<big><big>JTA We believed diverse coalitions would include Jewish women. Now we fear we are alone</big></big> Seven weeks after the Hamas attack on Israel, the strangely silent women’s rights group UN Women issued an Instagram statement on allegations of sexual violence in the invasion “We condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on October 7 and continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages...”
...then deleted it... replaced with a statement that dropped the condemnation of Hamas and only called for the release of the hostages. Word spread ... reigniting [Jewish women’s] contention that this … official arm of the United Nations focused on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment ... holds a double standard when it comes to gender-based violence ... Some of the critics — including Sheryl Sandberg, a former top Meta executive — have lobbied openly on the topic. Many have used the hashtag “#MeToo_UNless_UR_A_Jew.”...
Finally, António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, former prime minister of Portugal, a member of the Portuguese Socialist Party, serving Since 2017 as the ninth secretary-general of the United Nations, posted:
Why at last? Possibly because November 25 marked the 42nd International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
Globally, an estimated 736 million women and girls, one in three [—up from one in 4—], will be subjected to some form of physical and/or sexual violence, at least once in their life… [and]
and they couldn’t just sit there.
Or they can’t just sit there anyway:
TheGuardian <small>[TRIGGER WARNING] </small><big>”Whatever your view of the Israel-Hamas war, rape is rape. To trivialise it is to diminish ourselves — This isn’t some ghoulish competition, where any empathy shown to other victims leaves less available for Palestinians”</big>
Harrowing stories had begun emerging within days from the desert rave where traumatised young women, who survived only by hiding from the gunmen, described watching in silent horror as other women were gang raped, mutilated and shot” …
...Israeli women’s rights groups, worried [for loss of forensic evidence] in the initial chaos ... swiftly mobilised – and last week, Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, the lawyer chairing a civil [NGO] commission hastily created to document crimes against women and children during the massacre, flew to meet UN officials to discuss the testimony collated…
...Look away now if you would rather not read about women and young girls found dead with their pants pulled down, bleeding, bruises, scratches, smashed pelvises, semen samples, graphic details I wouldn’t normally go into on these pages except that otherwise it seems people don’t believe it….
...She was drinking. Her skirt was too short. She went willingly back to the footballer’s mansion, or up to Harvey Weinstein’s hotel suite, so what did she think was going to happen? Maybe she was a teenage runaway, or a sex worker; he was a good boy, or a much-loved celebrity. There is a long list of reasons rapists get away with it, but it all too often starts with a jury’s refusal to listen to a woman they have already decided for some stubborn reason not to [give a damn about]. Remember that…
...[because we are recognizing] a pattern deserving of investigation. ... when tales of Islamic State fighters raping and enslaving Yazidi women began to surface, or when horrific stories started filtering out from women in occupied Ukraine last year, I don’t remember too many sceptics demanding to see video proof. Nor do I recall many victim support workers responding as the director of the Sexual Assault Centre at the University of Alberta in Canada did after 7 October, by signing an open letter condemning genocide in Gaza that criticised a Canadian politician for repeating “the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence”. Only in this conflict have some normally proud progressives seemingly gone out of their way to show they don’t always #BelieveWomen, after all….
READ THE WHOLE GUARDIAN ARTICLE.
Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy is a lawyer and scholar of international law, gender and human rights, founder with colleagues of the NGO Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, NOTE: the dead, injured, and hostages are NOT only Jews, and in fact include Muslim victims too.
On our past diaries and elsewhere, I’ve posted links to reports that for months unarmed female members of IDF surveillance reported uniformed members of Hamas drilling and training in a wide range of tactics to overcome everything from heavy armament to individual resistance, removing components of the border fence, even being visited by officials arriving in high-end foreign luxury cars to address the fighters, one of them wagging a finger and grinning right into the camera when the surveillance worker zoomed in on his face. These women, and their one female analyst officer, for months urged their superiors to pay serious attention, were told they are merely the eyes of IDF intelligence, not the brain, and that they would be courtmartialed if they persisted in their demands, to just shut up and do their jobs. (Most of those women were killed Oct 7.)
<big>I also brought a report of The Women Who Saw 9/11 Coming</big> whose intel their male “superiors” rejected.
