by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 28, 2012 | Defensive Violence, Male Violence
By Maurice Garland / The Loop 21
Nowadays the words “Stand Your Ground” have almost become synonymous with “no fair” and “unjust,” due mostly to the non-arrest of George Zimmerman the night he shot Trayvon Martin and that law that protected him up until just last week.
But the cases of John McNeil and now Marissa Alexander have highlighted the inconsistencies in the law’s application.
According to a blogsite pleading her case, in 2010, Alexander found herself in a violent confrontation with her husband. Her husband already had a history of abuse towards her and other women in the past, causing Alexander to place an injunction for protection against violence on him.
On this day in particular Alexander says that her husband, unprovoked, assaulted her in the bathroom of her home. She managed to get out of his grasp and ran to her car in the garage to leave, but realized that she didn’t have her keys. She was also unable to open the garage door to get out because of a mechanical malfunction.
At this point, she was very fearful for her life, but knew that she had to at least get her cell phone to call for help. That’s when she grabbed a gun, for which she had a concealed weapon permit. When she walked back into the kitchen area, she saw her husband again, who was supposed to be leaving through another door with his two sons (her stepsons). When he saw her, she says he screamed “bitch, I’ll kill you” and charged at her. She then pointed her weapon at the ceiling, turned her head and shot in the air. That scared her husband off.
But, he promptly called the police and told them that she shot the gun at him and his sons. She was taken to jail where she has been sitting ever since.
Alexander has been trying to use Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws to defend her actions, but to no avail. A judge ruled that Alexander was actually in the wrong, saying that she could have exited to safety through one of the other doors or windows in the house instead of crossing paths with her husband in the kitchen.
“I am a law abiding citizen and I take great pride in my liberty, rights, and privileges as one,” pleads Alexander on the blogsite telling her story. ” I have vehemently proclaimed my innocence and my actions that day. The enigma I face since that fateful day I was charged through trial, does the law cover and apply to me too?”
From AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/rights/155173/woman_in_jail_for_shooting_at_abusive_husband%3A_why_didn%27t_stand_your_ground_laws_apply_to_her/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 19, 2012 | Pornography, Repression at Home
By Gail Dines / Counterpunch
As colleges become more corporate, we are hearing more and more stories of academics being sanctioned for having the audacity to speak out against corporate malfeasance. Not only does this limit the free speech of academics, it also serves to scare teachers into adhering to the hegemonic discourse.
The latest example is quite stunning. Jammie Price, a full professor at Appalachian State University, was suspended last month for showing the documentary The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships. Distributed by the Media Education Foundation, one of the most respected producers of progressive documentaries in the country, the film sets out to look at how mainstream pornography has not only become more violent and misogynistic, but is actually in bed with major financial institutions such as credit card companies, venture capitalists, cable companies and hotels (they make more money from porn than mini bars).
After showing the film to 120 students, three evidently complained to the university administration that Dr. Price was showing “inappropriate material” in class. Dr. Price was not allowed to learn the names of the students or to meet with them, was denied a hearing, and was immediately suspended and told that she could not enter any offices or classrooms in the Arts and Sciences buildings. Should she want to obtain “materials, computer files, pick up mail …” she needed to make arrangements to be escorted by a member of the faculty.
How interesting that a university decides that an academic analysis of one of the most profitable industries in the world is “inappropriate.” What exactly are we supposed to teach about? Maybe if Jammie Price had been in a business school and taught a case on how to make a killing in porn, she might have been given a pass. Or maybe, to be on the safe side, Dr. Price should have instead invited a pornographer to class to promote their products. In 2008, the porn press was abuzz with the great news that Joanna Angel, owner of the porn site Burning Angel, had been invited to speak to a human sexuality class at Indiana University. No pretense was made that this was going to be an educational event by the porn news site X Critic, when they wrote, “She will be showing the students clips from her movies, handing out sex toys and enlightening them with a positive view on pornography.”
I wrote a letter of complaint to the president of Indiana University pointing out that the role of a university classroom was to educate the students, not provide a captive audience for capitalists to push their products. The president’s office responded in a rather odd way. They asked the professor to apologize to me for bringing in Joanna Angel, as if this whole case was a personal insult to me. I think we should be speaking about porn in the classroom, but not as a fun industry that sells fantasy, but rather as a global industry that works just like any other industry with business plans, niche markets, venture capitalists and the ever-increasing need to maximize profits.
