"A fine introduction to the bold, contentious, complicated women who categorically refused to be good little girls, and thereby changed the way our culture defines male-female relations".--Voice Literary Supplement.

The issue of sex trafficking has become increasingly politicized in recent years due to the efforts of an influential moral crusade. This article examines the social construction of sex trafficking in the discourse of leading activists and organizations within the crusade, and concludes that the central claims are problematic, unsubstantiated, or demonstrably false. The analysis documents the increasing endorsement and institutionalization of crusade ideology in U.S. government policy and practice.

"Toward a Feminist Theory of the State" presents Catharine MacKinnon's powerful analysis of politics, sexuality, and the law from the perspective of women.

Trafficking in women’ has, in recent years, been the subject of intense feminist debate. This article analyses the position of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) and the writings of its founder, Kathleen Barry. It suggests that CATW's construction of ‘third world prostitutes’ is part of a wider western feminist impulse to construct a damaged ‘other’ as justification for its own interventionist impulses. The central argument of this article is that the ‘injured body’ of the ‘third world trafficking victim’ (...) in international feminist debates around trafficking in women serves as a powerful metaphor for advancing certain feminist interests, which cannot be assumed to be those of third world sex workers themselves. This argument is advanced through a comparison of Victorian feminist campaigns against prostitution in India with contemporary feminist campaigns against trafficking. The term ‘injured identity’ is drawn from Wendy Brown's (1995) States of Injury, Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Brown argues that certain groups have configured their claims to inclusion in the liberal state in terms of ‘historical ‘injuries’. Antoinette Burton (1998) extends Brown's analysis to look at Victorian feminists’ relationship to Empire, arguing that the ‘injured identities’ of colonial ‘others’ were central to feminist efforts to mark out their own role in Empire. This paper builds on Burton's analysis, asking what role the ‘injured identities’ of third world sex workers play in the construction of certain contemporary feminist identities. The notion of ‘injured identities’ offers a provocative way to begin to examine how CATW feminists position the ‘trafficking victim’ in their discourse. If ‘injured identity’ is a constituent element of late modern subject formation, this may help explain why CATW and Barry rely so heavily on the ‘suffering’ of ‘third world trafficking victims’ in their discourses of women's subjugation. It also raises questions about the possible repressive consequences of CATW's efforts to combat ‘trafficking in women’ through ‘protective’ legislation. (shrink)

Drawing on more than fifty interviews in both the US and the Netherlands, Wendy Chapkis captures the wide-ranging experiences of women performing erotic labor and offers a complex, multi-faceted depiction of sex work. Her expansive analytic perspective encompasses both a serious examination of international prostitution policy as well as hands-on accounts of contemporary commercial sexual practices. Scholarly, but never simply academic, this book is explicitly grounded in a concern for how competing political discourses work concretely in the world--to frame policy (...) and define perceptions of AIDS, to mobilize women into opposing camps, to silence some agendas and to promote others. (shrink)

An anthology of writings from the women's Liberation Movement.

From 30 contributors--including Kate Millett, Barbara Kruger, and Sharon Olds--a richly diverse collection of essays and poetry exploring female sexuality.

Is it time to take a break from feminism? In this pathbreaking book, Janet Halley reassesses the place of feminism in the law and politics of sexuality. She argues that sexuality involves deeply contested and clashing realities and interests, and that feminism helps us understand only some of them. To see crucial dimensions of sexuality that feminism does not reveal--the interests of gays and lesbians to be sure, but also those of men, and of constituencies and values beyond the realm (...) of sex and gender--we might need to take a break from feminism. Halley also invites feminism to abandon its uncritical relationship to its own power. Feminists are, in many areas of social and political life, partners in governance. To govern responsibly, even on behalf of women, Halley urges, feminists should try taking a break from their own presuppositions. Halley offers a genealogy of various feminisms and of gay, queer, and trans theories as they split from each other in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. All these incommensurate theories, she argues, enrich thinking on the left not despite their break from each other but because of it. She concludes by examining legal cases to show how taking a break from feminism can change your very perceptions of what's at stake in a decision and liberate you to decide it anew. (shrink)

Domestic violence discourse challenges cultural acceptance of male violence against women, yet it is often constituted by gendered, racialized, and class-based hierarchies.Transformative efforts have not escaped traces of these hierarchies. Emancipatory ideals guiding 1970s feminist activism have collided with conservative impulses to maintain and strengthen family relationships. Crime control discourse undermines critiques of dominance through its focus on individual men. Domestic violence discourse exemplifies both resistance to and replication of hierarchies of power.