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Gender, Crime and Justice

Gender, Crime and Justice. Liberal and Socialist Feminism: Using the lens of prostitution.

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Gender, Crime and Justice

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  1. Gender, Crime and Justice

  2. Liberal and Socialist Feminism: Using the lens of prostitution • Sex is supposed to be the moment when we are most honestly, nakedly ourselves. This is a myth. We fake it - again and again. We do this to hide, to deny our fears, to avoid honesty. We all live ironic lives. (Duncker, P. I992: lntroduction. In P. McNeill, B. Freeman and J. Newman (eds), Women Talk Sex: Autobiographical Writing on Sex, Sexuality And Sexual Identity. London: Scarlet Press: 10).

  3. Gender Differences? Female Male

  4. Gender Differences? Female Male Give birth Ejaculate Lactate Pee up a wall ??? ??? • Sex - female and male physiology • Gender - 'a learned quality' (MacKinnon, 1982)

  5. Gender defined by language? • How do the terms 'slag', 'tart' and 'lezzie' define what is acceptable about women’s sexuality? • What do the phrases 'a bit of a lad', a 'casanova’, 'limp wristed' or 'sowing wild oats’ tell us about men and sexuality?

  6. Key Gendered Operatives • Language • Assumptions • Norms The social construction of prostitution Liberal Feminism – prostitution as the right to enter into a contract Socialist Feminism - takes the social as the starting point

  7. Liberal feminist views on prostitution Carol Pateman ‘The Sexual Contract’

  8. The Netherlands • 80% of women in the brothels in the Netherlands are trafficked from other countries. (Budapest Group (1999) The Relationship Between Organized Crime and Trafficking in Aliens. Austria: International Centre for Migration Policy Development). • In the Netherlands alone, "nearly 70 per cent of trafficked women were from CEEC Central and Eastern European Countries” (International Organization for Migration (1995) Trafficking and Prostitution: the Growing Exploitation of Migrant Women from Central and Eastern Europe. Budapest: IOM Migration Information Program).

  9. Socialist feminist views on prostitution • Martha Nussbaum - legalizing prostitution is likely to make things a little better for women who have too few options to begin with. “the difference between the sex worker and the professor — who takes money for the use of a particularly intimate part of her body, namely her mind — is not the difference between a "good woman" and a "bad woman." It is, usually, the difference between a prosperous well-educated woman and a poor woman with few employment options”. (Nussbaum, Trading on America's puritanical streak, http://www.ajc.com/search/content/opinion/2008/03/13/spitzered_0314.html 19th April 2010)

  10. The Netherlands (again) • The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW) Legalisation does little to protect women. "The only time they protect anyone is to protect the customers." http://www.catwinternational.org/

  11. Another way – liberal and socialist feminists find an alternative Sweden - Imagine a world where women and girls are not for sale. Now make it real.

  12. ‘sex equality’ – a liberal feminist concept • ‘social inequality’ - a socialist feminist viewpoint

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