It seems to me that Price’s crime was to provide a progressive critique of the porn industry, rather than wax lyrically about how porn empowers women sexually. She showed a film that takes an unflinching look at the real porn industry. Instead of claiming that we are all empowered by porn, The Price of Pleasure delves into the underbelly of the industry, illustrating its points with images drawn from some of the most popular porn websites. These are not pretty, nor are they very erotic. We see women being choked with a penis, women smeared in ejaculate, women being slapped and spit upon, and in a particularly horrible scene, a woman retching after she has licked a penis that was just in her anus (called Ass to Mouth in the industry).
I have never before heard of an academic suspended for either talking about or showing porn. This is not really a surprise because the trend in academia is to avoid talking about the actual industry and how it interfaces with mainstream capitalism. At a recent academic conference I attended in London, I found myself surrounded by post-modern academics who could use a good dose of political economy. The plenary session consisted of academics making the argument that there is no “it,” meaning the porn industry, because there are so many producers of porn and just so many types of much porn on the internet, that it is impossible to locate any actual industry. Interesting that while there is no “it,” there are, in fact, porn trade shows, porn business web sites, porn PR companies, porn lobbying groups, and so on. All these things that would suggest that there is indeed a porn business.
The failure to lose sight of how the industry functions has been noted by the pornographers themselves. Andrew Edmond, President and CEO of Flying Crocodile, a $20-million pornography Internet business, explained to Brandweek that “a lot of people [outside adult entertainment] get distracted from the business model by [the sex]. It is just as sophisticated and multilayered as any other market place. We operate just like any Fortune 500 company (Brandweek, October, 2000, 41, 1Q48). Jammie Price did not get distracted by the sex, and for that she paid dearly.
From Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/19/the-shocking-suspension-of-dr-price/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 11, 2012 | Prostitution
By Gloria Steinem
When I’m meeting with women and girls in prostitution in my own country as well as some countries of Europe, Africa and here in India, I’ve always asked what they would like for their daughter. So far, the answers have not included prostitution.
That’s especially striking given the profound differences in their lives, from Manhattan call girls to women in the brothel line-ups of Sonagachi; from women in the counties around Las Vegas, the only places in the US where prostitution is legal, to bar girls from the villages of Ghana and the scheduled castes in Bihar where women are consigned to prostitution by birth. Indeed, the same seems to be true of prostituted males who serve male clients.
The truth seems to be that the invasion of the human body by another person – whether empowered by money or violence or authority — is de-humanising in itself. Yes, there are many other jobs in which people are exploited, but prostitution is the only one that by definition crosses boundary of our skin and invades our most central sense of self. I know this is a subject that needs much more exploring, but I want to indicate it in shorthand because I think it’s the source of the misunderstanding in these two letters in response to a lecture I gave at Jawaharlal Nehru University on April 2.
I did not say — nor do I think, as Shohini Ghosh supposes — that sex trafficking and prostitution are “synonymous.” Though both are created by the same customers who want unequal sex, they represent crucial differences in a woman’s ability to escape or control her own life. However, I would not equate prostitution with domestic work, as she does. That ignores the damage and trauma of the body invasion that is intrinsic to the former and should never be part of the latter. Also I don’t think “consenting adults” is practical answer to structural inequality. Even sexual harassment law requires that sexual attention be “welcome,” not just “consensual.” It recognizes that consent can be coerced.
In addition, Kumkum Roy criticizes me for not using the term “sex worker.” I know this term is common in AIDS policy and academia, but it turned out to be dangerous in real life. For instance, in places as disparate as Germany and Nevada in the US, government used the idea that prostitution is “a job like any other” to withhold welfare and unemployment benefits from women who failed to try it. Only protests by women’s movements ended this form of procurement. As a popular term, I notice that prostituted girls and women say “survival sex,” as more descriptive as well as a breach of human rights.
Finally, I devoutly wish that unions had improved conditions in brothels, kept children out of prostitution and lessened disease and violence, as they promised to do, but in fact, there has been a huge increase in trafficking, girls in prostitution have become younger and younger, and there is no independent evidence of lowering rates of AIDS. What the idea of unions has done is to enhance the ability of the sex industry to attract millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation for the distribution on condoms, despite the fact that customers often pay more for sex without condoms, and it has created a big new source of income for brothel owners, pimps and traffickers who are called “peer educators,” I understand that that the traffic of women and girls into Sonagachi has greatly increased.
