Black Looks

• “The last word has not been spoken” – Beah Richards

  Posted: March 31, 2011, 7:06 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  I’ve watched Beah Richards in many films and I remember reading somewhere about her poetry. But I never knew she was a feminist, wrote powerful political poetry speaking truth to power; was a playwright, a strong fiercely political, inspirationally powerful Black woman. Richards had no fear of speaking out at on her commitment to truth and freedom at political rallies. What frightened her was fascism not communism, after all as she said “I grew up in Mississippi and lived with it every day”. In an interview with the director and co-producer, LisaGay Hamilton – who herself must be congratulated for such a selfless work of art – Ann Marie Offer, described Beah Richards as a “Minister of Human Dignity.” what an apt obituary for such a great woman.

  Like most life stories the film is full of those joys and sadnesses we all pass through – some better and worse than others. At the time of the interviews, Beah was suffering from the last stages of emphysema and was on oxygen 24 hours a day. Her next to last journey, back home to Mississippi, in which she leaves her home of 25 years, is one of those indescribable painful sadnesses which sap your strength leaving you weak and utterly forelorn.

  3 months later, Beah Richards received an Emmy Award for her role in the series, “Practice” and soon after she passed away. Her last request was that her ashes be scattered on the confederate graveyard in Mississippi – even death was to be made an act of struggle.

  Her life story is told in the film “Beah: A Black Woman Speaks” a documentary film by LisaGay Hamiliton. As a young woman trying to be an actress and dancer in Hollywood in the 1950s and facing the proverbial slammed door, Beah decided to go to New York. She was penniless and hearing about a peace conference in Chicago with a prize for the poem which best expressed peace, she decided to enter her poem “A Black Woman Speaks……” Beah entered a poetry competition. I never heard of this poem yet it’s at least as powerful as Sojourner Truth’s’ “Aint I a Woman“. The poem speaks to the primordial memory of pre-Americas, slavery, rape, imprisonment, racism,humiliation, lynchings and centuries of dehumanization of Black peoples. The poem though it speaks to these vile memories and realities, is a poem of resistance. An act of survival and despite the terrible hardships of the journey from there to here, I, we remain standing our pride in tact.

  I kept your sons and daughters alive.

  But when they grew strong in blood and bone
  that was of my milk
  you
  taught them to hate me.
  PUt your decay in their hearts and upon their lips
  so that strength that was of myself
  turned and spat upon me,
  despoiled my daughters, and killed my sons.
  You know I speak true.
  Though this is not true for all of you

  A BLACK WOMEN SPEAKS…
  OF WHITE WOMANHOOD
  OF WHITE SUPREMACY
  OF PEACE
  
  A poem by BEAULA RICHARDSON

  Read by Beaula Richardson at the Women’s Workshop at the American People’s Peace Congress held in Chicago on June 29, 30 and July 1, 1951 bringing a standing ovation from all 500 women attending.

  It is right that I a woman
  black,
  should speak of white womanhood.
  my fathers
  my brothers
  my husbands
  my sons
  die for it: because of it.
  and their blood
  chilled in electric chairs,
  stopped by hangman’s noose,
  cooked by lynch mobs’ fire,
  spilled by white supremacist mad desire to kill
  give me that right

  I would that I could speak of white womanhood
  as it will and should be
  when it stands tall in full equality.
  but then, womanhood will be womanhood.
  Void of color and of class,
  And all necessity for my speaking thus will be past.
  Gladly past.

  But now, since ‘tis deemed a thing apart
  Supreme,
  I must in searching honesty report
  How it seems to me.
  White womanhood stands in bloodied skirt
  and willing slavery
  reaching out adulterous hand
  killing mine and crushing me.
  What then is the superior thing
  That in order to be sustained must needs feed upon my flesh?
  Let’s look to history.

  They said, the white supremacist said
  that you were better than me,
  that your fair brow would never know the sweat of slavery.
  They lied
  White womanhood to is enslaved,
  The difference is degree.

  They brought me here in chains.
  They brought you here willing slaves to man.
  You, shiploads of women each filled with hope
  That she might win with ruby lip and saucy curl
  And bright and flashing eyes
  Him to wife who had the largest tender.
  Remember?
  And they sold you here even as they sold me.
  
  My sisters, there is no room for mockery.
  If they counted my teeth
  They did appraise your thigh
  And sold you to the highest bidder
  The same as I.

  And you did not fight for your right to choose
  Whom you would wed
  But for whatever bartered price
  That was the legal tender
  You were sold to a stranger’s bed
  In a stranger land
  Remember?
  And you did not fight.
  Mind you, I speak not mockingly
  But I fought for freedom,
  I’m fighting now for our unity.
  We are women all.
  And what wrongs you murders me
  And eventually marks your grave
  So we share a mutual death at the hand of tyranny.

  They trapped me with the chain and gun.
  They trapped you with lying tongue.
  For, ‘less you see that fault—
  That male villainy
  That robbed you of name, voice and authority,
  That murderous greed that wasted you and me,
  He, the white supremacist, fixed your minds with poisonous thought:
  “white skin is supreme.”
  And there with bought that monstrous change
  exiling you to things.
  Changed all that nature had in you wrought of gentle usefulness, abolishing your spring.
  Tore out your heart,
  set your good apart from all that you could say,
  think,
  feel,
  know to be right.
  And you did not fight,
  but set your minds fast on my slavery
  the better to endure your own.

  ‘Tis true
  my pearls were beads of sweat
  wrung from weary bodies’ pain,
  instead of rings upon my hands
  I wore swollen, bursting veins.
  My ornaments were the wipe-lash’s scar
  my diamond, perhaps, a tear.
  Instead of paint and powder on my face
  I wore a solid mask of fear to see my blood so spilled.
  And you, women seeing
  spoke no protest
  but cuddled down in your pink slavery
  and thought somehow my wasted blood
  confirmed your superiority.

  Because your necklace was of gold
  you did not notice that it throttled speech.
  Because diamond rings bedecked your hands
  you did not regret their dictated idleness.
  Nor could you see that the platinum bracelets which graced your wrists were chains
  binding you fast to economic slavery
  And though you claimed your husband’s name
  still could not command his fidelity.

