Feminist Action Alert: Please Read this Report and Sign a Petition to Support Women's Rights Activists In Iraq

image is from here

What follows is from *here* and is cross-posted at this blog for the purposes of garnering more support and securing more safety and freedom for Yanar Mohammed and other revolutionary feminist activists in Iraq. With great thanks to Yanar Mohammed, to AWID, to trust.org, and to Amanda Shaw.


Warning: the news below is both grim and graphic.

Realistic hope for change comes with sustained (and reported) organising and other actions of resistance and revolution. Prayers and power for all women in Iraq and to the women in any country where US and NATO military forces are occupying, committing gynocidal atrocities that are not reported at all in Western Patriarchal Corporate media. Please take a moment to sign the petition linked to at the end of the body of this report.

You may also link back by clicking on the title below. 

The Word on Women - The Other Tahrir Square: Attacks Continue On Women Human Rights Defenders In Iraq

By AWID Friday Files | 6 hour(s) ago | Comments ( 0 )

By Amanda Shaw

Women have been at the forefront of demonstrations across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the recent popular uprisings, which have received much media and international attention. In contrast, coverage of attacks on women human rights defenders (WHRDs) in Iraq’s Tahrir Square demonstrations has been limited, AWID asks why.

On the frontlines of demonstrations or behind the scenes as tech-savvy organizers, women have played pivotal roles in the recent democratic revolutions and uprisings in the MENA region. Women’s activism and organizing in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya has garnered substantial international attention. Yet in spite of several attacks, including sexual assaults, on Iraqi women activists and their organizations since February, women’s roles in Iraq’s Tahrir Square demonstrations have generated less media coverage. And the violence against them has intensified since June, one of the deadliest months so far in 2011 for Iraqis.

The Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) is one of the leaders of Iraq’s Tahrir Square demonstrations, helping to organize youth activists and advocating for women’s rights. AWID takes a look at OWFI’s work, the situation of women human rights defenders (WHRDs) in Iraq and asks why the other Tahrir Square is receiving so little international attention.

Women’s Rights and Women Human Rights Defenders in Iraq

Since the U.S. Invasion in 2003, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the conflict, nearly 4.8 million have been forcefully displaced and almost 750,000 women widowed. Even before the invasion, and as a result of years of economic sanctions and war, Iraqis experienced high rates of violence, displacement, exile, widowhood, unemployment and illiteracy. Today, Iraqi women face violence from all sides: from armies and security forces, sectarian and tribal leaders as well as from private security contractors unaccountable to international law.[1]

Different political factions including opposition and resistance movements have also tended to target women and gender relations in their political projects, whether through physical violence or legislation.[2] According to OWFI’s 2010 Annual Report, women in Iraq experience gender-specific forms of violence that include so-called ‘honour’-based violence, trafficking, violence toward women accused of prostitution, being unveiled, and wearing makeup.[3]

It is within this context of militarization, religious, sectarian and political fragmentation, widespread violence (including various forms of violence against women) and increasingly conservative visions of gender relations that Iraqi WHRDs organize. They face the same denial of civil and political rights as all citizens – including those of peaceful assembly, association, expression and the right to life and security – but with gender-specific consequences.[4] Some Iraqi WHRDs take part in mixed human rights groups or social movements, while others denounce the disappearance of family members  or work directly on women’s rights agendas.

The context of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by foreign troops has led to a particularly problematic dynamic for those working on women’s rights who may be labelled “western” or “traitorous” for their work, which may also be seen by some Islamists as associated with the supposedly secular agenda of the Saddam Hussein regime.[5] Given this difficult context, Iraqi WHRDs may be forced to abandon their political activities, go into exile or focus instead on surviving and caring for family members.

