Category Archives: Feminism

 “LaDonna Harris: Indian 101” to Air on PBS November 1

Harris is best known for her work in U.S. civil rights when she set the tone with a landmark legislation initiative that returned land to the Taos Pueblo Tribe and Native tribes of Alaska. She also served a pivotal role in helping the Menominee Tribe regain their federal recognition.

Her trailblazing efforts began when President Lyndon B. Johnson selected her to educate both the executive and legislative branches of U.S. government on the unique relationship that American Indian tribes hold within our nation. This education course was affectionately called “Indian 101″ and was taught to members of Congress and other federal agencies for over 35 years.

via Executive Producer Johnny Depp’s  “LaDonna Harris: Indian 101” to Air on PBS November 1.

Finn aims to be first female president of Somalia | WNN – Women News Network

A Finn of Somali origin wants to run as a candidate in the Somali presidential election in 2016. Fadumo Dayib is currently studying public administration at Harvard, but she thinks that Somalia is now ready for a female president.

Fadumo Dayib moved to Finland in the 1990s to escape the civil war in Somalia. She’s now studying at Harvard but planning to return to Somalia—and she thinks she can make quite an impact on the country.

”I want to be Somalia’s president because I believe women have a chance to lead Somalia,” said Dayib. ”Women lead the country economically, manage family budgets and are very visible in society, but they have been kept out of politics. Somalia is now ready for a female president” . . .

via Finn aims to be first female president of Somalia | WNN – Women News Network.

Humans of New York

“When I was fifteen, I was raped by three boys while competing at a gymnastics tournament. I was so ashamed, that I stood on a train track, and waited for the train to come. At the last moment, I tried to jump away. I woke up after a month. It was the middle of the night, and I could immediately tell that something was missing. I started feeling all over my body, and that’s when I realized that I’d lost my arm. Now I counsel teenagers who have been diagnosed with HIV. I’m normally the first to meet with them after they get their results. I try to explain to them that there’s a way out of even the most impossible situations.”

(Odessa, Ukraine)

via Humans of New York.

Man assaults woman jogging…who turns out to be a federal marshal

After allegedly attacking her by grabbing her behind and pulling down her shorts, Flynn took off running and the victim/federal marshal ran after him, the station said.

That is when victim yelled, “Federal marshal, stop!”

She caught up with him a few blocks away, cornered him, and when he resisted, she kicked him in the crotch, CBS Pittsburgh reported.

Flynn is suspected of lifting up another woman’s skirt earlier that day (a busy Tuesday of sexual assault for this guy!) and now faces charges of aggravated assault, indecent assault, and escape. It’s unfortunate that, in a culture in which harassment like this is disturbingly normalized, it often takes a chance encounter with an law enforcement agent — or dedicated teen girl runner — to bring guys like this to justice. But still, I’m enjoying imagining his face when he heard “Federal marshal, stop.”

via Man assaults woman jogging…who turns out to be a federal marshal.

U.S. Open 2014: Serena Williams Beats Caroline Wozniacki for 18th Grand Slam Title – NYTimes.com

{Power, grace, Serena!}

Serena Williams was asked last week what the number 18 meant to her.

“It means legal to do some things,” she said with a laugh.

But she knew what the reporter was getting at.

“It also means legendary,” she added more seriously.

She would not go so far as to call herself legendary — “I’m just Serena,” she said — but she joined some elite company Sunday, when she tied Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova with her 18th Grand Slam singles title.

The top-ranked Williams defeated Caroline Wozniacki, 6-3, 6-3, to capture her third United States Open final in a row and sixth over all.

via U.S. Open 2014: Serena Williams Beats Caroline Wozniacki for 18th Grand Slam Title – NYTimes.com.

Feminists Are Not Your Mommies | Dame Magazine

It’s time for the internet—well, the entire culture, really, but let’s start small—to grow the fuck up about women. Tim Colwill, editor-in-chief of gaming website games.on.net, recently offered an example of what this might look like, with a post called “Announcement: Readers who feel threatened by equality no longer welcome.”

