Category Archives: Feminism

Finding Your Authentic Self Is A Lot Of Bloody Work. | Rebelle Society

Chip away at that deranged ego until you feel your authentic self breathe. Until you hear the voice of your body reverberate through your being with the power that only truth brings.

And if no one else tells you, I am here telling you now. It’s not over. Not even close. And you, in all your finery, in honor of your highest self, you chose this.

You chose not to be satiated by the status quo. You chose to have vision. You chose to write yourself the greatest narrative ever written and live up to it through the bare-knuckle grazes and the depths of existential despair.

You chose this because it’s worth it. It’s worth it to keep going through the best and the worst because in the end you emerge.

via Finding Your Authentic Self Is A Lot Of Bloody Work. | Rebelle Society.

Mexican mayoral candidate reportedly decapitated – body found on dirt road | World news | The Guardian

The body of a woman running for election as mayor of a small Mexican town has been discovered after she was kidnapped and reportedly decapitated in the same region where 43 student teachers disappeared last year.

Aidé Nava’s body was found on a dirt road in the beleaguered Mexican state of Guerrero on Tuesday night, hours after she was abducted by a group of armed men, Guerrero’s chief prosecutor Miguel Angel Godínez told Milenio TV.

via Mexican mayoral candidate reportedly decapitated – body found on dirt road | World news | The Guardian.

With Plan to Walk Across DMZ, Women Aim for Peace in Korea – NYTimes.com

Suzy Kim, a professor of Korean history at Rutgers University who is another main organizer, said the group had yet to hear anything from the South Korean government side. South Korean officials declined to comment on the proposal Wednesday.

The group’s intent is to walk across the DMZ, from North to South, on May 24, International Women’s Day for Peace and Disarmament.

Ms. Kim credited the original idea to Ms. Ahn, who founded a group called Women De-Militarize the Zone a few years ago. “She had been thinking of how neglected the women’s role had been” in attempting to solve the Korean impasse, Ms. Kim said.

Ms. Ahn’s website, WomenCrossDMZ.org, said the planned walk was meant as a “symbolic act of peace.”

Thirty female peace activists from around the world are the core group of walkers. They include Ms. Steinem’s fellow honorary co-chairwoman, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, a 1976 Nobel Peace laureate from Northern Ireland, who helped organize enormous peace demonstrations, mostly of women, that crossed sectarian lines and helped end the bloodshed there.

Another organizer, Leymah Gbowee, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for her work in leading a women’s peace movement that brought an end to civil war in Liberia in 2003 and led to the eventual exile, and successful war-crimes prosecution, of President Charles G. Taylor.

Ms. Kim acknowledged that the currently high level of North-South hostility, coupled with the North’s regular denunciations of the United States, the South’s principal ally, was “not a climate to achieve an agreement” to replace the armistice.

“On the other hand, the kind of deadlock we’re in makes it all the more important and necessary in not being O.K. with the status quo,” she said.

via With Plan to Walk Across DMZ, Women Aim for Peace in Korea – NYTimes.com.

California is punishing low-income people for having children

Studies show that family caps do not reduce the number of children women have. What they do is deepen the poverty rate of single mothers and children. In fact, California now has one of the worst rates of child poverty rates in the nation under the Maximum Family Grant.

Essentially, this policy punishes women for being low-income, but does nothing to help them escape the cycle of poverty. Thankfully, California lawmakers are currently working on their third attempt to repeal the policy. Hopefully the other 15 states where family caps exist will follow suit and do the work of legislative bodies, not legislating bodies.

via California is punishing low-income people for having children.

You Shall Procreate: Attacks on Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Iran | Amnesty International USA

You Shall Procreate: Attacks on Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Rights in Iran | Amnesty International USA.

Women in Iran could face significant restrictions on their use of contraceptives and be further excluded from the labour market unless they have had a child if two proposed laws are approved, says a new report by Amnesty International.

Inoreader – Afghan Women

If you’ve got 365 days,

Why do we have only one day?

Why don’t you greet us every day, saying

“Happy women’s day!”

Don’t decorate us for just a day

You don’t need to say it annually,

“Today is your day, today is your time!”

“Happy women’s day!”

If you really consider me, make every day my day!

I know who I am,

And I am proud enough to cheer my own existence

I have already been framed

With the beauty of my nature,

With the crown of my soul

Yes! This is my own way!

You degrade us,

Making us feel inferior,

And then on the 8th of March,

You say, it’s our day, our holiday!

“Happy women’s day!”

Make this day every day

Respect me for who I am

I am not a weak symbol

I know who to be, how to stay strong

A hope lies down in my eyes:

That one day everybody will greet me as equal

Every day!

That is what I always pray….

Happy women’s day!

By Sadia S.

via Inoreader – Afghan Women.

First Lady Michelle Obama greets recipients of the State Department 2015 International Women of Courage Award

First Lady Michelle Obama greets recipients of the State Department 2015 International Women of Courage Award recipients in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House March 7, 2015. From left: Nadia Sharmeen, Bangladesh; Arbana Xharra, Kosovo; May Sabe Phyu, Burma; Marie Claire Tchecola, Guinea; Tabassum Adnan, Pakistan; Sayaka Osakabe, Japan; Rosa Julieta Montano Salvatierra, Bolivia; Captain Niloofar Rahmani; Afghanistan; Majd Chourbaji, Syria.

via P030715CK-0067 | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Meryl Streep, Freida Pinto to Present U.S. Premiere of Banned Indian Rape Documentary – Hollywood Reporter

Meryl Streep and Freida Pinto will present the U.S. premiere of India’s Daughter by British filmmaker Leslee Udwin, which has been banned for telecast in India.

The controversial BBC documentary revolves around the horrific 2012 gang rape of a young woman on a bus in Delhi which sparked a national furore and massive street protests.

Co-produced by well-known Indian journalist Dibang, the film includes an interview with one of the four jailed attackers – Mukesh Singh – who said women were more responsible for rapes then men, igniting local and international outrage.

via Meryl Streep, Freida Pinto to Present U.S. Premiere of Banned Indian Rape Documentary – Hollywood Reporter.

British soldiers ‘shouted sexist abuse’ at England Women against Australia | Football | The Guardian

An Australian supporter at the match, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “This was a stunning one-off that I’ve never heard before in women’s football.

“They were calling the girls t****, telling the referee ‘I’d like to blow you’.

“I said something to the Army sergeant, ‘This isn’t a complaint as an Australian supporter, it’s a complaint as a woman’. It was beyond the pale.

“He was apologetic after the game and offered to apologise to the players.

“He said they’re just a bunch of young boys, but I have 17 and 18-year-old brothers, I know what they’re like but they wouldn’t say that to strangers.”

via British soldiers ‘shouted sexist abuse’ at England Women against Australia | Football | The Guardian.

From India and Turkey to Oxford, we live in a perpetual state of war against women | Suzanne Moore | Comment is free | The Guardian

The war against women is waged routinely and globally. Equality of the most basic kind cannot exist when a woman’s life and her words are always worth less than a man’s. But in the darkness of the night, what haunts us are not broken systems but the faces of the broken girls. So, so many. All the time.

via From India and Turkey to Oxford, we live in a perpetual state of war against women | Suzanne Moore | Comment is free | The Guardian.