A year before the the hashtag #MeuPrimeiroAssedio would go viral, black feminists began working across Brazil to organize women who don’t generally participate in activism. Their efforts culminated in the Black Women’s March Against Racism and Violence and in Favor of Living Well in Brasilia, the capital. There, 50,000 Afro-Brazilian women of all ages and backgrounds came together to denounce violence against black women – not just sexual violence but also deadly abortions, mass incarceration and medical neglect. It was the first ever national march of black Brazilian women.
In high school, Mireille found that teachers and students took for granted that the head of a club should be a boy. When she would stand up in front of her class and ask, "Why can't the head be a girl?" they would tell her, "That's for Americans. You're trying to be an American." Mireille would stand in front of her high school class and ask why the head of a club couldn't be a girl. They'd tell her, "That's for Americans." Michael May/NPR Being "American" was shorthand for being too aggressive, too liberated, too selfish. The message was clear: You're doing this for yourself, not for the good of your country. "They'd say, 'You don't belong in Rwanda,' " Mireille recalls. " 'You don't even belong in Africa!' "
In the letter, which introduces the club's first read of 2018, Reni Eddo-Lodge 's Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, she addresses her white privilege and "white feminism," writing, "When I gave my UN speech in 2015, so much of what I said was about the idea that “being a feminist is simple!” Easy! No problem! I have since learned that being a feminist is more than a single choice or decision. It’s an interrogation of self."
American black women aren’t just more likely to identify as feminine; research shows they are also more likely to embrace feminism. This was highlighted in a 2007 study that found that black women were more interested in traditionally feminine behaviors such as wearing attractive clothing than their white counterparts, and also were more likely to describe themselves as feminists. The researchers point to decades of previous studies showing that black women tend to identity as feminists more than white women.
Millions of women and men around the world have taken part in the #MeToo movement, sharing their experiences of sexual harassment in an attempt to show the magnitude of the problem. But the digital campaign has not been as prominent on Chinese social media until now - and even then, there haven't been as many other people stepping forward to share their experiences.
Republican women in Alabama were only four points more likely than Republican men to believe Moore’s accusers. In fact, Republican women were 40 points less likely to believe Moore’s accusers than were Democratic men. All of which points to a truth insufficiently appreciated in this moment of sexual and political upheaval: It’s not gender that increasingly divides the two parties. It is feminism
Read to your kids on a wide variety of people and stories that break that stereotypical image about boys saving the world or that the girl needs a hero to be save her. Talk about why women are always shown wearing aprons and baking or why the men are always portrayed as carrying briefcases to work. If we don’t help the children now, they will grow up with these notions that will solidify later in life.
My generation of women came of age amid the exhilaration of second-wave feminism: We saw ourselves as strong, fierce self-defenders. Inappropriate sexual advances, we told ourselves, were simply an opportunity to prove our superiority over the weaker sex. Few of us believed we sustained any serious damage, and most of us thought that with enough grit, we could defy the odds and find our way.
Anger at men’s behaviour has erupted in the US several times in the past: from the “smash the masher” movement of the early 1900s, where women fought back against street harassers with hatpins and umbrellas, to the feminist “speak-out” sessions of the 1970s to the support for Anita Hill in the 1990s. But what led to today’s tipping point? While the #metoo campaign played a crucial role, other elements also helped create a tinderbox waiting for a Weinstein-like spark.
As a feminist of Egyptian and Muslim descent, my life’s work has been informed by the belief that religion and culture must never be used to justify the subjugation of women. I can write about my culture and religion because I am a product of both. Even when I’m accused of giving ammunition to the Islamophobic right, in the struggle between “community” and “women” I always choose the women. It is exhausting that Muslim women’s voices and our bodies are reduced to proxy battlefields by the demonizers and defenders of Muslim men. Neither side cares about women. They are concerned only with one another.