Women's Views on News |
- Protest at porn industry conference
- Every woman safe everywhere in the UK
- Gritty, dark, brutal: TV prison series Wentworth
- Porn makes sexist men even more sexist
Protest at porn industry conference Posted: 20 Sep 2013 08:26 AM PDT Protest against the Radisson hotel group supporting an industry that has a record of exploitation. The Radisson Blu Edwardian hotel in London’s Bloomsbury is set to host a major conference for the porn industry on September 22-25 and women's groups are calling for a boycott of the hotel group. And on 22 September activists from the London Feminist Network (LFN) will be donning protective overalls and masks as part of a mass protest against what they describe as a 'toxic' industry. The conference, Xbiz EU, is billed as 'three days of unparalleled symposiums, networking and deal-making opportunities' for the adult entertainment industry. It is taking place amid growing concerns about the influence and harms of pornography. The event will run sessions advising companies on how to maximise profits such as developing porn sites for mobile devices, increasing traffic to porn sites, and making money from live webcam sites. The recent debates on government legislation have shown that the industry as it stands has some systemic problems with violence against women. Whether you want to campaign for more ethical porn or you think the whole industry should be abandoned, taking money (and at over £600 per person for a conference, with over 250 people attending, that's a lot of money) from an industry that currently makes money from practices that hurt women is problematic. Porn really has nothing to do with free speech, as its advocates claim; it is about money. And as Close The Loophole points out, the hotel chain Radisson Blu promotes itself as a leader in ethical and responsible corporate practice, supporting a number of children's and homeless charities to demonstrate their values. These include the World Childhood Foundation, a non-profit organisation with over 120 projects in 15 countries helping children at risk from abuse and exploitation. Radisson Blu also promotes itself as a family friendly hotel, asking visitors to their Facebook page to 'Check out our new children's book for the explorative kids that stay with us at the Radisson Blu Edwardian, Bloomsbury Street and Kenilworth hotels! They have great activities for exploring London.' Meanwhile, objections to pornography voiced by women's groups range from the physical and psychological impact on women involved in its production, to its frequently violent content and negative influence on society’s attitudes to women. And a recent report from the Office of the Children's Commissioner found that access to pornography influences children's attitudes to relationships and sex, and that there is a correlation between holding violent attitudes and accessing more violent media. Dr Julia Long, from the LFN, said: "In providing an opportunity for the porn industry to extend its global reach, Radisson Hotels are putting commercial interests before the well-being of women and children. "While we are having a national debate on the harms of pornography and the government is planning to introduce 'opt-in' filters, Xbiz EU is holding sessions specifically aimed at combating any attempts to curb access to internet pornography. "Pornographers don't care about the damage their industry does. Their only concern is profit." "When we protested outside this event in 2011, a member of the Radisson staff covered up the hotel sign. They were clearly ashamed to be associated with the porn industry, so why are they hosting them again?” Object this Sunday, too. Or if you can’t get there, Close the Loophole has provided the following contact details for the Radisson Blu Edwardian hotel: You can tweet @RBEhotels to let them know you're #notbuyingit and publicise to your followers that Radisson Blu say they have responsible business practices but their actions show otherwise. Or you can email them directly at resbsh@radisson.com. They have an automated response that says they will respond to your email in 48 hours. Keep it polite, educational and personal. Remember that the person receiving the tweets, messages etc might not have been responsible for the booking and might have experiences themselves of either the porn industry or of sexual violence… or both. Tell them their competitors, Omni and Marriot have already made the decision that pornography does not fit their brand. Ask them why they think it fits their brand, why they want their business to be linked to supporting an industry that has a record of exploitation. Let's ask (nicely) for Radisson Blu to revoke the booking and make way for an ethical business practice that includes taking a stand against violence against women and girls. You could also post a review on TripAdvisor; Google; or Yelp to make potential guests aware of Radisson Blu's support of the pornography industry. “We will be protesting in numbers on Sunday,” said Julia Long, and, she pointed out, ” We're not going away.” Join us. The LFN protest will take place at 4pm this Sunday, 22 September, at the Radisson Edwardian Bloomsbury Hotel, 9-13 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1B 3QD. Please note this is a women-only protest. For further info, keep an eye on this facebook page or @antiporn_lfn #pornistoxic. |