If women had been heeded, 9/11 might never have happened. If women had been heeded, there might never have been a 2023 Israel-Hamas War. This is a war of men, by men, for men, on everyone else, like all the rest. When such dismissal of women’s expertise and good judgement goes on in ‘advanced’ nations, how much worse is it in most of the world?
<big><big><big>There IS a global war on women, by men in power and all their collaborators on down, and the whole world is suffering and dying for the sake of all these men’s ambitions.</big></big></big>
All who still doubt it are being willfully blind. In doing so, they make themselves passive collaborators culpable in the agonies of this planet.
<big>LISTEN TO WOMEN. BELIEVE WOMEN. <big>ELECT WOMEN. </big></big>
<big>Now, back to the usual news of the wars on women and the women fighting for a better world for all of us:</big>
<big> NPR- November 29 Gaza Woman describes trying to keep her family safe — and alive</big>
EMAN ABU SAEID: Here in Gaza, seconds - seconds between life and death. You can't expect when - how long will you live?
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: That's Eman Abu Saeid, an architect, social worker and Palestinian mother of two. She was still in her home in Gaza City when I called her on October 9. She's one of the people I'd been introduced to over the phone as I was searching for people to talk to in the Gaza Strip about life during this war, but already life as she knew it had changed….
AP December 1 <big>the Gaza Health Ministory said two-thirds of the casualties are women and children.</big> cf CARE.org - Nov 15 “70% of those killed in Gaza are women and children", According to the CIA Factbook pre-war 2023 population estimate, the male-female ratio was 1.02 male(s)/female.
HOW THEN is it happening that men seem to be SO much more spared?
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<big>AlaskaBeacon In Emmonak, a village of about 800 residents near the terminus of the Yukon River, the women’s shelter has begun to train people known as “victim resource advocates”</big> in the region’s smaller villages to connect people there ... with shelter and care.
“The villages don’t have [law enforcement and there’s none available from outside that’s safe either], but hiring advocates in their community helps provide services to those in need that are victims of domestic violence or sexual assault,” said Joann Horn, the executive director of the Emmonak Women’s Shelter.
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<big>Eduards Szivos, who founded the tech conference Devternity,</big> was caught making up fake women to list on the conference program (who would "drop out" at the last minute) and apparently running a fake instagram of a "woman in tech" who says things like “I don’t like seeing women as victims because such a mindset turns men into suspects. Men suffer from biases equally to women.”
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<big>In a recent interview actor Selma Blair said her multiple sclerosis was misdiagnosed for decades as PMS or being "dramatic."</big>. Consequences including brain damage. 19th reporter Jennifer Gerson looks at studies that show Blair's experience is not unique for women with MS.
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<big>WaPo published a hand-wringing unsigned editorial about how supporters of TFG are having trouble finding anyone to date or marry them</big> the solution being that women should lower their standards and learn to accept "alternative perspectives that may at first seem odd or offensive." E.g., date guys who vote for a known rapist who brags about "grabbing women by the p*ssy." Amanda Marcotte points out that
...our sexist culture remains too enamored by stories of female self-sacrifice to accept that it's just fine if Trump voters never get laid. Even people who really should know better have taken to bullying liberal women for their refusal to date male Trump voters. "If attitudes don’t shift, <big>a political dating mismatch will threaten marriage," </big>declared a recent headline of a Washington Post column by the editorial board….
Fine. Let the WaPo editorial board clutch their masculine “pearls” and go date and marry these guys. Problem solved.
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<big>medscape Men are 37% more likely to misuse prescription stimulants, 75% more likely to abuse methamphetamine [and cocaine]</big> compared to women, results of a national annual drug use survey show. My thought: considering that women have more fatigue problems than men do, I'da thought it would be the other way around. So maybe it’s simply that men just really tend to like to get hopped up.
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<big>medscape In higher income countries, maternal perinatal mortality should be a concern of pediatricians, not OB/GYN alone</big> because pediatricians are the doctors seeing women the most across these 12 to 15 months, so they’re best positioned to spot warning signs: 38% of maternal deaths in these countries occur from 8 to 42 days after birth, with the leading cause of maternal death from pregnancy up to 1 year after a birth being homicide*.
