Category Archives: Feminism

Noa: Open letter to the wind

If we refuse to recognize each other’s rights and embrace our obligations, if we continue to each cling to his own narrative with contempt and disregard for that of the other, if we again and again choose swords over words, if we sanctify land and not the lives of our children, we shall soon be forced to truly seek a colony on the moon, for our land will be so drenched in blood and so cluttered with tomb stones there will be nothing left for the living.

I wrote these words, and sang them together with my friend Mira Awad. They stand truer than ever today:

“when I cry I cry for both of us,

My pain has no name.

When I cry, I cry to the merciless sky and say:

There must be another way”

Noa, july 22, 2014

via Noa: Open letter to the wind.

Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Three Women in Kabul

It is very painful when I have to pay the rent on our house and the markets are too expensive. I have six children and I am the leader of my family. My husband is ill and has had two operations.

My wish during Ramadan is that God save our people from illness, sadness, and poverty.

We Don’t Have Food to Eat

via Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Three Women in Kabul.

Rapes can only be prevented if gods come down from heaven: UP governor – The Times of India

Former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav earlier said rapes were “minor mistakes committed by youngsters” and that laws sending rapists to the gallows must be quashed.

After last week’s rape and murder in Lucknow that caused considerable outrage, the Samajwadi Party chief attributed growing crimes against women to the rising population.

READ ALSO: Mulayam Singh Yadav: UP has 21 crore people, yet lowest number of rapes in India

His brother and PWD minister Shivpal Singh Yadav later endorsed his views.

Asked about the failing law and order after the Badaun incident, where two minor girls were gang-raped and then hung from a tree, chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had snapped at a woman reporter: “You are safe… so why rake up the question?”

via Rapes can only be prevented if gods come down from heaven: UP governor – The Times of India.

It’s not just guys running for US Senate that are dumb about rape – it’s politicians the world over. Get with the new program guys – it’s called human rights!

Shoni Named WNBA All-Star Game MVP: Scores Record 29 Points

“Showtime Shoni”—garnered more Native pride throughout Indian country on Saturday as she scored 29 points during the WNBA All-Star game.

Atlanta Dream rookie Shoni Schimmel, a tribal citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Umatilla, was named the Most Valuable Player of the WNBA All-Star, scoring an All-Star game record 29 points with eight assists while leading the East to a 125-124 overtime victory over the West.

Schimmel scored 24 of her points during the second half and overtime to break the All-Star game record of 23 points set by Candace Parker last season. She attempted a whopping 16 three-pointers, sinking seven.

via Shoni Named WNBA All-Star Game MVP: Scores Record 29 Points.

Michelle Obama the Colored Woman: Some Takes on the Brilliant Brown vs Board of Ed. Site Visit Photo — BagNews

If you weren’t completely transfixed yesterday by the shooting down of a commercial jetliner over Ukraine, you might have come across this. Simply put, it’s the best visual to come out of the Administration in months, maybe longer.

via Michelle Obama the Colored Woman: Some Takes on the Brilliant Brown vs Board of Ed. Site Visit Photo — BagNews.

GOP deja vu: blocked a bill aimed at restoring free contraception for women

Senate Republicans have blocked a bill aimed at restoring free contraception for women who get their health insurance from companies that object on religious grounds.

The vote on Wednesday was 56-43 to move ahead on the measure, short of the 60 votes necessary to proceed.

Democrats sponsored the election-year bill to reverse last month’s Supreme Court ruling that closely held businesses with religious objections could deny coverage under President Barack Obama’s health care law.

via News from The Associated Press.

City of Tehran’s female workers fired ‘for own well-being’ – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Tehran City Council member Gholamreza Ansari said on the issue of segregation, “In a situation where a worker has no choice but to work two shifts for the financial security of one’s family, these limitations will have negative consequences and will cause corruption, bribery and fraud.”

