Misogyny and Sexism in the News

[Soon]

Originally Posted by Gemme

UVa Fraternity Suspended Over Rape Allegations

Here's the Rolling Stone in-depth article on that.

[Kobi]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

[Kobi]

[Kobi]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/us...pgtype=article

[Gemme]

Sailor Filmed and Distributed Videos of Women on Submarine

[Kobi]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertain...rity/383617/2/

[Kobi]

When it comes to stopping violence against women, actions speak louder than words. So even though there’s increased worldwide awareness about violence against women, the problem won’t be solved unless countries make significant policy and financial changes to support victims, according to a five-part series of studies in The Lancet, one of the world’s premier medical journals.

The series, entitled “Violence Against Women and Girls,” calls the violence a “global public health and clinical problem of epidemic proportions,” and the statistics are bleak. 100-140 million women have undergone female genital mutilation worldwide, and 3 million African girls per year are at risk. 7% of women will be sexually assaulted by someone besides their partner in their lifetimes. Almost 70 million girls worldwide have been married before they turned 18. According to WHO estimates, 30% of women worldwide have experienced partner violence. The researchers said that these problems could only be solved with political action and increased funding, since the violence has continued “despite increased global attention,” implying awareness is not enough.

“No magic wand will eliminate violence against women and girls,” series co-lead Charlotte Watts, founding Director of the Gender Violence and Health Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said in a statement. “But evidence tells us that changes in attitudes and behavior are possible, and can be achieved within less than a generation.”

One of the major problems highlighted in the Lancet series is that much of the current research on violence against women has been conducted in high-income countries, and it’s mostly been focused on response instead of prevention. The study found that the key driver of violence in most middle-and-low income countries is gender inequality, and that it would be near impossible to prevent abuse without addressing the underlying political, economic, and educational marginalization of women.

The study also found that health workers are often uniquely positioned to help victims, since they’re often the first to know about the abuse.

“Health-care providers are often the first point of contact for women and girls experiencing violence,” says another series co-lead, Dr. Claudia Garcia-Moreno, a physician at the WHO, in a statement. “The health community is missing important opportunities to integrate violence programming meaningfully into public health initiatives on HIV/AIDS, adolescent health, maternal health, and mental health.”

The series makes five concrete recommendations to curb the violence against women. The authors urge nations to allocate resources to prioritize protecting victims, change structures and policies that discriminate against women, promote support for survivors, strengthen health and education sectors to prevent and respond to violence, and invest in more research into ways to address the problem. In other words: money, education, and political action are key to protecting the world’s most vulnerable women. Hashtag activism, celebrity songs, and stern PSAs are helpful, but this problem is too complicated to be solved by awareness alone.

“We now have some promising findings to show what works to prevent violence,” said Dr. Cathy Zimmerman from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. “We urgently need to turn this evidence into genuine action so that women and girls can live violence-free lives.”

The study comes just in time for the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

http://time.com/3598444/lancet-viole...-women-global/

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


And how much money was wasted on a global study to show what feminists have been saying for centuries?

[Kobi]

Protestors in New York flooded the streets last week, toting signs that blazed with images and phrases about cruel injustice.

Just a week after similar events in Ferguson, a grand jury ruled that Daniel Pantaleo — the NYPD officer who put Eric Garner, a 44-year-old, black, Staten Island man, in a chokehold that led to Garner’s death — should not be brought to trial for his actions.

A failure to indict the police officer responsible for Garner’s unjustifiable, illegal, and unnecessary death signifies why there’s been a breach of trust between communities of color and those tasked with enforcing the laws.

In black American communities, we are holding our breath, waiting for whoever’s next. There is no guarantee that the next victim will be a black male, but there appears to be a guarantee that the victim will be marginalized or forgotten by the mainstream media if she is a girl or woman of color.

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, a non-profit organization whose mission is to defend the human rights of black people, found that every 40 hours, a black man, woman, or child is killed by police, security guards, or self-appointed law enforcers. In fact, since the killing of Mike Brown, more than 14 black teens have been killed by the police, including 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a boy in Cleveland, Ohio who was murdered less than two seconds after police arrived at a playground to answer a 911 call related to a black child carrying a pellet gun. We know another Eric Garner is coming, and it is impossible to prepare for the onslaught of grief that will accompany the next traumatic injustice.

But one of the largest injustices is how little we collectively discuss the many women of color who are also killed by police.

