I realized I hated being “comfortable.”

At first, this “comfort” was because of my career. I had a remote job and a steady schedule in which I could complete work, watch videos on YouTube and Twitch, hangout with my cat, Po, and occasionally go out with my boyfriend. 

I soon found myself uneasy in the comfort of my routine. I felt stunted and caged in. I began to spiral; I wondered if I relied on overworking to feel productive, romanticizing struggle, and if I would ever feel fulfilled with my life, regardless of success. For months, I stewed over one question: “Is this it”? 

If not, what is “it,” then? 

If so, what do I want from this life?

The latter question is what truly galvanized my thinking. I began to sketch an answer.

Redirecting my life

As per the advice of my mother, I strive to not center my life on work. Yet even with such a master “work-life balance” as mine, I realized I had no idea what to do with the “life” part. Where did I want to go in this life, and who did I want to be when I arrived? I had no answer. I felt lost. 

A few ugly breakdowns and virtual therapy sessions later, I concluded I wanted to be confident and proud of myself. For me, this translated into being a more vocal advocate for black women like me. Yes, I hoped to help right the wrongs inflicted upon me, but I also hoped to testify to those who try to disregard black women’s struggles.

So I decided to make myself “uncomfortable” by outwardly advocating for myself and my truth. This was long overdue, I’ll grant, but later is better than never.

As a result, you’ll likely hear me going into what my partner calls “Ted Talks” about the fraught dynamics black women endure — because my experiences of discrimination are shaped by the intersection of my black and female identities. 

My journey with identity and stereotypes

Often, I feel the pressure to conform to a mold due to the categories I fit into on paper. As a result, whether I align with expectations or not, I am left feeling like a performer on a stage, seen as an embodiment of my identities — an archetype of all black women — as opposed to the actual person I am. 

So here is my truth: I am not an archetype. I am an example of a black woman, one of many.

Yet even still, I can wield this typecasting to the advantage of other black women. I have a phrase that illustrates this tactic saved in the notes app of my phone: “T��� way you regard me is the way you regard every black woman after me. Through fighting for myself, I fight for others who are like me.” 

I don’t know if it’s a poem, a philosophy, or a promise. Regardless, it remains the primary motivator for my advocacy. 

But my battle with stereotyping has also been with myself. 

“Black is not a monolith.” That’s a phrase I’ve been hearing more over the years — and I need to hear it. While grappling with internalized racism, colorism, fetishization and all the other ills that are often canon in the black experience, I realized that, as I discovered who I was as a black woman, I began to project my newfound identity onto others.

One example can be found in my relationship to hair. I’d gone through the whole perm thing in middle school, and, in high school, it was followed by the “big chop” — inflicted by a white stylist unaware of how to cut black hair. After this racially-charged mishandling of my hair, I became emotionally attached to my natural hair. Today, you’ll catch me rocking styles that embrace my natural hair and never defile it.

Yet as I developed a sense of pride in my hair, I found myself distressed when I rarely noticed family members parading their natural hair. Most preferred their hair straightened.

So I conversed with fellow black women, and with work I broadened my dogmatic viewpoint to this:

I just want black women to be happy. 

To sincerely advocate for the liberation of all black women from stigmas, expectations, limitations and struggles, I must also stand for those who differ from me in their expressions, ideas and paths.

Therefore, I’ve made it a point to learn from others by hearing their stories and truths. Through doing so, I am able to discover who I am through who I am not. By exposing myself to the diversity and vibrance in my community, I open my life up to the beautiful idiosyncrasy of humanity. 

I’ve made it a point to listen, but also to ensure I’m heard. Therefore, I’d like to present you with three topics I now confidently advocate for.

Code-switching

is when one adjusts one’s style of speech and expression in different settings in order to be treated with dignity. Code-switching traditionally occurs in spaces where black individuals feel they must alter their behavior to appease, and therefore obtain opportunities from, white individuals in power. However, code-switching can also just represent different forms of self-expression and socializing. 

When I code-switch, I do so because I align with different communities and have developed a comfortable form of communicating with members of these environments. If you do not belong to my community, please do not speak in a particular way to try and mimic how you assume I — and other members of the community — sound.

This includes using “sis”, “girl”, “fam”, or — and I vividly remember an older white lady trumpeting this piece of slang — “bomb diggity”. Recently, in a discussion on , I shared my memories of non-black persons employing phrases such as “Baby Daddy” and “Side Chick” only when referencing black individuals. 

To quote the rapper Megan Thee Stallion, “Don’t call me sis, ‘cause I’m not your sister.”

Please stop. It’s not hip or funny, and it makes me uncomfortable. 

Though, let it be known that I’m attempting to limit my code-switching and instead speak with my authentic dialect. My success and opportunities shouldn’t be limited by my speech patterns. My voice is that of my communities and loved ones, and they and I both deserve to be heard and succeed as our unadulterated selves. 

Period.

Black women, self-protection, and blame

Speaking of Megan Thee Stallion, let’s go back to her shooting, for a moment.

In December of 2022, after she and the rapper Tory Lanez got into an argument while leaving a party together, Lanez at Megan’s feet, resulting in her hospitalization and surgery.

I’m still not over the male response to her shooting. 

Megan’s prosecutors asserted that after the shooting, Lanez had launched a “weaponed misinformation” campaign to turn public opinion against Megan. For example, in one of his songs, the rapper Drake implied Megan had lied about being shot. 

But the misogyny did not stop with Drake. Online users Megan with a deluge of sexist, violent comments and threats.

In the wake of the incident, I called out men left and right, putting them in their place when they spoke with blatant illogic. 

It was truly infuriating to hear men try to justify how a woman getting shot was not the shooter’s fault but her own, due to her proximity to the criminal. But it wasn’t surprising. 

In the months following the assault, Megan a keystone figure in the movement to Protect Black Women. 

This past summer, I was able to see Janelle James perform at a comedy club while visiting my hometown. She did a bit about riding in Ubers as a woman, describing safety-measures such as farting to make oneself seem undesirable. She also jested about how people would likely respond if she fell asleep in the Uber and woke up to being sexually assaulted:

“I know how people are. As soon as you tell your friends, ‘I woke up in the back of the Uber with a dick in my mouth,’ what they gonna say? ‘Why you fall asleep in a Uber? Are you stupid?’” 

She even goes on to joke that she would probably blame herself, for sleeping with her mouth open. 

Funny, right? 

I laughed, as did most of the other women in the room. I cannot speak for them, but I was laughing because she had climbed on stage and said such a truth. 

Women are often told we should know better than to be in a bad situation, and in consequence, we assume responsibility for acts of violence exacted upon us. We are expected to always be on the defense, cautious and expecting of the so-called “obvious” dangers that lurk just around the corner. Admonishing women for their perceived “failure” to protect themselves overshadows placing accountability and consequences on perpetrators of violence.

My take: Stop blaming women for others’ intolerance and transgressions. 

That shit’s embarrassing.

Societal standards, social media, and marketing skin color

Racism is real. Colorism is real. is real. To debate their existence is to disregard black individuals who have been discriminated against, degraded and humiliated for no reason other than their physical appearance deviating from the “standard” of caucasian features. 

In addition, we can and should legitimately critique black women who cater to such “standards” for profit, not turn a blind eye to or encourage them under the guide of “supporting all black women.” That’s not supporting black women, that’s supporting a black woman. 

All the while, other black women and girls wonder how they look to others — because they don’t look like someone who conforms to racist societal ideals. 

I’ve often noticed identity-wounding ideas and ideals being hyped up on social media platforms, perpetuated under the facade of supporting black women despite the harm they impose upon that precise community. These trends may be examples of , ignorance or a combination of the two phenomena. 

“Supporting black women” has become a trend and a path to social ranking. I all too often see people advocating for black women simply as a malicious marketing tactic to get people to engage with their content. 

Sometimes, however, this pernicious strategy is not even employed successfully.

In 2022, TikTok content-creator Veronica Shaw, otherwise known as Chef Pii, launched her , and it went viral. She began to fulfill orders for the sauce. When customers raised concerns over the product’s health safety, Shaw leveraged her blackness to wrangle internet users into purchasing her worryingly opaque and non-FDA approved sauce. Her financial success was quickly marred by controversy.

In other cases, social media creators prospered by adhering to society’s racial criteria. I remember when I first heard about Pinkydoll, a TikTok influencer who gained attention by simulating an NPC, or Non-Player Character, in her livestreams. At first, I didn’t have much of an opinion on her content. The moment I truly tuned in was after realizing she had been to make her skin lighter. 

With Pinkydoll’s secret publicly exposed, there came a torrent of opinionated netizens. While some concentrated on her being a catfish, others were struck by her profit-oriented appeal to colorism. Some disliked how others were solely focused on her skin tone, while still others accused her of masquerading — or “light-fishing” — as biracial.

My opinion? Instead of abiding by discriminatory social dynamics and the crumbs given to a particular paradigm of a black woman, let’s demolish these racial disparities altogether. 

I’m not going to disparage Pinkydoll simply for obtaining money in a calculated — and ultimately fruitful — approach. I understand doing what you have to in given circumstances. 

All I’m saying is I’d rather the circumstances change so black women don’t have to alter themselves simply to be on equal footing with the rest of society. 

This concludes my “Ted Talk.”

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post My Vindication: A Tale of Blackness, Womanhood and Self-Advocacy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Young athletes struggle greatly

The daily trials of competitive sports wear players out physically and mentally. The problem begins when the demands exceed the expected level athletes sign up for. A constant, false perception that “more is always more” permeates collegiate athletics — for example, that just one more hour of practice would invariably improve the outcome of any game. Further, my interviewees often felt a “resting is the enemy” mentality bearing down on them. These outlooks combine to create a taxing experience where sore muscles and weary minds come standard.

Given these demands, it is understandable that coach–athlete relationships, which are a cornerstone of collegiate athletics, often prove difficult. “We had to read his mood every day and try to please him,” one participant said. There is a constant need to navigate coaches’ behavior, which, depending on their personality, can be unpredictable. Those who act uncaringly contribute to their players’ mental strain, and ones who overvalue performance frequently ignore the strain altogether.

The latter underscores a pervasive issue: Athletes feel undervalued beyond their on-field contributions. Gender-specific challenges magnify these difficulties. As an interviewee succinctly put it, “Our female coach was invested in us as people, whereas the male coach was strictly business.” Many coaches are cold and unempathetic.

Furthermore, dismissive attitudes prevail. One interviewee recalled this, saying, “I don’t care what’s going on in your personal life, or your mental health. Deal with it.” This reflects the premium placed on portraying mental fortitude over real emotional health.

Sadly, student athletes’ mental fortitude diminishes when they contend with extreme practice schedules in Power Five athletics. “Sports would take up about six to seven hours of my day,” one participant noted. Indeed, extended practice hours leave little time for personal life and self-care. Many of my interviewees desired a different approach over the “no pain, no gain” style currently in use.

As it stands, the intense training and competition of Power Five conferences can exhaust student athletes. Injuries and a demand to perform despite physical limitations were common themes in my interviews. Participants described how their coaches would ignore bodily risks and urge injured athletes to play through the pain. Many obliged so they would not jeopardize their scholarships.

Student athletes know that balancing academic and athletic commitments is no small feat. Those who strive to excel at both frequently battle mental fatigue, including stress, burnout and a loss of passion for the sport. A player remarked, “Basketball became like a job, and I forgot how to have fun.” These draining commitments overshadow life experiences, making it a challenge to maintain a sense of identity off the field.

Mental health is a major issue

Players’ physical bodies work in tandem with their mental health to keep them solid. Unfortunately, collegiate sports endanger that, too. Mental pain carries significant stigma. Several facets of daily life, such as beauty and representation, clash with athletic expectations, causing anguish.

Regarding the former, unrealistic beauty standards worsen body image concerns among female athletes. A participant said she worried about looking “like a man” and felt undeserving of food based on caloric intake. This is somewhat common among those with muscular builds, who sometimes restrict their meals or develop eating disorders.

As for the latter, minority athletes face additional challenges in predominantly non-diverse institutions. “T��� coaches didn’t really know how to converse with me about certain things,” one interviewee shared. Some participants struggle with the lack of representation and cultural understanding that they experience. This lack of awareness creates barriers to open communication, a crucial topic my next section addresses further.

Many interviewees highlighted the lack of accessible mental health resources at their institutions. “We had a single sports psychologist for the entire athletics department,” one participant recalled. As a result, she had difficulty getting appointments due to limited availability. This is a common problem in schools with smaller budgets.

Teamwork requires communication and trust

Mental health is supported by open communication and trust. These two things are linked with effective teamwork. Alas, my interviews revealed just how anemic these relationships can be with coaches and within teams themselves.

Interpersonal issues among teammates can create communication barriers. One participant told me there was “a lot of jealousy” within the group. It complicated her role in team communication and undercut team unity.

Expressing difficulty is a major problem in collegiate athletic communication. An interviewee told me, “I didn’t want to admit that I was struggling because I was a strong leader and didn’t want to show my teammates I was going through hell.” Student athletes generally feel forced to maintain an image of strength. They fear any show of vulnerability is a sign of weakness and could lead to judgment from teammates or consequences from authority.

This unwillingness to confide in coaches forms another barrier. One participant admitted, “I felt like [the head coach] would remove me from competition or dismiss my experiences.” Many expressed concerns that discussing mental health issues could disappoint others or be met with societal stigma, which would affect their playing time or team dynamics.

Based on the statements of my interviewees, I learned that they encountered a complete lack of direct communication channels and were not taught how to express their struggles. One participant revealed, “Our head coach didn’t want to have any one-on-one meetings with us.” That showcases a breakdown of individual guidance, treating all players as a singular entity. Another admitted, “I never learned how to communicate a challenge.” This comment highlights the need for training in effective emotional expression.

That is more important than it sounds. Without strong communication, trust cannot form between people. Unsurprisingly, trust issues were a recurring theme across my interviews. Athletes were hesitant to open up to authority, specifically staff or mental health professionals, about their issues. Some participants felt uncomfortable talking to a sports psychologist connected to the head coach. After all, word could get out and bring repercussions.

Student athletes need greater support

My interview insights illuminate the intricate network of communication channels and support structures student athletes need to stay strong through their collegiate journeys. Team camaraderie, loved ones, mental health professionals, coaches and more bolster them to manage their pain. But to improve the collegiate sports environment altogether, real changes must be made.

Team camaraderie and a sense of “sisterhood” among female teammates serve as a fundamental pillar of mental health support. Participants underscored the significance of team members as invaluable supporters who understand and share their challenges. “My teammates were some of my biggest supporters… We’re all going through the same struggles,” one interviewee affirmed. This bond creates an atmosphere of trust; athletes can openly express their vulnerabilities and find solace in their shared experiences.

Family, particularly parents and siblings, emerged as an essential source of guidance and emotional aid. Student athletes emphasized their unique roles: Fathers often served as sounding boards for challenges and decisions, while mothers provided empathetic listening and emotional reassurance. An interviewee reflected, “My parents were always there for me… Just answering the phone, and whenever they couldn’t answer, they called back later that night.”

Mental health professionals, notably sports psychologists, played a pivotal role in supporting student athletes’ well-being. Regular sessions provided a safe space for them to share their concerns and explore coping strategies. The accessibility of this aid varied across institutions, influenced by factors like funding and staff resources.

Supportive coaching staff who demonstrated empathy and genuine care for their players’ well-being produced a better environment — one that prioritized holistic growth and mental health alongside performance. “Our female coach, if you were injured or were going through something, she was willing to point you in the right direction… She was more accommodating,” one participant said. Female coaches in particular understood and aided athletes’ mental needs.

Beyond coaches and mental health professionals, athletic trainers and academic advisors were also vitally supportive. Advisors went beyond their academic role, offering confidential support for players dealing with personal dilemmas. Interviewees emphasized their role as a confidant, providing a crucial support network. Some described their advisor as “a friend,” while others observed players spending time in the advisor’s office to receive emotional support.

Similarly, athletic trainers, primarily focused on physical health, provided psychological help. Participants noted how their trainer also acted as a confidant. This illustrates the integral role these relationships play in athletes’ overall well-being. Other interviewees echoed this sentiment, underscoring the importance of building a strong student–trainer bond.

A number of universities actively addressed mental health issues through initiatives such as mental health education sessions. Some collaborated with professionals in this field. These efforts aimed to cultivate a supportive environment where student athletes felt comfortable addressing their troubles rather than hiding them.

All these positives must be emphasized for every player’s benefit. Mental strength is intricately intertwined with the facets of a student athlete’s collegiate experience. Their mental health should be placed at the forefront to generate a more uplifting experience, enabling them to thrive in sports and everyday life.

To ensure their continued triumph, college institutions should implement several beneficial practices. They should emphasize coaching education and adjustability; most coaches are only former athletes themselves, having not passed formal training to become responsible mentors. Coaches must know that many strategies can bring victory, but they do not work for every player. Coaches can bring out the best in their pupils by understanding their individual needs and tailoring their mentoring styles to each person.

Additionally, institutions should add accessible sports psychologist services, enhanced mental health education and diversity and inclusivity initiatives. These resources help players manage daily difficulties. They should foster peer and family support, and produce an atmosphere of open communication.

By following my recommendations, student athletes, coaches and athletic departments can collaboratively make a positive change. Doing so would equip players with the tools they need to manage the complex challenges they may encounter. In turn, they would be healthier and more successful in Power Five college athletics.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In light of the 2022 US Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overruled Roe v. Wade, the need for federal and state Equal Rights Amendments (ERAs) has become increasingly crucial. The decision emphasized that federal constitutional protections extend only to rights deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions.

However, by grounding reproductive rights in the right to equality rather than privacy, the federal ERA’s incorporation into the Constitution would help protect these fundamental human rights from being denied. Using the 14th Amendment and its substantive due process clause, which has traditionally been used to argue for privacy rights, including reproductive rights, has proven to be precarious. This approach relies on the often-debated and fluctuating interpretation of substantive due process by the Supreme Court. By instead anchoring reproductive rights in the federal ERA, which explicitly prohibits discrimination based on sex, these rights would be more robustly protected as fundamental aspects of equality.

There has been a distressing regression in women’s rights in recent years. In v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the federal constitutional right to an abortion. In , a long-dormant restrictive abortion law was reintroduced and then reversed, leaving women and girls uncertain about their reproductive health rights. These decisions have eroded women’s ability to access sexual reproductive health services and maintain bodily autonomy equally across the nation.

In 2024, women’s rights activists had some victories in and , where limitations for state health insurance-funded abortion care were struck down by district and state supreme courts, respectively, offering hope. 

These developments underscore the Equal Rights Amendments (ERA) at the federal and state levels. Only constitutional entrenchment of gender equality will establish irrefutable protections for us all. 

What is the ERA and what does it have to do with abortion rights? 

The federal ERA is a simple constitutional amendment. It seeks to end sex discrimination and guarantee the rights of all people within the most important legal document in the United States.

The main simply and eloquently states, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

The initial decision by the allowing for the possibility of the reinstatement of a draconian law from 1864 severely restricting abortion access underscores the vulnerability of these rights without explicit constitutional legal protections. The court’s decision stated, “Because the federal constitutional right to abortion that overrode [this statute] no longer exists, the statute is now enforceable….”  

The positive application of state-level equal rights amendments has led to protecting reproductive rights, particularly for economically vulnerable people, and to state-level accountability.

recent judicial ruling striking down limits placed by the state on Medicaid for abortion provides reassurance, demonstrating the power of state constitutional equality provisions to serve as a defense against state agency overreach and limitations on reproductive rights. Similarly, striking down the discriminatory legislation that restricted Medicaid coverage of abortion is a testament to the vital importance of state-level protections that can be derived from an equal rights amendment. 

This election year, with just a handful more co-sponsors needed to to a vote in Congress affirming its validity, it is time to take action to help secure reproductive rights and substantive equality. We also need to ensure that any sex-discriminatory acts will be challenged and reviewed with at the judicial level. 

Working as a lawyer across the globe has reinforced my understanding that legal frameworks, including international treaties, national constitutions, and customary law, play a crucial role in safeguarding fundamental rights. The protection of all women’s human rights, including the right to sexual and reproductive health and rights, requires a multi-faceted approach that encompasses both state and federal levels. 

The US has international legal obligations to guarantee equality and reproductive rights.

Women’s struggle for reproductive autonomy is not confined to any one nation, and must reflect international human rights law and standards, including the right to sex equality, broadly defined.   

At the end of 2023, for example, the UN Human Rights Committee that the United States, which is a State party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “should redouble its efforts to guarantee protection against sex and gender-based discrimination in its Constitution, including through initiatives such as the Equal Rights Amendment.”  

The Human Rights Committee also strongly recommended to the US that it “should take all measures necessary at the federal, state, local and territorial levels to ensure that women and girls do not have to resort to unsafe abortions that may endanger their lives and health.” The Committee elaborated that specific measures the US should take should include providing legal, effective, safe, and confidential access to abortion throughout the US territory, ending the criminalization of abortion – including for medical staff, eliminating inter-state access bans on abortion, and expanding access to medication abortion. 

It’s time to prioritize equality in the US.

Every year, the United States hosts an annual international gathering at the United Nations to discuss the state of gender equality worldwide. Ironically, without constitutional equality or full access to sexual reproductive health, the US is noncompliant with international standards and must implement these measures to finally be on par with where these measures already exist. 

Next March, at the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), we should be able to proclaim to the global community that the US is moving towards compliance. This includes states considering measures on Equal Rights Amendments (ERAs) and reproductive rights, such as my home state of , where the ERA will hopefully remain on the ballot this November. These strides will bring the US closer to meeting international standards and shedding its outlier status.

I urge lawmakers and advocates to prioritize the incorporation of the federal ERA and adopting and implementing state ERAs to help ensure that sex equality and reproductive rights, as universal human rights, are upheld throughout the United States. Anything less would be a disservice to and a violation of the principles of equality, non-discrimination, justice, and human dignity that we strive to uphold globally.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The foundational idea of feminism has always been to achieve between the sexes. Inspired by this, the catalyst propelling the sexual revolution was the that women have a right to express their sexuality in the same way as their male counterparts. There is no doubt that at least some feminists for this right. The famous television showSex and the City the question of whether women should seek sexual pleasure as men do. Vogue magazine this again in 2022 but avoided answering it.

The issue remains relevant. It gets straight to the fundamental connection that links men and women: their sexual union and the societal norms surrounding it.

The sexual revolution, past and present

With “equality” as their guiding light, feminists began their long march toward sexual freedom. The following is a timeline of the movement’s major milestones, following the progression of how the demand for sexual equality with men grew.

In 1848, the Seneca Falls , the first women’s rights convention in America, was held. Its manifesto, the Declaration of Sentiments, declared that “all men and women are created equal” and objected to “a different of morals for men and women.” By “morals,” of course, they meant sex.

In 1928, Margaret Mead, the high priestess of the sexual revolution, published her famous book Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization.  She wanted to “ upon the adolescent girl in Samoa” who “thrusts virtuosity away from her … All of her interest is on clandestine sex adventures.”

From the 1970s onward, the sexual revolution’s and scientists started asserting that sexual repression or “civilized” sexual morality undermined human happiness. The feminist Germaine Greer “ promiscuity to break women’s ‘doglike’ devotion to men … tentatively at first, but with rising confidence, women were claiming unrestricted erotic freedom.”

Today, feminists continue to assert that women and men are equally sexually hungry. Dr. Sarah Hunter Murray, of Not Always in the Mood: The New Science of Men, Sex, and Relationships, holds this view. In her words, “Not only is the idea that men have higher  drives an oversimplified notion, but it’s really just not true.”

A from the University of Michigan assures us that “Women like casual sex as much as men if the stigma is removed from accepting the offer and the experience involves a ‘great lover.’” Feminist Kristen Sollee , “So many high profile women are embracing gender equality and unabashed sexual expression.”

Influenced by this norm, sex therapists compel their female clients to act like men sexually. One had clients who were “strong, progressive women” but weren’t “comfortable expressing themselves” at an “intimate, sexual level.” They felt that men should seek them instead. The therapist advised her clients to exercise assertiveness. She suggested they buy marbles in two different colors, one for each partner, and put them near an empty glass bowl. Whenever a client or her partner initiated sex, she was to place a marble into the bowl. The goal was to have roughly an equal mix of colors in the bowl at the end of the year. She was effectively telling her female clients they must mimic men to be sexually equal.

Feminists won a resounding victory: The right of a woman to “have sex like a man,” if she so wants, is now cultural orthodoxy. Even the suggestion that she should not do so because she is a woman would be considered a violation of her equality with men.

A rather sticky issue remains, however. The feminists assumed that women could have sex like men because the male and female sex drives are the same. But is that true? In the spirit of the Seneca Convention’s assertion to “let facts be submitted to a candid world,” here are some that speak directly to the strength of the male sex drive.

The male sex drive’s great, and sometimes destructive strength 

Prostitution has in all cultures across the world. Female prostitutes are mentioned throughout the ages, from the in the 18th century BC to Hollywood’s hit film in the modern era. Powerful kings and monarchs assembled colossal such as the Grand Seraglio of the Ottoman Sultans. Hugh Hefner had a of Playboy Bunnies. Women were, are and will be objects of affection for the male gaze.

History and current events have repeatedly shown us the deviant side of male sexuality. The use of rape as a weapon is a recognized by international criminal law. Religions reflect how powerful the male sex drive is. The Quran dangles women as one of the for pious Muslim men in heaven, saying it is populated by “maidens of modest gaze, who no human or jinn has ever touched before.” Mohammad Atta, one of the airplane hijackers who attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, he would go on and find “women of paradise” waiting for him, dressed “in their most beautiful clothing.” Voyeurs are all male and can go to great lengths to observe nude women, even on US Navy . There is a reason why they are called “Peeping Toms.”

With such a storied history of prompting sexual misconduct, the male libido is notorious to women everywhere. Journalist Hadley Freeman , “Men … are dogs, trying desperately to escape being trapped so they can hump anyone and everyone they meet.”

The female sex drive is weaker

Nobody makes the case that women do not like sex or do not cheat on their spouses. Different women have different preferences and goals. However, it is not complicated to determine the strength of the female sex drive vis-à-vis the male one if we look for evidence around us.

The #MeToo movement and the No Means No movement, the latter of which went on to Only Yes Means Yes, demonstrate that women are far less ready for casual sex. The multi-billion-dollar worldwide market for diamond engagement shows women’s preference for monogamy.

The Fifty Shades of Grey book series, which has over 150 million copies worldwide in 52 languages, has a majority female readership. It is about women’s secret to be sexually dominated by a powerful, controlling man. Time magazine reported on analyses of 20 that estimated that between 31% and 57% of women entertain fantasies where they are forced to have sex. Empirical have shown first and second-year female students “hook up” to shed their virginity. By the third year, however, they become increasingly interested in committed relationships and have less casual sex.

Even Margaret Mead’s 1928 book contradicts the portrayal of women as promiscuous. In the chapter on formal sexual relations, she wrote, “In native theory, barrenness is the of promiscuity; and, vice versa, only persistent monogamy is rewarded by conception … virginity is a legal for her … and virginity definitely to a girl’s attractiveness.”

In her pioneering book, Mead informs us about the premium on female virginity even in a society considered relatively free of moral constraints. It suggests a disparity in the strengths of the male and female sex drives.

The consequences are becoming apparent

It has been over 50 years since the start of the sexual revolution, and its effects have shown themselves. In 2022, Jessica Burrell, a feminist who herself on her sexual conquests, wrote:

The tide is turning away from casual sex, especially for women…a new wave of conscious abstinence seems to be emerging. But why is this? … It was easy to feel a sense of duty to use this hard-earned freedom; when single, I had a sense that it was my feminist obligation to get out there and have sex like a man, overriding any hormonal urges and remaining intently unattached. To be empowered meant being unfailingly up for it, and those who weren’t risked looking uncool or not progressive. For me, this meant…a pressure to have sex on male terms.

This is a paragraph rich in unwitting revelations. Ironically, the right to have sex like men became its exact opposite: a “feminist obligation” and “sense of duty.” Having “sex like a man” implies that women do not like to have sex like men. And the “hormonal urges” are a tacit admission of what evolutionary have long told us, which feminists : The possibility that sex can result in a life-altering pregnancy gives women a heavier burden, making women sexually choosier than men.

We now have more than 50 years of data to prove that the sexual revolution had the worst effect on the one thing it was supposed to improve: sex. The orthodoxy that a woman had to remain a virgin before marriage was replaced by the orthodoxy that she had better not one. The mission statement that “we want to have sex like men” went on to become the sexual revolution’s first commandment: that women are always ready and sexually available.

Unsurprisingly, to many powerful men, this seemed like an offer they could hardly refuse. Many of them forced themselves upon women who did not want their attention and claimed that their actions were consensual. (Though that possibility cannot always be ruled out — women, too, can fib.) It is after the sexual revolution that women’s of good men being extinct have hit an all-time high. Young people are having than before.

The passionate union between man and woman is seriously threatened. The National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior that men and women under 30 were “significantly more likely” to that they did not kiss during sex because kissing would have been “too intimate” with their partner. Yes, even the kiss appears endangered. Birth rates have across the West and are now far below replacement rates.

Technological alternatives dominate sex

We are at the cusp of an age where men and women are attempting to eliminate each other sexually. What else can one make of the fact that women’s for donated sperm has soared? Many sperm banks are deliberately established near elite colleges to satisfy women’s demand for “college-educated sperm.” The global sperm bank market is expected to from $5 billion in 2021 to $7.5 billion by 2030. This is a result of the growing acceptance of single-parent or same-sex families.

By a creepy and mysterious coincidence, sperm counts of Western men — only Western men — have in the last 40 years. That is just ten years after the sexual revolution started. In the last decade, the number of women choosing to their eggs has increased tenfold.

Men also took action to get flesh-and-blood women out of their lives with pornography. They also have the option to seek pleasure from virtual girlfriends. The AI chatbot company offers erotic roleplay to its customers. Some buyers consider themselves to their chatbot companions. The company Silicon Wives luxury sex dolls for $2,000 and ships them free worldwide. Its blog new customers, assuring them: 

You’ve made a great investment. A sex doll can provide companionship, sexual satisfaction, and even add some unique spice to your relationships. A sex doll doesn’t care about your job, car, looks, or the contents of your wallet. They’re always up for a good time and will never judge you for your fantasies or your hang-ups.

In short, a Silicon Wives doll is a woman without the ‘disadvantages’ that come with a real one.

The sexual revolution has hurt women

If there was any intention among the revolutionists that increased sexual rights would benefit women’s lives, it fell through. Instead, the happened: Women’s happiness is , particularly in America. Antidepressant use is rising, mostly in women. Nearly 18% of adult women use . Increasing numbers of women are drinking themselves to . Single mothers head of the 10.89 million single-parent families in the country — a third of them live in poverty.

America is not the only nation in jeopardy. In Western countries such as the UK, Greece and Venezuela, significantly more young women have been for violent crimes than in the past. The UK has reported a loneliness among teenage girls and young women.

How did this happen to the West? The root cause is the literal application of equality in the sexual realm. Equality is an ideal that glitters because of its seeming ethical symmetry. It is manifestly contrary to hierarchy. That is simultaneously its strength and weakness, as equality can be mistaken for sameness or identicality.

Once it was accepted that women are equal to men — which they undoubtedly are in worth and dignity — the logic of this principle extended unstoppably into women’s sexual lives. Since men had demonstrably more sexual freedom, logic demanded that women ask for equal rights. To argue or concede that women were different might have implied that they wanted less sex than men. That would have been a nail in the coffin in their fight for equality. Logic locked feminists into demanding that women get the right to have sex like men. Those who made the demand unknowingly set women up to be clones of men while kneeling before the shrine of equality.

The complementary nature of the sexes must be understood

The feminist victory that women should have the right to have sex like men is probably one of social history’s worst turning points. The data inarguably shows this. Essentially, feminists overprescribed their medicine. Sex is essential to women, and it was tightly moderated before the revolution. Since then, feminists have effectively prescribed morphine for a headache.

Sex for women does not have to be of all-consuming importance like feminists decided. The women who made this diagnosis were puzzlingly most out of touch with the specificities of female sexuality. It was betrayal by women intellectuals — many of them and — that has damaged millions of ordinary women. This right must be challenged, or else its devastating social consequences will spread further across the world.

Now that some women are realizing the revolution’s failure, the logical next step is to correct course. People who genuinely care about women, men and society at large should launch a new discourse: Women can reflect upon the advantages of renouncing equal sex. They can embrace a sexually conservative lifestyle that treats female sexuality with understanding and nuance.

Doing so should not be considered as succumbing to the “patriarchy,” but simply drawing on past experience. If such a movement grows strong, it is also likely to induce positive changes in men’s sexuality and behavior. Today’s men, who are wrongly excoriated for their shortcomings, may work harder to love. Women have far more power over men than feminists care to admit. They are what men dream about and desire all their lives. It is time for women to regain what nature has given to them, which was whittled away in the name of equality.

Sex between women and men ought to be exempt from the misapplication of the ideal of equality. Instead, we should accept it for what it really is: gloriously unequal, different and complementary between two equally authentic sides of humanity.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post On Women’s New “Right” to Have “Sex Like Men” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

It glosses over human rights , especially those concerning . This raises questions about the authenticity of the reforms. A notable number of people seem to unquestionably embrace the image Saudi Arabia has meticulously curated for Western media consumption. Outlined and elaborated below are several reasons why the purported changes seem questionable.

Saudi Vision 2030

Launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2016, the Saudi government embarks on an ambitious modernization odyssey with . Saudi Arabia developed the plan on recommendations from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. This vision aims, among many things, at gender reform. While I perceive it as a marketing gambit, the stated goal is to amplify women’s influence in the Saudi socio-economic landscape. This places women as crucial catalysts for economic and societal transformation. 

In 2018, women were only of the Saudi workforce. The agenda makes bold pronouncements about women’s empowerment. It is aiming to women’s labor market participation from 22% to 30% by 2030. In line with these promises, the labor participation of Saudi women has indeed dramatically. At face value, these strides seem commendable. However, dig a tad deeper, and the narrative shifts.

