Black women as a group have never been fools. We couldn’t afford to be.― Barbara Smith
Dear Women,
Where to for WAAC for 2019? That’s what we’ll be discussing at our first meeting for the year on Monday, 25 February. Last year we focussed on mapping out the anti-woman terrain that confronts us on a daily basis: rape culture, pornography, prostitution, sexual objectification, and the rest of it. This year, we need to figure out what to do with our raised consciousnesseseses. Do we ally ourselves with other groups such as eChildhood or Collective Shout? Do we try to influence politicians and legislation? Or do we just do doughnuts in Westfield carparks on a Saturday night?
We hope you can make it to this important strategy and planning meeting where we will try to figure out what works and what doesn’t and where to put our precious energies.
Yours in Sisterhood,
The Women of WAAC.
Email women@womensactionalliance.org for more info, (including details of women’s events in Canberra and special offers for members) or to sign up for our mailing list.
EVENTS, ETC.
- Women, Peace + Security: In Conversation with NATO’s Special Representative
- In conversation with Jane Caro
- In conversation with Natasha Stott Despoja
- Building women’s livelihoods: an evidence-based theory of change
- Self-defence workshop
SEXISM, MISOGYNY, HARASSMENT, PATRIARCHY, GENERAL ICKINESS
- For ‘leftover’ single women in China, Lunar New Year brings dread of facing their families
- The UAE handed out awards for gender equality & men won them all
- Balkan women are sharing their #MeToo testimonies about experiencing painful gynecological procedures and abuse
- A man I manage earns £20k more than me, and I can’t discuss it publicly
- Lesbians are being excluded from the Vancouver Dyke March in the name of ‘inclusivity’
- British surgeon claims trans-identified males are entitled to uterus transplants, saying the demand among self-identified transwomen for a womb transplant is far greater than that of females.
PORNOGRAPHY
- WhatsApp has a child pornography problem
- Fake-porn videos are being weaponized to harass and humiliate women: ‘Everybody is a potential target’
- It’s time for New Zealand’s porn critics to reject ‘sex work’ ideology
- “Rosebudding”, the latest porn phenomenon that shows a man raping a woman anally until she suffers rectal prolapse
PROSTITUTION & TRAFFICKING
- Freed from forced marriages, U.K. victims asked to pay government back for rescue
- 47 men arrested by Vancouver police in operation targeting sexual predators of teenagers
- Illegal brothels targeted in Canberra as police express concern for trafficked workers. It’s interesting to read the response by the Scarlett Alliance, which represents pimps, not women who are prostituted.
- The Sexploitationpodcast is released every Thursday and available on iTunes. Recent episodes include Is Internet porn addictive?and What do sex buyers really think?
MALE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
- Australian police deal with domestic violence every two minutes
- Girl ‘raped by stepdad, told by dad she deserved it for being a lesbian’
- Two French policemen charged with raping a tourist
- Brazil: four women killed every day in 2019, human rights body says
- Man, 27, arrested after allegedly threatening to kill women because he’s a virgin
- Philippines: Rodrigo Duterte orders soldiers to shoot female rebels ‘in the vagina’
NEW IN THE WAAC LIBRARY
Please see Megan to borrow a book from the WAAC library.
- Broken Silence. Voices of Japanese feminism, Sandra Buckley (ed.) (1997)
- Not Just Lucky. Why women do the work but don’t take the credit, Jamila Rizvi (2017)
- Woman to Woman. A guide to lesbian sexuality, Carol Booth (2002)
