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The Big Story  Feminism young girls, in a country where any discussion of sex is still deeply taboo. While these new forms of misogyny have sprouted and taken root, a generation that rejected feminism has lost the means to talk about it. Sociologist Philip N Cohen tracked the use of words ‘sexism’ and ‘sexist’, in books over time. He relates how, after rising to prominence in the 1970s, they peaked in the 1990s, ‘and then, once again became less common than, say, the word “bacon”.’7 The need for a new analysis could be what is driving this renaissance. A generation of women are finding that reality doesn’t live up to the equality enshrined in law. A jolt If earlier expressions of feminism dug deep into the root causes of oppression, this chapter majors on deeds; it is pragmatic, brand savvy – and taking aim at the many-headed hydra of patriarchy wherever it rears its ugly head. ‘In the past couple of months,’ recalls Canadian blogger Jarrah Hodge, ‘I’ve been to rallies against the closure of an abortion clinic in New Brunswick, campaigned for justice for missing and murdered indigenous women, and critiqued media reporting on sexual assault and the representation of women in Star Trek.’ The internet is choked full of feminist blogs and bloggers of all stripes, political persuasions class and race. Hodge’s diary of events is also symptomatic of another powerful thread of early 21st-century grassroots feminism: the need to act for all women, not just privileged white ones. ‘A real achievement of the feminist movement now is that we have connected up across class and cultures; including LGBTI people and straight men,’ reports 26-year-old Ecuadorean activist Adriana Garrido. The new activism is also united in a powerful rejection of violence. The most dramatic protests have taken place in India, where the brutal rape and murder of a student in Delhi sparked outrage on an unprecedented scale. The activist Kavita Khrishnan has spoken of a new wave of ‘deep introspection about how we end up sustaining violence and discrimination against women’. ‘It may be the first time in decades,’ commented the author Nilanjana Roy, ‘that we are exploring those fault lines – of caste, class and gender – in such a mainstream fashion.’8 Feminist groups in the Global South will often be fighting different battles compared with those in the North. Many pursue ‘strategic litigation’ – ways to enforce laws and set precedents around rights and protections – showing great courage and perseverance in troubled, violent places such as Colombia or Afghanistan. They are increasingly globally connected – internet activism has forged a powerful new solidarity. Take the case of Liz, a 16-year-old Kenyan girl with learning difficulties who was left physically disabled and incontinent after being gang-raped and dumped in a pit latrine. When Kenyan women’s rights groups heard that the perpetrators’ punishment was to cut the lawn of the local police station they started a protest petition on campaign site Avaaz. It went ‘Do we want to be the Barbarians at the gate or the people in the boardroom? I say both’ QAHERA – THE HIJABI SUPERHEROINE Deena Mohamed, a 19-yearold Egyptian graphic designer, created the veiled webcomic superheroine Qahera (‘conqueror’ in Arabic) in 2013. She combats misogyny and Islamophobia in equal measure. One comic strip targets the topless Ukrainian ‘sextremists’ of Femen. ‘They stereotype, dehumanize and exclude Muslim women from their version of feminism and liberation,’ explains Mohamed on her Tumblr blog. ‘It has little to do with their nudity – I don’t care about that and neither does Qahera.’ Qahera also metes out retribution to Egyptian men who sexually harass women, foiling attacks and suspending perpetrators from lamp-posts. Street harassment is growing in postrevolution Egypt, and is an enduring focus for women. Harassmap uses online tools to record incidents; Graffiti Jarami reclaim women’s right to occupy public space by spraypainting powerful women on to walls, while female and male members of Bassma (‘Imprint’, founded in 2012) patrol Cairo’s metro and city streets in high-visibility jackets to deter attacks and raise awareness. qahera.tumblr.com // harassmap.org // facebook.com/imprint.movement.eg TAKE BACK THE TECH (TBTT) What would a feminist internet look like? There would possibly be more pictures of cute, angry cats, with slogans such as ‘patriarchal interwebs, I’m coming for you’ and, according to one Janet Gunter, ‘we’d be able to maintain / hack / mod[ify] our devices, protect privacy. A machine of one’s own.’ She was tweeting in response to the question put out to techie women the world over by TBTT, a campaign to ‘take control of technology to end violence against women.’ A global network routed in the Global South, TBTT has spawned the EROTICS research project, which explores whether the internet enables greater sexual diversity or just more ways to police it. Key figures include Malaysian internet rights activist Jac Sm Kee, who works to bring a feminist politics into internet governance debates. She tells researcher Jessica Horn she is optimistic about what engagement will bring: ‘We still have a lot of power and capacity to be able to decide what kind of space we want it to be.’ takebackthetech.net 16 ● N e w I n t e r n at i o n a liST ● july/au gust 2 014