Ansari went on, “These kinds of actions have high costs and are only propaganda … and have no relation to the spirit of our religion and ethics. Separating the sexes has been tested many times in various places, such as our universities, and it has not been successful.”

via City of Tehran’s female workers fired ‘for own well-being’ – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Celebrating cellulite isn’t the route to happiness | Bella Mackie | Commentisfree | The Guardian

This desire to rejoice in our form, whatever its shape, is yet another way for women to see our bodies as the priority. We may refuse to see our cellulite as ugly or unsightly, but we are still being asked to focus on an external part of ourself, to flip the negative into a positive and examine our physical attributes from a different angle. Is this what we see as progress? If you cannot imagine a blog where men happily praise each others’ beer guts then the answer must surely be no.

I have spent the past year running. I’ve got stronger and leaner. I can feel my physical strength increasing. I have learned to appreciate how each part of the body connects, and how wonderful it is to be able to use it fully. But this trend towards body positive language and imagery requires us to do the opposite; it asks us to see our bodies as superficial.

When writing about the history of the suffrage movement, Jeanette Winterson argued that if a woman cannot feel comfortable in her own body then she has no home. In order to feel fully at ease with ourselves, perhaps we should throw off the notion that one’s body, and one’s specific body parts, must be seen as either praiseworthy or wanting. Acceptance, rather than jubilation, is the only way we women might have a real chance of moving away from the constant fixation with our image.

via Celebrating cellulite isn’t the route to happiness | Bella Mackie | Commentisfree | The Guardian.

A federal pro-choice bill that would stem the anti-choice tide in the states

The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing today on the Women’s Health Protection Act. Sounds like the name of an anti-choice bill deceptively cloaking itself in friendly “pro-woman” language like so many of them do, right? But no–for once, it’s the real deal: an pro-choice law that–to quote the opposition–”would wipe out almost every single pro-life law on abortion.”

I don’t know that it would quite do that, but the bill does straightforwardly affirm that “access to safe, legal abortion services is essential to women’s health and central to women’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States.” It prevents states from passing restrictions on abortion that would not be placed on “medically comparable procedures“–taking direct aim at “bad medicine” laws, like unnecessary ultrasounds and biased counseling, that interfere with the patient/doctor relationship, as well as TRAP laws that are shutting down clinics under the guise lie of patient safety.

via A federal pro-choice bill that would stem the anti-choice tide in the states.

Hobby Lobby: A “Perfect Storm” to Galvanize the Public | National Women’s Law Center

  1. The Use of Religion As an Excuse to Discriminate: Over the past few years, there has been a campaign to use religion as a disguise for discrimination. (It must be noted that many people of religion have spoken out against these attempts.) Perhaps the most famous recent example of this is the Arizona bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse to serve LGBT individuals and others. In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court allowed employers to impose their religious beliefs on their employees.
  2. Corporate Personhood: There have been many attempts to imbue corporations with an ever-increasing number of legal rights in order to allow the 1 percent to further entrench their power. The best known example of this is the Citizens United case – in which the Supreme Court held that corporations had a First Amendment right to make campaign donations. Thanks to the Hobby Lobby decision, corporations will not only be joining us on the campaign trail but in the pew as well, since the Supreme Court ruled that some corporations have a right to religious liberty under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
  3. Denying Women The Ability to Make Their Own Reproductive Health Decisions: At the heart of the campaign against reproductive rights is the idea that women should not be able to make their own decisions about their health care. The outpouring of support for Wendy Davis’ 2013 filibuster was precisely because women were feeling silenced about their own health and Davis spoke up seemingly on all of our behalf. The Hobby Lobby decision doubles-down on this point – both by allowing bosses to have a say in their women employee’s health care choices and because it is about birth control. Let’s repeat that – they don’t trust women to make decisions about BIRTH CONTROL. In the year 2014.

via Hobby Lobby: A “Perfect Storm” to Galvanize the Public | National Women’s Law Center.