Category: Social Equality

A Westworld Actress Says Fans Keep ‘Mansplaining’ the Show to Her

~ mcequality

For the past year, Westworld actress Shannon Woodward has been inundated with fans sharing their own theories. So much so, some have been implying that a star of the show knows less than they do.

“Last year, I had a lot of people telling me their theories, and trying to convince me that they were right,” Woodward told Marie Claire. “I tried to be kind to them about it because I was so glad that they were enjoying the show, but at some point it got to sound a lot like mansplaining. I was like, ‘You know I’ve read the scripts, right? I do know what happens and that’s not what happens.’”

via A Westworld Actress Says Fans Keep ‘Mansplaining’ the Show to Her

The Trump Administration Is Bringing the Global Gag Rule Home

~ mcequality

The Trump administration is expected to announce the implementation of a domestic gag rule on Friday, the New York Times reports. The domestic gag rule, which has been a top priority for anti-abortion conservatives in the administration, would prevent reproductive healthcare providers like Planned Parenthood from accessing Title X funds if they provide abortion referrals. The domestic gag rule language is still unclear since it hasn’t been officially released, but it could mirror the global gag rule Donald Trump reinstated in January 2017, through an executive order.

“This is a far-reaching attack and an attempt to take away women’s basic rights and reproductive rights,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), said on Friday. “I would posit that a president who it’s clear does not know the difference between HIV and HPV should not be interfering in the doctor-patient relationship,” she added.

via The Trump Administration Is Bringing the Global Gag Rule Home

What has #MeToo actually changed? – BBC News

~ mcequality

On 15 October, actress Alyssa Milano suggested on Twitter that anyone who had been “sexually harassed or assaulted” should reply to her Tweet with “Me Too”, to demonstrate the scale of the problem. Half a million people responded in the first 24 hours.
A barrage of allegations has since emerged against high-profile men in entertainment, the media, politics, and tech. Many deny any wrongdoing. The repercussions are still in flux, but Hollywood’s power dynamics have undoubtedly shifted.
That’s less obviously true in the world beyond, and begs the question: What’s different for the millions of ordinary people who shared their own #MeToo stories? Are the currents of the movement visible in their lives too? How far has the rallying cry been converted into real-world change?

via What has #MeToo actually changed? – BBC News

How can businesses tackle sexual harassment? – BBC News

~ mcequality

Employment lawyer Karen Jackson left a career in the City to start her own legal practice, partly because she was a victim herself. She spells out this reluctance.
“They know there will be a big fallout from it. There will be other people at work judging them, potentially labelling them as a troublemaker and causing problems for their career.
“I have clients who can’t tell me what has happened because they feel such a sense of shame.”
One answer is independent whistle-blowing phone lines – already used by many blue chip companies.

via How can businesses tackle sexual harassment? – BBC News

‘Unfuckable’ Women Don’t Go on Killing Sprees

~ mcequality

Most of these stories had common threads: Women who feel cut off from access to sex, romance, and companionship often assume that they’re broken, that the odds are stacked against them, and they’re destined to be unlucky in love for the rest of their lives. “I spent a lot of time wondering what was wrong with me, why wasn’t I good enough, why wasn’t I fun enough,” Ashley said. “It’s isolating. It’s ugly. It’s a total mindfuck. And even as I was doing all these things to change myself and improve, I still hated myself and had this nagging feeling that my effort was pretty much hopeless.” These women feel the same sense of isolation that emanates throughout the incel ecosystem.

Yet despite the universal experience of loneliness and sexual failure, there appears to be one fairly significant difference between men and women: “I’ve never gotten anything from a woman blaming men for [their loneliness],” Shechter says. “But men, yes.” Of course, not all men blame their sexual woes on women’s failure to appreciate their value, nor on a female fixation on bad boy alpha males rather than more deserving “nice guys.” But, Shechter reiterates, “women have never said that.”

via ‘Unfuckable’ Women Don’t Go on Killing Sprees

#MeToo: Emmy the Great speaks out about music industry men | British GQ

~ mcequality

Throughout my career, I have constantly batted off exhausting banter from professional contacts that remind me of one thing: I am a body, a body, a body. Yet I often thought of myself as a machine during these moments, daydreaming of how, through sheer resilience, I would one day gather enough power to remove myself from their company. I would be interested to know how many male artists have had to think of that.

I want to refer to myself as lucky to have had relatively innocuous experiences, but that would do a disservice to those who have been through similar. As I write, I waver between two thoughts – the first that my story is insignificant and I shouldn’t make a fuss, and the second that I am terrified for my parents to read it, in case they think I’ve screwed up my life. These two positions cannot both be true. I will say that this is the first time that I’ve written an article while shaking. That’s why these stories need to continue being told.

via #MeToo: Emmy the Great speaks out about music industry men | British GQ

100 Women: The female protesters against giving women the vote – BBC News

~ mcequality

Historian Kathy Atherton says people nowadays can find it “surprising” that women were involved in an anti-suffrage movement, but that it’s important to “put yourself in their shoes”.
“There would have been a general acceptance that women were intellectually inferior and emotional – and women would have believed that as well as men – so they didn’t have the capacity to make political judgements,” she says.
“It’s a really hierarchical society and the white male is at the top of the heap.
“There’s a fear that you’re upsetting the natural order of things, even going so far as thinking the colonies would be affected if they felt that Britain was being ruled by women.”

via 100 Women: The female protesters against giving women the vote – BBC News

10 Black Women’s Rights Activists Who Have Changed The Face Of Feminism

~ mcequality

Unfortunately, much like President Trump’s Black History Month speech, the contributions of many black feminists to the feminist movement have long been overlooked and replaced with an overwhelmingly white narrative due to an unwillingness from the movement to understand that while women of color are affected by sexism, as is every woman in a patriarchal society, black women and other women of color must also deal with a systematic racism that many white women will rarely, if ever, face in the United States.

via 10 Black Women’s Rights Activists Who Have Changed The Face Of Feminism

The totally normal, completely unsurprising lack of women at CES

~ mcequality

For many women at CES, the lack of female representation in the keynote wasn’t surprising. It wasn’t even solely the CTA’s fault. A 2016 study by the National Center for Women and Information Technology found women held 57 percent of all professional occupations yet only 25 percent of all computing jobs. These figures were even lower for nonwhite women: Asian women held 5 percent of jobs in the computing industry, black women held 3 percent and Latinas held just 1 percent.

via The totally normal, completely unsurprising lack of women at CES