Ensaf Haidar shared a selfie on Facebook:
It seems to be only defending pornography that brings them out
Oct 22nd, 2015 4:43 pm | By Ophelia BensonMichael Moorcock talked to Andrea Dworkin for the New Statesman in 1995.
Michael Moorcock: After “Right-Wing Women” and “Ice and Fire” you wrote “Intercourse“. Another book which helped me clarify confusions about my own sexual relationships. You argue that attitudes to conventional sexual intercourse enshrine and perpetuate sexual inequality. Several reviewers accused you of saying that all intercourse was rape. I haven’t found a hint of that anywhere in the book. Is that what you are saying?
Andrea Dworkin: No, I wasn’t saying that and I didn’t say that, then or ever. There is a long section in Right-Wing Women on intercourse in marriage. My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse–it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman. I said that when we look at sexual liberation and the law, we need to look not only at which sexual acts are forbidden, but which are compelled.
The whole issue of intercourse as this culture’s penultimate expression of male dominance became more and more interesting to me. In Intercourse I decided to approach the subject as a social practice, material reality. This may be my history, but I think the social explanation of the “all sex is rape” slander is different and probably simple. Most men and a good number of women experience sexual pleasure in inequality. Since the paradigm for sex has been one of conquest, possession, and violation, I think many men believe they need an unfair advantage, which at its extreme would be called rape. I don’t think they need it. I think both intercourse and sexual pleasure can and will survive equality.
It’s important to say, too, that the pornographers, especially Playboy, have published the “all sex is rape” slander repeatedly over the years, and it’s been taken up by others like Time who, when challenged, cannot cite a source in my work.
That’s how it’s done.
Michael Moorcock: You have been wildly and destructively misquoted. I’ve been told that you hate all men, believe in biological determinism, write pornography while condemning it, have been censored under the very “laws” you introduced in Canada and so on. I know these allegations have no foundation, but they’re commonly repeated. Do you know their source?
Andrea Dworkin: Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler and lobbying groups for pornographers. Some of the lobbying groups call themselves anti-censorship, but they spend so much time maligning MacKinnon and myself that it is hard to take them seriously. And it seems to be only defending pornography that brings them out. I would define illiteracy as the basic speech problem in the US, but I don’t see any effort to deal with it as a political emergency with constitutionally based remedies, such as lawsuits against cities and states on behalf of illiterate populations characterised by race and class, purposefully excluded by public policy from learning how to read and write. Fighting MacKinnon and me is equivalent to going to Club Med rather than doing real work.
It’s much the same with the war on “TERFs” – like looking for the diamond under the streetlight instead of where you dropped it.
Spotlight on Saudi Arabia
Oct 22nd, 2015 12:03 pm | By Ophelia BensonAdam Coogle, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, reminds us of some facts about Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia’s dismal human rights record is getting media scrutiny, thanks in part to news that Saudi authorities plan to lash 74-year-old Karl Andree, a British cancer survivor, 350 times for possessing homemade alcohol. Flogging in the kingdom entails a series of strikes with a wooden cane, with blows distributed across the back and legs, normally not breaking the skin but leaving bruises.
In other words Saudi Arabia plans to commit a heinous crime in order to punish a 74-year-old cancer survivor for possessing some alcohol. Saudi Arabia is the criminal here, and by a wide margin. Hitting people with sticks is a very bad thing to do; possessing alcohol, on its own, is not.
In other words Saudi Arabia’s priorities are horrifyingly disordered.
This ruling comes after a year of bizarre and cruel punishments meted out by the Saudi judiciary, including the public flogging of liberal blogger Raif Badawi in January and a death sentence for Ali al-Nimr, a Saudi man accused of protest-related activities allegedly committed before he was 18 years old.
Campaigning for human rights is a crime there. Violating human rights is fine, and campaigning for them is a crime.
More than a dozen Saudi human rights advocates are languishing in prison today for “crimes” related to their “illegal” human rights work; most are convicted for “setting up an unlicensed organization.” These include activists such as Waleed Abu al-Khair, currently serving an outlandish 15-year sentence solely for his work exposing the government’s human rights abuses.