But in spite of these enormous challenges, Iraqi WHRDs continue their work in addressing violence, resisting militarism and organizing for democratic change. Some of the major achievements of the Iraqi women’s movements include campaigns against a discriminatory law governing marriage, divorce and child custody and limiting the constitutional role of Islam, lobbying for gender quotas in political representation as well as working to ensure legislation complies with international conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).[6]

The Other Tahrir Square

Since 2010’s inconclusive elections, the Iraqi coalition government has been plagued by infighting and financial scandals, while many Iraqis still lack basic services and employment opportunities are few.[7] Inspired in part by events elsewhere in the region, Iraqi citizens have gathered every Friday since February in Baghdad’s own Tahrir Square to protest corruption, poor government and basic services, high unemployment and lack of freedom of expression.

Authorities have responded harshly, banning street demonstrations and attempting to confine large gatherings to football stadiums.[8] As a result, there have been a number of clashes between pro-democracy demonstrators on the one hand and security forces and pro-government demonstrators on the other, resulting in the deaths of at least 125 people, hundreds wounded and the arrest and detention of dozens of activists.[9] Among the activists who have been attacked are several associated with OWFI, which has played a key role and helped to increase women’s visibility in the square demonstrations.

OWFI’s current president, Yanar Mohammed, co-founded the organization during the 2003 U.S. invasion by putting up a sign reading “Women’s Freedom in Iraq” in a burned out bank in Baghdad. OWFI advocates for change in the structures that allow violence against women to be perpetrated with impunity, implementing programs that strengthen women’s political participation and promote freedom from violence. They have established an underground network of safe houses for women escaping violence, advocate for women in prison, organize against sexual trafficking and run a newspaper and radio station. Since its original three members, the size of the organization has grown or shrunk depending on the country’s security situation; OWFI currently has almost 60 activists, hundreds of supporters in person and online and is active in four cities in central, western and southern Iraq.

Targeting OWFI and other Iraqi Activists

Since the Friday Tahrir Square demonstrations began in February of this year, OWFI activists have experienced violent and sexualized attacks, intimidation and harassment preventing them from carrying out their work. There have also been reprisals against their youth allies, including detentions and kidnappings. In an interview posted on the organization’s website, OWFI President, Yanar Mohammed, cites their work in organizing the youth at Tahrir Square as being one of the main reasons why OWFI activists have been targeted.

On Friday June 10^th, after the expiration of a one-hundred-day deadline, set by Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki for improving basic services, demonstrators gathered because there were no noticeable changes in the provision of electricity, water, jobs, or in ending corruption. At this demonstration, four women from OWFI’s 25-member delegation were attacked, sexually assaulted and beaten by pro-government demonstrators who destroyed their banners, beat them with wooden sticks, and groped their bodies. The attack was seen by OWFI as an attempt to shame the activists in public space.

OWFI activists met in the first week of July to discuss a strategy in the face of this violence, and on July 8^th, a bus full of female activists and some youth supporters returned to Tahrir Square with banners reading “Beating of Tahrir Women Increased Our Determination for Change,” and “Instead of fulfilling the promise of the hundred days, they released their thugs on us”.[10] Activists Jannat Basim, Aya Al Lami, and Yanar Mohammed were interviewed by the media and used a megaphone to announce their determination to continue challenging the authorities in spite of repression. But as the delegation left the square, pro-government supporters intimidated and physically attacked youth activists that were accompanying the OWFI delegation, surrounded their bus and attacked the activists through the doors and windows. One youth supporter was kidnapped and later released. Only when foreign journalists were called to the scene did the pro-government supporters abate.

U.S.-based women’s rights organization MADRE has described repression against OWFI as “an attempt to terrorize women who have been the catalysts for demonstrations that call for a new Iraq.” As Yanar Mohammed describes in a MADRE Interview “when the humiliation is sexual, in a society like Iraq, they know it will break the women.”

