Feminist Current

This article was originally published on Karen Ingala Smith’s blog and is cross-posted with permission from the author. A couple of weeks ago, The Independent ran an article on male victims of domestic violence. There were some factual inaccuracies in the report along with the use of the statistic that one in three victims of [...]

Someone messaged me yesterday asking my perspective on Game of Thrones; wondering if I had any feministy links or insights to share with him. I stopped watching GoT early in the second season, after Joffrey forces one prostitute to beat another unconscious in a horrifically sadistic and gruesome way. I’d already been having a hard [...]

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 [...]

An article was published recently in The Independent looking at the Nordic model in Sweden. The journalist, Joan Smith, took a ride in a squad car to see how a model wherein the buyer is criminalized and the prostitute is decriminalized actually worked. What she found will likely be met, by any progressive, intelligent, feminist [...]

 Iceland has been called the world’s most feminist country. Ranking first in the 2012 Global Gender Gap Report, the country sucessfully banned strip clubs, adopted feminist legislation around prostitution, decriminalizing sex workers and criminalizing the men who buy sex, and have legislated against printing and distributing porn. Now, the progressive country is considering banning hardcore [...]

You’ve likely heard about the ‘cannibal cop‘ by now. He was a New York police officer whose wife discovered a website open on his computer displaying a photograph of a dead girl. The officer, Gilberto Valle, had been visiting a ‘fetish sites’ (because murdering women is a ‘fetish’ donchaknow) which “show[ed] women in various stages [...]

Yesterday, The Nation and Tom Dispatch published an epic, historical look at the successes of the feminist movement over the past fifty-odd years and the long road ahead. In the article, Ruth Rosen points to various male “behaviours” like rape that, while once were viewed simply as “custom” were redefined, thanks to the feminist movement, [...]

On February 14th, 2013, women across the globe are invited to ‘rise up’ and dance, in order to address the global epidemic of violence against women. The event, organized by Eve Ensler, is called One Billion Rising. The website states: we are inviting ONE BILLION women and those who love them to WALK OUT, DANCE, [...]

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 [...]

On December 1st 2012, Vancouver Rape Relief & Women’s Shelter held their annual Montreal Massacre Memorial event at the Vancouver Public Library. This event remembers the 14 women who were murdered on December 6, 1989 in Montreal by a man, simply because they were women. The event also seeks to address the fact that violence [...]

Coverage of the murder of Kasandra (Kasi) Perkins by NFL linebacker Jovan Belcher has been incredibly brutal over the past few days as we bear witness to mainstream news sources rushing to defend Belcher’s character and erase any whiff of ‘male violence’ or ‘domestic abuse’ from the conversation. Most media that covered the story over [...]

The tragic story of Amanda Todd has been covered widely by the media and has impacted people across the continent. Todd was only fifteen years old when she killed herself last Wednesday after having been subjected to three years of sexual harassment and abuse both online and at school. After a man convinced her to [...]

This article was originally published on the Deep Green Resistance News Service and was reprinted with permission from the author.   Seven years ago, I was headed out to do my laundry. It was early, before dawn, and the laundromat was across the street. Entering the building, I saw a young woman gasp, before crouching [...]

A few weeks ago, on July 7, 2012, Melissa Harris-Perry hosted a discussion of pornography. The guests she brought on to talk about the American porn industry included: feminist pornographer Tristan Taormino,  Zephyr Teachout, who is an associate professor of law at Fordham University, Jaclyn Friedman, and Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson. Apparently, Gail Dines [...]

After reading a piece, published back in 1989 by Sonia Johnson called “Rearing Nice Sons Can’t Change the World“, I started thinking about mothers, sons, male privilege and what’s sometimes referred to as the ‘Not my Nigel‘ defense. In the article, Johnson points out that, while we love to wax poetic about the very important [...]

Let’s just start by saying this: I really don’t care about ‘kink’ or about ‘kinky people’. It just doesn’t interest me. I don’t give a shit about your leather fetish. Really. But because I recently dared to suggest that RCMP officer Jim Brown’s sadomasochistic behaviour might, just might, be related to the fact that we [...]

Photos of a member of the RCMP, Cpl. Jim Brown, engaged in BDSM scenes were discovered online recently. The scenes were violent, degrading, according to many news reports, “reminiscent of [serial killer Robert Pickton's] crimes.” The fact that Brown played a role in the Pickton murder investigation was particularly upsetting to the public. How could [...]