Anarchist Feminist

Victoria Law Explores "Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women"

2010-02-12T14:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Victoria-Law-Explores-Res-by-Joan-Brunwasser-100211-942.html

February 11, 2010
By Joan Brunwasser

In late December, I interviewed Ramsey Kanaan of PM Press. In the process, I perused their catalog. One of the books that caught my eye was Victoria Law's, which I subsequently read. It was equally fascinating and harrowing. Welcome to OpEdNews, Vikki. Please tell our readers how you came to write Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women?

~

In college, I had spent a semester researching post-Attica prisoner organizing and resistance. At the end of that semester, I looked back at what I had found and realized that every instance, except for one, was about male prisoners. I talked this over with my professor and spent the next semester exploring incarcerated women's issues and their ways of resisting or challenging their conditions of confinement. I also explored why their actions weren't as well-documented (or remembered) as their male counterparts.

To do this, I set aside all preconceived notions of what I thought of when I thought of prisoner organizing and started reading books and articles specifically about women in prison. I found a LOT of literature that covered specifically female issues like motherhood and pregnancy behind bars. Issues of parenting (and, of course, pregnancy) are often not even mentioned in books and articles about male prisoner organizing leading people who are looking for instances of prisoner resistance to ignore how people in prison organize around parenting and family issues. Battering and abuse is another issue that comes up in literature about incarcerated women, but again, since that's not an issue that we see impacting men going to prison, it isn't perceived as as a "prison issue."

I also scoured the news (and alternative media, mostly prison-related zines) for mentions of actions by incarcerated women. Once I found that someone had done something (filed a lawsuit, complained to the press, launched a hunger strike, etc), I used the websites of either that state prison system or the federal Bureau of Prisons to find the woman's contact information and sent her a letter explaining who I was and what I was researching. I asked if she would be willing to share her stories and experiences with me.

Not wanting to take without giving back, I offered what I could: I offered to look up lawsuits for them and send them copies of court decisions; I offered to look up other resources for them; I offered to send them books via the Books Through Bars program that I helped start here in NYC; I sent stamps so that they could not only respond to me, but also write letters to other groups or people; in one cases, I offered to call the woman's children when she was unable to call.

I got a lot of reading, researching and writing done in those four months. That one semester really opened my eyes about the gendered perceptions that we, as a society, have about prisons as well as about what resistance looks like (both inside prison walls and outside).

I also want to add that a huge part of my ability to get so much research and writing done in four months was because I had had a baby daughter 6 weeks before the semester started; being stuck inside during the winter with a newborn gave me a LOT of time to read, respond to letters, contemplate ideas and issues (mostly while nursing), and revise draft after draft. I doubt I would have had the same ability to concentrate (and write) if I had still been as a childfree person rushing off from one political event to another at various hours of the day and night or if my daughter had been older, more mobile and needing more direct attention.

photo: Maggie Wrigley
That was the start of what became Resistance Behind Bars. After the semester ended, I kept in contact with most of the women and continued to add their stories and experiences to my paper. I sent the paper to a man named Anthony Rayson, who publishes many many zines of prison writings. He, in turn, photocopied the paper and brought it with him to a talk he gave about prisoner organizing; someone at his talk took the paper and turned it into a pamphlet and started distributing it.

I continued to add stories and facts to my original paper as I came across them. I also started taking sections of my paper, like the part about women's organizing for better health care and women creating their own media, and sent them to activist publications like Clamor Magazine, Punk Planet and off our backs.

Almost 8 years after I had first started exploring this subject, I met Ramsey Kanaan at PM Press. He was interested in publishing my work as a book. I wrote to the women who had shared their stories with me and told them about the opportunity to spread their experiences to wider audiences. All of them agreed to have their stories published, although a couple of them asked that their real names not be used.

Following the example of a few other articles by activist groups on the outside written about women in prison, I decided that I would share my drafts with the women whom I was writing about. Every woman got multiple drafts of the chapter(s) that her stories and experiences appeared in. Each woman had the opportunity to add, correct, update or remove anything that pertained to her.

That must have been incredibly time-consuming.

In a couple of instances, women also commented on some of the material and information in that chapter. For instance, when I sent the chapter on education to RJ, she commented extensively on a study about higher education in women's prisons, pointing out that the study made prison seem like an idealized environment for women to pursue a higher education and highlighting some of the harsher daily realities for incarcerated students.

I also had incredible help from several people on the outside who read my entire manuscript at various stages, gave feedback and asked questions that forced me to explore the issues further.

And, being the mother of a small child (although she might disagree with the characterization of herself as "small"), I want to stress that a book-length work would not have been possible without the huge amount of support I received from both my friends and the people with whom I organize. I realize that not all mothers get this type of support, although they should, and that I'm extremely fortunate to have such a wonderful support system.

That's the long answer. When I told her about the interview and this question, my daughter, now age 9, suggested a shorter response: "There are some things in the world that I disagree with. Also, many people don't think about women when they think about prisons and so I wanted to write a book that brought attention to them."

If we look at the imprisoned as being at the bottom of the totem pole, women prisoners are, in general, even lower. Women face many disadvantages that men do not. Could you talk about that a bit, Vikki?

When prisons were first built in the U.S., they were designed for men. Women were not thought about when prisons were designed. When women were incarcerated, they were stuck in the attics or basements of the penitentiaries. Sometimes they were even stuck in the cells next to male prisoners (and then were blamed for any disturbance that their presence caused among the male prison population). They were given less access to the few programs and activities that the men were allowed, such as access to the chapel, medical care or to go outdoors. They were also in danger of sexual abuse from the male prison staff.

Keeping that in mind, we can see how, even centuries later, incarceration is still gendered as male and thus prisons are designed with men in mind. For instance, prison health care is geared towards men. This is not to say that men in prison have excellent medical care, mind you. Health care in prison is atrocious for all genders, but it also does not take into account the specific health concerns of women, such as menstruation, pregnancy, breast cancer, cervical cancer, etc. (I also want to add that the prison health care system takes into account even less the concerns of transgendered and transsexual prisoners)

Another aspect that affects women much more often than it affects men is parenting. This reflects not only the way prisons were originally designed but the way our society, as a whole, is gendered so that the bulk of parenting falls upon mothers. The majority of people in prison are parents, but when a father goes to prison, often times a female relative (such as a wife, girlfriend, mother or sister) will take on raising his child(ren). When a mother goes to prison, she's much more likely to already be a single parent. Lacking the same support as her male counterpart, her children are five times more likely to end up in the foster care system.

This becomes particularly pernicious because, under the 1997 federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (or ASfA), if a child is in foster care for fifteen of the last twenty-two months, the child welfare agency is required to file a petition to terminate parental rights. Only 2 states have made exceptions for incarcerated parents.

However, most people don't think of parenting when they think about prison. Even incarcerated fathers don't necessarily recognize parenting as a prison issue. Last year, I did a talk at a reentry program for formerly incarcerated men. Half of the men were fathers; all of them had their kids cared for by their wives or other relatives while they had been locked up. None of them had had their children placed in the foster care system because there was no one willing to care for them while their father was incarcerated. The men were startled to learn about the 15-month time line of ASFA because their children were taken care of and so ASFA didn't impact them.

Yet another aspect that disproportionately affects women in prison yet is ignored is abuse. Over half of women in local jails, state and federal prisons report having experienced past physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse. Keep in mind that people tend to underreport experiences of abuse, so that number is, in reality, much higher.

A Bureau of Justice report found that women in prison are three times more likely to have been physically and/or sexually abused before incarceration than men. However, prisons not only lack the resources to help support women in working through past abuse, but often perpetuate the abuse. Under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, gender cannot be considered when employing guards. This means that women have the right to work in male prisons and men have the right to work in female prisons. In many, many cases, this has led to sexual abuse of women prisoners by male staff members, who often have the right to be in sensitive areas such as the toilet area, the shower area, the housing units where women dress, undress and sleep, etc.

I could go on and on about how women face additional problems and dangers than their male counterparts in prison, but I'll stop with these examples. I do want to emphasize though that I am not pointing out these disadvantages to call for more "women-friendly" prisons. The construction of the first women's prison units were the result of well-intentioned reformers' horror at the abuses and depravities that women suffered when they were housed in male prisons.

However, when the first female-only prison unit was built in Illinois in 1859, the number of women being sent to prison tripled because judges became less reluctant to send women to the hellholes that were prison.

More recently, in 2006, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) identified 4500 women who did not need to be imprisoned and instead would be better off in their home communities getting drug treatment, job training, etc. Instead of putting together a plan to release them, however, CDCR proposed building 4500 new beds in what they called Female Rehabilitative Community Corrections Centers, essentially mini-prisons, in the urban areas where many of these women had lived before arrest **without** closing any of the beds in the existing women's prisons. In essence, their recommendation means that 4500 more women could be sentenced to prisons. The existence of these mini-prisons also meant that, lacking many of these treatment programs on the outside, judges would be more likely to sentence women to these Corrections Centers to access these programs.

However, the bill that was finally passed in 2007, AB76, did not address the root causes of rising female incarceration: mandatory sentencing, racial profiling, poverty and the feminization of poverty, or the lack of support systems for women leaving prison. Instead of focusing on reforming the prison system to make it more habitable for women, I'm a firm believer that we should shift these resources back into the communities to address the reasons why women are sent to prison in the first place.

Okay, Vikki. Let's pause here. When we return, you can tell our readers how our prison system mitigates against families staying together and how prisoners' children can be used as pawns to control their mothers' behavior.

***

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women,
AVAILABLE NOW at http://resistancebehindbars.org

PROMISES, PROMISES: War widows' futile fight

2010-02-12T14:06:00.000-08:00

Ironic an English paper would carry this article! It just shows that when the American war machine is done with its soldiers, it throws the widows under the bus!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8938822

PROMISES, PROMISES: War widows' futile fight
AP foreign, Wednesday February 10 2010
KIMBERLY HEFLING

Associated Press Writer= WASHINGTON (AP) — For a decade, war widows in matching yellow suit jackets and hats quietly and persistently have knocked on Capitol Hill doors seeking an end to the "widows' tax," a government policy that deprives them of benefits from their husbands' military service.

They are always warmly received, but that's where the hospitality ends. Despite pledges of help from scores of federal officials — including President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — their long quest remains unfulfilled.

Every year since 2005, the Senate has voted to eliminate the policy that denies widows the ability to collect both a military survivor's benefit and the full annuity bought when their military husbands were alive. But in each of those years, the fix was dropped when House and Senate negotiators wrote the final bill in private.

"What we always hear is that there is just no funding for us. 'Sorry, this is not your year,'" said Vivianne Wersel, chairwoman of the Government Relations Committee at Gold Star Wives of America. Her husband died of a heart attack in 2005, days after returning from his second tour in Iraq. "What happens behind closed doors, we get thrown under the bus."

The widows' tax is a law that won't allow surviving spouses to receive the retirement pay due them when their spouse died from a cause related to military service, and at the same time collect the full annuity — essentially an insurance policy most of their spouses opted to buy. They paid an average of 6.5 percent of their retirement pay in premiums, often $100 or more a month.

Because one benefit is subtracted from the other, affected surviving spouses lose about $1,000 a month on average. There are about 54,000 survivors who are affected by the policy, whose spouses served in conflicts from World War II to Afghanistan, and that number could grow.

The widows say politicians have promised time and time again to help them, but they don't.

Part of the problem is the cost. Eliminating the offset in benefits is expensive, said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who has been the widows' longtime ally. Making good on the promise would cost $6.7 billion over a decade.

But knowing the cost hasn't stopped politicians from promising to help.

Pelosi, as House minority leader in 2005, took up the widows' cause as part of the Democrats' GI Bill of Rights, before her party gained control of Congress.

Two years later, Obama, then a senator, co-sponsored legislation to eliminate the offset just before he spoke at a Gold Star Wives reception on Capitol Hill. In his budget proposal to the Congress last week, he didn't include it.

Kimberly Hazelgrove, 36, of Lorton, Va., whose husband died in Iraq in 2004, said she recalls Obama coming to the reception and promising to help them. The 36-year-old mother of two said she's now left wondering what happened to the promise.

"I have yet to see it, after a year in office, that really being a priority for them," said Hazelgrove, who has lobbied on Capitol Hill with her kids, ages 6 and 9, in tow.

Last June, four military widows showed up before 8 a.m. for a House Armed Services Committee session where their issue was on the agenda. Several hours into the hearing, an aide told them the discussion had been pushed back because of its sensitive nature.

At 10:30 p.m., the matter finally came to a vote. By then, Sandra Drew of Herndon, Va., was the only widow still there. Drew, whose husband was killed in Bosnia in 1995, said she was dumbfounded when Democrats who had co-sponsored the legislation in past years voted against it, while Republicans who had once opposed it were supporting it.

She said some committee members sheepishly looked at her as they voted down the provision, "visibly uncomfortable that I was in the room. It went right down party lines, and it shouldn't be a partisan issue."

Steve Strobridge, a retired Air Force colonel who is director of government relations at the Military Officers Association of America, said something could be done for the widows if the political will existed.

"It requires a vote of the entire Congress or a big emphasis of leadership to say we're going to elevate this priority, and as terrible as it seems, taking care of the widows whose military sponsor was killed by service has not been given a high enough priority," he said.

Congress did take the step of recognizing the widows' plight and gave affected survivors $50 more per month starting in 2008.

"We've had a partial victory and eventually we will continue to pound away and get it done," Nelson said.

Wersel said her group is pleased that so far this year they have enlisted more than 300 co-sponsors for their legislation in the House and more than 50 in the Senate, but they are still not confident that means Congress will pass it.

"The whole process has become rhetoric," she said.

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On the Net:

Gold Star Wives of America: http://www.goldstarwives.org/

Military Officers Association of America: http://www.moaa.org/

House Armed Services Committee: http://armedservices.house.gov/

Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys

2010-02-07T03:32:00.001-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/04/girl-buried-alive-turkey

Robert Tait
Guardian.co.uk
Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:20 EST

© Ho/Reuters The hole where a 16-year-old girl was buried alive by her relatives in Adiyaman, southeastern Turkey

Death reopens debate over 'honour' killings in Turkey, which account for half of all the country's murders

Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an "honour" killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.

The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.

Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on its website.

The girl had previously been reported missing.

The informant told the police she had been killed following a family "council" meeting.

Her father and grandfather are said to have been arrested and held in custody pending trial. It is unclear whether they have been charged. The girl's mother was arrested but was later released.

Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter - one of nine children - had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex.

A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. Her body showed no signs of bruising.

The discovery will reopen the emotive debate in Turkey about "honour" killings, which are particularly prevalent in the impoverished south-east.

Official figures have indicated that more than 200 such killings take place each year, accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey.

Female genital mutilation causes aggression

2010-02-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/dutch-rss-news/female-genital-mutilation-causes- .html

Female genital mutilation causes aggression
06/02/2010
Dutch News

Many women who have undergone female genital mutilation suffer psychiatric problems.

This is the finding of a study by Pharos, which gathers information on refugees and health. In the study 66 Dutch African women, who had been subjected to the practice, were questioned. They were found to be stressed, anxious and aggressive. The study also found that this group of women were more likely to have rows with their partners or in some cases would not dare enter a relationship.

On the positive side, women were more likely to say no to the practice if they knew it was banned in the country where they live.
An estimated 50 women or girls are believed to be circumcised every year in the Netherlands. This is the first time that a study has been carried out into the psychiatric and social complaints associated with female circumcision.

The report has been published to mark the international day against female genital mutilation today.

© Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Saving the lives of women and children

2010-02-03T11:12:00.001-08:00

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/saving_the_lives_of_women_and_children/

Brian Lilley | Monday, 1 February 2010
Saving the lives of women and children

The G8 appears set to take on the issues of child and maternal mortality. Can they do it while saving lives, not destroying them?

Upon hearing the statistics it is hard not to be moved, to feel that something must be done to change this. Each year, in the developing world, more than 500,000 women die in pregnancy and childbirth, some 9 million children die each year before their fifth birthday. It was these grim numbers that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper used in a keynote address at the Davos World Economic Forum to call for concerted action by G8 countries.

The problems of heightened infant and maternal mortality in the poorer countries of this planet are not news, they have been known for sometime. In 2000, leaders gathered at the United Nations headquarters to endorse the Millennium Development Goals, which included reducing child mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters by 2015. In the years since, not much has happened.

So in an open letter published in the Toronto Star, Montreal’s La Presse and Le Figaro in Paris, Stephen Harper announced that as president of the G8 this year, Canada will host the G8 and G20 this June, he will push leaders to make a tangible difference for the women and children of the developed world, saying relatively simple health-care solutions could alter the outcomes.

"The solutions are not intrinsically expensive. The cost of clean water, inoculations and better nutrition, as well as the training of health workers to care for women and deliver babies, is within the reach of any country in the G8. Much the same could be said of child mortality. The solutions are similar in nature – better nutrition, immunization – and equally inexpensive in themselves."

The plan laid out by Prime Minister Harper is hard to criticize and it was good to hear, during his speech at Davos, that he has spoken with other G8 leaders and they appear willing to take on this neglected Millennium Development Goal. "It is therefore time," says Harper, "to mobilize our friends and partners to do something for those who can do little for themselves, to replace grand good intentions with substantive acts of human good will."

Yet, when Harper does try to reach out to other nations and get them on board he will face several challenges in bringing about the type of change most of us think of when a world leader says they want to improve the health outcomes of the world's poorest people. The first challenge surfaced in Ottawa at the same time that word of this plan was spreading through the frozen Canadian capital; some development agencies see abortion as the key to reducing infant and maternal mortality.

The change in policy towards family planning in Washington is well documented; abortion is back on the agenda as an acceptable public policy tool for the United States to export around the world. The case in other counties of the G8, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan plus Russia is less well known.

One of the key advisors to Britain's Labour government, or at least Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is Jonathon Porritt of the Optimum Population Trust. Porritt is the man who wants Britain's population cut in half to 30 million people. In conjunction with the United Nation's Population Fund, the OPT also wants to see Africa's population reduced for environmental reasons using family planning, which is often now a program well beyond contraception and includes abortion.

My reason for pointing this out is not to engage in an overall argument about abortion but to set the stage for the argument that what you and I hear when a politician promises something may not be what actually happens. When Prime Minister Harper, as president of the G8, speaks of infant and maternal mortality rates and says, "Far too many lives and futures have been lost." Most of us think his goal is to lower the mortality rates by saving the lives of pregnant women and children under five by improving access to clean water, primary health care, vaccines. That may be what Mr. Harper has in mind and those are in fact what he lists in his speech, but the policy people have other ideas in mind.

Shortly after Harper's push for the G8 to take on this issue became known, a media event was held with Canada's minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda. Ms. Oda gathered several non-governmental groups around the table for a chat on the issue, a brainstorming session of sorts and invited the media to attend. Several well known names were there, UNICEF, CARE, Plan International and World Vision, there was also a group I had not heard of until that day, Action Canada for Population and Development. One of the goals of Action Canada, as I discovered after chatting with their official afterwards, is to promote abortion around the world as a human right.

Now I don't really care which side of the abortion debate you are on, I think we can all agree that when a politician says we should reduce the number of children that die before their fifth birthday, one of the solutions you automatically think of is not abortion. Most reasonable people would think of improving health outcomes. After calls to the offices of Prime Minister Harper and Minister Oda, I've been assured that is what they mean when they speak of this problem, saving lives. Still, they will have a fight on their hands at the G8 from not only the worldwide coalition of NGOs who back Action Canada's viewpoint, but also from other G8 members, like Britain and the United States who may take a different view.

One of the other challenges Harper will face in getting his G8 partners to "replace grand good intentions with substantive acts of human good will," is that what has been tried over the past 15 years or so has not worked. Reducing the mortality rate among mothers and young children may have been a UN Millennium Development Goal but politicians have been speaking about it much longer than the last 10 years. Go back just a bit further and you find these same goals as central to the 1994 Cairo Conference.

Clearly what has been happening so far has not worked. Whether this lack of progress is due to a lack of funds or poorly designed programs is not clear but with billions having been poured into this field over the last decade and zero progress, I'd put my bet on the latter. That won't stop activists for the status quo from trying to ensure their current methods prevail. Stephen Lewis, the former U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS is chastising Harper for coming to this issue late, "It takes a lot of chutzpah to pretend that somehow you're championing something that others have championed so vigorously before you."

We can only hope, for the sake of the women and children whose lives are at risk, that Mr. Harper can convince his fellow G8 leaders not only to get on board with his initiative, but to look at it with fresh eyes, which will take chutzpah, and possibly also include ignoring Stephen Lewis.

The 6 Weirdest Things Women Do to Their Vaginas

2010-01-30T13:16:00.000-08:00

This shows that patriarchy still controls the world! Er, is this writer a male? If so, what makes him qualified to write about vaginas?

By Andy Wright, AlterNet
January 30, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145461/

What's wrong with your vagina? If you answered "nothing," you're probably wrong. According to the beauty-industrial complex, it's ugly, and it smells bad. But don't worry-- there's nothing that money can't fix.

1. Problem: Your Vagina Smells Bad
Solution: Vaginal Deodorant

In the seventies, Massengill tried to marry feminism and its vaginal deodorant spray ("With Hexachlorophene") in an ad that declared the product to be "The Freedom Spray." It was "...the better way to be free to enjoy being a woman. Free from worry about external vaginal odor." Because you're going to need that time you used to spend worrying about your vaginal odor to flirt your way through the glass ceiling. Oh, and Hexachlorophene? It's a disinfectant that can be lethal when absorbed through the skin. In 1972, it was added to baby powder in France due to a manufacturing error and killed thirty-six children.

In case you think vaginal deodorant is a relic of the past, just take a trip to the drug store. (I did, and I took notes. The staff of my local Walgreens is convinced that I'm both very thorough and that my vagina smells really bad.) There are several kinds of vaginal deodorants still for sale (Walgreens even manufactures a generic version). You can buy scented vaginal suppositories called Norforms in Island Escape and Summer's Eve Deodorant Spray in Island Splash. (Norforms contain something called Benzethonium chloride, which is also used as a hard surface disinfectant for fruit and classified as a poison in Switzerland. Exotic!) And you can buy FDS (Feminine, Discreet, Sensual) Spray ("For the woman who cares.") in a myriad of scents including Sheer Tropics and Fresh Island Breeze.

Because if you really cared, you'd make your vagina smell like a poisonous island.

2. Problem: Your Vagina is Dirty
Solution: Douching

Douching, the act of forcing a mixture of fluids up into the vagina with a tube and pump, was first promoted as a form of birth control (it doesn't work) and has continued to be used for vaguely medical reasons: to prevent STIs (sexually transmitted infections), to clean the vagina after menstruation and, of course, to rid it of that disgusting vagina smell. Douching has been repeatedly discouraged by the medical community, which not only doesn't attribute any health benefits to the act, but believes that it can actually harm women. A government Web site run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services discourages douching by answering a series of hypothetical questions, one of which is: "My vagina has a terrible odor, can douching help?" The answer: No. Get thee to a doctor.

Despite health concerns, manufacturers still churn out vaginal douches. Pick up a box of Summer's Eve Douche, and you'll find warnings that douching has been associated with PID (Pelvic Inflamatory Disease), ectopic pregnancy and infertility. Right next to the suggestion that women douche after their menstrual period, after using contraceptive jellies and creams and to "clear out any vaginal secretions." So basically, any time your vagina isn't as dry as a British sitcom.

3. Problem: Your Vagina is Too Loose
Solution: Vaginal Rejuvenation
Let's face it. Nature really screwed up when it made the vagina. Never mind that that it accommodates the birth of a child or that it's fundamentally better designed than male genitalia. (Who wants to carry their most sensitive reproductive organs on the outside?) While nature was busy dishing out things like multiple orgasms, it forgot to make vaginas vice-tight. Luckily, plastic surgeons have stepped in to put an end to womankind's collective suffering.

Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation is a trademarked phrase that refers to a practice developed and popularized by Dr. David Matlock, who's made several appearances on the E! channel's plastic surgery reality show, Dr.90210. Matlock and other doctors who carry out LVR claim that the $4,000 to $20,000 procedure makes women's vaginas tighter, thus increasing sexual pleasure.

But many doctors disagree. The American Urogynocology Society won't endorse it. And the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists cautioned in a 2007 statement that women seeking "designer vaginas" should be "informed about the lack of data supporting the efficacy of these procedures and their potential complications, including infection, altered sensation, dyspareunia, adhesions, and scarring." Sexy!

4. Problem: Your Vagina is Ugly
Solution: Labiaplasty

If your vagina is tight enough (and let's face it, it's probably not) you've still got to deal with the labia. And by "deal with," I mean remove. Labiaplasty drastically reduces the labia, the protruding lips that surround the opening of the vagina. Why would you want to do this? Because your labia are "unequal," "elongated," "large," "irregular," "floppy," and "unfeminine." These are just some of the unflattering adjectives bandied about on the Web sites of surgeons who offer this procedure. Luckily, with the use of lasers and scalpels, your vagina can be made "prettier," "better proportioned," "youthful," and achieve "the true Playboy aesthetic look." How much will it cost you to make your labia proportional and feminine? About $5,000 or more.

5. Problem: Your Vagina Tastes Bad
Solution: Vagina Mints
If your partner is reluctant to give you oral sex, it's not because of pervasive cultural belief that cunnilingus is complicated to the point of being impossible and that vaginas are inherently icky (thus the need to uncomplicate them and un-ickify them with, oh, say, labiaplasty) it's because your vagina tastes bad. Enter the Linger Internal Vaginal Flavoring, or Altoids for your vagina. Linger assumes you already feel bad about your nether regions, stating on its Web site that the mint-flavored pill "decreases self-consciousness" and tosses out the unattributed statistic that 72 percent of women feel self conscious about their taste and odor. Dubious marketing practices aside, the Linger mint isn't just a harmless, if asinine, oddity. Mother Jones magazine did some digging into the origins of Linger and discovered that the vagina mint is no different from a regular mint. In other words, it's made out of sugar. And putting sugar-based mint directly into your vagina is a recipe for a mint-flavored yeast infection.

6. Problem: Your Vagina is the Wrong Color
Solution: Vaginal Bleaching and Dying

Many women are under the impression that it's OK to have a vagina colored vagina. They're wrong, of course. They should be pink, and exceptionally so. What's a woman with a vagina colored vagina to do? Bleach it. Accomoclitic Laser and Wax Studio in Lakewood, Colorado, purveyors of an anal bleaching product called "Pink Wink," also sell something called Bleach Babe, a cream that promises to do away with the "natural discoloration surrounding the exterior of the vagina." Bleach Babe contains Kojic acid, the same ingredient that keeps salmon meat pink. South Beach Solutions sells a similar lightening product with Sodium hydroxide, which can also be found in drain decloggers and septic tank cleansers.

If bleaching fails to render your vagina the color of a Barbie Dream House, you can try My New Pink Button, billed as a "Genital Cosmetic Colorant that restores the "Pink" back to woman's genitals." Because vaginas that aren't vibrantly pink are old and sad. My New Pink Button is meant to be painted onto the vagina (it comes in powder form and must be scooped up with a moist Q-tip like device) and lasts 48 to 72 hours. After which, one supposes, users must reapply in order to maintain the youthful status of their genitals.

Robin Givhan zeroes in on debate over plus-size women in fashion

2010-01-22T16:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/21/AR2010012105260.html?hpid=topnews

By Robin Givhan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 24, 2010; E01

The conversation about plus-size women and their relationship to the fashion industry has taken on new contours recently thanks to the current issue of V magazine, the celebrated young actress Gabourey Sidibe and a first lady who has decided to make combating childhood obesity her signature issue. The rumblings about physiques -- rotund and petite -- should get even livelier beginning Feb. 11, when ready-to-wear designers in New York unveil their fall 2010 collections over the course of a week. (Their counterparts in Milan and Paris will follow soon after.) And that means attention will once again turn to the proportions of the models who walk their runways and who serve to define our culture's beauty aesthetic.

For several years, fashion observers have complained on blogs, in letters-to-the-editor and over cocktails with friends about the spindliness of models -- lollipops wrapped in silk or cashmere is how they have derisively been described. And industry insiders have debated the cause and effect of these profoundly skinny mannequins on our self-image. Do they push women to be more prone to eating disorders? Are they an insult to womanhood? Are they merely part of a designer's creative prerogative? Or are they the product of lemming-like style-makers who feel compelled to follow trends? It would be a welcome relief if the majority of those designers who put their wares on the runway in the coming months took a stand and refused to use models whose ribs are plainly visible and whose countenance cries "ill-health." What is the point of creeping out consumers, after all?

To be fair, a bit of headway was made in plumping up models when designers presented their spring collections a few months ago. The models were often still quite thin -- much slimmer than they were back in the 1980s heyday of women such as Cindy Crawford or Naomi Campbell -- but rarely did they look as though a strong wind would send them rolling down the catwalk like glittering bits of tumbleweed.

But after a volley of exhausting complaining, defending, finger-pointing and declaring one's right to creative license, a new conundrum has presented itself: It's hard to even know what an acceptable-size model is supposed to look like anymore. How big is big enough? And when does plus size, in a profoundly overweight population, become just as distressingly unhealthy an image as emaciation?

The niche fashion publication, V magazine, has received a significant amount of attention among style aficionados because of its "size issue," which features photos of women who measure in at size 12. The star of the issue is arguably the model Crystal Renn, who captures the same air of detached, unattainable glamour as any size 0, perhaps even more so because Renn is classically pretty rather than startlingly odd. But some of those readers who have seen the photographs of her have complained that she's only a size 12. She really isn't large enough to be considered a plus size, which despite the fashion industry's definition, most people consider to be a size 16 or larger, which is the threshold at which women typically find their fashion choices abruptly limited.

Just how big does a model have to be before folks are satisfied that she represents some ever-shifting vision of what a "real" woman looks like? Must she be precisely 5-feet-4 and a size 14, which is the fashion industry's accepted stats for the average woman? And if she is, will that transform the fantasy photographs in fashion magazines into the equivalent of catalogues? After all, a large part of our fascination with Hollywood is because it's populated with absurdly stunning men and women who are so far from average they ignite our wildest desires and persuade us to pay good money to go to bad movies.

The most compelling spread in V is the one in which the same ensemble is photographed on a skinny model and on a larger one. The lesson to a lot of women who have an insecure relationship with fashion is that they, too, can participate in the world of Dolce & Gabbana and Proenza Schouler. And the lesson to designers is that all sorts of women can make their clothes look good. Attitude often counts more than body size. Although, there are certainly times when no matter how good you think you look, reality tells another story. See: Mariah Carey at the Golden Globes.

The recent awards show also provided an opportunity to see the plus-size actress Sidibe, who stars in "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," all glammed up. She has been dazzling interviewers with her charisma and Valley Girl patois. (She was also photographed for V.) And she has been a marvel of self-confidence in an industry that values thin. We have all seen the fan magazines with their sad tales of incredibly shrinking actresses. They shrink, in part, because they want to fit into the teeny-tiny clothing samples that they borrow from designers. They shrink for fashion.

The L.A.-based designer Kevan Hall created the gown that Sidibe wore to the Globes, a deep green, flowing floor-length dress with soft, short sleeves and beaded embellishment at the waist. He has worked with a lot of actresses who are what he describes as "special sizes" and the reality is that "it's all about picking the right silhouette for her shape."

And it doesn't matter if a woman is a size 2 or a size 16, "you're always treading lightly. I've had actresses who are a size 2 stand in front of me and weep. I've had young girls who want to cover their arms and older women who want to cover their arms," he says. The most significant difference in creating a dress for a larger size is that often a designer has to tamp down his ego. He can't as easily force his vision onto the woman since she doesn't have the physique of a hanger. "But at the end of the day, it's always really about the client," Hall says. "Let's be realistic, after all. What is the end-use of these clothes?"

One might also ask, what is the ultimate goal -- on the part of the fashion industry -- in celebrating the confident Sidibe? Is it about her work? Is it a fascination -- a marveling -- over this big girl who doesn't seem to have any existential angst about being big? Is it about a broader definition of beauty?

"I'm hoping that things are changing," says an optimistic Hall.

We all hope that we are getting closer to a less judgmental, more accepting society. But we also are faced with an uncomfortable question: How does a culture celebrate the beauty of all shapes and sizes even when statistics are telling us that certain sizes are unhealthy?

In V magazine's celebration of size, there's a group of photographs taken by Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld of a voluptuous burlesque performer. The way she is depicted is unsettling because it reads as a kind of fat porn -- that tendency to show heavyset women as overly sexed, ribald or just plain sideshow. Fashion fetishizes women all the time and in a host of different ways. But the one thing that fashion loathes is a cliche. And the worst cliche about large women is that they are creatures of insatiable appetites -- both real and metaphorical. And, of course, the stereotype about the ultra-thin is that they are brittle and cold.

Somewhere between emaciation and obesity lies good health. And somewhere between those extremes there is also a definition of beauty that is inclusive, sound and honest.

The Forgotten Persecution of Women in World War II

2010-01-21T11:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,672803,00.html

01/21/2010 04:53 PM
The 'Dishonorable' German Girls
By Jan Friedmann

Hitler's Gestapo arrested thousands of women for admitting they had affairs with foreign forced laborers in Germany, despite many confessions being false and made under duress. Men were often executed and women sent to concentration camps for the crime of "racial defilement." Some continued to suffer the consequences long after the end of the war.

On Sept. 19, 1941, Maria K. signed the record of her interrogation. In her written statement to the police detective, the 14-year-old girl confessed that she had "shared the bed of Polish national Florian Sp. and also had sexual relations with him."

The incident allegedly took place on a Saturday evening in July. She had tended the cows during the day, and that evening she and her 18-year-old friend Hedwig invited the two Polish men to join them.

According to her signed statement, they kissed, and then the four of them went to the bedroom, Hedwig with Josef G. and she with Florian. Once in the bedroom, the Polish man removed her panties. They had slex three times that evening and twice in the next few days, once after lunch, behind a bush in a nearby field. This is the account given in her signed confession.

Maria K., who is 82 today, covers her face with her hands when she talks about the "confession" that changed her life forever and led to the death of the two young men. She is ashamed, even though the Gestapo detective concocted the statement and beat her into signing it. This is her story today, and other documents support its veracity.

Gisela Schwarze, a historian from the western German city of Münster, has spent years investigating cases like hers, digging through the files of special courts in cities like Dortmund, Bielefeld and Kiel. She uncovered Maria K.'s story in a local archive. It unfolded in Asbeck, a village with a wartime population of 850 in the western Münsterland region.

'Racial Defilement'

As a result of her research, Schwarze discovered a group of victims of the Nazi regime that has been neglected to this day. It consists of the women and girls who government officials accused of having sexual relations with foreign forced laborers. Some of the romantic relationships did exist, while others were made up, but the punishment was almost always extreme. The women were sent to concentration camps by the thousands, while the men were usually executed.

"Fellow Germans who engage in sexual relations with male or female civil workers of the Polish nationality, commit other immoral acts or engage in love affairs shall be arrested immediately," Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, ordered in 1940.

The crime the Nazi lawyers had constructed was called "racial defilement." At first, it only applied to relationships between Jews and non-Jews, but the racist construct was later expanded to include Slavs.

Prisoners of war and deported civilians were forced to work in factories and in fields, where they came into contact with local residents, many of them women. The men were fighting on the front. But informers prepared to denounce wrongdoers were everywhere -- neighbors, co-workers and teachers -- contributing to a hellish atmosphere of racial hatred and bigotry.

Maria K., the third youngest of 11 siblings, was orphaned as a child. An older brother took in the siblings, but he was eventually drafted into the German army, and his 27-year-old wife was left to care for the children on her own. To help her out, the landlord sent Florian Sp., a young Polish forced laborer, whom the children quickly came to trust.

'Necessary Welfare Measures'

The comfortable relationship between the Polish worker and the family was viewed with suspicion in the village. Maria was arrested, and during her interrogation the Gestapo officer hit her in the face and told her to admit that she had had sex with the Pole. The helpless and naïve girl signed the confession, which only marked the beginning of her worst ordeals. In October 1941, the Gestapo in Münster submitted a request to "initiate the necessary welfare measures" against Maria, who was now classified as a "dishonorable German girl."

She was placed in various reformatories and was eventually taken to a place that the SS had set up to house young female delinquents: the "Uckermark Youth Protection Camp," a subcamp of the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

She was given a prisoner number, 290, and from then on she no longer had a name. She suffered beatings, whippings, hunger and acts of humiliation. She was released in the fall of 1944 and taken to a preparatory school for children's nurses near Berlin. At the end of 1945, she managed to return to Asbeck by traveling through occupied Germany. The two Polish forced laborers had already been hung in Asbeck on August 28, 1942. The cause of death listed on their death certificates was "unknown."