The Role of International Solidarity

The mainstream media has largely ignored these events and the recent upsurge in violence in Iraq, some citing readers’ “Iraq fatigue” to justify their lack of coverage.[11] According to Yanar Mohammed, media coverage plays an essential role in helping to protect women human rights defenders, “if you are an outspoken feminist in Iraq these days and you are demonstrating in Tahrir Square, you have actually no protection. So media [coverage] is the best protection.” Moreover, international solidarity efforts – campaigns and other forms of calling attention to the work of WHRDs – are made all the more challenging by the complex terrain of an Iraq overwhelmed by foreign intervention. At the same time, Mohammed marks an important distinction:

“Even if the U.S. intervention that happened before – the military intervention – has destroyed our lives, we need a civilian intervention now. We need the American people to support and empower us again so we can take matters into our own hands and hold free elections." [12]

Indeed, broad-based international (and not just U.S.) solidarity with Iraqi WHRDs remains important in helping them continue their work. As female activists occupy center stage elsewhere in the region’s democratic revolutions and uprisings, the activists in Iraq’s Tahrir Square should also be counted among them.

Sign the MADRE petition condemning the attacks on OWFI and other activists here.

Notes:
1. http://www.globalfundforwomen.org/impact/success-stories/153/1827-impact-of-militarism-on-women-in-the-middle-east-a-north-africa
2. Al-Ali, N. and Pratt, N. (2008) “Women’s organizing and the conflict in Iraq since 2003” Feminist Review 88, pg. 74-85. Pg. 75.
3. OWFI Annual Report, 2010.
4. Ibid.
5. Al-Ali, N. and Pratt, N. pg. 81.
6. Al-Ali, N. and Pratt, N. Pg. 76.
7. http://www.npr.org/2011/07/11/137771025/dispute-over-key-jobs-stalls-iraqs-government
8. http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/21/iraq-widening-crackdown-protests
9. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/07/08/iraq.protest/
10. Personal Communication, Yanar Mohammed, 20 July 2011.
11. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/07/iraq-iran-largely-term-media
12. http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/06/13/iraqi-feminists-sexually-assaulted-during-pro-democracy-protests/

On Colonisation, Racism, Sexism, Language, and Fighting Oppression

This is a cross-post from The Vagina Conspiracy.

Thank you, Lb.

Dear readers, please click *here* for more.


What is inherited from colonization from Lb'rashon Breed on Vimeo.

They're at it again over to Yahoo Answers: balking about White Radical Feminism (as if Patriarchs and Masculinists were timid little innocents doing nothing at all except being abused)

image is from here

There's some strange discussion at that place. It doesn't get too much stranger than what men say about feminists, radical feminism, and women generally. But despite what some dood says, the real question is:

Why do men hate women so much, despise femininity, and put down anyone who, in their view, displays anything "feminine" at all? And why do men so systematically express contempt for anyone who is a woman, feminine or not?

But, if we're going to pretend the social world isn't misogynistic, and instead is only about threatening men, we end up with stupidity like this from "Athlete". Please click on the question below to link back to the source site.

Athlete

Resolved Question

Why do feminists dislike masculinity, and men in general ?

It seems that feminists have a strong disliking for all men (except for the few cowardly ones that succumb to feminism and become "male feminists") - there have been multiple quotes by the famous feminists that have shaped feminism, such as from Andrea Dworkin (and many other feminists) who has stated that even consensual sex is an act of violence and is simply rape. She has also stated things such as marriage being derived from rape

" Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership. " - Andrea Dworkin

"Intercourse as an act often expresses the power men have over women." - Andrea Dworkin

"All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman." - Catherine MacKinnon

"All men are rapists and that's all they are" - Marilyn French


Now, my question is, WHY do these feminists dislike men so much ? To condemn such an intimate act of love between a man and a woman (sexual intercourse) as "rape" is unfathomable to me. Have they been hurt, at one point in their lives, by a man so much that they developed a hatred for them all ? If this is true, then perhaps misogynists have had the same thing happen to them, only in their case, they have been hurt by a woman.

• 4 days ago
• Report Abuse

Additional Details

@Sam - The fact that you agree that marriage is the same as kidnapping and raping someone shows that a feminist's mind is blurred and clouded by hate.

