Category Archives: Feminism

Shamed and Angry: Alicia Machado, a Miss Universe Mocked by Donald Trump – The New York Times

In the process, Ms. Clinton, the first female presidential nominee of a major party, elevated a largely forgotten tale of Mr. Trump, when his oversight of beauty pageants collided with his unforgiving fixation with female beauty.And Mrs. Clinton put a spotlight on Ms. Machado, Miss Universe 1996, who says she has never recovered from the experience. Ms. Machado, who grew up in Venezuela, said she had had eating disorders and psychological trauma as a result of the episode.“I was sick — anorexia and bulimia for five years,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in May. “I was 18. My personality wasn’t created yet. I was just a girl.”Mr. Trump has acknowledged pressuring her to lose weight, saying it was her job as Miss Universe to remain in peak physical shape. On Tuesday morning, he made no apologies for that.

Source: Shamed and Angry: Alicia Machado, a Miss Universe Mocked by Donald Trump – The New York Times

Charlotte girl weeps over police shootings at city council meeting | 3CHICSPOLITICO

 

“It’s a shame that we have to go to their graveyard and bury them. And we have tears. We shouldn’t have tears. We need our fathers and mothers to be by our side.”Zianna made her tearful statements during a highly-charged, emotional City Council meeting — the first after protests over the police shooting of Keith Scott.Charlotte residents packed City Hall, delivering blistering criticisms for how Mayor Jennifer Roberts and the city’s police handled the death of Scott, an African-American man who was shot by an officer last week.

Source: Charlotte girl weeps over police shootings at city council meeting | 3CHICSPOLITICO

‘I hope Merkel keeps us’: how Nujeen Mustafa travelled from Syria to Germany in a wheelchair | World news | The Guardian

A year ago, Nujeen completed a 3,500-mile journey from Syria to Germany in a cumbersome steel-frame wheelchair, an Odyssean adventure that involved dodging masked Isis fighters, navigating perilous Mediterranean waters and fending off packs of wild dogs. Now the wheelchair is folded up on the veranda and she sits on a faded beige sofa in the living room of the flat she shares with two sisters and four nieces, struggling with a crumbly German biscuit.Looking at this teenager, with her thick black-and-red spectacles, I cannot help thinking of her as a Harry Potter figure, exiled on a Westphalian Privet Drive. There are even some Dursley-esque neighbours who, Nujeen says, “aren’t such big fans of refugees”.When I suggest the comparison, she shakes her head. She likes the town she has ended up in, and the fact no one knows her here. “Harry Potter is such a lifeless book, there’s too little emotion and too much display of power,” she says, adding a barb that has a special sting coming from someone with her backstory: “It makes every boy in the world think they are the chosen one.”Nujeen Mustafa was born on New Year’s Day 1999 in Manbij in northern Syria, the youngest of a Kurdish family of 11 in a mostly Arab town. Though Muslim, she says her family were never “obsessed” by religion: she and her sisters and cousins were the only girls who didn’t cover their heads in their local high school.Her pride in her cultural identity as a Kurd is fierce, however, and shaped her view on her country’s descent into civil war. As the population divided into supporters and opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, “the Kurds had their own side as they couldn’t trust anyone”, as Nujeen puts it in the memoir she has co-written with Sunday Times journalist Christina Lamb, who also co-authored Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography.

Source: ‘I hope Merkel keeps us’: how Nujeen Mustafa travelled from Syria to Germany in a wheelchair | World news | The Guardian

The most thorough, profound and moving defense of Hillary Clinton I have ever seen.


I am no political historian, but as far as I can tell this short essay was the birth of the “Hillary is a Liar” meme. Now to be clear, most conservatives already strongly disliked her. They had been upset with her for some time because she had refused to play the traditional First Lady role. And they were horrified by her attempt to champion Universal Health coverage. But if you look for the actual reasons people didn’t like her back at that time, you won’t see ongoing accusations of her being “crooked” or a “liar”. Instead, the most common opinion seemed to be that she was a self-righteous leftist who considered anyone with other views to be morally inferior. In short, the prevailing anti-Hillary accusation was not that she was unrelentingly dishonest, but that she was just intolerably smug.After the Safire piece however, this all changed. Republicans, who learned from Nixon never to let a good propaganda opportunity pass if they could help it, repeated the accusations of mendacity non-stop to anyone who would broadcast or print them. And if you doubt the staying power of Safire’s piece, type the phrase “congenital liar” into a Google search along with “Hillary Clinton” and see what happens. To this day, that exact phrase is still proudly used by many on the right. This, even though Safire was eventually proven wrong about everything he had written. And despite the fact that he stated himself that he would have to “eat crow” if she were ever cleared, Safire never apologized or even acknowledged his many errors once that happened. Because as we all know, swift-boating means never having to say you’re sorry.

