Kate Millett’s book Sexual Politics was pivotal for the developing second wave feminist movement. It was regarded as very important both by feminists at the time and by the media. Time magazine labelled Millett as the Mao Tse-Tung of women’s liberation, but the book is not as well known today as might be expected for […]

Comment by Sheila Jeffreys addressed to Chairperson of CEDAW and Chairperson of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, May 2011. “The practice of transgendering children is on the rise in Australia and internationally and should be understood as an “emerging” harmful cultural practice. In this practice children are diagnosed by psychiatrists as suffering […]

A brief excerpt from Sheila Jeffreys addressing the McCarthyism of Transgender and the Sterilization of Transgender Children is transcribed below. Podcast available here.    “Radical feminist theory was and is particularly revolutionary because it means a total transformation of male domination. So it means the removal of it at its most basic level. It means […]

This article looks at the increasing links between the sex industry and business in the form of executives and companies using strip clubs and brothels to network and broker deals, using prostituted women as bribes, or offering visits to brothels as Christmas bonuses. This problem is only just beginning to be recognized by feminist researchers […]

This article examines a developing trend in the prostitution industry in the western world, the boom in escort prostitution. Escort prostitution, operating through mobile phones and the Internet, is supplanting the brothel as the major form in which prostituted women are delivered to male buyers. Policy-makers who promote the legalization of the prostitution industry have […]

Within the academy the ‘sex work’ position, i.e. that prostitution should be understood as legitimate work, and an expression of women’s choice and agency, has become the dominant perspective. Most feminist scholars now take this point of view or show sympathy towards it. The critical approach to prostitution that was almost universal amongst feminists from […]

This article looks at the increasing links between the sex industry and business in the form of executives and companies using strip clubs and brothels to network and broker deals, using prostituted women as bribes, or offering visits to brothels as Christmas bonuses. This problem is only just beginning to be recognized by feminist researchers […]

Access to prostituted women is increasingly justified by disability charities and services on the grounds of the sexual rights of the disabled. In Australia, for example, disabled men form a niche market for the legalised prostitution industry. Male sexuality is constructed out of male dominance and is likely to manifest the eroticisation of hierarchy and […]

This article is a critical feminist analysis of the UK Gender Recognition Act of 2004. This Act is radical in enabling transgenders to gain certificates recognising their new ‘acquired gender’ without undergoing hormonal or surgical treatment. The Act has considerable implications for marriage, for motherhood and fatherhood, for women who are the partners of men […]

This article argues that women in the military are in double jeopardy. They face the danger of rape from their male colleagues as well as the ordinary dangers of being killed or wounded by the enemy. They are used to send messages from one masculine military to another in their very bodies. This is particularly […]