Assessing anti-porn feminism

What are the harms caused by pornography as presented by the anti-porn feminists? Helen Longino identifies three main ways that pornography harms women. The first is that pornography, but especially violent pornography is implicated in violent crimes that are committed against women. Secondly, pornography defames women due to the ‘lies’ it endorses which surround the…

Is there a tension between feminism and multiculturalism?

A simple reading of feminism that all women should be regarded as equal in relation to their male counterparts and should not be disadvantaged by their gender, it is generally seen as a positive ideology that is applicable to all, and if it is not, there are some proponents who hold that it should be.…

Bridget Jones and the death of Feminism

I recently read Jessa Crispin’s “Why I am not a feminist: a feminist manifesto” – I enjoyed it and found myself nodding along on the train. It is persuasively written and is the perfect antidote to books that promote ‘feminists’ as a life style that can be bought at Urban Outfitters. The main thrust of…

What is Violence?

“Violence is a human universal,” (Abbink, 2000, xi) because we are yet to come across a society where violence is entirely non-existent. Despite violence’s pervasiveness, it remains one of the most difficult phenomenon to explain – what is violence and what it does are central and challenging, but necessary questions to ask. Violence is hard…

Judith Butler, RuPaul’s Drag Race and Feminism

  I watched the first episode of RuPaul's drag race (it's on Netflix if somehow this cultural phenomenon has passed you by), one of his aphorisms is "you're born naked...the rest is drag" and this never fails to make me think of Judith Butler, so what follows is an account of gender performativity and how it…