Category Archives: english

posts (also) in english

fw: Roma women urge European governments to respect their human rights

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(2nd International meeting of Roma women)

Athens, 12.01.2010 – The increased and alarming human rights violations against Romani women and ways of ensuring full enjoyment of their rights topped the agenda of a two-day conference of Roma women, which ended today in Athens.

In a final declaration of the conference, the participants unanimously called on European governments to uphold their obligations and ensure that Romani women enjoy their fundamental rights, to put an end to a climate of impunity around atrocious abuses of their rights, to take unequivocal measures to punish perpetrators and compensate Romani women victims.

Romani women also urged the governments of European countries, where forced sterilisation is an ongoing practice, to take active measures to compensate the victims, sanction perpetrators and initiate state medical reform in the area of patients’ rights.

The conference’s conclusions stressed the need to prevent de facto segregation in housing and education, while promoting the principles of equality and integration.

Participants also encouraged Roma activists and human rights communities to actively engage with Roma communities to raise awareness on their human rights and facilitate access to public services and law enforcement mechanisms.
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fw: European Feminist Forum publishes “A Herstory”

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Over the past several years, feminist women and men throughout Europe came together to meet as part of the European Feminist Forum. In the European Feminist Forum, they exchanged ideas about issues that face women in Europe today, with the goal of creating a new European feminist agenda. The discussions are now collected in the book “A Herstory (2004-208)”. Download the book (PDF)

The new Europe

Women in Europe still often do not enjoy the same opportunities as men. And the newly expanded Europe brings with it entirely new challenges – a new dynamic in the area of economic migration, for example, and also an increase in the trafficking of women from Eastern Europe.

Time for a new feminist agenda
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“Is human life less precious than this belief?! … doesn’t need a complicated answer.”

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“Reclaiming the lucidity of our hearts” by Sass Rogando Sasot

[…] The root of our oppression is the belief that there is only one and only one way to be male or female. And this starts from our birth. Upon a quick look on our genitals, we are assigned into either male or female. This declaration is more than just a statement of what’s between our legs. It is a prescription of how we should and must live our lives. It is a dictation of what we should think about ourselves, the roles we should play, the clothes we should wear, the way we should move, and the people with whom we should have romantic or erotic relationships. But the existence of people whose identities, bodies, and experiences do not conform to gender norms is a proof that this belief is wrong.

Nonetheless, even though the truth of human diversity is so evident and clear to us, we choose to hang on to our current beliefs about gender, a belief that rejects reality and forces people to live a lie. This is the belief that leads to attacks on our physical and mental integrity, to different forms of discrimination against us, and to our social marginalization. This is the belief that led to Joan of Arc to be burned at stake because she was cross-dressing. This is the belief that motivated the rape and murder of Brandon Teena on December 31, 1993. This is the belief that led to the stabbing to death of Ebru Soykan, a prominent transgender human rights activist in Turkey, on March 10, 2009. This is the belief that led to the arrest of 67 Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia for cross-dressing in June this year. This is the belief that keeps the list of transgender people being harassed, killed, and violated growing year after year. And it is very unfortunate that our legal systems, religions, and cultures are being used to justify, glorify, and sanctify the violent expressions of this belief.

So we question: Is human life less precious than this belief? Is our right to life, to dignified existence, to liberty, and pursuit of happiness subservient to gender norms? This doesn’t need a complicated answer. You want to be born, to live, and die with dignity – so do we! You want the freedom to express the uniqueness of the life force within you – so do we! You want to live with authenticity – so do we!

Now is the time that we realize that diversity does not diminish our humanity; that respecting diversity does not make us less human; that understanding and accepting our differences do not make us cruel. And in fact, history has shown us that denying and rejecting human variability is the one that has lead us to inflict indignity upon indignity towards each other. […]

One amazing speech, and one amazing woman!

women’s stories and climate change

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Climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on women, as witnessed in her homeland Bangladesh, says Anushay Hossain. But where are women’s voices and outrage in response to this growing concern?

[…] The scenario in Bangladesh reveals that climate change is real and is already impacting populations and ecosystems around the world. But the case of Bangladesh shows us something more: It’s the world’s poor who will feel the impact of this change the hardest. And women make up approximately 65 percent of the world’s poorest populations, according to the International Labor Organization.

Climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on women, concluded a report released yesterday by The United Nations Population Fund. “The State of World Population 2009,” which focuses on women, population and climate change, also says that women have been largely overlooked in the debate on how to address climate change-related problems, and that success in combating this concern is more likely if policies, programs and treaties consider women’s rights and needs.

This report is more evidence that though the gender angle of climate change will not be part of the agenda at upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference, which takes place in Copenhagen from Dec. 7-18, it should be. Negotiations leading up to the conference, at which it is hoped an international agreement will be adopted for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, have already hit a wall as developing and developed nations disagree on how to fight climate change. […]

— “Feminist Voices Missing in Climate Change Debate”

On “State of World Population 2009”:
State of World Population 2009 – Facing a changing world: women, population and climate

How do population dynamics affect greenhouse gases and climate change? Will urbanization and an ageing population help or hinder efforts to adapt to a warming world? And could better reproductive health care and improved relations between women and men make a difference in the fight against climate change? Find the answers in the State of World Population 2009.

