Misogyny and Sexism in the News [Archive] - Page 3

Kobi

05-28-2014, 07:04 PM

Between sun-seared shrubs and the collapsed remains of Istanbul’s Byzantine city walls, police found the body of an American tourist, Sarai Sierra, 33, in February 2013. Ms. Sierra, a New Yorker and a first-time traveler abroad, disappeared after near-constant contact with her family for two weeks. What happened to her is still a little unclear, but a Turkish man has reportedly confessed to killing her after supposedly trying to kiss her.

This is not a case of wrong place, wrong time. Ms. Sierra was not wandering off the beaten path. She was not engaged in risky behavior. She was on a trip hoping to practice photography, according to news reports. This is a terrifying case of what can — and does — happen to female travelers abroad.

Since her death early last year, a number of reports of attacks on female tourists have made headlines. An Italian tourist was reportedly raped by police officers in Mexico in the same month that Ms. Sierra’s body was found. An American tourist was raped in a store in Israel last June. A Norwegian woman was raped (then jailed, for having “unlawful sex”) in Dubai; she and the man accused in her attack were eventually pardoned last summer. On Jan. 15, a Danish woman, 51, reported being raped at knife point in New Delhi. She said she had approached the seven or eight men who attacked her to ask for directions to her hotel. In March, a British woman said she was raped by a security guard in a luxury hotel in Egypt.

Whether it is on a bus in New Delhi or at a resort in Acapulco, Mexico, the risk of an assault may seem ever-present, if recent high-profile attacks in places like these are indicative of a general state of danger for female travelers. Such news reports have tripped an alarm for many of us who venture beyond familiar destinations, some seeking the sort of solo, immersive experiences that are becoming increasingly common.

We weigh our bodily integrity against our desire to see the world. For us, for women, there is a different tourist map of the globe, one in which we are told to consider the length of our skirts and the cuts of our shirts, the time of day in which we choose to move around, and the places we deem “safe.”

But what is the reality of violence against women now in the places we want to go — and should we be avoiding whole cities because of this risk, as some women are doing? What is the actual risk for women traveling abroad compared with the perception? I talked to statisticians and women’s rights advocates and visited a few countries where notorious cases have recently occurred to get a sense of what is happening.

Headlines in India

Since December 2012, ask most people what country they think of when they think of rape against tourists or others, and they will likely say India.

The brutality of the gang rape and murder of a young Indian medical student on a bus one December evening in New Delhi shocked many around the world. Protests erupted in huge numbers throughout India and beyond, and a government-led commission took an internal look at how the country prosecutes perpetrators of sexualized violence. But on the heels of the New Delhi attack came three more assaults on women in India that grabbed headlines. All three of the victims were foreigners: a Swiss woman during a camping trip with her husband in March 2013 in Madhya Pradesh state, central India; a British woman soon after that in her Agra hotel room; and a 30-year-old American woman in the resort town of Manali.

These attacks have apparently rattled people enough to affect tourism. The New Delhi-based Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry reported that three months after the woman’s death after the attack on the bus, foreign female tourism to India fell by 35 percent.

Still, the truth is that other countries are even more dangerous for women than India. Without firm statistics on violence against female tourists, the closest yardstick is violence against local women — which experts say far outnumbers the better-known tourist attacks.

“The fact is that the rate of rape in Mexico is higher than in India,” said Carlos Javier Echarri Cánovas, a professor of demography at El Colegio de México who studies violence against women. There were 15,000 rape complaints in Mexico in 2010 and about the same in 2011, according to government statistics. Mr. Echarri explained that while 18,359 rape cases were registered in India in the first quarter of 2012, according to the National Crime Records Bureau, Mexico has one-tenth the population of India.

Yet even these statistics aren’t conclusive. Reports of rape in all countries are hampered variously by corruption and a cultural willingness to ignore violence considered “normal,” even close to home. The compelling narrative has been that as more Western women travel farther afield, the more they are at risk. But that is hard to pinpoint statistically. It might raise the question of why few are asking about the safety of traveling as a woman in Western Europe and the United States, a country of more than 300 million people. In the United States about 270,000 women were victims of rape and sexual assault in 2010, according to the Department of Justice. (The department culled data from interviews with households, which means that these are rapes that may or may not have been reported to police.)

Various kinds of Internet searches that I conducted turned up very few news stories about attacks on women in these destinations: There’s one from July 2013 about a tourist from Georgia (the state, not the country) alleging rape in New York and another about a woman from Canada who says a handful of French policemen raped her in Paris in April. Mainly though, searching for news articles on the rape of foreigners in the United States yielded only their mirror image — reports of violence against American women abroad. But this does not mean there are fewer attacks taking place on Western soil.

Experts note that this trend, so to speak, is amplified by the media, which makes individual incidents seem part of a larger pattern. “On average, attacks against white women worldwide receive more coverage than attacks against women of color,” said Cristina Finch, director of Amnesty International USA’s Women’s Human Rights Program.

Looking at the Numbers

Experts I spoke to say they cannot know whether attacks on female tourists are actually increasing. Hard numbers are difficult to come by. None of these groups — UN Women, an agency focused on gender equality; the United States State Department; and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs — keep data on violence against female tourists. The British Foreign Office, however, does release statistics on how many Britons request consular assistance after a sexual attack; in 2012-2013, 310 people requested assistance, with 138 saying they had been raped and 172 sexually assaulted — an increase of 9 and 12 percent for the year respectively, according to figures from the office’s “British Behavior Abroad Report.”

But those figures are hardly the end of the story. A number of experts tell me that it is possible that violence is on the rise in part because more women than ever are traveling alone, and are venturing ever farther off the beaten path.

For sheer numbers, consider that nearly 25 years ago there were seven million United States passports in circulation, said John Whiteley, a State Department spokesman. Now there are 118 million. Still, Mr. Whiteley said he was not sure he saw a trend when it came to violence against female travelers.

“We do know that over the years that violence against women has become increasingly talked about and reported,” said Ms. Finch of Amnesty International USA. She agreed that there was no way to know whether actual violence against female travelers was up.

Dina Deligiorgis, a spokeswoman at UN Women, said there has been increasing attention to violence against women and girls in the last five to 10 years for a number of reasons, including the passage of various resolutions in the United Nations and the start of the United Nations secretary-general’s UNiTE to End Violence Against Women campaign.

How Safe Are Local Women?

Every expert I spoke to, whether in India, Mexico, Brazil or elsewhere, said that cases of violence against international female tourists are not only more likely to make the news, they are also more likely to see justice than cases involving local women.

On Feb. 6, 2013, six female Spanish tourists were raped in Acapulco. On Feb. 13, Mexico’s attorney general, Jesus Murillo Karam, declared the case “resolved.”

Teresa Inchaustegui, the director of the Mexican government’s Center of Studies for the Advancement of Women and Gender Equity, said that though that case had wrapped up swiftly, there were thousands of unsolved rapes of local women every year. And she noted that the Acapulco mayor initially tried to downplay the attack on the women, saying it had hurt the image of the town and that such violence could have happened “anywhere in the world.” (He later apologized for his remarks.)

“It’s undoubtedly a double standard,” said Laura Carlsen, director of the nonprofit Americas Program of the Center for International Policy, of the government reaction to the tourist rapes versus those of local women. An often cited crime statistic in Mexico is that 98 percent of the crimes in the country go unpunished.

Last May, I decided to visit Mexico because the country has long been on the international danger radar — rashes of drug-war-related violence have left headless bodies across the country for years, and recorded violence against local women is staggering. In the northern city of Ciudad Juárez alone, hundreds of women have been killed or have disappeared since 1993.

The United States State Department warns that women should avoid being alone in the country, “particularly in isolated areas and at night” and that rape and sexual assault “continue to be serious problems in resort areas.”

Overall, a number of people who study gender in Mexico expressed something similar to what Mr. Echarri at the Colegio de México told me: “You have a patriarchal society, a misogynistic one, with a widely held belief that women are the property of men.” This, it would seem, can lead to sexualized violence — whether harassment or assault — and foreigners predictably draw attention.

A Dutch citizen, Rachel de Joode, lived in Mexico last year and said she felt there was a reason to be more cautious as a woman “just because of what I heard in the media and around me.” She said she would never go anywhere alone after 9 p.m. without truly knowing the area and using a “safe cab” (one called from a reputable company, not hailed off the street).

Mexico City has taken recent precautions, creating women-only buses in 2008 — women-only subway cars were already in place — on which a number of female tourists, including Ms. de Joode, said they felt safer. And while Ms. de Joode told me that she had been grabbed at in the mixed-gender subway a few times, she had experienced that and worse on the streets of Berlin and Amsterdam.

Lonely Planet, a travel guide for the slightly more intrepid backpack set, also seems to fall on the not-as-scary-as-it-appears side: “Despite often alarming media reports and official warnings, Mexico is generally a safe place to travel, and with just a few precautions you can minimize the risk of encountering problems,” it states online.

In my half-dozen trips to Mexico, I have never experienced any kind of serious sexual harassment. I have, however, been asked for a bribe by the police.

Some Blame the Victim

When it comes to perception versus reality, it might help to look to Turkey. I was recently in Istanbul for a conference on preventing atrocities. I walked in the same places Ms. Sierra walked and felt no danger whatsoever beyond burning my skin in the blasting sun. I was warned, though, when I asked at the front desk of my hotel for directions one evening to a particular part of the city to meet a friend. “Be careful of the men there,” the staff warned.

Like many major cities, Istanbul has its share of crime. But what I found so ominous about this warning was that I was not told to watch for pickpockets or scammers or even violence from the anti-government protests that were in full swing last summer. I was told to watch for men.

Even so, multiple tour operators I spoke to in Istanbul said Ms. Sierra’s murder has had little effect on tourism in Turkey. Government figures show that the number of foreigners arriving in Turkey in May 2013 increased by 18 percent compared with the same month the year before.

Istanbul Tour Services said they had seen no cancellations or drop in reservations after Ms. Sierra’s death. Hakan Haykiri, 51, who owns a store that sells tourist knickknacks in the neighborhood in which Ms. Sierra was found dead, agreed that the case had not affected his trade, dismissing the violence as too common globally to matter.

“The same things happen everywhere in the world and it does not affect tourism,” Mr. Haykiri said. But he went on to say: “If the woman does not flirt, a man would not attempt to do anything, any harassment. Everything starts with a woman.”

This kind of victim-blaming was not terribly uncommon among men I spoke to in Turkey. Erkan Turkan, 30, a manager at Istanbul’s Volare Tour, interrupted a question about whether Ms. Sierra’s murder had affected business by saying, “She was asking for trouble.”

Victim-blaming is hardly unique to Turkey. Sara Benson, who has written for the Lonely Planet guidebook series since 1999, described an attack she experienced in Malaysia. Riding an old, rickety bicycle to update the company’s guide, she found herself being followed and taunted by a man on a motorbike.

“He’s laughing and cackling and making masturbatory gestures,” she said. “He circles back and I start hurling rocks at him.”

Shaken, she went to the police a couple of villages over. But all she got was laughter when she described what happened, she said. “You’re a white woman traveling around by yourself,” she recalled an officer saying. “You got what you deserved.”

How to Minimize the Risk

So what kinds of precautions can a concerned traveler take? Minimizing risk, whether in a foreign city or a local one, whether you are a woman or a man, is common sense. One easy way to do that is to check the State Department’s website for travel warnings before you head out; the site is regularly being updated and includes cautions about things like carjackings in Mexico and gender-based violence in and around protest areas in Egypt. For more women-specific updates, there are many “What can I expect?” message boards out there, including ones by Lonely Planet. Also, it never hurts to carry the telephone number for your hotel and the local police with you.

One out of every three women worldwide will be physically, sexually or otherwise abused in her lifetime, according to a 2013 World Health Organization study. Julia Drost, the policy and advocacy associate in women’s human rights at Amnesty International USA, said such violence “knows no national or cultural barriers.”

The question then, in the end, is: Should all this violence — real or amplified — stop us from seeing the world?

Summing up what seems to be the underlying sentiment of many female travelers I spoke to, Jocelyn Oppenheim, an architectural designer in New York who has trekked extensively through India, said: “Bad things can happen, but bad things can happen when you get in a taxi in New York.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/travel/women-alert-to-travels-darker-side.html?referrer

Kobi

05-29-2014, 04:09 PM

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Missouri-based Army drill sergeant has been accused of sexually assaulting 12 female soldiers during the past three years, including several while he was deployed in Afghanistan.

Staff Sgt. Angel M. Sanchez appeared at a pretrial hearing at Fort Leonard Wood on Wednesday and could face a court-martial later this year, defense attorney Ernesto Gasapin said Thursday. The Washington Post first reported on the charges against Sanchez.

Military court records indicate that Sanchez is accused of using his supervisory position as a drill sergeant with the 14th Military Police Brigade to threaten some of the women he's accused of assaulting.

He is accused of sexually assaulting four women and assaulting eight others by touching them inappropriately, said Tiffany Wood, a Fort Leonard Wood spokeswoman.

The charges, filed earlier this month, come amid persistent criticism by Congress over how the Pentagon handles sexual assaults. The U.S. Defense Department says more than 5,000 reports of sexual abuse were filed in the most recent fiscal year — a 50 percent increase from the previous 12 months.

The Pentagon's first formal report on sex assaults in its ranks — released two days after Sanchez was charged on May 13 — shows that in the vast majority of the cases the victim was a young, lower-ranking woman and the offender a senior enlisted male service member, often in the same unit.

Sanchez served one tour each in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning a Bronze Star, before arriving at the Missouri post in August. He's been assigned an office job with his unit as his legal case unfolds.

Several of the women Sanchez is accused of attacking testified at Wednesday's hearing. But Gasapin said the initial accuser chose not to attend the hearing.

"It starts as one allegation and spreads out," he said, referring to the investigation that led to multiple accusers coming forward. "We have serious questions about the credibility of the witnesses making these accusations."

The defense lawyer said he expects an investigating officer's full report to be complete by June, at which point Sanchez's case could be set for a court-martial. The charges could also be dismissed or downgraded, Gasapin said.

Military prosecutors say Sanchez's alleged crimes date back to his year in Afghanistan, which lasted from March 2011 until March 2012. Prosecutors allege that during that time, Sanchez assaulted a female soldier at Outpost Dandar in Kunar province and also had a sexual relationship with a soldier "subject to his direct control."

One of the alleged incidents took place at Fort Richardson, Alaska, according to military court records.

At Fort Leonard Wood, Sanchez is accused of forcing one woman to perform oral sex on him in an office he shared with other drill sergeants. That accuser said Sanchez suggested she would be kicked out of the Army if she didn't comply with his demands for sex.

"I can be your replacement for your girlfriend," he is accused of telling a Fort Leonard Wood soldier who is gay.

A married soldier in Afghanistan said that Sanchez, who was also married, told her and others that "I know you guys are married but it's OK if you have a deployment buddy."

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called sex assaults in the ranks "a clear threat" to male and female service-members when the Pentagon released its latest statistics.

In December, Congress approved changes to the Uniform Code of Military Justice that strip commanders of their ability to overturn military jury convictions. That law also requires a civilian review if a commander declines to prosecute a case and requires that any individual convicted of sexual assault face a dishonorable discharge or dismissal.

The law also provides alleged victims with legal counsel, eliminates the statute of limitations for courts-martial in rape and sexual assault cases and criminalizes retaliation against victims who report a sexual assault.

Federal lawmakers are considering even further changes, some of which are opposed by top military commanders.

Greg Jacob, a former Marine who now works for the Service Women's Action Network, said the charges against Sanchez suggest that the military "hasn't fixed the problem." He said the inherent power imbalance between a drill sergeant and a lower-ranking soldier make the allegations even more disturbing.

"You're taught to trust authority, trust the chain of command," said Jacob, the group's policy director. "You're dependent on these people for everything, from your food to your sleep to your safety."

http://news.yahoo.com/sergeant-accused-sexually-assaulting-soldiers-042859324.html

Kobi

06-09-2014, 11:07 AM

Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.

Consider the supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a. “sexual assault.” Herewith, a Philadelphia magazine report about Swarthmore College, where in 2013 a student “was in her room with a guy with whom she’d been hooking up for three months”:

“They’d now decided — mutually, she thought — just to be friends. When he ended up falling asleep on her bed, she changed into pajamas and climbed in next to him. Soon, he was putting his arm around her and taking off her clothes. ‘I basically said, “No, I don’t want to have sex with you.” And then he said, “OK, that’s fine” and stopped. . . . And then he started again a few minutes later, taking off my panties, taking off his boxers. I just kind of laid there and didn’t do anything — I had already said no. I was just tired and wanted to go to bed. I let him finish. I pulled my panties back on and went to sleep.’”

Six weeks later, the woman reported that she had been raped. Now the Obama administration is riding to the rescue of “sexual assault” victims. It vows to excavate equities from the ambiguities of the hookup culture, this cocktail of hormones, alcohol and the faux sophistication of today’s prolonged adolescence of especially privileged young adults.

The administration’s crucial and contradictory statistics are validated the usual way, by official repetition; Joe Biden has been heard from. The statistics are: One in five women is sexually assaulted while in college, and only 12 percent of assaults are reported. Simple arithmetic demonstrates that if the 12 percent reporting rate is correct, the 20 percent assault rate is preposterous. Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute notes, for example, that in the four years 2009 to 2012 there were 98 reported sexual assaults at Ohio State. That would be 12 percent of 817 total out of a female student population of approximately 28,000, for a sexual assault rate of approximately 2.9 percent — too high but nowhere near 20 percent.

Education Department lawyers disregard pesky arithmetic and elementary due process. Threatening to withdraw federal funding, the department mandates adoption of a minimal “preponderance of the evidence” standard when adjudicating sexual assault charges between males and the female “survivors” — note the language of prejudgment. Combine this with capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also nonconsensual touching. Then add the doctrine that the consent of a female who has been drinking might not protect a male from being found guilty of rape. Then comes costly litigation against institutions that have denied due process to males they accuse of what society considers serious felonies.

Now academia is unhappy about the Education Department’s plan for government to rate every institution’s educational product. But the professors need not worry. A department official says this assessment will be easy: “It’s like rating a blender.” Education, gadgets — what’s the difference?

Meanwhile, the newest campus idea for preventing victimizations — an idea certain to multiply claims of them — is “trigger warnings.” They would be placed on assigned readings or announced before lectures. Otherwise, traumas could be triggered in students whose tender sensibilities would be lacerated by unexpected encounters with racism, sexism, violence (dammit, Hamlet, put down that sword!) or any other facet of reality that might violate a student’s entitlement to serenity. This entitlement has already bred campus speech codes that punish unpopular speech. Now the codes are begetting the soft censorship of trigger warnings to swaddle students in a “safe,” “supportive,” “unthreatening” environment, intellectual comfort for the intellectually dormant.

It is salutary that academia, with its adversarial stance toward limited government and cultural common sense, is making itself ludicrous. Academia is learning that its attempts to create victim-free campuses — by making everyone hypersensitive, even delusional, about victimizations — brings increasing supervision by the regulatory state that progressivism celebrates.

What government is inflicting on colleges and universities, and what they are inflicting on themselves, diminishes their autonomy, resources, prestige and comity. Which serves them right. They have asked for this by asking for progressivism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-college-become-the-victims-of-progressivism/2014/06/06/e90e73b4-eb50-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html

Kobi

06-09-2014, 04:53 PM

New Delhi (AFP) - A minister from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party has said rapes happen "accidentally" in the latest controversial remarks by a politician amid renewed anger over attacks against women.

Ramsevak Paikra, the home minister of central Chhattisgarh state who is responsible for law and order, said late on Saturday that rapes did not happen on purpose.

"Such incidents (rapes) do not happen deliberately. These kind of incidents happen accidentally," Paikra, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which also rules at the national level, told reporters.

Paikra, who was asked for his thoughts on the gang-rape and lynching of two girls in a neighbouring state, later said he had been misquoted. His original remarks were broadcast on television networks.

The remarks come days after the home minister of the BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh state said rapes were "sometimes right, sometimes wrong".

The minister, Babulal Gaur, gave the remarks on Thursday at a time of growing outrage over the gang-rape and murder of the girls, aged 12 and 14, in northern Uttar Pradesh state late last month.

Modi, whose party came to power in a landslide election victory, has so far stayed silent over the rapes and has not addressed the politicians' comments.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav faced severe criticism for his perceived insensitivity over the attacks on the low-caste girls, who were found hanging from a mango tree after being sexually assaulted multiple times.

Yadav's father Mulayam Singh -- leader of the Samajwadi Party -- was also the target of public anger in April when he told an election rally that he opposed the recently introduced death penalty for gang-rapists, saying "boys make mistakes".

Women's groups have slammed the comments, saying they were evidence that politicians were unable to stem sexual violence because they lacked respect for India's women and were ignorant of the issues.

Politicians also came under fire after the fatal gang-rape of a student on a moving bus in New Delhi in December 2012, a crime that angered the nation and shone a global spotlight on India's treatment of women.

India brought in tougher rape laws last year after the Delhi attack, but they have failed to stem the tide of violence against women across the country.

At the time, several politicians sought to blame tight jeans, short skirts and other Western influences for the country's rise in rapes, while the head of a village council pointed to chowmein which he claimed led to hormone imbalances among men.

http://news.yahoo.com/indian-minister-says-rapes-happen-accidentally-070139401.html
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Chow mein is now responsible for hormonal imbalances causing men to rape? That's a new one. :blink:

Kobi

06-10-2014, 10:42 AM

Rape victims get called a lot of things. Sometimes it's "slut". For the 11-year-old gang rape victim in Texas, it was that she was a "spider" luring men into her web. It's not all bad, though - thanks to anti-violence activists, those who have been attacked also get called "survivors" and "brave". The last word I ever expected to hear to describe a rape victim is "privileged".

Yet in the Washington Post late last week, columnist George Will wrote about campus rape, claiming that being a victim in college has become "a coveted status that confers privileges", and that "victims proliferate" because of all these so-called benefits.

Ah, yes, the perks of being a rape victim! Here are just a few of the "privileges" that being raped at college confers onto women:

For Indiana University freshman Margaux J, it meant dropping out of school because even after her attacker was found guilty, the school refused to expel him.

Columbia University's Emma Sulkowicz had the great pleasure of enduring questions from a disciplinary panel that didn't believe being anally raped was physically possible without manufactured lubrication.

Andrea Pino, then a student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, was told by an academic advisor that she was "being lazy" for applying for medical leave after her rape.

And who doesn't look at Lizzy Seeberg – a St. Mary’s College student who killed herself a week after reporting being raped by a a Notre Dame football player – and not think, wow, how lucky!

It takes a particular kind of ignorance to argue that people who come forward to report being raped in college are afforded benefits of any kind. If the last few months of coverage of the rape epidemic on college campuses – including new stories from brave young women today in the Guardian – has shown anything, it's that survivors of sexual violence are treated abysmally by administrators, peers and campus police. But to someone like Will – who calls this a "supposed" scourge of rape and puts the term "sexual assault" in scare quotes – rape is hardly even a real thing.

To demonstrate the "capacious definitions of sexual assault" that Will believes are running rampant on campuses, the conservative columnist cites a case in which a woman said, "No, I don't want to have sex with you" ... only to have her alleged attacker proceed anyway. The only people who could find ambiguity in this are idiots and, well, rapists. (And even the latter, I imagine, would recognize this as an assault.)

In response to Will's column this week, women on Twitter started posting under #SurvivorPrivilege, a hashtag started by writer and anti-rape organizer Wagatwe Wanjuki. "#SurvivorPrivilege of graduating 6 years later than planned bc, yanno, rape. How covetable!," Wanjuki tweeted. Activist Katie Klabusich wrote, "#SurvivorPrivilege is getting to explain to truly would-be allies in your life that yes, your boyfriend could rape you. & it was rape-rape." Washington DC-based Robyn Swirling tweeted, "#SurvivorPrivilege was losing all my friends when they decided it was easier to remain friends with my rapist than stand with me."

The good news from Will's very bad, no-good column is that anti-rape activism is clearly having a profound effect on the culture. The rape-apologist backlash – sadly, Will is hardly alone in his ignorance – is in full effect precisely because feminist language and recommendations around sexual assault are being taken seriously by the White House, the media and (hopefully, soon) schools as well. For people like Will – misogynists who believe rape is about "ambiguities" rather than violence – this shift also represents a win for feminists more generally.

Today, if you argue that women who drink or who dared to have past consensual sexual encounters are somehow un-rapeable, you will get taken to task. There's much work to be, for sure – victim-blaming is still much the norm in some circles – but gone are the days when you could say something stupid and sexist and it would go unnoticed or applauded. I'm sure that this change in what's socially acceptable terrifies Will and his cohort because it upends everything they believe about women, sex and consent – and it reveals them for the dinosaurs that they are.

I'm willing to bet that Will has an inbox full of emails from rape survivors (no, no scare quotes necessary) who are educating him on exactly the kind of perks they got if they came forward. I doubt these people's stories will change his mind, but I do know they're changing the country.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/10/campus-rape-victims-survivor-privilege-george-will

Kobi

06-13-2014, 06:18 AM

****Trigger Warning****

(Reuters) - Egypt has asked YouTube to remove a video showing a naked woman with injuries being dragged through Cairo's Tahrir Square after being sexually assaulted during celebrations for President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's inauguration.

Sunday night's assault took place as thousands of people enjoyed inauguration festivities, raising new worries about Egypt's commitment to fighting sexual violence.

Authorities arrested seven men aged between 15 and 49 for sexually harassing women on Tahrir Square after the posting of the video, which caused an uproar in local and international media.

It was not clear whether the men arrested took part in the assault shown on the video.

"The Egyptian embassy in Washington DC and a number of Egyptian authorities, at the direction of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, have requested the YouTube administration to remove the video of the sexual assault victim," Sisi's spokesman said.

"This came in response to her wish, which she expressed during the president's visit to her yesterday at the hospital to check on her condition," he added in an emailed statement late on Thursday.

YouTube was not immediately available for comment on the Egyptian request. The clip showing the assault was still available on the video-sharing website on Friday.

Egypt approved a new law this month which punishes sexual harassment with at least six months in jail or fines of at least 3,000 Egyptian pounds ($420). The United States has urged Egypt to make good on its promises to fight sexual violence.

Sexual assault was rife at demonstrations during and after the 2011 uprising that ousted veteran president Hosni Mubarak and has been common for a decade at large gatherings in Egypt.

Sisi, Egypt's former army chief who won a landslide poll victory last month after deposing elected Islamist president Mohamed Mursi last July, has frequently spoken highly of women and their importance to society.

A police officer who rescued the victim of sexual harassment should be honored, Sisi said, in an apparent reference to the woman in the video.

But some liberals have been wary of Sisi, especially after remarks he made defending an army practice - later denied by an army court - of conducting "virginity tests" on female protesters who complained of abuse.

Sexual harassment, high rates of female genital mutilation and a surge in violence after the Arab Spring uprisings have made Egypt the worst country in the Arab world to be a woman, a Thomson Reuters Foundation survey showed late last year.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/13/us-egypt-harassment-idUSKBN0EO0TQ20140613?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

Gemme

06-15-2014, 02:45 PM

Campus Sexual Assault (http://time.com/2853826/college-sex-assault-reports-campus-rape-data/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmaing9%7Cdl10%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D487134)

Kobi

06-20-2014, 04:21 AM

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2013-11/enhanced/webdr02/29/3/enhanced-buzz-10150-1385713807-8.jpg

Girlguiding UK has revealed that sexism affects “most aspects” of the every day lives of young women.

The organisation’s “Equality For Girls” report surveyed more than 1,200 girls and young women aged 7 to 21, and have called their findings “a wake-up call” and “a disturbing insight into the state of equality for girls in the UK.”

The survey revealed that 87% of the 11 to 21-year-olds surveyed said they thought women were judged based on their appearance, and not their abilities.

Disturbingly, most of the 13-year-olds questioned said they had experienced sexual harassment.

Of the entire 13 to 21 age bracket, 28% had experienced unwanted touching and sexual attention, with 26% experiencing unwanted attention and stalking. A further 51% revealed they’d been objected to sexual jokes and taunts, and more than three-quarters said they found this behaviour threatening if they were by themselves.

54% of girls aged 11 to 21 have experienced online abuse.

