— Eddie Perfect in his Letter to the Woman Who Changed My Life in Women of Letters.
Because who doesn’t want to break out into dance on day three of their period? (via Mama Mia)
Feminism, in my view at least, should not use the power of institutions, including the state, to protect women from the right to make up their own minds. Equality must both redress gender biases and redistribute power so we all take on our share of responsibilities as well as rights. Setting up women as needing protection from male-driven sins means denying the role of Eve as the tempting source of knowledge. As an unbeliever, I quote these archetypes to illustrate my objections to some forms of so-called conservative feminism. It is not feminist to infantilise women by removing our right to make the wrong choices.
We need to recognise that all genders have similar capacities to make good and bad choices and need similar conditions in which to make them. While I am no fan of sexploitation, of objectifying and commodifying human beings, I do not see tactics of censorship and banning of particular manifestations as useful. Emphasising women as victims also contributes to gender-based biases in political thinking.
"—
Eva Cox speaks out with her ever-intelligent mind on who gets to use the ‘f’ word. This is in response to the Melinda Tankard-Reist storm started by Rachel Hills which is leading to some nasty in-fighting among the ‘f’ crew of Australia.
For the record, I don’t think you can be a feminist and ‘pro-life’ or anti contraception. Try being a woman in a developing country having your 12th child in as many years, with no access to contraception, and unsafe abortion being your only option? Women need access to family planning resources, and this includes options for safe abortion.
Oh, to have a leader with such a great sense of humour…
Yesterday I posted about an incredible book I just read called “I Shall Not Hate” by Izzulden Abuelaish. It’s incredible because it was written by an incredible man who, despite everything, still manages not to hate. But this post isn’t about the book, except to say go read it.
What I want to talk about is what the book motivated me to do. After reading the book, and gaining a much greater insight into the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, I wanted to do something. Of course, one of the most powerful things you can ever do for a cause you care about is to tell people. In our ever-connected world, the telling people part is made about as easy as possible. And I’m telling people, don’t worry about that. But then I decided I wanted to do more.
Coincidentally, I got an e mail yesterday saying that my kiva loan had been paid back. About 6 months ago I lent some money through kiva to a woman’s group in Senegal, and yesterday, they paid me back. “Great,” I thought, I can now lend this money to a Palestinian woman who is looking for a loan.
According to Kiva, since 2005 they have leant $275 million in loans around the world, and there are thousands of people at any one time looking for a loan on kiva. Thousands.
Naively, I thought I’d be able to lend money to any number of Palestinian women. But when it came time to look through all the loans and choose, all I saw was a wall of male faces. In fact, there was not a single woman looking for a loan on her own.
In the end I chose to fund the only female face I saw, who was a woman pictured with her husband. She runs a grocery store, and wants a loan to increase her produce so she can sell more. Apparently, her husband has a stable job, but there is always need for more income.
So I lent money to this woman’s grocery shop, but was left feeling a bit depressed. This only got worse when I looked at the overall kiva loans and saw that there are about 1,500 men looking for loans, versus 500 women.
And yet another piece of the poverty puzzle becomes blatantly obvious once again. We will never be able to eradicate extreme poverty when women are being excluded from education, and earning an income.
As I (figuratively, of course) turned the last page of the book ‘I Shall Not Hate,’ I felt an instant urge to to shout to the whole world the importance of reading it.
I wanted to buy copies for my friends. Have talked about it to my boss, my boyfriend and my sister.
And I’ve made a kiva loan today to a Palestinian business woman.
All thanks to the eloquence and sheer bravery of Izzeldin Abuelaish, whose three daughters were killed, or should I say bombed? Or maybe even had their limbs and brains and blood torn apart and thrown around a room?
Despite from the unthinkable tragedy of losing three daughters in a matter of seconds, Abuelaish manages to tell his story about life as a Palestinian, born in a refugee camp in Gaza, and his fight to be a doctor despite all the challenges (and checkpoints) in his way, with an admirable eloquence.
It’s about so much more than one man’s life, too. It’s about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The stubborness of people. The need to emancipate and involve women in the running of society. The desperate need for peace. The denial of human rights to Palestinians. The exhaustion of both the Palestinians and Israelis at the conflict in their worlds. The failure of leaders to bring peace. An unwavering sense of hope.
It’s only January, but I’m calling this one a must read for 2012.
It has (finally?) happened - I am now the owner of my very own e-reader, thanks to a very well chosen birthday gift.
To see if we like each other, I’ve been testing it out while on holidays. Jasper Jones (which I paid just $3.63 for!) is my very first kindle touch book, and it’s beginning to look a lot like true love.
So 2011 was a big year, yeah? The Arab Spring. The death of notorious dictators. The East Africa Famine. More natural disasters. The continued evolution of social media. Climate Change. It seems like it’s all happening.
Back in my own little corner of the globe, I’ve experienced a seismic shift too:
Those are the things I count as really big and important in my life, and I’m pleased to say most of them are in the right direction of where I want my life to go. After so long being restless, traveling, being absent from the lives of my loves, and feeling like was always in a rush to get there, I’m starting to feel like I am there. Which is a pretty cool feeling.
If 2011 was the year of committment, 2012 is the year of consolidation.
So, what next? As a tragic goal setter, here are a few on my list this year:
While the list seems a lot more ‘boring’ than my goals in the past, I like the idea of consolidating the big things I did this year. Of stopping to smell the roses. Of strengthening my links with family and friends. Of continuing to read and write and stay nerdy (like there’s any other choice!)
