Women's Voices

This is the introduction to the 1992 book, "Living Laboratories: Women and Reproductive Technologies," by Robyn Rowland. Here, she describes reproductive technologies as inherently based on a male desire for domination and control of both women's reproductive capacity, and over nature itself."In the process of trying to end their own alienation, men have made procreative alienation a reality for women, divorcing women from their wombs, eggs and embryos — from their own bodily selves and their sense of procreative continuity. They have made children products of the nexus between commerce, science and medicine, calling experimentation on women and human society ‘therapy’ and camouflaging the intention to map and control human genetics with the rhetoric of ‘helping the infertile’. In this process women have become the experimental raw material in the masculine desire to control the creation of life; patriarchy’s living laboratories."

Over the last several years, transgender activism has made sweeping gains. Proponents of this ideology have succeeded in positioning "gender identity" as the social justice issue of our day.But are the claims made by these activists actually true? What does it mean to say that people can be "born in the wrong body"? Does the concept of “gender identity” break down stereotypes about the nature of men and women, or does it reinforce them? And what about the rights of women and girls?On February 1, 2020, the US-based organization Women's Liberation Front hosted a panel event called “The New Misogyny.”Three women’s rights campaigners, Meghan Murphy, Saba Malik, and Kara Dansky, presented a critical analysis of gender identity and made arguments for sex-based women's rights. The event took place at the Seattle Public Library in downtown Seattle, Washington, despite protesters inside and outside the building.This is the talk given by Meghan Murphy, a Canadian journalist and founder of Canada’s leading feminist website, Feminist Current.

Surrogacy: Erasing the Motherby Dianne Post"The birth mother is not in the place of another; she is the mother. That was the law in every country in the world until now. We always knew who the mother was — she was the one who gave birth. That is the first definition of a mother. We weren’t so sure about the father, which is why women’s freedoms have been curtailed so men could be assured of their lineage. Now, with DNA, we can be scientifically certain of the father. So the first “success” of the surrogacy movement was to change the definition of the mother and remove the woman who gave birth from the frame. By applying the word 'surrogate' to the wrong person, it depresses the position of the birth mother but does not elevate the position of the other woman. Instead, the position of the sperm donor, or the father, is elevated as the only person with rights."https://www.fairobserver.com/culture/surrogacy-legality-ethics-womens-rights-news-018210/

Excerpts from Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English (1973)."Women have always been healers. They were the unlicensed doctors and anatomists of western history. They were abortionists, nurses and counsellors. They were pharmacists, cultivating healing herbs and exchanging the secrets of their uses. They were midwives, travelling from home to home and village to village. For centuries women were doctors without degrees, barred from books and lectures, learning from each other, and passing on experience from neighbor to neighbor and mother to daughter. They were called 'wise women' by the people, witches or charlatans by the authorities. Medicine is part of our heritage as women, our history, our birthright."Full text: https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/ehrenreich-barbara/witches.htm

This is a speech given by Andrea Dworkin in San Francisco, 1978, first published in "Letters from a War Zone."Introduction:"Pornography and Grief was written as a speech for a Take Back the Night March that was part of the first feminist conference on pornography in the United States in San Francisco, November 1978. Organized by the now defunct Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM ), over 5000 women from thirty states participated and we shut down San Francisco's pornography district for one night. The ground was taken but not held."

Transgenderism, Neoliberalism and Rape Cultureby Renee Gerlich First delivered on October 12, 2019 at an International Women's Day event in Brisbane, Australia. She re-recorded the speech for the Women's Voices archives.Speech text:reneejg.net/2019/10/transgender…ture-brisbane-talk/

Female Erasure, Reverse Sexism, and the Cisgender Theory of Privilegeby Elizabeth Hungerfordread by Genevieve Gluck"Cis theory of gender denies the lived experiences of millions of women who despise the social role 'woman,' instead framing non-trans women's gender identity as a privilege. The theory is blind to how these seemingly benign 'gender identities' operate as a hierarchy of social roles and interactions whose end game is the unequal distribution of power between male and female humans. This essentialist, ahistorical assessment of gender identity short-circuits women's ability to recognize themselves as oppressed by gender-based roles. It denies us use of the language and concepts necessary to describe women's specific exploitation as women."

Feminism: An AgendaFrom: Letters From a War Zone by Andrea DworkinFirst published in 1988Read by: Monica K."This too was a speech, given April 8, 1983, at Hamilton College in upstate New York. It was published at the invitation and by the initiative of a male student in the college literary magazine, "The ABC's of Reading," in 1984.I remember flying up in a plane that was more like a tin can, just me and the pilot. I remember the semicircle of hundreds of young faces. That night, fraternity boys tried to break into the rooms I was staying in on campus in a generally deserted building.There were two immovable, institutional doors between me and them. I couldn't get an outside line and the switchboard didn't answer to get security. I waited.They went away.I still think that prostitution must be decriminalized, as I say in this speech; but, increasingly, I think there must be simple, straightforward, enforced criminal laws against exploiting women in commercial sexual transactions. The exploiter— pimp or john— needs to be recognized and treated as a real criminal, much as the batterer now is."