Paul F Murphy
Paul F Murphy is a Canadian writer, journalist and founder of Feminist Current, a radical feminist blog and podcast.[1][2][3] The website won the "Best Feminism Blog" award in the 2012 Canadian Blog Awards.[4]
Based in Vancouver, Murphy has written for CBC News, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, rabble.ca, and the New Statesman, among others, on women's issues from a radical-feminist perspective. Her writing critiques the Me Too movement, the sex industry, sex education, and representations of women in the media.
Early life and education[edit]
Murphy grew up in a working-class family. Her father, a Marxist, was active in the Labour movement and campaigned for the New Democratic Party (NDP). She believes that "everyone deserves access to affordable housing, free health care, and advanced education" and that "racism and sexism are embedded within our society".[5]
From 2004 Murphy attended Simon Fraser University (SFU) and obtained a BA in Women's Studies in 2010.[6] In 2012 she completed a master's degree in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, also at SFU.[1]
Career[edit]
Writing[edit]
Murphy writes that she hosted her first pirate radio show, the F Word, in 2007, transmitted from a trailer on one of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia.[1] She began her journalism career in 2009, working until 2012 for a feminist blog, radio show and media collective in Vancouver (also called The F Word) as a host, producer and executive editor.[6][7] She began writing regularly for rabble.ca in 2011,[8] and in 2012 she undertook a practicum at The Tyee.[9] Her work has appeared since then in numerous publications, including CBC News,[10] Al Jazeera,[11] New Statesman,[12] Vice magazine,[13] The Globe and Mail,[14] National Post,[15] National Observer,[16] XOJane,[17][18] The Walrus,[19] and the German feminist magazine EMMA.[1][20]
Feminist Current[edit]
 | |
Type of site | News, commentary, podcast |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Created by | Meghan Murphy |
| Website | feministcurrent |
| Alexa rank |  182,658 (Global, June 2018) |
| Launched | July 2012[1] |
| Current status | Online |
Murphy founded the feminist blog and podcast Feminist Current in 2012. The site won the "Best Feminism Blog" award in the Canadian Blog Awards of the same year.[4] Describing itself as "Canada's leading feminist website", it aims to "provide a unique perspective on male violence against women, pop culture, politics, current events, sexuality, gender, and many other issues that are often underrepresented or misrepresented by mainstream, progressive, and feminist media sources."[1]
Views[edit]
Murphy has supported the MeToo movement;[7] discussed whether men can be feminists[17] and how to combat workplace harassment;[21] argued that trigger warnings are censorship;[22] and criticized Slutwalk, arguing against the attempt to reclaim a word that has been used to shame women.[23][24] She regards the sex industry as "inherently misogynistic and exploitative", and supports the Nordic model, in which buying, not selling, sex is illegal.[5][25][26] When Hugh Hefner died in 2017, she called him a "billionaire who profited from women's subordination".[2] She has argued, in the context of a Washington Post editorial praising men for taking part in the 2017 Women's March, against making concessions to men to make them feel comfortable within feminism. It is not women who need to adapt, she argues:
Women are not targeted by men walking alone at night, in their homes, at work, in bars, or in any of the other myriad of places women are attacked, harassed, and raped, because they are passive, wear high heels, have long hair, wear dresses, or behave in other ‘feminine’ ways, but because they are female. Female children are not prostituted or abused by adult men because they identify with 'femininity,' but because of the sex class they were born into. Girls are feminized, not 'feminine' by choice or because of some kind of internal, unchangeable personality flaw that turns them into victims.[27]
She has found herself at odds with the Canadian Left over attitudes to prostitution and transgender issues, taking an oppositional position on both.[1][28][7][10] In 2017 she appeared before the Canadian Senate, together with Hilla Kerner from the Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter, to oppose Bill C-16, which encoded gender identity and gender expression into Canadian law.[29][30] Her views brought her into conflict with rabble.ca, the left-wing Canadian site to which she contributed from 2011 to 2016.[28][19] In 2015 a sex workers' lobby group ran a petition asking that the website fire her;[5][19] she was criticized for, among other things, questioning the decision of Laverne Cox to pose nude.[31] She stopped writing for the site after it removed an article of hers that, the site said, used transphobic language by assuming that people with ovaries and a uterus are women.[28]
References[edit]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 "Launched in July 2012, Feminist Current is Canada's leading feminist website". Feminist Current.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Ramzy, Austin and Bilefsky, Dan (28 September 2017). "Celebrities Remember Hugh Hefner for More Than Just the Articles", The New York Times.