But there is good news. The old polarization into legalization and criminalization is giving way to a more practical, woman-centered and successful Third Way: De-criminalize the prostituted persons, offer them meaningful choices, prosecute traffickers, pimps and all who sell the bodies of others, and also penalize the customers who create the market while educating them about its tragic human consequences.
Those are turning out to be goals on which many people work together.
From The Hindu: The Hindu
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 7, 2012 | Male Violence, Women & Radical Feminism
By Hannah Rubenstein / Inter Press Service
No man, except for those raised here as children, lives in Umoja village in Kenya; one has not for two decades. It is a village only of and for women, women who have been abused, raped, and forced from their homes.
In the culture of northern Kenya’s Samburu district there is a saying: “Men are the head of a body, and women are the neck.” The neck may support the head, but the head is always dominant, towering above.
But in this remote village, located in the grasslands of Samburu district, this mantra does not ring true. In Umoja, as one female resident says, “We are our own heads.”
Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, holds a unique status in the country: it is a village populated solely by women. For more than two decades, no men have been permitted to reside here.
The rule is one of the requirements of a community that has fought against overwhelming odds to become a place of refuge for women. It is a sanctuary where men – who have been the cause of so many problems for these women – are simply not welcome.
In the 22 years since its founding, the village has had a significant impact not only on the women who choose to call Umoja home but within the communities that surround it. The example that Umoja has set, coupled with the outreach efforts of its residents, has touched the lives of women in the region.
Celena Green, who is the Africa programme director for an organisation called Vital Voices that works with the women of Umoja, told IPS: “The existence of Umoja has allowed women’s groups in other surrounding villages to learn from the empowerment and pride of the Umoja women.”
Women from nearby communities attend workshops in the village that are aimed at educating women and girls about human rights, gender equity, and violence prevention. When the women return home, Green explained, “they begin to change the culture, demanding a safe, violence free community where women and girls are valued and protected.”
“Ideally, no woman or girl should ever have to flee her home to come to Umoja in the first place,” she added. “But ultimately, the aim of Umoja is to provide an emergency safe haven for those women who are in distress, and more importantly to contribute toward building communities where everyone is valued and can succeed.”
Umoja’s history began in 1990, when a collective of 15 Samburu women, who called themselves the Umoja Uaso Women’s Group, began selling beadwork and other goods to raise money for themselves and their families. As the group began to grow financially lucrative, they found themselves facing increasing harassment by men in their communities who felt that economic growth was not appropriate for the women, who traditionally play a subordinate role.
In response, the women, led by matriarch Rebecca Lolosoli, decided to break away and begin their own village, in order to ensure security and cooperation for themselves out of the reach of those who sought to undermine them.
Today, Umoja is home to 48 women who have come from all over the country. Their stories vary – some were young girls fleeing forced marriages to old men, others were raped or sexually abused, and several were widows who were shunned by their communities. Moreover, several women residing in the village are Turkana, taking refuge from the tribal violence currently raging in the central region of Isiolo.
The villagers, who rely on the sale of beadwork and profits from a nearby campsite and cultural center, pool their funds as a collective to support themselves. In addition to providing food and basic necessities for village residents, profits are used to cover medical fees and the operation of a school that serves both the village’s children and its adult women who wish to learn basic skills and literacy.
Nagusi Lolemu, an older woman with delicate hands and a melodious voice, is one of the village’s original founders. Sitting in the shade, her nimble fingers string red beads deftly in one fluid, unthinking movement, as she speaks rapidly in Samburu.
Lolemu’s story echoes a recurring theme in the village: she was widowed after years of marriage and subsequently rejected by the community she called home. “There were too many single women,” she explained to IPS through a translator. Single women, who are not permitted to hold property in Samburu culture, and generally are not educated, are viewed as a financial drain on the community. When her husband passed away, she was no longer welcome in her home.
Nagusi, who has been living in Umoja for 22 years, has two grown children. She does not question her decision to leave her home for Umoja.
“My children are educated, working, and giving back to the family and the community,” she told IPS. “In a regular village, this could not happen.”
In her village – like any other traditional community – there is little opportunity for women’s education and the consequential financial benefits it brings, she explained. Her daughter would have grown up as she did, illiterate and dependent on men for all her basic needs.
“Here,” Lolemu said, matter-of-factly, “everyone is equal.”
