‘Cutting the nose, lips and ears’: Brutality against Afghan women at record level
Violent crimes against women in Afghanistan reached an unprecedented level of brutality in 2013, an Afghan human rights watchdog has announced as the US-led coalition prepares to withdraw.

Chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), Sima Samar, told Reuters that the pace and the hideousness of attacks on women intensified in 2013 with a 25 per cent surge in cases from March through September.

"The brutality of the cases is really bad. Cutting the nose, lips and ears. Committing public rape," Samar said. "Mass rape... It's against dignity, against humanity."

The spokeswoman noted that as the withdrawal deadline draws near for international troops, women in tribal areas are less protected, leaving them vulnerable to violent assaults.

"The presence of the international community and provincial reconstruction teams in most of the provinces was giving people confidence," Samar said. "There were people there trying to protect women. And that is not there anymore, unfortunately."

She also noted that poor economic conditions and the lack of security are also contributing factor to the rise of incidents.
Other human rights workers are blaming the attacks and even killing of women on the absence of law in a country based on patriarchal tribal societies.

1. First, there’s her no-nonsense approach to The Great Miley Debate:

So many interviews, even ones that I consider really intelligent and good writers, will do the, like, ‘Oh, you’re not taking your clothes off like Miley Cyrus and all these girls’ thing, which to me is just the weirdest thing to say to someone. … Now when people are like, ‘Tell me what you think of Miley!’ I’ll say, ‘What do you think of Miley?’ and they’ll flounder and say, ‘Well, I think she’s really talented…’ and I’m like, there you go.

It’s so condescending when people are surprised to hear that young women aren’t all secretly waged in an underground war against each other, and I’m thrilled to see that Lorde refuses to play into that.

2. Then she promptly moves on to making us jealous of her avant-garde fashion sense:

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been into clothes, but not really labels– that’s kind of only been in the last year or so. It’s something I’ve always cared about. I used to just constantly thrift and make stuff and cut stuff up and borrow my dad’s stuff and borrow my little brother’s stuff and all that jazz. … It’s just, if something is cool, then it’s cool.

So not only are her clothes interesting, but they’re interesting in an authentic way. Damn. Right now, even Chanel is trying so hard to replicate that “it’s cool because it’s cool” aesthetic, and they’re majorly failing.

3. Next, she moves on to brilliantly shooting down the way fashion photographers treat young women:

I have found that there is a lot of stuff, particularly on photo shoots, that people expect of girls, like ‘Pop that hip out a bit more! Can you just give me a wink? Can you look a bit more sexy? Or if it’s an outdoor thing they’ll be like, ‘Oh, you’re in a long, beautiful dress? Let’s get you sitting in this field and looking confused. Some of the stuff, I’m like, no one would ask this of a guy.

Spot on. Spot freaking on.

4. And then she expertly sums up what we’ve been trying to put into words for-freaking-ever:

I think I’m speaking for a bunch of girls when I say that the idea that feminism is completely natural and shouldn’t even be something that people find mildly surprising. …I find a lot of feminist reading quite confusing and that often there’s a set of rules, and people will be like, ‘Oh, this person isn’t a true feminist because they don’t embody this one thing,’ and I don’t know, often there is a lot of gray area that can be hard to navigate.

Gender Studies classes around the world could benefit from a guest lecture by Dr. Lorde.

5. And to make you love her even more, she tops it all off with an awesomely punchy quote that I kind of want embroidered onto a throw pillow:

Don’t let some random comment that you wouldn’t have even thought about overshadow something important that you were actually trying to say.


Read more: http://www.thegloss.com/2014/01/03/fashion/lorde-interview-fashion-feminism-miley/#ixzz2pRHrP5HO

The bird lovers' call for the eradication of cats (but then who will I talk to at parties?!) isn't just a modern phenomenon. On the contrary! It's been going on for years as proven by the amazing New York Times letter to the editor from 1914 that was recently unearthed by Gothamist. Of course, what makes this Letter to the Editor so exciting isn't just its age or its argument against domestic felines— it's the heaping dose of old fashioned sexism that the author somehow managed to insert within.

It’s time for another installment of Facts That Support Common Sense. This time around, when movies have more than just a bunch of hoinky doink dudes running around, more people like it! They’ll even pay to go see it! In a theater! Of 2013?s top 50 domestic films, the group of movies that passed the Bechdel test performed significantly better than those that did not. 1.56 billion dollars better. Now if I was someone that was in charge of things like making movies, I would pay attention even if it was $156 more. But 1.56 billion dollars? Do you know what that looks like? It looks like this:

$1,560,000,000.00

$1,560,000,000.00

$1,560,000,000.00

That looks like a lot of money because it is. It’s a lot of money people aren’t making because they won’t even let two women say, “Hey, do you have a feeling you want to talk about?” “No, but I wanna talk about this sandwich I ate yesterday. The bread was stale.” A lot of these headlines are about movies with strong female characters making more money but that’s not true. That’s not what this test is about. It’s not about whether they are strong or feminist or independent or whatever hot button word you want to throw in front of ‘woman’ to make it appeal to people that care about this sort of thing. It’s not about whether they have their own storyline or feelings or sense of purpose. It’s just about them talking about something other than a dude to another woman. The bar is that low. And still over and over movies don’t clear it. At this point it’s like people pick the bar up off the ground so they can walk under it. You could cover the bar in shit and people would still be like, “Well if this what it takes for women not to be people!” Or at least that’s how it seems to me but I’m black so no one cares what I think anyway.

