Just a bit of an invitation, isn’t it

Mar 13th, 2017 5:10 pm | By

Here’s another:

H/t Stewart… Read the rest



Trolls in real life

Mar 13th, 2017 4:43 pm | By

Now this is familiar.

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Otherwise intelligent

Mar 13th, 2017 3:29 pm | By

Oh good lord.

At Pink News one Josh Jackman explains what women are.

There seems to be an epidemic of otherwise intelligent, respectful, feminist people suddenly blurting out that trans women “aren’t real women.”

*grits teeth*

One, he mentions two people (and things Germaine Greer said years ago); two is not an epidemic. Two, it’s neither stupid nor disrespectful nor unfeminist to say that trans women are not women in every sense of the word. Three, nobody “blurted out” anything; two women made reasoned arguments.

After that, Josh Jackman (I don’t dare say “he” lest I be accused of misgendering…them) gets down to the hard work of explaining why it’s wrong to say that trans women are not women … Read the rest



When women dare to spark

Mar 13th, 2017 12:27 pm | By

Now Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s daring to say that she thinks trans women are trans women has become a news item. I guess it’s shocking when women say things like “trans women are trans women.”

The LA Times tendentiously headlines:

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie angers transgender community

And the Motoons “provoked the Muslim community” and Charlie Hebdo “sparked outrage” and on and on it goes.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the Nigerian novelist and outspoken feminist, drew criticism from transgender activists after suggesting that the experiences of transgender women are different from women whose gender was assigned female at birth.

Which is ridiculous, because of course the two sets of experiences are different. In other contexts that’s seen as the whole point.… Read the rest



Locked up for Holi

Mar 13th, 2017 11:21 am | By

Michael Safi reports from Delhi:

As India’s raucous spring festival of Holi approached this year, a memo circulated among two women’s dormitories at the University of Delhi.

Undergraduate women would be locked inside the student halls from 9pm on Sunday until 6pm on Monday, it read – well after most Indians had finished smearing each other in dye, dancing or drinking from cups of bhang lassi, a milky cannabis-based concoction.

The decision of the hostels highlights a darker side to one of India’s most joyous festivals: as inhibitions decrease, many women say the street harassment endemic to Delhi life also surges.

And naturally the solution to that is to imprison the women. Literally imprison them for 21 hours. Literally … Read the rest



It is amazing

Mar 13th, 2017 10:46 am | By

Donnie from Queens showing his usual dazzling self-awareness and insight.

Ah yes, he’s such an expert at avoiding rudeness. He’s so good at being nice. Du wut he sez, nott wut he duz.… Read the rest



The potential for surprises

Mar 12th, 2017 5:20 pm | By

Poor Angela Merkel. She has to go visit Trump on Tuesday. Yuck. I hope he doesn’t try to hold her hand.

German officials say the detail-oriented Merkel, 62, has been preparing assiduously for her trip to Washington.

She has watched Trump’s speeches and [pored] over his interviews, including a lengthy Q&A with Playboy magazine from 1990 in which he floats many of the controversial ideas he is now trying to implement as president, they say.

Members of her entourage have also analyzed Trump’s encounters with other leaders – including Britain’s Theresa May, Japan’s Shinzo Abe and Canada’s Justin Trudeau – and have had exchanges with some of their counterparts on how to handle the unpredictable former reality-TV star, the

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Penny wise

Mar 12th, 2017 4:54 pm | By

The health commissioner of Baltimore ponders what she would have faced if she had had no health insurance when she got pregnant.

Even though I’m a relatively healthy 34-year-old, I have several medical conditions that call for more frequent monitoring. My doctor recommended that I return every two weeks for a physical exam and ultrasound. Closer to delivery, I should plan to see him every week.

I didn’t hesitate to follow my doctor’s recommendations. I have excellent health insurance with no copay for doctor’s visits and a minimal cost for tests.

But what would I have done if I didn’t have insurance?