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on to collect 1.6 million signatures. Kenya’s public prosecutor has since upgraded the charges and a new trial was due to start in June. Other nascent campaigns are getting a taste of victory – such as the successful battle to force Facebook to remove misogynistic images and comment. Tactics and tools are quickly taken up and shared. Each win builds confidence and is a step towards bigger changes. It feels as if feminism has a more populist bent today. It’s alright to be feminist and like Beyoncé. Men are increasingly encouraged to join the struggle for gender equity. There are pushes for more women on corporate boards or to run for high office. ‘It’s not what we in second-wave feminism thought we would work on,’ chuckles Joni Seager, ‘but I think it’s complementary in a “small steps” kind of way. It opens up the old debate: do we want to be the Barbarians at the gate or the people in the boardroom? I say both.’ Reasonable and revolutionary Malala Yousafzai warned her peers, the Tower Hamlet girls, that both the ‘developing’ and what she described as the ‘modern world’ discriminated against women. ‘In India and Pakistan, people say it openly, but here [in Britain] it’s kept hidden. Now we need to highlight it. ‘Women need equality in practical l ife – real l ife.’ If we want the transformative, far-reaching changes imagined by Malala, it is the strong feminist movements that hold the key to change. These organizations are more effective at combating violence than either political parties or wealth, according to a 40-year study conducted in 70 countries.9 Feminist groups are operating at the coalface of patriarchy in its most brutal manifestations, and should be the target of funds and support. The foundations of feminism are strong. In Brazil, feminist NGOs are monitoring the implementation of domestic violence legislation; while one young woman’s anti rape-culture stance – featured on the front of this issue – goes viral. The latest groundswell of anger brings new approaches, which can tap into the older wisdom, and has the chance to effect real cultural and political change. These women will take us to the next stage on the journey: to a world that values women; where girls love the bodies they are born with, where rape is treated as if it mattered, and care is shared and valued. n 1 Huffington Post, Maternal mortality infographic. nin.tl/SND9HX 2 ‘Why women are still left doing most of the housework’, May 2011, Oxford University press release. nin.tl/1i4CUVv 3 ‘An early start for gender equality’, Plan Canada, October 2011. nin.tl/SNDive 4 Natasha Walter, Living Dolls – the Return of Sexism, Virago, 2010. 5 Young People into 2013, The Schools Health Education Unit. nin.tl/1i4EeHW 6 Anne Becker, ‘Eating behaviours and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls’, The British Journal of Psychiatry (2002). nin.tl/1i4Fqen 7 Philip Cohen, ‘The Banal, Insidious Sexism of Smurfette’, The Atlantic, August 2013. nin.tl/SNF27L 8 ‘Viewpoints: has the Delhi rape case changed India?’, BBC News, September 2013. nin.tl/SNF5QZ 9 ‘The civic origins of progressive policy change: combatting violence against women in a global perspective, 1975-2005’, American Political Science Review, (Issue 03, Volume 106), August 2012. nin.tl/1i4FM4G RADICAL HANDMAIDS ‘Pro-choice activists who love Canadian Literature and really outrageous hats’. radicalhandmaids.com THE POWER OF GENTLE MEN ‘Powerful men do not need to hurt or blame others.’ This is one of the values spread by the Men’s Resource Centre Rwanda (RWAMREC), the country’s first ever male-led organization working for gender equity. It delivers training to violent men, teaching new models of ‘positive masculinity’. Its prescriptions, which include making husbands cook rice and sweep the compound, have successfully turned abusers into conflict resolution counsellors for troubled marriages, according to Guardian reporter Nishtha Chugh. It’s one of hundreds of organizations that are looking to attack patriarchy by reimagining what it means to be male. The largest movement is the White Ribbon anti-violence campaign (now a global network) propelled by the Canadian Michael Kaufman, who also tours campuses teaching men about consent. Another campaign, MenCare, pushes for gentle, fairly shared parenting; its influence extends as far as Brazil and Latvia. In a more politicized vein, there is the New York-based Challenging Male Supremacy Project. rwamrec.org // men-care.org // whiteribbon.ca #I DON’T DESERVE TO BE RAPED This list would not be complete without a hashtag-led Twitter protest. A 28-yearold Brazilian journalist, Nana Queiroz, struck a blow against victim-blaming last March when she posted a photo of herself topless with the words ‘Eu Nao Mereco Ser Estuprada’ (‘I don’t deserve to be raped’) written across her body [immortalized on this issue’s front cover]. It was her outraged response to a survey, which claimed that 65 per cent of Brazilians thought that a provocatively dressed woman deserved to be raped. The research institute later revised its figures down to 26 per cent – still a quarter of the population. The post went viral, with thousands of women and men uploading their own pictures. Consequently, Queiroz met with President Dilma Rousseff and is helping to draft a document to outline how to educate schoolchildren in gender issues. ‘It's not an invitation!' N e w I n t e r n at i o n a l i s t ● july/au gust 2 014 ● 17 . c o m /g e n d e rf o c u s . o r g i d . a w . y f a i r e i s t w i n f e m Yo u n g I D : AW S o u r c e s

