The "Art" of Exploitation

I have a new post up at the Ms. Magazine blog:

I consider myself fairly liberal when it comes to some of the most controversial 21st-century debates about sex. I’m not anti-pornography or sex work, as long as they are properly regulated, include health care for workers and require explicit consent of all participants. I also think that erotically charged art can be very compelling, provided it goes beyond prurient sensationalism. So it’s pretty impressive, though not in a good way, that French artist Antoine D’Agata’s photographs of himself having sex with Cambodian sex workers piss me off so much.

D’Agata, whom Flaunt magazine calls a “provocative social documentarian,” revels in the controversial nature of his art practice. He has expressed hope that the photos–which depict him engaged in a variety of sex acts with young women in brothels–might somehow bring light to the plight of sex workers in Cambodia.

Read the rest here.

Secretary Clinton Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day

Just a little reminder on the importance of women's issues (particularly global ones) from our Secretary of State:

A Feminist Countdown to 2011 ~ Day One

From my post over at the Ms. Blog:

When I was a very young child, I received a late November package all the way from my grandmother in Germany. It was a large, cloth Advent Calendar, designed to hang on the back of my bedroom door and fitted with little pockets, one for each day leading up to December 25. In each pocket she’d stuffed a tiny toy or bit of candy for me to retrieve day by day. I took so much pleasure in this calendar that my parents felt compelled to fill it for me each year around the holidays, well into my preteens.

I wanted to pass on the joy of this countdown-of-treats to Ms. readers. So, I present to you a secular version of my childhood calendar to help us at the Ms. Blog count down to 2011.

As the days pass, you’ll see more and more of the image behind the dates revealed. You’ll also be offered links to virtual feminist “treats”–a video, a game, a story. Check back each day to see what’s next!

Presenting my Feminist Advent Calendar! Day One is up...



(Click here to visit the home page with the full calendar)

Free Sakineh

A most worthwhile petition; please consider following the link and signing (also post to Facebook, Twitter, etc.):

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a 43 year old mother of two, was convicted in May 2006 of having an “illicit relationship” with two men and received 99 lashes as her sentence. Despite already having been punished, she has now been further convicted of “adultery” and has been sentenced to death by stoning.

See the petition for more information and/or read Marina Nemat's statement further down on the same page. She writes, in part:

Iran’s political prisons, including Evin, are still quite operational. People are tortured and executed in Iran on a daily basis. When atrocities happen, those who remain silent and don’t speak or act against evil become its accomplices. We cannot afford to wait for governments to bring about real change. I believe in the power of the individual. Each one of us can make the world a better place, even if only one small step at a time. We can create a ripple effect that will expand and eventually turn into a tsunami.

Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani has been condemned to death in Iran. There are many others who are languishing like her in their grave-like cells, maybe facing painful deaths. They are not alone or forgotten. Even if we don’t know all their names, we are with them. I do not believe in violence, but I do believe in the power of voices coming together as one. Let’s get our voices heard.

Again, if you feel that this is a worthy cause (and, really, how can you not?), please sign the petition.

For more information, you can check out these news stories (among others):

Will We Again Abandon Afghan Women? | The New York Times

Details scarce surrounding Iranian widow’s ‘crimes’ | Globe and Mail

Iran stoning sentence woman asks to be reunited with her children | The Guardian

An Appeal for Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani | The Huffington Post

Mu Sochua

The NY Times just ran an article on Mu Sochua, a woman I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of before. She's a women's rights activist and political figure in Cambodia, and has accomplished a great deal over the last two decades, fighting against domestic violence, HIV/AIDS, child trafficking, and generally raising the profile of women's rights and gender issues in Cambodia.

Her work is limited, unfortunately, by - what else - politics.

The gist of the Times articles is that nobody, including other women in power, wants to have anything to do with Mu Sochua or her agenda, because she opposes the majority government. The majority, needless to say, has made little progress for women's rights, preferring to maintain the status quo. It seems the entire political culture of the country will have to be changed before any real progress is made.

