Alison Phipps | Newcastle University (original) (raw)

Books by Alison Phipps

The Me Too movement, started by Black feminist Tarana Burke in 2006, went viral as a hashtag elev... more The Me Too movement, started by Black feminist Tarana Burke in 2006, went viral as a hashtag eleven years later after a tweet by white actor Alyssa Milano. Mainstream movements like #MeToo have often built on and co-opted the work of women of colour, while refusing to learn from them or centre their concerns. Far too often, the message is not 'Me, Too' but 'Me, Not You'. Alison Phipps argues that this is not just a lack of solidarity. Privileged white women also sacrifice more marginalised people to achieve their aims, or even define them as enemies when they get in the way.

Me, not you argues that the mainstream movement against sexual violence expresses a political whiteness that both reflects its demographics and limits its revolutionary potential. Privileged white women use their traumatic experiences to create media outrage, while relying on state power and bureaucracy to purge 'bad men' from elite institutions with little concern for where they might appear next. In their attacks on sex workers and trans people, the more reactionary branches of this feminist movement play into the hands of the resurgent far-right.

The body is a site of impassioned, fraught and complex debate in the West today. In one political... more The body is a site of impassioned, fraught and complex debate in the West today. In one political moment, left-wingers, academics and feminists have defended powerful men accused of sex crimes, positioned topless pictures in the tabloids as empowering, and opposed them for sexualizing breasts and undermining their natural function. At the same time they have been criticized by extreme-right groups for ignoring honour killings and other culture-based forms of violence against women. How can we make sense of this varied terrain?

In this important and challenging new book, Alison Phipps constructs a political sociology of womens bodies around key debates: sexual violence, gender and Islam, sex work and motherhood. Her analysis uncovers dubious rhetorics and paradoxical allegiances, and contextualizes these within the powerful coalition of neoliberal and neoconservative frameworks. She explores how feminism can be caricatured and vilified at both ends of the political spectrum, arguing that Western feminisms are now faced with complex problems of positioning in a world where gender often comes second to other political priorities.

This book provides a welcome investigation into Western politics around womens bodies, and will be particularly useful to scholars and upper-level students of sociology, political science, gender studies and cultural studies, as well as to anyone interested in how bodies become politicized.

Papers by Alison Phipps

Sociological Research Online

What is the role of the community in tackling gender-based violence (GBV)? Could communities succ... more What is the role of the community in tackling gender-based violence (GBV)? Could communities succeed in ways that states have failed? What approaches could make this possible? This article presents a theoretical discussion of Community Power, a recently codified and influential paradigm in Britain that focuses on 'handing power' to communities to deal with local issues. We are particularly interested in its potential to tackle GBV, a persistent issue with many social determinants relevant to Community Power. Our refractive analysis works on two levels: (1) we explore the possibilities of Community Power in relation to GBV; and (2) we use GBV as a lens on Community Power to illuminate its broader strengths and weaknesses. In doing this, we call for a deeper engagement with the terms 'community' and 'power', which are under-theorised and flattened in the paradigm of Community Power. Applying intersectional theory to this task, we find that Community Power initiatives risk exacerbating the dynamics that underpin GBV. We make suggestions for creating a more GBV-sensitive approach to Community Power, which might also help to enhance this mode of practice in the round.

Feminist Theory, 2024

A 'rape crisis' has been identified in universities in the Anglophone North, and responses usuall... more A 'rape crisis' has been identified in universities in the Anglophone North, and responses usually take the form of institutional discipline and governance despite well-established assessments of the failings of both carceral and procedural approaches. In these responses, institutional reputation and risk management overdetermines, elevates, and captures particular types of white feminist activism. This paper theorises these dynamics, using precarity as a lens on the relations within which campus sexual violence is addressed. I trace the material connections between sexual violence and precarious labour, and the intersecting narratives of crisis focused on both issues in contemporary higher education, which reflect 'genres of crisis' in the wider politicocultural sphere (Berlant, 2011: 26). In this context, persistent attachments to discipline and governance within the campus sexual violence movement can be theorised at least partly as a political flight from vulnerability, a 'holding on' to whatever one can find, that is ripe for exploitation by liability-focused institutional agendas. Such procedural enactments of security are possible because bureaucracy is the institutional 'water in which we swim' (Graeber 2015: xii), which creates a strong impetus to reduce politics to paperwork relations. This is especially manifest in risk-averse and compliance-driven 'safeguarding' modalities, securitarian regimes (Butler in Lorey, 2015: 8) that serve mainly to interpellate the dangerous Other and safeguard the institution. Following Butler (2004), I argue for the cultivation of more susceptible relations which are difficult to achieve within disembodied bureaucratic codes and which require a retreat from both narratives of crisis and procedural attempts at calm.

Gender and Education, 2021

This paper reflects on the first five years of the Changing University Cultures (CHUCL) collectiv... more This paper reflects on the first five years of the Changing University Cultures (CHUCL) collective, which conducted equality and diversity projects in four English universities between 2015 and 2020. We explore how CHUCL has been used in the service of institutional polishing (Ahmed, S. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Duke University Press, 143) and airbrushing (Phipps, A. 2020b. "Reckoning Up: Sexual Harassment and Violence in the Neoliberal University." Gender & Education 32 (2), 230-233), how our reports have become non-performatives (Ahmed, S. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Duke University Press, 90), and how our findings have been weaponised in the service of institutional interests. We are two of three white middle-class women who constitute the CHUCL collective; we situate this retrospective within critical reflections on our positionality and an abolitionist theorisation of the institution. We conclude that we have often been the master's tools, and while we join the work of imagining alternatives, we must build capacity for survival within the master's house.

