Days: 4-5: Be Your Own Expert; Women-Human Rights: Violence is Not Our Culture

Day 4: Who's the expert? Break a Myth!

See the assorted actions that challenge media's self-appointed experts and consider even starting your own wiki (if you are not sick of wikileak stories that ignore women's issues)...

We also need to acknowledge our own expertise. In Patricia Hill Collins' book, Black Feminist Thought (chapter 11, 2nd ed): she challenges definitions of positivist experts and proposes a Black Feminist Epistemology (how we know what we know) or four criteria that are helpful for all of us.

1) We look at/respect the "experts'" lived experiences and their knowledge-wisdom
2) We use dialogue in assessing claims re knowledge or expertise and willingness to share back and forth.
3) We use ethic of caring--talking from the heart & respect.
4) We have personal accountability for one's expertise and how results or expertise are used; motives

These four points are in contrast to positivist methodology that emphasizes:
1) distance between research and subject;
2) absence of emotions;
3) "value" free
4) adversarial debates decide truth

For dealing with statistics and VAW, Hill Collins' criteria have guided my own work as a sociologist-feminist from the North. I value women's lived experiences with VAW and their own lives through my own research and spending time in women's lives and experiences in Bangladesh. I listened to and engaged in dialogue about my own understandings and women's and men's understandings. I also learned to be open about my own values, roles, and perspectives in gathering the oral and statistical data. Some times, based on these experiences, dialogues and feedback with Bangladesh colleagues, staff, and respondents, I changed my research questions, methodologies, and perspectives.

For example, instead of just listing signs of an abused woman in the Bangladesh domestic violence resource brochure, AKM Saiful Islam and I listed the signs of a good relationship (eng p2;. bn p2) first and signs of abusive relationships second. At the same time, I maintained that VAW was NOT just a matter of culture. Finally, I sought to be accountable for my research and my presence as well as the consequences for women participants and staff as I shared the research.

I suggest incorporating these criteria on our ways to empowering women to become experts in their own lives: listen to the women and their expertise because they have lived through VAW and suffered the consequences as well as being experts on survival. Support those who work through legal, political, and institutions to end violence against women. Share your experiences with one another inside and outside of the family to end the isolation and conspiracy of silence to maintain honor. Finally, reach out to one another if you suspect abuse.

Likewise, often when men heard that I was doing research on VAW in Bangladesh, they told me that they also were abused. I started listening to their narratives and learned what experiences they had defined as abuse: harsh words-actions from their spouse, socio-emotional dynamics of couples, and dowry and other pressures from their families. Although none of these narratives justified the physical, socio-emotional abuse, and abandonment of wives, the men's narratives gave me more insights on domestic violence in Bangladesh and possible solutions.



Day 5: Violence is not Our Culture--International Campaign







Read more about the campaign to stop stoning, honor killings, and other violence against women in the same of culture, religion, or tradition. Support women who bravely speak up for women's and human rights rather than demonizing and punishing them in the name of culture, religion.

Likewise, hold politicians accountable for what I call "opportunistic use of gender", where they use women's issues, rights, and/or violence against women as justifications for military action most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other arenas. Then assorted leaders turn to "cultural" reasons for ignoring women rights, empowerment and well-being in these countries' new/old regimes and in the presence of USA and allied forces for nine years! Ann Jones in argues that "Afghan women have already been abandoned." For example, escalating violence against women is cited as a reason for the USA presence in Afghanistan despite increasing Talibanization of Afghanistan. Male leaders have excluded women from negotiations-deliberations about reintegration of the Taliban.

So please read these and the women's stories from around the world on the campaign website...culture increasingly has been used to justify violence in the USA- Dr. Tiller's murder as well as around the world.

See also: Zainab Salbi: Women, wartime and the dream of peace | Video on TED.com

Day 10: Controlling images-words ?| Secure online communications | Your right to privacy

On Day 10, please consider the state of your identity in on-line networks, especially social networks. TTBT women have many useful tools and apps on their website.

I want to talk about readers, audience, and the possible uses and abuses of social networking sites.....and what recourse we have when some one takes images and (mis)information and posts it to us and/or social networking sites.

Ultra Violet has some interesting discussions started by Meena Kandasamy who had continued to grapple with a cyber-stalker, in "Self-expression and social networking sites" and pursuant discussions on readers and audience. After anonymous negative comments appeared based on a picture that she posted on her social networking site, she wrote:

Although one is aware that there are laws against defamation in place, how can these be put to use against anonymous trollers and orkut-scrap-posters and their like? Forget the case of independent writers, do we actually have any mechanism to punish ALL those who are abusive on the web because of the anonymity that it provides.

