research

Consciousness-raising 2.0, the New View, and a special issue of Feminism and Psychology

Elizabeth — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:16:05 -0700

I recently published an article, "Consciousness-raising 2.0: Sex Blogging and the Creation of a Feminist Sex Commons," in the journal Feminism and Psychology. I was invited to submit the piece by Leonore Tiefer , chief advocate of the New View Campaign against the medicalization of sexuality. She was putting together a special issue of the journal looking at the uses the New View has been put to since it's inception ten years ago. I immediately agreed because, while I believe in the importance of expert research guiding policy and knowledge, I think it is important for that research to be grounded in the experiences of real sexual people and should attend to their social environments and not only to their chemical and genetic components. Over-medicalization, and the privatizing of knowledge about sexuality distances us from our bodies and our experiences and frames our issues in terms of diseases instead of seeing the way that social and cultural factors influence our ability to experience sexual pleasure.

More on what's in the issue, on my contribution and how you can help me expand my article below the fold.

Feminist researchers challenge UK anti-prostitution Big Brothel project

Elizabeth — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 16:14:07 -0700

We are advocates here for solid research on sex work, especially on working conditions across the many sectors of the sex industry. It is especially galling when bad research, often bad enough to be called "research"-in-quotes, gets passed off to support public policies that make working conditions more dangerous (e.g., driving sectors of sex work further under ground or making it harder to report crimes or workplace dangers).

Recently the UK has been taken by a storm of anti-prostitution "research" that is being used to support policies that would criminalize the purchase of sex. There was Melissa Farley in Scotland "studying" men who purchase sex (we debunked that here) and now there is the Poppy Project's "Big Brothel" investigation by Julie Bindel and Helen Atkins, purporting to look at the workings of establishments where women sell sex to men. I am glad that a growing number of well-organized feminist researchers are publicly challenging these projects. They clearly highlight the ethical and methodological flaws in the studies and the sensationalistic ways that they overgeneralize from flawed findings. It seems sometimes that the anti-prostitution "researchers" are so disgusted by their topic that they can't take it seriously. Below is a summary provided by the UK researchers who are most actively challenging this kind of work and who need the support of everyone who takes sex workers seriously.

Click here to read more.

Feminist sociologist seeks feminist bloggers

Elizabeth — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:06:07 -0700

Dr. Jessie Daniels, a sociology professor at Hunter College, is looking for bloggers who consider themselves feminists (any sort) to participate in an interview-based research study. (Please click here if you are interested!) Her book, White Lies (Routledge 1997) is a well known investigation of the intersections of race, class and gender in white supremacist groups. Her new book, Cyber Racism (Rowman & Littlefield 2009) continues that investigation as such groups move their interactions to the internet.

I met Dr. Daniels when we were on a panel together at the Eastern Sociological Society meetings this past spring. She was presenting an excellent critical analysis of race and gender on sites like the Holla Back NYC blog I think her work is fabulous and I hope that some of you will help her in this new project. She also discussed Racism Review, the blog she maintains with Joe Feagin.

An overview of her feminist blogger project, in her own words, below the fold

Melissa Farley in Scotland: Trivializing prostitution and trivializing violence against women

Elizabeth — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:58:07 -0700

Melissa Farley and her fringe research mill Prostitution Research and Education have teamed up with a Scottish anti-prostitution group to produce a new 'research' report with the problematic title "Challenging Men's Demand for Prostitution in Scotland: A research report based on interviews with 110 men who bought women in prostitution" (PDF here).

Readers of this site will understandably be rolling their eyes and groaning, "not again!" But it is important to remember, awful though it is, that other folks take Farley's research seriously and that it deserves serious attention to help mitigate the damage it can do to real efforts to advocate for women's safety and sex worker safety. Such 'studies' play to particular political positions, in this case pressure to export the Swedish 'solution' through Europe, but political expedience is not the same as sound policy. Check today's Daily Record (Scotland) for the most recent orchestrated flood of bad news coverage of a poor study to support wrongheaded policy.

It is important to stress, again and again, that Farley's research cannot be considered reliable and certainly doesn't approach even basic scientific standards. The problems with the current study are many but can be summed up in terms of ethical concerns, bias and inadequate attention to detail in the write up. The write up is problematic enough that it is hard to judge the quality of the research, but the very clear bias is enough to call the findings into question. The bias also leads to the making of recommendations that are not proportional to the findings. Below I address just a few of the major problems. (Watch this space for links to critiques by other feminist sex worker advocates and researchers.)

The Next Step Into the Commons: The Sex Commons Wiki

Chris — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:27:51 -0700

A lot's gone down in the last year with Sex in the Public Square; I think that Elizabeth and I have accomplished even more than we originally expected to here so far with projects like the sex work forum, and the networking that we've done with people in the real world and all the discussion of news items. Looking at the site as a whole, I'm not only proud of what we've done, but outright amazed.

And there's still so much more that we can do. Recently, we came up with an idea to take us even further: a sex-positive wiki.

One of the things that made this seem like such a good idea to me was the surge of media coverage in the wake of the Spitzer scandal, and especially the Diane Sawyer 20/20 special, which repeatedly seemed to make a deliberate effort to snatch bullshit from the maw of truth.

Kristof calls prostitution as dangerous as...

Elizabeth — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:58:55 -0700

...working for minimum wage? (And other problems of logic and evidence)

So according to Nicholas Kristof's op-ed today, Eliot Spitzer recently encouraged him to write a book about Spitzer's anti-sex-trafficking work. Perhaps he will. He certainly seems to buy the assumption that tightening penalties for johns will somehow help women who are victimized while working as prostitutes. Actually just the opposite is likely.

In non-Spitzer sex news...

Elizabeth — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:34:23 -0700

What a day! Eliot Spitzer resigned. Melissa Farley, Tracy Quan and Dina Matos McGreevey appeared on the same New York Times Op Ed page. And in other news we learn that at least 25% of teenage girls are infected with STIs.

Dr. Michael Goodyear

Elizabeth — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:41:15 -0800

Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality

Elizabeth — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 11:38:58 -0800

An interdisciplinary research center at San Francisco State University. Their goal "is to promote social justice and well-being by recognizing and challenging how inequalities undermine healthy sexuality."

Newsflash: The economy causes poverty

Elizabeth — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:31:57 -0800

Thanks to Deborah Siegel at Girl with Pen (and to Feministing via which I discovered GWP) for this report on Frank Furstenburg's recent briefing paper on teen pregnancy and poverty.

The headline as she reports it from the Ascribe Livewire:

Teen Pregnancy and Poverty: 30-Year-Study Confirms That Living in Economically-Depressed Neighborhoods, Not Teen Motherhood, Perpetuates Poverty

Can you feel the tidal wave of support building for all kinds of "End economic depression in neighborhoods where teens live" programs? In fact since Furstenburg reports that young women who become teen mothers are often already poor, maybe the government can use all the abstinance-only money that states keep rejecting to fund some education/housing/jobs programs to rebuild neighborhoods and reduce poverty and increase opportunity. That might be a better way of reducing teen pregnancy rates.

Furstenburg's briefing report is here.