#women security in India

[roobylavender]

i’m torn between indian and pakistani mainstream media bc i feel like the former tends towards wanting to be progressive as a whole but often makes haphazard attempts in the process that certainly have their heart in the right place but are still not doing quite enough and then the latter is like 90% straight women hating shite from the gutter but the leftover 10% that is actually worth something is some of the most phenomenal stuff you have ever seen and near close to perfect. but it’s only 10% and you have to wait and wade through so much of the shite to even get to it

[dental321]

From Sarees to Smartphones: A Comprehensive Guide to BerryBox in India

BeryBox is a versatile online shopping platform that caters to the diverse needs and preferences of Indian consumers. The platform offers a comprehensive selection of products, from traditional sarees to cutting-edge smartphones, reflecting the rich tapestry of Indian tastes and lifestyles. BeryBox's user-friendly platform makes exploration effortless, catering to fashion enthusiasts, tech enthusiasts, and those seeking lifestyle essentials.

The platform's collection of sarees captures India's diverse cultural heritage, featuring a spectrum of choices from traditional silk sarees to contemporary designs. BeryBox collaborates with skilled artisans and renowned designers to ensure each saree represents a blend of craftsmanship, innovation, and cultural significance. BeryBox also caters to the tech-savvy consumer with a curated selection of smartphones, offering flagship models and budget-friendly options.

BeryBox's watch collection is a standout feature, blending style and functionality for various occasions. The platform takes pride in its commitment to quality assurance across all product categories, ensuring that each saree, smartphone, and watch meets BerryBox's standards of authenticity and durability. BeryBox has invested in a robust logistics network to ensure prompt and secure deliveries, enhancing the overall online shopping experience.

The platform regularly features promotions and offers across its diverse range of products, from festive discounts to flash sales, providing ample opportunities for users to make their purchases more affordable and enjoyable. BeryBox's customer-centric approach prioritises customer satisfaction, providing responsive support to address queries and concerns. The interactive and user-friendly interface reflects BerryBox's commitment to creating an online shopping experience that prioritises the needs and preferences of its diverse customer base.

BeryBox's versatility, commitment to quality, and customer-centric approach position it as a frontrunner in the competitive landscape of online shopping in India. As the platform continues to evolve, it envisions a future where online shopping transcends transactional exchanges and becomes an immersive, personalised experience. In conclusion, BeryBox stands as a comprehensive and dynamic platform that encapsulates the diversity of Indian lifestyles, serving as a trusted companion for those seeking quality, variety, and a seamless shopping experience.

[ayaansh006]

Fashion Forward: BeryBox's Impact on the Evolution of Style in India

BeryBox, a leading online shopping in India, has significantly shaped the evolution of style in the country. Under the banner of "Fashion Forward," BeryBox has not only adapted to trends but also actively shaped and propelled the changing face of style. The platform has played a pivotal role in diversifying the fashion landscape in India by bringing together a myriad of styles, ranging from traditional ethnic wear to contemporary global fashion trends.

BeryBox celebrates cultural fusion by curating fashion that seamlessly fuses traditional elements with modern aesthetics, offering users a chance to embrace their heritage while staying on-trend with the latest fashion influences from around the world. The platform's commitment to trendsetting collections ensures that users have access to the latest in fashion, from seasonal must-haves to avant-garde styles.

BeryBox embraces technology to enhance the fashion-forward experience for its users, introducing virtual try-ons powered by augmented reality, which allows shoppers to virtually test how a garment or accessory looks before making a purchase. This interactive feature adds a layer of excitement to the online shopping journey and reflects BeryBox's commitment to staying at the forefront of technological advancements in the fashion space.

BeryBox has successfully navigated the balance between global fashion influences and local sensibilities, incorporating styles from international runways while keeping a finger on the pulse of regional trends. This synergy between global and local influences has contributed to BeryBox's status as a fashion destination that appeals to diverse demographics across India.

BerryBox actively supports and promotes emerging designers, serving as a launchpad for independent and budding talents. This commitment to nurturing fresh talent contributes to a dynamic and innovative fashion ecosystem in India, fostering a sense of creativity and experimentation.

BeryBox acknowledges the growing importance of sustainability in the fashion industry by integrating environmentally conscious choices into its offerings, promoting sustainable and ethical fashion practices. This alignment with eco-friendly initiatives not only reflects BeryBox's commitment to responsible fashion but also influences users to make more environmentally conscious choices in their style preferences.

BeryBox adapts its collections to align with seasonal and festive trends, ensuring that users can effortlessly find the perfect attire for every occasion. This adaptability not only reflects an understanding of the cultural significance of festivals but also positions BeryBox as a reliable guide for individuals navigating the diverse landscape of festive fashion in India.

[socialjusticeinamerica]

I go to concerts and events all the time and women use the men’s room no problem when their tiny restrooms overflow. The only time I ever noticed anyone complain was when a drunk women stumbled into a men’s room after a concert in Las Vegas. The men’s room was full of redneck assholes with southern accents, cowboy hats and boots. They immediately surrounded her and began harassing her with vile comments and graphic descriptions of how they were going to gang rape her. Security had to intervene to save her from those MAGA assholes. So much much for those country boys being good Christians. In New England nobody blinks an eye when women use the men’s room and if anyone started saying shit like that to woman they would have gotten the shit kicked out of their redneck asses.

Years ago history books would talk about regional peculiarities like Yankee Ingenuity and Southern Hospitality. I have spent a fair amount of time in the south, I have friends and family there, and in better times even owned property there. Let me tell you that Southern Hospitality is a myth. Unless you’re in a big city or a theme park or some other big tourist attraction, and you don’t have a southern drawl you’re going to be treated like Bin Laden showing up at Ground Zero. The rich modern day Confederates are the most elitist and bigoted people alive. The poor are some of the meanest, rudest, angriest, most hostile, and least Christian people you could ever meet.

Now that’s a blanket statement and obviously everyone doesn’t fit into that stereotype. There are plenty of normal people but very few of them will ever speak up for fear of the way they will be treated. This has been going on since the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700’s. It isn’t something that can be blamed on The Southern Strategy, Nixon, Reagan, Fox News, the Tea Party, or the MAGA movement.

The North industrialized and modernized everything including banking, transportation, industry, and food crop agriculture. The rich southern Planter Class, the Aristocracy, relied on King Cotton, tobacco, and slavery. None of which was profitable or sustainable. The Planter Aristocracy soon became deeply indebted to northern banks and were at risk of losing their land, property livelihoods, and social standing. When the North and West started pressuring the South to end slavery and pay their bills the Southern

Planter elite decided to secede from the Union of States. They thought it was win-win, they could keep their slaves, escape their debt, and simply trade their cash crops with Europe. Well the Europeans switched to Egypt, India, and the Caribbean for their cotton and to a lesser extent tobacco. Only a handful of wealthy elites in each states could afford slaves in any quantity beyond one. The hillbilly rednecks were propagandized into believing they were defending their way of life and states rights against Northern (and western) Aggression. The west was populated by immigrant farmers who couldn’t afford slaves and came from countries where slavery was banned, never existed, and was condemned by European religious groups.

