Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Kobi]

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.




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/...ir-daily-lives

[Kobi]

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.




http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014...people/373172/

[Kobi]

“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.
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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. ****TriggerWarning****

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/pict...i-website.html

[Kobi]

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/repo...ampaign=buffer

[Kobi]

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-charg...ry?id=24542754

[Kobi]

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.

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/2014/07/0...-control-cases