"Look What You Made Me Do"

Caesar, Hitler, Nixon - War, Racism, Hatred - Alcohol, Mysogyny, Conformity

Seamless trinities...
One needn't ever drink a drop of alcohol to serve in it's churches...
Just as one needn't ever hit women to perpetuate ever worse to them...
Or as one needn't necessarily exit conventional reality to reject the convention.

Seamless subjects. Addiction: money, ego, power, sex, drugs, food, adrenalin, violence, drugs, fear, hatred, guns, vanity, games, the very creative imperative itself -addiction alone makes an endless daisy chain of seamlessly related subjects. They continue on through Blame and Guilt, and Control. Subjects of enthrallment, helpless captivity. It's a necessary convenience to limit the moment's topic. In such isolation, the seamlessness of the chain is not a foregone understanding though, not at all, quite the opposite. It is not a given understanding that to talk of one is to talk of 'them' all... As it should be; that isn't necessarily true, or false.

Donna Abu-Nasr | June 24

The Independent - A Saudi woman holding a child checks out lingerie at a store in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A group of Saudi woman launched a campaign aimed at bringing in female sales personnel at lingerie stores. Only men are allowed to sell underwear in almost all stores in this ultraconservative kingdom, making the experience of shopping for intimate apparel for most women embarrassing

Using colorful bras donated by employees at Victoria's Secret, a group of 26 mostly Saudi women completed the first course of its kind to be offered in the kingdom — how to fit, stock and sell underwear — a training organisers hope will help boost a campaign to lift the ban on women selling underwear in the kingdom.

The graduates held a small ceremony at a college in the western seaport of Jiddah yesterday, capping 40 hours of instruction during which they learned to overcome their embarrassment at doing bra fittings, deal with customer complaints and display the stock in an appealing manner.

The 10-day course comes three months after a group of Saudi women launched a campaign to boycott lingerie stores until they employ women. Almost all the stores in the kingdom are staffed by men.

David Smith | Johannesburg | June 18

The Guardian - One in four men in South Africa have admitted to rape and many confess to attacking more than one victim, according to a study that exposes the country's endemic culture of sexual violence.

Three out of four rapists first attacked while still in their teens, the study found. One in 20 men said they had raped a woman or girl in the last year.

South Africa is notorious for having one of the highest levels of rape in the world. Only a fraction are reported, and only a fraction of those lead to a conviction.

The study into rape and HIV, by the country's Medical Research Council (MRC), asked men to tap their answers into a Palm Pilot device to guarantee anonymity. The method appears to have produced some unusually frank responses.

Professor Rachel Jewkes of the MRC, who carried out the research, said: "We have a very, very high prevalence of rape in South Africa. I think it is down to ideas about masculinity based on gender hierarchy and the sexual entitlement of men. It's rooted in an African ideal of manhood."

James Marson | Kyiv, Ukraine | June 14

The Independent - In a country hit hard by economic downturn, the industry is expected to double to $1.5 billion this year.

When Tonya came to Kyiv (Kiev) from her small hometown in western Ukraine to study, it was a route out of the dreary provincial life she had grown to hate. She struggled to make ends meet. Her parents, with a combined monthly income of around $200, were hardly in a position to help fund her studies.

Tonya feared she would have to give up and return home. But then she found a way to stay: selling her body to foreign men.

"My choice was to work as a prostitute or go home," she says, glancing around nervously. "I would never have done it but for the circumstances. I don't want to work as a prostitute, but I need to get an education so I can get a decent job."

Tonya is one of thousands of women who are part of an industry that has boomed in Ukraine since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991: sex tourism.

The problem is already so acute that Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine's interior minister, declared on national television earlier this year that "The country is becoming a paradise for sex tourism before our eyes."

Mike Thomson | June 12

BBC -

_{(A young girl goes through a rubbish tip while carrying a doll (file photograph)Poverty is robbing many young Zimbabwean girls of their childhood)}

Growing numbers of children in Zimbabwe are turning to prostitution to survive, the charity Save the Children says.

The aid agency says increasing poverty is leading girls as young as 12 to sell their bodies for as little as a packet of biscuits.

It also claims that the coming football World Cup in neighbouring South Africa could soon make things worse.

Unemployment in Zimbabwe is thought to top 90% and many cannot afford to pay for food, medical care or school fees.

