(Source: idontwannahurtno-more, via sarahharafat)
Female Blogger Weight-Shames Cheerleader—Why Are Women So Mean? -
A CBS Houston sports blogger is getting some serious backlash after criticizing an NBA cheerleader for her weight.Hokemeyer adds, “It’s also easy to be mean behind a computer. Blogging is also a one-dimensional experience that doesn’t force a person to deal with the consequences of their behavior because the writer doesn’t look their target in the eye or observe body language or general social cues that may stop them from being mean in real life.”
(Source: erikawastaken)
How Nonprofits Can Build Social Capital & Boost the Economy: May 3 Forum -
Preview of issues to be discussed at May 3 event in Boston.
(Source: jbsankara)
Boston Police sent out this tweet:
#MediaAlert: WARNING - Do Not Compromise Officer Safety/Tactics by Broadcasting Live Video of Officers While Approaching Search Locations
This means not just video, but all social media : Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, etc. For the safety of the officers and their tasks, do not post anything about it! It may compromise their investigations.
Focus on keeping yourselves tuned in to reliable news sources.
An Opportunity in Guatemala: Deciding the Ríos Montt Case
By Mary Speck, Senior Analyst, Guatemala (@speckmary)
A historic case is unfolding in a Guatemalan courtroom: the trial of former military president José Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The case sets a precedent not only in a nation whose justice system has barely begun to investigate abuses committed during the 1960-1996 armed conflict, but also internationally. This is the first time an ex-head of state has faced genocide charges before a national rather than an international court and is a key test of judicial independence for a still fragile democracy.
Crisis Group’s Guatemala Project has been attending the trial. We spoke with Senior Analyst Mary Speck about the case and its significance for Guatemala’s justice system.
Q: What exactly are the charges against Ríos Montt?
Prosecutors accuse General Ríos Montt of ordering counter-insurgency operations that resulted in the deaths of at least 1,771 people from Maya-Ixil communities in the north-western department of Quiché, as well as many rapes and torture and the forced displacement of some 29,000. They argue that Ríos Montt and his military intelligence director, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, who faces the same charges, targeted indigenous villages for destruction, burning homes and crops and killing and brutalising men, women and children in a scorched-earth campaign against leftist guerrillas.
These massacres not only were crimes against humanity, prosecutors say, they also were genocide, a crime incorporated into Guatemalan law after ratification of the 1948 UN convention. According to the indictment, Ríos Montt is responsible for authorising and implementing military operations that defined the Maya-Ixil population as the “internal enemy” and thus targeted the entire group for elimination. Conviction on the genocide charge alone could mean 30 or more years in prison.
[video]
“Being a woman is not a means to humiliate and punish anyone”
After a policeman in the Iranian Kurdish town of Marivan paraded an accused criminal in traditional Kurdish women’s clothes in the streets in order to humiliate him, women marched in the city condemning the use of women’s attire as a kind of humiliation.
In support, an internet campaign of Kurdish and other Iranian men has sprung up showing men wearing Kurdish women’s clothes and messages and support. For example, this message says,”wearing Kurdish women’s clothes is not only not an insult, it is instead a great honor for us,” and goes on to describe how women stand side by side with men in every part of society and during wartime.
Support the campaign by liking the page!
زن بودن ابزار تحقیر و تنبیه هیچ کس نیست(via Ajam Media Collective)
WOW
(via wakeupyourdead)
“
What kind of world do we live in when young men are so proud of violating unconscious girls that they pass proof around to their friends? It’s the same kind of world in which being labeled a slut comes with such torturous social repercussions that suicide is preferable to enduring them. As a woman named Sara Erdmann so aptly tweeted to me, “I will never understand why it is more shameful to be raped than to be a rapist.”
And yet it is: so much so that young men seem to think there’s nothing wrong with—and maybe something hilarious about—sharing pictures of themselves raping young women. And why not? Their friends will defend them, as they did in Steubenville, tweeting that the young woman was “asking for it” and that the boys were being unfairly targeted.
Women and girls are the ones expected to carry the shame of the sexual crimes perpetrated against them. And that shame is a tremendous load to bear, because once you’re labeled a slut, empathy and compassion go out the window. The word is more than a slur—it’s a designation.
” — “In Rape Tragedies, the Shame Is Ours,” my latest at The Nation (via jessicavalenti)(via starlit-waves)
A Peruvian father faces allegations that he doused his son with gasoline and set him on fire after learning the 22-year-old was gay and HIV-positive.
According to the Peruvian daily newspaper La Región, Hitler Baneo Núñez, 49, allegedly tried to burn the victim (identified in reports…
(Source: The Huffington Post)