  You bore him sons.
  I bore him sons.
  No, not willingly.
  He purchase you.
  He raped me,
  I fought!
  But you fought neither for yourselves nor me.
  Sat trapped in your superiority
  and spoke no reproach.
  Consoled your outrage with an added diamond brooch.
  Oh, God, how great is a woman’s fear
  who for a stone, a cold, cold stone
  would not defend honor, love or dignity!

  Your bore the damning mockery of your marriage
  and heaped your hate on me,
  a woman too,
  a slave more so.
  And when your husband disowned his seed
  that was my son
  and sold him apart from me
  you felt avenged.
  Understand:
  I was not your enemy in this,
  I was not the source of your distress.
  I was your friend, I fought.
  But you would not help me fight
  thinking you helped only me.
  Your deceived eyes seeing only my slavery
  aided your own decay.
  Yes, they condemned me to death
  and they condemned you to decay.
  Your heart whisked away,
  consumed in hate,
  used up in idleness
  playing yet the lady’s part
  estranged to vanity.
  It is justice to you to say your fear equaled your tyranny.

  You were afraid to nurse your young
  lest fallen breast offend your master’s sight
  and he should flee to firmer loveliness.
  And so you passed them, your children, on to me.
  Flesh that was your flesh and blood that was your blood
  drank the sustenance of life from me.
  And as I gave suckle I knew I nursed my own child’s enemy.
  I could have lied,
  told you your child was fed till it was dead of hunger.
  But I could not find the heart to kill orphaned innocence.
  For as it fed, it smiled and burped and gurgled with content
  and as for color knew no difference.
  Yes, in that first while
  I kept your sons and daughters alive.

  But when they grew strong in blood and bone
  that was of my milk
  you
  taught them to hate me.
  PUt your decay in their hearts and upon their lips
  so that strength that was of myself
  turned and spat upon me,
  despoiled my daughters, and killed my sons.
  You know I speak true.
  Though this is not true for all of you

  When I bestirred myself for freedom
  and brave Harriet led the way
  some of you found heart and played a part
  in aiding my escape.
  And when I made my big push for freedom
  your sons fought at my sons’ side.
  Your husbands and brothers too fell in that battle
  when Crispus Attucks died.
  It’s unfortunate that you acted not in the way of justice
  but to preserve the Union
  and for dear sweet pity’s sake;
  Else how came it to be with me as it is today?
  You abhorred slavery
  yet loathed equality.

  I would that the poor among you could have seen
  through the scheme
  and joined hands with me.
  Then, we being the majority, could long ago have recued
  our wasted lives.
  But no.
  The rich, becoming richer, could be content
  while yet the poor had only the pretense of superiority
  and sought through murderous brutality
  to convince themselves that what was false was true.

  So with KKK and fiery cross
  and bloodied appetites
  set about to prove that “white is right”
  forgetting their poverty.
  Thus the white supremacist used your skins
  to perpetuate slavery.
  And woe to me.
  Woe to Willie McGee.
  Woe to the seven men of Martinsville.
  And woe to you.
  It was no mistake that your naked body on an Esquire calendar
  announced the date, May Eighth.
  This is your fate if you do not wake to fight.
  They will use your naked bodies to sell their wares
  though it be hate, Coca Cola or rape.

  When a white mother disdained to teach her children
  this doctrine of hate,
  but taught them instead of peace
  and respect for all men’s dignity
  the courts of law did legislate
  that they be taken from her
  and sent to another state.
  To make a Troy Hawkins of the little girl
  and a killer of the little boy!

  No, it was not for the womanhood of this mother
  that Willie McBee died
  but for the depraved, enslaved, adulterous woman
  whose lustful demands denied,
  lied and killed what she could not possess.
  Only three months before another such woman lied
  and seven black men shuddered and gave up their lives.
  These women were upheld in these bloody deeds
  by the president of this nation,
  thus putting the official seal on the fate
  of white womanhood with in these United States.
  This is what they plan for you.
  This is the depravity they would reduce you to.
  Death for me
  and worse than death for you.

  What will you do?
  Will you fight with me?
  White supremacy is your enemy and mine.
  So be careful when you talk with me.
  Remind me not of my slavery, I know it will
  but rather tell me of your own.
  Remember, you have never known me.
  You’ve been busy seeing me
  as white supremacist would have me be,
  and I will be myself.
  Free!
  My aim is full equality.
  I would usurp their plan!
  Justice
  peace
  and plenty
  for every man, woman and child
  who walks the earth.
  This is my fight!

  If you will fight with me then take my hand
  and the hand of Rosa Ingram, and Rosalee McGee,
  and as we set about our plan
  let our Wholehearted fight be:
  PEACE IN A WORLD WHERE THERE IS EQUALITY.

  Thanks to @llapen who tweeted about the film – as Beah Richards said – “The last word has not been spoken”.

• Community guide for Nigeria elections

  Posted: March 29, 2011, 7:38 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Stakeholders Democracy have published this excellent guide to monitoring the April elections. The guide can be downloaded here.

  We have prepared a community guide to the 2011 elections which we hope will be shared and adapted by all of those who hope to promote better elections in their communities. It was drafted with the Niger Delta in mind but we are hopeful that communities in other parts of Nigeria will also find it useful.

  Via Naijablog

• Notin’ Do U [Nothing Worries You]

  Posted: March 29, 2011, 3:49 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Notin’ Do U [Nothing Worries You]
  your mind is philosophy.
  your loyalty epically stays in love
  and you love me in a way that
  safely feels something like ‘prophetic’;
  you see things in my soul
  that elude my ordinary eyes
  and i can feel it deeply when we talk.
  it is in the way you casually lean your body
  towards mine and then talk half-asleep,
  it is in that unutterable way you look at me when no one is around,
  it is in the sweetly serious way you say we should
  talk a lot so that we don’t float past each other like space men
  but rather grow together entwined.
  i like it when we talk and your delightful mind
  sparkles in conversation and your short white teeth
  reveal a sweet, rare smile behind full, dark lips because simply put,
  when we are together, notin’ do u.
  …you are now pressing hard against me.
  and in your face i see
  a fineness raw, exciting yet gentle.
  all in one deliciously dark, square-jawed face…
  …for there’s a fluid storm rising and billowing like harmattan
  behind your pair of marble eyes.

  © Donald Molosi Nov. 30, 2010

• SIJI: ‘Ijo’ – Brilliance

  Posted: March 28, 2011, 9:44 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  SIJIMusic sent me this – I love! Brilliance!

  SIJI – ‘Ijo’(Official Video) from SIJI on Vimeo.

