When the dignity of one person is denied, all of us are denied

Disabled people in the UK have been under constant attack lately. Whether it's the vast and wide-ranging benefit cuts; Birmingham city council refusing care to people with substantial needs, which has since been ruled unlawful; cuts in Access to Work, ironically when we are being told we should all be getting jobs; or the impending closure of the Independent Living Fund, the hits feel like they are coming from every direction.

But I read about a case a few days ago, Court tells disabled woman: just wet yourself, and it showed me just how government cuts are affecting real people. It is not an 'austerity measure', nor is it 'small government', it is an affront to a woman's dignity and human rights, and we should all be utterly outraged.

Elaine McDonald has just lost a Supreme Court fight for her local council to allow her to continue to have overnight care. Funding was withdrawn by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for the overnight care that Ms McDonald needs to assist her with going to the toilet during the night, and the council instead gave her some incontinence pads, stating that this was cheaper.

Elaine McDonald is not incontinent! And she, quite rightly, objects to being asked to lie in bed for 12 hours at a time (since her care has been cut), in her own waste. She needs to go to the toilet regularly due to a bladder dysfunction, and complained that providing pads instead of care caused a lack of dignity and independence.

Can you imagine if you were at work and your boss stated that bathroom breaks were wasting time and money, and that it would be cheaper for the company to provide everyone with incontinence pads instead? If you weren't on an authorised break then you could just use the pad instead, and sit in it until you were permitted to go? And Elaine McDonald is in her own home - of course, moving to a care home instead would cost the council considerably more.

Even in purely economic terms this is a questionable decision. The lack of mobility which she will now experience, and the potential infections from spending night after night in your own faeces and urine, could cause significantly worsened health and social problems, which would increase the cost of her care significantly. And some people in Ms McDonald's situation may try to go to the bathroom or commode regardless, risking increased falls and, thus, increased health and social care costs again.

But the Supreme Court judges ruled 4-1 that the council had acted lawfully. Judge Lady Hale, the sole judge to rule in Ms McDonald's favour, stated that,

"A person in her situation needs this help during the day as well as during the night and irrespective of whether she needs to urinate or to defecate.

"Logically, the decision of the majority in this case would entitle a local authority to withdraw this help even though the client needed to defecate during the night and thus might be left lying in her faeces until the carers came in the morning.

"Indeed, the majority view would also entitle an authority to withdraw this help during the day."

Of course, incontinent pads in themselves are not bad things. For people who are incontinent, they are invaluable. But Elaine McDonald does not need them and does not want to use them. Nobody should be put in this position, and she was right to challenge it legally. The depressing truth is that the council and courts rated costs over human dignity, and Ms McDonald could be the first victim of many.

And it seems that she is not the only person being challenged on their use of a toilet to save money. According to The Scotsman, "disabled residents at a supported-housing complex have been told to train themselves to go to the toilet at fixed times to fit in with a strict new rota". Is this where the infamous Big Society comes in? You can run libraries, or you can assist disabled people to go to the toilet. Because after all, those who should be providing those services will not bother.

[The image is a photograph of a hand, holding a piece of paper on which is printed, "The budget is killing me!". The photograph is adapted from an original, licensed under a Creative Commons licence, by Steve Rhodes.]

Charter of Rights of Women Seeking Asylum

Asylum Aid has created a Charter of Rights of Women Seeking Asylum.

The way that we are treating these women is appalling. Completely ignoring the trauma they have suffered, we are locking them up or forcing them to beg and sleep rough, without support, healthcare or money.

Asylum Aid have created this video.

Every single woman from Asylum Aid on Vimeo.

They say,

We believe a change of culture designed to produce a genuinely gender sensitive asylum system is urgently needed to ensure that women seeking asylum receive a comparable standard of treatment to women in similar situations who are settled here already.

There is also a campaign briefing available, and they are campaigning so that all member states of the European Union to adopt gender guidance so that women's asylum claims will be dealt with consistently.

(cross-posted at The F Word)

Amanda Knox

I first wrote this for the F Word blog.

Amanda Knox has been convicted of the murder of Meredith Kercher, and if you weren't paying attention, you might believe that she did it alone.

In fact, two men have also been convicted of the murder - one last night and one last year, but they are very much secondary to the story, even though, as far as I can tell, it has never been decided who did the actual killing.

Now, I have not studied the trial or the evidence, and I do not know whether Amanda Knox did or did not kill Meredith Kercher, but I do know that this is seeming to be another legal case where the woman involved is demonised to a degree rarely seen in male defendants.

And the fact that Amanda Knox appears to be a young woman with some confidence in her sexuality has certainly worked against her. That she had condoms and a vibrator in a see-through bag has been widely reported, as some kind of proof that she was deranged enough to kill her housemate in a sex game.

That her nickname is Foxy Knoxy has been repeatedly mentioned, though very few reports tell you that that nickname apparently came about due to her skills on a football field rather than anything more salacious. Because that wouldn't fit the story quite so well.

With the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Maxine Carr has arguably been more slated by the press and public than Ian Huntley, who actually killed the girls. Maxine Carr's crime was to lie to the police by giving Huntley an alibi, and there is no indication that she did so with any knowledge of what he had done.

Amanda Knox even got a longer sentence than Raffaele Sollecito, who was also convicted of Kercher's murder. Issues which seem to have been used against Knox during the trial are so telling about what women are still up against compared to men in these situations.

1. There was a youtube video showing her drunk.
2. She sent an email to a friend saying she had had sex on a train.
3. She wrote a story about a woman being raped and a photo of herself with a machine gun entitled 'the Nazi'.
4. She did cartwheels in the police station while waiting to be questioned.

Now, while the third of these is certainly questionable, and the fourth somewhat odd, the first two are unremarkable, and are in no way legal evidence for murder.

According to the Guardian,

Italians shrug off extramarital sex, yet they are prim in their attitudes to premarital sex, at least outside the stable context of fidanzamento (engagement). They use the same words for boyfriend and fiance.

