On the unexpected variety in human choices … June 25, 2008

The NY Times today contains a feature about Pashe Keqi, the last of Albania’s sworn virgins. 

The practice of the sworn virgin occurred “under the Kanun of Leke Dukagjini, a code of conduct that has been passed on orally among the clans of northern Albania for more than five centuries. Under the Kanun, the role of women is severely circumscribed: Take care of children and maintain the home. While a woman’s life is worth half that of a man, a virgin’s value is the same - 12 oxen.”

In a land of war and disease, women might take on the role of a man to replace a dead father, to avoid an arranged marriage, or just to live a better life.  Their assumption of the role was very thorough and they ranked, behaved and were accepted as a man.

Pashe Keqi’s observations on her choice:

“Back then, it was better to be a man because, before, a woman and an animal were considered the same thing,” says Keqi, who has a bellowing baritone voice, sits with her legs open wide like a man and relishes downing shots of Raki and smoking cigarettes. “Now, Albanian women have equal rights with men and are even more powerful, and I think today it would be fun to be a woman.”

Heads up: Refugee Week (UK) June 18, 2008

Quick heads up (a little late, I’m afraid): this week is Refugee Week in the UK! Lots of events going on around the country. Check out the details here to see what’s going on near you:

http://www.refugeeweek.org.uk/

Yesterday I went to see this film: http://www.almostadult.co.uk/almostadult/index.html

which I cannot recommend highly enough - it details the exploitation, loneliness and destitution that faces some asylum seekers who come to the UK, in the story of two young women seeking refugee status.

Asylum seekers as valued community members June 16, 2008

Stereotype has it that the British working class is the most likely segment of the population to be racist and anti-immigrant, scapegoating and hating on the asylum seekers. But this heartening article tells a different story.

We had our own little code to warn them it was a dawn raid and to get out. There’s more than one way of getting out of the flats - there’s two staircases and two lifts, so you could play games if you knew how. If we were a thorn in their flesh, then good.”
Sixty-seven-year-old Jean Donnachie flashes a mischievous smile as she describes the tactics she and her neighbours used every day to thwart immigration officers trying to arrest asylum seekers on her estate in Glasgow. A grandmother and former cashier who has lived on the Kingsway for 20 years, she makes an unlikely resistance fighter. But when she talks about how the estate took on the Home Office, there is a gleam of defiance in her eyes.

At first sight, the Kingsway seems an unwelcoming place. Wind whips around the 15-storey tower blocks, the windows in the lobby doors are broken, the corridors are gloomy and bare. Remnants of police incident tape flicker from lampposts and prominent surveillance cameras add an air of menace to its pathways. There is little to dispel the sense that this is one of Britain’s forgotten pockets of poverty.

But when hundreds of asylum seekers were placed there to live - often for years - while their cases were processed, they were warmly embraced. “We had been really going downhill - a lot of antisocial families were being put here. But after a year of the asylum seekers coming, the atmosphere became completely different,” Donnachie says. “These people couldn’t do enough for you, and I thought this was wonderful - it was like going back to when I was a child and you could leave the key in the door and if you needed help someone would come round.”

In the UK, people seeking asylum are often kept waiting for verdicts on their cases for years– during which time they are given a place to stay and subsistence, but not allowed to work. As a result, many have thrown themselves into voluntary work in their communities, become valued and much-loved neighbours. And when the government gets around to deciding to throw them out, the communities are fighting back. This is happening across the country, and community efforts are apparently meeting with at least some degree of success.

An important story, and one that goes against the conventional narrative– that’s what happens when you actually talk to people, rather than just accepting the received wisdom.
Via The F-word.

Mao offered US 10 Million Women February 16, 2008

Apparently, during a trade negotiation in 1973, Mao offered the US 10 million women.

“You know, China is a very poor country,” Mao said, according to a document released by the State Department’s historian office.”We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women. So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands.” A few minutes later, Mao circled back to the offer. “Do you want our Chinese women?” he asked. “We can give you 10 million.”

Kissinger, characteristically, gave a clear rejection of the appalling offer:

“It is such a novel proposition,” Kissinger replied in his discussion with Mao in Beijing. “We will have to study it.”

Now, it’s not like Mao treated Chinese men well either, but this is a particularly stark example of the commodification of women. (Thanks, Jender-parents!)

 

Sex Wars VS Farm Wars December 8, 2007

Brownfemipower has a powerful post comparing the feminist energy devoted to the porn industry with the lack of feminist energy devoted to the farm industry.   

I know that there’s more than one way to get fucked.And I only hope there will be a time when feminists fight for thirty years about the best way to end violence against farmworkers.