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2013-11/enhanced/webdr01/29/3/enhanced-buzz-16105-1385712233-4.jpg

Young girls are also already worrying about how sexism with affect the career path:

Girls believe that motherhood still disadvantages women in the workplace, and almost half of those aged 11 to 21 worry that having children will negatively affect their career (46%). A similar number think that employers at least to some extent prefer to employ men over women (43%). Half worry about the pay gap between men and women (50%), rising to 60% among 16- to 21-year-olds.

The levels of criticism female celebrities and women in the public eye in the media has also affected young women’s aspirations to be in similar positions one day. 43% say the way women are criticised for how they look on TV has put them off every wanting to be in a position where they’d appear on TV themselves.

66% of 11 to 21-year-olds think they’re aren’t enough women in leadership positions in the UK. However, many of the girls surveyed said that the lack of women in leadership positions made them more determined to succeed.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/catesevilla/young-girls-say-that-sexism-is-a-part-of-their-daily-lives

Kobi

06-21-2014, 03:50 PM

George Will is standing by his controversial Washington Post column, in which he stated that universities have turned sexual assault into "a coveted status that confers privileges," arguing that people on the internet just like being upset about things.

As Politico pointed out, during an interview with C-SPAN Friday, Will argued that the backlash has less to do with his argument than with the way the internet works now. "Today, for some reason ... indignation is the default position of certain people in civic discourse," he said. "They go from a standing start to fury in about 30 seconds."

Will went on to say that while it's great that the internet has "erased the barriers of entry to public discourse" he argues that now you don't have to be even remotely intelligent to criticize Washington Post columnists. "Among the barriers of entry that have been reduced, is you don't have to be able to read, write, or think," he said. "You can just come in and shout and call names and carry on."

The reaction to Will's column didn't consist of shouting and name calling so much as people calling for him to be fired. In his Post essay, Will argued against the "preponderance of evidence" standard for adjudicating sexual assault cases that is often used in university investigations (as opposed to the "beyond reasonable doubt" level of a criminal court), but in the process seemingly implied that the sexual assault epidemic isn't real. In fact, as he argued on C-SPAN, it's mainly kids getting in trouble with alcohol. "What's going to result is a lot of young men and young women are going to get in this sea of hormones and alcohol ... you're going to have charges of sexual assault," he said. That combined with the less rigorous legal process on campus means, "you're going to have young men disciplined, their lives often permanently and seriously blighted, don't get into law school, don't get into medical school, all the rest."

Will also responded to the four Senate Democrats who wrote him condemning his column, and claimed that he was more serious about sexual assault — or as he would say "sexual assault" — than Congress, because his definition of sexual assault doesn't include things like "improper touching." As he told CSPAN, "When remarks become sexual assault, improper touching … we begin to blur distinctions that are important to preserve if you believe as the senators purport to believe, that this is a serious matter." And yet, it's hard to imagine how his detractors could trivialize sexual assault more than a man who thinks of increased awareness of sexual assault as an obstacle for future male doctors and lawyers to overcome.

dcCN-gl95RQ

http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/06/george-will-stands-by-his-column-indignation-is-the-default-position-of-certain-people/373172/

Kobi

06-29-2014, 02:54 PM

“Saatchi Art does not believe in censorship unless the material is pornographic or incites racial hatred." So, it is ok to consider violence against women as art now? And,they will censor racial hatred but not misogyny? WTF.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paintings depicting the moment Charles Saatchi apparently throttled his former wife Nigella Lawson have emerged for sale, on his own art website.

The couple divorced last year after Saatchi was seen with his hand around his wife’s neck as they sat outside Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair.

Seven images of the scene are currently for sale via the millionaire art collector’s website, for prices ranging from £150 to several thousand.

They appear on SaatchiArt.com, closely linked to his London gallery and mean the 71-year-old could benefit from any sales.

Mr Saatchi dismissed that ‘throttle’ art could be a new genre, as he said the works were a small proportion of those submitted by 40,000 artists who used the site.

He told the Mail on Sunday: “Would it have been a better story if I had censored artists whose work might be personally disobliging?”

Pete Jones, 52, has listed ‘Last Course’ on the site – a picture of Miss Lawson with hands on her throat painted on a bread board - for £17,600. Another picture, painted by Jane Kelly and called Art Collector Throttling a Cook has a price tag of £1,170.

Darren Udaiyan, 41, produced a Van Gogh style painting of the incident, which he uploaded to the site and is currently on sale for £5,870.

He told the newspaper: "It’s not really controversial. Saatchi is strangling Nigella but it’s also about him squeezing the art market.

"It works on many levels. It’s a comment on the art market and how people control it."

Mr Saatchi accepted a police caution for the incident after a photo was taken of the incident, leading to an acrimonious divorce.

Polly Neate, chief executive of Women’s Aid, said it was “extremely insensitive” to all victims of domestic violence for someone who had accepting a caution for assaulting their partner to earn commission from images of the incident.

Rebecca Wilson, chief curator at the online gallery, said: “Saatchi Art does not believe in censorship unless the material is pornographic or incites racial hatred."

Anyone can upload their work to Saatchi Art, and will received 70 per cent of the sale price with 30 per cent paid to the company for commission.

Pictures came be seen here. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/celebritynews/10933550/Paintings-of-Nigella-Lawson-being-throttled-for-sale-on-Saatchi-website.html) ****TriggerWarning****

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/celebritynews/10933550/Paintings-of-Nigella-Lawson-being-throttled-for-sale-on-Saatchi-website.html

Kobi

07-06-2014, 03:25 PM

Many victims of sexual assault do not report these crimes to family, school officials or police, and a new report on the normalization of sexual violence among young girls and women offers several insights into why this is; it also functions as a pretty harrowing primer on rape culture and its consequences.

Researchers at Marquette University analyzed forensic interviews with 100 young people between the ages of 3 and 17, many of whom spoke candidly about their daily experiences of sexual violence and harassment.

According to sociologist Heather Hlavka, many of the young people she interviewed viewed these incidents as a normal part of life. One interview subject told researchers, “They grab you, touch your butt and try to, like, touch you in the front, and run away, but it’s okay, I mean … I never think it’s a big thing because they do it to everyone.”

According to a release on the report, there are several of the reasons why young women do not come forward about the abuse they experience, including a belief that men “can’t help it” and a fear of being labeled a “whore”:

~ Girls believe the myth that men can’t help it. The girls interviewed described men as unable to control their sexual desires, often framing men as the sexual aggressors and women as the gatekeepers of sexual activity. They perceived everyday harassment and abuse as normal male behavior, and as something to endure, ignore, or maneuver around.

~ Many of the girls said that they didn’t report the incident because they didn’t want to make a “big deal” of their experiences. They doubted if anything outside of forcible heterosexual intercourse counted as an offense or rape.

~ Lack of reporting may be linked to trust in authority figures. According to Hlavka, the girls seem to have internalized their position in a male-dominated, sexual context and likely assumed authority figures would also view them as “bad girls” who prompted the assault.

~ Hlavka found that girls don’t support other girls when they report sexual violence. The young women expressed fear that they would be labeled as a “whore” or “slut,” or accused of exaggeration or lying by both authority figures and their peers, decreasing their likelihood of reporting sexual abuse.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/14/report_many_girls_view_sexual_assault_as_normal_be havior/?utm_content=buffer34ac5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Kobi

07-14-2014, 01:26 PM

A Tennessee woman is the first to be charged under a new state law that specifically makes it a crime to take drugs while pregnant, calling it "assault."

Mallory Loyola, 26, was arrested this week after both she and her newborn infant tested positive for meth, according to ABC News affiliate WATE-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee. Loyola is the first person in the state to prosecuted for the offense.

The law, which just went into effect earlier this month, allows a woman to be "prosecuted for assault for the illegal use of a narcotic drug while pregnant" if her infant is harmed or addicted to the drug.

Monroe County Sheriff Bill Bivens told WATE-TV that the 26-year-old admitted to smoking meth days before giving birth.

"Anytime someone is addicted and they can't get off for their own child, their own flesh and blood, it's sad," he said.

Bivens said he hoped the arrest would deter other pregnant women from drug use.

"Hopefully it will send a signal to other women who are pregnant and have a drug problem to seek help. That's what we want them to do," he said.

The law has come under tremendous opposition from both state and national critics, who say that the law will hinder drug-addicted pregnant women from getting help and treatment.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee is actively seeking to challenge the law, which they describe as raising "serious constitutional concerns regarding equal treatment under the law."

"This dangerous law unconstitutionally singles out new mothers struggling with addiction for criminal assault charges," Thomas Castelli, legal director of the ACLU Tennessee, said in a statement. "By focusing on punishing women rather than promoting healthy pregnancies, the state is only deterring women struggling with alcohol or drug dependency from seeking the pre-natal care they need."

Just before Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed the bill in April, Michael Botticelli, acting director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy at the time, said the federal government didn't want to "criminalize" addiction.

"What's important is that we create environments where we're really diminishing the stigma and the barriers, particularly for pregnant women, who often have a lot of shame and guilt about their substance abuse disorders," Botticelli said, according to The Nashville Tennessean. "We know that it's usually a much more effective treatment and less costly to our taxpayers if we make sure that we're treating folks."

Haslam released a statement after signing the bill saying the intent of the law is to "give law enforcement and district attorneys a tool to address illicit drug use among pregnant women through treatment programs."

Loyola was released on $2,000 bail and was charged with a misdemeanor according to WATE-TV. The law allows anyone charged to use entering a treatment program before birth and successfully completing it afterwards as a defense.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-charged-controversial-law-criminalizes-drug-pregnancy/story?id=24542754

Kobi

07-14-2014, 01:33 PM

Eden Foods is an organic food business that's been operating out of Michigan since the 1960s. Eden's president and sole shareholder, Michael Potter, is anti-GMO, pro-macrobiotic diet, and believes in "full transparency–complete disclosure of ingredients and all handling" for Eden's products, which include things like mung beans, buckwheat noodles, plum vinegar, and dried sea vegetables. As a longtime Eden Foods consumer, I don't think it's unfair to describe the company as exactly what conservatives would dream up if they were parodying an organic foods brand.

Well, except for one thing: Potter is a Roman Catholic who says certain forms of birth control are abortion. And his lawsuit challenging the Health and Human Services (HHS) contraception mandate is one of three that the U.S. Supreme Court has ordered to be reviewed in wake of its June 30 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the controversial case concerning birth control and an employer's responsibility to provide health insurance that covers it. The Christian owners of corporate craft chain Hobby Lobby had said doing so violated their religious beliefs and the Supreme Court agreed, holding that requiring a closely-held company to provide the coverage was not "the least restrictive means" of accomplishing the government's goal (increasing insurance coverage for contraception) and therefore stood in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993.

Following the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Court ordered reviews of three similar cases wherein lower courts had rejected companies' requests to be exempted from the mandate: Autocam Corp. v. Burwell, Eden Foods v. Burwell, and Gilardi v. Department of Health & Human Services.

Autocam is a Michigan-based company that manufactures parts for cars and medical supplies. The Gilardi brothers operate two Ohio food distribution companies. In all three lawsuits, the companies objected to covering all forms of contraception (in the Hobby Lobby case, owners had merely objected to four specific types). The Gilardi case will now go back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia; Eden and Autocam will bounce back to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Of course, these three case are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. More than four dozen lawsuits against the Obamacare contraception mandate are pending by faith-affiliated charities, colleges, and hospitals, according to the Associated Press. And 49 lawsuits—many of them stayed in anticipation of the Hobby Lobby ruling—are pending from for-profit corporations. See a list of them here. (https://www.aclu.org/reproductive-freedom/challenges-federal-contraceptive-coverage-rule#cases)

In October, when the U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term, it is expected to hear a challenge from the University of Notre Dame—a challenge very similar to one from Christian college Wheaton. Unlike Hobby Lobby, Wheaton was eligible for the accommodation for religious nonprofits that HHS had already worked out. Under this workaround, religious employers who object to covering contraception must simply alert the government of their objection and which insurance company they use. Thereafter, the government will make arrangements with insurers to provide birth control coverage for the company's employees (a move which insurance companies seem to have accepted because plans that include contraception coverage wind up less costly to them those that don't).

But Wheaton says that merely filling out the form violates religious beliefs, since doing so would indirectly end up facilitating birth control coverage for employees. Last week, the Supreme Court granted the college an injunction against enforcement of the contraception mandate pending appeal.

The Court's decision in Wheaton doesn't resolve the merit of the school's claims (though for a clickbait-y mess of legal ignorance, check out this Dahlia Lithwick and Sonja West piece asserting that the court found the whole accommodation "unconstitutional"). Should Wheaton get its way, those who oppose the contraception mandate may be "close to the end of the line of what they can demand" under the RFRA, notes Jonathan H. Adler at The Volokh Conspiracy:

Wheaton and some religious employers claim that the form HHS requires them to fill out and sign (EBSA Form 700) substantially burdens their religious belief because it directly facilitates the provision of contraceptive coverage to which they object. Yet as the order notes, religious objectors are able to notify the government of their objections to contraception coverage without using the form, and that nothing in RFRA would prevent the government from using this information to facilitate contraception coverage for relevant employees. This would suggest that should a majority of the Court find the existing accommodation insufficient, a RFRA-compliant accommodation based on a different form or reporting procedure should be relatively easy to create.

Yes, some religious objectors might object to any form, but an objection to informing the government of one’s objection, due to the knowledge that the government may use this information in an objectionable fashion, would seem to fail for the same reasons that religious objections to paying taxes fail.

A small tweak to the existing religious nonprofit accommodation seems harmless enough, but there are reasons some supporters of the Hobby Lobby decision may object to the court coming down in full favor of Wheaton College. Michael Austin at IVN news likens it to the difference between exceptions and accommodations in education:

Accommodations include such things as providing sign-language interpreters, note takers, recorded textbooks, and extra time on tests. The guiding philosophy behind educational accommodations is that every student should have an equal opportunity to learn the material in a course and have that knowledge assessed by an instructor.

From time to time, educators are asked to forgo that philosophy and make exceptions for students who are having difficulty in a course—to require less reading, or fewer tests, or lower grades for some students than for others. Exceptions often look like accommodations, but they are actually very much the opposite.

Austin thinks Hobby Lobby was looking for an accommodation, while Wheaton (and Notre Dame and the dozens of institutions involved in similar cases) is looking for an exception. "It will be tempting for the courts, and for Americans generally, to believe that religious exceptions proceed logically from religious accommodations," he writes. "But they do not. Accommodations and exceptions are fundamentally different kinds of things. One allows us to balance competing interests, while the other demands that we sacrifice one set of interests to another."

Under the RFRA, it really comes down to substantial burden—does it substantially burden a nonprofit's religious freedom to fill out a form objecting to covering birth control? I would say no. Though neither would it burden HHS substantially to change the reporting requirement in some way (say, by having employees at objecting companies fill out a form).

But all this implies we're actually arguing about what we say we're arguing about, and by this point it's clear we are most certainly not, at least not unilaterally. Both the federal government and some employers are using the contraception bit of HHS' essential benefits mandate as a way to protest or defend Obamacare, and what it stands for, at large.

One person who isn't afraid to admit this is Eden Foods' Potter. Though Potter's lawsuit against HHS is brought on First Amendment and RFRA violation grounds, Potter barely mentions his religious beliefs when he talks or writes about the case. In 2013, he told Salon's Irin Carmon that he didn't care about birth control per se but the "whole category of things that I don’t think any company should be forced to be involved with." In a press release the same month, Potter called it "discriminatory" that not all employers have to comply with the HHS mandate ("individuals who practice certain faiths are exempt, while individuals who practice other faiths are not") and lamented the "overreach" of HHS:

Eden employee benefits include health, dental, vision, life, and a fifty percent 401k match. The benefits have not funded "lifestyle drugs," an insurance industry drug classification that includes contraceptives, Viagra, smoking cessation, weight-loss, infertility, impotency, etc. This entire plan is managed with a goal of long-term sustainability.

We believe in a woman's right to decide, and have access to, all aspects of their health care and reproductive management. This lawsuit does not block, or intend to block, anyone's access to health care or reproductive management. This lawsuit is about protecting religious freedom and stopping the government from forcing citizens to violate their conscience. We object to the HHS mandate and its government overreach.

After the Supreme Court ordered Eden's case to be reviewed, Potter put out a short press release affirming that "we believe we did what we should have." Many progressives are now calling for a boycott of Eden Foods. Carmon and others have suggested that the real root of Potter's distaste for "lifestyle drugs" like contraception is not religion but his macrobiotic diet and beliefs.

But should that even matter? Deeply held beliefs are deeply held beliefs. Why is it okay to object to medications because of Jesus but not because of your construction of health and science? If both get you to the same place—a moral conviction against certain healthcare—than why should one be any more valid than the other as a talisman against government overreach?

"No one has a natural right to force other people to pay for her (or his) contraception or anything else (with or without the government's help), and by logical extension, everyone has a right to refuse to pay if asked," Sheldon Richman wrote recently.

Of course, the only legally available way to refuse to pay (at least without getting hit by steep fines) is by claiming a religious exemption, so that's what we're getting at the moment. However—as Jacob Sullum has noted here many times, and I tried to convey in this recent interview with Catholic magazine America—allowing for religious exemptions to generally applicable law can lead to a general questioning or rethinking of those laws.

In any event, Hobby Lobby was only the beginning on contraception coverage front. We can expect to see a lot of similar cases coming before federal courts in the months and perhaps years to come. We can expect legislative action, too: The Obama administration is insisting that it will act to remedy the Court's Hobby Lobby decision. And Democratic Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed a law Sunday that will give voters the chance to enact a state law forcing business owners to offer prescription birth control coverage to employees.

But this is a controversy that only exists because the Obama administration and Congress have made birth control, and all sorts of health services, an appropriate subject of state and corporate concern. More laws trying to compel business owners to run their companies in a certain way isn't going to get us anywhere but more court battles.

"Accommodations support, while exceptions destroy, the integrity of the enterprise that creates them," Austin wrote about the Wheaton case. Perhaps that's actually a feature in this situation.

http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/08/eden-foods-and-next-birth-control-cases

Gemme

07-22-2014, 07:10 PM

Montana Teacher Re-Sentenced for Rape of 14 Year Old (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/04/30/ex-montana-teacher-stacey-dean-rambold-to-be-re-sentenced-in-rap/20878231/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmaing9%7Cdl23%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D470605)

Teacher Rape Case

By MATTHEW BROWN

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) -- A former high school teacher who served one month in prison after being convicted of raping a 14-year-old student faces more time behind bars after the Montana Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that his original sentence was too short.

Justices in a unanimous ruling ordered the case of Stacey Dean Rambold assigned to a new judge for re-sentencing.

The decision means Rambold must serve a minimum of two years in prison under state sentencing laws, Yellowstone County Attorney Scott Twito said.

The high court cited, in part, the inflammatory comments of the sentencing judge, District Judge G. Todd Baugh, who drew wide condemnation for suggesting that the victim shared some responsibility for her rape.

Baugh said during Rambold's sentencing in August that the teenager was "probably as much in control of the situation as the defendant." He later apologized.

Rambold was released after fulfilling the original sentence last fall and is expected to remain free pending his reappearance in state District Court.

The defendant was a 47-year-old business teacher at Billings Senior High School at the time of the 2007 rape. The victim, one of his students, killed herself while Rambold was awaiting trial.

Rambold's sentence had been appealed by the state Department of Justice.

Attorney General Tim Fox said the Supreme Court's decision had "rebuffed attempts to place blame on a child victim of this horrible crime."

Under state law, children younger than 16 cannot consent to sexual intercourse.

Rambold's attorneys insisted in court filings that the original sentence was appropriate, and cited a "lynch mob" mentality following a huge public outcry over the case.

Like Baugh, they suggested the girl bore some responsibility and referenced videotaped interviews with her before she committed suicide. Those interviews remain under seal by the court.

Rambold attorney Jay Lansing was traveling and not immediately available, his office said.

The family of victim Cherice Moralez issued a statement through attorney Shane Colton saying the court's decision had restored their faith in the judicial system. The statement urged the family's supporters to continue working together to keep children safe from sexual predators.

During last year's sentencing hearing, prosecutors sought a 20-year prison term for Rambold with 10 years suspended.

But Baugh followed Lansing's recommendations and handed down a sentence of 15 years with all but 31 days suspended and a one-day credit for time served. Rambold was required to register as a sex offender upon his release and to remain on probation through 2028.

After a public outcry, Baugh acknowledged the sentence violated state law and attempted retroactively to revise it but was blocked when the state filed its appeal.

The Supreme Court decision did not specify what sentence would be more appropriate. That means Rambold potentially could face even more time in prison.

County Attorney Twito said he would consult with attorneys in his office and the victim's family before deciding how much prison time prosecutors will seek.

The case will likely be assigned to a new judge sometime next week, Baugh said Wednesday. He said he was not surprised by the court's decision.

The judge sparked outrage when he commented that Moralez appeared "older than her chronological age."

Her 2010 suicide took away the prosecution's main witness and resulted in a deferred-prosecution agreement that required Rambold to attend a sex-offender treatment program.

When he was booted from that program - for not disclosing a sexual relationship with an adult woman and having an unauthorized visit with the children of his relatives - the prosecution on the rape charge was revived.

During August's sentencing, the judge appeared sympathetic to the defendant, fueling a barrage of complaints against him from advocacy groups and private citizens. It also led to a formal complaint against Baugh from the Montana Judicial Standards Commission that's now pending with the state Supreme Court.

Justices said they intend to deal with Baugh separately. But their sharp criticism of the judge's actions signals that some sort of punishment is likely.

"Judge Baugh's statements reflected an improper basis for his decision and cast serious doubt on the appearance of justice," Justice Michael Wheat wrote. "There is no basis in the law for the court's distinction between the victim's `chronological age' and the court's perception of her maturity."

Baugh, 72, was first elected in 1984. He has said he deserves a public reprimand or censure for undermining the credibility of the judiciary and plans to retire when his six-year term expires at the end of the year.

He was unsure when the Supreme Court would act on the complaint against him.

"I expect at some point to appear before them, but don't know when," he said.

The leader of a women's group that filed one of the complaints against Baugh said Wednesday's high court decision gave advocates only part of what they want.

"The other part of the victory will be when something is done about Baugh," said Marian Bradley, president of the Montana chapter of the National Organization for Women.

Judge to be Censored Over Rape Comments (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/07/22/montana-judge-to-be-censured-over-rape-comments/20935211/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl15%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D505374)

HELENA, Mont. (AP) - The Montana Supreme Court on Tuesday will publicly reprimand a judge who gave a lenient sentence to a rapist after suggesting the 14-year-old victim shared some of the responsibility for the crime.

District Judge G. Todd Baugh, of Billings, is scheduled to appear before the court in Helena, where one of the justices will read a censure statement prepared in advance. Baugh will likely get an opportunity to address the court, and the censure will then go into the record, state Supreme Court clerk Ed Smith said Monday.

The censure is a public declaration by the high court that a judge is guilty of misconduct. The rarely used punishment was recommended by the state's Judicial Standards Commission, which investigated complaints into the comments Baugh made during Stacey Dean Rambold's sentencing last year.

"It's a process basically to publicly reprimand them for their conduct bringing dishonor on their position and the court's judicial system," Smith said.

The standards commission can impose or recommend to the Supreme Court a range of disciplinary actions if it finds merit in a misconduct complaint filed against a judge. They range from a private letter of admonishment to removal from office.

The Supreme Court accepted the commission's recommendation for Baugh's censure, but also added a 31-day suspension. Chief Justice Mike McGrath wrote in the order that Baugh had eroded confidence in the court system.

Baugh sent Rambold to prison for 30 days last year after he pleaded guilty to sexual intercourse without consent.

Rambold was a 47-year-old business teacher at Billings Senior High School at the time of the 2007 rape. The victim was one of his students. She committed suicide while the case was pending trial.

Baugh said during Rambold's sentencing in August that the teenager was "probably as much in control of the situation as the defendant" and that she "appeared older than her chronological age."

Under state law, children younger than 16 cannot consent to sexual intercourse.

After a public outcry, Baugh apologized for the comments and acknowledged the short prison sentence violated state law. He attempted to revise it retroactively but was blocked when the state filed its appeal.

The last Montana judge was censured by the Supreme Court was District Judge Jeffrey Langton, of Hamilton, in 2005. Langton had pleaded guilty to a drunken driving charge, then was placed on probation for violating the terms of his sentence.

Rambold has been free since last fall after serving the original sentence. After his release, Rambold registered as a sex offender and was to remain on probation through 2028.

Prosecutors appealed Baugh's sentence, and the Supreme Court in April ordered a new sentencing in the case by a different judge. District Judge Randal Spaulding, of Roundup, is scheduled to re-sentence Rambold on Sept. 26.

Baugh, who is the son of former Washington Redskins quarterback "Slingin'" Sammy Baugh, has said he plans to retire after three decades on the bench when his term expires in December.

Gemme

07-27-2014, 02:36 PM

Sexual Harassment at Comic-Con (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/07/27/comic-cons-dark-side-fantasy/20937601/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl1%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D507587)

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Amid the costumes and fantasy of this weekend's Comic-Con convention, a group of young women drew widespread attention to a very real issue - allegations of sexual harassment at the annual pop-culture festival.

Geeks for CONsent, founded by three women from Philadelphia, gathered nearly 2,600 signatures on an online petition supporting a formal anti-harassment policy at Comic-Con.

Conventioneers told Geeks for CONsent they had been groped, followed and unwillingly photographed during the four-day confab.

Meanwhile, what Geeks for CONsent and others regarded as blatant objectification continued on the convention floor. Scantily clad women were still used as decoration for some presentations, and costumed women were described as "vaguely slutty" by panel moderator Craig Ferguson. When Dwayne Johnson made a surprise appearance to promote "Hercules," 10 women in belly-baring outfits stood silently in front of the stage for no apparent reason.

Groping, cat-calling and other forms of sexual harassment are a larger social issue, not just a Comic-Con problem. And many comics and movies still portray women as damsels in distress. But Geeks for CONsent says things are amplified at the festival, where fantasy plays such a large role.

"It's a separate, more specific issue within the convention space," said Rochelle Keyhan, 29, director of Geeks for CONsent. "It's very much connected (to the larger problem) and it's the same phenomena, but manifesting a little more sexually vulgar in the comic space."

"Comic-Con has an explicit Code of Conduct that addresses harassing and offensive behavior," said Comic-Con International in a statement on Sunday to The Associated Press. "This Code of Conduct is made available online as well as on page two of the Events Guide that is given to each attendee."

Earlier, Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer told the Los Angeles Times that "anyone being made to feel uncomfortable at our show is obviously a concern for us." He said additional security was in place this year, including an increased presence by San Diego Police.

Keyhan's focus on Comic-Con began with a movement launched in her hometown called HollabackPhilly, to help end public harassment against women and members of the LGBT community. She and her colleagues developed a comic book on the subject in hopes of engaging middle- and high-school students, which is what brought them to Comic-Con.

Costuming, or cosplay, is a big part of the popular convention, with male and female fans dressing as their favorite characters, regardless of gender. A man might wear a Wonder Woman outfit, and a woman could dress as Wolverine. Keyhan and her colleagues - all in costume - carried signs and passed out temporary tattoos during the convention that read, "Cosplay does not equal consent."

In addition to the existing Comic-Con's Code of Conduct, Geeks for CONsent wants the 45-year-old convention to adopt a clearly stated policy and says staff members should to be trained to handle sexual harassment complaints.

"It makes it feel safer for the person being harassed to report it and also for bystanders who witness (inappropriate behavior)," Keyhan said.

Toni Darling, a 24-year-old model who was dressed as Wonder Woman on Saturday, said the issue goes way beyond Comic-Con.

"I don't think it has anything to do with cosplay or anything to do with costumes," she said. "People who are the kind of people who are going to take a photo of you when you're not looking from behind are going to do that regardless, whether you're in costume or not."

Still, she'd like to see an advisory in the Comic-Con program against surreptitious photography, and a clearer statement from Geeks for CONsent. She found some fans were afraid to take photos, even when she was posing at a booth on the showroom floor.

"The kind of behavior that needs to be modified," she said, "is somebody taking a photo of you bent over while you're signing a print."

