I’ve been wondering about this. Jeannie Suk in the New Yorker on “the looming Title IX crisis”:

…on May 13th the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (O.C.R.) and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division issued a Dear Colleague letter announcing to the nation’s schools that, under Title IX—the 1972 law banning sex discrimination by schools that receive federal funding—transgender students must be allowed to use rest rooms that are “consistent with their gender identity.”…

In chastising North Carolina, the Justice Department explained that if non-transgender people may use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity, then denying transgender people access consistent with their gender identity constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex. Similarly, the Dear Colleague letter states that

Maybe it’s time to do something about the hypertrophied financial “industry” that has an unfortunate tendency to break the global economy ever few years?

On Tuesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) headlined an event that launched a new coalition calling itself “Take On Wall Street.”

The group includes lawmakers like Warren, Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), labor leaders like the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka and the AFT’s Randi Weingarten, as well as civil rights groups, community groups, and the organizing giant Move On. It aims to put pressure on lawmakers at all levels to pass stricter rules governing the financial system.

Operating on two principles — “No cheating, and no pushing the risks on taxpayers,” as Warren put it

In Bill Cosby news:

There is enough evidence that Bill Cosby assaulted a woman just over a decade ago to bring a criminal case against him to trial, a judge ruled Tuesday.

…

Defense attorneys have tried to get the charges thrown out, arguing that a deposition Cosby gave for a civil suit could not be used against him and that the prosecution is politically motivated. District Attorney Kevin Steele charged Cosby after defeating former DA Bruce Castor, who had declined to prosecute the case when it initially emerged. That decision became an issue in the election.

“The underlining theme of these, and each of those charges, that based upon what he did to the victim and giving her

Clementine Ford explains the double bind that women are caught in. We’re taught a long list of don’ts that are all about rape-avoidance. If we get raped or otherwise assaulted or abused anyway, we get scolded for recklessly disobeying the Don’ts List. (Have you ever noticed how the Don’ts List is a kind of abstraction of purdah and hijab – or how purdah and hijab are still with us in the form of all these don’ts? Of course you have; it’s obvious.)

The great irony is that women, chided as we are for behaving as if we might have the right to move through the world like autonomous adults, are also punished whenever we take overt and declarative steps

Portland schools won’t be teaching “skepticism” about climate change from now on.

In a move spearheaded by environmentalists, the Portland Public Schools board unanimously approved a resolution aimed at eliminating doubt of climate change and its causes in schools.

“It is unacceptable that we have textbooks in our schools that spread doubt about the human causes and urgency of the crisis,” said Lincoln High School student Gaby Lemieux in board testimony. “Climate education is not a niche or a specialization, it is the minimum requirement for my generation to be successful in our changing world.”

The resolution passed Tuesday evening calls for the school district to get rid of textbooks or other materials that cast doubt on whether climate change

Last week Muirfield golf club voted not to admit women. Sounds like a good idea, but it means they don’t get to host a big championship.

GOLF CHIEFS have stripped course Muirfield of the Open Championship after its members threw out a proposal for women to join the East Lothian club in a move branded “simply indefensible” by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.

The decision by members of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers, which owns and runs the club, also drew the ire of Prime Minister David Cameron who said the move was “outdated.”

Yeah, women have had time to learn to play by now.

Henry Fairweather, the club captain, and his committee had recommended that women should be

Heather Saul in the Independent reports on a thing some women are doing in Iran:

Women in Iran are cutting their hair short and dressing as men in a bid to bypass state ‘morality’ police who rigorously enforce penalties for not wearing a hijab.

A number of women have shared photos of themselves in public with their hair uncovered on Instagram and other social media.

The women have cut their hair short in some images and in others are dressed in clothes more typically associated with men.

That’s not being trans, or gender nonconforming, or gender fluid – it’s surviving. It’s trying to avoid being stopped, and harassed, and arrested, and fined, perhaps beaten, perhaps put in jail for … Read the rest

It’s the done thing in my neighborhood for shops to put messages on sandwich boards outside. The cupcake one suggests cupcakes to go with the weather or the holiday or the news or whatever else strikes them.

A couple of blocks north, where there’s slightly less foot traffic, a little clothing boutique I hadn’t noticed before had one this afternoon that said

Give a girl the perfect shoes, and she can change the world.

I was sorely tempted to go inside and ask if I could punch whatever genius came up with that.… Read the rest

The Independent has also noticed the dismissive attitude to sexual harassment in France.

There was a time when France sniggered at the sex scandals that periodically enlivened British or American politics. “Jamais ici”, they would say. “We are relaxed about sex, unlike the prudish and hypocritical Anglo-Saxons.”

Except that the issue never was “sex” as such, it was sexual harassment. News flash, sophisticates: unilateral “sex” isn’t sex, it’s abuse or assault. If French women were ever “relaxed” about being assaulted or harassed, they were making a mistake.

