Masculine, Feminine, or Human?

Robert Jensen on categories of masculinity and femininity:

In a guest lecture about masculinity to a college class, I ask the students to generate two lists that might help clarify the concept.

For the first, I tell them to imagine themselves as parents whose 12-year-old son asks, "Mommy/daddy, what does it mean to be a man?" The list I write on the board as they respond is not hard to predict: To be a man is to be strong, responsible, loving. Men provide for those around them and care for others. A man weathers tough times and doesn't give up.

When that list is complete, I ask the women to observe while the men answer a second question: When you are in all-male spaces, such as the locker room or a night out with the guys, what do you say to each other about what it means to be a man? How do you define masculinity when there are no women present?

The students, both men and women, laugh nervously, knowing the second list will be different from the first. The men fumble a bit at first, as it becomes clear that one common way men define masculinity in practice is not through affirmative statements but negative ones — it's about what a man isn't, and what a real man isn't is a woman or gay. In the vernacular: Don't be a girl, a sissy, a fag. To be a man is to not be too much like a woman or to be gay, which is in large part about being too much like a woman.

From there, the second list expands to other descriptions: To be a man is to be a player, a guy who can attract women and get sex; someone who doesn't take shit from people, who can stand down another guy if challenged, who doesn't let anyone else get in his face. Some of the men say they have other ideas about masculinity but acknowledge that in most all-male spaces it's difficult to discuss them.

When that process is over, I step back and ask the class to consider the meaning of the two lists. On the first list of the culturally endorsed definitions of masculinity, how many of those traits are unique to men? Are women ever strong? Should women be strong? Can women be just as responsible as men? Should women provide and care for others? I ask the students if anyone wants to make the argument that women are incapable of these things, or less capable than men. There are no takers.

I point out the obvious: The list of traits that we claim to associate with being a man — the things we would feel comfortable telling a child to strive for — are in fact not distinctive characteristics of men but traits of human beings that we value, what we want all people to be. The list of understandings of masculinity that men routinely impose on each other is quite different. Here, being a man means not being a woman or gay, seeing relationships as fundamentally a contest for control, and viewing sex as the acquisition of pleasure from a woman. Of course that's not all men are, but it sums up the dominant, and very toxic, conception of masculinity with which most men are raised in the contemporary United States. It's not an assertion about all men or all possible ideas about masculinity, but a description of a pattern.

I ask the class: If the positive definitions of masculinity are not really about being a man but simply about being a person, and if the definitions of masculinity within which men routinely operate are negative, why are we holding onto the concept so tightly?

Robert Jensen has a gift for breaking down this kind of thing so simply. A good article - read the whole thing

Too Many People?

You know, I get really irritated when people talk about overpopulation. So does this guy. To me it seems like a way of shifting blame. It is about blaming people who live in the global south for environmental problems that were caused by exactly not them. I think a far more pressing need is to reduce our constant striving for unlimited economic growth and overconsumption.

The places where population is growing fastest — sub-Saharan Africa, rural China and Bangladesh — have virtually no carbon emissions, and pitiful food consumption rates. The gap is so huge that to be responsible for as many gas emissions as one British person, a Cambodian woman would need to have 262 children. Can we really sit in our nice homes, with a fridge-full of food we will mostly chuck away and an SUV in the drive, and complain that she is the problem?

Of course, there's only so many people we can fit on the earth- and, you know, feed.

But if this is a problem, is there a solution that isn't abhorrent? Some people seem to reach instinctively for authoritarian answers. The government of China has bragged that its "greatest contribution" to the fight against global warming has been its policy of punishing, imprisoning or sterilising women who have more than one child. Some environmentalists — a small minority — eye this idea jealously.

There is a far better way — and it is something we should be pursuing anyway. It is called feminism. Where women have control over their own bodies — through contraception, abortion and general independence — they choose not to be perpetually pregnant. The UN Fund For Population Activities has calculated that 350 million women in the poorest countries didn’t want their last child, but didn’t have the means to prevent it. We should be helping them by building a global anti-Vatican, distributing the pill and the words of Mary Wollstonecraft.

