In London yesterday. Via Chris Moos.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A police officer, not a doctor, by her bed
Apr 29th, 2014 5:03 pm | By Ophelia BensonIn El Salvador, a nightmare I can’t even read about without quaking with fury.
Cristina Quintanilla was 18 years old in October 2004 when, seven months pregnant with her second child, she collapsed in pain on the floor of her family home. “I felt like I was choking, like I couldn’t breathe,” she says, shaking at the memory.
Quintanilla, who lives in San Miguel, El Salvador, fell unconscious and, bleeding heavily, was taken to hospital by her mother. When she woke up, dizzy from blood loss and anaesthetic, and having lost her child, she says she was startled to find a police officer, not a doctor, by her bed.
Because she’s a woman and she had a miscarriage, so OBVIOUSLY she committed a crime.
“It was strange because doctors wear white but he was wearing blue … He said, ‘From this moment on, you are under arrest.’ This confused me even more.”
Quintanilla says she was interrogated while still under the effect of anaesthetic, handcuffed and brought from hospital to a cell in a police jail, accused of having killed ker child. Within 10 months, she was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. “It was another huge tragedy in my life. I had a son, who was three years old. How could I ever be with my child, with my family, with a sentence [like this]?”
See? That’s why I can’t read it and stay calm. THIRTY YEARS IN PRISON FOR HAVING A MISCARRIAGE.
El Salvador has one of the world’s strictest abortionlaws, with abortion a crime even when a woman’s life is at risk. Human rights activists say this has created a system of persecution in the country’s hospitals as well as its courts, where any woman – and particularly a poor, young woman who loses her baby – is suspect.
Dozens of women like Quintanilla have reportedly been prosecuted and imprisoned on homicide charges after suffering miscarriages, stillbirths, or obstetric emergencies away from medical attention.
Because when in doubt, persecute a woman.
According to the Agrupación Ciudadana por la Despenalización del Aborto (Citizens’ Coalition for the Decriminalisation of Abortion), 129 women were prosecuted for abortion-related crimes in El Salvador between 2000 and 2011, with 49 convicted (23 for abortion, 26 for homicide).
In a report published with the Centre for Reproductive Rights, the Agrupación says: “Enforcement of the country’s abortion law has had serious consequences in hospitals and healthcare centres, where any woman who comes to an emergency room haemorrhaging is presumed to be a criminal.”
In many of the cases documented, health workers had reported women to the police.
As if miscarriage simply didn’t exist!
High-profile backers of El Salvador’s abortion ban include senior figures in the Catholic church, National Republic Alliance party and the influential lobby group Sí a la Vida (Yes to Life).
While Beatriz’s case was being debated, José Luis Escobar, archbishop of San Salvador, reportedly suggested it would be inhuman and “against nature” for her to have an abortion, saying: “Sure, [Beatriz] has health problems, but she’s not in grave danger of death. Since we need to consider both lives we need to ask, whose life is in greater danger. We think that the foetus is in greater danger.”
How I wish there were a technology that could make some archbishops and cardinals pregnant against their will. How.I.wish.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Saudi Arabia demands criminalization of everything
Apr 29th, 2014 4:30 pm | By Ophelia BensonHahahahahahahaha this is the funniest headline I’ve seen in awhile – it’s in the Independent -
Saudi Arabia criticises Norway over human rights record
You must admit.
Ok so what’s the problem? What rights are they neglecting? Prisoners’? Children’s? Foreigners’? Asylum seekers’? Those of the disabled?
No, none of those. It’s the rights of Mohammed and Islam that Norway has been neglecting. How are those human rights, you wonder? They’re…not.
Saudi Arabia has criticised Norway’s human rights record, accusing the country of failing to protect its Muslim citizens and not doing enough to counter criticism of the prophet Mohammed.
Hey, you know what? No country should do anything to “counter criticism” of Mohammed or any other religious figure.
The gulf state called for all criticism of religion and of prophet Mohammed to be made illegal in Norway.
Ok then I call for Islam to be made illegal in Saudi Arabia. Why not? If Saudi can, we all can.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende was in Geneva to hear the concerns from 91 other countries. He told Norway’s NTB newswire prior to the hearing: “It is a paradox that countries which do not support fundamental human rights have influence on the council, but that is the United Nations,” reported The Local.
Human Rights Watch last report noted that in 2012 Saudi Arabia “stepped up arrests and trials of peaceful dissidents, and responded with force to demonstrations by citizens.”
It continued “Authorities continue to suppress or fail to protect the rights of 9 million Saudi women and girls and 9 million foreign workers. As in past years, thousands of people have received unfair trials or been subject to arbitrary detention. The year has seen trials against half-a-dozen human rights defenders and several others for their peaceful expression or assembly demanding political and human rights reforms.”
Still, it’s nice of them to try to help the rest of the world do better.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Mass “marriages”
Apr 29th, 2014 12:10 pm | By Ophelia BensonNew news from Nigeria – Monica Mark reports in the Guardian:
For two weeks, retired teacher Samson Dawah prayed for news of his niece Saratu, who was among more than 230 schoolgirls snatched by Boko Haram militants in the north-eastern Nigerian village of Chibok. Then on Monday the agonising silence was broken.
