Academic literature on the topic 'Anti-sexual assault activism'

This historical analysis research project traces the early history of the anti-rape movement within the US by examining one university’s development of a sexual violence resource center and the role of student activism. The time period between the 1970s through the 1990s was selected for this analysis due to the significant development of legislation, research, and activism surrounding sexual violence on college campuses. In order to conduct this historical analysis, primary sources from the university’s Archives Collection were studied that included administrative documents, memos, financial documents, program reports, newspaper clippings, and training and workshop materials. Secondary sources were included to provide context to the topic of sexual violence, research, feminism, and campus culture during this time period. Amidst the university’s varied response and debates that surrounded sexual violence, the students’ persistent advocacy had led to conflict resolution.

This paper examines shifting conceptualizations of sexual harassment, or el-taḥarrush el-ginsy, in Egypt. Through longitudinal data from online Arabic discussion boards and blog sites, as well as insights from interviews and participant observation of anti-sexual harassment organizations, it explores the range of meanings evident in the use of the term taḥarrush. A comparative approach was employed to assess changes in Egyptian discourses with those taking place across the region. Online data was collected using the search terms “taḥarrush ginsy” and “taḥarrush.” Google served as the primary search engine to locate discussion and blog posts from the years 2000-2012. Through this method, 233 unique posts were identified focused on el-taḥarrush el-ginsy. The data showed overwhelming public concern in the region about the molestation and rape of children until 2006. In October 2006, a shift occurred in Egyptian posts, tied to the Eid mob sexual harassment that took place in downtown Cairo. From that point on, taḥarrush in Egypt signified the sexual harassment of women in public space. Prior to the Eid mob sexual harassment event, the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights had begun a campaign to end everyday sexual harassment in the streets, which it called taḥarrush. Following the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, this activism continued with independent initiatives focused on community-based work, such as HarassMap. Throughout this time, the discourse was complicated by the connection of taḥarrush to more violent forms of sexual assault and rape, which was further evident following the Revolution. This connection of taḥarrush with more sexually violent practices aligns with prior meanings of taḥarrush, but it has also contributed to public resistance to the idea that taḥarrush signifies everyday sexual harassment that anti-sexual harassment initiatives seek to establish.

In September 2018, the second wave of #Metooindia resumed in India, opening up conversations on sexual assault. Surprisingly, this did not lead to the inclusion of sexual assault as a key campaign issue in the Indian parliamentary elections in early 2019. This study investigates the underlying role of news media and social media in building an anti-sexual assault agenda in the 2019 Indian Lok Sabha election campaign. It builds on past literature on rational choice decision-making theory, social media activism and rape as a political issue in campaigns. This mixed method study includes the analysis of political manifestos and Facebook posts during the campaign, news articles published in the two most circulated English newspapers in India and interviews with political journalists. The restrained mainstream media coverage of sexual assault and pan-Indian social media platforms helped to limit the issue from becoming a part of the campaign during the elections.

Introduction Fashion has long been associated with resistance movements across Asia and Australia, from the hand-spun cotton Khadi of Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom struggle to the traditional ankle length robe worn by Tibetans in the ‘White Wednesday Movement’ (Singh et al.; Yangzom). There are many reasons why fashion and activism have been interlinked. Fashion can serve as a form of nonverbal communication (Crane), which can convey activists’ grievances and concerns while symbolising solidarity (Doerr). It can provide an avenue to enact individual agency against repressive, authoritarian regimes (Yangzom; Doerr et al.). Fashion can codify a degree of uniformity within groups and thereby signal social identity (Craik), while also providing a means of building community (Barry and Drak). Fashion, therefore, offers activists the opportunity to develop the three characteristics which unite a social or environmental movement: a shared concern about an issue, a sense of social identity, and connections between individuals and groups. But while these fashion functions map onto movement characteristics, it remains unclear whether activists across the world deliberately include fashion into their protest action repertoires. This uncertainty exists partly because of a research and media focus on large scale, mass protests (Lester and Hutchins), where fashion characteristics are immediately visible and amenable to retrospective interpretation. This focus helps explain the rich volume of research examining the manifestation of fashion in past protests, such as the black, red, and yellow colours worn during the 1988 Aboriginal Long March of Freedom, Justice, and Hope (Maynard Dress; Coghlan), and the pink anti-Trump ‘pussyhats’ (Thompson). However, the protest events used to identify these