Long story short the United States, aka the Union or the North, had the food crops, the population, the transportation, the industry, the schools, the banks/money, and virtually every other advantage. The Confederacy was built on lies and propaganda spread by the upper class. They had nothing but bitterness and resent at the North and West that they still have to this day. Treating women and marginalized people with disrespect is ingrained into their DNA and so tightly wound into their societal fabric it may never come out. Even their LGBT community is racist AF. Now their were good people in the South, called Unionists, who didn’t agree with slavery, secession, or the Planter Aristocracy and many of them moved North and some even joined the US Army to fight against the Confederacy. Ironically some of them remained in the Army softer the Civil War ended and took part in the “Indian” Wars, after which they returned to the South as military heroes with their disloyalty to the Confederacy forgiven.

A scorpion can not change its nature. And people who have been propagandized since the 1700’s by the wealthy elite can’t be expected to change their “traditions” overnight. Thanks to Republican oligarchs a disproportionate percentage of Southerners and rural people blame modern Democrats, who are now mainly in the Northeast and the West Coast as they were during the Civil War, for all their problems.

They’ll never understand that the modern Republicans and oligarchs are holding them hostage and denying them jobs, education, unions, prosperity, and healthcare. They have been conditioned to for two centuries to blame outsiders for their problems while supporting their oligarch oppressors. Denigrating women, people of color, and marginalized groups is a sadly a rite of passage for the majority in the Old Confederacy. They’re like the people of Eastern Europe who have been holding grudges for so long they don’t even remember why they they are collectively doing it. They need to be deprogrammed from that Confederate mindset first and then deprogrammed from the Republican/MAGA mindset but that’s not likely to happen anytime soon if at all. We’d have to win back the White House, the Congress, the SCOTUS, and the state legislatures first. Then we’d have to utterly smash the Republican Party and ban the oligarchs and their dark money from politics. Following that Herculean talk we’d have to invest heavily in public education across the South and rural West and return it to modern standards from the plundered mess the oligarchs and their privatized schools have created.

A second civil war may be looming and they are propping for it. Invariably they will lose for the same reasons they did the first time but it will be far more costly and have lingering effects that may never be reconciled. It won’t be a regional war like the first time but rather a bloody mess like the war in Northern Ireland with terror bombings and revenge killings. No single community will be safe. Sometimes I think we’d be better off letting Texas and Florida secede and take Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana with them. The remainder of the MAGAts would flock there and shoot themselves into third world status. The rest of the US would keep the military, the nukes, planes, ships, tanks, and all Federal property. There are blue areas in the sunbelt but as a whole I can’t see those states being reformed. Texas is a cancer since it’s been under Republican rule and Florida is pathetically imitating them. The in between states, with the exception of some blue cities are virtually third world states and as backwards as can be.

I mean no offense to the good people of the red states. My issue is with the Republican misrule over those areas and the backwards brainwashing they have subjected their citizens to. I feel deeply for the Democrats and other decent people there. But history has taught us time and again that unless a majority of the people want change it is impossible to force democracy on them. The Republican oligarchs have spent billions of dollars since the 1960’s to reshape this country and to maintain that Confederate mindset in the South. That’s not something that can be undone by electing a Democratic president and a handful of charismatic congressmen and women.

[kutputli]

Louis the "Pimp": A Rebuke and Rebuttal

OK, IWTV fandom, I have been made aware that some (many) of you are genuinely not aware of some of the anti sex work implications of your statements around Louis and pimping, so -

First of all, some ground level assumptions: I am assuming we are all pro sex workers here. Which means that we all believe in the right for adults to consent to commercial sexualised labour, and to demand ethical working conditions just like any other worker. Sex work is work etc.

Now, that stance can and must coexist with the acknowledgement that sex work has both historically and currently been coerced from marginalised communities. In my part of the world, hereditary caste based sexual enslavement is an on-going atrocity, and similarly, in the United States Black enslaved people was disproportionatey victims of commercialised sexual abuse. (This is RELEVENT to Armand and Louis so it behoves everyone to inform themselves about these realities.)

What I'm saying now comes from the scholarship and testimonies of sex workers themselves, who have always been at the forefront of advocating for themselves as communities and unions. You can and should read through the publications of the Global Network of Sex Work Projects to ground yourself in these perspectives.

The idea that its ok to be a sex worker, but that a client or a pimp or a brothel owner deserves contempt, shaming or derison is an old one, associated with the dichotomy of pitable fallen women vs dispicable emasculated men (emasculated because of the patriarchal shame of a) paying for sex and b) living off of a woman's labour). This has manifested in what is known as the Nordic model (or, hypocritically, the Equality Model) of Prostitution, where sex workers themselves are deemed nominally free to practise their trade, but clients and third parties (pimps, managers, brothel owners) are criminalised. There is unambiguous peer-reviewed data showing the failure of this approach to protecting sex workers from harm, and almost every sex worker union has denounced it.

So now let's talk about this cultural and legal contempt and criminalisation of the third party, and specifically, the pimp figure. Unlike the brothel owner, the pimp is more often from a similar class and identity as the sex worker, often sharing the same living and working spaces. Pimps are often sex workers allies and collegeaues. They provide an interface between the client and the sex worker that can help screen them for safety and security, and the remove the additional burden of soliciting and marketing from the sex worker's labour.

And because it is important to talk about specifics, a pimp in marginalised communities of sex workers is often a brother, a father, or a lover to the sex worker who faces the same casteism, racism and classism that she does. He is often the father of the sex worker's child. In India, for example, even though prostitution itself is not criminal, any adult male living with a prostitute is assumed to be guilty of being a pimp unless he can prove otherwise, and can face imprisonment of up to 2 years with a fine. One of the demands of unionised sex workers, including those in India, has been to decriminalised pimping along with sex work, not just because pimps make it safer and easier for sex workers to get clients without having to actively solicit, but also because such criminalisation actively harms family units.

Of course, there are pimps who can be abusive and exploitative. This is true of any professional relationship, and this is also true of people in romantic and sexual relationships (like marriage). But to deem a pimp inherently as an abuser carries a lot of anti sex work and racist and classist baggage with it.

Why racist (and classist and casteist etc)? Because the men with capital were (and are) not often pimps. They are landlords and investors, who ran brothels and saloons and massage parlours and dance bars and other sites where sexual labour was commercialised. To denigrate a man for being a pimp as somehow worse than being the owner of a sweatshop or farm is a way of jeering at the men who have not been able to buy themselves the luxury of distance from the exploitation they profit from. And the men of capital were and are, overwhelmingly, those from the dominant identity (White. Savarna. etc.)

So NOW, with all that necessary context in mind, let's talk about Louis and what it means when fandom firstly calls him a pimp, and then second sneers at him for his perceived behavior as one.

You know who first calls Louis a pimp?

Daniel Molloy, a white man being the brash, confrontational journalist that he has the luxury of being.

Louis accurately describes his profession managing and operating a diversified portfolio of entireprises. This translates to investing his family's sizeable trust into real estate (he owns 8 out of 24 buildings on Liberty Street) and running establishments that make money from selling liquor, organised gambling and sex work. Just as not many Black men would have been in a position of power to make a profit from a sugar plantation as Louis' great grandfather did, not many Black men would have had the capital (and the business acumen) to own and operate a series of businesses that included sex work. Infact we see him collecting his profits from a white man who was closer to the pimp role - Finn.

Reducing this to calling him a pimp is the first of many racist microaggressions we will watch Daniel make. As someone who indulged in some kind of sex work himself, one might say some of Daniel's hostility is self-loathing. Nonetheless, there is a racialised element in his contempt towards both Louis and Armand that, I would theorise, comes from the distinction made between a white, educated man choosing to recreationally whore himself for drugs, and a Black man who earned a living from other people's sex work, or a Brown man who is perceived as a rent boy.

