Archive for the ‘Women’ Category
Sexual Violence Against Women in Immigrant Detention
12:17 pm By la Macha · GLBT| Health| Immigration| Women · 1 Comment
17 Nov 2009As horrified as I was to watch this video of Esmeralda speaking about her experiences in immigration detention prisons, I am so glad that she is speaking out. For so long, sexual violence against women in detention prisons has been the secret people don’t talk about. Or if they do, it’s (justifiably so) with pseudonyms or only found out about after a newspaper reporter manages to dig around enough.
This horror–the horror that specifically targets immigrant women in detention, is not new, it’s not unusual, it happens all the time. Women locked in little cells, many times with their children, and then forced to submit to the will of guards who promise extra blankets or play time for the kids, or most times, nothing at all.
Please watch Esmeralda’s testimonio (but be forewarned, there is lots of triggering stories!!!)
Esmeralda: A Transgender Detainee Speaks Out from Breakthrough on Vimeo.
It’s important to also point out that Esmeralda faced sexual violence that other women did not specifically because she is transgendered. So, even though she is a woman, she was put in prison with men. The U.S. government (not sure about Mexico), recognizes only the gender that is legally given to a person upon their birth, and as such when there are no transgendered facilities (which are bad enough because they segregate trans people from general populations as if they have a disease or something, talk about stigma!!!), trans women and men are often forced to stay in facilities meant for the opposite sex. Which makes already vulnerable women without citizenship papers or other legal representation even more vulnerable. If it’s nearly impossible to report guards, how on earth can women report fellow detainees who hurt her? Not to mention what happens if she has a period or needs other reproductive services while in a prison that functions for men’s needs?
These prisons (AND, please be aware, the U.S. prison system in general! These abuses are not particular to detention prisons!!!!) are a violation of human rights and dignity–and are one of the main reasons why I support calls for immigration reform (even as I work towards something more radical). The abuse is so horrific and so violent, we can not wait until there is something more radical in place to stop the violence. And doing nothing is an even worse idea. Please see restorefairness.org for how you can help!
Video found via Facebook
Nadya Suleman Speaks Again
11:48 am By la Macha · Health| Women · 2 Comments
17 Nov 2009
Diiiiiiiios Mio. Remember the woman who gave birth to eight children after she underwent fertility treatments? Well, she’s in the news again, this time to explain why in the hell she felt it was necessary to be implanted with all eight of her embryos.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “If you have these frozen embryos that are there, and they were writing you letters saying, We are charging you this much, and it’s going up and up and up every month that they are stored — you can either use them or destroy them. You’re like, O.K., I have six already. What’s another? And maybe it won’t even work. So, I just decided to take the chance because I didn’t want to destroy the embryos. That was the main focus — not like: ‘Oh, gosh! I really want eight!’ People were thinking, ‘Oh, she wanted so, so many.’ No!”
She sounds like she’s coming from a really frightening place of Christian fundementalism (it’s a baby no matter what I must save it!) and desperate poverty. How many of us haven’t been in that same place with some other aspect in our lives? Getting those bills every single month when you know you can’t pay them, being told by a friend to “come get your shit or I’m dumping it all” when you know you have no place to bring it home to…we’ve all be there before. We’ve all done things like make eight kids share one Popsicle and lecture the kids that they should be thankful for the opportunity. We make jokes about it, but that poverty staring us in the face is very real, isn’t it?
So, I feel really bad for Suleman. But boy…I think it might be time to really question the idea of people who are adamantly pro-life getting IVF treatments. Or maybe doctors should only be allowed to fertilize two eggs at a time. Or something. I’m not really on top of how IVF treatment works–I know what I know because I’ve been told by friends who’ve gone through it how it works.
But the bottom line for me is that I just don’t think any human woman should be carrying eight fetuses at one time, even if she does so willingly. Morally and ethically, the argument simply can’t be made that it’s ok to place such stress on a woman’s body. And if people feel that they *must* place that kind of stress on their bodies because of the moral choice to not “kill a child,” then I think that the system needs to begin to find moral and ethical ways to confront those beliefs in a way that prioritizes the needs of the mother first and foremost.
Maybe Nadya Suleman is actually one of the best arguments out there for state health coverage that covers fertility treatments? Then people can afford to take the chance of only attempting one or two embryo fertilizations at a time?
Monday Morning Movie : Justicia for Sarah Kruzan
6:44 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Justice| Violence| Women| youth · No Comments
16 Nov 2009Last Monday we wrote about how the Supreme Court was hearing two cases examining the practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In the video part of that post the way this type of sentencing impacts young people of color was looked at. However, in hindsight, the post presented the issue as primarily a male one, failing to look at how women of color are unjustly treated especially with the added layer of sexual violence playing a role with their introduction into the criminal justice system.
I came across part of the life of Sarah Kruzan via a few of my friends on Facebook. Here we have an example how the sexual violence women of color experience criminalizes them, the “victim” if you will, even though I hate that terminology. Sarah was a child, just a year younger than my older daughter, when she was groomed for prostitution by a predatory man. Now I’m not saying that the adult male that pimped her deserved to be killed, but I am saying that Sarah certainly doesn’t deserve life without parole.
