Hasta La Gadget!

Actor Mahershala Ali brings diversity to this year’s Academy Awards in two vital ways. He’s a black actor at an awards show that’s been heavily criticized for being #sowhite, and he’s Muslim, part of a religion that is often vilified and exploited in Hollywood. 

In an interview in the Radio Times, Ali spoke out the struggles of occupying this specific intersection of race and religion in America. Although these identities make his presence so important at the Academy Awards, being a black Muslim man out in the real world often means you’re a target for multiple kinds of bigotry. 

The “Moonlight” actor, who converted to Islam when he was 25 years old, told the magazine that he isn’t shocked by Islamophobia ― as a black man, he already knows what it feels like to be a victim of discrimination.

“If you convert to Islam after a couple of decades of being a black man in the U.S., the discrimination you receive as a Muslim doesn’t feel like a shock. I’ve been pulled over, asked where my gun is, asked if I’m a pimp, had my car pulled apart,” Ali said in the interview. “[Some] Muslims will feel like there’s this new discrimination that they hadn’t received before – but it’s not new for us.” 

Ali also spoke about how his wife, Amatus Sami-Karim, the daughter of an imam, stopped wearing a head scarf because “she had so many bad experiences. She didn’t feel safe anymore.”

Black Muslims make up a significant percentage of America’s Muslim population. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center study, 40 percent of native-born American Muslims describe themselves as black. On the other hand, most foreign-born Muslim Americans are from Arab countries (41 percent) and describe themselves as white (60 percent).

Some black Muslims claim their stories are erased by the stereotype that to be Muslim is to be Arab. Others have written about facing racial discrimination from within their own faith community. 

Ikhlas Saleem, a contributor for Buzzfeed, put it this way:

I’ve inherited a legacy and community where on paper, I should fit into many groups — black, Muslim, black and Muslim. In practice, I am not always welcomed into them, and if I am, people aren’t always sure exactly how I fit … There was a time when being Muslim in America meant being black, but in 2016, I’m the anomaly. I navigate a landscape where I am as likely to remind white Americans that Black Lives Matter as I am to explain it to South Asian and Arab Muslims.

While accepting a Screen Actors Guild Award earlier this year, Ali spoke about how important it was to embrace and celebrate all of the things that make people unique. 

“I think what I’ve learned from working on “Moonlight” is we see what happens when you persecute people. They fold into themselves. And what I was so grateful about in having the opportunity to play Juan was playing a gentleman who saw a young man folding into himself as a result of the persecution of his community and taking that opportunity to uplift him and to tell him he mattered, that he was OK, and accept him. I hope that we do a better job of that.”

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On Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s administration rescinded a guidance allowing transgender students to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity in public schools. While the Obama era guidance clarified that trans students are federally protected from sex discrimination under Title IX, the Trump administration said that it wants to leave LGBTQ rights to the states. Rescinding the guidance opens the door to discrimination against trans students at this level, and sends the message that the government will not stand up for the nation’s most vulnerable kids. 

A common claim that opponents of such protections for trans students make is that allowing transgender people into bathrooms endangers cisgender women and girls. In his much discussed appearance on “Real Time,” alt-right former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos told host Bill Maher that he “makes no apologies for protecting women and children from men who are confused about their sexual identity.” This argument perpetuates the myth that trans people are predators, when they are far more likely to face violence and harassment in restrooms at the hands of cis people.

Yet, Yiannopoulos’s line is a common refrain that continues to be used by those who care little about real, not mythical, violence against women. When walking back LGBTQ protections or promoting so-called “bathroom bills,” proponents of such legislation have said that allowing trans people to use the appropriate restroom means men can “enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls,” and that businesses that allow trans people to use the appropriate restroom pose “a danger to wives and daughters.”

But invoking women’s safety while ignoring real violence faced by women and girls on college campuses, on the street and within their own homes is nothing more than a veil for hate. This so-called protection is a justification for transphobia — and as cisgender women, we’re done being your excuse.

To those who would use my body and the bodies of women like me as an excuse for violence and discrimination: It stops today.

There are no recorded cases of transgender people harming anyone in the bathroom. In fact, trans people are far more likely to encounter violence and harassment themselves. In 2016 alone, at least 27 transgender people were murdered, the majority being transgender women of color. A whopping 41 percent of transgender people will attempt suicide in their lifetimes, compared with just 4.6 percent of the general public, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the Williams Institute. On top of that, trans women encounter structural sexism just as cis women do. Perpetuating the lie that transgender people are predators just feeds into this discrimination. And we cis women never asked for this kind of “protection” to begin with.

Conservatives are right that the safety of women and girls is at risk, but certainly not because of trans people. One in five women will be raped in her life, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, and nearly 30 percent of women worldwide will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime, according to the World Health Organization. Trans people face even more staggering rates of these types of violence. One in two trans people will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime, according to the Office for Victims of Crime. Meanwhile, the cis men who commit sexual assault ― if they face consequences at all ― face shockingly light sentences, like Brock Turner who served just three months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.

The safety of women and girls is at risk, but certainly not because of trans people.

If opponents of trans protections sincerely cared about the safety of women and girls, they’d care about ending rape culture. They’d care about holding President Trump accountable for more than 15 allegations of sexual assault and harassment against women. And they wouldn’t paternalistically tell us who we ought to fear when we proudly count trans and queer people as part of our communities.