We then get to the idea of denigrating Louis' pimp-like behavior. First of all, let's look at Louis as the employer and manager of sex workers. Everything we have seen about him shows him to be courteous, considerate, and professional. His guilt at the entire situation of how sex work operates aside (and we can agree that it must have been exploitative and even abusive in general, and that he was complicit in such a system, as any capitalist is) - MOST importantly, we never see Louis doing the thing that patriarchy really resents a pimp for - sampling the goods for free. We never see him use his power over the sex workers he employs to get favours.

In fact he makes it clear that he visits Miss Lily precisely because she is part of a different establishment, and that both of them being Black in a majority white situation places them on a more equal footing. Watching Louis with Miss Lily, both is how he is with her sexually as well as socially, gives you the clearest evidence of how he behaves around sex workers he is having a relationship with. (Contrast that to Lestat, who buys her time and body as an act of one-upmanship with no concern for her preference, and then who kills her out of jealousy.)

So - Was Louis a pimp? No. Was Louis an abusive pimp? Also No.

Then why does the fandom continue to deploy this term in relationship to him?

It's racism, your honour. (The answer is almost always racism.)

To unpack this, lets jump forward from the 1910s where, again I remind you - very very few Black men in the United States were in any position to operate as fashionable brother owners with wealth to spare.

We now move to the 1980s, when one (but not the only!) sub-genre of rap was evolving - gangsta rap. In this sub-genre, Black musical artists like Too Short and Ice T were creating and more pertinently making accessible to white America, the signifier of the Black pimp figure. This drew from 1960s Black culture-making around West Coast pimps like Iceberg Slim, but also from an older storytelling tradition that linked the figure of the pimp with the archetype of the trickster. I'm not going to cite the wealth of literature you can find that theorises this, (nor defensively provide the mass of nuanced critique that Black feminists have offered) because the limited point I wish to make is -

When white America began enjoying (and appropriating) rap and hip-hop culture, one of the tropes it started perpetuating with the shallowest of understanding of its origins, was that of the specifically Black pimp. A figure who displayed wealth, but without (white-signifying) class, who was sexually active in a racialised hypermasculine way, but both a threat to women and contemptibly a leech off them.

THIS is the pimp archetype that is being evoked when fandom talks about Louis's 'pimp'ness.

It is racist. It is ahistorical and canonically unfactual.

It is also needlessly contemptuous of the sex workers (labourers and third parties alike) who are part of the community here on tumblr, so often praised as one of the spaces that is friendly to them.

Maybe think about all of that the next time you choose to use the word 'pimp'.

[whenmemorydies]

Violence and Love in Monkey Man

Dev Patel's Monkey Man has played at my mind for two weeks now. This is for reasons that I'm able to articulate and for many that I probably have not yet been able to find the words for. This post is, in part, my attempt at sorting through some of my thoughts. My tumblr is all spoilers all the time. If you don’t want that, then please don’t read on.

Violence

Like most places in the world, systemic violence is a scourge in India. Monkey Man does not shy away from this reality and depicts Hindu nationalist state violence and violence against women and gendered minorities in the country to chilling effect.

We come to see this in the brutal rape and murder of Kid's activist mother at the hands of the police, while she tries to shield her child and her land from police and state terror. We see it in the treatment of (largely femme-presenting) sex workers in the two brothels featured in the film, including one frequented by the police and political elite. We see it in the violence and ostracisation meted out against the hijra, or third gender community by individual actors and the state more broadly. We see it in the state-orchestrated razing of an entire community after the land on which it sits is declared a "holy site". We see it in the movement of people from the regions to the city after their land has been stolen and the grinding poverty they face as a result.

Unlike so many action films, none of the violence in Monkey Man occurs in a vacuum. Even Kid's original means of making money in an underground fighting ring is done against the backdrop of his forced displacement from regional India to the city - a migration pathway that many in the country have been forced to take and which is a direct result of land theft and resource extraction in the regions by local and multinational corporations as well as federal and state governments.

The truth is that so much in relation to state and societal control is enacted in painful and violent ways on the bodies of the marginalised and oppressed. And I often think about how the horror and action genres are some of the best suited to speak about systemic injustice because of their capacity to make that violence uncompromisingly visible (one recent example is Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass which depicted the bloody fallout of the Christian missionary/colonial project in vivid crimson, splashed all over a non-descript maritime town in present-day America). The violence in Monkey Man is no different.

While Kid's realisation of the interconnectedness and heavy hand of the state not just in the violence experienced by his mother, but also by the hijra, and by sex workers like Sita comes later in the movie, we as the audience are given this insight earlier. Recall Kid pointing out to Sita that her tattoo is of a koel, not a sparrow as originally misidentified by the Australian client sexually assaulting her minutes earlier in the film.

Kid goes on to say that he grew up in the forest and woke up to koels singing everyday. Its the longest conversation that the two have but in those brief words, we understand that Sita too has likely been displaced to the city from the regions, probably under very similar circumstances to Kid. The way this displacement maps itself onto her body is distinctive to how it does so for Kid, with gender playing a large role in this.

Other factors like caste, class and religion also impact on how the characters in this film experience or perpetrate violence. I would write more on these intersections but then this post is going to get more unwieldy than it already is.

I will say though, that in India, where fascist Hindu nationalism is being used by government to harm minority communities, steal land and secure populist votes, Patel makes a distinction between revelatory and weaponised faith. Kid is raised in peace by his mother with the former, but as an adult he lives in a world where the latter has taken hold and is being used by those in power to shore up more of that power for themselves.

For me - as the descendant of parents, grandparents and great grandparents who lived through anti-Tamil pogroms led by Sinhalese chauvinists weaponising Buddhism as part of their fascism in Sri Lanka, who like the rest of us, is living in an election year for Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi in India, and who is also frustratingly, helplessly bearing witness as the state of Israel and it’s allies conflate Zionism with Judaism in defence of the genocide being waged against Palestinians - watching this action film make the distinction between revelatory and weaponised faith was profound.

Love

Patel makes it a point in this film to show how Kid's most nourishing relationships, the ones that sustain him - indeed the ones that literally save his life - are those that he has with women and with people who don’t conform to the gender binary. In doing this, we see what Kid is fighting tooth (quite literally) and nail for throughout the film. We see what is at stake - what we stand to lose - if perpetrators get to rule without accountability.

Its also no mistake that these relationships are all tied visually to the natural world in the film: Kid's mother's deep ties to the earth, rivers, trees and roots that she leads him through as a child. Alpha and the hijra's sanctuary, the Ardhanareeshvara temple with its most sacred space being the roots of a holy tree. Sita and her koel tattoo: the memory of the forest carried on her skin while she traverses the brutal reality of the city. Patel is making a point here too. About nourishment of another kind, through our connection with the earth instead of extraction from it. The visuals in the film drive this point home, particularly when contrasted with the industrialisation and poverty of the city.

Two particular loving relationships that stood out for me were the love shared between Kid and the hijra community as well as between him and his mother.

Alpha, hijra Elder and the hijra community

Keeper of the Ardhanareeshvara Temple and hijra Elder, Alpha becomes a mother-figure to Kid after he is rescued with near-fatal injuries. It is Alpha who keeps watch over him as he recovers, helps Kid to confront the totality of his past memories which his trauma has kept fragmented, and who ultimately leads a veritable hijra army to join forces with him to assassinate some fascists.

Alpha's gentleness with Kid was so moving to see, in particular during the conversation they have about his attempt as a child to save his mother from the fire set by her rapist and murderer. That exchange moved me to tears.

