Via don2g @ Flickr.
Via Muslimah Media Watch, NOW Lebanon interviews Arab feminists Dr. Omaira Abou-Bakr and Hoda al-Saadi, after a conference for Arab women in Beirut. Both women are members of an Egyptian NGO called Women and Memory.
An Amish woman has been charged with failing to report her husband’s sexual abuse of two girls. She allegedly reported the abuse to church elders, but they are not being charged with any crime. If convicted, she could serve several years in prison.
RMJ writes about a Toyota “viral marketing campaign” of stalking and harassment. There are no words.
It’s Fat Talk Free Week, Tri Delta’s 5-day body activism campaign that draws attention to body image issues and the damaging impact of the thin ideal on women in society. I like the slogan: “Friends don’t let friends fat talk.”
Dispatches from Rape Culture: A judge in B.C., Canada decided not to send convicted rapist Fernando Manuel Alves to jail, because the crime was “not something that shows some pathological danger to the community.” Women, as you know, are not members of the community. Judge G. Rideout called the rape an opportunistic “event.” In his decision, he refers to the brutally violent rape as “rough play” at least three times.
Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell has a swell essay on marriage in The Nation. She says, “Typically advocates of marriage equality try to reassure the voting public the same-sex marriage will not change the institution itself. … I hope it is not true.”
Thanks to Jos for highlighting it!
I sent that Fat Talk Week link to my mom last night (she is a nurse practitioner who is a consultant for the state who’s job is to travel around her region of the state and advise on school based health centers)and she told me she was forwarding it to all her colleagues.
I just looked up mandatory reporting laws in Missouri, where the Amish woman lives. Ministers and teachers there are considered mandatory reporters, but I am not sure whether “church elders” are considered minsters or teachers, in which case they actually did not have a legal obligation to report the child abuse. Further, based on my experiences with cases like this, the Amish mother is probably being charged with something like “neglect,” or “child endangerment” or “failure to protect,” which is different from failing to report. As far as I know, people are rarely charged with failing to report, even when they are clearly mandated reporters.
I’ve been very happy with our series of Camrys,but this is way, way out of line. Where do we write to complain?
I thought Canada was a safe space? Everyone’s supposed to be lefty and healthy and polite there. This judge is really messing with my favorable stereotyping.