‘Free from all uninvited touch of man’: Women's campaigns around sexuality, 1880–1914

The history of sex in the last 100 years has generally been represented as a triumphant march from Victorian prudery into the light of sexual freedom. From a feminist perspective the picture is different. During the last wave of feminism women, often represented as prudes and puritans by historians, waged a massive campaign to transform male sexual behaviour in the interests of women. They campaigned against the abuse of women in prostitution, the sexual abuse of children, and marital rape. This article describes the women's activities in the social purity movement, and the increasingly militant stance taken by some pre-war feminists who refused to relate sexually to men, in the context of the developing feminist analysis of sexuality. The main purpose of the paper is to show that in order to understand the significance of this aspect of the women's movement we must look at the area of sexuality not merely as a sphere of personal fulfilment but as an arena of struggle in which male dominance and women's subordination can be most powerfully reinforced and maintained or fundamentally challenged.     

Anti-sexist men: A case of cloak-and-dagger chauvinism

The paper looks at the sexual behaviour of anti-sexist men as this is presented in writing, in discussion, and in personal experience of them. It shows that changes in the sexual behaviour of anti-sexist men have been those that serve their own interests. Some anti-sexist male writing about sex describes how some of them cannot get an erection without objectifying the women they're in bed with; and they don't tell these women about the misogynistic fantasies they have in order to objectify them. Drawing on this, on discussions with anti-sexist men and on personal experience, it seems that ‘impotence’ is a common reaction to stroppy feminists and sexually active women. The paper concludes that male anti-sexism is more a ‘cloak-and-dagger form of chauvinism’ than a genuine attempt to lose their power over women.     

A “pair of … infernal queens”? 1 a reassessment of the dominant representations of emmeline and christabel pankhurst,first wave feminists in edwardian britain

Abstract

This article reassesses the dominant representations of two First Wave feminists in Edwardian Britain, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, who founded the women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) on 10 October 1903 with the expressed aim of fighting for the right of women to enfranchisement on the same terms as it was, or may be, granted to men. Both women, it is argued, have been represented by historians mainly in a negative light which, at best, ignores their women-centred approach to politics and, at worst, misrepresents their views. However, if we are to understand these women as feminists then we must examine their own rationale for their actions which is in wide divergence with the views expressed by historians. As women-identified women, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst were forerunners of some of the ideas articulated by radical feminists in the Second Wave of feminism in the West in the 1970s. In this article, this theme is illustrated through focusing on two key areas – the world-view of the Pankhurst women and their style of leadership.     

Queering the ‘straight’ line: men’s talk on paying for sex

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of interviews conducted with eight men who identified as clients of women sex workers, but who also spoke about paying to secretly explore their sexual desires for trans women and men. I draw on queer theory to approach the question of how, and to what extent, men’s paid sexual encounters functioned as sites where they could resist the constraints of compulsory heterosexuality and navigate more fluid sexual identities. Highlighting the complex nature and meanings of paying for sex, I argue that the secrecy of the paid sexual encounter provided a space for ‘breaking out’ of the confines of heterosexuality whilst simultaneously being the very thing that allowed men to stay ‘in line’ with what was expected of them within the heteronormative realities of their everyday lives.     

Sisterly conduct: Do feminists need guidelines for ethical behavior with one another?

Feminists who actively participate in the contemporary women's movement find a plethora of dilemmas that cause great pain and conflict. One of these involves the negative ways in which we reportedly interact and behave with one another.Accounts of unsisterly conduct are recounted by feminists who themselves have felt under attack by other feminists, by feminists who have observed seemingly brutal interaction, or by feminists who have defended themselves after a perceived hostile confrontation by other feminists.Both written and oral reports of unsisterly conduct led me to ask questions about the need for ethics in the women's movement. This paper reports on how the idea evolved and on responses by participants at two feminist conferences held in California in 1982.     

A centenary of organized feminism in Norway

Today's feminist movement in Norway, like that of other countries, builds on the ground prepared by the early feminists. Though in many respects differing from their sisters of the late nineteenth century, common characteristics between feminists past and present abound. Never very dominant in number, feminists now as then gradually win support for their views. Drawing on the experiences of early strategies, today's feminists widen the goals of feminism to include fundamental changes in the lives of both women and men. This achievement has in the case of Norway been assisted by favourable economic, social and political circumstances.     

Negotiating the Politics of Inclusion: Women and Australian Labor Governments 1983 to 1995

The Hawke and Keating Labor governments have tended to practise a politics of inclusion in which women, along with other social groups, are seen to have an important part to play in building the new, internationally competitive Australian economy of the twenty-first century. Australian politics have therefore had a very different nature from that of the more exclusionary politics practised by British Conservative governments. While the politics of inclusion have given feminists room for manoeuvre, and facilitated some positive developments in areas such as affirmative action and childcare policies, feminists have had little success in challenging the overall direction of the governments' right-wing economic policies. Furthermore, the ‘economic’ has functioned as a meta-category which dissolves difference and conflict. The Australian experience therefore has both practical and theoretical implications for British feminists who may be experiencing a Labour government themselves before too long.     

