New Dehli, the Commonwealth Games, and Patriarchal Misogyny for White Men Coming to Take Advantage of Their White Het Male Entitlements and Power

WATCH THE WESTERN WHITE MEN

image is from here

What follows is from *here*. Click on the title below to link back.

Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010: Special Report- Major boost for sex tourism in India (part 1)
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Commonwealth Games

Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010: Special Report- Major boost for sex tourism in India (part 1)

Legalising prostitution in a country battling from human trafficking has not quite been the wisest move by the Indian government. Prostitution might be as old as civilization itself however; it is the worst form of oppression and slavery. It is a result of extreme poverty, criminal greed and the patriarchal misogynist nature of society that has evolved over time.

Eight hundred thousand women and young girls are bought and sold each year. What is most worrying however is, if it wasn’t for prostitution this modern day slave trade as we know it would not exist. India, one of the world’s largest developing economies has a billion dollar prostitution industry. According to official figures, there were more than 2.8 million prostitutes operating in the country and actively involved in the sex trade in 2007. This figure is expected to have tremendously increased in the last few years.

What is most interesting however is the fact that according to a Human rights watch report in 1996 there were 10 million sex workers in the country and BBC had concluded in one of its reports that the figure of sex workers had increased to 3 million in 2003-04. Therefore there is a high likelihood that the government of India has under reported the exact figures to evade the eye of the Human rights watch, Ngo’s and media.

With the advent of Commonwealth games 2010 that will be attracting scores of foreign tourists the Indian capital has become a whore – fest. While there has been much talk revolving around corruption during the preparations of the CWG 2010, it has brought a massive influx of money for many. Architects, Engineers, construction companies, hotels, travel agencies and shops. One might wonder who else can benefit from the Commonwealth games. Ruchira Gupta a member of the organization Apne Aap Women Worldwide says ‘look no further than the sex trade’.

According to Gupta, thousands of Indian girls are being kidnapped by traffickers all over the country and being sold to pimps and brothels who are reportedly preparing them for the CWG games in Delhi. It is also noted that the women are injected with oxytocin to make their bodies more voluptuous for the sex trade. Most of the girls that are being kidnapped and trafficked are between the ages of 9 to 17.

One particular anti-trafficking organization working in the Indian Capital, Shakti Vahini states that almost 40 to 45 girls have been rescued since March and the girls belonged to the poorest states of India including Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Orissa. According to the Action against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of children, many girls are being kidnapped from the extremely poor areas of the country like Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka to curb the shortfall of sex workers the capital city faces with the large influx of foreigners. Some say the shortfall is as much as 50%.

These girls are then being trained and coached by pimps. They are also being taught English and words like ‘hello’, ‘how are you’, ‘thank you’ and most importantly the phrase ‘please use a condom’.

GB Road in Delhi India is famous for housing hundreds of prostitution dens in the country’s capital city and according to reports; the red light zone in the capital is getting a major face lift in the wake of the CWG 2010. The brothels are upgrading themselves to provide luxurious facilities and make them more appealing for the foreign customer by installing fridges, air conditioners and LCD TV’s.

Tina Jaswal, the CEO and owner of the No 1 escort agency of New Delhi has said that she is hoping to make some good money out of the games and simple economic principles of demand and supply will ensure that she gets high rates for her call girls. She also stated that their agency has effectively doubled their rates and have increased the number of call girls as well.

On October 9th, is there any other song I could post? This blog is all about "Real Love"!

I am wishing everyone love in their life. Every person on Earth. (Including white heterosexual men!) And peace. And joy. And if you have it or find it, please share that love, joy, and peace with others who need it in ways that respect them and validate their and your own humanity.

Imagine: It's John Lennon's 70th Birthday on October 9, 2010. And it is Sean Ono Lennon's 35th birthday--the same exact age John was when Sean was born. Hapy Birthday, Sean!

(See YouTube for over 80 tribute videos by musicians and fans)

(Check out Google's mainpage for this)

See IMAGINE *here*, featuring John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I'm wishing you joy and peace, Yoko!

I'd kind of like to think, even with the Italian version, that I was named after Julian Lennon. But as I was born over two months before he was, that's unlikely. Julian is now 47. He's lived seven years longer than his father did. I'm wishing you joy and peace, Julian! Joy and peace also to your mum, Cynthia, who wrote a great book about John. 

And a very happy, joyful, peaceful 35th birthday to you, Sean!

What follows is from CBS Sunday Morning. Click on title below to Get Back to the original website.

NEW YORK, Oct. 3, 2010

Julian and Sean Lennon Come Together

Having Grown Up Separately in the Shadow of a Beatle, the Half-Brothers Discuss Their Careers and Their Close Bond

• Sean Lennon, Yoko Ono and Julian Lennon at the opening of an exhibition of Julian's photographs in New York City.  (CBS)
  

• Play CBS Video Video The Lennons Come Together John Lennon's two sons grew up living completely different lives raised by two different people. And who would have thought his two long estranged families would ever come together in peace and harmony. But as Anthony Mason now shows us, they have.
  