When Dawah called together his extended family members to give an update, he asked that the most elderly not attend, fearing they would not be able to cope with what he had to say. “We have heard from members of the forest community where they took the girls. They said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants,” Dawah told his relatives.
As “wives” – meaning, as slaves, chattel, livestock; wholly-owned property to be poked at will.
Reports of the mass marriage came from a group that meets at dawn each day not far from the charred remains of the school. The ragtag gathering of fathers, uncles, cousins and nephews pool money for fuel before venturing unarmed into the thick forest, or into border towns that the militants have terrorised for months.
On Sunday, the searchers were told that the students had been divided into at least three groups, according to farmers and villagers who had seen truckloads of girls moving around the area. One farmer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the insurgents had paid leaders dowries and fired celebratory gunshots for several minutes after conducting mass wedding ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday.
“It’s unbearable. Our wives have grown bitter and cry all day. The abduction of our children and the news of them being married off is like hearing of the return of the slave trade,” said Yakubu Ubalala, whose 17- and 18-year-old daughters Kulu and Maimuna are among the disappeared.
And the rescue efforts are failing because Boko Haram has sleepers.
Nigeria’s armed forces face an uphill battle against the insurgents, who operate in small, mobile units and are drawn from communities that spill across the country’s porous desert borders. Near daily aerial bombardments have been halted as ground troops have poured into the forest in search of the girls.
“We are trying, but our efforts are being countered in a way that it is very clear they are being tipped off about our movements. Any time we make a plan to rescue [the girls] we have been ambushed,” said an artillery soldier among a rescue team announced by presidential decree over the weekend. In one clash, he said, 15 soldiers were killed by the insurgents.
“We know where these girls are being held in the forest, but every day we go in and come out disappointed. Definitely somebody high up in the chain of command is leaking up information to these people,” said the soldier, whom the Guardian was able to reach three times during shift breaks. Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, said in 2012 that Boko Haram had secret backers among government and security officials.
Those girls were sitting physics exams. I guess Boko Haram has shown them what they get for being so clever.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The very worst moment
Apr 29th, 2014 11:52 am | By Ophelia BensonA piece by channel4 news on April 25th:
Amid mounting public fury and an international outcry over the fate of 230 kidnapped Nigerian teenaged girls – now missing for nearly two weeks - the mother of one of the girls has warned that unless they are rescued urgently, she and other parents would likely be collecting their children’s dead bodies.
Speaking by telephone from Chibok, the town in north-eastern Borno state where the girls were kidnapped from their school in the middle of the night, a distressed Mrs Rahila Bitrus told Channel 4 News of her family’s anguish and accused the Nigeriangovernment of failing to act fast enough.
“They’d assured us they would rescue our children but today, it’s 11 days since the abductions and we still haven’t seen our daughters,” she said. “We are going through the very worst moment of our lives.
“The kidnapping has caused us great pain and sorrow,” said Mrs Bitrus. “We are praying and fasting for the safe return of our daughters.”
Her 17-year-old daughter, Ruth, an art student at Chibok Government Girls’ Secondary School, was about to sit exams. Insurgents suspected of belonging to the jihadi group Boko Haram – whose name means “western education is forbidden” – abducted the girls from their dormitories, loading them onto trucks, before setting the boarding school ablaze.
The girls, who are all aged between 16 and 18 and mostly come from Christian families, are thought to be held captive in a notorious region of difficult, rough terrain called the Sembisa Forest, a known jungle hideout of Boko Haram in Borno State. Around 40 girls escaped early on. Their accounts appeared to confirm that the kidnappers were from Boko Haram.
I suppose their being mostly from Christian families makes them all the more likely to be badly treated – although Boko Haram seems to be eager to treat everyone as badly as possible, so maybe the religion doesn’t make any difference. Boko Haram doesn’t leave itself room to treat some people even worse than others.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague has said he is “appalled” by the abductions. In a statement on Friday to Channel 4 News, he said he had discussed the kidnappings with the Nigerian foreign minister and was talking to the authorities about “how best to assist in their efforts to secure the girls’ release.”
Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speaking as the United Nations special envoy for global education, said he too was in contact with the Nigerian authorities and had offered assistance. He told Channel 4 News: “The world must wake up to the escalating tragedy now engulfing Nigeria. Today the lives of 230 teenage schoolgirls hang in the balance.”
The Islamist militant sect’s escalating campaign of terror has killed more than 4,000 civilians in just four years. It claims to be fighting for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria, with strict adherence to Sharia law.
…
Wole Soyinka, Gordon Brown and human rights activists have expressed the widely-held fear that the girls could already be imprisoned in unreachable bush camps and held for years to be used as sex slaves. There is also speculation in Borno State that the girls are being used as human shields to deter military action against Boko Haram camps.
(One of the pictures being used on Twitter to petition for more efforts to find the missing schoolgirls).
There is much anger at the government.
Women’s rights activists – whose number include some of the missing girls’ mothers – have condemned the government’s rescue efforts as incompetent. They say they are ready to risk their own lives by storming the insurgents’ hideout themselves to persuade Boko Haram to release the girls.
“We are very angry,” women’s rights lawyer Hauwa Shekarau told Channel 4 News. “We are not happy with efforts so far and we are demanding the government do more.”
Ms Shekarau, who is President of the International Federation of Women Lawyers Nigeria, said civil society groups felt powerless in the face of deep-seated public mistrust of the federal government’s rescue efforts.
“Eleven days have gone by and we still have no information about the whereabouts of these girls,” she said.
Now it’s fifteen days.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Lend a voice
Apr 29th, 2014 11:38 am | By Ophelia Benson[It's Borno, not Burno]
#BringBackOurGirls Very little is known about what the authorities are doing to bring back the 200+ girls abducted whilst at school. Even the exact figure of the girls taken is different between reports. These are precious lives and, if you care, we need to keep the pressure on the Nigerian Government and international organisations to rescue these girls. Sign now at: https://www.change.org/
en-GB/petitions/ over-200-girls-are-missing- in-nigeria-so-why-doesn-t- anybody-care-234girls
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Your business is to ensure that the law is human rights compliant
Apr 29th, 2014 11:32 am | By Ophelia BensonA joint press release: ‘Wills without bigotry – protest against the Law Society’
About 70 protesters rallied outside the office of the Law Society to condemn their endorsement of discriminatory sharia law on April 28 2014. The protest was organised by anti-racist, feminist and human rights groups, namely One Law for All, Southall Black Sisters, Centre for Secular Space, and London School of Economics SU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society. Chris Moos was the master of ceremonies of the rally.
At the protest, Pragna Patel, director of Southall Black Sisters called upon the Law Society to withdraw its guidance:
“Our message to you is this: Wake up: You are the Law Society and not a body advising on the compatibility of the law with religious principles! You have no business in normalising discriminatory religious principles in the legal culture and practice of this country. Your business is to ensure that the law is human rights compliant and not anti-rights compliant. Your business is to tear up the guidance. Your business is to stand with us on this side of the fence and on this side of history.”
Maryam Namazie, founder of One Law for All and Fitnah – Movement for Women’s Liberation argued:
“There is no place for Sharia in Britain’s legal system just as there is no place for it anywhere. Sharia – like all religious laws – is based on a dogmatic and regressive philosophy and a warped understanding of the concepts of equality and justice. It is primitive and patriarchal and based on inequality, retribution and religious [im]morality. It is not a rule for equals and has no place in a modern state or system of law. Law Society listen up: you must immediately withdraw your shameful guidance. Now! In the words of Algerian women singing for change: “We aren’t asking for favours. History speaks for us.”
Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said:
“The Law Society is violating its own equality policies by providing guidance on Sharia-compliant wills and offering training courses in Sharia law for high street lawyers. It is colluding with Sharia law principles that discriminate against women, non-Muslims and children who are adopted or born to unmarried parents. This is a direct attack on the equal rights of many Muslims, especially women. The Law Society is supposed to uphold the equality values of British law. Instead, it is undermining them. The Law Society would never provide guidance to facilitate racist or homophobic-compliant wills. Why the double standards?”
Kate Smurthwaite, comedian and activist, appealed to the Law Society:
“Religious bigots are highly skilled at trampling on the rights of women, children and non-believers. They don’t need The Law Society to help them. The value of daughters is THE SAME as the value of sons. All marriages, religious, non-religious, gay or straight are marriages. And every child is legitimate. Faced with bigotry it is the job of all of us – including the Law Society – to challenge it. The protestors today did exactly that. When will The Law Society follow suit and rip up this ‘guide to discrimination’?”
Abhishek Phadnis, president of the LSESU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society, added:
“I come from a country which has seen this divisive trend being taken to its logical conclusion – where a woman’s rights to, among other things, alimony and inheritance, depend entirely on her religion, there being different laws for each community. The resulting discrimination has visited appalling suffering upon Muslim women in particular. I have no wish to see it replicated here. A man may choose to be as spiteful and chauvinistic as he wishes, but it is not something our public institutions should encourage or condone. I hope the Law Society will withdraw this Note before it causes any further damage”.
James Bloodworth, the Editor of Left Foot Forward, said:
“In issuing its guidance on Sharia-Compliant Wills, the law society is lending respectability to something that should have none: the view that women are in some way second class citizens.”
Diana Nammi, Chief Executive of the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation, commented:
“I am here today to represent thousands of women and girls from the Middle East, North Africa and Afghanistan who live here in the UK. Many of these women, like me, have fled countries where Sharia law is practiced. […] There is a lot of money to be made by lawyers from drafting Sharia compliant wills. We cannot allow for women’s rights to be sacrificed so that lawyers can cash in. The Law Society must never step beyond its remit of secular law. It has no just reason to legitimise any religious law.”
Ramin Forghani, Vice-Chair of the Scotland Secular Society, who had travelled from Glasgow to join the protest, asserted:
“I’m Iranian and I well know what happens when the barrier between religion and legal system gets destroyed. Shame on the Law Society!”
Rumana Hashem from Nari Diganta – Women in Movement for Social Justice, Secularism and Equal Rights added:
“As a Bengali-Muslim resident in the UK, I faced enough discrimination in this country in relation to ethnicity, gender and migration for the last seven years. I cannot tolerate further discrimination in relation to my religion and sex. [...] When Muslim countries like Bangladesh are moving away from religious law and moving towards secularism and gender equity by overcoming religious rules, how can the Law Society in the UK provide guidance for legitimising Sharia Law in a state which is meant to provide secularism and human rights for all?
Other speakers at the rally included Jason Scott of the London Atheist Activist Group and Yasmin Rehman of the Centre for Secular Space.
The rally finished with protesters tearing pages from a copy of the Equality Act and pinning them to the fence of the Law Society, symbolising the contravention of the Act by the Law Society.
As the master of ceremonies of the rally, Chris Moos concluded:
“Our protest has sent a clear and loud signal to the Law Society that secularists and equality campaigners will not stand by and watch while the Law Society is undermining the basic principle of secular equality enshrined in the law. We hope that the Law Society will accept our legitimate concerns and address them by immediately withdrawing the practice note. The Law Society needs to act now, or face even more scrutiny from secular and human rights campaigners.”
The open letter kick-starting the campaign against the Law Society on March 23rd was signed by scientist Richard Dawkins; Egyptian activist Aliaa Magda Elmahdy; writer Taslima Nasrin; Founder and Director of Basira for Universal Women Rights Ahlam Akram; founder of Secularism is a Woman’s Issue Marieme Helie Lucas; and Raheel Raza, President of Council of Muslims Facing Tomorrow amongst others.
Pictures of the protest can be found here.
For more information, contact:
Maryam Namazie
One Law for All
077 1916 6731
@MaryamNamazie
Pragna Patel
Southall Black Sisters
pragna@southallblacksisters.co.uk
020 8571 9595
@SBSisters
Gita Sahgal
Centre for Secular Space
gita@centreforsecularspace.org
079 7271 5090
@GitaSahgal
Chris Moos
LSESU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society
074 2872 0599
@ChrisMoos_
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Where did Ross Douthat disappear to?
Apr 29th, 2014 10:59 am | By Ophelia BensonWe’ve noticed many times how jeremiads about religious freedom seem to go in only one direction – freedom to refuse service to gay couples, freedom to refuse to perform medically necessary abortions, freedom to shield child-raping priests from the law. Mark Joseph Stern at Slate points to an example from silence as opposed to jeremiad.
On Monday, the United Church of Christ brought a federal lawsuit against North Carolina’s marriage laws, which were amended in 2012 to ban gay unions. What interest does the United Church of Christ have in toppling the state’s homophobic ban? Under North Carolina law, a minister who officiates a marriage ceremony between a couple with no valid marriage license is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor and can be thrown in jail for 45 days. And since gay marriage is illegal in North Carolina, that means any minister who dares celebrate a gay union in his church may face jail time.
I’m not certain why Ross Douthat, Ramesh Ponnuru, Mollie Hemingway, and other vociferous conservative defenders of religious liberty aren’t vocally outraged about this fact. Nor am I certain why, if religious freedom is truly one of the most cherished values of American conservatism, the religious right wasn’t incensed when Unitarian ministers in New York had to risk arrest while performing commitment ceremonies under a similar statute in 2004. Surely a vision of religious liberty that would allow a storeowner to turn away gays at the door would encompass the basic principle of allowing houses of worship to honor lifelong commitments they deem worthy of solemnization in the eyes of God.
But then he goes on to admit that actually he knows perfectly well why: the conservative jeremiadists are interested in only their kind of religious freedom.
Anyone legitimately concerned about the rights of believers to practice their faith as they wish should be appalled by North Carolina’s marriage laws. The threat of a minister going to jail simply for celebrating a gay marriage is a real, and terrifying, affront to the very premise of “free exercise” of religion. Given how irrationally concerned conservatives are that ministers may soon be arrested in America for refusing to conduct gay weddings, I would hope they would be equally horrified by the specter of a minister being arrested for agreeing to perform one. But, of course, they won’t be. The right has settled on a stunningly specious new narrative of victimization and religious oppression; to observe that some Americans are facing religious oppression for their pro-gay views just doesn’t fit the storyline. Consistency and morality would command conservatives to enthusiastically join the United Church of Christ’s lawsuit. Hypocrisy will prevent them from saying a word.
That’s why I don’t go in for jeremiads about religious freedom: I know perfectly well I don’t want to defend every kind of religious freedom there can possibly be, so I don’t talk about it that simplistically. Be careful what you undertake to defend.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Reminders
Apr 29th, 2014 10:39 am | By Ophelia BensonJessica Valenti points out one of the ways women are given special treatment.
When I argue with a sexist, there’s an inevitable point at which he will call me “sweetheart”. (I like to think of it as shorthand for “you’re winning”.) If I’m really making him feel foolish, he may resort to “bitch”. “Ugly” is the last refuge of the hopelessly destroyed.
I’ve been writing about feminism on the internet long enough that these names don’t really bother me. But nothing is more grating than when a man I don’t know – in comments, Twitter or real life – calls me “Jessie”.
I don’t know if I find the diminutive the most grating item, but I do find it grating. Which is worse, hatred or contempt? Hard to say. Are “cunt” “bitch” and “twat” worse than “honey” “sweetie” and “babyname”? I don’t know; both are special.
As it turns out, it’s not just me. Behind every female with an opinion is a man with a sneering nickname for her.
Sophia Wallace, a photographer and feminist artist, tells me, “In professional contexts, I suddenly become ‘Sophie’ with people who have an issue with me. Usually they think I have exhibited too much leadership and are trying to bring me down.”
Well, it’s like “boy,” isn’t it. It’s what you do to uppity inferiors – you remind them of their inferior status.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Where are the girls?
Apr 28th, 2014 4:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe BBC’s correspondent in Nigeria, Will Ross, reports on the agonizing wait.
Almost two weeks after they were driven away from their boarding school in the town in the middle of the night, parents are desperate for news of their daughters.
[Oops, editor needed. That should be "Almost two weeks after their daughters were driven away from their boarding school in the town in the middle of the night, parents are desperate for news of them."]
A resident of the small town of Gwoza in the remote north-east said on 25 April she saw a convoy of 11 vehicles painted in military colours carrying many girls.
This will be of little comfort to the parents as it suggests at least some are now even further from home, close to the Cameroonian border.
Little comfort? No comfort at all, I should think.
On Friday, a presidential advisor told the BBC the incident was “unfortunate, embarrassing and evil”.
“The fact that some of them have been rescued raises our hope that with more effort, the objective of bringing them to safety and to their parents will be achieved,” said Reuben Abati.
But they were not rescued by the military. They escaped.
Part of the problem may be the familiar “god will fix it” one.
“Nigerian citizens have been waiting in vain for an effective decisive action from the presidency beside the usual: ‘We condemn this act…’ But the president is waxing strong in his Pentecostal polemics and total reliance on prayers to solve the country’s security failings,” says Nigerian writer Victor Ehikhamenor.
“Nigeria is a highly spiritual country and its past and present leaders know this and have manipulated it to their benefit,” he says.
“However, the current administration has taken it to a new height where God is expected to actually physically solve all the country’s debilitating problems from terrorism to corruption to fixing dilapidated infrastructures.”
While God’s fans blow people up in markets and kidnap schoolgirls to be their sex slaves. Whose side is God on exactly?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Hot
Apr 28th, 2014 4:30 pm | By Ophelia BensonPablo Flores pointed out another Facebook page about street harassment, this one started by a young woman in Argentina. My Spanish is minimal and rusty but I can get some and anyway there’s the Translate button. Acción Respeto: por una calle libre de acoso.
Here’s a cartoon posted there:
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Normalizing sexual violence
Apr 28th, 2014 11:36 am | By Ophelia BensonHere’s a sad finding from sociologists in gender studies – girls view sexual violence as normal.
(April 2014) – New evidence from the journal Gender & Society helps explain what women’s advocates have argued for years – that women report abuse at much lower rates than it actually occurs. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), 44% of victims are under the age of 18, and 60% of sexual assaults are not reported to police.
The study, “Normalizing Sexual Violence: Young Women Account for Harassment and Abuse,” will appear in the June 2014 issue of Gender & Society, a top-ranked journal in Gender Studies and Sociology. The findings reveal that girls and young women rarely reported incidents of abuse because they regarded sexual violence against them as normal.
Sociologist Heather Hlavka at Marquette University analyzed forensic interviews conducted by Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) with 100 youths between the ages of three and 17 who may have been sexually assaulted. Hlavka found that the young women experienced forms of sexual violence in their everyday lives including: objectification, sexual harassment, and abuse. Often times they rationalized these incidents as normal.
During one interview, referring to boys at school, a 13 year-old girl states:
“They grab you, touch your butt and try to, like, touch you in the front, and run away, but it’s okay, I mean… I never think it’s a big thing because they do it to everyone.”
See…this is why feminists are so widely seen as huge pains in the ass. It’s because we keep pointing out the badness of what most people view as normal. We keep trying to defamiliarize the “normal.”
The young women in the study provided insight into how some youth perceived their experiences of sexual violence and harassment during sexual encounters with men. In particular, the study pointed to how the law and popular media may lead to girls’ interpreting their abuse as normal.
I wondered about that a lot when I was navigating the street harassment in Paris as a teenager. It was so relentless and constant that it was clear all women in Paris must be familiar with it…so did they just view it as normal, and if so did that make them able to ignore it? I couldn’t imagine how that could work. I still can’t.
You know another thing that’s apparently viewed as “normal”? Bullying. Of course sexual violence is a form of bullying, but it’s not the only form. At any rate it’s terrible that such things become normalized. Feminism is going to continue to denormalize the “normal.”
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
“¡Los piropos me alegran todo el día/tarde/noche!”
Apr 28th, 2014 11:03 am | By Ophelia BensonWe’ve heard about street harassment in Cairo and Brussels; now let’s hear about street harassment in Lima, via the Stop Street Harassment blog.
When I arrived in Lima, Peru, as an American exchange student about two months ago, I thought I knew about street harassment. I had read about it, I had experienced a few catcalls here and there, and I had even had an egg thrown at me out the window of a moving car. But it had never been as constant as what women here experience every day. During my first of many ten-minute walks to school, I experienced endless “piropos” – honking, whistles, and of course the infamous kissing noises that Limeña women are forced to endure each time they walk down the street alone (and sometimes otherwise).
But apparently Kotex Perú can’t tell the difference between street harassment and a nice compliment. Through the Facebook page of “Paremos el Acoso Callejero,” a Lima-based organization for fighting street harassment, I came into contact with the following Kotex Peru ad with the caption “¡Los piropos me alegran todo el día/tarde/noche!” (Catcalls cheer me up all morning/afternoon/night!)
Here’s that Facebook page.
Ad Translation:
“Kotex Test: If you are walking down the street and you are cat-called, you:
- Laugh at the situation and keep walking
- Stop and give a look that could kill to whoever is catcalling you
- Take your lipstick out of your purse, put it on, and blow him a kiss”
Clearly, the sentiment of this ad is that “piropos,” or catcalls, are a compliment, and something to be appreciated. Listen, Kotex. This is not flirting. This is street harrassment.
A “piropo” isn’t It’s not about the fact that this man thinks I’m pretty. He’s not trying to brighten my day. He’s not trying to pay me a compliment. The smirks and laughter that often accompany these expressions make it clear that they’re meant to make women uncomfortable for the harrasser’s own entertainment.
The sentiment of this ad is even more than that. Choice # 2 is clearly meant for the prudish sex-negative humorless feminazis who just don’t know how to take a compliment.
The disconnect is bizarre. We’re supposed to see combinations of clothed men and naked women as “human sexuality” and we’re supposed to see barrages of jeering sexual harassment as something cheer-upping and flattering. Oy.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A place where the writers call themselves “free thinkers”
Apr 27th, 2014 12:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonMissing the point. Damion Reinhardt at Skeptic Ink.
Freezing Peaches at AACON
If you were to Google for “removing the objectionable paintings” as a phrase, it will lead you to (as of this printing) exactly one place on the World Wide Web, a place where the writers call themselves “free thinkers” and are presently discussing removing three paintings from an art show because said paintings depict women in various states of undress:
Not just missing the point but also distorting – “discussing removing three paintings” sounds as if the terrible people in question were discussing doing the removing themselves, which was not the case.
But the missed point is the more important aspect, because it’s so typical (of the genre as well as of Reinhardt’s friends and colleagues). No it wasn’t “because said paintings depict women in various states of undress.” If they had been for instance paintings of people in various states of undress, there would have been no issue. To be minimally fair and accurate, he should have phrased that as “because said paintings depict anonymous women in various states of undress along with famous men as thoroughly dressed as it’s possible to be apart from gloves and hat.”
But that would have ruined the sneer.
You can see all three paintings in this Storify. The images are not safe for work, unless you work in an art gallery and can therefore be expected to view nudes routinely without turning into a slavering misogynist sex beast.
I would love to write a brilliant post about why censoring these paintings is a bad idea, even in this narrow context, but Russell Blackford anticipated this issue almost exactly a year before the events of this weekend:
Within wide limits, we should all be free to talk about sex, or even joke about it. Book stalls should be free to sell books whose covers have arguably sexual or erotic images, art displays or poster shops should be free to include art with erotic content, etc.
It does seem that in every generation new rationalisations are invented to try to restrict sexual expression and openness. And in every generation, we have to fight this.
Please go read his entire post, and think seriously about whether we atheists want to follow the leads of mullahs and the priests in demonizing human sexuality in general and covering up of artistic representations of the female form in particular.
If you care to support the artist, prints of smiling David Silverman are still available from his website.
The paintings are not about “human sexuality”; they are about male sexuality, and women as objects of same. There’s a context here, for fuck’s sake. This wasn’t a set of pictures of naked people, and it wasn’t erotica; it was paintings exclusively of naked unknown women mixed in with fully clothed famous intellectual men. That does not simply translate to Human Sexuality.
Also, it was at the American Atheist Convention. Women were there as well as men: attending and also speaking. Women were participating. But what were these paintings? Famous fully clothed atheist men, and naked women. Where were the famous fully clothed atheist women? Nowhere. What does that look like to the casual (and even attentive) viewer? That men do atheism and women do being naked. Does Reinhardt really see no problem with that at an atheist Convention?
Update: Ahahaha Damion is such a wit. So is “I has gelato” of Twitter. (That’s a title. You know, like Princess Henrietta of Monaco.)
Geddit? I want to put burqas on all the women. Yup.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
All different, and all identical
Apr 27th, 2014 11:29 am | By Ophelia BensonA great Jesus and Mo this week. (They’re all great, but in light of the recent demonizations of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, this one is especially so.)
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Vatican meritocracy
Apr 27th, 2014 10:44 am | By Ophelia BensonGnu Atheism at Facebook on a certain recent canonization:
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
They are agreeing to being spiritually married to their father
Apr 27th, 2014 10:12 am | By Ophelia BensonA startling – yet all too easily understandable – item from Purity Culture. Lynn Beisner at AlterNet:
My step-father began having problems getting erections when I was a senior in high school. How did I find out about this? He told me that he was using me to get an erection so that he could have sex with my mother.
We were very religious people. We attended a Fundamentalist Baptist Church so sexually conservative I was not even allowed to wear jeans. But still, he would sit me down and discuss what he had been thinking on those nights when he pressed my body against his and stroked my hair, the curve of my hip and the area between my collar bone and breasts until his penis was hard against my thigh.In those incredibly awkward and galling conversations he reassured me repeatedly that he would never do anything to compromise my virginity.
So using her to get a hard-on is perfectly fine. Purity is preserved.
In a way it’s staggering in its callous absurdity, but in another way it’s just of course, the whole point of patriarchy is ownership of female sexuality, so naturally Mr Horndog rationalizes that it’s all cool as long as he doesn’t actually Break Her Hymen.
But it’s worse than that.
To better understand the role that Purity Culture played in my step-father’s abuse, I would ask that you bear with me while I explain a little about the beliefs and practices of that culture. I should distinguish first the difference between the emphasis placed on purity in mainline Christian circles, and the hardcore Purity Community. The latter is best known for their the icky tradition of Purity Balls. At these annual events, daughters as young as five dress in elaborate white gowns and “gift” their virginities to their fathers for safekeeping.
I will grant you that purity balls are indeed cringe-worthy. But it is important that we not stop our examination of the culture at that point because the Purity Culture is far more troubling, and the relationship between father and daughter becomes far more enmeshed and emotionally incestuous than most articles about purity culture expose.
For starters, the balls are celebrations of the vow that these girls have made and the contract that they sign. They are agreeing to being spiritually married to their father and to God until such time as their father sees fit to give her to a husband. For their part, fathers pledge to protect their daughters’ virginity, which is the “most precious gift that she can offer her future husband.”
Yeah you know that’s really not…
…it’s not a thing, not Christianity only more so, not extra extra pure. Daughters “spiritually marrying” their fathers…that’s a twist.
According to Vision Forum, one of the leaders in the Purity Culture, a father treats his daughter in such a way that is that he “woos her and wins her with a tenderness and affection unique to that relationship”
My step-father couldn’t woo me using Purity Balls, because there were none at that point. Back then, fathers were encouraged to woo their daughters on regular dates. My step-father would bring me flowers, open doors for me and generally treat me like I was his much younger girlfriend.
Ew!
I did a post on the Ew back in September 2011, via a post of Libby Anne’s. Everyone who commented was equally horrified.
And in practice…it turned out to be every bit as creepy as it looked.
To me, these dates felt more like an excuse for my step-father to re-experience his youth. He got to be seen with a younger woman on his arm, and more importantly he got to spend an hour or two basking in the warmth and adoration of someone who was not allowed to challenge him.
I am not being egotistical when I say that my step-father fell for me, developed a huge and creepy crush on me during those dates. Had we been allowed to have the normal step-father/daughter relationship where we ignore each other and occasionally snarl back and forth, I feel fairly sure he would never have developed that heartfelt affection and sexual attraction.
But the dates succeeded in one way: They taught me exactly what I should expect while dating men in that environment: abuse.
And the other thing they taught her?
The second lesson, however, is about more than just being your father’s servant. It is meant to teach young women to orient their entire lives around pleasing their fathers as practice for pleasing their husbands. One of the more important ways that this shows up is in the requirement that a woman dress and groom herself in a way which pleases her father.
A prime example of this is a statement from Michelle Duggar, a star of the hit series “19 and Counting” She said that she styles her hair however Jim Bob prefers because “what he likes is what I want.” The Botkin sisters, luminaries in the Purity Movement, talk about wearing their father’s favorite colors, styles in dress and hair so that their father will enjoy seeing them.
Girls are trained to be patriotropic.
In the practical case of my step-father, surrendering to his wishes about my appearance led to him treating me as his personal Barbie doll. He bought my clothes had my hair styled as he wanted. Then under the guise of giving his stamp of approval to the outfits that I planned to wear, he would demand fashion shows. Although they were obviously for his titillation, he was doing nothing more than what Purity Culture encourages.
It’s inevitable, when this is made so central. It’s funny about that, isn’t it – it’s not charity or compassion or making the world a better place that’s made central in these cults, it’s patriarchy – real patriarchy, literal patriarchy, not the sublimated watered down version that we secular weirdos have to navigate.
Of course not every man in purity culture uses his daughter to treat his erection problems. But the attitudes and beliefs about women that encourage men to see daughters as apprentice wives and their sexuality as his make it very easy justify all manner of oppression and abuse just as my step-father justified his behavior. The potential for abuse grows exponentially when you factor in the isolation that these families and religions generally practice which leave the fathers with no fear of reprisal and daughters without recourse.
What does “apprentice wife” mean in this context? A girl who is being groomed for literal slavery. It’s a decorated, veiled, beribboned kind of slavery, but it is slavery.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The cutting in the back rooms
Apr 26th, 2014 6:11 pm | By Ophelia BensonEgypt has one of the highest rates of FGM in the world: a staggering 91 per cent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have been cut, according to a 2013 report released by UNICEF (PDF). Genital mutilation is practiced in various forms across the African continent, from Nigeria to Somalia. In Egypt, it is most common—indeed, almost universal—in rural areas like Diyarb Buqtaris village where Soheir grew up. But it crosses all class boundaries. The West often labels the excisions an Islamic practice, but cutting occurs in Egypt in both Muslim and Christian communities, and it goes on despite the fact that the Egyptian Coptic Church and Al Azhar, the country’s leading Islamic authority, have condemned it.
Al Azhar may be “the country’s leading Islamic authority,” if that means anything, but it’s not so leading that it brought FGM to a halt. The Muslim Brotherhood did not condemn it, and when asked said it was not a priority.
In the past, barbers or local midwives often did the cutting in the back rooms of the girls’ homes. In recent years doctors have performed an estimated 80 per cent of the procedures. Even so, they may know little about the damage caused to the girl, says Vivian Fouad from the NPC. Her organization has worked to integrate a course highlighting the dangers of FGM into Egypt’s gynecological and public health curriculum. “The ‘medicalization’ of FGM is very high,” Fouad explained, and “this is very dangerous, as it gives legitimacy to the practice.” The procedure, which takes just a few minutes, costs anything between $4.50 in the countryside to $140 in private clinics in the capital: useful earnings the medics make on the side.
If doctors do it, that makes it look as if it’s a normal and in some way medically beneficial thing to do. That’s bad. Imagine if doctors cut off every girl’s left little finger. The girls would mostly survive, but they would have a worse, clumsier, narrower grip than people who kept both their little fingers. Adults should not do things like that to children.
An American-Egyptian artist who prefers not to be named says she was circumcised in a smart clinic in the coastal city of Alexandria during the early 1990s. “I thought it was normal thing and everyone did it. It was something to be proud of,” the 31-year-old told The Daily Beast. Her mother, from the United States, had been coerced by friends into organizing the operation. The young woman says she is still suffering from psychological damage as a result of the mutilation. She was sedated during the procedure, but that is is not always the case. She said she could barely walk or urinate for four days afterwards.
See? If everyone does it and it seems normal – then everyone does it and it seems normal. The fact that it’s agonizingly painful at the time and destructive later is obscured. Footbinding worked the same way. It hurt like fuck and it left girls and women crippled, but it was normal and everyone did it…until it wasn’t any more.
“In the era of the Muslim Brotherhood, the people perceived that they encouraged these practices,” Fouad said. Even though it is not addressed or endorsed in the Qur’an, genital mutilation fit into the kind of traditionalist view of Egyptian life that the Brotherhood exploited for its own ends.
In 2011, local media reported that the then-ruling Muslim Brotherhood was offering subsidized female circumcision at mobile clinics. The Daily Beast obtained a leaflet, dated April 2012, emblazoned with the logo of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and detailing discount medical services being made available. At the bottom the simple paper brochure advertised female and male circumcision for just 30 Egyptian pounds ($4.50) a procedure.
Well it’s the Muslim Brotherhood. It’s not their genitals that are going to be carved up.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Math matters
Apr 26th, 2014 5:55 pm | By Ophelia BensonDavid Robert Grimes points out that mathematics is of fundamental importance, a claim which I would have thought was uncontroversial in this high tech age, but apparently it’s not.
There is still a self-perpetuating apprehension about mathematics, and an attitude of contempt that must be overcome. The comment by Sheila Nunan, the general secretary of the INTO, that “it was the boys who did the honours maths led the country to ruination” borders on the profoundly anti-intellectual, and such sentiments are counterproductive to improving our national numeracy problem.
Ireland however seems to have other ideas of what’s important.
It is a damning testament to our skewed priorities that until now we have insisted primary teachers have honours Irish but showed little concern about their mathematical confidence. That we place more value on a minority language than on the language of the universe reeks of misplaced nationalism. Similarly, that we devote 30 per cent of primary teaching time to Irish and religion while our basic literacy and numeracy struggle should raise alarm bells.
Irish and religion, 30% – in primary school. That does seem highly perverse. Nationalism is not one of humanity’s better ideas, and religion is a kind of nationalism of god.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
30%
Apr 26th, 2014 5:19 pm | By Ophelia BensonDavid Robert Grimes points out that mathematics is of fundamental importance, a claim which I would have thought was uncontroversial in this high tech age, but apparently it’s not.
There is still a self-perpetuating apprehension about mathematics, and an attitude of contempt that must be overcome. The comment by Sheila Nunan, the general secretary of the INTO, that “it was the boys who did the honours maths led the country to ruination” borders on the profoundly anti-intellectual, and such sentiments are counterproductive to improving our national numeracy problem.
Ireland however seems to have other ideas of what’s important.
It is a damning testament to our skewed priorities that until now we have insisted primary teachers have honours Irish but showed little concern about their mathematical confidence. That we place more value on a minority language than on the language of the universe reeks of misplaced nationalism. Similarly, that we devote 30 per cent of primary teaching time to Irish and religion while our basic literacy and numeracy struggle should raise alarm bells.
Irish and religion, 30% – in primary school. That does seem highly perverse. Nationalism is not one of humanity’s better ideas, and religion is a kind of nationalism of god.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