The people who carried most of these executions remained unpunished after the war, and in 1963 the Münster public prosecutor's office closed its investigations into the cases. But the humiliations continued for Maria K. During church services, villagers berated her as a "Pole's whore" and "Pole lover." Many women who had survived the Nazi persecution were treated in much the same way.

A few weeks ago, Maria K. and historian Schwarze traveled to the Uckermark camp together, where a memorial, a stone wrapped in strips of iron, stands today. Maria K. scattered a handful of earth at the site, which she had collected in the forest where the two young Poles were killed.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Increase prostitution age to 23: Amsterdam

2010-01-19T13:40:00.000-08:00

Let's get something straight before I present the article below. I hate all types of prostitution and wish it didn't exist!!! To me, it is evil and all forms of prostitution is *POWER RAPE*!!!!

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/01/increase_prostitution_age_to_2.php

Increase prostitution age to 23: Amsterdam

Tuesday 19 January 2010

The age at which young women should be allowed to become prostitutes should be raised from 18 to 23, according to Amsterdam city council executive Lodewijk Asscher.

And Asscher wants the city's famous red light district to be prostitution-free between 4am and 8am, so that efforts can be focused during the day on tracking down pimps and human traffickers.

'18-year-old girls from Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary are extremely vulnerable. They are brought here but they are unable to resist the pressure. Women of 23 are more adult, more resistant,' Asscher is quoted as saying in Tuesday's Telegraaf.

Asscher also says that prostitutes should have to register as freelancers with the local chamber of commerce and prove that they can speak Dutch, or at least English, Spanish or French.

'Amsterdam is an international city and prostitution is part of that,' he told the paper. 'And there is nothing against it, if it is done out of free will. But unfortunately we see many instances where this is not the case.'

The city council launched major clean up of the city centre red light district in 2008 with the aim of cutting back on crime and forced prostitution, and taking the area more upmarket.

© DutchNews.nl

Congolese Women and Girls Suffering the Insufferable

2010-01-16T16:44:00.000-08:00

ttp://www.opednews.com/articles/Congolese-Women-and-Girls-by-Emily-Spence-100110-199.html

January 12, 2010
Congolese Women and Girls Suffering the Insufferable
By Emily Spence

By Emily Spence and Brian McAfee

While in the eastern Congo last summer, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated, "With respect to companies that are responsible for what are now being called conflict minerals, I think the international community must start looking at steps we can take to try to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence here."

In relation, the Democratic Republic of Congo's UN supported armed assault against rebels in the eastern Congo has promoted widespread death, rape and other forms of brutality. Indeed, the decade-long war has claimed at least 5.4 million lives -- the most in any conflict since WWII. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of women and girls, including babies, have suffered rapes and sexual mutilation, often with weapons and tools used in the process. Further, it is thought that, in eastern portions of the Congo, up to seventy percent of Congolese women, along with children of all ages, have been sexually attacked, according to the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a research center at Harvard University.

Moreover, some relief workers have estimated that up to twenty percent of new rapes have been instigated by police and civilians in urban rather than rural areas because a culture of violence has set into much of the nation due to the long, drawn out conflict. At the same time, the attacks are so extremely violent that they have been described as sexual terrorism by medical workers at the Panzi Hospital in Bukavuat where thousands of survivors have been treated each year.

Overall, it has emerged that all major groups involved in the wars have committed these and other serious war crimes, including looting peasants, purposefully destroying homes, and forcing the mass dislocations of more than a million terrorized people from their neighborhoods. Countless families and whole communities have been forced to live with constant fear, repeated migrations and insurmountable social turmoil.

In a country with an annual income of $110 per capita and a life expectancy rate of 54.4 years, life is difficult enough as it is. However, individuals on the run can't even have the assurance of this modest sum to support their existence. As a result, massive food, medical and displacement aid is needed in the country at the very time that it is most dangerous to be there as an aid worker. Simultaneously, a shortage of donations negatively impact the quality of care delivered by various assistance organizations, including U.N.sponsored relief programs.

Meanwhile, a rape-friendly culture encourages leniency towards rapists and ostracism towards victims regardless of their ages. Indeed, wounded sufferers are generally shunned by their spouses, other family members and former friends, particularly so if they have any children that resulted from periods of long term bondage accompanied by repeated rapes.

Simultaneously, assailants rarely receive proper trials. Therefore, the lack of punishment has increasingly emboldened Congolese men to find pleasure through physically violating women and children on a routine basis. Consequently, the number of assaults on women and children are increasing and spreading into new regions so as to include ever new groups, such as the Pygmies.

Even as the International Criminal Tribunal recognizes rape as a crime of genocide under international law, there is little by way of meaningful deterrence to the escalating aggression. In relation, this "pandemic of sexual violence," indicates Stephen Lewis, the former United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, is "obscene," "insanely savage," and is nothing short of "femicide" [1].

Despite the prevalence of a social stigma, the abandoned women and girls - some of whom some are pictured at Congo/Women [2] - do sometimes receive substantial help. For example, it comes from groups like SOS AIDS, an organization that works with other relief agencies to get in touch with rural survivors so as to take them to treatment centers for psychological counseling and medical support.

The assistance often includes the successful repair of fistulas, debilitating ruptures of the urinary-genital tract that leave females incontinent and prone to infections for life. The helpers, also, try to provide housing, including for those in need of anti-retroviral and other drug treatments due to the attackers having infected their victims with assorted serious diseases. (The HIV prevalence includes approximately 4.2 percent of the population.) Meanwhile, the high number of injured women and girls makes it impossible to treat them all, aside from the fact that the majority of the assaults, apparently, go unreported.

Thankfully, there are a number of dedicated groups like SOS AIDS taking a stand for justice and human welfare even when it is dangerous for their staff to do so. Tragically, others try to increase the very same kinds of turmoil SOS AIDS is striving to remedy. They are doing so in order to gain control off our main minerals: tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold that garner an estimated $180 million in revenues each year.

The main reason that these minerals are in such high demand is because they are critical in the fabrication of digital cameras, laptops, cell phones, portable musical devices and video games. Yet, some of these battlefield minerals are not widely found over much of the world. Therefore, there is great competition for them in the Congo and some individuals will stop at nothing to get them.

All considered, people interested in supporting the necessary reforms in this wartorn land can phone or write letters to Congressional representatives to urge them to ratify the Congo Conflict Minerals Act (S. 891) and the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (H.R. 4128), which are currently undergoing legislative review.[3]

They can also sign petitions directed to members of Congress.[4]

Additionally, they can contact their respective mobile phone manufacturers to indicate that they want the companies to ensure that cell phones are only made from certified conflict-free materials.

As Brian indicated, "The women and girls of the Congo are our sisters and daughters in the larger sense of our all being part of one human family. Therefore, our love and concern for them, as it would be for any other cherished human being, must be present. In relation, I sort of decided to adopt the rest of the world as my family due to my having been orphaned at an early age. Besides, (the) Congolese people deserve unreserved justice and compassion as much as any other people do, as our common welfare is inexorably linked. In fact,only a huge outpouring of care from around the world will help to bring about the kind of changes so desperately needed in this tragically destroyed nation."

Due to a shortage of funds and critical care supplies, the crisis in the Congo is inadequately addressed. Yet many charitable groups are striving their best to provide relief.

Thankfully, several of these agencies have excellent track records. A few of them that come highly recommended are the Women and Girls of the World,Stephen Lewis Foundation, SOS Medical Centres and Women for Women International in the event that any support of their projects might like to be undertaken. [5] As Margaret Mead suggested, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

Emily Spence and Brian McAfee are authors living respectively in Massachusetts and Michigan. They have spent many years involved in human rights, environmental and social services efforts. They can be contacted at brimac6@hotmail.com.

References
[1] Ensler E, Lewis S (2008) The never ending war. Huffington Post. Available: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler-and-stephen-lewis/the-never-ending-war_b_150668.html. The Stephen Lewis Foundation (2007 September 13) Stephen Lewis calls for a new UN initiative to end sexual violence in the eastern region of the DRC. Available: http://www.stephenlewisfoundation.org/news_item.cfm?news=1988&year=2007.
[2] Congo/Women, an exhibition featuring photographs by Lynsey Addario, Marcus Bleasdale, Ron Haviv and James Nachtwey. Available:http://congowomen.org/.
[3] GovTrack.us, 111th Congress, 2009-2010, S. 891: Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009. Available: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-891. GovTrack.us, 111th Congress, 2009-2010,HR 4128: Conflict Minerals Trade Act. Available: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-4128.
[4] Urge Your Senators to Cosponsor the Congo Conflict Minerals Act of 2009 (Raise Hope for Congo). Available: http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6273. Urge Your Representative to Cosponsor the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (Raise Hope for Congo). Available: http://www2.americanprogress.org/t/1659/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6281.
[5] Humanitarian relief organizations: Women and Girls of the World [http://www.womenandgirlsoftheworld.org/],Stephen Lewis Foundation...gt;> Countries...gt; Democratic Republic of ...[http://www.stephenlewisfoundation.org/what_project.cfm?project=3272],
MedicalCentres in Congo -- SOS Medical Centres [http://www.sos-medical-centres.org/africa/congo], and
Women for Women International's Congo initiative at Congo Women Need Your Help | Women For Women International[http://www.womenforwomen.org/global-initiatives-helping-women/help-women-congo.php].

Skewed China birth rate to leave 24 mln men single

2010-01-11T12:58:00.001-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100111/hl_afp/chinapopulationmenmarriage

Mon Jan 11, 5:59 am ET

BEIJING (AFP) – More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020, state media reported on Monday, citing a study that blamed sex-specific abortions as a major factor.

The study, by the government-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, named the gender imbalance among newborns as the most serious demographic problem for the country's population of 1.3 billion, the Global Times said.

"Sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas," where the cultural preference for boys over girls is strongest, the study said, while noting the reasons for the gender imbalance were "complex."

Researcher Wang Guangzhou said the skewed birth ratio could lead to difficulties for men with lower incomes in finding spouses, as well as a widening age gap between partners, according to the Global Times.

Another researcher quoted by the newspaper, Wang Yuesheng, said men in poorer parts of China would be forced to accept marriages late in life or remain single for life, which could "cause a break in family lines."

"The chance of getting married will be rare if a man is more than 40 years old in the countryside. They will be more dependent on social security as they age and have fewer household resources to rely on," Wang said.

The study said the key contributing factors to the phenomenon included the nation's family-planning policy, which restricts the number of children citizens may have, as well as an insufficient social security system.

The situation influenced people to seek male offspring, who are preferred for their greater earning potential as adults and thus their ability to care for their elderly parents.

The Global Times said abductions and trafficking of women were "rampant" in areas with excess numbers of men, citing the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Illegal marriages and forced prostitution were also problems in those areas, it said.

Authorities put the normal male-female ratio at between 103-107 males for every 100 females. But in 2005, the last year for which data were made available, there were 119 boys for every 100 girls, the newspaper said.

However, the study said that in some areas the male-female ratio was as high as 130 males for every 100 females, a report by the Mirror Evening newspaper said.

The report said the study urged the government to relax the so-called "one-child" policy and study the possibility of encouraging "cross-country marriages."

China first implemented its population control policy in 1979, generally limiting families to one child, with some exceptions for rural farmers, ethnic minorities and other groups.

It has said the policy has averted 400 million births.

Researchers said the gender imbalance problem cropped up in the late 1980s when the use of ultrasound technology became more prevalent.

This allowed women to easily determine the sex of their foetuses, leading to an increased number of sex-selective abortions.

South Sudan: Women's Eyes on the Political Prize

2010-01-07T14:37:00.000-08:00

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49907

Miriam Gathigah
IPS News
Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:04 EST

Outnumbered where it counts? South Sudanese women are seeking to strengthen their influence at all levels of society.
Juba, South Sudan,  January marks the fifth anniversary of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which ended a bitter north-south civil war in Sudan. With important elections scheduled for April, women are debating and fighting for an expanded role in the new institutions of government.

"For as long as women continue to feel they have no say in politics, their sense of marginalization will make it difficult for them to work hand-in-hand with men," insists Agnes Lawrence Odwar, Torit County member of the interim legislative assembly in Lakeside State.

In the eyes of women like Odwar, rebuilding infrastructure and civil institutions in a region cruelly devastated by conflict to a degree unmatched by even other civil wars on the continent will require profound changes.

"We believe this change will come through an engendered decision-making process (meaning more women participating in government) as well as in the implementation of these decisions," opines Hannah Dario, a social worker in Lakeside State, Rumbek County.

"Hoodwinking us into believing in what is otherwise not a democratic process, because certain groups remain marginalized, will only breed more trouble. No one should gamble with the peace for which we have paid such a high price to enjoy."

Sudanese women like Odwar and Dario believe South Sudan's post-war leadership remains dominated by men, something which should be changed in the April elections.

There are voices seeking to push the debate over women's role in politics in South Sudan extends beyond ensuring a small number of women gain positions.

"How about women as equal stakeholders of society? Are we also not entitled to participate in making decisions that determine our future as a nation?" asks Deborah Tito.

Tito, who describes herself as a housewife, is typical of many women at the grassroots of South Sudan's women's movement. She is a member of the Women's Union, which has branches across all the Southern states as well as in the north of Sudan.

The movement gathers women to discuss political and societal issues - one result is that even South Sudanese women with little or no formal education often have a political awareness that is much stronger than their counterparts in other parts of the continent.

Its members meet to discuss and debate current political affairs; the meetings also serve to collect and articulate women's grievances and issues to be passed on to those women who occupy elected and appointed positions in government.

The women, deeply apprehensive about the possibility of the region slipping back into armed conflict, find the Women's Union provides a rare space to vent political passions in a society that remains strongly patriarchal, but this has not yet translated into substantial political power for women.

"It's very unfortunate that the debate about women and leadership has degenerated into the number of seats we can or should have," Tito says.

Her remarks are not intended to dismiss the importance of the growing numbers of women in political office, but to draw attention to how little tangible impact this has had on women's lives. Health indicators are one concrete measure of conditions for women; on maternal mortality and other measures of women's health, South Sudan ranks amongst the worst in the world.

The core of Tito's message is the need to focus on quality even as women fight for quantity.

"Wouldn't it be better to have fewer women leaders who can deliver, rather than more who are there to make the leadership class look good in terms of being more gender representative?" she asks.

"Not many women are willing to sacrifice their personal interests for the greater good which is to have a more gender representative leadership by women who can deliver. Women eyeing positions of power are extremely suspicious of each other," concludes Tito.

"We know there is an under representation of women in leadership, what we need to do is learn how to better strategies by marshaling strength in support of the most promising candidates."

Finding such candidates is made harder by the fact that South Sudan has a literacy rate of only 24 percent - just 12 percent for women, versus 37 percent for men.

"For most women, even with the end of the war, survival precedes all else. As long as they can put together something to feed the family then all else is luxury, including a more balanced gender make-up in government," expounds Adak Costa, appointed a member of the Legislative Assembly for Rumbek County under affirmative action policies.

"Changing that perception is going to be very difficult. For educated women it is easy to see the cause-effect relationship between good government and a better south Sudan, but it is not easy for the uneducated."

Tito emphasizes that the system might reduce women to the role of rubber-stamping men into leadership.

Martin Elias Lomuro, South Sudan minister for parliamentary affairs, says there should be massive education on the need for Sudan to enjoy government representative of the different groups and interests in society.

"This, however, is not to say that the democratic structures already in place are not significant because there are fewer women in governance, but is a wake-up call on the fact that women need to be at the center of mainstream leadership," says Lomuro, who also leads the South Sudan Democratic Forum (SSDF) party.

Safe Motherhood Revisited

2010-01-04T15:41:00.001-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Safe-Motherhood-Revisited-by-Elayne-Clift-091231-686.html

January 2, 2010
Safe Motherhood Revisited
By Elayne Clift

In a village in rural Indonesia, a woman lies dying from infection after giving birth, unattended, two days earlier. Last year the daughter she delivered prematurely was stillborn and the low-birth weight baby she had before that died when he was a week old. In Sub-Saharan Africa another mother labors for two days and nights. When her baby is finally born, she suffers a hemorrhage and dies.

Scenes like these are repeated around the developing world with stunning regularity. Every minute a woman dies in pregnancy and childbirth; every year nearly 540,000 women los their lives to complications during pregnancy and childbirth. The vast majority of these deaths are preventable when women have access to vital health care before, during and after childbirth.

Most of this maternal morbidity and mortality could be stopped with coordinated action, sufficient resources, strong leadership and political will. Providing access to comprehensive reproductive health services (including family planning and safe abortion), ensuring skilled care by midwives during pregnancy and childbirth, and providing emergency care for all mothers and newborns with complications, would dramatically impact outcomes. So why has the international community not been more successful in reducing the maternal mortality rate over the last two decades?

Jeremy Shiffman, a political scientist at SyracuseUniversity, attempted to answer that question two years ago on the 20th anniversary of the Safe Motherhood Initiative. In an article in The Lancet (Oct. 2007), Shiffman suggested four key factors were at play: the need for strong leadership; the need to frame maternal health appropriately; the need for greater political will; and the need to understand the issue itself.

Recently, Dr. Shiffman noted that there is growing policy cohesion but reiterated problems around leadership, weak mobilization of civil society, and the lack of a unifying "frame" aimed at political commitment and action. Increasingly that frame is an economic one: Every year an estimated $15.5 billion in potential productivity is lost when mothers and newborns die.

When a number of United Nations agencies launched the Global Safe Motherhood Initiative in 1987, its goals were to raise awareness about the half million women dying every year from childbearing and to inspire efforts to reduce maternal mortality by half by the year 2000. Over the next decade, maternal mortality reduction remained high on the rhetorical agenda of the international public health community. Articles were written, conferences held, grants awarded.

In 2000 the United Nations announced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at poverty alleviation by 2015. Maternal health got its own MDG: Goal five was the reduction of the global maternal mortality ratio by 75 percent over 1990 levels by 2015. The consensus today is that MDG-5 has shown the least progress of all the MDGs.

The MDGs did foster dialogue among competing entities such as abortion advocates, AIDS activists, human rights feminists, and those who focused on public health policy on behalf of women vs. newborns. Development agencies and other donors increased funds for maternal and newborn health. Political leaders in India and Nigeria talked publicly about MDG-5. And still women died in the face of funding shortfalls and lagging political will.

As pressure built to address the continuing tragedy of maternal mortality, critical alliances were formed, among them in 2005, the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, an amalgam of groups committed to the continuum of care.

In 2007, a global Women Deliver Conference took place in London. Attended by 1500 parliamentarians, donors, public health professionals, and others, it helped establish key linkages between maternal health, reproductive health and choice, education, economics, gender issues, and human rights.

In 2008, UNFPA, UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank agreed to organize a strategic alliance aimed at harmonizing approaches by UN agencies to improve maternal and newborn health at the country level, and to jointly raise necessary resources.

The White Ribbon Alliance (WRA), an international coalition established in 1999 to advocate for quality health care before, during and after childbirth, recently announced its "Mothers Day Every Day" campaign in partnership with CARE. Sarah Brown, wife of the British prime minister, is an active force in WRA.

EngenderHealth, an international reproductive health organization, just received a three-year, $11 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to coordinate the Maternal Health Task Force Project. Its mandate is to shape collective efforts in improving maternal health worldwide by facilitating dialogue and consensus around programs and policies, research and evaluation, and advocacy. "We must find ways to translate knowledge into action and to build communities that work well together," says Dr. Ana Langer, President of EngenderHealth. "Governments are feeling the pressure."

Ann Starrs, executive vice-president of Family Care International, agrees. "While some regions have experienced declines in their maternal mortality rates since 1990, it is nowhere near enough. Donors and governments haven't invested sufficient resources in the programs and strategies that are essential to reducing maternal mortality. These strategies need to be implemented along with efforts to improve health services overall, and be linked to efforts addressing factors like gender inequality and poverty."

Despite continuing challenges including the fact that "this is still seen as a women's issue," Starrs is optimistic. "There is greater internal cohesion and collaboration around this issue than I've seen in the past twenty years," she says. "The last 12 to 18 months have seen a significant change in terms of awareness, high-level political attention, and celebrity engagement. We're at the cusp of real change."

"The challenge today," she adds, "is how to get the money to where it needs to go. It is unconscionable that one woman out of every seven in Niger will die from pregnancy-related complications compared to one in 48,000 in Ireland. Yes, we're facing a global economic crisis. But an investment of $7 billion per year will save the world $15 billion in lost productivity. That's not charity; it's a smart investment."

What Is Patriarchy?

2010-01-04T13:53:00.000-08:00

http://thesacredcircle.net/Patriarchy.html

Patriarchy is the insidious cultural force governing our planet today;
a hierarchal system supporting male domination and elite supremacy;
rooted in all religious & political belief systems that patronize a male GOD,
give MAN dominion over the Earth or appoint MAN head of household.

Patriarchy has dominated and ruled the world for many centuries now
keeping the numerous powers and gifts of the female under its control.

Since the Goddess as Divinity, Earth, Mother & Life-Giver has been deliberately
suppressed, supplanted & diminished by patriarchal religions & social systems,
along with the feminine powers of birthing & sustaining all life on earth,
it has sadly resulted in the sick and dysfunctional world we live in today!

Patriarchy creates illusions of male supremacy, power & importance.

Of course, the idea of male supremacy is absurd, but when we uphold this
delusion we are actually supporting & sustaining a hierarchal system that
keeps many people oppressed, sick, dependent, poor or powerless.

We must also realize that by relinquishing our power to Patriarchy
we actually justify, condone or rationalize condescending or
abusive treatment toward females, children, animals, Nature,
any other life-form considered less valuable!

Patriarchy stifles our true essence by creating a false sense of reality.
It perpetuates shame and deterioration of the soul because it goes
against natural forces & cycles of life. It is also a root cause of wars,
misogyny, racism, sexism, homophobia, codependency, alcoholism,
addiction, workaholism, eating disorders, violence, crime, genocide
& many other abuses and diseases we see in the world today.

The truth is, we are all spiritual beings, one with Nature, one in Spirit,
valuable and complete in the framework of our design, and we
must reclaim our divinity, our own unique mysteries, and our
connection with the natural world in order to fully recover.

The laws and forces that govern life, yin and yang, are balanced,
flowing harmoniously and equally between polarities.
If we are not aligned with the natural forces of life
we stay imbalanced ... therefore unhealthy.

Males as well as females are gravely affected by Patriarchy
because it teaches males to be god & females to serve god...
thereby defining roles for us that are impossible to emulate
without creating conflict and confusion in our basic natures and
in our relationships with one another. Patriarchy creates wars
within the SELF, and when there's conflict and stress within
there is always discord, dis-ease & dysfunction without.

In the Sisterhood of the Sacred Circle...
We are reclaiming our feminine power, unique mysteries,
rites of passage & celebrations to heal and recreate our lives.

We are also freeing ourselves from the mental and emotional
bondage of Patriarchy because it lies at the core of our diseases,
dysfunctions, compulsions, addictions & codependency...
and true recovery isn't possible until we are restored
to sanity & wholeness as true children of the Earth.

Health Screening: What's a Woman to Do?

2010-01-04T11:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Health-Screening-What-s-a-by-Elayne-Clift-091231-133.html

January 2, 2010
Health Screening: What's a Woman to Do?
By Elayne Clift

If it's not foods that are good for you and then aren't, it's drugs like hormone replacement therapy, handed out like vitamin pills to midlife women until we learned they could cause breast cancer. Now, controversy and confusion swirls around screening for breast and cervical cancer. Women are understandably "bothered and bewildered." Is there a way to sort out how to take care of ourselves?

The debate over when and how often to get mammograms has actually been ongoing for years. In the 1960s, randomized controlled studies were conducted but the complex data they provided led to different interpretations and recommendations. In 1971 a large-scale study found that mammograms were of limited benefit to women under fifty. In 1997, a consensus conference at the National Institutes of Health concluded that there was insufficient evidence to recommend screening for women under age fifty. Still, the Senate voted unanimously in support of women under fifty getting mammograms so the National Cancer Institute endorsed screenings for women in their forties.

Meanwhile, women's health education and advocacy organizations were making their position clear. Breast Cancer Action (BCA), the National Women's Health Network, and others, stated that pre-menopausal women should not have regular screening mammograms. Everyone, they said, should know the benefits and risks of all screening methods (mammograms, breast self-exam, clinical breast exam) so they could make the best decisions for themselves based on individual risk assessment.

BCA argues that we need to put aside individual situations in favor of public policy decisions that affect large numbers of people. "Emerging science tells us that we need to try to do that if we're going to get to the best place in terms of reducing deaths from breast cancer and minimizing the harms that occur when we do mammography screening." Among those harms, says BCA, are false negative results, or false positive results that lead to unnecessary invasive procedures. There is also the risk of cumulative exposure to radiation. Often, cancers that will not progress and are not life-threatening will be diagnosed and treated even though they pose no real problem.That's why risks must be balanced against benefits of finding breast cancer early enough to effectively treat the disease. ""Early detection' doesn't really mean what we've been led to believe -- that finding breast cancer early is the key to survival. It's not that simple," says Barbara Brenner, executive director of BCA.

Women diagnosed with "early" breast cancer fall into one of three categories: those with breast cancer that responds to currently available treatments; those with breast cancer that will never become life-threatening; and those with very aggressive disease that can't be effectively treated with available therapies. The only people who benefit from early detection are those in the first group because their lives can be saved if they get timely and appropriate treatment. It is these women who need screening.

Last November the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that women begin regular breast cancer screening at age fifty rather than forty. Dr. Robert Aronowitz, an internist at the University of Pennsylvania, supports that recommendation. "You need to screen 1,900 women in their forties for ten years in order to prevent one death from breast cancer," he wrote on NYTimes.com. "In the process you will have generated more than 1,000 false positive screens and all the overtreatment they entail." Noted breast cancer surgeon Dr. Susan Love concurs. "There are no studies that indicate mammograms will reduce deaths from aggressive tumors in young women," she says. "It's not whether women under fifty get breast cancer. They do. The question is whether mammography is the best way to find them and really change the outcome."

While cancer groups like The American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute are split on guidelines issued by the Task Force, its recommendations are consistent with international findings and standards. The World Health Organization recommends starting screening at age fifty. In Europe, mammograms are given to post-menopausal women bi-annually. Detection rates are similar to those in the U.S.

Just after the Task Force recommendations for breast cancer screening were presented, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) announced a similar revision to its screening guidelines for cervical cancer. ACOG now advises women to get their first Pap test at age twenty-one. (Previously they advocated a pap test three years after sexual activity began or at age twenty-one.) The new recommendation also promotes testing biannually instead of annually for women under thirty. According to Dr. Alan Waxman of the University of New Mexico, "the evidence to date shows that screening at less frequent intervals prevents cervical cancer just as well, has decreased costs and avoids unnecessary interventions that could be harmful."

Changing health behavior, especially when it reverses prevailing norms, is not easy. Patients and providers alike will struggle with these new recommendations as they begin to think differently about risk and disease reduction. Some will question the timing of these recommendations given the current political climate regarding health care financing and reform. Certainly we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater, especially since women often receive routine health screening only when they visit their gynecologists for pap smears and breast exams.

Still, marrying evidence-based protocols to intuitive risk assessment is not a bad idea. As Barbara Brenner says, "We have suffered from oversimplification of the early detection message for far too long. The new recommendations on screening may help us move to a more nuanced understanding of cancer, and ultimately a better place for all of us."

Feminomics: Top Five Heroines of Financial Reform

2009-12-31T12:13:00.000-08:00

http://www.newdeal20.org/

Feminomics: Top Five Heroines of Financial Reform
By Joe Costello, NewDeal 2.0
Posted on December 30, 2009, Printed on December 31, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144881/

From an economic standpoint, will 2010 be the year of the woman? As part of the Roosevelt Institute's ongoing 'Feminomics' series, running on the New Deal 2.0 blog, I was asked to reflect on women's changing roles in the economy. Here's my take on how the New Deal advanced the cause of women's equality.

1) First, I'll start with Yves Smith, who I came across end of last summer. She has 25 years in financial services, worked for, amongst others, Goldman, McKinsey, and Sumitomo, and is also a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Business School. Her must-read blog is Naked Capitalism. She has shown great knowledge and greater courage -- and from my experience, these two traits are too rare together. Her writing is exceptional, and if you want a good overview of the financial mess and what's gone on over the past year and half, I highly recommend paging through her blog's archive. The president should replace Geithner with her. Time we had our first woman Treasury Secretary.

2) Next, Elizabeth Warren. Either mistakenly, which I believe is the case, or purposefully, in which case I'd have to reevaluate my opinion of Harry Reid, Warren was appointed by Reid to head the Congressional Oversight Panel for all the money being handed to the banks. Warren is Professor of Law at Harvard and wrote the excellent book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. So, she documented the great underbelly of Wall Street's debt bubble -- particularly its destruction of a big chunk of working America. I don't know if Reid thought he was getting some doddering academic when he appointed her, but instead he got a strong and energetic public advocate. There's been a pretty hard effort to discredit Ms. Warren, and Yves Smith takes a look at the hatchet job done by NPR here. I've been nothing but impressed when I've heard her talk, and strongly second the motion by William Greider to give her subpoena powers.

3) In October 2007, working for Oppenheimer, Meredith Whitney wrote a report calling Citi the pile junk it is. Amazingly, she was pretty much the only one in the whole industry to do so. Since then, Whitney has been straight at the big banks, holding nothing back on what bad shape they're in. She's the Anti-Geithner. In the middle of latest pop in the stock market, which has gotten the banks $50 billion in new capital over the past couple months, Whitney appeared on CNBC and called the banks' profits "manufactured" by the government, and stated things would begin heading south again. She's an eagle above the weasels scurrying below on Wall Street.

4) Gretchen Morgenson writes for the NYT business section. In the last year and half, she has written far and away some of the best coverage of the financial crisis in the mainstream media. Most importantly, she put Mr. Blankfein at the meeting with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke when the bailout of AIG was decided to the advantage of Goldman for at least 14 billion. Again, if you want to read some good things on the last year and half, scroll through her articles in the Times' archive (The Nation did an ok piece on her, but unfortunately, it suffers from the author's "objective journalism" disease).

5) Finally, I'd throw in Sheila Bair, who was appointed head of the FDIC by none other than George W. Bush. Ms. Bair has frequently tangled with the boys in the government, taking on Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, and Summers. She's stated repeatedly the banking crisis is not over, tried to slow the foreclosure tsunami, and most recently stated again Citi is a pile of crap and needs to be placed into receivership.

These women are inspiring! Citizens all, helping to breathe life into this old republic.

Editor's note: AlterNet nominates Nomi Prins as a 6th heroine of financial reform: Before becoming a journalist, Nomi worked on Wall Street as a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and ran the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London. Prins regularly takes on the banks in her articles in the independent and progressive media. Read some of her work from this year here. It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.

This post originally appeared on New Deal 2.0.

Joe Costello has been involved in communications, energy and political economy for three decades. He was communications director for Jerry Brown's innovative 1992 presidential campaign and was a senior adviser for Howard Dean's effort in 2004. He's spent two decades thinking and acting on the confluence of information technologies and democratic political economy. Read his writing at Archein.

Child Abuse Video - Worth Watching

2009-12-31T10:21:00.000-08:00

http://www.blip.tv/file/1199602

Diners Club Ends Relationship with Mail Order Brides Service

2009-12-29T06:20:00.001-08:00

http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/diners_club_ends_relationship_with_mail_order_brides_service

Diners Club Ends Relationship with Mail Order Brides Service
BY AMANDA KLOER
PUBLISHED JUNE 12, 2009

I am thrilled to report that Diners Club International has officially agreed to end their relationship with Vietnam Brides International, including the "payment plan" that Diners Club Singapore offered so that men could charge women to their credit cards. This is a true victory for the Change.org community and for all of us who work to prevent the exploitation and sale of women.

Thank you and congratulations to the over 800 of you who signed the online petition and sent messages to Diners Club asking them to end their support for an industry which is rampant with human trafficking and exploitation of women. Here is the official response we received from Mai Lee Ua, representative of Discover Financial Services, which owns Diners Club:

“On behalf of Diners Club International, which is part of Discover Financial Services, we appreciate [your] bringing this specific merchant relationship with a Diners franchisee to our attention. Formal steps have been taken to terminate the relationship [with Vietnam Brides International].”

This statement is telling, and it says that you all made a huge difference. Your letters made Diners Club aware of the partnership one of their frachisees had made with a mail order bride service. You helped keep an important financial protection in place for women at risk of trafficking and abuse via the mail order bride industry. You refused to accept that an international company can treat and finance women like objects. This is one of those rare moments when you can see the important changes your actions bring, and the difference you make in the world.

Thank you for bringing this issue to Diners Club's attention. And thank you Diners Club International for making the important decision to protect women and girls from exploitation. Together, we are the change we wish to see.

Feminomics: Women and Bankruptcy

2009-12-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-warren/feminomics-women-and-bank_b_395667.html

Elizabeth Warren, Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the banking bailouts
Posted: December 17, 2009
Feminomics: Women and Bankruptcy

From an economic standpoint, will 2010 be the year of the woman? As part of the Roosevelt Institute's ongoing 'Feminomics' series, running on the New Deal 2.0 blog, I was asked to reflect on women's changing roles in the economy. Here's my take on the pernicious effects of bankruptcy on women -- especially those in the middle class.

Why is bankruptcy an issue of equal justice and fairness to women?

Bankruptcy exposes the economic vulnerability and insecurity of middle class women. The women in bankruptcy, like the men who file for bankruptcy, are a fairly representative cross-section of the American middle class. Their education levels are slightly higher than the population generally, with women in bankruptcy more likely to have attended college than their counterparts. Most are employed when they file. They work in a representative cross-section of industries and occupations. More than half are homeowners. By the most overt criteria, the women who file for bankruptcy are, as a group, solidly middle-class. But at the time they file for bankruptcy, their incomes tend to hover only slightly above the poverty level, and they are deeply mired in debt. The women who file for bankruptcy played by all the rules, but they are still in economic freefall.

How has the financial crisis impacted women experiencing debt and insolvency?

Based on projected figures, more than a million women will find their way to the bankruptcy courts this year -- more women than will graduate from college, receive a diagnosis of cancer, or file for divorce. The numbers are staggering.

How do current bankruptcy laws place special burdens on women?

For many women, the on-time payments of domestic support obligations are essential to economic survival. Until 2005, the bankruptcy of those who owed the obligations actually helped women because the bankruptcy wiped out credit card debts and other obligations, while leaving domestic support obligations intact. This gave women a clear field to collect from their ex-husbands. But the credit card companies got the laws changed in 2005, making it harder for these men to declare bankruptcy and harder to discharge credit card debt. That puts women trying to collect domestic support obligations and credit card companies in direct competition for the ex-husband's resources. Credit card companies can hire lawyers and develop extensive debt collect departments, something that is really tough for women. When the credit industry controls the bankruptcy rules, women lose.

Twenty-nine women's groups -- a diverse collection that included the Y.W.C.A., Hadassah, American Association of University Women, Church Women United, the NOW Legal Defense Fund and the Feminist Majority-publicly opposed the bankruptcy legislation.

What groups of women are especially at risk?

Women with children are particularly vulnerable, both because of the economic challenges faced by single-parent households and because bankruptcy now gives credit card companies greater capacity to compete with women in collecting past-due debts.

How can women protect themselves from bankruptcy?

Most women file for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious medical problem, a job loss or a family break up. It is hard to protect against those. But women can help themselves if they keep their fixed expenses (rent, car payment, student loans) to half of their incomes, and if they put aside some savings. My daughter and I wrote a book with more detailed advice, called All Your Worth, that some women have found helpful.

What legal reforms are necessary moving forward to ease the burden on women?

Anything that eases the burden on hard-working, middle class American families will provide great help to women. One thing the financial crisis taught us, though, is the extent to which the broken consumer credit market has fueled the insecurity of the middle class. Today, lenders operate in what is really a Wild West environment. They face little regulation, and they can get away with almost anything that pushes up profits. In the years leading up to the crisis, the broken market affected women disproportionately. Women were 32 percent more likely than men to have received subprime loans and 41 percent more likely than men to have received higher-cost subprime loans, regardless of income.

There are a number of causes of the rising insecurity of the middle class, but one of the biggest problems right now is that the largely unregulated consumer credit industry has preyed on customers by burying tricks and traps in the fine print and concealing true costs. This is why I believe it is so important for Congress to act on the President's proposal to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. We need to make the market competitive again and to get rid of the tricks and traps. This will empower families to make good choices and will increase their economic security.

