Global Roundup: Skating for Missing Indigenous People, Disabled Kenyan Women Make Reusable Pads, Afghan LGBTQ and Gender Apartheid, Job Search Help for Trans People, Indigenous Women's Softball Team
Global Roundup: Skating for Missing Indigenous People, Disabled Kenyan Women Make Reusable Pads, Afghan LGBTQ and Gender Apartheid, Job Search Help for Trans People, Indigenous Women's Softball Team
Photo: Melissa Skeet
Melissa Skeet, a 36-year-old former roller derby player, is currently on a four-month-long skating journey across the United States to amplify Indigenous voices and raise awareness for the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis. “The Great Skate,” as she calls her mission, has taken her to more than a dozen states, through the Pacific Northwest, across the Great Plains, and along the Great Lakes, all the way to Washington D.C.
Everything is documented on her Instagram account, @skeet_fighter, where followers can donate to the cause and help fund her travels. As an Indigenous woman (Skeet is a citizen of Navajo Nation) and a survivor of domestic violence, this journey is about honoring the past while looking forward to a brighter future, she says.
‘Why is this crazy roller skater skating this crazy-long distance?’ I want to cut the ties of generational trauma…My ancestors fought really hard so that I could be here today, I’m telling my story, but also their story. -Melissa Skeet
Her uniform includes a helmet and her face is painted with a red handprint, which symbolizes the thousands of missing or killed American Indian and Alaska Native people ignored by police.
Indigenous people are murdered at a rate of up to ten times the national average, and homicide is one of the leading causes of death for Native women. While the Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates that there are currently around 4,200 unsolved MMIP cases, some estimate the actual number is much higher.
Last year, the Not Invisible Act Commission—an advisory committee consisting of Tribal leaders, families of missing and murdered individuals, and law enforcement—submitted an official report to Congress identifying factors underpinning the crisis, including grossly underfunded tribal law enforcement, the exclusion of Indigenous people in data collections, and lackluster media coverage.
Skeet’s path to get to her nationwide skating journey started at age 11, when she tested out her first pair of rollerblades on the paved bike trails of the Grand Canyon National Park near Navajo Nation, where she grew up.
Both of her parents survived Indian boarding schools, but were stripped of their culture and forbidden to speak their native languages or engage in traditional practices. Skeet connected with her Navajo culture on visits with members of her mom’s family still living on the reservation.
For Skeet, the Great Skate is an act of ceremony; like her ancestors before her who survived the Long Walk, she is also carrying grief, hope, and healing all at once. And the handprint on her face is more than just a harbinger of the MMIP cause. Many Native American cultures believe that red is the only color spirits can see. “The lost souls are following that,” she says.
Via Africanews.com
A group of disabled Kenyan women in Mombassa is making a living by sewing reusable sanitary pads.
The Tunaweza foundation says the product is much needed in a country where women sometimes struggle with the monthly cost of disposable pads.
Our pads are cost-effective because when I use it, you do not buy another pad, and it is used for three years. Then you can even buy another one after three years...But the other pad you buy it every month, and so it is very much expensive. It is also environmentally friendly. -Charity Chahasi, director of the Tunaweza oundation
In a good month the women at the foundation can make 3,000 pads in a week.
Tunaweza now employs over 20 people, making it a big win both for the workers in a nation where people with disabilities often confront negative attitudes and are forced to lead a precarious existence with little social support.
Customers are happy too. College student Anne says she has no regrets about making the switch to Tunaweza's pads.
My high school education was hard when I was using the classic pads; I was not comfortable with them [...]That is when I met my friend who told me about the group of women who are making the reusable sanitary pads. they taught me how to use them, how to wash and maintain them. -Anne
Via OpinioJuris
Artemis Akbary, Co-Founder and Executive Director of ALO: the Afghan LGBT+ Organizatio, and Kirby Anwar, a Senior Legal Fellow at CUNY School of Law and an Advocacy Director for MADRE, write in an article for OpinioJuris about the persecution of queer people in Afghanistan since the Taliban took control in 2021 and how recognising the crime of “gender apartheid” in line with human rights law can help.
Taliban Soldiers brutally beat a trans woman and cut her hair while passers by gawked. They then blindfolded her, took her to an unknown location, and raped her. In a separate incident, soldiers beat a trans man’s relatives in their home and demanded to know where he was. The trans man, a police officer under the now-toppled government, had fled after being threatened with forced marriage by a Taliban soldier. Many of his lesbian and transgender colleagues, unable to flee, have been subjected to this fate. Dozens of stories like these have been documented by our organizations and our partners
The authors call on the United Nations to hold the Taliban accountable for gender persecution, and to codify a new crime in international law, “gender apartheid”, in a treaty on crimes against humanity (CAH) now being negotiated at the UN. But they urge a modified and updated definition of the crime of “apartheid” to go beyond the outdated treaty language already in place which has been interpreted to require that victims share “biological” characteristics. The language should include all hose targeted on the basis of gender, including LGBTQI+ people, the authors say.
Conservative must not be allowed to use the outdated language to leave trans people out of protected categories and exclude any analysis of sexual orientation, they add, calling for the definition of apartheid as a crime to be updated to align with human rights law.