So we do need to reduce our population growth to something manageable, but improved social justice, security, and women's rights take care of that pretty neatly. For instance here in Canada, where women can be pretty independent, with (mostly) good access to birth control, and a relatively comfortable economic situation, we have a below replacement fertility rate (1.53 per woman). Reproductive rights are a very important part of the puzzle (Unless you're China) - just one more reason we must keep fighting that fight. As I wrote previously:

Give women more choices and they won't have as many babies - they may work outside the home, delay marriage, and use contraception. Children are expensive and less of an asset in industrial, urban societies as opposed to agricultural societies. Wealthier populations tend to also be healthier, which means less infant mortality (which generally correlates with having fewer babies).

It seems that population growth is inversely proportional to the degree to which a society is egalitarian, urbanized and economically secure. You can play with this yourself using Gapminder. Just press "play" to see how the indicators change over time.
Here, correlated with total fertility rate, is Life expectancy at birth. As life expectancy increases, fertility rate decreases. This one shows under 5 mortality rate. This one relates total fertility rate to the percentage of girls who complete primary school. Again, the trend is clear. Similarly, an increased Urban population also correlates to a lower fertility rate. Finally, increased income per person means fewer babies born.

One person, one body, one count

Who has fought hardest to prevent violence against women, if not feminists? And it is advocates for women, like the beleaguered Status of Women Canada, who have been working to alert the public to the prevalence of violence against pregnant women.

From the SWC publication, Assessing Violence Against Women: A Statistical Profile:

Women are particularly vulnerable when they are pregnant and when they take steps to leave their violent partners. With regard to pregnancy, the Violence Against Women Survey found that 21% of abused women were assaulted during their pregnancy, and in 40% of these cases, this episode was the beginning of the abuse.
[...]
The public also has relatively low awareness levels of prenatal violence with 20% [of a survey taken in New Brunswick] undecided on whether physical abuse of a woman often starts during pregnancy and 44% who disagree that violence often starts at this time.

Without the constant hard work of feminists and organizations like the SWC, domestic violence - including violence against pregnant women - would likely drop off the public radar. Who researches reports, creates policy recommendations, organizes programs for abused women, and builds women's shelters? I'll give you a hint: it isn't the anti-abortion movement.

So for them to claim that opposing the Unborn Victims of Crime Bill (Bill C-484) is somehow demonstrating a lack of care for these women is pretty ridiculous. One could note that being so keen to abolish the SWC displays a callous disregard for all the women, including the pregnant sort, that it works so hard to help.

A woman who has chosen to give birth, who wants and welcomes her baby, has invested the fetus with her hopes and dreams. Indeed she comes to think of the fetus as a baby before it is born. Nobody denies this. It doesn't follow that the fetus should be enshrined in law as an unborn child, and a human being with the same status as the mother. Harm to the fetus that she has come to care for is a tragedy, particularly when it is caused by violence to her own body. If we want to protect pregnant women, then let's enact effective policy and write meaningful laws to protect pregnant women, not disingenuous laws for fetal rights.

Other comments on here, here, here, and here, and especially here - among many others today

Canadian F-word Blog Awards now accepting nominations

Know a good feminist blogger? Get thee to the Canadian F-Word Blog Awards and nominate her (or him).


Many Categories:
Best Canadian Feminist Blog
Best International Feminist Blog
Activist Blog
Environmental Blog
Entertainment Blog
Culture Blog
Group Blog
Individual Blog
Women of Colour -centered Blog
Reproductive Liberty Blog
Family Blog
Political Blog
LBGT Blog
Humour blog
Best Comment Thread
Most Poignant Comment
The "Why the fuck didn't I say that" comment
Best Snark Comment
Most Regressive "Progressive"
The Support Bro

Plus, if you donate to WISE, you can be entered into a contest to win these fabulous handcrafted tit pillows.

Blogging for Choice: The Jane Collective

I'm too tired to write a proper post (plus there's so much amazing stuff out there already today - a lot of really great stuff), so I'll just give you a video to watch on The Jane Collective, an underground abortion service which operated in Chicago from 1969 to 1973. During a time of dangerous illegal abortions, the women took matters into their own hands, and learned to perform abortions. They saved a lot of lives:

"If you needed an abortion, for whatever reason, you took your life into your own hands – and you were terrified, absolutely terrified," recounts a member of the collective of the late 1960s. "All you knew is that you might die, that this person didn't know what he was doing and you were going to pay hundreds of dollars... to bleed to death in some hotel room."

Heather Booth, then a student at the University of Chicago involved in civil rights and antiwar movements, found herself sought out by a few young women who were pregnant, scared, and desperate. They had somehow heard that Booth knew of a safe abortionist. Soon others began to call, prompting Booth and several other young feminists to found JANE, an anonymous abortion service that provided counseling and acted as the go-between for pregnant women and doctors willing to perform the procedure.