Recently Niveditha Menon asks what are "the voices in our head"? She discusses our abilities to name and/or articulate our experiences, picking our battles, and who is our audience? In particular,

how do we know who is in our heads when we write? Who are we writing for? Who are we writing against? Under what social pressures do feminist writers (whether male or female) articulate their experience? How do we know our “authentic” voice, given all this input from friendly and unfriendly sources?

Back to me (my puran-aged feminist self).....

Several important issues here....1) using writing and posting to clarify who we are, our place in the world and 2) then how our readers can take and use/mix/abuse our words, images, and some times actions. How much agency and control do we have over our own images, identities? TBTT and others stress using pseudonyms and many do.

At the same time, trolls and others hide behind their pseudonyms to stalk and provide misinformation about people, incidents, and episodes...once on the internet...this misinformation is very hard to scrub. As result, stalkers can pursue bloggers and/or people absconding on sexual assault or domestic violence felony charges can set up faux social networking identities complete with 'female friends' writing (interesting gender bending) and/or from the safety of their home country can continue to harass the plaintiff and their families via various internet ISPs...Others join in the discussion and gossip-adda of idiosyncratic personal matters rather than the broader and endemic issues of VAW and abuse. This is not an isolated incident...from some of my earlier writing but also some of my transnational emails and advocacy work on domestic violence.

So it's one thing to be clear on our voices, audiences, and purposes for writing, but what do we do when others hide in the anonymity of the internet and social networking sites and faux identities? Adda and gossip ensue?

Or how do we handle the announcement of beginning and ends of relationships via little symbols on Facebook? When relationships do not begin as we like and/or they end badly? Scorned persons? Or the uses of our images and videos by others, especially when be-friending people gives them access to our profiles and info? Or when disturbed former spouses-partners post pictures of their ex-partners on the internet-social networking sites. Or batterers claim that pictures of abused partners have been photoshopped....

These are also real experiences that brought me to Facebook, and also make me concerned about the uses-abuses of social networking sites. Hence I'm still looking for answers....how how we handle these situations...or when we discuss and use these sites to clarify such issues if that is possible giving the social constructions of our relationships and lives by multiple persons.

How do we handle when such (mis)information persists on the internet and is easily retrieved by searching on a person's name? I see these searches nearly every week on my blog. How do we handle troll comments on our blogs and sites?

Any thoughts? Suggestions?

Day 16-Int'l Human Rights Day-Moving on from Justice for Nadine

At the end of 16 days of blogging to eliminate VAW, today was Int'l Human Rights Day. Today Global Voices has an interesting discussion of the Elders and their new Campaign, Every Human has Rights. BTW, I hope that Nobel Peace Prize winner, Elder, and Grameen Bank President, Dr. Md. Yunus will consider giving Cyclone Sidr devastated borrowers --predominately women--a longer break from their micro credit debts-payments than until March.

Take Back the Tech wants us to revise & recast /or take steps to feministing Wikipedia by adding our research & sources. I hope that any posters will do this carefully and mindfully b/c Wikipedia can be a very powerful resource. Unfortunately too many students in my classes are just cutting and pasting Wikipedia as their own work without doing the necessary research and work. I hope that people who have built my bridges and did my surgery have not just looked it up on Wikipedia.

For those who have been following the Justice for Nadine saga (and ignoring the many other cases of domestic violence and VAW in our own communities), I strongly encourage you to read Abdul Kargo's concluding and profound essay (and esp the last three paragraphs): Lessons Have Been Learned. Now it’s Time to Pick up the Pieces and Move On., on this saga, and also in response to 157 comments (including 3 by me) on his earlier post, What's a Woman's Worth Meaured Against.

He concludes: "Accept that it happened. Acknowledge that it was terrible. Then pick up the pieces and move on. That’s what I intend to do."

My concluding remarks--on this case until he's arrested and had his day in court: alleged abuser and rapist Sajid Huq, is still a fugitive, wanted by New York City on these felony charges. The warrants for his arrest remain open. Until there is justice & safety for Nadine and other abused women from their abusers, none of us will be safe from the Sajid Huqs of the world.

