Category: Feminisms

Where On the Internet is Your Knowledge?

So Siko Bouterse, Carmen Alcázar, María Sefidari, Sydney Edmonds Poore and I are off to Bahia, Brazil, in a week. We’ll be at the AWID Forum – a gathering of 2000 feminists from over 40 countries – as the Wikimujeres delegation. It’s going to be a powerful opportunity for different avatars of mine to come together – the feminist with the free knowledge advocate – and a wonderful space to meet old friends and new.

More on what we’ll be doing there, in this piece I wrote published by AWID, Where On the Internet is Your Knowledge?

…our knowledge is not yet on the internet as it should be. Whether it is our lives as women, our experiences as feminists, our histories as indigenous peoples, our struggles as trans women, our analyses as black academics, our achievements as disability rights activists… very little of our complex knowledge and wisdom is easily accessible to the rest of the world.

Why is this a problem? Because the internet is becoming the default reference and library of the world, especially for young people and powerful decision-makers. And the less we are seen, the less we are heard, the less we are known… the more difficult it is for us to inspire, to challenge, to change the world.

For those who’ll be at the AWID Forum, come find us! For those who won’t be there, join us virtually! @WhoseKnowledge will be launching its mapping process, and all the #WikiMujeres will be working on improving Wikimedia content on feminists and women’s human right issues. We’re excited!

Seeing each other fully: IRL, on Wikipedia

This has been an extraordinarily complex 24 hours. On the one hand, in the Wikimedia free knowledge world, I am celebrating Christophe Henner and Maria Sefidari being made Chair and Vice-Chair of the WMF Board (there’s power for you). And then the new Board’s bold and brilliant decision of making Katherine Maher WMF Executive Director, removing months of possible uncertainty and waste in a fell swoop (there’s leadership for you). And the Wikimedians of the Year being declared as Emily Temple-Wood and Rosie Stephenson-Knight (there’s almost redundant affirmation for you; Emily has been my Wikipedian of the decade for a while now).

On the other hand, there’s the world beyond, the expanse of the ‘real world’ these past few days: the awfulness of the Brexit vote, the portents for the November election in the US, and the overall environment of hate, racism, xenophobia, and ‘othering’ of multiple kinds. And yet, these two worlds are connected. In multiple ways.

Take as an example, the two English Wikipedia articles on the Orlando shootings and Jo Cox’s assassination in the UK, both awful, gut-wrenching acts of violence and hate in the past weeks, occurring days of each other. The descriptions of the perpetrators in the lede paragraphs are currently this, respectively: “The assailant was Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American” and “A 52-year-old man was charged with her murder and will stand trial under terrorism protocols”. In the Orlando article, the lede goes on to describe Mateen’s alleged (and disproved) links with ISIL. The Cox article has nothing further in the lede, not even the name of the proven neo-Nazi Thomas Mair, who shot her; you have to scroll down to the end of the article to find a single paragraph on the man. Omar Mateen has a long, separate, article on him. Thomas Mair doesn’t. In previous versions of the articles that I remember seeing just a couple of days ago, Omar Mateen was described as ‘being of Afghan descent’, while the unnamed (from the start of the article) Mair was believed to have ‘a history of mental illness’ and links to ‘right-wing extremism’.

These two articles demonstrate both what is extraordinarily brilliant and amazing about the Wikimedia community – and what is deeply, deeply troubling, and needs shared, collective, reflexivity and leadership. The fact that they exist, that 608 distinct humans have worked so far on the Orlando article and 243 on the Cox article, that each iteration is meant to improve in all good faith, the substance and quality of the article… all this matters, is meaningful, and worthy of celebration. At the same time, the fact that these brilliant, passionate, committed authors have their own systemic – possibly unconscious – biases of how they describe the perpetrators of these crimes, while possibly lacking the self-reflexive thought on how that impacts countless innocent people tarred unfairly with the same biases… that is the critical challenge for the future of knowledge on the internet, and far more broadly, the critical challenge for the future of our world as we live it today.

What does each of us take away from reading these articles as ‘fact’, as ‘information’, as ‘knowledge’? What ways of seeing the world, of seeing *each other* do we imbibe?

I deeply miss being at Wikimania right now, celebrating the joys of moving on from mayhem with some sense of balance and thoughtfulness. Yet I urge everyone who is lucky enough to be at Wikimania to look at each other today and over this weekend, and ask yourself this question (as I asked it of senior leadership at the WMF a few years ago, to uncomfortable silence): ‘Do we in this room even begin to represent the swathes of humanity that exist in the real world, that are on the internet today, that will be on the internet tomorrow? How can we possibly begin to design with, create with (*with* _not *for*), and amplify the knowledge of, those who do not look like most of us in this room, and who have had very different life experiences?’.

My hope is in the fact that people like Katherine, like Emily, like Maria, like Christophe – they are brave enough to ask this question of themselves, and of each of us, knowing that the answers are going to be messy, uncomfortable, painful, and yet will lead us in the only direction worthy of free-as-in-‘libre’ knowledge. Towards a world in which we truly see each other fully. Whether on Wikipedia or in the real world.

Musawah and other musings

Three weeks ago, I decided to give myself a challenge: write a Wikipedia article every week, for ten weeks. The first two weeks, I wrote about Freedom Nyamubaya and Peggy Antrobus, amazing feminists from Zimbabwe and the Caribbean, respectively. Now I’m into Week 3, and it happens to be the first week of Ramzan/Ramadan this year. So here’s my iftar offering: an article on the incredible network of global feminists working on feminist interpretations of Islam, Musawah. Many of those in the network are personal inspirations, and they delightfully confuse and confound the stereotypes around Muslim women (as though this is a homogenous category). I would love to know how many of you knew Musawah existed, and how many of you are surprised and pleased to know what they do. Ramzan Kareem, everyone!

I also snuck in an article earlier in the week, on Ayize Jama-Everett, the inspiring African-American science fiction writer I heard at the Bay Area Book Festival last weekend. I’m rarely shocked by gaps in the English Wikipedia, but this one did surprise, given that Ayize is a US citizen, and has written a fairly acclaimed trilogy. Wonder why he got left out, despite obvious notability? People do often choose to write about what they know (and whom they look like), including on Wikipedia.

As Siko Bouterse and I have said on Whose Knowledge?: there is a historical process of socio-cultural colonisation and imperialism that has outlasted the territorial. In a sense, the ‘global South’ and the ‘global North’ are political terms of geography, history, as well as ideological and material dis/privilege: there is a ‘global South’ in the global North and vice-versa.

 

Not One More…

So the Stanford rape case has had me so angry, it’s been hard to respond coherently. The situation is that of Brock Allen Turner, a (white) male student – who happened to be on the Stanford swim team at the time – raping an unconscious female student in January 2015, and then getting only six months with probation last week, because the judge deemed a prison sentence would have a ‘severe impact’ on him. The woman responded with a searing letter: “I was not only told that I was assaulted, I was told that because I couldn’t remember, I technically could not prove it was unwanted. And that distorted me, damaged me, almost broke me. It is the saddest type of confusion to be told I was assaulted and nearly raped, blatantly out in the open, but we don’t know if it counts as assault yet. I had to fight for an entire year to make it clear that there was something wrong with this situation.”
 
The father of the perpetrator responded with another letter in which he called it “20 minutes of action” for which his son shouldn’t be punished.
 
And in the meantime, Black Lives Matter activist Jasmine Richards was facing up to 4 years in prison for trying to ‘de-arrest’ someone during a peace march. She was finally sentenced, in the past week, to 90 days in jail, with 18 days served, and 3 years on probation. She spends time in prison, Brock Allen Turner doesn’t.
 
So all of this is fury making of the worst kind. But I wondered – knowing how rarely rape gets convicted anywhere in the world – what the stats were in the US. Sure enough, Rebecca Solnit had the even more fury-making answer: so you thought 6 months with probation was absurd? The outrageous truth is that reporting a rape (women are twice as likely as men *not* to report) will be unlikely to lead to a conviction: only slightly more than 2% are convicted.
 
What is the conviction rate in India? Better than the US, strangely, but declining each year, even as reported cases go up: 44.3 percent in 1973, 26.4 percent in 2011.
 
And the base: across the world, rapes go unreported in the majority of the cases. It’s estimated that in India, reported cases are 1.8 per 100,000 people; for the US, it’s 28.6 per 100,000. And again, across the world, in the majority of cases, the perpetrator is known to the victim/survivor.
 
