Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Skymark Airlines came under fire from the cabin crew’s labor union, which said the super-short skirt—with a distinctively swinging ‘60s look—barely covers wearers’ thighs.

“We’re concerned that the design of this uniform may cause problems,” including sexual harassment, the Japan Federation of Cabin Attendants said in a statement.

“The airline is saying the uniform is meant to attract more customers, but this shows the company is treating women like a commodity,” it added.

Comments posted on the union’s website said attendants would not be able to carry out their duties effectively owing to fears about leering stares or customers shooting pictures up their skirts with a mobile phone.

The airline, which disputes the union claims, plans to introduce the uniform as a temporary promotion for the launch of domestic routes its Airbus A330 planes in the spring.

The carrier could not be immediately reached on Tuesday.

But last week, Skymark president Shinichi Nishikubo told reporters: “We won’t impose the uniform on any of the cabin attendants who refuse to wear it.”

“It is disappointing that the outfit designed in part for the ad campaign is being seen in a distorted way,” he added.

© 2014 AFP


http://www.japantoday.com/category/n...ymark-airlines

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

http://www.dailydot.com/lol/naked-le...mom-blackmail/


As you can guess, dating apps require a certain amount of finesse. But while the nuances of app-based dating culture might be a little tricky to understand, one thing seems pretty clear: Don’t send someone a picture of your junk unless she explicitly asks for one.

One female Let’s Date user found a quick and easy solution to the unwanted dick-pic problem. Tumblr user aheartbeatchanged was chatting with a guy about the weather when this appeared:




“F**k no,” she replied. “I don't need to be disrespected by someone I don't even know."

“Relax,” he wrote back. “It’s only my c**k.”

Things escalated quickly, and, well... see for yourself:






At this point, the smartest thing would’ve been for Trevor to apologize and vanish forever. Especially since he’d just given someone a naked photo that could potentially be, you know, posted on Tumblr for 60,000 people to laugh at and reblog.






Oh yeah. She went there.

As of Sunday night, aheartbeatchanged hasn’t heard back from Trevor’s mom. What she has received is more than a hundred messages from Tumblr users, ranging from supportive to... more poorly worded insults: “If you had/get some good dick (which you obviously haven't/don't) you wouldn't be such a grammar nazi and prude.”

He and Trevor would probably make great friends.

Update: Let's Date writes to clarify that "while the users may have met on Let's Date, the inappropriate photo was not sent via Let's Date as the app's messaging platform does not allow users to send pictures to each other, they are only able to send text."

Photo via Guys With iPhones

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Recently, the news and the Internet have been abuzz with stories about Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and pop star Beyoncé Knowles and their mission to ban the word “bossy” as it applies to girls and women. Their campaign makes sense. It’s no secret that in America, attributes praised in men are often vilified in women. Where a man is bold, confident, daring and a real “go-getter”, a woman is aggressive, bitchy, cocky or a “ball-breaker”. In other words, assertive girls and women get called “bossy”.

Little girls who emerge as natural leaders on the playground are discouraged from being “bossy”. Where little boys might be encouraged to seize the reins of whatever game or activity in which they’re engaged, little girls are scolded to “share”, and “let so-and-so take control, now”. It’s as if being a natural leader is a bad thing, a threat to their femininity. Or worse, a girl’s assertiveness emasculates the boys around her.

Labelling anyone with a negative description like “bossy” damages their self-esteem. And it just isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to squash a girl’s natural leadership skills so that she isn’t labelled as aggressive. Yet while I agree with the thesis behind Ms. Sandberg’s and Ms. Knowles’ campaign, I believe that another term should be eliminated as well. I want to destroy, once and for all, the myth of the “Angry Black Woman”.

Just like the “bossy” label, the Angry Black Woman (ABW) label diminishes and trivializes the experiences and feelings of Black women. If every time a Black woman asserts her rights she gets pigeon-holed as an ABW, her voice is silenced. No one hears her.

The exception, of course, is when Black women speak out for issues that affect men, too. Our outrage is fine as long as we’re marching for civil rights or protesting new voting laws which seek to disenfranchise minorities. Our wrath is justified when we decry the modern day lynching of our young Black men under the Stand Your Ground laws. When we’re rallying against these injustices, our tears are celebrated, held up as emblems of the struggle: grieving mothers, clutching the photographs of our slain sons. But the moment we speak up for ourselves, we become the Angry Black Woman.

http://www.forharriet.com/2014/03/ba...y-we-must.html

[*Anya*]

Originally Posted by Happy_Go_Lucky

Recently, the news and the Internet have been abuzz with stories about Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and pop star Beyoncé Knowles and their mission to ban the word “bossy” as it applies to girls and women. Their campaign makes sense. It’s no secret that in America, attributes praised in men are often vilified in women. Where a man is bold, confident, daring and a real “go-getter”, a woman is aggressive, bitchy, cocky or a “ball-breaker”. In other words, assertive girls and women get called “bossy”.

Little girls who emerge as natural leaders on the playground are discouraged from being “bossy”. Where little boys might be encouraged to seize the reins of whatever game or activity in which they’re engaged, little girls are scolded to “share”, and “let so-and-so take control, now”. It’s as if being a natural leader is a bad thing, a threat to their femininity. Or worse, a girl’s assertiveness emasculates the boys around her.

