They would have transitioned me: third conditional TERF grammar of trans childhood

Some of the most virulent public trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) discourse in the UK follows the grammatical form of the third conditional: if I had grown up now, I would have been persuaded to transition. This articulation of the hypothetical threat of a transition that did not happen but is imagined, in retrospect, to be not just possible but forcibly enacted plays an important role, both politically and psychically, in a contemporary political landscape that is threatening the livelihoods of trans children. Interrogating this discourse via an analysis of an open letter by J.K. Rowling, and a documentary by Stella O’Malley, this article asks: what might we learn about contemporary transphobia in the UK if we took seriously the grammar of TERF discourse animated by trans childhood? It argues that while the third conditional grammar of TERF discourse could articulate a politics of solidarity between cis and trans positionalities and politics, its potential for a shared political standpoint is routinely interrupted by the defence mechanisms that are oriented by the psychic life of the child. Interrogating these defence mechanisms at the level of the cultural, the article traces out paranoia (as reading practice and psychic state) as well as projection, as two main modes of TERF engagement with trans childhood. The article thus engages with the range of real and fantasmatic impossibilities that haunt the trans child both in the present and the past, and it contributes to the growing body of scholarship on trans childhoods. In doing so, it makes the case that public discourse on trans children should desist from hypothetical third conditional claims, and instead find ways of embracing trans childhoods unconditionally.

Where’s the Love? Recentering Indigenous and Feminist Ethics of Care for Engaged Climate Research

Across a range of environmental change and crisis-driven research fields, including conservation, climate change and sustainability studies, the rhetoric of participatory and engaged research has become somewhat of a normative and mainstream mantra. Aligning with cautionary tales of participatory approaches, this article suggests that, all too often, ‘engaged’ research is taken up uncritically and without care, often by pragmatist, post-positivist and neoliberal action-oriented researchers, for whom the radical and relational practice of PAR is paradigmatically (ontologically, epistemologically and/or axiologically) incommensurable. Resisting depoliticised and rationalist interpretations of participatory methodologies, I strive in this article to hold space for the political, relational and ethical dimensions of collaboration and engagement. Drawing on four years of collaborative ethnographic climate research in the Peruvian Andes with campesinos of Quilcayhuanca, I argue that resituating Participatory Action Research (PAR) within a feminist and indigenous ethics of care more fully aligns with the radical participatory praxis for culturally appropriate transformation and the liberation of oppressed groups. Thus, I do not abandon the participatory methodology altogether, rather this article provides a hopeful reworking of the participatory methodology and, specifically, participatory and community-based adaptation (CBA) practices, in terms of a feminist and indigenous praxis of love-care-response. In so doing, I strive to reclaim the more radical feminist and Indigenous elements – the affective, relational and political origins of collaborative knowledge production – and rethink research in the rupture of climate crises, relationally. The ethico-political frictions and tensions inherent in engaged climate scholarship are drawn into sharp relief, and deep reflection on the responsibility researchers take on when asking questions in spaces and times of ecological loss, trauma and grief is offered.

Gender Mainstreaming and Climate Change

Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by climate change, not because of innate characteristics but as a result of the social structures and cultural norms that shape gender inequalities. Feminist activists and transnational organizations continue to voice their concerns regarding the need for greater attention to gender inequalities in the context of climate change. Gender mainstreaming is a policy process designed to address the gendered consequences of any planned actions—the ultimate aim being to achieve gender equality. Gender mainstreaming emerged in the late 1990s at the Beijing Women’s Conference as a result of the frustrations of feminist activists and international nongovernmental organizations about the lack of attention to gender equality. Yet its implementation has been hampered both by a lack of vision as to its purpose and by ongoing tensions, particularly between those who espouse equality and those who support the mainstream. This has led to resistance to gender mainstreaming within departments and units that are charged with its implementation, and indeed a reluctance of key players to commit to gender equality. Yet there is still strong support for the original feminist intent from activists and researchers addressing the impacts of climate change. The transformational potential of gender mainstreaming is still viewed as a process that could address and challenge gender inequalities in the context of increasing climate challenges. However, there are barriers that must be overcome for the transformational potential of gender mainstreaming to be realized. These include equating climate justice with gender justice, ensuring that the radical feminist intent of gender mainstreaming is not co-opted by the neoliberal agenda of maximizing economic development over gender equality and women’s empowerment, and ensuring that organizations tasked with facilitating gender mainstreaming not only understand its intent but also address gender inequalities within their own organizational structures and practices.

The Political Personal Realm in the Draft Law on the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Indonesia

<p class="p1">This article is using a critical interpretation based on radical feminist theory to analyze the issue of sexual violence against women in Indonesia. Based on data from Komnas Perempuan in 2020, the number of victims of sexual violence is increasing. The root of sexual violence comes from the biological differences between women and men that has been constructed in society. Men are considered to have sexual dominance on women. The existence of sexual politics maintains by the state have taken away women’s authority both in private and public spheres. Using the critical and praxis feminist approach, this article assesses the data research from Komnas Perempuan, especially related to cases of sexual violence. The analysis and criticism of sexual politics in this article also highlights the Draft Law on the Elimination of Sexual Violence. The analysis proves the importance of state involvement in ensuring the lives of Indonesian female citizens, especially concerning protection from sexual violence.</p>

