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Tag Archives: Europe

Horse meat, gender and food sovereignty

There is a food safety scandal sweeping Europe since the second week of 2013. Every week has brought more chilling details of how tainted our food production is and how we, as consumers, have our agency removed by fraudulent corporations that show utter disregard for our autonomy and right to choose what we eat. The […]

Feminism has abandoned me

I know feminism, as a movement, doesn’t particularly care about me. At least not anymore than any other political and/ or social movement. After all, it is merely a collective, a lose label under which anyone can more or less take a place as long as they uphold a few basic tenets (and even then, […]

Remembering the dead: what have we learned 67 years after the end of WWII?

This week, Europe commemorates the end of World War II, the event that marks a breaking point in contemporary history, the event that faced us with this reminder of humanity’s capability for evil. I don’t need to re-visit the significance of this war or the importance of the event as others have done it (and […]

A year in personal failures: how I didn’t single-handedly stop racism within feminism or in The Netherlands

I. “My feminism will be intersectional” redux I set myself up for failure. I know. I like big, unachievable goals that I will, all on my own, conquer. Because I am a sucker for failed end of the year balances. Because when this time of the year rolls by, I sit and ponder on what […]

Europe and the politics of Neo-Obscurantism and violence

Yesterday was a tragic day in Europe. Death and violence have swept the continent in two episodes that might, at first hand, seem unrelated. In the Belgian city of Liège, a man threw hand grenades and opened fire on the crowd at the city center’s Christmas market, killing four and injuring more than 100 (of […]

If you protest racism during Black Face season in The Netherlands, you will be beaten up and arrested

[Content warning for very racist images, links to videos of police brutality and depictions of State endorsed racism] Ah, my home, The Netherlands. Tourists from all over the world wax lyrical about the tulips, the windmills and the widely available weed. What these tourists hardly ever get to see is how institutionalized racism works in […]

Roma women in Europe: the silenced, underreported gender oppression

European countries are always praised for the strides they make towards gender equality. European nations consistently rank on top of quality of life rankings and measurements. Moreover, the EU is held as a sort of modern gold standard for the promotion of human rights and the values of “reason and enlightenment”. Gender equality and anti […]