Kid: I failed her.

Alpha: No. You tried to save her. You see scars. I see the courage of a child fighting to save his mother.

The wider hijra community at the temple also take Kid in and care for him during his recovery. Truly, the scenes at the temple were some of my favourite in Monkey Man. Outside of his memories of his mother, they are the only scenes where we see love, peace and joy on the faces of any of the characters in this film.

Also witness this moment of delight below as the hijra at the temple appreciate a fine ass man channelling his righteous anger and fucking up a punching bag full of rice. I note that the music during this training montage is simply stunning. Ustad Zakir Hussain's rapid fire tablas punctuated by each of Patel's landed punches and kicks and then followed by Jed Kurzel's achingly soaring instrumentals (listen to "The Kid" from the movie's score) were just *chef’s kiss*.

Another favourite moment for me was when Kid decides to go back to the underground fight ring one last time and not throw his matches (as he had been doing prior). He bets on himself and when he inevitably wins his fights, he takes the money and gives it to the hijra, ensuring that they can continue to live at the temple without fear of being evicted. We love to see a man who literally pays his rent.

Neela, his mother

Kid’s first teacher and the center of his life as a child. In almost every memory we are shown of her, Kid remembers his mother walking through a forest, sharing her ecological and religious knowledge with him and in doing so, positioning him within the wider world.

GIF by dailyflicks

We watch as he takes this understanding with him forward through the remainder of the film. His conversation as an adult with Alphonso as they drive through the city in the latter's tuk tuk is emblematic of this. "They don't even see us", Kid says of the elite who frequent the club where he has just gained employment, "they're all up there living and we are stuck in this."

His mother showed him what it was to live: to be still and in concert with the world and the Divine around you, to be loved fiercely, and to thrive as a result. This is in stark contrast to what Kid has had to learn to do in the city: to survive, to merely exist. He is never depicted resting or at home as an adult. He's always working, hustling and planning for the next thing, his next step. When he loses his village, his land and his mother as a child, Kid also inevitably loses his sense of home. It’s no coincidence that the tracks “Home” and “Mother” on the movie’s score sound almost identical.

Later at the end of the film, we see Kid close his eyes, having done what he set out to do. The last thing he sees is his mother, smiling at him in the forest. Her face is the face of God he gazes at before he succumbs to his injuries. This devotion to his mother is not just that of a child to a parent. Its also deeply tied to his Hindu faith which calls on its followers to honour the Divine Mother, the supreme feminine energy, Aathi Parashakthi, in all her manifestations including in those who mother us.

The movie ends with Kid’s deep, revelatory faith - instilled in him by his mother - and with the death of the man who weaponised that faith for power and wealth. It left all of us in the cinema seated in stunned silence even as the credits began to roll.

To describe Monkey Man as simply a revenge film does it an absolute disservice. This is not revenge. It is defence borne out of deep love for community and righteous opposition to injustice. Seeing hijra warriors dressed as Kali, the goddess of destruction, dealing death blows against fascists while spinning in the most beautiful lenghas was exhilarating (I literally screamed “YESSSSSSS!” at the screen when they arrived). Seeing Sita take out pimp and sex trafficker Queenie got me cackling and yelling “whoooop!”. Seeing Kid, a masculine character act to defend women and people outside of the gender binary, from further systemic harm without any ulterior motive was absolutely unreal to witness on the big screen. Seeing a person of faith act in deep connection to that faith without judgment against anyone but those who perpetrate harm made me feel hopeful in a way that took me by surprise. Kid acted out of love and respect. I would argue that Sita, the hijra and Kid all acted out of recognition of a shared humanity.

And at a time when folks from marginalised communities are being subjected to horrendous violence worldwide, both interpersonal and systemic, watching the oppressed take their perpetrators out…and I mean out (see: a rapist and murderer getting bludgeoned to death with a glittery high heel and a fascist, self-proclaimed “holy man” being stabbed in his third eye by the blade he hid in his own “sacred” pathankal/paduka), well, it was cathartic to see.

Am I saying violence is the answer to systemic violence? I think the answer to that question is context-specific. Non-violent resistance has a place, but it’s by necessity a performance and requires an audience. What do you do when no one’s watching? What do you do when the people who are watching are doing nothing to stop your suffering? What then? These questions are what many liberals refuse to grapple with because the answers are too uncomfortable for their polite sensibilities. But if you keep your foot on someone's neck long enough, you should expect them to fight back, by any means necessary. In Monkey Man, we have an action film where we get to witness that resistance in all its visceral glory.

[city-of-ladies]

A savvy businesswoman, Osoet Pegua (c.1615–c.1658) was connected to both the royal court of Siam (now Thailand) and the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Her business acumen helped her secure a role as an invaluable partner in the region.

Here is the link to my Ko-Fi. If you enjoy my content, your support would be much appreciated!

Early Life

Osoet was born around 1615 and was of Mon-Burmese descent, placing her at the margins of Thai society. By unknown circumstances, she ended up in the Dutch compound in Ayutthaya, then the capital of Siam and a major trading post. She lived in a world where female traders often held substantial influence and had strong networks.

Many foreign men who arrived were single and frequently took local wives or concubines. Osoet herself would be involved with three Dutchmen.

At age 16, she became the concubine of Jan van Meerwijck and later had a son with him. After his death in 1635, she sought a new relationship.

A Respected Trading Partner

Osoet’s next partner was Jeremias van Vliet, who became director of the VOC’s office in Ayutthaya. Osoet, already a skilled and well-connected businesswoman, proved invaluable to the Dutch by facilitating connections with the royal court, including the king himself. This helped advance Dutch commercial interests. She also worked with the wives of high-ranking officials, underscoring the political and commercial roles of aristocratic women.

Osoet had three daughters with van Vliet. He wanted to take custody of them and move them out of the country, but Osoet refused. The king supported her decision, a testament to her respected position. Osoet was thus able to keep her daughters.

Behind-the-Scenes Leadership

Osoet later met Jan van Muijden, who also became the VOC director. She entered into a relationship with him when she was around 31 and he was 25. Lacking experience in managing an office and barely speaking the local language, van Muijden relied heavily on Osoet. She unofficially took charge of VOC operations, using her contacts to secure trading licenses for him.

Her influence peaked between 1646 and 1650, during which the company prospered thanks to her court connections. She negotiated lucrative contracts and even gained a monopoly on supplying provisions for the Dutch establishment in Ayutthaya.

Osoet died in 1658 following a stroke that left her paralyzed and unable to speak. At the Dutch’s request, she was given a Christian burial in the Company’s graveyard, rather than being cremated

Further reading:

Delouche Gilles, Une femme d’affaires et d’influence à Ayudhya au XVIIe siècle : Dame O-Sut (? -1658)

Djik Wil O., “Sex and trade in seventeenth century Siam. Osoet Pegu and her Dutch lovers”

Smith Bonnie G., Women's History in Global Perspective volume 2

[herejusttosufferalong]

I agree with this comment: "A secure committed girlfriend would know better and honestly be so unbothered."

I think about Corey and India during there promo tour. This girlfriend didn't show this type of behavior on SM when all the rumors about them was going around. She told him in private that it needed to stop and guess what it stopped. That was the behavior of someone it a committed relationship.

🐜is not secure because L has not given her reason to be. She knows she is a dime a dozen and this may not last.

