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Poet Aja Monet Confronts Police Brutality Against Black Women With #SayHerName
“Melissa Williams,” Aja Monet reads, “Darnisha Harris.” Her voice is strong; it marches along, but it shakes a little, although not from nerves. She’s performing a poem that includes the forgotten names of girls and women who’ve been injured or killed by the police. She finishes forcefully, then pauses, exhales. “Can I do that again?” she asks. “It’s my first time reading it out loud, and … ” she trails off.
Monet had written the poem – a contribution to the #SayHerNamecampaign, a necessary continuation of the Black Lives Matter movement focusing on overlooked police violence against women – earlier that morning. That evening, she’d read it at a vigil. Now, she was practicing on camera, surprised by the power of her own words.
As a poet, Monet is prolific. She’s been performing both music and readings for some time – at 19, she was the youngest ever winner of New York City’sNuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam – and her work has brought her to France, Bermuda and Cuba, from where her grandmother fled, and where she recently learned she still has extended family. Next month, she’ll return to visit them. But first, she wants to contribute to a campaign she believes in.
Though she’s disheartened that a hashtag is necessary to capture people’s attention – “I think #SayHerName is the surface level of the issues but beneath that there is the real question of, ‘Why?‘” she says – Monet wields her art to achieve social and political justice. While discussing political poetry with a fellow artist in Palestine, he observed, “Art is more political than politics.” “I feel him,” she says. “I think he’s right.”
Read our full interview with Monet here.
#GirlsWithToys proves women belong in science
In a recent interview a CalTech scientist, said, “Many scientists, I think, secretly are what I call ‘boys with toys’” The only problem? Not all scientists are boys — and women around the world let him know. This is so much more than a hashtag.
Feminists United Club Member Grace Mann Murdered After Months of Threats of Sexual Assault and Violence
After University of Mary Washington Feminists United Club president Paige McKinsey spoke up at a student senate meeting about the culture of sexual hostility among the university’s fraternities and the university’s unwillingness to do anything about it, the anonymous social media app Yik Yak exploded with insults and threats of physical and sexual violence toward McKinsey and other campus feminists.
After the rugby team was recorded singing a song about raping dead whores, prompting FUC members to report the incident to the school administration, the threats got even worse.
Then, on April 17th, Grace Mann was murdered by her roommate, a former rugby player.
You can literally be murdered for being a feminist.
What triggers my anger is when that person who happens to be a female says: “I don’t need feminism. I don’t need to be liberated.”
How about you tell that to:
- that Moroccan girl who killed herself after being forcibly married to her rapist (x)
- that 11-year-old Texan girl who got raped by 18 men while the New York Times said she “dressed older than her age.” (x)
- Reyhaneh Jabari, an Iranian woman who was tortured in jail then hanged after killing the man who was going to rape her. (x)
- Nojood Al-Ali from Yemen who got divorced when she was 10. (x)
- the 16-year-old girl from Ohio who got raped and filmed at a party by 2 boys, while CNN reporters talked about the bright futures of the rapists as athletes. (x)
- the 94 women in Jordan who were legally married to their rapists, only in 2014. (x)
- the 8-year-old girl who was married to a man 5 times her age, and died on the day of her wedding because she suffered from bleeding and uterine rupture after intercourse. (x)
- the 25 Palestinian women who were killed by either their brother or father, in order to “protect their honor” only in 2013. (x)
- the 99% of Egyptian women and 90% of Yemeni women who have experienced sexual harassment (x) (x)
You still don’t need feminism?
Feminist vandals are giving this beach body ad the upgrade it deserves
Commuters on the London Underground this month were treated to a series of advertisements for U.K. dietary supplement manufacturer Protein World, featuring their “weight loss collection” alongside an ultra-thin woman with the caption: “Are you beach body ready?“ The U.K.’s feminist community was less than receptive to this obvious shaming tactic — and made their voices heard. There are plenty more where the above came from.
Yesterday, a teacher at my daughter’s preschool told me that she saw two boys and a girl spinning the knobs of a play oven. Boy #1 says: “I’m a pilot! I’m flying a plane.’ Boy #2 says: “Me too!” The girl is quiet, so the teacher says to her: “What about you, are you a pilot?” The 3 year old girl replies: “I can’t be a pilot. I’m a pilot’s wife.”
So what do you think has happened in this little girl’s short life to make her believe it’s more likely that she would be a pilot’s wife than a pilot?
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