FTM Transsexualism and Grief
In “Pornography and Grief” Andrea Dworkin writes very powerfully about the impact upon her of having to look at so much pornography in order to write about it. The horror of the pain, destruction, and just pure run of the mill hatred towards women inspired grief in her (Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, 1988). […]
The Lesbian Revolution – October 2018
The Lesbian Revolution: lesbian feminism in the UK 1970-1990 Sheila Jeffreys FiLiA Salford, Greater Manchester October 2018 I am going to talk today about my new book The Lesbian Revolution: lesbian feminism in the UK 1970-1990. The book is a history of lesbian feminism, and I wrote it with two purposes. One was simply […]
The Need to Abolish Marriage
I have a radical lesbian feminist position on marriage which is well expressed by the US lesbian legal theorist Ruthann Robson (1992) who argues for the general abolition of marriage saying that ‘lesbian survival is not furthered by embracing the law’s rule of marriage. Our legal energy is better directed at abolishing marriage as a […]
Bisexual Politics: a superior form of feminism?
In this article, I shall examine the ideas and practices of the bisexual movement that has developed in the Western world in the last decade. I shall offer a lesbian feminist critique. Bisexual theorists and activists have formulated critiques of lesbian feminism at their conferences and in anthologies of their writings. Lesbian feminists have been […]
Transgender Activism: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective
Feminist analysis of transsexualism such as that of Janice Raymond has seen it as a deeply conservative phenomenon in which surgical mutilation is employed to maintain the genders of male dominance and female subordination. Transsexualism has a new face in the nineties in “transgenderism” which employs queer and postmodern theory to render transsexualism progressive. This […]
The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians: sexuality in the Academy
This article suggests that the developing field of lesbian and gay studies shows a likelihood to discriminate against the interests of lesbians and certainly against lesbian feminist theory, through the incorporation of a ‘queer’ perspective. Recent writings in the field suggest that ‘queer’ theory and politics are and should be based on the celebration of […]