Happy New Year everyone, and here’s to a sensational 2012
p.s. Want to know how I went with my 2011 goals? I did stop eating tuna. I didn’t become debt free, but my net worth is greater than my current debt. I did cook many, many, many more meals at home than ever before in my life, and while I didn’t drink as little as I would have liked, I certainly cut back compared to 2010. Not bad, not bad at all.
— Dereck Rooken-Smith is the Assistant Director-General for the Office of Development Effectiveness.
The evidence suggests that the truth lies in the in-between: Microfinance works really well sometimes – but not always. It works for some people the way we thought it might, and for others in ways we didn’t anticipate. For some people, microfinance doesn’t seem to have any measurable effect…
People in developing countries don’t always make what we might think are rational savings decisions, just like people in developed countries. They may not save because the future is unknown, because they don’t have the self-control to follow through, because they don’t always foresee their future needs, or because they don’t see the point when they’ll just have to share their money with family and community members. All of these reasons sound familiar to anyone who has had trouble making a decision whether to save or spend – be it on budget, diet, or time and energy.
"— Leah Stern asks What do we really know about microfinance? The answer - it works for some people, some of the time, and is not the silver bullet it’s made out to be.
I appreciate the sentiment, but enough of the awkward looking black child. This was sent to me by Peter Singer as part of his new e mail update feature for The Life You Can Save campaign.
The collapse of the News of the World is partly the result of a new understanding by British politicians that their political future no longer depends on the patronage of Rupert Murdoch. David Cameron and Ed Milliband realized that they not only could but should disown their relationships with him – an act which would have been considered political suicide only a few years before. And it was not just that the stranglehold of newspaper proprietors over politicians had been relaxed. The final nail in the coffin for the News of the World was a short campaign on twitter which persuaded companies to withhold their advertising from Britain’s biggest highest-circulation newspaper.
This suggests that new media is not just a faster and 24 hour news channel. The political economy of media is changing…
"— Owen Barder on how twitter and new media are impacting politics. Fascinating.
Sylvester Pokona is just 38 years old, but has the life experience of a man much older. A survivor of the Bougainville crisis – the civil war which gripped Bougainville in Papua New Guinea from 1988 to 1990, all the events of his life since then have been impacted by the conflict, including his status as a person living with HIV.
Since finding out his HIV positive status, Sylvester has become a leader and advocate for persons living with HIV in his community. Photo Josh Estey.
When the crisis overtook Bougainville, Sylvester joined the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) and was separated from his wife and children. The conflict, which began over a dispute between local landowners and mining company Rio Tinto, tore apart many families in the region as men left their villages to fight, were imprisoned, and sometimes killed.
“During the crisis families got separated. Some marriages were broken because maybe the husband or wife might be from a different part of PNG, and then, if you weren’t from Bougainville you had to leave. When those people went away, or those people stayed back, the father or the mother was separated from the rest of the family,” explains Sylvester.
Sylvester’s family suffered this same fate, with the conflict driving him apart from his family. “I was married, I have kids, two daughters, and most of the time during the crisis I was traveling to the Solomon Islands and …I was leaving my wife and my two kids, so what happened, because of the problems, we got separated.”
“And when we got separated I went away with a troubled mind…I thought that I’m going to find a peaceful life somewhere with somebody else, but instead I got infected,” says Sylvester.
Though Sylvester only confirmed his HIV status in 2010, he believes he contracted the disease in 2002. For eight years Sylvester had no confirmation of his HIV status, and was also not receiving any antiretroviral treatment, which left him vulnerable to entering the full blown AIDS stage.
“When I first got sick in 2003, my weight was 72 [kilograms], so I lost eight kilos. The other two times I got sick…I was admitted to hospital…this was where actually the doctor diagnosed me and he told me to get an HIV test,” says Sylvester.
Sylvester Pokona, 38, is a survivor of the Bougainville crisis – the civil war which gripped the island from 1988 to 1990, Photo Josh Estey.
Sylvester is just one of the many people affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Papua New Guinea. In 2009, over 34,100 people were reported to be living with HIV. High risk behaviors within the country are fuelling the epidemic including low condom use, people having multiple sexual partners, and low rates of HIV/AIDS education and awareness.
Since finding out his HIV positive status, Sylvester has become an impressive leader and advocate for persons living with HIV in his community, and is a member of Bougainville Friends, an HIV/AIDS network supported by CARE.
“The aim of Bougainville Friends is to network with all the Persons living with HIV in Bougainville, and to fight discrimination,” says Sylvester. As part of CARE’s support, Sylvester has received training in leadership, project planning, and HIV/AIDS which he uses on a daily basis to help educate the community and strengthen the Bougainville Friends network. This includes working with CARE’s KTA Youth Peer Educator program which is educating young adults in HIV/AIDS awareness, and also peer education techniques, public speaking, and leadership.
Since publicly declaring his HIV status on World Aids Day, the 1st of December, in 2010, Sylvester has spoken to hundreds of Bougainvillians, particularly youth who are more vulnerable to contracting the disease, about the risks and realities of HIV, and also provided support for others living with HIV. Strong and healthy now he is taking anti-retrovirals, Sylvester has big plans for Bougainville Friends, and for himself.
“My wish is for Bougainville Friends to become a national body…with sustainable projects. From what I have learned from working with CARE, I am somebody now. I have learned a lot from them and I hope that I will continue to work with them, we will work together… to help prevent the spread of HIV.”
by Lyrian Fleming, first published at CARE Australia
Take a walk through a Dhaka slum with MSF and explore their incredible Urban Survivors site more. This is communications excellence in action.
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