Free Cece McDonald

Cece McDonald, a black trans woman in Minnesota, has been in jail over a year for defending herself against a racist and homophobic attack.  She is due to be sentenced early next month.  The excerpt from the below article is an introduction to her story:

From http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/20/2012/4586

Cece McDonald is a 23 year old black trans woman who was out with friends one summer night in 2011 in Minneapolis, MN. As they passed in front of a bar, they were attacked by white people who were obviously racist and transphobic, based on a swastika tattoo and language used that night. The fight left Cece severely wounded by a glass to her face and one of the attackers dead.

The fight began when the white supremacists began yelling racial and transphobic slurs at the friends at about 12:20am. The attack became physical when one of the white supremacists put a gash in Cece’s face with a glass, damaging Cece’s saliva gland. It is believed by prosecutors that Cece then fatally stabbed one of her attackers.

Cece was charged with two counts of 2nd degree murder. Upon her arrest, Cece was denied adequate medical treatment for her wound, interrogated for hours, and put in solitary confinement. The woman who assaulted Cece was not arrested or charged.

Tags: Cece McDonald, heterosexism, homophobia, misogyny, patriarchy, racism, resistance, sexism, trans, transgender, transphobia, violence, violence against women

Remembering Amina

 

With April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we call your attention to the case of Amina al-Filali, a 16 year old Moroccan girl who committed suicide last month after being forced to marry a man who raped her.  Due to an arcane patriarchal and misogynistic law, instead of being punished for the crime, a rapist may marry a child victim and receive immunity from criminal charges.  When Amina’s family filed charges against her rapist, they and the court agreed upon this outcome, with her tragic death the result.

Hamida, Amina al-Filali's sister (Getty/AFP)

Sisters of Resistance are outraged at the murderous institutional and interpersonal violence inflicted upon Amina, both legally and culturally, in what she experienced.  As an oppressed person, a young brown woman under neocolonial patriarchy, decisions were made for her, and against her best interests.  As a survivor of rape, she was spoken for, not listened to, and her wishes not taken into account.  We would disagree with anyone who would say that she simply “chose” to kill herself.  Instead, we acknowledge the significant trauma that occurred to her, and the grief she must have felt at not being able to see any way out.  We mourn the loss of a young, vibrant person who ended her own life rather than submit to a lifetime of oppression. 

We join others internationally in calling for the cancellation of Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code, which greatly endangers young survivors by granting rapists legal access to their bodies and lives.  Women’s rights must be considered human rights, and women and other oppressed peoples empowered to determine our own futures.  We remember Amina, and countless others with similar stories, and reaffirm our commitment to creating a world in which suffering like theirs exists no more. #ripAmina

WE ARE ALL AMINA AL-FILALI

END VIOLENCE AGAINST

WOMEN AND CHILDREN EVERYWHERE!

 

Tags: Amina, Amina al-Filali, anti-violence, child brides, child marriages, feminism, honor, honour, human rights, international, misogyny, Morocco, patriarchy, rape, RIP Amina, ripamina, sexism, survivor, teen, teenager, transnational, transnational feminism, victim, violence against women, women's rights

JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON MARTIN

17-year old, unarmed Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by self-appointed, unofficial “neighbourhood watchman” Zimmerman who has a history of stalking innocent young black boys. Zimmerman is over 100 pounds heavier and 11 years older than Trayvon who was walking away when Zimmerman began to chase him. Trayvon was returning to his dad’s girlfriends house from the local store having brought Skittles and some Ice Tea. He was on the phone to his girlfriend.

In an almost incomprehensible on-going injustice, the police have allowed Zimmerman to walk free, not even arresting him, as the murderer has admitted to shooting dead the innocent teen but has claimed “self-defense” saying he felt threatened and describing Trayvon as “suspicious” during his 911 call. Under the controversial “Stand Your Ground” laws in Florida, this is apparently all a murderer needs to say to be completely let off. But how does someone half your age and half your size who is walking away from you threaten you? Since when did wearing a hood when it is raining become a justifiable reason for murder? Why did police do a “background check” on Trayvon as he lay dead on the floor but not on the murderer Zimmerman? Why was Trayvon’s blood tested for alcohol and drugs but not Zimmerman’s? Why did police “correct” witnesses who said Trayvon lay screaming for his life?

As the 911 tapes are released and more witnesses come forward to speak to the media, it is increasingly apparent that this was a hate crime, an act of racist violence, which has been defended by a racist police force who seem to be actively protecting the murderer.

