07.Feb.2010 Under Construction…

Stay tuned as we try and get all the information loaded from the old blog.

01.Dec.2007 Parental Alienation Syndrome Is Not A Mental Disorder

Psychologists who make their living at pushing this so-called syndrome are trying to get it approved in the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V).  This must be stopped.  Too many children are ending up with abusers in family court once the words “parental alienation” are uttered.

The American Psychological Association (APA) agrees it is not a mental disorder.  Here is their official statement:

Statement on Parental Alienation Syndrome

The American Psychological Association has no official position on “parental alienation syndrome.” This concept has been used in contested child custody cases and has become the subject of significant debate. While it may be that in some divorces, children become estranged from their non-custodial parent for a variety of reasons, there is no evidence within the psychological literature of a diagnosable parental alienation syndrome.

The committee members that will be considering this are listed below.  We all need to send a letter to each one to express our concerns.  A downloadable letter has been prepared for each member (click on the highlighted name link), with space to include your own comments, including how PAS has been used against you in court by an abuser if this is the case:

Darrel A. Regier, M.D., M.P.H. (Vice Chair):  Download a letter for Dr. Darrell Regier now

David J. Kupfer, M.D. : Download a letter for Dr. David Kupfer now

Daniel S. Pine, M.D. (Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence Chair): Download a letter for Dr. Daniel Pine now

Geoffrey M. Reed, Ph.D.  Download a letter for Dr. Geoffrey Reed now

Wonder about the “mental health” professionals trying to get it approved in the next Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V)?  They are psychologists for hire, ready to testify for their clients or recommend that the children be put in their $40,000 a week treatment center.  There is a lot of money to be made by these people if “parental alienation syndrome” makes it into the DSM-V.

And what about the children that are the true victims?  Can you imagine the horror of being told you have to live with your abuser or your parent’s abuser?  Even after you had witnessed it?  How does that child feel…do they have nightmares night after night dreaming of trying to save that parent?  And on top of it, the abusive parent and/or their Whores of the Court are keeping you from seeing your loving parent.  How about the child that was raped by a parent?  All the rapist parent has to do is go into court and utter the words “parental alienation” and 70% of the time they score custody.  Then the child is usually drugged into compliance to let the abuser continue to rape the child, and nobody will listen because the label “parental alienation syndrome” has been placed upon them.

Help lend your voice to the effort to keep this horrific label meant to keep the court psychologists and social workers employed.  Comments are being taken during the first few months of 2010.  The manual is scheduled to be published May 2013.  Please print and fill out the letters above at the links next to names, or compose letters of your own.  This is very important!

For the love of our children…

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

31.Oct.2008 First Battered At Home And Then By The State

An article written by Camilla Cavendish (UK), who has been shortlisted for the 2008 Paul Foot Award for Campaigning Journalism for her family justice campaign.  The article appears in  The Times Online.

Women who manage to escape domestic violence then find themselves under suspicion and facing a wall of silence

When I first started campaigning for children who had been taken from their families by local authorities on what I felt were flimsy grounds, my editor told me to keep writing “until we’re sick of it”. I apologise to readers who have reached that point. But a case has been raised with me by an MP who is being prevented from helping a constituent because the local council believes that it is obliged to withhold most of the relevant information. That is worrying.

Tim Yeo is concerned about the treatment of two constituents by social services. Ann – not her real name – was in an abusive marriage. The council advised her to move into temporary accommodation the next time her husband became aggressive. She did.

At this point Ann was a textbook victim. Her little boy had had an operation. She cared for him and took him to medical appointments. When she started living with another man, Bob, and got pregnant by him, her ex-husband sued for custody. He claimed that Ann suffered from a condition that used to be called Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy and is now known as fabricated or induced illness (FII). This would have led her to pretend the child was ill.

Despite a surgeon explaining that he had made most of the medical referrals, social workers seem to have become convinced that Ann was a liar. When a teacher reported that the boy was scared of his dad, the idea was said to have been put into his head by Ann, because he used “adult words”. The father won custody. Ann’s little boy now sees her for only three hours a week.

It is one thing for the system to decide that a boy is better off with his father than his mother. It is quite another to take a child from its parents into care. When Ann became pregnant, the council was concerned. She and Bob found its suspicion hard to bear. She tried to express this to a social worker by saying that Bob felt like killing them all if their baby was also taken away. It was a disastrous mistake. Police arrived. Bob was marched out of the house. A few days later, their baby was removed.