An insightful dissection of the labor market data highlights the increase of Saudi women in historically male-dominated sectors like retail, food and manufacturing. However, a recent of this trend reveals a troubling detail: Numerous women are shoehorned into roles with ambiguous parameters, grueling hours and low pay. Quite frequently, they’re merely stepping into the shoes of unskilled migrant workers in tenuous positions. Is this the empowerment we laud?

Are typical Saudi women genuinely represented?

Certainly, the nation has witnessed a series of unprecedented moves. Women are ascending to higher government positions. This includes the recent of a female Deputy Minister of Labor, the first Saudi being dispatched to the US and a cadre of assuming pivotal roles at the General Presidency for the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques. While the nation has witnessed a series of unprecedented developments, it is crucial to question whether these women genuinely represent the typical Saudi female. 

Frequently, these appointments emerge from privileged and affluent circles. For instance, take Princess Reema bint Bandar, the ambassador appointee. She is a member of the Saudi Arabian royal family; the daughter of a former ambassador to the US who held the position for an extended period. Often, members of the royal family have unique opportunities and responsibilities that set them apart from others. Her status and background automatically distinguish her from average Saudi women. 

Riding into freedom

Additionally, noteworthy reforms such as the ending of the female and the revision of male have undeniably captured global admiration. Saudi women have fought since the 1990s to get the driving ban lifted. In 2017, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman presented the lifting of the ban as an effort to improve and diversify the economy. Then, the driving ban was finally lifted on June 24, 2018, granting licenses to as many as women in the first seven months.

The recalibration of the guardianship laws allows women over 21 amplified autonomies in areas like education, healthcare, employment and travel. However, they do still need a male relative’s permission when it comes to significant life choices such as marriage and getting a passport to leave the country.

These changes appear to signify increased freedoms for Saudi women, shaping a new societal framework and, importantly, enhancing Saudi Arabia’s global image–particularly in the eyes of Western beholders. However, a discerning eye might view many of these reforms as artful, yet superficial public maneuvers. The widely praised granting of driving rights to women can be interpreted as institutionalized tokenism, especially when the broader political and civil rights landscape for Saudi women remains lacking in progress. The irony is palpable, several women who championed the driving ban continue to languish behind bars.

Saudi Arabia’s overarching control

The state’s authoritarian influence significantly limits collective resistance. Journalists and activists face imprisonment. In some cases, they also face execution for sharing opposing views on online platforms. Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, a Saudi citizen whose details are barely known, was given a sentence for social media posts. Following that is Salma al-Shehab, a Leeds University scholar who received in prison for Twitter activism. These are chilling reminders that challenging the prevailing authorities risks one’s freedom and stresses the severe consequences women may face.

Loujain al-Hathlou, a Saudi women’s rights activist, is also a poignant example. Saudi authorities held her for . Her ostensible transgression? Advocating against the prohibition on women drivers and the male guardianship system. She faces a series of charges that include non-violent acts of dissent, ranging from peaceful protests to engaging in social media activism. All these are perceived as seditious in the eyes of the kingdom. The kingdom’s stance resonates with stark clarity: We dictate the changes; you don’t demand them.

True empowerment

The contrast between external perceptions and local realities underscores the importance of telling the difference between the polished facade presented by the state-led initiatives and the genuine struggles and triumphs of Saudi women striving for empowerment. All too often, Saudi women are depicted in binary extremes, either as victims awaiting rescue or as exceptional individuals breaking barriers with governmental anointing as the ‘first’ in their field. Real empowerment for Saudi women is rooted in their intrinsic agency and tenacity, not granted as a mere favor from the state.

Faced with such adversity, the response of many Saudi women diverges. Some people contemplate an expatriate life to freely express critiques on the gender dynamics of Saudi Arabia. Others, fueled by an indomitable spirit, tirelessly champion gender transformation from within their society, shaping the concept of empowerment on their own terms. In Saudi Arabia’s socio-political landscape, the true measure of women’s empowerment will not lie in orchestrated changes but in the organic evolution of women’s rights and roles, as championed by the women themselves.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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In a widely shared of Jina’s funeral, her father cries out, “This is the daughter of Kurdistan, the child of those who demand freedom. She is the symbol of resistance. Today, the women of Kurdistan are a symbol of resistance for the whole world.”

Her death and the words of her grieving father ignited a women and youth-led protest movement in Kurdistan that swept all of Iran and initiated a global solidarity movement for women, life and freedom. The violent response of Iran to the protests has resulted in the death of over 248 protesters and the arrest of more than 12,575 others, reported human rights group on October 23.

Iran Attacks Kurds Yet Again

A few days after the protests began, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) took military action across the border by launching missiles and drone attacks against camps. The strikes wounded 58 people and killed 13 others, including children, an infant, and a pregnant mother.

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According to , Iranian officials and state media have justified the brazen attack on the grounds that Kurdish opposition groups are using Amini’s case as an excuse to separate Kurdistan from Iran.

The continued militarization and economic impoverishment of Kurdish cities by Iran and its imprisonment and execution of Kurds are rationalized based on this accusation of separatism.

Many analysts were surprised that Iran was blaming the Kurds and resorting to unjustified military force against them. However, to Kurds, this attack was expected, as it has been their ill-fate to be the target and scapegoat of the Iranian state: a state that continues its onslaught on Kurdish lives through unjustified imprisonment, execution and assassination.

The story of the Kurds in Iran is similar to that of their brethren in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Being Kurdish in Iran is tantamount to being a criminal. Standing for your identity and advocating for your linguistic, political or economic rights can get you imprisoned and often executed. With few rights and little economic opportunity, the Kurds have few options but to stand defiant against the regime at the risk of death.

A Brave Story of Resistance

The crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran against the Kurds in Iran are extensive because the Kurds have always been the most outspoken critics of the establishment in Tehran. They have paid heavily with their lives for their stance against the tyrannical rulers in Tehran. They even engaged in a full-scale rebellion against the Khomeini regime after his fatwa against the Kurds in 1979.

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The Kurds defied the regime and stood against Khomeini’s government from the inception of the Republic. In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini feared the Kurds so much that in his first week as supreme leader of Iran he offered them over $75 million in to buy their loyalty and ward off a Kurdish rebellion. When the Kurds refused to join his so-called Islamic Republic, he declared a fatwa against them and went to war with Kurdistan.

The shocking part of this tragedy is that this phobia of Kurds that informed Khomeini’s fatwa and war against Kurdistan is a significant part of the Persian psyche today.

Outside of Iran, and even many protesters who struggle for human rights and an end to the regime, share this fear of the Kurds. They often attempt to intimidate and strong-arm Kurds into taking down their , and when Kurds insist on talking about their rights, they are told not to speak of this and to stand in unity. This attempt to silence Kurds even in the diaspora, where freedom of expression and other democratic rights are guaranteed and protected by law, illustrates how irrational but deeply rooted this phobia is in the Persian psyche.

This irrational phobia of Kurds and Kurdistan is very much what governs the Persian perspective on the Kurds in Iran. It is a phobia that oppressors across the Middle East share and use as justification for denying Kurdish rights and identity. This phobia informs the forced assimilation, extrajudicial killings, unlawful detention and increased securitization of Kurdistan.

It is thus, fundamentally important to deconstruct and debunk this phenomenon in order to end the intentional, irrational and unjustified persecution of the Kurdish people. It is only through overcoming this phobia and ending the negative connotations of the label of separatism that Iran’s Persian population can build lasting unity and understanding with Kurds, Baloch and other ethnic communities in Iran. This unity is essential in overthrowing the theocratic state of the ayatollahs and establishing an inclusive and truly democratic Iran.

[ published a version of this piece earlier.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Why Does the Islamic Republic of Iran Fear its Kurdish Population? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

We have made great progress as a society in subverting systems of oppression, and our media reflects this. However, the media and audiences seem to be developing a tendency to overuse misery and negativity in their fight. These lead to deeply emotional pieces that claim to represent ‘reality’ and the ‘human condition,’ but these Misery Magnets appropriate, reduce, and disempower causes, rendering them emotional states rather than actionable challenges. 

Dressing Scantily and Exercising Sensuality

Take Euphoria for example. This show follows a group of teenage girls as they struggle to find their individual and sexual identities. The show follows Maddy Perez in an inconsistent relationship with her abusive boyfriend, Nate Jacobs; Kat Hernandez in her attempts to claim sexual control and overcome body dysmorphia; Cassie Howard, suffering from her promiscuous reputation; Jules Vaughn in her earliest sexual experiences with old men she meets online; and lastly the show’s main character, Rue, a recovering teenage drug addict struggling to find her place in the world. 

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I can see how this show is relatable to some niche of society. However, for the majority, this show becomes an influence. It says that being empowered is dressing scantily and exercising sensuality; your focus should be on molding yourself physically and emotionally to your new obsession, your high school experience should include catfights over muscly athletes, and spending classes fantasizing about being rammed against a wall during sex. 

The effect of this is worsened as few of the characters bear the implications of their vices. The teenage girls traipse through morally and legally ambiguous situations in high heels emerging unscathed and unchanged. 

In Season 1, Kat becomes a cam girl, a move that is depicted as an empowering way to reclaim her sexuality and overcome her struggles with body image. She is paid to verbally dominate and sexually degrade adult men found on a Pornhub-esque website. Alongside being blatant grooming since Kat is a minor, the representation of sex work as inconsequentially easy and lucrative is a horrific message to promote. 

I constantly questioned  why they chose the high school setting: were the unused lockers and aligned desks simply interesting props? This does not provide solace; it fetishizes and idolizes a shockingly obscene but moreover dangerous lifestyle as an experience for teenagers. Teenagers may have already been overexposed and over-adultified but Euphoria further romanticizing this self-destructiveness does not help. The problem is not what it is attempting to illustrate, the problem is the passive representation of these tragedies. 

Replacing Potent Conversations with Stereotypes

Ginny and Georgia, a show released in early 2021, poses a similar quandary. The show follows Ginny Miller, a 15-year-old claiming greater maturity than her 30-year-old mother, Georgia, in a town in New England where Georgia decides to settle down with her children to give them the “life she never had.” The show covers sexual abuse, bullying, body dysmorphia, depression, self-harm, coming of age, break-ups, violence, racism, and other struggles of identity.  

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My primary issue with the show arises from the attempt to cover this mass of ingrained issues in ten episodes; each is touched upon superficially, nothing is resolved, and potent conversations are continually abandoned. One appalling incident that remains imprinted in my mind is an argument between Ginny and her new Taiwanese boyfriend, Hunter. Ginny calls her English teacher racist but is met with pushback from Hunter. 

They begin throwing stereotypes at each other, while Hunter fails to see how the teacher’s treatment of Ginny is racist. Ginny, on the defensive, highlights that he will never know the true strife of racism as his favorite food are cheeseburgers. Hunter pushes back saying she does not know how to twerk or cook “pound back jerk chicken” so she cannot truly claim her blackness either. The entire argument, which consists of stereotypes to prove that the other is whiter, is extremely confusing. 

Beyond the comical dialogues, the worst part of this incident is that it is never resolved. They ignore each other for a week or so after which Hunter gallantly storms into the restaurant Ginny works at to profess his love to her, only to find out a few hours later that she has been cheating on him. It is as if the writers of the show were saying racial identity is something two biracial characters “should” be struggling with, and instead of showing how they do, we’ll just throw this scene in and have them throw derogatory stereotypes at each other. 

The representation of Ginny as a quasi-empowered black girl is deprecated by her oscillating insecurity. In the wake of a fight with her friends, she stands up to her racist English teacher. Portrayed as a moment of immense glory, 16-year-old Ginny pulls a gun on him, blackmailing him for a letter of recommendation. Stripped of integrity, her actions are tainted with naïvete. So what did the show really do? It picked, let’s say, six systems of oppression and flung them in our faces with mindless dialogue, inconsistent personalities, and no commitment to storylines. Misery used as a trope. 

Is the Media the Chef or the Waiter?

Current media pegs their overuse of misery and negativity on the pursuit of social change or the representation of reality. However, the consistent exposure to deeply emotional facets of oppression subliminally affirms the lifestyle as acceptable or normal. This negative influence now engenders massive unrestricted reach. I know we have a choice of which media to consume, but do teenagers exercise free will, or is it the stage of life when there is warmth at the center of the herd? I don’t advocate censorship but the human condition has a lot more positivity and negativity. 

The debate on whether the media is the chef or the waiter can never be resolved because humanity is too diverse. But my case for sustainable and responsible media would involve highlighting as much positivity as negativity. In the words of Oscar Wilde, “we are all in the gutter together, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

[Naveed Ahsan edited this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Misery Magnets Disempower, Not Empower appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Although there wasn’t an act the US Congress made to guarantee abortion rights, state legislatures for 50 years couldn’t enforce laws when it came to denying reproductive health access. The court decided in 1973 that a woman’s right to an abortion was protected by the right to privacy, the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. However, upon its reversal, that federal constitutional right no longer exists. 

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This fall, I will be a freshman at Emory University, located in Atlanta, Georgia. Like many other southern states in the United States, Georgia has passed legislation prohibiting a woman’s right to an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, this bill could not be enforced. But through the Dobbs ruling this past June, the Supreme Court is giving states the right to decide. Women are no longer protected. Young female students like me will still face the repercussions of this devastating ruling, regardless of the university’s political leanings. However, while I can travel and gain access to reproductive care, women in lower socioeconomic backgrounds living in cities like Atlanta will be disproportionately impacted by the court’s decision. 

The Dobbs ruling shattered my once idealistic, naive view of the United States’  protection of women. Growing up in Connecticut, a progressive state in the northeast, I took for granted that women of all demographics had the freedom to choose what to do with their bodies. In high school, I was surrounded by teachers and classmates who shared the common belief that it was a right for a woman to have equitable reproductive healthcare. As a junior, I took an American Studies course where we discussed topics related to the oppression of women. I was disgusted by how commercials in the 1970s subjugated women, reducing them to the confines of the household. When it came to dealing with the threats of Roe v. Wade being overturned, I denied the possibility of such an outcome. While the right to an abortion was and is a polarizing, controversial issue, I never thought that the country would revert to a place where women are prohibited to decide their future.

Looking to the future

Although it can be hard to find hope at a time when women are being marginalized, we are living in a different world than half a century ago. There used to be underground societies where women were able to get abortions and avoid the law. Now in 2022, with the help of technological advancements in medicine, there are safer ways for women to get reproductive care. For instance, since the overturning of Roe, there has been a huge surge in the use of two drugs called misoprostol and mifepristone, often referred to as the “abortion pills.” This medication has been approved by the FDA for making it a proven alternative for women. According to the New York Times, medication abortion is less expensive and less invasive while providing more privacy than surgical abortions. Women can even receive these pills by mail after an in-person or initial virtual consultation with a doctor. Another advantage of this medication is that it’s difficult for the state to track and monitor. There is comfort in knowing that innovations such as these exist. Even though I foresee legal challenges in southern conservative states, I hope there continue to be solutions for women to get the support they need and deserve.

If I had known the outcome of the Dobbs ruling when I was applying to college last year, I would have reconsidered attending a school in the south. Many of my friends expressed a preference for staying in the northeast for their higher education, both when talking in class or during extracurriculars. One of my former classmates, who is in the process of applying to college, told me that she is only looking at universities where abortion rights are protected. I believe many young women who grew up in the north will apply to institutions in states that protect women’s reproductive rights over those that do not. As I look to the future, I have faith that northern policymakers and scientists around the nation will come together to protect vulnerable populations of women in need of proper reproductive healthcare. At this point in our country’s history, millions of women’s lives are on the line. It is up to us, the people, to be the change we want to see.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post A Young American Woman Loses Faith After Dobbs Ruling appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Cold War may be a thing of the past, but the practice of using romance and sex as tools of extortion and blackmail is still flourishing the world over. The #MeToo movement that started as a chorus of feminist indignation mobilizing long-suppressed grievances has also been frequently deployed as a weapon to bludgeon men into silence or, worse, milk them for all they are worth. 

In India, Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj, a journalist and documentary filmmaker, has been hot on the trail of duplicitous women. Some of them work in groups, regularly blackmailing gullible males into parting with large sums of money after sleeping with them. Their victims are usually married and hold a respectable place in society, making them easy targets for extortion.

Bhardwaj is known for speaking out against the rampant misuse of India’s gender laws, especially section 376 of the 1860-vintage Indian Penal Code (IPC) that addresses rape and sexual violence. Sections 489A and 354 deal with domestic abuse and sexual harassment respectively. The journalist observes, “Increasingly, men in India are becoming victims of systematic abuse through gender-biased laws. Laws where their innocence doesn’t matter, where they are presumed guilty and where a mere verbal accusation by a woman them a puppet in the hands of police and judiciary for years to come.”

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Indeed, the on gender-based violence gathered by India’s National Crime Records Bureau is very revealing. Of the 120,306 total arrests under section 498A in the year 2020, 96,497 were men and a whopping 23,809 of the arrested were women. There are increasing reports of women who, after a few years of marriage, file false cases of domestic abuse in the hopes of winning large settlements. Subsequently the family is summoned and forced to settle the case by paying large amounts of money. Up to 75% of cases are withdrawn because it emerges that the purported victims are exploiting the law. This can only the credibility of genuine survivors of abuse and domestic violence.

I spoke to Bhardwaj about some of the most disturbing cases she has come across, including that of the woman who filed nine rape cases against nine different men at nine different police stations within one year — all in one city, Gurgaon. The journalist told me about the men who have committed suicide because of shame after they were falsely accused of rape. Bhardwaj also revealed the gaslighting and professional sabotage she experienced at the hands of many feminists. She has also shared her views on the hotbutton topic of marital rape and measures that the government could implement to address the misuse of biased gender laws.

The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Vikram Zutshi: You deliver a perspective on gender rights seldom seen in the media, highlighting both male and female victims of fraud, abuse and extortion. What are some of the most disturbing and unique stories you have covered?  

Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj: The most disheartening story I have covered to date is that of the late Arvind Bharti, which I have covered in my upcoming documentary, India’s Sons. Arvind was first forced into marriage by a woman who threatened to file a rape case against him. He married her and thought life would be smooth but she filed a false dowry case against him within a year of their marriage. Arvind fought those cases for eight  years, studied law to defend himself properly and when he won the cases finally, he still had to settle because the woman wouldn’t let him be. It was traumatizing for Arvind because he had a daughter too from this marriage. But he had to give up on his daughter because of his wife’s constant cruelty. Eventually Arvind got divorced and wanted to move on, but his estranged wife kept defaming him everywhere he went — at his office and his study centers.

She got him thrown out of his job and eventually got him booked under a false rape charge after getting him beaten up brutally and confining him for three days. Arvind was jailed for 15 days. This broke him deep inside. Eventually Arvind ended his life leaving a 26-page suicide note detailing the torture he went through for decades, and writing about how the laws are extremely favorable to women. I  reported on the case, and stood with his family. Eventually, after several campaigns, the woman was arrested for abetment of his suicide.

The most unique story I have covered is that of Ayushi Bhatia who filed nine rape cases on nine different men at nine different police stations within one year – all in one city, Gurgaon. I exposed this girl, which eventually led to her arrest for filing false cases, criminal intimidation, extortion and blackmail. After that exposé, people from across India contacted me writing about women who are filing false rape cases.

I exposed another such woman, Sonia Keswani from Jabalpur, who has filed six rape cases against five different men in the city of Jabalpur over a span of six years. She filed a rape case on the first man she implicated, got married to him and then filed dowry, domestic violence and rape cases against him again. After this, from 2021 to July 2022, she filed four more rape cases against four other different men. 

In both these cases, while Ayushi and Sonia were both married, they kept filing rape cases on other men, claiming they were raped on a false promise of marriage. In my opinion, these two cases highlight how rape laws are being brazenly misused in our country today.

There are several cases I have brought to light involving suicide by men after they were falsly accused of raping a woman. Some of these names include Awadhesh Yadav, Manoj Kumar, Arvind Bharti, Amit Kumar and Rahul Agarwal.

Zutshi: Your film India’s Sons delves into a bizarre tale of deception and fraud set in Jaipur. Tell us about how the legal system was misused by its practitioners to entrap a number of unwitting men. 

Bhardwaj: India’s Sons is about the lives of men who were falsely accused of rape but then were honorably acquitted by the court after years of trial. By then, their lives were totally destroyed by the case. Justice Nivedita Anil Sharma from Delhi once asked, “If the woman who files a rape case is immediately called a rape survivor, then why shouldn’t we call men who are honorably acquitted in these cases after being falsely accused, as “Rape Case Survivors.” This is what forms the tag line of the documentary as well: The Tale of False Rape Case Survivors.

One of the cases discussed in the documentary is that of a honeytrap racket busted in Jaipur by the special operations group of Rajasthan Police. About 44 people including high court lawyers, policemen, two dozen women and others pretending to be journalists were arrested during this phase. These people did a recce of high net worth men, especially those who were married. They sent women to lure them into sexual relationships, gathered evidence of these relationships and then threatened to register rape cases against these men. They made about three million dollars, a whopping 24-25 crore rupees. This racket operated nonchalantly for about three years until it was busted.

I am in Jaipur right now for the screening of my documentary film and, even today, the anti-corruption bureau has arrested a few policemen and advocates for extorting money from a man accused of rape. In all such cases, the legal system has taken for granted that whatever the woman states is gospel truth. No investigation is conducted and, almost always, even if it is found that the woman has lodged cases falsely, she is not punished. In the honeytrap racket, these women casually changed their statements and turned hostile after receiving money from the accused. The legal system ignored such dubious actions and so did the law enforcement authorities.

Zutshi: Do you consider yourself a feminist in the modern meaning of the term? How have India’s usually hyper-vocal feminists responded to your work? 

Bhardwaj: Personally, I am unable to identify myself as a feminist in the way that the term is used in the modern era. More often than not, hyper-vocal feminists have this innate hate for men which I find very annoying. For them, this entire world is against women, and anyone who doesn’t speak their language is a misogynist.

Equal rights and opportunities for all is an absolutely wonderful thought and, even today, there are women and girls who are disadvantaged and need the support from society to realize their true potential. Having said that, life isn’t a cakewalk for every man out there either. They too have their own struggles, challenges, and now even face discrimination especially because of one-sided laws that need to be addressed. But anyone talking about men suddenly becomes an enemy of feminists.

There are many feminists who have attacked my work. One of them started a petition to Netflix, when my documentary was released, to take it off the air. Another one wrote to the organizers of a TEDx talk I was invited to, demanding not to allow me to speak. In contrast, I have received standing ovations at several events. Time and again, I get abused on social media by feminist warriors who often describe me as a “pick me woman”, “misogynist”, “traitor”, and much worse terms, which I can not mention here. However, it no longer impacts me . I can safely say that I have thousands of women supporting my work, and they actively recognise the need for someone to speak up for these men who are also suffering.

Zutshi: What do you think of the proposed marital rape legislation that is currently a hot topic of debate on social media? 

Bhardwaj: This is an extensive topic of debate. I would ask  you to check out my video on this issue, which details my reservations on the proposed marital rape legislation.

To sum the video up, we already have laws that address sexual abuse within marriage. If the current exception in the existing rape laws were to be removed, almost every matrimonial dispute could result in rape charges against the husband. We are already witnessing thousands of unsubstantiated allegations of unnatural sex that is illegal under section 377 of the IPC. These cases will eventually end in settlements whereby the husband will be asked to shell out significant sums of money to save himself. Certain countries have already instituted special provisions against marital rape. Most of these countries have a gender-neutral law, but in India, it would be rendered as yet another weapon in the hands of wives. 

Zutshi: In your opinion, what are the steps that can be taken to address the misuse of section 376 of the IPS on rape and sexual harassment? 

Bhardwaj: The courts should give credence to fair and impartial investigations. They must value evidence, not mere verbal allegations made by women. This could go a long way in addressing the misuse of section 376. Currently, the courts are not punishing women who misuse section 376 to victimize men. Judges need to penalize women who make false allegations of rape. Only then will the misuse cease.

In addition, I think the lawmakers need to differentiate between cases of sexual assault and those that involve false claims of a promise of marriage because they do not belong to the same category. Currently, all men accused of a promise to marry are thrown into jail. Even if it later transpires that no promise of marriage was made and, consequently, the sex was consensual and not rape, the accused has already enormously suffered. The time in jail and the loss of reputation can often drive such men to suicide. The system is not working and must change.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As with previous elections, this one followed a . The story goes like this. The parliament deadlocks over disputes about who the emir has appointed as his prime minister and cabinet. Allegations of the ruling Al-Sabah family’s corruption and unruly MPs playing to their tribal and sectarian constituencies add to a toxic brew of simmering resentment between the ruling family and the elected parliament. After months of wrangling, with important legislation left swinging in the wind, the emir dissolves the parliament and goes to the electorate hoping to end yet another impasse. Instead, the cycle of parliamentary deadlock, bitter wrangling and another election ensues. Naturally, the Kuwaitis are getting tired of this sordid saga.

Understanding the Recent Election

Earlier this year. Crown Prince Sheikh Mishaal Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah standing in for his ailing half-brother Emir Nawaf the parliament after it refused to approve his choices for the prime minister and cabinet ministers. He was hoping that voters would elect a parliament more amenable to his decisions.  The people have voted in a parliament that is bound to disappoint him. The opposition, a disparate grouping united only in their visceral dislike of the Al-Sabah family, secured significant gains. With a gain of 27 new MPs, the primary were Islamists.

The result sets up further confrontations and the promise of more deadlock at a time when the parliament needs to pass legislation enabling the government to borrow from global markets. And while the bounce in oil prices as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has provided financial relief, it is only temporary.  Unlike Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) hydrocarbons-rich neighbors, Kuwait is in efforts to diversify the economy away from near total dependency on oil.

Jenan Mohsin Ramadan Boushehri (l) and Alia Faisal Al Khaled (r) were elected as representatives of the Kuwaiti National Assembly, the national parliament. While most commentaries have focussed on Islamist wins and the likelihood of further deadlock, passing reference has been made to the election of . Note that no women were elected in the previous parliamentary election of December 2020.

Two Women MPs, Islamists and Implications for Women

Boushehri ran as an independent in the 3^rd constituency and comfortably.  She had previously served in the 2018 cabinet as the minister of public works and the minister of state for housing affairs. Joining her is the secular writer and thinker Al-Khalid who was in the 2^nd constituency.

Kuwaiti women have long campaigned against domestic violence and honor killings. Having two women in parliament may help to turn the tide but there remains a long way to go. After a wave of honor killings had rocked Kuwait last year, the women’s rights activist Nour al-Mukhled, writing for had this to say:

, which passed in Kuwait’s National Assembly in August of 2020, calls for the establishment of a National Family Protection Committee that would put measures in place to tackle the spread of domestic violence in Kuwait.… Despite the fact that the law was passed more than a year ago, the law remains nothing but merely ink on paper, continuously failing to protect women who end up being victims of domestic violence.

The Wave of Femicides in Kuwait

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The new law replaced the notorious which effectively enabled honour killings by treating the murder of women by their husbands or other male relatives as a misdemeanour punishable by a maximum three year jail term and/or a maximum fine of 225 Kuwaiti dinars, a little over $700.

The Family Protection Law also called for training for those assisting survivors of domestic violence and provision for shelters, rehabilitation and advisory services. A parliament consisting entirely of males, as Nour al-Mukhled noted, did nothing to put teeth into the legislation as they bickered with the ruling family.

It is high time for Kuwait’s parliament to act on honor killings and domestic violence. With two women back in parliament, change may come. But Kristin Smith Diwan, a senior resident scholar at Washington’s Arab Gulf States Institute, makes an regarding the victory of Islamists: “If those candidates come forth with conservative social positions it will divide those who are pushing for reforms.” Ominously Diwan added that 17 of the newly elected MPs had signed a “values pledge” calling for, amongst other things, gender segregation in schools.

Last October, al-Mukhled concluded:

More than one year and six lives later, we still see the offhand attitude in parliament and society toward violence against women, a convenient way of condoning this tragedy without condemning and holding accountable those responsible.

To see off that offhand attitude will take more than two women MPs, it will require an almost entirely male parliament to find its mettle and begin to bring to an end attitudes and practices that shame Kuwait.

[ first published this article and is a partner of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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From struggles and revolutions for independence during colonization to their role as suicide bombers in terrorism and terrorist groups, women have always participated in conflicts. Women in terrorism captured the attention of the global population from onwards when they were being by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in droves. The figure of the female terrorist presents a conundrum. On the one hand, as one who commits acts of violence, she is a perpetrator of human rights violations against her own gender and others. On the other hand, structural human rights violations increase her vulnerability to radicalization. The female terrorist then seems to be caught between these two positions, where both law and politics are struggling to accommodate such a figure within their ambits.

The problem lies in the fact that women typically have been viewed from the of being victims rather than having political agency. Accounts of men’s violence and terrorism typically are seen as rational and male terrorists are seen as active perpetrators of political violence. In contrast, accounts of women’s participation in terrorism is characterised as . This sets up a false dichotomy that translates to an understanding of agency that is gendered, with women’s violence being seen as exceptional.

Women as Victims, Not Perpetrators of Violence

In international law, the women, peace and security () agenda mainly focuses on victims of sexual violence during conflicts. UN Security Council Resolution in WPS has only one with one sentence that mentions female radicalization: “…to conduct and gather gender-sensitive research and data collection on the drivers of radicalization for women, and the impacts of counter-terrorism strategies on women’s human rights and women’s organizations” (para. 12). This is a fraught area within the WPS Agenda with a confusing wording, where women are presented as both problem and solution in the same sentence. Furthermore, the WPS model falls within heteronormativity—it is heterosexual and heteropatriarchal. The WPS space needs to be recast as something else which does not carry the cultural baggage of gender stereotypes and of these normative frameworks.

Too many have taken a simplistic view of women’s violence as a result of personal failures.  Such a recasting is important because the female terrorist is currently presented without any political agency. The model at present is quite simplistic and reductive, reflecting the way in which women’s violence is generally constructed as resulting from personal failures, lost love and irrational emotionality. Consider the reasons given for women’s radicalization by the of the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality: “a sense of duty to defend their Muslim brothers and sisters”, “a sense of adventure”, “the prospect of marriage” (p. 26). These reasons are repeated in several policy reports and papers that have come out over the last few years on this topic. 

The ‘push’ and ‘pull’ that are given for women’s violence are that they are frustrated in their personal lives, have unsatisfactory love lives and are looking for an emotional outlet, while the allure of militancy is that it is an adventure, and that they are rebelling against patriarchal injunctions in their own families. Caron E. Gentry and Laura Sjoberg state in Beyond Mothers, Monsters and Whores that how violent women matter in global politics is typically through “the mother, monster and whore narratives which confine them to vengeance, insanity and sexuality and deny the possibility that they could be choosing their actions” (p.20). 

The female terrorist is then always presented as someone’s wife, partner, mother, daughter, sister. And we keep coming back to the tropes of the public/private when the female terrorist is characterized as such, where the public sphere is seen to be the rational male space, and the private sphere the ‘irrational’ and ‘emotional’ space. Narratives of women and violence then become sensational and stylized, where their private love and sex lives, lack of ideal femininity as well as lack of political agency become construed as the drivers of terrorism and militancy.

This is not to say that all policy reports do this. The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate’s “Gender Dimensions of the Response to Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters” acknowledges the need to take a different approach. However, this report is one among the few while a majority of the policy reports thus far rehash the stereotypes.

Women’s Agency in Violent Extremism

News reports and coverage of such women popularized the term ‘jihadi bride’ with regards to women joining ISIS, and several scholars have commented on how problematic this is. The connotation of “jihadi bride” is that these women are infantilized as brides and tabloid sensationalism flattens a complicated but necessary debate about political agency.

The flip side to this, however, is that when talking about such women, especially in the context of foreign terrorist fighters where some left to fight in ISIS as young as 15-year-olds, where does one draw the line between vulnerability and agency?  We need to be to the coercion and violence many female members experience themselves.

At the heart of it all is theinability of the broader cultural to conceive that women are capable of being attracted to violence for reasons that are their own. The gendered narratives of women’s violence ultimately leads to women’s invisibility in legal and political narratives of terrorism, where ultimately women then can only be seen  as victims. Any deviation from this is seen as going down a about what it means to be a woman. This appears to cancel the possibility that women may not always behave in ways that we as a society expect them to, thus giving rise to sensationalized narratives and framing their violence as exceptional.

 [The author is a  on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls with  who helped publish this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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No Story Is Worth Dying For

In most Kenyan media schools, the phrase “No Story Is Worth Dying For” is quite a common saying. However, what happens when you fall in love with your work?

Describing herself as a “product of Jerusalem,” with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shaping much of her life, Shireen Abu Akleh has shown the world what it means to be a journalist and what it means  to tell stories that  affect you as a journalist and your community. In her own words, her only mission was to be close to her people, and within her people she was killed.

“I chose to become a journalist to be close to people. It may not be easy to change reality, but I was at least able to bring their voice to the world,” Abu Akleh said in a taped for the Qatari channel’s 25th anniversary. 

Journalism in Africa Has Become a Travesty

When I was growing up, I listened to Kenya Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio Taifa and watched KBC Channel 1 —  that’s what we had at that time and I must say that the type of journalism exhibited was mind-blowing. A type of journalism that can only be compared to Abu Akleh’s.

Today, African journalists have turned their craft into a very ordinary career reserved for cool kids, who spent most of their time in big cities or overseas. After spending time overseas, these cool kids return to their homeland and land jobs in major newsrooms, thanks to their polished English. Sadly, most of them have zero journalism skills or storytelling abilities.

While journalists like Ahmed Hussein-Suale,a renowned investigative journalist from Ghana, was in 2019 for his role in exposing the corruption in his country,and Jamal Farah Adan of Somalia, Betty Mtekhele Barasa of Kenya, and dozens were killed in Ethiopia covering the Tigray conflict, it is very unfortunate that some journalists still find it right to use journalism for fame, power, and build future political careers.

Today, some Kenyan journalists engage in uncalled-for social media wars with critics who point out their lack of skills and unreasonable theatrics for clout chasing.

We have lost the basics of journalism such as good storytelling. Instead, journalists are thirsty for social media numbers, likes, and retweets. We don’t verify anymore. As long as it helps increase the number of followers, it goes for publishing. Right now, distinguishing a professionally trained journalist from a socialite is becoming an uphill task.

