Requiring Bin Attash "to have physical contact with female guards violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)," a 1993 federal law that protects a person's free exercise of religion, the 9/11 suspect's attorneys said in a statement Monday. "Prior to 2014, questions existed regarding RFRA's applicability to Guantanamo Bay detainees. Those questions were answered by the Supreme Court's recent decision, [which] conclusively establishes that the term 'person,' as used in RFRA, includes nonresident aliens" such as Bin Attash.
Guantanamo Prison recently introduced a new policy that requires guards (male or female) to have physical contact with "high-value detainees" whenever they're escorting them, a rule that's presented a problem in escorting detainees like Bin Attash, a devout Muslim who refuses to touch any woman who is not a relative.

Bin Attash, who faces the death penalty, has possibly damaged his prosecutors' case against him by choosing to stay in his cell rather than be physically led by a woman. Defense can now argue that their client was not given proper time for counsel.

"This will threaten the government's ability to seek death in this case," says Bin Attash's military-appointed attorney, Air Force Captain Michael Schwartz.. "A smart prosecutor would be on the phone with [Guantanamo officials] and saying, 'What the hell you are doing?'"

Dear #Gamergaters,

Do you know why you piss me the fuck off?

Because you’re lazy. You’re ignorant. You are a blithering collection of wannabe Wikipedia philosophers, drunk on your own buzzwords, incapable of forming an original thought. You display a lack of knowledge stunning in its scope, a fundamental disregard of history and human nature so pronounced that makes me wonder if lead paint is a key component of your diet. You think you’re making piercing arguments when, in actuality, you’re throwing a temper tantrum that would embarrass a three-year-old.

(#Gamergate, for those unaware, is what happened a bit over a month ago, where an angry neckbeard posted demonstrably false allegations about his ex-girlfriend, claiming she slept with video game site reviewers for better scores for her games (again, demonstrably false), and then a whole bunch of other angry neckbeards on the Internet went full Denis Dyack and spitfrothed themselves into national attention by making an array of threats on numerous female game developers, including ones about their death, tried to hide behind a shield of “it’s about journalistic ethics because they said gamers are dead,” and generally proved why the Internet needs to be burned to the ground and the ashes salted. If you’re curious about the details, here’s a good background link.)

It’s like all you can do is look at this collection of words, scratch yourself uneasily, and then run off to look for grubs. Your reaction (and I am not making this up, because it’s been widely documented literally everywhere) to various articles proclaiming the death of the basement-dwelling, cheetos-huffing, poopsock-sniffing douchepistol, because games are so good now that they are common entertainment and thus everyone plays them, was to COMPLETELY MISS THE POINT by either:

a) Making misogynistic threats against a wide variety of female game developers and critics because somehow they’re going to keep games you enjoy from ever being made again

or

b) Being stupid enough to get sucked in by people busy making misogynistic threats against a wide variety of female game developers and critics, and supporting their idiotic crusade for the dumbing down of everyone everywhere ever.

From the recent articles on the Kurdish female fighters resisting against ISIS, it is easy to see that mainstream media is adamant in continuing the long tradition that obsessively portrays women involved in armed combat through the lens of objectification, sexual deviation, and as an abnormality. Looking past the outer appearance of army fatigues and gun-slinging women, some with short-cropped hair, others with long braided flower adorned hair, the concept of the motivations and behaviors that drove women to pick up arms— that is, their agency—remains missing.

The role of female participation in nationalist struggles has been frowned upon by western feminists as a continuation of the patriarchal agenda of the men. Anna McClintock views the nation-state as a repository of male hopes, aspirations and privilege unless nationalism has been thoroughly exposed to an analysis of gender power. That is to say that nationalism as a male-dominated and executive arena offers very little space to women in order to better their own status and gain basic equality rights with men.

Thus, women are relegated to the pre-subscribed role of motherhood or “bearers of the collective,” whether that is to reproduce more members of the nation (in the biological sense) or to reproduce the nation’s customs and traditions (in the social sense). Men, however, are characterized as the civil or military reproducers of national policy and decision-making. When women are offered a role, it essentially boils down to conforming to the established gendered division of labor and conventional roles.

Additionally, women are seen as protectors of life and antithetical to violence. Therefore, whenever they engage in violence through armed resistance and combatant roles, they are automatically seen as an anomaly, and as being hostile to peace. The dichotomy: women are predisposed to peace and life and men are naturally inclined to violence, is an essentialist one and too often falls into the trap of rendering women as passive within national struggles. Not enough attention is given to the behavior, motivations, and experiences of the roles women play in armed conflict.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening/linah-alsaafin/objectifying-female-fighters

In a chapter of her book called “Girls & Jerks,” Dunham recounts, in her trademark style of dark absurdism delivered with a smile, “an ill-fated evening of lovemaking” with a “mustachioed campus Republican” named Barry. It involves a condom flung into a tree, a clueless partner and, to wrap it all up, a righteous moment of feminist power when Dunham throws the man’s shoes and clothes out the door and tells him to hit the road. Because of the title’s chapter, we are meant to understand this guy as a jerk Dunham has known and fucked. We read, cringe a little, move on.

But in another chapter, this one called “Barry,” Dunham returns to the encounter with the mustachioed condom-flinger, writing, ““n another essay in this book I describe a sexual encounter with a mustachioed campus Republican as the upsetting but educational choice of a girl who was new to sex when, in fact, it didn’t feel like a choice at all.” She then recounts the story again, sharing other details. How intoxicated she was, how aggressive Barry was, the medical attention she required after it all ended, the shame and confusion she felt as she remembered and contended with the experience. “I never gave permission to be rough, to stick himself inside me without a barrier between us,” she writes. “I never gave him permission. In my deepest self I know this, and the knowledge of it has kept me from sinking.