• Stories
• Julian Lennon: I Finally Forgive Dad
• Julian Lennon Returns to His Musical Roots

(CBS)  Fans of John Lennon plan to COME TOGETHER at events around the world next Saturday to mark the anniversary of his birth. Hard to believe, but that's the day Lennon would have turned 70. And who would have thought Lennon's two long estranged families would ever come together in peace and harmony. But as Anthony Mason now shows us . . . they have:


In the often-bitter history of the Beatles family . . . it was a surprising moment of unity.

John Lennon's first wife Cynthia and the woman he left her for, Yoko Ono, embracing.

On the eve of what would have been Lennon's 70th birthday, his two wives and their two sons . . . all together now.

"That was most curious how that came together," said Julian Lennon. "I did tell everybody that everybody was going to be there - and wasn't quite sure if everybody was going to turn up!" he laughed.

The occasion was the opening of Julian Lennon's first exhibition of photographs.

At 47, John Lennon's first-born son is already 7 years older than his father was when he was killed in 1980.

"If millions of people weren't coming up and asking you about your father's 70th birthday, is it something you would be marking in any way?" Mason asked.

"I'm actually looking at my age and his age, going, Jesus, what happened?" Julian laughed. "You know, time has flown. And now more than ever look back with a great deal of respect for him as a man, and his work, but not necessarily as a father. There's a lot of forgiveness now."

It's been the paradox of Julian Lennon's life that he spent his childhood chasing after his father's love, and the years since running from his father's shadow.

He scored a series of his own hits in the Eighties, but was always being measured against his father's almost mythological image:

But earlier this year Julian suddenly set out in a new direction . . . considering a career as a photographer.

"It's kind of unexpected, isn't it?"

"Listen," Lennon replied, "six months ago, I had no idea."

Urged on by celebrity photographer Timothy White, who admired his work, Julian began to put together a show based around a series of landsacpes and skyscapes:

Web Exclusive: Watch Extended Interview With Julian Lennon

"It sort of became a bizarre hobby. But I can't help myself for taking pictures of clouds," Lennon said.

"I guess also, the other side of the coin is, Dad wasn't necessarily known for his photography. Not that that's the reason I'm doing this by any means."

"But you don't have to suffer the comparison," Mason said.

"Yes, in that respect. So there's a joy in this and a freedom to this."

But Julian has also tried to hold onto him. For years he has been buying up Beatles memorabilia at auctions around the world.

He's collected the Afghan coat John wore on the set of "Magical Mystery Tour."

"How did you feel about having to do that?" Mason asked.

"Well, I mean, it does suck, doesn't it? But if that's the only way I can get them back, then that's what I'm going to have to do."

"What means the most to you?"

"I guess the postcards," Julian said. "It means that he was thinking about me at a time he wasn't around."

After the divorce, Julian often went years without seeing his father, who later doted on his half-brother Sean:

"When I saw the fact that, you know, he'd basically given up music for a couple of years to look after Sean, you know, that was - it was hurtful. I thought, 'Well, why didn't he do that for me?'

"But then in retrospect, and [seeing] what duress he was under at the time when the Beatles hit, I mean, they hit as big as it got. I started to grasp, Well, he couldn't have stopped. You have to let go and sort of say, Well, I get it. I understand. I really do."

The day before the opening of his photography show, his mother Cynthia arrived from Spain where she now lives:

"We've never seen my son so happy as he is now," she said.

When asked if he was nervous, Julian Lennon said, "Yeah. I do get incredibly anxious. Almost borderline panic attacks."

On opening night at New York's Morrison Hotel Gallery, Julian's show packed the house:

"I think it was more insane than backstage after a gig," he said.

The crowd included George Harrison's first wife, Pattie Boyd.

(CBS)

And then Yoko arrived with Sean.

Julian and his younger brother, who is now 34, grew up in different homes, in different countries, but they're very close:

"Julian is the reason I started playing music, actually," said Sean. "Because when I was a kid I remember when his record came out. And he was, you know, the biggest thing that existed in the world."

"Biggest thing in our family," said Yoko.

For the first time together, they talked about their relationship:

"Actually he taught me how to play guitar," Sean said. "I remember him teaching me the song, 'Faith' by George Michael."

"Oh, jeez," Julian exclaimed.

"But the truth is Julian was like my hero. He still is," said Sean.

The show included photographs Julian had taken of Sean, when he surprised him on tour in Eastern Europe a few years ago.

For two weeks, Julian rode the tour bus with his brother:

"So he was your roadie?" Mason asked.

"I actually became the sort of assistant tour manager for restaurants."

Sean said, "He's much better at organizing than I am."

