Friday, October 19, 2007

Weekly Update

1. Student raped and denied care because she appeared intoxicated
A DC area university student was denied access to post-assault care from several hospitals because she appeared "intoxicated." At a party earlier in the evening, she had be given a date-rape drug, and was raped. She was then denied access to a rape kit, and was sent home. She returned the next morning, and was again denied the kit.

As mentioned on Feministing.com, check out the article for yourself at: http://media.www.gwhatchet.com/media/storage/paper332/news/2007/10/04/News/Gw.Sued.For.Negligence.Malpractice-3011740.shtml

2. Cosmopolitan Magazine sponsors panel on 'Gray Rape'
A panel discussion was held this week in response to Cosmopolitan's article on "Gray Rape." The panel included members of the academic community, journalists, and members of legal community. Check out the article for yourself at: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/gray-rape-a-new-form-of-date-rape/

3. Around Montreal:
"Leaf in Whirlwind"

A dance-theater piece adapted from the story of feminist writer Lalithambika Antherjanam about reconstructing life after a wartime rape and pregnancy during the partition of India and Pakistan.

October 10 - 28, 2007
Tuesday to Saturday at 8 pm
Sunday at 3 pm

MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels)
3680 Jeanne-Mance
Tickets: $20 $18 Seniors $15 Students
514 982 3386

For more information, please see: http://www.teesriduniyatheatre.com/
Lead from The Daily, Oct. 15/07

1 comment:

bhattathiri said...

Excellent blog.One of the greatest poetess, story writer and novelists in Kerala is Lalithambika Antherjanam who can be called and a literary historian and her writings are a heavily debated topic. Because of her earnest effort today women are largely educated and daughters are thought to be as prized as sons. Kerala has been praised for its treatment of women because of characteristics such as these. However, Lalithambika Antherjanam's writing speaks to some of the problems for Malayali women especially namboodiri women were often forced into seclusion in their homes, especially during adolescence. If they went out they would have to cover themselves. Even among other castes, the place of women in Kerala society is questioned. While women have had the opportunity to be educated for many years in Kerala, this education has not necessarily meant an elevated position in society Kerala society. Her independent -view and their realistic style make them part of a broader phenomenon of modernity through which, writers and thinkers around the world have tried to move away from the traditional cultural paradigms into the certainties of the age of the scientific temper. Although she was part of the most powerful priest cum landlord Brahmin caste of Kerala, her life-work was the exposure and destruction of the hypocrisy, violence and injustice with which women were treated in Namboodiri society. She was not allowed to study in school, and could only glean scraps of information about the outside world through male relatives who were kind enough to tell her about current affairs. "The stories and the autobiographical fragments in this collection are engaged and critical accounts of life in Namboodiri households. Set in the thirties, forties and fifties, these texts bring alive the world into which Lalithambika Antherjanam (1909-1985) was born. They record in vivid detail the physical incarceration, the mental agony and the terrorizing disciplinary holds of rituals of purity with an intimacy that can only come from one who writes from experience. Yet these stories are also accounts of individual women's protests, and these range from the ones that shake the polity, to ones that subtly re-order the immediate world. Surprisingly little known outside Kerala, her work provides invaluable insight into the little documented social reform and nationalist movements of Kerala. The introduction places the author and her work in the cultural history of Kerala." Her stories throb with the tormented reality of the Namboodiri illam or household: unbearable social restriction, rigid sexual mores, lives ruled by the maintenance of ritual purity, the extreme oppression of widows