By Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne
Since the publication of Rachael Hills’s article “Who’s Afraid of Melinda Tankard Reist” (and see her reflections two weeks later) at least ten on-line and print media articles have joined in a public dissection and commentary along the lines of, “she’s a conservative religious fundamentalist” and “she’s pro-life and can’t be a feminist.”
The subliminal context of the attempts to bring Melinda Tankard Reist to her knees and destroy her work is of course the elephant in the room: if her considerable impact on educating the public about the harms of the sex industry could be reduced, the pornography and prostitution promoters and profiteers would rejoice.
As her publishers at Spinifex Press, Australia’s only feminist publishing house (and secular), we take issue with these portrayals of Melinda Tankard Reist. It is easy to try to dismiss someone by smacking on a “fundamentalist” (whether Christian or Muslim, Hindu or Jewish) label and thereby dismiss the arguments that a person makes. What is less easy, but more ethical and intellectually rigorous, is to examine Tankard Reist’s views – which are shared by many feminists and other advocates for social justice and human rights – and to see what the factual arguments for those views are. Read more>
3 Responses
I have been a feminist since early high school. It defines me and the work I do in the field of sexual violence. I have known and worked with MTR for several years now and I have a profound respect for her tireless effort to counter and confront the core misogynist issues underpinning the “sex industry”. It comes as no suprise that she is experiencing a vitriolic backlash – the sex industry is one of the three biggest global money makers, up there with the drugs trade and armaments….there are going to be some powerful forces at play. And we see it so clearly with the pure and blatant misogyny used by many of her attackers and the misrepresentation of her beliefs in various media reports. On a political level she needs to be ” taken down” . We must fight to make sure this doesn’t happen. She is a ridiculously brave and wonderful advocate for the sexual freedom of women and girls and by extension boys and men.
I am about as pro- choice feminist as you can get! But I think we need to speak openly and frankly about all of the issues we face as women and we must be able to tolerate differences, divergence and down right disagreements and still work together against sexual violence and exploitation. In my early twenties I had 3 abortions and I am grateful in the extreme for being able to access these services. But I will also say that all three abortions were the result of a collusion between myself and the three men involved to put their sexual gratification and pleasure over my own basic health and wellbeing. And all three were sad and degrading and felt awful. I defend to the death my right to have them but I agree that abortion is no solution to the incredible disregard for womens bodies, health and wellbeing epitomized by my personal experience.
Keep up the extraordinary work Melinda.
The critical point here is to distinguish between MTR’s pro-life stance and that of various American pro-life groups. The problem with the American version is that they actually mean anti abortion (criminalizing abortion and making US overseas aid dependent on not making abortion available). As long as MTR is simply going around proving information about some of the negative potential consequences of abortion, it’s hard to see why the more liberal / libertarian feminists would have a problem. The minute she starts advocating legislative interference (as advocated by American pro-life activists) all feminists would be right to object.