Victory for Claire Finch May 23, 2010

Press release from the English Collective of Prostitutes
On Thursday 29 April, in Luton Crown Court, Claire Finch was found NOT GUILTY of a criminal charge of keeping a brothel. The jury, in line with public opinion, refused to criminalise Ms Finch for working together with friends from her own home for safety. Ms Finch, her friends and colleagues, her legal team and the English Collective of Prostitutes which co-ordinated the case, celebrated this victory for rights and safety.

This case is a precedent – it forges a way for sex workers to work together from premises. Thousands of women who want to protect their safety now have the possibility of a legal defence against criminal charges. Sex workers are 10 times more likely to be attacked on the street than indoors, and it is much safer to work with someone else than to work alone. Yet the law expressly forbids this – two or more women working together are classified as a brothel. Following the decision of the court, all pending prosecutions of women working together without force or coercion must now be dropped. Parliament must now look to decriminalise as New Zealand did successfully nearly seven years ago, improving women’s safety without increasing prostitution.

Let’s All Move to Iceland! March 26, 2010

The “World’s Most Feminist Country” apparently – discuss!

I wonder why there is such a strong consensus behind the country’s decision to ban all strip clubs – even among men. Or are there good reasons to be suspicious about the accuracy of the 2007 poll results? Can any Icelandic readers help the rest of us understand the secret of your country’s success?

It would also be interesting to hear from those mentioned in the article who believe that strip clubs are ‘empowering’. Is there anything to this argument?

“Wedding volunteers” December 17, 2009

The Jender-Parents have passed this story on to me.

More than 1,000 followers of a multi-religious sect in northern India have pledged to marry female sex workers who want to escape exploitation.

Discuss. I myself don’t quite know where to begin.

Is it ok to treat a person like a plate? September 22, 2009

That’s not a question I had ever envisaged contemplating, despite philosophers’ well-known penchant for pondering strange topics such as the number of angels that can fit onto the head of a pin, and so forth. But I was recently prompted to consider that very issue (people as plates, not angels on pins) when I came across the practice of Nyotaimori – eating sushi/sashimi off a naked woman. As one might guess from the sushi reference, the practice originated in Japan. A brief trawl of the net revealed that it wasn’t (isn’t?) widely popular in Japan, and was (is?) instead the preserve of the Japanese elite, and according to one site, Japanese gangsters. But enterprising restaurant owners in other parts of the world are now offering Nyotaimori for those who can pay the typically high fees.

So, what’s one to think? Is it ok to treat a person like a plate?

Pole Fitness Classes? May 23, 2009

Reader Seagull has sent us this very interesting query:

A group of academics sent a letter to their university’s vice chancellor objecting to the presence of “pole fitness” classes being offered to staff and students in the campus sports centre. Our argument was that a university campus is not an appropriate place for a “fitness” activity which is an offshoot of the sex industry and a manifestation of the mainstreaming of raunch culture which objectifies women. We argued that we had a right to a working environment which enshrined respect for women, and we felt the university’s reputation could be damaged if the press got wind of the fact that we offer courses in pole dancing.

We received a reply from the university’s management which argued that there is nothing remotely sexual about “pole fitness” which is an entirely legitimate and beneficial exercise activity. This was accompanied by considerable documentation from various national fitness and exercise organisations which sang the praises of this wholesome health-benefitting activity which was so far removed from its sleazy pole-dancing roots that our suggestion that it might not be appropriate caused much hurt and incredulity among its practitioners. The most disturbing aspect of the response was the utter inability of the university management and the fitness organisations to understand our concerns about the promotion of raunch culture on campus.

We would therefore be really interested in this blog’s readership’s views on this, specifically,

1. How widespread is “pole-fitness” and other manifestations of raunch culture on university campuses, and how widely does it receive such strong endorsement from management, sporting bodies and fitness organisations?

2. Has anyone else tried to raise concerns about this, and if so, what was the outcome?

3. Does anyone have any strategies for how we could effectively challenge the mainstreaming of raunch culture?

4. Can anyone point us to academic studies or data that could help us show our university why raunch culture of this kind is harmful to women?

5. Finally, is there any point in fighting this fight? Perhaps “pole fitness” has become so mainstream that challenging it is futile and harms the feminist movement/s my making us look like strident old-fashioned harridans out of touch with the modern world?

Images of Prostitution March 26, 2009

I just came across this article. Have only skimmed it so don’t know about it’s printed content, but it has some striking photographs of prostitutes in it – police photos of the same woman, but picked up at different times, so we get to see her progressing from a young woman to someone older. Pretty heartwrenching.

