Feminist Current

A New York Times article published on May 22nd reports on how the economic misery inflicted on Greeks has forced many into prostitution in order to survive. Here is an excerpt: With the country heading into the fifth year of economic depression, and unemployment near 60 percent for young people, greater numbers of women and [...]

The Women’s Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution, a pan-Canadian coalition of equality-seeking women’s groups, has, as of today, been granted leave to intervene in the Bedford case, scheduled for hearing on June 12, 2013 at the Supreme Court of Canada. The Court will decide whether or not to keep the current prostitution laws (which [...]

A piece published in the Toronto Star over the weekend may have led you to believe it would, as the headline: “Feminists take opposite stands on prostitution” alludes, explore different feminist positions on prostitution and prostitution law. The author, Rosie DiManno (“one of the Star’s best and most prolific writers“!), immediately trips all over herself [...]

Cool. Earlier his week, The Gloss featured old photos of prostituted women in order to highlight the fact that being poor and having to service nasty-ass dudes in the early 1900s also involved wearing cool tights. A comment left on the post reads: “Well, I’m obviously going to be an old school sex worker for [...]

This article was originally posted at Manyfesto and has been republished with permission from the author, Taryn Fivek.   What is postfeminism? Allegedly it is the space where we can move past feminism, where feminism no longer holds appeal to women and where it can even be harmful to women. As Melissa Gira Grant writes:  [...]

Samantha Berg elaborates on Pro Sentret’s research into violence against prostituted women under the Nordic model.   The third page of Pro Sentret’s Dangerous Liaisons report lays out the mission statement for the 2012 investigation: The purpose is to evaluate whether the women are more exposed to violence after the introduction of the law. The [...]

I’ve become increasingly frustrated by what feels like a barrage of articles coming from self-described progressives claiming that feminists are the real enemy of sex workers. It seems as though some of those who position themselves as ‘sex worker rights activists’ are intent on creating rigid divisions among women, placing the prostituted woman in a [...]

You probably haven’t heard about the newest prostitution research from Norway. It has been available in Norwegian since last summer when a tiny handful of pro-prostitution peeps wrote about it, but almost no one has noted the report’s English release. Now that I’ve read it I understand the silence from pro-sex work lobbyists and the [...]

It’s true. I’ve known more than one abusive man in my day. Some I knew intimately and some were only acquaintances. You know, just friends of friends. Some men still think it’s ok to maintain friendships with abusive men dontchaknow. At a certain point someone might accidentally let it slip that so-and-so, you know, that [...]

Gloria Steinem recently gave a talk in New Delhi about prostitution and trafficking. Again defying that old trope, forever pushed by advocates for the full decriminalization and/or legalization of prostitution, that pretends abolitionists are concerned with some kind of puritan morality and “sin,” Steinem stated: “Prostitution is not inevitable, it is only about unequal distribution [...]

The Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University  is “a college of Concordia University dedicated to studying feminisms and questions of social justice.” It is, essentially, the Women’s Studies Department at Concordia University. Following the Bedford v. Canada decision, they released a statement “applauding” the ruling. Here is the response I sent earlier today: I [...]

You want to talk victim-blaming? Ok. Let’s talk victim blaming. The Toronto Sun published an article on March 11th entitled: “Helping Hookers Stay Safe” which looked at a project called the safer stroll project. According to the article, this project is an “innovative mentorship program…designed to educate sex workers to deal with high-risk and violent [...]

The go-to perspective on prostitution from many progressives in Canada these days seems to be a fairly hard and fast vote for decriminalization or legalization. Even many of our beloved East Vancouver lefties  seem convinced that the most progressive position to take is one of ‘sex as work’, arguing that debates around prostitution should prioritize [...]

Recently, there have been a slew of articles written about women and Occupy Wall Street. Particularly, the need for a feminist presence in the movement and the recognition that women are often the ones who suffer the most under an inequitable economic system. In an unfortunate, but hardly surprising, male-centric lapse of judgement, some dudes [...]

I’ve got to be honest here. I truly believed that Slutwalk NYC was going to be different. Not different enough to lose the ‘slut’, and therefore, not different enough to convince me that this ‘movement’ was one I wanted anything to do with, but perhaps different enough to hold validity beyond personal catharsis. Maybe this [...]

According to Melissa Gira Grant, who published a piece in The Guardian today entitled Men buy girls, not sex’ and other myths of anti-prostitution moralists, your body is no longer connected to your existence as a human being. Even though women’s bodies have long been the only signifier of their existence as lesser beings, it [...]

I received a link to this blog post just hours ago via a feminist listserv; a listserv that has, just like much of the feminist community elsewhere has, experienced A LOT of heated debate around prostitution, sex work, abolition, and decriminalization. The author claims to desire a ‘genuine’ answer to some specific questions she puts [...]