Ellen Fairchild died on May 24th at the age of 95. Fairchild was a former director of Planned Parenthood Syracuse, which is now Planned Parenthood of the Rochester/Syracuse Region — the affiliate I work for.

Fairchild was responsible for opening the nation’s first legal abortion clinic — PPRSR’s statement notes that, boldly enough, she did so within hours of New York legalizing abortion within the state in 1970.

Ellen Fairchild, who oversaw Syracuse’s Planned Parenthood when it opened the nation’s first legal abortion clinic in 1970, died Saturday at age 95.

“She exemplified the traits of leadership, community spirit, energy, dedication and perseverance in her efforts to ensure that every child was wanted and loved,” said Betty DeFazio, speaking for Planned Parenthood of the Rochester/Syracuse Region.

Fairchild was predeceased by her husband, Dr. Robert D. Fairchild, a Syracuse surgeon. She is survived by the couple’s five children. Funeral arrangements are private.

Fairchild directed Syracuse’s Planned Parenthood from 1966 to 1978. An award in Fairchild’s name recognizes Planned Parenthood employees, volunteers, donors or supporters.

She previously taught at Syracuse University, where she earned a doctorate in educational psychology. She also was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

From PPRSR’s statement:

In 1968, Dr. Fairchild established the “Sex Education Center” at Planned Parenthood in Syracuse complete with a meeting room and library of resources because she understood that people needed information and knowledge to make responsible decisions. In the 1970 annual report, she noted that the number of contraception patients had doubled that year. This was partially attributed to the increased education programming offered.

She supported the Planned Parenthood Board of Directors’ action to adopt the “Freedom of Choice” statement in January 1970 which said, “We believe that while all people should recognize the great responsibility they assume when they become parents, no one should be forced to use contraception or undergo sterilization or abortion.” That same belief still guides the organization today.

Dr. Fairchild recognized that men needed to be involved in prevention of unintended pregnancy with their partners. As a result, Planned Parenthood of Syracuse introduced vasectomy services upon receipt of approval from the NYS Health Department in April 1971. Later, as others in the community expanded availability of sterilization services, continuation of the service was not required.

Her legacy lives on. On March 4, 2002, a premiere showing of the fifth version of “Hope Is Not A Method” (originally produced in under her leadership in 1971) demonstrated the film’s reputation among health teachers and staff at family planning clinics as being the classic film for teenagers and young adults on the subject of contraception. It remains an important family planning educational tool for teens across the country.

So I’m bringing back the Bad Ass Women’s Activist of the week segment, which I’ve completely let slide, for Ellen Fairchild. Because she truly was a bad ass. May she rest in peace.

Donations in her honor can be made to Planned Parenthood of the Rochester/Syracuse Region.

[For the record, this post was entirely my idea. Whenever I am specifically asked to post about something regarding support for an organization, I note that I was asked.]

Think it was bad when Southwest Airlines started kicking women off of their planes for dressing “inappropriately?” Well they’ve apparently got nothing on the Transportation Security Administration. They recently forced female traveler Mandi Hamlin to remove her nipple piercings before allowing her to board a plane — even though she offered to show her piercings to the female officer and required pliers to remove the jewelry:

Hamlin, 37, said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems.

The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin’s chest, the Dallas-area resident said.

Hamlin said she told the woman she was wearing nipple piercings. The agent then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the jewelry, Hamlin said.

Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked whether she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was out, she said.

She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring.

“Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her,” said Hamlin’s attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA’s Office of Civil Rights and Liberties. Allred is a well-known Los Angeles lawyer who often represents high-profile claims.

Applying pliers to the torso of a mannequin that had a peach-colored bra with the rings on it, Hamlin showed reporters at the news conference how she took off the second ring.

She said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring. (emphasis mine)

Best case scenario, this was sexual harassment. Absolutely nothing that Hamlin was forced to do was necessary. She was upfront and compliant. None of it made passengers more safe, and the officers knew it. It seems pretty obvious that the male agents did this for shits and giggles. They sexually humiliated and injured her, laughed about it, and then proved that this was their goal by completely ignoring her equally “dangerous” belly button ring.

I also don’t think that there’s any huge leap in calling this sexual assault. Granted, it doesn’t seem as though any of the officers touched her. But they did force her to touch private areas of her own body for their personal enjoyment, despite her protestations and despite the pain it caused her. This was not a security measure, but the agents used their authority as an excuse for the abuse. Other than sexual assault, I don’t know what the hell else you call that.

