Cis privilege strikes again.

Samira Ahmed has won her equal pay claim against the BBC in a landmark case that lawyers say could leave the broadcaster facing a bill running into the millions for similar claims by other female staff.

Ahmed, the presenter of viewer feedback programme Newswatch, claimed she was owed almost £700,000 in back pay because of the difference between her £440-an-episode rate and the £3,000 an episode Jeremy Vine received for hosting the similar Points of View programme.

Ooof, that’s quite a gap.

An employment tribunal unanimously concluded that the BBC had failed to provide convincing evidence that the pay gap was for reasons other than gender discrimination, although the BBC continues to dispute this.

No, … Read the rest

About those lavish and unusual apologies…

https://twitter.com/moviefeminist/status/1215736843423055873

McLaughlin is the founder of MeTooSTEM.

Yes, grovel and debase yourself some more. Well done you.

— Jurassic Snark (@underhandrea) January 10, 2020

More apologies. It’s a retort as opposed to a serious statement, but still. More apologies? After that stream of abject prostrate lachrymose apologies they’d already issued?

https://twitter.com/McLNeuro/status/1215748705338515461

Flippant dismissal of the concerns of women, from the woman who founded MeTooSTEM. What did they do to her?

https://twitter.com/McLNeuro/status/1215749880783785984

They get “folks” asking if a group that opposes sexual harassment of women in STEM can change the subject and be about trans people instead – and the founder of the group thinks this is a good thing.

People have lost their damn … Read the rest

The @MeTooSTEM grovel got even more grovelly.

https://twitter.com/MeTooSTEM/status/1215786039232602113

When has anyone ever talked to actual women like that? When has anyone ever apologized to women for sexist insults or misogynist epithets like that? When has anyone ever repudiated something a volunteer retweeted in such abject and sympathy-oozing terms?

Never that I know of. I haven’t seen all the content that exists, of course, but I have paid a lot of attention to how people talk to and about women on social media and this kind of belly-crawling and sobbing with pity on behalf of women is starkly unfamiliar to me. “We are so sorry for the hurtful content” – nope, that’s not how that goes when it’s mere women at … Read the rest

13 former White House press secretaries and foreign service/military officials call for the return of regular White House and other press briefings. 

All of us have experienced the challenges of a regular press briefing whether at the White House, the State Department or the Pentagon. We all had days where the last place we wanted to be was behind one of those podiums. But day after day, we persisted.

We believed that regular briefings were good for the American people, important for the administrations we served, and critical for the governing of our great country.

It’s not that great. It’s really not. It’s behind all other developed democracies on a whole list of items, like maternal mortality for instance. … Read the rest

Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Would she be able to think critically?

If you heard a two-year-old meow like a cat (they do that, and make other animal noises; it’s fun) and told her or him that the reason s/he liked particular toys, games and clothes was because s/he was really a cat, and that there are lovely doctors who can give her/him fur and a tail when s/he’s old enough, by the time s/he were four they’d be desperate to be turned into a cat. That is what ‘affirmation’ does.

The correct response to a small girl saying “I’m really a boy” is “Wow, really? Well, I’m really an elephant! Shall we go shopping for bananas?”

Of course, … Read the rest

A British Columbia doula asks some questions:

Where do you see yourself in the hierarchy of birth? Are you at the bottom? The smallest player with the smallest voice? Or are you at the top?

Basically the doctor isn’t the boss of you. But what’s intriguing to me is the graphic that illustrates the hierarchy-dismantling.

Isn’t it fascinating that whoever created this graphic sees nurses and midwives as women and doctors as men, but the pregnant woman as the “birthing person”?

You’d think it would at least be consistent – nurse person, doctor person, birthing person, but no, the medical personnel are divided on the strictest of (outdated) lines. Somehow it’s only the one pushing out the baby who … Read the rest

Hmmm.

Trump adds a new vivid description to his attacks on "little pencil neck" Rep. Adam Schiff: "He buys the smallest shirt collar you can get, and it’s loose!"

— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) January 10, 2020

Trump’s campaign has been selling Schiff T shirts since last spring. For real.

Trump’s presidential campaign has started selling $28 “Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff” T-shirts that feature a drawing of Rep. Adam Schiff with a pencil for a neck and a clown nose.

Little Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff

He spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking. He should be forced to resign from Congress!

Everyone should buy a Pencil-Neck Adam Schiff shirt today!

BUY Now: https://t.co/5SMsrJC8nU pic.twitter.com/v3Vvmma0e6

— Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022)

… Read the rest

Meanwhile, during breaks from trying to start a war with Iran, Trump is trashing more environmental regulations.

The Trump administration plans to rewrite decades-old regulations to make it easier to build major infrastructure such as pipelines, which would have the effect of relaxing government efforts to fight the climate crisis.

“Relaxing.” That’s a nice word – a nice, soothing, pleasant word. The truth would be less pleasant: which would have the effect of weakening government efforts to fight the climate crisis. Or harming, ending, negating, nullifying, destroying. Relaxation really has nothing to do with it.

Trump announced Thursday morning the changes to National Environmental Policy Act rules, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental impact of

… Read the rest

A heart-rending and infuriating but perhaps ultimately hopeful thread:

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209411070742529 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209414480683009 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209416112271361 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209418997956608

Oh god. Four years old. It’s unconscionable.

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209420717641733

I think we can feel Carol’s fury with her – I think the typos are a kind of fury thermometer. I’m pretty sure I start missing keys when I get wrathful.

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209422474993664

Great, the therapist thinks telling a girl that girls can have short hair and wear jeans is confusing while telling her she’s a boy is not confusing. I think we need a new Theory of Confusion.

https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209424228192258 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209426019209218 https://twitter.com/SourPatches2077/status/1215209427734691841

Thinking critically is a good thing, including for therapists. Affirmation and Validation are not always the best thing for people.… Read the rest

Many sources are saying it looks as though Iran shot down that plane.

Senior Ukrainian security official says Flight 752 may have been brought down by a missile — or a terrorist act, drone collision, or engine explosion https://t.co/ULKNwozPZK

— Anton Troianovski (@antontroian) January 9, 2020

Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on Iraqi bases housing U.S. soldiers. https://t.co/VHA2nG6ZSm

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 9, 2020

Ukraine investigators consider missile strike, terrorism as possible causes of Iran plane crash – CNN https://t.co/rmV4afHGxd

— Karol Cummins (@karolcummins) January 9, 2020

If the CBS report on the Ukrainian crash in Iran is accurate, it would join two other notable accidental shootdowns:
– The downing

… Read the rest

I think Glinner summed it up nicely this morning.

One day we'll tell kids, oh yeah, they let this guy cheat and win women's races and no-one said shit because of an unspoken agreement among progressives that, really, in the end, the achievements of top-class female athletes have less value than the demands of mediocre men. pic.twitter.com/1VORmiNVN3

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) January 8, 2020

… Read the rest

Many are praising Louise Perry’s review of Andrea Long Chu’s book Females. I like this passage:

The feeling of desperate, conflicted desire is a thread running through Chu’s writing. Where she departs from mainstream trans activism is in vocalising that conflict, rather than wishing it away: “What I want isn’t surgery; what I want is never to have needed surgery to begin with. I will never be natural, but I will die trying.”

It is impossible not to feel compassion, despite the fact that Chu does not spend even a moment wondering what it might feel like for cis women — a little over half the human race — to be the objects of all this longing. To engage

… Read the rest