THE POLITICS OF A WOMAN’S BODY UFRIEDA HO
TABOOM MEDIA AND GALA QUEER ARCHIVE
The backsliding of women’s rights happening right now should be the clarion call that gender rights are still everybody’s business.
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fghanistan seems a million miles away, so does Texas in the USA. But in early spring, events in those two places struck a chilling chord for women everywhere. It was a stark reminder of just how quickly the backsliding of rights happens in a world where women’s bodies remain fair game. The return of the Taliban to rule comes with the terror of its track record against women. Its interpretation of Sharia law has included keeping girls from attending school, prohibiting women from being in public without a male guardian, banning nail polish and demanding the public floggings for women considered to have transgressed certain laws. In Texas this September the state passed into law limits to abortion care after six weeks of pregnancy, when many women are not even aware that they may be pregnant. It extended this with a diabolical so-called ‘bounty clause’. It allows citizens to sue those who assist in any way in the provision of an abortion and rewards them by covering their legal costs and offering a $10 000 ‘incentive’.
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Hopes and Dreams that Sound Like Yours: Stories of Queer Activism in Sub-Saharan Africa. Taboom Media & GALA Queer Archive, 2021. Illustration by Lamb of Lemila
