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Ireland: My Body, My Choice: From Reproductive Rights to Sexual Harassment

October 29, 2016 By HKearl

Grace Gageby, Dublin, Ireland, SSH Blog Correspondent

In 1983, the 8th Amendment, a ban on abortion that gave the “right to life of the unborn with due regard to the equal life of the mother” was voted into the Irish constitution. The youngest person who voted in the referendum then is now 51.

Between the implementation of the 8th Amendment and the present day, a pro-choice movement has been struggling to secure a woman’s right to control her own body in Ireland. This September saw the 5^th annual March for Choice, in which (despite bus strikes and abysmal weather) 25,000 people took to the streets of Dublin to call on the conservative political establishment to trust women to make their own choices.

Women and men of all ages marched through the city with signs declaring ‘My body, my choice’, ‘Get your rosaries off my ovaries”, ‘Woman, not vessel’, ‘Not the Church, not the State, women must decide their fate’, and, in reference to Ireland’s victory in the Marriage Equality campaign, ‘Choice: you gave it to the gays, now give it to the girls.’ Speeches at the end of the march drew attention to how Ireland’s abortion ban affects the most vulnerable women in society, for example, asylum seekers.

A tribute was paid to the 12 women a day who are forced to travel to England for abortions, in this moving rendition of the traditional song, ‘Trasna na Donnta’ (Irish for ‘Across the Waves’).

The past few months have seen a big focus on repealing the amendment. Sweaters with merely the word ‘repeal’ printed on them sold out in one day in a pop-up shop in Dublin city centre. All proceeds were given to the Abortion Rights Campaign, and across the country, men and women of all ages literally wore their beliefs on their chests.

Street artist, Maser, graffitied a large red and white heart bearing the words “Repeal the 8^th” on the wall of Dublin’s Project Art’s centre. The mural was painted over after Dublin City Council received complaints, which sparked mass outrage and indignation over this threat to freedom of speech. At a protest, I spoke to countless men and women who wanted to make the message abundantly clear: the issue of reproductive rights in Ireland cannot be covered up with a bit of blue paint.

People in Ireland are no longer accepting the quintessential Irish problem of shoving matters under the carpet, and exiling women to England to receive medical treatment their own country refuses to provide. Since being painted over, the mural has become iconic, popping up all over the city on bags, shirts, badges, in shop windows, and even on donuts made by the fabulous Aungier Danger! In its suppression, the painting over of the mural spawned insurgence and sparked a conversation that cannot be muted by a backward establishment determined to dominate women’s sexual and personal decisions.

Unfortunately, Ireland’s history of silencing women’s oppression goes back further than the 8^th amendment. In fact, the 8^th was built on the legacy of the Magdalene Laundries, institutions run by the Catholic Church to house ‘fallen women’. The Magdalene Laundries were motivated by not only a desire for free labour, but, according to Frances Finnegan (author of Do Penance or Perish: A Study of Magdalene Asylums in Ireland), a need to “maintain moral and social order within the bounds of a patriarchal structure.” An estimated 30,000 women were confined in these laundries in the 19^th and 20^th century. Historically, there has been a culture of secrecy surrounding the laundries, and the abuse women faced within them. While Taoiseach Enda Kenny (Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland) issued a formal apology in 2013, the religious institutions such as the Sisters of Mercy refused demands from the Irish government, UN Committee on Rights of the Child and the UN Committee Against Torture to contribute to the compensation fund for victims of the laundries.

With this history of oppression and silence, it is hardly surprising the archaic 8^th amendment is currently in place in Ireland. It stems from centuries of Church and State control over women’s bodies.

Despite this, a youthful, vibrant pro-choice movement in Ireland is flourishing, having taken inspiration from the Yes Equality Campaign that legalised gay marriage in 2015. This victory was not only a joyous occasion for Ireland, but also for politicized sections of LGBT people, women and the working class who are currently at the forefront in the struggle for reproductive rights in Ireland. The sheer momentum behind the pro-choice movement in Ireland has created a massive drive for challenging sexism in all its facets.

If we want to achieve true gender equality in Ireland, we cannot and will not have a law policing women’s bodies in our constitution. If women are not equal in the eyes of the law, how can we expect the same thing in the hearts and minds of our citizens? Women’s bodies are not commodities: not vessels for children, not possessions of the State and not objects for the male gaze. We need to reject a culture of silencing oppression and of not listening to women’s stories, whether they be stories of assault, harassment, or being criminalized for having a say in their own reproductive rights. The current appetite for social change and challenging sexism in all it’s forms has created a platform from which women can be heard, and given Ireland’s history, it’s about time.

