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Stephanie Leary

Writer, Front End Developer, former WordPress consultant

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Pockets and autonomy

May 2, 2013 Stephanie Leary Leave a Comment

Men are used to carrying stuff in their pockets, you put money there, you put car keys there. With money and car keys come power and independence. You can buy stuff, you can leave. The idea of some women’s clothes not having pockets is baffling, but it’s worse than that — it’s patriarchal because it makes the assumption that women will either carry a handbag, or they’ll rely on men around them for money and keys and such things.

— Kyle Cassidy

This is part of the background noise of my life: most women’s clothes (business and dresswear, especially) don’t have pockets. I didn’t realize, until this post started making the rounds among my Twitter friends, that most men didn’t know this.

Also? It’s easier to separate a woman from her handbag than a man from his pockets. Once you’ve lifted her handbag, the woman is bereft of transportation, ID, money, and phone — that is to say, vulnerable.

Life feminism

This is an excerpt from Content Strategy for WordPress.My latest books are Content Strategy for WordPress (2015) and WordPress for Web Developers (2013). Sign up to be notified when I have a new book for you.

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I’m a front end developer at Equinox OLI, working on open source library software. I was previously a freelance WordPress developer in higher education. You can get in touch here or on LinkedIn.

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