Women's Voices (Women's Voices)

Genevieve Gluck speaks with Renée Gerlich, a feminist writer and artist based in New Zealand.

Her writing can be found at Feminist Current, Savage Minds and her blog, reneejg.net. In 2021 she founded Dragon Cloud Press to publish her series The Brief Complete Herstory, a female-centered history of the world from the Big Bang to present day neoliberalism. Her book Out of the Fog: on Politics, Feminism and Coming Alive, which explores the deep roots of the contradictions that characterise today's political landscape, will be published by Spinifex Press later this year.

Renée also reads Audre Lorde's essay, Poetry is Not a Luxury.

In this episode, Genevieve Gluck and Caroline Norma discuss Larry Flynt, pornography's impact on women beyond Western societies, surrogacy, and gender identity ideology.

Over the last several years, transgender activism has made sweeping gains. Proponents of this ideology have succeeded in positioning "gender identity" as the social justice issue of our day.

But are the claims made by these activists actually true? What does it mean to say that people can be "born in the wrong body"? Does the concept of “gender identity” break down stereotypes about the nature of men and women, or does it reinforce them? And what about the rights of women and girls?

On February 1, 2020, the US-based organization Women's Liberation Front hosted a panel event called “The New Misogyny.”

Three women’s rights campaigners, Meghan Murphy, Saba Malik, and Kara Dansky, presented a critical analysis of gender identity and made arguments for sex-based women's rights. The event took place at the Seattle Public Library in downtown Seattle, Washington, despite protesters inside and outside the building.

This is the talk that was given by Saba Malik, a radical feminist who serves on the Board of Directors for the Fertile Ground Institute, a non-profit organization working for ecological justice.

Jennifer Lahl is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, which, according to the mission statement, exists to “educate and inform members of the general public, thought leaders, lawmakers, and others on ethical issues in healthcare, biomedical research, and biotechnological advancement.”

Lahl has over 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and in senior-level nursing management. She has made several documentaries with a particular focus on exploring the exploitation of women by the assisted reproductive technologies (ART) industry, including Breeders: A Subclass of Women?, #Big Fertility, and Eggsploitation.

Her most recent film titled Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Assign Gender? questions the ethics of medically transitioning children and reveals some of the harms, both emotional and physical, of childhood sex reassignment procedures and medications.

Genevieve Gluck and Jen Izaakson of Lesbian Labour discuss the ineffectiveness of the police to adequately address sexual assault and violence against women while simultaneously pursuing charges against women for social media posts; the platforming of child sexual abusers by trans organization the Sylvia Rivera Law Project; the phenomenon of men pretending to be lesbians and the harm this does to the lesbian community.

Elly Arrow is a radical feminist and prostitution abolitionist activist who works to raise awareness about the many harms of the sex industry. In this episode Genevieve and Elly discuss the unique health risks involved in prostitution, the impact that full decriminalization has had on women in Germany, the importance of discussing the role of male entitlement, and why it is not possible to separate trafficking from what sex industry campaigners term "sex work".

You can also find Elly Arrow's work on Youtube.

A selection of international news stories pertaining to women's rights for the month of January 2021.

Genevieve Gluck and Caroline Norma discuss the Nordic model legislation proposed in New York and Malta; US bills to prevent minors from undergoing experimental "gender reassignment treatments"; deepfake pornography.

Martha Nussbaum is an American philosopher and current Professor of  Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly  appointed in the law school and the philosophy department. She has a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political  philosophy, feminism, and ethics, including animal rights.

In this essay, Nussbaum analyzes the works of Judith Butler,  particularly her theory of gender performativity, and what Nussbaum  calls Butler's “hip  quietism” which “collaborates with evil”.

“What precisely does Butler offer when she counsels subversion? She  tells us to engage in parodic performances, but she warns us that the dream of escaping altogether from the oppressive structures is just a dream: it is within the oppressive structures that we must find little spaces for resistance, and this resistance cannot hope to change the  overall situation. And here lies a dangerous quietism.

For Butler, the act of subversion is so riveting, so sexy, that it is a  bad dream to think that the world will actually get better. What a bore equality is! No bondage, no delight. In this way, her pessimistic  erotic anthropology offers support to an amoral anarchist politics.