Appalled at the exorbitant procedure fees and upon discovering that their main abortionist wasn't a licensed physician, the women of JANE learned to perform illegal abortions themselves. Eventually, the underground collective performed over 12,000 safe, affordable abortions. Word of the illegal alternative was spread through word-of-mouth, cryptic advertisements, and even by members of Chicago's police, clergy, and medical establishment.

12000 abortions and nobody died.

Currently, the abortion mortality rate for illegal abortions is 100-1000 per 100,000 in developing countries. In the United States, the death rate from legal abortion is 0.6 per 100,000 procedures.

Legal abortion is more likely to be safe.

Safe abortions save lives, something the Jane Collective was well aware of.

This Week in Intelligence

And I don't meant the secret CIA kind - I mean the part of I.Q. that comes before "quotient".

It's been a busy week for intelligence.

To sum up:

Men don't like intelligent women. This is, of course, the fault of teh feminists. (We pencilled the plan in our agendas, right after "Destroy the Family".)

Also, Stupidity is the best defense against the left's pesky rationality

But of course, I shouldn't worry my pretty little head about all of this, because my pretty little head holds a pretty little brain, which due to its cute and womanly IQ cannot possibly think about anything but shoes and lipstick. But fortunately I was born in Canada, where we have a respectable "national IQ". That almost makes up for the fact of my womanhood. Because can you imagine if I was born in, say, Kenya or Rwanda? Not that I can draw that conclusion by myself. Being a woman and all.

Don't you just feel smarter already?

Robert Jensen on Oppression

How do we explain the fact that most people's stated philosophical and theological systems are rooted in concepts of justice, equality, and the inherent dignity of all people, yet we allow violence, exploitation, and oppression to flourish? Only a small percentage of people in any given society are truly sociopaths, engaging in cruel and oppressive behavior openly and with relish. Feminism helped me understand the complex process, which tends to work like this:

--The systems and structures in which we live are hierarchical.
--Hierarchical systems and structures deliver to those in the dominant class certain privileges, pleasures, and material benefits.
--People are typically hesitant to give up such privileges, pleasures, and benefits.
--But, those benefits clearly come at the expense of those in the subordinated class.
--Given the widespread acceptance of basic notions of equality and human rights, the existence of hierarchy has to be justified in some way other than crass self-interest.
--One of the most persuasive arguments for systems of domination and subordination is that they are "natural."

So, oppressive systems work hard to make it appear that the hierarchy -- and the disparity in power and resources that flow from hierarchy -- is natural and, therefore, beyond modification. If men are naturally smarter and stronger than women, then patriarchy is inevitable and justifiable. If white people are naturally smarter and more virtuous than people of color, then white supremacy is inevitable and justifiable. If rich people are naturally smarter and harder working than poor people, then economic injustice is inevitable and justifiable. And, if human beings have special status in the universe, justified either on theological or biological grounds, then humans' right to extract from the rest of Creation whatever they like is inevitable and justifiable.

For unjust hierarchies, and the illegitimate authority that is exercised in them, maintaining their own naturalness is essential. Not surprisingly, people in the dominant class exercising the power gravitate easily to such a view. And because of their power to control key story-telling institutions (especially education and mass communication), those in the dominant class can fashion a story about the world that leads some portion of the people in the subordinate class to internalize the ideology.

For me, feminism gave me a way to see through not only male dominance, but all the systems of illegitimate authority. I saw the fundamental strategy they held in common, and saw that if we could more into a space in which we were true to our stated ideals, we would reject those systems as anti-human. All these systems cause suffering beyond the telling. All of them must be resisted. The connections between them must be understood.

I thought this was a brilliantly succinct summary of how systems of oppression, dominance, and hegemony maintain themselves. He is also very good at connecting different forms of oppression, showing how they are all interrelated... racism, patriarchy, capitalism, and this ecological nightmare. Read the rest of "King of the Hill"

Also, on white privilege, read Jensen's comment on this blog post

Three Things to Read - Especially for Women

I'm back in town and trying to catch up on my reading and these three articles crossed my path within a few minutes of each other, and they are tossing around in my head, in a magical cosmic salad of sorts.

I'm too tired to write anything coherent about them at the moment, so without further ado (plenty of ado tomorrow, I promise) I direct your attention to these three posts:

Firstly, check out Wrong, Wrong, Wrong, Misogynist, Wrong, from Fundie Watch (who somehow always manages to turn these fundie rants from freaky to funny).