I hope that all who have participated in this saga will reach out to one another and their communities to end this violence-adda-gossip and support those activists and ordinary people who are doing the hard-difficult-everyday work in this area.

****Check out a new resource from January 2008: New Blogsite OUT AGAINST ABUSE to educate and organize the South Asian Community about domestic violence-gender abuse--please read, comment, and discuss this resource!****


Last but not least:

• Please check out the today's and earlier VAW posts on Bangladesh from Our View (English) and Amader Kotha blogs (Bangla). These young women (and men) give me hope.
• Best wishes e doa to Sheikh Rumana for her surgery & tara tari recovery so she can return to her work for women migrants' rights
  
• To Shawn about making a difference btw, the voting is still open on his contest video.....'To Phil, From Bangladesh'--and in second place.
• All those bloggers who have posted on VAW and the 16 Days Campaign
  
• Those unnamed, cannot be named for their safety, and not so famous people doing the hard work to make sure that all of us have human rights

As for me, it's been a long 16 days, I have a satchel of seminar papers to mark, and Take Back the Tech kittens to feed.

Day 12/Capture Compelling Images-Posts on the Internet

Often we have to scurry through disturbing images to get to more redeeming images and sites on the internet. Some times when pursuing the sitemeter links to our blogs, we can see purient search terms that certain readers use and end up linked to our blogs-sites. We can turn around and use these terms (girls, women, mobile, sex) or a certain alleged abuser-fugitive's name on our own sites of resistance.

The Take Back the Tech folks would like to see images that disturb, annoy, amuse, or inspire you from the internet or websites.

For day 12, I want to blog about some images-posts that inspired me. Yesterday, I included a variety of positive gifs and website images about VAW (those blinking gifs are still in my eyes). Today I link to three posts from Sheril Kirshenbaum, a gifted marine biologist, writer, musician, and advocate for women in science, environment, and for people around the world and Cylone Sidr, a category 5 hurricane that devastated much of Bangladesh three weeks ago.

In one of her most recent The Intersection posts, she wrote about how young women scientists had won the top honors at the Seimens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. This post had a great picture of one of the female winners wide-mouthed in surprise, happiness? These young women scientists inspire me (a sociologist) as well as Sheril's writing and advocacy for all kinds of water-fish-environmental issues (go to The Intersection for more of these posts).

Sheril has also written a thoughtful post on how she decided to change her blog picture to the current picture and representations of women scientists, for example, marine biologists. She discusses the tension about appearances, contents, and women defining themselves and parental input on our pictures-images. I sent her post to the Nari Jibon office to inspire some of the young and future computer students.

Finally, three weeks ago, I started reading Sheril on The Intersection when I was searching for information on Cyclone Sidr as it bore down on Bangladesh, but with little international media attention. Chris Mooney and The Intersection had the horrifying radar pictures of Sidr, and then Sheryl posted her motivational blogcast on how Bangladesh needs your help. Bangladesh still needs all of our help because the relief and reconstruction efforts are still ongoing, but international media attention has drifted away to the latest news (see some of my earlier posts on how to help and Nari Jibon blog coverage). Sheril's blogcast inspired and motivated to me to continue writing about Bangladesh, disasters, the cyclone, and about how disasters can lead to women and girl children's insecurity.

I look forward to seeing more of these articles and the Take Back the Tech images!

Day 10/ Offline Activism-Clothesline Projects

Take Back the Tech has an excellent post today about taking our actions offline to what we wear, make, and use to tell the world about our experiences. They give very detailed instructions on how to design, stencil, and make your own t-shirt.

Another way of taking our activism offline is through Clothesline Projects. According to the Clothesline Project site, this action started in Massachusetts USA in 1990 and has been adopted in many states and countries. Survivors and people who have lost loved ones to VAW design their t-shirts using different paints, markers, threads, and materials. Different colors of T-shirts are used to represent different types of VAW:

• WHITE for victims who have died as a result of domestic violence
• YELLLOW or BEIGE for women and children who have been battered or assaulted
• RED, PINK or ORANGE for women and children who have been raped or sexually assaulted
• BLUE or GREEN for women and children survivors of incest
• PURPLE or LAVENDER for women and children attacked because of their sexual orientation/identification.
  

You can find more about the project on their website or call 1-508-896-1875.