“If you really think feminism, or women, are destroying games,” he writes, “or that LGBT people and LGBT relationships have no place in games, or that games in any way belong to you or are ‘under attack’ from political correctness or ‘social justice warriors’: please leave this website. I don’t want your clicks, I don’t want your hits, I don’t want your traffic. Leave now and please don’t come back.”

This is the first step: Serious people refusing to engage with anyone who argues on the level of a whiny child, and editors refusing to prioritize the page views that come with such arguments. As Colwill put it, for these excessively vocal, woman-hating brats, “Literally the worst possible thing that can happen here is equality. That’s the worst outcome, that’s the nightmare scenario.” If they were actually children, we’d be obliged to fret over their moral development and continue providing lessons in sharing and caring. But the “14-year-old in a basement” stereotype notwithstanding, the enemies of equality are not actually kids, and pro-woman writers sure as hell aren’t their mommies. The grown-up internet needs to unequivocally shun these clowns, so the rest of us are free to have some new conversations.

via Feminists Are Not Your Mommies | Dame Magazine.

Afropunk fashions: bodies as resistance

One of my favorite things about the AFROPUNK fest – besides the music, obviously – are the fashions. It’s legit the best outfit-watching of the year, and the festival is full of gorgeous people getting really creative with the ways they get dressed.

For those of you wondering how a fashion post fits into a feminist political project, I’m here to tell you how deeply political the way we adorn ourselves can be. Our decisions about the ways we present our genders and our bodies, the choice to love our bodies even when we are told they are too dark, too gender non-conforming, too fat, too queer, can be freeing in a way that is absolutely radical. Dressing in a way that feels good, in which we celebrate our bodies, in ways that represent our truest selves, is an act of resistance for those whose bodies are policed, medicated, targeted, and too often threatened with violence.

via Afropunk fashions: bodies as resistance.

Simple – Wannabe Caliph Erdogan is anti-educated professional females! Why are pro-AKP Twitter users targeting female journalists? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Zaman also for the first time wrote openly about the “rape and murder” threats female journalists Melis Alphan, Sirin Payzin, Selin Girit, Tugce Tatari, Banu Guven, Nuray Mert and Ece Temelkuran received during the 2013 Gezi Park protests. Professor Yasemin Inceoglu at the Galatasaray University communication department told Al-Monitor, “All these journalists are professionals. The attacks against them are nothing but an open threat to silence those few critical minds in the media. I certainly don’t understand the silence of some other female journalists — playing the three monkeys, when their colleagues are subject of such a lynching campaign.”

Although there are campaigns in support of these female journalists, it is something else to stand up against a strong government and a crowd backed and encouraged by this government. “We did not file a lawsuit against those threats because of the sensitive environment back then,” Karan told Al-Monitor. “And I have no knowledge that our security enforcement did anything against it, even when these threats were made public.”

The government’s pressure cost both Zaman and Karan their jobs at the Haberturk daily newspaper, with Zaman now writing for Taraf and Karan for Cumhuriyet. Karan said, “I did not lose the job after one incident, but Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu literally lashed out at me in three separate live TV interviews. I remember well the one in December 2011 when I asked him — based on the information I was receiving from my sources inside Syria — about the Salafist groups that were spreading fear and [their activities] being no less of a threat than those of [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad. He said then that they know Syria street by street, quarter by quarter, while denying the Salafist threat and entirely blaming Assad. Today, we know the result.”

Karan told Al-Monitor that Davutoglu’s appointment as prime minister means nothing but the continuation of pressure on the media. “As long as journalists talk about what the government does in a positive light, there is no problem. Their policies are not supposed to be questioned. Therefore, media freedom is going to shrink even further, if this situation continues.”

via Why are pro-AKP Twitter users targeting female journalists? – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.