Childbearers as rights-bearers: feminist discourse on the rights of aboriginal and non-aboriginal mothers in Australia, 1920–50

Abstract

In the post-suffrage era in Australia, feminists invoked maternalist arguments in support of the idea that mothers were political subjects with rights and they extended their campaigns to press for recognition of the rights of Aboriginal women. This article examines the claim made by post-suffrage feminists that ‘the common status of motherhood’ entailed a range of social, economic and civil rights. They argued in Royal Commissions, election campaigns, and the press that all mothers, working class and middle class, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who wished to retain the custody of their children should have the legal right and economic ability to do so. In New South Wales the campaign culminated in the staging of a play called Whose Child? This article explores some of the tensions between Women's claims as mothers and as independent citizens and the difficulties encountered when feminists attempted to have mothers' rights defined as human rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.     

Can women fly?: Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake and Sally Gearhart's The Wanderground

In this article Vonda McIntyre and Sally Gearhart have been chosen to represent two different trends in recent speculative fiction written by women: the books written by feminist writers to whom writing comes first, and those by feminists who write because they have a message they want to express. According to traditional literary and critical norms, the former group of writers write fiction, the latter propaganda. The question posed by the article is this: what is one to do if the conclusions reached through literary analysis are very different from the emotional quality of one's reading experience?     

Feminism Means Business: Business Feminism,Sisterhood and Visibility

ABSTRACT

By interviewing self-proclaimed feminists with small-scale businesses who sell feminist commodities, the aim of this article is to understand why and how the market has become an arena for doing feminism and what this can tell us about contemporary feminism. Using theories of postfeminism and popular feminism in combination with Lacanian discourse theory, the analysis shows that feminism is renegotiated into ownership by reshaping the feminist discourse of sisterhood into business support and advice. Furthermore, competition is reshaped into a positive value of expanding the feminist community, and making profit is reshaped into a feminist discourse of equal pay. Business feminism produces an individual, visible, affluent and entrepreneurial feminist subject who does not challenge economic structures or ownership conditions.     

What is Black British Feminism?

Young looks at the place of black feminists in today's academy in Britain, and poses some questions for contemporary self-identified black and white feminists based in that country. There is a new confidence among some black, professional Britons but infiltration into the academy remains problematic for many. Black British feminists and writers are largely absent in so-called postcolonial literary canons developed in the Anglo-American institutions, and by and large black British feminists are only offered fragile support by white feminists. Although African-American feminism offers intellectual sustenance and networks, the situation in the United States is very different, particularly as, there, black feminism has had much more impact and recognition. Discussions of the intersections of race, class and gender are rare in Britain outside black feminism, and there has been much less attention than in the States to black women's writing. Perhaps some kind of 'provisional essentialism' is still needed, for it is difficult for black feminist academics ever to feel the question of race is optional. It can be argued that 'blackness' is used to describe women of very different origins, and can obscure differential histories, but 'blackness' is always a political concept, not a register of national belonging. Black women have transformed British culture, but white feminists have largely failed to understand their problems. Attention to the social history of black women in Britain, and particularly to the creative work of black women writers, filmmakers and other cultural workers, is the place at which a new analysis should begin.     

Feminism and Penal Expansion: The Role of Rights-Based Criminal Law in Post-Neoliberal Ecuador

This article analyses feminist discourses on the criminalisation of violence against women in Ecuador, after the enactment of a “post-neoliberal” constitution. It responds to arguments in feminist legal theory, which affirm that penal expansion thrives through neoliberal globalisation, and that certain feminists have sponsored this carceral-neoliberal alliance, over and above redistributive concerns. However, in Ecuador, many feminists who participated in a recent criminalisation process also endorsed the post-neoliberal government’s social redistribution programme. Ecuadorian feminism therefore complicates current discussions on carceral and governance feminism, which link penal expansion with neoliberalism and an absence of redistributive concerns. Ecuadorian left-leaning feminists use rights-based frameworks to reconcile penal interventions with potential abuses of coercive power. This allows them to regard criminal justice as minimally problematic within the redistributive agenda they endorse. At the same time, the penal approach of Ecuadorian feminists runs the danger of marginalising legally pluralistic approaches to justice.     

Book Review: Work,children and gender equality

The motivating concern behind this article is that women, in the diversity of their ages, life situations, cultural traditions of gender and actual sexual connections to men, are still marginalized by prevailing approaches to HIV and AIDS. Safe sexual practices for women, within social contexts and actual sexual relations with men, are not being approached in ways that engage women's (or their male partners') active involvement. Conventional heterosexual distinctions between women's and men's sexuality disables prevention processes. Categories and perspectives which prevail in ''interpreting'' the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, inhibitions and assumptions framing sexual safety information, and cultural narratives of gendered love/desire/sex, converge into two highly problematic outcomes: a dissociation of heterosexually-defined men who have sex with women from central responsibility for HIV prevention, and marginalization of women who have sex with men from concern about women's sexual safety.     

moral ambivalence and irregular practices: contextualizing male-to-male sexualities in Calcutta/India

Male-to-male sexuality in India has been described as both heavily stigmatized and implicitly tolerated. This paper examines these apparently contradictory attitudes, arguing that they reflect broader moral ambivalence about homosexuality in Indian culture and society. While the effects of homophobia in India are very real, simultaneous social latitude allows for relatively un-scrutinized same-sex sexual contact. The paper explores this scenario as a post-colonial legacy and considers the consequences for contemporary sexual subjectivity, particularly in respect of irregular responses to emerging gay identities and socially ambiguous male-to-male sexualities. Conceiving of men who have sex with men as subject to both prejudice and tolerance raises complex questions for HIV/AIDS related policy, programming and activism. The paper argues that understanding male-to-male sexualities in India as practiced within a climate of ambiguous moral censure offers critical insights for the future promotion of health.     