"How Does Somebody Have a Baby in Jail Without Anybody Noticing?" The Awful Plight of Pregnant Prisoners

2009-12-16T11:57:00.000-08:00

"How Does Somebody Have a Baby in Jail Without Anybody Noticing?" The Awful Plight of Pregnant Prisoners
By Rachel Roth, The Nation
December 16, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144550/

Over the past year, incarcerated women and their allies have achieved a remarkable string of victories against inhumane treatment. First, they persuaded the Bureau of Prisons to issue a new policy in October 2008 limiting the use of restraints on women who are in labor, giving birth or recovering after childbirth; the Marshals Service, which transports people in federal custody, followed suit. Next, they won legislation in the spring and summer of 2009 restricting the use of restraints on pregnant women in New Mexico, Texas and New York. Finally, they successfully petitioned the US Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit for a rehearing of the full court in a case from Arkansas, which resulted in a ruling in October that shackling women in labor is unconstitutional.

These developments send a strong signal to the rest of the country to stop subjecting women to this dangerous and degrading practice. But what happens to pregnant women in prison before they wind up in chains at a hospital?

When women are brought to a hospital in shackles, the pain and humiliation they endure likely caps months of difficulty from being pregnant behind bars, months without adequate prenatal care or nutrition, or even basics like a bed to sleep on or clothes to accommodate their changing shape.

The lack of common sense and compassion with which imprisoned pregnant women are treated is chilling. Three stories illustrate the dangers women face when they cannot get anyone to take their medical needs seriously.

First, some women are not taken to the hospital until after they have already given birth, despite having informed staff members that they are in labor. Women wind up giving birth in their cells with the assistance of a nurse, corrections officer or cellmates. Others give birth in their cells with nobody to help. Both situations endanger the woman and her baby. Nineteen-year-old Terra K. screamed, pounded on the door and asked for the nurse in the Dubuque County Jail in Iowa, only to give birth alone in her cell. Afterward she asked, "How does somebody have a baby in jail without anybody noticing?"

Next, some women never see their pregnancy result in a live birth. In the Collier County Jail in Florida, Joan S. repeatedly sought medical attention because she was near her due date and leaking amniotic fluid; this went on for almost two weeks. By the time she got an ultrasound, the doctor informed her that all of her amniotic fluid was gone and her fetus's skull had collapsed. Jail officials then delayed taking her to the hospital, putting her at risk for septic shock the longer the dead fetus remained inside her. As if this were not bad enough, the jail delayed giving her a shot she needed because she has RH-negative blood, which could cause complications if she becomes pregnant in the future. She is only 22.

Finally, corrections personnel neglect women who have had miscarriages. Michelle M. was punched repeatedly in the stomach by two other prisoners in the Maricopa County jail in Arizona. Guards denied her access to the infirmary. Three days later, she was bleeding so heavily that she was finally taken to a hospital, where doctors told her she had miscarried and instructed her to return for a checkup. But the jail wouldn't bring her back for the checkup--that is, not until three weeks later, when she began bleeding so much that the jail finally called an ambulance. At the hospital, she needed a blood transfusion as well as a surgical procedure to remove the remains of the pregnancy from her uterus.

These are not isolated events; they are just a few that recently made the news. Institutions of confinement are not required to report the pregnancy outcomes of women in their custody. Until elected officials mandate such reporting, we will have to rely on the efforts of imprisoned women, journalists, human rights investigators, researchers, lawyers and advocates to document the reality of life for pregnant women inside prison walls. Reflecting on more than thirty years of experience, ACLU National Prison Project director Elizabeth Alexander says, "In virtually every case that I have handled involving healthcare claims of women, I have found women who lost their pregnancies or newborns due to the prison's atrocious neglect."

The denial of appropriate care to pregnant women is part and parcel of the general state of medical neglect in prisons in the United States. Access to timely, appropriate medical care is further undermined by the trend to contract out medical services to private, for-profit companies.

When women suffer inadequate pregnancy-related care, seeking redress is extremely difficult, given the many hurdles imposed by the Prison Litigation Reform Act. As one example, a federal court dismissed a woman's lawsuit over her failure to comply with the jail's internal grievance procedure. She persevered, and the court of appeals overturned the lower court. The court of appeals compared the case to something out of Alice in Wonderland, because all the parties agreed that the jail's grievance procedure was never made available to anyone being held in the jail, and, therefore, compliance would be impossible.

This state of affairs is even more disturbing when we consider that most women do not pose a threat to public safety. They are serving time -- or stuck in jail because they are too poor to make bail -- for nonviolent crimes, and could be supervised in the community instead of being incarcerated.

The purpose of prison is to punish and control, not to tend to people's medical needs, although prisons and jails are constitutionally obligated to do so. Leaving women to give birth all alone in their cells, or to suffer the consequences of a miscarriage or stillbirth without proper medical attention, surely violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The United States has no real system of prison oversight to ensure accountability for the treatment of people in custody. As Joan S. said of her decision to bring a lawsuit against the jail and private company that denied her medical care, "I want them to make changes. I don't want this to happen to other mothers."

Nine years for cricket bat killer

2009-12-15T11:03:00.000-08:00

http://www.expatica.com/nl/news/community_focus/Nine-years-for-cricket-bat-killer.html

15/12/2009
Nine years for cricket bat killer

A Pakistani man has been sentenced to nine years in prison by an Amsterdam court for killing his wife. He is said to have beaten her to death with a cricket bat in 2007 after she asked for a divorce.

Amsterdam--The Public Prosecutor’s office had demanded a sentence of 14 years for murder, but the court ruled that only manslaughter had been proved. The judge spoke of a gruesome act, said the man had deprived the couple’s four children of their mother and noted that at no point had he shown any sign of remorse for what he had done.

Younis K. (39) supposedly murdered his wife because she wanted to divorce him and go live with another man, which would have dishonoured his Pakistani family.

K's nephew, who had also been accused of taking part in the killing, was released because there was insufficient evidence that the injuries of the victim were caused by two people.

Afghanistan's Forgotten Women

2009-12-14T17:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1258880814692&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout

Mon. Dec. 7, 2009
Afghanistan's Forgotten Women

"Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghan women continue to be among the worst off in the world," says the report. (Reuters)

CAIRO — Violence against Afghan women is "endemic" and the government is not doing much to protect them, the Human Rights Watch said in a new report.
"Eight years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghan women continue to be among the worst off in the world," said the report posted on the HRW's website.

"Their situation is dismal in every area, including in health, education, employment, freedom from violence, equality before the law, and political participation."

The report, "We Have the Promises of the World: Women's Rights in Afghanistan", details cases of rights violations against women.

"Women in public life are subject to routine threats and intimidation.

"Several high profile women have been assassinated, but their killers have not been brought to justice."

Read HRW Report (Document)
Sitara Achakzai, an outspoken rights activist and politician, was murder last April and the government has so far not arrested any of the perpetrators.
"[This creates] an environment of impunity for those who target women," the HRW said.

It added that physical and sexual violence against women are still rife in Afghanistan.

"One nationwide survey of levels of violence against Afghan women found that 52 percent of respondents experienced physical violence, and 17 percent reported sexual violence," it said.

"Yet because of social and legal obstacles to accessing justice, few women and girls report violence to the authorities."

The report cites the case of a woman who was gang raped by a group that included a powerful local militia commander.

Although she fought to have her rapists prosecuted, they were subsequently pardoned by the West-backed President Hamid Karzai.

Later, her husband was assassinated.

The United Nations said last week that violence and rape against women in Afghanistan was a problem of "profound proportions".

Forgotten

HRW said that though girl education was the declared main goal of the Kabul government and its foreign donors, girls have far less access to schools than boys.

"The majority of girls still do not attend primary school," said the report.

"A dismal 11 percent of secondary-school-age girls are enrolled in grades seven through nine. Only 4 percent of girls make it to grades 10 through 12."

The international rights watchdog said many girls are prodded into arranged and forced marriages.

"Surveys suggest that in more than half of all marriages, the wives are under age 16, and 70 to 80 percent of marriages take place without the consent of the woman or girl."

HRW accused the West and the Kabul government of failing to improve the conditions of Afghan women since the ouster of Taliban in 2001.

"While the plight of women and girls under the Taliban was used to help justify the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, women's rights have not been a consistent priority of the government or its international backers."

The US invaded Afghanistan to topple the Taliban regime, which was accused of violating women rights.

Eight years, many believe the West has failed to put the country on the path of progress as promised.

"Women are not a priority for our own government or the international community," MP Shinkai Karokhail told the HRW.

"We've been forgotten."

Gender jihad, the burqa-bikini and religious conservatism

2009-12-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/12/04/gender-jihad-burqabikini-and-religious-conservatism.html

December 15, 2009 4:28 AM
Gender jihad, the burqa-bikini and religious conservatism
Meidyatama Suryodiningrat
The Jakarta Post
12/04/2009 11:37 AM

Abaya, burqa, niqab and hijab. Iniquitous symbols of female religious subordination, where human fallibility supersedes divine design.

As Muslims observed Idul Adha last week, who paused for Siti Hajar as her husband sacrificed their son in an act of divine obedience?

God's words absolute. Hajar's faith resolute. But a mother's heart must have cringed.

Where was Hajar's emotional narrative, given the Koran's "reverence to the womb that bore you" and Prophet Muhammad's designation of "paradise under a mother's feet"?

Perhaps still lurking in the shadow of seventh-century Mecca. Veiled in ignorance and cultural insularity.

Nuryamin Aini, a lecturer at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University's Sharia School in Jakarta, says Hajar's muteness may be the result of "the *quiet* trust of a mother to her child and husband".

"Or due to her inability to defend *speak for* herself," she says in the journal Swara Rahima, referring to Hajar's position as a once-banished second wife.

Except for the bedroom and maternity room, the keepers of heaven are marginalized in Islam's discourse.

It began with misogynistic Arab clans, then the mosque. Finally women were edged out of politics and leadership altogether. Hajar was the first victim of post-Muhammad Islamic history, which turned an egalitarian faith into a patriarchal monolith.

Umm Waraqa, Sayyidah Nafisah: prominent female imams and scholars of their time, but mere footnotes in Islamic history.

The shaping of Islam's paradigms (sharia) was bereft of female inquiry as men and Arab tradition defined Islam for women. Modern Muslim feminists and female clerics, the likes of Fatima Mernissi or Amina Wadud, continue to be perceived as curios or immoderate.

Today sharia abounds, beyond the borders of the Middle East, from Sudan to parts of Indonesia, yet still adopts the same cultural defects of its point of origin. Religion as a truncheon of political conservatism. Islam hijacked as the raison d'*tre of terrorism.

The end result: a mix of backwardness and incomprehensibility that blights the religion of peace and places women in legal peril.

Like Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein, fined in August for wearing pants in public, or Aisha Duhulow, the girl damned by a Somali sharia court a year ago and stoned to death on charges of adultery.

In Indonesia things are not as bad. Yet.

But 21 regions - Cianjur and Indramayu in West Java, Enrekang and Maros in South Sulawesi, Pesisir Selatan in West Sumatra, and Aceh province, among others - have issued (sharia) bylaws discriminatory to women, whether on mandatory hijab or aspects of social behavior.

As Kemala Chandra Kirana, chairwoman of the National Commission on Women, says, "It isn't an issue of agreeing or disagreeing with the jilbab *hijab*, rather a case of freedom of women's expression."

The latest imposition of further conservatism in Acehnese bylaws regard dress, including the prohibition of pants for women.

Musdah Mulia, head of the Indonesian Conference on Religion and Peace, says, "*The bylaws* don't make people morally conscious, they only make them hypocrites.

"How can you punish someone based on a 19th-century law that wasn't even around during the Prophet's time?" adds Musdah, the 2009 recipient of the Il Premio Internazionale La Donna dell'Anno (International Prize for the Woman of the Year).

Some have fought back by reviving liberal Islamic voices at the fore. Others reconciled modernity with wacky concoctions such as the burkini (the burqa-bikini bathing suit).

But surely there is a simpler hidden lesson when understanding that Islam's most tolerant, peaceful and finest example, the Prophet Muhammad himself, was raised without a father.

Despite the tradition of Islamic scholarship and the renowned history of women in Indonesia's independence struggle, women here are overdue in their gender jihad.

Of the 21,500 pesantren (Islamic schools) in the country, an insignificant number are led by women or have, if any, senior females teaching male students.

Acknowledged female clerics are too few among their countless male counterparts. Most still cater to gender-specific congregations.

Who among them has endeavored to emulate Egyptian Kariman Hamzah who this year became the first women to complete a Koranic tafsir (interpretation) recognized by Al-Azhar scholars?

Empowerment through existing religious structures is not novel. Sinta Nuriyah, the wife of former president and NU chairman Abdurrahman Wahid, several years ago initiated women's centers through the pesantren network.

It might raise evolutionary awareness, but its success is questionable.

Women cannot rely on the acquiescence of set institutions to accommodate change. Like any revisionism, critical thinking - "women's lib" - challenges existing structures of authority.

How far are traditionalist pesantren clerics willing to emasculate themselves?

More than just wrestling the chauvinistic interpretations of Islam, there is a larger cost at stake.

If the rise of conservatism and religious terrorism is often attributed to a radical fringe permeating through religious schools, then inclusion of a gender-conscious tafsir may offset extremist vehemence.

Complacency breeds complicity.

It's time women reclaimed their position as equal voices in Islam.

Not by waiting, but taking the mimbar (pulpit) to preach that prayer is no less hallowed from a woman's mouth.

Afghan women among worst off in world-rights group

2009-12-14T13:40:00.001-08:00

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE5B51R220091206?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

Afghan women among worst off in world-rights group
Sun Dec 6, 2009

When President Hamid Karzai was first elected president of Afghanistan in 2004, he appointed three women ministers. Five years on, the minister for women's affairs is the last remaining female in the cabinet.

The report's author said Karzai's reliance on support from powerful former warlords has further restricted women from making progress in Afghan society and government, and attacks on women in public life seem to be worsening.

"There are definitely some negative trends and attacks on women in public life is one of those," said Rachel Reid, Afghanistan researcher for the Washington-based rights group.

"As Karzai has weakened over the last few years he's got more dependent on warlords, whose views are not that different from the Taliban often and that has an effect on women."

A further sign that women's status in Afghanistan is declining, the report said, is the introduction of the Shi'ite Personal Status Law, which caused an international outcry because some of its articles were seen to legalise marital rape.

Last week U.S. President Barack Obama announced an additional 30,000 U.S. troops for Afghanistan. Reid said his silence on women's issues during his speech signalled that attacks against women in the war-riven country were permissible.

"It matters so much that on the presidential level, it matters from top to bottom that leaders in society, that men and women try to tackle the injustices that are meted out to women daily," Reid said.

IRS Audits Single Mother For Not Making Enough Money

2009-12-13T10:32:00.001-08:00

IRS Audits Single Mother For Not Making Enough Money
By Cara , Feministe
December 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.feministe.us/blog//144526/

This is absurd. Via Raven’s Eye, Danny Westneat at the Seattle Times has uncovered a case in which the IRS audited a single mother with two kids, who earns $10 an hour at Supercuts and lives with her parents. What was their reason for doing so? Random selection? An incorrectly completed return? No, they just thought that she was too poor to be telling the truth:

“I asked the IRS lady straight upfront — ‘I don’t have anything, why are you auditing me?’ ” Porcaro recalled. “I said, ‘Why me, when I don’t own a home, a business, a car?’ ”

The answer stunned both Porcaro and the private tax specialist her dad had gotten to help her.

“They showed us a spreadsheet of incomes in the Seattle area,” says Dante Driver, an accountant at Seattle’s G.A. Michael and Co. “The auditor said, ‘You made eighteen thousand, and our data show a family of three needs at least thirty-six thousand to get by in Seattle.”

“They thought she must have unreported income. That she was hiding something. Basically they were auditing her for not making enough money.”

Seriously? An estimated 60,000 people in Seattle live below the poverty line — meaning they make $11,000 or less for an individual or $22,000 for a family of four. Does the IRS red-flag them for scrutiny, simply because they’re poor?

The IRS must either think that the United States is just filled to the brim with liars, or that they receive an awful lot of tax returns for people who don’t exist. A whole lot of people in this country, not just in Seattle, live under the poverty line — even though the poverty line is actually placed ridiculously low. And more still live above the official poverty line while still being poor. It’s usually not pretty. It’s sure as hell not just. And often, those people need the help of friends and family to get by. But as they will tell you, it can be done — because, simply, it has to.

As Westneat points out, it’s not as though low-income people can’t commit tax fraud. But choosing them as audit subjects specifically because of their low income is incredibly classist, and far from cost effective. It can also be just plain cruel and vindictive, as it turned in Porcaro’s case:

She had a yearlong odyssey into the maw of the IRS. After being told she couldn’t survive in Seattle on so little, she was notified her returns for both 2006 and 2007 had been found “deficient.” She owed the government more than $16,000 — almost an entire year’s pay.

She couldn’t pay it. Her dad, Rob, has run a local painting business, Porcaro Power Painting, for 30 years. He asked his accountant, Driver, for help.

Rachel’s returns weren’t all that complicated. At issue, though, was that she and her two sons, ages 10 and 8, were all living at her parents’ house in Rainier Beach (she pays $400 a month rent). So the IRS concluded she wasn’t providing for her children and therefore couldn’t claim them as dependents.

She stood to lose what is called earned income tax credit, a refund targeted to help low-income workers. You qualify only if you’re working, as Rachel has been.

So, according to the IRS, parents living in intergenerational housing aren’t caring for their children. Further, while I don’t personally know anyone for whom $16,000 is not a huge sum, it’s an impossible and mind-boggling one for someone who earns $18,000 a year.

When Porcaro’s father’s accountant informed the IRS that they had been interpreting their own tax law wrong, they didn’t exactly back down — they instead launched an investigation against Porcaro’s parents. As one can imagine from the fact that such an investigation was conducted at all, that, too, got ugly:

They racked up $10,000 in accountant bills — $8,000 of which Driver is trying to recover from the IRS.

In the end, the parents were cleared. The IRS also backed off trying to reclaim Rachel’s earned income tax credit.

But the agency insisted Rachel couldn’t prove she was supporting her children — she didn’t have enough receipts — so she had to stop claiming them as dependents. A few weeks ago she paid back $1,438 (plus penalties and interest!) on that issue.

Way to go, IRS. You did an investigation likely costing tens of thousands of dollars (counting both sides). To squeeze a grand out of a single mom who did nothing wrong.

Now, for tax purposes, Porcaro’s children just don’t plain exist. She’s not supporting them. Her parents aren’t supporting them. Apparently these children don’t eat, wear clothes, incur medical bills, or sleep anywhere — except that they do, and the IRS just doesn’t give a shit.

There was no fraud here. Porcaro was and is supporting her children. She just so happened to be doing it under a very common living arrangement that the IRS doesn’t seem to like. No one was breaking the law by claiming her children as dependents twice. She filed her taxes honestly, and indeed probably paid extra money she didn’t have to ensure that they were done right. And after that she is still being penalized, both now and in the future.

And she’s hardly alone in her struggle:

Why did this happen? The IRS won’t say, but Congress has been fighting for years about the earned income tax credit for the working poor.

Republicans have called the credits “backdoor welfare” and tried to cancel them. When they controlled Congress, they ordered the IRS to ramp up audits of people who claim the credit.

In 2006, credit recipients such as Rachel were more than twice as likely to get audited as the rest of the 140 million individual tax filers.

So, while upper middle class and rich people are being handed actual tax breaks out the ass, poor folks are being specifically and disproportionately targeted for tax “breaks” that they need to survive.

The thing is, while I’m sure it doesn’t feel that way to her, Rachel Porcaro’s story probably has a comparably happy ending. A whole lot of single moms making $18,000 a year don’t have parents with accountants, not to mention $10,000 to pay now and try to get back later. And I dread to think of what the IRS does to those women’s lives.

Further, this absolutely is a women’s issue: women are disproportionately represented among the working poor, and single moms are even more over-represented (49% of working poor families are headed by single women). We’ve got a system that is undoubtedly classist, consequently sexist, and, since a greater percentage of people of color live in poverty as compared to whites, racist.

Porcaro’s story isn’t just scary and outrageous because of what was done to her — it’s also scary and outrageous because it reveals that there are a lot of stories like it that aren’t making the news.

Women Left for Dead and the Man Who's Saving Them

2009-12-10T16:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Women-Left-for-Dead-and-th-by-Rady-Ananda-080712-170.html

July 12, 2008
Women Left for Dead and the Man Who's Saving Them

Fahamu (Oxford) granted permission for full reprint.

In the Congo, where hundreds of thousands of women are brutally raped every year, Dr. Denis Mukwege repairs their broken bodies and souls. Eve Ensler visits him and finds hope amid the horror.

I have just returned from hell. I am trying for the life of me to figure out how to communicate what I have seen and heard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. How do I convey these stories of atrocities without your shutting down, quickly turning the page or feeling too disturbed?

How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and feces?

This journey was a departure for me. It began with a man, Dr. Denis Mukwege, and a conversation we had in New York City in December 2006, when he came to speak about his work helping women at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. It began with my rusty French and his limited English. It began with the quiet anguish in his bloodshot eyes, eyes that seemed to me to be bleeding from the horrors he'd witnessed.

Something happened in this conversation that compelled me to go halfway around the world to visit the doctor, this holy man who was sewing up women as fast as the mad militiamen could rip them apart.

I am going to tell the stories of the patients he saves so that the faceless, generic, raped women of war become Alfonsine and Nadine--women with names and memories and dreams. I am going to ask you to stay with me, to open your hearts, to be as outraged and nauseated as I felt sitting in Panzi Hospital in faraway Bukavu.

Before I went to the Congo, I'd spent the past 10 years working on V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. I'd traveled to the rape mines of the world, places like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, where rape has been used as a tool of war. But nothing I ever experienced felt as ghastly, terrifying and complete as the sexual torture and attempted destruction of the female species here. It is not too strong to call this a femicide, to say that the future of the Congo's women is in serious jeopardy.

I learned from my trip that there are men who take their sorrow and helplessness and destroy women's bodies--and there are others with the same feelings who devote their lives to healing and serving. I do not know all the reasons men end up in one or the other of these groups, but I do know that one good man can create many more. One good man can inspire other men to ache for women, to fight for them and protect them. One good man can win the trust of a community of raped women--and in doing so, keep their faith in humanity alive.

Dr. Mukwege picks me up at 6:30 A.M. It is a lush, clean morning. Eastern Congo, where Panzi Hospital is located, is wildly fertile. You can almost hear the vegetation growing. There are banana trees and cartoon-colored birds. And there is Lake Kivu, a vast body of water that contains enough methane to power a good portion of the sub-Sahara--yet the city of Bukavu on its banks has only sporadic electricity. This is a theme in the Congo. There are more natural resources than almost anywhere else on the planet, yet 80 percent of the people make less than a dollar a day. More rain falls than one can imagine, but for millions, clean drinking water is scarce. The earth is gorgeously abundant, and yet almost one third of the population is starving.

As we drive along the semblance of road, the doctor tells me how different things were when he was a child. "In the sixties 50,000 people lived here in Bukavu. It was a relaxed place. There were rich people who had speedy boats in the lakes. There were gorillas in the mountains." Now there are at least a million displaced Congolese, many of whom arrive in the city daily, fleeing the numerous armed groups that have ravaged the countryside since fighting erupted in 1996. What started as a civil war to overthrow dictator Mobutu Sese Seko soon became "Africa's first world war," as observers have called it, with soldiers from neighboring countries joining in the mayhem. The troops have various agendas: Many are fighting for control of the region's extraordinary mineral wealth. Others are out to grab whatever they can get.

But you have to go back further than 1996 to understand what is going on in the Congo today. This country has been tortured for more than 120 years, beginning with King Leopold II of Belgium, who "acquired" the Congo and, between 1885 and 1908, exterminated an estimated 10 million people, about half the population. The violent consequences of genocide and colonialism have had a profound impact on the psyche of the Congolese. Despite a 2003 peace agreement and recent elections, armed groups continue to terrorize the eastern half of the country. Overall the war has left nearly 4 million people dead--more than in any other conflict since World War II--and resulted in the rape of hundreds of thousands of women and girls.

In Bukavu, the people escaping the fighting walk from early morning to late at night. They walk and walk, searching for a way to buy or sell a tomato, or for a banana for their baby. It is a relentless river of humans, anxious and hungry. "People used to eat three meals a day," says Dr. Mukwege. "Now they are lucky to eat one."

Everyone knows the doctor, an ob-gyn. He waves and stops to inquire about this person's health, that person's mother. Most doctors, teachers and lawyers fled the Congo after the wars started. It never occurred to Dr. Mukwege to leave his people at their most desperate hour.

He first became aware of the epidemic of rape in 1996.

"I saw women who had been raped in an extremely barbaric way," he recalls. "First, the women were raped in front of their children, their husbands and neighbors. Second, the rapes were done by many men at the same time. Third, not only were the women raped, but their vaginas were mutilated with guns and sticks. These situations show that sex was being used as a weapon that is cheap.

"When rape is done in front of your family," he continues, "it destroys everyone. I have seen men suffer who watched their wives raped; they are not mentally stable anymore. The children are in even worse condition. Most of the time, when a woman suffers this much violence, she is not able to bear children afterward. Clearly these rapes are not done to satisfy any sexual desire but to destroy the soul. The whole family and community are broken."

We arrive at Panzi Hospital, a spread-out complex of about a dozen buildings. Eight years ago Dr. Mukwege created a special maternity ward here with an operating room. Panzi as a whole has 334 beds, 250 of which now hold female victims of sexual violence. The hospital and its surrounding property have become, essentially, a village of raped women. The grounds are overwhelmed with children and hunger and need. Every day at least two children here die from malnutrition. Then there are the many problems that result from severe trauma: women with nightmares and insomnia, women rejected by their husbands, women who have no interest in nurturing the babies of their rapists, women and children with nowhere to go.
It is early morning, and the hospital courtyard has been transformed into a temporary church. Women dressed in their most colorful, or perhaps only, pagne (a six-yard piece of brightly patterned cloth that can be wrapped into a dress or skirt) sit waiting for the doctor to arrive and lead the prayer service that begins each day. A dedicated staff of female nurses and social workers are there as well, dressed in their starched white jackets. There is singing, a combination of Pentecostal calls and Swahili rhythms, Sunday-morning voices calling up Jesus.

This morning service is a kind of daily gathering of strength and unity. When the women sing, everything else seems to disappear. They are with the sun, the sky, the drums, each other. They are alive in their bodies, momentarily safe and free.

As they sing, Dr. Mukwege tells me stories about the women in the chorus. Many were naked when they arrived, or starving. Many were so badly damaged he is amazed they are singing at all. He takes enormous pride in their recovery. "I will never be ashamed," the women sing. "God gave me a new heart that I can be very strong."

"At the beginning I used to hear patients' stories," Dr. Mukwege tells me. "Now I abstain." I soon understand why. I meet Nadine (like others in this story, she agreed to be photographed, but asked that her name be changed, as she could be subject to reprisals for speaking out), who tells me a tale so horrendous it will haunt me for years to come.

When we begin talking, Nadine seems utterly disassociated from her surroundings--far away.

"I'm 29," she begins. "I am from the village of Nindja. Normally there was insecurity in our area. We would hide many nights in the bush. The soldiers found us there. They killed our village chief and his children. We were 50 women. I was with my three children and my older brother; they told him to have sex with me. He refused, so they cut his head and he died."

Nadine's body is trembling. It is hard to believe these words are coming out of a woman who is still alive and breathing. She tells me how one of the soldiers forced her to drink his urine and eat his feces, how the soldiers killed 10 of her friends and then murdered her children: her four-year-old and two-year-old boys and her one-year-old girl. "They flung my baby's body on the ground like she was garbage," Nadine says. "One after another they raped me. From that my vagina and anus were ripped apart."
Nadine holds onto my hand as if she were drowning in a tsunami of memory. As devastated as she is, it is clear that she needs to be telling this story, needs me to listen to what she is saying. She closes her eyes and says something I cannot believe I'm hearing. "One of the soldiers cut open a pregnant woman," she says. "It was a mature baby and they killed it. They cooked it and forced us to eat it."

Incredibly, Nadine was the only one of the 50 women to escape.

"When I got away from the soldiers, there was a man passing. He said, 'What is that bad smell?' It was me; because of my wounds, I couldn't control my urine or feces. I explained what had happened. The man wept right there. He and some others brought me to the Panzi Hospital."

She stops. Neither of us has breathed. Nadine looks at me, longing for me to make sense of what she's related. She says,

"When I got here I had no hope. But this hospital helped me so much. Whenever I thought about what happened, I became mad. I believed I would lose my mind. I asked God to kill me. Dr. Mukwege told me: Maybe God didn't want me to lose my life."

Nadine later tells me that the doctor was right. As she fled the slaughter, she says, she saw an infant lying on the ground next to her slain parents. Nadine rescued the girl; now having a child to care for gives her reason to keep going. "I can't go back to my village. It's too dangerous. But if I had a place to live I could go to school. I lost my children but I'm raising this child as my own. This girl is my future."
I stay for a week at Panzi. Women line up to tell me their stories. They come into the interview numb, distant, glazed over, dead. They leave alive, grateful, empowered. I begin to understand that the deepest wound for them is the sense that they have been forgotten, that they are invisible and that their suffering has no meaning. The simple act of listening to them has enormous impact. The slightest touch or kindness restores their faith and energy. The strength of these women is remarkable, as is their unparalleled resiliency. Dr. Mukwege tells me I need to meet Alfonsine (her name also has been changed). "Her story really touched me," he says. "Her body, her case is the worst I have ever seen, but she has given us all courage."

Alfonsine is thin and poised, profoundly calm. She tells me she was walking through the forest when she encountered a lone soldier.

"He followed me and then forced me to lie down. He said he would kill me. I struggled with him hard; it went on for a long time. Then he went for his rifle, pressed it on the outside of my vagina and shot his entire cartridge into me. I just heard the voice of bullets. My clothes were glued to me with blood. I passed out."

Dr. Mukwege tells me, "I never saw such destruction. Her colon, bladder, vagina and rectum were basically gone. She had lost her mind. I was sure she wouldn't make it. I rebuilt her bladder. Sometimes you don't even know where you are going. There's no map. I operated on her six times, and then I sent her to Ethiopia so they could heal the incontinence problem, and they did."

"I was in bed when I first met Dr. Mukwege," Alfonsine says. "He caressed my face. I lived at Panzi for six months. He helped me spiritually. He showed me how many times God makes miracles. He built me up morally."

I look at Alfonsine's petite body and imagine the scars beneath her humble white clothes. I imagine the reconstructed flesh, the agony she experienced after being shot. I listen carefully. I cannot detect a drop of bitterness or any desire for revenge. Instead, her attention is fixed on transforming the future. She tells me with great pride, "I am now studying to be a nurse. My first choice is to work at Panzi. It was the nurses who nurtured me day after day, who loved me back into living."
Alfonsine has ambitions that go beyond Panzi: "I feel like a big person in my community; I can do something for my people. Women must lead our country. They know the way."

Every day about a dozen new women arrive at Panzi Hospital. Most come for surgery to repair a fistula, a rip in their internal tissue. There are two types of fistulas seen here: One is the aftermath of brutal rape, the other the result of birth complications, something that could be prevented if there were adequate maternity health care. These obstetric fistulas are the result of abnormal tearing during the birth process. Many occur when women flee the militias while they are in labor; there is no time to give birth, and the baby dies inside. The women who make it here are the lucky ones. They limp on homemade canes made from tree branches; they trudge slowly in deep pain. Some have walked 40 miles. Because it takes so long to get to the hospital, women have no chance to receive the anti-HIV medications that must be taken within 48 hours after rape. Health experts fear that in a few years, there will be an explosion of AIDS in the Congo.

Dr. Mukwege was once the only doctor at Panzi Hospital able to perform fistula surgery; now he has trained four others. The hospital does 1,000 such operations a year.

I sit in on a typical operation in a clean, safe, but seriously underequipped operating room (nurses use torn pieces of a green dressing gown to tie the woman's ankles to the stirrups). I am able to see the fistula--a hole in the tissue between the woman's vaginal wall and bladder. A hole in her body. A hole in her soul. A hole where her confidence, her esteem, her spirit, her light, her urine leak out.

Because of the prevalence of fistulas, the Panzi complex is soaked in urine. The smell pervades everything. Pee spills out of women in a huge, dirt-floored hangarlike space where hundreds sit all day. Pee spills out in classrooms, leaving puddles on the floor. The women are always wet. Their legs chafe and their skin burns. There are many little girls in pee-stained dresses roaming around Panzi; shy and ashamed, they, too, are victims of rape. The week of my visit, a state agency had turned off the water for the hospital after billing Panzi $70,000 (an insane amount by Congolese standards) because it heard that the hospital, which is private, was receiving money from the West. Staff had to bring in buckets of water from the surrounding neighborhood. To have hundreds of women with fistula-caused incontinence and no water seemed like a crime upon a crime.

I can't help wondering what happened in Dr. Mukwege's life that compelled him to work here, sometimes 14 hours a day. "I was born in Bukavu on March 1, 1955," he tells me. "During my young age my mother was suffering with asthma. In the night when she became ill, I was the one who would go and look for a nurse or bring her medication. We all thought she would die. Even now, each birthday she celebrates, I am so happy to see her alive.

"My father was a pastor. He was very gentle, very human. From him I got the caring to treat patients. When we would go and visit sick people together, he would pray. I would ask, 'Why can't you give them tablets or prescriptions?' He said, 'I am not a doctor.' I decided then that prayer is not enough. People must take things into their own hands. Asking God does not change anything. He gives us the ability to say yes or no. You must use your hands, your mind. When I receive women here who are hungry, I can't say, 'God bless you.' I have to give them something to eat. When someone is suffering, I can't tell her about God, I have to treat her pain. You can't hide yourself in religion. Not a solution."

Dr. Mukwege began as a general practitioner, focusing on pediatrics. When he worked in a clinic in Lemera, a village south of Bukavu, he saw dreadful things happening in maternity. "Women were coming in bleeding day after day, many with severe infections. A woman had a baby and carried it dead in her vagina for a week. It was terrible. This helped me make a total engagement in a new career."
He went back to school to study gynecology in Angers, France, and then returned to Lemera to train the staff in obstetrics and gynecology. After he moved to Bukavu he created a special maternity ward at Panzi. Women who were victims of extreme sexual violence began to arrive. The number grew every day.

Who was--and is--raping the women? The better question might be, who isn't?

The perpetrators include the Interahamwe, the Hutu fighters who fled neighboring Rwanda in 1994 after committing genocide there; the Congolese army; a loose assortment of armed civilians; even U.N. peacekeepers. Christine Schuler Deschryver, who works for a German aid organization and is a fierce advocate for Panzi Hospital and Congolese women, says, "All of them are raping women. It is a country sport. Any person in uniform is an enemy to women."

Many women do not even report the violations, because they are afraid of rejection by their husbands and families. Although there are laws against rape in the Congo, if a woman reports her rape and her rapist is arrested, he can pay his way out and come back and rape her again. Or murder her.

Dr. Mukwege, in contrast, is motivating a different kind of healing army. I speak with a hospital employee named Bonane. "I was in Uganda," he says. "I saw the doctor on TV. He was explaining the atrocities. I realized these are my mothers and sisters. I was so inspired, I came here to work with him."

Dr. Mukwege is married with five children, but his brother, Herman, tells me his family doesn't see him much because his devotion to the women has consumed his life. Although the doctor's energy never flags, I notice an underlying exhaustion in his face and his being, a sleepless despair that comes from dwelling constantly amid violence and cruelty. He says to me, "When you rape a woman, you destroy life and you destroy your own life. Animals don't do this. When a pigeon has sex with another pigeon, it is kind. I am wondering how man has the power of such destruction."

And yet, the status of women in the Congo was dismal long before the wars started. The women work all day in the field and market, carrying the Congo on their backs (sometimes up to 200 pounds in bags strapped to their foreheads). They prepare the dinner, wash the clothes, clean the house, take care of the children, have mandatory sex with their husbands. They have no power, no rights and no value. Many women I talk to ask why I am "wasting my time" with them.

I interview a man who is the keeper of a gorilla preserve. He tells me that when dangerous militias began staking out territory in the park, he went to their commanders and asked if their soldiers would work with him to protect the gorillas. In the end they all agreed. I ask him why he didn't feel compelled to do the same for the women. The question surprised him. He had no answer.

I ask the doctor about the Congo's leader, Joseph Kabila, who in November 2006 became the country's first democratically elected president in 46 years and promised to be the "craftsman of peace." Are things getting better?

Dr. Mukwege sighs. "Kabila," he says, "has done nothing. The fighting here in the east has not stopped. During 2004 my life was threatened; I got phone calls warning me to stop my work or die. The calls have ceased, but it is still very dangerous.