So many were taken aback to learn that, by the time she was arrested at the age of 20, Knox had had sex with seven men. They were less outraged by how this information was obtained: Knox was told in prison she was HIV-positive and asked to write a list of her lovers. Before she was told that a mistake had been made, the list was passed to investigators, one of whom passed it to a journalist.

The ethics around that 'mistake' are appalling, particularly if it was a tactic to obtain information about her sexual history to use against her during the trial.

Amanda Knox may or may not have committed this murder, and I certainly do not know whether she did. However, two men have also been convicted and rarely even mentioned. That Knox is a woman, and a woman with some sexual history, appears to have damned her.

Not-So-Helpful Advice from Women's Magazines

My fifth guest post at the F Word.

Yesterday while waiting for an appointment, I picked up one of the women's magazines on the waiting room table and started skimming through it to pass the time.

I came across an article entitled '25 health tips women doctors want you to know'. I thought this may be interesting - or at least more interesting than how to emulate the latest look from the latest celeb, so I started to read.

To say it was disappointing is somewhat understating the matter. One tip told me to use moisturiser. Another to walk rather than take the lift. Another to eat plenty of calcium. Then one tip was to buy a vibrator. While this may be good advice, the explanation behind it was infuriating! It said that some men are not good at foreplay, and if this is the case with 'your man', then rather than be frustrated, get a vibrator instead and you won't have any problems any more.

On so many levels, this is dreadful! Firstly, many women are single, many are with women not men. Heterosexist presumptions still prevail everywhere. Secondly, still calling it 'foreplay' separates it from 'sex' as if they are two completely different matters, with one building up to the other rather than it all being one whole experience. And thirdly, if your partner is bad at sex, or does not understand your sexual needs or desires, then that is something to work on with them, have fun exploring and mutually learn about. Saying, 'oh he's not good at that bit' is kinda letting him off the hook, let's face it!

If your male partner was having trouble enjoying sex with you, you can be sure the magazines wouldn't advise you to get him a blow-up doll or simulated vagina, it would tell you 'how to please him' and exactly what you should do to make sure he was happy.

By all means buy a vibrator, and enjoy it. But don't take advice just because it comes from a doctor in a magazine and use it to substitute a partner with good technique rather than talking to that partner about the problem and what you do and don't like.

I very rarely read women's magazines these days, and if I do it tends to be the Chat and Take a Break type when I'm ill, rather than the beauty / fashion ones. But whenever I do look at those - usually in a doctor's waiting room - I see that the same old messages we have always had from them are still there.

A few weeks ago I made some photocopied flyers to surreptitiously slip inside teenage and women's magazines in shops. They counter some of the usual crap messages we get from these publications, and question their content. If you want to get hold of any of these flyers I'd be happy to send you some if you send me an SAE to

Pippa, PO Box 4663, Sheffield, S1 9FN

Alternatively if you want to get any of my zines just let me know when you order that you want some of the magazine flyers and I'll stick some in the envelope for you.

It's small actions like sticking the flyers in the magazines that can actually make a real difference. When we are feeling powerless in the suffocating patriarchy around us, knowing that a woman or girl somewhere who might never have been allowed to challenge the presumptions of heterosexuality, the fascist beauty standards around us or the everywhere-written laws of body hair, who bought that magazine today, may get some relief and empowerment from the words they unexpectedly find stuffed inside, really does help.

I'm Not Like Other Girls

I'm looking for submissions for a one-off zine called I'm Not Like Other Girls.

What I want women and girls to do is to complete the sentence,
"I'm not like other girls because..."

I will make a zine of the responses.

The sentence will appear randomly placed, with all credits at the end, so your sentence and your credit aren't linked. This may help you to be more open, and the zine will flow much better too.

They may be categorised by theme, but that will depend on the submissions.

If you want to contribute, email me at incurable.hippie@googlemail.com

1) Put 'I'm not like other girls' in the subject line.
2) Email me your sentence (I'm not like other girls because...)
3) Tell me if you want to be anonymous.
4) If you want to be credited, tell me how (name / pseudonym, name of zine, etc)
5) If you want to receive a contributors' copy when it's ready, tell me your address too.

I can't guarantee your words will be put in the zine, but it's very likely. I only want submissions from women and girls.

Thanks!

To see more of my zine stuff, go to rebelgrrlzine. New ones to be added next week.

Irene Fernandez Is Acquitted!

I posted yesterday about Dr Irene Fernandez, and have received the fantastic news that she has been acquitted!

source: tenaganita.net

IRENE FERNANDEZ IS ACQUITTED
Monday, 24 November 2008


The Kuala Lumpur High Court has acquitted Dr Irene Fernandez, co-founder and executive director of Tenaganita.

The first words as she was congratulated, Irene said, "I am free! At last I am free!"

A scheduled court appeals hearing, which was to last until Friday 28 November was today ended when Judge Mohamad Apandi Ali gave his decision and set aside her 2003 conviction and reversed the conviction and sentencing.

Minutes later, Irene walked out of the court-room, free at last, saying, “I’m relieved that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.”

“I spoke the truth (and now) the conviction has been set aside,” she added.

It was a day of double surprises. The defence lawyer, M. Puravalen had asked that the motion of appeal stay. Turning the Public Prosecutor Shamsul Sulaiman, the judged then asked if the prosecution opposed the motion.

“Having been served the type-written notes, and having thoughtfully studied the notes, I have decided in the interest of justice, that justice itself would not be served by opposing this appeal.”

“You do not oppose, does that mean that you concede the case?” the judge asked.

“We do not oppose the appeal,” was the quiet reply.

The defence then asked that the conviction and sentence be set aside. The came the final surprise. From the bench, the judge gave his decision. “In the light of the respondent and Public Prosecutor is not opposing the appeal, I set aside and reverse the conviction and sentencing.”

The court room erupted into continuous loud cheers which the judge had to wave down. It has been thirteen long years, too long for anyone to wait to have their name cleared by the courts. But Irene has finally found closure.

Surrounded by her family, friends, colleagues and supporters, Irene said that the rights of defenders must be upheld. Ultimately, it is the people that we work with – migrants and refugees – that have been handed this victory. There is also vindication in the work that Irene does, and the organization that she heads.