Grace is a student. She writes regularly for her school newsletter and yearbook, and has been published in Inis Magazine. Grace is currently involved with the socialist feminist group ROSA (for Reproductive rights, against Oppression, Sexism & Austerity), and their campaign for abortion rights in Ireland.

Video: Street harassment in Yemen

January 9, 2012 By HKearl

One of the most common “arguments” I hear when it comes to street harassment is that it wouldn’t happen if women didn’t dress “a certain way.” When I give talks, I specifically point out studies that refute this, such as how in Yemen more than 90 percent of women experience street harassment, yet women are very modestly dressed, if not completely covered, when they are in public places.

Last year Ghaidaa Al Absi launched The Safe Streets campaign to address the problem of street harassment in Yemen and they just released a video about the issue.

It’s in Arabic and even if you don’t know the language, the opening powerfully shows how street harassment is not about what women wear. The video also brings up the complicated contexts for street harassment: sometimes a street harasser is a harassment victim too, but he is harassed for different reasons. Can pointing out the parallels of harassment to harassers help stop the cycle?

Al Absi sent me the following via email about the campaign and video:

“Safe Streets Campaign for anti-sexual harassment in the streets launches the opening ceremony of broadcasting a short movie called “Safe Streets” that is done as an activity for the campaign aims to reduce the rate of sexual harassment in the Yemeni streets.

The campaign aims to monitor cases of harassment and encourage community and women in particular to break the silence, and talk about what is happening to them on the streets in order to put pressure on decision makers to declare solutions of this serious social problem.

This short movie aims to present the problem of sexual harassment, that many Yemeni women are facing it in their daily life in the streets, and how the harasser of the woman can be a victim of harassment in the street too, so then he can understand how women feel.”

Saudi women can vote! Next: driving and the end of male escorts?

September 26, 2011 By HKearl

: Image via Peace is the New Black

Did you know that women in Saudi Arabia cannot vote? It’s true, but only for four more years. Yesterday, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia made a big announcement: in the next election cycle women can run for office and vote. This is major (long overdue) progress and a cause for celebration, even if Saudi women won’t see its fruition until 2015.

What’s caused this change?

Via The New York Times:

“There is the element of the Arab Spring, there is the element of the strength of Saudi social media, and there is the element of Saudi women themselves, who are not silent,” said Hatoon al-Fassi, a history professor and one of the women who organized a campaign demanding the right to vote this spring. “Plus, the fact that the issue of women has turned Saudi Arabia into an international joke is another thing that brought the decision now.”

Related, the Arab Spring combined with social media and women’s determination also inspired about 30 women to organize a protest in June against the no-women drivers law and they drove cars.

Via The Washington Post:

“Maha al-Qahtani, 39, drove for 35 minutes in Riyadh with her husband in the passenger seat. ‘This is my basic right. It should not be a big deal. There is nothing wrong or illegal about driving,’ Qahtani, a state employee, said. ‘The decision to ban driving proves how backward the regime is.'”

You can follow the latest news on women working to secure the right to drive on the Saudi Women Driving blog.

Today, Saudi Princess Ameerah Al-Taweel spoke to Forbes.com about women’s rights and why women should be allowed to drive. She said:

“Other than it being an economical barrier—an average woman spends 30% of her salary on a driver—[it’s] a social barrier. She can’t go some places because of this driver, lack of privacy, sometimes safety issues. It is symbolic outside, where we are being judged as suppressed and as happy with the status quo when we’re not. No matter how many great things we do, we’ll always be judged as a country that suppresses women because we’re the only country in the world where women can’t drive.”

Good for her for speaking out!

As Al-Taweel alludes to, being able to vote or drive are not the only rights women are denied in Saudi Arabia. Saudi women also have very little access to public places, especially compared to most women (and nearly all men) around the world. This is an excerpt from my book on this subject:

“There are countries where the laws, as well as male harassment, keep women from having the same access to public spaces as men. One of the worst countries for women’s equality in public spaces—and equality in general—is Saudi Arabia. Women are forbidden from leaving their local neighborhood without the company of a male family member or guardian. Women need permission from their male family member or guardian to travel by airplane, check into hotels, or rent apartments. Even mosques and some public streets are reserved for men, and women only have limited access to parks, museums, and libraries.

Women in Saudi Arabia are also prohibited from driving cars. Abdel Mohsen Gifari, a researcher for the country’s religious police who has spent much of his career enforcing laws, such as those prohibiting women drivers, told to a Miami Herald reporter in 2009 that one of his daughters wants to drive. “I told her that driving is allowed in Islam,” Gifari said in an interview with a Western reporter. “But it is more of a cultural thing. We already have a lot of problems on the road when it comes to sexual harassment, with guys flirting with girls in the car. If a woman drives, it’s only going to bring more problems.”