• Reflections on David Kato

  Posted: March 25, 2011, 4:24 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Mixed news is coming from Uganda on the Anti-Homosexuality Bill [AHB] David fought so hard against. On the one hand its been said the Bill is dead and on the other it will still be debated in Parliament.

  It is very possible that the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill will be shelved once and for all. Frank Mugisha of SMUG wrote

  Anti homosexuality bill should not be discussed, not needed redundant and unnecessary says Ugandan Government…. “the bill is shelved…the govt has stopped it.”

  The Ugandan Minister of Information also said the Bill would be shelved, saying it is unnecessary and should not be considered and will not be supported by government.

  However even if the AHB is abandoned, a new Bill, the Sexual Offences Bill [OB] is likely to include similar anti-homosexuality legislation so the struggle very much continues.

  African Perspectives invited me to talk about the life and work of Uganda, LGBTI activist, David Kato who was murdered on 26th January 2011. It was a very personal interview and I speak for no one but myself. I was very nervous doing the interview. I was not sure I was the “right” person; would say the “right” things – whatever they are; I was grieving and my confidence was at a low. So I asked Kagendo Murungi whose work I respect and love. I asked her to be objective and frank. I expected a couple of lines at the most but she gave far more and I thank her for this.

  I just finished listening to your interview for a second time today and I wanted to let you know that I really appreciate your voice. The information you shared and the analysis that you gave about the media’s treatment of David’s death was invaluable because it changes the experience of the events of the past weeks even in hindsight.

  Your voice bridges the difference between our trusting that there are more complex voices on the situation in Uganda and in Africa and that there is a critical analysis of homophobic violence in a longer and more complex historical continental context AND witnessing that testament.

  It was really saddening to hear about the exploitation of this tragedy in various ways because I was really shocked and appalled to hear about the fundraising scams!

  I think there was obviously a lot of sadness in your voice but the way in which you framed your responses to the questions really created a tone of respect and a space for listeners to pause and reflect on a personal level on their own intentions, analysis and preconceived notions about what is happening in Uganda and throughout Africa.

  I really felt that your interview humanized David in a whole different way than I’ve seen or heard. Perhaps its because your comments are not in a context that can be turned into a spectacle or exploited by any outside parties because it is a personal reflection from a friend and colleague as well as a voice from the inside-out.

  If the radio button doesnt work click here to listen to the podcast:

• Sharpeville

  Posted: March 24, 2011, 3:15 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Somehow, between the requirements of summer
  and winter, we went forth holding above our heads
  souls that death comes in, like Moses scurrying
  down the mountain side with tablets scratched
  with scripture; like a lamp blinding the damp dark
  of mines our fathers walked in search of food.
  We raised them and held them like sacrifices
  to specific gods, trophies of a triumphant day,
  and kept them, self-evident, lifted above the world
  with a purpose. Our souls, glowing like headlights
  at a storm as if they knew what hardship meant.
  In our hands they were the day’s newborn child:
  behold, we cried, lifting them with hands callous
  from scraping, as we approached the charge office,
  behold, the only thing greater than yourself! It was
  breath held in anticipation, though some were candles
  that lit our way to freedom, others hammers
  and others scythes, nailing in planks and reaping
  the full grass. And others going to their graves
  alone, though their heads still scream in the night
  like trees that were felled before their season.

  © Rethabile Masilo

• The US has no right to impose their political processes on others

  Posted: March 23, 2011, 6:17 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Amy Goodman interviewed Mildred Aristide just before they landed in Haiti.  Mrs Aristide rarely speaks in public so I was very interested to hear what she had to say.  She spoke of her time in South Africa and learning about the connections between Africa and Haiti – learning about Africa and teaching about Haiti. In answer to the US government’s statement to President Aristide not to look to the past but to the future she quoted Barthélemy Boganda of the Central Africa Republic [CAR] response to the French colonial government who made a similar statement ”I would stop talking about the past, if it weren’t so present”.     It is convenient and in the US’s interest for Haitians and any of us for that matter to forget the past. The past is full of betrayals, violence and exploitation carried out by the US so no wonder they would prefer we all forget it.

  And I think that what I’ve learned from Africa is how much Africans carry the past with them, and the past being lessons from their ancestors, the lessons of their culture, all of which happens in time, in a time space. So it’s not that you live in the past, but you carry with you the lessons and the good and the experiences of the past.

  I think it’s—it’s an inability, maybe, by the American political process to understand the kind of relation that Titide has with the Haitian people, and it doesn’t fit within the kind of policy frameworks that perhaps they have of—and so, it’s an unwillingness to see beyond that. I’ll attribute it to that.

  I think that the United States and a lot of those western European countries see politics a certain way, and I think that they have no right to impose that on other peoples.

• Euphoria and the struggle to come: Return of Jean-Bertrand Aristide

  Posted: March 22, 2011, 4:24 pm by Sokari

  Tags:   

  
  
  

  Walter Turner of Africa Today interviews Pierre Labossiere and Robert Roth both of of Haiti Action Committee.  Both Pierre and Robert were in Haiti to welcome back President Aristide and here they both speak of their joy and excitement and that of the Haitian people at his return. Everyone was busy cleaning the streets, making posters and hanging posters so there was a huge amount of activity. Nonetheless there was a certain amount of anxiety right up to the moment he arrived – wondering if it would really happen.

  What happens next when the euphoria settles.   The  February 2004 coup was a double one.  To remove President Aristide and also to destroy Lavalas – the movement of the people.   The last 7 years has seen an increase in poverty and hardship irrespective of the earthquake which made the situation worse.  Now the struggle will go on.  This is a new beginning and a long road ahead.  Each experience is a learning one on which to build and move forward.   The forces against change are powerful so the people need to be mindful and focused but it is achievable.   A new Lavalas starts from now – Manigat, Martelly are not important.  The people have the consciousness and the power.   Listen to the people – always!

  Africa Today – March 21, 2011 at 7:00pm
  
  Click to listen (or download)

• Free Gender

  Posted: March 18, 2011, 5:11 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Free Gender is a blog by a group of 14 young Black Queer South Africans, living in Khayelitsha, Cape Town.  The group was started by Funeka Soldaat in 2008.   One of the main focuses of the group is to campaign for justice for  Zoliswa Nkonyana who was brutally murdered on February 4th 2006 by a gang of 20 men and Millicent Gaika who was beaten and raped on the 6th April 2010.

