Discrimination against women, global examples, vol. 3

Carrie Fisher, badass:

Carrie Fisher gave predatory producer a cow's tongue in a box

And she did it on behalf of another.

“It was a cow tongue from Jerry’s Famous Deli with a note that said: ‘If you ever touch my darling Heather or any other woman again, the next delivery will be something of yours in a much smaller box,’” Robinson recalled.

Ongoing erosion of women's rights in increasingly theocratic Turkey and Iraq via child marriage (and by "child" they only ever mean girls...)

Turkish marriage law a blow to women's rights, say activists

‘Catastrophic’ Iraq law could legalise marriage for children as young as nine

But hey, as to the latter, it's actually an improvement on what was proposed before!

The version of the bill proposed in 2014 included provisions that would have banned Muslim men from marrying non-Muslims, legalised rape within marriage, and prevented women from leaving the house without their husband’s permission.

Thanks again, Dubya.

http://www.bbc.com/news/42032629

>3 MarthaJeanne: so wispy and ephemeral.

I know it's likely meant as an asshole gesture, but I admire the prowess and don't mind the motif. (Granted that the Navy must have a different view.) No power on earth will stop people from drawing genitals wherver whenever by any means possible and I for one would never stop them.

Btw, could everyone please at least add some words of description to the links they post, at least when the links don't incorporate any? There's practically zero dialogue in this group to begin with (which I, for one, regret--but there's nothing I can do to change this.)

Jezebel's comment section on this story rocks as ever!--but I admit it's easy for me to say, as I'm totally with the amused majority. :)

The Navy Is Aware Of The Sky Penis, And They Are Handling It

Hardly original: something like this was done before:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/24/mars-rover-penis-draws-nasa_n_3148422....

Seriously?

CDC gets list of forbidden words from Trump administration

The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in any official documents being prepared for next year’s budget.

>8 southernbooklady: How do you possibly discuss a developing feotus without using the technical word for it? I mean you could write "unborn child" each and every time, but that's not necessarily the same thing.
They could always try spelling it properly, of course, and see of that escapes the word search approach.

>9 Helenliz: How do you possibly discuss a developing feotus without using the technical word for it?

"pre-term cellular mass"? "advance-stage blastocyst"? :)

Since this comes up under budget submissions, my guess is that it is an attempt to avoid language that could potentially stall out the budget process. Or, some congress people (we know who they are) either faint or lose their shit at the mere sight of the word "fetus"

Technology will widen pay gap and hit women hardest – Davos report

(...) A new WEF report on the future of jobs finds the dominance of men in industries such as information and biotechnology, coupled with the enduring failure of women to rise to the top even in the health and education sectors, is helping to reverse gender equality after years of improvements. (...)

The WEF’s annual gender gap report at the end of last year calculated that the gulf between male and female opportunity had widened for first time since it started gathering data in 2006. “The global economic model has failed working people and failed women more than most,” Burrow said. “In the world of work, using any set of indicators, progress for women has stagnated. This has been driven by corporate greed and profit, more than anything.”

Well, there are multiple problems happening simultaneously. On the one hand, corporate greed and profit-seeking certainly affect most strongly the low-paying jobs women are most likely to hold. But at the same time, the better jobs such as those in STEM, and higher hierarchical positions anywhere are as hard for women to win as ever.

Spot the thinnest of good news/bad news boundaries:

Salvadoran woman jailed over stillbirth freed after 11 years

Vásquez is the 16th woman to be freed as a result of appeals and campaigns by reproductive rights groups and lawyers working under hostile conditions perpetuated by the conservative media and powerful anti-abortion groups. A 17th woman, Mayra Figueroa, who was jailed for 30 years in 2003, will be freed next month.

Did the Good Pope weigh in on cases like this yet? Or is he still busy attacking the victims of his priests?

In El Salvador the legislation – in place since 1998 – has led to a string of miscarriages of justice in a conservative, macho culture that endorses the aggressive persecution of women deemed guilty of rejecting their primary roles as child bearers.

Most, like Vásquez, are poor, single and convicted on flimsy evidence after having a spontaneous gynaecological complication such as a miscarriage or stillbirth.

Last year a teenage rape survivor was sentenced to 30 years in prison after having a stillbirth on the grounds that failing to seek antenatal care amounted to murder.

Remember that those anti-abortion lobbies doing their dirty work in South America and other poor countries are richly supported--often started--by groups in the United States (I have yet to see reports of similar substantial involvement from other Western countries).

There's been a news story for the last week in the Uk that, I think, is relevant in here. Oxfam is a large charity that has been active in world poverty since the end of WW2. However it has been hit by allegations that it did not declare or even take effective action on aid workers exploiting women in trouble hit regions of the world. They didn't declare the use of prostitutes by aid workers to the charity commission because they were not exchanging sex for aid. I think that has missed the point. I feel sure no woman wants to be a prostitute; hence even paying a prostitute for sex they are taking advantage of their situation.

