On 17th January 2018 Kristina Harrison addressed the second Woman’s Place meeting in Manchester, following is a transcript of her speech, which is also available on YouTube.
Posts Tagged ‘Feminism’
Tariq Ramadan, admits to “Lying” in defending himself against Rape Allegations.
Tariq Ramadan” «Désolé pour ma ‘violence’»: Sorry for my ‘violence’.(le Soir)
On the 25th of July prominent figures backed this campaign for Islamist Scholar Tariq Ramandan.
We wish to remind the country that affirmed the inalienability of human rights and equality, the importance of respecting principles that ensure the integrity of French justice.”
The letter also expresses deep concern with the inhuman treatment that Tariq Ramadan has been subject to at the hands of French justice.
The signatories conclude by asking, “We ask our French friends: should it truly come to this?
They included:
Ken Loach, UK, Dr Norman Finkelstein, USA, Noam Chomsky, USA, Peter Oborne, London, UK, The Rt Revd Dr Rowan Williams, Cambridge, UK, Yvonne Ridley, Scotland, UK, Baroness Uddin, Charles Taylor, Montreal, Canada, Houria Bouteldja, Paris, France, Karen Armstrong, London, UK.
Now Ramadan has changed his story and admitted to lying.
France 24.
Ramadan, a well-known TV commentator, has strongly denied accusations that he raped the women in hotel rooms as an attempted smear by his opponents.
His lawyer Emmanuel Marsigny said the Swiss academic had changed his account of what happened on the basis of text messages that have emerged between him and his two accusers.
The messages “show that the plaintiffs lied and that the sexual encounters were wanted, consensual and even sought again afterwards”, Marsigny said.
The unearthing of these messages “has allowed him to acknowledge that he had sexual relations” with the women, Marsigny said.
Ramadan, accused of raping the women in 2009 and 2012, has been in custody since February 2.
He previously insisted he had no sexual contact with his two accusers, feminist activist Henda Ayari and a disabled woman known in media reports as “Christelle”.
Ramadan was a professor at Oxford University until he was forced to take leave when the rape allegations surfaced at the height of the “Me Too” movement late last year.
The married father of four, whose grandfather founded Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, has repeatedly sought bail arguing that being in prison is making it difficult to treat his multiple sclerosis.
The courts have so far rejected his requests, ruling that he can receive adequate treatment in the prison hospital at Fresnes in the southern Paris suburbs.
Last month a computer expert working on the investigation retrieved 399 text messages between Ramadan and Christelle, whom he is accused of raping in a Lyon hotel room in 2009.
The text messages detailed his violent sexual fantasies ahead of the alleged attack.
Afterwards, the records show that he wrote to her: “I sensed your unease… apologies for my ‘violence’.”
Ramadan previously claimed he was involved in a “game of seduction” with Christelle, online and on the telephone.
But he said their only face-to-face contact was a drink in the hotel bar, describing her as a “compulsive liar”.
Ramadan’s lawyers have also provided details of his exchanges with Ayari, whom he is accused of raping in a Paris hotel in 2012.
The New Straits Times adds,
Ramadan said he had “relations akin to sex games of the submissive-dominant kind, but always in a consensual and knowing way,” his lawyer said.
“It has been one year now that Mr Ramadan’s defendants have been playing tricks to save his cause. But the truth is that he lied from the beginning of this case by denying he had sexual relations and that it took one year to confess,” Jonas Haddad, a lawyer for the other plantiff, Henda Ayari, told Reuters.
“Will it take him another year to confess the rest?” he said.
Ramadan’s lawyer said a series of text messages found in the two women’s mobile phones showed the relations were consensual. He filed a request for Ramadan, in custody since he was notified of the French investigation on February 2, to be freed.
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Criticising the burqa means lining up with racists – says SWP.
Defiant woman rips off her black burqa after ISIS were driven away. (Raqqa October. 2017)
The fall out from Boris Johnson’s comments on the Burka continues.
Nobody doubts that they have given the wink to the far-right and legitimised prejudiced diatribes against ‘Muslims’.
But there is also a pro-body veil reaction from some quarters.
Liberal people who (as a Facebook friend in the US remarks) are up in arms about the world imagined in The Handmaid’s Tale. But often the same individuals give weight to the idea that the religious obligations inflicted on women by this interpretation of Islam, are a choice to be celebrated.
There is talk – I thought it remained safely relegated to distant memories of courses on ‘theory’ – about the way it may free the female shape from the ‘male gaze’.
As if Islamic Law is about anything other than the behaviour of the believers in the sight of god enforced through violence if need be.
Not surprisingly the British SWP, with its long history of complicity with Islamism, has bent to this wind.
They are not trying to shout down criticisms of the burqa by linking them to the far-right.
Why criticising the burqa means lining up with racists
Boris Johnson’s attack on the burqa has left some liberals with a problem.
The article begins with this bold assertion:
“when supposed progressives criticise the burqa, it gives more credibility to the more overt Islamophobes.”
