Just Futures Collaborative

"The anti-gender feminist focus on sex-segregated spaces as a solution to violence in prisons is misguided. Prisons are unsafe spaces for all their inhabitants, not just cisgender women. To create real safety, we must move beyond simplistic binary narratives about gender and instead focus on addressing the root causes. Carceral systems are built and maintained on logics of violence and power inequality. Without fundamentally challenging the way violence is embedded in these systems at a foundational level, we won’t achieve any meaningful or lasting change in prison conditions." Read our new article: "Safe" Prisons? Challenging Violence Narratives and Anti-Gender Feminist Agendas https://lnkd.in/ePNpZ4UT

"Trans women are rarely the source of violence in prisons. Rather, evidence from around the world shows that they are its frequent targets. Anti-gender feminists’ fixation on biological determinism and gender essentialism distracts from the broader, more urgent issue of systemic violence within prison systems, exacerbated by other axes of discrimination and violence. Anti-trans campaigning is deeply damaging to the gender justice agenda, especially when done in alliance with powerful, unjust systems." Read our new article: "Safe" Prisons? Challenging Violence Narratives and Anti-Gender Feminist Agendas https://lnkd.in/ePNpZ4UT

Read our new article about how anti-gender feminists are weaponizing false narratives about women's safety and carceral settings to promote an anti-trans, pro-criminalization agenda. "Anti-trans rhetoric has increasingly infiltrated legal, policy, and public debates, becoming a powerful narrative trend and a set of legal proscriptions, including within feminist movements. At Just Futures Collaborative, we have observed that some feminists align with powerful actors and carceral institutions to push harmful agendas against trans and gender-diverse communities (among others). The campaigns by self-named “gender critical” feminists sometimes weaponize narratives of violence and women’s safety to vilify and punish those already pushed to the margins by the state and by dominant social groups, with a particular focus on trans women" https://lnkd.in/ePNpZ4UT

Download and read our new knowledge product, "'Safe' Prisons? Challenging Violence Narratives and Anti-Gender Feminist Agendas". Our article pushes back against the systematic campaign by anti-gender feminists to weaponize narratives about women’s safety and spread disinformation about prison settings to push a carceral agenda, and endanger the lives of trans, gender-diverse and non-conforming persons. They do so in alliance with powerful, unjust systems and actors, and cannot be relied on to advance a meaningful agenda of safety and rights for all. If you want to get your hands on the printed publication (small and easy to carry!), find us at the 15th AWID Forum! https://lnkd.in/ePNpZ4UT

Just Futures Collaborative Steering Committee member Alice (Ali) Miller is an author of the article "The (mis)use of evidence in contested rights: Commentary on the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls’ report on “prostitution and violence". She comments on how hard and long feminist and/or queer and other activists who represent the concerns of marginalized communities worked to build the evidence base which has resulted in major shifts in the human rights system - "This has been a central feminist project...all of us understood that producing the evidence of the kinds of harms, that frameworks, both formal and informal laws and the practices of state and non-state actors produced, was essential to the validity of our claims that the human rights system should look at us." Miller points to the fact that a core part of "this mandate" has been building not just the case that the state is responsible for violence carried out by state actors, but in "building up the notion that the state is accountable for non-state actors" as well. Miller shares the history of how feminist activists and scholars did the work to build up the evidence for this advocacy through years of rigorous documentation and research, done through numerous methods and by involving those across disciplines. Miller notes that the SR's report on "Prostitution and violence against women" is a kind of "epistemic violence" as it not only disregards and misuses evidence, but "undermines the capacity of the legal system to respond to harm." Read the article in full here: https://lnkd.in/eNzV7c-t Listen to the conversation here: https://lnkd.in/deS5aHyz

Did you know that almost none of the evidence or policy recommendations provided by numerous sex workers' rights groups towards the report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women on "Prostitution and violence against women" made it into the SR's report? When sex workers' submissions were cited - they were cited out of context, and/or misrepresented. Instead, according to Jules Kim, who sits on our Advisory Committee and is at present the Global Coordinator of Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP), the report presented "a lot sensationalized and highly graphic depictions of abuse, what we refer to as pity porn, and absolutely no evidence to support any of those claims." The authors of the article titled "The (mis)use of evidence in contested rights: Commentary on the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls’ report on 'prostitution and violence'", note that: "The SRVAW received many submissions by sex workers, feminist, human rights and public health organisations, activists and academics who used their materials to elaborate their position on the harms of criminalisation and argue for full decriminalisation. Many of these submissions provided analyses of various forms of abuse in the sex sector as a product of criminalisation of the sex sector. However, the SRVAW used these submissions in support of her position of client criminalisation, in direct opposition to what these submissions call for, without acknowledgement of their positions." Read the article in full here: https://lnkd.in/eNzV7c-t Listen to the conversation, convened by Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, and facilitated by Susana Fried (Co-director: Knowledge, Learning and Narratives at Just Futures Collaborative) here: https://lnkd.in/deS5aHyz

Just Futures Collaborative Co-founder and Co-director: Knowledge, Learning and Narratives, Susana Fried, facilitated an insightful conversation last Wednesday, about the "The (mis)use of evidence in contested rights: Commentary on the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls’ report on “prostitution and violence". The webinar - convened by the amazing team at Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters - was further deepening a conversation begun by the article co-authored on this subject by numerous experts, including our own Susana Fried and our Steering Committee member Alice (Ali) Miller! The conversation also included incisive remarks by Just Futures Collaborative's Advisory Committee member Jules Kim - Global Coordinator at Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP). Jules described the alarming ways in which sex workers' voices, experiences and expertise had been systematically ignored by the SR, how sex workers had barely been consulted, their submissions cited misleadingly or not at all, and how "sex workers voices are not reflected" at all in the end product. Jules clearly described the process, which, from the very articulation of the call for submissions (for example, the framing and the articulation of sex work as an "inherent form of violence") made clear that sex workers' submissions were not welcome (the SR's report was framed as being on "Prostitution and violence against women"). Jules noted that despite several such attempts made to exclude sex workers - including by inviting only very few sex workers to the preliminary consultations ahead of the report - sex worker-led groups mobilized to make numerous submissions which made an evidence-based case for the decriminalization of all aspects of sex work. Take a listen: https://lnkd.in/deS5aHyz Read the article here: https://lnkd.in/eNzV7c-t (In the image below: Jules Kim, Global Coordination of NSWP stands holding a red umbrella)

If you missed the webinar yesterday, here’s the podcast! https://lnkd.in/gCcEMjWs Joyce Hamilton Nadia van der Linde Count Me In! (CMI!) Global Network of Sex Work Projects (NSWP) International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) Alice (Ali) Miller CREA Terry McGovern Cynthia R. Sibongile Ndashe Karin Santi Luisa Cabal

https://lnkd.in/gnN_C98J

Join us for an Instagram live on November 25th to hear researchers, Alejandra Sardá-Chandiramani and Lucía Bonilla talk about the trends and effects of rising fascist fundamentalism across regions, the actors involved and new perspectives and strategies for resistance. This discussion will be preceded by Noor’s report titled, “In the Shadows of Hate: Trends and Strategies of Fascist Fundamentalisms Across Regions” - launching TOMORROW! Watch this space for more information and mark your calendars for Nov 25th at 9AM (EST) to hear more about this latest report from our fantastic researchers and Noor’s organising team. Join the conversation here: https://lnkd.in/gwcy8jF9