May 8, 2018

"Look what did I do? I wasn't shaming the girls. I wasn't putting women's menstruation out there just for the sake of getting sanitary pads. I was saying, 'Screw you, Museveni.'"

From "She Strips, She Swears, She Goes To Jail ... For The Good Of Her Country" (NPR). The country is Uganda.
[Stella] Nyanzi wrote that she refused to call the first lady "Mama Janet."

"What sort of mother allows her daughters to keep away from school because they are too poor to afford padding materials that would adequately protect them from the shame and ridicule that comes by staining their uniforms with menstrual blood?" she wrote. "What malice plays in the heart of a woman who sleeps with a man who finds money for millions of bullets, billions of bribes, and uncountable ballots to stuff into boxes but she cannot ask him to prioritize sanitary pads for poor schoolgirls? She is no Mama! She is just Janet!"...

When she disrobed, she found herself holding on to the burglar bars at the university and declaring herself a nalongo owenene — the mother of twins with the big vagina.... [C]onjuring tribal mythology, she also said that Janet Museveni had no power over her, because, as the mother of twins, she had endured a pain Museveni would never know. Her vagina was bigger and more powerful than Museveni's, Nyanzi said. She also denigrated the first lady using sexual, misogynist imagery that made Nyanzi unpopular with her feminist colleagues....

"For me, I don't have guns," she says. "I don't have money. I don't have clout. I have Facebook and I have language, and I think we can be polite and continue to suffer or we can step out and be rude and get some... Maybe they won't give us the sanitary pads or the public health services, but they will know that we know."

13 comments:

Oso Negro said...

But did she yell "death on your pussy!" ?

rhhardin said...

First world problems.

rhhardin said...

There's nothing like the sound of a distant African tampon circle.

Mark said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mark said...

And in addition to the plantation here, there is the ideological imperialism that seeks to sweep up other cultures in its net, including the genital-centric language.

D 2 said...

First napkins. Then flashlights.

Tommy Duncan said...

So, this post is not garnering much interest.

Ann, you may need to herd the cats over to this thread.

Quaestor said...

What would Cecil Rhodes do?

President-Mom-Jeans said...

I don't know much about this broad, but based on this article, I think I like the cut of her jib. You always have to respect someone who clearly gives zero fucks.

mikee said...

I like the poor guy in India who, when faced with his wife's issues with the price of sanitary pads, figured out how to make really, really inexpensive ones. He then started women-owned small businesses nationwide to make and sell them. Of course, he did not ask the government to buy them for everyone. That makes zero sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arunachalam_Muruganantham

Gretchen said...

Apparently, lack of sanitary pads is a huge problem in 3rd world countries. They actually DO have problems accessing things, unlike the liberal college students in the US who think lack of access means the government or University doesn't supply them for free, when they could go to any Walgreens or grocery store and purchase some at a reasonable price.

Bay Area Guy said...

If this continues to get out of hand, we might have to re-colonize.

SDaly said...

C'mon guys, don't be glib about this. Haven't you been to all of the one-room school houses across the U.S. and noticed the little room off to the side where the teacher gave out free sanitary pads to the girls?