Tag: Amnesty International

Virginity Testing is Just Stupid

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Virginity Testing is Just Stupid

And I can add, evil as well. My half of the human race, the male half, can sometimes be alarmingly stupid, ignorant and malicious. Pushing around young girls looking for some bizarre concept of purity is the ultimate bullying and we should know better. We might do better trying to live our lives as gentlemen and worrying less about women’s sexuality.

There is no way that taking money for testing a woman’s virginity to determine her purity is ethical in business or otherwise. It never will be. Doesn’t basic business ethics imply that you are doing something useful, something beneficial in a sense? What’s useful about testing for virginity?

The Virginity Hit
The Virginity Hit (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Where would you get that out of this?

James Pilant

The invasive, sexist practice of “testing” girls’ virginity – Salon.com

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/14/the_invasive_sexist_practice_of_testing_girls_virginity/

Aside from the primary fact that a virginity test is evil and invasive, it’s not even accurate – as any teenager who’s ever gone horseback riding or read the instructions in a box of tampons could tell you. As ethicist and researcher Marie-Ève Bouthillier told the Gazette, to assume so “reduces virginity to a piece of skin.” Claire Faucher, an assistant clinical professor at the Université de Montréal, says that the World Health Organization considers virginity testing sexual violence against women. And Amnesty International calls it “sexual violence… akin to rape.”In far too many places in this world, a girl’s virginity is so highly prized her community is willing to sexually abuse her to try to confirm it. And though an official statement on the ethics of the practice may help curb it in some areas, it’s clear from its persistence in places where it’s not supposed to exist that it takes a lot more than saying it’s wrong to stop it. As Bouthillier notes, testing is easy to perpetuate “because it’s a taboo practice and it’s hidden.” That’s why more education and enlightenment and protections for girls need to be a serious priority in the healthcare profession, all over the world. Healthcare providers need …

via The invasive, sexist practice of “testing” girls’ virginity – Salon.com.

From around the web.

From the web site,

http://hatfulofhistory.wordpress.com/2013/09/22/before-melanie-phillips-was-mad-her-role-in-uncovering-the-virginity-testing-controversy/

But I thought I’d mention that before Melanie Phillips became ‘Mad Mel’, she was a social affairs journalist for The Guardian and broke the ‘virginity testing’ story for the newspaper in 1979, as seen in this archival piece from The Guardian‘s
website. The ‘virginity testing’ controversy centred around the
gynaecological examination of a South Asian women at Heathrow when she
tried to enter the country on a fiancee visa, and soon led to a
widespread investigation into racially discriminatory practices within
the UK immigration control system (you can find out more about our
research into this here).

It is bizarre how the investigative journalist who broke this story
in 1979 has become the right-wing columnist that we know (and don’t
love) today. I wonder what she would write if the ‘virginity testing’
story broke now…

Unconditional Income in Switzerland?

On By southwerkIn Capitalism
Switzerland!
Switzerland! (Photo credit: nicolasnova)

RT takes a look at at a proposal before the Swiss Parliament to make everyone eligible for a guaranteed income.
James Pilant

From around the web.

From the web site, RapidBI Ecademy.

http://rapidbiecademy.wordpress.com/2012/04/18/will-switzerland-introduce-an-unconditional-basic-income-for-everyone-lucas-wyrsch/

Dear Ecademists,

Signatures are being collected for a proposal aimed at introducing an unconditional basic income for everyone living in Switzerland.

Organisers of the initiative, launched in Bern on Thursday last week, consider a guaranteed income a civil right and stressed it was neither a redistribution initiative nor a call to abolish social welfare.

The group, including a former senior government official and an ex-chief economist of a leading Swiss bank, has 18 months to collect at least 100,000 valid signatures to force a nationwide vote on the issue.

They believe that with a basic income of CHF2,500 – children would receive one fourth of that – everyone could live in “dignity and freedom”, without being plagued by existential fears.

From the web site, weekidmuze.

http://weekidmuze.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/unconditional-basic-income-for-all-care-freedom/

Development aid, economic growth policies and other measures have failed to tackle poverty effectively. Hundreds of millions of people are still suffering from poverty and hunger. Based on the current policies poverty will persist for many more decades to come. Therefore, developing countries are considering alternative ways. In Brazil, Namibia and South Africa a basic income is now by many considered to be the best way to end degrading poverty once and for all. Brazil is the first country worldwide that has adopted a law that calls for the gradual introduction of a basic income. In South Africa and Namibia, the trade unions, churches and many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are trying to persuade their governments to introduce a basic income. And in Namibia, the BASIC INCOME GRANT COALITION has conducted a two-year pilot project. The positive results have exceeded expectations.

From the web site, Boiling Frogs.

http://boilingfrogs.info/2013/06/03/basic-income-initiative-switzerland/

Launched one year ago by two basic income groups from Basel and Zurich, the swiss initiative for basic income still has until august to make sure it has the 100.000 signatures to succeed and trigger a referendum, as specified under the Swiss law.

Yet, basic income activists were happy and smiling when welcoming me at the train station in Geneva two weeks ago. With more than 110.000 signatures collected so far, much of the job has been done already.

A referendum within two years?

But even though the press is now unanimous that they are on the verge to succeed, the activists now aim at collecting 130k signatures by august, just to make sure they reach the quorum.

If this goal is reached, then the government will submit their proposal to a votation, where all swiss electors will be invited to vote yes/no to the proposals of the initiative which aims at embedding the principle of basic income into the constitution, like it already is the case in Brazil.

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