Community rallies are taking place and media coverage is growing as mass public outrage also increases. There will be a “Million ‘Hoodie’ March” tonight (Wednesday 21/03/12) attended by Trayvon’s parents in NYC to demand an end to racist profiling. People who can’t attend are being asked to upload photos of them in a hoodie to social networking sites show support. UPDATE:  Trayvon protest in Oakland SF Trayvon’s parents at protest in New York

Please sign and share the petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/prosecute-the-killer-of-our-son-17-year-old-trayvon-martin

Visit Trayvon’s website:

http://www.justicefortrayvonmartin.com/

for info on what you can do, events, people to contact & how to spread the word.

Please read/share the following links:

White People, You Will Never Look Suspicious Like Trayvon Martin

The crime of killing a black person still is not greater than the crime of being black.

Listen to the 911 tapes which prove Trayvon was the victim not the aggressor

Trayvon Martin and the fatal history of American racism

White Denial and Trayvon Martin

REPEAL THE STAND YOUR GROUND LAWS

END WHITE SUPREMACY

Tags: African American, Black, Florida, gun laws, Hispanic, injustice, justice, loss, lynching, mourning, murder, organize, police corruption, racism, racist violence, resist, resistance, social media, Stand Your Ground law, Trayvon Martin, USA, violence, white, young boy, Zimmerman

Handy Reference Guide to Identifying Oppressive Silencing

To assist you in identifying and resisting dominant and unequal power relationships in your life, we’ve compiled a list of common phrases people in historically dominant roles have been conditioned to and may use to try to silence oppressed others, particularly when they perceive their dominance to be challenged.

The quotations below were used by men against women and are thus patriarchal; however, one could expect to find similar strategic dismissals and silencing of the accounts and concerns of people of color, working class and poor people, queer and LGBTQI people, young people, fat people, disabled people, and other marginalized folks in the discourses of those who discriminate against them. The simultaneous and intersecting nature of oppression is also considered here.

These strategies, and others we may have missed, can be found in any order, but from our experiences attempts to silence us commonly go something like this:

Assert authority
Question your knowledge/judgment
Delegitimize your response
Delegitimize you
Enforce dominant point of view
Shut down debate or conversation

Tags: ablism, accountability, activist tools, anti-oppression, discourse, domination, feminism, guide, heterosexism, homophobia, invisibility, male-female dynamics, male-female relations, masculinity, oppression, point of view, power dynamics, race, racism, revolutionary lovers guide, sexism, transphobia, visibility, vision

Happy International Women’s Day!

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2012 we link to and quote from just some of the articles celebrating IWD we have found so far.

To all women resisting imperialism, war, violence, patriarchy, environmental destruction and other forms of oppression all year round we say the struggle continues! Venceremos!

Sisterly Solidarity, today and everyday,

Sisters of Resistance

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From http://feministsforchoice.com/international-womens-day-how-did-it-start.htm

International Women’s Day: How did it start??

Today marks the 101^stInternational Women’s Day around the globe. Communities use the day across the world to press demands on governments, promote gender equality, raise awareness about women’s oppression, celebrate mothers, and more. Given that this day has so much significance worldwide, it is worth knowing how the movement was started.  Consider it another item in your feminist history repertoire. [...]

International Women’s Day was originally created by a group of international Suffragists to recognize their work and to press demands on their respective governments. The holiday was proposed at the second International Conference of Working Women, a Socialist conference held in Denmark, at which over 100 women from 17 countries attended.

At first the day was most widely observed in Europe but quickly spread globally. It is now an official national holiday in many countries including China, Russia, Bulgaria and Uzbekistan. While the overall purpose is the same, each country has a unique history with the holiday…

Read the full article here

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From http://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00015918.html

Africa Celebrates International Women’s Day

Rural women represent, on average, more than 40 percent of the agricultural workforce in the developing world, but they own only 1 percent of the land, and face constant barriers to equality and success.

Read more of the informative articles that All Africa have compiled from Sudan, to Rwanda and South Africa, to celebrate IWD here.

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From http://thefeministwire.com/2012/01/why-the-question-of-palestine-is-a-feminist-concern/

Why the Question of Palestine is a Feminist Concern

I have been asked how I view the occupation of Palestine from my feminist perspective, or perhaps another way to put it, why and how I think the question of Palestine is a feminist concern. It seems to me that the question posed by the predicament of Palestinians is not merely the uncertainty of their future political fate as a people (a nation without a state, territory, and resources of its own, without capacities of self-determination). It is rather the question of the specific conditions of human devaluation and disposability to which they appear to be fated by a normalized system of exploitative inequality, dispossession and violence.

