An Anti-racist Radical Profeminist Critique of a Socialist Review of White Radical Feminism

image/logo is from *here*

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(The NOTES section was revised and added to on 1/31/2012.)

The excerpted writing below is from Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal. You may click *here* to link back to that site in order to read the whole article. You may also link back by clicking on the title just below:

Socialists in the Australian women's liberation movement

The author is Margaret Allan. She is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party of Australia. This article is based on an educational talk to the party's congress, held in Sydney in January 1999.

Below is the section of that article on Radical Feminism, reproduced here for the sole purposes of radical pro-feminist political analysis and discussion. 

I have not altered the content of the text in any way other than to add footnote numbers which may refer you to comments below the original writing, within this blog post. The section by Margaret Allan is reproduced here in full, but again keep in mind it is part of a larger piece of writing. Please refer back to that for the context in which the following discussion occurs.

Radical feminism

First I will look at radical feminism. “Patriarchy” was the word used by Engels[1] when describing anthropologically the different types of family or kinship units that have existed. He called families, clans or other social groupings that traced descent through the mother's side matrilineal. Descent traced through the father's side was patrilineal. Matriarchal or patriarchal were used to describe situations in which the auhtority and power over the group were invested in either the woman or the man.

The term patriarchy was redefined by radical feminism, and put into common usage, to refer to whole social systems controlled by men through their control of women's reproductive functions. That is, women are seen as oppressed because of their biology and their role as child-bearers.[2]

Adherents to patriarchy theory tend to agree on these four points:

1. Patriarchy expresses the totality of the social relations of male supremacy and female subordination.[3]
2. Patriarchy has existed in all known socioeconomic formations, though most analyses tend to focus on the particular features of capitalist patriarchy.[4]
3. Patriarchy is a hierarchical system in which power and control are vested in men to effect and reproduce their domination over women. Patriarchal relations are said to be reproduced through the sexual division of labour and patriarchal ideology.[5]
4. Patriarchy unites men across class lines. Their unity is based on the fact that although men hold different degrees of power within the patriarchy, all men dominate at least some women.[6]

Radical feminist arguments are explicitly or implicitly biologically determinist -- women are “naturally” caring, sharing, nurturing peaceful beings -- a stabilising force in society, whereas men are prisoners of their raging hormones, aggressive, warmongering.[7] Men cannot control their animal-like instincts -- they rape women and are violent, so for women to survive, they must separate from this threat to them and their children.[8]

An extreme view held by some radical feminists was summed up by Kimberley O'Sullivan in Girl's Own, a Sydney-based radical feminist newspaper, No. 5 1981:

Wimmin and men are two different species. Not different races within the one humanoid species but different species who evolved separately and differently. Wimmin are biologically and morally superior but men hold power by force of arms.[9]

The flaw of any theory that relies on this notion of patriarchy (our theory is also based on patriarchy, but as Engels defined it) to explain women's oppression is that it counterposes the liberation of half of humanity to the liberation of the other half. All men are said to have a primary interest in women's oppression.

Like liberal feminism, this type of radical feminism is fundamentally a bourgeois feminist current. While liberalism seeks to humanise capitalism through reforms -- getting more women into positions of power, etc. -- both tend inevitably to develop a reactionary aspect because of their insistence that capitalism is not founded ultimately and necessarily on class exploitation, and therefore on women's oppression.

The two most influential and original statements of radical feminism were Kate Millett's Sexual Politics and Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex: the case for feminist revolution, both published in 1971.[10]

Since then, writings from academics such as Andrea Dworkin (a vehement supporter of censorship, who says that pornography is the theory, rape is the practice)[11] and Renate Klein and Robyn Rowland in Australia have been influential. One of the main centres for radical feminist theory in Australia in recent years has been women's studies courses at Deakin University in Geelong. This is also the base of finrrage, Feminist International Network Resisting Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, which campaigns against the use of science to violate and manipulate women's bodies and their reproductive capability.

They oppose all reproductive technology -- including things such as IVF technology and the use of RU486, the morning after pill, on the basis that male doctors experimenting with women's bodies is another form of the violence that is naturally a part of men's attitudes and behaviour. This is an ironic reversal for radical feminism, which originally argued in favour of reproductive technology to free women's reproduction from men's control.
We have argued against radical feminist views consistently, in many different forums. One area was the censorship and pornography debate, on which we wrote and distributed a pamphlet encapsulating our opposition to censorship as a path to stopping the sexual exploitation of women.[12]

One section of radical feminists advocate separatism as political practice, based on their analysis of the origins and nature of women's oppression.

