Boing Boing » feminism

Sloppy statistics: Do 50% of Americans really think married women should be legally obligated to change their names?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 18:52:45 +0000

Jill Filipovic wrote an opinion column for The Guardian yesterday, arguing against the practice of women taking their husbands' names when they get married. It ended up linked on Jezebel and found its way to my Facebook feed where one particular statistic caught my eye. Filipovic claimed that 50% of Americans think a women should be legally required to take her husband's name.

First, some quick clarification of my biases here. Although I write under a hyphenate, I never have legally changed my name. I've never had a desire to do so. In my private life, I'm just Maggie Koerth and always will be. That said, I personally take issue with the implication at the center of Filipovic's article — that women shouldn't change their names and that to do so makes you a bad feminist. For me, this is one of those personal decisions where I'm like, whatever. Make your own choice. Just because I don't get it doesn't mean you're wrong.

But just like I take objection to being all judgey about personal choices, I also take objection to legally mandating personal choices, and I was kind of blown away by the idea that 50% of my fellow Americans think my last name should be illegal.

So I looked into that statistic. And then I got really annoyed.

First off, Filipovic doesn't cite a source for that stat. Some of her other numbers — specifically, that 10% of Americans think that keeping your name means you aren't dedicated to your marriage — are cited, with a link to an Atlantic Wire article that links to a Livescience piece about a survey of a couple hundred students at a small Midwestern college. That study, itself, wasn't actually meant to tell you what the American public thinks as a whole. It was meant to compare changing attitudes between 1990 and 2006 in a place that was specifically chosen because it was likely to be fairly conservative. It was specifically meant to contrast with previous research that had overly focused on the choices and attitudes of upper-income East Coasters. In other words, the data doesn't say what Filipovic says it does.

The 50% statistic comes from a 2011 paper, published in the journal Gender & Society. The whole PDF is online, if you want to read it.

In that survey, 22.3% of respondents strongly agreed with the question, "In the past, some states legally required a woman to change her name to her husband’s name. Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree that this was a good idea?" Another 27.6% somewhat agreed. And that adds up to 49.9%.

But it doesn't tell the full story.

First off, this was a survey of a little more than 800 people, almost half of whom were from Indiana. They were randomly chosen — so that's better than, say, a survey of college students — but it's still a far cry from saying, "This is what half of all Americans believe."

Second, there's a difference between "strongly agree" and "somewhat agree". Just like there's a difference between "somewhat disagree" and "strongly disagree". If you've ever taken a survey where those were your only choices, you know that it's often difficult to fit your actual beliefs into the boxes. Although the authors did ask follow-up questions, the paper doesn't discuss them in this particular context, so it's hard to say exactly what the people answering "somewhat agree" actually meant to say. There is some evidence in the paper, though, that what was really being expressed here was a belief in the rightness of families sharing an identity. On another question, "It's okay for a man to take his wife's name when he marries," a full 53.5% either agreed or strongly agreed. (Although some of those people seemed to agree with the idea in a way that suggested they found it unlikely to actually happen.) And the authors of the paper even ended up connecting both these responses to strong "collectivist" or "individualist" ideas about marriage and family.

Finally, while there were certainly people surveyed who thought women should change their names because of religious ideology or what many of us would probably consider outdated notions of who in the relationship "belongs" to whom, what respondents thought about name changes didn't necessarily reflect what they thought about female equality. Sixty-seven percent of these people disagreed with the idea of strict "man as breadwinner, woman in the home" gender roles. Eighty-two percent thought that working mothers could have just as good of a relationship with their children as stay-at-home moms. And 80% disagreed with the idea that it was more important for a woman to support her husband's career and goals than her own.

Oh, and it's also worth noting that the answers on name-change questions split much more obviously along cultural lines — race, education level, income, where you live in the country — than did the answers to the questions on gender roles, which were much more uniform. Essentially, there's some evidence here that what you think about name changes has more to do with the cultural expectations you live with than it does with what you actually think about women.

All of that kind of serves to undermine, rather than support, Filipovic's position. The survey doesn't tell us what all Americans believe. But it does tell us that it's perfectly possible to feel uncomfortable with the idea of a woman not changing her name upon marriage and still feel pretty comfortable with the idea that women are people. As a feminist, it's that latter idea I actually care about.

