Mind the Gap

Hands up. Who can tell me what the definition of liberation is? When the UK and US invaded Afghanistan one of the promises made was that the women of Afganistan would be Liberated.

Natasha Walter has been to Afghanistan five years later to see just how far this liberation has come. Read her report here

Take a moment to read Amnesty International’s site and these statistics are a reminder of just how far we’ve got to go.

We’ll be launching the second phase of our campaign against rape, so watch this space.

Via the Fword, protest in Bristol tomorrow about the lack of rape crisis centres in the city.

Be there if you can.

As a follow up to Naiades’s post about the Pascua Lama campaign, I came across this online petition which people might also like to sign.

Our first Annual General Meeting will take place on Thursday 30th November.

Mind the Gap has come a long way since its formation in September 2004. We’ve run discussion nights, hosted workshops as part of other events, started a blog, created a zine, run campaigns to promote feminism and Stop Rape.

The AGM is now a necessary step to get this group legally constituted. Once this happens, not only will we have a framework for our activities, we’ll be able to apply for funding.

But we also want to use the AGM as an opportunity to review what we’ve done so far and where the group wants to go next. There are plans in the pipeline for a website, another zine, a newsletter and a Bristol branch of the group, but we do need more people to get involved.

Decisions about discussion nights, campaigns and events are all made by group members, so if there’s something you’d like to see us doing, or if there’s something we could be doing better, or something you would like to do, please come along and tell us about it. We can only do so much, so if there’s anything you’d really like to see happening, consider doing it with our support. For example, would you like to run a campaign, or start a subgroup focussing on one particular area of feminist activism?

We are open to suggestions.

If you’ve never come to a meeting before, we would love to meet you at the AGM.

For details about the venue, drop us an email at mindthegapcardiff(AT)yahoo(DOT)co(DOT)uk

Don’t forget to order a copy of the latest edition of Subtext magazine. The only way a feminist media can develop in the UK is through people actually buying magazines like this one because if we don’t support them, no one else will.

Sorry we’re late with this — very busy at the moment.

Ok, people, read the below, I think it speaks for its self. Copy and paste into an email, add your name on to the bottom and mail it on to all your friends. I think This is something that should be publicised as the victims as it were, have bee censored by there own government and prevented from bringing attention to the cause.

Dear friends who care about our earth.

Judge for yourself if you want to take action.

In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in Chile runs from 2 rivers, fed by 2 glaciers. Water is a most precious resource, and wars will be fought for it.
Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no unemployment, and they provide the second largest source of income for the area.

Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and other minerals. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world - and to make 2 huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain, one for extraction and one for the mine’s rubbish tip.

The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called Barrick Gold.
The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose members is George Bush Senior.

The Chilean Government has approved the project to start this year, 2006.
The only reason it hasn’t started yet is because the farmers have got a temporary stay of execution. If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just destroy the source of specially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extraction process.

Every last gram of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose land it is. They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses.

The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the Interior.
Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help from international justice.

The world must know what is happening in Chile. The only place to start changing the world is from here.

We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the following way. Please copy this text, paste it into a new email adding your signature and send it to everyone in your address book.

No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean Cordillera on the Chilean-Argentine frontier.

We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the Pascua Lama project to protect the whole of 3 glaciers, the purity of the water of the San Felix Valley and El Transito, the quality of the agricultural land of the region of Atacama, the quality of life of the Diaguita people and of the whole population of the region.

