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On law and “Lose the Lads’ Mags”

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Wendy Lyon

So last week UK Feminista and Object issued a joint press statement, announcing they’d received legal advice that women working in shops that sell “lads’ mags” may be able to sue their employers for sexual harassment or sex discrimination. A number of bloggers have already given incisive critical responses, and I’ll particularly point you in the direction of Stavvers from Another Angry Woman, Gemma Ahearne from plasticdollheads and Jem and Carter from It’s Just A Hobby.

I’m coming to it a bit late myself, but that’s because I was hoping to be able to base my response on the legal advice the two groups received. I should have been able to base it on that legal advice – or at least a summary of it – according to this snippet from the press statement:

UKFemail

So, last Monday evening I sent them this email:

UKFemail2

By Friday morning, I hadn’t heard anything so I followed up with this tweet:

to which I unfortunately have had no reply, though they’ve been active on Twitter since then and have responded to other people’s tweets. So either they aren’t really making the summary available, or they’re being very selective about who they make it available to – which raises its own questions.  The press release (and the corresponding Guardian letter, signed by a number of British lawyers) are fairly clear about what they believe to be the legal basis for action – the Equality Act 2010 – and how they think the shops may fall afoul of it by selling lads’ mags, so I have to wonder what exactly is in the summary that UK Feminista are holding back.

The Guardian letter makes reference to “examples of staff successfully suing employers in respect of exposure to pornographic material at work”, so perhaps the advice contains actual details of those examples, and maybe unsuccessful attempts as well – which would be useful in assessing what criteria are needed to make out an actual case of sexual harassment or sex discrimination. You’ll notice that the letter is carefully couched in equivocal terms – sale and display of the magazines “may” breach the Equality Act; “is capable of giving rise to breaches”; “in some cases”. I’m not sure those caveats come across as clearly in the press release, in which Kat Banyard announces:

The good news is that customers and employees don’t have to put up with it any more. Legally as well as ethically, lads’ mags are well past their sell by date.

As Carter and Stavvers pointed out, the effect of such an unqualified assertion could very well be to mislead some shop workers into thinking they have a case when they don’t – and that could have disastrous consequences for their job security if they were to act without benefit of proper legal advice. As an occasional campaigning-group-press-release-writer myself, I understand that bold statements make better copy, but I wish they’d given some consideration to the fact that there are actual jobs at stake here which most of these workers can probably ill afford to jeopardise. A certain amount of responsibility has to go along with imparting legal advice, whether it’s your own or somebody else’s. And I don’t think that’s a very responsible statement for Kat Banyard to make.

As to the legal advice from the lawyers – or at least, what I’m able to see of it – all I as a non-British-lawyer can do is look at the statute and the case law. The Equality Act 2010 prohibits direct and indirect discrimination, the latter applying where

A applies to B a provision, criterion or practice which is discriminatory in relation to a relevant protected characteristic of B’s

… “sex” being one such protected characteristic.

There’s another section about Sex Equality (Section 64) but it deals with pretty much what it says it deals with, i.e., equal terms and conditions of work. Which would certainly be breached if female employees were singled out for sexual harassment, and may be the reason the letter and press statement refer to discrimination and not just harassment alone. On the other hand, they may be applying the Catharine MacKinnon notion of pornography itself as a discriminatory act – what she described in Only Words as “subordinating women through sex”. The problem with this is that it rests on a series of assumptions which would all need to be accepted for this approach to succeed: that lads’ mags are pornography; that pornography does subordinate women; that the impact of this is sufficient to overcome the rights of the publishers to produce, the stores to sell and the buyers to purchase these materials. It’s not a terribly solid foundation to build a case on, which I imagine is why the letter mostly just highlights the harassment angle.

So let’s turn to that. Under Section 26 of the 2010 Act, harassment occurs where:

(1)(a)    A engages in unwanted conduct related to a relevant protected characteristic, and
(b)  the conduct has the purpose or effect of
(i)violating B’s dignity, or
(ii)creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment for B.
(2)A also harasses B if—
(a)A engages in unwanted conduct of a sexual nature, and
(b)the conduct has the purpose or effect referred to in subsection (1)(b)

I don’t think you have to agree with UK Feminista and Object to understand, in theory, where they see the lads’ mags fitting in here. But it’s important to read the section in full, because it goes on to say:

(4)In deciding whether conduct has the effect referred to in subsection (1)(b), each of the following must be taken into account—
(a)the perception of B;
(b)the other circumstances of the case;
(c)whether it is reasonable for the conduct to have that effect.

What this basically tells us is that displaying and/or selling the lads’ mags cannot constitute harassment in and of itself – even if a shop assistant feels her dignity has been violated, even if, and I think it is rather a big if, the sale of the magazines is what has given rise to the hostile or offensive environment she experiences. All the circumstances have to be looked at in the round, and each case will be judged on its own merits.

Which is why I really wish I had precise details of the cases the legal advice is based on. Most of the case law I’ve found predates the Act, though I don’t see any pertinent change from the previous law. There certainly are examples of successful actions against employers for exposure to porn in the workplace, but not in a context where the porn was a product being sold by the employer. So I’m not sure how much use those cases would be in the type of case we’re discussing here. For one thing, there is more scope for a conflict of rights here, since compelling an end to these sales would impinge on the publishers’ freedom of expression (as well as free movement of goods and services, if there’s any cross-border element involved). Given the huge deference that the ECHR and the EU give to member states to regulate sexually explicit material, I don’t think this would necessarily be the biggest legal hurdle, but it would be an additional one that wasn’t present in the earlier cases.

There’s also a strong possibility that the Employment Tribunals would distinguish between the circulation of images that are in no way related to a person’s actual work, and the sale of magazines by a shop whose business it is to sell magazines. I realise this has the whiff of “what did you expect when you took that job” and that can be problematic for a lot of reasons, not least that the people who work in these shops often don’t have a lot of alternatives. It is, nonetheless, a point on which the tribunals could distinguish this case from the precedents, and I think they’d be likely to seize on it. Unless women on staff are somehow being targetted for abuse with these magazines – in which case the issue really is the abuse and not the magazines themselves – I would expect the Tribunal to fall back on the “other circumstances of the case” provision. If it didn’t – if it held that a worker was sexually harassed by the mere sale and/or display of these magazines – then it would cease to be just an employment tribunal, and overnight would become a national press censor. This is just the type of scenario in which judicial bodies tend to put their hands up and say it’s up to Parliament, not them, to make that call.

