Category: Herstory

Sexism in the “Bathroom Debates”

This Article addresses the issue of sex‐separation in public intimate
spaces, e.g., public bathrooms, changing rooms, locker rooms, shower
rooms, etc. ሺcollectively called “bathrooms”ሻ. It challenges widely‐
circulated claims that sex‐separation in bathrooms was a historical
development of the late nineteenth century and that the primary reasons
for it were sexism, patriarchy, Victorian modesty, and class elitism.
Instead, it argues that sex‐separation in bathrooms dates back to ancient
times, and, in the United States, preceded the nation’s founding. It argues
as well that a key purpose of sex‐separation in bathrooms was to protect
women and girls from sexual harassment and sexual assault in the
workplace and other venues.

In the bathroom debates, the question of how bathrooms
first became sex‐separated has become a central one. Two theories have been widelydisseminated in the press as fact. One is associated with Professor Sheila
 Cavanagh, who argues that the very first instance of sex‐separated public
toilets occurred at a ball held in a Parisian restaurant in 1739. She argues
that the Parisian upper‐classes initiated this separation “to indicate class
standing and genteel respectability.”

Professor Terry S. Kogan has offered a second theory that purports to
explain how sex‐separation became such a widely‐embraced norm. He claims that the practice arose in the late nineteenth century.  Kogan maintains that when the Industrial Revolution brought large numbers of women out of the home and into factory workspaces, authorities believed that a practice of men and women using the same toilets would be indecent. Authorities also worried, Kogan argues, that the spectacle violated their ideal that men and women by nature occupied “separatespheres.” Kogan argues that a Massachusetts labor law statute, passed in 1887, was the first U.S. law mandating sex‐separation.

In conclusion, I reject the tales of the alternative bathroom histories as
too narrow. I suggest that their worst error is not merely factual, but
rather an approach that ignores and even contorts the histories and
experiences of other vulnerable groups, in this case, women and the poor,
even as they seek rights for transgender persons. Women have fought for
centuries to recover and preserve these histories. These stories are key
pillars supporting their current claims to protections against
discrimination.

The Article concludes that the alternative bathroom histories fail. As
they propose an explanation of sex‐separation that advances the interests
of some sexual minorities, they offer a narrative that oppresses women
and the female‐bodied. They ignore the stories of women’s lives and, in
particular, their struggles with sexual assault and sexual harassment. They
similarly ignore the struggles of the poor for safe intimate spaces. Women
and others must push back on approaches that contort women’s history,
for they are rooted in sexism and patriarchy, even when they may be
intended to advance the freedom of other groups.

Source: Sexism in the “Bathroom Debates”: – SSRN-id3311184.pdf

Stella Forever Fund has reached $3m target, due to female philanthropists

Stella’s Forever Fund, had reached its endowment target of $3 million – securing prize money for the annual Stella Prize in perpetuity.

Last November, McLean, a Sydney philanthropist and a previous Deputy Chair of the Stella prize, donated $1 million to the Stella Forever Fund in one of the biggest donations of its kind.

Other patrons of the fund include Debra Morgan, Chief Executive of the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust, Karen Wilson. from The Wilson Foundation, Carol Schwartz AO from The Trawalla Foundation and Krystyna Campbell-Pretty, who is also one of the major benefactors the State Library’s Women Writers Fund.

Source: Stella Forever Fund has reached $3m target, due to female philanthropists

On the Disappearing of Joan Vollmer Burroughs ‹ Literary Hub

After William Burroughs killed his wife Joan Vollmer, he threw away all her possessions. Their son, Bill Jr., never saw a photograph of her. When Bill Jr. was 32, he begged his father to send him a photo but he didn’t.

Now she is only remembered as a footnote to William Burroughs’ mythology. On the internet, and in all the libraries I scoured, no one has tried to correct the narrative of her erasure.

Last year, I tried. After lack of interest from many other outlets, my pitch to write about her was accepted by a reputable literary magazine. But several scholars questioned the purpose of my project and my editor tried to get me to dramatize Joan’s promiscuity, while cutting out sections on her childhood and her dreams.

One of the scholars who responded to my second request was Nancy M. Grace. I was thrilled. Nancy was one of the first, and remains one of the only, scholars to acknowledge that Beat history existed outside the trio of William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg; that women were writing and working alongside them, but had been dismissed as second-class, if acknowledged at all.

Over the phone, Nancy was kind and generous with her time. She agreed that Joan wasn’t just a “muse” and that the common narrative surrounding her death—and the way it is used to bolster William’s outlaw persona—undermines the seriousness of the act and contributes to our culture’s permissiveness toward violence against women.

It’s true that Joan is only famous because of her relation to the Beat men. William Burroughs directed this narrative—through killing Joan, he ensured she wouldn’t live to create a body of work.

William’s literary executor James Grauerholz wrote a 70-page document about Joan’s death in which he deconstructed the events surrounding her murder. He writes about what kind of gun William may have used, how many people were in the room, and how long William spent in jail (only two weeks). He puts William “on trial” and asks the readers to act as “judge and jury.” He turns her death into a spectacle, a murder-mystery. It’s the longest piece of writing on Joan, by far, but it obscures Joan the woman almost completely.