Finally, to Ms Moganambal, who is Irene’s defence lawyer – from Irene and Tenaganita –we thank you and we love you.

Dr Irene Fernandez

Dr Irene Fernandez is an amazing woman who has done great work promoting the rights of migrant workers in Malaysia. After publishing an article on the living conditions of these workers, she was arrested for 'maliciously publishing false news' in 1996. She was on trial for 7 years, found guilty in 2003 and imprisoned for a further year. Despite being released after this, her passport is held by the courts and, as a convicted person, she was barred from standing as parliamentary candidate in the 2004 Malaysian elections. Despite her restricted civil rights, she carries on her everyday life and continues her work.

She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize, in 2005.

Her appeal is due to start today, the 24th November 2008, and the petition below is demanding a return of her rights, and those of other human rights defenders.

Please read on, and sign.

From the Global Sisterhood Network.

Dear Friends,

We have drafted a petition letter for Dr. Irene Fernandez's freedom.

Dr. Fernandez is a staunch human rights activist and is the director
and co-founder of Tenaganita, a Malaysian NGO that promotes the rights
and welfare of migrant and agricultural workers. She is also a
Steering Council Member of Pesticide Action Network Asia and the
Pacific (PAN AP) and the People's Coalition on Food Sovereignty
(PCFS), among many organisations. In 2005, she was given the Right
Livelihood Award for "her outstanding and courageous work to stop
violence against women and abuses of migrant and poor workers".

In 1995, Dr. Fernandez published a report on the living conditions of
migrant workers in Malaysia's detention centres. She was charged with
'maliciously publishing false news' against the Malaysian government
in 1996. After seven years of trial, the longest in Malaysian judicial
history, she was found guilty in 2003. She was allowed bail pending
appeal. Her civil rights are now restricted, but she carries on her
everyday life and continues her work.

The trial of Dr. Fernandez will resume on 24th- 28th November, 2008
and this may be the final round of hearings in the High Court in Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia.

We call on organisations, institutions and individuals to support Dr.
Fernandez by signing the petition letter which is addressed to the
Malaysian government and other institutions in Malaysia, and is posted
at foodsov.org/.

By signing the letter, you and your organisation or institution will
appeal for justice and rights of human rights defenders like Dr.
Fernandez and it may give her the freedom to continue her work with
migrant workers as well as helping communities achieve genuine
people's Food Sovereignty.

Please circulate widely.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Norly Grace Mercado
PCFS Secretariat

See also heart's post on Irene.

Penalising the Punters

This is one of the only articles I have found which is positive about Jacqui Smith's proposals to criminalise men who buy sex from women who are controlled by a pimp. She has had to field some real hostility to the proposals and, from what I have seen, has stuck to her arguments and reasoning and is refusing to compromise. Good on her, we need more of that.

These proposals becoming law could make a huge difference to women trafficked, forced and manipulated into prostitution, and would be a great start to creating justice for women in this country.

Penalising the Punters

The home secretary has caused a storm with plans to change prostitution laws. She tells Julie Bindel why she is following the global trend to target men who buy sex

When I meet the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, on Wednesday afternoon, she is at the centre of frenzied press attention. She has just announced planned legislation to target those who buy sex from trafficked women, and though she has been talking about the subject all day, she shows no signs of flagging. She tells me she is "very proud" to have taken this step. I ask what motivated it. "I thought it was important to continue to look at the way in which we tackle prostitution," she says, "and we had not, until this point, looked at the impact demand has made on the sex industry." She explains that demand is one of the main reasons so many women are involved in the sex industry, including those who have been trafficked here to service the market. "We need to send out a message to men and to society in general, that most women do not choose to be in prostitution, whereas the buyers have free choice."

The proposals follow a six-month governmental review of the demand side of the sex trade. It should soon be a criminal offence to pay for sex with someone who is controlled for another person's gain - and it will be no defence for buyers to claim that they were unaware that a person was trafficked, pimped, or debt-bonded to their drug dealer or landlord. Kerb crawlers will also be penalised more than they have been: police currently have few powers to deal with a kerb crawler on a first offence, but the expected new law will remove the need to prove repeat violations. Police will also be given powers to close premises associated with sexual exploitation.

An estimated 80,000 women are involved in street, escort and brothel prostitution in the UK. According to government statistics, 4,000 women and children have been trafficked into prostitution in the UK at any one time, but the police suggest the real figure is far higher - studies have found that at least 70% of women working in UK brothels are trafficked from places such as Africa, Asia and eastern Europe. The fact is that a thriving sex industry, left to operate largely without government or police interference, is naturally a green light for traffickers keen to make easy profits in a welcoming environment.

The proposed new legislation has attracted both approving and angry attention from commentators, but one of the interesting aspects of this move is that it reflects an international trend. Lithuania and Finland both have laws similar to Britain's new approach, making it illegal to pay for sex with a trafficked woman. In Norway - where procuring, pimping and human trafficking are already illegal - the government is in the process of introducing legislation that will outlaw the buying of sex, but not the sale. This follows the lead set by Sweden, which criminalised all buying of sex almost 10 years ago, after a feminist campaign prompted by the suspected murder of a street prostitute called Catrine da Costa. The law prohibiting the purchase of sexual services in Sweden came into force in 1999 as part of the larger Violence Against Women Act, with the parliament defining prostitution as a serious form of male violence against women and children - harmful not only to the individuals involved, but also to society at large.

When this law was introduced, there were an estimated 2,500 women in prostitution in Sweden. Today there are around 500. And what is particularly impressive is that the number of women trafficked into Sweden is now between 200 and 500 a year - the lowest tally in Europe. Some anti-prostitution activists in the UK are disappointed that Smith has not followed Sweden and criminalised paying for sex in all circumstances. I ask why she has taken what might look like a half measure, and she cites a recent Mori poll which found that the majority of people do not support a blanket ban - but well over half agreed that paying for sex with a trafficked woman should be criminalised. "It is best to go with the grain of public opinion," she says, "rather than try to do something which may be met with resistance at this moment."