African Governments Must Learn from Palestine

Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by Israeli forces just eight days after the world marked the World Press Freedom Day on May 3. With such events, African governments need to step up and steer clear of Israeli-like behaviors of gagging the media, and instead, just like Palestine gave Abu Akleh the freedom to tell her people’s story, they should also give the same freedom to their journalists.

In March, Ugandan authorities the offices of Digitalk, an online tv station known for airing critical views of President Yoweri Museveni and his family. Other than confiscating the TV’s production and broadcasting equipment, they also arrested and charged its reporters with cyberstalking and offensive communication. The charges could see them facing up to seven years in prison. 

The killing of this brave journalist who dared to tell the stories of the oppressive Israeli should not kill the spirits of journalists worldwide. Instead, this should be an inspiration to every reporter to work even harder,  to help give voice to the voiceless, uphold justice and make the world a better place for every person whether in Gaza, Tigray, Libya, Syria or Afghanistan among other countries and regions experiencing instability.

(Senior Editor Francesca Julia Zucchelli edited this article.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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It’s Time for #MeToo to Address Structural Racism

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The first official Women’s History Month was inaugurated in 1980 and has been celebrated every year since. There are indeed many milestones and accomplishments to celebrate, including the strides women have made in  and the , the increased  of women in government, and the hard-won legal and social equality. At the same time, white women have leveraged their relative racial privilege to make these gains at the expense of women of color.

Incomplete Picture

While it feels empowering to think of women as a collective group, this category is not a monolith. Failing to consider women and women’s history from an  perspective leaves out the range of experiences and needs of women who do not fit into the white middle-class mold. In short, when the broad range of women’s experiences is not acknowledged, the movement remains incomplete. 

Because historical and contemporary women’s movements have willfully and strategically omitted racial justice, there is a legacy of isolating racism from sexism. This ignores the lived experience of everyone except white women. It has ensured that white women see a competition between issues of racism and sexism, and feel that they lose if the conversation centers around the former. 

The made the deliberate decision to fight for the right of white — not all — women to vote, choosing not to collaborate with black female activists. More recently, the 2017 Women’s March organizers faced criticism for focusing primarily on white women’s issues. 

And in the peak of the #MeToo movement, celebrities like Alyssa Milano, who said that she  to be the vessel for the movement, and Rose McGowan, who  at not being credited with initiating the movement, have by and large been associated with the inception of #MeToo. In reality, , a black female activist and advocate, coined the phrase and spearheaded the movement to raise awareness of sexual violence against working-class women and women of color a whole decade earlier.

As sociologists and white women, we argue that the discomfort regarding engaging with racism in both the society in general as well as in women-centered movements stems from the idea that white people don’t have to talk about race and racism because they aren’t “our issues.” But, because we live in a , everyone has a racial identity.

Another way to think about this is by acknowledging that race is socially constructed, meaning that it carries a social, not biological categorization. However, the fact that it is socially constructed doesn’t mean it isn’t real. In a racist society, race has very real consequences for people.

Real Change

To avoid injury and to build a more equitable and just society, white women must become better at talking about race and racism, and recognize that while we experience sexism, we benefit from racial privilege in society. These benefits range from not having to  when dating to more frequent  in the workplace compared to minority women to extensive when a white woman goes missing, among others. 

Real change will mean giving up some of our comfort and power. Making these changes may not feel nice to us as individuals, but will have life-saving consequences for black people and other people of color. 

Second, we must recognize racism is a  that is embedded into the fabric of American society. Dismantling it will require supporting anti-racist policies and politicians, and advocating for laws such as the , which aims to “improve maternal health, particularly among racial and ethnic minority groups, veterans, and other vulnerable populations. It also addresses maternal health issues related to COVID-19.” 

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To ensure that political leaders truly represent the American public, everyone must have a seat at the table. While there have been four women on the Supreme Court, this month, we have the opportunity to confirm , who would be the first black woman on the court. 

Finally, we cannot begin to address racism without a shared knowledge of the truth. Ideally, this means casting a wide net and engaging with people from different backgrounds. Black activists and authors can us the social world through their eyes. But even so, we can’t expect anyone to tell us what “good” white people we are. In the words of the late scholar and activist , there is no gold star for “challenging white supremacist, capitalist, and patriarchal values.”   

What’s more, since racism is structural, we will all say and do racist things at times. But if we care about making the world a better place, we must listen, learn, apologize and continue to improve. Of course, self-knowledge is not enough. As white women, we must simultaneously work to improve ourselves and engage in the difficult work of dismantling white supremacy. This won’t be easy work, but it’s work that is worth doing. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Over the past six months, Afghan women have continued to protest against the Taliban policies, provoking a brutal response. One of the detainees  AFINT: “Unfortunately, there is sexual harassment by the Taliban. The Taliban think that a woman who protests for her rights or has worked before they came to power is a prostitute. So, they consider these women as sex slaves.” While it may be impossible to change the Taliban’s mindset, international and regional pressure is key to helping Afghan women and holding the current regime accountable. 

The Taliban Use Violence Against Women as a Bargaining Chip

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To deal with the international pressures, the Taliban turned the women’s rights issues into a bargaining chip against the international community to gain recognition and force engagement. The US, in particular, consistently calls on the Taliban to respect women’s rights. But does the US have enough leverage over the Taliban to force them to revise their treatment of women?

Power Is Everything 

Since the overthrow of the Afghan government last August, the US remained engaged with the Taliban, although Washington does not recognize the regime as legitimate. Although the Taliban views the US as the loser in this conflict, many within the group’s leadership believe that they have to interact with Washington to gain recognition. 

The Taliban’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai  in December: “If the US embassy reopens in Kabul, all European countries will be here in half an hour. We are working hard in this regard, and since I have been a member of the negotiating team with them (the Americans), I am sure from their morals and behavior that, God willing, they will be back soon.” 

From the Taliban’s perspective, power is everything. As far as they can control the country, the US has to respect them and will have to recognize them. This assumption leads the group to not compromise on women’s rights. Instead of revising their policies, they detained women activists and then released some of them following pressure to do so during the  in January.

The US has profound concerns about the Taliban’s relations with other terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State branch in Afghanistan, but human rights, women’s rights and an inclusive government are all part of the US agenda in its interaction with the country’s new leadership. In his talk at the United States Institute of Peace, Thomas West, the US special representative for Afghanistan,  these values as crucial for the US-Taliban relationship. 

However, it is imperative to keep in mind that any compromise from the international community on women’s rights that suggests to the Taliban that their harsh policies may be accommodated will only exacerbate the situation for women in Afghanistan. 

International Commitment

For more than 20 years, the US and international community repeated their strong commitment to  in Afghanistan, creating the expectation that it should continue doing so after the Taliban takeover. However, many Afghan women saw the US agreement with the Taliban as a .

International pressure is the critical factor for holding the Taliban accountable. When the women activists disappeared without explanation, the Taliban denied its involvement for months. The United Nations and US diplomats repeatedly called on the Taliban to find the missing women.

In the end, the Taliban released several well-known women activists despite denying involvement in detaining them. The group also published videos of  by the activists. Totalitarian regimes use this tactic against human rights activities for propaganda and to mislead the public; exposing the Taliban’s double game will not be easy and will require international commitment and cooperation. 

There are several measures that can be helpful in holding the Taliban accountable, and the US can play a central role. First, the diplomatic contacts with the Taliban should not be interpreted as hope for recognition; rather, diplomacy should be used only for contact and assessing responsibilities.

Second, international consensus on women’s rights and supporting the idea of an inclusive and legitimate government in Afghanistan is key. This is significant for women’s rights and negotiation for building a broad-based government to reflect Afghan society, which is instrumental for avoiding another round of conflict. 

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Third, increasing the activities of international organizations in Afghanistan to support women and monitor their situation under the Taliban is necessary. Currently, there is no access to different corners of the country where crimes against women may be committed. Fourth, financial support to organizations championing women’s education and activities will be vital for women’s voices and Afghan social society to resist the Taliban’s fascist approach.

The US can exert pressure on behalf of Afghan women to demand that their rights to work and education are honored. Any degree of leniency toward the Taliban will make the situation worse for women. If the US shows a faltering resolve or sends a misleading message, the international consensus on human rights will disappear.  

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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FO° Live: Women Under the Taliban

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In response, the Taliban have deployed various oppressive measures. In September, they the Women’s Affairs Ministry with morality police, which enforces the armed group’s on the country. At the same time, while trying to confine women to their homes by forbidding them to work or study, the Taliban are using the threat of violence against women as a bargaining chip against the Western powers.

Violent Tactics

In September last year, the Taliban attacked the media to prevent them from covering the women’s protests in Kabul. Two journalists were . Etilaatroz is one of the leading Afghan newspapers and a critical voice mainly focused on investigative journalism. An attack on the newspaper was a clear signal for everyone covering the protests against the Taliban.

Since the armed group took control of the country, at least 318 media outlets in 33 of 34 provinces and, according to the International Federation of Journalists, 72% of those who are women.

But the Taliban quickly changed their tactics to tackle women’s protests through more intimidating methods, including nighttime house searches to locate those who dared raise their voice. Tamana Zaryabi Paryani, a member of the movement demanding rights to work and education, is just one of the women from their homes in Kabul in the middle of the night; her whereabouts . Some families report being contacted by detainees from Taliban prisons in undisclosed locations.

The Taliban deny capturing, detaining or killing women and other opponents. This tactic aims to mislead public opinion, the media and policymakers in Western countries. The situation may be even more critical in the provinces, beyond the eyes of the media. In September last year, the Taliban a former police officer with the ousted Afghan government in front of her family in Gor province; she was pregnant at the time of her murder.

There is no way to assess the true number of disappeared women across the country. Some of them are known by the media, such Mursal Ayar, Parwana Ibrahimkhel, Tamana Paryani, Zahra Mohammadi and Alia Azizi. Most of them belong to the protest movement against the Taliban’s policies. Azizi worked as a senior female prison official in Herat and went missing when the Taliban took control of the city. Amnesty International the Taliban to investigate the case and release her “immediately and unconditionally” if she is in their custody.

Last week, the UN repeated its and asked the Taliban to release the disappeared women activists and their relatives. The German Embassy, currently operating from Qatar, has called for an into the missing women. It is entirely possible that the Taliban will eventually release some of the captives, claiming that they were rescued from the clutches of the kidnappers, in order to portray themselves as a responsible government.

Gang rape is another tactic that the Taliban deploy against women in detention. The Independent that last September, bodies of eight detainees arrested during a protest in Mazar-e Sharif were discovered. According to reports, the girls were repeatedly gang-raped and tortured by the Taliban. Sexual assault is a many-sided weapon against women in a society based on strict honor codes. Some of those who survived the rapes were by their families.

In January, The Times that the staff in the government-run Mazar-e Sharif Regional Hospital claim that they receive around 15 bodies from Taliban fighters each month — mostly women with gunshot wounds to the head or chest.

Bargaining Chip

Violence has been the Taliban’s primary tool both in war and during negotiations with Western powers. Over the course of two decades of conflict, the Taliban used violence as a means to win recognition as a political force. During their talks with the US and the Afghan government, the Taliban escalated violence to enhance their position at the negotiating table. Now, they are pursuing the same strategy by trading repression for recognition.

Since the Taliban took control of the country, women’s rights are a constant subject of ongoing diplomatic discussions that have so far brought no result. The international community has failed to press the Taliban to form an inclusive government and respect women’s rights.

But the armed group wants the international community to recognize their government. In January, a Taliban delegation was invited to Oslo to talk with Western powers and representatives of Afghan women for the first time. At the meeting, Hoda Khamosh, a civil society activist, the Taliban delegation: “why are the Taliban imprisoning us in Kabul and now sitting here at the negotiating table with us in Oslo? What is the international community doing in the face of all this torture and repression?”

Since then, nothing has changed. The reality is that the Taliban used the talks in Oslo as an opportunity to make an international appearance to advertise their government. They are deploying precepts like women’s rights to force more international engagement. While Norway was for inviting the Taliban and offering them exposure, Switzerland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that it invited the Taliban to talk about “the protection of humanitarian actors and respect for human rights.”

The Taliban is an ideological, zealot religious movement, and years of experience suggest that they are unlikely to revise their position on women’s rights and other fundamental issues, including human rights and political pluralism. Talking about women’s rights in Western capitals is just an opportunity for them to normalize their regime and travel abroad. Human rights violations, particularly violence against women, not only serve the Taliban’s ideological purposes but have turned into a convenient bargaining chip against the international community.

It is critical that Western powers support fundamental human rights in the country without providing the Taliban with opportunities for blackmail, implementig realistic measures to press the group to release activists and to respect women’s rights. First, it is important to maintain or escalate the current sanctions regime against the Taliban leadership. Second, making sure that there is no rush to recognize the Taliban regime mong foreign governments is another key leverage point.

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Third, there is a need to appoint a special rapporteur to monitor the human rights situation and document violations to hold the Taliban accountable. Fourth, it is important to extend and support the mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan to help monitor the human rights situation in the country.

Finally, the international community can continue its humanitarian support through UN agencies and other organizations without recognizing the Taliban. Recognition of the group will not only increase human rights abuses but will send the wrong signal to other extremists in the region. All these measures will reduce the Taliban’s ability to use violence as a bargaining chip against the international community.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Taliban Use Violence Against Women as a Bargaining Chip appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The second was the legitimization of voyeurism. What was at one time regarded as an unwholesome and indecent fascination with other people’s affairs is now considered conventional. In fact, the more transgressive outlook is to be nonchalant.

MTV at 40: Did Video Kill the Radio Star?

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The new Disney+ mini series “” dramatizes an infamous leaked sex tape ���Ա��DZ������Բ��� and her then-husband, Tommy Lee, who still plays drums for the band Mötley Crüe. Anderson was starring in Baywatch, a TV series that ran from 1989 until 2001. The show was about a team of lifeguards on a Los Angeles beach and became a showcase for Anderson, who featured in the series from 1992 to 1997 before moving into film.

Anderson married Lee in March 1995. It seemed a marriage made in heaven. Well, in Cancún, Mexico, to be exact. The newlyweds were sensibly undressed in beachwear, Lee’s splendidly inked torso in full view of the media. By the end of the year, Anderson announced she was pregnant. But heaven had an unwanted visitor.

Private Lives Made Public

There were rumors about a videotape of Anderson and Lee in sexual congress. That such a thing existed surprised no one. The couple seemed blissfully loved-up. But what surprised many was that people were discussing it as if it were a public event. It later became known that the videotape had been stolen from the couple’s California home while they were honeymooning and that the thief, a dissatisfied contractor who had done some work at their house, was seeking to release the tape in an instance of what we’d now call revenge porn.

This was the mid-1990s, remember. Today, he would have immediately uploaded the recording and gotten millions of views within minutes.

Anderson and Lee were, it seems, genuinely upset by the prospect of having their private lives turned inside out. Neither had anything to gain. Lee’s band had six successful albums, and Anderson was borderline iconic, her signature red swimsuit emblematic of the time. Had the tape gained a wider audience, NBC, the TV network, would probably have dropped her from the show amid protest from their advertisers and several indignant church organizations.

For comparison, in predigital 1988, Rob Lowe’s career temporarily cratered after the media got hold of a recording of the actor in a threesome with a woman who was later revealed to be 16 and another woman in her 20s. After a 10-year absence, Lowe made a Lazarus-like recovery when he got a part in “The West Wing,” a show that restored him. Of course, Lowe was a man.

Lowe’s recovery is one way of imagining how Anderson’s career might have gone had the tape been quickly and widely distributed. Another way is to remember Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” of 2004. She had several contracts canceled after a tumult of complaints about her appearance in the halftime Super Bowl show in which she exposed her breast. Her partner in the stunt was Justin Timberlake, whose career suffered no comparably ill effects.

Also in 2004, a similar sex tape featuring Paris Hilton and her partner Rick Salomon had the opposite effect. It propelled Hilton to global notoriety and consequent stardom. Hilton was a woman, but, unlike Anderson or Jackson, she did not have a successful career in show business. Salomon was relatively unknown and, perhaps paradoxically, later married — and I am not making this up — Anderson (though only for a year).

A sex tape also functioned as a career propellant for Hilton’s one-time friend, Kim Kardashian. Again, unlike Anderson, but a lot like Hilton, Kardashian had no known acting or singing talents and belonged to what was then the emerging class of celebrities who were well-known for being followed avariciously by the media. Kardashian existed as an internet life force and a presence in a reality TV series. Halfway through the first decade of the century, this was sufficient to guarantee her a spot high on the A-list.

There were several differences between Anderson’s experience and those of Hilton and Kardashian. For a start, audiences already knew Anderson and realized she needed a sex tape circulating about as much as a funeral wreath. Hilton and Kardashian, on the other hand, were best known as socialites, people who dress well, inhabit fashionable environments and are fond of premieres. All three women acted as if they were affronted, outraged and embarrassed by the leaks, but only one of them sounded credible.

Has Porn Lost Its Appeal?

There was another big difference. When Anderson’s tape appeared, the internet was still in its infancy and without YouTube, which launched in 2005, there was no obvious conduit for publishing. Consent and exploitation may sound old-fashioned today, but, in the 1990s, they were still relevant. Even by the early 21st century, the lack of online regulation had not been realized as the major problem it later became.

Kardashian herself stress-tested the internet’s limits in 2016 when she posted , her modesty protected only by censor bars. In the same year, launched an online platform specializing in what was then seen as risqué material. Its majority owner Leo Radvinsky’s background was in porn. It’s now one of the fastest-growing , according to Ofcom, second only to Pornhub for streaming this type of erotica.

Tumblr appeared to buck the trend when it banned adult content in late 2018. Its traffic dropped and it was sold a year later for a modest $3 million, having been at $1.1 billion in 2013.

What about us? Did we change too? Our capacity to respond, appreciate or be repelled by aesthetic influences is not fixed. Perhaps we were more likely to be offended or shocked when the Anderson tape became available, less so by the later exposures and hardly at all by OnlyFans’ output. Porn has largely lost some of its power to thrill or disgust. Our sensitivity to images of others having sex couldn’t have remained unchanged with so much of it readily available online, could it?

There hasn’t really been anything shocking since the original Kardashian transmission. Can you imagine if anyone tried it today? Audiences would hardly be able to contain their indifference. With the possible exception of Britain’s seemingly indestructible, multi-purpose , surely no one would attempt it, for fear of being ridiculed.

Our fascination with what other people do in their not-yet-made-public moments is what drove reality TV to its preeminent position as the century’s most popular genre, and I think its form, style and subject matter justify calling it a genre. Maybe this prurient streak has always been in us, though I’m inclined to believe the captivation was animated and encouraged by TV’s ingenuity; by coaxing drama from documentary, TV cameras made privacy entertaining. Every one of us became eavesdroppers without any of the guilt typically associated with being a peeping tom. Maybe that’s why watching sex tapes, or their digital equivalents, isn’t so exciting anymore. Those pangs of conscience were probably part of the frisson.

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Like anything else that’s banned, the prohibition is part of porn’s appeal. The instant you make it legit, you reduce its attraction. While #MeToo and other movements that fight the objectification and degradation of women would find this irony hard to accept, there is logic in rinsing off porn’s dirt and making it a bit more respectable — and a bit less stimulating.

Anderson, now 54, would probably not accept any responsibility for the growth or sanitization of porn and almost certainly not want her legendary tape viewed again after nearly three decades. And if it were, it would register only historical interest rather than titillation. But in the 1990s, Anderson was riding the zeitgeist, however unwittingly and, perhaps, with help from her private misfortune, changing its direction.

*[Ellis Cashmore’s “” will be published by Bloomsbury in May.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Did Digital Media Retire the Sex Tape? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Financial Sector Needs to Address Whistleblower Retaliation

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An issue that is causing immediate concern amid the increasingly dictatorial reign of the Taliban is the country’s profound financial crisis. Cut off from international financial institutions and with nearly worth of assets frozen, Afghans can’t rely on humanitarian assistance as aid organizations try to navigate their way around the newly-imposed sanctions regime.

The local currency, the afghani, is in ; down nearly 20% since mid-2021, there doesn’t seem to be a stabilization point in the foreseeable future. Jobs have disappeared, and those lucky enough to be employed frequently are months behind in receiving their salaries. The United Nations fears that the Afghan banking system is on the .

Currency Alternatives

With limited funds remaining in the country, lengthy lines form at the banks and ATMs as Afghans seek access to what little is left — many being left with nothing. In addition to having severely constrained access to cash, purchasing power for the average Afghan is falling quickly, placing them in ever more dire straits. 

This perfect financial storm has led many Afghans to look to decentralized finance as an alternative, and has rapidly moved in to fill the void, just as it has done in other countries facing currency crises. Although crypto is still often highly volatile, Afghans see it as a legitimate source for much-needed cash flow and liquidity. They also increasingly view digital wallets as far more stable than their bank accounts.

Even if cryptocurrencies are not truly decentralized, it is possible that Afghans see cryptocurrency as an escape route from at least one aspect of life under an authoritarian regime. Further adding to crypto’s popularity is its ability to promote financial inclusion for people who often have difficulty gaining access to traditional financial services, like women, most of whom weren’t allowed or able to open a bank account in Afghanistan. 

Greater ease of opening accounts, lower documentation requirements and more affordable fee structures make cryptocurrency a viable and attractive alternative to brick-and-mortar banks and hard currency. Given that crypto financial services are intentionally mobile-friendly, they are much more accessible to the average Afghan than the failing internal banking system.

Connecting Scattered Families

According to the UN, as of last year, nearly 5.9 million Afghans , mostly in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. The number has been on the increase since the Taliban takeover as of new refugees seek asylum in countries across the globe. Migration often leaves families separated and in dire need of resources.

Well before the Taliban administration took power, it was common for Afghans living abroad to help support family members back home. According to the World Bank, in 2020, nearly $800 million, or roughly , streamed into the country in the form of remittances. 

As Afghan banks shut down or limited operations and international payment providers like Western Union suspended operations in Afghanistan due to international sanctions, intra-family transfers became increasingly difficult. Moreover, even those banks that remained open typically did not make simple payment systems like Venmo or Zelle available to their customers.

With cryptocurrency-based payment systems, family members have a solution for bypassing the internal financial problems in the country. The result is an acceleration of crypto use, placing Afghanistan among the in the world for adoption rate.

Links Between Crypto and Terrorism

Unfortunately, crypto’s ability to remain outside mainstream financial and regulatory structures has also made it attractive to terrorist organizations. A recent report from the US attorney general’s Cyber Digital Task Force between cryptocurrency and terrorist organizations: “While public data on terrorist use of cryptocurrency is limited, it is clear that terrorist networks have conducted fundraising operations through Internet-based crowdsource platforms in an attempt to evade stopgaps built into the international banking system.” 

Well-known terrorist organizations from Hamas to the Islamic State use cryptocurrency to create funding networks and purchase supplies for their operations. It is remarkably simple for these groups to leverage extensive social media networks to back their fundraising drives.

Ongoing efforts to disrupt such activity have seen some limited success. For example, US anti-terrorism efforts in 2020 led to civil forfeiture cases and the seizure of more than 300 cryptocurrency accounts containing several million dollars.

Can Crypto Help the Taliban Circumvent Sanctions?

As crypto adoption rates skyrocket, concerns are building in the international community that the Taliban itself will turn to cryptocurrency to sidestep sanctions and cloud financial transparency. All of this raises the question of whether crypto adoption in Afghanistan poses a significant security threat for the rest of the world.   

The Taliban continues to seek international recognition and has stated that failure to do so will have significant consequences for the world. However, it does not appear that recognition is forthcoming. Indeed, the US is unlikely to ever officially recognize the Taliban government, with the group still on its list of .

Without formal recognition, the Taliban regime will continue to struggle to access its international accounts or generate international funding to help alleviate its economic woes. While cryptocurrency might seem like a reasonably effective option for the Taliban government, the complexity of the economic situation in the country precludes a single solution. With governments across the world beginning to introduce stricter regulations on cryptocurrency markets and actively working to prevent access by terrorist organizations, things may not be quite so simple for Afghanistan’s new leaders. 

At least one government has explicitly attempted to counteract US sanctions through cryptocurrency in the past. The embattled regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela had teamed with Russian banks to back Evrofinance Mosnarbank, the primary supporter of Venezuela’s proposed national cryptocurrency, the . Maduro claimed that the petro would help Venezuela obtain alternative sources of international financing, despite heavy US sanctions. However, the scheme has not been successful, a sign that similar attempts by the Taliban may be of limited use.

The deteriorating situation in Afghanistan represents an ongoing security threat far beyond its borders. Stability, both political and financial, is certainly in the best interests of the people of Afghanistan and everyone else, including cryptocurrency markets.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Afghans Turn to Crypto Amid Crisis appeared first on 51�Թ�.

COP26: Can People Power Save the World?

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The impacts of climate change are no longer just an environmental or political issue but also a complex social problem with immense repercussions for the well-being of women, girls and marginalized groups who already face injustices due to gendered power dynamics and a lack of control over the use of resources. Studies have that women and girls are 14 times more likely to die or be injured than men due to a natural disaster. They are subject to a number of secondary impacts, including gender-based violence, loss of economic opportunities and increased workloads.

Knowledge and Understanding

Not only are women more affected by climate change than men, but they also play a crucial role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Women have the knowledge and understanding of what is needed to adapt to changing environmental conditions and to come up with practical solutions.

But their knowledge and expertise are still largely untapped resources. Restricted land rights, lack of access to financial resources, training and technology, as well as limited access to political decision-making, often prevent them from playing a full role in building resilience in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.

Wealthier nations, which have often used colonialism, territorialism and capitalism as means of defining progress, have caused irreversible damage to the environment, largely contributing to the deterioration of climate worldwide. Today, the Pacific Islands may be a group of nations most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, with some facing possible obliteration.

In 2021, as the fear and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic seemed to be the biggest immediate threat facing the global community, the Pacific region was not spared from catastrophic climatic events. The year began with tropical cyclone Zazu affecting American Samoa, Samoa, Niue and Tonga, and tropical cyclone Yasa landing in Fiji and Vanuatu within the span of a week.

The Pacific is most definitely experiencing more frequent and intense cyclones than ever recorded. For example, Yasa became the most powerful tropical cyclone of 2020, beating Goni with a minimum barometric pressure of 899 mb (26.55 inHg) and a maximum wind speed of 250 km per hour (155 mph). It was also the fourth most intense South Pacific tropical cyclone after Winston (2016), Zoe (2003) and Pam (2015), while Zazu dissipated into an extratropical cyclone.

With this trend of disaster in the region, the need for resource allocation is great. In 2018, Global Humanitarian Overview shows that $23.17 billion in was received in worldwide appeals. According to the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Aid Map, $132.11 million was committed to the Pacific in that year, a mere fraction of the global effort. The Pacific’s biggest continue to be Australia and New Zealand.

The United Kingdom’s of £290 million to help countries prepare for climate change is welcome. However, past pledges by wealthier industrialized regions have failed us. For example, the commitment to raise $1 billion in climate funding has not happened and continues to be discussed at COP26. These resources are crucial for the countries and people most vulnerable to climate change.

Lived Realities

The lived realities of women in the communities are often silenced given the limited representation women have in decision-making. The stories we do not hear are of those most impacted by climate change, stories that affect the livelihood and well-being of communities. At the Women’s Fund Fiji, our goal is to shift the power imbalances that prevent the full participation of women, girls and marginalized groups by providing equitable and flexible access to resources that will help women’s and feminist groups, networks and organizations better respond and adapt to the climate crisis.

The women in the rural remote communities of Fiji are among the most vulnerable groups of people battling climate change in the world. Women in Namuaimada Village in Rakiraki specialize in harvesting nama (Caulerpa racemosa) — an edible seaweed, also known as sea grapes, which is found in shallow waters near the reef. The harvesting of nama is done mainly by women, who go out in fishing boats to the reefs during low tide and spend about four hours harvesting the seaweed.

According to the Women in Fisheries Network  funded by Oxfam and the Women’s Fund, women are expert fishers in the coastal zone and the dominant sellers of seaweed, crustaceans and mollusks, with many fishing for household needs and selling the surplus contributing to the income and livelihoods of their families. With rising ocean temperatures, the production of these onshore and coastal marine resources will continue to decline, eventually causing loss of income and increased food insecurity for the fisherwomen.

The assumption that only the livelihoods of coastal women are affected is debunked as we investigate the plight of the fund’s grantee partner, , who are already experiencing the onset of climate change and exacerbated natural disasters creating both short-term and long-term hurdles to their work. The group of 31 women dairy farmers located in the interior of Fiji’s main island of Viti Levu run family-owned dairy farmsteads and are shifting social norms like patriarchy and contributing to decision-making epicenters in a male-dominated industry.

Floods and tropical cyclones have continually disrupted their farm infrastructure and their ability to supply milk to the Fiji Dairy Cooperatives Limited, the nation’s main dairy organization that purchases their milk on a contractual basis. With temperatures expected to continue to rise, their cattle will face greater heat stress. In hotter conditions, lactating cows feed less, leading to a fall in milk production. If climate change continues along the current trajectory, these women will be faced with income reduction and may not be able to support their families or maintain their current independence. 

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This is the unfortunate reality faced by women of Fiji specifically and women of the Pacific at large. Under the guise of the technical and scientific study of climate change and climate-induced disasters, the voices of women in all their diversity are often not heard. Our experiences of the many challenges we face as a group of the population that is most vulnerable are not necessarily accounted for when decisions relating to climate change are made.

This year, leaders of just three of the 14 Pacific Island states made it to the discussions to Glasgow due to COVID-19 restrictions, making it “the thinnest representation of Pacific islands at a COP ever,” to Satyendra Prasad, Fiji’s ambassador to the United Nations. Given that international negotiations are still, in the words of Britain’s former Energy Minister Claire O’Neill, very much a “,” women’s groups are left to bear the brunt of shrinking spaces and resources when it comes to mitigating the challenges of the climate crisis in the Pacific.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Fiji’s Women Are Living the Reality of Climate Change appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Why Texas’ Abortion Law Matters

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The , which bans the termination of a pregnancy after the detection of cardiac activity, also deputizes individuals to sue anyone who facilitates the procurement of an abortion after the six-week cut-off point. This, in effect, turns everyday residents of the Lone Star state into and , a practice that is reminiscent of the country’s sordid and violent history of empowering white individuals to hunt down fugitive slaves.

Radical Political Project

It is clear that SB 8 is an assault on the that is informed by and reflects the logic of white power and male supremacism. But the law goes further: It is also an assault on the very framework of liberal rights. On one hand, SB 8 is a continuation of the anti-democratic turn within the American right. On the other hand, it is a repudiation of liberalism. Taken together, these two aspects of SB 8 highlight what the Texas abortion ban can tell us about the radical political project of the American right.

Texas Republicans are not alone in disdaining democracy. As we have seen in the Republican response to the “” — the myth that Donald Trump won the 2020 election that was then “stolen” from him — the GOP has demonstrated a remarkable willingness to reject a bedrock principle of democracy: the legitimacy of free and fair elections. While this rejection provides the clearest evidence of an anti-democratic ethos operating within the GOP, SB 8 provides a window into another anti-democratic impulse, namely the rejection of self-governance.

A public conducted by the University of Texas, Austin, in February, found that a majority of Texans were in favor of either leaving abortion laws as they were or making them less strict. And yet, SB 8 with almost 60% of the vote in the Texas Senate and 55% of the House vote in what is an . This is, in part, because there is little effective Democratic representation in the state due to and, most recently, a state legislative that allows the majority party to bring legislation to a vote over the unanimous objection of the minority party.

It is also a product of Texas state legislators governing on solely partisan lines as they the views they believe their partisan constituents hold. And, foundationally, it is because the Texas GOP has rejected the very principle of democratic self-governance for underrepresented groups. By denying individuals who can experience pregnancy the rights of bodily self-determination, SB 8 also denies them equal rights and equal protection of the law.

Speaking of the rule of law, SB 8 represents a striking rejection of the state’s authority and obligation to uphold the law. As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her , “Taken together, the Act is a breathtaking act of defiance — of the Constitution, of this Court’s precedents, and of the rights of women seeking abortions throughout Texas.” By delegating enforcement of the law to individual Texans, SB 8 reflects a wholesale rejection of the liberal state as an organ tasked with upholding the rights of individuals. What, we may well ask, does the American right seek to replace the liberal state with?

Post-Liberal World

The political theorist Patrick Deneen suggests an answer in his 2019 , “Why Liberalism Failed”: “Such efforts should focus on building practices that sustain culture within communities, the fostering of household economics, and ‘polis life,’ or forms of self-governance that arise from shared civic participation. All such practices arise from local settings that resist the abstraction and depersonalization of liberalism, and from which habits of memory and mutual obligation arise.”

While Deneen’s post-liberal localized communitarian society is sketched in broad strokes, much can be read between the lines. For Deneen, culture is both hyper-local and transcendent, premised on a community’s practices and on “the universal and eternal, the divine and sublime.” In his future political world, power is centralized within the community, and the principal organizing unit of the community is the household — the family.

Self-governance does not take the form of individual autonomy but, rather, as Deneen writes, of “human relationality, sociability, and the learned ability to sacrifice one’s narrow personal interest not to abstract humanity, but for the sake of other humans.”

But whose community are we speaking of? What culture should prevail? Whose interests within the household are prioritized? Whose definition of the family is operationalized? And what of those who do not have a family according to the community’s definition? What members of the community will be expected to sacrifice themselves?

Implicit in Deneen’s argument is the assumption that there is one set of right answers to these questions. We need only look to Texas to see how the rejection of liberalism and the turn to community enforcement of norms will play out. Post-liberalism will be organized around the “culture” of a patriarchal, white and Christian community.

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Deneen is correct to assert that the post-liberal world he imagines will be unlike any we have experienced before. The American right is not seeking to return the country to pre-1973 Roe v Wade. For four decades, informed by twin commitments to patriarchal traditionalism and white supremacism, the American right has sought to restrict and deny bodily autonomy and self-determination to underrepresented and historically disempowered groups while upholding the rights of white men.

