Now what would you think if someone said “it’s not that I’m anti-racist or anything, but I don’t believe in discriminating against people because of their race”?

The issue of self-harm is gaining a higher profile, in the UK at least, but it still remains to some extent a hidden and misunderstood problem, as evidenced by the stereotype of a teenage girl cutting her arms in a dark bedroom.

Sometimes tragedies, losses, or terminal illnesses really galvanise us into action, make our priorities crystal clear, and give us a strength we did not know we had…

First it was a problem supposedly only for gay men, drug users, and the promiscuous, then for Eastern Europeans and Africans, and now it is women who are said to bear the brunt of the virus and be the ones who should empower themselves and stop the virus in its tracks. Women taking responsibility for men’s behaviour. Sound familiar?

“Reclaim the night” is a women-only march in London, demanding justice for rape victims in a country in which, according to the British Crime Survey (2001) there are an estimated 47,000 rapes every year, around 40,000 attempted rapes and over 300,000 sexual assaults — with a paltry conviction rate of 5.3%.

According to an overview of thousands of psychology studies, men and women are psychologically very similar. So why are so many of us convinced that women are from Venus and men are from Mars?