Take Aiyana Jones, 7, who was killed by a Detroit police officer as she slept on her father’s couch. Or Rekia Boyd, 22, whose life ended in Chicago when she was killed by a police officer. Or Yvette Smith, 48, who was unarmed when she was killed by a police officer in Texas. Or Pearlie Smith, 93, who was fatally shot in her home. Or Tarika Wilson, 26, whose one-year-old son was also injured when she was killed by a Ohio police officer. Or Tyisha Miller, 19, who was killed by a police officer in Los Angeles. Or Kathryn Johnson, 92, who was killed by a police officer in Atlanta. Or Gabriella Nevarez, 22, who was killed by a Sacramento police officer. Or Eleanor Bumpurs, 66, who was killed by a police officer in the Bronx. I could go on and on, but you still probably wouldn’t recognize their names.

While we grieve with the families of Brown, Garner, and countless others, black women are tired of being placed at the fringes of the conversations about state-sanctioned violence. Justice can’t only apply to black males.

While some news outlets covered these women’s deaths, many chose to overlook them because they’re women, and more specifically, black women. Their deaths seem to have little value. As writer Victoria Law explains in Bitch magazine, the names of unarmed black women killed by police “very rarely stick in public memory and never gain the same traction as Eric Garner or Michael Brown.” Sexism impacts every aspect of black women’s lives, including how we’re treated, or not addressed, in media after our deaths. Yet our experiences with law enforcement are very similar to that of black men.

As a black woman, I’m not immune to the fear. My heart pounds rapidly every time I see blue-and-red lights flashing in my rearview mirror. I never know if I will be alive when I leave those brief encounters with police officers. One wrong move could cost me my life, and that is a fear that haunts me as I move through the world every day.

If the next victim of police violence is a black woman or girl, her name will probably not resonate as loudly as that of Mike Brown and Eric Garner. Her face won’t adorn posters protesting the mistreatment of black women by police officers, because police violence is often coded as male, as Dr. Treva B. Lindsey of Ohio State University explains.

Prevailing narratives around Black violability and anti-Black racial violence pivot around Black men and boys. Both historically and contemporarily, when many people working towards racial justice around the issue of racial violence, the presumptive victim is a Black male. From lynching to police brutality, the presumed victim is a Black male. Therefore, Black women and girls are viewed as exceptional victims as opposed to perpetual victims of anti-Black racial violence. Our narratives around racial violence, unfortunately, have yet to evolve into ones that are gender inclusive. Black Victim=Black Male.

Female victims of color are marginalized, and always have been. Renowned social justice warrior and organizer Fannie Lou Hamer was savagely beaten by Mississippi police officers in 1963. She developed a blood clot in the eye, damaged kidneys, and a limp that would remain with her for the rest of her life as a result of the beating. Yet, the sexual and physical terrorism committed against Hamer isn’t discussed as often as the repeated arrests of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr or Malcolm X.

Even now, police violence inflicted upon women of color — like Boyd and Jones, who were both unarmed when they were fatally shot by police officers — doesn’t dominate headlines the way the killings of Garner and Brown do. No concrete data has been collected on the number of black women who are killed by law enforcement, and that’s no coincidence; most of the time, we barely know their names. While we grieve with the families of Brown, Garner, and countless others, black women are tired of being placed at the fringes of the conversations about state-sanctioned violence. Justice can’t only apply to black males.

Social justice leaders are organizing and meeting with Congressional and international leaders to push toward laws that will insure that people of color are safe to stand in front of convenience stores without being choked to death. But as we wait for those laws to be seen as necessary, and we wait for police officers to wear body cameras, and we wait for a shift in how police officers are trained, we also wait for female victims of color to receive equal acknowledgement.

Native New Yorkers, like me, know how brutal the New York Police Department is. We’ve lived through Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Kimani Gray, and the countless others who’ve lost their lives at the hands of those designated to protect and serve us. Eric Garner is the newest member of that lineage of men of color who are killed by the New York Police Department, and whose families have to watch their loved ones receive minimal justice. All black women request is that our deaths matter too.

http://www.bustle.com/articles/52433...-hear-about-it

[Kobi]

A Missouri Republican is pushing a bill that would allow a man who gets a woman pregnant to stop her from having an abortion. The measure would force a woman who wants an abortion to obtain written permission from the father first—unless she was the victim of "legitimate rape."

Rick Brattin, a state representative from outside Kansas City, filed the bill on December 3 for next year's legislative session. The proposed measure reads, "No abortion shall be performed or induced unless and until the father of the unborn child provides written, notarized consent to the abortion."