No one’s rights should be traded away to appease the Taliban. The world must continue to insist that Afghan women deserve full equality, and criminalizing gender apartheid would be another tool against patriarchal regimes like the Taliban’s. We must also be equally resolved that Afghans who are persecuted for their sexual orientation or gender identity have just as much right as all other Afghans to be free from violent systems of oppression
Attendees mingle at a mixer hosted by the OPEN Foundation and Women in Tech at Giant Jones Brewing. Courtesy of OPEN Foundation
Transgender adults are twice as likely to be unemployed as their cisgender counterparts, and they earn about 24% less each year, even when they have similar or higher education levels, according to a 2021 McKinsey & Company report.
The OPEN Foundation launched about a year ago as an offshoot of the Out Professional Engagement Network, or OPEN, a membership-based nonprofit that has supported LGBTQ+ professionals since 2006.
In February, the foundation teamed up with OutReach LGBTQ+ Community Center to start a program called Transform, which offers months of career coaching and training for trans women and transfeminine nonbinary individuals. The six participants in the first cohort are enrolled through the end of the year.
Among them is Ivy Jochem, 23, who identifies as transfeminine. The Madison native had worked retail jobs but wanted to move into the information technology field. She’d been unemployed for a couple months when her mom told her about Transform.
Over the past eight months, the program has helped Jochem overhaul her resume, find jobs to apply for and meet potential employers. Jochem got free membership to OPEN, which gives her access to the organization’s online networking community.
She transitioned four years ago and has openly identified as transgender since then, but with every job interview, she wonders what the prospective employer will think.
It’s kind of a gamble. Nobody's been directly awful to me, but it's kind of a toss up whether they'll be accepting or not…I have no idea what people think of me, if they're harboring bigotry or hate. -Ivy Jochem
The program is about more than career support. OutReach trans advocate Gabe Loredo and OutReach program director AJ Hardie, both trans men, are available to help participants with broader needs like getting their names legally changed.
The OPEN Foundation secured $15,000 from the Madison Community Foundation to fund the Transform program for a second year, when the organization plans to enroll a larger number of participants.
The Spanish version is narrated by Oscar-nominated Indigenous Mexican actress Yalitza Aparicio (“Roma”), while the English version is narrated by Xochitl Gomez (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness).
The women play barefoot and dressed in their traditional huipiles — indigenous skirts and blouse. María Enedina Canul Poot was the inspiration behind Las Amazonas, a team comprised of players ranging in age from 14 to 63. She was approached by the governor’s office of the municipality located on the Yucatán peninsula, which proposed different activities to help fight obesity. The government suggested Zumba classes, which includes aerobic exercise set to modern music, but Canul Poot had other plans.
She talked to several women in her town, proposing they play softball. However, Canul Poot did not expect it would cause so much discomfort among the men in the indigenous community.
We never thought we were going to have that problem of machismo…I never thought that in my house I would have someone telling me not to play that kind of sport. Every time I would go out, he would say, ‘No, make tortillas for me to eat’ and he would always look for various ways to stop me from going to practice. -María Enedina Canul Poot
The players had to push back against the expectation that indigenous women are only there to serve their husbands and families and should not expose themselves to society.
The 54-year-old pitcher had to deal with her husband’s refusal to be part of the team that Canul Poot helped create. Several of the players also experienced difficult moments, with some conflict escalating to domestic violence in which they feared for their lives.
My daughter, her husband kicked her out of the house. But little by little, [men] realized that we are doing something, not to look for relationships with people outside of their marriage, but it was a way for people to have fun. -María Enedina Canul Poot.
Canul Poot’s husband accepted her desire to play before he died in January 2023. After he came around, every time she went somewhere to play, he had dinner ready for her when she returned, a change she had never imagined would happen.
Yalitza Aparicio, who is narrating the film’s Spanish version, had to deal with racism toward indigenous people prevalent in Mexico when she rose to fame with the role of Cleo in “Roma.”
I hope that future generations do not have to go through what we have gone through, in my aspect as a woman and as an indigenous person, which is discrimination, because of your origin, because of your skin color. Because many times they abuse you, believing that, ‘Ah well, she is indigenous. She doesn’t know how everything works, so we can take advantage of this.’ They forget that we have been preparing ourselves over time so as not to repeat these situations, so that everything works out, so that people are not judged by what they see but by the results of their work. -Yalitza Aparicio
The team’s players know that their journey which began six years ago will take them even further.
The Amazonas are going to go very far, that’s in our heads, in our hearts. It’s going to ring everywhere. To the women, I tell them to fight for what they want, that the chains and barriers we have in front of us, let’s throw them away to reach the goals they set for themselves. -Jessica Yazmin Díaz Canú, one of the team’s players.
Thank you for reading Global Roundup. You can support FEMINIST GIANT by:
Hitting the heart button so that others can be intrigued and read
Upgrading to a paid subscription to help keep FEMINIST GIANT free
Opting for a one-time payment via buying me a coffee
Sharing this post by email or on social media
Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
If you choose a paid subscriptions - thank you! I appreciate your support. If you like this piece and you want to further support my writing, you can like/comment below, forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.