So in all the fury making around Stanford, yes – sign the campaign asking for judge Aaron Persky’s recall (I did). But as in so much else around injustice, recognise how we all tend to respond to individual cases rather than the underlying structural conditions of patriarchy and sexual assault. Did we pay attention to this case because the media carried it, and because he was a Stanford swimming champion? Did we not pay attention to Delta Meghwal’s rape and murder because she was Dalit?

So hold on to your outrage, make it count. Support the women and men around you who fight against patriarchy and discrimination every single day, not just this week.

 
#NotOneMore #FreeWomensBodies #NoMoreRape #RecallAaronPersky #JusticeforDelta #BlackLivesMatter

Shut Up and Listen (also, Read).

20160604_103350Just back from two days at the Bay Area Book Festival in downtown Berkeley, where we bookended our time with the most brilliant panel yesterday of five authors of speculative and subversive fiction in which only *one* was a white dude (and the others covered a multiplicity and intersectionality of races, ethnicities, genders and sexualities), and ended today with an Egyptian transnational secular Muslim feminist speaking with a Bay Area African American feminist.

20160604_112602In between, we went to a panel of science nerds who write about cooking, linguistic nerds who are conlangers (those who construct languages) for shows like the Game of Thrones and the Expanse, wandered down Radical Row and talked revolutions, and made friends with bookshelves in the middle of the road. Bibliophile, activist, heaven.

While my brain is still processing and sedimenting all I learnt, I’ll leave you with a few brilliant lines from Harlem/Bay Area African American science fiction writer, Ayize Jama-Everett, who when asked how/if his speculative fiction is also subversive, said: “I’m a black man in America. Every thing I *do* is subversive… When I read about utopias, I ask: where are the black people? …Writing is both an act of lunacy and bravery. It’s blood on a page.”

And the final final word from the fabulous Mona Eltahawy, speaking to the equally fabulous Chinaka Hodge, to folks who think about ‘rescuing’ people from ‘over there’ and bringing them back ‘over here’, mistakenly thinking ‘over here’ is not equally (if differently) misogynistic, racist, xenophobic, homophobic… “We’re doing our own work ‘over there’. Work on your own ‘over here’… and don’t forget to shut up and listen”.

Yes, my brother, my sister. *mic drop*.

Haiku for change

I recently had the opportunity to be part of a reflection process on the work we do as feminists, advocating for gender equality in development organisations. This was with an organisation called Gender at Work, an international knowledge network for gender equality; it’s a group I’ve been associated with since its founding in 2001, though I left them as Program Associate in 2007, when we moved to the Republic of Berkeley. It was such a joy being part of a space that incorporated the striving, thinking and doing of feminist praxis – with fabulous activists who embody that spirit – but it was also a joy (luckily) to reflect on where I am, both personally and professionally, these many years on. It must have something to do with – groan – the milestone of middle age/mid-evil-ness lurking round the corner. Still, at the end of the reflection, I wrote a haiku about change; I suppose it’s a birthday prezzie of sorts to myself.

Touched by the return,

I find my journey forward –

But some of me… stays.

Yes, Nepal can!

So California couldn’t manage it; Proposition 8 – a ban on gay marriage – was passed, and the California Supreme Court will now examine whether the ban is constitutional or not.

And India is still mulling over it; the Indian Supreme Court is yet to give its final verdict on Section 377, which criminalises gay sex.

But Nepal leads the way: in a historic judgement, delivered on 17 November, Nepal’s Supreme Court not only reiterated that LGBTIs are ‘natural persons’, entitled to equal rights, identity and expression, regardless of their sex at birth, but has also set up a commission that will recommend a same-sex marriage act for the Nepal government.

What made this extraordinary moment possible? One reason is clearly the tireless activism of LGBTI groups in Nepal, led amongst others, by the first openly gay member of Nepal’s constituent assembly, the Communist Party of Nepal (United) representative Sunil Babu Pant. Another factor seems to be the participation of LGBTI in campaigns for a democratic, secular Nepal, a process that led to the relinquishing of the monarchy by King Gyanendra in April, and a new constituent assembly in which the Maoists have the majority.

As Sunil Pant himself said, on a recent visit to India:

In Nepal, the LGBTI communities were part of the campaign for garnering votes for the Communist Party of Nepal. They approached me to campaign and I managed to secure 15,500 votes. It makes a statement that LGBTI people are interested in matters of politics and governance and not just sex. The campaign not only gave LGBTI issues visibility but a platform to negotiate for rights.

