Interview with Kathy Davis: Transitioning to Gender Equality with Regard to Sexuality

Interview with Kathy Davis: Transitioning to Gender Equality with Regard to Sexuality

Abstract

This interview opens up the chapter on transitioning to gender equality, exploring sexuality and sexual agency. It aims at addressing possible changes towards more equal sexual relations among all sexes. Within the field of Feminist and Gender Studies, sexuality and sexual encounters are contested topics and riddled with tensions regarding gender relations. These tensions have provoked many debates or even “wars” within the field of Feminist and Gender Studies. In the interview with Kathy Davis, Christa Binswanger takes up feminist discussions dealing with inequality within sexual relations in order to lay out the field. In the interview Davis and Binswanger discuss some problematic aspects of the feminist movement in the 1970s, like, for example, the assumption of a single notion of female sexuality. More recently, work on transnational feminism has also been helpful for thinking about sexuality and gender and for fostering a self-critical and open dialogue about the complexity of sexual practices and desires. Davis points to the importance of listening to what women in different parts of the world have to say about their own problems and struggles. As such, notions of gender equality and sexual freedom always need to be kept in perspective, as one version of feminism, but never the only one.

In: Binswanger, Christa, and Andrea Zimmermann, eds., 2021. Transitioning to Gender Equality. Basel: MDPI. https://doi.org/10.3390/books978-3-03897-867-1, p. 97-105.