Feminist Current

We often point to nature in order to defend our own behaviour and patterns in human society. People will defend everything from violence, to rape, to male dominance by pointing to animal behaviour. But maybe instead of looking to defend patriarchy by looking to nature, we should look to nature for alternative structures and behaviours that challenge our own social norms. When Caitlin Starowicz hea...

Too often, when women are not interested in sex at the same levels their male partners are, they are told either that there is something wrong with them or that they are obligated to find a way to meet men’s desires. Friends instruct us to engage in “maintenance sex” in order to keep our male partners happy. Women are told they are cruel or bad partners if they don’t have sex with their boyfriends...

Transgenderism is often discussed in terms of personal identity — a person expressing themselves, becoming their true self, connecting their outer persona to an internal feeling, etc. — but what about those around them? What happens when a woman’s heterosexual partner decides he is, in fact, a woman? How does this impact the relationship? In this episode, I speak with a woman who saw and experienc...

Girls learn, from the time they are young, to hate their bodies. We learn to focus on and work to fix so-called “flaws” — everything from weight to wrinkles to body hair to skin “imperfections.” Once we hit puberty, things often become worse, as men begin to gaze at, comment on, or grope our bodies, now sexualized and deemed available for public consumption. Considering that these messages are so...

Take Back the Night/Friday, September 18, 2015.  “ Male violence against women is still considered a distraction [by the male left], rather than a fundamental oppression that the left has to deal with.” — Daisy Kler We talk about intersectionality a lot these days, but what does it really mean to combine our analysis of race, class, and gender? While we know women from all walks of life suffe...

In 2003, Andrea Dworkin wrote , “The world was sleeping and Kate Millett woke it up.” Indeed, Kate Millett was a game changer. In 1970, she published Sexual Politics , which catapulted her to fame, both in and out of the feminist movement. The New York Times called the book “the Bible of Women’s Liberation”, and her publisher, Doubleday, said it was one of the ten most important books they publish...

Image: ninotchkarosca.com In this episode, I speak with Ninotchka Rosca , an incredibly accomplished activist and writer from the Phillippines. She is the author of six books, including two bestselling novels — The State of War and Twice Blessed ( which won the 1993 American Book Award for Excellence in Literature) — a two-time recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, and has...

Women’s bodies have always been have always been the focal point of patriarchy. Liberals and conservatives alike have both worked to ensure women don’t have bodily autonomy. As a result of patriarchy, women’s knowledge of and control over their own bodies has been wrested from us. We are forced to depend on male legislators, a male-dominated medical establishment, and Big Pharma, and woman-centere...

Women’s reproductive rights are under attack, yet again. In the United States, women are being jailed, physically violated, traumatized, endangered, and even dying as a result of increasing restrictions on abortion rights and limited control over their reproductive health. A new documentary, Birthright: A War Story , tells the stories of real women who have become collateral damage in the aggressi...

The feminist movement is still going strong, though today’s young third wave feminists could learn a thing or two from the activists of decades past. In her book, Radical Feminism: Feminist Activism in Movement , Finn Mackay delves into the history of radical feminist activism; exploring struggles, debates, and triumphs. A longtime activist herself, Mackay founded the London Feminist Network and r...

“Harmony” “I don’t see technology as neutral — I see technology as driven by cultural forces. And the cultural forces that are driving this technology is the commercial [sex] trade.” — Kathleen Richardson Kathleen Richardson launched the Campaign Against Sex Robots , but her aims are actually much broader than humanoids built for male pleasure. Richardson is an abolitionist, and sees sex robots as...

Despite being a century into the women’s movement, it can, at times, feel as though progress has stalled. Indeed, old stereotypes about the roles men and women play in the home persist, and some recent reports show that a significant number of American millennials still believe that a male breadwinner and a woman who “takes care of the home and family” is the ideal family model. A 2015 poll commis...