After reading that (yes, I think the order is important), visit a cat and twenty, for in defense of male-bashing... because, well, she's got a point.

And the multifaceted Poor Bashing...the sexualization of poor wimmin is actually the erotic oppression of ALL wimmin from Dark Daughta. This is of particular interest to me, as I'm currently trying to navigate all the political implications of sexuality in my own life.

men... women... relationships... power... sexuality... anger... fear... There's a lot in these articles. So grab a hot drink and get readin'.

Underpaid women: Stupid Letters to the Editor

You know, I have no one to blame but myself. I know how the National Post makes my head spin, and yet some macabre force compells me to read it.

Anyways, today I found this little gem of a letter to the editor:

Underpaid women
Re: Why Men Earn More, editorial, July 23.

The bottom line is that if women want to earn as much as men, they have to behave like men in the employment marketplace. That usually means: work longer hours at intellectually challenging, personally unrewarding careers that offer a poor workplace environment, physical hazards, pay linked to performance, an imposition on nonworking lifestyle choices or some combination of the above.

Furthermore, women would have to take on more responsibilities, make family sacrifices and be more productive in the jobs they have. That's how men do it. Women can do it too, if they so choose.

Now I could politely tell the author to climb back into the cave from whence he came, and let us women go back to eating bonbons while our menfolk hunt for our dinner, but I think I'll take the high road today. Some facts might be a better response.

First, we need to get to the heart of his argument, which appears to be that women, compared to men:

1. work shorter hours in more rewarding and challenging careers
   
2. experience better workplace environments, and fewer physical hazards
   
3. are payed based on something other than performance
   
4. make poor lifestyle choices
   
5. take less responsibilities and make fewer family sacrifices
   
6. are less productive in their jobs than men.
   

Are any of these true?

1. Do women work shorter hours in more rewarding and challenging careers? When all women are compared with all men in paid employment, women's earnings in 2003 averaged only 63.6% of men's. This is indeed due in part to womens' shorter average paid working hours. (Of course, when unpaid work is added, women and men both work nearly 9 hours a day). Often paid working hours are not a matter of choice; women are overrepresented in part-time, contract and temporary work, and women are less likely to be paid for overtime hours. When adjusting for the difference in working hours, the gap decreases to 70.5% - that is, women make 70.5% of the average earnings of men working full-time for a full year. Lastly, more women than men head single parent households, which significantly impacts the quantity of paid hours worked. (Most data from here, here, and here) As to whether women work more rewarding jobs, that is probably fairly subjective, but we do know that women are overrepresented in the lowest paying jobs like cashiers, food service, and child care jobs and underrepresented in the highest paying occupations like senior managment, law, and dentistry. I suppose a case could be make that scanning bar codes all day is more rewarding than looking at nasty teeth, but otherwise I think most people would prefer the higher paying jobs - for the pay, the challenge, and the status.
   
2. Men do represent about 3/4 of those injured in the workplace - however, we do have labour laws for a reason. Willingness to be injured is fortunately not a requirement for a decent wage. This means we should continue trying to reduce workplace injuries overall, not demand women experience a greater share. There are other risks women face more than men: including sexism on the job, sexual harrassment, repetitive stress injuries, toxic chemicals. Do women have better working environments? Hard to say, but probably men and women both have equally shitty workplaces.
   
3. Are women paid for something other than performance, more often than men? This appears to be true, but it is not exactly a good thing. Pay-for-performance tends to result in higher pay not lower pay. So, yes please, we'd like some more of that, thank you. I expect it isn't likely to happen any time soon since the kinds of jobs that reward performance aren't typically nursing, teaching, and clerical.
   
4. Women make poor lifestyle choices. Where to even begin with this one. Most likely the letter writer is referring to having children, since I can't imagine what other lifestyle choices affect employment so differently for men and women. One thing: it takes both a man and a woman to make a baby, so why should a woman be poorer just because it is her body in which the fetus must grow? But, the fact is, we do, which is part of the reason reproductive choice is so important.
   
5. Women take less responsibility and make fewer family sacrifices. This is sort of funny. I suppose if you were to remove child care, and husband care, and elder care from the picture, then it could be true. Also, one of the things women know when they start a family is that they are making a big sacrifice - their job opportunities and pay almost certainly decrease - unlike men, who experience the opposite. That could be one of the reasons women are delaying marriage and children longer and longer.
   