European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2020

Using #MeToo as a starting point, this paper argues that the cultural power of mainstream white f... more Using #MeToo as a starting point, this paper argues that the cultural power of mainstream white feminism partly derives from the cultural power of white tears. This in turn depends on the dehumanisation of people of colour, who were constructed in colonial ‘race science’ as incapable of complex feeling (Schuller 2018). Colonialism also created a circuit between bourgeois white women’s tears and white men’s rage, often activated by allegations of rape, which operated in the service of economic extraction and exploitation. This circuit endures, abetting the criminal punishment system and the weaponisation of ‘women’s safety’ by the various border regimes of the right. It has especially been utilised by reactionary forms of feminism, which set themselves against sex workers and trans people. Such feminisms exemplify what I call ‘political whiteness’, which centres assertions of victimhood: through these, womanhood (and personhood) is claimed to the exclusion of the enemy. Through legitimating criminal punishment and border policing and dehumanising marginalised Others, claims to victimhood in mainstream feminism often end up strengthening the intersecting violence of racial capitalism and heteropatriarchy.

Gender and Education, 2020

This paper situates sexual harassment and violence in the neoliberal university. Using data from ... more This paper situates sexual harassment and violence in the neoliberal university. Using data from a ‘composite ethnography’ representing twelve years of research, I argue that institutional inaction on these issues reflects how they are ‘reckoned up’ in the context of gender and other structures. The impact of disclosure is projected in market
terms: this produces institutional airbrushing which protects both the institution and those (usually privileged men) whose welfare is bound up with its success. Staff and students are differentiated by power/value relations, which interact with gender and intersecting categories. Survivors are often left with few alternatives to speaking out in the ‘outrage economy’ of the corporate media: however, this can support institutional airbrushing and bolster punitive technologies. I propose the method of Grounded Action Inquiry, implemented with attention to Lorde’s work on anger, as a parrhesiastic practice of ‘speaking in’ to the neoliberal institution.

Soundings, 2019

This paper engages critically with the feminist fight against sexual violence, especially in rela... more This paper engages critically with the feminist fight against sexual violence, especially in relation to global rightward shifts in which political and cultural narratives around gender are being reshaped and rejuvenated. In the context of a new ‘war on women’ worldwide, #MeToo and similar movements have been key to contemporary political resistance. However, mainstream movements against sexual violence are ill-equipped to address the intersections of patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism which produce sexual violence. Furthermore, the reactionary arms of these movements are gaining increasing power and platforms, dovetailing with the narratives of the far right in their attacks on sex workers and trans people. I argue that to resist an intersectionality of systems, we need what Angela Davis calls an intersectionality of struggles, and that feminism which does not centre the most marginalised is not fit for purpose.

Feminist Formations, 2019

This article explores how whiteness shapes public feminisms around sexual violence, using #MeToo ... more This article explores how whiteness shapes public feminisms around sexual violence, using #MeToo as a case study. Building on the work of Daniel Martinez HoSang (2010), Gurminder Bhambra (2017), and others, I theorize political whiteness as an orientation to/mode of politics that employs both symbolic tropes of woundability and interpersonal performances of fragility (DiAngelo 2011), and invokes state and institutional power to redress personal injury. Furthermore, I argue that the “wounded attachments” (W. Brown 1995) of public sexual violence feminisms are met by an equally wounded whiteness in the right-wing backlash: acknowledging the central role of race exposes continuities between both progressive and reactionary politics dominated by white people. Political whiteness stands in contrast to the alternative politics long articulated by women of color, and Black women in particular. However, these alternatives may encounter different problematics, for instance intersecting with neoliberal notions of resilience, which are also racialized. Challenging political whiteness is therefore not simply a case of including more diverse narratives: this must be done while examining how sexual violence is experienced and politicized in the nexus of patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism, in which gender, race and class intersect with categories such as victims and survivors, woundedness and resilience.

Journal of International Women's Studies, 2017

This paper attempts to sketch a ‘rhetorical economy’ of feminist opposition to the sex industry, ... more This paper attempts to sketch a ‘rhetorical economy’ of feminist opposition to the sex industry, via the case study of debates around Amnesty International’s 2016 policy supporting decriminalisation as the best way to ensure sex workers’ human rights and safety. Drawing on Ahmed’s concept of ‘affective economies’ in which emotions circulate as capital, I explore an emotionally loaded discursive field which is also characterised by specific and calculated rhetorical manoeuvres for political gain. My analysis is situated in what Rentschler and Thrift call the ‘discursive publics’ of contemporary Western feminism, which encompass academic, activist, and public/media discussions. I argue that contemporary feminist opposition to the sex industry is shaped by a ‘sex war’ paradigm which relies on a binary opposition between radical feminist and ‘sex positive’ perspectives. In this framework, sex workers become either helpless victims or privileged promoters of the industry, which leaves little room for discussions of their diverse experiences and their labour rights. As Amnesty’s policy was debated, this allowed opponents of the sex industry to construct sex workers’ rights as ‘men’s rights’, either to purchase sex or to benefit from its sale as third parties or ‘pimps’. These opponents mobilised sex industry ‘survivors’ to dismiss sex worker activists supporting Amnesty’s policy as privileged and unrepresentative, which concealed activists’ experiences of violence and abuse and obscured the fact that decriminalisation is supported by sex workers across the world.