So why does this bother me so much?

Here's the thing. I grew up in a fairly conservative and religious culture, listening to Christian radio and hearing all sorts of "outrageous" news about how liberals were oppressing people and trying to take away our ability to choose our own way of life.

As a teenager and young adult, I started looking into those claims more closely and found that the vast majority weren't true. These situations and statistics weren't ever just made up out of whole cloth, but they were deeply misrepresented and contorted in order to support a pre-determined thesis. The closer you looked at what actually happened, what had actually been said, how people surveyed had actually responded, the more the intended sense of outrage and oppression vanished in a puff of logic.

That experience made me a skeptic. It also made me feel pretty damn betrayed and used.

Today, I'd classify myself as fairly liberal. But it still makes me angry when people misuse, misconstrue, and misrepresent information in order to manipulate me into feeling oppressed and outraged. It still pisses me off when all I have to do is spend 15 minutes reading in order to easily figure out that "those people" are not actually out to get me. And I don't really care whether it's "my side" or "their side" doing it. Either way, it makes me angry.

Half the people I meet in my daily life do not want to take away my right to choose my own last name. (Or, at least, there's no evidence of that here.) Whether or not you change your last name — and whether or not you think married women should change their last name — is not the strongest predictor of what you think about women's equality. (At least, that doesn't seem to be the case according to this survey.)

If Jill Filipovic thinks women should keep their own last names, well, great. I enjoy keeping mine. But she should be able to make that point without trying to scare people and without trying to misrepresent what a name change does and doesn't mean about our personal beliefs.

Image: marriage license, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from sadsnaps's photostream

For Anonymous: an ode to the Delhi rape victim, by Nilanjana Roy

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:41:38 +0000

"Let there be an end to this epidemic of violence, this culture where if we can’t kill off our girls before they are born, we ensure that they live these lives of constant fear. Like many women in India, I rely on a layer of privilege, a network of friends, paranoid security measures and a huge dose of amnesia just to get around the city, just to travel in this country. So many more women have neither the privilege, nor the luxury of amnesia, and this week, perhaps we all stood up to say, 'Enough,' no matter how incoherently or angrily we said it." For Anonymous, by Nilanjana Roy.

Nobel scientist Rita Levi-Montalcini, 103, dies in Rome

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:29:50 +0000

The Italian neurologist and "senator for life" Rita Levi Montalcini, who won the Nobel Prize winner for Medicine in 1986, died in Rome. She was 103. Rome's mayor says the biologist, who conducted underground research in defiance of Fascist persecution, and went on to win a Nobel Prize for helping unlock the mysteries of the cell, died at her home in the city. More at the Associated Press. (HT: @csanz)

Amazons with a Cause

Jasmina Tesanovic — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:41:55 +0000

Why are women first to pay for every crisis? In every society, capitalist, socialist, or transition? It's because the bodies of women are expendable.

I always noticed how women over eighty in Turin looked incredibly well, beautiful and loved and taken care of: desirable, because old and valuable. I connected this to Italy's long-established and sophisticated health care system. Italian hospitals were famous for methods which preserved the dignity of the patients, in tumor cures, especially breast cancer: the "invisible mastectomy" was invented in Milan. Rather than simply intervening in crisis, they were good at illness prevention and attentive follow-ups.

The economic crisis and financial harassment of Italy has reached this safe haven of health and dignity. In Turin, one of the best clinics for cure and prevention of breast cancer is about to be closed. The patients are on the streets, their appointments cannot be scheduled, they are paying for their urgent operations because their doctors cannot help them. The doctors are on the streets too.

Public health care in Italy was guaranteed as one of the basic human rights: without class race of gender discrimination. We are all equal in front of death.

The Valdesian hospital was founded by Italy's Protestant minority; it was about spirituality and charity rather than the global health market. However, the church passed the hospital to the state some years ago. They naturally assumed that it was in good hands, but as this tiny church is to the state, the state is to the market.

Although "Italy is not a brothel," as they said during the Berlusconi scandals, the flesh of women is negotiable by other means.

Protests, sit-ins and negotiations have failed to save the hospital. So last weekend, Turinese women decided to take action. They organized a public booth to photograph their breasts anonymously.

They plan to release an affresco of hundreds of their depersonalized female bodies, as a warning.

