If you’re a woman and if your head is spinning following passage of the draconian abortion law in Alabama, rest assured that the dizzy disorientation you’re feeling is shared by women across the country. If you’re like me, you might find yourself waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night with the terrifying sense that your worst nightmare has just crossed the threshold from dream to reality. If you’re like me, you might find that words fail to describe your sense of anger and despair.

Welcome, ladies, to the new reality of the all-out, unashamed assault on our bodies and our lives. This is the battle we hoped we’d never have to face. This is the battle that we should have known was baked into the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. This is the battle that we and our daughters will have to fight because every obstacle that every woman ever has overcome and every opportunity seized were born out of our ability to make our own choices about our reproductive lives. Make no mistake about this: Every aspect of women’s lives is now under threat.

And where, exactly, do our fellow citizens stand on women’s right to decide how, when, and with whom we choose to bear our children? According to the Pew Research Center, 58% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 37% think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases.

When you break down those numbers into attitudes among Republicans and Democrats, the deep divide over abortion becomes even more stark. Here’s what the pollsters at Pew found:

“By a wide margin (59% to 36%), Republicans say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. In 1995, Republicans were evenly divided (49% legal vs. 48% illegal).

Views among Democrats have shifted in the other direction over the past two decades. Today, 76% of Democrats say abortion should be legal in at least most cases. In 1995, 64% favored legal abortion in all or most cases.”

Should we, as pro-choice women, take any solace at all from the fact that our views are shared by a majority of Americans? Sadly, the answer is no. We’re living through a time in which nothing in our civic and political life can be taken for granted. If nothing else, Donald Trump and his Republican enablers have demonstrated to us in no uncertain terms that majority opinion does not necessarily prevail. In fact, with every news cycle we are bombarded with the upside-down reality that the beliefs and opinions of the majority can easily be overwhelmed and squashed by the cunning, the dishonesty, and the manipulation of the minority.

Words may have failed me upon hearing the disturbing news out of Alabama. But words haven’t failed three clever comedy writers, Amber Ruffin, Jenny Hagel, and Ally Hord. They’ve found just the right words. Listen, laugh, and cry. And then shake off the nightmare and get ready to fight.

The post Alabama’s anti-abortion abomination appeared first on Occasional Planet.

One of the most contentious and emotionally charged issues in American politics today is the issue of abortion and a woman’s right to choose. Forgotten in the increasingly divisive crusade to deny women the right to make decisions over the autonomy of their own bodies and their right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term is the fact that abortion is as old as pregnancy itself.

Contemporary discussions about abortion often seem to begin and end with 1973 – the year of the ruling in Roe v. Wade, in which the Supreme Court handed down one of the most life-altering decisions for women in the court’s history. That decision has rippled through American culture – and, indeed, across the world – in multiple ways that continue to profoundly impact women, their life choices, their financial well-being, and their expectations of fulfilling the promise of their lives.

As the debate rages on, and as countless numbers of women’s lives and the lives of their families are impacted by the narrowing of abortion access in states across the country, it’s important to remember that the undeniable fact of women seeking to control the destinies of their bodies predates by centuries that decision in 1973. It’s also important to remember that the history of abortion cannot be recalled without acknowledging the fears and sheer desperation that led our female forebears to tolerate the dangers, the pain, and the risk of remedies and procedures they hoped would end an unwanted pregnancy but often led instead to permanent bodily harm or death.

Abortion in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries

Let’s acknowledge as well that, contrary to popular belief, abortion restrictions and the outright denial of abortion access is a relatively new development in America’s history. In her definitive history of abortion in America, “When Abortion Was a Crime,” historian Leslie Reagan recounts how abortion used to be a part of everyday American life. In the eighteenth century until the late nineteenth century, abortions were commonly performed and were permitted under common law until “quickening” – a term that describes the stage when fetal movement in the womb may be felt by the mother. Prior to 1880, even the Catholic Church tolerated the reality of abortion. As Reagan explains, “the Catholic Church implicitly accepted early abortions prior to ensoulment. Not until 1869, at about the same time that abortion became politicized in this country, did the church condemn abortion; in 1895 it condemned therapeutic abortion [procedures performed to save the life of the mother].”

In 1857, the newly constituted American Medical Association undertook what could be considered one of the first large-scale lobbying efforts to criminalize abortion. Due to concerns about poisonings, but also reflecting a growing backlash to women’s emerging role in American public life and the desire of member physicians to professionalize the practice of medicine and limit the competition of midwives and homeopaths, the AMA pushed for state laws restricting abortion. In 1873, Congress passed the Comstock Law, banning abortion drugs. By 1880, the AMA’s efforts lobbying for state laws restricting abortion bore their bitter fruit.

Abortions in ancient times

Even earlier historic accounts provide a glimpse into the common practice of women seeking to abort unwanted pregnancies. These accounts not only comment on procedures but also recount a long list of recipes for pastes, pessaries, ingestions, salves, suppositories, and ingested herbal toxins. Folk cultures across the world and across time abound with an almost limitless variety of abortifacients and methods for their use passed on from one generation to the next. The acknowledgment of abortion as a fact of women’s reproductive lives was not limited to folk culture and the ministrations of shamans, herbalists, and midwives. The most influential philosophers, scientists, and physicians of ancient times wrote about and often provided advice about the most effective abortion techniques.

In the Kahun Gynecological Papyrus, one of the earliest known medical texts from ancient Egypt, the use of crocodile dung made into a pessary to be inserted into the vagina was the recommended method to induce abortion.

In ancient Greece, the musings of Aristotle in his work “Politics” foreshadow some of the thorniest terms of the debate raging through to our own time.