Finally, there is despair at the heart of the cheerful Butlerian  enterprise. The big hope, the hope for a world of real justice, where laws and institutions protect the equality and the dignity of all  citizens, has been banished, even perhaps mocked as sexually tedious.  Judith Butler's hip quietism is a comprehensible response to the difficulty of realizing justice in America. But it is a bad response. It collaborates with evil. Feminism  demands more and women deserve better. "

Full text available here.

Over the last several years, transgender activism has made sweeping gains. Proponents of this ideology have succeeded in positioning "gender identity" as the social justice issue of our day.

But are the claims made by these activists actually true? What does it mean to say that people can be "born in the wrong body"? Does the concept of “gender identity” break down stereotypes about the nature of men and women, or does it reinforce them? And what about the rights of women and girls?

On February 1, 2020, the US-based organization Women's Liberation Front hosted a panel event called “The New Misogyny.”

Three women’s rights campaigners, Meghan Murphy, Saba Malik, and Kara Dansky, presented a critical analysis of gender identity and made arguments for sex-based women's rights. The event took place at the Seattle Public Library in downtown Seattle, Washington, despite protesters inside and outside the building.

This is the talk given by Kara Danksy, who serves on the Board of Directors for the Women’s Liberation Front, where she acts as an attorney and media coordinator.

https://soundcloud.com/womenreadwomen/the-new-misogyny-kara-dansky

Female Erasure, Reverse Sexism, and the Cisgender Theory of Privilege

by Elizabeth Hungerford
read by Genevieve Gluck

"Cis theory of gender denies the lived experiences of millions of women who despise the social role 'woman,' instead framing non-trans women's gender identity as a privilege. The theory is blind to how these seemingly benign 'gender identities' operate as a hierarchy of social roles and interactions whose end game is the unequal distribution of power between male and female humans. This essentialist, ahistorical assessment of gender identity short-circuits women's ability to recognize themselves as oppressed by gender-based roles. It denies us use of the language and concepts necessary to describe women's specific exploitation as women."

Elizabeth Hungerford is a feminist writer at sexnotgender.com and ehungerford.com. She is also the co-founder of a public discussion group about the contentious politics of gender. As an attorney, she is particularly interested in class-based analysis of gender, identity, women-only spaces, and the philosophical contradictions created by protecting "gender identity" as a matter of law.

Patrícia Lélis is a Brazilian radical feminist and former congressional journalist who has been repeatedly harassed and threatened with death for speaking about issues that impact women and for criticizing the sex industry. She has been maligned by Brazilian political parties on both the right and the left, and recently experienced a campaign of targeted harassment and death threats for opposing sex self-identification, citing the recent incident at LA's Wi Spa, and was even called a criminal by her own political party, PT, who issued a statement denouncing her. In addition, her employers were flooded with thousands of emails asking for her to be fired.

In spite of relentless libel and threats against her, Lélis continues to speak up for women's rights and says, "Women are always silenced, whether on the political right or the political left. I still believe and defend that being a woman is not a feeling."

This is a speech given by Andrea Dworkin in San Francisco, 1978, first published in Letters from a War Zone.

Introduction:
"Pornography and Grief was written as a speech for a Take Back the Night March that was part of the first feminist conference on pornography in the United States in San Francisco, November 1978. Organized by the now defunct Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM ), over 5000 women from thirty states participated and we shut down San Francisco's pornography district for one night. The ground was taken but not held."

In this episode, Holly Lawford-Smith reads her academic paper, The Metaphysics of Intersectionality Revisited. Lawford-Smith co-authored the paper with Kate Phelan, and it was published in the Journal of Political Philosophy.

Holly Lawford-Smith is an Associate Professor in Political Philosophy in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. She works in social, moral, and political philosophy, with a particular interest in feminism, climate ethics, and collective action. Most of her current research is centered on the conflict of interests between gender identity activism, on the one hand, and both women’s rights, and lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) rights, on the other hand.

In February 2021, she launched a website, www.noconflicttheysaid.org, that invites women to contribute anonymous stories “about the impacts on women of men using women-only spaces”.

In May 2022, she published her debut book titled Gender-Critical Feminism, which analyzes the new view of gender that has emerged in recent years an ‘identity’, a way that people feel about themselves in terms of masculinity or femininity, regardless of their sex.