It then jumps to this statement,
Some liberals see the burqa as a reflection of sexist ideas.
They assume that women are pushed to cover themselves because female flesh has been deemed dirty or too exciting to men.
Of course there will be some Muslims who think this. But the idea is hardly Islamic—it’s deeply rooted in Western capitalist societies.
So that’s all right then.
Or not.
Think of rape trials where women are told they were “asking for it” because of what they wore. Or the Canadian cop who said that women should “avoid dressing like sluts” to escape sexual assault.
The SWP claims that
Many liberals, and right wingers, claim they want to “liberate” oppressed Muslim women who they assume have been forced to cover up.
Are they alone.
Apparently not:
We should oppose women being forced to wear coverings. And we should stand with the women in Iran who have defied the state and removed their hijabs in public, imprisoned as a result.
This is what the SWP said about these protests (4th of June):
Women are resisting the compulsory wearing of the headscarf—which is another very good thing happening at the same time.
Even women who want to wear it are saying it should be the right of women to choose.
As the left we have to support the women fighting back, and not leave the issue to the pro-imperialist right.
The problem is that the issue grabs attention in the West because it resonates with the Islamophobic representations of Iran.
The issue is being hijacked by Islamophobia by some in the media in the West.
End of story for the SWP until this week.
But its not Islam that’s at fault
But it isn’t true that Islam forces women to cover themselves. Like other religions, Islam suggests that men and women dress “modestly”. What this means is open to interpretation, which is why different Muslim women choose to wear different coverings, or none at all.
Women often say they choose to wear coverings to feel closer to Allah. It’s patronising to assume that every women who wears a hijab, niqab or burka has been told to do so by a man.
So they do it for Allah.
If religion is not a problem what is?
This also treats the main source of oppression facing Muslim women as Muslim men. In fact, the main oppressor of Muslim women is the state.
The state is of course the principal form of oppression for ‘women’: no doubt the ‘state’ has a special function in oppressing women……
Apart from wishing away decades of feminist debate about patriarchy, the family, and the old saying that the “personal is political’,
The confusion reaches its apex in confusing state legislation about the full body veil, ‘forcing’ women to give up the ” veils, headscarves or burqas with the idea that criticising the burka is to “line up with racists”.
Socialists should defend a woman’s right to choose what she wears. That includes the right to wear a burqa—and the right not to wear one.
Forcing Muslim women to give up wearing veils, headscarves or burqas isn’t liberating, just as encouraging women to wear skimpy clothes isn’t. Instead it’s just another form of judging women on their appearance and dress, and taking control and choice away from them.
Is siding with the legislation, in say France, when it was backed by all the political parties at the time, the same as being on the same side as the ‘far right’?
Is ‘forcing’ people to not wear the oppressive full-body veil the same as “criticism”?
This argument gets nowhere.
Rather than point out that the SEP feels no compunction about lining up with the far-right over Brexit the issue at hand should be taken seriously.
This is a ‘liberal’ view of a Muslim woman the SWP and others are trying to shut up.
Boris Has Made it Almost Impossible for Muslims to Critique Veiling.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
In my view, scarves, cloaks and masks symbolise the negation of the female form, female inferiority and menace, and most troublingly, a wilful distancing from other humans in the public space.
One of Britain’s foremost scholars Ziauddin Sardar, has this to say on the controversial subject: “In a total perversion of Qur’anic advice, dressing modestly has been interpreted as dressing like a nun, covered from head to foot, showing only a woman’s face (in some circles only the eyes), wrists and feet.”
Females thus accept the burden of modesty while men do not, though both have this obligation. Millions of Muslim women do not submit to these pressures. One of them, a senior TV producer unloaded her frustrations in an email: “We came here to get away from these oppressive expectations. Britain offered hope, a place where you were protected by the law, could be educated, go out, be free. “You could make your own decisions, strive to be equal to men.
Now this freedom is crumbling away because of a few shouty, veiled women. Our voice remains unheard.”
She is right. Vast numbers of white Britons give us their support when most we need it. They did this week. We Muslims need to give a little too – abandon regressive customs and integrate for the greater good and our survival. With the hard right marching again across Europe, Muslims face an existential threat. This is no time for cultural and religious obstinacy.
These are her views (2015) in more depth: As a Muslim woman, I see the veil as a rejection of progressive values.
They are much more materialist and historically rooted than airy abstractions about the ‘state’.
Muslim feminists of the past critiqued and repudiated the veil. One of them was a man, Qasim Amin, an Egyptian judge and philosopher, who in 1899 wrote The Liberation of Women.He was the John Stuart Mill of the Arab world. Huda Shaarawi set up the Egyptian women’s union in the early 1920s. One day in 1923, as she disembarked from a train in Cairo, she threw off her veil and claimed her right to be visible. Educated Iranian women started feminist magazines and campaigned against the veil around the same time. These pioneers have been written out of history or are dismissed as western stooges by some contemporary Muslim intellectuals.
