Lee Francis Cissna, the Head of USCIS, Is Making Life Increasingly Tough for Immigrants

~ mcequality

It’s often the architects of our nation’s monstrous immigration policies (cough Stephen Miller cough) who are the subject of dramatic news headlines and the target of our much-deserved vitriol. But, as a new Politico profile of Lee Francis Cissna, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, reminds us, the bureaucrats who willingly and happily follow the dictates that come from above are equally as appalling (if not more so in their unthinking devotion to carrying out orders).

Politico describes how Cissna, the son of an immigrant from Peru and husband to the daughter of a Palestinian refugee who has steadily worked his way up the ranks of different federal agencies, has been dramatically—and quietly—reshaping immigration policy:

via Lee Francis Cissna, the Head of USCIS, Is Making Life Increasingly Tough for Immigrants

Bravo Reality TV Star Grant Robicheaux Accused of Rape

~ mcequality

Grant Robicheaux appeared a few years ago on the Bravo reality TV series The Online Dating Rituals of the American Male. Now, he stands accused of drugging and raping women.

Robicheaux, a surgeon in Newport Beach, Calif., in 2014 appeared in a single episode of the show, during which he went on a date with a woman who told him, “I wanna know what’s wrong with you, because you seem, like, too perfect.” Afterward, she told the camera, “He seems a little too perfect. I think there might be some dark skeletons in that closet.”

Earlier this week, Robicheaux and his girlfriend Cerissa Laura Riley have been charged with raping women with the use of drugs. Investigators say they have discovered “hundreds of videos of apparently intoxicated women believed to have been filmed” by Robicheaux and Riley, according to The Mercury News. Both have denied the charges.

via Bravo Reality TV Star Grant Robicheaux Accused of Rape

#WhyIDidntReport Goes Viral In Response to Donald Trump Tweet

~ mcequality

It is not at all shocking that a guy who bragged about grabbing women by the pussy and has been accused of sexual assault by nearly two dozen women would embrace this line of thinking. And so, minutes later, #WhyIDidntReport was born. As of Friday afternoon, it’s the top trending hashtag on Twitter.

#WhyIDidntReport is not the first collective outpouring of sexual trauma on social media, nor will it be the last. A slew of people, including celebrities, opened up about their own experiences with abuse and the forces that kept them silent:

via #WhyIDidntReport Goes Viral In Response to Donald Trump Tweet

Fatness, Race, and Food Policies in America 

~ mcequality

The piece is fantastic; communicating the everyday inhumanities experienced by fat people. The list is long and depressing: bullying in childhood and beyond (cruelty as young as three, the article reveals), partnering with a person you’re not attracted to just to feel desired, being fired or unable to progress in a career or company, having a doctor celebrate your eating disorder as a means to lose weight, the internal struggle to separate self-worth from size, hiding eating behaviors from co-workers and loved ones, and so on.

We’ve known for years that bias against the overweight prevents us from seeking necessary medical attention, as well as misdiagnoses. It ultimately, unfortunately, leads to a near total distrust in doctors—unless, of course, you are equipped to find a fat-positive provider, one that recognizes the failure of the BMI-based system (which is a luxury afforded to the wealthy). The latter point brings about a question of intersectional fat-positivity: both in socioeconomic privilege and in racial discrimination.

via Fatness, Race, and Food Policies in America 

UK Denies Windrush Generation Members Citizenship

~ mcequality

Some immigrants known as the Windrush generation, who have been living in the UK for decades, are now being denied citizenship because they lack the proper documentation proving they lived in the UK before 1973.