"Visitors come from the international community," he continues. "They eat sandwiches and cry, but they do not come back with help. Even President Kabila has never put his foot here. His wife was here. She wept, but she has done nothing."

UNICEF, ECHO (the humanitarian aid office of the European Commission) and PMU (a Swedish humanitarian organization) are the major supporters of Panzi. Although the hospital can always use more money, the real need is for a political response to the violence. Barring that, Dr. Mukwege would at least like to get real protection for the women once they leave the hospital. "I patch them up and send them back home," he says, "but there is no guarantee they will not be raped again. There have been several cases where women have come back a second time, more destroyed than the first."
On my last day, the doctor asks me if I will lead some exercises for the women that will help alleviate their trauma. We go to the hangarlike building where 250 depressed and sick women are waiting. We begin with breathing. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Then we attach a noise to the breath. Other noises follow. One after another, noise after noise. Then we attach a movement. There is stomping. There is punching. There is mad waving of arms. The women are up on their feet, screaming, releasing guttural sounds of sorrow, rage, terror. In a matter of minutes, I watch them go from broken, mute women to wild, laughing, ferocious beings.

In the midst of this energy, Dr. Mukwege challenges the women to a dance contest. Celebration and power explode from their bodies. A part of each woman is fierce, unbreakable. No one has killed their spirits. The doctor whispers to me, "When I see this joy, this life in the women, I know why I must come back here every day."

The women's frenzy builds and builds. They dance in the hot African sun. They dance in the open road. They literally dance us up a steep hill, hundreds of women and children moving in a single, radiant feminine mass.

If 250 women who have been raped, torn, starved and tortured can find the strength to dance us up a mountain, surely the rest of us can find the resources and will to guarantee their future.

*Eve Ensler is a playwright, an activist and the founder of V-Day. Her latest books are Insecure at Last: Losing It in Our Security-Obsessed World and Insecure at Last: A Political Memoir. First posted in Glamour Magazine in 2007. Permission to repost piece from Pambazuka News granted by Fahamu (Oxford).

How you can help

The women of Eastern Congo, V-Day and UNICEF-the latter acting on behalf of United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict are launching a new campaign to urge an end to the femicide and raise money for women's groups in the Congo. You can...

Write a letter addressed to His Excellency, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila Kabange; demand that he take action to stop the attacks on women. Send it to U.N. Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, P.O. Box 3862, New York, NY 10163, and it will be delivered to Kabila.

Donate directly to Panzi Hospital through vday.org. Money donated to Panzi also goes to establish a City of Joy, a safe haven for the healed women, where they'll learn to become political leaders.
Also see Fahamu Networks for Social Justice (fahamu is kiswahili for 'understanding' or 'consciousness'). "Fahamu has a vision of the world where people organise to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression, recognise their social responsibilities, respect each other's differences, and realise their full potential."

Men married to smart women live longer

2009-12-08T06:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article6872519.ece

October 18, 2009
Men married to smart women live longer
Swedish scientists have discovered that long life and good health have nothing to do with a man’s education and everything to do with his wife’s
Shane Watson

There is a lingering suspicion among girls (as the unpopularity of science subjects demonstrates) that boys don’t value cleverness as an essential quality in a life partner. Given a choice between gorgeous or brainy, there is no guarantee they’ll do the right thing, because men think they’re clever enough for two. Well, it turns out they’re wrong. Swedish scientists have discovered that long life and good health have nothing to do with a man’s education and everything to do with his wife’s. Men married to smart women live longer — simple.

However, before you ring up your girlfriend to tell her that the man who left her for a bimbo will drop dead of brain atrophy, this is not a victory for women’s intelligence in general. It would be nice if our stimulating observations about FlashForward and the Tory agenda were keeping our men alert and full of life. Unfortunately, it’s simply our skill at processing advice about healthy lifestyles, and passing it on. All it boils down to is that “educated” married women have long since banned their men from eating pork pies at every other meal. They instinctively know about the importance of breakfast, the downside of dips (men think hummus is a diet aid) and the virtues of Green & Black’s 85% (the chocolate that doesn’t count). The Carla effect, in other words, is alive and well beyond the boundaries of the Elysée Palace.

Still, this seems like a narrow reading of how a woman’s intelligence affects her husband’s health. Cholesterol-watching is only the tip of the iceberg. On top of that, there’s the whole good exercise, bad exercise battle. (Men will only do exercise that results in a calf injury, and only in binges, so they are grey with exhaustion every day for a week, then laid up for the rest of the month; we are constantly lobbying for yoga.) There’s risk-avoidance training, too. For example, the struggle to prevent men walking to work in winter with sopping wet hair, wearing only a shirt; or, my personal favourite, reminding them not to shut the tea towel in the oven door, because that’s what causes all the black smoke and flames.

For some of us, the challenge of keeping our menfolk fit and well goes way beyond encouraging them to lay off the Player’s Navy Cut. Since being married to my husband, I have had to point out that swallowing chewing gum is not normal, let alone healthy. Ditto eating food that has been showered with glass. Lighting a fire in a tent. Cooking topless. Dialling while pedalling. Smoking over an open car bonnet (just kidding, but only just). The point is, without a female in the house, most men would come to a sticky end, with or without the daily sausage sandwich.

So what’s in it for us? Back in the days when the goal was to marry a rich man, at least you could look forward to a bit of his’n’hers indulgence. Now it’s all checking the salt content of the bran flakes and pushing selenium. You can’t help feeling a bit short-changed.

The Secret to Legal Marijuana? Women

2009-12-05T13:45:00.000-08:00

The Secret to Legal Marijuana? Women
By Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet
December 5, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144333/

In September, ladymag Marieclaire ruffled some feathers when it published a piece about women who smoke weed. But its most interesting effect was not the "marijuana moms" chatter it unleashed, and instead the fact that it brought to the mainstream media a more open discussion of the fact that women can be avid tokers, too.

Public acceptance of pot is at an all-time high, and the fact that women have drastically changed their attitudes may be what is most fascinating about the sea change in public opinion -- and policy -- regarding marijuana. In 2005, only 32 percent of polled women told Gallup they approved legalizing pot, but this year 44 percent of them were for it, compared to 45 percent of men. In effect, women have narrowed what had been a 12-point gender gap.

Women are also smoking more weed. The most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that current marijuana use increased from 3.8 to 4.5 percent among women, while there was no significant statistical change for men.

Indeed, it appears the growing acceptance of marijuana is fueled by women having joined the movement for reform.

Women "can reach people's hearts and minds," says Mikki Norris, co-author of Shattered Lives: Portraits from America's Drug War, managing editor of the West Coast Leaf, and director of the Cannabis Consumers Campaign. "I think we can really take it from the third- to the first-person, and make it personal."

Norris, who's participated in numerous successful marijuana campaigns, may be onto something. If pro-weed women are a new momentum behind the normalization of marijuana, they may also become the driving force behind game-changing drug reform.

If that's the case, then it's worth examining why some women have signed onto the marijuana reform movement -- because it may soon be why many others will as well.

'A bigger amygdala'

The avenue through which women have been foremost leaders in the movement is medical marijuana advocacy.

There are currently 13 states that have legalized medical marijuana use and at least 14 other states with pending legislation or ballot measures. In California, where cannabis has been legalized for medical use since 1996, a Field poll found 56 percent support for adult legalization -- and the matter may very well make its way onto the 2010 ballot.

Every woman I spoke to referenced cannabis' medicinal properties as a major reason they are so personally impassioned by the marijuana reform debate.

One of these is Valerie Corral, dubbed "the Mother Teresa of the medical marijuana movement," by Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

Corral was introduced to the medical benefits of marijuana in 1973, when she was the victim of a car crash that left her an epileptic. At one point, while on pharmaceuticals, she was having up to five seizures each day.

In 1974, her husband read an article in a medical journal that described how positively rats had reacted to cannabis when treated for certain ailments. Soon thereafter, Corral started applying a strict regimen of marijuana, and kept a catalog of its effects.

"Within a few weeks, I noticed change," Corral said. And over time, she was able to control seizure activity in a way that allowed her to wean herself off the prescription drugs. To this day she does not take anything other than marijuana for her epilepsy.

Not only did medical marijuana change Corral's quality of life, it changed its course. She went on to found Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), a patient collective based in Santa Cruz, Calif. that offers organic medical marijuana and assistance to those who have received a terminal or chronic illness diagnosis.

WAMM currently serves about 170 patients. When I spoke to Corral, she was late to hit the road for her Thanksgiving holiday. She had spent the morning with a patient who was anxious about his radiation therapy. She then spent the afternoon delivering marijuana before counseling -- "and learning from" -- terminal patients.

While Corral knows first-hand the physical benefits of marijuana, she believes its most important effect is "the way it affects how we look at things that are difficult."

"No matter what else happens to us," Corral said, "the quality with which we live our lives is so important."

Cheryl Shuman, a 49-year-old optician in Los Angeles, would agree. Up until she started using cannabis therapy to treat her cancer, she was on a daily regimen of 27 prescription drugs, attached to a mobile intravenous morphine pump, and undergoing constant CAT and MRI scans. In 2006, her doctors told her she'd be dead by the end of that year.

"I had to make a decision [regarding] which way I was going to go and quite frankly, I thought if I am going to die, I want to control how my life is going to be," Shuman said, her voice breaking. "And the only side-effects were that I was happy and laughing."

It turns out those may not have been the only effects of her cannabis therapy. Her cancer has been in remission for 18 months now -- and that coincides precisely with the start of the marijuana treatment.

Shuman had previously used pot medicinally in 1994, when going through a harrowing divorce. Up to 80 milligrams of Prozac a day, coupled with multiple therapy sessions a week, did not help her get over the sense that she could barely make it through each day.

During one session, she says, "my therapist said, 'I could lose my license, but I think what would help you more than anything is just smoking a joint.' I didn't know how to respond! I said I couldn't do that -- I don't drink, I've never even smoked a cigarette!"

But after researching medical marijuana and realizing that cannabis had been available in pharmacies until the early 20th century, Shuman acquiesced and tried a joint. At 36 -- after learning to inhale -- Shuman says she found she "finally had some peace."

This year, Shuman became the founding director of Beverly Hills' National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) chapter -- and she hopes to attract women to the cause.

Corral, for her part, acknowledges that the role she fills within the marijuana movement is one that fits the traditional female archetype. "Maybe it's because we have a bigger amygdala," she laughs, referring to the part of the brain that processes emotions. "It probably is!"

Debby Goldsberry, director of the Berkeley Patients Group, a medical marijuana dispensary, feels similarly: "It's our job in our families and in our circles of friends to be caregivers. It makes sense that women would gravitate to cannabis."

In a recent study of a sample of patient reviews at a chain of medical marijuana assessment clinics in California, Craig Reinarman, a sociology professor at UC-Santa Cruz, found that only 27.1 percent of the patients were female. Another study, conducted on a sample of patients at Goldsberry's Berkeley dispensary, found that 30.7 percent of those patients were women.

Those numbers are close to the general expert estimate that women constitute about a third of marijuana consumers.

Mainstream myth-busting

Since more women are smoking weed, it's no surprise there has finally been an onslaught of girl stoner coverage in the corporate media.

It probably started with "Weeds" -- a Showtime series about a bodacious soccer mom who deals and smokes pot -- which is now readying for its sixth season premiere. But the big dam opener this year was the aforementioned publication of the Marieclaire article, "Stiletto Stoners," which paints the portrait of a whole class of "card-carrying, type A workaholics who just happen to prefer kicking back with a blunt instead of a bottle."

Julie Holland, a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at the NYU School of Medicine, has been called onto NBC's Today Show twice now to explain why women are gravitating towards weed.

During one of her appearances, Holland seemingly shocks the hosts by telling them that 100 million Americans have tried weed -- 25 million of them over the past year. The most recent National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 10.6 million women used marijuana in 2008.

Also surprising to the TV hosts was Holland's assertion that marijuana is the least addictive substance among many. According to a 1999 Institute of Medicine report, the rate at which people who try a substance and go on to become addicted is 32 percent for nicotine, 23 percent for heroin, 17 percent for cocaine, 15 percent for alcohol, and 9 percent for cannabis.

"Look at what the choices are. Cannabis isn't toxic to your brain, to your liver, it doesn't cause cancer, you can't overdose, and there's no evidence that it's a gateway drug," Holland said. "I believe that the majority of adults can healthfully integrate altered states into their lives, and it makes sense to do it with the least toxic substance you can. "

The public seems to agree.

Societal mores around marijuana are at their most progressive in at least 40 years, when Gallup first started asking Americans whether they believed marijuana ought be legalized. This year, 44 percent of those polled -- up from 36 percent in 2005 -- said they are in favor of legalization. A May Zogby poll found marijuana legalization was even more popular with its respondents, at 52 percent.

Harry Levine, professor of sociology at Queens College and co-author of Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice, attributes a lot of the mainstreaming of progressive views on pot to the medical marijuana movement.

"What it has done is change the image of marijuana from this tie-dye 1960s hippie-dippy kind of thing to a real drug, a real substance that has medical uses," he said. "You can separate it from the scary image of drugs."

Why do girls smoke?

As weed is no longer considered by the public to be a "hard drug," three presidents -- 41, 42, and 43 -- have admitted to smoking marijuana. "The whole association of failure and dropouts [with marijuana] has been smashed in an important kind of way," Levine says.

In other words, you can smoke pot and be successful. Look at Natalie Angier, for example. In her book Woman: Intimate Geography, this Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer interjects a personal note of -- and case for -- female empowerment through weed:

All the women in my immediate family learned how to climax by smoking grass -- my mother when she was over thirty and already the mother of four. Yet I have never seen anorgasmia on the list of indications for the medical use of marijuana. Instead we are told that some women don't need to have orgasms to have a satisfying sex life, an argument as convincing as the insistence that homeless people like living outdoors.
As Angier writes, alcohol is a "global depressant of the nervous system" so marijuana can be a woman's best friend. In that vein, Holland has clinically observed that many of her female patients choose marijuana over alcohol -- for all kinds of social situations -- because it makes them "more present instead of absent."

"You can relax but not be incapacitated. You can keep your wits about you and protect yourself," Holland told me, adding that women don't always tolerate alcohol the way men do.

Diana, 37, a published writer in Madison is one such woman. She uses marijuana as a social lubricant: "If I drink, I know I'll be throwing up by night's end, even if it's only a couple of beers. But with weed, I know I can make it to closing time -- and keep up with all the steely-stomached drinkers."

Paloma, 25, a Bay Area union organizer, told me she smokes weed two to three times a week to "relax, sleep, work on arts and crafts or clean the house and cook" without being distracted by what she calls her "explosive" attention deficit disorder.

A few women smokers said they did not initially like the effects marijuana had on them. Tessa, 29, a doctoral student in Portland, said, she didn't enjoy weed in college "because I would not be able to do anything besides be high and stupid. Now I know to smoke less -- maybe a hit or two -- and then relax on that."

What a lot of women like Tessa don't know is that there are several kinds of weed that have different effects on the mind and body. Women who live in places where marijuana can be purchased at dispensaries are often more attuned to the fact that cannabis sativa gives a euphoric head high while cannabis indica results in a lazy body high. And then there are hybrids -- the equivalent to blends in wine culture.

Ally, 34, an architect and mother in San Francisco, sees weed as similar to vino: "Smoking a joint and taking a bath is what drinking a glass of wine and taking a bath was to my mom," she says, balancing a baby on her knee. "It's 'me' time!"

Think of the children!

The acceptance of pot has led to discussion of how marijuana reform might positively impact families and children. This may change the debate because family values have long been employed by drug warriors as reasoning for why weed ought remain criminalized.

Enter Jessica Corry, a pro-life Republican from Denver. A mother of girls aged two and four, this 30-year-old newly-minted lawyer is widely hailed as a rising star in Colorado politics. She is currently working on her first book, which she described to me as an "analysis of how race consciousness and political correctness are silencing America's students and our entrepreneurial spirit."

A real conservative. Yet she is also one of the most outspoken proponents of marijuana legalization.

In 2006, she started a group called Guarding Our Children Against Marijuana Prohibition, which supported a statewide initiative to legalize marijuana.

"I had high-ranking Republicans politely encouraging me to write my political eulogy," Corry said. "Fortunately, they were wrong. While the initiative failed, it garnered more general election support than that year's Republican candidate for governor."

Corry doesn't smoke pot -- though she is open about past use. "As a mother," she says, "I'm far more concerned about my kids having access to a medicine cabinet than having access to a joint or a liquor cabinet. Marijuana, when consumed independently, has never been linked to a single death."

Mothers like Corry are drawn to marijuana regulation as part of a larger appeal that encourages the use of harm reduction to more pragmatically deal with substance abuse. Examples of harm reduction include providing designated drivers for drinkers and clean needles for heroin addicts.

Concerned moms may be moved to action by studies such as the Teen Survey, conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia. This year, there was a 37 percent increase in teens who said pot is easier to buy than cigarettes, beer or prescription drugs. Nearly one-quarter said they can get weed within the hour.

Those stats matter to women. In light of this, children and family will be included in the mission statement of the Women's Alliance, a group NORML will launch next year. The coordinator, Sabrina Fendrick, plans to include mention of how current marijuana policy undermines the American family and sends mixed messages to young people.

An economic savior?

The harm reduction approach extends itself from families and children to our ailing economy. With the largest economic recession since the Great Depression firmly in place, more people see the benefits of taxing and regulating marijuana for adults.

Economist Jeffrey Miron has calculated that, assuming a national market of about $13 billion annually, legalization would reap state and federal governments about $7 billion each year in extra tax revenues and save about $13.5 billion in law enforcement costs.

This kind of math attracts libertarian support, ranging from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California who recently called for an open discussion on legalization, to Rep. Ron Paul, a physician and Republican congressman from Texas, who has long advocated it.

The problem with a fiscal approach, however, might be that it could have more traction as a top-down rather than a bottom-up movement. Deborah Small, a drug reform veteran and founder of Break the Chains, a group that engages communities of color around drug reform policy, believes the reason the medical marijuana movement has been so successful is that its female leaders have made it a "real grassroots movement."

"Male-dominated libertarian philosophy and money has dominated" the general marijuana reform movement, Small says, and "there's a struggle in this next stage to see whether the movement will be driven by people with a lot of money or people on the ground -- or if they can agree to work together."

Perhaps male drug reform leaders can learn from the ladies. Jessica Corry, the GOP mom from Denver, turns the economic discussion back to the home: "It's generational child abuse to waste billions of dollars every year on marijuana prohibition."

Mikki Norris, the California marijuana activist, observed gender-specific focus groups in Oakland on Measure Z, a 2004 ballot initiative that ultimately succeeded in making marijuana the lowest law enforcement priority. She heard the women's group speaking on behalf of their children -- "they wanted money for their kids' education and they didn't want kids arrested for pot." Men, on the other hand, were more worried about children getting involved with drugs, she told me.

Norris said, "I just think women have a better grasp of home economics," or what's really important in a family.

Today's economic climate lends itself to easy parallels with the fight to repeal Prohibition in the 1920s, which was also framed as a family issue. Harry Levine, the sociologist, reminded me of Pauline Sabin, a high-society Chicago feminist who organized women in the fight to repeal the 18th Amendment.

"Sabin said that because of the violence, the corruption, the bootleggers, and all the resulting lost tax revenue, that alcohol undermined the home and therefore women should speak out for themselves and children," Levine said.

Many point to the moment when women joined the fight against Prohibition as the tipping point for the ultimate success of the movement.

Women as a new force

The women in the marijuana reform movement have different reasons for trumpeting policy change. Some see cannabis as a medicinal wonder drug, others see tangible -- and sensible -- socio-economic benefits to taxing and regulating it.

Trends indicate that as more states legalize the use of cannabis for medical purposes, more people will discover first-hand that legalization of marijuana does not equate with anarchy and instead with more effective control of a substance so readily available to Americans -- and American kids -- across the country.

And as Californians may next year, Americans will soon be exposed to the choice between regulating marijuana for adult use or continuing a failed drug war that incarcerates 850,000 people a year -- tearing apart families, ruining futures, and siphoning from public funds that might otherwise benefit the next generation. All this for a relatively mild psychotropic that at least a third of us has tried.

As the recession continues to unravel communities across the country, the economic incentive to end this drug war will affect the opinions of many who might never otherwise have considered legalization. The time may very well be now.

Similar to the prohibition of alcohol in the early twentieth century, what we have today is a federal policy that is at odds with public opinion. It is a policy without a plurality of citizen supporters.

And many women are at the vanguard of the movement that recognizes this and is fighting for change.

As Army shrinks, South Korea to recruit women soldiers

2009-12-05T06:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.mercatornet.com/demography/view/as_army_shrinks_south_korea_to_recruit_women_soldiers/

As Army shrinks, South Korea to recruit women soldiers
Michael Cook | 4 Dec 2009

From 2011 South Korea may start recruiting women volunteers for its Army to make up for its growing shortage of young men. Military planners foresee that troop strength will shrink from 650,000 to 510,000 in 2020. One way to make up the shortfall is to allow women to serve as rank-and-file soldiers. Currently female commissioned and non-commissioned officers make up 3% of the nation's total military forces. By 2020, they will be 5.6%. According to the National Statistical Office, the number of 20-year-old Korean men will begin to decline rapidly after hitting a peak at 360,000 in 2014 and will drop below 250,000 by 2023.

Despite the alarming projected shortage, it is far from certain that the plan will be implemented, as the very idea is likely to provoke heated debate, according to the Chosun Ilbo. ~ Chosun Ilbo, Dec 3

The Militarization of Sex

2009-12-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/25/the_militarization_of_sex?obref=obinsite

The Militarization of Sex
The story of Hezbollah's halal hookups.
BY HANIN GHADDAR | NOVEMBER 25, 2009

Mohammad, a 40-year old Lebanese Shiite who lives in Hezbollah's stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs, was holding forth on the virtues of resistance, loyalty, and sex. "You could create the most loyal army by providing political power, social services and fulfilling the desires of your men -- namely, sexual ones," he declared.

"And Hezbollah has been very successful in this regard," Mohammad continued. It is hard to disagree. Hezbollah liberated South Lebanon from Israeli occupation, expanded the Shiite community's political power within the country, and has provided social services, such as health care and education, to its constituency since the 1980s. Today, it is also working to fulfill the sexual needs of its supporters, though a practice known as mutaa marriage.

Mutaa is a form of "temporary marriage" only acceptable within Shiite communities, one that allows couples to have religiously sanctioned sex for a limited period of time, without any commitments, and without the obligatory involvement of religious figures. In conservative Muslim societies known for their strict sense of propriety, mutaa offers an escape clause. The contract is very simple. The woman says: "I marry myself to you for [a specific period of time] and for [a specified dowry]" and the man says: "I accept." The period can range between one hour and a year, and is subject to renewal. A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man, but a Muslim man can temporarily marry a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish woman, as long as she is a divorcée or a widow. However, those interviewed for this article confirmed that Hezbollah-the "Party of God"-has allowed the practice to spread to virgins or girls who have never married before, as long as the permission of her guardian (father or paternal grandfather) is obtained.

Temporary marriage has long been practiced by Shiites around the world. However, it has recently become more commonplace in Lebanon, notably within Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut's southern suburbs and in southern Lebanon after the 2006 war with Israel,

Hezbollah's recent encouragement of this phenomenon highlights the compromises it had been required to make in order to remain the preeminent force among its domestic Shiite constituency. As the party gained strength due to its effectiveness in fighting Israel, it was forced to cope with the reality that many Lebanese Shiites did not share the Iranian-inspired religious beliefs of Hezbollah's leaders. They came to dominate a community that was shaped by the secular leftist trends of the 1970s and 1980s, and the cosmopolitan culture embodied by Beirut. Today, Lebanese Shiites are exposed to pop icons such as sexpot singer Haifa Wehbe, countless Western advertisements and programs, and technological innovations such as online dating. Allowing these Shia to balance their sexual desires with their support for the "Resistance" against the "Zionist entity" is a vital ingredient to Hezbollah's staying power.

According to Shiite writer and activist Lokman Slim, Hezbollah party members are not allowed to practice temporary marriage for security reasons, unless assigned by the party to do so. "We should make a clear distinction between Hezbollah as an organization and Hezbollah as it runs the community's culture and social affairs," Slim said.

But for everyone else, Hezbollah apparently decided to expand its support for this practice after the 2006 war, to maintain its support base and keep the Shiites in Lebanon under its control. "After the 2006 war, Iranian money came to Lebanon in abundance, and money opened the door to sexual luxury that could not be ignored or controlled," noted Slim. "Therefore, Hezbollah decided it is easier to allow sex under certain religious titles in order to keep the control over the community."

The havoc wreaked by the 2006 war and a more difficult domestic political situation also encouraged Hezbollah to shift its position in order to consolidate support. Sheikh Mohammad Ali Hajj, imam of the Imam Ali Mosque in the Sad Bouchrieh district of Beirut, remarked that after 2006, Hezbollah had to strengthen its support among its communities. "They created a military group, The Resistance Saraya, which took in anyone ready to join, religiously and ideologically committed or not," he said. "They had to contain the Shiite community around it with all its aspects, the good and the bad, and found measures to control it, including the temporary marriage," he added.

Hezbollah is in charge of enforcing resolution in the event unpleasant scenarios arise, such as pregnancy or disagreements between couples. "It is only a matter of more control rather than being tolerant," Slim explained.

There is no doubt that Hezbollah's legitimization of mutaa has created semi-official channels that Lebanese Shiites use to hook up. Hassan, a 30-year old Shiite from Beirut's southern suburbs, is a high school teacher. He graduated from the Lebanese University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, and considers himself secular but supports the resistance as a political, not a religious, movement. He is enthusiastic about the initiative taken by a number of Hezbollah party members and supporters to act as matchmakers between couples, and sometimes turn their shops, bookstores and workplaces into meeting places for young men and women.

"My cousin, a hard-core Hezbollah supporter, finds pleasure in using his mini-market as a hub where both men and women refer to him to hook them up in a temporary marriage. He even has Excel sheets to help him organize and control the contacts, and of course he practices temporary marriage himself," he added with a smile.

Nevertheless, Hassan remains very critical of those in the community who use this kind of marriage as a cover for prostitution networks functioning inside the suburbs. "Some made it a trade and Hezbollah usually turns the blind eye to these networks because they do not want the Lebanese Internal Security to interfere in its stronghold."

However, once the sex trade got out of control, Hezbollah finally requested the ISF to enter the southern suburbs to help control some of the community's illegal practices, such as traffic, drugs, and prostitution. This month, The ISF began coordinating with Hezbollah and the heads of local municipalities in the southern suburbs under the slogan "Order comes from Faith," initiated by Hezbollah, to control these crimes.

There is also no shortage of ways that Shiite men and women make contact to form a temporary marriage; sometimes, the experience ends up bringing them closer to Hezbollah. Ali, for example, is a 26-year old man from southern Lebanon who has "temporarily married" a number of girls in the last two years. "I usually meet them in Hezbollah's public library or the center, where young men and women gather to attend religious and political preaching," he explained.

The men and women are put in separate rooms, but he finds a way to communicate. "If I want to approach a girl, I ask her for her number and call her later, but mostly I get approached by girls who directly ask me if I am interested in temporary marriage," Ali said. "Although they are veiled from top to bottom, you can always guess how she looks like from her face and eyes," he added with a wink.

With his designer jeans, trendy haircut, and sharp sense of humor, Ali seems to be an unlikely Hezbollah supporter. He has always supported the resistance and what Hezbollah has achieved in this regard; however, in the last couple of years, he has developed a strong support for Hezbollah on issues he was previously critical of, such as its affiliation with Iran, involvement in domestic politics, and its religious rhetoric.

Coincidently or not, these developments took place as he was drawn to practice temporary marriage. In his southern village, it is difficult to meet girls and have normal relationships with them, and he acknowledges that getting closer to the party's social network has helped him meet more girls who were open to this kind of marriage. Gradually, Ali stopped drinking alcoholic beverages, took up praying and fasting, and never skipped a Hezbollah's rally or village events, where he also meets potential "wives." However, it is obvious that the slickly dressed Ali never gave up his love of fashion.

It is, of course, not only men who take advantage of mutaa. Zahra, a fully veiled 25 year-old Shiite woman who is completing her master's degree in English literature, comes from a family of Hezbollah supporters and party members, and has been a lifelong Hezbollah member herself. She explained that she practices temporary marriage because it is a religious duty.

"I take good care of myself, and make sure I look perfect every time I go into a mutaa marriage because I should please my husband, temporary or not," she said. "It is my religious duty to do so. God allowed this kind of marriage for a reason, and I never question God's wishes."

Zahra is divorced and believes that Islam has acknowledged sexual desires for both males and females, which is why temporary marriage is permissible. "It is also a religious duty to fulfill your sexual desires," she insisted, noting that temporary marriages with women whose husbands had been killed fighting Israel were especially encouraged. "[T]hose who satisfy widows of martyrs have more reward in heaven," she said.

While the practice of mutaa may sound exceedingly strange to those outside of these communities, it is an important outlet for many Lebanese Shiites. As the community is increasingly defined by Hezbollah's conservative ideology and isolated by the increasing sectarian divisions in Lebanon, it is more and more difficult to form relationships with people from different backgrounds. In this sense, mutaa marriage has become a convenient and practical solution. However, it comes with a cost: Hezbollah has increasingly been able to harness the appeal of mutaa to bolster its support within its constituency. And there should be no doubt that Hezbollah's increased control over Lebanese Shiites comes with consequences that are anything but temporary.

Ex-Miss Argentina dies after buttock surgery

2009-12-02T15:25:00.000-08:00

Ex-Miss Argentina dies after buttock surgery
Another woman dying for corrupt, serpent patriarchal beauty standards!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/6699403/Ex-Miss-Argentina-Solange-Magnano-dies-after-buttock-surgery.html

Telegraph
Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:25 EST

The former Miss Argentina, Solange Magnano, has died from complications after undergoing cosmetic surgery on her buttocks.

Miss Magnano, a 38-year-old mother of twins who won the beauty pageant in 1994, died of a pulmonary embolism on Sunday. She had spent three days in a critical condition following a gluteoplasty procedure in Buenos Aires.

A close friend, Roberto Piazza, said the procedure involved injections and the liquid "went to her lungs and brain".

"A woman who had everything lost her life to have a slightly firmer behind," he said.

Miss Magnano's funeral and burial on Monday was shown on national Argentine television.

Dr Gonzalo Cortes y Tristan, who treated the former beauty queen after she fell ill, Miss Magnano had arrived at his hospital with an acute respiratory deficiency. Her condition deteriorated until she suffered the embolism, he added.

The Untold Stories of Violence Against Women

2009-12-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49433

The Untold Stories of Violence Against Women
Miren Gutierrez & Oriana Boselli
IPS News
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:44 EST

Robert Dijksterhuis, Jac SM Kee, Monia Azzalini,Paula Fray, Thenjiwe Mtintso and Laila Al-Shaik.
Rome - "You don't need to go far, it is all around us," said Robert Dijksterhuis, head of the gender division in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to a room mostly full of women. "Up to one in three women around the world has been abused in some way - most often by someone she knows," he added, quoting UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) numbers.

The audience, a group of committed women - and men -, had gathered in Rome to discuss this widespread emergency and the role media have in relation to it in a conference organized by the IPS news agency and supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the city of Rome.

The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) reports in the paper "Violence against women worldwide" that up to 70 percent of women experience physical or sexual violence from men in their lifetime - the majority from husbands, partners or someone they know. Among women aged 15 - 44, acts of violence cause more death and disability than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.

And violence against women is pervasive.

During the conference, IPS launched the handbook "Reporting Gender-Based Violence".

"Violence against women has presented particular challenges to the media and to society because of the way in which it has been consigned to the private sphere -dampening public discussions and stifling media debate. Yet, the media has the potential to play a lead role in changing perceptions that, in turn, can help galvanize a movement for change," says the introduction by IPS Africa Director Paula Fray.

The handbook deals with issues such as religious and harmful traditional practices, domestic violence, sexual gender-based violence, femicide, sex work and trafficking, sexual harassment, armed conflicts, HIV and AIDS, child abuse, the role of men, the criminal justice system, and the costs of gender-based violence, with real stories illustrating how these issues and trends can be tackled by the media, discussion points, fact checks and additional resources.

In South Africa, a woman is killed every six hours by someone she knows; in Guatemala, two women are murdered, on average, each day. In São Paulo, Brazil, a woman is assaulted every 15 seconds. Rape of women is widespread in armed conflicts such as those of Colombia and Darfur, Sudan.

This phenomenon affects not only developing countries, but also the developed world. In the U.S., 83 percent of girls aged 12 - 16 experienced some form of sexual harassment in public schools, and one-third of women murdered each year are killed by partners; in the European Union between 40 and 50 percent of women experience unwanted sexual advancements, physical contact or other forms of sexual harassment at their workplace.

However, according to UNFPA, civil society, media and politicians have begun only recently to join their efforts to change the perception of the phenomenon of violence against women, trying to knock down the wall of indifference and misconstruction that has always surrounded it.

And this is where the media comes in.

According to the Italian Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs Vincenzo Scotti, "communication can be one of the most powerful tools" in the fight against this type of violence.

In "Changing cultural and social norms that support violence", the World Health Organization (WHO) confirms that media - which have been successful in addressing a wide range of health issues - could play a bigger role in fighting violence.

Meanwhile papers like "The influence of media violence on youth", published by the American Physiological Society, show how female victimization in story lines reduces the perceptions of violence in the reality.

This problem is exacerbated by the under-representation of women in media and misrepresentation of their role. Media Monitoring Africa - a watchdog organization that promotes fair journalism - denounces the scarcity of women working in the media and the marginalized way in which they are portrayed, often limited to victims or someone's relative.

"The influence of women in journalism is one of the most central problem areas in feminist media research," acknowledges a report entitled "The Gender of Journalism", authored by Monika Djerf-Pierre.

Djerf-Pierre's study shows that even in a female-friendly nation such as Sweden, "journalism as a field has remained male-dominated." (Sweden ranks number four in the Global Gender Gap [GGG] published by the World Economic Forum.) Today, almost half of Swedish journalists are women, the study shows. However, three out of four leaders in the media industry are men. In other countries the situation is worse.

According to Dijksterhuis, some of the ways communication can be used in a changing landscape with new technologies are trying to set the agenda; forging stronger linkages with NGOs, media and other actors (an issue that was highlighted by many speakers in this conference); and monitoring the results, since "most information is biased towards men."

Communications rights should be part of these efforts, said Jac SM Kee, coordinator of Women's Rights Advocacy in the Association for Progressive Communications. Her organization is involved in an effort to "reclaim ICTs" (Information Communication Technologies) to end violence and address the intersections between communication rights and women's human rights, especially in relation to violence against women.

Meanwhile, Mona Azzalini, of the Global Media Monitoring Project in Italy, talked about the biggest global survey about women's participation in the media, to be released in 2010.

The initiative "promotes a change in the way women are portrayed" and creates a "network of advocacy groups" fighting discrimination and stereotypes in the media. The last monitoring - done in 2005 - was focused on four issues: the representation of women as subjects of information, the journalists, the content of the news including cases of stereotypes and discrimination, and journalistic practices.

The results of the 2010 survey will be compared with the 2005 report, which showed that only 21 percent of the sources are women, and most experts quoted (83 percent) are men. The point of view of women is nowhere to be seen: in politics only 14 percent of the sources were women; while in economic issues, 20 percent were women. Even when the issue is violence against women, most of the voices (64 percent) are men's.

And how do media talk about these issues?

"Victim means weakness; weakness means violence... Media love violence," said Laila Al Shaikhli, anchorwoman of Al Jazeera, who spoke about the difficulty of getting the real story, when women are reluctant to speak out and carry on a social stigma, when they themselves participate in the cycle of discrimination, educating children with the same paradigms.

The result is that the image of women comes out distorted.

In Italy, for example, "80 percent of people form their opinions based on TV," said Emma Bonino, vice president of the Italian Senate. "And I am not satisfied with how women's images are transmitted in our media. It is a humiliating image... Working women do not exist. The role of media is an important part of whichever strategy you want in place when fighting against violence. It is not marginal or complementary, it is essential to forming the idea of women."

In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi controls about 90 percent of the TV audience through his private media empire Mediaset and the state television RAI.

Thenjiwe Mtintso, South Africa's ambassador to Italy, spoke from the point of view of a gender activist and a former journalist during apartheid about the definition of what is news and its ownership, and who transmits it. Not women, she said. And this is something that has to change if violence against women is to end.

