The Center for Women’s Studies at Vanguard University announces the CWS GENDER AND JUSTICE Conference. This conference will take place during March 28-29 at Vanguard University, Costa Mesa, CA. Registration is $69 ($49 if you register by February 20).
The program:
Friday – March 28 2008
12:00 – 2:00 pm Registration
2:00 – 5:00 pm Plenary 1: Justice, Gender and the Media
Jackson Katz www.jacksonkatz.com
A mini-seminar within the conference
5:00 – 6:15 pm Dinner Break
6:15 pm
Plenary 2: Justice, Gender and Domestic Violence
Elizabeth Leonard, author Convicted Survivors
https://www.vanguard.edu/faculty/eleonard/
7:30 pm
Special Screening
“Sin By Silence” Documentary/Olivia Klaus
http://www.sinbysilence.com/
Saturday – March 29 2008
9:00 am
Plenary 3: Justice, Gender and Human Trafficking
Laura J. Lederer, J.D.
Senior Director for Global Projects and executive Director,
Senior Policy Operating Group Office to Monitor and Combat
Trafficking in Persons U.S. Department of State
Anna Cruz
Vanguard Senior
Student Research Presentation
10:30 – 11:30 am Workshop 1
11:30 – 1:00 pm Lunch
1:00 – 2:00 pm Q & A Panel
2:00 – 3:00 pm Workshop 2
3:15- 4:45 pm
Mimi Haddad President, Christians For Biblical Equality
Sheri Benvenuti Director, Center for Women’s Studies
See also:
Testimony in Massachusetts: Porn Confuses Young Men about How to Behave
My name is Jackson Katz, and I’m the founder of a group called Real Men, which is an anti-sexist men’s group. The purpose of our group is to get men to start taking responsibility for the outrageous level of sexism and sexual harassment and sexual violence and all forms of violence against women in society. I’m also a graduate student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education…
I travel around the country and speak to college audiences, both male and female, and mixed audiences, and one thing I find over and over again, in frank discussions, is that pornography is extremely influential in the lives of young boys growing up today, and girls, but specifically I speak to guys. This blizzard of images of women in degrading and humiliating positions, guys just come to think of that as normal.
People on the Left and the Right Share Blame for the Sexual Miseducation of Americans
Jackson Katz: I want to mention a chapter in the book called, “Guilty Pleasures: Pornography, Prostitution, and Stripping”. In this chapter, I look at the ways in which the pornography culture, and the prostitution and stripping industries, if you will, are helping to shape boys’ and men’s attitudes toward women and girls and their sexuality as well as men’s sexuality. This is a national conversation that is long overdue. You asked what my dream was about the book–well, one piece of the dream is that I hope my book helps to catalyze a more thoughtful conversation between men, as well as between women and men, about pornography, prostitution, and stripping. Ideologically, these are enormously influential industries. I think there has been very little thoughtful conversation about them in male culture, and certainly even in the academy. My friends and I are very frustrated by either the lack of or the superficiality of the conversation about them. For example, pornography is by far the most influential form of sex education–or sex (mis)education–in the United States. There is so little quality sex education in the schools in our sex-crazed country. The right has successfully squelched the responsible sex education movement that arose in the seventies. In the void, you have this enormous multi-billion dollar industry that has profit as its motive, not education. The pornography industry is serving as the vehicle for so many boys’ and men’s sexual socialization. And the level of brutality that has been normalized in mainstream pornography, the level of sexist brutality, is just astounding. Many people have not been paying attention, but I think they need to pay attention. It’s very disturbing, I think, for a lot of people to see–with eyes wide open–what boys and men are masturbating to. But I think it needs to happen. Sadly, in recent years many feminists have been leery of going down this road because this issue is seen as divisive, and fraught with both ideological and interpersonal conflict. I think that’s really sad because the industry hasn’t slowed down one bit–in fact, it’s only been accelerating in the last few years.
The Village Voice Earns $80,000/Month from Prostitution, Sex Trafficking and other Adult Ads (explicit language)
On the website of the Phoenix New Times, you’ll find an excellent article on the misery of prostitution. On the same page, however, is a link to 3,828 “adult entertainment” classified ads. These ads leave little to the imagination about what is being sold…
Gloria Steinem at Smith: Cooperation, Not Domination
…there are more slaves in proportion to the world’s population–more people held by force or coercion without benefit from their work–more now than there were in the 1800s. Sex trafficking, labor trafficking, children and adults forced into armies: they all add up to a global human-trafficking industry that is more profitable than the arms trade, and second only to the drug trade. The big difference now from the 1800s is that the United Nations estimates that 80% of those who are enslaved are women and children…