Tag: Feminist

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Health

Paula Caplan, 74, Dies; Feminist Psychologist Took On Her Career

Paula Caplan, 74, Dies; Feminist Psychologist Took On Her Profession

The couple divorced in 1978. A previous marriage also ended in divorce. Along with her daughter, Dr. Caplan is survived by her son, Jeremy; her brother, Bruce; and five grandchildren.

After moving to Canada, Dr. Caplan was a psychologist for the Toronto Family Court for three years. Among her first efforts was a study of assertiveness among girls and boys, following on the work of the prominent German American psychologist Erik Erikson, in which he had concluded that boys were innately more assertive than girls.

Dr. Caplan showed otherwise. Focusing on very young children and diminishing the presence of adults in the room during the study, she demonstrated that it was gendered socialization, not biology, that made girls act less assertively than boys.

Dr. Caplan was a professor at the University of Toronto from 1979 to 1995 and head of its Center for Women’s Studies in Education from 1985 to 1987. She later taught at American University, the University of Rhode Island, Brown University and, most recently, Harvard, where she ran the Voices of Diversity Project at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research.

Dr. Caplan’s work extended beyond academic psychology. An actor since high school, she had small parts in TV shows and commercials, only some of which had anything to do with her intellectual pursuits.

She wrote plays and directed documentary films, including “Isaac Pope: The Spirit of an American Century” (2019), about a Black man who had served in the Army under her father in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.

The film was of a piece with her latest interest, veterans and specifically those deemed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a diagnosis she largely rejected. There was nothing pathological about having a strong, even debilitating reaction to the horrors of war, she said, and our desire to medicalize those reactions made it possible for nonveterans to ignore just how terrible war could be.

“Leaving this work to psychotherapists alone may be not only harmful to the soldiers but also dangerous for us as a nation,” she wrote in The Washington Post in 2004. “It helps hide the consequences of combat, making it easier for us to go to war again the next time.”

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World News

In Nigeria, ‘Feminist’ Was a Frequent Insult. Then Got here the Feminist Coalition.

In Nigeria, ‘Feminist’ Was a Common Insult. Then Came the Feminist Coalition.

LAGOS, Nigeria – During the largest demonstrations in Nigeria’s recent history, 13 women came together to support their fellow citizens who risked their lives to march against police brutality.

The women were all in their 20s and 30s. All at the top of their fields. Many had never met in person. They found each other months earlier on social media and called their group the Feminist Coalition. They jokingly called themselves “The Avengers”.

“We decided that if we don’t step in, the people who suffer the most would be women,” said Odunayo Eweniyi, a 27-year-old technology entrepreneur and founding member of the Feminist Coalition.

They raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through crowdfunding websites last year to support protesters who took to the streets to denounce human rights abuses by a police unit called the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). The Feminist Coalition provided the demonstrators with basic services: legal aid, emergency food, masks, raincoats. But when peaceful protesters were shot by the military and the demonstrations ended, the Feminist Coalition did not.

Now their goals are set higher. They want equality for Nigerian women and focus on issues such as sexual violence, women’s education, financial equality and political representation.

The struggle for equality will not be easy. A gender equality law first introduced in 2010 has been repeatedly rejected by the male-dominated Nigerian Senate.

And then it comes down to being proud feminists in a country where the word feminist is often used as an insult.

For years it has been difficult to identify as a feminist in Nigeria. The coalition’s decision to use the word on behalf of the organization and the female symbol in its yellow logo was highlighted. Many of the protesters who benefited from their support were men – and not all had supported women’s rights.

“We only used the word because we wanted to let them know where the money was coming from,” said Ms. Eweniyi.

We spoke to some women behind the Feminist Coalition about why they joined and what they want to change in Nigeria.

Before Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi founded her non-profit Stand To End Rape in 2014, it was common practice to open the newspaper in Nigeria and find a picture of a rape victim in crime coverage without thinking about what that public identification might be affecting her life. Women were raped and killed without consequences. Many health care providers had no idea how to gather evidence of rape.

Ms. Osowobi, 30, seeks to change attitudes by changing public order and practices. Her nonprofit runs seminars to help people prevent sexual violence and a rape survivor network where survivors can share experiences, care for one another, and feel less alone. She has worked on laws that prohibit sexual harassment and violence.

But usually men decide whether or not to pass such laws.

“We need more women to get into these rooms and make important guidelines and decisions that reinforce other people’s voices,” said Ms. Osowobi.

It was Tito Ovia’s National Youth Service who made it clear to her that she wanted to work for public health. At the Nigerian AIDS Control Agency, she found that a lack of data made it difficult to tell whether the money spent on HIV / AIDS prevention made a difference.

Ms. Ovia, 27, co-founded a company with friends in 2016 to ensure that health care across Africa is driven by data and technology. Helium Health has helped hospitals and clinics build electronic health records and hospital management systems.

She said she did not expect the Feminist Coalition’s work to be serious enough to support protesters as they risked their lives to try to change a police system that brutalized young people.

