Radical and gender critical feminists think the best way to understand gender is as a set of harmful norms, which are applied to people on the basis of their sex.
Feminists have for a long time preferred to understand gender in this way, and to advance the claim that those norms are pernicious and constraining. There’s nothing that one has to be like simply because one is female, or because one is male, they say. Be whatever you want to be.Recently, this view of gender, and this ‘advice’ dispensed to male and female people, has become contested. Some insist now that gender is not harmful norms but rather is identity. Gender-as-identity is the view that everyone has an internal, subjective sense of their own gender, and that this—rather than their sex—is what determines how they should be treated by other people, and by the law.
‘Blue girl’: Iranian woman denied soccer stadium access dies after setting herself on fire
An Iranian woman who was denied entry to a football stadium in Tehran has died after setting herself on fire, human rights organization Amnesty International said Tuesday.
Sahar Khodayari, 29, faced charges of “appearing in public without a hijab” when she attempted to enter the stadium “dressed as a man” in March, according to Amnesty.
Source: ‘Blue girl’: Iranian woman denied soccer stadium access dies after setting herself on fire – CNN
Femicide: The murders giving Europe a wake-up call
Finland, held up as a beacon of gender equality, also has one of the EU’s highest murder rates at the hands of an intimate partner.
“The welfare state has given many rights to women, but this policy has concentrated on the labour market… not equality in private life,” she said.
Source: Femicide: The murders giving Europe a wake-up call – BBC News
No lust at first sight: why thousands are now identifying as ‘demisexual’
For those who are not asexual but not celibate either, the new label is helping to define their love lives.
In 2017, Dan Savage, the sex and relationship guru behind the column and podcast Savage Love, was scathing about demisexuality, despite being considered a progressive beacon on understanding identity and sexuality. He wrote: “We used to call people who needed to feel a strong emotional bond before wanting to fuck someone people who, you know, needed to feel a strong emotional bond before wanting to fuck someone. But a seven-syllable, clinical-sounding term that prospective partners need to Google – demisexuality – is obviously superior to a short, explanatory sentence that doesn’t require internet access to understand.”
[ed: a fancy new label for those who don’t sexually objectify others].
Source: No lust at first sight: why thousands are now identifying as ‘demisexual’ | Society | The Guardian
Religious freedom laws won’t shield all cases
A Christian rehabilitation centre for women would not be shielded from a discrimination claim for turning away a biological male who identified as female under the governments draft laws upholding religious freedom.
Australian Christian Lobby managing director Martyn Iles warned that activists were increasingly using discrimination law and gender identity as a “weapon” to force religious bodies to compromise their beliefs.
In one, a biological male who identifies as female threatened a discrimination action after being subjected to a second interview for admission to a Christian women’s residential rehabilitation program.
I Hated My Mother For Refusing To Leave My Abusive Father
For years, I hated my mother for her complicity in the violence my siblings and I grew up with. I fantasized about someone calling the police on our behalf, and prayed that someone would step in and act where my mother wouldn’t. But the extraordinary miscarriage of justice in Neha Rastogi’s case has made me realize that my mother’s mistrust of the system wasn’t unfounded. Domestic violence victims might overcome life-threatening physical, psychological, and financial obstacles to seek help, only to be revictimized by an unforgiving legal system. And when the system fails one of us, it fails us all.
For example, the Department of Homeland Security has released a public, searchable database of detained immigrants that allows abusers to track their victims, and there are draconian laws in at least 29 states that can put mothers in prison for failing to protect their children from abuse, despite clear evidence that these women were abused themselves. (This type of evidence is often used against women instead of being considered a mitigating circumstance; one Oklahoma prosecutor told the court a battered mother charged with enabling child abuse had “made the decision to stay.”) In some of these cases, battered women actually received longer sentences than the men who had abused them and their children.
Source: I Hated My Mother For Refusing To Leave My Abusive Father
How an Élite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein | The New Yorker
New documents show that the M.I.T. Media Lab was aware of Epstein’s status as a convicted sex offender, and that Epstein directed contributions to the lab far exceeding the amounts M.I.T. has publicly admitted.
According to the records obtained by The New Yorker and accounts from current and former faculty and staff of the media lab, Epstein was credited with securing at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, including two million dollars from Gates and $5.5 million from Black, gifts the e-mails describe as “directed” by Epstein or made at his behest.
Google Maps Is Still Directing Women Seeking Abortions to Pro-Life Clinics — and a Memorial for the ‘Unborn’
In areas where abortion rights are under threat, confusing labels and a lack of policing by Google means misleading — and sometimes flat-out wrong — Google Maps results are common, a VICE News analysis found. Users who search Maps for abortion clinics will often be directed to centers that do not offer or refer patients for abortions, political groups that oppose abortion rights, and, in one case, a monument to “unborn” children.
Thousands protest in South Africa over rising violence against women
Thousands of South African women took to the streets on Thursday to protest at the government’s failure to deal with rising violence against women in the wake of a string of brutal attacks that have shocked the country.
At least 137 sexual offences are committed per day in South Africa, mainly against women, according to official figures. This week the women’s minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said more than 30 women were killed by their spouses last month.
Source: Thousands protest in South Africa over rising violence against women | World news | The Guardian
Evelyn Hernández: Prosecutors In El Salvador Are Going After A Woman Tried Twice For Having A Stillbirth
Evelyn Hernández’s acquittal last month was hailed as a victory for women’s rights, but prosecutors are appealing.
Hernández’s acquittal by a Salvadoran court three weeks ago was seen as a victory for women’s rights in the conservative country. Abortion there is banned in all cases, including when the woman’s life is in danger. Impoverished women suspected of having undergone an abortion are regularly prosecuted for homicide and sentenced to as many as 40 years in prison.