Esmeralda takes over the Internet : How social media has helped Romani women to reclaim visibility

by Émilie Herbert-Pontonnier

Remember Esmeralda? The exotic "Gypsy" heroine born under the pen of the French literary giant Victor Hugo and popularized by Disney studios with their Hunchback of Notre Dame. (...)

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< artwork: “Si las marronas lo permiten” by Nayare Soledad Otorongx Montes Gavilan

Non. L’enquête s’appuie sur les 20 années de mobilisation de l’AWID dans l’objectif d’obtenir davantage de financement de meilleure qualité pour des changements sociaux menés par des féministes. Cette enquête est la troisième édition de la recherche Où est l’argent pour l’organisation des mouvements féministes? Notre objectif est de mener une enquête WITM tous les 3 ans.

Second Dialogue de haut niveau sur le financement du développement

• Organisé les 27 et 28 juin 2015, le second Dialogue de haut niveau sur le financement du développement,  avait pour thème Le Consensus de Monterrey : état de la mise en œuvre et responsabilités futures.
• Outre les six traditionnelles tables rondes portant   sur chacun des chapitres du Consensus de Monterrey, un dialogue interactif officieux a été instauré entre différentes parties prenantes, parmi lesquelles des groupes de défense des droits des femmes.
• Les nations « en développement » ont lancé un appel à prendre en compte les défis mondiaux aussi bien que les possibilités et besoins locaux dans les interactions avec les différents groupes sociaux ­–notamment les femmes, les jeunes, les personnes handicapées, etc. – sur les thèmes identifiés dans le Consensus de Monterrey. 

Una experiencia mágica de narración feminista conducida por la feminista panafricana Coumba Toure, quien actuará en la antigua tradición de lxs griots de África Occidental.

Y nos reunimos nuevamente
Juntamos nuestras historias, nuestra fuerza
nuestras canciones
nuestras lágrimas
nuestra ira
nuestros sueños
nuestro éxito
nuestros fracasos
Y lo colocamos todo junto
en un gran cuenco para compartir
durante una luna de pensamientos
Y nos mantenemos en contacto
nos sacudimos las mentes unas a otras
nos acariciamos las almas 
mientras nuestras manos siguen atadas
y nuestros besos y abrazos están prohibidos
Sin embargo, nos hacemos más fuertes cada hora
entretejiendo juntas nuestras voces
cruzando las barreras del sonido
mientras hablamos en lenguas
 
Nuestras voces son cada vez más altas
Sabemos lo que nos diferencia de otras personas
y entre nosotras, de modo que
estamos bordando nuestras bellezas en un mosaico de pensamientos
desde nuestros aprendizajes más profundos, desde nuestros poderes
A veces nos rodea el terror
la confusión, la deshonestidad
pero nos lavamos en el océano de amor
Somos tejedoras de sueños
para vestir nuestro nuevo mundo
hilo por hilo
tan pequeñas como somos
como pequeñas hormigas construyendo nuestro movimiento
comopequeñas gotas construyendo nuestros ríos
Damos pasos hacia adelante y pasos hacia atrás
bailando nuestro camino de vuelta a la cordura
Sostenemos el ritmo de nuestros corazones: sigan
latiendo, por favor, no se detengan
Y aquí estamos, transmisoras de generosidad olvidada
gota tras gota creciendo como el océano
creciendo como el río que fluye de nuestras almas
mostrando nuestra fuerza para ser el agua
que limpiará este mundo
y nos estamos reuniendo nuevamente ¿pueden sentirnos?
Mentiría si dijera que para mí
está bien no verlas, extraño a mi gente
Extraño su contacto y
sus voces sin filtro y sin registro
Extraño nuestros susurros y nuestros alaridos
nuestros gritos de la revolución abortada
Solo queremos parir nuevos mundos
Entonces luchemos para borrar las fronteras entre nosotras
Por favor, no se detengan

Investissement à impact de genre et émergence de fausses solutions :

une analyse pour les mouvements féministes

L'investissement à impact de genre est désormais considéré comme une solution contre les inégalités de genre. Et pourtant, comme le montre notre rapport, il fait partie du problème. Les institutions publiques et privées en font la promotion en tant que moyen pour parvenir à l'égalité de genre et pour accroître les ressources des femmes et des filles.

Mais en aucun cas, ces affirmations ne sont étayées par des preuves.

