NEWSGIRLS RIGHTS

After a month and more than 50,000 petition signatures, an open letter, numerous radio shows, TV segments, blog posts, articles, and even YouTube videos about the company, LEGO has decided to listen to girls! On Sunday, February 5, Michael McNally, Brand Relations Director, sent an email to SPARK Movement. SPARK, a girl-fueled movement to end the sexualization of girls, is a coalition of more than 70 organizations and reaches tens of thousands of girls and those who support their healthy development. LEGO has accepted SPARK’s request for a meeting to discuss how they can go back to offering all LEGO toys to both boys and girls and to respect girls’ hunger and desire to play with toys that challenge them creatively and intellectually.

In response to their new Friends line, which includes Barbie-like, skinny, mini-skirted girls in settings such as a beauty salon, a bakery, and a splash pool, SPARK demands that LEGO, the third largest toy company in the world, encourage girls to build, construct, imagine, dream and create a world that can include both hair stylists and rocket scientists, cupcake bakers and fire chiefs. In SPARK’s Change.org petition, they demanded that LEGO stop selling out girls. More than 52,000 people have signed on already, and the conversation about LEGO Friends has become global.

LEGO has defended the Friends line, saying that it’s the result of 4 years of research into how girls play and what they want, and that they have plenty of other offerings for girls. However, LEGO’s website features 86% male characters, and the majority of the female characters come from the new Friends line. LEGO’s marketing strategy consistently ignores girls who have interests beyond make-up and cupcakes. Putting the focus of LEGO on “beauty” as opposed to creativity places unnecessary limits on girls’ interests. While there is nothing wrong with an interest in pastel-colored LEGOs, making “looking pretty” as opposed to “building things” the focus of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign serves only to limit all kids in the long run.

More than 35,000 people have joined a popular campaign on Change.org calling on the North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association (NCISAA) to allow girls to play football.

Members of the U.S. National Women’s Tackle Football Team launched the online petition on Change.org after they heard that starting linebacker Mina Johnson, a student at Southampton Academy in Virginia, was forced to sit on the sidelines when an opposing team threatened to forfeit rather than play against a girl. The opposing school was a member of the NCISAA, which prohibits girls from playing on boys’ varsity teams.

"The members of the U.S. national women's team and I felt it extremely important to support Mina in her desire to play football,” said Adrienne Smith, who launched the campaign on Change.org on behalf of her teammates. “At one time or another, everyone on the U.S. national team has faced similar discrimination. We wanted to show unanimous support for Mina and her teammates, as well as her coach and community, by speaking as one voice through our petition."

Roseanna Smith is a member of the U.S. National Women's Tackle Football team. Roseanna, Adrienne Smith, and their teammates have launched a petition in support of girls' right to play football.

When I was 17, I joined my high school football team.

Even in 1999, it wasn’t very popular move, talent aside -- and I didn’t have much of it then. What I did have was a desire to test the limits of what I thought I could do. By lifting weights and training harder than I ever had before, I earned biceps, abs, and a spot on the team. I worked full-time in the summer between two-a-days and a part-time evening gig at the local newspaper. Every practice, my goal was to be a full participant in every drill, exercise, and conditioning session. I only finished last at the beginning.

I didn't understand the offense at first. Many days, I would draw up plays and ask questions in the coaches' office after practice. I made too many mistakes to count. Some of the most embarrassing were lining up in a three-point stance as a tailback in practice or forgetting the play on the way to the huddle during a game. But there were many positives, the two most important: I learned how to be a player by earning a role on the team, and the opportunity to play football changed my life.

I’m telling you part of my story because it’s vitally important to understanding why other girls need to play football.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week overruled a decision requiring a Texas cheerleader to pay $35,000 in legal fees after she sued the high school that forced her to cheer for a basketball player who pled guilty to assaulting her.

H.S. was removed from the cheerleading squad by Superintendent Richard Bain for asserting that she would not cheer for her rapist by name. This incident and the school's general misconduct motivated her family to bring a lawsuit against the school district on free speech, equal protection, and due process grounds.

The decision, issued Monday, alters a ruling by a lower court which previously found the cheerleader’s entire suit “frivolous,” ordering the sexual assault survivor to pay the school district $35,000 in legal expenses. The new ruling finds that the free speech portion of the lawsuit was not frivolous, and orders the amount owed to be recalculated accordingly.

The news comes after more than 140,000 people joined a popular campaign on Change.org calling on Silsbee High School to admit to mistreating the student, apologize for the actions against her, improve district policy for dealing with sexual assault, and refuse to take money from the girl and her family. As of yet, the school has not responded. This court decision represents a golden opportunity for the Silsbee Independent School District Official to say they don't force money from rape survivors.

Last night, Change.org member Lauren Todd saw a shirt on the JC Penney website and, she says, "I couldn't believe what I was seeing."

The t-shirt, clearly labeled for girls seven to sixteen, said “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.” Right next to the picture, the retailer helpfully provided some text to talk the buyer into making a back-to-school purchase:  "Who has time for homework when there's a new Justin Bieber album out? She'll love this tee that's just as cute and sassy as she is."

