abrazame
Raden Ayu Kartini (1879-1904)
Per Javanese noble tradition, Kartini was secluded at home from the age of 12 until her marriage at age 24. Removed from school, Kartini read widely with a particular focus on the emancipation of women. She wrote and was published in De Hollandsche Lelie (The Dutch Lily), a Dutch magazine for young women.
At age 24, she unwillingly became the third wife of the polygamous Regent Chief of Rembang. He supported her interest in women’s education and helped her to create a female academy in the district. Less than a year after her marriage, Kartini died after giving birth to her son Soesalit.
After her death, the Minister for Culture, Religion and Industry in the East Indies collected the letters Kartini had written to her Dutch penpals. In 1911, they were published in a book entitled Door Duisternis tot Licht (Out of Dark Comes Light). Eventually translated into Malay and Javanese, these letters improved the Dutch understanding of the native Javanese and contributed to social change in Indonesia. Inspired by these letters, the Van Deventer family created the R.A. Kartini Foundation to established schools for women in Java.
Since 1964, April 21 has been Karini Day, a national holiday in Indonesia.
Raden Ayu Kartini (1879-1904)
Per Javanese noble tradition, Kartini was secluded at home from the age of 12 until her marriage at age 24. Removed from school, Kartini read widely with a particular focus on the emancipation of women. She wrote and was published in De Hollandsche Lelie (The Dutch Lily), a Dutch magazine for young women.
At age 24, she unwillingly became the third wife of the polygamous Regent Chief of Rembang. He supported her interest in women’s education and helped her to create a female academy in the district. Less than a year after her marriage, Kartini died after giving birth to her son Soesalit.
After her death, the Minister for Culture, Religion and Industry in the East Indies collected the letters Kartini had written to her Dutch penpals. In 1911, they were published in a book entitled Door Duisternis tot Licht (Out of Dark Comes Light). Eventually translated into Malay and Javanese, these letters improved the Dutch understanding of the native Javanese and contributed to social change in Indonesia. Inspired by these letters, the Van Deventer family created the R.A. Kartini Foundation to established schools for women in Java.
Since 1964, April 21 has been Karini Day, a national holiday in Indonesia.
when does it stop?
I wrote one of my final papers on sex trafficking of Nepali women and girls. It seems that there’s a lot of victim-blaming involved with sexual assault. Kamathipura in Mumbai is famous for being the largest red-light district in Asia, and many of those girls are trafficked from Nepal. And even when these girls are rescued from their debt bondage, one of the biggest challenges for them is reintegration into the communities they came from. So many of them don’t go back, and with the little skills they possess, they often return to sex work.
There is so much stigmatization of girls involved with sex work. No one will touch the food the girls have touched. However, you hear very little about scolding the people who are involved in the lucrative sex industry. The pimps and the traffickers. And at one point, I was very frustrated and believed that all of these people, who can be both male or female (even former sex-trafficked women!), need to be publicly reprimanded for doing what they have done. And if there’s food we shouldn’t touch, it would be theirs!
Then I thought about some of the advocacy work I do, and thought about how one of the reasons I got involved is because I believe that every human being should be treated with dignity. Many intravenous drug users are stigmatized for their addiction. And this has made it really hard for harm reduction programs that want to help them stop and provide simple services like syringe exchange so that they do not get infected with HIV or Hepatitis C. And I think that although denouncing an act as a social evil or as something that shouldn’t ever be done is sometimes a good prevention measure, the way we treat people who do those things is a negative consequence. For example, convicts, ex-convicts, and homeless people are rarely treated with dignity. Maybe they weren’t treated with dignity before. So yes, what the traffickers and what the brothel owners do is deplorable and they should be ashamed for the way they treat those women and even punished for it. But if the world continues to look down on them for their actions, when does the blaming stop? How do you bring about justice while preserving human dignity and human rights for everyone? Especially if people have already started to spread around individual blame and stigma? Maybe we’re blaming individuals too much when we should be targeting larger institutions…?
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
heads up, heads up, heads up
you hold me up
you hold me down and up
and down and up
and up and down
reading week
when you take advantage of the time you have by flinging in the spring and losing 2 days to go to DC.
when you’re screwed over for losing that time.
when you browse facebook and see you or your friend in some random strangers’ photo background.
when you have more caffeine than you need.
when you can’t write anymore.
when you tell yourself school doesn’t matter as much, but then you worry about life stuff.
when you’re scared of the immediate future.
