Women in Saudi Arabia try to ‘buy’ their freedom to work

ABHA: Saudi workingwomen have embarked on new ways to win the consent of their male legal guardians or husbands to  take a job. This is so in jobs where there are still strong taboos about women working in them.

Many Saudi workingwomen set aside a portion of their monthly income, which enables them to win the consent of their male guardians as well as to enjoy full freedom to do job, according to a report in Al-Riyadh Arabic daily.

These women, who often managed to secure a job after a long period of waiting, see their job as a basic requirement of their day-to-day life. Hence, they are wary of safeguarding it by taking all the precautionary measures. Even if the job does not improve their economic status, it contributes substantially in upgrading their social status compared to jobless women.

Critics point out that legal guardians are cashing in on this particular state of affairs facing Saudi women. These women “bribe” their guardians to secure their permission to take up a job, mainly in the media, health, and educational sectors. They see this “monetary element” as the major factor that influences guardians to allow their women to work, in addition to the opening up of Saudi society with the advancement of the information technology. Some describe this tendency among guardians as “unsuitable utilitarian bargaining,” while others say it is a “medium solution” for women to satisfy their men while reaching out to realize their goal.

Take for example the case of Fatima. She was appointed by the Ministry of Education as a teacher in Al-Baqaa in Asir province in the beginning of the current academic year. Her workplace was located in a remote area where women teachers prefer not to work. Fatima said that she found it very difficult to reach her workplace, which is far away from her place of residence in Khamis Mushayt city. “It took me at least three hours to reach the school. So I asked my jobless brother to take me to school and back for a monthly fee of SR1,500. He grabbed it as a golden opportunity to earn an income, as well as to accompany me as mahram (legal guardian). My colleagues — 10 women teachers — decided to travel together with me. This resulted in my brother earning a huge monthly income of SR15,000 in addition to my share of SR1,500. This also helped me to overcome the objection of my parents to go to work at a remote place in the company of a foreign driver,” she said.

Similar was the case with Nadia, who lives with her husband and children in Jeddah. She got appointed at a school in Mikhwa in Baha province. Nadia was not in a position to abandon her job, due to her family’s financial position and her desire to earn some income for herself. “In the beginning, my husband rejected my request to allow me to take up the job. Later he agreed on condition that I arranged any blood relative to accompany me to and from the workplace. My brother Abdullah, who did not continue his schooling after completion of intermediate level, agreed to transport me to and from Mikhwa for a monthly payment of SR1,000,” she said.

Noura, a nurse, says that she joined a nursing course after promising her father that she attended the course for the sake of obtaining a certificate, and not to start working as a nurse. But after completion of the course, she started searching for a job without informing her father. Subsequently, she managed to secure a job at a primary health center.

“I tried to convince my father about the advantages of having a job, assuring him that there was no gender mixing at the workplace. But my father’s response was disappointing. He started abusing me as if I had committed a grave offense. This situation continued until I received my first salary. When I got two months’ salary, I set aside SR2,000 for my father and SR500 for my mother,” she said, adding that this had an electrifying effect. Her father changed his attitude toward her job. “Henceforth, he has been very keen on seeing me going to my workplace regularly. He does not like me staying away from work,” Noura said, adding that it does not bother her to allocate a portion of her revenue to her parents in return for them allowing her to enjoy freedom to work. “Moreover, my father now allows me more freedom, especially for travel to attend conferences anywhere inside the Kingdom,” she said.

At a time when legal guardians try to prevent women under their custodianship from taking up jobs on the pretext of mixing with men, a number of men block their wives from going out for work on the ground that they must be always available at home to take care of them as well as to bring up their children, says Muna. “Some husbands do not like to see their wives enjoying economic liberty by earning money for themselves. I managed to allay apprehensions of my husband in this respect by lending him a helping hand through meeting a portion of household expenses and settling a part of his debts,” she said, adding that she has been keen to keep a portion of her revenue to fulfill her personal needs. “I lied to him about the exact amount of my monthly salary. I told him that my monthly salary is SR9,000, even though I was drawing a much higher amount,” she said.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Zayed Al-Almai, a prominent writer and human rights activist, is of the view that this type of behavior toward women shows the degradation of values with regard to social integration and family bonds in addition to transforming these relations into a level of “utilitarian bargaining.”

Al-Almai also sees in this something that transforms social and human rights into a commodity, selling one’s dignity to buy one’s interests without any feeling of remorse. He also underlined the need for enacting stringent regulations aimed at protecting the weaker sections, such as women and children, in addition to enlightening male members of society on their duties and responsibilities toward women.

On his part, Abdullah Al-Towairqi, a prominent citizen, said that this attitude is common not only among legal guardians of women, like parents and brothers, but also on the part of their husbands, who see their women as a tool for exploitation and even for blackmailing in certain cases. He denounced the deprivation of women’s right to earn wealth as well as her right to work, in addition to choose her family life and future course of action.

Al-Towairqi ruled out the wrong notion that it is a disgrace for a man who faces financial difficulties to be supported by his wife.

Echoing the same view, Hala Al-Dosary, a human rights activist, said a job is something that enables a woman to have financial capabilities and enjoy more freedom. “It is significant if a woman can play her role in improving the financial level of her family by supporting her husband to meet household expenses,” she said.

http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20110512032752/Women_in_Saudi_Arabia_try_to_buy_their_freedom_to_work

A woman to enjoy a male ritual in the gender-biased Jatland

CHAPPAR (BHIWANI): A couple of days before her wedding on May 12, Monika Sangwan of Chappar village in Haryana’s Bhiwani district will ride a mare to the village temple. Women of her family will accompany her singing traditional songs. The ritual, called ‘ghurchari’, is an old custom in these parts but only for men. Monika would be the first woman to perform ‘ghurchari’ in the Jatland known for its gender bias against women.

Monika is a postgraduate student in a Hissar college. Breaking with tradition, her mother Kamlesh Sangwan (45), an anganwadi worker, decided to have the ‘ghurchari’ for Monika’s wedding. “Why should I discriminate against my daughter when I would arrange ghurchari for my son when he gets married?” said Kamlesh.

She was inspired when Satyawan Sangwan of her village performed ‘kuan pujan’ (worshipping a well) when his daughter was born. In Haryana, the puja is held to celebrate the birth of a male child. But, Satyawan did it to welcome his daughter’s birth, the first girl child born in his family after 30 years.

Kamlesh, a member of the village youth club, also decided to celebrate Monika’s marriage to Satinder in a unique way. “I am excited,” said Monika, adding that her father Dharambir is also happy about this.

Her elder sister Neelam got married five years back when ‘Save the Girl Campaign’ had not picked up in the village. “It would have been nice, if a ghurchari had been organized for me. But I am happy my sister would get that opportunity,” said Neelam.

Village sarpanch Kartar Singh welcomed the initiative. The population of the village is around 10,000. “More than 100 boys are waiting to get married. We plan to involve these boys in the `Save the Girl Campaign. They will also inform the authorities, if they get to know about any female foeticide case,” he said.

Shyam Sunder, secretary of Bhiwani’s Red Cross Society, is credited with the initiative to perform ‘kuan pujan’ for the girl child here about a year ago. “Marriage is an important event in a person’s life and the girl should feel proud of her gender on this occasion,” he said.

And, his efforts has helped improve the sex ratio in the village. From 821:1,000 in 2010, the sex ratio in the 0-6 age group has climbed to 1,281:1,000 in the first three months of this year, said Sunder.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-04-27/india/29478299_1_girl-child-gender-bias-male-child

When women act like men: Ban on “pengkid” women

THREE years ago, the National Fatwa Council made a decision against women who dressed like men — pengkid — and denounced their behaviour as haram, even as it caused much anger and confusion among the public.

The fatwa, released by the council on Oct 23, 2008, read: “Pengkid, that is, women who have the appearance, mannerisms and sexual orientation similar to men is haram in Islam.

“We urge parents and the Muslim community to pay serious attention to this problem.

“Emphasis should be placed on teaching and guiding young girls, especially on their clothing, behaviour and appearance, so that this problem may be avoided because it runs counter to their fitrah and Allah’s way.”

(Fitrah is the innate natural sexual inclination each person is born with and which does not change. In Islam, if a person is born male, he is masculine and sexually attracted to women; if born a female, she is feminine and sexually attracted to men.)

The episode only came to an end, of sorts, when Department of Islamic Development (Jakim) director-general Datuk Wan Mohamed Sheikh Abd Aziz clarified that the fatwa was meant as an advisory to “arrest the social ill”, and not a law.

He defined pengkid as a married woman or maiden whose appearance or image was like that of a man.

While the fatwa includes the dressing of the person, it’s also about the way she behaves because “a woman may be dressed as a woman but her behaviour may be like a man”.

She may also have sexual desires for women.

Wan Mohamed denied that the fatwa labelled all pengkid as lesbians.

“It is hampir (close to) lesbianism. Hampir means she doesn’t do the act, but is heading that way.

“For instance, Islam forbids people from coming close to zina (adultery). That means, not only is the act forbidden but any act that may lead to the act is also forbidden.

“We are trying to save these women (from becoming lesbians). What would happen if we didn’t advise and save our people?

“If we allow this problem to continue, our Eastern culture will be no different from the Western one. Where will our religious values be?” he had said in an interview with the New Sunday Times then.

He pointed out that the gazetting of the fatwa was at the discretion of the states.

It is learnt that the fatwa has so far remained advisory in most states, except for the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, where it has been gazetted into law and included in Section 34 of the Administration of Islamic Law (Federal Territories) Act 1993.

http://www.malaysia-today.net/mtcolumns/newscommentaries/39955-when-women-act-like-men

14-Year-Old Girl Faces Adultery Charges

A 14-year-old girl caught in a rooftop encounter with a 25-year-old man faces adultery charges in Ajman, United Arab Emirates, officials said.

The girl’s distraught father told Gulf News she was locked up for more than two weeks at the Ajman central jail with older women before being transferred to a juvenile center in Sharjah.

Normally people under 15 are considered victims in sex crimes. She will be tried on adultery charges later this month.

“The trial will start in spite of the age ceiling set for trials on sexual related crimes by the U.A.E. law,” a court source told Gulf News. “The law states that the minimum age of suspects in crimes related to sex must be 15 years. Such cases should be conducted in special juvenile courts. Otherwise, suspects are considered victims rather than suspects.”

The girl’s father said his ninth-grade daughter is a brilliant student.

“I did not inform the school about the incident,” the girl’s sobbing father said. “I did not tell her brothers … they believe that she went to stay with her aunt in Abu Dhabi for some time.”

The father said court officials refused to release his daughter on bail.

http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=34210&catid=863

Tehran Students Protest Treatment of Women

Tehran University students are protesting the extensive presence of security forces on their campus, saying such measures are turning the university into a garrison, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.

Tehran University was the scene of repeated protests after disputed presidential elections in June 2009
(file photo: December 2009)

The students are angry at what they say is a recent increase in the number of security forces and surveillance cameras at the university’s Faculty of Social Sciences, as well as the “insulting attitude” of university security officials who have threatened female students over the way they dress.

“We will not tolerate such offensive, humiliating attitudes and will not keep silent before those who turn universities into garrisons,” the students said in a statement published on the Daneshjoo News website on April 16.

The protest came on the same day that segregated buses for male and female students were introduced on the Tehran University campus. According to Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency, gender segregation on buses was implemented in response to “repeated requests by students.”

Pouyan Mahmoudian, a former member of the Islamic Association central council at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University, rejected that claim, saying gender segregation is proof of social suppression in Iran.

“The Iranian regime is facing a legitimacy crisis,” Mahmoudian told Radio Farda on April 17. He said the establishment wants to impose an ideological system on society which is based on a particular interpretation of Shari’a, but young people will never accept it.

“The authorities have tried gradually to adopt such policies by force during the past 10 years, but it has always backfired,” said Mahmoudian.

http://www.payvand.com/news/11/apr/1194.html

Turkey grapples with spike in ‘honor’ killings

Istanbul, Turkey

A drastic rise in reported “honor” killings and fatal domestic violence in Turkey has sparked a vigorous debate about the government’s recent attempts to address the problem. It also highlights the clash of conservative values with the country’s rapid modernization.

Government figures released in February suggest murders of women increased 14-fold in seven years, from 66 in 2002, to 953 in the first seven months of 2009. In the past seven months, one rights organization has compiled more than 264 cases – nearly one per day – reported in the press in which a woman was killed by a family member, husband, ex-husband, or partner.

“There’s been an incredible increase,” says Gulhan Yag, a young activist who recently attended a funeral for a teenage girl killed for eloping with her boyfriend. “This feels like a genocide against women.”

Amidst a surge of public outrage, the Islam-rooted ruling party is being cast as both villain and hero. While some argue it has fueled social conservatism, others claim that for the first time, a problem that has long plagued Turkish family life is finally being uncovered – in part because women are asserting their rights and drawing attention to the issue.

“We know that violence against women has been a longstanding bleeding wound of the society,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a convention last month on the eve of International Women’s Day. “It is being reflected by the media as a growing issue when it is simply the hidden and unspoken truths being uncovered.”

On paper, progress for women

On paper at least, Mr. Erdogan’s government has an impressive record for fighting the problem.

Since 2006, police officers have undergone training to combat violence against women, and now a specialized domestic violence police unit is being set up. Penal and civil codes were changed in 2004 and 2005 to increase sentences for honor killers.

Meanwhile, amendments to the family protection law currently in parliament will for the first time allow judges to impose restraining orders in relation to non-married couples.

