Category Archives: Gender Equality

“For almost all of them, marriage means rape on their wedding night and thereafter.”

The New York Times: 11 Years Old, a Mom, and Pushed to Marry Her Rapist in Florida.

“Johnson, the former 11-year-old unwitting bride who is now fighting for Florida to set a minimum marriage age (there is none now), says […] she was raped by both a minister and a parishioner and gave birth to a daughter when she was just 10 (the birth certificate confirms that). A judge approved the marriage to end the rape investigation, she says, telling her, “What we want is for you to get married.“
[…]
“It was a terrible life,“ Johnson recalls, recounting her years as a child raising children. She missed school and remembers spending her days changing diapers, arguing with her husband and struggling to pay expenses. She ended up with pregnancy after pregnancy — nine children in all — while her husband periodically abandoned her.

“They took the handcuffs from handcuffing him,“ she says, referring to the risk he faced of arrest for rape, “to handcuffing me, by marrying me without me knowing what I was doing.“ “

Link via MetaFilter.

“Bernie Sanders splintered and ultimately sabotaged the Democratic party – not because he chose to run against Hillary Clinton, but because of how he ran against her.”

The Guardian: The destruction of Hillary Clinton: sexism, Sanders and the millennial feminists. “In this extract from her book, Susan Bordo asks how the most qualified candidate ever to run for president lost the seemingly unloseable election”.

“You were used to having no one share the reward but now there was no one to share the work, either.”

Washington Post Opinion: The day they disappeared. By Alexandra Petri.

“At first it seemed as if it might be heaven.

You could walk down the street and attend school free from the uncomfortable presence of a woman who had chosen distracting attire. There were no women in sweatpants or yoga pants or skirts of any length, with hair covered or with hair uncovered — or women, indeed, of any kind at all. Finally, you did not have to worry about feelings. The world was one big locker room.”