6. Women are less productive than men. This I couldn't find any data on, either way. We know two things definitely improve productivity - one is technology, since improved technology allows fewer labour hours to accomplish more. The second is training and education. Neither of those are related to gender.
   

It is true than when women behave like men (mostly meaning not having any children), they tend to make similar wages.

The thing is, women, in some people's eyes, don't do the same work as men. They stay home having babies and knitting dirndls while the men are out hunting bear and fending off the Visigoths, so naturally they get paid less... It's easy to caricature this view (dirndls versus Visigoths, etc), but there may be some truth in it. Some research suggests that when women behave as men do--not having babies, mainly--the income gap largely disappears. If so (I won't claim the matter has been definitively settled), the question facing women is a stark one: What do you want, kids or cash?<Straight Dope>

Not very family friendly, is it?

One of These Countries is Not Like the Others

Let's play a game.

What do these countries all have in common:

Chile
Philippines
Sri Lanka
India
Bangladesh
Pakistan
Israel
Mozambique
Liberia
UK
Germany
Canada

... something not shared by that beacon of women's rights, the United States of America.

Yep, these nations, and many others, have been run by women.

In America there has been no woman president. Only 16% of congress are women. Well, someday perhaps the USA will catch up. Maybe the Philippines or India can come and liberate American women.

In Canada, we aren't exactly doing so well, either. No women lead any of the four major parties. We have never had more than 21% women in parliament, with few of these coming from aboriginal, immigrant or other minority women.

Granted, attaining gender parity in politics may not be the most urgent and pressing matter facing women, but it is one visible marker that helps us guage our progress.

Inspired by India electing its first woman president, Pratibha Patil.

Men, Women, Gay, Straight, Trans, Bi, Unisex - Everyone looks better in white lace see-through pants

The late 1960s were a time of throwing off the shackles of traditional societal gender norms, including the rules surrounding who could wear lace pants. Unisex clothing popped up on runways mid-decade, reaching suburban malls by the time today's ad appeared.

Wicked hot.
Via Torontoist
Happy Pride!

White Woman's Burden

Baby Skylar
Originally uploaded by NZJY

is to breed.

After all, we must save guys like this from their fear of a yellow/brown/black planet. Poor guys, hunkered in their bunkers, circling the wagons. Everyone's out to get them, you know. Especially white middle class women who are underutilizing their god-given fertility.

Not that we haven't heard this all before, of course. Don't you know we have a fertility crisis! Beware the coming demographic shift! White women, start your hormones. It's babymaking time.

To read: So You Want Me to Breed? in the Tyee, and Family Values: Made in America on RH Reality Check

Warning: the following may be considered frightening to white wealthy hetero christian male bigots, and their supporters, who fear losing their privilege above all else.

Sleeping, the sequel, originally uploaded by soleil.jones.

Originally uploaded by Soulfull

Diego
Originally uploaded by Renichil

Humanitarian "Feminism" from Above as a Form of Colonial Control

These interventions by the colonial state against social practices that oppressed women have been described as 'colonial feminism', that is where the colonial government intervened on behalf of women, claiming it was doing so on humanitarian grounds.

Sometimes these measures operated simultaneously as forms of colonial control. The colonial authorities were often sympathetic to those interventions that they regarded as a way of transforming the values of societies whose traditions resisted their rule. This was clearest with respect to the French colonial policy of forced unveiling in the Maghreb.

In all cases, it was entirely predictable that such legislative acts would become the focus for nationalist resistance. Yet, paradoxically for women colonial ideology could represent new forms of freedom. As a result, women were much more ambivalently placed in relation both to colonialism and anti-colonial nationalism. This has also meant that while women struggle with the legacies of colonialism in the postcolonial era, they are repeatedly accused of importing western ideas.

Well-meaning interventions by western feminist, human rights groups, and Ford Foundation-funded non-governmental organization can at times end up by making life more complicated for local feminists. Development of all kinds comes best from below rather than being imposed by above.

Interestingly, he also writes about how during anti-colonial struggles, women are often seen as the vessels of culture, "retrieved for the present from the society of the past."

For macho-nationalists, home and the domestic sphere, relatively free from colonial control, was the best guardian of the traditional values, culture, and identity of the new phenomenon they were creating on the Europen model against their European masters, 'the nation'.

Which means women's struggles do not end upon achieving self-determination, but that this is a precondition for a strong and viable feminist movement.