The bill contains exceptions for women who become pregnant as the result of rape or incest—but there are caveats.

"Just like any rape, you have to report it, and you have to prove it," Brattin tells Mother Jones. "So you couldn't just go and say, 'Oh yeah, I was raped' and get an abortion. It has to be a legitimate rape."

Brattin adds that he is not using the term "legitimate rape" in the same way as former Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), who famously claimed that women couldn't get pregnant from a "legitimate rape" because "the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down."

"I'm just saying if there was a legitimate rape, you're going to make a police report, just as if you were robbed," Brattin says. "That's just common sense." Under his bill, he adds, "you have to take steps to show that you were raped…And I'd think you'd be able to prove that." The bill contains no provision establishing standards for claiming the rape or incest exceptions. It also doesn't state any specific penalties for violating the law nor say whether a penalty would be imposed on the woman seeking the abortion or the abortion provider.

Missouri is home to only one abortion clinic, based in St. Louis. Each year, legislators target the clinic with dozens of new restrictions. In 2014, the GOP-controlled Legislature approved a bill requiring women seeking an abortion to wait 72 hours between the initial consultation and the procedure. It's the longest abortion waiting period in the county.

A group of Democratic lawmakers in Missouri found the onslaught of anti-abortion bills so ridiculous that in 2012 they introduced a bill to ban vasectomies except to save the life of a man. If conservative male lawmakers imagined jumping through hoops to obtain reproductive services, the thinking went, they would see the absurdity of their anti-abortion crusade.

Not Brattin. The father of five says that his recent vasectomy was the inspiration for this bill.

"When a man goes in for that procedure—at least in the state of Missouri—you have to have a consent form from your spouse in order to have that procedure done," he says. "Here I was getting a normal procedure that has nothing to do with another human being's life, and I needed to get a signed form…But on ending a life, you don't. I think that's pretty twisted."

A spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, a group of clinics that perform vasectomies, says that there is no law in Missouri requiring a man to get another person's permission for a vasectomy. Individual providers sometimes require a patient to have his partner's consent. (Planned Parenthood of Missouri does not.) Brattin saved the document his wife signed and intends to share it with other lawmakers when it comes time to promote his bill.

Brattin notes that his bill also contains an exception for cases in which continuing the pregnancy would endanger the life of the mother. Women whose partners have died can sign a sworn affidavit to that effect.

When asked if he would support an exception for women whose partners are abusive, Brattin says, "I haven't really thought about that aspect of it." But he adds, "What does that have to do with the child's life? Just because it was an abusive relationship, does that mean the child should die?" Brattin notes that women in these situations can obtain protective custody once the child is born.

Asked about Casey v. Planned Parenthood, a 1992 Supreme Court decision striking down a requirement that a woman inform her husband if she haves an abortion, Brattin says he doesn't believe the ruling affects his bill. Because Missouri has laws requiring men to pay child support during a pregnancy, he contends, a bill requiring a man's involvement in an abortion should be constitutional.

In 2013, Brattin sponsored a bill to give intelligent design and "destiny" the same amount of attention in Missouri textbooks as evolution. Brattin has cosponsored many anti-abortion bills, including several measures restricting medication abortions that passed the Missouri Legislature in recent years. His latest bill, which would allow a man to veto a woman's decision to get an abortion, is identical to a measure Brattin proposed in April that died in committee.

"This bill is insulting and a danger to women in abusive relationships," says M'Evie Mead, the director of statewide organizing for Missouri's Planned Parenthood affiliated. "That's very much our concern. But when it comes to abortion, Missouri legislators are always trying to outdo each other."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...aving-abortion

[Kobi]

Tamara Loerstcher was suffering from an untreated thyroid condition and depression and had begun to self medicate with drugs when, in late July 2014, she suspected she might also be pregnant. Loerstcher, uninsured at the time, went to an Eau Claire, Wisconsin, hospital for medical treatment and to confirm her pregnancy.

After submitting to a urinalysis, Loerstcher disclosed her past drug use to hospital workers. But instead of caring for Loerstcher, who as it turns out was 14 weeks pregnant, hospital workers had her jailed.

Those are the allegations in a soon-to-be-filed federal civil rights lawsuit by attorneys from National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Carr Center for Reproductive Justice at New York University School of Law, and the Perkins Coie law firm.

