Women's Views on News |
- Long-overlooked correction needed
- Green Primary sets new democratic standard
- Joss Whedon’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’
- Turning another blind eye on Bahrain
| Long-overlooked correction needed Posted: 31 Jan 2014 08:25 AM PST
In England and Wales mothers' names and occupations are not on marriage certificates but fathers' names and occupations are. This is not fair. Women are routinely written out of history. The UK has been a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against women for many years. By accepting the Convention countries committed themselves to undertake a series of measures to end discrimination against women in all forms, including: to incorporate the principle of equality of men and women in their legal system, abolish all discriminatory laws and adopt appropriate ones prohibiting discrimination against women. And it is not acceptable for the Home Office to say that: "the requirement to include the father's details in a marriage certificate is historic and would require a change to the present legislation. Currently there are no plans to change the rules." The Equality Act 2010 bans unfair treatment and helps achieve equal opportunities in the workplace and in wider society. This seemingly small inequality is part of a much wider pattern of inequality. Language shapes behaviour and cultural sexism is a huge barrier to true equality. Calling for mothers’ names and occupations to be on marriage certificates is about more than just this single issue. It is indicative of a society and culture and a country where things are decided by men to suit men. Marriage was historically a business transaction between the father of the bride and the father of the groom. But things have changed considerably and it is important that all forms of discrimination are challenged. Many people have taken the time to sign the petition on change.org. The comments of those who have explained why this issue matter to them fall into three broad areas: Genealogists are very keen for this to change to make researching family trees easier. This, they point out, is an important historical record; marriage certificates an important resource for historians. Only being able to extract a father's name and occupation from these records not only limits, but skews the historical record. People have mothers. These mothers have names and occupations. They should be recorded for historical purposes so that future historians can gather more accurate data. Many people have said that they have been brought up by their mother and that their father has been entirely absent – these people are upset that the only person who parented them cannot be included on a marriage certificate. Many women are bringing up children with no support or contact from the father – these people would like their role in their children's lives to be recognised. ‘My son's father,’ wrote one women, ‘chose not to be involved in his life. I'm bringing him up alone. Why should someone who's had no input into my son's upbringing and takes absolutely no responsibility or him whatsoever get to be on his future marriage certificate, when I cannot? There must be hundreds of thousands of families in this situation. ‘This is a completely outdated example of historical patriarchy. It needs changing.’ Some are feminists and people who want this for basic equality reasons; ‘Because I am a feminist’. Others point out that ‘It is just common sense and long overlooked correction that has to be made.’ One of the most poignant is ‘To be named is to exist, to be recognised.’ Please sign the petition. And share it with your friends.  |
| Green Primary sets new democratic standard Posted: 31 Jan 2014 06:20 AM PST
Germany’s Ska Keller and France’s Jose Bove have been selected to lead the Greens in their upcoming European campaign. The two won the four-person and historic Green Primary, the first ever Europe-wide, open, online selection of leading candidates for the European elections. Keller and Bove will now be the figureheads of the third common Green European campaign, and lead the united Green parties of Europe. Their task now is to bring a European dimension to the national Green campaigns. Ska Keller, the youngest of the four contenders, is a German activist, migration campaigner and politician. Born in Germany, near the Polish border, Keller studied Islamic, Turkish and Jewish studies at the Freie Universitaet Berlin. She has been speaking up for youth empowerment in Europe since she joined Grüne Jugend, the youth wing of the German Green party, in 2001. She was elected co-spokesperson of the Federation of Young European Greens for 2005-2007 and to the European Parliament in 2009. Keller sits on the Committee on Development, the Committee on International Trade, and on the Delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee. She calls anti-racism and internationalism her guiding principles, is against ‘Fortress Europe’, and campaigns strongly for the rights of refugees and migrants. Commenting on her selection, Ska Keller said: "I'm looking forward to an enthusiastic election campaign, for the whole of the European Union. "It will be our task as top candidates to bring a European dimension to the national Green campaigns. "I hope and I'm sure that we can keep the enthusiasm and motivation that I have experienced during the Green Primary going. "In our campaign, we Greens will be clear about what our Green alternatives are for Europe: a fair and Green