Welcome to Monday’s FEMINIST GIANT Newsletter.
cw: many of the news reports I’ve included in today’s newsletter can be triggering for some. They include intimate partner terrorism, violence by family members, murder and violence against women. Global patriarchal fuckery is violent. Patriarchy socializes men into believing they are entitled to our bodies, our time, our attention. One of the reasons I launched this newsletter is to keep yelling PAY ATTENTION because global patriarchal fuckery has worsened under the pandemic. The COVID19 pandemic is disproportionately disastrous for women and girls around the world.
In recognition of this, the long-running British soap opera East Enders returns on Monday after a three-month break with a trigger warning for the opening episode which shows that the mental and physical abuse suffered by Chantelle (Jessica Plummer) at the hands of her husband, violent and controlling Gray (Toby Alexander-Smith), has worsened throughout lockdown, and ends in her husband murdering her.
The BBC soap worked closely with Women’s Aid and Refuge on the storyline. The spike in intimate partner terrorism and domestic abuse in the UK during the pandemic lockdown is horrific and is reflected in many other countries. I am glad to see the BBC acknowledge that in such a popular show. Read more here:
Chantelle faces tragic end as EastEnders returns after three months off air
I made a couple of FEMINIST GIANT Dispatches from the Pandemic about the increase in violence against women, children, and queer people during lockdown. Here is one:
There are concerns for the health of Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh who has been on hunger strike for 28 days to draw attention to the plight of political prisoners in the country during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Iranian regime sentenced Sotoudeh to 12 years in Tehran's Evin prison last year after she defended women arrested for protesting compulsory headscarf laws.
A member of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), which played a central role in routing Daesh/ISIS from their Syrian stronghold, was killed by her brother in the Syrian town of Darbasiyyah, by male relatives angry that she had joined the women fighters.
Kongra-Star, a confederation of women’s organizations, recently launched a campaign called “She did not commit suicide, you killed her” after an increase in murders of women there and in other deaths that were officially ruled suicide, but where the women are believed to have been killed by male relatives.
The murder of Beritan is a reminder of the urgency of tackling what I call the Trifecta of Misogyny. The YPJ are the protection/fighting unit of the anarchist feminist revolution in northern Syria. They recognize that it is not enough to fight the State or murderous fascists like Daesh. The State along with the Street and the Home together oppress women. I am working on a book project about anarchist feminists. If you want to know more or to read excerpts from it as a work-in-progress, pledge to my Patreon.
I will be writing quite often about the Trifecta of Misogyny in newsletters to come.
In Pakistan, women journalists have been organizing against online abuse and harassment.
Police in Pakistan say a husband shot and killed his journalist wife at the couple’s home in a remote southwestern town before fleeing. Shaheena Shaheen was a TV host and reporter at state-owned broadcaster Pakistan Television.
In Malaysia, the Women’s Centre for Change, a non-profit organisation working to end violence against women & children, has issued a comic to help prevent and understand child sexual abuse
Today is Labor Day in the U.S. and Canada. Here is an important reminder of the role of women in the U.S. labor movement.
As white women who vote for fascist fucks like Donald Trump are being analyzed for the bootlickers of patriarchy that they are, it is important to see how women who support fascist fucks around the world engage in a similar dynamic of benefitting from a proximity of power to the detriment of so many other women. I am looking forward to reading this anthology published by the feminist Zubaan Books in India.
Courageous Sisters Ghana, an NGO working to promote and protect Human Rights and Dignity of LBQT persons in Ghana, has published a report called OUR VOICES: Mapping the Needs of LBQ Women and Trans People in Ghana.
More news of feminist resistance to global patriarchal fuckery on Wednesday! Please share as widely as you can. Like and comment below and encourage others to subscribe.