The fight against sexual violence in a right-moving world

This talk will engage critically with the feminist fight against sexual violence, in relation to the global swing to the right in which political and cultural narratives around gender are being reshaped and rejuvenated.

With Speaker Professor Alison Phipps from Sussex University

Abstract

In the context of a new ‘war on women’ worldwide, #MeToo and similar movements have been key to contemporary political resistance. However, mainstream movements against sexual violence are ill-equipped to address the intersections of patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism which produce sexual violence. Furthermore, reactionary arms of these movements are gaining increasing power and platforms, as they dovetail with far-right narratives. I argue that to resist an intersectionality of systems we need an intersectionality of struggles, and that feminism which does not centre the most marginalised is not fit for purpose.

Bio

Alison Phipps is Professor of Gender Studies at Sussex University. She is author of The Politics of the Body: Gender in a Neoliberal and Neoconservative Age (Polity, 2014) and is currently working on a new monograph entitled Personal Business: the Feminist Fight Against Sexual Violence.