Maternal mortality increased by 26.6% from 2000 to 2014 across the US ... higher now than it was for our own mothers. The U.S. now has the highest rates of maternal mortality among high-income nations, especially for Black, American Indian, or Alaska Native women, those of lower socioeconomic status, and those under 18 or over 35 years old.... half of maternal deaths occur during pregnancy, another half in the year following … Females under 20, many of them our own pediatric patients, had a greater than six times higher risk and those aged 20-24 had a 65% higher risk of pregnancy-associated homicide across race and ethnic groups. Homicide is most likely before 21 weeks of pregnancy, decreases in the third trimester, but increases again after birth. Two-thirds ... occurred in the home, with the perpetrator a current or prior partner (> 59%, with 98% being male), 45%-50% were associated with reported intimate partner violence (IPV), and the most common method was a firearm (55%)....
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<big>from The19thNews November 30 marked Native American Women’s Equal Pay Day</big> spotlighting that those working full- or part-time are still earning only 55 cents for every $1 paid to non-Latino White men in the US.
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<big>from Karij at Daily Kos <big>JEZEBEL LIVES!</big></big>
Paste Magazine buys Jezebel weeks after closure with aim to ‘push boundaries’
Less than 3 weeks after the feminist US news site Jezebel was shuttered, news has emerged that the site has been acquired — on Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Paste Magazine, a music and culture publication, had acquired Jezebel and was looking to relaunch the site as quickly as Wednesday. Josh Jackson, a co-founder and the editor in chief of Paste, told the Times that losing Jezebel in the current climate “just didn’t seem to make sense” and he wanted “to bring all of the best things from all of the eras” to the resurrected website.
I really enjoyed reading Jezebel, especially for the current coverage of women’s issues. I truly wish that the new owners will not only bring back the current Jezebel but let it become what it was in the past without having someone look over the shoulder’s of the writer’s. I know since G/O Media took over it became just a glint of what it had been. We need women’s voices in media, with women controlling the content….
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<big>HighCountyNews How the New Mexico Whiptail became a gay icon — all members of this lizard species are female</big> and reproduce asexually through a process called parthenogenesis.
In the hot sun, the sandstone layers of the canyon were like melting Neapolitan ice cream... I followed a slim trail of pink puddles through archways of junipers and found myself in the landscape [of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting] topped by a tiny slice of blue sky served à la mode. A ...boulder ... had calved off the pastel canyon rim ... rough as sandpaper and festooned with an eight--inch lizard … displaying her fierce black-and-yellow stripes. When she raised her chin, the powder-blue underside contrasted with the pink hue of the boulder....
How did I know that she was a she? I had stumbled across the internet’s “gay icon” of herpetology: the New Mexico whiptail. Over the past decade [this species] has become an idol for some queer people, because [all the members are] female. They reproduce asexually through ... parthenogenesis and yet still display sexual behaviors like mounting ... thus ... dubbed the “leaping lesbian lizard” [inspiring] art, comics, a Pokémon named Salazzle ... online merchandise — even the name of an ultimate frisbee team at Wellesley College. One sticker sold on Etsy portrays two lizards in the seven colors of the Sunset Lesbian Pride Flag, their tails curled in the shape of a love heart…
The article goes tells of Hannah Caracalas, a biologist and board member of the Northern Colorado Herpetological Society, explaining that parthenogenesis —reproduction without male fertilization— is relatively common in plants, as well as invertebrates such as scorpions, if rare in vertebrates (some fish, reptiles and birds; including a recently observed pair of female California condors, “though these New World vultures primarily reproduce sexually...” … and there are species, such as certain marine snails, that change genders to mate).
From high school and college biology and history classes to Hollywood entertainment products, natural reality has been straight-washed by a framing of cisgender and heteronormative bias, as if all species reproduce or cohabit in male/female pairs. What has been propagated is prejudice.
...A recent study published in Life Sciences Education showed that biases like this in biology courses impacted queer students’ sense of belonging and career preparation. By erasing the truth of diverse genders and orientations in nature, this bias helps bigots spread the lie that queerness in humans is “unnatural,” an errant choice. It’s reminiscent of today’s book bans, which label queer texts as profane in a homophobic effort to skew how we view the world….
