In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Month: May 2011

Cut Prison Populations in California

Good good good.

Conditions in California’s overcrowded prisons are so bad that they violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday, ordering the state to reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that broke along ideological lines, described a prison system that failed to deliver minimal care to prisoners with serious medical and mental health problems and produced “needless suffering and death.”

Naturally, the more conservative justices dissented, saying that decreasing prisoner populations would put Californians in jeopardy. But huge numbers of prisoners are non-violent offenders, and they face disease and death living in squalid and cramped conditions:

The majority opinion included photographs of inmates crowded into open gymnasium-style rooms and what Justice Kennedy described as “telephone-booth-sized cages without toilets” used to house suicidal inmates. Suicide rates in the state’s prisons, Justice Kennedy wrote, have been 80 percent higher than the average for inmates nationwide. A lower court in the case said it was “an uncontested fact” that “an inmate in one of California’s prisons needlessly dies every six or seven days due to constitutional deficiencies.”

The feminist naturist. A.k.a. the “naked grandmas” post!

This is one of those guest-posts I’ve been promising to write for many an age now. I hope you enjoy…?

I became a naturist in a totally feminist fashion – all due to a man.

When he told me that he believed that genuine nude beaches were the best, my initial reaction was, “Um, hell no. Wtf?!”

Roughly 24 hours later, I was standing on a nude beach, having been dragged there. I was really tired, due to the dragging and whatnot. We were camped out near a group of naked strangers, most of whom were middle-aged Ukrainian men. They were busy roasting something over an open fire. A couple of little boys, also naked, really wanted to be part of the roasting experience. “Alright, who farted?!” One of the naked men yelled. “If you little bastards are going to cook, you’ll need better manners!”

It was at that point I decided that I had absolutely nothing to lose in this situation. “Can you untie these?” I asked my guy, and offered him the strings at the back of my bikini top. He untied them for me, and then I slid out of my bikini bottoms as well, and walked into the sea, naked as a jaybird. After I was done floating and watching the seagulls and clouds and marveling at how much better my body felt without the bikini on, I sat on my towel and stared at the waves. People on their way through to a different beach, people who totally had their clothes on, kept glancing at me as they passed, but not in any way that made me feel uncomfortable.

“Hm, wow, this is kind of awesome, actually” I thought to myself at the time. And so I became a naturist.

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Accusing the Accuser

I have a piece up in the Daily about victim-blaming and the DSK case. A bit:

Writing in the American Spectator, political commentator Ben Stein joined the chorus, saying that DSK is probably innocent because he’s an economist and economists don’t rape people, and after all, these accusations are coming from a maid. Rumors are swirling in France that the woman is a prostitute — prostitutes, apparently, are alternately deserving of and immune from rape. And according to one French poll, 60 percent of the French public believes that she’s part of an elaborate setup to sink DSK’s political career.

But the biggest problem isn’t that the French press and public seem to have taken victim-blaming and conspiracy-theorizing to new levels of unhinged. The problem isn’t that, all evidence aside, she and other accusers are alternately painted as sluts or virgins, because it’s just easier to either jam the facts into the “She’s a whore” narrative, or imply that if she wears a headscarf, she must be sexually conservative. The problem is that we consider any of that relevant.

Check it out.

Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict: Addressing Women’s Needs and Rights on the Frontlines

Well. This has been the most inspiring, frustrating, overwhelming, depressing and hopeful few days. I hope to collect my thoughts for you on it next week. For now, the third (and last) plenary at the Nobel Women’s Initiative conference on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict starts at 10:00AM ET (give or take a few minutes) today, and I’ll be liveblogging it right here. I really hope you’ll join in the conversation.

Here’s the description of our charge for this session:

What does a survivor-centered strategy look like? How are women activists on the frontline defending and surviving violence and risk? This panel is meant to spark discussions around possibilities and approaches for a comprehensive response for women activists and survivors of sexual violence in conflict. By drawing the links between trauma, justice, health, livelihoods, security and reconciliation, participants reflect on what is needed to support women in finding their voice and reclaiming their lives to forge a new security.

And here are the featured presenters:

Moderator: Lisa VeneKlasen – Just Associates, USA
Speakers:
Wangu Kanja – Wangu Kanja Foundation, Kenya
Shereen Essof – Just Associates Southern Africa, South Africa
Parvin Najafgholi – Iranian Women Cultural Center and One Million Signatures campaign, Iran
Patricia Ardon – Sinergia N’oj, Guatemala

And here’s the liveblog!

