Women's Views on News |
- The forgotten women of Bosnia
- ‘Nobody gets off lightly in here’
- Thinspiration: only part of the problem
| Posted: 03 May 2013 09:25 AM PDT
Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosnia, is (hoping) to be a documentary film looking at the use of rape as a war strategy. And looking at a survivor’s quest to shed light on the international community’s failure to acknowledge the effects this crime has on women’s lives, long after the war has ended. ‘Hoping’, because it still needs funding. Which is why there is a Kickstarter appeal for money. We want to make this documentary, Ivana Ivkovic Kelley explains, because females are nonstop targets during wartime, as demonstrated by the mass rapes implemented as a policy of genocide during the Bosnian war. This atrocity is grossly ignored by the international community and international tribunals. This film revisits one survivor who continues to fight for justice on behalf of others all over the world. From her tiny smoke-filled office on the shrapnel-damaged outskirts of Sarajevo, to her monthly sojourns to The Hague, her goal is for perpetrators to be brought to justice. To this day, war rape survivors continue to join her group, finally sharing their stories with this woman who will ensure their testimonies are heard in the courts in Sarajevo or the Hague. In many cases, the perpetrators are either awaiting trial or have been rewarded by the Serbian government for successfully running a “camp”, often in the form of a promotion within the local police force. We have witnessed incidents of this same “reward” behavior in similar conflicts around the world. In situations such as these, many survivors have expressed anger, fear, and shock, especially when they see their attacker, years later, in high level positions or vacationing beside them on the Adriatic coast, which numerous victims have witnessed. The main subject of my film, Bakira, takes justice into her own hands when others have given up…and sets out to find where the perpetrators, named in numerous testimonies, now live, subsequently providing this evidence to The Hague and other courts. This is a critical project – one that needs immediate attention and any support you can give. It is through projects such as these that light is shed on human rights issues. The continued treatment of women around the world, especially during times of conflict, needs to be heard through as many channels as possible. Unfortunately, war rape survivors are often seen as a problem, a by-product of war that needs to be swept under the rug…a reality in many post-war countries. Our work will be done, Kelley says, when the world comes together to ensure female victims of war are not forgotten and the perpetrators are brought to justice. Kelley worked interviewing survivors of systematic rape during the war in Bosnia, as well as translating their testimonies and travelling into enemy-occupied territory to deliver food and medical supplies. She has been interviewed twice by NPR, by a number of domestic newspapers in the USA, and was invited to speak at the University of Stockholm and University of Uppsala during the last year of the Bosnian war. Not too long ago, she decided to leave her studio job in order to dedicate her time and soul to this project. She launched the Kickstarter campaign to raise $12,000 for Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosnia, her first documentary, at the beginning of April. With your help, Persephone Speaks could be completed by autumn: please click here to donate.  |
| ‘Nobody gets off lightly in here’ Posted: 03 May 2013 06:30 AM PDT
The Knitting Circle is about a a group of women locked up for decades in a Hertfordshire asylum. Julie McNamara lived and worked as a nursing assistant and social work trainee in the Harperbury hospital in Radlett, Hertfordshire, in the 1980s. That was on the eve of the introduction of Care in the Community, a government policy which saw the closure of most of the large asylums and their replacement with smaller group homes. Harperbury was one of six 'big bins' in Hertfordshire and could accommodate up to 2,000 patients. It survives to this day, in a smaller form, and is now known as Kingsley Green. At the time she worked there, McNamara wanted to do something constructive for the women at the hospital, but Sister Mary Frances, an old style nursing sister working there, warned her that she could not be seen to be doing anything political. “She told me the only way you can get away with it is if you do something for the hospital shop. “She suggested I form a knitting circle,” recalled McNamara. Years later McNamara came across an old tape of the knitting circle conversations, which gave her the idea for the play. “I heard those voices and I said whatever happened to those people on that tape?" she said. So she put out feelers on the survivor networks and was amazed at the response. “I was absolutely inundated. I am still hearing from people with nowhere else to tell their stories. “There were thousands and thousands of people