They are merely doing publicly what the hospital did less visibly.

Next step is the big demo planned for December first, to be followed by a sit-in for December 7th. On that day, the police are scheduled to shut physically the hospital.

It was a place of solace where women felt like respected human beings, and the attack on it has made them into Amazons with a cause.

Sexy breast cancer campaigns anger patients

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:49:08 +0000

A wonderful article by Liz Szabo in USA Today on "I heart boobies," "save the ta-tas," and all those other horrible sexualized breast cancer campaigns that raise dubious funds for dubious goals and leave those of us who have the disease feeling demeaned. There is nothing sexy about breast cancer, and Szabo does a fantastic job in this piece explaining why. Above, one of the worst such campaigns I have ever seen.

"All of us are really fed up," my friend and fellow person-with-breast-cancer Lani "Chemo Babe" Horn says in the article. "Save the tatas? No, save the women. A lot of us had to give up our tatas to live."

Snip:

When diagnosed with aggressive cancer at age 38, Horn says, saving her breasts was the last thing on her mind. All she could think about, she says, was staying alive for her three young children. "Every time I thought, 'I can't climb back into that chemo chair,' I thought, 'I have to be able to tell my kids, 'I did everything possible.'"
The new breed of ads is especially cruel, Horn says, because breast cancer strips women of many features associated with femininity and beauty. Chemotherapy and surgery to remove the ovaries can both improve a woman's odds of survival, but at the cost of plunging her into instant menopause.
Chemo can make women lose their hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. Radiation can leave women's chests feeling, as one survivor has described it, like "a raw piece of meat."
And beyond the chemo-induced nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, Horn says, long-term hormonal therapy can cause severe vaginal dryness, making intercourse too painful to contemplate. While many cancer survivors want more information about preserving their fertility and alleviating sexual side effects, very few get help, Horn says.

Read the rest, and forward it to everyone you know. Man, I'm so glad Pinktober is almost over.

Below, another horribly-conceived sexualized breast cancer campaign, this one from @letsfcancer.

I'm sure some of the people behind some of this stuff have good intentions, but then, why do they ignore the voices of breast cancer patients (myself included) who see this shit and say publicly and repeatedly, "What the actual fuck?"

Honda designs a car "for women," the Fit She's

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:26:58 +0000

At left, the new Honda Fit She's, a car available in predictable pink or what the maker calls "eyeliner brown." The vehicle is designed for the female market in Japan, and costs around $17.5K USD at current exchange rates. Official website here, in Japanese.

The Honda Fit She's features a “Plasmacluster” climate control system the maker claims can improve skin quality, a windshield that prevents wrinkles, a pink interior stitching, "tutti-frutti-hued chrome bezels," and an adorable heart instead of an apostrophe in “She’s.”

No word on whether it cures breast cancer. Video from NBC Today Show here.

Above right, screengrab of the Petticoat 5, the world's first computer "designed for women, by women," as featured in the "Computers" episode of Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper's BBC cult series, "Look Around You." It features a built-in emery board with which you can file your nails; a makeup mirror; and when you press the "S" key, the keyboard emits a puff of fragrance in mint or tomato.

So. Left, right. Guess which one's real.

(via MyLifeScoop)

Amazon reviews for "binders" (full of women) are funnier than Romney's original gaffe

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:07:55 +0000

You knew it was coming. Binders full of women, the funny Amazon reviews. (HT: Tara McGinley)

Cassandra Clare, author and internet-bullying victim, "on hiatuses and hate blogs"

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 22:08:36 +0000

Fantasy author Cassandra Clare, writing about her experience at the receiving end of some fairly serious and organized internet bullying.

These sort of attacks are so shocking/upsetting because they break the social contract we have come to expect decent people to adhere to: that people don’t attack your personal relationships, that they don’t sneer not just at your friends but at the idea that you might have friends, that they don’t attack the way you look or your family or your ethnicity/religion. The thing is, to the hate bloggers, and to the kind of people who send anonymous hateful messages, the object of their hate isn’t a person. To them, I am not a human being. My family are not real people.