Source: The most thorough, profound and moving defense of Hillary Clinton I have ever seen.

Hillary, ‘weak’? Not from where I’m standing | Jessica Valenti – “Women are stronger – if you do not believe it guys, try being nine months birthing a new human? Give up your false biases!”

Women’s supposed fragility was used as an argument against giving us the vote. The debate about Clinton’s pneumonia plays into the same old prejudices

Source: Hillary, ‘weak’? Not from where I’m standing | Jessica Valenti

The link between women’s mental and physical fitness to political engagement was so strong, in fact, that Susan B Anthony once said that bicycles had “done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world”. They not only quite literally got women out of the house and into more comfortable clothes, but they chipped away at the notion that women were physically weak.

Decades later, the notion that women’s bodies are somehow less suited for political life remains. After all, it wasn’t merely boorishness that led Donald Trump to criticize Megyn Kelly by alluding to her period – there’s a longstanding myth about women’s hormones making them unfit to lead. (Comedian Hari Kondabolu has my favorite response to sexists who think a woman’s judgement is impaired once a month: “I’m a man with a penis and testicles, my judgement is impaired every five to seven minutes.”)

It wasn’t a coincidence, either, that when Politico reported on Clinton’s illnessthey described her dizzy spell as “swooning” – a term rarely used to describe men. Even Trump’s comments that Clinton doesn’t have a “presidential look” signal a particular sexist disdain.

The truth is that the campaign trail is brutal, and working all hours through an illness like Clinton’s shows strength, not weakness. That we would see it as anything but stamina reveals a tired double standard. Besides, what’s more important right now than an individual’s health is the health of our nation. Coughs aside, I think we all know whose hands that would be safer in.

So blue. The heartbroken case for Hillary Clinton – Medium – I am for her but for those who doubt – read this, please.

Hillary Clinton will provide some small, inadequate measure of assistance to the growing masses of victims even while she continues to pander to the very forces of their destruction. She’s oblivious to techno-capitalism’s looming dead end, because it contradicts the story of human infallibility, and she’s too cynical to believe that a post-capitalist future is possible. But she won’t (overtly) suppress dissent or work to attack, disrupt and destroy progressive people’s movements or to terrorize and ruin the lives of immigrants (at least, not as aggressively as Trump surely would with a helping hand from ALEC, the NRA, the KKK and legions of confused, scared, heavily-armed white men). That doesn’t give us much breathing room, but it’s something.I won’t belabor the Trump-Hitler comparison here, but read this if you harbor any doubts about the nature of Trump’s personality disorder and intentions. This is a nihilistic man punch drunk on ego and power, hungry for violence, all in for cutthroat competition, incapable of self-reflection, one hand on the nuclear button and the other on Mein Kampf, capable of the unthinkable. What he cannot create he will destroy — such is the nihilist’s endgame.That, in the end, is why I’ll vote for Hillary Clinton — because she isn’t Donald Trump. I will vote for Clinton* and, if she wins, I will not be excited or happy, not even a tiny bit.

Source: So blue. The heartbroken case for Hillary Clinton – Medium

A Holiday in Palestine? An Indian Woman Travels through Guns, Graffiti and the Strange Denial of Stamps – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

We walked through the souk, the market in the old city, and took a turn towards the entry of the Al-Aqsa mosque. Three Israeli soldiers stood at the corner. Overhearing us talking in English, they approached to ask us where we were going. This, because there are two entrances to the Al-Aqsa mosque, one for Muslims, and another for non-Muslims, which sort of translates into one for locals and the other for foreign tourists.We were headed to the Muslim entrance. Assuming we were tourists, they probably wanted to tell us we weren’t allowed entry from this side. As they approached us, AK retorted, “why?” They asked us where we were going. Why are you asking us, she snapped back. Where are you from, they insisted. It’s none of your business. We are trying to help you, they responded. We didn’t ask for your help. We walked away. One of them walked ahead of us and into the mosque. We stopped to look at an Afro-Palestinian neighbourhood. We then walked over to the entrance of the mosque where we were stopped and asked if we were Muslim. We were asked to recite a verse from the Quran. Neither of us could. After a short altercation we returned.As we approached the same corner again, one of the two remaining soldiers called out to us. AK snapped back again. He stopped us and asked where she was from. I’m Palestinian, she answered back. Can I see your ID, he responded. AK has a Blue ID because she resides in Jerusalem. Those living in West Bank and Gaza have a Green ID. She handed over her ID in anger and told him to keep it because she wasn’t going to sit around and be made to wait for hours as they harassed her. She had broken no law and there was simply no need for her to be stopped, she snapped and walk off. I followed her silently, wondering what would happen next. Don’t you need your ID to cross the checkpoint to go to work tomorrow, I asked. Yes I do. She called her cousin who ran a juice shop in the same market and turned around to get her ID back before the soldier disappeared with it. When we returned to the corner he told her she needed to stay there until he was done with her. She asked what his problem was again. So hurt simply because I wouldn’t listen to you? As she carried on, enraged, he snapped back, “Ok you need to shut up now.” At this point she lost all cool that she had left and demanded to see his captain.

