Violence Against Women - What we in the US take for granted

[Greyson]

I just saw a quick news story the other night about "Honor Killings." Yes, they are happening globally. One story in particular was out of Canada. These women are killed by male family members because they have done something that is considered to have "disgraced" the family. Something horrible like stepped out of their home without being chapperoned by a male family member.

[Kobi]

TEL AVIV—For years, Israeli women have been pressured into moving to the rear of public buses serving strictly religious Jews. Now, in confrontations reminiscent of the era of Rosa Parks, women are pushing back.

Doron Matalon, an 18-year-old soldier, says she was standing at the front of the No. 49a municipal bus after an overnight shift at her Jerusalem base on Wednesday morning last week when an ultra-Orthodox man ordered her to move back.

"I said that I have the right to sit here," she says. "Then a commotion ensued, and other people gathered around and started shouting….It was scary."

The conflict drew national media attention and highlighted the growing tensions in Israel as the population of once-insular ultra-Orthodox Jews has surged beyond the urban enclaves of Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, where they have lived for decades.

As the Orthodox seek jobs and housing in other areas, they are increasingly interacting with mainstream Israelis who see their strict code of religious practice to be coercive, and a threat to Israel's democracy.

"It's a slippery slope. What starts with women boarding the bus in the back because of modesty can end up with women not voting," says Mickey Gitzin, the director of Be Free Israel, a nonprofit that promotes religious pluralism. "It could turn Israeli society into a segregated society in which women don't have a place in public life."

In the past week, public outrage peaked following a TV report on the harassment of an 8-year-old girl by ultra-Orthodox men, in the Jerusalem suburb of Beit Shemesh. The men spat on the girl and called her a prostitute for dressing in a way they considered to be immodest.

That spurred thousands of people to demonstrate against the segregation of women on Tuesday, Dec. 27; a counterprotest two days later ignited clashes in Jerusalem and in Beit Shemesh.

Haredi rabbis of Beit Shemesh said the women of their community observe modesty rules voluntarily because they are for women's honor and Judaism orders the separation of men and women in the public sphere.

Many ultra-Orthodox object to segregation, but have gone on the defensive. "The problem is that they want to make a secular state in the Holy Land. That's what creates the friction," said Israel Eichler, a parliament member from the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party.

Mr. Eichler alleged that Israel's secular media is focusing on the ultra-Orthodox treatment of women as a way of indirectly attacking a political ally of the Haredis—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly denounced segregation. Last week he insisted that "women will sit in every place."

Haredi political parties wield outsized clout because they often function as kingmakers of Israeli coalitions by moving between right and left, though their outlook is more in keeping with right-wing coalitions.

For decades, Israel's Haredi sects kept at a distance from the mainstream, congregating in self-contained ghettos. Their religious ideology rejected the foundations of the secular Jewish state even as they participated in its politics.

Because they made up a relatively small percentage of the population, they were allowed to avoid army service and oversee schools that shed elements of state curriculum, and lobbied for public subsidies that enabled graduates to continue religious study rather than pursue jobs.

In the 14 years since the first public buses went into operation in Jerusalem, exclusion and segregation efforts have expanded to include men-only sidewalks in ultra-Orthodox
neighborhoods, separated waiting rooms at some health clinics, and the gradual disappearance of women from billboard advertisements in Jerusalem.

With Haredi birthrates double the average Israeli family, ultra-Orthodox Jews are poised to surge from around 10% of the country's population. Economists say the status quo, where most Haredi men don't work, will eventually drag down the economy because the government won't be able to afford the rising cost of so many men staying out of the workplace.

The bus lines that initially served only ultra-Orthodox communities eventually spilled over into mixed areas. As the number of segregated bus lines grew into the dozens and complaints emerged, the liberal Israel Religious Action Center, an affiliate of the U.S. Reform Jewish movement, petitioned the Supreme Court to ban segregation on buses.

In a ruling in January 2011, the court said that while forced segregated buses were illegal in principle, it would be possible to allow them to operate for one year on a voluntary basis.

The ruling highlighted a dilemma for Israel's government in determining how to handle diverse religious and national groups that reject many of its basic principles.

"The deeper question is how does a democracy deal with separatist fundamentalist communities in its midst," said Yossi Klein Halevi, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. "Israel's great domestic challenge is to figure out the balance between allowing cultural autonomy and reinforcing its sovereign authority."

With the one-year trial period about to end, the petitioners say they plan to press the Supreme Court again.

For Ms. Matalon, it might be too late. She says she fears riding the bus and hasn't returned for fear of harassment.