According to Lawford-Smith, women are socialized to conform to norms of femininity (and sanctioned for failure), and masculinity and femininity exist in a hierarchy in which femininity is devalued. This view, she argues, helps us to understand injustice against women, and what we can do about it.

In this paper, The Metaphysics of Intersectionality Revisited, Lawford-Smith articulates some of the ways that intersectionality is being interpreted to the detriment of the women’s movement, and attempts to clarify the history behind the concept.

“The insights of early black feminists on this topic were original, imaginative, and important, and they pointed to an urgent gap in social justice-oriented theory and politics,” say Lawford-Smith and Phelan.

“Here we are not questioning their significance, but rather the way the concept of intersectionality has been taken up in contemporary mainstream feminism, both inside and outside the academy. The idea of ‘intersectionality’ has assumed enormous cultural importance, but is variously deployed in ways that seem far from what its originators had in mind.”

This is a speech given by Renee Gerlich in Brisbane on October 12, 2019. The event was hosted by the International Women’s Day Brisbane Committee.
Full text of the speech can be found here.

"The mindless mantra 'transwomen are women' encapsulates both the ideology and attitudes of transgenderism, and the neoliberal zeitgeist, in three words. It implies the destruction of nature, of biology, of our own bodies – including through the radical mastectomies increasingly conducted on adolescent girls, mainly lesbians. It is based on the commodification of women, and it leads to the removal of legal protections and social supports designated for women and based on sex, and using this mantra like a threat – because if you don’t accept it, you are a bigot – men are colonising women’s hard-won spaces, organisations, movements and safehouses as well as lesbian culture."

Pornography and Male Supremacy was first published in an anthology of speeches and essays by Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, 1988.

Read by Elly Arrow

"Feminists are often asked whether pornography causes rape. The fact is that rape and prostitution caused and continue to cause pornography. Politically, culturally, socially, sexually, and economically, rape and prostitution generated por­nography; and pornography depends for its continued existence on the rape and prostitution of women. The word pornography comes from the ancient Greek porne and graphos: it means "the graphic  depiction of whores."
Porne means "whore," specifically the lowest class of whore, which in ancient Greece was the brothel slut available to all male citizens. There were distinct classes of prostitutes in ancient Greece: the porne was the sexual cow. She was, simply and clearly and absolutely, a sexual slave. Graphos means "writing, etching, or drawing.
The  whores called porneia were captive in brothels, which were designated as such by huge phalluses painted on or constructed near the door. They were not allowed out, were never educated, were barely dressed, and in general were miserably treated; they were the sexual garbage of Greek society. Wives were kept in nearly absolute isolation, allowed the company of slaves and young children only. High-class prostitutes, a class distinct from the porneia and from wives both, had the only freedom of movement accorded women, and were the only educated women. Two very significant words originated in the ancient Greece many of us revere: democracy and pornography. Democracy from its beginnings excluded all women and some men. Pornography from its beginnings justified and promoted this exclusion of all women by presenting the sexuality of all women as the sexuality of the brothel slut. The brothel slut and the sexuality of the brothel slut had been stolen and sold — raped and prostituted; and the rape and prostitution of that captive and degraded being with her captive and degraded sexuality is precisely the sexual content of pornography. In pornography, the will of the chattel whore is synonymous with her function: she is purely for sex and her function is defined as her nature and her will."

Genevieve Gluck and Caroline Norma discuss rape impunity in India, women's day protests in Mexico, women garment workers demonstrating against the military coup in Myanmar, and guest Jen Izaakson comments on the murder of London woman Sarah Everard along with the public response.

Genevieve Gluck and Donovan Cleckley discuss the influence of pornography, plastic surgery, and the objectification of women on gender identity ideology.

Donovan Cleckley holds a BA in English and Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Montevallo and an MA in English from Tulane University. His research focuses on the relationship between women’s rights and gay rights, literature and sexual politics, and the social and political implications of transgenderism as an ideology, an industry, and an institution. Learn more about his work on his website, or find him on Twitter.

I spoke with Kathleen Richardson of the Campaign Against Porn Bots about the increasing threat of deepfake pornography and the potential harms of the emerging VR pornography industry.

