Category: prostitution

Report Back on WDI-USA national conference

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FIST members attended the the Women’s Declaration International – USA conference , which took place in Washington DC, September 23-25, 2022. The theme and title of the conference was “Reigniting the Women’s Liberation Movement”. The gathering lived up to its “national” title with women having traveled to the conference from across the country; we spoke to women from at least 11 states. Relative to the female population in the U.S., there was good representation of black and brown women (including in the leadership) and a large lesbian contingent. Some of us estimated that 2/3 of us were older and 1/3 were women in their mid-30s or younger. The feeling was very warm and welcoming, it was truly wonderful to share a weekend meeting 100 like-minded women (or so we assumed).
The conference was very well organized, there were back-to-back plenaries and breakouts for a full two days, in addition to the introductory plenary on Friday night, where members of the Board of WDI-USA introduced themselves and the conference–plenaries took place in the dining room so we were able to continue eating and have our dessert even as we took in all of the ideas presented. The food was good and plentiful. Everything ran on time. It took place in a swanky hotel and we sat in a ballroom complete with sparkly chandeliers and white tablecloths.  There were many good presentations with some time for questions afterwards but there was very little actual discussion. Very little exploration of how far our assumed like-mindedness went.
Plenaries included those on the Second Wave of the WLM, Radical Feminist Structural Analysis, Nonviolent mass Action as a strategy for Resistance, the history of feminists “trashing” each other in the women’s movement and strategies to combat it, Women’s writing, Grassroots Organizing, Women in Leadership, Women’s Community, Stories and Land, Ethical Communication, and finally “What Would Victory Look Like?”.

The plenaries were interspersed with smaller breakout sessions on Reproductive Rights, Opposition to the Sex Trade, the Value of Lesbian Only Spaces, Consciousness Raising, Gender and Feminism, Misogynoir (“Black Patriarchy”, facilitated by Black women) and Legislative Advocacy.

Some of our differences became evident during the last session of the conference. as all women in attendance were asked to present their visions of what “victory” would look like. Otherwise differences were not discussed at all; we never touched upon feminists taking money from Christian Nationalists, or the WDI-USA promotion of Women’s Bill of Rights, or their opposition (or at least WoLF’s) to the ERA (see our ERA-FIST brochure) or the WDI statement in opposition to the Inflation Reduction Act or their former work on their Equality for All Act which is a watered-down version of FIST’s Feminist Amendments to the Equality Act or the history of the right wing trying to co-opt feminism through groups such as the Independent Women’s Forum. Nor was there any discussion of how WDI/WDI-USA is funded or how the conference itself was funded.
 
The conference centered on the issue of gender and there was a great sense of relief in being at a large gathering where gender-critical views could be openly discussed. However, it did eclipse other crucial issues, such as the recent catastrophic loss of legal abortion in the U.S.  Reproductive rights and justice was not a major topic at any of the plenaries at which everyone in attendance was present. After the conference, FIST members and other attendees from NY had a discussion about what the place of gender should be in terms of women’s liberation as a whole (we reached no conclusion and consider this an ongoing discussion).
This one meeting might not reignite the Women’s Liberation Movement but it certainly demonstrated that the embers have not burned out. The great deal of warmth and openness—really great spirit—gives us hope for bringing the different “factions” of feminism together on mutually agreed upon campaigns.
Posts to our blog page by Feminist Writer are the opinions of individual FIST members and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Feminists in Struggle organization.  Official posts are authored by Feminist Struggle.

Why We Need the ERA!

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The ERA would end women’s second-class citizenship by finally giving women equal standing in the federal CONSTITUTION, thus would ensure women’s equal TREATMENT under all laws, regulations, and policies of state and federal governments.

The ERA would afford women equal treatment under the DUE PROCESS CLAUSE and the EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE, which affect all other rights including everything from obtaining a dog license to the First Amendment, LIBERTY, etc. These fundamental constitutional rights ensure that all people enjoy the most basic freedoms: autonomy, self-determination, authority over the self,  bodily integrity, etc. Without the ERA, women cannot be assured that any rights will apply equally to them.

The ERA would require courts to use strict scrutiny when reviewing claims involving different treatment of women. Without the ERA, courts are allowed to use only intermediate scrutiny, which, unlike strict scrutiny, permits infringements on rights.

The ERA would protect abortion rights and literally save women’s lives by making it clear in the text of the Constitution, for the first time in history, that women are fully equal persons who can no longer be subjected to unequal treatment under any laws, including abortion laws.

The ERA would allow us to fight and reverse any sex discriminatory state or federal law, regulation or policy. The ERA specifically states that the Congress may pass legislation to enforce the ERA, which would mean Civil Rights laws would be amended to ensure women’s equal legal stature. Without the ERA women do not enjoy equal treatment under civil rights laws. For example, aside from employment, women are excluded from Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. ERA would fix this

Under the ERA and strict scrutiny, women would still enjoy separate spaces and sex-based preferences that serve a compelling state interest, such as a need to address a history of discrimination.

