Athill is best known for Stet, her account of a life in publishing that won deservedly wide acclaim when it appeared at the beginning of the decade; at the age of 83 she burst on to the scene, or so it seemed. But she had been, in fact, a pioneer of a kind of writing that, when she began to practise it, hardly had a name. There was “autobiography”, which was the sort of book a Great Man (usually the writer would be a man, or should be) would write as an account of his Great Life, and his encounters with other Great Folk. When Instead of a Letter was published in 1963 (the year of Sylvia Plath’s suicide; the year that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique came out), it was called “documentary” — and so it was, the documentary of one woman’s ordinary and yet, in her telling, wholly extraordinary life.

— Erica Wagner on Diana Athill’s memoirs

In countries all over the world today, women live with the threat, or consequences, of female genital mutilation.

In Africa alone an estimated 3 million girls and women are subjected to the practice each year, and some 92m of the continent’s female population are estimated to have been victims of FGM.

The justification for the procedure changes from country to country. In some parts of the continent, religious scriptures are disingenuously invoked. In other parts it is cultural traditions that help keep the practice alive. But whatever the reasoning, the simple fact of the matter is that female genital mutilation is a blatant violation of the most fundamental human rights and must be eradicated.

Many States in which FGM is practised are signatories to the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women, article 5, which explicitly calls for legislation banning FGM. And while there are positive signs of a shift away from the practice in many countries, the failure of many African Union states to ratify the protocol and the scarcity of effective national legislation is hampering a more co-ordinated effort to rid the continent of this scourge.

— Rid the world of female genital mutilation

Apparently dinosaurs still roam the earth. They’re all at Publishers Weekly. This list proves that the only support women authors get is from our Wonderbras. As women make up 90 per cent of the fiction-buying public, perhaps we should make a point and girl-cott male authors until our work is given the same critical acclaim and public backing.

— Kathy Lette quoted in the article ‘Women authors left off list of the year’s top 10 books’

That right there, in >140 characters, is possibly the most succinct and effective piece of feminist gonzo journalism I have ever read. Personal, factual, shoving the meaty political details of women’s everyday life right up in your face. Plus, it quite delightfully manages to combine in 32 words most of the big taboos of modern misogynist thought: women bleeding in the boardroom. Women being candid about the parts of our physical lives which aren’t to do with fucking but also matter to us. Women’s bodies being, in fact, more than just tools for baby-making and delivering sexual pleasure to men. Women being outspoken and proud about reproductive self-determination. Women reacting to the termination of unwanted pregnancy not with horrific, life-stomping mental breakdown but with what most of us actually feel: relief. The radical truths that women, with their bleeding, messy cunts, can hold high-powered jobs, make decisions about our own bodies, own our own moral compasses and face pain and humiliation with our heads held high.

— Penny Red on the tweet by Penelope Trunk about her miscarriage (as detailed here).