fashion characteristics are a relatively small proportion of actions used by environmental activists (Dalton et al.; Gulliver et al.), which include not only rallies and marches, but also information evenings, letter writing sessions, and eco-activities such as tree plantings. This article aims to respond to Barnard’s (Looking) call for more empirical work on what contemporary cultural groups visually do with what they wear (see also Gerbaudo and Treré) via a content analysis of 36,676 events promoted on Facebook by 728 Australian environmental groups between 2010 and 2019. The article firstly reports findings from an analysis of this dataset to identify how fashion manifests in environmental activism, building on research demonstrating the role of protest-related nonverbal communications, such as protest signage (Bloomfield and Doolin), images (Kim), and icons, slogans, and logos (Goodnow). The article then considers what activists may seek to achieve through incorporating fashion into their action repertoire, and whether this suggests solidarity with activists seeking to effect environmental change across the wider Asian region. Fashion Activism Fashion is created through a particular assemblage of clothes, accessories, and hairstyles (Barry and Drak), which in turn forms a prevailing custom or style of dress (Craik). It is a cultural practice, providing ‘real estate’ (Benda 7) for an individual to express their social roles (Craik) and political identity (Behnke). Some scholars argue that fashion became overtly political during the 1960s and 70s, as social movements politicised appearance (Edwards). This has only increased in relevance with the rise of far right, populist, and authoritarian regimes, whose sub-cultures enact politicised identities through their distinct fashion characteristics (Gaugele and Titton; Gaugele). Fashion can therefore play an important role in protest movements, as “political subjectivities, political authority, political power and discipline are rendered visible, and thereby real, by the way fashion co-establishes them” (Behnke 3). Across the literature scholars have identified two primary avenues by which fashion and activism are connected. The first of these relates to activism targeting the fashion industry. This type of activism is found in both Asia and Australia, and promotes sustainable consumption choices such as buying used goods and transforming existing items (Chung and Yim), as well as highlighting garment worker exploitation within the fashion industry (Khan and Richards). The second avenue is called ‘fashion activism’: the use of fashion to intentionally signal a message seeking to evoke social and/or political change (Thompson). In this conceptualisation, clothing is used to signify a particular message (Crane). An example of this type of fashion activism is the ‘SlutWalk’, a protest where participants deliberately wore outfits described as slutty or revealing as a response to victim-blaming of women who had experienced sexual assault (Thompson). A key element of fashion activism thus appears to be its message intentionality. Clothes are specifically utilised to convey a message, such as a grievance about victim-blaming, which can then be incorporated into design features displayed on t-shirts, pins, and signs both on the runway and in protest events (Titton). However, while this ‘sender/receiver’ model of fashion communication (Barnard, Fashion as) can be compelling for activists, it is complex in practice. A message receiver can never have full knowledge of what message the sender seeks to signify through a particular clothing item, nor can the message sender predict how a receiver will interpret that message. Particular arrangements of clothing only hold communicative power when they are easily interpreted and related to the movement and its message, usually only intelligible to a specific culture or subculture (Goodnow). Even within that subculture it remains problematic to infer a message from a particular style of dress, as demonstrated in examples where dress is used to imply sexual consent; for example, in rape and assault cases (Lennon et al.). Given the challenges of interpreting fashion, do activists appear to use the ‘real estate’ (Benda 7) afforded by it as a protest tool? To investigate this question a pre-existing dataset of 36,676 events was analysed to ascertain if, and how, environmental activism engages with fashion (a detailed methodology is available on the OSF). Across this dataset, event categories, titles, and descriptions were reviewed to collate events connecting environmental activism to fashion. Three categories of events were found and are discussed in the next section: street theatre, sustainable fashion practices, and disruptive protest. Street Theatre Street theatre is a form of entertainment which uses public performance to raise awareness of injustices and build support for collective action (Houston and Pulido). It uses costumes as a vehicle for conveying messages about political issues and for making demands visible, and has been utilised by protesters across Australia and Asia (Roces). Many examples of street theatre were found in the dataset. For example, Extinction Rebellion (XR) consistently promoted street theatre events via sub-groups such as the ‘Red Rebels’ – a dedicated team of volunteers specialising in costumed street theatre – as well as by inviting supporters to participate in open street theatre events, such as in the ‘Halloween Dead Things Disco’. Dressed as spooky skeletons (doot, doot) and ghosts, we'll slide and shimmy down Sydney's streets in a supernatural style, as we bring attention to all the species claimed by the Sixth Mass Extinction. These street theatre events appeared to prioritise spectacle