For the people that keep saying she is young but isn't Corey and his partner young. Corey is actually younger than L. Look how he claimed his women.

no notes

[blackhistorystoryteller]

Black Americans should visit Ghana

To know more about black slave trade in Ghana

Monuments of shame

Cape Coast Castle - now a World Heritage Site - is one of about forty forts in Ghana where slaves from as far away as Burkina Faso and Niger were imprisoned. This former slave fortress could hold about 1,500 slaves at a time before they were loaded onto ships and sold into slavery in the New World in the Americas and the Caribbean.

Male captives who revolted or were deemed insubordinate ended up in the condemned cells - a pitch-black room where slaves were left to die in the oppressive heat without water, food or daylight.Rebellious women were beaten and chained to cannon balls in the courtyard

Built in 1482, Elmina Castle on Ghana's Cape coast is the earliest European structure erected in sub-Saharan Africa. Originally Portugese, it was later captured by the Dutch, who used it as a base for the Dutch slave trade with Brazil and the Caribbean. Under the flag of the Dutch West Indies Company, around 30,000 slaves a year passed through Elmina until 1814 when the Dutch abolished slavery.

The Portuguese position on the Gold Coast remained secure for almost a century. During that time, Lisbon leased the right to establish trading posts to individuals or companies that sought to align themselves with the local chiefs and to exchange trade goods both for rights to conduct commerce and for slaves whom the chiefs could provide. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, adventurers--first Dutch, and later English, Danish, and Swedish-- were granted licenses by their governments to trade overseas. On the Gold Coast, these European competitors built fortified trading stations and challenged the Portuguese. Sometimes they were also drawn into conflicts with local inhabitants as Europeans developed commercial alliances with local chiefs.

The principal early struggle was between the Dutch and the Portuguese. With the loss of Elmina in 1642 to the Dutch, the Portuguese left the Gold Coast permanently. The next 150 years saw kaleidoscopic change and uncertainty, marked by local conflicts and diplomatic maneuvers, during which various European powers struggled to establish or to maintain a position of dominance in the profitable trade of the Gold Coast littoral. Forts were built, abandoned, attacked, captured, sold, and exchanged, and many sites were selected at one time or another for fortified positions by contending European nations.

Both the Dutch and the British formed companies to advance their African ventures and to protect their coastal establishments. The Dutch West India Company operated throughout most of the eighteenth century. The British African Company of Merchants, founded in 1750, was the successor to several earlier organizations of this type. These enterprises built and manned new installations as the companies pursued their trading activities and defended their respective jurisdictions with varying degrees of government backing. There were short-lived ventures by the Swedes and the Prussians. The Danes remained until 1850, when they withdrew from the Gold Coast. The British gained possession of all Dutch coastal forts by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, thus making them the dominant European power on the Gold Coast.

During the heyday of early European competition, slavery was an accepted social institution, and the slave trade overshadowed all other commercial activities on the West African coast. To be sure, slavery and slave trading were already firmly entrenched in many African societies before their contact with Europe. In most situations, men as well as women captured in local warfare became slaves. In general, however, slaves in African communities were often treated as junior members of the society with specific rights, and many were ultimately absorbed into their masters' families as full members. Given traditional methods of agricultural production in Africa, slavery in Africa was quite different from that which existed in the commercial plantation environments of the New World.

Another aspect of the impact of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on Africa concerns the role of African chiefs, Muslim traders, and merchant princes in the trade. Although there is no doubt that local rulers in West Africa engaged in slaving and received certain advantages from it, some scholars have challenged the premise that traditional chiefs in the vicinity of the Gold Coast engaged in wars of expansion for the sole purpose of acquiring slaves for the export market. In the case of Asante, for example, rulers of that kingdom are known to have supplied slaves to both Muslim traders in the north and to Europeans on the coast. Even so, the Asante waged war for purposes other than simply to secure slaves. They also fought to pacify territories that in theory were under Asante control, to exact tribute payments from subordinate kingdoms, and to secure access to trade routes--particularly those that connected the interior with the coast.

It is important to mention, however, that the supply of slaves to the Gold Coast was entirely in African hands. Although powerful traditional chiefs, such as the rulers of Asante, Fante, and Ahanta, were known to have engaged in the slave trade, individual African merchants such as John Kabes, John Konny, Thomas Ewusi, and a broker known only as Noi commanded large bands of armed men, many of them slaves, and engaged in various forms of commercial activities with the Europeans on the coast.

The volume of the slave trade in West Africa grew rapidly from its inception around 1500 to its peak in the eighteenth century. Philip Curtin, a leading authority on the African slave trade, estimates that roughly 6.3 million slaves were shipped from West Africa to North America and South America, about 4.5 million of that number between 1701 and 1810. Perhaps 5,000 a year were shipped from the Gold Coast alone. The demographic impact of the slave trade on West Africa was probably substantially greater than the number actually enslaved because a significant number of Africans perished during slaving raids or while in captivity awaiting transshipment. All nations with an interest in West Africa participated in the slave trade. Relations between the Europeans and the local populations were often strained, and distrust led to frequent clashes. Disease caused high losses among the Europeans engaged in the slave trade, but the profits realized from the trade continued to attract them.

The growth of anti-slavery sentiment among Europeans made slow progress against vested African and European interests that were reaping profits from the traffic. Although individual clergymen condemned the slave trade as early as the seventeenth century, major Christian denominations did little to further early efforts at abolition. The Quakers, however, publicly declared themselves against slavery as early as 1727. Later in the century, the Danes stopped trading in slaves; Sweden and the Netherlands soon followed.

The importation of slaves into the United States was outlawed in 1807. In the same year, Britain used its naval power and its diplomatic muscle to outlaw trade in slaves by its citizens and to begin a campaign to stop the international trade in slaves. These efforts, however, were not successful until the 1860s because of the continued demand for plantation labor in the New World.

Because it took decades to end the trade in slaves, some historians doubt that the humanitarian impulse inspired the abolitionist movement. According to historian Walter Rodney, for example, Europe abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade only because its profitability was undermined by the Industrial Revolution. Rodney argues that mass unemployment caused by the new industrial machinery, the need for new raw materials, and European competition for markets for finished goods are the real factors that brought an end to the trade in human cargo and the beginning of competition for colonial territories in Africa. Other scholars, however, disagree with Rodney, arguing that humanitarian concerns as well as social and economic factors were instrumental in ending the African slave trade.

[newspatron]

How India Became a Global Leader in Telecom

If you are interested in learning how India became a global leader in telecom equipment manufacturing and 5G innovation, this article is for you. You will discover how India leveraged its engineering talent, policy reforms, and open standards.

