Meredith Ralston unchains sexual pleasure from carceral thinking & calls for an end to slut-shaming

Meredith Ralston is Professor in the Departments of Women’s Studies and Political Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her most recent book, Slut-Shaming, Whorephobia and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution is a remarkably self-reflexive and rigorous study of contemporary sexual politics in a supposedly permissive era. We talk about the limits of white feminism and carceral thinking when it comes to the prevalent approaches to thinking about and reckoning with the reality of sex work. Meredith speaks to her profound sense that a “pleasure gap” still exists, where the disparate and binaristic socializations of men and women position people very differently in terms of access to pleasure. I ask her about the place of biology in sex, and whether culture and context, and power, are always complexly at play in determining even our sense of the biology of sex. Ralston’s research work has largely focused on sex work and sex tourism globally, she’s also looked at unhoused women and sex work in Canada. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, and her film, Hope in Heaven received a very positive reception when it was broadcast on CBC. She also wrote and directed two documentaries with the National Film Board of Canada on women in politics. Here, though, we talk about her shifting relationship to the documentary work that she’s produced. This is where the critical self-reflection comes in, as Ralston is extremely aware of her own tendency to adopt certain conservative relationships to sex and sex work. It’s a complex topic that warrants an engaged conversation that doesn’t conveniently skip over the impasses. I would definitely recommend her new book. It thinks through the ripple effects of the #MeToo movement, which is differently relevant in the face of the misogynistic vilification of Amber Heard we’re seeing right now; it talks about the discourse of rape culture, and, most intensely, it advocates for sexual equality and justice, and an end to the sexual double standard that continues to contribute to the vulnerability and widespread dehumanization of trans women, women of colour and women in general who are open about sexual desire. We end by talking about a broader end to the policing of sex, which cannot arrive soon enough.