How can we treat people like this? November 26, 2007

Janipher Maseko was raped by armed rebels in Uganda and fled to the UK at 13.  At 18, she was in Yarl’s Wood detention centre, separated from her two children (one newborn), in agony from her swollen breasts, being told to take drugs to shut down her milk– and being told she was about to be sent back to Uganda, alone.  Fortunately, some good and powerful people intervened.  But her case is not yet over, and it’s not the only one.  Read more here.

16 Days November 25, 2007

Today, 25 November, is the first day of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.

The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign originating from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute sponsored by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership in 1991. Participants chose the dates, November 25, International Day Against Violence Against Women and December 10, International Human Rights Day, in order to symbolically link violence against women and human rights and to emphasize that such violence is a violation of human rights. This 16-day period also highlights other significant dates including November 29, International Women Human Rights Defenders Day, December 1, World AIDS Day, and December 6, which marks the Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre. 

The International Red Cross is one of many groups to be a part of this campaign. One of their initiatives is to give a voice to women who are suffering from violence.

The IRC is in war zones around the world, helping many thousandsof women and girls every day. We know they have much to say andwe know how easily their voices are lost, so we’re working withwriter, photographer and long-time women’s advocate Ann Jones togive them an opportunity to speak, loudly and clearly.With digital cameras, women who have survived conflict,displacement, discrimination, sexual and domestic violencevividly document their own lives. Through these personalphotographs, stirring portraits are revealed and women cometogether to tell stories of strength, reclaim their rights andmake their voices heard.Be a part of this powerful exchange, which begins tomorrow,November 25th to kick off “16 Days of Action against GenderViolence.” Over the course of the 16 Days, you’ll be inspired bythe extraordinary changes these brave women make with the boldclicks of their cameras.Just sign up for our 16 Days e-mail list, and on each of thosedays you’ll get a special e-mail with one woman’s photo, anamazing story and a chance to add your own voice. Afterward,you’ll get occasional updates from Ann and the IRC about newstories, IRC programs empowering women, and the many ways YOUcan help.

To sign up for the IRC 16 Days list go here.   Thanks, Jender-Parents!

A Jihad For Love November 10, 2007

This wonderful documentary profiles gay and lesbian Muslims in twelve countries.  It tells an incredibly complex story (really, many stories) that I couldn’t hope to do justice to here.  I think perhaps what struck me most was this: the people in the film are being persecuted in the name of Islam, yet it is also clear that what sustains them through this persecution is precisely their deep faith in Islam.  The stories are complex, the people are complex, the interplays between culture, religion, and politics are complex– and they all (people, cultures, religious intepretations, laws) differ tremendously from one another.  I won’t try to say much more, except to note that there is a vast amount of rich material here for those interested in sexuality, gender, self-understanding, religion, culture, textual interpretation, human rights, silencing, and on and on and on.  See it as soon as you can, and tell others about it! the director has a blog here.  And here’s an interview with the director to whet your appetite.  

Document the Silence TODAY October 31, 2007

Go grab something red to wear to show your support for ending the silence about violence against women of colour (especially if you’re in the US). And check out this website for more things to do.

Document the Silence: 31 October October 26, 2007

The Document the Silence Project aims to end the lack of attention to crimes of violence against women of color in the US. They have an important event coming up on October 31, and I’d urge you to participate:

Recent events in the United States have moved us to action. Violence against women is sadly, not a new phenomenon in our country or in the world, however, in the last year women of color have experienced brutal forms of violence, torture, rape and injustice which have gone unnoticed, received little to no media coverage, or a limited community response. We are responding to:

The brutal and inhumane rape, torture, and kidnapping of Megan Williams in Logan, West Virginia who was held by six assailants for a month.

Rape survivors in the Dunbar Housing Projects in West Palm Beach, Florida one of whom was forced to perform sexual acts on her own child.

A 13 year old native American girl was beaten by two white women and has since been harassed by several men yelling “white power” outside of her home

Seven black lesbian girls attempted to stop an attacker and were latter charged with aggravated assault and are facing up to 11 year prison sentences

In a Litany of Survival, Audre Lorde writes, “When we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” These words shape our collective organizing to break the silence surrounding women of color’s stories of violence. We are asking for community groups, grass-root organizations, college campus students and groups, communities of faith, online communities, and individuals to join us in speaking out against violence against women of color. If we speak, we cannot be invisible.

Join us and stand up to violence against women!

Be bold, be brave, be red. Wear red on October 31, 2007. Take a picture or video of yourself and friends wearing red. Send it to: beboldbered@gmail.com. We’ll post it!

Take Your Red to the Streets! Know of a location where violence occurred against a woman of color? Have a public location where you feel women of color are often ignored? Make violence against women of color visible by decorating the space in red. Be sure to send us pictures and or video of your display!

