Women's Voices

Women's Voices

By Women's VoicesNewsNews Commentary
Download on the App Store

Women's Voices episodes

  • Pornography and Grief - Andrea Dworkin

    This is a speech given by Andrea Dworkin in San Francisco, 1978, first published in Letters from a War Zone.

    Introduction:

    "Pornography and Grief was written as a speech for a Take Back the Night March that was part of the first feminist conference on pornography in the United States in San Francisco, November 1978. Organized by the now defunct Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM ), over 5000 women from thirty states participated and we shut down San Francisco's pornography district for one night. The ground was taken but not held."

    18 min
  • The Politics of the Toilet - Sheila Jeffreys

    ***Please note this recording contains explicit content.***


    "This article is a feminist response to the campaigning activism and queer and transgender theory which promotes the ‘degendering’ of public toilets. This campaign originates in the demands of men who transgender to access women's toilets. Activists argue that sex segregation of toilets is the result of nineteenth century moralism and is a discriminatory practice. They say that degendered toilets would be safer for women because the good men would protect women from aggressors, and they show a remarkable degree of insensitivity to women's needs and interests. The campaign is increasingly effective, with schools in the US and local councils in the UK moving to degender toilets in response. This article will argue that the safety of women as a group requires that toilet provision should remain sex segregated or take the form of individual cubicles that offer privacy and safety to all users."

    1 hr 1 min
  • Female Erasure, Reverse Sexism, and the Cisgender Theory of Privilege - Elizabeth Hungerford

    Female Erasure, Reverse Sexism, and the Cisgender Theory of Privilege

    by Elizabeth Hungerford

    read by Genevieve Gluck

    "Cis theory of gender denies the lived experiences of millions of women who despise the social role 'woman,' instead framing non-trans women's gender identity as a privilege. The theory is blind to how these seemingly benign 'gender identities' operate as a hierarchy of social roles and interactions whose end game is the unequal distribution of power between male and female humans. This essentialist, ahistorical assessment of gender identity short-circuits women's ability to recognize themselves as oppressed by gender-based roles. It denies us use of the language and concepts necessary to describe women's specific exploitation as women."

    Elizabeth Hungerford is a feminist writer at sexnotgender.com and ehungerford.com. She is also the co-founder of a public discussion group about the contentious politics of gender. As an attorney, she is particularly interested in class-based analysis of gender, identity, women-only spaces, and the philosophical contradictions created by protecting "gender identity" as a matter of law.

    38 min
  • Feminism: An Agenda - Andrea Dworkin

    Andrea Dworkin (September 26, 1946 - April 9, 2005) was a US radical feminist philosopher, activist, and writer. She is best known for her analysis of pornography, although her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 40 years. They are found in a dozen solo works: nine books of non-fiction, two novels, and a collection of short stories. Another three volumes were co-written or co-edited with US Constitutional law professor and feminist activist, Catharine A. McKinnon.


    This is a speech given by Dworkin April 8, 1983, at Hamilton College in upstate New York, from a compilation of essays and speeches, Letters From a War Zone, first published in 1988.

    53 min
  • Transgenderism, Neoliberalism, and Rape Culture - Renee Gerlich

    This is a speech given by Renee Gerlich in Brisbane on October 12, 2019. The event was hosted by the International Women’s Day Brisbane Committee.

    Full text of the speech can be found here.

    "The mindless mantra 'transwomen are women' encapsulates both the ideology and attitudes of transgenderism, and the neoliberal zeitgeist, in three words. It implies the destruction of nature, of biology, of our own bodies – including through the radical mastectomies increasingly conducted on adolescent girls, mainly lesbians. It is based on the commodification of women, and it leads to the removal of legal protections and social supports designated for women and based on sex, and using this mantra like a threat – because if you don’t accept it, you are a bigot – men are colonising women’s hard-won spaces, organisations, movements and safehouses as well as lesbian culture."

    12 min

About Women's Voices

From the publisher's feed

✺ News and conversation regarding current events