And then there’s the bombing campaign in Yemen, with probable war crimes.
Saudi Arabia’s membership in the UN Human Rights Council has not led to improvements in its rights record. Instead, it has used its position to prevent an international inquiry into laws-of-war violations committed in Yemen. Somehow, bizarrely, Saudi Arabia serves as a partner in the U.S. government’s campaign to “combat violent extremism”—despite its longtime failure to address these issues at home in accordance with basic human rights and the rule of law.
Allies such as the United States and the United Kingdom rarely criticize Saudi abuses; one U.S. official even recently “welcomed” Saudi Arabia’s participation at the Human Rights Council. British Prime Minister David Cameron responded to the possible flogging of Mr. Andree by meekly asking Saudi officials not to carry out the punishment.
So we have to keep yipping and objecting. Louder and louder and louder.
Guest post: True but irrelevant, or relevant but false
Oct 22nd, 2015 10:35 am | By Ophelia BensonGuest post by Bjarte Foshaug.
Hardly anything has greater potential for introducing absurdities into an argument than using words in a different meaning than your opponent while continuing to act as if you were both still talking about the same thing. Now, obviously words don’t mean anything in themselves, but get their meanings from us. If someone wants to apply the word “fish” to what most people call “bird”, and vice versa, they are free to do so. But then it’s either disingenuous, or stupid, or both, to go on talking as if everyone else were using the words in the same way. It’s as if we were having a conversation about clubs for hitting baseballs (let’s call them “bats(1)”), and I suddenly started talking about flying mammals (let’s call them “bats(2)”) and how you’ve completely misunderstood baseball for failing to consider the relevance of Chiroptera to the sport.
We see this whenever atheists present arguments against the existence of a supernatural, intelligent creator of the universe (let’s call it “God(1)”), and “philosophically sophisticated” theists answer by pointing to the existence of Life, the Universe and Everything (let’s call it “God(2)”), as if this refuted the atheist position. And we see it whenever feminists present arguments for the equality of people with a strong preponderance of certain innate, physical traits more commonly found in mothers than in fathers (let’s call them “women(1)”), while trans* activists try to make it all about people who think or feel a certain way, or subscribe to certain cultural norms etc. (let’s call them “women(2)”).
I am sure we are all familiar with Daniel Dennett’s concept of “deepities”, but anyway: A deepity is an ambiguous statement with two possible interpretations. One of these interpretations makes the statement true but trivial, while the other makes it profound but false. I have identified a similar kind of phenomenon except that in this case the statement is either true but irrelevant, or relevant but false depending on which interpretation you choose. God(2) is no more relevant to a conversation about God(1) than flying mammals are to a conversation about clubs for hitting baseballs. The only thing that makes it seem relevant is the word “God” itself, which clearly doesn’t mean the same thing in the two cases. I would argue that the same thing goes for women(2) vs. women(1).
In both cases there is usually an element of trying – consciously or not – to have it both ways: If challenged, you can always fall back on the “safe” true but trivial/irrelevant interpretation, but for all other intents and purposes you take credit for the profundity/relevancy of the second interpretation. I can’t tell you how many religious people in my experience have attempted to first “prove” the proposition “God exists” TRUE by pointing to the existence of God(2) before changing the definition back to God(1) in order to make the proposition thus “proven” seem profound or relevant.
Trans* activist rhetoric seems to be full of equivocations like this:
• Being a “woman2”, is all about how you think or feel about yourself. Yet if a person who rejects the entire framework of “male” vs. “female” ways of thinking or feeling simply calls herself a “woman(1)” as a convenient shorthand for certain physical traits, she is still considered “cis”, which implies acceptance of that very same framework and identification as a woman(2).
• Being a “woman(2)” has nothing to do with physical traits, yet feminists who fight against discrimination of women(1) based on physical traits, are being inconsistent or hypocritical if they don’t change their cause entirely and turn all their focus towards the discrimination of women(2).
• Being a “woman(2)” has nothing to do with physical traits, yet straight men(1) or lesbian women(1) who are attracted to women(1) based on physical traits are being inconsistent or hypocritical if they don’t consider women(2) as potential partners.