"It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last time," she says.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...myyahoo_module

[Novelafemme]

Originally Posted by Greyson

I just saw a quick news story the other night about "Honor Killings." Yes, they are happening globally. One story in particular was out of Canada. These women are killed by male family members because they have done something that is considered to have "disgraced" the family. Something horrible like stepped out of their home without being chapperoned by a male family member.

CANADA?!?!

[Cin]

Eve Ensler Calls for a Billion Women to Strike Against Sexual Violence

The Vagina Monologues shot writer Eve Ensler to stardom. Now she is a global campaigner who plans to call a billion women out on strike against rape.

Eve Ensler has big plans. For the 15th anniversary of V-Day in 2013, she wants to get a billion women – the figure comes from the UN's estimate that one in three women will be raped or assaulted during their lifetime – to come together, "to walk out of their jobs, to walk out of any situation where they have been violated, or just to walk because they were violated, and to join with whoever. If women could see the numbers, how many women we are who have been through this experience …
http://www.alternet.org/story/153625...e/?page=entire

[EnderD_503]

Originally Posted by Novelafemme

CANADA?!?!

Erm...you do realise honour killings occur all over the world yes? Basically anywhere that has residents who come from regions where honour killing is accepted will have an issue with honour killings. Canada (and other western nations including the US) has had quite a few cases where immigrants from the middle east or south Asia, particularly, participate in honour killings. There was one case recently where a husband, his wife and their son were responsible for drowning their three daughters over "revealing" social media pictures and having boyfriends or something like that. Every nation in the world has a struggle against honour killings.

[Truly Scrumptious]

Originally Posted by Novelafemme

CANADA?!?!

Yes, Canada.
Right now there is a trial going on that has a mother, father and son accused of killing 4 family members: 3 daughters and one first wife.

It's hard to stomach, but if you're up for the challenge you can read about it here:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/a...honour-killing

[Novelafemme]

Honestly...I consider myself fairly well-read and I don't recall coming across honor killings in Canada. off to do some research:::

...even though it makes me incredibly sad and frustrated.

[Novelafemme]

“A woman’s body is considered to be the repository of family honour.

“Honour crimes are acts of violence committed by male family members against female family members who are held to have brought dishonour onto the family.’’

How? By exhibiting themselves in unacceptable ways, by going where they don’t belong, by asserting a whiff of independence, by getting raped, by asking for a divorce — all moral crimes that require expunging, sometimes to the extreme of death.

“Cleansing one’s honour of shame is typically handled by the shedding of blood. It’s really about men’s need to control women’s sexuality and freedom.’’

So very troubling. The article's closing summed my feelings up perfectly.

I work with a large group of Saudi scholars and have (over time) developed honest and respectful relationships with each one of them. There are days when I "push the envelope" a bit with some of the men by asking some very direct questions. I have to run and get some study time in for an exam tomorrow, but I'll be back to discuss this issue more tomorrow. It is near and dear to my heart.

[Cin]

Why We Must Put Our Bodies on the Line to Fight Against the Right-Wing War on Women's Rights

Is it time for a reproductive rights revolution? We've done it before; the climate may be right again for occupations and actions to save our bodies from state control.

Despite some modest gains, overall there’s a steady chipping away of abortion rights and access to contraception, no matter who’s in office or what he or she pledges to do.

In the cities and towns of America, the effects of that chipping are showing. Austerity budget cuts, the absolutely brutal legislative war on women and the further stigmatization of abortion mean that clinics are shutting their doors, costs and travel times for procedures are rising and the back-alley abortion (now more commonly done with a pill obtained over the Internet than with a coat hanger) is very much back with us. But of course since the passage of the now "accepted compromise" of Hyde Amendment banning funding for low-income women to have abortions, the truth is it never really left.

Here’s the reality that many feminists know: As the income gap in America has grown, another gap has grown along with it. Women are divided into two classes. With each small law that has been passed requiring parental consent, mandatory ultrasounds and waiting periods, with each guarantee that we will never reconsider allowing Medicaid-funded abortions, the divide between the women who will always be able to have abortions and those who are now living in a pre-Roe era keeps growing--and the number of women in the latter category expands along with it.

It may not be the 99 percent vs. the 1 percent just yet, but the class, race and privilege gap over who has reproductive rights is turning into a chasm, with a smaller and smaller number of women on the side that allows them freedom over their bodies...

...As for the issue of reproductive rights, which has been stuck in its own rut with a squeamish population and an even more squeamish power structure approving every abortion restriction on the book, it’s beguiling to wonder what we could do with that power to change the conversation.

If we had the bodies on the ground, might we stake out some ideological territory that would enable those mainstream organizations to push harder? Could we spread a new message that would make our fellow citizens--who as a rule are so indifferent about the reproductive freedoms of women who aren’t themselves or their families--think twice?