SB 8 goes even farther. The Texas law does not only subjugate the autonomy of under-represented groups; it proactively constructs a post-liberal political world that is fundamentally unequal and unjust.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Texas Legislators Don’t Just Want to Ban Abortion appeared first on 51�Թ�.

During the past two years alone, six women have had their lives taken by either their male kin or other men. The women have been reduced to mere statistics thrown around to point out the rise of killings, without investigating the cause of their murder or providing insight into these high-profile cases.

Around the World, Femicide Is on the Rise

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The Family Protection Law, which was passed by Kuwait’s national assembly in August 2020, for the establishment of a national family protection committee. This committee would put measures in place to tackle the spread of domestic violence. The law stipulates that those taking part in the family protection sector should undergo the necessary training. It also calls for the activation of a domestic violence shelter, which would offer rehabilitation and advisory services to survivors of domestic violence.

At the time, these measures were  as a victory, one that abolished Article 153, which treated honor killings as a misdemeanor with a maximum three-year prison sentence and/or a small fine for the perpetrator. Experts argued that Article 153 all but  honor killings. Yet despite being passed more than a year ago, the Family Protection Law remains nothing but merely ink on paper. The failure to protect women from being victims of domestic violence continues unabated.

Violence Against Women

The absence of such protection is what  Farah Hamza Akbar’s life. In April, Farah was gruesomely killed by a man she had previously filed two cases against for kidnapping and attempted murder. The perpetrator, Fahad Subhi Mohammed, who had been stalking the victim but was not known to her or her family, crashed into Farah’s car, kidnapped her and her two daughters. He stabbed Farah in the chest before dumping her body in front of a hospital, leaving her there to die.

Dana Akbar, Farah’s sister and lawyer, shared a  on social media saying she had warned the prosecutor several times that her sister’s life was in danger. According to Akbar, her sister’s perpetrator attempted to kidnap and harm Farah on multiple occasions. He was detained twice but released on bail each time. Mohammed was out on bail when he killed Farah.

The heinous crime sent shockwaves across Kuwait, resulting in a large  during the height of summer in the holy month of Ramadan. Protesters called for reforming existing laws, putting in place better protection mechanisms for victims of violence and actually enforcing the Family Protection Law.

The debate following Farah’s death served to amplify the anti-sexual harassment movement that was brought into prominence early in the year by Ascia al-Shammari. The influential fashion blogger posted a powerful venting her fury about the horror of being car chased by men, a common form of harassment in Kuwait. She called for a mechanism to report sexual harassment, saying “it is a necessary step in this country … So I don’t understand when you say you are against it.” The video went viral on social media platforms, provoking many women to comment and leading to “culturally sensitive” conversations about sexual harassment and gender-based violence.

Following Shammari’s video, a social media awareness campaign dubbed  (I will not be silent) was launched by medical doctor Shayma Shamo. It served as a virtual safe space that gave women the opportunity to share anonymous testimonies of harassment or abuse, encouraging more women to speak up.

Empty Promises

But the outrage that took place and the different hashtags only resulted in empty promises made by several members of parliament. Former MP Yousef al-Fadhala, who resigned from parliament in April, a government-sponsored mobile app designed to document and register instances of harassment. MP Abdulaziz al-Saqabi for an amendment to the penal code, adding punishments that include up to a year in prison and a fine of 3,000 Kuwaiti dinars ($9,940). Lastly, MP Abdullah al-Mudhaf adding punitive measures to the penal code, with a three-month window for the executive branch to activate these laws.

Almost eight months later, none of the proposals has been acted upon. However, in late September, the minister of commerce and industry and the chairman of the Public Authority for Manpower, Abdullah al-Salman, directives to end discrimination in the private sector and criminalize harassment in the workplace. While this step is long overdue, it is a promising one toward establishing a safer work environment for women. Yet there remains much to do.

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A recent  from the male-only Women, Children and Family Affairs parliamentary committee suggests that femicide is not a legislative issue but a societal one. The committee added that preventing violence against women is the responsibility of the government. This muddled and inadequate response, especially when Kuwait is witnessing a disturbing increase in femicide, is not nearly enough.

Despite having a vocal parliament and a free press, in comparison to its Gulf neighbors, Kuwait lags behind when it comes to enacting legislation to protect the lives of its women. More than one year and six lives later, we still see the offhand attitude in parliament and society toward violence against women, a convenient way of condoning this tragedy without condemning and holding accountable those responsible.

*[This article was originally published by , a partner organization of 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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On September 1, Texans were gifted with a new law essentially abortions in the state, but with a twist sure to be embraced by the unemployed. Anyone who wants to pick up a quick $10,000 bounty is now a key component of the Texas anti-abortion team. And just to make sure that the team is well-protected in the often-dangerous world of bounty hunting, on that same day, Texans with a handgun became free to that gun openly without a license, permit or training.

Why Texas’ Abortion Law Matters

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This means that as that bounty hunter is snooping around trying to locate abortion-supporting miscreants to cash in on the bounty, he/she can have a handgun at the ready if confronted by an angry boyfriend about to head out with his pregnant girlfriend to seek an abortion.

“A�����dz���������󳾱�Գٲ�”

This is, of course, another in a growing list of “only in America” moments. The nation is piling up an impressive list of “accomplishments” on its regressive road to a simpler world in which white guys made all the decisions and many of the rest of the white guys and gals loved the way it worked for them. For context, it should be remembered that some Americans used to lynch other Americans for perceived cultural insensitivity. So, while this new rule of law step backward might look like a creative attempt at reimagining policing, it is instead a return to an even more tribal time when those who perceived themselves wronged took care of things themselves.

To be sure, there are undoubtedly a few other recognized constitutional rights, beyond a woman’s right to choose, that might be ripe for vigilante exploitation. How about that Second Amendment right to bear arms? As with abortion rights, gun rights are controversial in America, rest on a still disputed legal foundation and have passionate activist supporters and opponents. If left to my choice, no individual would be able to own a gun of any kind without certification of gun safety training, a full background check, a specific-use license and a locked gun case for storage at home. No assault weapons or high-capacity magazines would be allowed in private hands.

Because of America’s love affair with guns and the 50-state solution to even constitutionally-protected rights, there are 50 different state governmental responses to the nation’s gun carnage. Again, as with abortion rights, some states are permissive while others are more restrictive, leaving some elements of the gun control package suggested above as the law in some states.

So, while armed Texans are hunting down abortionists and those who aid them, legally armed could be hunting down all those illegal assault weapons for a hefty bounty per weapon. Wouldn’t this be fun: Your neighbor has a slew of guns, purchased without a background check, no licenses and no gun case. Hop on it, sue in your local court and take a shot at collecting that hefty bounty.

This enriched law enforcement concept would not have to be limited to the constitutional realm. How about recycling? For those of you with neighbors who never recycle despite local recycling mandates, this could be yet another fertile ground for vigilante “justice.” And this time, all you have to do is pretend you are walking your dog while actually noting the absence of recycling bins on recycling day. As an added bonus, you get to feel good about yourself because you are helping to save the planet.

“Freedom Lovers”

In addition to a new urgency for a return to vigilante justice, a significant element of the populace also seems committed to limiting the right to vote of some of their legally-entitled fellow citizens. Since free and fair elections are seen by all freedom-loving people as a core element of the democratic process, narrowing the definition of “free” and “fair” is a great way to start a fundamental march backward.

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This idea isn’t new in America; it is just newly-minted in Republican-led states where old ideas get new life. If you have too many people of color taking advantage of present voting laws to achieve electoral gains, you have to change the rules or this will keep happening. Enter a dizzying array of new voter suppression laws.

For those who are true “freedom lovers,” there seems to be a singularly American nostalgic longing for measles, mumps, polio and even smallpox. Remember those days of yore when god alone decided who ended up in an iron lung? Now, a whole new universe of willfully ignorant freedom lovers is roaming the land and killing their fellow citizens.

This phenomenon appears to generate from a frontier mentality that resisting the government was the only honorable way for real men to live. “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,” “Live Free or Die” and the like have polluted America’s democratic discourse since the time of the nation’s birth. With a gun in one hand and a beer in the other, resisting the intrusion of organized authority has now become the sick mantra of those who don’t care if your liberty is invaded by the coronavirus, mumps or measles.

Yet this fundamentally anti-liberty message escapes most of its adherents. Freedom and liberty should be viewed as a collective expression, not a dogma that elevates the welfare of the individual over the freedom and liberty of others. On this note, it would be entertaining to engage some of these “resistance” fighters in a discussion about the absurdity of opposing life-giving vaccines while promoting “right to life” bounties for those who interfere with a woman’s freedom to choose.

The Months Ahead

In the months ahead, there will be rancorous debate in America about abortion, about gun control, about protecting the right to vote, about the wisdom of recycling and about vaccine mandates. It will be a confrontation of ideas, with one side looking to project an America that actually lives up to its self-serving narrative and the other side seeking a return to an America blinded to its failures.

Resistance to public health mandates, resistance to universal access to meaningful health care, and resistance to access to the affordable child care, pre-K learning and community college that are central to thriving families will be the hallmark of those trapped in their reverence for the past. To see more, keep an eye on the immigration debate as America’s southern border continues to be an unwelcoming barrier and Afghan refugees flood unwelcoming communities. Those who give voice to that noxious anti-immigrant message also give voice to the realities of America’s past.

Think finally about the notion that for the first time most of us can remember, America may be committed to declared or de facto wars on the soil of other nations. Sadly, it is continuing to fight a war with itself on its own soil.

*[This article was co-published on the author’s , Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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However, a non-trivial proportion of Afghan women might not be bothered enough by the Taliban’s rule in order to protest. Some might even support the group’s fundamentalist policies. Days after the Taliban took over the Afghan capital on August 15, of women took to the streets to welcome the group’s return to power. Millions of Afghan women took no public stance over the fundamentalist movement.

The Media Embrace the Martyrdom of Afghan Women

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Given the Taliban’s long history of misogyny and extremism, it might be puzzling that some women might express their public support or indifference to the loss of their rights.   

Why Some Women Support Extremist Groups

Whether globally or in the Muslim world, it is not an anomaly that some women might support misogynistic leaders or political organizations. In the Middle East, women played a role in different political Islam movements with varying degrees of conservatism. At its peak, recruiters for the Islamic State (IS) group managed to attract female supporters and convince them to migrate to their territories in Syria and Iraq at a time when harrowing stories were emerging about the organization’s treatment of women. So, even if such extremist movements are enemies of women, not all women view them in these black and white terms.

In a research published in the World Politics journal, Lisa Blaydes and Drew Linzer investigate why women might support Muslim fundamentalists. Their answer focuses on the availability of economic opportunities for women. When women lack enough opportunities to achieve their economic and social independence, they might choose to increase their attractiveness in the marriage market of a patriarchal society by becoming more conservative. Thus, limited economic possibilities can push women to trade some of their rights in exchange for financial security.

Afghan women have made significant gains over the last two decades. For example, according to the International Labor Organization’s estimates, female participation in the labor force grew from 15.5% to 22.74% of the female working-age population between 2001 and 2019. This means that more women are looking for inclusion in the labor market.

Yet when it comes to unemployment rates among Afghan women, there is barely any change over the same period. The unemployment rate among women in the labor force moved from 14.75% in 2001 to 13.81% in 2019. Hence, the opportunities available to the increasing numbers of women who choose to work have not significantly increased.

Other Reasons

This economic explanation is only one side of the story. Indoctrination through various processes of socialization can also contribute to women’s conservative attitudes. Households, schools, religious institutions and online spaces are all realms where such attitudes are cultivated and reinforced.

Fundamentalist groups understand the importance of women’s indoctrination. Contemporary extremists such as IS and the Taliban rely on female recruiters to attract female members and build ideological support for their movements among women. In the early days of political Islam movements, Egypt’s Muslim Sisterhood was the female side of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Sisterhood was concerned with educating women about their roles in an ideal Islamic society.

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But a more cynical explanation is that the lives of the vast majority of Afghan women are less affected by the rule of the Taliban. As anthropologists Charles Hirschkind and Saba Mahmood out, the decry against the Taliban’s rule is merely an urban phenomenon. Most Afghan women — —live in rural communities, where conservative social norms are enforced independently of who is in charge of the capital city. For example, in 2017, the of rural women aged 20 to 24 who got married before 15 and 18 were 5% and 31.9%, respectively. This is compared to 2.1% and 18.4% among their urban counterparts.

Being away from the capital in a country plagued with underdevelopment, rural women also suffered disproportionally due to their higher economic vulnerability and exposure to the two-decade violent conflict between the Taliban and the government. Putting an end to the civil conflict may provide hope to some that their situation might improve.  

We do not know precisely how prominent female support is for the Taliban. Yet the picture is more complicated than a simple fight between women-hating extremists and freedom-loving feminists. With successive Afghan governments failing to address the root causes of gender inequalities, seeing women protesting in the streets with Taliban flags becomes a less surprising anecdote.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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According to the , abortion was so dangerous that in 1965, roughly 17% of deaths relating to pregnancy and childbirth were the result of illegal abortions. The shocking statistic is unsurprising given that in the 1950s and 1960s, the number of illegal procedures ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year.

For Americans, Abortion Is More Controversial Than Same-Sex Marriage

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Women from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and women of color were disproportionately affected by strict regulations as many couldn’t afford to travel to places where they could obtain a legal abortion. The levels of morbidity and mortality among this demographic were astounding. While among white women as a result of abortion stood at one in four in New York City in the early 1960s, the number was one in two for nonwhite and Puerto Rican women.

Born out of this predicament was the Abortion Counseling Service of Women’s Liberation, also known as the , founded by Heather Booth as an underground service headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The main goal of the “Service,” as it became known, was to assist women in gaining access to safe and affordable abortions. Many women who were part of Jane were taught to perform abortions for others in need and did so successfully without a medical license. 

Laura Kaplan, a member of Jane and of “T��� Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service,” was not surprised when Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law one of the country’s strictest abortion rules, banning the procedure from as early as six weeks into pregnancy, but she was angry: “I am outraged by this, but even more than Texas, I am the most angry at the Supreme Court’s decision to let this blatantly unconstitutional ruling stand.”

The six-week mark stipulated by the new legislation means that many women will be barred from accessing abortion services before they even realize they are pregnant. The legislators went a step further by incentivizing private citizens to report and sue providers or anyone helping a woman get an abortion for $10,000.

Under the new law, the government doesn’t enforce the bill — the private citizens of Texas do. This provision was designed to make the law harder to contest in court, but lawsuits are expected. The US Department of Justice has already mounted a , positing that it stands “in open defiance of the Constitution.”

At the same time, several Latin American countries are loosening their restrictions on abortions. “Predominantly Catholic countries like Argentina and Mexico are making progress, while we are moving backwards,” says Kaplan. 

Could there be a return of Jane in Texas now that abortion rights are being curtailed? “Women are not going to let women suffer,” says Kaplan. “We didn’t back then.” Starting in 1969, Jane groups popped up all over the country, with women finding their way to one of the services when they were in need.

After New York state legalized abortion, it changed the landscape. White middle-class women could get on a plane and get to New York, but it meant that many young, poor and many women of color were left behind. Kaplan thinks history may repeat itself: “Women with the most need didn’t have access to abortion and that will happen again.”

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It’s important to note that after abortion was legalized, less than 0.3% of women, regardless of age, experienced serious complications post-procedure. If the real debate is about the preservation of life — and, indeed, the sanctity of life — we have to look beyond the life of the developing fetus and to the life of the mother as well. 

Any rational policy should look at promoting access to birth control and prioritizing the health of the mother by assuring that she has access to safe procedures. Outlawing abortion doesn’t work — the story of the Jane Collective has shown that. It won’t change people’s motivation to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

As a democratic society, we don’t want to throw ourselves back to an underworld that offers subpar care, creates a greater public health problem and endangers the health of women.

*[The Wider Lens provides commentary on trending stories in the world of health, covering a wide variety of topics in medicine and health care.]

The post Return of Jane: Would Stricter Rules Bring Back Illegal Abortion? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Addressing the Fragile Limits of Female Autonomy

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As written, the law allows private individuals to pursue legal action against anyone suspected of assisting an abortion past when a is detectable, which is generally agreed to be around the sixth week of pregnancy. According to the , prior to the enforcement of Texas’ new anti-abortion law, while there were barriers to dissuade or prevent women from having abortions, no state directly forbade the procedure before the 20-week mark.

However, the lack of judicial deterrence against the new Texas law indicated trends moving forward that will severely curtail women’s bodily autonomy and ability to make personal health decisions.

Six Weeks

Globally, 36% of countries allow abortions upon request, including the United States. The most common across these countries is 12 weeks — far less than US national regulations and the typical viability of a pregnancy but twice the allowance for women under the new Texas law.

In Texas, it is estimated that between who obtain abortions are at least six weeks into their pregnancies, meaning that the new law will effectively nullify the vast majority of abortions in the state. As Texas is the second-largest US state after California, its more than making up approximately 8.8% of the total US population as of 2020, around 7 million Texans are directly affected by the new legislation.

Additionally, due to the implementation of S.B. 8, the distance for a woman who is over six weeks pregnant to find abortion services has increased from . While clinics that provide abortions, such as Planned Parenthood, remain open, they are preemptively turning away patients that are over the six-week mark in order to protect themselves from lawsuits.

One bright spot amid Texas’ new “sue thy neighbor” law was the temporary issued by a local Texas District Court that prevents the organization Texas Right to Life and its associates from suing abortion providers and health care workers.

While S.B. 8 doesn’t criminalize abortion, upcoming laws, including that is due to take effect on November 1, will. As currently written, the Oklahoma law would make any person who performs or induces an abortion on a pregnant woman without first testing for embryotic cardiac activity guilty of homicide.

This bears a passing resemblance to the strict anti-abortion of the Revised Penal Code of the Philippines, which allow for the imprisonment of women and anyone who would assist them in conducting an abortion. These laws have lead a World Health Organization study to declare the reduction of safe abortion options as one of three key challenges for women’s health, accounting for up to 20% of

If legal abortion in the US is further restricted, Americans should expect to see upticks in death rates of women and people who can become pregnant, particularly among the most vulnerable and poor populations in areas that severely restrict abortion.

In comparison to a wave of anti-abortion laws in the United States and , other nations have been working to decriminalize abortion. After a decades-long struggle, abortion was decriminalized in on January 1 this year. Most recently, on September 7, has ruled that it is unconstitutional to punish abortion as a crime, which will provide a path for the legalization of the procedure across the country.

However, in both countries laws to facilitate abortion procedural processes remain nebulous, and Mexico is likely to face future internal resistance as only three states and Mexico City previously allowed abortions on request.

Long-Term Impacts

By failing to halt the implementation of S.B. 8, the Texas government and the Supreme Court have paved the way for further restrictions on abortions and the oppression of women. While the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, it would protect women who seek abortions under the new Texan law and the state on September 9, the immediate increase in fear, repression and the inevitable long-term negative impacts among both patients and health care providers cannot be understated.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear several other anti-abortion laws in the upcoming year, most critically the of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Mississippi, which is attempting to ban all abortions beyond 15 weeks. If the Supreme Court decides in favor of the law, as it is expected to, experts like believe it will lead to the overturn of Roe v. Wade and the dissolution of the right to abortion in the United States.

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In turn, this could dismantle the national right to abortion, and activists fear there will be no protection against further disenfranchisement of the rights and bodily autonomy of all pregnant individuals.

In opposing this, abortion rights advocates like Kathryn Kolbert of the Center for Reproductive Rights emphasize the need to turn to the legislative process, win elections and develop long-term strategies. However, the polarized nature of the American state and the parallel advance of restrictive voting laws means that the future of women’s rights and bodily autonomy in the US remains dim.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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It may require more patience than the legacy media is capable of to understand what direction the Taliban’s policies will take. In the meantime, multiple interests, both inside and outside Afghanistan, will be seeking to influence its future orientations. In the short term, the media will continue to speculate on two levels. The first consists of seizing upon specific incidents deemed to demonstrate what the “real” intentions of the government will be. The second is to assume that the Taliban will simply repeat their policies that preceded the US-NATO invasion 20 years ago.

After Afghanistan, How Probable Is Peace?

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The safest prediction today consists of affirming that there will be a significant period of confusion. At its extreme, it could evolve, as General Milley seems to believe, into civil war. In all cases, the persistence of instability will lead to further uncertainty among the experts themselves about what might finally emerge over the next three to five years.

The easiest solution for the media in the West is to highlight the issue of women’s rights or simply the Taliban’s treatment of women. It has consistently provided the issue at the core in the West’s propaganda campaign in favor of a permanent military campaign against the Taliban. Once US President Joe Biden made the decision to act definitively on putting an end to the US military presence in Afghanistan, it has emerged once again to encourage those who want the US to return to the battlefield.

Some non-mainstream commentators have pointed to the fact that, back in 1979, President Jimmy Carter’s administration initiated the CIA’s campaign to mobilize Muslim fundamentalism in opposition to Afghanistan’s elected socialist government. That government had enshrined women’s rights in its constitution, but due to its socialist leanings, it appeared too dangerously close to Russia’s influence for the comfort of the Beltway’s strategists.

The clandestine operations were designed to destabilize that government. This had the effect of drawing the Soviets in to restabilize it. That prompted the CIA to accelerate its support for a mujahadeen revolt against the regime. This in turn laid the groundwork for the Taliban takeover in 1996. In the meantime, the Soviet Union had collapsed, which meant that the US could stop worrying about both Afghanistan and its women. This allowed the Clinton administration to concentrate instead on reestablishing order in Yugoslavia and keeping Saddam Hussein under control via devastating sanctions.

Amidst the near absolute uncertainty that reigns today in Kabul, a small number of activist women, knowing how responsive Western media is likely to be, have dared to challenge the government. They are certainly right to make their voice heard in an effort to remind the new government of its promise to respect women’s rights. But does it really make sense to present it as a protest movement before there are any practices to protest against? Protesting against policies of the past could backfire on the women in the present. The Taliban may feel that “the lady doth protest too much.” What better way for the Taliban to brand them as hysterical and unworthy of playing a partnership role in governing?

Western media is predictably tuned into this drama and reports every small detail. “Recent weeks have seen the Taliban send mixed signals about the place of women in Afghan ���dz�����ٲ�,” Al Jazeera’s Ali M. Latifi. After vowing a commitment “to the rights of women within the framework of Sharia [Islamic law],” the tune seemed to change. Later in the same month “the group’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said women who work with the government should stay at home until they can ensure their safety on the streets and in offices.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Mixed signals:

A synonym for political discourse by every type of political regime

Contextual Note

How contradictory are the two positions that appear to be “mixed signals”? To justify the request that women return to their homes, the spokesman explained their concern that “our forces who are new and have not been yet trained very well may mistreat women … We don’t want our forces, God forbid, to harm or harass women.” 

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Is this hypocrisy or brutal honesty? Until a government is formed and its policies put into practice, no one can tell. On the face of it, it should be taken seriously rather than dismissed as a dodge or a lie. Today, there is no stable authority that can effectively contain the fanatical and vengeful individuals within the Taliban movement, which has existed for the past 20 years as an insurgency thriving on resentment toward the foreign invaders.

In a with the title, “The Taliban invited The Telegraph to tea,” Jennifer Aldrich quotes a young Taliban fighter who claims that the protesting “women are Westernised and they want a Western government and they are against Islamic law. In Islam there’s great respect for women. I wonder why they are protesting.”

Was Kipling right when he proclaimed that “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet”? Afghanistan is the latest illustration of another principle: that when the West actively seeks to meet the East — as it has been doing for centuries — it is generally armed with sophisticated technology and an exasperating lack of empathy or even curiosity about Eastern cultures. This is uniformly followed by a defeat or a humiliating retreat, with little learned along the way.

Historical Note

Why have the themes of Western feminism come to dominate the debate over Afghanistan’s future? Wars in the past were never fought over such narrow cultural goals. In retrospect, the Second World War has been framed around the idea that Western democracies were committed to rescuing the Jews from Hitler’s persecution. In reality, that motive played no significant role in the Allied decision to go to war with Germany.

The case of the Civil War in the US is similar. The abolition of slavery was a consequence of the war. Slavery itself was not directly the issue that sparked the conflict. Had the South not sought to expand a slave-based economy westward, Abraham Lincoln, even though he may have personally disapproved of slavery, would have been happy to continue a peaceful co-existence with the South.

The West is focusing on the plight of Afghan women for two reasons. First, it is a story that plays well in Western media. It sounds moral and virtuous. It flatters Westerners by highlighting the superiority of their civilization. But it also correlates with the need felt in the highest levels of government and business to keep the economy focused on defense and national security. It highlights stark cultural contrasts that can be presented as a threat to “our way of life.” What better justification for excessive military preparedness, including the capacity to conduct preemptive strikes and invade backward nations?

French President Emmanuel Macron has criticized the US withdrawal, to “standing with those who fight for freedom and women’s rights.” In one curious twist of logic, the argument has come back to bite him. As Libyan psychiatrist Ahmed Sewehli , “This place where women are ordered what to wear and if they don’t conform they can’t study or work and can even be arrested…is called France.”

Of course, the last time women had Western-style rights in Afghanistan, written into the 1964 constitution, was under a government that the US worked to overthrow by stoking fundamentalism. British journalist Matt Kennard has a confidential memo of the UK Embassy in Kabul in 1980 that reveals the true strategy of the Western powers. It encourages clandestine military support for the mujahadeen and even seeks to glamorize them in this observation: “T��� picture of Islamic freedom fighters is much more acceptable to world public opinion than that of stubborn reactionaries determined to maintain a system of feudal antiquity.”

It has always been about optics, not about rights.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Harry and Meghan: In Pursuit of Wealth and Luxury

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The epoch-defining “The Oprah Winfrey Show” ran for 25 years, during which the host used her growing reputation not so much to change people’s lives but to instruct them to change their own lives. Like a preacher using a parable to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson, Oprah drew on her own experiences and opened herself up to inspection, encouraging her followers to accept responsibility for themselves and to self-actualize — fulfill their own talent and potential.

It was a very different message to that preached by civil rights leaders earlier in the 20^th century. Oprah relied less on the solidarity and potency of collective effort, and more on individual determination and enterprise.

Philosophy of Individualism

Oprah’s philosophy of individualism chimed well with the changing times. Her show arrived at the start of the third decade after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, and the less portentous 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibited discrimination in voting. The first post-civil rights decade had been tumultuous, with riots in many major cities serving notice that the technical abolition of racism had done little to extirpate it from American society. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 catalyzed further unrest.

Well into the 1970s, the dust seemed to settle, and conspicuously successful black figures emerged as if living evidence that it was possible to overcome what once seemed insurmountable obstacles. Bill Cosby featured in the country’s most popular sitcom, “T��� Cosby Show.” Eddie Murphy’s 1984 “Beverly Hills Cop” established him as one of the world’s most bankable film stars. Michael Jackson was arguably the leading entertainer in the world. Two months after Oprah’s show launched, Mike Tyson won boxing’s heavyweight world championship to become probably the most heralded athlete since Muhammad Ali. Michael Jordan was on his way toward his cultural apogee.

Black celebrities of the 1980s were perfect emblems of the Reagan era, a period associated with low taxes, laissez-faire markets, entrepreneurial initiative and individualism. Oprah and the other glittering African Americans were conspicuous reminders of the success of black Americans, who had persevered and refused to allow the country’s enduring racism to derail their destinies. Oprah was, as one writer sarcastically , “an Horatio Alger for our times,” referring to the 19^th-century novelist whose tales imparted the message that hard work can triumph over poverty.

This didn’t mean Oprah avoided the problem of racism. Within months of going national, Oprah ventured into dangerous territory by featuring residents of . There had been no black residents in Forsyth since 1912, when three black men — all of whom were subsequently hanged — allegedly raped a white teenager, prompting whites to burn down black churches and schools. Oprah asked questions of white people who openly refused to welcome black people into the. “We have a right to have a white community,” said one woman. Unwaveringly, Oprah persisted with her questioning.

Mischief and Provocation

Oprah had few equals when it came to mischief and provocation. No social or personal issue was off-limits: as well as racism, she tackled homophobia, addiction, infidelity and child abuse — sometimes drawing on her own experience as a victim. It was a new type of show. She took aim at figures from entertainment, but from politics too and from big business. No one was spared.

Yet her partisanship never clashed with her fundamental idea that people should help themselves. If they grumbled and complained about the world, they would get nowhere. If they relied on others, they would end up where they started. In this sense, she aligned herself with the conservative writer who believed that, by the end of the 1980s, racism in America was not so much a raging lion that needed to be slain but more an annoying bee that could be swatted.

It made sense to Steele — and perhaps Oprah — not to waste energy on the collective effort fighting a beast that had already been tamed. Instead, African Americans should focus on their own progress as individuals. For many, Oprah was and is a guru, her mantra being “Live Your Best Life.” Somehow, 35 years ago, she scented that this type of individualist ethos was filtering into the zeitgeist.

Oprah leveraged her influence to publish “O, The Oprah Magazine,” initiate a book club, play in film adaptations of Alice Walker’s “T��� Color Purple,” and Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and not so much endorse Obama’s bid for the presidency as authenticate it. In fact, research indicated that 30% of voters in the 2008 election said they would be influenced by Winfrey, with half of those more likely to cast votes for the candidate she endorsed; coined it as the “Oprah factor.”

In 2008, Oprah announced plans to launch an eponymous television channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, or OWN. Twenty years ago, the first university course based on her was launched at the University of Illinois: “Oprah Winfrey, the Tycoon” was the first of several to use Oprah “as a prism to get at the intersection of race, class and gender in the post-civil rights era,” as one tutor put it.

No one ever queried her sincerity. When she conducted interviews, there was emotional immediacy, but with open and honest mischief. Many of her interviews disclosed hitherto unknown aspects of her subject’s character. The in 2005 revealed the actor as a frenzied, perhaps hysterical figure. Michael Jackson in 1993 divulged experiences in his childhood that made audiences wonder how much effect they were having on his bizarre behavior later in life. More recently, in her interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Oprah, perhaps inadvertently, dragged into the light allegations of racism at the heart of the British monarchy.

Help Thyself

History will be kinder to Oprah than it has been to several other African Americans who were once admired but later reviled. The groundbreaking Bill Cosby was disgraced after sexual assault charges were brought against him (his conviction was overturned earlier this year.) Mike Tyson was imprisoned for rape in 1992 and served three of his 10-year sentence. Michael Jackson died in 1999 but was posthumously denounced after two men claimed to have been sexually abused by him as children. At 67, Oprah has taken criticism but emerged basically intact. She was even seriously discussed as a presidential candidate for a while after dropping hints in 2018 that she might run for office.

Oprah was once an entertainer. But she became a mogul, so her story is one of spectacular success. While she is emblematic, Oprah is hardly typical: Black women remain underrepresented in positions of power in both private and public sectors on either of the While Oprah herself might explain this as the result of a lack of confidence, ambition, self-esteem and support from peers, others might identify experiences of discrimination, stereotyping and more structural factors, such as disparities in the education system and the job market that have persisted over the decades. Oprah’s approach tends to downplay the impact of institutional barriers.

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Oprah hasn’t tried to change society. She hasn’t even tried to change human beings. She’s tried and succeeded in making people change themselves. Her gift was and is that she is neither a firebrand nor a demagogue. There is nothing other-worldly about her. She just insinuates herself into people’s lives by speaking plainly and truthfully without bombast or sham virtuousness. It has enabled her to change countless lives in ways even she probably doesn’t realize.

It’s doubtful if there has been anyone quite like her, recognized the world over just by her first name. Her power is all-pervasive; its effects are felt everywhere. If you think I exaggerate, think of someone, good or bad — a politician, a religious leader, an entertainer — who has influenced so many people and whose sway will surely extend beyond her lifetime.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the of “Kardashian Kulture: How Celebrities Changed Life in the 21st Century.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Germany’s Greens Are Within Earshot of Power

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In May, showed that 43% of the German population perceived Baerbock as a suitable successor for Merkel, leading over her two main contenders; at the end of August, this figure was down to 22%. Targeted online campaigns have been busy exploiting Baerbock’s missteps and stoking fears of political change among voters. These attacks have laid bare how modern political campaigns in the age of social media flush sexist attitudes that persist in both politics and the wider society to the surface. 

Belittled and Patronized

Before Merkel rose to become one of the world’s most powerful female politicians, she was underestimated and belittled throughout the 1990s as a woman from East Germany by a male-dominated West German political class. Despite prevailing in intra-party struggles by often adapting to male behavior, she still had to face gender-based headwinds during her first general election campaign in 2005 as the front runner of her party.

The Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) began the campaign polling at 48%, only to plummet to a sobering 35.2% on election day, securing a knife-edge victory over the incumbent, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Even back then, when social media was still a negligible factor, Merkel had to face partly overt, partly subliminal gender-discriminatory reporting. German media dissected Merkel’s outward appearance, starting with the corners of her mouth and her hairstyle and ending with her now-famous pantsuits.

According to , president of the German Bundestag from 1988 to 1998, at times, “there was more discussion about hairstyle, outer appearance, facial expression, hands, etc. than there was debate about the content. And how often did the question come up: Can the girl do it?”

Her competence was called into doubt, as stereotypical headlines from the time show: “Angela Merkel — an angel of understanding kindness,” “A power woman … corpses pave her way.” In 2004, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse came to the following conclusion to the question of why Merkel had to face such inappropriate media scrutiny: “Because she is a woman and comes from the East. And that is not the stuff of political fantasies that make West German men’s clubs ecstatic.”

Even Merkel’s nickname, “Mutti” (mommy), used affectionately by most Germans now, was originally a  epithet. The slow reinterpretation of this nickname is emblematic of how difficult it is for women in politics to break away from antiquated role models.

Since then, Merkel has emerged victorious in four consecutive elections, at the moment the country’s after Helmut Kohl. She is one of the countless global role models who have proven women to be apt leaders. In light of this overwhelming evidence of women’s political prowess, the levels of sexism and disinformation launched against Baerbock are astonishing. 