rather than disruption as a means to attract attention to their message. The Cairns and Far North Environment Centre ‘Climate Action Float’, for example, requested that attendees: Wear blue and gold or dress as your favourite reef animal, solar panel, maybe even the sun itself!? Reef & Solar // Blue & Gold is the guiding theme but we want your creativity take it from there. Most groups used street theatre as one of a range of different actions organised across a period of time. However, Climacts, a performance collective which uses ‘spectacle and satire to communicate the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crisis’ (Climacts), utilised this tactic exclusively. Their Climate Guardians collective used distinctive angel costumes to perform at the Climate Conference of Parties 26, and in various places around Australia (see images on their Website). Fig. 1: Costumed protest against Downer EDI's proposed work on the Adani coalmine; Image by John Englart (CC BY-SA 2.0). Sustainable Fashion Practices The second most common type of event which connected fashion with activism were those promoting sustainable fashion practices. While much research has highlighted the role of activism in raising awareness of problems related to the fashion industry (e.g. Hirscher), groups in the dataset were primarily focussed on organising activities where supporters communally created their own fashion items. The most common of these was the ‘crafternoon’, with over 260 separate crafternoon events identified in the dataset. These events brought activists together to create protest-related kit such as banners, signs, and costumes from recycled or repurposed materials, as demonstrated by Hume Climate Action Now’s ‘Crafternoon for Climate’ event: Come along on Sunday arvo for a relaxed arvo making posters and banners for upcoming Hume Climate Action Now events… Bring: Paints, textas, cardboard, fabric – whatever you’ve got lying around. Don’t have anything? That’s cool, just bring yourself. Events highlighting fashion industry problems were less frequent and tended to prioritise sharing of information about the fashion industry rather than promoting protests. For example, Transition Town Vincent held a ‘Slowing Down Fast Fashion – Transition Town Vincent Movie Night’ while the Green Embassy promoted the ‘Eco Fashion Week’. This event, held in 2017, was described as Australia’s only eco-fashion week, and included runway shows, music, and public talks. Other events also focussed on public talks, such as a Conservation Council of ACT event called ‘Green Drinks Canberra October 2017: Summer Edwards on the fashion industry’ and a panel discussion organised by a group called SEE-Change entitled ‘The Sustainable Wardrobe’. Disruptive Protest and T-Shirts Few events in the dataset mentioned elements of fashion outside of street theatre or sustainable fashion practices, with only one organisation explicitly connecting fashion with activism in its event details. This group – Australian Youth Climate Coalition – organised an event called ‘Activism in Fashion: Tote Bags, T-shirts and Poster Painting!’, which asked: How can we consistently be involved in campaigning while life can be so busy? Can we still be loud and get a message across without saying a word? The iconic 21st century activist "t-shirt and tote-bag" combination is hard to miss these days! Unlike street theatre and sustainable fashion practices, fashion appeared to be a consideration for only a small number of disruptive protests promoted by environmental groups in Australia. XR Brisbane sought to organise a fashion parade during the 2019 Rebellion Week, while XR protesters in Melbourne stripped down to underwear for a march through Melbourne city arcades (see also Turbet). Few common fashion elements appeared consistently on individual activists participating in events, and these were limited to accessories, such as ‘Stop Adani’ earrings, or t-shirts sold for fundraising and promotional purposes. Indeed, t-shirts appeared to be the most promoted clothing item in the dataset, continuing a long tradition of their use in protests (e.g. Maynard, Blankets). Easy to create, suitable for displaying both text and imagery, t-shirts sharing anti-coal messages featured predominantly in the Stop Adani campaign, while yellow t-shirts were a common item in Knitting Nanna’s anti-coal seam gas mining protests. Fig. 2: Stop Adani earrings and t-shirts; Image by John Englart (CC BY-SA 2.0). The Role of Fashion in Environmental Activism As these findings demonstrate, fashion appears to be deliberately utilised in environmental activism primarily through street theatre and the promotion of sustainable fashion practices. While fewer examples of fashion in disruptive protest were found and no consistent fashion assemblage was identified, accessories and t-shirts were utilised by many groups. What may activists be seeking to achieve through incorporating fashion via street theatre and sustainable fashion practices? Some scholars have argued that incorporating fashion into protest allows activists to signal political dissent against authoritarian control. For example, Yanzoom noted that by utilising fashion as a means of communication, Tibetan activists were able to embody their political goals despite repression of speech and movement by political powerholders. However, a consistent fashion repertoire across protests in this Australian dataset was not found. The opportunities afforded by protected protest rights in Australia and absence of violent police repression of disruptive protests may be one explanation why distinctive dress such as the masks and black attire of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters did not manifest in the dataset. Other scholars