The UK government has taken a hard line (for once) and has decided that Oxfam will not receive any money from the UK development fund until they have their house in order.

Oxfam's boss seems to have entirely missed the point, and the interview today doesn't do much to reassure that this will be dealt with.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/feb/16/oxfam-chief-accuses-c...

In countries like Haiti it's hard to imagine non-exploitative prostitution exists (assuming "non-exploitative prostitution" isn't an oxymoron, dubious proposition to be sure).

You'd think people who go in for charity work, unless they are actually crooks, wouldn't get confused on such points.

Even the Prime Minister is the victim of mansplaining:
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-politics-43321190/pmqs-corbyn-and-may-on-internati...

Not sure where else to put this:

#MariellePresente

"She died because she was a combative black woman” Heads up. It's a brutal murder.

A minor example, but a good example that men are still regarded as the norm:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-43605516

>17 MarthaJeanne:

Oh that's totally deliberate, both "alumnus" and "wives".

Quite a bit of sexist viciousness about all things Oxford, it seems. Recently I read Jeanette Winterson's Why be happy when you could be normal and she mentions more or less in passing that the mentor she had at Oxford, a man not much older than the students but a gay misogynist, was routinely subjecting her and other girls he tutored to sexist abuse. Apparently he resented their very presence there.

And we won't forget last year's Oxford dictionary illustration of "rabid" with that resplendent phrase "a rabid feminist", wont we!

Mind you, I'm not implying other universities are any better. I think I mentioned this before, that I overheard once a group of our male students talking about one of their's stay at Cambridge and how he mentioned as practically the first thing that struck him there the astonishing sexism of the place.

Fucking shit. "The Atlantic" HIRED this guy. No, think about it--sure they fired him, but first they HIRED him. You can fucking be the sort who advocates hanging women who have abortions and a mainstream magazine will still offer you a job.

'Hang women who have abortions' is not a view that's fit for public debate.

And get a load of the dumb asshole at the NY Times stepping in to defend him.

“I jumped at your abortion comment, but for heaven’s sake, it was a tweet. When you write a whole book on the need to execute the tens of millions of American women who’ve had abortions, then I’ll worry,” Stephens wrote.

Seriously, dude. But how long a book? Does a hundred pages cut it, or should we worry more at mark 400 or so? Illustrated or not? Aww, don't you worry your pretty little dickhead about anything...

From Circe to Clinton: Why Powerful Women Are Cast As Witches

In the last decade, United Nations officials have reported a rise in women killed for witchcraft across the globe. In India the problem is particularly well-documented, with older women being targeted as scapegoats or as a pretext for seizing their lands and goods. In Saudi Arabia, women have been convicted of witchcraft in the courts, and in Ghana they have been exiled to so-called “witch camps”, an injustice movingly addressed in the award-winning film, I Am Not a Witch. And in the United States, a Gallup poll found that 21% of people believed in witches (and not the Hermione Granger kind).

I'm looking forward to reading the author's new novel, Circe. I love feminist takes on myth and fairytale.

>19 LolaWalser: I find that point of view repugnant. How can this be the type of conservative view that a respected publication needs to give air time to?

I also wonder about The Atlantic, now, as a workplace. How can a woman who has had an abortion feel safe in her workplace, now? I would feel completely unsafe working with someone who had this public view. It would constitute a hostile work environment for me. And the editors, up until today, seemed to think this is not a big deal, saying women should be killed. Good to know how little value we have.

>20 southernbooklady:, >21 sparemethecensor:

I'm all out of comment. I could swear some more but even I am beginning to feel bad about it. ;)

So, the James Beard Awards were announced the other day. Always a happy moment for me, being somewhat cookbook-addicted.

What some folks don't realize, though, is that there is a whole slew of journalism awards as well, one of which was this, in the personal essay category:

Dear women: own your stories

It's a pastry chef's reaction to another chef's exploitation of the #MeToo movement:

The display of both the chef and those willing to applaud such a thinly veiled opportunistic leap shocked and dismayed me more than the sexual assault claims—perhaps because I’ve gotten a thick skin to it but also, and I think moreover, because it points to the real root evil, the baseline, the deep systemic issues that we face as women and how they are based in something that is going to take a lot more than simply exposing some men as sexual predators. There is something more dangerous beneath all of the violence we face because of our sex.

There is a quiet expectation that we are here to be “of use.” That we are here to save your careers. We are here to make people like, and even adore, you. We are here to offer a “woman’s touch.” We are here to make sure you feel “balanced.” We are here to prop up, to support, to coax and to, ultimately bear witness to your greatness. Not to have our own.

Another woman scientist whose ground-breaking work is impacting all of us today, so naturally, I've never heard of her:

Esther Lederberg

https://medium.com/s/the-matilda-effect/esther-lederberg-matilda-velvet-90a506bf...

