Janine Benedet, Esq. is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto, Ontario.  She holds a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from the University of British Columbia and the degrees of Master of Laws (L.L.M.) and doctor of the science of laws (S.J.D.) from the University of Michigan.  Her research and teaching interests include the criminal law of sexual offenses, sexual harassment in employment and education and the legal regulation of prostitution and pornography.  In 2000 she appeared before the Supreme Court of Canada on behalf of Equality Now in a case challenging the constitutionality of the powers of custom officers to prevent the importation of pornography into Canada.  Equality Now successfully argued that the international traffic in pornography, including gay and lesbian pornography, promotes in equality on the basis of sex.

Julie Bindel has worked on issues of violence against women for over 20 years. In 1999 she developed and coordinated the first re-education program for users of women in street prostitution in the United Kingdom. Ms. Bindel has developed and delivered several training courses for local professionals/activists in the Balkans and EU destination countries on combating trafficking in women. She has been a member of the expert panel for the European Commission on Trafficking and the Sexual Offences Consultation Group at New Scotland Yard. Ms. Bindel, a founder of the national law reform organization Justice for Women, writes regularly for the Guardian and other newspapers and is the co-editor of The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys (Astraia Press, 2003). 

Vednita Carter is founder and executive director of Breaking Free, an Afro-Centric non-profit agency that assists women and girls in escaping systems of prostitution. She has extensive experience in developing and planning programs for prostituted women and girls. Ms. Carter developed and directed the Women’s Services Program for six years at WHISPER (Women Hurt in Systems of Prostitution Engaged in Revolt). She counseled incarcerated women for five years at the Rivers of Life prison ministry program. Ms. Carter is the author of "Prostitution: Where Racism and Sexism Intersect”, published in the Michigan Journal of Gender and Law, and she co-authored “Prostitution, Racism and Feminist Discourse”, published by the Hastings Law Journal. Her most recent writing includes a chapter in the Journal of Trauma Practice (Haworth Maltreatment & Trauma Press) and Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women’s Anthology for A New Millennium (Washington Square Press). She has written numerous articles on African American women and prostitution published nationwide in feminist newspapers and newsletters. She has premiered in the documentary "Rape Is", produced by Cambridge Documentary Films.

Michelle Madden Dempsey, Esq. is a former criminal prosecutor and civil litigator, who is currently engaged in doctoral research at the University of Oxford regarding the prosecution of violence against women. She has served as a legal consultant to the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales, the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, and the Chicago-based Prostitution Alternatives Roundtable.  

Dr. Gail Dines is professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston. She is editor of the best selling book Gender, Race and Class in Media, and is co-author of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality. A long time anti-pornography activist, Dines worked to bring the Dworkin-Mackinnon legislation to Massachusetts. She was founding editor of the newsletter Challenging Media Images of Women and she gives lectures across the country on pornography and violence against women. Her research focuses on the political economy of the pornography industry, and the ways in which pornographic images construct notions of hegemonic masculinity. 

Annalisa Enrile, a Filipina-American, is the current chair of GABRRIELA Network, a US-Philippine women’s solidarity organization. GABNet provides the means by which Filipinas can empower themselves, functions as a training ground for women’s leadership, and articulates the women’s point of view. GABNet effects change through organizing, educating, fundraising, networking and advocacy. Its main campaign focuses have been on sex trafficking, anti-militarization and labor issues such as contractualization and exploitative migrant labor. Enrile has been involved in GABNet for over ten years. She is also a professor at the USC School of Social Work and has taught in the areas of community practice for social change, theory and ideology, and women and social movements. www.gabnet.org

Dr. Melissa Farley has practiced clinical psychology for 35 years.  She is director of Prostitution Research & Education in San Francisco. Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress (2003), to which she contributed four articles, has been used by advocates, students, researchers, governments and NGOs. In addition to speaking about prostitution at national and international meetings, Dr. Farley has provided expert testimony about prostitution and trafficking in forensic cases. She is a photographer and multimedia artist.  www.prostitutionresearch.com

Kenneth Franzblau has worked for Equality Now, an international human rights organization, since 1996. His current work focuses on practices that create demand for trafficked women and girls including sex tourism, prostitution and pornography. He worked with the New York Attorney General on the investigation of Big Apple Oriental Tours which resulted in the first prosecution in the United States of a sex tour company for violation of state promoting prostitution laws. He also worked with the Hawaii legislature on the first state penal statute specifically providing that selling sex tours is a form of promoting prostitution. Mr. Franzblau was previously Equality Now’s liaison to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. He has written several op-ed pieces and articles concerning sex tourism and trafficking. Mr. Franzblau holds a BA and MA from George Washington University and a JD from St. John's University. Before working for Equality Now, he was labor counsel to numerous police unions in New York State for 10 years.

Rus Ervin Funk is an educator and activist around the issues of sexist violence (domestic violence, sexual assault, pornography and prostitution). He is currently Research and Education Specialist at the Center for Women and Families in Louisville, KY. He also sits on the board of directors of the National Center on Domestic and Sexual Violence and on the Coordinating Committee of the Fairness Campaign in Louisville, KY. As a Master’s level social worker, Rus has worked with women, men and children who have been victimized as well as with male perpetrators of domestic violence and sex offenders. A public policy advocate, Rus helped create the Violence Against Women Act. In addition, he co-founded DC Men Against Rape (one of the first men’s groups in the country) and several other community-based organizations. Rus has written dozens of articles, manuals and two books dealing with sexist violence, including Stopping Rape: A Challenge for Men (New Society Publishers, 1993), the first and only book by a man for men about stopping rape. He also wrote “Gay male pornography’s “Actors”: When “Fantasy” isn’t” (with Christopher Kendall) in Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress (Melissa Farley, editor; Haworth Press, 2003) and “What Pornography says about Me(n): How I became an Anti-Pornography Activist” in Not for Sale: Feminists Speak Out Against Pornography and Prostitution” (edited by Rebecca Whisnant and Christine Stark (2004). 

Dr. Robert Jensen is an associate professor in the School of Journalism of the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics. Prior to his academic career, Dr. Jensen worked as a professional journalist for a decade. His article “A cruel edge: The painful truth about today’s pornography -- and what men can do about it” appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of MS Magazine. He is the co-author with Gail Dines and Ann Russo of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (Routledge, 1998); author of Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004) and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002); and co-editor with David S. Allen of Freeing the First Amendment: Critical Perspectives on Freedom of Expression (New York University Press, 1995).  http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/home.htm

Christopher N. Kendall Esq. teaches law at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. He is the former Dean of Law at that university and was recently appointed one of three Commissioners on the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia. Originally from Winnipeg, Canada, Dr. Kendall was educated at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and the University of Michigan Law School. He remains active in anti-pornography legal activism in Canada. In 2000, he was part of the legal team for Equality Now before the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of Little Sisters Book and Art Emporium, in which the Court agreed with Equality Now that same-sex pornography, like heterosexual pornography, violates the sex equality provisions of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Dr. Kendall’s most recent book, Gay Male Pornography: An Issue of Sex Discrimination (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2004) details the individual and systemic harms that result from the production and distribution of gay male pornography. He has published extensively throughout Canada, Australia and the United States on pornographic abuse, misogyny and racism within the gay male community.

Dr. Laura Lederer currently serves as the Senior Advisor on Trafficking in the Office of Global Affairs at the Department of State. She founded the Protection Project at Harvard University in Washington, DC (the project moved to The Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies in 2000.) Dr. Lederer served 10 years in philanthropy as Director of Community and Social Concerns at a private foundation before continuing her education in the law. In 1997, she received the Gustavas Meyers Center for Study of Human Rights Annual Award for Outstanding Work on Human Rights for her work on harmful speech issues. She is the editor of The Price We Pay: The Case against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda, and Pornography, published in 1995, and the author of numerous articles on trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation of women and children, and child pornography.

Dr. Neil M. Malamuth is Professor of Psychology, Communication and Women Studies and Chair of the Department of Communication/Speech at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from UCLA in 1975, and he previously served on the faculties of the University of Manitoba, Canada and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His primary research focuses on the causes of violence against women, with particular emphasis on sexual coercion and on media effects. Dr. Malamuth has over 100 scholarly publications in these research areas. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society and of the American Psychological Association. In the most recent published analysis of “eminence in social psychology,” he was one of only seven scholars in the world rated as highly eminent as indicated by being in the top 100 researchers in all four categories of eminence (see Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1992). His recent publications include articles on a hierarchical model of the characteristics of both criminal and noncriminal sexual aggressors and on the role of pornography consumption as a potential contributor to sexual coercion. http://www.commstudies.ucla.edu/faculty/malamuth/pubs.html

Dr. Diana E. H. Russell is a Professor Emerita of Sociology at Mills College, Oakland, CA. She is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 17 books, most of which are on sexual abuse and sexual violence against women. She was co-recipient of the 1986 C. Wright Mills Award for outstanding social science research for her book The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women. Professor Russell has published three books on pornography, including Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm, and edited the anthology Making Violence Sexy: Feminist Views on Pornography. She recently completed a manuscript about child pornography that is being considered for publication. Professor Russell was a founding member of Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media in 1976 -- the first feminist anti-pornography organization in the United States. In its November 2004 issue, Hustler magazine honored Professor Russell as “Asshole of the Month”. Hustler declared “war on feminism in general and Russell in particular” in response to her published statement about Larry Flynt in which she said: “I wish that this evil, misogynist man had died in his mother's womb.” www.dianarussell.com

Christine Stark is a poet, writer, speaker, visual artist and activist of American Indian and European ancestry. Her work has been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress, The Florida Review, Poetry Motel, Poetry Midwest and Our Choices, Our Lives: Unapologetic Writings on Abortion. She is a co-editor of Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography. She has spoken nationally and internationally and appeared on national TV and NPR's “Justice Talking”.  She has also organized numerous community events on rape, racism, homelessness and poverty. Christine teaches Composition at a Minnesota State Community College in northern Minnesota. Christine is currently a member of the Minnesota Indian Women's Sexual Assault Coalition. http://www.christinestark.net/

Dr. Chyng F. Sun teaches Media Studies at the Paul McGhee Division at the New York University. She received her Ph.D. in communication from University of Massachusetts and holds master’s degrees in children’s literature (Simmons College, Boston) and instructional design (Syracuse University). Dr. Sun’s research areas include media theories, Asian-American media representations, media effects, children’s media and audience research. She has extensive experience as a children’s author, journalist and video producer. Her videos include Mickey Mouse Monopoly: Disney, Childhood and Corporate Power and Beyond Good and Evil: Children, Media and Violent Times, both distributed by Media Education Foundation. She is currently working on a video on pornography: “Fantasies Matter: Pornography, Sexualities and Relationships” (working title).

Dr. Rebecca Whisnant, an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Dayton, is co-editor (with Christine Stark) of Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography (Spinifex Press, 2004). She has published in ethics and feminist theory and has recently been named co-editor of several upcoming volumes for the Feminist Ethics and Social Theory Association (FEAST). A longtime anti-pornography educator, she has presented her slideshow and lecture “Exposing Pornography: A Feminist Perspective” to numerous college classes, conferences, and organizations.