Every woman safe everywhere in the UK Posted: 20 Sep 2013 07:07 AM PDT Ask the Labour Party to include women claiming asylum in their party’s policy on women’s safety. Over the summer, the London Refugee Women’s Forum took part in a film making workshop and made this powerful short film introducing themselves and the issues that they’re passionate about. It starts with one of their members who is destitute, and follows their fascinating story as they become a campaigning force to be reckoned with. The Forum have this year’s Labour Party conference in their sights, and two of their members, Jade Amoli-Jackson and Rehemah Ndagire, will be speaking and launching their film at the Movement for Change fringe meeting at 1pm this Sunday, 22 September, in Brighton. Please come and join us if you’re in the area – you can find all the details and sign up via the Movement for Change site. Women for Refugee Women (WRW) are calling for Labour policies to support the rights of women seeking asylum. Over twenty refugees will be joining Jade and Rehemah as they urge the Labour Party to include women who are claiming asylum in a meaningful way in their policy on women’s safety, called 'Everywoman Safe Everywhere'. Labour expressed regret at “hardly touching” asylum issues in their interim report – and we hope that this will now be redressed. As WRW revealed last year in their report, Refused, 66 per cent of the women seeking asylum have fled some kind of gender-related persecution, including rape, sexual violence, forced prostitution, forced marriage or female genital mutilation, and their treatment when they claim asylum and protection in the UK is often seen as a second torture. Abuse allegations in Yarl’s Wood are just one example. An important story was uncovered in last weekend’s Observer about allegations of sexual abuse within Yarl’s Wood by a former detainee. And in the Telegraph, Women for Refugee Women’s Natasha Walter tells the story of Sara who was locked up for seven weeks while she was pregnant and suffering from hyperemesis, the same condition of morning sickness as the Duchess of Cambridge had. Over the past few months we have interviewed many women, women currently in Yarl’s Wood and those who have recently been released, and are gathering new evidence about women’s experiences of detention. In this powerful blog post, a former detainee talks about the horrors of going back to Yarl’s Wood – she is one of our volunteers who has been gathering this new evidence. Ghada, who fled from her home country of Iraq in 2007, spoke to Reuters about her experience of the asylum system. She gives a personal account of how she navigated her way around the brick walls of disbelief with the Home Office and through the courts. She fled Iraq after she had been persecuted for working with foreigners and promoting women’s rights. She told Reuters: 'Everything depends on the first interview. 'They ask what language do I speak? Do I need an interpreter? But they don’t ask if I need counselling, if I’m OK, because the person interviewing me is a man. 'I told them some information but I couldn’t tell them everything. I had just arrived and I didn’t want to relive being threatened, having to flee my country, the long journey here. But you are expected to reveal everything. 'A lot depends on how the person in front of you makes you feel. I think they just wanted to do the job and go home. 'You could come for a political reason, you could have been raped, traumatised, tortured but I didn’t see any specially trained person to talk to you. 'That was the first contact with the government. 'They make you feel that you broke the law, you’re a criminal. I was thinking I didn’t do anything wrong in my life, I was just trying to get to safety.’ Join us. Help us get the Labour Party to include women who are claiming asylum in a meaningful way in their policy on women’s safety, called ‘Everywoman Safe Everywhere’. So it is every woman in the UK, everywhere in the UK. Women for Refugee Women challenges the injustices experienced by women and children who seek refuge in the UK. |
Gritty, dark, brutal: TV prison series Wentworth Posted: 20 Sep 2013 04:00 AM PDT Amanda Rodriguez reviews the new prison TV series Wentworth. The second in a weekly series of cross-posts from Bitch Flicks. Wentworth is an Australian women’s prison drama that is much grittier, darker, more brutal and realistic than another recent prison drama - Orange is the New Black - could ever hope to be. This bleak realism also makes Wentworth’s well-developed characters and situations much more compelling than its fluffier American counterpart. Don’t get me wrong; I really enjoyed Orange is the New Black [OITNB]. The stories of incarcerated women are always important because they are a particularly marginalized and silenced group. However, the over-the-top, zany approach to characterization that OITNB utilizes for comedic effect renders the characters less substantive overall. Consider the lesbian-obsessed prison worker Healy who has a mail order Russian bride or the abortion doctor murderer and ex-meth addict Pennsatucky Doggett