And a final interesting possibility raised by a Global Voices commentator from Nepal, is that the country’s predominantly Hindu culture is more accepting of gay rights. She quotes an excerpt from Ruth Vanita’s essay on Homosexuality and Hinduism, in support:

In 2004, Hinduism Today reporter Rajiv Malik asked several Hindu swamis (teachers) their opinion of same-sex marriage. The swamis expressed a range of opinions, positive and negative. They felt free to differ with each other; this is evidence of the liveliness of the debate, made possible by the fact that Hinduism has no one hierarchy or leader. As Mahant Ram Puri remarked, “We do not have a rule book in Hinduism. We have a hundred million authorities.

However, while this argument should surely have traction in India – and is used by sexuality rights advocates – the Indian government’s stand has been, rather ironically, more Victorian than Vedic. Whether the courage of Nepal’s jurists inspires their colleagues in India, remains to be seen. This is one case of cross-border trafficking that I would welcome.

What a long, strange trip it’s been…

So it’s finally November 4th, and since I can’t GOAV (get out and vote) myself, I will WTV (watch the vote) instead. But as a quick round-up, just a few images and thoughts that have stuck with me through this long, strange trip. First, a video that a few young women put together for Sarah Palin, which I thought was perfect for all those crazies who thought Hillary supporters might swing Sarah’s way. Yeah, right (sic)!

Then the ‘roast‘ at the Alfred E. Smith dinner, which I thought was a remarkable event; two Presidential candidates, a day after an intense final presidential debate, meet to make fun of each other and themselves. Highly recommended for politicians in India. Obama did tell us he was Superman (as if America didn’t know that already): “contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father, Jor-el, to save the planet Earth,” while McCain invoked Joe the Plumber – again! – to tell us he “recently signed a very lucrative contract with a wealthy couple to handle all the work on all seven of their houses”. I have to say, McCain had brilliant comic timing, Obama much less so. But then it’s another sort of timing that will count today.

Which brings me to the final moment, that my favourite pollsters at fivethirtyeight.com wrote about, after a rally in North Carolina. In Sean Quinn‘s words, “something is stirring in America”:

Back at the rally, after the march had left MLK Gardens, I’d gone back for the car while Brett took photos, and I spotted a very old black man in a sharp Sunday suit walking slowly at the very back of the huge march. He hadn’t yet arrived at the voting center, and I decided to find him when I got back.

I wanted to go talk to him, to ask him what this moment meant to him. He was a guy who you take one glance at, and know, that guy’s seen it all. I wanted a quote. I had my journalist hat on. I thought, this will be great.

So when I got back to the voting location with the car, I went to find him in the line. Eventually I spotted him, and was ready to walk up the few feet between us and introduce myself when I stopped in my tracks.

A young black boy, no more than eight years old, walked up to this man, who was at least eighty. The boy offered the man a sticker, probably an “I Voted” sticker, but I couldn’t see. The man took the sticker and paused. Silently, he looked down at the boy, who was looking back up at the man. The man put his hand gently on the boy’s head, and I saw his eyes glisten.

I didn’t ask the man for a quote. I didn’t need to. I walked over by myself, behind the community center, and I sat down on a bench next to the track, and wept.

Section 377 and Proposition 8

Here in California, both advocates for and against are calling it the second biggest battle after the Presidential elections on November 4: the fate of Proposition 8 on the ballot, or the move to ban gay marriages. In June this year, same-sex marriages were made legal in California (the second state after Massachusetts, and then Connecticut followed); over 11,000 couples have got married in the few months since. In fact, pioneering lesbian rights activist, Del Martin, died in August at the age of 87, after having married Phyllis Lyon, her companion of over 55 years, on June 16, the first day of legalisation. Sexuality rights activists are worried that well deserved celebrations in June are starting to feel somewhat premature: proposition 8 is the first time an attempt is being made to eliminate a civil right already achieved.

Back home in India, an even more fundamental – and equally critical – battle is being fought over Section 377, the section of the 1861 Indian Penal Code that criminalises ‘unnatural sex’. Ironically, the British – under whose reign the Indian Penal Code was created in pre-independent India – rejected such criminalisation in 1967. And various scholars, including Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai in Same-Sex Love in India, have demonstrated fairly unequivocally that same-sex love and relationships have existed and been represented in Indian art and literature for over two thousand years.