have observed that fashion sub-cultures also developed partly to express anti-establishment politics, such as the punk movement in the 1970s. Radical clothing accessorised by symbols, bright hair colours, body piercings, and heavy-duty books signalled opposition to the dominant political ideology (Craik). However, none of these purposes appeared to play a role in Australian environmental activism either. Instead, it appears that Maynard’s contention that Australian protest fashion barely deviates from everyday dress remains true today. Fashion within the events promoted in this large empirical dataset retained the ‘prevalence of everyday clothing’ (Maynard, Dress 111). The lack of a clearly discernible single protest fashion style within the dataset may be related to the shortcomings of the sender/receiver model of fashion communication. As Barnard (Fashion Statements) argued, fashion is not always used as a vehicle for conveying messages, but also as a platform for constructing and reproducing identity. Indeed, a multiplicity of researchers have noted how fashion acts as a signal of what social groups individuals belong to (see Roach-Higgins and Eicher). Activist groups have a variety of goals, which not only include promoting environmental change but also mobilising more people to join their cause (Gulliver et al., Understanding). Stereotyping can hinder achievement of these goals. It has been demonstrated, for example, that individuals who hold negative stereotypes of ‘typical’ activists are less likely to want to associate with them, and less likely to adopt their behaviours (Bashir et al.). Accordingly, some activist groups have been shown to actively promote dress associated with other identity groups, specifically to challenge cultural constructions of environmental activist stereotypes (see also Roces). For example, Bloomfield and Doolins’s study of the NZ anti-GE group MAdGE (Mothers against Genetic Engineering in Food and the Environment) demonstrated how visual protest artifacts conveyed the protesters’ social identity as mothers and customers rather than environmental activists, claiming an alternative cultural mandate for challenging the authority of science (see also Einwohner et al.). The data suggest that Australian activists are seeking to avoid this stereotype as well. The absence of a consistent fashion promoted within the dataset may reflect awareness of problematic stereotypes that activists may be then deliberately seeking to avoid. Maynard (Dress), for example, has noted how the everyday dress of Australian protesters serves to deflect stereotypical labelling of participants. This strategy is also mirrored by the changing nature of groups within the Australian environmental movement. The event database demonstrates that an increasing number of environmental groups are emerging with names highlighting non-stereotypical environmental identities: groups such as ‘Engineers Declare’ and ‘Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action’. Beyond these identity processes, the frequent use of costumed street theatre protest suggests that activists recognise the value of using fashion as a vehicle for communicating messages, despite the challenges of interpretation described above. Much of the language used to promote street theatre in the Facebook event listings suggests that these costumes were deliberately designed to signify a particular meaning, with individuals encouraged to dress up to be ‘a vehicle for myth and symbol’ (Lavender 11). It may be that costumes are also utilised in protest due to their suitability as an image event, convenient for dissemination by mass media seeking colourful and engaging imagery (Delicath and Deluca; Doerr). Furthermore, costumes, as with text or colours presented on t-shirts, may offer activists an avenue to clearly convey a visual message which is more resistant to stereotyping. This is especially relevant given that fashion can be re-interpreted and misinterpreted by audiences, as well as reframed and reinterpreted by the media (Maynard, Dress). While the prevalence of costumed performance and infrequent mentions of fashion in the dataset may be explained by stereotype avoidance and messaging clarity, sustainable fashion practices were more straightforward in intent. Groups used multiple approaches to educate audiences about sustainable fashion, whether through fostering sustainable fashion practices or raising awareness of fashion industry problems. In this regard, fashion in protest in Australia closely resembles Asian sustainable fashion activism (see e.g. Chon et al. regarding the Singaporean context). In particular, the large number of ‘crafternoons’ suggests their importance as sites of activism and community building. Craftivism – acts such as quilting banners, yarn bombing, and cross stitching feminist slogans – are used by many groups to draw attention to social, political and environmental issues (McGovern and Barnes). This type of ‘creative activism’ (Filippello) has been used to challenge aesthetic and political norms across a variety of contested socio-political landscapes. These activities not only develop activism skills, but also foster community (Barry and Drak). For environmental groups, these community building events can play a critical role in sustaining and supporting ongoing environmental activism (Gulliver et al., Understanding) as well as demonstrating solidarity with workers across Asia experiencing labour injustices linked to the fashion industry (Chung and Yim). Conclusion Studies examining protest fashion demonstrate that clothing provides a canvas for sharing protest messages and identities in both Asia and Australia (Benda; Yangzom; Craik). However, despite the fashion’s utility as communication tool