And she's trying - taking on general interest issues, building a reputation for herself among the people. Perhaps someday, Mu Sochua will have the impact on Cambodia that she really ought to.

(Mu Sochua's Website)

(By the way - did anyone think that the title of the Times article was bizarre - "The Female Factor" - what's that supposed to be about?)

A few thoughts on Haiti

The disaster in Haiti (as seen by those in the rest of the world, of course) is winding down. The government is giving up on searching and moving toward rebuilding. The media frenzy is nearly over - no headlines, few articles on the front pages of websites and papers. Even more - people aren't talking much about Haiti any more, and although I don't know, I imagine donations are on their way down, too.

I could say that in reality, the disaster is far from over, that we still need to support Haitians, etc. And it would be true - at least to a point.

But in all honesty, Haiti will be okay - as much as it can be. The damage is already done. Hundreds of thousands are dead, and the country destroyed. The humanitarian groups are finally in place, and all the rich foreign governments are involved. The disaster relief machinery is in place, it's all downhill (or is that uphill?) from here.

And it's too late to really do anything, because this disaster wasn't really caused by the earthquake.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. It had a terrible infrastructure. The government was inefficient, corrupt, had no resources, and was completely incapable of dealing with a disaster. And on and on it goes.

Haiti needed 'disaster relief' long before the earthquake. And if something had been done, the effect of the quake would have been much, much reduced.

That's how it always happens, though. A part of the world, a people group, some other division has a problem. It could be poverty, potential war or genocide, or just simple racism, sexism, classism. Something happens, the conditions finally become intolerable, and then people (hopefully) do something. If it's obvious enough (earthquake, hurricane), we do quite a lot. If it's more subtle, we don't do as much.

Regardless, by that point all that can be done is clean up. That's the real disaster.

Something needs to be done before the earthquakes, not after.

Feminist Flashback #45

A.k.a. Women in Prison, part 2 of 3


While I haven't read anything yet that confirms my suspicions, I'd be willing to bet that the BBC's hit television drama Bad Girls (1999-2006) was more than marginally based on Germany's Hinter Gittern, which I featured as the previous flashback. Obviously, Bad Girls isn't just limited to German-speakers and at least the first few seasons can be purchased in the USA (and viewed, I think, on BBC America). In any case, I can't recommend Bad Girls highly enough; it's less risque than its German cousin, which is neither here nor there, really, and it's fun, smart, thought-provoking and a little campy (but only in the best of ways).

Feminist Flashback #44

A.K.A. Women in Prison, part 1 of 3

In 1997, the ground-breaking German television drama Hinter Gittern: der Frauenknast [Behind Bars: The Women's Prison] first aired, and I watched it with rapt attention with my grandmother as a teenager, an interesting experience to say the least, considering German prime time is like an only moderately tamed down version of Showtime. The show ran for ten years and, while I haven't seen it since the second or third season, from what I can remember it was pretty hard-hitting, impressively executed and downright fascinating.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it'll ever come out in America, but DVDs of the show in German are available. If you're a German speaker, it's well worth a watch.



(If that's not enough of a taste, here's another trailer.)

Torture: Just for the Fun of it

Part of me is unclear on what we're actually talking about in the "torture debate." But I'm becoming convinced that we actually DO know—and the position taken by many Americans is chilling.

As if we didn't know this, the latest declassified information reveals that torture orders came directly from the office of former Vice President Dick Cheney. These orders came despite the fact that Cheney and the rest of the sadistic Bush administration had been warned such tactics were ineffective. These orders came despite the fact that not one Neocon believed there was truly a link between Sadaam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. (Well, maybe W. thought so, bless his heart.) These orders came precisely because Cheney knew that he needed an excuse for an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation. So that waterboarding thing, eh? That's known for getting people to say anything. Let's try that, say, 183 times this month and see what happens.

