What’s Current: Apparel company, Lands’ End, cancels donations to Fund for Women’s Equality after religious critics take issue with Gloria Steinem

Photograph: Paul Zimmerman/Wire Images
Photograph: Paul Zimmerman/Wire Images

Lands’ End apologizes for featuring an interview with Gloria Steinem and ends its donations to the Fund for Women’s Equality. (Turns out they don’t care about feminism because their primary objective is actually just making money or something.)

Kesha posts an emotional thank-you note, saying, “this is bigger than just me.”

“Worst serial killer in history,” Robert Pickton, who fed prostituted women to pigs, claims that his arrest by Canadian police was actually what was “truly evil” about the situation.

The U.S. government turns a blind eye to policies that fuel sex trafficking.

“It is high time to stop saying ‘boys will be boys’ and recognize that abolishing sex trafficking requires placing the stigma on the purchaser rather than the commodified women and girls they buy.”

Melissa Farley systematically expounds the moral rationalization of prostitution and the denial of its harms:

“Anyone who knows about the daily life of those in prostitution understands that safety in prostitution is a pipe dream. Advocates of legal and decriminalized prostitution understand this but rarely admit it. Still, evidence exists, for example the Sex Workers’ Education and Advocacy Taskforce in South Africa addressed distributed a list of safety tips including the recommendation that while undressing, the prostituting individual should “accidentally” kick a shoe under the bed, and while retrieving it, should check for knives, handcuffs or rope.”

Jonah Mix thoroughly elaborates on the deep contradictions in leftist thought presented by the liberal and progressive support for the legalization of pimping and buying sex:

“Leftist defences of prostitution are awash in unintended implications for other exploitative industries. For example, many on the Left argue that without decriminalization, women in prostitution are unable to claim health benefits and other labor protections. But this is also the case with those who work illegally for less than minimum wage. While the Fair Labor Standards Act is technically designed to allow all employees to request worker’s compensation and overtime pay, under-the-table workers (especially immigrants, young adults, and unskilled labourers) are often unable to claim these benefits as a result of their grey legal position.

In response to this, it could be said that lowering or abolishing the minimum wage would allow these workers to come out from the shadows and claim FLSA protections, much as decriminalizing prostitution is said to do the same. Yet very few Leftists would argue that the abolition of wage laws is an acceptable way to ensure workers’ safety, even if the removal of those wage laws would allow them to claim protections afforded to others.”

Susan Cox

Susan Cox is a feminist writer and academic living in the United States. She teaches in Philosophy.