Women's Views on News |
- No More Page 3 is one year old
- Abortion and protest in Turkey
- The world athletics championships
- Prostitution: Edinburgh’s sauna issues
| No More Page 3 is one year old Posted: 22 Aug 2013 08:42 AM PDT
What can you do to mark 23 August? - Tell the world we want No More Page 3 and that 23 August is… No More Page 3 day! - And help make sure that as many people as possible get to hear about No More Page 3. - Wear a No More Page 3 T-Shirt (bought or home made) and send us a picture. - Put up a poster. - Leave lots of flyers in public places or in copies of The Sun. - Gather your friends/dance group/guides troop etc and set up a protest in a local town centre with petitions and flyers. - Ask your local radio/newspaper/TV station if you can do a piece for them about the campaign and why you support it. - Write to/email a celebrity or a group/organisation and ask them to support the campaign. - Or Tweet a celebrity or a group/organisation and ask them to support the campaign. - If you're at the seaside write 'No More Page 3!' in the sand. - Make a No More Page 3 birthday cake and take it to work. - Have a No More Page 3 party (and make sure you invite some friends who still need to hear the message!). - Have a No more Page 3 Birthday night out (any excuse), wear your tees and get people you meet to sign the petition (you can do this on your phone, dontcha know). - Drive around with a megaphone shouting "No More Page 3″ (No?). - Hire a plane and drag a No More Page 3 banner through the (…too much?…) Anything else you can think of? Let us know: email nomorepage3@gmail.com  |
| Abortion and protest in Turkey Posted: 22 Aug 2013 06:46 AM PDT
Guest Post from Zeynep Talay, a writer and sculptor, born in Istanbul and now living in London. The birth of the new royal baby in the UK was covered in Turkey as much as anywhere else, and it would be easy to assume that that made it one of those media events that are truly global. But like most of them it was filtered through a local context. In our case it was quite a colourful one. Our prime minister, for instance, would approve of Kate, as he is a big fan of pregnancy, believing that all Turkish women should bear at least three children. On the other hand, recently a lawyer with religious commitments said on state television that heavily pregnant women should not be seen in public. Apparently it offends his aesthetic sensibilities. Women in Turkey have had to listen to this sort of thing for some time now, and it is part of the reason why they have been so prominent in the recent protests. On the afternoon of 1 June I was in a crowd of tens of thousands struggling up the hill towards Taksim Square, where the police were firing tear gas in all directions. People were passing us in the opposite direction, teary, coughing and suffocating, and as we tried to help them our anger was growing. The chanting of the crowd grew louder, until someone shouted 'Son of a bitch Erdoğan!' A small group, including a good friend of mine, joined in. 'Don't say that', I said to her. She replied: 'I think he deserves it. What shall we do other than swear?' 'No', I said, 'swear at Erdoğan, but don't use the word 'bitch''! My voice was then almost drowned out by those who agreed with me: 'No swearing! More important, no sexist swearing!' Once the police retreated from Taksim there were slogans everywhere. One said 'We, the prostitutes, assure you that we did not give birth to Erdoğan.' This was a reference to an incident that happened a few years ago. The mayor of Ankara, Melih Gökçek, was a guest on a live TV phone-in programme. As usual he was expressing himself in a crude way. At one point someone called in to say: 'Gökçek, we came to a conclusion: Even if a group of us, forty prostitutes, joined forces, we could not possibly give birth to a man like you!', and hung up. Gökçek had been talking about abortion, which he often does. In a more recent TV programme he refined his views. Asked what should happen to women who were pregnant as a result of being raped, he replied that the woman should kill herself before thinking about killing the baby. Abortion is not on the agenda of the media and politicians in Turkey all the time, but somehow, every so often, a politician makes a ridiculous comment about it. One spectacularly absurd one came from the prime minister himself in May, 2012. He said, 'Every abortion is an Uludere.' What did he mean? On 29 December, 2011, at 9.30pm Turkish F-16s bombarded fifty Kurdish villagers in the village of Uludere (Kurdish: Roboskî) close to the Iraq border. They had mistaken them for terrorists. 35 people died, most of them children. In reality they were smuggling oil and cigarettes, as they have been doing for decades, as the local gendarmerie know very well. But that day the army made a 'mistake'. When, instead of conducting a proper investigation, the government offered money to the relatives, the victims' mothers protested: 'We don't want your money; we want you to find those responsible!' They were ignored. On 18 June, 500 days after it happened, when the mothers tried to go to the spot to remember their sons and nephews, they were kept out of the 'incident area' by the gendarmerie. The next day they received a letter informing them that they had been fined TL3,000 each (approximately £1,000) for trespassing. Even those relatives who didn't go were fined. So in May, 2012, Erdoğan is giving a speech to the AKP's Central Women's Committee. 