  With the support of Funeka and visual activist,  Zanele Muholi, the group started the blog as a way of documenting their lives, their challenges and hopes.   The group have no funding but still their vision is to build a supportive community for themselves based on mutual teaching and learning.   Through the blog they are developing their writing, journalistic and photographic skills.   The next step is the young women want to extend their community to include  young queer women of colour in Europe and America with the aim of building alliances and learning from each other.

  Last Monday the group held a rally outside the parliamentary building in Cape Town to demand the government take concrete and meaningful action against the rape of Black lesbians in the Townships.

  Held in their left hands were wooden crosses that symbolize crucifixion – brutal killings that our lesbians friends have encountered at the hands of perpetrators and further face revictimization at the hands of police who often stall the cases.
  Speaking to one supporter who said that “We are here because want our parliament to recognize ‘us’ and our needs”. Another speaker spoke of …

  Unlike other previous protests that took place in the past at various places like Khayelitsha Magistrate court (for Zoliswa Nkonyana’s case) and Wynberg Magistrate court (in support of Millicent Gaika) who survived curative rape in 2010, the rally was a silent one. No struggle songs sung which suggests anger, pain, irritation and impatience cause by several delays, lost cases, worsened by lost cases and other matters thrown out of court due to what justice system call ‘lack of evidence.’

• East End White Pride Cancelled

  Posted: March 17, 2011, 2:09 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  On 2nd April a group under the name of “East End Gay Pride” [EEGP] planned to  march through the Shoreditch and Whitechapel districts of Tower Hamlets, London.  The march which was promoted as “united against homophobia and all prejudice” claimed to be in response to a homophobic sticker campaign in East London – a campaign which has questionable origins and has been condemned by both the East End Mosque and the Association of British Muslims.

  The EEGP is part of a growing and mainstreaming of Islamophobia as Muslims are painted as the face of homophobia in Britain and Europe.   Left-leaning liberal journalist, Johann Hari who is known for his internationalist reporting on Palestine and Congo, recently published a piece “Can we talk about Muslim homophobia now” in which he claimed

  “East London has seen the highest increase in homophobic attacks anywhere in Britain. Everybody knows why, and nobody wants to say it. It is because East London has the highest Muslim population in Britain, and we have allowed a fanatically intolerant attitude towards gay people to incubate there, in the name of ‘tolerance’.”

  Hari’s assertions have been challenged by a number of Queer and non-Queer journalists and bloggers.  For example, Patrick Lilly of UK Black Pride, writes an open letter response pointing out Hari’s figures are not consistent with those of the Metropolitan police

  “There are however huge variations in totals of reported Homophobic Crimes: some Boroughs rise by 60% others decline by the same amount. I don’t know what may affect reporting of homophobic crime but on the basis of the information available from the Met your claims that East London has the highest increase in homophobic crime is TOTALLY inaccurate (and inflammatory).’

  Lenin’s Tomb goes further to expose scaremongering in the media particularly when journalists like Johann Hari who writes in the Independent, do not take the time to check their statistics and sources before publishing inflammatory remarks based on distortions of facts and anecdotal evidence.

  “A typical scaremongering poll appeared in The Sunday Times in 2008. It dealt with Muslim students, and it alleged a series of nasty attitudes on their part. Among other things, it said: “Homophobia was rife, with 25% saying they had little or no respect for gays.” What it meant to say, of course, was that acceptance of gays was rife, with 75% of Muslim students having some or much respect for gays. There was also a famously distorted study for the right-wing Policy Exchange in 2007, which claimed that only 30% of British Muslims disagreed with the claim that homosexuality is morally wrong and should be illegal.”

  To return to the EEGP,  there are a number disturbing aspects of the organisation and the now cancelled march namely that it had anti-Muslim and anti-Islam agendas.

  Opponents of the EEGP have been concerned over the possible involvement of the far-right English Defense League.  This has been confirmed as one of the EEGP’s founding organisers, Raymond Berry, turned out to be a founding member of the EDL as well as involved with “Stop the Islamification of Europe” group whose tagline is “Racism is the lowest form of stupidity! Islamophobia is the height of common sense!”  Since being exposed, Berry has resigned from the EEGP.

  The EEGP site specifically states that anti-facist groups are not welcome and if they do come they  will not be allowed to carry placards at the march which is being presented,  ridiculously, as  non-political.  Homophobia, Islamophobia, racism,  facism, the EDL, Gay Pride – all of these are political.

  The Queer Muslim organisation, the Safra Project made the following statement against the EEGP.

  “This not only disregards the history of embedded racism that our communities have suffered in the area and more generally but also, as Queer Muslims, we feel that there are more productive ways to address the concerns that the East End Gay Pride march organisers have raised. For example by getting involved with the important cross-community projects that are ongoing in East London.

  Therefore, we, as Queer Muslims who are most likely to suffer the fall out of this march, ask:

  •The organisers to cancel this march on all of our communities, neighbours and families in East London.

  •The local Queer people in the East End of London to engage with the wider local community in collaboration to better understand and work productively on all forms of prejudice.

  •For everyone to voice their opposition to overt and covert racism and Islamophobia especially in the name of gay rights. All forms of prejudice must be understood in their overlapping ways and to ignore this lived reality, particularly that of Queer Muslims, is to avoid engaging with underlying issues of social, economic and political injustice and disadvantage.”

  Safra’s statement differs greatly from the EEGP in that it both claims a Muslim Queer space and brings home the need to discuss the impact of queer gentrification on communities of colour and working class people.

  Despite all the claims of being “a political”  there is no evidence of inclusiveness on their site where everything is white,  English and homonormative including the repeated use of  the descriptive “gay” which erases people who self-identify as lesbian, bi-sexual, queer, queer trans, transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming.

  The call out to Johann Hari via Twitter is further evidence of the agenda of this event -

  In another Tweet EEGP linked to the Joel Kafetz show and his interview with  Raymond Berry [the day before his EDL connections were exposed]. Since then they have removed his  photo from his site but no statement on his EDL fascist connections.