After the transformative 60s, Muslim feminists resumed the fight for equality. European rule was over. It was time. The Moroccan academic Fatema Mernissi, Egypt’s Nawal El Saadawi and the Pakistani scholar Riffat Hassan all argued for female emancipation. They rightly saw the veil as a a tool and symbol of oppression and subservience. Mernissi’s Beyond the Veil ( 1975) is a classic text. So too El Saadawi’s The Hidden Face of Eve (1975). But more conservative Islamic tenets have taken over lands, communities, families, heads and hearts.
The promise of this version is a return to certainties and “purity” of belief, a mission backed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Deobandi revivalists, funded by Arab money, now run more mosques in Britain than any other Muslim subgroup. Women are told not to travel without male relatives, not to work, to be subservient, to veil. This movement began as a reaction against the Indian raj and mutated into a fundamentalist creed. Today their pushback against “cultural imperialism” appeals to many alienated young Muslims. And, in part, it explains the growing popularity of the hijab, jilbab and full veil .
But in the Qur’an, the veil is mostly used metaphorically to describe barriers between good and bad, believers and nonbelievers. In two verses, women are told to lower their gaze, and to cover their private parts and bosoms. Men are also instructed to lower their gaze, and to dress modestly. One verse commands the women in the prophet’s family to fully veil, partly to protect them from enemies and supplicants.
Sahar Amer, associate professor at the University of North Carolina, has studied these sacred injunctions: “[Nowhere] is the hijab used to describe, let alone prescribe, the necessity for Muslim women to wear a headscarf or any other pieces of clothing often seen covering women in Islamic countries today. Even after reading those passages dealing with the female dress code, one continues to wonder what exactly the hijab is: is it a simple scarf? A purdah? A chador? Or something else? Which parts of the body exactly is it supposed to cover? Just the hair? The hair and neck? The arms? Hands? Feet? Face? Eyes?”
All religions cast women as sinners and temptresses. Conservative Islam has revived the slander for our times
Veils, in truth, predate Islam. Zoroastrian and Byzantine upper-class ladies wore them to keep aloof from the hoi polloi. When Islam’s armies first reached Persia, they were shocked at this snobbery; then they adopted the custom they loathed; the control of women was hard-wired into their psyches.
All religions cast women as sinners and temptresses. Conservative Islam has revived the slander for our times. Women have to be sequestered or contained lest they raise male lust and cause public disorder. Some young Muslim women argue that veils liberate them from a modern culture that objectifies and sexualises females. That argument is appealing; but if credible, why would so many hijabis dress in tight jeans and clinging tops, and why would so many Muslim women flock to have liposuction or breast enhancements?
It is complicated: veils for me represent both religious arrogance and subjugation; they both desexualise and fervidly sexualise. Women are primarily seen as sexual creatures whose hair and bodies incite desire and disorder in the public space. The claim that veils protect women from lasciviousness and disrespect carries an element of self-deception. I have been at graduation ceremonies where shrouded female students have refused to shake the hand of the chancellor. Veiled women have provoked confrontations over their right to wear veils, in courts, at schools and in colleges and workplaces. But I regard their victories as a rejection of social compromise.
Moroccan feminist activist, Ibtissam Lachgar, arrested for Public Drinking and Disturbing Order.
Solidarity with Ibtissam Lachgar!
ABAT, Morocco (AP) — A prominent Moroccan feminist activist has been arrested for alleged public drinking and disturbance of order, in what her association called an attempt to quash its campaigning for abortion access and LGBT rights.
An online campaign was launched soon after Ibtissam Lachgar’s arrest Friday in Rabat, demanding her release.
Lachgar’s group Alternative Movement for Individual Freedoms, or MALI, said in a statement that “we strongly condemn these arbitrary arrests and intimidation of members of the movement.”
Hours earlier, MALI criticized the Health Ministry in a press release for banning sales of a drug used to induce abortion. The group also created an online platform to provide women with abortion pills.
Women who intentionally attempt or undergo abortion in Morocco face up to two years in prison and a $50 fine.
Mouvement Alternatif pour les Libertés Individuelles – Maroc
(from Face Book)
Betty Ibtissame Lachgar was assaulted in town, and unjustly detained at the police station while she wanted to file a complaint against her attackers ” with knives ‘: change of police stations, interrogations, degrading situation in the jails…
According to Betty’s family and friends, she’s supposed to be out in the morning to get past the da.
If Betty was to be a victim of violence, human rights violations or humiliation during her detention, the Moroccan state will be held in full responsibility by Mali, such violence will be prosecuted.
My house was smiling to thank you for being assaulted in the ancient city of Rabat, and was unjustly detained at the police station while she wanted to file a complaint against her attackers “with knives”: changing police stations, interrogations and humiliating situation at the theoretical guard.
According to Betty’s family and friends, you’re supposed to come out tomorrow morning to go to the d.a.