'We have written a legendary chapter in the history of women and politics', he says. Somehow this brings him to the subject of abortion. He says he is against it, that abortion is murder and that it is planned by those who want to erase the Turkish nation from world history. Then he adds: 'People keep talking about Uludere. Every abortion is an Uludere!' First of all, Uludere was not discussed in the media as much as it should have been. The people who did keep talking about it thought that the government should apologise and conduct a proper investigation instead of trying to silence people by giving them money. But Erdoğan thinks that everyone's first and only criterion in this life is money, like his is. But I am still trying to understand how he connected Uludere with abortion. For a rational mind there is no such connection. On the other hand, if to show that abortion is murder he compares it with Uludere, then that is an admission that Uludere was murder too. An unsolved one. When Erdoğan made this connection and made the discussion of abortion a matter for the media, it backfired and the AKP [of which he is leader] backed off from making abortion illegal per se. But they have already restricted the places at which it is legally possible (within ten weeks) and are making it easy for obstetricians to refuse a request for one. A more subtle measure was introduced in 2012 when the Ministry of Health sent letters to health centres saying that from now on, when a woman's pregnancy test proved positive, the mobile numbers of the father and/or husband would be sent to the ministry. Their aim, they said, was to be able to track the health of the babies and their mothers. We found out about this practice when we read about an unmarried woman whose records had been mixed up with someone else. While she was visiting hospital for another health problem, the system generated an automatic 'congratulatory' call to her father informing him his daughter was pregnant. When she arrived home she was ostracised by her mother and beaten up by her father. In 2004 Erdoğan himself wanted to criminalise Caesarian births. He had to drop it but his government continues to surprise us. On 22 July the health minister Recep Akdağ said that he preferred natural births without painkillers to caesarians, on the grounds that 'the more brave the mother is the more brave the child will be. We don't want a generation of cowards.' The association with the Roman emperor seems to have passed him by, but then the AKP aren't very good at metaphors. I don't know how the mothers of Uludere gave birth, but they seem to be brave, as were their children. Braver than the men who killed them, and those who won't punish them.  |
| The world athletics championships Posted: 22 Aug 2013 03:30 AM PDT
Britain’s track and field athletes achieved their target of six medals at last week’s world championships in Moscow, but only just. As the final evening of competition began, the British total stood at five. Britain’s women finished fourth in the 4x100m relay, agonisingly overtaken on the final straight by France. There were fleeting celebrations when the men’s sprint relay team finished third in the final race of the championships, stopped short when they were stripped of the bronze medal due to a faulty changeover. Resigned to having fallen short of the target set by UK Athletics, the athletes had already returned to their hotels when a last-minute piece of luck came their way. France had been disqualified from the women’s sprint relay for their own faulty changeover: Britain moved up to third place, and the sixth medal was theirs. It was an exciting end to a week that had shown plenty of promise. Christine Ohuruogu stepped up early on to take on the role of poster girl, left absent by an injured Jess Ennis-Hill. Ohuruogu’s 400m win on August 13 set the tone for the British team’s championships: she was behind for much of the race, and almost seemed defeated, before pulling off one of her signature late surges to win back her world title by four thousandths of a second. “You’re not supposed to give up, you’re supposed to fight with everything you’ve got,” she said. “For me, a race isn’t won until it’s finished.” This fighting spirit has made Ohuruogu the most successful British woman athlete in history – no other Brit has ever regained a lost world title – and the darling “golden girl” of the media. Ohuruogu also contributed to another of Britain’s medals, running a storming final leg in the 4x400m relay to secure a bronze. Her promise to continue racing until Rio 2016, when she will be 32, has raised hopes of another performance to match her gold in Beijing five years ago. Another medal was won by Tiffany Porter, whose bronze in the 100m hurdles was Britain’s first ever world championship medal in that event. She set a personal best in a very strong field, finishing behind Brianna Rollins, who holds the third fastest time in history, and Olympic champion Sally Pearson. The younger members of the team have also provided reason for hope. With Ennis-Hill injured, we had to make do without the heptathlon gold to which we are becoming accustomed, but British number two Katarina Johnson-Thompson rose to the occasion in quite some style. The 20 year-old set four personal bests to bring herself into unexpectedly into contention for a bronze. Hopes were high, but in the event, second place in the 800m was not quite enough to secure the medal. But it was a close call – her final score of 6,440 was just 28 points adrift of the bronze medallist. Johnson-Thompson has proved that she is here to stay, something that has not gone unnoticed by Ennis-Hill’s coach Toni Minichiello. “She is better than Jess pound-for-pound,” Minichiello told the BBC. “If you look at what Jess did at her