Loerstcher and her attorneys, in a call with reporters, detailed her experience, including her alleged mistreatment by Wisconsin officials and the ongoing deprivation of Loerstcher’s constitutional rights under a Wisconsin law that grants authorities the power to involuntarily detain and confine a pregnant woman for substance use if she “habitually lacks self-control” and her substance use poses a “substantial risk” to the health of an egg, embryo, or fetus.

The Wisconsin policy is similar in nature to radical “personhood” laws pushed in state legislatures controlled by anti-choice lawmakers. “Personhood” amendments, which would outlaw abortion at any stage of pregnancy, were roundly rejected by voters in several states on Election Day.

According to Loertscher and her attorneys, unbeknownst to her, as hospital workers were preparing a prescription to treat Loertscher’s thyroid condition, they were also initiating unborn child protection proceedings on behalf of Loertscher’s then 14-week-old fetus.

Loertscher and her attorneys claim that within days of Loertscher seeking care, hospital workers had already turned over Loerstcher’s hospital records to the state without Loerstcher’s knowledge or consent. They also claim that with those records in hand, state officials filed a petition accusing Loerstcher of abuse of an unborn child and held a hearing in which the state had appointed an attorney, known as a guardian ad litem, for the 14-week-old fetus, but granted Loerstcher no meaningful representation.

At the hearing, Loertscher and her attorneys allege she was ordered by the court into in-patient treatment even though she had not used drugs recently and voluntarily sought medical care. When Loerstcher refused to go to in-patient treatment, she was held in contempt of court and sent to jail, where she was held for 17 days without prenatal care and subject to abuse and harassment.

“This was my first pregnancy, so I didn’t know what to expect,” Loerstcher told reporters. “I was having lots of cramping and a lot of stress from everything and they [jail officials] wouldn’t allow me to see the doctor. They told me I would have to see a jail-appointed doctor who told me she wanted me to take a pregnancy test to confirm the pregnancy even though that’s why I was in jail, because I was pregnant. They knew that’s why I was there.”

Loerstcher claims she refused the pregnancy test, and in response, correction officials put her in solitary confinement and threatened to use a taser on her. “The jail doctor told me if I chose to miscarry, there wasn’t anything they could do about it anyways,” Loertscher said through tears.

About a week after Loerstcher’s release, she says she got a notice in the mail from the state stating they had found she had engaged in child abuse.

“It was really devastating to get that letter,” said Loerstcher. Unless it’s overturned on appeal, Loerstcher’s name will appear on the state’s child abuse registry for life. That would mean Loerstcher, who is a certified nurse’s aid, would be unable to work in her field, noted her attorney, and that she would be barred from ever volunteering at her son’s school after he is born in January. “This has very serious ramifications for her life and economic stability long term,” said Sara Ainsworth, director of legal advocacy at the National Advocates for Pregnant Women and counsel for Loerstcher.

In order to be released from jail, Loertscher had to sign a consent decree agreeing to additional drug tests, so she remains under state custody to some extent, her lawyer said.

Wisconsin Act 292, known as the “cocaine mom” law, extends the court’s juvenile jurisdiction to include “fertilized eggs, embryos, and pregnant women at all stages of pregnancy where the pregnant woman ‘habitually lacks self-control’ in the use of alcohol or controlled substances ‘to a severe degree’ such that there is a ‘substantial risk’ that the health of the egg, embryo, fetus, or child upon birth will be ‘seriously affected.’”

In effect, Act 292 grants “personhood” rights to fertilized eggs and embryos by granting the state power to initiate child protective actions against the expectant mother anytime the state believes she has substance use issues that will “seriously affect” the health of the egg, embryo, fetus, or child.

Under Act 292 Wisconsin officials have broad authority to arrest and detain the expectant mother for up to the duration of her pregnancy and can appoint an attorney, known as a guardian ad litem to represent the best interests of the “unborn child,” like they allegedly did in Loerstcher’s case. But because the law empowers the state to act through the juvenile courts rather than the criminal courts, much of the proceedings and findings are sealed. “This law operates through juvenile court, so everything that happens is essentially secret,” said Ainsworth. “There’s no way to know the full extent of how this law has been used against pregnant women in Wisconsin.”

While the total numbers of Wisconsin women swept up under Act 292 may not be known, Loerstcher’s case is not the first.

Last year, attorneys from the National Advocates for Pregnant Women filed a lawsuit on behalf of Alicia Beltran, another Wisconsin woman involuntarily detained at a drug treatment facility despite no evidence she had used drugs while pregnant. The attorneys sued in federal court, but that case was eventually dismissed as moot and without a ruling on the merits of her claims after Wisconsin officials released Beltran out of custody. In the order dismissing Beltran’s claim, the court noted that ”if Beltran’s allegations are true, what happened to her is extremely disturbing.”