Been there. It sucks. (via Maureen Johnson)

Why not to hire a woman, Australia edition, 1963

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:19:13 +0000

An Australian Department of Trade document listing the reasons women should not be hired to be trade commissioners. "A spinster lady can, and often does, turn into something of a battleaxe with the passing years. A man usually mellows." (HT: @christinelhenry)

Native American women twice as likely to be raped

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 15:19:24 +0000

"One in three American Indian women have been raped or have experienced an attempted rape," according to a Justice Department statistic cited in the NYT. The rate of sexual assault among indigenous American women "is more than twice the national average," and it's particular grim in "Alaska’s isolated villages, where there are no roads in or out, and where people are further cut off by undependable telephone, electrical and Internet service."

Natural history and the rights of women

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 14:04:45 +0000

Really fascinating talk coming up at the Royal Society in London. Sharon Ruston, a professor of 19th century literature and culture, will be talking about the scientific texts that influenced Mary Wollstonecraft—the pioneering feminist who wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. Wollstonecraft isn't known for a connection to science, but during the time she was writing Vindication, she was also reading and reviewing books on natural history for a journal called Analytical Review. Ruston says those books played a role in shaping Wollstonecraft's philosophy. Sounds cool! Event is September 28 at 1:00 pm. Recorded audio will be available online a few days later. (Via Alice Bell)

Women in atheism: a tour through history

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 18:48:51 +0000

Here's an hour-long lecture and Q&A with Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). The lecture recounts the long, honorable history of women in atheism, and explicitly connects feminism and freethought. It's a great tour through the history -- the often secret history -- of women who fought and gave all, risking persecution for speaking out against religion and for women's rights to control their destinies. The lecture was recorded at the Center for Inquiry's 2012 Women in Secularism Conference, and FFRF was founded by Gaylor and her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor.

CFI's Women in Secularism Conf. | Annie Laurie Gaylor: "The History of Women in Freethought" (via Skepchick)

Modernizing Modesty: the Hijab and Body Image

Mariam Sobh — Fri, 11 May 2012 13:10:15 +0000

Photo: Ranoush (cc) Illo: Rob Beschizza

Recent trends in Hijab fashion modernize a form of modest dress once defined by local traditions. In seeking self-expression, however, Muslim women find themselves targeted by a media industry with its own taste for female objectification.

“It’s two-sided,” says Aisha Ahmad, 30, a health care administrator from Ft. Lauderdale. “On the one hand, it’s nice to see that we can achieve a 'high fashion' look while still wearing hijab. On the other hand, it puts you right back in the same place. ... Not all of us look like these models, nor will we ever look the way they do."

Hijab refers to modest dress in general and head-covering in particular. The Islamic requirement is to loosely cover all but the face, hands and feet, avoiding sheer angles and revealing little of the body. Across the world, local variations on this theme prevail: the long Abaya gowns of the Gulf region, the Jilbab in Syria and Jordan, and the Burqa in Afghanistan. In Iran, there is the Chador.

But as new generations of Muslim women came of age, they found ways for hijab to complement, rather than stymie, a growing desire for self-expression. And with them came a new breed of designer and entrepreneur—many of them women—whose specialization in “hijab fashion” came to prominence in the mid-2000s.

As a result, muslim women now have more to choose from, with mainstream retailers producing maxi dresses and maxi skirts which Muslim women adore: long and loose and perfectly in line with the latest trends. It's even made modestly itself fashionable: able to express themselves creatively with it, more Muslim women now say they do or want to wear hijab.

Designing and selling clothing that breaks the stereotype of drab Muslim clothing, however, has a tricky side.

Turkey, one of the first Islamic countries to have “hijab fashion shows”, fills the catwalks with models in from nearby European countries. Marketing often highlights a peculiar combination of physical attributes all-too familiar to Western fashionistas and critics alike. Advertising targets a nascent market from every glowing screen.

In an ironic twist, Hijab-wearing Muslim women are falling prey to the same thing their choice of garb ostensibly protects them from: a relentless bombar of distorted female body images.

"I feel that women may be encouraging it.,” said Inaya Shujaat, who converted to Islam more than 12 years ago. “When we have female celebrities whose only accomplishments are being hot or gorgeous, I wonder what sort of message that sends. We are living in the post Women's Liberation era, yet I feel that women are being portrayed in a more negative way today.”

Shujaat likes the idea of hijab fashion, but takes issue with the polarizing choice, between the new and the old, which has emerged.

