Women's Views on News |
- Income ruling: heartbreaking news
- Get your MP to stand with girls
- Words matter, sisters
- How can we tackle victim-blaming?
| Income ruling: heartbreaking news Posted: 16 Jul 2014 08:21 AM PDT
In July 2012, the government increased the salary requirement for a British person bringing a non-EU spouse into the UK to £18,600. If the couple have children, the amount rises to £22,400, with an extra £2,400 for every child thereafter. It is clear that the government does not understand the anguish of the families divided by the 2012 Family Migration rules and the £18, 600 income limit. If they did, the rules would not have been put in place in the first place. In the aftermath of the Court of Appeal's judgement on the test case challenging the minimum income threshold for spouses wishing to enter the United Kingdom, on 11 July, it is time for us to share with David Cameron, the leader of our country, the impact of his actions. We can do this very simply, by sending him a white feather. That's it. Simple but effective. And as we all send them to Downing Street, the amount of white feathers will add up until we can be ignored no more. It can be a real feather taped to a card, or a paper feather, or a drawing… or whatever you like. All we need to send is a white feather, and the name of our loved one(s). We can write more if we wish, but we don't have to. 1. Send them by post, send them by email, tweet them. Do all three if you know how to, and if you can! Post your feathers to: The Right Honourable David Cameron MP, Prime Minister 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA Or to email them, click here. Twitter them via: @Number10gov, @david_cameron Use #whitefeather and #familiestogether and #lovemigration 2. Share them on Facebook, our Facebook page and your other social media too, to raise awareness of the campaign and to encourage others to send their white feathers too. 3. If you want to, you can email photographs of your white feather to us and we will collect and document them on our site. The additional means of sharing are great things to do, but the only important thing to do is send a white feather to David Cameron. And we can all do that. We can keep sending them until the rules are changed, our families are reunited and our human rights are restored. One feather at a time, one family at a time, we will win this. In solidarity and hope, and with love, Katharine and the Love Letters to the Home Office team. Some sample text: This feather is for [name]. This feather is for [name] who missed his daughter's first birthday. This feather is for [name] and [name] who are separated by the 2012 Family Migration rules. This feather is for my daughter.  |
| Get your MP to stand with girls Posted: 16 Jul 2014 07:10 AM PDT
31 million girls across the world have never been to school; Every year 14 million girls are married before they are 18; Children born to young girls are 60 per cent more likely to die before the age of 1; By 2020 there could be another 220 million girls forced into marriage; Worldwide, 125 million girls and women have suffered Female Genital Mutilation; By 2020 a further 40 million girls may suffer FGM; On 22 July the British government will be co-hosting a one-day Girl Summit to raise awareness of violence against girls around the world and to find ways to tackle issues such as Early And Forced Marriage and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). This is being led by Justine Greening, the UK Secretary of State for International Development. As residents of Leamington and Warwick we will be asking our MP, Chris White, to send our message of support to Justine Greening for this Summit and to ask for the following outcomes: that the summit will be the beginning of a movement to end violence against girls rather than a one off event; for real commitments to ensure global targets to reduce violence against girls as part of the post 2015 development framework; and commitments to support civil society and grassroots movements in eliminating early marriage and FGM Please show your support for this by sending your name and postcode – to show you are one of Chris White's constituents - to us and we will add your name to a set of paper dolls that we will present to Chris, just before the Summit, asking him to pass these messages on to Justine Greening. The more names we have to support this, the stronger the message – so please pass this on to your friends. If you aren't based in Leamington or Warwick, you can still join in, by contacting your MP. You can contact your MP by e-mail, or, if you're feeling lazy, by going through this website which shows you who is representing you at various levels of government. Write the 3 "asks" in your own words and explain this issue is important to you and you want to see action happening on it. Then let us know so we can see who is being asked. Here are the three asks: 1. That the summit will be the beginning of a movement to end violence against girls rather than a one off event. 2. For real commitments to ensure global targets to reduce violence against girls as part of the post 2015 development framework. 3. For commitments to support civil society and grassroots movements in eliminating early marriage and FGM. You can also sweeten your letter by saying how pleased you are that the Girl Summit is happening, and that you would like your MP to express your support to Justine Greening. Thanks. #standingwithgirls  |
| Posted: 16 Jul 2014 04:12 AM PDT
With the slogan "Words Matter!" the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) launched its leaflet on accurate terminology when referring to undocumented migrants including reasons why not to use the term 'illegal migrant' and instead the recognised 'undocumented' or 'irregular' migrant as well as providing a lexicon with translations of the latter terms in all EU languages. Over more than a decade of promoting the rights of undocumented migrants, PICUM has witnessed how the term 'illegal migrant' strongly impacts the perception that undocumented migrants have no rights and that migration is a criminal activity. "Since the word 'illegal' has become a stigma in my everyday dealing with people, I started to ask myself whether I was really illegal. "Of course, I am not and will never be. I am undocumented," a migrant worker from the Philippines, living in the Netherlands told PICUM. Besides being discriminatory and criminalising, the term 'illegal migrant' is also judicially incorrect as a person cannot be 'illegal' as irregular migration is an administrative rather than a criminal offence. In fact, research shows that the term 'illegal migrant' as a form of status, meaning a legally-justified category that is ascribed to certain groups of people and then used to deprive them of rights, was only created over the course of the twentieth century. The author of the book ‘Undocumented: How Immigration Became 'Illegal’, Aviva Chomsky, professor of history at Salem State University, USA has expressed her support for PICUM's campaign. "It's notable," she said, "that the countries that most pride