I don’t entirely accept the slippery slope argument made by some other critics of the campaign. And again, this is because of the judiciary’s ability to distinguish between what might seem like analogous cases before it. It’s entirely possible, and indeed it happens all the time, that a court or tribunal will refuse to apply its own previous reasoning – not because it doesn’t follow logically, but because it would have undesirable consequences. If an Employment Tribunal did rule that a woman was discriminated against by having to sell Nuts, it doesn’t mean they’d then have to find a religious fundamentalist was discriminated against by having to sell Gay Times. Where the slippery slope might apply, though, is in the decisions made by individual shop owners or chains: if a UK Feminista/Object victory had the effect of emboldening other groups, as it surely would, pulling anything that causes controversy may well be the more desirable option from a commercial/convenience standpoint.

“Lose the lads mags” campaigners can’t pretend this is unlikely, either, because this sort of self-censorship is exactly what they’re aiming for. I’m not sure if they believe they could actually win a case, but they might have an impact just by threatening to bring one. How much of an impact remains to be seen (though I’m inclined to predict “not much”). One thing’s for sure anyway: just as a successful No More Page 3 campaign would still leave us with a vile rag called “The Sun”, losing the lads mags would still leave the women who work in these shops with a myriad of other problems – and dare I say it, more pressing problems, or at least they were more pressing when I worked in a shop – such as low wages, long hours, little or no job security and, yes, sexual harassment, the kind you can’t get rid of just by pulling a magazine from the shelves. I’d like to think that if they win this campaign, UK Feminista and Object will stick around to help these women fight to overcome those problems too. But I suspect they’ll just move on to the next sexy press release.

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Posted in Equality, feminism, Porn. Bookmark the permalink.

Enduring (the) Myths: Sex Work, Decriminalisation and the Nordic Model

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Nine

“When prohibitionists do cite other researchers’ findings, they sometimes distort the results and assert the exact opposite of what the cited researchers found.”

– Ronald Weitzer, The Mythology of Prostitution: Advocacy Research and Public Policy (2010)

In early March 2013, the Huffington Post published an article with the title Debunking The Myths: Why Legalising Prostitution Is A Terrible Idea. I was not desperately keen to read it, but I proceeded to anyway because I am generally interested in what people are saying about sex work. And then I was angry. And then I went away and did something else, but I’ve had to come back to it again, a month later, because this one has specific features that make me particularly angry, and I need to share with you what they are.

It was written by Jacqui Hunt, London director of Equality Now. And despite its title, its scope is not limited to legalisation: she believes decriminalisation is an equally bad idea. At first glance, her article looks fairly reasonable and well researched, citing studies from various countries in which sex work has been legalised or decriminalised. It should be noted, however, that any legal model can be tweaked: whichever approach to sex work is selected by authorities, sex workers’ rights and well-being may or may not be prioritised in the accompanying legislation. Germany’s legalisation model is not identical to Austria’s (given the choice, I’d pick Germany). This means that negative outcomes might very well indicate the need for better legislation, rather than conclusive proof that legalisation or decriminalisation should never be entertained again. On the other hand, criminalising sex workers’ clients, as per the Nordic model, has specific, negative repercussions for sex workers’ safety, and there is no conceivable way to criminalise clients that won’t result in those negative repercussions.

I’m not going to address each and every claim Hunt makes about legalisation or decriminalisation: my intention in writing this post is, instead, to examine the ways in which some of her claims have been made, ways which I believe undermine her credibility. My main interest here is in references she makes to New Zealand, where I recently visited the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC) to specifically discuss the effects of decriminalisation. And because the primary source for her observations on New Zealand reveals a markedly different picture from the one she has chosen to paint, I’m given to feel that all of her claims ought to be thoroughly investigated before anyone takes them as gospel.

Read the rest of this entry →

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Posted in Dodgy stats, Equality, feminism, Harm reduction, Health, Sex work, Violence against women. Bookmark the permalink.

Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t listen – Joan Smith on the Swedish sex trade law

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Wendy Lyon

Yesterday, the Independent ran this article by Joan Smith about Sweden’s sex trade law. Joan Smith is, in her own words, a “feminist author and columnist” and the essence of her article was that the law criminalising clients is an unqualified success.

This is despite the fact that she seemingly didn’t speak to a single member of the group most affected by the law, by which I mean Swedish sex workers. Her investigative method was to “jump in a squad car with local police” as they tailed working women around the streets of Stockholm, and then to uncritically report what those police told her.

Jem over at It’s Just A Hobby has already passionately conveyed her feelings about sex workers being ignored in this way. Please go and read her post and come back here when you’re done. If you only have time to read hers or mine, read hers. It’s more important.

For those of you who made it back here, I just want to add a couple things. The refusal to listen to sex workers’ voices isn’t only offensive, insulting and pretty much without parallel (would Smith “investigate” the results of a law on domestic violence without speaking to women who’d experienced it? Would she take police at face value that they had improved their handling of rape cases without asking rape victims if they agreed?), it’s also bad policy. It means she isn’t – can’t be – getting the full picture. She isn’t even asking all the relevant questions.

Just to give a few examples from that piece:

“The woman, who hasn’t broken any law, is offered help from social services if she wants to leave prostitution. Otherwise, she’s allowed to go.”

Did she accept the help? If not, why not? Has she accepted the help before? If so, why is she still on the streets? Now that she’s lost the income from that client, how will she compensate for it?

“[The national rapporteur on trafficking in human beings] talks about why women end up in prostitution, citing research that shows a history of childhood sexual abuse, compounded by problems with drugs and alcohol.”