"Just experience, my dear boy," Julian said. "Just experience."

"You're the organized one! Anyway, it was the most touching thing."

Julian's relationship with Sean's mother has been far more difficult.

For years he fought bitterly with Yoko for a share of his father's estate, before they finally reached a settlement.

"You've had your differences in the past," Mason said. "Forgive me, but you've decided to 'give peace a chance.'"

"Jeez!" Julian said. "It's just not worth the stress. It really isn't. The stresses and the strains. I think the key point to all this, for me at least, has been Sean. If I hurt Sean's mother, then I hurt Sean. It's a roundabout way of thinking about things. But because I love Sean so much, I just don't want to hurt him. I can get over it. Have gotten over it."

"And thank you for doing that," Sean said.

"Thank you for being here tonight," Julian said.

In the end, Julian Lennon's show of photographs produced its own remarkable picture, that of John Lennon's family together.

Imagine that.

For more info:
julianlennon.com
seanonolennon.com

"Domestic Violence Awareness Month" ought to be renamed "Heterosexual Husbands and Boyfriends Beating The Shit Out of Women and Their Children Awareness Millennium"

image is from here

It is Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the U.S. and here is a website devoted to publicising that.

1. Domestic Violence is, it seems to me, the violence done by the U.S. government and corporations and individual oppressors to the oppressed who live within the U.S. and its "territories". Or to it's "territories" and the land and the air and the water. Poverty, for example, is a form of Domestic Violence. So is institutionalised racism, heterosexism, and misogyny.

2. Domestic violence is distinguished from Off-shore Violence. And in looking at the latter what we may note is how warfare is part of each: warfare against women by men who seek patriarchal/male supremacist control of women and girls, and also to regulate and restrict the behavior of boys so that they grow up to be "good patriarchs", meaning mass murders, serial rapists, and batterers of anyone in punching range.

3. Domestic Violence was the name chosen when discussions about the many ways men dominate women through intimate violence because too specific for contemplation, let alone resistance work and activism to stop men's violence against women. It is the generic term for something that isn't at all generic or ungendered. Yes, we need to acknowledge that there is such a thing as battery in lesbian and gay relationships. And of course there are many ways adults in families do violence to children. But the most common form of gendered-sexual violence in families is fathers and father figures incesting/raping/molesting their own daughters or girls they are supposed to be parenting, not preying on.

4. Why doesn't the Anti-Woman Revengelical Fundamentalist Christian White Right [Wrong) acknowledge that their unwritten and unspoken moral code is this: "The Family That Preys Against Female Family Members, Stays Together Due to Stockholm Syndrome and other effects of Dominance and Control"? And realise that feminism is only anti-family if your idea of family includes men dominating women, heterosexism, and violence against women and children, including sexual violence?

5. Why doesn't the Anti-Woman Libertarian Liberal "Left" acknowledge that their unwritten and unspoken code is this: men should have as much freedom of access and rights to violate girls and women as men desire to have, to do whatever it is men wish to do to girls and women that men learn from predatory men and pornographers and pimps. What is are the liberals and libertarians doing to stop incest and rape? Not a whole helluva lot. Why is that? Because rape and incest aren't worth stopping? Or because liberal men believe that in a liberal society incest and rape are part of the price paid for "freedom"? Too fucking high a price, I say.

6. Why isn't homophobic and anti-girl bullying and battery understood as part of Domestic Violence? How many girls and boys have to take their own lives before conservatives and liberals wake up to the fact that children hurting, degrading, humiliating, and terrorising other children isn't socially good or socially necessary. Clearly anti-bullying and anti-battery policies and education programs could be in place in every school system. Sure, there'd have to be less military massacres going on non-domestically, to liberate funds to pay school systems to implement such policies and programs. But the problem with that would be what? Less profit in Dick Cheney's, Donald Rumsfeld's, and David Petraeus's pockets? Those "poor" men will just have to get along with the millions they already have acquired through mass rape and mass murder of "foreign" people of color.

7. Why isn't the violence boys do to girls in school systems and outside school systems discussed? I sporadically hear about is anti-gay bullying, usually by boys against boys, or anti-girl bullying, usually by girls against girls. I'm not suggesting each isn't a serious social problem--both are, as is anti-lesbian violence against girls, which I hear little to nothing at all about. But we also need to focus on the problem of boys sexually harassing, stalking, physically and sexually violating girls, throughout grade school and on into adulthood. And anti-lesbian violence among children too.