Though I find the whole thing to be outrageous, nothing about it surprises me. When you put men in positions of extreme authority in a patriarchal culture that strongly cherishes that authority, rape and other violence against women (and numerous other oppressed groups) is just going to happen — particularly when the violence is regularly condoned, ignored and defended. And it does happen. All the fucking time. It’s only natural that once federal security starts taking a larger role in our daily lives, and once those who used to be lowly security have supreme authority, more dangerous and discriminatory abuse of power will follow.

I don’t let the female guard in this instance off of the hook, either. Even if the male guards were her superiors — which it seems that they may have indeed been — I can only assume that the woman still has a conscience and knows the difference between right and wrong. If nothing has been omitted here, and the female guard actually did not protest or attempt to reason with her superiors in any way, she holds some responsibility. But it’s also pretty clear here that the male guards were the ringleaders, and that they were very pleased with themselves.

It takes a brave woman to come forward in this situation, and I praise Hamlin for refusing to take this shit laying down. It would be much easier to try to forget the whole thing. It would be even easier than that to not seek out publicity and show her face on television. She’s going to face ridicule — compounded, let’s face it, by the fact that she’s not a 20-year-old blond who wears a size 2 — and as she strikes me as an intelligent woman, I can only believe that she knew this. Reflecting on the officers who laughed at their abuse against her, she had to know that they weren’t the only horrible, entitled assholes who would find the whole thing to be fucking hilarious.  Staying quiet is understandable, and the officers expect it — which is how the abuse continues.

But clearly, Hamlin has also recognized that she is not the one who deserves to feel humiliated. And in standing up for herself, she has also stood up for every other woman who was the victim of similar treatment but shamed into silence. She sure as hell has my respect.

A defense attorney has yet again made a highly offensive argument about how a victim was advertising her desire to be raped by her choice of clothing. But this time, instead of just saying “oh well,” or “tsk tsk” or “everyone deserves a defense no matter how misleading and unethical,” a government official is actually doing something about it (emphasis and brackets mine).

An MSP is demanding action from the legal profession after a lawyer used the way a teenage sex assault victim was dressed as a defence for a client.

Iain Smith also brought up the 15-year-old’s sexual history and said she was not vulnerable.

His client, Rikki Tainsch, was given three years probation for plying the girl with drink then attacking her.

SNP MSP [Scottish National Party Member of Scottish Parliament] Roseanna Cunningham has lodged a parliamentary motion calling for such comments to be banned from the courts.

Tainsch, who had never met the 15-year-old before the day he attacked her, took her to his home in Tibbermore, Perthshire, in August last year.

He then gave her enough vodka and Irn Bru to make her violently sick.

She went to bed feeling unwell but woke to find the 24-year-old assaulting her.

During the trial at Perth Sheriff Court, Mr Smith said the teenager had been “scantily clad”, wearing shorts, black boots and a white top.

He also stated: “There was a suggestion the girl had been sexually active before.

“I don’t think it is fair to say this was a very vulnerable person.”

Damn straight these kinds of comments should be banned from court. I’ve made this argument more times than I can count (you’ll find many examples under the slut-shaming and courts gone crazy categories). Thank you, thank you, thank you Ms. Cunningham. If it hasn’t been made clear yet, she really is a bad ass:

Ms Cunningham said: “This case underlines much of what is wrong with the way in which our legal system deals with rape and sexual offences.

“To use as mitigation the way in which a 15-year-old girl was dressed or to question her sexual history should be absolutely unacceptable.

“The victim was under 16 and that makes her vulnerable. There should have been no question about that.

“No wonder so many victims of sexual crimes are unwilling to report their experiences to the police if this is the sort of treatment they can expect should the case come to trial.”

Ms Cunningham added that she would be writing to the lord advocate, the solicitor general, the justice minister and the Law Society of Scotland about the case.

A clarification: Sixteen is the age of consent in Scotland. I don’t think that Cunningham is at all implying that these kinds of arguments would be better if made about a woman of any older age, but pointing out the particularly irresponsible and disgusting nature of making the argument in the case of a girl who could not legally consent even if she wanted to.