Evolution,Language and the Battle of the Sexes

This paper argues that the power of evolutionary psychology (EP) and the challenge it poses for feminists reside less in any new scientific knowledge EP has produced, and more in the meta-narrative it has provided for scientists whose work is not directly concerned with evolution. Using the study of sex/gender differences in language as a case study, the paper shows how EP's meta-narrative has been taken up in both expert and popular scientific discourse. It considers what gives the meta-narrative its appeal, and how feminists have contested it. It also locates the argument within the longer history of feminist responses to evolutionary science, comparing current debates with those that took place in the late nineteenth century.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Zina</Emphasis> and the moral regulation of Pakistani women

From 1998 to 1999, I interviewed women who had been incarcerated under the Zina Ordinance (zina means illicit sex) in Pakistan. This led me to an examination of women's moral regulation by their families, a process in which I maintain the state is complicit. I argue against relativist explanations of this process, which view Pakistani culture or notions of timeless Islam as the reason for women's incarceration. Instead, I examine the interconnection of morality with the legal/judicial structures, the relationship between the state and patriarchy within families, and the plight of impoverished women in Pakistan within an era of globalization. In my analysis, I link economic development and human rights to globalization and the continuing costs of militarization. Such connections allow feminists to target the structural conditions that sustain the laws in Pakistan and help create an environment that will bring about the repeal of the laws while contributing to trans-national feminist solidarity.     

Laughing Medusa: Feminist Intellectuals at the Millennium

The role of the intellectual is traditionally gendered masculine, and women are excluded from consideration. Contemporary discussions of the 'death of the intellectual' noticeably make no reference to feminist intellectuals. On the other hand, women in academia have been reluctant to adopt the role of public intellectual as conventionally defined. There is an anxiety about the contemporary place of the intellectual, and about the necessity for the distinction made by some feminists between theory and practice, the intellectual and the activist, and where this might lead. In exploring the role of feminist intellectuals over the last two centuries, three paradigms of the feminist intellectual are proposed for consideration: Cassandra (the prophetess cursed with disbelief), for example Florence Nightingale; the feminist Messiah (the exceptional female saviour who would sacrifice herself to change women's lives), for whom the exemplar is Margaret Fuller; and the Dark Lady (the token woman in a community of men), such as de Beauvoir, Mary McCarthy and Susan Sontag. Indeed, Camille Paglia's rivalry with Sontag lends itself to being interpreted as evidence of her current desire to occupy this 'dark lady' role. In conclusion, after discussing contemporary, late twentieth-century feminism (Natasha Walter, Elizabeth Wurtzel, gurrl power, 'women behaving badly'), the role of Margaret Thatcher in changing perceptions of women's capacity for political power is proposed for celebration. Finally, there is Cixous's image of the feminist intellectual as the laughing Medusa, who turns men to stone, but turns laughter on herself.     

The politics of publishing: Selection and rejection of women's words in print

The commercial publishing industry is controlled by men and under the guise of rational and objective decision-making, it manages to produce and disseminate material that it claims to be ‘universal’ and representative of all humanity. In fact, through gatekeeping, the publishing industry selects and promotes the ideas and knowledge that effectively maintain and support the dominant male view of the world. This constitutes a rarely acknowledged ‘political’ dimension in the production of knowledge and in the publishing industry. Alternative views, such as those presented by feminists, are contained at a level where they inevitably remain marginal and without the legitimacy that the sheer volume of production and expensive promotion accord to masculist ideals and practices. Feminist publishing cannot compete in terms of scale or influence and feminist writers and feminists in publishing have to contend with the issue of marginality — both ideological and pragmatic — in a male-dominated area. ‘Book publishing, like all industries, is controlled by rich, white heterosexual men’. (West, 1978:6)     

‘The Injustice of the Woman's Vote’: opposition to female suffrage after World War I

Winning the vote in 1918 for British women over the age of thirty and, in 1928, on equal terms with men, did not mean that the controversy over the legitimacy and soundness of women's suffrage ceased to exist during the interwar period. In the context of the backlash against egalitarian feminism, many men and women remained opposed to women's suffrage. This article presents the views of three individual women, Arabella Kenealy, Charlotte Cowdroy and Charlotte Haldane, who, although they held diverging views on politics and feminism, agreed that female suffrage might have adverse consequences for the future of Britain. They shared the widely accepted views on the disappearance of sex differences and on the danger of ‘race degeneration’, which led them to advance critical views on female suffrage.