Hasta La Gadget!

Since February 11, 2015, Turkey has been shaken by the brutal killing of a 20-year-old university student, Özgecan Aslan, who was allegedly killed after resisting rape. Her death became a rallying cause for activists campaigning to end violence against women in Turkey. Mass demonstrations took place to protest violence against women. Women nationwide have worn black in condemnation of the murder. Not only women but also Turkish men wearing skirts demonstrated in Istanbul to support women’s rights in her memory. The slaying of Özgecan revealed the fact that violence against women has increased in recent years in Turkey. Human rights monitor Bianet says 281 women murdered in 2014. The number of murder increased 31 percent in comparison to the previous year. Nine percent of these women had asked for protection from the state. What went wrong and why has violence against women increased in Turkey?

Almost a decade ago, Turkey became one of the pioneer countries to launch several initiatives for women’s rights in the Broader Middle East and North Africa region. The country actively assumed a role in Western projects and hosted several conferences related to women’s rights. Governments of Turkey, Italy and Yemen, in partnership with their civil society organizations — namely, No Peace Without Justice, The Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV) and the Human Rights Information and Training Center — became part of the Democracy Assistance Dialogue (DAD) of the U.S.-led Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative (BMENA), which set up in order to support and encourage reform of democracy within the region by fostering constructive dialogue between governments and members of civil society. Turkey, as a co-sponsor of DAD, focused on advancing dialogue and reform in the areas of empowerment of women. Significant activities have taken place with the sponsorship of Turkish government in Turkey emphasizing women in public life.

The BMENA Gender Institute, which facilitates and supports review of the full and effective implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in the countries of the region, was launched by Turkish NGOs, the Global Political Trends Center (GpoT) and TESEV in 2009. The idea of the project was solidified within the framework of Forum for the Future a centerpiece of BMENA Partnership. As a part of the EU-led Barcelona Process, the First Euro-Mediterranean Ministerial Conference on “Strengthening the Role of Women in Society” was held in Istanbul in November 2006 in order to make possible equal participation of women and men in all spheres of life, which is accepted as one of the essential elements of democracy.

Turkey also introduced several reforms in the area of women’s rights. Turkish legislation on women rights has greatly improved through the changes in the Turkish Penal Code, Civil Code, Labor Code, Family Law and Municipality Law. In 2005, the penal code was changed to criminalize marital rape and level higher sentences for sexual crimes and harshen the sentences for those convicted of honor killings, which previously carried reduced sentenced because of “provocation”. Thus, the prospect of EU membership accelerated already existing efforts of the women’s movements in Turkey. In 2009, a Parliamentary Committee on Equal Opportunities for Men and Women was established for the first time. Turkey was the first country to ratify the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (CAHVIO), the Istanbul Convention, in 2012. Despite the reforms made by the government and regional initiatives, which also covers not only Turkey but also the entire MENA region, violence against women in recent years has increased. Professor Aysel Çelikol, head of the Support for Contemporary Living Association (ÇYDD), drew a correlation between the increase in the inequality between the genders and increased level of violence men commit against women, arguing “women’s rights are going backward as much as conservatism is increasing in the society.”

Prevention or Punishment?

With the brutal killing of Özgecan Aslan, the necessity of effective ways to prevent domestic violence and rape cases has come to the agenda. Some politicians, like Ayşenur Islam, the Family and Social Policies Minister of Turkey, have even called for reinstatement of the death penalty, which was abolished in 2004 as a part of the democratization process in Turkey that was strongly motivated by the European Union. The emerging debate on the death penalty, which was banned as a part of Turkey’s negotiation to join the European Union, also led to debate on the effectiveness of the EU and its transformative power on Turkey since the claims arose on the basis that this debate demonstrates waning EU influence.

As a part of these debates, Marietje Schaake, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, said the focus of the Turkish government should be much more on preventing cases from happening and not punishing the excessive cases after they happen. She is partly right. I am saying partly because reinstating the death penalty and its execution on rapists or murderers is questionable, since previously the death penalty was mostly executed on political activists or politicians for crimes against the state, the Constitution and military, while judges opted to give reduced sentences to rapists and murderers.

We should not discuss the reinstatement of death penalty; instead, we should ask ourselves who is responsible for violence against women? Judges who gave reduced sentences to rapists and murderers based on the oddest reasons, or the “good conduct” clause that enables reduction in prison terms for defendants with no record of past conviction, or conservative politicians who do not believe in equality between men and women and make remarks such as “women should not laugh loudly in public” or people who see rape as a right to retain if a woman wears a miniskirt and thinks that she “deserves it.” Whatever the reason behind it, this catastrophic event indicated to us once more that enacting rules or making reforms cannot by themselves help to empower women and prevent violence against women unlike these reforms are internalized by the people from top to bottom. The government of Turkey should focus much more on internalization of the reforms (like those it pioneered once upon a time) to prevent them from being merely cosmetic.