In my home town, the Carbondale IL Women's Center has held annual Clothesline Projects where they display t-shirts made by survivors and/or people who have lost or had loved ones deal with VAW. They hang the T-shirts on my university walkway where students must pass to go to and from class and the student center. They also display them in other public places and at VAW and "Take Back The Night" marches and demonstrations during October, Domestic Violence Awareness month . These displays are very stark reminders of VAW and its effects on survivors, families, partners, friends, and loved ones.

They also publish this warning about computer safety for women whose abusers may be monitoring their computer use.


Safe stenciling, clothesline chats, and computing!

Justice for Nadine delayed again--fugitive Sajid Huq again no show in NYC court 3 Dec

NEW RESOURCE ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN JANUARY 2008:
NEW BLOGSITE OUT AGAINST ABUSE TO EDUCATE AND ORGANIZE THE SOUTH ASIAN COMMUNITY ABOUT DOMESTIC-GENDER ABUSE--PLEASE READ, COMMENT, AND SHARE THIS RESOURCE

In regard to (lack of) Justice for Nadine:

Her alleged abuser and rapist, fugitive Sajid Huq, missed a second court date on 3 December in New York City. An erstwhile Columbia University graduate student, he has been absconding since missing his first court date (1 Nov--warrant issued). Meanwhile, he (and his friends) have been posting his rationalizations for his abuse-rape on various blogs via a variety of names. See for example, in mid November, the excellent post on the case by Abdul Kargo and the ensuing comments--some by Sajid et al in T'ings 'n Things "What is a woman's worth measured against?". See my own recent post on the case and coverage in Bideshi Blue and other posts-links in the last month.

You can read more about this case on the Justice for Nadine facebook page, 9,411 and counting members from around the world, including pictures of Nadine post assault and also picture of Sajid. Pls inform the police and/or call 911 if you see him.


My thoughts are with Nadine and her family-friends during this difficult time.

Beyond this case, please reach out: listen and learn more and join community discussions and programs on domestic violence and violence against women VAW such as OUT AGAINST ABUSE ...where ever you are.

Day 8- who makes herstory-who does the worK?

Today, I want to acknowledge the unnamed teams of women (and some men) of mid range staff and NGO '"aides" who actually do the work in the VAW projects, who carry out the day to day operations, who are the people who answer the doors, phones, emails, keep our spaces safe & healthy & pick up our stuff, make our tea & cook our meals.

They write the web pages and code for our operations; translate documents, work the night and day shifts, conduct the outreach and interviews for research, crunch endless numbers and statistics, code narratives, pore over and compile newspaper clippings on VAW, type and deliver the grant applications and then keep track of the accounts for the final reports.

These same people count the number of days-nights stayed in shelters, services given, and reconcile the financial accounts, go to courts and deal with police, counsel survivors who may or may not go back to abusive situations, may die and/or escape and thrive. They burn out & grieve.

All these persons do the every day work that keeps the programmes running, but relatively unseen by government officials, elites, programme executive directors, and others in the media, political hearings, and journals, but known by those who utilize these services. These staff members rarely move into or from upper level management positions from NGO to NGO .

Also what of the lowly paid staff, often without benefits and who work according the funding and political vagaries and whims of politicians, government officials, and donors who don't want to fund women's safety and empowerment? So that women can can talk back, have choices that they can make about where and how to live and love with their near and dear ones, walk and/or live & love without fear and/or even to go to school for skills and to make a living w/o having their education funds suddenly withdrawn in change of government or safety net policies.

So let's make herstory by acknowledging women's unpaid, informal, and formal labors, how we have replicated some of these unequal gender-race-class-sexuality relations in our VAW and women's programmes, and how women's work-subsidy keeps our livelihood and capitalism in gear. By funding programmes and women's work that enable women-children-families to make choices and thrive rather than 'better than nothing." Also acknowledge the men who work in these projects as allies, speak up to their male peers when we are not around, and do the right thing, because.

Hence, my enormous gratitude and debt to the supervisors and fieldworkers on my research projects on domestic violence & women workers among others, the staff at Nari Jibon Project, and all the students and respondents who have patiently shared, waited and dreamed for a better day and life.

