The "F" Word

No...the "F" word is not the four letter one.  This one has eight letters.  Feminism.

Before you watch this film, what do you think feminism means?  Are you a feminist?

Make a list of reasons why someone might choose to call themselves a feminist.

What are some of the disparities between men and women?

After watching the film, read the articles below and respond on your blog.

Global Voices: A Mother’s Day Manifesto

Published On Mon May 09 2011

By Craig and Marc Kielburger: Global Voices

We felt an advertising-induced urge to buy something to express love for our mom on Mother’s Day—but she doesn’t need a sappy greeting card, sweets, or roses tied with pink ribbon.

Instead, we devote this column to you, Mom, in hopes that women—and men—will open their eyes to the suffering we’ve witnessed in countries where rape is a weapon of war, wives are chattel to their husbands, and girls covered head to toe are silenced.

Our Mother’s Day gift is our fierce feminist resolve.

To state the obvious: we’re men. Far from disqualifying us as feminists, we think it’s our responsibility to be what one male feminist dubbed “unlikely allies” in the battle for gender equality. We know young women who reject the f-word because they think it’s past its prime; because feminism is seen as a pointless academic pursuit by those who wrongly believe there is gender equality in developed countries. This is hardly the case.
The trafficking of women and children for prostitution is rampant, a global smuggling business worth an estimated $32 billion, and it’s crossing our borders. Two weeks ago, Toronto-area police infiltrated a sex ring that forced girls as young as 14 into prostitution. They were auctioned off like cattle on the Internet.

Normally we’d define feminism as the struggle for gender quality, but in some cases it’s a struggle for fundamental human rights.

Last week, we spoke at an event with Stephen Lewis, co-founder of the advocacy group AIDS-Free World. The organization has issued a horrifying report on sexual terror in Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe. Rape wasn’t just an outcome, but a systematic weapon of war used to degrade women whose families supported the opposition. With Zimbabwe’s high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, rape was a “death sentence” from perpetrators who deliberately infected their victims.

Our reaction was visceral—throats closed and eyes watering—as we struggled to imagine such pain.

Our hearts broke again this month when we learned that in Libya, troops loyal to leader Moammar Gadhafi had allegedly been issued the anti-impotence drug Viagra in order to commit acts of sexual violence against female rebel supporters.

These are the most horrific women’s rights violations, but many more girls and women face harsh realities every day.

Bride burnings in Africa and the Middle East, veilings and dowries; genital mutilation in West Africa; the killing of infants and little girls in China.

In our travels, we have met some of these ailing survivors. Their sorrowful stories brought us to tears.
And as women in developing countries fight for reproductive rights, our now Conservative majority government is poised to cut funding to International Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides reproductive health services abroad. It’s a paternalistic refusal to offer women in Africa the same rights offered to women in Canada.

Not for a moment do we think that women in this country are immune from abuse. Date rape and domestic violence plague even developed countries. In the United States, someone suffers from sexual assault every two minutes, on average. We all know someone—a co-worker, a cousin, a friend—living with this violence.

We don’t say this to degrade or attack men, just as feminism is not only a “women’s issue.” Fighting for feminism is also a strategy for economic growth and prosperity. Investing in women, especially in developing countries, offers a huge return on capital, seen in the improved health of families, communities and nations.
We say this because we need to end rape as a weapon of war. We need a world where foreign aid means sustainable development—education and employment strategies for women to empower themselves, to take control over their own wages, bodies and lives.
Mom, we vow that we’re doing our part every day to make this happen. We buy gifts from charities and organizations that partner with women overseas to form sustainable employment; we contribute to women’s advocacy groups; we proudly use the feminist label to describe our beliefs, and we respect women in our daily lives as co-workers, friends and family.

On Mother’s Day, we want to give mothers, and women everywhere, the kind of promise you won’t find written in a Hallmark card—the power to lead your families, communities, economies, nations, and the global fight against poverty.