But nothing happened—no information that was helpful came out of those simulated drownings. Not one shred of useable intelligence was produced after six of these sessions a day for what must have been a very long month—in United States custody. We knew this would happen. We knew this because Cheney's torture script was based on the military training program Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), which was designed to help downed American pilots resist torture. SERE came out interrogation methods used by the Chinese during the Korean War to elicit false confessions from American prisoners for propaganda purposes. For essentially the same sinister purposes, the Bush administration ordered the SERE program reverse-engineered by psychologists working within a joint Army and CIA command and renamed "enhanced interrogation methods."

Military and law enforcement professionals repeatedly warned against the application of SERE tactics, but Senate reports confirm that their use was urged by top Bush administration figures desperate to link Al Qaeda and Iraq. The Senate report notes that SERE-based interrogation techniques were presented to Guantanamo personnel in September of 2002, despite the objections of instructors from Fort Bragg. In an interview with the Army’s Inspector General, Army psychiatrist Major Charles Burney said "interrogation tactics that rely on physical pressures or torture…do not tend to get you accurate information or reliable information." According to Burney, instructors repeatedly stressed that harsh interrogations don’t work and that the information gleaned "is strongly likely to be false."

So what in the hell could have led Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, to praise the henchmen who used these techniques? Manically relieved that Democrat Nancy Pelosi has been charged with knowing that torture was being used on detainees as early as 2003, Bond nearly tripped over a flag in his rush to condemn the Hose Speaker. In response to Pelosi's bold-faced claim that the CIA lied to Congress, Bond said: "It’s outrageous that a member of Congress would call our terror-fighters liars. Instead of prosecuting or persecuting, our country should be supporting our intelligence professionals who work to keep us safe.”

I don't doubt that Pelosi is lying. I don't doubt that important documents remain classified today because they reveal the extent of many Democrats' knowledge and endorsement of torture. This is the sort of deplorable response that a child would know better than to try and pull. You don't cover up injustice. And when the rest of the world is watching, you really can't.

Just what is at stake here? Well, not valuable intelligence that will keep Americans safe. We know that sort of thing isn't a byproduct of torture. What we are seeing is a segment of the US population articulate a preference for violence and state-sponsored persecution. Forty two percent of Americans think that there are cases in which the U.S. should consider using torture against terrorism suspects. Almost half of my neighbors have the will to use pain, fear, and overpowering brutality to get what they want. Oh, wait—given what we know about the SERE program's ineffectiveness, those who still support decisions to use torture prefer to inflict pain and suffering EVEN IF it fails to get them a damned thing. They'd do it just for fun.

We will regret it if we don't deal with the perpetrators of US-backed torture techniques. No domestic issue is worth turning our backs on gross injustices committed by Americans. Hoarding "political capital" cannot dissuade the Obama administration from seeking the swiftest, harshest punishment for those who want to bully the rest of the world. If we don't police our own, it will be done in ways even less to our liking.

Congratulations to Carol Ann Duffy....

GB...it's about damn time!

After 341 Years, British Poet Laureate Is a Woman:

The writer Carol Ann Duffy was appointed Britain’s poet laureate on Friday, becoming the first woman to take a 341-year-old job that has been held by, among others, Dryden, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Cecil Day-Lewis and Ted Hughes.

Ms. Duffy, 53, is known for using a deceptively simple style to produce accessible, often mischievous poems dealing with the darkest turmoil and the lightest minutiae of everyday life. In her most popular collection, “The World’s Wife” (1999), overlooked women in history and mythology get the chance to tell their side of the story, so that one poem imagines, for instance, the relief that Mrs. Rip Van Winkle must have felt when her husband fell asleep, finally giving her some time for herself.

Announcing the decision, the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, called Ms. Duffy “a towering figure in English literature today and a superb poet” who has “achieved something that only the true greats of literature manage — to be regarded as both popular and profound.”

Why I Love Hillary, Reason #347

Advocacy & the Western Woman

Funny how entering an international studies program precipitated my growing aversion to theorizing about people on the other side of the world. Life could be easier if my timing was better and my ethics just a little quicker on the uptake. Not so long ago I was two weeks into law school and having epiphanies about the pointlessness of competition and confrontational debate – both like kryptonite to me yet at the time were(and sometimes still are) perversely my go-to mannerisms. Now a year in an international studies program has left me reluctant to even gossip about my neighbor.