In 2002, the Naz Foundation (India) filed a Public Interest Litigation in the Delhi High Court to challenge Section 377, with growing support from across the country. In recent hearings on the PIL, the Additional Solicitor General PP Malhotra has sounded more than mildly Victorian himself while trying to defend the section against incisive judicial questioning: “Gay sex is against the order of the nature. We will disturb the nature by allowing them to do so. In the compelling circumstances the State has to take the help of the law to maintain the public morality.” The government’s stand itself is somewhat confused: the Ministry of Health believes that legalising homosexuality would help in its efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, while the Ministry of Law is against it on ‘moral’ grounds.

Last week, over 30 Rhodes Scholars from India wrote to the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh – who has often served on the Selection Committee for the Rhodes Trust – and asked him to repeal Section 377. In the letter, we said:

Ever since the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships were first given to Indian students in 1947, its recipients have contributed in many different ways to the progress of India, in education, the civil service, science, and business. We, the undersigned, belong to this diverse community of Indian Rhodes Scholars but write in our individual capacity as Indian citizens with a commitment to public service and the fundamental principles of the Indian constitution — liberty, equality, justice, and the dignity of the individual. We believe that it is clear what these principles demand of us today: to join the growing body of concerned citizens that calls for the decriminalisation of consensual sex between adults of the same sex by the reading down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.

As the historic case over the constitutionality of Section 377 now awaits the attention of the Delhi High Court, we write to register our profound disagreement with the language of the Additional Solicitor General P. P. Malhotra, who, in articulating the government’s stance, has argued that reading down the section could ‘open the floodgates for delinquent behaviour and be misconstrued as providing unbridled licence for homosexual acts’. He has argued, in addition, that strong social disapproval and the ‘right to health of society’ is sufficient reason to justify the treatment of homosexuals as criminals.

[…]

The health of our society, our democracy, and our polity, requires that we recognise the historic nature of this moment. Section 377 is a colonial relic, an imposition of un-Indian Victorian attitudes towards human sexuality that even the United Kingdom rejected in 1967. The government today has the unique chance to extend the fundamental right to equality and freedom to Indians who have long been discriminated against. This discrimination is real and manifests itself in police arrests, the threat of blackmail, and brutal violence, among other things, relegating India’s sexual minorities to second-class citizenship. We recall the courage of earlier governments in putting principle above immediate popularity in fighting for an end to institutionalised caste- and gender-based discrimination. We urge this government, a government committed to the cause of social and political justice, to seize the moment and make the historic decision to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The full text of the letter is here. The Telegraph reported that a couple of days after the delivery of the letter, the Prime Minister asked the Ministers of Health and Law to “sit together”, and “sort out” the matter:

Singh’s directive to his colleagues came two days after 30-odd Rhodes scholars from India wrote to him requesting “an end to a law” that they said went “not only against fundamental human rights” but also worked “sharply against the enhancement of human freedoms”.

Earlier this year in an article in Frontline, Rakesh Shukla of Voices Against 377 said: “The petition is important but not enough. We need to continue to lobby with political parties, the legal fraternity, the police and mental health professionals and to raise awareness among the public.” This is absolutely true; repealing Section 377 is not going to ensure dignity and security for hijras, kothis, lesbians or gays in India, but it is an urgently needed first step, and our government needs to take it.

Image courtesy Sangama.

Just (kinda) do it

This is un-bloody-believable, pardon the Sanskrit. A woman who won the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco on Sunday (billed as the world’s largest women’s marathon), didn’t get to be on the winner’s podium because she wasn’t part of the group of ‘elite’ runners – who began 20 minutes ahead of the running proletariat – and was therefore not even considered for the awards. Then when she cross-checked, the organisers acknowledged that she’d been faster than the ‘elite’ winner by over *eleven* minutes, yet they wouldn’t give her the trophy. Finally, after public outcry – er, yes, she ran the fastest, so perchance, she should be the winner? – they are giving her a trophy, and recognising her as ‘a’ winner, not ‘the’ winner.

Sounds to me like Nike following in the dubious track of a certain US presidential race. Except in that case, if you’re the popular winner and you still lose the ‘elite’ vote (with some fudging), you don’t become Prez, but you might get a Nobel Prize instead.