I know this isn’t my usual Armchair Activist series, but i figured no one would mind if i just took a moment to remind everyone of Blog Against Sexism Day, which is coming up on March 8th - less than a week. Here’s the text from the post i wrote at BASD’s new host,Taking Place:

The first Blog Against Sexism Day, on March 8th of 2006, was a huge success, especially considering i was still very new to the blogosphere and didn’t really know many other feminist bloggers. The success is due entirely to individuals spreading the word on their blogs, through email, and other word-of-mouth methods. In the end, we had hundreds of participants from North and South America, Africa, Australia, Asia and Europe. The participants and topics discussed were so varied that it was, in my opinion, a perfect sampling of the feminist blogosphere.

I paid attention to the requests from last year. In addition to Blog Against Sexism banners, i’ve also made banners that read Blog For Gender Liberation, Blog For Women’s Liberation, and Blog for Wimmin’s Liberation. I also encourage others to create new banners and let me know if you do, so i can help spread the word about your work. Last year, i also had a lot of requests for reminders that i wasn’t able to do because i didn’t have a system in place. Although there are only a couple weeks before Blog Against Sexism Day, this year i’m ready. So if you’d like a reminder the day or two before, just let me know in the comments section of this post or drop me an email at veganwonder [at] gmail [dot] com.

Although i’m starting a little late getting the word out this year, i’d like to see even more participants than the first year. So help by spreading the word. If you’re interested in participating, all you have to do is write a post on March 8th. However, the day was also started to help spread the word about the numerous feminist and pro-feminist bloggers out there. So i greatly encourage you to add your name to the list of participants. To do so, just leave a comment here with a link to your blog or email me the url of your blog.

For more information about Blog Against Sexism Day or to get a banner for your blog, check out the new official Blog Against Sexism Day page.

Are the three events exactly the same? No, of course they’re not. But that doesn’t mean the similarity isn’t interesting….

AngryBrownButch, in a post about gentrification, quotes a interview with a fashionable New Yorker she heard on the radio:

Q: Now, why do you think a neighborhood suddenly takes off like that?

Melena Ryzik: Well, it starts with the low rents. That’s the key thing -

Q: Big spaces and low rents.

MR: Exactly, exactly. And of course I think there’s also the idea for New Yorkers that you want to be the first person to discover something, so there’s a certain cache in having been maybe the first person or the first set of people living over on the Meatpacking district side of things.

# # #

Dodosville on how Europeans settled America:

In case the Europeans weren’t totally convinced that it was OK to take people’s land by force because they didn’t believe in the Christian God, Europeans also decided to redefine what it meant to “occupy” land in legal terms. This justification was probably for some of the more intellectual Europeans as it was a less crude justification than they are heathens, do what you want to them. So the monarchs, clergymen and scholars if Europe got together and said, well, yeah those people are living on the land, but they aren’t really using the land in the way that’s intended. Civilized people built settlements, planted food in the ground, had cattle and other livestock, chopped down forests in the name of progress, and tried to grow as big as they could. The Indians of the Americas weren’t doing that, well, except for the Inca and the Aztec whose settlements were bigger than most in Europe, but we’re not talking about those people – we’re talking about the hunter/gatherers who live in small tribes – those guys weren’t using the land right and it was an affront to nature and God’s plan that people used it in that way. So since they weren’t using the land the way it was meant to be used, it was terres nullus, or empty land, and everybody has the right to take empty land, by force if you have to. It was just what had to be done – it’s the natural order and all those things.

# # #

From a 1982 article in The Link, by Muhammad Hallaj:

The Zionists’ need to convince the world that their scheme victimized no one required them to maintain the delusion that Palestine was a land without people. When they sought Gandhi’s endorsement of Zionism, their emissary brazenly asserted to him that “Palestine itself was a waste space when we went there… No one else wanted it.” Even after the Zionists created their Jewish state they continued to insist that the Palestinians did not exist. “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them,” Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister, said after the 1967 war. “They did not exist.“

Edited to add: I’ve added bolds to the quotes to emphasize what I was intrigued by: the tendency, in all three situations, to talk about the land as if it were empty and unused. As should be obvious, by noting this similarity I am not saying that the three situations are alike in all other ways.

From AngryBrownButch:

An important victory was recently won in the struggle for trans rights, specifically around health care. Judge Sheldon Rand of the Manhattan Family Court found, for the second time, that the City of New York is obligated to pay for the sexual reassignment surgery of Mariah Lopez, a young trans woman of color who was denied this important and necessary medical care while in the care of the NYC foster system. The City is constitutionally required to provide adequate medical coverage for all children in its care, and SRS is a medically approved procedure, one that is often necessary for trans people. In the decision, Judge Rand wrote: “Mariah L. should be treated in order that she may go on with her life and be in a body which blends with the gender with which she identifies.”