Discrimination keeps Palestinian women out of Israel's workforce

2009-12-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10921.shtml

Discrimination keeps Palestinian women out of Israel's workforce
Jonathan Cook
The Electronic Intifada
Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:28 EST

Israel's finance minister was accused last week of trying to deflect attention from discriminatory policies keeping many of the country's Palestinian Arab families in poverty by blaming their economic troubles on what he described as Arab society's opposition to women working.

A recent report from Israel's National Insurance Institute showed that half of all Arab families in Israel are classified as poor compared with just 14 percent of Jewish families.

Yuval Steinitz, the finance minister, told a conference on employment discrimination this month that the failure of Arab women to participate in the workforce was damaging Israel's economy. Eighteen percent of Arab women work, and only half of them full time, compared with at least 55 percent of Jewish women.

He attributed the low employment rate to "cultural obstacles, traditional frameworks and the belief that Arab women have to remain in their home towns," adding that such restrictions were characteristic of all Arab societies.

But researchers and women's groups pointed out that employment of Arab women in Israel is lower than almost anywhere else in the Arab world, including such employment black-spots for women as Saudi Arabia and Oman.

"Most Arab women want to work, including a large number of female graduates, but the government has refused to tackle the many and severe obstacles that have been put in their way," said Sawsan Shukha of Women Against Violence, a Nazareth-based organization.

That assessment was supported by a survey this month revealing that 83 percent of Israeli businesses in the main professions -- including advertising, law, banking, accountancy and the media -- admitted being opposed to hiring Arab graduates, whether men or women.

Yousef Jabareen, an urban planner at the Technion technical university in Haifa, who has conducted one of the largest surveys on Arab women's employment in Israel, said the problems Arab women faced were unique.

"In Israel they face a double discrimination, both because they are women and because they are Arabs," he said.

"The average in the Arab world [for female employment] is about 40 percent. Only women in Gaza, the West Bank and Iraq -- where there are exceptional circumstances -- have lower rates of employment than Arab women in Israel. That gap needs explaining and the answers aren't to be found where the minister is looking."

He said a wide range of factors hold Arab women back, many of them the result of discriminatory policies by successive governments to prevent the 1.3-million Palestinian Arab minority, which comprises one-fifth of Israel's population, from benefiting from economic development.

These included widespread discrimination in hiring policies by both private employers and the government; a long-standing failure to locate industrial zones and factories in Arab communities; a severe lack of state-supported childcare services compared with Jewish communities; a shortage of public transport in Arab areas that prevented women reaching places of work, and a lack of training courses aimed at Arab women.

According to a study by Women Against Violence, 40 percent of Arab women with degrees are unable to find work.

When interviewed, Jabareen said, 78 percent of non-working women blamed their situation on a lack of job opportunities.

Maali Abu Roumi, 24, from the town of Tamra in northern Israel, has been looking for a job as a social worker since she finished training two years ago.

A report by Sikkuy, an organization promoting civic equality in Israel, revealed this month that Israel's Arab population received 70 percent less government funding for social services than the Jewish population, and that Arab social workers -- in a poorly paid profession that attracts mainly women -- had a 50 percent higher workload.

Abu Roumi added that, in addition, cash-strapped Arab schools, unlike Jewish schools, could not afford to employ a social worker, and that Israel's Arab minority lacked the equivalent of the welfare institutions and foundations funded by wealthy overseas Jews that offered work to many Jewish social workers.

"Most of the Jews I studied with have found work, while very few of the Arabs on my course have been employed," she said. "When a job comes up, it's usually part time and there are dozens of applicants."

The Alternative Planning Center, an Arab organization that studies land use in Israel, reported in 2007 that only 3.5 percent of the country's industrial zones were in Arab communities. Most attracted small businesses such as workshops for car repairs or carpentry that offered few opportunities for women.

"Israel's private sector is almost entirely closed to Arab women because of discriminatory practices by employers who prefer to employ Jews," Jabareen said. He added that the government had failed to provide leadership: among governmental workers, less than two percent were Arab women, despite repeated pledges by ministers to increase Arab recruitment.

Shukha said: "The civil service is a major employer, but many of these jobs are in the center of the country, in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, a long way from the north where most Arab citizens live."

She noted that there were no regular buses from Nazareth, the largest Arab town in the country, to Jerusalem. "The transport situation is even worse in the villages where most Arab women live."

In addition, she said, most could not travel long distances to find work because of the scarcity of child-care provision. Only 25 government-run daycare centers have been established for preschool children in Arab communities out of 1,600 operating across the country. Shukha also criticized the trade and industry ministry, saying that, although it had invested heavily in training for Jewish women, only six percent of Arab women were attending courses, and then mostly for sewing and secretarial work.

Jabareen said that, according to his survey, 56 percent of non-working Arab women wanted to work immediately.

"Since 1948 Israeli governments have been blaming poverty on 'cultural barriers' stopping Arab women from working, but all the research shows that the argument is nonsense," he said. "There are hundreds of Arab women competing for every job that comes on the market."

He said Arab men faced massive discrimination, too, but found work because they filled a need in the economy by doing hard manual labor that most Jews refused, often traveling long distances to work on construction sites.

"Women simply don't have that option," he said. "They cannot do that kind of work and they need to stay close to their communities because they have responsibilities in the home."

Jabareen added that on average Arab women in Israel had a higher number of schooling years than those in Arab countries and the Third World. There were even slightly more Arab women at Israeli universities than Arab men.

"All the research shows that the more educated the population, the more it should be able to find work. The case with Arab women in Israel breaks with the trend. It's unique."

A study by the Bank of Israel published this month suggested additional reasons for the high levels of poverty among Arab families. It showed that Arab men were typically forced into retirement in their early 40s, at least a decade before Israel's Jewish workers and workers in Europe and the United States.

The researchers attributed Arab men's early unemployment to the fact that most are restricted to physically demanding laboring jobs, and because they are rapidly being replaced by foreign workers who are paid less than the minimum wage.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

UK Honour Killing 'Wake-Up Call'

2009-12-01T16:28:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/8387475.stm

UK Honour Killing 'Wake-Up Call'
BBC News
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:35 EST

Tulay's body has never been found.

The case of a girl allegedly murdered by her own family is a "wake-up call" over so-called honour killings in the UK, the Old Bailey has been told.

Tulay Goren, 15, disappeared in 1999 after continuing a relationship with a man her family disapproved of.

Tulay's father Mehmet, 49, and uncles, Ali Goren, 56, and Cuma Goren, 42, all deny murdering the teenager.

In his closing speech, Jonathan Laidlaw QC said it was "shocking" to see feudal" crime in 21st Century Britain.

The prosecutor said: "How a father with the support of two of his brothers could take a knife to his own daughter, if that is what occurred, is something that is really quite impossible to understand.

"If the prosecution are right, to add to the sheer brutality of what these men did is the cold-blooded nature of this killing."

He continued: "If there are those in this country who believe we do not face similar problems as other countries where honour violence occurs, this case will be something of a wake-up call."

The court has been told that Tulay's relationship with her boyfriend, Halil Unal, would have been unacceptable to her family.

He is a Sunni Muslim while the Goren family was from the Alevi branch of the faith.

Tulay went missing from Woodford Green, north London, in January 1999. Her body has never been found.

The brothers have tried to shift the blame to each other during the course of the trial.

Ali and Mehmet Goren, both from Woodford Green, and Cuma Goren, from Walthamstow, also deny conspiring to murder Mr Unal between May 1998 and February 1999.

Mr Laidlaw said none had shown any remorse, adding: "All that is on their minds are the lies they have told in order to escape conviction - a conviction we suggest all three richly deserve."

The defence counsel is expected to sum up on Tuesday.

Embracing women and gay rights

2009-12-01T06:35:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Embracing-women-and-gay-ri-by-Roland-Michel-Trem-090824-274.html

August 26, 2009
Embracing women and gay rights
By Roland Michel Tremblay

I cannot remember if at an early age I stopped myself and asked the question: why are there two sexes on this planet? I believe I must simply have taken it all for granted. There were men and women, in the animal world there were males and females, even flowers have some sort of two sexes. Makes you wonder about rocks.

As a gay person myself, being a man only interested sexually in men, I could have wondered why we needed women in the first place. I certainly couldn't see a reason for them to exist in my life, I had no interest in any of them. A lesbian could think the same about men, I have met a few in my days who hated men so openly, it frightened me. It is rare though that I have met a gay man hating women, quite the contrary. I have to say that I don't really mind, I just accepted it, there were two sexes, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Of course everyone will tell you why there are two sexes, for reproduction, the survival of the species. Isn't that obvious? So obvious, how dare I ask the question? My answer is that it is not so obvious. Some animal species and plants self-reproduce, hermaphrodite is the term, or even intersex in humans. So why should there be a need for two sexes for reproduction purposes? And why two sexes instead of three or four?

Perhaps there is a parallel universe out there where there is only one sex, where an individual can reproduce on its own. In other parallel universes, maybe you need an orgy with at least five different sexes in order to lay a huge heavily fertilized egg right in the middle that will bring about a new monster to the world. I have to say that trying to explain biology, and why it is like this and not like that, is exactly like trying to explain the universe. Why are there planets, stars, galaxies and electrons?

Interestingly in robotics and nanotechnology, they are trying to create some sort of self-reproducing machine at a very small scale. I remember reading that they needed to ensure that the self-reproduction process could be stopped, or else whatever is self-reproducing could quickly take over the universe. The need for two sexes might prevent a self-reproductive species from taking over the world.

Apparently many animals can spontaneously change sex in their lifetime, even though they can only be of one sex at one given time. A man can be turned into a woman quite easily these days. Get rid of the penis, inverse the skin, provide hormonal pills and there you are, new breasts and a new vagina without the reproductive organs. So biologically, even though women and men can look the same, there are still anatomical differences.

In social life in history there were matriarchal and patriarchal societies. However matriarchal societies don't seem to have gained much popularity in recent history. Even though through time men were physically stronger, which might begin to explain why they were mostly always in power whilst inspiring fear around. As society developed in time, intelligence became perhaps more of a factor in deciding authority, in the Western world anyway. I believe somehow this is a fair statement?

I don't think I ever thought in my youth that women could be less intelligent than men, contrary to what was thought for a very long time on this planet and still is in a large percentage of the population. I even thought as I grew older that women could be more intelligent than men. I believe now that statistically there may not be much difference. I always thought that gay people were more intelligent than most, I could also be wrong on that one. They certainly have fewer inhibitions.

The struggle for women to gain rights is very similar to the struggle gay people have to endure. You probably would disagree with this. I wonder why it took so long for women in the West to gain the same rights as men. With half the population as an army, why has it been so long in coming? We're not even there yet. Two world wars were necessary to change a few things, because then women needed to join in the effort of making ammunition and bombs, most men were needed on the front or were already dead by then.

Whatever your attempts to change any constitution, any bill of rights or any human rights charter, it should only be met by failure. If only anyone was working at changing these for the better for all humankind, today it is only getting worse. It took us that long to gain those rights, we will not lose them now without the fight of the millennium. We will not go back to the dark ages.

People should update themselves, readjust their position and change their discourse. Should we just be uneasy about some questionable philosophies of life, or should we reject them outright? There may come a time when religion will no longer be acceptable in our society, and we're close to reaching that point, as many continue to diverge from international laws. I think we can agree that discrimination of any kind is not to be tolerated any longer?

I don't feel like I am man, but I don't feel like I am a woman either. I can share traits with both sexes, perhaps I have the best of both worlds, or the worst depending on the viewpoint. I am perhaps a bit too emotional, it turned out in time that many heterosexual men are more emotional than I am. I have also met women with less emotions than you would have thought possible. Quite often we act very much like we believe people think we should act. It no longer applies nowadays. We can all be as emotional or emotionless as we want, no matter our gender. I suppose it is a good thing.

If I had created this world, I don't think I would have thought of creating two sexes in order to permit reproduction. I would have gone for hermaphrodites, intersex and self-reproduction. I would even have gone for spontaneous generation of life out of nothing, instead of this idea of needing life to create life.

We still have no clue about how life came to be in the first place, and why there are generally speaking two sexes with a string of anomalies in between, which are also part of nature since they exist in nature in large numbers. I say all mistakes were intended, for some unknown purpose. What is in nature belongs to nature, it is natural. How can it be otherwise since it is within nature?

I am also surprised as to how women could have gone so low in history, to virtually be the slaves of men for so long. I could not have thought of that on my own, growing by myself without any teaching or example, and suddenly come across women later on and decide that they were inferior to men. Then again, I am not a real man, and so perhaps I cannot understand the instincts of real men. Maybe for them it is only natural and logical that women should be inferior, and only through the force of law can they be made to understand that it cannot be this way, because half the world at least will not stand such an idea.

In fact, growing up with my sister who is 3 to 4 years older than I am, and being much more powerful physically than I was for many years, I could have thought that women were born to rule over men, men being destined to be their eternal slaves. I have been beaten up by my sister for long enough to have thought that, if society had not told me otherwise eventually.

When I was a child I was always potentially afraid of other boys, but I was never afraid of a girl. It is also true that I have been bullied by many boys, but never by a girl. I have seen many girl bullies bullying other girls though, so it is all the same isn't it. In my adult life I have witnessed bullies of both sexes, and they were bullying males and females without discrimination.

Brute force is the law, how big you are, how powerful you are, you are the winner, you are the leader. In politics, in the work environment, in any couple, the one who runs the house is often the most intelligent one, the one being the most knowledgeable, or even often the most physically powerful one capable of intimidating the others. Who can shout the loudest around here? Could be a man or a woman.

So where does this lead to, these simple observations about sexes? Women in the world still have a long way to go, because globally they are still way behind men when comes the time for emancipation, human rights and power. What women have gain today in the West, just like for gay rights, they could easily lose again eventually.

When it comes to human rights it is never forever granted, it is only always on loan, and stripped away as soon as some bullies see an opportunity to do so. It is a constant battle. Women are usually more religious than men, and yet, religion is very much for reiterating women as what is called, in religious terms, the weaker sex. Fighting religion might be a starting point for women to gain more rights, just as it is for gay people.

I find it weird that there are two sexes in this world. I cannot explain why there was a need for two sexes for procreation to exist, whether there was a creation or an evolution, or both. I am puzzled by the idea that sexes could be considered not equaled just because one sex can be more physically threatening than the other. I am surprised women worldwide are still struggling hard to gain any sort of rights.

I cannot explain why I am gay, attracted to the same sex as mine, though I know I was born that way and science at least appears to have verified that point. It seems natural, since in the animal kingdom homosexuality is also common. Perhaps it is just one more way of controlling the overpopulation, by having a certain percentage attracted only to the same sex.

These biological functions that caused me so much trouble in my youth, and still today. Sometimes I wish there were no sexes, males or females or gay people or transgenders. How nice would that be? No discrimination based on gender or sexual orientation. No half of the population serving as slave to the other half for centuries. No sex and all the related problems that these out of control biological and sexual urges can cause.

Imagine a world without gender or sex. Just all the same sort, all identical, all capable of self-reproducing without the need from someone of the opposite sex. I wonder what kind of world that would be. Like a world where everyone would be the same color. Why not be multi-colors, as many colors as certain animal species are, like marine fish and birds for example? If humans were all identical there would be no racial problem. A world without discrimination. That would be something worth living for, or would it?

We would all be the same, conformists to the max. I don't know about you, but I like my aquarium to reflect all the colors the human eye can see. Everyone just love a universal rainbow flag crossing all boundaries and all nationalities, right? Or are you color blind? Black has always been my favorite color, many cannot see the black color, I've always wondered why, it makes absolutely no sense does it?

With no sexes, no different races based on skin color, we would only have to deal with the other sorts of discrimination. For example, are you stronger or weaker than I am? Were you born here or there? Are you more or less intelligent than me? How rich and powerful is your family? How beautiful and young are you?

I guess there will always be discrimination for as long as we can compare ourselves to others. I wonder if nature could have done it right no matter what it could have come up with. But two sexes was definitely a mistake, an obvious one at that, unless the only reason was to limit the reproduction process somehow so we do not take over the universe any time soon. For the overpopulated planet however, I'm afraid it is too late.

***

“Without irony, this life would hardly be worth living.”

Roland Michel Tremblay

http://www.themarginal.com/destructivism.pdf

Women of South Sudan Say: 'Media Give Us a Fair Deal'

2009-11-28T13:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=49337

Women of South Sudan Say: 'Media Give Us a Fair Deal'
Miriam Gathigah
IPS News
Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:29 EST

Juba, South Sudan - The guns have gone silent - except for sporadic conflict in parts of the vast South Sudan region, such as the Eastern Equatoria State. It may not be the absolute end of the conflict in the region, but it is a reason for renewed hope.

It has been two decades of bitter civil war in Sudan, the southerners bearing the burden of massive destruction which has left an estimated 1.9 million people dead and four million displaced, according to United Nations agencies.

Although many of the estimated six million living in South Sudan are daring to expect a new dawn, the effect these expected changes will have, particularly on women, remains to be seen.

In many African countries women are in the majority, and South Sudan is no exception, with the national report on Millennium Development Goals revealing that women make up 60 percent of the population.

"Despite democracy being understood to be a government of the people and by the people, the role that women can play in both the democratization process of South Sudan, and the sustenance of this democracy, is still not clear," says Alice Michael, executive director, Voice for Change, and a member of the Women Union, a movement which began in the 70s and commands a massive following.

"Media coverage of the coming elections (scheduled for April 2010), for instance, is usually supported by pictures of men seemingly caucusing, perhaps to create the impression that they are deep in serious political discussions."

This, says Michael, makes politics appear very masculine - and when it becomes a general public perception males find it difficult to view women as equal counterparts.

Her remarks are echoed by Mary Sadia, another member of the union. "The manner in which the media represent us (women) is key in deconstructing the perception that our roles are in our homes, to bear and rear children.

"A few months ago a woman leader worked so hard to put together a public forum, but when we watched its news coverage that evening, male politicians had been accorded center-stage at her function, and she was reported only to have been there."

She said the power of the media to perpetuate and solidify gender stereotypes could not be over-emphasized. "It is even more critical to bear in mind that the most powerful and memorable social changes are instigated by the media, usually in subtle ways. Ways that nonetheless paint very powerful pictures in people's minds," said Sadia.

But the director-general in the ministry of information and communication in Eastern Equatorial State, Hon Alex Locor, counters these claims "There have been deliberate efforts to accord women as much media space as men, particularly in this highly charged political atmosphere.

"There are few media outlets. In Eastern Equatoria State we have only 97.5 FM, which means the media are still acclimatising themselves, and may not meet all expectations, but there are clear efforts towards equitable gender representation."

Lucy Lokololong, a businesswoman in Juba, in explaining the relationship between women and the media, says the injustice towards women happens at two levels.

"The manner in which women are portrayed, say in a photograph. Are they feeding their children and doing chores considered feminine? Then their reported opinions - are they often quoted as making remarks perpetuating gender inequality?

"In essence we are talking about gender as constructed by culture, but perpetuated by the media. All this can be in blatant or subtle stereotyping," says Lokololong.

"A photograph, for instance, is a powerful tool for subtle stereotyping. A news item that covers an entire political rally and gives not a single woman's voice making a contribution speaks volumes."

Lokololong also referred to 97.5 FM, as an example of a media outlet that has caused discontent, particularly with women. "The only program for women, dubbed 'The Women's Programme', airs at 3 pm. How many women are in the house to listen at that hour?

"That too is a way of trivializing women's issues. Other programs that seem to target men, say on the economy and politics, air at prime time while people are home unwinding."

Pauline Luguma, a journalist, adds that women are under-represented in media institutions as practitioners. "This has also compromised the manner in which women are portrayed in the media."

She said that out of the 11 journalists in Eastern Equatoria State, only two are women. "Women therefore are assigned 'soft news', on subjects such as lifestyle, while men cover 'hard news', such as the economy and politics."

The outcome, she says, is a very visible and imbalanced gender disparity, with men appearing as sources and key news makers while women are depicted as objects.

"This therefore sabotages any chances of women being taken seriously as leaders and potential movers of any political process."

John Kennedy Okema, editor-in-chief of 97.5 FM, said although there were challenges in changing from patriarchal news-making angles to more gender-representative ones, "there have been initiatives to drive this much-needed paradigm shift, such as deliberately incorporating women's voices in key headline news. But it is not a change that can happen overnight."

The editor's remarks are echoed by the minister for Information and Communication for Eastern Equatoria State, Bernard Loki. "It is indeed a process that takes a bit of time. In my ministry, for instance, there is a lot of discontent on gender representation because of male dominance.

"The South Sudan story is more complex than this. We are talking about media that only just recently rose from the ashes of war. With time women will take much more media space than they do now."

As women continue to stand at the periphery of newsworthiness, the wheels of change are grinding and democratization beckons with the coming general elections, as well as the referendum.

This therefore calls for a clear media transformation that accommodates more women, and the opinions they hold as inarguably equal stakeholders in society.

Girl, 16, lashed over knee-length skirt

2009-11-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

50 lashes could cripple a person for life!

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34170961/

Girl, 16, lashed over knee-length skirt
‘She is just a young girl,’ mom says after Sudanese judge imposes sentence
Reuters
Nov. 27, 2009

KHARTOUM, Sudan - A 16-year-old south Sudanese girl was lashed 50 times after a judge ruled her knee-length skirt was indecent, her lawyer and family said in the latest case to push Sudan's Islamic law into the spotlight.

The mother of teenager Silva Kashif told Reuters on Friday she was planning to sue the police who made the arrest and the judge who imposed the sentence, as her daughter was underage and a Christian.

The case will add fuel to a debate already raging over Sudan's decency laws after this year's high-profile conviction of Sudanese U.N. official Lubna Hussein, who was briefly jailed for wearing trousers in public.

Hussein, a former journalist who used her case to campaign against Sudan's public order and decency regulations, is touring France to publicize her book about the prosecution. She had faced the maximum penalty of 40 lashes but was given a lighter sentence.

'We all sat and cried'
Kashif, whose family comes from the south Sudanese town of Yambio, was arrested while walking to the market near her home in the Khartoum suburb of Kalatla last week, her mother Jenty Doro told Reuters.

"She is just a young girl but the policeman pulled her along in the market like she was a criminal. It was wrong," said Doro.

Doro said Khashif was taken to Kalatla court where she was convicted and punished by a female police officer in front of the judge.

"I only heard about it after she was lashed. Later we all sat and cried ... People have different religions and that should be taken into account," she said.

Arrests for indecency, drunkenness and other public order offences are not uncommon in Khartoum which is governed by Islamic Shariah law.

But the punishment of residents of the capital originating from the south remains a sensitive issue.

Sudan is supposed to be working to soften the impact of Shariah for southerners living in Khartoum under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north-south civil war. The deal lifted Shariah law in the south, where most follow Christianity and traditional beliefs.

Women's groups argue the decency laws are too vague, giving the country's separate public order police too much freedom to decide what kind of dress is appropriate.

Compensation bid
Kashif's lawyer Azhari al-Haj told Reuters he was preparing a case against the police and judge for arresting and sentencing an underage girl. He said according to the law, people under 18 should not be given lashes.

"She was wearing a normal skirt and blouse, worn by thousands of girls. They didn't contact a guardian and punished her on the spot."

Al-Haj said he was hoping to win compensation and to clear Kashif's record. "We are also against the law itself. We want the law to be changed."

Nigerian football star Stephen Worgu this month said he had been sentenced to 40 lashes after being wrongly convicted of drunk driving in Khartoum. The sentence has been postponed pending an appeal.

Copyright 2009 Reuters. Click for restrictions.

"Too Fat to Be a Princess?" Young Girls Worry About Body Image, Study Shows

2009-11-26T14:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091124103615.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

"Too Fat to Be a Princess?" Young Girls Worry About Body Image, Study Shows
ScienceDaily
Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:00 CST

Even before they start school, many young girls worry that they are fat. But a new study suggests watching a movie starring a stereotypically thin and beautiful princess may not increase children's anxieties.

Nearly half of the 3- to 6-year-old girls in a study by University of Central Florida psychology professor Stacey Tantleff-Dunn and doctoral student Sharon Hayes said they worry about being fat. About one-third would change a physical attribute, such as their weight or hair color.

The number of girls worried about being fat at such a young age concerns Tantleff-Dunn because of the potential implications later in life. Studies have shown that young girls worried about their body image are more likely to suffer from eating disorders when they are older.

The encouraging news for parents is that taking their young daughters to see the new Disney film The Princess and the Frog isn't likely to influence how they perceive their bodies.

The UCF study, recently published online in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, concluded that young girls' behavior or self-esteem did not appear to be influenced by video clips of the beautiful, thin princesses in animated children's movies. That's a sharp contrast to earlier studies showing how the self-esteem of older girls and women suffers after short-term exposure to thin, beautiful models on television and in the movies.

While the study found no short-term consequences for young girls, the media's portrayal of beauty likely is one of the strongest influences on how they perceive their bodies because children spend so much time watching movies and television, Tantleff-Dunn said.

That's why it's important for parents to use movies such as The Princess and the Frog, which premieres Nov. 25 in New York and Los Angeles and Dec. 11 nationwide, to start conversations with their children about weight, skin color and their perceptions of beauty, she said. They can explain that princesses' tiny waists are not realistic for girls and that children don't need Cinderella's golden hair or Snow White's porcelain skin to look good.

"We need to help our children challenge the images of beauty, particularly thinness, that they see and idolize and encourage them to question how much appearance should be part of their self-worth," said Tantleff-Dunn, who directs UCF's Laboratory for the Study of Eating, Appearance and Health. "We should help them build a positive self-image with an appreciation for many different types of body attributes."

Criticism and teasing from parents, siblings and peers also shape how young girls perceive their bodies, Tantleff-Dunn said. And as their children's most important role models, parents also shouldavoid criticizing their own bodies.

During the study, each of the 121 girls was taken into a room with a "playmate" -- a trained research associate in her 20s who had experience working with children. After chatting for several minutes, the playmate asked each girl how she feels about the way she looks. Thirty-one percent indicated they almost always worry about being fat, while another 18 percent said they sometimes worry about it.

Half of the girls watched parts of animated children's movies such as Cinderella that featured young, beautiful characters and appearance-focused comments, such as Gaston telling Belle in Beauty and the Beast that she is "the most beautiful girl in town, and that makes her the best." The second group watched parts of animated children's movies such as Dora the Explorer and Clifford the Big Red Dog that do not contain any appearance-related messages.

In a room that featured a dress-up rack of costumes, a vanity, dinosaurs and more, children then spent about the same amount of time on appearance-related play activities, such as brushing their hair at the vanity, regardless of which set of movies they watched.

While older girls and women tend to compare their bodies to the models', younger children may be more likely to adopt the persona of the princesses while playing, the UCF researchers said.

Women Scientists and the Nobel Prize

2009-11-26T14:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Women-Scientists-and-the-N-by-Elayne-Clift-091124-672.html

November 25, 2009
Women Scientists and the Nobel Prize
By Elayne Clift

When Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn got the call, along with Jack Szostak, that they had won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Medicine, they entered a largely unknown group of women whose work in the sciences has been honored.

Rosalind Franklin's work on DNA is now widely acknowledged but it was not recognized by the Nobel Committee in 1962 when it awarded the coveted prize to James Watson and Francis Crick for their work on the double helical structure of DNA. Watson and Crick's work included essential information from Franklin's research, which had been transmitted to them without her knowledge.

Chien-Shiung Wu was a pioneering physicist whose work radically altered modern physical theory and changed the way we look at the structure of the universe. She never got a Nobel Prize, but she was the first woman to win a major award from the National Academy of Sciences.

In chemistry, Gertrude Elion's accomplishments were tremendous. She developed many life-saving drugs, including the first chemotherapy for childhood leukemia, the immunosuppressant that made organ transplant possible, and the first effective anti-viral medication. She was the fifth woman to receive a Nobel Prize in Medicine, despite enormous prejudice against her.

Drs. Greider, Blackburn and Szostak received their Nobel Prize for discovering a key mechanism in the genetic operations of cells, inspiring new research into cancer. Essentially the trio solved the mystery of how chromosomes protect themselves from degrading when cells divide. According to the Nobel citation, they found the solution in the ends of chromosomes in something called telomeres. Blackburn and Greider discovered the enzyme that builds telomeres, called telomerase, and the mechanism by which it adds DNA to the tips of chromosomes to replace genetic material that has eroded. Their work set the stage for further research designed to explore whether cancer cells use telomerase to sustain their uncontrolled growth. This in turn leads to studying whether drugs that block the enzyme can fight the disease.

Ten women have won the prestigious medicine award since the first Nobel Prizes were given out in 1901, but this was the first time two women were honored in the same year. In addition, the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to a woman for the first time. Dr. Elinor Ostrom, a research professor at Indiana University, shared the prize with Dr. Oliver Williamson of the University of California at Berkeley. Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. “[She] has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized.” In other words, Ostrom proved that communities trump corporations.

Over the past decade, women have been conducting some other interesting research. As social scientists they've been exploring the gender gap within the sciences. Virginia Valian's book, Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women, analyzed hundreds of studies looking at the status of women in the professions, science and academia. In an interview with Natalie Anger published in The New York Times, Valerian reported that “what seems to happen is that men and women start out on roughly equal footing. " But if you look several years down the line, the differences in their career paths become apparent. The men are earning more, they are being promoted at a faster rate than women.” Valian adds, “What makes it hard to understand women's slow advancement is that nothing seems overtly wrong in most work situations.”

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and professor at Columbia University, addresses this dilemma in her 2008 Harvard Business Review Report, “The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering and Technology.” According to Harvard, the report “examines the hostile ‘macho' work environments, extreme job pressures and related factors that frustrate highly-qualified women in what otherwise should be productive and satisfying career trajectories.”

Joan Herbers, president-elect of the Association of Women in Science (AWIS) and a science professor at Ohio State University (OSU), says “we know for sure the bad old days are more or less gone. Overtly bad behavior has been reduced. But the invisible stuff is equally damaging.” With a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) she is involved in Project CEOS/Advance: Comprehensive Equity at Ohio State. The project is designed to increase the representation and advancement of women in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers through research-based interventions that transform the workplace culture at OSU. Results will be shared with other academic institutions.

The NSF has also awarded a grant to AWIS for in-depth work on issues of gender equity within the sciences. A kick-off conference, “Broadening Participation: A Societal Imperative,” drew 300 NSF grantees to Washington, DC in November to discuss relevant issues and ways to address them.

Carol Greider is optimistic. “As a scientist, I know that one data point doesn't mean there is a trend. But I hope the fact that many more women won the Nobel this year is the beginning of a trend in that direction.”

Did Darwin forget to ask how sexual reproduction evolved?

2009-11-25T16:28:00.000-08:00

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/vive_la_difference_but_how_did_it_begin/

Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Vive la différence! – but how did it begin?
Did Darwin forget to ask how sexual reproduction evolved?

We have published several articles this year to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Darwin, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of the Species. MercatorNet has been presenting articles on both sides of the debate. Below, Dorothy Vining wonders if Darwin forgot to ask how sex evolved. Join the discussion on this topic on MercatorNet's Facebook group.

In my twenties, I was responsible for indexing Darwin's works for the Great Books Syntopicon under the direction of the well-known philosopher Mortimer Adler. At the time I swallowed the Darwinian "natural selection" scenario hook, line, and sinker. It was so beautiful, so overarching, so all-explanatory. But later on I came to realize that too much was left unexplained.

One question that has baffled me is the origin of sexual reproduction. As far as I can see, this is an unsolved puzzle amongst scientists.

Apparently Darwin did not wonder about it. Either it has not occurred to his followers that they have no explanation for the beginning of sexual differentiation into male and female, or they are deliberately ignoring it.

Evolutionists point out that sexual differentiation has both costs and benefits. They point out that reproducing sexually is costly in that time and energy have to be devoted to finding a suitable partner. There is a risk of remaining unmated. There is a risk of producing offspring less fit than the parent because of recombination. Other things being equal, asexual reproduction is quicker and easier. Asexual reproduction is more common in species little troubled by disease.

On the other hand, sexual reproduction increases diversity and the likelihood of survival in changing circumstances. It purges the species of damaging mutations so that they can evolve new defenses against infections. Some animals actually breed sexually and asexually at different times!

But as to how sexual reproduction originated there is little said. In Why Have Sex? The Population Genetics of Sex and Recombination, (2006) Otto and Gerstein mention some of the reasons for sex listed in the previous paragraph. But they offer no answer as to how it all got started.

Confronted with the fact that sexual differentiation actually does exist in most multicellular animals, we have to surmise that at some point throughout the millenia one of these creatures in the process of cell division just happened to develop a cell with only half the usual complement of genetic material. We might call this a rudimentary egg (oocyte or ovum). Whatever could be the advantage of producing an egg? An egg would be of absolutely no use unless there was a sperm to fertilize it. If this animal found no mate, it would, of course, have been the first and last of its kind!

Well, perhaps another creature of the same species accidentally produced a sperm, complete with a tail. Why do you suppose it would grow a tail when it didn’t have a clue that it would have to go swimming after an egg? And of course it would not be genetically preprogrammed to recognize an egg if it should chance to run into one!

If we accept evolutionary theory we are required to imagine that each animal that today reproduces sexually, in the distant past was going about its business of reproducing asexually, dividing and budding away, when all of a sudden it accidentally produced an egg and at the same time, in the same locale, another animal of the same species just happened to make a sperm cell. Also, simultaneously and independently they each accidentally acquired the apparatus to get the egg and sperm together so they could produce offspring with a full set of genes.

Are you buying this?

If ever there was a case of "irreducible complexity", we have one in the transition from asexual to sexual reproduction. Irreducible complexity means simply that the process cannot be reduced to a series of simple steps one after another. If a number of things do not happen and come together all at once, nothing works. Irreducible complexity has been defined in various ways but I prefer Darwin's own language: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case" (Origin of Species, Chapter VI).

But as far as I can see, sexual differentiation is such a case.

Asexual reproduction results in progeny identical to the parent, unless there is a genetic mutation which will produce some change in the DNA. For an organism to initiate sexual reproduction additional genetic information is required, not only added to one organism but added simultaneously to two organisms of the same type, at the same time, and differing so that the changes will be complementary. There is no point in having a genetically female animal if there is no matching male anywhere around.

Accidental genetic mutations are almost always deleterious and have never been shown to involve an increase in genetic information. Consider that the informational content of the DNA in a single human cell equals that of 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Where did all the new additional information required for sexual differentiation come from?

I have never seen any even remotely plausible explanation of how sexual differentiation might have first evolved in the Darwinian scheme of things. To my mind, the very fact of sexual differentiation necessitates, yes, demands a plan. And a plan demands a planner. "Male and female He created them," not "Male and female they decided to become."

Dorothy Vining once worked for the philosopher Mortimer Adler on the Syntopicon, an index to the ideas in the 54 volume set of The Great Books of the Western World. As her field was the biological sciences, she was assigned to index the biological works of Aristotle, Hippocrates, Harvey, Galen, and Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man. An enthusiast then, she became increasingly critical of Darwin’s theories. She blogs at Musings at 85.

When Sex Hurts, and No One Can Tell You Wh

2009-11-24T09:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.alternet.org/story/143131/when_sex_hurts%2C_and_no_one_can_tell_you_why%3A_the_mysterious_condition_called_vulvodynia?page=entire

When Sex Hurts, and No One Can Tell You Why: The Mysterious Condition Called Vulvodynia
Carey Purcell
Alternet.org
Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:15 CST

Imagine a choice between no intercourse or sex with unbearable pain. Then imagine that no doctor knows how to fix it. That's the world occupied by women with vulvodynia.

Karen Wilson was 16 when she first began feeling the pain. It began out of the blue one day, and it never stopped. She could never figure out why the heavy feeling in her vagina was happening, or how to stop it. Some days the pain was so bad that she couldn't walk or even get out of bed.

Wilson began going to doctors, but none of them knew what the pain was or how to make it stop. Many people told her it would end after she had children, and one doctor suggested that it was psychosomatic. It wasn't until her 20s that Wilson was diagnosed with a mysterious condition known as vulvodynia.

Loosely defined as chronic vulvar pain, vulvodynia is characterized by burning, stinging pain in the vuvla, sometimes called the "lips" that surround the opening to the vagina. Vulvodynia is often mistaken for yeast or bacterial infections or as a sexually transmitted infection or disease.

Many patients have had to visit numerous doctors before being diagnosed, and there is no known cure for it. Often, patients are able to find a regimen of treatments to control their pain, but they never arrive at a complete cure for vulvodynia.

The most common symptom of vulvodynia is pain during sexual intercourse, and the condition was first defined in 1880. It is not determined yet exactly what triggers vulvodynia, but a few theories have been tested and proven to be helpful in properly diagnosing the illness. Christiane Northrup's book Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom lists yeast infections, gynecological surgery, childbirth and sexual abuse as some of the triggers, as well as inflammation in the vestibular gland. Vulvodynia is especially difficult to diagnose because there are almost no physical signs of illness or infection and doctors have to rely on patients' descriptions of the symptoms. It is a diagnosis of exclusion, because it is only diagnosed when all known causes of symptoms are ruled out.

