Women's Voices

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 Women’s 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 women’s rights activist for more than six years. He began focusing on Women’s sex-based rights in the past several years, and along with Jaclynn, formed the Taiwan Women’s 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. 

Christina Ellingsen, a representative of feminist organization Women’s 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.

Christina’s 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 “gender identity” 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.

Christina has set up a legal fund to defend women in Norway who are being charged with hate speech crimes for stating biological facts.

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 “literal objectification” of women into sex objects.

“Lifelike, replica women and girls  produced for men’s sexual use, sex dolls and robots represent the literal objectification of women. They are marketed as companions, the means for men to create their ‘ideal’ woman, and as the ‘perfect girlfriend’ 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 — 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 men’s 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.

‘Sex dolls and robots in the female form function as an endorsement of men’s sexual rights, with women and girls positioned as sexual objects. The  production of these products further cements women’s second class status.’”

You can register to attend Caitlin’s book launch event on August 23rd, or pre-order a copy of Sex Dolls, Robots and Woman Hating.

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 women’s 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 “about the impacts on women of men using women-only spaces”.

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 ‘identity’, 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 women’s movement, and attempts to clarify the history behind the concept.

“The 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,” say Lawford-Smith and Phelan.

“Here 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 ‘intersectionality’ has assumed enormous cultural importance, but is variously deployed in ways that seem far from what its originators had in mind.”

Genevieve Gluck and Donovan Cleckley discuss the influence of pornography, plastic surgery, and the objectification of women on gender identity ideology.

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 women’s 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.

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.

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.

Renée also reads Audre Lorde's essay, Poetry is Not a Luxury.

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.

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.

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.***

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".

You can also find Elly Arrow's work on Youtube.

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.

Full video available here.

An article I recently published, “App Fetishizing Forcible Transitioning of Kids Available on Google Play”, 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 family’s 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 “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.

“What 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.

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.

Helen Joyce is a journalist for The Economist who holds a PhD in mathematics from University College London, and who recently published a book titled Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, which debuted at number 7 on the Sunday Times’ hardback non-fiction list, and appeared in the Times’ list of the best books of 2021. Regular Times columnist David Aaronovitch wrote that “Joyce [examines] a new ideology about gender. This holds that biological sex is as much a 'social construct' as the idea of gender is. One benefit of Joyce's book is its intellectual clarity and its refusal to compromise.” Kathleen Stock, professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, and author of Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism (2021), gave Trans a 5-star review at The Telegraph, calling it a “superlative critical analysis of trans activism” and observing that “Joyce shows an impressive capacity to handle complex statistics, legal statutes, and other bits of evidence without losing clarity or narrative drive.” Writing for the Standard, Stella O’Malley said, “Joyce’s book truly is a tour de force. With a fine eye for detail, she brings all the elements of gender ideology together with clarity and precision. For anybody who wishes to gain a deep understanding of the issues related to trans activism, this book is simply a must-read.”

On April 12, the Chinese government removed radical feminist groups from a popular social networking website called Douban. Similar to Reddit — which banned feminist groups critical of gender ideology last year — Douban is an online forum with a group function allowing users to post on various topics and engage in discussions. Of the groups deleted, several were centered on facets of the “6B4T” movement. Additionally, the term 6B4T was censored, and Douban users are not permitted to mention the names of the disappeared groups without risking suspension.

The abbreviation “6B4T” is a Chinese radical feminist movement that encourages women to reject sexual intercourse with men, as well as child-rearing, dating, and marriage. The ideology originated in South Korea and is associated with separatist feminism and political lesbianism, which advocates women organizing for their rights by refusing any participation with men and patriarchal institutions. The reason for the removal of the radical feminist groups on Douban is not explicitly stated, but it is suggested that the ideas discussed in the forums violated national policies.

Genevieve Gluck interviews an anonymous Chinese radical feminist residing in New York about the censorship of feminists in China.

Maya Forstater, who was let go from her position at think tank Center for Global Development (CGD) in March of 2019 for tweets asserting the reality of biological sex, and who had originally lost a court case challenging her employer’s decision, has on June 10th won an appeal filed with the employment tribunal.

According to the introduction in the ruling,

“The Claimant holds the belief that biological sex is real, important, immutable and not to be conflated with gender identity. She considers that statements such as ‘woman means adult human female’ or ‘trans women are male’ are statements of neutral fact and are not expressions of antipathy towards trans people or ‘transphobic’.”

Those who set up a monthly donation to Sex Matters during the month of June will have their contribution matched and doubled by a “generous donor”.