"I don't like that it seems to be appropriate only for one particular age group and dress size,” Shujaat said. “I am a 36 year old mother of two. I do not wish to dress like a 21 year old college student, nor do I have the body of a 21 year old college student. Hijab fashion needs to be all-inclusive, bearing in mind that Muslim women come in many shapes, sizes, ages, etc. It really irritates me that I basically have two choices when it comes to hijab fashion: ethnic, or trendy. There is no in-between."

Like Ahmad, Woro Hapsari sees benefits both in hijab fashion and Muslim women flexing their marketing muscle. Moreover, Hapsari, who works for Nokia Siemens Networks in Indonesia, said she doesn't necessarily feel like she has to live up to the image set by models: “Yes it affects me, but not as much now since I wear a hijab. You can say that now those models influence me to look healthy and to dress nicely but still in modesty.”

As the whirlwind of fashion marketing grows, however, so does a new pressure to conform.

“I often struggle to find that balance in my work attire when I compare my look to what I see on TV, print ads, and in the stores,” Ahmad said. “Being pretty and thinner than I am are always on my mind. Whether I want to admit or not, I take cues from what I see in the media as what I should look like and then find myself buying accessories to look like what I see in the media.”

In particular, Muslim women say the use of tall caucasian models to market fashionable hijab is misleading: the products look amazing on the clothes horses, and less so on average women. Plus ca change.

"Instead of making women feel proud of their Muslim identity they make women feel like they should try to imitate and look like the these models,” said Sarah Gil, a 20 year-old fashion, marketing and design student in Bogota, Columbia.

Gil decided to wear hijab as a way to honor her Muslim identity and to escape the “scrutiny” of other women.

While encouraged by the choice and satisfied with her “hijabi skin”, she still feels critical of herself and fears that it's not enough to protect her from the relentless marketing of body images: “I think the media portrays women as nothing more than a tool to draw attention … there is nothing positive about that.”

Jana Kosaibati, hijab fashion blogger and medical student, said these companies are simply trying to live up to the standards of advertising that mainstream companies use, because they feel consumers want that.

“Even within the hijab and Islamic fashion market, there is a large variation in the type of advertising they use,” Kosaibati said. “Many will not show models' faces, and some won't even use models at all. If a company chooses to use glammed-up models, I don't think this is misleading. Most consumers are savvy enough to look beyond the adverts.”

Kosaibati added, though, that it would be refreshing to see more effective, creative advertising that did not simply look like glossy magazines with the addition of headscarves: “hijab fashion companies have a great opportunity here to showcase women of different shapes, sizes, ethnicities and ages, if they do choose to use models. … they [could] make their clothing feel a lot more accessible and wearable for all women, and this helps to counteract the negative messages that mainstream advertising may be sending out."

Whether from a secular or religious standpoint, women in Islamic culture are finding that self-expression comes hand-in-hand with how their bodies are represented in the media and by the international fashion industry. While it's good to see more options for Muslim women who want to dress modestly, I've concluded that as long as we put our beauty and bodies first, we will never be happy.

That said, it would be refreshing to see more professional models who look more like the rest of us. After all, we are the ones buying the stuff.

Narrow the Gap: ending income inequality for women

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 21:18:42 +0000

From Gina Trapani, a project to address the fact that in 2012, women still get paid less than men for the same work: Narrow the Gap. Happy International Women's Day.

Russian fan-made fictional table of contents for a Harry Potter encyclopedia of feminism

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:19:12 +0000

Charles Tan sez, "Ekaterina Sedia translates a Russian fictional Table of Contents for Encyclopedia of Feminism According to Harry Potter."

The Practice of Female Separatism in Daily Life of Luna Lovegood
Hermione Granger on Liberal Feminism
Female Empowerment in Academia Through the Eyes of Minerva McGonagall
Women in Politics: The Dilemma of Dolores Umbridge
Women in the Military and Psychological Violence: The Case of Bellatrix Lestrange
Consequences of Limiting Abortion Rights: The Tragedy of Lily Potter
The Death Toll of Unpaid Labor: The Duel of Molly Weasley and Bellatrix Lestrange
Replication of Violent Family Practices: Family Strategies of Nymphadora Tonks
The Duality of Economic Strategies for Women: Narcissa Malfoy

Russian Language Harry Potter Fandom is Awesome (Thanks, Charles!)