• Etc. etc…
A lot of anger at feminists
Oct 21st, 2015 5:33 pm | By Ophelia BensonJustin Trudeau says he’s a feminist, and proud to be one.
In an interview, co-sponsored by the Toronto Star, which aired on Monday night before the election (Oct. 18), Trudeau was asked by journalist Francine Pelletier if he would describe himself as a feminist.
“There seems to be a lot of anger,” Pelletier asked, “not just at women, but at feminism and feminists. Would you describe yourself as a feminist?”
“Yes. Yes, I am a feminist,” said Trudeau. “I’m proud to be a feminist.”
And not only that…
Trudeau added that the public should pay more attention to developments in popular culture like Gamergate—a long-running controversy about sexism and violence toward women in video game culture.
“The things we see online,” he said, “whether it is issues like gamergate or video games misogyny in popular culture, it is something that we need to stand clearly against.”
And, I’m told, he plans to have 50/50 women and men in his cabinet.
Ok then.
So self-contentedly, exclusively male
Oct 21st, 2015 4:38 pm | By Ophelia BensonIn 1987, Ursula K. LeGuin sent a letter to an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich who had asked her to blurb a new anthology of science fiction stories.
John Radziewicz
Senior Editor
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
111 5th Ave
New York NY 10003Dear Mr Radziewicz,
I can imagine myself blurbing a book in which Brian Aldiss, predictably, sneers at my work, because then I could preen myself on my magnanimity. But I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of the series, which not only contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. That would not be magnanimity, but foolishness. Gentlemen, I just don’t belong here.
Yours truly,
(Signed)
Ursula K. Le Guin
That was nearly 30 years ago. Very damn little has changed.
The smallest minority
Oct 21st, 2015 4:03 pm | By Ophelia BensonThis is very funny but also painfully true:
SIX WORDS TO REMOVE FROM YOUR VOCABULARY TO BE A BETTER ALLY TO ME by Wayne Gladstone.
Sure, you’re a good person. Each day you learn a little more about the rest of humanity, and just by clicking this link you’ve already shown your interest in being a better ally. But while you’ve living a good life, checking your privilege and learning about people of different races, religions, social orientations and identities, there’s an ally opportunity you might have overlooked. The smallest minority. Me. And while I may be a minority of one, I must remind you that my opinion of you is not based on a measured consideration of your cumulative actions, but a far more easily defined concern determined by how well you, my potential ally, adhere to my evolving set of words and considerations.
This is where we are. “How dare you not take into account my [ ____________ ] whenever you say anything?”
Let’s see…first of all, I don’t even know who you are? You seem to think we’re close, or used to be close, but I have no idea who you are. Your handle rings a bell, but that’s it.
Second…well see above, and then ask yourself, why would I?
Third…there are people who aren’t you?
Fourth – I don’t care.
Fifth – how dare you not take into account my 1-4?
And an infinite regress ensues.
One of the six examples:
“Wha?”
Yes, the dropping of the “t” in the word “what” has come to express an increased degree of incredulity. While some take issue with this word as an example of race appropriation, that argument is belied by the racist assumption that this word originated in the African American community in the first place. Instead, “wha” is personally problematic because it reminds me of the two months I had to go to speech therapy in second grade to better pronounce my “T’s.” So be a better ally. Say “what” the way it was intended, and be grateful the 20th letter of the alphabet comes so easily to you.
Exactly, just the way being a woman comes so easily to me and all the women I know.
H/t G.
Guest post: It’s more than the messages you hear
Oct 21st, 2015 11:52 am | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by iknlast on Without having to go back.
It’s more than the media. It’s more than the messages you hear. The messages we get are all around us, often unnoticed in any real way, subtle.
My father refusing to teach me how to start the lawnmower. His paying for my brother’s college on terms that were much more generous than mine.
Being kept in the dining room on Christmas with the women while the men went into the living room and talked about interesting things. Being the last one served. Being asked to make the coffee at the meeting.
Many of the messages aren’t “girls wear nail polish” “girls wear high heels”. They are subtle; the people delivering them may not realize they are delivering them. The people receiving them may not realize they are receiving them.
It is in the way my major professor in my doctorate talked to me in a fatherly manner, like a pat on the head, while being good buddies with his male students.
