FiLiA

Serenity Rose is heading a London-based survivor-led campaign, together with The Public Interest Law Centre, aimed at receiving justice, social change and acknowledgement of the harms done to women previously denied access to safety when applying for housing assistance after fleeing abuse and violence against women & girls. After the landmark amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill, women now have a legislative right to help but historical systemic failures to safeguard often hold lifelong repercussions, impacting survivors in ways which have largely been unseen and unheard. Serenity joins FiLiA’s Sadia Hameed to discuss her experiences as a survivor, the problems in our systems of misogyny and repeated discrimination against women and girls. Serenity hopes this campaign will create a collective voice of survivors who have previously been silenced, systemically, who basically say the truth of “this is what has been happening to us for all these years. She argues there needs to be a shift socially, and a recognition of that… we need to stand together and very very strongly state: “this was wrong and we want something done about it.”

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If you feel you have been wrongly treated by London councils when you most needed help with accessing safe housing please get in touch with Serenity or Helen and Isabella from the Public Interest Law Centre who will provide you with an emphatic ear, guidance and a community of women working towards transcendence of what was wrongly done to us at our most vulnerable; one voice alone is often ignored, many voices together speak truth into change!

"There is no choice in oppression. There is no choice in exploitation. There is no choice in being a secondary citizen to men in this country, given that every six hours or every five hours there is a rape happening in India. I think it is fair to say that there is absolutely no choice in being a woman in India at all."

Vaishnavi Sundar is a self-taught filmmaker, writer, and grassroots activist. She is from Chennai, in the south of India. Vaishnavi produced and directed India's first feature-length documentary, called But What Was She Wearing? She is the alumna of the prestigious International Visitor Leadership Program, a professional exchange program funded by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Vaishnavi is the founder of Women Making Films, which is known for its effort to break the glass ceiling within the fraternity of domestic and world cinema. She has written, directed, and produced all her films, under her own production company, Lime Soda Films.

Even though But What Was She Wearing is India's only film on the sexual harassment women suffer in the workplace that covered voices from women across caste, class, region and religious differences, it earned her the title of “cancelled feminist” among some left-wing sectors, and she has since been wearing it on her sleeve, with pride.

Vaishnavi was “cancelled” on the basis of her political opinion women’s sex-based rights ought to be protected and that men should not be in women’s sex segregated safe spaces. Vaishnavi centres women in all her films, her writing and she is unapologetically pro-women’s sex-based rights. When she is not filming or writing scathing rebuttals to liberal feminist drivel, she is busy logging all things WTF on her new VLOG channel on Youtube.

You can learn more about Vaishnavi’s work here and on the Lime Soda Films Website

Watch the trailer for But What Was She Wearing?

Or connect through Twitter @Vaishax

"I think decriminalization sounds good to some people because they only think about prostituted people. And of course, people in prostitution should never be criminalized. What they don't seem to realize is that full decriminalization also means decriminalizing sex buyers, pimps, brothel owners et cetera."

Tegan Larin is a member of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women Australia (CATWA), a feminist organisation that works to end all forms of sexual exploitation of women. She has several years experience volunteering at front-line organisations in Melbourne that support women in prostitution as well as women who have been trafficked. Tegan completed a Masters of International Relations at the University of Melbourne including a semester at Humboldt University in Berlin where she focused on feminist issues and gender studies. Tegan is currently a PhD candidate at the Monash University XYX Lab. Her research interests include public policy, design, urban planning and feminist theory. Tegan's PhD research focuses on the unregulated sex industry in Melbourne. She joins FiLiA’s Sadia Hameed to discuss her work, the situation in Victoria, Australia, the importance of listening to survivors and why prostitution is different from a job at McDonalds.

Links:

CATWA Submission to the Victorian Review into Decriminalisation Of Sex Work

Tegan’s piece Full decriminalisation of the sex industry is a step backwards

Follow CATWA on Twitter: @CATWAustralia

Find out more on CATWA’s website: www.catwa.org.au

Watch this video about the situation of women in prostitution in Australia during COVID-19

Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans is an academic, philosopher, social theorist and feminist activist. She specialises in analysing the politics of the body. Heather’s most recent book Transgender and Body Politics is published by Spinifex Press later in 2020. Heather is a passionate advocate for women’s sex based rights and co-writer of the Women’s Declaration of Human Rights. Heather has co-edited two books on the subject of transgender children and young people together with Professor Michele Moore - Transgender Children and Young People: Born in Your Own Body and Inventing Transgender Children and Young People. In this podcast, Heather explains why she uses the phrase “the transgendering of children,” why this is an important feminist issue, as well as why she believes the figure of the transgender child has been socially constructed and how this topic may be related to political forces, misogyny and medicine.

Dr Kathomi Gatwiri is an award-winning researcher and teacher. She is based at Southern Cross University on the Gold Coast Queensland where she teaches in the School of Arts and Social Science across a range of subjects. She completed her PhD with a thesis (and subsequent book) on ‘African womanhood, health, sexuality and incontinent bodies: A case of Kenyan Women living with vaginal fistula’. She has a Master of counselling and psychotherapy, and a Bachelor of Social Work with first class honours.

Kathomi talks with Sally Jackson about her work in Kenya raising awareness of the effects of vaginal fistula and the Counting Dead Women Kenya Project which she co-founded. This interview contains graphic descriptions of both.

Follow Kathomi’s work:

Counting Dead Women Kenya on Facebook and Twitter

Kathomi on Twitter and Instagram