Full video available here.

An article I recently published, “App Fetishizing Forcible Transitioning of Kids Available on Google Play”, highlights a transgender pornography application that uses photographs of children. One of these children is a 14 year-old girl named Molly Russell, who committed suicide after viewing self-harm content on Instagram. As a result of my research, Kathleen Richardson contacted the family’s solicitor and the photograph has since been removed from the app, though the app itself remains available on Google Play and contains photos of other children, as well.

Dr Holly Lawford-Smith, radical feminist and associate professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, reads her philosophical essay, Ending Sex-Based Oppression: Transitional Pathways arguing for the abolition of gender stereotypes, sometimes also referred to as sex roles. First published in Philosophia in November 2020.

Abstract:
From a radical feminist perspective, gender is a cage. Or to be more precise, it’s two cages. If genders are cages, then surely we want to let people out. Being less constrained in our choices is something we all have reason to want: theorists in recent years have emphasized the importance of the capability to do and be many different things. At the very least, we should want an end to sex-based oppression. But what does this entail, when it comes to gender? In this paper, I'll compare four 'transitional pathways', with a view to considering how each relates to the ultimate end of ending sex-based oppression. Should we open the doors to the cages, so that people can move freely between them, but leave the cages themselves in place? (Transgender pathway). Should we add more cages? (Nonbinary pathway). Should we make the cages bigger, so that people have a lot more room to move around inside them? Or should we dismantle the cages, so there are no more genders at all? (Gender abolitionist pathways). Some of these options are ‘gender revisionist’, others are gender abolitionist. I'll argue in favour of a gender abolitionist pathway.

Beth Johnson is a representative for Speak Up For Women, a New Zealand-based women’s rights group working to educate the public about the ways sex self-identification harms women.

On July 13, a billboard paid for by Speak Up For Women was removed following backlash on social media. The billboard, displayed in downtown Wellington, simply stated the dictionary definition of the word ‘woman’, a nod to the campaigning done by UK women’s rights activist Posie Parker. The billboard was intended to draw attention to sex self-identification clauses within the Births, Death, Marriages, and Relationships Registration Bill, which allows full self-identification and alteration of the sex marker on one’s birth certificate without a medical recommendation.

In August, the Advertising Standards Authority completed an assessment of complaints about the billboard, and decided that “The majority of the complaints board said in the context of advocacy advertising the advertisement was socially responsible and did not reach the threshold to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence, did not cause fear or distress without justification and was not misleading.”

Currently, the government is holding a public consultation on the bill containing sex self-identification clauses which is open to members of the public living overseas as well as New Zealanders. The deadline for submitting a response is Tuesday, September 14, and Speak Up For Women is asking for international support in opposing the legal erasure of women.

***Please note this recording contains explicit content.***

"This article is a feminist response to the campaigning activism and queer and transgender theory which promotes the ‘degendering’ of public toilets. This campaign originates in the demands of men who transgender to access women's toilets. Activists argue that sex segregation of toilets is the result of nineteenth century moralism and is a discriminatory practice. They say that degendered toilets would be safer for women because the good men would protect women from aggressors, and they show a remarkable degree of insensitivity to women's needs and interests. The campaign is increasingly effective, with schools in the US and local councils in the UK moving to degender toilets in response. This article will argue that the safety of women as a group requires that toilet provision should remain sex segregated or take the form of individual cubicles that offer privacy and safety to all users."

This was a talk given by Jo Bartosch on July 4, 2020, during a webinar titled: "Sex Tech, Robots & AI: A feminist Response," hosted by the Campaign Against Sex Robots.

campaignagainstsexrobots.org

Vaishnavi Sundar is an independent filmmaker, feminist, writer, and women’s rights activist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. She is the founder of Women Making Films and Lime Soda Films, and she has recently released a four-part documentary titled Dysphoric, which explores the social, medical, and institutional construction of gender identity. Her film places women and girls front and center, and questions not only why they may feel uncomfortable in their sexed bodies, but also the myriad of harms involved in medical transitioning. The full documentary is available for free on YouTube.

Genevieve speaks with Roxie, a former dominatrix turned radical feminist. Roxie tells her story of how she was groomed into the sex industry and the connections between pornography and transgenderism, sissification, BDSM as a form of abuse, and the apparent increased prevalence of fetishes.