Fortunately, Judge Rand was far more understanding and respectful than most of the media coverage, which has ranged from iffy to downright disgusting…

Please click through to read the ugly details, including a cut-and-paste email that you can send to the Post. And make sure to read the first post in the comments, as well.

I didn’t agree with much that Jessica Valenti wrote in her argument about the gap between older feminists and younger feminists (something that I’ve never experienced myself; I’ve had nothing but support and genoristy from older feminists). I felt that she treated older feminists as a homogenous group, as if all older feminists should take responsibility for the few who behaved rudely towards younger women. It’s exactly the same kind of thinking that leads some older feminists to be dismissive of younger women. Yes it’s wrong if an older woman takes an inane ignorant comment as a symbol of ‘young people today’. But it’s just as wrong for Jessica to take the comments of a few older women as standing for a generation of activists.

That’s not what I want to write about. I’ll acknowledge that I’ve had a bad day, but what Jessica wrote at the end of her piece made me really angry:

But the public face of feminism is institutional—Ms. Magazine, Feminist Majority Foundation, NOW—they’re what the world thinks of when they think of feminism.

As someone from the world, I have to tell her she’s wrong. Maybe Americans think of Ms. Magazine, Feminist Majority Foundation and NOW when they think of feminism. Although I would hope that women have more specific experiences of feminism, they think of the battered women’s centre their friend went to, their union’s women structure, their college women’s facilities, the local welfare rights organisation, or the rape crisis line they called.

Outside your country? Most of us don’t even know what the Feminist Majority Foundation is, nor do we care. We actually have feminism out here too. Our organisations, our magazines, the way we organise, and the issues that are most important to us, they’re not exactly the same as it is in the US. We don’t think of US institutions when we think of feminism, we think of what’s happened locally, the battles we’ve fought and won, and the battles we’ve fought and lost.

After long deliberations the jury returned today acquitting Bob Schollum, Brad Shipton and Clint Rickards of all charges. Clint Rickards is now trying to return to his job as Deputy Comissioner of the New Zealand police. Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton are returning to their jail cells, as both were found guilty of a historic rape case in 2005 (a fact that no other jury has been allowed to know about).

A friend of mine wrote a song about this:

JUST ONE MORE THURSDAY IN BLACK

Well the jury retired with a word from the judge
Not to go and do anything rash
And the lawyers withdrew, replenished anew
With undisclosed payments of cash
It was on a Wednesday that the jury retired
And on Thursday came dutifly back
There was nothing so special they had to report
It was just one more Thursday in black

There was no expense spared to make sure it was fair
There was even a guest star Allblack¹
But at closing the law showed who it works for
It was one more Thursday in black

Well if you¹re a pig and sufficiently big
And there¹s several of you in a pack
You can do pretty much what you like to a woman
And know that she can¹t hit you back
Right now somewhere unknown ,there¹s a woman alone
In pain and in fear on the rack
while grinning police ready bottle and grease
for one more Thursday in black

There was no expense spared to make sure it was fair
There was even a guest star Allblack
But at closing the law showed who it works for
It was just one more Thursday in black

Don Franks

There are two things that I choose to hold on to, from the series of cop rape trials. The first is that this it not OK. The legal system does not deliver justice for women, but more than that - this should never have happened in the first place. Many people knew that these cops were abusive, and no-one did anything about it, and these are not the only police who have used their power to rape and abuse. We must hold onto our outrage, because it is out of that outrage that the hope for a something better can be built.

What gives me real hope is the knowledge that I’m not alone. That all over New Zealand, in places I wouldn’t necessarily expect, people are thinking what I’m thinking, and feeling what I’m feeling. If we can get just some of these people together, who knows what we could do.

I’m sure I’ll have more tomorrow, but all that’s left to say tonight is to pay heed to the dignity of the women who sought justice against Clint Rickards, Brad Shipton and Bob Schollum. And leave the last words to Louise Nicholas: “We did our best. We did our very best. The justice system has let us down again.”

Note for Comments This post is for feminist and feminist-friendly comments only. If you want to doubt the word of any of the complainants take it somewhere else. I’m not hosting that today.

1. Member of the New Zealand Rugby Team - pinnacle of New Zealand’s sporting achievement. Clint Rickards was able to call a friend of his who was an All Black to testify. I always imagined that his testimony would start ‘as an All Black, I know something about rape’ (back)