She’s absolutely right on her other points, as well — this is one of many very big reasons why more women don’t report sexual assault. Even in cases where the woman understands that she was assaulted, that it was not her fault and she deserves justice, there is a good and valid justification for why women choose to remain silent. It’s because of asshole attorneys like this one, the courtrooms that allow this type of behavior, and the juries that buy into it.

But Cunningham isn’t the only one who has decided that she will no longer allow her fellow-women to be treated in this way by rapists and those who apologize for them. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the horrifying case of a South African woman who was publicly stripped of her clothes by male taxi drivers and then sexually assaulted and doused in alcohol while onlookers laughed and cheered. The excuse they gave for their actions? She was wearing a miniskirt.

Now, South African women are fighting back.

Hundreds of South Africans marched on central Johannesburg on Tuesday defending the right of women to wear miniskirts without harassment.

The picket was staged near the Noord Street taxi rank where a young woman had her clothes torn off by taxi drivers and hawkers last month, allegedly for showing too much skin.

Her assailants allegedly touched the woman’s private parts while pouring alcohol over her head and calling her names.

The protesters, mostly women and many wearing miniskirts themselves, carried placards reading: “We love our miniskirts”, and “We aren’t road signs, you need to respect us”.

Mpumi Ngidi, 26, said she was frequently harassed.

“If you are caught between the pavement and a (vendor’s) stall and you cross a group of men, at least one in three will try to touch your boobs, your ass …” she told AFP.

“I don’t wear miniskirts, I don’t dress in a sexy way or dress up. It is partly a defense mechanism.”

Let me just say that a quality I respect most in other feminists is the ability to be mad as all hell and yet still retain a sense of humor. “We aren’t road signs, you need to respect us?” Right on, ladies.

Of course, a single march isn’t going to fix things, and the rapists and rape apologists were unimpressed.

Taxi associations condemned last month’s incident, which saw several other women coming forward with similar harrowing stories, but twenty-something taxi driver Thulani Nhlapho on Tuesday summed up one male view.

“If you are wearing a miniskirt, you give the impression you want to be raped,” Nhlapho added.

“You respect yourself when you wear a longer skirt. We respect women who respect themselves.”

Edwin Ndlovu, 29, was among those regarded the procession with great amusement.

“We laugh because they are naked,” said the car guard. “As a person you have to control your feelings. It is difficult when women are naked. That’s how some men end up raping women.”

Popular radio personality Redi Direko, herself abused in a taxi as a teenager, rejects such statements with contempt.

“We have babies who get raped, grandmothers who get raped. When I was assaulted, I was 13 and wearing a school uniform.”

Direko said it was disturbingly common for women to have their breasts and buttocks fondled on taxis.

“There is a lot of patriarchy. The expression of male sexuality is often violent, women have no negotiating power.”

About 50,000 rapes are reported every year in South Africa, which has one of the world’s highest violent crime rates.

But activists say the numbers are hugely under-reported, and could amount to a million a year.

It’s depressing, of course, but we also can’t expect any different. The point is that women are organizing, they’re making themselves seen and heard, and they are refusing to be shamed into silence. I find the woman whose assault was a catalyst for this event to be a hero in her own right; as I said above, women have a good reason to keep their mouths shut in a rape culture, and South Africa’s is sadly one of the worst.

Clearly, the taxi drivers who seem to rape with impunity (along with other men) are not going to have their minds changed first. In order to eradicate a rape culture, I believe that you first have to get your message through to the mainstream, so that the general population stops tolerating rape apologism. Once we fail to condone rape apologism, we will also fail to condone rape. This is the tactic behind both Cunningham’s actions and the South African who organized and participated in this march.

It gives me hope. I wish them all of the luck in the world, and hope that the idea spreads.

Today is the 20th anniversary of the R. vs. Morgentaler decision that legalized abortion in Canada — more or less, a Canadian version of Roe. Dr. Henry Morgentaler, the doctor whose arrest for performing abortions illegally was the basis of the case, is quite the hero to all who believe in medical privacy and the right of women to control their reproductive capacity:

The Polish-born physician, a survivor of the infamous Dachau concentration camp, quit his family practice in Montreal in 1968 to open his first abortion clinic in defiance of the laws of the day.

He was moved, he has often said, by the suffering of women at the hands of backstreet quacks whose amateur abortions left them in pain at best or dead at worst.

