Kathleen Barry

2.1. Birth and Early Life

Kathleen Barry was born on January 22, 1941, in the United States.

2.2. Education

Barry pursued extensive academic studies, earning two Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Her doctoral studies focused on distinct but related fields: one Ph.D. was awarded in sociology, and the other in education.

3.1. Teaching Career

Barry has held academic appointments as a professor at several notable institutions. She taught at Brandeis University and Penn State University, where she shared her expertise and engaged with students on critical social issues.

3.2. Feminist Activism and Advocacy

Kathleen Barry is recognized as a leading theorist who brought the issues of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation to the forefront of the women's movement. Her work was instrumental in identifying these practices as fundamental concerns for women's rights and human dignity. Following her extensive research and publications on international human sex trafficking, Barry co-founded the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW). This organization operates as an NGO affiliated with the United Nations, actively working to combat human trafficking globally. Her efforts have significantly contributed to raising international awareness and shaping the discourse around these critical human rights violations.

3.3. Awards and Recognition

In recognition of her significant contributions to the empowerment of women and her unwavering commitment to social justice, Kathleen Barry received the Wonder Woman Foundation Award in 1985. This award acknowledged her substantial strides in advocating for women's rights and combating exploitation.

4.1. Books

Barry's first major work, Female Sexual Slavery, published in 1979, was a groundbreaking book that played a crucial role in prompting international awareness of human sex trafficking. The book's impact was widespread, leading to its translation into six languages.

Her subsequent work, The Prostitution of Sexuality, published in 1995, delves into a critical examination of the concept of "consent" within liberal modern American discourse. In this book, Barry argues that "every form of oppression is sustained" through the apparent consent of the oppressed group or class to their own exploitation. She concludes that the normalization and acceptance of prostitution, often based on arguments of prostitutes' consent, fundamentally ignore the human rights principle that violation cannot be consented to. Barry posits that women, as members of an oppressed class under patriarchy, are compelled by society to "consent" to their own sexual exploitation, drawing an analogy to how a Marxist perspective might describe workers being compelled to cooperate with their oppressors, the capitalists. This work made significant contributions to political philosophy and feminist theory by offering a nuanced critique of consent in the context of systemic power imbalances.

Other significant books by Kathleen Barry include:

• Vietnam's Women in Transition (1995)
• Susan B. Anthony: A Biography of a Singular Feminist (2000), a biographical account of the prominent American suffragist.
• Unmaking War, Remaking Men: How Empathy Can Reshape Our Politics, Our Soldiers and Ourselves (2010), which explores the role of empathy in transforming societal structures related to conflict and masculinity.

A Korean translation of The Prostitution of Sexuality was published in 2002 under the title 섹슈얼리티의 매춘화^Korean, translated by Jung Geum-na and Kim Eun-jung.

4.2. Other Writings

Beyond her major books, Kathleen Barry has contributed numerous essays and chapters to edited volumes, further exploring themes of sexual exploitation, cultural dynamics, and feminist theory. Her other notable writings include:

• "The Vagina on Trial" (1971)
• "On the History of Cultural Sadism," a chapter included in Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis (1982), edited by Robin Ruth Linden.
• "Beyond Pornography: From Defensive Politics to Creating a Vision," featured in Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography (1980), edited by Laura Lederer.
• A keynote address delivered at the "Feminist Legal Perspectives on Pornography and Hate Propaganda" conference (March 5-7, 1993).
• "Pornography and Global Sexual Exploitation: A New Agenda for Feminist Human Rights," a contribution to The Price We Pay: The Case Against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda, and Pornography (1995), edited by Laura Lederer and Richard Delgado.
• "Deconstructing Deconstructionism (or, whatever happened to feminist studies?)" and "Pornography and the Global Sexual Exploitation of Women," both published in Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed (1996), edited by Diane Bell and Renate Klein.
• "When Men Tell Women's History," an opinion piece published in the Chicago Tribune (November 3, 1999).