Awareness | Posted by Julie Z on 05/13/2010
Kiana Firouz
Today I received an email from FBomb reader and contributer Katherine C. She alerted me to the situation involving filmmaker Kiana Firouz. Kiana is a 27 year old Iranian LGBT rights activist who stars in Cul de Sac, a documentary about the condition of lesbians in Iran. The film was largely produced in the UK as clips of her work featuring the persecution of gays and lesbians in Iran were found by Iranian itellegence who began to harass and follow Firouz in Tehran.
Homosexuality is a crime punishable by death in Iran. Generally, homosexuality is punishable by 100 lashes with the death penalty being enforced after the fourth offence.
Although Firouz is currently in Britain, the British government has refused her asylum. She is being forced to …
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Awareness | Posted by Julie Z on 05/11/2010
Yeardley Love: Why Domestic Violence Is Serious
Many of you may have heard by now about the murder of Yeardley Love, a senior lacrosse player at the University of Virginia. Last Monday, Yeardley was found by one of her roommates in bed, face down and unresponsive. Police found blood on her pillow and reported that her face was bruised as a cause of ‘blunt-force trauma.’
George Huguely, also a senior at the University of Virginia, and Yeardley’s on-again-off-again boyfriend, was charged with killing Yeardley, and admitted to acting violently with her the night she died, stating that he “entered Ms. Love’s unlocked apartment early Monday, kicked his foot through her bedroom door and forced his way in. He then ‘shook Love, and her head repeatedly hit the wall’” (NY Times)
Of course, this is a tragedy. …
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Awareness | Posted by Julie Z on 04/27/2010
Being An Ally
In December, I attended the National Association for Independent Schools’ Student Diversity Leadership Conference, which I blogged about here. This conference, which brought together high school students from across the country to talk about diversity, inspired a friend of mine and I to start a diversity club at our school. We had no idea how hard pulling this off would be.
While there were teachers at our school who had attended the conference with us and who completely supported us, our efforts at starting a club were completely ignored by the student body. We concluded that much of the disinterest had to do with the fact that our school is overwhelmingly white and pretty much conforming to stereotypes across the board.
Getting kids at our school to understand that …
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Awareness | Posted by Julie Z on 04/13/2010
B-Listed interviews Nancy Lublin
A while back B-Listed (which, if you don’t know is this really cool pop-culture human rights blog aimed at influencing the media) interviewed Nancy Lublin, who I think is really rad.
Basically, Nancy Lubin started Do Something.org which is this really awesome organization that tries to motivate teens to get off their asses and, well, do something – volunteer, help other people, etc. etc. As a teen myself, I know how hard this can be (and how badly adults want us to in fact unglue ourselves from TV on the internet…and how very hard that is) so I definitely appreciate her valiant effort.
B-Listed offered that the FBomb re-post this interview, and I’m happy to present it below:
What do you think it is about Do Something that motivates …
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Awareness | Posted by Julie Z on 04/9/2010
Hot Topic Thinks Cutting Is Cool
I didn’t even know what “cutting” was until around middle school when a friend of mine casually called a girl in our grade a “cutter.” When I asked her what a cutter was she told me it was a person who cut themselves, usually with razor blades, because they wanted to make a statement to get attention. I’m pretty sure she also mentioned that cutters are always goth/emo. She was wrong in her assessment of what cutting is, but it’s getting more and more clear where she was steered astray.
I don’t think cutting is an issue that we’re completely culturally aware of. Whereas eating disorders are becoming increasingly understood as exactly that – disorders – rather than strictly ways for girls to get attention or direct results of narcissistic …
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Awareness | Posted by Julie Z on 03/18/2010
Lesbian Teen Banned from Prom
I’m sure a lot of you have heard about this story by now but I had to blog about it. Apparently the school district of Itawamba County in Mississippi would not allow Constance McMillen, 18, to attend her prom wearing a tuxedo and with her girlfriend. Constance was told by her assistant principal that she may be able to get away with escorting her girlfriend if she were to bring a bunch of guys…you know to cancel out / hide their lesbianism, or something. The superintendent suggested that the girls attend the prom separately, wearing dresses, and avoid each other completely lest they “push people’s buttons.”
Now this would be repulsive enough if these were merely the suggestions of misguided authority figures. But the fact is, the district actually has …
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Awareness, Feminism | Posted by Jaded16 on 03/3/2010
Someone Needs To Take The Negative PR Off Of Abortion’s back
As I was reading this post on “Abortion Doulas” I got to thinking about being pro-choice, abortion in general and about abortion in India in particular (as this is where I live). Out here, we tend to look at abortion as something shameful, disgusting, a thing to keep under wraps. No “good Indian” girl ever gets an abortion. If she does, people whisper about her in hushed tones for what she did was indeed disgusting. Interestingly, this is the attitude for abortion only for single women, unwed mothers etc. Within the sanctity of marriage, many women are forced to abort their unborn female fetuses. That isn’t entirely looked down upon. In fact, aborting the girl child is seen as the only solution.
Most T.V ads and posters somehow …
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Awareness | Posted by Julie Z on 03/2/2010
I Can’t Believe This Still Happens: Honor Killings
It’s kind of hard to convince American teenagers that we still need feminism. “But my mom works,” many a peer of mine has stated in response to finding out that I identify with the f word. “She even kept her own last name. We’re totally post-feminist.”
Ah, yes, it is fun for us to live in the privileged little bubble that is the United States, where our Moms do work and can keep their own last names (how far we’ve come…). Even with the rate of women earning 77 cents for every man’s dollar (as of 2007), not to even go into all of America’s feminist short comings, we are incredibly lucky to live here.
At least we don’t have honor killings.
Honor killings, as defined by StopHonourKillings.com, …
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