4 days ago

@Sammy - Since I'm 16, and not technically a man, you love me don't you ? <3

4 days ago

@Sam - Marriage was never about "abduction" - if you do research you will find that it's purpose has always been pure (to create a bond between two loving men and women), however, the misuse of marriage sometimes led to people marrying to gain land. Marrying to obtain land is NOT EQUAL to abduction. Feminists such as you and Andrea Dworkin simply feel the need to be victimized (when in fact there is nothing making you a victim) and so you create these ideas of something as pure as marriage being "derived from abduction." Open your eyes.

4 days ago

@Sam - Ah but that's the thing right there, it's not a fact you're stating, it's not even an opinion. It's a delusional lie created to fullfill your need to be victimized, and whatever action you try to take against the situation you make up in your "fact" is your attempt at satisfying your inferiority complex.

4 days ago

@Sam - Indeed they are creating the lies for you, but not just for you, they are creating them to instill the idea in ALL people's minds that Women = Helpless Victims, and Men = Brutal Savage Predators.

Considering The Unbearable Whiteness of Being a Radical Feminist Who Isn't White

photograph of Sojourner Truth is from here

Almost two years ago I posted *this* from displayed the above image. Approximately one and a half years ago I posted *this*. In the time prior to then, and since then, I've seen almost no examples of white radical feminists taking responsibility for their whiteness or organising a white radical feminist movement that places the eradication of racist misogyny (including all the effects of globalised white male supremacy) at its center.

I have criticism here of whiteness--usually white men's. But as an ally to radical feminist women of color, I include in my critiques the often unacknowledged, unowned, and irresponsible display (via invisibilisation and denial) of whiteness in what is termed "radical feminism". Such critique, like my critique of sexism and misogyny, is seen as hatred of the oppressor group, or unfair, or mean, or, especially, insulting. How is naming something that harms people "insulting" to the people in charge of the perpetuation of the harm?

There are so many examples of this unacknowledged and irresponsible use of whiteness in "radical feminism" that many women of color I know won't use the term to define or describe themselves.

But if radical (and feminist) means "getting to the root" and "pro-activist" and "revolutionary", then surely what many women around the world are doing, in the realm of theory-building, community-building, and pro-revolutionary activism, is radical feminist. Asian women, Black women, Latina women, Indigenous women are most women. White women are not most women. Yet many white radical feminist perspectives, shaped by white experience and white privilege and power, are considered central to what radical feminism is and does.

I support and advocate perspectives which come out of white radical feminism of the last forty years. My own work has been deeply shaped and directed by the work of white radical feminists such as Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Catharine A. MacKinnon, and Sheila Jeffreys. But their work is not the center and foundation of radical feminism to me. It is complimentary; it is an addition to the core radical feminist work which is usually not termed such by whites and which may not be included in anthologies about the history of radical feminism, edited and published by white women and white presses. And when men term a woman "radical" or "feminist" often enough all they mean to do is stigmatise and insult the women.

White women's radical feminism, which will likely be termed here "white radical feminism" or "white racist radical feminism" or "white supremacist radical feminism" is critically important to me while it is also glaringly problematic--and harmful, and misogynistic--in its unbearable whiteness of being.

Radical feminism (by radical feminists of color) is the core, foundational work, to me. In North America that is often the work of Indigenous and Black women. Globally it is also the work of Latina and Asian women.

In my view but not mine alone, African American radical feminists, in the last forty years, such as Flo Kennedy, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde (who is also Caribbean-American), bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, have presented a far more comprehensive analysis of society from radical feminist perspectives and they don't leave out critiquing whiteness as most white racist radical feminists do.

A member of a (pro-)radical feminist collective I am part of has been in contact with a prominent white racist radical feminist who won't answer the question about whether or not she is racist. This is added to all the other experiences of white racist radical feminists who, in addition to not owning or acknowledging their own racism, will deny it quite defensively. I have seen this happen over and over and over again to the point that I consider the denial of whites' racism to be a key part of how whites keep white supremacy oppressively in tact and in control.

I can see the racism of white radical feminism and it's not difficult to spot if one is willing to call it what it should be called: one expression and manifestation of white supremacy.

