Nairobi — The schoolboy watched as a man tried to remove the nappy of a little girl he was dragging along a Nairobi riverbank, suspecting that he was going to rape her.

Having been trained to defend girls against sexual assault, the boy called other young men to help him confront the man and rescue the child.

"It would have been fatal," said Collins Omondi, who taught the boy as part of a programme to stamp out violence against women and girls in Nairobi slums. "If this man would have assaulted this kid, he would have thrown her inside the river."

Omondi teaches a programme called 'Your Moment of Truth', run by the charity Ujamaa Africa which encourages adolescent boys to stand up against violence towards women.

The training is "highly effective" in improving attitudes towards women and increasing the likelihood of successful intervention, researchers from Stanford University, University of Nairobi and United States International University-Africa said.

The training increased boys' successful interventions when witnessing physical or sexual assault by 185 percent, from 26 to 74 percent, according to their study to be published later this year in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201503241509.html

Passover is nigh and the Notorious R.B.G. has spoken.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has released a supplementary Seder reading highlighting the role of women in the Exodus narrative. Ginsburg—who is the first Jewish woman ever appointed to the Court—decided to contribute a feminist perspective after being asked by a Jewish nonprofit to to write on social justice and Passover. Below is an excerpt of her essay, which was co-written with Washington D.C.’s Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt:

The stories we tell our children shape what they believe to be possible—which is why at Passover, we must tell the stories of the women who played a crucial role in the Exodus narrative.

The Book of Exodus, much like the Book of Genesis, opens in pervasive darkness. Genesis describes the earth as “unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep.” In Exodus, darkness attends the accession of a new Pharaoh who feared the Israelites and so enslaved them. God alone lights the way out of the darkness in Genesis. But in Exodus, God has many partners, first among them, five brave women.

***

These women had a vision leading out of the darkness shrouding their world. They were women of action, prepared to defy authority to make their vision a reality bathed in the light of the day.

http://blog.longreads.com/2015/03/23/the-intrepid-women-of-exodus-ruth-bader-ginsburgs-feminist-seder-supplement/

Emmy Noether was one of the most brilliant and important mathematicians of the 20th century. She altered the course of modern physics. Einstein called her a genius. Yet today, almost nobody knows who she is.

In 1915, Noether uncovered one of science's most extraordinary ideas, proving that every symmetry found in nature has a corresponding law of conservation. So, for example, the fact that physical laws work the same today as they did yesterday turns out to be related to the notion that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Noether's theorem is a deep insight that underpins much of modern-day physics and things like the search for the Higgs boson.

DESPITE HER BRILLIANCE, UNIVERSITIES DIDN'T WANT TO HIRE A WOMAN

Even so, as one of the very few female mathematicians working in Germany in her day, Noether faced rampant sexism. As a young woman, she wasn't allowed to formally attend university. Even after proving herself a first-rate mathematician, male faculties were reluctant to hire her. If that wasn't enough, in 1933, the Nazis ousted her for being Jewish. Even today, she remains all-too obscure.

That should change. So it’s welcome news that Google is honoring Noether today with a Google Doodle on her 133rd birthday. To celebrate, here's an introduction

Hold onto your butts: a man has admitted that generally speaking, it takes longer for men to believe what a woman says than it would if a man said it. And… exhale. Let's breathe this one out.

Who is this brave soul, and what exactly did he say? His name is Damon Young, the co-founder and editor of VSB Magazine. In an essay for HuffPo republished from a blog called Very Smart Brothas, Young admitted that he doesn't trust his wife, basically:

Panama and I were talking about the Rolling Stone story controversy. It eventually segued to Cosby, which then segued into a realization that there's a common thread in each of these types of stories and the tenor of the conversations surrounding them.

Trust. Well, the lack thereof. Generally speaking, we (men) do not believe things when they're told to us by women. Well, women other than our mothers or teachers or any other woman who happens to be an established authority figure. Do we think women are pathological liars? No. But, does it generally take longer for us to believe something if a woman tells it to us than it would if a man told us the exact same thing? Definitely!

