Category Archives: Feminism

“The Egyptian government knew their own secret service was making a huge mistake” – Egyptian Streets

Dutch journalist Rena Netjes sounds furious over the phone. She didn’t get much sleep last night.

“There are so many lies being spread, including by the Egyptian ambassador in the Netherlands,” says Rena. “I did have permission to do my job in Egypt. I had a temporary press card that was still accurate until December 31 2014, and by then I would’ve gotten a permanent one. Those are the facts.”

Last Monday, she was one of the convicted Al Jazeera English journalists that received a ten year prison sentence in absentia for ‘working, financing and falsifying footage for Al Jazeera in order to defame the Egyptian state’.

However, Netjes has never worked for Al Jazeera English, as the organization has confirmed and the proof against her is non-existent. “The fact that the Egyptian court failed to even get my name and passport number right represents [how] the entire trial [proceeded]. A non-existing Dutch name, ‘Johanna Indinienatta,’ with a non-existing passport number is convicted of being a terrorist. The Egyptians never made a connection to me, Rena Netjes. All they knew is that this person was a member of a terrorist network,” explains Rena.

“I cannot travel to any Arab or African country anymore. Even traveling to some European countries is not possible anymore. Let alone ever going back to Egypt where I lived for four years. I am not surprised, though. Justice does not exist in Egypt, nor does freedom of press.”

via “The Egyptian government knew their own secret service was making a huge mistake” – Egyptian Streets.

McCullen: A view from a thousand feet

Of course, there is nothing theoretical about abortion for one in three women and many trans men and gender queer people. Abortion isn’t a symbol. It isn’t an idea. It’s a medical procedure they chose to undergo. And the sidewalk outside the clinic isn’t a metaphor for the American abortion debate or the polarization of public opinion, but an actual sidewalk through which their actual bodies must cross in the face of actual harassment. To treat it as an abstraction is disrespectful to those who know too well the very real impacts of impeded access — and also betrays the Court’s distance from the on-the-ground dangers it now exacerbates. In McCullen we see the Justices looking down on the sidewalks of America’s clinics from a thousand feet. From this great height, every walk through the crowds looks shorter and every death threat sounds softer. It must feel very safe up there.

via McCullen: A view from a thousand feet.

Where Killings Are Common, Death of Activist Stuns Benghazi – NYTimes.com

“My people, I beg of you, there are only three hours left,” she wrote at about 5:45 p.m., before the polls closed. She posted pictures of a group of fighters downstairs from her house, and at about 8:45 p.m., she told her sister during a telephone call that her husband was going outside to talk to the men.

Within minutes, Ms. Bugaighis, 50, was dead, having been stabbed, shot and left bleeding in her living room.

via Where Killings Are Common, Death of Activist Stuns Benghazi – NYTimes.com.

The US supreme court’s abortion buffer zone ruling protects a gauntlet of horror | Jessica Valenti | Commentisfree | The Guardian

Imagine trying to walk into a building, trying to get a medical treatment – and someone screams at you. Someone is two inches from your face – two feet from the front door – and that someone is videotaping you, calling you a whore. There’s ketchup poured in the snowbanks around you, made to look like spurted blood. You try to take a step forward, but people block your way, yelling that you’re going to be “mother to a dead baby”. They hold signs in your faces, whisper “murderer” in your ear as you pass. Maybe they shove you.

Don’t believe portrayals to the contrary – from anti-choice activists and the news media – that these kinds of protestors outside abortion clinics are not grandmas praying, or kindly “counselors” who just want to talk reasonably to women. These people wait outside clinics to shame and to harass; they are there to scare.

via The US supreme court’s abortion buffer zone ruling protects a gauntlet of horror | Jessica Valenti | Commentisfree | The Guardian.

The Massachusetts Buffer Zone Protected Me | National Women’s Law Center

This sense of safety hasn’t always been the norm for employees and patients of reproductive health care providers in Massachusetts. Prior to the buffer zone law, some protestors would dress up like Boston Police Department officers to deceive patients into providing their contact information. Some protestors would intentionally block the entrance to the door or stand in front of cars entering the garage. There were cases of protestors photographing or throwing literature inside of patients’ or employees’ cars. Most tragically of all, two employees were murdered at neighboring health centers in Brookline in 1994.

Part of my responsibilities as Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts’ Counseling and Referral Supervisor included overseeing the 60 volunteers who staffed our hotline, some of whom had been volunteering for Planned Parenthood since before I was born. I was often reminded by our volunteers of how lucky I was to have only known the health center after the buffer zone law was passed. When I trained new volunteers, many asked if I felt safe at the health center, and I would explain how the buffer zone worked. They were relieved to know that they would have a safe, clear path to the door every day.