Morgentaler soon found himself before the courts, where he was acquitted by a jury that accepted his defence of medical necessity for the abortions he performed. But the verdict was overturned on appeal and he went to jail.

It took three more trials and three more acquittals – two in Quebec, one in Ontario – before he carried the day at the Supreme Court.

Looking back, in semi-retirement and two months short of his 84th birthday, Morgentaler is philosophical about the personal toll.

“I had to accept the fact that a certain amount of sacrifice was required of me,” he says. “I have no regrets.

“Women in Canada now have access to good abortions done by doctors in clinics or hospitals where their life is not in danger.”

We in America, often seen as the home of bitter contention over abortion, had things relatively easy. Amazingly enough, we managed to secure abortion rights fifteen years earlier and with far less personal sacrifice asked of any one individual (“Roe” never did receive her abortion; since converting to Christianity she has claimed that she never really wanted one and has unsuccessfully tried to overturn the decision on this basis).

Unfortunately, though Canadians gained the right to abortion in a later and more liberal time, they still face many of the same problems as we do in America. Women and doctors are still up against anti-choice zealotry (do a google news search on today’s anniversary; count the number of pro-choice, anti-choice and neutral articles that come up and you’ll see what I mean). And critically, as in the U.S., there is the question of access:

It’s estimated there are currently about 100,000 abortions a year across Canada. But surveys indicate that fewer than 20 per cent of hospitals actually perform the procedure, and there are only 22 private clinics, mostly in major cities.

There are no clinics in Prince Edward Island or Saskatchewan and only one in New Brunswick, where the provincial government won’t pay for abortions under medicare unless they’re done in full-service hospitals.

Morgentaler is challenging the New Brunswick policy in court and expects to win eventually – as others did when they challenged similar funding rules in Manitoba and Quebec.

But pro-choice forces complain that no federal government has ever levied financial penalties under the Canada Health Act against provinces that restrict medicare funding of abortion.

The current Tory regime is even less likely to take action, says Judy Rebick, a former head of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women.

She fears the situation could even get worse if the Conservatives manage to strengthen their hold on power at the federal level.

“If Harper gets a majority then the provinces that don’t want to be funding abortions, and the hospitals that don’t want to do it, will feel freer not to do it.”

Just like here, many if not most women would have difficultly obtaining an abortion easily and close to home; those who can are likely to reside in cities. It is worth noting, however, that Canada is apparently the only Western country that has no federal laws restricting abortion — that’s right, none. That includes abortions after 20 weeks, the most contested and likely to be restricted elsewhere, and amazingly enough they are still only performed for extreme fetal deformity that would result in death or stillbirth or for the health of the woman. Who would’ve thought that if legal, women wouldn’t rush out in large numbers to have abortions at 32 weeks, possibly going in groups, tacking on a manicure and making a day trip out of it? Also not so shocking, though, anti-choice Canadian groups still try to use late-term abortions as wedge issue and pass legislation that would act as a catalyst for further restrictions.

And as noted above, restrictions imposed by local/provincial laws are indeed already an issue. Dr. Morgentaler has apparently taken on this cause as well. It’s also worth a strong mention that Canada has America definitively beat in the area of public funding for abortion; most Canadian abortions are covered by medicare (as is virtually all other health care). For this, Dr. Morgentaler can also be thanked, and should be. Like I said: he’s quite an amazing man, doctor and activist.

Happy reproductive freedom day, Canada! I’m clearly far from an expert on Canadian reproductive justice, abortion law or the Morgentaler decision. If you have additional articles or blog posts that you have written or think would be useful or important to read, leave them in the comments.

[Cross-posted from Feministe]

The Bad Ass Women’s Activist of the Week is a semi-regular segment that I do over at The Curvature whenever I come across a really kick ass person who deserves some praise and recognition. With all of the bad news out there in the feminist blogosphere, I figure that news about the people who are doing good things is much needed.

This week, the bad ass activist is Rebecca Gomperts. She’s the founder of the amazing Women on Waves organization. [Warning: I'm not nuts about the tactic of showing the bodies of women who have died from illegal abortions. If you don't want to see such an image, do not go to their "facts" page]. Many of you have probably heard of them already, but for those who haven’t, Women on Waves is a Dutch group that charters a boat into the international waters outside of countries where abortion is illegal and provides them safely (and legally) to women in need. Which, if you ask me, is really fucking cool.

