1 thing Ian Brown and I have in common and 6 things we don’t (by shaynastock)

Amazing and brilliant feminist response to Ian Brown’s article in the Globe and Mail -“Why men can’t - and shouldn’t - stop staring at women”.

fotojournalismus:

Afghan girls work at a first Internet cafe for women in Kabul March 8, 2012. Afghanistan opened its first female-only internet cafe on Thursday, hoping to give women a chance to connect to the world without verbal and sexual harassment and free from the unwanted gazes of their countrymen.

[Credit : Mohammad Ismail/Reuters]

Around 100,000 women gathered in Karachi last Sunday at a rally for improved rights and gender equality. Entitled: ‘Empowered women, strong Pakistan’ and billed as the largest women’s political rally in the world, it was organised by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), a political party in Pakistan. Women attending the rally carried placards reading: “Say no to Domestic Violence” and “We Condemn Domestic Violence”.

They also waved MQM flags and carried posters of the founder and leader of the MQM, Altaf Hussain, who addressed the rally from London by telephone, saying: “The world over, women are considered equals in every sense. Unfortunately and sadly in Pakistan they continue to be treated worse than animals. “Women in Pakistan are subjected to treatment meted out to second-or-third-class citizens. Worse, they are treated like animals. Crimes like honour killing, wani and marriage to the Quran are rampant under the veil of tradition.”

He added that political and religious parties should bear witness to the revolution of women and that the empowerment of women would mean a better Pakistan. (via World’s ‘largest women’s rally’ held in Pakistan | Women’s Views on News)

feministryangosling:

Virginia

The current situation in the US is really almost unbelievable.

Yes – that is what a clitoris looks like. And we were finally able to create a 3D model of the clitoris using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)!! Even though we know almost every detail of the male penis, the clitoris has always remained more of a mystery. I suppose you could chalk this up to both to the fact that our sexual organs are more internal and thus harder to observe, and the fact that most scientific and medical fields are male dominated. But what helped bring about the better understanding of the internal clitoral structure was the advent of MRI machines, which allow us to perfectly model structures within the body. (via The Clit: Tip of the Iceberg « Loose Garments) Yea! The clit ain’t just a dot yo.

Thousands of Iranian Women Are Training to Be Ninjas.

kick ass ladies!

Why Thousands of Iranian Women Are Training to Be Ninjas

By Max Fisher

In a society that treats them like children, sports — and especially martial arts — offer a way to express strength and independence.
 
There are 3,500 women in Iran officially registered as training to become ninjas, according to state-run Press TV.

The laws and official practices of Iran place enormous restrictions on its women. They are considered inferior to men in almost all legal matters, especially family laws such as marriage or child custody, and their testimony is officially equal to half of a man’s. Clothing restrictions and fierce segregation laws marginalize women in the public sector, making participation in society arduous and painful. Those who try anyway are often singled out for harassment and punishment.

But the Iranian regime’s 33-year quest to make Iranian women weak and helpless, to force them into child-like subservience, has failed. Though we in the West often perceive them this way because the hijab and the chador are all we see on the surface, women in Iran are stronger collectively and more assertive individually than the Islamic Republic would have us believe. After all, its laws and restrictions would not be necessary if Iranian women were as powerless as the religious leaders hoped. It is precisely because Iranian women do wield power in their society and homes that the country’s reactionary leaders feel compelled to imbalance the playing field, to pass laws taking that dignity and influence away. And one of the places where their failure becomes clear is in the surprisingly vibrant arena of women’s sports.

The first two Muslim women to summit Mount Everest, in 2005, were both Iranian; a dentist and graphic designer whose expedition had suffered unusually bad conditions and serious injuries. In 2004, a group of Iranian women started a rugby league that, by 2006, had 1,000 members.

Mastering a Japanese martial art, especially one popularly associated with fearless lone warriors, might hold a certain appeal to Iranian women who have watched their government struggle for decades to weaken them. (via Why Thousands of Iranian Women Are Training to Be Ninjas - Max Fisher - International - The Atlantic)

Awesome!! Check out the link for the video.

n the first photo, Marilyn is compared to another woman in a bikini, who is much thinner. The text reads: “This [pointing to Monroe] is more attractive than this [pointing to the other woman].” While I can totally get behind the title “fuck society,” and add “and its stupid expectations” for good measure, there’s nothing anti-establishment about what’s being done here. This is a common tactic, in which women are pitted against each other, so that we lose sight of the real problem: namely, society.The thought behind this comparison photo is to turn the dominant paradigm on its head, but what it really does is reinforce that for one woman to be good, another must be bad. And that kind of thinking isn’t going to get us anywhere.