Today, the Supreme Court struck down the Massachusetts buffer zone law that made me, my coworkers, and the patients feel safe and protected. It is incredibly disheartening to learn that my former coworkers and their patients won’t be protected by the same 35-feet that kept me safe. I trust that the staff at Planned Parenthood will continue to do whatever they can to help protect their patients and provide excellent, non-judgmental care, and encourage you to follow them online (find the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund on Facebook and Twitter) for ways to action to replace the buffer zone law.

via The Massachusetts Buffer Zone Protected Me | National Women’s Law Center.

Prominent female activist killed in Libya | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

Bugaighis was shot in the head Wednesday night, just hours after casting her ballot in Libya’s parliament elections, the state news agency LANA reported. She was rushed to a hospital where she died of her wounds, it said.

Earlier in the day, she had been speaking by phone from her home on a Libyan TV channel about fighting raging near her neighborhood, sparked when militants attacked army troops that had been deploying to protest polling station.

“These are people who want to foil elections,” she told Al-Nabaa network as rattling gunfire interrupted her call. ” Benghazi has been always defiant, and always will be despite the pain and fear. It will succeed.”

In the evening, five gunmen broke into her home, the house’s guard told police, according to the Al-Wasat newspaper. They first asked about her son Wael, then shot the guard in the leg, then broke into the house. The guard said that he heard gunfire from inside.

Bugaighis’s husband, who is a member of the Benghazi municipal council and was also at home at the time, has disappeared since the attack, the paper and other Libyan media said.

Bugaighis had only just come to Benghazi from the capital, Tripoli, especially to cast her ballot in the election, a family friend Hanaa Mohammad told Libya Ahrar TV. She had fled with her family some time back to Jordan because of death threats against them.

via Prominent female activist killed in Libya | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.

vintage everyday: Vintage Photos of Foreigner Women Pose in Kimono Dress

Vintage Photos of Foreigner Women Pose in Kimono Dress – Long history of cultural appropriation. Fad, fancy, thinking its a compliment but OK to marginalize, and later intern and imprison Japanese just because they or their parents were Japanese. In the 1920’s it was walk like an Egyptian.

via vintage everyday: Vintage Photos of Foreigner Women Pose in Kimono Dress.

90-year-old woman raped in Rochdale | UK news | theguardian.com

A 90-year-old woman has been dragged off the street and raped.

The attack happened in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, as the woman walked to a local shop.

The victim felt a hand go over her mouth and she was hauled backwards in Spotland Road at about 6.45am yesterday, police said.

Greater Manchester police want to hear from anyone who may have seen the victim, and potentially the offender.

The pensioner is white and wore a white summer dress with a floral print, and a cardigan.

Because of the nature of the attack, the only description of the offender is that he was white.

Superintendent Alistair Mallen said: “I am sure the entire community will share our revulsion at this. The victim has been through a horrific ordeal and we are all hoping she can make a full recovery. She is now being supported by experienced officers and we are doing everything possible to reassure her that we will catch the man responsible.

“This kind of attack is, thankfully, so rare that it will naturally cause a huge amount of concern in the community.

“I now want people, including the criminal fraternity, to imagine if that had been your mum or grandma. I want to harness these feelings and use them to help the police do their job – catch this man and put him before the courts.”

via 90-year-old woman raped in Rochdale | UK news | theguardian.com.

Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Freedom

Let me breathe my own air

Let me choose my flying wings

Let me rest in the sky’s nest

I’m tired of impure words and hearts

I’m tired from the dance of colors in each face

I’m tired of looking backwards

through barred windows and shame

Let me be myself

Let me live as a human

That I am female should not matter

By Nilofar

via Afghan Women’s Writing Project | Freedom.

Fighting sexism – 30 years on — New Internationalist

I remember how 30 years ago, I raged, raved and ranted when I heard that a drunken husband had kicked his pregnant wife in the stomach, causing her to lose her baby. I waved an article at the group of women and asked them to form a vigilante team to beat up drunken men who entered the village, as women in Nagaland had done, according to a newspaper report I had read.  An old woman calmly said to me: ‘You are very young. But don’t say such (silly) things to our women. If a woman joins a mob to beat up her husband, how will she face him the next day? How will life go on?’

And so we continue. Thirty years later.

via Fighting sexism – 30 years on — New Internationalist.