for social and environmental movements, empirical studies of how fashion is used by activists in these contexts remain rare. This analysis demonstrates that Australian environmental activists use fashion in their action repertoire primarily through costumed street theatre performances and promoting sustainable fashion practices. By doing so they may be seeking to use fashion as a means of conveying messages, while avoiding stereotypes that can demobilise supporters and reduce support for their cause. Furthermore, sustainable fashion activism offers opportunities for activists to achieve multiple goals: to subvert the fast fashion industry, to provide participation avenues for new activists, to help build activist communities, and to express solidarity with those experiencing fast fashion-related labour injustices. These findings suggest that the use of fashion in protest actions can move beyond identity messaging to also enact sustainable practices while co-opting and resisting hegemonic ideas of consumerism. By integrating fashion into the vibrant and diverse actions promoted by environmental movements across Australia and Asia, activists can construct and perform identities while fostering the community bonds and networks from which movements demanding environmental change derive their strength. Ethics Approval Statement This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Queensland (2018000963). 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Behnke, Andreas. The International Politics of Fashion: Being Fab in a Dangerous World. Routledge, 2016. Benda, Camille. Dressing the Resistance: The Visual Language of Protest. Chronicle Books, 2021. Bloomfield, Brian P., and Bill Doolin. “Symbolic Communication in Public Protest over Genetic Modification: Visual Rhetoric, Symbolic Excess, and Social Mores.” Science Communication 35.4 (2013): 502–527. Chon, H., et al. “Designing Resilience: Mapping Singapore’s Sustainable Fashion Movements.” Design Culture(s) Conference. La Sapienza University of Rome, 16-19 June 2020. <https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/18742/1/DCs-Designing%20Resilience.pdf>. Chung, Soojin, and Eunhyuk Yim. “Fashion Activism for Sustainability on Social Media.” The Research Journal of the Costume Culture 28.6 (2020): 815–829 Coghlan, Jo. “Dissent Dressing: The Colour and Fabric of Political Rage.” M/C Journal 22.1 (2019). Craik, Jennifer. Fashion: The Key Concepts. Berg Publishers, 2009. Crane, Diana. 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Sphincter I hope my good old asshole holds out 60 years it's been mostly OK Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation survived the altiplano hospital -- a little blood, no polyps, occasionally a small hemorrhoid active, eager, receptive to phallus coke bottle, candle, carrot banana & fingers -- Now AIDS makes it shy, but still eager to serve -- out with the dumps, in with the condom'd orgasmic friend -- still rubbery muscular, unashamed wide open for joy But another 20 years who knows, old folks got troubles everywhere -- necks, prostates, stomachs, joints -- Hope the old hole stays young till death, relax -- March 15, 1986, 1:00 PM, Allen Ginsberg Lucky to the end, Allen Ginsberg (1926-97) achieved his first and final wish. Despite the constipation mentioned occasionally in his later poems, the anus of the grand gay father of the Beats remained relatively healthy until his death while other vital organs failed. Ginsberg, who had also described the erectile misfunction of his penis in mid-to-late career poems, died from a heart attack brought on by liver cancer. While the poet fleshed out references to the male anus in at least fifty of his poems, his "Sphincter" comprises the chronological climax in the development of both his anal and erotic verse. The poem was written just months after the beginning of the global media demonisation of Hollywood star Rock Hudson who was found in late 1985 to be both gay and to have died from AIDS complications. Ginsberg's timely "Sphincter" reflects on the poet's survival as an anally-active gay man through both the pre-AIDS and AIDS eras. While criticism of the (homo)eroticism in Ginsberg's verse ranges from utter denial to near hagiography, overall the significance of his musings on male ani has been avoided. The rather anal-retentive Thomas Merrill claims that, "even sophisticated readers of Ginsberg's poetry are apt to be put off, perhaps bored by, his obsession not only with four-letter words, but with the clinical, strikingly nonerotic descriptions of his homosexuality" (24). For the far less uptight John Tytell, on the other hand, "Ginsberg has always reveled in the divinity of his own sexuality, his homosexuality, adorning his own physical propensities and urging the life of the body on his readers" (245). However, "Sphincter" which is an intensely erotic (albeit anti-Romantic) poem, contains none of the expletives (apart from "asshole") nor divine associations used repeatedly by the poet elsewhere to represent the (homo)eroticised male body, and his anus in particular. Six decades of anal health and recovery aside, Ginsberg packs a suggestive lot into his "Sphincter" with the list of objects wielded during the pre-AIDS period as the means to his erotic end. The term "phallus" -- while suggesting the penis and allo-erotic activity -- may also mean dildoes with certain tactile qualities and anus-fitting shapes and sizes ideal for auto-erotic delight. Indeed, the "coke bottle, candle, carrot/banana & fingers" -- with their smooth to slightly rough texture, stiff to pliable constituency, hard to semi-hard density, and rounded pointedness -- offer more reliable potential for sustained anal stimulation than the occasionally tumescent penis. These