Nigerian troops have rescued about 160 more hostages from Boko Haram’s Sambisa Forest stronghold, the army said on Thursday, taking the total number liberated this week alone to nearly 500.
The numbers underlined the scale of the tactic of mass abduction used by the militants, who according to Amnesty International have seized about 2,000 women and girls since the start of last year.
Amnesty’s Africa director for research and advocacy, Netsanet Belay, said the rescues were a “cause for celebration” but he warned: “This is just the tip of the iceberg.
“There are thousands more women and girls, and men and boys, who have been abducted by Boko Haram,” he said in a statement.
Female former hostages have described being subjected to forced labour, sexual and psychological abuse as well as having to fight on the frontline alongside the rebels.
The first release of 200 girls and 93 women was announced on Tuesday, raising hopes that some of the 219 girls snatched from their school in Chibok in April last year were among them.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2015/04/military-rescues-more-women-girls-from-boko-haram/#sthash.OZ4F8Ary.dpuf

The version of the script we have is dated December 7, 2012, so it’s possible, if not likely, that some revisions have been made. But several of the examples cited as offensive by the Native actors who walked off the set are present in, and confirmed by, this script.

The film’s main character, presumably played by Sandler, is Tommy (also called “Three Knives”), a white man who was given up by his family and raised by Native Americans. He is married to a Native American woman named—wait for it—Smoking Fox, and the movie follows the two of them as Tommy battles a group of men called the Left-Eye Gang.

The scenes that caused the Native actors to leave the set appear to happen within the first 15 minutes or so of the film. Extra Loren Anthony, who spoke to Indian Country Today, described a scene involving a character named Beaver’s Breath as being particularly irritating to the extras:

“One thing that really offended a lot of people was that there was a female character called Beaver’s breath. One character says ‘Hey, Beaver’s Breath.’ And the Native woman says, ‘How did you know my name?’”

Kirke was a student at the time she became pregnant and didn’t have much money. She didn’t want to tell her mother and ask for financial help, so she had to empty her checking account to scrounge together enough money to pay for the procedure. Ultimately, she had to forgo anesthesia because she couldn’t afford it.

Now a mother of two girls, Kirke says she’s already anticipating the body-image issues her daughters will face, but hopes they won’t still be fighting for adequate reproductive care and the right to make decisions about their own bodies. “I would love if, when they’re older … the political issues surrounding their bodies were not there anymore,” she says. “I would hate to see them having to fight for rights.”

The good news is that access to abortion is actually expanding in some states. For most legislators, the goal is to prevent situations such as Kirke’s, where women can’t afford the care they need and have to make do with subpar options or forgo treatment altogether.

Though more anti-choice bills were enacted around the country between 2011 and 2013 than in the previous decade, legislators in states like Washington and Oregon have proposed bills that would require insurance providers to cover abortions as they would any other type of reproductive care. Said Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, in a statement:

Since 1976, millions of women in America who qualify for public insurance have endured government-sanctioned discrimination in access to abortion services. But there is a strong and growing movement underway to eliminate this disparity

EZEIZA, Argentina , Apr 16 2015 (IPS) - Rural organisations in Latin America are working on defining their own concept of feminism, one that takes into account alternative economic models as well as their own concerns and viewpoints, which are not always in line with those of women in urban areas.

Gregoria Chávez, an older farmer from the northwest Argentine province of Santiago del Estero, said feminism must include “the struggles and support of our fellow farmers in defending the land.”

Until recently, feminism was an alien concept for her. But like so many other women farmers around Latin America, she is now a leader in the battles in her province against the spread of monoculture soy production and the displacement of small farmers.

“I think women are important in the countryside because they are braver than men,” she told IPS. “I’m not afraid of anything. I always tell my compañeras that without courage we won’t gain a thing.”

Let’s play a round of the world’s worst game: Can You Be a Feminist and…? The rules, laid down by generations of opinion writers, are that you find a thing and then bloviate airily about whether that thing is compatible with being a feminist. There are some reliable old standbys to start with: CYBAF and wear high heels? (Yes.) CYBAF and a stay-at-home mum? (Yes.) This is easy. Let’s do a harder one. CYBAF and a man? Well I’d hope so, but if I’m absolutely honest the number of men I’ve met who are actually feminist is dwarfed by the number of men who call themselves feminist and then use this as cover to act like a perfect horse’s arse towards women. Try this: CYBAF, and a man, and go to a lapdancing club, and get handsy with the dancers? We have a winner. GAME OVER, ruptured irony gland stopped play, no one can ever play CYBAF again.