Another country that has targeted punters is South Korea. Here, the move towards criminalisation began in 2002 after brothel fires in which 14 women died - it transpired that the brothel doors had been locked from the outside by pimps and were only ever opened to allow buyers entry. In 2004 the South Korean government criminalised the demand side of the sex trade, with punters facing a year in jail or a fine if caught paying for sex. This has massively reduced the sex trade in a country where prostitution once brought in an estimated $21bn a year - 4% of the gross domestic product. Now the red light areas are largely deserted, and bed spaces in the many government-funded refuges for former prostitutes are usually full. (The South Korean government has dedicated substantial resources to helping women leave the industry, something Britain has yet to do.)

Even the Dutch - long notorious for their legalised brothels - are moving towards increased regulation of prostitution. For years, the story given by the Dutch was that legalising brothels had been a solution to the myriad problems associated with the sex industry. Then last year, Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen admitted that legalisation had been a failure. "We want in part to reverse it," he said, "especially with regard to the exploitation of women in the sex industry. Lately we've received more and more signals that abuse still continues." Members of the UK government visited Amsterdam in 2007 as part of the demand review, and did not like what they found. "Ministers came back clear that the problems of illegality and abuse are not solved by legalisation," says Smith. "On the contrary, there were still problems with organised crime and trafficking." Many of the Amsterdam brothels where women pose in windows are now being closed by police, as are the street tolerance zones where men could once buy sex without threat of arrest.

As the Netherlands has found, legalisation doesn't seem to be the answer, and the reason for this international push towards criminalisation seems to stem, at least in part, from the experiences of other countries where the sex trade has been liberalised. In 1984, for instance, Victoria was the first Australian state to legalise prostitution, and the main arguments put forward for the move (including by pimps and brothel owners) were that this would sever prostitution from organised crime and make the trade much safer for the women involved.

The reality does not match that early promise, as underlined by the occupational health and safety advice that is handed out to women by states that have legalised the trade. Women are advised to pretend they have a stomach upset if a buyer "insists on anal sex without a condom"; they are told to be careful when injecting local anaesthetic into their vagina, as it can mask more "serious injuries". (The idea that anyone would inject anaesthetic into their vagina is a stark reminder of the trade's brutality.) Then there is the advice that women should "learn basic self-defence", "be aware some clients can be rough" and that, when visiting a buyer's home, they should check for signs of a planned gang-rape, including loud music and too many cars in the drive.

This suggests that legalisation has been far from successful in protecting women's health and safety, and there is also good evidence that it has failed to stop the illegal sex trade. There are about 400 legal brothels in Victoria, and far more illegal ones. This reflects the situation in Nevada, the only US state to legalise brothels, where the illegal prostitution industry is currently nine times larger than the legal one. The fact is that anywhere that liberalises prostitution quickly becomes a prime destination for punters - many more pimps will set up business there than are legally approved.

In the UK, Smith is bracing herself for more criticism from those who consider the new laws part of a "nanny state" approach to government. One man wrote on this newspaper's website that he was so appalled at the legislation that he would never again "vote for a female in ANY election, local or general". Smith laughs at this, and tells me that she believes she is doing the right thing.

"We are trying to get the vast majority of the law-abiding public to help protect vulnerable women," she says. "I am willing to accept that there are women out there who say they have chosen to sell sex, but they are in the minority, and laws are there to protect the majority. In this case, the majority of women in prostitution want to get out, and suffer violence and exploitation. If there are women who have made a free choice, there are more who have had no choice".

Feminist Carnivals

I found out yesterday that my Access to Feminism post, about (dis)ableism in the feminist community has been featured in the 68th Carnival of Feminists. They have randomly called me Penny, but that doesn't matter, it's nice they spotted and included my post. The issue does need to be brought out into the open.

There are some other interesting posts in the Carnival. What a crazy random happenstance talks about Feminist Dealbreakers - what constitutes a 'dealbreaker' in the relationships in her life. Behaviours or attitudes which force an end to a relationship with someone. For her, it can be people who claim to be feminist pro-lifers, for instance.

Reading the post, and the discussion continues in the lengthy comments section, got me thinking. I realised I have different deal-breakers depending on who the person is! Most notably if they are new to my life I deal break quickly and firmly, for instance someone being anti-choice or pro-pornstitution writes them off instantly), whereas people I have known for many years I seem more able to tolerate some of those things. Partly because huge numbers of people from my childhood (half my family, many of my friends), are Roman Catholic and so being 'pro-life' was kind of the default. Hell, I was!!

I guess I feel I can't expect my old friends to change in order to remain friends with me, but I don't have to put myself through trying to make friends with a new person with whom I am fundamentally opposed.

Jill at Womenstake wrote "Pro Life"? Puh-lease! about how misleading the term actually is, when preventing access to family planning, contraceptive and abortion services and products can indeed put lives at risk.

I didn't need to read Is Sarah Palin a Feminist Icon? No she's not. People get this mixed up, like Margaret Thatcher must be one too, for being the first female Prime Minister. No no no no!


NaBloPoMo

Women Deserve Better

Today's the first time in this daily blogging business where I'm really struggling for what to say.

It's only day 6 so I hope this doesn't continue! I did today's photography blog post this morning, but it's here on hippie blog post I'm having trouble with, mainly because I feel entirely lacking in words.

There are plenty of subjects available, it's the actual writing about them that's the problem.

So for today, I will let someone else's words do the talking, originally seen on the f word blog.




NaBloPoMo

Eve Ensler on Sarah Palin

Drill, Drill, Drill*

I am having Sarah Palin nightmares. I dreamt last night that she was
a member of a club where they rode snowmobiles and wore the claws of
drowned and starved polar bears around their necks. I have a
particular thing for Polar Bears. Maybe it's their snowy whiteness
or their bigness or the fact that they live in the arctic or that I
have never seen one in person or touched one. Maybe it is the fact
that they live so comfortably on ice. Whatever it is, I need the
polar bears.

I don't like raging at women. I am a Feminist and have spent my life
trying to build community, help empower women and stop violence
against them. It is hard to write about Sarah Palin. This is why the
Sarah Palin choice was all the more insidious and cynical. The
people who made this choice count on the goodness and solidarity of
Feminists. But everything Sarah Palin believes in and practices is
antithetical to Feminism which for me is part of one story --
connected to saving the earth, ending racism, empowering women,
giving young girls options, opening our minds, deepening tolerance,
and ending violence and war.