who believes she has a calling from Jesus, or the flame-haired Russian mobster cook Red played by my beloved Captain Kathryn Janeway (er, I mean Kate Mulgrew). Very colorful. Very little depth. Though OITNB and Wentworth deal with similar themes, Wentworth (based on an Aussie soap opera from the 70′s and 80′s called Prisoner: Cell Block H) takes a no-holds-barred approach to subjects like officer sexual exploitation of prisoners, turf wars and hierarchy, sexuality, the inmate code of silence, gang beatings, gang rapes, prison riots, and the brutality of the crimes that landed these women behind bars. My first glimpse of Wentworth Correctional Centre left me comparing the prison to middle school with its catty girls and basic rights stripped from the inmates, much like the ones that are stripped from children, i.e. rules govern when they use the restroom, showers, bed times, how they spend their free time, classes are mandatory, and they are allowed no privacy save that which they sneak. The finale of the first episode (“No Place Like Home”) concludes, however, in a chaotic riot with a body count, leaving a major character dead. I rapidly revised my initial reading, realizing that the women of Wentworth play for keeps in a way that those of OITNB do not. The show evokes a primal sense of self-preservation amidst the complete absence of the basic human need for safety. It is unflinchingly honest in its representations of women who’ve committed terrible acts, lived complicated lives, and must continue their struggle for survival in the place that’s supposed to give them structure and rehabilitate them but in actuality further hardens and traumatizes them. The racial diversity of Wentworth’s cast leaves a bit to be desired. One of the primary prison guards, Will Jackson, is played by Robbie Magasiva, a Samoan New Zealander. Aboriginal Shareena Clanton portrays the integral matriarchal role of prisoner Doreen Anderson. Lastly, there’s Frankie Doyle’s steady girlfriend, Kim Chang, played by Korean Ra Chapman. To be fair, I don’t know enough about the racial/ethnic composition of Australia to know what would constitute a balanced representation. In addition, though, there isn’t as much lesbianism as one might expect from the show either, though the lesbianism depicted is as graphic as the rest of the series. Though there are more lesbian characters in OITNB, I often wondered why their relationships were so censored, at least on Netflix that can call its own shots…was it an effort to not exploit lesbian sexuality as so many shows typically do or was it to not “turn off” viewers? On Wentworth, Frankie Doyle is the only major LGBTQ character along with her minor character girlfriend, Kim. We also find that the “Governor” Erica Davidson harbors a secret attraction to Frankie. Erica Davidson is one of the more interesting characters represented in the show. Erica becomes Governor through semi-devious means, but she continues to claim that the welfare and rehabilitation of the female prisoners are her number one priorities. The show constantly pits her genuine empathy for the women against her career ambition. Her sexuality is gratifyingly complex. We are given background on her relationship with her (male) fiance who is very vanilla when it comes to sex. Erica fantasizes about a fetish club she once visited as part of her pre-Wentworth lawyer work. When she asks her fiance to pull her hair during sex, he loses his shit. They don’t have a conversation about it, like, say a couple might if the man requested anal sex or a ménage à trois; instead he issues an ultimatum. They almost end a five plus year relationship because her request makes him feel inadequate. He asserts that she may have picked the “wrong guy.” He stifles her sexual curiosity completely. The repression of her sexual fantasies exacerbates Erica’s desire to step outside the bounds of sexual propriety as is evinced by her lesbian attraction to an inmate, a woman who constantly challenges her authority. The complex sexual power dynamic at work between Erica and Frankie feeds into Erica’s fantasies. The psychological context given for Erica’s sexuality gives her much more depth than, say, Piper Chapman from OITNB, whose sexuality is the cause for much debate but is given little room for its inherent fluidity. Lastly, we’ve got Wentworth’s heroine Bea Smith. Wentworth is a sort of prologue intended to give the backstory for the woman Bea later becomes in Prisoner: Cell Block H. In many ways, Bea and Piper aren’t so very different. They’re both women out of their element, gentle by nature. Neither woman wants to rock the boat, but both are possessed of a streak of moral righteousness that alternately gets them in trouble and gains them respect. Both undergo major transitions before the end of their first seasons, the prison setting actually accentuating their buried inner violence and pushing them to acts of vicious aggression. Bea’s pre-prison life, however, is not as ideal as Piper’s perfect upper middle class New York existence. Bea is a hairdresser whose husband brutally beats and rapes her on a regular basis. Bea is imprisoned for attempting to kill him when she finally snaps and decides to fight back. Piper’s crime is an isolated incidence