An item from last May is being passed around on Twitter and Facebook today – Eve Ensler writing about fistula and…well, Eve Ensler.

She had a fistula because she had uterine cancer, you see.

My friend Paul says to me, “It’s like you’ve got Congo Stigmata.” Well, actually, almost everyone said it in one way or another. “It doesn’t surprise me, Eve, of course. All those stories of rape over all these years. The women have entered you.” And at first I pushed this away because it’s not really a great advertising for activism. Come care about others, listen to their stories and their pain, and you can contact it too.

Hmmmno. That’s not the problem. The problem is that rape in the Congo isn’t about you. It isn’t something you should invoke as a way of talking about you. Ever.

Dr Handsome, my colon doctor, e-mailed Dr Deb the day after the surgery and said he had been unable to sleep because he was so in awe of the mystery of what they had found. He said, “These findings are not medical, they are not science. They are spiritual.”

Another way not to talk about rape in the Congo.

I have always been drawn to holes. Black holes. Infinite holes. Impossible holes. Absences. Gaps, tears in membranes. Fistulas. Obstetric fistulas occur because of extended difficult labor. Neccesary blood is unable to flow to the tissues of the vagina and the bladder. As a result, the tissues die and a hole forms through which urine or feces flow uncontrollably. In the Congo fistulas have been caused by rape, in particular gang rape, and rape with foreign objects like bottles or sticks. So many thousands of women in eastern Congo have suffered fistulas from rape that the injury is considered a crime of combat.

Ohhh myyyyyyy godddddddd that is so not a way to talk about rape in the Congo. It’s not a fucking literary conceit, it’s not a metaphor, and it’s sure as hell nothing to do with any distant safe prosperous woman’s literary interest in “holes.” It’s not an occasion to drop sophisticated chat about holes as absences. Just don’t. Do not.

After three trips to the Congo, I needed to see a fistula. I asked to sit in on a reparative operation. I need to know the shape of this hole, the size of this hole. I needed to know what a woman’s insides looked like when her most essential cellular tissue had been punctured by a stick or penis or penises. Wearing a mask and gown, I peered

No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

There in the lining was an undeniable hole, a rip, a tear in the essential story. It was almost a perfect circle, the size of a quarter may be, too big to prevent things from getting in or from falling out. I couldn’t help but think of the sky, of the membrane of the sky and the rip in the ozone. Humans had become hole makers. Bullet holes and drilled holes, hurt holes, greed holes, rape holes. Holes in membrane that function to protect the surface or bodily organ.

Yes; holes. In this case, physical injuries, which are not playthings for Eve Enslers to bat around like so many ping pong balls. (Hey didja ever stop to think that balls are holes turned inside out? Wo, deep, huh?)

Seriously; don’t ever do that. Don’t treat horrors as sources of aesthetic “play” and don’t treat them as pretexts to talk about your Self. Don’t be an Eve Ensler.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Catholic morality. Rape children, protect colleagues who rape children, protect the church from all consequences of protecting colleagues who rape children…and make sure to punish people who marry someone the church disapproves of.

It’s impressive, isn’t it? Inspiring? No wonder the church inspires such loyalty.

A Catholic high school near Philadelphia fired a teacher who told administrators he was going to marry his male partner.

The episode is the latest in a string of similar incidents, and it came just a week after New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan said the church is not “anti-gay” but has been “outmarketed” on the issue of gay marriage.

Ah, Timothy Dolan. Timothy Dolan, archbishop and blogger. Timothy Dolan who took to his blog a few years ago to complain that lots of people rape children but everybody shouts at the church. “They do it too!” the archbishop complained, like any toddler.

In this case, Griffin, 35, an alumnus of Holy Ghost who taught languages there for 12 years, was dismissed Friday (Dec. 6) in a meeting with the school president, the Rev. James McCloskey, and the principal, Jeffrey Danilak.

Which surprised him, because they knew he was gay, the two of them went to school parties as a couple.

But McCloskey said in a statement to the newspaper that Griffin’s action violated the terms of his contract, “which requires all faculty and staff to follow the teachings of the church as a condition of their employment.”

And yet…what if “the teachings of the church” were that staff could not marry people of other races? Would such a contract be enforceable? I don’t know the answer to that, but I think the church wouldn’t try to enforce such a teaching. Maybe it should think hard about what “teachings of the church” have changed over time, and why.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

There’s a blog and blogger called Kelly Barnhill, and she has a post from yesterday on anti-feminism and how mystifying it is. I know; isn’t it? It mystifies the hell out of me. Why not join it instead of fight it? (I think the official answer is “because only ugly bitches are feminists,” but that answer is incorrect.)

Now, a while ago (quite a while, actually) I wrote a post about a children’s movie with some pretty gross lady-hating themes, and I’ve managed to catch heck for it. In the comments, in my email box. Whatever. There are people who are seriously mad at me for pointing out that the movie was, in addition to being a crappily-animated, source-text-destroying, dreckish disaster of a movie – it was also grossly antifeminist. Moreover, it fed into the baseless fears of the men’s-rights folks who seem to think that personal empowerment is a zero-sum game. That to empower women means to disempower men. And that the purpose of feminism is to throw men, collectively mind you, into the proverbial dust-bin of history.

These things make me tired.

And sad.

It’s depressing that so many people think not-being-dominant=being-subordinate. Oy. Just because I don’t want to be subordinate, that doesn’t mean I want you to be subordinate.

The curious thing for me, though, is the sense of ownership. I write children’s books. I tweet. I keep this blog. I have a readership – a small one, sure. But a readership nonetheless. I get notes from readers – both men and women – saying “I come here to read about the writing process” or “I come here to get your insights on….” whatever. Books. Kids. Pretty things. “Please keep your feminism to yourself,” people say in comments I delete. “No one cares about your politics,” one woman wrote me. She wrote a lot of other sentences, mind, and I’ll repeat none of them here. She closed with, “the next time you want to air your grievances, just keep your yap shut.”

Apparently, for both children and children’s authors, silence is golden.

Or maybe it’s not authors. Maybe it’s women. Maybe women saying things online makes us itchy. Or maybe women saying things at all.

And campaigns. Don’t forget campaigns. Campaigns of fretful deracinated angst-ridden wastrels trying to persuade the entire rest of the world to stop reading the blogs of six or seven Demons Incarnate because they so hates’em.

The thing is though? My identity as a feminist informs every facet of my life. It informs my parenting. It informs my reading. It informs the way I listen to the news. It informs my interactions with others. It informs my understanding. It informs the questions that I ask. And it informs the writing that I do  - the novels for children, the short stories for grown ups, the stuff on this blog. I can’t take the feminism out. I don’t even know how.

And maybe this is the limitations of my world-view. Because I honestly can’t understand how we can be in this world and not be feminist. How can we just not notice inequality and injustice when it is staring us in the dang face? How can we not come up against the blindness of privilege and not want to change? How can we not desire to open our eyes? All social justice movements, in the end, work to remove shadows and blocks. We cannot see injustice if the limits of privilege block the view. If we remove the block we can see unfairness and we can change the world and make it better. Those blocks are removed through experience, through awareness-raising, and, probably most effectively, through story. Story matters.

I like this Kelly Barnhill.

I am a feminist. Proudly so. Unabashedly so. It concerns me that I get unpleasant emails and comments just based on this blog. I have in the past. I will in the future. Ugly people will say ugly things, and that is just that. It concerns me that “Writing While Feminist” is offensive to people – that the fact of my world-view and the fact of my voice and the fact that I tell stories and think things and see the world in terms of changing and re-shaping and bettering things for everyone is somehow worthy of vitriol or anger or shaming words.

Same here.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Radio 4 also reported on the No Gender Segregation protest, this morning on the Today programme. (I spell it programme because it’s in the UK. They get to spell it their way when it’s there.)

That’s huge, because everybody listens to Today.

It’s available for a week. They talk to Chris and Abhishek. It starts at 1 hour 35 minutes.

H/t Maureen.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

David Marr’s reporting continues; on the testimony of Joan Isaacs.

The council has already conceded in its submission to the royal commission that Towards Healing is opaque in its workings; inconsistent in its outcomes; operates without central oversight; and might be seen as lacking independence as it investigates abuse.

“It is now clearer than ever that the time has come for the church to hand over the determination of victims’ compensation to an independent process,” Sullivan told his Ballarat audience. “We are recommending a national compensation scheme, independent of the church that would determine payments.”

Sullivan doesn’t mean the courts where the church and its insurers continue to play hardball with victims such as Joan Isaacs. She is the first of the four. We know her name and saw her face. Most of this week will be spent examining her case.

When she began to read her statement in a slightly faltering voice the feeling in the hearing room changed. The commissioners lowered their eyes; the lawyers were still; there was absolute silence.

Not a moment for bible quotations? Not a place for hypocritical invocations of pseudo-compassion for thelittlechildren?

“From 1967 to 1968, I was sexually abused by Father Francis Derriman who was a priest of the archdiocese of Brisbane and chaplain of Sacred Heart Sandgate for those two years. I was aged 14 to 15 at the time of the abuse …”

And when she finished half an hour later I heard something I have never heard before at a royal commission: applause. McClellan did nothing to reproach the gallery. The applause rolled on. Isaacs said very softly to the room: “Thank you.”

Handy-dandy, which is the beggar, which the thief.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Hemant Mehta tells us that now that a Satanist group has said it wants to put up a monument in the grounds of the Oklahoma state Capitol building, to join the 10 Commandments monument that’s already there – a Hindu group wants to join the fun.

Fabulous. Now that the monument is there, and won’t be coming down, this is the only available way to respond.

Will the Muslim volunteer please hurry up?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Meanwhile Dave Silverman went on Fox News to talk about their nonsense about omigod who will stand up for Christmas. They made him sit between Shmuley Boteach and Bill [argh] Donohue.

The Fox person was outraged because there was a Satanic monument of some kind placed next to omigodnononononothehorror the ten commandments – as if it were universally agreed that the ten commandments were the best thing ever. The ten commandments are horrible. Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie – that’s the closest they get to anything like morality, and that’s a pretty pathetic showing. Yes no kidding, we know that, how about a little more? How about something a little affirmative, that might take more effort than just not killing people? (Believe it or not I don’t actually want to kill people.)

And the Fox person was also completely humorless about Festivus.

And despite all that Dave won so ha.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DW0FBQTYjs

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

James Bloodworth has a good post at Left Foot Forward on why we oppose gender segregation at public events.

As long as neither gender is put at a disadvantage by imposed segregated seating – i.e. men and women will be ‘separate but equal’ – Universities UK don’t see any problem with it.

To get an idea of just how absurd this is, imagine for a minute the justified furore there would be if racial segregation were permitted on campus on the basis that black and white people were ‘different but equal’. Imagine if gay people were separated out from their straight friends on the basis that they were ‘difference but equal’, with those refusing to move booted out of the lecture hall for no other reason than their sexuality.

You know this would not be permitted, and yet it is with women. Why?

Because it’s different. It gets a partial exemption, or sometimes a full exemption. Why? Because it’s so hard to give up the subordination of women. Why? Because sex, and family life, and habit, and all sorts of things related to that. Because it’s up close and personal.

Religions get an exemption for hiring all-male clergy, after all. Why’s that? Why do you not see them any longer barring Other Races, when you do see them quite cheerfully barring women? Because gender inequality goes deeper than the other kinds. Why does it? Because it’s there, I guess, like Everest. Humans like to sort and rank and evaluate, and gender is the first criterion most people encounter.

Or to put it another way, I don’t know, but it does.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Camillia Khan, head of communications for the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, writes in the Huffington Post UK about gender segregation, or, as she prefers to call it, gender ‘segregation.’

The debate on ‘segregation’ has returned, and once again figures from across the spectrum have focused their lenses on Muslim students and Islamic societies. Universities UK recently published a guidance document, outlining the management of external speakers on campuses and have been heckled for coming to the rather simple conclusion, amongst many others, that side-by-side gender based seating is not against the law.

From across what spectrum? What lenses? She’s a clumsy writer. Universities UK hasn’t been “heckled” – it’s been disputed, often hotly, but not heckled. And then, what was disputed was not a conclusion that “side-by-side gender based seating is not against the law.” The law wasn’t the issue. The issue was university policy, not the law.

So we know already that Khan doesn’t bother to be precise about what she’s discussing.

The focus on this single case-study, buried amidst the document’s 42-pages, has been extremely disproportionate and led to sensationalist comments, vilifying Islamic societies and Muslim students. It is encouraging to see that Universities UK have chosen to remain firm on their objective and measured stance, acknowledging the nuances that exist with different theological perspectives.

Vilifying Muslim students? I don’t think so. I think Khan told a falsehood there. And why is it encouraging to see that UUK is “acknowledging the nuances that exist with different theological perspectives”? How is that their job or their role? They’re an organization of university vice-chancellors, not theologians.

Firstly, the term segregation itself is highly problematic and acts to conflate the reality further. As Saussure theorised on syntagmatic relations, ‘within speech, words are subject to a kind of relation that is independent of the first and based on their linkage,’ and segregation connotes various forms of separation and oppression – it is a word loaded with modern history, drawing  back to the belligerent injustices of the slave trade, apartheid, and the Holocaust. It blows the discussion out of proportion and acts to politicise it further. Segregation implies a hierarchy- a form of discrimination which asserts the dominance of one group over another- which is a very different reality to a voluntary seating arrangement which impacts both males and females equally. Thus, the current discourse is creating new imagined problems rather than solving existing ones.

Where to begin. Yes, segregation is a loaded word, but it’s the right loaded word. Calling it something more emollient than that is lying, and minimizing the ugly reality. A seating arrangement that spells out who may sit where is indeed a form of discrimination which asserts the dominance of one group over another. Segregation in seating can’t be fully voluntary, because it depends on everyone’s compliance.

The term ‘segregation’ denotes discrimination and isolation – and this couldn’t be further from the general reality. There needs to be a linguistic shift in the discourse – but more importantly, the shift must be an ideological one which accepts that there exist differences based on sound spirituality, and these need to be embraced, led by brave and nuanced organisations such as Universities UK. Male and female seating is a simple religious manifestation that has been established for multiple millennia and is one that is still actively implemented today by many churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious communities. Taking away the basic freedom to choose a room arrangement from mature and democratically elected student groups such as Islamic societies will only seek to alienate Muslim students from social engagement by denying their right to religious freedom.

She’s being deceptive again there. The issue isn’t meetings of groups such as Islamic societies, it’s meetings and debates open to everyone.

What a pathetic project, a woman defending her own segregation, and being deceptive to do it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Note to spammers:

If you’re going to heap flattery on me by way of tricking me into thinking your comments are real, it doesn’t help to address me as “Guy.” If you call me Guy, I’ll think you’re not sincere.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

That’s nice. A “Christian” school suspends a teacher because someone stole her phone and now there are naked pictures of her on a revenge porn site.

A female teacher at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy in Ohio has been placed on administrative leave after school officials found a nude photograph of her on a “revenge porn” site.

…

A spokesman from the school said “we have an employee who appears in some photos that have been compromised and made digitally available,” but he did not indicate how the photographs were first discovered, or whether any of her students had seen them.

A parent of one of her students told WCPO that while “the woman is already a victim,” because this is “a Christian school, parents are upset that a teacher is even taking naked pictures and sending them to people — and her students are old enough to get online and Google their teacher’s name and the photos come up.”

“Parents are upset” that blah blah blah so they think it’s ok for the school to suspend a teacher for something that was done to her. How pleasant, how fair, how decent.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)