***Be advised that this episode contains explicit language and some discussion of violence in pornography.***

Helen Joyce is a journalist for The Economist who holds a PhD in mathematics from University College London, and who recently published a book titled Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, which debuted at number 7 on the Sunday Times’ hardback non-fiction list, and appeared in the Times’ list of the best books of 2021. Regular Times columnist David Aaronovitch wrote that “Joyce [examines] a new ideology about gender. This holds that biological sex is as much a 'social construct' as the idea of gender is. One benefit of Joyce's book is its intellectual clarity and its refusal to compromise.” Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, and author of Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism (2021), gave Trans a 5-star review at The Telegraph, calling it a “superlative critical analysis of trans activism” and observing that “Joyce shows an impressive capacity to handle complex statistics, legal statutes, and other bits of evidence without losing clarity or narrative drive.” Writing for the Standard, Stella O’Malley said, “Joyce’s book truly is a tour de force. With a fine eye for detail, she brings all the elements of gender ideology together with clarity and precision. For anybody who wishes to gain a deep understanding of the issues related to trans activism, this book is simply a must-read.”

Christina Ellingsen, a representative of feminist organization Women’s Declaration International (WDI) in Norway is being investigated under hate crime charges for tweets she made between February 2021 and January 2022.

The tweets in question were replies directed at Christine Marie Jentoft, a representative of trans activist group Foreningen FRI. Jentoft is a male who identifies as a lesbian woman.

Christina’s charges are centered around her questioning why FRI promotes the belief that men can be lesbians. While police are still investigating, if she is found guilty, she could face a prison sentence of up to three years.

Norway introduced “gender identity” into the hate crime paragraphs in January 2021. At the time, WDI Norway (formerly WHRC Norway) warned  that the introduction of the concept into law would result in persecution of women for stating biological facts.

Christina has set up a legal fund to defend women in Norway who are being charged with hate speech crimes for stating biological facts.

"The birth mother is not in the place of another; she is the mother. That was the law in every country in the world until now. We always knew who the mother was — she was the one who gave birth. That is the first definition of a mother. We weren’t so sure about the father, which is why women’s freedoms have been curtailed so men could be assured of their lineage. Now, with DNA, we can be scientifically certain of the father. So the first 'success' of the surrogacy movement was to change the definition of the mother and remove the woman who gave birth from the frame. By applying the word 'surrogate' to the wrong person, it depresses the position of the birth mother but does not elevate the position of the other woman. Instead, the position of the sperm donor, or the father, is elevated as the only person with rights."

https://www.fairobserver.com/culture/surrogacy-legality-ethics-womens-rights-news-018210/

Dr Kathleen Stock OBE is a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex who has written a number of articles for peer-reviewed academic publications primarily on aesthetics, sexual objectification, and the impact of modern gender theory on the rights of women and girls. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to higher education, after which many philosophers took to social media to object, circulating an “Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy.”

She has recently published a philosophical examination of the main tenets of gender ideology, called “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism,” available now in both hardback and in electronic format.

Excerpts from "Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers," by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English (1973).

"Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called 'wise women' by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright."

Full text:

https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/ehrenreich-barbara/witches.htm

This is the introduction to the 1992 book, "Living Laboratories: Women and Reproductive Technologies," by Robyn Rowland. Here, she describes reproductive technologies as inherently based on a male desire for domination and control of both women's reproductive capacity, and over nature itself.

"In the process of trying to end their own alienation, men have made procreative alienation a reality for women, divorcing women from their wombs, eggs and embryos — from their own bodily selves and their sense of procreative continuity. They have made children products of the nexus between commerce, science and medicine, calling experimentation on women and human society ‘therapy’ and camouflaging the intention to map and control human genetics with the rhetoric of ‘helping the infertile’. In this process women have become the experimental raw material in the masculine desire to control the creation of life; patriarchy’s living laboratories."

Caroline Norma and Genevieve Gluck discuss recent events pertaining to gender ideology and women's rights, including Japan's decision not to go forward with sex self-identification, the possibility of trans-identified males competing in women's categories in the Olympics, and male violence against women in the US prison system. Guest Jen Izaakson provides commentary regarding Maya Forstater's appeal, who was sacked for tweets saying that biological sex is immutable, drawing the support of JK Rowling; Jen also provides an update on the decision by several UK institutions to withdraw support from LGBT charity Stonewall.