Woman-Blaming at its best March 9, 2009

CNN has an article on an important and horrendous thing going on in Iraq: girls and young women being sold into prostitution by their parents. But what do they call it? “Iraq’s Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Their Daughters”. Yeah. Because we all know men play no role at all in prostitution. The article itself does a good job drawing attention to the many forces producing this situation: a government that is not sufficiently concerned about women; police imprisoning women who speak out; cultural devaluation of women; war; poverty. But the headline makes it sound like it’s just a matter of mothers who are horrible to their daughters. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)

Strippers and Wives as Helpful Metaphor in Academia January 9, 2009

This has just been forwarded to me. It’s from an internal talk at a British university, designed to somehow help staff. I’m still picking my jaw up off the floor.

Wives, strippers, professional services: using experiential
pedagogy, cultural studies, and institutional metaphor.

Placed in a context of pedagogical and educational development and higher education institutional management theory, the film The Full Monty offers a way into understanding the relationship and possible potentials of professional services staff in the university. Using a cultural studies and experiential learning approach, how does the metaphor of strippers and wives help understand the ways in which professional services staff can engage with both academic staff and students? What do professional services staff ‘do’ in universities?

One can as easily begin by asking the question what wives and strippers do? What is the purpose of pursuing this type of inquiry in the first place? Come to the paper, find out the reasoning behind this and give your own opinions. The discussion will focus on typologies and approaches to professionalization of administrative/educational development approaches (rather than focussing on a discussion of gender/sexuality in university hierarchies). This will be placed in the context for academic staff to move away from styles of teaching which transfer knowledge to those which engage with students collaboratively and encourage the learning process; what then is the parallel process and shift for professional services staff?

I’m not sure which is my favourite bit. Maybe the line about not being about gender and sexuality. But overall it’s got to be the general thought that considering what strippers– and wives!– do will help lecturers to develop a new teaching style. And help us to understand what professional services staff do in universities. Wow.

London Brothels September 15, 2008

Ever wondered what life is like inside a London brothel? Then have a look at the Poppy Project’s recent report.

Feminist Pornography April 15, 2008

There’s a fascinating article out on Alternet, about the efforts of feminist pornographers. (I know that some use definitions of ‘feminist’ and ‘pornography’ that make this term necessarily empty. If you’re such a person, substitute ‘feminist makers of sexually explicit films’, and read on– you may or may not grant that any of these people have managed it, but it’s worth thinking about what it would take to get there, and these people are doing interesting work.) It includes discussion of the Feminist Porn Awards (interestingly, these were initiated as a response to racism in pornography).  Also discussion of the many different ways that various directors understand what it is to make feminist pornography.  Audacia Ray focuses on working conditions.

According to Audacia Ray, director of the The Bi Apple as well as a sex educator and sex workers-rights activist, “Feminist porn is, for me, much more about the production end of things than it is about what is actually onscreen. It’s about the ability of the people performing the porn to negotiate what they’re doing.” For Ray, producing feminist porn involves paying performers above the industry standard, using condoms and covering the costs of HIV testing (neither of which are industry standards), getting input from her cast about what they want to do before they arrive on set, and avoiding surprising actors with last-minute requests.

Venus Hottentot discusses content:

“For me what makes it feminist is the story,” explains Hottentot. “[With Afrodite Superstar,] I wanted to create something about sexuality and self-esteem, and for me those were my first objectives in making this film. When I looked at what is going on with HIV/AIDS in the African-American and Latin communities, I felt like there needed to be a sexual conversation.” And it’s in that context that Hottentot tells the story of a young woman of color struggling to discover an authentic identity and sexuality in the mainstream hip hop industry.

Tristan Taormino combines both by allowing performers to decide the content:

Tristan Taormino places her cast of professional adult performers in charge of how, when, why, with whom, and how often they have sex, and then interviews them about everything from the racism in porn to what they like to perform. For Taormino, the collaborative aspect is a crucial part of what makes her work feminist. “I want viewers to get to know the performers and get a more three-dimensional character, as opposed to [a] one-dimensional sex robot.” Creating context is also how Taormino responds to the dominant imagery in mainstream porn. “When something comes up that could possibly reinforce a dominant image — like, for example, in Chemistry 3 there was a bunch of rough sex — [it's] really important to, in my interviews with people, have them specifically talk about why they like rough sex, how they obtain consent, what their boundaries are, and how it relates to their sexual expression.

One particularly interesting thing that comes out in the article is that– if the article’s right– mainstream pornography is starting to pay a bit of attention to feminist pornography. One of the winners of the Feminist Porn Awards also won a mainstream award for Best Gonzo Release– particularly significant because this is a genre which has traditionally been amongst the most misogynistic. I really do urge you to read the article of you’re interested in feminism and pornography, whatever your views are. There’s a lot of complexity in the article. (The article is exclusively about feminist pornographers, so it’s not the place to go for a discussion of feminist opposition to pornography– but it doesn’t try to do that.)