You can thank Maajid Nawaz, Liberal Democrat candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn, for the demise of the world’s worst game. Last Friday, the Mail released CCTV footage of Nawaz — Muslim moderate and (yes!) self-professed feminist — in a lap-dancing club, receiving a private dance. Repeatedly, and contrary to the club policy, he puts his hands on the woman dancing for him. Club manager Jay Shah told the Mail that Nawaz was “asking her to touch him and he was touching her . . . In general he was quite persistent with her, asking to take her out and for her number.” Let’s note that Shah’s concern for the women working on his premises didn’t seem to extend to actually ejecting the man breaking the rules, before we move on to enjoying Feminist Maajid Nawaz’s public response to these revelations.

Firstly, Feminist Maajid Nawaz tweeted a picture of his wife with the caption “Don’t ya wish your wifey. was. hot. like. mine? …. Don’t ya? … Don’t ya?” But not satisfied with this salvo of patriarchy smashing, Feminist Maajid Nawaz released a statement on Facebook explaining that his lapdance was no contradiction with his feminism — it was, if anything, a perfect expression of his feminism. After all, it’s not as if he killed anyone: “In current times, our moral uproar is best reserved for those who aspire to stone men or women to death, not those who consensually watch women, or men for that matter, dance.” Ah, there’s that word: consensually. Nawaz, you see, is a choice feminist. “My feminism, as intended by me, extends to empowering women to make legal choices, not to judge the legal choices they make. My fight is for rights.”

And if women choose to dance for men in an upholstered broom cupboard, for twenty pounds a go, by God Nawaz will fight for that right. In fact, he’ll even make the choice easier by supplying the twenty pounds himself! That’s how much of a feminist Feminist Maajid Nawaz is. What does the “choice” to work in a nightclub look like for the women who do it? Firstly, they’re usually not actually employed by the club: it’s standard for them to pay the club a fee, which they then need to make back before they can break even on their night’s work. This incentivises women to tolerate rule-breakers as they compete with each other for business, and because the house has made its money either way, there’s limited incentive for the bouncers to protect the women who work there from the grabby patrons.

The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom today released its annual "Top Ten List of Frequently Challenged Books," based on over 300 reports of community members attempting to have literature removed from libraries and school curricula. The organization notes that "attempts to remove books by authors of color and books with themes about issues concerning communities of color are disproportionately challenged and banned."

Four of the books on the list are by writers of color: "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie, "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi, "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison and "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini.

Seven of the 10 books were challenged because they were "sexually explicit." Among those books are two that deal with child sexual assault: Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye" and "A Stolen Life," a memoir by Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped, raped and held prisoner for 18 years by a Mendocino couple.

"Homosexuality" is listed as the reason two of the books were banned or challenged: Stephen Chbosky's perenially controversial "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" as well as "And Tango Makes Three," Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell's children's book about two male penguins who form a relationship and raise a chick together. The book is based on a true story.

In creepy Reddit megathread, thousands of women recount the first time they were perved on by a grown man

So there’s a giant, growing, and extremely creepy megathread up on Reddit at the moment, and for once, the creepiness isn’t coming from inside the Reddit. Well, less of the creepiness is coming from Reddit than you might expect.

Yesterday, you see, a Redditor known as BA_Baracus posted a couple of simple questions to AskReddit: Women of Reddit, when did you first notice that men were looking at you in a sexual way? How old were you and how did it make you feel?

This wasn’t the first time he’d posted a question to his fellow Redditors; he’s posted a bunch, including “People of reddit with eyes that point in different directions, which one of them is usually looking at me?” and, er, “Recent rape victims of Reddit, how did it happen, and what the hell were you doing in India?” None of these questions got much of a response.

But this time, well, thousands of “women of Reddit” stepped forward to tell the horrifying yet in most cases completely unsurprising stories of the first time men started perving on them, in many cases before they were even teenagers.

Here’s a sampling of some of their stories. TRIGGER WARNING for extreme fucking creepiness.


Age 8, followed to a department store changing room