The battle against FGM is yet to be won

Today, in recognition of the UN’s International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, we reflect upon female genital mutilation (FGM), defining this cultural practice, addressing its harmful implications, and seeking resolution on this dangerous, damaging and sadly all too prevalent issue. FGM, also known as female genital cutting and female circumcision, is the ritual removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is common across much of Africa and the Middle East, and is practiced in some parts of Asia, and among diaspora populations in Western countries. Somalia is thought to have the highest prevalence of FGM in the world, with 98% of girls affected. In my homeland of Nigeria, it is believed around 20 million girls and women have undergone the procedure. Globally this figure rises to 200 million. FGM as a cultural practice, is often perceived as a rite of passage into the maturity of womanhood, but evidently conceived to contain and control a young woman, or even a girl’s sexuality, to ensure virginity before marriage and fidelity after, by the brutal method of limiting a woman’s sexual pleasure. This is a blatant violation of a female’s rights, and the embodiment of female subordination, as FGM quite unusually, is visited upon the female gender, by the female gender, towards a misguided but sadly reinforced sense of community affirmation. In addition to the enduring psychological effects of the practice, FGM presents severe medical risks to its victims. In the short-term, excruciating pain, excessive bleeding and shock are commonplace. Anesthetics are rarely used, and many women recall the procedure as an enduring trauma. Infection is also common, as FGM often takes place in un-sterile environments. This prolongs the suffering of the procedure, and can be fatal if left untreated. The long-term complications are extensive; chronic infection, menstrual problems, painful urination, obstetric complications and peri-natal risks all arise as a direct result of FGM. It must be stopped. As the founder and CEO of the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, a maternal health charity based in Nigeria, I have seen with my own eyes the harm caused by this archaic practice. Women who have undergone the procedure commonly experience complications during birth, and are at a greater risk of caesarian section, hemorrhage, obstetric lacerations and prolonged labour. In low and middle income economic regions with poor coverage of quality maternal healthcare such as Nigeria, the heightened risk that FGM imposes on expectant mothers presents an added danger to childbirth. Last year I participated in a United National Population Fund conference in Nigeria that called for collective action to eliminate Female Genital Mutilation by 2030. FGM is a dangerous, harmful and unnecessary cultural practice, a physical assault that causes grievous bodily harm – it is therefore the responsibility of the international community, domestic governments and civil society to work together in fighting to protect girls of the future from such inhumane practice. The UN estimates that if current trends continue, 15 million more girls between 15 and 19 […]

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Torture Memo Author John Yoo Has ‘Grave Concerns’ Over Trump’s Use Of Executive Power

Former Justice Department official John Yoo, best known for writing the memos authorizing the George W. Bush administration’s use of torture during interrogations, says even he thinks President Donald Trump is going too far with his executive orders. In a New York Times op-ed titled “Executive Power Run Amok,” Yoo says while he supports a “robust vision” of the executive branch, he believes Trump fundamentally misunderstands the separation of powers laid out in the U.S. Constitution. “Even I have grave concerns about Mr. Trump’s uses of presidential power,” he writes. Yoo has long advocated for largely unchecked presidential power in times of crisis, such as the Bush administration’s war on terror. He wrote several legal opinions that were used to justify the CIA’s use of waterboarding and broad surveillance programs, and he even said presidential power protected the executive’s right to crush a child’s testicles if the president believed it would help him obtain information. He also defended former President Barack Obama’s use of armed drones. But in his op-ed, Yoo argues Trump lacks constitutional restraint. He specifically questions Trump’s executive orders calling for the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and renegotiating NAFTA, and his firing of acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she said she wouldn’t defend his executive order on immigration. Yoo also criticizes Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, arguing the policy could have been constitutional if he had sought proper counsel on the matter. Bush-era official John Yoo says Trump’s use of executive power has gone too far. “Had Mr. Trump taken advantage of the resources of the executive branch as a whole, not just a few White House advisers, he would not have rushed out an ill-conceived policy made vulnerable to judicial challenge,” Yoo writes. “A successful president need not have a degree in constitutional law. But he should understand the Constitution’s grant of executive power,” he writes. “Otherwise, our new president will spend his days overreacting to the latest events, dissipating his political capital and haphazardly wasting the executive’s powers.” Yoo previously criticized Trump’s remarks on torture, telling Fox News last year he believes Trump doesn’t understand what waterboarding is used for. “I’m afraid Mr. Trump thinks of waterboarding, or worse, as a kind of punishment, like a sentence ― as you said, revenge or reprisals,” Yoo said. “That’s not what its purpose is. The purpose of it is not to take revenge for past acts. It’s to figure out what to do now to get intelligence to stop future attacks.” Yoo also took issue with Obama’s 2016 executive orders on gun safety, calling them an effort to “extend the reach of the regulatory state.” How will Trump’s first 100 days impact you? Sign up for our weekly newsletter and get breaking updates on Trump’s presidency by messaging us here.

