General

It continues to be his-story

03/16/2007 by Debra

The story of Pak Kumjoo
excerpts from a translation by Caroline Berndt
— Whether it was morning or night, once one soldier left, the next soldier came. Twenty men would come in one day…
— We would try to talk each other out of committing suicide, but even with that, women still did. There were women who stole opium and took it. If they took a lot of it, they would vomit blood and die. There were people who died after gulping medicine whose name they didn’t even know. There were also people who hanged themselves with their clothing when inside the toilet. Because there were people who tried to kill themselves even if they only had some string, we tried to hide string from each other…
— Then, about six months after I was made a “military comfort woman,” I told a colonel in the army, “Do you think we are your maids and your prostitutes? How can you be a human being after making us do such things? We came because we were told we were going to a factory, and we didn’t come knowing we would be prostituted.” I spat in his face.
— From there, that soldier said, “It is the command of the army. The country’s order is the Emperor’s order. If you have something to say, you can say it to the Emperor.” Then he beat me. I was in a coma for three days. Even when I regained consciousness, I couldn’t move. Even now I feel pain from that time, and scars remain.

“Microcredit”=What the IMF offers women

03/15/2007 by Debra

Women’s ENews has a very informative commentary on the IMF and it’s value to women.

(WOMENSENEWS)–Earlier this month President Bush, in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, opined that microcredit has “been very successful.”
Bush went on to say, “If you’re a rural farmer scratching out a subsistence living, would you want to be able to sell your goods to new markets overseas?” Don’t you “want to be able to sell into a larger universe?”
Apparently Bush and others believe that rural farmers will successfully exit subsistence agriculture and start competing for market share side by side with multinational powerhouses like ConAgra, General Foods and Nestle.
This equates the activities of the world’s largest corporations with the activities of peasants–mostly women–bartering in rural fairs. Yeah, right.
One expects Bush to endorse policies popular at the World Bank. But when the Nobel Prize Committee, the United Nations and hundreds of international development agencies join the celebration of microcredit as the key to reducing female poverty via women’s economic empowerment we have an obligation to probe their underlying premises.
Powerful policy makers–at the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Federal Reserve and the White House–share the view that markets (specifically the individual exchanges that occur in markets) will save the world’s poor.
This view is an article of faith for neo-liberals since they adhere to the economic philosophy that holds that capitalism and unfettered markets will cure the world’s ills. It assumes that poverty is a problem of individual behavior.

In this article the authors contrasts the IMF approach with SEWA (SELF EMPLOYED WOMEN’S ASSOCIATION) approach. [Read more…] about “Microcredit”=What the IMF offers women

The Big Tent is as the Big Tent Does

03/10/2007 by Debra

It would seem a weekly event the thread asking for definition of progressive, asking who would not fit under the big tent. No answer was ever forthcoming except that the owner and mods did not feel it their place to determine what people wrote on their blog.

Self definition of progressive then seemed to be the criteria for fitting under The Big Tent.

Blogging for F4J – acceptable, maligning female politicians [see numerous posts on Belinda Stronach]- acceptable, adhering sexist and politically derogatory labels to feminists [again see PB diaries around abortion,Elizabeth May]- acceptable, debating a womans’ right to choice [many blogs, tags-abortion,Elizabeth May]- acceptable, defaming a persons reputation and all who associate with him – acceptable.

Whether or not Roberts’ post was wrong has been discussed throughly, what I would like to know is how it was worse than any of the previous examples?

The Big Tent is either Big enough to handle and accept all sides of a controversy and to allow free speech OR it moderates views and speech.

If PB has decided on the latter will we soon be in receipt of a policy clearly defining the progressive views and values the mods and owner find acceptable?

A policy on what will be acceptable blog topics, words used, groups and/or persons that can be maligned freely?

It would seem echo chamber is in the eye of the beholder.

International Women’s Day

03/08/2007 by Debra

IWD

I struggled with what to write today. Which subject seemed to have the greatest importance.

In the end I felt there was no subject that had greater importance. They represented different cultures, different concerns, different areas (work, school, motherhood, reproductive rights) different focus (success stories and stories that show how much work is still required) and I realized that I couldn’t anymore choose a topic of greater importance than I could choose a woman of greater importance. [Read more…] about International Women’s Day

Vagina Verboten

03/07/2007 by Debra

Vagina Verboten In a stunning display of stupidity, a New York school has suspended 3 honour students for using the word vagina. Oh did I mention it was during a reading from the Vagina Monologues?

The excerpt from “Monologues” was read Friday night, among various readings at an event sponsored by the literary magazine at John Jay High School in Cross River, a New York City suburb. Among the other readings was a student’s original work and the football coach quoting Shakespeare.
The girls took turns reading the excerpt until they came to the word, then said it together.
“My short skirt is a liberation flag in the women’s army,” they read. “I declare these streets, any streets, my vagina’s country.”

snip

But Principal Richard Leprine said Tuesday that the girls were punished because they disobeyed orders, not because of what they said.
The event was open to the community, including children, and the word was not appropriate, Leprine said in a statement. He said the girls had been told when they auditioned that they could not use the word.
Reback said Tuesday that no one in the audience was younger than high school age. “What did we do that was so wrong?” she asked. “We were insubordinate, but the reason we were insubordinate was that we talked about our body.”

Now granted they ‘only’ received a one day in school suspension.

More importantly, they received a monumental life lesson on what it means to be born with a vagina.

Doris Anderson

03/04/2007 by Debra

On March 2nd 2007 Canada lost a brave and noble woman.

Doris Anderson gave voice to those who were afraid to speak, didn’t know what to say or had no one to listen.

She did not sit back and imagine that so called nuanced responses were the way to achieve equality for women. She said what needed to be said, did what needed to be done and encouraged others to do the same.

In 1981 Doris was instrumental in ensuring that women’s equality would be enshrined in the Charter.

Anderson vs. Axworthy
1981: Canada is gripped by an identity crisis after Prime Minister Trudeau says he will add a charter of rights to the country’s constitution.
Women were worried about the Charter, says Anderson: the leaders behind it were all men, and men had a dismal record of defending women’s rights. As chair of the independent federal advisory committee on the status of women, she had already planned a conference that February so women’s groups could collaborate to critique the Charter.
But in January, then Employment Minister Axworthy pressed the committee to delay the conference until June. As reported at the time in the Toronto Star, he said a February conference could embarrass the government since it would be holding its last debate on the Charter at the same time.
Anderson was outraged. She said the committee would lose all credibility as an independent body if the government could manipulate it like this. Also, women had been waiting for months for this chance to influence the debate on the Charter. Delaying the conference until after that debate was finished would make it pointless.
Anderson and five other committee members decided to resign in protest. The conference was cancelled.

[Read more…] about Doris Anderson