The Guardian has a really great profile of Gomperts this week, and so I thought that it would be a great time to celebrate WoW’s accomplishments.

It was a stint as resident doctor aboard Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior II boat that inspired Gomperts to set up WoW. She was shocked by the number of women who were either suffering from botched back street abortions, or struggling to cope with several mouths to feed, in countries where the procedure is illegal or severely restricted. She became determined to find a way to help them. “I remember meeting an 18-year-old girl in South America who was desperately trying to take care of her three younger brothers and sisters. She had recently lost her mother because of a backstreet abortion. Her mother had been pregnant for a fifth time and couldn’t support another child so she had gone down the illegal route. I thought, how is it possible that a whole family has lost their mother just because she couldn’t get a safe and legal abortion?

“I went back to the Rainbow Warrior and told the crew the story and how I wanted to help and they said that if you had a Dutch-registered ship it would be subject to Dutch law and so it would be legal to provide abortions in international waters. It seemed like the perfect solution. Of course, I had no idea at the time what I was taking on.”

Gomperts’ plan was to raise enough money to buy her own ship, which would be properly equipped with the necessary medical equipment and treatment rooms, but it quickly became clear that this wouldn’t be possible. Pro-choice groups don’t attract the level of donor support often enjoyed by pro-life organisations, so Gomperts turned to Plan B: finding funds for a mobile clinic that could be transferred to a hired ship for each voyage.

WoW visits are in fact legally blocked by some countries, including on their very first voyage to Ireland. And though the terminations they do provide are very important, they are only one ship, and Gomperts acknowledges that their work is mainly symbolic and political.

There have been some successes. In 2004 when Women on Waves sailed to Portugal they were blockaded by two war ships, which refused to let them enter Portuguese waters. Gomperts says this “disproportionate response” by the government caused such a furore in the country that it ensured abortion was a key issue in the 2005 election, which ended with the ruling party being replaced by the Socialist party. In February this year, Portugal held a national referendum on abortion and in April, President Cavaco Silva ratified a law allowing women to obtain abortions until the 10th week of pregnancy.

It is this kind of success that propels Gomperts forward, she says. She has recently been battling with the Dutch government for permission to provide abortions on the ship until the 12th week of pregnancy, instead of the seven weeks that the organisation’s licence currently covers.

“There is a very small window in which we can help women at the moment. I would like that extended because it is still safe under the conditions we provide.

“We would never provide surgical abortions purely for practical reasons. You need at least 20 minutes for each woman so we would have to stay out in international waters for a lot longer. We also know that the services we provide will never be able to meet the demand. It is a symbolic gesture. We know we won’t solve the problem.”

That is an absolutely amazing impact, even when they are not able to perform any abortions. And, for the record, WoW also provides information on their website about how to obtain RU-486 (the abortion pill) safely in countries where abortion is illegal.

I encourage you to go read the whole profile. I have to say, I have a bit of a thing for abortion providers and have featured them as bad ass women’s activists before. As a reproductive rights activist and Planned Parenthood volunteer, I know that we can fight all of the political fights in the world, but the law is absolutely meaningless if there are not doctors willing to provide the abortions we’re fighting to keep or make legal. And currently, the law is meaningless for many women in the U.S. who have no access to abortion due to distance and/or cost. These doctors also generally work for nonprofits, which means that they aren’t paid as highly as they would be in private OBGYN practices. And worst of all, they are regularly intimidated by anti-choice protesters who threaten them with violence on a regular basis, and have in fact been known to follow through on those threats. To be an abortion provider takes courage, no matter where they practice. Gomperts faces not only potential violence; she also faces potential trouble with the law. And she does her job, anyway.

Being an abortion provider should not have to be a heroic thing, and I look forward to the day when it’s not. But unfortunately, right now it is, and so I think that these doctors and their staff deserve our utmost respect.

If you’d like to donate to Women on Waves, check them out here.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Massachusetts was considering expanding the “buffer zones” outside of abortion clinics, to protect patients and staff from harassment by anti-choice protesters.

The Times reports that yesterday, the bill was passed, and it’s expected to be signed by the governor next week. The law requires that protesters stand at least 35 feet away from abortion-providing facilities.

The 35-foot rule is now the strictest state law in the U.S. It passed unanimously in the state Senate and with a vote of 122-to-28 in the House. How fucking cool (and utterly dumbfounding!) is that?

