The Agonist - Global Women's Issues

Transsexual prostitute in Italian political sex scandal burns to death

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:37:59 -0800

A Brazilian transsexual caught up in a scandal which prompted the resignation of a senior Italian politician was found burned to death in his home Friday.

Reuters, The Daily Telegraph

This Brenda might be a shemale, to be precise. Plenty of them from Brazil work as prostitutes in Italy.

Cancer scientist reveals secret life as prostitute

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:10:13 -0800

So, there has been lately some women's issues in The Agonist and I even read the word 'vagina' here. So, here is my contribution, without the word 'vagina':

working as a prostitute until late 2004, describing it as "so much more enjoyable" than an earlier job as a computer programmer.

CNN

She charged £300 for an hour from her victims.

Zambia 'porn' reporter acquitted

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:10:02 -0800

Nov 17

BBC - A Zambian journalist has been acquitted of pornography charges after sending officials pictures of a woman giving birth in a hospital car park.
The incident happened during a nurses' strike and the baby died. Zambian President Rupiah Banda had described the photos as pornographic.
Chansa Kabwela said she had sent them in protest at the effects of the strike that paralysed the country's hospitals.
whew, a sensible outcome in a bizarre trial - background

The Myth Of Equality In America

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:27:18 -0800

Yes, yes, I know I've been on my hobby-horse about women's rights in America most of this week. But really, can one describe the desire for equal pay and an equal choice set for fully half of our population as a hobby-horse? I think not. I do realize that women have it very well on our society. But it could be better. Much better, as this post demonstrates.

The only quibble I have with the post--and the report--is that it's too narrowly focused on economic determinants. Matters of choice, education and general quality of life measures would be most welcome too.

And yet, how can such things improve when women are only 3% of CEOS, or, even more worrisome, when women are 'losing ground relative to men in terms of salaries: female CEOs [of non-profits] now make only 66 percent of male salaries, compared with 71 percent in 2000,' or in politics: "In state politics, there are only six women governors, and women comprise only 15 percent of mayors of cities with populations of over 100,000."

I have a sinking feeling that there has been a steady erosion of women's rights in the country over the last twenty-five years and I'd like to see a study focusing on that. Sure, there has been some high profile window dressing in corporate America and in politics, but still. How can 78 cents on the dollar be a good thing?

Scientist announces that she is call girl and blogger Belle de Jour

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 20:21:59 -0800

Guardian - One of the best kept literary secrets of the decade was revealed last night when 34-year-old scientist Dr Brooke Magnanti announced she was the writer masquerading as call girl Belle de Jour.

The author behind the bestselling books detailing her secret life as a prostitute decided to come out to one of her fiercest critics, Sunday Times columnist India Knight, after claiming anonymity had become "no fun". "I couldn't even go to my own book launch party", she said.

Until last week, even her agent was unaware of her name. But now Magnanti, a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol, has spoken of the time six years ago she worked as a £300 an hour prostitute working through a London escort agency. Magnanti turned to the agency in the final stages of her PhD thesis when she ran out of money. She was already an experienced science blogger and began writing about her experiences in a web diary later adapted into books and a television drama starring Billie Piper.

Magnanti saysshe has no regrets about the 14 months she spent as a prostitute. "I've felt worse about my writing than I ever have about sex for money," she said.

A month ago she revealed her secret to her colleagues at the Bristol Initiative for Research of Child Health, who were "amazingly kind and supportive". She was preparing to tell her parents this weekend.

Magnanti said she was working on a doctoral study for the department of forensic pathology of Sheffield University in 2003 when she began her secret life. "I was getting ready to submit my thesis. I saved up a bit of money. I thought, I'll just move to London, because that's where the jobs are, and I'll see what happens.

"I couldn't find a professional job in my chosen field because I didn't have my PhD yet. I didn't have a lot of spare time on my hands because I was still making corrections and preparing for the viva and I got through my savings a lot faster than I thought I would."

Unable to pay her rent, Magnanti's mind turned to other things. She told the Sunday Times she wanted to start doing something straightaway, "that doesn't require a great deal of training or investment to get started, that's cash in hand and that leaves me spare time to do my work in" Her solution was prostitution.

"I did have another job at one point, as a computer programmer, but I kept up with my other work because it was so much more enjoyable."

