Subjects Archives: Feminism

Based in New Delhi, Zakia Nizami Soman is one of the founder members of the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan(BMMA), a movement of Muslim women across India struggling for their citizenship rights.  In this interview with Yoginder Sikand, she talks about the BMMA’s work and reflects on the daunting challenges facing Muslim women in India today. […]

  Rauda Morcos has every right to hate the press.  On July 2003, the Israeli newspaper Yedeot Ahronot interviewed Morcos about her poetry but also announced to the world that she was a lesbian. Following the public outing, Rauda Morcos’ car windows were smashed, the tires punctured, and she received countless threatening phone calls and […]

  In 1992, I was a thwarted, guilt-ridden and depressed revolutionary, living underground with my lesbian partner and two-year old daughter in St. Louis.  I was part of a tiny group that had gone underground at the beginning of the 1980s, responding to the collapse of the mass movements after the end of the Vietnam […]

The government of President Leonel Fernández, with the support of the powerful Catholic Church and the far right (known as the Nazionalistas), will soon adopt a new constitution that will set the country back decades. The new constitution is part of a ruling class attack on working people in a desperate attempt to preserve the […]

  In its last Tuesday issue [22 September 2009], Al-Akhbar carried a short news story about “Helem,” an organization dedicated to fighting for the rights of homosexuals in Lebanon, which soon became an organization to combat all forms of discrimination. The news story covered Helem’s protest against the “International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association” conference […]

Maria Charles and David B. Grusky.  Occupational Ghettos: The Worldwide Segregation of Women and Men.  Stanford University Press, 2004, 400 pp.  $US 55.00 hardcover (0-8047-3634-0). There is a substantial body of literature showing that, across time periods and nations, men and women have tended to do different types of work.  While many studies suggest that […]

Joseph Andoni Massad.  Desiring Arabs.   Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007 . xiv + 453 pp.  $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-50958-7. With Desiring Arabs, Joseph Massad makes a significant contribution to the existing scholarship on sexuality.  He merits praise for boldly tackling the problematic of knowledge in a world that continues to be unevenly carved […]

  Suad Amiry Presents No Sex in the City, 10 October 2007 Suad Amiry Speaks at the Casa Internazionale delle Donne, Roma. January 2009 Suad Amiry, Public Lecture, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, 8 April 2008 Play now: Excerpt from Ines Gramigna and Virginia Fiume, “Portrait of a Lady: Encounter with Suad Amiry” (Alternative […]

President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s landmark decision to nominate three women for cabinet posts in his second administration bodes well for his post-election promise to usher in a “new era” in Iran. The choice of three females for top ministerial positions will be interpreted by critics as a ploy by Ahmadinejad to compensate for any perceived legitimacy […]

  This is not the first time that I stand trial for my beliefs.  But it is the first time that they will probably be able to stop me. I always knew that many people silently supported me, and that if I ever got into trouble they would stand behind me.  This moment has come. […]

  I was 10 years old and every week my mother would buy Zan-e Rooz (Today’s Woman), Iran’s highest circulation women-oriented publication, from the neighborhood newsstand.  She always said that when I read a magazine I can speak better.  My sisters and I would wait for the magazine every Saturday, and I particularly enjoyed reading […]

  From Nawal el Saadawi to Janet Afary Dear Janet, I am glad to see you’ve been reading my work since you were a graduate student.  Did you read my work in English or Persian?  (I write in Arabic.)  I very much enjoyed your book: Sexual Politics in Modern Iran.  Egypt, my country, and Iran […]

  The Slovenian philosopher and sociologist Slavoj Zizek argues that tolerance constitutes a mystifying discourse veiling what is really at the heart of political and social struggle.  There is good reason, Zizek argues, that someone like Martin Luther King didn’t make use of the concept.  The struggle against racism is not a struggle for tolerance, […]

28 June 2009 29 June 2009 30 June 2009 30 June 2009 1 July 2009 1 July 2009 4 July 2009 5 July 2009 6 July 2009 7 July 2009 Red Lésbica Cattrachas is a lesbian feminist group.  For more information, contact Cattrachas general coordinator Indyra M. Aguilar: .

  The curfew is not the only means of population control — now the de facto government is bent on suppressing the visibly identifiable sectors, in this case the indigenous population of the Central American country. Antonio Martínez, an indigenous leader, via TeleSur, reported on Wednesday that the international agencies that talk so much about […]

  Here we publish an interview with Farian Sabahi, an Italian-Iranian professor at Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Turin.  A professional journalist, Sabahi has been writing for Corriere della Sera for several months.  She was a guest of LibrInTerra on the 26th of March, presenting her two books Storia dell’Iran [A History […]

  Fit Chick Unbelievable Knockers Earlier in 2003 this T-shirt (Fit Chick Unbelievable Knockers) became one of the best-selling items ever for the British high street fashion store French Connection.  Like French Connection’s generic T-shirt ‘fcuk me’ and the World Cup inspired bestseller, ‘fcuk football’ it was a huge success.  It could be seen everywhere, […]

  “Fetishism: the Key to Sensuality”; “Is Cannibalism a New Religion?”; “Syrian Lingerie”; “I Am Gay, Therefore I Do Not Exist.” . . .  With such a table of contents, Jasad (“body” in Arabic), a Lebanese, Arabic-language, cultural quarterly “specializing in the art, literature, and science of the body,” might be mistaken for an unidentified […]

  The past decade has witnessed a renewed interest in social policies, and some governments have increased social spending to soften the impacts of economic reform.  These changes have come in the wake of widespread realization of the failure of the neoliberal economic model to generate economic growth and dynamism and to reduce poverty.  Meanwhile, […]

Nancy Fraser‘s analysis of the obstacles to social and political justice represents an advance at a theoretical level for those who face the dilemmas of social practice.  In this sense, her work reinforces the importance of the role of the intellectual, not only when it comes to dealing with moments of crisis, but also with […]