What’s the problem with sex dolls? A conversation with Kathleen Richardson

This is an edited transcript of the podcast with Professor Kathleen Richardson on our culture’s increasing obsession with sex dolls, and what this means for women, and human relationships.

“What’s interesting about sex dolls and sex robots, is that it reveals really clearly what patriarchy thinks of women and what men want from women.” Read More

How the Modern Slavery Act fails women and girls

This is the text of Anna Fisher’s talk at the CEASE UK summit (#CEASE18) on Wednesday 14 November, 2018. She explains that the Modern Slavery Act 2015 fails to follow international law in how it defines the offences that mainly affect women and children, why she thinks this happened and why it matters, and what kind of legislation and policy we need to effectively address the issues. Read More

Prostitution Policy and Law: What are the Options?

This article looks at legal and policy approaches to prostitution and why the Nordic Model is the human rights and equality-based approach.  Read More

What’s Wrong with Prostitution?

A hard look at prostitution, and how it affects people, taking in its intrinsic links with porn, sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation, its inherent racism, and why we should hold those who drive it accountable. Read More

What the idea of “sex robots” tells us about prostitution

We talk with Dr Kathleen Richardson, Senior Research Fellow in the Ethics of Robotics at De Montford University, about what the idea of “sex robots” can tell us about prostitution.

The artwork is by Suzzan Blac, a survivor of child abuse, prostitution and sex trafficking, who through her art sheds light on the violence, objectification and dehumanisation that is intrinsic to the commercial sexual exploitation industry. Read More

Male art that dehumanises women vs. female art that illuminates the reality of sexual violence and female objectification

Alice Glass reflects on how when male artists create works that dehumanise women it is taken to be a comment on society as a whole, while women’s resulting brutalisation, isolation and objectification is seen as little more than a sideshow. She compares this with the powerful art of Suzzan Blac who mines her own traumatic memories of abuse and prostitution to create a blistering commentary on pornographic, female objectification and paedophile culture. Read More