Wisconsin is one of a number of states that have some kind of process in place that allows the state to effectively suspend the civil rights of pregnant people in the name of protecting against fetal harm. Most recently, Tennessee enacted a law that essentially empowers prosecutors to charge pregnant people with fetal assault for a host of activities, including drug use.

Meanwhile, South Carolina and Alabama through judicial decisions have made various criminal laws applicable to pregnant women, while both Minnesota and South Dakota amended their civil commitment laws to include a special process for committing pregnant people if they are determined to be a risk to their developing fetus.

But of all the state laws punishing pregnant people, Wisconsin’s is the most broad, said Ainsworth, and no court has yet ruled on its constitutionality.

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/20...tm_campaign=FB

[Kobi]

[Kobi]

Acclaimed Novelist Sells 30 Million Books, Is Remembered For Her Physical Appearance In Obituary

[Kobi]

The Supreme Court has declined to overturn a lower court’s ruling that an insurance company was within bounds when it fired a breastfeeding mother. The woman’s suit was dismissed by the Eighth Circuit Court on the grounds that firing a woman for breastfeeding isn’t sexist because men can lactate, too.

The ACLU’s Galen Sherwin wrote Monday that former Nationwide Insurance Company employee Angela Ames sued her employer when she returned from maternity leave to find that no allowances had been made to enable her to pump breast milk for her baby during the day.

When Ames asked her supervisor for accommodations that would enable her to express milk and store it for her child, the supervisor reportedly responded that Ames should “go home and be with your babies” instead. That supervisor went on to dictate a letter of resignation to Ames that day, effectively forcing her to resign.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Nationwide and the Eighth Circuit Court, denying Ames’ petition for a review of her case’s dismissal. The trial court’s decision — which the Circuit Court upheld — said that for Nationwide’s firing of Ames for taking time to express milk at work could not have been sexist because under certain circumstances, some men can lactate, too.

“The court’s reasoning in this case echoes old Supreme Court pronouncements that discriminating against pregnant women at work isn’t sex discrimination because both men and women can be non-pregnant,” Sherwin wrote. “Congress long ago rejected this ridiculous reasoning when it passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. It’s disheartening to see it resurface again.”

The Court also found that the dismissive statement that Ames should “go home and be with (her) babies” was in fact gender neutral and not directed at Ames because she was a new mother.

“As the ACLU and 11 other organizations argued in a brief supporting Angela’s appeal, that comment reflects exactly the type of sex stereotype — that women will be less committed to their work after having children, or that they belong at home taking care of the children — that the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in employment was aimed at eradicating,” Sherman wrote.

Additionally, the circumstances around the case indicate that Ames was pressured into agreeing to sign the letter of resignation when she was upset and in pain. It was her first day back from maternity leave and Nationwide denied her access to the company’s “lactation room” for new mothers because they said they needed three days to process Ames’ paperwork, a requirement no one had seen fit to tell Ames about until the day she returned to work.

A company nurse reportedly informed Ames that she could use a common area typically used by sick employees if she had to lactate that badly. The sick room, however, did not have a locking door and someone was occupying the room when Ames attempted to enter.

As Ames waited for the room to be clear, her breasts painfully swollen and beginning to leak, her supervisor came to her desk and informed her that she would be responsible for all of the work that she had missed during her leave time. All of it must be completed, said the supervisor, within the next two weeks — meaning a considerable amount of overtime — if Ames did not want to face disciplinary action.

Sherwin wrote, “She finally returned, in increasing panic and pain from the pressure in her breasts, to her department head to see if there was anything she could do to help her find a place to pump. That’s when the department head made the “just go home to be with your babies” comment and dictated her letter of resignation.”

Ames’ case, said Sherman, “shines a harsh light on the multi-layered workings of structural discrimination: Workplace policies that don’t make space for the realities of pregnancy and motherhood, employers’ entrenched sex stereotypes and implicit bias, and courts that — despite decades-old legal protections — still manage to turn a blind eye to the pervasive discrimination faced every day by working women.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/s...n-can-lactate/

[Gemme]

Airline has Outdated Policy for Female Flight Attendents

[Kobi]

Cosmopolitan surveyed 2,235 full-time and part-time female employees and found that one in three women has experienced sexual harassment at work at some point their lives.