Women, marginalisation and politics in Africa and Asia

Across the world, women are on the fringes in all facets of life endeavours- economy, education, governance, and politics compared to their male counterparts. Irrespective of the geographical location, women are culturally and socially disadvantaged. They are systematically deprived of individual choices, economic opportunities, political rights, political power as well as intellectual recognition. Women are on the lower incomes ladder compare to their male counterparts. Feminists have argued that women’s fivefold role – mother, wife, home-manager, informal educator, and family nurse is responsible for women’s impediments in life. As a beast of burdens, women have obstructed them from pursuing their aspirations at the same speed as their male counterparts. Consequently, women are marginal in the scheme of mainstream issues of life as politics and economy. Using secondary data and applying the radical feminist theory, women marginalization in Nigeria and India was investigated. The paper revealed some forms of women marginalization in these countries and their similarities to show that women marginalization is a universal phenomenon, cutting across culture, race, and continent. While the concept of marginalization may vary according to the historical and socio-economical context of societies like Nigeria and India, its impact on the marginalized remains the same across cultures, peoples, and continents. To address this gender imbalance and disparity in opportunities between men and women, there is a need for a rotund education for a large majority of women in these continents to accelerate the empowerment of women in every aspect of life.

Emma Goldman

Both in the United States and internationally, the anarchist Emma Goldman earned a reputation as a prominent Jewish radical feminist. Goldman became a household name at a time when that was extremely rare for a woman. Anarchism and Emma Goldman played a significant role in US politics around the turn into the 20th century, as they were also key for the development of US Jewish life, feminism, and the Left more generally. Like most Jews in the United States, even in her day, Goldman was secular, and also identifiably Jewish culturally. She was concerned about the potential statism of Zionism, but at the time most Jews in the United States and globally, of all political stripes, were similarly not Zionist. She also never hesitated to offer apt critiques of Jews whose politics differed from hers. Identified as “the most dangerous anarchist in America” of her day and a most dangerous woman, she was accused of terrorism for her political ideals and activism in a way that foreshadowed the ensuing century of US elites targeting justice workers by calling them terrorists. More broadly for Jews and Jewish studies, anarchist theory and what that meant for this Jewish feminist activist and thinker are among the best frames for understanding Jewish life without a central authority structure, and particularly in the diasporic context.

Re-claiming resilience and re-imagining welfare: A response to Angela McRobbie

Across popular media and political discourse, subjects are increasingly addressed through the language of resilience – called upon to be positive, to show ‘grit, and to ‘bounceback’ from adversity. In her latest book, Feminism and The Politics of Resilience: Essays on Gender, Media and the End of Welfare (2020), Angela McRobbie offers an incisive analysis of the gendered address that this call to resilience takes; teasing out its complex relation to the logics of post-feminism and locating its traction against a backdrop of neoliberal austerity which has disproportionately punished women – and poor, black and brown women especially. In this short piece, I reflect upon the book’s contributions and consider whether the language of resilience, rather than be abandoned, might be reclaimed and repoliticised as part of radical feminist re-imaginings of welfare

Demons of the mind: The ‘psy’ sciences and film in the long 1960s

This introduction provides context for a collection of articles that came out of a research symposium held at the Science Museum's Dana Research Centre in 2018 for the ‘ Demons of Mind: the Interactions of the ‘Psy’ Sciences and Cinema in the Sixties' project. Across a range of events and research outputs, Demons of the Mind sought to map the multifarious interventions and influences of the ‘psy’ sciences (psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis) on film culture in the long 1960s. The articles that follow discuss, in order: critical engagement with theories of child development in 1960s British science fiction; the ‘horrors’ of contemporary psychiatry and neuroscience portrayed in the Hollywood blockbuster The Exorcist (1973); British social realist filmmakers' alliances with proponents of ‘anti-psychiatry’; experimental filmmaker Jane Arden's coalescence of radical psychiatry and radical feminist techniques in her ‘psychodrama’ The Other Side of the Underneath (1973); and the deployment of film technologies by ‘psy’ professionals during the post-war period to capture and interpret mother-infant interaction.

How Decriminalisation Reduces Harm Within and Beyond Sex Work: Sex Work Abolitionism as the “Cult of Female Modesty” in Feminist Form

Background Sex work has a long history and takes different forms, but the associated precarity and danger, particularly where poorer women and minorities are concerned, is undeniable. There is growing evidence that decriminalisation reduces harm, and, indeed, it is the policy approach favoured by sex worker groups. Despite this, many feminists instead seek to “end demand” for paid sex, recommending legal penalties for sex buyers, with the aim of abolishing sex work altogether. Method This paper takes a comparative approach, examining why “end demand” is applied to sex work but not to care work. Abolition is typically justified both in terms of reducing harm to sex workers and to women more generally, with sex work’s very existence being thought to perpetuate the notion that all women are “sex objects.” Women are, however, not only exposed to harm within care work but are also commonly stereotyped as care givers, and in a way that has similarly been argued to contribute to gender inequality. Results By comparing sex work with care work, this paper reveals the logical inconsistency in the “end demand” approach; unlike with sex work, there is little push to criminalise those who purchase care or other such domestic labour services. By revealing the moral nature of abolitionist arguments, and the disrespectful way in which sex workers are characterised within radical feminist literature, it argues that, rather than reducing harm, the “end demand” approach perpetuates harm, conspiring in the notion that “immodest” women are the cause of social ills. Conclusions Reducing the harm that sex workers—and women more generally—face requires feminists to challenge “the cult of female modesty”, rather than to be complicit in it.