I know we are overwhelmed with horrors of white supremacy, attacks on our human rights and civil rights, violence against women, immigrants, and POCs, and all the other terrible actions legitimized by the election of a bigoted, small-minded, self-aggrandizing, sexist (etc etc) President. It becomes difficult to know where to make a stand, what to actively oppose and what to let slide because we don’t have enough time to push against everything that needs a shove into the pit of oblivion.
Instead of examining Big Issues, though, I want to focus on something seemingly small and personal that makes a big statement.* Pina Charlotte, a young German woman, told her story on Facebook and in the online magazine Süddeutsche Zeitung aimed at the 18-30 age group. Both were accompanied by a photo of Charlotte as she appeared when the event occurred. She says she shared the story because “perhaps someone is convinced that we have achieved equality here in Germany and there is no (longer) sexism….”
You don’t have to feel helpless; it’s okay to be loud instead.
Pina Charlotte was meeting friends to go bouldering. She rode her bike to the rail station and, realizing she needed a new monthly rail pass, she inserted her card into the vending machine to buy a ticket. Then this happened.
From a group of boys (18-21) one breaks away through one of the doors without my really taking note of it-why should I?
But seconds later I feel a powerful clout on and pinch of my butt.
When I turn around, I see one of the boys rejoining the group amidst the jeering and laughter of the other 6-7.
My ATM card is still in the vending machine - so a "you can’t be serious" is all there’s time for at first.
Charlotte was justifiably pissed off but had to deal with finishing her transaction and getting her ATM card back. The train was waiting so she got on, stored her bike, and saw that the group of boys were also on the train. She decided to take action.
My temple’s throbbing and smoke is coming out of my ears. And I see no reason to keep this fury to myself. It's already pouring out of me as I approach the little group — so loud that it gets very quiet in the whole train.
"So, boys, let's have a talk now! I don’t care if the whole train hears! Which one of you mama’s boys clouts strange women on the ass?"
I don’t entirely recall what I spouted after that. Something with “disgrace to manhood, lack of respect, pathetic, feeling strong in the group," and "shame on you..."
... But it isn’t really important. What's important is that I said something . . . to get rid of the anger because someone comes here who thinks he can make me the subject of a bet. To have my body at his disposal to compare testosterone levels. Who obviously lacks any respect for a woman’s autonomy.
Despite the assault, being preoccupied by her ticket purchase, and having a moment of feeling trapped, Charlotte spoke up. She took action to point out who assaulted her and the friends who encouraged him; how petty and domineering it was; and drew the attention of others on the train to the event. She said it was a good day because
- on the way back to my bicycle I'm already accompanied by appreciative nods and approving thumbs up by men and women.
- independently of each other two women came up to me and expressed their appreciation and told me about their experiences.
I was able to let one of them know that she doesn't have to feel helpless, that it's okay to be loud instead. When a woman said, "to have witnessed that alone" she would have been made to feel so helpless even as a spectator that "it ruined the whole day for her", I could honestly tell her, "it doesn't have to - it didn't ruin my day.”
Admittedly I'm not going to change these fucking specimens of misunderstood manhood. But society is changing. We're changing it. And I have the hope that perhaps in a few years my daughter will grow up without asking herself whether a bare belly reduces her to an object in the eyes of some men.
Charlotte offered advice on how to respond when it happens to you and what you might do when you see another person casually harassed.
SPEAK UP!
Girls: if a remark, a touch doesn’t suit you. Be loud.
And People: if you see someone who just can't speak up, perhaps from shock, then do something.
SOMETHING.
Give the person the feeling that you’ve noticed the situation, that you also see it as wrong.
Offer a conversation or a high five.
Show that you do care what happens around you. It isn’t always strangers - sometimes it happens to people that you actually know.
Today this sympathy among other things salvaged the day for me.
Note that this also works online. Don’t take it in silently. If it happens to you, say OUCH . . . STOP. If you see it happening to someone else do SOMETHING.
This week I’ve intermingled the upbeat moments with the usual bad news to help mitigate the weight in each category of assaults on women.
