Feminist Current

On April 19th, the Biden Administration released new rules "broadening the scope of Title IX," the 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs. The new rules add "gender identity" to the law, roll back regulations aimed at ensuring due process for those accused of harassment or assault, and effectively demand use of "preferred pronouns," leading ma...

It's only recently that we are beginning to hear the stories of family members of men who have begun identifying as women, from the “trans widow” to, now, the children of transitioners. Emma Thomas is the founder of the campaign group,  Children of Transitioners , a group that  questioned  the University of Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust on their “perinatal care policy for trans and non binary peo...

Sasha Ayad⁠  is Licensed Professional Counselor who has treated adolescents for over 13 years. She began feeling concerned about the trans trend reaching teens, and after learning about Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) so began looking into the “trans kid”phenomenon more deeply. Sasha became a founding board member of several organizations fighting for a more cautious, science-based approach, i...

Helen Joyce is a journalist, editor, and the author of Trans: When ideology meets reality . Helen is also a founder of  Sex Matters , a campaign group advocating for clarity about the two sexes—male and female—in law and in life. In this episode, Meghan Murphy speaks with Helen about new political developments in the UK around gender identity legislation and women's sex-based rights, why wome...

In February 2020, Laila Mickelwait, Exodus Cry’s Director of Abolition at the time, published an op-ed titled, “Time to Shut Pornhub Down,” bringing attention to the fact that Pornhub was hosting child pornography and videos of trafficking victims on the site. This sparked a petition and accompanying campaign, Traffickinghub . Then, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Nicholas Kristof, published a...

The issue of prostitution in Canada has been left mostly uncovered. The debate in the public sphere tends to centre around questions of "women’s choices," and the left chants "sex work is work" in an effort to frame the problems in the sex trade as being limited to labour standards. Meanwhile, the men who pay for sex and exploit women in trade are ignored.  In this episode, Meghan Murphy spea...

Porn and people’s relationships to porn has changed immensely since the advent of the internet — even moreso with apps like OnlyFans and other social media tools that connect consumers directly to women. Many argue these tools are a means to empower women — allowing them freedom, independence, and the ability to make a lot of money. But is that really the case? To learn more about the realities be...

Robert Wintemute, a professor of human rights law at King's College London and a lawyer for the LGB Alliance , was scheduled to give a talk called called “Sex vs. Gender (Identity) Debate In the United Kingdom and the Divorce of LGB from T,” at McGill University in Montreal last week. The event never happened, though, cancelled shortly after it began as protesters stormed the venue shouting profan...

Scottish women suffered major blow in December when the SNP government passed a bill that will allow anyone to get a gender recognition certificate through self-declaration without a diagnosis of "gender dysphoria" or doctor’s assessment. They will need only to claim to have been "living as a different gender" for three months. Teenagers will become eligible to apply to change their legal sex on t...

Marissa Darlingh was an elementary school counselor with over a decade of experience working with students in culturally diverse public school districts when she was fired from her job at Allen-Field Elementary School in the Milwaukee Public School District. After speaking at an April 23 rally in Madison against gender identity ideology in schools, a campaign was organized to get Marissa fired, an...

Two months ago, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini traveled from her hometown in the province of Kurdistan to the Iranian capital, Tehran, to visit her brother. She was arrested by the morality police getting off the subway for failing to cover her hair properly, in accordance with Iran’s Sharia law. Three days later, she was dead, beaten severly in the head. Iranian women said "No more," and launched an upr...

Today, women only spaces are highly controversial. Thanks to gender identity legislation, “female only” has become practically obsolete. When Sall Grover set out to create a female only social network and app, she was trying to help — offering women a space where they needn’t deal with the predatory, sexist, harassing behaviour of men. She had no idea such an endeavour would make her a target. In...

Pornography has been wholly normalized in our society. It is expected that men and boys use it, is joked about, and is treated as a harmless pastime — synonomous with masturbation. But the industry is anything but harmless. Benji Nolot is the founder of Exodus Cry , an NGO committed to abolishing sex trafficking and breaking the cycle of commercial sexual exploitation while assisting and empowerin...