If Betty is a victim of violence, human rights violations or humiliation during her detention, the Moroccan state will be fully responsible by ” Mali and this violence will be pursued legally.
She has now been released.
There is a ‘debate’ about the MALI including allegations that they have been “provocative”.
That is, they have organised a campaign about the dramatic position of Moroccan women who wish to have an abortion and have to resort to clandestine methods. The movement is also charged with “muscular” activism having held a picnic in the month of Ramadan, a ‘kiss in’ to support two adolescents charged with embracing in public, backing gay rights and supporting Femen.
Ibtissam Lachgar alleges that before her arrest she and a friend were threatened by a group of young men for their “libertarian” lifestyle and, in the process of complaining to the local police, she was again menaced and insulted before finding out, later, that charges against her had been made. (Here)
Huffington Post reports on this:
As Controversy Rages on Boris Johnson, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Backer of the Burqa Ban, is invited to Momentum Labour Fringe.
‘Disparition’ by Yemeni photographer Boushra al-Moutawakel.
Boris Johnson should be kicked out of Conservative party for burka comments, Muslim peer demands.
Plenty of people have commented on the words of former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, the Conservative Party’s relationship to Islam, not to mention those who’ve joined in, with glee at the opportunity to attack the prejudices revealed amongst the Tories and their supporters.
In a different vein I began writing on the wider European and international context of the controversy this morning.
Johnson may speak for a ‘liberal’ attitude peppered with a few rude words (personally I find his handling of the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe case, prisoner of the Islamic Republic of Iran far far worse).
An obvious point to begin with is that that the Danish Social Democrats, Socialdemokraterne, backed the public ban on the burqa,
“The Liberal, Conservative and Danish People’s parties all voted in favour of the bill, as did the opposition Social Democrats with the exception of MP Mette Gjerskov, thereby securing the majority.” The Local.
The full law needs looking at it:
Another issue would be the silence of most of the people now shouting about Johnson faced with this: (March 2018): Iranian woman who removed headscarf jailed for two years. “Prosecutor says woman took off obligatory hijab in Tehran street to ‘encourage corruption’.”
But, to return to the issue of the burqa in general, France, the best known secular country, has, with the support of many sections of the left, prohibited the full face veil since 2011 (Loi interdisant la dissimulation du visage dans l’espace public.) The bill was passed by the National Assembly by a vote of 335–1.
Amongst the left who backed the ban was Jean-luc Mélenchon, vocal in his enthusiasm for Laïcité, secularism.
It did not take long to draw some connections here, and the Spectator had got there before me:
Man who supported a burka ban to speak at Corbynista festival
Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The French socialist veteran who ‘inspired the European left with his radical campaign for the presidency in 2017’ will be speaking to a Momentum-heavy crowd at the event. And what is his view on Muslim dress? Well, it turns out he has advocated a full face veil ban, as well as stating that the burkini was ‘a provocation’ – and the ‘fruit of a Salafist religious offensive’:
‘It is not impossible or contrary to public freedoms and fundamental rights to legislate on dress practices if the defence of public order and human dignity justifies it. The complete concealment of the face is problematic from this dual point of view. It prevents any recognition of the persons concerned, which disturbs public order. And it also deprives them of social existence and undermines their physical and moral integrity which puts into question the dignity of the human person. It is therefore on this double basis that the law could affirm the obligation to have the face discovered in all public places.’
The Spectator gives no source for this quote but it a pithy and accurate summary of the views of the leader of La France insoumise (LFI).
Here is the site of The World Transformed 2018.
As a service to those attending the rally here are Some further indications of his stand:
From Tendance Coatesy: (2016).
Jean-Luc Mélenchon on the Burkini : “C’est une provocation”.
Dans Le Monde d’aujourd’hui, JLM condamne les “militantes provocatrices en burkini”. Michelle Guerci.
«L’instrumentalisation communautariste du corps des femmes est odieuse. C’est un affichage militant, mais quand on est l’objet d’une provocation, mieux vaut ne pas se précipiter dedans […] La masse des musulmans est excédée par une histoire qui les ridiculise. Valls a eu tort d’en rajouter. »
The ‘communitarian’ * exploitation of women’s bodies is vile. It’s a militant badge, but even so when we are the target of a provocation the best thing to do is not to get involved…The majority of Muslims are frustrated by this row, which makes them look ridiculous. Valls (Prime Minister) is wrong to add to it.
Il ressort de cette interview que JLM, ne condamne ni les maires qui ont pris ces arrêtés, ni Manuel Valls qui les a soutenus, ni la droite sarkoziste qui a orchestré cette campagne, ni le gouvernement qui laisse faire (3), mais des femmes accusées d’instrumentaliser leur propre corps ou de l’être par leurs maris, pères, cousins… Bref la fameuse COMMUNAUTE.