The House Health Care Reform Bill That Passed and Passed Over
11:28 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · GLBT| Immigration| Politics| Women · 4 Comments
9 Nov 2009Some are celebrating the weekend passage of a health insurance bill in the House of Representatives. Pero those unhappy and critical aren’t just tea-baggers and others crying over a red scare. From jump, I was angered that health care reform was excluding and scapegoating some of the communities I feel strongly about, immigrants and women.
The Affordable Health Care for America Act, aka HR3962, passed 220-215 but the act contains provisions that bar access to services for women.
The Stupak Amendment (does that rhyme with stupid) bans coverage for abortion under any plans that use federal monies. This amendment apparently was a response to threats from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who threatened to dis the bill at masses across the country if abortion was covered. I went to church this Sunday specifically to see if the health care reform bill would be mentioned instead the priest talked about the World Series. Hmm.
Additionally the amendment requires that those participating in the “health exchange”, individuals and employers, buy riders for covering abortion services. The only exceptions are for pregnancies that are the result of rape/incest or when the life of the pregnant woman is in danger (her life, not her health). Additionally employer sponsored and private plans that don’t take government money are exempt. This means that women who participate in the public option of health care exchanges couldn’t even use their own money to access abortions.
Mangos With Chili Presents Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead in the Bay Area Tonite & Nov. 15th
11:42 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Arts| California| Culture| Events| Lo Que Hay| Raices| Violence| Women| dance| history| language · 1 Comment
7 Nov 2009
Porque we remember our loved ones from our familias and community everyday and porque the mujeres that are involved in the creation of this project are beautiful and kick culo.
Mangos With Chili: the floating cabaret of QTPOC bliss, dreams, sweat, sweets & nightmares
proudly presents the premiere of:BELOVED: A Requiem for Our Dead
because we refuse to forget youFeaturing:
Nalo Hopkinson
Charleston Chu
E. Rose Sims
SoliRose
Nico Dacumos
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Ms. Cherry Galette
and moreWith video by Storm Florez, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Kortney Ryan Ziegler, and more
November 6th and 7th, 8PM
The Lab
2948 16th St
San Francisco, CA 94103
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of fundsNovember 15th, 8PM
Hechos en Califas Festival
La Pena
3105 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of fundsIn this highly anticipated premiere of the newest Mangos With Chili production, we invite you to join us at the crossroads for a night of conjuring, memory, mourning and celebration. Through elegies of story, song, dance, drag and more, the Bay Area’s noted and notorious queer and trans people of color performance crew will honor our erased, fallen and slain queer and trans people of color family lost to hate crimes, war, colonization, and genocide. We will celebrate our queer legacies and the ways we’ve found to survive through the beautiful resistance of memory, and whisper stories about grief, loss, healing, sweet darkness, and walking between worlds towards rebirth.
Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead will feature the brilliance and blaze of renowned Caribbean speculative fiction storycrafter Nalo Hopkinson; multimedia invocation performance art heart wrench by playwright and poet Nico Dacumos; In Memoriam, a new collaborative dance theater work by Charlston Chu and Cherry Galette; ancestral prayer/spoken love letter by writer and theater artist Rose E. Sims; a mixed media jazz dance cabaret extravaganza by Charleston Chu, an autobiographical musical journey traversing the Middle East and African Diaspora by virtuoso trio SoliRose; the powerful truth renderings of queer Sri Lankan writer and performer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha; and the premiere of Moorish Salt a burlesque-dance theater/ritual performance art piece by fusion dance artist and theater-maker Cherry Galette.
Mangos With Chili is a Bay Area based arts organization committed to showcasing high quality performance of life saving importance by queer and trans artists of color to audiences in the Bay Area and beyond. Founded in 2006 by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms Cherry Galette, Mangos With Chili has performed to sold out houses across North America, wowing audiences in world class theaters, underground performance spaces, bars, and campus halls, with their high intensity, breathtaking performance, politics, and storytelling craft, reflecting the lives and stories of queer and trans people of color, while making art that speaks out in resistance to the daily struggles around silence, isolation, homophobia, and violence that QTPOC face. Mangos With Chili is a fiscally sponsored project of the San Francisco based arts organization CounterPULSE, which provides space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators: www.counterpulse.org. Mangos With Chili is supported by the Horizons Foundation, the Astraea Foundation, and the generous support of our community of donors.Both venues are wheelchair accessible. The show contains material of adult nature. Parental discretion advised. Please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that audience members and performers with multiple chemical sensitivity can attend.
For more information:
mangos.with.chili@gmail.com
mangoswithchili.wordpress.com
Rihanna interview
6:11 pm By la Macha · Celebrities| TV| Violence| Women · 10 Comments
5 Nov 2009This just broke my heart. Broke my heart.
From Huffington Post, a preview on the Rihanna interview:
I think that it is really generous and loving of Rihanna to think about girls at a time in her life when she is hurting and confused and devastated and even humiliated. But that section quoted above–that part where she says, “her selfish decision to love”….Oh, how my heart breaks.