There's nothing new with what we are doing in Afghanistan, nor with the arguments used to justify it. It's been done by colonial powers in the past, and will continue to be done in our name unless we stop it.

Quotations from Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction by Robert Young. Formatting added to make it easier to read.

Inspired by the ongoing conversation here (see comments).

See also Afghan Women: Used by the Taliban, Used by Us.

Smoking & Beef Soon to be Illegal for Men of Breeding Age

"Male reproductive health is in trouble," say two new studies, so urgent guidelines are needed for men of breeding age, just like for pre-pregnant wimmins. In case you'd forgotten:

New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.

Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.

Potential causes for the problems with male reproductive health include carcinogens (like from cigarettes), chemicals (like dioxins), hormones (like from American beef, or milk), and endocrine disruptors (such as found in many plastics). So all men capable of inseminating have a pretty long list of substances to avoid: smoking, beef, dairy products, most personal care products, bottled water, etc.

Details from Grist: Separate studies show chemicals, cigarettes may affect male birth rate :

The percentage of boys born in the U.S. and Japan each year has gradually declined over the last three decades, a new study says -- and pollutants are a possible cause. "Male reproductive health is in trouble," says lead researcher Devra Lee Davis of the University of Pittsburgh, noting that both adult fertility and fetal chances seem to be affected. The study, published in the online journal Environmental Health Perspectives, calls the trend "a serious matter" that could be caused by exposure to chemicals like dioxin and mercury; it also points to factors including stress, obesity, and fertility treatments. The true cause, says Davis, is "something we need to find out and act upon." Because a woman without a man -- well, she'd probably be fine, but still. Meanwhile, a British study says smokers are twice as likely to conceive girls, suggesting that nicotine may affect sperm. Yes, smoke gets in your Y's -- but picking up puffing in an effort to determine your child's gender is not recommended.

More info here and here

On Privilege and What We Can do About It

Came across this excellent post today: "Check my What? On Privilege and What We Can do About It. Some tips on going from pro-equality in spirit to pro-equality in deed".

A really good explanation of what privilege means, with some concrete suggestions of how to deal with it. Tells us to accept the fact that privilege exists, learn to listen so we can understand what our privilege means, and then gives tips on how to communicate (including some tips on respectful language, and dealing with minority spaces). One of the most important specifics is, I think, is the advice to recognize "it's not about you". Basically anyone who has any sort of privilege oughtta read it: men, white people, heteros, rich people, etc.

It seems to be an opportune time to post about this, considering the conversations that have been raging in this corner of the blogosphere lately. More to come.

Read the whole thing.

Also recommended for a good primer on some of the effects of privilege vs. discrimination: The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide, previously blogged about here.

UPDATE: Check out Classified: How to Stop Hiding Your Privilege and Use it for Social Change. You can even download a whole copy here.

Blog Against Sexism Day

Whew there have been a LOT of people Blogging Against Sexism Today.

Just a few notable posts:

• Kate Sheppardreminds us how women's issues are deeply connected with environmental issues
  
• Kuri has some interesting observations about power/authority/hyper-masculinity
  
• A Liberal in DC notes Canada still has a long way to go in terms of gender parity in politics
  
• All About Pamusement has an excellent post on the hypocrisy of the Harper government towards women
  
• Sand Gets in my Eyes on women's struggles in Saudi Arabia (where she is currently living)
  
• Brit Bravo blogs about CodePink - women against the war
  
• tigtog offers up examples of some of the more insidious forms of sexism
  
• The Road to Surfdom shows us a particularly nauseating example of sexism
  
• Thinking Girl offers a thoughtful (and sad... and true...) post about the challenges facing women.
  
• Polly Jones gives us the answer to all our childcare problems
  

Men blogging against sexism today:

• BlogTHIS and The Dominion blog about women's health in Haiti
  
• Canada's Debate reports on women's murders in Guatamala
  
• Porcupine Blog remembers 4 great women freedom fighters
  
• Latino Politico on the importance of las mujeres and how equality often begins in our own homes
  
• Terry Glavin gives us a brief overview of the history of IWD and where we are today
  
• Buckdog blogs to end violence against women
  

And since we are blogging against sexism, I thought it appropriate to list some Women Bloggers I like, in no particular order:

• Verbena-19
  
• An Arab Woman Blues - Reflections in a sealed bottle...
  