You can also follow me tweeting from the conference this morning (including from a conversation with the Nobel Laureates at 9:15am) at @jaclynf, and follow the conference hashtag on twitter at #endrapeinwar. And don’t forget — we’re all taking action together tomorrow.

Doing anti-racist work in white-dominated feminist organizations

A must must must must must-read piece. A small taste:

What I had planned for my meeting with the white women of TWFC was a set of introductions, and an initial discussion of what, in their opinion, a truly diverse organization would look and feel like. As I expected, their views were universally that a diverse TWFC would be just like the current TWFC, except there would be more women of color attending events and volunteering for the organization. Their focus was on “attracting” more women of color. I urged them to shift the focus in two separate directions:

Question 1: “How do women of color stand to benefit by joining the current TWFC?”

Question 2: “Can you see anything about the current structure of TWFC that might serve as an impediment to attracting women of color.”

Answers to Question 1 were clustered around the belief that TWFC helped “all women” and that a woman of color’s interests were also served by the work of the organization because “they’re women too.” No one on the board suggested that the category of “women” was not universal, and that communities of women (or women from different communities) might have different needs, and different opinions on how to achieve those needs. There was a distinct air, in some of the comments, that women of color should be “grateful” that organizations like TWFC were fighting for “their” interests, and that the failure of women of color to join TWFC was a kind of ingratitude.

But really read it all, it is excellent.

Who is the Victim in the “DSK Affair”?

This is a guest post by Mounia. Mounia is an activist and soon-to-be high school graduate from Morocco/Canada. She enjoys working on issues around gender, queer rights and immigration- among other things. She also occasionally writes, and will be a Feministe intern in the fall.

Disclaimers : The links in the body of this post are in French, and provide the sources for the quotes given. My apologies. If anyone is curious and wants more a more extensive translation than already provided/given by Google, do let me know!

Also, this post is purely about French reactions to IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn arrest. It in no way makes a judgment on the case, as Mr. Strauss-Kahn of course deserves a trial.

It’s an “untolerable cruelty,” according to Socialist Representative Manuel Valls. As for Eva Joly, Green Party Presidential Candidate, she calls it a “nightmare,” “dramatic” and “very violent.”

These are the reactions to the alleged sexual assault of a hotel worker by IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. And from the vocabulary used – violent, nightmarish, dramatic — you would probably think the ‘it’ in question was the rape.

You would be wrong.

‘It,’ in fact, refers to Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s plight in the oh-so-inhumane American justice system. And the quotes above are far from exceptional. They are fairly representative of the reactions of French politicians to the news of DSK’s arrest.

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Want to lower the abortion rate?

Then give low-income women the means to prevent pregnancies they don’t want, and the means to support children they do.

New Guttmacher research finds that abortion rates declined among most groups of women between 2000 and 2008. However, one notable exception was poor women (those with family incomes less than 100% of the federal poverty level). Poor women accounted for 42% of all abortions in 2008, and their abortion rate increased 18% between 2000 and 2008, from 44.4 to 52.2 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44. In comparison, the national abortion rate for 2008 was 19.6 per 1,000, reflecting an 8% decline from a rate of 21.3 in 2000.

And yet the same people who claim to be “pro-life” and against abortion rights also tend to be against social services for low-income women and children, and contraception access for uninsured and underinsured women. Funny how that works.

Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict: Justice and Accountability

Whew. What an overwhelming first day. Second plenary at the Nobel Women’s Initiative conference on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict starts at 3:00PM ET today, and I’ll be liveblogging it right here. Hoping to get some of your questions in live!

Here’s the description of our charge for the afternoon:

This panel aims to give a round up of efforts to prosecute perpetrators at the international and local levels. From the International Criminal Court to grassroots mobile courts, women have spearheaded various alternative and innovative forms of justice. What is needed to strengthen these efforts to ensure greater accountability and prosecution?

And here are the featured presenters:

Moderator: Susannah Sirkin – Physicians for Human Rights, USA
Speakers:
Anuradha Bhagwati – Service Women’s Action Network, US
Naw K’nway Paw Nimrod – Women’s League of Burma, Thailand
Andrea Medina Rosas – Red Mesa de Mujeres de Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

And here’s the liveblog!

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