Along with the physical pain, vulvodynia takes a great emotional toll on the women who suffer from it. It can cause great damage to women's relationships and self-esteem, and many patients question their psychological well-being and their worth as a female if they are unable to be sexually active. Finding a diagnosis and a cure can also be extremely stressful, because treating vulvodynia is an expensive, long-term (usually life-long) investment. Even diagnosing the illness can be costly for the patient, who may see several gynecologists before being properly diagnosed, and a co-pay for a gynecologist, which is considered a specialist under the majority of health insurance plans, can cost anywhere from $10 to $50 a visit.

The cost of a consultation with a vulvodynia specialist can vary, ranging anywhere from approximately $200 to $800, and the appointments last between one and two hours. And many of these specialists don't accept health insurance, which often fails to reimburse them adequately for the exceptional amount of time required with a patient in order to effect a positive outcome in a vulvodynia case. Dr. William Ledger, Professor Emeritus of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, described the situation as "bothering the devil out of him," when he explained why he accepts very few insurances from patients who have vulvodynia.

According to Ledger, treating a patient with vulvodynia requires a great deal of time and attention from the doctor, and accepting insurance causes the time spent with the patient to be unprofitable for the doctor. He said many gynecologists make the majority of their revenue by seeing and treating numerous patients and performing operations. Simply put, the more patients the doctor sees, the more money the doctor makes.

Wilson has suffered the financial burden of vulvodynia since her diagnosis, adjusting her budget for medical co-pays as well as physical therapy sessions, where the therapist massages and manipulates the pelvic muscles internally and externally. She had a vestibulectomy, a surgical procedure that removes some tissue from the vulvar area, and she has prescriptions for Lyrica and Valium. It is the physical therapy sessions that take the greatest toll on Wilson. Each visit costs $99, which she pays out of pocket, because she has not been able to find a health insurance company that will cover them.

Wilson, who is married and the mother of a ten-year-old boy, was recently laid off from her job. She is covered under her husband's insurance, but she is concerned about how her current financial situation will affect her health. She has not seen her physical therapist for several months and hopes she will not have to soon, because of the cost.

Yamalis Heranandez had always thought the pain she experienced was psychological, crediting it to religious guilt and thinking the pain would disappear after her wedding. When she was diagnosed with vulvodynia, she was relieved and upset, because she had thought if it was something psychosomatic, she would be able to cure it through counseling.

Hernandez has tried taking a variety of medicines, including lidocaine, desipramine and Neurontin and after a year of failed attempts to ease the pain, had a vestibulectomy, which helped her condition. She also has experienced relief from acupuncture treatments, light therapy, and appointments with a psychotherapist to help with the intense depression she fell into after being diagnosed.

"I felt very guilty not being able to have sex with my husband," she said. "I always thought he was going to leave me, thinking, 'I am such a drag to be around. I'm so ugly. Why would anybody ever look at me? I don't even feel like a woman.' I felt like a disgusting person, and I felt bad he had to be around me."

Hernandez credits the psychologist with helping her trust her relationship and said if she hadn't gone to therapy sessions, she doesn't think she would still be married.

The first time Ledger sees a patient with vulvodynia, he spends about 30 minutes with her, compared to the 10 he typically spends with a patient. That visit, uninsured, costs the patient $350, and if the patient chooses to have an additional gene test done in order to help diagnose the cause for vulvodynia, an additional $190.

"These women have a condition that takes a lot of time and isn't anything that can fit under one heading," he said. "It's a chronic condition, and for most of them it's never over. Trying to figure out what's going on with each individual patient and the best combination of approaches that work with them takes a lot of time. And that's kind of contrary to the way most ob-gyn doctors work."

The difficulty of treating vulvodynia discourages many doctors from approaching it, according to Ledger, who described the situation as very discouraging.

"These women take a long, long time to evaluate," he said. "You may have a lot of false starts with them. You have to keep in communication with them. Basically, ob-gyn people don't want to deal with chronic problems. They don't want to deal with something that's not going to go away."

Neither Wilson's and Hernandez's surgeries completely cured the symptoms the women were experiencing. They still have to see doctors and purchase numerous prescriptions as well as pursue alternative treatments that may not be insured.

One year and four months after she was married, after the surgery and several months using dilators, devices used to stretch or enlarge her vaginal opening, to help control her muscle spasms, Hernandez was able to have sex with her husband for the first time. However, her condition is not cured and she still lives with vulvodynia every day, using lidocaine to ease the pain of sexual intercourse and, for a short period of time, she attended physical therapy sessions to strengthen her pelvis.

Following her surgery, Hernandez experienced great relief from acupuncture treatments, combined with light therapy. But she isn't able to see her acupuncturist any longer, because she changed health insurances and the cost of the treatments tripled, going from $20 to $60.

Even after stopping acupuncture treatments, Hernandez estimates that she has spent several thousand dollars trying to treat vulvodynia, even though her surgery was covered by her health insurance. When asked to list her medical expenses, she mentioned acupuncture appointments, massage sessions, several dilators which were $150 each, and medical co-pays, as well as over the counter medications to treat yeast infections, which vulvodynia patients are especially prone to. Her psychotherapy treatments were on a sliding scale of $40 per visit, and her physical therapy appointments were $20 twice a week. She also had to change her wardrobe so she could wear more skirts and dresses, because pants were too uncomfortable.

She said the cost of her treatments was a huge burden on her life, and she felt guilty going to her therapist, because it was an "extra" cost in her budget. Her total estimated cost is even less than it would be for other women in her situation, because Hernandez was participating in a research study under which she received some medications and tests free of charge.

Being covered by health insurance is absolutely necessary for any patients with vulvodynia, despite the fact that many specialists do not accept health insurance for patient visits. The additional costs of treating the condition, such as prescription painkillers, are even more expensive if the patient is uninsured. The surgical cost of a vestibulectomy can total up to several thousand dollars out of the patient's pocket, and an uninsured prescription of a painkiller can be anywhere from $30 - $100.

"If you don't have health insurance in this country, it's not a good thing," Wilson said. "There's no way around that. If you don't have health insurance, you can call any old doctor and the first thing they ask you is what kind of insurance you have."

Ledger said his situation is an exception to the rule in the medical profession in that he is a tenured professor and used to be the chairman of the Obstetrics and Gynecology department. The majority of his payment comes from teaching and research, and his paycheck will not decrease if he does not charge more money. He said if his income was dependent on treating patients, he would charge much more per visit.

While Ledger is committed to his work and able to treat women for a lower cost than other specialists, he is concerned about the future of researching and treating vulvodynia, saying he did not see many students that indicated interest in treating this kind of condition. He credited the lack of interest partly to the debt load shouldered by recent graduates of medical school.

According to the American Medical Association, the average debt carried by a medical school graduate has risen faster than the consumer price index for the past twenty years, and the tuition has been growing faster than the CPI. The average debt of the graduates of 2007 was $139,517 and had increased by 6.9 percent since the previous year. Three quarters of medical school graduates have debt of at least $100,000 and 87.6 percent carry outstanding loans.

"There's little interest in treating vulvodynia. It's time consuming, and the monetary awards don't match the effort required to treat the patient properly," Ledger said. "You make money by delivering babies and doing operations...I happen to think our whole medical system stinks."

Wilson's physical therapist said her therapist sees many women who have the same problem as her.

"That's a bit of concern in and of itself," Wilson said. "You wonder how many women are struggling with this."

Wilson's concern is shared by many other patients and professionals in the medical community. The National Vulvodynia Association was founded in 1995 by five patients who lived in the Washington DC area, to provide emotional, medical and financial support for women suffering from this condition. Currently about 5000 people, both patient and medical providers, are donors to the NVA, which is administering a Cost of Illness survey about vulvodynia. Ten studies on the condition have been funded so far, but its economic impact, such as out-of-pocket expenses and work hours lost by the patient, has not been considered yet and will be a part of the survey.

The survey is a step in the right direction of the change that is so badly needed in the American health care system. However, despite the obvious problems that vulvodynia presents for both patients and practitioners in the health care system, no one seems quite sure how to bring about this change. Health care reform has been discussed widely as of late, but even if the reform bill is passed, Ledger does not predict it will have great impact on the medical community's approach to vulvodynia.

"With the pressure on doctors and the concern about economics and the cost of malpractice, we have endangered the system here," Ledger said. "It needs to be changed badly, but I think it's going to be hard to accomplish it."

Desire Drug May Prove Sex Really Is All in Her Head

2009-11-19T15:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&sid=a1dWw6lHCAJQ

Desire Drug May Prove Sex Really Is All in Her Head (Update1)
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By Naomi Kresge

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH is banking on sex really being all in women’s heads.

The German drugmaker is putting the finishing touches on a pill designed to reawaken desire by blunting female inhibitions. Unlike Viagra, which targets the mechanics of sex by boosting blood flow to the penis, this drug works on the brain.

The desire drug, the focus of a meeting on sexual disorders in Lyon next week, has the potential to revolutionize sexual medicine much as Pfizer Inc.’s blue pill did a decade ago. That could put family-owned Boehringer at the center of a debate about whether the medicine is a chemical shortcut around a complex dysfunction involving body and mind -- or whether disinterest in sex is a legitimate medical condition.

“This drug has the potential to finally open the door to acceptance of the idea that decreased desire can be something that involves a dysfunctional way the brain works, and not only a bad partner,” said Jim Pfaus, a neurologist at Concordia University in Montreal, who conducted early tests of the drug in rats. “Of course it’s in your head.”

The U.S. market for medicines to rekindle female libido could be bigger than the $2 billion a year in U.S. sales for erectile dysfunction treatments because more women report sexual problems, BioSante Pharmaceuticals Inc. Chief Executive Officer Stephen Simes estimated last year.

Showing It Works

Boehringer, based in the German town of Ingelheim on the Rhine’s west bank, was searching for a depression treatment in the 1990s when it stumbled on the compound, called flibanserin. By 2002, Boehringer found the drug wasn’t lifting patients’ mood. The company says researchers were startled when test subjects rated one measure of well-being, sexual appetite, consistently higher than the others.

After what Pfaus described as an initial period of hesitation about developing a sex pill, Boehringer decided to move forward. The company needs new drugs because it faces the loss of 1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in annual revenue when two older medicines, Mirapex for Parkinson’s disease and Flomax to treat enlarged prostate, lose patent protection next year.

The world’s largest closely held pharmaceutical company has been studying flibanserin for more than a decade and it has yet to publish clinical test results showing the drug is effective. The company will lift its veil of secrecy on Monday at the European Society for Sexual Medicine conference with data from trials of more than 5,000 European and U.S. women.

Women’s Distress

The main criterion for the clinical trials, which the company named after flowers, was how many “satisfying sexual events” women said they had experienced after starting treatment. If the results are good, the so-called Bouquet studies, dubbed Violet, Daisy, Dahlia and Orchid, could form the basis for applications to U.S. and European regulators.

The German company is taking a page from Pfizer’s book. The U.S. drugmaker broadened the appeal of Viagra in 1998 by steering clear of the word “impotence” and saying the blue pill addressed a disease called erectile dysfunction. Boehringer is avoiding potentially offensive words such as frigidity and refers to the problem its pill cures by its clinical name, hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or HSDD.

“An increasing body of evidence shows that hypoactive sexual desire disorder causes substantial emotional distress,” said Heike Specht, a spokesman for the company. The drugmaker “has conducted late-stage clinical trials in over 5,000 women from which we hope will result the first available pharmaceutical treatment.”

A Boehringer survey of 31,000 U.S. women aged 18 and above found that one in 10 expressed distress because of diminished sex drive.

Ideological Battle

A sluggish libido is “a real problem,” and early clinical results so far suggest Boehringer’s drug can help, according to Stephen Stahl, a psychopharmacologist and chairman of the Neuroscience Education Institute in Carlsbad, California. Stahl, who has been a consultant for Boehringer, sees a growing role for drugs in treating sexual disorders.

Not everyone agrees there is a disorder to begin with.

In 2003, a year after Boehringer started the Bouquet clinical trials, an article written by Ray Moynihan in the British Medical Journal called female sexual dysfunction “the freshest, clearest example we have” of a disease created by pharmaceutical companies to make healthy people think they need medicine.

“This is for some an ideological battle,” said psychiatrist Michael Berner of the Freiburg University Clinic, who had patients in Boehringer’s studies. “One view is the multi-dimensional view you get from people like me. And then you have these people that say you should work only on relationship issues and that medication cannot have a place.”

‘Like Dancing’

Researchers don’t know why some women’s libido falters, said Pfaus, who has tested compounds in rats for Pfizer, Boehringer and Palatin Technologies Inc. by gauging whether they spur female rats to solicit sex from males.

“An erection is obvious, it’s easy,” Pfaus said. “But desire -- how do you get at that?”

The explanation may be partly evolutionary, according to Berner, who says male primates are driven by a need to spread their semen, while for females it’s important to be able to care for and rear the offspring.

Some researchers believe the social components of intercourse mean that sexual problems can’t be addressed in the same way as heart failure or cancer.

Sex is a “historical and cultural phenomenon,” said Leonore Tiefer, a psychiatry professor at New York University. There’s no baseline of normalcy by which to define a disorder, she contends.

“It’s like dancing, or music, or piano-playing,” Tiefer said. “You do it with the body, but the part the body plays isn’t the largest part.”

Over the Wall

Flibanserin works on the brain by putting “two feet on the brakes” to block the release of a chemical called serotonin, which regulates mood, appetite, sleep and memory, Pfaus said. In time, the process should trigger the production of dopamine, a chemical that, among other jobs, helps stimulate desire.

The drug differs from testosterone, a hormone that’s also been tested to reawaken women’s desire. Berner, interviewed at his study in Freiburg, sketched the picture of a wall to explain how flibanserin works.

“You’re standing here, sad, inhibited,” he said, drawing a stick figure next to the wall on a scrap of paper. “Testosterone would give you a little bit more excitement, so you’d climb over. Flibanserin would take away one of the stones.”

Once a Day

The compound takes three to six weeks to kick in. The pill has to be taken daily, and some women taking part in the clinical trials reported feeling tired, Berner said.

Boehringer recruited women for clinical studies using print advertisements. Berner said his patients were largely professionals in their early 30s to mid-40s, and most chose to continue in the trial in a subsequent phase that ensured they would get the real drug instead of a placebo. Boehringer is recruiting older women for a follow-up study.

Women can be diagnosed with hypoactive sexual desire disorder if they feel concerned, bothered or frustrated by a lack of desire -- or if it’s hurting their relationships.

The company used personal digital assistants to check whether the pill was working. Participants were beeped once a day and asked to rate their level of desire and say whether they had been sexually active and whether it was enjoyable.

Potential Rivals

If flibanserin makes it to market, it will be the first success after a series of failures from drugmakers including Procter & Gamble Co. and Pfizer. The New York-based maker of Viagra abandoned efforts to adapt its pill for women in 2004 and closed sex-health research at the end of last year.

The only female sexual dysfunction therapy approved in the U.S. is Eros-CTD, from NuGyn, Inc., a suction pump that fits over the clitoris much like the erection pumps that predated Viagra. Intrinsa, a testosterone patch from Noven Pharmaceuticals Inc. licensed by Procter & Gamble, is sold in Europe for women whose uteruses have been removed. A U.S. version was put on hold in 2004 on concern about whether it is safe for long-term use.

Still in clinical trials are a new version of the P&G patch; LibiGel, a testosterone gel from BioSante; and bremelanotide, an injected therapy from Palatin Technologies.

Researchers around the world will be watching Boehringer’s results in Lyon, according to Pfaus. “There are probably a lot of companies holding their breath,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Kresge in Zurich at nkresge@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: November 13, 2009 06:09 EST

Women put 515 chemicals on their face and body every day in beauty regime

2009-11-19T15:23:00.000-08:00

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6603483/Women-put-515-chemicals-on-their-face-and-body-every-day-in-beauty-regime.html

Women put 515 chemicals on their face and body every day by using beauty products that contain dozens of ingredients, some of them potentially harmful.

By Alastair Jamieson
Published: 8:45AM GMT 19 Nov 2009

A survey found women typically use up to 13 products, most of which contain more than 20 ingredients, including additives.

Perfumes contain an average cocktail of 250 ingredients, the study found, with some containing as many as 400.

The study, published by company Bionsen which makes deodorants it says are ‘aluminium free’, said some of the additive ingredients in other products have been linked to cancer, hormone problems, skin conditions and allergies.

Lipstick contains on average 33 ingredients, body lotion 32, mascara 29, and the purest product, hand moisturiser, 11, it found.

Charlotte Smith of Bionsen told The Sun: "Beauty regimes have changed dramatically from a simple 'wash & go' to daily fake tan applications, regular manicures, false lashes and hair extensions.

“The new 'wonder treatments' contain more chemicals to be able to achieve better results, which means that women are more at risk.”

Earlier research found one third of women under the age of 25 are regularly applying products meant for the over-40s, potentially exposing themselves to unnecessary damage through treatments designed for older skin.

Eczema patients who use products that are too greasy often suffer from a condition called occlusive folliculitis – sweat cannot escape from behind clogged pores, causing itchy red lumps.

Female Wild Horses Stick Together

2009-11-18T14:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/

© Elissa Z. Cameron

Stéphan Reebs
Sat, 14 Nov 2009

Wild mares socialize in new Zealand's Kaimanawa Mountains.
Wild mares that form strong social bonds with other mares produce more foals than those that don't, researchers have found, in what may be the first documented link between "friendship" and reproductive success outside of primates.

The study followed bands of feral horses in the Kaimanawa Mountains of New Zealand over the course of three years. Elissa Z. Cameron, now at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, and two colleagues computed sociality scores for 56 mares, based on parameters such as the proportion of time each animal spent near other mares and the amount of social grooming she did.

The team found that the scores correlated well with foaling rate: more sociable mares had more foals. They also suffered slightly less harassment by the bands' few males.

Such correlational studies are notoriously tricky to interpret, and they do not prove cause and effect. But Cameron's data are certainly consistent with the idea that bonds between females-even unrelated ones, as in horse bands-help them fend off pestering males, thus reducing stress and promoting healthy pregnancies.

Other studies of various primate species (baboons, most notably) support that notion.

The research was detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.

Opinion: U.S. is doing no good in Afghanistan

2009-11-17T12:14:00.000-08:00

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_13755903?nclick_check=1

Opinion: U.S. is doing no good in Afghanistan
By Malalai Joya
Special to the Mercury News
Posted: 11/10/2009 08:00:00 PM PST

As an Afghan woman who was elected to Parliament, I am in the United States to ask President Barack Obama to immediately end the occupation of my country.

Eight years ago, women's rights were used as one of the excuses to start this war. But today, Afghanistan is still facing a women's rights catastrophe. Life for most Afghan women resembles a type of hell that is never reflected in the Western mainstream media.

In 2001, the U.S. helped return to power the worst misogynist criminals, such as the Northern Alliance warlords and druglords. These men ought to be considered a photocopy of the Taliban. The only difference is that the Northern Alliance warlords wear suits and ties and cover their faces with the mask of democracy while they occupy government positions. But they are responsible for much of the disaster today in Afghanistan, thanks to the U.S. support they enjoy.

The U.S. and its allies are getting ready to offer power to the medieval Taliban by creating an imaginary category called the "moderate Taliban" and inviting them to join the government. A man who was near the top of the list of most-wanted terrorists eight years ago, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, has been invited to join the government.

Over the past eight years the U.S. has helped turn my country into the drug capital of the world through its support of drug lords. Today, 93 percent of all opium in the world is produced in Afghanistan. Many members of Parliament and high
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ranking officials openly benefit from the drug trade. President Karzai's own brother is a well known drug trafficker.
Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans are living in destitution. The latest United Nations Human Development Index ranked Afghanistan 181 out of 182 countries. Eighteen million Afghans live on less than $2 a day. Mothers in many parts of Afghanistan are ready to sell their children because they cannot feed them.

Afghanistan has received $36 billion of aid in the past eight years, and the U.S. alone spends $165 million a day on its war. Yet my country remains in the grip of terrorists and criminals. My people have no interest in the current drama of the presidential election since it will change nothing in Afghanistan. Both Karzai and Dr. Abdullah are hated by Afghans for being U.S. puppets.
The worst casualty of this war is truth. Those who stand up and raise their voice against injustice, insecurity and occupation have their lives threatened and are forced to leave Afghanistan, or simply get killed.

We are sandwiched between three powerful enemies: the occupation forces of the U.S. and NATO, the Taliban and the corrupt government of Hamid Karzai.

Now President Obama is considering increasing troops to Afghanistan and simply extending former President Bush's wrong policies. In fact, the worst massacres since 9/11 were during Obama's tenure. My native province of Farah was bombed by the U.S. this past May. A hundred and fifty people were killed, most of them women and children. On Sept. 9, the U.S. bombed Kunduz Province, killing 200 civilians.

My people are fed up. That is why we want an immediate end to the U.S. occupation.

MALALAI JOYA spoke at San Jose State University Saturday and signed copies of her new political memoir, A Woman Among Warlords, co-written with Derrick O"Keefe. The survivor of four assassination attempts, she was elected to Afghanistan"s parliament in 2005 and kicked out in 2007 by the warlords. She wrote this article for the Mercury News.

Soldier mom refuses deployment to care for baby

2009-11-17T10:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/11/16/us/AP-US-Soldier-Mom-Deployment.html
Soldier mom refuses deployment to care for baby

By RUSS BYNUM, AP Military Writer
Mon Nov 16, 9:32 pm ET

SAVANNAH, Ga. – An Army cook and single mom may face criminal charges after she skipped her deployment flight to Afghanistan because, she said, no one was available to care for her infant son while she was overseas.

Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, 21, claims she had no choice but to refuse deployment orders because the only family she had to care for her 10-month-old son — her mother — was overwhelmed by the task, already caring for three other relatives with health problems.

Her civilian attorney, Rai Sue Sussman, said Monday that one of Hutchinson's superiors told her she would have to deploy anyway and place the child in foster care.

"For her it was like, 'I couldn't abandon my child,'" Sussman said. "She was really afraid of what would happen, that if she showed up they would send her to Afghanistan anyway and put her son with child protective services."

Hutchinson, who is from Oakland, Calif., remained confined Monday to the boundaries of Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, 10 days after military police arrested her for skipping her unit's flight. No charges have been filed, but a spokesman for the Army post said commanders were investigating.

Kevin Larson, a spokesman for Hunter Army Airfield, said he didn't know what Hutchinson was told by her commanders, but he said the Army would not deploy a single parent who had nobody to care for his or her child.

"I don't know what transpired and the investigation will get to the bottom of it," Larson said. "If she would have come to the deployment terminal with her child, there's no question she would not have been deployed."

Hutchinson's son, Kamani, was placed into custody overnight with a daycare provider on the Army post after she was arrested and jailed briefly, Larson said. Hutchinson's mother picked up the child a week ago and took him back to her home in California.

Hutchinson, who's assigned to the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, joined the Army in 2007 and had no previous deployments, Sussman said. She said Hutchinson is no longer in a relationship with the father.

The Army requires all single-parent soldiers to submit a care plan for dependent children before they can deploy to a combat zone.

Hutchinson had such a plan — her mother, Angelique Hughes, had agreed to care for the boy. Hughes said Monday she kept the boy for about two weeks in October before deciding she couldn't keep him for a full year.

Hughes said she's already having to care for her ailing mother and sister, as well as a daughter with special needs. She also runs a daycare center at her home, keeping about 14 children during the day.

"This is an infant, and they require 24-hour care," Hughes said. "It was very, very stressful, just too much for me to deal with."
Hughes said she returned Kamani to his mother in Georgia a few days before her scheduled deployment Nov. 5.

She said they told her daughter's commanders they needed more time to find another family member or close friend to help Hughes care for the boy, but Hutchinson was ordered to deploy on schedule.

Larson, the Army post spokesman, said officials planned to keep Hutchinson in Georgia as investigators gathered facts about the case.

"Spc. Hutchinson's deployment is halted," Larson said. "There will be no deployment while this situation is ongoing."
___
Russ Bynum has covered the military based in Georgia since 2001.

What Should a Feminist Man Look Like?

2009-11-15T11:23:00.001-08:00

What Should a Feminist Man Look Like?
By Courtney E. Martin, The American Prospect
November 15, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143928/

"Machismo!" shouted a young college student in the third row.

"Tough!" "Violent!" "Homophobic!" shouted three other young men, sprinkled throughout the packed lecture hall. Ethan Wong, a student at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, who was dressed in a slim business suit, nodded as he wrote each word on the chalk board.

The roomful of young men was brainstorming all the qualities associated with masculinity. Wong was one of the organizers of the National Conference for Campus-Based Men's Gender Equality and Anti-Violence Groups, a long and clunky name for an unprecedented event that took place last weekend at his school. It was the first time that young guys from around the country -- guys like Wong, who recognize that the kind of masculinity they are describing is toxic for men, too -- gathered to share strategies for getting college men involved in gender-based activism and discuss the work ahead.

In attendance were about 200 individuals, representing 40 colleges and two dozen organizations, many of them sporting titles like Center Against Sexual and Domestic Abuse, Men Can Stop Rape, and Men Stopping Violence. Notice a trend here? This contemporary movement of gender-conscious young men is largely identifying themselves in terms of what they are against. They're not rapists. They're not misogynists.

They're also not particularly effective in imagining what they do want to be. Case in point: back to Wong at the chalkboard. The negative associations with masculinity poured off the tongues of these feminist-friendly college kids. They've taken Women's Studies 101. When their buddy says, "That's so gay," they spit back, "That's a sexual identity, not a dis." They let a few tears fall during the Take Back the Night March. They devour Michael Kimmel's Guyland and proselytize about Byron Hurt's documentary, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. This generation is saying no to toxic masculinity.

But what are these young men saying yes too? We've all failed to envision an alternative.

This became painfully clear over the course of the weekend as speakers and students grappled to find what one presenter referred to as a "feminist masculinity." Is there such a thing? Does it look like President Barack Obama -- or does his insistence on talking about sports and drinking beers reveal that he's just one of the guys? Does it look like KRS-1, the veteran rapper who recently said that hip-hop needs more women -- or is his statement too little, too late? Stephen Colbert, in some ways, is the closest thing we've got. He consistently lampoons misogynist punditry and policy, yet his "feminist masculinity" is only visible vis-à-vis its blowhard foil.

We've certainly got plenty of pictures of men who are stubbornly clinging to the old paradigm of maleness, and sadly, they're not acting -- think Tucker Max and Bill O'Reilly. The men's rights movement is making reclaiming traditional manhood a compelling project for young, lost men. These activists know how to paint a vivid, if delusional, picture of the kind of man who will overcome victimization at the hands of all of us hateful feminists: He's righteous, he's fighting back, and most important, there's nothing feminine about him. He is the opposite of female in every way.

While it's thrilling that there is also a movement of young men all who want to tear down the patriarchy right alongside women, it's dangerous that they don't have a clear picture of what they want to build in its place. At the conference, one young man spoke up against the notion of a new "feminist masculinity," explaining that he feared it would be one more box that young men felt they had to fit into. There's a lot of validity to his argument, but I fear that the old adage is true: We can't be what we can't see. Models help us try on various identities and find one that is truly authentic. The more publicly feminist-aligned men we have, the more opportunities the next generation has to find a positive, masculine gender identity that actually fits.

Many young men, it seems, are stuck in stage one of gender consciousness. They want to prove that they are one of the "good ones" and separate themselves from all the gendered behaviors and beliefs that they now see as oppressive. That, or they wallow in guilt. (This is not unlike the stage many white kids get stuck in upon fully realizing their role in perpetuating racism.) At worst, this point of view is paralyzing. At best, it leads to burnout. It's not until privileged folks, men in this case, can own the ways in which they have a self-interest in resisting systems of oppression that their work becomes sustainable.

This is about so much more than the 200 men who attended this conference. They are on the front lines, but there are legions of progressive men of all ages, all over the country who are struggling to redefine masculinity and live that redefinition every day. They fumble without models but continue on because they know that there is so much to be gained. Guys who reject traditional masculinity, for starters, have a greater chance of finding fulfilling work that isn't just a symbol of their provider status. They might explore the joy of relationships -- being nurturing with their kids, real with their friends, open with their partners. They have the opportunity to shed their socialized skin and all the anxiety that comes with trying to be a "tough guy" and make a happy life defined, not by their paycheck or their size, but by their humanity.

Fighting against the world that we don't want is a critical first step, but fighting for the world that we do want is where liberation truly begins.

Reprinted with permission from Courtney E. Martin, "What's the Alternative to Tucker Max?" The American Prospect Online: November 9, 2009. www.prospect.org. The American Prospect, 1710 Rhode Island Avenue, NW, 12th Floor, Washington, DC 20036. All right reserved."

Courtney E. Martin is the author of Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women. You can read more about her work at www.courtneyemartin.com.

Designer vagina craze worries doctors

2009-11-15T09:29:00.000-08:00

What the article doesn't mention is that some women have to do this because they've been butchered by female circumcision and/or they feel they have to do this please patriarchal standards of feminine 'beauty'. Doing this to have a 'pretty pussy' is destructive and evi!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/12/2741446.htm

Designer vagina craze worries doctors
By Emily Bourke for PM
Nov 12, 2009 11:49pm AEDT

There is mounting concern about a vaginal plastic surgery procedure more and more Australian women are having.

Each year more than 1,200 Australian women undergo surgery on their genitalia in a procedure known as labioplasty.

Doctors and surgeons fear that some women may be having the operation unnecessarily and there are concerns about operations being done by unqualified medical professionals.

In Britain, where the procedure is equally popular, medical experts are warning of a shocking lack of information about the risks and long-term impact.

It is controversial surgery but it is booming nonetheless.

For some, labioplasty is an exercise in Hollywood-style vanity, while for others it is a transformative procedure that trims, sculpts and restores a woman's genitalia.

But there have been no studies to prove its long-term safety and doctors are worried about its ballooning popularity.

Dr Ted Weaver from the Royal Australian College of Gynaecologists says there are concerns.

"We put out about a statement from our college a couple of years ago, highlighting concerns about this designer vagina craze because we felt that often it did prey on fears of women and women's insecurity about their particular genital appearance," he said.

"The surgery's potentially damaging. It could potentially lead to further problems for a woman as a result of surgery and may not fix her insecurity."

Dr Kourosh Tavakoli is a member of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons and a fellow of the Australasian College of Surgeons.

He has been performing the labioplasty for seven years and is seeing a 100 per cent increase in that number year on year.

"Let's not kid ourselves. The last survey in my practice was 80 per cent for cosmetic and I would say for psychological reasons - that's what I see as a function," he said.

"There are two reasons [women give for having the surgery] - I can't get comfortable during sex and the number two reason is essentially pure physical, in terms of running or jogging and not being able to wear a leotard or cossie."

Labioplasty can cost between $4,000 and $6,000 and is often covered by Medicare.

Safety fears
Dr Tavakoli says it is a lucrative field, but he fears some practitioners are not up to the task.

"I have seen horrendous results from them. I mean there's three groups doing it - plastic surgeons, gynaecologists and GP surgeons in their offices, without proper lighting or sedation or anything," he said.

"I think the last group is a concern because they can take excess tissue and cause problems."

Research published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology is questioning the value of the labioplasty, with concerns that many women seek the surgery without fully understanding the risks. British medical experts are also questioning the ethics of the surgery.

Dr Weaver says some women are being exploited.

"We think anybody performing these procedures certainly should be well trained, not only in the surgical technique but also have the training in the ability to try to perhaps dissuade a woman from having it done," he said.

"[They should] also be able to counsel the woman that there is a variation in normal appearance and that she doesn't have to confirm to a picture that she might have noticed in a girlie magazine or something equally ridiculous."

He believes there are women in Australia who are having the procedure unnecessarily.

Dr Tavakoli says patients must be psychologically screened and they must have realistic expectations. But either way, he says the procedure is here to stay.

"I believe it's a good operation. I stand by this operation. I've had enough experience to see the mental transformation that this operation can bring and it will become a mainstay operation in cosmetic surgery," he said.

"But again it needs to be very heavily scrutinised and patient selection is imperative. In the right patient, it will have benefits and patient selection is paramount."

Trading Women’s Rights for Political Power

2009-11-13T11:43:00.000-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/opinion/12michelman.html?pagewanted=print

November 12, 2009
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS
Trading Women’s Rights for Political Power
By KATE MICHELMAN and FRANCES KISSLING
Washington

A GRIM reality sits behind the joyful press statements from Washington Democrats. To secure passage of health care legislation in the House, the party chose a course that risks the well-being of millions of women for generations to come.

House Democrats voted to expand the current ban on public financing for abortion and to effectively prohibit women who participate in the proposed health system from obtaining private insurance that covers the full range of reproductive health options. Political calculation aside, the House Democrats reinforced the principle that a minority view on the morality of abortion can determine reproductive health policy for American women.

Many House members who support abortion rights decided reluctantly to accept this ban, which is embodied in the Stupak-Pitts amendment. They say the tradeoff was necessary to advance the right to guaranteed health care. They say they will fight another day for a woman’s right to choose.

Perhaps. But they can’t ignore the underlying shift that has taken place in recent years. The Democratic majority has abandoned its platform and subordinated women’s health to short-term political success. In doing so, these so-called friends of women’s rights have arguably done more to undermine reproductive rights than some of abortion’s staunchest foes. That Senate Democrats are poised to allow similar anti-abortion language in their bill simply underscores the degree of the damage that has been done.

Many women — ourselves included — warned the Democratic Party in 2004 that it was a mistake to build a Congressional majority by recruiting and electing candidates opposed to the party’s commitment to legal abortion and to public financing for the procedure. Instead, the lust for power yielded to misguided, self-serving poll analysis by operatives with no experience in the fight for these principles. They mistakenly believed that giving leadership roles to a small minority of anti-abortion Democrats would solve the party’s image problems with “values voters” and answer critics who claimed Democrats were hostile to religion.

Democrats were told to stop talking about abortion as a moral and legal right and to focus instead on comforting language about reducing the number of abortions. In this regard, President Obama was right on message when he declared in his health care speech to Congress in September that “under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions” — as if this happened to be a good and moral thing. (The tone of his statement made the point even more sharply than his words.)

The party has distanced itself from the abortion-rights movement in other ways. It has taken to calling Democrats who oppose a woman’s right to choose “pro-life” (and not “anti-choice”). The group Democrats for Life of America, whose Congressional members ultimately led the battle to exclude private insurance companies that cover abortions from health insurance exchanges, was invited to hold a press conference in Democratic Party offices. The party has promoted “pro-life progressives” like Sojourners, Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, organizations whose leaders have stated that abortions should be made “more difficult to get.”

This, then, is where we stand as party leaders celebrate passage of the House bill. When it comes to abortion, they seem to think all positions are of equal value so long as the party maintains a majority. But the party will eventually reap what it has sown. If Democrats do not commit themselves to defeating the amendment, then they will face an uncompromising effort by Democratic women to defeat them, regardless of the cost to the party’s precious majority.

In the meantime, the victims of their folly will be the millions of women who once could count on the Democratic Party to protect them from those who would sacrifice their rights for political gains.

Control of Uppity Women Behind Witchcraft Accusations?

2009-11-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/149529-Control-of-Uppity-Women-Behind-Witchcraft-Accusations-

Deborah M. DeCloedt Pinçon
sott.net
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:52 UTC
Noble Martyrs were likely just Uppity Women

Abstract

This literature review investigates the relationship between a woman's communicative behaviors and the likelihood of her being accused as a witch in various regions of Europe from 1350 to 1650 a.d. This paper uncovers how women were expected to communicate during this period and what sort of deviation from this normative communicative behavior was present in those ultimately accused of witchcraft. The environmental and socioeconomic changes in Europe, as well as religious factors and the history of witchcraft that influenced the communicative behaviors of women in this period are reviewed.

Throughout Europe, between 1350 and 1650 a.d., as many as 500,000 people, primarily women, were executed as witches as part of the inquisitional process, and many more were accused of witchcraft and tortured to elicit confessions (Ben-Yehuda, 1980). Undoubtedly there were reasons why women in general and specific women in particular, were more readily accused of being witches during this period in Western history. While it is certain there were multiple factors involved, this paper will investigate the relationship between communicative behaviors and the likelihood of being accused as a witch in the European witch hunts.