The deputy head teacher of a large school with 1,500 pupils east of Victoria Falls told the BBC that hundreds of her female students are now selling their bodies for whatever they can get.

"It could be books, it could be biscuits, chips, some even just to be given a hug."

_{** Zimbabwe appeals for more investment, end to sanctions at World Economic Forum
** Zimbabwe constitution hearings to go ahead: parties
** United States ready to assist Zimbabwe: Clinton
** Bomb Kills Boy}

In 1631, an exhausted 46-year-old woman arrived at the gates of the Vatican. Mary Ward, a Yorkshire-born nun, had walked more than 1,500 miles from her order in present-day Belgium to Rome, knowing that she might end up in prison.

For more than two decades, she had been leading an order of devotees that lived in defiance of the Vatican's strict rules that confined nuns to their cloisters.

Ward had taught her religious sisters not to wear habits and trained them to work with the poor and the persecuted, and to found and teach in Catholic schools. She also encouraged women to perform in plays, a move considered scandalous in Shakespearean times when all female roles were played by boys.

She was living at the height of the Roman Inquisition where accusations of heresy abounded. The pope at the time was Urban VIII, the same pontiff who threw Galileo in prison for daring to suggest that the Earth orbited around the Sun.

Now this revolutionary woman had gone to Rome asking him for official approval of her rebellious order which lived in defiance of centuries of Catholic teaching.

It was, therefore, perhaps of little surprise that Urban threw Ward in jail and issued a papal bull ordering her movement to be suppressed. The Independent

WaPo - ...Herring has worked on more than a dozen pieces of legislation with the Chicago-based Americans United for Life, which takes credit for "helping state after state become more pro-life every year." Her next goal is a law requiring clinic staff members to report the identities of the sexual partners of pregnant underage girls. She is also working on a school curriculum.

"We have helped build a legal fence that helps protect women," Herring said. "The greater goal, even in legislation, is to influence the culture. This is a major culture war that isn't going away."

Riyadh | June 8

WaPo - Saudi Arabia's first woman cabinet minister cannot appear on television without permission, a newspaper quoted her as saying on Monday.

Noura al-Faiz's appointment in February as deputy minister for women's education was hailed as a big step for the integration of women in conservative Saudi Arabia where a puritanical form of Islam bans women from driving, voting and mixing with unrelated men.

"I don't take my veil off and I will not appear on television unless it is allowed for us to do so," Faiz told the daily Shamss, which published a picture of the deputy minister wearing a headscarf with her face showing.

Saudi state television has hired Saudi women as presenters in recent years as part of a reform drive launched after the September 11 attacks in U.S. cities which focused international attention on radicalism in the world's biggest oil exporter.

Faiz also dismissed calls for girls to be allowed to do sport at school, which Saudi Arabia's powerful religious establishment has prevented. "It's way too early," the paper reported her as saying.

Fazile Zahir | Fethiye, Turkey | June 4

Asia Times -
The funeral of women's rights champion and avowed secularist Turkan Saylan, who helped thousands of Turkey's most underprivileged girls access education, was packed with mourners.

Conspicuously absent were members of the Islamist ruling party, who have been lambasted for ordering a demeaning investigation into Saylan's charity while she was on her death bed. Continued after the jump

• Battle Between Pro-Secular and Islamic Government Continues in Turkey

May 29

Spiegel Online - 'Men Live Better Where Women Are In Charge'

How does a matriarchy really work? Argentinian writer Ricardo Coler decided to find out and spent two months with the Mosuo in southern China. "Women have a different way of dominating," the researcher told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Are men raised to be incompetent?

Coler: For the Mosuo, women are simply the more effective and reliable gender. However, they do say that the "really big" decisions -- like buying a house or a machine or selling a cow -- are made by the men. Men are good for this kind of decision-making as well as physical labor. The official governmental leader of the village, the mayor, is a man. I walked with him through the village -- nobody greated him or paid him any attention. As a man he doesn't have any authority.

Wild

The Independent

Sex will be strictly cerebral in a new top-shelf magazine for 'thinking women', reports Jerome Taylor

Suraya Singh used to have a mundane job working for an education quango. Like millions of women the 30-year-old would often spend her lunch breaks perusing the women's magazine section at a nearby newsstand.

There she became increasingly despondent at the celebrity gossip, diet tips and fashion advice she was bombarded with. What she wanted was a classy erotica magazine that women like her would be happy to buy. Men's magazines regularly mixed aspirational and intelligent content with high-brow erotica, but women, she felt, were being left out. Which is why she decided to quit her job and set up a magazine herself.