Targeted From Day One

When the Green Party chose Baerbock as its front runner in April, it did so with confidence that after 16 years of Angela Merkel, voters had shed their misgivings about aspiring female politicians. If anything, the Greens expected a young, energetic woman to embody political change and provide an appealing contrast to the stodgy, veteran, male candidates like Armin Laschet of the CDU and Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). But soon after the announcement of her candidacy, voices emerged online questioning whether a  would be suitable for the chancellorship. However, it’s not just her status as a mother that made Baerbock an ideal target, especially for conservatives and far-right populists on the internet: Unlike Merkel, she is young, politically more inexperienced, .

Adding to that, Baerbock exposed herself to criticism by making unforced mistakes. False statements in her CV, delayed declarations of supplementary income and alleged plagiarism in her published in June provided further ammunition to her adversaries. Her book’s title, “Now. How We Renew Our Country,” and the criticism she faces mirror the Greens’ current dilemma. Before Baerbock could even communicate a new, innovative policy approach with climate protection at its center to the voters, public attention had already diverted to her shortcomings.

While part of the blame rests with Baerbock herself, a lack of proportionality of criticisms toward her as opposed to other contestants in this election is apparent. For more than a year now, accusations loom around her contender for the post of chancellor, Olaf Scholz. As finance minister and chairman of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, he is accused of failing to prevent the  in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany surrounding Wirecard AG, a payment processor and financial services provider. Luckily for Scholz, still-unanswered questions concerning the scandal receive scarce media attention, partly due to the complexity of the issue at hand making it harder to distill into bite-size news. 

Armin Laschet, the CDU‘s candidate for chancellorship and minister president of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, had to navigate rough waters during the COVID-19 crisis. The state government used opaque procedures to award a contract for protective gowns worth €38.5 million ($45.6 million) to the luxury fashion manufacturer , a company linked to Laschet’s son. Laschet also received criticism for a good-humored appearance during a visit to areas affected by floods that killed at least 189 in July. In addition, he too was accused of plagiarism due to suspicious passages in a book published in 2009.

Even though Scholz’s, and especially Laschet’s missteps have not gone unnoticed by the media, the public and political opponents, Lothar Probst, a researcher at the University of Bremen, recognizes a systematic character in the criticism faced by Baerbock. In an with the German Press Agency, he surmised: “Her credibility, respectability, and authority are undermined, she is portrayed as sloppy. … A young, urban smart woman [is] once again tackled harder than her competitors.”

Even before Baerbock’s gaffes were in the spotlight, she found herself in the firing line. Conspiracy theories surfaced, suggesting that Baerbock was a puppet of  and an advocate of the “great reset” conspiracy. Disinformation about Baerbock was also gender-based. Collages of quickly circulated, including deepfake photographs disseminated via the messenger Telegram.

Such disinformation originated significantly from far-right circles. In 2019, according to the , 77% of registered hate posts were attributable to the center-right and far-right political spectrum. According to political scientist , from Trier University, female politicians from green parties are primary targets for right-wing attacks and disinformation because topics such as climate protection and emancipation inflame passions and mobilize the political right.

Worldwide Concern

Baerbock’s political opponents and critics deny disproportionate criticism, insisting that she should have known what she had signed up for; after all, election campaigns are not for the faint-hearted, especially when entering the race as the front-runner. Yet statistics prove that in Germany, hatred toward female politicians is an everyday occurrence. A survey by  showed that 87% of the female politicians interviewed encountered hate and threats on an almost daily basis; 57% of these were sexist attacks.

These results are in line with international studies. In a 2019 “#ShePersisted. Women, Politics & Power in the New Media World,” conducted by Lucina di Meco and Kristina Wilfore, 88 global female leaders were interviewed, were “concerned about the pervasiveness of gender-based abuse.” The study that “A new wave of authoritarian leaders and illiberal actors around the world use gendered disinformation and online abuse to push back against the progress made on women’s and minority rights.”

A recent from January, “Malign Creativity: How Gender, Sex, and Lies are Weaponized Against Women Online,” by the Woodrow Wilson International Center, also shows that 12 of the 13 surveyed female politicians suffered gendered abuse online. Nine of them were at the receiving end of gendered disinformation, containing racist, transphobic and sexual narratives, with the latter being the most common.

Sixteen years have passed between Angela Merkel‘s and Annalena Baerbock’s first campaigns for the chancellorship. Today, women striving for power still have to deal with mistrust and gender-discriminatory prejudice. Merkel had to hold her own in a male-dominated environment where she was underestimated and often treated disparagingly. But compared to Merkel, the campaign against Baerbock has reached a new,  dimension. Merkel, who is childless, outwardly inconspicuous and politically more conservative, offered less of a target to conservative, male adversaries than the young, modern and progressive Baerbock.

Besides, Baerbock’s opponents in 2021 have more effective tools for spreading gendered disinformation on social media. While disinformation targets both male and female politicians, women are more affected. It aims to  women’s credibility and their chances of electoral success and discourage future generations of women from pursuing political careers. Germany’s female politicians must keep in mind that such disinformation is spread by distorted, unrepresentative groups that don’t reflect the social progress made over the years.

At this particular moment, it appears unlikely that Baerbock will move into the chancellor’s office as Merkel did in 2005 by the narrowest of margins. Yet the race is far from over, with nearly a month until election day. Baerbock’s recent performance in the first of three TV debates proves that she is not ready to abandon the field to (online) campaigners spreading gender-based prejudice and disinformation. Despite polls declaring Scholz as the debate’s winner, narrowly ahead of Baerbock, she presented herself as a modern and socioecological alternative to both her contenders and reverted attention to policy away from her persona and gender.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post From Merkel to Baerbock: Female Politicians Still Face Sexism in Germany appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Prince Andrew — rumored to be the queen’s favorite son — has insisted he has no recollection of meeting Giuffre, though there is a , taken in London in 2001, showing him with his arm around her waist. Also in the picture is , currently imprisoned and pending trial in the US for allegedly procuring underage women for the late Jeffrey Epstein. Formerly a powerbroker-financier, Epstein was in a New York City prison cell in August 2019 while awaiting a criminal trial for allegedly trafficking underage girls.

#MeToo: Power, Let’s Talk About It

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Despite Prince Andrew’s denials, the case haunts him: In 2019, he stood down from his official duties after being widely condemned for his seeming indifference to Giuffre and his unconvincing account of his relationship with Epstein in a .

From Palm Beach to Stockholm

On Giuffre’s account, she met Maxwell when she was 16 and working as a spa attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. She claims Epstein and Maxwell then abused her sexually and pressured her to have sex with other men, including Prince Andrew. She says she had sex with him on many occasions between 2000 and 2002, at Maxwell’s home in London, Epstein’s New York City residence and on his private Caribbean island.

Of course, the two decades separating the offenses and the legal proceedings have made many wonder why Giuffre waited so long before bringing her case to public attention and, now, to the courts. The rise of #MeToo and the confidence the movement has given many previously constrained women is surely a factor. But to imagine Giuffre as an opportunist, who was never coerced but actually chose to remain under the iniquitous stewardship of Epstein, trivializes the deeper violence she endured. This was violence disguised as care, which Epstein used as his means of possession.

To understand how she, as a teenager, abandoned herself to a world that obliged her to give readily and fulsomely to any number of strangers, we have to try to trespass into her mind. She didn’t surrender herself to sex trafficking — this was her retrospective interpretation. More likely she became part of a glamorous milieu in which she wanted for nothing, at least in material terms. Was she fleeing her family? She has been quite silent about it, but her father, it seems, knew all about her first ventures with Epstein, having worked at the same place as his daughter did when she was approached. Was she attracted to a wonderworld where luxury and extravagance were normal? A combination, most likely.

It’s been suggested that Giuffre found herself in a -like predicament. But this simplifies her experience. There were no captors with whom she learned to identify, only confederates. Today she talks about coercion, but there was no physical threat, as far as we know. Yes, she could have left, but for what? A return to the mundane, and perhaps a family life she found unappealing. Like anyone else, she had options, if you could call it that. Having been caught in a web woven by professional abusers from such a yet-unformed age, did she really see a way out? Our circumstances impose limits on how we’re able to exercise choice.

Giuffre accepted the values and followed the norms of her new culture in a manner somewhat reminiscent of religious cult converts who tiptoe into what strikes them as a strange and unfamiliar environment but adjust and become part of what becomes a new normal. After that, her logic would have changed and any asperse against Epstein and his accomplices lacked plausibility. How could they be such bad people while they were providing lavish gifts and travel by private jet to exotic parts of the world? And how could a woman act so inhumanly against the interest of so many other women? 

Henchwoman?

The role played by British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of Robert Maxwell, is still not completely clear. (Robert Maxwell was a media mogul, who fell to his death from his £15-million yacht off the Canary Islands, aged 68, in 1991. There was talk of suicide or murder by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.) The FBI is currently investigating Maxwell, who had an affair with Epstein and worked for him, recruiting staff to work in his mansions and girls to give him massages. Giuffre has said Maxwell procured underage girls for Epstein.

Maxwell has issued a denial, though an affidavit by a woman filed in a separate case in February 2019 claimed she had visited Epstein’s island in 2006 and seen many girls, some “young teenagers,” who had been recruited by Maxwell. Ghislaine Maxwell has denied any wrongdoing and may or may not be a key figure. Until she appears in under oath, we can only surmise. But the optics are not promising.

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Giuffre portrays Maxwell as someone who had Epstein’s unshakable confidence. Maxwell was apparently awestruck by powerful men like Epstein and Prince Andrew. The girls encouraged each other to treat Maxwell worshipfully or risk the consequences. Presumably, they thought she would safeguard the girls; Maxwell was, after all, a woman — and a mature woman — in a conclave dominated by men. She may have been abrasive and unapproachable, but she was still a woman, albeit one who, in the presence of men, “.”

Maxwell’s relationship with the girls must have been complex. We can only imagine that their trust in her was laced with trepidation, and any confidence they had in her would have been tempered by her deference to Epstein. It must have been destabilizing, perhaps devastating, to realize that far from being a protector, Maxwell might have been a henchwoman.

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We can’t tell for sure whether Giuffre was the ingénue her narrative suggests, but it’s not necessary to assume she either had wisdom beyond her years or the naiveté of a child. Like the other recruits, she probably took a juvenile pleasure from the leverage conferred by her youthful good looks. There is even the possibility that a world of wealthy hedonists was to her liking. It was, as Sarah Ditum reminds us, after all, a time when “” was a commonly accepted trope that elicited no more than a wink from the onlookers; girls caught up in these situations did not yet have the vocabulary to understand themselves to be victims. Equally, there’s no reason to suppose Giuffre was aware of the destructive afterlife of this world.

Alternatively, she may have experienced, in common with a great many women in abusive relationships, the terrifying prospect of nihilism, the absence of solidity and permanence that might await them if they leave. The simplistic “Why didn’t she just go?” often has no answer that makes objective sense. Fight is not an option. Flight seems petrifying. Staying put sometimes appears the best of three bad choices.

Some will say that any person, particularly a woman, who engages in sex for payment is a prostitute. But the term disguises not only the range of relationships and roles in what we now call the commercial sex industry but the gamut of motivations and circumstances contributing to someone’s position in an enterprise (if I can call it that). It’s doubtful that Giuffre ever set out to dispense sexual favors for money, though she probably had no qualms about using them to advance her own interests. She probably never thought she was doing that, anyway.

More likely she just assumed that sex was just part of her duties, which were to supply contentment, repose and a sense of wellbeing to Epstein’s friends. She said of her with Epstein: “He was laying naked on top of a massage table … I’m a 15-year-old girl and seeing him on the table was weird.” But familiarity probably made it less weird, and living in Epstein’s domain probably inclined her toward a docile observance of daily routines so that giving massages to naked men seemed as quotidian as doing grocery shopping. Yet she has survived and appears to be recovering. Her vengeance is probably part of her recovery.

Beyond Reproach?

How this will play out for Prince Andrew and, indeed, for the Windsors, is uncertain. After Prince Harry’s withdrawal and his apparent enthusiasm for sharing family secrets with anyone prepared to listen, a sex scandal is likely not on the royal family’s list of priorities. Andrew’s intransigence and his unwillingness to cooperate with police inquiries invite speculation. Were he an entertainer, such as an actor or a pop singer, this would be manna from heaven. But he isn’t: He is the son of a monarch, a nobleman and, as such, regarded as a person beyond reproach.

The royal family is now properly in crisis. The once-great rulers of a once-great nation struggle defiantly to find anchorage after casting itself adrift of its historical mooring. Even Princess Diana has reappeared like an unwelcome albatross thanks to revelations of Martin Bashir’s untoward behavior in securing her notorious . The family has survived crises before and will survive this one, but not unscathed.

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Andrew now has a dilemma like no other. He must choose between two equally daunting options. He’ll maintain his innocence, of course. But a refusal to appear in court to defend himself may be interpreted as timorousness. In a civil lawsuit, the court has no power to compel attendance, but the prince could still be tried in absentia and face possible damage to his character and, by implication, the crown’s.

A more robust response, on the other hand, could yield the wrong result and perhaps prosecution, in which case the crisis will become a cataclysm for the royal family — and long-awaited justice for countless women like Victoria Roberts Guiffre, who once found themselves trapped in the world of powerful men.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Prince, the Financier, the Henchwoman and the Girl appeared first on 51�Թ�.

During the war, soon to enter its second decade, women were able to break into male-dominated professions — a development well known from other conflicts. However, this progress did not stem from social emancipation but rather due to the dwindling numbers of working-age men as a result of death, imprisonment, displacement and flight. Women’s new responsibilities came with multiple burdens of unequal pay coupled with housework, parenting and increased domestic violence as some men struggled to come to terms with their wives’ new roles.

Angela Merkel’s CDU Is Still Not Sure How It Feels About Muslims

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A 2017 survey among women living in Syria and abroad identified that 81% thought that the in Syria “truly impede women’s success.” Indeed, many Syrian women living in other countries experience new social conditions that allow them to break free from traditional gender roles. 

Newfound Freedom

Since 2014, Syrians have been the largest group of in Germany. As of December 2019, about 790,000 had fled to Germany, starting in 2010, and the proportion of women among Syrians seeking protection has increased over the years. Many  from Muslim-majority countries have little or no work experience. In numerous cases, they take their first steps to pursue a career in the country where they settle, with nearly 80% of female refugees expressing a desire to be gainfully employed.

A similar picture applies to Syrian women in Germany. According to a , 60% of them “definitely” want to work, and 25% are tending toward doing so, yet only 40% have any work experience. Most Syrian female refugees in Germany belonged to the upper social classes back home. They are well educated and already harbored values closer to those of their new home country. Hence, many of them are more inclined to embrace new freedoms and opportunities.

While the issues facing Syrian refugees may be underrepresented in German media, some have shared their experiences. Mai Zehna, who fled to Germany at the end of 2012 from Syria, where she already worked as an art teacher, Deutschlandfunk Kultur: “I grew up in an open family and was raised the same way as my brother. … Where I was born and raised … women look European. Of course, there are women with headscarves, but many are also unveiled.” Yet according to Zehna, women’s rights in Syria were a far cry from what she is now experiencing in Germany: “The laws in Syria don’t support women. There are written laws, but in reality … society looks at men and women differently. There is more support and freedom here than in Syria.”

Ghada, a 44-year-old from Aleppo, lived a very different life. She fled to Germany to escape her strictly religious family and husband, leaving two of her three children behind: “Women’s rights are suppressed in Syria. … I’ve had enough of it. … In Syria, I was forced to wear a headscarf and a long black coat. … Here in Germany, I have more freedom. I am far away from the oppression.”

Relationships at Risk

Unlike Ghada, who deliberately left her husband behind, many Syrian women have chosen to divorce their husbands in Germany, putting an end to their traditionally preordained roles as housewives. In Syria, women are legally allowed to file for divorce, albeit with more restrictions than men. But besides this discriminatory legal setup, they face pressure and intimidation from their families, neighbors and friends. Character assassination, social exclusion and slander are just some of the repercussions for divorced women who are still condemned by most segments of society.

Najat Abokal, a family attorney in Berlin, noticed an above-average proportion of Syrian women coming to her office and filing for divorce within the first year after the peak of refugee arrivals in 2015. As Abokal the Frankfurter Allgemeine, divorce was the only option for many women to escape domestic violence and begin an independent life. The divorces were often preceded by a period of separation before being reunited with their husbands who had stayed behind in Syria.

During this period, women learned to make decisions that they would have previously left up to their husbands. The unforeseen, long separation has helped many women develop self-confidence and awareness of their new rights. Social psychologist Bita Behravan, from the University of Duisburg-Essen, that women’s respective socio-economic backgrounds are secondary in terms of how they take in their new life in Germany. Women who lived in both modern and traditional roles in their countries of origin cannot help but notice their higher status in Germany.

Hence, the process of integration for Syrian women is an entirely different experience to that of men. Women can see the new values and norms as an opportunity. Men, on the other hand, might perceive it as a fall from grace. From the day they are born, they are used to being taken care of by women. Conversely, they traditionally play the role of providers. After arriving in Germany and reuniting with their wives, these men have to cope with the fact that they are  to take up work instantly, that their salaries are not enough to support the family and that their wife’s second income is required to make ends meet.

Besides, they often depend on their wives’ better German skills in daily life. This initial feeling of helplessness and discontent considering the intra-familial role reversal puts an immediate, and sometimes insurmountable, strain on marriages.

Worth It

Single  in Germany face similar fears of judgment as those trying to escape their marriages. In Syria, relationships outside of wedlock remain taboo — at least publicly. Underneath the surface of religious rules, premarital sexual relationships certainly exist, particularly in late adolescence and early adulthood. However, they remain an unspoken secret and are hushed up in the family and the public sphere. This spiral of silence does not vanish into thin air as soon as Syrian women cross the border into Germany. Even if they intend to leave behind the dominance of family and religious rules in favor of a liberal approach to love and sexuality, the fear of condemnation from their families or tainting the family honor looms large.

Speaking to , 24-year-old Syrian student Hana opened up about the different approach in her new home country: “Here in Germany … people don’t look into your personal life and they don’t require a certificate of marriage for a couple to live together. I feel more freedom and confidence to make my own decisions.” Nonetheless, she decided against telling her family that she now lives with her boyfriend.

In addition to fearing condemnation at home, women who embrace a more Western lifestyle worry about the judgment of men who have sought refuge in Germany but have retained patriarchal social attitudes. “Many immigrants come from patriarchal cultural contexts in which male dominance and female subordination are considered normal,” Susanne Schröter, director of the Global Islam Research Center in Frankfurt. Young refugee men often lose their former dominant role. Hence, some tend to revert to patriarchal practices of their homelands “to prevent these unruly women and girls from gaining freedom through violence.”

Very few women manage to resist this pressure and the weight of religious traditions and expectations. Yet despite these obstacles, many Syrian women in Germany have caught the independence bug. Through prior experiences, they have learned that winning their freedom and shaping their own lives requires strength and effort. Having endured oppression in Syria and taken on the dangerous journey to their new homes, those remaining risks seem worth taking. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Syrian Women Find a New Life in Germany appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Women Become Collateral Damage in COVID-19 Pandemic

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As some of us begin to return “back to normal,” a new threat is emerging. Research indicates that men are far more likely to want to come into the office than women, threatening to bring back the days when office spaces were dominated by men. What does this mean for the future of gender equality in the workplace?

After the Storm

First, let’s look at the raw numbers. A recent UK-based poll of over 2,000 business leaders, office managers and employees shows that almost want to work from home at least once a week when the pandemic is finally over, versus just 56% of fathers. Given that many employers are keen to accommodate the wishes of their staff when it comes to work format, this means within a few short years, we could see offices that are less gender-balanced than they are at the moment.

It could be contended, of course, that this does not matter so much. The experience of the pandemic has proven to many employers that it’s more than possible to build a without interrupting business operations. There are numerous tools that allow most things to be done virtually, and many people are more productive at home than in the office. Similarly, working from home doesn’t appear to be correlated with lower wages in itself. For example, the makes $45 an hour, a figure that hasn’t changed that much over the pandemic period.

However, there are some real concerns exposed by the research. Chief among them is the fact that, for women, career development appears to be positively correlated with in-person work. In other words, while working from home doesn’t appear to affect men’s prospects of getting promoted, it does for women.

In-person attendance at the office can boost an employee’s career prospects, if only because they are more visible in the workplace. Given this, it’s easy to see what may begin to happen if women work from home more than men. Not only will individual women be passed over for promotions, but companies will start to see increases in the gender disparity in leadership roles. Even more problematically, some research suggests that this in that high-ranking executives are more likely to work from the office rather than home, thus exacerbating the problem further.

The Cost of WFH

The research also raises some troubling questions about the way in which employees see their responsibilities. Implicit in many women’s responses to the survey was the idea that they need to balance domestic responsibilities with their professional lives. In other words, more women may choose to work from home, not because they actually want to, but because they are already disproportionately burdened with things like childcare responsibilities. This risks the long-standing when it comes to unpaid labor like domestic work.

The problem here is that many companies are (rightly) presenting a choice to workers to either continue working from home or come back to the office. And while this is presented as a choice primarily related to wherever a worker thinks they will be most productive, the choice is made more complicated for many women by gendered expectations. 

There is a well-established link between domestic labor and professional career advancement. It is well known that unpaid household labor has always been a barrier to women advancing at work as the majority of domestic and childcare responsibilities continue to fall on women. This has only worsened in the pandemic when mothers were, for example, more likely to take on the responsibility of educating their children when schools were closed.

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As we emerge from the pandemic, we may be exacerbating these damaging stereotypes. It would be very troubling, for instance, to return to a world in which many families feel that men “belong at the office” and women “belong at home.” Even if the women at home are working, it doesn’t hide the fact that this attitude reminiscent of the 1950s will now result in women working full time as well as shouldering most of the household work.

This effect may be even worse among minority groups. There are already many in business, tech and numerous other fields independent of gender, so these communities could be even more greatly affected by the gender gaps left over from the pandemic. 

It is important, of course, to recognize women’s agency in making the choice to work from home. For many women, the last year has been a revelation because it has given them the flexibility they’ve long been asking for when it comes to balancing professional and domestic responsibilities. For many women, this flexible schedule is a major advantage and is one of the reasons why they may be reluctant to return to the office.

Not All Bad

While we must recognize these hidden costs, it is equally important to admit that the pandemic hasn’t been entirely bad news, even when it comes to gender equality. The normalization of remote work has saved many women hours in commuting time and given them back control of their schedules. These short-term gains should not be ignored.

Similarly, this normalization of remote work may allow women to advance their careers in other ways. We’ve seen a spike in online businesses being founded over the past year, as there are now more types of that can be run entirely online than at any time before. Subsequently, many women have taken advantage of working from home to research the different types of online businesses they can start.

Also, having men home from work — especially for couples who follow more old-fashioned gender roles — may also have had a positive effect on how involved men are in childcare and domestic labor. Many couples have been able to divide these tasks more evenly over the past year, adopting more egalitarian strategies in the division of labor. These strategies, it has been suggested, can improve , and even their professional productivity. 

Still, challenges remain. We should remember that not all households are headed by heterosexual couples — or couples at all — which may complicate an approach that seeks to use existing gender stereotypes to reach a more equal division of labor. Similarly, in a social environment where even the radical right is trying to use feminism as a rallying cry, raising the issue of gendered labor risks polarizing the debate. We must be careful not to get bogged down in such polarization lest it cloud the facts of the matter and prevent progress. 

It is possible that some of these concerns will not come to pass. There is, in fact, a school of thought that argues that the post-pandemic period will be much like the times we thought may never return. Nevertheless, given the hard work and the bravery that it took to reach the still-incomplete state of gender equality at the end of the previous decade, it would be wise to pay attention to issues like these moving forward. 

It may be the case that family and childcare policies will be the way toward post-pandemic recovery. Ultimately, we should be careful to ensure that the pandemic doesn’t reverse the progress we’ve made on gender equality while also recognizing that working from home can be a positive step for many women. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will Women Return to the Office? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Cosby Show on Trial

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The Huxtables were a fictional family at the center of a sitcom that dominated television ratings in the 1980s. The show was credited to its creator, executive producer and lead character, Bill Cosby, then 48, and approaching the peak of his immense popularity. In 1987, Cosby was the world’s top-earning entertainer, worth $57 million. But in April 2018, the 80-year-old was convicted on three counts of aggravated indecent assault and sentenced to three to 10 years for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman in 2004. He vowed to serve the full sentence rather than express remorse.

Last week, a court dramatically overturned Cosby’s conviction. The judges’ decision to “the ‘vast’ violation of due process” the defendant faced during the legal proceedings. It did not, however, rule that the sex crime for which Cosby was convicted did not take place. But the man once described as “America’s dad” was free after just over two years behind bars. His prosecution was determined to be unconstitutional: He can never be tried for the same offense again.

Cultural Impact

From the vantage point of today, it’s almost impossible to understand how extraordinarily popular, influential and pioneering Cosby once was. His fall from grace was more spectacular than other abrupt descents, such as those of O.J. Simpson, Tiger Woods, Mike Tyson or Lance Armstrong. Cosby wasn’t so much an entertainer as a savior. Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, his groundbreaking show “the most positive portrayal of black family life that has ever been broadcast.” The show could legitimately be said to have changed all subsequent programs featuring black artists.

Cosby’s cultural impact in the late 20^th century can scarcely be exaggerated and, while it wasn’t limited to television, “T��� Cosby Show” was unquestionably a gamechanger. Before 1967, when Cosby appeared in the secret agent drama “I Spy,” blacks were not allowed on US network television in straight roles, only comedies — and even then as clownish characters.

Cosby’s opus was different: He stuck with the conventions of nuclear family-based sitcoms with the father (played by Cosby himself), an obstetrician. They were a “normal,” well-to-do family who just happened to be black. And that was the subversive element of Cosby’s project. The Huxtables were described by Ebony magazine as “a Black family that TV hadn’t seen before,” meaning they weren’t dysfunctional or cartoon-like.

The show wasn’t without its who considered Cosby’s depiction unrealistic and misleading — the vast majority of African American families were decidedly not affluent. The implication here was that those blacks who did not live up to the Huxtables’ standard considered themselves failures. Related criticisms were also made about Oprah Winfrey. But for all the criticism, in the late 1980s, Cosby’s worst (known) offense was his too-good-to-be-trueness. He was nominated for the Grammys 15 times, winning nine and, over the course of his life, won 74 awards for his various contributions.

False Prophet

But a different kind of criticism came after Cosby wound down the show in 1994. Instead of settling into a comfortable retirement interspersed with a few TV ads for which he’d become celebrated, he morphed from the lovable, avuncular fellow to a curmudgeon who continually griped about the condition of African Americans. Remember, Cosby was for many a kind of moral guide, so when the funny man who told clean jokes and respected family values told African Americans what they were doing wrong, people listened. To climb out of the depths of poverty and shrug off the effects of racism, blacks needed to study more and make their mark as individuals. But Cosby didn’t blame racism, the remnants of segregation or the diehard bigotry of many whites. He blamed blacks themselves.

“T��� Atlantic” journalist Adam Serwer called him a “.” The description made sense: Cosby’s commitment to traditional values and his opposition to drastic changes made him a perfect proponent of conservatism, particularly as he had been a longtime advocate of civil rights. His image of a free-willed individual making their own way through the world was doctrinally spot on. But perhaps this is where his status as a popular entertainer actually worked against him.

Would Cosby have been emboldened to make his sometimes extreme pronouncements about the condition of black America had he not been as incomparably popular? For a period between 1984 and 1992, when his show ran, he had no peers. Everyone, save his academic critics, loved him and respected his colossal cultural contribution. He probably assumed he could say just about anything and get away with it, no matter how provocative and perhaps hurtful his comments seemed.

And there was something else. Dr. Martin Luther King, as well as presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, were all subjects of scurrilous talk, much of it empty, about their sexual conduct. Allegations of sexual impropriety went with the territory, especially if the territory was the domain of clean-living family men with impeccable reputations. Cosby had previously dismissed or ignored them, although in one case, in 1997, it was discovered that he’d paid $100,000 over a period of two decades to a woman with whom he had a sexual relationship in 1975.

The woman claimed that she’d had his daughter, . When Jackson was 22, she threatened to sell her story to a tabloid unless Cosby paid her $40 million. She was convicted of extortion and sentenced to 26 years in prison. Jackson spent 14 months in prison, with two associates, before the decision was reversed and all three were released.

Cosby had been married since 1964. Would it have damaged his reputation were it known that Cosby had a brief extramarital relationship with a woman in the 1970s? Probably not much at the time: “T��� Cosby Show” didn’t air until 1984. Cosby disputed his paternity, but he may have thought it politic to support the child financially rather than risk any kind of publicity. A more charitable interpretation would be that he gladly funded the education of the daughter of a woman with whom had a relationship even if the child was not his own. Over the years, he was similarly benevolent to several hundred other young people. In 1997, the case had a different complexion: Cosby’s straight-living family man image took a hit, but he was probably due some forgiveness.

Sexual Assault

Had that been the only blemish on Cosby’s otherwise unspoiled reputation, he would have probably receded gradually in the popular imagination and been left to a peaceful retirement: a once popular and, in many ways, iconic entertainer who held strong views on how black people should progress and used his fame as leverage to promote them. Those views were out of sync with the approaches of most blacks, and he might have been quietly ignored had it not been for two people. The first was Andrea Constand, whom Cosby met in 2002 at Temple University where she managed the women’s basketball team. He was 64, she was 28.

Two years later, on Constand’s account, Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home in Philadelphia. She reported this to the police. Cosby maintained the sex was consensual and the police decided not to press charges. Constand then sued for sexual battery and defamation, prompting Cosby to for $3.4 million after four days of deposition in 2006. Some other women went public with descriptions of their own experiences of drug-induced sex with Cosby, but, like Constand’s claims, they were treated, at least initially, much like other accusations against celebrities. Cosby’s reputation was left intact, and he repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Were it not for an unexpected denunciation from a second key person, the later years of Cosby’s life would have been different.

was a stand-up comic who criticized Cosby in his routine, urging his audience to google “Bill Cosby rape,” cautioning them that “It’s not funny.” Most of the claims fell outside the statute of limitations, though Constand’s did not. After this, nearly stepped forward to trigger a chain of events that led to a court case in which Cosby stood accused of sexual assault. The result of the trial in 2017 was a hung jury after six days of deliberation. The verdict was a mistrial: Cosby was then 79 and escaped a possible lengthy prison sentence. This was before the #MeToo movement arrived and relandscaped social culture. A retrial in April 2018 resulted in a guilty verdict and a prison sentence that has just been overturned.

Cosby is now a free octogenarian. He remains one of the most paradoxical public figures of the past half-century. Praised to high heaven by one generation, damned to hell by another. He can legitimately claim to have changed the way the world looked at black people — and not just black people on TV, either. Cosby forced everyone to refocus and see the kinds of racial stereotypes that had circulated for centuries as exactly what they were — crude distortions. Like every idol, he had feet part of iron, part of clay. In the 1980s, he was so revered, his rumored flaws were overlooked, but in the post-#MeToo world, Cosby’s wrongdoings were unforgivable. To them, his release will be a perversion of justice, yet others may see it as divine providence.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Bill Cosby Is Free: Is It Perversion of Justice or Divine Providence? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Why Do So Many Athletes Have Mental Health Issues?

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It is only over the past 30 years that women have clawed their way into the upper echelons of sport. Britain’s Jane Crouch and the USA’s Gail Grandchamp were granted licenses to box professionally in 1994 and 1992 respectively. The Women’s National Basketball Association started in 1997. The professional Women’s United Soccer Association launched in 2001 in the US after the breakthrough FIFA Women’s World Cup of 1999. Women were warned for decades of the dangers of distance running, but in 1993, Wang Junxia broke the 30-minute record for 10,000, confirming that the “” was bogus.

Transitions

Women now fight in mixed martial arts, play cricket, rugby and every other sport once considered a men-only affair. And yet three recent developments that might have been hailed as progressive in a different context are, as many see it, threatening to undermine women’s sport.

Earlier this month, 400-meter runner was ruled out of the US Olympic trials because she didn’t satisfy the conditions the track and field governing organization, World Athletics, established in its eligibility regulations for certain women’s events. Among those requirements was that female competitors’ testosterone levels had to be below 5 nanomoles per liter for at least 12 months. Testosterone is the hormone that stimulates the development of male secondary sexual characteristics and which some believe confers a physical advantage in sports.

While there is to support this, competitive success rests on motivation, confidence, attention focus and other non-physical attributes, as sport psychologists often remind us.

Telfer had previously competed in men’s events. She was assigned as male at birth but transitioned to female and, in 2019, won a National Collegiate Athletic Association women’s title. Within days of the Telfer decision, New Zealand announced its Olympic team that included a weightlifter who, like Telfer, was born a man and also transitioned. In her case, she did fulfill eligibility requirements and has done so since 2015. Injury prevented her from competing in the 2016 games.

We have become accustomed to athletes who have transitioned from male to female and the understandable obstacles they face in trying to reintegrate into sports. So it was unusual when Kumi Yokoyama, a football player in the US , recently , “In the future, I want to quit soccer and live as a man.” They (Yokoyama’s preferred pronoun) played for Japan in the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France and, as far as we know, were assigned a female gender at birth. Female-to-male transitions in sport are rarer and less controversial, although a player who identifies as male but who competes in a woman’s league as Yokoyama does may yet prompt deliberation.

End of Women’s Sport?

It’s easy to appreciate why so many women (and a few men) in and outside of sport are upset. As they see it, women have spent a century fighting to crush the sobriquet of “the weaker sex” and establish a presence in elite sport. No sooner have they clinched what appeared to be a victory that they find their competitions filling up with women who used to be men, women who wish to be known as men and women who were born men allowed to compete as women but are now excluded because they have too much testosterone.  

It must feel like winning a tough three-set tennis match only to be told by the umpire that the rules have changed and it’s now a best-of-five game. Hubbard’s inclusion, in particular, “is the beginning of the end of women’s sport,” according to of The Spectator. She should probably have added, “as we know it.” The change does not seem terminal, at least not to me. But, for sure, the landscape of women’s sport is changing noticeably.