The identification of men as the enemy led many radical feminists to the conclusion that women should separate themselves from men politically and socially. Lifestyle preferences for all-women households, personal relationships, cultural institutions and even communities, were often promoted as the key to liberation.

This often leads to the assertion by some separatists that a “true feminist” is one who does not have sex with men, and is celibate or a “political lesbian”.

Most radical feminists in the second wave eventually went into academia or worked in women's services such as rape crisis centres and women's shelters.[13]

NOTES:

My overall critique of the discussion about radical feminism is four-fold:

--it relies on anti-radical, anti-feminist academic assessments of radical feminist work
--it is very white-centered and white supremacist
--it ignores crucial writings by white radical feminists and radical feminists of color that directly address and contradict the points made above
--it reproduces and reinforces many of the anti-radical and anti-feminist arguments made by well-published corporate pimps and other white male supremacists interested in defending their right to rape and traffic in women and girls and otherwise maintain rule over female human beings

1. There has been a fairly thorough rejection of Engel's understanding of women's oppression based on family relations as Engels understood them. That some non-feminist Socialists still prefer to hold to his theories when better theories by radical feminists exist only means to me that some people prefer to believe, sexistly, that men (or Socialists) are the best theorists, including on matters relating to women and women's liberation. Very generally speaking, I don't find this to be the case at all. I don't think it is because men and women think and theorise differently due to biological or natural factors. Instead, I think that men's minds, as shaped and structured in patriarchal and woman-hating societies, learn to abstract reality and organise theory around hypothesis--well away from the scary feelings and emotions men dread consciously including into their intellectual work, while many feminist's minds, in response to patriarchal conditions in which men's abstractions about women are part of the problem, learn to be able both to abstract reality and keep theory grounded in it. For more discussion on what's wrong with Engels, please see the following links to a four-part post by Stan Goff. I will add that many white het men there were willing to read a pro-feminist (Goff's) and feminist critique of Engels (MacKinnon's) only because a white het man with Socialist cred produced and published it.
Why the Left should drop Engels on Gender, part 1

Why the Left should drop Engels on Gender, part 2

Engels and Gender, part 3

Engels and Gender, Last Installment

2. This goes against the bulk of radical feminist writing I'm familiar with. See, especially, Catharine A. MacKinnon's radical feminist critique of such biologically deterministic viewpoints in Feminism Unmodified and in Toward A Feminist Theory of the State.

3. I'd argue that other systems of oppression carry within them the means and methods to reproduce male supremacy. White supremacy and capitalism, to name two, are infused with patriarchal (male supremacist) power structures, values, and practices. White supremacist notions of Race are also sexed. Class positions are infused with sexual meaning. Thus, if a woman is poor and of color she is subordinated socially, sexually, and economically in multiple ways, with each reinforcing her subordination to rich white men and to various groups of less economically powerful men. We may note how this manifest in the global trafficking of girls and women, predominantly poor girls of color to predominantly rich white het men. This horrific reality cannot and ought not be understood or analysed only in terms of patriarchy, capitalism, or race oppression. It is the weaving together of the three that identify key features of the atrocity. Similarly, the higher incidence of rape of Indigenous North American women by white het men, compared to the also-alarming rate of rape of white women by white het men, cannot either.

4. This conclusion, proposed by some white-centered and/or European-centered feminists, ignores and further marginalises of the work of many other radical women of color, particularly Indigenous and Black feminists who note how white or European patriarchy is currently globalised. See, for example, Yurugu, by Marimba Ani.

5. Another key site of male supremacist (or patriarchal) oppression is the sexual subordination of women by men through normalised sexual acts and sexual behavior as men experience and define it. Among other radicals, including many male socialists, the oppressive nature (as opposed to the "natural power") of sex expressed and enforced by men over and against women has largely been ignored or relegated to the realm of the "natural".

