Women's Views on News |
| Filibuster win for women’s rights Posted: 26 Jun 2013 07:36 AM PDT
Over the past few years we have seen several attempts in the UK to reduce the time limit for abortions as a tactic to draw the debate towards more restrictive abortion laws and increased barriers. So far these attempts have been defeated. The abortion debate is much worse in the USA, but, as the Abortion Rights website points out, “this should stand as a warning to pro-choice activists in Britain that if we are not vigilant, where America leads Britain often follows.” With this in mind, last night I went to bed hoping that Texas Senator Wendy Davis, a Democrat, would succeed in her marathon filibuster and prevent an attempt being made by the Republican Party to restrict the availability of abortion to the women of Texas, USA. This morning I tuned in to chaos. A filibuster is a US parliamentary procedure – a slowing or obstructive tactic – which extends a debate in order to delay a vote on a proposed bill. In this case the bill – SB5 – would ban abortion at 20 weeks, force clinics to become mobile surgical centres, and limit doctors to hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles – making access difficult in rural areas. The impact of the bill is said to be that almost every abortion clinic in Texas would have to close. Lawmakers had to vote on Senate Bill 5 before a special session’s end at midnight local time. In an attempt to prevent the bill from reaching the desk of Texas governor Rick Perry and being signed into law, Davis began speaking at 11.18am yesterday. She finished at just after 10pm, two hours shy of the 13 hours needed to time-out the vote. During this time she was not allowed to eat, drink, take bathroom breaks, lean on anything or move more than a couple of feet from the desk that contained her notes. Watched by a 100,000 people on YouTube’s live video stream, Davis presented her case against the bill and read out stories contributed by women who had experienced abortions. Her Twitter following had risen from 1,200 to more than 20,000 by Tuesday night, the hash tag #sb5 trended worldwide. US president Barack Obama tweeted his support at one point, and the hashtag #standwithwendy also trended worldwide. Thousands of Texan women, wearing orange T-shirts in support of Davis, stood waiting outside the gallery while the filibuster was taking place, waiting for someone to relinquish a gallery seat. In contrast, the main news networks in the US, particularly CNN, were mocked for their lack of coverage. Davis, who spoke for over 11 hours, had to stop at 10.07 pm local time because 3 points of order were sustained by Republican votes. Two were sustained because she mentioned issues not felt to be germane to her case – Planned Parenthood's budget and the 2011 Texas sonogram law – and one because a colleague helped her adjust her back brace, supposedly contravening the rule about the speaker being unaided during a filibuster. However, the Democrats on the floor then proceeded to ask for clarifications on various points and the debate that followed on parliamentary rules used up most of the remaining time. Then the crowd – hundreds of protestors strong – cheered and clapped for the final 15 minutes as the clocked ticked towards midnight, making it almost impossible to hear whether or not the vote to pass the bill was taken. “If this passes, abortion would be virtually banned in the state of Texas, and many women could be forced to resort to dangerous and unsafe measures,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund. The latest news indicates that the vote took place after the deadline and was therefore void. Meanwhile, Wendy Davis, as a female politician, is rightly being lauded for her effort to stem the tide against women’s rights in Texas. We applaud you.  |
| Posted: 26 Jun 2013 04:34 AM PDT
The Fullbright Company, a US independent video game studio, decided to pull its latest game, Gone Home, from the Indie Megabooth at Pax Prime Expo. In a statement, the founders of the company – two women and two men, one of whom is gay – cite a number of reasons for this decision, which can be summarised as the sexist, homophobic and transphobic comments of the founders of Penny Arcade, PAX's parent organisation. Coming on the back of Anita Sarkeesian’s work on identifying sexist tropes in videogames and the horrendous backlash she faced – and faces – in doing so, this development got me thinking. Am I a gamer? What does being a gamer mean? Looking for definitions, I found the most common seemed to be ‘a person who plays games, especially computer or video games.’ So that's me then. I play games online, on my computer, smartphone and tablet. My interest was sparked after receiving a present of a Sega Megadrive complete with Sonic the Hedgehog some years ago. However, I have not been a great fan of the console or multiplayer online games, mainly because I felt that the male-centric focus of many of the games do not interest me enough to invest hundreds of pounds. My son, for whom I bought nearly every console going over the years, played – and still does play – games such as Resident Evil and Call of Duty – games that I have no interest in. This is because, as a feminist, I am not interested in the damsel in distress trope or beating, raping or killing women (or men for that matter) in order to complete a game. I am also not interested in being ‘flamed beyond recovery’ during online multiplayer games, just because of my gender. And this lack of interest means when I am searching for a new game, if I see one advertised with say, an image of a big-breasted woman, I don't even look at it. If I find a game that looks interesting but features no women at all or only the the damsel in distress trope, I don't buy it. What I have never been able to understand is why an entertainment business would ignore such a massive