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Uncovering the roots of racist ideas in America

Donald Trump proclaimed during his inaugural address, “When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.” Opening our hearts to patriotism will not solve the problem of racist ideas. Some of the nation’s proudest patriots have also been the nation’s most virulent racists. The organizing principle of the Ku Klux Klan has always been allegiance to the red, white and blue flag. Lacking patriotism is not the root of racist ideas. But neither is ignorance and hate, as Americans are taught so often during Black History Month. Contrary to popular conceptions, ignorant and hateful people have not been behind the production and reproduction of racist ideas in America. Instead, racist ideas have usually been produced by some of the most brilliant and cunning minds of each era. And these women and men generally did not produce these ideas because they hated black people. In my new book, “Stamped from the Beginning,” I chronicle the entire history of racist ideas, from their origins in 15th-century Europe, through colonial times when early British settlers carried racist ideas to America, all the way to their emergence in the United States and persistence into 21st century. I distinguish between the influential producers of racist ideas, and the consumers of them. And I study the motives – and historical circumstances – behind the production of racist ideas. My persisting research question was not merely what racist ideas influential Americans produced, but why they produced those racist ideas at a particular time and how those ideas impacted America. What caused Thomas Jefferson to decry “Amalgamation with the other color” in 1814 after he had fathered several biracial children with Sally Hemings? What caused U.S. Sen. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina in 1837 to produce the racist idea of slavery as a “positive good” when he knew slavery’s torturous horrors? What caused President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 to affirm that “the greatest existing cause of lynching is the perpetration … of the hideous crime of rape” when he probably saw the data that showed that rape was not the greatest existing cause? What caused think tankers and journalists after the presidential election of Barack Obama in 2008 to produce the racist idea of a post-racial society during all that post-election violence against black bodies? Time and again, racist ideas have not been born and bred in the cradle of ignorant, hateful or unpatriotic minds. Time and again, powerful and brilliant men and women have produced racist ideas in order to justify the racist policies of their era, in order to redirect the blame for their era’s racial disparities away from those policies and onto black people. The common conception that ignorance and hate lead to racist ideas, and that racist ideas initiate racist policies, is largely ahistorical. It has actually been the inverse relationship – racial discrimination has led to racist ideas which has led to ignorance and hate. “Stamped from the Beginning” shows that the principal function of racist ideas in […]

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Watch The Feminist Superbowl Ad No One Is Talking About

Forget Audi pitching pay equality: The most feminist ad of Superbowl this year was a Tide commercial in which not a single woman appears. The commercial was woven into Fox’s broadcast. Announcer Terry Bradshaw finds a barbecue stain on his shirt, dips out of the game and races to actor Jeffrey Tambor’s house. The 72-year-old actor helpfully washes the ex-NFL players clothes while they both hang on the couch. For years men have been largely ignored by the makers of laundry detergent, who aimed their marketing voodoo squarely at women. A more typical Tide commercial would involve a mother desperate to remove the grass stains on her son’s soccer shorts or perhaps a beautiful lady prancing through a backyard sniffing freshly-laundered sheets off the line. Last night’s ad marks a step forward for equality at home. Acknowledging laundry as a man’s chore is a small but welcome step for gender equality. Yet, the commercial that caught everyone’s attention Sunday night was a more nakedly feminist spot for Audi. In the car company’s commercial a father muses on the opportunities that may one day be available to his young daughter. “What do I tell my daughter? Do I tell her that despite her education, her drive, her skills, her intelligence, she’ll automatically be valued as less than every man she meets?” Audi ends the ad by broadcasting its commitment to equal pay. Equal pay for equal work is obviously important. But so is equality at home: If that little girl is going to make it out there in the world, she needs a partner at home who takes on his (or her) share of the housework. The burden of housework, however, still falls mostly on women. Even though women represent 47 percent of the workforce and an overwhelming majority of women with kids at home are employed, they still do much more of the housework, according to data from the Labor Department. The so-called extra-shift holds them back outside the home. It is partly the reason women are still so hard to find in the upper echelons of the business and political spheres. Women “face two glass ceilings, one at work and one at home,” a news story in Bloomberg noted in 2015. “Until that changes, the number of women advancing to high-level positions isn’t likely to go anywhere.” The Tide commercial is a strong signal that change is happening. Men are slowly taking on more household tasks. What’s happening with laundry marks an “epic change,” Ellen Byron of The Wall Street Journal reported last year ― after Tide put out a similarly male-focused commercial featuring Emmitt Smith. Sixty-seven percent of men between ages 18 – 34 were responsible for cleaning their own clothes in 2014, up from 44 percent the previous year, according to data cited by the Wall Street Journal. Older men, age 55 and up, mainly leave the task to their wives. Just 35 percent do their own wash, according to the data. Companies, including Procter & Gamble, […]

