"Once when my daughter Paola was in her twenties, she said to me that feminism was dated. That I should move on. We had a memorable fight. Feminism is dated? For privileged people like my daughter and all of us here today, but not for most of our sisters in the rest of the world, who are still forced into premature marriage, prostitution and forced labor."
- Isabel Allende from TED lecture, "Tales of Passion"
I am not trying to undermine the issues with discrimination and violence against women in America with this quote (and I know she's not either), but the quote is very accurate in the sense that we tend to disregard the issues outside of our narrow comfort zone.
In Gayle's class, we were able to choose any topic for a half-a-term long project. I wanted to do a social commentary, based on discrimination and injustice revolving around sexual identity. During the first two weeks of the process and research, I decided to narrow it down to just the current global issues on the violation of women's human rights. The topic was overloaded and ridiculously horrific; I couldn't imagine just squeezing it all in in a small section of the project.
In the end, I made a book, installation and a small zine. Here's some of the images.
Forced, Underaged Marriage
Forced Sterilization
Sex Trafficking
Widow Burning
Stoning
Honor Killing
Acid Burning (Referencing the awesome Charles Burns!)
Underage Rape in Wartime
Female Infanticide