The bill was designed to replace an old law that said protesters could not come within 6 feet of people trying to enter the clinic, while they were within 18 feet of the clinic. It was a nobly-intended but confusing and incredibly difficult to enforce law. And shockingly enough, they fixed it.

As I covered last time, these types of laws existing at all is very rare. So Massachusetts was already ahead in that respect. But how often do lawmakers actually correct the problems caused by poorly-written or short-sighted laws? Not nearly often enough. In my book, that makes them doubly awesome.

And though anti-choicers claim that they will challenge the bill (and I don’t doubt that they will), the good news is that they challenged the previous law back in 2001, and the State Supreme Judicial Court declared the restriction perfectly Constitutional.

So thanks, all you seemingly-awesome MA lawmakers out there. Keep up the good work — you might almost make us forget that your state once elected Mitt Romney.

I’m bringing back the Bad Ass Women’s Activist of the Week segment for some particularly bad ass people.

For those of you who aren’t currently reading the new Planned Parenthood blog I Am Emily X, you should be. Every day they post a different story and video of a different, anonymous Planned Parenthood clinic worker or volunteer (all of whom they call “Emily X”), talking about their experiences working at their clinic, and namely dealing with the protesters who are outside. They started it as a counter to the insane “40 Days of Life” protests taking part across the country. Whether the blog will continue once the campaign is over, I’m not sure, but I really hope that it does.

Today’s video is particularly interesting. It’s by a doctor who used to work with Dr. Slepian, and was one of the first doctors to go back to work at his clinic after the murder. He was assigned 9 federal marshals for his protection.

It’s chilling, and particularly so for me. Dr. Slepian was killed about an hour from my home. I was only 13-14 years old at the time, so my memory of the news coverage is vague and spotty. But since I now work at an abortion clinic a little over an hour from Dr. Slepian’s old clinic, it’s hard for the story — and the mere mention of Dr. Slepian’s name — to not strike a chord. Here’s the doctor, and please, make sure to check out the other videos of Emily X.

So I know that this story (via Tracey) is a few days late, but I just had to share. It’s so great that reading about it honestly makes me tear up a bit. In lieu of a bad ass women’s activist this week, meet bad asses David Shepherd and Travis Price.

The Grade 9 student arrived for the first day of school last Wednesday and was set upon by a group of six to 10 older students who mocked him, called him a homosexual for wearing pink and threatened to beat him up.

The next day, Grade 12 students David Shepherd and Travis Price decided something had to be done about bullying.

“It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something,” said David.

They used the Internet to encourage people to wear pink and bought 75 pink tank tops for male students to wear. They handed out the shirts in the lobby before class last Friday — even the bullied student had one.

“I made sure there was a shirt for him,” David said.

Out of 830 students, half wore pink on the day. These kids really are fucking awesome. Seriously, check it out:

David said one of the bullies angrily asked him whether he knew pink on a male was a symbol of homosexuality.

He told the bully that didn’t matter to him and shouldn’t to anyone.

How often are you going to find a high school boy willing to say that? And how about their humble demeanor:

Travis Price and David Shepherd, Grade 12 boys who organized a drive to back a new Grade 9 student who was harassed for wearing a pink shirt on the first day of school last week, have been deluged with e-mails and interview requests from near and far.

. . . While Travis and David appreciate the recognition, “we don’t want to move the focus from the situation onto us,” said David, who is leaning toward joining the RCMP after high school.

“People say, ‘You’re celebrities, you’ll go down in the history books of the school,’ but that’s not what we set out to do.”

“People say you’re famous, heroes or celebrities,” added Travis, who plans to take criminology next year. “We’re not, we’re just two kids who stood up for a cause.”

They’re also working on a proposal for an elementary school program about bullying. And other student councils from the area are planning holding their own “pink day.”

I have to be honest and say that when I first read the story, I didn’t pay attention to the source and just assumed that this happened somewhere in the deep south– not Canada. I mean, we usually think of them as being a lot more progressive than the U.S. Not to mention, who gets picked on for wearing pink, anymore? I was under the impression that it was all the rage. My two younger brothers (both straight) have embraced the color. Pink is my 20-year-old brother’s absolute favorite for clothes and everything else, and my 15-year-old brother has a pink Nintendo DS. Pink is cool now for guys, so seriously, what the fuck? Is it a regional thing?