Should I really be so upset though, about not wanting to make snappy cultural judgements? Well, no. But it is crucial that a radical feminist be able to competently assess cultures and institutions for their gendered aspects. And don't we have a concomitant obligation to name and fight injustice wherever it operates? Feminists ought to be adept at identifying commonalities and therefore possibilities for empowerment whenever women are in need. And despite all the First-World meddling and agenda setting, I still believe in an international feminist movement that can transform women's and men's lives.

My role and agenda as an international feminist partly hinges on the resolution of this issue. No one has to come down on one "side" of the debate "between" multiculturalism and universal human rights. Toleration is not 'against' principled judgment - but if you're one of the hegemons, I believe more and more that it would be wise to back away slowly from judging anything more than 4-H competitions. And if an unawareness of privilege blinds you to the fact that the breathtaking view is made possible by the folks you're standing on, then for christ's sake watch your step. I do bitch a lot about injustice and inequity – but as a white, upper middle-class American do I truly have that much to gripe about? Sure I do – but I try to remind myself that bellyaching over "the Canon" does not compare with the way real hunger gnaws at the stomach (Haitians describe this as "Clorox" hunger, because the sensation of starvation feels as if bleach were eating their stomachs – a sharp, acidy feeling ). It is perfectly fine for me to be resentful about having to time a baby and a dissertation, but this means squat beside women who've had radically different reproductive "options" as victims of genocidal wartime rapes.

We must be able to rank and prioritize injustices if we are serious about stopping them. Wrongs and discriminations are concrete events that happen every day, and some of them are lethal. I may be resentful of many inequities I see in my reference group, but I am not hungry, carrying an unwanted child, prevented from driving, legally excluded from politics or suffering from poorly executed rituals involving my vagina. I would love to blame my family for picking out my really bad first husband (though the honor is indeed all mine) and my education hasn't been hindered by much except my hand getting too tired to sign another IOU. No one, for one of the first times in recorded history, has really prevented me from attaining general fulfillment (or at least as much fulfillment as most men) When I take myself seriously, it must be in a global context and I'm doing o.k.

God knows I'm an unfairness hawk, so these days I find myself in a perplexing situation when I can't find the right words to point out glaring injustices. Hey, I might be an American but I read – and the bottom line is that I have had the leisure time and emotional space not only to notice the suffering of others, but to amass the material resources that can relieve it. Much of the time I'm furious about how we're taught – through our cultural and political discourse – to think about other cultures. When we talk about how any minority group "treats its women," we tacitly reinforce the idea that men comprise the core of any identity, and that women are the passive agents of culture. How did we end up in a situation where human rights are dismissed as unique Western constructs? When I'm not mad about linguistically reinforcing patriarchy, I'm pissed at the absurd idea that "those women over there" must not share with us some basic desires or precepts of humanity – to live free from emotional and physical violence, to protect their children, to have a say in the laws that regulate their lives and families. Only women in the West want these things? This is a deeply awful idea – and one we should get away from right now.

I'm concentrating these days on tempering outrage with humility – and mostly failing – but I'm trying to strike a balance between being empathetic and so goddamn overpowering. Knowing my culture's colonial legacy cannot preclude me from honestly trying to do better. If we – relatively privileged Western women – aren't willing to be honest about our own roles in American cultural and economic imperialism, then what legitimacy do we have? Sleeping with the enemy, though we do it still, is never the way to resist. But as long as we benefit from economic policies that impoverish other women, as long as we hire them cheaply to raise our children and clean our homes, as long as we don't exercise what autonomy we've wrested from the patriarchy, we really can't claim to have an ethic to our names. I so want to believe like Virginia Woolf that as a woman I have no country - but the truth is that I represent many things I never wanted to be or do. I'm still not sure what to say about that.