It’s a painful chapter to read, to watch Dunham navigate her own competing narratives — of righteous anger, of laughing self-preservation, of self-blame — about an experience that felt dangerous and scary but also, somehow, like it was her fault. I know very few women who don’t have a story like this, women who, like Dunham, feel that what happened to them was violating and wrong while also believing that “there are fifty ways it’s my fault.” Dunham is also, like so many other women, not always exactly sure what to call what happened. She also, like so many other women, wants the reader to understand why that’s OK.

After expressing some outrage about Dunham’s wealth and privilege (who would have guessed that Williamson was such a socialist?), he targets her for writing about Barry, questions whether she is telling the truth, seems to suggest that Dunham should share her medical records as evidence of the incident and then calls the chapter a public lynching. It’s gross, and it’s predictable in its grossness. There is no empathy for Dunham to be found because, to Williamson, the story is all about Barry.

herie Williams, a thirty-five-year-old African-American woman in the Bronx, just wanted to protect herself from her abusive boyfriend. So she called the cops. But although New York requires police to make an arrest when responding to domestic violence calls, the officers did not leave their car. When Williams demanded their badge numbers, the police handcuffed her, drove her to a deserted parking lot, and beat her, breaking her nose, spleen, and jaw. They then left her on the ground.

“They told me if they saw me on the street, that they would kill me,” Williams later testified.

The year was 1999. It was a half-decade after the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which deployed more police and introduced more punitive sentencing in an attempt to reduce domestic violence. Many of the feminists who had lobbied for the passage of VAWA remained silent about Williams and countless other women whose 911 calls resulted in more violence. Often white, well-heeled feminists, their legislative accomplishment did little to stem violence against less affluent, more marginalized women like Williams.

This carceral variant of feminism continues to be the predominant form. While its adherents would likely reject the descriptor, carceral feminism describes an approach that sees increased policing, prosecution, and imprisonment as the primary solution to violence against women.

This stance does not acknowledge that police are often purveyors of violence and that prisons are always sites of violence. Carceral feminism ignores the ways in which race, class, gender identity, and immigration status leave certain women more vulnerable to violence and that greater criminalization often places these same women at risk of state violence.

“The three of us chatted for a bit longer, eventually exchanging pleasantries and going our separate ways. I resumed moving from group to group, now mostly listening, and was amused to see that Carl—no last name given or requested—continually moved away from me, as if afraid that I’d taint his ranting with more of my unfortunate facts. I’ve encountered his type before, usually at "political" protests. They’re the sort who would rather we paved the world and shot the sick, instead of risking life being unpredictable and potentially risky. In another time, they were anti-Semitic, antiblack, antiwomen’s liberation, anti-gay, or all of the above. Now, they’re antizombie in the most extreme ways possible, and they use their extremity to claim that the rest of us are somehow supporting the “undead agenda.” I’ve met a lot of zombies. Not as many as Shaun and Mom have, but I’m not as suicidal as they are. In my experience, the only “undead agenda” involves eating you, not worming their way into public acceptance and support. There will always be people for whom hate is easier when it’s not backed up by anything but fear. And I will always do my best to hoist them by their own petards.”

Revolutionary Hope: A Conversation Between James Baldwin and Audre Lorde (Essence Magazine, 1984)

JB: One of the dangers of being a Black American is being schizophrenic, and I mean ‘schizophrenic’ in the most literal sense. To be a Black American is in some ways to be born with the desire to be white. It’s a part of the price you pay for being born here, and it affects every Black person. We can go back to Vietnam, we can go back to Korea. We can go back for that matter to the First World War. We can go back to W.E.B. Du Bois – an honorable and beautiful man – who campaigned to persuade Black people to fight in the First World War, saying that if we fight in this war to save this country, our right to citizenship can never, never again be questioned – and who can blame him? He really meant it, and if I’d been there at that moment I would have said so too perhaps. Du Bois believed in the American dream. So did Martin. So did Malcolm. So do I. So do you. That’s why we’re sitting here.

AL: I don’t, honey. I’m sorry, I just can’t let that go past. Deep, deep, deep down I know that dream was never mine. And I wept and I cried and I fought and I stormed, but I just knew it. I was Black. I was female. And I was out – out – by any construct wherever the power lay. So if I had to claw myself insane, if I lived I was going to have to do it alone. Nobody was dreaming about me. Nobody was even studying me except as something to wipe out.

JB: You are saying you do not exist in the American dream except as a nightmare.

AL: That’s right. And I knew it every time I opened Jet, too. I knew that every time I opened a Kotex box. I knew that every time I went to school. I knew that every time I opened a prayer book. I knew it, I just knew it.

JB: It is difficult to be born in a place where you are despised and also promised that with endeavor – with this, with that, you know – you can accomplish the impossible. You’re trying to deal with the man, the woman, the child – the child of whichever sex – and he or she and your man or your woman has got to deal with the 24-hour-a-day facts of life in this country. We’re not going to fly off someplace else, you know, we’d better get through whatever that day is and still have each other and still raise children – somehow manage all of that. And this is 24 hours of every day, and you’re surrounded by all of the paraphernalia of safety: If you can strike this bargain here. If you can make sure your armpits are odorless. Curl your hair. Be impeccable. Be all the things that the American public says you should do, right? And you do all those things – and nothing happens really. And what is much worse than that, nothing happens to your child either.