Seventy years ago, when the UK was recovering from World War II, Britain put out ads in Caribbean countries under its control, hoping to attract people to help rebuild the country. In 1948, 492 West Indians—as British subjects—boarded the vessel Empire Windrush, attracted by a promise of more stable work. They ushered in the Windrush generation—a generation of black and brown people from British Commonwealth nations that were invited to come work in the UK until 1971, only to face harassment, bullying, and racism when they arrived. According to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, there are an estimated 500,000 people in the Windrush generation.

via UK Denies Windrush Generation Members Citizenship

Brett Kavanaugh: The supreme showdown for Trump’s America – BBC News

~ mcequality

A California professor and President Donald Trump’s pick to become the next Supreme Court justice will appear before senators to tell conflicting stories about a high school party 36 years ago.
The accuser and the accused, in the glare of the spotlight, with a lifetime seat to the most powerful court in the US at stake.
While the drama will be intensely personal, as she alleges he assaulted her and he strongly rejects the accusation, this is more than a clash of two individuals and their recollection of past events.
It also represents the confluence of two movements – one decades in the making, the other a recent, powerful groundswell.

via Brett Kavanaugh: The supreme showdown for Trump’s America – BBC News

Cara Delevingne on why she didn’t report sexual abuse – BBC News

~ mcequality

Model and actress Cara Delevingne has shared why she was so reluctant to report sexual abuse.
“I felt ashamed of what happened and didn’t want to publicly ruin someone’s life,” says Cara.
Thousands of women have been sharing their stories under the hashtag WhyIDidntReport.
It’s gained popularity after Donald Trump suggested people who’d been abused in the past should’ve gone to the authorities sooner.

via Cara Delevingne on why she didn’t report sexual abuse – BBC News

Distracted Boyfriend Meme Is Sexist in Sweden

~ mcequality

Here in America we are tearing our hair out over having a very bad government much of which does not consider women fully human. But in Sweden, memes are being scrutinized for sexism.

The Guardian reported on Wednesday that Sweden’s advertising ombudsman ruled that the Distracted Boyfriend meme—which was once a quaint stock photograph by Antonio Guillem called Man Looking at Other Woman, and has been forever fused to our central nervous systems I am sure—is sexist. The image was used in ads for the internet services provider Bahnhof, which assigned the labels “You” to the boyfriend, “Your current workplace” to the girlfriend, and “Bahnhof” to the second woman.

via Distracted Boyfriend Meme Is Sexist in Sweden

Artist Sarah Lucas on Her New Museum Retrospective

~ mcequality

Having only known her as the cool, confrontational artist in photos, I suspected Lucas, 55, would be tough in person. But when I meet her at the New Museum where she’s currently installing over 150 works for her first ever U.S. retrospective open September 26, Au Naturel, she is cool as a cucumber, albeit frazzled by the installation (she’s currently figuring out the best placement for a set of gigantic concrete boots in the museum’s lobby.) Just last week, she invited a group of women (and men in drag or dressed as giant phalluses) to the New Museum to help her create One Thousand Eggs: For Women, in which women throw precisely 1,000 eggs at a wall to create a gooey, yellow painting. “Women, we’ve got eggs, but they’re limited,” she tells me over lunch. “It’s a different thing to be a bloke… your seed isn’t limited. You can produce more and more of it, you can spill any amount of it around, if you’re just having a wank, and it doesn’t cut off.”

via Artist Sarah Lucas on Her New Museum Retrospective

Women Are Turning Their Facebook Profiles Black Today in Protest of Domestic Abuse Amidst a National Conversation About Blackouts and Sexual Violence

~ mcequality

Yesterday, a chain letter made its way through the Facebook DM’s in a coordinated effort to draw attention to domestic abuse. It reads:

Tomorrow [note: today, Sunday, September 30th] female blackout from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Its a movement to show what the world might be like without women. Your profile photo should just be a black square so that men wonder where the women are. Pass it only to women … It’s for a project against domestic abuse. It is no joke. Share it.

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The same effort has been made at least once before, but this blackout happens to dovetail with a conversation about the link between blackout drinking and violence toward women, prompted by allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. Unsurprisingly, alcohol is also intrinsic to domestic violence; while estimates fluctuate widely, the general consensus is that perpetrators are believed to be intoxicated in well over half of domestic abusive cases in the US. In general, researchers estimate that about half of all sexual assaults in the US are committed by men who have been drinking.

via Women Are Turning Their Facebook Profiles Black Today in Protest of Domestic Abuse Amidst a National Conversation About Blackouts and Sexual Violence