Global Quickies: Women in Stadiums, Period Taboos in Sports, and Hair Salons Help Family Planning
JORDAN
“A gag order has been placed on a Jordanian writer who was arrested for posting a cartoon deemed offensive to Islam. […]The cartoon depicts God in paradise, being treated as a servant by an Arab man, who is in bed with two women and asking for wine.”
FRANCE
“A French court has refused to release a 68-year-old woman pardoned for murdering her husband after nearly 50 years of rape and violent, sparking a public outcry with some describing the ruling as “incomprehensible”.”
PERU
“On August 13, Lima became the site of a massive demonstration against the systemic gender-based violence of recent decades. More than 50,000 Peruvians, mainly women, swarmed the streets of the city in an unprecedented march in which they called for justice for the many Peruvian women who are habitual victims of gender violence, or worse, of judicial negligence.”
BRAZIL / CHINA
“A Swimmer’s ‘Period’ Comment Breaks Taboos In Sports — And In China. Fu Yuanhui, a Chinese swimmer at the Rio Olympics, made headlines this week for telling the world she was on her period.”
EGYPT (From Donna)
“Eight female Egyptian presenters told to lose weight or lose Jobs.”
GERMANY
“The German Interior Minister, Thomas de Maiziere, has called for a partial ban on the burka, a day after saying a full ban might not be constitutional.”
FRANCE
“The decision by a handful of French mayors to ban the Islamic burkini swimsuit has divided the country and shocked its neighbours, with critics seeing the prohibitions as profoundly discriminatory.”
BRAZIL / IRAN
“Olympic security personnel questioned a female Iranian volleyball fan when she showed up for a match holding a large sign and wearing a T-shirt that said “Let Iranian Women Enter Their Stadiums.””
GUINEA
“Guinea is set to expand its use of hair salons to promote urban family planning beyond the capital, even introducing it to tailors’ shops”
TURKEY
“Women’s rights groups, lawyers and doctors have condemned Turkey’s decision to introduce a mandatory chemical castration programme for convicted sex offenders, arguing the treatment does not address the underlying reasons for widespread violence against women, and that bodily punishment will instead lead to increased abuse.”
GIBRALTAR
“Gibraltar took a decisive step toward recognizing same-sex marriage on Monday when its government announced a draft bill to modify the British Overseas Territory’s Civil Marriage Act. The bill will now go before parliament, which will approve the change to the law in six-weeks, as required by the Constitution.”
Featured image: #NiUnaMenos (not one less), art by Diana Solis for Peru’s march against gender violence
I was born and raised in Peru and it was encouraging to see the vast majority of my FB feed vehemently supporting #niunamenos, although I did see some knuckleheads “like” superficially apparently supportive stuff like some idiot telling people (mostly women obviously) that “if you go tomorrow to the #niunamenos demonstration, I hope you delete reguetón from your Spotify playlists” (it’s a music genre whose songs often are misogynistic).
And of course, there was just a bit of pushback identical to the BLM pushback. “ALL violence is bad” and of course a page cropped up: “Nadie menos” which is “no one less” (note gender neutrality; the “una” in “ni una menos” refers to women specifically, so “not one less” referred in the article above misses that in translation). I can’t find the page right now, it’s probably deleted, but posts with the hashtag #nadiemenos are there, and I see there’s an event. Didn’t have too many likes though, and from their posts they were obviously vehemently anti-feminist. A lot of them were religious themed (catholic of course), and trying to coopt the “violence against ANYONE is bad” to also include fetuses (of course).