Au contraire, l’investissement à impact de genre constitue plutôt une nouvelle version de vies et de sociétés soumises à une même logique financière, qui continue de façonner les profondes inégalités de notre monde.

Avec ce rapport, l'AWID offre aux lecteurs·rices - féministes, défenseur·euse·s de la justice de genre et autres parties prenantes de l'investissement à impact de genre - une analyse critique et des preuves étayées pour comprendre l’investissement à impact de genre, ses récits et les implications économiques et politiques qu’il a pour les mouvements féministes.

Hagamos que lo invisible sea visible: manifiesto de unx fisicoculturista de género fluido en Hong Kong

por Siufung Law

«¡97…! 98… ¿dónde está 98? ¡98! ¡Por favor, vuelve a la formación!... ¡99! ¡100!...» La dama detrás del escenario le pedía incesantemente a cada atleta que formara una fila en el espacio húmedo, transpirado y abarrotado detrás de escena. (...)

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< arte: «When They See Us» [Cuando nos ven], Lame Dilotsotlhe

Frequently Asked Questions

The Sixth High-level Dialogue on Financing for Development, 7-8 October 2013 focused on reviewing the progress of MDG’s, and identifying gaps to be addressed in discussions on the new development framework.

A report by the MDG’s Gap Task Force launched during the session pointed to the failure to meet MDG 8 (Global Partnership for Development) as a major factor in the challenges to meeting the MDGs. The report showed that more focus should be given to developing stronger global partnerships that would ensure binding commitments for the new development framework post 2015. 

Jurema Araújo is a teacher-poet from Rio de Janeiro. She contributed to the magazine Urbana, edited by the poets Brasil Barreto and Samaral (RIP) and to the book Amor e outras revoluções (Love and Other Revolutions) with several other writers. In collaboration with Angélica Ferrarez and Fabiana Pereira, she co-edited O livro negro dos sentidos (The Black Book of Senses), a creative anthology on black women’s sexuality in Brazil. Jurema is 54-years-old; she has a daughter, three dogs, a cat, and many friends.

Introducing The Black Book of Senses

I’ll admit it: when Angélica and Fabi invited me to curate a collection of erotic texts by black women, I didn’t know what curatorship was. I understood the erotic well, but curatorship... I smiled, feeling shy and flattered. I think I thanked them – at least I hope I did – and thought to myself: what the fuck is it?! This fancy word I’ll have to learn the meaning of while doing it, what is it?

Now at this point, I know what it is to be a curator: it is making love with someone else’s texts, with someone else’s art, with the intention of putting a book together. And that is exactly what I did. I undressed each text of every author of this book with a literary lasciviousness. And I got involved in the words and senses of others. I was penetrated by poems I didn’t write; tales I didn’t even dare to imagine turned me upside down, messing with my feelings, with my libido. And it was a wonderful and unusual orgasm: ethereal, corporeal, sublime, at once intellectual and sensitive.
These texts pulsated like a clit hardened by desire, drenched, dripping joy in every reading. Words that swallowed me with their naughty significance, making me dive deeper into this wet universe. 

These black women went to the bottom of their arousals and turned their deepest erotic fantasies into art. These works are impregnated with each writer’s own way of experiencing sexuality: freely, blackly, for ourselves, in our own way, empowered.

I chose to spread the texts throughout different parts of the book, each one organized according to the most delicate, explosive, evident, or implicit content they presented.

To open the door to this “invulved blackessence,” we have our Preliminaries section, with texts that introduce readers to this world of delights. It is a more general, delicate caress to acknowledge the subjects addressed by the texts in the rest of the book.

Then comes the heat of Touch, addressing what the skin can feel. That energy which burns or freezes our bodies, makes our hormones explode and starts to awaken the other senses. And although there are many of us who are voyeurs, the contact of skin with a wet and warm mouth is exciting, like wandering through the softness of whomever is with you. We are seduced by the firm or gentle touch that gives us goosebumps and that lovely discomfort that runs from the neck down to the back and only stops the next day. And the warmth of the lips, the mouth, the wet tongue on the skin – oh, the tongue in the ear, hmmm – or skin on skin, clothes moving over the body, almost like an extension of the other’s hand. If there is no urgency, that wildest arousal of the pressure of a tight grab, a bit of pain – or a lot, who knows?

The Sound – or melody? – section shows us that attraction also happens through hearing: the voice, the whispers, the music that enables the connection between the bodies and can become the theme of desire. For some of us, someone with a beautiful voice would only need their vocal cords, because that harsh or heavy or melodious sound would be auditory sex. Their loud swearing or sweet words whispered in the ear would be enough to give us hair-raising shivers from neck to coccyx.