The invisible genocide of women

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 18:37:42 +0000

Video Link.

The recently-launched Women Under Siege website is a new project of the NYC-based Women’s Media Center, and features a number of powerful essays and features by women, about sexual violence against women. There's an account by CBS News correspondent Lara Logan, who survived a sexual assault while covering uprisings in the Middle East; another about covering sexualized war in Congo by Lynsey Addario, who survived the same.

In this post, I'd like to draw special attention to a feature on the site about a subject with which I have personal familiarity: violence against indigenous women in Guatemala. Though the country's long civil war is over, the femicidio is not. Snip:

More than 100,000 women were raped in the 36 years of the Guatemalan genocide in which at least 200,000 people died. In this video, photojournalists Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita interview survivors and document the ongoing forensic and legal investigation that has just indicted former Guatemalan President Efraín Ríos Montt.

There are so many powerful stories on the Women Under Siege website. Below, a photo by Ms. Addario, from Congo: "Lwange, 51, with her daughter, Florida, who had been raped the week before this photo was taken in 2008. The child had screamed at the time, then bled. With her vagina and her young psyche damaged, Florida would no longer speak."

VA state senator attaches rectal exam amendment to anti-abortion bill

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:29:52 +0000

"To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication." (thanks, Antinous!)

Muslim student claims sexual harrassment, school ignores, she's falsely reported as a terrorist, FBI shows up at her door

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:19:40 +0000

Balayla Ahmad, an observant African-American Muslim student at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, has filed a federal lawsuit claiming she was sexually harassed by a male student in 2009 for months on end, but that university officials showed "deliberate indifference" to her repeated complaints—and that she was then reported to the FBI in revenge for having complained. From the Associated Press:

When she complained to a teacher, she was told that the university generally doesn't get rid of students right away over such incidents, the lawsuit said. Another teacher asked her if she were married and asked her not to report it to the dean because he would speak with the harasser, the suit said.
Ahmad then reported the harassment and fears for her safety to the university's president and dean, who promised to meet with her. But she said when she met with the dean, he said, "My hands are tied. What do you suggest I do?"
After reporting the sexual harassment in April 2009, Ahmad said she was approached by two university security directors who told her someone had made allegations against her and they threatened to call the FBI and have her arrested.
Later, two FBI agents knocked on Ahmad's apartment door, questioned her and left a business card, according to the lawsuit. She said she learned that her harasser or his associates had fabricated a story falsely accusing her of being a terrorist in apparent retaliation for having made a sexual harassment complaint against him.

Muslim who claims harassment sues Conn. university (AP)

Update: A Boing Boing reader who once attended and lived near the University of Bridgeport points out that the school went bankrupt some decades ago, and was effectively bought out by an affiliate arm of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The history's a little complicated; here's what looks to be a reasonably neutral Wikipedia article about that.

Libya: Gaddafi used rape as a weapon, gave troops Viagra, says ICC prosecutor

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:11:58 +0000

(A Libyan woman holding a Kingdom of Libya flag walks past a caricature of Muammar Gaddafi near the court house in Benghazi June 8, 2011. REUTERS/Esam Al-Fetori )

The ICC's chief prosecutor told journalists gathered at the UN today that he has gathered evidence which shows that Libyan leader Col Muammar Gadaffi ordered military agents to "punish women" with rape to spread terror and silence dissent. Human rights groups and journalists working in the region have reported this for months, and the case of Iman Al-Obeidi brought such allegations to international attention (she has since sought refuge in Romania). But this new validation, and the possibility of charges being brought against Gadaffi in the International Criminal Court, are significant.

"It was never the pattern he used to control the population. The rape is a new aspect of the repression. And that's why we had doubts at the beginning but now we are more convinced," he said. "Apparently, he decided to punish, using rape."
He said it was difficult to know how widespread the use of rape was. "In some areas we had a number of 100 people raped. The issue for us was, can we attribute these rapes to Gaddafi himself, or is it something that happened in the barracks," he explained.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo also said some witnesses had confirmed that the Libyan government was buying containers of Viagra-type drugs to carry out the policy, and to "enhance the possibility to rape". "We are trying to see who was involved," he added.

