Testimony, Violence, and Silence – An Examination of Agamben and His Critics
You’re not allowed to speak much, and you don’t know which language to speak when you can. Recovery from trauma is finding the words.”- Rebecca Mott (2021), writer, poet and survivor of prostitution A philosophical investigation on ‘unspeakable violence’ In 2021, thanks to Canadian feminist nurses and activists Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald, I discovered…
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Paul Ricœur: Memory, History, Forgetting – Coming Soon
This post is about a presentation I gave last June at the Fonds Ricœur Summer Workshop at the UCD (University College Dublin). I had the same questions, the same goal – demonstrating that male violence is a type of atrocity that brings about its unique challenges to the question of testimony (and to women and…
Keep readingThe Right to Sex: A Lesson in ‘Pragmatic’ Feminism
Asthe glass slips from your hands, you contemplate the chore ahead: you mentally prepare to carefully tiptoe between the shattered bits scattered across the floor, pick up the old broom, swipe it all into the dustpan when something unexpected happens. TinTinTin The glass bounces on the floor, defying gravity, teasing destiny. You hold your breath,…
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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 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, two boys said,…
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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…
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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. 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 used on women…
Keep readingWhere Did My Confidence Go?
“Where did my confidence go?” asked the little girl.
She looked under the bed, but only saw monsters.
She looked inside her closet, but only found insecurity.
She looked at her bookshelf, but only saw absence.
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To Become a Stereotype – Pictures Only
This post complements the article published on 4W.pub. It is based on a speech delivered in front of the UN CEDAW expert committee. In previous presentations, I had looked at how speech is used by men to define womanhood, in this one I’ve looked at how sight and images are used to define womanhood, hence…
Keep readingCassandra’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…
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Little Red Riding Hood Asks Questions series I – Prostitution
In a small teeny tiny town in the grand glorious gorgeous woods, lived a girl everyone knew as Little Red Riding Hood. She was called that way because of the red hood she never removed. Her mama had sown it for her, that’s why it was so precious.
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Females by Mr Andrea Long Chu: A Telegrammic Review
‘To be female is, in every case, to become what someone else wants. At bottom, everyone is a sissy.’
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The Provincial Times Series – ‘Jill and Giles Foundation to distribute Thanafix in India’
A press release from the Jill and Giles Foundation announced yesterday the distribution of 100 000 doses of Thanafix® in India. The drug developed by the US pharmaceutical company Gilgamesh Science is meant to alleviate the suffering of patients afflicted by incurable diseases such as destitution or hopelessness.
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‘Feminism Allowed You to Speak’: Maintaining Intergenerational Feminist Solidarity in the Face of Sophisticated Attacks
Little Red Riding Hood is the story of a little girl who on her way to her sick grandmother, encounters a wolf who asks her where she is headed to. In Charles Perrault’s version, after the girl’s naïve reply, the wolf arrives at the grandmother’s house before Little Red Riding Hood. He deceives the grandmother…
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When Will I Be Young?
I keep seeing those magazine covers. Sophia Loren finally loving herself at 86. Glenn Close ‘beginning’ at 73. Jane Fonda in peace in her third act. Does it really take that long to feel free? Youth is overrated. You spend it figuring it out what is happening to you and the next thing you know…
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Are we women ready to wake up? A review of Sheila Jeffreys’s autobiography Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life
Trigger Warning: My Lesbian Feminist Life takes you to the revolutionary feminism of the 1970s to the lush Australian nature, down through the desert of the early 2000s all the way to today. Trigger warning is an occasion for us all to take stock on our achievements and most importantly where we have regressed.
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Postfeminism and veiling, story of an unhappy marriage: Conceptualising veiling through postfeminism.
Despite the appeal to freedom and progress, veiling is an archaic, cumbersome and misogynist practice. This essay aims not only to untangle contemporary faux-feminist discourse but also put forward a new way to conceptualise the headscarf, understanding its role within a culture of male violence.
Keep readingAdvertising and the consumption of women: How sexist images in advertising have become sexualised
This presentation was given during the ‘Acting against sexist advertisement in public spaces’ panel in the European Parliament in Brussels on the 6th of March 2019. The panel was part of the wider event ‘S&D Gender Equality Youth Forum’. The speech has been edited with minor modifications and additions. A picture is worth a thousand…
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Borazan Sesli 