The Feminist Club Amsterdam
Written by Matisse Lefebvre In her influential 1988 work Surviving Sexual Violence, Liz Kelly introduced the concept of a ‘continuum’ to describe male sexual violence against women. This concept was originally based on two dictionary definitions. The first one denotes ‘a basic common character that underlies many different events’ and the second a ‘continuous series […]
The exceptional legislative measures taken by the French government since the COVID-19 pandemic illustrate the country’s procreative social norms: parents have been intensely supported, guided and assisted during the crisis. Not surprisingly, although procreation is addressed as a public issue, the right not to procreate has mostly been repressed. Sterilization as a definitive contraceptive method was legalized in 2001 in France, following intense debates on sexual and reproductive rights. However, does the reality of the sterilization process illustrate the straight-forwardness and accessibility of legal texts? Through a focus group I organized, participants showed otherwise: gynecologists are complicit to the pronatalist French government, which manipulates its population into procreating to activate generational renewal. This illustrates a highly complex and layered system in which culture, health and education, amongst others, intertwine with each other, striving for the accomplishment of political goals.
An article written by Matisse Lefebvre “The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.” (Michel Foucault, 1976) Michel Foucault, in his influential work The History of Sexuality (first volume), explores how sexuality started being conceptualized differently at the end of the nineteenth century onwards. The parallelism between “sodomite” and “homosexual” […]
This is a book review of three important books for postcolonial feminism:
Ahmed, L. (1993). Women and gender in Islam: Historical roots of a modern debate.
Delphy, C. (2015). Separate and dominate: Feminism and Racism after the War on Terror.
Mohanty, C. T. (2005). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity.
Abstract
Abortion impacts different actors and human rights. This gives a rise to the question: “why is abortion such a difficult concept regarding human rights?”. I intend to argue that abortion is a complicated concept because this concept is at the intersection of several people’s rights. After having discussed the different angles of human rights on abortion, the people able to be pregnant such as ciswomen, trans and non-binary people are the most concerned by abortion right because abortion protects a lot of their rights. Abortion could indeed be seen as contradicting the right to life. However, the status of the unborn child highly depends on the conceptualisation of human rights and each legal system. For the case of the biological father or the unborn child, abortion does not affect significantly their rights. The people able to be pregnant are the most concerned by the action of abortion because their rights are clearly influenced by the obtention of this right.