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The primary objective of this thesis is to conduct a comparative analysis of Sweden'slegislation, that criminalizes the purchase of sexual services, with Finland's laws thatdistinguish prostitution from human trafficking and prohibit the purchase of sexual services ifthe customer is aware of or ought to have suspected that the prostitute is a victim of humantrafficking. The study aims to identify and examine the core differences between these laws and how they reflect distinct views on prostitution and women, and the extent to which they are aligned with gender equality. The study employs a liberal sex work perspective which regards prostitution as a form of work that can be separated from the individual's body and aneo-abolitionist perspective that views prostitution, whether voluntary or involuntary, as a harmful and exploitative practice that oppresses women. The study employs a most-similardesign and ideological analysis to address the research questions. The results reveal the legislations' role in promoting gender equality as part of a broader feminist struggle against patriarchal structures. Sweden's law addresses gender inequality by identifying prostitution as a manifestation of male violence against women, while Finland's law targets exploitation insex trafficking, maintaining gender equality by protecting those most vulnerable inprostitution.

The Swedish Sex Purchase Act was unique, when introduced in 1999. While it was legal to demand and collect payment for sexual services it became a crime to respond to such demands or offer payment. It is now part of Sweden’s foreign policy to ‘export’ this law, using gender equality arguments. Several countries have since followed. The law is often portrayed as a triumph of feminism and women’s political struggles. The law is gender neutral however and applies equally to e.g. MSM sex trade (Men who have Sex with Men), a phenomenon that the normal gender equality arguments do not capture. ‘Homosexual prostitution’ was initially argued in the legislative proceedings, to be so different from heterosexual prostitution, that the scientific investigator raised concerns if one-sided criminalisation was considered by legislators. Yet, this is what happened. This study traces exactly how this came to be, analysing legislative documents and debates, focusing on heteronormative reasonings. In the final round of legislation the question had entirely disappeared. MSM sex trade or culture was not even mentioned and can be seen as heteronormative collateral damage.

Using womanist theory as a theoretical framework, this study has analyzed identity formation and self-empowerment. Adichie is considered a feminist writer, but her ideals and ideas are very different from Western ideals and aim to survive and challenge patriarchal culture. In her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Adichie argues for a change in society's attitude toward the oppression of women and children. Adichie articulates a womanist ideology that relates to universal human suffering. This study considers the postcolonial background of the main characters, who confront the hybridity that occurs with identities that encounter a postcolonial culture. The domination of women is the most basic form of female subjugation in postcolonial Nigerian society. This is largely due to the cultural influences of patriarchal culture inherent in African society, which promotes prejudice against women and accepts violence against women and children as normal. Patriarchal violence is analyzed to explain how surveillance and punishment imprison the characters in the novel and isolate them from others. This analysis aims to show that liberation from oppression is only possible through unity with others, courage, and the achievement of dignity. / <p>Slutgiltigt godkännandedatum: 2022-06-28</p>

This essay examines the intersection of Valerie Solanas' radical feminist manifesto, the S.C.U.M. (Society of Cutting Up Men) manifesto, and her attempted assassination of Andy Warhol in 1968, proposing that the latter can be understood as a sophisticated piece of performance art. Solanas' manifesto, penned in 1967, challenged societal norms, advocating for the overthrow of patriarchal structures. Through a lens of performativity theory, which emphasizes the performative nature of language and actions, this essay reinterprets Solanas' actions as deliberate expressions of her feminist beliefs. Tracing Solanas' life, from her early struggles to her involvement in the avant-garde art scene of New York City, highlighting her interactions with Warhol's Factory and her provocative works. Solanas' attempted assassination of Warhol, while initially perceived as a psychotic act, is reframed as a conscious enactment of her manifesto's principles, challenging dominant power dynamics. By reframing the assassination attempt as a form of performance art, this essay sheds new light on Solanas' legacy, emphasizing the transformative potential of art as a tool for social critique and change. / Denna uppsats undersöker skärningspunkten mellan Valerie Solanas radikalfeministiska S.C.U.M. (Society of Cutting Up Men) manifestet, och hennes försök att mörda Andy Warhol 1968. Undersökningen framhåller att det senare kan studeras som ett sofistikerat performanceverk. Solanas manifest utmanade rådande normer och förespråkade avskaffandet av patriarkala strukturer. Genom ett nyttjande av performativitetsteorin, som betonar den performativa naturen av språk och handlingar, omvärderar denna uppsats Solanas handlingar som medvetna uttryck för hennes feministiska övertygelser. Solanas försök att mörda Warhol, som vid sin tid uppfattades som en psykotisk handling, omvärderas i texten som en medveten förkroppsligande av hennes manifestets principer. Att omvärdera mordförsöket som en form av performancekonst, lyser texten ett nytt ljus på Solanas arv och betonar konstens transformerande potential som ett verktyg för social kritik och förändring.

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The My Stealthy Freedom (MSF) movement on social media has garnered over 1 million likes on Facebook and continues to make headlines in major media outlets. The founder Masih Alinejad routinely speaks out against obligatory veiling in the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). This study analyses hijab and the MSF movement from a Marxist feminist perspective, evaluating the emancipatory potential for women. The study attempts to untangle Islam from the discourses around the oppression of women to find the material roots of oppression upon which the discourse has been built. The legislation of women’s clothing and women’s bodies has a long history, with just the hijab having been made compulsory and forbidden three times in Iran within the previous century. Through the use of Multimodal Critical Discourse analysis, photographs and videos from the MSF movement are compared to hijab propaganda by the IRI to identify whether the concern of the MSF movement is limited to obligatory hijab, or if it places within the broader movement for women’s emancipation. The results show that despite the visual emphasis on the hijab, the MSF movement has a broader aim emancipating women as expressed by the activists of the movement.

Drawing upon the opportunity that the Internet and social media provides anyone with internet access to create, consume, publish and produce digital content, this study aims to examine one of the new means of communication. In today’s digital society creating content and communicating across boarders is easier than ever, but actually getting the point across is not – with an evergrowing number of posts, users and sites there is a struggle close the gap between posting a message and actually having it noticed. This study examines memes – normally seen as easily understood jokes – as means of accessible and simplistic communication by qualitatively examining fifteen feminist memes on Twitter. The study aims to see what the memes are conveying in means of social criticism and feminist orientations, their relation to the online feminist discourses and, lastly, explore the memes’ potential role in the political sphere. The theoretical framework firstly explains memes in relation to Henry Jenkins’ participatory culture, Lawrence Lessig’s remix culture and relates memes to the political sphere based on both Limor Shifman’s meme theory and the two theories mentioned above. Secondly, first-, second- and third-wave feminism is introduced along with radical feminism and the feminist concept of sisterhood. Lastly, the social constructivism sets the groundwork for the study’s choice of method; critical discourse analysis. The critical discourse analysis is used in a modified version along with the ‘verbal-visual unity’; a method designed to take the memes structure – the combination of text and images – into account. These methods are used to identify themes, connotations, modality, interdiscursivity, social criticism and the feminist orientation of the memes. The result reveals that there are four main points of social criticism emphasized in the memes; regarding body norms, regarding belittling of women’s opinions and actions, regarding patriarchal structures and regarding men in general. The main feminist orientation visible in more than half the memes is radical feminism, while second-wave feminism is visible in a third. Meanwhile, the memes’ relation to the feminist discourses varies; smaller discourses have low levels of interdiscoursivity, while the main discourse for online feminism show high levels. The study shows that memes’ – potential – roles in the political sphere are as means of spreading opinion, as ways of constituting new norms in a new reality, and as means of shifting the structures of power in society.

This essay aims to examine how RFSL (the swedish national association for sexual orientations) is constructing sexsellers by looking at how sexsellers are described in one of RFSL’s texts. The method used in this paper is Fairclough's discourse analysis which will be applied on one text from the website of RFSL. With this method it is possible to study the textual, the discursive and the social practices of the chosen text. The theoretical framework will be Foucault's power theory, the normalization principle and Gayle Rubin’s charmed circle. The result of this study shows that RFSL is forming discourses which construct sexsellers as either voluntary or involuntary. A voluntary sexseller includes sexsellers who see themselves as sexworkers or people who sell sexual services. By speaking of sexsellers as voluntary, RFSL is forming both a liberal feminist point of view but also a postfeminist point of view, and by speaking of sexsellers as involuntary a radical feminist point of view is formed. Therefore RFSL allows three kinds of sexsellers to be heard in their text: a working, a voluntary and an exposed sexseller.

There has been little research conducted in general that explores the impact of sexualized violence on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. There is even more limited qualitative research, and almost none of it from a therapeutic perspective. This led me to engage with the fictionalized stories of LGBTQ youth characters who have survived sexualized violence to learn how these stories might inform the work of helping professionals. This thesis provides a reflexive thematic analysis of three novels written by queer authors. Through the lens of response-based therapy, intersectional feminism, and queer theory, it considers the ways in which the characters are impacted by their experiences with sexualized violence and their responses to it. Findings indicate that the characters were affected by childhood sexual abuse at a time in their lives when their sexual identities were on the cusp of being formed. Their experiences with sexualized violence impacted the ways that the characters learned to live with contradictions; experienced ambivalence in the relationships with the adults who caused them harm; and engaged in small acts of resistance against the impact of sexualized violence in their lives to create futures in which they could thrive. The characters’ experiences with casual sex and sex work are shown as an act of resistance against violence. This research aims to queer the discourses on LGBTQ youth who have experienced sexualized violence, expose the small acts of resistance that they perform against the impacts of sexualized violence, and transform the ways that child and youth care workers, therapists, social workers, and other helpers understand the resilience and experiences of LGBTQ survivors. / Graduate