“More women know their rights, people are more aware than before, and for the last five years police have been trained in these issues,” says Meltem Agduk, United Nations Population Program Coordinator for Turkey.

Are police willing to help?

But others question both the effectiveness of the legislation, and the government’s own commitment to the problem.

“Laws have been made but they are not being applied,” says Canan Gullu, chairwoman of the Turkish Association of Women’s Federations. “Police stations don’t work as they should and there are not enough safe houses for women.”

The government passed a law in 2005 recommending that municipalities with more than 50,000 people should have a women’s shelter. Few have paid attention to the vaguely worded, noncompulsory legislation, and so far only 65 are operating, compared to the 1,400 that would exist with proper implementation.

Activists claim police are unwilling or unable to help vulnerable women. In February, Arzu Yildirim, a mother of two, was murdered, allegedly by her ex-boyfriend after having requests for police protection rejected. Hers was one among many similar cases.

The funeral Ms. Yag attended was for 19-year-old Hatice Firat, who was killed Feb. 28 after running away to live with her boyfriend – an offense her relatives saw as staining the family’s honor. Local media said her brother was the prime suspect.

But her case was not without sympathy. Yag and a group of other women arranged for a funeral after Firat’s family refused to pick up her body. And a crowd of 150 people bore her coffin through the streets of the southeastern Turkish city of Mersin chanting slogans against the murder of women.

Police detained 11 relatives as well as her boyfriend, and two days later, 22 members of Parliament urged the government to investigate the reason for the rise in women’s murders.

Prime minister’s comment draws ire

Some see the government as part of the problem, however, claiming that the Islamic values espoused by Turkey’s leaders have fueled the violence. Erdogan particularly drew the ire of women’s activists last year when he said at a conference in Istanbul that he “did not believe” in gender equality, a comment that was widely reported in Turkish news outlets. (He went on to say that “that’s why I prefer to say ‘equal opportunity.’ Men and women are different in nature, they complete each other.”)

“If our prime minister says men and women aren’t equal, it affects men. There’s no positive example for them. They are now thinking that they can do anything they want,” says Gulsun Kanat, a volunteer social worker for the women’s charity Mor Cati.

Though it is impossible to substantiate such claims, Turkey’s statistics on gender equality remain abysmal by almost any standard. While in recent years the country has made tremendous strides economically, improved the situation of its ethnic and religious minorities, and is increasingly enjoying greater political clout on the global stage, it has languished near the bottom of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap reports since the index was created in 2005. It is currently ranked 126 out of 134 countries – lower even than Iran.

On the question of the rising violence, some suggest the rapid urbanization of the past two decades, twinned with the growth of civil society movements, have given rise to a gender war.

“A lot of the honor killings in Istanbul are being committed by people who moved from villages in the southeast,” says Vildan Yirmibesoglu, head of Istanbul’s Human Rights Council. “Women who didn’t previously go out on the streets are part of community life in a way they didn’t used to be. They want to study to go to school and to express themselves, and families don’t approve of this.”

Meanwhile, a growing number of women activists like those who buried Hatice Firat are intensifying their own fight against the killings and the patriarchal system that still grips Turkish family life.

“Men killed her, and we didn’t allow men to bury her,” says Yag, whose fellow activists carried out the funeral rites traditionally performed by mosque officials. “I’m at a point now where I draw power from the fact that I know we have to fight against this crime.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2011/0414/Turkey-grapples-with-spike-in-honor-killings/%28page%29/2

Moms killing kids not nearly as rare as we think

NEW YORK – “How could she?”

It’s the headline du jour whenever a horrific case emerges of a mother killing her kids, as Lashanda Armstrong did when she piled her children into her minivan and drove straight into the frigid Hudson River.

Our shock at such stories is, of course, understandable: They seem to go against everything we intuitively feel about the mother-child bond.

But mothers kill their children in this country much more often than most people would realize by simply reading the headlines; by conservative estimates it happens every few days, at least 100 times a year. Experts say more mothers than fathers kill their children under 5 years of age. And some say our reluctance as a society to believe mothers would be capable of killing their offspring is hindering our ability to recognize warning signs, intervene and prevent more tragedies.

And so the problem remains.

“We’ve learned how to reduce auto fatalities among kids, through seatbelt use. We’ve learned how to stop kids from strangling on the strings of their hoodies. But with this phenomenon, we struggle,” says Jill Korbin, an anthropologist at Case Western Reserve University who has studied mothers who kill children. “The solution is not so readily apparent.”

How common is filicide, or killing one’s child, among mothers? Finding accurate records is nearly impossible, experts say. One problem is classification: The legal disposition of these cases varies enormously. Also, many cases doubtless go unreported or undetected, such as very young mothers who kill their newborns by smothering them or drowning them in a toilet after hiding the entire pregnancy.

“I’d say a mother kills a child in this country once every three days, and that’s a low estimate,” says Cheryl Meyer, co-author of “Mothers Who Kill Their Children.”

Several databases track such killings but do not separate mothers from fathers or stepfathers. At the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System reported an estimated 1,740 child fatalities — meaning when a child dies from an injury caused by abuse or neglect — in 2008.

And according to numbers compiled from 16 states by the National Violent Death Reporting System at the CDC Injury Center, 130 children were killed in those states by a parent in 2008, the last year for which numbers were available.

“The horrific stories make the headlines, so we believe it hardly ever happens,” says Meyer, a professor of psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. “But it’s not a rare thing.”

Meyer and co-author Michelle Oberman interviewed women at the Ohio Reformatory for Women. They found that of 1,800 women at the prison, 80 were there for killing their children.

It’s also a phenomenon that defies neat patterns: It cuts across boundaries of class, race and socio-economic status. Oberman and Meyer came up with five categories: filicide related to an ignored pregnancy; abuse-related; neglect-related; assisted or coerced filicide (such as when a partner forces the killing); and purposeful filicide with the mother acting alone.

Different as these cases are, though, there are some factors that link the poor teen mother who kills her baby in a bathroom with an older, wealthier mother, and one of them, experts say, is isolation.

“These women almost always feel alone, with a total lack of emotional support,” says Lita Linzer Schwartz, a professor emeritus of psychology and women’s studies at Penn State, and co-author of “Endangered Children.”

Schwartz says women are often not checked for mental illness after their crimes, and that is unfortunate.

“Women need better treatment not only before, but after,” she says. “They get tormented in prison, when often what they need is psychological care.”

The issue of mental illness is a tricky one. Some women are obviously seriously ill — for example, Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children, one by one, in the bath in 2001, believing she was saving them from the devil. After first being convicted of capital murder, she was found innocent by reason of insanity and remains in a mental institution.

But Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University, says cases are not always so obvious — sometimes depression is enough to send a woman over the edge. “Almost all these women are not in their right minds (when they commit these acts),” she says. “The debate is whether they’re sick enough to be called insane.”

Besides isolation, another frequent similarity in the cases is a split with the father of the children. “So often there is an impending death or divorce or breakup,” Meyer says.

In the case of Armstrong, the 25-year-old mother had apparently argued with the father of three of her young children — about his cheating, according to the woman’s surviving son — just before driving into the river on Tuesday in Newburgh, N.Y. (Her 10-year-old son climbed out a window and survived. Three children, ages 11 months to 5 years, died.)

This was one of those cases where the mother was committing suicide and decided to take the kids with her. To rational observers, there is nothing more perverse. But in the logic of many these mothers, experts say, they are protecting their children by taking them along. Armstrong’s surviving son told a woman who helped him that his mother had told the kids: “If I’m going to die, you’re all going to die with me.”

Experts have heard that many times before.

“We see cases where the mother thinks the child would be better off in heaven than on this miserable earth,” for example with an abusive father, says Schwartz. “They think it’s a good deed, a blessing.”

A good deed — performed by a good mother. “It’s how the sick mother sees herself being a good mother,” says Oberman. “Once she decides she can’t bear the pain anymore, she thinks, `what would a good mother do?'”

Korbin, the anthropologist, says in prison interviews she conducted, some women who had killed their children were still certain they were good mothers. And it’s that very ideal of being a “good mother” that is holding our society back from taking preventive action or intervening in a potentially abusive situation before it’s too late, Korbin says.

“Often the people around these women will minimize a troubling instance that they see, saying, `Well, she’s a good mother.’ We err on the side of being supportive of women as being good mothers, where we should be taking seriously any instance where a mother OR father seems to be having trouble parenting. ANY instance of child maltreatment is serious.”

In fact, Armstrong’s aunt told reporters that her niece “was a good mother. She was going through some stuff.”

Meyer, for one, is angry that the people around Armstrong didn’t take heed of the warning signs earlier.

“To me this is a textbook case,” she says. “This woman was completely overwhelmed. Almost always, you can find people who say, `I knew something was wrong.’ This did not come out of the blue. I say shame on the people who saw signs and didn’t do anything. This is your responsibility, too.”

Not that it is easy to know when and how to raise an alarm bell. “I think often people just don’t know what to do,” says Korbin.

But, she adds, it doesn’t help to gape at a few of the more shocking cases and then move on, without recognizing the scope of the problem and the factors that link many of these cases.

“People focus on the spectacular cases — and they are spectacular,” she says. “But that means another few kids will die over the next few days without much notice, and that is very sad.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110416/ap_on_he_me/us_when_mothers_kill;_ylt=AqcORVg1dcf5hDLsesutSy9n.3QA;_ylu=X3oDMTM2M2l0ZGo5BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTEwNDE2L3VzX3doZW5fbW90aGVyc19raWxsBGNjb2RlA3B6YnVpbnRlBGNwb3MDNwRwb3MDNwRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3JpZXMEc2xrA21vbXNraWxsaW5naw–

Police arrest 61 trying to hold prohibited protest against France’s ban of Muslim veils

PARIS — Police on Saturday arrested 61 people — including 19 women — for attempting to hold an outlawed Paris protest against France’s pending ban on face-covering Islamic veils, a top police official said.

Fifty-nine people were detained while trying to demonstrate at Place de la Nation in eastern Paris, as were two others while traveling there from Britain and Belgium, said Nicolas Lerner, chief of staff for the Paris police chief.

The arrests come amid in a rising, if small, groundswell of controversy over Monday’s start of an official ban of garments that hide the face, which includes Muslim veils such as the slit-eyed niqab and the full face-covering burqa. Women who disobey the law risk a fine, special classes and a police record.

The demonstrators rallied in defiance of a ban of the protest ordered Friday by Paris police on the ground that a Muslim group’s call for the rally was “clearly an incitement to violence and racial hatred,” said Lerner.

“The demonstration was not banned because of the practice (among some Muslim women) of wearing veils, but because of the speech,” he said, adding that Jewish groups and others had planned counter-protests — raising the prospect of public disorder.

Most of the would-be protesters were released after being taken to police stations, though six remained in custody — mostly on suspicion of being in France illegally, Lerner said.

The two would-be protesters who had tried to arrive from Britain and Belgium were known to French authorities. Police were under existing orders to stop and expel them, if they tried to reach France, Lerner said.

Lerner identified the man who had traveled from Britain as Anjem Choudary, the head of Islam4UK until it was banned earlier this year by Britain’s government for glorifying al-Qaida. Several people associated with the group have been linked to terrorist acts.

The protest was called by a group known as Unicite Tawhib, which has been linked to Internet sites that call for Islam to dominate France and the world, Lerner said.

Secular France has been in the throes of a debate about the role of religion in its society. Many Muslims have felt stigmatized by a 2004 law that banned Islamic headscarves in classrooms and during the intense debate that preceded the adoption of the face-veil ban last year.

The measure forbids women to hide their faces in public places, even in the streets. Violators could face a fine of €150 ($215) or a citizenship course — or both. Anyone found forcing a woman to cover her face risks a year in prison and a €30,000 fine ($43,000), and possibly twice that if the veiled person is a minor.

Authorities estimate at most 2,000 women in France wear the outlawed veils. France’s Muslims number at least 5 million, the largest such population in western Europe.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/police_arrest_61_trying_to_hold_prohibited_protest_against_frances_ban_of_muslim_veils/2011/04/09/AF58318C_story.html?wprss=rss_world

Protests against women’s policy cripple Bangladesh

DHAKA, Bangladesh – Police clashed with demonstrators and arrested dozens in Bangladesh as a hard-line Muslim group enforced a paralyzing general strike Monday protesting a new policy giving women equal inheritance rights.

The protesters, mostly students of Islamic schools, smashed vehicles and set fire to a fuel station and attacked a convoy of devotees on their way to an Islamic shrine in southeastern Bangladesh, according to police, news reports and witnesses. Police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse protesters in various parts of the country.

Dozens were injured in clashes across the country during the strike, media reports citing police said.

Nearly 150 people were arrested during the one-day strike that saw schools and businesses shut in the nation’s main cities and towns, the Daily Star newspaper and ETV station reporting, citing police and witnesses.

General strikes — calls for businesses to close shop to protest a cause — are fairly common in the South Asian country, and those who do not comply can face intimidation by hard-line activists.

Monday’s strike was organized by the Islamic Law Implementation Committee, a grouping of several religious groups and political parties. Its head, Fazlul Huq Amini, told a news conference later Monday that about 100 activists had been arrested in the capital, Dhaka.

While the strike was called to broadly seek the adoption of Islamic law in the Muslim-majority nation of 150 million people, its specific agenda was to oppose the government’s new policy on women’s inheritance rights.