No whites will use the term "white supremacist" to define themselves nor will they use "white supremacy" to define the ideology fused to practice that is their own practice. Not white men, not white trans people, not white women. Wherever whiteness exists, you can bet it will only be people of color who are willing (and, it appears, able) to name it accurately and appropriately.

The prominent white racist radical feminist argued to one member of the collective that there is a difference between racism or white supremacy and "race-blindness". Putting aside the problematic able-ism of that term for a moment, how is race-unconsciousness NOT racism-in-action? How is making that distinction NOT the practice of liberalism applied to race politics?

I know of no radical feminist women--of any color--who argue that men ought to be able to define and control terms and their meanings. Especially terms that refer to what men do that is oppressive to women. So "gender-blind" or "gender-unconscious" doesn't get to exist as a term, generally, among anyone I know who is anti-sexist and anti-misogyny. Why, then, should the term "race-blind" get to?

If a white person doesn't see race (which clearly the problematic term "race-blind" implies), doesn't that mean they operate in a multi-racial/racist world as a racist? How can they not? How does not seeing one's own whiteness result in one being anything other than racist and white supremacist in practice, interpersonally and institutionally, structurally and socially?

No white person I know, including myself, can explain how that might be possible. There's nothing radical (or pro-feminist) about protecting and defending whiteness, white supremacy, white privileges, white power, or white unconsciousness about race and racism. Because, especially in the last seven years, I have seen how much white women's racism negatively impacts (hurts, harms, demeans, subjugates, and oppresses) women of color, I look forward to the days when "radical feminists" popularly (and in practice) means "women who are organised to radically critique and challenge all forms of oppression that harm women--in the name of liberating women from all forms of oppression" and is no longer used synonymously to mean "white radical feminists". Most radical feminist women I know are not white and are not "color-blind" either.

And, contrary to the assumptions of many white radical feminists, the radical feminist women of color I know are clear about the need to end pornography, prostitution, trafficking, sexual slavery, and are far more conscious of the need to eradicate all of those forms of gross harm, each of which is founded on the existence and protection of racist misogyny, than are white radical feminists I know.

There is a white radical feminist conceit that only white women can really "get it" about things like pornography and prostitution and that being of color in North America means one is necessarily "Third Wave" or Liberal. Lost in such condescendingly white myopic analysis is the fact that neither pornography or prostitution are the "primary emergency" issues in the lives of many women of color. Also lost is the profoundly liberal politics of whites ignoring racist misogyny as a central form and expression of woman-hating.

If you are a radical feminist of color and are interested in co-organising a radical feminist women of color blog with other radical/feminist women of color, please contact me at aradicalprofeminist@gmail.com.

From Herstory to History: What Happened to the News of the Girl Who (according to very few news reports) Sparked the Riots in London?

This is a cross post from The Vagina Conspiracy. Thank you, Lb'rashon Breed.


London Riots from Lb'rashon Breed on Vimeo.

Mourning the Loss of Christina Santiago and Praying for her partner Alisha Marie Brennan

Christina Santiago (left) and her partner, Alisha Marie Brennon
Photo via: The L Stop

With deep condolences to all the loved ones of Christina Santiago, and best wishes and prayers for the emotional and physical healing of her partner, Alisha Marie Brennan.

What follows is from *here* at IndyStar.com:

Community activist Christina Santiago and her partner, Alisha Marie Brennon, drove from their Chicago home to see Sugarland perform at the Indiana State Fair, a trip a year in the planning.

Santiago, 29, died Saturday night when strong winds toppled the stage at the fairgrounds. Brennon remains in critical condition at Wishard Memorial Hospital.

The trip was rare time away from work for Santiago, a manager at the Community Care Project at Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago.

"The sudden and devastating loss of Christina has left the entire community, including her Howard Brown Health Center family, heartbroken," said Jamal M. Edwards, president and chief executive of the center. "Christina was an amazing woman -- one of our very brightest stars -- who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of women, particularly lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer women ."