"There are an awful lot of stereotypes about who women are and what turns them on, which I don't think are true," she says. "If you're not some walking stereotype of a woman – who really speaks to you?"

Ross Douthat | May 25 | NYT

American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago. They’re more likely to work outside the home, and more likely to earn salaries comparable to men’s when they do. They can leave abusive marriages and sue sexist employers. They enjoy unprecedented control over their own fertility. On some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex.

But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the victims of “the problem with no name,” American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women.

President Obama has come to Notre Dame, though he knows well that we are fully supportive of Church teaching on the sanctity of human life, and we oppose his policies on abortion and embryonic stem cell research..Others might have avoided this venue for that reason. But President Obama is not someone who stops talking to those who differ with him... The world you enter today is torn by division – and is fixed on its differences.. too often differences lead to pride in self and contempt for others.

Dr John Jenkins, Notre Dame president.more

“We must find a way to live together as one human family... Our very survival has never required greater cooperation and understanding among all people from all places than at this moment in history.... Maybe we won’t agree on abortion, but we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions ...So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”

President Barack Obama. more

Ben Arnoldy | CSM Blog

Ladravan, INDIA – In rural India, having a toilet has become an issue of a woman’s right. Many homes don’t feature plumbing because men, in particular, question the expense – even the desirability – of indoor facilities.

That’s changing rapidly in the state of Haryana, where the government is putting up funds and village women are leaning on their men to get with the program. Their slogan: “No toilet, no bride.”

The combined effort has helped boost the number of rural homes with toilets to 60 percent, up from less than 5 percent four years ago, says Kashi Nath Jha, the Haryana local chairman of the sanitation organization Sulabh International.

In Ladravan, a village of farms and brick kilns about an hour’s drive from Delhi international airport, one bride has already divorced her groom when she learned that his family lied about having a toilet, says Anil Kumar Chhikara, one of the village leaders. Another young woman, Monica, says of any potential suitor, “I’ll be asking him to build a toilet.” And if he doesn’t? “Then I won’t marry him.”

Women have more clout these days in the village, says Mr. Chhikara, because years of selective-sex abortions have left more bachelors than potential brides.

Kamla Devi sits on the front porch of a new home being built for her son and his fiancée. The toilet was one of the first items to be completed. The government will refund 90 percent of a completed toilet’s construction cost. Until now, Mrs. Devi had no toilet and, like others, would wait until nightfall for privacy. “It was very embarrassing when I was outside and I saw the light of a car … on me,” she says.

Paul Sheehan writes in the SMH - Several teenagers at an elite Sydney girls school are coming to terms with the full magnitude of their public betrayal via the internet. Where to begin? One has had her genitalia discussed in anatomical detail. Another has had her face likened to a koala's. A third has learnt that her circle of friends is not friendly at all: "She thinks she's best friends with lots of people but they actually hate her."

Apr 30

DanChurchAid - Young women in Cambodia are being given agricultural training in an attempt to help alleviate poverty and unemployment. These underprivileged women are not only learning about the seasonal cycles of various crops but also how to farm livestock. The intension is, that they can help to secure a better future for their families.

When Uy Vannek left school at the age of 18 with only a third-grade education, no-one thought that she would one day go on to have her own farm, producing vegetables and poultry.

As a child, her family had to endure a poor standard of living. Money was so scarce, her family could not pay for Uy’s education, and she had to leave school early. As a farmer’s daughter, Uy did not have a lot of options.

In Cambodia, farming has traditionally been seen as men’s work, not a career suitable for women, who have instead been expected to take responsibility for housework and sewing.

Luckily for Uy and other women, the organization Ponleur Kumar is of a different opinion.

John M. Glionna | Toechon, South Korea | Apr 30

LA Times -

Kang Il-chul rides in the back of a van packed with gossiping old women. The 82-year-old girlishly covers her mouth to whisper a secret.

"We argue a lot about the food," she says, wrinkling her nose. "To tell you the truth, some of these old ladies are grouchy."

There are eight of them, sharing a hillside home on the outskirts of Seoul, sparring over everything from territory to room temperature.

Some wear makeup and stylish hats; others are happy in robes and slippers. A few are bitter, their golden years tarnished by painful memories; others have sweet dispositions and enjoy visiting beauty salons or performing an occasional dance in the living room.

