Since my initial blog posting of my reflections on the current SlutWalk phenomenon more and more exciting acts of Civil Disobedience have been storming the world and my awareness of them has been from media-news, events that I’ve gone to first-hand, and to current books I happen to be reading as we speak.
The SlutWalk craze is simultaneously spreading around wealthy Western nations, just as in Middle-Eastern countries Women are standing up for their rights as well. Last week, a significant triumphant call in Saudi Arabia had women protest by getting in cars and driving throughout the city defying the ban on female driving.
This week in solidarity to both movements, in the Ukraine, women protestors drove in their cars topless yet veiled their heads and faces to reflect the challenges of imposed repression on women due to strict religious codes in the East, and women as sex-objects in the West. The Ukraine activist group is a notorious feminist movement known as FEMEN. Their activism has turned the tides of making noise.
Back in Washington DC, on Tuesday night, I was at an award ceremony at the Canadian Embassy where the Canadian Ambassador to the US, presented the Julia Taft Award to the UNDP Afghanistan Project; and in his opening to Helen Clark, he praised that UNDP projects are always better implemented and run when a woman is at the reins of command. Like Helen Clark, Julia Taft in her lifetime was an international humanitarian worker who led the United Nations Development Program for a considerable length of time.
Thursday night, hours earlier to typing this post, I attended an empowering event by a rather new community based organization known as FEM-EX, not to be confused with the Ukrainian group, but perhaps they could collaborate one-day in the future. The event included presentations to empower women in America, from youth oriented all-women drum ensembles, poets reading aloud Eve Ensler-like monologues, singers promoting self-confidence and self-love, dance instructors encouraging self-expression through erotic dance moves on chairs and even a strip-pole, and yoga-instructors encouraging trust in people with one-on-one body lifts.
To top it all off, I reached a part of Wangari Maathai’s memoir where she discusses the intensity of the 1990’s in Kenya, where the push for better Democracy and accountability led to open confrontation with the corrupted government. After the male protestors were detained, the Mothers went out and protested for the release of their sons.
When the government tried to crack down on the elder women with the police, “the women refused to be intimidated and they did not run. Instead, they did something very brave: Several of them stripped, some of them completely naked, and showed the police officers their breasts. One of the most powerful of African traditions concerns the relationship between a woman and a man who could be her son. Every woman old enough to be your mother is considered like your own mother and expects to be treated with respect. As they bared their breasts, what the mothers were saying to the policemen in their anger and frustration as they were being beaten was ‘By showing you my nakedness, I curse you as I would my son for the way you are abusing me” (Unbowed, Maathai).
Whether she is your Mother, or a stranger never abuse Women! Respect is the key.
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