zarafa

are women human?
02.26.07-03.09.07 After spending the past two weeks at the Commission on the Status of Women, in the United Nations, New York,. Where the focus was on the girl-child. Left me with a wonderful buoyant feeling of hope for our women’s movement and the planet. The first day of the Commission left an indelible impression as a sea of young women from all over the world crowding into the halls and the conference rooms – what joy it was to see so many girls and young ladies taking their issues to the United Nations, some wearing their national dress, the sound of youthful voices in the conference rooms speaking so confidently and eloquently about subjects so prescient to women’s and girls rights, Trafficking in Human’s, Female Genitals Mutilation, Poverty, AIDS, Education, Social Justice, issues that impact the rights and welfare of women and children globally, it was an inspiring session and I was welled up with emotions most of the time, knowing these caring loving young ladies were answering the call to give voice the most important issues that impact the ability for girl’s and women to live their lives fully, with freedom, dignity and grace –. What amazing dynamics and energy as we discussed these issues.

Trafficking in Humans, NOW-NYC Human Trafficking Fact Sheet
http://www.nownyc.org/traffickingindex.htm

I would like to recommend a very important book
“are women human? And other International Dialogues,”
Catherine A.MacKinnon, Harvard University Press

Fifty years ago the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defined what a human being is.
It told the world what a person, as a person, is entitled to.
Are women human yet?
If women were human, would we be a cash crop shipped from Thailand in containers into New York's brothels? Would we have our genitals sliced out to purify us (of what?) and to bid and define our cultures? Would we be used as breeders, made to work without pay our whole lives, burned when our dowry money wasn't enough or when men tired of us, starved as widows when our husbands died if we survived his funeral pyre, forced to sell ourselves sexually because men won't value us for anything else? Would we be sold into marriage to priests to atone for our family's sins or to improve our family's earthly prospects?
Would be we sexually and reproductively enslaved? Would we, when allowed to work for pay, be made to work at the most menial jobs and exploited at barely starvation level?
Would we be trafficked for sexual use and entertainment worldwide in whatever form current technology makes possible? Would we be kept from learning to read and write?
If women were human, would we have little to no voice in public deliberations and in government? Would we be hidden behind veils and imprisoned in houses and stoned and shot for refusing? Would we be beaten nearly to death, and to death, by men with whom we are close? Would we be sexually molested in our families? Would we be raped in genocide to terrorize and destroy our ethnic communities, and raped again in that undeclared war that goes on every day in every country in the world in what is called peacetime? If women were human, would our violation be enjoyed by our violators? And, if we were human, when these things happened, would virtually nothing be done about it? http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/mackinnon/mackin1.html#books