Tim Blair quotes Mark Steyn: 

The gentleman had called the Female Genital Mutilation Helpline thinking it was a helpline set up by Her Majesty’s Government to help you find someone to genitally mutilate your daughters. 

And no, he’s not joking.

Good news, everyone: 

From Monday the Guardian is handing over control of its features content to 10 young trainee journalists… Here they describe the topics they want to explore and debate – the media, sex, food, employment, globalisation and more.  

Thrilling, isn’t it? All that exploring and debating by the titans of tomorrow as they probe “the issues that matter to us and why.” They have a mission statement and everything:

We are all members of Generation Y – those born between the early 80s and early 00s.

And this, in itself, is somehow fascinating and a basis for applause. 

Like every generation, we think we see things differently from the ones that came before us. Also like every generation, we face rapid change that we don’t fully understand – for instance, are we really digital natives, or just magpies collecting shiny things? Are we doomed? Is our future a dystopian IRL news feed of being screwed over by landlords/elected officials/ill-judged sexts?

With such pressing questions in mind,

For one week, we will share our perspectives on the media, globalisation, sex and pop culture,

Media, globalisation, sex and pop culture. Wooh, yeah. Can the system cope with this avalanche of intellectual boldness?

These are some of the pieces we will be bringing you:

Buzzfeed’s Beastmaster explains the cat thing.

Everything you wanted to know about trans sex lives and were rude enough to ask.

And obviously,

Why Clueless defines Gen Y better than any other single cultural artefact.

As you can see, it’s “a week for everyone,” brought to you by an “eclectic mix of voices that have yet to be heard.” And so let’s meet some of these eclectic debaters and explorers, this hot and sassy new Guardian team.

Cathy Young on the psychodramas of academic feminism: 

Twenty years ago, critics such as Christina Hoff Sommers, Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, and Karen Lehrman described the bizarre “therapeutic pedagogy” in many women's studies classrooms, where female students were frequently encouraged to share traumatic or intimate experiences in supportive “safe spaces.” Today, at many colleges, academic therapism has spread to other fields. Welcome to the age of the trigger warning. […] Initially, the warnings were primarily for sexual assault and partner abuse. Eventually, they spread to just about everything that could be potentially upsetting to any person of politically correct sensitivities: sexism, racism, homophobia, “ableism,” “victim-blaming,” “slut-shaming,” “fat-shaming,” “body-shaming” and a host of other sins and oppressions. (My personal favourite is a warning for “discussion of gender policing” – that is, of norms dictating proper bounds of masculine and feminine behaviour. How startling to find such a discussion on a feminist blog.)

Christopher Snowdon parses the assumptions of “medical socialism”: 

‘Neoliberalism’ means free markets and ‘transnational forces’ means globalisation, i.e., free trade between countries. These are the main factors that have led to the extraordinary reduction in poverty in developing countries since 1980. The world suffers less from an unequal distribution of wealth than it does from an unequal distribution of capitalism. Countries which have resisted free market reforms have suffered greatly as a result.

Thomas Sowell feels the benevolence of teachers’ unions:  

The teachers’ unions see charter schools as a threat to their members’ jobs, and politicians respond to the money and the votes that teachers’ unions can provide. The net result is that public schools are often run as if their main function is to provide jobs to teachers. Whether the children get a decent education is secondary, at best.

And Dr Ben Carson, a retired black neurosurgeon, recently spoke at a conservative conference and received thunderous applause. Much to the annoyance of quite a few people on the Totally Non-Racist Left™, who denounced him as an “uncle Tom,” a “token” and a “house negro.” “He can shine my shoes,” wrote ‘progressive’ comedian Laura Levites. 

As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.

It all began for me more than a decade ago, with the “mangetout moment”; a passing conversation with my editor at the Guardian about those pangs of consumer guilt that wash over us, but upon which we rarely act. 

Ah, consumer guilt. I bet you’re feeling its sting right now. 

Those moments when, for example, you pick up a plastic-wrapped packet of mangetout in a supermarket, fleetingly dwell on their food miles or the likely exploitative wage of the Kenyan farmer who grew them, but still pop them into your shopping basket and shuffle towards the next aisle.

Such are the recollections of Mr Leo Hickman, whose ten years of struggling with ethical purity will be known to long-term readers. And who believes that the way to make poor people rich is to not buy their goods. 

Our experiment was never framed as anything other than a personal journey. It certainly was never meant to be a finger-wagging sermon – more a fumble and a feel through some of modern life’s most chewy dilemmas.

Yes, Mr Hickman and his equally fretful colleagues shied from any hint of such competitive piety, honest, and instead merely had debates on subjects ranging from ethical sandwich-wrapping and the immorality of fireworks to whether it’s acceptable to employ a cleaner and alternative uses for inherited fur coats – among them, dog bedding and indoors-only fashion. And debates on whether roadkill could be an alternative ethical food source for Guardianistas who “hate waste.” Those “chewy dilemmas” that bedevil us all. 

And Mr Hickman’s moral guidance was often reciprocated by his readers:

A woman from Derbyshire wrote to enthusiastically explain how she hung her “washable menstrual products” out to dry from the guy rope when camping.

It’s good to know these things. And such wisdom was not without influence:

A troubled student writes:

As a proud male feminist,

Oh, go on. Guess where. 

As a proud male feminist, I believe it’s important for men to rally around the feminist movement to provide support and to act as an example for other men to follow. So it confuses me that at university a shockingly large number of male students I speak to refuse to apply the term to themselves, instead being evasive and avoiding such an empowering title.

Yes, dear readers, it’s both shocking and confusing that in the twenty-first century, in one of the most cosseting and politically corrected environments in all of the developed world, some male students feel no need to describe themselves as feminists. And calling oneself a feminist, announcing it proudly to the world – or at least to other, likeminded, equally proud students – is apparently the duty of all righteous beings, especially those with testicles. It’s empowering, you see. And never a sign of narcissism, credulity and pretentious moral grandstanding. 

The scandalised and bewildered author of this piece is Mr Lewis Merryweather, a first year student of comparative literature at the University of Warwick. “He is a proud feminist,” reads his Guardian profile, “and writes poetry.” And the sorrows of his life are there for all to see:

I often encounter negative reactions when declaring myself a male feminist at university.

Missionary work is hard. Bring handkerchiefs, quickly, a dozen at least. And possibly towels and a mop.

I find this attitude among male students worrying… Perhaps it stems from male panic, that, foolishly, male students worry they may lose power and opportunity in a world of feminism. Perhaps guy students are embarrassed to align themselves with a word that lexically alludes to female-centrism.

Yes, that must be it. Those lexical allusions are a real bugger.

Maybe they’re worried about feeling emasculated.

Says our fretful poet. A man agonised by the existence of peers who don’t think exactly as he does and won’t wear his badge. And to make matters worse, there’s the ever-present shadow of hegemonic oppression:

In the words of Colm Dempsy, a male feminist who spoke at the forum I attended: “I am a proud male feminist. I am willing to fight with you. If you let me.” This is a statement every man, inside university and outside, should be able to shout without fear of being silenced by society.

Silenced by society. In a national newspaper.