Feminists Unite
A group for anyone who supports women's rights. Post news, events, links or thoughts.
Re: Generation Gap -- jakethorn's Offspring post
Okay, so I've been struggling with these things for a long time. The generation gap of the 60's, the generation gap today, activism, etc. My parents used to be major hippies, and whereas I feel my mother has kind of lost touch (yay mercedes! marble bathrooms for all!) my pop is really still in tune with it, and understands my frustration with the current 'way of the world.' I spoke to him at length about the 60's. The few things that hit me (and that I wrote down) went as follows:
He without sin cast the first stone
This video is of a woman being stoned to death. Terrible. And why? Because she loved someone of another religion. And what are the men doing afterward? They are taking a photo of it with their cameras. And here is a petition to protest her killing. This was in Iraq. And what the hell are we doing there again?
anti-Choice movement scores massive victory
Liz touched on this in the open thread, but it's deserving of a full blog post.
Advertising...
So I've got bronchitis, and this afternoon I went to Health Services to get checked out again. In the waiting room I decided to catch up on my music news and grabbed a Rolling Stone. I opened the magazine to find *drumroll* a two page D&G ad that definitely resembled sexual violence (one man naked and strapped to a chair with three other shirtless men standing around him...). I know I've seen a D&G ad where they're whipping tic-tac-toe games into each other's backs, too. I was pretty appalled.
I kept flipping through the magazine until: Diesel ad. Man lying with head in woman's lap. Both scantily clad. She's pouring water into his mouth. Tagline? Global Warming Ready.
Redlight Children
Tonight I went to a lecture/presentation on campus (I go to Sarah Lawrence) for a campaign called Redlight Children. I'm not gonna lie, I went on assignment to photograph for the campus newspaper. I didn't even plan on staying for the whole thing. When the presentation began, however, I realized there was NO way I was leaving until it was over.
To give you an idea what I was in for, here's the slogan from the information cards handed out to us: Imagine you've been bought, sold, emotionally abused, and raped. Now imagine you're a four-year-old.
and you think college is hard???
for most Nigerian women, being a student has a far different meaning than it does for us Americans. constantly preyed upon by their professors, they have to sleep with men (sometimes old enough to be their grandfathers) against their will in order to pass class. and i'm not talking about a few isolated cases. i'm talking about an incredibly prevalent practice that almost every girl encounters at one point in her academic career or another. They spend a good deal of their time trying to deal with/avoid their professor's advances, and often end up forced to sleep with these men in order to get the classes/credits that they need to graduate. when they complain to administrators? they're told to shut up and do it! their own parents often turn away when told of the
sexual violence
anyone interested in tackling the issue of sexual violence? i think the epidemic levels of rape in the world today are appaling...and are only overshadowed by the staggering number of women who have been victims of this terrible crime in the past. rape is global. its in our literature, our movies, our history, our religion. it isn't going away, and why? because the world accepts it. it is accepted as a reality, as something that happens and will happen and isn't going away. no one really thinks rape can be stopped. the world, by and large, has accepted it. this mindset needs to be challenged! further, i am greatly disturbed by the fact that rape is not treated as a hate crime. women are raped BECAUSE THEY ARE WOMEN. yes, men are raped too, but in far fewer n