6. It is not only that patriarchal societies function to allow and encourage all men to dominate at least some women. With female human beings denied basic human rights such as access to private safety and sustained dignity, and with so many girls and women surviving (or not surviving) sexual assault and other misogynist atrocities and gynocidal practices, boys are encouraged to dis-identify with girls, men are encouraged to dis-identify with women, and males on the whole are supported in engaging in misogynistic practices which simultaneously homosocially bond males to one another and socially subordinate women to men in various ways. One example of this may be seen in the normalised rapist practices of young men in college and university fraternities. Men across class and race from region to region in many places--but not universally--are seen as more manly by other males if they engage in such practices. In such places, the man or boy who refuses to degrade or assault women or girls in front of other males is understood by the men present to be "less of a man"; he loses sexual status among those patriarchally positioned to confirm it. See note 2 for more.

7. Even if reviewing white feminist writings alone, this is not generally the case. No radical feminists I have ever read or known make such a case, and in fact argue exactly the opposite: to be a radical and feminist is to believe in the humanity of men against much evidence that men value being inhumane to women. See, for more, Andrea Dworkin's speech to 500 men, "I Want A Twenty-Four Hour Truce During Which Their Is No Rape".

8. No anti-rape or anti-pornography radical feminist-identified women I know or have read believe that men are "naturally" prone to rape, to batter, or to otherwise exhibit masculinist or patriarchal aggression against girls and women. To be an activist is to believe that such behavior and systems which promote it are "not natural". The only women I know who do believe this are not "Radical Feminist" identified. Instead, some are Radical Lesbian identified.

9. For a good example of how this was challenged within a predominantly white branch of the US Women's Movement, please see: "Biological Superiority: The World's Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea", by Andrea Dworkin.


10. This would be true only according to mostly white academics who only consider white authors and activists to be worthy of writing about, reviewing, and critiquing. That white editors compile the writings of white writers is nothing new and ought not be seen as an indication that women of color were not and are not centrally involved in all realms of radical anti-patriarchy activism.

11. This is inaccurate in three respects:

1. Andrea Dworkin was not an academic. She as a front-line Women's Liberation activist and author. She quit college before graduation. She marched in streets to protest women's subordination to men. She didn't teach except once in Minneapolis (a course on pornography, and also a course on literature), while also doing non-academic activist work.
2. Andrea Dworkin was not "a vehement defender of censorship". She was against all state censorship and was opposed to the ways her ordinance was (mis)used in Canada in a censorial manner. She wrote eloquently about what censorship is and she and MacKinnon wrote about the myth--perpetuated by corporate pimps and spread by liberal academics who defended them--that their stance on pornography was pro-censorship. For more, see Pornography and Civil Rights: A New Day for Womens' Equality. See also, Andrea Dworkin, "Against the Male Flood: Censorship, Pornography, and Equality".
3. Andrea Dworkin never said or wrote "Pornography is the theory; rape is the practice". The quote belongs to Robin Morgan. Dworkin said "Pornography is the practice; rape is the practice." Andrea understood pornography materially, not primarily or centrally as an idea or a theory; it is one white and male supremacist (racist patriarchal) industry that makes sexual subordination socially existent, marketing rape as entertainment primarily for men. Meanwhile, pornography's defenders--including those who materially profit from the industry--see it as only idea, fantasy, and subjectively determined. (One wonders how they got so rich only engaging in thinking.) Dworkin and MacKinnon have argued convincingly against such a determination. (Source: *here*.)

12. I have witnessed how debates among Socialists misunderstood--often willfully--Dworkin's views and activism on the issue. She was a key proponents and crafters of a radical feminist anti-pornography law, and other actions against the industry, and she's already been miscategorised above. This doesn't surprise me as anti-radical feminists in Socialist and Libertarian circles commonly and purposefully misrepresented the positions and actions of radical feminists against pornography. The Socialist anti-feminists I'm aware of did this, in part, as a means of protecting the power of men against women practiced and promoted in industry pornography.

13. The whole "wave theory" of feminism is academic mythology as much as anything else, steeped in narrow white- and euro-centric understandings of activism and liberation struggles against men's cultural and systematised subordination of women. Asian, Black, Brown, and Indigenous radical feminists, self-defining as such or not, are usually written out of such "wave theories", or are marginalised in special chapters or sections on race--as if women of color must only ever speak for people of color as a class, never for women as a class. The above discussion by Margaret Allen, unfortunately, perpetuates this euro-centrism and white supremacy. And the supposition that a great many radical feminists went into academia is in itself classist; most radical feminists are poor women of color globally, with little to no access to the academic institutions run by ruling class whites and men.