age as a junior, Kat’s performed better than that every single time. If she keeps going she’ll probably be better.” Perri Shakes-Drayton could only manage seventh in the 400m hurdles final after hitting two hurdles, but this performance is hardly indicative of her potential or form. Sheakes-Drayton had achieved the second fastest qualifying time in the semi-finals, and is still ranked second in the world. She was joined in the final by Eilidh Child, who took fifth place. To have two women in a world championship final illustrates the developing depth of talent in British athletics. There was also promise on show from Hannah England, who came fourth in the 1500m, and from a strong group of 800m runners: Marilyn Okoro and Laura Muir reached the semi-finals with a season’s best and lifetime best respectively. Jess Judd, who started the season in brilliant fashion, was unable to advance beyond the heats, but at just 18, she has plenty of time to progress. She was in tears as she crossed the finishing line, but was proud of her season and confident of her future. “I expected so much more than that,” she said. “I’ve come a long way this season. It’s been my best year so far and it would have been a dream if I could have made it into the final, or at least a semi-final. “I know I could be a finalist, I can run so much quicker.”  |
| Prostitution: Edinburgh’s sauna issues Posted: 22 Aug 2013 01:09 AM PDT
By Jenny Kemp of Zero Tolerance, a charity working to tackle the causes of men's violence against women. The news that six Edinburgh saunas have lost their licenses and that more closures might follow has provoked a great deal of comment, and speculation that women involved in prostitution might be made more unsafe by the closures. It is important in this debate to remember the harm that saunas cause and focus on the reasons why they should close. In her Herald column, Colette Douglas Home appears untroubled by the saunas near her home (“Let’s hope women do not pay price for zero tolerance”, August 13). Indeed, many Edinburgh residents have ceased to register what these places are. It is much easier to turn a blind eye to a trade in women’s bodies than to confront the ugly reality. But the hard truth is that saunas are inherently unsafe, and a visible manifestation of gender inequality. They have no place in modern Scotland. Many people think saunas are a safe place for women to sell sex. But, as one survivor of the prostitution industry put it, “What is safe about being stuck in a room with a strange man who knows he has permission to do whatever he wants to you, when he can use as much time as he wants to fulfil his porn fantasy?” Focusing on the venue also distracts us from the core harm of prostitution: submitting to repeat unwanted sex, often many times a day, which has profound effects on women’s physical and psychological wellbeing. NHS guidance on sexual exploitation notes that it is associated with multiple health problems including sexually transmitted infections, HIV, cervical cancer, depression, drug and alcohol dependency, and dissociation. Licensing premises where harm occurs does not help address these problems; rather it sanctions the harm and normalises sex for sale. It is easy to overlook gender issues when discussing saunas; the gender-neutral term “sex worker” is often used. Let us be honest. We are talking about men buying women in 95 per cent of cases. How does turning a blind eye to this fit with other agendas in Scotland? To prevent domestic abuse and rape we tell men to respect women as equals and ensure consent but, in saunas, consent can be bought and women and men are not equal. Men have money and power and women are the product. This unequal exchange is an obstacle to equality that must be dismantled. If you are in any doubt about what men who use saunas think of women, a glance at the reviews on punter websites will take you rapidly out of your comfort zone. The “Invisible Men” Project catalogues men’s comments on paid sex. The website is replete with accounts of brutal, violent sex with women who are described as miserable, bruised, tired, agitated and in one case, “a slab of meat”. Let us focus on men’s choices for once and, in doing so, realise that providing them with a discreet venue for exploitation, with free parking thrown in, is an anachronism and a disgrace. It is often claimed that sauna opponents are not interested in women’s welfare. That is untrue. It is because we prioritise women’s welfare over men’s privilege that we want a new approach. When a local authority licenses saunas as “public entertainment” that creates a barrier to it providing support for women to leave prostitution. After all, why would anyone working for a legitimate licensed business need support services? It is no coincidence that Glasgow City Council understands prostitution as survival behaviour and has developed exit services and expertise in trafficking. The two go hand in hand. Providing exit services for women in prostitution is not Victorian moralism. It is a response to the fact that most women involved want to leave the exploitation behind. Closing saunas is just the start. We need more work to support women, promote equality and challenge men’s sense of entitlement to women’s bodies. That is what a zero tolerance culture means: a society transformed, not one that turns away from exploitation. Zero Tolerance is a charity working to tackle the causes of men's violence against women. For more information about Zero Tolerance click here or visit our facebook page or follow us on Twitter @ZTScotland.  |
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