Marc and Craig Kielburger are children's rights activists and co-founded Free The Children, which is active in the developing world. Their column appears Mondays online at thestar.com/globalvoices.

 

The Origins of Mother's Day

  Mothers' Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870, followed by a bit of history:

          ......................................

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of
peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

*************************************************************

Mother's Day for Peace - by Ruth Rosen.

Honor Mother with Rallies in the Streets.The holiday
began in activism; it needs rescuing from commercialism
and platitudes.

Every year, people snipe at the shallow commercialism of Mother's Day. But to ignore your mother on this holy holiday is unthinkable. And if you are a mother, you'll be devastated if your ingrates fail to honor you at least one
day of the year.

Mother's Day wasn't always like this. The women who conceived Mother's Day would be bewildered by the ubiquitous ads that hound us to find that "perfect gift for Mom."  They would expect women to be marching in the streets, not eating with their families in restaurants.  This is because Mother's Day began as a holiday that  commemorated women's public activism, not as a celebration of a mother's devotion to her family.

The story begins in 1858 when a community activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis organized Mothers' Works Days in West Virginia.  Her immediate goal was to improve sanitation in Appalachian communities.  During the Civil War, Jarvis pried women from their families to care for  the wounded on both sides. Afterward she convened meetings to persuade men to lay aside their
hostilities.

In 1872, Julia Ward Howe, author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", proposed an annual Mother's Day for Peace.  Committed to abolishing war, Howe wrote: "Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage... Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of
those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs".

For the next 30 years, Americans celebrated Mothers' Day for Peace on June 2.

Many middle-class women in the 19th century believed that they bore a special responsibility as actual or potential mothers to care for the casualties of society and to turn America into a more civilized nation.  They played a leading role  in the abolitionist movement to end slavery.  In the following decades, they launched successful campaigns against lynching and consumer
fraud and battled for improved working conditions for women and protection for children, public health services and social welfare assistance to the poor.
To the activists, the connection between motherhood and the fight for social and economic justice seemed self-evident.

In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother's Day.  By then, the growing consumer culture had successfully redefined women as consumers for their families.  Politicians and businessmen eagerly embraced the idea of celebrating the private sacrifices made by individual mothers.  As the Florists' Review, the industry's trade journal, bluntly put it, "This was a
holiday that could be exploited."

The new advertising industry quickly taught Americans how to honor their mothers - by buying flowers.  Outraged by florists who were seling carnations for the exorbitant price of $1 a piece, Anna Jarvis' daughter undertook a campaign against those who "would undermine Mother's Day with their greed." But she fought a losing battle.  Within a few years, the Florists' Review triumphantly announced that it was "Miss Jarvis who was completely squelched."

Since then, Mother's Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry.

Americans may revere the idea of motherhood and love their own mothers, but not all mothers.  Poor, unemployed mothers may enjoy flowers, but they also
need child care, job training, health care, a higher minimum wage and paid parental leave.  Working mothers may enjoy breakfast in bed, but they also
need the kind of governmental assistance provided by every other industrialized society.

With a little imagination, we could restore Mother's Day as a holiday that celebrates women's political engagement in society.  During the 1980's, some
peace groups gathered at nuclear test sites on Mother's Day to protest the arms race.  Today, our greatest threat is not from missilies but from our indifference toward human welfare and the health of our planet.  Imagine, if
you can, an annual Million Mother March in the nation's capital.  Imagine a Mother's Day filled with voices demanding social and economic justice and a
sustainable future, rather than speeches studded with syrupy platitudes.

Some will think it insulting to alter our current way of celebrating Mother's Day.  But public activism does not preclude private expressions of love and gratitude. (Nor does it prevent people from expressing their appreciation all year round.)

Nineteenth century women dared to dream of a day that honored women's civil activism.  We can do no less. We should honor their vision with civic activism.

Ruth Rosen is a professor of history at UC Davis.