That these conditions of devaluation and disposability depend on the maintenance of naturalized hierarchies of human difference (race, ethnicity, nationality, religion) will undoubtedly resonate with feminist analyses of forms of gendered devaluation, disposability and violence that obtain in many socio-historical contexts, including this one. It is also the case, however, that beyond any homologies, which this theoretical resonance might suggest (eg. between racialized and gendered forms of devaluation and disposability), the projects of settler colonialism and apartheid nationalism that the Israeli state embodies and the logic of security which undergirds and legitimates its policies of surveillance, militarization and war have long been feminist concerns.

Feminist analyses have shown how such projects are enabled and upheld not only by normative cultural ideals of gender and sexuality embedded in their constitutive conceptions of land, territory, sovereignty, people/race, citizenship, freedom and power. As modes of producing and regulating life – indeed, as projects that see to the uneven distribution of life-chances (the augmentation of life-chances of some at the cost of the reduction of life-chances of others), like and in tandem with capitalism – the projects of settler colonialism and apartheid nationalism also require divisions of labor and forms of social reproduction (and social death) that are profoundly gendered and racialized in ways that exceed the dominant form of political antagonism.

Read full article

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from http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/laurie-penny-thats-enough-politeness–women-need-to-rise-up-in-anger-7544480.html

Laurie Penny: That’s enough politeness – women need to rise up in anger

A huge cultural change is taking place all over the world right now. Over the past year, from the Arab Spring uprisings to the global anti-corporate occupations, young people and workers have realised that they were flogged a false dream of prosperity in return for quiet obedience, exhausting, precarious jobs and perpetual debt – most of it shouldered by women, whose low-status, low-paid and unpaid work has driven the expansion of exploitative markets across the world. Equality, like prosperity, was supposed to trickle down, but not a lot can trickle down through a glass ceiling.

Women, like everyone else, have been duped. We have been persuaded over the past 50 years to settle for a bland, neoliberal vision of what liberation should mean. Life may have become a little easier in that time for white women who can afford to hire a nanny, but the rest of us have settled for a cheap, knock-off version of gender revolution. Instead of equality at work and in the home, we settled for “choice”, “flexibility” and an exciting array of badly paid part-time work to fit around childcare and chores. Instead of sexual liberation and reproductive freedom, we settled for mitigated rights to abortion and contraception that are constantly under attack, and a deeply misogynist culture that shames us if we’re not sexually attractive, dismisses us if we are, and blames us if we are raped or assaulted, as one in five of us will be in our lifetime.

Read full article here

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From http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health-a-z/W/women/

Women and Mental Health A- Z

Mental health problems affect women and men equally, but some are more common among women. Abuse is often a factor in women’s mental health problems. Treatments need to be sensitive to and reflect gender differences.

The same numbers of women and men experience mental health problems overall, but some problems are more common in women than men, and vice versa.

Various social factors put women at greater risk of poor mental health than men. However, women’s readiness to talk about their feelings and their strong social networks can help protect their mental health.

Women as guardians of family health

However busy they are, it is important that women look after their mental health. Traditionally, women have tended to take on the responsibility of looking after the health of members of their family as well as themselves. For instance, women often shop for their family and influence what they eat or advise their family when they feel unwell. This role makes it particularly important that women understand how the choices we all make in everyday life can affect our mental health. 

Women as carers  

Most carers are women, whether they care for their children, partner, parents, other relatives or friends. Women carers are more likely to suffer from anxiety or depression than women in the general population. Three quarters of people who care for a person with a mental health problem are women and the average age of carers is 62 years.  

Read more

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Further Reading from SoR

Also be sure to check out the Revolutionary Lovers Guide and Women We Admire posts to celebrate IWD with Sisters of Resistance

Revolutionary Lovers Guide

This IWD make sure you are in healthy, equal and respectful relationships: http://sistersofresistance.wordpress.com/resources/sista-resista-library/revolutionary-lovers-guide/

Women We Admire

Wangari Maathai: http://sistersofresistance.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/women-we-admire-wangari-maathai-1940-2011/

Audre Lorde: http://sistersofresistance.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/women-we-admire-audre-lorde/

Grace Lee Boggs: http://sistersofresistance.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/women-we-admire-grace-lee-boggs/

Erykah Badu: http://sistersofresistance.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/women-we-admire-erykah-badu/

Tags: Africa, Central Africa, feminism, International Women's Day, mental health, Palestine, women