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Why The Travel Ban, Temporary Or Not, Is A Bad Idea

As the (temporary) travel ban executive order hit the newsstands, it seemed like a no-brainer victory for the White House, I suppose. Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen would not be allowed to enter the United States for a period of time. It was sure to please the conservative base, and divide the Democrats between progressives who would oppose it, and moderates unwilling to oppose it, in the hopes of winning in 2018 and 2020. Well that didn’t go according to plan. You saw protests erupt across the United States airports. A majority of Americans (55%) oppose the plan. If anything, the ban helped unify the Democrats in a way that had not happened since before the 2016 election. And it has divided the Republicans so that not only have GOP moderates decried the executive order, but also hard core conservatives like TEA Party Star Congressman Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican. What went wrong for the White House? First of all, those who crafted the executive order rushed it through the first week of the Trump Administration, without giving it a lot of thought as to what it would say, or why those countries were on the list. As the conservative Cato Institute pointed out, these are not the countries where attackers are from. Critics were quick to point out that many of the countries where 9/11 hijackers came from or lone wolves have emerged weren’t on the list, and that these are places where Donald Trump does business. Second, it was not written in consultation with key members of Congress on relevant committees, or even those in government who would be in charge of enforcing the ban. Those were the people who would not only be in charge of implementing the confusing order, but could have also provided expert advice that a team of bloggers and low-level congressional staffers clearly lack. Third, there’s something you should know about these countries that should seem pretty obvious once you think about it. The Afghan government is our ally in the battle against the Taliban, who you may remember provided the base for Al-Qaeda to attack us. It’s the same for the Iraq government, that we helped build, which is working with us to rid the region of ISIS. Libya’s in a similar position against an ISIS ally. It’s the same with Yemen, locked in battle with the Houthis and an Al-Qaeda affiliate that we clashed with just last week in a commando raid. Imagine our teammates in the war on terrorism explaining this order to their people, trying to convince them that America still supports them. Frankly, this represents a pre-9/11 mindset. Had our military and intelligence community been consulted, they could have pointed out these serious drawbacks to the plan. Had Congress been consulted, they could have offered experience on the matter. Lawyers could have defended the plan in court better with consultation, which is why supporters of the ban are losing so badly in the […]

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I Get by With a Little Help From My Friends

Women, especially women over 50, have time to enjoy and learn from other women, because we are unencumbered. The kids are grown and there is a feeling of liberation. We have time to pursue other activities. I have an idea you might consider… But first a little tidbit from Honey. Two women, strangers, are seated next to one another on a flight from LA to Miami. By the time the flight lands they know how many children they have, how many times they been married, the purpose of the trip to Miami and even each other’s personal problems. It is a fact that women engage in conversations with like-minded women. Women share. Women love dialogue. Women care. There is not a woman alive that does not love to gather information. Women are busybodies and it is all good. And after the age of 50 or 60, with more time than ever on her hands, she has been set free to make a relationship with herself and her fellow sisters. THE STORY One year ago, I met a young advertising executive. He wanted to understand, for advertising purposes, the psyche of women over fifty. I told him, “That would take me a life time!” So, he suggested,”Would you mind inviting a group of women friends to your home for a focus group?” The purpose of the meeting was to listen as the women, hopefully, ‘bathed’ in conversation. Not only did they ‘bathe’ in conversation, dear friends of mine, they almost drowned in their words as their thoughts and feelings came pouring out of their mouths. There was no holding back as they ‘permitted’ themselves to show their vulnerabilities. It was dramatic. I sat there watching them draw power from one another. A short description of the women. My friends were married or had a significant other, they were mothers and grandmothers, many had once had careers, they were educated, they had taken up activities from travel to sports to book clubs, to classes, etc. They were from several different cities. They were not home sitting on their laurels. They felt ‘invisible’ due to their age. They were facing joy and freedom but also problems and issues. I could feel they were glad they had accepted my invitation because they all left my home with smiles and still yackety yaking. It was all good. I thought about the group meeting on and off over the next few weeks. I kept thinking to myself, “Why not form a group?” I stopped thinking and started doing! I phoned my girlfriend, Jane, who has a degree in Family Psych. She participated in the original group. I wanted her opinion. She liked the idea and so… I began making phone calls, pooling from different groups of friends, explaining the platform. I imagined some of the gals would turn me down. Dear readers, not one women said no. They were over the top thrilled saying,”I would love to be part of the group. I want this in […]