Journal of Gender Studies, 2017

This is the introduction to a Special Issue of Journal of Gender Studies.

Feminist Theory, 2017

There is a siege on universities on both sides of the Atlantic. 1 The far right is targeting acad... more There is a siege on universities on both sides of the Atlantic. 1 The far right is targeting academics and their social justice work, bolstered by a mainstream suspicion of 'experts' and 'elites', and a general rightward political shift. There is a white supremacist, alleged serial sexual harasser and abuser in the White House, a hardline English government and a 'new normal' that involves overt and unrepentant sexism, racism and other forms of discrimination. I have written about the feminist classroom as a 'safe space', and the need to protect our most vulnerable students. I have considered how the neoliberal university suppresses the capacities required to do this. I have theorised an 'institutional economy' of sexual violence, exploring how institutional (non-)responses are shaped by neoliberal rationalities. In this piece, I discuss how the market framings of sexual violence in the university interact with our contemporary political field and growing hostility to progressive work. Universities are key neoliberal institutions. In neoliberal systems, the role of the state is to safeguard the market through deregulation and privatisation: the rhetoric is that the social good will be ensured by the unfettered operation of market forces. We are all expected to maximise our speculative value within multifarious systems of rating and ranking. Universities supply knowledge commodities for 'self-betterment' and economic growth, and to support state relations with capital. Market logics are strongly evident in the metrics academics labour under, the emphasis on higher education as an investment with a return, the ideas of student as consumer and lecturer as commodity. These sit alongside a continuation of older forms of governance: Louise Morley (2012) describes the climate of contemporary HE through a binary of archaism and hyper-modernism. Universities, like neoliberalism itself, deliver the discourse of a meritocratic free market but continue to work in favour of the ruling class. Sexual violence in UK universities made its way on to the agenda after the 2010 National Union of Students (NUS) report Hidden Marks, which found that one in

Feminist Theory, 2016

Whose personal is more political? This article explores the role of experience in contemporary fe... more Whose personal is more political? This article explores the role of experience in contemporary feminist politics, arguing that it operates as a form of capital within abstracted and decontextualised debates which entrench existing power relations. In a neoliberal context in which the personal and emotional is commodified, powerful groups mobilise traumatic narratives to gain political advantage. Through case study analysis this article shows how privileged feminists, speaking for others and sometimes for themselves, use experience to generate emotion and justify particular agendas, silencing critics who are often from more marginalised social positions. The use of the experiential as capital both reflects and perpetuates the neoliberal invisibilisation of structural dynamics: it situates all experiences as equal, and in the process fortifies existing inequalities. This competitive discursive field is polarising, and creates selective empathies through which we tend to discredit others' realities instead of engaging with their politics. However, I am not arguing for a renunciation of the politics of experience: instead, I ask that we resist its commodification and respect varied narratives while situating them in a structural frame.

Gender and Education, 2016

In the context of renewed debates and interest in this area, this paper reframes the theoretical ... more In the context of renewed debates and interest in this area, this paper reframes the theoretical agenda around laddish masculinities in UK higher education, and similar masculinities overseas. These can be contextualised within consumerist neoliberal rationalities, the neoconservative backlash against feminism and other social justice
movements, and the postfeminist belief that women are winning the ‘battle of the sexes’. Contemporary discussions of ‘lad culture’ have rightly centred sexism and men’s violence against women: however, we need a more intersectional analysis. In the UK a key intersecting category is social class, and there is evidence that while working-class articulations of laddism proceed from being dominated within alienating education systems, middle-class and elite versions are a reaction to feeling dominated due to a loss of gender, class and race privilege. These are important differences, and we need to know more about the conditions which shape and produce particular performances of laddism, in interaction with masculinities articulated by other social groups. It is perhaps unhelpful, therefore, to collapse these social positions and identities under the banner of ‘lad culture’, as has been done in the past.

Sexualities, 2015

This article reports on research funded by the National Union of Students, which explored women s... more This article reports on research funded by the National Union of Students, which explored women students' experiences of 'lad culture' through focus groups and interviews. We found that although laddism is only one of various potential masculinities, for our participants it dominated the social and sexual spheres of university life in problematic ways. However, their objections to laddish behaviours did not support contemporary models of 'sexual panic', even while oppugning the more simplistic celebrations of young women's empowerment which have been observed in debates about sexual-ization. We argue that in their ability to reject 'lad culture', our respondents expressed a form of agency which is often invisibilized in sexualization discussions and which could be harnessed to tackle some of the issues we uncovered.

Sociology, 2015

This article links HE neoliberalisation and 'lad cultures', drawing on interviews and focus group... more This article links HE neoliberalisation and 'lad cultures', drawing on interviews and focus groups with women students. We argue that retro-sexist 'laddish' forms of masculine competitiveness and misogyny have been reshaped by neoliberal rationalities to become modes of consumerist sexualised audit. We also suggest that neoliberal frameworks scaffold an individualistic and adversarial culture amongst young people that interacts with perceived threats to men's privilege and intensifies attempts to put women in their place through misogyny and sexual harassment. Furthermore, 'lad cultures', sexism and sexual harassment in higher education may be rendered invisible by institutions to preserve marketability in a neoliberal context. In response, we ask if we might foster dialogue and partnership between feminist and anti-marketisation politics.