Magnanti said her future lies in medical science, but she also has a literary streak. She has been writing a novel, and the Belle blog will "continue for a bit — I'd like her to have happy ending".

interview

Vagina

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:16:05 -0800

I have come to the conclusion that there is a direct correlation between a man's ability to say that icky word, vagina, and how he treats and sees women. If he can't say the word, he's probably a dick.

This post inspired by Digby.

And while we're on the subject of vaginas this is just wrong on so many levels. Clearly the influence of porn is deleterious on many levels.

Chinese continue to provide consumer

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:14:00 -0700

goods.

Global Views Through The Eyes Of Women

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:42:25 -0700

Does Military Service Turn Young Men Into Sexual Predators?

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:11:47 -0700

TruthDig/Alternet, By Penny Coleman, October 23

Every day, for four years as a West Point cadet, Tara Krause lived and worked alongside the men who had gang-raped her.

Still, she managed to graduate in 1982. She served as a field artillery officer during the Cold War and was attached to the 518th Military Intelligence Brigade during the Gulf War. In what she calls "an act of incredible self-destruction," she married a three-tour Vietnam vet in 1985 and, for the next eight years, lived "the private hell of his PTSD."

"Suicidal behavior, violence and degradation were common threads of daily life," she told me. She survived only because when he put his gun to her head one day, it finally gave her the courage to flee. "Like Lot’s wife," she says, she struggles not to look back.

It’s been almost 30 years since the rape, and Krause says she still "dance(s) the crushing daily struggle" of her own PTSD: "The nightmares, panic attacks, flashbacks, cold sweats, suicidal thoughts, zoning out, numbing all emotion and desperately avoiding triggers (reminders)—I have become a prisoner in my own home."

[...]

For all the work she has done to heal her own injuries, she still has no answer for the question: "How do you get a group of Southern white teenagers, all of whom were Eagle Scouts, class presidents, scholars and athletes, to be capable of raping a classmate?"

The question deserves an answer, and not a simplistic one. A 2003 survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the Gulf War found that almost 8 in 10 had been sexually harassed during their military service, and 30 percent had been raped.

Yet for decades, in spite of the terrible numbers, the military has managed with astonishing success to get away with responding to grievances like Krause’s with silence, or denial, or by blaming "a few bad apples." But when individual soldiers take the blame, the system gets off the hook.

And it can be shown that the patterns of military sex crimes are old and widespread—for generations, military service has transformed large numbers of American boys into sexual predators.

So it seems reasonable to ask whether perhaps there is something about military culture or training or experience that can be identified as causative, and then, perhaps, changed.

The correlation is difficult to dismiss. The majority of veterans behind bars today are there for a very specific type of crime: violence against women and children. That fact has held true since the first Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) surveys of veteran populations in the nation’s prisons in 1981, and there is evidence that those surveys only identified a much older problem.

If Men Were Dying En Masse...

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:42:55 -0700

Miriam Mannak | Cape Town | Oct 6

IPS - Maternal mortality rates in Africa constitute a "monumental tragedy" that requires urgent attention by African governments, health experts say.

"Expectant mothers in Africa, of all pregnant women in the world, are worst off. An average African woman has a chance of one in fourteen of dying during pregnancy or child labour," says human rights and health researcher Ebenezer Durojaye.

Durojaye, a Nigerian working at South Africa’s University of the Free State, told IPS that the situation in Sierra Leone is even worse. "Here, a woman has a chance of one in eight of dying during pregnancy and labour. In countries like Singapore, for instance, the maternal death risk is one in 3,000," he explained.

Durojaye was speaking at the 19th World Congress by the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO), in Cape Town, South Africa. The event, which runs from Oct. 4-9, is being attended by over 2000 obstetricians, gynaecologists and health experts from around the world.

"The situation in Africa is an outright nightmare and a monumental tragedy," Durojaye said.

Corporate Responsibility

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:19:57 -0700

Anytime I read something and I have a viscerally negative reaction to it, I know I need to first take a step back from it, think about why I had the reaction I did and then re-read it. (Same goes for movies.) I remember my first reading of Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale.' Talk about visceral. I literally threw the book across the room several times. But I persisted. And I am glad I did. That's one of the reasons I think literature is essential--I want my preconceived notions challenged. That doesn't mean I come around easily. Sometimes I have to be kicked and dragged into reality. But at least I do come around--or so I hope.

