Holly Lawford-Smith, Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy at the University of Melbourne talks to Writer, Filmmaker and Women's Rights Activist, Vaishnavi Sundar. Vaishnavi's film, ‘But What Was She Wearing?’ was the first feature-length documentary about workplace sexual harassment in India. This is a pre-recorded conversation that is going to be part of the undergraduate course…
Holly Lawford-Smith
Jane Ussher was quoted in an ABC News article about sexual harassment and violence against transwomen saying: "[It's] because they are women, because they are trans, because they are a woman of colour and many of whom were bisexual, queer or lesbian so these different multiple identities put them at high risk of sexual violence".…
In my postdocs and early career work I was interested in theoretical questions about collective action, collective agency, collective responsibility, and collective punishment. I worked on what kinds of groups can be the authors of actions and therefore be responsible for what they do (2015a), how groups come to have obligations and responsibilities (2016e), the…
Himmelreich, Johannes., & Lawford-Smith, Holly. ‘Punishing Groups: When External Justice Takes Priority Over Internal Injustice’, The Monist 102/2 (2019), pp. 134-150.Lawford-Smith, Holly. ‘Are ‘The Affluent’ Responsible for Global Poverty?’ Ethics and Global Politics (Symposium on Christian Barry & Gerhard Øverland’s Responding to Global Poverty) 21/1 (2019), pp. 61-67.Barry, Christian. & Lawford-Smith, Holly. ‘On Satisfying Duties…
The belief that people can't change their sex is "absolutist" and "incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others".That is the ruling just made by a UK employment tribunal judge in the case of a woman denied work over "offensive" tweets. The judge also declared "not worthy of respect in a democratic society"…
Oxford University Press USA decide not to go ahead with a collection of interviews with women philosophers (a sequel to this collection) after its curator, Richard Marshall, refuses to remove Kathleen Stock’s & my interviews from the collection.
Massey University deplatforms the ‘Feminism 2020’ event, organized by Speak Up For Women NZ and at which I am a speaker, under pressure from activists. (The event goes ahead in a new venue).Reported here, Massey’s statement here.
The Queer Political Action Collective organize the protest, speculating wildly as to the content of the talk, and Van Badham tweets this to her 80K followers.Here’s the placard that was sitting outside the building my office is in, for the duration of the protest:
Student activists at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) attempt to have the university cancel my talk, ‘Deplatforming is a feminist issue’ (with Emily Vicendese), for Feminist Forum. I’m sure the irony was lost on them.
The Institute for Art and Ideas (IAI) withdraws an article with contributions from multiple philosophers after the trans activist authors complain about being ‘non-consensually co-platformed’ with gender-critical authors.Details here, with a link to the original piece.IAI later republish the article without the trans activist authors, and publish both their retraction statement and my…
An Equality Australia petition demands that the University of Melbourne deplatform our event ‘The Future of Sex-Based Rights’, a forum to discuss the proposed Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Amendment Bill 2019 (which introduced sex self-identification to VIC). Reported here, here, here, and here.