Infighting is not new to feminism — who is doing things right, who is doing things wrong, who is toxic, who is good, who is a phony, a grifter, not an ally, too right, too rich, too academic, too old, or too pretty has always been up for debate, and potentially a reason to cancel women from the movement. Today, even within the already marginal "gender critical feminist" umbrella, women are expecte...

  The pill has long been heralded as a win for women — a path towards freedom, a woman’s right, a pivotal aspect of the sexual revolution — but is hormonal birth control really all that? The Business of Birth Control , a new documentary from the creators of The Business of Being Born , takes a critical look at the connection between hormonal birth control and women’s health and liberation. Is...

Most feminists don't think of guns as means to empower women — rather, we tend to see them as a danger. Antonia Okafor Cover , the founder and president of EMPOWERED , sees things differently. Antonia is the National Director of Women's Outreach and a national spokesperson for Gun Owners of America. She founded EMPOWERED in order to educate, train, and equip young women in the use of firearms for...

Earlier this month, Julie Jaman, an 80-year-old resident of Port Townsend, Washington, was banned from her local community pool. Her crime was to ask a male to leave the female change room. Just moments after she told Clementine Adams to “get out of here,” she was told by YMCA aquatics manager, Rowen DeLuna, “You’re discriminating and you can’t use the pool anymore and I’m calling the police.” The...

The sexual revolution is generally understood to have been liberating for women — we could enjoy sex free from social consequences as well as outside the context of marriage and reproduction. Women no longer need to marry or have children if they don’t want to. They can have sex before marriage. They can have casual sex. They can divorce if they are unhappy in marriage. They can, in theory anyway,...

Norwegian feminist Christina Ellingsen is facing a prison sentence of up to three years for saying that men cannot be lesbians or mothers. Country contact for Women’s Declaration International (WDI) in Norway , Christina is being investigated under hate crime charges for tweets she made between February 2021 and January 2022, directed at Christine Marie Jentoft , a representative for Norwegian tra...

Katherine Deves is a Sydney-based lawyer and mother of three daughters. In 2020, she realized no one was standing up for female athletes in Australia, so joined forces with women in New Zealand to co-found Save Women's Sport Australasia . Katherine gained national prominence during the 2022 Australian federal election when she ran , ultimately unsuccessfully, as the Liberal candidate for the seat...

Last week, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion in 1973. Why did this happen? Who is to blame? What does this mean for American women? How do we move forward? In this episode, Meghan Murphy speaks with Mary Lou Singleton, a family nurse practitioner and midwife who advocates for women's reproductive sovere...

In 2018, Maya Forstater was subject to an internal investigation at her place of employment, the Center for Global Development, after complaints about her tweets. She lost her job as a result, accused of "transphobia." Maya took the case to the Employment Tribunal, which resulted first in a judgment saying her "belief" that sex is real was "not worthy of respect in a democratic society." Maya rece...

Twitter has a history of banning those who fail to toe the line in terms of progressive political orthodoxy. In particular, the social media corporation has banned numerous people for challenging gender identity ideology — for saying things like ‘men aren’t women,’ for example. Does twitter have a woman problem? Or are there simply activists working behind the scene to present their ideas as...

Surrogacy has become a relatively mainstream practice. Celebrities and those with means treat surrogacy as a harmless option to aid women who cannot or do not wish to carry their own babies or to allow gay couples to have children. Few seem to consider the impact on mother and baby. A new surrogacy bill in Quebec proposes changes to current legislation that would recognize surrogacy contracts, whi...

The stories of those who exited prostitution tend to be wildly different than those still working in the industry and identifying as "sex workers." And what men tend to believe about those working in prostitution tends to align with that "sex worker" narrative as well — that some women just really enjoy prostitution, that it is simply a job like any other, that these women are making such good mon...