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[probablyasocialecologist]

A new study launched this week highlights the work of Andhra Pradesh Community-Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) and the remarkable untapped potential of agroecological natural farming in Andhra Pradesh, India.  Spanning over 6 million hectares, and involving 6 million farmers and 50 million consumers, the APCNF represents the largest agroecological transition in the world. Amidst the diverse landscapes of Andhra Pradesh, this state-wide movement is addressing a multitude of development challenges—rural livelihoods, access to nutritious food, biodiversity loss, climate change, water scarcity, and pollution—and their work is redefining the way we approach food systems. Farmers practicing agroecology have witnessed remarkable yield increases. Conventional wisdom suggests that chemical-intensive farming is necessary to maintain high yields. But this study shows agroecological methods were just as productive, if not more so: natural inputs have achieved equal or higher yields compared to the other farming systems—on average, these farms saw an 11% increase in yields—while maintaining higher crop diversity. This significant finding challenges the notion that harmful chemicals are indispensable for meeting the demands of a growing population. The advantages of transitioning to natural farming in Andhra Pradesh have gone beyond just yields. Farmers who used agroecological approaches received higher incomes as well, while villages that used natural farming had higher employment rates. Thanks to greater crop diversity in their farming practice, farmers using agroecology had greater dietary diversity in their households than conventional farmers. The number of ‘sick days’ needed by farmers using natural farming was also significantly lower than those working on chemically-intensive farms. Another important finding was the significant increase in social ‘capital’: community cohesion was higher in natural farming villages, and knowledge sharing had greatly increased—significantly aided by women. The implications for these findings are significant: community-managed natural farming can support not just food security goals, but also sustainable economic development and human development. The study overall sheds light on a promising and optimistic path toward addressing geopolitical and climate impacts, underlining the critical significance of food sovereignty and access to nourishing, wholesome food for communities. Contrary to the misconception that relentlessly increasing food production is the sole solution to cater to a growing population, the truth reveals a different story. While striving for higher yields remains important, the root cause of hunger worldwide does not lie in scarcity, as farmers already produce more than enough to address it. Instead, food insecurity is primarily driven by factors such as poverty, lack of democracy, poor distribution, a lack of post-harvest handling, waste, and unequal access to resources. 

[ayaansh006]

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[hiriajuu-suffering]

Kamala aunty and the Hindu vote

Getting this out of the way, I'm voting for Kamala Harris. Biden really should've dropped out two months ago, and there's no other corporate democrat I would really endorse besides her, and not because of the identity politics. Well, sort of. If the Republican primary taught us anything, is a person of South Asian descent will continue to be the ideological punching bag of the white community.

South Asian men get deleted so hard I can't even find a GIF of Vivek Ramaswamy

How Kamala was treated the past four years by the democratic administration of Biden's was nothing short of egregious. Every impossible problem to solve she was blamed for with no tools address the root cause, and she stayed in there looking dumb like a loyal corporate employee. Now the entire system is banking on the political capital they were sweeping from underneath her to stop a literal convicted felon from retaking power and pardoning himself.

Not to mention the states where votes actually mattered 8 years ago were too sexist to put in a woman in power before, so now we're hoping a woman of color would go over better?

Candace Owens already showed how envious she is of Kamala's biracial swag with some really dumb comments.

Her black half isn't what's the issue is, because she embodies a lot more blackness than Asianness in her disposition to the American psyche. And the precedent for half black Presidents that perfectly fall within the cookie-cutter corporate democrat on policy has already been set.

It's her Asian side that might stoke the xenophobia that caused the whitelash red wave of 2016; y'know, because she's going to be subject to nearly the same misogyny Hilary was.

As an Asian-American, Kamala Harris and Andrew Yang weren't just the two candidates I identified most with, they were the best candidates in that primary, period. But they got dismissed and belittled so immensely because of the need to appeal to milk-toast whiteness. Republicans pander hard to grab minority votes, Democrats just avoid putting any minorities in significant positions influence. Don't believe me? Seen any LBGTQ+ positions in real moving and shaking positions?

The DEI stuff the right is going to criticize the entire scope and sequence of how Kamala became the candidate isn't good or fair, but it's not entirely wrong. Because of just how hollow the Democratic Party treats anyone with the poor affliction of being a minority.

There's a key part of the South Asian diaspora Biden lost exactly that Kamala herself is a part of, which makes things interesting to say the least..

Kamala does have the best policy on Israel of any candidate, but that's not saying much since her policy is essentially Obama-lite.

But that means she might lose her own identity vote on just that considering how abhorrently Islamophobic naturalized Indian-Americans have gotten in their support of Narendra Modi

I don't care how effective the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue has been at curbing Chinese aggression, the Nationalist imagery isn't a good sign for any society, really.

Especially when Muslim civil rights in India have all but evaporated. Nikki Haley wasn't particularly bad on Muslim civil rights compared to other Republicans, even as a half-Indian, she didn't buddy up to Modi (probably because he's done more to encourage gender-based violence in India than stop it), and I expect Kamala to actually get the misogynistic slander from conservative Indians because the hyperpatriarchy only comes when it comes to the opposition.

Being half Brahmin though certainly can't hurt her chances with her Hindu base, right? Well, Hindu men certainly have deeper roots in the red pill movement then we'd like to believe, and the first ones they point the finger towards are Hindu women that didn't choose them. Nikki Haley was polling better but Vivek Ramaswamy ate up her press pretty handily. Everyone sees Asian feminine beauty as valuable, but our misogynistic standards prevent us from seeing that type of ethnic image as leadership-worthy.

At least it's not Gavin Newsom. But that might not be enough for South Asian American males dissatisfied with their lot in life. Trump's message is appealing to us because it feeds into our vanity and takes responsibility off us as to why our sisters are meeting the model minority myth and we aren't. While we're not solely to blame, at least the right has some crazy narrative that explains why life didn't turn out to what was expected of us, even if that narrative twists it in a way that will end up just making us feel more isolated, because the right has the most racist women in the country, bar-none.

Well, women on both sides of the political spectrum are equally pretty racist in their courtship preferences, it's just liberal women will explain things in vague externalities and icks rather than being a sign for public restrooms in pre-1963 America.

In either case, this is a biracial black woman who was never in touch with the struggles of an Asian man, never really having been related to one even though she's an Asian woman. To a lot of Asian men, Trump is just more of what we expect of the lunacy of American politics, versus Kamala might be one of those people who actively makes us feel subhuman by being of the same race but still treating us as less than, like many desi women have been doing since biracial marriages within 1st generation South Asian Americans began getting normalized.

The normative view has to become where femininity isn't inherently more attractive than masculinity, especially so that women aren't just fit to be more educated and start making more, but actually lead society in meaningful ways.

I think if you're an AAPI in any capacity and you're not voting for Kamala Harris, you're missing the point somehow. But we're not the movers and makers of these elections, because we always reside in states that are firmly blue or red (well, at least until 2016 when Georgia did a thing). Kamala Harris's black vote definitely extends further than Biden's, but by less than makes actual sense. Can't do much worse than Biden on the Hispanic vote, but Kamala Harris if anyone is how you do that.

So if there's fundamentally just about how identity works in America, we will have a POTUS 47 in 2025. But we've learned the two decades in America has been anything fair to identity. Heck, as a Muslim teacher of a liberal arts content area in a red state I feel at the time. My supervisors won't make exceptions for me they readily make for anyone else, not that they were requirements to begin with, just because my identity bears the ugliest parts of the model minority myth. I don't look Asian enough to be Asian, and the media makes my ethnic identity look to threatening to be trusted with novel ideas, at least.

That's at least something this candidate and I have in common. Biraciality and Multiethnicity isn't well understood in our discussions of intersectionality in social and political discourse. The only people that try to make sense of it are the ones that actively try to erode the ethnic barriers enclaves self-segregate on. Kamala has had to think about that because it's a fundamental part of her identity.

I'm not voting on identity or identity politics, as the right would claim I will. I'm voting because at least this candidate has the capacity to understand me, because they're not a white, entitled, spoiled brat that tried to overthrow the government when he didn't get his way. Y'know, fundamental stuff like that.

Because I'm still American through-and-through, regardless of what my ethnic background is. What's more American than having a minority prosecutor in a liberal enclave? That's literally one of the top 5 career options every desi child is given when they think about their careers.

So yeah, Kamala2024. Bite me.

[feministdragon]

In light of the bullshit being put out by the UN Women organization, insisting that men should be legally recognized as women, let’s look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and see how many of these human rights women actually possess.

