"(A) lot of us want to believe that activist men really are different from our fathers, brothers, old boyfriends, and male strangers we confront in our daily routines. We want to have some faith that the guy who writes a position paper on sexism and posts it on his website is not writing it just to make himself look good, get pussy, or cover up some of his dangerous practices towards women....And we would like to think that 'security culture'....includes thinking proactively about how to deal with misogyny, patriarchy and heterosexism both outside of and within the activist scenes....But all of these wishes, all of these dreams obviously tend to go unaddressed."

Anarchist People of Color's Ernesto Aguilar writes on sexism in the movement, with an emphasis on legitimacy and systemic change and a critique of personal-is-political approaches. Although he's direct in pointing out men having weak gender politics, he also takes anarchists to task for failing to develop an anti-sexist political culture as well.

Much as breasts have become a market commodity, vaginas have suffered a similar fate. Girls, women, boys, and men, are given little to no empowering imagery, mythology or language within American culture, regarding vaginas and female genitals. The most common thing kids and adults hear about female genitals is they supposedly stink like rotten tuna fish, or leave trails like slugs. Additionally, those jokes about tuna and slugs are bantered about lightly by males and females alike. Women are taught their genitals are gross in American culture, yet we also know they are an economic commodity, which is confusing.

With the fall of the dictatorship of Pérez Jimenez in
1958, Venezuela tentatively took its first steps
towards the aperture of a fragile, exclusionary
democracy. In practice, democracy proved to be a
gender-exclusive phenomenon. Although the Constitution
of 1960 declared that men and women were formally equal
under the law, women who had been active in the
struggle for democracy found themselves devoid of its
privileges and marginalized from politics.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada is reviewing Canada's domestic worker program this week. Grassroots Women notes that the review is long overdue and changes are needed now.

"Fed up with delays in the judicial process, police inaction, fear of being victimized again by alleged rapists who procure easy bail, the women of Nagpur have decided to take the law into their own hands.

The razing of the alleged rapists' homes follows a series of high-profile cases that began in August when Akku Yadav, a gang leader who faced 24 criminal charges including murder, was stabbed and stoned to death in a court by a mob led by women."

Developing countries' crippling debt hits women hardest. And the policies of
the IMF and World Bank make matters worse

Noreena Hertz |
The Guardian

By Heather Mallick

Monday marks the 15th anniversary of the mass murder of 14 young women at the University of Montreal's École Polytechnique. Dec. 6 is now called the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.

Feminist Daily News Wire |
October 13, 2004

Saudi Arabia

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives | September 22, 2004

(Vancouver) As a result of legal aid cuts women are losing custody of their children, giving up valid legal rights to support, and being subjected to litigation harassment, according to a new report.

Atefeh Rajabi appears to have been a fairly normal 16-year-old: sulky, disobedient, and eager to have sex. In London, those attributes earn lectures from parents and teachers on the importance of acting responsibly and not being offensive. In the city of Neka in Iran, where Atefeh Rajabi comes from, they get you hauled up in front of a judge..... Atefeh's typical teenage behaviour meant that she was charged and found guilty of "acts incompatible with chastity". The judge in the Islamic court ruled that the appropriate penalty was death.

YELLOWKNIFE - A group representing native women in the N.W.T. says it expects prostitution to increase if a pipeline is built down the Mackenzie Valley.

Third World Resurgence | July/August 2004 |
By Diego Cevallos

While world attention has been focused on the murders of young women in
Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, `femicide' in neighbouring Guatemala, where on
average, one woman a day is killed, goes unnoticed.

It is now ten years since the UN held its International

Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. Its

Programme of Action was the first and most comprehensive

international policy document to promote the concepts of

reproductive rights and reproductive health...One decade later, however, some 600,000 women die each year...while 18

million are left disabled or chronically ill because of largely preventable complications during pregnancy or childbirth.

On this 51st anniversary of the attack on the Moncada fortress on July 26, 1953 I shall address a sinister character that keeps threatening, insulting and slandering us. This is not a whim or an agreeable option; it is a necessity and a duty.

On June 21, at the Anti-imperialist Forum I read Epistle Number Two to the president of the United States, responding to an infamous State Department report on trafficking in human beings, one of those reports the government of that country usually issues, as if it were the supreme moral judge of the world. In that document Cuba is accused of being one of the countries that promotes sexual tourism and child pornography.