objects may answer the decades-old queries in "Iron Horse" (1966): "What can I shove up my ass?" and "Oh if only somebody'd come in &/shove som'in up that ass a mine" (432). The bottle and candle are appropriated from a passage in Ginsberg's signature poem, "Howl" (1955), about the "best [male] minds" (126) of the poet's generation, "who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a/package of cigarettes a candle . . . and ended fainting on the wall with/a vision of ultimate cunt and come..." (128). In his "Sphincter", Ginsberg reminisces about the pleasurable insertion into his anus of such props to heterosexual romance. The coke (rather than beer) bottle signifies the contemporary product probably most commodified along with youthful images of (compulsory) heterosexuality in global mass media advertising. Through sodomy with that iconic item of American capitalist cultural imperialism, the poet's jingle valorises his rectum as one of the most fitting and wonderfully subversive "things" that "go better with coke!" As items usually for oral insertion rather than anal penetration, the carrot and banana (and bottle) here play on a subtle metaphor of "receptive"-anus-as-"active"-mouth. Allusions to the (frequently 'cock-hungry') oral-anal configuration of the anus denatus are more explicit in other Ginsberg poems. In "Journal Night Thoughts" (1961) the poet awaits as "a cock throbs I lie still my/mouth in my ass" (271). Ginsberg asks his sexual partner in "Please Master" (1968) to "make me wriggle my rear to eat up the prick trunk", and describes his anus as his "hairmouth" (494). In "Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass" (1974) he desires a young man's "soft mouth asshole" (613). While containing "phallus" and "fingers", there is no tongue nor other oral referent in the rather clean "Sphincter". By contrast, "Iron Horse" (1966) includes the growly request: "Sweet Prince --/open yr ass to my mouth" (433-4). Ginsberg's Pre-AIDS poems frequently celebrate the joining of the uncondomed penis, anus and body fluids in sensational detail. In "This Form of Life Needs Sex" (1961) "joy" comes to mean the very act of joining male anus with penis: "You can joy man to man but the Sperm/comes back in a trickle at dawn/in a toilet on the 45th floor" (285). "Please Master" (1968) includes the demand, "fuck me more violent ... & throb thru five seconds to spurt out your semen heat over & over" (495). In "Love Comes" (1981) the period of the sex act and whether condoms are used is not stated: "I relaxed my inside/loosed the ring in my hide ... He continued to beat/his meat in my meat" (11). The memorial "'What You Up To?'" (1982) recaptures his most scatological unsafe copulation: "That white boy ... one night in 1946/he fucked me naked in the ass/till I smelled brown excrement/staining his cock" (29). While "Sphincter" marks the chronological peak in the development of Ginsberg's erotic poetry, the unbroken line, "unashamed wide open for joy", comprises the structural and thematic climax within the poem itself. This current of anal-erotic joy traces back to "Howl" (1955) with its passage about those men, "who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists/and screamed with joy" (128). Ginsberg has said that he wrote "joy" here instead of the expected "pain" as a reaction to the "James Dickey film Deliverance where [receptive anal sex] is supposed to be the worst thing in the world" (Young 103). In the inter-male rape scene in the 1972 film version of Dickey's 1970 novel, actions indicate that one man uses his penis to penetrate the anus of another who is held at gunpoint and ordered to squeal like a pig throughout the assault. Prior to this the raped man is taunted with female names. The consensual 'safe' gay anal joy exhibited by Ginsberg's "Sphincter" counters such homo-, gyno- and porcine-phobic violence. While the anal-erotic jouissance in poems that preceded "Sphincter" was overshadowed at times by non-reproductive aims and scatological themes, "Sphincter" delivers the explicit message that consensual protected anus-around-penis eroticism (particularly for actively "receptive" men) creates penultimate emotional and physical pleasure. The "phallus/coke bottle, candle, carrot/banana & fingers" leave any specified penis out of the pre-AIDS picture. By contrast, "Now" as Ginsberg states "[in the mid-Eighties age of] AIDS", at a time when auto-eroticism, digital/dildo stimulation and other penetrations without penis mean the safest anal sex, the poet himself celebrates contact with the safe sex penis -- "the condom'd/orgasmic friend" -- for which he is "unashamed wide open for joy". The preceding phrase, "out with the dumps", refers to the expulsing of two combined types of "dumps". Firstly, the mental depression about the end of skin-to-skin anus-penis sex and secondly, defecated matter which brings not only physical relief but an anus open to penetration. Unlike "Sphincter", later poems do not specify whether sexual encounters are 'safe' or 'unsafe'. In "The Guest" (1992) the question of whether condoms are used is open but the consensual status of the encounter is stressed: "I ask permission, he says 'yes,'/I pull his hips up, hold his breast,/spurt my loves deep in his bum" (78). Other poems such as "Violent Collaborations" (written with Peter Hale, 1992) humorously relish sadomasochistic and coprophilic pleasure: "Fuck me & fist me/in your army enlist me/Poop on me when you're at ease" (92). Again there is no specification that condoms are used nor that there is 'unsafe' contact. With its "shy" but "eager" anus and "condom'd/orgasmic friend", "Sphincter" marks not so much an end to 'unsafe' sex as an end to the specification of 'safe' sex in Ginsberg's poetry. No Ginsberg