Mr Yeo has written to the council to ask what justification there was for removing a ten-week old baby from a couple who have never been charged with an offence. The council’s previous replies to his requests for information are not encouraging. Ann and Bob want their MP to know all the facts of their case, however damaging it might prove to them. Mr Yeo would treat this in confidence. But the council says that it is bound by confidentiality. It cannot disclose information about families with which it works. So Mr Yeo is in the dark. He cannot advise his constituents without seeing the files.

What constitutes “confidentiality” for a ten-week old baby? Should her right to privacy trump her right to family life? If a council puts people under such pressure that one of them makes a silly remark and it then punishes them for that remark, is that not persecution? Not only is Ann a victim of domestic violence, but the State has made her a victim a second time. If she really is ill with FII, she needs help. Yet all she has received is punishment.

This story looks like an example of a Catch-22 that I have begun to notice. You could call it “once a victim, always a victim”. It is well known that if you have been in care yourself, the authorities are more likely to consider you a risk to your child, keep you under scrutiny and to put your child in care. But it appears that something similar holds true if you have suffered domestic violence. It is not illogical to keep tabs on women who have fallen for cruel, manipulative men who can harm them and their children. What is surprising is that allegations made by such men are given so much weight

In the past three months I have spoken to a surprising number of women who have escaped domestic violence only to find themselves accused. First, they are blamed for having exposed the children to violence. Then, when they get up the courage to leave, they are suspected of being too weak to cope alone. One woman told me that she was labelled as a “weak parent” because she rang the police whenever her ex, against whom she had a restraining order, prowled round her home at night. Many claim that their ex-partners started to accuse them of being mentally ill as soon as they departed or after they turned down a derisory divorce settlement. Thus the psychological abuse continues.

The coup de grâce seems to come when women who make the break, and manage it well, then find themselves accused of obstructing access to the children. The system is understandably keen to keep children in touch with fathers. But this can create a double bind.

I recently spoke to a manager of a refuge for battered women. She is furious that a family judge has revealed the address of this refuge, which is supposed to be secret, by insisting that the father be told where his children reside. The father is now sending threatening mail there, and arrives there for visits with the children. So a woman who had been urged to make a clean break is still being browbeaten. The refuge staff fear that this man may eventually get custody of the children, by arguing that their mother is depressed. The authorities will have made her so.

I do not know how widespread this phenomenon is. But too often, power seems to tip the wrong way. The abusive partner gets custody. The innocent new father loses his child. The MP – one of the only people that Bob is legally allowed to talk to – is kept in the dark. Mr Yeo believes that “a family is being split up because of decisions taken by unaccountable officials who are hiding behind the law”. Can a system that relies on circular logicreally speak for the children?

Beware Family Court: What Victims and Advocates Should Know

This is a very good article, read it at the Women’s Justice Center.   Here is a synopsis of the information presented on the website:

Despite some new protections patched into family law for victims of violence against women, the family law and family court system remain a flawed and risky venue for victims of family violence. It’s especially risky for victims who present claims of violence and abuse in family court without any criminal case documents to back up those claims.  The structure and powers of the family court system are radically different from the criminal system. By understanding these differences, victims and advocates can minimize the risks of family court, and get the best of each system to work for them.

Part I of this text describes some of the key differences between the family and criminal court systems. It explains why family court is so prone to fail victims of family violence.

Part II provides some strategies for avoiding family court when possible, or for protecting against the risks when a family court case is opened.

Parts III & IV provide some general tips for handling your family court case.

Part V offers some tips on what to do if you lose in family court, particularly if you lose child custody. And

Part VI tells a story of how one domestic violence victim who had become badly trapped in family court hell, ultimately managed to get free.

 
Feel free to photocopy and distribute this information as long as you keep the credit and text intact.
Copyright © Marie De Santis,
Women’s Justice Center,
www.justicewomen.com
rdjustice@monitor.net

Emotional and Psychological Abuse Fact Sheet

From Families Against Court Travesties:
 
DEFINITION of the TERM: Emotional/Psychological Abuse
Emotional/Psychological abuse is referred to in the professional literature by many interchangeable terms such as: emotional abuse, covert abuse, psychological maltreatment, coercive abuse, abuse by proxy, and ambient abuse.
 