The ERA would allow women to sue the government for unequal enforcement of rape and domestic violence laws, bias against women in family court, and courts enforcing laws requiring equal pay for women would have to construe the word equal to mean actually equal. Without the ERA courts can interpret laws requiring equal treatment to mean something less than fully equal. The ERA would enable women to assert stronger legal arguments against the commodification of women by surrogacy, pornography, prostitution, and sex trafficking.  

According to Wendy Murphy, attorney for Equal Means Equal, “The ERA is more desperately needed in 2022 than ever before because of Dobbs” (the decision that overturned Roe). “Women’s pervasive status as second-class citizens enabled the Supreme Court to cavalierly take away all personhood rights of pregnant women. Women are literally the lifeblood of this nation, yet they are vulnerable to dystopian court rulings solely because they lack basic equality in the Constitution. The only solution is to fix the Constitution. The ERA does that.”

The ERA was ratified by the 38th state in January of 2020 and is now the law of the land, but, just like the Trump Administration, the Biden Administration is blocking the ERA from being published in the Constitution. Biden is also fighting against the ERA in federal court the same way Trump did.    #PublishERANow!

Four lawsuits are currently pending in NY, MI, RI and DC that seek to validate the ERA. The DC case is scheduled for oral arguments at:

DC Circuit Court of Appeals on September 28th.

WHAT YOU CAN DO: 

  • Come to DC and help us protest Joe Biden’s opposition to Women’s equality. WE DEMAND EQUALITY NOW!!
  • Call/text the White House Comment Line: 800-456-1111
  • Tweet #PublishERANow!  @SCOTUS and @JoeBiden
  • Call your Senators and urge them to demand Biden publish the ERA!!

Distribute our ERA-FIST brochure

BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT: Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century is on sale now!

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I’m delighted to announce that my new radical feminist anthology, Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century, has just been published by Tidal Time Publishing!
The print book is available for purchase at worldwide bookstores, online retailers, and (at a special sale price for U.S. purchasers) at Tidal Time Publishing’s site at https://www.tidaltimepublishing.com/our-books.
In the 2020s, there is a rebirth of radical feminist theory and activism. Hence, this new anthology, which brings together the best in contemporary radical feminist thought. Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century seeks to raise up the voices of women around the world writing or creating from a radical feminist perspective, including scholars, journalists, political activists and organizers, bloggers, writers, poets, artists, and independent thinkers.
This anthology especially seeks to amplify the voices of Women of Color, who are most likely to be silenced, marginalized, or ignored, and their experience denied or minimized. Relevant to contemporary radical feminism, this collection explores themes around the intersection of sex, race, and other axes of oppression; violence against women and girls; sex trafficking and the sex industry; pornography; sexuality; lesbian feminism; the environment; political activism; feminist organizing; women-only spaces and events; liberal versus radical feminism; transgenderism; and many other topics of interest and import to radical feminist theory and practice.
Spinning and Weaving’s Contributing Editor, Elizabeth Miller (that’s me!), is a radical feminist activist who runs the Chicago Feminist Salon and co-organized the Women in Media Conference, a radical feminist conference held in Chicago in 2018. Among other projects, she is currently working on organizing two other radical feminist conferences in the U.S., and runs the Radical Feminism Resources community on Facebook.
The book will also soon be available for purchase in electronic formats through Kindle and other e-readers.
You can read more about Spinning and Weaving at https://spinningandweaving.org/.

Spinning & Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century

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Feminists in Struggle (FIST) is hosting a book launch event on April 24th for Elizabeth Miller’s forthcoming radical feminist anthology, Spinning & Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century. The event will feature presentations by several of the book’s amazing radical feminist authors in this groundbreaking anthology.

Spinning & Weaving , Radical Feminism for the 21st Century features 45 chapters of radical feminist analysis and fiction on topics like sisterhood, intersectionality, lesbian feminism, ecofeminism, sexual exploitation, gender ideology, and technology. The book features over 35 radical feminist authors from across the globe. The book is published by Ruth Barrett at Tidal Time Publishing and edited by Elizabeth Miller.

Listen to a few of these authors discuss their ideas expressed in the book and join the discussion as we build our international radical feminist movement.

Cherry Smiley – feminist from Nlaka’pamux & Dine Nations , author of “Women Aren’t Men: A Radical Feminist Analysis of Indigenous Gender Politics”.

Yagmur Uygarkizi – 24 year old feminist born in Turkey, author of “Feminism Allowed You to Speak: Reinforcing Intergenerational Feminist Solidarity Against Sophisticated Attacks”.

