2018 – YEAR IN REVIEW

OBJECT has had a busy year! Here is a summary of what we have been doing in relation to each of our 5 Key Issues.

Pornography

• Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans joined our management committee in 2018 and is our spokeswoman for this Key Issue. She was interviewed on The Wright Show on talkRADIO in October – she explains why “Porn is NOT Liberating”.

• In September, we joined sister organisation Not Buying It (plus others from Fair Play For Women, Nordic Model Now and Women Against State Pension Inequality) in a protest outside the Liberal Democrat Party Conference in Brighton. We OBJECT to their policies supporting pimps, pornography and the prostitution industry.

• The amazing ‘Rad Fem 101’ event held on 30th November by Let A Woman Speak included 3 OBJECT representatives – Sheila Jeffreys, Heather Brunskell-Evans and Kate Graham. Kate’s spoke powerfully on the horror of pornography, referring to and recommending some great books on this topic (inc. Andrea Dworkin’s Pornography: Men Possessing Women and Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology.)

Prostitution

•  The 2018 OBJECT Essay Prize was awarded to Hannah Harrison (now OBJECT’s website manager) for an essay on the environmental impact of prostitution.

• On the day of our Annual General Meeting, held in London in July, we took down 64 prostitution ads from just 3 phone boxes – we analysed how these ‘adverts’ sell women like ‘meat on a menu’.

• We have been investigating the Public Policy Exchange, which delivers biased pro-sexual exploitation ‘training sessions’ to police forces and charitable organisations.

• OBJECT have attended several national conferences about prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation. Our chair Janice Williams spoke about Age Verification Law at the first annual CEASE conference held in London on 14th November.

Sex Encounter Venues

• OBJECT supported Not Buying It in protesting against Sheffield City Council’s licensing of a strip club in the city. OBJECT contributed financially, helped to publicise the crowd-funder and were in court on the day of the hearing. The council’s barrister conceded that community impact had not been properly considered when licensing the strip club. This argument was put forth by Karen Monaghan of Matrix Chambers on behalf of Irene, a Sheffield resident who crowd-funded to cover the costs of the case. VICTORY!

OBJECT supported the campaign against the licensing of a strip club in Sheffield. OBJECT attended the judicial review in Leeds high court – the council were forced to concede that community impact had not been properly assessed when licensing the strip club.

Surrogacy

• Our spokeswoman for this Key Issue is Professor Sheila Jeffreys, who joined our management committee this year.

• We have been spreading awareness of the harms of ‘surrogacy’ and showing how deeply it connects to our other Key Issues. ‘Surrogacy’ is like prostitution, except that a woman’s body is purchased for reproductive use/abuse rather than sexual abuse.

Transgender

• OBJECT representatives have spoken on the panel at several of Venice Allan’s ‘We Need To Talk about the GRA’ events.

• OBJECT were involved in the ‘Get The L Out’ protest at London pride, protesting against lesbophobia and lesbian erasure in the so-called LGBT community. We OBJECT to the pressure placed on lesbians by the ‘LGBT’ community to pretend that men can be lesbians and to grant sexual access to them. This sense of male entitlement to use/abuse women underlies all our 5 Key Issues, which is why we felt it was important to make a stand at ‘LGBT Pride’ parades this year. Following the usual abusive, lying transactivist Twitter pile-on, our Chair Janice Williams was complained about for bringing her employer into disrepute by participating in the protest. Complaint NOT upheld.

• We have been involved in the Fair Play For Women campaign to raise awareness of the GRA consultation and the harms of allowing men to change their ‘legal sex’ and more easily access women’s spaces.

• OBJECT responded to the GRA consultation in October to voice our opposition to ‘sex self ID’, and to highlight the danger of such a law change to women and girls.

• OBJECT supported Maria MacLachlan in court, where Tara Wood (a young man) was rightfully found guilty of having physically assaulted her at Speaker’s Corner in 2017. We OBJECT to the threat and use of violence that men (including ‘transactivists’) enact in order to silence women, particularly when we are attempting to discuss matters (such as ‘gender’ self ID) relating to male violence and entitlement.

• We also supported Linda Bellos and Venice Allan at court, when they were prosecuted by a man called Guiliana Kendal. he made a private prosecution against Linda for stating (via a livestream broadcast by Venice ) that she would defend herself if attacked. The case was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service who quite rightly decided to drop it.

Other Successes

• OBJECT started a new London-based activist group in December! We also hope to form activist groups across the rest of the UK – please get in touch if you’d like us to help you link up with others in your area.

As you can see, OBJECT has had an immensely busy and successful year in 2018! We hope to surpass and build upon our successes in 2019. We will continue to OBJECT to the objectification and oppression of women and girls, focusing on our 5 Key Issues of Pornography, Prostitution, Sex Encounter Venues (Sexual Exploitation Venues), Surrogacy and ‘Transgender’.