Patrick Stewart is not just a Starfleet captain, X-Men’s Charles Xavier and an actor admired by millions of fans
The actor is also
deeply involved in work that helps women who are victims of violence. At
the recent Texas Comicpalooza, in reply to a question, he talked about
how his father’s violence towards his mother inspired him. He also
explains how he only recently discovered that his father suffered from
PTSD dating back to his father's involvement in World War II.
My name is Sandra Dwyer. I am a final year student doing Social Science in Cork University. As part of my research project, I am covering the Pussy Riot case in Russia, while drawing on the possibility of what some people have coined the term a new wave of transnational feminism. I read alot of the work on 'feminist ezine', which has greatly assisted any material I address on feminism. I think your opinion on this subject would add great depth to my work. I have a few specific questions, but in general terms, I am mainly concerned with your opinion on the entire situation that has taken place in Russia, and if you do think that these women have in fact started a new wave of transnational feminism?
I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.
Very kind regards,
Sandra.
Hey Sandra!
A new wave of transnational feminism? No, I don't think that has been started.
Did you hear about this in the news?
"A 15-year-old girl in the Maldives who was allegedly raped by her stepfather has been sentenced to 100 lashes for having premarital sex.
Her stepfather hasn't faced trial for accusations he raped the teen and killed their baby, BBC reported.
The girl and her stepfather were charged in June 2012, Amnesty International stated, after the body of a baby was found outside their house on Feydhoo Island. The human rights group said the stepfather had allegedly sexually abused the girl for years.
Zaima Nasheed, a spokeswoman for the juvenile court, told BBC the girl was also placed under house arrest for eight months and defended the punishment saying the girl had willingly acted outside the law.
Under Maldivian law, the girl won't receive her punishment until she turns 18, Amnesty International said.
"Flogging is a violation of the absolute prohibition on torture and other cruel inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment," Amnesty International said prior to the sentencing.
The nation of islands is located southwest of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean."
If a new wave had started people would be more worried about things like that and try and stop it. Now back to your question...
No, there is no "new wave". If anything its the old adage "two steps forward, three steps backwards". Now I am not saying we aren't making progress, we are making progress. But it is a very slow process.
And if we want to make radical / rapid progress then we need to start thinking outside the box and going for more radical thinking.
Which is funny because I don't consider myself to be a radical feminist. Or a militant one. But the older I get the more I wonder if there is radical / militant alternatives.
Take for example Japanese whalers. I think we should be ramming their ships and sinking them. Torpedoes if necessary. Then rescue the survivors. Make it clear that whaling as an industry has to stop and that whalers will be dealt with the same way we deal with pirates off the coast of Somalia - we kill them. If we are killing pirates for hijacking oil tankers, why aren't we killing whalers for killing whales?
Now I realize that is a controversial thought. But lets apply that same logic to rapists. 99% of the world's rapists are walking around free. Why? Because only 10% of women report sexual assaults to the police. A tiny percentage of them goes to court. And convictions are rare, even when there is physical evidence. So it really is no surprise so many rapists walk free.
Plus, even if we do convict them... we later release them years later, back in to society. And many sexual offenders are repeat offenders. So the only permanent solution is to remove them from normal society entirely - which is why I think we should build a penal colony on Greenland or some other remote island and send all of the world's rapists there. Yes, it is an unusual solution, but it would work.
So if you're looking for a new wave of international feminism then it should be happening in the courts and in politics first - and it will require some radical new laws to deal with people not fit to live with the rest of society.
And then there is the matter of conviction rates. James Holmes (the Batman cinema massacre) may be forced to take a truth serum during his trial. If we can do that for mass murderers, why can't we do that for rapists? We evidently have the technology to get the truth out of people using drugs, why aren't we using this technology to improve our justice system?
On the topic of Russia, the Pussy Riot case is evidently motivated by politics - the silencing of political enemies. It isn't so much that Pussy Riot is a feminist group. They're a political group, and the Russian government wants to silence them. But it backfired and now the media spotlight has hold of it.
It would be nice if things backfired more often. Karmic, really.
You are probably familiar with the Microsoft Office Labs vision of what 2020 might be like. Its in the video below if you haven't seen it before.
However I want to point out something of interest...
The gadgets don't actually make your life easier. They just make everything more complicated and time-consuming. Yes, they look kewl and interesting, but most of the time (99% or so) people are just wasting time on such things and not actually "building" anything.
Now in the video they do, eventually, design a rooftop garden for buildings in the future. Which is a nice idea, absolutely. But did they really need to use all those gadgets to design such a thing?
Nope. They could have done it a lot faster the "old fashioned way" and not wasted all that time playing with their toys.
Which begs the question... will so much of our society in the future be spent twiddling with gadgets and designing stuff (that rarely gets built) or will be actually putting our skills to use and BUILDING things.
I chalk it up to wasted "manpower". Take Britain for example, which has just over 2.5 million unemployed people right now (not counting me, I'm a professional writer).
That is 2.5 million people who could be building things. Building homes. Bridges. Roads. Parks. Rooftop gardens. Greenhouses. Windmills. Solar panels. Building things that would make Britain even more amazing than it already is.