Day 6/Build the Transational Movement Against VAW- Find Your Resistance & Allies

Today, I focus on building assorted knowledge, action, and movements to end violence against women VAW. I also encourage you to map and locate your sources of resistance, albeit everyday acts of speaking up, knowing how to find and work with allies in your household, classes, workplaces, streets, and communities such as local women's centers-shelters, to knowing that VAW often travels transnationally in our socio-emotional-economic and family luggage as we move to different households, places and even continents. These situations also affect the newly arrived wives, tourists, military personnel, and migrant workers--domestic, child care, and service workers as well as international students, ICT workers, etc-- in our communities and on deployment. For example (and these examples are taken from real cases):

• Some women have found themselves in transnational webs of domestic violence when they move to the West or North to marry someone who in turn isolates and abuses them. When they file charges or complain, then their husband's family members pressurize the women's family members with false cases so that their daughter will drop the case.
• The abuser can hold dual passports and commits his abuse in countries with few or no laws against domestic violence and flees to his other country. The woman survivor & children live in fear of his return trips and ongoing abuse-harassment by her estranged-divorced huband's family.
  
• Some women with new citizenship in the North have returned to their country of origin to settle divorces and family matters. They find themselves and/or their children kidnapped and abused by their estranged husbands and in-laws. Their family members have to appeal to their embassies or High Commissions for help...and....
  

VAW also follows assorted military and peacekeeping activities, too, where the protectors can end up as abusers as seen in many military actions by USA and UN Peacekeeping forces. Women military personnel also experience VAW and/or as seen recently Iraq, in the chaotic psych-ops facilities, a few have administered abuse themselves. In turn, when the military and peacekeepers return to their home countries, they bring some of this VAW with them and their spouses and families are affected, too.

VAW also follows the tourism, entertainment, and R & R industries that sprung up around military bases as well as international donor funded tourism and business projects. Many of the industries employ women as domestic, entertainment, and sex workers, who have little control over the terms and conditions of their work places, passports, and earnings, but the promise of higher earnings than in their countries of origin.

Another alarming trend is the VAW in 'mail-order brides as well as women brides from men's countries of origin. Many clients in USA women's shelters are women from other countries--Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe-- brought to USA by men who wanted docile women rather than 'assertive USA women', and in turn the husbands abused their new wives in this strange land. Or newspapers in the North and South are filled with ads of transnational partners (esp men) seeking wives from their country of origin. The new wives--often with limited language skills or resources-- are brought to the USA and abused by their new husband and maybe their in-laws. They feel trapped because they are in USA on spouse visas, feel shame, and/or do not know what to do. Two developments in the USA are visa available to women who have suffered abuse and/or the "U" visa that can be sought by abused women who report their abuse to the police. Women in this situation should see the advice of their local women's program and/or immigration lawyers.

Finally, many domestic and childcare workers migrate, accompany elite families--business or diplomatic staff-- and/or are trafficked to other areas. in these work situations, they have little control over their work conditions, working in 24/7 days and also suffer sexual and physical abuse from their employers, employers' family members, or others. These "global" women do not see their children in their countries for many years. Often we learn of these women in our communities when they escape from their employers' homes often with injuries or only the clothes on their backs.

National and international laws-policies on domestic violence and VAW have been very slow in addressing the increasing transnational nature of VAW. Likewise, many advocacy programs may not have the contact with programs in other countries and knowledge of different laws and remedies.

So today--look around your life and note the sources of support and allies and provide volunteer time, including translation, and donations to them. Such programs who are very dependent on donations, grants and government support, which does not always fund women's real empowerment and escapes from abuse and poverty. In our transnational lives, we also need to know of and support international initiative and programs that work with migrant women, workers and family members and reach out to workers who are trapped in abuse as well as charge their abusive employers.

If you would like to see the reports of actions in this 16 days....go to the Take Back the Tech site day 6 and follow the directions and/or Map It. Or go to the 16 Days campaign website and the International Calendar of Activities and/or Resources links. Finally, I have omitted references the above points, but I can provide documentation for these points and/or you can go to the resource pages on the above websites.

Day 5-Women Bloggers Make and Broadcast the Message Against VAW

The digital divide and VAW has often meant that women did not have access to the internet, video, and related media much less the tools to make and upload these media. When they did have access, they were often confronted with less than positive images. Now more women and male allies are making their own videos and media clips and posting on popular sites.

For example, in the Justice for Rahela campaign & other cross- posts this fall, a Youtube video on Rahela made available many video and visual images of Rahela as she struggled to live and name her assailants in the month before she died in September 2004. Many of us had never seen her before except in maybe a newspaper clip.