Biological males have been competing in women’s events at least since the 1920s, when , a British shot-putter and javelin thrower, won all manner of competitions. Upon retiring, Weston and married a woman. In 1936, , a German high jumper, competed at the Olympic Games and was later declared to be an anatomical male. At the same tournament, Polish runner Stanisława Walasiewicz, aka Stella Walsh, was regarded with suspicion; she was shot in the US in 1980 and her autopsy revealed “ambiguous” sexual features. There are several other examples of men — either masquerading as women or living their lives naively as women without realizing their sexual identities — who have competed against women in organized sports.

The case that brought the transgender issue to prominence was that of Renee Richards, who played tennis as Richard Raskins before undergoing gender reassignment surgery, then resuming her tennis career on the women’s circuit. The United States Tennis Association insisted that Richards should take a test to determine her sex. In 1977, the New York Supreme Court that this demand was “grossly unfair, discriminatory, and inequitable, and violative of her rights.”

Denaturing Sex

Following the Richards controversy, a Canadian mountain bike racer competed as a female for Canada at the World Championships, having undergone reassignment surgery in 1996. This sparked debate with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and, in 2003, its medical director announced: “We will have no discrimination … the IOC will respect human rights … after certain conditions have been fulfilled, the athlete will be able to compete in his or her new sex.” The “conditions” related to the length of hormone treatment and timing of surgery.

While the IOC’s approach at the time seemed inclusive and in sync with the times, transitioning, as the reassignment process is now known, was set to become more prevalent. was included by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) in 1980 and so became a legitimate, treatable medical condition. As well as surgery, hormone therapy can be prescribed, although in recent years a more subjective response has also been recognized. Self-identification became a means of attributing sexual characteristics to oneself.

This effectively blurred the conventional distinction between sex and gender, the former once considered the physical categories of male and female, the latter the social and cultural differences conventionally ascribed to those categories. Once the traditional sexual binary of male and female came under scrutiny, we effectively denatured sex, making it possible to choose how we wished to be known, addressed, treated and, generally, thought of. We brought sex under our volition, adapting it in a way that made it shapeable. Now, sex is practically indistinguishable from and even interchangeable with gender.

Criminal justice systems, educational institutions, the armed forces and most other areas of society have made accommodations to the disappearing sexual binary. In recent weeks, British supermarket chain announced that it will allow staff who identify as women, even those assigned male at birth, to use its female washrooms. A prominent independent substituted the term “head girl” for the nonbinary “learners.”

Biological Destiny

Sport is different. Its history is predicated on the myth of frailty, and its entire structure has developed in a way that reflects this. Only in a minority of events are women allowed to compete with and against men. For the most part, sports are segregated. The policy most in harmony with cultural trends, particularly that of gender fluidity, is to welcome people who presently consider themselves women, no matter what their background may be. After all, the salutary reminder that served feminism so well in the 1970s and beyond was that “biology is not destiny.”

Historically, women have been denied the right to own property, vote, keep their own income, be educated, serve in the military or in politics, or participate in dozens of other pursuits that men have controlled. In a sense, natural-born women have a right to be angry over transgender women. “Anyone born a man retains male privilege in society; even if he chooses to live as a woman,” is how of The New Yorker sums up one position. Women haven’t been gifted their rights — they’ve fought for them. This is especially true in sport.

So what happens next? One by one, sports will broach the subject and find a way of including transgender competitors in the events that reflect their present sexual identity — in other words, what sex they consider they are. Some sports that have already made adjustments and modified eligibility rules will probably maintain them for the time being. Others will find such rules unnecessarily awkward. Others still will struggle to find an accommodation. But all sports will admit transgender competitors, no matter how hard and for how long objectors protest their inclusion.

This is an unwinnable fight, and the longer it persists, the more protesters risk being derided as transphobic and out of touch. Sport’s are gratifying symbols of oneness, but in practical terms, its diverse, incongruous, even adversarial elements make sport a twisted, confused entanglement that will be difficult, if not impossible, to unknot.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Will Transgender Athletes Bring the End of Women’s Sport as We Know It? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The withdrawal prompted widespread protests from women’s groups and an uproar on social media, criticizing that it signals a huge setback for women’s rights in a country with high rates of gender-based violence and femicides. Just in 2020, at least  women were murdered in Turkey.

Turkey Doubles Down on Hard Power

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Following the public outrage over the withdrawal, government representatives unconvincingly  that women’s rights are guaranteed in national laws and that there is no need for international laws. The Directorate of Communications defended the decision with the  that the convention was “hijacked by a group of people attempting to normalize homosexuality,” and that this is incompatible with the country’s social and family values.

Turkey was the first state to ratify the Istanbul Convention and became the first to pull out. What lies behind the withdrawal?

Erdogan’s Rationale: To Remain in Power at All Costs

In August 2020, officials in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) signaled that Turkey was considering withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention after religious conservatives began an intense lobbying effort against the convention, lambasting it for damaging “traditional Turkish family values.” Although they claimed that the treaty destroys families and promotes homosexuality, conservative women’s groups supporting the AKP defended it. The row even reached Erdogan’s own family, with two of his  becoming involved in groups on either side of the debate. Due to these internal tensions within the AKP and the symbolic achievement with the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque in 2020, the debate was postponed.

Although  had shown that 84% of Turks opposed withdrawing from the Istanbul Convention and a majority of conservative women were in favor of it, Erdogan decided to pull out of the treaty, thereby disregarding not only the international law anchored in the constitution, but also the legislative power of parliament. This move comes amid significantly eroding  for the president and his informal alliance with the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP). The withdrawal from the convention gives Erdogan three political advantages that will help him retain power.

First, Erdogan and his AKP aim to reenergize their conservative voter base, which has been dissatisfied with the economic downturn — a reality that has only been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. The ruling AKP government cannot curb the high level of inflation, and unemployment and poverty rates remain high. Leaving the convention is a symbolic gesture to his base, but it will bring short-term relief, as did the reconversion of the Hagia Sophia.

Second, with a potential electoral defeat in mind, Erdogan is looking for new allies. He thus made an overture in January to the Islamist Felicity Party (SP), which is in an oppositional alliance with secularist, nationalist and conservative parties. With its 2.5% of the vote in the 2018 parliamentary elections, the SP shares the same Islamist roots as the AKP and is popular among ultraconservative voters, who enthusiastically back the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.

In his meeting with the SP, Erdogan used the withdrawal as a bargaining chip for a possible electoral alliance in the future. He is not only aiming to strengthen his own voting bloc, but also to break the oppositional alliance, which has increasingly gained confidence since its success in the 2019 local elections and been effective in challenging Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian rule.

Third, to bolster his image as a willful leader, the Turkish president has intensified the level of repression by suppressing democratic civil society organizations that dare to challenge his rule. This time, he has targeted women’s rights advocates, who frequently criticize the government for not strictly implementing the protective measures of the Istanbul Convention.

Political Conditionality as a Necessary European Reaction

While increasing the level of repression in domestic politics, Turkey intensified its diplomatic charm offensive to reset Turkish relations with the European Union. Against this background, Brussels should not only condemn the decision, but also revise its  by imposing political conditions regarding human rights and the rule of law, which have once again been breached with Ankara’s withdrawal from the convention.

This approach is necessary for two reasons. First, the EU can send a motivating message to democratic segments of civil society and the opposition by underlining that the Istanbul Convention is an issue of human rights and that its sole purpose is protecting women from violence rather than undermining Turkey’s national values and traditions. Second, calling Ankara out is also in Europe’s own interest. The withdrawal can have spillover effects on other member states of the Council of Europe.

Considering the latest attempts by the Polish  to replace the Istanbul Convention with an alternative “family-based” treaty that also finds support in other Central European governments, the backlash against women’s rights in Europe is not a myth, but rather a reality.

*[This was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What Lies Behind Turkey’s Withdrawal From the Istanbul Convention? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Elizabeth Taylor died on March 23, 2011. Ten years later, her influence remains. Each time you read a story in print about the private life of a celebrity, or watch a TV report purporting to expose a hitherto undisclosed aspect of a public figure, or listen to a radio broadcast about the personal aspects of a famous name, or click on a site that promises confidential details on someone you like or hate, you have Taylor to thank… or blame.

The Kardashians Changed Everything

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Our current preoccupation with the private lives of others is not a natural craving. It was cultivated in the 1960s, encouraged for the rest of the 20^th century and boosted in the 21^st century by a social media stress-tested by countless celebs. We can trace the molecular trail back to Taylor.

Taylor lived her scandal-spangled life in full view of the media. She lived it without the customary protection afforded to Hollywood stars, who might have engaged in discreditable behavior but never advertised it. Taylor, by contrast, did everything but provide footage of her private life. Her lack of discretion shocked not only her fans and the media, but also the Roman Catholic Church, which her for “erotic vagrancy.” She wore the opprobrium as if it if were one of the fabulous jewels gifted to her by admirers (one diamond alone was at $18.9 million in 2019).

The Life of Elizabeth Taylor

Born in London, Taylor was taken to the US at the outbreak of the Second World War by her American parents and touted around studios and gossip columnists by a pushy mother until she made her big breakthrough in the 1944 film, “National Velvet.” She was 12 at the time. Under contract with MGM, Taylor appeared in a series of family-friendly films before starring opposite Rock Hudson in “Giant” and in two Tennessee Williams adaptations, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Suddenly Last Summer.”

As is often the case with child stars, she matured at a different rate to most, and instead of spending her teenage years getting up to mischief, she got married. Taylor was 18 when she married Nicky Hilton, son of hotelier Conrad Hilton. The marriage lasted eight months. She was married again weeks before her 20^th birthday, this time to British actor Michael Wilding.

She married her third husband Mike Todd, a producer, in 1957. When he died in a plane crash the following year, she married Eddie Fisher, who had been the best man at her wedding. It was an inexplicable and, in the 1950s, monstrous union: Fisher was married to the popular singer-actor Debbie Reynolds and had two children. He left them all for Taylor, prompting a memorable quote from Reynolds’ mother who, when asked to describe Taylor, , “Everybody knows what she is.”

Hollywood had never had a notorious woman quite like Taylor. and were both involved in scandalous affairs, but Taylor’s was of a different order. For a while, she was damned by media and the public they served; she was spat upon, hissed and booed in public. Yet audiences flocked to her movies. So much so that she became one of the most valuable assets in Tinseltown — a fact confirmed when she was asked to play the lead in a remake of “Cleopatra.” She demanded and got a then-unheard-of fee of $1 million. Filming was delayed time and again, once because of a life-threatening illness that Taylor survived and which helped rehabilitate her reputation. But only for a while.

In 1962, Richard Burton, a Welsh Shakespearean actor, married with two daughters, was hired by 20^th Century Fox to play Marc Antony, opposite Taylor’s Cleopatra. The filming was transferred from its original location in London to Rome.

As life follows art, Taylor and Burton became lovers. Their relationship provoked pandemonium. Taylor’s barely believable shamelessness in wrecking a second family and, in the process, humiliating her husband, set the world chattering and watching. Photographs taken by paparazzo Marcello Geppetti with a zoom lens captured the pair in flagrante. The images circulated around the world. By the time the film “Cleopatra” was released, Taylor and Burton were the most outrageous couple — arguably in history — and audiences could allow themselves to be agreeably confused: Were they watching Antony and Cleopatra or Liz and Dick, as they became known?

In the tradition of all grand romances, Burton lavished Taylor with extravagant gifts, especially gems — for which she had a well-documented taste. They married in 1964. It was around this time that Taylor reflected on how she’d become a well-paid product of her own creation: a depthless, meaningless object of public fascination, almost like a marionette without strings.

Taylor and Burton’s relationship was volatile, spanning 14 years — practically each second chronicled by a media then sensing the public appetite for other people’s private lives. Unlike most other Hollywood stars of the time, Taylor had no compunction about sharing her personal affairs. Her conduct might have been ruinous, but in the 1960s and 1970s, a kind of voyeurism was taking hold. She made six films with Burton, each blurring the line between fiction and fact. The public’s vicarious involvement in her tumultuous, often alcohol-fueled relationship grew and spread to the point where a certain prurient curiosity became respectable. It is still respectable, of course.

Taylor and Burton divorced in 1974, remarried the following year and divorced again after 10 months in 1976. Taylor continued to act and remained a media magnet. She married an American politician, John Warner, and became less visible in movies. Her taste for alcohol became a dependence and, together with a strong desire for prescription drugs, became an incapacitating weakness that required attention. In 1983, Taylor became the first celebrity to in to the Betty Ford clinic. She made no attempt to conceal her indisposition and, predictably, the media sent teams to monitor her progress.

Michael Jackson, Charities and White Diamonds

When she emerged, Taylor had found a new partner, this time from outside the spheres of entertainment or politics. Larry Fortensky was a construction worker, 20 years her junior. The eighth wedding took place in 1991 at the Neverland ranch of her by-then friend Michael Jackson. The wedding ceremony was interrupted by a journalist who, in a foolhardy attempt to get a scoop, parachuted into Jackson’s estate — suggesting that Taylor’s media appeal was undiminished.

Taylor’s unlikely and somewhat puzzling friendship with Jackson was genuine enough. She was at Jackson’s side when he was on the end of abuse allegations and proclaimed her support for him, though sickness prevented her from appearing in court for him.

The illness and eventual death in 1985 of her friend Rock Hudson motivated Taylor to support AIDs charities. In that year, she helped American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). She stayed true to AIDs causes for the rest of her life and could take credit for being one of the most effective promoters of LGBTQI+ causes ever.

Taylor was not the first celebrity to lend her name to a perfume — that was Sophia Loren. But when she transferred some of her mystique to the White Diamonds fragrance, it turned what might have been a scent into one of the biggest market brands ever. Nowadays, every celebrity, from Ariana Grande to Dolly Parton, has their own fragrance.

White Diamonds still holds its own in the world’s market. In a way, it maintains the Taylor legend — and hers is properly a legend. There are all manner of unauthenticated stories and tidbits about her that meld seamlessly with the truth. That is, after all, what a celebrity is: someone about whom a lot is known, but a lot more attributed.

Her Legacy

Elizabeth Taylor was a prototype. Some would say a culprit. But few entertainers leave such an inescapable legacy: Almost every area of society, not just entertainment, is open to inspection. Taylor was a maverick when she allowed fans to pry into her life. Today, we expect every aspiring star, politician and probably everyone else to be as uninhibited. While some rue the passing of what we once regarded as a personal life, the disclosure of forms of abuse once considered domestic and so restrictively beyond the reach of enforcement agencies is part of the rollback of privacy. No one and nowhere is free from public attention.

Taylor’s legacy is that she started a debate, more excitingly and decisively than any other artist, about the public and private spheres. Is it better to maintain a separation or to inquire and reveal as much about ourselves and others as possible? And which of the two benefits society most? Taylor’s answer seems obvious.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Legacy of Elizabeth Taylor appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Harry and Meghan: In Pursuit of Wealth and Luxury

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Queen Elizabeth II and her family live atop a rigid hierarchy of rank and class awareness that pervades and rots British culture. Under the queen, there is a strict pecking order: princes, dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, barons, baronets, knights, followed by the confetti of orders of chivalry handed out to the deserving common folk who have rendered the monarch a service. A network of lord lieutenants — representatives of the queen — reside in every British county to manage the royal patronage at the local level. There are also the hierarchies of the charities and institutions — the Royal Ballet, The Royal National Theater, the Church of England, military regiments and so on — that the queen and her relatives “patronize” (in this instance, an appropriate use of that adjective).

Beyond the aristocratic titles are the untitled gentry compiled in two listings, and . These contain the names and biographies of the “good” families and are the studbooks for the anxious parents of socially ambitious children. The gentry — the old, landed families of England — know who they are and, even if they do not have titles, jealously guard their status. They also make sure their entries in Burke’s are up to date. These families all know each other, mix at the same events, attend the same schools and ensure their offspring marry each other to keep the money and land where it should be. Sometimes, even aristocratic families lose their money and are reduced to earning their living like the rest of us. But they do not lose their status. They may be poor, but they are still upper class. Bloodlines count.

When a complete outsider, Meghan Markle, turned up as Prince Harry’s girlfriend, the questions from his relatives were not about color, race or even money. The questions were: “Does she come from a good family? Do our people know her people? Is she related to the Shropshire Markles? Isn’t that a German name? Perhaps one of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha cousins might know her?” The questions were about “family.”

None of the answers to any of the questions helped Meghan. The fact that she was beautiful, charming, poised and successful counted for little. Unfortunately for her, the Windsors and the courtiers had already decided that she came from a bad family. Not only that, but divorced and an actress — that word deliberately used rather than “actor.” The gossip picked up from the royal circles was that Meghan’s parents were “common” and “related to no one.” When no senior male relative or even family friend could be found to walk Meghan down the aisle, it just further confirmed her lack of “breeding.”

Even worse, Meghan was given the clear impression that her family was so embarrassing that only her mother could be invited to the wedding. The chatter among the Windsors and the well-connected classes was not about race but about how Harry had married so much beneath him. No wonder Meghan felt an outsider.

Kate Middleton, the duchess of Cambridge, shares much with Meghan — and she knows it. Her family is not of ancient lineage, and her relatives, if not embarrassing, are whispered in palace circles to be, “How shall one say — not our sort of people.” When they were dating, Prince William told his well-born friends to stop saying “doors to automatic” every time his girlfriend came in the room — a reference to the fact Kate’s mother had been a British Airways flight attendant and that William was obviously slumming it. Kate has become acutely aware that she has to disown her past. Meghan is her own person and not willing to do that.

Race is not the problem. The corrosive class consciousness of the British is the issue. The first step to root out this cancer is to abolish the monarchy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What Meghan Markle Failed to Understand About the British Monarchy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

According to the Secretariat of Citizen Security (SSPC) last year, 3,752 women were violently killed. Of these were 969 classified as femicides — as the violent death of a woman because of her gender — a slight increase on the previous year’s figure. According to data by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico has the second-highest total number of femicides in the region — after Brazil — whilst nearby El Salvador and Honduras have the highest rates per capita. The of violent crime, a culture of machismo and weak implementation of measures designed to protect women mean Latin America is home to 14 of the 25 countries with the highest rates of femicide in the world.

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The first months of the coronavirus pandemic were particularly dangerous for Mexican women, according to Maissa Hubert, the executive sub-director of Equis Justicia Para Las Mujeres, a Mexico City-based NGO. “During the first months of the pandemic, we saw a rise in various forms of gender-based violence,” she says. “In total, 11 women killed each day, compared to 10 per day at the start of 2020.”

In March 2020, the emergency call centers 26,000 reports of violence against women, the highest ever in Mexico. The number of women leaving their homes to take shelter in the National Refuge Network .

Outside the home, however, the continued growth of Mexico’s transnational criminal organizations and the militarized response of state security forces have further increased risks to women. While crime dropped in the first months of the pandemic, the security vacuum has increased clashes between 198 active armed in the country’s “hyper-fragmented criminal landscape,” according to International Crisis Group.

Gangs and Militarized State Security

“Organized crime has aggravated the situation with regards to the murder of women,” says Maria Salguero, a researcher who the National Femicide Map. “T��� crime gangs use the dead bodies of women to send messages to their rivals. In states where there is a lot of organized crime, such as Juarez, Chihuahua, Guerrero and Naucalpan, we see high incidences of femicide, disappearances and rape.”

The situation is exacerbated by the further militarization of state security. The (BTI) country report on Mexico notes that “the army has been called upon to perform internal security tasks and is receiving large amounts of resources in the context of the war against drug trafficking.” It adds that the widening of the military’s mandate to include civilian tasks could have worrisome implications for consensus building in the country. As noted in the BTI report, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador‘s government risks losing public support if it cannot solve the challenges of corruption and violence in the country. It points out that “the fact that the army, which has so far not signified a threat to democracy, is required to undertake ever more tasks may be a threat in the future.” Such a breakdown in trust for institutions and the security forces could have knock-on effects for all violent crime.

On May 11, 2020, the Mexican armed forces and National Guard were given new to play a far greater role in policing violent crime in the country — giving them free rein to assume many of the police force’s duties — without any effective audit mechanism.

The effect of this process on gender-based violence is only now coming to be understood. “T��� attitude of this government and its predecessors has been that a military response to the security situation will protect all of us and women in particular,” says Hubert. “But the reality is that the increased circulation of firearms has had a tremendous impact on women.”  

Firearms were the weapon used in 60% of the total 1,844 murders committed against women in 2020. From 1998 to 2019, the number of women by firearms in Mexico rose by 375%. Over 2.5 million firearms have entered Mexico from the US over the last decade, and firearms accounted for the overwhelming majority of the total of 34,515 murders in Mexico in 2020, the highest number since 2015.

An Overlooked Issue

The continued emphasis on militarized security is sapping state funds at a time when resources for programs addressing violence against women in Mexico are being cut. In recent years, Mexican public policy has had a mixed record with respect to gender-based violence. It took until December last year for President Lopez Obrador to talk about gender-based violence, having previously avoided using the word femicide or acknowledge that women faced specific security concerns. In May 2020, he that 90% of domestic violence-related 911 calls were false. His team failed to provide evidence to support this claim when requested to by NGOs.

Despite this intransigence at the executive level, in recent years, there has been greater recognition of the problem at the federal and ministerial level, according to Hubert, with many long-lasting public policies proposed by the National Institute of Women, founded in 2001. However, many of the preventative and reactive policies introduced to tackle gender-based violence have been subject to cuts in government spending as a result of the pandemic.

“We analyzed the activity of the courts at the start of the pandemic, and we found gender-based violence was not being prioritized,” says Hubert. “Issues such as divorce and alimony are crucial for a woman looking to free herself from a violent situation, but they weren’t being attended to by the courts.” 

For Saguero, the priority is to keep recording the names and identities of the victims of Mexico’s “shadow pandemic” of gender-based violence. “Only by making the victims visible can we really make the scale of the problem visible,” she says, “but we have a lot of work to do because the numbers remain high.”

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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I imagine anyone who has a loved one or a friend who has suffered (I use this verb carefully) with serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression or other functional impairments, will be upset by Harry’s cavalier description of his response to the media attention he and his wife Meghan habitually receive.

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When the duke and duchess of Sussex grumble about their lack of privacy and condemn the media for the moral decay they appear to symbolize, they should ask whether they are having to pay for the audacity of trying to disguise their own moral decay with a flagrantly cosmetic show of trying to live a private life. This is a couple that has designed its own mission to escape a life of unlimited privilege and comfort — but with a modicum of public duties to fulfill — in order to pursue a life of extravagant luxury and incalculable wealth. These things come at a price, and here it is this: People will pronounce judgment on you. That’s it.

Playing the Villains

Of course, in order to do so, people need evidence. And that’s where the media come in. They act as the public’s proxy: They represent us, acting on our behalf, have our authority to invade your privacy, probe your personal life and investigate your affairs, even in a hostile or critical way. The Sussexes want to stay in our minds. So they need a media they have recently called “” like they need antiperspirants — useful but often containing aluminum (a toxin).

A little over three years ago, when they announced their engagement, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pulled ahead of George and Amal Clooney and Barack and Michelle Obama in the best-loved couples’ stakes. Now, they’re only just edging Fred and Rosemary West. Their anemic ubiquity isn’t their own fault, of course. They can’t help it if the media chronicle their exploits thoroughly. All the same, they might try a little harder not to play the villains quite so perfectly.

The barely believable timing of the upcoming with Oprah Winfrey only days after Meghan won her privacy case against the Mail on Sunday could not have been dreamt up. A woman who cares so fervently about her private life and was prepared to go to court to defend it, promises to discuss marriage, motherhood, life as a royal and how she is handling “intense public pressure” in front of several million TV viewers. Even if the audience falls short of those 90 million worldwide who watched Oprah’s interview with Michael Jackson in 1993, it will still be colossal. (In the UK alone, nearly 23 million watched Martin Bashir’s 1995 interview with Diana, princess of Wales, Harry’s mother, of course.) This is exactly why we are all drawn to the couple. They invite us to be judge and jury, and there’s something quite satisfying about judging others. “Disgraceful! Shame on you! Good for you!” We applaud people we like, deplore those we dislike, and sometimes just feel indignant. We take our reward from all types of pronouncement. This is why Harry and Meghan have become so satisfying.

Filling a Vacancy

Viewers will watch partly to learn, partly to amuse themselves and partly to adjudicate. I am not convinced Harry fully understands this, but I suspect Meghan is canny enough to have grasped the full implications of Sunday’s interview. Meghan was brought up in Woodland Hills, California, about a half-hour’s drive away from Beverly Hills, where Kim Kardashian was raised. While no one has suggested Meghan has aspirations to be the next KK, there is a vacancy. “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” the hit TV show, has been canceled, and Kim is sorting out her divorce from Kanye West.

The next phase of her career will probably not require her to remain in the public purview. She is worth about $780 million, according to Forbes, and still only 40. Meghan is a year younger, but is a relatively fresh figure in the public imagination and could learn from her. I am not contemplating she will emulate the sex tape that shot Kim to notoriety in 2007, of course. Perish the thought. But consider: Kim Kardashian virtually handed audiences license to make evaluations of her behavior.

Meghan seems to intuitively understand what she has got into. The Oprah interview will not be a ferocious interrogation, but the doyenne of talk shows is no pushover and will want disclosure. Viewers will almost certainly be presented the chance to decide whether Meghan is right or wrong on a number of issues. She will reveal things that were hitherto unknown and force viewers to take a position. And all this will be rendered painless by the simple fact that the audience’s verdicts will have no consequences of note for the people involved. Meghan and Harry will unhook their mics, walk off set and congratulate each other on a job well done. They will have appeared, spoken and set a million tongues wagging. That’s what celebrities do.

And that’s show business, isn’t it? Meghan is from a showbiz background and, even if she is now a royal pariah, she’s still a duchess and will exploit every commercial possibility in the illustriousness conferred by this title. In particular, she probably prides herself on her ability to rile and divide. Many, it seems, regard her as vacuous, superficial, facile, insubstantial and ignorant — an apotheosis of style without content. Some think she is sly, conniving and Machiavellian. Others still consider her to be a sublime example of modern womanhood: self-confident, decisive, opinionated and purposeful; for this, they both respect and love her. In the eyes of this last group, she has been the making of Harry. We all admire the cheek and chic of how whatever she does gets done.

The trouble is, when no one especially cared about (or even knew) Meghan Markle, many have been invested in Prince Harry for more than three decades (he is 36). Some will probably cringe to see him expose himself in front of millions, probably at the behest of his wife. Others will draw on their reserves of resentment and blame him for his self-serving treachery in leaving British shores for a celebrity lifestyle in LA.

Neither of them is innocent, but then again, neither is Oprah, CBS, ITV nor the countless newspapers and magazines that have carried news of the couple. And don’t forget us — no one gets off scot-free. Blame is layered. Everyone who watches even snippets of the fateful interview, whether they love or loathe the couple, is implicated in perpetrating this narrative of two lavishly entitled lives striving to become even more lavishly entitled.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

 The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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What Happens When We Ban Abortion?

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This corresponds to more than and health services provided by the US to women’s health advocacy groups, impacting issues as far-ranging as HIV, malaria and water sanitation. While the Biden administration has promised to reverse American support of this declaration, the impact from funding allocations to organizations as well as women’s health during the time it’s enforced will leave long-term effects.

Limited Access

The Trump administration has also made gains nationally to limit women’s access to reproductive health care not only by nominating Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, but also by chipping away at women’s access to birth control. In what became the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s despite the reported difficulties in accessing birth control, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 to uphold companies’ right to deny insurance coverage of birth control to employees. These cases highlight the increasing barriers to reproductive health care enacted by the United States and how urgent it is for the incoming administration to prioritize access to birth control and abortion, especially amidst the ongoing pandemic.

The World Health Organization that the average rate of unsafe abortion is “four times higher in countries with more restrictive laws than in countries with less restrictive laws.” With the advent of COVID-19, have become less accessible even in places where birth control should be easily available, culminating in a rise in pregnancies and, hence, the need for abortions. Due to social distancing restrictions, previously accessible clinics have shut down many services, which can make time-sensitive appointments and access to medical care nearly impossible. In one egregious case, no abortion procedures were available in for seven months due to COVID-19, and they continue to be offered only once a month.

Further complicating the issue, women have also been more heavily impacted by job losses than men, with more than considering reducing hours or quitting their jobs in the next year. In places like the United States, health care is largely tied to employment, meaning women have fewer affordable ways to obtain birth control, further increasing the rate of unwanted pregnancies.

While there have been efforts to bring doctors to restricted areas to perform abortions, such as flying in practitioners to the one clinic available for abortions in South Dakota or the advocacy group providing offshore medical assistance to women living in countries without the right to abortion, this is not a sustainable long-term option. The United States is considered a country where women have access to abortion, but in practice, access varies heavily by state.

Since 2019, when multiple were passed, five states have only one clinic offering abortions. Before that, 38 states by law that teenagers inform their parents 24 to 48 hours prior to receiving an abortion. While many states continue to one’s right to abortion, the Trump administration’s harsh criticism of abortion has further constrained the legal access to both the procedure itself and to information about reproductive health care at a national level, with the impacts of COVID-19 serving to further restrict access.

Alternative Approaches

Restrictions on reproductive care are certainly not unique to the United States. Poland has been in the news recently with the introduction of legislation to ban abortion in cases of fetal defects, which would nearly 98% of abortions. The new law has inspired the largest in the country since the 1980s pro-democracy movement. Because of the momentous backlash against the heightened restrictions, the legislation has not yet been implemented. However, the fact that increasingly severe restrictions are being introduced in countries with populist leaders reveals the fragile limits of female autonomy.

Even with the new Biden administration, restrictions on access to reproductive care and laws enacted will not automatically go away. Just like women in Poland, women in the United States are less likely to seek out safe measures conducted by medical practitioners with less information and greater restrictions.

The Biden administration remains limited in its options to pursue judicial or legislative success for abortions due to conservative majorities on the Supreme Court and in the Senate. However, there are several that the administration can pursue, even within the first 100 days. As president, Biden can reinstate Planned Parenthood and other organizations back into Title X’s family-planning program. In addition, he could reduce the current restrictions on the early pregnancy termination drug mifepristone. Both of these approaches could expand access to abortion without directly interfering in states’ laws and maintain some security for women if Roe v. Wade were to be partially overturned.

Access to abortion remains limited in the United States, and the strength of anti-abortion movements remains a serious concern in the US and elsewhere. Existing restrictions on abortion will not instantly disappear with the swearing-in of a new administration, nor will the additional long-term consequences caused by the coronavirus pandemic simply go away. In light of the situation, the public needs to continue being adamant in its refusal to allow governments to restrict the bodily autonomy of pregnant people lest we continue moving away from the needs and rights of those giving birth. To secure the reproductive rights of Americans and those affected by American foreign aid, the Biden administration must take action.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Addressing the Fragile Limits of Female Autonomy appeared first on 51�Թ�.

In Germany, we don’t do that, at least not in a formal way. We do have, however, a sense of who was a good chancellor and who wasn’t, and there probably is something of a common understanding as to why. Chancellors stand out if they accomplished extraordinary feats. Konrad Adenauer will always be remembered for accomplishing Franco-German reconciliation and anchoring the Federal Republic firmly in the West; Willy Brandt for initiating a radical turn in West German foreign policy toward the East, culminating in the reconciliation with Poland; and Helmut Kohl for seizing the historic opportunity in 1989 and bringing about the peaceful reunification of the two Germanies.

The Downward Spiral of Angela Merkel’s CDU

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What about Angela Merkel, the first woman to hold Germany’s most powerful political office? Her tenure will end in a few months’ time, at the end, one hopes, of a horrific pandemic. On September 26, Germany will elect a new parliament, and Merkel will retire. By then she will have been in office for more than 15 years, second only to Helmut Kohl, who managed to hold on to the office a few months longer. When Merkel took over in November 2005, she was largely dismissed as “Kohl’s girl” who was likely to have a hard time asserting herself in a political party, the Christian Democrats (CDU) largely dominated by men.

The Anti-Trump

In fact, shortly after the election, then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder on national television that there was no way that his Social Democratic Party would ever accept an offer from Angela Merkel to form a coalition with the CDU under her leadership. As it so happened, the Social Democrats did, and Schröder was finished. In the years that followed, it became increasingly clear that Merkel was quite capable of asserting herself in the treacherous waters of Berlin’s political scene. In fact, in 2020, Forbes magazine Merkel as the most powerful woman in the world — for the 10^th consecutive year.  

Throughout her 15 years in office, the chancellor has, on average, received . As recently as December, more than 80% of respondents in a representative survey said that Merkel was doing a good job. Appreciation for Merkel, however, has hardly been limited to Germany. In an international from September 2020 covering 13 nations, Merkel was by far seen as the most trusted major world leader. More than three-quarters of respondents rated her positively; by contrast, more than 80% saw then-US President Donald Trump in a negative light.

Poll data also suggest that during Merkel’s tenure, Germany’s stature in the world has substantially increased. In a of 10 European nations from early 2019, almost 50% of respondents agreed that Germany played a more significant role in the world than a decade ago; fewer than half said the same thing about France and the UK. Germans are, for obvious historical reasons, understandably concerned about the country’s international image and reputation. Not for nothing, Canada’s The Globe and Mail referred to her in 2018 as the “,” only to add that “We need her kind more than ever.” This in itself will secure Merkel an eminent place in post-reunification German history.

Ironically enough, the article was written at a time when Merkel’s star appeared to be rapidly waning, the result of serious electoral setbacks on the national and regional level. In the election to the German Bundestag in September 2017, the Christian Democrats lost more than 8 percentage points compared to the previous election, which meant a loss of 65 seats in parliament. At the same time, the radical right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) entered parliament, garnering more than 12% of the vote. In subsequent regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse, the Christian Democrats lost more than 10% of the vote, setting off alarm bells in Munich and Berlin.

By the end of 2018, Merkel appeared to be up against the ropes, her days numbered. Particularly the upsurge in support for the radical populist right caused alarm, particularly in Bavaria. In response, the powerful Christian Social Union (CSU), Bavaria’s independent arm of the Christian Democrats, once again to reach beyond Bavaria and create a genuinely national-conservative party, competing with both the AfD and the CDU. The CSU had always maintained that there must never be a democratically legitimated party to the right of the CSU. With the AfD, there clearly was, and Merkel’s Christian Democrats appeared not in a position to stem the tide.

