Feminist Current

Image: The Age/Simon Schluter

Feminism has suffered a significant loss in recent decades. The impact of “queer studies,” neoliberalism, and identity politics was substantial. Renowned radical feminist, Sheila Jeffreys, witnessed the move from “Women’s Studies” to “Gender Studies” in academia and saw feminist discourse and women’s culture built during the second wave eroded.

Jeffreys joined the women’s movement in the early 1970s and was a professor in the political science department at the University of Melbourne for 24 years. She is the author of numerous books, including: Anticlimax: A Feminist Perspective On the Sexual Revolution, The Spinster and Her Enemies, Unpacking Queer Politics, Beauty and Misogyny, The Industrial Vagina, and Gender Hurts.

I spoke with her about the past and future of the women’s liberation movement, as well as her experiences working as a radical feminist in academia, over the phone from her home in the UK.

Image: Veer Images

The days of Marlo Thomas’ “Free to be… You and Me,” it seems, are long gone. Now, when kids don’t quite “fit” within the gender roles prescribed by a patriarchal society, no longer do we say, “You’re fine just the way you are!” Instead, more and more frequently, we are saying, “Maybe you were born in the wrong body.”

The quickly popularized phenomenon of transing kids — that is, to begin youth on treatment programs as soon as they proclaim a “gender identity” that doesn’t match the gender roles traditionally attached to their biological sex, ushering them into the process of “transitioning” towards living as the so-called “opposite gender” — has been widely celebrated and supported by liberals and progressives alike. But are we moving too quickly? What are the consequences of medical interventions like this on children? What are the social consequences?

With many questions left unanswered (and many questions not being asked in the first place), the “trans kids” trend needs more interrogation.

Lisa Marchiano, LCSW, is a clinical social worker and Jungian analyst. She is also one of those people who is concerned we’re moving too fast and too uncritically towards transitioning kids. Her article, “Layers of meaning: A Jungian analyst questions the identity model for trans-identified youth” can be found at 4thWaveNow. For more on her work, visit The Jung Soul. I spoke with her over the phone from her home in Philadelphia.

An example of the imagery circulating in mainstream media, depicting a woman in a burkini alongside a woman in a bikini.

Just today media reported that a court in the French Mediterranean island of Corsica has upheld a burkini ban issued by a local mayor, despite the fact that a higher court recently ruled against the ban. The past couple of weeks have been rife with imagery positioning Western women in bikinis alongside Muslim women in burkinis, presenting what’s intended to be a vision of the liberated woman vs the oppressed woman. But surely there’s more to this conversation than women’s clothing? Surely it’s not as simple as bikini = freedom, burkini = oppression?

Natasha Bakht

In this episode, I speak with Natasha Bakht about the burkini, veiling, and how banning burqas and burkinis impacts Muslim women more broadly. Later in the interview, we discuss the situation with Homa Hoodfar, a Canadian-Iranian scholar whose work has centered around Western perceptions of the veil and hijab, as well as on women’s rights in Muslim societies. Homa has been detained in Iran’s Evin Prison since June.

Natasha is an associate professor of law at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests are generally in the area of law, culture and minority rights and specifically in the intersecting area of religious freedom and women’s equality.

As prostitution and the legislation that surrounds it has become an increasingly heated debate, the voices of women who survived the industry have grown louder and stronger.

This year, a new book containing testimonies written by survivors was published by Spinifex Press. Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade, bust myths, reveals the trauma experienced by those who are used and abused by johns, and raises hope, as we hear from women who turned the personal into the political, and are fighting back. This week, I spoke with co-editor, Melinda Tankard-Reist, and two survivors who shared their stories in the book, Simone Watson and Charlotte, over Skype.

Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade was edited by Caroline Norma and Melinda Tankard-Reist and is now available in Canada, the US, and Mexico from IPG Books.

This week, 300 women have gathered for a five-day long feminist meeting in an “eco-domain” in Normandy, France. The will discuss topics like heterosexuality, lesbianism, anti-racism, ecofemism, and more. There will also be open mic nights and parties as a goal of the week is not only to further feminist analysis, but “rediscover the joy and freedom found in women-only space and to re-energize.”

I spoke with two of the organizers to learn more about Womyn’s Gathering 2016 over the phone from France.

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