Angela C Wild – Lesbian Feminist activist and founder of “Get the L Out UK”, author of “Understanding Heterosexuality: Eroticizing Subordination and Colonization, A Lesbian Feminist Prospective”.

Melissa Farley & Inge Kleine , co-authors “Harm and its Denial: Sex Buyers, Pimps and the Politics of Prostitution”.

Gail Dines – founding president and CEO of the non-profit, Culture Reframed and author of “Racy Sex, Sexy Racism: Porn from the Dark Side”.

Special performance by singer song-writer Thistle Pettersen, who has written a song celebrating the book and our feminist work together!

Get your  TICKET today!

Order the book

Redstockings Manifesto 50 Years Old Today

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by Kathy Scarbrough

Today, July 7, 2019 is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the NYC area radical feminist group Redstockings (www.redstockings.org).  The Redstockings manifesto of 1969 (click here for pdf) announced the aim of the group was to defeat male supremacy and purposefully echoed the language and organization of the Communist Manifesto, published more than a century earlier.  Redstockings called for a feminist revolution that would include a much needed economic revolution but also include a social revolution that would overthrow oppressions based on sex and race.  At first the male Left made fun of women’s liberation, then over the years the Left seemed to accept some feminist theory. However, segments of the Left today cling stubbornly to certain anti-woman and anti-feminist positions.  Therefore, it is good to come across papers within the Marxist community that defend feminism.

Zachary George Najarian-Najafi is a male radical who has read important feminist writings and connected them with classic writings on socialism in a three part series of articles called “Misogyny is Revisionism” published in Medium.com.  In this short series he debunks what he calls the “three insidious big lies that threaten the revolutionary and emancipatory foundation of the Marxist project.” These lies are, 1) Transwomen are women (on-the-lefts-woman-problem) 2) sex work is work (the-masque-of-the-red-pimp) and 3) feminism is bourgeois (in-defense-of-feminism). Najarian-Najafi writes clearly and without a lot of jargon yet seems well schooled in Marxism and cites many of the most famous theoreticians, both female as well as male. Each piece about a 10 to 15 minute read and well worth the time.

What better way to mark the 50th anniversary of Redstockings than by deepening one’s understanding of the connection between women’s liberation and socialism.

Legislative Alert!

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HR5, the “Equality Act” is currently in the Judiciary Committee in the U. S. Senate.  FIST is developing a response to this bill.  Please stay tuned for proposed amendments.  To contact the members of the Judiciary Committee, go to:  https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/members

SB 132 – A bill in the California legislature, “an act to add Sections 2605 and 2606 to the Penal Code, relating to corrections,” would allow males who identify as transgender to be housed with the female population if it passes. It has already passed in the California Senate and is currently in the state Assembly, where it will be reviewed in the Public Safety Committee. This bill if enacted is particularly dangerous for women since the passage of SB 179 in October 2017 has allowed “. . . a person to submit to the State Registrar an application to change gender on the birth certificate . . . to conform the person’s legal gender to the person’s gender identity.” So any man may declare himself a woman and change his birth certificate, with no requirements or oversight and in total disregard of biological reality, opening the door for sexual predators of various types, from voyeurs to rapists, to reinvent themselves as female by taking on female names and identities. Add to this the reality that the majority of female prisoners have been molested, raped, sexually assaulted, trafficked, coerced or forced into pornography and/or prostitution, and the potential harm to incarcerated women and girls is greatly increased if SB 132 also passes.

FIST strenuously opposes the passage of this bill and asks everyone to call the members of the California Assembly Public Safety Committee and urge them to not allow it onto the floor for a vote as it poses a grave risk to actual women, who comprise 52% of the general population and a growing percentage of the prison population, and therefore to public safety. Also if you are in California, please contact your Assembly representative and urge her or him to oppose it as well. Here is a link to the list of the Public Safety Committee members and their phone numbers: https://apsf.assembly.ca.gov/membersstaff

Failing to get Favorable Court Rulings, Gender Activists Go After Vancouver Rape Relief’s Funding

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Feminists In Struggle urges all supporters of feminism and of democracy to support Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter in their continuing fight to preserve spaces for natal women alone.  According to VRR, gender activists have now convinced the city to discriminate against women in the name of inclusivity.  In the defense of their woman-only policy they raise some interesting comparisons to indigenous, ethnic, disability and other struggles. In their statement they note that many grants by the city of Vancouver are given to other organizations that serve other specific groups, but that “rightfully, none of these groups have been challenged with the demand that they demonstrate “accommodation, welcomeness and openness to people of all ages, abilities… and ethnicities,” as it would undermine their mission. However, this is precisely what they are doing in the case of VRR. The Vancouver City Council is ignoring previous court decisions affirming VRR’s right to offer some services to only natal females and attempting to force them to change this policy.  For more information on what has happened, go to their statement.

The Collective of Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter