History remembers us for our actions, not our intentions, after all. Do you want to be the one who trembled in the corner while someone suffered or the person who spoke up bravely, with a quaver in your voice, and made a difference?
Category Archives: Feminism
vintage everyday: The Corman’s Missing Polaroids: The Story Behind 66 Lost Polaroids of Madonna Before She Was Famous
The Corman’s Missing Polaroids: The Story Behind 66 Lost Polaroids of Madonna Before She Was FamousThe missing Polaroids had kept Richard Corman awake at night for years. He had misplaced or, worse, thrown away dozens of shots he took of Madonna in April 1983, when she was a fiercely ambitious 24 years old unknown with blood-red-lips, a painted-on-mole and an armful of black rubber bangles.
Buffy Sainte Marie – “I’m Going Home” – YouTube
Buffy Sainte Marie’s ”I’m Going Home” Lyrics
Heaven isn’t so far away as people say
I got a home high in my heart
Heaven is right where I come from; I never throw it away
I know the place and I’m going home
I’m going home
I’m going home
See up there, it’s not the same
They know your name
And I’m not ashamed to need it
I’m going home
I’m going home
I’m going home
You keep on knocking but I’m not coming out of this state I’m in
I’m travellin’ right, I’m gonna get there soon
I’m standing up praying, I’m singing
Saying Heyo ha ha heyo ha hey ya
I know the way and I’m going home.
I’m going home
I’m going home
That’s where the heart can rest
The best is there
And only a fool would leave it. I’m going home
I’m going homeI’m going home
I’m going home
I been around, I been to town
Hey, where you think I learned right from wrong
And I’m going home
I’m going home
+972’s Person of the Year: The women standing up to sexual harassment | +972 Magazine
Every womanizing culture is sleazy in its own special way. In America it’s frat-boy sniggering. There’s the Mediterranean suffocating pseudo-romantic come-ons, or the conservative Middle Eastern trick of punishing women for men’s sexuality.In Israel too, sexual aggression expresses a dark underside of national and cultural flaws: swaggering ego-driven entitlement, the unquestioned certainty that specific people and positions are above both law and morality. If they break it, their buddies will cover up for them — that is the sensual intoxication of sheer physical military power.In a bygone era, these traits were romanticized and marketed to Israel’s people and outside admirers alike. Israelis prided themselves on being brash and direct; they disregarded rules to release creative problem-solving genius that is the secret of the Jews’ mythologized, centuries-old resilience. Israel views itself as the triumph of the gun over the ghetto. For heroic, nation-saving military men, helping themselves to women’s bodies seemed like a natural extension of that.When values are so deeply rooted in society, they become transparent and unquestioned. But when so many women (one high-profile man was accused by no less than 14 people) are able to step outside and see what was previously invisible, it means the silent rules that define women’s natural role in society are no longer functioning. The more visible these values become, the more flimsy their force.The women of 2016 may not have realized it, but their actions conveyed that entitlement, impunity, and brash invasiveness — at least as manifested in sexual aggression — are now anathema. No longer do military, religious, or political causes justify the sacrifice of their physical and spiritual integrity. Manipulate these causes for self-satisfying urges, and it won’t end well.
Source: +972’s Person of the Year: The women standing up to sexual harassment | +972 Magazine
Wish You Would Listen: A Very Short Playlist Because You Missed the Whole Point of Feminism – The Ladies Finger – why are people so afraid?
Obviously, this never happened. The part where Princess Nokia showed up, I mean. But I wish it did, because the other stuff – being asked to leave spaces, or prove my gender, happens all the time.In bathrooms, at airport security checks, at the movie theatre, on our local buses. Everywhere. Friends and family (often self-titled feminists), tell me to “Dress more like a girl. Or at least grow your hair out.” They point to my jeans, my short hair and my beat-up sneakers, and say, “What more do you expect?” This is a playlist for all the people who have offered me snatches of discordant wisdom and jarring insights, and to anyone who relies on gender binaries to question the validity of an individual’s rights and way of life.
These Ballerinas from Cairo are Reclaiming their City in a Series of Breathtaking Photographs – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger
These Ballerinas from Cairo are Reclaiming their City in a Series of Breathtaking PhotographsDecember 26, 2016By Soyra GuneYou could argue, as Cairoscene does, that ballet in some aspects is very similar to the city of Cairo.Two directors cum photographers, Mohamed Taher and Ahmed Fathy have taken to the streets of Cairo to create a new image of the city by taking scenic photographs of ballerinas against urban backdrops and posting these images on their Instagram page, Ballerinas of Cairo.
Stalking Was Made a Punishable Crime 3 Years Ago, So How Do Stalkers Continue Despite Police Complaints? – The Ladies Finger – India is not unusual in not really taking stalking seriously. In the USA, we have seen one elected President.
Stalking Was Made a Punishable Crime 3 Years Ago, So How Do Stalkers Continue Despite Police Complaints?December 24, 2016By Divya VijayakumarImage credit: Public Transport by Ahmed Mahin Fayaz via Flickr/CC by 2.0A month ago, a friend wandered into a grocery store where she saw a vaguely familiar man staring at her. She approached him and asked if they knew each other. He said yes, he knew her name, and even rattled off a list of places where he’d seen her before – at track practice, a park close to her home, a bookstore. With growing discomfort, she turned to leave when he called out to her. “It was your birthday two days ago, wasn’t it? Happy birthday.” This last bit of information was not even on social media.While she was shaken by the interaction, many people didn’t consider it something to worry about. After all, they countered, he wasn’t harming her. In fact, he’d even been nice and wished her. While she chose not to go to the police, she felt unsettled for a long time after.On 17th December, Jyothi Kumari, an advocate in her 20s, was on her way to work in Bangalore when she was murdered by Madhu who had been stalking and harassing her for years. He had constantly harassed her when she was younger, following her to college and incessantly telephoning her house. He disappeared for a while when her uncle intervened but two months ago, Jyothi had approached the police saying that Madhu had resurfaced, attacked her when she was in her PG and also stolen her scooter. All that her complaint yielded was a “stern warning”, and no FIR was filed.Jyothi is the latest in a growing number of women who have been not just harassed but murdered by their stalkers – angry, entitled men seeking revenge after their advances were rejected. Many of these crimes also share a pattern of having been committed in public places, often as these women were travelling to or from their place of work. Pinki Devi, a beautician in Gurgaon was stabbed to death by her stalker at a metro station in Delhi in October. S Swathi, an Infosys employee, was hacked to death by her stalker at Chennai’s Nungambakkam railway station in June.With every horrific case, what becomes clear is this — stalking cannot be brushed aside as something casual. Yet there are movies and pop culture that glorify stalking, depicting it as proof that a man’s persistence pays off. Just a few months ago Tamil actor Sivakarthikeyan defended stalking, saying that it does not matter if in a movie the hero’s feelings are not reciprocated initially, if his thoughts are “pure” and he is willing to marry the girl.The Indian Penal Code, thankfully, was amended in 2013 to include stalking as a crime. Section 354 of the IPC deals with attempts to outrage a woman’s modesty: the amendment introduced Clause 354D to specifically address instances of stalking and defines a stalker as any man who follows, contacts, or attempts to contact a woman to foster a personal interaction with her, despite her clear indication of disinterest.Despite this, our police still often do not file an FIR under Clause 354D, but prefer Clause 354A that deals with molestation. But, 354A only covers incidents where a man initiates unwanted physical contact that is explicitly sexual, demands sexual favours, forcefully shows pornography against the will of a woman or makes sexually coloured remarks — things that may or may not happen in a case of stalking.Also Read: महिलाओं पर की जाने वाली टिप्पणीयों का सिलसिला कब खत्म होगा?If my friend had indeed tried to complain to the police about the stalker in the grocery store, how effective would it have been? Journalist Arunima Mazumdar wrote of experiencing something similar when she called the police after being harassed by an old classmate, both online and offline, from 2013 to 2015. Mazumdar was made to wait for hours at the police station before an officer nonchalantly commented that Pradhan hadn’t really “done” anything to her. An FIR was not filed and the stalker was let off after writing an ‘apology’ letter.By law, stalkers can receive bail if being convicted for the crime for the first time – and this sometimes gives the offender an awful opportunity for revenge (bail can be denied only in the case of subsequent convictions for stalking). For instance, Lakshmi, a 32-year-old housewife, was stabbed to death in Delhi, in September by Sanjay Kumar. He had already been arrested for harassing her, but had secured bail. In 2015, Meenakshi, a teenager in Delhi, was also murdered by Jai Prakash despite her family having lodged a complaint against him for stalking – two years before she was murdered.
The CBSE has Done Away with an Entire Section of Crucial History about Caste Struggle in India – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger
We may just be witnessing another bout of forced amnesia about caste atrocities. On Monday, the CBSE announced its decision to remove a section entitled ‘Caste, Conflict and Dress Change’ from its social science curriculum for Class IX students, following an order by the Madras High Court that directed it to remove ‘objectionable content’. The removed section of the NCERT textbook, used by the CBSE and 15 state boards, involves a discussion of the Nadar community, whose men and women were forced to keep their upper bodies uncovered by the National Council of the Pidagaikars, the caste council of the Nairs of the state of Travancore in the early 1800s. This was perceived as a sign of respect towards the ‘upper’ castes, and the Nadars had to pay a mulakkaram or ‘breast tax’ if they chose to cover themselves. In 1822, the practice sparked a series of violent agitations known as Maru Marakkal Samaram, or the Channar Revolt, where women from the Nadar and Ezhava communities demanded the right to wear the same clothing as ‘upper’ caste women. Hostility around the issue continued until 1858 because the Nadar women were unsatisfied with the compromises they were being asked to make – those who were Christian converts were allowed to wear a kuppayam (a jacket-blouse of sorts), but not allowed to wear any apparel in the style of Nair women, who wore an upper cloth around their torsos.
Arachnologist Rajashree Khalap on Discovering the Sorting Hat Spider that Excited even JK Rowling – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger
Perhaps this is also why the spider has been named after the Sorting Hat. The name Eriovixia gryffindori is both a nod to the Harry Potter series that Khalap says everyone on the team loved, and is also an attempt to involve more people in conversations about the eight-legged creatures. “Popular culture has the potential to do this,” she says — even remarking that Pokémon inspired many researchers she knows to enter the field. JK Rowling even tweeted about spider.
Pinterest Thinks Hiring Female Engineers is Too Hard and Decides to Try Less – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger
Don’t let the “female-friendly” interface fool you. Most the team that runs the firm is male, and overwhelmingly so in the tech and leadership profiles – with men accounting for 79 percentage and 84 percentage of the fields respectively, according to numbers displayed by The Verge last year. It was this context that led the company to employ Candice Morgan at the head of its diversity campaign and publicly announce its internal goals for hiring people from underrepresented and minority categories.



















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