Bent over clusters of E.coli cells in her University of Wisconsin lab, Dr. Lederberg discovered that the dense bristles of velvet could be used like tiny needles to capture and blot, in the same spatial orientation, a bacterial colony from one petri dish to another.

Soon she was hunting down yards of the lushest velvet on the market, determining which detergents best suited the textile and which manufacturers treated their product with chemicals that could lead to a confounding variable. Replica plating—a fundamental lab technique now used by high-school biology students and federally funded genetics researchers alike—was born.

In the "Nice News" thread LolaWalser posted about the team and worldwide cooperation that resulted in the first picture of a black hole. It's awesome, so read it if you haven't.

I'm not going to put this there, since it isn't nice news. Naturally, after the celebrations, come the trolls:

Trolls harrassing scientist who helped take the first picture of a black hole

Would that it were only a "week"...

“A Shameful Week for the U.S.”: Trump Admin Guts U.N. Resolution to End Rape as Weapon of War (Democracy Now video)

There is a sit-in going on at a Swarthmore College fraternity house right now to close it down after it came out that members talked about acquiring date rape drugs and boasting about their "Rape Attic":

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/us/swarthmore-college-phi-psi-fraternities.ht...

In the middle of the article, written apparently without irony, was this summation of the controversy:

But the question of how to handle fraternities has dogged administrators for years: Critics say fraternity houses encourage drunken partying and sexual misconduct, while supporters say many of them build camaraderie and foster future professional relationships.

Well, I thought, that just says it all. We are a culture that builds camaraderie and future relationships out of our shared experience of raping people.

Well, men do. Don't know why you'd use first person plural for the company of those dipshits... Those who don't see women as human beings are themselves nothing but trash.

>28 LolaWalser: Don't know why you'd use first person plural for the company of those dipshits

I suppose because I am American, a product of that same university system, and although my college days are long past and I never belonged to a sorority or interacted with the sorority/fraternity system, I nevertheless still deal with people who did and do. They are all around me: now supposedly well-respected members of my community. People I know. People who may, for all I know, look back on the bonds they forged with their college friends through hateful and even criminal acts or even just run-of-the-mill nastiness with feelings of nostalgia and fondness. It's hard for me not to feel complicit in the whole ethos just by being polite when I talk to them.

Here's an update to the story: the fraternities at Swarthmore have disbanded:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/30/close-rape-attic-swarthmore-stu...

It's hard for me not to feel complicit in the whole ethos just by being polite when I talk to them.

I don't see how it diminishes "complicitness" to join these crapulous pigs even just symbolically.

If I may be honest, that just smacks of utterly baseless self-flagellation to me. If it takes so little to be complicit, then it would take nothing less but a superhuman extreme NOT to be complicit. If all the myriad active and passive ways our existence enables that of monsters and misery is making us directly complicit, then what sort of actions would we have to undertake to rid ourselves of "complicitness"? Mass murder, 24/7? Suicide?

And if being polite makes you feel complicit, maybe stop being polite to them? You are paying way too high a price for that politeness, IMO.

There's nothing special about being American here. The fraternity houses may be bollocks more typical nowadays for the US higher education, but the rape culture everywhere relies on the same principles--men everywhere bond by ganging up on women, expressing exactly the same views and fulfilling the same goals as those fratters. Case in point, still fresh in the news--the Spaniards who organised themselves in a "wolf pack" and went looking for a woman to gang-rape--in one of the articles in the Guardian, just the other day, I read how one of the men texted the others how it would be great if they found a fat girl to rape, how he'd prefer to rape a fat girl in the company of his mates than have sex with a model alone (I'm paraphrasing as I don't recall the exact wording but that's exactly the message).*

"Fraternity" or "wolf pack", it's the same thing--a space where men "prove" themselves to other men at the expense of women, where they communicate and bond in the language of misogyny and through acts of humiliation of women.

*“Mate seriously, if the five of us all fucked a fat girl together at San Fermin, it would be the best thing ever. I’d rather fuck a fat girl with all of you than a hot one by myself,” one of the men had said. “Are we bringing burundanga {a date rape drug}? I got reinoles {another date rape drug} at a really good price. For the rapes,” a message read. “This trip is a baptism of fire to become a wolf,” read another.

(Bolding is mine.)

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48094438

"The Democratic Republic of Congo has some of highest rates of sexual violence in the world."

>27 southernbooklady:

Not in any way to disagree, but it required no fraternities to raise David Cameron and BoJo to the fruiting stage. That sort seems to be self-propagating in any well-manured soil.

Rise up, the revolution is a woman

Weeks into the protests that would eventually topple Sudan's dictator, the government realized it had an unprecedented problem on its hands: the number of women in the streets calling for change far outnumbered the men.
So the regime's top brass sent a chilling message down to its officers on the ground: "Break the girls, because if you break the girls, you break the men."