I believe that the McCain/Palin ticket is one of the most dangerous
choices of my lifetime, and should this country chose those
candidates the fall-out may be so great, the destruction so vast in
so many areas that America may never recover. But what is equally
disturbing is the impact that duo would have on the rest of the
world. Unfortunately, this is not a joke. In my lifetime I have seen
the clownish, the inept, the bizarre be elected to the presidency
with regularity.

Sarah Palin does not believe in evolution. I take this as a
metaphor. In her world and the world of fundamentalists nothing
changes or gets better or evolves. She does not believe in global
warming. The melting of the arctic, the storms that are destroying
our cities, the pollution and rise of cancers, are all part of God's
plan. She is fighting to take the polar bears off the endangered
species list. The earth, in Palin's view, is here to be taken and
plundered. The wolves and the bears are here to be shot and
plundered. The oil is here to be taken and plundered. Iraq is here
to be taken and plundered. As she said herself of the Iraqi war, "It
was a task from God."

Sarah Palin does not believe in abortion. She does not believe women
who are raped and incested and ripped open against their will should
have a right to determine whether they have their rapist's baby or
not. She obviously does not believe in sex education or birth
control. I imagine her daughter was practicing abstinence and we
know how many babies that makes.

Sarah Palin does not much believe in thinking. From what I gather
she has tried to ban books from the library, has a tendency to
dispense with people who think independently. She cannot tolerate an
environment of ambiguity and difference. This is a woman who could
and might very well be the next president of the United States . She
would govern one of the most diverse populations on the earth.

Sarah believes in guns. She has her own custom Austrian hunting
rifle. She has been known to kill 40 caribou at a clip. She has shot
hundreds of wolves from the air.

Sarah believes in God. That is of course her right, her private
right. But when God and Guns come together in the public sector,
when war is declared in God's name, when the rights of women are
denied in his name, that is the end of separation of church and
state and the undoing of everything America has ever tried to be.

I write to my sisters. I write because I believe we hold this
election in our hands. This vote is a vote that will determine the
future not just of the U.S. , but of the planet. It will determine
whether we create policies to save the earth or make it forever
uninhabitable for humans. It will determine whether we move towards
dialogue and diplomacy in the world or whether we escalate violence
through invasion, undermining and attack. It will determine whether
we go for oil, strip mining, coal burning or invest our money in
alternatives that will free us from dependency and destruction. It
will determine if money gets spent on education and healthcare or
whether we build more and more methods of killing. It will determine
whether America is a free open tolerant society or a closed place of
fear, fundamentalism and aggression.

If the Polar Bears don't move you to go and do everything in your
power to get Obama elected then consider the chant that filled the
hall after Palin spoke at the RNC, "Drill Drill Drill." I think of
teeth when I think of drills. I think of rape. I think of
destruction. I think of domination. I think of military exercises
that force mindless repetition, emptying the brain of analysis,
doubt, ambiguity or dissent. I think of pain.

Do we want a future of drilling? More holes in the ozone, in the
floor of the sea, more holes in our thinking, in the trust between
nations and peoples, more holes in the fabric of this precious thing
we call life?

Eve Ensler

September 5, 2008

Imagine A Woman by Patricia Lynn Reilly

Imagine a Woman

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honours her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past's influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honours the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine a woman who is interested in her own life.
A woman who embraces her life as teacher, healer, and challenge.
Who is grateful for the ordinary moments of beauty and grace.

Imagine a woman who participates in her own life.
A woman who meets each challenge with creativity.
Who takes action on her own behalf with clarity and strength.

Imagine a woman who has crafted a fully-formed solitude.
A woman who is available to herself.
Who chooses friends and lovers with the capacity to respect her solitude.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the full range of human emotion.
A woman who expresses her feelings clearly and directly.
Who allows them to pass through her as naturally as the breath.

Imagine a woman who tells the truth.
A woman who trusts her experience of the world and expresses it.
Who refuses to defer to the thoughts, perceptions, and responses of others.

Imagine a woman who follows her creative impulses.
A woman who produces original creations.
Who refuses to colour inside someone else’s lines.

Imagine a woman who has relinquished the desire for intellectual safety and approval.
A woman who makes a powerful statement with every action she takes.
Who asserts to herself the right to reorder the world.

Imagine a woman who has grown in knowledge and love of herself.
A woman who has vowed faithfulness to her own life.
Who remains loyal to herself. Regardless.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

Designer Vaginas

I'm watching a documentary called The Perfect Vagina, about the rising trend of women having cosmetic surgery on their vaginas.

It is the fastest growing area of cosmetic surgery, and seems to be predominantly due to women's concerns about the size of their labia minora. In a medical research paper referenced in the programme, we learn that labia minora range in size from 20mm to 100mm, so naturally there is a lot of variation, but it seems that the vaginas we see, especially in porn, are 'perfect' and contained and neat, with small labia minoras, and this is making many women insecure. To the point of wanting surgery to reduce theirs.

Girls of 14, 15 and 16 are enquiring about the surgery, and the numbers seeking it are unprecedented.

The operation is called a labiaplasty and it is done under local anaesthetic, the woman being awake while her labia are sliced off. It can take three months for the vagina to recover after surgery.

The presenter, Lisa Rogers was clearly moved and alarmed by the attitudes she came across, from women, from men and from medical professionals. We also saw her own changes throughout the film.

She continually wanted women to love their bodies, and their vaginas, and could see clearly that cutting bits off and stitching bits up was not any kind of answer to the problem of us feeling so pressurised by our pornified society that even intimate parts of our bodies do not look 'right' and must be brutally modified.

The whole programme made me incredibly sad. It strikes me that hating our vaginas is yet another way that our patriarchal society infiltrates our minds and destroys women. Piece by piece.

So, so wrong

in so many different ways...

Impossible Babe of the Day.