Under the government’s new rules, every child inherits the same amount.

Amini accuses the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of violating the Quran, the Islamic holy book, by introducing the new inheritance policy.

Hasina, however, insists the new rules are in line with Islam and says the hard-line group is deliberately manipulating people’s religious feelings to destabilize the country.

Hasina’s government says it wants women to have greater rights in employment, inheritance and education.

Despite being governed mostly by secular laws, Bangladesh generally follows Islamic law in family-related matters, including marriage and inheritance.

The Quran’s elaborate rules on inheritance are complicated. However, while there are several exceptions, in most cases a daughter inherits half of what is received by a son.

In Dhaka, a city of 10 million people, thousands of security officials were deployed to patrol the streets during the strike, police said.

The security officials cordoned off the country’s main Baitul Mokarram mosque in downtown Dhaka and set up barbed wire fences near the mosque.

The strike came a day after a student was killed and 25 other protesters against the new inheritance policy were injured during a violent clash between hard-liners Muslims and police in western Bangladesh.

In Chittagong district, 135 miles (215 kilometers) southeast of Dhaka, protesters attacked a convoy of about 200 buses carrying devotees to an annual gathering at a local Islamic shrine, leaving about a dozen people injured, the Daily Star reported, citing its Chittagong bureau.

The Islamic Law Implementation Committee denounces people who visit shrines, saying Islam does not allow worshipping at shrines.

Also in Chittagong, firefighters rushed to a refueling station after it was set on fire by the protesters, the Daily Star said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110404/ap_on_re_as/as_bangladesh_general_strike_5

New furor over France’s Muslims as veil ban looms

TRAPPES, France – Karima has a plan. If police stop her for wearing a veil over her face, she’ll remove it — then put it back on once they’re out of sight. If that doesn’t work, she’ll stay home, or even leave France.

For Muslim women who cover their faces with veils, it is the moment for making plans. Starting April 11, a new law banning garments that hide the face takes effect. Women who disobey it risk a fine, special classes and a police record.

The law comes as Muslims face what some see as a new jab at their religion: President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party is holding a debate Tuesday on the place of Islamic practices, and Islam itself, in strictly secular but traditionally Catholic France.

The increasing focus on France’s Muslims — who number at least 5 million, the largest such population in western Europe — comes with presidential elections a year away and support for a far-right party growing. A recent palpable rise in tensions has also been boosted by fears of a mass migration of Muslims due to disarray in the Arab world.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant put it bluntly Monday.

“This growth in the number of (Muslims) and a certain number of behaviors cause problems,” he said in remarks carried on French radio. “There is no reason why the nation should accord to one particular religion more rights than religions that were formerly anchored in our country.”

France’s challenge is evident in the Paris suburb of Trappes. It has a large Muslim population and is one of the few towns in France where veiled women are occasionally seen on the streets.

At the town hall, the subject of the impending crackdown is taboo. Some predict police will turn a blind eye to any veils to keep things tranquil.

“I have a choice to take it off. I choose not to,” said Karima, 25, shopping at the outdoor market in this town of 29,000 southwest of Paris.

Karima is forthright, though she refuses to provide her full name because of her defiant stance on the ban. Others are not so willing to talk. Two women veiled in black scurried away when approached.

“The problem of veils and so on become public issues because people are afraid,” said Farhad Khosrokhavar, a noted expert on Islam in France. “It’s a process of scapegoating and it works beautifully.”

The topic of Tuesday’s roundtable by Sarkozy’s conservative UMP party is officially secularism, a foundational value of France. However, the talks are expected to take up distinctly Muslim social issues like halal food in school cafeterias or demands by some for separate hours for women at public swimming pools.

Its backers say debate is needed to address evolutions in French society — such as a growing demand for mosque building and Islamic butchers — since the country’s 1905 law formally separated the state from the Catholic Church.

Detractors, however, see a sheer political ploy to lure potential voters as Sarkozy’s popularity keeps sinking and the extreme-right National Front is getting a second life under its new leader, Marine Le Pen, the daughter of party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. While Le Pen’s party performed well in local elections in March, Sarkozy’s party suffered a drubbing.

Muslims have felt stigmatized by the 2004 law banning Islamic headscarves in classrooms and again during the intense debate that preceeded the face veil ban. Muslim leaders are now so irked they have refused any role in the roundtable.

France’s top religious leaders — Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists — published a joint statement last week saying the debate could add “to the confusion in the troubled period we are traversing.”

Sarkozy fired his adviser on integration, Abderrahmane Dahmane, last month for castigating party leader Jean-Francois Cope, who is organizing the talks.

“Cope’s UMP is the plague of Muslims,” Dahmane said in an interview.

Dahmane is a controversial figure who has called on French Muslims to wear a green star Tuesday, similar to the yellow star that Jews were forced to wear under Nazi occupation. Prominent Jewish figures in France have bristled at the comparison.

Another longstanding UMP member tore up his party card in a rage at the Paris mosque. Abdallah Zekri, a member of the High Council of Mosques of France from the southwestern city of Nimes, says Arabs are being targeted.

“Muslims will always be scapegoats,” he said at a Paris news conference. “We no longer talk about immigrants. We talk about Muslims.”

In unusual terms for a secular leader, Sarkozy extolled the virtues of his country’s “Christian heritage” during a recent visit to Puy-en-Velay, the starting point of a famed medieval Christian pilgrimage route.

“Without identity there is no diversity,” the president said. “The (French) republic is secular. It belongs to each citizen without any distinction.”

Muslim women who choose to cover their faces with veils may doubt that they belong.

The measure banning the veil forbids women to hide their faces in public places, even in the streets. It punishes those who defy the law with a fine of euro150 or a citizenship course of both. Anyone discovered forcing a woman to cover her face risks a year in prison and a euro30,000 fine — doubled if the veiled person is a minor.

Authorities estimate at most 2,000 women in France wear the outlawed garment. But for each of them removing the filmy cloth would be an exceptional act.

“Behind this is spirituality,” said Karima, a doctoral student of history with Algerian-born parents. “This law will keep women at home.”

Khosrokhavar predicts that, despite the ban, the status quo will quietly continue for many women, with local authorities turning a blind eye.

The French “have lots of lofty abstract principles” like secularism, he said. “But when it comes to dealing with it concretely, you cope with it.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110404/ap_on_re_eu/eu_france_and_islam_2

Lebanon Protesters Take Aim at Family Law System

 

BEIRUT, Lebanon (WOMENSENEWS)–The demonstrations held here on March 20 marked the third time in four weeks that protesters gathered to demand an end to the “confessional” or sectarian system that divides Lebanon’s government and society along religious lines.

But this time the focus of protesters’ anger broadened to include the country’s system of family laws that are governed by religious authorities and often discriminate against women.

Signs echoing ongoing protests across the Middle East, including “Game Over,” mixed in the streets with new ones such as “Civil Marriage Not Civil War.”

“We have a saying in Arabic that if you do something three times, the third time confirms it,” Sara Abughazal, editor of the Beirut-based Sawt al-Niswa (Voice of Women) online newsletter, told Women’s eNews.

“Sunday was really good,” said Abughazal, who is also a member of Lebanon’s Nasawiya, a feminist collective that supported the rally and has also planned a discussion on women in the anti-sectarian campaign for tomorrow. “We are able to say that there is a popular interest in secularism. It’s not just the intellectuals. We’re getting the attention of random people from everywhere.”

At this most recent demonstration, Lebanese citizens once again joined in the thousands to demand the overthrow of “the sectarian regime,” a slogan modified from Egyptian protesters’ demands for the overall overthrow of the regime of President Hosni Mubarak.

All three protests have focused on bringing an end to sectarianism–a system that has been with this small Mediterranean republic since its independence in 1943–which critics say enflames the tensions among Lebanon’s religious communities by pitting them against one another in the division of power.

The demonstrations follow a large anti-sectarian protest held in the capital last year and are occurring ahead of a major April 2 follow-up march that is expected to benefit from the region’s current revolutionary energy.

Power Divided Among 18 Religions

Unlike many Arab states, which have been ruled by the same man–or dynastic father-son combination–for decades, Lebanon is not under the control of an authoritarian ruler. Instead it has a sectarian dictatorship that divides power among 18 official religions and limits individual access to the state.

The president must be a Maronite Catholic, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, the speaker of the house a Shiite Muslim and all other cabinet and parliamentary posts are filled according to religious quotas.

Under the confessional system, a citizen must choose a sect before attaining citizenship rights.

All family laws–marriage, birth, death, inheritance–are controlled by religious authorities.

Since current family laws are under the jurisdiction of religious courts, civil marriage, for instance, does not exist in Lebanon.

Most religious laws grant fathers child custody and children are automatically registered in their father’s village. Shiite courts allow parents to leave property to daughters alone, while Sunni courts demand that at least some of assets go to the nearest male relative. In some sects, men who harm female relatives can still receive a lesser penalty if they did so citing protection of “family honor,” while rape within marriage is also not recognized as a crime.

The march ended in front of the Interior Ministry, with several nongovernmental groups joining. One group there was the Collective for Research and Training on Development – Action, which leads the campaign to overturn the Lebanese government’s law restricting Lebanese women from passing citizenship to their foreign husbands and children.

“The strong current confessional political polarization impedes all attempts to pursue rational, cool-headed and objective discussions over the would-be rights of citizens,” said Omar Traboulsi, field manager for the group.

“The Nationality Campaign called for the support of the march against sectarianism because our demands for equality between men and women in terms of the right to nationality are being frustrated by confessional considerations constantly being flagged by most of the leading political circles in Lebanon,” he added.

Up to 20,000 Protestors

The group estimated that nearly 20,000 Lebanese came out to protest the status quo, a number supported by Twitter users and bloggers. The news agency Agence France-Presse reported between 6,000 and 7,000.

One of the protest’s early supporters is Ali Dirany, who helped coordinate some of the rally’s logistics.

“You can call me romantic but I want to marry this woman in a healthy environment where she is treated as equally as I am,” Dirany said, turning towards his girlfriend, as the two sat outside a coffee shop off of one of Beirut’s main streets. “Every sort of law in the civil sector is unjust towards women.”

In the two decades following its 15-year civil war, Lebanon has engaged in several economic growth projects and has one of the fastest growing economies in the region. With a population of just over 4 million, it does not suffer the same scale of poverty as its larger Arab neighbors.

The current political structure pits two major camps–one supported by the West and the other backed by Syria and Iran–against each other. Current party heads agree that now is not the time to challenge the system itself.

But with presidents ousted in Tunisia and Egypt, a U.N. “no-fly zone” and military intervention in Libya, a fired cabinet in Yemen and ongoing street-protest-related violence claiming the lives of thousands across the region, every society is feeling the ground shifting.

Beirut has been called the “Paris of the Middle East” since the 1960s for many reasons, including its Mediterranean beaches and culinary pleasures, but never for its revolutionary tendencies.

With help from social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, regional neighbors in upheaval and people on the street eager to claim rights as individuals, that may all change.

Many Lebanese now seem eager to make the most of the revolutionary window that has opened.

“It’s Lebanon’s turn,” said Dirany.

http://womensenews.org/story/the-world/110323/lebanon-protesters-take-aim-at-family-law-system?page=0,1

Young Bengaluru bride dumped for dowry, returns home

A 21-year-old Bengaluru bride, who came to the UAE in July last year, has been forced to return to her home, being dumped by her husband and his family for failing to meet a dowry demand.

 

 

 

Sufina Kaval, a medical health inspector from Bengaluru, said she got married to her husband who worked as a sales executive in Dubai at a grand ceremony in her hometown on April 13, 2010.

But when she arrived in the UAE three months later, the Gulf News quoted her as alleging that her husband constantly harassed and even physically tortured her for dowry, before forcing her to give him a divorce.

“To date, we have spent Rs.3, 500, 000 (Dh285, 000 approximately),” claimed Kaval.

Showing a copy of a letter she wrote to the Consul (Labour and Welfare) at the Indian Consulate, she alleged that her husband was having an affair with another girl and “tortured” her for “dowry” whenever she confronted him about it.

“He kept me locked inside the house without a phone,” she alleged.

“He did not provide me medical help. When I became ill, I took medicines on my own. He took this as an attempt by me to commit suicide and filed for divorce in Dubai Courts,” she alleged, adding, “I was compelled to sign an Arabic paper whose contents I did not understand.”

She said after the divorce, her husband threw her out of his apartment in Sharjah.

“I had nowhere to go. The neighbours came to my rescue,” she said, noting that her parents had also flown in to take her back to India.

“If it had not been for a few friends, including the Indian Association Sharjah and the Indian Consulate, I do not know what would have happened,” she said.

A.K. Bhardwaj, Consul (Consular) of the Indian Consulate, said, “The passport and other belongings of Sufina Kaval were under the custody of her divorced husband. The consulate intervened in the matter and her husband was called to the consulate and asked to hand over her passport and other belongings.”

The consulate also provided Kaval shelter for one night, he said, adding she left for India on March 13.

Kaval said she has now been advised to file a case of dowry harassment against her husband in the Indian courts.

“No woman should suffer the way I did,” she said.

https://ludmilap.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=post

Gay Marriage: Civil Right or Civil Wrong?