Green echoes this statement, explaining to IPS: “In a traditional village, women may not have had the opportunity to exercise leadership, to be in control of their wealth or resources, and they would more likely experience domestic violence, female genital cutting, child marriage and other traditional practices that discriminate against and physically harm women and children.”
In addition to barring men from residing in the village, the women of Umoja live by a set of self- imposed rules, which, as Lolemu explained, are based on ensuring equality and mutual respect within the village.
Residents are required to wear the traditional clothes and intricate beadwork jewelry of their people at all times, in order to preserve and promote their cultural heritage. The practice of female genital mutilation is not permitted. And the only males allowed to sleep in the village are those who have been raised there as children.
Read more from Inter Press Service: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107309
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 5, 2012 | Male Violence, Mining & Drilling, Rape Culture, Toxification
By Sara Jerving / PR Watch
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has generated widespread media attention this year. The process, which injects water and chemicals into the ground to release “natural” gas and oil from shale bedrock, has been shown to contribute significantly to air and water pollution and has even been linked to earthquakes. But little has been reported on the ways in which fracking may have unique impacts on women. Chemicals used in fracking have been linked to breast cancer and reproductive health problems and there have been reports of rises in crimes against women in some fracking “boom” towns, which have attracted itinerant workers with few ties to the community.
Toxins in Fracking Process Linked to Breast Cancer
Not only has the chemical cocktail inserted into the ground been shown to contaminate groundwater and drinking water, but fracking fluid also picks up toxins on its trip down to the bedrock and back up again that had previously been safely locked away underground. Chemicals linked to cancer are present in nearly all of the steps of extraction — in the fracking fluids, the release of radioactive and other hazardous materials from the shale, and in transportation and drilling related air pollution and contaminated water disposal.
Some reports indicate that more than 25 percent of the chemicals used in natural gas operations have been linked to cancer or mutations, although companies like Haliburton have lobbied hard to keep the public in the dark about the exact formula of fracking fluids. According to the U.S. Committee on Energy and Commerce, fracking companies used 95 products containing 13 different known and suspected carcinogens between 2005 and 2009 as part of the fracking fluid that is injected in the ground. These include naphthalene, benzene, and acrylamide. Benzene, which the U.S. EPA has classified as a Group A, human carcinogen, is released in the fracking process through air pollution and in the water contaminated by the drilling process. The Institute of Medicine released a report in December 2011 that links breast cancer to exposure to benzene.
Up to thirty-seven percent of chemicals in fracking fluids have been identified as endocrine-disruptors — chemicals that have potential adverse developmental and reproductive effects. According to the U.S. EPA, exposure to these types of chemicals has also been implicated in breast cancer.
The Marcellus Shale in the northeast part of the United States also naturally contains radioactive materials, including radium, which is largely locked away in the bedrock. The New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) analyzed 13 samples of water, contaminated by the fracking process, as a result of the hydraulic fracturing of the shale during the extraction process. The DEC found that the resulting water contained levels of radium-226, some as high as 267 times the limit for safe discharge into the environment and more than 3000 times the limit safe for people to drink. One gas well can produce over a million gallons of contaminated water. A New York Times expose in 2011, released secret EPA documents that illustrated how this water is sometimes sent to sewage plants that are not designed to process the dangerous chemicals or radiation which in some instances are used in municipal drinking supplies or are released into rivers and streams that supply drinking water.
Emerging data points to a problem requiring more study. In the six counties in Texas which have seen the most concentrated gas drilling, breast cancer rates have risen significantly, while over the same period the rates for this kind of cancer have declined elsewhere in the state. Similarly, in western New York, where traditional gas drilling processes have been used for decades before hydrofracking came along, has been practiced for nearly two centuries, rural counties with historically intensive gas industry activity show consistently higher cancer death rates (PDF) than rural counties without drilling activity. For women, this includes breast, cervix, colon, endocrine glands, larynx, ovary, rectal, uterine, and other cancers.
Toxins linked to Spontaneous Abortion and Birth Defects
Certain compounds, such as toluene, that are released as gas at the wellhead and also found in water contaminated by fracking have the potential to harm pregnant women or women wishing to become pregnant. According to the U.S. EPA, studies have shown that toluene can cause an assortment of developmental disorders in children born to pregnant women that have been exposed to toulene. Pregnant women also carry an increase risk of spontaneous abortion from exposure to toluene. Wyoming, which contains some of the most active drilling fields in the country, failed to meet federal standards for air quality due to fumes containing toluene and benzene in 2009.
