Women, Gender, and Sex

The controversial bill package FOSTA-SESTA has already impacted sites like Reddit, Craigslist, and Google — and that’s just the start.

Covid-19 presents a new problem for sex workers. In-person sex work is intimate by its very nature, and workers are at heightened risk of contracting the virus if they keep working. But without work, as strip clubs close and clients dwindle, sex workers struggle to survive.

Sex workers all over the world face a constant risk of abuse. This is not news. Nor is it news that they are an extremely marginalized group of people, frequently forced to live outside the law. But when word got out that Amnesty International had initiated a consultation to develop a policy to protect the human rights of sex workers, it was like lighting a touch paper. Journalists and celebrities climbed on the band wagon. Ever-more sensational headlines condemned Amnesty International for advocating for “prostitution as a human right”.

The internet provided consensual sex workers with a sense of safety and community not available on the streets. Screening clients before meeting them, sharing information about dangerous clients, and finding work without relying on pimps turned a historically dangerous profession into a safer, more reliable way to earn a living. Unfortunately, the internet also provided sex traffickers with a more efficient way to advertise sex trafficking victims without detection by law enforcement. Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, websites hosting advertisements of sex trafficking victims were often immune from liability. Section 230, which meant to promote free speech on the internet, repeatedly left these victims without remedy. Congress recognized a need to hold someone responsible for online advertisements of sex trafficking victims. FOSTA/SESTA removed website immunity under Section 230 to encourage websites to diligently monitor and remove sex trafficking posts or otherwise be held responsible for facilitating the unlawful action. To avoid the work of monitoring content under FOSTA/SESTA, websites removed posting capabilities previously used by consensual sex workers. Congress failed to consider how the internet protects consensual sex workers and how this protection would be stripped from them in the wake of FOSTA/SESTA. This Comment will argue consensual sex workers deserve protection under FOSTA/SESTA. Ultimately, this Comment will recommend that Section 230 immunity be reinstated and either enforced jointly with existing legislation or construed more narrowly. Under either recommendation, both sex trafficking victims and consensual sex workers will receive the protection they deserve.

The timely reintroduction of this bill addresses the growing number of state restrictions on abortion access.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Bill Cosby's sexual assault conviction was thrown out Wednesday by Pennsylvania's highest court in a ruling that swiftly freed the actor from prison more than three years after he was found guilty of drugging and molesting Temple University employee Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia mansion.

After 36 years I now have male privilege - like a secret agent pushing feminism and undermining the patriarchy from the inside, says the writer Lee Hurley

Stay informed and read the latest news today from The Associated Press, the definitive source for independent journalism from every corner of the globe.

Tarana Burke is a civil rights activist who was the original founder of the "Me Too" movement, which she started in 2006. It later became a global phenomenon that raised awareness about sexual harassment, abuse, and assault in society in 2017.

The Me Too movement has shown that sexual harassment is more widespread than many realized, helping survivors of sexual violence find resources and a community.

This publication intends to support policy makers, employers, and activists by sharing UN Women’s work on this topic and offering new guidance on policy and practice on sexual harassment.

Published in Feminist Media Studies (Vol. 18, No. 3, 2018)

November 25 is recognised worldwide as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

According to recent bestseller lists, unreliable female narrators are having a heyday -- such as in popular titles like A.J. Finn’s The Woman in the Window and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Learn how to use established principles of feminist theory (it's easier than you think) to unearth critical power dynamics and real-world issues of gender discrimination, abuse, and harassment in any work of literature.

Feminism in India is newly relevant. The past month has seen an explosion of online testimony to sexual harassment, in a watershed moment in India's #MeToo movement. The beginnings of the latter…

#MeToo in the Academic Library: A Quantitative Measurement of the Prevalence of Sexual Harassment in Academic Libraries

The movement needs to rethink its rhetoric.

This resource analyses Twitter data on the use of the hashtag #MeToo in different countries. Research was conducted in cooperation with UN Global Pulse, the Secretary-General’s initiative on big data and artificial intelligence for development, humanitarian action, and peace.

Missing white woman syndrome is a term which is used by social scientists[1][2][3] and media commentators in reference to the media coverage, especially on television,[4] of missing-person cases involving young, attractive, white, upper middle class women or girls compared to the relative lack of attention towards missing women who were not white, of lower social classes, or of missing men or boys.[5][6] Although the term was coined in the context of missing-person cases, it is sometimes used of coverage of other violent crimes. The phenomenon has been highlighted in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and other predominantly white countries.[7][8]

#MeToo[a] is a social movement against sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and rape culture, in which people publicize their experiences of sexual abuse or sexual harassment.[1][2][3] The phrase "Me Too" was initially used in this context on social media in 2006, on Myspace, by sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke.[4] Harvard University published a case study on Burke, called "Leading with Empathy: Tarana Burke and the Making of the Me Too Movement" (2020).[5] The hashtag #MeToo was used starting in 2017 as a way to draw attention to the magnitude of the problem.

My history of trauma and sexual harassment didn't stop or disappear when I came out as transgender, but most of my community did.

Tarana Burke is an American Activist from The Bronx, New York, who started the MeToo movement. In 2006, Burke began using MeToo to help other women with similar experiences to stand up for themselves. Over a decade later, in 2017, #MeToo became a viral hashtag when Alyssa Milano and other women began using it to tweet about the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases. The phrase and hashtag quickly developed into a broad-based, and eventually international movement.

Key moments in the cases against the producer, who has been found guilty of rape and sexual assault.

Students say John Comaroff ‘kissed and groped students without their consent’ and threatened their careers if they reported him

Former film producer, who is currently incarcerated in New York, faces possible extradition for alleged attacks on five women

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was charged Friday with raping two more women in Los Angeles, prosecutors said.

The former movie mogul and convicted rapist, now serving time in a New York prison, has been charged with 11 counts of sexual assault in California involving five women.

Individuals who have been victims of oppression or abuse have found hastags to be an effective way to increase the scope and effect of their activism. Northeastern researchers Sarah Jackson, Moya Bailey and Brooke Foucault Welles have created an interdisciplinary project that studies and explains how hashtags acquire their followings.