Kate and Deeg, April 2004

“We want the abolition of the institution of the bourgeois nuclear family.
We believe that the bourgeois nuclear family perpetuates the false categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality by creating sex roles, sex definitions and sexual exploitation. The bourgeois nuclear family as the basic unit of capitalism creates oppressive roles of homosexuality and heterosexuality….It is every child’s right to develop in a non-sexist, non-racist, non-possessive atmosphere which is the responsibility of all people, including gays, to create.”
–“Third World Gay Liberation Manifesto,” New York City (circa 1970)

“The struggle for civil rights within the context of this society can, at best, result in second class status and toleration by a wretched straight society. The struggle for democratic or civil rights assumes that the system is basically okay, and that its flaws can be corrected through legal reform….We demand the right of all lesbians and gay men, and children to live in the manner we choose.”
–“Gay Liberation, Not Just Gay Rights!” LAGAI, Lavender Left (Los Angeles) and Lesbian and Gay Liberation and Solidarity Committee (New York), 1987

A specter is haunting Amerikkka.

The specter of gay marriage.

Every few years, it seems, we have a new wave of push and counterpush on the marriage issue, and we are always in the same unpleasant position. We demand all civil rights for queer people.

But marriage isn’t a civil right. It’s a civil wrong.

Just because George W., Pete KKKnight and the KKKristian RRRight don’t want us to get married, doesn’t mean we have to want to.

In 1996, we held our legendary First Ever Mass Gay Divorce on Castro Street, where a good time was had by all at the dish breaking booth and the Go Your Separate Ways Travel Agency. At that time, we wrote the following flier (remember that great Toaster Head graphic):

“Remember us? We are lesbians and gay men, the people who choose love, and sex, over societal acceptance, over physical security, over the almighty buck.

“We pursue our love into the cities and towns where we find each other. What a wonderful variety of relationships we have – from anonymous or casual sex in baths, bathrooms and beaches, to long-term monogamy and everything (and everyone) in between. We say, “the state can’t tell us who, or how, to love.” We say, “Get your laws off my body.” So how exactly does that become a plea to the state to marry us? Will having state-defined relationships make us better lovers? It hasn’t done much for hets.

“We always thought that one of the good things about being a lesbian, or gay man, is that you don’t have to get married. Many of us have parents who are or were married, and really, it’s nothing to write home about.

“The heterosexual nuclear family is the most dangerous place to be. A woman is beaten every 15 seconds. One girl in three is sexually molested by the time she reaches maturity. According to the National Coalition to Prevent Child Abuse, one million children were abused last year, and 1,000 were killed. 46 percent of the murdered children were not yet one year old.

“We’re here today because we were lucky enough to survive these odds.

When our gay leaders talk about how gay marriage will support the institution of marriage in this society, we have to agree. We would oppose it for this reason alone. It is interesting that while assimilationists clamor for gay marriage, the right wing is trying to hold straight marriages together by eliminating no-fault divorce. Strange bedfellows?

“Gay marriage might give some married gay people access to health care, tax breaks, and immigration rights. But shouldn’t our community be fighting for us all to have access to health care, whatever our “marital status?” The same for immigration. Somehow, in these right-wing times, money, goods, and jobs are free to flow across the border, but not people. Shouldn’t everyone be able to live where they want to, who made these borders anyhow? And why should any married people pay less taxes? What assimilationist gays are really asking is that the heterosexuals share some of their privilege with queers who want to be like them.

“There is a basic conflict here, between those who see the gay movement as a way to gain acceptance in straight society, and lesbians and gay men who are fighting to create a society in our own image. A decent and humane society where we can be free. We do not want the crumbs from this society’s table, and we are not fighting for a place at it. We want to overturn the fucking table.

Assimilation is NOT liberation”

We couldn’t have said it better. Oh, yeah, we did say it.

The origins of the LGBTQ movement are revolutionary. The rebellions at Stonewall and San Francisco City Hall were led by drag queens and butches who rejected heterosexual roles and restrictions, who were inspired by the revolutionary example of the Black Panthers and the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH). Now, some of the same people who participated in those fabulous outpourings of anti-establishment rage tripped over each other on the way to City Hall to have their love blessed by gavin newsom, successor to dan white and dianne feinstein, darling of the developers, persecutor of the homeless, and cause of Gay Shame getting beaten and busted by the cops on more than one occasion.

For many older lesbian and gay couples, who recall the days when they could not go to a bar without fear, the chance for official sanction of their love feels like a chance for acceptance after a lifetime of oppression. We respect their choice. But we continue to demand that we honor all our relationships, not just the ones that mimic straight capitalist society.

We remind queer people everywhere that we did not survive the early days of the AIDS epidemic because of the relationships between one man and one man, but because of the strong love of our communities: the health care teams of gay men, lesbians, fag hags and chosen families who spent days and weeks hanging around the ICUs of Kaiser and PPMC, refusing to leave when told “family only,” fighting bitterly with biological family members who showed up trying to cram their loved ones into a box and whisk them back to Iowa or New Jersey to be buried with crosses or tallises.

According to a 2004 General Accounting Office report, there are 1,138 federal rights and responsibilities that are automatically accorded to married people. Why should we fight for 1,138 rights for some people, instead of all rights for all people? If Freedom To Marry and the Human Rights Campaign Fund (of course, what can you expect from the folks who brought you the equals sign?) put the resources they have already spent on the “right” to get married into fighting for health coverage for all residents of this rich country (not “virtually all Americans” as “promised” by future president john kerry) and housing for all the queer youth kicked out by their families and living on the streets, we would have a much better world by now.

Every so-called communist organization in town is suddenly joining the battle cry for marriage. Huh? Have they forgotten their Engels? It is testimony to the fundamental homophobia of the left, that they are only comfortable fighting for the most puritan of queer rights. Where were they when the bathhouses were being closed? The left has never recognized queer liberation as the truly revolutionary movement that it is. It is time they did.

The right wingers say marriage is a sacred religious institution. We agree. The state has no business getting involved in religious institutions, from sanctioning personal unions to legislating what schoolgirls should wear on their heads (though we don’t really recommend the toasters).

Of course, we too will be fighting to defeat the anti-queer marriage amendments. How can we not? But we resent having to do it, and we will not allow it to distract us from our real needs: equality, justice, self-determination and self-actualization for ALL. Just because you are not someone’s significant other, does not mean you are insignificant.

More classic anti-nuclear family articles:

United We Fall, June 2000

Speech at the American Sociology Association, August 2004

Racism, Marriage and the Queer Community, November 2008

http://www.lagai.org/gaymarriage.htm

Paying to become ‘like a virgin’ in China

BEIJING – Despite the gradual liberalization of attitudes towards pre-marital sex in China, as well as rampant prostitution and Internet pornography – a woman’s virginity is still highly valued by many men here, especially in rural areas.

So what’s a girl trying to disguise her past sexual experience to do?

Pretend to be a virgin.

Search the words “artificial hymen” on Google in Chinese, and you’ll get seven million results. Search “Joan of Arc Red,” and you’ll get over a million results – it’s the biggest selling brand in China’s growing fake hymen market.

Try to appear ‘shy’ for ‘a better effect’
A young woman looking for a solution to her awkward problem can simply log onto the website www.xuexing.org and pay $18.40 for two fake hymens nicely packed in a wooden box.  For $14.40, the same products come simply wrapped in a paper box.

The website says the goods were first invented in Japan in 1993 and then became popular in Thailand, followed by the rest of Southeast Asia before eventually making their way to the Middle East.

According to the instructions, the little piece of semitransparent tissue has no side effects and is made of a natural fibrin glue, a medical elastic substance, a soluble base and carboxymethocel.

“After you put this into the vagina, it’ll dissolve and expand. Have sex in about 20 to 30 minutes, and you’ll ‘bleed’,” explains the instructions.  “A better effect will be reached if you appear to be shy and in pain.”

Circumventing tradition
I first learned about this product through an anonymous text message that read, “Joan of Arc Red, no surgery, no injections, no pain, and it will re-virginize you in just a few minutes.”  I logged onto the website, and an online service agent began chatting with me immediately.

Refusing to tell me how many packs they sell on a daily basis because, the agent said, it’s a business secret, he was frank about the vast market for their product.  “A lot of new graduates buy them before they get married,” he wrote. “So do some prostitutes who want to get a better price from their customers.”

A few decades ago, it was commonplace for husbands to expect to see tell-tale red marks on their wedding night. But despite the fact that China is much less conservative today than it used to be, many brides are still judged the same way.

Bo Gu / NBC News 

A photo of “Joan of Arc Red” on the product’s website.

Lian Yue, a well-known columnist with “Shanghai Weekly,” has been giving love advice for ten years. He says a large number of his befuddled male readers tell him about their disappointment when they find out their girlfriends have had sexual experiences before them.  He also hears quite often from women concerned about losing their virginity to Mr. Wrong.

“The Chinese women’s social status is still low, and some of the husbands value wives for having their hymens intact,” said Lian. “This doesn’t necessarily just exist in rural areas. Some urban people have the same idea.”

Reconstructive surgery is an option
If the woman is well-off and prefers a more secure camouflage, surgery is an option to make her feel like a true virgin again.

Li Weifan, deputy president of the Beijing Wuzhou Women’s Hospital, spoke to NBC News quite openly about the “hymen reconstruction” they offer as one of their plastic surgery services.

“Around 10 to 20 percent of our patients come here for plastic surgeries like liposuction or breast implant,” she said.  “Some girls – a lot them are newly graduated college students – regret their previous sex life and come here to regain their virginity before they get married.”

Li said the hospital schedules a few surgeries every month, and the patients’ recovery time is about one month. The surgeries cost from $450 to 1,000. Due to privacy issues and the fact that many of the surgeries are done in private clinics, there are no official statistics on how many re-virginization surgeries are performed in China annually. However women’s hospitals like Wuzhou have become popular in China with young, affluent women because they can enjoy better service and greater privacy than in public hospitals.

Although the fake hymen product instructions claim there are no side effects, gynecologists do warn that it could cause infections. Doctors also warn that surgery induced fake hymens could rupture if the girls engage in physical exercise like riding a bike.

Despite the risks, becoming a virgin in a few minutes is not just a dream in China.  The easy-to-operate fake hymens are also used by women in the Middle East, where pre-marital sex still has a strong social stigma.

In Syria, an artificial hymen can be bought for $15 on the black market by girls who can’t afford to have hymen reconstruction surgery performed in underground clinics.  In 2009, a prominent religious leader in Cairo called for severe punishment of any person who facilitates the sale of artificial hymens, deeming it an immoral and corrupt act.

“It’s really not necessary at all to fake being a virgin, unless you have been raped and this really provides some comfort,” said Wang Xiaoyuan, a young editor in the Beijing office of Bazaar magazine.  “Women have no duty to keep their virginity before getting married.  If my boyfriend had a virgin complex, I’d absolutely find another guy. I think in the name of no discrimination in China, the difference between male and female does not get the respect it deserves.”

Ladies Lock and Load: American Women Buying More Guns

EW YORK – Women are gaining on men in the purchase of firearms for hunting and personal defense, according to the NRA and others. Thousands of women are learning how to shoot—and going hunting together, reports Shushannah Walshe.

When Gina York married an avid hunter six years ago, she tried going out with him, but said it “just wasn’t fun,” because men “are so serious about getting the buck, getting the prize,” and she didn’t learn the skills she needed to enjoy herself. That all changed last year when she joined DIVA…WOW (Women Outdoors Worldwide), a shooting and hunting group for women only.

“The first clinic I had attended was last fall and I had never shot a shotgun before,” York said. “When you are starting to do some of these shooting sports, it’s very frustrating, and they are very good with support and teaching you the proper way to use your firearms.” On her first big hunt with the Divas, as she calls them, she bagged not one, but two deer. She said the DIVA women were happy and supportive and her family ate the venison she brought home. Her husband, she joked, was “jealous.”

Hunting isn’t just mostly for men anymore. Gina York is just one of the many women flooding the firearms market, including some picking up a hunting rifle for the first time. It may seem surprising to the non-gun-toting women in America, but women are packing heat in increased numbers—for personal defense as well as hunting. The market is focusing on the female demographic in a way it never has before. And it’s working: In addition to buying firearms, more and more women are purchasing accessories made specifically for them, and going out with other female hunters in record numbers.

York bought accessories for her weaponry, and hunting clothes tailored for women—she even snagged a leopard-print rifle case for Christmas. And she said hunting with women is very different from being in a male hunting group. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, you got one and I didn’t.’ They were just so happy that I did, even though some of them did not come home with anything,” she explained.

Attendance at the National Rifle Association’s shooting clinics for women, called “Women on Target,” has increased 20 percent. Diane Danielson, coordinator of the clinics, said that last year the clinics taught more than 10,000 women to shoot. That number doesn’t even include other programs the NRA sponsors for women, including self-defense classes and overnight hunting trips.

 

Some gun products for women are more extravagant. One woman saved for three years to buy a Swarovski scope for her firearm.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation keeps track of the increase among women purchasing firearms. In 2009, the last year for which the foundation has statistics available, gun-store owners reported a 73 percent increase in female customers. And while women were using the guns for hunting—there was a 28.5 percent increase in firearms bought for that purpose—the number of women buying guns for personal defense also increased 83.2 percent.

Those numbers reflect what many of the women in Danielson’s shooting clinics have told her. “Many of them find themselves alone for the first time in their lives. Some are widows, some are single mothers, some are just looking for a way to protect themselves, and this is why they’ve come to the program to learn to shoot,” Danielson said.

The National Sporting Goods Association, which also tracks hunting statistics, says more women than men took up hunting in 2009. The number increased by 5.4 percent from the previous year, adding 163,000 new female hunters. The NSGA also reports a 20 percent increase in the number of women taking up firearms for hunting or any target shooting activity in 2009. That’s 6.42 million women, up from 5.35 million three years earlier.

