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The Non-Religious State in Brazil

In Brazil, abortion is a crime not only for the doctor who performs it but also for women having the surgery. It’s not a crime for men who got these women pregnant and often run away. The Brazilian government is supposed to be non-religious where political decisions are not supposed to be guided by religious values and beliefs. When representatives who discuss abortion issues by debating the notion of “life” according to Christian values and therefore as a gift to be preserved no matter what, they’re in fact being unconstitutional. In Brazil, we do not have a non-religious culture and a State that works to improve citizen’s lives. This is somewhat recent in Brazilian history. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Darcy Ribeiro, two important Brazilian sociologists, have described in their works how the old colonialist plantation mind shaped Brazilian political culture. We even had a president who used to openly say: “To my friends, everything. To the enemies, the law.”

A bit of theory

Political theory, according to sociologists, political scientists and philosophers, says that the State is a structure created to maintain a certain ideology. It is a domination structure where a certain social group rules over others. It’s easy to prove that when we look at who’s ruling the State: men who are white and usually from families who have had money for centuries. Both sociologists Louis Althusser and Pierre Bourdieu have described how education, religion and other social institutions work to keep things working in this domination structure. Read the rest of this entry →

Image via www.trans-aide.com

The discussion about the nature of gender — and what makes someone a man, a woman or someone outside the binary system — is ongoing, and it’s unlikely that one true, definitive consensus will be reached any time soon. Is gender essentialist? Is gender constructed? Is a woman defined by her biology, or the identity of her innate inner self, or her choice of clothing, or her lived experience as a woman?

Or is a woman defined by her breast size?

Delphine Ravisé-Giard, a member of the French Air Force, transitioned in 2007. Upon her transition, the French military quickly and easily changed her documentation to reflect her identity as a woman. The civil court system, however, is making her legal transition infinitely more challenging. After the Ministry of Justice overturned a ruling requiring Ravisé-Giard to undergo sex reassignment surgery, a court has now required her to permanently enhance the size of her breasts.

Read the rest of this entry →

Photo/ boston.com

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke once described their song “Fitter, Happier” as a checklist of slogans for the ’90s. If it was re-written for the modern mom, the checklist might look something like this (you’ll have to imagine the computerized voice on your own): Read the rest of this entry →

This post is a part of the Blog for IWD BLOG

For Blog for International Women’s Day, we’ve asked you to describe a person or event that has helped to fight for equal rights around the world. At GAB we decided to answer our own question, and each editor came up with her/his own Global Feminist Profile.

As some of you may know, a Global Feminist Profile [GFP] is a monthly column on Gender Across Borders that highlights feminist leaders all over the world who are creating change and empowering their countrywomen to demand equality.  GFPs run on the third Monday of each month. Some previous Global Feminist Profiles have been: Audacia Ray, Marta Lamas, and Dr. Shershah Syed, to name a few. You can look at the complete archives of the Global Feminist Profiles by clicking here.

And without further ado, I give you the mini-Global Feminist Profiles from each of the GAB editors:

Dr. Lee Ae-ran, profile by Erin Rickard

Dr. Lee Ae-ran’s activist pursuits have risen out of her early experience with political oppression. Dr. Lee was born in North Korea, and when she was 11 years old she and her family were imprisoned in a labor camp. After suffering eight years of abuse she was released, and she went on to earn a college degree and eventually fled to South Korea. She has founded several aid organizations for North Korean refugees, including the Hana Defector Women’s Organization that provides women with education and child care; the North Korea Traditional Culinary and Culture Institute which trains women in culinary and entrepreneurial skills; and the Global Leadership Scholarship Program for students. Dr. Lee is one of this year’s recipients of the US State Department’s annual International Women of Courage Awards.

Hélène Cixous, profile by Kyle Bachan

Hélène Cixous is a French feminist writer, poet and playwright. With over seventy works detailing the relationship between sexuality and language, she is considered one of the mothers of poststructuralist feminist theory. Hélène’s body of work is considered to be a wealth of self-liberation, for herself, and for all others. She founded the first centre for women’s studies in Europe at the University of Paris VIII, and still teaches there today.

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, profile by Emily Heroy

Chandra Talpade Mohanty, originally from Mumbai, India and now resides in the U.S., became influential after her essay “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” published in 1986 by Duke University Press. For me personally, this essay changed my outlook on what international feminism meant. Specifically, she breaks down the structure of the “Third World Woman,” and how  oppression is very diverse, from country to country and from culture to culture. Mohanty writes about this subject further in a book of essays entitled Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Mohanty is currently the department chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. Read the rest of this entry →

Cover of Water the Moon by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

Fiona Sze-Lorrain was born in Singapore and grew up with a multitude of cultural influences which appear in the poems of Water the Moon. The title of this collection brings together two potent feminine symbols but, just as the moon leaves shadows, it leaves the reader with questions. Who is to bring water the moon and to what end? Can anything grow on that lunar surface? Is the title a command? A dream?

At least some of these questions appear to be answered early in the first section in the poem “My Grandmother Waters the Moon”, a poem which elevates the art of making mooncakes to the same importance as rebellions and battles. This ennobling challenges the devaluation of traditional women’s work yet coming as it does in a chapter entitled “Biography of Hunger” it seems only reasonable. The hungry think mostly of food, after all. In “Shoebox Filled with Mao Buttons” Sze-Lorrain mentions that “[s]tudents bartered [these pins] for pork buns, / a professor swallowed two to commit suicide.” The students use the buttons to fulfill a hunger, the professor to end hungers that could not be fulfilled. We never learn what drove the professor to that extreme. The poem is more impressionistic, more about responses than the atrocities to which the subjects respond. Similarly, in “Tibet” we read of a horrific escape, of people dying in migration: why they must flee we are not told. Sze-Lorrain expects readers to do their own research into the history and with her agonizing descriptions in powerful, sometimes contrastingly beautiful, language she gives us every reason to do so. Read the rest of this entry →

Roman Polanski, who admitted to raping a 13-year old girl (no, he didn’t call it rape, but I refuse to say he had sex with her, since that would require him being with a partner who could and did consent) but fled the US before he could be sentenced, was arrested by Swiss police as he entered the country on his way to the Zurich Film Festival. To read the news reports, however, you would think that his arrest was the injustice, rather than his crime, was the injustice. As usual, when a wealthy man is held accountable for such crimes, rape apologism comes to the fore.

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The burqa is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic. -French president Nicolas Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France

France prides itself on secularism, a principle they call laïcité, which implies the absence of religious involvement in government affairs and vice versa.  France has the highest Muslim population in western Europe (8-9.6% of the total population) and continues to have a huge divide between the Muslims and non-Muslims in their country. French president Nicolas Sarkozy gave a speech during a special session of parliament in Versailles this morning to support the effort to banning of the burqa in public. Read the rest of this entry →

Jane Campion is one of the most renowned film directors working today. In 1993, she won the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or for her film The Piano – and to this day, she is the only female director to have won that prize.

Last week, Campion was back at Cannes, to screen her new film, Bright Star. While at the festival, she made comments about her beliefs as to why there aren’t more high-profile female filmmakers. Specifically, she argued that women may not be emotionally strong enough to handle such competition with men.

From The Guardian:

“I don’t think women grow up with the world of criticism that men grow up with,” said Campion, 55. “It is quite harsh when they experience the world of film-making and have to develop tough skins. But they must put on their coats of armour and get going because we need them.”

Read the rest of this entry →