Victoria Dutchman-Smith

“No one wants to shame a woman for the moves she has made when forced to play a game according to someone else’s rules, but criticising the rules is easily conflated with criticising the player. This is a ploy which extends into multiple areas in which women make choices, from traditional housewifery to sex work. Those of us who question the conditions under which women make decisions which limit or harm them are deemed to be invalidating the women themselves, due to some inexplicable, innate discomfort or phobia regarding children, sex or even silicone.”
― Victoria Dutchman-Smith, Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women

“I’m going to look at a number of areas – beauty, the body, unpaid work, progress, sex, community, power, violence – in terms of how they are experienced by women in midlife, and how other groups exploit, scapegoat and demonise middle-aged women in order to preserve favoured narratives.”
― Victoria Dutchman-Smith, Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women