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Lily Lines: He told her to ‘stop shagging men.’ Now, she’s suing.

Plus, poet Sham-e-Ali Nayeem answers our questions

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August 5, 2018 at 11:08 p.m. EDT

This article is part of the Lily Lines newsletter. You can sign up here to get it delivered twice a week to your inbox.

This week:

#TheTotalShutDown in South Africa, poet Sham-e-Ali Nayeem answers our questions, and the anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death.

Australian senator sues after colleague tells her to ‘stop shagging men’

Australian Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young is suing colleague Sen. David Leyonhjelm for defamation. In June, Leyonhjelm reportedly told Hanson-Young to “stop shagging men” during a debate about violence against women. Leyonhjelm, a Liberal Democrat, admitted to making the comments but said the fact that Hanson-Young, a Greens Party member, was offended “is an issue for her, not me.”

Hanson-Young’s lawsuit says that Leyonhjelm continued to make disparaging comments about her to the press after the initial incident, according to the New York Times.

“I’m calling this out because it is wrong,” Hanson-Young said in a statement. “No woman, whether she be working behind a bar, in an office or in the Parliament, deserves to be treated this way, and it needs to stop.”

Demonstrators in Copenhagen protest Denmark’s ban on face veils

In May, Denmark’s government approved a ban on wearing face veils in public, and the new law went into effect last week. Approximately 1,300 people gathered to protest the decision in Copenhagen on Wednesday, according to Reuters. Many wore niqab veils or burqas while chanting “no racists in our streets” and “my life, my choice.” Although Danish lawmakers say the ban is not targeting religion, Muslim women often wear garments that cover their faces to practice modesty.

A few days after the demonstration, news outlets reported that a 28-year-old woman who wore a niqab while shopping was fined 1,000 kroner, which is around $156. Under the law, a person could be charged up to 10,000 kroner or face jail time, depending on how many times they are caught.

New Zealand’s prime minister to show the ‘imperfections of parenting’

Six weeks after giving birth to her daughter, Jacinda Ardern resumed work as New Zealand’s prime minister on Thursday. Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters assumed Ardern’s position while she was on maternity leave. In an interview with Radio New Zealand, Ardern said she is “privileged” to have help when caring for her daughter, Neve.

“I have a partner who can be there alongside me, who’s taking up a huge part of that joint responsibility because he’s a parent too, he’s not a babysitter,” the prime minister said. TV host Clarke Gayford is Ardern’s partner and Neve’s father.

Ardern also noted that she’ll be able to bring Neve to work with her, something many women aren’t able to do. Don’t expect Ardern to hide “the imperfections of parenting,” she said. “I don’t think anyone needs that.”

#TheTotalShutDown in South Africa

To kick off Women’s Month in South Africa on Aug. 1, thousands of women marched as part of #TheTotalShutDown campaign meant to raise awareness about gender-based violence. Wearing black with “a touch of red,” marchers organized across South Africa as well as other countries including Namibia, Botswana and Lesotho. In South Africa, the rate of femicide is higher than the global average. Women and those who are gender non-conforming were encouraged not to go to work or school or spend money. Instead, they marched, keeping the march’s tagline — “My body, not your crime scene” — in mind.

Demi Lovato opens up

On Sunday, singer Demi Lovato posted to Instagram, marking her first public statement since unsubstantiated reports surfaced that she was hospitalized for an apparent drug overdose. The rumors led to an outpouring of support from celebrities and fans, who Lovato thanked in her written statement.

A post shared by Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) on

Iowa governor appoints a woman judge to state’s Supreme Court

On Wednesday in Iowa, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds promoted District Court Judge Susan Christensen to the state’s Supreme Court. Christensen will join an all-male bench when Justice Bruce Zager retires in September. The Iowa Supreme Court has a total of seven justices.

Republican Marsha Blackburn could make history in Tennessee

On Thursday in Tennessee, Rep. Marsha Blackburn won the GOP primary, increasing her chances of succeeding fellow Republican Sen. Bob Corker, who announced his retirement this year. Blackburn will now face Democrat Phil Bredesen, a former governor, in the general election this November. If Blackburn wins, she would become the first woman to represent Tennessee in the U.S. Senate.

Blackburn supports President Trump and has told The Washington Post that she does not “campaign on the gender issue.” Vice President Pence has also endorsed the eight-term congresswoman.

In a recent survey pegged to the five-year anniversary of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag, the Pew Research Center analyzed how Americans view social media as a mechanism for political and social movements.

• Fifty-three percent of survey respondents said they have been civically active on social media in the past year.

• Although 77 percent of survey respondents said “social media distract people from issues that are truly important,” 67 percent agreed that these platforms help create sustained movements for social change.

• Black and Hispanic users were more likely than white survey respondents to say they turn to social media to find like-minded users or locate ways to get involved with issues that are important to them.

In her poetry, Sham-e-Ali Nayeem explores the idea of home from the perspective of an Indian Muslim woman who left the city she was born in as a baby. Her family moved from Hyderabad, India, to the United Kingdom before coming to the United States when Nayeem was 5. “Much of my poetry really does explore the idea of being in exile, coming from multiple places and how our relationships end up becoming our home in those circumstances,” the Philadelphia-based artist says. Poetry has always been part of Nayeem’s life, even when she was working as a public-interest lawyer. She credits her father, who died in 2006, for making it accessible to her growing up. “Poetry didn’t seem like something you had to go see somewhere,” she says. “It was shared over the kitchen table or in the garden.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When your father passed, was there anything that somebody did for you that helped you sit with your grief and mourn?

