In Favor of Feminism: Share Your Views
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10 girls on Afghanistan's robotics team rescued
The team, a group of girls ages 16-18 pursuing their love of engineering and robotics, safely arrived in Doha, Qatar, days after Kabul fell to the Taliban.
Ten girls from Afghanistan's girls robotics team have been rescued out of Afghanistan.
NBC News"Several members of the girls Afghan robotics team have safely arrived in Doha, Qatar, from Kabul, Afghanistan," a statement from the Digital Citizen Fund and Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs said of the Afghan Girls Robotic Team.
The team, which consists of a group of girls ages 16-18 who have overcome hardship to pursue their love of engineering and robotics in Afghanistan, safely arrived in Doha, Qatar, days after Kabul fell to the Taliban.
"The Digital Citizen Fund (DCF), the team's parent organization, is deeply grateful to the government of Qatar for their outstanding support, which included not only expediting the visa process but sending a plane after outbound flights from Afghanistan were repeatedly canceled," the DCF said in a statement.
Elizabeth Schaeffer Brown, a board member on the DCF, said that she and the DCF founder had been working with Qatar since early August when it became clear that the Taliban would be overthrowing the government.
"The flight out of Kabul was only at the very end of a journey in which safety was always a concern," she said.
"Ultimately the girls 'rescued' themselves. If it were not for their hard work and courage to pursue an education, which brought them in contact with the world, they would still be trapped. We need to continue to support them and others like them," she said. Unfortunately, several members of the team remain in Afghanistan. DCF is working with Qatar to arrange transportation for the remaining members and their aides.
When Kabul fell, the robotics team was on the mind of many.
Allyson Reneau, a mom of 11 who graduated from Harvard in 2016 with a masters in international relations and U.S. space policy, could not stop thinking about the girls when the Taliban began to take over the country.
Reneau, 60, first met the girls through her work on the board of directors for Explore Mars, when the girls attended the 2019 Human to Mars conference. Reneau has kept in touch with the girls over the years, and as reports of a Taliban takeover grew, she had an overwhelming feeling the team of girls might be in danger.
"I remembered my former roommate in D.C. a couple of years ago was transferred to Qatar," Reneau explained. "She said she worked in the U.S. Embassy in Qatar... she was sure her boss would approve helping the girls."
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From PBS's “Brief but Spectacular" series, a short 4 minute video titled
“A geologist's Brief But Spectacular take on calling out harassment and sexism in science."(The full story is discussed in greater detail by the documentary "Picture a Scientist".)
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I can't find it now, but I read an essay positing that many of the ancient Venus figures may actually be self-portraits by women. The large breasts and tapering feet are similar to what a woman sees as she looks at her body directly from above. Oh wait! I found it!
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Miriandra: thanks for the reference. Comedian Hannah Gatsby noted that the woman in the following image was on the Paleo diet. Not quite the 2021 goal of Paleo diet (LOL) I also went down the rabbit hole reading the piece you included. There are so many tangents to explore, I think my Monday's activities are set while I'm waiting for some repair folks to arrive.
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Miriandra, that’s an interesting article full of artist names mostly of whom I’d never heard of before. Like the great composers who are elevated are all men because women were deemed less than in innumerable ways, female artists and their works have been summarily disregarded, their accomplishments trivialized, minimized, invisible-ized.
The idea that the Venus figure could be a woman’s self-portrait is a very real and logical possibility. Did I read that right, that this sculpture is only 2 1/2 inches in height? Rather incredible that something that size it was even found!
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"The idea that the Venus figure could be a woman's self-portrait is a very real and logical possibility. Did I read that right, that this sculpture is only 2 1/2 inches in height? Rather incredible that something that size it was even found!"
DivineMrsM, yes, it's small. About the size of a whittled figure, which also speaks to it being a piece of personal expression rather than having religious significance. An item for active worship is typically large, so a group can revere it together. Personal worship items are usually protective charms, which are very small. At 2 1/2 inches, it's in between; but of a good size to comfortably hold in a female hand and say, "This is me."
