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‘You’re not representative’: Identity politics in sex industry debates
Alongside ‘listen to survivors’, ‘you’re not representative’ is a key refrain from abolitionist quarters in feminist debates about the sex industry. Most recently, this mantra was chanted in the furore around Amnesty International’s draft policy on decriminalisation, where in addition to claims that the organisation was acting to protect the rights of ‘pimps’ and ‘Johns’, it was argued that the sex workers supporting Amnesty’s proposal were an unrepresentative minority with unusually positive experiences of the industry. This assertion is problematic on a number of levels. First, as Wendy Lyon reminds us, due to criminalisation and stigma the demographics of the…
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‘Listen to survivors’ and the fetishisation of experience
The debate over Amnesty International’s draft policy supporting the decriminalisation of sex work has been heated. Although the organisation developed the policy following extensive research with sex workers and consultation with key stakeholders, it has been accused of wanting to protect the rights of ‘pimps’ and ‘Johns’ to buy or profit from the sale of sex. The position of those supporting Amnesty’s draft policy is clear – the vast majority of sex workers globally oppose criminalisation (including the ‘Nordic Model’ of criminalising clients), because it jeopardises their incomes, creates health vulnerabilities and puts them at risk of violence. As the…
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‘Disappearing’ sex workers in the Amnesty debate
Originally published in Open Democracy The international council meeting of Amnesty International which starts today in Dublin will consider a resolution urging that sex work be decriminalized. This is accompanied by a draft policy on state obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of sex workers. The document is clear – the rights of sex workers are at stake, the organization has not changed its stance in opposition to forced labour and human trafficking, and it considers children who are involved in commercial sex to be victims of a grave human rights abuse. One of the first things that…
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Universities, don’t conflate ‘lad culture’ with ‘drink culture’
Originally published in The Guardian Last week, Rob Behrens, chief executive of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, commented on the need for universities to do more to tackle “lad culture” among students. Discussing the problem, he associated it with a “drink culture in universities that leads to a loss of discipline and thought”. His comments were echoed across the national papers, which discussed “excessive drinking” and “lewd behaviour”. That the OIA is taking sexual harassment in universities seriously is welcome and an important win for the NUS. But, as attempts to deal with sexual violence in higher education become…
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Student political protest is under threat, not free speech
This is the original, longer version of a letter which appeared in The Observer on February 22nd (and can be read online here). It also contains more signatories, since people were still adding their names when we sent the letter off. If you wish to add your name, please leave a reply right at the bottom and we will add you. We are deeply concerned about the inaccuracies of and politics behind the signed open letter published in the Observer on Sunday 15th February, which calls universities to account for ‘silencing’ individuals following the cancellation of Kate Smurthwaite’s comedy show…
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Neoliberalism and the commodification of experience
The personal is political, that revolutionary phrase which illuminated the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s and after, was originally coined in response to claims that consciousness-raising was navel-gazing with no coherent programme for social change. It posed a direct challenge to the idea that ‘personal problems’ and especially so-called ‘body issues’ should not be brought into the public arena, an assumption which feminism has done an excellent job of destabilising. Politicising the personal through the production of research on gendered bodies has fed the development of epistemologies based on the validity of experiential knowledge, and this, in turn, has…
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Universities are reluctant to tackle sexual violence for fear of PR fallout
Originally published in The Guardian We have heard a lot lately about how UK universities have a problem with sexual violence. Nicole Westmarland, writing in the Telegraph on 20th January, cited a YouthSight poll which found that 1 in 3 female students had experienced sexual assault or unwanted advances, and described institutional inaction as a ‘national embarrassment’. My work with NUS, on the Hidden Marks and That’s What She Said reports, has revealed a high prevalence of sexual harassment and assault against women students, framed by a ‘lad culture’ which is increasingly normalised. This January, a group including eight cross-party…
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The dark side of the impact agenda
Originally published in Times Higher Education There has been a great deal of discussion, much of it critical, of the impact agenda in higher education and in the research excellence framework. We have been cautioned that this agenda might prioritise lower over higher quality research if it has demonstrable social reach, that the role of ethics is unclear (so researchers might be facilitating questionable policy agendas or corporate practices) and that the impact of much valuable exploratory and theoretical work (often in the arts and humanities) is almost impossible to assess. But thus far nobody has really explored the potential effect…
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Why feminism needs trans people and sex workers
Originally published in the New Statesman, 24th November 2014 There are several stories circulating about what happened at this year’s London Reclaim the Night march. The Sex Worker Open University have criticised the organisers for including a speaker from Object, a campaign group they claim oppresses those in the sex industry by picketing their workplaces and attempting to put them out of jobs. The SWOU have also alleged the distribution of transphobic leaflets by some march attendees. This has been corroborated from the other side of the political divide, with a group of radical feminists confirming that they carried a banner…
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Laddism is not just a working class phenomenon
This article was published in The Conversation with a changed title. The world media cognoscenti have been on a crusade recently against a particular brand of misogyny. And their campaign has achieved some results. Controversial comedian Daniel O’Reilly just announced that he is retiring his “Dapper Laughs” character after footage emerged of him on stage describing a woman in the audience as “gagging for a rape”. This incident sparked an online petition signed by 60,000 people calling on ITV2 to decommission his show – which the channel subsequently did – and his UK tour was also cancelled. Campaigners are hoping a…
Alison Phipps 