Janice Williams
The Road to Hell…is paved with good intentions. OBJECT! usually steers clear of criticising feminist colleagues. Nobody’s perfect, we all make mistakes, broad church etc. But when the intention is ‘kind’ but the impact is appalling, something has to be said. Dr Julia Long has said it: ‘Much of what is written and spoken in …
OBJECT ESSAY COMPETITION EXTENSION The date for submission has been extended to 15th June 2020. First Prize £400.00. Second Prize £200.00 This competition is open to young women aged 17 – 30. We hope to inspire and encourage young women to develop an interest in feminist theory and activism. Our topic this year is surrogacy …
You’ve heard of an article, you’ve heard of a listicle (an article based on a list) and now here’s a a pointicle! This is a point-by-point review of the new and controversial book “Inventing Transgender Children and Young People”, edited by Heather Brunskell-Evans and Michelle Moore. The book is a compilation of essays by clinicians, psychologists, parents, educators, ‘detransitioners’ and others affected or interested in the creation of the ‘transgender’ child. We highly recommend reading the book yourself, but if time and money are in short supply then read our summary of the key points here!
This article was originally presented as a talk at the Rad Fem Collective conference in London on 22nd September 2019. Increasing numbers of young women are choosing identify as ‘asexual’. These women reject the role of ‘sex object’. Many express disgust with porn-sick sexuality, to the extent that some call themselves ‘repulsed asexuals’. However, many don’t oppose porn, prostitution and sexual objectification of other women. Why? I argue that this is because they interpret their ‘asexuality’ only as a personal preference; all other preferences, including the use of pornography, are seen as equal and ‘valid’. If these ‘asexual’ women became feminists, could they reinterpret their ‘asexuality’/celibacy as a positive form of resistance to porn-sickness and compulsory heterosexuality?
Please respond to the UK surrogacy consultation – 5 minute response here! The UK government is holding a consultation on surrogacy, one of our 5 key issues. The consultation is biased and does not call into question the ethics of surrogacy. The proposed aim of the law ‘reform’ is simply to make it easier for ‘intended parents’ to attain children, at great cost to the rights of mother and child. Please respond to voice your OBJECTion to surrogacy. Here are OBJECT’s suggested answers to key questions that you may copy and paste.
Michelle Kelly recently spoke out about her experience of being exploited for 7 years in prostitution and pornography. As expected, she received vicious backlash from sex trade lobbyists. They bullied, threatened, ‘doxxed’ and intimidated – terror tactics designed to silence her and deter other survivors from coming forward. This gaslighting and victim-blaming is re-traumatising – and it is deliberate. When women speak out about men’s violence and abuse, we are told to shut up, to distrust ourselves, to always give our abusers the benefit of the doubt lest we say something ‘unkind’ about men. But as Michelle points out, the women and children still in the sex industry have no voice. Only those who have escaped are in a position to speak out. We must continue to OBJECT to men’s violence even (or especially) when we are told to shut up.
Do the cows in the field know they are shut in? As they shuffle painfully into the milking parlour, do they know there is another way to live their lives? No. Cows are farmed but do not know it. What about us women? Surely it is different, we are human, we have choices. But do we? Are we, surreptitiously and without realising it, subject to the same techniques as the cows, the sheep, the goats? While of course being ‘fed’ the line that we are human and equal to men? History, archaeology, language, sexual politics and the arts all tell the same story: Women are farmed!
Last Saturday, I went to Lancaster Pride with members of ReSisters United to protest against lesbian erasure and the harms of ‘transgenderism’. We were told by the Pride manager to “fuck off, you fucking dogs”. Ironically, a group called Dog House Stoke was welcome at the event – the men were ‘puppy’ fetishists, a form of BDSM that incoorporates bestiality and paedophilia. We were shocked and disturbed to see unaccompanied children playing with these men. Their sexual fetish ‘puppy play pen’ appeared to be being used as an ad-hoc children’s creche.
Last summer, Janice Williams took part in the ‘Get The L Out’ protest at London Pride 2018, OBJECTing to the destructive impact ‘LGBT community’ has on lesbians (e.g. pressure on lesbians to have sex with men). After the event, malicious ‘transactivists’ scoured the internet in a ‘witch-hunt’ for information on the brave women who dared to speak out in defense of lesbians. Someone discovered that Janice worked as a funeral celebrant at Humanists UK. Her employers received a complaint about her involvement in the protest, accusing her of ‘transphobia’. Humanists UK launched an investigation despite lack of evidence, ignoring company policy and breaching their own complaints procedure. Read Janice’s full account of the ‘witch-hunt’ here.
OBJECT has been campaigning against the London Porn Film Festival, alongside #NotBuyingIt and London Anti-Porn Women. The films due to be screened were advertised as containing extreme violence, including necrophilia. We reported this to Camden Council, prompting an investigation and forcing the pornographers to switch venues last minute. On Saturday 27th April, we protested outside the grotty pub where the event took place. The organisers generously gave us a faux ‘invoice’, informing us how much money they’d lost due to our efforts! Pornography comes at the cost of women’s lives, dignity and hopes of liberation. Helping to fight and OBJECT to porn is priceless.