Our opponents have been beating us at this game. We hold rallies and marches while they do cruel but effective things like blocking clinic entrances and stalking and harassing women (and resorting to unspeakable violence, it should never be forgotten). This ranges from reprehensible to criminal to psychotic, but it indicates a level of moral surety and confidence that should be ours, that is ours.
http://www.alternet.org/occupywallst...ts?page=entire

[Kobi]

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: January 9, 2012

CAIRO — At first Samira Ibrahim was afraid to tell her father that Egyptian soldiers had detained her in Tahrir Square in Cairo, stripped off her clothes, and watched as she was forcibly subjected to a “virginity test.”

But when her father, a religious conservative, saw electric prod marks on her body, they revived memories of his own detention and torture under President Hosni Mubarak’s government. “History is repeating itself,” he told her, and together they vowed to file a court case against the military rulers, to claim “my rights,” as Ms. Ibrahim later recalled.

That case has proved successful so far. For the first time last month, an administrative court challenged the authority of the military council and banned such “tests.” Ms. Ibrahim will ask a military court on Sunday to hold the officers accountable.

But nearly a year after Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, Ms. Ibrahim’s story in many ways illustrates the paradoxical position of women in the new Egypt. Emboldened by the revolution to claim a new voice in public life, many are finding that they are still dependent on the protection of men, and that their greatest power is not as direct actors but as symbols of the military government’s repression. It is not a place where Egyptian feminists had hoped women would be, back in the heady days of the revolution, when they played an active role, side by side with men, to bring down a dictator.

“Changing the patriarchal culture is not so easy,” said Mozn Hassan, 32, executive director of the seven-year-old group Nazra for Feminist Studies.

Female demonstrators have suffered sexual assaults at the hands of Egyptian soldiers protected by military courts. Human rights groups say they have documented the cases of at least 100 women who were sexually assaulted by soldiers or the security police during the time of military rule — including Ms. Ibrahim’s experience in March and the anonymous woman recorded on video last month as she was beaten and stripped, exposing a blue bra, by soldiers clearing Tahrir Square after fresh protests. The vast majority of cases have come during the three-month crackdown on demonstrations that has taken more than 80 lives since the beginning of October.

Even when women have pushed back, as they did late last month in a historic march by thousands through downtown Cairo — many carrying pictures of the “blue bra girl” — they have done so only with the protection of men. Men encircled the marchers and at times those male guardians seemed to direct the crowd or lead its chants; many chants led by women called for more “gallantry” from Egyptian men.

Famous mainly as silent victims, women like the “blue bra girl” risk becoming mascots of the male-dominated uprising, said Ms. Hassan, one of several Egyptian feminists who said they were thrilled by the size of the march — but winced at its dependence on men.

“If you are calling for men to protect you, that is bad, because then they define you and they stick to the traditional roles,” Ms. Hassan said. (Even among feminist groups, there were few all-women organizations in Egypt, and of the 13 founders of Ms. Hassan’s organization, 6 were men.)

At the same time, the revolution has opened the door for the ascendance of conservative Islamist parties, including religious extremists who want to roll back some of the rights women do have. The mainstream Muslim Brotherhood is poised to win nearly half of the seats in Parliament, when voting is completed this week, while the more extreme Salafis are on track to win more than 20 percent.

While Brotherhood leaders talk of encouraging traditional roles but respecting women’s career choices, many Salafis oppose allowing women to play leadership roles and favor regulating issues like women’s dress to impose Islamic standards of modesty. “We have major concerns because what they are proposing is very oppressive,” said Ghada Shabandar, a veteran human rights activist.

Even now, however, women have almost no leadership roles in the various activists groups that formed out of the original protests that ousted Mr. Mubarak and so far women have fewer than 10 of the roughly 500 seats in Parliament. The electoral debates have featured scant mention of women’s issues — from the pervasiveness of genital cutting to legally sanctioned employment discrimination, despite official statistics showing that a third of Egyptian households depend on female earners.

“We have no feminist movement now,” said Hala Mustafa, editor of Democracy, a state-run journal.

Feminists say that for decades Egyptian security forces have kidnapped or sexually abused women as a way to pressure the men in their families. In a celebrated case from 2005, a journalist, Nawal Ali, sought to press charges against the government-aligned thugs who had beaten and stripped her in an attack. It is not all bleak, though. Some argue that the revolution is helping to revitalize the dormant women’s movement, if only by opening up politics so Ms. Ibrahim could have her day in court or thousands could march for the woman stripped to her bra.