Kobi

09-05-2014, 07:10 PM

Nearly one in five women have been raped, according to a new report on sexual victimization from the Center for Disease Control. The data tracks the responses of 12, 727 men and women over the age of 18, based on their experiences during and through 2011. The report's findings — particularly how prevalent rape is, and the fact that most rapists aren't strangers — shouldn't be surprising, but there's a difference between knowing facts dispel certain myths and seeing the numbers laid out.

Report (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=ss6308a1_e#Table1)

Kobi

09-06-2014, 02:51 PM

“Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” said Thomas Edison.

The quote immaculately and succinctly captures the ingredients to success, and appears to be – at least to those who still believe he invented the light bulb – classic Edison: genius.

Except for one minor detail.

Edison never actually wrote or said those words. What’s more – experts now say that that a woman you’ve never heard of should get the credit.

And she’s not the only one, though we’ll never know all their names.

How Edison’s quote evolved hints at a tendency of prevailing culture to put words in the mouths of famous men – in a way that amplifies their greatness. A “courtesy” perhaps, that has never quite been extended in much the same way to women, many remaining largely unknown or forgotten.

So how did seven famously inspiring quotes come to be attributed to Edison and the likes of Emerson, Twain, Voltaire, Vonnegut and Kafka when these were originally conceived, or written by, women?

1. “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”

Attributed to: Thomas Edison

Credit due to: Kate Sanborn

In the early 1890’s an academic named Kate Sanborn delivered a series of lectures on the topic “What is Genius?” She defined genius as a mix of “inspiration” and “perspiration”. “Talent is perspiration,” she said, explaining that genius required more perspiration than inspiration. If she provided a ratio, it was never recorded.

Sanborn was ridiculed in a newspaper editorial column that said she was “getting a lot of attention” for stating something so obvious.

Nevertheless, her definition may have found its way into the consciousness of a famous and influential contemporary: Thomas Edison.

Edison, later asked for his definition of genius is said to have answered, “2% is genius and 98% is hard work.”

When probed on whether genius was inspired, he replied, “Bah! Genius is not inspired. Inspiration is perspiration.”

Within a month of Edison’s comments being published, several writers and speakers re-jigged his statements – and after clever re-writes (without his further input), this eventually culminated in the quote as we now know it.

Edison may have provided a ratio, but who deserves the credit?

“In my opinion Kate Sanborn’s lectures were very important in the evolution and construction of the quotation that is now popularly attributed to Thomas Edison,” writes “Garson O’Toole” in an email to me.

He’s the Quote Investigator (QI) – a Magnum P.I for the quote world if you will, that is, if Magnum also had a PhD.

I also checked in with Fred Shapiro, the renowned expert and editor of the Yale Book Of Quotations - considered the most authoritative and complete quotation book in the world.

Shapiro also happened to write “Anonymous Was a Woman” – a piece published several years ago in Yale’s Alumni Magazine.

“If I was writing my ‘Anonymous Was a Woman’ article now,” he tells me, “I would include Sanborn and Edison as another example of a woman not being given credit for a famous saying.”

Coming from a quotes legend like Shapiro, that’s all the confirmation needed: Kate Sanborn was a precursor of Edison’s famous quote and deserves major points.

Then again, this game called life isn’t really about keeping scores against others, is it?

2. “Sometimes you’re ahead; sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.”

Misattributed to: Kurt Vonnegut / Baz Luhrmann

Credit due to: Mary Schmich

Wise words indeed from Mary Schmich, often misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut or even Baz Luhrmann (via 1998’s Sunscreen Song).

Schmich, a journalist, had written a column for the Chicago Times about what she’d say to the class of ’97 if she were to be asked to give a commencement speech.

If the quote seems unfamiliar, her opening line to that column is sure to jog the memory of any kid from the 90’s:

“Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97: Wear sunscreen.”

The essay became the subject of a fake e-mail chain claiming to be a MIT commencement address given by counterculture hero Vonnegut.

The e-mail went viral and the association with Vonnegut became so widespread that his lawyer was flooded with requests to reprint, prompting Vonnegut to reply: “What [Schmich] wrote was funny, wise and charming, so I would have been proud had the words been mine.”

“Poor man,” responded Schmich. “He didn’t deserve to have his reputation sullied in this way.”

So it goes.

Schmich went on to win a Pulitzer in 2012 – the ultimate symbol of success for a journalist. But, success doesn’t always necessarily mean winning. Consider this still-refreshing definition:

3. “To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Misattributed to: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Credit due to: Bessie Anderson Stanley

In 1904 a Boston firm, in conjunction with a woman’s magazine, ran a competition in which people were asked to answer the question “What Constitutes Success?” in 100 words or less.

The winner was a woman from Kansas named Bessie A. Stanley. Her submission, presented in its entirety below, earned her the prize money of $250.

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much;

Who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children;

Who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;

Who has never lacked appreciation of Earth’s beauty or failed to express it;

Who has left the world better than he found it,

Whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;

Who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;

Whose life was an inspiration;

Whose memory a benediction.

Sound familiar?

In 1951, in a piece titled “What Is Success?” a writer quoted the words he claimed to be from Ralph Waldo Emerson (the quote at the start of #3.)

According to QI, what the writer presented as an Emerson quote was “clearly derived” from Stanley’s essay.

However, the attribution to Emerson stuck (the writer’s column was syndicated) and the quote firmly entered popular culture when Ann Landers featured it in her famous column in 1966 and then again in 1980.

4. “Don’t bend; don’t water it down, don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

Misattributed to: Franz Kafka

Credit due to: Anne Rice

In 1995, a collection of short stories by Kafka was published, including a foreword by the author Anne Rice. Here’s an excerpt:

Kafka became a model for me, a continuing inspiration. Not only did he exhibit an irrepressible originality—who else would think of things like this!—he seemed to say that only in one’s most personal language can the crucial tales of a writer be told. Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Only if you do that can you hope to make the reader feel a particle of what you, the writer, have known and feel compelled to share.

According to QI, Anne Rice did not use quotation marks in the passage above because she was not quoting Kafka. “She was presenting her conjectural thoughts about Kafka’s attitude toward writing.”

Proving this one is a slam dunk: Anne Rice deserves full attribution for her quote.

Memo To Russell Brand: You may want to correct the misattribution in your Booky Wook.

5. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Misattributed to: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Credit due to: Muriel Strode

In August 1903, Muriel Strode published a poem titled “Wind-Wafted Wild Flowers.”

Here’s the relevant excerpt:

“I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.”

In 1992, an academic periodical printed Strode’s slightly revised quote (replacing just the I’s) with an attribution to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Not long after, it appeared as a sign at a school once again incorrectly credited – and from there you could say it took off, becoming widely accepted by the general public as an Emerson quote.

“It is clear that the linkage of the saying to Ralph Waldo Emerson occurred many years after his death and is not substantive,” concludes QI.

In terms of misquotes Emerson ranks up there with another great writer – Mark Twain.

6. “The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”

Misattributed to: Mark Twain

Credit due to: Agatha Christie

According to Cindy Lovell, Executive Director of the Mark Twain House and Museum, this is not a Mark Twain quote. Several other Twain experts agree. “Mark Twain remains the most frequently quoted American author,” Lovell writes, “which means he is also the most frequently misquoted author.”

Here comes the plot twist.

In a surprising email to me, Agatha Christie Limited (a private company set up by Agatha Christie prior to her death) confirms that this is indeed one of hers. They say the quote originated during an old press interview – but are unable to locate the source.

John Curran, an expert on Agatha Christie with whom I share this bit of news, tells me he shall “remain dubious” until he sees the original citation.

With Twain definitively out of the running for this quote though, and unless it can be proven otherwise, Agatha Christie deserves at least a tentative full-credit for now.

7. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Misattributed to: Voltaire

Credit due to: Evelyn Beatrice Hall

In her 1907 book Friends of Voltaire, Hall wrote:

Voltaire forgave him all injuries, intentional or unintentional. ‘What a fuss about an omelette!’ he had exclaimed when he heard of the burning. How abominably unjust to persecute a man for such an airy trifle as that! ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’ was his attitude now.

With the quote marks, it easy to see how the words eventually came to be attributed to Voltaire. But, Hall was not actually quoting Voltaire – she was describing his attitude.

In 1934, the quote entered popular culture when it was misattributed to Voltaire in the “Quotable Quotes” section of the Readers Digest.

Later, in an interview with a newspaper, Hall tried to correct the misattribution. “I did not mean to imply that Voltaire used these words verbatim and should be surprised if they are found in any of his works. They are rather a paraphrase of Voltaire’s words in the Essay on Tolerance — ‘Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.’”

Still though, decades later, the quote still seems to stick to Voltaire.

So, what’s the big deal if quotes are misattributed or not attributed at all? If some of these women were around now, would they really have minded at all?

It might have mattered.

In this day and age, an uncredited quote could amount to millions of dollars in lost royalties – well, at least to Vivian Greene.

You may know her as she is more commonly known – Anonymous.

Greene has been struggling for years to get credit for her work.

Even copyrighted, her quotes still appear unattributed on various products sold in household-name stores around the world – denying her not just recognition, but a substantial amount of income from royalties.

Despite this, and several other setbacks she’s faced along the way, she still maintains a tremendously positive spirit.

You could say she’s figured out one of life’s secrets:

“Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass … it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

After all, she came up with that quote back in the 70’s.

Let’s give this woman, at least, credit in her time.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maseenaziegler/2014/09/01/how-we-all-got-it-wrong-women-were-behind-these-7-famously-inspiring-quotes/

Gemme

09-07-2014, 11:21 AM

UwJRFClybmk

I've seen Laci on a few videos now and she brings up some excellent points, most of which we probably already know, but also some figures we might not be aware of.

Kobi

09-15-2014, 10:32 PM

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/3a/19/8f/3a198f5ea8439749632c12c2531467e0.jpg

Kobi

09-15-2014, 10:35 PM

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/6e/1b/78/6e1b781fb62e6e59925ce6d89173986e.jpg

Violette

09-15-2014, 11:48 PM

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/6e/1b/78/6e1b781fb62e6e59925ce6d89173986e.jpg

That is just astounding!

Gemme

09-16-2014, 04:48 AM

Gemme

09-19-2014, 05:53 PM

itsonus.org (http://itsonus.org/#videos)

DapperButch

09-19-2014, 08:07 PM

Colombia Women's Cycling Team Uniforms Cause Controversy (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/09/15/colombia-womens-cycling-team-uniforms-cause-controversy/20962721/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl10%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D529739)

I'm not sure if I'm more upset by the person who's idea it was to put them in a uniform that made them look half naked or the responses of the people.

This is BEYOND disturbing. I can't imagine any of these women are happy about ONCE AGAIN being turned into sexual objects, rather than athletes. Makes me sick. I can't even imagine what they are thinking. They spent their lives focused on using their bodies for sports, working them as machines, and yet, here they are being REMINDED that what is MOST important about their bodies is that they are sexually appealing to others.

I am blown away by how obvious this is.

Gemme

09-25-2014, 06:38 PM

Rape Tee Shirt Pulled From Store in the Philippines (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/09/24/offensive-rape-joke-t-shirt-pulled-from-retail-store-incites-ou/20967329/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl26%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D535012)

It should never have been produced at all.

Gemme

09-30-2014, 06:06 PM

Iceland Running a Gender Equality Conference---Without Women (http://fortune.com/2014/09/30/iceland-is-running-a-gender-equality-conference-without-any-women/)

Innovative or business as usual?

Kobi

09-30-2014, 06:54 PM

Iceland Running a Gender Equality Conference---Without Women (http://fortune.com/2014/09/30/iceland-is-running-a-gender-equality-conference-without-any-women/)

Innovative or business as usual?

Business as usual. It is the male perspective on what ails females and how best to address the male perspective of the female experience. It's called male-centric feminism or liberal feminism.

Nice explanation of this can be found here: Liberal Feminism. (http://lauramcnally.com/2014/09/29/dont-blame-emma-watsons-speech-for-liberal-feminism-failures/)

Kobi

10-03-2014, 08:20 PM

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/ac1394dbdcca6a36cbf486633b129cd813095ac3/r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/USATODAY/USATODAY/2012/10/29/breast-cancer-sexualization-4_3.jpg

Many breast cancer survivors say a crop of pink-ribbon campaigns have hit a new low -- by sexualizing breast cancer.

An online porn site this month has been using breast cancer to increase its Web traffic by offering to donate 1 cent for every 30 views of its videos. The intended recipient for the donation, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, rejected the offer and instructed the site to stop using its name.

Yet pornographers are only the most extreme example of a disturbing trend: using sex to sell breast cancer -- or simply get attention, say Gayle Sulik, author of Pink Ribbon Blues. Sulik, who recently lost a friend to the disease, notes that magazines and advertising campains now routinely use topless young women to illustrate a disease whose average victims are in their 60s.

"I don't see the porn site to be much different from the 'Feel your boobies' T-shirts," says Sulik, referring to the Pennsylvania-based Feel Your Boobies Foundation. "It sexually objectifies women, trivializes breast cancer . . . and uses the objectified woman as window dressing for the profit-making machine."

Newer cancer groups are embracing slogans such as "Save the Ta-Tas" and "I Love Boobies" in the name of humor and reaching out to a younger, less conservative audience. Other groups say they're trying to stand out from the crowd of public service announcements that arrive every October, during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

A poster for the "Save 2nd Base" fundraiser at Tao restaurant in Las Vegas last month, for example, depicted a curvy model in a string bikini, noting "everyone in pink bathing suits receives open bar." An online version of the ad went viral, spread by outraged cancer survivors. The Las Vegas restaurant did not return phone calls for this story.

Although proceeds were to benefit Komen, the cancer group's spokeswoman Andrea Rader says Komen hasn't heard how much was raised, and won't accept the donation. Rader says the Las Vegas restaurant was supposed to get Komen's approval before launching the ads, but did not. "We would never have approved that," Rader says. Rader notes that Komen, which has been criticized for its "cause marketing" partnerships with companies such as KFC, disapproves of coy language for body parts. "We just say 'breasts,'" Rader says.

Breast cancer survivor Kathi Kolb used her skill with computer graphics to create an alternative "2nd Base" poster on her blog, the Accidental Amazon. Kolb's version makes the bikini model look more like a real cancer patient: with a catheter port in her chest, a prosthesis in her bra and a compression sleeve on her arm to prevent swelling.

"It's thinly disguised prurience," says Kolb, 58. "The average guy may be moderately obsessed with breasts, but any guy who's ever known any woman with breast cancer, the last thing he thinks is that breast cancer is sexy."

Kolb says she's been disgusted by sexy breast cancer campaigns for years, noting that many companies are manipulating customers' compassion for commercial gain. But this year, she says, "is worse than ever."

But Kimmy McAtee, spokeswoman for the Keep A Breast Foundation, says its "I Love Boobies!" campaign aims to "speak to young people in their own voice about a subject that is often scary and taboo." T-shirts and bracelets "speak directly to our target audience in a way that is authentic, inspiring and refreshing. We always want to take a positive approach to breast cancer awareness, rather than a funny or sexy one."

Even mainstream groups, such as the American Cancer Society, are using humor to get their message across. "It's OK to look at our chests," the society announces, with videos showing close-ups of women's chests. On a site called makingstrideswalk.org/boobs, the society announces that a fundraising walk "was created to focus on breasts, and women are glad their chest has our undivided attention."

The American Cancer Society says the "boobs" video was created to get people's attention. In a written statement, the society said, "People are exposed to a wide variety of breast cancer information during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, and this video was intended to break through the clutter to capture the attention of social media users, who we want to encourage to spread the word about an important message: empowering women to take control of their breast health and fight back in their communities."

Breast cancer survivor Lani Horn, 41, from Nashville, says these groups are missing the point. "All of us are really fed up," Horn says. "Save the tatas? No, save the women. A lot of us had to give up our tatas to live."

Karuna Jagger, executive director of Breast Cancer Action, an advocacy group, says, "The implicit message in these campaigns is that it is breasts that are sexy; sexy is what is important; and we should care about breast cancer because it takes those lovely, sexy breasts out of the world . . . Every October, the stunts just gets more bizarre and further removed from what's needed for this epidemic."

Horn, who blogs at chemobabe.com, scoffs at the notion that campaigns such "Feel Your Boobies" educate women about breast self-exams.

While many women with cancer do find breast lumps themselves, that tends to happen more by accident, such as while getting dressed, than during formal self-exams. Medical authorities such as the American Cancer Society and U.S. Preventive Services Task Force no longer promote monthly breast self-exams.

Overall, teaching women to do structured monthly self-exams causes more harm than good; it doesn't save lives, but does cause needless worry, says physician Virginia Moyer, chair of the federal task force. "This doesn't mean women shouldn't be 'breast-aware,' but it does mean that we know that clinicians spending time teaching the techniques of breast exam and promoting its uptake is a poor use of time," Moyer says.

Yet ogling-as-fundraising isn't limited to the USA.

A British group, Coppafeel!, urges women to do a "boob check." In an imitation of Janet Jackson's infamous Rolling Stone cover, Coppafeel has been promoting its campaign with images of a topless member of the Spice Girls, Mel B, and her husband, Stephen Belafonte, who clutches her breasts.

A French website called Boobstragram encourages women to post photos of themselves in a bra, advising, "showing your boobs on the web is good; showing them to your doctor is better."

Writer Peggy Orenstein, who has been treated for breast cancer twice, says she's appalled at what is being marketed on behalf of "women like me."

The new campaigns do real harm, she says, by reinforcing the image that breasts are a woman's most valued asset. That only increases the pain suffered by women who undergo mastectomies, Orenstein says.

"On one hand, women with cancer are told -- or have to learn -- that we are not our breasts, that our sexuality, our femininity are not located in the mammary gland," Orenstein says. "That's a complicated, sometimes painful reckoning. Then these organizations come along and reinforce the notion that boobs are the most important things about us, particularly if they're hot and apparently most particularly if they're actually fake."

When diagnosed with aggressive cancer at age 38, Horn says, saving her breasts was the last thing on her mind. All she could think about, she says, was staying alive for her three young children. "Every time I thought, 'I can't climb back into that chemo chair,' I thought, 'I have to be able to tell my kids, 'I did everything possible.'"

The new breed of ads is especially cruel, Horn says, because breast cancer strips women of many features associated with femininity and beauty. Chemotherapy and surgery to remove the ovaries can both improve a woman's odds of survival, but at the cost of plunging her into instant menopause.

Chemo can make women lose their hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. Radiation can leave women's chests feeling, as one survivor has described it, like "a raw piece of meat."

And beyond the chemo-induced nausea, diarrhea and vomiting, Horn says, long-term hormonal therapy can cause severe vaginal dryness, making intercourse too painful to contemplate. While many cancer survivors want more information about preserving their fertility and alleviating sexual side effects, very few get help, Horn says.

Cancer "doesn't make you feel terribly sexy. Pain is not terribly sexy," Horn says. "There's a cruelty to this, when you're in danger of losing the very sexuality that they're selling."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/30/patients-decry-sexualization-of-breast-cancer/1630911/

Kobi

10-10-2014, 10:13 AM

Discuss gender in the workplace and there it is, stubborn, infuriating, impossible to avoid: the pay gap. For every dollar a man earns, professional women earn only 78 cents.

The pay gap holds across and within professions, including some of the highest-paying. It is real, and it is persistent.

So at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing—a conference on women in tech in Phoenix, Arizona—it was likely to be a common topic of conversation. And when Maria Klawe, the president of Harvey Mudd College, interviewed Satya Nadella, the recently installed CEO of Microsoft, it was bound to come up.

And, indeed, it did. Klawe, academic, asked Nadella, CEO: How should women handle the pay gap? How should they secure fair and equal pay?

Now, before continuing, let us review some statistics.

We know first of all that there is that stubborn, shocking pay gap. It persists across jobs and careers.

And we know, what’s more, that however bad things are in the workforce generally, they are particularly bad in tech, where women hold just 25 percent of the jobs. (They make up 57 percent of the entire workforce.)

Ann Friedman recently (and excellently) compiled all the dismal numbers about the state of women in tech. Hunt for the root cause, she writes, and you have to “look at who’s holding the purse strings”:

" Only 4 percent of senior venture capitalists are women, and 19 percent of U.S. angel investors are women. Is it any wonder that men are 40 percent more likely to be funded by venture capitalists, and only 4 to 7 percent of startup founders are women? (Well, that number is disputed, but almost everyone agrees it’s single-digit.) Software developers, the darlings of the tech gold rush, are only 20 percent women. A third of female tech entrepreneurs reported facing “dismissive attitudes” from their co-workers. […] Even when women break into tech, they don’t stay. More than half — 56 percent — end up leaving the industry."

That’s right. Even once they get to tech, most women don’t linger:

https://s-media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/a8/72/72/a8727221b1a16110c797282c8d4d4000.jpg

So. This is the state of things. Sound and well-sourced data suggest that women face additional hurdles in tech at every juncture: in college, as an entry-level employee, as a manager, as a VC—and as a CEO (only three tech CEOs in the Fortune 500 are female).

One might even say that something, something big, something systemic is biased against women.

How should women handle that systemic bias, Satya Nadella?

“It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise,” he told the attendees, according to Selena Larson of ReadWriteWeb.

“That might be one of the initial ‘super powers,’ that quite frankly, women (who) don’t ask for a raise have,” he added. “It’s good karma. It will come back.”

Larson continues, with delicious detail:

Audience murmurs suggested confusion and displeasure with career advice that both goes against everything women are told in the Lean In era, and seems woefully out of touch.

And how.

So out of touch, in fact, that Nadella quickly walked the comments back. In an email to all Microsoft employees last night, he wrote:

Toward the end of the interview, Maria asked me what advice I would offer women who are not comfortable asking for pay raises. I answered that question completely wrong. Without a doubt I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap. I believe men and women should get equal pay for equal work. And when it comes to career advice on getting a raise when you think it’s deserved, Maria’s advice was the right advice. If you think you deserve a raise, you should just ask.

And that’s good advice for everyone—not just women. Still, though, the story remains remarkable. You can omit the specific gender element of this, view it as abstractly as possible, and you get this story:

A powerful CEO was asked how individuals should act in a system stacked against them, and his literal answer was, have faith in the system.

If you think he’s the only person who sometimes thinks that way, well, I have a raise to give you. But only if you don’t ask for it first.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/microsofts-ceo-and-the-worst-career-advice-imaginable/381312/

Kobi

10-13-2014, 01:34 AM

Under the banner of free speech, companies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been host to rape videos and revenge porn—which makes female users feel anything but free. (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/the-unsafety-net-how-social-media-turned-against-women/381261/)

Kobi

10-13-2014, 03:00 PM

In its English-language magazine, the organization argues a religious justification for its treatment of the Yazidis.

n the newest issue of Dabiq, the English-language magazine published by ISIS, the extremist group for the first time confirmed and justified the capturing, enslaving and selling of Yazidi women and children. The article surfaced as a new report from Human Rights Watch said that hundreds of Yazidis are being held captive in makeshift detention facilities in Iraq and Syria, including forcing some young women and teenagers to marry the group's fighters.

“The Islamic State’s litany of horrific crimes against the Yezidis in Iraq only keeps growing,” said Fred Abrahams, special adviser at Human Rights Watch. “We heard shocking stories of forced religious conversions, forced marriage, and even sexual assault and slavery—and some of the victims were children.”

In the article, "The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour," the magazine stated that "the enslaved Yazidi families are now sold by the Islamic State soldiers," adding that, "the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the Shariah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations."

"May Allah bless this Islamic State with the revival of further aspects of the religion occurring at its hands," the article says.

Referring to the Yazidis as "pagans" and "infidels," the article said, "Their creed is so deviant from the truth that even cross-worshipping Christians for ages considered them devil worshippers and Satanists, as is recorded in accounts of Westerners and Orientalists who encountered them or studied them."

Publication of an article like this is obviously part of an intimidation effort. Elsewhere in the magazine, ISIS spokesperson Mohammed al-Adnani threatens, "We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women."

But ISIS is also boasting about what they see as the revival of important institutions, such as slavery. "Before Shaytan reveals his doubts to the weak-minded and weak hearted, one would remember that enslaving the families of the [infidels] and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of Shariah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Quran and the narrations of the Prophet, and thereby apostatizing from Islam," the article says. "... May Allah bless this Islamic State with the revival of further aspects of the religion occurring at its hands."

The United Nations estimates that at least 500,000 Yazidis fled their homes in northern Iraq after ISIS waged a major offensive in August on Sinjar, pushing tens of thousands into Mt. Sinjar where they were stranded for weeks.

Researchers with Human Rights Watch, who interviewed 76 Yazidis that fled to the Kurdish region of Iraq and 16 Yazidis who manage to escape ISIS detention, said that none of those who had been detained said they had been raped, although several said they had fought off violent attacks.

"As much as we could, we didn't let them touch our bodies," said one young woman who had been abducted but managed to escape. "Everything they did, they did by force."

However, fully disclosing assault may be curbed by social norms among Yazidis.

"The biggest taboo is not being captured, it is being [sexually] assaulted," Tirana Hassan, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch's Emergencies Division, told Vice News. "The Yezidis are a small, conservative community and women will go great lengths to ensure this is private, to make sure they are not ostracized by the community. Virginity is a very important concept."

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/isis-confirms-and-justifies-enslaving-yazidis-in-new-magazine-article/381394/

Allison W

10-14-2014, 12:18 AM

I would have posted this in another thread, if not for the fact that the previous post in this one is kind of what prompted me to post this.

http://www.alternet.org/world/isiss-nightmare-fierce-kurdish-women-fighters

ISIS's Nightmare: Fierce Kurdish Women Fighters
In the battle for Kobani, Syria, Kurdish women warriors are said to terrify ISIS.

DailyKos / By gjohnsit
October 10, 2014

On Monday the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said that the isolated Kurdish enclave of Kobani was "about to fall" to a massive, sustained assault from ISIS.
Also on Monday, Rooz Bahjat, a Kurdish intelligence officer stationed in Kobani said the city would fall within "the next 24 hours." By now ISIS was expecting to be slaughtering civilians by the score.

Instead, something totally unexpected happened - ISIS has been forced to pull back.

A local Kobani official, Idris Nahsen, told AFP that fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) had managed to push ISIS fighters outside several key areas after "helpful" airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition

"The situation has changed since yesterday. YPG forces have pushed back ISIS forces," he said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, confirmed that ISIS fighters had withdrawn overnight from several areas and were no longer inside the western part of Kobani. They remained in eastern parts of the town and its southern edges, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman, whose group relies on a network of sources inside Syria. The number of dead in the overnight fighting was not clear, but Mustafa Ebdi, a Kurdish journalist and activist from Kobani, wrote on his Facebook page that the streets of one southeastern neighborhood were "full of the bodies" of ISIS fighters.

Kobani has been under attack by 9,000 ISIS jihadists, armed with tanks and heavy artillery for nearly a month. This is the largest manned assualt by ISIS in its short existence.They are being opposed by just 2,000 Kurdish fighters with the YPG, the armed wing of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), without access to any heavy weaponry and short on ammunition.
To put this into perspective, 800 ISIS fighters routed 2 divisions of the Iraqi Army, totaling 30,000 heavily armed soldiers, in June.
In other words, the Syrian Kurds of Kobani weren't supposed to stand a snowball's chance in Hell.

My father used to say, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight that matters. It's the size of the fight in the dog that does."

And now, here we are. Two days after Kobani was supposed to have become just the latest victims of ISIS terror. The difference is obviously the motivation of who is fighting.

"We either die or win. No fighter is leaving," Esmat al-Sheikh, leader of the Kobani Defence Authority, told Reuters. "The world is watching, just watching and leaving these monsters to kill everyone, even children...but we will fight to the end with what weapons we have."

Some people have more motivation than others. Those people include women. A very large percentage of the YPG fighters that have been so good at killing ISIS jihadists are women.

I asked her about YPG’s women’s wing, the YPJ (Women's Protection Units), and the women fighters coming from Turkey. She said Kurdish women were as equally involved in defense affairs as in social services. “We have set up training camps for women in all three cantons. Women are active in all fronts,” she said. “Of the first 20 martyrs we had when IS attacked Kobani, 10 were women. Last year, of our 700 YPG martyrs, 200 were women...