  Other groups who have stated their disgust with the growing Islamophobia and the casting of Muslims as the “face” of homophobia and hate in Britain and across Europe,  are Bent Bars, Imaan and Decolonizing Queer whose statement reads…

  “Despite negotiations with the local council by a few determined individuals, the Pride march will likely go ahead. The far right have thus been given the pink light to an area which has already been deeply traumatized. Besides successive fascist and neo-fascist attempts to march through the East End, the area has long been a hub of police racism, and has one of the highest rates of stop and search.   Then there is the staggering number of racist attacks, which according to police statistics are almost five times as high as the number of homophobic hate crimes.”

  The cancellation of the East End Gay Pride was announced on Wednesday [16th March 2011] and is a clear victory for Queer Muslim individuals, organisations and their allies, who have borne the risk but who are now being sidelined by the same gay imperialists who paved the way for neo-facists to organise this event in the first place.

  The Decolonize Queer statement

  LGBT rights marches, too, are travelling across European borders. Besides East London, which last summer saw its first queer ‘march on Hackney’, marches have been organized in several inner-city migrant neighbourhoods across West Europe, including in Oslo, Berlin and Brussels – all entirely new sites for queer marching. Not all of these marches are right-wing, some in fact identify as anti-racist. They come from various political places, including conservative and left-wing, gay identitarian, radical queer, and genderqueer.

  Clearly, these mobilizations cannot be equated and reduced to a far-right agenda. What nevertheless unites them is their shared setting, in an inner city which is cast as Muslim, recognized through a growing archive of deficiency (including hate, sexism, homophobia and criminality), and thereby prepared for intervention and control. What further unites these settings is that the first gentrifiers often include gay, queer and trans people with race and class privileges, who in some contexts of urban planning are greeted, in settler colonial manner, as ‘pioneers’ who will ‘break in’ these hitherto ‘ungentrifiable’ areas. In the East London homophobia debate, too, gay, queer and trans people with race and class privileges, including those who recently arrived from other parts of Europe, North America, and all over the Global North, are addressed as ‘residents’ whose interests must be protected by the police and the wider community. While (some) gay, queer and trans people are, for the first time, treated as colourful symbols of life, love and revitalization, those who have been there much longer, and who have few other places to go, become recast as sources of death whose lives do not matter, and who are ultimately disposable.

  As transnational activists and intellectuals, we call on gay, queer and trans people with race and class privileges, which also include some of us, to refuse our/their role in politically correcting racist agendas of policing and gentrification. To think about what our/their presence means for those who have been there, often longer, sometimes for generations, including racialized and working-class families who cannot afford rents which rise with the arrival of young upwardly mobile people. To think about what it means to move into an area marked for population exchange, and paint it as a dangerous territory of terror and insecurity which requires greater policing. We support the Safra Project in asking how these mobilizations will impact queer and trans people from Muslim and other criminalized communities, who beyond periodical references to ‘my LGBT Muslim friends’ have been completely sidelined: What are the effects of revanchist gentrification on racialized and working-class people, including and especially those whose gender and sexual expressions invite police harassment rather than protection, and who need affordable housing in areas that are both sexually and racially diverse? What would an anti-violence activism look like that does not lend force to these deadly processes, but fights violence in its many faces, interpersonal and institutional, spectacular and banal, including where ‘the perpetrator’ is the market or the state? If you are going to claim an area as ‘your neighbourhood’, how can you, at the very least, start contributing to it, rather than taking away from it? Read in full here

  
  

  
  

  First published on New Internationalist

• Port-au-Prince preparing for the return of Aristide

  Posted: March 17, 2011, 6:05 am by Sokari

  
  
  

  Aristide and the endless revolution
  
  

• Zimbabwean 6 released on bail – support needed

  Posted: March 16, 2011, 12:17 am by Sokari

  
  
  

  The International Socialist Organisation [ISO] have announced the remaining 6 “Egypt video” Zimbabweans have been released on $2,000 bail each.

  The sum to be deposited with the clerk of the court as bail sum is
  US$2 000.00 for each person. Of the six therefore the total will be 12
  thousand dollars.

  the other conditions are that the comrades reside at specified
  addresses, surrender passports and travelling documents, not to
  interfere with the evidence and to report on Mondays, Wednesdays and
  Fridays to the CID Law and Order Harare

  Our appeal now is that we do not have sufficient funds to secure the
  release of the comrades if any one is willing to assist please let us
  know as soon as possible in order for us to secure the liberty of our
  comrades

  Contact ISO via their website for details on how to donate.

• Reflections on the self: portraits by five African photographers

  Posted: March 16, 2011, 5:05 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Reflections on the Self is curated by Christine Eyene and will be shown at the Royal Festival Hall from 8 March – 3 April 2011.

  Reflections on the Self presents women’s visual narratives, as told through self-portraits and portraits of other women. The photographers are women whose views of the world have been shaped by their own experiences in Africa and the diaspora.

  Hélène Amouzou (Togo; lives and works Belgium); Majida Khattari (Morocco; lives and works France); Zanele Muholi (South Africa); Senayt Samuel (Eritrea, lives and works in the UK); Nontsikelelo Veleko (South Africa). These five photographers engage with issues such as identity, sexuality and displacement, and their work often overturns stereotypical expectations. …..Continued

• South African victory on lesbian rape

  Posted: March 15, 2011, 4:35 am by Sokari

  
  
  

  Free Gender is a Black lesbian group from Khayelitsha in Cape Town.   The group organised a rally in protest against the lack of government and political  response to ” corrective rape”.

  One should ask questions how can people whose rights are infringed vote to the upcoming elections when they are repeatedly victimized and killed in their townships. Let alone being refused citizenship when they report those crimes.

  It is clearly true that victims like Zoliswa Nkonyana, whose case is still unresolved. Zoliswa was stoned to death in February 2006, Khayelitsha. Sizakele Sigasa & Salome Masooa callously murdered in 2007, Meadowlands, Soweto. Eudy Simelane who was brutally murdered in April 2008 in KwaThema, Springs. Maduo Mafubedu who was killed in April 2007, Alexandra township. There are unfortunate cases like those of Millicent Gaika, survivor of curative rape that happened in April 2010, Gugulethu. Gaika became the face of survivors, which is one of the major cases that led to the parliament meeting and rally today.

  The march coincides with a successful meeting between anti-rape groups – Luleki Sizwe,  Women’s Legal Center, Rape Crisis project, and the South African government to specifically discuss the rape of lesbians, and were able to obtain an agreement for a

  “long term sustained engagement of various government arms and civil society groups to research, develop and implement a national action plan to tackle ‘corrective rape’ and the intersecting issues of gender-based violence, anti-LGBTI violence and hate crimes……………

  Various representatives of different activist groups and coalitions then went into Parliament for the long promised first meeting with senior officials at the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Development, who flew to Cape Town for the meeting.