Labelling anyone with a negative description like “bossy” damages their self-esteem. And it just isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to squash a girl’s natural leadership skills so that she isn’t labelled as aggressive. Yet while I agree with the thesis behind Ms. Sandberg’s and Ms. Knowles’ campaign, I believe that another term should be eliminated as well. I want to destroy, once and for all, the myth of the “Angry Black Woman”.

Just like the “bossy” label, the Angry Black Woman (ABW) label diminishes and trivializes the experiences and feelings of Black women. If every time a Black woman asserts her rights she gets pigeon-holed as an ABW, her voice is silenced. No one hears her.

The exception, of course, is when Black women speak out for issues that affect men, too. Our outrage is fine as long as we’re marching for civil rights or protesting new voting laws which seek to disenfranchise minorities. Our wrath is justified when we decry the modern day lynching of our young Black men under the Stand Your Ground laws. When we’re rallying against these injustices, our tears are celebrated, held up as emblems of the struggle: grieving mothers, clutching the photographs of our slain sons. But the moment we speak up for ourselves, we become the Angry Black Woman.

http://www.forharriet.com/2014/03/ba...y-we-must.html

We saw Brandi Chastain on Chopped last week. I had the same reaction when she spoke about her non-profit: Bay Area Women's Sports Initiative (BAWSI). She said, "We call it BAWSI".

She laughed and clearly pronounced it "bossy". Really bothered me.

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

A disagreement over the discovery of the cause of Down’s syndrome has resurfaced in France more than 50 years after the findings were published.

The dispute erupted again at the French Federation of Human Genetics' (FFGH) seventh biennial congress on human and medical genetics in Bordeaux at the end of last month.

Paediatric cardiologist Marthe Gautier, who was involved in the experiments that led to the identification of the extra copy of chromosome 21 — the cause of the syndrome — was due to relate her role in the discovery when two bailiffs arrived with a court authorization to record the session. The FFGH then decided at the last minute to cancel Gautier's presentation

http://www.nature.com/news/down-s-sy...france-1.14690

Speaking of men stealing women's work product.....

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/caitlincowie...n-ads-with-men

Commercials tend to show women in provocative poses no matter what product is being sold, so we decided to recreate three of them with men.

[Kobi]

FORT BRAGG, North Carolina (Reuters) - A U.S. Army general at the center of a rare court-martial of a top military leader was cleared of sexual assault charges on Monday, but admitted to mistreating a junior officer during their inappropriate sexual relationship.

Brigadier General Jeffrey Sinclair pleaded guilty to several lesser military criminal offenses as part of an agreement with the government that dismissed the most serious allegations against him.

The 27-year Army veteran said he knew the female Army captain with whom he had a three-year extramarital affair was enamored by his rank, and he led her on despite knowing he would never divorce his wife.

When he realized his subordinate was emotionally committed to the affair in a way he was not, he flirted with other women and was cold to her in hopes she would become angry enough to break off their secret liaison that spanned two war zones, Sinclair told a judge.

"I failed her as a leader and as a mentor and caused her harm to her emotional state," the one-star general said.

Though vindicated of charges that he forced the captain to perform oral sex and engaged in "open and notorious sexual acts" with her, Sinclair's decorated military career is almost certainly over.

Sinclair's attorneys will argue during the sentencing phase on Monday that he should avoid jail time and be allowed to retire at a reduced rank in keeping with how officers in similar cases have been treated.

The lawyers say Sinclair's case is one of the first courts-martial of a general in nearly 60 years and was fueled by political concerns at a time when the U.S. military is grappling with how to handle rising sexual assault in its ranks.

"Clearly what General Sinclair did was wrong, but it certainly had the appearance that he was being the scapegoat for the bigger sexual assault problem that the military's going through," said Morris Davis, a retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who is not involved in the case.

TRIAL HALTED BEFORE PLEA

Sinclair, a 51-year-old married father of two, has remained on active duty at the sprawling base at Fort Bragg after being stripped of command in southern Afghanistan in May 2012 as a result of the criminal allegations.

His trial was already under way this month when a judge ruled that politics appeared to have improperly influenced the Army's decision to reject an earlier offer by Sinclair to plead guilty if the charges of coercive sex acts were dropped.

The former lead prosecutor in the case resigned after military leaders refused to dismiss the sex charges despite concerns about the key accuser's credibility. The new chief prosecutor said the government did not doubt the woman's underlying allegations.

The judge last week allowed Sinclair to renew his plea offer, and the general's attorneys announced on Sunday that a resolution to the case had been reached.

The agreement called for the government to drop the sexual assault charges involving the captain, as well as two additional charges that could have required Sinclair to register as a sex offender.

The identity of the captain, a military intelligence officer, is being withheld by Reuters due to the nature of the charges.

Sinclair pleaded guilty to maltreating his accuser, using his government credit card for personal purposes related to the affair and using demeaning language to refer to female staff officers.

He admitted to calling a female major "a red-headed troll" but told the judge he was joking when he said "I'm a general, I'll say whatever the fuck I want."

Sinclair also faces punishment after pleading guilty this month to having an adulterous affair, asking junior female officers for nude photos and possessing pornography on his laptop while deployed in Afghanistan.

He could have been sent to prison for life if he had been convicted of the sexual assault charges, but now faces a far less severe maximum sentence.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/sex-assault...154520589.html