... Whiptail fans joke on online … that the cis-het male biologists of yesteryear must have described the New Mexico whiptail as “a species consisting entirely of good friends and roommates....”
The natural world offers the power to shatter human prejudice….
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<big>via OND by ChitownKev TheGuardian — Emma Graham-Harrison Oscar Pistorius granted parole and will be released from prison in January</big>
South Africa’s parole board has granted early release to Oscar Pistorius, former athlete jailed for the 2013 murder of [former girlfriend] Reeva Steenkamp … Pistorius shot Steenkamp, a law graduate and model, through a bathroom door in their shared home in Pretoria on Valentine’s Day 10 years ago. He claimed he thought there was an intruder in the bathroom when he opened fire. … He has served eight and a half years in prison, plus a further eight months under house arrest.
Before Steenkamp’s murder, Pistorius was a national star feted for winning Paralympic medals and going on to become the first double amputee to race in the Olympics….
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<big>NativeNewsOnline Buffy Sainte-Marie Accepts Emmy and Responds to Critics Who Question Her Indigenous Roots</big>
A doumentary film about legendary singer and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, 82, has won an International Emmy Award. Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, directed by Madison Thomas and narrated by Sainte-Marie, was made and released before the CBC called into question her Indigenous roots in late October 2023. The award is presented by the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
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VIDEO: The Black Mambas, South Africa’s South Africa's all-female anti-poaching unit
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🌍 Tentative deal on Portland teacher contract means students return to school Monday. A final sticking point – an additional $4 million in raises – was resolved in favor of teachers. (The Oregonian, November 27)
🌍 <big>The new face of a city of 50,000 people. Nadia Mohamed, </big> the 27-year-old mayor-elect of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, says her win is just the first chapter. (The New York Times, November 26)
🌍 <big>Prominent women in tech say they don't want to join OpenAI's all-male board. </big> After internal chaos earlier this month, OpenAI replaced the women on its board with men. As it plans to add more seats, Timnit Gebru, Sasha Luccioni, and other AI luminaries tell Wired why they wouldn't join. (Wired, November 28)
🌍 <big>Deepfake pornography victims learn there are no laws to fight it. </big> A group of young women in a New York City suburb, horrified to learn their photographs had been manipulated and posted online, took matters into their own hands. (Bloomberg, November 28)
🌍 IranInt.com Prominent Iranian-American dissident Masih Alinejad on Thursday blasted the German government for seeking to impose a gag order on her meeting to discuss the repression of women in the Islamic Republic.
🌍 Xi vs. She: China’s government wants women to return to domesticity, but it’s already too late
🌍 HumanRightsWatch Women in prison in Japan are seriously abused.
🌍 Bloomberg Australia’s Pay Gap Narrows Despite Persistent Glass Ceiling
🌍 IPSJournal Dobbs/Roe v. Wade: The Collateral Damage for African Women
🌍 BBC Rallies n Italy to condemn violence against women draw huge crowds
🌍 Ms Magazine Combating Terrorism and Misogyny Together By placing women’s rights at the heart of counterterrorism efforts, governments not only challenge extremist ideologies but also pave way for more just societies.
🌍 IslamicRelief.org Investing in hope to prevent violence against women and girls in Afghanistan
🌍 UN Women In focus: Women's leadership at the COP 28 climate conference
🌍 TheHill Some Post-Roe cases headed for SCOTUS: Idaho’s emergency request to fully enforce its abortion law — a possible appeal to overturn a SCOTUS precedent allowing laws that ban anti-abortion activists from approaching people outside abortion clinics — whether to take up the dispute over the availability of mifepristone, the common abortion pill,
🌍 AP - In the US, Black survivors are nearly invisible in the Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis
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from 2018: Peace&justice and feminist activist Huda Abuarquob
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<big><big>🌍 <big>UPDATE: Joan Jara, Human Rights Icon for Chile, Has Died </big> by kosak Alex Morales, November 13.</big>PLEASE READ AND REC. — all dk posts are rec’able forever.</big>
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<big> This Week In The War On Women meets Saturday evenings & reblogs across the week. Everyone interested is welcome to comment, bring news links & stories, and consider joining to reblog here or write for the group. For automatic delivery to yr Activity Stream of our posts & reblogs, click the FOLLOW button HERE.</big>
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