Other countries that legally restrict or legally permit the restriction of women’s mobility in public spaces include Kuwait, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).”

Hopefully with the right to vote and run for office secured, Saudi women can use their political voices to chip away at these severe inequalities. And in the meantime, I look forward to hearing about more protests of the driving ban as well activism around the unfair decree that women must have male permission and/or male company to go places. They have my support as they move forward to secure more rights!

“Thank You”

April 13, 2010 By Contributor

Thank you for addressing an issue that is SO overlooked and neglected. For the longest time, I thought I was the only one that thought this was wrong, but I feel so much better knowing there are other women out there fighting against this.

As a female, I don’t know how many times I have been walking down a street and been scared out of my mind by loud honks, whistles, yells, and screams. It is hard to explain the problems with this because people just think that you are “showing off”, being a “bitch” not accepting these “compliments”, or trying to make yourself appear like an attractive person, when that is NOT the issue at all.

I believe every girl has encountered this but we accept it because we see it in the movies, in reality, on tv, and it is positively reinforced as normal treatment and behaviour toward women.

For everyone who thinks that behaviour is a type of “compliment”, it’s not, its badgering and insulting. It is degrading, humiliating, frightening, angering, and incredibly deeply disrespectful. Every time a friend and I have this happen to us, it reminds me that we, as women, still have so far to go yet.

So many times, I want to yell, “what am I? A circus act?” These honkers and yellers all take something away from us when they do that – that being our dignity, our independence, and our right to walk down a street like any normal human being. We may not have stones thrown at us, but those honks, those screams are heckles, not compliments.

Thank you for recognizing this as an issue and informing the world that it needs to stop. No women deserves this treatment.

-Ally

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Include your location and it will be added to the Street Harassment Map.

What about equality in public spaces?

August 26, 2009 By HKearl

Today is Women’s Equality Day, a time not only to celebrate the gains we have for which our foremothers fought, but also a time to reflect on all of the areas where women continue to lack equality, including in public spaces.

Men who harass and assault women in public spaces – consciously or unconsciously – disrespect women. Their actions exhibit their belief that they have the right to interrupt women’s privacy, demand their attention, and sexualize, insult, humiliate, and hurt them whenever they want. These men generally do not care how their actions make women feel at the time nor do men on a whole understand or care about the many ways the fear or experience of harassment and assault limits women’s movement and feelings of comfort in public spaces.

Women are approached and harassed by men in all contexts, including when they are: commuting to work and school, on business trips and sightseeing in new places, doing errands or going to the club, and as they walk their dog or exercise. They are harassed by men when they are on foot, in a car, riding public transportation, waiting for public transportation, and even as they garden or stand in their own front yard. They are never completely free from the chance that someone will harass them, no matter their age, sexual orientation, race, class, or body type.

Women protest in Egypt. BRImage from International Museum of Women — Women protest in Egypt. Image from International Museum of Women

In lieu of laws or societal outrage and action over this sad reality, women take it upon themselves to try to stay safe, and in the process, often end up curtailing their public lives and access to public spaces. For example, some women avoid going in public places alone and many avoid going alone after dark or in an unfamiliar area to avoid assault. This may mean they miss out on night classes, working extra shifts, or attending networking events.

Other ways women alter their lives to try to avoid being harassed include: taking alternate routes to their destination, mixing up their routine so they do not become predictable, paying for a taxi or driving a car rather than walking or relying on public transportation, wearing baggier and less flattering clothing, and wearing specific facial expressions (assertive, scowling).

To avoid upsetting men who relentlessly get in their space, women may pretend they have boyfriends or husbands (even if they are lesbian), make up fake phone numbers, turn up their ipod, and pretend to talk on the phone.

Women constantly have to be prepared for men to approach them in public and they instantly have to decide how to respond: will they ignore them, will they stand up to them, or will they try to humor and appease them. All options have risks and a woman is never assured that she will be completely safe. This reality is a huge setback in the trajectory toward gender equality.

All over the country and world, there are activists speaking out against and working to end gender-based harassment and assault in public spaces. Their voices are strong and their actions laudable, but they are few in number. We need more activists and, most importantly, we need a widespread, coordinated, and concerted effort to end street harassment.

We must all do our part to make sure women and girls are safe and welcome in public spaces, and one day when they are (I’ll be an idealistic dreamer for a moment), only then will we be able to say women have made great strides toward achieving full equality.