There are lots of news items this week, as always. Plenty to make you angry or sad or just do a facepalm. But also some good news, and finally a petition for you to sign. Enjoy!
Many, many thanks to the women who provided stories and links: Besama, Tara, officebss, ramara, and Eyesbright. I hope I didn’t miss anyone! This is truly a group effort.
STUFF THAT MAKES US ANGRY
Facebook group “No hymen no diamond” for men seeking virgin brides
The woman discovered a camera disguised as a clothing hook in her room. And it only got worse from there. (story about women workers on oil rigs)buff.ly…
Hunter Huxley has started a series of stories of women who are being jailed for having an abortion. As of this writing, there are two. Here is the first.
And the second.
Here's a depressing article about harassment in the tabletop gaming community.
Feminist bake sale results in death threatswww.theguardian.com…
2015 Was the Most Violent Year in Recent Memory for Abortion Providers
Utah has new abysmal law requiring anesthesia when a woman has an abortion after about 20 weeks, potentially endangering some women's lives.
AND BEYOND ANGRY
From NBC news - another horror story about child rape:www.nbcnews.com…
From theroot - Sex Trafficking and child pornography from here in the good old USA:www.theroot.com/…
STUFF THAT MAKES US SAD
International study shows a link between length of paid maternity leave and infant mortality. In some developing countries, just extending the leave from 12 weeks to 16 weeks makes a significant different in the mortality rate
And we of course are one of the few countries with none at all required, and a higher infant mortality rate than any other industrialized nation.
From NY Daily News:
Another campus assault - but this one is a murder case: UTX-Austin freshman found dead
www.nydailynews.com/…
The most recent followup:
STUPID STUFF
“Attention-seeking” has DNA in common with reductive jokes about women with “daddy issues”; it draws from centuries-old hatred for women who demand to be heard and from some men’s deep resentment of women’s physical attractiveness. But social media, which has initiated a new culturewide conversation about what is public and what is private, has made “attention-seeking” the misogynist stereotype du jour.
When used to address a woman who wishes to bear testimony or present an analysis, “attention-seeking” sweeps every merit of her truth or observation away in a profoundly ad hominem accusation, lent even more weight by its gender essentialism.
www.slate.com/…
Shame on AOL and Google - "Counting Down the Hottest Wives and Girlfriends in Sports Today"
Which OPENS with:
It looks like many of your favorite sports stars know how to score on and off the field. Really guys?!
You have to get really stupid to get Louie Gohmert stupid. But if he had his way, we would.
The text of the bill he opposed:
"Nowhere in the scriptures does it say that women should be chasing after fancy titles and knowledge."
Likewise, nowhere in the scriptures does it say that men should chase after these things either. Somehow that escapes him.
UPDATE: The bipartisanreport story has been pulled, as have many others. Supposedly he did NOT invoke God to say women are only biologically fit for raising children, and somehow learning them sciences makes them drink and smoke and get tattoos and have sex.
What he DID say is that if Marie Curie had had entrepreneurial opportunities, she would never have stayed in the lab and done her research.
When I have more time, I’ll look into this further.
Not to be outdone, there is Trump. Proving that Donald Trump has always been not only a misogynist but also a real creep:
The Daily Show Found a Video of Donald Trump Talking About His 1-Year-Old Daughter’s Breasts
www.slate.com/…
SMART STUFF
Know your rights:
Discrimination and harassment based on a person’s religious garb is unacceptable and often illegal. Muslim women do not have to remove their headscarves except under very specific circumstances and should never be targeted for expressing their faith. To make clear their rights in a variety of situations, the ACLU has just released a Know Your Rights guide for women and girls who wear hijab.
A little good news: Tennessee's "fetal assault" law, which criminalizes women using drugs or even some medications during pregnancy, will expire in June and will not be renewed. Instead of the intended effect, it kept women addicts from getting drug treatment or prenatal care. I could have told them that would happen!
The case for investing in women scientists:
"Systemic failures to improve the experience of women, especially minority women, in STEM puts us on an inequitable treadmill off of which we can’t seem to jump."
Anita Sarkeesian’s new project"Ordinary Women"— which has brought in more than $181,000 at press time toward a $200,000 goal on a Seed & Spark funding campaign that ends Thursday — has revolutionary aspirations of its own. Though it may not be clear at first, the work carries an underlying activist bent. There are even lessons for content creators."We can change the narrative about women," says Elisabeth Aultman, the project's producer and a veteran of the legal department at Lucasfilm. "We can demonstrate that women in history have accomplished great things. Women can be anything men can be, and things men have not been. If we change the stories that we tell about women, we change the roles that women can have in the world and we change the world.”
From Fusion - Old guy banned from brewery for sexist remarks, bartender’s attitude is great!
“Last week I opened my email to find a message from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police legal department confirming, after three months of conversation, that public female bare-chestedness is legal in Pennsylvania.“Here’s what they wrote:
“‘CONCLUSION There is no City or State law which expressly prohibits or even addresses the act of appearing bare-breasted in public. Based upon the information provided to the Law Department, the City does not appear to have any legal grounds under the City Code or Title 18 (i.e. the Commonwealth’s Crimes Code) to cite or arrest women for being bare-chested without any additional sexual or criminal behavior associated therewith. The City is preempted from regulating criminal conduct on its own so we only have state law with which to work.’”
breastsarehealthy.wordpress.com/…
More than one-quarter of abortions in the United States are obtained by women ages 18 to 24—roughly college age—yet many students’ access to the procedure is limited by state laws, the location of clinics and, in particular, a lack of reproductive health services on campus.
The students’ association at UC Berkeley is fighting to change that. Last month, the association passed a resolution urging University Health Services (UHS) to begin providing medication abortions—the non-surgical option using pills—at the campus health center, called Tang.
msmagazine.com/…
Food for thought - testing a rape kit can clear an innocent man of charges as well as convict a guilty one - From reuters: Virginia's top court on Thursday ordered the release of a former U.S. sailor who has spent 33 years in prison, because new DNA evidence showed he did not murder a Newport News man and rape the man's wife in 1982.
There's hope for the future - here's one little girl's response to people who want to shut her up already.
Here's a Washington Post story about that's little girl's reporting.
Nowhere on earth do women have as many opportunities as men. Nowhere.
While the debate around this truth rages everywhere, girls and women living in extreme poverty – those often hit hardest by the injustice of gender inequality – have been left out of the conversation.
This must change. The fight for gender equity is global.
Some 62 million girls are denied the right to education. Half a billion women can’t read. 155 countries still have laws that discriminate against women.
Poverty is sexist. If you haven’t yet signed the petition, please click on the link.
act.one.org/...