Santiago and Brennon had been partners for more than two years.

Friends from the health center drove to Wishard Sunday to visit Brennon. Back in Chicago, there were plans for a joint prayer vigil with the health center and Amigas Latinas, an association that provides resources to Latina lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning women. Santiago served on its board of directors.

Santiago's work to expand the center's women's health services division earned her recognition. In 2010, co-workers honored her with a Spirit Award, equivalent to employee of the year.

She also was named to the Windy City Times' 30 Under 30 list in 2007 for her work with the health center.

Edwards said Santiago was a big Sugarland fan. She passed on opportunities to speak and participate in Northalsted Market Days, a two-day annual street fair in Chicago that attracts about 100,000 people and promotes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture.

Please see The L Stop, *here*, for more currently and in upcoming days.

What Andrea Dworkin DIDN'T say: "All sex is rape", "All men are rapists", "All heterosexual sex is rape", and similar shit

Please click on the title below to link back to the source page:

Movie Review: The Spiritually Ugly 30 Minutes or Less

• 8/12/11 at 3:00 PM
• 9Comments

Photo: Sony Pictures

The R-rated comedy 30 Minutes or Less has the careless, amoral vibe of a seventies drive-in chase movie awash in drugs, nudity, and shooting, and without any pesky, PG-13, momentum-killing anxiety about “social consequences.” The makers don’t go as far as they might have — kids, for example, aren’t killed (only traumatized for life). But in spirit, this movie couldn’t be much more ugly. I enjoyed it. It suits the national mood.

The director, Ruben Fleischer, was behind the mysteriously successful Zombieland and is now, having wrung cheap laughs out of the end of civilization, essentially self-lobotomized. This film is better. It has a clever, mean, relentlessly vulgar script by Michael Dilberti. The central relationships are bracingly grotesque, the laughs, such as they are, are proportional to the degree of the characters’ avarice, murderousness, stupidity, and indifference to devastation. Early on, best buddies Jesse Eisenberg, a pizza deliveryman, and Aziz Ansari, an elementary-school teacher, beat each other up and vow never to speak again. Eisenberg turns out to have deflowered Ansari’s sister (Dilshad Vadsaria) while Ansari admits he divulged a secret that ended Eisenberg’s parents’ marriage. Adding to the unpleasantness is that Ansari, an amusing comedian, has no idea how to modulate his performance and shouts all his lines, while Eisenberg, finally freed by last year’s The Social Network from his stammering-sweetie persona, makes a point of staying brusque and irritable.

Danny McBride is the film’s strongest presence, as he often is in comedies that up the macho creepiness quotient to the point where you wonder whether Andrea Dworkin weren’t right about all men being rapists. He plays the unemployed, druggie, relentlessly emasculated son of a retired military officer (Fred Ward) living off lottery winnings. On the advice of a stripper he thinks likes him, McBride decides to kill his father — or, rather, to pay someone to kill his father and force someone else to rob a bank to come up with the $100,000 hit man fee. If that sounds moronically convoluted, it should be said that McBride is the thinker in his social circle. His pal, played by Nick Swardson, is chiefly good at blowing things up and burning things down. Swardson does, however, create the bomb vest that locks onto the delivery guy who has the bad luck to answer the pair’s call for a pizza. And so Eisenberg is forced into robbing a bank to keep from being vaporized.

30 Minutes or Less is paced like a thriller, and it’s impressive how much suspense Fleischer and Dilberti are able to generate given that no one onscreen has any brains.

(Ansari suggests that Eisenberg remove the bomb vest by sawing off his arms, putting them in ice, and having them reattached at the hospital.) Halfway through, Michael Pena shows up as a weirdly effeminate hit man who makes you think better of McBride. But then McBride comes onscreen and you start hoping for Pena to waste him. Then Eisenberg and Ansari blunder into a bank and you think maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they both got blown up. I think those debt-ceiling negotiations have really done a number on us.

By: David Edelstein Filed Under: movie review, 30 minutes or less, movies