themselves on their commitment to equality, human rights, and democracy (like the United States and the western European countries) are precisely those that, in the late twentieth century, invented a new status ('illegal') in order to deprive some of their residents of access to equality, human rights, and democracy. “When we use the term "illegal" in this way, we are implicitly accepting the idea that all people are not created equal, that all people do not deserve equal rights, and that the law should treat people differently depending on the category they are assigned to." This categorisation undermines that international human rights law guarantees undocumented migrants entitlements to a comprehensive set of rights regardless of their administrative status. Service providers and supporters struggle to challenge these perceptions when trying to ensure access to services for undocumented migrants. A supporter of undocumented migrants of a solidary network in Finland shared her experience of calling a women's shelter to see if they could support an undocumented woman who urgently needed to flee a violent situation: "They told me they refuse her because she had no social security number, but when I challenged them on it, the lady on the phone said to me, 'Well, she’s an illegal, she shouldn’t be here anyway!' "Can you imagine? Sending a woman back to a domestic violence situation so she will suffer some more and maybe decide to leave Finland! It goes against everything the women’s movement stands for." Acknowledging previous efforts of key institutions, such as the United Nations, the European Commission and Parliament and several media outlets, to adopt humane terminology, PICUM will continue to campaign for language use which recognises undocumented migrants as rights holders and is in line with Europe's values. To read the brochure, click here. Use it to challenge the use of 'illegal'. Thanks.  |
| How can we tackle victim-blaming? Posted: 16 Jul 2014 01:42 AM PDT
Following the blatant public victim-blaming in the last few weeks, we need a serious discussion on how to tackle what is now an endemic problem. Take the example of the so-called 'Magaluf girl' who was filmed performing oral sex on 24 men in a 'mamading' game in a bar in the popular party destination of Magaluf. 'Mamading' is the charming practice of encouraging/coercing young women in bars to perform sex acts in return for free alcohol. In this case, a young woman, ostensibly from Northern Ireland, was reportedly promised a 'holiday' for performing the sex acts, goaded on by the pub crawl organisers, Carnage Magaluf. It turned out the 'holiday' was a three-euro cocktail. The film of the young woman made by staff from Carnage Magaluf went viral and was picked up by the tabloids. Since then the media has exploded with celebrities and newspapers all chipping in their opinions on the young women's actions – predominantly slut-shaming by tabloid headlines and celebrities like singer Nicole Scherzinger. The footage has widely been described as the young woman 'degrading herself' and taking events to a 'new low', placing the onus on her actions rather than the coercion and contribution of the men in the video. Scherzinger publicly told the young woman that she is the reason "why guys be talking about 'bitches and hos' and all these things", effectively blaming her for an entire culture of sexism and rape. The publicity from the video is even apparently being used to promote Carnage Magaluf's pub crawls, as the organisers claim the young woman in question 'enjoyed it' so much she booked herself on another of Carnage's events the day after the incident. This sort of language is horribly evocative of the idea that women 'ask for it', 'want it' and 'love it' when they are sexually assaulted. In this case it is almost impossible to know the true extent of the young woman's consent, which was likely blurred by the alcohol, the jeering and coercion, the public pressure and 'game' mentality, but one thing is for certain – according to social and digital media, the young woman is much more to blame than the bar organisers or the 24 men she fellated. Only a few public figures, including former Apprentice contender Luisa Zissman, have pointed out that there were many other people involved in the incident who shared responsibility. 'No one has bothered to name and shame them [the men in the video], [and] even if they were, I'm sure they wouldn’t be ridiculed in the same way and may even be celebrated,' Zissman wrote in her column in the Daily Star. In the same week, television presenter Vanessa Feltz came forward to publically declare that she had been sexually assaulted by Rolf Harris in 1996. Whilst she was not alone in revealing the level of Harris's abuse of young women in the media world, Feltz has been particularly targeted in social media as she has become the subject of a deluge of Twitter responses effectively blaming her for the incident. Ranging from the idea that she was enjoying playing the 'victim card' to the idea that she should have reported the abuse at the time and not retrospectively, the responses have placed the blame squarely on Feltz's shoulders. Many have even suggested that her claims cannot be true as she is ‘too ugly’ to be the victim of a sexual assault, evoking that old well-worn myth that a woman can control whether or not she gets attacked by altering how she looks. But as Laura Bates wrote in the Guardian: 'The reaction Feltz received is precisely the reason why coming forward is not “perfectly simple” at all – it’s a terrifying decision fraught with risk and the prospect of being re-victimised, blamed and labelled for ever.' In both these cases the level of blame placed on the women is evident in the public ridicule expressed via digital media, exposing our society's enduring belief that in sex-related cases, the women are almost always at fault in some way. A contributor to everydayvictimblaming.com pointed out the double standards applied to men and women in these cases: 'A man receives a sexual act in a bar, he's somehow passive, certainly blameless. A woman performs sexual acts in a bar she's a "slag", a "whore", her life is ruined which is what she "deserves".' Bates highlights just how damaging these double standards and public trials are to victims of abuse, coercion and control: 'As victims fight to be believed and face a barrage of abuse for coming forward, powerful men continue to perpetuate the victim-blaming myths and misconceptions that make reporting so hard in the first place.' However, it is not only powerful men who perpetuate these myths, but a wide and stubborn culture of victim-blaming and public humiliation which in turn ensures that 85 per cent of women and girls who experience sexual violence feel unable to report it to the police. It’s not just the Twitter campaigns and the tabloid headlines we need to confront, but the broader and endemic culture of victim-blaming digital media allows us to see the full extent of – a culture which pervades the judiciary and wider society.  |
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