Of course it has to be acknowledged this list of human rights is fundamentally a list of ideals rather than the reality on the ground, and often even men in the world don’t possess every one of these rights.   However, i’d like to point out exactly how few of these rights women have.   

On a side note, the UN website takes pains to point out that if Hansa Mehta of India hadn’t spoken up they wouldn’t have even thought to put ‘all human beings’ instead of men.  They say this to celebrate Hansa Mehta and to pat themselves on the back about their inclusivity, but isn’t that honestly shameful?  That they had to be told to include women??? more than HALF of HUMANITY, in a UNIVERSAL declaration of human rights?   

Anyways, let's get into this.

Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

So right out of the gate, in Article 1, we can see what women are stripped of: Women are not afforded equal dignity and rights, neither before the law or within culture, not in any country or place in the world.  

And then there’s this stupid ‘spirit of brotherhood’.  Yeah, ‘siblinghood’ sounds weird, but is there literally no other way to express the connections humanity owes each other than through male relationship?

Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

This is a fantasy for all human beings, but yes, at least we’re finally talking about all human beings.

Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

This is attainable by many men currently, but what woman in the world today has ‘security of person’?  What woman alive today does not live with the threat of rape?

Article 4 No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

‘Unpaid labor’, or women’s constant, unacknowledged, unpaid labor in care of the men, children and elderly in their lives.  Is that not servitude, if not outright slavery?

Article 5 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

How many women in the western ‘free’ world are anally raped and choked during sex on a regular basis, without their permission?  How many women are forced into degrading clothing and practices of appearance?  How many women are belittled and dehumanized on a daily basis, in conversation, media, religious practice, culture?

Article 6 Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7 All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Barely, barely anywhere in the world do we have legal recognition of ourselves as human beings. Not even in the US is women’s humanity defended in the law. Women are not explicitly named as being human beings in the US legal code, but rather are only inferred to be a subset to men.

Article 8 Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

‘Effective remedy and national tribunal’ against rape when?  ‘Effective remedy and national tribunal’ against porn (filmed violence upon women) and prostitution (paid violence upon women) when?   ‘Effective remedy and national tribunal’ against child marriage, FGM etc when?

Article 9 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10 Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11 1. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. 2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

These are still effectively fantasy in many parts of the world, for both men and women. 

Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

This is troublesome in a world where men’s honor is dependent upon the socially compliant behaviour of his female relatives, but also when will we begin to defend women from attacks upon her honour and reputation?

Article 13 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. 2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

In a world where some women cannot even leave their home, much less their own country without male guardianship, this is a farce.

Article 14 1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. 2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15 1. Everyone has the right to a nationality. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

This is also unattainable for many men.

Article 16 1. Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution. 2. Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses. 3. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

1 and 2 obviously not attainable in much of the world.  But also, why in 3. is ‘family’ the natural and fundamental group unit of society, and not 'tribe'?  That is an ideological choice that enshrines the subservience of women to men, and strangely dissonant to the organization of our species in the 200,000 years of our existence.

Article 17 1. Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. 2. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Again, this is one of those laws that is on the books in my country and many other countries but is culturally ignored and actively worked around, to the detriment of women’s financial independence.

Article 18 Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20 1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. 2. No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Few women enjoy these luxuries, as they are expected to conform to their family’s and husband’s thoughts, beliefs, religion, ideology

Article 21 1. Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. 2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. 3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Look at the low, low numbers of women participating in government around the globe, and then look me in the eye and tell me women have these rights in practice.

Article 22 Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

yup, pretty much nobody has these

Article 23 1. Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. 2. Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. 3. Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. 4. Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Women recieving equal pay for equal work when?  

also ‘himself and his family’?    ahhhhh you guys forgot women are people again, didn’t you

Article 24 Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Please see Article 4 above, also women’s 'rest and leisure' when?

Article 25 1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

We’re far away from both of these.  But also why are these in the same article? 

Article 26 1. Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. 2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. 3. Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

We’re also far from the attainment of this one, but also, isn’t there some fundamental conflict between 3 and the others?   Parents often choose to invest in their sons and ignore their daughters, the UN is fine with this?  Parents can have the right to discriminate among their children?

Article 27 1. Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. 2. Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Womens’ contributions to science and culture fully acknowledged when?  Women’s entitlement to the fruits of their intellectual labor actually protected when?

Article 28 Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29 1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible. 2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society. 3. These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30 Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Yeah, we’re also not here yet, but again, ‘his rights and freedoms’: you guys kinda forgot women are people here too.  

Yes, this document was written in 1948.  Yes, it’s hard to update the texts of documents like this without opening a whole can of worms.  Yes, even men aren't guaranteed a number of these rights. But this document clearly shows us where women’s rights are lacking, and UNWomen, you’ve got a whole lot of nerve to ignore your real tasks in favor of ‘empowering’ a group of men at the expense of what little rights and protections women even have.

[workersolidarity]

[ 📹 Despite the widespread destruction caused by the Israeli genocide, ongoing in the Gaza Strip, and despite the Zionist entity's destruction of all Mosques in Gaza, the resilience and determination of Palestinians, strong in their Muslim faith, cannot be diminished as a Palestinian man calls for morning prayers while standing stop the rubble of demolished homes in the city of Khan Yunis, south of Gaza. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

261 DAYS OF ISRAELI GENOCIDE IN GAZA: INDIA PROVIDING MUNITIONS TO THE ZIONIST ENTITY SINCE START OF WAR, PROTESTS GRIP TEL AVIV, NETANYAHU CLAIMS US DECREASES WEAPONS SUPPLIES, UNRWA: 69% OF SCHOOLS HOUSING DISPLACED PALESTINIANS HAVE BEEN BOMBED, GENOCIDE GOES ON

On 261st day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 3 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 47 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 121 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands, of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

The Zionist entity has sent Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to the United States on a reconciliation tour after video released by the occupation Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the weekend accused the United States of decreasing weapons transfers to the Israeli occupation army.

Gallant will meet with senior Biden administration officials to discuss security issues, including the slow down of arms transfers to the Zionist entity, while the US administration continues to express concern over a planned visit by Netanyahu where he will give a speech before the United States Congress.

According to reporting in the Hebrew media, the Biden administration remains concerned that the Israeli Prime Minister could attack the administration during his speech before Congress for the supposed slow-down of arms transfers, which the White House still denies.

Despite intense push-back from the Biden administration, Netanyahu stuck by his criticisms at a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, continuing to accuse the US administration of slow-rolling munitions sales to the Zionist entity.

"Netanyahu's video was puzzling, to say the least," said John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, speaking at a press conference on Saturday.

"We did not know that this video would be published, and the statements made in it disturb and disappoint the United States, especially considering that no other country is doing more than us to help Israel defend itself against the threat of Hamas. Netanyahu's statements about the supply of weapons were incorrect. Israel will not be harmed by our new priorities," Kirby added.

Meanwhile, back at home, the Netanyahu administration endures large-scale protests calling for a hostage exchange deal to be settled, with tens of thousands of Israelis spilling out onto the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday night.

Organizers said it was the largest anti-government protest to date, while video from the protests showed violent police suppression, some on horseback, with dozens arrested during the night after the protesters blocked the city's main highway.

Protesters say they demand their government negotiate a hostage exchange deal, even if it means ending the war in the Gaza Strip.

On October 7th, 2023, Palestinian resistance factions broke out of the outdoor prison that is the Gaza Strip, raiding Israeli settlements and taking approximately 120 hostages back to the enclave.

