Tracey Emin: Love is What you Want
http://soundcloud.com/southbank-centre/tracey-emin
More about the show and further talks/events on the Southbank Centre website here.
I made it to Auschwitz and breasts – can you go further?
Revolution Will Be Feminist Or It Won’t Be
Via feministes indignades a plaça Catalunya This is a world I could live in, unlike the one we have now which large number of us just survive in:
ENGLISH – Manifesto (last version, 20 May 2011)
This afternoon, feminists who participated in the feminist alternatives workshop have reflected and written the following public declaration:
“Feministes indignades” (indignant feminists) at Plaça Cataluya (acampadabcn), May 20th, 2011
REVOLUTION WILL BE FEMINIST OR IT WON’T BE
We are here because:
* we want a society centred into people and not marketplaces. This is why we vindicate: free public and basic services like education, health, and childhood and special needs care in opposition to social budget cuts, and the new employment and pension reforms.
* we want the whole people commitment to build a society where no male violence will take place in any of its forms: in economy, aesthetics, employment, institutions, religions or in its physical or psychological forms, as well as in its sexual or work exploitation forms…
* we want to freely decide about our own body, enjoy and relate with it and whoever we want.
* we want to freely decide about free abortion and sexual and affective education.
* we want a diverse society to be respectful with any form of living sex and sexuality (lesbian, gay, intersex, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, …) and we want the right to sexuality at any stage of life to be recognized. We demand the dis-patologisation of trans identities. Read more…
TEDx Karachi
Mukhtar Mai
TEDx Karachi (an independently organised TED event) this year was titled “Making the Impossible Possible” and featured Mukhtar Mai alongside others. Mai has certainly made the impossible happen!
There was also a presentation of submissions for the interesting Inside Out project using the theme Stand Up Against The Persecution of Minorities
Videos aren’t available until next week so I’ll just post the summary of Muhammad Aly Balagamwala’s impressions of the day for now and update later:
The take-home message
1. We need to focus on education – Fasi Zaka, Mukhtar Mai
2. Lack of resources should not be an excuse to do something you believe in – Raja Sabri Khan, Imran Khan
3. Mind can triumph over body – Imran Khan, Sarmad Tariq
4. Pain, if channeled in a positive direction, can achieve great things – Dr Quratulain Bakhtiari, Sarmad Tariq, Mukhtar Mai
5. Don’t blame life, or anyone else. You may be down but success is about getting up that one last time. – Sarmad Tariq
6. Bulleh Shah was a Commie (oops sorry, a revolutionary) – Noori
How to starve men and divide communities
Everyone knows that giving financial aid to women in developing/impoverished countries is the way to raise living standards for all, yes? Indeed, the bestseller Half The Sky uses this notion as it’s core. Women feed their families, men waste it on drink and drugs.
Funnily enough, aid programmes that use these gross stereotypes don’t always work that well for all genders involved. Surprise!
Oxfam Great Britain and Concern Worldwide, in a fascinating document, have collected evidence showing that aid programmes purporting to have gender at their core actually don’t, and these programmes place ridiculous stresses on already fragile gender relations:
‘This acceptance of gender stereotypes not only reinforces traditional gender roles for women but also runs a risk of normalising this behaviour for men. Furthermore, most CTs [Cash Transfers] take place without any explicit analysis of gender roles and responsibilities, or an understanding of how gender relations work within different households of communities. [p12 pdf]
Fair play, starvation is avoided (although evidence shows men were loath to ask for help and did starve because they knew they were considered worthless). And obviously many women are helped by this cash, but why waste so much money and opportunity just because of a basic lack of knowledge in gender dynamics. Or more likely is simply considered unimportant? And in the long term, the impact on communities may not be good:
Targeting can alienate the community without real and meaningful participation and can increase division and long term vulnerability. Jealously and community division were noted in all three cases [studied]. [p16]
Gender inequality won’t be improved without the expertise available actually being used. It won’t be improved by using gross stereotypes and ignoring men. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a speech a couple of days ago:
I believe that unless you change mentality and behaviour of men, it will be very difficult to change this situation
He then went on to ask that ‘women leaders from around the world and from all walks of life’ actually do the work, but hey – like giving money to women only and alienating half the sky, he’s half way there. Right? I’m reminded of the slogan that talks of the radical notion that women are human beings. Any change of spreading that one round the world?
H/T The Guardian & Womankind
Happy Easter 2011
Peace be with you.
Hwyl Fawr!
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.
If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Howard Zinn
Support for Egyptian Uprising
Via Al Jazeera, Rabbi Michael Lerner writes in support of the protesters in Egypt, concluding:
In normal times, when the forces of repression seem to be winning, this kind of thinking is dismissed as “utopian” by the “realists” who shape public political discourse. But when events like the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt occur, for a moment the politicians and media are stunned enough to allow a different kind of thinking to emerge, the kind of thinking that acknowledged that underneath all the “business as usual” behaviour of the world’s peoples, the yearning for a world based on solidarity, caring for each other, freedom, self-determination, justice, non-violence and yes, even love and generosity, remains a potent and unquenchable thirst that may be temporarily repressed but never fully extinguished.
It is this recognition that leads many Jews to join with the rest of the world’s peoples in celebrating the uprising, in praying that it does not become manipulated by the old regime into paths that too quickly divert the hopes for a brand new kind of order into politics and economics as usual, or into extremist attempts to switch the anger from domestic elites who have been the source of Egyptian oppression onto Jews or Israel which have not been responsible for the suffering of the Egyptian people.
We hope that Egyptians will hear the news that they have strong support from many in the Jewish world. We are not waffling like Obama – we want the overthrow of Mubarak, the freeing of all political prisoners, the redistribution of wealth in a fair way, trials for those who perpetrated torture and other forms of injustice, and the democratisation of all aspects of Egyptian life.
News has not been good from Cairo this afternoon. ‘Pro-Mubarak’ supporters, many of who are thought to be in the pay of Mubarak, attacked Tahrir Square where thousands were trapped. Journalists were hunted down. Attacks continue this evening. Protesters were attacked in Alexandria yesterday.