Does that narrative accurately describe you?  Were there different or other factors that brought you where you are [and that Sweden will need to address if it wants to get you out of the sex industry and prevent others like you from entering]?

“Where 70 or 80 women used to sell sex outdoors, these days it’s between five and 10 in winter, 25 in summer.”

What happened to the missing women? Did they just go indoors? Did they leave Sweden (perhaps to work in a country where the clients aren’t as well-behaved as the cop claims the Swedish clients are)? Did they find “straight” jobs, or did they have to turn to other less desirable ways of earning income? Are they all even still alive?

“Before 1999, most women in street prostitution in Stockholm were Swedish. Now they’re from the Baltic states or Africa, and have sold sex in other countries as well.”

Why did they come to Sweden? Was the sex trade law itself the draw, or did they come for different reasons but find themselves unable to get any other work? Why aren’t they availing of that “help from social services”?

“They tell Haggstrom’s officers they’re much more likely to be subjected to violence in countries where prostitution has been legalised.”

Do they really?

“one of the criticisms of the law was that it would make prostitution more dangerous. All the Swedish police officers I spoke to insisted this was a myth”

Is it really a myth? Or are sex workers just less likely to report violence to police officers, now that they depend on income from a criminalised source?

“”If a sex buyer can find a prostituted woman in a hotel or apartment, the police can do it,” Haggstrom observes sardonically.”

Is this really true? Or do the police simply not know when they haven’t found a sex worker whom a buyer has found?

“40 women, mostly from Romania, had sufficient confidence in the Swedish criminal justice system to testify against the men exploiting them”

How many women in the sex trade didn’t have sufficient confidence in the criminal justice system to testify?

“In a brightly lit street, Haggstrom points out a couple of Romanian women who work as prostitutes.”

Once again, why are they selling sex in Sweden? Why haven’t they availed of the social services? Why isn’t the Swedish law “working” for them?

My last question there is a key one. Reading this article, I was struck by the number of references in it to women still in the sex trade. The Baltic and African women. The Romanians on the street. The 40 Romanians who testified in last year’s trafficking trials. The woman of undisclosed nationality whose income source was arrested at the start of the article. Even if you buy the Swedish claims that their numbers have dropped precipitously – and remember, those claims relate only to street prostitution, which was only a tiny part of the industry to begin with – there’s obviously still a Swedish sex trade. And the women (and men) working in it are actual human beings who presumably have views on the law and what its consequences have been for them. One would think that those consequences would be at least as important, to a feminist like Joan Smith, as the crude number count. Which in any case clearly excludes these women from the “success” narrative, a fact I’d expect her to also deem worthy of exploration.

But Smith didn’t just consider it irrelevant to ask these women what the law has meant (and hasn’t meant) to them. She also refused to engage with the many sex workers who tweeted her to point out this omission, the sole exception being her dismissive response to Jem. She allowed police officers – people who see it as their mission to drive sex workers out of business, people who have a long history of using sex workers for their own ends in all sorts of nefarious ways (yes, even in post-criminalisation Sweden) – to define their experiences for them.

I have a few words for that type of reporting. “Feminist” isn’t one of them.

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Posted in feminism, Sex work and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Why childbirth should be on the feminist agenda in Ireland

Posted on March 17, 2013 by feministire

Guest post by Sylda Dwyer

The day before Mother’s Day in an emergency Saturday sitting, a High Court judge was asked to compel a pregnant woman to undergo a Caesarean section. According to an affidavit presented in court, Waterford Regional Hospital believed that because the woman was 13 days overdue by their calculations, had a scar on her uterus from a previous C-section and the position of the baby’s head was high, a Caesarean was required. As the woman was refusing to consent to the procedure, the hospital sought an order to enforce the C-section immediately.

The judge heard evidence from the locum consultant obstetrician attending the woman and one other consultant obstetrician from the same hospital who gave his evidence over the phone. No independent or third party opinions were heard. The woman was represented in court by a solicitor paid for by the hospital. Her voice – undisputedly the most important in this potentially precedent-setting case – was absent. We do not know her reasoning for refusing the section except that it was not on religious grounds as the judge sought clarification on this.

We do know the following:

– she believed the hospital had miscalculated her due date and was in fact due on 18 March

– her husband was overseas and therefore unable to support her

– she has a son who was born in 2010 by Caesarean section

– she wanted to deliver this baby naturally

– she was prepared to undergo a C-section if an emergency arose or if the surgery took place on the Sunday or Monday when her husband would be back in the country.

Just minutes before the judge was due to make his ruling, word arrived from the hospital that the woman had consented and that a spinal anaesthetic had been administered. It is unlikely that we will ever know how the judge would have ruled. Either decision would have been a significant landmark in human rights in childbirth in Ireland.

A ruling in favour of the enforced C-section could have potentially opened up the floodgates to medical professionals turning to the courts when coming up against resistance from women who disagreed with hospital policies such as induction and active labour management. Such a ruling would essentially take the decision making power of a pregnant woman out of her hands and in the process remove her right to body autonomy in contravention of her human rights, a situation not unfamiliar to Irish women.

A ruling in favour of the mother would have been a boost to the recognition of a woman’s right to bodily integrity and to make informed decisions about her healthcare during pregnancy, something that is sorely needed in Ireland at the moment.

Either way, this emergency sitting had huge implications for maternity care and women’s human rights in this country.

It is also worth noting that the absence of a ruling meant that no woman in this country has yet been subjected to a court-enforced Caesarean birth against her will and this is cause for celebration. Although it is a dark day for pregnant women’s rights that the situation arose at all, we should be thankful that the horrors that might unfold in a forced C-section have not been realised. One can only imagination the long term negative implications such a birth would have on the baby and its traumatised mother.

So what happened next?

Outside of a couple of articles from the Irish Times, who initially broke the story on Saturday, an excellent opinion piece from Victoria White in the Examiner and some cursory pieces in a smattering of online and print outlets, the media has been deafeningly silent on this case. Apart from reporting the facts that presented themselves in court, no analysis or questioning of the case has been published. No one has asked why an independent expert opinion wasn’t sought, no one has asked why the woman was insistent on refusing consent, no one has queried the fact that one of the consultants claimed that Caesarean sections are “almost risk free”. It would appear that we’re all relieved that this messy business has been neatly swept under the carpet.