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the lesbian meme. The problem is and always has been men's inability to control themselves and their parents absolving them from responsibility.0 -
The Venus figure reminded me of a book I read in a philosophy of religion course I took in college, great book that really made me think: When God Was a Woman
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Dear Texas:
Screw you.
I cannot WAIT for the lawsuits against anti-vaxxers to start, based on this new anti-abortion law.
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SummerA, I followed the link to the God book on Amazon. Even tho it was written in 1978, it has a four and a half star rating from 748 reviews. It appears to be a book I am interested in reading, so I will put it on my list. Here’s the description:
“How did the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy come about? In fascinating detail, Merlin Stone tells us the story of the Goddess who reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East. Under her reign, societal roles differed markedly from those in patriarchal Judeo-Christian cultures: women bought and sold property, traded in the marketplace, and inherited title and land from their mothers. Documenting the wholesale rewriting of myth and religious dogmas, Merlin Stone describes an ancient conspiracy in which the Goddess was reimagined as a wanton, depraved figure, a characterization confirmed and perpetuated by one of modern culture's best-known legends??―??that of the fall of Adam and Eve. Insightful and thought-provoking, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the origin of current gender roles and in rediscovering women's power.“
Alice, I am surrounded by so many women punching themselves in the face. Society has conditioned them from birth to assume the mantle of nurturing mother as the pinnacle of their worth.
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I like those memes on Adam and Eve.
Tangentially related to this thread: I was in surgery yesterday (reconstruction), and realized when they wheeled me in that this time my ENTIRE TEAM was female-presenting. And for just a second before the anesthesia kicked in, I thought, "This is nice!" And afterwards, I can't help but feel like we've made progress. Not all the progress we need, not as quickly as would be good, but having an all-female surgical team is not something we would have seen when I was born.
And then I think about Texas and how insurance will cover anything I need/want now with my breasts -- because yay, boobies! men love boobs! --, but God forbid I get raped and impregnated. Then, somehow, depending on what state I live in, my ability to decide what is right or best for my health and my body is at minimum, questioned, and at worst, superseded by people with the misguided belief that my life is worth less than cells I did not put in my body and do not want there, that because some man was a psycho and raped me, his sperm and my egg and the little conglomeration of cells they form is worth more than my life or the life of the child who may result from that pregnancy.
*sigh*
But yay, female surgical teams?
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saltmarsh, what a thought provoking post. The reality of an all female surgical team is definitely progress. I recently read that more and more women are going to female doctors, that they are being preferred over men.
You use great words to explain how abominable the new Texas abortion law is. My apologies to anyone who lives there, but I wouldn’t even want to go there to vacation these days.
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Divine, yeah, this law sucks but I do think the fight over it will lead it it being overturned. Beyond the ban itself, it seems almost too complicated to prosecute.
I will say though that Texas has a lot going for it, just not so much in the big cities.
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Read this with my morning coffee:
Who are we to judge the Taliban when governments in our own country can take control of a woman's body? A world apart from Afghanistan, the United States must take a good look at itself and ask the hard question: Are we so different when it comes to how we treat women and girls?
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Being forced to carry a pregnancy to term makes women so very very vulnerable. Doing it in a context where so many women don't even have access to healthcare is actually heinous.
I hope that legislative and judicial processes can overturn this law. And I hope there can be an IUD drive or something for Texas women.
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Magiclight, that is so spot on. I'm not sure we've ever earned the right to look down on any country's or faction's morality, but now we're scraping rock bottom.
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Alice, definitely scraping the bottom, but Texas did not have far to go to get to their bottom. The Texas Legislature has declined to pass any broad expansion of state and federal health care coverage for uninsured Texan. So women must carry fetus to term without health care. Does Tx. wish both woman and fetus die?
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It also means that Tx will not pay for medical care nor any form of nutritional support for those babies that are forced to be born. Pathetic outcome for both women and children.
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Cross posting from the liberal thread. (I didn’t add the red marker, it was already in the post).
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I'm running out of brain cells to carry my anger. Between Covid, Texas (and most of the rest of the south) trying to drag us back to the 1950s, and politicians encouraging the worst citizens of the country to believe their lies, I really wonder if we have a future.
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