8. There's a simple way to end married het men battering women in their home. It is to remove forever from the home any man who is found to have beaten up a woman in the home. And to prevent him from ever having contact with his female spouse or his children, as beating up a child's mother is or ought to be grounds for losing all rights to ever see your child or your spouse again. Sound harsh? To the men who think that's too harsh: Try not beating up women and avoid the harsh consequence. Any man that terrorises or systematically dominates and controls a woman in their home has no right to raise their children, to have custody of them, or to visit them. Sound harsh? To them men who think that's too harsh: systematically demonstrate regard and respecting for women and children; don't terrorising or ridicule anyone; don't dominate and bully anyone; and don't demean and controlling anyone systematically. Try being non-abusive, compassionate, and caring, not vengeful and vindictive and then, guess what? You get to raise your own children! See how easy that can be? It's all, quite literally, in your hands, fellas.

9. As for the men who declare the "equal" problem of women beating men, show me the thousands of x-rays of those men's broken bones, please. Show me the thousands of photos of their badly battered faces. Show me the shelters. Because it's not that class-privileged men aren't economically posititioned to purchase and set up "safe homes" for men abused by women. No. Straight men can do that if need be, what with all those allegedly advanced construction skills (to compliment all the destruction skills). The reality is that there is no need. Meanwhile, men down-play the violence men do to women and up-play the violence women do to men. (Yes, women can and do hurt men (and women) in a variety of ways. I've seen women who have been abused and neglected by men lash out in frustration and pain and say hurtful things to men, sometimes even to their faces. What I haven't ever seen or heard about is this: a woman abuse a man who was never been abused by a man. Not once. I accept that it is often the case that men who batter women witnessed men beating up women somewhere earlier in their lives. But not that they witnessed women beating up men earlier in their lives. So no matter how you look at it, the source problem here is men's violence against women, not women's against men.

10. Funny (not ha-ha funny, and not ta-ta funny) how the major media might mention something about Breast Cancer Awareness Month--never enough, while generally ignoring Heterosexual Husbands and Boyfriends Beating The Shit Out of Women and Their Children Awareness Month. I know queer battery happens too; I'm gay. But I'm all for naming what the endemic problem is that's part of an overall systemic reality of men subordinating women, which is men battering (and raping) women, intimately. And anyone beaten, even in lesbian and gay relationships, is called misogynistic names, which tells you a whole lot about the gendered foundations of domestic violence. The problem is not, as too many abusive het men proclaim the problem to be: "spouses hitting each other". I raised the issue in a recent post: why it is that anti-abortionists don't seem to give a shit that men beat up pregnant women causing untold miscarriages? I mean even if they only care about unborn female foetuses and don't give a damn about out-of-the-womb girls and women, you'd think they'd be overtly anti-battery and anti-rape (including anti-incest): two reasons for unwanted pregnancy and unwanted loss of pregnancy. Two main methods of terrorising and dominating women through force and violation. How about Pernicious and Predatory Patriarchal Privileges Awareness Month? Let's see the morning shows and evening news deal with that issue honestly in town hall meetings.

Pirates of Color and Blond Thin White Heterosexual Women: Part 93 (now in 3D), aka "Gunfire at Falcon Lake"

this image is being used here for media analysis purposes only, as an expression of political speech, and is from here

I've written out my analysis of what the hell is going on with this case in my comment below. It has been modified a bit from the one I submitted to The Feminist Texican. With thanks to Melissa for posting what follows. Please click on the title below to link back to her blog. What is next is a video and commentary and analysis from Melissa. Then a very few comments (two) from readers of her blog. Then there's mine, which as usual is last and longest. While I get into it below, I'll state from the outset that I don't know what happened in this particular case. I've only got mass media as my source of information and if there's one thing they're known for not doing, it's telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. They aren't under any oath, and their investors want money, not social change. Exploitation and entertainment is the name of the capitalist media game. The stories all start and stop there.

To all who have been harmed by poverty, drug trade gun-fire, rape, and other forms of atrocity, my heart goes out to the loved ones of those who did not survive. Most of those victimised are of color. Many are women of color. And the U.S. media won't tell you a damn thing about any one of them--we won't ever learn their names, hear about their personal histories, watch their family members and other loved ones grieve, or understand how it came to be that they were in a violent place where guns manufactured in the U.S. were sent with the express purpose of firing bullets in order to kill people of color.

On the alleged Mexican pirate attack at Falcon Lake

6 October, 2010

Trigger warning. 

Today has a transcript of the interview portion here.

This is all just too bizarre.

I live in south Texas (I was actually going to go out to Falcon Dam with a friend a while back to check out the flooding) and hear stories of cartel/gang violence on a daily basis. Something about this woman’s story seems off when you compare it to all the stories you hear about cartel violence. For one, how would she have time to turn her jet ski around, see her husband was shot, try to pull him up onto her jet ski, and still be able to get away…all while being shot at from three boats? I could absolutely be wrong here, and perhaps she really did “luck” out and was able to barely make her escape, but it doesn’t sound right. Second, mutilated bodies turn up all the time. I really can’t see the cartels giving a shit if Hartley’s body is found, so I can’t picture them going back just so they could hide his body. (No, I’m not alleging anything here other than my opinion that her story sounds bizarre. I can’t imagine what the family is going through.)

