Join us for this rare opportunity to hear Swedish feminist Ekman discuss her polemic on the psychology of sex work, in which she also criticizes the booming surrogacy industry.
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In her book ‘Being and Being Bought: Prostitution, Surrogacy and the Split Self’ (Spinifex Press, 2014) Kajsa Ekis Ekman draws on Marxist and feminist analyses to argue that “the Self must be split from the body to make it possible to sell your body without selling yourself. The body becomes sex. Sex becomes a service. The story of the sex worker says: the Split Self is not only possible, it is the ideal”.
Turning to the practice of surrogate motherhood, Kajsa Ekis Ekman identifies the same components: that the woman is neither connected to her own body nor to the child she grows in her body and gives birth to. Surrogacy becomes an extended form of prostitution. In this capitalist creation story, the parent is the one who pays. The product sold is not sex but a baby.
Please join us for a chance to discuss the issues with Kajsa Ekis Ekman. Kasja is a Swedish journalist, writer and activist. She is the author of several works about the financial crisis, women’s rights and Marxism. She writes for the major Swedish daily Dagnes Nyheter and is an op-ed columnist at the leftwing daily ETC.
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