There has been no public outcry or a rallying of the troops to support this woman who played such a strong hand to defend her bodily integrity and human rights when most would have conceded to the pressures. In fact, rather than the sound of supporting voices, the loudest noise has been the feverish tapping on keyboards and smartphones as boards, forums and social media have lit up with other women condemning this new mother for daring to question her medical advice, calling her a reckless, selfish, stupid, dangerous, incense-burning hippy who deserves to have her child taken from her.

Rather than an outpouring of sympathy for a woman who felt she knew her own body and her baby best, many believe that the medical opinion was sacrosanct and beyond reproach and therefore the court should have ruled that she be subject to a forced Caesarean. By all accounts, the majority of the female online community have judged that the pregnant woman was fully entitled to bodily integrity and to make decisions about her body and her baby, just as long as they were the “correct’ decisions as deemed by her doctor.

Is seems that as a nation we are happy to accept that there is only one truth to birth and that is the medical system’s truth. Rather than question the policy practices of the Irish maternity system, which prioritises managing as many women through the system as it can, as fast as it can, over the health and wellbeing of mothers and their babies, we are happy to accept routine interventions which often directly lead to complications and traumatic birth experiences with long term health consequences, both physical and psychological.

We have a birth culture in Ireland where women accept that their birth process can be decided on by a medical practitioner. Hospitals dictate when a woman’s labour starts, how is starts, and whether its going fast enough according to a one-size-fits-all policy. Inductions convenient to hospital diaries, but not to a woman whose body simply isn’t quite ready to give birth yet, often fail leading to Caesarean sections that could have been completely avoided if the woman had been given a few extra days for her body to be ready to give birth.

Women already in labour who are deemed not to be progressing sufficiently fast enough to hospital policy, although their body is going at a pace that is working for both mother and baby, have their labour speeded up which can lead to both maternal and foetal distress. Episiotomies, surgically planned incisions of the perineum, are often performed without seeking a woman’s consent and in some cases in spite of her refusal. There is a time and a place for all of these interventions where they are positive and useful tools in successful birth outcomes. The issue is that they have become standard practice without medical indication.

In recent years a whole industry has developed around dealing with the fall out of women’s – and babies – negative birth experiences. Traumatic birth counsellors with expertise in post natal depression and post traumatic stress disorder, cranio-sacral osteopaths, women’s health physiotherapists and perineal specialists are part of mainstream healthcare. These practitioners provide a necessary and important service but surely there are questions to be asked about why so many women and their babies will require these services in the first instance?

Why is it that when the vast majority of pregnancies in Ireland are considered low risk, do we have such a high incidence of intervention and medicalised birth? Why do we accept that giving birth is something horrific that has to be endured as long as we end up with a healthy mother and baby? Who decides what the definition of healthy is? It would appear that we set that standard as simply still being alive, and to hell with the immediate and long term consequences of trauma caused by a medical interventionalist model. It is a low bar.

We unquestionably go along with hospital policies that are put in place to manage the number of women passing through maternity hospital doors and to protect medical professionals against litigation rather than for the best interest of mothers and babies. Rather than allowing labours to begin spontaneously and to progress at a natural pace for the comfort and safety of both mother and baby, hospitals hold full control over the birth process. This model of maternity care is the only example in the healthcare sector of maintaining such control. In any other medical situation, the patient has full control in the decision making process and can walk away without consequence if they don’t consent to medical recommendations. In this same context, it’s worth noting that pregnancy is not an illness, rather a natural physiological process, until medical complications arise.

Given that there are so many births in Ireland every year and child bearing is experienced by so many women, why is childbirth completely ignored by the feminist movement? . We rally to defend the rights of women in early pregnancy to choose how they want their pregnancy to proceed, as we should. Yet there is something about the birth process itself that we have marginalised and dismissed.

When uninterrupted, pregnancy and birth can be a life-affirming, empowering, peaceful and private experience that can result in positive outcomes for both mother and child, including in the post-partum bonding and healing process. So why do we allow it to be taken from us and controlled? The current system of maternity care, while populated with many excellent medical professionals, has administration, logistics and litigation management as its focus rather than mother-led care. Until freedom of choice in childbirth is put front and centre as a priority of the feminist movement in Ireland, alongside pro-choice and equality policies, cases like this High Court sitting will become de rigour and women’s rights in childbirth will continue to be eroded.

Related articles:

Woman agrees to Caesarean after hospital goes to court – Irish Times

Sadly, Ireland doesn’t know best in Ireland’s rigid childbirth regime – Victoria White, Irish Examiner

Caesarean Section Refusal in Ireland – Human Rights in Ireland

No country for pregnant women – AIMS Ireland

Giving birth is a feminist issue – Mind the Baby

Irish hospital prepared to forcibly perform C-section on non consenting woman – Allergic to Patriarchy

NHS NICE Caesarean Guidelines

Sylda Dwyer blogs at http://www.mindthebaby.ie

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Posted in feminism, Health, Reproduction, The family and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Wendy Lyon

This piece comes from Britain, but Irish feminists must not see it as irrelevant to feminism in Ireland. One example that jumped out at me immediately was this one: “To involve women of colour as entertainment or free catering service at feminist events whilst failing to involve women of colour in visible lead speaker or panel roles is racist.” I can think of a couple recent examples where events were organised to discuss migrant women’s experiences, and migrant women did not feature on the panel at all (at least initially, presumably until the exclusion was pointed out to the organisers). I also attended an event not too long ago where a migrant woman spoke powerfully about her negative experiences in Ireland, and when it came to Q&A time a white Irish woman in the audience stood up to express her sympathies…and then addressed a question about this woman’s experience to the white Irish NGO worker sitting beside her on the panel.