As an aside: I just love how a young white woman is widowed in an attack by Mexicans, and it gets national news coverage. Yes, I’m gonna go there. Because innocent people are getting murdered on a daily basis. Women are being raped at gunpoint while their boyfriends/husbands/family members/friends are forced to watch. I went to dinner last month with my old high school friends and was stunned to learn that two of them had relatives who’d been kidnapped and held for ransom in Reynosa. Do you have any idea how surreal it is to sit at Olive Garden, have one friend disclose the fact that her uncle had been kidnapped, and then hear another friend at the other side of the table say, “Mine was too?” (Both of their relatives are safe now.)

Fucked up shit is happening. Daily. Less than 15 miles south of where I live. But because it’s happening to brown people–Mexicans, no less–the media doesn’t give a shit.

1. noemi | 6 October, 2010 at 10:46 am

I totally agree with you that its not being reported. The shit my dad tells me when he comes back from Nuevo Leon. My cousin right now is kidnapped, for weeks now. And there was no coverage at all when they hung men from trees near Cerralvo.

2. Darth Paul | 6 October, 2010 at 3:57 pm

I turned him over and he was shot in the head. And that’s when one of the boats came up to me. [I] had a gun pointed at me. [They] were trying to decide what to do with me, and then they left.”

Me digo el mudo…

I’m just gonna be coarse and suggest she had him offed and is trying to pin it on vague Mexican bogeymen. As indicated, violence is happening all the time on the frontera…what better place to have an ‘incident’ with your spouse of one year?

3. Julian | 8 October, 2010 at 12:54 am

I’ve heard her story. Apparently there are plenty of media opportunities to do so. For what it’s worth, I’m going to say I believe her account of what happened. And my condolences to her and his loved ones.

And I’m also going to say that when I first heard this story my first reaction was that this was yet another fu**ed up racist white male supremacist media story that was going to clog the airwaves–or whatever they are now–for weeks to come.

Why did I think that? Because this is not just A story. It is THE story that repeats in dominant U.S. media and in the dominant U.S. mind: something negative happens to an English-speaking woman, usually young–sometimes a girl–always “pretty” by corporate/advertising/pornographic standards, which means–necessarily and with very few exceptions–she’s white, blond, and thin. I already mentioned young, didn’t I? And white? And thin? And blond? Just checking. And not ever, ever a lesbian. And not ever, ever a butch woman of any sexual orientation. Oh, and always, always class-privileged. Always. Never poor. Not even once.

So here’s the deal: the media wants us all to look at these women, some women, a select few, over and over and over again, to prop up this one ideal of beauty while exploiting someone’s suffering, and to associate this beauty with suffering and with victimisation and various ideas that “she needs help”.

The perennial “she” has been kidnapped, raped, or something else that’s grim and terrible, always–ALWAYS–by “a foreigner”. If the foreigner isn’t an English-speaking, GREAT. And if the foreigner is male and of color, EVEN BETTER. Corporate media isn’t about to discuss any serious issues, like, say, white male supremacy and how it impacts what media covers and doesn’t cover. You’d think that all the dominant media would occasionally slip up and make the mistake of focusing on that, but no. We won’t hear about the fact that one in three American Indian women are raped in this country [in her lifetime] and that over 80% of the rapists are white het men. That’s not “news”. Truth is, it’s not “new”, but it ought to be news.

What we’ll get is yet another story that amps up U.S. white xenophobic racism, anti-Mexican/Mexico (or anti-Black, or anti-Muslim, or anti-Arab) sentiments, and plays to the heterosexist and racist pornographic imagination wherein bad things happen to good white (“good” and “white” being interchangeable) women, by bad, bad men (read: men who don’t speak English as a first language and who are darker than pale white people). “Dark” means bad.

The media IS HUNGRY for stories that will reinforce our racist government’s efforts to stigmatise people of color in order to reinforce white supremacy and uses of the U.S. military and police forces–as if white supremacy was in any danger of being harmed any time soon. (As if it wasn’t the U.S. government and corporations that are harming the hell out of non-rich white folks, and people of color of all classes. Hush my mouth!)

It’s Snow White and Sleeping Beauty all over again. All we need now are some white het male heroes on Aryan-white horses to save the day.

The reason the perennial “she” must be young is U.S. corporate advertisers have tons of non-recyclable shit to sell us all. So we’ve got to be trained on her face. We’ve got to note what “youth” looks like: it looks like a white woman, preferably blond; it doesn’t look fat; it looks more beautiful if very young. Because there’s another major enemy out there of white women (and women of color too)–AGE. Yes. Cue the “Jaws” theme music. AGE will get her. One day it will. If she and her white loved ones aren’t off’ed by some man of color in the mean time.