I reminded Nimet of the legends we hear of IS militants fearing to encounter women fighters. She replied, “This is not a myth but reality. I personally met IS fighters face-to-face. Women fighters infringe on their psyche. They believe they won’t go to paradise if they are killed by women. That is why they flee when they see women. I saw that personally at the Celaga front. We monitor their radio calls. When they hear a woman's voice on the air, they become hysterical.”

Kurdish women have traditionally been part of the resistance forces. At Kobani, one woman in particular, Arin Mirkan, showed just how far they are prepared to go to defeat ISIS.

The woman, who is reportedly a commander in the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit, known as the YPG, broke into an Isis (also known as Islamic State) bastion on the eastern outskirts of Kobani and clashed with militants before detonating herself with a grenade, a monitoring group said on Sunday.
Mirkan, a mother of two, is rumored (but not proven) to have killed 23 ISIS fighters.

Another female YPG fighter, Ceylan Ozalp, killed herself with her last bullet rather than be captured by ISIS.

It's still far to early to determine how this will turn out. The Kobani defenders are running short on ammo, while Turkish tanks sit just a few meters across the border doing nothing. Instead, the Turkish military is arresting Kurdsfleeing the fighting in Kobani.

18 ethnic Kurds have been killed in violent protests in Turkey, demanding that the Turkish army help the brave defenders in Kobani.

The Pentagon still expects Kobani to fall, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is more concerned with ISIS marching on Baghdad.

Speaking specifically about cities in western Iraq, he said, “There are places where [the Islamic State] continues to make gains in Iraq. We talked about Hit. We talked about Ramadi. We talked about Fallujah, which is still in contention right now. That’s worrisome, because it’s close to Baghdad.”

8:46 AM PT: It's complicated.

Kurds insist that Turkey should allow Kurdish fighters, supplies and weapons to enter the encircled town through its territory. Turkey refuses to do so unless the Kurds meet certain demands, including distancing themselves from their allies in an outlawed Kurdish separatist party in Turkey.

As an indication of the complex political currents, however, she made it clear the Kurds would not welcome military assistance from Turkey, asking instead for free passage of Kurdish fighters from Turkey to reinforce those in Kobani.

“We would view Turkey sending its troops without an international decision as an occupation," she said.

Anwar Muslim, a lawyer and the head of the Kobani district, echoed those sentiments, saying it was illogical to ask the Kurds to denounce Mr. Assad and join Syrian insurgent groups fighting against him.

9:12 AM PT: Meanwhile in Anbar, Iraq:

Iraq’s restive western province of Anbar is on the verge of completely falling into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) unless urgent action is taken to address military failures, the Anbar Tribal Council warned on Wednesday...

“It is strange that while ISIS is developing its presence and capabilities on the ground in Anbar, military and security leadership are not doing anything new to address this. As a result of this, most parts of Anbar province are now completely in ISIS’s hands, including Ramadi city center,” Ibrahim told Asharq Al-Awsat.

It was Anbar’s police force that was protecting citizens from ISIS, he said, adding that military forces were actively hindering efforts to combat the extremist group. “Unfortunately, the military has become a source of assistance for ISIS because for the most part ISIS is able to attack and defeat the military, taking control of their arms and equipment,” said Ibrahim.

11:10 AM PT: Dramatic new development

It appears that the Kurds have finally picked up an ally.

Kurdish sources inside Kobane say that the YPG (Syrian Kurdish Popular Protection Units) have advanced in the east and that a group of Free Syrian Army fighters moved behind IS lines causing heavy losses.

---

I think this is really important. I keep hearing people talk about the world needing women's peace and harmony and blahdy-blah, but--at the risk of saying something batshit insane about this whole "violence" thing--I often find myself thinking that what the world (and particularly women) need is women's force.

*Anya*

10-14-2014, 08:20 PM

14 October 2014 Last updated at 12:55 ET

GamerGate: 'Press must tackle misogyny,' says developer

By Kevin Rawlinson & Leo Kelion

BBC News

More video game news sites must place a spotlight on the misogynistic abuse that could drive women from the industry, a developer has demanded.

Brianna Wu, whose firm is behind the Revolution 60 game,who said she faced death threats after speaking out, said the sites could help change the industry's culture.

A debate is raging in the sector about claims of corrupt relationships between some developers and reviewers.

But it has also regularly veered into the issues of feminism and misogyny.

"Every woman I know is terrified that what happened to me will happen to them next. And this is a true campaign of terror on women in the field," she told BBC News.

Ms Wu fled her home on Friday 10 October after graphic sexual threats were made against her.

The next day, she shared screenshots of tweets from one user who had threatened to murder her and her family, and had posted her home address to prove they knew where she lived.

The abuse came after she shared pictures on Twitter mocking players with sexist attitudes, who had used the Twitter hashtag GamerGate.

'Drive women out'

Her latest comments coincide with Ada Lovelace Day, an annual event celebrating women's feats in technology and science.

Ms Wu, head of development at games company Giant Spacekat, also said that internet services needed to do more to help police trace those who posted abuse.

"As it currently is, when crimes occur, law enforcement frequently cannot locate the people that are doing it," she said.

"We need to get more serious as a culture about making it possible for law enforcement to act in very serious situations like this.

"GamerGate could very seriously drive most women out of the industry. I realise that's a very strong statement and I absolutely mean it. I don't know a single woman in this field who is not asking herself if she wants to stay."

Ms Wu's experience was similar to those of games reviewer Anita Sarkeesian and developer Zoe Quinn, who were also on the receiving end of abuse.

Allegations about Ms Quinn's personal relationships with journalists were presented as evidence of "possible corruption" in the industry.

Ms Sarkeesian was hounded after releasing the latest in a series of video blogs that criticised bestselling games for propagating sexist stereotypes.

In response to the treatment meted out to Ms Sarkeesian, thousands of people signed an open letter calling on the gaming industry to change.

Ms Wu singled out IGN and Giant Bomb as two popular websites that she said had not drawn enough attention to the abuse aimed at women.

"They are choosing not to cover this story, or Zoe's story, or any of these stories. This has a real silencing effect," she told the BBC.

"These are video game sites that are tailored towards men, so the people that most need to understand the harassment and culture that's being created, the sites that speak to them are not covering this."

While Giant Bomb has not covered the debate in depth, it did report Ms Wu's story on Monday. Readers of both IGN and Giant Bomb have also discussed the wider debate on their forums.

Neither of the two sites was able to comment when asked for a response.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29616197

Kobi

10-16-2014, 11:21 AM

Prominent feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian has officially canceled a speaking engagement at Utah State University after a threat was emailed to the school promising a mass shooting targeting her and anyone who attended the event.

The email said there would be “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if Sarkeesian’s speech was not canceled by the university, and goes on to detail exactly how the attack would be carried out.

“If you do not cancel her talk, a Montreal Massacre style attack will be carried out against the attendees, as well as students and staff at the nearby Women’s Center. I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs.”

Originally, despite the threat, Sarkeesian was still planning to go ahead with the speech, but after learning from campus law enforcement that Utah’s concealed carry laws meant it would be possible that guns would indeed be at the event, she changed her mind.

The threat is the latest in a series of escalating attacks targeting prominent female game critics and developers. Anita Sarkeesian and developers Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu have fled their homes in recent weeks after their personal addresses were posted online and death and rape threats were made against them. Sarkeesian has endured these kinds of attacks for years ever since her “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” video series was attempting to raise funding on Kickstarter. Recently, matters have escalated however, culminated in this exceptionally graphic and detailed school shooting threat. The “ Montreal Massacre” mentioned in the email refers to the crimes of Marc Lépine, who killed 14 women, injured 10 and also killed four men in order to “fight feminism” in 1989 before committing suicide.
Fanboy Wars: The Newest eBook From Forbes
The Fight For The Future Of Video Games is a warts-and-all look at the clashes between the video game business and its passionate fans.

The obvious elephant in the room is that these threats and attacks against specific female developers have escalated as the popular #GamerGate movement has gained traction in the gaming community. The #GamerGate community is exceptionally defensive when being tied to “fringe” elements who directly threaten and harass women in this way, but it’s getting borderline impossible to extract what the movement claims to want to be with what it actually is.

Zoe Quinn was the figure who in effect spawned the hashtag movement, who accused her of sleeping with members of the games press for positive coverage for her game (when in reality the press members in question barely mentioned her game in passing, and did not review it). Developer Brianna Wu, who fled her house as recently as this week, was targeted by 8chan, the 4chan spin-off ousted from the site, because of her harsh words for #GamerGate and those who claim to march under that banner. And Sarkeesian has been a consistent target for years, and her repeated and public disdain for #GamerGate has escalated attacks on her as we see today.

While it’s true these threats aren’t being signed with a #GamerGate hashtag, we’re past the point of pretending that it’s a complete coincidence these threats have increased as #GamerGate members have gotten more fervent. The stated goal of #GamerGate, a movement concocted on Twitter TWTR -4.08%, Reddit and 4chan, is the pursuit of a more “ethical, professional and unbiased” video game press. Yet, whatever reasonable elements of the group there may be, some members have taken it upon themselves to threaten “unethical” females in the industry and everyone who supports them. This has happened so often and the threats made are so personal, graphic and unsettling, that it’s overshadowed anything that could have ever been productive about the movement. Whether or not the “goal” of #GamerGate was to literally chase prominent women out of the industry, that’s the effect its now having. Each day seems to bring a new low, and it seems like only a matter of time until a woman is physically harmed when someone follows through on one of these hundreds and thousands of threats. In Sarkeesian’s case, she wasn’t willing to risk speaking at an event that allows concealed weapons after the looming threat of a massacre. It’s hard to find fault with that logic, unfortunately it comes with the side effect of the person who made the threat getting exactly what they wanted.

It’s no longer possible to defend #GamerGate. For every member that unequivocally condemns these sorts of attacks against women, there’s another explaining why it’s completely unrelated from the movement, while yet another is cheering the harassers on. #GamerGate is an amalgam of a million different goals raging from the valid (better disclosure!) to the insane (death to feminists!), and it’s become bloated and grotesque with hate. Perhaps it’s too bad the sane members of the movement are caught in this tidal wave, but there’s no avoiding getting swept out to sea at this point.

The police need to be heavily involved as these threats escalate. The games press needs to unite with fans to condemn this sort of thing outright, and not pretend that ethics in games journalism has absolutely anything at all to do with…whatever it is this has become.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/10/14/anita-sarkeesian-cancels-speech-after-school-shooting-threat-at-utah-state/

Gemme

10-17-2014, 04:42 PM

Australian Family Feud (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/10/17/australian-family-feud-game-show-criticized-for-sexist-questio/20979964/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl12%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D547580)

Family Feud is a fun show, right? Sometimes they tip the hat one way or the other but the Australian version just fell off the deep end.

What would YOUR top 8 responses be to these?

Name a woman's job.
Name a man's job.

Yes, in 2014.

Kobi

10-19-2014, 06:00 PM

It happened on a Russian television show.

"I was at the Olympics and saw Maria Sharapova play her… him…," said Ivan Urgant, the host of an aptly named nighttime interview show, Evening Urgant.

"…One of the Williams brothers," Shamil Tarpischev finished.

This would just be ugly if run-of-the-mill sexism were it not for the fact that Tarpischev is head of Russia's Tennis Federation and the director of an annual professional tournament in Moscow. Now, he faces a one-year ban and a $25,000 fine from the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for his comments.

"I am sorry that the joke which was translated into English out of its context of a comedy show drew so much attention," he has said since in a statement. "I don’t think this situation is worth all the hoopla because those words were said without any malice." He later added the event "was hyped to an absurd level."

Serena Williams will kick off defending her WTA Tour Finals championship in Singapore this week. The WTA's swift action seems to have kept the comments from becoming a distraction.

"I think the WTA did a great job of taking initiative and taking immediate action to his comments. I thought they were very insensitive and extremely sexist as well as racist at the same time," Serena Williams said in a press conference Sunday. "I thought they were in a way bullying."

Even Maria Sharapova, a Russian who had her share of run-ins with Serena Williams, spoke out against the comments made by the man who has been her team captain in Federation Cup competition.

"I think they were very disrespectful and uncalled for, and I'm glad that many people have stood up, including the WTA," she said. "It was very inappropriate, especially in his position and all the responsibilities that he has not just in sport, but being part of the Olympic committee. It was just really irresponsible on his side."

Part of the reason Tarpiscehv's comments stood out is because of how the WTA has led the way for women in many other sports. Indeed, thanks to Billie Jean King and her allies who pioneered the modern tour, women's professional tennis went from a fledgling, ad-hoc affair to a global business that offers players a pick of tournaments nearly every week of the year. At this year's U.S. Open, each singles champion took home $3 million with the potential for bonus money—a long way from when Wimbledon and the U.S. Open first began in the 19th century without a women's event at all.

But sexism—sometimes institutional—has still reared its head recently in the sport.

During Wimbledon this year, when Andy Murray hired his second female coach (the first was his mother, Judy), Australian player Marinko Matosevic said, "For me, I couldn't do it since I don't think that highly of the women's game."

At last year's Australian Open, French tennis star Jo-Wilfried Tsonga said the reason that the women's tour, with just a few exceptions, is so topsy-turvy is because, "You know, the girls, they are more unstable emotionally than us. I'm sure everybody will say it's true, even the girls… No? No, you don't think?" He added: "But, I mean, it's just about hormones and all this stuff. We don't have all these bad things, so we are physically in a good shape every time, and you are not. That's it."

In 2012, Gilles Simon, another French tennis player, told reporters at Wimbledon that he thinks "men's tennis is ahead of women's tennis," that they "provide a more attractive show," and that they "spend twice as long on court as women do at Grand Slams." And because of all that, he intoned, nothing justifies equal prize money.

When Ernests Gulbis, a Latvian player who has reached the top 10 in the world tennis rankings, was asked earlier this year whether or not he would like any of his sisters to join him on the tour, he seemed to think he was doing them a favor by saying: no.

"Hopefully they're not going to pursue a professional tennis career. Hopefully," said Gulbis. "Because for a woman, it's tough. I wouldn't like my sisters to become professional tennis players. It's tough choice of life. A woman needs to enjoy life a little bit more. Needs to think about family, needs to think about kids. What kids you can think about until age of 27 if you're playing professional tennis, you know. That's tough for a woman, I think."

But tennis journalist Lindsay Gibbs, who developed a guide to keep sexism out of tennis coverage ahead of Wimbledon this year, says that the media is just as much to blame as anybody else. Ironically, she was inspired by Gilles Simon, who said, "What got to me was finding myself in the big press conference room at Wimbledon facing media that were asking me to justify myself, while they themselves had been writing six pages on men's tennis for every two pages on women's for years."

"C'mon guys, take some responsibility!"

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/a-recent-history-of-sexism-in-tennis/381645/

Kobi

10-20-2014, 09:03 AM

https://s-media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/f5/71/f1/f571f1084cb9928c309764d0d9a784cd.jpg

Gemme

10-20-2014, 09:10 AM

https://s-media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/f5/71/f1/f571f1084cb9928c309764d0d9a784cd.jpg

:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|

Allison W

10-21-2014, 09:20 AM

Anya and Kobi already posted two articles here about GamerGate, which kind of shames me, because it occurs to me that as someone who's been playing video games for the past 25 years or thereabouts and who is actually in communities where GG and anti-GG factions are clashing, I should have been on the ball about posting GG-related news here. It's just, there's so much that has been written on it, and most of it in the gaming press rather than the mainstream press, that I wasn't sure where I'd start. Still, that's no excuse on my part.

So yeah, I'm someone who's actually part of the subculture where this conflict is raging. That, and as a lifelong gamer whose first memories of the medium are flitting visions from before the onset of childhood amnesia and who was one of the many children who had crazy nightmares about enemies that keep coming even when you pause the game(!!), I also feel that video gaming is fucking well my hobby to "invade" with feminist values. So for those reasons, I'm going to offer not just links and articles but also a bit of commentary, at the risk of meandering somewhat from the original purpose of the thread, and some of the following links will be from small-time bloggers and other non-mainstream sources that those of you who aren't part of the gaming subculture (or, well, who don't follow wehuntedthemammoth) might have missed. I hope this is all right.

Part of the issue is--as was touched upon in Kobi's post--that GamerGate is a dual-layer movement, built upon a core of original agitators whose motive is right-wing anti-feminist backlash, surrounded by a humongous shell of useful idiots who actually think this is about journalism, despite the fact that the movement's biggest "accomplishments" thus far have been driving numerous women out of the industry and making gamers look like psychopaths to outside observers. That core hides behind the nebulousness of this leaderless movement and uses the outer shell as a shield to deflect criticism and disown responsibility for their actual goals and deeds.

Some links related to the last paragraph:
this exposé of the conspiracy at GG's core is comparatively bite-sized, so I'd recommend starting here (https://storify.com/EffNOVideoGames/stopgamergate-it-has-always-been-a-spin)
What GamerGate's manifesto really means (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/18/gamergate-manifesto-translated-into-english/)
An example of the deflection of responsibility: one of the "anti-harassment" GGers is actually the same asshole who created the "Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian" flash game a few years back (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/18/storify-time-gamergate-rs-with-ugly-histories-of-harassment-and-more-amazing-stuff-from-the-tweeter/)
L. Rhodes writes an open letter to GamerGate's misguided outer shell. (https://medium.com/@upstreamism/to-fair-minded-proponents-of-gamergate-7f3ce77301bb)
More detailed evidence of the GG conspiracy follows:
Evidence of core GGers using sockpuppets to pad their outer shell and get the ball rolling, and further links to articles that pissed them off (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/08/31/4chan-gamebros-raise-a-sockpuppet-army-for-extra-class-present-yourselves-as-normal-people/)
Zoe Quinn posted screenshots providing evidence of the motives of core GGers (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/06/do-you-still-think-that-gamergate-is-a-spontaneous-movement-against-game-industry-corruption-zoe-quinn-has-some-screenshots-to-show-you/)
Further evidence of the conspiracy at GG's core, from their own IRC logs (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/08/zoe-quinns-screenshots-of-4chans-dirty-tricks-were-just-the-appetizer-heres-the-first-course-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/)
Good golly more evidence (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/10/spamming-doxxing-and-sockpuppeting-4channers-dirty-tricks-straight-from-their-irc-log/)

This is about more than just video games: video games are a major cultural institution now, bigger even than television, music, or movies, and thus the medium is a major fortress in the cultural war between feminism and patriarchy--and supporters of patriarchy, even outside the gaming press, are absolutely treating it as such and fighting to maintain patriarchy's hold upon it. GamerGate has gotten a fair bit of right-wing--and also specifically MRA--support from outside that gamer press. That right-wing garbage mill Breitbart (to think a movement allegedly about journalistic ethics was happy to receive support from fucking Breitbart) was one of the first non-gaming-press outlets to write in support of GamerGate--the author of the piece even thinks gamers are losers, but supports GamerGate because he and GG share the goal of defending patriarchy. False-flag "feminist" Christina Hoff Summers wrote that GamerGate is a reaction against feminists trying to, allegedly, destroy male culture (if the behaviour of GamerGate is representative of this male culture, maybe it's about fucking time it get destroyed). And even carnival-of-misogyny A Voice For Men has jumped on the bandwagon, apparently defending video games as an alternative to marriage for men (what the christ).

Some links for the last paragraph:
On Milo Yiannopoulos, the guy who wrote the Breitbart piece (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/20/gamergates-gamerhater-heroes-milo-yiannopoulos-and-mike-cernovich/)
On Christina Hoff Sommers's piece on GamerGate (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/21/you-all-need-to-watch-this-music-video-that-deftly-rebuts-christina-hoff-sommers-on-vidya-games-gamergate-panderingtodickheads/)
I was serious about A Voice For Men defending video games as an alternative to marriage and oh my god you have to see this image (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/20/ladies-your-weight-is-somehow-a-mens-rights-issue-and-five-other-lessons-drawn-from-six-terrible-a-voice-for-men-memes/)
Because it really is about misogynists trying to keep video games a patriarchal stronghold (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/09/21/mens-rightsers-take-up-arms-against-the-vidya-game-destroyers-never-give-up-never-surrender-and-dont-shop-at-kroger/)
MRAs appropriating the concept of "safe space" to declare that entire swaths of culture, like video games, are supposed to be "safe space" for male nerds who are apparently traumatised by women's refusal to give them sex or some stupid shit (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/08/26/mens-rights-activists-video-gaming-should-be-a-safe-space-for-male-nerds/)

A further observation: the "corruption" that was used to justify GG was the allegation that Zoe Quinn had traded sex for positive reviews (check out the very first link in this post for some very gross defenses of this position), and the fact that major games-press sites deleted such accusations, which was supposedly censorship. Thing is, it later came out that no, Zoe never traded sex for reviews, and her game was not actually reviewed by people she'd slept with (one of them mentioned it in passing in some article or another). And moreover, the journalists in question knew she never traded sex for reviews, meaning that they rightly saw these accusations as baseless harassment and not a legitimate indictment of anyone's journalistic integrity, and that the deletion of these accusations was thus a normal response to harassment and in no way censorship or corruption. And yet, despite this original accusation being found false, the GamerGate ball keeps rolling. (Because it was never about corruption.)

Another observation: Anti-"social justice warrior" gamers who line up in defense of GamerGate on the one hand whine and moan about how games aren't taken seriously as art, and on the other hand the moment someone critiques games as cultural artifacts rather than simply meaningless entertainment, they start screaming about how THEY JUST WANT TO PLAY VIDJA GAMES KEEP YOUR SOCIAL JUSTICE BULLSHIT OUT OF IT. hypocrisy much (https://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/b0kq-v4iiaaoksu.png)

I'd like to thank Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, and Anita Sarkeesian for standing their ground against GamerGate. I'd also like to thank David Futrelle for making wehuntedthemammoth.com and doing such a good job of tracking GamerGate; it made providing sources much easier. I'd also like to thank the headwiz of one of my other Internet hangouts for putting his foot down and telling GamerGate supporters that they can get the fuck out because he wasn't going to be "neutral" about a movement orchestrated as an attack on women. And I'd also like to thank all the journalists who act like grown-ups and accept that it's time for the medium they love to grow up, and don't straddle that hypocritical fence mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Lastly, here's an MSNBC video in which Zoe Quinn herself is interviewed and gets to speak on the subject. (http://www.msnbc.com/ronan-farrow-daily/watch/exclusive--woman-who-sparked-gamergate-345327171549?adbid=524296562483015680&adbpl=tw&adbpr=2836421&cid=sm_m_main_1_20141020_34090337)

*Anya*

10-21-2014, 10:37 AM

Allison, thanks so much for your explanation of what GamerGate really means, your links, and, in general, providing context for those of us (like me) that did not know enough to know what we did not know!

Much appreciated!

PS: I am sorry I left out the "i" in the spelling of your name in my rep comment!

Allison W

10-23-2014, 08:55 PM

I don't think anyone here had any delusions that Republicans are anything but moustache-twirling villains that hate women for rebelling against old white male dominance, but:

Right-Wing Media Discourage Young Women From Voting (http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/10/21/right-wing-media-discourage-young-women-from-vo/201259)

Conservative media personalities have discouraged young women from voting as the midterm elections near, claiming that they are "too dumb to vote."

Fox's Kimberly Guilfoyle: Young Women Shouldn't Exercise Civic Duties Because "They Don't Get It." During the October 21 edition of Fox News' The Five, the co-hosts discussed the impact of women voters in the upcoming midterm elections. After co-host Greg Gutfeld suggested that young women lack the wisdom to vote as conservatives, Kimberly Guilfoyle suggested that they should be excused from jury duty, because they lack life experience and just "don't get it." Instead, she said, they should "go back on Tinder or Match.com." [Fox News, The Five, 10/21/14]

Fox's Tucker Carlson: "Do You Want Your Government Run By People Whose Favorite Show Is Say Yes [To The Dress]?" During the October 2 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered, network host Tucker Carlson criticized a Republican campaign to encourage young women to vote Republican by asking whether or not the young women targeted by the ad should vote at all:

CARLSON: I don't think as a general matter you should be encouraging people who don't know anything about what they're voting for to vote. That's what the Democrats do, giving Newports to the homeless to get them to the polls. That's literally true. Republicans shouldn't follow suit on that. You shouldn't pander to people. Tell us what the candidates are for, what they're against. Attack the other guy, that's fair too. I'm all for attack ads, but you're targeting people -- you're targeting people who are watching Say Yes To The Dress? You want your government run by people ... who's favorite show is Say Yes To The Dress. [Fox News, Outnumbered, 10/2/14]

National Review Online: Five Reasons Young Women "Are Too Dumb To Vote." In a September 28 post challenging Lena Dunham for encouraging young women to vote in an article for Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NRO's Kevin D. Williamson provided his "Five Reasons Why You're Too Dumb To Vote." Calling voting a "shallow gesture of citizenship" which women use to say "I want," Williamson urged those who do not agree with his political values to not vote at all:

I would like to suggest, as gently as I can, that if you are voting as an act of self-gratification, if you do not understand the role that voting in fact plays in a constitutional republic, and if you need Lena Dunham to tell you why and how you should be voting -- you should not vote. If you get your politics from actors and your news from television comedians -- you should not vote. There's no shame in it, your vote is statistically unlikely to affect the outcome of an election, and there are many much more meaningful ways to serve your country and your fellow man: Volunteer at a homeless shelter; join the Marine Corps; become a nun; start a business. [National Review Online, 9/29/14, via Media Matters]

Fox's Harris Faulkner: Do We Want Young People To Vote "If They Don't Know The Issues?" On the October 8 edition of Fox News' Outnumbered, co-host Harris Faulkner responded to Rock The Vote's "#TurnOutForWhat" campaign by questioning whether or not young people should vote "if they don't know the issues." [Fox News, Outnumbered, 10/8/14]

Gemme

10-25-2014, 05:30 AM

Ted Bishop Resigns as PGA President After Making Sexist Remarks (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/10/24/ted-bishop-resigns-as-pga-president/20983823/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl16%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D551904)

Ted Bishop was ousted Friday as president of the PGA of America over a sexist tweet and Facebook post directed at Ian Poulter.

Bishop was unhappy with comments Poulter made in his book about the Ryder Cup captaincy of Nick Faldo in 2008 and Tom Watson last month at Gleneagles. Bishop was with Faldo at The Greenbrier on Thursday when he tweeted to Poulter, "Faldo's record stands by itself. Six majors and all-time RC points. Yours vs. His? Lil Girl."

In a separate posting on his Facebook page, Bishop lamented that athletes who had "lesser records or accomplishments in a sport never criticized the icons." He mentioned Watson's eight majors and 10-3-1 record in the Ryder Cup, and Faldo's six majors and record Ryder Cup points getting "bashed" by Poulter.

"Really? Sounds like a little school girl squealing during recess. C'MON MAN!"

He deleted the tweet and the Facebook post later Thursday evening and said in an email to The Associated Press that "I could have selected some different way to express my thoughts on Poulter's remarks."

But he never apologized.

In removing Bishop as president, the PGA of America board said the remarks were inconsistent with association's policies.

"The PGA of America understands the enormous responsibility it has to lead this great game and to enrich lives in our society through golf," PGA chief executive Pete Bevacqua said in a statement. "We must demand of ourselves that we make golf both welcoming and inclusive to all who want to experience it, and everyone at the PGA of America must lead by example."

Bishop, a head golf professional from Indiana, had one month remaining on his two-year term as president.

Derek Sprague, expected to be voted in as the next president at the Nov. 22 annual meeting, was appointed the interim president. Paul Levy will handle the roles as vice president and secretary until the election.

Golfweek magazine reported earlier this week that Suzy Whaley, a teaching pro in Connecticut, was getting a lot of support to be elected secretary. That would put her in line to be president in four years. Whaley did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.

"The members and apprentices of the PGA of America must uphold the highest standards and values of the profession, as well as the manner in which we conduct ourselves at all times," Sprague said. "We apologize to any individual or group that felt diminished, in any way, by this unacceptable incident."

Bishop has been one of the most outspoken presidents of the PGA of America, which has 27,000 members and runs the PGA Championship and Ryder Cup when it is held in America. But his social media venting, and what the PGA described as "insensitive gender-based" comments, got him in trouble.

Poulter was traveling to China and was not aware of Bishop's comments until he landed and found his phone filled with messages.

"Is being called a `lil girl' meant to be derogatory or a put down?" Poulter said in a statement. "That's pretty shocking and disappointing, especially coming from the leader of the PGA of America."

