Lydia Paynter, Author at The Orbital

Nice guys finish last’ has to be one of my least favourite phrases in the English language, pipped to the post perhaps only by ‘the friend zone’. Yet time and time again, in conversations, online and in films and TV, the idea that women ignore the ‘nice guys’ in favour of a bad boy is pervasive in our culture. To the guys who are respectful and kind to women, the ones who will go to Women’s Marches, lift up their female colleagues at work, and call themselves feminists I will say this: it’s great that you’re a feminist, it’s great that you respect women, but that still doesn’t mean that woman you catch eyes with over the morning papers on the underground simply must date you. Being a ‘nice guy’ is a reward in itself, it makes you a better person, and society better as a whole. But th...

Motherhood, and specfically the ability to carry and give birth to a baby, is simultaneously revered as the epitome of the greatest of all human powers, the ability to create new life, and ridiculed and undervalued as ‘women’s work’. The power to choose not to give birth, and instead end a pregnancy, seems to incite equally rigorous complaint and controversy, which is soon set to be voiced very publicly as the Republic of Ireland prepares to go to the polls on 25th May for an vote that could lift the country’s ban on abortion. In Ireland, an abortion is not merely illegal; its prohibition is enshrined in the constitution as the Eighth Amendment, which recognises the equal right to life of both a woman and an unborn foetus. The change to the constitution, which came into force...

Author: Lydia Paynter

‘Nice Guys Finish Last’

The Irish Abortion Referendum