By some estimates, just 50 of those hostages remain alive after 9 months of Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which according to the Hamas resistance group, has killed roughly half of the hostages.

Meanwhile, as the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip continues, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has issued a statement declaring that 69% of the UNRWA schools in Gaza that housed displaced Palestinian families during the war have been bombed by the Israeli occupation army, leaving them either destroyed or partially damaged.

The UNRWA made the announcement via its account on the social media platform X, stating that according to the Global Education Cluster, an educational organization affiliated with UNICEF, "69% of school buildings where displaced families were seeking shelter have been directly hit or damaged."

"This blatant disregard of humanitarian law must stop. We need a ceasefire now," UNRWA added.

In other news, according to the Hebrew media site Yedioth Ahronoth (Ynet), India has been providing the Israeli occupation with munitions since the very start of the war in Gaza, delivering countless tons of military aid to the Zionist army.

"India stands firm in its support of Israel amid the war in Gaza and supplies it with advanced drones made in the country despite growing Pro-Palestinian calls from its Muslim demographic," the Ynet article states.

According to the article, back in May, Spanish authorities prevented an Indian ship carrying over 27 tons of munitions destined for the ports of occupied Palestine from docking at the port of Cartagena in southeast Spain.

"The incident highlights the fact that India has been providing significant military assistance to Israel since October 7th," Ynet said in the piece.

Back in February, the Indian media reported that India was supplying the Israeli entity with advanced Hermes 900 drones, which are manufactured in the Indian city of Hyderabad.

Ynet says the Indian media reported that the factory, which was established by the Zionist entity to supply the Hermes drones to the Indian military, converted at least 20 of the drones specifically for the occupation army due to a shortage resulting from the war in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Zionist entity continues its genocide against the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip, slaughtering civilians by the hundreds each week and obliterating the enclave's medical and public infrastructure.

On Sunday morning, June 23rd, local media reported that at least 5 Palestinian civilians were killed as a result of the Israeli occupation's bombardment of central and western Gaza City.

In one of the incidents, a correspondant with Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that Zionist warplanes bombed a residential building near the Al-Jawhara Tower in central Gaza City, resulting in the deaths of 3 Palestinians and wounding several others, including women and children.

Similarly, two civilians were killed, and a number of others injured, as a result of an Israeli air raid targeting a residential house in the Al-Shati Refugee Camp, also known as the Beach Camp, west of Gaza City.

Additionally, the Israeli occupation army intermittently bombed the center and south of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing bombardment of residential neighborhoods of Gaza City, at least 43 Palestinians were killed on Saturday according to local healthcare sources, while scores of others were wounded in Zionist airstrikes and artillery shelling.

The mass murder continued when the Israeli occupation forces on Sunday bombed a residential house in the Al-Sabra neighborhood, south of Gaza City, massacreing 8 civilians and wounding dozens of others.

Simultaneously, the Israeli occupation army also used a drone to bomb a gathering of civilians near the power station north of the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, killing two Palestinians and injuring several others.

Similarly, Zionist artillery shelling pummeled the western and southern neighborhoods of Rafah, south of Gaza, while Zionist soldiers detonated a number of residential buildings in the Brazil neighborhood, south of Rafah, continuing the systematic destruction of residential areas of the city after deconstructing nearly the entire Saudi neighborhood.

According to local reports, in the city of Rafah, the Israeli occupation forces have destroyed hundreds of homes in the Saudi neighborhood in the west and center of the city, detonating entire residential squares using explosives.

The Israeli occupation's massacres and atrocities continued with the Zionist army's bombing of the main eastern gate for the headquarters of the UNRWA, southwest of Gaza City, slaughtering at least 5 civilians and wounding 7 others.

According to local reporting, Zionist warplanes targeted the guard room at the main eastern gate for the UNRWA headquarters in the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood, southwest of Gaza City, resulting in the deaths of 5 Palestinians, some of whom were "dismembered" by the attack, and also wounding 7 others, including women and children who were transported to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in the city.

Prior to publishing, another news alert was issued by WAFA News Agency, reporting that the Zionist army had bombed in the vicinity of the tents of displaced Palestinian families near the Vocational Training College of the UNRWA, west of Gaza City, murdering at least 8 Palestinians.

Another strike by the Israeli occupation forces targeted residential areas of the Al-Sabra neighborhood, south of Gaza City, killing 9 more civilians and wounding several others.

According to local Civil Defense crews, rescue efforts recovered the bodies of 3 Palestinians and several wounded civilians as a result of Zionist fighter jets that bombed a residential house belonging to the Ja'rour family, in the vicinity of the Dabit area of central Gaza City.

Meanwhile, in the Bureij Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, a female Palestinian civilian was killed, and several others wounded, as a result of an Israeli occupation airstrike on the "Meet" family home in the Camp, while another strike on a group of civilians in the Nuseirat Camp killed one Palestinian and wounded a number of others.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll now exceeds 37'598 Palestinians killed, including upwards of 10'000 women and over 15'000 children, while another 86'032 othrrs have been wounded as a result of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

June 23rd, 2024

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

[redditreceipts]

Can I just say that after years of being in queer/TRA circles and being constantly bombarded with "OP's a TERF; their opinion is invalid," "hmm this [basic statement about misogyny existing] seems like radfem rhetoric," "how could you say that? That's so bigoted!" and just constant variations of "think this, you're bad if you think otherwise" after all of that it is so refreshing to come to radfem spaces and to see people very firmly state their opinions but also be very clear about differences of opinions being "allowed." I've seen you and several other radfems talk about how radfem ideology isn't a religion and that's so refreshing. I have internally for years thought trans ideology sounded like a religion but I could never say that aloud.

It's kind of funny in that among TRA circles, they regularly talk about TERFs indoctrinating people and radfem ideology being "cult-like," but I haven't see that yet. I see that all the time in TRA spaces instead. I certainly don't agree with everything I see in radfem spaces, but whereas in TRA spaces I feel like I'd be ostracized for my differing viewpoints and even suicide baited in radfem spaces I so far feel like disagreement is allowed. Vehement and passionate disagreement perhaps but nothing that would devolve into a complete lack of respect or care.

thank you!!!

and yes, you don't have to agree with everything on my blog (or maybe you don't even agree with anything lol).

I actually think it's so weird that people can be very convinced of something, and still completely unwilling to defend that position. I mean, I understand that there are positions that people don't want to discuss all of the time, like whether the Holocaust actually happened or whether slavery should be legal. I personally wouldn't want to have this discussion every day, but I could defend my position - and I also don't think that the Holocaust and slavery are comparable to the question of whether biological males can be women.

I also don't understand the accusation of gender criticals being cultist. I mean, there is a huge spectrum of opinion, from people saying that some trans women are women, to people saying that trans women are women in some sense but not in the other, to people saying that no trans women are women but they're also not men, but a third category... all of these opinions would be labelled as "TERF"-opinions. on the other hand, in TRA circles, there is exactly one opinion you are allowed to have, and it's "trans women are women".

also, I am completely open to changing my mind. If anyone gave me an actual valid argument as to why self-identification should determine one's sex category, this will become a TRA blog in next to no time. Issue is just that I haven't heard one yet lmao

and the entire suicide-threat thing reminds me of Mahatma Gandhi, who would just go on hunger strike any time anyone did something he didn't like. you might argue that he had good goals or that he secured peace, but marginalised groups in India are still to this day angry with him because he prevented some of their movements by going on hunger strike. It's just so manipulative.

anyways, cool that you're here :)