It’s damned difficult to do great science when you’re always navigating the minefield of bias and disregard, the expectation that you must make the (psychological) tea; when asserting yourself makes you a bitch – even getting a word in without interruption can be a challenge
The 2019 Women’s March Will Take Place in January
Break out your poster board from wherever you… store your poster board… because the National Women’s March is BACK, baby. Or, at least, it will be back in January 2019, per organizers.
The New York Times reports that the third annual National Women’s March will take place on January 19 of next year, with planned actions in cities across the nation and world. The main march will take place in Washington D.C., though organizers say they’re still hammering out the route and other permit-related details.
Leta Hong-Fincher on Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China
In 2015, a group of feminist activists in China planned to commemorate International Women’s Day by handing out stickers calling out sexual harassment on subways and buses in cities throughout the country. For several years, they had been engaging in provocative performance art—acts of consciousness-raising that involved everything from their donning white wedding dresses doused in fake blood to call attention to domestic violence to holding street actions protesting the lack of equality in the number of women’s public toilets, dubbed “Occupy Men’s Toilets.”
via Leta Hong-Fincher on Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China
Stockton University Allegedly Fails Women After Sexual Assault
A New Jersey university failed two former students after they were assaulted, two new federal lawsuits claim.
The first suit, filed Monday, involves a Stockton University student who says she was sexually assaulted by a fraternity member at a Pi Kappa Phi house party in 2012, The Trentonian reports. (23.1% of female undergraduates expert rape or sexual assault while in school, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.) The student says she tried to report her assault to police when they broke up the party approximately one hour later, but the officer told her to stop talking about it after she told him she’d punched the frat house member in self-defense.
via Stockton University Allegedly Fails Women After Sexual Assault
UCLA Student Sues ZBT, SAE For Failing To Do More to Prevent Assault
In 2017, a UCLA student filed a Title IX complaint against another student for sexually assaulting her and won. (Her attacker, Blake Lobato, was expelled.) She is now suing two fraternities and a student group representing the interests of other frats on campus in order to change “a culture of alcohol abuse and sexual transgression,” reports the LA Times.
The civil complaint (filed under Jane Doe) accuses fraternities, especially Zeta Beta Tau and Sigma Alpha Epsilon, with “[doing] little-to-nothing to protect their members and guests from harm.” It also accuses the SAE chapter at UCLA of failing to intervene on the night she was sexually assaulted by Lobato:
The complaint alleges that Sigma Alpha Epsilon members continued to ply Jane Doe with booze although she was visibly drunk at the fraternity’s house party on Aug.12, 2016. It also alleges that the fraternity failed to provide security or supervision.
via UCLA Student Sues ZBT, SAE For Failing To Do More to Prevent Assault
Brett Kavanaugh, Sexual Assault, the Threat to ‘Every Man’
“I am willing to talk to the Senate Judiciary Committee in any way the Committee deems appropriate to refute this false allegation, from 36 years ago, and defend my integrity,” Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh said on Monday in what has now been his second statement denying sexual assault allegations made by Christine Blasey Ford.
Ford has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee but senators remain divided over whether to postpone voting on Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee or let Thursday’s vote carry on as scheduled. Trump himself seems committed to Kavanaugh’s nomination. When asked on Monday if Kavanaugh offered to resign, Trump responded: “What a ridiculous question.”
via Brett Kavanaugh, Sexual Assault, the Threat to ‘Every Man’
McDonald’s Workers to Go on 1-Day Strike Over Sexual Harassment
For Kim Lawson, who began working at a McDonald’s in Kansas City, Missouri last year, sexual harassment seemed to come with the job. Almost immediately after she started, she said, a coworker began brushing up against her numerous times and went out of his way to be near her, always standing too close. He would give her gifts, something he didn’t do to anyone else they worked with. But when she told a manager about her coworker’s behavior, no action was taken: “He still worked the same shift. He was still around,” Lawson told Jezebel. The experience soured her on reporting any harassment, so when a night shift manager began hitting on her, making lewd comments about her body, she felt like saying anything would be useless. And since he was a manager, she said, “I felt like I had to be nice about it.”
via McDonald’s Workers to Go on 1-Day Strike Over Sexual Harassment
‘Sexist, unsafe’ world experienced by young girls – BBC News
An “alarmingly high” number of girls and young women feel unsafe outside their home, according to annual research for Girlguiding UK.
The survey of 1,903 13 to 21-year-olds in the UK found nearly two-thirds either felt unsafe, or knew someone who was fearful walking home alone.
More than half had suffered harassment, or knew someone who had, it said.
But girls are responding more robustly than before and were also more likely to call themselves feminists, it said.
The research, the tenth over as many years, found more girls claim to understand what feminism means, with almost half saying they are feminists – up from a third in 2013.
One young woman, from the 11 to 16-year-old age group, told researchers a feminist was “a person who strongly believes in gender equality and that everyone no matter their background should be treated equally.”
via ‘Sexist, unsafe’ world experienced by young girls – BBC News
Spotify sued for gender discrimination and equal pay violation | Music | The Guardian
A former Spotify sales executive is suing the music streaming giant for gender discrimination, equal pay violation and defamation. Hong Perez alleges that the Swedish company systematically discriminated against female employees, Variety reports.
Perez alleges that her former boss, the US head of sales Brian Berner, took only male employees to the Sundance independent film festival in 2016 and 17. She says employees spoke of “drug use” on these “boys’ trips” and alleges that one man got into a physical fight during one. She claims these trips excluded more senior women.
via Spotify sued for gender discrimination and equal pay violation | Music | The Guardian
Jeff Sessions Considering Indefinite Detention of Asylum Seekers
Jeff Sessions, a racist bloodhound, is considering indefinite detention of people who cross the U.S. border seeking asylum.
Over the past several months, Sessions has instructed judges to deny victims of domestic and gang-violence asylum, and now he is reportedly considering to deny bond hearings to asylum seekers, even if they have passed the credible fear interview. This means that anyone seeking safe haven in the U.S. could be detained indefinitely.
A decision set by a case called Matter of X-K, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) allows asylum seekers to be released on bond if they pass a “credible fear” interview, in which officials assess whether the asylum seeker is at risk of persecution in their home country. Sessions is reportedly trying to find a way to overturn the BIA’s decision.
via Jeff Sessions Considering Indefinite Detention of Asylum Seekers