Abstract: In the last few years, many countries have introduced (or are proposing to introduce) legislation on ‘conversion therapy’, prohibiting attempts to change or suppress sexual orientation and/or gender identity. This legislation covers ‘aversion therapy’, a form of torture that has already been criminalized in most progressive countries, and ‘talk therapy’, involving things like counselling,…
Holly presents her talk 'Celebrating Exclusion' for the IWD Brisbane Meanjin 2023.
The longer version of a speech I gave on Sunday at Melbourne's first gender-critical Speaker's Corner event, talking about the 2022 Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI) & potential conflicts of interest created by employer participation in the index, with a particular focus on my own (UniMelb).
This is a talk about Sarah Lucia Hoagland's book 'Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value' (1988), which I prepared for an International Women's Day event in Melbourne, Australia in March 2022.ReferencesFrye, Marilyn. ‘Review: A Response to “Lesbian Ethics”’, Hypatia 5/3 (1990), pp. 132-137. Hoagland, Sarah Lucia. Lesbian Ethics: Toward New Value (Palo Alto: Institute…
Holly Lawford-Smith presenting on the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute's 'Issues Paper No. 31', which reviews the empirical literature on conversion therapy.
Holly Lawford-Smith takes on the claim that there's no conflict of interest between gender identity activism and other minority groups, and argues that gender identity activists are engaged in cultural appropriation of a core feminist concept, namely 'gender'.
Associate Professor Holly Lawford-Smith presenting Gender Identity Propaganda at the Coalition for Biological Reality's public event, Gender Identity in Law.[Note: there's a re-recording of my segment here].
This is a re-recording of my talk from the public event 'Gender Identity in Law', held in Hobart, Tasmania on the 26th of February 2022.
Holly Lawford-Smith speaks at the IWD Feminist Fightback seminar on Saturday 6 March 2021, on the topic 'An update on Conversion Therapy Legislation in Australia'.
Holly Lawford-Smith speaks on the topic 'Where have all the lesbians gone?' at the Brisbane IWD Women’s Day rally on 6th March 2021.
A presentation of some of Catharine MacKinnon's ideas from her (1991) paper 'From Practice to Theory, or What is a White Woman Anyway?' She defends the idea that there is such a thing as being treated as a woman, regardless of other identity features, and she talks about what the caricature of 'white woman' as…
In the Women's Human Rights Campaign AU/NZ October Webinar, gender critical feminist philosophers Kathleen Stock (Sussex) and Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne) discuss some hard questions for gender critical feminists.Declaration on Women's Sex-Based Rights
This is my side of a recent debate over the proposition "Gender identity should replace sex in policy". I argued that it should not.
This is a replica of the talk I gave at the Australasian Association of Philosophy conference on the 8th of July 2019. I ask whether women have the right to exclude all male people--regardless of their gender identity--from women-only spaces. I argue that they do.
This video presents the section "Science" from the (2019) paper "Transwomen in elite sport: scientific and ethical considerations", written by Taryn Knox, Lynley C Anderson, and Alison Heather.In the full paper the authors discuss the International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines on transwomen athletes competing in women's sports, and the Canadian Centre for Ethics in…
An introduction to Mary Daly's feminist conceptual engineering project, starting in 1968 and culminating in the 1987 book Webster's First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language.Online access to the Wickedary here.
Kate & Holly talk about whether Andrea Dworkin has been fairly claimed by contemporary trans activism as an example of a radical feminist who thought transwomen were women. They draw on some of the ideas presented in the videos 'Intercourse' and 'Androgyny'.
In Chapter 9 of Andrea Dworkin's book Woman Hating (1974), she talks about androgyny, her vision for a future without sexual subordination.
A discussion of the ideas in the first chapter of Andrea Dworkin's (1987) book Intercourse.
[The text of this video was posted to Medium 2nd September 2020. An edit (adding two sentences) was made 7th September 2020. A further note was added 24th November 2021. Anyone interested in more detail can also consult my book Gender-Critical Feminism (2022)].Abstract. Gender critical feminists are described in popular media outlets as 'anti-trans…
Shulamith Firestone was one of the first radical feminists. This video introduces some of the ideas from her (1970) book The Dialectic of Sex (1970).
Shulamith Firestone was one of the first radical feminists, with four essays in the magazine Notes From The First Year (1968), published by New York Radical Women. In this video ideas from her essay 'On Abortion' are introduced.
Ti-Grace Atkinson was arguably the first radical feminist, and the inventor of the idea of 'political lesbianism'. In this video, her understanding of the idea, from her three most relevant essays, is presented.