The O.J. Simpson story was so huge, so very, very, very huge, not only because he was famous. But because it so usefully reinforced in the dominant white imagination this idea that really, when you’re not looking, that dark man is gonna gitcha! And the “you” he’s gonna git is “pretty, white, blond, thin, female, heterosexual, and class-privileged”.

Now I’ll add that I believe O.J. Simpson horrifically battered and murdered Jessica Brown Simpson, and that he also callously and selfishly murdered Ron Goldman. The issue isn’t so much guilt or innocence. The issue is what to focus on so that we don’t have to pay attention to the deeper issues: the racist-misogynistic violence and terrorism that is U.S. foreign and domestic policy–the active maintenance of poverty, for one thing, which disproportionately wears the face of someone who is female and of color.

We’ve also got to not really notice–in so many words–the fact that we’re at it again in Asia–sixty-five-plus years and counting of terrorism, just because we can keep on murdering and raping, raping and murdering Asian people and pretend, against overwhelming evidence, it’s to protect white Amerikkka. And we have awards–medals of honor–to give some of our soldiers, if they live and if they don’t. (The U.S. military cares not one bit about its soldiers; it trains them to kill and to be killed, and if they complain about it they are called misogynistic names.)

And I say all of this while believing that this particular young woman is telling the truth. And, I could be wrong. I thought about the fact that maybe her husband was an abuser. That’s not because media portrays, stigmatises, and stereotypes hulky white het guys as perps of anything, mind you. It’s because I know lots of women and gay men of all colors who’ve been victimised by white het men.

In this latest story, I’ve wondered if maybe he, the white husband, was involved, himself, in drug runs. Perhaps not. We’ll see what we find out. Lorde knows the media won’t leave this alone. And they won’t PRECISELY for the reasons Melissa says: because the dominant U.S. media must not cover the deaths of women of color. They must not cover the deaths of men of color either. They will usually only cover the terrifying incidents of white women being systematically harmed (by white men) if the perp isn’t a white man.

And so we won’t get news about Iraqi citizens who’ve been raped and murdered by U.S. troops–unless, maybe, if the soldier is a Black or Brown man. And we won’t hear about what the West is really doing in Afghanistan, to women, to men, to children, to the land. And we won’t hear about how U.S. and European weapons are funneled to and furiously fuel every conflict around the world: from Central America to sub-Saharan Africa to cities and towns across the good ol’ U.S. of A.

We won’t be called to grieve the loss of any people of color. Not ever. Not in the white white West. If no one white was harmed, there was no crime, as far as dominant media is concerned. If only whites were harmed, and only people of color were the perpetrators, you’ll be hearing about it for weeks if not months, if not years, if not for centuries.

The U.S. media doesn’t have time to tell us anything that’s fundamentally and systematically wrong with the U.S. We’re too busy being enthralled with what happened in this latest case. And with the latest products to make our skin look years younger. Oh, and Lindsay Lohan and Lady GaGa.

"Undesired" shows us that Gynocide is indeed Global. And if a foetus will become a girl, there are ways to prevent her from ever seeing the light of day

image is from here

Anti-abortion activists would do well to end misogyny (including battery, rape, and incest--by men against girls and women) and stop trying to legislate control of girls' and women's bodies. If they care about all of humanity and not about protecting patriarchal power, that is.

Abortion is a subject of controversy in the U.S. and elsewhere because men want control of women's and girls' bodies any way they can get it, including through battery, rape, and incest, and including through legislating what women and girls can lawfully do if they get pregnant by being raped--by their fathers, boyfriends, husbands, or (less often) unknown rapists. That women ought to determine the course of their own sexual lives (which is also to say their political lives) is a conceptually new idea in the minds of patriarchs, and it is not one that makes patriarchs especially happy. Patriarchs are not easily made happy because their happiness depends on the subjugation of human beings who are not them and subjugated people, often enough, won't settle for subjugation. Subordination and oppression are not life-sustaining practices; they necessarily result in untold deaths. To hear anti-abortionists shout about it, you'd think only foetuses are being destroyed. But the death and destruction of post-birth girls and women occurs through various means.

Those who survive sexual and racial oppression do resist that oppression. Oppressors don't like this rather annoying tendency of subordinated people. Male oppressors--the social dominants in every gender hierarchy on Earth--have the institutional force, available to be acted out interpersonally when deemed appropriate, to make sure women and girls remain below men and boys in every conceivable way. The deaths that add up are those of women and girls.

One conceivable way to keep women and girls down is for men to forcefully impregnate them and make abortion illegal. Another way is for men to beat the hell out of them when they are pregnant, sometimes resulting in miscarriage and the death of the woman. A women I just found out about is facing the challenge of leaving her husband because she is, once again, pregnant. She wants to have a child and she'd like to carry this foetus to term. He apparently has other ideas, as he's beaten her so brutally in the past, during and between pregnancies, that she's miscarried every time she's been pregnant by him thus far. This is not a story about a woman in what is termed "the East". It is a story about a Western woman; a woman born and raised in the U.S. This raises a question: if anti-abortion activists cared about human life so much, why aren't they anti-battery? Why aren't they anti-rape? Why aren't they opposed to men ruling women in law and in custom?