Saturday, February 1, 2014 - 12:00pm - 6:00pm
On Feb. 1, people at more than a dozen locations around the world will work together to edit Wikipedia for greater representation of women in art and other articles.

To learn more, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/ArtAndFeminism.

The event is organized by people at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, 540 West 21st Street, New York City. They can also provide guidance for attendees at their location on how to edit Wikipedia effectively. They encourage people to join in from all over the world - if you can't edit from their Center, join remotely or at one of the other event locations.

We have lots of great resources on how to edit Wikipedia (and why!) on HASTAC. Check out the Related Content on the left for more information.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) 2010 Summary Report presents the first year of NISVS data on the national prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV), sexual violence (SV), and stalking among women and men in the United States. The 2010 survey is the first year of the survey and provides baseline data that will be used to track IPV, SV, and stalking trends.


2010 Summary Key Findings
IPV, SV, and stalking are widespread in the United States. The findings in the 2010 survey underscore the pervasiveness of this violence, the immediate impacts of victimization, and the lifelong health consequences. Women are disproportionately impacted. They experienced high rates of severe IPV, rape, and stalking, and long-term chronic disease and other negative health impacts, such as post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.
Women are disproportionately affected by IPV, SV, and stalking.
• Nearly 1 in 5 women (18%) and 1 in 71 men (1%) have been raped in their lifetime.
• Approximately 1.3 million women were raped during the year preceding the survey.
• One in 4 women have been the victim of severe physical violence by an intimate partner, while 1 in 7 men have experienced the same.
• One in 6 women (16%) have been stalked during their lifetime, compared to 1 in 19 men (5%).
IPV, SV, and stalking victims experience short- and long-term chronic disease and other health impacts.
• Eighty-one percent of women who experienced rape, stalking, or physical violence by an intimate partner reported significant short- or long-term impacts, such as post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and injury. Thirty-five percent of men report such impacts of their experiences.

• Women who experienced rape or stalking by any perpetrator or physical violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime were more likely than women who did not experience these forms of violence to report having asthma, diabetes, and irritable bowel syndrome.

• Men and women who experienced these forms of violence were more likely to report frequent headaches, chronic pain, difficulty with sleeping, activity limitations, poor physical health, and poor mental health than men and women who did not experience these forms of violence.

If you had to pick a Kevin Smith movie that fans would rally to defend from a blogger's dismissive comment with misogynistic Twitter fervor, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back probably wouldn't be on your shortlist. But the internet can often be a small, mean place — a dank tunnel full of blindly groping mole people trying really hard to make themselves heard in an almost total vacuum of perspective — which is part of the explanation for how Kevin Smith came to post a long super-apologetic chronicle of that time he commented on a blog post and unwittingly propped open the floodgates of internet misogyny. Big whoops.

Here's what happened. Bracing for the massive end-of-year Netflix streaming purge, Death and Taxes blogger Maggie Serota wrote a brief roundup on Friday of the fine films that the cabal of dementors that decide what gets streamed on Netflix have slated for a DVD-only existence. In her post, Serota included this completely disposable jab at one of Kevin Smith's more derided flicks: "'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back' is included in the purge, but absolutely no one will miss that one."

In a wonderful twist, however, Kevin Smith commented on Serota's post with what can only fairly be described as a good-natured, "Thanks for the free plug, Mags!" What??? Famous people read the internet? IMPROBABLE! And yet, the proof was right there, next to the avatar of Kevin Smith doing mouth stuff to his adorable dog.

IF YOU LIKE MY STUFF, THEN YOU LIKE WOMEN
Saturday 28 December 2013 @ 6:09 pm
And if you like women, NEVER call them “cunts”. Or get vulgar with them at all. And if you like me or my stuff at all, then NEVER express yourself to ANYONE – woman or man – in misogynistic terms. This is important to me. Even before I was married and had a daughter, this was important to me. The Jay character aside, I’ve always tried to imbue the characters in my flicks with nothing but respect for women. If my movies have made you feel it’s okay to reduce another human being by labeling them a “bitch” or a “cunt”, then I was an even worse filmmaker than I thought.