way out of the crisis, putting youth unemployment on the top of the agenda, protecting the rights of refugees and migrants, fair trade not free trade, more ambitious climate targets, and more democracy." For the last two and a half months, voters in each EU member state have been able to take part in this e-democracy project. The four Green candidates – the other two were Italian MEP Monica Frassoni and German MEP Rebecca Harms, the Green group leader – travelled throughout Europe to put their vision for the future of the EU to voters, giving people the chance to confront them directly in live debates in ten different cities, and in online chats and live hangouts. Overall 22,656 people voted; Ska Keller received 11,791 votes and Jose Bove 11,726. The European Greens are the only political family who have chosen to open up the process of selecting their top politicians, and this Green Primary has, they hope, set a new democratic standard. By enabling 16 and 17 year-olds to take part, it has given them a voice in Europe’s future, too. Monica Frassoni, from the Italian Green Party, explained why they opened up the voting to anyone rather than just party members: "Our main goal is not so much the competition between people. "It is to go out there and mobilise not only our sympathisers but [all the] citizens, to make them understand that the policy of Europe can change and we can make it better. And a lot of people don't think that, they don't have any ownership in Europe and this is what we want to give them back."  |
| Joss Whedon’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Posted: 31 Jan 2014 04:57 AM PST
Our regular cross-post from Bitchflicks. By Lady T. Joss Whedon's adaptation of William Shakespeare's ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ is soaked in sex, languidness, and alcohol, as any decent adaptation of a Shakespeare comedy should be. It's not a "wedding movie" in the traditional sense: there are no Bridezilla jokes, montages of wedding planning going hilariously wrong, or subplots about in-laws fighting each other. But Much Ado About Nothing does have more than one wedding scene, and the film does employ the classic "left at the altar" plot point. Claudio (Fran Kranz), in love with Hero (Jillian Morgese), abandons her on their wedding day. What follows is not the typical "wacky wedding hijinx" story, but a story that exposes the true nature of the characters involved in the ceremony, where several male characters reveal disturbing attitudes toward women, and one surprises us by being a little more enlightened than we expected. Claudio doesn't have cold feet because he's nervous about marriage. At the beginning of the film, there's nothing he wants more than to go to the chapel and get ma-a-a-a-aried. In fact, he wants to marry Hero the day after she accepts his proposal, prompting her father Leonato (Clark Gregg) to tell him to put on the brakes because he's not quite ready to transfer ownership of his daughter to a husband … I mean, er, "watch his little girl grow up." Then the villain Don John (Sean Maher) tricks Claudio and Don Pedro (Reed Diamond) into believing that Hero is unfaithful to him. Don John stages a moment where his cohort Borachio (Spencer Treat Clark) seduces Hero's lady-in-waiting, Margaret (Ashley Johnson), in Hero's bedroom. Claudio and Don Pedro witness two shadowy figures going at it behind a curtain, and believe that Hero is disloyal. She is, as Don John puts it, "your Hero, Leonato's Hero, every man's Hero." (Keep away from that Runaround Sue.) So, naturally, Claudio and Don Pedro a) forget that Don John is the same villain who was in handcuffs at the beginning of the film for trying to stage a coup against Don Pedro, and b) decide that two shadowy figures in his fiance's bedroom is concrete proof that Hero is cheating on him. They believe this because someone wrote "gullible" on every ceiling in every building they've ever been in. Feeling betrayed and resentful, Claudio doesn't simply call off the wedding or privately ask Hero for an explanation. He manhandles her at the ceremony, shoves her back into her father's arms, calls her a whore, and refuses to marry her. Don Pedro joins in on the slut-shaming, and once they're done humiliating Hero in front of her friends and relatives, they stalk off with Don John (who hilariously steals a cupcake from the dessert platter before leaving the ceremony). The scene is mostly played as serious; Whedon even eliminates Benedick's Captain Obvious moment where he comments, "This is not a nuptial." The film focuses on the horrifying behavior of Leonato, the previously affectionate father, who wishes for his daughter's death after hearing the prince declare that she is nothing more than a "common stale." Some of his exact words: "Let her die." Leonato's denunciation of Hero is the most disturbing moment of the film, as it should be. Verbal and physical abuse at the hand of a lover or boyfriend is traumatizing and life-altering, but there is something profoundly and uniquely painful in suffering at the hands of a parent. The casting of Clark Gregg, aka everyone's favorite Agent Coulson from The Avengers, is a particularly brilliant move; any fan of Joss Whedon's is conditioned to see Gregg as a good guy, and the moment of betrayal feels particularly pointed when coming from the mouth of such a likable actor. Meanwhile, only two men present at the ceremony believe Hero's (accurate) version of the story without question. One man is a priest, who is not so much