of non-violent drug trafficking that she did simply as a youthful thrill and to help out Alex, her then girlfriend. Though she, like Piper, is bewildered by prison culture when she is first incarcerated, Bea is no stranger to darkness. Though Bea and Piper both undergo major personality shifts by the end of their first seasons, Bea’s prior life, her family, and her meek disposition are truly and permanently eradicated by her stay in prison (and she hasn’t even had a hearing, nevermind trial and sentencing, as the first season closes). I think I’m asking too much from Orange is the New Black. In fact, I know I am. It’s a mainstream show that focuses on the marginalized stories of women in prison, many of them LGBTQ. Shouldn’t that be enough subversion to keep me happy? Walking into the show, I’d already watched a couple of seasons of the British women in prison drama Bad Girls, and then after seeing Wentworth, I knew that I wanted more from the trope of women and prison than Orange is the New Black could provide. I didn’t want these important, often untold stories turned into humorous fluff in order to make them palatable to an audience. I didn’t want the complexity of the lives and struggles of these women to be minimized in order to keep them within their pre-determined stereotype boxes for the sake of simplicity and a huge, mainstream audience. I’ll keep watching OITNB, but I’ll keep turning to Wentworth for stories about ostracized women with fascinating psychology, depth of character, and complexity of emotion and motivation. Wentworth Prison can be see on Channel 5. |
Porn makes sexist men even more sexist Posted: 20 Sep 2013 01:09 AM PDT Danish research suggests consumption of porn can fuel misogyny in straight men. Quantifying the affect pornography has on attitudes towards women is a tricky one, not least because very few people are open and honest about their consumption of xxx-rated material, but also because recreating the right conditions in a lab must be a bit challenging. Nonetheless, researchers in Copenhagen have found that for some men at least, watching porn does make them more sexist. I could have probably told you this based on my experiences at school, but it’s good to have the science to back it up. The study, of 200 Danish adults aged between 18 and 30, suggested that men who were ‘less agreeable’, ie antagonistic, hostile and self-interested, or as I like to call it, hyper-masculine, were more likely to display sexist attitudes after exposure to hardcore pornography. Basically, if you’re a dick already, watching porn is going to make you an even bigger dick. Researchers asked 100 men and 100 women about their pornography consumption habits and assessed their personality types before subjecting half to a selection of hardcore video clips. The other half presumably had to watch something which would to generate zero arousal – Time Team perhaps? The men who were probably best acquainted with the delete-browser-history function, ie those who watched a lot of porn, were also more likely to harbour sexist attitudes in the first place. So we see it it a self-fulfilling circle of sexism; sexist men watch more (possibly mainstream but almost definitely sexist) porn, and watching it makes them even more sexist. It’s a bit of a no-brainer really. Neil Malamuth, one of the researchers behind the study, said “What we’ve concluded is not that porn creates these attitudes but that it accentuates them. “If these men already have these kinds of beliefs, but they are more dormant, porn appears to prompt these [tendencies] in their conscious minds. “These men already have these tendencies; porn adds fuel to the fire." The report’s lead author, Gert Martin Hald, of the University of Copenhagen, added: “The study is important because it may help nuance the view of effects of porn and enable us to better understand for whom adverse effects of porn are most likely and the mechanisms by which such effects occur.” For me however, it’s still a bit chicken-and-egg; pornography is helping to fuel sexist attitudes because it is inherently sexist, and it’s sexist because it’s predominately made for men, by men, who still view women as a means to an end, ie their own sexual satisfaction. But where do they get that notion from? Interestingly, attitudes of the study’s female participants were unaffected by pornography. Denmark is well know as an egalitarian nation and boasts an impressive record on gender equality, so in some ways the results are surprising. If the female-friendly Danes are affected by porn in this way, what hope do British men have? Denmark however was the first country in the world to legalise porn, and gender equality is not something that is high on the list of priorities of your average porn filmmaker, even in Denmark. Figures released earlier this year suggest British web users access legal adult content more than they do social networking sites, which must be quite a lot. The government may be looking into ways to safeguard children from online porn, but unfortunately there is no way of stopping those hyper-masculine, already sexist men accessing material that will just make them even less agreeable. If that is possible. |
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