Bishop's boldest move as president was to pick Watson as the U.S. captain, saying he was tired of the Americans losing. But the move backfired when Watson's heavy-handed style didn't mesh with a younger generation. Watson, 65, was the oldest captain in Ryder Cup history.

Poulter in his book said that Watson's decision-making "completely baffles me." He was referring to benching Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley for both sessions Saturday.

Faldo stirred up the European team on Friday when he said during his Golf Channel commentary that Sergio Garcia was "useless" in 2008 during the European loss at Valhalla and that he had a "bad attitude."

"Faldo has lost a lot of respect from players because of what he said," Poulter said in his book. He noted that it was Europe's only loss in the last 15 years and Faldo was the captain. "So who's useless? I think Faldo might need to have a little look in the mirror."

Kobi

10-28-2014, 03:22 AM

BOSTON (Reuters) - One in six female undergraduates at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who responded to a survey has been sexually assaulted, but fewer than 5 percent reported a sex crime, MIT said.

Five percent of female undergraduates said they had been raped and one in five knew a perpetrator of unwanted sexual behavior, according to the MIT poll, which had a response rate of 35 percent from undergraduate and graduate students.

"Sexual assault violates our core MIT values. It has no place here," MIT President Rafael Reif wrote in a campus email Monday accompanying the survey results.

MIT, which urged all its students to take the survey on attitudes towards sexual assault, is one of the first U.S. schools to release wide-ranging data on sex crimes on campus.

Lawmakers, activists and students across the United States have been urging a crackdown on sexual assaults on campuses.

MIT emailed the survey to all of its 10,831 undergraduate and graduate students on April 27 - two days before the White House called on colleges and universities to ask students about these matters.

The White House has declared sex crimes to be "epidemic" on U.S. college campuses, with one in five students falling victim to sex assault during college years.

The survey also asked students about how widely unwanted sexual behavior occurs on campus, and how likely victims were to discuss it with friends or others.

"We are interested in learning about the problem, measuring it and solving it," MIT Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart said on a teleconference call with reporters.

She said the school was expanding prevention and education efforts as it continued to mine the data, and that it planned to conduct follow-up surveys.

Barnhart noted a certain sense of confusion about what constitutes sexual assault and said the school released the poll to intensify the discussion about it while seeking ways to curb such incidents.

According to the poll, nearly two-thirds of respondents who had encountered an unwanted sexual experience said they had told someone about it, but less than 5 percent reported the incident to an official.

Barnhart said only a small number of sexual assaults were reported at MIT and that the school was adding new resources to help students who had experienced an assault.

Over the past few months, more incidents have been reported, she said, noting that raising awareness about the problem was paying off.

MIT began taking steps after an alumna wrote anonymously in the student newspaper, saying she had been raped on campus.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/one-six-female-mit-students-sexually-assaulted-survey-182342038--finance.html
---------------------------------

Have to wonder how many surveys, how many times women have to address this issue before they are believed. Male sexual violence against women is rampant on college campuses.

Kobi

10-28-2014, 10:31 AM

A registered sex offender has emerged as a star player on a top tier college football team, resuming his athletic career after being expelled from the Air Force Academy where he was court-martialed for sexual assault.

No NCAA rule prevents a person with a criminal conviction from playing college athletics, a spokesperson told ABC News. It is left up to the individual college or conference to determine eligibility.

Jamil Cooks, 23, enrolled at Alcorn State in Mississippi, a Division One NCAA school, after being found guilty in April 2013 of abusive sexual contact in a court martial proceeding at the Air Force Academy, which required him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

Cooks' lawyer, Richard Stevens, says he is appealing the conviction.

The ability of Cooks to continue his football career despite being a sexual predator is only the latest example of distorted priorities that involve sexual violence, said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York.

"I think it’s wrong that they’re allowed to continue to play," she told ABC News.

Officials at the Air Force Academy said the court-martial and dismissal of Cooks was part of an effort to end a culture in which sexual assault had gone unreported or tolerated.

“It’s disappointing,” said Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Michelle Johnson about the ability of Cooks to continue to play high-level college athletics. "That’s not what we tolerate here.”

Cooks was one of two members of the Air Force Academy football team court-martialed for sexual assault as part of a sweeping, controversial investigation that also led to the resignations or dismissals of 15 other cadets. Johnson was appointed superintendent after the investigation.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/registered-sex-offender-emerges-star-college-football-player/story?id=26491067

Gemme

10-31-2014, 05:01 AM

Woman has Child at 70 Due to Societal and Familial Pressures (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/10/30/what-its-like-to-become-a-mother-at-age-70/20986371/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl23%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D554917)

Kobi

10-31-2014, 03:15 PM

WASHINGTON — Shocked and offended by explicit questions, some U.S. servicemen and women are complaining about a new sexual-assault survey that hundreds of thousands have been asked to complete.

The survey is conducted every two years. But this year's version, developed by the Rand Corp., is unusually detailed, including graphically personal questions on sexual acts.

Some military members told The Associated Press that they were surprised and upset by the questions, and some even said they felt re-victimized by the blunt language. None of them would speak publicly by name, but Pentagon officials confirmed they had received complaints that the questions were "intrusive" and "invasive."

The Defense Department said it made the survey much more explicit and detailed this year in order to get more accurate results as the military struggles to reduce its sexual assaults while also encouraging victims to come forward to get help.

The survey questions, which were obtained by The Associated Press, ask about any unwanted sexual experiences or contact, and include very specific wording about men's and women's body parts or other objects, and kinds of contact or penetration.

Here is a sample question, one of a series of 11 graphic questions out of 34. Some are even more detailed:

"Before 9/18/2013, had anyone made you insert an object or body part into someone's mouth, vagina or anus when you did not want to and did not consent?"

"We've had a number of complaints," said Jill Loftus, director of the Navy's sexual assault prevention program. I've heard second- and third-hand that there are a number of women, officers and enlisted, who have gotten to the point where they've read the questions and they've stopped taking the survey. They found them to be either offensive or too intrusive — 'intrusive, invasive' — those are the words they used."

About 560,000 active duty, National Guard and Reserve members were invited to fill out the questionnaire — about five times the number the survey was sent to two years ago. Officials will not say how many responses they have received so far.

Early last year, a report on the 2012 anonymous survey results set off a furor when it estimated that 26,000 military members may have been sexually assaulted or subjected to unwanted sexual contact. Exasperated members of Congress complained that the Defense Department wasn't doing enough to combat sexual assault and tried, largely unsuccessfully, to force changes in the Pentagon's legal and command procedures.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who has pressured the military to deal with its sexual assault problem, said changing the questions could skew the study over time.

"I am concerned the new survey was done in a manner that not only prevents comparing apples to apples from previous years. ... I hope this isn't a case of, 'If you don't like the answer, change the question.'"

In addition to the Rand questions, Loftus said the Navy sends its own survey to sailors and Marines that doesn't get as specific. She added, "We think we've done a very good job of trying to make people aware of what sexual assault is."

But Rand analysts say the more detailed questions are necessary. So does Nate Galbreath, the senior executive adviser for the Pentagon's sexual-assault prevention office.

"This is a crime of a very graphic nature," Galbreath said. "For us to improve our understanding, it sometimes requires asking tough questions."

He said the Defense Department hired Rand to develop and conduct the survey this year, based on new direction from Congress that the effort be fully independent of the Pentagon. He was aware of the complaints but said that he more succinct the questions are, the more accurate the results will be.

"Research has told us, if I ask someone, 'Have you ever been raped?' they will say, 'No,'" Galbreath said. "If I ask that same person, 'Have you ever been forced to engage in sexual activity against your will?' they might say 'Yes.' It's because of the loaded terms like rape and sexual assault, that it's not very clear to a lot of people what we may be asking about."

The survey begins with questions about sexual harassment, asking about jokes, "sexual gestures or sexual body movements," requests to take or share sexually suggestive pictures or videos or efforts to establish "an unwanted romantic or sexual relationship."

Kristie Gore, one of the project leaders at Rand, said participants were told they could skip questions they found upsetting, or simply not take the survey. In the end, she said, Rand received a "relatively small" number of complaints.

She said research suggests that "the discomfort from being asked about prior trauma in a confidential survey is temporary and that such questions cause no additional long-term harm to previously traumatized persons."

Andrew Morral, the other project leader, said the questions were based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

"If you don't use precise language to describe different types of sexual assault and harassment, people define those terms for themselves in different ways, which leads to ambiguous results," he said.

The report on the 2012 survey, which was released early last year, showed sexual assault incidents rose from about 19,000 in the 2010 survey to 26,000.

Those totals far outdistance the number of sexual assaults that are actually reported by members of the military.

According to the latest report, the number of sexual assaults jumped by 50 percent last year as the military worked to get more victims to come forward.

Over the past two years, the military services have tried to increase awareness. Phone numbers and contact information for sexual assault prevention officers are plastered across military bases, including inside the doors of bathroom stalls. And top military officers have traveled to bases around the world speaking on the issue.

In the 2012 anonymous survey, about 6.8 percent of women who answered said they were assaulted and 1.2 percent of men. There are vastly more men in the military; so by the raw numbers, a bit more than 12,000 women said they were assaulted, compared with nearly 14,000 men. (Statistical math is apparently beyond the scope of the military)

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20141031/NEWS11/141039924/-1/NEWS
-----------------------

Sexual assault is not that complicated a concept. Seems to me, some man speak military people without a clue are getting their jollies at the expense of the very people they are supposed to be protecting.

Allison W

11-02-2014, 12:12 PM

More keeps happening on the Gamergate front, but the thought of making a new post about it gets awfully daunting, just because of the sheer volume of shit out there--I'm just up and making myself do it, here. The border skirmishes in the communities I'm in finally started to die down, but before they did, I got to see a whole lot people standing up against Gamergate. Also that fun thing where the folks on my side (myself included) provided evidence and sources and whatnot and the folks on the other side pretty much just whined and frothed, which I think contributed to the die-down. Seriously, though, it was pretty messed up for a while--there were people doing shit like calling me a TERF (is this real life?), and saying that feminists should shut up because if we're in a BDSM community (which was the locale) we must be hypocrites, and actually trying to draw false equivalence between WeHuntedTheMammoth (a site that tracks misogyny in the online "manosphere") to ReturnOfKings (a hyper-patriarchal PUA site from the bowels of the manosphere that does everything from teach men how to commit date rape, to engage in active rape apologism, to advocate for total male dominance of society). It was crazy and stupid, but thankfully it's cooling down. No telling when there might be another flare-up somewhere, but.

Before I continue, that site I mentioned. No, not ROK; don't go there unless you want to be sick with rage. I mean WeHuntedTheMammoth (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/). I want to shill it to you. It's quickly become one of my favourite sites, and I believe it should be one of yours if you want to keep track of the new misogyny movement of the Internet "manosphere." Not only does David Futrelle tirelessly track the movements of these groups (including, more recently, Gamergate), but he breaks the news in a largely supportive environment where you don't have to feel like you're alone behind enemy lines when you're learning about this stuff. Highly recommended.

Now, some good news; you should absolutely check this out, especially if you've been worried about this lately--it'll help. Maybe you heard that Anita Sarkeesian appeared on The Colbert Report (http://www.themarysue.com/watch-anita-sarkeesian-colbert-segment/), maybe you didn't. This was a glorious development that sowed absolute chaos in the Gamergate ranks (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/30/the-top-22-most-ridiculous-things-said-by-8channers-about-anita-sarkeesians-appearance-on-the-colbert-report/). The responses to it ranged from defeatist melancholy to an absolute spiral into delusion in which GGers went so full bullshit that they told themselves that this monumental blow against them somehow meant they were winning. Even better, it's just a milestone in a long list of entities coming out against Gamergate--virtually every non-gaming, non-reactionary media outlet has come out against Gamergate, and even the geek sphere is mostly against them (http://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2jlmp0/they_said_theyd_boycott_publications_that_wrote/). Geek heroes are coming out against Gamergate (http://waxy.org/2014/10/gamergate_schadenfreude/). GGers are starting to act like the world is against them because it is. Hell, even Playboy magazine (I won't link that one, but I'm sure you can find the article if you really want) published an article critical of Gamergate.

Let's have some more feel-good. Chris Kluwe ripped Gamergate a new one with some of the most brilliant and colourful profanity the Internet has seen yet. (http://www.themarysue.com/chris-kluwe-gamergate/) He also went on to summarise the reactions of Gamergate to Anita Sarkeesian's appearance on The Colbert Report (https://storify.com/jenncutter/chris-kluwe-sums-up-reactions-to-femfreq-on-colber), and it was funny. And this is probably the single funniest thing about GG on the Internet (https://twitter.com/alqaeda/status/524985414973935616).

For about a month or two straight I was sick with anger. My limbic system wouldn't stop screaming about the enemies lurking in my own tribe and cutting off the blood flow to those parts of my brain that actually try to deal with things in rational terms. The fights were ugly, especially when these people were in communities I'm part of, and really laid bare the awful nature of those enemies. I don't want to get into further into the gory details of those clashes than I already have; I do hope that's all right.

But now, after all that's happened, there's a part of me that's hopeful--only part, granted, because Gamergate has been successful at driving far too many women out of the hobby, and I can only hope that they'll come back. But those gamers who stand against Gamergate's ideals really stood up. I got to see non-trans women and trans women (the latter, interestingly, are insanely common in both the hobby and the industry itself), and awesome allies, standing together against GG and doing great things: I can only hope the next is to reach out to those women who were driven out by Gamergate and draw them back in. Gamergate even succeeded at making feminism in games mainstream by catapulting Anita Sarkeesian all the way to The Colbert Report and exemplifying our society's misogyny problem so clearly even the mainstream media can see it. It brightens my day a little every time I hear someone say that before Gamergate they didn't understand why feminism is still important or that misogyny is alive and well, but now they're starting to see it. Even 4chan, the place where the conspiracy against Zoe Quinn that became Gamergate was originally hatched, wised up and banned Gamergate from its midst after years of tolerating all kinds of horrific toxicity, from misogyny to racism to anti-Semitism, on its boards. Gamergate called itself the "sleeping giant" that had finally been awoken by "feminist invasion," and then it provoked the actual sleeping giant.

I suppose I can only hope that something good comes of this in the end, and that it's not just the antidepressants talking.

I could continue in this post, but I want to finish this one off and post it. In the next post, the bad news. I'm not looking forward to this.

Allison W

11-02-2014, 03:22 PM

Yeah, the bad news. Here I'm going to be putting Gamergate and some of its bullshit in context, and shedding some more light on who--and what (http://i.imgur.com/B8raLv6.jpg)--is behind Gamergate, and some major fears about what gotterdammerung may yet result from this.

To start off, you may have heard of Vivian James (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/25/today-in-gamergate-entitled-manchildren-use-manic-pixel-dream-girl-as-their-shield-again/), the fictional young woman who has become the Gamergate mascot. Or perhaps you haven't. Either way, David Futrelle provides a little more context on her and how Gamergate uses her, including the rape joke meme built into the colour scheme of her hoodie (it's complicated, and needless to say, trigger warning), should you choose to follow his links to the details. Just wanted to put that out there for no particular reason. I don't even know why.

Now. I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir when I say that the fundamental downside of Gamergate exposing the reality of modern misogyny even to the mainstream is obviously that the reason the mainstream can see it is because extreme misogyny really does exist and it's being vocal and going on the offensive. But the rabbit hole goes deeper. Way deeper.

Have any of you heard of Operation Lollipop? You probably haven't. How about #EndFathersDay, the so-called "feminist" campaign to end Father's Day? It was a false flag campaign, undertaken by misogynists using sockpuppet accounts to pose as feminists with the goal of making feminism look bad, which has been tied to Operation Lollipop. I suggest you read both of these (http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/end-fathers-day-and-feminist-troll-accounts) articles (http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/your-slip-is-showing-4chan-trolls-operation-lollipop), and bear in mind that Operation Lollipop is from the same community that later hatched the conspiracy against Zoe Quinn that went on to become Gamergate. Gamergate's antifeminist agenda precedes it; Gamergate is merely its latest incarnation. And already their work continues. (https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/523113644205555712/photo/1) Notice the instructions to (mis)use language used by feminists and other advocates of social justice in order to attack feminism and make the bizarre claim that a game having a female protagonist constitutes male rape of women's bodies. (Because Gamergate is about ethics in journalism and objectivity and honesty, don'tcha know.)

You should also see this. It's a list of tweets (https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/gamergate-is-a-misogy) by one a_man_in_black (https://twitter.com/a_man_in_black) (I like the work he's doing and wanted to make sure people saw it, OK?) arguing that Gamergate isn't a misogynistic movement unto itself so much as the latest outburst of a misogynistic movement that's been going for years. Like I say, Gamergate's antifeminist, misogynistic agenda precedes it. Here, he also argues that Gamergate "moderates" are a myth (https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/the-lie-of-gamergate-moderates) on the grounds that all Gamergaters benefit from the harassment committed by more aggressive Gamergaters. (Also, contains sadness about Gamergate driving a teenage girl who was passionate about gaming offline. :( )

TRIGGER WARNING JESUS CHRIST TRIGGER WARNING I DON'T EVEN HAVE TRIGGERS AND THIS FREAKED ME THE FUCK OUT! Now that I've shown you 4chan's involvement and just what kind of people festered there, I want you to see some other important communities behind Gamergate (http://gawker.com/these-are-the-creepy-4chan-successors-behind-gamergates-1648966614), including 8chan, which was created in response to 4chan banning Gamergate. TRIGGER WARNING!

I'd also like for you to have just a little look at who Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend who made the Zoe Post that begat the conspiracy against her, is. His name is Eron Gjoni, and this is him in a bite-sized nutshell. (https://twitter.com/ElizSimins/status/522811684201578496)

I want you to know what kinds of people (http://i.imgur.com/gbgqafV.jpg) are connected to the Reddit board KotakuInAction, which is supposedly the "respectable" wing of Gamergate (spoiler: it's not).

TRIGGER WARNING! I want you know what the moderators of KotakuInAction--which, again, is supposed to be the "respectable," "moderate," "anti-harassment" wing of Gamergate--get up to outside of KIA. FNVG provides info here (https://twitter.com/EffNOVideoGames/status/527939351280238592), including a link to an article on the subject and listing even more offenders than are listed in that article, including the note that KotakuInAction shared a moderator with a board called Philosophy of Rape. Which, unlike many of the other boards, makes no pretense of being about "fantasy," as the creator flat-out claims that he is as serious as a heart attack. If you have a strong stomach, WHTM goes into greater detail on one of the boards, "Break Feminazis," here (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/21/these-mens-rights-activists-get-off-literally-by-fantasizing-about-sexually-humiliating-feminists/). TRIGGER WARNING!

I want you to know what kind of people "lead" Gamergate (https://medium.com/@poopsockholmes/the-bad-apples-of-gamergate-ba39f8fd485), insofar as it has leaders--it claims to be leaderless, and yet many of these people are, in fact, major figures in the movement. Don't worry too much about the article being written by one "Poopsock Holmes"; "poopsocking" is just a joke about spending too much time playing video games (i.e., that someone is not even getting up to poop).

Here, have some more sadness (https://twitter.com/MadScientist212/status/528796384028135426) about what Gamergate's prominent figures really think about women.

And some more sadness (https://twitter.com/gamergatetxt/status/522899877538185216) about what GGers think about "SJWs" and gender. Way to deride exactly the people this world needs. (Note: Gamergatetxt isn't the original poster of that awful comment; rather, Gamergatetxt is a feed that archives the worst statements made by Gamergate.)

You wanna know who else is jumping on the GG bandwagon besides MRAs, rape apologists, open racists, anti-Semites, and yada yada? Stormfront. I am fucking serious. Fucking Stormfront. Literal neo-Nazis. (Granted those are open racists and anti-Semites, but this is kicking it up to a new level when you get open and proud neo-Nazis involved.) Gamergaters still aren't asking themselves why the literal worst people in the world today think the GG banner represents their interests while virtually everyone who is not a complete piece of shit stands against it. Additionally, you may notice two terms commonly thrown around in GG's rhetoric, particularly when they're not running PR: "SJW" ("Social Justice Warrior," which now pretty much refers to anyone who opens their mouth in opposition to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., despite some GGers making bizarre claims like "SJWs are known TERFs") and "cultural Marxism" (Marx's theories of class applied to race, gender, and sexuality). Both of these terms originated in neo-Nazi circles. "SJW" escaped from neo-Nazi circles quite a while ago, granted, but "cultural Marxism" is much newer to me, and leads me to suspect that Gamergate is even more strongly influenced by neo-Nazi thought than many of its members are willing to admit.

So yeah. This is all leading into one big clusterfuck at the centre: Gamergate isn't "just" inextricably linked to the harassment of women. It is also inextricably linked to an active agenda of misogyny and a desire to keep women disempowered in our culture that extends far beyond one harassment campaign--and also to the even more extreme neoreactionary movement (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Neoreactionary_movement). (If you wish to know more about the mouth-breathing degenerates behind the NRx movement, please read RationalWiki's article; it's depressing and I don't want to talk about it myself.) I fear that, with a lot of Gamergaters feeling like the world is against them--and the prominence of manosphere misogynists and neoreactionaries in GG (http://i.imgur.com/B8raLv6.jpg)--this is prime time for these foul movements to scoop up angry young men. This is a perfect recruiting campaign for the Men's Privilege Movement, for redpills, for neo-Nazis, for PUAs and other rape advocates, for neoreactionaries. Even if Gamergate has largely alienated most and awoken many to the need for feminism and social justice in general, it's still very convenient for the literal worst people in the world to bring more people into their particular folds. Ayn Rand's philosophy of pure greed was supposedly (I'm only 28, so my knowledge is limited) just a fringe thing for anti-hippies in college fifty years ago, and yet now that philosophy is actively corroding civilisation as we know it. I worry that in fifty years the NRx--something so heinous and blatantly evil that Ayn Rand actually manages to look almost tame in comparison--could pick up that kind of steam.

I'm upset. I'm angry and I'm scared and kind of want one of those strawberry daiquiris my grandmother picked up for me the other day even though I don't generally like to drink.

...But, before I go, I'm going to end on a tangent. Some Polish developer named Destructive Studios released a trailer a few weeks ago for a game they're developing called Hatred. (FNVG article here (http://fucknovideogames.tumblr.com/post/100204212288/hatred-is-a-genocide-simulator-developed-by-neo-nazis); critical Polygon article which includes the trailer--trigger warning, natch--here (http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/16/6988687/the-worst-trailer-of-the-year-revels-in-slaughtering-innocents)) It's a murder simulator in which a white male protagonist who hates the world goes out and hunts innocent people to kill, with a special focus on things like the victims pleading for their lives before you murder them in extremely graphic ways. The cherry on top is that someone actually looked into the political connections and affiliations of some of the developers and oh look they're neo-Nazis! And do you want to know what these neo-Nazis had to say about the game and why they were making it? They were making it because they wanted a counterpoint to today's "political correctness," and to make a game that was "honest" and not "political." We have officially reached such a fucking political nadir that there are people who can claim with a straight face that a neo-Nazi genocide simulator is the definition of "apolitical." But why do I bring it up? There's no direct link to Gamergate. It's just, this, right here, despite any actual connections, it just smacks of everything Gamergate is about. Teenage white male rage and entitlement. The idea that said teenage white male rage and entitlement is "apolitical" (see also: Gamergate's demand for an "apolitical" gaming press) and that anything else is a "political agenda." Hatred of everything from "political correctness" all the way on down to "basic human decency." And, y'know, actual neo-Nazis. That the trailer was released in the middle of the Gamergate shitstorm was just icing on the sadness cake.

I will say, I might be a hypocrite. I look at Hatred as a perfect example of what's wrong with gamer culture at the moment and something that should probably be kept out of respectable stores (not simply because of the violence, but because of the extremist political connections and implied agenda of the devs), but you know what? If someone were making a murder simulator about a woman venting her rage and hatred upon society in a horrific burst of ultra-violence, I would be all I'M THROWING MONEY AT THE SCREEN BUT NOTHING IS HAPPENING right now. But, of course, that would be "political." Also probably "misandry," somehow.

fuck it I need a drink

Allison W

11-02-2014, 05:58 PM

A little update on GG again. Yes, I saw something new since my last post; there's just no end to this madness. That daiquiri tasted awful but I'm glad I had that drink anyway because seriously fuck this bullshit.

That Gamergate has been harassing women opposed to it into silence isn't news. But now, when male allies speak up against false-flag "feminist" Christina Hoff Sommers telling GG that everything they do is peachy and they don't need to change the way they treat women or think about women at all and that feminists are evil people for bringing their cooties into their treehouse, this shit happens (https://twitter.com/Ash_Effect/status/528953667580198913/photo/1). Yes, that is a graphic accusing male allies of being The Patriarchy for not buying CHS's claim that she represents feminism. This, after harassing anti-GG women into silence to keep them from speaking up against this. It's as a_man_in_black said (https://storify.com/a_man_in_black/the-lie-of-gamergate-moderates): "moderate" Gamergaters are bullshit because they are still cashing in on the benefits of more aggressive Gamergaters harassing women into silence. I'd also like to take this moment to reiterate that appropriating and misusing language used by feminists and other advocates of social justice (https://twitter.com/EffNOVideoGames/status/522833853279268864/photo/1) has been part of GG's plan from square one, and that this is just a picture-perfect example of it.

Gamergate calls Christina Hoff Sommers "Based Mom." It's fitting, seeing as they use her to wash the poop out of their collective underpants.

BONUS! Remember my mention of anti-Semitism, racism, and neo-Nazis in Gamergate? Here, have some brand new anti-Semitism and racism in Gamergate (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/11/02/why-are-gamergaters-so-quick-to-excuse-an-anti-semitic-caricature-of-anita-sarkeesian-thats-literally-derived-from-nazi-propaganda/).

Allison W

11-07-2014, 03:34 PM

Sorry about being a little quiet the past several days. Some goings-on in another thread made me feel a little uncomfortable/unwelcome, but the less said about it the better.

Gamergate hatched a plan (http://fucknovideogames.tumblr.com/post/101734757303/operation-firefly-is-gamergates-latest-attempt) to try to make a move on Tumblr (http://fucknovideogames.tumblr.com/post/101730482728/taking-on-tumblr-is-a-bold-move-its-the), but I wouldn't be too worried about that if I were you. There aren't a lot of neutrals left for them to convert, especially on Tumblr. I'm not even sure why I'm reporting on this.

Gamergate's lawyer, however, is still a disgusting, sleazy fuck (https://twitter.com/PenLlawen/status/528133369708572672), and my god he needs to be moved to a remote island far far away before he actually does something, because he's already justified nefarious things to himself. That is not a good sign.

Here, wash that last link out of your brain (http://youtu.be/rr2JPjhtGZA) (warning: peak Gamergate at 3:13-3:20).

Anyway, while they're pretty clearly in their twilight and there's not really much of anything they can do to make a comeback at this point, they're still going on with bizarre conspiracy (https://archive.today/5o7G8) theories (http://no-harassment-here.tumblr.com/image/102001082860). (Also bizarre: what qualifies as "creepy research" to them.)

But speaking of conspiracy theories, on to the reason I broke my hiatus to post this in the first place. Christmas came early this year, folks. One of the major players in GG, also an anti-Semite and MRA, abandoned the movement (http://twishort.com/DONgc) due to its infighting. It's gotten so bad that even their hero Milo doesn't see this going anywhere good (https://twitter.com/Nero/status/530386146920906752). Because, as is to be expected from a bunch of conspiracy-theorist maniacs who see enemies everywhere they look, they are now eating their own (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1yS8JFIIAA7tHT.png:large).

I see a lot of GG's major female players (such as they are) on that shill list. I wonder if now they understand what the movement is really about, or if they've found some way to keep themselves in the dark.

Kobi

11-09-2014, 06:57 AM

https://s-media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/9b/54/87/9b5487e1c6e376bd162b6274af82eced.jpg

Kobi

11-09-2014, 06:58 AM

https://s-media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/de/f0/a3/def0a3755360400e2ae7488f7b553da3.jpg

Kobi

11-10-2014, 04:45 PM

WITH the success of Republicans in the midterm elections and the passage of Tennessee’s anti-abortion amendment, we can expect ongoing efforts to ban abortion and advance the “personhood” rights of fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses.

