The Right to Sex: A Lesson in ‘Pragmatic’ Feminism

Photography: my own. 'Ma non troppo' in Italian means 'but not too much'. Let's be feminist but not too much. Let's demand things, but not that much. Prostitution is bad but not that bad. Pornography is bad but not bad enough to stop it, etc. (Amia Srinivasan and others could say). Asthe glass slips from… Continue reading The Right to Sex: A Lesson in ‘Pragmatic’ Feminism

New Feminist Book Breaks the Silence on Male Torture of Women

Abandon hope all ye who enter here Dante Ordinary people do not know that everythingis possible. David Rousset – L’univers concentrationnaire, 1946 Photography: my own. Years ago at school, my course mates and I were assigned to read two novels by the feminist writer Dacia Maraini. In the first, she recounted her rape. In class discussions,… Continue reading New Feminist Book Breaks the Silence on Male Torture of Women

Welcome to the Sex Stereotype Clinic

Stereotyping is a printing technique developed in the 18th century. A stereotype is a solid plate of metal where letters and illustrations are tightly fit together to be reproduced indefinitely on paper. Metaphorically, a stereotype is a prejudiced cliché. A preconceived and oversimplified vision of reality, a stereotype is an image that only exists in our… Continue reading Welcome to the Sex Stereotype Clinic

Prostituted Women Experimented on For Decades in USA-funded HIV Trials Overseas

Trials of HIV prevention medications used thousands of vulnerable women in Africa and Asia, leaving some infected and sometimes in collaboration with pro-prostitution organizations. Photography: my own Since the 1980s, women in prostitution in Africa and Southeast Asia have been used to test new solutions against HIV. Despite evidence of harm, the nonoxynol-9 spermicide was… Continue reading Prostituted Women Experimented on For Decades in USA-funded HIV Trials Overseas

Cassandra’s Resolutions for the New Year

we need to develop a feminist understanding of time. Indeed, the first specificity of women’s condition, compared to that of other male and female oppressed groups, is that the atrocities men commit against us are not historicised. We hear ‘prostitution has always existed’, ‘rape has always existed’. We are made to understand that male violence is like God: it never began so it can never end. Obviously, that's a lie.

‘Feminism Allowed You to Speak’: Maintaining Intergenerational Feminist Solidarity in the Face of Sophisticated Attacks

'What a wonderful world it would be if some doctors not too different from Dr Hfuhruhurr would create the ‘perfect’ ‘fuckable’ female-shaped bodies to host the marvellous male brain: male head and female body; the structure of our patriarchal societies reproduced on the single' Little Red Riding Hood is the story of a little girl… Continue reading ‘Feminism Allowed You to Speak’: Maintaining Intergenerational Feminist Solidarity in the Face of Sophisticated Attacks