Aristotle wrote:

 “. . . when couples have children in excess, let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation.”

The Greek physician Hippocrates, although mostly opposed to abortion, counseled that a woman seeking to end a pregnancy could “jump up and down, touching her buttocks with her heels at each leap” – causing the embryo to come “loose” and fall out. This was a technique that later became known as the Lacedaemonian Leap. Other Greek physicians recommended the ingestion of myrrh, rue, and juniper.

In the days of the Roman Empire, Pliny the Elder’s “Natural History” provided evidence that women of his time sought to limit the number of pregnancies. His practical–-if ineffective—advice confirmed that “if a pregnant woman steps over a viper, she will be sure to miscarry.”

An eighth-century Sanskrit manuscript recommended sitting over a pot of boiling water or steamed onions –a questionable pregnancy-ending technique used by Jewish women on New York’s Lower East Side well into the twentieth century.

Here are some of the methods women have used, throughout history, to try to induce abortions

• Ingesting a meal of toxic lupines with ox bile and absinthium
• Smearing the mouth of the uterus with olive oil, honey, cedar resin, and the juice of the balsam tree
• Myrtle oil gums
• Sitting in a bath of linseed, fenugreek, mallow, marshmallow, and wormwood
• Creating a paste of ants, foam from camel’s mouths, and tail hairs of black-tail deer dissolved in bear fat
• Ingesting pennyroyal or drinking of pennyroyal tea (5 grams of which is toxic and may lead to death)
• Fumigating the womb with various poisons
• Opium ingested with mandrake root, Queen Anne’s lace, gum resin, and various types of peppers (in 2011 it was reported that women in Pakistan are still using opium bombs in the uterus to end unwanted pregnancies)
• Inducing abortion by riding horses or carrying heavy objects
• Inserting a uterine suppository of mouse dung, honey, Egyptian salt, wild colocynth, and resin

Today in America, one in four women will have an abortion by the age of forty-five. Tellingly, 59 percent of women seeking abortions are mothers. Many of us believed that the Roe v. Wade decision was settled law and that the decision would forever protect a woman’s right to choose. We also believed that access to safe, legal abortions would relegate to the ash heap of history the home-induced abortions using toxic, poisonous chemicals or the back-alley horrors of knitting needles and coat hangers. Will we be proven wrong? And will women be returned once again to the uncertainties and dangers that women who came before us were forced to face?

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Sadia Khatri is determined to change the lives of women and girls in Pakistan—one tea-sipping, snacking, strolling, bicycle-riding excursion at a time.  The story of Sadia, a native of Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city, and her activism began with her decision to go to college in America. Sadia landed at Mount Holyoke, a prestigious, all-women’s college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Sadia’s American experience changed her life. It seems possible that the sense of empowerment brought back to Pakistan by this one young woman might end up changing the lives of thousands of women and girls in cities across Pakistan.

Sadia’s epiphany came to her after she returned to Karachi and realized that the lifestyle she’d enjoyed as a woman in America, particularly the freedom to go out alone with no purpose other than to enjoy being out in a public space, shed a harsh light on the constrained lives of women and girls in her hometown. As Sadia explains, male-dominated traditions, misperceptions about safety for women, and both subtle and overt social mores dictated that females have a male companion or chaperone accompany them in public spaces—whether that be a male friend, a father, or a brother. As a budding feminist and a young woman who had experienced the unfettered freedom of women in America, Sadia was seized with a passion for change.

Fueled by a new sense of self-confidence and a belief in the collective organizing they’d discovered in America, in 2015 Sadia and Atiya Abbas, a friend who had also observed on her own travels the contrast between the freedoms of women living abroad and the cramped lives of women in Pakistan, founded the feminist collective Girls at Dhabas.

The framework for their public protest is simple but brilliant and effective. Dhabas, which are popular, casual roadside cafes for locals and truckers, are places where men traditionally gather to drink tea, snack, and socialize. These are public spaces where the lone woman or girl traditionally was not welcomed. Girls at Dhabas encourages women to venture out alone to interact with public spaces, like the dhabas, in order to erase the fear of being out alone and to build a level of comfort with utilizing the public spaces in their cities.

Relying on personal narratives, storytelling, and social media, the Girls at Dhabas movement has created connections and strengthened the resolve of women to reclaim their right to public spaces in cities across Pakistan. The collective has either inspired or helped young women in other cities reclaim public spaces by staging their own actions, like organizing all-women cricket matches and collective bicycle rides.

Humay Waseem, a bicyclist participating in a group inspired by Girls at Dhabas called Islamabad Girls on Bikes, explained her new-found feelings of freedom to a Western news service: “I drive on these roads all the time but this was maybe the first time I got to experience them while biking … I loved the feeling of freedom with the breeze in my hair.”

As Sadia explains in the video below, the transformation of the perception of public space and who has permission to be there is freeing not just for women but for men as well. As she says, “the more we step out and the more we start getting comfortable in these spaces—not just for us does it get normalizing but also for the men.”

American influence

In this upside-down era of Trumpism where intolerance has been elevated to the highest levels of government, it’s easy to forget about the value of encouraging artists, academics, scientists, and students, like Sadia, to come to the U.S. and soak up the influence of America’s cultural and intellectual diversity. Think about how just one young woman’s experience of being in America has inspired thousands of women to find the courage to embrace a new definition of their rights as women in a place more than eight thousand miles away. Sadia’s experience and the fervor she developed for women’s rights is a shining example of the best of America and what the projection of American values and influence used to look like on the international stage.

What America is losing

How many more smart, motivated men and women, like Sadia, are out there? Given the opportunity, how many more will carry back to their countries the values of democracy, free speech, equal rights, and an open and diverse society that represent the best of the American experiment?  Sadly, we may never find out. The current harsh rhetoric and restrictive policies and intentional delays on immigration and visa allocation have cast a shadow over the numbers of individuals seeking to attend, do research, or teach at American institutions of higher learning.

The facts are telling an irrefutable story of America’s loss. Following years of significant growth, the number of international students attending colleges and universities in the U.S. has declined precipitously. According to data from the U.S. State Department, the total number of F-1 visas—the visas that enable international students to attend school full time anywhere in the U.S.—declined from approximately 644,000 in 2015 to 394,000 in 2017.

The economic loss is significant as well. During the 2017-2018 academic year, international students attending American institutions of higher learning in states across the country contributed approximately $39 billion to the economy as a whole, helped to support the challenged budgets of colleges and universities from coast to coast, and contributed to supporting more than 455,000 jobs.

Loss of influence. Loss of dollars and jobs. Loss of access to the international brain bank. Loss of opportunity to influence the next generation of organizers and leaders like Sadia. This is not what winning looks like.

The post Changing Pakistani women’s lives, one sip of tea, one bike ride at a time appeared first on Occasional Planet.

As we in the U.S. watched the federal government shut down because of one man’s fixation on a border-wall boondoggle meant to exclude desperate families fleeing violence and poverty, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, an estimated 3.5 to 5 million women forcefully demonstrated that exclusion is not the only reason to build a wall.

Here’s the story of how millions of brave women came together to demand gender equality, respect, and inclusion by using their bodies as the building blocks to form a 385-mile-long human chain. They called their wall the Vanitha mathil, or the women’s wall.

The story begins in September 2018, when India’s supreme court overturned a centuries-old ban that forbade women of reproductive age from entering the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala. The Sabarimala Temple is an important annual pilgrimage destination for more than a million Hindus. Although the supreme court’s decision was groundbreaking, it failed to alter long-held religious beliefs about the impurity of women’s bodies. It also failed to stop the day-to-day shaming and discrimination of menstruating girls and women—who are forbidden to prepare food or even to step foot in a temple.

Since the ruling, the Hindu nationalist party and religious hardliners have ramped up their intimidation tactics. Female pilgrims have been attacked. Women between the ages of ten and fifty have been prevented from entering the temple. Journalists have been denied access and pushed out of the area. Police charged with protecting female worshipers have been battered with stones.

Women of all ages responded by pulling out their most powerful asset—themselves. Does their response sound familiar to those of you who took to the streets for women’s marches following the 2016 election? Or ran for office in 2018? Or decided to override guilt and shame to speak out about discrimination, intimidation, or sexual assault?

On New Year’s Day 2019, Karala’s women’s wall became the largest gathering of women demonstrating in support of gender equality in India’s history. The next day, two 40-year-old women under police protection entered Sabarimala Temple and offered their prayers. In defiance of the court, after the women left the temple was shut down for a cleansing ritual.

Speaking on behalf of the local government’s intention to uphold the court’s decision and reflecting on the clash of women’s demand for equal treatment and the intransigence of traditional religious beliefs, KK Sahilaja, minister for social justice in Kerala and a participant in the women’s wall, pulled no punches. “We stand for gender equality,” she said. “Those saying that women are impure should be ashamed of themselves. How can they say women are impure in front of God.”

I am not a Hindu, nor do I feel a connection to any religion. But that doesn’t matter. I recognize in the faces of the women and girls of Kerala the same determination of all women to fight for our right to be included.

The post Defying religious misogyny, Hindu women create a human wall of inclusion appeared first on Occasional Planet.

The World Bank (WB), an international financial institution with a questionable track-record of interventions in the developing world, is currently thinking about the future of work as it is preparing its 2019 World Development Report. They, and every other policy wonk these days it seems, are pondering how robots and technology will change how we live, love, learn and earn.

Often, these speculative discussions take place in far off mountains of Switzerland and in the executive suites of global power brokers. In most instances, the conversations are rarefied and divorced from reality.

Input from individuals who will make up an even greater share of the future economy, care workers, is non-existent or minimal. Yet, the level of protections and rights we secure for individuals in this most marginalized sector of our economy will most certainly reflect the level afforded to other workers across industries.

Jobs in the care industry are the among the fastest growing, according to the projections of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. A growing and aging population in developed countries, coupled with increasing number of millennials having children while both partners hold jobs, will further amplify the need for care work.

The care industry broadly encompasses individuals who provide live-in or home care assistance for the elderly, for the disabled, for immobilized people and for children. They are also commonly known as domestic workers, who take on the roles of nannies, chauffeurs and housekeepers.

Many consider the domestic worker the “original gig economy worker,” due to a high degree of inconsistency and insecurity associated with their work and lack of access to benefits and a safety net. The work they do and services they provide are undervalued and rarely counted by economists.

In their current form, the professions in this sector are anything but desirable. People working in the care industry have been historically marginalized and are extremely vulnerable. The average median income for home-care workers in the U.S. is roughly $13,000 per year, compared to the annual median income across other professions, which hovers around $44,000 per year.

Women are grossly over-represented in this industry, as ares racial minorities. Currently, around 40% of home-care workers in the U.S. are immigrants, many of them undocumented and thus at increased risk of exploitation. While their daily jobs entail maintaining the dignity of another human being, their own dignity and opportunity to provide for their own families is grossly diminished.

There are also very few national or international standards for the work performed by domestic workers or ways to scientifically quantify its value. As Anna Blackshaw, writer and photographer documenting lives of domestic workers in California, observed, it’s difficult to measure “just another happy child or shining kitchen floor,” as compared to the metrics of the latest tech widget.

Even scarcer are labor protections, guaranteed days off or retirement benefits. Many domestic workers work until they are physically spent or bedridden. Stories of verbal, physical and sexual abuse by employers are all too common. Being fired for being sick occurs too often. Not being paid for months on end is reality for too many.

However, change is on the way. It comes from Seattle, WA and is the result of prolonged and tireless advocacy by Working Washington, a non-profit that initially galvanized around the issue of the $15 minimum wage.

The group’s efforts have resulted in a first-ever Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, adopted in July 2018 by the Seattle City Council. While the document falls short of the activists’ demands for securing guaranteed written contracts, it is still a step in the right direction for protecting domestic workers.

The bill requires that all domestic workers, even those classified as independent contractors, must be paid at least the equivalent of Seattle’s minimum wage. It forbids employers from retaining workers’ personal documents and calls for creation of a board to advise on future regulations.

These efforts complement the work of national organizations such as National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), which have also been on the front lines protecting the rights of domestic workers.

One must remain hopeful that examples from Washington State and the work of grassroots activists such as NDWA will find their way into the World Bank’s report as ideas worth spreading and replicating. This is particularly important at a time when workers, both in the United States and across the world, plunge deeper into an uncertain future and  a tech-dominated – and often exploitative – economy.

The post The future of work: Who will care about the caregivers? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Every year, just as the summer is nearing its end, the world remembers. We remember the unconscionable use of the world’s deadliest weapons—nuclear weapons—seventy-three years ago, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This year, unlike in the years past, we no longer should be comforted solely by “never-agains” in speeches and statements of government officials marking the event. This year, for the first time in world’s history, there exists a credible and widely supported framework to deliver on the promise of the nuclear-weapons free world. A group of bold women played an essential role in its delivery.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (the Ban Treaty) came into existence in July 2017. This ambitious document spelled out a commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. It banned the making, testing, possession, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.

More than 120 countries participated in its drafting, most of them from the global south – including the small island states whose populations are still reeling from the consequences of nuclear testing. Absent were, unsurprisingly, nine possessors of nuclear weapons (U.S., U.K., France, China, Russia, Pakistan, India, North Korea and Israel) and their respective allies (including almost all NATO members).

As of now, more than sixty states have signed onto the Treaty and fourteen have ratified it, slowly inching closer towards the goal of 50, when the treaty would become operational.

The road to the Treaty’s existence was a culmination of political courage and skillful diplomacy. But it is also the result of the decades of tireless advocacy by civil society movements, like the International Coalition to Ban Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize last year for its work.

ICAN follows the long line of anti-nuclear efforts which span as far back as the invention of the atomic bomb itself. They feature a diverse cast of characters, movements and well-meaning individuals from the U.S. and abroad. They have included environmentalists, hippies, young people, lawyers, physicians, scientists, and even committed nuns – Sister Megan Rice who broke into the high-security nuclear facility in Tennessee as an act of protest being among the most well-known.

Women have played an integral part in anti-nuclear activities in the U.S. and across the world. They organized and attended protests, produced scholarship and were instrumental in pushing for past diplomatic breakthroughs on nuclear testing ban treaties. They were also key to bringing about the Nuclear Ban Treaty.

Many of the civil society activists who took part in negotiations were women. ICAN’s leadership is made up of passionate and committed women and led by Beatrice Fihn, a proud mother of two. Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the nuclear blast in Hiroshima, also played an outsized role in speaking against nuclear weapons. She was a constant presence in the halls of the UN headquarters for the past several years, sharing her story of survival and lobbying diplomats to support the Ban.

Women were well represented in many country delegations negotiating the Treaty. The diplomats from Ireland stood out in this regard, for their team was composed solely of female Ambassador, experts and policy advisers. Despite this, women remain grossly underrepresented in disarmament diplomacy

Women who have delivered the Ban Treaty and are now working to mount a large coalition to ensure the Treaty ratified by as many countries as possible.  Their work should be supported, the role they played in bringing about the Treaty should be celebrated more widely known.

At a time when the number of social justice causes calling for our attention is ever-increasing, we must prioritize the call of the anti-nuclear weapons activists. Responding to their calls will  provide for safety and  security of our planet for many years to come.

The post Women are leaders on the path toward a nuclear-weapons-free world appeared first on Occasional Planet.

First-time political candidate Kelli Dunaway thought she had a shot at unseating Ann Wagner, the conservative Republican Congresswoman from Missouri’s 2nd District. She never really got the chance.

Dunaway dropped out of the four-way Democratic race in the St. Louis area last month, but she learned some valuable lessons from her attempt. In a recent interview with Occasional Planet, she candidly shared her insights into what she did wrong, how the political system worked against her, and what other female candidates can do to overcome the obstacles.

“The bottom line was that I just couldn’t raise as much money as the other candidates,” she said, noting that in our political system, money raised is the measure of viability for a candidate. “I kept hearing—from potential donors—‘You are not raising enough money,’ and ‘You are not visible enough’—from grassroots supporters. It was a Catch 22.”

But more important than her fundraising totals are the reasons behind her inability to wring cash from donors.

“It’s a structural problem,” said Dunaway, a a single mom with two young children. “The system is set up so that only two kinds of people can successfully run for office: People who are wealthy, or people who are retired. There’s no place for a single mom. I was trying as hard as I could. But I felt anxious and stressed, because I was disappointing everyone. I wasn’t a good Mom, I wasn’t a good employee, and I wasn’t a good candidate.”

“There just wasn’t enough of a support system for a candidate like me,” she added. “I thought women would get excited about a strong capable woman taking the risk of running. I thought they’d help me more—be surrogates when I couldn’t be at events, give a little more of their time to help when my family responsibilities made being a candidate extra difficult. That didn’t happen enough.”

“Now that I’ve done this,” she said, “I see that no one benefits from the system as it is. Even if you win, you’re going to spend 20 hours a week on the phone raising money. It’s grueling, and it’s not good for anyone.”

Dunaway acknowledges that her opponents worked the system more effectively than she did. “They lined up donors early. They got endorsements from the Missouri Democratic elite. They made better connections earlier in the process. Maybe if I’d have been doing what they were doing a year before announcing my candidacy, I’d still be in it,” she said.

Dunaway admits to being frustrated by her opponents’ ability to get those “power elite” endorsements. “It was unfortunate that women in power didn’t really give me a chance, because I got into the race later, and they had already decided to back my opponent. But I was surprised that they were supporting a 29-year-old male. I got into the race in the first place to help make Congress more reflective of the overall population. Congress is only 20 percent women. I wanted to be part of the change. I thought having a woman in the race this time would give us a shot to put a Democrat in that seat.”

Issues—or, rather, the lack of them—played a role in Dunaway’s truncated campaign, too. An unashamed progressive, Dunaway wanted to talk about guns, reproductive rights and other hot-button topics, so she posted her views on her campaign website. That tactic, she learned, defied conventional wisdom. Other candidates, she learned, just ask for money—they don’t take public stands on issues on their websites.

“I am not just about money. The issues are important to me,” she said. “I don’t listen to establishment advice. We’re at a critical time in our history—we need to talk about these issues. But I learned that you get more money when you do not talk about these things. We are democratically electing a kleptocracy—donors see issues as a distraction. Other candidates keep their views on issues beneath the radar, because that’s what the donors want them to do. It’s sad, but that is the system.”

The solution, said Dunaway, is for more people to care about what is happening. “As of now, we leave it all to the donor class,” she said. They make the money decisions and that determines who runs. The people who care about issues—like me—are on the outs: we’re the weirdos.”

Dunaway says she has learned her lessons the hard way, and she seems resigned to the notion that, to be successful, future women candidates will probably have to play the system according to the current rules of engagement. Will she run again? She’s not sure what’s next for her, other than a general idea about helping to empower women.

“I want to help position women to take 50 percent of the seats in Congress—50 percent of everything: board rooms, executive suites, all the areas of power,” she says. “The last thing America needs right now are more privileged, Harvard-educated men.”

The post Lessons learned: Kelli Dunaway’s candid take on running for office appeared first on Occasional Planet.

When a 94-year-old ex-president gropes your backside, is it sexual assault, sexual harassment, inappropriate touching or what? As women, at long last, feel confident enough and free enough to tell what has happened to them, and as we try to understand the scope of what has been happening for as long as men and women have existed, it seems that we need a better vocabulary to describe these situations. Fortunately, there is the Violence Against Women Lexicon, a resource created by the Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children, based in Ontario, Canada.

The Lexicon offers a compendium of terminology, from “Abandonment” to “Youth Violence,” sourced from a wide variety of organizations that work with survivors of abuse and violence of all varieties. Much of what has been reported recently has been lumped under the vague term “sexual misconduct.” But there are better, more precise words, and they’re listed with detailed descriptions in the Lexicon.

Here are some of the terms included in the Lexicon. I’ve selected them [with edits for length] not to be comprehensive — or prurient — but to illustrate that there are nuances and degrees along the spectrum.  I’ve focused less on commonly understood terms, such as rape, and more on terms that are often thrown about without clear definitions, or on those that give precision to specific kinds of behaviors, or on  terms that I didn’t know existed. Some of the terms overlap, perhaps reflecting the lack of consistency in calling abuses by agreed-upon names. Also, in this lexicon, they focus on the abuse of women, but they apply to male victims, as well.

You’re going to cringe at some of these, and — unfortunately — you’re going to recognize many of them as describing some of the abuses we’ve been reading about lately. These terms would be useful, I think, in helping women, healthcare professionals, news reporters, commentators, and law enforcement personnel to be more accurate in defining what has occurred. For a complete—and very disheartening—list of terms about the vast varieties of abuses that continue to run rampant in modern culture, please take a look at the full Lexicon.

Abusive sexual contact: Intentional touching, either directly or through the clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person without his or her consent, or of a person who is unable to consent or refuse. [9]

Aggravated sexual assault: A sexual assault that involves an injury to the victim or one in which her life is endangered.[15]

Child/Youth sexual abuse: A person under the age of 18 years old who has been involved in a sexual act with a person in a position of trust and authority by age, strength, or intelligence, including acts such as touching, fondling, exposing oneself, participation in prostitution and any participation or viewing of pornography. [12] Any sexual contact with a child or any activity undertaken with a sexual purpose. It can include genital fondling, digital penetration, or an invitation to sexually touch the perpetrator. [28]

Coercive sexual initiation: The use of persistent coercive strategies (i.e., psychological and emotional manipulation, verbal persuasion, or physical tactics) to initiate sexual contact…In some studies, sexual coercion includes the use of alcohol or drugs to decrease the victim’s inhibitions to obtain sexual contact…Other studies narrow the definition to include physical tactics such as continual attempts to sexually arouse the victim and removal of clothing.

Consent: Agreeing to sexual activity – for example, kissing, touching, intercourse – with another person.  Consent is voluntary.  Even if you consent to sexual activity, you can still change your mind (decide you want to stop).  Without permission (consent), it is sexual assault.[35]

Cyber Misogyny: The various forms of gendered hatred, harassment, and abusive behaviour targeted at women and girls on the Internet. [89]

Dating violence:  Abuse or mistreatment that occurs between “dating partners”, individuals who are having – or may be moving towards – an intimate relationship.1 Dating abuse or dating violence is defined as the perpetration or threat of an act of violence by at least one member of an unmarried couple on the other member within the context of dating or courtship. [21]

Digital Dating Abuse: When one partner in an intimate relationship uses technology (e.g. cell phone) and social media to harass or control the other. [89]

Drug Facilitated Sexual Assault: When alcohol or other drugs are used to sedate or incapacitate a person in order to perpetrate sexual assault. Proactive – a perpetrator puts a drug into a victim’s drink or gives a victim alcohol until she becomes inebriated and incapacitated. Opportunistic – a perpetrator targets a person who is already intoxicated or incapacitated. [83]

Emotional abuse: Includes verbal attacks, such as yelling, screaming and name-calling. Using criticism, verbal threats, social isolation, intimidation or exploitation to dominate another person. Criminal harassment or “stalking” may include threatening a person or their loved ones, damaging their possessions, or harming their pets.[50]

Harassment in the workplace: Any conduct based on age, disability, HIV status, sex, sexual orientation and other factors that is unreciprocated and unwanted and affects the dignity of men and women at work.

Incest: Any sexual behavior imposed on the child by a family member, including extended family members such as teachers or clergy. Sexual contacts may include a variety of verbal and/or physical behaviors; penetration is not necessary for the experience to count as incest. [11]

Intimate sexual violence: Physical, sexual, or psychological harm by a current or former partner or spouse. This type of violence can occur among heterosexual or same-sex couples and does not require sexual intimacy.

Invitation to sexual touching: For a sexual purpose, inviting, counseling or inciting a person under the age of 16 years to touch, directly or indirectly, with a part of the body or with an object, the body of any person, including the body of the person who so invites.

Non-consensual sharing of intimate images: The distribution of intimate images to third parties without the consent of the person shown in the image. [89] Images are often distributed as a form of revenge against a former partner, and may have been taken without the victim’s knowledge or consent, or may have been shared consensually in the context of a former intimate relationship with the expectation that such images would be kept private.

Non-contact unwanted sexual experience: Unwanted experiences that do not involve any touching or penetration, including someone exposing their sexual body parts, flashing, or masturbating in front of the victim, someone making a victim show his or her body parts, someone making a victim look at or participate in sexual photos or movies, or someone harassing the victim in a public place in a way that made the victim feel unsafe. [65]

Partner assault: When a woman is repeatedly subjected to ANY type of intimidation by a husband, boyfriend or ex-lover. The purpose is to control her behaviour by putting her in a state of fear.[3]

Physical abuse: The intentional infliction of pain or injury by: Slapping, shoving, punching kicking, burning, stabbing and/or shooting, poisoning. “Caring” in an abusive way including giving too much medication, keeping confined, neglecting or withholding care, Using a weapon or other objects to threaten, hurt or kill. Sleep deprivation – waking a woman with relentless verbal abuse. [22]

Psychological and emotional abuse: The use of systemic tactics and behaviour intended to control, humiliate, intimidate, instill fear or diminish a person’s sense of self-worth, including: Verbal aggression. Forcibly confining a woman. Stalking/harassment. Deliberately threatening behaviours (e.g., speeding through traffic or playing with weapons). Threatening to harm or kill children, other family members, pets or prized possessions. Threatening to remove, hide or prevent access to children, or threatening to report the woman to authorities. Threatening to put the woman in an institution. Threatening to commit suicide/attempting suicide. Controlling a woman’s time, actions, dress, hairstyle, etc. Denying affection or personal care. Taking away a woman’s teletype writer (TTY), medication, hearing aids or guide dog. Belittling a woman through name calling or descriptions such as ” stupid”, ” crazy” or “irrational”. Accusing a woman of cheating or being promiscuous. Leaving a woman without transportation or any means of communication. [22]

Revenge porn: When a former partner posts images or videos created while the relationship was still intact or that were shared by a partner for private use in order to “get revenge”. [89] This can also include images or videos captured during incidents of sexual assault, recordings made with a hidden camera, or images stolen from personal computers.

Sexual coercion: Unwanted sexual penetration that occurs after a person is pressured in a nonphysical way. Sexual coercion refers to unwanted vaginal, oral, or anal sex after being pressured in ways that included being worn down by someone who repeatedly asked for sex or showed they were unhappy; feeling pressured by being lied to, being told promises that were untrue, having someone threaten to end a relationship or spread rumors; and sexual pressure due to someone using their influence or authority. [66]

Sexual interference: For a sexual purpose, touching, directly or indirectly, with a part of the body or with an object, any part of the body of a person under the age of 16 years. [76]

Sexual solicitation or advance: A person suggests that if you become sexually involved with him or her, he or she will give you a better grade or some other type of incentive. [17]

Unwanted sexual contact: Unwanted sexual experiences involving touch but not sexual penetration, such as being kissed in a sexual way, or having sexual body parts fondled or grabbed.

Voyeurism: Surreptitiously, observing — including by mechanical or electronic means — or makes a visual recording of a person who is in circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy, if the person is in a place in which a person can reasonably be expected to be nude, to expose his or her genital organs or anal region or her breasts, or to be engaged in explicit sexual activity; if the person is nude, is exposing his or her genital organs or anal region or her breasts, or is engaged in explicit sexual activity, and the observation or recording is done for the purpose of observing or recording a person in such a state or engaged in such an activity;  or the observation or recording is done for a sexual purpose. [76]

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A common form of sexual harassment, in my case, is through technology. Someone I briefly dated many years ago sent me unsolicited and unwanted explicit pictures and videos shortly after socially reconnecting online. He was married, I was not interested. I immediately broke our connection and blocked him. For months afterward, I beat myself up about it. Did I lead him on by accepting his friend request? Should I have ignored him? What would his wife think about me if she knew?

I am an adult woman in my 30’s who knows better than to blame myself for that. Imagine a young girl experiencing that. It happens.

This scenario has played out so many times, I can’t even recount each individual experience. The DM’s and private messages on social media, wherein a stranger or casual acquaintance casually drops sexual suggestions or nude photos, or both. Sometimes the comments are even public. Ah, the anonymity of the Internet. You might be surprised how often that type of behavior goes unchecked or is accepted as commonplace.

When I was a teenager, it was worse. Men twice, three times, four times, five times my age gawked at me, tried to touch me–and sometimes succeeded–without invitation or permission. They sat too close, exposed themselves to me, made sexual suggestions, stalked me, invaded my privacy, and much, much worse. Most of the time it was a complete stranger. Sometimes it was a neighbor or parent of a friend or other trusted adult figure. Other times, it was boys my own age, coworkers and students.

A man in a sports car once pulled alongside me as I was walking home from a car accident. He asked me for directions. I knew better than to get too close to his car but I didn’t need to in order to see that he was completely nude and touching himself. I ran the rest of the way home and tearfully told my mom, who immediately called the police and filed a report. I was 15 years old.

At a crowded live music event in my home town, I was repeatedly grabbed, pinched, and touched while navigating through the crowd. My t-shirt was ripped, I had bruises. I never even knew who was doing it. I was 16 years old.

Two different ex-in-laws grabbed and molested me–one of them had to be pulled off of me with force (it took two adult men) because he was drunk and wouldn’t let go even while I was pushing at and kicking him. I was almost 21 years old and 7 months pregnant with my first baby.

I won’t horrify you with the details of the more serious incidents. The recounting is a form of reliving these experiences and I have no interest in that. But I want everyone to know, if there’s any doubt in your mind, that this happens on a daily basis. Sexual assault and harassment take many forms, happen in many settings, and come from many people of different ages and backgrounds and levels of familiarity. Victims can be any age, any demographic. It is always unwanted, unsolicited, uncalled for, and wrong. Wrong. Wrong. It should be a crime with consequences. Every. Single. Time.

It is beyond wrong that we allow this to happen and that victims are afraid to tell anyone. Our fearful silence is another form of abuse being perpetrated on us by a system that punishes, doubts, and blames victims and lets the criminals go. I know the world can be a horrible place and we have many big, important issues to tackle. But this is one we have complete control over. Let’s stop it already.

The post Me, too: a lifetime of sexual harassment and abuse appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I distinctly remember as a child once telling my mother I was divided into “half Muslim and half American,” as if there was no overlap. My mother, understandably, was horrified, but I couldn’t understand why. It made sense to me. I couldn’t have been older than 6 or 7 years old, so it must have been around 2003. The pain of 9/11 was still a raw, open wound in the American psyche, and it colored my perception of society, even though I wasn’t even school-aged when those hijacked planes brought down generations’ of hopes and dreams alongside the towers. Because of it, I internalized the message I was hearing from the world that in order to be a real American, I had to be White and Christian; being neither of those things, I felt I had to compartmentalize my supposedly mutually exclusive identities. And so I spent years trying to make myself palatable by erasing my Muslimness and shunning my Pakistani heritage in the hopes of becoming worthy of belonging. Foolish. As if I don’t forever wear those pieces of me in my very skin.

Today several years wiser, I have come to embrace my hyphenated identity as Muslim-American, even when the reservations on my complete Americanness rub me raw. And I have realized I am worthy as I am— whole and unapologetically me. They are both irrevocably components of my identity and, rather than foregoing either, I’ve dedicated myself to carving a niche in my community for the burden of that hyphen. To some extent, I didn’t have much of a choice. Hating a part of yourself you can’t change because of what other people say isn’t exactly good for your self image. Besides, somewhere along the way I decided to become a hijabi and, if there’s anything that can break a desire to be more palatable, it’s choosing to go out every day in a scarf that literally makes some people want to kill me.

But old habits die hard, and I can’t entirely shake the idea I wasn’t necessarily wrong to think like that when, to this day, that’s how the world sees me. I’m too Muslim/Brown/Pakistani to be American, and too American to be Muslim/Brown/Pakistani. Can I belong?

And the one idea that underscores the cause of all of this— the reason this is something I have to struggle with in the first place— is a lack of representation. The idea I am some mystical creature playing a tug-of-war with parts of my identity for the right to exist comes from the fact that everywhere I look, Muslims are portrayed one way and Americans are portrayed another, and there is a vast, seemingly insurmountable chasm in between those two representations.

When we think of Americans they are White, Christians (and usually men). But the only time I see someone who looks like me on screen, they are either (a) terrorists, (b) apologists, or (c) casualties. The bomber whose face everyone has been texted to be on the lookout for could be my brother; the man on screen reminding the world that the terrorist does not represent Islam and apologizing on behalf of the Muslim community could be my father; the children ravaged by war in Syria or savaged by a drone strike in Afghanistan could be my sister or cousin. But never a positive representation in America. No, people who look like me only show up in the context of a crime. No wonder I grew up thinking there wasn’t space for me.

Even though I know better, the challenges of internalized underrepresentation and misrepresentation still plague me. I’m currently applying to law schools, but a year ago I had ruled it out from my possible postgraduate future. Noting that poverty exacerbates most other social justice concerns, the idea of working on civil rights issues pro bono had called to me. But a nagging concern stopped me short. What if, because of the way I look— because I am a hijabi— a jury would deny justice to my client? What if the judge took an immediate dislike to whomever I was representing because they couldn’t overcome the way I looked? What if someone else suffered despite the purity of my motivations merely because my appearance was an obstacle to their chance at justice?

In other words, the idea of identity-imposed restrictions held me back— the idea that because of the way I look, there are certain things to which I can never aspire. No one ever said it to my face, but I inferred it from my society. You can’t be what you can’t see. I’ve never seen a hijabi attorney in the United States before— in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, certainly, but never the United States. Perhaps this was why. So for a long while I abandoned the idea and resigned myself to a future working with an NGO or nonprofit where, so long as I was behind the scenes, my appearance could cause no one harm.

Recently, though I’ve decided I was being dumb. Those restrictions didn’t really come from the nature of my identity, but from me. I can’t subvert myself out of fear or cynicism or what-ifs; I’m just going to have to hold a little tighter to my faith in humanity. And in no small part, my about-face is because I want to change the system. I didn’t have role models to convince me I’m not crazy to aspire to this, but perhaps my story can convince someone else their dreams aren’t unattainable. That their hopes are valid. If I surrender to “this is just the way things are,” then who brings about “the way things should be”? Someone’s got to do it. And I’m too stubborn to give up.

On the flip side of the same coin, representation is also the catalyst for profound microcosmic change. Representation inherently carries the potential to empower. A few weeks ago, I bought Muslim Girl: A Coming of Age on a whim, being an avid fan of muslimgirl.com. And although Amani Al-Khatahtbeh is a Jordanian-Palestinian-American Jersey girl, and I’m a Pakistani-American Midwesterner a few years younger, I was astonished to see pieces of my story in the pages of her’s. As a child, I craved books with protagonists that looked like me, and I remember reading even the most bland and uninspiring things simply because one character had a vaguely “ethnic” name. And now there’s an entire book— a gorgeously written, candid memoir— that reflects pieces of me?!? I sent a series of incredulous messages to a friend, “I have never ever felt like my thoughts were written by somebody else’s hand. (She even likes lists!) Wow, the power of representation. Is this how most people feel when they just read most books?”

Immediately after I finished it the first time, I picked it right back up and began again. I was just so amazed to see experiences that so closely mirrored mine validated in black and white right there in front of me. She talked about respectability politics and the burden of representation as the Token Muslim Girl; I have struggled with that.

She talked about the challenges of first-generation Americans to straddle the lines of a hyphenated identity the world tells you is mutually exclusive and her perpetual frustration with the pathetic “where are you from” question; I have written these words.

She talked about when in elementary school the insults lobbed at her distinctly shifted to be racial slurs about “her people” and how she got the student suspended when she told the teacher; I was in the fifth grade the first time I had a student suspended for his racism.

She talked about the feelings of inherent inferiority that plagued her childhood as a girl of color and how difficult it was because of it to convince herself she was allowed to take up space; I intimately know that self-doubt.

She talked about those who try to challenge her feminist identity by claiming her status as a hijabi invalidates her quest for women’s empowerment; I fight that battle.

She talked about the constant vigilance as a visibly-Muslim hijabi that keeps her from saying certain phrases too loudly in public or standing too close to the train tracks; I self-monitor like that, too.

She talked about her infuriated exhaustion at having to asserting her humanity time and time again after each terrorist attack simply because she is Muslim; I know that anger.

She talked about how she was labelled “abrasive” when she, as a woman of color, spoke up too loudly for what she believed in; I wear that label.

She talked about the challenge of forcing White America to confront the pervasiveness of racism— even when people of color have never been able to turn away from that depravity— in the context of Brexit and Trump’s GOP nomination; I wrote that in the context of Trump’s election.

I still can’t get over the power of that book to validate what I feel, even though I spend hours telling other people time and time again what they experience is valid. I know it, but seeing it written in my hands helped me internalize it.

And there are thousands of stories other than these about the power of representation. Representation is the story of the Mexican-American father who was irrepressibly happy because in Rogue One, Diego Luna’s character unabashedly has a heavy accent like his and was still portrayed as an average person, not a caricature. Representation is the story of an excited young Whoopi Goldberg who saw a Black woman on Star Trek who wasn’t a maid and said “I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.” Representation is the story of the beaming little girl who saw the protagonist in Home had dark skin and hair like hers and the adoring girl empowered by the all-female cast of Ghostbusters. Representation is the story of the now-iconic image of the little boy astonished to find the president’s hair felt just like his. Representation is the story of how a mere visit from Michelle Obama to a girl’s school seems to have boosted their tested scores as they realized “She made it. And so can we.”

I can’t help but think representation is one of those foundational issues that, once resolved, can affect change in so many areas. Imagine it. If when we looked around— at the media, at politics, at our neighborhoods— and saw people who looked like us looking back, stigmas could slowly disappear in the face of diverse narratives that portrayed people as humans, not labels. Without those stigmas, prejudice would lighten. With diverse narratives readily available, the burden of representation would ease. Having role models would help to ensure no child’s dreams were stunted by hopelessness or cynicism. Representation matters.

As I scrawled inside my copy of Muslim Girl, representation “is the difference between knowing at a rational level that I’m not crazy for what I think and how I feel, and KNOWING deep inside me that I’m not crazy in the least. I’m not alone. And representation is the light at the end of the tunnel that, if she could do it, maybe I’ll survive all this and succeed after all. This is the power of representation to inspire hope.”

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