“I thought it would be a lot more fun, don’t let me lie,” she said with a laugh. “I thought we would meet, we would drink, we would complain about men. We would work a little. I didn’t know life was going to be threatened. “

Before joining the Feminist Coalition, 30-year-old Damilola Odufuwa founded Wine and Whine, a self-help group for Nigerian women.

She wanted to create a safe and fun place where young women could get together, have a drink, and complain about sexual harassment in the workplace, marriage pressures, the patriarchal system and its gatekeepers, and other frustrations – and then start finding solutions.

Ms. Odufuwa, the Africa public relations director for a major cryptocurrency exchange, had recently returned to Lagos from the UK to start Wine and Whine. She was impressed with the way women were treated in Nigeria.

She and her co-founder Odunayo Eweniyi – the same duo behind the Feminist Coalition – ensured that Wine and Whine also wore his feminism as a badge of honor.

“We’re a feminist organization,” Ms. Odufuwa told a male talk show host in a 2019 interview about Wine and Whine.

“Oh!” replied the hostess, sounding surprised when she used the word.

“We are very feminist,” she replied with a laugh. “Your reaction tells me that feminism is perceived as that bad thing.”

Odunayo Eweniyi, a 27-year-old tech entrepreneur, wasn’t sure how big it would be to put “feminist” in the group’s name.

“It shouldn’t be a hunt for the entire movement,” she said. “To be honest, I am now very proud that we used the word feminist because people are dealing with it in a way that the word feminist does not equate with the word terrorist.”

Although Nigeria has a history of feminist movements, identifying as a feminist is seen as radical.

Ms. Eweniyi recently got tattoos of her favorite equations: Schroëdinger’s equation, the golden ratio and the uncertainty principle.

She works to reduce the insecurity in the lives of Nigerian women.

The savings app startup Piggyvest, launched by Ms. Eweniyi in 2016, addresses one of the main problems identified by the Feminist Coalition – financial equality for women. The idea is that people should be able to save and invest even small amounts of money. It has more than 2 million customers – men and women.

As the anchor of one of the biggest Nigerian television news shows, Laila Johnson-Salami vividly remembers her male co-host who told a producer to say his name first.

But she was fearless. Via Newsday, the program on the television channel Arise, she kept Nigerians informed of the protests, which adopted the hashtag #EndSARS.

At 24, she is the youngest member of the coalition. Their main goal is to attract a younger audience. And recently she started a podcast that can help with this.

She uses her platform to hold politicians accountable but said, “If there’s one thing I know for sure in this life, it’s that Laila will never get into politics.”

The interviews that Ms. Johnson-Salami conducts on the Broken Record Podcast are very different from her television interviews. They talk extensively about everything from the importance of vulnerability to adoption and investment.

“Time is up, it’s over,” tweeted Fakhrriyyah Hashim in February 2019. “You are done getting away with monstrosities against women.”

Her tweet started the #MeToo movement in northern Nigeria. In it, Ms. Hashim coined the hashtag #ArewaMeToo – Arewa means “north” in Hausa, a West African language spoken by most northern Nigerians.

In a very conservative region where Ms. Hashim, 28, called a “culture of silence,” #ArewaMeToo has sparked a flood of testimonies about sexual violence. The Sultan of Sokoto, the highest Islamic authority in Nigeria, banned it when it spilled into street protests from social media.

Another campaign launched by Ms. Hashim, #NorthNormal, urged Nigerian states to implement laws that criminalize violence and broaden the definition of sexual violence.

Her women’s rights activism has brought her death threats and abuse. Now she has put some distance between herself and the people behind these threats after accepting a scholarship at the African Leadership Center in London.

The Feminist Coalition members all worked from home because of the pandemic. She was also able to raise awareness and resources online during the #EndSARS protests in London.

“I knew we would achieve all of the goals and targets we set,” said Ms. Hashim.

An estimated two-thirds of Nigerian girls and women do not have access to sanitary towels. You can’t afford it.

Karo Omu, 29, has been fighting for four years to bring sanitary towels and other hygiene items to Nigerian girls. It focuses on girls in public schools who come from low-income families and girls who have had to flee their homes and live in camps.

There are 2.7 million internally displaced people in northeastern Nigeria as a result of the violent and uncontrolled uprising by the Islamist group Boko Haram and its offshoots. And for many women and girls who live in the camps, it is a struggle to get enough food and clothing, let alone expensive sanitary towels.

Her organization, Sanitation Aid for Nigerian Girls, is handing out reusable pads bought with money crowdfunded by Ms. Omu and her colleagues to help girls worry less. Some of the girls they helped had never had a block before.

“Women’s problems are fought by women,” she said.

Categories
Health

Christina Crosby, 67, Dies; Feminist Scholar Wrote of Turning into Disabled

Christina Crosby, 67, Dies; Feminist Scholar Wrote of Becoming Disabled

Christina Crosby, an athletic woman who had just turned 50, was three miles on her cycling program near her Connecticut home when her front spokes caught a branch. The bike stopped and threw Dr. Crosby on the sidewalk. The impact hit her face and snapped at her neck. Immediately she was paralyzed for the rest of her life.

