[TW: rape] I asked the Congolese women; ‘give me the 5 major issues affecting Congolese women today’. Rape was number 4. Political participation was number 1. Economic empowerment was number 2. Domestic violence was number 3. And they qualified it; the rape you see is because we don’t have women in high places to effect the change that needs to be done. No.2, if we were economically empowered, we wouldn’t be in abusive relationships and will know how to handle ourselves.
But outsiders expected rape to be number 1 because that’s the global image of Congolese women. One Congolese woman asked where people got the idea that rape was their major problem. Someone answered her “if you don’t say so, the West won’t give you aid”.
Congolese women wanted to show their fellow sister how they’ve been sustaining their children and communities in midst of the violence they lived in. By the time the white people arrived, they changed their tune: ‘help, I’ve been raped. I’ve been abused’.
They’ve figured you all out. That’s the stories you white people want to hear. You travel to cry. So they will make you cry. The media never goes into any community to pick stories of how you survived and what positive things are happening. A pressman once asked me if I’ve been raped during the Liberian war and when I answered no, he passed the mike over my head. So the easiest thing for those who need media attention or aid is to talk about their personal history and say they were raped.
This is a similar situation across the globe for migrants who wanted papers after war; every time they went to the US consulate and told the truth, they were denied. When they went and told a sad story, the counselor cried and granted them their papers.
by:Western media and charity need to portray AfricanS as helpless and meek because that is the global image of Africa they want to sustain.
(via thisisnotafrica)
(via shaktiandawe)
(via theprivilegeofbeing)
The Nu Project’s Nude Photos Tell The Truth About Women’s Bodies
The Nu Project is a no-glamor honest look at beauty and image in our world.
Female nudity isn’t hard to come by in the media, but the bodies we see usually represent a fairly limited scope of sizes and shapes. The Nu Project, a collection of nude photographs shot by Minneapolis photographer Matt Blum, seeks to add some variety to the mix. Blum started The Nu Project in 2005 but said it really took off when his wife, Katy Kessler, became the project’s editor. Blum sees the photos as filling a void. “When I started shooting nudes there was no project like it,” he told The Huffington Post in an email. The things that I had seen either used models with typical model bodies or average people who were made to look extremely unimpressive. I figured there was a way to treat women (of any size/shape) like models and photograph them beautifully, respectfully without a lot of sexual under or overtones. The women photographed are all volunteers, and most of the pictures are taken in the subjects’ homes — where they feel most comfortable. The Nu Project’s website showcases six galleries of nudes, three shot in North America, three in South America. Although Blum told HuffPost that he feels that they have a “good variety of people involved,” he and Kessler acknowledge on The Nu Project website that they’d love for the subjects to be more diverse. “The hardest part for us is that the project is 100 percent volunteer, so I do not see the women until I show up at their door,” Blum writes on the website. “We’re doing our best to encourage all types of women, but we need volunteers of all backgrounds and walks of life to make the project more complete.” Blum said he ultimately hopes that these images inspire the women who see them to feel better about their own bodies. “It’s been really exciting to hear people react to the images,” he told HuffPost. “We get a lot of feedback from women (especially) who have struggled to see themselves as beautiful, and this project has helped them on that path.”
(via raspberriesandrum)
(Source: coguniverso, via spiritmolecule)
Following his release from Guantanamo Bay, Sami Al-Hajj, a (former) Guantanamo Bay detainee, dashes towards his eight year old son Mohammad and swoops him up in his arms, hugging him and planting tender kisses on his face in their first reunion after seven years.
After being imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for seven years, during which he was repeatedly interrogated and tortured, including being physically, sexually, and psychologically abused, Al Hajj was released without any charges held against him.
Al Hajj, a journalist for the Al Jazeera network, was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 while on his way to do camerawork for the network concerning the war that had recently broken out in Afghanistan. It has been speculated by both Al Hajj’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, and Reporters Without Borders that the main reason that he was incarcerated for so long was due to the US Miliary’s desire to make him an informant against Al Jazeera, as most of Al Hajj’s interrogations consisted of American interrogators questioning him about the (Al Jazeera) network.
While in Guantanamo, Al Hajj wrote a poem titled Humiliated in Shackles to his son Mohammad:
When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,
Hot tears covered my face.When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed
A message for my son.Mohammad, I am afflicted.