This an essay from the 1982 anthology “Against Sadomasochism” titled “On the History of Cultural Sadism,” by Kathleen Barry. It is followed by excerpts from a book by Roy F. Baumeister called “Masochism and the Self”, which pertain to male masochism and gender identity.

Kathleen Barry is an internationally recognized feminist and sociologist. She is the author of the landmark book Female Sexual Slavery (1979) which has been translated into six languages and launched an international movement against sexual exploitation.

She is the founder of the United Nations Non-Governmental Organization, The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, and collaborated with UNESCO to develop new international law that makes sexual exploitation a violation of human rights which is the subject of her 1995 book, Prostitution of Sexuality: Global Exploitation of Women. It has been translated and published in Chinese and Korean.

Professor Roy F. Baumeister is a social psychologist who is known for his work on the self, social rejection, belongingness, sexuality and sex differences, self-control, and free will. He earned degrees from Princeton University and Duke University. Baumeister has researched social psychology for over four decades and made a name for himself with his laboratory research.

Baumeister’s 1989 book Masochism and the Self explains the phenomena of sexual masochism as a means of releasing the individual from the burden of self-awareness.

In Chapter 7, “Femininity, Masculinity, and Masochism”, Baumeister discusses the aspect of gender in sexually masochistic practices. He found that in men, masochism presents differently than in women, with male masochists often eroticizing humiliation and the loss of status, including being “symbolically converted into women” and that “the desire for loss of status is a central feature of male masochism.”

***Please note this recording contains explicit content.***

This is a recording of both a speech, "Pornography: The New Terrorism," and a short essay, "For Men, Freedom of Speech; For Women, Silence Please." Both were originally published in "Letters from a War Zone" in 1988.

"Pornography is the propaganda of sexual fascism. Pornography is the propaganda of sexual terrorism. Images of women bound, bruised, and maimed on virtually every street corner, on every magazine rack, in every drug store, in movie house after movie house, on billboards, on posters pasted on walls, are death threats to a female population in rebellion."

The École Polytechnique massacre, also known as the Montreal massacre, was an anti-feminist mass shooting at an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal. On December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine entered a mechanical engineering class at the École Polytechnique and ordered the women and men to opposite sides of the classroom. He separated nine women, instructing the men to leave. He stated that he was "fighting feminism" and opened fire. He shot at all nine women in the room, killing six. The shooter then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, targeting women for just under 20 minutes. He killed a further eight women before turning the gun on himself.

Caroline Norma is Lecturer at the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. Her 2015 book, The Japanese Comfort Women and Sexual Slavery During the China and Pacific Wars explores the origins of the Japanese military's system of sexual slavery and illustrates how Japanese women were its initial victims. Campaigns for justice and reparations for 'comfort women' since the early 1990s have highlighted the magnitude of the human rights crimes committed against Korean, Chinese and other Asian women by Japanese soldiers after they invaded the Chinese mainland in 1937. These campaigns, however, say little about the origins of the system or its initial victims.

Maya Forstater, who was let go from her position at think tank Center for Global Development (CGD) in March of 2019 for tweets asserting the reality of biological sex, and who had originally lost a court case challenging her employer’s decision, has on June 10th won an appeal filed with the employment tribunal.

According to the introduction in the ruling,

“The Claimant holds the belief that biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity. She considers that statements such as ‘woman means adult human female’ or ‘trans women are male’ are statements of neutral fact and are not expressions of antipathy towards trans people or ‘transphobic’.”

Those who set up a monthly donation to Sex Matters during the month of June will have their contribution matched and doubled by a “generous donor”.

Genevieve and Jen discuss the misogyny of the Metropolitan Police force, including messages leaked from a WhatsApp group wherein officers joked about raping women. A BBC investigation revealed Telegram groups where revenge porn and women's private information were being shared; a leading transgender psychologist has called for the complete normalization of paraphilias, including 'ageplay' and sadomasochism; a transgender pedophile was caught by undercover FBI agents; a man who identified as a lesbian quietly 'detransitioned' after receiving nearly $100k in grants.