Despite feminists’ best efforts, many people today believe that inequality between the sexes is natural, not cultural. They will often point to the behavior, clothing, or play of girls and boys to prove this; or they will point to hormones, like testosterone, as evidence that men are inherently violent, sexually aggressive, or more adventurous than women. Cordelia Fine’s work throws a wrench into...

Today, pornography is inescapable. It shapes our self-image, our relationships, our sexualities — even our body hair removal practices. In academia, many media scholars have taken a non-critical approach to porn and third wave feminists have embraced it. If it feels like the pornographers have won, it’s because in many ways they have. A new book edited by Dr. Heather Brunskell-Evans explores the i...

The Working Class Movement Library When the Working Class Movement Library — a small, volunteer-run library in Salford, England that holds records and stories of working class people’s lives and activism — announced they would be hosting feminist journalist Julie Bindel as a speaker, they were hit with a barrage of posts and messages attacking Bindel and the library. As is the trend these days, hu...

On January 21st, three million people across the globe — a majority of whom were women — took to the streets. A response to the election of Donald Trump, the initial Women’s March was set…

The Women’s March – Vancouver. (Photo: Jess Martin) On January 21 st , three million people across the globe — a majority of whom were women — took to the streets. A response to the election of Donald Trump, the initial Women’s March was set to take place in Washington, but sister marches spread across the globe. It turned out to be the largest demonstration in U.S. history . While the organizers...

In Robert Jensen’s new book, The End of Patriachy: Radical Feminism for Men , he asks one question: “What do we need to create and maintain stable, decent human communities that can remain in a sustainable relationship with the larger world?” His answer is feminism. The book puts forth a radical feminist challenge to institutionalized male dominance, offers a historical and social analysis of patr...

Image: Women’s Liberation Front v. United States Facebook page On August 11th, 2016, Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Department of Education (DOE) in order to challenge their recent redefinition of “sex” in Title IX to include “gender identity.” These kinds of changes have been taking place across North America — in many cases “...

In September, NBC greenlit a sitcom called Mail Order Family . The plot would center around a widowed single father who orders a mail-order bride from the Philippines to help raise his two preteen daughters. Online backlash was swift, as people asked what was so funny about the exploitation of marginalized Filipino women, so plans to produce the show were cancelled, but that doesn’t mean the issue...

Image: The Age/Simon Schluter Feminism has suffered a significant loss in recent decades. The impact of “queer studies,” neoliberalism, and identity politics was substantial. Renowned radical feminist, Sheila Jeffreys , witnessed the move from “Women’s Studies” to “Gender Studies” in academia and saw feminist discourse and women’s culture built during the second wave eroded. Jeffreys joined the wo...

Image: Veer Images The days of Marlo Thomas’ “Free to be… You and Me,” it seems, are long gone. Now, when kids don’t quite “fit” within the gender roles prescribed by a patriarchal society, no longer do we say, “You’re fine just the way you are!” Instead, more and more frequently, we are saying, “Maybe you were born in the wrong body.” The quickly popularized phenomenon of transing kids — that is,...

An example of the imagery circulating in mainstream media, depicting a woman in a burkini alongside a woman in a bikini. Just today media reported that a court in the French Mediterranean island of Corsica has upheld a burkini ban issued by a local mayor, despite the fact that a higher court recently ruled against the ban . The past couple of weeks have been rife with imagery positioning Western w...

As prostitution and the legislation that surrounds it has become an increasingly heated debate, the voices of women who survived the industry have grown louder and stronger. This year, a new book containing testimonies written by survivors was published by Spinifex Press. Prostitution Narratives: Stories of Survival in the Sex Trade , bust myths, reveals the trauma experienced by those who are use...

This week, 300 women have gathered for a five-day long feminist meeting in an “eco-domain” in Normandy, France. The will discuss topics like heterosexuality, lesbianism, anti-racism, ecofemism, and more. There will also be open mic nights and parties as a goal of the week is not only to further feminist analysis, but “rediscover the joy and freedom found in women-only space and to re-energize.” I...