Reproductive Rights
Texas women — be sure to plan ahead for rape and buy insurance. Texas Governor Abbott has signed into law HB 214, which allows insurers to limit all elective abortion coverage, including pregnancies that result from rape, incest, or severe fetal abnormalities. Even abortions of non-viable pregnancies where a fetus cannot survive outside the mother’s womb do not need to be covered by insurance. Women will have to purchase supplemental abortion insurance without any financial support if they wish coverage.
The Hill rightfully calls this economic violence against women. The law will be most onerous on lower income women as they have fewer resources to cover abortion costs and supplemental insurance, plus they are statistically twice as likely to be raped compared to women with a higher income. (I added the bold below.)
...according to the Guttmacher Institute nearly 75 percent of abortion patients are poor and 26 percent of these patients live below the federal poverty level. These are precisely the type of women who need complete health insurance, yet are the ones who will be targeted the most under this law.
Rape victims by definition lose control over their own bodies during rape. Texas lawmakers essentially just took away that last drop of control women have afterwards.
Only one bit of good news in this section but it’s big and sends a strong F-U message to Trump: Oregon is expanding women’s reproductive rights and access. Oregon Governor Brown signed the Reproductive Health Equity Act that creates state-funded access to reproductive healthcare services for residents previously barred by federal regulations.
The nation’s most progressive health policy, it eliminates reproductive health care barriers based on citizenship status, gender identity, and income. The bill ensures reproductive health care to anyone who can become pregnant and bans discrimination against transgender or gender-nonconforming people. The state fund will pay for coverage of women who have been excluded from some types of healthcare, such as Medicaid, due to their citizenship status and other federal regulations.
Society
Texas police sexually assaulted a woman pulled over for allegedly running a stop sign and failing to use signals.
The attorney for a black woman subjected to an invasive and lengthy roadside strip search by Texas police has released a dashcam video of the incident that he says shows her treatment was a form of rape.
“When you stick your fingers in somebody without their effective consent, that’s rape in any state that I know of,” said Sam Cammack, an attorney for Charnesia Corley.
Momentary art respite with a happy owl woman.
A type of intersectionality that we’d prefer to eradicate is the overlap of gender-based hatred and white supremacy. A Vox article explores their connection in “the manosphere.” (I added bold.)
While it’s true that the movement is most frequently described in terms of the self-stated, explicit white supremacy that defines many of its corners, for many of its members, the gateway drug that led them to join the alt-right in the first place wasn’t racist rhetoric but rather sexism: extreme misogyny evolving from male bonding gone haywire. [...]
Though various branches of the movement are often at odds with one another, they share a number of core beliefs — and a common meme-flavored vernacular — that serve to unite them in what is sometimes called “the manosphere.” This realm includes the “men’s rights” movement, pickup artist culture (a community of men also labeled “PUAs” that essentially makes a game of the art of bedding women), “incels” (men who are “involuntarily celibate” because they feel women reject them), and geek gatekeepers like supporters of the Gamergate movement.
The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that woman-hatred fueled by the presidential campaign is part of the white supremacist movement.
Alt-Right personality Richard Spencer . . . tweeted. . . “[w]omen should never be allowed to make foreign policy. It’s not that they’re ‘weak.’ To the contrary, their vindictiveness knows no bounds.” Female citizens of his ideal white “ethno-state,” he told The Washington Post, would stay at home and produce offspring.
The connection between misogyny and white supremacy doesn’t mean some women aren’t responsible for promoting this bigotry. Ignoring the truth that white women also support white supremacy underestimates how extensive it is.
When it comes to identifying the perpetrators of racial hatred in this country, it is tempting to comfort ourselves with gender tropes. But women have always played a determining role in white-supremacist movements. [...]
...women were responsible for the erection of many of these Confederate statues across the country at the turn of the 20th century. In the 1920s, women composed the most influential arm of the KKK. And lest we forget the election that emboldened these modern white supremacists: More than half of white women voted for Trump.
The federal Bureau of Prisons issued a new policy requiring prisons to provide free tampons and maxi-pads to female inmates.
The new operations memorandum was released less than a month after Sen. Kamala Harris, D-CA, and three other Democratic senators introduced a bill that would have made the same policy change.