• Women of Color Blog
  
• Marginal Notes
  
• Moons of Saturn
  
• Skdadl at Peace, Order, and Good Government, Eh?
  
• Politics'N'Poetry
  
• Sketchy Thoughts
  
• Thinking Girl
• April Reign
  
• Hope and Onions
  
• Feminist Toronto
  
• Liberal Catnip
  
• Idealist Pragmatist
  
• Diva Rachel
  
• Thought, Interrupted by Typos
  

Recently discovered blogs with women authors:

• Freedom for Egyptians
  
• Mshairi - "life, love, poetry, africa, gender activism"
  
• Redneck Mother is raising children, lettuce, and hell in Texas
  
• Saudi Stepford Wife
  

(There's lots, and many are indeed Canadian, despite Kinsella's "memo to Canada: WE NEED MORE SMART FEMALE BLOGGERS NOW!")

Lastly, don't forget to read The 33rd Carnival of Feminists

p.s. if I got anyone's gender wrong, please let me know in the comments. After all it is notoriously difficult to be sure about anything on the Internet
UPDATE:

• April Reign covers the death of Doris Anderson
  
• Idealist Pragmatist offers up a video of Stephen Lewis on women's rights
  
• Inside the Box: women of inspiration
  
• An Arab Woman Blues brings us a message from "liberated Iraq"
  
• Afghan Lord marks International Women’s Day by describing the suffering of Afghanistan’s women.
  
• The Cylinder blogs about IWD in Palestine
  
• Hope and Onions has an amazing "30 stories from 30 places, in order to demonstrate the breadth of women's experiences around the world". This will take some time to read, but is well worth it.
  

Solidarity With All the World's Women

As a fairly privileged woman living in Canada, I think today (March 8th, International Women's Day) I'd like to express my solidarity for all the world's women. There's such a vast range of different experiences; many women are fighting battles I've been fortunate enough not to have to fight. Despite our differences, we still have our shared womanhood in common.

North America
Here in North America, we are defending against the loss of the liberties we fought so hard for. "Feminist" has been rebranded as a dirty word. The right of a woman to choose when and if to have children is constantly under attack. Violence against women, and women's poverty are still urgent issues. In Canada, essential women's programs are being cut. Our aboriginal women face special risks.

Iraq
The current state of women in Iraq is covered in a recent report by MADRE: Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the US War on Iraq. (Listen/watch more at Democracy Now):

A groundbreaking report on the incidence, causes, and legalization of gender-based violence in Iraq since the US-led invasion. Amidst the chaos and violence of US-occupied Iraq, women — in particular those who are perceived to pose a challenge to the political project of their attackers — have increasingly been targeted because they are women. Today, they are subjected to unprecedented levels of assault in the public sphere, "honor killings," torture in detention, and other forms of gender-based violence.

Afghanistan
Because my country is one of the current occupiers, Afghanistan has particular importance to me. The women of Afghanistan are in a grave situation, with some of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world, on top of decades of war and extreme oppression. The courageous feminists at RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) are incredibly inspiring, working for peace, freedom, and democracy. Their projects include womens' literacy, orphanages, education, human rights, health care, and more. (Canadians Support Afghan women)

Africa
The diversity of Africa makes it tough to write anything short, but a few of the issues women there are facing include poverty, violence (also sexual violence), AIDS, and slavery. Let them tell it in their own words: Read some African women's blogs.

Iran
This year, women marking International Women's Day were beaten and arrested. Despite the ongoing oppression of women in Iran, there is a strong and vibrant Iranian women's movement fighting for their rights, on their terms.

The truth is, there's not enough to room to write everything I want to say to express my solidarity with my brave and beautiful sisters all over the world.

So check out Amnesty International, CBC, Labourstart, and InterPress Service for much much more.

(Last Year's Post)

Why We Must Struggle Against All Forms of Oppression

A comment posted by brownfemipower on her own blog entry: Denying people food is a Male Thing.

ONe of the incidences that I had the pleasure (not) of participating in with a white feminist involved her showing me pics of an Afghani woman who had twin children, one boy and one girl, and she feed the boy breast milk and the girl watered down formula. She didn't think that she had enough milk to feed two kids, so she gave the girl formula–and of course, she’s freaking poverty stricken and can't come up with enough water to make the formula–and of course, when you're starving, what do you do, but portion out and restrict the food you do have? So anyway, the girl wound up dying.

