Publisher Description

Bad Attitude(s) on Trial is a critical analysis of pornography in the context of contemporary Canada. The notion that pornography both reflects sexual domination and 'victimizes' women has recently found expression in law in the landmark Canadian Supreme Court decision of R. v. Butler (1992). Many feminists embrace this new law as progressive, but in the post-Butler years, straight, mainstream pornography is still flourishing, while sexual representations that challenge conventional notions of sexuality, such as those centering on gay and lesbian sex and s/m sex, are the focus of censorship. It is the censorship of sexual others that the authors critique from a legal, cultural, gay, and philosophical standpoint. Lise Gotell examines the intervention of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) in the Butler decision and provides an overview of socio-legal debates on pornography and censorship. Brenda Cossman examines the Butler decision itself and challenges the dominant reading of this case as a feminist victory. Becki Ross critically examines the expert testimony she delivered in defense of Bad Attitude, an American lesbian sex magazine seized by police from Glad Day Bookshop in Toronto in 1992. She details the difficulties she encountered in explicating and contextualizing the specificities, nuances, and complexities of lesbian s/m fantasy in a court of law. In the final chapter, Shannon Bell advances a conception of pornography that is not distinguishable from philosophy, using philosophy to make pornography. Bad Attitude(s) on Trial provides a new debate on pornography and feminism. It will be of particular interest to students of both women's, and gay and lesbian issues, but will also be relevant for scholars of law, political science, and philosophy, as well as for anyone interested in a different, provocative view of the Butler decision.

A surprising and innovative look at class that proposes new approaches to this important topic. While references to gender, race, and class are everywhere in social theory, class has not received the kind of theoretical and empirical attention accorded to gender and race. A welcome and much-needed corrective, this book offers a novel theoretical approach to class and an active practice of class analysis. The authors offer new and compelling ways to look at class through examinations of such topics as sex work, the experiences of African American women as domestic laborers, and blue- and white-collar workers. Their work acknowledges that individuals may participate in various class relations at one moment or over time and that class identities are multiple and changing, interacting with other aspects of identity in contingent and unpredictable ways. The essays in the book focus on class difference, class transformation and change, and on the intersection of class, race, gender, sexuality, and other dimensions of identity. They find class in seemingly unlikely places-in households, parent-child relationships, and self-employment-and locate class politics on the interpersonal level as well as at the level of enterprises, communities, and nations. Taken together, they will prompt a rethinking of class and class subjectivity that will expand social theory.

Taking its starting point from women's contributions to the French revolution, this important anthology goes far beyond any particular historical, European or American context and expands its scope in space and time to an all-inclusive global theme, namely the contributions of radical women towards an ever-changing world and its revolutionary transformations everywhere. The superbly edited essays by diverse contributors from various continents and disciplines explore a wide platform of women's revolutionary involvements and elucidate the broad range of contributions by women scholars, scientists and activists to movements of social transformation, as well as to a reexamination of established methods of cultural analysis from enlightened liberalism to Marxism. The contributions of women scholars and activists from Africa, Asia and Latin America are particularly significant in that they transcend and expand European/North American feminism as relevant primarily to its own socio-cultural context and focus on women acting in terms of their own non-Western traditions and cultures, that is, on non-Western models based on indigenous strategies of social transformation. This rich anthology shuns any postulation of a single global model for revolution. Yet, despite the emergence of a `problematic relationship between Western or Western educated theorists and the causes of the oppressed', women's diverse social, cultural and historical experiences and strategies are united in this edition, as in their common causes, as emphasized by the following statement in the introduction: `the female body has become ... a privileged site for social analysis in the context of international capitalism as well as in the critique of traditional socialism.' Sabine Jell-Bahlsen, Ogbuide Films Women and Revolution covers an enormous socio-historical space, four continents - Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America – and quite a few countries within them. This huge field of human experience is looked at from the focal point which runs explicitly and implicitly through all nineteen chapters: the active if not revolutionary role women have played individually and collectively in various determining social situations, a role regularly suppressed by the coercive power of institutionalized domination. The impetus for this endeavor was the commemoration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution, an occasion to take an in-depth look at its less obvious agendas, through a focus on the activity of women, and on Olympe de Gouges in particular. But as Olympe de Gouges became acquainted with Mr. Guillotine, the considerable role of women became suppressed not only actually but as a kind of damnatio memoriae which the old Romans had already invented. As this work shows, there have been multiple forms and contents through which women have taken history into their own hands and have participated in emancipatory struggles throughout the world. They are at their best in their use of the resources of local village traditions, of dense social contexts, of mutual aid and in turning such grassroots resources into radical democratic struggles for the future. A fascinating and timely book!. Wolf-Dieter Narr, Freie Universität Berlin The vital role played by women in struggles for social transformation has scarcely been appreciated, and with the sense of defeat that hangs over the revolutionary project, stands to be further forgotten. That is why the publication of Women and Revolution is both welcome and necessary – on intellectual and scholarly grounds, but also because these are stories which have to be told if we are to resume the march toward a better world. Joel Kovel, Bard College