The second is the same photo of Marilyn, this time alone in the Motivational Poster style. The text reads: “PROOF: That you can be adored by thousands of men, even when your thighs touch.” From the start this would seem like a better message. No comparison photo, no pitting women against each other. For some reason, though, this photo troubles and angers me more than the first one does. Because here’s the thing: you are worth more than what men think of you.  (via The Marilyn Meme - Shameless Magazine - your daily dose of fresh feminism for girls and trans youth)

great analysis

Actress Jane Fonda kisses Stephen Hawking after a preview performance of a play in Los Angeles in 2011. Photograph: Ryan Miller/Getty Images His career has shed light on the secrets of the universe, from the nature of space-time to the workings of black holes, but there is one conundrum that still baffles the world’s most famous scientist.

In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women.

“They are,” he said “a complete mystery.” (via Stephen Hawking admits he finds women ‘a complete mystery’ | Science | The Guardian)

Eve Arnold, a world-travelling photojournalist whose subjects ranged from the poor and dispossessed to Marilyn Monroe, has died, the Magnum photo agency said Thursday. She was 99.

She was 99. Magnum spokeswoman Fiona Rogers said Arnold died peacefully Wednesday in a London nursing home.

Born in Philadelphia in April 1912 to Russian immigrant parents, Arnold lived on Long Island when she became interested in photography while working in a photofinishing lab.

After taking a six-week photography course at the New School for Social Research in New York, she began her career in the 1940s, working for publications including Picture Post, Time and Life magazine during a golden age of magazine photojournalism.

Her subjects included migrant labourers, New York bartenders, Cuban fishermen and Afghan nomads; celebrities such as Joan Crawford and Elizabeth Taylor; and political figures including Jacqueline Kennedy, Malcolm X and Margaret Thatcher.

Arnold was renowned for her rapport with those she photographed.

“If you’re careful with people and if you respect their privacy, they will offer part of themselves that you can use,” she told the BBC in a 2002 interview.

Check out her amazing photo collection.

Quote: “If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.”

The number of reported rapes in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, has risen sharply, creating “a climate of fear”, according to a civil society source.

“We have had the problem of rape in the city but what we are witnessing now is on a scale never seen before,” said Mama Hawo Haji, a women’s rights activist. “For instance, in the last two days alone, we have taken 32 rape cases to the hospital; in the past four months we recorded 80 cases.”

She said women’s groups were raising awareness of the issue and would continue to do so “until someone listens to us. We will continue shouting from the rooftops until rape stops.”

Calling on Somali men to join women in stopping the menace, Haji said: “I want all Somali men to remember that their mother is a woman, their daughter is a woman, their sister is a woman and their wife is a woman. How would they feel if any of them was raped? I want them to feel angry whenever a woman is raped.” (via IRIN Africa | SOMALIA: Rape on the rise amid “climate of fear” in Mogadishu IDP camps | Somalia | Conflict | Gender Issues | Governance)

argh… whenever a country is in turmoil for whatever reason, rape seems to increase.

Thousands of women marched through downtown Cairo on Tuesday evening to call for the end of military rule in an extraordinary expression of anger over images of soldiers beating, stripping and kicking a female demonstrator on the pavement of Tahrir Square.

The event may have been the biggest women’s demonstration in Egypt’s history, and the most significant since a 1919 march led by pioneering Egyptian feminist Huda Shaarawi to protest British rule. The scale was stunning, and utterly unexpected in this strictly patriarchal society. Previous attempts to organize women’s events in Tahrir Square this year have either fizzled or, in at least one case, ended in the physical harassment of the handful of women who did turn out.

Just two hours before the women massed, a coalition of liberal and human rights groups unveiled a plan to try to break state media’s grip on public opinion by holding screenings around the country of video capturing recent military abuses.

