The Fade Out, Vol. 1 by Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips

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Offensive racist stereotyping, rampant sexism, an abundance of rape, clichéd and disjointed storytelling and an unwieldy cast of homogenous characters of which to keep track – what’s not to love about this 1940s noir in graphic novel form?

WATCH banned rape documentary India’s Daughter for a LIMITED TIME ONLY #JyotiSingh #IndiasDaughter

Rape documentary India’s Daughter was BANNED in India. It’s UK airing was brought forward to tonight and is now available on iPlayer. It will probably only be on YouTube for a limited time before the Indian government or the BBC have it removed. It focuses on the gang rape and gruesome murder of Jyoti Singh on a bus in December 2012.

I highly recommend you watch it while you can. Please share.

The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick

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The Shawl is the first book I’ve read concerning the Holocaust but it’s everything one would expect it to be. A horrific, poignant, lyrical, and heartbreaking narrative of one woman’s life before, during and after the traumatizing events for the Jewish during WWII. Listening to Yelena Shmulenson’s skillful narration brought Rosa’s suffering to life and doesn’t fail to evoke heartache for her plight.

What abuse in relationships looks like: A note to YA and NA readers, watch these

Considering the alarming number of YA and New Adult books marketing abusive heterosexual relationships as romantic, here’s something to educate the masses who are seduced by the abusive arseholes that are the heroes.

This is Abuse is a campaign launched by the UK government to inform and support victims of abuse in relationships specifically targeted at young people. There’s even an FAQ to help you identify it and advice on how to tackle specific situations.

Meathouse Man by George R.R. Martin

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This is some fucked up shit. Misogynistic and necrophilic fucked up shit. With illustrations. My inner feminist is vibrating with rage and is drawing disturbing comparisons with serial killer Elliot Rodger.

The meathouse is a whorehouse whose ‘whores’ are dead women, most of whom are former criminals and debtors although some have been kidnapped and killed precisely to be commodified by transforming them into brainless undead prostitutes. Outside of the meathouses, corpses are used as workers directed by handlers (read: puppeteers), similar to what The People do with vampires in Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series. The entertainment industry is dominated by corpse fights like the gladiators of old, their handlers manipulating them like 3-D real world video game characters.

Sold by Patricia McCormick

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Sold is a lyrically beautiful and graphically descriptive story of an innocent 13-year-old Nepalese girl from the mountains, sold by her oppressive gambling addict step-father and trafficked into India to become a prostitute in a brothel run by a woman with no morals. There, Lakshmi’s body is sold for the price of a Coca-Cola – a luxury she’d once cherished as a poor country girl. When she’d left home, she’d believed she was to become a maid in a rich woman’s household in the big city where she could save and send money home to her beloved mother and her baby brother. The reality is soul-crushing. She’s told so many lies she doesn’t know what to believe.

Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates

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Laura Bates brings issues of harassment, assault and abuse of both men and women to light, after being deluged with submissions to her website and Twitter accounts. Seemingly small incidents of off-hand remarks can feel like the death of a thousand cuts when they happen everyday in every facet of your life.

These sexist ouccrences happen so often and are so insidious and pervasive in Western society that they’ve become normalised to the point we feel silly for being upset about instances others brush off and disheartened when our complaints are ignored. All of this undermines confidence and erodes self-esteem. Even if we don’t realise it, we’ve all witnessed sexism – on the street, in the media, at school and work, and now online with social media and comment forums. As Bates says, ‘Enough is enough‘.

Rape in Orphan Black | Season 2, Episode 5 *SPOILERS*

We have two rapes, victims of each gender, under very different circumstances. *SPOILERS*

B785 (Cyborgs: More Than Machines #3) by Eve Langlais

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Sheldon is the cyborg Einstein (formerly IQ221) disconnected from emotion, socially awkward with an off the charts intellect, and completely disinterested in sex. The only difference is that Einstein kisses and awakens his Sleeping Beauty as a last resort as nothing he’d tried to fix the cyborg female worked.

Sheldon & Amy in The Big Bang Theory

This scene says it all.

Fair warning: I ❤ Sheldon and Eve Langlais did him justice. *fangirl squee*

New Zealand TV: ‘The Almighty Johnsons’ vs. ‘Top of the Lake’

2012 was the year of Danish TV for me, with The Killing gluing me to my screen, but 2013 was the year for New Zealand to impress. Three seasons of The Almighty Johnsons (IMDB) and the mini-series Top of the Lake (IMDB) have left me eager for more.

Top of the Lake

Starkly beautific natural rural landscapes are juxtaposed with the sheer ugliness of past and present events in the town ironically called ‘Paradise’. One shock after another is delivered like a punch to the gut. Answers are few to begin with. At the end of each episode you’re left pondering the possibilities: rape, paedophilia, drugs, people trafficking, kidnapping, paternity. And everything and everyone is completely fucked up.