It can appear to those who wish to be in denial, that in the West that girls are valued. But girls are valued primarily (if not only) for what they can do for patriarchally, misogynistically abusive men. No girl is allowed to live her life as if men don't control her in some way at some point. Heterosexist relationships are, after all, compulsory. Parents can want freedom from heteropatriarchal constraints for their daughters, but daughters encounter heteropatriarchal imperatives and mandates daily, regardless of what parents want for their girl children. This is the way of most, if not all, of the world.

Robin Morgan and many other feminists have deeply wanted it to be so, but it was not and is not so: sisterhood is not global except among some networks of women fighting men's misogynistic violence. Sisterhood isn't globalised for many reasons and among those reasons is anti-lesbian heterosexism, white racism, anti-Indigenism, Western imperialism, and the oppression of the Global South by the Global North. A reason too often overlooked by scholars of feminism is this one: brutal patriarchal terrorism and control of human beings. What is global is patriarchal brotherhood, not feminist sisterhood. What is global is gynocide.

Men rule women and globally men rule with a cast iron fist. Sometimes they use other methods.

Historically and currently in the U.S. and in other regions of the West, white men rule women through battery and rape, through discrimination at work and exploitation on the street, and through forcibly sterilising women of color. Men of color rule women too: most often they rule women of color. And white men rule men of color too. Add to this the reality of virulent heterosexism and it becomes rather obvious that heterosexual white men, collectively if not always interpersonally, rule all other groups of people through systems of violence and exploitation that are no longer regionally contained. Yet another method is the racist and heteropatriarchal regulation of women's pregnancies, through enforced misogynist laws and intimate violence, each of which determines which foetuses will be welcomed to come to term and which will not.

With this in mind, I direct your attention to a problem in India. And if you wish to believe it is a problem unique to India, or Asia, or "the East", you may do so, but you'd be mistaken.

What follows is from RadioAustralia.net.au. Please click on the title to link back.

New film highlights India's 'missing' daughters

Updated October 6, 2010 21:39:14

They've become known as India's disappearing daughters, or simply 'the missing' - since 1980, an estimated 40 million girls have been killed through abortion, neglect or murder. Many are killed because of their gender. In Indian society, sons are still seen as a guarantee of status and income. But a new multimedia project called 'Undesired' is fighting to bring the issue into the open.

Presenter: Helene Hofman
Speakers: Walter Astrada, photojournalist; Ruchira Gupta, president and founder, Apne Aap Worldwide; Shreeya Sinha, associate producer and videographer, 'Undesired'

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ASTRADA: I was taking pictures of one girl who was giving birth. Some doctors were saying if she's not having a boy it will be a big problem. The family-in-law is waiting outside. They pass the baby to the sister of the husband. The first reaction was to check the sex of the baby. And it was a girl. Everybody was completely silent. You don't need a language to understand.

HOFMAN: Photojournalist Walter Astrada has covered violence against women in Guatemala and Congo, but he found the situation in India particularly distressing.

ASTRADA: In India, you have the sex based abortion. You have the violence against girls. You have rape. You have burns. You have acid attacks. You have trafficking of women. You have selling of women. Basically you have a lot of violence where usually only one of these [things] happens in every country. Or maybe two. There it's altogether.

Today - and every day - 7,000 foetuses will be aborted in India simply because they are female.

Across the country, from the foothills of the Himalayas to the slums of New Delhi, female child mortality is suspiciously high. In the more affluent communities of Punjab state the rate is 81 per cent higher than it should be. In neighbouring Haryana, it's 135 per cent.

And even for the girls that live, millions are be mistreated by their own families, neglected and less well fed or educated than their brothers.

'Undesired' tells the stories of these mothers and daughters through Walter Astrada's photographs and through interviews with victims and activists like Ruchira Gupta, president and founder of Apne Aap Worldwide, an Indian anti-sex trafficking organisation.

GUPTA: Every image was horrifying but every image rang true, from the little girl, who was sort of curled up like a foetus, to the mother kissing her daughter happy that she was alive, to the woman who was a burn victim from dowry expectations. Every image was chilling and I just wish I didn't have to see those images. Violence against women is very common and it's so normalised. The other reason it's not talked about is because there are these super achieving women in India who are prime ministers and doctors and lawyers and so people tend to see that image of India, not knowing that while there might be a few hundred thousand women achievers there are a few million who are being subjugated and trampled upon who are also girls and women.

HOFMAN: For a Hindu family in India, a son is a status symbol, who will eventually be able to provide for the family.