Gender and Education, 2012

Sexual and gendered violence in the education sector is a worldwide concern, but in the UK it has... more Sexual and gendered violence in the education sector is a worldwide concern, but in the UK it has been marginalised in research and policy. In this paper we present findings from the National Union of Students’ study Hidden Marks, the first nationwide survey of women students’ experiences of violence. This research established high levels of prevalence, with one in four respondents being subject to unwanted sexual behaviour during their studies. We analyse why the issue of violence against women students has remained low profile in this country, whereas in the USA, where victimisation rates are similar, it has had a high profile since the 1980s and interventions to tackle it have received a significant amount of federal support. We urge UK policymakers, universities, students’ unions and academics to address the problem, and make suggestions about initial actions to take.

Critical Social Policy, 2010

This paper uses the notion of the body to frame an archaeology of sexual violence policy in Engla... more This paper uses the notion of the body to frame an archaeology of sexual violence policy in England and Wales, applying and developing Pillow's ideas. It argues that the dominant construction is of sexual violence as an individualized crime, with the solution being for a survivor to report, and with support often instrumentalized in relation to criminal justice objectives. However, criminal justice proceedings can intensify or create further trauma for sexual violence survivors. Furthermore, in addition to criminalizing the violent body and supporting the victimized one, there is a need for policy to produce alternative types of bodies through preventative interventions. Much sexual violence is situated within (hetero) sexual dynamics constructing a masculine aggressor and a feminine body which eventually yields. Prevention must therefore focus on developing embodied boundaries, and narratives at the margins of policy could underpin such efforts.

Sociology, 2009

Women on low incomes are disproportionately represented among sexual violence survivors, yet femi... more Women on low incomes are disproportionately represented among sexual violence survivors, yet feminist research on this topic has paid very little attention to social class. This article blends recent research on class, gender and sexuality with what we know about sexual violence. It is argued that there is a need to engage with classed distinctions between women in terms of contexts for and experiences of sexual violence, and to look at interactions between pejorative constructions of working-class sexualities and how complainants and defendants are perceived and treated. The
classed division between the sexual and the feminine, drawn via the notion of respectability, is applied to these issues. This piece is intended to catalyse further research and debate, and raises a number of questions for future work on sexual violence and social class.

The Sociological Review, Nov 1, 2007

This paper tracks and attempts to unravel a persistently dominant discursive construction of the ... more This paper tracks and attempts to unravel a persistently dominant discursive construction of the problem of women's under-representation in science, engineering, and technology (SET) education and work: the idea that the interaction of gender stereotyping with the masculine image of SET disciplines and workplaces prevents girls and women from choosing SET subjects and going into SET careers. The discursive framework of 'Women in SET' will be examined at both macro and micro levels as it operates in the field of activist and pedagogic activity that has grown around the issue since the 1970s. A Foucauldian analysis will be applied in order to explore the kinds of subject positions this framework enables and excludes. It will be argued that the 'Women in SET' framework re-inscribes the gendered binaries that have at a symbolic level defined girls/women and SET as mutually exclusive, and as a result practices based on this framework may be counter-productive because their subjectivating effects on girls and women may undermine their broad political aims. This paper tracks and attempts to unravel a persistently dominant discursive construction of the problem of women's under-representation in science, engineering,and technology (SET) education and work:the idea that the interaction of gender stereotyping with the masculine image of SET disciplines and workplaces prevents girls and women from choosing SET subjects and going into SET careers.Feminists writing on this topic (see for example Henwood 1996 and 1998; Hughes, 2001; Volman et al., 2001) have argued that despite the existence of a body of work which engages with the complex co-construction of gender and SET, the issue of women's participation in SET has since the 1970s been positioned in the mainstream within a liberal-feminist politics which leaves the 'black boxes' of gender and SET (Henwood and Miller, 2001) untouched and advocates changing women's dispositions and perceptions in order that they might choose, and fit better into, SET. Since the mid-1970s a field of activist and pedagogic activity around the issue of 'Women in SET' has emerged in the UK, beginning with initiatives focused on improving girls' experiences of, and

Sociological Research Online

Feminist Theory, 2024

Gender and Education, 2021

European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2020

Gender and Education, 2020

Soundings, 2019

Feminist Formations, 2019

Journal of International Women's Studies, 2017

Journal of Gender Studies, 2017

This is the introduction to a Special Issue of Journal of Gender Studies.

Feminist Theory, 2017

Feminist Theory, 2016

Gender and Education, 2016

Sexualities, 2015

Sociology, 2015

Gender and Education, 2012

Critical Social Policy, 2010

Sociology, 2009

The Sociological Review, Nov 1, 2007

Womens Studies International Forum, Mar 1, 2006

This article explores the field of policy, activism, and educational activity around the issue of... more This article explores the field of policy, activism, and educational activity around the issue of women's under-representation in science, engineering, and technology (or Women in SET) which has developed since the 1970s in Europe and North America. Critical, radical, and postmodern feminist ideas are marginal in this field, despite the existence of a body of feminist literature on the interrelationships between gender and SET. Evidence is presented from in-depth interviews with Women in SET activists, most of whom were employed in scientific and technical professions, exploring their reluctance to claim an allegiance with feminism. Bourdieu's concept of habitus is used in an attempt to show how these dispositions are connected to the internal dynamics of the Women in SET field and the wider field of SET. It is argued that the activists' 'feel for the game' incorporates a disposition towards reformism and 'neutrality' that relies in part on a dis-identification with feminism. It is therefore concluded that in addition to other factors such as the wider shift in gender politics and the role of personal experience, the status of feminism within particular social fields may be connected to the structures of these spaces and the relative compatibility of resultant dispositions with a feminist identification. The 'reformist habitus' of Women in SET activists, which is directly connected to the constraints under which they work, is posited as a contributing factor to the lack of progress made on Women in SET issues since the 1970s.

British Journal of Sociology of Education, Jul 1, 2006

Review article: Harris, A. (2004) 'Future girl: young women in the twenty-first century' ... more Review article: Harris, A. (2004) 'Future girl: young women in the twenty-first century' London: Routledge

What's left of Sexual Democracy?, 2023

This is the text of a paper I gave at the conference 'What's Left of Sexual Democracy?' held at N... more This is the text of a paper I gave at the conference 'What's Left of Sexual Democracy?' held at Newcastle University, May 25-27 2023.

This is the text of an online keynote I gave, hosted by the Universidad Autónoma de Baja Californ... more This is the text of an online keynote I gave, hosted by the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California and the Freie Universität Berlin, on February 5th 2020. It distils what I have learned over the past fifteen years of scholarship and activism around sexual harassment and violence in UK universities, for fellow scholars, activists and organisers in other contexts and countries.

This is the text of a keynote speech delivered at the Sexual Harassment in Higher Education confe... more This is the text of a keynote speech delivered at the Sexual Harassment in Higher Education conference at Goldsmiths on December 2nd 2015. Content note for sexually violent language and descriptions of traumatic experiences. I want to talk about markets. Education markets, institutional markets, sexual markets: brought together by similar modes of assessment and audit. University league tables; module evaluation forms; 'sex charts' in student residences. Hierarchies of performance (which are often hierarchies of masculinity) at national, institutional and individual levels. Rate your university. Rate your lecturer. Rate Your Shag. 2013 saw the emergence of a number of Facebook pages under the latter slogan, linked to universities across the country. They o ered a space for students to give sexual liaisons marks out of ten based on any criteria, and were 'liked' by about 20,000 users of the social network in the rst 72 hours. The activity was supposed to be anonymous, but privacy quickly evaporated under the instruction to 'name them, shame them and if you must, praise them.' Name them and shame them. All the pages were rapidly deleted by Facebook, deemed to contravene its policies on bullying and harassment. Unsolicited evaluation is bullying and harassment. Unsolicited evaluation is also very often gendered-women are appraised, men do the appraising. Although students of

June 27th 2015, entitled 'Feminist Futures: critical engagements with the fourth wave'. The full ... more June 27th 2015, entitled 'Feminist Futures: critical engagements with the fourth wave'. The full title of my talk was 'Identity, experience, choice and responsibility: feminism in a neoliberal and neoconservative age.' There are various sources linked throughout-if you are not within a university and therefore unable to access the academic journal articles, send me an Email and I can download them for you. Hello. I'm Alison Phipps and I'm Director of Gender Studies at Sussex. It's great to be here and I'd like to thank Amaleena, Alice and Anna for inviting me to speak today. We canand I'm sure we will-debate whether we're currently witnessing a 'fourth wave' of feminism and what this is, but for now I'd like to say it's fantastic to be part of such a

Sexualisierte Diskriminierung und Gewalt im Hochschulkontext. Erscheinungsformen, Umgang, Präventioon, 2023

This is a book chapter that appears in the forthcoming collection 'Sexualisierte Diskriminierung ... more This is a book chapter that appears in the forthcoming collection 'Sexualisierte Diskriminierung und Gewalt im Hochschulkontext. Erscheinungsformen, Umgang, Präventioon', edited by Heike Pantelmann and Sabine Blackmore (Berlin: Springer). It distils what I have learned over the past fifteen years of scholarship and activism around sexual harassment and violence in UK universities, for fellow scholars, activists and organisers in other contexts and countries.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st Century Feminist Theory, 2019

Gender based violence in university communities: Policy, prevention and educational interventions, Jun 27, 2018

This chapter explores the issue of sexual violence against students in relation to the concept of... more This chapter explores the issue of sexual violence against students in relation to the concept of ‘lad culture’. Adopting a more nuanced approach to the understanding of campus sexual violence and the masculine cultures that frame it, the chapter places such issues within the institutional cultures of neoliberal competitively driven universities. The chapter discusses the results of a 2013 study conducted by the National Union of Students (NUS) in the UK showing that many of the behaviours associated with lad culture, including sport, heavy alcohol consumption, casual sex and sexist/discriminatory ‘banter’, constituted sexual harassment. It theorises sexual violence and laddish masculinities in order to better understand them and develop effective interventions. It also considers how power and privilege, as well as patriarchy, neoliberalism and carceral feminism, intersect in student lad culture.

Violence Against Women

All were drug users between the ages of 19 and 29. Wright dumped their remains in isolated spots ... more All were drug users between the ages of 19 and 29. Wright dumped their remains in isolated spots around the town of Ipswich during a six-and-a-half-week period in 2006 (Malkin 2008). In 2010, PhD student Stephen Griffiths, who termed himself the 'crossbow cannibal', was convicted of the murders of street sex workers Shelley Armitage, Suzanne Blamires and Susan Rushworth, after body parts were found floating in the river Aire. The women, all drug users aged between 31 and 43, had disappeared over a period of just under a year (Carter 2010, Press Association 2010). The £300-an-hour call girl blogger Belle de Jour, revealed in 2009 to be Bristol research scientist Dr Brooke Magnanti, may appear to be working in a different industry to these women. However, in an interview with the Times in 2009, Magnanti described herself as 'very lucky' because she had not experienced violence. 'You need to be aware of your surroundings: if it goes wrong, how can I get out of this room; how can I get into a taxi; how can I brush someone off if I need to?' (Knight, 2009). In 2003 as Belle, she had written about an encounter with a fellow call girl in a public toilet. I turned round to see A crouched on the floor, sobbing. I almost didn't stop. But something about the fragile bow of her heaving shoulders made it impossible to walk away. "Are you okay?" I whispered, kneeling beside her. It all came out in fits and starts-first man trouble, then family problems, then a recent surgery gone wrong, then the reason for the surgery. It turned out A was the victim of a particularly notorious rape several years ago. It was the anniversary of the incident. "That was you?" I whispered. She nodded. "I'm so, so sorry." The incident was reported in some papers as an attack in which the victim escaped, but all the girls knew the truth. No one gets away from a man with a hammer. Although sex work is a multifaceted industry with a diverse workforce, a central feature is the risk, or experience, of violence. Sex workers are a resourceful group, who as individuals and communities have developed a complex set of coping and safety strategies. These do not often bring them into contact with statutory services: but social workers in these and third sector organisations who are aware of the issues and can operate without judgment may be able to offer support.

The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behaviour and Society, Jan 6, 2014

This document offers guidance to training facilitators on how to incorporate intersectionality in... more This document offers guidance to training facilitators on how to incorporate intersectionality into existing trainings on bystander intervention and first response to disclosures of violence. This is not meant as a separate training programme in and of itself, but rather to enhance the presentation of existing trainings. It explains what intersectionality is and suggests how to frame training intersectionally, as well as particular activities facilitators can use. This guidance has been developed as a result of conducting a series of focus groups with key informants: student liberation officers and university staff. These focus groups discussed how differences between individuals and their proximity to and risk of experiencing violence might influence their ability to safely intervene. This guidance will be most helpful when used in conjunction with the intensive versions of training. However, we understand that time constraints may not allow for this. In our focus groups, we learned that when universities abridge trainings, existing sections on intersectionality are often the first to be cut. We would encourage you to try to take an intersectional approach to addressing violence, regardless of the length of the training. What is intersectionality? When we talk about intersectionality, we're talking about how structures in society position people to either be powerful (less likely to face discrimination or oppression) or more vulnerable (more likely to face discrimination or oppression). Power dynamics-such as gender, race, class, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, immigration status, disability, and more are. involved in these power relations. Intersectionality recognises that these are not distinct and separate realms of experience and can intersect with other forms of differentiation such as economic, political, cultural, psychic, subjective and experiential (Brah and Phoenix 2004). Therefore, all of these aspects of lived experience interlock and overlap to create unique lived experiences of oppression and privilege. This occurs on a structural level (for instance, in government policy) and on an interpersonal level (for instance, prejudice against marginalised groups). It does not mean that people with more structural power (e.g. a heterosexual, middle-class, White British man) have never experienced personal hardships, only that these hardships are not related to their social positioning. Intersectionality is a term originally put forward by Kimberlé Crenshaw to explain the overlapping issues experienced by black women. In her 1989 paper 'Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex', Crenshaw cited the case of five black women who sued General Motors for employment discrimination, but lost because the company claimed they did not discriminate by gender (because white women were not discriminated against) or race (because black men were not either). The black women in this case, positioned at the intersections of 'woman' and 'black', were not recognised by the law as a unique group and so were not able to defend their rights. This intersectional discrimination applies in other areas, and to other categories of people, as well.

Report produced for NUS comprising literature review and qualitative research around women&am... more Report produced for NUS comprising literature review and qualitative research around women&amp;#x27;s experiences of &amp;#x27;lad culture&amp;#x27; in UK higher education.

Developed by an independent team and published by UNESCO, the Education for All Global Monitoring... more Developed by an independent team and published by UNESCO, the Education for All Global Monitoring Report is an authoritative reference that aims to inform, influence and sustain genuine commitment towards Education for All.

The biochemist, Apr 1, 2008

Engendered Species Why do women in SET need feminism? is also a cultural and symbolic relationshi... more Engendered Species Why do women in SET need feminism? is also a cultural and symbolic relationship between SET and masculinity: dominant forms of masculinity are associated with rationality, competitiveness, independence, physical strength and technical skill, qualities which are central to the definition of the ideal SET worker and which underpin SET cultures. As a result, many boys and men are attracted to SET, while many girls and women are driven away. Of course, it would be difficult to design an initiative which tackles this complex interaction of factors. However, feminist analysis could provide a set of tools and activists could breathe life into these theories by putting them into practice. Working from these ideas, we could focus on reshaping SET to be more welcoming to women (and also to men who do not fit the masculine model). Women in SET are feminists already: they believe in gender equality and have already proven that women have the ability to perform well in so-called masculine professions. Unfortunately, stereotypes of feminists as aggressive, unreasonable and unfeminine, and the risks of identifying as a feminist within a maledominated profession 1 , stop many of them from admitting it. I will end with that well-known saying; feminism is the radical notion that women are people 8. If we want to achieve gender equality in SET, perhaps it's time to stop believing the stereotypes and come out of the closet.

