Recently in International Category
File this one under good news.
In a landmark Indian Supreme Court ruling today, Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah struck down Penal Code 377, overturning a colonial-era law criminalizing "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal."The victory is a historic step forward for human rights only days after people worldwide took to the streets for gay pride, particularly in a country where LGBTQII individuals face discrimination, stigma, and violence on a daily basis.
While the original petition against 377 cited its adverse impact on HIV/ AIDS prevention efforts, the Supreme Court ruling statement was far more progressive, citing the value of an inclusive society:
"The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognising a role in society for everyone... It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is antithesis of equality, and that it is the recognition of equality which will foster the dignity of every individual."
While reports indicate this will only impact New Delhi, it may open doors for the rest of the country as well.
More from community blogger bifemmefatale here.
Dr Neera Desai, a founder of India's first women's studies program, the Research Centre for Women's Studies at SNDT Women's University, passed away last Thursday from cancer at the age of 84. Professor Vibhuti Patel, a colleague and friend of Desai and the director of department of Post-Graduate Studies and Research at SNDT said:
"I had been working with her since 1977. In all these years that I had known her, I thought of her as a warm person who was forever motivating and ever ready to experiment with new ideas. She was a major institution builder. This is a period when women's studies is coming of age. However, she started work in this field in the early 50s and for over two decades fought a lone battle to raise awareness about the same till the 70s when she began garnering support from several quarters."
She wrote a number of books on women's rights and feminism in India, including Women in Modern India (1952) and Feminism in Western India (2004). She was nominated for 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.
Via (including pic) FeministsIndia.
Also check out community blogger ramlath's post.
Twenty-three year old Giorgia Boscolo just became the first female gondolier after nine centuries of exclusively male rowing in the canal in Venice. Boscolo had to pass a grueling six-month, 400 hour course, but told reporters that she had no fear that she couldn't handle the physicality of the job: "Childbirth is much more difficult." Boscolo is the mother of two.
Her father, also a gondolier, has doubts about her participation in this historically male tradition: "I still think being a gondolier is a man's job, but I am sure that with experience Giorgia will be able to do it easily," he said.
Damn skippy Papa Boscolo. Better get used to waving across the canal at your diesel daughter.
Thanks to Tiffany for the heads up.
A military coup in Honduras this weekend deposed President Manuel Zelaya. The Honduran Congress has stripped Zelaya of his office and appointed the president of the Congress, Robert Micheletti, to be head of state. It is Central America's first military coup since the Cold War.
Eva Gollinger in Caracas, Venezuela reports:
The text message that beeped on my cell phone this morning read "Alert, Zelaya has been kidnapped, coup d'etat underway in Honduras, spread the word." It's a rude awakening for a Sunday morning, especially for the millions of Hondurans that were preparing to exercise their sacred right to vote today for the first time on a consultative referendum concerning the future convening of a constitutional assembly to reform the constitution. Supposedly at the center of the controversy is today's scheduled referendum, which is not a binding vote but merely an opinion poll to determine whether or not a majority of Hondurans desire to eventually enter into a process to modify their constitution.Such an initiative has never taken place in the Central American nation, which has a very limited constitution that allows minimal participation by the people of Honduras in their political processes. The current constitution, written in 1982 during the height of the Reagan Administration' s dirty war in Central America, was designed to ensure those in power, both economic and political, would retain it with little interference from the people. Zelaya, elected in November 2005 on the platform of Honduras' Liberal Party, had proposed the opinion poll be conducted to determine if a majority of citizens agreed that constitutional reform was necessary. He was backed by a majority of labor unions and social movements in the country. If the poll had occured, depending on the results, a referendum would have been conducted during the upcoming elections in November to vote on convening a constitutional assembly. Nevertheless, today's scheduled poll was not binding by law.
Kim Pearson has a great summary this morning over at BlogHer.
I'm left wondering about the safety of the women in Honduras during military coup and state instability--these are often the times when sexual assault increases, women struggle to get access to the medical help they need, not to mention all the other basic resources that are necessary to keep families going. We'd love to hear from readers with family in the area...