It is apparent in this interview that JLM neither condemns the Mayors who have instituted these by-laws, nor Manuel Valls (Prime Minister) who backs them, nor the (ex-President) Sarkozy’s right-wing which has orchestrated the campaign, nor the the government which has allowed this to happen, but the women involved, who have used their own bodies, or have been ‘used’ by their husbands, their fathers, their cousins…to put it simply, the famous “community”.
Le burkini est le fruit d’une offensive religieuse salafiste qui ne concerne qu’une partie de l’islam […] La question politique à résoudre reste celle du combat des femmes pour accéder librement à l’espace public.
The burkini is the product of a Salafist religious offensive which only affects a part of Islam….There still remains the political issue of women’s struggle for free access to the public sphere.
Michelle Guerci points out that the Burkini is in fact a relatively new phenomenon, which would itself be prohibited under the rule of severe Wahhabist codes.
******
When the law banning the bukha was first debated in 2010 this post was on Tendance Coatesy.
French Left Leader Backs Secular Freedom Against Religious Garb.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Here
On proposals to ban the Burka.
What is wrong with the Burka (voile intégral) ? “D’abord parce qu’il est obscène.”
To start with it’s obscene.
“Si l’objet de la nouvelle loi est bien de garantir la liberté, l’égalité et la dignité de toutes les femmes qui vivent sur notre territoire, d’autres mesures seraient opportunes dans ce cadre.
If the object of the new law is to guarantee freedom, equality and dignity of all women who live in our land, there are other measures which should be taken within this structure.
The Parliametary Left should amend the law (he is a Senator).
The aim should be to extend secularism.
It is time to impose the principle of ‘mixing’ (that is women and men should allowed to be together) in all public places. Today this principle is not guaranteed by law, even in schools.
For example, one cannot accept the rule that reserves certain hours in swimming pools for one gender. Or that certain types of sport should be reserved for one gender.
Finally, if the legislators are really coherent they should extend secularism to French overseas territories and to Alsace Moselle (where there is still recognition of religion as part of the state and the education system).
The LFI chef has not dropped his hostile views on Islamic ‘modest’ dress, as can be seen in this furious attack on his opinions on the veil in 2017.
Sur la question du voile, les propos choquants de Jean-Luc Mélenchon dans « L’émission politique »
During the 2017 Presidential elections the (now) Candidate for the Élysée emphasised his backing for banning the burka (voile intégral).
And in May 2018 the LFI leader criticised the fact that the new leader of the student union Unef, Maryam Pougetoux,, who has a veil, comparing it to himself advertising religion by wearing an enormous cross.
Many people will be uncomfortable with legislation on the issue of the face-veil, the burqa.
And with La France insoumise’s vision of a top-down administered secularism.
But from that to go and speak of this as if it’s simply a fashion choice, or worse, ‘celebrating’ it as a sign of diversity, is both insulting and reactionary.
The blood-stained tyrannies which have enforced this dress remind us that it is not, in the view of some currents of Islam, a ‘choice’ but an obligation.
As Terri Murray has put it, Why feminists should oppose the burqa.
The claim that covering yourself up in public is an empowering choice insults the intelligence and dignity of women everywhere, just as the theological claim that the burqa is a necessary defence against predatory male sexuality insults Muslim men insofar as it treats them as fundamentally incapable of responsibility for their sexual behaviour.
The reason Western feminists (male or female) object to seeing women in burqas is not that we can’t tolerate diversity, but that the burqa is a symbol of patriarchal Islam’s intolerance of dissent and desire to contain and repress female sexuality.
Without challenging the burqa we cannot challenge the oppressions it is bound up with.
At the minimum it is hard to disagree than nobody in a public function should enforce their religious ideas of “Purity” and sexual segregation through the display of this oppressive costume.
Marie Laguerre on Street Harasser’s Slap “I can’t keep quiet and we mustn’t stay silent'”.
Harcelée dans la rue, elle publie la vidéo de son aagression (Le Monde)
Paris prosecutors opened an investigation Monday after a young woman was assaulted by a street harasser for telling him to stop, in full view of a terrace full of people and CCTV cameras in Paris’s 19th arrondissement.
This outrage has been all over the francophone media – with good reason.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation Monday after a young woman lodged a complaint against a street harasser who hit her in the face after she told him to stop making obscene remarks.
The victim obtained a CCTV video of the incident that has since gone viral on social media.
The investigation involves sexual harassment and violence with a weapon after he threw an ashtray at the victim, resulting in an injury that will cause her to miss some work, French media reported.
Marie Laguerre, 22, posted footage of the incident on her Facebook page, describing how the man launched a series of “humiliating” comments coupled with whistles and explicit language as she was on her way home in northeastern Paris. (1)
So I let out a, “Shut up!” while making my way,” she wrote. “Because I do not tolerate this type of behaviour. I cannot keep silent and we must not be silent.”
But “this man didn’t like that”, she continued, explaining that he first threw an ashtray at her before following her and then “hitting her in the face in the street, in broad daylight, in front of dozens of witnesses”.
