Laurie Penny
Laurie Penny is a contributing editor to the New Statesman. She is the author of five books, most recently Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies, and Revolutions
Articles by this author
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Views Monday, October 26, 2015 Women Can’t Have It All – Because the Game Is Rigged Can women have it all? That this is still a major ethical dilemma of mainstream feminism shows how far we’ve still got to go. Yes, even though they’ve taken the nudes out of Playboy. The answer is less important than the fact that the question is vapid. Here's a better one: when did the message... Read more |
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Views Monday, October 12, 2015 Robots Are Coming for Your Job. That Might Not Be Bad News Do androids dream of a three-day week? This week, Professor Stephen Hawking weighed in on the topic that’s obsessing technologists, economists and social scientists around the world: whether a dawning age of robotics is going to spell mass unemployment. “If machines produce everything we need,”... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, September 22, 2015 What David Cameron Did to the Pig, His Party Is Now Doing to the Country Whatever you do, don’t think about David Cameron and a dead pig. I know, I know it’s like trying not to think of an elephant, but the fact is that the allegations that the Prime Minister may have put a 'private part of his anatomy" into a dead pig's mouth as part of an initiation ritual for an... Read more |
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Views Friday, July 11, 2014 Emergency Surveillance Law: Cameron's Cynical Appeal to the Three of the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse Illegal spying is illegal, except when it isn't. It has just been announced that a highly unusual emergency law will retroactively provide a legal basis for collecting the data and internet browsing history of all British citizens. The hastily-announced Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill... Read more |
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Views Monday, May 26, 2014 Let's Call the Isla Vista Killings What They Were: Misogynist Extremism It’s time to call misogynist extremism by its name. On Friday night, a young man went on a massacre in Santa Barbara that left six other people dead and seven injured. In the hours before the massacre, the suspect, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger , had uploaded a video to YouTube titled “Retribution”. In... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, May 20, 2014 Abortion Should Be Free, Safe and Legal – For Everyone What does a good abortion look like? A few months ago, Emily Letts, a 25-year-old American clinic worker, filmed her surgical abortion and posted the video on the internet. In the clip, Letts smiles and hums throughout the procedure, which she chose to have simply because she did not want to bear a... Read more |
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Views Friday, January 10, 2014 To Save a Generation from Despair, It’s Not Enough to Hassle Them into Low-Paying Jobs It is difficult to quantify despair. You’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever filled in one of those strange little forms that require you, with helpful tick-boxes, to rank your mood from sunny to suicidal. Read more |
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Views Friday, January 03, 2014 David Cameron's Internet Porn Filter Is the Start of Censorship Creep Picture the scene. You're pottering about on the internet, perhaps idly looking up cake recipes, or videos of puppies learning to howl. Then the phone rings. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, October 08, 2013 If You're a Feminist You'll Be Called a Man-Hater. You Don't Need Rebranding Nobody likes a feminist. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 18, 2013 The G8 Comes to the 'New Northern Ireland', a Place Where no Dissent Will Be Tolerated In Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, the streets are full of fake shop-fronts, designed to give the impression that empty stores are still selling things. Some of them are so realistic that locals have attempted to walk through doors that turn out to be painted on. The small Northern Irish town has 4.8 per cent unemployment, with an 82 per cent rise in redundancies last year, and a population of 14,000, plus about 3,000 police from all over Britain, plus a protest camp. Read more |