I’d note also the negative reaction among some Irish feminists to a woman of colour’s post on this blog, in which she objected to Islam being used as a bogeyman in the Irish abortion debate (as if Catholicism hasn’t been oppressive enough). Among other things, she was told that she should go to a Muslim country and see what things were like there. The assumption by the people who made those comments that they know more about life in her native country than she does – that’s also racist.

Any women of colour in Ireland who are reading this – what other examples of racism have you seen within Irish feminism? And what do white Irish feminists need to do better/differently/at all to address this?

Black Feminists Manchester's avatarBlack Feminists Manchester

By Mia

When we talk about ‘white feminist spaces’ what we mean is the default mainstream feminism of the UK, (Europe and USA). A feminism that considers itself superior to women’s movement’s throughout the world, using it’s white privilege to cherry pick which women (of colour) and oppressions are worthy of attention or rescue, viewed through a myopic authoritative white lens.

White feminism must evolve and integrate with multi cultural societies if it is genuinely concerned with the liberation of all women. Barr a few switched on individuals, many white feminists (WFs) I have encountered in the UK, view ‘woman hate’ as the only form of oppression requiring eradication, for women to be free. I wish that was true.

What many WFs still forget or fail to notice is that, women of colour making up the global majority of the women’s population, they face and challenge multiple oppressions i.e. racism, classism…

View original post 979 more words

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Posted in Equality, feminism, Migration, Racism and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Taking Ideology to the Streets: Sex Work and How to Make Bad Things Worse

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Nine

“If you drive it underground so no one can find it, it wouldn’t survive.” – Rhoda Grant, 2012

In many ways, Dana fits the profile. She’s a twentysomething woman with a drug addiction. She was abused in childhood and her partner is occasionally violent towards her. They’re in and out of homeless accommodation, and she works on the street to fund both their habits. You could hold her up as an example of someone who does not want to do sex work, and you’d be right. You could score points with her story. You could insinuate that anybody who rejects total eradication of the sex industry simply doesn’t care about her. And that’s pretty much what the campaigners were doing when they lobbied for the criminalisation of her clients.

It’s late 2007, and the Scottish Parliament recently passed the Prostitution (Public Places) (Scotland) Act, outlawing kerb-crawling. Dana’s clients are now breaking the law. If she worked indoors, this would not (yet) be the case, but she doesn’t; she wishes she could, she knows she’d be safer there, but most brothel managers don’t take too kindly to injecting drug users, plus it would be hard to hold down structured shifts given how each day and night is arranged around the search for heroin. The law change hasn’t caused her to pack up and go home (what home?); instead, it has complicated and compounded an already difficult situation.

As I make her a cup of hot chocolate and count out free condoms, Dana takes a seat, tells me about last night. She waited on the streets for hours, frequently changing location in order to avoid police attention. The boyracers were out as usual, yelling abuse and throwing eggs as they sped by. She was rattling – experiencing heroin withdrawal. Gradually, the few remaining clients wore her down, and she agreed to do business with them for less than the usual price. She was out so long that she missed her hostel’s curfew and had to stay out until five in the morning; tried to sleep in a bus shelter. It’s late 2007 in Scotland, and the streets are cold.

“I used to complain about having to come out here to work,” she says. “I had nothing to complain about compared to now.” And this is the statement that sticks with me, a statement so simple and yet so clear, a statement which demonstrates that, despite how Dana’s supposed advocates, her would-be protectors – anti-prostitution campaigners – characterise sex work and how she experiences it, Dana herself knows the difference between a bad situation and a worse one. She is now in the latter. The support organisation I work for is severely underfunded (just over a year from now, it will be forced to cease service provision altogether). Waiting lists for drug treatment are lengthy, and missing an appointment, no matter how valid the reason, can land someone back at the end of the queue. When women like Dana are stopped by the police, sometimes they receive sympathetic treatment, but really it’s a lottery. There’s a serial rapist going around, but even though the women know about it, some of them are taking their chances with him anyway because there are so few clients to choose from. Maybe he’ll just be a bit rough, they rationalise. His behaviour escalates.

Those whose primary goal is to ‘send a message’ are worlds away from these women on the street. Their prioritisation of ideology over safety speaks volumes about their own motivations. It’s one thing if they simply don’t understand the practical repercussions of passing laws such as this one, although it’s too important an issue to excuse a lack of research – these are people’s lives we’re talking about here. But it’s quite another thing if their ignorance is a conscious decision, if they reject concerns not because those concerns are found to be invalid but simply because those concerns are raised by people they don’t want to hear from, including sex workers themselves. Those concerns interfere with a simplistic agenda which, in allowing no room for the nuances of real life, is set to fail. Harmful legislation is steamrollered through by people who block out dissenting voices and allow their supporters to believe there are no dissenting voices, or that those voices are dissenting only because they would rather see women ‘bought and sold’. This sorry state of affairs does no favours for the people they talk about helping.

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Posted in feminism, Harm reduction, Politics, Sex work, Violence against women. Bookmark the permalink.

1992 – 2012 Legislating for X and Savita?

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Stephanie Lord

Savita Halappanavar was a 31 year old Indian dentist based in Galway, Ireland. She was married to Praveen Halappanavar who was a 34 year old engineer. Savita was pregnant. On the Sunday 21st October 2012, she presented to University Hospital Galway with back pains while in her 17th week of pregnancy.

Sadly, hospital staff told her she was miscarrying her pregnancy but there was still a foetal heartbeat present.

The doctors in the hospital told Savita and Praveen that her cervix was fully dilated and that amniotic fluid was leaking. They also told Savita that the foetus would not survive – but it would be over in a few hours.

For the following three days, Savita was upset and in “agony” but according to Praveen she had accepted that she was having a miscarriage and the doctors continued to check the foetal heartbeat. She asked the doctors on several occasions to terminate her pregnancy. They had said there was no prospect of the foetus surviving.

On Monday 22nd October, the consultant did ward rounds. Savita asked the consultant if there was no prospect of saving her pregnancy, could doctors induce to end the pregnancy instead. The consultant responded “As long as there is a foetal heatbeat, we can’t do anything.”

