By Phoebe Chua Chia Shing
Human
rights, “commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a
person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being”
(Sepulveda et. al. 2004)
When the term "human rights" was first introduced, it was mainly for the cause of attaining equality and freedom in the area of civil and political rights. However in the past 3 or 4 decades, the feminist as well as the LGBT movements have been striving to be accepted as part of basic human rights along with religious and cultural freedom.
With the emergence of new media, advocates for these four areas have a lot more channels available to disseminate information. One of the blogs I've come across advocating women's rights is WIMN's (Women in Media and News) Voices (http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/). It features a diverse online community of 50 women blogging on media coverage on woman and a range of social, cultural and political issues everyday; the primary audience being obviously women. Based on observation, the blog seems quite open for anyone to comment to the point that at times it gets so many spam comments. It has not had to deal with dissent as blog viewers seem to only have compliments for most posts or nothing to say at all unless negative comments have been removed which I doubt,
On the other hand, one particular site that caught my attention was the Jewish LGBT network (http://jewishlgbtnetwork.com) as it seemed to combine the advocacy for ethnicity, religion and LGBT rights all in just one site. As if the specific use of "Jewish" isn't an indication already, Being a resource site for Gay Jews, Lesbian Jews, Bisexual Jews and Transgender Jews, it was set up with the targeted purpose of offering a support structure to LGBT Jews based in any part of the world. It provides a platform, to locate and connect with local social groups, professional groups and other support-groups catering to this community, The title itself explicitly indicates its primary audience. It does not provide viewers an option to comment but allows trackbacks and pingbacks to share the information. Hence, I find it a bit strange that a site which aims to connect people discourages interaction on the site.
Whether I agree or disagree with the views from any of these four movements, I cannot deny the fact that it has and - I predict - will continue to bring great impact to our society, quoting another example,
“Decades from now, people will look back and wonder how societies could have acquiesced in a sex slave trade in the twenty-first century that is... bigger than the transatlantic slave trade was in the nineteenth. They will be perplexed that we shrugged as a lack of investment in maternal health caused half a million women to perish in childbirth each year.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
What are your views?
“The test of whether or not you can hold a job should not be in the arrangement of your chromosomes”
On the other hand, one particular site that caught my attention was the Jewish LGBT network (http://jewishlgbtnetwork.com) as it seemed to combine the advocacy for ethnicity, religion and LGBT rights all in just one site. As if the specific use of "Jewish" isn't an indication already, Being a resource site for Gay Jews, Lesbian Jews, Bisexual Jews and Transgender Jews, it was set up with the targeted purpose of offering a support structure to LGBT Jews based in any part of the world. It provides a platform, to locate and connect with local social groups, professional groups and other support-groups catering to this community, The title itself explicitly indicates its primary audience. It does not provide viewers an option to comment but allows trackbacks and pingbacks to share the information. Hence, I find it a bit strange that a site which aims to connect people discourages interaction on the site.
Whether I agree or disagree with the views from any of these four movements, I cannot deny the fact that it has and - I predict - will continue to bring great impact to our society, quoting another example,
“Decades from now, people will look back and wonder how societies could have acquiesced in a sex slave trade in the twenty-first century that is... bigger than the transatlantic slave trade was in the nineteenth. They will be perplexed that we shrugged as a lack of investment in maternal health caused half a million women to perish in childbirth each year.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
What are your views?
