Welcome to the discussion! This week brought books, film, history, economics, politics, abortion, sociology, international news, and striking images, starting with:
1.
h/t gmoke: Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts
by Rebecca Hall, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2021 ISBN 978-1-9821-1518-0
...A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post...
Part graphic novel, part memoir, Wake is an imaginative tour-de-force that tells the “powerful” (The New York Times Book Review) story of women-led slave revolts and chronicles scholar Rebecca Hall’s efforts to uncover the truth about these women warriors who, until now, have been left out of the historical record...
2.
from TheConversation — How Mrs. Claus embodied 19th-century debates about women’s rights
Clement Clarke Moore’s 1823 poem … redefined Christmas in America… [transforming religious associations] into a familial celebration … [Then] Nineteenth-century writers, journalists and artists were quick to fill in details about Santa that Moore’s poem left out: a toy workshop, a home at the North Pole and a naughty-or-nice list. They also decided that Santa Claus wasn’t a bachelor; he was married to Mrs. Claus.
Yet scholars tend to overlook the evolution of Santa Claus’ spouse. You’ll see brief references to a handful of late-19th-century Mrs. Claus poems – especially Katharine Lee Bates’ 1888 “Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride.”
But as I discovered when I began work on a class about Christmas in literature, the writers who created Mrs. Claus were not just interested in filling in the blanks of Santa’s personal life. The poems and stories about Mrs. Claus that appeared in newspapers and popular periodicals spoke to women’s central role in the Christmas holiday. The character also provided a canvas to explore contemporary debates about gender and politics…..
3. Images worth thousands of words:
4. women’s news items from around dk:
.
🟪 Snowite, RozRed, BriarBron, CinderBlaq, TomoeTan, PunzlBlond, GaiaGreen, Čehrāzād, Nona & Blu: a short feminist fantasy mash-up for a long winter’s night, by mettle fatigue for
🟪 America just lost its greatest living writer: Joan Didion has died by Dartagnan
🔵 In a first, Indian gig company sues protesting women workers
Urban Company's suit against its women workers is the first such legal action amidst growing discontent over gig work.
* Urban Company's women workers protest against new policies they say will hurt earnings
* Company sues them for "illegal" action
* Gig companies increased use of algorithms that decide jobs, pay
An Indian platform company [whose app] provides home[care] and beauty services has sued its female workers for protesting against rules the women say will hurt their earnings, in the country's first such legal action amid growing discontent against gig work.
Among the new policies ... is a subscription scheme that requires partners to pay a sum of money upfront and take on a minimum number of jobs each month, new categories of partners, and a discount scheme for customers. [These policies will limit workers’ flexibility and] “will reduce our earnings and make it hard for us to make ends meet. We had no choice but to protest because the company wouldn't listen to our concerns," said [Seema Singh, 35, a beautician named in the suit] who has worked at Urban Company for four years.
Dozens of women, who the firm calls partners, gathered outside Urban Company's office in the northern Indian city of Gurugram this week holding banners and shouting slogans against the proposed new rules. Urban Company ... said in its suit filed this week at a local court against four of its women partners that their actions were "illegal and unlawful"………...
🔵 www.theguardian.com/...China mulls bolstering laws on women’s rights and sexual harassment
Draft safeguards would mark major development in women’s rights as China faces calls for gender equality. (The following blockquote is from an additional source?)
China, a country where men dominate the top echelons of politics and business, ranks 107th among 153 countries in the World Economic Forum's annual ranking on global gender equality
China's top lawmaking body on Monday debated legislation to give women more protection against gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace, state media reported, outlining rules including a clearer definition of inappropriate behaviour.
The standing committee of the country's parliament, the National People's Congress, deliberated a draft amendment to the "Women's Rights and Interests Protection Law," … as China explores ways to maintain the labour force while its population is set to shrink, and after activist calls for gender equality that have accompanied a fledging #MeToo movement………..
6. History, sociology, technology, education, entertainment….
🔸 from Tufts University, 2018 “From Cowboys to Commandos: A clinical psychiatrist connects sexual and gun violence with media archetypes” also published at ■ theconversation.com ■ rawstory.com ■ etc
"the shifting media role models to which young American males have been exposed since the 1950s and ‘60s. As sociologist Daniel Rios Pineda has observed, the influence of the mass media begins at a very early age. Based on my own cultural observations, I believe that the emergence of a more violent male “archetype” in the media has been internalized by many young men, and may be one factor contributing to increased sexual and gun-related violence." The linked research list from year 2000 is titled "Male roles, masculinities and violence : a culture of peace perspective"
🔸 from MotherJones & TheFullerProject‘Your Mom is a Bad Mom’: Minnesota’s Foster Care System Rooted in Racist Boarding School Legacy, Native Mothers and Experts Say
Racism and misogyny, and lack of diversity and cultural competency among social workers in the state, combine with existing economic and carceral inequalities to force Native American children into foster care system at 15 times the rate of non-Native children.