There will be a protest of the military coup of Honduras at the United Nations today from 3 to 6 pm for those in the New York area.
Update: Christy Thornton, the head of NACLA, recommends this post on the subject. She'll be writing something for us tomorrow on the topic.
Amnesty International has released a pretty high-tech public awareness campaign against domestic violence: in bus shelters, the poster has an "eye tracker," making the image change from a seemingly happy couple (if you're looking directly at it) to an image of violence when you look away.
The text on the ad says, "It happens when nobody is watching." Thoughts?
h/t to Shara.
Conservative Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) in Canada Doug Elniski has been catching a ton of shit for posting the text of a speech that he gave a couple of weeks ago to junior high school students on his blog, where he supposedly told the girls that "men are attracted to smiles":
Part of the posting included advice to girls saying, "Ladies, always smile when you walk into a room, there is nothing a man wants less than a woman scowling because he thinks he is going to get s--t for something and has no idea what."It continues, "Men are attracted to smiles, so smile, don't give me that 'treated equal' stuff. If you want Equal, it comes in little packages at Starbucks."
Elniski's blog was taken down on Monday afternoon.
Blog gone or not, the real damage was done to the female students he reached that day. While Elniski clarified that the comparison between equality and a sweetener wasn't actually said at the speech and publicly apologized for the "stupid, inappropriate" comment on his blog, his creepy reference to smiles was said. He actually defends that one, claiming he was merely trying to say that "men and women should be friendly and approachable in dealing with others."
Nice try, dude.
...but is he really the only one? Public moral outcries of elected officials sexual behavior is complex, often tedious and not really in the name of justice. The prime minister of Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, likes to hire woman to attend parties and do who knows what else. Barbara Montereale, one of the women in the much reprinted picture of two women photographing each other in Berlusconi's bathroom sent the pictures to the press to be published for the truth to come out. She was paid and flown down to spend time with him. The Italian authorities are starting an investigation according to the Telegraph UK.
The three women, whose accounts of their evening with Mr Berlusconi apparently largely corroborate each other, have been questioned by police in Bari who are investigating Mr Tarantini for allegedly inciting prostitution.Mr Berlusconi faces increasing pressure to explain whether he knew if the women were being paid to attend his parties and whether he slept with a prostitute.
He is under attack not only from the press and the opposition but also the Roman Catholic Church.
I don't actually care what the Catholic church deems moral and immoral, or what makes them upset. This is not a matter of morality, but a question of exploitation and the use of women by men in power. And this is not the only story, it is a trend with men in power to hire women to do whatever they want with and their bloated sense of self and ego that comes with having so much power creates a vacuum where anything is for sale and purchase. Isn't that what happened with Eliot Spitzer?
I find moral panic and outrage over the often grotesque, exploitative sexual behavior of politicians hilarious. My instinct is to suggest that it is a private matter, just as I don't want you to talk about my private sex life, I don't think anyone's should be fodder for news material. On the other hand, that fact that stories like this come up over and over again merely shows us what men in power think is legitimate behavior. This is not a matter of "i gotcha," but more about the ways entitlement plays out with our beloved "statesmen."
After seeing the video of the Iranian protester Neda being shot through the heart, the world has been forced to think about role of women in the fight for a democratic Iran. Dana writes at Tapped a little bit about why women might be so involved,
Only 13 percent of Iranian women participate in the paid work force, compared to over 25 percent of women in Turkey and over 38 percent in Indonesia. With the permission of a court, fathers can arrange marriages for daughters under age 13. Polygamy is legal, and under Ahmadinejad, Parliament even tried to ease restrictions on the practice. Women cannot run for president, and family law discriminates against them when it comes to divorce, child custody, and inheritance. Dozens of feminist political leaders have been arrested and detained since 2006, when police violently attacked a women's rights demonstration in Tehran, leading to the founding of the One Million Signatures Campaign for women's legal equality.
Women have a lot to lose if Ahmadineajd returns to power. Mousavi clearly has a better stance on gender with more room to change policy concerning the lives of women and specifically because his wife, Zahrad Rahnavard, is a known advocate of women's rights.
