Episodit
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After almost a year of organizing, Jaclynn Joseph and Neo Yao have founded Taiwanâs first gender critical, female-centric organization â Taiwan Womenâs Association (TWA/Chinese èșçŁć„łæ§ćæ) â 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 Womenâs 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 womenâs rights activist for more than six years. He began focusing on Womenâs sex-based rights in the past several years, and along with Jaclynn, formed the Taiwan Womenâs 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.
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Christina Ellingsen, a representative of feminist organization Womenâs 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.
Christinaâs 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 âgender identityâ 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.
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Christina has set up a legal fund to defend women in Norway who are being charged with hate speech crimes for stating biological facts. -
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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 âliteral objectificationâ of women into sex objects.
âLifelike, replica women and girls produced for menâs sexual use, sex dolls and robots represent the literal objectification of women. They are marketed as companions, the means for men to create their âidealâ woman, and as the âperfect girlfriendâ 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 â 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 menâs 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.
âSex dolls and robots in the female form function as an endorsement of menâs sexual rights, with women and girls positioned as sexual objects. The production of these products further cements womenâs second class status.ââYou can register to attend Caitlinâs book launch event on August 23rd, or pre-order a copy of Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating.
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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 womenâs 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 âabout the impacts on women of men using women-only spacesâ.
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 âidentityâ, 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 womenâs movement, and attempts to clarify the history behind the concept.
âThe 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,â say Lawford-Smith and Phelan.
âHere 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 âintersectionalityâ has assumed enormous cultural importance, but is variously deployed in ways that seem far from what its originators had in mind.â
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Genevieve Gluck and Donovan Cleckley discuss the influence of pornography, plastic surgery, and the objectification of women on gender identity ideology.
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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 womenâs 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. -
This an essay from the 1982 anthology âAgainst Sadomasochismâ titled âOn the History of Cultural Sadism,â by Kathleen Barry. It is followed by excerpts from a book by Roy F. Baumeister called âMasochism and the Selfâ, 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.
Baumeisterâs 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, âFemininity, Masculinity, and Masochismâ, 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 âsymbolically converted into womenâ and that âthe desire for loss of status is a central feature of male masochism.â
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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.
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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.
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Renée also reads Audre Lorde's essay, Poetry is Not a Luxury. -
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.
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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.
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Caroline Norma and Emma Dalton discuss Dale Spenderâs book Man Made Language as part of a series titled âRadical Feminist Perspectivesâ. 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 Womenâs Declaration International, a campaign that promotes awareness of womenâs human rights and lobbies for their consideration in public policies.
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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.***
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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.
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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".
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You can also find Elly Arrow's work on Youtube. -
The Ăcole Polytechnique massacre, also known as the Montreal massacre, was an anti-feminist mass shooting at an engineering school affiliated with the UniversitĂ© de MontrĂ©al. On December 6, 1989, Marc LĂ©pine entered a mechanical engineering class at the Ăcole 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.
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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.
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Full video available here.
An article I recently published, âApp Fetishizing Forcible Transitioning of Kids Available on Google Playâ, 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 familyâs 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. -
Jennifer Lahl is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, which, according to the mission statement, exists to âeducate and inform members of the general public, thought leaders, lawmakers, and others on ethical issues in healthcare, biomedical research, and biotechnological advancement.â
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: Whatâs 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.
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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.
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Beth Johnson is a representative for Speak Up For Women, a New Zealand-based womenâs 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 âwomanâ, a nod to the campaigning done by UK womenâs 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 oneâs birth certificate without a medical recommendation.
In August, the Advertising Standards Authority completed an assessment of complaints about the billboard, and decided that âThe 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.â
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.
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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 âhip quietismâ which âcollaborates with evilâ.
âWhat 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.
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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. - Näytä enemmän