“Peace be with you.” THWAP!

THWAP! “And also with you.”

These monks, said to be in Jerusalem, apparently took advantage of an unusual snowstorm last weekend to start a good-natured snowball fight, according to video posted to Facebook by a user named Héctor Gonzalo Collipal Osses.

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Snow pours around the brothers as one tentatively leans down for a generous scoop and heaves it onto another.

Inspired, a second monk joins in, then another, until all six of the men are laughing, hurling snowballs at one another across the courtyard.

According to Vatican Radio, the men are Franciscans.

What do Channing Tatum, Serena Williams, Irina Shayk, Jony Ive, and Sam and Aaron Taylor-Johnson have in common? Not much, besides an affinity for stealing kisses and making funny faces inside the V.F. Oscar party photo booth.

The way people consume media is changing at a rapid pace. What was once magazines, newspapers, television, and radio is now streaming TV, blogs, and podcasts. The old rules for reaching customers are no longer relevant, namely advertising on television, radio, and print. In fact, the playing field has been evened. At one time, to reach millions of potential customers, you’d need to spend as much for television, radio, and print media. Today you can reach millions of people for pennies on the dollar as compared to just a decade ago. There are entirely new rules for client engagement. That is why I was excited to recently sit with marketing veteran Sergio Garcia, co-founder of UR Business Network, a firm capitalizing on the new rules of client engagement through media.

Sergio fell in love with the United States when his family brought him here from Guatemala at nine years old to be treated at a children’s hospital for rare kidney disorder. He was the son of an entrepreneurial father, which may be why Sergio has been an entrepreneur for most of his career, building advertising and marketing businesses in both the United States and Latin America.

UR Business Network was founded in 2012 and they have since broadcast thousands of hours of exclusive and syndicated content. Weekly episodes are hosted by a lineup on business owners, entrepreneurs, and technical experts. The podcasts are archived and then syndicated through blogging. All the shows are available on iTunes, Shoutcast and the UR Business Network website. Sergio has spent 20 years in marketing and advertising, and that’s why his four new rules of client engagement are worth adhering to.

Your Content is Your Brand: A decade ago, your brand consisted of a logo, a mission statement, and a static website where consumers were expected to take your word for who you purported yourself to be through your paid media. Today, customers are researching the brands they work with long before they make a purchase which means they are more likely to make their buying decision based on the content you are sharing through your blog, podcasts, and social sharing. Consumers no longer have to take your word that your business is great, because now every business has the opportunity to prove value through the content they are sharing online.

Story Matters: When producing content for your business, now more than ever, your story matters. Customers are not just buying your expertise, but they are also buying into your story. Content proves value whereas your story allows your potential customers to become emotionally invested in you and your business. It’s much easier to create a legion of followers (i.e. customers) when they know why you do what you do. For example, Toms, a world-famous shoe manufacturer, offers a simple albeit unremarkable shoe design, yet they have built a multi-million dollar business on their awesome story. Every time a person buys a pair of Toms shoes, a pair is donated to a third-world country. It’s their One For One program that has created a massive customer movement and business empire. Your story… and the story of your business matter.

You Must Shake Hands to Do Business: Even though UR Business Network is a massive media empire that specializes in helping organizations through building or sharing already built media channels, Sergio says that there is no substitution for getting belly to belly with people. No media will ever be 100 percent effective unless, as a business, you figure out a way to get belly to belly with your customers and potential customers regularly. That’s one reason that UR Business Network has grown so quickly. Currently, UR Business Network has more than 50 shows being aired monthly, with content streaming 24 hours a day, making it a great opportunity for businesses who want to create content, and even for those who want to sponsor shows to get in front of the audiences that follow specific content. That being said, Sergio attributes much of the success of their company to their regular, in person, networking events that the company hosts to bring together entrepreneurs, businesses, and content providers. There are many different ways each person can benefit from the content creation, and the best way to figure out how everyone can help one another is by bringing them together to meet, network, mix, mingle, and strategize, regularly.

Success is Influence, Not Money: If you want to build a massive empire, of the type that UR Business Network is creating, you’ll need to influence people. The Internet, through podcasting, blogging, and 24/7 media streaming, allows you reach people exponentially. Ten years ago, you’d have to meet clients one at a time to influence them or you could spend hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars influencing them through TV, radio, and print. Today, the influence amongst millions is created by teaching the masses about you and your company through online media platforms. If you, as a business or business owner, are influencing millions of people, explained Garcia, then you are well on your way to building a massive empire. Garcia says that too many entrepreneurs predicate 100 percent of their success on cash flow, whereas Garcia says that positive cash flow is only evidence that your business is heading in the right direction and that the true measure of a business’s success will always come down to the number of people being influenced.

