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Cambodian blogger Catherine Harry tackles the finer points of sex education, women's health and gender imbalances.....

Sex, gender and social change: Cambodian blogger tackles taboos

Sex toys, infidelity and penis size are generally hush hush topics in conservative Cambodia, but not on a taboo-busting video blog called "A Dose of Cath" that unabashedly wrestles with the risqué, drawing both applause and abuse in the patriarchal country.

Hosted on Facebook, the show by a 23-year-old Cambodian woman tackles the finer points of sex education, women's health and gender imbalances in a country where the #MeToo movement has barely registered.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/sex-gender-so ... --spt.html

Ms Harry is often featured in the international press as an example of a (rare) Cambodian feminist. Most recently:

31 Mar 2018 06:27AM
PHNOM PENH: Anger is not always a bad thing, at least not for 23-year-old Cambodian Catherine Harry. Such emotion has led her to be featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia 2018, the magazine’s annual selection of young visionaries who tackle issues that matter in countries around the world.

post256042.html?hilit=women#p236310

She was also mentioned in the Facebook Explorer discussion, quoting the BBC.
post200505.html?hilit=Dose%20of%20Cath%20blog#p200505

Great lady doing important work speaking on these subjects for young women. I read she really suffered when that douche knuckle Zuckerberg did his little 6 month experiment where it hid pages like hers from news feeds. Glad she's keeping on going

heard she has won or been shortlisted as a forbes most influential women under 30 in asia of something

Cambodian Vlogger Promotes Equal Rights With Positive Sex-Ed Posts
September 15, 2018 10:23 PM
Catherine V. Harry is 23, has 243,000 Facebook followers, generates between $1,000 to $2,000 a month from her vlog, A Dose of Cath, which focuses on sexual and reproductive health, and she doesn’t much care if people disagree with her on women’s rights as long as they discuss the topics she considers important.

In Cambodia, what sets her apart is her willingness to take on the traditional social and cultural code, the chbap srey, which defines expectations for Cambodian women. Although no longer taught in schools, it is a mindset with deep cultural roots that sees good women as quiet and obedient. Harry, however, sees it as a tool of oppression, one that enshrines gender inequality and masks violence toward women in and out of their homes by encouraging them to remain silent.

Harry started her women’s rights advocacy in 2012 as a blogger confronting the chbap srey. She launched her Facebook vlog in February 2017 with enough weekly topics mapped out to see her through the first 50 weeks.

She posts every Saturday night, a time slot that appeals to her audience, mostly young women like herself.

“I talk to them as friends,” she says. “I won’t lecture them so I can be one of their friends. I share what I know to them. So, they can relate themselves to what I share.”

Taking on taboo topics

Harry vlogs about taboo topics, such as menstruation, contraception, abortion. Most of her clips average about 100,000 views. A post on virginity, “Is the value of women determined by virginity?,” has passed 2 million hits and thousands of comments — not bad in a country of 16.3 million people, 6.8 million of them on Facebook.
https://www.voanews.com/a/cambodian-vlo ... 72848.html

Meet the 23-Year-Old Cambodian Woman Teaching Her Country About Consent
Phnom Penh, Cambodia November 1, 2018

Seated in a classroom on the bucolic fringes of Cambodia’s capital, three dozen teenagers put a radically new term to the test: affirmative consent.

Armed with only scissors and a definition, they are instructed to separate a list of scenarios – persistent requests for a kiss, drunken smooches, physical advances on a subordinate – into whether each is consensual or not. A debate ensues.

“No!” insists Venghour, a lanky 16-year-old who raises his arms above his head in emphasis. “If it’s reluctant then it’s not consent.” Behind him, a female classmate nods, picking out a lonely example for her consensual column.

It might sound like awkward, difficult territory to engage a sea of uniformed teens spanning the pubescent spectrum. But from the front of the room, Catherine V. Harry, a sprightly 23-year-old feminist activist, deftly guides the Gen Zers.

“Consent,” she says, on the sweltering afternoon of the tutorial, “is an enthusiastic, voluntary agreement before any sexual activity.”
http://time.com/5302765/cambodia-dose-o ... ine-harry/

January 14, 2020 / 8:04 PM / Updated 12 hours ago
A dose of feminism - the YouTuber tackling taboos in Cambodia
Matt Blomberg
4 Min Read

PHNOM PENH (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Shortly after midnight each Sunday, Catherine Harry takes her place in front of a camera at her home in Phnom Penh.

As the city soundscape of chanting monks, temple bells, jackhammers and traffic quieten she goes to work on “A Dose of Cath”, her popular vlog tackling the gender taboos that still pervade her native Cambodia.

“Women, unlike men, rely on a wide variety of factors to raise their sexual desires,” Harry said to camera as she opened a forthcoming episode on women’s libido.

“It is important to check with your partner from time to time, establishing ongoing consent, to make sure that she is comfortable with the experience.”

At 25, Harry is chief messenger for a movement shaking off the legacy of the Chbap Srey, an oppressive code of conduct for women that was only removed from primary school curricula in 2007.

The code instructs women to walk slowly and laugh quietly. It extols obedience and submission and dictates that women “serve” husbands and never discuss family issues outside the home.

It takes the form of a poem and is thought to have originated in the 14th century before being passed down orally through the generations until it was put in writing 500 years later.

“It legitimizes domestic violence and violence against women,” Harry told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview. “And it has been deeply ingrained in a lot of people’s minds.”

A self-professed introvert, Harry takes on a bold persona in “A Dose of Cath”, which challenges conservative Cambodia by tackling topics still seen by many as taboo.

The episode on libido follows others titled Know Your Vulva, Let’s Talk Period, and Is Masturbation Bad? - topics she said were near impossible to learn about elsewhere in the local Khmer language.

“In Cambodia, sex is taboo,” she said. “People don’t talk about it ... I’m trying to give them a source on these things without having to learn about it from porn.”

In a nation of 16 million people, Harry’s most popular offerings get upwards of 2 million views.
Full article: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-camb ... SKBN1ZD1M1

This month A Dose of Cath tackles emergency contraception:

https://www.facebook.com/adoseofcath/

CEOCambodiaNews wrote: ↑Fri Mar 06, 2020 9:59 am This month A Dose of Cath tackles emergency contraception:

https://www.facebook.com/adoseofcath/

Good on her!!!!