I hope that future discussions among Socialists about radical feminism demonstrate more awareness of the many theories and practices of radical feminist women of color, and also don't distort the political viewpoints of white radical feminists usually misinformation provided by corporate pimps and their defenders and apologists.

I encourage radical and feminist activists to offer comments at the original site.

On being intergender and anti-gender: a profeminist statement

image is from here

A while ago, sometime last year or the year before, I 'came out' as intergender. I understood this name to apply to a set of experiences I'd had since childhood in which I didn't socially or spiritually fit into one or the other of two dominant/enforced gender categories. What's important for me to remember is that gender categories themselves are part of a vicious set of interlocking systems of oppression by race, region, and sex.

In English and in the US, "woman" is a term that linguistically and structurally place women beneath men as both less advantaged and as socially inferior. "Man" is a term used to mean "humanity" which, if you follow the male supremacist logic, means women aren't human--at least not as fully human as men. Were this a linguistic matter alone, I might decide not to pay it much attention. But given that women worldwide, relative to men in their own communities, cultures, and civilisations are often enough economically and sexually subordinated to men, we must note how language and treatment fuse in the human experience.

A white Lesbian once challenged me on my use of the term "intergender" to describe myself. I have never forgotten her challenges. What I realise now is that it is in vogue--and has been for decades--to privilege the naming of ourselves in anti-radical, anti-feminist ways over being responsible to radical activists, including feminists seeking to abolish sex as an oppressive system and gender as a hierarchical and terroristic force.

Nowhere in contemporary white Academic queer-positive theory do I see any commitment to radical social change wherein systems of race and sex are understood as both inhumane and unjust. Instead I see lots of acquiescing around sex and race as naturalised and normalised phenomena. Perhaps now more than ever, we have terms proliferating through our communities that uphold rather than challenge race and sex as markers of who gets treated like shit and who gets treated as if they were fully human.

In our raced and sexed system, only white men are fully advantaged, which isn't to say white men have it all good. And on the class level, whites and all men fare better than women of color.

In white- and male-dominated queer theory, transgender identity has become one way for liberals to test each other's "tolerance" of  "difference", sometimes quoting Audre Lorde when challenging cis people to respect trans existence. But to take tolerance of difference as the end all and be all of political work is, imo, to misunderstand or ignore what Audre Lorde, a radical feminist and a lesbian, was speaking out about. As I see it, her call for oppressed people--namely and specifically, women across sexuality, age, and race--to find mutual regard and respect across such differences, was not to claim that accomplishing this was the sole goal. It was, rather, a means to a far more difficult end: the eradication of gendered and raced oppression entirely. To fight oppression based on sexuality, sex, age, and race is unlikely to be successful if in-fighting and horizontal hostility (to use Flo Kennedy's term) isn't also challenged as employing the master's tools.

I don't see hostility directed against trans people as appropriate, personally and politically. And everything I write, I write from the structural location of someone with lots of social advantage, as a male and as a white person. As a radical, I see the liberal acceptance of terms put forth by conservative and liberal people as inappropriate or pro-status quo.

I want to clarify that me naming myself "intergender" is a subjective experienced molded by social mistreatment in childhood (and beyond), including bullying and harassment by males naming me things that meant "girl" as if being a girl was something all males should avoid. Many males in my childhood seemed preoccupied with avoiding being seen as "like a girl". This preoccupation was never my own in part because I respected girls at least as much as boys, and often more so than boys. But also because I didn't feel like a boy and so wasn't so keen on trying to be something I wasn't.

My political work in adulthood has been to not behave like a man in the male supremacist sense while acknowledging that being a man isn't something I control in the structural or macro-social sense. And to the extent that women experience me politically and personally as a man, I am one, regardless of whether or not such a name feels accurate to me. To try and silence women by saying that they are trans- or inter-phobic for stating their truth is, to me, yet another act of male supremacist bullying on my part.

One of many things that troubles me in the current male- and white-dominated queer discourse on being transgender is the ways in which it is either naturalised--an oppressively conservative intellectual tactic--or made to seem as if it ought to trump all other social and structural realities, such as whether or not someone born and named as "male" acquires and benefits from the various advantages handed to males in male supremacist societies.