It is in historical moments like this that I often reflect on a powerful book I read in my MA program in Women's Studies called the Eloquence of Silence by Marnia Lazreg. I continually go back to the chapter on nationalism and how nationalism produces itself in times of conflict. She calls out feminists that minimized the involvement of women in the Algerian resistance as women somehow being duped into fighting. She was writing about Algeria and the fight against colonization so the context is different, but she discusses specifically this idea of how women in the Middle East are homogenized and not written about in their full complexity.
Similar to previous forms of feminism, the mainstream media sometimes represents women protesting in Iran with shock and awe, even heralding them as fallen angels or martyrs. This is not to downplay the tremendous power being built by women in Iran or to suggest all the coverage has been in this vein, but this shock directly stems from assumptions about a homogenized group of women "Middle Eastern" or "Arabic" that are complacent, oppressed, without agency or will. Ultimately, my hope is that as the conversation expands and more and more talk about the role of women in the historical fight for democracy in Iran, perhaps this trend is changing.
But finally, the video that has been passing around the internet is creating that similar "shock," which is not to say its content isn't jarring. I haven't watched it actually, I can't get myself to. Kate Harding has a good explanation of why she couldn't either and I think the point she makes of exploitation is a solid one. In deciding to finally watch the video, she writes,
President Nicolas Sarkozy says that burqas are "not welcome" in France, and supports a ban on women wearing the burqa in public.
[He] said the Muslim burqa would not be welcome in France, calling the full-body religious gown a sign of the "debasement" of women.In the first presidential address to parliament in 136 years, Sarkozy faced critics who fear the burqa issue could stigmatize France's Muslims and said he supported banning the garment from being worn in public.
"In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity," Sarkozy said to extended applause at the Chateau of Versailles, southwest of Paris.
"The burqa is not a religious sign, it's a sign of subservience, a sign of debasement -- I want to say it solemnly," he said. "It will not be welcome on the territory of the French Republic."
Banning the burqa doesn't further women's rights - it limits them. Now, obviously there's a difference in Islamic women's dress from the hijab to the burqa - but legally banning any of them erases all agency from Muslim women. (I'm especially wary of Sarkozy's comments and this potential ban given that France banned headscarves from public schools in 2004.)
If you're interested in hearing Muslim women talking about the hijab, here are a couple of interesting vids.
UPDATE: Jill has more.
Related posts: Only citizenship for some: France denies citizenship to Muslim woman
Malaysian women speak out on hijab
A new study by the Medical Research Council on rape in South Africa reveals that one in four men in South Africa may have raped someone--with most of those attacking more than one victim. Before the critics come out of the woodwork arguing that this is hyperbolic research, be clear, the methodologies were sound; the MRC spoke to 1,738 men in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape provinces.
There are so many disturbing data points as part of this research, but I think rather than talking about how completely horrifying the facts are, it's important to focus on WHY this is happening. It's easy to read these kinds of statistics and throw up our hands as if there is nothing we can do in the face of such atrocity. Instead, we need to support the feminists in South Africa who are obviously well-aware of this issue and doing everything they can to change the culture of violence.
It's clear that many of the men who admitted to raping women had done so multiple times. This makes it even more critical that focus be put, not only on prevention and cultural shifts, but on prosecution. The legal system in South Africa must support women to come forward about their sexual assault experiences so they can help prevent other women from facing the same fate.
Professor Rachel Jewkes of the MRC, who carried out the research, told the BBC's World Today:
The absolute imperative is we have to change the underlying social attitudes that in a way have created a norm that coercing women into sex is on some level acceptable. And it's partly rooted in our incredibly disturbed past and the way that South African men over the centuries have been socialised into forms of masculinity that are predicated on the idea of being strong and tough and the use of force to assert dominance and control over women, as well as other men.
Related Posts:
"Corrective rape" increasing in South Africa.
Child's play includes sexual assault in South Africa
South Africa will only be free when women are...
Women's Day in South Africa
Thanks to all the readers and community poster Lorenc who brought this to our attention.