Lauren didn’t think it was "cute and sassy," however. She thought it was one in a "series of small, seemingly cute and harmless messages, that can seep into a girl's mind and damage her self-perception and her self-worth." So she started a petition on Change.org asking the retailer to pull the offensive tee from its shelves.

"My concern is the Toronto District School Board (is) using tax money to tell girls that they are second-class citizens," Tarek Fatah, founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, told the Toronto Sun. He's talking about the District's decision to allow a Muslim Friday prayer session in the Valley Park Middle School cafeteria, where it forces girls to sit behind the boys, and sends menstruating girls to the back where they can only listen, but not participate.

In just the past few hours, over 2000 people have signed a petition started by a Toronto resident, Tim Das, asking that the misogynist prayer sessions end -- that if the school wants to provide religious accommodations, it must still uphold its own gender equity policy and the terms of Ontario's Education Act. "The moment I read this story, I was aghast -- as a first generation Canadian and child of South Asian immigrants, as a Toronto resident whose hard earned tax-dollars were being used to facilitate this extreme misogyny, and most of all as the father of a sweet, spirited six year old girl in the Toronto Public School system," Das told Change.org. "After receiving an unsatisfactory response from the Chair of the School Board, I knew I had to do more." That's when he decided to start the petition.

The Muslim Canadian Congress is so strongly opposed to these gender segregated prayer sessions, it's threatening legal action. Alia Hogben, Executive Director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, has also spoken out against the school's segregated prayer sessions. Major Canadian papers on the right and left of the political spectrum have published editorials denouncing this practice, which gives school sanction to isolating and embarrassing young girls for a basic bodily function.

Silsbee Superintendent Richard Bain told H.S., a 16-year-old student cheerleader, that she would either cheer for her rapist or be kicked off the squad. When she was harassed by other students and called a "slut," school officials told her to avoid the cafeteria and lay low. This is clearly unacceptable and despicable treatment of a student rape victim -- but H.S. is the one stuck paying the school district tens of thousands of dollars. Where's the justice in that?

Earlier this month, H.S.’s final appeal of her First Amendment case was denied, letting the lower court ruling stand that cheerleaders are nothing but a “mouthpiece." (NFL cheerleaders have spoken out against this.) Student who pick up those pompoms lack any free speech rights, including the right to refuse to cheer for a player that has assaulted them. Furthermore, the courts decided that arguing a high school girl has the right to refuse to cheer for her rapist -- "Two, four, six, eight, ten! Go Rakheem. Put it in!" -- amounted to such a ridiculous claim, H.S. should have to pay the school district’s legal fees, to the tune of more than $35,000 (some media has reported a higher figure, but a Change.org investigation into the documents has revealed discrepancies and a filing error, which has yet to be officially resolved).

This is tens of thousands of dollars school officials are taking from a student rape victim they wronged.

In a matter of days, over 40,000 Change.org members have sent emails expressing outrage over a recent New York Times article that insinuated an 11-year-old Texas girl was to blame for her own gang-rape. This afternoon the public editor, Arthur Brisbane, took note of this outpouring by condemning the article's lack of "balance" in his blog on the paper's website. The appalling piece in question included community gossip about what the preteen victim wore and who she hung out with.

Brisbane wrote in his post:

My assessment is that the outrage is understandable. The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim.

The New York Times is under fire from bloggers and nearly 20,000 Change.org members to date. Why? It all started with this story by New York Times reporter James McKinley that insinuates an 11-year-old-girl is to blame for her own gang-rape.

Last Thanksgiving, a sixth grade girl was driven to an abandoned trailer on the outskirts of Cleveland, Texas, and brutally and repeatedly raped by at least 18 men. In reporting on this appalling attack, McKinley interviewed Cleveland residents for their reactions. What he heard and what he wrote exemplify the worst possible side of humanity.

To Sheila Harrison, the biggest concern is how raping a child will impact the rapists. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives,” she said.

Want to combine the practicality of buying book bags and pencil cases with the thrill of human trafficking? The Girl Store, in a wildly inappropriate philanthropic effort, is selling school supplies on a website designed to mimic the sale of children into sexual slavery.

Here's the deal: The Girl Store is a charity that claims to help keep young Indian girls from being sold into marriage or sexual slavery. The idea is that you buy school supplies for girls that otherwise couldn't afford them and that, in turn, keeps them in school.  The online store for these items is designed, apparently, to appeal to people who'd really like to buy an actual girl, but will settle for just buying some pencils for her.

Catherine A. Traywick at the Ms. Magazine Blog describes the flash intro to the website as being "greeted by shaky footage of a disheveled Indian girl smiling bashfully as an unknown cameraperson pans up and down her body, lingering on her little hands, before finally settling on her face." The text that goes with it reads, "100% genuine girls. Young... innocent... and available. Experience the sensation of buying a girl... her life back. Buy a girl before someone else does." If you make it past that intro, the landing page features three sullen little Indian girls for whom you can buy school supplies.

Who told these people that the best way to combat the early, forced sexualization of girls is to design a website that does exactly that? Shock value alone is not justification. There is no such thing as exploitation for a good cause. This a a bad marketing strategy of epic proportions.