Homosexuality, a crime in Uganda

Those that choose alternative lifestyles face dangerous consequences for those lifestyles. Proposed legislation in Uganda would penalize homosexuality with execution, and lesbians in South Africa face corrective rape. The concept of corrective rape against lesbians seems both troubling and ineffective, but what I gathered from the Sky news clip is that it is rooted in sexist ideology. This ideology does not seem completely different from those promoted in the U.S. through media and other cultural images. Perceived gender roles and legislative limitations that support those roles can become violently harmful.

Honduran election controversy

The Honduran election that positioned Porfirio Lobo to become the new leader caused much controversy, most of centered around a shaky political system. Pressure from the West to form these Democracies in third world countries seems to be damaging more than helping. When legislation and proper systematic changes have not been made to ensure votes are taken accurately and that other elements play out democratically, they will have another political process that lacks planning and fuels corruption. Even when processes do play out democratically; the people will doubt that because of the lack of a proper period of adjustment and planning, which may or may not have been the case in Honduras.

New recommendation to hold off on mammograms

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended that women wait until age 50 to begin getting biennial mammograms as opposed to yearly testing. This has the violently acerbic taste of insurance companies tightening down on covering mammograms for women under age 50. Surely, this recommendation does not claim to protect the women who would be dead if they had waited until age 50 to get a mammogram, but let's just see how far this recommendation goes.

Hair-pulling soccer match

Elizabeth Lambert, a defender on the University of New Mexico's women's soccer team, pulled an opponent to the ground by her hair, an act that resulted in her indefinite suspension. The New York Times highlighted the fact that women's soccer is largely ignored in its headline For All the Wrong Reasons, Women’s Soccer Is Noticed. This is representative of women's sports in general. They simply are not received as well as men's sports. There are clearly countless feminists arguments as to why, but what's interesting is the way female athletes make front-page news. Call me overly-sensitive, but it just seems that we only care about the world of female athletics when those athletes behave in a way that has been deemed unfitting behavior for a lady.
http://www.newsy.com/videos/soccer_violence_from_head_butts_to_hair_pulls

Beyonce in Egypt

Not everyone is exactly enthusiastic to see Beyonce perform in her yearlong world tour, CNN reports. Islamist Egyptian Member of Parliament Hamdi Hassan claims the government would be breaking Sharia law in letting the singer perform having been photographed naked before. He said it would be encouraging sin.

I don't know if I'd take it quite that far, but I could see how the singer's risque attire could strike a cord with the conservative nation. But fully clothed or not, she's still a $400 dollar ticket!

Catholic church targets Anglican converts

The Vatican released its plan to use cannon law to create a separate sector of the church targeting Anglican converts. Allowing Anglican converts to keep some of their traditions, the law was directed toward those who fell on a more traditional side of Anglican worship. It doesn't sound like the Catholic church is doing this to inspire a oneness in faith at all. It simply seems conjured up to capitalize off the split within the Anglican church and is almost too accommodating for my taste. This makes me wonder just how far the Catholic church is willing to retreat from its own doctrines to get more converts.
Newsy.com

Five Generations

Is this simply newsworthy because she is African American? Let's be honest the same connection to slavery's not so distant past could have been drawn with any past US first ladies- be it as a descendant of slave owners or one of slaves. The truth is that the history of slavery is not as black and white as portrayed.

Newsy.com covers the many perspectives.
http://www.newsy.com/videos/michelle_obama_s_slave_roots

This is a little different from my normal post because it is not an international story but involves the adoption and later return of a South American child by a Caucasian American woman. Anita Tedaldi told MSNBC that she could not bond with the child.

“I think it was both ways… that the child, D, wasn’t connecting with us," she said to MSNBC.

"And at the same time, while I was seeking help with a therapist, a social worker, while I was trying to establish a connection, and did some attachment therapy, I also realized that, on my part, there was a difference. I also had a hard time bonding with him.”

Tedaldi has five biological children of her own, none of which she seemed to have a hard time bonding with. While I can understand adoption being a completely different scenario, I am just not understanding how one can comprehend returning a child like a pair of jeans with a loose thread. Did all of the reasons she came up with for why she wanted to adopt suddenly go out the window?