That was in 2003. She lost the use of her leg muscles and much of her upper body. But over time, she regained limited function in her arms and hands. And two years after the accident, she returned to work part-time as a professor of English literature and feminist studies, gender and sexuality studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

Finally – by dictating with speech recognition software – she was able to write a treatise: “One body, undone: Live on after great pain” (2016). It was an unsentimental examination of what she called the “surreal neurological wasteland” that she was poured into, and that forced her to search for her self-esteem.

In bottomless grief over everything she had lost, Dr. Crosby preserved her intellect and her ability to speak. Yet sometimes her pain was beyond the reach of language.

“I feel an unassailable loneliness,” she wrote, “because I will never be able to adequately describe the pain I am suffering, nor can anyone accompany me into the realm of pain.”

Late last month she was hospitalized in Middletown with a cystitis and learned she had pancreatic cancer, her partner Janet Jakobsen said.

Dr. Crosby died a few days later, on January 5th. She was 67 years old.

In her book, Dr. Crosby, to learn proper lessons about overcoming difficulties, or to come wiser from their disastrous injury. That made it a prominent text in disability studies and activism.

The typical disability narrative “leads the disturbed subject through painful exams to livable accommodation and lessons learned, and all too often the note sounds triumphant,” she wrote. “Don’t believe it.”

Christina Crosby was born on September 2, 1953 in Huntingdon, rural central Pennsylvania. Her father, Kenneth Ward Crosby, was a professor of history at Juniata College, where her mother, Jane (Miller) Crosby, taught home economics.

Christina was athletic as a child. She and her older brother Jefferson were age-related and physically competitive.

Christina attended Swarthmore College, where she majored in English and graduated in 1974. She wrote a column for the student newspaper called “The Feminist Slant” and helped found Swarthmore Gay Liberation. As a strange feminist, she remained committed to social justice and sexual liberation throughout her life.

She studied at Brown University in Providence, RI, where she completed her PhD in English in 1982. There she was part of a socialist feminist caucus that dealt with issues such as domestic violence. She and the caucus set up a hotline for abused women and established a women’s shelter called Sojourner House in 1976, one of the first of its kind in the country.

During this time she met Elizabeth Weed, then director of the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center in Brown, where the feminist caucus was holding its meetings. They were partners for more than 17 years and continued their relationship long after Dr. Crosby went to Wesleyan in 1982. Dr. Crosby’s papers are said to be kept at the Pembroke Center in Brown.

Dr. Crosby’s dissertation with Brown became her first book, “The Ends of History: Victorians and ‘the Woman Question'” (1991), which examined how Victorian literature excluded women from public life and raised questions about how history is told .

Though hired by Wesleyan’s English department, Dr. Crosby became a central part of the university’s women’s studies program, which she established as a major and later redesigned as a feminist, gender and sexuality study.

“She was the heart and soul of this program for decades,” said Natasha Korda, an English professor at Wesleyan University, in an interview.

“She was also a rock star on campus,” she added. “She was charismatic and lively, she had so much energy and she cut a very dashing figure.”

The students loved her, said Dr. Korda because she could make complex theoretical arguments “crystal clear” and because “she was not only an incredible storyteller, but also a great conversationalist”.

In the early 1990s, one of her students was the writer Maggie Nelson, whom Dr. Crosby advised on her thesis on denominational poetry. Dr. Crosby initially had little regard for denominational writing, but she later credited Ms. Nelson for opening her eyes to her worth when she began writing her memoir.

In 2003 the university faculty selected Dr. Crosby as chairman of the faculty. She chaired meetings and represented her colleagues in meetings with the President and the Board of Trustees.

She had just started her year-long tenure in this position when she had her bicycle accident. “Your life was brilliant,” said Dr. Jakobsen, Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard, who has been Dr. Crosby’s partner and is her only immediate survivor. “Christina was a person who burned very brightly.”

In an eerie parallel, Dr. Crosby’s brother Jeff, an attorney with whom she was always closely associated, was multiple sclerosis in his twenties and quadriplegic in his late 40s. She wrote in her memoir that after her accident, her childhood fantasy of being her brother’s twin – Dr. Weed had once referred to them both as “beautiful physical specimens” – “was maliciously recognized because there we were, each with seriously incapable damage to the central nervous system, each in a wheelchair. “

Mr Crosby died in 2010 at the age of 57. It was his death, seven years after her accident, that Dr. Got Crosby to begin her memoir. It was unanimously chosen by a committee of Wesleyan students, faculties, and staff as the book all incoming students would read in 2018.

Towards the end of the book she wrote about the struggle between the fear that she would stop to mourn her past life, which would mean that she would “have come to terms with my deeply changed body” and the fear that she would not stop to grieve, a sign that she refused to move on and perhaps didn’t want to live.

“To move on, I have to actively forget who I was,” she concluded. “I am no longer what I used to be – and yet I no longer think about it. All of us who continue to live are not what we were, we will, always will. “