This conversation is how, after five months of marriage, eight months of being engaged, and another year of whatever the hell we were doing before we got engaged, I realized I don't trust my wife

Supreme Court justice, feminist, and all-around badass Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns 82 today. Let's celebrate with some inspiring quotes. Happy birthday RBG!

1. ON HER MOTHER

"My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady, and the other was to be independent. The study of law was unusual for women of my generation. For most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A., but your M.R.S."

— via ACLU

2. ON BEING REJECTED EARLY IN HER CAREER BY A FIRM THAT HAD ALREADY HIRED A WOMAN

“You think about what would have happened ... Suppose I had gotten a job as a permanent associate. Probably I would have climbed up the ladder and today I would be a retired partner. So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great good fortune.”

— In conversation with Makers

3. ON FEMALE SUPREME COURT JUSTICES

"[W]hen I’m sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the supreme court]? And I say ‘When there are nine.’ People are shocked. But there’d been nine men, and nobody’s ever raised a question about that."

— In an interview with 10th Circuit Bench & Bar Conference at the University of Colorado in Boulder, via CBS News

4. ON DISSENTING OPINIONS

"Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, ‘my colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way,’ but the greatest dissents do become court opinions."

— From an interview on Live with Bill Maher

Paul Feig Says Female Ghostbusters Backlash Most “Vile, Misogynistic Sh** I’ve Ever Seen in My Life”


In a recent Variety interview for his new comedy Spy, director Paul Feig was asked how he felt about the tiny man-babies who claim his all-female Ghostbusters reboot will retroactively ruin their childhood:

The Internet is really funny – I love it, but I hate it at the same time [...] The first wave when you make an announcement like that is overwhelmingly positive. Everyone’s so happy and you’re like, This is great. Then comes the second wave and you’re like, Oh my God. Some of the most vile, misogynistic sh** I’ve ever seen in my life.
Feig talked in particular about the “vicious” remarks he saw on Twitter, saying “The biggest thing I’ve heard for the last four months is, ‘Thanks for ruining my childhood.’ It’s going to be on my tombstone when I die. It’s so dramatic. Honestly, the only way I could ruin your childhood is if I got into a time machine and went back and made you an orphan.”

The director says that after receiving a particularly hateful tweet (most of which would likely be even worse if Feig was a woman), he often checks out the offender’s profile: “I figure it’s some wacked out teenager. But almost constantly it’s someone whose bio says, ‘Proud father of two!’ And has some high end job. You’re raising children and yet you’re bashing me about putting women in my movie?”

Speaking with Dame Magazine, Crews spoke eloquently about gender and how we represent ourselves when talking about how much of himself he brings to his character on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. “Every man and every woman has both sexes in them [...] We have to embrace the duality that we are,” said Crews. “I’m an artist – I love painting and drawing, and I play the flute, and people go, ‘Man, that’s feminine!’ But why is that feminine? That’s just human. If you feel that is feminine, you’re judging yourself based on what other people’s reactions might be.”

The former NFL player, who is now married with five children (four of whom are girls) and one granddaughter, said that he has had to do some “serious thinking” about the world in which he’s raising his children, and that’s part of what made him want to actively speak out about feminism and the fight for equality. “When I see the world and the way people are treated, I see so many domination and control issues,” said Crews. “The truth is, everyone is equal and valuable, and everyone is necessary, but there tends to be a dismissal of certain groups.”

But, Crews clarifies, he’s not trying to speak for women, but rather to be the best ally he can. “Women are more than capable of handling themselves, and have been doing so wonderfully for years,” explained Crews. “What I am saying is, as one man to another man, examine your own mind-set. Examine what makes you tick. Because if you feel that you are more valuable than your wife and kids, that’s a problem.” In his book Manhood, Crews cites male pride as something that stops men from changing their outlook on how they treat women.

Crews also spoke at length about rape culture and its prevalence in the world of sports and football, noting that he’s known many men who believed women were responsible for their own sexual assaults because of how they were dressed. “Once I realized that I was part of that culture, I knew that I had to change it,” Crews said, citing 50 Shades of Grey as an example of pop culture projecting abuse as romance, and said that it’s simple in our society for men to use lies, guilt, and shame to control women – something he’s seen at length in his work with the Polaris Project to stop human trafficking.