poem specifically addresses his penis (and/or testicles) in the way that "Sphincter" is devoted to his anus. In his poetry he does not epitomise himself as any libidinous body part other than his anal hole. In "Please Master" (1968) the poet conflates his anus with his selfhood when exclaiming: "touch your cock head to my wrinkled self-hole/... please please master fuck me again" (494-5), and "Please call me ... a wet asshole" (495). In Ginsberg's "Sphincter" moreover, his anus synecdochically represents not only his whole person but a type of gay Everyman. His sphincter is "active" and "receptive", "old" and "young", "shy" and "unashamed", and "rubbery" and "muscular". These antithetical qualities also characterise the male body idealised in gay culture (in reaction to media images of decaying 'plague victims') during the AIDS-era. This body is sexually 'versatile' (as both 'bottom' and 'top'), boyish-looking but sexually mature, introspective but assertively 'out', and physically toned but flexible. The "rubbery muscular" qualities of Ginsberg's anus are focal, because -- apart from the "blood" and "hemorrhoid" which evoke colours and shapes -- "Sphincter" contains no other physical representations of his anal orifice nor any of the myriad hyperbolic metaphorisations found in his earlier visceral verses. Anal-roseate associations appear in "A Methedrine Vision in Hollywood" (1965) and "Hiway Poesy" (1966). In the first there is wind of the floral: "one-eyed sparkle, giant glint, any tiny fart/or rose-whiff before roses were/Thought Impossible" (381). In the second, the anus-as-flower manifests through ambiguous layers. The word "rose" may be read as noun, adjective or verb: "Oh that I were young again and the skin in my anus folds/rose" (386). "Kaddish" (1959) draws on topographical metaphors: "a mortal avalanche, whole mountains of homosexuality, Matter-/horns of Cock, Grand Canyons of Asshole" (214). Manifestations of the anus as a cosmic portal or eye appear in several poems, but not in "Sphincter". Ginsberg draws on Yogic beliefs to cast the anus as the source of the enlightening kundalini in "Iron Horse" (1966): "Muladhara sphincter up thru/mind aura/Sahasrarapadma promise/another universe" (435). In the only reference to the anus in the copious footnotes to his Collected Poems, the editors explain 'Muladhara Sphincter' simplisticly as "anal chakra (one of seven bodily centers of spirit energy in Orient [sic] yoga practice)", while 'Sahasrarapadma' is described in detail as "Seventh chakra, 'thousand-petal lotus' at skulltop" (781). Ginsberg, however, seems to have placed his stress on these first and last chakras more equally or in reverse. In "Scatalogical Observations" (1997) he declares, "The Ass knows more than the mind knows" (85-6). In "Journal Night Thoughts" (1961) the poet's anus comprises a universal 'third eye' through which he comes to 'know' and 'see'. This anus/eye in the formulation of "the eye in the center of the moving/mandala -- the/eye in the hand/the eye in the asshole" (267) is later eroticised as "I prostrate my sphincter with my eyes in/the pillow" (271). As we have seen, Ginsberg's erotic poetry frequently features imagery of the sexual orifice that is beyond any man's individual scope and culturally most proscribed from public view. While many passages in his verse evoke the male anus as a subject worthy of versification and visualisation, Ginsberg's "Sphincter" comprises an ode which literally and literarily presents the poet's anus to the audience as a poetic vision in itself. The succinctly anti-analphobic and anti-homophobic "Sphincter" finely balances critical aspects of the ars poetica. Devoid of signature tropes such as the anus/mouth, anus/I and anus/eye, "Sphincter" with its relative lack of euphemism and clever mix of metonymy and metaphor nonetheless merges antithetical themes to relay a profound spiritual message. The poet's ode to his ageing anus matter-of-factly and humorously revels in memories of auto- and allo-erotic 'phallo-morphous' perversity and celebrates the anal-erotic joy in being 'fucked safely' as a personal and political act. As this millennium closes, we could do worse in our 'anal-retentive' culture than following one of the century's wisest poetic ends: "till death, relax". References Deliverance. Dir. John Boorman. U.S.A.: Warner Bros., 1972. Dickey, James. Deliverance. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1970. Ginsberg, Allen. Collected Poems 1947-1980. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. ---. Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986-1992. London: Penguin, 1994. ---. Death and Fame: Poems 1993-1997. London: Penguin, 1999. ---. White Shroud: Poems 1980-1985. New York: Harper and Row, 1986. Merrill, Thomas F. Allen Ginsberg. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1988. Tytell, John. Naked Angels: The Lives and Literature of the Beat Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976. Young, Allen. "Allen Young Interviews Allen Ginsberg." 1973. Gay Sunshine Interviews. Ed. Winston Leyland. San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1978: 96-128. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Simon-Astley Scholfield. "A Poetic End: Allen Ginsberg's 'Sphincter'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/sphincter.php>. Chicago style: Simon-Astley Scholfield, "A Poetic End: Allen Ginsberg's 'Sphincter'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (199x), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/sphincter.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Simon-Astley Scholfield. (1999) A poetic end: Allen Ginsberg's "Sphincter". M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/sphincter.php> ([your date of access]).

