Caitlin Moran

Abortions are never seen as a positive thing, as any other operation to remedy a potentially life-ruining condition would.

These hormones do not make me feel feminine: every night, I lie in bed feeling wrenched, and the bulge of my sanitary napkin in my kickers looks like a cock.

Strip clubs let everyone down. Men and women approach their very worst here.

Women wear heels because they think they make their legs look thinner.

But women living in fear of aging, and pulling painful and expensive tricks to hide it from the world, does not say something amazing about us as humans.

The idea that I might not-- in an earlier era, or a different country-- have a choice in the matter seems both emotionally and physically barbaric.

For a woman, every outfit is a hopeful spell, cast to influence the outcome of the day. An act of trying to predict your fate, like looking at your horoscope.

Amnesty International Survey found that 25 percent of people believe a woman is to blame for being raped if she dresses "provocatively.

Not one had ever passed judgement on my cheap handbag to my face. But then, this is a reserved country.

In the 21st century, it can't be about who we might make, and what they might do, anymore. It has to be about who we are and what we're going to do.

In that instance, my body had decided that this baby was not to be and had ended it. This time, it is my mind that has decided that this baby was not to be. I don't believe one's decision is more valid than the other. They both know me. They are both equally capable of deciding what is right.

Within living memory of this country, men could rape their wives: women were not seen as a separate sexual entity, with the right of refusal.

But when women are asked when they're going to have children, there is, in actually, another darker, more pertinent question lying underneath it.

Women are always being asked when they're going to have children. It's a question they're asking even more often.

Men and women alike have convinced themselves of a dragging belief: that somehow women are incomplete without having children.

In fact, in recent years I have become more and more didactic about pubic hair - to the point where I now believe that there are only four things a grown, modern woman should have: a pair of yellow shoes (they unexpectedly go with everything), a friend who will come and post bail at 4 a.m., a fail-safe pie recipe, and a proper muff. A big, hairy minge. A lovely furry moof that looks - when she sits, naked - as if she has a marmoset sitting in her lap. A tame marmoset, that she can send of to pickpocket things, should she so need it - like that trained monkey in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It was the 'Are the boys doing it?' basis on which I finally decided I was against women wearing burkas. Yes, the idea is that it protects your modesty, and ensures that people regard you as a human being, rather than just a sexual object (...) But who are you being protected from? Men. And who - so long as you play by the rules, and wear the correct clothes - is protecting you from the men? Men. And who is it that is regarding you as a sexual object, instead of another human being, in the first place? Men. Well. This all seems like quite a man-based problem, really. (...) I don't know why we're suddenly having to put things on our heads to make it better.

Your key hobbies need to be long country walks (get some fresh air in those lungs!), masturbation, and the revolution. Between those three, you should, in the long term, stay relatively sane.