Her Facebook post was accompanied by the video surveillance from the bar in front of which the incident took place. The video has so far been retweeted hundreds of times and the public video on Facebook has received hundreds of comments.
The French government announced in March that sexual harassment on French streets or in public transport will soon be punishable by an on-the-spot fine of €90. In announcing the measure, a government spokesman cited a 2016 survey that found 87 percent of women who use public transport had experienced harassment such as wolf whistles or comments on their appearance, intrusive staring or someone pressing up against them.
Only 2 percent of these women went so far as to file a police complaint, although in more than 85 percent of cases at least one witness was present.
The BBC has just reported on this:
France shocked by video of woman being slapped by harasser
Everyone at the cafe had found her response normal, she said, and the owner gave her the video to help catch the attacker. It has now been viewed more than a million times.
Ms Laguerre said fighting back against such aggression was hard, but all women were affected by it and it was time to say stop. “I can’t keep quiet and we mustn’t stay silent,” she wrote on Facebook.
(1)”Hier soir, alors que je rentrais chez moi, vers le Boulevard de la Villette dans le 19ème arrondissement à Paris, j’ai croisé un homme.
Il s’est permis de m’adresser des bruits/commentaires/sifflements/coup de langue sales, de manière humiliante et provocante à mon passage.
Pas de chance, c’était pas le premier de la journée et j’étais fatiguée. J’ai donc lâché un “ta gueule” en traçant ma route. Car je ne tolère pas ce genre de comportement. Je ne peux pas me taire et nous ne devons plus nous taire.
Ça n’a pas plu à cet homme. Après m’avoir jeté un cendrier dessus, il est revenu sur ses pas et m’a suivi dans la rue.
Il m’a frappé au visage, en pleine rue, en pleine journée, devant des dizaines de témoins.
J’ai porté plainte.
Ce n’est pas le seul. Le harcèlement c’est au quotidien. Ces hommes qui se croient tout permis dans la rue, qui se permettent de nous humilier et qui ne supportent pas qu’on s’en offusque, c’est inadmissible. Il est temps que ce genre de comportement CESSE.
#NousToutes
The reason why the video has been so widely shared can be see immediately.
Now in English:
While Marie Laguerre has received enormous support, some remark on the passivity of witnesses (a dubious point for reasons too obvious to cite):
Iranian Islamist Regime Cracks Down on Women Dancing.
Islamist Bigots Crack Down on Unveiled Dancing Women.
Woman arrested in Iran over Instagram video of her dancing
Guardian. Saeed Kamali Dehghan Iran correspondent.
Arrests of app users including Maedeh Hojabri after posting videos prompt outrage.
Iran has arrested a number of people over videos that were posted on Instagram, including a young woman who filmed herself dancing to music.
According to activists, Maedeh Hojabri was one of a number of users behind popular Instagram accounts who have been arrested. The identities of the other detainees have not been confirmed.
Her account, which has been suspended, was reported to have had more than 600,000 followers.
Hojabri has since appeared on a state television programme with other detainees, in which she and others made what activists say were forced confessions, a tactic often used by Iranian authorities.
State TV showed a young woman, her face blurred, crying and shaking while describing her motivation for producing the videos.
“It wasn’t for attracting attention,” she said. “I had some followers and these videos were for them. I did not have any intention to encourage others doing the same … I didn’t work with a team, I received no training. I only do gymnastics.”
Little is known about Hojabri’s personal life, or which city in Iran she is from, but since her arrest her videos have been shared by hundreds of people, giving her a reach beyond her account.
They appear to have often been taken using a camera in her bedroom while she danced to western pop and rap music without wearing a hijab, which is required in public.
Just in case anybody had forgotten the everyday religious tyranny that the Iranian Islamist regime shackles its people with.
But…
Iranians Mock Clerics After Teen Girl Arrested Over Instagram Dancing
Iranian women post video of themselves dancing in public after Maedeh Hojabri, 18, arrested for videos in which she appeared without compulsory headscarf
https://twitter.com/AlinejadMasih/status/1015641765272084480
Solidarity.
Labour Controversy over Gender Recognition.
Activists divide on issues such as trans women on all-female shortlists.
A veteran feminist and opponent of government plans to streamline how people can legally change their gender aims to set up a “new women’s liberation movement” to lobby a future Labour government.
Ruth Serwotka, convener of the Socialist Feminist Network, said she and others on the left had been “frozen out” of voicing their concerns to the party leadership about what they believe would be the impact of the government’s proposed Gender Recognition Act. The act would make it easier for people to self-declare their gender without having to be assessed by clinicians.
Nearly 500 people from Labour, the Greens, the Women’s Equality party and trade unions attended the latest meeting of the group, which took place in London at a location that was kept secret because of what the group alleges is intimidation by trans activists.
I think that in time there will be an impact on Labour’s support among women and trust in the party from women,” said Serwotka.
Further meetings are planned around the country, she said, and will lead to the establishment of “a new women’s liberation movement” later this year.