Source: A Holiday in Palestine? An Indian Woman Travels through Guns, Graffiti and the Strange Denial of Stamps – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

The Woman Who Wasn’t To Be Believed | Dame Magazine

Hillary Clinton’s aggregate truth rating on PolitiFact is 72% (this includes True, Mostly True, and Half True ratings). In spite of this, her Republican opponent Donald Trump has coined the nickname “Crooked Hillary,” a reflexive attack on her honesty.       And his campaign even launched the website Lying Crooked Hillary this year, which accuses her of, “Spinning lies and weaving a tapestry of deceit that she hopes will cover the truth.” Donald Trump’s aggregate truth rating on PolitiFact is 30%.  Thirty Percent.So how can he get away with calling her a liar?

Source: The Woman Who Wasn’t To Be Believed | Dame Magazine

Michelle Obama Brings Voters’ Trust to Hillary Clinton’s Campaign – The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama has bridled for years at the confines of life in the White House and has tried to steer clear of the partisan messiness that has consumed her husband and is fueling this year’s bare-knuckled presidential contest.But this week, Mrs. Obama will wade into the campaign fray on behalf of Hillary Clinton, putting her broad popularity and reputation for authenticity to work for a candidate who has suffered from a lack of both.At an event in northern Virginia on Friday, Mrs. Obama will urge voters to register ahead of the state’s Oct. 17 deadline, the first of what aides say will be a series of appearances in the coming weeks in support of Mrs. Clinton.Mrs. Obama’s steps into the campaign spotlight underscore her transformation from a once-reluctant political spouse into a confident public figure, a role she says she has embraced more fully during President Obama’s second term.

Source: Michelle Obama Brings Voters’ Trust to Hillary Clinton’s Campaign – The New York Times

The Multiple Abuses of Reina Maraz – Intercontinental Cry

Sexual Violence and ‘that night’

Maraz told in court how one night Limber Santos and Vilca went out drinking. Around 5am, Vilca came back to the kiln and into Maraz’s room, where she was sleeping with the children. He woke her and horrifyingly told her ‘your husband owes me a debt, and he gave me you.’ Then he raped her in front of her children.The lead judge, Marcela Alejandra Vissio, described the incident as improbable in her verdict because Maraz did not make a police report.  But not filing a police report for rape is not unusual for women, who face significant barriers in the legal system such as reliving trauma and being victim-blamed. Data on unreported rape is hard to find in Argentina, as in many countries, but it is likely to be far under-reported. On top of the usual barriers, Maraz has the additional barrier of not fully understanding or speaking Spanish.The aftermath of Maraz’s rape included a vicious beating at her husband’s hands. It also sparked violent conflict between Vilca and Santos.On the morning of her husband’s death, 14 November 2010, Maraz got up at 4am to help him prepare for a trip to visit his sister to pay her back a debt. Maraz explained in court that Vilca was also up that morning, drunk. Limber Santos and he started arguing through the window of the room, and then Santos went out. At that moment, Maraz heard the sound of a padlock locking her and the children into the room.The person who removed the lock and came into the room shortly after was not Maraz’s husband, but Vilca. She asked him where her husband was, and Vilca said Limber Santos had left for his sister’s. Then he raped her again, again in the presence of her two children.The Aftermath of Limber Santos’ deathMaraz had no idea that her husband was dead at that moment. When there was no sign of him, she went to stay at her father-in-law’s house with her sons. She testified that she was afraid to stay at the brick kiln because of Vilca’s presence. And she went to the police and reported her husband as missing – she was worried he had been robbed when he didn’t appear at his sister’s.Limber Santos’ body was then found in a rubbish heap on the grounds of the brick kiln. Maraz and Tito Vilca were arrested and jailed as responsible. In jail, Maraz discovered she was pregnant. Her little girl was born in Unit 33 of Prison Los Hornos of Buenos Aires.It took nearly a full year until Maraz was informed of the charges against her in her own language. The Argentine human rights advocacy organization La Comisión Provincial por la Memoria —‘The Provincial Commission for Memory’ — carried out one of its regular prison inspections in Prison Los Hornos and realized that Maraz was unable to communicate well in Spanish. They brought a Quechua speaker to visit her.

Source: The Multiple Abuses of Reina Maraz – Intercontinental Cry