This story is from 2010 but worth noting anyway, especially given the fact that nothing has changed. How people in Saudi Arabia treat foreign domestic servants:

Doctors have removed 13 nails and five needles from a Sri Lankan housemaid who said her employer in Saudi Arabia hammered them into her body.

LP Ariyawathie, 49, told staff at Kamburupitiya Hospital her employer inflicted the injuries as a punishment.

X-rays showed that there were 24 nails and needles in her body.

The nails were up to two inches (5 centimeters) long.

Ms Ariyawathie travelled to Saudi Arabia in March to become a housemaid.

Last week, she flew back to Sri Lanka and was admitted to hospital in the south of the

Well all right – finally there’s a move to make the RFRA not quite such a poisonously theocratic intrusive law. The CFI press release:

The Center for Inquiry (CFI) applauds and supports the introduction of the “Do No Harm Act,” an amendment to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that would prevent its use in situations that involve third-party harm, helping to end the law’s sanctioning of religious discrimination and imposition.

The measure, introduced this morning by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) and Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA), would amend RFRA by adding language stating that RFRA should not be interpreted to allow the imposition of one’s religious views or practices upon another, to authorize discrimination against others because of

The Guardian has an excerpt from Ensaf Haidar’s new book. It’s about the day Raif called to tell her he was going to be flogged the next day, and the immediate aftermath of that for her and for their children.

A friend told her there was a video.

It wasn’t hard to find. By now some of my Facebook friends were referring to it. It also appeared immediately on YouTube when you searched for “Raif Badawi” and “lashes”. It was as if I was being operated by remote control. With trembling hands I clicked on the video to set it in motion. I saw Raif’s delicate frame from behind, in the middle of a big crowd of people. He

Originally a comment by Freemage on #WhereAreWomen.

Disney actually triggered a fairly major ‘feminist consciousness’ moment for me, back in the day.

My then-girlfriend and I had just gone to see Mulan in the theaters, and loved it. So we left the movie humming the songs and talking about the film and then, as we were walking through the mall, decided to check out the Disney store. Since Mulan had just come out, of course, there were shelves and shelves of toys set out. And guess what the ONLY Mulan figurine was?

Bridal Fucking Mulan.

The white-faced, gown-wearing version of her that exists for just a few minutes in the film solely to be rejected by her before the … Read the rest

Oh fuck this shit. I am so sick of it. Fuck it. Women exist, god damn it. We’re not some afterthought, some nonentity, some bit of decor, some piece of sweater fluff it’s fine to brush off. We are people too.

Shane Black, the director and co-writer of Iron Man 3, has said he was forced to change the gender of the film’s villain from female to male after pressure from the production company Marvel, which feared toy merchandise would not sell as well.

In an interview with Uproxx, Black said the original Iron Man 3 script featured a female version of Aldrich Killian, eventually played by Guy Pearce. “We had finished the script and we

Via Maryam:

Isfahan Friday prayers leader says women cycling makes society unsafe. It’s the regime that makes it unsafe for women and everyone.
اين رژيم است كه جامعه را نا امن ميكند …

The Hebden Bridge Handmade Parade is June 26th.

This is from last year’s:

… Read the rest

Sarah Ditum has a long, brilliant piece in The New Statesman, What is gender, anyway? What is it indeed. It’s a vexed subject at the moment, she said with a polite cough.

The conversation about trans gender has moved, Ditum points out, from physical transition to more ethereal kinds of “transition” like identifying as or expression. On the other hand there is the essentialist view of for instance Simon Baron-Cohen,

Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, who has written extensively on what he calls “the essential difference”, claiming that the male brain is inherently systematising and the female brain inherently empathising, leading to a natural division of roles on the basis of a physical difference. (Baron-Cohen does

Brazil’s coup has restored power to its natural owners, white men.

Most Brazilians backed Rousseff’s impeachment but in one of the world’s biggest racial and cultural melting pots, where more than half the 200 million people identify themselves as black or mixed, the makeup of Temer’s government raised alarm.

Leftists, minorities and many lower-income Brazilians fear that a deep economic recession, and the spending cuts that the new government says are essential to spur a recovery, could mean rolling back progressive policies.

“The rallying cry right now is the economy and that can become an excuse to scrap anything related to matters of inclusion, equality or culture,” says Esther Solano, a sociologist at the Federal University of São Paulo.

The Guardian asked readers to share their experiences of sex discrimination in film making.

Conscious and unconscious bias is alive and well in our business. And much is to do with how “talent” is evaluated. Because of the belief in the auteur, a conceptthat has infected the film space but particularly public funding, women have been at a disadvantage – auteurs are generally men and if you can’t see it, not only can’t you be it, but no one will let you be it either. The way women’s work is assessed and their talent rated doesn’t cut it, because they’re being measured against a male paradigm.
Mia Bays, film producer, 44

Of course – because only men are … Read the rest

Another entry for the “to the surprise of no one” file – very few British films are written or directed by women.

A report commissioned by Directors UK found that between 2005 and 2014 just 13.6% of British films were directed by women and only 14.6% of those had a female screenwriter, as a result of “unconscious, systemic bias”.

The damning report concluded that the problem of gender inequality had remained almost unchanged in those 10 years, revealing that in 2005, 11.5% of UK films had a female director, which only increased to 11.9% in 2014.

We know. How do we know? We see the movies, and the advertising for the movies, and the reviews of the movies.

Beryl

News from Saudi Arabia: women there face flogging and imprisonment if they check their husband’s phone without his permission.

The offence would be prosecuted as a violation of privacy because it is not covered in the country’s Islamic laws, senior lawyer Mohammad al-Temyat has said.

Well it wouldn’t be, would it. There weren’t phones to check when Mo wrote the Koran – which is reason number 4 billion whatever whatever for why we shouldn’t take a very old book as something we’re not allowed to change or dispute or throw away. Mo didn’t know everything, including phones and secularism and feminism and human rights, so he shouldn’t be set up as an infallible authority on all things.

Speaking to

Tavaana on Twitter:

Tavaana توانا ‏ @Tavaana May 13
Persepolis women’s #volleyball team, 1970. #Iran: a country where pictures from the past look like the future!

Bangladesh yesterday:

Police in Bangladesh say a 75-year-old Buddhist monk has been hacked to death in the south-eastern district of Bandarban.

An official said the monk’s body was found inside a Buddhist temple.

It is the latest in a spate of murders of religious minorities, secular activists and academics.

It’s ideological cleansing.

Police said Maung Shue U Chak appeared to have been attacked by at least four people at the temple in Baishari, 350km (220 miles) south-east of the capital Dhaka.

His killing follows the murder of two prominent gay activists, a law student and a university professor in April.

In February a Hindu priest was beheaded in northern Bangladesh.

In other news –

Locals in presence of a