But it is not just those who support abortion rights who have reason to worry. Anti-abortion measures pose a risk to all pregnant women, including those who want to be pregnant.

Such laws are increasingly being used as the basis for arresting women who have no intention of ending a pregnancy and for preventing women from making their own decisions about how they will give birth.

How does this play out? Based on the belief that he had an obligation to give a fetus a chance for life, a judge in Washington, D.C., ordered a critically ill 27-year-old woman who was 26 weeks pregnant to undergo a cesarean section, which he understood might kill her. Neither the woman nor her baby survived.

In Iowa, a pregnant woman who fell down a flight of stairs was reported to the police after seeking help at a hospital. She was arrested for “attempted fetal homicide.”

In Utah, a woman gave birth to twins; one was stillborn. Health care providers believed that the stillbirth was the result of the woman’s decision to delay having a cesarean. She was arrested on charges of fetal homicide.

In Louisiana, a woman who went to the hospital for unexplained vaginal bleeding was locked up for over a year on charges of second-degree murder before medical records revealed she had suffered a miscarriage at 11 to 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Florida has had a number of such cases. In one, a woman was held prisoner at a hospital to prevent her from going home while she appeared to be experiencing a miscarriage. She was forced to undergo a cesarean. Neither the detention nor the surgery prevented the pregnancy loss, but they did keep this mother from caring for her two small children at home. While a state court later found the detention unlawful, the opinion suggested that if the hospital had taken her prisoner later in her pregnancy, its actions might have been permissible.

In another case, a woman who had been in labor at home was picked up by a sheriff, strapped down in the back of an ambulance, taken to a hospital, and forced to have a cesarean she did not want. When this mother later protested what had happened, a court concluded that the woman’s personal constitutional rights “clearly did not outweigh the interests of the State of Florida in preserving the life of the unborn child.”

Anti-abortion reasoning has also provided the justification for arresting pregnant women who experience depression and have attempted suicide. A 22-year-old in South Carolina who was eight months pregnant attempted suicide by jumping out a window. She survived despite suffering severe injuries. Because she lost the pregnancy, she was arrested and jailed for the crime of homicide by child abuse.

These are not isolated or rare cases. Last year, we published a peer-reviewed study documenting 413 arrests or equivalent actions depriving pregnant women of their physical liberty during the 32 years between 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, and 2005. In a majority of these cases, women who had no intention of ending a pregnancy went to term and gave birth to a healthy baby. This includes the many cases where the pregnant woman was alleged to have used some amount of alcohol or a criminalized drug.

Since 2005, we have identified an additional 380 cases, with more arrests occurring every week. This significant increase coincides with what the Guttmacher Institute describes as a “seismic shift” in the number of states with laws hostile to abortion rights.

The principle at the heart of contemporary efforts to end legal abortion is that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses are persons or at least have separate rights that must be protected by the state. In each of the cases we identified, this same rationale provided the justification for the deprivation of pregnant women’s physical liberty, as well as of the right to medical decision making, medical privacy, bodily integrity and, in one case, the woman’s right to life.

Many of the pregnant women subjected to this mistreatment are themselves profoundly opposed to abortion. Yet it was precisely the legal arguments for recriminalizing abortion that were used to strip them of their rights to dignity and liberty in the context of labor and delivery. These cases, individually and collectively, highlight what is so often missed when the focus is on attacking or defending abortion, namely that all pregnant women are at risk of losing a wide range of fundamental rights that are at the core of constitutional personhood in the United States.

If we want to end these unjust and inhumane arrests and forced interventions on pregnant women, we need to stop focusing only on the abortion issue and start working to protect the personhood of pregnant women.

We should be able to work across the spectrum of opinion about abortion to unite in the defense of one basic principle: that at no point in her pregnancy should a woman lose her civil and human rights.

Lynn M. Paltrow is a lawyer and the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, where Jeanne Flavin, a sociology professor at Fordham University, is the president of the board of directors.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/08/opinion/pregnant-and-no-civil-rights.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Kobi

11-13-2014, 01:21 PM

They’ve taken down women I care about one by one. Now, the vicious mob of the Gamergate movement is coming after me. They’ve threatened to rape me. They’ve threatened to make me choke to death on my husband’s severed genitals. They’ve threatened to murder any children I might have.

This angry horde has been allowed to wage its misogynistic war without penalty for too long. It’s time for the video game industry to stop them.

Gamergate is ostensibly about journalistic ethics. Supporters say they want to address conflicts of interest between the people that make games and the people that support them. In reality, Gamergate is a group of gamers that are willing to destroy the women who have invaded their clubhouse.

The movement is not new. Two years ago, when Anita Sarkeesian tried to crowdfund a series of videos critiquing the hypersexualized female characters of video games, they threatened to kill and rape her. The movement reached fever pitch – and got its name — when a jilted former lover of indie game developer Zoe Quinn published transcripts of her life online. Gamers who were outraged over charges that Quinn’s game Depression Quest had received favorable reviews due to an alleged romantic relationship with a journalist, seized the opportunity to shame and terrify her into hiding. Now, Gamergate is a wildfire that threatens to consume the entire games industry.

The fact that Gamergate supporters went after Quinn and not the journalist says everything you need to know about the movement.

I became Gamergate’s latest target when I tweeted this joke about supporters of the movement. (Unable to copy the image. See article directly.)

The next day, my Twitter mentions were full of death threats so severe I had to flee my home. They have targeted the financial assets of my company by hacking. They have tried to impersonate me on Twitter. Even as we speak, they are spreading lies to journalists via burner e-mail accounts in an attempt to destroy me professionally.

We’ve lost too many women to this lunatic mob. Good women the industry was lucky to have, such as Jenn Frank, Mattie Bryce and my friend Samantha Allen, one of the most insightful critics in games media. They decided the personal cost was too high, and I don’t know who could blame them.

Every woman I know in the industry is terrified she will be next.

The culture in which women are treated this way by gamers didn’t happen in a vacuum. For 30 years, video games have been designed by men, marketed to men and sold to men. It’s obvious to anyone outside the industry that video games have serious issues with the portrayal of women. It’s not just oversexualized examples, such as Ivy of the Soul Caliber series. Games are still lazily falling on the same outdated tropes involving women. Princess Peach, of Nintendo’s Mario games, has been kidnapped in 12 separate games since 1985. Perhaps the most disturbing of all is the propensity of games to have women thoughtlessly murdered as a motivation for the male hero, such as Watch Dogs.

The consequence of this culture is male gamers have been trained to feel video games are their turf. In stopping Gamergate, the men who dominate it – not just women — must address the culture that created Gamergate.

Some have. But many more have been silent. In the male-dominated video game media, many have chosen to sit by and do nothing as Gamergate picks us off, one by one. IGN has not covered Gamergate. Game Informer has not covered Gamergate. Ironically, the people who most need to hear this message are not hearing it, because of an editorial choice to stay on the sidelines.

There are many straightforward steps we can take to change this.

First, major institutions in video games, which happen to be dominated by men, need to speak up immediately and denounce Gamergate. The dam started to break this week as Patrick Klepek of Giant Bomb broke the silence at their publication on Monday. Last week, the industry’s top trade group, the Entertainment Software Association spoke out against Gamergate, saying “Threats of violence and harassment have to stop. There is no place in the video game community for personal attacks and threats.”

Secondly, I call upon the entire industry to examine its hiring practices at all levels. Women make up half of all gamers, yet we make up only a fraction of this industry. While it’s possible to point to high profile women in the field, the fact remains. Women hold a shockingly disproportionate number of high level positions in game studios, game publishers and particularly in leadership roles. There are just 11 percent of game designers and 3 percent of programmers, according to The Boston Globe.

Game journalism also plays a critical role. It doesn’t matter how many women we get into game production. If the only people evaluating the work we do continue to be men, women’s voices will never be heard.

My friend Quinn told me about a folder on her computer called, “The Ones We’ve Lost.” They are the letters she’s gotten from young girls who dream of being game developers, but are terrified of the environment they see. I nearly broke into tears as I told her I had a folder filled with the same. The truth is, even if we stopped Gamergate tomorrow, it will have already come at too high a cost.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/20/rape-and-death-threats-are-terrorizing-female-gamers-why-havent-men-in-tech-spoken-out/

--------------------------

The feminist analysis of this would be, GamerGate is another tickle down effect of the real problem. The real problem is we live in a patriarchal world, made by and for males based on the concepts of male superiority which cannot exist without female inferiority; male dominance which cannot exist without female submission; male entitlement which cannot exist without female lack thereof. All of this is reinforced thru ritualized, systemic, and institutionized methods to keep women, oppressed, victimized and objectified. The biggest weapon used is the threat of violence and "corrective rape" to those who dare expose the system for what it is.

The system, from time to time, allows things to occur which appear to be "progressive" and "empowering" for females. Nothing is allowed to happen in an oppressive system which does not enhance or reinforce the power or whims of the oppressors. Nothing. The oppressed may be operating under the illusion they have gained something or made headway but in the final analysis, the benefit to the oppressor far outweighs the crumbs the oppressed mistake as progress.

Much time, energy, and resources are wasted by reinventing the wheel, issue after issue in the trickle down effect. GamerGate, the rape of females, domestic violence, wage inequity, and every other trickle down issue comes from the same source. These issues will remain until the source of these horrors inflicted on females is dealt with with.

The silence of males on these issues and the use of "not all males" are both methods of distancing oneself from the reality and responsibility. Silence implies consent and agreement. "Not all males" is saying there is a difference without demonstrating there is a difference. To expect those who benefit from such a system to speak to the inequities of such is not exactly realistic. It takes strength and courage to stand apart from the protection afforded by the whole.

Feminism is about always keeping the bigger picture in mind when looking at the trickle down effects. It is about speaking to the truth over and over. It is about living the truth and modeling the truth to others. It is about not being complicit in ones own oppression and educating others about this as well.

Feminism is not a laundry lists of trickle down issues which are wholly unsolvable at the trickle down level. It is a way of seeing the world for what it is and being committed to changing it 24/7/365. It is also about feeling you are banging your head against the wall.....cuz you are.

And, you know you are doing a damn good job as a feminist when people attack you and threaten you for speaking out, for telling the truth, and for being committed to the truth. Being threatened means you are speaking to something that is very threatening to the person(s) who are threatening you. Thats a crapload of threatening.

It is stone age mentality but threats and violence are all about instilling fear and forcing people to be silent because they are paralyzed by fear. Threats and violence are just methods of control, like any other methods of control females face every single freakin day.

History has proven over and over the methods of the oppressors. It has also shown the methods the oppressed have used to lessen their burden including bargaining, colluding, appealing to higher senses, using logic etc.

History will keep repeating itself until the oppressed finally say no and back up that no with appropriate, definitive action.

Kobi

11-13-2014, 01:51 PM

The man once known as “America’s Dad” is too radioactive for daytime television.

Bill Cosby, who was scheduled to appear as a guest on “The Queen Latifah Show” to promote his new comedy tour, is no longer going to be on the show.

TMZ initially reported producers rescinded the invitation, but updated the story with a statement from the show’s spokesman saying Cosby’s appearance was “postponed at his request.” The change came just days after the Daily Mail published Barbara Bowman’s account of the alleged sexual abuse she said she suffered at Cosby’s hands.

These allegations have been reported for years — before Bowman spoke to the Daily Mail, she spoke to Newsweek in February. Cosby has said almost nothing about the accusations. His publicist told Newsweek: “This is a 10-year-old, discredited accusation that proved to be nothing at the time, and is still nothing.”

Tamara Green spoke to Matt Lauer on the “Today” show in 2005 about her alleged experiences and in February to Newsweek. In 2004, Andrea Constand filed suit against Cosby for battery, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, alleging that Cosby had drugged and raped her. Thirteen women came forward with their own allegations and agreed to testify as witnesses if the suit went to trial. Cosby settled in 2006.

In recent years, Cosby has executed something of a career revival: He did a special for Comedy Central, “Bill Cosby: Far From Finished.” He is developing a new show for NBC slated for summer or fall of next year.

But it seems actor and comedian Hannibal Buress’s willingness to openly criticize Cosby finally tipped the scales against him.

Buress is on tour performing a new stand-up act. In it, he calls Cosby a rapist while voicing disagreement with his more recent role as public scold to black people.

“Bill Cosby has the f—ing smuggest old black man public persona that I hate,” Buress said. “He just gets on TV — ‘Pull your pants up, black people. I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. So, brings you down a couple notches.”

During his act, Buress expressed incredulity at what he calls Cosby’s “Teflon public image.” “I’ve done this bit on stage, and people don’t believe me. People think I’m making it up,” Buress said. “If you didn’t know about it, when you leave here, Google ‘Bill Cosby rape.’ It’s not funny. That s— has more results than ‘Hannibal Buress.’”

What was strange was the mushroom cloud of controversy Buress set off repeating something he had said before — not about new allegations, but about the same 13 women who signed on as witnesses in Constand’s 2004 lawsuit.

Without intending to, Buress became a perfect example of the conundrum of male allyship: It wasn’t enough 13 different women accused Cosby of drugging, raping and violently assaulting them. It was only after a famous man, Buress, called him out that the possibility of Cosby becoming a television pariah became real.

Last month, Cosby was a guest on the “The Colbert Report.” Colbert remained in character, but was unambiguously deferential. In August, Cosby appeared on “The Tonight Show” and got similar treatment from Jimmy Fallon.

Author Mark Whitaker omitted rape allegations from his new biography of Cosby, and the book was still widely praised for giving a comprehensive look at Cosby’s life. When HuffPost Live host Marc Lamont Hill asked Whitaker why he failed to mention the rape allegations in the book, for which he had Cosby’s cooperation, Whitaker answered: “In these cases, there were no definitive court findings, there were no independent witnesses, and I just felt, at the end of the day, all I would be doing would be, ‘These people say this, Cosby denies this.’ And as not only a reporter but his biographer, if people asked me, ‘What is the truth? What do you think?’ I would be in the position of saying, ‘I don’t know,’ and I just felt uncomfortable.”

Cosby is hardly an outlier when it comes to popular figures given the benefit of the doubt when accused of abusing women. When fired CBC host Jian Ghomeshi posted on Facebook Sunday night he was being targeted by a “jilted ex-girlfriend,” fans and even those unfamiliar with Ghomeshi immediately rallied around him. The post drew more than 100,000 likes.

Owen Pallett, a friend of Ghomeshi’s, pulled a Buress: He chose to publicly condemn Ghomeshi, who is accused of sexually assaulting and battering women. “Jian is my friend,” Pallet wrote in a rather damning Facebook post. “I have appeared twice on Q. But there is no grey area here. Three women have been beaten by Jian Ghomeshi.”

Pallett chose to speak while only two of nine women who came forward to accuse Ghomeshi — actress Lucy DeCoutere and lawyer and author Reva Seth — were willing to reveal their identities. The others requested anonymity out of fear of harassment, threats and retaliation. At the time Pallett published his post, only four women had come forward. Since then, four more have spoken to various Canadian news organizations. Many Ghomeshi supporters dismissed them as liars, as has Ghomeshi.

But somehow, Pallett’s willingness to speak bolsters the women’s claims. The problem, argued Salon’s Katie McDonough, is that people were shocked Pallett chose to believe women:

Is there anything that scandalous about Pallett’s decision? After all, what Pallett is doing is what a lot of people have already done — taken sides. Pallett just happens to have taken the side that says that women are not vindictive. Women are not liars. Women are not out to destroy men for sport.

On one hand, having male allies such as Buress and Pallett, who are unafraid to speak up, has been instrumental in amplifying women’s voices when they make accusations against men more powerful and famous than themselves. On the other, there’s a question why this is necessary at all — and why there’s such a reflexive reaction to dismiss them.

The sexual assault allegations by Bowman, Constand and Green were all over the Internet when Queen Latifah’s show decided to book Cosby. Quite possibly, it took Buress’s words to make Cosby so unpalatable the best decision for both parties was to cancel.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/10/31/after-jian-ghomeshi-is-the-world-finally-starting-to-turn-against-bill-cosby/

Gemme

11-17-2014, 03:16 PM

Anchor sexism (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/11/17/anchor-wears-same-suit-every-day-to-prove-a-point/20994811/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl8%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D565225) in Australia.

Allison W

11-18-2014, 06:10 PM

I've been putting this one off, but I think there's sufficient mass for another update on what GG has been up to.

First off, on entities (and men) in tech condemning Gamergate, Blizzard's CEO, Michael Morhaime, did so at the start of Blizzcon (http://www.themarysue.com/blizzard-gamergate/) on November 7. It was fairly gentle as condemnations go, but still. For some further context on Blizzard: Blizzard is the company behind World of Warcraft, whose playerbase is now like 60% women, because Blizzard actually punishes harassment on WoW servers. Because they were smart and realised that letting dudebros drive women away was leaving money on the table. (And that's what Gamergate is angry about: women's money is green and game developers are starting to look for ways to get women to buy their products. Which involves putting the interests of women ahead of the interests of toxic little boys who want to keep "cooties" out of what they mistakenly believe to be their treehouse.)

Some more good news: one of Gamergate's early successes, such as they were, that wasn't harassing women out of vidya was getting companies like Intel to stop advertising on sites they don't like. Like getting Intel to stop advertising on Gamasutra. So what's the good news? Intel reversed its decision and is advertising on Gamasutra again (http://www.themarysue.com/intel-gamasutra-new-ads-gamergate-debacle/). So not only is Gamergate stalling out, but it's actively losing ground it once held.

Video game critic and cultural commentator Jim Sterling of the Jimquisition left The Escapist (an online entertainment magazine, mostly about video gaming) to go independent. I don't think he actually declared a specific reason aside from getting enough support on his Patreon to be able to safely go independent, but I wonder how much of it has to do with the fact that Alexander Marcis, general manager of the Escapist, gave preferential coverage to Gamergate by actually getting his sources for an article on Gamergate from 4chan (https://storify.com/alexlifschitz/escapist-drama). The writers Alexander Marcis invited to comment included Slade Villena, a guy who previously had actively advocated for "black hat" (criminal) tactics against Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian, and James Desborough, whose Gor RPG (about a massively misogynistic setting in which women are sex slaves, I wish I were making this up) Alexander Marcis was financially backing at the time (http://womanistgamergirl.tumblr.com/post/99950630674/the-escapists-alexander-marcis-has-been-crowdfunding) (I actually saw that kickstarter and promptly donated all of my NOPE). Because it was never about ethics in gaming journalism. Jim Sterling, on the other hand, has ended up on the anti-GG side by virtue of people accusing him of being a "social justice warrior" because he's stated that better representation of women and minorities in video games is both morally and financially the correct course of action (http://youtu.be/je72mH9OmuU). (His response to this accusation was to ask if he's allowed to be a social justice bard. Thank God for him.)

Now for some half-assed "bad news" that doesn't actually seem to mean anything positive for Gamergate:

Gamergate lost Milo, but it picked up a new sad excuse for a champion (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/11/14/gamergates-new-champion-is-a-wax-replica-of-patrick-bateman-who-thinks-gamers-are-a-bunch-of-dateless-nerds/), who, as David Futrelle says, looks like a wax replica of Patrick Bateman and thinks gamers are a bunch of dateless nerds (and Gamergaters don't seem to be disagreeing with him very hard on this point).

Roosh V (who one of my friends nicknamed LR1, for "Literally Rapist 1") started a "gaming site" for Gamergaters called Reaxxion (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/11/12/rooshs-reaxxion-douchebag-non-gamer-starts-gaming-website-for-douchebags/) (presumably a reference to "neoreactionary"). Of course, he openly declares that his stake in this is 'protecting the interests of heterosexual Western males,' but that gay men and 'attractive women' are still allowed. One of the first articles up on the site ended with the note that in further columns it would explore how video games are a fundamentally male activity. I'm not even kidding. I wish I were.

Remember that thing with Matt Taylor's shirt covered in half-naked ladies? Gamergate is jumping on that because the #Gamergate hashtag is losing steam (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/11/16/with-gamergate-floundering-the-internet-douchebag-squad-whips-up-a-shirtstorm/), and of course they're talking about how this is the exact thing they've been fighting all along. (Because it was never about ethics in gaming journalism.)

The guys making The Sarkeesian Effect, who are, of course, Gamergaters, decided to bring on Jack Fucking Thompson as a source (https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2mp58l/archconservative_jack_thompson_thinks_anita_is_a/). I'm old enough to remember when Jack Thompson was actually trying to destroy video games, and so I always found the comparisons of Anita Sarkeesian to Jack Thompson to be ridiculous and disingenuous. But now, Gamergate has passed comparing Anita Sarkeesian to Jack Thompson and actually progressed to inviting Jack Thompson--who not only actually did seek to destroy video games, but also got disbarred for severe ethics violations--in to call Anita Sarkeesian a "censor." (Because it was always about attacking feminism, and not about ethics of any kind, or even really about video games, particularly for the open misogynists behind The Sarkeesian Effect.)

Now, this next one is a fair bit heavier--trigger warning, definitely a trigger warning for this link. Remember how I mentioned in an earlier post that /r/KotakuInAction actually had to drop several moderators from its board for their extremely inconvenient connections, like that one moderator they happened to share with /r/PhilosophyOfRape? I didn't go into more detail on that board at the time, but if you actually want the messy details, here they are, from The Mary Sue. Again, TRIGGER WARNING (http://www.themarysue.com/gross-subreddit-advocates-rape/).

Here, wash that out of your brain. Have a nice picture of Vivian James being liberated from being Gamergate's mascot (http://i.imgur.com/k91HnMr.jpg) and getting some good pro-woman games and even a new hoodie so she doesn't have to wear a dogwhistle rape joke.

Now. Lastly, some shitlord told Brianna Wu that "respects is earn." You know, that thing where dudebros claim that it's OK to disrespect women because women haven't "earned respect" but men supposedly have. The way this guy butchered the phrase, however, invited a delightful new meme. Enjoy! (http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/11/17/respects-is-earn-a-meme-is-born/)

PS: on women in STEM fields, and computer science and vidya specifically, god dammit Mattel (http://www.dailydot.com/geek/barbie-engineer-book-girls-game-developers/)

Gemme

11-20-2014, 06:48 PM

UVa Fraternity Suspended Over Rape Allegations (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/11/20/fraternity-suspends-activities-governor-deeply-disturbed-afte/20996999/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl18%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D568042)

Also, this struck a chord with me.

#FeministHackerBarbie (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/11/20/barbie-i-can-be-a-computer-engineer-book-creates-internet-bac/20996755/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl35%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D567788)

smh

Soon

11-20-2014, 08:03 PM

UVa Fraternity Suspended Over Rape Allegations (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/11/20/fraternity-suspends-activities-governor-deeply-disturbed-afte/20996999/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl18%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D568042)

Here's the Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/a-rape-on-campus-20141119?page=4) in-depth article on that.

Kobi

12-01-2014, 09:58 AM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court is weighing the free-speech rights of people who use violent or threatening language on Facebook and other social media.

The justices will hear arguments Monday in the case of a man who was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for posting graphically violent rap lyrics on Facebook about killing his estranged wife, shooting up a kindergarten class and attacking an FBI agent.

Anthony Elonis of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, says he was just venting his anger over a broken marriage and never meant to threaten anyone.

But his wife didn't see it that way, and neither did federal prosecutors. A jury convicted Elonis of violating a federal law that makes it a crime to threaten another person. A federal appeals court rejected his claim that his comments were protected by the First Amendment.

Lawyers for Elonis argue that the government must prove he actually intended his comments to threaten others. The government says it doesn't matter what Elonis intended; the true test of a threat is whether his words make a reasonable person feel threatened.

One post about his wife said, "There's one way to love you but a thousand ways to kill you. I'm not going to rest until your body is a mess, soaked in blood and dying from all the little cuts."

The case has drawn widespread attention from free-speech advocates who say comments on Facebook, Twitter and other social media can be hasty, impulsive and easily misinterpreted. They point out that a message on Facebook intended for a small group could be taken out of context when viewed by a wider audience.

"A statute that proscribes speech without regard to the speaker's intended meaning runs the risk of punishing protected First Amendment expression simply because it is crudely or zealously expressed," said a brief from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.

So far, most lower courts have rejected that view, ruling that a "true threat" depends on how an objective person perceives the message.

For more than four decades, the Supreme Court has said that "true threats" to harm another person are not protected speech under the First Amendment. But the court has been careful to distinguish threats from protected speech such as "political hyperbole" or "unpleasantly sharp attacks."

Elonis argues that his online posts under the pseudonym "Tone Dougie" were simply a crude and spontaneous form of expression that should not be considered threatening if he didn't really mean it. His lawyers say the posts were heavily influenced by rap star Eminem, who has also fantasized in songs about killing his ex-wife.

But Elonis' wife testified that the comments made her fear for her life.

After his wife obtained a protective order against him, Elonis wrote a lengthy post mocking court proceedings: "Did you know that it's illegal for me to say I want to kill my wife?"

A female FBI agent later visited Elonis at home to ask him about the postings. Elonis took to Facebook again: "Little agent lady stood so close, took all the strength I had not to turn the bitch ghost. Pull my knife, flick my wrist and slit her throat."

The Obama administration says requiring proof that a speaker intended to be threatening would undermine the law's protective purpose. In its brief to the court, the Justice Department argues that no matter what someone believes about his comments, it doesn't lessen the fear and anxiety they might cause for other people.

The case is Elonis v. United States, 13-983.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SUPREME_COURT_FACEBOOK_THREATS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Kobi

12-02-2014, 01:36 PM

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ee/23/85/ee2385a4eaca420723891eab76776f2e.jpg

Kobi

12-03-2014, 12:00 PM

WASHINGTON — Peggy Young used to drive for United Parcel Service, delivering envelopes and small packages early in the morning. “I was a dependable, honorable worker,” she said. “I worked when I was supposed to. I did what I was supposed to.”

Then she got pregnant, and her doctor recommended that she avoid lifting anything heavy. The company responded by placing her on unpaid leave.

“I lost my health benefits,” Ms. Young said. “I lost my pension. And I lost my wages for seven months. And my disability benefits.”

She sued under the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and the Supreme Court will hear her case on Wednesday. Women’s rights groups hope that Ms. Young’s case will snap their recent losing streak at the court, which has included decisions on equal pay, medical leave, abortion and contraception.

“We’ve had some very big disappointments recently, but I’m hoping it won’t be a uniform set of experiences,” said Marcia D. Greenberger, a co-president of the National Women’s Law Center. “I hope Peggy Young will break the mold.”

The Supreme Court’s decision has the potential to affect the lives of millions of women, who make up 47 percent of the labor force and often work during and late into their pregnancies. According to the Census Bureau, an estimated 62 percent of women who had given birth in the previous year were in the labor force.

Women are the sole or primary breadwinners in 40 percent of American families with children, according to a Pew Research Center study. Whether employers are required to make accommodations for their pregnancies, women’s groups say, will make a tangible difference in the lives of many families.

UPS has announced that it will change its policy to offer light duty to pregnant women starting in January. “The new policy will strengthen UPS’s commitment to treating all workers fairly and supporting women in the workplace,” said Kara Ross, a spokeswoman for the company.

The case before the Supreme Court, she said, “is really about what the UPS policy was then.” The old policy, she said, “was lawful and consistently applied to our workers.”

The company told the justices that it had no legal obligation to make the kinds of accommodations it recently announced. The lower courts in Ms. Young’s case agreed, with a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., saying the pregnancy law does not give pregnant women “a ‘most favored nation’ status.”

“One may characterize the UPS policy as insufficiently charitable,” Judge Allyson Kay Duncan wrote for the court, “but a lack of charity does not amount to discriminatory animus directed at a protected class of employees.”

Ms. Young, speaking in a public relations firm’s conference room here, said it would have been easy for UPS to accommodate her.

The parcels she delivered were so light that the lifting restriction recommended by her doctor was needless. “It’s envelopes or very small boxes,” she said. “They sat in a little basket in a seat next to me. Very rarely was it anything heavy, because it’s very expensive to send that way.”
Continue reading the main story

If something heavy did turn up for an early morning delivery, a co-worker could handle it, Ms. Young said. If the company remained concerned, she said, it could have assigned her less demanding duties.

She said she had worked a second job in the afternoons throughout her pregnancy, delivering flowers. “They were heavier than the packages I would deliver for UPS,” Ms. Young said.