  Ndumie Funda, the one-woman founder of Luleki Sizwe who started the campaign, began by delivering the record-breaking170,000 signatures of support from people in 163 countriesaround the world. She then presented a written statement calling on the ministry to embark on an inclusive, long term and sustained process of taking action against ‘corrective’ rape, exactly what they ended up agreeing to.

  The Triangle Project, Rape Crises Trust Cape Town and Women’s Legal Centre, three local groups, then presented another statement calling on the ministry to take a series of specific, immediate steps to address the intersecting issues of gender-based violence, anti-LGBTI violence and hate crimes.

  More photos from the march here

• Kinky Salon: Calling out and remixing racism

  Posted: March 14, 2011, 4:49 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  I am compelled to republishing this brilliant response to Kinky Salon’s public apology. A little back story… Kinky Salon organised a spring “sex-positive”  party in London with a “jungle theme”.  In addition to the apology Kinky Salon published their summary of criticisms……[these are also dealt with by Racism Remixed.]

  That the connection of a party that pertains to be sex-positive to tribal costumes, apes and so on, carries with it a subtext of racism and imperialism, and therefore fails to be sex-positive for everyone.

  - That the way we presented this particular jungle-themed party, with a title parodying The Jungle Book, drew upon a text that is often interpreted as imperialist and racist. See: [movies.dowse.com]

  - That the dress-up suggestions, referencing books/films like Heart of Darkness, The African Queen, and Tarzan drew upon texts containing narratives that are often interpreted as racist – see Wikipedia.

  On the basis of the above, Kinky Salon offered an apology -see here and below is one response to that apology by Racism Remixed….

  Dear Kinky Salon Friends,

  We’d like to take a moment to “apologise” to anyone who we upset or offended in the presentation of our Spring party and to thank them for providing Kinky Salon London with the opportunity for growth and improvement.Isn’t it great how life furnishes white people with so many opportunities? Thanks guys!

  For those members of our community who might be unaware of this, some visitors to our Facebook event page raised objections to aspects of the jungle theme that we originally put forward. The arguments are summarised here. Although only a small number of the people who objected have ever been to a Kinky Salon party (and let’s face it: people of colour who haven’t attended a Kinky Salon party have no worthwhile life experiences and don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to racism), we take all feedback into consideration and have written to each of our critics personally(with a generic message). We acknowledge that some people found our literary references particularly careless (and we do admit that we can be careless – the other day we put milk in the cupboard instead of the fridge. Imagine!) and that for others a jungle theme itself is uncomfortable. By others we mean the other, as in, people of colour, and by uncomfortable, we mean the kind of feeling you get when you wear trousers that are too tight. In failing to take these perspectives into account, aspects of our original theme were interpreted by some as naive and insensitive to issues of race and imperialism (sorry if this sentence is a little long – it’s the result of an informal contest we held to see who could talk the longest about racism without using the actual word racism). We are grateful to those who have opened our eyes to this. We could have gone to Specsavers but we opted to get this kind of eye care for free, from people of colour.  Continue reading …….

  
  

• Migritude: Teardrops from Babylon

  Posted: March 10, 2011, 7:03 pm by Sokari

  Tags:   

  
  
  

  Migritude by Shailja Patel

  We have traveled half the world

  with hearts open,

  we’ve seen everything.

  Always remember who we are,

  where we came from,

  and you’ll never do evil [From What we keep ©]

  Migritude is a gift of which Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak writes,

  “A vibrant, gendered, wordsmith’s voice, speaking Africa, Asia, the metropole, history, the present – the world” [shailja.com]

  In the introduction to Migritude, Vijay Prashad writes

  “I came to Shailja Patel’s Migritude joyously, embraced by the first few lines about the teardrop in Babylon.  The embrace didn’t falter.  The words held me.  They are a song”

  I too did not deviate from that first embrace.

  One has great expectations from a text which begins with such poetic imagination as “It began as a teardrop in Babylon”.  My mind flew to all the teardrops shed from the dignities stolen by imperialism, injustice and hate.   The indignities endured in exile; the collusion of global capital and imperialism in the political and socio-economic tyrannies which force us to flee our homelands. We see this as I write, with the murder of Ugandan LGBTI activist David Kato and South African lesbians and transgendered women and men who are being raped and murdered because of  their sexuality and gender identity;  with the women of Congo, many of whom daily, face rape and other terrible acts of violence; with the people of Egypt who are demanding freedom from the tyranny of Mubarak and his US / Israeli allies;  with the millions of people of colour – who dare to cross borders and  face daily hostility in the US, Germany, and UK; with the surviving indigenous peoples of America whose lives are impoverished and history erased with whiteness.

  Through her own life journey and mixing prose and poetry,  Shailja’s Migritude exposes and shares the tears of history merging personal stories with reflections on violence, colonisation, and migrant journeys which flow horizontally and vertically, through the lives of women.

  It is best I start at the beginning and go with my feelings which are not linear but bounce around moving between sadness, joy, anger, hope, irony,  knowing and not knowing.   Migritude is a gift but not a gift on a plate. Rather it is poetry woven with performance which requires imagination.  And this is one of the many gifts of Migritude -  we get to expand and explore our imaginations.  And we learn.   It’s about how we imagine ourselves, our histories, our political journeys.  It is also about facts. Facts of our histories which we are never told and facts of the politics of empires and post / neo -empires which are full of deceptions and exploitation.

  Migritude has many beginnings.  The first is in 6th Century BCE  and the first depiction of the motif “Ambi” in Central Asia, which on the arrival of the Barbarian – Imperialism, is  later  stolen by Scottish weavers of the small village of Paisley.  Ambi becomes Paisley, Mosuleen becomes Muslin, Kashmiri becomes Cashmere and Chai becomes “a beverage invented in California” .

  Later in 800AD there is the beginning of  the relationship between Africa, Arabia and  Asian brought about by “flourishing” trade and travel between the peoples of these regions.    Another beginning is the gift of her “wedding trousseau”.  Shailja’s mother had been collecting saris and jewelry for the day Shailja would get married.  It wasn’t happening so she gave up, broke tradition and offered her the gift of a red suitcase full of exquisitely beautiful saris.  An act which Shailja interprets as recognition of her chosen path as been equally worthy of that of her sisters’ marriage.  An act of feminism and the knowledge that one has the power to change the way things are. An act which would lead to the performance of Migritude.