It is not Rihanna’s job to stop violence against women. It’s not any woman or girl’s job to stop violence against women and girls. Even if she stayed with Chris Brown forever–it would never be her fault that women are being killed by men. It is manipulative and even violent to say it is. It is not selfish for a woman or girl to love. Dear god, no.
It is selfish to beat a woman. It is selfish to scare and intimidate her. It is selfish to take her love and use it against her, it is selfish to beat a woman who loves you because you know you can.
It is Chris Brown’s job to stop violating women. It is men’s job to stop violating women. It is men’s job to stop twisting and FUCKING with love so freely and generously given. It is the job of men to grow the fuck up and get into some kind of healing/therapy so that they can teach *little boys* how to not beat the holy fuck out of a person who loves them.
And it’s media’s job to stop putting the lives of little girls onto the shoulders of survivors. They have enough shit to worry about. It’s time to start putting responsibility where it belongs. On the fists of men who make the choice to use them whenever they feel like it.
Rihanna Speaks
9:23 pm By la Macha · Women · No Comments
4 Nov 2009Remember Rihanna? Remember how her then boyfriend, Chris Brown, beat the holy crap out of her? And how Rihanna got a lot of grief from fans and the police and even feminists for not “speaking out” after the attack?
Well, Rihanna will be speaking about the incident to Diane Sawyer on Friday:
In an exclusive interview, music superstar Rihanna sits down with Diane Sawyer revealing publicly for the first time what happened last February with singer and ex-boyfriend Chris Brown. The incident resulted in the couple’s seemingly fairytale relationship being shattered and Brown being sentenced to community labor, five years of probation and one year of domestic-violence counseling. During the in-depth interview, Rihanna also talks candidly about growing up in Barbados, her family life, and how she has been doing over the last nine months. The interview will air on “20/20,” FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6 (10:00-11:00 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network. Portions of the interview will also air on “Good Morning America” on Thursday, November 5 and Friday, November 6.
Will you be watching?
Who’s Your Mama : Event at Food for Thought in Amherst on November 13th
11:41 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Books| Events| Family| Women| boston · 1 Comment
4 Nov 2009
I met the organizer of this event, TK, at the Allied Media Conference this past summer. Another amazing mami media maker puts together an amazing event. Those in the Amherst area represent and support.
NOVEMBER 13, 2009 * 7PM
Food for Thought BooksPlease join us for a very special evening of women’s voices and responses to benefit To Tell you the Truth. Featuring Who’s Your Mama: Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (Edt. by Yvonne Byone) Contributors: JLove Calderon (We Got Issues!/ That White Girl), Marcella Runell Hall Hall (Hip Hop Education Guidebook) and Marla Teyolia (Empowered Mama!). On site childcare provided.
A Favorite Latina on the Web Needs Our Support
10:46 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Blogs| Linking Latinos| Media| VivirLatino| Women| media justice · No Comments
4 Nov 2009I’m really honored that Guanabee named yours truly one of their favorite Latinas on the web.
Some deal explicitly with Latino issues, some don’t. Some are funny, some are creative, some are activists, all are uniquely amazing, inspiring women who, we think, are some of the best at what they do.
I am especially honored by some of my company on the list, including dear mami amiga, Noemi Martinez of Hermana Resist. As a single mami media maker, I appreciate what Noemi does and understand the struggle it is to express yourself in a given medium with no source of funding and with kids yelling, learning, laughing and getting sick as your background soundtrack. Which is why I am asking you to help my mami hermana.
Monday Morning Musica y Moviemiento : All the Ladies Say
7:49 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Culture| Events| Movies| Music| New York City| Women| dance| history · No Comments
2 Nov 2009The history of hip hop is often told in a male voice and from a male point of view. The role of mujeres, from MC’s to B Girls, is told as an aside. Enter the legendary Rokafella, a figure I knew growing up, as an example of fierceness, presenting a new documentary that highlights the lives of six street dancers exploring motherhood, sexual tension, femininity versus masculinity and the rap industry/mainstream images.
This coming Saturday at BAAD!, in the Bronx, NY you can catch a sneak peek screening of All the Ladies Say. The event includes performances by guest artists and photos by Vanessa Bahmani and Emily Lady Caprice. This event is a fundraiser to support the completion of the film and will be followed by an after party with an open jam.
Hola!
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- Puerto Rican, Latino Clergy, Theology Professors, Community Members To Condemn Brutal Hate Killing of Gay Puerto Rican Man
- Vigils for Justice y en Memoria de Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado
- Russell Athletic rehires fired union organizers
- When Things Go Wrong…Terribly Wrong.
- Official VivirLatino Statement on Lou Dobbs Leaving CNN
- Sexual Violence Against Women in Immigrant Detention
- Nadya Suleman Speaks Again
- Update : Arrest Made in Murder of 19 Year Old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado
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