Category Archives: Feminism

After rampages, Merkel says again: Wir schaffen das – The Local

“The period after Fukushima also wasn’t easy. But now it’s about a more fundamental question: Will the terrorists succeed in in destroying our values or are we strong enough to find the right answer? That is a big challenge for the whole society.”The security forces are doing everything they can to discover the full facts about the attacks, she stressed.The Chancellor also spoke of the concrete measures her government plans to take in response to the attacks, including a desire to create a central agency for information security which would have the ability to decode encrypted communications.“We will have to redouble efforts to deport people,” she said.She also pledged that weapons laws across Europe would be sharpened, further research into radicalization would be conducted, and stronger controls on what people do on the internet would be implemented.“We are talking about a huge litmus test, not just for Germany but for the whole of Europe.”

Source: After rampages, Merkel says again: Wir schaffen das – The Local

Trump the Traitor by Bernard-Henri Lévy – Project Syndicate

The implications of Trump’s election would be truly terrifying. The problem would not only be his vulgarity, sexism, racism, and defiant ignorance. It would be his possible infidelity to America itself. The party of Eisenhower and Reagan has been commandeered by a corrupt demagogue who betrays not only his country’s ideals, but also its fundamental national interest.

Source: Trump the Traitor by Bernard-Henri Lévy – Project Syndicate

Dear Politicians, Please Shut Up About Hacking and Chopping Rapists. Do Some Actual Work to Ensure Women’s Safety Instead – The Ladies Finger

When politicians make noisy bombastic statements about killing rapists, it’s a neat little diversion from work. How do you create environments in which women can report rape, be safe after reporting, stay secure and strong during trials, and create conditions in which rape trials can be sensitive? All of this is hard work and requires more effort than simply hanging someone. It requires challenging existing laws that are biased against women; it requires making changes in the educational system by introducing sex education and sensitising young adults and children; it requires us, and especially politicians, to stop moral policing women, a task that requires a little more than gruesome solutions such as “cutting the hands and legs of rapists”.So if you don’t mind, Raj Thackeray and the rest of you, don’t give speeches and demand blood in our names. Call us after you’ve done some work.

Source: Dear Politicians, Please Shut Up About Hacking and Chopping Rapists. Do Some Actual Work to Ensure Women’s Safety Instead – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Mimi Writes…….: How To Grow a Nation

My life isn’t perfect. Our world isn’t either.But I’ll keep planting.And digging.And getting my hands dirty.And tending my own garden.Because when I find myself planting seeds in window-boxes in the silence of the hot southern sun or during a snowy inaugural walk, I feel a growing in my own soul. And a voice with the deepest strongest wisdom of all saying…”Just plant, Mimi. Plant.”

Source: Mimi Writes…….: How To Grow a Nation

DNC’s 102-year-old delegate thrilled to see woman nominated – video | US news | The Guardian

Jerry Emmett, 102, was just six years old when women were given the right to vote. She said that was very much on her mind when she helped cast a ballot to nominate Hillary Clinton for president on Tuesday. Emmett, the honorary chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic delegation, said despite her flagging energy levels, she was thrilled to be at the convention

Source: DNC’s 102-year-old delegate thrilled to see woman nominated – video | US news | The Guardian

Mimi Writes…….: Monday Mimisms ~ I Need An Ocean and A Long Strong Kiss

But I am having a good hair life this year (unlike a few real candidates) and I haven’t lost any emails (that I know of) and the ONLY reason I know that my bloglegs are returning as we blogspeak is that I continue to use unnecessary and annoying parentheses and run-on sentences galore while adjusting my wrinkled couch skirt in public. Yes. Finally.

Source: Mimi Writes…….: Monday Mimisms ~ I Need An Ocean and A Long Strong Kiss

الكاتبة الفلسطينية نادية حرحش توقّع بالقاهرة روايتها “في ظلال الرجال” | مصريات

Hosted a “D” Centre for Studies and Research in Cairo signing ceremony and discuss the novel “in the shadows of men,” published by Dar Ibn Rushd, the Palestinian writer and professor of Islamic studies at the University of Jerusalem Nadia Harhash.

And witnessed the signing ceremony and discuss the novel presence of Dr Yasser Ayoub, editor of 7 days, the Syrian and Jihad Saad artist and publisher Bisan aggression, a large number of intellectuals and artists of Palestinians and Syrians expatiate Egypt.