Sandra Steingraber, an acclaimed ecologist and author of “Raising Elijah” — a book on how to raise a child in an age of environmental hazards, takes the strong stand that fracking violates a woman’s reproductive rights. “If you want to plan a pregnancy and someone else’s chemicals sabotage that — it’s a violation of your rights as a woman to have agency over your own reproductive destiny,” she said.
Steingraber sees banning fracking as an issue that both the pro-choice and anti-abortion camps can both rally behind. She has been giving talks on why opposition to fracking should be considered a feminist issue. The author won a Heinz award — which recognizes individuals for their contributions in areas including the environment — for her work on environmental toxins. She dedicated the $100,000 prize to the fight against fracking.
Crimes Against Women on the Rise in Some Energy Boom Towns
Beyond concerns about cancer and toxins are other societal ills related to fracking that disproportionately impact women. Some areas across the country where fracking has boomed have noted an increase in crime — including domestic violence and sexual assault. In Dickinson, North Dakota, there has been at least a 300% increase in assault and sex crimes over the past year. The mayor has attributed the increase in crime to the oil and “natural” gas boom in their area.
The Executive Director of the Abuse & Rape Crisis Center in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, Amy Miller, confirmed that there has been an increase in unknown assailant rapes since the gas industry moved into the region — which are much harder to prosecute. Miller also noted that domestic abuse has spiked locally, with the cases primarily from gas industry families. The county has more than 700 wells drilled, with more than 300 of these operational, and another 2,000 drilling permits have been issued.
The Gas Industry’s Pink Rig
Even though fracking and drilling are dependent on a potpourri of carcinogenic chemicals, big energy companies don’t hesitate to slap on pink paint in PR campaigns championing breast cancer awareness.
In 2009, a natural gas drilling rig in Colorado was painted pink with a percentage of the daily profits from the unit going to the Breast Cancer Foundation. This and other showy gestures by the methane gas industry appear to do little to alleviate concerns about the impact that fracking chemicals and practices may be having on public health and safety.
From TruthOut: http://truth-out.org/news/item/8336-the-fracking-frenzys-impact-on-women
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 4, 2012 | Prostitution, Worker Exploitation
By Edith M. Lederer / Associated Press
The U.N. crime-fighting office said Tuesday that 2.4 million people across the globe are victims of human trafficking at any one time, and 80 percent of them are being exploited as sexual slaves.
Yuri Fedotov, the head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, told a daylong General Assembly meeting on trafficking that 17 percent are trafficked to perform forced labor, including in homes and sweat shops.
He said $32 billion is being earned every year by unscrupulous criminals running human trafficking networks, and two out of every three victims are women.
Fighting these criminals “is a challenge of extraordinary proportions,” Fedotov said.
“At any one time, 2.4 million people suffer the misery of this humiliating and degrading crime,” he said.
According to Fedotov’s Vienna-based office, only one out of 100 victims of trafficking is ever rescued.
Fedotov called for coordinated local, regional and international responses that balance “progressive and proactive law enforcement” with actions that combat “the market forces driving human trafficking in many destination countries.”
Michelle Bachelet, who heads the new U.N. agency promoting women’s rights and gender equality called UN Women, said “it’s difficult to think of a crime more hideous and shocking than human trafficking. Yet, it is one of the fastest growing and lucrative crimes.”
Actress Mira Sorvino, the U.N. goodwill ambassador against human trafficking, told the meeting that “modern day slavery is bested only by the illegal drug trade for profitability,” but very little money and political will is being spent to combat trafficking.
“Transnational organized crime groups are adding humans to their product lists,” she said. “Satellites reveal the same routes moving them as arms and drugs.”
Sorvino said there is a lack of strong legislation and police training to combat trafficking. Even in the United States “only 10 percent of police stations have any protocol to deal with trafficking,” she said.
M. Cherif Bassiouni, an emeritus law professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said to applause that “there is no human rights subject on which governments have said so much but done so little.”
Laws in most of the world criminalize prostitutes and other victims of trafficking but almost never criminalize the perpetrators “without whom that crime could not be performed,” he said.
Bassiouni said the figure of 2.4 million people trafficked at any time is not reflective of the overall problem because “at the end of 10 years you will have a significantly larger number who have gone through the experience.”
He urged a global reassessment of “who is a victim and who is a criminal” and called for criminalizing not only those on the demand side using trafficked women, children and men, but all those in the chain of supplying trafficking victims.
From The Washington Post:
