queering your comfort in restrooms by having two "All Gender Restrooms" and not telling you which one has the urinals and which one has the trashcans for menstrual products đ€Șđ
Women scientists made up 25% of the Pluto fly-by New Horizon team. Make sure you share this, because erasing womenâs achievements in science and history is a tradition. Happens every day.
Jair Bolsonaro is backing a legal move to open up large tracts of indigenous territory to commercial exploitation â denounced as an âextermi
More than 5,000 indigenous women have marched through Brazilâs capital to denounce the historic assault on native lands they say is unfolding under the countryâs far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Female representatives of more than 170 of Brazilâs 300-plus tribes have gathered in BrasĂlia in recent days to oppose highly controversial attempts to strip back indigenous land rights and open their territories to mining operations and agribusiness.
On Friday morning those guerreiras (warriors) trooped south from their encampment wearing bright-coloured headdresses made from the feathers of parrots and macaws and clutching banners condemning growing anti-indigenous violence under Bolsonaroâs âgenocidal administrationâ.
Two demonstrators clasped an effigy of the embattled Brazilian leader whose presidential sash bore the words: âFora Bolsonaro!â (Bolsonaro out!).
âWhat they want is to take away our land,â said Alessandra Korap, an activist from the Amazonâs Munduruku people, deploring a slew of political initiatives she said threatened indigenous lands and lives.
Foremost among those threats is the âmarco temporalâ or âtime frameâ argument: a legal challenge to indigenous land rights that is being considered by the supreme court.
Opponents say that, if successful, the suit â which Bolsonaro has championed as a way of stopping Brazil being âhanded over to the Indiansâ â would nullify all indigenous claims to land they were not physically occupying when Brazilâs constitution was enacted on 5 October 1988.
âThis is illegal. This is unconstitutional. They want to tear up our roots and we will not allow it,â Korap said on the eve of Fridayâs march.
Speaking at the protest camp, organized the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, Korap said a ruling in favour of the thesis would effectively legalise the theft of indigenous land.
âThe time frame thesis indicates that we have only existed since 5 October 1988. But this isnât true. The whole of Brazil is indigenous territory â all of it. Unfortunately, it has been taken away, bit by bit â and now they want to take away those pieces that were left for us,â she said.
As well as Bolsonaro, under whose administration deforestation has soared, the legal challenge is backed by congressâs powerful ruralist caucus, whose members are simultaneously pushing a bill that would have a similar impact. That measure, known as PL490, would restrict indigenous land claims and permit infrastructure building and the commercial exploitation of native forests, without requiring indigenous occupants to be consulted.
SĂŽnia Guajajara, another prominent indigenous leader, said: âThese are all highly orchestrated measures which are designed to take away the land rights of indigenous people and open these lands up for exploitation ⊠Itâs all about profit and money. We champion biodiversity, keeping the forest standing, which is precisely what ensures us life. All they think about is development built on destruction.â
Supporters of the time frame thesis argue that setting a date-limit for indigenous land claims will help avoid conflicts and legal uncertainty for landowners. âShould we protect indigenous land rights? Obviously, yes. But we must also protect the rights of property owners, farmers, who are essential for Brazilâs development,â prosecutor Alisson de Souza said during a recent hearing.
Guajajara said the indigenous women were mobilizing to repel the latest chapter in a centuries-long attempt to wipe out the descendants of those who inhabited what became Brazil when Portuguese colonizers arrived in 1500. âWhat weâre living through now isnât any different from what weâve always faced when it comes to this extermination effort. Weâve seen centuries of violence, spilled blood, rape and enslavement â and now all of this is being officially professed by the government.
âOur march is about defending Mother Earth,â added Guajajara, 47. âMore and more we women are taking the frontline in the defense of our sacred Mother Earth.â
As well as the time frame thesis judgment and the PL490, activists are also concerned about the imminent expiration of a series of land protection orders barring the development of areas inhabited by uncontacted tribes. Advocates are urging Funai, the indigenous protection agency, to renew those orders restricting access to remote territories inhabited by the Piripkura, Pirititi, JacareĂșba/Katawixi and Ituna/ItatĂĄ peoples. The Piripkura territory, in Mato Grosso state, is among the most affected by illegal logging, and its protection will expire this month.
Korap said indigenous women would continue to fight despite the onslaught: âThis government will last just four years â we have been resisting for more than 520.â
âOur struggle is for survival, for life, for the forest and for our children. So we will resist. In spite of all the attacks from the government, we are resisting and we will continue to resist,â she vowed.
This is way we need to be able to talk womenâs health issues. How can we talk about womenâs cancers being left out of programs for survivors if we have to dance around womenâs biology to appease wokesters.
The events of 9/11 made these women sick. Twenty years later, why are they still left out of the health coverage that was created for surviv
Leigh Calmar still canât forget the dust. About a month after the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001, she returned to working downtown, at an architecture firm, after maternity leave. On the walk to her office building in the Financial District, she remembers seeing dust from the collapsed buildings. There was even dust in her office, on the window ledges and desks. âOur eyes would burn, I would breathe this stuff â it was just horrible,â Calmar says. âAnd it went on for months.â
It was this ubiquitous dust blanketing lower Manhattan in the days and months after 9/11 that caused both short- and long-term health problems for the neighborhoodâs workers and residents, explains Dr. Joan Reibman, the director of the World Trade Center Environmental Health Center at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, which treats 9/11 survivors.
The dust contained harmful particles â like fiberglass, lead, and asbestos â that doctors believe are linked to cancer, and it has led to respiratory problems like chronic sinusitis, asthma, and pulmonary symptoms, Reibman says. The first death ever officially linked to 9/11 dust was that of a female lawyer who fled the area that day and died just five months later, after experiencing lingering difficulty breathing. Other victims include Marcy Borders, a bank employee in the North Tower who became known as âDust Ladyâ from a well-known photo of her covered in powder. She died in 2015 from stomach cancer, at the age of 42.
In 2009, Calmar, then 48, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she had insurance, her chemotherapy and radiation treatments racked up huge medical bills. The federal World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP), set up to support survivors and responders alike, wouldnât be available until 2011. Now 60, Calmar is enrolled in the program, so if her breast cancer were to recur, the government would cover treatment. âThat is such a relief for me,â she says.
That isnât the case for every woman survivor facing health problems. Like Calmar, thousands of women survivors of 9/11 â who worked, lived, or attended school near Ground Zero â have been diagnosed with cancer, asthma, mental health disorders, and more. But only a few âwomen-specificâ conditions, such as breast and ovarian cancers, have been officially recognized by the WTCHP. (Still, it took the WTCHP over a year to recognize ovarian cancer as a covered condition, and nearly two years for a majority of breast cancers to be covered.) Other conditions, like uterine and endometrial cancers and autoimmune diseases, are not covered. For two decades, women have struggled to be fully covered by the health program, battling the narrative that people with 9/11-linked health problems are predominantly male first responders, say advocates and survivors.
âThe public sense of who deserved help and who had sacrificed for that help was very male-focused, it was very responder-focused,â says survivor and advocate Lila Nordstrom, who was 17 and a senior at Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan near Ground Zero on 9/11. âCommunity members never got access to that narrative, which meant that a lot of them never â because they didnât see themselves reflected in any coverage â thought to seek help, never thought to advocate for themselves.â
Though advocates estimate that survivors outnumber responders three to one, male responders make up nearly two-thirds of health-program enrollees, and most initial research to determine linked conditions was conducted on first responders, they say.
Like responders, survivors suffered both acute exposure on the day of the attacks as well as chronic exposure in the aftermath. But while responders automatically qualify for annual health-monitoring exams and treatment through the WTCHP, community members qualify for a one-time health evaluation and can enroll in the health program only after they start showing symptoms for a physical or mental health condition thatâs been officially linked to exposure. At present, the program serves more than 100,000 responders and survivors, though the CDC estimates more than 400,000 people were âexposed to toxic contaminants, risks of traumatic injury, and physically and emotionally stressful conditions.â
As director of the Rutgers University WTCHP Clinical Center of Excellence, Dr. Iris Udasin primarily treats responders. She notes little clinical distinction between them and survivors: âI think if youâve seen elevated diseases in the responders, youâd see the same things in the residents of the community.â
Cancer is the most common recognized condition among survivors. Women make up 47 percent of survivors (and 12 percent of responders) enrolled in the program, according to CDC data, and breast cancer in women is the third-most-prevalent cancer in the program overall. Data is lacking, however, on other female-oriented health problems like uterine cancers and autoimmune diseases, which are more common in women than men. A petition to add uterine and endometrial cancers to the list was rejected in September 2019 for lack of evidence, due to relatively small numbers of women studied. Still, âit was sort of surprising that so many cancers were included, but not uterine,â Reibman says. She supports a new push to get these cancers added, led by New Jersey representative Mikie Sherrill. Inclusion of uterine cancer will be reconsidered at a WTCHP hearing on September 28.
Stephanie Stevens, a spokesperson for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which houses the WTCHP, said that if the program administrator decides to add uterine cancers to the list, the change would need to go through the federal rule-making process, including a public comment period. Itâs a process that typically takes months to complete. And under the Zadroga Act, the WTCHP does not pay for treatment until a condition is on the list, meaning coverage would not be retroactive.
Sara Director, an attorney at the firm Barasch McGarry, which represents more than 25,000 9/11 responders and survivors, supports the effort. âCertainly, a 9/11 survivor or responder whoâs suffering from uterine cancer is frustrated that this cancer is excluded from the ones that have been presumed to be caused by the toxins,â says Director, herself a survivor, having attended New York Law School, located a half-mile north of Ground Zero, at the time. âWe urge everyone in the community, that when they go to the [WTCHP], even if their cancer is not one that will qualify them, to make sure that the health care program knows about it.â
Unfortunately, this wonât do much to help women like Emily*, who had a civilian job with the New York Police Department before 9/11. Afterward, she was reassigned to help identify missing people, putting her downtown on the day of the attack and for several months that followed. In fall 2019, Emily, who is postmenopausal, suddenly started bleeding regularly, requiring pads. Soon after, she was diagnosed with endometrial cancer and had surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation to treat it.
Emily is enrolled in the WTCHP as a responder, but at a checkup a few months following her treatment, her doctor told her that the paperwork theyâd filed to WTCHP had been rejected, because endometrial cancer wasnât a recognized 9/11-linked condition, and thus she was ineligible for coverage by the program. Her health insurance doesnât fully cover her medical expenses, which she says have cost her between $5,000 and $7,000 and counting. She would have paid nothing out of pocket if the condition were recognized. âThe reason that my paperwork was denied was [that] there arenât enough studies, because there werenât enough women,â she says.
And thereâs even less data on women who were children or young adults at the time of the attacks â initial research on 9/11-related health problems reviewed by NIOSH was done on people who were, on average, in their 40s and 50s, Reibman says, leaving yet another knowledge gap for women. âThereâs been a deficiency in surveying for a lot of sex-associated issues, and those include issues in terms of reproductive health that we really know little about,â she says.
Nordstrom, now 37, has been diagnosed with asthma, rhinosinusitis, gastroesophageal reflux disease, and PTSD, all WTCHP-covered conditions. While she was able to eventually enroll in the health program, during college she sought care for recurring asthma attacks â and faced skepticism. âI would see doctors who would tell me that there were no health conditions linked to World Trade Center exposure, or that only first responders got sick and so I couldnât possibly be sick with 9/11-related asthma,â says Nordstrom, the author of Some Kids Left Behind: A Survivorâs Fight for Health Care in the Wake of 9/11. âI was just kind of told that it was in my head or that I should relax.â
Nordstrom â who testified to Congress in June 2019 alongside former Daily Show host Jon Stewart and first responders to fight for federal funding for survivors â says that, for those who can get in, the program is a godsend. But in her view, it doesnât treat women the same as men, especially women survivors. âPart of the narrative that was necessary in order to get federal funding passed was that this was about heroes, but that left out the 300,000 people that had just been downtown doing whatever because they were told it was safe,â Nordstrom says. âWhen do women ever get access to a hero narrative? Never.â
* Emily asked to be identified by a pseudonym because she and her doctors plan to appeal her case.
âThen I learned that in this century, the 21st century, more women have been killed by their male partners than Americans have died in wars, including 9/11. That, uh, that is not the number of women who have been killed by men in this country. That is only the number of women who have been killed by the men who supposedly love them. Which is⊠I just I-I find this statistic so overwhelming I have to forget about it just to get through my day. Except I think you canât forget about it, right? I think even if you donât know the statistic, the truth of that is there all the time. The truth of that, rampant violence against womenâs bodies is underneath everything all the time hummingâŠâ I feel like Iâm blacking out
Every culture likes to pretend that feminism is something foreign to them, that it's the crazy and hysteric bitches from another country that are trying to corrupt their own women, who neither want nor need feminism, because they actually enjoy being oppressed. Afghan women love not going to school and covering their whole body, feminism and women's rights are a western concept that you can't force upon them! Italian women don't mind being catcalled, it's different here! Only girl bosses whine about discrimination in the work place, working class women just soldier on! But feminism is a worldwide movement and it is at home in every class, culture and country, because women everywhere are oppressed and women everywhere hate it. If it's a natural part of your culture to abuse women, then the women's struggle against it is a natural part of your culture as well.
interesting watching people trying to get others to take the abortion ban seriously by making it a race/class/disability/whatever issue... i like the subtle acknowledgement that if something is 'just' a women's issue then it isn't that big of a deal.
I think the place where so many of these âhyperfemininity but make it empoweringâ ideas fail is the assumption that men care about your interiority. Like âI present myself as a bimbo but Iâm actually a full, self-aware, empowered person with thoughts and ideasâ, yeah they donât give a shit though. Every woman who has been made out as a bimbo or a sexpot or a Playboy bunny is a full entire person, with thoughts and experiences and opinions and feelings of her own. Itâs not subverting anything to pretend thatâs an innovation and that the new, ~empowered~ bimbo is separate from ye olde pinup girl. As long as theyâre getting the catering and sexual gratification out of it, men arenât gonna care about the personhood of the woman under the makeup. They never have.
incels are just the first generation of men who have been brought up addicted to porn. every single incel talking point about women is from porn. incels think women are having sex from the time they hit puberty onward bc they watch porn with pedophilic undertones or actual cp/loli, incels think women can have sex at a moments notice w any man they want bc that's what happens to women in porn, incels think women regularly have extreme sex like anal or gangbangs bc that's what porn shows them, incels think women like men who are abusive or violent bc that's what women in porn like. u know that weird meme that's being going around abt white women fucking dogs? yeah that's been an incel thing for years. why is that when men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of beastiality? bc most men will have come across animal abuse porn by the time they're graduated high school and incels, who watch porn even more than normal men, see women having sex with animals regularly. incels are just men who's only contact with women has been through porn, men who accept that porns depiction of women is accurate, and they hate women because they totally believe what they see in porn. when they try to roleplay what they see with real women, and the women have boundaries and personalities and lives outside of sex, it infuriates them not because they're mad women have been abused and misrepresented, but because they're upset they are not getting the ultimate male fantasy they were promised from childhood.
More than a few things have been floating around social media going âdo women really have it better than in the 50s?â and the answer is yes. Like objectively, they do have it better?
The argument goes that women now have it worse because of the whole idea of the second shift whereas when women stayed at home and maintained a household then at least their work was recognised and âvaluedâ. But that all relies on the premise that womenâs work has actually been valued at any point of time which just isn't true at all.
Women looked after the home and children and cooked and cleaned because men thought it was easy and it kept women out of the workplace. It kept women dependent on men and they were told that they weren't capable of anything else. And just think about how so many people see stay at home parents now: lazy people who do nothing but watch day time television and do the occasional chores. People who have an âeasy jobâ which doesn't require much work. And you're sitting here telling me that you think the views were so much better seventy years ag? That seventy years ago this job was actually valued and that value was just lost over time for some people?
And also, most of the modern technology which we take for granted now didn't even exist back then so the work was a lot harder than it was now. Wasn't there something which suggested that in the 1950s a housewifeâs work week was like 80 hours or some shit?
And these women were never afforded breaks or time off. They didn't get to just stop at the weekend because theyâd been working. They had to continue day in and day out of cleaning and childcare and all these other chores because they were not valued and were treated like absolute shit.
Don't confuse wanting to keep women out of the workplace and make sure they're financially dependant on men with actually valuing the work that they do. The second shit and the laziness of men is absolutely awful and we need to change some things so people can actually live and have free time, but don't sit there and act like womenâs jobs were valued in any way.
This trend of saying women had it better before de were allowed to work is propaganda meant to keep women from seeking financial independence. Remember that being economically dependent on their abuser is the most common reason women give for why they won't leave an abusive relationship, especially if there are kids involved.
Men want you to depend on them so they can treat you like shit and you have nowhere to go.
Also there has always been a large working class population of women who worked outside of the home on top of all the expected domestic labour. Especially because many "breadwinner" husbands tended to spend all their earnings on themselves, that is if he didn't just up and leave. And these women had little to no workplace protections or security or financial safety net.
I hate the incel community so much for many reasons but one of the primary ones is that I too, as a young girl, was isolated, struggled to make friends (let alone get attention from boys) was not conventionally attractive, didnât know how to dress and my undiagnosed adhd and possibly autism too made me awkward af. I genuinely had a terrible time through all of school. The difference is that I donât blame men or fantasize about inflicting violence against them for all of this. I have enough critical thinking skills to know that this problem is about how we raise children, deal with bullying accepting neurodivergent people and nothing to do with men or them hating me and wanting to punish me.