The same conversation took place with the consultant on the morning rounds of Tuesday 23rd October, and the consultant said that nothing could be done, as it was “against the law” and “this is a Catholic country.” Savita responded that she was a Hindu but the consultant said that there was nothing to be done. During that evening, Savita began to shake and shiver. The pregnant 31 year old began to vomit. She went to the toilet where she collapsed. Doctors took blood tests and gave her anti-biotics.

On Wednesday 24th October, Savita was still sick, and she and Praveen again pleaded with doctors to end her pregnancy and the response was unchanged from the previous days.

It is the law. It is a Catholic country. There will be no termination.

An open cervix has the same risk of infection as an open head wound.

Her cervix had been dilated since Sunday.

At around lunchtime, the foetal heart stopped and doctors brought Savita to theatre where they removed the womb contents. After the procedure she spoke to her husband Praveen, but she was very sick. This was the last time Praveen spoke to his young wife.

At 11pm that night Praveen received a call from the hospital to say she was being moved to an intensive care unit. Her heart was low. Her pulse was low too. Her temperature was high. The doctors said she was critical but stable.

By 7pm on Saturday her heart, kidneys, and liver were no longer functioning. She had contracted septicaemia and E.coli ESBL.

Savita Halappanavar, 31 year old Indian dentist, and wife of Praveen, died during the early hours of Sunday morning in this “Catholic country”. Praveen brought his wife home to be cremated in India. She was laid to rest on November 3rd.

Savita should have been celebrating Diwali this week with her husband.

Instead, the Health Service Executive have started an investigation in to her death and University College Hospital have extended their sympathy to her family and friends. External experts are being consulted and a ‘risk review’ is being carried out.

Under Irish law, the Supreme Court decision handed down in the 1992 X Case, Savita would have had a right to a legal termination of her pregnancy where there was a “real and substantial risk to her life.” There must not merely be a threat to a woman’s health. She must be at risk of death for an abortion to be performed legally in Ireland. But it is a Constitutional right in that case, according to the Supreme Court.

There is no legislation to give effect to this though.

Seven different governments have decided that women at risk of dying as a result of their pregnancies are not important enough to provide a law for. There are no legal rules to say to a doctor that yes, an open cervix for a number of days is a risk to a pregnant woman’s health, or that it may be such a risk to her health that it veers in to the category of being a risk to her life, and she is therefore constitutionally entitled to an abortion. Yes, the medical profession will know when a woman is at risk and when she isn’t, but there is no clarity as to whether there is legal cover for them to be able to act in a case such as Savita’s. They could be liable for severe penalties under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 if they are found to not have the legal cover required.

Perhaps the doctors in this case genuinely felt that there was not such a high risk of infection and that this did not reach the very high standard of being a “real and substantial risk to her life”. However, the response the consultant gave Savita and Praveen while she was pleading in agony for a termination was that it was “against the law” in “this Catholic country” – rather than “you don’t actually need a termination.” Strange that.

The European Court of Human Rights said during the ABC v Ireland case that women should know under what circumstances they are entitled to a lawful termination in Ireland. It is a ruling based on the constitutional law of Ireland.

For many years, some prochoice activists have been of the clearly held view that, when it comes to the political establishment, someone would actually have to die before the Government would legislate for the Supreme Court decision in the X Case handed down twenty years ago. If the HSE inquiry finds that Savita died as a result of not receiving a termination, leaving her open to the massive risk of infection which eventually killed her, this Government, and the six Governments that have gone before them must realise her blood is on their hands. That is not to be melodramatic about things. A woman has died. If the HSE inquiry finds that Savita did not die from being prevented from having a termination and it was something else, her story will still send shivers down the spines of every woman in Ireland who has had a miscarriage who may well think “what if that had been me? What if the foetal heartbeat hadn’t stopped when it did?”  – because under those circumstances there is still a real and substantial risk of death. The fact remains, there are some conditions that will arise in pregnancy that will make the pregnancy itself life-threatening.

At this stage, it is either wilful ignorance or complete and utter misogyny that prevents the Government in Ireland from legislating for the X case to allow women in life-threatening situations have abortions legally and safely. The ABC case judgment was delivered in 2010. The Government responded by convening an Expert Group to examine “options” rather than actually produce legislation. The time is now over for the Expert Group.

While the Expert Group are examining, there is no way of knowing whether there is a woman in a hospital somewhere in Ireland with a dilated cervix miscarrying and pleading for a termination to take place. We have no way of knowing whether there is a woman contracting the e.coli that will kill her at this very moment because doctors have refused to terminate her pregnancy.

It is time to legislate for X. Savita Halappanavar should not be dead.

This must never happen again.

 

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Posted in Abortion, feminism, Reproduction. Bookmark the permalink.

An Open Letter to Roseanne Barr, From a Feminist Sister

Posted on November 9, 2012 by AB Silvera

Dear Roseanne,

My name is Ariel Silvera, I’m a latina from Buenos Aires, Argentina who has lived around the UK and Ireland for the past 11 years. I am also a feminist trans woman. Now that the election is over, I hope you’ll have time to take a look at this letter.

I’m going to admit I’m not as familiar with your work as I should be. I never watched your famous show, although a good number of my friends of mine swear by it. I’ve occasionally seen you say some quite brilliant things in terms of politics, and my perception of you until now has been one of a rather kickass woman. So, I’m writing this out of disappointment regarding your recent comments about trans women. From a feminist to another feminist.

I want to start with a reality check. I like talking about material reality, about things that actually happen, rather than conjectures and assumptions. This reality check is about toilets. In a heated twitter outburst, you wrote ‘if she has a penis, she’s not allowed in’, continuing with ‘women do not want your penises forced in their faces or in our private bathrooms’.

Roseanne, I honestly wonder, just what do you think I do when I go to the bathroom? I’m going to tell you exactly what I do when I go to a public bathroom. Don’t worry! I won’t be sharing any scatological details or talk about any gross poo stuff. Ick! Okay, so. My public bathroom routine is, more or less, as follows:

1. Enter bathroom, head to nearest cubicle (I’m lazy, what can I say), or, if there is a queue, join it and wait for my turn.
2. Once in the cubicle, I lock the door behind me. If there is no lock, or it’s broken, I try to find a way to hold the door either with one arm, or a leg, or a bag if I have any.
3. I do my business, and I get out of the cubicle. I head towards the sinks.
4. I wash my hands carefully. At this point, maybe eye contact is made with another woman. Maybe we’ll say hi or comment on the weather. You know, small talk.
5. Leave the bathroom in the knowledge of a job well done.

So, there you have it. This is what I do when I, a trans woman, a woman who was assigned male at birth and has transitioned to female, do when I go to the bathroom. I can imagine that you, a cis woman, assigned female at birth, have a similar routine. Maybe you make witty remarks if someone strikes up a conversation, after all you’re a very intelligent person who can come up with a better topic than the goddamn weather.

What I’m trying to point out here is that at no point did I:

1. Talk to other women or girls in the bathroom about my genitals and the status thereof, or
2. Show my genitals to other women or girls in the bathroom or generally expose myself.

I imagine you don’t do this either. Congratulations. You go to the bathroom in exactly the same manner I do, as a trans woman. And before you ask? No, I have not had sexual reassignment surgery.

In your tweets, you say that people like me should not be able to access women’s bathrooms. I imagine you expect me to go into the men’s toilets. Roseanne, are you aware of the violence statistics for trans people in America alone? The fact that a majority of young trans people report verbal and physical harassment, and a third of trans youth have considered suicide? Given the violent misogyny prevalent in American society today, that if someone perceived as ‘a man dressed as a woman’, or someone simply perceived as female or feminine, entered a male-dominated space, do you honestly believe they would not face violence? Did you know that there were 17 recorded murders of trans people in America alone in 2011?

We are just going to the toilet, Roseanne. We’re not there to molest kids. You’ve brought up NAMBLA, and how you fought against their inclusion under the Gay/Lesbian banner back in the day. Good. I despise NAMBLA. I’m glad you did that work and I’m thankful for it! But, I ask, why do you bring it up? Are you implying allowing trans women into women’s restrooms is the same as opening the door to child molesters, rapists and paedophiles?

Now, I want to ask you to do something. Look up all reported cases of trans women raping minors in restrooms. Or of ‘men dressed as women’ doing this. Now, look up statistics of the violence faced by trans people in our society, and the way it maims and murders us for who we are (or, occasionally, when a black trans woman kills a white man, by accident, in self defense, she is sentenced as a mere murderer).

Ask any trans person, trans men, trans women, genderqueer & non-binary folk, and we will all tell you that bathrooms, for us, are TERRIFYING. Almost every trans person I’ve ever met (and being a long-time activist in the community, I’ve met a few from at least a dozen countries), has a horror story. That time they got beaten up for being in the ‘wrong’ toilet, whether it corresponded to their birth-assigned gender or not. The time they got shouted at. The time someone stabbed them. And this violence is mostly faced by those whom patriarchy, heteronormativity and a racist capitalism makes the most vulnerable: trans women of colour. 

You are asking us to face real violence because of the fact that a small percentage of us (just like a small percentage of ANY GROUP IN SOCIETY) may be rapists or paedophiles. There’s probably paedophiles or rapists in your own party, Roseanne, statistically speaking. By your own logic, we shouldn’t let members of the Peace and Freedom party into women’s bathrooms either.

You’ve brought the misogyny present in much of the LGBTQ movement into this conversation. I couldn’t agree more that this is a hugely important thing to address, and we need to continue to make LGBTQ groups understand that misogyny exists, that women are particularly oppressed in this patriarchal society. I think we can agree on this quite easily. I’m a long-time feminist activist, and have seen how misogyny tears movements apart, and how we must bring a feminist consciousness to bear on these problems.

Near the end of this blog post, you talk about vitriol aimed your way by members of the trans community. Threats and misogynist insults are unacceptable! But when you imply that an entire community is made up of rapists and paedophiles, many people are going to be angry and upset. And they may have very base reactions based on the fact that a massive percentage of us deal with massive self-hatred, and are made to feel alienated and suicidal by a society which, largely, promotes hatred towards us. A hatred we have to confront in the streets, every day, when we leave our front door.

Your reaction to the anger of members of a persecuted and marginalised community, which you ignorantly insulted, was this:

“The level of their misogyny is akin to racist fascism from the nazi’s in 1930′s pre war berlin-The GLBTQ community needs to confront this and challenge it.”

As a trans woman who is also jewish; as a trans woman who is also the daughter of parents who survived two military dictatorships (in Uruguay and Argentina, supported by America, might I add); as a queer feminist activist fighting for liberation, as a person who has seen her friends bleeding after being beaten up at protests, evicted from their homes, as someone who fights the good fight against oppression, just as you do… This is disgusting and offensive.

The anger and vitriol from a bunch of pissed off people with very, very little power is not comparable to the campaigns of terror perpetuated by the Nazis in the build-up to their ascension to power. And that’s just the key here: power. Do you think that trans people really have the institutional and societal power to oppress you? In the United States, trans people keep being murdered, keep surviving horrible violence and discrimination, particularly trans women of colour, as I said above. Do you really think that their communication of anger through twitter is the same as a bunch of german dudes beating up an elderly jewish shopkeeper? Is this it?  I eagerly await your compilation of tweets, which the blog post promises.

I don’t know how to end this, Roseanne. I was shocked to hear you treat trans people as if we are your enemies, as if we are part of the powers that be, which continue to keep people fighting against one another, in poverty and misery, fighting wars for profit and propagating patriarchal attitudes. I hope you read this letter, and that you consider my words in it.

I leave you with a link to a video of me giving a speech encouraging Irish LGBTQ people to become allies of the pro-choice movement, at the March For Choice, Ireland’s largest pro-choice demonstration in 20 years, only a few months ago. One of my main involvements in feminism for the past five years has been campaigning for free, safe and legal abortion in Ireland, something which I imagine you strongly support. We have a lot in common Roseanne. I hope you consider what I’ve written here today.