Do we go with the political? Having a 'babe of the day' at all?
The technical? That photoshopping is appalling - her back would break and her shadow actually has a stomach.
Back to the political? What on earth are we telling women and girls about how they should look?
Back to the technical? What the hell happened?

Gah!

'I was seen as an object, not a person'

"I was seen as an object, not a person" | Lifeandstyle | Life and Health

Lap-dancing clubs are advertised as exclusive, glamorous entertainment for 'gentlemen'. As a former dancer tells Rachel Bell, the reality for the women who work in them is both degrading and dangerous

Wednesday March 19, 2008
The Guardian

Lap-dancing clubs
'Just by being there you're acknowledging that you are something the men can pick and choose from.'

Weeks after moving into a new flat, Elena [not her real name] learned that her temping contract was to be cut short - she had to find money to cover the rent as quickly as possible. She had recently met a woman who worked as a lap-dancer, which had reassured her that it "wasn't too dangerous. It made it seem normal." For the next six months, Elena worked for one of the many lap-dancing chains that assures customers that they are "gentlemen", paying for an "exclusive" experience. During that period, any sense that she had had of lap-dancing as just another job was laid firmly to rest.


It wasn't only the earning potential that led Elena to try lap-dancing - she now believes that she, and women in general, are socialised to see it as an inviting occupation. "I thought, well, I'm a sex object anyway, I might as well have it out on the table. It was as though I felt I couldn't do anything else. Everywhere I look I'm being told that my main source of power is my sexual power, my body is the best thing I have to offer and so to use those things in your job is empowering. But sexual power isn't power. It's meaningless in the real world."

Lap-dancing reinforced all Elena's negative beliefs about herself and about men. "The men just see you as an object, not a person, and whether you are equally engaged in their desire is irrelevant. Increasingly, you learn to despise the men because of the way they perceive you. Lap-dancing is about creating a situation whereby the men feel they are doing you a favour - that's the way the game is set up, so all the power is with the customer." She believes that for men who visit lap-dancing clubs, enjoyment derives primarily from handing over the money, not from the dance itself.

Rather than being a lucrative job, in her experience, as soon as a woman starts working at one of the clubs, it costs her money. "You pay 'rent' to the club just to be there and if you can persuade someone to buy a dance, you get £20 - about 20% of which the club takes. Then there are the fines - £10 if you miss your turn to pole dance, if you're late, you're wearing the wrong shoes or you break the rules. There are so many ways to make money from you. You are constantly trying to make as much money as possible out of everybody, otherwise you are literally paying to be there.

"The club management take on more women than are needed in a night so it really becomes dog eat dog. Quite often I made nothing. There were a lot of nights when I would have taken money out and come home with less." The most Elena made in a night was £205. "I love talking to people, but to make any money you really have to act stupid, admire their tie, massage their ego for hours. I could never go to work as anything near myself and that becomes damaging."

The message that working in the sex industry is normal, exciting - sometimes even empowering - is a popular one in our culture. Over the past few years, lap-dancing clubs have proliferated, branding themselves as a respectable part of the leisure industry. At the end of last year, Larry Flynt, the founder of Hustler magazine, opened his first British lap-dancing club in Croydon; Manchester has its first student lap-dancing bar, the Ruby Lounge, and a former stripper has been shown giving a topless lap-dance on Big Brother. Music videos by mainstream artists including Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams and Justin Timberlake, have featured lap-dancing or pole dancing, while job centres advertise lap-dancing jobs alongside the more usual calls for human resources managers and chefs.

Yet academic research has linked lap-dancing to trafficking, prostitution and an increase in male sexual violence against both the women who work in the clubs and those who live and work in their vicinity. A recent conference in Ireland highlighted the use of lap-dance clubs by human traffickers as a tool for grooming women into prostitution; the clubs also normalise the idea of paying for sexual services. And a report by the Lilith Project, run by the charity Eaves Housing, which looked at lap-dancing in Camden Town, north London, found that in the three years before and after the opening of four large lap-dancing clubs in the area, incidents of rape in Camden rose by 50%, while sexual assault rose by 57%.

One factor in the proliferation of these clubs is the 2003 Licensing Act which introduced the one-size-fits-all premises licence, meaning that strip clubs are no longer required to get special permission for nudity. The campaign group, Object, which is launching its Lap-Dance Challenge on April 22, wants legislation changed to classify lap-dancing clubs as "sex encounter establishments" and recognise them as part of the sex industry, which would allow local authorities to regulate them as such. Following round-table meetings with supportive MPs and local authorities, it is working to put forward a bill in the Commons.

Sandrine Levêque, advocacy officer at Object, says: "Ten years ago, a handful of lap-dancing clubs operated in the UK. Today that figure is well over 300, according to industry sources. This has been facilitated by liberalisation of the law, which licenses them in the same way as pubs and cafes, and not for what they really are."

The Fawcett Society and the Lilith Project are also calling for tighter controls on lap-dance clubs. In its 2007 report, Inappropriate Behaviour: Adult Venues and Licensing in London, the Lilith Project showed how current licensing policy helps to foster the illusion that all women are sexually available, in a culture in which a rape is reported every 34 minutes, and 26% of people believe that an "inappropriately" dressed woman is "asking for it".

Elena supports the calls for a change in licensing legislation. "I live in a country with unbelievable levels of rape, where two women die every week because they are murdered by their partners ... For me, I suppose, the question is always, why would you want somebody to take their clothes off for you when you know that they don't really fancy you, when you know it isn't what they really want to do?"

The sex industry doesn't just tell lies about women. One of its biggest lies is that it is positive for men. Statistics show that addiction to the porn and sex industries is the third biggest cause of debt in the UK, while sex and relationship therapists are seeing an increase in the number of men suffering from sex addiction. Does Elena think lap-dancing is damaging to men too? "Stag do's, in particular, made me think there must be a lot of crossed wires about it," she says. "I think men are fed just as much bullshit about their sexual identity as women are ... I don't think that it makes anybody happier".

One body of research on strip clubs in the US found that all dancers had suffered verbal harassment and physical and sexual abuse while at work; all had been propositioned for prostitution; and three-quarters had been stalked by men associated with the club.