There is an argument put forth by some conservative-to-liberal politically active M2F people and some allies of such politically active M2F people. (Such activists are a very tiny minority of trans people who ought not be seen to be representative of most trans people; most trans people do not medically or socially transition and don't identify as M2F.) The argument is this: as soon as someone comes into a M2F transgender (in this case, transsexual) identity or transitions medically or socially to be more like a woman--as some trans and non-trans people narrowly and often oppressively define the term and experience, that necessarily means they don't have any of the advantages that being male has given them.

As someone who accepts and regrets how powerfully oppressive racist and hetero/sexist socialisation acts on us, especially but not only in the first few years of life, I find it untenable that all the ways we males learn to disrespect all who are female, and position ourselves as superior to girls and women,  would vanish when we alter our social and personal understandings of ourselves. Similarly but not in perfect analogy, I find it untenable that if someone white came to realise that they were of mixed ethnic heritage in their mid-twenties, for example, with some of their heritage being European and some of it being African and Indigenous, this would result in all their racist views, values, and political practices simply and suddenly disappearing. I mean really: how could that happen?

Even if our structural location shifts somewhat with this new information and identity, old patterns and habituated practices are well-established aren't they? (I'm not saying gendered and raced ways of being are "fixed" in any absolute sense. I'm saying we learn to be racist and sexist, and as anyone can tell you, such socialisation is difficult to uproot. This is why males who identify as profeminist and whites who call ourselves anti-racist ought not be assumed to be non-sexist and non-racist. But beyond that, our structural, institutionally protected locations as males and whites are not as fluid as our intellectual and emotional locations.

If someone is raised white, does a childhood of believing one is superior to people of color evaporate with the news later in life that one's grandparents and great grandparents weren't all of European and white descent? What are the political means or social mechanisms through which this psychic and structural transformation occurs?

If our political lives worked this way, we need only work together to transition every white person to being, in appearance and identify, a person of color. And voila, white supremacy and its future genocidal ravages would disappear. We need only convince all men that they are really women to end male supremacy's death-grip on humanity. As someone who has been a peripheral part of white-dominated and white supremacist gay male society for decades, I've seen how white gay men accept the idea that we are girls-not-men, and also how we resist, in pro-patriarchal ways, heterosexist and homophobic males who insist we are girls-not-men. In no instance does this social viewpoint result in gay men not being misogynistic. In fact, many of the ways gay males embrace "femininity" and "effeminacy" are grimly and glaringly woman-hating. This hasn't gone unnoticed and unchallenged by many feminist lesbians and a few profeminist gay men.

A claim I hear from some white trans- and queer-identified people is that they/we are unfairly targeted for political interrogation and critique. I'd argue that gay males and lesbians, as well as heterosexual women, have been targeted for such critique for as long as we've existed in heteropatriarchal times and environments. And to confuse the radical critique of lesbian feminists with the critique of patriarchal het men is to turn structural political reality on its head.

I take the white Lesbian's challenges to heart and mind. And I conclude that my political position with regard to gender is to be anti-gender, not pro-gender, not pro-gender binary, not pro-gender hierarchy. Especially, my political position as a white Westerner isn't one of pretending the gender binary or dual sex system I grew up inside, isn't a hierarchy. Sex and gender are hierarchies that exists fundamentally and foremost to allow and encourage non-transitioning men and males to oppress women, girls, and females as patriarchal men define and enforce the terms.


P.S. After publishing this post, I was sent *this* found at Feminist Reprise, by a friend and colleague. It is written by someone who is not anti-trans but will likely be termed "transphobic" for critiquing some of the behavior of a few white M2F trans activists. Here is an excerpt from the whole piece, titled "Radical Feminism and the Transgendered, or, how to write a post that will infuriate everyone", by Jane Doe, 05/15/2006:

Many MTFs I know minimize the effect male privilege has on their behavior. I suppose it is like the proverbial fish who asks "what is water?" - being the beneficiary of male privilege during one's formative years, even if one begins to question one's identity as a man, confers benefits upon one that are invisible to the recipient (although obvious to women, who do not receive these benefits). Since MTFs do not want to be male, they would like to imagine they can just toss male privilege away along with their unwanted boys' clothing. The human mind does not work in this way, however. It is ironic that those resorting to violent, invasive tactics in order to enter the Michigan Women's Music Festival, for example, with the excuse that they are NOT men and should be accepted as women, are resorting to an ingrained male privilege which tells them they have a right to go anywhere they want to go.