Corona Winner

Yet Merkel managed to survive the various challenges to her leadership, despite continued electoral setbacks, which largely benefited the AfD. But skepticism abounded. In late 2018, a majority of Germans that Merkel would not serve out her mandate, due to expire at the 2021 parliamentary election. At about the same time, however, 70% of respondents in a said they wished she would finish her mandate. Once the pandemic hit Germany in the spring of 2020, Merkel’s stock started to soar once again. International media celebrated Germany as a most likely pandemic that had proven to the virus.

What a joke. Only this time, nobody’s laughing. At the time of writing, Germany is a coronavirus disaster zone. The country has proved, once again, to be completely unprepared in the face of the second wave of infections that threatens to overwhelm the health care system. Starting in early December, Germany posted record new infections, and this before the arrival of the UK mutation. By now, the situation in some parts of Germany is nothing short of . At the same time, the situation on the vaccination front leaves .

In mid-January, Germany more than 22,000 new infections on a single day and more than 1,100 new COVID-19-related deaths. This is at least partly the result of the German government’s indecisive, hesitant and confusing response to the pandemic, made worse by Germany’s federal system, which provides for a plethora of veto points. This means that not only has it been difficult and quite tedious to arrive at a coordinated policy but also that every Land introduced its own measures, some more stringent than others. The result has been a certain degree of public exasperation. In a , more than half of respondents said they were annoyed at the measures that were “often contradictory.”

To be sure, Merkel cannot be held personally responsible for the dramatic deterioration of the situation once the second wave hit Germany with full force. A lot of time was lost in December in attempts to get the various political officials from Germany’s 16 Länder to agree on a common strategy. And even in the face of a potential disaster in early January, Merkel had to do a lot of to get support for more restrictive measures.

Cultural Revolution

Under the circumstances, Angela Merkel’s other accomplishments as well as her failures are bound to fall by the wayside. They shouldn’t. On one hand, Merkel has dragged the Christian Democrats into the 21^st century. The CDU used to be the party of “Kinder, Kirche, Küche” (children, church, kitchen). Politics were a men’s world for, as my neighbor, a woman, used to tell me, politics is a “dirty business” — and dirty businesses should be left to men.

Merkel dared to appoint a woman to the most male of all ministerial portfolios, defense. The German armed forces did not like her, despite the fact — as even Germany’s conservative flagship publication, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, has conceded — that she managed to substantially as well as and their image. Today, that former defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, heads the European Commission, another novum. She was replaced by another woman, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who in 2018 succeeded Merkel as the head of the CDU.

Probably nothing exemplifies the cultural revolution Merkel set in motion than the question of sexual and gender identity. Those of us who grew up in the postwar period probably recall that once in a while, our parents would hint that somebody was a “175er.” This was in reference to of the German criminal code according to which homosexuality was a punishable offense. The paragraph goes back all the way to 1871, establishing that any sexual activity between two males (there was no formal mention of lesbians) was subject to criminal persecution and punishment.

During the Nazi period, gays suffered from severe persecution, many of them ended up in concentration camps. After the war, the Federal Republic not only retained the paragraph; it also used the Nazis’ “” — in the camps, homosexuals were marked by a pink triangle on their prisoners’ shirts — to initiate some 100,000 proceedings against homosexuals. It was not until 1994 that the “gay paragraph” was finally abolished, not least because of East German insistence during the negotiations on reunification.

More than 20 years and many gay parades later, in 2017, the German Bundestag voted on legalizing same-sex marriage. On the occasion, Merkel allowed representatives to vote their conscience rather than following party discipline. Quite a few Christian Democrats came out in the support of the law, which was passed by a substantial majority, much to the chagrin of Germany’s conservatives. Some of them defected to the AfD given its vocal opposition to the law, which, as one of its leaders , threatens to undermine Germany’s traditional values and harm society. , however, that a substantial majority supported the law. In June 2017, 60% of men and more than 70% of women came out in favor of same-sex marriage across Germany.

We Can Handle This

Angela Merkel’s resolute position during the so-called refugee crisis of 2015-16 also comes out as a positive. In order to understand the enormity of the event, it might be useful to recall one of the great �������Ա�ü����� (delusions) of the Federal Republic, the notion that Germany was “not a country of immigration.” Given the fact that by the 1980s, Germany was home to millions of guest workers and their families, many of whom had permanently settled in Germany, the notion ignored the reality on the ground. Yet it was not until 2001 that an expert commission of the German Bundestag came to the that the notion was “no longer tenable.” By 2015, a significant majority of Germans with that statement, and in 2019, more than agreed that in the future, Germany should accept as many refugees as in the past.

This is quite remarkable, given the storm Merkel provoked when in 2015 she cleared the way for welcoming a million refugees, many of them from war-torn Syria. Her main argument was that Germany is a strong country: “Wir schaffen das,” Merkel announced — “We can handle this.” The German public was not entirely convinced. Perhaps they remembered Merkel’s predecessor, Helmut Kohl, who in 1990 had promised that unification would lead to “blossoming landscapes” in the eastern part of the country. The reality, of course, was the opposite. The West German taxpayers would have to pay the bills for decades to come while in the east, resentment continued to grow only to erupt in substantial support for the AfD.

Under the circumstances, German skepticism in 2015 was quite understandable. In early 2016, around 80% of the population concern that the government had lost control over the refugee situation; among AfD supporters, it was virtually 100%. As expected, the radical right made the refugee crisis the central focus of their mobilization — a winning strategy, as the party’s success in subsequent elections demonstrated. But in the end, Merkel prevailed; early that the refugee influx would lead to major social problems were largely , and, in late 2018, a of Germany’s public agreed that the chancellor had done a good job with respect to her refugee policy.

With Merkel, the CDU moved to the left — or so her critics have . Others have that the left-wing turn of the CDU is largely a myth. The reality is somewhere in between. Empirical studies that in the aftermath of reunification, all major German parties gradually moved to the center. With reunification, Germany added millions of citizens from a socialist regime whose value system and views on major social issues, such as abortion and homosexuality, were considerably to the left of the dominant value system that prevailed in the western part of the country. As a result, the conservative ideational elements in the CDU got progressively weakened, provoking from the party’s right wing. A from 2017  (but based on interviews held before the refugee crisis of 2015) found that CDU members largely agreed. They saw their own party “distinctly to the left” of their own position and that way before Merkel’s now-famous “Wir schaffen das.”

Grey Spots

Yet against all party-internal resistance and opposition, despite calls for her to hand in her resignation, Merkel once again prevailed — a remarkable feat in these turbulent times. Future historians are likely to consider Angela Merkel’s 15-year tenure in an overall positive light. To be sure, there are grey spots, such as Germany’s handling of the fallout of the financial crisis of 2007-08 and, more recently, Berlin’s intransigence with regard to Italian pleas for “Corona bonds” during the first wave of the pandemic.

Another grey spot regards the question of gender equality. Officially, the European Union has been committed to gender mainstreaming since the mid-1990s. More often than not, the results are wide off the mark, particularly in Germany. To be sure, even here critics would that Merkel has “contributed fundamentally to the recognition of women as leaders and decision-makers in Germany.”

In other essential areas of gender politics, her record is rather dismal. Her government did little to nothing to narrow the pay gap between men and women or to do away with Germany’s “anachronistic tax system” that privileges married couples “as long as one of the two (usually the husband) has a high income and the other one (usually the wife) earns little or nothing.” And actual reforms, for instance regarding child care and parental leave, were less intended to promote gender equality than to enhance the position of the family, in line with traditional Christian Democratic doctrine.

The record was equally dismal with regard to public life. As a from late 2018 put online by the Federal Center for Political Education noted, in the course of Merkel’s tenure, the number of women in her cabinets progressively declined, from 40% in her first cabinet to 30% in her fourth. At the same time, the CDU failed to attract new women members. In 2018, women made up around 25% of party ranks.

Things were not any better with respect to the composition of Germany’s Bundestag. At the end of the red-Green coalition in 2005, the share of women MPs had been more than 40%. After the election of 2017, it had fallen to a bit more than 30%. In the Christian Democratic parliamentary group, women made up barely 20%. And although Merkel appointed a woman as defense minister, the most important ministries — interior, foreign affairs and finance — in the hands of men.

This was to a large extent also true for Germany’s civil service. In 2020, 35% of top positions in the public sector were held by women. And, as the ministry for justice and consumer protection recently “the higher up in the hierarchy, the lower the share of women.” But at least here, change is underway. By 2025, all senior positions are supposed to have closed the gender gap.

Klimakanzlerin

If Germany is a laggard with regard to gender equality, it has prided itself to be a leader when it comes to the environment. The reality, however, is somewhat different. In fact, when it comes to arguably the greatest global challenge, the fight against global warming and climate change, Angela Merkel has been a major disappointment.

As a reminder: Merkel entered office as a strong advocate of decisive action against climate change. In fact, in the years that followed, German media nicknamed her the “Klimakanzlerin” — climate chancellor. Yet over time, she gradually abandoned her convictions, caving in first to the demands of German’s powerful and then to the coal industry. Germany continues to rely heavily on for the production of energy. To a significant extent, it is the environmentally most disastrous type of coal, .

Lignite power plants are among Europe’s worst polluters. Most of them in Germany and Poland. And while a number of EU countries, such as France, Italy and the Netherlands, have decided to stop coal-fired power production by or before 2030, Germany won’t phase out its coal plants until 2038. Mining lignite is an important sector in the southeastern part of former East Germany, in Lusatia, around the city of Cottbus. Electoral considerations, particularly given the AfD’s strength in that part of the country, of course have nothing to do with the Merkel government’s reluctance when it comes to coal. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Overall, Merkel’s climate policy has been suboptimal, to put it mildly. As a former environmental minister , for the government, political opportunism and convenience counted more than tackling an essential problem. That was before the pandemic hit. COVID-19 appears to have caused somewhat of a reconversion. By now, Merkel has once again as the Klimakanzlerin. And for good reasons. COVID-19 has largely been associated with environmental destruction, the dramatic loss of biodiversity and global warming. Polls show that Germans are quite sensitive when it comes to these issues. A found around 85% of the German population not only concerned about these issues, but also willing to make lifestyle changes to “protect the climate.” Under the circumstances, Merkel’s return to her environmentalist roots is hardly surprising. It makes a lot of sense, politically speaking.

Despite a vigorous 15-year resume as chancellor, it is now clear that COVID-19 will define how Merkel will be judged once she leaves office and by how well Germany will master this challenge over the months to come. This might be unfair. After all, Merkel is what Americans call a “lame duck.” But, as Donald Trump so eloquently put it, it is what it is. The German government’s recent frantic attempts to regain control of a situation that has largely spun out of control are an admission of unpreparedness paired with incompetence and mismanagement paired with wishful thinking. In March 2020, Merkel on national television that COVID-19 represented the “greatest challenge since the Second World War.” She was right.

As long as Merkel holds Germany’s most powerful political position, she is in charge and ultimately bears responsibility. At the moment, a large majority of Germans have full confidence that once again, she will be at the top of her game and handle the challenge. It is to be hoped that their confidence is justified.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Around the World, Femicide Is on the Rise

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It is astonishing that every day that goes by, women are killed the world over in the ordinariness of daily life — not in times of war, internal conflicts or gang violence, but by the people closest to them. These women are not mere statistical data: When you know their names, once you have seen their photographs, watched their videos or read their stories, the individual tragedies become haunting nightmares.

Drivers of Violence

To put matters in context, it is important to point out that violence is widespread around the world, especially in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. For example, in , with a population of 130 million, 3,752 women were killed in 2018 compared to 32,765 men. There is a similar picture in , with a population of 210 million. A total of 41,634 murders were committed in 2019, of which 1,314 were women and nearly 40,000 were men. In , with a population of 60 million, another country where violence is common, 20,336 murders were committed in 2017; of these, 2,930 of the victims were women and 16,421 were adult males.

It should be noted that the countries with the highest total number of murders are also the ones with the highest rates of income inequality in the world. According to the that measures income inequality, South Africa is in first place, with a score of 63.1, while Brazil is at high at the top with 54.7 and Mexico with 47.2. These can well be understood as meaningless, technical statistics. However, they describe the current social inequalities that translate into unemployment, poverty, hunger, homelessness — drivers of crime and, inevitably, of violence.

Due to social inequality, almost all buildings in rich districts in Brazil are fenced up and equipped with cameras. Because of this distorted social structure, the number of private security guards employed in the wealthy districts of South Africa far exceeds the in the country. Again, due to social inequality, the drug trade has been one of Mexico’s main problems for decades and is one of the main causes of violence.

Violence is an inequality-driven social problem and must inevitably be addressed together with other social phenomena. However, the experiences of women who continue to be killed every day should be described as a distinct social problem that requires a unique approach and understanding. First, femicide is global in scale. Some countries see lower rates of femicide, others higher, but, ultimately, it happens in every country in the world. The main factor that distinguishes femicide from other types of murders is that it is the murder of women by their husbands, ex-boyfriends, fiancées, lovers — those with whom they shared their lives together and even had children.

According to UN , women are killed mostly because they wanted a divorce or to break up the relationship, or because they did not accept the man’s proposal. Even if they manage to get a divorce, their lives are often taken by the ex-husbands. If a woman is married, she shares the same house with the murderer. If she wants to escape, she is obliged to find another place to shelter. If she lives separately, she has interactions with the father of the children. If there are no children, her home or workplace addresses are known to the potential perpetrator.

I Love You to Death

All this makes women easy targets. The limited number of measures that women can take to protect themselves, such as taking shelter with relatives or getting a restraining order, don’t always work. Women can be stabbed or shot on the street, in front of their homes or offices, in cafes, in broad daylight. Headlines such as “He Killed His Wife After Meeting Her to Make Peace” that frequently appear in the back pages of local newspapers reflect how easily women are killed like sacrificial sheep.

This precarious situation women find themselves in is related to their status in the patriarchal structure and the cultural values of the societies ​​in which they live. Factors such as women’s education, participation in the labor force, participation in the public sphere and in politics determine their levels of safety. Some cultures ​​allow the man to see his wife as a piece of property rather than as an individual with whom he has a marriage contract. Such values ​​imply that the woman’s desire to end the relationship or divorce constitutes a sufficient reason for her death or that the man has the right to kill the woman because she does not return his “love.”

These values ​​are rooted in tradition and history and are often reproduced in everyday life. Pop music provides a perfect example. Lyrics like “You are either mine or nobody’s,” “I love you to death,” “I will sacrifice myself for you,” “I will die but I will not leave you, my dear” settle into the collective consciousness of a society and gain legitimacy in a latent way. Such nuances point to the motives behind the human actions expressed by Wilhelm Dilthey and are critical for understanding social actions.

This patriarchal social structure, which allows men to have power over women, also oppresses the man. It expects him to behave like a “real man,” demands of him to “avenge his honor” and stigmatizes him for not being able to “control his woman.” This structural pressure, either directly or indirectly, pushes men toward violence.

Looking at Turkey

However, femicide cannot be blamed on the patriarchal social structure alone. There is a need to analyze the social change in society on the basis of gender. In other words, it is necessary to look at the changing status and roles of men and women over time.

Turkey provides a good case study. Over the past three decades, the status of Turkish women has changed significantly. First of all, due to the urbanization of the country that social pressure on women has decreased. Of course, this does not mean that Turkish women are completely emancipated. However, the communal social structures specific to the countryside have been broken as a result of migration to the cities, and this has provided women with a limited amount of ​​freedom. Part of it is the increase in the . established in the 1990s that fight against violations of women’s rights have also played a role.

Perhaps the most emblematic development in relation to the changing status of women in Turkey is the . It is the most current internationally recognized legal text for combating discrimination against women and granting protection from violence. Turkey was the first to ratify the convention, which has since been signed by 45 countries and the European Union.

On the other hand, the disadvantaged situation of women in society still continues. According to the World Economic Forum’s , Turkey ranks 130 among 153 countries. (This index should not be used as a sole indicator of the social status of women. For example, , one of the countries with the highest femicide rate and where female labor force participation is 47%, is ranked 25, while Japan, where female labor force participation reaches 70%, is 121.) Again, women are far behind men in terms of participation in the labor force. According to TURKSTAT data, the in Turkey was 29.4% as of 2019. In addition, women’s participation and representation in politics are low. As of 2019, the rate of female deputies remained at 17.3%.

Due to these and other factors, the status of women in Turkey is still fraught with disadvantages. It is such disadvantages that make women vulnerable to violence. This summer, the country was rocked by protests following a brutal murder of a 27-year-old student by an ex-boyfriend, just one of the hundreds of others; in 2019, at least , a grim record of the decade. But, ultimately, a woman in Turkey today is not a woman of 30 years ago. Social change, in which globalization, urbanization, communication technologies, women’s social movements and many other factors can be included, has also changed the status of women. This situation, of course, brought about a psychological transformation. For example, the weakening of social pressures allows women to develop a new awareness about divorce. The idea that being divorced is not shameful for a woman constitutes one of these mental shifts. This change in perceptions has led more women to seek divorces, and more women found the strength to say no to the violence they experienced.

All this means that Turkish women are challenging the established structures more often. This situation, of course, has taken shape as an attitude that challenges the traditional status of men as holders of power. From this point of view, the increasing number of murders of women committed by an intimate partner — up nearly six times since 2008 — can be explained, in part, by the conflict between this changing status and mentality of women and men. Amendments to criminal law that increase penalties for violence against women even if applied without compromise will alone not solve the problem.

Prevention of femicide, the scope of which exceeds this article, can be achieved with long-term and multidimensional reforms, programs and projects. We can start by developing an approach based on understanding this problem in its sociological, anthropological and psychological dimensions. Ultimately, we need to understand both men and women, and what drives the dynamics of the relationships between them.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post What Makes Women Such Easy Targets for Violence? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

One democratic process affected by the COVID-19 pandemic around the world was elections. Indeed, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, elections have been in at least 67 nations around the globe. Central and Eastern Europe was no exception. Serbia’s parliamentary election, originally set for April 26, was postponed by two months even though it was boycotted by much of the opposition due to the steady decline of democracy and media freedom in the country, resulting in a turnout of less than 50%.

The controversial election secured for President Aleksandar Vucic with over 60% of the vote, granting his Serbian Progressive Party 190 seats in the country’s 250-seat parliament. As a result of the election and in-person voting, while the rest of Europe is now in its second wave of the pandemic, Serbia is now in its .

Europe’s Far Right Fails to Capitalize on COVID-19

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Leading up to the elections in Poland, the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party to the constitution to postpone the election for two years due to the pandemic, automatically extending President Andrzej Duda’s term in office. In the end, elections were held in June and July, with Duda narrowly beating the opposition Civic Platform’s candidate.

Beyond elections, the pandemic has been used to mask legal and constitutional changes in the region. In Hungary, Viktor Orban’s government first passed the during the first wave of the pandemic, effectively giving the prime minister the power to rule by decree. The government’s first action was to pass a that transgender people only be recognized by their sex at birth. The government also announced that disseminating “fake news” about the pandemic or the government’s response to it was a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

As a result, although no one has yet been charged under the new laws, several people were after criticizing the government on social media, which some commentators likened to being picked up by the driven by the secret police during the communist era.

In November, as the country entered its second wave of the pandemic, the Orban government announced the Second Authorization Act for a period of 90 days. The following day, proposed were announced that would make it mandatory for children to be raised amid “Christian cultural values,” defining the mother as female and the father as male, as well as prohibiting changing gender after birth. These bar same-sex couples from adopting, but single parents can request an exemption through special ministerial permission.

Additionally, one minute before midnight on the day before new curfew measures went into effect, the government proposed a , making it impossible for coalitions to contest elections, effectively wiping out the opposition.

At the same time that Hungary adopted its first Authorization Act, Poland adopted the Act on Special Solutions Related to the Prevention, Counteracting and Combating of COVID-19, which was ultimately used by the Polish government and PiS to . A few weeks later, the “” bill was enacted by the Polish parliament. Already among the strictest abortion laws in Europe, the high court’s October ruling that it was unconstitutional to abort a fetus with congenital defects effectively , bar in the case of incest, rape or a danger to the mother’s health.

This new ruling was met with around the country, even spreading to church services in the devoutly Catholic Poland and seeing as many as 100,000 people on the streets of the capital Warsaw. This attack on women’s health was also met by a push to leave the European , known as the Istanbul Convention, citing that it is “harmful” for children to be taught about gender in schools. Hungary refused to ratify the treaty in May, “destructive gender ideologies” and “illegal migration.”

It is likely that what the world is seeing in these countries is what Ozan Varol calls “” that “serves as a way to protect and entrench power when direct repression is not a viable option,” with the ultimate goal of creating a one-party state. The pandemic seems to be helping authoritarian leaders to secure their grip on power. In Serbia, Vucic gained popularity during the first wave and, even after criticism from the opposition and supporters alike, Orban in Hungary, as shown in a recent poll.

Findings from interviews carried out as part of a project, , funded by the Economic & Social Research Council suggest that while people were predominantly supportive of democracy in the months before the pandemic, some of those interviewed in Hungary, Poland and Serbia during the first wave in the spring seemed to have a change of heart, expressing more sympathies toward authoritarian forms of government. This trend is worrying, as it shows the potential effects that crisis can have on democratic values. These abuses of power in Central and Eastern Europe cannot be ignored. It is crucial to pay attention to how these times of crisis can further exacerbate the already existing illiberal tendencies across the region.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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As defined by the , femicide is the “intentional murder of women because they are women.” According to the UN, die at the hands of intimate partners and family members, mainly through domestic abuse or “honor killings.” Unfortunately, as with many forms of domestic violence, COVID-19 — and the subsequent isolation and economic pressures — has increased rates of femicide across the globe. Many countries including , and the have seen increases in femicide rates.

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Even before the pandemic, there was an upward global trend in terms of femicide rates over the last several years. Approximately 87,000 women died by femicide in 2017, and the UN has recorded an average in reporting of domestic violence in 2020 due to the pandemic. In total, the of violence against women and girls is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion, or 2% of the global GDP on a yearly basis. Femicide has damaging effects on all levels of society, but, first and foremost, action needs to be taken against femicide to prevent further victimization of women and girls.

Mitigating Femicide

In order to effectively mitigate femicide, three main policies have been endorsed by international organizations. These include laws and legal frameworks that specifically forbid femicide and allocate resources toward domestic violence prevention; education and community outreach that is inclusive of women but also engages men and boys; and support, including law enforcement and other social service agencies, that women can safely report violence to in order to prevent further aggression.

However, the problem remains that while many countries do have legislation on the books and are signatories of agreements that call for an end to violence against women, these laws are simply not enforced. Thus, the reality is that women are vulnerable to violence with few protections, and those they have are at risk of being eroded. Because of the public outrage over Pinar Gültekin’s death, Turkey is one of the most notable examples of femicide in 2020.

Turkey was the first country to ratify the in 2012. The convention is intended to promote gender equality and reduction of violence against women through a series of prevention, protection and persecution strategies aimed at both victims and perpetrators. However, despite the fact that many elements of the convention now exist in national legislation, Ankara announced that it would from the convention, citing “harm to the family institution and promotion of homosexuality.”

Many feminist advocates see the problem as emerging long before this potential withdrawal because, contrary to the laws in place, the government admitted to not keeping records of women killed by femicide. The feminist platform began record-keeping after this announcement, and reported that 474 women were killed in Turkey in 2019, the highest in a decade during which murder rates of women have increased year on year.

In light of this disparity between law and practice, community action is one of the most visible methods to force public recognition of women’s issues that can lead to further policy implementation. A pivotal moment in second wave feminism was Iceland’s 1975 “,” where women forwent work and household labor to join in mass protests against unequal pay. This widespread movement ultimately led to the restructuring of many gendered laws in Iceland and offered other women’s rights activists an effective example on which to draw.

More recently, many activists have organized mass protests against femicide. Many of these occur on International Women’s Day, March 8. One particularly active region of anti-violence protest is Latin America, which is home to some of the highest femicide rates in the world. In response to President Sebastian Pinera’s nonchalant reaction to over reporting sexual abuse per year in Chile, feminist activists staged protests that led to global popularization of the , “A Rapist in Your Path.”

Similarly, women across Mexico participated in a 24-hour strike to protest the increasingly graphic murders of women around the country. While Mexican authorities reported in 2019, feminist advocacy groups say that the number of women killed is underrepresented.

Social Activism Alongside Policy

Social movements are critical for garnering attention and support but can be easily co-opted without meaningful change. The hashtag was originally used by Turkish women as a way to honor Pinar Gültekin and prevent future femicides, but after its adaptation by Western celebrities, the original intention dissolved into one of female friendships and “sisterhood.” Similar to the media campaign, when the #BlackLivesMatter feed was overrun with black squares that quashed the voices of those it was intended to uplift, the degeneration of #ChallengedAccepted undermined its ability to promote meaningful change and address femicide.

Therefore, social activism needs to occur alongside policy reform. When the voices of the people are included in legislation, the framework to implement anti-violence campaigns becomes more tangible and effective. In addressing femicide at government level, the short, mid and long-term expectations must be defined.

In the short term, countries must ensure that women and children have adequate support to report and escape abuse, especially in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. The effects of the pandemic will only continue to increase that include unemployment, problematic alcohol use, mental health problems and reductions in government social spending in areas such as health and education. Having more responders available and ensuring more temporary safe spaces are accessible is key to reducing violence and femicide in the immediate future.

Within the next six months, countries should have drafted updated long-term anti-violence plans that incorporate the effects of COVID-19 into existing legislation and propose methods to fully implement it. If the country has gaps in existing protections, it would be beneficial to work in tandem with local women’s organizations as well as with the chapters of international organizations that can report back on the state of women’s affairs and offer improvements to legal protections. In the case of Turkey, it is vital that existing protections and legislation for women are not removed. The removal of protective legislation can create immediate backlash and unrest among women and perpetrators.

In the long-term, women should have access to regular, streamlined services to turn to in cases of abuse, with particular support provided to vulnerable groups including transgender women and women in low-income brackets. Governments should maintain standardized records on violence against women. Additionally, there should be educational campaigns to inform women about access to resources, as well as initiatives to encourage gender equality, particularly those aimed at boys and men.

For perpetrators with low-level offenses, rehabilitation programs should be put in place to prevent repeat or more serious offenses. Most critically, perpetrators of femicide should be prosecuted in ways that stop the spread of violence. Removing repeat and high-level sexual violence perpetrators from the public sphere will diminish incentives for others to commit honor killings and sexual assault.  

The rise of femicide is a public health hazard like any other and affects not only victims’ families but their communities, countries and the wellbeing of women across the world. At a time when preventative measures to combat femicide are obscured and governments remain passive in the face of mounting crimes against women, it is necessary for the public to speak out in unison against gendered violence and hold governments accountable for their actions.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Around the World, Femicide Is on the Rise appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Global Pandemic Exposes Gender Inequality

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Add to that the myriad of women in health services and education, to mention only the most prominent sectors, and the Herculean effort women have made to alleviate the fallout of this crisis becomes glaringly obvious. And this does not even touch upon the too-often forgotten, because unremunerated, work women have done in the privacy of their homes, as wives and mothers guaranteeing the continued smooth running of the household. Or the fact that once schools closed, mothers took on the extra task of homeschooling their kids, countless of them having to make the choice of sacrificing their jobs in order to do so.

Short End of the Stick

More often than not, unfortunately, reality is not a romance novel — appreciation does not come easy. And often enough, good people end up getting the short end of the stick. COVID-19 has once again proved the point. Women have been among the most prominent victims of COVID-19, not necessarily as direct casualties — men have generally been more likely than women to die from coronavirus-related health problems — but as the objects of COVID-19’s “collateral damage.” In the process, the pandemic has dealt a significant setback to gender equality.

This is the tenor of a growing number of studies and reports by various national and international institutions. In general, COVID-19’s economic impact has been significantly more pronounced for women than for men. Whereas “regular” economic downturns tend to affect men more severely than women — since men tend to work in sectors that closely tied to economic cycles, such as manufacturing and construction — in the case of COVID-19, the reverse has been the case, for a number of reasons. For one, as a recent academic has shown, “the employment drop related to social distancing measures has a large impact on sectors with high female employment shares.”

In general, women account for roughly 40% percent of the global workforce. Unfortunately, as a on the website of the World Economic Forum has pointed out, “they are over-represented in three of the four most in-decline parts of the global economy” as a result of the pandemic: “accommodation and food services (54%); retail and wholesale trade (43%); and services such as arts, recreation and public administration (46%).”

As a result, women have been disproportionately affected by layoffs. In , for instance, 3% of the country’s workforce lost their job as a result of the pandemic; 70% of them were women. In the , between March and early April, female employment dropped by 13%; among non-college-educated women, by 15%. On a global scale, the consulting firm McKinsey has that job losses caused by the pandemic have been around 1.8 times higher for women than for men.

The impact of the pandemic has been particularly severe for women with children. The temporary closing of nurseries and schools in early spring meant a substantial increase in the time women spent on childcare, including homeschooling. All of this, of course, represents unpaid labor, done, at least in part, to allow men to continue to work in their higher-paying jobs. This, at least, is the derived from an Austrian study. In couples with at least one child, the study found, women spent on average nine and a half hours per day doing unpaid work, men around seven.

What this suggests is, as a recent Swiss has shown, that COVID-19 has often resulted in a considerable “reduction of women’s employment capacity.” In , for instance, in households with at least one child age 14 or below, more than a quarter of women, but only around 15% of men, reduced the time they spent on the job in order to guarantee childcare.

Given the importance of uninterrupted work experience for advancement and promotion, this is not only likely to have a negative impact on women’s future career chances and earnings potential, it is also likely to hamper, at least for the time being, further progress in narrowing the gender wage gap. Not for nothing, most of the recent publications that deal with this question conclude that COVID-19 has critically years of progress for women and “worsened gender inequality.” A recent warns that Covid-19 is likely to “set women back half a decade.”

Dramatic Impact

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the life chances of women has been dramatic across the globe, and so has its socio-psychological impact. The arguably most disastrous fallout of this health crisis has been an upsurge in domestic violence. CNN, for instance, has that the pandemic has triggered an “explosion of domestic abuse on a global scale.” UN Women has to violence against women in the context of COVID-19 as the “shadow pandemic.” Data suggest, Un Women has charged, that “all types of violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence, has intensified.”

In the UK, for instance, a found that two-thirds of women in abusive relationships suffered more violence from their partners during the pandemic. A large majority of the victims said that the lockdown had made it harder for them to escape their abusers. Unfortunately, reliable data are still rather sparse; empirical studies, if they exist, are preliminary. What they suggest, however, is that strict measures, such as lockdowns or quarantine, have tended to interpersonal tensions and, with them, incidences of violence. In most cases, women have been the targets of violence and abuse, especially in low and middle-income countries.

In April, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) that 31 million additional cases of gender-based violence could be expected to occur if the lockdown were to continue for at least six months. “For every 3 months the lockdown continues, an additional 15 million extra cases of gender-based violence” were expected.

In most of these countries, COVID-19 has resulted in a significant disruption of sexual-health services and supply chains for contraception. In India, for instance, between December and March, “the of contraceptive pills and condoms dropped by 15% and 23%, respectively,” resulting in a rise in unwanted pregnancies. In its spring report, the UNFPA projected that pandemic-driven disruptions in access to contraception would potentially result in more than 47 million women losing access to contraception, “leading to 7 million unintended pregnancies in the coming months.”

By now, there is overwhelming evidence that once again, women have been in the forefront of the struggle to maintain a modicum of normalcy in a very critical situation. At the same time, they have been its primary victims. COVID-19 has, once again, thrown into sharp relief the extent to which inequality, injustice and violence continue to inform the reality experienced by large parts of women in today’s world. As has been pointed out on numerous occasions over the past few months, teachers and nurses are significantly underpaid with regard to their contribution to society.

The contribution women have made to the functioning of society more often than not continues to go unnoticed and unappreciated. And that despite the fact that without women’s gainful employment, overall inequality would be even higher than it already is. In the , more than “40 percent of all mothers are either the sole or the primary breadwinners for their families, and 70 percent of couples are now dual earners.” And yet, more often than not, their effort is dismissed.

It has become a worn-out trope that as a result of this pandemic, nothing will be the same as before. There is no return to the status quo ante. Forgive my skepticism. We have heard this before, most recently in the aftermath of the near-collapse of the global financial system in 2008. Yet if, for whatever reason, this time, things will be fundamentally different, one of the central items on the agenda must be gender equality. That means gender equality now, not within the next 100 years or more, as the most recent projects. Women cannot hold up half the sky if they are being pushed down by their male counterparts.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Women Become Collateral Damage in COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on 51�Թ�.

They speak about that which was previously forbidden: concerts with pop stars from the West, movie theaters, cultural exhibitions and sporting events such as the World Wrestling Entertainment  at the Mohammed Abdu Arena in Riyadh in February and the just-concluded inaugural Aramco  golf tournament, all with mixed audiences of men and women. And, of course, seeing women driving — a right that was granted in June 2018.

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The relaxation of the male guardianship system in August of this year has also been hailed as a  for women. At the time, the decision was celebrated by Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Gathering together a group of female employees in the embassy, she said: “You have unalienable rights now, the right to your own identity, to move, dream, work.”

Correcting the Narrative

Speaking on November 19, the ambassador the importance of gender equity and women’s advancement as a cornerstone of Vision 2030, Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious and audacious program of economic and social transformation. She also took up a theme often expressed by Saudi authorities: Hers was a country “too often misunderstood, our remarkable progress, reform and change too often overlooked.” She added, “We need to do a better job of correcting an inaccurate and distorted narrative.”

That was what the G20 summit was designed to do — to shift the narrative away from the negative. But COVID-19 intervened, and what was to have been a glittering showcase of Saudi innovation, creative drive and women’s empowerment became a flat Zoom reality. The opportunity to press the flesh and wow their guests with trips to sites like the $500-billion futuristic Neom city now under construction morphed into a dull screen of faces. Still, there was one moment of technical wizardry projecting a group photo of G20 leaders onto the walls of the historic ruins of the city of Diriyah on the outskirts of Riyadh.