Workplace
The Taylor Swift countersuit against former radio host David Mueller for alleged assault and battery is bringing out more stories of workplace sexual assault. The author of the article at the link reports that every woman she’s spoken to about the trial has told of at least experiencing one or more sexual assaults at work.
Trial Verdict: Swift was vindicated and her mother, who was charged with tortious (wrongful) interference, was also found not liable. The groper must pay $1 in damages but the real win is to other women. Swift said “My hope is to help those whose voices should also be heard. Therefore, I will be making donations in the near future to multiple organizations that help sexual assault victims defend themselves.”
How much do the highest paid women in each state make compared to men? Wage differences range from Connecticut’s high where women earn $444,000 less, to the lowest (yet still abysmal) in Alaska where women earn $50,000 less.
PROBLEM. The ways tech companies alienate women often begin in the job candidate interview. The basic determinants of whether or not a company will be hiring diverse candidates includes the following.
- Will women have any input in the hiring process?
- Will the interview panels be diverse?
- Will current female employees be available to speak to candidates about their experiences?
SOLUTION. One company wanted to ensure women would comprise 50 percent of the engineers on a team. Here’s what they did.
- They [held] a webinar led by female employees, with 100 female candidates who asked questions about how the organization was changing to become more inclusive to women.
- They asked recruiters to follow up with the candidates to offer fuller responses and address other concerns.
- The company realized it needed to take extra time to convince women that it truly valued them.
It worked. The women hired through that effort are all still at the company.
Robert Reich’s Facebook post addressing a NYT article Evidence of a Toxic Environment for Women in Economics
Alice Wu mined more than a million posts from an anonymous online message board frequented by economists. Here’s what she found:
1. The 30 words most uniquely associated with discussions of women are, in order: hotter, lesbian, bb (internet speak for “baby”), sexism, tits, anal, marrying, feminazi, slut, hot, vagina, boobs, pregnant, pregnancy, cute, marry, levy, gorgeous, horny, crush, beautiful, secretary, dump, shopping, date, nonprofit, intentions, sexy, dated and prostitute.
2. The 30 words associated with men reveals no such hostility, just words relevant to economics.
3. Online discussions about women are more likely to involve topics related to personal information (words like family, married or relationship), physical attributes (words like beautiful, body or fat) or gender-related terms (like gender, sexist or sexual).
4. Online discussions about men are more likely to be on topics like economics itself and professional advice (with terms including career, interview or placement).
Hostility to women isn’t limited to professional economics, of course. But this is one of the first clear findings of how deeply such hostility exists. Frankly, I’m ashamed.
What do you think?
Resistance
All the strong women: that’s us!
Three self-empowered women: Dolores Huerta, Kat Perez, Vilissa Thompson
International
Chile is close to finalising a landmark ruling to legalise abortion under certain circumstances thanks to the efforts of President Michelle Bachelet. Right now, women who have abortions (and those who assist them) can be punished with five years in jail. The biggest obstacle remaining is US forced-birthers including VP Pence and a panel of eight male and two female judges who will deliberate on its passage.
...after congress passed the law Bachelet wrote on Twitter: “Today, women reclaimed a basic right that we should never have lost: being able to choose when we’re living through painful moments.”
A ten year old Indian girl who was raped gave birth by cesarean section under anesthesia and was told it was a kidney stone removal because she’s too young to understand that sexual intercourse leads to pregnancy. I’m restraining myself and zapped the castration-minded commentary I had added here. grrrr.
In Honor of the Eclipse
* Thanks to BMScott for bringing Pina Charlotte’s story to my attention and for translating the German. This helped me tell this story accurately and use Charlotte’s own words (in English) to relay her power and self-possession.
Thanks also to the WOW women who make each week’s news gathering easier even when the news is depressing (that means 52 weeks per year because there is a WAR on women). This week elenacarlena, SandraLLAP, ramara, and Tara TASW were our information goddesses.
This Week in the War on Women provides a weekly summary of new on women's issues and information on current political actions. We welcome all who are interested to join, to write for us, and to provide relevant links and stories. |