who were put away for no good reason. “I lived and worked with a woman who was put away for 48 years for stealing a bicycle aged nine. “I met people who had children to their own fathers or grandfathers. “These were young, young women. They were placed in these asylums 'for their own protection' and described as 'morally deficient'.” The play is based on the testimonies of 70 women, including a woman who was born in an asylum and wondered why she had never been adopted. “When she traced her mother she found she had done 34 years in this 'bin'. She had been nursed for years in a women-only ward, and had 12 pregnancies. She had a PhD in Philosophy," said McNamara. “The only way these women survived was through their own love for each other and through utter mischief,” said McNamara. One of her favourite stories was from Anne from Enfield. “Every Christmas the Friends used to give them chocolate brazils. She had never liked brazil nuts so she sucked the chocolate off and gave the nuts to the nurses as presents. “It took them four years to find out," said McNamara. McNamara started to think of new ways of working with actors, because she wanted them to hear the voices of the people who were telling their stories. “I wanted them to hear from the patients themselves. I wanted them to hear from former staff members," she said. So she cast six actors and matched them with some of the survivors and staff. The play is a moving and authentic portrayal of a group of patients and staff as they struggle to maintain their morality, dignity and individuality in a world where the only thing to look forward to is the next cup of tea. And where, if you step out of line, you can expect a cold bath, a beating and a spell in isolation. “Nobody gets off lightly in here,” says Colin Shine, the charge nurse in the piece, played by actor Sanjiv Hayre. McNamara says the people who gifted her their stories think of this as their play. “It's been enormous fun. I've had huge mischief. “The people who have given me their stories have stayed in touch with me for the past three years. It's become a huge tribe," she said. McNamara is now in talks with producers about turning the play into a film. The Knitting Circle will visit Oxford, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Deptford and Bristol. The performances have integrated sign language interpretation, and some, such as the performance at Liverpool’s Bluecoat Theatre on 9 May, are audio described. In Bristol, the cast will be joined on stage by some of the survivors, who will receive a public apology. In February Ireland’s Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, apologised on behalf of the Irish state to the survivors for the appalling treatment of hundreds of women in the Magdalene Laundries, and McNamara believes those who survived the asylums deserve the same from the British government. When I heard that, I thought my God we've heard not even an acknowledgement of what women went through in the asylums, in the so-called long care system where, for the most spurious of reasons, women were thrown away for the rest of their lives. Nobody is after compensation, she points out, but every single story-teller who gifted their stories to this play wants an apology. McNamara believes services for today's mental health patients are patchy. “It's chequered. It depends where you live, it depends whether you've got money, it depends whether you've got access to the protocols that allow you to be treated, it depends whether you're black or white, whether you are rich or poor. “It is an appalling time to be unwell in the mental health system in this country, because we are taking a huge retrograde step by selling off the health service and by decimating the welfare system. “Nye Bevan must be spinning in his grave,” she said.  |
| Thinspiration: only part of the problem Posted: 03 May 2013 01:05 AM PDT By Thea Raisbeck. A petition to ban 'thinspiration' hashtags on Twitter has admirable intentions, but won't stop the rise in eating disorders. The petition, started by American student Tori Singer, is calling for Twitter to "restrict the use of thinspiration language and hashtags currently circulating the twittersphere". For the uninitiated, 'thinspiration' and pro eating disorder (Pro-Ed) sites and groups encourage extreme thinness as a desirable goal and advocate for eating disorders as a lifestyle choice. Users find support to entrench their illness; sharing tips for suppressing the appetite or hiding signs of the disorder from others. Thinspiration and Pro-Ed sites are nothing new. Many years ago, when I was at the height of my struggle with anorexia, Pro-Ed content could be found – if you looked hard enough – on Yahoo! Groups or in the Livejournal community. Concern over these sites is also nothing new: in 2001 Yahoo! banned around 115 Pro-Ed sites or communities, with AOL and MSN following suit shortly after. Twelve years later, as internet use and social media burgeoned, Pro-Ed sites have increased exponentially. A recent study has indicated that there are now over 