The Stories We Tell About Rape
We are raped and we are raped and we are raped and we are raped.
The Cutprice Guignol
The Ninth Year: The Haunting of Swill House
Category: Discussion
July 28, 2017
Hounds of Love, Extreme Violence, and Exploitation
I went to see Hounds of Love today, writer/director Ben Young’s debut feature revolving around the story of an suburban Australian couple (played by Emma Booth and Stephen Curry) carrying out a series of violent abductions, rapes and murders to assuage his twisted sexual appetites. We pick up as they abduct Vicky (Ashleigh Cummings) and carry out a series of physical and sexual assaults on the teenager, and a battle of wills begins between the younger woman and the older.
July 8, 2017
Doggett, Coates, and the “Perfect” Rape Victim
So, I recently finished up the latest season of Orange is the New Black (yeah, yeah, I know, slow on the uptake). I thought it was pretty good overall, but one subplot in particular seems to have caught the eye of a lot of reviewers and viewers alike is the one revolving around Tiffany Doggett and Charlie Coates.
June 25, 2017
Note to Self
I’m content right now. I’ve been listening to eighties pop, trying to French inhale with my new vaporiser, and dancing with the cat all night, and I feel good. Which feels like something close to a miracle, because a few months ago, I was so depressed that I was legitimately struggling to get out of bed in the morning, and when I’m in those states, it feels like the only thing facing you is this unassailable wall of shit, on the other side of which is another, more festering, more rancid pile of shit – you know, something like Game of Thrones’ treatment of women in season four. It feels fucking endless, and even though I could lie there, one hand in the eleventh bag of crisps of the day and the other to my mouth so I could chew off what remained of the skin around my fingers, and know that I had gotten out of worse in the past, I just for the life of me couldn’t see a way out of this one. It felt permanent – terminal, in the least fatal way possible.
June 12, 2017
Doctor Who, Stunt Casting, and the Elusive Female Doctor
So, I write a lot about Doctor Who on this blog, and there’s a question that I haven’t addressed yet. One that, with the end of Peter Capaldi’s tenure as the show’s lead drawing to a close, has been asked more and more: why is the Doctor always a white dude?
June 3, 2017
Basically Straight
It’s bisexual pride day today! Let’s celebrate by addressing some fuckin’ biphobia.
May 12, 2017
Deconstructing Femininity
What does deconstructing femininity look like?
Because I know how we construct femininity – the same way we do masculinity, through a collection of social, historical, and cultural influences that tell us that if we are born with a certain body type or identify with a certain gender than we should act a certain way. That’s not hard to understand. But what I want to know is what a deconstruction of that would look like through the lens of pop culture.
April 12, 2017
Trouble Clef Release Announcement!
Hello, everyone, and I hope you’re having a great week so far. Mine is going brilliantly, thanks in no small part to the fact that today is the release date for my new novella, Trouble Clef!
Maya has spent decade putting her time as one quarter of a world-famous girl band, Trouble Clef, behind her, along with the intense romance she shared with her closeted bandmate Kyra. But now, ten years after their last controversial show, Trouble Clef has a chance to pick up where they left off with a reunion tour, and Maya is forced to face the past—and the undeniable feelings she still has for Kyra—once more.
As some of you may know, I write romance and erotica under the pen name Kara Lowndes. Trouble Clef – yes, that title is a straight-up shameless pun and I’ll never apologise for it – is a contemporary lesbian romance novella, and it’s very gay and pretty funny and I’m very excited for you to read it. It’s available as an ebook and is Kindle compatible, so if you’re looking for something short, sweet, and sexy to get you through till summer, I have just the thing for you…
Trouble Clef is published by Evernight Publishing, and is available through Amazon (UK and USA) as well as the publisher’s website. If you’re looking for something shorter, I released a contemporary lesbian short story (Amazon link) last year that might hit the spot (pun more than intended).
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