The very personal issue of how a woman gives birth and feeds her baby is subject to much public d... more The very personal issue of how a woman gives birth and feeds her baby is subject to much public debate. In this week's Scrubbing Up, Alison Phipps, director of gender studies at Sussex University, suggests women are coming under undue pressure to conform to "natural motherhood", deemed the "ultimate feminine achievement". This April, Brazilian authorities ordered 29-year-old Adelir Carmen Lemos de Goés to have a Caesarean section because her baby was breech. She was taken to hospital-under a court order-by police officers and had the operation against her wishes.

This is a short electronic aid/handout with points to be elaborated in class and links to discuss... more This is a short electronic aid/handout with points to be elaborated in class and links to discussion material. Please feel free to download, adapt and use (and share onwards). It's meant especially for fellow feminist scholars who are not experts on Palestine but who want to centre this issue as much as we can in our classrooms.

This is an eight-week syllabus that aims to give postgraduate and upper-undergraduate students an... more This is an eight-week syllabus that aims to give postgraduate and upper-undergraduate students an advanced grounding in the political sociology of gender and violence. Please download, adapt and use as you see fit!

This is a thirteen-week syllabus on different aspects of gender and feminist theory, for upper-un... more This is a thirteen-week syllabus on different aspects of gender and feminist theory, for upper-undergraduate and postgraduate students. It contains key and suggested readings and suggested preparation tasks and seminar activities.

Gender and Education, 2021

Gender and Education, Aug 8, 2021

European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2021

Using #MeToo as a starting point, this paper argues that the cultural power of mainstream white f... more Using #MeToo as a starting point, this paper argues that the cultural power of mainstream white feminism partly derives from the cultural power of white tears. This in turn depends on the dehumanisation of people of colour, who were constructed in colonial ‘race science’ as incapable of complex feeling (Schuller, 2018). Colonialism also created a circuit between bourgeois white women’s tears and white men’s rage, often activated by allegations of rape, which operated in the service of economic extraction and exploitation. This circuit endures, abetting the criminal punishment system and the weaponisation of ‘women’s safety’ by the various border regimes of the right. It has especially been utilised by reactionary forms of feminism, which set themselves against sex workers and trans people. Such feminisms exemplify what I call ‘political whiteness’, which centres assertions of victimhood: through these, womanhood (and personhood) is claimed to the exclusion of the enemy. Through legi...

European Journal of Cultural Studies, Jan 19, 2021

Using #MeToo as a starting point, this paper argues that the cultural power of mainstream white f... more Using #MeToo as a starting point, this paper argues that the cultural power of mainstream white feminism partly derives from the cultural power of white tears. This in turn depends on the dehumanisation of people of colour, who were constructed in colonial 'race science' as incapable of complex feeling (Schuller, 2018). Colonialism also created a circuit between bourgeois white women's tears and white men's rage, often activated by allegations of rape, which operated in the service of economic extraction and exploitation. This circuit endures, abetting the criminal punishment system and the weaponisation of 'women's safety' by the various border regimes of the right. It has especially been utilised by reactionary forms of feminism, which set themselves against sex workers and trans people. Such feminisms exemplify what I call 'political whiteness', which centres assertions of victimhood: through these, womanhood (and personhood) is claimed to the exclusion of the enemy. Through legitimating criminal punishment and border policing and dehumanising marginalised Others, claims to victimhood in mainstream feminism often end up strengthening the intersecting violence of racial capitalism and heteropatriarchy.

Gender and Education, Jun 6, 2018

ABSTRACT This paper situates sexual harassment and violence in the neoliberal university. Using d... more ABSTRACT This paper situates sexual harassment and violence in the neoliberal university. Using data from a ‘composite ethnography’ representing twelve years of research, I argue that institutional inaction on these issues reflects how they are ‘reckoned up’ in the context of gender and other structures. The impact of disclosure is projected in market terms: this produces institutional airbrushing which protects both the institution and those (usually privileged men) whose welfare is bound up with its success. Staff and students are differentiated by power/value relations, which interact with gender and intersecting categories. Survivors are often left with few alternatives to speaking out in the ‘outrage economy’ of the corporate media: however, this can support institutional airbrushing and bolster punitive technologies. I propose the method of Grounded Action Inquiry, implemented with attention to Lorde’s work on anger, as a parrhesiastic practice of ‘speaking in’ to the neoliberal institution.

Feminist Formations, 2019

Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Phipps, Alison (2019) 'Every woman knows a Wei... more Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Phipps, Alison (2019) 'Every woman knows a Weinstein': political whiteness and white woundedness in #MeToo and public feminisms around sexual violence. Feminist Formations, 31 (2). pp. 1-25.

Feminist Formations, 2019

This article explores how whiteness shapes public feminisms around sexual violence, using #MeToo ... more This article explores how whiteness shapes public feminisms around sexual violence, using #MeToo as a case study. Building on the work of Daniel Martinez HoSang (2010), Gurminder Bhambra (2017), and others, I theorize political whiteness as an orientation to/mode of politics that employs both symbolic tropes of woundability and interpersonal performances of fragility (DiAngelo 2011), and invokes state and institutional power to redress personal injury. Furthermore, I argue that the "wounded attachments" (W. Brown 1995) of public sexual violence feminisms are met by an equally wounded whiteness in the right-wing backlash: acknowledging the central role of race exposes continuities between both progressive and reactionary politics dominated by white people. Political whiteness stands in contrast to the alternative politics long articulated by women of color, and Black women in particular. However, these alternatives may encounter different problematics, for instance intersecting with neoliberal notions of resilience, which are also racialized. Challenging political whiteness is therefore not simply a case of including more diverse narratives: this must be done while examining how sexual violence is experienced and politicized in the nexus of patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism, in which gender, race and class intersect with categories such as victims and survivors, woundedness and resilience.