Rally! Gather your friends, family, and community to rally. Check out the Document the Silence website for the litany we’re asking participants to read together on October 31st. Be sure to send us pictures and/or video of the event! You could even gather where you created a display!

For more Information on how to Host a RED Rally, please click on the page “How to Host a Red Rally.”

Share your story of silence. Share your own story of silence by uploading it to the Document the Silence website (http://documentthesilence.wordpress.com/). You can send a story in any form you’d like – as a written statement, video clip, movie, documentary, or visual art.

For more information, go here.

Feminism and 9/11 October 4, 2007

As part of the Carnival, I linked to a post asking why there isn’t more feminist writing about 9/11. But I wasn’t sure what such writing would actually be– sure, there are plenty of feminist things to say about the ways that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been justified, and about their effects on women. Lots of feminist things to say about the way that Islam has been demonised as monolothically anti-woman, and so-on. But specifically about 9/11? I drew a blank. Susan Faludi didn’t, in part because immediately after the event she was told that “this sure pushes feminism off the map!”. In her new book, she argues that the crisis of 9/11 has served as a way of pushing women back into traditional domesticity. She also ties it into American history and national mythology:

Our foundational drama as a society was apposite, a profound exposure to just such assaults, murderous homeland incursions by dark-skinned, non-Christian combatants under the flag of no recognized nation,” she writes. “September 11 was aimed at our cultural solar plexus precisely because it was an ‘unthinkable’ occurrence for a nation that once could think of little else. It was not, in fact, an inconceivable event; it was the characteristic and formative American ordeal, the primal injury of which we could not speak, the shard of memory stuck in our throats. Our ancestors had already found a war on terror, a very long war, and we have lived with its scars ever since.

Interesting and important arguments, though as Rebecca Traister at Salon notes things are complicated by the rise of women to certain positions of power during the same time (Condoleeza Rice, Katie Couric). And as Patricia Cohen of the New York Times notes, invasion narratives are hardly unique to the US psyche. Though I haven’t read the book, I’m a little troubled by all this talk of “our” founding narrative as one of being light-skinned people invaded by dark-skinned ones. Aside from the fact that this really gets the facts wrong about who invaded whom (which needn’t prevent it from being a myth that we believe), very few Americans have family histories that go back to those narratives. Most of us are more likely to identify with narratives of immigration or slavery, surely. Still, interesting and thought-provoking stuff.

Muslim Feminist Art August 13, 2007

Including pub quizzes!  Sample question:

Round six, question two: Jean Charles de Menezes was shot and killed when mistaken for a ’suicide bomber’.” On news reports, shocked passengers in the tube carriage stated the Brazilian man was ‘Asian, definitely Asian’. Does this suggest that a) all brown people look the same? or b) there are people in the world who believe Brazil is part of Asia?”

More here.

Immigration and breastfeeding May 24, 2007

A Ugandan mother has been separated from her breastfeeding son and young daughter for two weeks, whilst awaiting deportation in Yarl’s Wood (one of the detention centres where failed asylum-seekers are held before being removed from the country). It is also reported that the woman has been denied breast pumps whilst in detention. This means that she is in constant pain, and runs the risk of her milk stopping before she is reunited with her son. This is just one of many cases, despite Home Office guidelines stating that breastfeeding children should not be removed from their mothers. More here.

a host of urgent and depressing issues May 23, 2007

Read this. It was brought to my attention after communication with REACT, a project concerned with raising awareness about the experiences of asylum seekers in the UK.

One of the ongoing projects they are engaged in is concerned with the particular problems facing women refugees and asylum seekers, with the process systematically failing to address gender-specific issues, despite approx 50% of refugees being female.

For instance, an chronic lack of childcare for women refugees means that women often have to make their cases for asylum, at the initial interview, in the presence of their children; if - as is not uncommon - the woman has left their home country having suffered gender-based violence such as rape and other forms of sexual violence, the presence of her children often hinders giving a description of these experiences. So can the presence of male interpreters. When, later in the process, allegations of rape are then made, they are not believed precisely because it wasn’t mentioned in the initial interview.

Lack of childcare means that women often cannot attend ESOL english language classes. These seem like two pretty clear instances of locutionary silencing (see Langton, 1993); conditions are such that women feel they simply cannot speak - perform locutionary acts that they wish to.

Some of the issues raised in the article (above) also highlight the epistemic injustices (see Fricker, forthcoming) that these women often face - their testimony being treated dismissively, as they are not treated as credible testifiers.

A very comprehensive document to consult is the refugee council’s review ‘Making Women Visible’.