feminist blogs

Lynsay Skiba is the Reigle Human Rights Fellow at Justice Now. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where she focused her studies on human rights law.

Many people who are pregnant inside California’s women’s prisons experience some form of mistreatment on a daily basis: they are deprived of basic information about their pregnancy; they lack access to responsive and consistent medical and mental health care; they endure degrading treatment at the hands of some prison staff; they lack control over important lifestyle choices impacting pregnancy such as diet and physical activity; and they are forced to cope with the prospect of being separated form their newborn shortly after birth, in some cases permanently.

Driving this mistreatment is the prison system’s apathetic and punishment-driven approach toward people in prison and their medical and mental health needs. What this means is that while people in women’s prisons who do not experience physical or mental problems during their pregnancies may receive treatment and experience medical outcomes that are unremarkable by accepted medical standards, those who have physical complications, mental health problems, or who choose to challenge their treatment are vulnerable to serious consequences, including death.

Using a participatory model of human rights documentation, Justice Now partners with those most impacted by these issues – people inside the two state prisons that house pregnant people – to expose pregnancy-related abuses through an international human rights framework. Together we have found that these prisons consistently violate the human rights to family, information, health, bodily integrity, dignified treatment, life, and the right to be free from cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Phyllis Schlafly, who is set to receive an honorary degree from Washington University this week has reiterated her support of marital rape. (Because, sorry, if you think that women who have gotten married have don't have a right to refuse sex - you are supporting rape.)

In an interview with Washington University's student newspaper, Schlafly held her anti-woman ground:

Could you clarify some of the statements that you made in Maine last year about martial rape?

I think that when you get married you have consented to sex. That's what marriage is all about, I don't know if maybe these girls missed sex ed. That doesn't mean the husband can beat you up, we have plenty of laws against assault and battery. If there is any violence or mistreatment that can be dealt with by criminal prosecution, by divorce or in various ways. When it gets down to calling it rape though, it isn't rape, it's a he said-she said where it's just too easy to lie about it.

Was the way in which your statement was portrayed correct?

Yes. Feminists, if they get tired of a husband or if they want to fight over child custody, they can make an accusation of marital rape and they want that to be there, available to them.

So you see this as more of a tool used by people to get out of marriages than as legitimate-

Yes, I certainly do.

Find out how can you can contact Washington University about this honorary degree nonsense here.

Via Right Wing Watch.

The above picture is from an anti-female genital mutilation campaign by the AMAM, Association of Women against Genital Mutilation. The copy reads: "More than 140 million women in the world are condemned to feel nothing." You know, like a blow-up doll.

I'm all for raising awareness about FGM, but this campaign really rubs the wrong way. It reduces women to their body parts and the issue to just a sexual one. Using a blowup doll to depict a woman who has undergone FGM is incredibly offensive - they're literally being portrayed as no longer human, just a sex toy. Not only is the ad dehumanizing, it also suggests that FGM is all about sex - that women who have undergone FGM will never enjoy sex and that a woman who is no longer sexual is no longer, well...a woman. What do you think?

For more information on FGM, you can go to Amnesty International, the Female Genital Cutting Education and Networking Project, and this report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Related: FGM was named in the Beijing Platform for Action - a declaration and action items adopted at the Fourth World Conference on Women - as a form of violence against women to be eliminated.

Via BoingBoing.

Check out this comprehensive new report by the Women & Girls Collective Action Network, comprised of 16 organizations in Chicago, about ending violence against women "with a focus on women of color, youth, queer and trans youth, women with disabilities, young women in the sex trade, among others." The report includes info on...

how groups have broadened their definitions of violence, rethought the roles of survivors and perpetrators, and identified systems of oppression as root causes of violence. Rather than copy the structures of the mainstream nonprofit system, many of these groups are creating new structures and negotiating older ones.

examples of how groups are building safe communities within the movement, responding to acts of violence within social justice communities, and grappling with the non-profit industrial complex.

strategies to end violence, including how to create community conversations, organize communities, use arts and performance, develop popular education, incorporate harm reduction, and partner with men.

Thanks to Ann Russo of DePaul U. for the heads up.

It's stories like these that make me doubt the idea that people are basically good. (Trigger warning)

Melissa Bruen was sexually assaulted on the University of Connecticut campus while a group of men cheered. Even more distressing is that the assault was retribution for fighting back against another man who was assaulting her.

On a weekend night, Bruen was walking home along a campus trail (actually known as "the rape trail" if you can believe that hit), when she was "picked up by [her] shoulders, pinned up against the pole and 'dry humped' by a stranger."

At first I thought it was one of my friends' attempt at humor, until I heard the man moaning.

I hung up the phone, and shoved the man off me. I am 5'5". He was around 5'11".

"My, aren't we feisty tonight," he said.