During the late 1200's, the Catholic Church set up the inquisition as a means to fight heresy. This primary directive expanded in the 1300's after the church met with success in wiping out the Cathars and other groups deemed heretical (Elliott, 2004). According to Elliott, the inquisitors assumed two additional duties; investigating candidates for sainthood, and the discovery and persecution of witches. Witches were originally viewed by the church as mere heretics, but this definition expanded with the Malleus Maleficarium, published in 1487 a.d. in Germany (Ben-Yehuda, 1980; Broedel, 2003).

Communicative behaviors of women from 1350 to 1650 a.d. are not easy to research. Many women were illiterate, and there are few existing literary examples that can provide a window on daily life and communication of and between women during this time. The information available is largely prescriptive in nature, from records of contemporary popular culture, like theatre, and from the Malleus Maleficarium, which was written as a guide to inform others what to look for in identifying a witch (Broedel, 2003). We can also extrapolate communicative behavioral norms from contemporary literature and religious writings.

Study of the European witch hunt has been limited; perhaps because most of the victims were women, basic misogyny was blamed and no further efforts were made until recently to understand the phenomena in more detail (Bever, 2002). Today, witchcraft accusations are still being levied against women in various countries in Africa, and in India (Oster, 2004; Whitney, 1995). Studying our past and seeking an understanding of communicative patterns is relevant to framing contemporary communication issues. Scholars in fields such as Women's Studies and Feminist Philosophy are interested in how power intersects with gender and communication, and the European witch hunts provide a unique historical backdrop in which to study how specific female communication in a patriarchy resulted in persecution.

This literature review investigates the relationship between a woman's communicative behaviors and the likelihood of being accused as a witch in various parts of Europe from 1350 to 1650 a.d. What did a woman communicate that made her more likely to be accused? To learn this, first, the environmental and socioeconomic changes in Europe, as well as religious factors and the history of witchcraft that influenced the communicative behaviors of women in this period are reviewed. Second, how women and witches were perceived by society, and the role church leaders and patriarchy played in this perception are uncovered. Third, these factors are synthesized to speculate about normative female communicative behaviors and determine what sort of deviations from normative communication existed in those who were accused of witchcraft.

Definitions and Background

Communicative behavior in this paper refers to verbal and nonverbal symbolic expression.

The main European witch hunt occurred between 1350 and 1650 a.d., with brief intermissions and periods of intensity.

There are times in this paper where "persecution" and "accusation of witchcraft" are used interchangeably.

The late medieval period shall be taken to span 1300 to 1500 a.d., and the next 200 years through 1700 a.d. are considered the early modern period.

In order to understand this phenomenon, the environmental, socioeconomic, and religious factors in Europe must be reviewed. There was significant change underway during this period of time, and much of the change was not under the control of the common person.

Environmental Weather Changes

The importance of weather may be easy to overlook, but climate change has played a critical role in our history. It is speculated that a sharp drop in temperatures, referred to as the "little ice age" in Europe, contributed to the record number of deaths during the plague because people's immune systems were compromised by lack of nutrition (Oster, 2004). The temperatures in Europe varied significantly between 1520 and 1770 a.d., and particularly cold periods led to serious and widespread crop failure (Oster). Using empirical data to support a correlation between extreme cold and the number and frequency of witchcraft trials between 1520 and 1770 a.d., Oster explains that witches were blamed for magically controlling the weather (Oster). She suggests that a particularly cold period in 1560 a.d. coincided with increased numbers of trials after nearly 70 years of relative inactivity (Oster, p. 218). Oster's view of the witch as scapegoat remains a recurring theme throughout this literature review.

Socioeconomic Factors

Weather was more intrinsically tied to agriculture and the economic system in this pre-industrial era, where crops were the primary means of economic exchange (Oster, 2004). Empirical evidence supports the positive correlation between temperatures and economic growth, where economic growth was negative when temperatures were colder than normal and crops failed (Oster). A new urbanization and reduction in rural population, due in part to the plague, likely contributed to the reduction of crop production in this period of great change (Oster; Ben-Yehuda, 1980).

In the 14th century, families began to move to large cities, where they participated in a cash economy for the first time, and discovered they couldn't readily support ill, unemployed, or unproductive members (Ben-Yehuda, 1980). Due to the black plague and to urbanization trends, 60% of the agricultural land was deserted in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany (Ben-Yehuda). According to Ben-Yehuda, this urbanization meant that at least in the short-term, men couldn't marry (guilds discouraged marriages), and women in the city had to find wage-jobs. Women were either sent to convents, found jobs weaving, or became prostitutes (Ben-Yehuda). Sprenger, one of the authors of the Malleus Maleficarium, came from Cologne, where this urbanization was occurring and where new laws about prostitution became a necessity in the 1400's (Ben-Yehuda), so this changing socioeconomic environment likely influenced Sprenger.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, a new urban prosperity emerged as the monetary economic system was perfected (Ben-Yehuda, 1980). According to Ben-Yehuda, the plague had decimated a large percent of the workforce, and those who survived were in great demand. This new middle class didn't want to jeopardize their new prosperity by having children, so they began to prevent pregnancy (Ben-Yehuda). Infanticide increased sharply, and many children were abandoned at churches in the 15th and 16th century; between 40-60% of all women age 15-44 were unmarried in the 16th century, and women were marrying later in life (Ben-Yehuda). Women were marginalized as commerce expanded in cities, and women became a greater percentage of those living in poverty (King, 1997). These demographics contributed significantly to why those accused of witchcraft were often widows, spinsters, and midwives, as their lifestyles and practices represented a direct threat to the Church, traditional family structure, and the patriarchal status quo (Bever, 2002; Whitney, 1995). Patriarchy was solidified or reinforced with the development of complex economies because they impacted women and men differently (Wood & Eagly, 2002).

Religious Factors

Religion was a much greater part of people's lives in the middle ages, and the church promulgated a dualistic framework that led to either/or extremes of viewing the world (Ben-Yehuda, 1980; Elliott, 2004; Whitney, 1995). The Catholic Church was the most powerful institution in Europe at this time, maintaining hegemony over religious, economic and political matters. The Catholic Church, by way of the 4th Lateran Council in 1215 a.d., introduced the inquisitional procedure and made confession mandatory (Elliott). Later, the Protestant reformation began, with sporadic religious wars breaking out in various regions in Europe. In some countries, witchcraft trials started by Catholics migrated into secular courts as the influence of the Catholic Church waned. The Church and religious factors such as ideals of moral conduct contributed greatly to the accusation of specific women as witches.

Witchcraft

History of Witchcraft

Witchcraft trials stemmed from an odd blend of ancient folklore and a series of challenges to the Catholic Church's hegemony in Europe. Moral boundaries had been static and clearly defined in the early medieval society (Ben-Yehuda, 1980). The rise of urbanization, impending collapse of the Church's hierarchical feudal system, heresies, changing socioeconomic and environmental conditions, religious wars, the plague, and prostitution all converged in a short span of time, and the Church desperately needed a tool to reestablish moral codes of conduct and a means to maintain their sociopolitical control (Ben-Yehuda; Oster). Witches represented the perfect scapegoat (Ben-Yehuda; Oster, 2004; Whitney, 1995). Even though the idea of witchcraft predates the Bible, and is mentioned in the Bible itself, the Catholic Church had historically discounted the concept that witches existed or possessed any power (Oster). Shortly after the formation of the inquisition, witchcraft suddenly was portrayed by the Church as a serious evil, and witches were said to be sexual companions of the devil (Ben-Yehuda; Broedel, 2003). This strategy, if judged by statistics alone, proved to be very successful based on the number of people directly and indirectly impacted.

Statistics on Those Accused of Witchcraft

Much empirical study has gone into establishing how many people were executed as witches between 1350 and 1650 a.d. Some researchers include only continental Europe, and others include places like Scotland, where witch trials were also prevalent. The total numbers reported still vary widely, from 200,000 and 500,000 people (Ben-Yehuda, 1980), to 1,000,000 (Oster, 2004), who states that in Germany evidence exists that 400 were killed in one day!

There was consensus that the vast majority of witchcraft trial victims were women. There is also speculation on the part of various authors as to why more people were persecuted as witches in Germany, Switzerland, and France. Some claim the greater economic growth in Poland, Flanders, and England made it less necessary to use witches as scapegoats (Ben-Yehuda 1980; Oster, 2004). Others base their argument around the Church and contemporary religious factors that will be discussed next.

Perception of Women, Witches, and Role of the Church

Malleus Maleficarium

Most people in medieval times accepted as normal the subordination of women, and many men viewed women as a possession or as a producing unit in the household; some also viewed women as dangerous, seductive, or as virginal and superior (Ben-Yehuda, 1980). Most modern scholars conclude that people, even without coaching, accused women of witchcraft because of gender bias in their culture, and in texts like the Malleus Maleficarium (Broedel, 2003; Whitney, 1995).

The Malleus Maleficarium, according to Broedel, reflected male clerical misogyny and resistance to the changing social roles of women, starting with its very authorship. Broedel provides a detailed narrative of how and why this book was written.

In 1485 Innsbruck, a woman named Helena Scheuberin was accused of witchcraft. She was the wife of a wealthy local merchant and according to Broedel, "not afraid to speak her mind" (Broedel, 2003, p. 1). Helena spat on the ground when she saw the new inquisitor in town, and didn't go to his sermons. She also discouraged others from attending the inquisitor's sermons and accused the inquisitor himself of being evil and in league with the devil. She was accused of witchcraft and the subsequent questioning focused on her sexuality. Helena hired an attorney who won the case for her on the grounds that no standard definitions existed that uniformly described what a witch was. The inquisitor in this case was a man named Henry Institoris [also known as Kramer], and he coauthored the Malleus Maleficarium along with Sprenger in response to this trial's outcome.

Institoris and Sprenger descriptively portrayed witches as female and focused on the power of a witch's sexuality (Broedel). According to Broedel, by 1505 this book was found throughout German libraries and influenced later laws, books, and even secular courts and procedures on witchcraft.

Sexuality and women's reproductive role

From this narrative about Helena, many patterns begin to emerge. First, sexuality was deemed most important even though Ms. Scheuberin was more obstreperous than sexual based on the information provided. According to Institoris, women were weak minded, and thus predisposed to consorting and sleeping with the devil; they incited men's passion, so a beautiful woman was the most suspicious (Broedel, 2003). Some witches poisoned people, killed infants, drank the blood of children, and worked with herbs (Broedel). From this description, midwives were likely targets of persecution due to their professional association with infants and herbal remedies (Broedel; Oster, 2004).

Haliczer provides insight into how sexuality became so critical in identifying witches. In Spain, daughters were often secluded for the sake of protecting their chastity, which was a key determinant in a family's reputation or face (Haliczer, 2002). Any woman not under the direct and constant control of a man [a husband, father or son] was automatically suspected of sexual excess (Haliczer). Widows were thus more likely to be accused of witchcraft since they were more autonomous and not under the control of a man (Haliczer).

Female spirituality

During this period, men didn't want women to read scripture because women were meant to be perpetually subordinate to their husband (Haliczer). According to Haliczer, a home was a woman's prison, and interestingly, religion itself became a means of freedom for women in Spain. Women were able to express their spirituality through piousness, which not only got them out of the home, but evolved into a strong ascetic movement where women were called on by royalty to act as advisors or intercessors (Haliczer). Ana de Jesus was considered to be prophetic, and became an advisor to archdukes on matters of state under the Hapsburg dynasty (Haliczer).

This is a significant contrast to women in other countries who were prohibited from leaving the home to attend church, even to the point of risking the woman's salvation (Elliott, 2004).

By the start of the early modern period, female spirituality in most of Europe was criminalized (Elliott). As stark as this statement is, Elliott supports it through her narrative about Chancellor John Gerson from the University of Paris. Gerson's mission was to discredit female mystics, and to appropriate mysticism through the discourse of spiritual discernment to the institution of the university itself. Gerson was highly successful, and soon spiritual expression manifested by a woman was criminalized as a form of witchcraft (Elliott). Later in his life, Gerson was asked to defend Joan d'Arc at her trial. Despite his best efforts and sincere desire to see her acquitted, he was unsuccessful in defending her largely because of his earlier success; there was no longer any acceptable means by which a woman could express her spirituality (Elliott).

The role of the Catholic inquisition, itself founded as part of the 4th Lateran Council of 1215, is at the root of the witchcraft trials because of its focus on the sacraments (Elliott, 2004). Confession became mandatory at a period in time when women were expected to demonstrate their obedience to God through obedience to their husbands (Elliott). According to Elliott, husbands would often insist their wives stay at home, rather than go to church where they could interact with others and possibly gossip. Yet, a woman who consistently missed confession could arouse suspicion within the community by this absence, and was more likely to be accused of witchcraft (Elliott).

Communicative Behaviors

Existing Records

Women who could read and write in Latin were not typically welcome or encouraged to publish in the late middle ages (King, 1997). Men traditionally wrote about topics that didn't concern the woman's world or her interests. Yet, the increasing use of the vernacular, along with the printing press, gradually resulted in more women writing literature, and there is currently an effort underway to translate these texts (King). A remarkable example of literature authored by a woman is The Book of Margery Kempe, written in the 15th century by the mother of fourteen children who traveled to Jerusalem on a spiritual pilgrimage (Kempe, n.d.).

Normative Female Communicative Behaviors

The period of 1350-1750 a.d. represents a time in which women began to assert their right to speak, the "age of the emergence of the female voice," (King, 1997, p. 21). In the early modern period, most female authors prefaced their literary work with statements of their own inadequacy, as was customary (King). Both the Catholic and Protestant churches constrained female expression and so women learned to be silent, obedient, and to exercise decorum (King). Rhetorically, women weren't even given full human status until the 17th century (King).

In Spain, women were judged pious if they engaged often in prayer, were abstinent, austere, and if they practiced physical penance and even scourging and fasting (Haliczer, 2002). Gossip was ubiquitous in the early modern world (Horodowich, 2005). Gossip was viewed as feminine (although it was performed equally by men as well), and was viewed as a mechanism for female solidarity, and as something to be silenced (Horodowich). Legal writers in Venice claimed testimony from two women was equal to testimony from one man, since women's voices were unreliable (Horodowich).

The late middle ages and early modern period were very rough, and outside of elite circles, interpersonal conflict was rampant and expressed through gossip, insults, scolding, threats, curses, legal action, physical assault, and threats of ritual magic (Bever, 2002). Jealousy and economic inequalities were often the cause of conflict, and women didn't have recourse to courts like men did (Bever). Physical assault was common; one woman would take by force that which was owed her, particularly when she didn't have a man to help arbitrate conflicts in court (Bever). Urban women were likely to have expressed their sexuality more openly in the early modern period (Ben-Yehuda, 1980), and this communicative behavior certainly would have met with censure from men within the church and the community. An ideal woman in a patriarchal society would keep her voice "soft, gentle, and low" (Larner, 1984, p. 62), and would behave in a chaste manner (Haliczer, 2002).

Relationship between Communicative Behavior and Accusation of Witchcraft

A woman who deviated too far from the male-defined norm would be identified as a witch (Larner, 1984). Assertiveness (sexual or psychological) and aggression stand out as communicative behavior that deviated the most for women accused of witchcraft; ironically, both those being accused and the accusers themselves were often female (Bever, 2002).

The stereotype of a witch was an independent woman who didn't nurture or love her husband or children, and had the power of words "to defend self or curse others" (Larner, 1984, p. 84). In Wurttemberg, Germany, allegations of poison were the most common accusation leading to trials (Bever, p. 960), and according to Bever, women really did threaten to poison others.
Physical assault was viewed as witchcraft if later harm could be connected to the conflict, and in addition to verbal curses, gestures or exclamation of rage could be viewed as accidental magic if emotional stress or fear led to psychosomatic symptoms (Bever, 2002). Bever also makes an association between menopause, age, and irritability experienced during this part of a woman's life that could trigger an accusation of witchcraft because the level of assertiveness or irritability deviated from the social norm. Trying to prevent pregnancy, telling other women how to do so, and practicing infanticide were clearly risky behaviors (Bever).

The Malleus Maleficarium states a witch identified herself through an ambiguously worded threat (Broedel, 2003, p. 142). Broedel states this text claimed a relationship between animosity, verbal threats and witchcraft, where specific forms of communication were key in identifying a witch: muttering in anger, threatening words, and touching an animal or person. A fourth means of threatening someone would be to appear in another's dream (Broedel, p. 143). Broedel claims rumor was central to the witch hunt.

Women could miss the occasional sermon, but absence from confession was likely to result in an accusation of witchcraft (Elliott, 2004). Women needed to be pious (Haliczer, 2002) and avoid gossip (Horodowich, 2005). It was common to call a woman, in public, a witch as a form of insult. If the woman ignored such a taunt, and was later accused of witchcraft, her failure to debate this taunt earlier would be used as evidence against her in court (Whitney, 1995). It seems clear that a woman would be wise not to stand out in any way, to avoid conflict, and not flaunt her wealth or education in order to stay clear of possible accusations.

Possible Explanations and Alternative Motives

A means of acculturation

The witchcraft trials may have been part of a campaign to Christianize the populace and expand the church's authority along with propping up patriarchy in general (Bever, 2002). Bever views witchcraft trials as a method of acculturation, where over generations repression reshapes society. Women were very aggressive at the outset of these witchcraft trials, but generations of persecution served to diminish woman's power and strengthen men's (Bever). Women learned to be ashamed of their sexuality and to avoid interpersonal conflict (Bever). Some scholars propose that the medical profession used these trials to marginalize or gradually eliminate the practice of herbology and midwifery (Oster, 2004), but Bever is not convinced of this argument.

Power over women

Whitney attributes the witch hunts to a greater emergence of the modern state and individualism, with conflict between male dominated "official" and female "domestic" spheres being played out with the witchcraft trials (Whitney, 1995). She suggests the catalyst may have been economic change, and focuses on how it was mainly women that accused other women of witchcraft, which merely reinforced patriarchal norms of femininity (Whitney). She reminds us that patriarchy intentionally divides women by rewarding those who maintain the status quo with more power, as they systematically disenfranchise other women by enforcing patriarchal norms (Whitney, p. 88). In New England witch trials, women charged of witchcraft were described as malcontents who refused to accept their place in the social hierarchy, and were guilty of anger, envy, pride, maliciousness, lying and seductiveness" (Whitney, p. 85).

Violence against women

Whitney sees witchcraft trials as a form of violence against women because of the ways in which torture was used to elicit confessions (Whitney, 1995). She thinks being female was a marker for deviance, and that with the reformation came an intensified need to control nature [nature being traditionally identified with the female] (Whitney, p. 87). Many of the men and children accused of witchcraft were put on trial only because they were directly related to women already thus accused, a form of guilt by association (Whitney, p. 88). While Whitney doesn't give us a full picture of how witchcraft trials were violent, Barstow provides a great amount of detail and specific examples of the sexually violent means by which women were treated (Barstow, 1994).

According to Barstow, public humiliation was common. She tells of an instance in 1649 a.d. in Newcastle, where thirty "good" upstanding women were somewhat randomly herded into a town square, stripped, and prodded by sharp objects by male "stickers." With their dresses around their heads, if they failed to identify where they were being poked, they were accused of being witches; the fact that they were numb with fear and humiliation was discounted (Barstow, p. 130). According to Barstow, in Nuremberg unwed mothers accused of killing their child were forced to confess through a specific process. The unwed mother would have her breasts publicly checked for the presence of milk; if found, the midwife would fetch the dead infant, no matter how long it had been dead or in what condition the body was in, and would bring the dead infant to the mother as a means of shocking the woman into confession. Between 1576 and 1617 a.d., nineteen women were tried in this way, and after their confession, they were all drowned or hanged as witches (Barstow, p. 133). Women and girls not yet in puberty were raped while in jail (Barstow). Barstow is the first scholar to point out the regular practice of sending the executed witch's assets to the Bishop's treasury, implicating a more mercenary cause for accusing women who had no male relative to inherit her estate (Barstow, p. 19).

In a great analogy, Whitney provides a contemporary example of how witchcraft enhances a male's standing in the Gonja tribe in Africa, while female witches of the same tribe are feared and hated; this is Whitney's way of supporting her allegation that women are only allowed to express aggression in their care for a child, because in any other circumstance female aggression challenges male dominance and patriarchy (Whitney, 1995, p. 90).

Limits of Existing Studies

If greater quantities of historical narratives written by women were available, these could be coded and studied quantitatively to learn more about specific communicative behavior of women during this period of time. Some of the sources cited in this literature review quote one another with some regularity since there is limited access to primary source material, which is problematic for obvious reasons.

Rationale

In a patriarchal system, power over women is often expressed by controlling a woman's sexuality, access to resources, and autonomy (Wood & Eagly, 2002), and it was necessary for the Church and the males who ran it to periodically reinforce this system. Witchcraft trials were definitely an effective means to achieve this goal.

According to this review of literature, the witchcraft trials were a means by which women and particularly young girls were socialized to be sexually obedient to their husbands (Haliczer, 2002; Wood & Eagly). From this perspective, it would be logical that women who were not under the constant control of a father or husband would be more apt to be accused of witchcraft. It is clear that expressing freedom of thought or expression, sexuality, aggression, assertiveness, or autonomy would result in a woman being more vulnerable to witchcraft accusations. A contemporary analogy would be women who in some cultures today are stoned for committing adultery, and sometimes are put to death, jailed, or shunned for being the victim of rape.

Women in Europe had no real choice. In order to avoid persecution as witches, they had to sacrifice their desire for autonomy. It would be very interesting to conduct an analysis of contemporary witch trials and other historical witch hunts that occurred in different times and locations in order to discover patterns of similarity and difference. It is predicted that a study of contemporary witchcraft trials in places such as India and various African nations would show that women who express "excessive" assertiveness, sexuality, aggressiveness, or autonomy, through verbal and nonverbal communicative behaviors, would be more likely to be accused of witchcraft than those who abide by their society's prescriptive norms for female behavior.

If these specific sorts of communicative behaviors are in fact more likely to result in a witchcraft accusation in these cultures today, this cross-cultural comparison would support the idea that patriarchy and control of women's autonomy and/or sexuality, was behind the witchcraft accusations in Europe.

References

Barstow, A. L. (1994). Witchcraze: A new history of the European witch hunts. San Francisco: Pandora.

Ben-Yehuda, N. (1980). The European witch craze of the 14th to 17th centuries: A sociologist's perspective. The American Journal of Sociology, 86, 1-31.

Bever, E. (2002). Witchcraft, female aggression, and power in the early modern community. Journal of Social History, 35, 955-988.

Broedel, H. P. (2003). The malleus maleficarium and the construction of witchcraft: Theology and popular belief. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

Elliot, D. (2004). Proving woman: Female spirituality and inquisitional culture in the later middle ages. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Haliczer, S. (2002). Between exaltation and infamy: Female mystics in the golden age of Spain. New York: Oxford University Press.

Horodowich, E. (2005). The gossiping tongue: Oral networks, public life and political culture in early modern Venice. Journal of the Society for Renaissance Studies, 19, 22-45.

Kempe, M. (n.d.). The Book of Margery Kempe. Luminarium: Anthology of English literature website (16 October 2007). A. Jokinen (Ed). Downloaded January 2007 from http://www.luminarium.org/.

King, M. L. (1997). Women's voices, the early modern, and the civilization of the west. Shakespeare Studies, 25, 21-31.

Larner, C. (1984). Witchcraft and religion: The politics of popular belief. New York: Blackwell. Oster, E. (2004). Witchcraft, weather and economic growth in renaissance Europe. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18, 215-228.

Whitney, E. (1995). International trends: The witch "she"/the historian "he." Journal of Women's History, 7, 77-101.

Wood, W., & Eagly, A. H. (2002). A cross-cultural analysis of the behavior of women and men: Implications for the origins of sex differences. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 699-727.

Deborah M. DeCloedt Pinçon, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
16 December 2007

Lack of Health Care Worsens Women's Life Quality: WHO

2009-11-10T11:44:00.001-08:00

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/10-3

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 by Reuters
Lack of Health Care Worsens Women's Life Quality: WHO
by Laura MacInnis

GENEVA - Despite living six to eight years longer than men, women lack essential health care throughout their lives, particularly as teenagers and elderly people, the World Health Organization said on Monday.

In a report, the WHO said that women around the world are "denied a chance to develop their full human potential" because many critical medical needs are ignored.

"Women generally live longer than men, but their lives are not necessarily healthy or happy," Margaret Chan, the head of the United Nations health agency, said at the WHO on Monday.

Though women tend to seek out medical services more often than men -- particularly before, during and after pregnancy -- they often fail to get adequate treatment to cope with violence, depression and problems related to old age, such as dementia.

"The obstacles that stand in the way of better health for women are not primarily technical or medical in nature. They are social and political," Chan said.

Childbirth assistance can be particularly hard to access for unmarried and marginalized women, teenagers and sex workers, WHO said in its first attempt to log differences between men's and women's health over their lifetimes.

"In many countries, sexual and reproductive health services tend to focus exclusively on married women and ignore the needs of unmarried women and adolescents," the report said.

"Paradoxically, health systems are often unresponsive to the needs of women despite the fact that women themselves are major contributors to health, through their roles as primary care givers in the family and also health care providers," it said.

WHO also said some 99 percent of the estimated 500,000 women who die every year giving birth are in developing countries where medical supplies and skilled workers are in short supply.

But while emphasizing the many links between poverty and ill health, the report also stressed that many shortcomings affect women across income brackets and geographical regions.

Depression and anxiety affect far more women than men, and women are more likely to catch sexually transmitted diseases.

Women are also overwhelmingly more likely to be victims of sexual violence than men, and elderly women's health problems such as eyesight and hearing loss, arthritis, depression and dementia are often untreated.

Unequal access to education, employment and fair wages can also present obstacles to women's health, especially in markets where medical insurance is linked to work or where user fees are required to access basic services, the WHO report found.

Women Are Overtaking Men in the U.S.

2009-11-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.sphere.com/2009/11/06/women-are-overtaking-men-in-the-u-s/

David Knowles
Women Are Overtaking Men in the U.S.
POSTED: 11/6/09

(Nov. 5) -- The United States may have officially entered the age of woman.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, this fall, for the first time in U.S. history, women have surpassed men and now make up more than 50 percent of the nation's workforce. In 1967, by comparison, they accounted for just one-third of all workers.

Signs of the changing landscape in gender relations are just about everywhere you look:

• Double the number of single women are now purchasing homes in America than there are single men.
• Four out of every 10 women are are now their family's primary breadwinner, a sharp increase from past decades.
• The New Hampshire State Legislature is now made up of a majority of women, a first for a legislative body in the U.S., and the number of women in government continues to edge up nationwide.
• Women now account for 30 percent of math Ph.D.s, up from just 5 percent in the 1960s.
• On average, women read nine books every year. Men only read four, and women account for 80 percent of the U.S. fiction market.
• The World Bank recently estimated that the global earning power of women will reach an estimated $18 trillion by the year 2014, up $5 trillion today.

"Women really have become the dominant gender," said Guy Garcia, author of "The Decline of Men." "What concerns me is that guys are rapidly falling behind. Women are becoming better educated than men, earning more than men, and, generally speaking, not needing men at all. Meanwhile, as a group, men are losing their way."

That seems especially true during tough economic times. While the economy has shed millions of jobs during the recession of 2008 and 2009, men have been three times more likely to lose theirs than women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Dr. Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, said that in the case of the recession, there really haven't been any winners in the labor force.

"As the economy improves, many of the blue-collar jobs that men hold are likely to return," Shierholz said. "But the longer-term picture is that we're seeing women continue to make relative gains in the workplace. That's not surprising when women are getting good educations and earning solid degrees."

In fact, a gender education gap, in which women are far outpacing men in terms of educational achievement, has been quietly growing in America over the past few decades. In 2009, for instance, women will earn more degrees in higher education than men in every possible category, from associate level to Ph.D.s, according to the U.S. Department of Education. When it comes to master's-level education, for instance, U.S. women earn 159 degrees for every 100 awarded to men.

"The big reason for the disparity is that women are going back to finish college or get new degrees and training," said Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress and one of the co-authors of The Shriver Report, which considers the implications of shifting gender roles.

"Girls today grow up in a post-feminist environment, being told they can do whatever they want in life," Boushey said. "But then they get out into the workplace and they find that they still make just 77 cents on the dollar compared with men."

That harsh realization, Boushey argued, helps account for why women have flocked to colleges at a time when the country finds itself shifting from a manufacturing-based economy to knowledge-based one.

"It's a huge shift," Boushey said, "when you think that a generation and a half ago our attitudes and expectations for what roles women and men could play in our society were entirely different than they are today."

As for the discrepancy in wages between men and women, that, too, may be soon be a thing of the past. A study of U.S. Census data conducted by Queens College sociologist Andrew Beveridge found that young women in New York and several other big American cities actually earn more than their male counterparts.

Garcia bemoaned what he sees as a "fragmentation of male identity," in which husbands are asked to take on unaccustomed familial roles such as child care and housework, while wives bring in the bigger paychecks.

"There was a division of labor, right or wrong, that men understood," Garcia said. "Now, the trade-offs are murky, and women often get stuck doing both jobs--taking care of kids and playing the primary breadwinner."

Boushey, on the other hand, thinks that now that both men and women are starting to share in the dual burdens of work and home responsibilities, we're more likely to find solutions that benefit both genders.

"It's about finding a mutually beneficial balance," Boushey said.

Who Were the Witches? - Patriarchal Terror and the Creation of Capitalism

2009-11-08T11:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-Were-the-Witches--Pa-by-Alex-Knight-091106-190.html

November 6, 2009
Who Were the Witches? - Patriarchal Terror and the Creation of Capitalism
By Alex Knight

This Halloween season, there is no book I could recommend more highly than Silvia Federici's brilliant Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (Autonomedia 2004), which tells the dark saga of the Witch Hunt that consumed Europe for more than 200 years. In uncovering this forgotten history, Federici exposes the origins of capitalism in the heightened oppression of workers (represented by Shakespeare's character Caliban), and most strikingly, in the brutal subjugation of women. She also brings to light the enormous and colorful European peasant movements that fought against the injustices of their time, connecting their defeat to the imposition of a new patriarchal order that divided male from female workers. Today, as more and more people question the usefulness of a capitalist system that has thrown the world into crisis, Caliban and the Witch stands out as essential reading for unmasking the shocking violence and inequality that capitalism has relied upon from its very creation.

Who Were the Witches?

Parents putting a pointed hat on their young son or daughter before Trick-or-Treating might never pause to wonder this question, seeing witches as just another cartoonish Halloween icon like Frankenstein's monster or Dracula. But deep within our ritual lies a hidden history that can tell us important truths about our world, as the legacy of past events continues to affect us 500 years later. In this book, Silvia Federici takes us back in time to show how the mysterious figure of the witch is key to understanding the creation of capitalism, the profit-motivated economic system that now reigns over the entire planet.

During the 15th – 17th centuries the fear of witches was ever-present in Europe and Colonial America, so much so that if a woman was accused of witchcraft she could face the cruellest of torture until confession was given, or even be executed based on suspicion alone. There was often no evidence whatsoever. The author recounts, “for more than two centuries, in several European countries, hundreds of thousands of women were tried, tortured, burned alive or hanged, accused of having sold body and soul to the devil and, by magical means, murdered scores of children, sucked their blood, made potions with their flesh, caused the death of their neighbors, destroyed cattle and crops, raised storms, and performed many other abominations” (169). In other words, just about anything bad that might or might not have happened was blamed on witches during that time. So where did this tidal wave of hysteria come from that took the lives so many poor women, most of whom had almost certainly never flown on broomsticks or stirred eye-of-newt into large black cauldrons?

Caliban underscores that the persecution of witches was not just some error of ignorant peasants, but in fact the deliberate policy of Church and State, the very ruling class of society. To put this in perspective, today witchcraft would be a far-fetched cause for alarm, but the fear of hidden terrorists who could strike at any moment because they “hate our freedom” is widespread. Not surprising, since politicians and the media have been drilling this frightening message into people's heads for years, even though terrorism is a much less likely cause of death than, say, lack of health care.1 And just as the panic over terrorism has enabled today's powers-that-be to attempt to remake the Middle East, this book makes the case that the powers-that-were of Medieval Europe exploited or invented the fear of witches to remake European society towards a social paradigm that met their interests.

Interestingly, a major component of both of these crusades was the use of so-called “shock and awe” tactics to astound the population with “spectacular displays of force,” which helped to soften up resistance to drastic or unpopular reforms.2 In the case of the Witch Hunt, shock therapy was applied through the witch burnings – spectacles of such stupefying violence that they paralyzed whole villages and regions into accepting fundamental restructuring of medieval society.3 Federici describes a typical witch burning as, “an important public event, which all the members of the community had to attend, including the children of the witches, especially their daughters who, in some cases, would be whipped in front of the stake on which they could see their mother burning alive” (186).

The book argues that these gruesome executions not only punished “witches” but graphically demonstrated the repercussions for any kind of disobedience to the clergy or nobility. In particular, the witch burnings were meant to terrify women into accepting “a new patriarchal order where women's bodies, their labor, their sexual and reproductive powers were placed under the control of the state and transformed into economic resources” (170).

Federici puts forward that up until the 16th century, though living in a sexist society, European women retained significant economic independence from men that they typically do not under capitalism, where gender roles are more distinguished. “If we also take into account that in medieval society collective relations prevailed over familial ones, and most of the tasks that female serfs performed (washing, spinning, harvesting, and tending to animals on the commons) were done in cooperation with other women, we then realize" [this] was a source of power and protection for women. It was the basis for an intense female sociality and solidarity that enabled women to stand up to men.”

The Witch Hunt initiated a period where women were forced to become what she calls “servants of the male work force” (115) – excluded from receiving a wage, they were confined to the unpaid labor of raising children, caring for the elderly and sick, nurturing their husbands or partners, and maintaining the home. In Federici's words, this was the “housewifization of women,” the reduction to a second-class status where women became totally dependent on the income of men (27).

The author goes on to show how female sexuality, which was seen as a source of women's potential power over men, became an object of suspicion and came under sharp attack by the authorities. This assault manifested in new laws that took away women's control over the reproductive process, such as the banning of birth control measures, the replacement of midwives with male doctors, and the outlawing of abortion and infanticide.4 Federici calls it an attempt to turn the female body into “a machine for the reproduction of labor,” such that women's only purpose in life was supposedly to produce children (144).

But we also learn that this was just one component of a broader move by Church and State to ban all forms of sexuality that were considered “non-productive.” For example, “homosexuality, sex between young and old, sex between people of different classes, anal coitus, coitus from behind, nudity, and dances. Also proscribed was the public, collective sexuality that had prevailed in the Middle Ages, as in the Spring festivals of pagan origins that, in the 16th-century, were still celebrated all over Europe” (194). To this end, the Witch Hunt targeted not only female sexuality but homosexuality and gender non-conformity as well, helping to craft the patriarchal sexual boundaries that define our society to this day.

Capitalism - Born in Flames

What separates Caliban from other works exploring the “witch” phenomenon is that this book puts the persecution of witches into the context of the development of capitalism. For Silvia Federici, it's no accident that “the witch-hunt occurred simultaneously with the colonization and extermination of the populations of the New World, the English enclosures, [or] the beginning of the slave trade” (164). She instructs that all of these seemingly unrelated tragedies were initiated by the same European ruling elite at the very moment that capitalism was in formation, the late 15th through 17th centuries. Contrary to “laissez-faire” orthodoxy which holds that capitalism functions best without state intervention, Federici posits that it was precisely the state violence of these campaigns that laid the foundation for capitalist economics.

Thankfully for the reader, who may not be very familiar with the history of this era, Federici outlines these events in clear and accessible language. She focuses on the Land Enclosures in particular because their significance has been largely lost in time.

Many of us will not remember that during Europe's Middle Ages, before the Enclosures, even the lowliest of serfs had their own plot of land with which they could use for just about any purpose. Federici adds, “With the use of land also came the use of the ‘commons' – meadows, forests, lakes, wild pastures – that provided crucial resources for the peasant economy (wood for fuel, timber for building, fishponds, grazing grounds for animals) and fostered community cohesion and cooperation” (24). This access to land acted as a buffer, providing security for peasants who otherwise were mostly subject to the whim of their “Lord.” Not only could they grow their own food, or hunt in the relatively plentiful forests which were still standing in that era, but connection to the commons also gave peasants territory with which to organize resistance movements and alternative economies outside the control of their masters.

The Enclosures were a process by which this land was taken away – closed off by the State and typically handed over to entrepreneurs to pursue a profit in sheep or cow herding, or large-scale agriculture. Instead of being used for subsistence as it had been, the land's bounty was sold away to fledgling national and international markets. A new class of profit-motivated landowners emerged, known as “gentry,” but the underside of this development was the trauma experienced by the evicted peasants. In the author's words, “As soon as they lost access to land, all workers were plunged into a dependence unknown in medieval times, as their landless condition gave employers the power to cut their pay and lengthen the working-day” (72).