Caitlin Roper, Campaigns Manager for Collective Shout, talks about her new book, Sex Dolls, Robots, and Woman Hating: The Case for Resistance, published by Spinifex Press.

In her book, Roper debunks common arguments put forward in favor of an industry which she describes as the “literal objectification” of women into sex objects.

“Lifelike, replica women and girls  produced for men’s sexual use, sex dolls and robots represent the literal objectification of women. They are marketed as companions, the means for men to create their ‘ideal’ woman, and as the ‘perfect girlfriend’ that can be stored away after its use.

Advocates claim the development of sex dolls and robots should be actively encouraged and will have many benefits — but for who?

Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating exposes the inherent misogyny in the trade in sex dolls and robots modeled on the bodies of women and girls for men’s unlimited sexual use. From doll owners enacting violence and torture on their dolls, men choosing their dolls over their wives, dolls made in the likeness of specific women and the production of child sex abuse dolls, sex dolls  and robots pose a serious threat to the status of women and girls.

‘Sex dolls and robots in the female form function as an endorsement of men’s sexual rights, with women and girls positioned as sexual objects. The  production of these products further cements women’s second class status.’”

You can register to attend Caitlin’s book launch event on August 23rd, or pre-order a copy of Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating.

Caroline Norma and Emma Dalton discuss Dale Spender’s book Man Made Language as part of a series titled “Radical Feminist Perspectives”. Dale Spender is an Australian feminist scholar, teacher, and writer. In 1983, Dale Spender was co-founder of and editorial advisor to Pandora Press, the first of the feminist imprints devoted solely to non-fiction, committed, according to the New York Times, to showing that "women were the mothers of the novel and that any other version of its origin is  but a myth of male creation".

Spender's work is "a major contribution to the recovery of women writers and theorists and to the documentation of the continuity of feminist activism and thought".

The book Man Made Language (1980) is based on Spender's PhD research. Her argument is that in patriarchal societies men control language and it works in their favor. "Language helps form the limits of our reality. It is our means of ordering, classifying and manipulating the world."

This conversation took place as part of a webinar for Women’s Declaration International, a campaign that promotes awareness of women’s human rights and lobbies for their consideration in public policies.

A radical feminist in France -- who wishes to remain anonymous for her safety -- was part of a small group of women, including survivors of the prostitution industry, who organized a protest in Paris on March 7 in honor of International Women’s Day. During their demonstration, they were attacked and threatened with death by trans activists, who had planned their assault in advance. In addition to hitting the women and hurling eggs at them, the trans activists, most of whom were very young, also spray painted the message: “Kill a TERF, save a trans” on the monument where they had congregated. This attack on feminist activism, especially activism centered on women’s sex-based oppression and opposition to the sex industry, is an increasing trend globally. Similar attacks and countless death threats have been recorded in the US, Canada, the UK, and Spain, as gender ideology spreads out of academia and through social media, where such hostility and incitement to violence is allowed to be openly expressed, virtually unchecked.

Caroline Norma and Genevieve Gluck discuss the Yogyakarta Principles, US bills banning the medical transitioning of minors via "puberty blockers", some of the challenges faced by women and girls in Japan, Australia's growing "Me Too" movement, and a website exposing rape culture in top UK schools.

Genevieve Gluck, Jen Izaakson and Hannah Berrelli discuss Baroness Nicholson's allegations that a gender identity policy on NHS hospital wards has enabled men to rape women with impunity; University of Pennsylvania trans-identified swimmer Lia Thomas; the creator of the trans flag's fixation with women's underwear and age regression; J.K. Rowling's support for detransitioners.

On April 12, the Chinese government removed radical feminist groups from a popular social networking website called Douban. Similar to Reddit — which banned feminist groups critical of gender ideology last year — Douban is an online forum with a group function allowing users to post on various topics and engage in discussions. Of the groups deleted, several were centered on facets of the “6B4T” movement. Additionally, the term 6B4T was censored, and Douban users are not permitted to mention the names of the disappeared groups without risking suspension.