Psychological maltreatment is a concerted attack by an adult on a child’s development of self and social competence, a pattern of psychically destructive behavior to the child.  (Garbarino, et al, 1986, as cited in Tomison & Tucci, 1997).
 
Psychological abuse can be defined as a repeated pattern of damaging interactions between parent(s) and child that becomes typical of the relationship… when a person conveys to a child that he or she is worthless, flawed, unloved, unwanted, endangered, or only of value in meeting another’s needs (Kairys & Johnson, 2002).
                 
Emotional abuse is the systematic, patterned and chronic abuse that is used by a perpetrator to lower a victim’s sense of self, self-worth and power (Mezey, Post & Maxwell, 2002).
 
It [psychological/emotional abuse] is most damaging to children, who are not aware, nor have control over, the pattern of relationships surrounding them, is almost always a precursor or accompaniment to physical aggression, and is based on maintaining consistent power and control over time (Garbarino, 1994).
 
To read the rest of this article, please go to the page set up with this information.

30.Oct.2008 Austrian Horror Dad: I Locked My Mom Up Until She Died

Josef Fritzl and daughter Elisabeth

From Fox News:

VIENNA, Austria —  Cellar monster Josef Fritzl has admitted he kept his mom bricked up in a locked room “for years” until she died.

Incest dad Fritzl, 74, told a psychologist it was revenge for abuse he claims he received at her hands.  He said: “I never had any love from her. She used to beat me, hit me until I was lying in a pool of blood on the floor. I never had a kiss. I was never cuddled.”

Local council files showed Fritzl inherited the home in Amstetten, Austria in 1959 “because his mother had died.”  He locked her in an attic room where she is said to have died in 1980. No neighbors remember seeing her over the 21 years. Fritzl told Dr. Adelheid Kastner: “I bricked in the window so that she never again saw the light of day.”  Fritzl later fathered seven children by daughter Elisabeth, 42, who he locked in a cellar at their home for 24 years.

Three lived upstairs with him and wife Rosemarie, 69. The others were kept with their mom.  Asked if locking up his mom had given him the idea for caging Elisabeth, Fritzl said: “To be honest I just didn’t think about it, about her being my daughter.”

“I saw her as my wife and as my partner.”

Kastner has prepared a report for Fritzl’s trial starting next February. She says Fritzl is not insane and recommends that he is never freed.

Additionally from the Guardian:

The confessions were made to Dr Adelheid Kastner, an Austrian prison psychiatrist who is assessing the 73-year-old’s mental state during six in-depth sessions before Fritzl’s trial, which is expected to start in January.  This week, Austrian newspapers reported Fritzl describing how his abusive relationship with his mother fed his life as a rapist.

“She never showed me any love, she beat me and kicked me until I was on the floor and bleeding,” he said. “I felt so weak and humiliated. I never got a kiss from her or even a hug although I tried very hard to please her. The only thing she did with me was go to church.  “She beat me and kicked me until I was lying on the floor bleeding. I had a horrible fear from her. She kept insulting me and told me I was a Satan, a criminal, a no-good.”  Reports revealed that Fritzl’s mother raised him alone after a bitter divorce. Fritzl claims he was isolated from other children and was an “alibi child”– his mother only had him to prove to her husband she was not sterile.  According to Fritzl, he moved into the Amstetten house in 1959 soon after he married his wife, Rosmarie. His mother moved into the house with them and Kastner was told how their roles gradually reversed with Fritzl’s mother coming to fear her son.   It is unknown how long his mother was kept in a room without daylight, but Austrian newspapers speculate it could have been for up to 20 years.

In the leaked confidential report, the psychiatrist declared Fritzl as sane and fit for trial despite suffering from a “severe combined personality disorder” and “a sexual disorder”.   In the first of the leaked accounts in Austrian newspapers, Fritzl said: “I have realised that I had a mean streak. For someone who was born to be a rapist, I have managed to contain myself for a relatively long period.”

He allegedly hatched his plan to incarcerate his daughter, Elisabeth, while he was in prison for rape.  In 1967 he was sentenced to 18 months in prison for brutally raping a 24-year-old woman at knifepoint in her home.  Kastner writes that Fritzl devised the “ideal solution” to his deranged fantasies after he was released from prison. He decided to lock up his daughter in the cellar so that he could “live out” his “evil side” while leading a seemingly normal life in the flat upstairs.  Kastner came to the conclusion when dissecting the personality of Fritzl that the electrician managed to distance himself from what he was doing by never looking his victim in the face when he raped her.  He was not only incredibly able to lead a double life but also managed to maintain a triple life without any problems,” she wrote, indicating that Fritzl played down the gravity of his crimes in his mind.  “Mr Fritzl resembles a volcano: under the surface that appears almost banal there is an evil streak. He is torn apart by his desires that he cannot master.”

Three children aged 12 to 15 whom Fritzl fathered with Elisabeth lived in the large upstairs apartment with him and his wife, Rosemarie, 69. Their other three siblings, aged five to 19, were kept in the cellar with their mother, never seeing the light of day until they were freed by police on April 26 this year.  Fritzl believed himself to be a good father to his incestuous family, he told the psychiatrist, and took them games and celebrated birthdays and Christmas with them.  It is believed Fritzl will try to use his claims of his own alleged childhood abuse to explain his actions towards his daughter.

Kastner concluded in her report that Fritzl was cold-blooded and calculating.  “His narcissism combines with the lack of empathy and contributes to the exploitative way of turning others into instruments of satisfying his own needs. There is also a noticeable ability or tendency to ‘modify’ reality according to his own wishes,” she wrote.

UPDATE:  Also see Josef Fritzl Trial Starts This Week, Court Cleared for Imprisoned Daughter’s Evidence

Say No To Violence Against Women

UNIFEM Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman invites you to Say NO to Violence against Women.  “One in three women may suffer from abuse and violence in her lifetime.  This is an appalling human rights violation.  We can put a stop to this.  I became UNIFEM’s Goodwill Ambassador to amplify the voices of these women.  That’s why I signed my name to this book.  It will help UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a strong supporter of our cause, to strengthen the United Nation’s efforts to fulfil women’s right to a life free of violence.  So please join me.  And add your name.”

Add your voice to an ever-growing movement of people who call for global action to end violence against women.

Goal:  One million people to say no to violence, and deliver to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on November 25th.  Click here to go to the Say No To Violence website. 

UPDATE: 11/23/08, WE DID IT!  There are 1,005,266 signed up…hurry, not much time left to add your name!  Please sign the book!

Patriarchy Reasserted: Fathers' Rights and Anti-VAWA Activism

A new article just published, really nails the issue being discussed.  Written by Molly Dragiewicz.  Here’s an excerpt:

Despite the repetition of FR pronouncements that domestic violence is not about patriarchy, sex, or gender, FR discourse on VAWA reveals the centrality of patriarchy, sex, and gender to their efforts. My analysis of FR discourse about VAWA found calls for formal equality, calls for the reassertion of patriarchy, and objections to women’s authority to be central. The intensification of anti-VAWA rhetoric in the form of calls for “fathers’ rights” not only fails to challenge feminist research and theorizing on violence, but also points to the centrality of the relationship between patriarchy and men’s violence against women. FR emphasis on reasserting patriarchy is paradigmatic of backlash, but FR groups are not just talking to themselves. Many complicated connections exist to mainstream fatherhood and marriage promotion initiatives and liberal and conservative politics that are yet to be investigated. The use of FR Web sites as places for like-minded men to seek out and receive peer support for violence-supportive attitudes is a serious concern for those interested in decreasing domestic violence, especially when we recognize their similarity to batterer accounts. The compatibility of FR commentary on VAWA with patriarchal peer support for violence against women should not go unnoticed.

This inquiry has limitations inherent to a discourse analysis of FR Web sites on VAWA. As a qualitative study, it is not representative of the total number of themes or the frequency with which they are found in all FR attacks on VAWA. Rather, this is an exploratory study that categorizes many different claims according to important themes. The sources that I cite here represent commentaries and arguments that are posted over and over again on many FR Web sites, and there is a great deal of continuity between the sites, but we cannot know about the reception of these claims from looking at Web postings alone. Additional studies that look at a larger number of sites using quantitative approaches would help to develop our understanding of this field. Additional work is needed to investigate more fully the relationships between the different sites, including cross-membership, and the funding relationships between FR and other groups across the political spectrum. Research that combines analysis of Web sites with materials made available to members but not posted online, and studies that compare FR group activities with their Web presence are still needed.

The good news is that the escalation of fathers’ rights rhetoric and other forms of backlash indicate that feminism is hitting a nerve in its criticism of patriarchy. The following quotation exemplifies the extent to which members of FR groups perceive that feminism has resulted in substantive changes for women and men:

[W]hen I lived in Democrat-ruled San Francisco, and was accused by my estranged wife of domestic violence, the ideological Feminist/leftist/democrats were in control of Family Court Services, the Criminal Courts, the prosecutors office, Social Services, and all the attendant government-funded NGOs whose purpose was to brutally and methodically separate fathers from their children. This was a world of purchased justice, wherein the Feminist Left were the rulers, and any man accused—regardless of his political affiliations (and I was at that time a Democrat)—was an instant enemy in the eyes of the State Apparatus. (LaSalle, 2007)

There is plenty of room for further research and advocacy against violence, and it is important to remember that multiple forms of violence, not just men’s violence against women, are shaped by gender. We need to understand the tactics of backlash and how they work in order to advance efforts to protect victims of abuse and decrease the occurrence of violence. Because of their preoccupation with issues related to battering and their bountiful Web presence, FR groups provide a plethora of opportunities for studying the specific dynamics of backlash against perceived feminist gains related to violence policy. 

I understand that many scholars have been slow to respond to FR rhetoric for a variety of reasons, but it is important to recognize that FR groups’ organization around violence against women is having a negative impact on battered women and their children. Survivors, service providers, and attorneys report the adverse impact of FR activism (Booth vs. Hvass, 2002; Jaffe & Crooks, 2004; Kaufman & Davis, 2006; Morrill, Dai, Dunn, Sung, & Smith, 2006; Rosen & O’Sullivan, 2005; Waits, 2003). Battered women’s organizations note that battered women have problems with abusers receiving custody at divorce (Varcoe & Irwin, 2004). FR group members have also sued shelters and other domestic violence service providers (Blumhorst v. Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles, 2005; Booth v. Hvass, 2002).  Despite their lack of success, such lawsuits are a waste of time and money for agencies that are already unable to fully meet demand for services (California Women’s Law Center, 2003). Rather than seeing FR groups as marginal, we need to understand the relationships between their cause and the other efforts that allow them some measure of influence.  Finally, FR groups’ literal and figurative emphasis on patriarchy provides ample opportunities for theorizing its relationship to masculinity and violence that are increasingly important in an era of federally funded fatherhood and marriage promotion initiatives.

Read the entire article here.

29.Oct.2008 Battered Mothers Speak Out: Participatory Human Rights Documentation as a Model for Research and Activism in the United States

An excerpt of the article by KIM Y. SLOTE, CARRIE CUTHBERT, CYNTHIA J. MESH, MONICA G. DRIGGERS, LUNDY BANCROFT and JAY G. SILVERMAN:

Across the United States, battered women separate from their batterers and enter the family courts seeking protection for themselves and their children. Instead of receiving protection, many report experiencing the unthinkable: The family courts award custody or unsafe visitation of their children to the same men who have used violence against them and, in many cases, against their children as well (Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence [AZCADV], 2003; California National Organization for Women [CANOW], 2002; O’Sullivan, 2002; Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, 1989; Women’s Law Project [WLP], 2003). These family court orders actively endanger women and children and prevent women from protecting themselves and their children from physical, sexual, and psychological abuse by the batterers. In such cases, many women and children report being harmed by the batterers in the context of these orders (AZCADV, 2003; Bancroft & Silverman, 2002; Butts Stahly, 1999; CANOW, 2002; Lemon, 2000; O’Sullivan, 2002; WLP, 2003).

In 1999, the Battered Mothers’ Testimony Project (BMTP) at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW) began a 3-year study of these problems in Massachusetts as well as of related problems such as gender bias and denial of due process. International human rights principles, strategies, and laws guided all aspects of the project, including research, community organizing, and advocacy. In 2002, the BMTP released Battered Mothers Speak Out: A Human Rights Report on Domestic Violence and Child Custody in the Massachusetts Family Courts (Cuthbert et al., 2002). The report identifies six intersecting categories of human rights violations committed by the Massachusetts family courts against battered womenand their children in the cases studied and concludes with a series of detailed recommendations for reforming the family court system to protect the human rights and enhance the safety of battered mothers and their children.

In this article, we (a) present our project’s participatory human rights methodology as an alternative model for research and activism on violence against women in the United States, (b) summarize our findings and human rights analysis of how the Massachusetts family courts are handling custody and visitation in specific cases involving partner and child abuse, and (c) discuss U.S. obligations under international human rights law and the value of a human rights approach to violence against women and children in the United States.

To read the article, click here.

Mothers Under Siege: The Tactics of the Fathers Rights Movement

This is an older article by Trish Wilson.  As her site goes down soon, many of us are trying to preserve her work she has produced over the years.  This article deserves a mention in the posts, as it is very relevent to what many mothers are going through now in a divorce.  Check for other articles by Trish Wilson in the “Pages” section.  This article is titled How A “Good Enough” Mother Can Protect Herself, here is an excerpt of it:

The fathers’s rights movement seeks to destroy the legal protections of women and children, primarily custodial mothers. Fathers’ rights groups are not male-only groups. A large number of these groups are lead and supported by the second wives, girlfriends, grandparents and former in-laws of the men who are taking their ex-wives back to court. This article details the agenda of the fathers’ rights lobby, which despite its claims, is not concerned about the welfare of children. Even though it is a worldwide movement, this article focuses on the movement in the Chesapeake region, particularly Maryland. Fathers’ rights groups in America are national groups with satellite chapters in each state. These chapters meet in church basements, rented halls, and members’ homes. They also meet on the Internet, Usenet, America Online, and CompuServe. The leaders of these groups often have obtained custody of their children by taking the mothers back to court repeatedly over an average of five years. Financially and emotionally exhausted, the mother eventually loses custody by court order.

It is important to stress that not all fathers concerned with their rights are bad fathers. Women’s groups and pro-feminist men’s groups do not hate men or downplay the important role of fatherhood. The focus of this article is on the fathers’ rights lobby, and those people who utilize underhanded, abusive tactics to control an ex-wife and children. It is not a blanket indictment of fathers across the board. Good fathers are doing everything in their power to parent their children to the best of their ability. They do not recruit their new wives and girlfriends into demonizing the first wife. They also do not have histories of domestic violence and/or child abuse, as do many members of the fathers’ rights lobby, or those who use similar tactics without the direct assistance of the lobby. The father’s lobby gives all non-custodial fathers a bad image. Before their claims to the rights of fatherhood can be achieved, the responsibilities of the role of father must be met. That includes personal maturity, financial responsibility, nurturing and guidance of children’s lives, and respectful treatment of the mother. Without the existence of responsibility, the talk of rights is hollow rhetoric.

Women Who Raged Against Oppression

I ran across this on the net tonight, it is a couple years old.  These are women who raged against oppression…some words from those who have led radical movements or fought for women’s liberation and socialism.  Original story located here. 

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT 1759-1797

‘HOW MANY women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre.

It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion, that they were created to feel rather than reason, and that all the power they obtain must be obtained by their charms and weaknesses. What were we created for? To remain, some say, in innocent: they mean in a state of childhood. We might as well never have been born.’

From her famous book, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. One of the first feminists, she was deeply inspired by what she witnessed during the French Revolution in 1789.
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SOJOURNER TRUTH 1797-1883

‘THAT MAN over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man-when I could get it-and bear the lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?’

An ex-slave who blasted the hypocrisy and double standards in society’s treatment of women.
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ELIZABETH DMITRIEFF 1851-1910

‘PARIS IS being blockaded. Paris is being bombarded. Do you hear the cannon roaring, ringing out the sacred call-to arms! Citizens of Paris, descendants of the women of the Great Revolution, the women who, in the name of the people and justice, marched upon Versailles and carried King Louis off as captive-we, the mothers, wives and sisters of the French people, will we go on allowing poverty and ignorance to make enemies of our children, allowing them to kill each other for the whim of our oppressors? Citizens, the gauntlet is thrown down. We must win, or die.’

Dmitrieff issued this declaration from Paris in 1871. Workers had seized control of the city, forming the Paris Commune. She played a key role organising women of the city. They defied all convention-defending their commune on the barricades.
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CLARA ZETKIN 1857-1933

‘WE CARRY on our war for this measure, not as a fight between the sexes, but as a battle against the political might of the possessing classes, as a fight which we carry on with all our might and main.

The aim of that fight will be that one day the proletariat in its entirety, without distinction of sex, shall be able to call out to the capitalist order of society, “You rest on us, you oppress us, and see how the building which you have erected is tottering to the ground”.’

Zetkin was a leading socialist in Germany. She led the calls to establish International Women’s Day.
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ANNIE BESANT 1847-1933

‘WHO CARES for the fate of these white wage slaves? Born in slums, driven to work while still children, undersized because underfed, oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who cares if they die or go on the streets, provided only that the Bryant and May shareholders get their 23 percent, and Mr Theodore Bryant can erect statues and buy parks?’

From her article “White Slavery in London”, which publicised the appalling exploitation of young women working at the Bryant and May match factory in east London. When the teenage workers read it, they went on strike, won major concessions-and sparked the rebellion known as New Unionism.
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ELISABETH GURLEY FLYNN 1890-1961

‘THE “QUEEN of the parlour” has nothing in common with the “maid in the kitchen”; the wife of a department store owner shows no sisterly concern for the 17 year old girl who finds prostitution the only door open to a $5 a week wage clerk.

The sisterhood of women, like the brotherhood of men, is a hollow sham to labour. Behind all its smug hypocrisy and sickly sentimentality are the sinister outlines of the class war.’

She was a leading organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World, a militant union that broke with tradition and organised both men and women workers. In 1951, at the height of the McCarthyite witch-hunts, she was jailed for two years.
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SYLVIA PANKHURST 1882-1960

‘WHEN I arrived in the East End, mothers came to me with their wasted little ones. I saw starvation look at me from patient eyes. I knew then that I should never return to my art.

Many times I have endured the vile brutalities of imprisonment and force feeding for the crime of working for women’s suffrage. I have gone to war too, and my life will be shortened for it. It is wrong that people like you should be comfortable and well fed while all around you people are starving. Capitalism is a wrong system of society and it has got to be smashed. I would give my live to smash it.’

From her 1920 courtroom speech while standing trial for sedition. An artist and a militant Suffragette, she organised women in London’s poverty-stricken East End. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, she broke with her family and declared herself “proud to be a Bolshevik”.
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ROSA LUXEMBURG 1871-1919

‘VIOLATED, dishonoured, wading in blood, dripping filth-there stands bourgeois society. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretence to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law-but the ravening beast, the witches’ Sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form. The madness will not stop, and the bloody nightmare of hell will not cease until the workers of Germany, France, Russia and England wake out of their drunken sleep, clasp each other’s hands in brotherhood and drown the bestial chorus of warmongers and the hoarse cry of capitalist hyenas with the mighty cry of labour, Proletarians of all countries, unite!’

Luxemburg was among the greatest revolutionaries of the 20th century, leading the left wing of the German socialist movement. She wrote these words during the First World War.
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FREDERICA MONTSENY 1905-1994

‘AS LONG as any woman is kept as an object and prevented from developing her personality, prostitution continues to exist. Prostitution presents a problem of moral, economic and social character which cannot be resolved juridically.

Prostitution will be abolished when sexual relations are liberalised, when Christian and bourgeois are liberalised, when women have professions and social opportunities to secure their livelihood and that of their children, when society is established in such a way that no one remains excluded, when society can be organised to secure life and right for all human beings.’

Montseny was an anarchist activist in the CNT trade union during the Spanish Revolution of 1936-9.
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ANGELA DAVIS 1944-

‘I AM totally committed to the eradication of the oppression of black people. I cannot separate myself as a black woman from overthrowing the system which consigns millions of black children to starvation. Prisons are instruments of political control. There are thousands of black men and women in prison today, not because they are criminals but because they resisted. People talk about moderation. If I see a comrade or friend being attacked by a pig with a machine-gun, I can’t respond with moderation, I can’t say, hold on there while I wonder what to do. You can’t tell a mother to moderately rescue her child from a burning building. We can be non-violent, but only if our enemy is non-violent. If our enemy has napalm and machine guns, we have to do everything to try and destroy that enemy.’

Davis was a black activist sacked from her teaching job at the University of California for being a Communist. In 1970 the FBI put her on their most wanted list, accusing her of supplying guns for a breakout from Soledad prison. She made this speech just before she was caught and locked up for 18 months.
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ARUNDHATI ROY 1961-

‘IF ALL of us are indeed against imperialism and against the project of neo-liberalism, then let’s turn our gaze on Iraq. We have to become the global resistance to the occupation. Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the US occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible for empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons. We must consider ourselves at war.’

An award-winning Indian novelist and leading figure of the global movement against capitalism and war. Her speech is from the World Social Forum which took place in January this year.
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