Dr Kathleen Stock OBE is a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex who has written a number of articles for peer-reviewed academic publications primarily on aesthetics, sexual objectification, and the impact of modern gender theory on the rights of women and girls. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to higher education, after which many philosophers took to social media to object, circulating an “Open Letter Concerning Transphobia in Philosophy.”

She has recently published a philosophical examination of the main tenets of gender ideology, called “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism,” available now in both hardback and in electronic format.

Elizabeth Miller is a radical feminist activist and organizer who runs the Chicago Feminist Salon. In 2018, she co-organized the Women in Media Conference. Recently, she has successfully campaigned for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by the state of Illinois, as well as the enactment of House Bill 40, to protect women’s rights to abortion should the US Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade at the federal level. She is currently working with radical feminist organization Feminists in Struggle (FIST) to advocate for women’s sex-based rights and protections.


Elizabeth Miller is the co-editor of a recently published anthology of essays about modern radical feminism titled Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century, available for purchase through Tidal Time publishing.

Pornography and Male Supremacy was first published in an anthology of speeches and essays by Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, 1988.

Read by Elly Arrow

"Feminists are often asked whether pornography causes rape. The fact is that rape and prostitution caused and continue to cause pornography. Politically, culturally, socially, sexually, and economically, rape and prostitution generated por­nography; and pornography depends for its continued existence on the rape and prostitution of women. The word pornography comes from the ancient Greek porne and graphos: it means "the graphic  depiction of whores."
Porne means "whore," specifically the lowest class of whore, which in ancient Greece was the brothel slut available to all male citizens. There were distinct classes of prostitutes in ancient Greece: the porne was the sexual cow. She was, simply and clearly and absolutely, a sexual slave. Graphos means "writing, etching, or drawing.
The  whores called porneia were captive in brothels, which were designated as such by huge phalluses painted on or constructed near the door. They were not allowed out, were never educated, were barely dressed, and in general were miserably treated; they were the sexual garbage of Greek society. Wives were kept in nearly absolute isolation, allowed the company of slaves and young children only. High-class prostitutes, a class distinct from the porneia and from wives both, had the only freedom of movement accorded women, and were the only educated women. Two very significant words originated in the ancient Greece many of us revere: democracy and pornography. Democracy from its beginnings excluded all women and some men. Pornography from its beginnings justified and promoted this exclusion of all women by presenting the sexuality of all women as the sexuality of the brothel slut. The brothel slut and the sexuality of the brothel slut had been stolen and sold — raped and prostituted; and the rape and prostitution of that captive and degraded being with her captive and degraded sexuality is precisely the sexual content of pornography. In pornography, the will of the chattel whore is synonymous with her function: she is purely for sex and her function is defined as her nature and her will."

Dr Holly Lawford-Smith, radical feminist and associate professor in Political Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, reads her philosophical essay, Ending Sex-Based Oppression: Transitional Pathways arguing for the abolition of gender stereotypes, sometimes also referred to as sex roles. First published in Philosophia in November 2020.

Abstract:
From a radical feminist perspective, gender is a cage. Or to be more precise, it’s two cages. If genders are cages, then surely we want to let people out. Being less constrained in our choices is something we all have reason to want: theorists in recent years have emphasized the importance of the capability to do and be many different things. At the very least, we should want an end to sex-based oppression. But what does this entail, when it comes to gender? In this paper, I'll compare four 'transitional pathways', with a view to considering how each relates to the ultimate end of ending sex-based oppression. Should we open the doors to the cages, so that people can move freely between them, but leave the cages themselves in place? (Transgender pathway). Should we add more cages? (Nonbinary pathway). Should we make the cages bigger, so that people have a lot more room to move around inside them? Or should we dismantle the cages, so there are no more genders at all? (Gender abolitionist pathways). Some of these options are ‘gender revisionist’, others are gender abolitionist. I'll argue in favour of a gender abolitionist pathway.

Vaishnavi Sundar is an independent filmmaker, feminist, writer, and women’s rights activist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. She is the founder of Women Making Films and Lime Soda Films, and she has recently released a four-part documentary titled Dysphoric, which explores the social, medical, and institutional construction of gender identity. Her film places women and girls front and center, and questions not only why they may feel uncomfortable in their sexed bodies, but also the myriad of harms involved in medical transitioning. The full documentary is available for free on YouTube.

campaignagainstsexrobots.org

www.collectiveshout.org/
campaignagainstsexrobots.org/