One obstetrician visit would cost $150. With an ultrasound each time, it would be $400. A Pap

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They are not an afterthought of nature

Mar 12th, 2017 12:29 pm | By

Margaret Atwood on The Handmaid’s Tale:

Over the years, “The Handmaid’s Tale” has taken many forms. It has been translated into 40 or more languages. It was made into a film in 1990. It has been an opera, and it has also been a ballet. It is being turned into a graphic novel. And in April 2017 it will become an MGM/Hulu television series.

In this series I have a small cameo. The scene is the one in which the newly conscripted Handmaids are being brainwashed in a sort of Red Guard re-education facility known as the Red Center. They must learn to renounce their previous identities, to know their place and their duties, to understand that they have

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She had to convince clients to respect her

Mar 12th, 2017 11:51 am | By

What happens when a man accidentally uses a woman’s name on the job?

Martin R. Schneider, an editor for the movie-reviewing site Front Row Central based in Philadelphia, realised men and women are treated differently in the workplace after he accidentally signed off on emails using his female co-worker’s signature

He tweeted the experience that made him realise women do not get the same respect in the workplace. The tweet that has been liked nearly 7,000 times and shared more than 5,400 times at the time of writing.

Mr Schneider, at the time working at another company, said that his colleague Nicole was getting criticism  from their boss for taking longer than he did on tasks that involved communicating

Read the rest


Complicit

Mar 12th, 2017 11:16 am | By

Saturday Night Live went after Ivanka Trump this time.

Yet again this weekend, “Saturday Night Live” trotted out Alec Baldwin doing a Donald Trump impression for its cold open. And yet again, that wasn’t even close to its harshest political sketch.

That distinction this week was reserved for “Complicit,” a faux Ivanka Trump perfume ad that is liable to really ruffle some feathers.

The basic idea is pretty clear: As an outspoken woman known to be very close to her father, she is complicit in the things Trump does — and for not doing something about them.

Daddy boasts of grabbing women by the pussy, Daddy calls Senator Warren “Pocahontas,” Daddy accuses Obama of a felony based on something somebody … Read the rest



She was opened to a certain level of hostility

Mar 11th, 2017 5:56 pm | By

Emma Brockes interviewed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a week ago for the Guardian.

Last year, at a writing workshop she was teaching in Lagos,

a young man rose to ask the famous novelist a question. “I used to love you,” she recalls him saying. “I’ve read all your books. But since you started this whole feminism thing, and since you started to talk about this gay thing, I’m just not sure about you any more. How do you intend to keep the love of people like me?”

Of people who are not sure about this whole feminism thing and this gay thing? Perhaps she has no such intention.

Adichie and I are in a coffee shop near her home in the

Read the rest


Lego NASA Women

Mar 11th, 2017 1:03 pm | By

Via Heroic Women to Inspire Game Designers

Lego NASA Women:

AMAZING NEWS: It’s official — Lego NASA Womenhas been approved by the LEGO Ideas Review Board and will soon be a real LEGO set. Everything is AWESOME!!!

Designers at LEGO are already hard at work planning the set’s ultimate look and feel. Set creator Maia Weinstock will continue posting updates as they become available, so stay tuned… As ever, THANK YOU to everyone who’s supported and cheered for this celebration of all the women who’ve contributed to NASA History!

Update: For those asking, an on-sale date is not yet determined, but will be sometime late 2017/early 2018.

From the LEGO ideas blog:

Women of NASA

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Yer fired

Mar 11th, 2017 12:09 pm | By

So the Trump people solved the problem by firing Preet Bharara.

On Friday, acting deputy attorney general Dana Boente began making calls to 46 prosecutors asking for their resignations. Such requests are a normal part of a transition of power from one administration to another, and about half of the 94 Obama-era U.S. attorneys had already left their jobs.

But Boente’s call to Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, appears to have left some confusion in its wake, in large part because President Trump met with Bharara soon after the election and had asked him to stay on.