  So I imagine I am lying down half struggling to extricate myself from the red, gold, green and turquoise blue saris with which Shailja performs to break the silence of violence, violation, rape, war, indignity, empire. The other half of me struggles to cocoon and protect myself in their softness.

  The book is roughly in divided into three parts. The first is Migritude which was “created dangerously” [i] to “reclaim and celebrate outsider status” and to “tell the invisible stories of empire war colonialism, the impact on those that are on the receiving end of these global forces” [KPFA Interview].   Shailja’s parents and their personal uncompromising struggle to ensure their three daughters have the gift of education; the  Maasai and Samburu women in Kenya who were raped systematically for 35 years by British soldiers stationed on their land;   the women of Iraq and Afghanistan – abducted, vanished, killed; the indignities unleashed by border patrols on people of colour.

  The second part – “The Shadow is the story of Shailja’s “creative journey” and the making of Migritude “a behind the scenes and after the fact, vinaigrette of memories and associations”.  Here she tells of her discovery of the origins of Paisley in ancient Babylon forcing her to engage with complex and multiple migrations.  Similarly history as told by Empire is full of half-truths and erasure.  Such as Idi Amin being a guard in the Kings African Rifles which were used to quell the Kenyan Mau Mau uprisings and from which he learned to torture from Britain s finest.  And that Britain, Israel and the US sponsored the coup which brought him to power and unleashed terror on millions.  And on love which in western context is often reduced to the banal by repetitious words and expressions.  Following a performance in Genoa, Italy Shailja learns from a member of the audience that during his childhood in rural Italy, life was so harsh that parents dared only kiss their children when the were sleeping as any affection when they were awake might weaken their ability to survive.

  The third and final section is devoted to poetry and Shailja’s journey from poet to performer; and most importantly, for her work as an activist, her personal shift from “self-protected silence to political expression”.  As Shailja learns, yes, you can run in a Sari!

  I end with another quote from the cover of Migritude which captures both the beauty of this poetic masterpiece and its explicit call to action!

  “Migritude is poetry as documentary. It is non-fiction as testimony. It is authorship as survival. Of course Migritude defies categorisation – the best art always does” Raj Patel

  SHAILJA PATEL – Kenyan playwright, poet, performer and activist.  – [shailja.com].

  Extras:  An interview with Shailja Patel by Preeti Mangala Shekar of the Women’s Magazine. [http://bit.ly/ga2tdZ]

  Migritude is published by Kaya Press – www.kaya.com]2010

  [i] Taken from “Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work by Edwidge Danticat

  This review was first published in New Internationalist

• Taking Freedom Home: it feels good to be Queer & African

  Posted: March 9, 2011, 5:30 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Kenyan filmmaker and activist, Kagendo Murungi talks with Nigeria Queer performance poet and dancer, Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene and filmmaker Selly Thiam project director of None on Record. They talk about their art, coming out and what it means to be Queer and African.

  Kagendo is the co-director of Liberation for Africans, a New York based committee of African gender non-conforming African people.

• The Witches of Gambaga: “If they say I am a witch then I must be a witch!”

  Posted: March 8, 2011, 6:05 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  Synopsis:

  The Witches of Gambaga is a disturbing documentary about a community of women  condemned and exiled as witches to the village of Gambaga in northern Ghana.  The film was produced by Nigerian feminist academic Amina Mama and Ghanian filmmaker / writer, Yaba Badoe who also directs and narrates the film.   During repeated visits over a period of 5 years, Ms Badoe  interviewed the women, traditional rulers and community activists in the region.

  The village of Gambaga has traditionally been a sanctuary for women accused of witchcraft where they are protected by the village Chief.  Many of the women are elderly and arrive after been driven into exile by their families.   Guilt is established by the arbitrary way a chicken dies following an accusation by a male or even a young child.  The birds throat is cut and if it dies with it’s wings down, then the woman is a witch.   In trying to understand what it means to be a witch, the film’s  producer and narrator, Yaba Badoe, asks the question which goes to the heart of the film, ” [what] If witchcraft traditions are so deeply entrenched, that to be born a woman is to be born under a shadow of suspicion.?”  This is contrasted with men who can also be witches but for them the practice is used in a positive way such as to protect his house or family.

  The belief that some women and men have supernatural powers has existed throughout history and across the world as a way of maintaining social control and upholding patriarchal structures. But invariably it is women who have been singled out for persecution at different points in history usually when communities are facing a crisis or series of events which are unexplainable or unpredictable. To understand the naming of women  as witches requires close scrutiny of the  factors behind, on the one hand, the powers of Pentecostal churches and Muslim marabouts in Ghana and other parts of the continent,  and on the other, the use of  traditional and spiritual  practices for explanations around the failure of nation states to address poverty and lack of socio-economic responsibility by governments. It is similar to cultural and religious fundamentalism that is the driving force behind homophobic laws on the continent which are also being used as political decoys.  Both the charismatic churches and some local Imams feed on witchcraft as explanations of social and economic problems.  The power of male authority,   patriarchal traditions and the low status of women  are central to this.  It is pertinent to point out that although accusations of witchcraft cut across class and age, it is those women who are seen as strong and independent who are most at risk.
  
  The Witches of Gambaga are protected by the paramount Chief, the Gambarrana and there is no doubt he benefits from their presence.  They pay to stay and must pay to leave so it is in his interest to accept either a “confession” as proof of guilt or the  the direction of the chicken’s death and to ensure the practice continues.  But as the film points out, good and evil is never simple and change is always possible. As we see from the film,  community engagement by local community activists has been central to eliminating the practice as well as trying to reintegrate accused women back into their villages.  Even though this can be a slow process, it is preferable to a confrontational strategy led by outside people, especially westerners, descending on communities.  Once the work has been consolidated at a very local level then it can be taken up by activists at a national level and moves towards intervention by the government and community leaders.    TheWitches of Gambaga shows that there is another way to addressing traditional and religious practices which hurt women and children. Women activists are beginning to speak out against the practice and the film itself has contributed to raising awareness at national level. Changes in attitudes by local leaders can also contribute to ending the practices of accusing women of witchcraft.  For example in one of the villages where the practice was prevalent, the new Chief has chosen to ignore the supernatural and instead intervene by counseling families and encouraging a change of attitude towards women in general.  However despite this, Badoe points out that the Minister for Women whose constituency is in the Gabaga region, did not once visit any of the villages nor attempt in anyway to engage with community leaders and chiefs or give any support to the women.