A daughter, on the other hand, brings pressure to one day provide a dowry.

Dowries were declared illegal back in 1961, but there are frequent reports of women being burned or killed by grooms and their families when the dowry fails to meet their expectations.

Also illegal is gender based abortion.

Shreeya Sinha, the associate producer and videographer for 'Undesired', says she quickly realised both practices are widespread.

SINHA: Since I am in fact Indian I knew that these atrocities were happening, but it was only after I went to India that I realised that the situation was a hundred times worse. I was shocked. It's not at all uncommon to see headlines saying 'dowry deaths', 'honour killings', 'sex selective abortions'. You find female foetuses dumped in backyards and in gutters. What I do hope is that 'Undesired' will start a conversation because it really starts with a mindset and if we can get people talking, hopefully they'll start to question what's going on in India and hopefully Indians themselves because there is a big sense of denial about what's happening to women there.

HOFMAN: 'Undesired' was funded by a grant from the Alexia Foundation, which supports photographers promoting social justice and cultural understanding.

It has been posted on the website of the US based media production company, Media Storm, allowing it to be shared by email and through social networking sites.

The idea is to get the message to as many people as possible.

Give a Damn! Fight Heterosexist Bullying any way you can. If in need, reach out to The Trevor Project.

My condolences to the loved ones of Raymond Chase and Cody J. Barker. May these two young men rest in peace along with all the other queer youth who have taken their own lives to escape the humiliation, degradation, and pain of being tormented in a heteropatriarchal and racist society for being gay, including Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi, and Asher Brown. Condolences to their loved ones as well.

The violence of normalising and statusing heterosexuality and stigmatising homosexuality is one and the same. All of it is tied to misogyny. Here's another LGBTQ Nation article about two other teenage gay males whose lives are lost due to anti-queer/pro-straight violence. Please click on the title to link back and see related links at the end of the article.

Two more gay teen suicide victims — Raymond Chase, Cody Barker mark 6 deaths in September

LGBTQ Nation • Friday, October 1, 2010 • 

We are saddened to learn today of two more gay teens who have turned to suicide. This brings the total to 6 known suicides in September by openly gay, or perceived gay, teenagers.

Raymond Chase

Raymond Chase, a 19-year-old openly gay sophomore studying culinary arts at Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, committed suicide on Wednesday by hanging himself in his dorm room.

Details of the incident are scarce and unlike previous reports, it is not known at this time what the circumstances were leading up to Chase’s death.

Johnson and Wales Vice President Ronald Martel emailed students with the news on Thursday:

Today I contact you with the deeply sad news of the passing of Raymond Chase, sophomore, 19, culinary arts major. The campus community is mourning the loss of this vibrant young man who leaves many JWU friends and teachers, and a loving family of Monticello, New York.

We have also learned of another gay teen whose death was sadly, but unintentionally, overlooked.

Cody Barker

In Shiocton, Wisconsin, Cody J. Barker, a 17-year-old openly gay teen, took his life on September 13.

Cody attended Shiocton High School, where he was active in choir. He recently attended a seminar aimed at helping him establish a gay/straight alliance at his school. Cody also enjoyed bicycling and gardening, and was a Lady Gaga fan.

Maria Peeples, Barker’s peer mentor through GSA for Safe Schools, said he was a passionate activist for all students, especially those, “targeted or ostracized for their sexual orientation or their gender identity and expression. … He really cared about making schools a safe place for students. That wasn’t always his own experience with school.” [Wisconsin Gazette]

Raymond and Cody mark the fifth and sixth known teen suicides in the month of September among openly gay, and perceived gay, teens in what has become an epidemic of gay suicides:

On September 9, Billy (William) Lucas, of Greensburg, IN, was was found dead in a barn at his grandmother’s home — he had hanged himself. While Billy never self-identified as gay, friends report he was tormented for years because other kids thought he was gay. Billy was 15 years old.

On September 19, Seth Walsh of of Tehachapi, CA, was found unconscious and not breathing after attempting to hang himself. Seth, age 13, spent the better part of 10 days on life support — he died on September 28. Seth was openly gay and suffered years of relentless bullying.

On September 22, Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, 18, of Ridgewood, NJ, jumped to his death off the George Washington Bridge, just days after his college roommate broadcast live images on the internet of him having a sexual encounter with another man.

On September 23, Asher Brown, age 13, came home from school and shot himself in the head after enduring what his mother and stepfather say was constant harassment from four other students at his middle school in Houston, TX. Asher told his parents he was gay that morning.

On Thursday, the Human Rights Campaign issued a nationwide action alert asking Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to speak out immediately and to push every school in the nation to implement anti-bullying policies inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Our schools and our nation cannot sit back and wait for the next tragedy,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “Tools and resources are available to protect our children and it is adults who must act to put strong laws, policies and procedures in place.”