By Emma Murphy
MELBOURNE — The National Union of Students' women's policy conference, "Fem X", was held at Melbourne University on September 26-27. About 100 women from around the country attended.
The conference agenda was broad, including workshops and plenary sessions on issues such as sadomasochism, transgender, women-only space and body image. Many of the views and policies put forward, however, were very conservative.
Commenting on the "Anti-sadomasochism" workshop, run by Patricia Karvelas and Vanessa Born from Left Alliance, Catherine Lawrence, welfare officer at Melbourne University, told Green Left Weekly: "I felt it was policing women's sexuality and what women choose to do in their sex lives. The whole tenet of the workshop was how to argue with a supporter of S&M, and it ignored the experiences of women working in the industry in positions of authority."
Another major discussion was prompted by a policy proposal which defined prostitution as inherently oppressive of women. The proposed policy claimed that pornography and sex work are always exploitative and violent towards women.
It also stated that sex workers should not be unionised since this legitimises the work, and that unions cannot offer the protection sex workers need. A majority of conference participants voted against this statement.
"It was a problem that the differences between working in a unionised brothel, for example, and on the street without legal rights were not mentioned", Lawrence said.
She added: "The motion supporting the criminalisation of clients is ridiculous given that many lonely, elderly and disabled people book sex workers due to their inability to access other social avenues. As well, the reality that transgendered women are over-represented in the sex industry, due to their inability to access other forms of employment, was overlooked completely."
The Democratic Socialist Party ran a workshop on "Transgendered women in women-only space". Many women attended and raised concerns about the recent decision of the NOWSA 1999 conference organising collective's decision to exclude transgender women.
The majority agreed that transgender women should be welcomed in women's organising on the grounds that the feminist movement should not enforce sexist gender boundaries.
A motion to this effect was moved at the final plenary session but lost on a very close vote.
The formal and informal discussion around the transgender motion throughout the conference was not accurately reflected in the final outcome. Rather, the motion in support of the inclusion of transgender women was lost as a result of bureaucratic gag motions stifling debate, confusion about procedure and claims of 'bloc' voting.