Now what would it cost to employ 2.5 million people and give them a decent salary? Say 50,000£ per year (about $80,000 USD). Well it would cost £125 billion per year.
Now I admit 50,000£ is a lot. The average annual wage in the UK is actually 36,000£. So maybe we don't need to spend that much.
£90 billion would cover it and give those 2.5 million an "average job" building things that make the UK a greater place.
Well... let me put it this way.
The UK already spends £190 billion on "social protection services" every year. Another £119 billion on health care. £88 billion on education. £38 billion on defense. And so forth.
The pie chart on the right is from the 2009-2010 fiscal year.
So an extra £90 billion to give every unemployed person in the UK a job building stuff isn't actually that big of a deal. It is, ahem, controversial and a wild idea, but it would solve a host of problems simultaneously.
#1. It would pretty much eradicate unemployment and homelessness. As long as people are willing to work, they will automatically have a job waiting for them.
#2. Crime/theft would drop dramatically. People who have jobs have little reason to steal things if they are making a decent wage.
#3. Foreign investors would flock to the UK because our economy would be booming. Once the initial stages pass the private sector would start hiring more people and the amount of money being used for "building things" would drop dramatically over time.
#4. The UK government would get most of their investment back in income taxes anyway. Not just the newly employed people, but from everyone else as well. Why? Because people would be spending more, which means other companies will be making more, which means they too would be paying more in income taxes.
#5. More people doing manual labour means more people who are exercising as part of their daily routine. This would boost the overall health of the country. Which means health care costs would decline a bit.
HOWEVER THERE IS A BIG FLAW IN MY IDEA
And it is that many people simply refuse to do manual labour.
Pick up a shovel and do work with my hands? Pff!
I think this is because many British people now have this sense of entitlement, that they don't "need" to work. Myself included. I'm a writer / former teacher. I've never worked a manual labour job beyond when I did some gardening during high school.
But if someone offered me a job in a greenhouse tending plants, I would do it. I think that would be an awesome job. (I love greenhouses.)
The same thing is true of Canada and the USA. Nobody over there is willing to pick apples or do agricultural work. So instead they import hardworking Mexicans to do all the work instead. And its not just farming either... the food services industry is mostly Mexican and Asian people. Why? Because most white people are too proud to work in McDonalds.
White people are, frankly, lazy and feel overly-entitled. Many of them think they are too good for manual labour. They went to college or university, they got a diploma or a degree, but they cannot find work in their chosen degree because frankly how many psychologists and social studies majors does the world really need?
No. The real jobs are in manufacturing and in building / growing things. Which is why places like China, Taiwan, Japan, etc are now manufacturing superpowers compared to many other countries - because they mass produce things and their employees do it for relatively little - and they're not too proud to refuse to do the work.
Complications of pregnancy results in the deaths of an estimated 70,000 teen girls in developing countries (second world countries) each year. In third world countries the rates are even higher. Overall half a million women die every year in childbirth due to complications.
So what is it like in the developed country like the UK, Canada or the USA?
Honestly, its not much better.
In the USA pregnancy is the leading cause of death for young women ages 15 through 19.
Its sad but true.
Certainly things could be done to prevent this, but the truth is that many teenagers who are not fully grown simply are not ready to bear children.
And the fact that health insurance in the USA is lagging behind the rest of the western world doesn't help either.
In the UK, where we have high standards for our hospitals we really are not much better. Part of it is societal. The kind of society the results in children as young as 12 getting pregnant and having babies.
FACT: In the UK girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in pregnancy than women in their 20s.
Its not just the mother's lives who are at risk either. Babies are 60 per cent more likely to die if their mother is under 18.
20 per cent of girls worldwide have their first child before the age of 18. Teen pregnancy living in a third world country is basically a death sentence and its not much better in 2nd or 1st world countries.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in 2006 there were 435,436 babies born to women ages 15 to 19 in the United States.
Teenagers in the USA are also more likely to have premature births. Premature births are 14.5% for teenage women in the USA, compared to 11.9% for women 20 to 29 years old. Premature babies are often grossly underweight. Babies born weighing less than 3 1/3 pounds are 100 times more likely to die than normal weight babies.
Babies born to teenage girls in the USA under the age of 15 are 240 percent more likely to die during or soon after childbirth.
And if you factor in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) then the statistics are even higher, since SIDS is much higher with premature / underweight babies...
All in all... teen pregnancy is a huge risk for both the mother and the baby. Even if you live in a developed country like the USA, Canada or the UK it still kills.
What is bizarre is that the majority (70%) of American women who get an abortion is NOT teenagers. Its actually women in their 20s who are single mothers and already have one or more children. They get pregnant AGAIN and decide that one extra mouth to feed is enough.
I think part of the problem is that teenagers think they are immortal and they don't know the risks of teenage pregnancy and that they have great faith in doctors. They think that even if something goes wrong that they will somehow survive. Teenagers are ever immortal optimists.
And its killing them. Pregnancy is the leading cause of death for young women ages 15 through 19.