I see it is a critical matter of radical sexual politics, not liberal or conservative gender theory, when female's and women's spaces are contested as appropriately exclusive or sovereign by people with male privilege and male supremacist power. It is also a matter of radical sexual politics when a vocal group of people--a tiny minority of class-privileged whites pretending to represent the whole of the population--declares its members immune and exempt from radical and feminist critique of the ways white and male supremacy is enacted socially. Surely white and male supremacy is being enforced when such a declaration of immunity takes place.

Woggy on Answerbag is at it again: this time with the myth of man-hating among white feminists

image is from here

I've written a great deal about the myth of man-hating, including about the allegedly anti-man quotes, that misogynists and other anti-feminists promote and peddle online as "truth". Here's the latest incarnation of it, presented as a seemingly innocuous question:

by woggy on January 15th, 2012

Did Andrea Dworkin hate men?
How about Susan Brownmiller?
Catherine MacKinnon?

An answer, by JulianReal

Andrea Dworkin didn't hate men and the proof of it is in her work and her life. She was very close with and respectful of her father, brother, nephew, and life-partner, who was a man. People who accuse her and other white feminists, like Susan Brownmiller and Catharine MacKinnon, of hating men just don't appreciate it when women of any color name and challenge the myriad ways men hate women in law, custom, and daily personal life. Not respecting or catering to men's misogyny (in the form of rape, battery, trafficking, sexual harassment, sexual and economic discrimination by men against women) as God-given or natural-and-inevitable isn't an example of women being "hateful" to men; it's a simple declaration of respect and love for women.

Andrea Dworkin, Susan Brownmiller, and Catharine A. MacKinnon spoke out eloquently and intelligently about patriarchal abuses, male supremacy, and misogyny perpetrated and perpetuated by men. What's hateful to anyone about doing that?

The more relevant question, imo, is why do so many men hate women, discriminate against women, harass women, batter women, rape girls and women, traffic and enslave girls and women, and insult and degrade women for entertainment and economic profit?

Read more: http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2652040#ans11727702

Women Activists in Haiti: Two Years after the Earthquake

photo of activists, including Elvire Eugene (second from left), is from here

It has been two years since the devastating earthquake devastating Port-au-Prince, killing hundreds of thousands and leaving many people vulnerable to the ravages of gross governmental neglect, the violence of globalisation and poverty, the on-going efforts at colonlisation by the US, and the ceaseless threat and violence of men against women.

Many women like Elvire Eugene fight back. Here is an exceprt of a news story about the work of Elvine and other women in Haiti (source: vday.org, *here*)

Lawyers and women's activists representing 30 grassroots organizations from across Haiti came together to discuss what needed to be done to address gender-based-violence in post-earthquake Haiti.

The meeting was coordinated by longtime V-Day activist Elvire Eugene, who is connected to many local partners and national networks working on women's issues in Haiti and is well suited to lead critical work on the ground. Judie C. Roy, a former presidential candidate and prominent activist, was also in attendance, as well as members of the Women's Ministry. During the meeting, a Task Force was formed to see the group's work through to completion. Members chose Elvire Eugene, Judie C. Roy and activist Marie Gislhene Mompremier to lead the Task Force.

Here are some links to other stories about activist women in Haiti.

From the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti:

“Haitian Peasant Women as Poto Mitan, Central Pillar”: An interview with Iderle Brénus Gerbier (Other Words)

20 December 2011 Comments: 0

By Alexis Erk­ert, Other Words

[Excerpt:]

The Hait­ian soci­ety is essen­tially macho, and the Hait­ian politi­cians and inter­na­tional inter­ests oppress Haiti’s own chil­dren. Farm­ers become vic­tims again and again and women are always held back. But these women con­tinue to sup­port their country.

Our goal is to achieve respect for the rights of Hait­ian women. Despite their posi­tion as poto mitan, as the main car­ri­ers of the national econ­omy, rural Hait­ian women always suf­fer in our soci­ety. Most of these women have no direct access to agri­cul­tural lands and income is strictly con­trolled by men, despite their role in agriculture.

See also:

Two Years Later, Where Is The Out­rage? (Lethaitilive.org) — Jan­u­ary 3, 2012

and,

http://ijdh.org/projects/rapp

And finally, for now, From MADRE's website (please click on the title just below for more):

Press Release: Groups Release Report Analyzing Sexual Exploitation in Haiti

Posted on: Thursday, January 12, 2012

Keywords: Haiti, Latin American and Caribbean, Combating Violence Against Women, Human Rights Avocacy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
CONTACT: Stephanie Küng, MADRE, media@madre.org;
Blaine Bookey, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, bookeybl@uchastings.edu;
Margaret Satterthwaite, NYU Global Justice Clinic, satterth@exchange.law.nyu.edu

Haitian Women and Girls Trading Sex to Survive
Groups Release Report Analyzing Sexual Exploitation

January 12, 2012—New York, NY—Two years after an earthquake devastated Haiti, a report detailing the impact of sexual exploitation on displaced Haitian women and girls has been released. The report is authored by MADRE, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV), the International Women’s Human Rights (IWHR) Clinic at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law, the Global Justice Clinic at NYU School of Law (GJC) and the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at UC Hastings College of the Law (CGRS).

The drastic increase in sexual violence in displacement camps has been well documented since the disaster. But another face of the epidemic has emerged as a pressing issue: the sexual exploitation of displaced women and girls.

Displaced women and girls have lost family and community members, along with the protection and safety nets those relationships offered. Because of poverty and a lack of economic opportunity, many women and girls are forced to trade sex for shelter, money or even a single meal. In many cases, those demanding sex are the very people who hold themselves out as representatives of the people—members of camp committees.

The report was compiled based on interviews with Haitian women and girls who have either engaged in transactional sex or who know people who have. Information was also collected through interviews with Haitian government officials, service providers and women’s rights advocates. The report highlights current barriers to addressing sexual exploitation and offers recommendations to protect the human rights of women and girls engaging in transactional sex. In addition, the report offers a unique legal analysis of the protections available for women and girls who have experienced a wide range of human rights violations associated with sexual exchanges.

Marie Eramithe Delva, co-founder of KOFAVIV said today, “Displaced women and girls are being forced by circumstance into survival sex. It is an epidemic, but one that has gotten little attention from the Haitian government or international community.”

Lisa Davis, MADRE Human Rights Advocacy Director and Clinical Professor of Law for the IWHR Clinic at CUNY Law School said today, “International law recognizes that an individual’s decision to engage in sex should be the result of free choice. The majority of women and girls interviewed do not have a choice. They are displaced and with few other options. In turn, they are at increased risk of sexual violence and health threats. We must shed light on this crisis.”

Blaine Bookey, Staff Attorney for the CGRS said today, “Although almost all individuals interviewed for this report recognized that sexual exploitation is widespread, representatives of government agencies responsible for addressing sexual exploitation hold stereotypes related to gender and poverty that present an obstacle to implementing practical solutions. Beyond this, the Haitian government’s inability to develop a meaningful response to sexual exploitation is also due to a stark lack of resources. I am hopeful the report will help breakdown these harmful stereotypes and bring much needed resources to bear.”

Margaret Satterthwaite, Professor of Clinical Law for the GJC and Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law said today, “Survival sex will not end until Haitian women and girls can access what they need to live.  Haitian women want economic opportunities and the capacity to access basic resources.  The international community should work closely with the Haitian government to create jobs, extend microcredit to women, and provide free education to all.”

Virtual Briefing: Join the authors of this report on Tuesday January 17 at 1 pm EST, for a conference call. RSVP at media@madre.org for call-in information.

To read the report in full, click here.

Someone on Answerbag.com asks a really misogynist question about feminists

image is from here

Just another of a billion examples of how the Internet makes promoting and perpetrating misogyny all too easy. All that follows is on Answerbag.com. The link to the site is below.

Question

Help answer this question below.

Did the existence of Andrea Dworkin prove that Neanderthal women were feminists?

response to the above question is by JulianReal

 

Your question is obnoxious and insulting.

Andrea Dworkin (1946-2005) was a very important US white feminist philosopher and political activist. She was also a brilliant writer. She worked for justice and human rights for and with women across race and class.

Her work including fighting to establish for all women the right to be free of ridiculous and misogynist attitudes like the one glaringly displayed in your question. Your remark proves we haven't come nearly far enough in the struggle to attain justice and human rights (or, even, basic respect) for women, including feminists.

People, like you, who promote the insulting mischaracterisation of women, including of feminists, are contributing to the overall oppressive condition of women being publicly and privately disrespected and assaulted--verbally and otherwise--by men.

Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating.
-- Andrea Dworkin

Read more: http://www.answerbag.com/category/life-and-society_32