It’s in the way my boss peed off the end of the boat the first time they took me out for training (marking his territory?). It’s in the way that another boss asked me, the person with the highest level of education in the entire business, to water the plants.
It’s the way that my current boss has looked at a building in which all but two of the employees are women – and appointed the two males as building captains. It’s in the way that my seniority is ignored at work, and everyone turns to the male who has been there half as long as I have when they want someone with authority (we have equal authority; I just rarely have the opportunity to use mine). These are messages that are often unseen, but have a huge impact.
Change the venue
Oct 21st, 2015 11:27 am | By Ophelia BensonThe death toll from last month’s haj stampede has topped 2,000, according to tallies given by foreign officials, making it the deadliest disaster in the pilgrimage’s history by far.
Saudi Arabia has yet to provide an updated death toll after saying 769 people died in the tragedy near Mecca, home of Islam’s holiest sites. But figures given by more than 30 governments around the world show that at least 2,097 foreign pilgrims have died.
That’s so horrific. It wasn’t an earthquake or a flood or a mudslide, it was just way too many people in one place, trying to carry out a “religious obligation” that dates from a time when Islam was a local religion and the locality was sparsely populated. It was just way too many people, crowding and pressing and suffocating each other, to the tune of over two thousand human beings.
The loss of life in the Sept. 24 disaster far exceeds the 1,426 pilgrims who died in the haj’s worst previous incident—a tunnel stampede in July 1990.
Here is a breakdown of the dead from foreign governments:
Iran: 464 dead
Nigeria: 199 dead
Mali: 198 dead
Egypt: 182 dead
Bangladesh: 137
Indonesia: 129 dead
India: 116 dead
Pakistan: 89 dead
Cameroon: 76 dead
Niger: 72 dead
Senegal: 62 dead
And so on, in descending order.
You know what would be good? Merciful, helpful, compassionate, while still being religiously obedient? If all the top clerics put their heads together and issued a Ruling that now that there are so many Muslims, the hajj is a pilgrimage to the Most Important Mosque in one’s country or region. Period; end of discussion.
If gender is social rather than natural
Oct 20th, 2015 12:21 pm | By Ophelia BensonIf gender is social rather than natural, change and variability are always possible. Hence continuities also require a social explanation. One important continuity is the hierarchical relationship between women and men, which has persisted despite many changes in the meaning of femininity and masculinity and in the social activities of women and men. While male dominance can and does change in form and degree, it seems that gender hierarchy can coexist with a wide variety of beliefs about gender and with different divisions of labour between women and men. Gender thus denotes a hierarchical relationship between women and men, not merely differences between them. If gender is understood to be social, this hierarchical relationship needs to be explained as a product of social arrangements.
–Introduction to Gender: a Sociological Reader, edited by Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott, p 6
The woman whose life he took is forgotten
Oct 20th, 2015 11:38 am | By Ophelia BensonRemember when the interim director of the Berkeley Astronomy department said: ““Of course, this is hardest for Geoff in this moment”?
Now it’s Oscar Pistorius who is “in need of healing.”
[A] justice system serves society with a split purpose. There’s punishment of the perpetrator and an element of rehabilitation (which has been vigorously stressed in this case – the terms of his house arrest include community service). And there’s also the strong social message that the justice system serves: through its sentencing, it makes a comment on the seriousness of the crime and how profoundly it will be perceived. This is the sticking point.
…
Judge Thokozile Masipa had to deal with the facts in front of her, and mete out a sentence as appropriate. But the parole board decision to release Pistorius from prison today measures the life of a woman, violently taken, in just a few short months behind bars. The value of South African women’s lives is set at an all-time low.
When the homepage of a major South African news site carries a story saying that Pistorius is ‘broken and in need of healing’, we, as women, are told that the perpetrator of the most violent of crimes is actually the victim, in need of comfort and protection, while the woman whose life he took is forgotten, edited out the story, just another statistic in a justice system that served her poorly.
We must make sure the world remembers: #HerNameWasReevaSteenkamp. And it is her life, not her killer’s, which it’s important to include in our ongoing conversation about global rates of violence against women.