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
From the late 1960s, women in the Australian industrial city of Newcastle, New South Wales (NSW), joined women around the world in agitating for a broader role in all areas of society and Josephine Conway was one of those women. Josephine raised awareness of, and campaigned on, many of the feminist causes of the 1970s and 1980s. She was passionate about women’s healthcare, protested against women’s objectification in the media, and lobbied for legislation that offered legal parity for women. She fought never-ending battles for the right to legal and affordable pregnancy terminations; and campaigned for equal employment opportunities and the provision of childcare services. Josephine supported women’s activism in the peace movement and for women’s ordination; and was involved in the blossoming of feminist spirituality and creativity in Newcastle. Using Josephine’s extensive archives as a lens, supplemented with oral histories from campaign allies, the thesis explores their pathways to feminism and shared activism. It dissects the women’s groups which Josephine joined, and the modes of operation and relationships within them, as well as the actions that were carried out in pursuing their feminist causes. The themes that emerge are, first that Josephine’s role in the women’s movement was that of the ‘committed individual’ posited by Gerda Lerner as necessary for social change. Second, the thesis demonstrates the wide range and value of the macro and micro-actions undertaken by Josephine and her cohorts in mounting and maintaining effective campaigns. Third, this study reveals the web of relationships and the flow of ideas, tactics and artefacts along transnational and national feminist pathways, and between the capital cities and the regions, which were essential for bringing about nationwide change. In doing so it reveals an important regional story which has not previously been included in histories of the Australian women’s movement.

The National Union of Students report Hidden Marks, which found that one in seven female students experience a serious physical or sexual assault during their time at college, impelled a call to arms from many feminist academics that sexual violence at universities must be investigated and challenged. The report from the Universities UK taskforce prompted university campaigns, demanding transformative changes to university culture requiring collaboration from activists, students, and university staff. This chapter draws on semistructured interviews with 10 activists at a collegiate university in England, describing their involvement with anti-lad culture campaigns. Thematic analysis draws out the strengths of, and difficulties in, university activism seeking to challenge cultures of sexual violence. In particular, this chapter discusses students’ strategies for transformation and their reflections on the successes of campaigns that oppose lad culture.

The new understanding of the victim’s psyche in rape fiction is derived from the literature of the anti-rape movement and autobiographical accounts of sexual assault. The rhetoric of this 1970s social movement, particularly the persuasive language of polemical nonfiction and the first-person narration in testimonies and autobiographies, inspired rape fiction. The use of sociopolitical theories and newly discovered facts about sexual assault informed the themes and plots of the first rape novels, and autobiographies and testimonies provided a bridge between the galvanizing rhetoric of social activism and subsequent fiction. The diverse texts that contributed to the emergence of the rape novel—from the transcripts of the consciousness-raising sessions of radical feminists to the memoirs of Maya Angelou and Billie Holiday—highlight the primacy of social movements to this new genre.

Focusing on West’s meetings with South African activist leaders, this chapter explores the timing of truth-telling public intervention and intercultural and interreligious collaboration in order to build antiviolence solidarity. The South African context is introduced by highlighting connections between gender justice and antiracist organizing in their anti-apartheid struggle and their post-apartheid constitutional clauses on gender and sexual orientation equality. Discussions with Muslim and Christian leaders feature communal responses to sexual assault. In Pietermaritzburg, South African public discourse on racism, religion, and sexual assault such as Jacob Zuma’s trial for rape invite relevant comparisons to public debates about United States leaders such as Donald Trump. In Cape Town, discussions of South African Black and Coloured intracommunal racial politics and antiviolence collaboration instigate reflections on collaboration among U.S. activists of color.

This chapter examines sexuality discourse and definitions of obscenity in print media following the Civil War. Editors of illustrated sporting weeklies, such as Frank Leslie (The Days’ Doings) and Richard K. Fox (The National Police Gazette) pushed the boundaries of visual representation. Meanwhile, anti-vice activist Anthony Comstock sought control over what could be seen in print. In pursuing the prosecution of Victoria Woodhull, Tennessee Claflin, Ezra Heywood, and D. M. Bennett, as well as sporting publications, Comstock shifted the focus of visual culture. His success in eliminating images he found shocking distorted the visualization of alleged sexual crimes as primarily the racial assault on white women by men of color. In other words, Comstock helped make the racialized rape/lynching mythos the dominant visual expression of sexual violence.