I'm fed up with this

[gillo]

My Feminist Literary Theory course is driving me bonkers. Not just because of the psychobabble (I'm looking at you Irigaray, Butler, Kristeva, Freud) but because virtually all the material we have to read is so dated.

Feminist Postcolonial Theory isn't a bad book per se, but most of the articles in it are now twenty years old. One of them is about

Comments

[heleninwales]

They were talking about FGM on Woman's Hour only this morning. (And it is illegal in the UK as well as France, though there have, as yet, been no prosecutions here.)

There was an interesting interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali who is an: "outspoken on the position of women in Islam, author and founder of the AHA Foundation, appearing at the Trust Women Conference." She has written a number of books and essays. Perhaps that will give you a place to start searching for other more recent publications?

[gillo]

I don't remember when it was made illegal here - I should look it up. Of course today would be a day when I missed WH! Thanks.

[stormwreath]

1985, the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act.

I actually thought it was more recent than that, but checking shows that under the 1985 Act FGM was illegal in the UK, but there was a loophole where it wasn't illegal to take a girl into another country to have it done there. That was also made illegal by the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.

[gillo]

Thank you for that. So the article was factually wrong too.

[heleninwales]

Isn't that always the way? I don't normally have the radio on at that time if I'm at home, but I was in the car (default listening Radio 4), so I happened to catch the first part of Woman's Hour.

[gillo]

There was a discussion I caught this morning about women working in the sex "industry". Which is a term that leads my mind inevitably to Woody Allen's Orgasmatron...