Was Elena ever verbally abused, or propositioned for prostitution? "Just by being there," she says, "you're acknowledging that you are something that they can pick and choose from, in that dehumanising way. A lot of men are totally blunt, and will say 'I like bigger tits than you've got', or 'How much for a blowjob?' Sometimes men try to persuade you to go back to their houses or to a hotel room for sex. There's a lot of blurring of the understanding of what it is you're supposed to be doing and whether you're actually a prostitute.

"The clubs maintain a veneer of no touching, but touching is more standard than not," she continues. "If I had a boyfriend now and he said he was going to a lap-dancing club, I would consider it to be infidelity. The fact is that if you break the rules, you make more money. If one dancer starts breaking the rules then the pressure is on others to do the same. Otherwise a bloke would think, Well, that dancer charged me £20 and stayed three feet away, but that one charged me just the same and she put her breasts in my mouth and sat on my crotch. Once you've been there a while, you learn that certain things are profitable, and no contact is the first rule you learn to break. Eventually you start to wonder, what is the difference between me and a prostitute?"

Oddly, men who pay a naked woman for a sexual service in a lap-dancing club do not see themselves as "johns", she says. "It's seen as a totally respectable thing for a man to do. Yet I don't feel it's something I'd put on my CV. The respectability is very one-sided."

Elena doesn't believe that lap-dancing is about sex, instead, she says,"It fosters sexual violence. It is damaging even if people are doing it voluntarily. I chose it and that's part of the problem. Even if lap-dancers did make loads of money, it would be irrelevant - paying a lot for something doesn't make it all right. The point about lap-dancing clubs is to ask what they represent culturally and what they do to all of us, not just women working in them".

One reason that Elena stuck with the job was other people's perceptions of it. "The reality didn't matter as long as I could pretend [to myself] that other people thought it was interesting, glamorous or sexy. It's hard to say, 'I am shocked by the reality of it, I do feel degraded, but I need to pay the rent and gas bill'." Research shows that the majority of women become lap-dancers through poverty and lack of choice. "There was definitely a hope among the people who worked there that one day someone would come in who would just pay them loads of money and 'rescue' them," says Elena. "Cinderella thinking, if you like. There were single mothers, nurses - it wasn't what you might think. Some of these women had a whole other career but, for whatever reason, they needed to supplement their income. Some of the nurses would come in knackered after a day on A&E, strip till two in the morning and then go home."

Elena wishes to remain anonymous for self-protection. "The shadowy world behind some clubs is not something that you would want to go up against," she says. "You just know that instinctively." What finally made her leave? "I began to sort myself out a bit and realised that it was a crazy thing to do. I could never be myself. I just suddenly thought, Oh, there are loads of things I could do other than this. This is really shit. I'm going home."

Straw sacrifices prostitution law to ban strikes by prison staff | Politics | The Guardian

Straw sacrifices prostitution law to ban strikes by prison staff

The government last night dropped key parts of its criminal justice and immigration bill, including a crackdown on prostitution, to ensure that powers banning prison officers going on strike are rushed on to the statute book by May 8.

The justice secretary, Jack Straw, is also sacrificing a proposal which would have barred the appeal court quashing convictions on a technicality in cases where there was "no reasonable doubt" about the defendant's guilt. It stirred strong opposition in the legal world where it was seen as incursion on the discretion of judges.

The bill would have introduced a programme of "compulsory rehab" for those involved in prostitution and removed the pre-Victorian term of "common prostitute" from the statute book which ministers said was widely regarded as stigmatising and offensive.

Women who were persistently found to be involved in loitering and soliciting were to attend compulsory drug and alcohol rehabilitation courses instead of being fined. If they failed to attend at least three meetings of the course they could face up to 72 hours detention before being brought before a court.

Women's groups, penal reformers and probation officers said women would be locked up simply for missing meetings.

Ministers said the changes were a way of providing women with an "exit strategy" from the sex trade and were the only legislative proposals to emerge from a review of the laws surrounding prostitution carried out in 2003.

The term "common prostitute" dates back to the 1824 Vagrancy Act and a public consultation showed that it is now widely regarded as offensive.

The Ministry of Justice last night said it was withdrawing the prostitution and criminal appeal provisions of the bill to ensure the legislation received royal assent by May 8, when a voluntary no-strike agreement with the Prison Officers' Association will lapse 12 months after the union gave notice it wanted to end it.

A ministry spokesman said: "We are taking this action to ensure that legal protection is in place in the event of further industrial action destabilising the prison estate, as was witnessed on August 29 last year. We must take this action in order to meet our duty to protect the public."

A special delegates conference of the POA on February 19 gave the union executive a mandate to take action, including a strike, and a mandate not to sign a new no-strike agreement. Straw was prepared to sacrifice key parts of his criminal justice bill yesterday to ensure that there was no gap between the voluntary agreement lapsing and the introduction of the statutory ban on industrial action taking effect.

The bill was the 55th criminal justice bill since Labour came to power in 1997 and would have created 19 new criminal offences on top of the 3,000 created in the past decade.

Justice for rape victims

Justice for rape victims

Please add your signature to the open letter at the link above, addressed to Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary.

Every 34 minutes a rape is reported to the police in the United Kingdom. Thousands more victims do not come forward.

Yet women are being failed by the criminal justice system, and left with nowhere to turn for support. We need your help to make a difference.

Please add your signature, and we will present the letter to her after the end of the campaign on 8th March, International Women's Day.

If you have any problems signing online, please email your name and organisation (if appropriate) to petition@fawcettsociety.org.uk or call us on 020 7253 2598 and we will add your name to the letter.

Petition:
Dear Home Secretary

Every 34 minutes a rape is reported to the police in the United Kingdom. Thousands more victims do not come forward.

Yet despite the scale of the problem, the Government has failed to provide the support that women want and need. The few remaining rape crisis centres are at risk of closing due to inadequate and insecure funding, and the vast majority of women in the UK have nowhere to turn to for support in their local area.

Not only are women who have been raped denied access to support, they are also denied access to justice. Only one out of every twenty rapes reported to the police results in a conviction, with less than one in five rapes even leading to a prosecution. This failure to bring rapists to justice amounts to a near ‘licence to rape’.