Rescinding the Obama administration’s guidance and rejecting similar protections is simply an act of hate against transgender people. To those who would use my body and the bodies of women like me as an excuse for violence and discrimination: It stops today. 

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Morocco’s policy toward migrants is more generous than most, issuing work permits and refusing to evict undocumented refugees. But it does little to account for gender, leaving women living in refugee camps vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

FEZ, Morocco – Born and raised in Lagos, 16-year-old Juliet Bamawo left her home and her family a year ago to travel thousands of miles from Nigeria to Morocco, propelled by the dream of studying at a European university and one day becoming a nurse. But soon after she arrived, reality set in. Instead of living in an apartment in Europe and learning about nursing, Bamawo is living in a makeshift camp beside Fez’s newly refurbished train station, in a tent made from plastic and scraps of material. There is no running water, and the tents are surrounded by garbage.

“I came here to travel to Europe, but there is no money,” she says. “I am now trying to get money, I am looking for help. It is difficult to live here. If there was a job and I was paid, I would work.”

Bamawo is among 15 Nigerian women living in the camp of around 300 residents from 10 sub-Saharan countries. Many were drawn by Morocco’s recently relaxed immigration policy, which tolerates camps like the one in Fez. But that’s as far as the welcome goes: Once migrants arrive, usually planning to continue on to Europe, they are given no support and essentially left to fend for themselves.

The lack of provisions leaves migrants unable to find work, abandoned in squalid, crime-ridden camps, and unable to move on to their final destination. And for women migrants who come to Morocco without an accompanying man, that usually means arriving to a life of poverty, exploitation and abuse.

The North African country of 35 million people has historically been a magnet for migrants. Many arrive with an “obsession to cross Gibraltar at any cost,” says Mohamed Khachani, president of the Moroccan Association for Studies and Research on Migration. But in response to the ongoing refugee crisis, many European countries have strengthened their borders, leaving large numbers of migrants stuck in Morocco. “There used to be evictions of clandestine migrants from Morocco. Nowadays it is not common to deport anymore,” says Khachani.

The drop in evictions is a result of a new strategy on immigration and asylum that Morocco announced in 2013, based on recommendations issued by the Moroccan National Human Rights Council. According to the report, Morocco “undoubtedly suffers from the effects of a strict European policy of control of its external borders.” So the government decided to adopt a human rights-based approach to documenting migrants. In a one-off move, Moroccan authorities issued around 27,000 residence permits to migrants between September 2013 and February 2015. The carte de séjour includes a work permit and offers access to primary and secondary schooling, but not to public health insurance.

The majority of women migrants who come to Morocco in hopes of crossing through the country to gain entry into Europe are from Nigeria and Cameroon, but there are also women from Mali, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo. And for many of them, the already risky journey along the Trans-Sahara Highway is made even more treacherous by the constant threat of exploitation and sexual violence.

“Women suffer more than men. When they cross over 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles), imagine every single border they have to cross,” says Khachani. “They suffer countless violations of numerous types.” According to his research, one-third of the migrant women living in Morocco were abused on their way to North Africa.

The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that of the over 6,000 refugees and asylum seekers considered persons of concern in Morocco, 44 percent are women. And a study by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) found most women migrants in Morocco travel without family members, but often in groups with other migrants.

According to a report by the IOM, more than half of the women are single mothers, the majority of them having become pregnant on the route, most likely in a context of abuse.

Migrants’ rights advocates say that while Morocco’s new immigration policy seems to treat migrants more humanely than many other countries, it fails to protect those most vulnerable once they arrive. “Women should be treated differently, they should be protected from rape and human trafficking. We should give them shelters and healthcare support,” says Moha Ennaji, president of the South-North Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Migration Studies and director of Morocco’s first PhD program in gender studies. “And for those who have babies, we should help them with daycare and kindergartens.”

Noting that Morocco has no women-only migrant shelters, Ennaji, who also works as a consultant to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, says more needs to be done to help migrants once they get to Morocco. The new policy “basically says that we don’t deport them, we don’t beat them up … we tolerate them, [but] they can beg and fight for a job.”

As head of the national body for the care and protection of migrants in Morocco, Fatima Attari deals directly with girls like Bamawo who are living in refugee camps. Attari says fighting against racism and discrimination are key to helping integrate undocumented women. “We need to welcome, listen, inform, guide, advise, assist them and provide legal, social and professional support,” she says.

While Bamawo still plans to one day make the dangerous sea crossing to Europe, these days she isn’t driven as much by her dream of becoming a nurse as by her desperation to move to somewhere safe and clean. “If I had good shelter, I would stay in Morocco,” she says. “Look at our environment here, it is very dirty. We need help; we are sick. We don’t know who can help us.”

This article originally appeared on Women & Girls Hub. For weekly updates, you can sign up to the Women & Girls Hub email list.

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By now we’ve all seen how dangerous some batteries can be, but the Slow Mo Guys are back with some more incredible slow-motion footage revealing that even the seemingly innocuous AA batteries stuffed in your TV remote can easily turn into a high-speed, exploding projectile if you’re not careful.

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