Feminist Flashback #24

For this week's (second) Feminist Flashback, I present to you all Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. The film was fantastic, but the books are really phenomenal. If you haven't read the books, I suggest you go out and do so right now. For your viewing and reading pleasure, first, a panel from the 2003 book (click to enlarge) and, second, the trailer for the 2007 film adaptation:

Suggestions Please!: Radical/WOC/Alternative/Global Feminist Blogs

Ojibway Migisi Bineshii and I are trying to generate a list of 100 (or so) radical/alternative/racially- and ethnically-diverse feminist/gender blogs as a companion/alternative to this list. We would LOVE your suggestions! Please leave links in the comments (if you think your own blog fits the bill, that's great too) and we'll post the list to both our blogs once it's compiled.

Thanks in advance, and please do forward this post to friends and/or ask for suggestions far and wide. We'd like to amass as diverse and comprehensive a list as possible!

Global Gag Rule Repealed

As of today, President Obama has repealed the "global gag rule", which, as we all know, was a "ban on U.S. funding for international health groups that perform abortions, promote legalizing the procedure or provide counseling about terminating pregnancies." Reagan instated the rule in 1984, Clinton repealed it in 1993 and then good ole Bush junior (good riddance!) reinstated it in 2001.

According to The Washington Post:

The memorandum revokes Bush's order, calling the limitations on funding "excessively broad" and adding that "they have undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family programs in foreign nations." In an accompanying statement, Obama said he would also work with Congress to restore U.S. funding support for the United Nations Population Fund "to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries."

Obama's decision was praised by family planning groups, women's health advocates and others for allowing the U.S. Agency for International Development to once again provide millions of dollars to programs offering medical services, birth control, HIV prevention and other care.

"For eight long years, the global gag rule has been used by the Bush administration to play politics with the lives of poor women across the world," said Gill Greer of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in London.

Dang, our new President is sure hitting the ground running. Go, Obama, go! Also, Planned Parenthood has a form you can fill out to thank President Obama...so go. Do it.

World Aids Day

Today is World AIDS Day, a day dedicated to raising awareness, encouraging testing, and fighting the global specter of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

About an hour ago, President-Elect Obama's released online his taped address to the Saddleback Civil Forum on Global Health (transcript available at The Washington Post's website). I honestly thought the speech could have been a little more convincing, more dynamic, but then again it was just a short, taped video address so what could he really say?

While trying to find a more, er, passionate response to World Aids Day, I came across this video, sponsored by Johnson and Johnson, about the organization Mothers2Mothers, which offers "social, emotional and psychological support" to pregnant African women who are HIV-positive. I know very little about the organization so far, but you can check out the video below:


I don't think this falls into the category of consumer-driven AIDS awareness hype, even though M2M is prominently sponsored by a major company. And, on the surface at least, I like the idea of what amounts to a counseling/mentoring/consciousness raising organization dedicated to bringing women together for mutual support, advice and consolation.

(Updated to add: Bil at The Bilerco Project has a great selection of World Aids Day videos from around the world.)

Women in Rwanda

Just a quick post today to encourage you check out an article in today's Washington Post about how women in Rwanda are taking charge. Apparently Rwanda's parliament is the first in the world to have a female majority.

An excerpt:

Women hold a third of all cabinet positions, including foreign minister, education minister, Supreme Court chief and police commissioner general. And Rwanda's parliament last month became the first in the world where women claim the majority -- 56 percent, including the speaker's chair.

One result is that Rwanda has banished archaic patriarchal laws that are still enforced in many African societies, such as those that prevent women from inheriting land. The legislature has passed bills aimed at ending domestic violence and child abuse, while a committee is now combing through the legal code to purge it of discriminatory laws.

[...]

"This was a broken society after the genocide," said Aloisea Inyumba, Kagame's former gender and social affairs minister, who was also a prominent official in his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front when it was still a rebel group fighting the country's genocidal government. "We made a decision that if Rwanda is going to survive, we have to have a change of heart as a society. Equality and reconciliation are the only options."

The article is part of a special report on women in the world. So go. Read more.

(H/T My Parents)