Signature, City, Country
Katharine Proudfoot, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Laura Cole, London, UK
David Platt, London, UK
Diane Platt, Manchester, UK
Tanya Corker, Manchester, UK
Nicola Hargreaves, UK
Nicholas Jones, UK
Johann Don-Daniel, Germany
Ashley Berger, Germany
Sarah Downie, Leeds, UK
Paula Delahunty, Bingley, UK
John O’Driscoll, Bingley, UK
Jordan-Lee Delahunty, Bingley, UK
Claire Mulvey, Bradford, UK
Marie Malcolm Bradford, UK
Ann Clowes, Halifax UK
Jayne McGee, Brighouse UK
Jason Barratt Oldham UK
Lindsay Torrance, RochdaleUK
Maggie Ford, Rochdale
Barry Cook, Todmorden
Shelley BUrgoyne, Todmorden
Libby Ray, Shipley, England
Anne Meynell, Bradford, England
Jim Meynell, Bradford, England
Alec Knibbs, Kings Lynn, England
Suzanne Bailey, Valencia, Spain
Agnieszka Legierska, London, England
Rosanna Bennett-Moncrieff, BristolEngland
Kirsten Bennett-Moncrieff, Bristol, England
Stephen Haley, Silsoe, England
Rob Smith, Bristol, England
Basil Anderson, Bristol, England
Jonathan Coles, BristolEngland
Deborah Weinreb, BristolEngland
Rachel Pearcey
Stephanie Greenwood
Caryne Chapman Clark, LondonEngland
Maryam Hashemi, London, UK
Duane Melius, London, UK
Dylan Chambers, London, UK
Anna Chippendale, Brighton, UK
Ryan Steer, UK
Chris Hatton, Brighton, UK
Jo Vear Brighton UK
Melanie James, Brighton, UK
Alison Pavic, London, UK
Belinda Jones, UK
Vanessa Brady, UK
Steven R Clark, UK
Christopher Kelly, Brighton, UK
Patricia Silva, Mexico
Barbara Magana, Mexico
Bharine Kalsi, London UK
Elspeth Kent, London UK
Rachel Laurence, London UK
Adam Thorpe, France
Willy Barth, Mainz, Germany
Bel Mooney, Bath, UK
Rose Thompson, Cardiff, UK

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance.

More information here.

Stop Press: Denise from Life Law and Gender has a really good post up about this memorial day.

I have been meaning to pick up on Winters post about street harassment for a couple of days. I’m going to make this quick as I think that this thread needs more thinking about really, so here are my initial thoughts.

Reading about Winter’s experience in the cafe last week coincided with an experience of my own, and made me recall a third which I think can all be draw together in some kind of moderately coherent group.
The first experience I want to talk about was a couple of months ago when we were having new patio doors fitted (I know, so middle class). The guy who spent nearly four hours at my house fitting these doors wasn’t particularly friendly. After I had offered him a cup of tea, I was going to go upstairs to work in my study so I said, mistakenly, “I’ll be upstairs if you need anything” to which he replied “Oh, that’s an offer” or something similar. Now, I know it was meant to be a joke, but it did make me carry around a large screwdriver until he was gone. Second thing I want to mention is that while on my way out on Saturday night this week (actually within 10 minutes of my house) some guy behind me called out something like “baby, baby, you’ve got a nice ass.” I have no idea who this person was, and in the grand scheme of things, it was quite polite, I guess. But it still made me grip my keys a little tighter in my hand and walk a lot quicker and a lot more upright. Now obvioulsy neither of these experiences is nearly half as bad as that experienced by the waitress in Winter’s post, but I do think they are in the same vein.

I’m pretty sure if you asked any of these men why they do what they do, they’ll probably come out with some kind of response like “It’s only a joke love, no harm done”. Well, at the risk of seeming like a dried out old feminist who hates men and has no sense of humour, I don’t get it. I don’t really understand why men actually do thins kind of thing at all, and in a way I think that’s a big part of the problem. When I see guys doing this kind of thing they always remind me of baboons (I suspect that is rather insulting to baboons, but that’s what I see). I mean frankly it’s embarrassing to mankind that men behave like this in public, seriously I’ve no issue with what they do in their own homes but, well I think their mothers would be embarrassed. But, despite the cringe-worthiness of said behavior, there is a much more sinister side. There is harm done. Harm to people like winter and myself who frankly did not realize that the size of our breasts and curvature of our asses were open for public debate, and who find this kind of behavior threatening.

In a way, I think that the animalistic nature of it is part of the problem. It’s so unpredictable, I don’t get it. Is it a joke? Is it a threat? Is it some strange primitive bonding ceromony that some boys are taken aside at school and told about while the rest of us are forced to participate in without prior consent. Is this guy going to follow me home and do me some damage? Is my life in danger? There are so many possibilities that could stem from the simple miming and “massive tits love” that really it’s quite confusing. So on that basis I think that there is Harm Done. Women are kept in a constant state of anxiety by his kind of low level harassment, and our more sensitive men in a constant state of bemusment. While I want to say Guys, cut it out, Your embarrassing yourselves (Whispered). What I would advocate is some kind of public awareness campaign about street harassment that says firmly, it’s really not funny.

The 27th Carnival of feminists is now up at the excellent Body Impolitic.

The 11th Carnival Against Sexual Violence is up at Abyss2Hope.