After the Second World War, Vancouver emerged as a hotbed of striptease talent. In Burlesque West,the first critical history of this notorious striptease scene, Becki Ross delves into the erotic entertainment industry at the northern end of the dancers' west coast tour - the North-South route from Los Angeles to Vancouver that provided rotating work for dancers and variety for club clientele. Drawing on extensive archival materials and fifty first-person accounts of former dancers, strip-club owners, booking agents, choreographers, and musicians, Ross reveals stories that are deeply flavoured with an era before "striptease fell from grace because the world stopped dreaming," in the words of ex-dancer Lindalee Tracey. Though jobs in this particular industry are often perceived as having little in common with other sorts of work, retired dancers' accounts resonate surprisingly with those of contemporary service workers, including perceptions of unionization and workplace benefits and hazards. Ross also traces the sanitization and subsequent integration of striptease style and neo-burlesque trends into mass culture, examining continuity and change to ultimately demonstrate that Vancouver's glitzy nightclub scene, often condemned as a quasi-legal strain of urban blight, in fact greased the economic engine of the post-war city. Provocative and challenging, Burlesque West combines the economic, the social, the sexual, and the personal, and is sure to intellectually tantalize.

Being a sex worker isn’t something to write home about for most women (and men) in the $12 billion-a-year sex industry. Prostitutes, strippers, and adult film stars put themselves, and what they do for a living, out on the street, stage, and TV screen every day, but they often keep their working lives hidden from friends, family, and other employers. They do this because sex work is widely considered illegal, unhealthy, and immoral. Edited by Annie Oakley, Working Sex, New Voices from a Changing Industry features stories and contributions from sex workers—strippers, prostitutes, domes, film stars, phone sex operators, and internet models—who are speaking out. This provocative anthology showcases voices from a vibrant community intent on unmasking the jobs they do with dignity and pride. Contributors tackling issues of class, gender, race, labor, and sexuality with blazing insight and critical observations include Michelle Tea, Stephen Elliot, Nomy Lamm, Ana Voog, Vaginal Davis, and Mirha-Soleil Ross.

An in-depth portrait of Thailand’s billion-dollar sex industry Thailand is known internationally as a popular sex tourism destination. Yet, despite its size and reputation, remarkably little research has focused on the country’s sex industry over the past two decades. Based on original ethnographic data and other sources, Sex Tourism in Thailand is an expansive yet nuanced study of diverse sex markets and their moral economies. Ronald Weitzer shows that although some of the central pillars of Thailand’s sex industry remain unaltered over the past four decades, in other respects there has been a profound transformation. In the sector oriented toward foreign visitors, the number of sex businesses and independent operators has grown numerically and geographically; customers are increasingly diverse in race and nationality; paid sexual encounters are no longer confined to young Thai women and older white men; transgender women comprise a significant share of the workforce; and technological advances give participants more autonomy than ever before. Sex Tourism in Thailand explores these developments in conjunction with related structural and experiential dimensions in an illuminating account of sexual commerce in Southeast Asia.