“You don’t have the men-only shooting stigma that was there for so many years; the good-old-boys clubs have long disappeared,” Danielson said. “The club managers and the board of directors have realized in order to continue to grow the sport we love, the biggest audience is women.”

At the NRA’s annual meeting next month in Pittsburgh, 40 women will participate in a pistol-instructor training course for women only. Over the course of three days, women will learn what it takes to teach other women to shoot.

Kirstie Pike founded Prois, a women’s hunting-clothing brand, four years ago, and has had 100 percent growth every year. Just this year, she’s had a whopping 600 percent increase in sales from the same time last year. Women used to have to borrow their husband’s hand-me-downs or buy children’s sizes, but not anymore.

“I think a lot of dealers historically have been pretty slow to move into the women’s market, not really sure how much is going to roll,” Pike said, describing sales. “And I think they are finding out that it really does roll and they are starting to be more willing to invest in that, because women do buy it. And if they make a quality product, they [women] will pay for whatever they need.”

Lighter guns with special hand grips made specifically for women are on the shelves, but Danielson cautions women to choose the weapon that’s right for them. “So many times a loved one will say, ‘Oh, yeah, you need to get this big .44. It will really knock them down.’ But then they realize they can’t handle a firearm that big, and we tell them they don’t need one that big. It’s more important that they have one that fits them and they are confident shooting, rather than one that is big and scary,” she said.

Peggy Tarturo, executive editor of Women and Guns magazine, has seen the market change over the publication’s 25 years. “You’ll see guns scaled down in terms of grips more attractive for women. Average women tend to be smaller, and so especially with a long gun, you’ll notice between a gun that didn’t fit you and a gun that did,” she said.

Plenty of products are aimed at women aesthetically, but they are not to every female hunter’s taste. Pike said “the pink stuff” isn’t for her. There are pink ammo rifles, pink shotguns, and even purses specifically designed for women with conceal-carry permits. John Castillo, spokesman for the sporting-goods chain Cabela’s, says his store carries pink pistol cases and even bedazzled camouflaged hats. It’s not something one might have seen a few years ago, but Castillo says the chain is “embracing” the female hunter.

And some products are much more extravagant. Judy Rhodes, the founder of DIVA…WOW (Women Outdoors Worldwide), said she saved for three years to buy a new Swarovski scope. “I always tell women, buy the best you can because you are only making that one-time investment,” she said.

Rhodes says her Texas-based group is the largest women’s-only outdoors organization in the world and that it “empowers women” by teaching them hunting and shooting skills. “For every one woman we introduce to the outdoors, she brings seven. And men will just stick with the same hunting partner for 70 years,” she said. “Women, we love the camaraderie, we love to cheer each other on. We love the success.”

And, now that Gina York has trained with the Divas, will she venture out with her husband? “I probably will,” she said. “I do feel like I can stand up to him and say, ‘No. This is the way I learned, and my way is just as good as your way.’”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/dailybeast/20110312/ts_dailybeast/12858_numberofuswomenbuyinggunsforhuntingandpersonaldefensespikessharply_1

HRW: Chechen women abused if refuse to cover head

GROZNY, Russia – The cars pull up in broad daylight. Security forces point guns at terrified women and shoot. It turns out they’re paintball pellets, but still harsh punishment in Chechnya for leaving home without a headscarf.

Chechnya’s strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has imposed an Islamic dress code on women, and his feared security forces have used paintball guns, threats and insults against those refusing to obey. In a 40-page report released Thursday, Human Rights Watch condemned the campaign as a flagrant violation of women’s rights and urged other nations to raise the issue with Moscow.

“The enforcement of a compulsory Islamic dress code on women in Chechnya violates their rights to private life, personal autonomy, freedom of expression, and freedom of religion, thought, and conscience,” the report said.

“It is also a form of gender-based discrimination prohibited under international treaties to which Russia is a party.”

Kadyrov rules with the support of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who has counted on him to stabilize the mostly Muslim region in southern Russia after two separatist wars in the last 16 years. Russian authorities have turned a blind eye to the treatment of women and other rights abuses in Chechnya.

Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of women who have experienced or witnessed attacks or harassment for their refusal to adhere to the Islamic dress code.

One of the victims, identified as Louiza, told the rights group that she and a friend were attacked while walking down Putin Avenue in Grozny on a hot day last June, wearing skirts a little below the knee, blouses with sleeves a bit above the elbow and no headscarves. Suddenly a car without a license plate pulled up, its side window rolled down and a gun barrel pointed at them.

“I thought the gun was real and when I heard the shots I thought: ‘This is death,'” she recalled in the report. “I felt something hitting me in the chest and was sort of thrown against the wall of a building.

“The sting was awful, as if my breasts were being pierced with a red-hot needle, but I wasn’t fainting or anything and suddenly noticed some strange green splattering on the wall and this huge green stain was also expanding on my blouse.”

The 25-year-old woman said her friend was hit on her legs and stumbled to the ground. Men dressed in the black uniform of Kadyrov’s security forces looked out of the car’s windows, laughing and sneering.

“It’s only at home that I could examine the bruise and it was so huge and ugly,” Louiza recalled. “Since then, I don’t dare leave home without a headscarf.”

Another target, a 29-year-old woman whose name was not given, said she was walking down the same central avenue in June with two other women, all without headscarves, when two cars stopped nearby and bearded men in black uniforms fired paintball guns at them, screaming: “Cover your hair, harlots!”

The woman told Human Rights Watch that she knows 12 women who were shot at with paintball guns in June. Overall, at least 50 or 60 women were targeted, the rights group said.

Threatening leaflets also appeared on the streets of Grozny, warning women that those who fail to wear headscarves could face “more persuasive measures.” The women interviewed by Human Rights Watch interpreted that as a threat to use real weapons.

Kadyrov’s security force has been blamed by rights activists for abductions, torture and extrajudicial killings in Chechnya.

In July 2009, the director of the Chechen office of Russia’s Memorial rights group, was abducted near her home in Grozny and found shot to death along a roadside a few hours later. Natalya Estemirova had publicly criticized the Islamic dress campaign as a violation of Russian law, angering Kadyrov who had threatened her with repercussions.

A few weeks after the paintball shootings, Kadyrov told local television that he was ready to give awards to the men who carried out the attacks and that the targeted women deserved the treatment. There was no response from the federal authorities.

The paintball attacks ended in mid-June, having achieving Kadyrov’s objective. The majority of women are now too scared to enter the center of Grozny without headscarves or dare to complain against the “virtue campaign.”

At Chechen State University in Grozny this week, all females students wore headscarves and, toeing the official line, defended the practice as part of local tradition and a sign of respect for Islam.

“The headscarf is part of our religion, part of our faith,” said Seda Sabarova, 18.

Kadyrov also scoffed at criticism of his effort to enforce an Islamic dress code, telling foreign reporters that headscarves make women beautiful.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110310/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_chechen_dress_code_4

Move to counter triple talaq, halala

LUCKNOW: A group of over 200 Muslim women got out of their kitchens last Sunday afternoon in a silent determination to fight for justice in their marital rights. From across Lucknow and outside too, they came together in a cramped hall to move towards justice, en force.

Face partially hidden by a tightly wound dupatta, Afzal Bano seems too docile to be revolutionary, much like the other women. The group looks near identical, especially in their body language — defiant yet unsure — that the bright salwar suits and chador can barely mask. Afzal calls on the women to fight for justice. “Hame Musalman khawateen ke liye insaf chahhiye (we want justice for Muslim women),” she declares boldly, looking for assurance towards Shaista Ambar, president of All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board.

Ambar, who broke away from All India Personal Law Board to form her splinter women’s group is a known iconoclast. After launching a feminist nikahnama two years ago, which makes registration of Muslim marriage compulsory, her followers expect her to take on the contentious issue of triple talaq, halala and dowry next.

In the past five years, Ambar and her followers have helped women like Rabia T (name changed). Rabia is thankful to Ambar for having saved her from “submitting to the indignity of Halala”, the tradition which demands that if a repentant husband wants to remarry his divorced wife, she will have to be another man’s wife first before a final comeback. Tina M, whose doctor husband pronounced talaq over a telephone, tackled the indignity via the forum.

Triple Talaq pronounced in a fit of rage, under influence of liquor etc without observing the ‘iddat’ or counselling is against Islam, Ambar tells the group and everyone nods in unison.

Tell this to the maulvis, says Samna R. Deserted wife of an air force pilot, Samna, from Chandigarh, has been contesting a maintenance claim in Lucknow court. Her husband bought talaq from a local maulvi and refuses to pay maintenance. But, she is determined to fight on, she tells others. Reshma, Nafeesa, Fatima, Sayeeda, Naznin, the number of young wives betrayed and dumped is swelling by the minute.

Syeda, whose husband bought a fake talaqnama for Rs 500, went to a senior cleric to lodge a complaint. But his response was ‘Allah saza dega unko’ (God will punish him). The middle-aged Syeda doesn’t want to wait. “I want justice while living,” she fumes, adding, “Let him cough up my meher money, so my son can set up a tea stall.”

These women are attempting to move towards a “progressive interpretation of Shariat as against the chauvinist approach of Maulvi to be enshrined in the Constitution,” says Ambar. The message is clear, in bold red on their banner, ‘Anchal hamara hai, Parcham Bhi Hamara Hoga’ that roughly translates to ‘The veil our banner, we will fly the flag (of justice).’

Bad girls: An investigation into a new breed of U.K. young women

{gotta wade through quite a bit of ideology here but the article is worth reading}

Recently, a former armed robber offered to show me how teenage girls are moving in on the drugs market.

As we stood on a city street corner, he dialled a number and asked the person who replied if they had ‘a little ting’  for him — street slang for a parcel  of drugs.

Within minutes, a slim and pretty girl, aged no more than 15, had appeared at our side.

She was discussing the proposed drugs deal with crisp efficiency when a boy of about 14 drove past on a motorbike. Suddenly, his head snapped back to look at us.

He’d clearly heard my companion’s raised voice as he haggled over the price of the drugs.

The boy immediately pulled his bike round and started revving loudly, raising his front wheel off the ground. He was still doing it as we left.

My companion explained: ‘This little girl is not working for no one. She’s the brains and the boy’s her muscle.’

He admitted he was astonished —  even envious — of the ‘success’ girls like this were enjoying as drug dealers on his estate.

‘They’ve got money on them all the time. They always dress sharp. They may be only 14 or 15, but they never wear the same trainers more than two days in a row.’

Our experience on a North London street corner is no aberration — it’s symptomatic of what’s happening all over the country.

While criminal offences by young men have fallen, those committed by girls aged 10 to 17 have increased by 25 per cent over the past three years.

Worse still, their violent offences have gone up by a staggering 50 per cent.

According to the latest government statistics, one in four violent attacks now involves a female. This means that, in 2008, more than half a million assaults were either carried out by women or involved a female in a gang.

In the same year, there were nearly 300 attacks a week carried out by girls under 18. Yet society remains preoccupied by male crime, and it’s still  struggling to catch up with these new kids on the block.

Who thinks to warn their children to watch out for the girls? I certainly didn’t.

Then, one day after school, a female stranger walked up to my then 14-year-old daughter outside London’s Hammersmith Tube station and slapped her hard across the face, before running off laughing



While criminal offences by young men have fallen, those committed by girls aged 10 to 17 have increased by 25 per cent over the past three years.

Worse still, their violent offences have gone up by a staggering 50 per cent.

According to the latest government statistics, one in four violent attacks now involves a female. This means that, in 2008, more than half a million assaults were either carried out by women or involved a female in a gang.

In the same year, there were nearly 300 attacks a week carried out by girls under 18. Yet society remains preoccupied by male crime, and it’s still  struggling to catch up with these new kids on the block.

Who thinks to warn their children to watch out for the girls? I certainly didn’t.

Then, one day after school, a female stranger walked up to my then 14-year-old daughter outside London’s Hammersmith Tube station and slapped her hard across the face, before running off laughing.

Attack: Ruby Thomas and Rachael Burke, right, whose violence was likened to ‘a scene from the film Clockwork Orange’

It was the kind of petty yobbery once associated almost solely with boys. But times have changed.

In Newcastle upon Tyne, I paid a visit to a state secondary school that reserves a special classroom for badly-behaved teenagers.

I was hoping to interview teenage boys at the time, and asked if I could go to the ‘sin bin’ to meet some.

The teacher was apologetic: that morning, every single occupant of the sin bin was a girl. Grimacing, he said: ‘They’re worse than the boys now.’

The courts bear this out. In April last year, two attractive 17-year-olds, Ruby Thomas and Rachael Burke, went on trial for attacking a man in Trafalgar Square, in the centre of London. Their male companion had knocked him down because he was gay.

The girls then kicked him in the head and stamped on his chest. He later died of brain damage. They also repeatedly punched in the face a man who tried to intervene.

Thomas, who’d attended the £12,000-a-year Sydenham High School for Girls, joked about their vicious attack the next day on Facebook. One onlooker likened the level of the girls’ violence to ‘a scene from the film Clockwork Orange’.

Then there was the case of a teenage girl gang from East London, calling itself Girls Over Men, which decided to punish a 16-year-old girl for disrespecting the gang leader’s mother.

Several of its members abducted the girl at knifepoint and took her to an alley, where they slashed the clothes from her body. One whipped her with a belt while another took photos on a mobile phone.