Thanks to a blogging grant from Global Voices-Rising Voices, computer and english students & staff at Nari Jibon Project (and four other locations) have had the opportunity to and learn how to write blog posts and also to use digital and video cameras. To date, they have posted video on the Bangladesh floods, & a homeless woman who gave birth in a garage and pictures of street girls, beggars, slum women rebuilding after Cyclone Sidr, including a mother nursing her child born during Cyclone Sidr, among other images. This past week, Computer Teacher Taslima (brown burkha) gave a digital camera and video training workshop for blogging students and staff (see stories and photos).

As their skills grow, I hope to see more blogs and video blogs on their perspectives as young women growing up and finding their way through the streets, schools, and lives amidst eve-teasing and VAW prevalent in Bangladesh (and elsewhere, too). Meanwhile I will scramble to keep up with their advances in technology and blogging.

Finally, I will leave you with a very haunting video with some [warning graphic-disturbing] photos of violence from the 1971 liberation war and the song, Bangladesh, as sung by Joan Baez. These words-song always move me (to tears) and to step up my efforts to end suffering where ever it may occur. Please see also the Drishtipat on Women of 1971, their campaign for restitution from Pakistan, and their varied experiences and stories as freedom fighters, grandmothers, mothers, daughters, students and children, including the thousands of Bangladeshi women raped by Pakistani soldiers and collaborators).

Day 4/Media, Sexism, VAW & Blog Coverage Justice For Nadine

On this day, we look the media & sexism in its mixed coverage of rape, dowry, and domestic violence. Media coverage can be complicated in countries such as Bangladesh with little reliable data on VAW and where legal and advocacy organizations must rely on news stories to count incidents and severity. In Bangladesh, most data on sexual assault and domestic violence come from newspaper story compiled by NGOs and human rights organizations such as Odikhar, Mahila Parishad, and Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association. These counts depend on the willingness of media reporters to write the stories and of the survivors to talk with reporters and/or people outside of the family. Some reporters can provide reliable reports and understanding of the power-gender dynamics, while others write stories with a sensational nature, victim-blame or as entertainment. Often coverage of any one case ends after the initial article and readers have no sense of the legal resolutions of cases as happened in the case of tortured-murder Rahela, a garment worker in 2004 among others.

An ongoing case that exemplifies these issues is the media and less than critical blogosphere coverage of a domestic violence-rape case filed in New York City in September against a Bangladeshi graduate student, Sajid, who allegedly beat and raped his wife, Nadine. He failed to show up for his court hearing in NYC in beginning of November and is a fugitive, who has continued to blog under his and a variety of fake names. Rather than to deny the charge, in his trail of blog posts-emails, he has described-justified his behaviors, which originally resulted in his arrest by NYC police. In turn, he has made a series of allegations about Nadine, none of which would stand as a defense against his abuse and rape charges in USA courts.

Concerned about the brutality and events in this case, others set up a Facebook page, Justice for Nadine, which provided support & information & post-abuse photos about her case and has responded to Sajid's et al ongoing postings. Soon they refused to get into point-counterpoint discussions and ceased responding to an onslaught of emails and pseudonym posts by Sajid et al. Missing from most of these blogs--any understanding of issues surrounding marital rape, domestic violence, and the gender power dynamics. Instead, many of the posts read like adda or gossip.

After an initial flurry of posts in October, most bloggers had ended their coverage until the middle of November when, Abdul Kargo wrote an excellent post, "What Is a Woman’s Worth Measured Against? Blogger Kargo has thoughtfully and deftly dealt with the variety of comments-issues generated by his readers and the reappearance of Sajid et al, who closed down his blog about the time Kargo wrote his post. During this month, some of the comments by Sajid et al have become repetitive intellectual excuses for his criminal behaviors and insulting language directed toward Nadine and those who seek an end to VAW. Others have challenged such comments, discussed the dynamics of VAW and responses when women speak up. They called for a change in in the nature of the comments posts and more community action to combat VAW. Today, I posted this comment #99, which expresses my sentiments on this case and the thread:

"Last night I wanted to say bash/shesh–enough, stop. Allowing fugitive sajid et al another forum to repeat their bogus pomo excuses over and over again creates ‘revictimization’, esp for survivors of abuse who may be reading. This also gives others the cautionary tale of what might happen to them if she speaks up, files charges, etc. or if their abuser-rapist is still at large b/c he did not show up for his court hearing. Dec 3 is his next opportunity.

