Women's Voices

Caroline Norma and Emma Dalton discuss Dale Spender’s book Man Made Language as part of a series titled “Radical Feminist Perspectives”. 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 Women’s Declaration International, a campaign that promotes awareness of women’s human rights and lobbies for their consideration in public policies.

Caroline Norma and Emma Dalton discuss Dale Spender’s book Man Made Language as part of a series titled “Radical Feminist Perspectives”.

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."

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.***

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.

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".

The École Polytechnique massacre, also known as the Montreal massacre, was an anti-feminist mass shooting at an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal. On December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine entered a mechanical engineering class at the École 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.

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.

Jennifer Lahl is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, which, according to the mission statement, exists to “educate and inform members of the general public, thought leaders, lawmakers, and others on ethical issues in healthcare, biomedical research, and biotechnological advancement.”

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: What’s 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.

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.

Beth Johnson is a representative for Speak Up For Women, a New Zealand-based women’s 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 ‘woman’, a nod to the campaigning done by UK women’s 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 one’s birth certificate without a medical recommendation.

In August, the Advertising Standards Authority completed an assessment of complaints about the billboard, and decided that “The 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.”

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.