“It will talk about wider issues than just transgender issues and really go back to the founding principles of the women’s liberation movement, look at whether they are fit for purpose, and consider what any new founding principles might look like. We want to do that because we certainly want to be able to influence a Labour government.”
The campaign by Serwotka and other feminists comes against the backdrop of divisions in Labour over whether transgender women can be included on all-women shortlists for parliamentary seats. The party is embarking on a consultation after confirming they are welcome to stand without a gender recognition certificate.
Factions in the bitter split had both been encouraging supporters to join the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, which met in central London.
Rest of article via link above.
Leading members of hard left group the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy are set for a showdown at its AGM this Saturday in a bitter dispute over the status of trans people.
CLPD executive member Jennifer James sparked the row by launching a campaign to ban trans women from all-women shortlists, leading to her suspension from the Labour Party. Now James, who has spoken alongside Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott at a fringe event, is pushing for her own proposals on Labour’s approach to trans people to be officially adopted by the CLPD at its AGM this Saturday 3rd March.
The acrimonious row has seen James threaten opponents saying “say it to my face one time and you’ll find out”, while a supporter of hers burned a copy of Owen Jones’ book following statements of support for trans women in Labour.
I am still absolutely fuming after reading this below – the attacks against comrade Pilgrim Tucker.
Pilgrim is one of the best, most respected, activists and writers in the UK today.
In the past few weeks I have been called trash, disgusting, despicable, f**ing scum, compared to a Nazi, a white supremacist, and a supporter of apartheid South Africa. I have had the insults ‘TERF’ (trans exclusionary radical feminist), transphobe and bigot aimed at me too many times to count.
I am one of the women Labour Party members who recently put my name to a crowdfunder to raise money for a legal examination of whether Labour is abiding by the Equality Act 2010. Currently the Gender Recognition Act states that a transgender person wishing to legally change their sex must meet certain criteria – to ‘live as’ the opposite sex for two years and a have a doctor’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Once they’ve been through this process they are given a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), can change their birth certificate to say female instead of male, and access sex-segregated spaces currently reserved for women such as female dorms in backpacker hostels, hospital wards, women’s prisons or domestic violence shelters (basically spaces where women are likely to be vulnerable or in a state of undress).
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But what’s happened to me, and every other woman I know in the Labour Party who has publicly stated they want to examine the impacts of these proposed changes, is an onslaught of abuse of the type I mention above. My name has been put on a ‘hit-list’ and an active campaign launched by a number of Labour members to have us expelled for ‘transphobia’. Two women on the list have been suspended from Labour, one for saying ‘women don’t have dicks’. So far nobody in a senior position within the party has spoken up for the many, many women (and good numbers of men) who have serious concerns about these issues.
Meanwhile women have had their employers contacted by anonymous activists accusing them of transphobia for simply questioning the trans rights agenda – every single meeting that women have tried to organise to discuss the issues has been targeted by activists attempting to shut it down.
The below is intended to give carefully thought out presentations of different sides in this controversy.
One thing that stands out is that the Socialist Feminist Network makes a contribution which is as far as possible from the ‘hate speech’ its critics allege.
Socialist Feminist Network.
“I urge transgender people to join us in that fight and to speak out against the sexism and misogyny in the self identity movement.”
Finding a progressive way forward for women and trans people
It’s a cliche but I really am honoured to be invited to speak at this meeting and to speak alongside socialists, feminists of the calibre of Ruth Serwotka and Bea Campbell.
As a transwoman I have identified not ‘as’ a girl or a woman but with girls and women for most of my life…. I’m also a socialist who understands with absolute clarity, that there can be no progressive agenda that uses abuse and harassment to silence women, there can be no socialism of any kind, that tells women, we’re re-defining you, be quiet and submit and there can absolutely, never be any human liberation without women’s liberation. As someone who understands that, I value women’s rights as highly as I value my own trans rights.
That is why I’ve not only marched through these very streets here in Manchester against section 28, not only stood tall as a proud and unapologetic transwoman, demanding rights, but I have also demonstrated and picketed in defence of women’s abortion rights and their right to control their own bodies. It’s also why I am implacably opposed to both the proposals for self-recognition of gender identity and the current ideology of I’m sad to say, the majority of transgender activists.
There’s simply too much to try and cover all the problematic aspects of the self-identity proposals and current trans ideology in this speech and hopefully much more can come out in the discussion so I’m just going to touch on a few issues but before I do I want to put these things into a wider context that I think is crucial to a fuller understanding of what’s going on in what I think are very complex issues of gender as well as I think, critical distinctions between everyday social sensitivities and status or even to a large extent legal protections on the one hand and on the other more fundamental political, biological and philosophical distinctions which must also be reflected in law.
So, context. As one of those troublesome Marxists I’d argue that oppression is rooted not in individual prejudice but in systematic discrimination arising from the needs of various male dominated class societies, most recently, capitalism. One of those systemic aspects of discrimination are gender roles, their deliberate propagation and policing across generations. Such ideas are propagated through newspapers, film, TV and advertising industries and very much policed by right wing politicians, by corporate media, religious groups, by families influenced by the ongoing justification of these norms and still today here in Britain they are occasionally policed with violence by usually male bigots.