In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.The oppressors are playing with me,
As they move freely around the world.They ask me to spy on my countrymen,
Claiming it would be a good deed.They offer me money and land,
And freedom to go where I please.Their temptations seize
My attention like lightning in the sky.But their gift is an empty snake,
Carrying hypocrisy in its mouth like venom,They have monuments to liberty
And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.But I explained to them that
Architecture is not justice.America, you ride on the backs of orphans,
And terrorize them daily.Bush, beware.
The world recognizes an arrogant liar.To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.
I am homesick and oppressed.Mohammad, do not forget me.
Support the cause of your father, a God-fearing man.I was humiliated in the shackles.
How can I now compose verses? How can I now write?After the shackles and the nights and the suffering and the tears,
How can I write poetry?My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish,
Violent with passion.I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors’.
I am overwhelmed with apprehension.Lord, unite me with my son Mohammad.
Lord, grant success to the righteous.
(via neoisolationist)
A Health Ministry inspector poured bleach over pots full of food in a Sudanese restaurant in Tel Aviv Sunday night.
The inspector, from the ministry’s district office for Tel Aviv, was participating in a raid by police and municipal inspectors on illegal businesses owned by African migrants. Altogether, the raid shut down 10 businesses in the city’s Neveh Sha’anan neighborhood, confiscating their equipment and welding the doors shut. The equipment was then loaded onto vans by other African migrants who had been hired as contract workers.
Many diners saw the inspector pouring bleach on the food, and one, asylum-seeker Aladin Abaker from Sudan’s Darfur region, posted photos of the incident on his Facebook page. He also described his feelings of humiliation.
“Everyone − except the destroyers − was in tears from the humiliation,” he wrote. “The waitress told us, ‘I’ve seen very harsh things in my life, like torture in Sinai, but this humiliated me more than what happened to me in Sinai.”
Abaker accused the inspector of “insensitivity to people and their culture, which sees food as a sacred thing that must be respected,” and said the raid was aimed at “embittering our lives so we’ll return to Africa ‘voluntarily.’”
Altogether, he said, more than 200 kilograms of meat, chicken and fish and over 500 prepared meals were destroyed.
The inspectors said they didn’t know where the meat came from and therefore feared for the diners’ health, Abaker wrote. “We told them: But this is the only place we’ve eaten all our meals for four years now, and none of us ever had stomach problems. Even whites eat here.”
The Health Ministry responded that inspectors had discovered “deplorable sanitary conditions, food stored under unsuitable conditions and temperatures, and food from unknown sources. In order to preserve the public’s health and that of the diners themselves, it was decided to destroy the food immediately. As part of the process of destroying the food, chemicals suitable to this purpose are used. It should be noted that this was a routine process of food destruction that is no different from other destructions of food/meat.”
Tel Aviv’s deputy city manager, Ruby Zelof, said the raids were carried out “to eradicate the undesirable phenomenon of businesses operating illegally, with sanitation and safety problems and illegal connections to electricity and water, and sales of alcoholic beverages without permits.”
Haaretz | Photo credit: Aladin Abaker
Israel is deporting Africans and also planning to put tens of thousands into detention camps.
Knesset Member Miri Regev — a member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud Party — called the refugees “a cancer in our body” and Danny Danon — also a Likud Knesset Member — wrote on his Facebook page referring to the Africans as “infiltrators”. Interior Minister Eli Yishai said the African asylum seekers threaten “the Zionist dream,” adding, “Jobs will root them here.”
See also:
- Why is the birth rate in Israel’s Ethiopian community declining? Ethiopian women who immigrated to Israel were coaxed into agreeing to injections of long-acting birth control drugs, or told they would not be allowed into the country
- Israeli woman has her photo taken with Africans, titles the Facebook album: “Late night tour of the Tel Aviv Safari”, captions the photo: “There are no signs forbidding taking pictures with the animals. There were no signs that forbid feeding, but we passed on that.”
(via terrestrial)
(Source: theburnthatkeepseverything, via psychedelicfeminist)
Effects Of Thinking White People Are “All Like That”:
- Literally nothing other than white people having their feelings hurt on the internet
- I’m not joking there is no real world consequence of this
Effects Of Thinking People of Color Are “All Like That”:
