challenging rape culture. behaving ethically.

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brick wall block­ing progress on sex­ual violence

As noted by long-​time activist Liz Kelly, chair of the Child & Woman Abuse Stud­ies Unit of Lon­don Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­sity, sex­ual vio­lence exists on a con­tin­uüm, from preda­tory leers, touches and ver­bal harass­ment — to which vir­tu­ally all women are sub­jected — on up to ille­gal sex­ual assault. Direct con­fronta­tion of the male enti­tle­ment under­gird­ing this entire spec­trum of behav­iors will be crit­i­cal to mean­ing­ful progress against sex­ual vio­lence, speaker after speaker empha­sized.
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In addi­tion to address­ing the gen­der hier­ar­chies and other power imbal­ances that facil­i­tate vic­tim­iza­tion, we need to empower young peo­ple so that they per­ceive of them­selves as active agents who have choices and prac­ti­cal tools for nego­ti­at­ing com­plex social situations.

Stieg Lars­son, the author of the pop­u­lar Mil­len­nium tril­ogy, did not feel this power when he was 15 years old. Thus, he did not inter­vene dur­ing a group camp­ing trip, as three of his friends raped a 15-​year-​old girl. “Her screams were heartrend­ing, but … his loy­alty to his friends was too strong,” writes long­time friend and biog­ra­pher Kurdo Baksi. “He was too young, too inse­cure.” Lars­son strug­gled with guilt for the rest of his life, even nam­ing the hero­ine of his nov­els after the rape vic­tim, Lisbeth.

To empower young peo­ple in these types of sit­u­a­tions, Car­mody has devel­oped an edu­ca­tional pro­gram that trains par­tic­i­pants both in how to behave eth­i­cally in their own sex­ual encoun­ters, and how to be “eth­i­cal bystanders.” The cur­ricu­lum, funded by the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment, has been suc­cess­fully intro­duced with boys, girls, men and women from a vari­ety of back­grounds, from rugby play­ers to Maoris in New Zealand to gay men and lesbians.

study. stem cells. myelin disorders. multiple sclerosis.

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349px-Caduceus_wall_mosaic_(Silver_Spring,_MD)cells forged from human skin show promise in treat­ing mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, myelin disorders

The study is the first suc­cess­ful attempt to employ human induced pluripo­tent stem cells (hiPSC) to pro­duce a pop­u­la­tion of cells that are crit­i­cal to neural sig­nal­ing in the brain. In this instance, the researchers uti­lized cells crafted from human skin and trans­planted them into ani­mal mod­els of myelin disease.

“This study strongly sup­ports the util­ity of hiP­SCs as a fea­si­ble and effec­tive source of cells to treat myelin dis­or­ders,” said Uni­ver­sity of Rochester Med­ical Cen­ter (URMC) neu­rol­o­gist Steven Gold­man, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study. “In fact, it appears that cells derived from this source are at least as effec­tive as those cre­ated using embry­onic or tissue-​specific stem cells.”

fine art. painting. kevin sloan.

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the naturalist’s note­book”, new paint­ings by kevin sloan

In his self-​described “alle­gor­i­cal real­ism” style, Sloan por­trays a vari­ety of flora and fauna in the­atri­cal tableaus. Occa­sion­ally ref­er­enc­ing artists Mar­tin John­son Heade and Audubon, ani­mals are seen inter­act­ing uneasily with items of con­tem­po­rary life like clocks, power cords, books and antique china. These inter­ac­tions cre­ate a quiet ten­sion and some­times humor as we wit­ness these odd dra­mas before us. In a recent inter­view in Amer­i­can Art Col­lec­tor mag­a­zine Sloan says of the ani­mals fea­tured in this body of work:

“They fum­ble with mea­sur­ing devices and col­lect time­pieces… they stare bewil­dered at piles of clocks and books. In these small dra­mas, they actively par­tic­i­pate in the world of mod­ern things but with a child-​like irrev­er­ence. These objects, often so valu­able and revered by us are just more things to stum­ble over and attempt to make sense of in the ani­mal world.”

illustration. books. nascimbene.

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illus­tra­tions of italo calvino clas­sics from maria popova at brain pick­ings

A grad­u­ate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, Nascim­bene illus­trated more than 50 books, 300 book cov­ers, and count­less edi­to­r­ial pieces for pub­li­ca­tions like The New Yorker, TIME, Newsweek, The Wall Street Jour­nal, The Chicago Tri­bune, The Boston Globe, Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can, and The Atlantic.

equality. violence against women. forced marriage.

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new law in kyr­gyzs­tan tough­ens penal­ties for bride kidnapping

The prac­tice of bride kid­nap­ping is wide­spread in Kyr­gyzs­tan and is still con­sid­ered by some as a valu­able tradition.

“Accord­ing to these ‘tra­di­tions’, when a Kyr­gyz man wants to get mar­ried, he picks a bride and starts to arrange her kid­nap­ping. This is a grave vio­la­tion of human rights. Women often expe­ri­ence phys­i­cal vio­lence and rape.

They feel humil­i­ated and see them­selves as prop­erty,” explains 37-​year-​old Kamilla, a vol­un­teer with the Women Sup­port Cen­ter, a grantee of the Fund for Gen­der Equality.

“My sis­ter expe­ri­enced all of those ter­ri­ble things and once she decided to finally divorce him, she was killed by her husband.”

Her hus­band was sub­se­quently con­victed for mur­der and is serv­ing a jail sen­tence. But address­ing the prac­tice of bride-​kidnapping remains a challenge.

Accord­ing to data by the NGO Women Sup­port Cen­tre, which works to elim­i­nate vio­lence against women, there are at least 11,800 cases of forced abduc­tion of women and girls every year in Kyr­gyzs­tan, with more than 2,000 of those girls reported being raped as well.