My guess is that that probably happened sometime around the time she saw the skin-tone of the baby.

http://www.newsy.com/videos/adopt_and_return

Rio wins bid for 2016 Olympic Games

The 2016 Olympics will be held in Rio de Janeiro, the first South American city to be offered this honor. As a Chicagoan, I was a little hurt that despite President Obama's best efforts, Chicago was eliminated in the first round. In the words of my mother "we loss, we loss, we ate tomato sauce!" The victory party in the city's downtown area was delayed indefinitely.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/sports/03olympics.html?hp

Students teaching students in South Africa

An education system severely scarred from the apartheid era, schools in South Africa are experiencing an enormous drop in scores of the national exams given to seniors. Teacher absentees are on the rise as well, forcing students to educate one another, yet and still these students are extremely driven and motivated.

Inequities in the schooling system seemingly spreads across countries with wealth determining education and thus future wealth for future generations. This is troubling to say the least, especially because these students want to learn. Their drive is admirable.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/09/19/world/20090920-SAFRICA_index.html

Intersex claims and athletics

Indian athlete, Santhi Soundarajan, attempted suicide after failing a gender test. Soudarajan touches in on the debate about South African runner Caster Semenya. Just how important is it to maintain a strictly dichotomous understanding of gender and sex even when impossible to neatly fit some individuals into those categories? Are we willing to risk losing lives to categorize them?

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/09/14/Semenya.India.Athlete/index.html?eref=edition

Bias much?

Remember the Gaza abuse report when Israeli soldiers spoke out about soldier abuse, reporting that they were forced to use Palestinian civilians as human shields among other war crimes? Well, I have been analyzing coverage of the two stories by CNN and France 24 for a class, and in doing so I noticed a very interesting difference in the American journalistic culture. The general manager of France 24 openly said in an interview that their organization did have values on secularism, education, democracy, etc. They have values, but aside from those values strive for balance and transparency in their reporting. That made me think. CNN would never make such an admission about its values, but in what they choose to cover, their word choice, and editing decisions, a bias is definitely communicated only not transparently. I just have to ask how objective is US news truly? Pay attention to which New York Times' international coverage pops up on my blog.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/07/15/israel.gaza.report/index.html
http://www.france24.com/en/20090715-gaza-veterans-idf-moral-deterioration-war-crimes-palestine-breaking-the-silence-soldiers-israel

North Korea steps closer to a nuclear bomb

The New York Times reported that North Korea was in the "completion stage" of developing a nuclear bomb. This sends more than a chill down my spine, just the talk of developing a nuclear bomb. What are your thoughts?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/world/asia/05korea.html?ref=asia

Finding health care abroad

Apparently more and more Americans are traveling south of the border for cheaper health care. Check this out!

Medical Tourism

Photo at http://www.laprogressive.com/2009/09/03/american-retirees-move-to-mexico-for-health-care/#comment-45223

Western gender ideas outrage supporters of South African runner

The international brouhaha is evaluating Caster Semenya, claiming that she is too masculine to compete in women's track.

International track officials said Semenya needed sex-determination testing to confirm her eligibility, the New York Times reported.

After a winning a 800-meter race at the track and field world championship in Berlin, Semenya returned home to enthusiastic supporters.

The New York Times quotes Leonard Chuene, the president of Athletics of South Africa.

"We are not going to allow Europeans to define and describe our children,” Chuene said.

I thought this story was especially interesting in its comparison of Semenya to Saartjie Baartman, "an African woman taken to Europe in the early 19th century and exhibited like a wild beast under the name Hottentot Venus," according to the New York Times.

Some commentators think this is more a question of race than gender. I think both perspectives are equally applicable. In Western culture, gender performance is so strictly binary that any differences are ostracized to the point of dehumanizing.

We'd be naive, if we did not at least consider the possibility that mainstream American culture has had particularly damaging effects to women of color. The story of Saartjie Baartman reminds me of the decades of sexually demonizing images of African American women. Semenya's story is a little different because it brings up the question of gender.

How should a woman look, and does any official have the right to answer that question?

Check out Newsy.com to get multiple perspectives on this story and comment.
http://www.newsy.com/videos/a_question_of_gender_race_or_status