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Lady Gaga Announces World Tour After Amazing Super Bowl Show

Get ready, little monsters. After performing a medley of her biggest hits for the Super Bowl LI halftime show on Sunday night, Gaga announced her Joanne World Tour that kicks off Aug. 1 in Vancouver. The “Million Reasons” singer will stop in Los Angeles, Boston and New York before heading to Europe and looping back through the United States. “Joanne,” Gaga’s fifth studio album, was released in October. With songs like “Hey Girl,” the star speaks to empower other women and seeks to give a voice to marginalized groups, a focus she’s had throughout her career. “I became obsessed with writing their stories in musical form,” she told The New York Times. “It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.” Joanne World Tour dates: Aug. 1: Rogers Arena, Vancouver, British Columbia Aug. 3: Rogers Place, Edmonton, Alberta Aug. 5: Tacoma Dome, Tacoma, Washington Aug. 8: The Forum, Los Angeles, California Aug. 11: T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada Aug. 13: AT&T Park, San Francisco, California Aug. 15: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, California Aug. 19: CenturyLink Center, Omaha, Nebraska Aug. 21: Xcel Energy Center, St. Paul, Minnesota Aug. 23: Quicken Loans Arena, Cleveland, Ohio Aug. 25: Wrigley Field, Chicago, Illinois Aug. 28: Citi Field, New York, New York Sept. 1: Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts Sept. 4: Bell Centre, Montreal, Quebec Sept. 6: Air Canada Centre, Toronto, Ontario Sept. 10: Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Sept. 15: Rock in Rio Festival, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil Sept. 22: Palau Sant Jordi, Barcelona, Spain Sept. 24: Hallenstadion, Zurich, Switzerland Sept. 26: Mediolanum Forum, Milan, Italy Sept. 29: Barclaycard Arena, Hamburg, Germany Oct. 1: Sportpaleis, Antwerp, Belgium Oct. 3: Ziggo Dome, Amsterdam, Netherlands Oct. 6: AccorHotels Arena, Paris, France Oct. 9: O2 Arena, London, U.K. Oct 15: Barclaycard Arena, Birmingham, U.K. Oct. 17: Manchester Arena, Manchester, U.K. Oct. 21: Royal Arena, Copenhagen, Denmark Oct. 23: Ericsson Globe, Stockholm, Sweden Oct: 26: Mercedes-Benz Arena, Berlin, Germany Oct. 28: Lanxess Arena, Koln, Germany Nov. 5: Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, Indiana Nov 7: Little Caesars Arena, Detroit, Michigan Nov. 10: Mohegan Sun, Uncasville, Connecticut Nov. 13: KFC Yum! Center, Louisville, Kentucky Nov. 15: Sprint Center, Kansas City, Kansas Nov. 16: Scottrade Center, St. Louis, Missouri Nov. 19: Verizon Center, Washington, D.C. Nov. 20: PPG Paints Arena, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Nov. 28: Philips Arena, Atlanta, Georgia Nov. 30: American Airlines Arena, Miami, Florida Dec. 1: Amalie Arena, Tampa, Florida Dec. 3: Toyota Center, Houston, Texas Dec. 5: Frank Erwin Center, Austin, Texas Dec. 8: American Airlines Center, Dallas, Texas Dec. 9: Chesapeake Energy Arena, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Dec. 12: Pepsi Center, Denver, Colorado Dec. 14: Vivint Smart Home Arena, Salt Lake City, Utah

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