Somebody told me, “Grief is just a part of you now.” It kind of relieved me a little bit. Things won’t be all fixed after a certain amount of time. You don’t have to be afraid of grief. You can take grief and transmute it into … a positive energy that can help others rather than only [feel] despair. That was really helpful for me. There doesn’t have to be a rush to be done with grief.

Once you’re not afraid of it, it doesn’t control you. You change, of course. I’m not carrying the same kind of grief I felt when he first passed away, but I also know the ways [losing him] really changed me in the same way I changed when I gave birth to my son. I really see birth and death as so inextricably linked. We all experience birth and death. These moments really transform us.

You’ll be performing at a Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center event this week called “Now You See Us.” It’s taking place close to the anniversary of India’s 1947 partition. What connection do you have to that time period?

The 1947 partition was one of the largest mass forced human migrations of our time period. I did not live through it, but my parents did. The impact of it was enormous, and not only for South Asians. The amount of life that was lost during 1947 partition is staggering, and the results of it are still rippling. You may have even heard about what is happening in Assam, [India] right now, with so many individuals who are being stripped of their citizenship. It’s connected to the latent effects of partition in 1971, when Bangladesh was created.

For many years, I have tried to use poetry as a vehicle to explore and focus on 1947 partition and for everyone to think about the human cost of displacement and the fiction that is borders. So many of us just accept them like they’re a natural thing to have. We need to think about what kind of cost we have to pay to maintain and create them. They’re made arbitrarily sometimes, and there’s violence used to create them. Borders do not uplift life. Period.

What can you tell us about your forthcoming book of poetry, “City of Pearls,” from Upset Press?

Hyderabad is known as the “City of Pearls.” I also love pearls. They are created through grit, time and patience. I like the idea of thinking about the displaced as pearls: We can transform our struggles into something beautiful. The story arc of the book is this exploration of grief and loss: The loss of home, the loss of a parent and the loss of self in a way. It’s about a migration to a new place, how you change in that experience, and how you honor who was there before you. Eventually, you realize where home lies for you.

Marilyn Monroe’s life ‘of both directions’

Aug. 5 marked the 56th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death. Born Norma Jeane Mortenson in 1926, the icon had an unstable childhood. Her father was not part of her life, and her mother, who struggled with mental health issues, was unable to care for her daughter. She lived with multiple foster families and married her first husband, James Dougherty, at 16.

Monroe, who adopted her stage name in 1946, experienced success as a model and then an actress in the 1940s and 1950s. Her hit films included “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and “The Seven Year Itch,” which included the infamous scene of Monroe’s character standing over a subway grate, her white dress caught in the air.

The public’s fascination with Monroe only metastasized when she took her own life in 1962 at 36, leaving her archive of poems, letters and diary entries to her acting teacher, Lee Strasberg. In 2010, Strasberg’s widow, Anna Mizrahi Strasberg, published a posthumous book authored by Monroe titled “Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters.” “What these texts bespeak, above all, is the tragic disconnect between a highly visible public persona and a highly vulnerable private person, misunderstood by the world, longing to be truly seen,” writer Maria Popova noted in 2012.

In a blog post on her website, Brain Pickings, Popova quotes one of Monroe’s poems:

“Life —I am of both of your directions

Somehow remaining hanging downward

the mostbut strong as a cobweb in the

wind — I exist more with the cold glistening frost.

But my beaded rays have the colors I’ve

seen in a paintings — ah life they

have cheated you”

Creme of Nature Pure Honey

When my first bottle of Creme of Nature Pure Honey conditioner ran out, I immediately grabbed my phone and ordered three more bottles. I have natural 3B curls (find out your curl type here), and this product leaves my hair feeling soft and hydrated. It’s made with pure honey, natural coconut oil and shea butter. So yes, it smells incredible. Plus, it’s surprisingly affordable, ringing in at under $12 for a 12-ounce bottle. If you’re in the market for more than a good conditioner, the Pure Honey line also includes shampoo, leave-in conditioner, detangler and more.

–Amy Cavenaile, Lily art director

Are you “on your own” for the first time? Maybe you’re going off to college or coming out of a long-term relationship. You could be an empty-nester or solo traveler. We’re looking for women at various stages in life who are navigating being alone. Share your experience with us here for a chance to be featured in an upcoming newsletter.

On Aug. 14 from 2 to 4 p.m. ET, join The Washington Post’s Fertility Frontier Facebook group for a private Q&A about egg freezing with Julie Lamb, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist at Pacific Northwest Fertility in Seattle.

*Have an idea for a news-inspired baiku? Send us your creation, and you might see it in the next Lily Lines. We follow 5-7-5.

A medical school in Japan didn’t want too many women. So it lowered their grades.

Nia Wilson’s death was an emotional trigger for me. What would happen if I were attacked?

She made a career out of scamming writers. These are the women of color who were her victims.

I grew up valuing purity and virginity. Today, it’s left me with feelings of shame.

In the back of my mind, I’m ‘scared all the time’: This is how I experience anxiety

How cartoonist Dami Lee first learned to flirt