The white feminist I was talking to was positive that this horrific thing happened because Afghani culture values men. Well, it's true that in a patriarchal culture, men are valued. But when you are a single afghani mother who can't forage for food on your own and you’re starving to death isn't there also a very real legitimate reason that you value male life? Do we really think that a well off Afghani woman in Canada that has plenty of food is going to starve her daughter to death and lavish breast milk on a son?

Desperation *creates* and/or *reinforces* gender imbalances–many times, those gender imbalances didn’t exist prior to the introduction of "desperation". Look in Iraq, for example–women are now confined to their houses in ways that they weren’t under saddamn. Is a little girl that requires food but can do nothing to help *get* the food really going to be valued?

and then, really, in the case of this woman, it really pissed me off that this white woman was decrying the sexism, but NOT the fact that a mother has to water down formula to make it last longer or deny her child all together because she simply doesn't have water. Those conditions of extreme horrific poverty were created BY US and the USSR. Do we have no responsibility at ALL in that child's death?

I think this anecdote illustrates nicely the connection between patriarchy and economic injustice. All forms of domination and oppression are connected, and ALL have to be struggled against. That is why Condoleeza Rice represents nothing for our struggles: as a black woman she has been invited into the "other side" of the racist, patriarchal, classist divide. That does not eliminate the divide. Frustrating: white wealthy women (who can choose to be stay-at-home moms because of their priviledged social position) and support right-wing parties and say feminism is dead. Grrrr...

Eliminate Violence Against Women

Saturday was International Elimination of Violence Against Women Day, and the first of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.

In the GTA, 13 women have been murdered by their husband or partner so far this year. One was Malini Thayakumar, stabbed to death by her husband on Nov. 5. Kathiravelu Thayakumar, who killed their daughter before killing himself, had been convicted in 2002 of assaulting his wife.

The province as a whole fares even worse than the GTA, according to StatsCan, with three to six women a month being a victim of domestic homicide. (From The Star)

There's a very strong tendency is marginalize, ignore, or outright deny the extent of violence against women. One of the most important things to do is to keep the issue out there, in the public eye. Here are 16 more ways to help.

Truly, this issue is not just for women. Lots of great resources for men here and here (excellent sites).

More on Women's Rights.

Microcredit and Women Empowerment

Are the microcredit programs that everyone is abuzz about overrated? Apparently this is a hotly debated issue.

My first inclination is to dismiss microcredit because it doesn't change the structural causes of poverty. Microcredit brings poor people into the existing global system of exploitation, and might even mask that very real exploitation, putting even more onus on the poor to get themselves out of the hole others have dug them into. It doesn't speak to social justice at all.

BUT, as I was reminded by The Rebel Sell, something that actually works shouldn't necessarily be dismissed so quickly, for solely ideological reasons. It is important to also look at the real and measurable results. Our fight for justice can, and does, occur in parallel to all sorts of development activities; indeed, as people rise out of the most devastating of poverty, they may have more resources and power with which to fight.

So microcredit needs to be examined on a functional basis: does it work? Does it help alleviate poverty? Does it empower women financially and/or within the family?

The answer is not so clear.

Increasing the burden of debt is one potential problem. As long as microcredit is managed by NGOs like Save the Children, this is a fairly small risk, as there are a whole host of additional helpful programs that accompany the actual money lending transaction. Unfortunately with high interest rates, especially when the private sector gets involved for profit, there can be grave consequences.

If not necessarily effective at improving poverty levels, what about the situation of women? Improving women's equality is vital to so many other progressive goals, that this alone might validate microcredit. If it could improve women's economic position, reduce the birth rate, and improve health, then there might be something to it.

Proponents of these micro-loans list the ways they help women, but results are mixed. According this journal article, "the effects of interventions such as microcredit loan programs—which empower women economically and socially—on domestic violence are ambiguous. Participation in such programs can, on the one hand, reduce a woman's risk of domestic violence by making her life more visible and by increasing her perceived value in the family; on the other hand, if the woman's economic empowerment results in her acting more assertively, her husband may respond with violence."

There does seem to be some preliminary evidence that involvement in one of these microcredit programmes does improve contraceptive use by women, which is a fairly significant marker of progress. There are a lot more articles here.

I can't claim to make a definitive conclusion. Although I would prefer to see the end of the disastrous SAPs and an expansion of important social programs, if microcredit energizes a discouraged development sector and elicits more money for the groups on the ground, then for that reason alone, it is worth pursuing.

More on Poverty and Women's Issues