Monday, January 25, 2021: The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan

There has been little or no coverage in the US about the recent war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over this disputed region. The territory is inhabited mostly by ethnic Armenians and the seven surrounding districts were inhabited mostly by Azerbaijanis. The present conflict began in back in 1988, when the Karabakh Armenians demanded that Karabakh be transferred from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia. That conflict escalated into a full-scale war in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After a period of relative stability, the situation deteriorated into several periods of outright war. On September 27, 2020,  Armenia was attacked jointly by Azerbaijan and Turkey, deploying Turkish armament. Turkish partnership in the current war is set against the backdrop of the genocide of the Armenian people by Turkey and the rise and collapse of the Soviet Union and the so-called Cold War.

Click on the link below for the recorded interview with Professor Gohar Shahnazaryan speaking to us from Armenia discussing the current situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the history of Turkish genocide of Armenian people, the role of Stalin and the Soviet Union in the region, and the central military and ideological instigation by current Turkish regime of President Recip Erdogan. She also describes the work of women and feminists on the ground. They are holding the communities and families together during the crisis. The feminists are also practicing feminist diplomacy as happened between women in Kosova and Serbia during the war in the Balkans.

Dr Gohar Shahnazaryan is the Co-Founder and Director of Women’s Fund Armenia. She is also the Director of the Center for Gender and Leadership Studies at Yerevan State University. She holds PhD in Sociology from Yerevan State University. Professor Shahnazaryan was a visiting scholar at the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University and at the Institute of Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies at UC.

For the past ten years Professor Shahnazaryan coordinated a number of large-scale projects on women and gender issues (such as projects on women’s leadership, development of referral mechanisms for the survivors of gender-based violence, educational projects on women’s rights, women and peacebuilding, development of feminist movement in Armenia, etc), and participated at various international, regional and local conferences, trainings and workshops on women’s rights and gender equality. She is an author of more than twenty publications on gender issues in Armenia.

Click here to listen to today's show. 32:39 min

Monday, July 4, 2016: Cynthia Enloe on gender and militarism

Militarism, Feminism and Nationalism

Now listen to part of an interview with Cynthia Enloe, perhaps the foremost U.S. scholar on gender and militarism.  Enloe is the author of many books including Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases, and Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make the Link.  As the Pentagon announces that it is now open to transgender soldiers, we discuss the role of the military in enforcing cultural ideals of masculinity and how the integration of women into units has - and has not - challenged that.

The interview with Enloe was aired on May 27, 2013. Click to listen now. 24:13 min.

Freedom from Fat Shame! A Reading + Discussion
North Branch, 1170 The Alameda
Saturday July 2nd
7:00pm-9:00pm
Virgie Tovar has assembled a group of incisive writers and activists for an evening of body liberation with readings and personal stories. Let their words smash your feelings of fat-shame and help you foster acceptance in yourself and celebrate diversity your community!  Featuring comic artist Casey Gilly, Co-Managing Editor for Everyday Feminism Jezebel Delilah X, poet Baruch Porras-Hernandez, burlesque performer Irene McCalphin, and Dr. Kjerstin Gruys, author of Mirror, Mirror off the Wall.



Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:

Chivvis Moore discusses her new memoir

Tribute to Pat Summitt

Monday, June 13, 2016: Love Your Fat & Let It All Hang Out

Monday on KPFA Women's Magazine, we listen to an interview with Sarai Walker, author of the fabulous radical feminist novel, Dietland.  Walker's novel, one of Entertainment Weekly's Top 10 of 2015, draws on her Ph.D. research focused on normative femininity of the body; the fat female body; consciousness-raising and the ‘personal is political’ in feminist practice and as a literary aesthetic; and critical theory, particularly Michel Foucault.  Don't miss this great interview by Meghan Murphy of Feminist Current, produced by Women's International News Gathering Service.

Click here to listen to the interview with Sarai Walker. 28:44 min

"We're Fat! We're Mean! We don't eat lean quizine!"

Next Kate Raphael talks with long-time feminist fat activist Deeg Gold about fat dyke activism in the seventies, eighties and nineties, including Let It All Hang Out Day in 1989 and 1990 in San Francisco.

"It kind of isn't healthy to discriminate against people."