Soundings, 2019

This paper engages critically with the feminist fight against sexual violence, especially in rela... more This paper engages critically with the feminist fight against sexual violence, especially in relation to global rightward shifts in which political and cultural narratives around gender are being reshaped and rejuvenated. In the context of a new 'war on women' worldwide, #MeToo and similar movements have been key to contemporary political resistance. However, mainstream movements against sexual violence are ill-equipped to address the intersections of patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism which produce sexual violence. Furthermore, the reactionary arms of these movements are gaining increasing power and platforms, dovetailing with the narratives of the far right in their attacks on sex workers and trans people. I argue that to resist an intersectionality of systems, we need what Angela Davis calls an intersectionality of struggles, and that feminism which does not centre the most marginalised is not fit for purpose.

Soundings, Apr 1, 2019

This paper engages critically with the feminist fight against sexual violence, especially in rela... more This paper engages critically with the feminist fight against sexual violence, especially in relation to global rightward shifts in which political and cultural narratives around gender are being reshaped and rejuvenated. In the context of a new 'war on women' worldwide, #MeToo and similar movements have been key to contemporary political resistance. However, mainstream movements against sexual violence are ill-equipped to address the intersections of patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism which produce sexual violence. Furthermore, the reactionary arms of these movements are gaining increasing power and platforms, dovetailing with the narratives of the far right in their attacks on sex workers and trans people. I argue that to resist an intersectionality of systems, we need what Angela Davis calls an intersectionality of struggles, and that feminism which does not centre the most marginalised is not fit for purpose.

Feminist Theory, Aug 9, 2017

Journal of international women's studies, 2017

Journal of international women's studies, Sep 1, 2017

This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any ... more This journal and its contents may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution , reselling , loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. ©2017 Journal of International Women's Studies.

Gender and Education, Apr 8, 2016

ABSTRACT In the context of renewed debates and interest in this area, this paper reframes the the... more ABSTRACT In the context of renewed debates and interest in this area, this paper reframes the theoretical agenda around laddish masculinities in UK higher education, and similar masculinities overseas. These can be contextualised within consumerist neoliberal rationalities, the neoconservative backlash against feminism and other social justice movements, and the postfeminist belief that women are winning the ‘battle of the sexes’. Contemporary discussions of ‘lad culture’ have rightly centred sexism and men's violence against women: however, we need a more intersectional analysis. In the UK a key intersecting category is social class, and there is evidence that while working-class articulations of laddism proceed from being dominated within alienating education systems, middle-class and elite versions are a reaction to feeling dominated due to a loss of gender, class and race privilege. These are important differences, and we need to know more about the conditions which shape and produce particular performances of laddism, in interaction with masculinities articulated by other social groups. It is perhaps unhelpful, therefore, to collapse these social positions and identities under the banner of ‘lad culture’, as has been done in the past.

Sociology, Aug 1, 2009

Women on low incomes are disproportionately represented among sexual violence victims, yet femini... more Women on low incomes are disproportionately represented among sexual violence victims, yet feminist research on this topic has paid very little attention to social class. This paper blends recent research on class, gender and sexuality with what we know about sexual violence. It is argued that there is a need to engage with classed distinctions between women in terms of contexts for and experiences of sexual violence, and to look at interactions between pejorative constructions of working class sexualities and how complainants and defendants are perceived and treated. The classed division between the sexual and the feminine, drawn via the notion of respectability, is applied to these issues. This piece is intended to catalyse further research and debate, and raises a number of questions for future work on sexual violence and social class.

Critical Social Policy, Jul 29, 2010

This paper uses the notion of the body to frame an archaeology of sexual violence policy in Engla... more This paper uses the notion of the body to frame an archaeology of sexual violence policy in England and Wales, applying and developing Pillow’s ideas. It argues that the dominant construction is of sexual violence as an individualized crime, with the solution being for a survivor to report, and with support often instrumentalized in relation to criminal justice objectives. However, criminal justice proceedings can intensify or create further trauma for sexual violence survivors. Furthermore, in addition to criminalizing the violent body and supporting the victimized one, there is a need for policy to produce alternative types of bodies through preventative interventions. Much sexual violence is situated within (hetero) sexual dynamics constructing a masculine aggressor and a feminine body which eventually yields. Prevention must therefore focus on developing embodied boundaries, and narratives at the margins of policy could underpin such efforts.

Izzard for the index. I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers who commented on the pr... more Izzard for the index. I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers who commented on the proposal and manuscript so generously and constructively. Any errors that remain are entirely my own. This book is dedicated to all the amazing Black feminists who have spent their time and energy educating white feminists about white feminism, while also developing the rich ideas and politics which are central to my analysis. In grateful recognition of their labour, I am donating all royalties I receive to projects by and/or for Black women, in the UK and overseas, which focus on sexual violence.

Manchester University Press eBooks, Apr 6, 2020

Phipps argues that the mainstream movement against sexual violence embodies a political whiteness... more Phipps argues that the mainstream movement against sexual violence embodies a political whiteness which both reflects its demographics and limits its revolutionary potential.