Business groups have filed briefs supporting UPS, saying the pregnancy law did not apply to Ms. Young’s situation. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce noted that many of its members had nonetheless “decided — for a variety of reasons — to offer pregnant employees more than what federal law compels them to provide.”

Ms. Young has attracted a diverse array of supporters, including women’s rights organizations and anti-abortion groups. The federal law, the anti-abortion groups told the justices, “protects the unborn child as well as the working mother who faces economic and other difficulties in bearing and raising the child.”

The Obama administration also supports Ms. Young, a stance that has required it to renounce statements in earlier briefs. The administration’s latest brief included a footnote acknowledging that the federal government “has previously taken the position that pregnant employees with work limitations are not similarly situated to employees with similar limitations caused by on-the-job injuries.”

“That is no longer the position of the United States,” the brief said, though it added that the United States Postal Service “continues to offer different treatment” to its pregnant workers.

The pregnancy law, she noted, was enacted in response to the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in General Electric Co. v. Gilbert, which ruled that discrimination based on pregnancy was not a form of sex discrimination. That congressional reaction, she said, was similar to one that followed the court’s decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the 2007 ruling that said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 imposed strict time limits for bringing workplace discrimination suits. In response, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

As for Ms. Young, Justice Ginsburg said, “this was a woman whose doctor told her she couldn’t lift more than, I think, 20 pounds.”

“For people who were temporarily disabled,” she added, “the employer would make an accommodation, but the employer said, ‘We’re not making an accommodation for her because she’s not disabled.’ ”

The case, Young v. United Parcel Service, No. 12-1226, turns on the language of the pregnancy law. It requires employers to treat “women affected by pregnancy” the same as “other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work.”

There is no dispute that some UPS workers were offered accommodations. What the two sides disagree about is whether the law required Ms. Young to be treated the same way.

The company made accommodations for workers who were injured on the job, who were covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act and who lost their driving certification from the Department of Transportation.

“They even accommodated people who lost their regular driver’s licenses due to drunk-driving convictions,” said Sharon Fast Gustafson, one of Ms. Young’s lawyers. “They would give them a separate driver to drive the truck while they were delivering packages.”

The company countered that it had treated Ms. Young the same as “other employees with similar lifting restrictions resulting from an off-the-job injury or condition.”

That is slicing things too finely, said Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan who will argue in the Supreme Court on behalf of Ms. Young. “What went wrong here,” he said, “is that UPS did not treat Peggy Young as it did any other valued employee.”

Ms. Young, 42, left UPS in 2009 and now works for a government contractor. She has three children, and she said she would be thinking about them when the Supreme Court heard her case.

“I don’t want my daughters to have to choose,” Ms. Young said, “between having a baby and supporting a family.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/us/case-seeking-job-protections-for-pregnant-women-heads-to-supreme-court.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=RelatedCoverage&region=Marginalia&pgtype=article

Gemme

12-06-2014, 06:50 PM

Sailor Filmed and Distributed Videos of Women on Submarine (http://www.aol.com/article/2014/12/06/navy-investigating-sailor-who-allegedly-filmed-women-in-submarin/21003810/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl3%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D577051)

Kobi

12-10-2014, 05:13 PM

You wouldn't think that folks dressing up in Sailor Moon costumes would strike fear into grown adults. And yet, for many in the comics industry, cosplay—“costume play”— seems to produce unusual levels of anxiety and bile. The most recent individual to publicly shout at the X-Men to get off his lawn is artist Patrick Broderick, who wrote on Facebook:

If you're a Cosplay personality, please don't send me a friend request. If you're a convention promoter and you're building your show around cosplay events and mega multiple media guest don't invite me....You bring nothing of value to the shows, and if you're a promoter pushing cosplay as your main attraction you're not helping the industry or comics market..Thank you.

Writer Mark Ellis then suggested that cosplayers had "narcissistic personality disorder" and took a brave stand against "overweight women in Power Girl and Slave Girl Leia costumes posing, posturing and demanding $20 to take a photo of them. A guy I know just said, ‘You’re standing around in public looking like a fool…shove your $20’ and took pictures anyway."

The dynamic here is clear enough. As Sam Maggs writes at The Mary Sue, the superhero comic world has long tilted overwhelmingly towards guys. That's changing though—and cosplay is both a result and a cause. Cosplay combines comics with the stereotypically feminized world of fashion; it's a way for folks to combine a love of Batman or Thor with a love of fabric and sewing and dressing up. As Maggs says, "Cosplay is an industry largely dominated by women; it opens up the world of comics—a world which has overwhelmingly felt exclusionary to girls and women—in a whole new way."

The question is, why do folks like Broderick and Ellis find that threatening? How exactly does someone cosplaying Power-Girl next to your booth damage you? People sometimes make vague claims about loss of revenue, or that the cosplayers don't buy enough comics—though it's hard to figure how more people at a convention filing past your table is going to damage your bottom line. The real vitriol, in any case, as in Ellis's statement, seems to be directed at the sexuality of cosplay, and even more at its artificiality. It’s the same mentality behind the fake geek girl meme—the idea that women cosplayers aren't real fans, and, beyond that, aren't actually real people. As Julia Serano argues in her 2007 book Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, the feminine is often denigrated as artificial and sexualized. The cosplayers threaten to undermine the authentic purity and virtue of the comics industry. A woman is getting her picture taken close by—how can we ever take our magic wishing-rings and giant-sized Man-Things seriously again?!

Those giant-sized Man-Things are perhaps more relevant than some cosplay nay-sayers might like to admit. It's true that comics in recent years has tended to define itself as authentic, serious, and male against the frivolous artificiality of cosplay. But in other contexts, it's comics themselves that have been defined as feminized, frivolous, and artificial. Bart Beaty in his 2012 book Comics vs. Art pointed out that high art has often framed comics as "feminized kitsch"—much to the discomfort of comics creators. Pop artists like Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and (more recently) Jeff Koons use comic books as a way to tweak high-art seriousness and the cult of the swaggering expressive male genius. In doing so, they linked comics to gayness, femininity, and camp. Beaty says that the massive success of the Adam West Batman TV series was especially painful for comics fans, since that show "drew heavily on a camp aesthetic." It did this, not least, through its colorful costumes. Ellis scorns the non-stick-thin bodies of cosplayers, but before those folks dressed up, Adam West was proudly sporting his Bat-paunch, to the delight of many a lusty villaineness.

More, according to Beaty, pop art was often validated as masculine itself in comparison to feminized comics. Lichtenstein, he says, has been figured as "a masculinized saviour of commercial culture" in comparison to "popular forms" like comics that are seen as "sentimental and feminized." In the catalogue for the 1993 traveling exhibition High & Low, curators Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik, for example, argued that "Pop art saved the comics." Pop art used comics to undermine masculinity, and then, in Beaty's view, built its own masculinity on a vision of itself swooping down to rescue a lower art form in distress.

The backlash to cosplay is in part guys trying to keep girls out of the male clubhouse. But in this context it can also be seen as feminized guys panicking at yet another in a long line of demonstrations that the male clubhouse isn't all that male to begin with. You could argue that cosplay's associations with fashion actually make it more highbrow than comics—the New York fashion runway and the New York gallery scene are more kin than either is to low pulp superhero comics. Cosplay is appropriating superheroes for art, much as pop art has done—and some in comics fear the results.

But they shouldn't. The truth is that cosplay is not a continuation of pop-art denigration by other means. Instead, it's an antidote. Pop art's self-conscious manipulation of comics is only possible, or painful, in a world where comics defines its legitimacy in narrow terms. Lichtenstein is only an outsider co-opting comics if you insist on seeing Lichtenstein as something other than a comics artist himself. Cosplay—like the Batman TV series before it—could be a way for fans to be the pop artists: to cast aside the wearisome performance of legitimacy for a more flamboyant, less agonized fandom. Once you stop neurotically policing boundaries, the question of whether comics or superheroes are masculine or feminine becomes irrelevant. If superheroes and comics are for everyone, that "everyone" automatically includes people of all genders, wearing whatever they wish.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/why-comic-book-guys-are-quivering-at-cosplay-gender-insecurity/383617/2/

Kobi

12-11-2014, 10:37 AM

When it comes to stopping violence against women, actions speak louder than words. So even though there’s increased worldwide awareness about violence against women, the problem won’t be solved unless countries make significant policy and financial changes to support victims, according to a five-part series of studies in The Lancet, one of the world’s premier medical journals.

The series, entitled “Violence Against Women and Girls,” calls the violence a “global public health and clinical problem of epidemic proportions,” and the statistics are bleak. 100-140 million women have undergone female genital mutilation worldwide, and 3 million African girls per year are at risk. 7% of women will be sexually assaulted by someone besides their partner in their lifetimes. Almost 70 million girls worldwide have been married before they turned 18. According to WHO estimates, 30% of women worldwide have experienced partner violence. The researchers said that these problems could only be solved with political action and increased funding, since the violence has continued “despite increased global attention,” implying awareness is not enough.

“No magic wand will eliminate violence against women and girls,” series co-lead Charlotte Watts, founding Director of the Gender Violence and Health Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said in a statement. “But evidence tells us that changes in attitudes and behavior are possible, and can be achieved within less than a generation.”

One of the major problems highlighted in the Lancet series is that much of the current research on violence against women has been conducted in high-income countries, and it’s mostly been focused on response instead of prevention. The study found that the key driver of violence in most middle-and-low income countries is gender inequality, and that it would be near impossible to prevent abuse without addressing the underlying political, economic, and educational marginalization of women.

The study also found that health workers are often uniquely positioned to help victims, since they’re often the first to know about the abuse.

“Health-care providers are often the first point of contact for women and girls experiencing violence,” says another series co-lead, Dr. Claudia Garcia-Moreno, a physician at the WHO, in a statement. “The health community is missing important opportunities to integrate violence programming meaningfully into public health initiatives on HIV/AIDS, adolescent health, maternal health, and mental health.”

The series makes five concrete recommendations to curb the violence against women. The authors urge nations to allocate resources to prioritize protecting victims, change structures and policies that discriminate against women, promote support for survivors, strengthen health and education sectors to prevent and respond to violence, and invest in more research into ways to address the problem. In other words: money, education, and political action are key to protecting the world’s most vulnerable women. Hashtag activism, celebrity songs, and stern PSAs are helpful, but this problem is too complicated to be solved by awareness alone.

“We now have some promising findings to show what works to prevent violence,” said Dr. Cathy Zimmerman from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “We urgently need to turn this evidence into genuine action so that women and girls can live violence-free lives.”

The study comes just in time for the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

http://time.com/3598444/lancet-violence-against-women-global/

----------------------

And how much money was wasted on a global study to show what feminists have been saying for centuries?

Kobi

12-14-2014, 03:16 PM

Protestors in New York flooded the streets last week, toting signs that blazed with images and phrases about cruel injustice.

Just a week after similar events in Ferguson, a grand jury ruled that Daniel Pantaleo — the NYPD officer who put Eric Garner, a 44-year-old, black, Staten Island man, in a chokehold that led to Garner’s death — should not be brought to trial for his actions.

A failure to indict the police officer responsible for Garner’s unjustifiable, illegal, and unnecessary death signifies why there’s been a breach of trust between communities of color and those tasked with enforcing the laws.

In black American communities, we are holding our breath, waiting for whoever’s next. There is no guarantee that the next victim will be a black male, but there appears to be a guarantee that the victim will be marginalized or forgotten by the mainstream media if she is a girl or woman of color.

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, a non-profit organization whose mission is to defend the human rights of black people, found that every 40 hours, a black man, woman, or child is killed by police, security guards, or self-appointed law enforcers. In fact, since the killing of Mike Brown, more than 14 black teens have been killed by the police, including 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a boy in Cleveland, Ohio who was murdered less than two seconds after police arrived at a playground to answer a 911 call related to a black child carrying a pellet gun. We know another Eric Garner is coming, and it is impossible to prepare for the onslaught of grief that will accompany the next traumatic injustice.

But one of the largest injustices is how little we collectively discuss the many women of color who are also killed by police.

Take Aiyana Jones, 7, who was killed by a Detroit police officer as she slept on her father’s couch. Or Rekia Boyd, 22, whose life ended in Chicago when she was killed by a police officer. Or Yvette Smith, 48, who was unarmed when she was killed by a police officer in Texas. Or Pearlie Smith, 93, who was fatally shot in her home. Or Tarika Wilson, 26, whose one-year-old son was also injured when she was killed by a Ohio police officer. Or Tyisha Miller, 19, who was killed by a police officer in Los Angeles. Or Kathryn Johnson, 92, who was killed by a police officer in Atlanta. Or Gabriella Nevarez, 22, who was killed by a Sacramento police officer. Or Eleanor Bumpurs, 66, who was killed by a police officer in the Bronx. I could go on and on, but you still probably wouldn’t recognize their names.

While we grieve with the families of Brown, Garner, and countless others, black women are tired of being placed at the fringes of the conversations about state-sanctioned violence. Justice can’t only apply to black males.

While some news outlets covered these women’s deaths, many chose to overlook them because they’re women, and more specifically, black women. Their deaths seem to have little value. As writer Victoria Law explains in Bitch magazine, the names of unarmed black women killed by police “very rarely stick in public memory and never gain the same traction as Eric Garner or Michael Brown.” Sexism impacts every aspect of black women’s lives, including how we’re treated, or not addressed, in media after our deaths. Yet our experiences with law enforcement are very similar to that of black men.

As a black woman, I’m not immune to the fear. My heart pounds rapidly every time I see blue-and-red lights flashing in my rearview mirror. I never know if I will be alive when I leave those brief encounters with police officers. One wrong move could cost me my life, and that is a fear that haunts me as I move through the world every day.

If the next victim of police violence is a black woman or girl, her name will probably not resonate as loudly as that of Mike Brown and Eric Garner. Her face won’t adorn posters protesting the mistreatment of black women by police officers, because police violence is often coded as male, as Dr. Treva B. Lindsey of Ohio State University explains.

Prevailing narratives around Black violability and anti-Black racial violence pivot around Black men and boys. Both historically and contemporarily, when many people working towards racial justice around the issue of racial violence, the presumptive victim is a Black male. From lynching to police brutality, the presumed victim is a Black male. Therefore, Black women and girls are viewed as exceptional victims as opposed to perpetual victims of anti-Black racial violence. Our narratives around racial violence, unfortunately, have yet to evolve into ones that are gender inclusive. Black Victim=Black Male.

Female victims of color are marginalized, and always have been. Renowned social justice warrior and organizer Fannie Lou Hamer was savagely beaten by Mississippi police officers in 1963. She developed a blood clot in the eye, damaged kidneys, and a limp that would remain with her for the rest of her life as a result of the beating. Yet, the sexual and physical terrorism committed against Hamer isn’t discussed as often as the repeated arrests of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr or Malcolm X.

Even now, police violence inflicted upon women of color — like Boyd and Jones, who were both unarmed when they were fatally shot by police officers — doesn’t dominate headlines the way the killings of Garner and Brown do. No concrete data has been collected on the number of black women who are killed by law enforcement, and that’s no coincidence; most of the time, we barely know their names. While we grieve with the families of Brown, Garner, and countless others, black women are tired of being placed at the fringes of the conversations about state-sanctioned violence. Justice can’t only apply to black males.

Social justice leaders are organizing and meeting with Congressional and international leaders to push toward laws that will insure that people of color are safe to stand in front of convenience stores without being choked to death. But as we wait for those laws to be seen as necessary, and we wait for police officers to wear body cameras, and we wait for a shift in how police officers are trained, we also wait for female victims of color to receive equal acknowledgement.

Native New Yorkers, like me, know how brutal the New York Police Department is. We’ve lived through Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Kimani Gray, and the countless others who’ve lost their lives at the hands of those designated to protect and serve us. Eric Garner is the newest member of that lineage of men of color who are killed by the New York Police Department, and whose families have to watch their loved ones receive minimal justice. All black women request is that our deaths matter too.

http://www.bustle.com/articles/52433-police-kill-black-women-all-the-time-too-we-just-dont-hear-about-it

Kobi

12-17-2014, 04:50 PM

A Missouri Republican is pushing a bill that would allow a man who gets a woman pregnant to stop her from having an abortion. The measure would force a woman who wants an abortion to obtain written permission from the father first—unless she was the victim of "legitimate rape."

Rick Brattin, a state representative from outside Kansas City, filed the bill on December 3 for next year's legislative session. The proposed measure reads, "No abortion shall be performed or induced unless and until the father of the unborn child provides written, notarized consent to the abortion."

The bill contains exceptions for women who become pregnant as the result of rape or incest—but there are caveats.

"Just like any rape, you have to report it, and you have to prove it," Brattin tells Mother Jones. "So you couldn't just go and say, 'Oh yeah, I was raped' and get an abortion. It has to be a legitimate rape."

Brattin adds that he is not using the term "legitimate rape" in the same way as former Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), who famously claimed that women couldn't get pregnant from a "legitimate rape" because "the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down."

"I'm just saying if there was a legitimate rape, you're going to make a police report, just as if you were robbed," Brattin says. "That's just common sense." Under his bill, he adds, "you have to take steps to show that you were raped…And I'd think you'd be able to prove that." The bill contains no provision establishing standards for claiming the rape or incest exceptions. It also doesn't state any specific penalties for violating the law nor say whether a penalty would be imposed on the woman seeking the abortion or the abortion provider.

Missouri is home to only one abortion clinic, based in St. Louis. Each year, legislators target the clinic with dozens of new restrictions. In 2014, the GOP-controlled Legislature approved a bill requiring women seeking an abortion to wait 72 hours between the initial consultation and the procedure. It's the longest abortion waiting period in the county.

A group of Democratic lawmakers in Missouri found the onslaught of anti-abortion bills so ridiculous that in 2012 they introduced a bill to ban vasectomies except to save the life of a man. If conservative male lawmakers imagined jumping through hoops to obtain reproductive services, the thinking went, they would see the absurdity of their anti-abortion crusade.

Not Brattin. The father of five says that his recent vasectomy was the inspiration for this bill.

"When a man goes in for that procedure—at least in the state of Missouri—you have to have a consent form from your spouse in order to have that procedure done," he says. "Here I was getting a normal procedure that has nothing to do with another human being's life, and I needed to get a signed form…But on ending a life, you don't. I think that's pretty twisted."

A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, a group of clinics that perform vasectomies, says that there is no law in Missouri requiring a man to get another person's permission for a vasectomy. Individual providers sometimes require a patient to have his partner's consent. (Planned Parenthood of Missouri does not.) Brattin saved the document his wife signed and intends to share it with other lawmakers when it comes time to promote his bill.

Brattin notes that his bill also contains an exception for cases in which continuing the pregnancy would endanger the life of the mother. Women whose partners have died can sign a sworn affidavit to that effect.

When asked if he would support an exception for women whose partners are abusive, Brattin says, "I haven't really thought about that aspect of it." But he adds, "What does that have to do with the child's life? Just because it was an abusive relationship, does that mean the child should die?" Brattin notes that women in these situations can obtain protective custody once the child is born.

Asked about Casey v. Planned Parenthood, a 1992 Supreme Court decision striking down a requirement that a woman inform her husband if she haves an abortion, Brattin says he doesn't believe the ruling affects his bill. Because Missouri has laws requiring men to pay child support during a pregnancy, he contends, a bill requiring a man's involvement in an abortion should be constitutional.

In 2013, Brattin sponsored a bill to give intelligent design and "destiny" the same amount of attention in Missouri textbooks as evolution. Brattin has cosponsored many anti-abortion bills, including several measures restricting medication abortions that passed the Missouri Legislature in recent years. His latest bill, which would allow a man to veto a woman's decision to get an abortion, is identical to a measure Brattin proposed in April that died in committee.

"This bill is insulting and a danger to women in abusive relationships," says M'Evie Mead, the director of statewide organizing for Missouri's Planned Parenthood affiliated. "That's very much our concern. But when it comes to abortion, Missouri legislators are always trying to outdo each other."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/republican-wants-women-get-permission-father-having-abortion

Kobi

12-17-2014, 04:55 PM

Tamara Loerstcher was suffering from an untreated thyroid condition and depression and had begun to self medicate with drugs when, in late July 2014, she suspected she might also be pregnant. Loerstcher, uninsured at the time, went to an Eau Claire, Wisconsin, hospital for medical treatment and to confirm her pregnancy.

After submitting to a urinalysis, Loerstcher disclosed her past drug use to hospital workers. But instead of caring for Loerstcher, who as it turns out was 14 weeks pregnant, hospital workers had her jailed.

Those are the allegations in a soon-to-be-filed federal civil rights lawsuit by attorneys from National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Carr Center for Reproductive Justice at New York University School of Law, and the Perkins Coie law firm.

Loerstcher and her attorneys, in a call with reporters, detailed her experience, including her alleged mistreatment by Wisconsin officials and the ongoing deprivation of Loerstcher’s constitutional rights under a Wisconsin law that grants authorities the power to involuntarily detain and confine a pregnant woman for substance use if she “habitually lacks self-control” and her substance use poses a “substantial risk” to the health of an egg, embryo, or fetus.

The Wisconsin policy is similar in nature to radical “personhood” laws pushed in state legislatures controlled by anti-choice lawmakers. “Personhood” amendments, which would outlaw abortion at any stage of pregnancy, were roundly rejected by voters in several states on Election Day.

According to Loertscher and her attorneys, unbeknownst to her, as hospital workers were preparing a prescription to treat Loertscher’s thyroid condition, they were also initiating unborn child protection proceedings on behalf of Loertscher’s then 14-week-old fetus.

Loertscher and her attorneys claim that within days of Loertscher seeking care, hospital workers had already turned over Loerstcher’s hospital records to the state without Loerstcher’s knowledge or consent. They also claim that with those records in hand, state officials filed a petition accusing Loerstcher of abuse of an unborn child and held a hearing in which the state had appointed an attorney, known as a guardian ad litem, for the 14-week-old fetus, but granted Loerstcher no meaningful representation.

At the hearing, Loertscher and her attorneys allege she was ordered by the court into in-patient treatment even though she had not used drugs recently and voluntarily sought medical care. When Loerstcher refused to go to in-patient treatment, she was held in contempt of court and sent to jail, where she was held for 17 days without prenatal care and subject to abuse and harassment.

“This was my first pregnancy, so I didn’t know what to expect,” Loerstcher told reporters. “I was having lots of cramping and a lot of stress from everything and they [jail officials] wouldn’t allow me to see the doctor. They told me I would have to see a jail-appointed doctor who told me she wanted me to take a pregnancy test to confirm the pregnancy even though that’s why I was in jail, because I was pregnant. They knew that’s why I was there.”

Loerstcher claims she refused the pregnancy test, and in response, correction officials put her in solitary confinement and threatened to use a taser on her. “The jail doctor told me if I chose to miscarry, there wasn’t anything they could do about it anyways,” Loertscher said through tears.

About a week after Loerstcher’s release, she says she got a notice in the mail from the state stating they had found she had engaged in child abuse.

“It was really devastating to get that letter,” said Loerstcher. Unless it’s overturned on appeal, Loerstcher’s name will appear on the state’s child abuse registry for life. That would mean Loerstcher, who is a certified nurse’s aid, would be unable to work in her field, noted her attorney, and that she would be barred from ever volunteering at her son’s school after he is born in January. “This has very serious ramifications for her life and economic stability long term,” said Sara Ainsworth, director of legal advocacy at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women and counsel for Loerstcher.

In order to be released from jail, Loertscher had to sign a consent decree agreeing to additional drug tests, so she remains under state custody to some extent, her lawyer said.

Wisconsin Act 292, known as the “cocaine mom” law, extends the court’s juvenile jurisdiction to include “fertilized eggs, embryos, and pregnant women at all stages of pregnancy where the pregnant woman ‘habitually lacks self-control’ in the use of alcohol or controlled substances ‘to a severe degree’ such that there is a ‘substantial risk’ that the health of the egg, embryo, fetus, or child upon birth will be ‘seriously affected.’”

In effect, Act 292 grants “personhood” rights to fertilized eggs and embryos by granting the state power to initiate child protective actions against the expectant mother anytime the state believes she has substance use issues that will “seriously affect” the health of the egg, embryo, fetus, or child.

Under Act 292 Wisconsin officials have broad authority to arrest and detain the expectant mother for up to the duration of her pregnancy and can appoint an attorney, known as a guardian ad litem to represent the best interests of the “unborn child,” like they allegedly did in Loerstcher’s case. But because the law empowers the state to act through the juvenile courts rather than the criminal courts, much of the proceedings and findings are sealed. “This law operates through juvenile court, so everything that happens is essentially secret,” said Ainsworth. “There’s no way to know the full extent of how this law has been used against pregnant women in Wisconsin.”

While the total numbers of Wisconsin women swept up under Act 292 may not be known, Loerstcher’s case is not the first.

Last year, attorneys from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women filed a lawsuit on behalf of Alicia Beltran, another Wisconsin woman involuntarily detained at a drug treatment facility despite no evidence she had used drugs while pregnant. The attorneys sued in federal court, but that case was eventually dismissed as moot and without a ruling on the merits of her claims after Wisconsin officials released Beltran out of custody. In the order dismissing Beltran’s claim, the court noted that ”if Beltran’s allegations are true, what happened to her is extremely disturbing.”

Wisconsin is one of a number of states that have some kind of process in place that allows the state to effectively suspend the civil rights of pregnant people in the name of protecting against fetal harm. Most recently, Tennessee enacted a law that essentially empowers prosecutors to charge pregnant people with fetal assault for a host of activities, including drug use.

Meanwhile, South Carolina and Alabama through judicial decisions have made various criminal laws applicable to pregnant women, while both Minnesota and South Dakota amended their civil commitment laws to include a special process for committing pregnant people if they are determined to be a risk to their developing fetus.

But of all the state laws punishing pregnant people, Wisconsin’s is the most broad, said Ainsworth, and no court has yet ruled on its constitutionality.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2014/12/12/pregnant-wisconsin-woman-jailed-states-personhood-like-law/?utm_source=nar.al&utm_medium=urlshortener&utm_campaign=FB

Kobi

12-18-2014, 11:08 AM

http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/09/4d/30/094d30f38ff615f33ff824047405a175.jpg

Kobi

02-01-2015, 01:57 PM

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/51/5c/a2/515ca2a2b9dbdd74c88337d18d5dd458.jpg

Acclaimed Novelist Sells 30 Million Books, Is Remembered For Her Physical Appearance In Obituary (http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2015/01/30/3617592/sexist-obituary-acclaimed-novelist-goes-viral/)

Kobi

02-03-2015, 10:22 PM

The Supreme Court has declined to overturn a lower court’s ruling that an insurance company was within bounds when it fired a breastfeeding mother. The woman’s suit was dismissed by the Eighth Circuit Court on the grounds that firing a woman for breastfeeding isn’t sexist because men can lactate, too.

The ACLU’s Galen Sherwin wrote Monday that former Nationwide Insurance Company employee Angela Ames sued her employer when she returned from maternity leave to find that no allowances had been made to enable her to pump breast milk for her baby during the day.

When Ames asked her supervisor for accommodations that would enable her to express milk and store it for her child, the supervisor reportedly responded that Ames should “go home and be with your babies” instead. That supervisor went on to dictate a letter of resignation to Ames that day, effectively forcing her to resign.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Nationwide and the Eighth Circuit Court, denying Ames’ petition for a review of her case’s dismissal. The trial court’s decision — which the Circuit Court upheld — said that for Nationwide’s firing of Ames for taking time to express milk at work could not have been sexist because under certain circumstances, some men can lactate, too.

“The court’s reasoning in this case echoes old Supreme Court pronouncements that discriminating against pregnant women at work isn’t sex discrimination because both men and women can be non-pregnant,” Sherwin wrote. “Congress long ago rejected this ridiculous reasoning when it passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. It’s disheartening to see it resurface again.”

The Court also found that the dismissive statement that Ames should “go home and be with (her) babies” was in fact gender neutral and not directed at Ames because she was a new mother.

“As the ACLU and 11 other organizations argued in a brief supporting Angela’s appeal, that comment reflects exactly the type of sex stereotype — that women will be less committed to their work after having children, or that they belong at home taking care of the children — that the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in employment was aimed at eradicating,” Sherman wrote.