The abbreviation “6B4T” is a Chinese radical feminist movement that encourages women to reject sexual intercourse with men, as well as child-rearing, dating, and marriage. The ideology originated in South Korea and is associated with separatist feminism and political lesbianism, which advocates women organizing for their rights by refusing any participation with men and patriarchal institutions. The reason for the removal of the radical feminist groups on Douban is not explicitly stated, but it is suggested that the ideas discussed in the forums violated national policies.

Genevieve Gluck interviews an anonymous Chinese radical feminist residing in New York about the censorship of feminists in China.

News for the week of January 29 to February 5, 2021, followed by discussion with Genevieve and Caroline.
Topics include criticism of the military sexual slavery system known as the "comfort women" system; sexual abuse and discrimination by employers at Google; the sexism inherent in the garment industry; impacts of puberty blockers on children.

After almost a year of organizing, Jaclynn Joseph and Neo Yao have founded Taiwan’s first gender critical, female-centric organization — Taiwan Women’s Association (TWA/Chinese 臺灣女性協會) — which has been officially recognized by the government.

Originally from Hawai'i and now based in Taiwan, Jaclynn Joseph is a university lecturer, Ph.D. candidate in the field of feminist philosophy, and the Taiwan country representative of the feminist organization Women’s Declaration International (WDI). A guest writer for Feminist Current, she was the first to shed light on the infiltration of gender identity ideology in Taiwan through her articles. 

Neo Yao was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan. He has been a human rights and LGB activist for more than fifteen years, and a women’s rights activist for more than six years. He began focusing on Women’s sex-based rights in the past several years, and along with Jaclynn, formed the Taiwan Women’s Association in late 2022 as a founding member, where he currently serves as an executive council member. Some founding members of TWA, including Jaclynn, also work with an organization called No Self-ID Taiwan (NSIDT). NSIDT is the only website in Taiwan dedicated to pushing back against gender ideology and tracking changes in related legislation. 

Elizabeth Miller is a radical feminist activist and organizer who runs the Chicago Feminist Salon. In 2018, she co-organized the Women in Media Conference. Recently, she has successfully campaigned for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by the state of Illinois, as well as the enactment of House Bill 40, to protect women’s rights to abortion should the US Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade at the federal level. She is currently working with radical feminist organization Feminists in Struggle (FIST) to advocate for women’s sex-based rights and protections.


Elizabeth Miller is the co-editor of a recently published anthology of essays about modern radical feminism titled Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century, available for purchase through Tidal Time publishing.

Caitlin Roper is Campaigns Manager for Australian grassroots movement Collective Shout: For a World Free of Sexploitation, and a PhD candidate researching female-bodied sex dolls and robots.

This talk was given during an online workshop titled "Sex Tech, Robots, and AI: A Feminist Response" on July 4th, 2020, hosted by the Campaign Against Sex Robots.

www.collectiveshout.org/
campaignagainstsexrobots.org/

Over the last several years, transgender activism has made sweeping gains. Proponents of this ideology have succeeded in positioning "gender identity" as the social justice issue of our day.

But are the claims made by these activists actually true? What does it mean to say that people can be "born in the wrong body"? Does the concept of “gender identity” break down stereotypes about the nature of men and women, or does it reinforce them? And what about the rights of women and girls?

On February 1, 2020, the US-based organization Women's Liberation Front hosted a panel event called “The New Misogyny.”

Three women’s rights campaigners, Meghan Murphy, Saba Malik, and Kara Dansky, presented a critical analysis of gender identity and made arguments for sex-based women's rights. The event took place at the Seattle Public Library in downtown Seattle, Washington, despite protesters inside and outside the building.

This is the talk given by Meghan Murphy, a Canadian journalist and founder of Canada’s leading feminist website, Feminist Current.

Genevieve Gluck speaks with radical feminist Natalia Shveykina about the challenges faced by women in Russia, including an epidemic of male violence, as well as female genital mutilation, the surrogacy industry, sex trafficking, and whether or not the Russian government will begin to incorporate policies which promote gender identity ideology.

Genevieve and Hannah discuss the erasure of women's spaces, both online and in the public sphere; the attack on lesbians; violent male convicts being transferred to New Jersey's Edna Mahan's Correctional Facility for Women; British Cycling's judgement regarding trans-identified athlete Emily Bridges; Florida Department of Health's guidance prohibiting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and gender identity surgeries for minors.