But they all share one thing: Decades ago, they were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers occupying the country before and during World War II. They were repeatedly raped and beaten over months and years.

Now time is running out for the halmoni, or Korean grandmothers. About 150,000 to 200,000 Korean women served as Japanese sex slaves, most living out their lives in humiliated silence.

When activists brought the issue to light in the early 1990s, officials sought out survivors. While many were too ashamed to come forward, officials registered 234 women.

I've been going over this most excellent post by Stanley Fish for the last several days, especially in light of the massive contretemps we had over hejab in this post.

Here's a nugget from the post, a clear indication of the thoughts I am wrestling with as I type. It also cuts right to the heart of the discussion we were having:

The force of these questions depends on assumptions the proponents of the conscience clause do not share, chiefly the assumption that obligations vary with different contexts and that one can (and should) relax the obligations of faith when one is not in church. This sequestering of religion in a private space is a cornerstone of enlightenment liberalism which only works as a political system if everyone agrees to comport himself or herself as a citizen and not as a sectarian, at least for the purposes of public transactions.

I'll come back to this in a few days. I'm wrestling with ideas I am uncomfortable with, but ideas I cannot deny. Contra DK, I do reserve my right to change my mind any time, even if I still can, well, just read the comment. We will be talking about this more.

Declan Walsh | Islamabad | Apr 14

The Guardian - President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan signed a bill introducing the Islamic law into the Taliban-controlled Swat Valley last night, boosting fears that armed extremists were gaining power in the volatile north-western region.

Zardari ratified the sharia law regulations after receiving cross-party support during a late evening sitting of parliament. During a short debate the prime minister, Yousaf Reza Gilani, said the new law had "the support of the nation".

In Swat, some residents celebrated in the streets, hoping the law would herald a return of peace to the violence-ridden valley, home to a ski resort and a one-time honeymooners' favourite. But that outcome was far from certain.

Human rights activists condemned the law, worrying it would presage the spread of Taliban rule to other parts of Pakistan. "I don't think this law is going to appease the Taliban. It's just going to give them a taste of victory," said Asma Jahangir, the United Nations special rapporteur on relig­ious freedoms.

Let the floggings commence....

Saeed Shah | Mingora, Pakistan | Apr 4

McClatchy Newspapers - A hundred miles northwest of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, the Swat valley offers a chilling vision of what much of the country could become.

Where tourists once frolicked, extremists are laying the groundwork for religious courts to dispense brutal punishments under their harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

The leader of the group, Sufi Mohammad, said penalties including flogging, chopping off hands and stoning to death must be available to Swat's Islamic courts.

Floggings are the proper punishment for sexual intercourse between unmarried people, drinking alcohol and slander, Mohammad said. Thieves should have their hands chopped off, except for poor people who steal to feed themselves. The punishment for adultery is death by stoning.

"These punishments are prescribed in Islam. No one can stop that. It is God's law," said Mohammad, sitting on the floor in his makeshift headquarters in Mingora, the regional capital. Mohammad, the head of the Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariaht-e-Mohammadi, or Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law, spoke in a rare interview with McClatchy.

Outcry in Pakistan after video of a 17-year-old girl's flogging by the Taliban is shown on TV ~ video at link

Hey! lets send them more of our money

Ramita Navai | Batman, eastern Turkey | Mar 27

The Independent - As Turkey cracks down on 'honour killings', women are now told to commit suicide

When Elif's father told her she had to kill herself in order to spare him from a prison sentence for her murder, she considered it long and hard. "I loved my father so much, I was ready to commit suicide for him even though I hadn't done anything wrong," the 18-year-old said. "But I just couldn't go through with it. I love life too much."

All Elif had done was simply decline the offer of an arranged marriage with an older man, telling her parents she wanted to continue her education. That act of disobedience was seen as bringing dishonour on her whole family – a crime punishable by death. "I managed to escape. When I was at school, a few girls I knew were killed by their families in the name of honour – one of them for simply receiving a text message from a boy," Elif said.

So-called "honour killings" in Turkey have reached record levels. According to government figures, there are more than 200 a year – half of all the murders committed in the country. Now, in a sinister twist, comes the emergence of "honour suicides". The growing phenomenon has been linked to reforms to Turkey's penal code in 2005. That introduced mandatory life sentences for honour killers, whereas in the past, killers could receive a reduced sentence claiming provocation. Soon after the law was passed, the numbers of female suicides started to rocket.