Jailing these girls, Judge William Kennedy said the attack was ‘ferocious, deliberate and chilling’.

Hand in hand with violence and gang culture is the high rate of teenage pregnancy.

Sadly, as this series will make clear, becoming a teenage mother or beating up a passer-by turn out to be part and parcel of the same problem.

Over the past ten months, I have interviewed girls all around the country to find out what’s triggering such extreme behaviour.

What was striking is that nearly every violent teenage girl I met could trace her problems back to an absent or abusive father.

All reported overwhelming feelings of rage and a sense of powerlessness. And many had turned to gangs to fill the vacuum left by their fathers.

Inner city: Violence by a girl is often seen by her peers as a sign of strength 

Candace, a gang member on an estate in Brixton, South London, was typical. Flashily dressed in black boots, a brown leather jacket and huge gold hoop earrings, she was 18 and already the mother of a three-year-old boy.

Her father, she said, hadn’t been around when she was growing up.

‘I wouldn’t have needed to go out looking for someone if my dad had loved me,’ she said.

So she increasingly turned to her gang for support and comradeship — winning approval by giving in to their demands for sex.

‘I thought I had to be accepted, so I slept with them. When a boy wanted me, it made me feel special. Oh my gosh, it became a really big thing.’

After giving birth to one boy’s child — though ‘I smoked so much weed I thought I was going to lose my baby’ — she was thinking of putting her baby into care.

But then — in a telling example of the way these gangs become surrogate families — the leader, a boy known as Tuggy Tug who’d been in care himself, persuaded her to keep the baby. Candace then sought help from the whole gang.

‘I said to them: “I can’t do this on my own. You need to be here.” And they have been here, straight.’

When the Government’s Sure Start scheme failed to pay out the £500 all pregnant teenagers are supposed to receive, Tuggy Tug bought Candace a buggy and another member bought a cot.

As for the baby’s father, who no longer wants to know her, ‘they sorted him out and beat him up for not helping’.

Another gang member, Crystall, who’d been arrested for hiding a gun for a boyfriend, told me: ‘I do know my father, but he’s got a lot of other kids.

‘He gave me a little £20 here and there, but he was never there for me. I was desperate for anything that felt like love.’

A third, when asked why she’d joined a boy gang and become a single mother, said: ‘It’s because I needed a father to be complete.’

Numerous studies both here and in the U.S. have shown that a sense of abandonment after a divorce or separation can stunt girls emotionally. Without a father’s love and attention, and a sense that they’re valued, young girls tend not to thrive.

They’re more likely to have sex earlier, to become single mothers and to fail to form or maintain relationships. From a young age, they’ll aggressively seek attention from men. As one study poignantly put it, they are ‘clumsily erotic’.

The explosion in single mothers means that far more girls than before are growing up without a father.

Four out of ten children born in 2000 to single mothers had no contact at all with their fathers by 2003.

This means we’re going to see increasing numbers of these fatherless girls joining gangs and becoming violent.

Girls need gangs for the same reasons boys do. They join them because they’re afraid — often because there’s no one else to protect them on a dangerous estate or in a poorly disciplined school.

Sky and Ebony are both 15-year-old members of a girls-only gang — a growing phenomenon.

When I met them, they were dressed almost identically in baggy jeans, heavy, metal belts and large hoop earrings, and both had their hair scraped back in ponytails.

Like Candace, Sky relies emotionally on her gang. Referring to the older members, she said: ‘The elders look after me. They give me that love and care my mum never did.’

Ebony pitched in: ‘They’re the only ones who see me as a person. Everyone else — teachers, my nan — treats me like scum.’

When Sky was harassed by an older boy, there was no question of turning to a parent for help. ‘The first person I called was my elder. She’s 18 and it’s more like I’m her little sister than her friend.’

Her elder sorted the boy out. Sky went on: ‘If I was raped, I know my gang would be there for me. They’d chase him down. I trust the gang more than I do the police to bring the person to justice.’

None of the young people I interviewed saw the adult world as there to support them. Yet both Sky and Ebony agreed that if there were adults around they could trust, they wouldn’t have to rely so much on their gang.

Despite the risks of being involved in crime, drugs and violence, Sky was adamant that she’d stay in her gang. Why? ‘Because it makes me feel wanted and protected.’

In other words, what most children expect from their parents.

Sky had joined a girl gang because of what happened to her cousin, who’d been recruited by the local boy gang.

Her cousin hid their weapons, carried their drugs and, whenever they felt like sex, dropped whatever she was doing to oblige.

At 14, her cousin agreed to take part in ‘a line-up’ — the gang term for a group of boys lining up for oral sex. But when she arrived at the house, there were eight boys rather than the three she’d expected.

She burst into tears and refused, but the boys slapped her into submission. ‘She thought she was getting respect,’ said Sky. ‘She wasn’t getting any love at home, so she thought that was love.’

Sky flicked her ponytail and sniffed. ‘Now they’re tired of sleeping with her, so she sleeps with other men for drugs and food. It’s pathetic. I don’t want to be like her.’

Many youth organisations are concerned about the rise of sexual violence towards girls in boy gangs and the way it’s accepted by even the very young. But these girls have often grown up in violent homes. To them, such treatment can seem normal.

The latest shocking figures from the British Crime Survey show that rapes of 13-year-old girls increased by 15 per cent in 2009/10.

Rapes of girls under 16 rose by 19 per cent. At the same time, sexual activity involving a child under 16 has shot up by 20 per cent.

In fact, the true figures are probably much higher, as many sexual crimes in gangs go unreported.

This brutal sexual culture is reinforced in music, as I witnessed for myself when I took three boys, all members of the same South London gang, to the Imperial War Museum a few months ago.

While we waited for one to finish admiring a Second World War tank, the other two started singing lyrics from their favourite ‘grime’ music.

‘In this neighbourhood, ugly bitches don’t get the time of day,’ rapped one. ‘I want to let out my anger,’ broke in the other, ‘yes, squeezing your breasts so hard might let out the cancer.’

When I remonstrated, they looked amazed. It hadn’t occurred to either of them that the lyrics might be offensive.

So it’s not surprising that girls like Sky and Ebony prefer to join girl gangs. Apart from the sex factor, though, they’re very similar to boy gangs — a forum for crime and violence.

‘In recent years, girls have seen the status and power given to male gang members and decided they want some of that,’ says Dr Funke Baffour, a clinical psychologist.

‘Being in a gang boosts the morale of these girls — many of whom are from broken homes without a mother or father figure.’

The girls are being lured into a life where senseless violence earns them respect. Often, they earn their membership with a random violent act, then compete for position by committing increasingly brutal crimes.

Mike Fisher, a leading anger management psychotherapist who visits inner-city schools, says that — even in the classroom — violence by a girl is often seen by her peers as a sign of strength.

‘The girls we’re dealing with in schools are increasingly physically aggressive,’ he said. ‘They’re tired of being pushed around by boys and they’re fighting back — just not in the right way.’

The charity Parentline Plus recently reported that half of its calls are from parents distressed by their daughters’ ‘extreme verbal and physical aggression’.

To find out more, I arranged to meet Dimples, the leader of a girl gang who has acquired a string of convictions.

As I waited for her outside a McDonald’s, a black girl walked past dressed in baggy jeans, trainers, a cap and heavy chains looped from her pocket to her waistband.

‘Are you Dimples?’ I asked. She looked at me as if I was mad.

‘I’m an art school student,’ she told me.

A plump, white girl in a polo neck and court shoes turned her head towards me. ‘Dimples? That’s me.’

Dimples is one of seven children, has two parents and went to a Catholic school where she did well until the age of 14, when she was arrested for assault and robbery. What happened?

‘I was very confrontational,’ she admitted over a strawberry milkshake. Her teachers wound her up, she claimed, and when she was suspended for a week, she thought: ‘You know what, let’s not bother.’

To begin with, the girls she hung around with weren’t officially a gang — but Dimples found herself acting as a gang leader when one of them was assaulted.

The victim, who’d just started at sixth-form college, had asked her friends for help. So they caught a bus to the college and tracked down the girl who’d hit their friend.

As Dimples squared up to the attacker, her friends were jeering and urging her on.

‘The main reason I hit her was to look big in front of my girls,’ she said.

‘I hit her in her head, grabbed her, got her on the floor, then punched her and stamped on her face.’

That was the first of many such episodes. Dimples explained: ‘When you’re in a gang, it’s hard to say no because you don’t want to look like an idiot. There are certain things you can’t say no to.’

With her gang of about ten teenage girls, she started ambushing professional women returning from an evening out and stealing money and jewellery.

Dimples admits she didn’t really need the money. It was the violence that attracted her, partly because it helped discharge her anger.

‘I did enjoy it. I wanted respect and it gives you this power. I knew what I was doing. I felt calm afterwards. I’d light a fag and feel, you know, really good.’

Unlike members of boy gangs, whom I’d interviewed for the Daily Mail a year before, Dimples wanted to share every detail with me.

The assault that landed her in prison was on a well-dressed girl in the street who appeared to Dimples to have glanced at her and four other gang members with disdain.

‘So I just beat her up. She tried to run. I punched her in the face. My friend held her and I punched her some more.

‘She fell to the ground in, like, a second, and me and my friend, we proper beat her up. I stamped on her. We went on punching and kicking her.’

The girl was very badly injured. Four weeks later, the police arrived at Dimples’s door.

‘I got charged with GBH. It wasn’t worth it in the end. Afterwards, I wondered why did I do it? What made me so angry? I went back and said I was sorry.’

At the time, she was revising for her GCSEs, in which she did well — ‘yet I still had time to do all this madness’. What saved her, in the end, was the attitude of other people. ‘People were afraid of me. It makes me seem like a monster — I had to change.’

At 17, Dimples has just had a baby boy. She’s studying to be an accountant and is now living at home with her parents.

‘I want my baby to grow up respecting people — otherwise you end up dying in this area,’ she said stoutly.

If she succeeds in her ambition, Dimples will be an exception. Most gang members, whatever their sex, are headed straight for a dead-end life, in which violence and drug-dealing are commonplace.

But there’s one crucial difference between the future of the girls and the boys. The teenage girls are also the mothers of the next fatherless generation.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1363145/Bad-girls-An-investigation-new-breed-young-women-bit-alienated-violent-brutally-sexualised-worst-male-yob.html#ixzz1G8d5mkYN

Perspectives from Bahrain: Women and the resistance movement

The following interview was conducted with a woman human rights activist in Manama, Bahrain who wished to remain anonymous.

Perspectives from Bahrain

The following interview was conducted with a woman human rights activist in Manama, Bahrain who wished to remain anonymous

In what ways are women participating in the protests in Bahrain?

There are two demonstrations currently taking place in Manama, one is taking place in ’Tahrir Square’ and is composed of a majority of Shi’a, and the other is principally composed of Sunni, who have their own demands. Women are taking part in both protests.

But the real question is what role do women have there?

In Tahir Square, for example, there are thousands of women participating in the demonstrations but they are kept aside. When they arrive at the square, they are asked to go to a corner where women are separated from the rest of the demonstration. This has been the practice in any demonstration in Bahrain since 2001. That is why I personally do not participate in the demonstrations. I don’t believe that women should be put aside.

Among the people on the square, there is no leadership of the youth, leadership is being taken by the religious leaders. Women will be pushed back.

Some women have been injured by tear gas, although not by bullets. As far as I know, there are no women among those taken to hospital and women have not been arrested.

What do you think of the media’s representation of women in the movement?

The media has shown images of women during the demonstrations or sitting down in the square. But nobody talks about women as women. Those who are interviewed about the protests on satellite television channels like Al Jazeera are virtually all men. Women are not considered to play an important role there, and they are certainly not the driving force behind the movement.

Are there any demands relating to women’s rights during the protests?

The political and social demands of the demonstrators do not include women’s rights. The question of women is not present. Nobody, not even the women, demand equality or respect for their civil rights!

It’s important to remember that a few years ago when a women’s movement in Bahrain demanded the enactment of a family law [aiming to protect women’s rights as called for by international conventions], there was another demonstration against it, in which thousands of women participated, opposing the law. Now, at the Lulu Centre [a shopping centre where protesters have been gathering], and in the demonstrations, the majority are those same women who opposed the family law.

The Bahrain Women’s Union has made some demands, for example that there should be women present at any negotiations between the government and the people. They are saying that any reform should make women and their needs a priority.

What are your views on the ongoing events elsewhere in the region? What do you think are the potential implications for women’s rights?

Even in Egypt and Tunisia women’s needs and demands were not a priority during the demonstrations, but the difference is that Tunisia and Egypt have strong women’s movements which can push for women’s rights. In the transitions women must have a role. Women’s needs and equality should be priorities for any government, any revolutionary government in this region.

Here in Bahrain, the movement for women’s rights, especially in terms of calling for equality, is still very weak. In Bahrain the revolution is different from Egypt and Tunisia because there everybody revolted together. In Bahrain, unfortunately, society is split, one part is calling for deep reforms, and the other, although calling for political changes, do not want the political regime and the government to end. I am afraid there may be a civil war. I hope that we do not reach that but the situation here in Bahrain is very serious and the division between the Sunni and Shi’a is becoming increasingly severe.

http://www.fidh.org/Perspectives-from-Bahrain

Photos: Sex workers’ demo in South Africa

Nearly 2% of Japanese girls have eating disorder: poll

Wednesday 02nd March, 05:52 AM JST

TOKYO —

Nearly 2% of female middle school students in Japan were found having eating disorders that require professional help in a survey in 2009 and 2010, according to health ministry data made available to Kyodo News on Tuesday. Gen Komaki who led the ministry’s first full survey on the juvenile health problem said, ‘‘The number of potential sufferers could grow several-fold. The popular trend today that favors dieting could be endangering children.’‘

The survey found that 1.9% of girls and 0.2% of boys have eating disorders and are in need of therapy or advice from doctors who have expertise in both physical and mental health.

