Currently, there are no explicit federal laws protecting LGBTQ individuals from discrimination. In roughly 26 states, you can still be fired for being LGBTQ, for example (though on the state or city level, there may be local laws that protect LGBTQ individuals). There is also no explicit federal law barring discrimination of women in public businesses.
via What the Equality Act Means for LGBTQ and Women's Rights
“And then it happened to me,” Fairley said on Tuesday during a press call. About two months after last year’s walkout, one of the men Fairley worked with began making sexually explicit comments to her, telling her she had a “fat ass” and “I’ll take you on a ride.” The harassment didn’t end there—he also would touch her without her consent, pinching her butt and rubbing his hand in her crotch. But when she reported his behavior, her coworker was simply transferred to another store, and Fairley’s hours were cut from an average of 25 hours per week to about seven hours, a move she believes was clearly made in retaliation. When she asked to be transferred to a different location in March of this year, she was told that she could only be transferred to the McDonald’s where her harasser worked.
via What McDonald's Workers Need to Fight Sexual Harassment is a Union
When Samia Ali worked as a medical scribe in Rhode Island—assisting doctors by writing down what happened during patient visits—she saw everything there is to see about the intimacies of a patient-physician relationship.
Many times, Ali told Splinter in an interview, she saw efficient and thoughtful care. But there was also neglect, mismanagement and, in some cases, open xenophobia.
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00:00“One dynamic that struck me was working with providers who did two things: express impatience when [patients were] not understanding English and [ignore] that most elder immigrants like bringing another person, usually one of their kids, to talk to the provider directly as a translator,” she said.
via How the Healthcare System Fails People Who Don't Speak English
In a six-month period between October 2018 and March 2019, 21,000 people in the United States reached out to Aid Access, an organization started by Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of the Netherlands-based abortion-pill distributor Women on Web, the Guardian reports. Not everyone who contacts the organization receives the medication—prospective clients must first pass an online consultation. Those who qualify receive Mifepristone and Misoprostol, which, when taken as directed, have been proven to be safe at terminating pregnancy. According to the data reviewed by the Guardian, more than a third (but less than half) of the people who requested the pills in that six month period received them. Notably, most of these requests came from states where abortion access has been severely cut back.
via Thousands in the U.S. Are Now Relying on Mail-Order Abortion Pills
Anti-abortion activists have been bashing away at abortion’s legality and accessibility for decades, but the past two weeks have been especially dramatic. On May 15th, Alabama passed the most restrictive law in the nation, which would grant no exceptions for rape or incest victims; this on the heels of Georgia’s so-called “heartbeat” bill that aims to ban abortions after six weeks, before the vast majority of people will even realize that they’re pregnant.
Inside this maelstrom of terrible laws came Alyssa Milano’s ill-conceived and not even real sex strike, which continued to show up in news stories and across social media as Missouri passed its own near total abortion ban. Milano’s announcement (which can be read in its original tweet form here) justifiably set off an avalanche of angry (and witty) rebukes, most of which lodged the same objections: such a strike is predicated on heteronormativity and gender essentialism; it positions sex as labor, as though we have sex with as our bosses; it doesn’t account for the striker’s own desire for sexual pleasure and intimacy; and it flirts with the conservative talking point that fertile cis women shouldn’t have penis-in-vagina (PIV) sex unless they intend to carry any resulting pregnancy to term.
Emboldened by the passage of Alabama’s almost total ban on abortion, some extremist anti-abortion activists are now pushing for the Republican Party to, in their words, “reconsider decades-old talking points” that make exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest.
As NPR reported, a coalition of groups led by Students for Life of America, is urging party officials to adopt their hardline stance:
via The Anti-Abortion Movement Is Inching Toward Its Logical, Radical Endpoint
Sssh! Periods is a brief look at the miserable experience of getting your period as a middle-schooler. “I’m literally the queen of bleeding out,” a girl named Caroline told NPR. One girl on the podcast said a teacher didn’t let her go to the bathroom when she got her period in the middle of class, and another remarked that her teachers’ reactions change quickly once they realize they’re dealing with a menstruating teenager. “Cause when you tell a teacher, their whole mood changes!” one said. “Facial expression and everything,” another added.
via These Bronx Middle Schoolers Made the Best Podcast About Periods
Nevada’s state assembly just passed a bill removing a series of restrictions on abortions, including requirements that a patient be told about the “physical and emotional implications” of having an abortion, that “a physician certify a pregnant woman’s marital status and age before performing an abortion,” and that a provider inform the patient of the “consequences” of having an abortion. The Associated Press reports that under the bill, it would no longer be illegal for a non-physician to dispense abortion-inducing medications.
via Nevada Lawmakers Poised to Remove Series of Abortion Restrictions
McLeod, per the incident report, was so drunk that he “had slurred speech and walked slow in a zigzag pattern.” When deputies went into the McLeod’s bedroom, they found blood on the bed and on the floor. Per the Sun Herald, his wife told deputies that “her husband was drunk and ‘just snapped,’ as he often does when under the influence of alcohol.”
Another woman who lives at the McLeod home, presumably a family member, told the sheriff’s department that McLeod’s wife ran up to her room, and shut and locked the door:
via Mississippi State Rep Doug McLeod Allegedly Punched His Wife in the Face for Undressing Slowly
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery claims to be a big believer in data. As reported last year, Montgomery has blocked effective, commonsense criminal justice reform proposals from becoming law in part by criticizing them as having “no data to support” them, and as being “pet projects” “based on myths and rhetoric.”
Given this insistence on evidence-based policy, it would be reasonable to assume that Montgomery would happily comply with a public records request seeking exactly the sort of data he wishes folks would utilize. He’s done the exact opposite.