Jane Lampman

CSM - The administration will soon decide whether to reverse Bush's 'conscience rule.'

The Obama administration will soon face a decision, bound to be controversial, on how to balance two important principles: freedom of conscience for healthcare workers versus unfettered access to healthcare, especially reproductive services.

Should physicians, for instance, be able to decline to provide birth control services, without referring patients to other providers? Can an emergency-room doctor who believes that emergency contraception is morally wrong refuse to tell a rape victim that it is available?

In its 11th hour, the Bush administration last December issued a "conscience rule" to protect healthcare providers who decline to participate in services they find morally objectionable, such as abortion. That regulation would cut off federal funding to state and local governments, hospitals, clinics, and other entities that fail to accommodate workers' beliefs.

The Obama administration announced its intent to rescind the rule, but it is seeking public comment by April 9 before making a final decision. President Obama has pledged to seek common ground on contentious "life" issues.

Nathalie Rothschild | Mar 13 | The Guardian

In these times of economic implosion, it seems there is one industry that the government is actually keen on crushing. The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, recently unveiled a proposal for new legislation aimed at bringing the sex industry to its knees (metaphorically speaking). If we tackle the demand, Smith proclaimed, then supply will diminish. In other words, Smith wants to penalise punters.

Under the proposal, anyone who buys sex or other erotic services from someone who is "controlled for another person's gain" could be fined and receive a criminal record. Ignorance of the circumstances would be no defence. Harriet Harman, the minister for women, believes the proposed legislation will help stamp out sex trafficking, which she has described as a "modern-day slave trade".

Yet if speakers at a panel debate this week on sex trafficking held at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts are to be believed, most sex workers – including migrant ones – do not see themselves as slaves, and few want to be "saved" by the likes of Smith and Harman. Scaring away potential punters will only rob those who work within the sex industry of their livelihood. (And this includes everything from charging for sex to pole-dancing, providing attentive dinner company and selling erotic lingerie, literature or DVDs.)

Annie Kelly | Mar 13

The Guardian - • Women living in fear of brutal assaults by male gangs
• Country's 'macho politics' lead to lack of action

The partially clothed body of Eudy Simelane, former star of South Africa's acclaimed Banyana Banyana national female football squad, was found in a creek in a park in Kwa Thema, on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Simelane had been gang-raped and brutally beaten before being stabbed 25 times in the face, chest and legs. As well as being one of South Africa's best-known female footballers, Simelane was a voracious equality rights campaigner and one of the first women to live openly as a lesbian in Kwa Thema.

Her brutal murder took place last April, and since then a tide of violence against lesbian women in South Africa has continued to rise. Human rights campaigners say it is characterised by what they call "corrective rape" committed by men behind the guise of trying to "cure" lesbian women of their sexual orientation.

Now, a report by the international NGO ActionAid, backed by the South African Human Rights Commission, condemns the culture of impunity around these crimes, which it says are going unrecognised by the state and unpunished by the legal system.

Phyllis Chesler | Spring 2009

Middle East Quarterly - When a husband murders a wife or daughter in the United States and Canada, too often law enforcement chalks the matter up to domestic violence. Murder is murder; religion is irrelevant. Honor killings are, however, distinct from wife battering and child abuse. Analysis of more than fifty reported honor killings shows they differ significantly from more common domestic violence.[1] The frequent argument made by Muslim advocacy organizations that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam and that it is discriminatory to differentiate between honor killings and domestic violence is wrong.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 5,000 women are killed each year for dishonoring their families.[2] This may be an underestimate. Aamir Latif, a correspondent for the Islamist website Islam Online who writes frequently on the issue, reported that in 2007 in the Punjab province of Pakistan alone, there were 1,261 honor murders.[3] The Aurat Foundation, a Pakistani nongovernmental organization focusing on women's empowerment, found that the rate of honor killings was on track to be in the hundreds in 2008.[4]

There are very few studies of honor killing, however, as the motivation for such killings is cleansing alleged dishonor and the families do not wish to bring further attention to their shame, so do not cooperate with researchers. Often, they deny honor crimes completely and say the victim simply went missing or committed suicide. Nevertheless, honor crimes are increasingly visible in the media. Police, politicians, and feminist activists in Europe and in some Muslim countries are beginning to treat them as a serious social problem.[5]