Regards,

Ariel Silvera

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Posted on September 28, 2012 by Wendy Lyon

Seriously, read this post. It’s spot-on in every single way.

hunternotthehunted's avatarHunter Not The Hunted

So: recently, a young woman, Lucy-Anne Holmes, started a petition on Change.org aimed at getting The Sun to stop featuring topless Page 3 girls*. The Internet seems to have done its work well, because it’s been all over Twitter for days, with endorsement from such stalwarts as Caitlin Moran** & Graham Linehan, and is now claiming over 27,000 signatures. Many of the proponents of #nomorepage3 have made reference to feminism and the general well-being of women as justifications for the quasi-campaign. Even more baffling was when I saw sex educators, sex radicals and other generally sex-positive (by which I include sex-critical) folks endorsing it.

Therefore, I think there is an even greater need for countervailing opinions from the perspectives of feminists. Which, in this case, is me. Nobody ever said life was fair. But there are 2 things I’m not going to touch on: whether or not P3…

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Just Don’t Call It Slut-Shaming: A Feminist Guide to Silencing Sex Workers

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Nine

The feminist movement really is in a pickle these days. It used to be a given that things like prostitution, pornography and stripping were bad, but nowadays there’s some resistance to these time-honoured notions. Women are increasingly coming out as sex workers and demanding rights. As feminists seek to shut down strip bars and criminalise clients, those women are complaining not just that they’ll lose their livelihood, but that they’ll be at increased risk of abuse and violence if their industries go underground! You can’t let such trivial concerns get in the way of your crusade, so below are some handy tips for discrediting these pesky meddlers. Remember: being an actual sex worker doesn’t entitle her to speak about sex work!

I don’t believe you; you don’t realise the harm you’re doing to yourself

This is generally your starting point. There you are, explaining that no woman really wants to work in the sex industry, and then some bint pops up claiming that her existence proves otherwise! Aim for the ‘false consciousness’ tactic here: citing statistics from research that the audience doesn’t need to know has been widely criticised by academics, you can imply that you know better than she does what’s good for her. Bonus points for using a strategy also employed by opponents of abortion rights!

a) You think the sex industry is the best thing ever!
b) What you said just proved that sex work is bad!

Keep her on her toes: if the sex worker claims any degree of autonomy or job satisfaction, paint her as a naïve fool who believes that the entire sex industry is a magical fairytale land of flowers, rainbows and sparkly dildos. Your own points about abuses in the industry should outweigh anything she has to say, rather than combining the two to give the audience a greater understanding of the diversity of human experience.

On the other hand, if the sex worker at any point mentions having a bad day at work, outlines the safety precautions she takes, or even jokes about clients with smelly feet, be sure to pounce on this straight away as evidence of the inherent harm of the sex industry. Don’t budge an inch if she tries to point out that none of these things are unique to sex work. It’s different, because it’s sex. Got that? Soon enough, she’ll stop publicly discussing any problems related to sex work, for fear that you’ll use them to call for complete eradication. And once she’s shut up about them, you can safely return to point a). Genius!

You’re only concerned about losing business

Goddammit, what is with these people? You’re only trying to send a message about equality between men and women, and they’re raising hell about disrupted support networks and a rise in violence! But that’s okay. As long as you make them out to be purely motivated by greed, you needn’t actually address the issues they’re highlighting, let alone the reasons why they might need money in the first place. Bonus points if you’re able to employ this one against, say, an escort who’s concerned about the increased vulnerability of street-based sex workers. Don’t for a moment entertain the idea that there might be solidarity across the sex industry.

You’re being paid off by pimps and traffickers

This is a great one. It’s a bit preposterous, but if your audience has already lapped up everything you have to say, you can possibly get away with the notion that the only reason people might disagree with you is that they’re the sockpuppets of shady criminal masterminds.

You’re letting all women down

If, despite your best efforts, the audience seems in danger of accepting that your opponent genuinely chose sex work, experiences it as a relatively worthwhile pastime and, furthermore, has some points that might be worth listening to, quickly play your trump card: it’s not about her, it’s about all women.

Although, once upon a time, feminism was concerned with questions such as “Does lesbianism discredit the movement?” or “If I like painting my nails, buying shoes and sucking cock (for free, of course) am I letting the side down?”, these issues have largely been cleared up in the name of freedom of choice. Luckily for you, though, feminism on the whole does not (yet) look so kindly upon women whose choices include sex work. Keep it black and white and don’t let any nuance get in there. Base your argument here on claiming that the sex industry promotes negative attitudes to women – for bonus points, use objectifying language to describe sex workers while explaining that objectification is bad. You’ve already established that consensual paid-for sex is wrong, so a woman who willingly provides it is clearly a traitor to your gender. Under the guise of ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’, you can proceed to being as nasty as you like to those uppity sex workers: they didn’t listen to you when you warned they were making the wrong choice, so they’ve already forfeited their right to sisterhood.

You’re not representative

Feminism has fought long and hard to dispel stereotypes and push for more rights for all women. Cast that legacy aside for now and focus on the task at hand! You may be advocating a course of action that will affect everybody in the sex industry, but you can still get away with claiming that anyone who doesn’t like it simply doesn’t count. Plus, if you play your cards right, manage to keep the dissenters in their place, and get the law-makers to agree that your ideology is more important than women’s safety, eventually the sex industry really will become a wholly unpleasant place to be. Those who have the means to find other work will at long last understand that it’s time for them to do so, and the only people left will be the ones who were already having a hard time of it and have no alternatives. Then all sex workers really will meet your standards of ‘representative’! It’s a bit of a circuitous route, grinding down a diverse industry until it encompasses nothing more than a homogeneous group of abused victims of pimping and trafficking, with no agency of their own and uniformly miserable experiences. But by then, at least, everybody will be exploited and unhappy, just like you were saying they were all along. You’ll have proved your point. Congratulations, and thanks for your contribution!

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Posted in feminism, Porn, Sex work, Violence against women. Bookmark the permalink.
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