Students trying to lose weight often use laxatives, throw up food they have eaten, skip meals and work out excessively, according to the survey led by Komaki, senior researcher with the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry.

In contrast, 3.5% of girls and 1.3% of boys said they took to binge-eating eight times over four weeks or more often.

Female students with the disorder said they tend to stay up late at night or cannot enjoy eating with their families, that they are told by family members to get thinner or that nobody understands their feelings.

The poll results are based on valid responses collected in accordance with international standards from 2,604 girls and 2,557 boys attending 36 junior high schools in Tokyo and its vicinity, and the Chugoku region of western Japan.

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/nearly-2-of-japanese-girls-have-eating-disorder-poll

Hollaback and Blank Noise: Indian feminist responses to sexual harassment

Two feminist groups in India addressing the problem of street sexual harassment.

Blank Noise’s blog statement:

Blank Noise was not a response to a specific event but rather the long term, ongoing, structural problem of street sexual harassment. For another, street interventions started as the main core of Blank Noise and have remained a crucial element despite its prolific online presence. Blank Noise did not start in the Internet nor did it immediately turn to Web 2.0 for its mobilization.

The main blog was created soon after Blank Noise started in 2003 to serve as an archive, information center, and space to announce future street events. The diverse online campaigns, lively discussions in the comment section of blog posts, and abundant blog post contributions by people who have experienced, witnessed, or committed street sexual harassment started after two unexpected events that I call ‘the digital tipping point’.

The first was when Jasmeen Patheja, the founder of Blank Noise, started uploading pictures of her harasser, taken with her mobile phone, to the blog in March 2005. The first picture was of a man who had stalked and pestered her for coffee despite her rejection to his unwelcomed advances. While some readers applauded her action, many challenged the post. How is the action different from “Can I buy you a drink?” Can it trigger the change wanted, especially since the guy might not even have access to the Internet? Is the action of publicly labeling the man as a perpetrator of street sexual harassment ethical, especially since the man has not been proven guilty?

These challenges then spiraled into a long discussion (72 comments!) about the grey areas of street sexual harassment and the ethics around confronting perpetrators. Although Blank Noise still continue to upload snapshots of harassers (this intervention is called ‘Unwanted’), their pictures have since then been blurred until the face is unrecognizable, including the one in the original post. This event was when Jasmeen realized that the blog also has the potential of being a space for discussions, opinions, and debates – the public conversation that Blank Noise aims for.

The second tipping point was when one of Blank Noise volunteers proposed an idea of a blogathon to commemorate the International Women’s Day in 2006. Blogging had become a major trend in India around 2004 and the blogathon basically asked bloggers around India to write about their experience with street sexual harassment in their private blogs and link the post to the Blank Noise blog. The bloggers invited were both women and men, people who have either experienced, witnessed, or committed street sexual harassment. The blogathon was an immense success, perhaps due to the frustration on the silence and downplay of street sexual harassment into eve teasing. Suddenly, eve teasing became a booming topic on the web and Blank Noise received media and (mostly the cyber) public attention.

This is when the idea of online interventions started. In the following year, Blank Noise created the first of its blogs that consist entirely of contributions from the public: the Action Heroes blog, a growing compilation of women’s experiences in dealing with street sexual harassment. It is then followed by Blank Noise Guys and Blank Noise Spectators, which respectively concentrates on the experiences of men and people who have witnessed street sexual harassment. Other than the community blogs, the main blog also introduced collaborative online campaigns in 2008, such as the ‘Museum of Street Weapons’ (a poster project that explores how women uses everyday objects to defend themselves against street sexual harassment) and ‘Blank Noise This Place’ (a photo collection of places where street sexual harassment occurs). These interventions were not only online; they were also collaborative and invited the public to participate.

These tipping points are intriguing not only for being the triggers to Blank Noise’s transformation to one of the most important digital activism in India (Mishra, 2010), but also for the reason why they are successful in doing so: they are able to attract public participation.

The first tipping point was able to attract people to participate by commenting on a post. The said post was very simple; it consists of a picture and a one-paragraph text that depicts a conversation between the harasser and the woman:

“stalker no. 1: ” Excuse me, have we met before?” machlee: no Stalker no. 1: Yes we have! On commercial street! I work in a call centre. I am a science graduate.” machlee: why are you telling me all this? stalker no. 1: can I have coffee with you? machlee: can i photograph you? stalker no. 1: yes! sure you can! stalker no.1: blah blah blah” (Patheja, 2005)

Having been used to NGO pamphlets and blog posts, I have come to equate discussion on sexual harassment as a very serious discussion with long text and formal language. This post is so different from what I was used to, but it was clear to me that even though the language was casual, the issue and intention were serious. The casual presentation spoke to me “we would like to share our thoughts and activities with you” rather than “we are an established organization and this is what we do”. It is not the space of professionals, but passionate people. As a blogger myself, I recognize the space as being one of my peer’s and immediately felt more attracted and comfortable to jump into the conversation.

The second tipping point attracted the more active, substantial participation than commenting; many people actually created texts, photos, or posters for Blank Noise. It was possible because Blank Noise opened itself. Jasmeen opened up to an idea of a volunteer, who opened up to the possibilities offered by the cybersphere. Instead of depending on a core team to conduct an intervention, Blank Noise opened up to a project that entirely depended on the public’s response to be successful. Moreover, Blank Noise opened up to diverse points of views and many types of experiences with street sexual harassment.

It is widely acknowledged that the success of a digital activism lies on its ability to attract public collaboration; however, the digital tipping points of Blank Noise underline several important factors behind the ability. Attracting public engagement is not always a result of a meticulous pre-planned intervention. On the contrary, it might spawn from unintentional events that welcome diverse points of view, adopt a peer-to-peer attitude, invite contributions, and most importantly, touched an issue that is very important for many different people. Web 2.0 is an enabling tool and site for dialogue, but it is certainly not the only reason behind the success of digital activism in galvanizing youth’s engagement.

Check out the blog here:

http://blog.blanknoise.org/

——————————–

And Hollaback! Mumbai‘s statement:

Hollaback is a global movement dedicated to ending street harassment. Street harassment, known in India as ‘eve teasing’ is one of the most pervasive forms of gender-based violence and one of the least legislated against. Leering, whistling, being referred to as food (mirchi, began, tamatar) to groping, flashing and assault are a daily reality for women in India and across the world. Harassment can occur on the train, in parks, maidans, cinema houses, on the street, on university campuses, buying vegetables, anywhere. But such incidents are rarely reported, and are culturally accepted as ‘the price you pay’ for being a woman and living in a city. At Hollaback!, we don’t buy it.

Calling it ‘eve teasing’ trivializes the act; it isn’t teasing, it’s harassment. And sexual harassment on the street is a gateway crime that creates a cultural environment which makes gender-based violence OK. There exists a legal framework to reproach sexual harassment and abuse in the home and at work, but when it comes to the streets—all bets are off. This gap isn’t because street harassment hurts any less, it’s because there hasn’t been a solution. Until now. The explosion of technology in India via the mobile phone and the Internet has given us an unprecedented opportunity to end street harassment—and with it, the opportunity to take on one of the most pressing women’s rights issues today.

By collecting women’s stories and creative expressions through email and mobile phones about their harassment experiences, Hollaback! is creating a safe, crowd-sourced initiative to end street harassment. Hollaback! breaks the silence that has perpetuated sexual violence internationally, asserts that any and all gender-based violence is unacceptable, and creates a world where we have an option—and, more importantly—a response.

Hollaback!MUMBAI is allied with 1298 Women’s Helpline, The Blank Noise Project, Jagori, Akshara and JustFemme.

Here’s their website.

Women rally against “Eve teasing” in S. Asia

Feb 28, 10:45 pm ET

NEW DELHI (AFP) – It sounds almost playful, but “Eve teasing” is a daily torment for many women in South Asia, who are now trying to call time on what they see as a bland euphemism for sustained sexual harassment.

Widely used for decades by the media and police in India and Bangladesh, and to a lesser extent in Nepal and Pakistan, “Eve-teasing” is a catch-all term that encompasses anything from lewd comments to assault.

As a reference to the biblical Eve, women activists argue that it carries an additional offensive inference — that of the woman as “temptress” who was complicit in her own downfall.

“It’s a dismissive term,” said Jasmeen Patheja, founder of an Indian community performance art group called “Blank Noise” that combats the abuse of women in public areas.

“Calling it ‘Eve-teasing’ is actually a denial that it is sexual violence,” she told AFP.

Following a spate of suicides by victims of sexual harassment, activists in Bangladesh successfully petitioned the High Court which ruled in January that the term Eve-teasing belittled the seriousness of the behaviour it described.

“The ruling sent a message to the local media, police and the educational establishment it should be dropped and replaced by appropriate terms like sexual harassment, abuse or stalking,” said Salma Alik, head of the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association.

From January to November 2010, 26 women and one father of a bullied girl committed suicide in Bangladesh, and 10 men and two women were murdered after protesting against sexual harassment, according to a local rights group.

Estimates differ on when the phrase “Eve-teasing” came into common usage, although it appears in newspaper articles dating back to the 1950s and 60s.

There are suggestions that it was appropriated by the media in order to avoid the word “sexual” which might offend sensibilities in culturally conservative countries.

Even though today’s Indian newspapers are laced with sexual references, the usage has persisted — often in headlines to stories which, on closer inspection, detail cases of women being slapped, groped and having their clothes torn off.

As a result, activists say, the common perception of an Eve-teasing incident is often one of young men having some innocent fun at women’s expense.

A recent survey by the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) of 1,000 teenaged boys in Mumbai showed that the overwhelming majority viewed the practise of Eve-teasing as harmless and inoffensive.

The Hollaback! movement — an international e-activism network against street sexual harassment — opened its first Indian branch in Mumbai last month and has begun a campaign to expose the reality behind the euphemism.

“Calling it ‘Eve-teasing’ trivialises the act; it isn’t teasing, it’s harassment,” said Aisha Zakira, Director of Hollaback! in Mumbai.

“And sexual harassment on the street is a gateway crime that creates a cultural environment which makes gender-based violence okay,” Zakira added.

There have long been complaints that police in countries like India and Bangladesh are dismissive of sexual harassment as a serious crime and many argue that this mentality is reinforced by the idea that victims are only being “teased.”

Many incidents go unreported, activists say, because women believe they will simply be courting ridicule and even further harassment.

“Most victims are ashamed to tell even their mothers because they fear being stigmatised,” said Madhumita Das, a senior specialist in ICRW’s Asia regional office in New Delhi.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110301/wl_sthasia_afp/asiawomensocietysexcrime_20110301034634

Former female combatants in northern Sri Lanka face a tough time returning to civilian life

KILINOCHCHI, 23 February 2011 (IRIN) – Former female combatants in northern Sri Lanka face a tough time returning to civilian life, with fewer marriage, education and job prospects due to stigma, say aid workers and activists.

“Former female child soldiers are just not being perceived positively by society,” said Thaya Thiagarajah, a senior official with the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India, noting how cultural and social barriers are the biggest barriers to their smooth reintegration.

Marriage prospects for female former rebels who fought with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are bleak, said Selvanayagam Selvantha, a local aid worker with the same church, located in the former conflict zone.

“Tamil society is very traditional. Parents do not want their sons to marry women ex-fighters,” he added, noting how important marriage is to being accepted in the community.

Stigma will be the biggest hurdle in reintegrating female fighters, said women’s rights activist Sunila Abeysekara, based in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo.

“Women cadres are seen as women who [value] marriage [less because they] took up arms,” she added. As a result, most female ex-combatants are “struggling to find normalcy” due to the weight of such judgment and suspicion.

She estimated there were about 3,000 female former rebels, but could not say how many were single.

“LTTE [was] a violent organization; many in society had suffered because of LTTE. Now LTTE is not there, society is free to express themselves against people who have been linked with LTTE. This problem is common for both men and women [ex-fighters],” Abeysekara said.

But it is women who are criticized most harshly, she noted.

Tamil Tiger separatist rebels waged a decades-long war – declared over in May 2009 – that displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians in northern Sri Lanka.

Female ex-combatants face social stonewalling even at the earliest stages of their return to civilian life, according to Clive Jackniek, a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration senior programme manager with the International Organization for Migration.

“The biggest challenge I faced after returning home was the lack of employment, educational and future options to live a good life,” said Jeya Kamalrajan, 18, who fought with the Tamil Tigers from 2007 to 2009.

“People do not want to hire me because they see me as a bad woman who joined the Tigers… I do not have a lot of plans – I want to live a decent life forgetting everything that happened in my past,” she said.

KILINOCHCHI, 23 February 2011 (IRIN) – Former female combatants in northern Sri Lanka face a tough time returning to civilian life, with fewer marriage, education and job prospects due to stigma, say aid workers and activists.

“Former female child soldiers are just not being perceived positively by society,” said Thaya Thiagarajah, a senior official with the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India, noting how cultural and social barriers are the biggest barriers to their smooth reintegration.