But haunting that moment was another image, cast onto the Louvre museum in Paris. It was of three women activists detained in Saudi prisons: Loujain al-Hathloul, Nassima al-Sadah and Samar Badawi. Their plight and the plight of other women prisoners is the subject of a just-released  by Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC. She cites multiple Saudi and international laws and agreements that have been violated during the arrests and detention of the women. She details credible allegations of torture and names two individuals very close to the Saudi crown prince either directly engaged in or presiding over torture. The torture, the report says, included beatings, electric shock, sexual assault and threats to rape and kill family members.

The two named individuals are Saud al-Qahtani, implicated in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 2018, and Mohammed bin Salman’s younger brother and the former ambassador in Washington, Khalid bin Salman. Al-Qahtani escaped prosecution in Saudi Arabia for the killing of Khashoggi but remains on the US sanctions list he was put on shortly after the murder; in July, his name was added to the UK sanctions list.

Khalid bin Salman, while serving as ambassador to the US, reportedly encouraged Jamal Khashoggi in the belief that he could return safely to Saudi Arabia. Prince Khalid left the United States shortly after details of the killing began to emerge. He returned briefly, then quit his post. In February 2019, he was appointed deputy defense minister. His older brother, the crown prince, is defense minister. As Helena Kennedy’s report states:

“Al-Qahtani personally tortured Loujain on a number of occasions. Al-Qahtani’s involvement is also attested to by the former female inmate of Dhabhan, who stated that one of the Women’s Rights Activists had told her that Saud Al-Qahtani was present at the unofficial facility for much of the time she was there, directed a number of both individual and group torture sessions, threatened her with rape, and sexually abused her. She also told the former inmate that she had witnessed Saud Al-Qahtani sexually assaulting several other Women’s Rights Activists in their rooms, including Loujain Al-Hathloul and Eman Al-Nafjan.

Additionally, the former female inmate of Dhabhan reports that Khalid bin Salman was occasionally present at the unofficial facility, and would sometimes attend interrogations. One of the Women’s Rights Activists told her that he would threaten rape and murder when overseeing interrogations, and would boast about his position and power, saying ‘do you know who I am? I am Prince Khalid bin Salman, I am the ambassador to the US, and I can do anything I like to you’, or words to that effect.”

These are very serious allegations. However, they are not proven and the Saudi authorities have consistently denied the claims. But rather than have an independent investigation, the authorities have chosen to take the view that those detained and the manner of their detention are internal issues for the Saudi courts to deal with. It’s a position they took in  eight individuals and sentencing them to between seven and 20 years in jail for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Saud al-Qahtani was not among those charged.

“People Have Not Been Fair”

In an  with the BBC’s Lyse Doucet, Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, said, “Our judiciary is independent and we do not allow people to lecture us or tell us what we should or shouldn’t do.” The minister claimed that Loujain al-Hathloul was not detained for her women’s rights activism but because she was being investigated as a national security risk. In 2018, Mohammed bin Salman called her a spy and said he would produce evidence “the next day” to prove it, but no such evidence has emerged.

Al-Jubeir also complained, as has Princess Reema, that Riyadh is a victim of unwarranted criticism: “I think that people have not been fair when it comes to dealing with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” he told Doucet. “I think they always look for the negative part of it rather than the positive part of it.”

Had US President Donald Trump secured reelection earlier this month, telling that “positive part” would have been less challenging. As it was, with the Saudis attempting to focus the summit on the global battle against COVID-19, Trump made a  via Zoom to extol his administration’s efforts at combating the pandemic and then left to play a round of golf. Joe Biden  Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” state in 2019, stating in October that his administration would “reassess our relationship with the Kingdom, end US support for Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, and make sure America does not check its values at the door to sell arms or buy oil.”

The Saudis are hoping that was just electioneering talk. Speaking to  in a virtual interview on the sidelines of the G20 summit, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, the Saudi foreign minister, said: “I’m confident that a Biden administration would continue to pursue policies that are in the interest of regional stability.” The foreign minister is likely correct in that assessment. But with the current abysmal state of human rights in the kingdom, it is far less likely that the Biden White House will buy into the positive narrative of reform and change Princess Reema has been deployed to sell in Washington.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Saudi Arabia’s Mission to Correct “Distorted Narrative” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Shattering the Silence on Female Genital Cutting

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While Sharifa visits India in 2016, khatna, a form of female genital cutting practiced by her Dawoodi Bohra community, is in the news. Her favorite cousins are on opposite ends of the debate, and she isn’t sure how or what to feel about the issue. As the story progresses, she learns truths about herself and her family that alter her life indelibly.

Shrouded in Mystery

Like my protagonist, I was born into this community. Dawoodi Bohras are a small Shia Muslim subsect with an estimated worldwide population of around 1.5 million. We are known for our high levels of education, our distinctive attire — orthodox women wear colorful burka-like outfits — and our delicious Bohri cooking.

Because the community is insular, most outsiders don’t know about the more problematic things. For example, those who openly critique our religious leader’s diktats can be socially shunned. Those who don’t comply with his rules about secular issues can be bullied. And, worst of all, he insists that khatna is mandatory.

Khatna is shrouded in secrecy. It involves cutting a girl’s clitoral hood around the age of seven. Often, girls are tricked, believing they are on their way to a party or to get ice cream. It’s a painful ritual that can have long-term emotional, physical and sexual consequences. The mythology behind it is that it will somehow make a girl sexually pure.

Public discourse about khatna in the mainstream media is a recent phenomenon, starting around five years ago. As a result, conversations about this form of gender-based violence haven’t been normalized, and many survivors, like me, can feel uncomfortable talking about it. Some survivors I know have even been told by family or clergy to keep quiet and must remain anonymous in their activism. To make things more complicated, the moment of trauma often comes with a confusing, gas-lit message from beloved elders: nothing really happened — but don’t tell. This is similar to what might be conveyed to childhood sexual abuse survivors.

Growing up, my own household was not observant, but many in my extended family are, and I became a victim of khatna by family members who thought they were doing the right thing by circumventing my parents and taking me for the procedure. It’s worth stressing that elders don’t believe that they are doing harm. They might not be aware they are practicing a ritual that is denounced by all major religious groups and is illegal in most countries. They are simply following a religious rite and social norms. As activist groups continue to spread information, perhaps this will change.

Stepping into the Spotlight

“Seven” is my fourth novel, and so I knew what to expect during the promotion cycle. There would be media interviews, panels and book club meetings during which I’d be asked about the book’s inspiration and, more specifically, my personal connection to the work. In fact, one of the most common questions an author gets asked is, To what extent is your novel’s fictional content autobiographical?

With other books, it was simple to shrug and explain that my stories were 100% fiction, with observations from my social world mixed in. But with “Seven,” I wasn’t so sure I knew how to answer this question. Sharifa is a fictional character and not me. But did I want to come out as a khatna survivor? And if I did, how would I handle questions about the details of this trauma from well-intentioned and curious interviewers? While I’ve been an activist since 2015, I intentionally performed behind-the-scenes tasks and mostly declined anything that involved stepping into the spotlight. I was too afraid to speak publicly about my own experience.

As the release date approached, I felt pulled to find a way to speak as both a novelist and as a survivor. I wanted to discuss writing craft and the issues, and I knew that I could have more impact if I brought the personal into the conversation. This, however, kept me up at night, and took me back to therapy to sort out my feelings and the trauma’s impact. I practiced answering the most intrusive questions with journalist friends so that I could find my boundaries. And still, I was afraid. The old trauma messages about shame and silence endured.

And then something shifted. It was in the middle of the second interview, for a literary podcast, when I had a moment of epiphany. My body felt strong and my mind lucid. I realized that I was responding to the interviewer’s questions as though they were opportunities rather than discomforts or threats. I came to understand that this work of fiction was a vehicle to talk about khatna, to meaningfully contribute to raising awareness about female genital cutting/mutilation.

Perhaps a part of me woke up, a part of me that had been aching to tell, and to be listened to. The shame fell away and in its place was clarity. Now, when I discuss my book’s characters, setting and plot, I also share the following seven messages.

“Seven” is one of the first novels to focus on khatna. 

 Female genital mutilation/cutting 200 million women, children and non-binary kids in 92 countries. It’s estimated that at least 75% of the women in my community have experienced khatna.

 It happens across cultures, religions, race, class, education and rural/urban divides.

 It even happens to white Christian women in the US. If it’s tied to any culture, it’s tied to global patriarchy.

Its goal is to control sexuality and it has no medical benefit whatsoever. It can have long-term emotional, physical and sexual consequences.

 It is a human rights violation, a form of gender-based violence not unrelated to other forms of gender-based violence such as rape culture or sexual harassment, which all oppress women, girls and non-binary people.

 It’s up to all of us to normalize these conversations so that we can create change.

“Seven” has been received well. It has just been named a Chapters-Indigo Best Book of 2020. The Globe and Mail listed it as the Best Independent Read to Pick Up This Fall, and Ms. Magazine called it “fully feminist and ambitiously bold.” I’ve spoken at over 30 virtual events where I’ve talked about Sharifa, her cousins, her marriage … and khatna. I don’t brace myself, and I’ve even enjoyed these conversations. I hadn’t imagined that a book with subject matter that used to make me feel queasy would be read and reviewed so widely. And most of all, I hadn’t ever expected that “Seven” would help me become braver.

*[Correction: An earlier version identified “Seven” as the first ever novel to focus on khatna. Updated on 11/23/2020 at 10:50 GMT.]

*[Please visit   and to find out more about the issues discussed in this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, leads the way in this worrying initiative. In a country where almost nine out of 10 women do not report gender violence, the scale of harm against women is alarming. Mexico was already one of the most dangerous places for women in the region, and the situation has only worsened during the pandemic. In April this year, an average of 11 women were murdered every 24 hours, while in May, Mexico’s National Shelter Network reported an in calls for help. In June, the country reported of femicide, kidnapping, and human trafficking. 

Femicide Continues to Plague Mexico

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Deeply disturbing are the comments President Lopez Obrador made to the press in May. When asked about the surge in domestic violence calls, Lopez Obrador retorted that “Ninety percent of those calls that you’re referring to are fake,” and in response to a question about the high number of women being murdered, he claimed this has “been manipulated a lot in the media.” Meanwhile, his government launched a misjudged public education campaign urging abusive men to “not lose patience” and “breathe and count to 10.”

In light of these flippant remarks, it is perhaps not surprising that women’s services are not deemed a top priority under the revised budget. Mexico’s 2020 federal budget to address gender violence had already been reduced by about 30%, leaving the eight states with the highest rates of femicide without any funding at all. Under the proposed 2021 budget pushed through during the chaos of COVID-19, the government will cut another 10%-20%, further decimating the country’s ability to respond to gender-based violence in an effective, respectful and targeted manner.

Cuts to social services tend to have the biggest impact on the most vulnerable populations. In this case, Lopez Obrador slashed federal funding to the Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Women Shelters (CAMIs) by 50% in 2020 and has pledged to make further cuts in the 2021 budget. CAMIs are located in poor, remote areas of Mexico and provide local women with vital support, including sexual, reproductive and maternal health care, assistance in cases of physical and sexual violence as well as translation services.

For many Indigenous and Afro-descendant Mexican women, CAMIS are the only facility where they are able to access gender-informed health care and psycho-social services. Since language and cultural barriers make it difficult for Indigenous and Afro-descendent women to file complaints about rights violations, it is even more critical that these facilities remain fully staffed and operational. 

The United Nations has touted the CAMI model of delivering respectful and culturally-sensitive quality services to rural and Indigenous women and girls as a best practice for serving marginalized and hard-to-reach populations. The proposed cuts to these services prompted Dubravka Simonovic, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women, and José Francisco Cali Tzay, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, to issue a  urging the Mexican government to keep its international commitment to combat discrimination and violence against women and girls as well to promote equality for Indigenous groups. By defunding these programs, Mexico is at risk of reneging on its international agreements. 

In addition to the UN, civil society organizations are greatly concerned about the pared down 2021 budget since the cuts to women’s services, including for domestic and gender-based violence, could not have come at a worse time.

Led by the CAMIS Network, CLADEM, CEJIL and Equality Now, a coalition of Mexican and international organizations has drafted a joint statement in response to the proposed cuts which are set to be approved by the end of this month. The organizations demand that the Mexican government prioritize funding for programs that combat gender-based violence and support survivors. Noting that 2019 was the deadliest year for women and that 2020 is on course be even worse, cutting funding would be catastrophic for Mexican women and girls, especially those from already marginalized communities. 

As the pandemic ravages across the world, a shadow pandemic of violence against women has followed. While governments have prioritized combatting the former, the latter, as illustrated by the case of Mexico, has been largely allowed to go unchecked. We cannot allow women and girls, especially those from marginalized communities, to be collateral damage in the fight against the coronavirus. A gendered lens must be applied to any and all solutions, otherwise, we risk sacrificing the health, safety and dignity of millions of women around the world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Do Romance Novels Offer an Outdated Model of Feminism?

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For those unfamiliar with the terms, the Urban Dictionary “clown car sex” as “the act of trying to place as many penises as possible into a single vagina like many clowns try to fit into one car somehow.” The term “handmaid” as used in the tweet presumably comes from Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel “T��� Handmaid’s Tale,” where of all statuses living under a totalitarian theocratic state (in the US Northeast and parts of the upper Midwest) “are stripped of their rights, forcing them to live out lives of servitude in a patriarchal society” ” and “(through servitude and rape) to carry children for the powerful.”

The link to Barrett is her presumed membership in a Catholic faith group that, according to ex-members, the lives of its members and preaches the subjugation of women.

Fertility Shaming

The term, of course, is hardly new. As early as 2012, the conservative Trump convert, Mollie Hemingway, wrote a entitled “Fertility Shaming: ‘It’s A Vagina, Not A Clown Car.’” In it, the author noted that she lived in two fundamentally different worlds. Here, a culture where “large families are considered awesome. You’re not looked down on for being childless or having a smaller family — indeed, my folks only had three children — but large families are considered cool.” There (Washington, DC), a different environment where “large families are mocked or derided. You only have 11 children if you’re retarded.” The latter she referred to as “fertility shaming.”

Hemingway points out the hypocrisy of those who promoted reproductive rights and, one might add, a woman’s right to choose, but only as long as it means “avoiding our fertility, and doing whatever it takes to not have kids (or more than one or two of them).” Ironically enough, her reference in the text is to Michelle Duggar, the Arkansas mother of “19 Kids and Counting,” who supposedly said “It’s a vagina, not a clown car.”

Duggar, unlike Barrett, is not a Catholic. But both women obviously believe artificial (as opposed to natural) birth control methods are fundamentally frowned upon by God. I am not sure where they got that from the Bible, but then I’m not a theologian versed in the intricacies of Bible exegesis. In fact, I started my academic career at a Catholic university where I had a colleague with 11 children, in addition to a number of them who never made it. Initially, even the Duggars were birth control — until they saw the light and “vowed to leave how many kids they’d have in God’s hands.” Apparently, the Duggars’ conversion moment was triggered by a miscarriage following the birth of their first son. Duggar blamed herself for the miscarriage thinking that her use of the pill had caused the problem. It somehow never occurred to her that miscarriages are quite common, as are stillbirths. Her miscarriage was not an act of divine punishment but an act of nature, random and unpredictable.

US suggest that between 10% and 15% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage during the early months of gestation, while one in 160 birth are stillbirths. Research that “Miscarriage is the most common complication of pregnancy with 1 in 4 women experiencing at least 1 miscarriage during their reproductive lifetime.” A Swiss claims that half of all fertilized egg cells end in a spontaneous abortion. Most “natural” abortions occur during the first three months of pregnancy. In a number of cases, women report several miscarriages. And as the age when a woman can become pregnant increases, the prevalence of miscarriage too. In fact, after the age of 40, the likelihood that pregnancy ends in miscarriage increases by 50% compared to a woman in her early 20s.

A recent in The New York Times recounts the story of a woman desperately trying to have a baby. In the process, she experiences three miscarriages within a relatively short period of time. Unfortunately, studies show that the likelihood of a miscarriage after three previous miscarriages increases by 50%.

What these stories imply is that miscarriages are a fact of life, a “natural” occurrence. They are one of these things that just happen, for no apparent reason. It’s the bad luck of the draw, similar to the fact that some people (such as Germany’s ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt) smoke all of their lives and live prosperously well into their late 80s, while others never touch a cigarette and yet die young of lung cancer. For those who believe that life has no particular meaning, that you get what you get, this is perfectly understandable, perhaps even acceptable.

It Is What It Is

For those, however, such as Europe’s dwindling number of true Catholics, and particularly American self-proclaimed Christians, it poses a fundamental problem. America’s “true believers” hold that life starts at conception. They also believe that its termination represents a crime, equivalent to murder in some circles. Unlike abortion, however, miscarriages cannot be blamed on human agency — unlike, for instance, global warming.

This leaves only one alternative. The termination of human life via miscarriage must be the result of God’s will, similar to the way American Christians explain to themselves the rapid warming of the planet, the eradication of much of the planet’s ecosystem and the potential destruction of humanity. It is all part of God’s plan for humanity. It is, as one of the great sages of our time has observed, what it is.

To be sure, this is a terrible simplification. And clearly not every American Christian subscribes to this logic. Far from it. At the same time, however, surveys suggest that many do; they certainly act as if they did. The reality is, there is nothing that would suggest that there is any necessity for this planet to survive as a home for intelligent beings. By now we know that over millions of years, this planet was populated by scores of creatures, ferocious and majestic, only to be wiped out by cataclysmic events. Their remnants can be found in museums all over the world, reminders of the fragility of life on Earth.

The fact that more than 10% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage poses a fundamental challenge to the notion, so dear to Christians, that the termination of a pregnancy represents an abomination in the eyes of God, that life starts at conception and that there is a fundamental “right to life.” God obviously disagrees, otherwise he would not allow for the “natural” termination of the life of millions of fetuses every year. For believers in a merciful God, be they Christians or Muslims, this must be nothing short of frightening. It suggests that God might not be as merciful as they believe or, worse, that God could care less about the fate of humanity.

For non-believers, it is one more piece of confirmation that the existence of God is a , that human life is the result of a chain of processes based on trial and error, and that humanity might be nothing but the accidental, and highly destructive, byproduct of natural selection and evolution. We don’t know. For believers, it is all part of God’s plan, like earthquakes, pandemics and the extermination of whole nations.

Fatally enough, this kind of thinking has failed to imbue us with humility and prudence. Today’s ruling class, from Trump to Johnson, from Bolsonaro to Putin, acts as if the destruction of the natural environment, the extinction of much of the planet’s species and rising average temperatures are of no consequence. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is with having noted that one day, the living might envy the dead. Khrushchev is said to have made the remark with regard to the threat of nuclear war.

Today, other threats are much more urgent than nuclear war. Pandemics, global warming, the extinction of a large part of this planet’s flora and fauna are realities that suggest that human life in the decades to come will be confronted with the quite real prospect of extinction, be it because of intolerable climate conditions, the exhaustion of the planet’s freshwater resources or because of pandemics, similar to the plague in the Middle Ages, that wipe out large parts of humanity. Under the circumstances, the living might very well wish they had been among that 10% to 15% whose potential existence ended in miscarriage.

Bigger Than Nuclear War

For the likes of Barrett, Hemingway, Duggar and , a Catholic freelance writer and blogger with 10 children, these ideas are most likely heretical, detestable and pernicious to the max, given they prevent women from fulfilling their divinely-mandated destiny of motherhood. They tend to ignore the fact that their pursuit of a grand family is only possible because the vast majority of Americans don’t indulge in it. If everybody did it, the consequences would be disastrous.

Take the case of a small country like Switzerland, which has a population of just over 8.6 million people. A large proportion of the country’s territory is covered by high mountains and several large lakes, areas that are largely uninhabitable. In 2016, there were roughly 3.8 million private households in the country. If each one of them had produced 10 children, within a few years, Switzerland’s population would increase by more than 30 million — roughly half that of France. Even the most pro-natalist representatives of the Swiss far right would consider this a nightmare scenario. And this despite the fact that Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world, with excellent health and social services.

The consequences of unbridled fertility can daily be seen in the news: the treks of desperate from largely Catholic Central American countries such as Honduras and El Salvador, seeking to make their way on foot to the southern border of the United States. Between 1960 and 2010, the population of Honduras more than quadrupled, reaching more than 8.5 million. And this in a country with rudimentary health care and no social services to speak of. The same is largely true for El Salvador.

To be sure, over the past two decades, population growth in the two countries has dramatically declined, now approaching European levels. At the same time, the influence of the Catholic Church has considerably in the region, compensated by a dramatic upsurge in the number of evangelicals, which might to a certain extent explain the collapse in fertility rates. But by now, the damage is done, reflected, in part, by the steady stream of refugees from the region.

President Donald Trump’s response was to freeze aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, thus further aggravating the situation in these countries. Earlier on, his administration, as Summer Brennan in Sierra, had already “stopped contributing to the United Nations Population Fund, the largest global supplier of contraceptives and reproductive services.”

At the same time, the US named Valerie Huber to the UN Commission on the Status of Women. “Huber,” Brennan points out, is “a longtime advocate of abstinence until marriage, is a proponent of “natural” family planning — in other words, the rhythm method.” Now, if they could only stop God from allowing miscarriages and stillbirths, and prevent Catholic priests from sexually assaulting young boys, Donald Trump could find his place in the history books as the president who restored religion to its rightful place in the center of American life.  

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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Since his divorce from fellow actor Amber Heard in August 2016 — Heard filed for divorce and a restraining order after a domestic incident — Depp has repeatedly tried to silence his former wife. But she has been unrepentant. She told The Sun about her life with Depp and provided details of his sexual and physical abuse. In an opinion column, the newspaper described him as a wife-beater who terrified Heard. It was another hurtful jibe, according to Depp, who claimed his public image had transmuted from “”, and that he had lost his career-defining role of Jack Sparrow in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise as a result. 

The Me Too Movement: Changing the Rules of the Game

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On November 2, Britain’s Depp’s claim for compensation after arguably the most widely followed libel trials of the century so far. The trial, which ended in July, had everything a newspaper like The Sun could have possibly wished for and which may yet provide raw material for a movie: warring celebrities, domestic violence, years-long rumors, gossip and half-truths, and the obligatory stories of drug abuse (snorting cocaine through a tampon applicator was an especially memorable detail). It was nasty, classless and tacky in the extreme. A perfect celeb story. At a time when cinemas were closed, it provided a real-life version of those he said/she said dramas.

Astonishing Gamble

Three years ago, the decision against Depp would have been damaging but not terminal. Now, in a world of #MeToo, it is ruinous. No Hollywood studio will risk casting Depp for fear of being accused of rewarding a wife-beater. Depp’s legal team described it as a “perverse and bewildering decision,” though the grounds for appeal are not immediately recognizable. If his lawyers can’t overturn the result, Depp will be cast into the wilderness. He is a wealthy man. But, at 57, Depp was probably not expecting an early retirement when he embarked on his legal action.

He may not have considered that today’s #MeToo culture is unforgiving: Men with power and influence can no longer use those resources to exculpate themselves and resume their careers, often with the reputations not only intact but enhanced. Since October 2017, when disclosures about Harvey Weinstein’s crimes over the course of nearly three decades circulated around the world, there has been a seismic shift in sexual politics. So, I return to my earlier question: Was Depp mad in initiating the action?

His gamble was astonishing. Depp must have known that the decision would either liberate him from sordid hearsay or condemn him. Perhaps he had no choice. After all, in #MeToo culture, even a whiff of domestic abuse can be destructive, and Depp might have sensed Hollywood’s major studios were avoiding him. Perhaps his marketability was already suffering, and he believed an all-or-nothing “Hail Mary” was his only chance. His logic was presumably that doing nothing would effectively validate Heard’s version of events.

So, a cost-benefit calculation probably told him that the risk of taking legal action, while enormous, had to be taken. Inertia would have left him in a kind of limbo, and the plum Hollywood roles would have continued to escape him. In effect, he is in no worse position than he was when the case started. All the same, Depp must know how sexual misconduct is no longer pardonable and that the verdict is probably professionally terminal.

Some prominent men accused of impropriety of some kind toward women have challenged accusers and attempted to return to professional life. These include Woody Allen, James Franco, dancer Marcelo Gomes, comedian Louis C.K. and radio host Garrison Keillor. Some others, like and , have managed to navigate a safe passage, though without convincing everyone of their innocence. But the vast majority of accused men have been consigned to oblivion. There are of them. Will Depp join them?

A Little Different

Scandal is the nitroglycerine of the entertainment industry, a highly volatile explosive that can blow a celebrity onto the A-list or wipe them off the map. While it’s been the latter for most transgressive male celebs in recent years, Depp could yet prove the exception. He is, after all, exceptionally popular, and while the judges didn’t believe his testimony, millions probably did. In practically every post-Weinstein case, women have been victims, usually pressured by a powerful man into a code of silence, sometimes for years. Cast against the gender politics of the recent decades, their narratives have been largely plausible and preclude much contestation. But Depp’s case is a little different.

Bear in mind Depp sued the publishers of The Sun, not Heard. It seemed unusual, perhaps perverse, that her allegations were publicized and scrutinized in a case in which she was neither claimant or defendant, only a witness. There was no undisputable evidence of Depp’s physical abuse and, perhaps crucially, there was a claim that Heard, far from being a victim, was actually a victimizer. Depp’s former personal assistant Stephen Deuters told the court that Heard subjected Depp to “years of abuse.” This was an unusual insight. While it’s not unheard of, women’s abuse of men is infrequent enough to make people think twice. Why would a man lie about this? Doesn’t it undermine traditional expectations of manhood? Isn’t he embarrassed about it?

The public’s default position on male abuse is to assume guilt. I’m not sure what the response to Heard will be. But I’ll offer some joined-up guesswork: I don’t think people will accept this verdict uncritically. Depp is no angel, but Heard met him in 2009, married him in 2015 and presumably knew him well. If they had a tumultuous relationship, she had enough time to decide whether or not she wanted it to continue. Remember, they didn’t divorce until 2016. Depp had previously been in relationships with Winona Ryder (1989 to 1993), Kate Moss (1994 to 1998) and Vanessa Paradis (1998 to 2012) and, while these too might have had their hot-tempered moments, they were not known to be abusive.

Everything points to descent to obscurity and the end of Depp’s showbusiness career. I suspect this won’t be the case. He won’t emerge unbruised and will have to find some way of rehabilitating his reputation. Johnny Depp could become the first of the #MeToo delinquents to salvage his career.

*[Ellis Cashmore is the author of “.”]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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How to Fight Domestic Violence During a Global Pandemic

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On August 3, the president celebrated a victory over the of one of Mexico’s most wanted criminals, Jose Antonio Yepez Ortiz, “El Marro,” the alleged leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel. That win was soon followed by the from Spain of Emilio Lozoya, ex-chief of the state-owned oil company, PEMEX, on bribery and money laundering charges, which ultimately implicated ex-presidents and various congressmen.

Gender-Based Violence

While Lopez Obrador touted these examples as clear evidence of his administration’s success, he, like many populists in the region, believes that he can shape public opinion and reality solely through his own declarations, despite all the evidence to the contrary. However, on the heels of these so-called victories, a July government report captured a staggering statistic: in the first half of 2020, indicating a nearly 2% increase since last year, putting 2020 on track to be the deadliest year on Mexico’s record. 

Among the record-breaking homicides figure lies a much greater policy failure to combat femicide — the murder of women based on their gender. Femicide is up 9.2% compared to the first half of 2019, 489 deaths through June this year according to the Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection (SSPC). Femicide shot up by 36% alone from May to June. While violence against women has long been problematic in Mexico, COVID-19 lockdowns have only worsened the situation by forcing many victims into dangerous circumstances with their aggressors. 

Budget cuts to federal and state programs due to the economic recession and diminishing tax revenues will likely make it harder to respond to domestic abuse calls and to prosecute femicides. Amid these extraordinary developments, AMLO’s response so far has been to downplay the chronic nature of gender-based violence in Mexico. 

Emergency calls show just how endemic the violence really is. Through the end of July, the emergency helpline had received 154,610 calls reporting gender violence incidents, up 47% from 2019, according to the . AMLO has in a press conference that 90% of these calls are “false.” While experts agree many of the calls are “inadmissible” or “unfounded,” due to poor connections, the victims hanging up and even prank calls, inadmissible calls don’t 77%.

The president is attempting to use the inadmissibility argument to refute the verified emergency call statistics of his own government. The figures also cannot account for the many victims who do not contact authorities out of fear. According to an independent NGO, 9 out of 10 women gender-based violence in Mexico. Rather than providing compassion and answers to victims, the president has selfishly claimed that his opponents are using femicide statistics for political attacks.

Economic Impacts

Beyond the physical trauma, domestic and state abuse against women can also have profound effects on women’s economic well-being. According to a by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (INEGI), over 19 million women reported being victims of domestic abuse, with 64% of incidents leading to severe violence. As a result, each victim lost an average of 30 days of paid and 28 days of unpaid work annually. INEGI estimates that between October 2015 and October 2016, the total cost of lost income by women who missed work due to domestic violence amounted to 4.4 billion pesos ($184 million).

These losses often perpetuate women’s dependence on their aggressors, worsening what already are unequal economic circumstances. According to the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Gender Development Index, women earn $11,254 per year, less than half of men, who make $24,286. More women rely on informal employment, with 56.6% working in the informal sector (excluding agriculture) compared to 48.4% of men. The Mexican Social Security Institute noted that women only comprise 38% of social security beneficiaries. This economic and labor inequality has meant that women have been disproportionately hit by the COVID-19 lockdowns, rising unemployment and lack of access to social security benefits. 

AMLO has failed to adequately respond to the issue, and the situation is likely to worsen unless the government makes a concerted effort. In August, a the president about a June report showing a cut of 37.5 million pesos to the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women. After the president’s denial, the government released a saying that no such cuts would be made because fighting gender violence was an essential task.

However, the response still falls well short of a meaningful attempt to stamp out the endemic issues in the criminal system and within Mexican machismo culture at large. The president’s austerity measures cannot come at the expense of rising femicide rates and violence against women throughout the country. Rather, a July report from the UNDP recommends that the government take on to spend on protecting the most vulnerable groups from the socio-economic effects of the pandemic.

As endemic as femicide is in Mexico — it trails only Brazil’s total number of cases in Latin America — gender-based violence is a pandemic that is claiming the lives of countless victims across the hemisphere. According to the United Nations’ Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, the countries with the per 100,000 women are: El Salvador (6.8), Honduras (5.1), Bolivia (2.3), Guatemala (2.0) and the Dominican Republic (1.9). Mexico’s rate of femicide is 1.4, which suggests that in addition to national measures taken to halt this pandemic, Latin America as a region has much work to do to protect the well-being of half of its citizens. 

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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The program provides a framework for SRHR to be included in health policies at the national level. have since shown that the recognition of SRHR and the implementation of sexual and reproductive health services has had dramatic impacts on the improvement of maternal health and the reduction of maternal mortality and unwanted pregnancies.

Global Pandemic Exposes Gender Inequality

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However, at UN negotiations against SRHR has expanded from previous contestations to the rejection of any mention of previously agreed references to SRHR. This has come about amid vocal objections by the Trump administration. These objections are not simply rhetorical pronouncements as they have in fact in removing references to SRHR in UN resolutions. In 2019, the Trump administration threatened to veto a UN Security Council resolution on sexual violence in conflict if it contained a reference to “sexual and reproductive health.” This reference was subsequently removed.

Since Donald Trump took office, references to safe abortion have from the Commission on the Status of Women outcome documents, and the word “sexuality” has been removed from “comprehensive sexuality education” to place emphasis on the role of families and “age-appropriate comprehensive education” instead.

Continued War

submitted by the United States show the attempts to replace SRHR with patriarchal, heteronormative, family-based language that excludes individual rights. These obstructions have among far-right populist groups that have incorporated opposition to SRHR into their political rhetoric and have found a powerful ally in the current US government. Globally, far-right populism has seen a resurgence in nationalism that  “traditional family values and gender roles.”

With the common EU position historically supporting SRHR in international forums, right-wing populist movements within the European Union in recent years have this position in UN negotiations. This is having for women, girls and members of the LGBTQI+ community, particularly in low and middle-income countries where health services are provided through global health assistance.

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy (MCP), also known as the Global Gag Rule, which prevents US global health assistance from being used to not only provide safe abortion services but also from going to organizations that simply impart information on abortion or refer patients to other providers. Since then, rates of unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion and maternal deaths . The MCP forms part of the politics of silencing the issue of abortion from the Trump administration which, to Louise Allen and Laura Shepherd, “must be read through the lens of the Trump Administrations continued war on women.” With the elections in the United States currently underway, President Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative who has “publicly opposed access to contraceptives and abortion services,” to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the US Supreme Court and is quickly trying to force her nomination through the Senate. Having already that she thinks Roe v. Wade, which ensures access to safe abortion services, was an “erroneous decision,” there is a risk that having another conservative judge on the Supreme Court could see it overturned.

Protection for the Unborn

However, domestic politics on abortion do not remain an issue in the United States alone as the Trump administration is using all methods of foreign policy at its disposal to wage its opposition to SRHR in international forums. It is an example of one county’s ability to influence policies and programs in other nations.

Even the global COVID-19 pandemic could not halt anti-SRHR activities. The United States voted against the UN General Assembly Omnibus Resolution on the pandemic, that one of the key objections was that it does “not accept references to sexual and reproductive health” and “sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights,” going on to declare that “T��� United States believes in legal protections for the unborn.” Early has also shown that some countries that have banned non-essential medical services during the pandemic have specifically included abortion. In , the minister for health stated that women who are seeking abortion services should use their time in lockdown to rethink their decision, while in , the ruling party tried to pass bills that would essentially ban abortion as well as sexual education.

This increasing global anti-SRHR agenda creates multiple concerns. The broader populist anti-SRHR agenda could continue even if there is a change in government in the US after the November election as opposition to women’s rights is already on the agenda of far-right governments. It could also mean that commitments that do not solely focus on SRHR may be prone to accept its omission in order to be passed. This could then lead to the absence of SRHR becoming a new normal, instead of the hard-fought-for package deal from the UN’s program of action.

The potential for watered-down SRHR language, or elimination of SRHR entirely, could reverse the progress of the ICPD, leading to a rise in maternal mortality and morbidity, as well as unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions worldwide.

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