For Federici, then, the chief creation of the Enclosures was a property-less, landless working class, a “proletariat” who were left with little option but to work for a wage in order to survive; wage labor being one of the defining features of capitalism.

Cut off from their traditional soil, many communities scattered across the countryside to find new homesteads. But the State countered with the so-called “Bloody Laws”, which made it legal to capture wandering “vagabonds” and force them to work for a wage, or put them to death. Federici reveals the result: “What followed was the absolute impoverishment of the European working class" Evidence is the change that occurred in the workers' diets. Meat disappeared from their tables, except for a few scraps of lard, and so did beer and wine, salt and olive oil” (77). Although European workers typically labored for longer hours under their new capitalist employers, living standards were reduced sharply throughout the 16th century, and it wasn't until the middle of the 19th century that earnings returned to the level they had been before the Enclosures.5

According to Federici, the witch hunts played a key role in facilitating this process of impoverishment by driving a sexist wedge into the working class that “undermined class solidarity,” making it more difficult for communities to resist displacement from their land (48). While women were faced with the threat of horrific torture and death if they did not conform to new submissive gender roles, men were in effect bribed with the promise of obedient wives and new access to women's bodies. The author cites that “Another aspect of the divisive sexual politics to diffuse workers' protest was the institutionalization of prostitution, implemented through the opening of municipal brothels soon proliferating throughout Europe” (49). And in addition to prostitution, a legalization of sexual violence provided further sanction for the exploitation of women's bodies. She explains, “In France, the municipal authorities practically decriminalized rape, provided the victims were women of the lower class” (47). This initiated what Federici calls a “virtual rape movement,” making it unsafe for women to even leave their homes.

The witch trials were the final assault, which all but obliterated the integrity of peasant communities by fostering mutual suspicion and fear. Amidst deteriorating conditions, neighbors were encouraged to turn against one another, so that any insult or annoyance became grounds for an accusation of witchcraft. As the terror spread, a new era was forged in the flames of the witch burnings. Surveying the damage, Silvia Federici concludes that “the persecution of the witches, in Europe as in the New World, was as important as colonization and the expropriation of the European peasantry from its land were for the development of capitalism” (12).

A Forgotten Revolution

Federici maintains that it didn't have to turn out this way. “Capitalism was not the only possible response to the crisis of feudal power. Throughout Europe, vast communalistic social movements and rebellions against feudalism had offered the promise of a new egalitarian society built on social equality and cooperation” (61).

Caliban's most inspiring chapters make visible an enormous continent-wide series of poor people's movements that nearly toppled Church and State at the end of the Middle Ages. These peasant movements of the 13th – 16th centuries were often labelled “heretical” for challenging the religious power of the Vatican, but as the book details they aimed for a much broader transformation of feudal society. The so-called “heretics” often “denounced social hierarchies, private property and the accumulation of wealth, and disseminated among the people a new, revolutionary conception of society that, for the first time in the Middle Ages, redefined every aspect of daily life (work, property, sexual reproduction, and the position of women), posing the question of emancipation in truly universal terms” (33).

Silvia Federici shows us how the heretical movements took many forms, from the vegetarian and anti-war Cathars of southern France to the communistic and anti-nobility Taborites of Bohemia, but were united in the call for the elimination of social inequality. Many put forth the argument that it was anti-Christian for the clergy and nobility to live in opulence while so many suffered from lack of adequate food, housing or medical attention.

Another common thread weaving the European peasant movements together was the leadership of women. Federici describes that, “[Heretical women] had the same rights as men, and could enjoy a social life and mobility that nowhere else was available to them in the Middle Ages" Not surprisingly, women are present in the history of heresy as in no other aspect of medieval life.” (38). Some heretical sects, like the Cathars, discouraged marriage and emphasized birth control – advocating a sexual liberation which directly challenged the Church's moral authority.

The gender politics of peasant movements proved to be a strength, and they attracted a wide following that undercut the power of a feudal system which was already in crisis. Federici explains how the movements became increasingly revolutionary as they grew in size. “In the course of this process, the political horizon and the organizational dimensions of the peasant and artisan struggle broadened. Entire regions revolted, forming assemblies and recruiting armies. At times, the peasants organized in bands, attacking the castles of the lords, and destroying the archives where the written marks of their servitude were kept” (45).

What started as a religious movement became increasingly revolutionary. For example, in the 1420s and 30s, the Taborites fought to liberate all of Bohemia, beating back several Crusades of 100,000+ men organized by the Vatican (54-55). The uprisings became contagious all across Europe, so much so that in the crucial period of 1350-1500, unprecedented concessions were made including the doubling of wages, reduction in prices and rents, and a shorter working day. In the words of Silvia Federici, “the feudal economy was doomed” (62).

The author documents that the initial reaction by elites was to institute the “Holy Inquisition,” a brutal campaign of state repression that included torturing and even burning heretics to death. But as time went on, ruling class strategy shifted from targeting heretics in general to specifically targeting female community leaders. The Inquisition morphed into the Witch Hunt.

Soon, simple meetings of peasant women were stigmatized as possible “Sabbats,” where women were supposedly seduced by the devil to become witches, but as Federici clarifies, it was the rebellious politics and non-conforming gender relations of such gatherings which were demonized (177). Strong, defiant women were murdered by the tens of thousands, and along with them the Witch Hunt also destroyed “a whole world of female practices, collective relations, and systems of knowledge that had been the foundation of women's power in pre-capitalist Europe, and the condition for their resistance in the struggle against feudalism” (103).

For elite European nobles and clergy, the Witch Hunt succeeded in stifling a working class revolution that had increasingly threatened their rule. Even more, Silvia Federici puts forward that the Witch Hunt facilitated the rise of a new, capitalist social paradigm – based on large-scale economic production for profit and the displacement of peasants from their lands into the burgeoning urban workforce. In time, this capitalist system would dominate all of Europe and be dispersed through conquistadors' “guns, germs and steel” to every corner of the globe, destroying countless ancient civilizations and cultures in the process.6 Federici's analysis is that, “Capitalism was the counter-revolution that destroyed the possibilities that had emerged from the anti-feudal struggle – possibilities which, if realized, might have spared us the immense destruction of lives and the environment that has marked the advance of capitalist relations worldwide” (22). How might things be different if the forgotten revolution had won?

Conclusion - Rediscovering the Magic of Truth-Telling

“Day by day, it's worse for my people, especially for the women. And that's why, because of all of these main reasons, we say this is the mockery of democracy and mockery of War on Terror.” – Malalai Joya, Afghan democracy activist, 2009

Caliban and the Witch is a book that challenges many important myths about the world we live in. First and foremost among these is the widely-held belief that capitalism, though perhaps flawed in its current form, started out as a “progressive” development that liberated workers and improved the conditions of women, people of color and other oppressed groups. Silvia Federici has done impressive work to take us back to the very foundations of the capitalist system in late-medieval Europe to uncover a secret history of land dispossession and impoverishment, gender and sexual terror, and brutal colonization of non-Europeans. This terrible legacy leads her to the profound conclusion that the system is “necessarily committed to racism and sexism” (17).

Most strongly, she writes, “It is impossible to associate capitalism with any form of liberation or attribute the longevity of the system to its capacity to satisfy human needs. If capitalism has been able to reproduce itself it is only because of the web of inequalities that it has built into the body of the world proletariat, and because of its capacity to globalize exploitation. This process is still unfolding under our eyes, as it has for the last 500 years” (17).

It's been said that we can measure a society by how it treats its women. This book provides compelling documentation to suggest that capitalism is and has always been a male dominated system, which reduces opportunities and security for women as well as marginalizing those who don't fit within narrow gender boundaries. In particular, Silvia Federici uses the story of the Witch Hunt to illuminate the inner workings of capitalism to show the restraining, silencing, and demonizing of female sexual power built into it.7 Responding to our question that started this essay, she writes, “The witch was not only the midwife, the woman who avoided maternity, or the beggar who eked out a living by stealing some wood or butter from her neighbors. She was also the loose, promiscuous woman – the prostitute or adulteress, and generally, the woman who exercised her sexuality outside the bonds of marriage and procreation" The witch was also the rebel woman who talked back, argued, swore, and did not cry under torture” (184).

In other words, the witches were those women who in one way or another resisted the establishment of an unjust social order – the mechanical exploitation of capitalism. The witches represented a whole world that Europe's new masters were anxious to destroy: a world with strong female leadership, a world rooted in local communities and knowledge, a world alive with magical possibilities, a world in revolt.

We need not despair for the world that has been lost. Indeed, it is still with us today in the struggles of people everywhere organizing for justice. Today from Afghanistan we can hear the clarion voice of Malalai Joya, a courageous woman who was expelled from the Afghan parliament in 2007 for speaking out against the U.S.-installed warlords who now rule her country. She appeared recently on Democracy Now! saying, “Now my people are sandwiched between two powerful enemies: from the sky, occupation forces bombing and killing innocent civilians" [and] on the ground, Taliban and these warlords together continue to deliver fascism against our people.”8

Joya risks her life to make these comments, but her words carry the sparkling truth that is so necessary to end the insanity of war and occupation in the Middle East. Those who are summoned to action by her call do so in the immortal spirit of the “heretics” and “witches” who resisted capitalism and feudalism before it, carrying forward a movement that is wide as the Earth and old as time.

Notes

1 – Harvard University researchers released a study on Sept. 17, 2009 showing that approximately 45,000 Americans die unnecessarily from lack of medical coverage every year, unfortunately many times more than the number killed in the September 11 terrorist attacks. See this article for more on the Harvard study: http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58G6W520090917

2 – “Shock and Awe”, Wikipedia. Online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe. Accessed Nov. 2, 2009.

3 – This “shock therapy” strategy is examined with detailed case studies by Naomi Klein in the excellent The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Metropolitan Books 2007. For example she offers that the US-led devastation of Iraq's social infrastructure, including destruction of hospitals, schools, and food and water systems traumatized the Iraqi people such that they could not mobilize to prevent the highly unpopular privatization of the country's oil wealth.

4 – for more on the Witch Hunt's effect on the male domination of reproduction and medicine, see Barbara Ehrenreich's Witches, Midwives and Nurses: A History of Women Healers, The Feminist Press at CUNY 1972, pamphlet.

5 – “The high point of wages was immediately preceding the ‘long' sixteenth century [roughly 1450], and the low point was at its end [roughly 1650]. The drop during the sixteenth century was immense.” Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System. Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press, 1974. pg. 80.

6 – see Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, W.W. Norton Press 2005. Jared Diamond's study of the rise of Europe focuses more on ecology than patriarchy, but is nonetheless useful for exposing the carnage of the colonization process.

7 – for a brilliant collection of insights into the many ways female sexuality is still under attack, see Friedman, Jaclyn & Jessica Valenti. Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape. Seal Press 2008. My review of this book can also be found here: http://endofcapitalism.com/2009/05/17/review-of-yes-means-yes-visions-of-female-sexual-power-and-a-world-without-rape/

8 – Democracy Now! October 28, 2009 broadcast. “A Woman Among Warlords: Afghan Democracy Activist Malalai Joya Defies Threats to Challenge US Occupation, Local Warlords.” Online at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/28/a_woman_among_warlords_afghan_democracy

Author's Website: www.endofcapitalism.com

"Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease

2009-11-04T15:36:00.001-08:00

"Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease
By Terry J. Allen, In These Times
November 4, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143682/

It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.

You are among the "43 percent of American women [who] experience some degree of impaired sexual function," according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties -- but only if the woman feels "personal distress" about it.

So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.

By promoting the belief that "normal" women have explosive sex all the time, BigPharma helped launch the disease. However, the FDA has yet to approve a treatment for women who fall short. Until then, they could try the Orgasmatron: a dial-a-delight spinal implant that rarely works -- and risks infection and paralysis. Or, for $60/month, pop LexaFem pills -- containing (how-could-it-not-work) "horny goat weed extract" in order to "feel like a real woman today." Its website promises, "You won’t ever feel unhappy again with LexaFem in your arsenal."

But the big swinging dicks of global FSD marketing (and off-label marketing) are Pfizer -- whose stop-gap strategy is selling women Viagra based on the fact that it works for men, and Procter & Gamble (P&G), which, using the same logic, has put its money on testosterone.

Viagra’s failure in trial after trial to work on women has not stopped doctors from writing 1.4 million off-label prescriptions. FSD is "a classic example of starting with some preconceived, and non-evidence based diagnostic categorization for women’s sexual dysfunctions, based on the male model," said John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute, in an interview with BMJ (British Medical Journal).

No drug follows the male model more literally than testosterone. Despite FDA refusal to approve P&G’s testosterone patch Intrinsa, U.S. doctors wrote 2 million off-label testosterone prescriptions in 2007. Like Pfizer’s little blue pill, the Intrinsa patch doesn’t really work for women. No wonder: Researchers don’t even know what constitutes a "normal" female testosterone level, and women with low levels of the hormone are as likely as those with high levels to be happy with their sex lives. And as filmmaker Liz Canner shows in her excellent new documentary Orgasm, Inc., (www.orgasminc.org), testosterone is usually teamed with estrogen, which increases risks for stroke, cancers and dementia.

The companies and clinics that narrow the range of sexual normality to porn industry standards suffer their own disease. Symptoms include: a compulsion to concoct illnesses and then develop drugs to treat them, and vice versa. Either way, the syndrome is typically accompanied by a rash of conflicts of interest.

A Pfizer survey in Malaysia found that Malay women are even more diseased than their American counterparts, with "69.6 percent experiencing some form of FSD," according to the Journal of Sexual Medicine, which also published an industry-supported supplement on FSD. Journal editor and urologist Irwin Goldstein denies a conflict of interest. "Science is science," he says. "It comes down to the bottom line. What the data shows, the data shows." Actually, no. Drug company-funded studies are more likely than independent studies to find the new drug superior to the old. Perhaps the bottom line Dr. Goldstein refers to is his income as a paid consultant for drug companies, including P&G and Pfizer.

Goldstein established an FSD clinic with Dr. Jennifer Berman, who now heads a Beverly Hills clinic and appears on Oprah. As one of the health professionals on a 1998 panel that received financial sponsorship from eight pharmaceutical companies, she helped define female sexual dysfunction. Some 22 drug companies, including Pfizer, had financial ties to 18 of the 19 authors of that panel’s report, the BMJ revealed.

"Maybe the best approach is not ineffective, over-hyped drugs with nasty side effects, but an end to disease mongering and a strong dose of comprehensive sex education," says filmmaker Canner. Her film hits female erogenous zones that pharmaceutical fixes can’t find: your brain and your funny bone.

Prenatal exposure to BPA in plastics makes young girls aggressive

2009-11-04T15:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.NaturalNews.com/z027382_BPA_plastics_pregnancy.html

November 3 2009
Prenatal exposure to BPA in plastics makes young girls aggressive
by S. L. Baker, features writer

(NaturalNews) How's this for a B movie sci fi plot: evil scientists use chemicals to transform toddler girls into terrifying little monsters. Unfortunately, researchers have uncovered a real life scenario that has some serious similarities to this creepy fantasy. While there are no evil doing scientists or true monsters involved, there is a scary chance that a common chemical -- specifically bisphenol A (BPA) found in many plastics -- could be causing unusually aggressive and hyperactive behaviors in some two-year-old little girls.

That's the conclusion of research by scientists at Simon Fraser University, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill and Cincinnati Children's Hospital. As NaturalNews previously reported, BPA has been linked to neurological problems in animal studies (http://www.naturalnews.com/025801_B...). But the new research, just published in the October edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, is the first to find a possible link between prenatal BPA exposure and behavior problems in human youngsters.

For the study, BPA concentrations were measured from urine samples taken from 249 pregnant women in Cincinnati, Ohio, at 16 weeks and 26 weeks of pregnancy, and also when they gave birth. When the research subjects' children were two years old, the research team assessed the toddlers' behavior using the Behavioral Assessment System for Children-2 (BASC-2). What they found is disturbing: if a woman was exposed to BPA during early pregnancy and she had a girl, the baby's nervous system might be adversely affected by the chemical.

Specifically, daughters of women who had higher concentrations of BPA in their urine samples during pregnancy were more likely to have aggressive and hyperactive behaviors than girls born to women with lower BPA levels, especially if higher exposure occurred in earlier pregnancy. The researchers don't understand why girls seem to be affected by BPA exposure more or differently than boys.

"In other words, girls whose mothers had higher BPA exposure were more likely to act like boys than girls whose mothers had lower BPA levels, especially if the exposure was seen earlier in pregnancy," the study's lead author Joe Braun, a doctoral student in epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, said in a statement to the media. "Boys' behavior did not seem to be affected, although there was some evidence of increased internalizing scores among BPA-exposed boys."

"We wanted to know if there was a risk in humans for neurodevelopment problems," he added. "Study results indicate that exposure to BPA early in the pregnancy seems to be the most critical issue. The most damaging exposure might happen before a woman even knows she's pregnant."

Concerns about BPA were first raised in recent years following worrisome animal studies. For example, previous research with mice found that the offspring of mothers with high BPA exposure during pregnancy were more aggressive than young mice not exposed to high prenatal levels of BPA.

"Many government agencies and consumers in the U.S., Canada and around the world have expressed concerns about BPA exposure, especially in children," said Dr. Bruce Lanphear, professor of children's environmental health in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University and the study's senior author, in the media statement. "Canada has banned BPA in baby bottles and other baby products, but that might not be sufficient to protect children. Although this is the first study of its kind, it suggests that we may also need to reduce exposures during pregnancy."

BPA is commonly used in the production of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins that are found in many homes, offices and even hospitals. It is used in a host of products including plastic bottles, canned food linings, water supply pipes and medical tubing. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 93 percent of people in the United States have detectible levels of BPA in their urine.

Why are Costa Ricans so happy and the world’s women so glum?

2009-11-04T15:15:00.001-08:00

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/heres_to_happy_life_years/

Carolyn Moynihan | Saturday, 31 October 2009
Here’s to happy life years
Why are Costa Ricans so happy and the world’s women so glum?

Whoever has been doing badly during the recession, it is not the happiness industry. The global glee club keeps pumping out studies from every point on the spectrum of human feeling, from the discontents of the liberated American woman to the sunny satisfaction of the average Costa Rican.

Yes, Costa Rica is top of the pops in the world of wellbeing as measured by both the Happy Planet Index (HPI) and the Happiness Adjusted Life Years (HALY) index developed by the Erasmus University at Rotterdam. (The great Renaissance humanist would no doubt approve of this effort.)

Citizens of the small but nicely located Central American state report the highest general satisfaction with life in the world with a score of 8.5 out of 10, beating even the famously contented Scandinavians (Denmark 8.3) and well ahead of their American neighbours (7.4).

When longevity is correlated with the satisfaction index, Costa Ricans take the HALY first prize with an average of 66.7 happy life years compared with the US average of 58 and the mere 12.5 years of happiness that the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe (in the last place) can expect.
What is it about Costa Rica that makes life there so good? It can’t be wealth since is still a developing country with between 16 per cent and 24 per cent of the people living in poverty. True, it is developing rather well, with a booming tourist industry based on its natural endowments. Indeed, the economic incentive to maintain its natural environment is one reason that life there is pleasant and the main reason that Costa Rica tops the Happy Planet Index. It has an ecological footprint less than one-quarter the size of the US (in 114th place) and comes very close to the HPI standard of consuming only its fair share of the Earth’s resources.

Having a small eco footprint is not much comfort to the poor, of course, but not all Costa Ricans below the poverty line are miserable. Mexican researcher Mariano Rojas found that only 24 per cent of them rated their life satisfaction as low, compared with 18 per cent of people in the non-poor category. Professor Rojas points out that a person can be satisfied with his life even if his income is low, as long as he is moderately satisfied in other areas such as family, self esteem, health and having a job. Mexico, by the way, is in the top 10 of nations measured by happiness, despite its struggle with poverty and other serious social problems.

So there is a lot more to happiness than meets the eye, or that can be measured by GDP. Economists have been onto this for a while and now politicians -- goaded by the threat of climate change, the financial crash and rumblings of discontent within their own populations, among other things -- are catching on. French President Nicolas Sarkozy seized the initiative and commissioned a report measuring economic progress against social indicators affecting human wellbeing, which has been discussed at an OECD forum held in Busan, South Korea, during the past few days. (Korea: HALY rating 46.9.)

While the rich nations mull over their ratings post-Busan, contradictory reports are circulating about the happiness of their people. Most of them loyally report being happy enough -- 86 per cent of New Zealanders, for example, ticked the “satisfied” or “very satisfied” boxes in the country’s first general social survey, even though 54 per cent of couples with children reported major problems with housing.
Elsewhere women are said to be less than thrilled with their liberated lives. Having a child is guaranteed to increase their misery, according to some experts, although at least one researcher finds that it increases parental happiness -- under certain conditions.

University of Pennsylvania economist Justin Wolfers, a co-author of a research paper called "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness", said in a recent Time Magazine dossier that this phenomenon -- paradoxical because of all their gains in freedom, education and economic power -- was universal among American women. "We looked across all sectors — young vs. old, kids or no kids, married or not married, education, no education, working or not working — and it stayed the same,” he said. Women were less happy than three or four decades ago -- and less happy than men! And this is happening in other developed countries as well.

No-one is sure exactly how to interpret the data but everyone has his or her own opinion. The standard explanation is the “second shift” that women do at home after their day job at the office. Former Gallup researcher Marcus Buckingham, who has a new book out called Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently, disputes this on the ground that the trend is towards more parity between men and women in household tasks; he puts women’s discontent down to the stress of making choices from the array of roles available to them today. Women are being “driven to distraction” by it, says Buckingham. (That a male would dare offer an opinion on a “women’s issue”, let alone write a book about it, is an indication in itself that some kind of crisis is upon us.)

Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at Wharton University and the other author of the "Paradox" paper mentioned above, maintains that, “Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children,” although she acknowledges that very few people would say as much or even feel it.

In fact, when asked about the most important things in their lives, most people place their children near or even at the top of their list. If at the same time they report less happiness than before they had a child/children, this probably has more to do with other variables in their lives. A new study by Luis Angeles from the University of Glasgow, based on the British household survey, found that marital status had a decisive influence on whether the addition of a child brought its parents more or less happiness. Dr Angeles says that for married individuals of all ages and married women in particular, children increase life satisfaction and life satisfaction goes up with the number of children in the household.

Factors such as age, education and income count also, and one can well understand that today’s mortgaged-to-the-hilt and job-insecure couples are scared of the effects of a baby on their finances, if nothing else. Still, Angeles findings suggest that the creep of non-marrying culture could be affecting mood change among women, as well as the small family trend.

Costa Ricans, by the way, have more children on average (2.14) than Americans and the other most developed countries and a younger population (median age 27.5). That should help keep them cheerful.

What moral can one draw from these admittedly very partial facts? Probably, as the man who wrote the book about women indicated, happiness boils down to making choices. It is all very well to have a lot of things to choose from but, in the end, you have to choose some things and not others.

Now, when governments are opening the door to quality of life values, is the time for those who know what they want in the way of family life to make themselves heard. Otherwise they might find that the eco-footprint minimalists are walking all over them.

16-Year Old Got Life Without Parole for Killing Her Abusive Pimp -- Should Teens Be Condemned to Die in Jail?

2009-11-04T15:03:00.000-08:00

If her pimp had killed her, he would have probably only gotten a few years in prison if not that.

16-Year Old Got Life Without Parole for Killing Her Abusive Pimp -- Should Teens Be Condemned to Die in Jail?
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
November 4, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143635/

This article is the first in a two-part series about juveniles and harsh sentencing.

Sara Kruzan was 11 years old, a middle school student from Riverside, Calif., when she met a man -- he called himself GG -- who was almost three times her age. GG took her under his wing; he would buy her gifts, take her and her friends rollerskating. "He was like a father figure," she recalls.

Despite suffering severe bouts of depression as a child, until then, Kruzan was a good student, an "overachiever" in her words. But her mother was abusive and addicted to drugs; as for her father, she had only met him a couple of times. So, more and more, GG filled in.

"GG was there -- sometimes," she said. "He would talk to me and take me out and give me all these lavish gifts and do all these things for me …" Before long, he started talking to her about sex, giving her his expert advice on what men were really like and telling her that she didn't "need to give it up for free."

Unbeknownst to her, GG was grooming Kruzan to be a prostitute. When she was 13, he raped her. "He uses his manhood to hurt," Kruzan recalls, "Like, break you in. I guess."

Kruzan worked for GG as a prostitute for three years. The hours were 6 p.m. until 5:30 or 6 in the morning. She and "the other girls" would come back and hand over their earnings to him. "He was, like, married to all of us I guess," she says. " … Everything was his."

After years of prostitution and sexual abuse, when she was 16, Kruzan snapped: She killed GG, was arrested and convicted of first-degree murder. Despite attempts by her lawyer to have her sentenced as a juvenile, the judge described her crime as "well thought-out" and sentenced her to life without parole.

"My judge told me that I lacked moral scruples," she recalls, a term she did not know the meaning of.

But the meaning of her sentence was all too clear. Life without parole, she says, "means I'm gonna die here."

'These Children Were Literally Lost In Adult Prison'

A few years ago, Sara Kruzan's story grabbed the attention of California State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, who introduced legislation to abolish the sentence of life without the possibility of parole for youth offenders. The bill was no get-out-of-jail pass; under his legislation, a juvenile who committed a felony before the age of 18 would serve a minimum of 25 years before being eligible to go before a parole board (also not a get-out-of-jail pass).

Yee is also a child psychologist. When it comes to judging the actions of teenagers versus those of adults, he argues, "the neuroscience is clear; brain maturation continues well through adolescence, and thus impulse control, planning and critical-thinking skills are still not yet fully developed."

Condemning teenagers to die in jail, then, means curtailing the lives of potentially productive members of society. "Children have a greater capacity for rehabilitation than adults," Yee said. Anyway, didn't California's prison system rename itself the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation?

In politics, however, punitive almost always wins out -- particularly in California, where "three strikes" laws have led to a prison crisis unparalleled anywhere else in the country. Yee's bill met intense political resistance and eventually died.

This past February, he introduced a new, watered-down bill that, instead of eliminating life without parole for juveniles would provide a review of a youth offender's sentence after 10 years.

In 2005, Human Rights Watch published an unprecedented study, "The Rest of Their Lives: Life without Parole for Child Offenders in the United States," which found "at least 2,225 people incarcerated in the United States who have been sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes they committed as children." Today, the number is even higher: 2,574.

It's only recently that the plight of juveniles serving life in adult prisons came across the national radar. Alison Parker, deputy director of the U.S. Program of Human Rights Watch told AlterNet, "these children were literally lost in adult prison. Nobody paid attention to the fact that they were under 18 at the time of their offense."

But this could soon change. Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a pair of cases -- Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida -- that will decide whether life sentences for juveniles violate the Constitution's ban on cruel-and-unusual punishment.

These cases follow the Court's landmark ruling in Roper v. Simmons four years ago, which struck down the death penalty for juvenile defendants on Eighth Amendment grounds. Echoing the opinion of Yee, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority that juveniles have an "underdeveloped sense of responsibility" that leads to "impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions," as well as being "more susceptible to negative influences and peer pressure."

Civil rights attorney Bryan Stevenson, the lead attorney in Sulliivan, argues that sentencing children to life without parole makes no more sense than sentencing them to death. In court filings for Sullivan, he writes, "The essential feature of a death sentence or a life-without-parole sentence is that it imposes a terminal, unchangeable, once-and-for-all judgment upon the whole life of a human being and declares that human being forever unfit to be a part of civil society."

Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, a nonprofit that provides legal representation to indigent defendants and prisoners, including juveniles. According to EJI, out of the prisoners serving juvenile life without parole, more than half are first-time offenders. At least 74 involve defendants who were 14 years old or younger when they committed their crime.

"Almost all of these kids currently lack legal representation, and in most of these cases the propriety and constitutionality of their extreme sentences has never been reviewed."

'Beyond Help'

Among these 74 is Joe Sullivan, the defendant in Sullivan v. Florida. Sullivan, who is reportedly mentally disabled, was 13 years old in 1989 when he was accused of raping an elderly woman after a burglary carried out by an older group of teenagers. The older teenagers confessed to the burglary but pinned the rape on Sullivan, a charge he denied.

The older boys did time in juvenile prison and were then freed. Sullivan became the youngest prisoner to be sentenced to die in prison for a crime other than murder. "I am going to try to send him away for as long as I can," his trial judge said. "He is beyond help."

At 14, Sullivan was sent to an adult prison, where he was repeatedly sexually assaulted. Sullivan now is 33 years old. Stricken with multiple sclerosis, he is confined to a wheelchair.

Sullivan's case is emblematic of a number of problems when it comes to juveniles sentenced as adults, not the least of which is the phenomenon of youths either being coerced or getting caught up in criminal situations orchestrated by older teenagers or adults.

Among juvenile offenders, many have participated in violent crimes as a result of their relationship with a grown-up. Incredibly, this can mean getting a harsher sentence than the adult in question.

"There is this tendency to point the finger towards the younger co-defendant, sometimes because of the perception that the younger person will get a lesser sentence," says Alison Parker. "There's still this perception out there that kids will be treated differently, but the reality is that kids are treated like adults."

Another major factor is race. During Sullivan's trial, "the prosecutor and witnesses made repeated, unnecessary reference to the fact that Joe is African American and the victim (was) white," according to EJI. "One witness repeatedly said the perpetrator of the assault was a 'colored boy' or 'a dark colored boy.' "

It is not news that the American criminal justice system disproportionately targets people of color. But when it comes to juvenile offenders, Alison Parker calls the disparities "absolutely shocking." On a national level, "African American youth are serving the sentence at a rate of about 10 times that of white youth," Parker told AlterNet. "In some states, the rate is even higher."

In both cases before the Supreme Court, the defendants were sentenced to life for crimes that fell short of murder, a phenomenon that is especially prevalent In Florida, where the number of prisoners who will die in jail for non-homicide crimes hovers at 77.

Terrance Jamar Graham, the defendant in Graham v. Florida, was 17 years old and on probation for a crime he committed when he was 16, when he took part in an armed burglary. His co-defendants got minor sentences. He was slapped with life without parole.

"Mr. Graham, as I look back on your case, yours is really candidly a sad situation," the judge told him. "The only thing that I can rationalize is that you decided that this is how you were going to lead your life and there is nothing that we can do for you."

This is classic "three strikes" logic, which, along with the conspiracy and felony murder statutes have led teens to be sentenced to life for crimes in which they played only a minor role.

Take Christine Lockhart, the first female juvenile to be sentenced to life without parole in Iowa. She was 17 years old and sitting in a car when her boyfriend killed someone during an armed robbery. Today, she has been in prison for more than half her life.

Lockhart, along with Sara Kruzan are a relative minority, two out of some 175 women serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. But their stories reveal how young people can get caught up in dangerous, harmful, and ultimately deadly, situations often simply by being with the wrong people at the wrong time.

"Sara's story is compelling," says Parker. "But it is really one that is shared across the country. There are many, many people with similar circumstances who are serving life sentences without any possibility of parole."

Kruzan, in fact, is one of the lucky ones. She now has attorneys who are working on appealing her sentence, pro bono. Most other prisoners serving life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles have no post-conviction representation at all.

Today, Kruzan is 32 years old and described as a "model inmate," despite any real lack of incentive. ("Who wants to excel in prison?" she says.) Asked what she would say if she had a chance to appear before a a parole board, she says that she believes she can now be of some value to society, perhaps even a "positive example."

Also, she says, "I've learned what moral scruples are."

World’s oldest profession: Embrace it or banish it?

2009-11-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

Prostitution is a crime against women: Power Rape. Every 'John' should be persecuted for their participation in the crime.

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/worlds_oldest_profession_embrace_it_or_banish_it/

Barbara Lilley | Friday, 30 October 2009
World’s oldest profession: Embrace it or banish it?
Should prostitution be legal and supported by society or banished for good?

Prostitution. It's the world's oldest profession. It's mentioned in the Bible. We gape at women we see on the street who embody the stereotypical street walker. We snicker around the water cooler when some high powered celebrity or politician is caught with his pants down in the company of a hooker. Most of the time, however, my guess is that people don't spend a lot of time thinking about prostitutes. But now, the debate over whether prostitution should be decriminalized is making headlines once again in Canada, as a small group of women challenges the government's laws regarding their "profession". There's a bit of a problem here though, because in Canada, prostitution is legal. You read correctly, prostitution is legal, so why is there a court case asking for it to be decriminalized? Because in Canada, while prostitution is legal, soliciting is illegal. Communicating for the purpose of procuring or selling sex is illegal. Living off the avails of prostitution is illegal. Running a brothel is illegal. But prostitution? Definitely legal.
Confused yet? You are not alone.

A story in Canada's online edition of The National Post notes that three women, Valerie Scott, a former prostitute who currently runs a sex-trade advocacy group, Terri-Jean Bedford, a dominatrix and Amy Lebovotich, a working prostitute, have decided to join forces and challenge what they see as discrimination against them and their friends and coworkers of the night. They are hoping, it seems, to overcome the difficulties the laws present them as they try to make a living from their chosen professions. The law, which allows women to sell their bodies for sex to anyone who is interested, also makes it illegal to do so, because to sell anything, be it the latest video game, car or sex, requires a few things. First, you need to be able to communicate with potential buyers, something Canada's communication law (Section 213 of the Criminal Code) prohibits. Having a place of business is usually helpful too, but again, Canada says you can do it, you just can't do it here. Or there. Or anywhere, really, but feel free to sell your body if that's what you want to do.

Another part of this bizarre law states that living off the prevails of prostitution is illegal, which means that being a pimp is, of course, illegal, but also paying your rent with the money made from prostitution is illegal. Oh and if you happen to be living with a partner who is not your pimp, he can be charged as a pimp because if he lives with you he is then living off the prevails of prostitution even if he (for the sake of argument) has no idea what you are doing when he is not home. Which makes having a live in boyfriend or husband a rather sticky problem for these women (never mind what kind of relationship you might have if your partner is OK with you being a prostitute in the first place). It also makes it impossible to legally hire a bodyguard for protection (a major concern for these women), because the guard would then be living off money made from prostitution, which, as I've stated, is illegal.

Lawyers for both the federal and provincial governments claim that while prostitution is legal, the government neither authorizes nor condones it. One of the plaintiffs, Valerie Scott, lived with a friend who was also a prostitute back in the 1980's. The women arranged for clients together and split rent on their apartment. Which means that these women were essentially running a bawdy house, communicating with men for the purpose of solicitation and breaking the law. Now here's the really confusing part: a spokesperson for the Attorney General of Ontario's office says that the arrangement that Ms. Scott and her friend had might be a possible solution that would not have prostitutes running afoul of the law.

Excuse me?

The plaintiffs are hoping to convince the court that changes need to be made to the law. They are right. The problem is that the law contradicts itself. Why is prostitution legal in the first place? Why haven't we said straight out that selling your body is illegal? Why are we so afraid to stand up and say what most of us think? That it is immoral to make money off sex.

Why don't we say anything? Because prostitution has always existed. And so we think that there is nothing that we can do about it, so we should just accept it and make it seem like a "normal" career choice for young women.

No one I know with young children would consider prostitution an acceptable career for their child and yet, no one wants to be called the Morality Police and so we say things like, "Well, I would never do it, but it's fine for you, so go right ahead". For those of us who are willing to stand up and argue against the rampant sexuality thrown in our faces on a daily basis, it seems we are fighting a losing battle. Music videos, video games, magazine covers with scantily clad women and men on them, headlines that scream out about how to have the best sex of our lives with anyone at any time all contribute to the desensitization of sex. How on earth are our children supposed to learn the value of their bodies and the fulfillment that having one sexual partner can give you if we constantly tell them differently with the media with which they are bombarded?

Instead of allowing prostitution to remain legal, the courts should do something really radical and tell the people of Canada that it has decided to get off the merry go round that is this law and declare that selling your body is illegal. Will they do it?

Doubtful, because it seems there are very few people who want to stand up and tell their neighbour that they are doing something wrong. We live in a world where everyone wants to live and let live, a society that is horrified by the mere mention of sexual prudence and yet wrings its hands when the ugly side of prostitution rears its head.

The plaintiffs in this case are right about one thing: a change needs to be made and that change needs to be made with and for our children. It's time to teach boys that objectifying women is wrong and for our girls to learn that they are strong and powerful without selling themselves short. As long as there are men willing to pay for sex, there will be women willing to sell it to them, but it's time for the world's oldest profession to be put to rest.

Barbara Lilley is a writer and mother of four living in Ottawa, Canada.