And our ongoing conversation about whether or not women even matter.
Total aesthetic hegemony
Oct 20th, 2015 10:33 am | By Ophelia BensonSo now North America is wholly ruled by Absurdly Gorgeous Men.
I feel as if I should be indignant about this, because what does Absurdly Gorgeous have to do with governing or administration? Nothing. (Diplomacy though? Different story? In which case maybe not nothing at all to do with governing? Persuasion is a necessary skill in governing, and charisma is part of persuasion. We ugly people are not useful in that way, fairness or no fairness.)
Maybe I’ll be indignant about it next week or sometime, but right now I’m just amused.
Hottie McHotterson 1, 2, 3.
Without having to go back
Oct 19th, 2015 5:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonAnother thing about that CisPrivilege Check List – item 22.3.1 again:
I was trained into whatever gender was appropriate for me, and so I am prepared to live in my current gender, without having to go back and learn vital skills I was not taught when I was young.
That’s privilege because trans people don’t have that: they were not trained into their “appropriate” gender, so they are not prepared to live in their current gender without going back to learn vital skills.
But isn’t it supposed to be trans-exclusionary for women to point out that trans women who grew up as boys don’t have the experience of being the lesser, the subordinate, the inferior, the feeble, the not very bright sex? And that that’s why sometimes feminist women want to be able to talk to each other about having grown up being the lesser, the subordinate, the inferior, the feeble, the not very bright sex?
Trans women have always been women, we’re told. To say otherwise is transphobic, isn’t it? Isn’t that too what we’re told?
I’m not sure all of this has been carefully thought through.
H/t Mr FP.
Who needs data?
Oct 19th, 2015 4:32 pm | By Ophelia BensonNoah Smith of Bloomberg View reports on this defunding of the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
The BLS is one of the most important economic data-gathering agencies in the U.S.
Employment numbers? Inflation statistics? Those all come from surveys run by the BLS.
Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled Congress is allowing the bureau to wither on the vine, and there are signs it will get worse. During the past five years, funding has stagnated as inflation has risen, meaning that in real terms the agency’s budget has fallen by 10 percent. Now the Senate is proposing to cut funding by about 4 percent more, in real terms, this year.
This is a dangerous game. The rewards from cutting BLS funding are minuscule. The proposed cut will save only $13 million a year, or about 0.002 percent of the federal discretionary budget. For comparison, this is about equivalent to the average household saving roughly $1 a year. It is nothing, nada. Not even a drop in the bucket.
It’s meaningless for the federal budget, but damaging to the BLS budget.
But these tiny funding cuts are already having a huge effect on the agency’s ability to tell us what’s going on with the economy. In 2014, the BLS was forced to cut back on one of its major programs, the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. It almost had to slash another program that gathers data on imports and exports.
Cutting these and other BLS surveys would be like blinding ourselves intentionally. It is because of BLS programs that we know whether the economy is stagnant or recovering, whether the trade deficit is shrinking or growing, whether Americans are getting jobs or losing them.
How else are we supposed to know those things? Guessing? Looking out the window? Swapping stories? Going to church?
[T]he BLS reductions are part of two dismaying trends in our legislative priorities — cuts to research funding, and a disregard for the importance of social science. In the case of the BLS, it would be a mistake to further hobble an agency that does so much to aid our very understanding of the economy around us.
Don’t worry, God will provide.
Tyrants cut off information
Oct 19th, 2015 4:22 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe first thing tyrants do is close schools. The second thing they do is burn books. The third thing is cut off information. Right-wing Republicans are on the way to doing all three: State legislatures continue to cut school budgets; local Republicans are reducing budgets for libraries. Congressional Republicans are now cutting off information — slashing the budgets of the most important sources we have for collecting data on what’s really happening to jobs, wages, and the economy: the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because of such cuts, the BLS can no longer collect data on mass layoffs or how Americans are using their time; the cuts may also make employment data less reliable.
Republicans don’t want Americans to know the truth. That way they can hoodwink us even more. But a free society needs good information no less than it needs citizens sufficiently educated to use that information to make informed decisions – such as voting Republicans out of office.
No labor statistics for you, peasants.
The bed of roses isn’t
Oct 19th, 2015 11:30 am | By Ophelia BensonA blogger drew up a Cis Privilege Checklist in 2007. I took a look. I was unsurprised to find that I disagreed with much of it. Some of it I don’t agree is really privilege, but that doesn’t matter much. The part that does matter, I think, is the radical simplification and absolutism about what “cis” people experience. It’s another version of that yes or no thing I made such a point of refusing last summer. It’s profoundly wrong.
Like –
6. Clothing works for me, more or less.
- I am a size and shape for which clothes I feel comfortable wearing are commonly made
- There are clothes designed with bodies like mine in mind.
- If I am unable to find clothing that fits me well, I will still feel safe, and recognizable as my gender
- If I have a restriction on what clothing I will buy (e.g. vegan, allergy, non sweatshop), I can expect that specialty stores will have them in my size/shape.
No. Not at all. That’s never been my experience of clothes. It doesn’t worry me much now but that’s because I’ve been able to arrange my life so that I don’t have to show up in a workplace every day looking normal. And people can and do feel unsafe for a million reasons that have nothing to do with clothes – and for plenty of reasons that do have to do with clothes but have nothing to do with being “cis.”
9. Perception/acceptance of my gender is generally independent of:
- Anything mentioned in 8.*
- My clothing choices, how my clothing fits
- My adherence to traditional roles of my gender (both “too much” and “too little”)
- Holding sexist, sex-negative, or rape-culture beliefs
- Holding feminist or sex-positive beliefs
- My sexual choices/desires
- With whom? (gender, number)
- Frequency
- Circumstance (marriage, love, one-night-stand)
- What (e.g. penetrating/enveloping, fetishes, dominance)
- Being assertive, aggressive, or passive
- Being in a position of power
- Being intellectual or not
- My dietary habits
- My weight
- My height
- My occupation
- My musical taste
- My hairstyle
- My hobbies
- Wanting gendered things/actions labeled “immature” or “childish”
- Whether or not I have had a specific medical procedure
No, no, no, no, no. Not at all. Perception and acceptance of everyone’s gender is far from independent of all those things except the last one. It’s true that most cis people mostly don’t have to clarify what sex they are, but it’s not true that they’re all always free of criticism for how well or badly they fulfill their duties to their gender. I get that it’s far sharper and more intrusive and often more dangerous for trans people; I don’t dispute that. But the fact that it’s worse for trans people does not mean that it’s non-existent for cis people.
16. Commonly used terminology that differentiates my gender from other genders/sexes implies that I am normal, and that I have unquestionable right to the gender/sex I identify with. The implications these terms make about my gender, my body, my sex, my biology, and my past are all acceptable to me.
No. Absolutely not.
22. My gender is acknowledged universally, immediately, and without hesitation
- My birth certificate, drivers’ license, social security card, etc are correct from the moment I get them.
- I have no need to establish that I am a different gender than someone already thinks I am.
- I lived my childhood in a gender that felt appropriate for me at the time, and still does. I lived my childhood in the gender that I want to have lived it in.
- I was trained into whatever gender was appropriate for me, and so I am prepared to live in my current gender, without having to go back and learn vital skills I was not taught when I was young.
- I experienced puberty, and being an immature girl/boy, at a time in my life when there were allowances for puberty and immaturity.
- My preferences for my gender have been honored my whole life, by my doctor, my parents, my teachers, my professors, my relatives, my classmates, my bosses, etc., except before I was able to state preferences, when I was forced to adopt the gender which I now inhabit.
Oh, no, no, no, no. 1 is ok, 2 is ok-ish, but after that, it’s complete nonsense. No, my gender did not “feel appropriate for me at the time” and no it doesn’t still. Every time I turn the damn tv on I’m made aware that I’m not “a woman” as the world of tv-makers understands women. That idea of what “a woman” is has never, ever, ever “felt appropriate” to me. Aha! says the alert privilege-spotter – so you’re trans then, you just won’t admit it. No, I’m not – I’m not “a man” either. Ok then you’re non-binary.
But in that sense maybe everybody is non-binary. Or the vast majority of people. Or well over half. Or half, or a substantial fraction. We don’t know. But it’s complete bullshit to claim that everyone who isn’t trans is described by that list under 22. It’s a mistake to think that everyone who doesn’t have your particular complication or difficulty or disadvantage is therefore wallowing in bliss and perfection. Life isn’t like that, and most people aren’t like that.
An engineering project
Oct 19th, 2015 10:10 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Indian “spiritual” site Speaking Tree warns of bad Vastu.
India has the Himalayas in its North, which – Vastu experts say – goes against Vastu. It is the reason that poverty remains an unending issue in our country.
Huh. So, could they move them to the south?
Facebook readers are not convinced.
But she still got drenched
Oct 18th, 2015 6:02 pm | By Ophelia BensonNow here’s a story of cis privilege. Girls in Nepal are banished when they are menstruating; they have to sleep outside in skimpy sheds without walls. What about during monsoon season? Well they get wet, of course.
Where do these ideas come from?
Ancient Hindu scriptures say women are highly infectious during their periods, that “all her body is so weak that viruses come out of her mouth and her limbs,” says Mukunda Aryal, who has studied Hindu culture for 40 years.
In Hinduism, there was once a king of the gods, who reigned above others. This god, called Indra, committed a horrible sin. And to atone for it, he created menstruation.
You what? He committed a sin, and to atone for it, he created menstruation? What the hell is the logic of that? Let alone the fairness? He created a sin, so girls and women have to have obnoxious cramping in their lower abdomens every month, and have a lot of gross clumpy blood (that is, endometrial tissue) to deal with? In what sense is it atonement to create an unpleasant inconvenient uncomfortable situation for other people?
The NPR reporters, Jane Greenhalgh and Michaeleen Doucleff, visit one menstrual shed.
It’s about a ten minute walk. It’s starting to get dark, and she doesn’t have a flashlight. “I’m scared mostly of snakes and of men,” she says through translator, Pragya Lamsal of WaterAid. Kamala has heard stories of girls being sexually assaulted when they’re alone in their sheds.
Her shed is shocking. It looks more like a cage — with wooden bars crisscrossed over the top and sides. It’s monsoon season and the rain is torrential. Kamala has a piece of plastic to drape across the top of her shed but she still got drenched.
Kamala was 11 when she first started her period and she remembers being terrified when she first slept outside. The shed is small, barely big enough for her to lie down and sometimes she shares it with 2 or 3 or more girls and so for most of the night they squat.
“I don’t feel good about practicing this,” Kamala says.
The Supreme Court of Nepal outlawed the practice in 2005 so it’s illegal to force women into these sheds, but many villagers in the remote west continue to do it.
Oh well, it’s only girls and women.
Maiduguri
Oct 18th, 2015 5:36 pm | By Ophelia BensonIn case anyone thought things weren’t so bad in Nigeria lately…
Suicide bombers blow up a mosque in Maiduguri.
At least 39 people have died after multiple explosions in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, an emergency official says.
Three female suicide bombers, thought to be aged between 11 and 15, struck on Friday morning, an official with the National Emergency Management Agency told BBC Hausa.
Aged between 11 and 15! Girls! Murderous men sending little girls out to explode themselves and others while the murderous men stay safe.
It follows bomb attacks on a mosque on Thursday, which killed at least 32.
Maiduguri is often targeted by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.
Boko Haram hasn’t yet bragged about doing it.
More than 100 people were killed in three explosions last month in the city, which is considered the birthplace of Boko Haram.
In Thursday’s attack, officials say the first suicide bomber blew himself up inside the mosque, with a second bomber detonating explosives as people rushed to help those injured in the initial blast.
The explosions caused parts of the mosque to collapse, leading to further injuries.
Blew herself up, that apparently should be. And notice the familiar cruelty of timing the second bombing to get the people who rush to help.
Anyway – no, things are still shit in Nigeria.
Three questions
Oct 18th, 2015 5:09 pm | By Ophelia BensonWatch Peter Tatchell ask panelists at an iERA debate to say whether or not they condemn the death penalty for blasphemy, amputation, and stoning for adultery, and the panelists refuse to reply.
That’s one time when a yes or no question is not out of place.