From 25 Nov-10 Dec is the International 16 Days Campaign to Eliminate Violence against Women. Today—day four—asks people to look at their media (blogosphere) for coverage of violence against women and to note sensationalistic coverage & posts. As we’ve seen in this ongoing thread and other blog coverage, these ‘discussions’ ignore that most rapists & abusers know their victims; in such posts, abusers and some bloggers reduce the case to titillating & entertaining details, and ignore the unequal power relationships in rapes and domestic abuse that result in lingering physical, socio-emotional injuries and even death.

As reflected in others’ comments, I also encourage people to educate themselves more about these issues and get in involved community discussion and action such as recently initiated by Adhunika and Sakhi in NYC.

****Check out a new resource from January 2008: New Blogsite OUT AGAINST ABUSE to educate and organize the South Asian Community about domestic violence-gender abuse--please read, comment, and discuss this resource!****

For more info about the 16 days campaign:
http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/16days/home.html

and to use ICT-blogs to end violence against women:
http://www.takebackthetech.net/frontpage"

Finally, I reiterate the points that I made in comment #5 in early November:

1. Sajid is a fugitive, who skipped his court hearing over charges filed in USA (they will not be transferred to Bangladesh!). Next hearing date: 3 December.
2. None of his posts-rationalizations about his USA felony charges will work in any USA court defense.
3. Any people who have been hiding him from police and the court can be subject to charges of obstruction of justice.
4. If Sajid is on a student visa at Colombia University and has not been attending classes because he is in hiding, then he is violating the terms of his student visa and subject to deportation. Immigration and SEVIS are probably very interested in finding him, too.

Eve-teasing/Day 2.5/16 days Gender Activism VAW

Day 2 Theme: Occupy All Spaces

Around the world, women have to reclaim their spaces and rights on the streets, public spaces, schools, transportation, cyber cafes (w/o other customers viewing disturbing images in the next seat), and and google searches on the internet. Many women face restrictions on their access to education, streets, and finding a secure space in a cyber cafe and internet.


They even have a hard time using their mobiles in a safe and secure way. As I noted in my earlier post, missed calls and/or phishing phone calls can also harass women users. Mobile cameras have been used to take and distribute graphic images of women (see Hana's post).

At the same time, mobile or cell phones can be life lines for battered-abused women; many shelters in USA and elsewhere seek donations of older & unregistered mobiles so that abused women can communicate easily with the shelter or authorities if the abuser blocks her phone usage or to have a safe-secure line. More recently, mobile phones enabled Bangladeshis to communicate with their near and dear ones during Cyclone Sidr.

Another issue on for women to occupy all spaces is eve-teasing--or men's street sexual harassment or molestation of young (any) women who travel their own streets to and from work, school, or their assorted tasks. For an excellent analysis, see Shoma Chatterji's post on eve-teasing in Kolkata and elsewhere in Fighting eve-teasing: rights and remedy.

Eve-teasing occurs in urban areas as well as in rural areas in South Asia and elsewhere although its name varies from country to region. In 2004-5 the Bangladeshi women's group, Mahila Parishad distributed a poster and conducted a campaign against eve-teasing because several young women, students, and even young girls committed suicide owing to social pressures-shame-daily harassment. In 2007, Advocate Habibun Nessa of Naripokkho, reported 29 suicide deaths in the last four years. In some cases the police colluded with the eve-teasers and blamed the women for their own problems. Bangladesh has no laws against eve-teasing, much less respect for women who dare to venture alone or even in groups in the streets.

These pressures also affect women's travels to Nari Jibon, which usually occurs with one or more friends. We've found that if a friend or travel companion stops coming to Nari Jibon , then the other student drops out unless she can find another friend to come to Nari Jibon.

Or two young women students who went out on the streets for a photo assignment and to ride a bus to and from Nari Jibon had to deal with young men who pushed ahead of them and eve-teased. Many times women get on the bus and find that men have taken the 'women's seats and they feel insecure in the packed bus. Photographer Syeeda Farhana captured sequence of Moina and Sathi as they tried to board a bus c. 2005:

The good news is that these women persevered and continued to come to Nari Jibon for English and computer training, pursued their higher education and taken some teaching jobs. Nonetheless many women service holders contend with daily eve-teasing as they commute to and from their jobs and same-same for students as they walk and/or travel to their schools. Eventually, women and/or guardians decide that these pressures are too much and they drop out of school, get married for security, and in some cases commit suicide. Dhaka has tried adding a few women only buses and other countries have tried adding women-only subway cars, but these measures & added buses will not be enough until men start treating women and girls with more respect as they move through and live in various spaces.

Time for women to freely and safely occupy all spaces!