Libya: Gaddafi investigated over use of rape as weapon (BBC News)

Egypt: "Virginity tests will spark next revolution"

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 08:21:54 +0000

Mona Eltahawy in the Guardian, on gender and revolution in Egypt:

If the "it wasn't about gender" mantra is stuck on repeat so that we don't scare the boys away, then let them remember the state screwed them too, literally - ask political prisoners, and remember the condoms and Viagra found when protesters stormed state security headquarters.
(...) Let's be clear, "virginity tests" are common in Egypt and straddle class and urban/rural divides. Be it the traditional midwife checking for a hymen on a bride's wedding night, or a forensics expert or doctor called in after a prospective bridegroom's suspicions, young women are forced to spread their legs to appease the god of virginity. But no one talks about it.
But it's different when the state [or the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] is the one forcing women's legs apart. A protest is planned for Saturday. It's a perfect time for gender to come out of the revolution's closet.
This must be our moment of reckoning with the god of virginity. The rage against the military must also target the humiliation brought by those tests, regardless of who carries them out.

Read the full opinion piece here.

Egypt: The viral vlog of Asmaa Mahfouz that helped spark an uprising

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 06:22:56 +0000

Video Link. 26-year-old Asmaa Mahfouz of Egypt recorded this video on January 18th, uploaded it to YouTube, and shared it on her Facebook. Within days, the video went viral within Egypt and beyond.

"Whoever says women shouldn't go to the protests because they will get beaten, let him have some honor and manhood and come with me on January 25th" she says in the video, "They don't even have to go to Tahrir Square, just go anywhere and say it: that we are free human beings."

And she condemns the couch potatoes and armchair internet activists, in no uncertain terms.

"Sitting home and just following us on news or on Facebook leads to our humiliation -- it leads to my humiliation!," she says in the video.

"If you have honor and dignity as a man, come and protect me, and other girls in the protest. if you stay home, you deserve what's being done to you, and you will be guilty before your nation and your people. Go down to the street, send SMSes, post it on the internet, make people aware."

The video is popularly credited with helping inspire fellow Egyptians by the thousands to participate in protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, calling for an end of the 30-year authoritarian rule of Hosni Mubarak. The video is also credited with helping to inspire the Egyptian government to block Facebook. Whether it's accurate to credit this one video, and this one young woman, with all of that, I'll leave to activists in Egypt who know the history better than I. But at the very least, her powerful video captures the spirit of an important moment in history.

The original version of the video is here.

The video is the subject of a New York Times piece today on the role of Egyptian women in the popular uprising, "Equal Rights Takes to the Barricades," by Mona el-Naggar:

"As long as you say there is no hope, then there will be no hope, but if you go down and take a stance, then there will be hope." That was what Ms. Mahfouz had to say in a video she posted online more than two weeks ago. She spoke straight to the camera and held a sign saying she would go out and protest to try to bring down Mr. Mubarak's regime.
This was certainly not the first time a young activist used the Internet -- later virtually shut down by the government -- as a tool to organize and mobilize, but it departed from the convenient, familiar anonymity of online activism.
More than that, it was a woman who dared put a face to the message, unfazed by the possibility of arrest for her defiance. "Do not be afraid," she said.

(English language version of Asmaa Mahfouz's video translated by Iyad El-Baghdadi, subtitles by Ammara Alavi. Thanks, Marianne Shaneen)

America's last non-profit feminist bookstore in Portland, OR fundraiser

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 20:02:36 +0000

MamaCass sez, "Portland, Oregon's In Other Words Feminist Bookstore is the last remaining volunteer-run non-profit feminist bookstore in the nation. It's also making a transition to a community center which will include a library and feminist archives. IOW just celebrated its 17th birthday, but to keep the doors open past January, they need to increase their monthly sustainers. IOW provides a safe, all-ages space for the community and will continue to if it gets the help it needs." (Thanks, MamaCass, via Submitterator!)

Happy International Women's Day

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:44:56 +0000

Happy International Women's Day to everyone, but especially to all the strong, brave women who fought and fight for a world where women and men have equal opportunities, equal representation in all fields of endeavor, and equal rights in society, custom and law. I am privileged to have been raised by my strong, feminist mother and father to be a feminist man. For my Mom, my grandmothers, my wife, and my daughter, happy IWD!

International Women's Day (Thanks, @brigittekhair!)

Previously: