Category Archive

As a socialist and women’s rights activist who continues to be perplexed, gob-smacked and horrified by the seemingly growing orthodoxy in left and feminist circles that Ekman entitles, “the story of the sex worker”, by which she means a sanitising of the sex industry and a justification for men buying sex, I felt a gushing sense of relief and also gratitude to the author while reading this enormously accessible, sharp and erudite book that looks at both the questions of prostitution and surrogacy.

Ekman puts both prostitution and surrogacy in the context of patriarchal capitalism; both of the hugely profitable sex and surrogacy industries commodify women’s bodies (the majority of the time it’s women in prostitution, in all cases with surrogacy) such that, as opposed to selling her labour or a service, women are forced to sell a part of themselves because there is no Cartesian dualism between the body…

The opposite of masculine rape culture is masculine nurturance culture: men* increasing their capacity to nurture, and becoming whole.

The Ghomeshi trial is back in the news, and it brings violent sexual assault back into people’s minds and daily conversations. Of course violence is wrong, even when the court system for handling it is a disaster. That part seems evident. Triggering, but evident.

But there is a bigger picture here. I am struggling to see the full shape emerging in the pencil rubbing, when only parts are visible at a time.

A meme going around says ‘Rape is about violence, not sex. If someone were to hit you with a spade, you wouldn’t call it gardening.’ And this is true. But it is just the surface of the truth. The depths say something more, something about violence.

Violence is nurturance turned backwards.

These things are connected, they must be connected. Violence and nurturance are two sides of the same coin. I…