Category: women
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Theorizing obstetric violence through feminist, intersectional and gender neutral perspectives
Introduction. One of the ongoing feminist challenges is the answer to the question of what extend women face violence and how it can be unveiled and prevented. While many forms of violence against women have risen to the social, political and legal surface worldwide, there is still a wide spectrum of uncharted ground that needs…
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Where are we today when it comes to human trafficking international law?
Human trafficking is a complex legal, human rights and feminist issue. While the number of trafficked persons is rising each year, the globalized economy and political market offers a transnational area of action, in which global uniformity to tackle the issue has serious limitations and weaknesses. Human trafficking is a crime that affects both men…
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Three stand up comedians you should know
Who doesn’t like a good comedy show when they are chealing on the couch on a lazy Sunday evening? Here are three female and non – binary stand up comedians to keep you the funniest company! 1. Sindhu Vee I found Sindhu while browsing on youtube and, oh boy, it was a hell of an…
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The feminist ‘sex wars’
Are our girls to be as free to please themselves by indulging in the loveless gratification of every instinct … and passion as our boys? (Willard, 1891 in Hunter, 2006, p. 15). It was in 1982, when the Barnard Sex Conference took place and the feminist ‘sex wars’ crossed the starting point. The controversies were…
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On postcolonial feminism
If we don’t tell our stories who will know we did not comply: We did not wish our lives away, but stayed focused, And staunched the cut of virginal blood, To stop our daughters being slaves; We learned to sing survival songs, Through violence and rape and war; We did not tell each other lies,…
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The embodiment of patriarchy into docile female bodies; from ancient Mesopotamia to today’s West Nepal
From the biology of the sexes to the social construction of gender “Sexual attributes are a biological given, but gender is a product of historical process. The fact that women bear children is due to sex; that women nurture children is due to gender, a cultural construct. It is gender which has been chiefly responsible…
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Book review: “The securitization of rape: women, war and sexual violence”, by Sabine Hirschauer
The securitization of rape: women, war and sexual violence. By Sabine Hirschauer. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2014. €96.29. ISBN 978 1 13741 081 8. Available as e-book. I. Introduction Wartime rape is something much more than single incidents of rape during war. This phenomenon is also called mass wartime rape, indicating the extra – ordinary numbers…
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Intersectionality
Oppression can be fragmented but it usually acts in a multilevel of power dynamics. Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, sizeism; these are some forms of oppression that people experience in our culture everyday. We can be easily aware of all these separately, but sometimes these individual forms of oppression can be combined with others…
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The psychological aspects of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
*I want to start with a declaration. Female Genital Mutilation is not something that happens only in non – Western countries. Europe is very much affected as well, counting around 600.000 women living circumcised. While the main (western) human rights campaigns focus mostly on Africa, underlying the undoubtedly devastating consequences of FGM on women’s lives,…
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Let’s talk about perinatal intimate partner violence and obstetric violence
Many women have experienced and continue to experience perinatal abuse, which consists of violence prior and during pregnancy, obstetric violence and postpartum violence. This phenomenon is quite complicate, since the literature talks about perinatal intimate partner violence (e.g. Silverman et al., 2006; Alhusen et al., 2013; Brown et al., 2008; etc.) and obstetric violence (e.g…