“That is the difference the Egyptian revolution has made,” Ms. Shabandar said. “The wall of fear is gone, and now when we march for the ‘blue bra girl,’ we march for Nawal Ali.”

A few younger feminists, though, say that philosophy keeps women in the back seat. “That is the same thing women were told after the revolution,” said Masa Amir, 24, recalling when the military council picked an all-male panel of jurists to draft a temporary constitution. But the result was a document implying that the president could only be a man — perhaps because no one at the table raised the issue.

But the stigma attached to victims of sexual abuse continues to force many to remain silent.

Six other women were subjected to “virginity tests” by the soldiers that night in March when Ms. Ibrahim was assaulted. The humiliation was so great, Ms. Ibrahim said, that she initially hoped to die. “I kept telling myself, ‘People get heart attacks, why don’t I get a heart attack and just die like them?’ ”

Her mother’s advice was to keep silent, if she ever hoped to marry, or even lead a dignified life in their village in rural Upper Egypt, Ms. Ibrahim said in an interview.

When she did speak out, Egyptian new media shunned her, she said, and only the international news media would cover her story. She received telephone calls at all hours threatening rape or death. But with the support of her father — an Islamist activist who was detained and tortured two decades ago — she persevered, and next week will go back to military court in an attempt to hold the perpetrators accountable as well.

When she saw the video of the “blue bra girl” being beaten, it redoubled her resolve. “I felt I had to avenge her,” she said.



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/wo...rchy.html?_r=1

[Kobi]

Associated Press
January 21, 2012
BLANTYRE, Malawi -- It's been 18 years since the late dictator Hastings Kamuzu Banda's "indecency in dress" laws were repealed in Malawi, but mobs of men and boys in the largely conservative southern African country have recently been publicly stripping women of their miniskirts and pants.

Friday, hundreds of outraged girls and women, among them prominent politicians, protested the attacks while wearing pants or miniskirts and T-shirts emblazoned with such slogans as: "Real men don't harass women." A recording of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry" got a loud cheer when it was played during the protest. Men also took part.

"Some of us have spent our entire life fighting for the freedom of women," Vice President Joyce Banda told the protesters. "It's shocking some men want to take us back to bondage."

During Banda's 1963-1994 dictatorship, women in Malawi were banned from wearing pants and short skirts. Banda lost power in the country's first multiparty election in 1994 and died three years later.

"Life President" Banda led the nation to independence from Britain, only to impose an oppressive rule. Whims that reflected a puritanical streak were law. The U.S.-trained physician and former Presbyterian church elder, himself always attired in a dark suit and Homburg hat, also banned long hair on men.

"We fought for a repeal of these laws," Ngeyi Kanyongolo, a law professor, said at Friday's protests. "Women dressed in trousers or miniskirts is a display of the freedom of expression."

While Banda is gone, strains of conservatism remain in the impoverished, largely rural nation. Some of the street vendors who have attacked women in recent days claimed it was un-Malawian to dress in miniskirts and pants. Some said it was a sign of loose morals or prostitution.

The attacks took on such importance, President Bingu wa Mutharika went on state television and radio on the eve of the protest to assure women they were free to wear what they want.

Other African nations, including South Africa, have seen similar attacks and harassment of women. Last year, women and men held "SlutWalks" in South Africa, joining an international campaign against the notion that a woman's appearance can excuse attacks. "SlutWalks" originated in Toronto, Canada, where they were sparked by a police officer's remark that women could avoid being raped by not dressing like "sluts."

In Malawi Friday, protesters also wore T-shirts with the slogan: "Vendor: Today, I bought from you, tomorrow, you undress me?" Street children and vendors have been accused of carrying out the attacks.

The president ordered police to arrest anyone who attacks women wearing pants or miniskirts. Police had already made 15 arrests.

"Women who want to wear trousers should do so as you will be protected from thugs, vendors and terrorists," the president said in a local language, Chichewa. "I will not allow anyone to wake up and go on the streets and start undressing women and girls wearing trousers because that is criminal."

Vice President Banda has speculated the attacks were the result of economic woes in a country that is currently racked by shortages of fuel and foreign currency.

"There is so much suffering that people have decided to vent their frustrations on each other," she told reporters.

A vendors' representative at Friday's protest, Innocent Mussa, was booed off the stage. Mussa insisted those who were harassing women were not true vendors.

"I'm ashamed to be associated with the stripping naked of innocent women," he said. "Those were acts of thugs because a true vendor would want to sell his wares to women, he can't be harassing potential customers."

Mussa blamed the harassment on unemployed young people.


http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pb...129964/-1/NEWS

[pamela]

there are so many terrible things happening in less developed countries and yet so much could be done to help these women out that is not being done.