After two trials described by Amnesty International as “grossly unfair,” Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been sentenced to a total of 38 years in prison and 148 lashes.
Sotoudeh, who has dedicated her life to defending Iranian women prosecuted for removing their hijabs in public, has been in the crosshairs of Iran’s theocratic government for years.
Category: Herstory
A Victorian Magazine Asked Spinsters Why They Were Single, And The Answers Were Incredibly Savage
“Because I do not care to enlarge my menagerie of pets, and I find the animal man less docile than a dog, less affectionate than a cat, and less amusing than a monkey.”
Source: A Victorian Magazine Asked Spinsters Why They Were Single, And The Answers Were Incredibly Savage
The origins of sexism: How men came to rule 12,000 years ago
Human societies weren’t always male-dominated. The switch came when we became farmers – and that suggests ways to roll back towards a more equal system.
For most of our history, we have been hunter-gatherers, and patrilocal residence is not the norm among modern hunter-gatherer societies. Instead, either partner may move to live with the “in-laws”, or a couple may relocate away from both their families. According to Hrdy, a degree of egalitarianism is built into these systems. If they reflect what prehistoric hunter-gatherers did, women in those early societies would have had the choice of support from the group they grew up with, or the option to move away from oppression.
“The #MeToo movement is about female cooperation,” says Hrdy, “but getting cooperation among non-kin is difficult.” Competitive instincts can prevail, or events can cause cooperation to fall apart – for instance in times of war, Hrdy says. “Women start to look out for the safety of their own children and their husbands.”
Restoring and strengthening equality will require effort on multiple fronts, she says. If patriarchy originated in sedentary social structures that formalised male ownership and inheritance, then laws that give women the right to own property in their own name, for instance, can help.
Source: The origins of sexism: How men came to rule 12,000 years ago | New Scientist
Sisters in Innovation: 20 Women Inventors You Should Know
From Wi-Fi to Kevlar: Twenty Female Inventors Who Changed the World!
Source: Sisters in Innovation: 20 Women Inventors You Should Know | A Mighty Girl
The ‘Most Dangerous’ Allied Spy of WWII Was a ‘Limping Lady’ With a Prosthetic Leg A Mighty Girl
Virginia Hall was one of the greatest spies of World War II but her incredible story is largely unknown today.
Source: The ‘Most Dangerous’ Allied Spy of WWII Was a ‘Limping Lady’ With a Prosthetic Leg | A Mighty Girl
It’s Black Breastfeeding Week. Wondering why? One gut-punching poem says it all.
Yes, there is something unique about black breastfeeding. Several somethings, actually.
For most of U.S. history, generation upon generation upon generation of black families were torn apart. Black mothers were often not allowed to nourish and raise their own babies, but were forced to nourish and raise the babies of their enslavers. For most of U.S. history, black breastfeeding meant wet nursing white babies, often at the expense of a black woman’s own children.
Source: It’s Black Breastfeeding Week. Wondering why? One gut-punching poem says it all. – Upworthy
When lesbians led the women’s suffrage movement
In 1911, lesbians led the nation’s largest feminist organization. They promoted a diverse and inclusive women’s rights movement.
Semen: Men’s Chemical War Against Women.
To be a human male is to have a Y-chromosome in nearly every single one of your 70 trillion cells, with those Y-chromosomes orchestrating the production of sperm, semen and testosterone. Men are born to produce semen – which wars against women. Men are born to produce testosterone – which wars against women. Men are born to war against women. Men are primordially a war against women, a biological war against women.
How is it that the Y chromosome – the most mutated, decrepit part of the human genome, currently in a less-than-3%-left condition — has every poli-social advantage at its disposal to assure its survival and perpetuation? Because dudes sure as shit have their assess covered.
The problem with males is biology. Feminist-leaning women fail to spend what would be far-more-productive brain-time deliberating on this fact: Being a human male is a genetic condition, a genetic condition wielding a proprietary biochemistry, a proprietary biochemistry for warmongering against females – and every other fucking thing.
Source: Semen: Men’s Chemical War Against Women. No-Skip Intro. – Trust Your Perceptions
Female scientists’ pages keep disappearing from Wikipedia – what’s going on?
A deletion battle over a black female chemist’s biography has put Wikipedia’s gender gap in the spotlight.
Critics point to stats that they claim show that Wikipedia is biased against women and female scientists in particular. Only 18% of the 1.6 million biographies in the English Wikipedia are about women. The figure is lower for people tagged as scientists – 16% of almost 150,000 articles.
‘[Notability is] a very, very difficult subject,’ says Roger Bamkin, co-founder with Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight of Women in Red, a Wikipedia project that aims to increase the number of women’s biographies. ‘When editors are arguing against notability, people will say, “Well, it’s men who are rejecting women as subjects” – and that may be true. Nine out of 10 editors are men.’
How local wise-women who carried on ancient traditions were exterminated by Christianity
Women’s power to create life, apparently out of their own substance, and to respond with fearful and mystical blood cycles to the phases of the moon, made them creatures of magic in the eyes of primitive men, who knew themselves unable to match such powers. Thus women took on the roles of intermediaries between humanity and spiritual powers. They became seers, priestesses, healers, oracles, lawmakers, judges, and agents of the Great Mother Goddess who gave birth to the universe. . .
We have all heard of Europe’s 400 years of witch persecutions, from the 14th to the 18th centuries, but few are aware of the enormous extent of the holocaust. The church likes to pretend that “only a few hundred thousand” innocents were murdered, but secular sources estimate as many as nine million.
Source: How local wise-women who carried on ancient traditions were exterminated by Christianity