Initially Nadia Harhash emphasized the fact that the writing was liberated from many of the constraints and concerns, and opened her many windows on the world again and helped in the treatment of a lot of pain and aches accumulated in lipstick and body.

Harhash added that this novel does not reflect Vsltinih woman trip, but as far as expressing Arab women as a whole, Syria or Egypt or Sudan Gulf or Lebanese or Moroccan or Tunisian or Libyan.

استضاف مركز “دال” للدراسات والابحاث بالقاهرة حفل توقيع ومناقشة رواية “في ظلال الرجال”  الصادرة عن دار ابن رشد، للكاتبة الفلسطينية وأستاذة الدراسات الإسلامية بجامعة القدس نادية حرحش. وشهد حفل توقيع ومناقشة الرواية حضور الدكتور ياسر أيوب رئيس تحرير مجلة 7 أيام، والفنان السوري جهاد سعد والناشرة بيسان عدوان، وعدد كبير من المثقفين والمبدعين الفلسطينين والسوريين المقمين بمصر. في البداية أكدت نادية حرحش على كون الكتابة حررتها من كثير من القيود والهواجس، وفتحت لها العديد من النوافذ على العالم من جديد وساعدتها في علاج الكثير من الألم والأوجاع المتراكمة في الروج والجسد. وأضافت حرحش أن هذه الرواية لا تعبر عن رحلة امرأة فسلطينية بل بقدر ما تعبر عن المرأة العربية ككل مصرية أو سورية أو خليجية أو سودانية أو لبنانية أو مغربية أو تونسية او ليبية. الرواية عبارة عن رحلة في عمق امرأة لها الكثير من التوقعات وخيبات الأمل، الهروب من الأحلام والكوابيس، التحديات والتطلعات، نقاط القوة والضعف، كما أن بها أيضا الكثير من المناورات بين الأمومة والأنوثة و التضحية والعطاء، الحب والرحمة، الغضب والانتقام.. إنها حياة النضال وعدم التوقف عن محاولات الصمود، رواية عن الباقين على قيد الحياة أو المحاولين البقاء على قيد الحياة في مختلف الطبقات، وعلى حافة السلطة الأبوية والاحتلال، إنها حياة امرأة تمضي بعيدا عن الرجال أو ظلال الرجال. ومن جانبه قال الفنان السوري جهاد سعد إن رواية “في ظلال الرجال” أشبه بسيرة ذاتية وتاريخية للمرأة في الشرق، حيث تجمع الكاتبة بين الحاضر والماضي والواقع والتاريخ. وأضاف “جهاد” الرواية تطرح العديد من الأسئلة المسكوت عنها وتقتحم تابوهات كثيرة عن الطفولة والذكريات والحب والزواج وعلاقتنا بإجسادنا وعن الإيمان والإتجار بالدين وعن النضال ضد المحتل والثورة التي تبدأ من داخل الإنسان، قبل أن تتحقق في السياق العام.

Source: الكاتبة الفلسطينية نادية حرحش توقّع بالقاهرة روايتها “في ظلال الرجال” | مصريات

Texas Rape Victim Was Jailed for Fear She Would Not Testify, Lawsuit Says – The New York Times – The last straw in WTF News today!

A rape victim who was jailed in Texas for nearly a month because prosecutors feared she would not return to testify after having a mental breakdown on the stand has sued the Harris County district attorney’s office, county officials and jail employees.The woman, identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, was held in the general population at the county jail — the same place where the rape suspect, Keith Hendricks, was housed. There, the suit says, she was misclassified as the perpetrator of a sexual assault — not as a victim — attacked by an inmate, denied medication and punched in the face by a guard.