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on to collect 1.6 million signatures. Kenya’s public prosecutor has since upgraded the charges and a new trial was due to start in June.

Other nascent campaigns are getting a taste of victory – such as the successful battle to force Facebook to remove misogynistic images and comment. Tactics and tools are quickly taken up and shared. Each win builds confidence and is a step towards bigger changes.

It feels as if feminism has a more populist bent today. It’s alright to be feminist and like Beyoncé. Men are increasingly encouraged to join the struggle for gender equity. There are pushes for more women on corporate boards or to run for high office.

‘It’s not what we in second-wave feminism thought we would work on,’ chuckles Joni Seager, ‘but I think it’s complementary in a “small steps” kind of way. It opens up the old debate: do we want to be the Barbarians at the gate or the people in the boardroom? I say both.’ Reasonable and revolutionary Malala Yousafzai warned her peers, the Tower Hamlet girls, that both the ‘developing’ and what she described as the ‘modern world’ discriminated against women. ‘In India and Pakistan, people say it openly, but here [in Britain] it’s kept hidden. Now we need to highlight it.

‘Women need equality in practical l ife – real l ife.’

If we want the transformative, far-reaching changes imagined by Malala, it is the strong feminist movements that hold the key to change.

These organizations are more effective at combating violence than either political parties or wealth, according to a 40-year study conducted in 70 countries.9 Feminist groups are operating at the coalface of patriarchy in its most brutal manifestations, and should be the target of funds and support.

The foundations of feminism are strong. In Brazil, feminist NGOs are monitoring the implementation of domestic violence legislation; while one young woman’s anti rape-culture stance – featured on the front of this issue – goes viral. The latest groundswell of anger brings new approaches, which can tap into the older wisdom, and has the chance to effect real cultural and political change.

These women will take us to the next stage on the journey: to a world that values women; where girls love the bodies they are born with, where rape is treated as if it mattered, and care is shared and valued. n

1 Huffington Post, Maternal mortality infographic. nin.tl/SND9HX 2 ‘Why women are still left doing most of the housework’, May 2011, Oxford University press release. nin.tl/1i4CUVv 3 ‘An early start for gender equality’, Plan Canada, October 2011. nin.tl/SNDive 4 Natasha Walter, Living Dolls – the Return of Sexism, Virago, 2010. 5 Young People into 2013, The Schools Health Education Unit. nin.tl/1i4EeHW 6 Anne Becker, ‘Eating behaviours and attitudes following prolonged exposure to television among ethnic Fijian adolescent girls’, The British Journal of Psychiatry (2002). nin.tl/1i4Fqen 7 Philip Cohen, ‘The Banal, Insidious Sexism of Smurfette’, The Atlantic, August 2013. nin.tl/SNF27L 8 ‘Viewpoints: has the Delhi rape case changed India?’, BBC News, September 2013. nin.tl/SNF5QZ 9 ‘The civic origins of progressive policy change: combatting violence against women in a global perspective, 1975-2005’, American Political Science Review, (Issue 03, Volume 106), August 2012. nin.tl/1i4FM4G

RADICAL HANDMAIDS ‘Pro-choice activists who love Canadian Literature and really outrageous hats’.

radicalhandmaids.com

THE POWER OF GENTLE MEN ‘Powerful men do not need to hurt or blame others.’ This is one of the values spread by the Men’s Resource Centre Rwanda (RWAMREC), the country’s first ever male-led organization working for gender equity.

It delivers training to violent men, teaching new models of ‘positive masculinity’. Its prescriptions, which include making husbands cook rice and sweep the compound, have successfully turned abusers into conflict resolution counsellors for troubled marriages, according to Guardian reporter Nishtha Chugh.

It’s one of hundreds of organizations that are looking to attack patriarchy by reimagining what it means to be male. The largest movement is the White Ribbon anti-violence campaign (now a global network) propelled by the Canadian Michael Kaufman, who also tours campuses teaching men about consent. Another campaign, MenCare, pushes for gentle, fairly shared parenting; its influence extends as far as Brazil and Latvia. In a more politicized vein, there is the New York-based Challenging Male Supremacy Project.

rwamrec.org // men-care.org //

whiteribbon.ca

#I DON’T DESERVE TO BE RAPED This list would not be complete without a hashtag-led Twitter protest. A 28-yearold Brazilian journalist, Nana Queiroz, struck a blow against victim-blaming last March when she posted a photo of herself topless with the words ‘Eu Nao Mereco Ser Estuprada’ (‘I don’t deserve to be raped’) written across her body [immortalized on this issue’s front cover]. It was her outraged response to a survey, which claimed that 65 per cent of Brazilians thought that a provocatively dressed woman deserved to be raped. The research institute later revised its figures down to 26 per cent – still a quarter of the population. The post went viral, with thousands of women and men uploading their own pictures. Consequently, Queiroz met with President Dilma Rousseff and is helping to draft a document to outline how to educate schoolchildren in gender issues.

‘It's not an invitation!'

N e w I n t e r n at i o n a l i s t ● july/au gust 2 014 ● 17

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