🔸 from TheLily‘The Matrix’ has always been a trans story, and now audiences can’t ignore it
"With the release of ‘The Matrix Resurrections,’ it’s time to revisit how how Lana and Lilly Wachowski always envisioned their most well-known films."
🔸h/t kosak gmoke barefootcollege.org/solution/solar/ an organization for 3rd world women that well-deserves support from all the rest of the world.
7. Recent news:
Plans include to appoint a women's health tsar, fight medical taboos, provide menopause support, ban "virginity repair" operations.
🔴[Feminist' foreign policy — what does that mean? https://www.dw.com/...]:
Annalena Baerbock is Germany's first female foreign minister. According to the new government's coalition agreement, she wants to pursue a "feminist foreign policy." But opinions differ as to what that actually means.
🔴 HOW Chile's same-sex marriage law could lift the economy.
Early this month, Chile became the 30th country to legalise same-sex marriage, joining Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Uruguay in Latin America. alone. As more countries turn this corner, researchers and LGBT+ activists say the economic benefits of marriage equality extend far beyond wedding celebrations and honeymoons, and can give nations an important competitive edge. "Marriage equality is still pretty rare around the world," said MV Lee Badgett, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who has been studying the economic impact of LGBT+ inclusion on countries since the mid-1990s."It is still something that sends a very powerful signal – and to businesses and tourists that can make a big difference,"
(the fact that the country was already minded to make that move makes 35-yr-old hitherto slightly wild & wooly leftist president-elect Gabriel Boric Font a little less surprising, maybe...)
🔴 FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENT in Honduras faces a tough fight on abortion.
Smeared as a 'baby killer' by critics, Xiomara Castro, of the leftist Libre Party, made a campaign pledge that pits her and women's rights campaigners against strong conservative opposition. Honduras is one of the 6 Latin America and Caribbean counties that bans abortion under all circumstances, and it's the only one baning emergency contraception, also known as the morning-after pill. A former first lady, Castro launched her political by leading national protest against the 2009 coup that ousted her husband Manuel Zelaya as president, a coup followed by bans on emergency contraception, enshrined abortion curbs in the constitution, decreased criminal penalties for gender-based violence, and in January 2021 increased difficulty to decriminalize abortion by requiring a three-quarters majority in Congress to change the current law.
...Her government plan commits to legalize abortion in the case of rape, risk to the mother's life, and deformities of the fetus. She has also pledged to allow the use and distribution of the morning-after pill....
🔴United Kingdom British Olympic boxing star Nicola Adams fights sexist stereotypes.
Adams, who is Black and a lesbian, said she's always faced two fights: one in the ring and another against those who argue women have no place in one of the most male-dominated of sports. A new documentary traces her 25-year career as a trailblazer in the battle for equality in the sport.
🔴 Mangroves to dye for — these ecosystems play an outsize role in sequestering planet-heating carbon dioxide emissions, food sustenance, and protection against storm surges...
but they have been disappearing drastically fast in Indonesia, ripped out to make charcoal, to give space for export shrimp ponds, and other short-term advantages with long-term consequences. A new Indonesian government programme aims to address the double hit from coronavirus and climate change among mangrove-dwelling communities by supplying training to communities to maintain the mangroves and use their textile-dye and sanitizer-compound potential especially in women's cottage-industry mask-making.
🔴 Beijing Dec 21 China will give pregnant women the right to chose a caesarean birth for babies even if husbands object, state media reported on Tuesday
...On Tuesday, two sex workers' collectives in southern India's Andhra Pradesh state asked the state government authority for a recount, saying the official [labour department] records don't reflect the real numbers. [campaigners call the official count about half the true total.]. The request came a week after the Supreme Court ordered the federal and local governments to start issuing [identification and] ration and voter cards to sex workers [on the record]. [The documents would also let them apply for land titles, have a better chance at other kinds of work, and if they have children it would help in school admissions that seek identity proof, pensions, healthcare and "endless" other benefits critical for women who were trafficked into sex work, or were escaping abusive families, or discarded by their families, and other causes of having no citizen documents of their own.]……...
🔴 "Calls for femicide to become separate crime in Greece mount as two more women killed" theguardian.com/...