The idea that the extraordinary richness and diversity of human personality and interests can be adequately accommodated by two roles based upon a child’s genitals at birth is an absurd one. If it wasn’t such a deeply damaging and fundamentally inhumane notion it would be simply laughable, so why are we still subjected to these deeply restrictive rules that limit and suffocate the scope of girls aspirations, that tell girls they are weak, frivolous, vain and valued principally for their looks and boys that they must not cry, that tenderness, sensitivity and heaven forbid, playing with girls or with girls things is for cissy’s… and who wants to be one of those?
The reason we are still subjected to these arcane and artificial roles is they serve an important purpose for our ruling elite. These ideas have evolved over centuries fundamentally to keep women in their place in a subordinate role that now seeks to control their ability to bear and raise children in ways that maintain, nurture and replenish a healthy and productive workforce at very low cost or no cost to big business or the state and to control and exploit women’s sexualised bodies to sell commodities, to titillate men and to further divide and divert working people from recognising our common interests and common humanity. The system benefits hugely from all that. That’s partly why many establishment politicians, the likes of the Daily Mail, the Sun and other right-wing forces constantly push these norms.
Another is the gender role for males which has also evolved in ways which attempt to control and shape men, in particular working-class men, preparing them for their exploitation at work or for war. Though occupying a more socially valued and higher status category the gender role for men is still fundamentally restrictive and exploitative, setting unrealisable standards of toughness and emotional constipation for instance.
When trans identitists talk about ‘cis’ people as individuals who are somehow congruent with their gender, not in conflict with it all, I have to stifle a little laugh. I think it’s fundamentally misleading. Even a man who sees no conflict with his gender role but ends up committing suicide as all too many young men do, because his ‘role’ and the rules he thinks he has to live by as a man render him incapable of addressing and dealing with his emotional needs or feelings is in fact in a very real and all too human sense, in conflict with his unhealthy, unnatural and mentally corrosive gender role even if he doesn’t know it.
Only a minority of adults fully conform to the gender stereotypes for their sex. Most people find that their real lives and real personalities are more complex than stereotypes and whilst most conform in broadly socially acceptable senses they do not do so fully.
Many people, especially women become aware of the oppressive nature of their gender norms and actively rebel against them. Feminists and socialists such as myself are for the complete removal of these artificially created rules and roles. However, whilst women in particular are oppressed by them, as well as in many other ways, some children discover that major or central aspects or our natural personalities and childhood interests are so completely incompatible with the gender role and norms inflicted on us that we find our core sense of self completely rejected and delegitimised as children.
The very same traits and interests that bring us shame and rejection seem to bring love and pride toward children of the opposite sex….and boy do we notice! In my opinion this is one of the major reasons children can begin to feel trapped by their bodies because it is our bodies that determine whether our personality is treated with love and approval or shame and illegitimacy.
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Full version:
From a standpoint critical of this view:
Socialist feminism without the socialism Cathy Nugent. December 2017.
The setting up of a socialist feminist network/website should have been worth investigating.
But a look at its contents indicates that the network/website has been set up purely to voice concerns over forthcoming possible amendments to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), specifically that transgender people will be able to register a change of gender by self-declaration.
The site includes a Q&A on the GRA and promotion of a new campaign Women’s Place UK. That campaign’s statement says that while it supports transgender rights it believes self-declaration may undermine the integrity of women-only spaces; in the forthcoming consultation on the GRA women’s groups (unspecified) should be consulted.
I disagree with this stance against self-declaration. If self-definition (and thereby self-declaration in a registering process) is a false or insufficient basis on which people should be allowed to live their lives, in this case be a woman, what do you put in its place? It can only be a more or less elaborate system of institutionalised vetting procedures where a transwoman is not a good enough woman, a semi-woman, and second class citizen, who can never gain entry to parts of society that other women have automatic access to.
But these arguments have been dealt with in previous issues of Solidarity (448 and 452) and are not what I want to take up here. As a socialist feminist I was annoyed by the description of socialist feminism which the site puts forward. For brevity, I’ll focus on this statement from the Q&A:
“Feminists do not conflate sex and gender. Sex is a scientific term for one’s biology, and this cannot be changed. As materialists we believe the root of women’s oppression lies in her biology, a view underpinning socialist theory for generations. Gender theory does not provide an alternative credible analysis and it is regressive. Queer theorists see the intimate connection between biological sex and oppression and react by trying to dismantle the notion of biological sex whilst socialists and feminists react by seeking to dismantle oppression.”
More background:
Marxism, feminism and transgender politics. Sue Caldwell ISJ December 2017.
No, Corbyn is not throwing women under the “trans bus”! Helen Rutherford Gregory. Clarion. September 2017.