So many of us women have also been literally violated and victimized by men, experienced hatred from men and men âpunishingâ us and we still donât go on terrorist killing sprees or financially support content showing men raped and abused. đ€đ€đ€
Once again seeing posts about radfems only criticize hijabs and not any other religionsâ forced modesty like okay lol, this is my time to shine, I have such a bone to pick with Christianity. I had to veil in a Catholic Church to attend my auntâs wedding. There was a little pamphlet explaining that veiling was a mark of respect towards women, since they were the vessels of life, and compared it to the veiling of the chalice used for the eucharist. My aunt was told by the priest that she better hurry up and start having kids before her womb shriveled up, haha. (She was in her late thirties and desperately wanted kids). I tore off my veil as soon as I got outside and refused to put it back on until my mom made go back inside for the pictures. I was an angry teen girl, and I was made angrier that I would go home in a few days, and have to face more modesty restrictions at my school and in my town. Now, we didnât have to cover our heads, but shoulders and knees were verboten, and we would make fun of another school where girls had to wear ankle length skirts, because that school was âtoo strictâ. We at least got to wear pants. I remember when my best friend, who had gone through puberty a little bit earlier than rest of us, was pulled aside by a teacher and told in no uncertain terms that she was showing too much cleavage and that she had to go and change. We were in middle school, and she was wearing the same simple crew neck shirts as the rest of us. She cried in the bathroom, and for years afterwards, she would always wear a camisole underneath all her shirts. I just gave up and wore nothing but long pants and skirts so I donât have to endure the humiliation of having my shorts or skirts measured. I wore jackets all the time, so I wouldnât have my shirtsâ necklines scrutinized. We had similar rules in regards to our sportswear, certain length skirts and shorts, no bellies showing, and no wearing just a sports bra ever. This was particular issues with the girls tennis team, as we started training in late august in the American south, and would get so hot we wanted to strip off our shirts and pour cold water over ourselves. One girl did this, and brought out the schoolâs principle to yell at us about disrespecting the game, ourselves, and the school. Her shirt went back on. This was really irritating as the boys track team trained at the same time, and not only did the boys run shirtless, they wore the tiniest shorts that left nothing to the imagination. And they were never told off for being immodest. One year, the girls swim team had to take their yearbook photo in their school uniforms instead of their racing one pieces because it was too immodest. The boys team was photographed in their speedos and swim caps.
Maybe itâs because I grew up in the Bible Belt, but I am always hundred percent ready to levy any criticisms at Christianityâs modesty standard. We just didnât cover our hair, but that doesnât mean we werenât still policed with same accusations of âslutâ and âwhoreâ when we stepped out of line. I was lucky, in that my parents didnât particularly care what I wore as long I was neat and clean, but I knew girls whose parents would check over their clothes to make sure that they were modest enough before they went out the door.
I still struggle with wearing certain kinds of clothes. Itâs summer right now and Iâm wearing jeans, as I never show my legs unless I can help it, lol. The amount of times I skipped out of swimming bc I didnât want to wear a bathing suite in front of people fills me with regret. My sister struggles from the same issues, and we didnât even come from a religious family, this is just the attitude our town and region had towards women and girlsâ bodies. I think head coverings and face veils are easy to point out, as the face and head are such important parts of human interaction, but modesty standards on general are terrible and should be critised regardless of religion, and I donât think radfems pull any punches when it comes to Christianity lol.
There are some good books about American Christian modesty and purity culture that helped me to move forward, and well as making me extremely grateful to my relaxed and loving parents, especially my strong and independent mother who did her best to combat what the rest of the world was teaching us. âPure: Inside the Evangelical Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Freeâ by Linda Kay Klein is heartbreaking personal account of the American evangical purity movement, and I really recommend it to anyone who has been or is going through something similar. âThe Purity Mythâ by Jessica Valenti discusses how American culture deals with the concept of female virginity, and itâs consequences, and highlights a lot of the religious aspects involved therein. âI Fired Godâ by is Jocelyn Zichterman is the authorâs personal memoirs of her life in and escape from a fundamentalist Baptist cult and it does touch on modesty standards and the consequences. And finally, thereâs a book that I think every American radfem should read, which is âQuiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movementâ by Kathryn Joyce, which is a harrowing documentation of far right Christianity in the US and the wider world. Itâs a tad bit outdated, as some of the major figures discussed, like Doug Phillips of Vision Forum, have fallen in scandal and disgrace, but itâs really important to read, especially in light of how politics in the US are moving against women right now.
Women with big laughs, big smiles, big voices, big bodies, and even bigger personalities to match. Women that donât care if they take up space with long strides and sit with their legs miles apart.
They give big hugs and big kisses, and they have big hearts. Big, proud women are amazing.
In 1992 eco-feminist Petra Kelly was shot and killed by her partner (who then killed himself). Andrea Dworkin attended the memorial with many other activists and was disgusted by the speakers who almost exclusively spoke of her partnerâs devotion to pacifism and only mentioned Kelly in passing.
-Â Andrea Dworkin, The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant
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