  The success of the film is due to Badoes persistent visits and her personal engagement with both the women and the Gambarrana who allows her to film the “secret” ceremony which decides on the guilt of the women.  Her interviews are intimate and heart-breaking showing both the vulnerability of the women as well as their agency and strength.   One young mother of two is ambivalent about her exile but at the same time focused on ensuring her children are educated by raising money to send them to school.   The film thankfully lacks the “pitying” and patronising tone often found in documentaries made by non-Africans as neither the women nor the audience are treated with anything but the utmost respect.   The strong feminist intervention places the women at the center and focuses only on the issue it wishes to confront and expose leaving all of those involved including the audience proud and empowered.  The Witches of Gambaga has has been shown and well received by audiences in Ghana and in Burkina Faso.

  Witches of Gambaga was the Winner, 2010 Black International Film Festival Best Documentary Award.  Watch a trailer of the film “Witches of Gambaga”  The film was also selected for special mention at this years FESPACO in Burkina Faso. Ms Badoe is also author of True Murder,  a mystery novel set in England.

• IWD: Beautiful brave women of WOZA!

  Posted: March 8, 2011, 5:10 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  I want to dedicate this day to the beautiful and brave women of Zimbabwe. Never to be deterred, only last week 11 of their members were arrested, the women and men took to the streets in five separate protests against the continued arrest and torture of their members. The women of WOZA have from the beginning been at the forefront of the struggle against Robert Mugabe’s regime. They have never faltered despite repeated beatings, arrests, imprisonment and torture. This report from yesterday’s march by Sokwanele.

  The five protests began from locations surrounding the High Court. Two of the protests managed to reach the 8th Avenue Court but three protests were dispersed by riot police and army. Three women have been arrested but have not been located at the police station by human rights lawyers. WOZA is concerned for their safety as police are hiding them. The three are Eneles Dube, Janet Dube and Selina Dube.

  As Bulawayo awoke to heavy police and army presence in the city, WOZA leaders decided to reduce the protest to the bravest of the brave numbering 500 female and male members. Another strategy adopted was to conduct flash protests, (appear and disappear as soon as police arrive). Additionally, headlines from the daily newspapers revealed an unofficial ban of rally and protests.

  Higher numbers of riot police were deployed at the previous target of WOZA protests – The Chronicle. However they quickly heard the loud singing and ran up several city blocks to respond. The song that carried a strong message – Kubi kubi siyaya – noma kunjani – besitshaya; besibopha; besidubula, siyaya. Roughly translated “the situation is bad but we will still get where we are going, even if the beats us, arrest us, or shoot to kill us, we will get there”. One police officer ordering one of the protests to disperse said – what rights are you talking about? – you are lying, you want to start a revolution!

  After they dispersed the protests, about 40 uniformed and plain clothed police officers picked up every single placard and newsletter, exposing two of their colleagues who had tortured members. One police officer came across a man holding the placard. He asked the man to show him it and asked why he was writing on it. The man said he needs scrap paper to write something down. The officer took it and proceeded to carefully fold this A2 size placard into the smallest piece imaginable and put it in his pocket telling the man, holding such a thing is not allowed.

  The protests taking place around International Women’s Day provide an opportunity to demand respect for Women’s rights and for peace in Zimbabwe. The theme adopted as part of the Constitutional reform process is ‘the rising of the women means the rising of the nation – No more poverty and starvation, many sweating for a few to benefit”.

• Putting risk and sexual assault in context

  Posted: March 4, 2011, 8:53 pm by Sokari

  
  
  

  I cant remember exactly when I joined Facebook but I think it was sometime in 2008, so about three years ago. In that time I have been sexually harassed a number of times but two were particularly horrible. In one I was sent pornographic photos and the other, what I thought was a fairly banal and short conversation ended with an abrupt verbal assault. I didnt report the first one – it completely freaked me out and I just deleted everything but the second I did report. FB’s response was because I had engaged with the person there was nothing I could do. This felt to me like because the guy [a gay identified man] knocked on my door and I had invited him into my space for a chat, I had no defense against being raped. In other words it was my fault. Even though the second incident was relatively mild compared to the first, I felt horrible and turned off my FB for a couple of days. Once I had recovered from feeling shit and blaming myself because this hit me on a low and because I had been careless about people wanting to add me to their “friend” list, I started to feel really angry. What makes men think they can violate you and walk away. I remembered a comment left here a couple of weeks ago in response to a statement on “corrective rape” in South Africa in which the man described rape as “a bit over the top” but he could understand the reasoning behind the barbaric acts.

  Men from Africa are seeing what is happening to men in North America and Europe. We are second class citizens. We are being turfed from the classroom and workplace at an alarming rate. There is no wonder African men feel defensive. While rape is a bit over-the-top, I can understand the reasoning behind their barbaric acts (though I do not condone violence).

  I thought for a second of not publishing but changed my mind even though the comment itself acted as a violent trigger. I seriously believe that the majority of women in this world face some kind of sexual assault on an almost daily basis. And I seriously believe that the majority of men in this world are with their silence complicit in these assaults even when they are not the direct perpetrator.

  Sometime ago I read this article by Amanda Taub at Wronging Rights. who puts “risk” and sexual assault in context. Just by the fact we are women we are always at risk – always.

  And second of all, guess what? If women never went anywhere where we risked being sexually assaulted, we’d never go anywhere, period. We certainly couldn’t go to work on foreign aid projects. Or to U.S. military academies. Not to college. Not on dates. Not to parties. Not to bars. Or on cruises. Not to work as models. Or security contractors. Except that even if we never went any of those places, we’d still be screwed (pun intended) because of course a high percentage of rapes happen in the home, committed by perpetrators whom the victims know. Putting the responsibility on women to prevent sexual assault by restricting their own behavior – or on their employers to limit it for them – won’t actually solve the problem, it will just reinforce gendered norms about what “good” women “should” do.

Blah blah blah

Fish cakes

Alas a fish cake.

Yet more fish cakes

Guess what ... yeah ... fish cakes.

The end of the fish cakes