Still, I reached out to Grauerholz for information, figuring if anyone knew more, he would. Plus, he seemed sympathetic to her situation; in his paper he mentioned being responsible for getting William to write an inscription for the unmarked cemetery niche where Joan’s remains were stored. This was after her bones had been dug up from their original grave—due to William and her family not paying the plot fees.

Source: On the Disappearing of Joan Vollmer Burroughs ‹ Literary Hub

Stop saying, ‘Where are the feminists?’ | The Spectator Australia

Feminists in the growing grassroots ‘reactionary’ movement are being cancelled, fired, arrested, and physically assaulted with little reporting from the mainstream media and unbearable condescension from conservatives.

Only just noticing that gender-critical feminists exist, Ami Horowitz has portrayed the hard work and resistance of these feminists as a type of cat-fight within feminism. In a typical type of infantilising of women’s political activism, Horowitz on Outsiders and Sky News Australia said that gender-critical, left-leaning feminists are welcome to come over to the conservative side, ‘The water is great!’ he claimed.

Horowitz claims that left-leaning feminists, like me, are in conflict with our political heritage and are starting to ‘speaking in almost conservative ideals’. This is the exact opposite of what is happening. The conservatives are finally noticing the success of the gender-critical and radical feminists’ arguments and are starting to adopt the arguments themselves.

Gender-critical feminist argue for a secular state free of ideology and the sex-based oppression of the gender stereotypes embedded in both conservatism and gender identity ideology.

What has attracted me and many other middle-aged women to the new wave of grassroots feminism, is that it is closer to the second wave of feminism. Second wave feminism, like conservatism is critical of prostitution, pornography, and surrogacy. Second wave feminists also calls out the exploitation of women across race and religious boundaries, something intersectional feminists are loathe to do.

Gender-critical feminists believe that the ‘third wave’ of feminism has seen a hijacking, or more accurately, a purchasing, of the women’s revolution through financial investment in gender studies and the funding of gender-based, rather than sex-based government policy. Third wave academic based feminism has been remarkably successful only in removing the focus of the bodily needs of women as a population. Women are expensive to maintain, in terms of childcare and workplace participation, so the erasure of women as a sex has been the most effective pushback by government against the demands of women since the women’s revolution began.

Source: Stop saying, ‘Where are the feminists?’ | The Spectator Australia

What’s with Wikipedia and women?

When last surveyed a decade ago, about 85% of English Wikipedia’s editors were men. Most lived in the U.S., the U.K. or India. And of the roughly 1.8 million biographies they jointly have produced, at least four out of every five is about a man.

The encyclopedia’s gender imbalance is hardly news; the Wikimedia Foundation has acknowledged a problem since that 2011 survey, and efforts to change things have received a great deal of media attention. Wikipedian Rosie Stephenson–Goodknight co-founded a project called Women in Red to write articles about women mentioned in encyclopedia articles on other topics; the project has created over 175,000 articles in five years.

Skirmishes over academic notability happen regularly, though they don’t usually involve outsiders. Wikipedians argued over astrophysicist Katie Bouman, who became famous when she was photographed reacting to the first-ever image of a black hole; although she became the media face of a 400-physicist team, Slate reported at the time that some editors argued that her scholarly impact did not warrant an article of her own and she should be folded into the article about the black hole itself. Bouman now has her own page.

Source: What’s with Wikipedia and women?

‘Many mistakes were made’: Kathleen Folbigg’s legal team calls on lawyers, A-G to resolve miscarriage of justice – Lawyers Weekly

According to Dr Cavanagh, Ms Folbigg’s lawyer and a barrister with decades of experience in criminal law – including coronial inquests and matters involving infant deaths – the case should never have proceeded to trial. The 2003 conviction of Ms Folbigg went ahead despite a lack of forensic pathology evidence of smothering for each of the four children.

In the submission to NSW State Coroner Magistrate Teresa O’Sullivan, Ms Rego and Dr Cavanagh specify the scientific evidence to refute the prosecution’s case that Ms Folbigg smothered her four children. In short, they are asking for findings to be made of natural causes of death for each of Ms Folbigg’s children. Importantly, they added that none of the children had a coronial inquest at the time of their deaths.

During the 2003 trial, the prosecution put forward the arguments that there could be no such thing as three or more infant deaths in one family from natural causes and that selected diary entries written by Ms Folbigg were “virtual admissions”. These claims and more have been debunked by leading scientists working pro bono.

Ms Rego said that asking for a coronial inquest does not bring an end to the pardon petition that Mr Speakman has had since March last year. Although the details of the petition – written about here or accessed here – have been before Mr Speakman for over a year now, he has yet to make a decision.

In a letter to the Attorney-General on 4 March 2022, three Nobel Laureates and the outgoing and incoming presidents of the Australian Academy of Science said there was no “justifiable reason to keep Ms Folbigg incarcerated”, given the overwhelming evidence that she was not responsible for the deaths of her four children.

Source: ‘Many mistakes were made’: Kathleen Folbigg’s legal team calls on lawyers, A-G to resolve miscarriage of justice – Lawyers Weekly

UNsynced: United Nations Out of Sync with Grassroots Global Feminists — FiLiA

Anna Kerr looks at why male interests will continue to dictate the human rights agenda, including specifically in relation to women and children, despite men’s overwhelming track record as the perpetrators of violent and sexual crime.

Source: UNsynced: United Nations Out of Sync with Grassroots Global Feminists — FiLiA