The whole world has been talking about carbon credits, carbon trading and emissions targets. But not enough has been said about the people whose activities contribute to those emissions or about those who will be most affected by climate change, especially women.

The climate-change debate needs to be reframed, putting people at the centre. Unless climate policies take people into account, they will fail to mitigate climate change or to shield vulnerable populations from the potentially disastrous impacts.

From Worldwatch Institute:

[…] One major finding of the report is that cultural, legal, and other barriers, such as poverty, keep women from having a say in the decisions that affect their environments, their families, and their livelihoods—in other words, their lives.
Who is telling the stories of women who are thriving despite the daily challenges they face? On-the-ground, first-person research is what tends to be missing in a lot of publications and news sources these days. […] Worldwatch is placing staff in the field to find out what is really working in agriculture—from policies designed to empower women and communities to innovative ways to produce nutritious food for vulnerable populations.
Nourishing the Planet: Evaluating Environmentally Sustainable Solutions to Reduce Global Hunger and Rural Poverty

More on the report at RH Reality Check

“Rape jokes are not jokes. Woman-hating jokes are not jokes.”

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some simple advice:

Listen. The men in your lives will tell you what they do. As long as the R word doesn’t get attached, rapists do self-report. The guy who says he sees a woman too drunk to know where she is as an opportunity is not joking. He’s telling you how he sees it.

The guy who says, “bros before hos”, is asking you to make a pact.

The Pact. The social structure that allows the predators to hide in plain sight, to sit at the bar at the same table with everyone, take a target home, rape her, and stay in the same social circle because she can’t or won’t tell anyone, or because nobody does anything if she does. The pact to make excuses, to look for mitigation, to patch things over — to believe that what happens to our friends — what our friends do to our friends — is not (using Whoopi Goldberg’s pathetic apologetics) “rape-rape”.

Change the culture… [W]e need to change the environment that the rapist operates in. Choose not to be part of a rape-supportive environment. Rape jokes are not jokes. Woman-hating jokes are not jokes. These guys are telling you what they think. When you laugh along to get their approval, you give them yours. You tell them that the social license to operate is in force; that you’ll go along with the pact to turn your eyes away from the evidence; to make excuses for them; to assume it’s a mistake, of the first time, or a confusing situation. You’re telling them that they’re at low risk.

from … Rape, In Theory And Practice @ yes means yes!

a new favorite blog!

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Barnyard Chorus
– an excellent Singaporean feminist and generally progressive group blog whose whole concept and approach i really love; from their “About us”:

Barnyard Chorus are a bunch of very concerned livestock members of the public that have a lot to say about the running of the world by our human and feral counterparts. And although through our writing we may not strike you as cuddly cute, we are actually quite friendly and amenable to letting you pet us for a minute, in exchange for a nominal treat.
Send your offer to peasant barnyard engineer, Farmer Plant’alot–let us think about it before we have our people call your people

:)

it’s interesting that Singapore is currently working for legislation against marital rape, which is something we have only recently started to take seriously in Romania, as in many European states, actually – through the removal of the line in the penal code that absolved a rapist if he married the victim and the addition in the definition of aggravated rape of a line about “victims who are family members” – and which indeed is still missing in many countries (see also 2008 UNIFEM report, figure 5.3), and a problem including in the U.S., in spite of spousal rape being criminalized in all 50 states. anyway, i like the Barnyard Chorus because it’s very active(-ist) and current and informative, but also well written, thoughtful, diverse, and, yeah, funny.

on “the danger of the single story”

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“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to disposess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower and humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that dignity.
[…] When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a ‘kind of paradise.'”

(via flip flopping joy: “The danger of a single story”)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

a racist, classist “pro-education” campaign

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“Minister Kocáb disgusted with Slovak Roma advertising” (via h.)

Prague, Oct 8 (CTK) – Czech Human Rights and Ethnic Minorities Minister Michael Kocab considers the method of advertising education used by Romany workers from Slovakia cynical and calculating, his spokeswoman Lejla Abbasova told CTK Thursday.

Workers from Slovakia, mainly Romanies, who repaired communications in Prague centre on Wednesday wore yellow T-shirts with the inscription “I should have studied harder!, thus becoming walking advertisements for education.

The inscription also mentioned the web address www.skoly.cz that participates in the event with the Underline communication agency.

[…] Kocab said such advertising was deepening a degrading stereotype of an uneducated Romany.

According to Pravo, the workers allegedly got cigarettes, beer and sausages as a reward for the participation in the advertising campaign.

They allegedly agreed to wear the advertising T-shirts voluntarily, Pravo writes.

However, the www.romea.cz server, which also informed about the event, said that the workers refused to put on the T-shirts Thursday. The server described the event as offending.
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