a character as a plot device, serving the same purpose as Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet and coming up with the always brilliant "hey, let's pretend the girl is dead!' scheme. Remember Benedick? The man in the beginning of the play who proudly proclaimed his eternal bachelorhood to anyone who asked his opinion (and those who didn't?). The man who only ever referred to Hero as "Leonato's short daughter"? The man who, when pressed to think of a compliment for a woman, could only say, "That a woman conceived me, I thank her"? He's the only male character of note who takes Hero's word. Granted, Benedick did not witness Don John's display of shadow puppet porn theater on Hero's balcony–but then again, neither did Leonato, who immediately believes the accusations against his beloved daughter. Benedick also knows better than to trust anything that comes from Don John's mouth. But even though he believes Hero, he's not willing to engage Claudio in a fight. He puts the blame on Don John. His position seems to be that even though Claudio and Don Pedro were wrong, they were tricked, and not entirely to blame. After his conversation with Beatrice, however, Benedick changes his tune. He agrees to challenge Claudio. This is a complete role reversal from the beginning of the film. Claudio, the professed lover, and Don Pedro, seemingly a friend to women, think nothing of denouncing and humiliating a woman in public. Benedick, the proud bachelor and misogynist, prioritizes the woman he loves over his closest friends. What can we learn about misogyny from the Much Ado wedding that wasn't? To put it in the most cliched terms, we can learn that actions speak louder than words. Claudio's sweet professions of love mean nothing when compared to his behavior towards Hero, and Benedick's rants against women and marriage are redeemed when he defends one woman on behalf of another woman he loves. Or, to put it another way–the guy who says a lot of sweet things and seems genuine might turn out to be a gullible asshole with a lot of internalized misogyny, and the mostly-decent guy who stands up for you will still need to make a lot of sexist jokes for the sake of appearances and male ego. Lady T is a writer with two novels, a screenplay, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at theresabasile.  |
| Turning another blind eye on Bahrain Posted: 31 Jan 2014 01:09 AM PST
Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, went on an official visit to the Middle Eastern state of Bahrain recently to promote the UK as part of Britain’s “Great” campaign to boost business and tourism. Apparently the UK government asked him to make the trip. Apart from the fact I thought his earlier behaviour meant he no longer flew about representing the UK, questions are still being raised about human rights in Bahrain regarding how pro-democracy protests were put down during the Arab Spring of 2011 – as well as ongoing issues. So his going there is questionable in itself. A spokeswoman for human rights organisation Amnesty International (AI) said Bahrain has long ago reneged on promises to reform, and the country is now trapped in an endless circuit of protest-clampdown, further protest-further clampdown. Anyone visiting Bahrain, she said, should go there with their “eyes wide open”. “Over recent years,” she pointed out, “we’ve had police officers acquitted of murder and torture charges or given disgracefully lenient sentences, and protesters – including children – given very long prison sentences.” Earlier this week, Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! spoke to Maryam al-Khawaja, the acting president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), about the situation in Bahrain now. ‘We're still seeing a deteriorating situation when it comes to the human rights violations,’ Maryam said. ‘The Bahraini government, so far, has no incentive to stop the human rights violations, and that's mainly because they feel that they have international immunity when it comes to being held accountable for all of the violations that they have been committing over the past three years.’ ‘We always talk about two types of human rights violators,’ Maryam continued. ‘There's the people who actually commit the crimes, which would be the Bahraini regime in this instance. ‘And then [we] talk about the human rights enablers – or the violation enablers. ‘Those are people who do business as usual with these regimes while they're committing the crimes that they are committing. Because of that business as usual, because they continue to do business the way they do, this enables the government to continue the crackdown that they're doing … we're talking about the air show or we're talking about the Formula One coming up in April. ‘Or the visit from Prince Andrew from the United Kingdom just a few days ago, to celebrate 200 years of cooperation with the Bahraini government by the United Kingdom. ‘All of these things enable the Bahraini government to continue doing what they're doing. ‘Like I said earlier, it puts them in a situation where they have absolutely no incentive to stop the human rights violations.’ So, as Maryam Al Khawaja said, we are ‘looking at a situation where the United States and the United Kingdom and countries that say that human rights and democracy are the cornerstone of their foreign policy are actually turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the human rights situation’. Great.  |
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