Source: Texas Rape Victim Was Jailed for Fear She Would Not Testify, Lawsuit Says – The New York Times

Purvi Patel has 20-year sentence for inducing own abortion reduced | US news | The Guardian – The world that Trump’s VP candidate is proud of – putting women in jail if they have a stillborn child

Patel’s conviction, in 2015, made her a national symbol in the debate swirling around abortion. Last week, when Donald Trump selected the Indiana governor, Mike Pence, as his partner on the Republican presidential ticket, many abortion rights groups invoked Patel’s name as a cautionary tale. Trump has said women who have illegal abortions ought to face “some form of punishment”. And activists had prevailed upon Pence to clarify the 2009 law used to convict her, without success.The ruling was not a uniform victory for Patel. The court held that the state had mounted sufficient evidence to show Patel knew the infant was born alive. Patel’s appeals team had challenged the integrity of the forensic test, the controversial “lung float test”, that prosecutors used to argue the infant was not stillborn. But the court agreed with Patel that the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the infant could have survived. It reduced her child neglect conviction from a class A felony to a class D.“The Indiana court of appeals … ultimately failed Purvi Patel,” Yamani Hernandez, the director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, said Friday. “People of color are bearing the brunt of unscientific laws and misplaced moral outrage against abortion, which is blurring into the territory of miscarriage, putting any pregnant person at risk of prosecution and incarceration. It needs to stop, and the decision didn’t go far enough to restore full justice for Purvi Patel.”AdvertisementA jury convicted Patel in 2015, and in May of this year, a team of volunteer attorneys appealed against her conviction.Prosecutors argued at trial that Patel gave birth to a 25-week-old live infant that could have survived if Patel had sought medical attention instead of abandoning the infant. Patel’s attorneys, who disputed the infant’s gestational age, argued the infant was stillborn, and not developed enough to survive outside the womb no matter what Patel did.Patel’s case quickly became a flashpoint in the country’s heated debate over abortion access. The prosecution painted Patel as hard-hearted and calculating. Women’s rights advocates countered that Indiana’s numerous restrictions on abortion had prevented Patel from terminating her pregnancy in a clinic, and they fingered her trial as part of a pattern of overzealous prosecutions against women who suffer miscarriages.

Source: Purvi Patel has 20-year sentence for inducing own abortion reduced | US news | The Guardian

Republican attacks on Hillary Clinton are more like a witch trial than politics | Angelina Chapin | Opinion | The Guardian

The tirades against Hillary Clinton at the Republican national convention this week have resembled a witch trial more than a political event.In his speech on Tuesday night, New Jersey governor Chris Christie decided to try “something fun” and indict Hillary Clinton for her crimes. The former prosecutor listed her “offences” one by one – she ruined Libya by overthrowing Gaddafi, she helped empower Boko Haram in Nigeria, she negotiated “the worst nuclear deal in history” – and hyperbolically asked “Guilty or not guilty?” at the end of every accusation. The nauseating spectacle was a hit.The crowd cried “Guilty!” and chanted “Lock her up!” with the fervor of townspeople holding torches, ready to storm the town square and burn Clinton at the stake. At least the Republican speakers were consistent: Ben Carson accused Clinton of devil worship since one of her college mentors, Saul Alinsky, acknowledges Lucifer in his book.Christie’s theatrical performance is not surprising. Both he and Donald Trump are the kind of megalomaniacal, testosterone-fuelled politicians whose rhetoric is more suited for the football field than the political stage (Christie actually ended his speech with “Now let’s go get ’em!”). These kind of men deter women from entering politics, when more females representatives is exactly what America needs.The New Jersey governor didn’t only attack Hillary’s track record as secretary of state, he attacked her personality. He said “She’ll bring all the failure of the Obama years with less charm and more lies” and underlined that America needs a “man who is unafraid … a man who wants to lead us.” In other words, this country needs an alpha male with zero political experience rather than a woman who has dedicated her life to public service instead of catchphrases.In case anyone needs a reminder, Congress is already 80% male. According to the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, there will not be gender parity in politics for another century. Of course discrimination has a lot to do with it – white men still symbolize power and competence in American culture – but many women are also turned off by the macho environment that Christie and his ilk perpetuate.Politics is still an alpha male’s game. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich found that women were less likely to apply for jobs that contained words with typically make adjectives such as “assertive” and “aggressive”. Let’s not forget that Donald Trump and Marco Rubio openly talked about penises during a national debate. Then there’s the shouting, bragging and sex scandals that define too many male politicians’ careers. Women who go into politics are also judged more harshly than men. They need to be tough but sensitive, good-looking but not flashy, assertive but demure. No matter what, your haircut will make headlines.

Source: Republican attacks on Hillary Clinton are more like a witch trial than politics | Angelina Chapin | Opinion | The Guardian