Lorna Finlayson

The difference between Catharine MacKinnon and a typical pro-war American feminist is that MacKinnon has a far bleaker view of the condition of women in Western countries. As she sees it, they need more than top-level representation – in the form of a female president, for example – to perfect their equality. They are systemically brutalised in a society that refuses even to recognise what is going on. This raises the question of whether America, too, might be a legitimate target of humanitarian intervention. But that doesn’t seem to be what MacKinnon has in mind when she asks: ‘Will the marines never land for them?’

In the event that Corbyn survives to win an election and form a government, what may be hoped from it? It has often been said that we should not expect his troubles to end when he becomes prime minister, and indeed that this may be the moment when his real problems begin. This is probably true, if not very useful. What we may hope for also depends on a more basic and fundamental question. If you think that capitalism can be managed in such a way as to afford a decent life for all, then it is precisely this we should hope for and demand from a Labour victory under Corbyn. If not, the hope must be for something else.

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.

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...

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...