Going after Pornhub, saving women's sports, and misgendering online
Here's what you may have missed at Feminist Current
I founded Feminist Current back in 2012, in order to have a space where I and other women could speak, listen to, debate, and engage with ideas and criticisms unwelcome in mainstream feminism or on the left. Since, my politics have evolved, but I remain committed to advocating for women and to the longstanding project of platforming women’s voices, work, and fight against gender identity ideology. Despite my criticisms of “feminism,” the ideology, and rejection of political tribes and identities, Feminist Current is an incredibly important project, and the only one of its kind. We have been the sole feminist voice in Canada for over a decade pushing back against third wave ideology, the sex industry, and trans activism. I’ve kept the name despite my personal journey away from ideology and towards advocacy for free speech, open debate, bodily autonomy, and civil liberties on account of the important history documented and preserved at Feminist Current. “Where are all the women,” you ask? Right here.
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Here’s what you may have missed:
Is Pornhub going down? Let’s hope so! After it was discovered that the company was hosting (and profiting from) child pornography and videos of trafficking victims on the site in 2020, a petition and accompanying campaign, Traffickinghub, was launched. A scathing exposé about the situation by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times then lead Pornhub to delete 80% of their content overnight — about 10 million videos. Visa, Mastercard, and Discover cut ties with the site. In 2021, Canadian parliament began to investigate MindGeek (the Canadian-based company that owns Pornhub), and a number of lawsuits were filed on behalf of survivors. The National Centre on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) filed several of these lawsuits, representing victims seeking justice against MindGeek.
I spoke to Haley McNamara, Director of the International Centre on Sexual Exploitation in the UK and a Vice President at the U.S. based NCOSE, about the situation at Pornhub, the Netflix documentary, and NCOSE’s efforts to stop exploitation in porn.
In the news:
This shouldn’t be news, but it is…. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says 100% of women don’t have a penis, adding:
“We should always have compassion and understanding and tolerance for those who are thinking about changing their gender. Of course we should.
But when it comes to these issues of protecting women’s rights, women’s spaces, I think the issue of biological sex is fundamentally important when we think about those questions.”
How do we get a Rishi in Canada, eh?
A woman in Norway is suing her employer for unfair dismissal after the organization’s management received an anonymous email complaint about… you know it… tweets! In February 2002, Rianne Vogels tweeted, “Transition … may lead to sterility, sexual dysfunction, lifelong hormone dependency, + complications.” Gasp.
Twitter has rolled back its policy banning “misgendering” and “deadnaming,” also known as the Meghan Murphy rule. The rule was initially announced on Pink News on November 23, 2018, just about an hour after I was permanently suspended from the platform. WEIRD!
Sociologist Dr Laura Favaro had been collecting data on the censorship of gender critical women as part of her research at City, University of London. After publishing an article at Times Higher Education called, “Researchers are wounded in academia’s gender wars,” the university received complaints and suspended her research in response. Favaro says:
“Those with a responsibility to support me have frustrated my ability to progress with the research or denied expected support via actions as well as omissions to act. This includes being ignored, ostracised, bullied, harassed — ending with a dismissal and confiscation of my data.”
You can support her legal case at CrowdJustice.
A 32-year-old man going by the name Desiree Anderson (also known as Cody D’Entremont) reportedly sexually assaulted a woman at a Windsor women’s shelter. The Windsor police have stated that the suspect was processed as a female and should be referred to as a female.
A 42-year-old man is in police custody after being caught entering the girls’ washroom at Rosa de América school in El Tambo, Peru. The man, identified as Walter César Solís Calero, was dressed as a schoolgirl. Reduxx reports:
“Solís was arrested, and police checked his mobile phone and discovered more photos of Solís dressed in school uniforms, some corresponding to other educational institutions, suggesting that he had entered other schools in the area using the same technique.”
Join us live on YouTube tomorrow night to talk about the fight for women’s spaces and sports:
I’ll be live streaming with women’s rights advocates Amy Sousa and K. Yang on Wednesday, April 26 at 9PM CDT/10PM EDT. Please tune in and join the live chat with your questions and comments!
Amy and K. are joining 12 time All-American swimmer and former NCAA Champion Riley Gaines on a panel called,” Our Spaces, Our Sports: Women Hold the Line,” on Thursday evening in Franklin, TN. Get tickets on Eventbrite.
Until next time!
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