100 Women: ‘Signing a gagging clause set me free’ – BBC News

~ mcequality

For most of my career, my gender was not a problem, but then five years into my last job in that industry, my working environment became intolerable. I felt marginalised in the office – for example, strip clubs were used as “after-dinner entertainment” with clients as well as for pre-drinks before team nights out. When I said I didn’t want to go, it was made clear to me that if I wasn’t going to be part of the team then I shouldn’t be there.

via 100 Women: ‘Signing a gagging clause set me free’ – BBC News

Report: The Trump Administration Is Withdrawing From the United Nations Human Rights Council

~ mcequality

Bloomberg reports that the Trump administration will announce its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council, citing “hypocrisy and criticized as biased against Israel.”

According to their sources, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, will announce the United States’ departure Tuesday at 5 p.m. While the United States has long threatened to leave this arm of the United Nations, its final straw may have been the council dunking on the Trump administration’s wildly inhumane child separation policy. Or this is, once again, the administration acting impulsively on its own tempers and whims. Or just John Bolton fulfilling a decade-long dream. Who the fuck knows.

via Report: The Trump Administration Is Withdrawing From the United Nations Human Rights Council

‘Shocking’ level of sexual harassment at music festivals – BBC News

~ mcequality

Nearly half of female festival goers (43%) under 40 say they have faced unwanted sexual behaviour at a music festival, new survey suggests.
Overall, 22% of all festival goers have faced assault or harassment, rising to 30% of women overall.
The most common forms were unwelcome and forceful dancing and verbal sexualised harassment.
YouGov surveyed 1,188 festival goers. The poll also suggested only 2% of such incidents were reported to police.
Earlier this year, separate data released in the Crime Survey for England and Wales in February showed more than 80% of victims of sexual assault did not report it to police.

via ‘Shocking’ level of sexual harassment at music festivals – BBC News

US child migrants: First ladies speak out on Trump separation policy – BBC News

~ mcequality

The former US First Lady Laura Bush has condemned a controversial policy that splits up families who illegally enter the country at the Mexican border.
Writing in the Washington Post newspaper, she describes the separation of children from their parents as cruel, immoral and heart-breaking.
Her comments follow growing controversy over President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.
Earlier Melania Trump made a rare statement expressing concern.
Mrs Trump “hates to see children separated from their families”, her spokeswoman said.

via US child migrants: First ladies speak out on Trump separation policy – BBC News

ER Doctor Suspended After Mocking Patient Suffering From Anxiety Attack

~ mcequality

An emergency room physician has been suspended after a video of her mocking a patient claiming to be suffering from an anxiety attack was posted to Facebook, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

In the video, Dr. Beth Keegstra, of El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos, is seen doubting Samuel Bardwell’s account of what happened to him, saying, “You are the least sick of all the people who are here, who are dying. So you put your head up. Don’t try to tell me you can’t move. Come on. Sit up.”

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She tries to force Bardwell to sit up by pulling at his arm, even though he clearly tells her that he is unable to.

via ER Doctor Suspended After Mocking Patient Suffering From Anxiety Attack

Five Undocumented Immigrants Killed in Texas in a High-Speed Car Chase With Border Patrol

~ mcequality

NBC News reports that at around 11 a.m. on Sunday, immigration officials stationed near the town of Big Wells in southwest Texas spotted three SUVs they believed to be smuggling undocumented immigrants. Agents stopped two of the cars, they said, but chased after a third, which was reportedly speeding along Highway 85 at around 100 miles per hour. Border Patrol agents and a local sheriff’s deputy chased the car until it ran off the road, ejecting several passengers.

“Border patrol was pursuing a vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban, and one of my deputies assisted and took over the pursuit just west of Big Wells,” Dimmit County Sheriff Marion Boyd told ABC News. “The vehicle was traveling around 100 miles per hour and from what we could tell the vehicle ran off the road, caught gravel, then tried to recorrect and that caused the vehicle to turn over several times.”

via Five Undocumented Immigrants Killed in Texas in a High-Speed Car Chase With Border Patrol

Pittsburgh Sex Workers Are Being Charged With Carrying Condoms, or, ‘Instruments of Crime’–Raising the Question of Who Is at Risk

~ mcequality

When asked to comment on the criminalization of condoms, a representative from the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office told Jezebel that the “premise that condoms have been criminalized is not an accurate statement.” He sent a letter from District Attorney Stephen Zappala, clarifying that the county is not criminalizing condoms across the board, but only classifying them as “instruments of crime” while there is a “nexus between condoms, phones, computers, etc., and the investigation of either trafficking or promotion of prostitution.” While Zappala also acknowledges that HIV is a serious public health risk, he seems to find that the ends justify the means. “If any police agency investigating such a crime [as human trafficking], believes that the possibility of exploitation exists, and did not adequately investigate such matters, they would not be doing their job,” he writes.

via Pittsburgh Sex Workers Are Being Charged With Carrying Condoms, or, ‘Instruments of Crime’–Raising the Question of Who Is at Risk

Kirstjen Nielsen Says Family Separation Policy Doesn’t Exist

~ mcequality

And even before Sessions announced that the new policy was official, parents were allegedly being separated from their kids at the border, a practice that a federal judge called “brutal, offensive, and fails to comport with traditional notions of fair play and decency”:

Ms. L explained that she wanted to apply for asylum and passed a crucial interview with an asylum officer. She was then taken and held in a detention center in the San Diego area.

Less than a week after arriving at the border, her daughter, called S.S. in court documents, was forcibly taken from her and brought to a detention facility in Chicago for minors who are unaccompanied, the lawsuit states.

“When S.S. was taken away from her mother, she was screaming and crying, pleading with guards not to take her away from her mother. That was the last time Ms. L saw her daughter,” the lawsuit reads.

via Kirstjen Nielsen Says Family Separation Policy Doesn’t Exist

What Is Sexual Harassment? A Glossary of the #MeToo Movement | Glamour

~ mcequality

Either way, the #MeToo era has given these training sessions an added urgency, especially when it comes to a full understanding of the movement’s key terms (and how to use them correctly). While the fact that we’re having more transparent, nuanced conversations about assault and abuses of power than ever before in history is inarguably a good thing, it’s also a dialogue that will ultimately prove more productive if we—men and women alike—are all on the same page about what we’re actually talking about. If our shared goal is more open and consistent conversation about #MeToo and all it entails, it’s crucial to get on the same page with terminology.

via What Is Sexual Harassment? A Glossary of the #MeToo Movement | Glamour