But the male-dominated world of French politics, for so long immune to scandal, is abruptly having to deal with serial accusations of its own forms of hypocrisy and prudishness. Last week Denis

French women MPs are protesting sexism from colleagues.

Isabelle Attard, a French MP from Normandy, stood outside the French parliament flanked by dozens of protesting female politicians and feminist campaigners. Armed with placards and loudspeakers, they demanded an end to a dangerous French taboo: the everyday groping, harassment, sexist comments and sexual assault that women are still subjected to in parliament by male politicians.

…

Attard, 46, an independent MP in Calvados, is one of eight women who came forward this week with allegations against the Green MP and deputy speaker of parliament, Denis Baupin, ranging from harassment to sexual assault.

Between 2012 and 2013, Baupin allegedly sent Attard and other MPs barrages of lewd daily text messages in

From PRI’s The World in November 2014:

More than half of women [in Bombay aka Mumbai] don’t have indoor toilets. In a typical Mumbai slum, there are something like six bathrooms for 8,000 women. Sometimes those bathrooms have collapsed, have dogs or rats living in them, or simply have no water.

Sarita, who works as a cook, gets to a bathroom maybe three times a day — if she’s lucky. She wakes up at 5:30 every morning to line up to use the facilities.

“I leave home at seven and I have to wait until I get back home — sometimes it’s nine hours, sometimes 12,” she says. “My stomach hurts when I hold it, but what can I

Calvin Klein gets rich and richer by advertising his stuff in ways that degrade women, because the degradation attracts attention and thus multiplies the effect of all of Calvin Klein’s advertising. That’s what the Huffington Post quotes a scholar saying, at least (and I don’t doubt it).

What ad is it this time? An upskirt one. Geddit? That’s great because it’s something guys do stealthily without the consent of the women and girls whose skirts they peer and photograph up.

Commenters voiced their disapproval on a number of aspects of the ad, including how Kristin’s youthful appearance prompted many to confuse her for a minor (she is 23,  for the record). They also took issue with the pose

Here’s something I didn’t know – Montreal is numero uno in North America in prostitution. Meghan Murphy writes:

A film by Ève Lamont called The Sex Trade (Le commerce du sexe) reveals that the situation in Quebec is much worse than many had imagined (myself included) — more women are sold in prostitution in Montreal than anywhere else in North America.

Lamont interviews pimps, johns, strip club owners, law enforcement, porn producers, and, of course, the women who work in the clubs, the massage parlours, on the street, and out of apartments and hotels in la belle province. A police officer explains that Montreal has 30 strip clubs and 200 massage parlours, never mind the escorts and street

Tarek Fatah tweeted this yesterday. It’s painful to watch.

I especially hate the way she hugs the yellow bag to her for comfort for a few seconds, as if it were a teddy bear – she’s so alone and so comfortless.

Indian Muslim punches wife sitting next to him on a train, shrink-wrapped in a head-to-toe Arab hijab. No one helps pic.twitter.com/OFiyKLuxSE

— Tarek Fatah (@TarekFatah) May 20, 2016

… Read the rest

It’s hard to call it good news when a wrong that never should have been committed is terminated after four years, but…all the same: Maria Teresa Rivera is out of prison.

A woman has been released from jail in El Salvador after spending four years behind bars accused of having an abortion, according to Amnesty International.

Maria Teresa Rivera, 33, was jailed in 2011 and sentenced to 40 years in prison for aggravated homicide after having a miscarriage.

But today, Amnesty International said a judge ruled there was not enough evidence to prove the charges against her, ending what had been the longest ever sentence imposed on a woman in the Central American nation for an abortion crime.

Ms

Sanctuary for Families, an anti-violence-against-women group, posts some responses to Emily Bazelon’s article on prostitution in the NY Times magazine last weekend.

Last weekend, the New York Times Magazine’s cover feature asked the question: “Should Prostitution Be a Crime?” 

The article courted controversy and failed to include the viewpoints of survivors, activists and service providers who know firsthand the deep harm and gender inequality perpetuated by the commercial sex industry. 

Today, the Times published letters in response to the article. Here are a few letters that didn’t make the LTE page, among them critically important perspectives from survivors that were left out:

To the Editor:
Re: Should Prostitution be a Crime?

If the small group of privileged “sex workers” highlighted

Another one of these: prominent male academic has a long string of allegations of sexual harassment, proceeds on his way regardless.

Thomas Pogge, a protégé, is a Name in global ethics and one of the few who actually has an influence on policy debates.

A self-identified “thought leader”…

Ok there’s one hint right there. If he calls himself a “thought leader” his ego is too big, and guys with hypertrophy of the ego tend to feel entitled to get women by whatever means necessary.

A self-identified “thought leader,” Pogge directs international health and anti-poverty initiatives, publishes papers in leading journals, and gives TED Talks. His provocative argument that wealthy countries, and their citizens, are morally responsible for correcting the