In any case, David and Travis are my new heroes, and I think that they deserve the recognition for doing something that took a lot of courage, and could have potentially caused them a lot of grief. I remember high school a little too well, and teenage boys were cowardly little fuckers. It’s great to see that there are some good ones out there. These boys not only stood up for this one kid (whose sexual orientation seems to be unknown), but also stood up for the right to be gay and still live peacefully. Rock on, guys, rock on.

I’m not sure that this family technically qualifies as women’s activists, but they at least deserve an honorable mention.

Broadsheet has highlighted an Afghan family who broke taboo to report their young daughter’s rape. I’m sure that most of you are aware of the fact that in many cultures, rape is seen as an embarrassment to the entire family, rarely reported to authorities and often ends in “honor killings,” marrying the victim off to her rapist, or disavowal by the family.

This case is particularly heinous. It involves two brothers from another family (18 and 24 years old) who raped a 7 year-old-girl until she lost consciousness. Two months after the attack, the girl is still in pain and anti-social. But what makes this horrible crime different from so many others is that her family actually reported it, and are fighting for the rights of their daughter in court.

Rape is not uncommon in Afghanistan, but victims rarely come forward because a girl or woman losing her virginity out of wedlock is seen as disgracing her entire family.

Because the crime is seldom reported, there are no reliable statistics on the number of young girls raped, Anwari said. She said it was the second such case in Ghazni this year.

“It’s not reported because of family honor. It’s very unusual that they’re bringing this forward,” said Naderi of Women for Afghan Women.

“No one in Afghanistan wants anyone to know their daughter has been raped because a girl’s virginity is so highly valued here. If a girl loses her virginity for any reason … she’s not a girl anymore. She’s a woman. Unmarriageable.”

Families and local elders often take the matter into their own hands and resort to traditional tribal laws, which commonly punish girls for the crimes of their male relatives. Under Afghan law, the sentence for raping a child is life imprisonment.

Zafar said the brothers’ relatives offered a 6-year-old girl as a future bride to compensate the victim’s family, who rejected the offer.

Erfani said another proposal was that the 7-year-old girl marry a young male relative of the brothers to salvage her honor. The girl’s family also turned down this suggestion, he said.

Bravo to this family. I’m sure that they are not the first in similar circumstances to have had the courage to step forward. But their actions are still unusual. In a culture with so much cultural pressure to remain silent and/or even punish the victim, this takes courage.

This is how progress begins. We can hope all we like for rape to stop, but I am sadly confident that it won’t until we begin to see reliable justice against rapists. Community members will talk about this family. A lot, probably most, will be negative. But maybe others who wanted to step forward and were too afraid will realize that they are not alone with their thoughts. Maybe another family of a victim will be less afraid to step forward. Maybe some will think twice before agreeing to a tribal hearing, which are notorious for punishing women for the attacks against them. It is a seed that has been planted.

Or maybe I’m wrong and none of that will happen. And it’s quite possible that these men will not even be punished for their crime.

But at the very least, this little girl will not be married into the family of her rapists. For all else that she has been and will go through, she will at least be spared that much. And sadly, it is an unlikely luxury for other girls and women in her situation.

Female police officer Ann McDermott has won a sexual harassment lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department, after she became the only female officer on an undercover team and subsequently received hardcore pornography in her mailbox everyday for six months.

Yes. Everyday. For six months.

It’s great that she won her case. I hope that it will make male-centric institutions begin to rethink their policies. But you know what’s not so great? The fact that this happened in the first place. It’s not so great that her complaints within the department were dismissed, it’s not so great that she was transferred to another unit, not so great that the harassment still continued, that she became a pariah who was disliked for being “disloyal,” and that she spent over five years and $500,000 (which she will be awarded in addition to damages) fighting for her damn rights. It’s not so great that if you google this story, you’ll find a ton of articles referring to the harassment as a “prank.”

It’s downright shitty that she now has to return to work in the same police department, with so many fellow-officers feeling as though she has somehow betrayed them.

Personally, I don’t think that $150,000 is nearly enough for her trouble. And I’m not sure that $650,000 is enough to convince the Chicago Police Dept (and likely other police departments all over the country) to shape up and start respecting their female officers. But I say that Ann McDermott is still quite the bad ass.