Women's role in toppling Sudan's Omar al-Bashir.

This piece of insanity is going on in Alabama at the moment:

Pregnant woman, shot in the stomach, is charged with the murder of her unborn child

The actual shooter, another woman, was not indicted, on the basis of "stand your ground" laws.

With all the horrific news coming out of the US these days, it's hard to pick the worst...

The charges have now been dropped.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48849040

>35 southernbooklady: >37 MarthaJeanne:
Marshae Jones won’t be prosecuted, so it appears this bad situation hasn’t gone nuclear. I couldn’t help but wonder about another scenario, though.
Suppose the shooter hadn’t shot a pregnant woman who was assaulting her.
Suppose instead she shot a boyfriend or husband who was assaulting her (and he survives).
Suppose also that the shooter was pregnant and that he was assaulting her after learning she intended to terminate the pregnancy.
Suppose also that his assault on her kills the unborn child.
How likely, in Alabama, would “stand your ground” protect her from being prosecuted for shooting him?
How likely, in Alabama, would she be arrested instead for provoking him to assault her (by her intention to terminate the pregnancy)?
How likely, in Alabama, would she be held responsible for what happened to the unborn child?
How likely, in Alabama, would he be held responsible for the assault?
How likely, in Alabama, would he be held responsible for the baby’s death?

The likely answers are such as to make one queasy. A lot of other emotions too.

Actually, I think the first question is: Would her charges have been dropped if journalists hadn't reported about this around the world? I had read about this on BBC before >35 southernbooklady: posted.

I can't also help but wonder that the police are so sure who 'started' the fight.

>38 dypaloh:

As far as the consequences of accidentally losing a pregnancy (as in miscarriage, for example) goes, the US has already been prosecuting and jailing women for years. (I say the US in shorthand but don't claim it's the same in all states.)

I'm trying to remember where we posted on that years before--there was a NY Times editorial--for the moment, this came up in the search, from last December:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/28/opinion/abortion-pregnancy-pro-li...

You might be surprised to learn that in the United States a woman coping with the heartbreak of losing her pregnancy might also find herself facing jail time. Say she got in a car accident in New York or gave birth to a stillborn in Indiana: In such cases, women have been charged with manslaughter.

In fact, a fetus need not die for the state to charge a pregnant woman with a crime. Women who fell down the stairs, who ate a poppy seed bagel and failed a drug test or who took legal drugs during pregnancy — drugs prescribed by their doctors — all have been accused of endangering their children.

Go to the article for hyperlinks within that passage documenting the cases.

>38 dypaloh: I am glad (read: abjectly relieved) the charges were dropped. To your various scenarios, however, I have only this to say: Marshae Jones was indicted because she was poor and African American. If she had been a wealthy pregnant white woman cussing out a Dollar store employee and the employee had shot her, then you can be assured that all hell would have rained down on the shooter and no one would have even uttered the phrase "stand your ground".

The "personhood" laws that claim fetuses are "people" aren't concerned in the slightest with the fetuses they say they are protecting. You can tell because all the supposed concern vanishes the moment the child is born and has to be cared for by someone. No, the point of those laws is first and last to control and subjugate women. And America being the kind of country it is, they are applied as ruthlessly as possible to poor women who are not white.

>41 southernbooklady: It seems to me that the concern ends before the baby is born. Where is the healthcare for pregnant women that would assure the newborn of a good start in life?

>42 MarthaJeanne: at the risk of sounding like a fanatic, I'd say the upshot is that the only "concern" in evidence is that men have unimpeded access to women with no consequences.

>39 MarthaJeanne: The effects of attention from media is clearly a legit question. I had asked myself that too and thought it hard to answer. The glare of press attention is daunting but some legal eagles would damn near kill to be in the spotlight. I wonder if there are any good (i.e. nontechnical) treatments on the general topic of how press attention affects legal processes.

>40 LolaWalser: Thank you for that link. It’s provoked me to violate a sacred vow to not pay money for news found on the web. I’ve gone ahead and subscribed to the NY Times so I can read the full articles. Aargh. Sorry, but I’m going to have to say that you’re corrupting me.

>41 southernbooklady: I agree that racial effects on legal process can never be discounted out of hand.

>44 dypaloh:

Oh my, sorry, really (I'm not a fan of the NY Times, to put it mildly, but it has its uses). I expect you used up the free credits fast, I still have 6-7 free articles for this month.

Anyway, I hope you'll find it worth it. :)

A web of abuse: How the far right disproportionately targets female politicians (BBC)

Abuse of female politicians is rife online - and much of it is being directed by established far-right groups and figures...

Female politicians across Europe have been targeted with threatening and misogynist content.

On both mainstream and fringe social media platforms, analysis of selected profiles found women in politics faced frequent comments targeting their gender, race and physical appearance...

the abuse aimed at female MPs exceeds that directed at their male counterparts, and differed in its focus and content...

