A bit of the Hollaback Israel goodness of the past weeks:
First, we had our meeting with Tel Aviv Municipality. I can't tell much other than it lasted two hours, been awesome and much change is gonna come. We hope.
Second, a story which is about 3-4 weeks old:
Have you heard of the PUA (pick-up artist) phenomenon? The scums who claim that "no" doesn't mean "no" (at least, in Israel), and that women are only saying "no" because they are being taught to be ashamed of their sexuality and wanting sex, so you shouldn't listen to them? After a story on our site, a link to a forum where a guy bragged about raping a woman was exposed. One post later at Hila's blog (one of our mods), and the Israeli blogsphere got on fire. From here to there, two lawsuits were served (one against the guy, the other against the "school of seduction"), few groups of feminist activists gathered information and screen shots of bragging on rape and various assaults (with their guides, of course, cheering and encouraging them - which is important, since their line of defense was "this isn't normal, that's not what we're teaching") to sue their asses, and the cherry on top - Tel Aviv city council member sent a complaint to the Attorney General of Israel, asks him to investigate these schools of seduction. As a side dish, there was graduate meetup of the specific school three days after the story was published. A spontaneous demo of 150 women and men marched there, stopped their gathering, and lectured them about feminism.
And last, I just sent an email to the Awesome Manal Shalabi. The reason is that I want to start a Hollaback of War (password: 5553), so to speak - leaving "regular" politics aside, and collecting testimonies of both sides of conflict, on it's affect on us - mostly the lack of personal security - from soldiers and cops in checkpoints and demonstrations to the random man of the "other side" who will harass or threaten you because you're the "enemy's property".
So, Hollaback Israel. We're truly changing shit. So much that numerous times per day I get all stuttery and apologetic with "you know I had no idea I'll get all that response, right?". So much that after 3 months, serious people have suggested me to stop seeing this as volunteering, and start seeing this as work - including salary and all. Umm, yay?
Edit: oh, and also, I finished the papers I had from the second year a week ago. Also a yay. I hope one of them will be good enough to be rewritten as an article.