Posts Written by Femination
By Femination • 12 years ago

A woman, travelling….alone? GASP!

Every time I tell someone I’m on a solo journey across Asia, they give me a blank stare. It quickly morphs into either a look of pity, concern, and happy to say, sometimes admiration. And every time I wonder how their reaction would be if I were a man.

An oil company executive’s Colombian wife, whose husband’s job has taken her all over the world, told me: “Your golden rule is: don’t trust anyone”. So I have to cover my drink and not talk to strangers. She asked me if I had seen the movie Taken. Yes I have. She asked me to watch it again.

I am not naive. I know these things happen, and I know that this earth is full of despicable men waiting to do horrible things to me. But in order to change a world controlled by a need to protect women, and realizing this protection is another form of oppression, we need to start somewhere. The belief that if something happens to me then I brought it upon myself, is, again the old rape-victim dilemma.

Fear of men stands as the justification behind burkas, behind the judgement against women having premarital sex, behind not allowing girls to go to school with boys or letting them out at night. Does this behavior not just perpetuate the cycle? (More…)
By Femination • 12 years ago

Street Harassment: Be a “Bitch”

I recently discovered the Hollaback Project, “a movement dedicated to ending street harassment using mobile technology.” Street harassment is a reality women face in varying degrees, depending on where in the world you live.

The first time I remember experiencing this I was 11 — I was living in Bogotá, Colombia, at the time, I should clarify. There you get constant bullshit like this from about the tender age of 10, or even younger if you’re more “developed” (shudders). It can continue until you’re about 60, or whenever you stop looking like what Colombian men consider a “woman” and more like a grandma, when you become this senile yet sweet asexual being.

Last time I was there, in May 2010, I was walking down a busy, ...

I recently discovered the Hollaback Project, “a movement dedicated to ending street harassment using mobile technology.” Street harassment is a reality women face in varying degrees, depending on where in the world you live.

The first time I ...
By Femination • 12 years ago

“Ain’t I a Woman”

Never are the problematics of race and gender at their most evident but when we see how the media disproportionately covers the hell out of disappeared pretty, young, white women and gives very little coverage to disappeared black women or men. This is also known as the “Missing White Woman Syndrome.”

“It’s all about sex. Young white women give editors and television producers what they want,” said Roy Peter Clark, vice president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla, in an MSNBC story on this. Media critics in the article said that news editors might chose white women stories over others because they decide which stories people will relate to the most. Relate, and feel attracted to, I ...

Never are the problematics of race and gender at their most evident but when we see how the media disproportionately covers the hell out of disappeared pretty, young, white women and gives very little coverage to disappeared ...
By Femination • 12 years ago

The “Other” 51%

It’s finally becoming not controversial or fringe to say that investing in women is smart economic policy, at least in the development sector. The Daily Beast‘s recent article,“Why the Global Economy Needs Businesses to Invest in Women”, speaks about the new trend in the World Economic Forum in Davos,

Businesses are starting to understand what development experts have long known: investing in women pays dividends.”

It’s good, wholesome feminist reading, wholeheartedly positive and realistic at the same time.

The subheadline, though, was problematic: “The global economy needs the other 51%.” This is implying that this other 51% is someone other than “the global economy,” as if women were not an active or a passive agent of this global economy.

Yet again, ...

It’s finally becoming not controversial or fringe to say that investing in women is smart economic policy, at least in the development sector. The Daily Beast‘s recent article,“Why the Global Economy Needs Businesses to ...
By Femination • 12 years ago

The Equality Language Lab

France’s Laboratoire de l’égalité brings you this awesome video, put together by Pacte Pour L’égalité, or Pact for Equality. Doesn’t require subtitles or translation.

Pacte Pour Légalité seeks to put pressure on France’s 2012 presidential candidates to address the obstacles toward equality between men and women.

The scenarios in the video serve mostly as metaphor of what it’s like to work or have a conversation with (some) men. I’ve had that experience many times, even if it’s just talking with friends or family. I never know if it’s “the gender thing,” or if it’s just me, and my ideas are just not that worthwhile and that’s why they get trampled in favor of someone else’s. Just having that thought alone though, is ...

France’s Laboratoire de l’égalité brings you this awesome video, put together by Pacte Pour L’égalité, or Pact for Equality. Doesn’t require subtitles or translation.

Pacte Pour Légalité seeks to put pressure on France’s 2012 presidential candidates to ...
By Femination • 12 years ago

Judaism and feminism…It’s complicated

Controversy about the ultra-Orthodox Jewish treatment of women shows no signs of abating, coming to a kind of crisis. Recently, ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in Israel spat on an 8-year-old they deemed was dressed indecently, Naama Margolese, from Beit Shemesh.

In an incident like this, it is very clear who is at fault. But the underlining narrative here rings familiar. And the lessons should be that the burden of men’s lecherous thoughts about women should be on the men, not on the women. They either undress them and  objectify them with plastic surgery, or they cover them up, and objectify them with a burqa or “modest dress”, even for an 8-year-old on her way to school.

The 

Controversy about the ultra-Orthodox Jewish treatment of women shows no signs of abating, coming to a kind of crisis. Recently, ultra-Orthodox Jewish men in Israel spat on an 8-year-old they deemed was dressed indecently, Naama ...
By Femination • 12 years ago

Thanks NYT, the Answer to All Our Questions About Marriage, Re-Marriage, Finally

Now, for the first time in history, people who aren’t married outnumber those who are. It’s very interesting to look at how the media are trying to analyze this, sometimes insightfully, sometimes a bit less than.

A New York Times article, “Alone Again, Naturally,” reveals:

“A woman discovers the answer to the question: Why do many men, after a breakup or a divorce, find it so difficult to be alone, while most women in the same situation seem just fine?”

Seems like a very poor editorial decision with the tagline “A woman discovers the answer” … unusually trite and sophomoric –to borrow the commenters’ favorite adjective. As the writer retells her fall and subsequent conclusions about marriage and remarriage, she “is overcome by sweeping ...

Now, for the first time in history, people who aren’t married outnumber those who are. It’s very interesting to look at how the media are trying to analyze this, sometimes insightfully, sometimes a bit less than.

A New ...
By Femination • 12 years ago

Turkey, behind the veil

Turkey is a nation of Muslim people without being a Muslim nation; it is therefore the most gender-equality prone in the Arab world. In the most touristy, “Western” parts of Istanbul, I saw occasional headscarves at the most.

But the one day we ventured over to the Western district, the former Jewish and Christian ghetto and now a conservative and relatively poor area, I could only see Burkas. Women walked in the street only if clustered in groups or if going to the market. We also saw them standing outside a mosque while the men prayed inside, listening. The contrast between the two made an impression on me.

The Koran says women are worth half of ...

Turkey is a nation of Muslim people without being a Muslim nation; it is therefore the most gender-equality prone in the Arab world. In the most touristy, “Western” parts of Istanbul, I saw occasional headscarves at the ...

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