I was assaulted when I was very young - I wasn't about to let it happen again. When he came toward me, I grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him down to the ground. I held onto his shoulders and climbed on top to straddle him. He started thrashing side to side, but I was able to hit him with a closed fist, full force, in the face.

A small crowd had gathered, mostly men. Now they seemed shocked. I was supposed to have been a victim, and I was breaking out of the mold. I hit him in the stomach, while clenching my legs around him to prevent another man from pushing me off. In all, it took three men to pull me off my assailant.

He got up and ran off, yelling at me, as if I were the would-be rapist.

Bruen started yelling, "You just assaulted me...He just assaulted me." Instead of coming to her aid, a group gathered around her.

Another man, around 6'1", approached me and said, "You think that was assault?" and he pulled down my tube top, and grabbed my breasts. More men started to cheer. It didn't matter to the drunken mob that my breasts were being shown or fondled against my will. They were happy to see a topless girl all the same. I punched him in the face, and someone shoved me into a throng of others. I was surrounded, but I kept swinging and hitting until I was able to break free of the circle they had formed.

If this doesn't ruin your day, I don't know what will. Though I have to say, I'm grateful to Bruen for sharing her story. Given how prevalent victim-blaming is, writing an article about your assault is no small thing.

What's truly incredible about this story is how it really dismantles the idea that teaching women to protect themselves (via self-defense, specifically) is truly effective. As Melissa points out, "Bruen did everything that she was supposed to do, but instead of being hailed a hero for pummeling someone who sexually assaulted her, she was further assaulted for her trouble." (Make sure to read Melissa's full post by the way.) This isn't to say that I think women shouldn't learn self-defense or fight back against assault - on the contrary, I think they should if that's what's best for them. But it's not an answer to rape culture (in which a crowd of people can stand and fucking cheer as a woman is being assaulted) - and that's what we need to be fighting back against.

Again, big kudos to Bruen for - as she puts it - "get[ting] a few good swings in." Not only against her assailants, but against a culture that would have her silenced.

Talk about a fucking depressing statistic.

The British public gives more to a Devon-based donkey sanctuary than the most prominent charities trying to combat violence and abuse against women, a report released today by a leading philanthropy watchdog reveals.

New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) has calculated that more than 7 million women have been affected by domestic violence but found that Refuge, the Women's Aid Federation and Eaves Housing for Women have a combined annual income of just £17m. By contrast the Donkey Sanctuary, which has looked after 12,000 donkeys, received £20m in 2006.

Justine Järvinen, the author of the report, said, "As a society we are not spending enough on this issue whether through charities or the government...Violence against women appears regularly as the subject of media reports and in the storylines of soap operas but rarely does it come up in normal conversation, which suggests there is a stigma around it. The truth is it is very common."

Warning: This video is graphic and upsetting.

Current TV is featuring this short documentary on breast ironing in Cameroon - a practice that about 1 in 4 girls in the country are subject to.

This is from Wayout TV, a project of Damon Wayans'. I'm almost speechless. (Almost.) When will people realize that violence against women isn't fucking funny? Not to mention the fact that violence against women increases during pregnancy. So, yeah. Hilarious.

Thanks to Rachel for the link.

But I find this really disturbing.

It's not the first hyper-masculine, sexist ad the show has run (see after the jump), but this over the top. While it does seem like Henry IIX's character is also sexualized in other ads and the show (the series itself seems to exude sex), spousal strangulation is just not screaming "hot" to me.

(The picture actually makes me wonder if it's a precursor to Anne Boleyn's beheading, which would make it even more unsettling; although I tend to doubt SHO is trying to incorporate historical cues into their marketing.)

I'm really curious to know how fans of the show feel about this image.

A forewarning: This is about as bad as it gets.

A Maryland man with bipolar disorder with a history of suicide attempt murdered his children this weekend after a court refused to submit a permanent restraining order requested by their mother partly because she was still "having sex" with him in fear for her and her childrens' lives.

While the psychologist's report claiming that Mark Castillo was not someone of harm to his children was a factor in the decision, Amy Castillo said that her husband told her "the worst thing he could do to me would be to kill the children and not me so I could live without them," which she wrote in the petition for the order.

Nonetheless, Judge Joseph A. Dugan Jr. said, "I am not satisfied that indeed there is clear and convincing evidence of abuse in this case." And brought up the fact that Amy continued to "have sex" with her husband, including "twice on the day he allegedly talked about killing the children," despite Castillo testifying that she was - very understandably - scared of him and worried that if she didn't, he would suspect she was taking action against him.

This is beyond horrid. To discredit a woman for being raped to save her and her childrens' lives is unbelievably heinous. I wonder if Dugan has that on his conscience now that her children are dead. Fucking horrible.

Thanks to Sarah for the tip, who is from the same neighborhood.