500 such sites on the internet, the majority set up by sufferers, many of whom are under 18. The sprawl of social media has made the dissemination of thinspiration that much easier, and Tumblr, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest have all attempted to prohibit or limit the use of Pro-Ed content. These measures have met with varying degrees of success, with many sites a kind of 'thinspiration by any other name'. Despite the images these groups share, which deify eating disorders and sanctify the prominence of bones, anyone who has struggled with an eating disorder knows it is a painful, isolating and almost unequivocally miserable way to exist. And it is this sense of isolation and despair that Pro-Ed sites often speak to. Claire Mysko, of the National Eating Disorders Association, claims that 'young people who are prone to disordered eating…feel very isolated, so this world…provides a community and a sense of belonging'. Yet, it is undoubtedly the case that Pro-Ed sites also allow sufferers to remain deeply rooted in their illness. One study revealed that 61 per cent of sufferers who visited Pro-Ed sites 'engaged in new weight reduction or purging methods'. Any attempt to limit the spread of thinspiration communities should therefore not be discredited and it is certainly the case that social media sites have an obligation to ensure responsible content. However, we cannot simply ban these sites without appreciating the – unmet – psychosocial needs they may be fulfilling, or without positing an alternative. The effectiveness of punitive 'banning' measures has been the subject of some concern. Susan Ringwood, of Eating Disorder charity B-eat, worries that such pressure may drive anorexic networks underground, 'stoking their sense of persecution and making it harder for help to reach them'. The way we talk about Pro-Ed sites is also of concern. If we express disgust, shock and horror at these communities there is a danger we are replicating the stigma already faced by eating disorder sufferers in wider society. It is surely more productive to think of what can replace the need these sites are fulfilling. We need to look at the complex etiology of eating disorders rather than relying on the erroneous assumption that looking at images of thin women causes the problem. Thinspiration is the product of a culture that praises absence: the absence of flesh, of wrinkles, of body hair. It is not the cause. The images used on Pro-Ed sites largely come from a fashion industry in which fatigue from starvation is the norm. The proliferation of these images, and the ease with which such images can be shared through social media, ratifies the idea that this is how people with eating disorders look. In reality, anorexia is the rarest of the eating disorders, affecting only around 10 per cent of all sufferers, yet it is the most publicised, the most mythologised and the most representative form of the disorder. Sadly, razor-sharp hip bones and paper-thin flesh are more likely to generate interest than an outwardly 'normal' looking woman who is on the verge of a gastric rupture due to incessant self-induced vomiting. And this is why we need to increase awareness of eating disorders – in all forms – and cease focusing solely on physical emblems of the disorder. Reports that eating disorder admissions were up 16 per cent in 2012 have been attributed by experts to late diagnosis. Perhaps dieting and thinness have been normalised to the extent that they are coded as typical 'feminine' behaviour so go unnoticed. Perhaps stereotypes and misrepresentation have lead many doctors to assume that if a patient is not a white, middle class teenage girl they can’t possibly be anorexic. Much of my early treatment path was hampered by professionals who refused to see a problem as I had not yet reached that arbitrary 'anorexic' weight. I sought solace in online communities, but was fortunate enough to stumble upon a pro-recovery site that, without hyperbole, probably kept me alive. There are many great pro-recovery sites out there where members can still share their pain and seek solace with those who understand. The difference is no one pretends that eating disorders are anything other than they are. Most people will not have heard of webiteback, proud2beme, FYOURED, or the Something Fishy website. They do not create ghoulish headlines so most people remain unaware of their existence. Pro recovery sites are not a panacea. Glancing through a slideshow of healthy body affirmations isn't going to make a chronic anorexic immediately pick up a fork and start eating. They are, however, our best alternative. Wider promotion of such sites – and more promotion of the idea that eating disorders are only superficially about food and weight – is probably the most effective antidote to a seemingly unstoppable tide of aggravating imagery. We need to tear down the myth that emaciation is natural and can be achieved by any other means than control, starvation and unending amounts of pain.  |
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