I say all of this, because last night I read this short essay about the porn industry. At first, I felt like it was some kind of post-colonial guilt trip. But then I remembered how the Indian men treated a young lady I met in India earlier this year. Their behavior was terrible--it was junior high behavior on steroids. (This is not to mention some of the behavior I witnessed in Oman towards Western women and among Arab immigrants in Denmark toward young Danish women.^*) After more thought about, and a reminder of the stories I'd heard about impromptu porn cinemas in India, I sat down to re-read the story in question.

Here's the meat of the story:

The village has no electricity, but that doesn't stop a generator from being wheeled in, turning a mud hut into an impromptu porn cinema – and turning some young men into rapists, with villagers relating chilling stories of assaults taking place straight after the film's end. In the nearest city, other young men are buying bootlegs copies of the almost always condom-free LA-made porn – copying directly what they see and contracting HIV. The head of the country's Aids commission says porn risks destroying all the achievements they've made. It's a timebomb, he says.

Now, I'm in no way responsible for the behavior of African men in Africa. But if an industry based in my country can ameliorate the spread of HIV/AIDS with a relatively straightforward PR campaign, well, that's a good idea.

More after the jump.

^* I'm not ragging on Arab men in general, here. What concerns me is that men who come from societies where women aren't liberated in the very basics of freedom tend to see women in the worst possible light and treat them in horribly stereotypical ways. This is as true in South East Asia and India and China, as it is in the Arab world and its diaspora.

In the end what really matters is education for women. As this story at the Guardian notes:

It has been decades since everyone in the aid world knew that research showed how improving women's education led to better health for their families and communities, which led in turn to economic possibilities and theoretically to the growth of societies which would demand better governments.

The Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's famous dictum that "No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy" can be seen as a buttress for this argument. Educated women resist ignorant dictators who impoverish their countries.

Educating women about the world around them and their choices is the single most powerful tool humanity has to offer a better life for fully more than half of the globe's population.

Mali protest against women's law

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 18:25:00 -0700

Aug 23

BBC - Tens of thousands of people in Mali's capital, Bamako, have been protesting against a new law which gives women equal rights in marriage.

The law, passed earlier this month, also strengthens inheritance rights for women and children born out of wedlock.

The head of a Muslim women's association says only a minority of Malian women - "the intellectuals" as she put it - supports the law.

Several other protests have taken place in other parts of the country.

The law was adopted by the Malian parliament at the beginning of August, and has yet to be signed into force by the president.

One of the most contentious issues in the new legislation is that women are no longer required to obey their husbands.

Hadja Sapiato Dembele of the National Union of Muslim Women's Associations said the law goes against Islamic principles.

"We have to stick to the Koran," Ms Dembele told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme. "A man must protect his wife, a wife must obey her husband."

"It's a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law - the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country - the real Muslims - are against it," she added.

Beer 'may aid women's bones'

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:18:00 -0700

Aug 16

BBC -

Women who drink moderate amounts of beer may be strengthening their bones, according to Spanish researchers.

Their study of almost 1,700 women, published in the journal Nutrition, found bone density was better in regular drinkers than non-drinkers.

But the team added that plant hormones in the beer rather than the alcohol may be responsible for the effects.

Experts urged caution, warning that drinking more than two units of alcohol a day was known to harm bone health.

Osteoporosis is a common problem for post-menopausal women, increasing the risk of disabling bone fractures later in life.

How a "solar suitcase" is saving women's lives in Nigeria

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:29:21 -0700

Adele Waugaman | June 2 | Reuters

When obstetrician Laura Stachel arrived in rural Nigeria to collect data about maternal care, she was shocked to discover that women were dying in childbirth because clinics had no reliable power supply.

After taking a course on solar electricity, she created what she calls the "solar suitcase" - which is now proving a life-saver in one of the hospitals she visited.

Laura's "solar suitcase", a kit of solar panels and rechargeable batteries, can light operating and delivery rooms, run a blood bank refrigerator and power two-way radios so that staff can call in off-duty doctors for emergency surgery.

WE CARE Solar

Aung San Suu Kyi awarded peace prize

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:58:05 -0700

AFP - The Mahatma Gandhi prize was on Monday handed over to a representative of Burma's imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi, an AFP correspondent said.

The Durban-based committee behind the International Award for Peace and Reconciliation handed over the prize to Aung San Suu Kyi's cousin, the head of Burma's self-proclaimed government-in-exile, Sein Win, as the country's rights icon awaits trial on charges of violating her house arrest.