Marriage prospects for female former rebels who fought with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are bleak, said Selvanayagam Selvantha, a local aid worker with the same church, located in the former conflict zone.

“Tamil society is very traditional. Parents do not want their sons to marry women ex-fighters,” he added, noting how important marriage is to being accepted in the community.

Stigma will be the biggest hurdle in reintegrating female fighters, said women’s rights activist Sunila Abeysekara, based in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo.

“Women cadres are seen as women who [value] marriage [less because they] took up arms,” she added. As a result, most female ex-combatants are “struggling to find normalcy” due to the weight of such judgment and suspicion.

She estimated there were about 3,000 female former rebels, but could not say how many were single.

“LTTE [was] a violent organization; many in society had suffered because of LTTE. Now LTTE is not there, society is free to express themselves against people who have been linked with LTTE. This problem is common for both men and women [ex-fighters],” Abeysekara said.

But it is women who are criticized most harshly, she noted.

Tamil Tiger separatist rebels waged a decades-long war – declared over in May 2009 – that displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians in northern Sri Lanka.

Female ex-combatants face social stonewalling even at the earliest stages of their return to civilian life, according to Clive Jackniek, a disarmament, demobilization and reintegration senior programme manager with the International Organization for Migration.

“The biggest challenge I faced after returning home was the lack of employment, educational and future options to live a good life,” said Jeya Kamalrajan, 18, who fought with the Tamil Tigers from 2007 to 2009.

“People do not want to hire me because they see me as a bad woman who joined the Tigers… I do not have a lot of plans – I want to live a decent life forgetting everything that happened in my past,” she said.

Nalini*, 19, from Mullaitivu District, told IRIN she feared the Tamil Tiger “label” would be “stuck” with her for ever.

“I really want to move on – but I am not sure how to in this cultural setting because people distrust me for something I am not.”

 

Christy Martin’s story: boxing champion, survivor of domestic violence

20

Lennox McLendon / AP

FILE – In this March 16, 1996 file photo, three-time world champion Christy Martin of Orlando, Fla., celebrates her victory over Deirdre Gogarty as her husband and trainer Jim Martin holds her up at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas. Just months after being stabbed and shot by her husband, Martin is scheduled to return to the ring on March 12, 2011, and fight Dakota Stone as the first fight on the pay per view card headlined by Miguel Angel Cotto and Ricardo Mayorga.

(02-20) 21:00 PST LAS VEGAS, (AP) —

In Christy Martin’s world everything was pink.

Except the blood. On a March night 15 years ago in a boxing ring on the Las Vegas Strip it was bright red and it was everywhere, gushing from a freshly broken nose and forming a mosaic of stains on Martin’s pink trunks.

The people who had paid thousands to sit at ringside were there to watch Mike Tyson win the heavyweight title against Frank Bruno, not two women fight. But as the blood flowed the cheers started raining down as the unlikely warriors bathed in red traded punches for six rounds before Martin won a unanimous decision.

Tyson would knock Bruno out in the third round that night to win the title for what would be the last time. But those at the MGM Grand arena and watching at home on pay-per-view couldn’t stop talking about the woman in pink who brawled, bled and fought like a man.

A few weeks later she would be on the cover of Sports Illustrated staring defiantly with her gloves on her hips under the heading “The Lady is a Champ.” Promoter Don King penciled her in for Tyson’s next undercard, and the next after that.

“I’ll open the show and Mike will close it,” she boasted.

On fight weeks, fans would mob Martin in the hotel lobby, asking for pictures and autographs. Always at her side were her trainer/husband, Jim Martin, and a 300-pound Elvis wannabe who doubled as her bodyguard.

Comedian Roseanne Barr celebrated with her in the ring. Jay Leno chatted her up on late night TV.

“No one could believe this woman in pink could keep fighting through all that blood,” Martin said. “They thought I’d just lay down and quit.”

What they didn’t know was that the Coalminer’s Daughter would never quit.

Not when she was bloodied in the ring. Not when she was stabbed, shot and left for dead on her bedroom floor.

___

The bullet, doctors told her, missed her heart by four inches. Her lung collapsed twice, and doctors had to work to stitch a calf that had been sliced nearly to the bone.

There was only one thing on Martin’s mind, though — getting back in the ring.

“As soon as I came to, I told my family that I was going to fight again,” she said.

It seemed preposterous. Martin’s career had been in decline for some time and she was 42, an age where reflexes tend to dull for fighters and their skills start to recede.

And while boxing loves a good story, there aren’t many fighters who return to the ring just weeks after being stabbed and shot.

A basketball player in college, Martin discovered boxing by accident in a tough-woman contest in Beckley, W.Va., where her friends urged her into the ring to compete for a $1,000 prize.

She won, only to find out the purse had been cut to $500. That was OK, though, because Martin found out something else — she liked knocking other woman silly.

“That’s the biggest rush there is,” Martin said. “That’s why fighters can’t retire. It’s the worst drug of all.”

She was 21 and working as a substitute teacher in 1990 when a boxing promoter told her about Jim Martin, who trained fighters in Bristol, Tenn. Jim Martin was so leery of allowing a woman in his gym that he considered having someone hurt her in a sparring session so she would quit. Soon, however, he grew enamored of the drive and talent of his new charge.

They were an odd couple, the young college graduate who loved the ring and the trainer who was 25 years her senior and sported a bad combover. But their relationship grew into something else as he took charge of her career, and not long afterward they married.

At first they were inseparable, sitting together at press conferences, and training together for fights. But in time the marriage soured, though Jim Martin still trained his wife and they lived in the same house.

Last November she told him she was leaving and wanted a divorce. She was involved with another woman.

Enraged at the thought, Jim Martin threatened to expose the relationship to her fans. Christy Martin later told police her husband stalked her for several days and, at one point, she told her girlfriend, Sherry Jo Lusk, she thought her husband was going to shoot her.

In the early evening hours of last Nov. 23, Christy Martin was in the bedroom talking on the phone with Lusk. Her husband appeared at the door, and she motioned him to wait until she was finished.

Instead, Christy Martin said, her husband came in, holding something behind his back.

___

Ask promoter Bob Arum and he’ll tell you the biggest problem with women’s boxing is that men don’t particularly like to see women hitting each other, and women like it even less. Though the sport has a small dedicated fan base, women in the ring are generally treated as a side show by fans and boxing promoters.

Martin was arguably the best female boxer of her era, but even her role was mostly limited to being in the supporting cast on boxing cards headlined by males.

In 2003, she and Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali, drew a crowd of more than 8,000 in Mississippi to what was billed as the biggest women’s fight ever. But two years later, Arum’s plan to pay $1 million to the winner of Martin’s scheduled fight with Lucia Rijker fizzled when only 100 tickets were sold with a week to go before the bout.

“If a woman is at the top of the bill you’ll never sell a ticket,” Arum said.

Still, Martin did fine in a series of fights for King. Her base purse was $100,000, and once she made as much as $250,000. It was enough to buy herself and her husband luxury cars and a nice house in a suburb of Orlando, Fla.

She fought anyone put in front of her, but that’s not saying much in a sport with a thin talent pool. In a bout on the undercard of a Tyson-Evander Holyfield fight, she knocked out a woman in the first round. Turned out the loser was a dancer who had never been in the ring before.

Once she had a fight called off at the last moment because her opponent was pregnant. Another time she was dropped from a card at a bull ring in Mexico City after officials decided to enforce a 50-year-old law that banned women from fighting each other so their reproductive organs wouldn’t be harmed.

But the 5-foot-4 Martin wasn’t afraid to take on a much bigger Ali, only to be stopped in the fourth round. And she won a decision over Mia St. John, who couldn’t break an egg but landed on the cover of Playboy magazine.

Martin always stood out from other women fighters because she loved to trade punches. That got the crowd’s attention, but the fact that her slugfests often turned bloody was what really fired them up.

That was never more evident than when Deirdre Gogarty broke Martin’s nose in the second round on the Tyson-Bruno undercard and blood flowed the rest of the fight. Many in the sport consider it the birth of women’s boxing, the first time fans paid attention to a woman fighter for both her skills and her guts.

“I had no idea what I had done but people kept coming up to me that night wanting pictures and autographs,” Martin said. “I got back to my room and there were messages from the ‘Today Show’ and Jay Leno. I thought it was a joke, and I couldn’t believe they were being so cruel.”

___

The gun was pink and smeared in blood as Christy Martin stumbled into the back seat of a car driven by her neighbor, Rick Cole. At first he didn’t think the gun was real, but the blood gushing from Martin’s wounds told him otherwise.

Her left calf was almost sheared off by a knife. She had three other stab wounds in her upper body and her face was bloody and bruised from being smashed into a dresser.

There was a 9-millimeter bullet lodged in her chest and she was pistol-whipped.

“Please don’t let me die,” she pleaded to Cole.

Prosecutor Ryan Vescio told a judge at Jim Martin’s bail hearing in December that Christy Martin tried to fight off her husband for as long as an hour. Vescio said that days before the attack Jim Martin told his wife:

“If I can’t have you, no one else is going to.”

Martin remembers her estranged husband coming into the room. Then she remembers the knife — that’s what she said he had been holding behind his back. The next thing she knew, she was in the fight of her life.

The shooting came later as she lay bleeding on the cement floor of the bedroom, with the bullet entering just below her left breast. A short time later she heard the sound of running water in the adjoining bathroom.

She knew her husband was in the shower. She knew she only had one chance.

“I was going to die one way or the other and figured I may as well die trying to get away,” Martin said.

The boxer stumbled to her feet and picked up her pink gun from the floor.

She managed to get outside and tried to get in her Corvette, but she had taken the wrong keys. So she made her way out into the street and flagged down the first car.

Safely inside, she handed the pink Glock to Cole. Only later would she find out it was the weapon used to shoot her.

“Imagine that,” she said. “Shot with my own pink gun.”

___

Jim Martin was missing for a week before police, acting on a tip, spotted him in the woods a few blocks from his home. Police said he was holding a bloody knife and initially refused commands to drop it before complying.

Christy Martin was in the courtroom when her 67-year-old husband made his first appearance in December. She celebrated when the judge denied bail. Jim Martin, who is charged with attempted first-degree murder and aggravated battery, pleaded not guilty, claiming self defense. Attempts to reach Martin in jail were unsuccessful, and his attorney did not return phone calls.

Christy Martin wasn’t out of the hospital long before she put in a phone call to Miguel Diaz, who trains fighters promoted by Arum. The question was simple: Would Diaz train her if she was cleared to resume her career?

Diaz went to his boss, who told Martin he would send her a plane ticket to Las Vegas.

“I always had a lot of affection for Christy,” Arum said. “I was very happy when she said she wanted to come back, providing Miguel would look at her and giver her the thumbs up if he thought she still had something.”

Diaz gave the thumbs up after his first workout with Martin. Arum signed her for $100,000 to fight March 12 at the MGM Grand hotel, where the rematch of her 2009 fight with Dakota Stone will be the first fight on the pay-per-view card headlined by Miguel Angel Cotto and Ricardo Mayorga.

A little more than three months after being left for dead, Christy Martin will fight again.

On a recent day at the Top Rank gym across the freeway from the glittering Las Vegas Strip, Martin threw punches in the ring while her girlfriend watched from the doorway. Heavy at 168 pounds when she started training, she was now down to 156 and on target to meet the fight-night weight of 150.

Her only concession to her injuries was an elastic bandage wrapped around her left calf. She moved freely as she hit the mitts of assistant trainer Richie Sandoval, grunting as she threw her trademark left hook, then followed it with another left and then a right.

“The first week she had some pain, but now she’s doing it like she never left the business,” Diaz said. “What she’s doing is amazing. The mental condition she is in is really something else.”

Martin’s boxing shoes were pink, but on this day the rest of the outfit didn’t match. Bouncing around the ring throwing punches with mean intentions, she wore a shirt that read “Box Like Heaven” on the front and “Fight Like Hell” on the back.

Vicious in her prime, she claims to be even more motivated to inflict pain now.

“I feel for Dakota Stone,” Martin said. “She doesn’t have a brain in her head if she wants to get in the ring with me after all I’ve gone through. I plan to ask the referee if he can count to 10 because she will be knocked out.”

Her husband/trainer is gone, but to Martin everything seems awfully familiar again. She will fight in the same ring where she fought on a card that included Thomas Hearns and Julio Cesar Chavez — the first major boxing event at the newly opened MGM Grand — and she will do it almost exactly 17 years to the day after her first fight there.

The Elvis wannabe will escort her to the ring, her trunks will be pink, and, yes, there’s a chance her nose could be broken again and she will bleed all over them.

But there’s no chance she will back down. Not after what she’s been through.

“I know I can get up off the floor when the going gets tough,” she said. “I fear no one.”

The woman who has fought on some of the biggest stages in the world, opened shows for the biggest fighters of her time, says she isn’t looking for sympathy. She’s also not looking to be a spokesperson for women’s rights, even if she did hire celebrity attorney Gloria Allred to represent her after the shooting.

“I just want people to say Christy Martin fought like a fighter, not a woman fighter,” she said. “I want everyone to realize I’m just a fighter and at the end of the night I put on a good fight.”

A lot of new fans will be rooting for her to do just that next month and Martin vows not to disappoint.

She’s happy again.

“I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t want to be me,” she said. “It’s very amazing, but I think God has a plan for me.

“I think I am a miracle.”

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/02/20/sports/s210046S51.DTL&ao=3#ixzz1EfCygq6b