In the most famous of those, a half dozen soldiers beating a woman with batons rip away her abaya to reveal her blue bra before one plants his boot on her chest. Fearful of the stigma that would come with her public humiliation, she has declined to step forward publicly, but the images of “blue bra girl” have been circulated over the Internet and broadcast by television stations around the world.

Relatively few Egyptians have Internet access or watch independent satellite television news, and many political organizers say they believed the scene is now more widely familiar in the United States than it is in Egypt. “Four blocks from here, no one knows about this,” said Aalam Wassef, a blogger and activist participating in the plan to try to spread the images.

Relatively few Egyptians have Internet access or watch independent satellite television news, and many political organizers say they believed the scene is now more widely familiar in the United States than it is in Egypt. “Four blocks from here, no one knows about this,” said Aalam Wassef, a blogger and activist participating in the plan to try to spread the images.

By four in the afternoon, thousands had gathered in Tahrir Square. Instead of the usual core of activists, it was a broad spectrum including housewives demonstrating for the first time, young mothers carrying babies, a majority in traditional Muslim headscarves and a few in face-covering veils. And as they marched towards the headquarters of the journalists union, two long lines of hundreds of men joined hands on either side of the column of women to protect them from any possible harassment.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/world/middleeast/violence-enters-5th-day-as-egyptian-general-blames-protesters.html?pagewanted=all

ahhhh!!!! this is AWESOME!!!!!!! These women are amazing! And the men who joined hands to protect them!!!

Is the video uncanny? Yes. It is like being lightly slapped, over and over again. That starts to sting, then infuriate.

And it is so easy to look forward to a time when a girl or woman will express one of the banalities in the video and be mocked for it. Mocked for saying, “Did you miss me?” or “Be nice.” Are women not scrutinized enough?

Girls, or young women, who already speak largely in the interrogative and treat the world of men as another, completely inscrutable species, have enough on their minds already. They are already sexualized to the maximum. Must their every word be a potential joke?

Girls speak casually about inane things. Girls speak, too, about sexual violence and quantum physics. They talk about fear and art, children, murder and opera; philosophy, blood, sex and mathematics.

(via Why are we laughing at girls in the Twitter-verse? - The Globe and Mail)

Franke James is the third person to pass through this column in recent months who feels she has been spied on, smacked down or targeted by a mean-spirited, micromanaging government or Conservative party always on the lookout for enemies of the state.
 
One is an artist, one an aboriginal advocate and one a widow. All three have fought back. And all three are women.

Cindy Blackstock is an advocate for aboriginal children who accessed her government files to show the government had been tailing her and spying on her after she launched a human rights complaint regarding the Conservatives’ treatment of aboriginal children.
 
Michaela Keyserlingk, who lost her husband to asbestos-related cancer two years ago, was threatened with legal action by the Conservative party because she was using the party logo in her campaign to stop Canadian asbestos exports.

Given the international condemnation endured by the Conservative government last week after Canada became the first country to withdraw from Kyoto, its actions against an artist whose criticism is more whimsical than wicked looks ever more petty.

This pettiness extends to its dealings with Blackstock and Keyserlingk and only highlights three of the most egregious failings of this government: its pariah status on the environment, its inexplicable defence of asbestos exports and its inaction on the aboriginal file.

James thinks the Conservatives have underestimated the power of women. (via Canada News: Tim Harper: Three women who fought back against the Conservatives - thestar.com)

YEAH. Franke James is awesome.

Now our revolution is in an endgame struggle with the old regime and the military.

The message is: everything you rose up against is here, is worse. Don’t put your hopes in the revolution or parliament. We are the regime and we’re back.

What they are not taking into account is that everybody’s grown up – the weapon of shame can no longer be used against women [me- YES! I salute their bravery… shame is a powerful weapon and I am glad it is broken]. When they subjected young women to virginity tests one of them got up and sued them. Every young woman they’ve brutalized recently has given video testimony and is totally committed to continuing the struggle against them.

The young woman in the blue jeans has chosen so far to retain her privacy. But her image has already become icon. As the tortured face of Khaled Said broke any credibility the ministry of the interior might have had, so the young woman in the blue jeans has destroyed the military’s reputation. (via Image of unknown woman beaten by Egypt’s military echoes around world | Ahdaf Soueif | Comment is free | The Guardian)