What’s Current: History of ‘comfort women’ to be included in California high school curriculum

Four Korean "comfort women" pose with a Chinese soldier in 1944. (Image: Pvt. Hatfield/U.S. Army/National Archives)
Four Korean “comfort women” pose with a Chinese soldier in 1944. (Image: Pvt. Hatfield/U.S. Army/National Archives)

California board of education votes to include “comfort women” (i.e. the thousands of women and girls exploited and raped by the Japanese Army during World War II) history in California textbooks.

California Assembly votes to remove time limits on rape cases in wake of Cosby accusations.

Women taking tea breaks was once considered a dangerous and suspicious act, linked to revolutionary feminism.

Melinda Tankard Reist examines the latest manifestation of porn culture: boys setting up a website to trade non-consensual images of schoolgirls.

“The men treat the images as trophies and conquests. The thrill is in the lack of consent. The language of porn is employed in their hunt for desired images. Some boys offer ‘hottest little teens’, another asks: ‘Who has nudes of this bitch?’ Some girls have begged for their images to be removed, only to be mocked and humiliated further. It is clear the ring enjoys the ritual humiliation and shaming of the girls.”

The Chibok girls are just one part of the ordeal of women in north-east Nigeria.

Susan Cox

Susan Cox is a feminist writer and academic living in the United States. She teaches in Philosophy.