>46 John5918: Not just a European problem

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48982172 About the US president saying that congresswomen should 'go back'. (Most of them were born in the US.)

And that's just the beginning.

This is depressing, and nothing new.

Nine out of 10 people found to be biased against women

But... my bolding...

Almost 90% of people are biased against women, according to a new index that highlights the “shocking” extent of the global backlash towards gender equality.

Despite progress in closing the equality gap, 91% of men and 86% of women hold at least one bias against women in relation to politics, economics, education, violence or reproductive rights.

I hate the framing of it as "the backlash to gender equality" (and it's repeated, even). No, the biases are historical, chronic, not new. The only thing different regarding this to, say, a century ago, is that insofar there is more equality or (usually) even only talk of equality, misogyny gets aired in public even MORE.

If all the women were herded off into purdah and every trace of us disappeared from the public space, it would not change a whit about the biases.

So please let's not degrade the worth of having rights by wedding them automatically to danger.

I can't be the only person on LT who had never heard of Eunice Foote, whose research led her to discover the greenhouse effect. She published a paper in 1853 describing the roles of water vapour and CO₂ in atmospheric heating which was read and then ignored.

Nautilus has an article on her.

Today is the second anniversary of the massacre in Toronto in which that incel shit killed eight women and two men with a van (and injured others).

Now, I wouldn't bother mentioning it (so many femicides, so many crimes against women, so many anniversaries...) but there's this one thing about the memorials and media coverage today that makes me so furious I have to mention it--THAT THERE IS NO MENTION OF MISOGYNY, of the fact that this shit hates WOMEN, that he TARGETED WOMEN, that he KILLED WOMEN BECAUSE HE WANTED TO KILL WOMEN, and those two men only because they got in the way.

A second historic massacre in Canada that targeted women, and they are refusing to mention women.

The conservative swine mayor John Tory bloviates about "we shall not be broken"--no, fucker, you and your sort won't be broken, because it's WOMEN that shit like that incel and other swine want to break. And he goes on to "heroes" (there must be heroes every time some pathetic abject shit goes down and innocents are slaughtered; chaos rules but we must stick to our vapid platitudes) and talks with emphasis of "MEN and women" who rushed to the side of the victims. I mean absolutely no disrespect to the men on the scene who tried to help--it's about the language, look at the language:

why are the incel shit's victims relentlessly, everywhere, exclusively "PEOPLE", when the helpers are described as "men and women"?! And this not only in the face of the glaring predominance of female victims, but with full knowledge of the killer's stated misogynistic aim?!

The 24 hour news gives a picture of two men placing flowers on the crossing and writes about "people" who were killed and when they even mention that incel shit's "sexual frustration" they bend around every which way to avoid mentioning women--the word "women" does not occur anywhere in the write up!

THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE.

This is a deliberate choice on the part of the officials and the media to ignore the misogynistic hatred and anti-feminism that targets women in this city, this country, as in the world at large. To ignore it, to downplay it, and to downright deny it.

Toronto is the capital of university- and community-based organised misogyny and anti-feminist movements. John Tory and the miserable media here are buttressing their hateful agenda.

Women who were mowed down by one womanhater in 2018 are today being pissed on in public by masses of others.

Fuck you, Tory, you shit, fuck you, Toronto Star, fuck you, Globe & Mail, fuck you, Murdochian swine everywhere, fuck you, City Hall, Doug Ford, the cops, fuck you all with a rusty pig spit.

Canada police say machete killing was 'incel' terror attack (Guardian)

Authorities say they have evidence tying Toronto attack in which a woman was murdered and two others injured to ‘incel’ movement...

Same story https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52733060

Men who run around spouting rants against women are voluntarily celibate.

It happened in February? I have no recollection of reading about this anywhere. For sure I did not hear of it as an attack on a woman--notice how the Guardian and the BBC both write about "people" being killed by those other incel shits, in Toronto and California. Never mind that they actually killed preponderantly women, and deliberately went after WOMEN, not just any "people". Only as murdered victims of dickhead bastards are we suddenly seen as "people"! God forbid they'd call out the misogynistic shit for what it is.

Bastard media, bastard manipulation and obfuscation of what is going on.

This is the tip of the iceberg. You think it's a coincidence this is happening in Toronto, the home of that dickhead guru Peterson and a whole host of other shits like him? Ha.

And John, this is not "discrimination" this is bloody murder.

>55 LolaWalser:

Indeed it is. But I wasn't sure where to post it. Apologies if this is the wrong thread.

It's not terribly important, I wouldnt care if it didn't feel like diminishing the event.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/291674

But eh, who cares, who cares about discrimination OR the murder of women.

>56 John5918:

I should have said first, thanks for linking it. The shock flustered me. Thank you.

>54 LolaWalser: I have no recollection of reading about this anywhere.