"Sexual harassment hasn't gone away -- it's just taken on new forms," Michelle Ruiz and Lauren Ahn wrote. Unlike workplace sexual harassment portrayed in films and pop culture that represent it as overtly aggressive, sexual harassment at work isn't always easy to spot. It can be a sexual comment in a meeting or even an insinuating Facebook message.

The American Association of University Women defines workplace sexual harassment as any, "unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature."

Out of the women who said they've experienced workplace sexual harassment, 29 percent reported the issue while 71 percent did not. According to the survey, the field with the highest levels of reported sexual harassment is food and service hospitality.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0...ss&ir=Business

[Kobi]

[Allison W]

Somewhat unusually for a men's magazine, GQ has apparently been getting into progressive investigative journalism recently. Jeff Sharlet attended the first national conference for A Voice For Men to report on the, uhm, "highlights," as it were.

It's a somewhat lengthy article at three pages of decent length, so I won't copy it here; instead, I'll just link to it.

Seriously, though. That first picture and its associated caption on the first page. My only commentary there is "welp."

Also, don't wade into the comments section unless you want to see the Men's Rights Bowel Movement brigade crying all over it. Article by GQ, comments by QQ.

[Gemme]

Oh my.

I couldn't make it through the whole thing.

I got stuck somewhere around here:

"Responding to a feminist critic, he once wrote, "The idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection." But that kind of talk is just for show, he says. He points out he used to be a counselor. What he's doing, really, is a kind of therapy. He wants me to understand."

[Allison W]

Originally Posted by Gemme

Oh my.

I couldn't make it through the whole thing.

I got stuck somewhere around here:

"Responding to a feminist critic, he once wrote, "The idea of fucking your shit up gives me an erection." But that kind of talk is just for show, he says. He points out he used to be a counselor. What he's doing, really, is a kind of therapy. He wants me to understand."

Yeah. Paul Elam is, uh, quite a character, to put it extremely gently. The kind of dude who says stuff like how if he were on a jury for a rape case, he'd vote "not guilty" no matter how damning the evidence against the defendant happened to be, how women don't "ask" to be raped so much as they "beg" to be raped, and... yeah. That kind of thing. And the thing where he put up fake White Ribbon Campaign websites, accusing the real White Ribbon Campaign websites of being fraudulent, and soliciting donations directly to his pocketbook. I could go on. AVFM being the "moderate" (I put that in quoties for a reason) wing of the Men's Rights Bowel Movement kind of reveals just how fucked-up the entire thing really is. It's frightening to consider that the rest of said bowel movement somehow manages to be even worse.

[Kobi]

This spring, an aspiring professor—W, as she’s chosen to call herself in a blog post about the experience—attempted to negotiate her tenure-track job offer with the Nazareth College philosophy department. She wanted a slightly higher salary than the starting offer, paid maternity leave for one semester, a pre-tenure sabbatical, a cap on the number of new classes that she would teach each semester, and a deferred starting date. “I know that some of these might be easier to grant than others,” she acknowledged in her e-mail. “Let me know what you think.”

Nazareth didn’t hesitate to do just that: W wrote that the college promptly let her know that she was no longer welcome. “The institution has decided to withdraw its offer of employment to you,” the terse reply concluded. “We wish you the best in finding a suitable position.”

What had W done wrong? Perhaps nothing, at least according to the advice to “lean in” that women have become accustomed to hearing. “This is how I thought negotiating worked,” W wrote. “I just thought there was no harm in asking.” (It’s entirely possible that there were factors at play not covered in the leaked correspondence—a Nazareth representative told me that the college was unable to comment on a personnel issue.)

In a survey of graduating professional students, Linda Babcock, of Carnegie Mellon University, found that only seven per cent of women attempted to negotiate their initial offers, while fifty-seven per cent of the men did so. We see those dire statistics and think that women are, in a sense, self-sabotaging. They don’t ask for the same compensation and benefits as men, so they can’t rightly be expected to receive them. But is it really the case that the disadvantage stems from not asking?

Sheryl Sandberg, the author of “Lean In” and the chief operating officer of Facebook, acknowledges the difficulties of negotiation, but nonetheless urges women to push forward (“I negotiated hard,” she writes) and to do what they would do if they weren’t afraid. But, had W spoken to psychologists who study the role of gender in negotiation alongside more popularly rendered edicts from women at the top of their fields, she might have been less surprised at the outcome.

The rest of the story.