The Feminist Club Amsterdam
By Lisa Verberne I am only being slightly dramatic when I say that I dread the day my fifteen-year-old Nintendo DS breaks because I know a part of me will die with it. Originally a pristine white, now its colour can only generously be described as grey. Its microphone has been broken for years, there […]
Written by Lisa Verberne In 2020, several transgender and intersex emancipation groups led by a Dutch transgender woman called Willemijn van Kempen, united to seek justice for the people affected by a discriminatory law dubbed the Transgenderwet (Transgender Law). The Transgenderwet described two conditions for transgender and intersex people who wanted to legally change their […]
Written by Hana Elramly “Everything in life is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power” – Oscar Wilde. Sex drives a major part of our actions and is present in several aspects of our lives, though for long it is meant to be limited to a married couple’s bedroom. Because sex is the essence […]
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.
Written by Melike Have you heard of the #MeToo Movement? Convictions of famous and powerful assaulters such as Jeffrey Epstein? The answer is most probably yes if you have access to social media and are able to read this article. The increasing mention of this movement makes it appear that it had become easy and […]