I'm somewhat reassured that you don't recall this either; I've been thinking that i must have been too engaged my own concerns about the spread of COVID to have noticed.

I hope these new charges stand up in court.

>59 librorumamans:

The media are hiding and obfuscating this shit, clear as day. Who knows what else is going on. Remember the flurry of reports about polygamy (polyGYNY, of course) in the GTA from last year? It's been going on for years and today you still get ads and forums for those looking for more wives on the first page. (Google's top suggested searches after "polygamy toronto"--#3 is "can i have two wives in canada")

I had thought that garbage would be efficiently prosecuted in a country like Canada; belatedly I know better.

The gender (and race/ethnicity) related peril of data bias in favour of the average white man:

Who Runs The World? Apparently This Guy. Meet Reference Man | Full Frontal on TBS

This headline came to my attention by chance, as I was reading another article:

Mary Kay Letourneau: Teacher who married boy she raped dies at 58

I'm not taking issue with the statement--statutory rape is rape--but just take a moment to imagine the death of every man who "raped a girl he married" followed by such a headline. How many in a day?

Is that why we don't hear about THEM? Too much of the "dog bites man" ordinariness?

https://www.pictureascientist.com/

The movie does not seem to be available right now, but the review in New Scientist https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24632892-800-how-academic-institutions-ma... sounds interesting.

From The Five Thirty Eight Blog:

When Women Run for Office: What's the Worst Sexism You've Experienced in Politics?

https://fivethirtyeight.com/audio-features/when-women-run/#af-chapter-3

Go Sara Howard, Nebraska Legislature!

...although, reading on, maybe not. I can't say I think "If it doesn't get you money or get you votes don't do it" is really the way I'd want my elected official to operate. It is rather brutally honest though.

This nonsense just won't go away... note--it happened to this woman twice within two months.

Passenger sues easyJet after crew told her to move seats to satisfy Orthodox Jews

Chinese vlogger dies after 'set on fire by ex during live stream' (BBC)

A Chinese influencer has died after her ex-husband allegedly doused her in petrol and set fire to her as she was attempting to live stream... The case has prompted conversation on social media about violence against women in China...

'It was toxic': how sexism threw police off the trail of the Yorkshire Ripper (Guardian)

Sex-worker victims were seen as dispensible, survivors’ accounts ignored, and women blamed for drinking or going out alone...

From this month's MIT Press Reader, interesting look into Britain's part of the story of how women were brought into and then antagonised from computing.

Mar Hicks is a historian of technology, gender and modern Europe, notable for work on the history of women in computing. Hicks is a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology and the author of “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing.” Hicks has a new co-edited volume out in March called “Your Computer is on Fire.”

Britain’s Sexist Campaign to Sell Computers

... In 1965, the chief accountant of Bibby and Baron Ltd., the largest paper bag manufacturer in England, wrote a series of articles on how office managers could wring the greatest efficiency from their workers at the lowest cost. “Equal pay for male and female workers is unlikely to be accepted by industrial concerns,” he wrote in one, urging employers to hire women, and “because female clerks can be obtained at a cheaper price than males, and may be just as good if given the same opportunities and training, it should be your policy to employ them wherever possible.” ...

‘No Time to Mourn’ Narratives of Gender Inequality in South Sudan (Human RIghts Watch)

South Sudanese women have faced the brunt of years of violence, abuses, and repressive gender norms, and their voices have too often been silenced. A new anthology of poems, short stories, and artwork by South Sudanese women, “No Time to Mourn”, seeks to provide personal insight into gender inequality and related abuses in South Sudan. It highlights the resilience of South Sudanese women and girls and their efforts to challenge barriers restricting their advancement...

How the aid sector marginalises women refugees (The New Humanitarian) by Shima Bahre, Executive Director of the Sudanese Women for Peace and Development Association

I am a woman, a refugee from Darfur, and the co-founder of an organisation committed to supporting other Sudanese refugee women in Kampala, Uganda. I have heard about the localisation process in humanitarian aid, but I do not feel its effect. What I do feel, and experience on a daily basis, are the numerous ways women – especially refugee women – are discriminated against in the humanitarian system. My experiences have taught me that, wherever we go, women need to stand up for ourselves and take leadership because no one understands the issues women from war zones face better than we do ourselves...

The targeted slaughters of women in the news recently, are a clear sign of what's to come: same old.

Afghanistan: 'We have won the war, America has lost', say Taliban

... We're shown a primary school, filled with young boys and girls scribbling in UN-donated textbooks. While in power in the 1990s, the Taliban banned female education, though they often deny that. Even now, there are reports that in other areas older girls are not allowed to attend classes. But here at least the Taliban say they're actively encouraging it.

"As long as they wear hijab, it's important for them to study," says Mawlawi Salahuddin, in charge of the Taliban's local education commission. In secondary schools, he says, only female teachers are allowed, and the veil is mandatory. "If they follow the Sharia, there is no problem."