According to Sergio Garcia, in the next five years, most consumers will be watching, listening, and learning everything right from their phone and tablet. This means that in order for companies to adapt, they’ll have to change the way they are communicating with customers, or succumb to the businesses that do.

Photo: Sergio Garcia, founder of UR Business Network with his son, Sal.

Are pills for the bedroom a good idea?

The question has divided the sex therapy community since Viagra was approved 17 years ago in 1998. And it’s coming up again now. Sprout Pharmaceuticals announced this week that it was submitting its newest application to the FDA for flibanserin (or “Pink Viagra,” as it’s been inaccurately but charmingly called) for low sexual desire in women.

A few months ago I wrote a piece called “The FDA Wants to Hear More About Women and Sex” that we’re nearing a crucial stage in the years-long debate over whether ‘Pink Viagra’ is potentially a good thing or not.

The article prompted an interesting comment:

“The problem is culture,” one reader wrote. “Women are NOT monogamous! We get bored fast… Anytime I am tempted with a new lover it’s like a whole new sexual awakening. You are simply looking for a monogamy cure!”

The author of this comment isn’t completely wrong, of course. Monogamy has many benefits, but outside some traditional religious circles, few people claim it’s an automatic ticket to erotic bliss.

We clearly do have instincts for pair bonding. But that’s different from strict sexual exclusivity, which most people agree is not natural for us.

There’s some evidence that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were at least somewhat promiscuous. Without bedrooms, bedroom doors or locks, sex on the plains of Africa must have been a pretty free-wheeling public affair.

That probably all changed when agriculture was invented and people started settling down to work the land. Hunter-gatherers have plenty of time for sex. But farming life revolves around work, which is not the greatest aphrodisiac in the world (as most of us can attest).

Most importantly, as my colleague Chris Ryan has noted, agriculture would have led naturally to stronger notions of individual ownership. MY land. MY tools. And eventually, MY spouse.

Strict sexual monogamy has always had more to do with property rights than with erotic pleasure. It’s served us pretty well for thousands of years. But it’s not exactly natural.

At every stage in human cultural evolution, we’ve strayed farther and farther from our natural habitat. For our ancestors, going north out of Africa in search of big game required the invention of shoes and warm clothing. Now, millennia later, we’ve got Ritalin to enable some of us to stay focused at our desks.

The concept is the same: more and more technology to help us tolerate ways of life farther and farther from the one we were first designed for. Whether it’s shoes, air conditioning or sitting on toilets rather than squatting on the ground, there’s not much in our lives that’s natural anymore.

As I wrote in “Sex for Pleasure, for Profit, or Both?” There are plenty of people who would have us draw the line at medications for sex.

But we’re not going back to promiscuous mating in small bands of hunter-gatherers. Most of us aren’t going to open our marriages and take new lovers. We don’t know to what extent our desire concerns are the product of the un-natural lives we lead. But if a pill were to enable some of us to accommodate a little better to long-term monogamy, then why not?

In their 2014 editorial in the Los Angeles Times, anti-medication activists Ellen Laan and Leonore Tiefer discussed a recent FDA meeting on loss of sexual desire. Describing some women who testified at the meeting, Laan and Tiefer wrote, “Their desire had simply ‘turned off like a light switch,’ as one woman said, sometimes as much as 30 years earlier, and they wanted it back, routine and predictable.”

I found Laan and Tiefer’s last phrase, “routine and predictable” a bit snarky. It seems to me that someone who hasn’t felt sexual in 30 years might be grateful for it to return at all.

As Tiefer and others have pointed out, sometimes a woman’s lack of sexual desire can be a rational response to relationship problems or other issues in her life. But that’s not always the case. There are many women in otherwise happy, loving relationships who are troubled by lack of desire. Many have been through counseling and sex therapy and still report feeling that something is missing.

Not even a new lover, that most potent of drugs, can guarantee great sex every time. But many women who participated in the ‘Pink Viagra’ trials felt the medication made an important difference in their lives.

I can understand a concern that medications for the bedroom might over-simplify sex or make people even more out-of-touch with their real emotions than is already the case. Sex is a special thing, or at least should be. I can understand wanting to keep it unpredictable and somewhat wild and untamed.

Except human mating hasn’t been wild and untamed for a long time. When it comes to sex, our species is a long way from home. Don’t talk to me about natural. We left natural behind a long time ago.

I’ll be interested to see what the FDA decides this time around.

© Stephen Snyder MD, 2014
www.sexualityresource.com
New York City

The author affirms that he has no financial stake in or professional relationship with Sprout Pharmaceuticals, and that he has not received financial compensation from any entity mentioned in this article or in any of the embedded links.