Money must be invested in support services without delay, so that every area has a fully-funded rape crisis centre, while the Government must take immediate steps to ensure that real improvements are made in criminal justice practice, so that every case is properly investigated.

The Government must do more for victims of rape. We call on you to give this issue the political priority that it deserves.

Disgraceful!

A terminally ill Ghanaian woman has been removed from hospital in Wales to be deported, because her Visa had run out. I'm so disgusted with my country's lack of care, humanity and basic respect.

Cancer Patient Loses Visa Battle
A Ghanaian woman who came to the UK five years ago and became a student is being flown back to the African country, despite being terminally ill.

Ama Sumani was taken by immigration officers from a Cardiff hospital where she has been receiving dialysis for a year after cancer damaged her kidneys.

Ms Sumani, 39, whose visa has expired, said she cannot afford care in Ghana.

Her solicitor said they had pleaded compassionate grounds. The Home Office said it examined each case "with care".

Before leaving, she had been comforted by a nurse in a day-room at the University Hospital of Wales.

The immigration service arrived at 0800 GMT.

Ms Sumani was tearful but calm when she left hospital in a wheelchair with five immigration officials, one carrying her suitcase, and she was driven away.

She left on a flight from Heathrow to Ghana at 1435 GMT.

The cancer she is suffering from - malignant myeloma - would ordinarily be treated with a bone marrow transplant, but she was not entitled to the treatment.

The dialysis treatment she has been receiving is helping to prolong her life and her last treatment was on Tuesday evening.

Legal status

But it needs to be repeated regularly and there are concerns she would not be able to access dialysis treatment centres in Ghana.

Health care there is also private but Ms Sumani said she could not afford it.

A spokesman for Ghana's high commission in London said the country had two fully-equipped hospitals in Accra and further north in Kumasi.

He did concede that access to treatment was costly but said that if Ms Sumani was a member of the Ghana national health insurance scheme she would still receive treatment.

A friend Janet Simmons said Ms Sumani was a widow and a mother of two children, who were currently being looked after by members of her church in Ghana.

She first came to the UK as a visitor in 2003, but then changed her status to student and attempted to enrol on a banking course at a city college, her solicitor explained.

Ms Sumani's lack of English prevented her from pursuing the course and she went to find work which contravened her student visa.

In 2005 she returned to Ghana to attend a memorial service for her dead husband.

But when she came back to the UK her student visa was revoked and she was only given temporary admission which effectively meant she was given notice she would be removed, her solicitor said.

She did not keep in touch with immigration officials and was first taken ill in January 2006. Without the dialysis doctors fear she only has weeks to live.

Her solicitor said she accepted her removal was fair but said they had made representations on her behalf on compassionate grounds.

Ms Sumani is being removed from the country rather than deported because of her expired visa which means she has no legal status in the UK.

A removal means that in theory she could apply to return to the UK in the future.

A spokesman for the Border and Immigration agency said said it would not remove from the UK anyone who they believe is at risk on their return.

"Part of our consideration when a person is removed is their fitness to travel and whether the necessary medical treatment is available in the country to which we are returning," he added.

"Removals are always carried out in the most sensitive way possible, treating those being removed with courtesy and dignity." (my emphasis. Bastards)

Women and Pensions (UK)

Because women often need to take breaks from our careers, to have children or because of caring responsibilities, it's quite common for us to lose out on a state pension due to lack of National Insurance contributions.

So, as a service to the women of Britain aged over 60, I'm sharing this article from the fab Money Saving Expert site.

Are you a woman over 60 who doesn't get a state pension?
Are you a woman over 60 who doesn’t get a state pension? Get £1000s back
What's this about?

A parliamentary question by a Lib Dem MP has shown that many women in their 60s are unnecessarily missing out on the state pension. To get a pension you need to have paid national insurance for 10 years of your working life; around 750,000 women are believed to be very near, but just under, this threshold.

By offering to pay a few £100, if you're near the threshold you can start to get the basic pension of £87 a week, and get a backdated payout from your 60th birthday, which is likely to be £1000s.

The reason I write 'offering' is actually you won't need to pay them money - it can just be taken from your payout. E.g you need to pay £340 of National Insurance to get your entitlement; and then you're owed £2000 back pay. The £340 then just comes out of the back pay.

Who's affected?

Women most likely to be affected are those that have paid some national insurance contributions but may have taken a break to have children, and not quite met the 10 year contribution quota to get a pension. But if you're a woman over 60 and aren't withdrawing a state pension, check now.

How to check

The quickest way to check is to call the National Insurance Deficiency Helpline on 0845 915 5996.

Explain your situation and ask how far off the required national insurance contributions you are to get a pension. You won't actually need to part with any money; the top-up contributions will simply be deducted from the backdated pension you are owed.

What you need to find out is

A. How much more national insurance must I pay to get a pension?
B. How much will the pension be each week?
C. How much will I get backdated?

Assuming the benefit of B and C outweigh A.... go for it!

Will I lose benefits elsewhere if I draw a pension?

Drawing a pension may affect other means-tested benefits, but this differs case by case. The best thing to do is follow the steps above to check whether you may be eligible and if it's worth it.

Also if you are married, have a husband more than 5 years older than you and are drawing a pension on his contributions you're unlikely to benefit.

More information

This was first reported on BBC Radio 4 by the Moneybox team... if you're looking at this it's well worth reading the article and listening to the audio.

Read the BBC article: Pension Boost For Older Women
Listen to Radio 4: MoneyBox Item on this pension boost

Evans

I saw a TV ad for Evans earlier, and none of the models could have been more than a size 14, I'm sure. Given that this is a clothes shop for women of sizes 16 upwards, going up to size 28 or 30 I think, that is crap!

I wasn't represented. It didn't make me want to shop there because they have clothes for bigger women.

It made me feel like 'there's yet another shop who designs their clothes for thin people' when they are the only high street shop who supposedly don't!

Who are they supposed to be selling to? Big women? Why not use them in their bloody ads then?

Grrr.