In Flavor, we know the tongue does a good job tasting the most hidden places and wandering through the body to delight itself. Sometimes this organ is used, boldly, to taste the other’s nectar. The idea of someone sharing their strawberry or a delicious, juicy mango through bites and licks – or licks and bites – melts us. But nothing is more delicious than tasting the caves and hills of the person you are with. Stick your tongue deep inside to taste a piece of fruit... or spend hours tasting the head of a cock in your mouth, or suck on a delicious breast to taste the nipples. This is all about memorizing someone by their Flavor.

There are texts in which the nose is what triggers desire. The Smell, my dear readers, can awaken us to the delights of desire. Sometimes we meet a person who smells so good, we want to swallow them right through our nose. When you run through the other person’s body with your nose, starting with the neck – wow, that delightfully uncomfortable shiver that runs down the spine and undresses the soul! The shameless nose then moves to the back of the neck and captures the scent of the other in such a way that in the absence of that person, smelling their same scent evokes, or conversely, invades in us olfactory memories that bring the arousing smell of that person back.

We then get to Look – for me, the betrayer of senses – in which we perceive desire from a point of “view.” It is through sight that the texts present desire and arousal, through which the other senses are brought about. Sometimes a smile is all it takes to drive us crazy. The exchange of glances? That look that says “I want you now.” That look of possession that comes to an end when you stop fucking, or not. That one is very particular; it draws the other who won’t be able to look away for long. Or the sidelong glance – when one looks away when the other turns their head, like a cat-and-mouse game? Once we are caught red-handed, there’s nothing else to do besides breaking into a wide smile.

Finally, the explosion. Wandering through All senses, the texts mix feelings that seem like an alert, so there is the greatest pleasure, that orgasm.

Of course, there is nothing explicitly separating these poems and tales. Some are subtle. Arousal engages all our senses and, most importantly, our heads. That’s where it happens, and it connects our whole body. I organized the poems according to how they came to me in each reading. Feel free to disagree! But to me, there is a sense through which desire goes and then explodes. Realizing which one it is, is delightful. 

Being able to turn arousal into art means freeing ourselves from all the prejudice, prisons, and stigma this white-centric society has trapped us in.

Every time a black writer transforms the erotic into art, she breaks these harmful racist chains that cripple her body, repress her sexuality, and turn us into the object of another’s greed. Writing erotic poetry is taking back the power over her own body and roaming fearlessly through the delights of desire for herself, for others, for life.

The literary erotic is who we are when turned into art. Here we show the best of us, our views of love drenched by pleasure, seasoned by the erogenous, spread through our bodies, and translated by our artistic consciousness. We are multiple and we share this multiplicity of sensations in words dripping with arousal. Yes, even our words drip with our sexual desire, drenching our verses, turning our sexual urges into paragraphs. To come, for us, is a breakthrough.

It is necessary to make our minds, bodies, and sexuality black, to reestablish our pleasure, and take back our orgasms. Only then will we be free. This whole process is a breakthrough, and it happens painfully. But there is happiness in finding ourselves to be very different from where we had been placed. 

I feel like I am yours, I am ours. Taste, delight yourselves, feast on these beautiful words with us. 

This text is adapted from the introductions to “O Livro Negro Dos Sentidos” [The Black Book of Senses], an erotic collection of poems by 23 black female writers.
 

Les fantômes des jeunes filles

par Akua Antiwiwaa

J’ai une vieille photo, floue, devant les yeux. J’y suis vêtue tout de blanc, des perles nacrées attachées à mes cheveux, collés contre mes oreilles, à celles qui pendent de mes poignets. (...)

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illustration : « Cultura Negra » (“Culture noire”), par Astrid Milena González Quintero >

Para recolher testemunhos centrados na realidade feminista sobre como o dinheiro circula e os bolsos em que entra;

Sesiones adicionales de consulta sobre el Borrador del Documento Final

• El 7 de mayo, los facilitadores dieron a conocer la versión revisada del Documento Final de la tercera Conferencia Internacional sobre la FpD a realizarse en Adís Abeba.
• A fin de continuar avanzando hacia el Documento Final hubo sesiones adicionales para realizar consultas en torno al mismo los días 12 al 15 y 26 al 29 de mayo de 2015 en la sede de la ONU en Nueva York.