Local sources told us the Taliban removed art and citizenship classes from the curriculum, replacing them with Islamic subjects, but otherwise follow the national syllabus. ...

The government pays the salaries of staff, but the Taliban are in charge. It's a hybrid system in place across the country.

There's no solution. The fanatical fuckers would need simply to drop dead for even a hint of improvement, there's no arguing with "must.follow.sharia."

This way for the deeper circles of Hell, Afghan ladies.

Here's a weird and creepy situation someone is trying to solve:

Brazilian Bank Bot stands up to abusers

In 2018, Brazilian bank Bradesco introduced a virtual assistant named BIA — short for Bradesco Inteligência Artificial — who presented as female and helpfully assisted customers with their financial queries. It wasn't long before BIA started being verbally assaulted and harassed, submitted to the same kind of abuse real women have to deal with every day. In 2020 alone, BIA received around 95,000 messages that could be categorized as sexual harassment. Not only did men feel entitled to swear at BIA, they used humiliating language and even threats of rape.

...Guided in part by that UNESCO paper and by the Hey Update My Voice campaign, Bradesco decided to change BIA's attitude and let her talk back. Now, BIA no longer attempts to remain friendly at all costs. When customers insult or attempt to demean her, she responds with a "don't talk to me like that," demands respect and will even cite articles of criminal law.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-57343435

This is about policewomen in Afghanistan being sexually abused by other police. The narrator ends by saying 'The women we've spoken to say they will never give up fighting for their rights.'

What do many terrorists have in common? They abuse women (Guardian)

Groundbreaking research shows that extremist attackers are often united in their violent misogyny, whatever their ideology...

What hit me was the man who, besides killing women to win the lottery, was willing to kill more to get a woman to love him. Wait a minute. Any reasonable woman is going to run from a man who thinks killing women is acceptable.

Tokyo attack: Knife-wielding man injures 10 on train (BBC)

A man attacked fellow passengers with a knife on a Tokyo commuter train late on Friday, injuring 10.

The suspect, 36, allegedly told police he became angry when he saw women who "looked happy" and wanted to kill them, according to local media reports. One victim, a female student, is said to be seriously injured, while the others suffered less severe injuries...

"he became angry when he saw women who "looked happy" and wanted to kill them"

Wow. Just wow. But femicide isn't a hate crime.

But femicide isn't a hate crime.

It's also under-reported and mistyped, deliberately so. I've been noticing for years now how many of the attacks in public seem to involve a majority of female victims but it's so hard to get at exact info.

But, have you noticed, women who stand up for themselves and don't want to defer to men just because they are males. Not killing them, just not needing them. They are labeled 'man-haters' and that is considered to be worse than the men who beat and kill women for being women. I don't get it.

It's turtles double standards all the way down!

I always check in on Jane Gilmore's twitter feed for how she corrects misleading headlines:

https://janegilmore.com/fixedit-he-didnt-rape-tinder-and-his-appeal-was-rejected...

>81 southernbooklady:

Kudos to her.

>81 southernbooklady: Now I want her book, Fixed It, but it is sadly unfound at any of the libraries I use.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/swiss-protest-court-ruling-reduci...

The appeals judge reduced the rapist's sentence from 4 years 3 months to 3 years because 'it was only 11 minutes.'

Jocelyn Bell Burnell Changed Astronomy Forever; Her Ph.D. Advisor Won the Nobel Prize for It (Open Culture)

An astronomer, Bell Burnell was instrumental in the discovery of pulsars — a discovery that changed the field forever. While her Ph.D. advisor Antony Hewish would be awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1974, Bell Burnell’s involvement was virtually ignored, or treated as a novelty. “When the press found out I was a woman,” she said in 2015, “we were bombarded with inquiries. My male supervisor was asked the astrophysical questions while I was the human interest. Photographers asked me to unbutton my blouse lower, whilst journalists wanted to know my vital statistics and whether I was taller than Princess Margaret.”

In the film, Burnell describes a lifelong struggle against a male-dominated establishment that marginalized her...

‘Like I wasn’t a person’: Ethiopian forces accused of systematic rape in Tigray (Guardian)

Ethiopian government forces have been systematically raping and abusing hundreds of women and girls in the current conflict in Tigray, according to a new report from Amnesty International. Adding to a growing body of evidence that rape is being used as a weapon of war in the northern region of Ethiopia, Amnesty’s research offers a snapshot of the extent of the crimes in an area where communications with the outside world have been deliberately restricted by federal authorities...

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/aug/12/south-korean-politici...

South Korean men ejaculate on women's clothing or other belongings.

Plymouth gunman: a hate-filled misogynist and ‘incel’ (Guardian)

Jake Davison, the Plymouth attacker, expressed misogynistic and homophobic views and portrayed himself as a man in despair who raged against his mother and his failure to find a girlfriend. In what the 22-year-old described as an “unscripted rant” posted just over two weeks ago, he said “for the most part it’s just been me against the world”. He also shared hate-filled views on Reddit forums used by “incels” – men who express online hostility and resentment towards those who are sexually active, particularly women. Earlier this year, authorities in the US warned that attacks linked to the incel movement were on the increase as authorities around the world have begun to treat the ideology as a more serious terrorism threat. Davison used incel forums to express hatred for his mother and a view that mass shootings had no connection to gun control...

It is believed Davison’s first victim was his mother, Maxine... Davison shot himself after killing five others including a three-year-old girl...

All of which just goes to prove that the women whoturned him down were right.

Plymouth shooting: police urged to take misogyny more seriously (Guardian)

Police must start taking misogyny more seriously in order to prevent more tragedies such as that in Plymouth, a top prosecutor has said, after a man who had regularly expressed his hatred of women killed five people and wounded two more. Nazir Afzal, who was previously chief crown prosecutor for north-west England, said Jake Davison should have been on a police watchlist...

Afzal raised the prospect that extreme views about women could be treated as terrorism. “You have got to think about how we deal with these men, and they are always men. What are they saying online, how are they being radicalised, who is doing the radicalisation?” Afzal said on BBC Breakfast on Saturday. “If you treat it as terrorism then you have other options open to you in terms of intelligence gathering, in terms of being able to prosecute for disseminating materials, in terms of being able to hold them to account if they are conspiring with each other. “So, there are other potential offences available if you treat it as terrorism, but of course as we currently know that’s not what the government’s intention is”...

If extreme misogyny is an ideology, doesn’t that make Plymouth killer a terrorist? (Guardian)

To track the ‘incel’ diatribes uttered and read by Jake Davison, murdering women can seem like the logical conclusion to their seething hatred...

Victims of femicide are shamefully ignored in strategy on violence against women (Guardian)

Femicide – the killing of women and girls by men – is once again hidden in plain sight by the government. A new Violence Against Women and Girls strategy announced last month fails to address the worst form of men’s violence against women and girls: their killing. The same omission was made in the two previous strategies. Our End Femicide campaign’s first objective is to “name it”. Six months in to the campaign, our government has failed women and girls at the first hurdle. The murder of women in the UK has recently generated hundreds of articles and a mass outpouring of grief and anger. So how come the government has failed to name and identify femicide? If not now, when? What will it take?...

Assholery, Spanish style:

Bullfighting festival axed after bulls named ‘Feminist’ and ‘Nigerian’ slain

No one thought to question the names before the bulls ran? (The bullshit ran?)

Anyway, un point for putting the kibosh on the whole sorry charade.

Taliban gathered some women in the university (not the students--women vetted by the Taliban as supporters) and showed them to the foreign press, while forbidding communication. One female reporter managed to get a statement from one of the women, who told her things were good, the Taliban put an "end to sin".

Incel/MRA/PUA and other misogynistic movements are spreading far beyond their origins on the net into the classrooms and workplaces...

70% of female teachers have faced misogyny in UK schools, poll shows

Teachers have raised concerns about the influence of “incel” subculture on teenage boys, as a survey revealed that seven in 10 female teachers have been victims of misogyny in school.

Obviously, the targets aren't going to be only teachers, but female classmates of these little bastards as well.

Misogyny is a social disease and a source of terrorism.

I can't believe it's so low.

I have a white colleague who's an okay guy, pretty full of himself & overbearing, but okay. He teaches at Harvard & has done so for all but the first two of his 25-or-so-year teaching career. We teach in a community program for students who can't see themselves in traditional college, for whatever reason (confidence, $, opportunity, etc); a lot of our students are people of color. One year a few of the students asked him during the first class about his stance when teaching American History & racism. He was horrified! His syllabus is all about non-normative Americans & their histories so that didn't bother him. He was bothered bc, he said, never before in his career had students questioned his right to teach.

I just sat there in the meeting & said nothing, but when I shared this story with women colleagues outside the program, they all agreed that we feel like, implicitly, our every word is questioned -- and it should be. I bet it's similar for other nonwhite, nonmale, non-normative teachers. But his outrage, his shock that students would ask, "What makes you qualified (beyond the word "Harvard") to teach us?" gave me a window into how he sees himself and how he sees our students.

He & another guy have been the directors of the program for the past dozen years. Almost every year there's at least one young male student who the male directors admit is problematic & disruptive, and doesn't respect women professors (the entirety of the remaining faculty) but he's such a good kid, they always say. Those guys are always their favorites. Meanwhile, these favored "good kids" have yelled at me in class, sat with their backs turned to me, stopped coming to the classes taught by women, despite the fact they're required. Then, at the end of the year when it's time to award credit, the director(s) overrule us & the "good kids" always get class credit.

If even fellow faculty have no respect for women teachers, how can they model that respect for students?