The Anti Room

At last, it’s here! Our fourth podcast is longer than usual – that’s because it was a special live event in association with Banter. Hosts Sinéad Gleeson and Anna Carey were delighted to welcome our very special guests Miriam O’Callaghan, Maeve Higgins and Martina Devlin, who joined us in front of a lively and enthusiastic [...]

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The tragically paywalled Caitlin Moran, columnist and critic for The Times, has written a book called How to Be a Woman, which you also have to pay for – I know! – but which you absolutely should. The title is a little misleading, as this is less of a guide to 21st century womanhood as [...]

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I’ve got a confession to make. I can’t play an instrument. Sure, I can sing, can (badly) strum a few chords on the guitar and mess about on a synth but that’s the extent of my ‘formal’  musical ability. Growing up, I longed to join a band, and yet I didn’t. While there didn’t seem [...]

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1. Because MCA has survived the cancer that put the band on hiatus and the Beasties are back, with their long-awaited new album Hot Sauce Committee Part Two (the album’s original release was put on hold after his diagnosis). And after the disappointment of To The Five Boroughs, it’s brilliant to have them not just [...]

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For my first Anti-Room post, I’m going to let loose a small rant that surfaces, on average, every few weeks. I kind of assume I’m carping to the converted, here, but even if not … well. This is my bonnet, and these are my bees. Here we go. Forget the L-word, the F-word, the C-word. [...]

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Sociologist Dr. Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics has, not for the first time, attracted considerable controversy in response to the publication last week of her most recent paper, “Feminist Myths & Magic Medicine”. Hakim has previously published provocatively titled works such as her 1996 paper “Mummy, I want to be a Housewife” [...]

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As an admittedly somewhat infrequent reader of The Wire (the magazine, rather than the cult Baltimore-based TV show) I could empathise with much in this article by writer Anwyn Crawford about why she won’t be subscribing to the music magazine again. In her opening paragraph, Anwyn tells us I haven’t been shy about my growing [...]

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Once upon a time, during the mid-1980s, I was a fresh-faced and enthusiastic young undergraduate and subsequently post-graduate student at UCD. In 1987 I, along with 300 of my peers, two-thirds of them men, graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree. Back then, as now, many graduates from my class entered the big accountancy firms around [...]

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Actress Geena Davis is perhaps best remembered in the role of poor, put-upon Thelma, sidekick to Susan Sarendon’s sassy Louise, in Ridley Scott’s 1991 groundbreaking road movie, Thelma & Louise. Although still acting, Ms. Davis has increasingly turned her attention to activism for gender equality, initially in sport and laterally in the media. Interestingly her [...]

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  I’m outta here! Women fed up with lads’ mags and sexist language undermining our struggle to be taken seriously and treated equally could follow the example of Guardian columnist Wendy Roby who encouraged her readers to engage in random acts of feminism. Roby argues very persuasively that “signs of female solidarity in unlikely places [...]

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