Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
Articles of theoritical or general character can be found under this heading. Those dealing with movements, specific struggles, national situations, etc., are posted under other headings. To list all of them, use in the group of key-words “Themes” the words “women” and/or “sexuality”.
Last Tuesday, a report revealed the extent of sexual assault against female surgeons ; on Wednesday a poll showed that sexual harassment was contributing to girls’ declining happiness ; at the weekend the Russell Brand revelations dominated the news cycle. On Sunday we heard how students are (...)
Contraception today may not be perfect but it’s better than methods of the past.
If you have access to it, it’s easy to take today’s contraception for granted. But key discoveries over the last century or so changed the lives of women.
Before the invention of modern intra-uterine devices (...)
In her recent book, Freida Afary makes a compelling case for socialist feminism as an urgent response to twenty-first century crises. Her “new approach” attends to recent historical and theoretical developments (authoritarian capitalism for one), key concepts (among them social reproduction, (...)
So-called ‘gender ideology’ has become one of the major bogeymen of right-wing movements around the world. But there are also some on the left who oppose transgender rights, believing them to be fundamentally in conflict with women’s rights – they’re commonly known as ‘gender critical (...)
Almost ten years ago, I asked a senior activist, “what is it like, fighting for women’s rights in Malaysia?” She sighed, “it is a marathon, Ruby. A long marathon and you just have to keep running even when you know not the destination.”
Reading a book such as Women and Gender in Islam by (...)
An expert explains how reproductive rights are changing globally.
The global landscape of reproductive rights is constantly shifting. The US Supreme Court ruling that has overturned Roe v Wade – the landmark 1973 decision that protected a woman’s right to have an abortion – marks a (...)
A feminist perspective on the conflict in Ukraine
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 24 February, it not only broke the post-war taboo of invading a neighbouring sovereign state, but also helped to break other taboos in the West. As the new war in Europe unfolds, large swatches of the (...)
Well, you can all relax. No consciousness was raised during this shitstorm.
‘Abolish the family’. The argument explodes, fluoresces and evanesces as if it had no history, detached even from the Sophie Lewis book, the publicity for which goaded the Laschian wing of the spear-side into (...)
TENS OF THOUSANDS rallied, marched, and chanted for reproductive justice in 650 U.S. cities on October 2. Ranging in size from a hundred to 10,000-20,000, the actions came in response to the Texas anti-abortion law that went into effect September 1. The predominance of hand-made signs (...)
The revolutionary social justice movement of the 1970s still has answers today
Feminism is often portrayed as a dinosaur rudely dying right in the way of progressive change. Younger people today are much more fluent in their understandings of sex, gender and sexuality. There are more terms (...)
Argentina and Poland aren’t countries that anyone would often think of together writes Terry Conway.
But feminists in the two countries have worked closely together for the last four years to fight the hold of the Catholic Church on politics and particularly to improve women’s access to (...)
It was hot outside that day. In the remote area of KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa a young man watched as five men approached him on the porch. “Could we have a drink?” one of them asked. As they finished the water they asked if they could go inside and thank the woman that lived there. (...)
“In order to change the conditions of life we must learn to see them through the eyes of women.”
Leon Trotsky, “Against Bureaucracy, Progressive and Unprogressive” (6 August 1923), in Problems of Everyday Life and Other Writings on Culture and Society, Monad Press, New York, 1973, p. 65. (...)
The Coronavirus crisis and, in particular, the governmental measures responding to it are aggravating pre-existing inequalities and oppression. Exposure to danger and access to support is determined by class, race and gender, as well as one’s position in the global economy. Feminists continue (...)
Enough already. When people try to be cheerful about social distancing and working from home, noting that William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton did some of their best work while England was ravaged by the plague, there is an obvious response: Neither of them had child-care responsibilities. (...)
MATERIALIST AND MARXIST feminist theory is currently undergoing something of a renaissance. Wide-ranging conceptual and empirical work on social reproduction is a major part of that theoretical innovation. So, too, are the recent international women’s strikes highlighting key issues such as (...)
I love Liza Featherstone’s essay, “Moving Beyond Misogyny” (The New Republic, November 4 2019), an essay that highlights the current popularity of misogyny as liberal feminism’s basic category for analyzing social problems. Hatred of women is offered up as the explanation for everything from (...)
Language can make rape disappear. We need to talk about the word ‘rape’: how it’s used, when it’s avoided, and how that both reflects and contributes to a culture of impunity and injustice.
When is a rape not a rape? The answer, apparently, is ‘most of the time’ . Of more than 58,000 rapes (...)
I remember the day I had my first conversation about sex with my mother. The year was 1986. My mother and I were in the kitchen of our apartment, in Arad, Arad county, Romania. She was doing the dishes, and I was sitting at the kitchen table doing my high school homework. I had my own room, (...)
In a comment published in New York Magazine in 2018, Andrew Sullivan warns the LGBT movement against its leftist “excesses,” which run the risk of jeopardizing the achievements of the gay rights movement and of opening the doors to a reactionary right on the rise:
The Trump era is, I fear, (...)
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