Act now on VAWA!

From #ONEBILLIONRISING – Please read, and act now to SAVE VAWA!

The energy from ONE BILLION RISING continues with immediate action steps!This week the House of Representatives will be voting on their version of the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA).Women’s groups, advocates, and survivors have worked to show support for the inclusive, bipartisan Senate-passed bill, S. 47, and are asking House members to oppose the alternate version which will be brought to the House floor for a vote as early as THIS WEDNESDAY! Our work is far from over.The alternate version of VAWA falls short of our goals for VAWA. Action must be taken this week to show support for the INCLUSIVE, SENATE PASSED version.WHY this is important for students, parents and alumna: The alternate version of VAWA drops important provisions in the Senate bill including provisions to strengthen protections and security for students on college campuses. It also drops the Senate-passed initiative to erase rape kit backlogs and other provisions found in the SAFER Act. This new version also fails by: Dropping the reauthorization of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act; Omitting the Senate-passed LGBT provisions; Providing non-tribal batterers with additional tools to delay and frustrate swift justice in tribal court systems; gratuitously restricting existing tribal authority to issue civil orders of protection against all abusers – which is currently the only local recourse Native women have against non-Indian abusers; Weakening the ability of the Office on Violence Against Women to serve as the effective hub for carrying out VAWA’s mission. Starting TODAY, we are encouraging you to flood your representative’s telephone lines and email inboxes with messages of support for S. 47, the inclusive, bipartisan Senate-passed version of VAWA and the demand that they vote against the House Republican leadership’s imitation VAWA. MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD! CONTACT Your Representative! Feminist Majority has made it super simple to contact your representative, just enter your zip code and you’re halfway there! CONTACT > DOWNLOAD the RISE for VAWA Poster > Why is VAWA so important? LEARN more > READ “Why the Campus SaVE Act MUST be in any Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013” >

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One Billion Rising

Every 15 seconds in America, a woman is beaten. Every two minutes, she or another is raped. Rape is the ultimate act of sexism and patriarchy; the physical manifestation of the dehumanization and objectification of woman from personhood to the worth of her vagina, and taking away her rights, choice, and agency as an individual.

Sexism is alive, well, and killing women and girls, right here, right now. Not just halfway around the world, not just during wartime, not just in poor neighborhoods, not just in the Midwest, not just in urban areas, not just in college, not just in prisons, not just anywhere. Everywhere.

To think that sexism isn’t that bad anymore, it’s time to stop navel-gazing and hold up a mirror: 1 in 3 women in this country have been raped and/or beaten. Are you one of them? Do you know one? Maybe you do, you just don’t know it.

Personally, I am very fortunate to have never been in a situation where I ever needed to defend myself, but I am still in my early twenties. Though I feel sorry for the person who may attempt to attack me one day. They have no idea that La Capitana is really a superhero, and will absolutely kick their f**king ass.

You may have heard of it. The Huffington Post was all over it,  both in support of the campaign and also presenting some harsh criticism. But RISE we did, all around the world.

Feminism and Valentine’s Day: A Holiday for Consciousness-Raising and Romantic Rebellion

The colliding of two worlds, you suggest? Mutually exclusive perspectives from different sides of society?

I disagree. But we’ll get to that.

The Commercials

There’s a flooding of sappy jewelry commercials every early February. No doubt – Valentine’s Day is the other Christmas for the shiny-metal and gems industry, and a multi-billion-dollar industry it is. Big business and big opportunity! A marketing field day. Fourteen of them in a row, to be sure.

Some of the commercials are downright disturbing – I won’t share publicity with them by naming names, but one phrase went, The “Let’s Skip Dessert Store” or something sexualized like that. Message: buy me something expensive that everyone thinks is pretty, that I can adorn myself with as women have throughout history to show their social status, and I will fuck you.

No thanks, sweetheart!

Messages like these are rife within the industry, and they only get worse around a day loaded with romantic, expensive expectations.