During Friday’s call, Bharara asked for clarity about whether the requests for resignations applied to him,

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It’s about the way the world treats us

Mar 11th, 2017 11:17 am | By

Uh oh. Uh oh uh oh. A woman said a wrong thing, again. A feminist woman. A feminist woman who is an author and widely respected. Uh oh uh oh uh oh; everybody get ready to throw things.

Feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has found herself at the center of a controversy over gender identity after comments she made about transgender women during an interview, which can be viewed in the clip above, recently went viral.

I like that “has found herself” – it’s so passive-aggressive.

Speaking earlier this week with the U.K.’s Channel 4, Adichie, who is promoting her new book Dear Ijeawele Or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, said, “When people talk about, ‘Are

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When Sean Hannity says “jump”

Mar 11th, 2017 10:30 am | By

So now Fox News is not only the chief source for Trump’s wild assertions, it’s also giving Trump instructions on what to do. Fox News.

The Trump administration moved on Friday to sweep away most of the remaining vestiges of Obama administration prosecutors at the Justice Department, ordering 46 holdover United States attorneys to tender their resignations immediately — including Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan.

The abrupt order came after two weeks of increasing calls from Mr. Trump’s allies outside the government to oust appointees from President Barack Obama’s administration. Mr. Trump has been angered by a series of reports based on leaked information from a sprawling bureaucracy, as well as from his own West

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Guest post: The presenters are expected to be expert in this field

Mar 10th, 2017 5:21 pm | By

Originally a comment by Rob on A personal and professional impossibility.

Both the BBC and RNZ (our version of the Beeb) have a long and proud tradition of long running shows that cover a wide range of issues that broadly fall within a generic header. The presenters are expected to be expert in this field, to be able to collate years, even decades long shows that maintain interest by being fresh, topical and challenging. Whatever your interpretation of the printed standards and your supposition about what is in an employment contract – let alone the interpretation of that – the practice promoted by both organisations is to expect and encourage the presenters to use their expertise to bring the … Read the rest



Because he told porkies under oath

Mar 10th, 2017 4:29 pm | By

It’s almost as if the Attorney General is supposed to be especially punctilious about not breaking laws.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed an ethics complaint against Attorney General Jeff Sessions over his testimony to a Senate committee that he had no communications with the Russian government.

The complaint, filed with the Alabama State Bar’s disciplinary commission, comes less than two weeks after The Washington Post revealed that Sessions met with Russia’s ambassador to the United States twice last year and did not disclose those communications when asked during his confirmation hearing in January.

Well you see he didn’t know they meant that kind of communications with the Russian government. He thought they meant the other kind. He didn’t … Read the rest



It’s become so normalized in the military

Mar 10th, 2017 12:41 pm | By

The Washington Post reports that the Marines-sexual shaming scandal is spreading throughout the military.

Sunday, March 5:

The Naval Criminal Investigation Service, or NCIS, said it was launching an investigation into the drive, while Marine officials said the drive had been taken offline. Additionally, the Marines’ highest-ranking officer, Gen. Robert B. Neller issued a statement calling the incident “distasteful” but did not address the investigation directly.

“Distasteful”? My god, that’s feeble. It sounds as if he’s concerned about the nakedness instead of the lack of consent, the stalking, the degradation, the loathing.

Tuesday, March 7: 

Female Marines subjected to online harassment on Marines United and other pages began to come forward, detailing that the problem was larger than any one

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The case centred on a Twitter exchange

Mar 10th, 2017 10:29 am | By

Katie Hopkins done for libel:

The writer and food blogger Jack Monroe has won a libel action against the Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins and been awarded £24,000 damages, in a row over tweets suggesting Monroe approved of defacing a war memorial during an anti-austerity demonstration in Whitehall.

The case centred on a Twitter exchange in May 2015, in which Hopkins confused two well-known anti-austerity commentators: Monroe and Laurie Penny, a columnist for the New Statesman. Penny had tweeted about a memorial to the women of the second world war in Whitehall having been vandalised with the words “Fuck Tory scum” during an anti-austerity demonstration.

Commenting on the graffiti, Penny tweeted from her account @PennyRed that she “[didn’t]

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