Additionally, the circumstances around the case indicate that Ames was pressured into agreeing to sign the letter of resignation when she was upset and in pain. It was her first day back from maternity leave and Nationwide denied her access to the company’s “lactation room” for new mothers because they said they needed three days to process Ames’ paperwork, a requirement no one had seen fit to tell Ames about until the day she returned to work.

A company nurse reportedly informed Ames that she could use a common area typically used by sick employees if she had to lactate that badly. The sick room, however, did not have a locking door and someone was occupying the room when Ames attempted to enter.

As Ames waited for the room to be clear, her breasts painfully swollen and beginning to leak, her supervisor came to her desk and informed her that she would be responsible for all of the work that she had missed during her leave time. All of it must be completed, said the supervisor, within the next two weeks — meaning a considerable amount of overtime — if Ames did not want to face disciplinary action.

Sherwin wrote, “She finally returned, in increasing panic and pain from the pressure in her breasts, to her department head to see if there was anything she could do to help her find a place to pump. That’s when the department head made the “just go home to be with your babies” comment and dictated her letter of resignation.”

Ames’ case, said Sherman, “shines a harsh light on the multi-layered workings of structural discrimination: Workplace policies that don’t make space for the realities of pregnancy and motherhood, employers’ entrenched sex stereotypes and implicit bias, and courts that — despite decades-old legal protections — still manage to turn a blind eye to the pervasive discrimination faced every day by working women.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/supreme-court-lets-stand-ruling-that-firing-woman-for-breastfeeding-not-sexist-because-men-can-lactate/

Gemme

02-15-2015, 04:27 PM

Airline has Outdated Policy for Female Flight Attendents (http://www.aol.com/article/2015/02/15/airline-has-shockingly-outdated-employee-policy/21142905/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl17%7Csec1_lnk3%26pLid%3D613599)

Kobi

02-19-2015, 05:10 PM

Cosmopolitan surveyed 2,235 full-time and part-time female employees and found that one in three women has experienced sexual harassment at work at some point their lives.

"Sexual harassment hasn't gone away -- it's just taken on new forms," Michelle Ruiz and Lauren Ahn wrote. Unlike workplace sexual harassment portrayed in films and pop culture that represent it as overtly aggressive, sexual harassment at work isn't always easy to spot. It can be a sexual comment in a meeting or even an insinuating Facebook message.

The American Association of University Women defines workplace sexual harassment as any, "unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature."

Out of the women who said they've experienced workplace sexual harassment, 29 percent reported the issue while 71 percent did not. According to the survey, the field with the highest levels of reported sexual harassment is food and service hospitality.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/18/e9/2b/18e92b4dd1e8570599f0cc7ca904ed19.jpg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/19/1-in-3-women-sexually-harassed-work-cosmopolitan_n_6713814.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

Kobi

02-19-2015, 05:13 PM

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a6/52/11/a6521130f1b143b47db3ca4d0cd00dc4.jpg

Allison W

02-28-2015, 07:58 PM

Somewhat unusually for a men's magazine, GQ has apparently been getting into progressive investigative journalism recently. Jeff Sharlet attended the first national conference for A Voice For Men to report on the, uhm, "highlights," as it were.

It's a somewhat lengthy article at three pages of decent length, so I won't copy it here; instead, I'll just link to it (http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201503/mens-rights-activism-the-red-pill?currentPage=1).

Seriously, though. That first picture and its associated caption on the first page. My only commentary there is "welp."

Also, don't wade into the comments section unless you want to see the Men's Rights Bowel Movement brigade crying all over it. Article by GQ, comments by QQ.

Gemme

02-28-2015, 08:03 PM

Allison W

02-28-2015, 08:13 PM

Oh my.

I couldn't make it through the whole thing.

I got stuck somewhere around here:

"Responding to a feminist critic, he once wrote, "The idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection." But that kind of talk is just for show, he says. He points out he used to be a counselor. What he's doing, really, is a kind of therapy. He wants me to understand."

Yeah. Paul Elam is, uh, quite a character, to put it extremely gently. The kind of dude who says stuff like how if he were on a jury for a rape case, he'd vote "not guilty" no matter how damning the evidence against the defendant happened to be, how women don't "ask" to be raped so much as they "beg" to be raped, and... yeah. That kind of thing. And the thing where he put up fake White Ribbon Campaign websites, accusing the real White Ribbon Campaign websites of being fraudulent, and soliciting donations directly to his pocketbook. I could go on. AVFM being the "moderate" (I put that in quoties for a reason) wing of the Men's Rights Bowel Movement kind of reveals just how fucked-up the entire thing really is. It's frightening to consider that the rest of said bowel movement somehow manages to be even worse.

Kobi

03-01-2015, 11:47 AM

This spring, an aspiring professor—W, as she’s chosen to call herself in a blog post about the experience—attempted to negotiate her tenure-track job offer with the Nazareth College philosophy department. She wanted a slightly higher salary than the starting offer, paid maternity leave for one semester, a pre-tenure sabbatical, a cap on the number of new classes that she would teach each semester, and a deferred starting date. “I know that some of these might be easier to grant than others,” she acknowledged in her e-mail. “Let me know what you think.”

Nazareth didn’t hesitate to do just that: W wrote that the college promptly let her know that she was no longer welcome. “The institution has decided to withdraw its offer of employment to you,” the terse reply concluded. “We wish you the best in finding a suitable position.”

What had W done wrong? Perhaps nothing, at least according to the advice to “lean in” that women have become accustomed to hearing. “This is how I thought negotiating worked,” W wrote. “I just thought there was no harm in asking.” (It’s entirely possible that there were factors at play not covered in the leaked correspondence—a Nazareth representative told me that the college was unable to comment on a personnel issue.)

In a survey of graduating professional students, Linda Babcock, of Carnegie Mellon University, found that only seven per cent of women attempted to negotiate their initial offers, while fifty-seven per cent of the men did so. We see those dire statistics and think that women are, in a sense, self-sabotaging. They don’t ask for the same compensation and benefits as men, so they can’t rightly be expected to receive them. But is it really the case that the disadvantage stems from not asking?

Sheryl Sandberg, the author of “Lean In” and the chief operating officer of Facebook, acknowledges the difficulties of negotiation, but nonetheless urges women to push forward (“I negotiated hard,” she writes) and to do what they would do if they weren’t afraid. But, had W spoken to psychologists who study the role of gender in negotiation alongside more popularly rendered edicts from women at the top of their fields, she might have been less surprised at the outcome.

The rest of the story. (http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/lean-out-the-dangers-for-women-who-negotiate)

Kobi

03-02-2015, 10:04 AM

pregnant woman is just a "host" that should not have the right to end her pregnancy, Virginia State Sen. Steve Martin (R) wrote in a Facebook rant defending his anti-abortion views.

Martin, the former chairman of the Senate Education and Health Committee, wrote a lengthy post about his opinions on women's bodies on his Facebook wall last week in response to a critical Valentine's Day card he received from reproductive rights advocates.

"I don't expect to be in the room or will I do anything to prevent you from obtaining a contraceptive," Martin wrote. "However, once a child does exist in your womb, I'm not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child's host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn't want it." Martin then changed his post on Monday afternoon to refer to the woman as the "bearer of the child" instead of the "host."

Martin said Monday that he edited the original wording calling women hosts because people took it the wrong way, even though he felt it was clear he was being sarcastic. "I don't see how anyone could have taken it the wrong way," he said. "It was me playing their argument back to them. Obviously I consider pregnant women to be mothers."

Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, told The Huffington Post in an email that Martin's rant reveals the "contempt" that anti-abortion lawmakers have for women.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/24/steve-martin-virginia_n_4847959.html

Gemme

03-05-2015, 01:41 PM

Youtube assaults (http://www.upworthy.com/they-sexually-assaulted-women-on-camera-now-its-their-turn-to-be-exposed-for-good?c=reccon3).

Kobi

03-12-2015, 10:50 AM

An 18-year-old who attempted to murder three women in revenge for the fact he was still a virgin has been jailed for 21 years.

Ben Moynihan, of Knightstone Court, Portsmouth, was found guilty in January of stabbing the women as they walked home alone.

They were attacked in separate incidents in Portsmouth last summer.

Moynihan must serve an additional five years on licence after his sentence ends, Winchester Crown Court heard.

During his trial, jurors heard Moynihan had difficulties finding a girlfriend and losing his virginity.

'Chilling and disturbing'

Police found a note which read "all women needs to die" and a journal containing descriptions of violence Moynihan dubbed his "diary of evil".

They also uncovered letters in which Moynihan said his frustration at not being able to lose his virginity had led to the attacks.

He wrote: "I was planning to murder mainly women as an act of revenge because of the life they gave me, I'm still a virgin at 17," he wrote.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-31765086

Kobi

03-12-2015, 10:53 AM

BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Brazil, where a woman is killed every two hours, is imposing tougher punishments on those who murder women and girls, as part of a government bid to stem a rise in gender killings.

President Dilma Rousseff said the new law gave a legal definition to the crime of femicide - the killing of a woman by a man because of her gender - and set out jail sentences of 12 to 30 years for convicted offenders.

The law, signed by Rousseff on Monday, also includes longer jail terms for crimes committed against pregnant women, girls under 14, women over 60 and people with disabilities.

Brazil joins 15 other Latin American countries which have brought in laws against femicide in recent years.

"This law typifies femicide as a grave crime and identifies it as a specific crime against women. It's a way to talk about this problem, make it visible by giving it a name and increasing sanctions for this crime," said Nadine Gasman, head of the agency United Nations Women in Brazil.

"It has taken us a long time to say that the killing of a woman is a different phenomenon. Men are killed in the street, women are killed in the home. Men are killed with guns, women with knives and hands," Gasman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

The number of women murdered in Brazil rose by 230 percent from 1980 to 2010, government figures show.

An average of 4,500 women are killed in the country every year, Gasman said.

"Femicide is part of the big increase in violence in general in Brazil. The underlying causes are discrimination against women and inequality, and in Brazil black women are the poorest and the most discriminated against," she said.

More research is needed to better understand the reasons for the big increase in gender killings in Brazil, Gasman said.

Femicide is a widespread problem across Latin America.

More than half the 25 countries with the highest femicide rates are in the Americas, according to a 2012 report by the Small Arms Survey, an independent research project in Geneva, based on 2004 to 2009 figures.

It is common for victims of femicide to have a long history of domestic violence and the perpetrators are often the victims' current or former partners, family members or friends, U.N. Women says.

"Our experience in the region and in Brazil shows femicide is part of a cycle of violence and it's the most intense form of violence ... that becomes graver and graver. It doesn't come out of the blue," Gasman said.

Femicide also stems from a macho culture that tends to condone violence against women and blames women for it, which in turn leads to low prosecution rates for gender-related crimes.

"This is a further step in Brazil's legislation in the fight against sexism that kills women daily in our country," Brazilian congresswoman Maria do Rosario said on her Facebook page, after the femicide law was introduced.

The challenge now is to ensure that the law is put into practice and that police, prosecutors and forensic experts are trained in how to investigate cases of femicide.

"It's always a challenge implementing laws but having this law makes it compulsory to investigate this crime with a gender perspective," Gasman said.

http://www.trust.org/item/20150310173857-1nfvn

Kobi

03-12-2015, 11:00 AM

Last year, an anonymous entrepreneur detailed on Forbes.com the many obstacles—and sometimes outright harassment—she faced when trying to raise money from venture capitalists while female. There were unwanted back massages and a pitch meeting at which she was asked, “Did your daddy give you money?”

It's not just the old guard doing the discriminating, she wrote:

Justin Mateen ... stated [allegedly] that having a young female cofounder at Tinder “makes the company seem like a joke” and “devalues” it. Or the comments of the male 20-something Twitter employee, who told me, “You should really hire a nerdy looking dude to represent your company publicly. You know, to make up for your looks.”

Women are now the majority of college students and about half of all managers in the broader workforce, but in the startup world, they number comparatively few. According to the Kauffman Foundation, they account for only about 16 percent of employers, and they make up only 10 percent of founders of so-called “high-growth” firms—startups that quickly add workers rather than fizzling out. Overall, women own only 36 percent of all small businesses.

The reasons for this disparity are hotly debated in the tech world. Some blame the stereotype that women are supposedly less tolerant of risk, or that they prioritize motherhood over the punishing hours of startup life.
"They didn't know what to do with me."

Others point to the hyper-macho atmosphere of Silicon Valley and other venture hubs. Just this week, interim Reddit CEO Ellen Pao, a former junior partner at the investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, testified in a lawsuit against her former employer that she was allegedly denied a promotion because of her gender. Among the issues involved are whether Pao's personality was deemed too "prickly" and why the company organized a men-only ski trip.

Lakshmi Balachandra, now a professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College, traversed this cultural divide when she worked at two venture capital firms—one mostly male, the other mostly female—in the late 90s. While at the male firm, occasionally entrepreneurs would assume she was an assistant, she said, or they would ask her out in the middle of meetings. But mostly, the firm's partners, "didn't know what to do with me. Like they were a little more formal," she said.

"Did it feel like they were trying really hard not to be sexist?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "That's a perfect way to put it."

One of the biggest reasons more women don’t start businesses is that female entrepreneurs have a more difficult time raising money. The Kauffman Foundation notes that, "For male entrepreneurs, 60 percent of startup funding was raised from outside sources, such as bank loans or angel investors, compared to 48 percent for women entrepreneurs. Women entrepreneurs are recipients of just 19 percent of angel funding and even less of venture capital funding.” A 2014 Babson College report similarly found that, although things are getting better, companies with a female CEO only received 3 percent of total venture capital dollars in the previous two years.

Fiona Murray, the associate dean of innovation at the MIT Sloan School of Management, recently conducted an experiment in which participants evaluated a video pitch from a new company that used slides, an identical script, and either a male or female voice-over. The male voice was 40 percent more likely to receive funding, as Murray wrote in the Boston Globe. “In a follow-up experiment, we found that evaluators particularly favor pitches from attractive men, and that attractive women do worse than unattractive men and women,” she added."Evaluators particularly favor pitches from attractive men, and that attractive women do worse than unattractive men and women.”

Sarah Thebaud, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California Santa Barbara, decided to try to determine why this gender gap in startup funding persists. In three experiments, she tested what a group of 178 college students thought about a series of business plans, and indirectly, the gender of the business owners behind them.

The study, published last month in the journal Social Forces, was conducted with two types of business plans: an “innovative” one and a “non-innovative” one. The non-innovative business was a new iteration of a model that’s been proven to work before (a typical wine store), while the innovative one presented an entirely new idea (a store that provides customers the ingredients, tools, and guidance to make and bottle their own wine.)

“Most businesses tend to replicate others that are similar—one pizza place may be a little different from another, but basically they’re all serving the same thing,” Thebaud explained in an article about the study in a UCSB publication. Thebaud presented the subjects with the same innovative and non-innovative business plans, but she manipulated the gender of the business owner, listing it as either Laura, Julie, David, or Jason.

The results suggest that investors are less likely to back female entrepreneurs because they don’t think they’re as smart as men are. The participants thought the non-innovative female business owner was less competent than the innovative one, but the level of ingenuity didn’t matter for the competence ratings of the male entrepreneurs. The non-innovative women were also rated as less competent than similarly run-of-the-mill men.

Thebaud tested other potential reasons the female entrepreneurs might have been discredited, like perceived likability or commitment, but they didn’t hold up.

To Thebaud, the fact that the innovative women, but not men, had higher competence ratings than their less-innovative peers suggests that women who launch especially intriguing ventures—not just a pie shop, but a paleo pie shop—seem more “authentically entrepreneurial.” The risky nature of their businesses might broadcast these women's resemblance to men.

“It signals to people that she is, indeed, aggressive and outgoing, willing to take risks and push barriers, which is what people often think women might not be willing to do,” Thebaud said.

It's worth noting that on some platforms, such as Kickstarter, cash is more likely to flow to women than to men. Still, Thebaud's results are troubling: They suggest that female founders are at an overall fundraising disadvantage unless their ideas are mind-blowing While some startups are revolutionary, most are ordinary businesses that aren’t especially sexy but make their backers (and hopefully a handful of employees) some money. For every new Facebook, there are scores of boring, yet profitable, pizzerias or inventory-management software systems. Apparently, women aren't taken as seriously when they pitch them.

Balachandra recently conducted a study that echoed Thebaud's findings. For her research, which is currently under review for publication, Balachandra examined how venture capitalists reacted to one-minute pitches from male and female startup founders in various industries. The main factor that determined whether the entrepreneurs were successful, she found, was how stereotypically "masculine" they behaved. The entrepreneurs—male and female—who were confident, stern, strong, and bold were much more likely to win funding for their ventures. The ones who were more stereotypically female, which to Balachandra's team meant they acted happier, kinder, and more excited, tended to lose. Importantly, there was no gender gap: The manly women performed better than the effeminate men did.

Balachandra thinks the explanation might lie in the fact that venture capitalists tend to invest in people who are similar to them—and all but 6 percent of VCs are men. Investors spend hours coaching their financial charges, so they might prioritize the type of fraternal chemistry that comes with interacting with someone of the same sex. "A VC will say, 'I only want to invest in someone I can have dinner with,'" Balachandra said.

What's more, female entrepreneurs often pitch businesses that appeal more to women than to men—and male VCs simply don't bother to try to understand them.

Balachandra says one solution is to breed more female venture capitalists—and keep existing ones from quitting. When she was working in the industry in the 90s, she started a networking group for fellow female investors in her area. None of the women in the group are still working in venture capital, she said.

And, she added, male investors need to do a better job finding the female entrepreneurs who are worthy of their time and money. Too often, male investors will rely on male-bonding type activities to pick their entrepreneurs, she says. "But you're assuming that just because you're sailing with someone that they're also going to be a good entrepreneur."

"[VCs] say 'women don't seek me out,' but a lot of women aren't in those circles," she explained. "You're not making an effort."

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/the-sexism-of-startup-land/387184/#disqus_thread

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In 2015 it is kind of flabbergasting to see the same sexist and misogynistic behavior as I did in the 1960's. With all the female and male parents jumping on the "Im a feminist" bandwagon these days, one has to wonder exactly who is teaching their daughters and sons this behavior. (Yes Sheldon, that was sarcasm.)

Kobi

03-12-2015, 11:04 AM

(WOMENSENEWS)--Gender violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other conflict zones around the world is a subject of continual research and education through witness testimonials, podcasts and information presented by the Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

But this year the museum took a look back, delving into a topic from history that, surprisingly, is entirely new–pivotal research about the rape of Jewish women during the Holocaust, described in a new book by two female scholars.

"Rape does not just happen," said Bridget Conley-Zilkic, director of research and projects for the division that guides the museum's genocide prevention programs, at a special event in Manhattan, N.Y., about the new book. "It is a tool that perpetrators use to reach their ends. We honor the history of those who suffered and those who died in the Holocaust by changing our world today."

The rape and sexual abuse of Jewish women in the Holocaust has been a subject that is so taboo that it has taken 65 years for the first English language book on the subject to make its way to the public.

"One question we get a lot is: 'Why did it take so long?' And, for that you have to understand how it came about," said Rochelle G. Saidel, co-editor with Sonja M. Hedgepeth of "Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust," a multidisciplinary anthology released by Brandeis University Press in December 2010.

In 2006, during a rare seminar about women and the Holocaust at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial, Saidel and Hedgepeth, both accomplished historians, mentioned, in passing, sexual abuse.

Saidel said, "This very illustrious Holocaust scholar raised his hand and said, 'There were no Jewish women who were raped during the Holocaust. How can you say such a thing? Where are the documents? Where is the proof?'"

Not a Lone Voice

His voice was not alone. For decades, a myth held sway that the Nazis didn't rape Jewish women because it violated German rules on "race" mixing. Others asserted that Jewish women who were raped must have colluded with the Nazis for food and that women, especially attractive ones, who survived the death camps voluntarily engaged in sexual barter.

Saidel and Hedgepeth knew rape was not documented in the same way as the number of trains that traveled to a concentration camp, but they sought out scholars from seven countries and collected 16 essays, drawing upon oral histories, literature, psychoanalysis, eyewitness reports and diaries.

The stories of rape and sexual abuse began to emerge as if they were old photographic film waiting for the right chemicals, and long-erased pictures of Jewish women who had suffered sexual abuse began to emerge.

Jewish women were raped and sexually abused by Nazi guards, but also by liberators, people who hid them, aid givers, partisans and even fellow prisoners. Judy Weiszenberg Cohen, an Auschwitz survivor living in Canada, told the editors that the "fear of rape" was omnipresent in the concentration camp.

"The exact number of women who experienced sexual molestation during the Holocaust cannot be determined … and the rapists by and large did not leave documents testifying to their actions," writes Nomi Levenkron, a human rights attorney in Israel, in an essay in the book. Most women who survived preferred silence, she said, fearing that they would be stigmatized in their communities.

"This is about all of our humanity. After I read the manuscript, I became kind of obsessed with it," said Gloria Steinem, the renowned feminist writer and advocate, who sponsored two events in New York this year to draw attention to the publication. "I thought, 'It's 70 years later. Why didn't we know this?' For all of the people to whom it happened, to be victimized is one thing--to be shamed, as if it was your fault, is another profound and deep oppression."

Raped and Killed

Many sexually abused women were raped and then simply killed.

Author Moinka J. Faschka of Kent State University in Ohio, one of the contributors to the book, cites survivor Harry Koltun, who said in an interview: "[T]he Gestapo SS came in and took out a few Jewish girls, they took them into a forest and they never came back. They did what they had to do sexually, and they killed them. Nice, nice looking girls."

At a presentation at the Anne Frank Center USA in New York, the book's authors said that previously the barriers to telling the stories of sexual abuse have been tremendous. Some Holocaust scholars believed that segmenting out rape stories–and even women's stories unrelated to sexual violence--would sever women from the community by focusing on one group when all Jews, regardless of gender, were targeted for persecution. Rape was not included in the Nuremberg Trials when Nazi officials were charged with war crimes.

In other cases, women feared they would be considered "impure" or be ostracized by their families.

"I have been interviewing Holocaust survivors in Israel since '78, but it didn't even occur to me to ask about sexual assault," said Eva Fogelman, a psychologist in New York City. "These people had lost so much of their dignity and privacy. I didn't want to take that last bit of privacy away from them."

For this book, Fogelman identified 1,040 testimonies of the 52,000 in the Shoah Foundation collection at the University of Southern California that mention rape or fear of rape.

"What you have is women who were raped talk about it in bits or pieces. Or, 'I know a woman and this happened to her,' – a way of indicating this happened, but not implicating themselves," Fogelman said.

This book, said co-editor Hedgepeth, is only the beginning of the exploration of this sensitive topic.

"I'm starting to feel from conversations that there will be more that comes out of this," she said.

http://womensenews.org/story/our-history/110529/holocaust-womens-rape-breaks-decades-taboo?page=0,0

Allison W

03-12-2015, 07:02 PM

Balachandra recently conducted a study that echoed Thebaud's findings. For her research, which is currently under review for publication, Balachandra examined how venture capitalists reacted to one-minute pitches from male and female startup founders in various industries. The main factor that determined whether the entrepreneurs were successful, she found, was how stereotypically "masculine" they behaved. The entrepreneurs—male and female—who were confident, stern, strong, and bold were much more likely to win funding for their ventures. The ones who were more stereotypically female, which to Balachandra's team meant they acted happier, kinder, and more excited, tended to lose. Importantly, there was no gender gap: The manly women performed better than the effeminate men did.

I might be the odd one out where my values are concerned, but I actually find this somewhat less worrying than Thebaud's findings, if only because of the part I bolded. You mentioned the issue of what kind of parents are teaching their children the behaviours mentioned in the article. I've actually been thinking for a while now that what is desperately needed is for today's parents to raise up a generation of aggressive young women. It pleases me in a kind of fucked-up way to hear that evidence suggests it could deliver desirable results, at least in this one particular arena.

Kobi

04-29-2015, 07:07 PM

There are various articles on Gamer Gate in this thread. Now, it appears, the truth is finally coming to the surface.

What if a stalker had an army? Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend was obsessed with destroying her reputation—and thousands of online strangers were eager to help.

-------------------------
The first thing Eron Gjoni said after sitting down across from me at Veggie Galaxy in December was that he would probably violate his gag order if he talked to me. Then he talked for the next three hours, and again and again over the next three months.

Gjoni can be relentless that way. And in others. He maintains incessant eye contact from behind a tangle of dark, wavy hair. He is intensely focused. Just ask Zoe Quinn, the object of his unwanted obsession.

In September 2014, Quinn, 27, appeared in Boston Municipal Court to ask Judge Jonathan Tynes for a restraining order against Gjoni, her ex-boyfriend. In a handwritten affidavit to the court, Quinn tried to explain what had happened over the past month. After their brief romance ended, she noted, Gjoni “wrote and published a long post about my sex life and private dealings to several websites that he knew had a history of harassing me.”

Quinn is a video-game designer and, like many women in the business, routinely receives misogynistic threats from strangers. Gjoni, Quinn contended, was aware that his blog post would result in her being harassed and stalked, and she claimed he had published it in order “to damage my professional reputation as an independent artist.”

What’s more, she told the judge, the results had been particularly severe: Since Gjoni’s initial blog post, “I have received numerous death and rape threats from an anonymous mob that [Gjoni] had given details to,” she wrote. “My personal info like my home address, phone number, emails, passwords, and those of my family has been widely distributed, alongside nude photos of me, and several of my professional accounts and those of my colleagues have been hacked.”

Quinn understated the facts. The thousands of threats, which she continues to receive daily, terrified her. Tweets such as “Im not only a pedophile, ive raped countless teens, this zoe bitch is my next victim, im coming slut” spoke for themselves. Messages such as “could kill yourself. We don’t need cunts like you in this world” preyed on the common knowledge that Quinn struggled with depression; she’d won acclaim for creating an impressionistic video game called Depression Quest. Forced to flee her Dorchester apartment, she spent more than six months hiding in friends’ homes. In her affidavit, Quinn struggled to explain to the judge who was behind these threats: They were anonymous, faceless, and they could be anywhere. “Eron has coached this mob multiple times, made multiple social media accounts to smear my name publicly, and has stoked the fire of this on many occasions and doesn’t seem to be stopping,” Quinn told the court. “I am in fear of him.”

Judge Tynes asked if Quinn had sought help from the police. She had, in fact— numerous times. She told Boston police officers what Gjoni had done, including her allegation that he had turned violent the last time they had sex over the summer, just before their breakup, while she was at a conference in San Francisco. Judge Tynes told Quinn he wanted to help, but stumbled to find the right words as he scribbled down the conditions of a restraining order against Gjoni, barring him from posting any further information about Quinn’s personal life online or encouraging—“What’s the first adjective?” the judge asked. “Something mob—What was the mob?”

“Uh, hate,” Quinn replied.

“Hate mob—all right,” said the judge. “I’ll put that in quotations. Good luck, ma’am. So long.”

And now here Gjoni sat before me. Over the past three months, according to Quinn, he had continued to defy Tynes’s order, divulging further details about her personal life and forcing her to return to court in Boston again and again to address his repeated violations. As of April, the court had formally charged him with four.

There’s a haunting resonance to Gjoni’s choice of location for our meeting. This is where he and Quinn first hung out in person: It’s where his obsession with her began. He’s come back to the beginning, and he wants me to know that Quinn is a “hypocrite,” a “compulsive liar,” and an “asshole.”

Gjoni is a highly cerebral, 25-year-old software developer who was recently fired from Massachusetts General Hospital’s robotics lab. He chooses his words deliberately, spending much of our time together describing the month after his breakup with Quinn: how he extracted details from her Facebook, text, and email accounts; how he tracked her movements and shadowed her conversations. The process he described to me sounded as if he were gathering the pieces of a horrible machine, with each component designed to be as damaging to Quinn as possible. Eventually, the machine would have a name: “The Zoe Post,” a 9,425-word screed he published in August.

But before he emptied the contents of Quinn’s private life into the gaping maw of a bloodthirsty Internet, back before he instigated the most vicious online backlash against feminism in a generation, there was a first date. A date that began, not unlike many other 21st-century first dates, on OkCupid. The algorithms spoke: Gjoni and Quinn were a 98 percent match.

Read the rest of the story here. (http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2015/04/28/gamergate/)