potential audience. As Ms.Blog reports, about half of gamers are women. According to a a new study, 2013 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry women make up 45 percent of all gamers and 46 percent of all "habitual video game purchasers. Further, adult women make up 31 percent of the video game population, and about 61 percent of women play video games compared with only 57 percent of men. However, the entertainment business doesn’t just ignore women, it is actively hostile to us by persistently portraying women as sexualised plot devices. I just don't get it. I do get that the gaming world is primarily run by straight white men who design for themselves, but what I don't get is the lack of business sense. The usual cry of 'female protagonists don't sell' – the same cry we get from the mainstream film industry when it is called out for its lack of female leads (or directors for that matter) – displays a complete lack of imagination. While recognising that smaller gaming companies and film makers may not have the capital to take a chance on attracting half the audience of the world to their product, it doesn’t make sense when the big gaming companies and film studios refuse to do so. I mean why take a chance on that, right?. This point was made at a Feminism in Gaming 2013 panel at the Wiscon annual science fiction feminist convention which discussed some of the misogynistic issues that women face as gamers. Highlighting the #1ReasonWhy twitter hashtag which described some of the misogyny that women gamers have experienced, the panel also said: ’We want to give the industry our money. Give us something we want to support!’ Fullbright's decision to make a stand against a misogynistic industry represents a step in this direction: I for one will certainly be supporting Gone Home. So, thank you Fullbright for your brave decision. And thank you Anita Sarkeesian for persisting in your work against sexism in the gaming industry. In related online news, the crowd funding site, Kickstarter last week issued a sincere apology about a mistake they made in not halting a misogynistic ‘seduction guide’ project. This apology sure beats Facebook's attempt when bowing to pressure from the thousands of women and men who mobilised behind the Women, Action and the Media campaign to clean up its act when it comes the gender-based hate speech. Maybe the tide is about to change – particularly in the online world which represents a major portal to both the gaming and wider entertainment industries – and half the world may, at last, be welcome. Please note that while this post has focused on women in gaming culture, we acknowledge that any person who is not a straight white male is also marginalised and stereotyped – or even worse completely ignored. If you have something to say about this we would be interested in hearing it.  |
| Widows: sentenced to destitution Posted: 26 Jun 2013 01:09 AM PDT
Around 81 million widows, that is about a third of all women whose husbands predecease them, are abused and left destitute. A further 34 million are also abandoned to live a life of poverty. When their husband dies, many women lose their status in society. They are effectively given a death sentence. Some still commit Sati, throwing themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre, rather than face living a hellish alternative. In some cultures, they are viewed as having sinned in a previous life and so caused their husband’s untimely death. Some are tortured and accused of being witches. Thousands of child brides are married off to older men; they can be widowed by the time they are 16, and then find themselves permanently cast out by society. Others have their inheritance taken from them. June 23 was the third United Nations (UN) delegated International Widows Day, the aim of which is to draw attention to these women’s plight. In London, hundreds of people took part in a 5km run or walk around Hyde Park to raise money for the Loomba Foundation, set up after founder Raj Loomba witnessed his mother’s experiences as a widow. He lead the campaign for International Widows Day, and June 23 is the anniversary of his mother's widowhood. This ‘Appeal for Widows’ video explains the women’s plight. The UN, who have produced their own video to support their work on this problem, said: "Absent in statistics, unnoticed by researchers, neglected by national and local authorities and mostly overlooked by civil society organizations – the situation of widows is, in effect, invisible. “Yet abuse of widows and their children constitutes one of the most serious violations of human rights and obstacles to development today.” The problem is particularly acute in India. The BBC news magazine explained how many women make their way to Vrindavan, the City of Widows, because they have been cast out by their families and have nowhere else to go. And the Women’s News Network, WNN, pointed out recently that many women worldwide are widowed during their reproductive years, because their husbands have been killed in conflicts. There are, for example two million widows in Afghanistan; 40,000 widows in Sri Lanka as a result of the conflict there, and 9,000 widows in Nepal following the Maoist insurgency there. The New York Times published a story in November 2011 about widows’ hardship in Iraq. The reporter said that 86,000 war widows were getting assistance from the Iraqi government in the aftermath of the war. Deaths through HIV and Aids also create millions more widows. As the Loomba Foundation says in its appeal: ‘Millions of widows have been ostracised and abandoned, simply because they are widows. ‘It is shocking; what's more shocking is how few people are aware of this gross violation of human rights that is largely based on 'superstitious' or 'cultural' beliefs about widows being the source of bad luck.’  |
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