With the Mediterranean country shaken by the sheer savagery of the killings [17 so far this year], calls have mounted for tougher legislative action to confront what are seen by many as hate crimes
🔴 "Housework falls to mothers again after Covid lockdown respite: Greater equality between men and women in domestic chores during last year’s lockdowns was short-lived" guardian.com
The immediate impact of the lockdown in March last year did cause a rebalancing of the domestic chores between men and women. It led some to hope that one of the quirks of Covid’s arrival might be a boost to equality in the home.
This shift towards men taking up more of the slack soon faded for those couples with children, however, as schools and nurseries closed. In comparison, child-less couples were found to maintain more of an equal share of household duties.
Susan Harkness, professor of public policy at the University of Bristol, said [...] “There was a short-term transition, but if you think about whether those changes persisted and affected gender norms, that’s not what we see. Fathers are more likely to get back into work more quickly than mothers, for example, so mothers can lag behind in terms of returning, post-Covid. When you close schools, you’re increasing the burden for women.”
found (very indirectly) via Elsevier's The Extractive Industries and Society peer-reviewed academic journal in the field of environmental studies, with a specific focus on the societal and environmental impacts of extractive industries such as the mining and oil and gas industries…
...Following an ecosystemic perspective, the book examines individual risk and protective factors, discusses initiatives to prevent sexual aggression (i.e., bystander intervention programs, given their use among men), covers programs that specifically seek to engage boys and men in sexual assault prevention, presents key risk and protective factors for sexual aggression (i.e., healthy masculinity, rape myth acceptance), provides the case for the need for sexual assault prevention efforts, and addresses false accusations and military sexual violence.
That webpage includes Table of Contents. One of the 2 editors is female. The
Amazon page offers a full paragraph about both of them including their professional honorifics (which, oddly, the Elsevier page doesn't seem to). I couldn't find any reviews, but the compilation is stated as a source for podcasts etc at
Prairie Center Against Sexual Assault which offers some VERY interesting-looking materials on this and closely related topics.
As a platform that’s been a refuge for feminist conversation for years clamps down on freewheeling chat groups, its users have begun a search for a new home on the Chinese internet. So far, they’re still wandering in the desert…..
……….Celebrity gossip groups mutated into places for women to discuss male misconduct, and to reject marriage and motherhood. It could turn vulgar — it’s not uncommon to see users wish a “penis fracture” on male targets.
On Dec. 1, Douban was fined 1.5 million yuan ($235,000) for “unlawful release of information,” the 21st fine that Douban got this year. On Dec. 9, regulators ordered Chinese app stores to de-list the app, meaning that new users cannot join the platform....
Marilyn Migiel, professor of Romance studies, has won the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Publication Award for “Veronica Franco in Dialogue,” forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press in spring 2022.
Established by literature scholar Aldo Scaglione in memory of his wife, Jeanne, an educator and humanitarian, the award is given annually to a manuscript in Italian Literary Studies. The award will be presented on January 8, 2022 during the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention in Washington, D.C……
…..A sixteenth-century Venetian courtesan and writer, Veronica Franco came to be embraced by late twentieth-century scholars as a triumphant proto-feminist icon who celebrates her sexuality and champions women and their worth. In “Veronica Franco in Dialogue,” Migiel analyzes the fourteen dialogic poems of Franco’s 25-poem “Terze Rime” (Poems in Terza Rima, 1575), seven written by Franco and seven written by an unknown male author.
🔴 medscape Study finds women with physical, intellectual, and sensory disabilities had higher risk for almost all pregnancy complications, obstetric interventions, and adverse outcomes, including severe maternal morbidity (SMM) and mortality.
🔴Reuters via medscape US FDA to Allow Abortion Pill by Mail Permanently
🔴medscape Canadian study finds Unrestricted Prescribing of Mifepristone Safe, Effective, rare adverse events.
🔴 a medscape write-up on "What One [male] Doctor's Viral Tweet Shows Us about Gynecological Care" about the twitter phenomenon last week. Key quote
"I will never know what it is like to be a gynecological patient, and my only option is to listen."
"Pope Francis on Sunday said that acts of violence against women are 'almost satanic' during a conversation including a woman who fled her abusive husband, Reuters reported.
'The number of women who are beaten and abused in their homes, even by their husbands, is very, very high,' the pontiff said to Giovanna, a mother of four who was a victim of domestic violence.
'The problem is that, for me, it is almost satanic because it is taking advantage of a person who cannot defend herself, who can only (try to) block the blows,' the pope said on Italy's TG5 network on Sunday evening, in a conversation with four people of varying backgrounds, according to Reuters."
🔴 nea.org/ before Manchin torpedoed things Educators Share 6 Ways the Build Back Better Act [could have supported] Students, Schools to make historic investments in children, families, communities, public education [and the economy]