Lorna Finlayson

Lorna Finlayson teaches philosophy at Essex. An Introduction to Feminism came out in 2016.

Diary: I was a Child Liberationist

Lorna Finlayson, 18 February 2021

When I was thirteen,​I left school and never went back. I don’t remember much about my last day. I don’t remember what lessons I had, or what I did when I got home. I only remember trying to make a mental recording as I walked down the corridors, into the foyer, out the automatic doors and onto the bus. I’d made a decision not to tell anybody I was leaving and waited until...

From The Blog
28 April 2020

When I was at primary school, one of the things they did to keep us occupied was make us perform a strange, tuneless chant about a factory worker named Joe. ‘Hi!’ we would shout. ‘My name’s Joe! And I work in a button fac-tor-ee. One day, my boss came to me and said “Joe! Are you busy?” I said “No!”’ As the chant developed, poor Joe would be given more and more instructions. First it was ‘Push this button with you right hand!’ and we would have to jab our right index fingers rhythmically in the air while continuing to chant. Then it was the left hand, then the right foot, then the left foot, then the head. I don’t remember there being any natural stopping point. It just went on until we made mistakes, forgetting some of the ‘buttons’ or losing our balance and falling over.

Short Cuts: The Rot

Lorna Finlayson, 1 August 2019

My brother​ is not dead. So far, he has lost only the top part of the index finger of his right hand, though he may lose more. He works with chainsaws. Or rather, he used to work with chainsaws. He did not lose the fingertip in a chainsaw accident, though. That would be an improbable scenario, since he is right-handed: this was the trigger finger. In October last year, my brother burned the...

What is so disorientating isn’t just that the feminist movement has attained apparent maturity and success just when the conditions of so many women’s lives are desperate and deteriorating, but that it should also be necessary – yet oddly so difficult – to argue for the relevance of those conditions to feminism. Austerity, war and climate change have not been prominent concerns in the most visible feminist campaigns, which have focused instead on a relatively narrow set of issues: increasing women’s representation in various spheres, or pursuing legal, policy and cultural changes in the areas of sex, sexuality and the body.

From The Blog
20 February 2019

On Monday, seven MPs resigned from the Labour Party – though not from their seats in the Commons – to form a new ‘Independent Group’ in Parliament. An eighth joined them yesterday, and three Tories today. Few people, arguably including the splitters themselves, have much confidence that the breakaway group can garner significant public support, or achieve any particular objective.

Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.

Sign up to our newsletter

For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.

Newsletter Preferences