I recently held a seminar on rape in war with military lawyers from across the world. We talked through a number of obstacles to prevention and elimination of sexual violence, but at the end of the seminar everyone agreed that the biggest of them all is silence.
Rape, and other forms of violence and abuse such as birth control sabotage or pregnancy coercion, are acts that seek to strip power from women and inhibit their decisionmaking. This election-year, where are the real conversations about violence against women, not just idiotic statements about rape?
Emily Bazelon profiles Charmaine Yoest in the New York Times Magazine. Yoest knows that the anti-choice movement needs to improve its reputation, but despite this, she can't give up on the overt sexism and the anti-contraception sentiments.
The development of a potential human life requires conception as a first step. But that is not the same as either pregnancy or personhood. You can't reduce complex reality to a slogan, and when you try to do so, you actually minimize the personhood of women.
A very silly Lena Dunham ad causes a right wing meltdown. Texas Planned Parenthood is running out of options, and Michelle Chen reports on how abortion restrictions are affecting clinics on the ground.
In the whirlwind of policy debates and activist conferences, it is easy to gloss over the victories we’ve accomplished together this past year. As I look forward to my next year, I’m glad to have such powerful hermanas beside me because we still have much work to tackle.