Listen now to the interview with Deeg Gold or Get MP3. 11:32 min






Click here to listen to the entire show. 59:50 min

Also on today's show:
Previewing the Black Queer Arts Festival
Women's Community Calendar

Monday, March 21, 2016: Murder in Honduras

Central America is not in the mainstream news as much as it was in the 1980s, but U.S. support for repressive regimes and destabilization of populist governments continues. In 2009, after a military coup ousted the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, Hillary Clinton campaigned actively among U.S. allies in Latin America to prevent Zelaya's return.  In the years since the coup, assassinations and arrests of indigenous, environmentalist, feminist and LGBT activists, repression of journalists, and murders in general, have skyrocketed.  In the last two weeks, two important Honduran environmental and indigenous leaders, Berta Caceres and Nelson Garcia, have been murdered, in what the government describes as random and unrelated acts.  Suyapa Portillo, professor of Chicano/a and Latino/a Transnational Studies at Pitzer College, discusses the life and work of Berta Caceres, who she says never failed to connect the struggle against patriarchy to the fight for land rights.


Click here to listen now. 59:50 min

Also on today's show:
Zika in El Salvador
A sit-down with radio host Kris Welch

Monday, March 7, 2016: Sue Katz on Hillary vs. Trump?

Katz says "It's unthinkable to live in a country under their [Trump or Cruz or Rubio] rule."

Hillary vs. Trump? Should feminists even bother? Writer and rebel Sue Katz says she isn't giving up on Bernie Sanders just yet, and talks about Hillary's feminism of privilege.  Katz is the author of Thanks But No Thanks: The voter's guide to Sarah Palin and Lillian's Last Affair.

Listen now or Get MP3. 22:01 min





Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:
"What Do Women Say?"
Comedian Gina Yashere

Monday, November 9, 2015: Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities

In 2008 artist Maya Gonzalez talked to U.C Berkeley Professor Laura E Perez about her 2007  book “Chicana Art: The Politics of Spiritual and Aesthetic Altarities.” One of the only books of its kind dedicated to Chicana feminist artists, Perez looks at over 40 local and national artists who challenge biased notions of gender, sexuality and politics. For example, in the work of Alma Lopez, Perez looks at how Lopez symbolically claims a place for same-sex desire within Mexican and Chicano/a religious and popular cultures. And in Ester Hernandez’s 1976 etching Libertad/Liberty Hernandez depicts a female artist chiseling away at the Statue of Liberty, freeing from within it a regal Mayan woman and, in the process, creating a culturally composite Lady Liberty descended from indigenous and mixed bloodlines.

These Chicana artists make use of, and often radically rework, pre-Columbian Mesoamerican and other non-Western notions of art and art-making, and create liberating versions of traditional iconography such as the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Sacred Heart. Filled with representations of spirituality and allusions to non-Western visual and cultural traditions, the work of these Chicana artists is a vital contribution to a more inclusive canon of American arts. Providing a rich interpretive framework, Pérez describes how Chicana artists invoke a culturally hybrid spirituality that challenges racism, bigotry, patriarchy, and homophobia.

Click here to listen now. 59:50 min.

Events:
Rituals + Remembrance, Oakland Museum: now thru January 3,2016
Celebrating the theme of memorial across cultures, the  21st annual Días de los Muertos (Days of the Dead) exhibition, Rituals + Remembrance, explores how Latin American, Filipino, Hawaiian, Japanese, Chinese and other communities view death, memory, and healing. The exhibition includes new and existing work by artists Nancy Hom, Lilli Lanier, Yvonne Escalante, Charles Valoroso, Bryan Keith Thomas, Safety First ©, Paco Garcia, Melanie Cervantes, and Jesus Barraza, as well as installations created by MetWest High School, Sankofa Academy, and the Alameda County Public Health Department.

Monday, September 7, 2015: Historical Memory

"Comfort Women" Memorial

Taking the podium, Kathy Masaoka, a Japanese-American, speaks in support of the installation of the statue of a “comfort woman” at a ceremony to unveil the monument in Glendale, California, on July 30. (Erika Toh)

We look at the controversy over plans to build a memorial to Asian women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military in World War II. Monuments to the "comfort women" have been approved in Glendale, California, Long Island, New York, and a number of other cities around the world.  But some feminists say the memorials unfairly single out Japan and promote racism against an already traumatized community: Japanese Americans. Japanese American activist Kathy Masaoka talks with Preeti Shekar about why her group, Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress, supports the memorials.

Read Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress statement about the monument to Comfort Women at http://www.ncrr-la.org/news/comfortwomenmonument/comfortwomenmonument.html.


Click here to listen now. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:
Community Solidarity

Monday, June 8, 2015: Ireland--Feminist Rights and LGBT

Why is gay marriage winning and abortion rights losing? Today June 8th on KPFA Radio's Women's Magazine we talk to feminists Katha Pollitt and Meghan Murphy about the recent vote in Ireland to legalize same sex marriage and we ask how is it that Ireland is now touted as in the vanguard of progressive politics after legalizing same sex marriage while abortion is still illegal in Ireland except when a women's life is in danger. Are the rights of LGBT people and feminists in conflict?

Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:

Fight Against Gentrification in Oakland

Monday, April 20, 2015: COMPAÑERAS: Zapatista Women

"Making the world by walking...Building the world as we go."

Click here to purchase this book.

Hilary Klein discusses her new book, COMPAÑERAS: Zapatista Women’s Stories.  We talk about the origins of the EZLN, its evolution over 30 years of struggle and institution building, and how well it realizes its objectives of full gender equality.  Klein lived in Chiapas for six years and interviewed dozens of women, from military commanders to civilian leaders to cooperative members.

Prior to 1994, the indigenous women of Chiapas were often forced into arranged marriages and confined to the private sphere; they had little access to birth control, and domestic violence was widespread. But gender roles were radically redefined in the context of the Zapatista movement, as women became guerilla insurgents and political leaders, healers and educators, and members of economic cooperatives. Gathered here are the stories of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters who worked collectively to construct a new society of dignity and justice. Zapatista women have played a key role not only in creating and maintaining indigenous autonomy, but also in making great strides towards the liberation and equality of indigenous women. Today the Zapatista autonomous justice system is recognized all over many parts of Mexico.

Listen now or Get MP3. 25:14 min






Hilary will be reading from her new book Thursday, April 23 at the Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics, 518 Valencia, San Francisco. And at the Anarchist Book Fair Saturday, April 25 at 1 PM. Go to http://hilaryklein.org/calendar-of-events/ for more information and events.


Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:
SF International Film Festival
Chinese feminist Feng Yuan on the Feminist Five

Monday, December 1, 2014: Lesbian Avengers

Lesbian Avengers, a memoir

Kate Raphael speaks with Kelly Cogswell, author of Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger.

Spanning the twenty years from the Culture Wars through the War on Terror, EATING FIRE begins in 1992 with the author's transformation from ex-Southern Baptist hickster poet into fire-eating Lesbian Avenger. She haunts the streets of New York, battles cops on Fifth Avenue, eats fire in front of the White House, and mobilizes 20,000 lesbians for the International Dyke March. She also squirms through excruciating meetings and finds true love. Several times.

Her avenging doesn't end when the group implodes. She morphs instead into a pioneering citizen journalist, coding the pages of her own online magazine, The Gully, and looking everywhere for truth and justice, from Havana cafes to the Laundromats of Paris and New York. She mostly doesn't find any, and the book deepens into a meditation on citizenship and social change in the post-9/11 world.

Kelly will be reading from her book Thursday, Dec 11 at Modern Times Bookstore at 7 PM. It is located at 2919 24th Street in San Francisco. For more Modern Times Events go to www.moderntimesbookstore.com.

Listen now or Get MP3





We remember Mary Berg, longtime host of A Musical Offering on KPFA. Click here for Mary's tribute and the rest of the show. 59:50 min.
Also on today's show:
Thoughts on Ferguson
Wal-Mart Workers on Strike
Tru Bloo

Monday September 1, 2014: Drop the Charges on Rasmea Odeh

Rasmea Odeh, Chicago feminist community leader and torture survivor, faces prison.

Rasmea Odeh was arrested and sexually tortured by the Israeli military in 1969, eventually confessing to a crime she didn't commit.  After ten years in Israeli prison, Rasmea created a new life in the U.S., helping to found the Arab Women's Committee, a 600-member organization that helps immigrant Arab women learn English, find their voices, and support one another.  Now the U.S. government is threatening to strip her of her citizenship and send her to prison for another ten years because of her past as a political prisoner.  We talk about the case with Professor Nadine Naber, author of Arab America: Gender, Cultural Politics and Activism.

Call Tuesday, September 2nd to stop the deportation of Rasmea. Go to www.stopfbi.net for phone numbers. Click here to sign petition to drop the charges against Rasmea.

Rally for Rasmea on September 8th.

Listen now or Get MP3: 32:21 min.

Click here listen to entire program. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:
Domestic Workers Organize in the US

June 30, 2014: Old Lesbians Organizing For Change National Gathering

OLOC national gathering, "Lesbian Activism Changing the World."

Women's Magazine, Kate Raphael speaks with Elana Dykewoman and Susan Chacin about the upcoming OLOC national gathering, coming up in Oakland July 23-27 and including events for all ages.

To find out about the national gathering and to register in advance go to: http://www.oloc.org/news/summer2014.php. Tickets will also be available at the door.

Listen now or Get MP3 20:12 min.





Listen to entire show. 59:49 min.

Also on this show: Clinic Buffer zones Are Not the Answer and Our Lesbian Sheroes, Our Foremothers - a lesbian herstory presentation by Old Lesbians Organizing for Change.