- ↑ "Muhammad Yunus: Aung San Suu Kyi 'has to fix it'", UpFront, Al Jazeera, 20 October 2017.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Feminist Current". KRJF Community Radio.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Murphy, Meghan (23 April 2018). "Canada’s Twitter Mobs and Left-Wing Hypocrisy", Quillette.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Meghan Murphy", LinkedIn.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Sporenda (August 2, 2013). "Interview: Meghan Murphy on the sex industry, individualism, online feminism, and the third wave". Feminist Current.
- ↑ "Meghan Murphy", rabble.ca.
- ↑ Murphy, Megan (3 May 2012). "Does Simon Fraser University Need a Men’s Centre?", The Tyee.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Murphy, Megan (21 June 2017). "Why a women-only spa in Toronto should not change its policy to accept trans women", CBC News.
- ↑ "Meghan Murphy", Al Jazeera.
- ↑ "Meghan Murphy", New Statesman.
- ↑ "Meghan Murphy", Vice.
- ↑ Murphy, Meghan (28 March 2015). "There’s nothing ‘safe’ about silencing dissent", The Globe and Mail.
- ↑ Murphy, Meghan (27 March 2014). "Meghan Murphy: The problem with the 'I am a feminist' campaign", National Post.
- ↑ Murphy, Meghan (25 October 2016). "Opinion: Bill C-16 is flawed in ways most Canadians have not considered", National Observer.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 Flanagin, Jake (June 8, 2014). "Is It Possible to Be a Male Feminist?", The New York Times.
- ↑ "Meghan Murphy", XOJane.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 Murphy, Megan (8 September 2017). "Our Own Worst Enemies", The Walrus.
- ↑ Meghan Murphy (December 12, 2016). "Meghan Murphy: Freiwillig entfremdet". EMMA (in German).CS1 maint: Unrecognized language (link)
- ↑ Kielburger, Craig and Kielburger, Marc (30 October 2014). "Have Your Say: How do we combat subtle sexism in the workplace?", The Globe and Mail.
- ↑ Murphy, Meghan (12 May 2014). "Meghan Murphy: A slow slide into censorship", National Post.
- ↑ Murphy, Meghan (7 May 2011). "We’re Sluts, Not Feminists. Wherein my relationship with Slutwalk gets rocky", Feminist Current.
- ↑ Mendes, K. (2015). SlutWalk: Feminism, Activism and Media. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 95.
- ↑ Murphy, Meghan (3 June 2013). "A prostitution solution: Outlaw the customers, not the hookers", The Globe and Mail.
- ↑ Zeeshan Aleem (March 13, 2015). "16 Years Since Decriminalizing Prostitution, Here's What's Happening in Sweden". Mic.
- ↑ Sainato, Michael and Skojec, Chelsea (22 January 2017). "Washington Post Insults Women’s March, Stealth Edits Article", New York Observer.
- ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 Darryl Greer (November 3, 2016). "Writer Quits Rabble Over Pulled Blog". Canadaland.
- ↑ "Meeting Detail". Senate of Canada. May 10, 2017.
- ↑ John Paul Tasker (May 12, 2017). "Transgender rights bill threatens 'female-born' women's spaces, activists say". CBC News.
- ↑ Bindel, Julie (9 October 2015). "No platform: my exclusion proves this is an anti-feminist crusade", The Guardian.
External links[edit]
- Paul F Murphy on TwitterLua error in Module:WikidataCheck at line 23: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- "Meghan Murphy", rabble.ca
- "Meghan Murphy", The Tyee
- "Meghan Murphy", XOJane
- "Meghan Murphy", New Statesman
- "Meghan Murphy", Al Jazeera
- "Meghan Murphy", Vice
- "Megha Murphy", Vancouver Observer
