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Inventor of Gender Reveal Parties reveals a new view

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Inventor of Gender Reveal Parties reveals a new view

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Jenna Karvunidis, seen as the inventor of gender reveals, has adopted a new view of the trend and now says "Who cares what the gender of the baby is?"

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A quick search on YouTube brings up hundreds of videos of expecting couples revealing the sex of their baby, usually with blue for a boy and pink for a girl.

Jenna Karvunidis is no stranger to this phenomenon. In fact, many credit her as the "inventor" of the gender party reveal. For her, it was through a cake.

"We had a knife and we cut into it all together and we all saw the pink icing at the same time, and found out that we were having a girl," Karvunidis says.

That was in 2008 before Instagram or Pinterest even existed. Karvunidis says she likes cake and wanted to celebrate her pregnancy with her family.

"I mean gosh, I just like to throw parties," she said. "I just thought it would be really fun for everybody in the whole family to find out."

At the time, she shared it on her blog, High Gloss And Sauce, and it was written up by a local Chicago magazine. After that, Karvunidis says she started to notice more and more gender reveal parties in the few years after her own.

Today, she sees them all the time. She's seen the video of the gender reveal party that inadvertently started a wildfire that burned nearly 47,000 acres, not to mention the one with the pet alligator.

"It's just become a bit of a nightmare," Karvunidis says.

Watching videos of gender reveal parties become bigger and more ostentatious has made Karvunidis rethink her own party 11 years ago.

In a Facebook post this week, Karvunidis said that when someone on Twitter had remembered her as the "inventor" of the gender reveal party, she wanted to share another surprise on Facebook.

"Plot twist! The baby from the original gender reveal party is a girl who wears suits," Karvunidis says. "She says 'she' and 'her' and all of that, but you know she really goes outside gender norms."

The post went viral. Karvunidis says her views on sex and gender have changed, especially when she's talking to her daughter.

"She's telling me 'Mom, there are many genders. Mom, there's many different sexualities and all different types,' and I take her lead on that," Karvunidis says.

She says she does have some regrets and understands these parties aren't beneficial to everyone.

"I know it's been harmful to some individuals. It's 2019, we don't need to get our joy by giving others pain," she says. "I think there's a new way to have these parties."

And that idea is as simple as just eating cake.

"Celebrate the baby," she says. "There's no way to have a cake to cut into it, to see if they're going to like chess. Let's just have a cake."
This story was produced and edited for broadcast by Denise Guerra and Hadeel Al-Shalchi. It was adapted for the web by Wynne Davis.

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Woman Who Popularized Gender-Reveal Parties Says Her Views On Gender Have Changed

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A quick search on YouTube brings up hundreds of videos of expecting couples revealing the sex of their baby, usually with blue for a boy and pink for a girl. Jenna Karvunidis is no stranger to this phenomenon. In fact, many credit her as the "inventor" of the gender party reveal.

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An article from the Washington Post discusses how gender roles during development can lead to higher levels of male dominance and female body image, both increasing sexual violence.

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Since the start of the #MeToo movement, our country has come a long way toward acknowledging the realities of sexual violence. Although holding perpetrators accountable is an important step, it's not going to solve the problem. We need to prevent sexual violence, not just punish it when it happens. This means we need to understand when, why and how the factors that drive sexual violence take root - and how to stop them from doing so.

Today, sexual assault prevention strategies typically come in the form of annual workplace seminars and educational programs on college campuses. But these efforts don't work, in part because they have a major flaw: They're too little, too late. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 43.2 percent of women who have been raped or suffered rape attempts were attacked before age 18, while one in 10 high school girls has experienced sexual dating violence. Women between the ages of 16 and 19 are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. And in a recent national survey of adolescents, 56 percent of girls and 40 percent of boys reported having experienced sexual harassment.

These statistics point to one conclusion: We need to start focusing on sexual violence prevention earlier. And if we look at how and why sexual assault happens, it becomes obvious that we need to start changing the way we engage with our children.
[#MeToo hasn't fixed the workplace. Here's a playbook that can.]
Many factors shape the risk that a person will become a sexual predator. But one pervasive and seemingly innocuous risk factor is belief in and adherence to conventional gender stereotypes. This gives rise to the idea that girls are (and should be) gentle, caring and appearance-focused, while boys supposedly are (and should be) strong, stoic and unemotional. It's why you'll see parents steering their boys toward sports and telling them to stop crying like a girl, while girls are encouraged to pursue art and music. It's why strangers in the grocery store tell your daughter she's pretty but rarely comment on your son's appearance. It's why parents discuss math and science much more frequently and in more detail with their sons than their daughters.

Gender stereotypes start early - before birth, if " Guns or Glitter" gender-reveal parties are any indication. As babies, girls are dressed in pink and referred to as princesses, and boys wear blue and acquire eight toy trucks before their second birthday. (Lest you think things have gotten better on the toy front, research by sociologist Elizabeth Sweet has shown that toys have become more gender-stratified over the past 50 years.) These choices tell children that gender is a highly important category, and, desperate to understand its meaning, kids then look around and make inaccurate inferences and assumptions about it, like the idea that boys are smarter than girls.

These stereotypes also shape kids' everyday lives in worrisome ways. Boys who develop strong gender stereotypical beliefs have less interest in school, lower standardized test scores and an increased risk for depression, compared with other boys. Girls with more stereotypical beliefs get worse grades, behave in more sexualized ways and worry more about their appearance, compared with other girls.

By adolescence, these gender stereotypes evolve and start to fuel sexual violence. Research has shown that, compared with other teen boys, those who endorse strong gender stereotypes - for instance, that it's natural for boys to want to admire girls and that girls should use their looks and bodies to attract men - are more likely to make sexual comments about and grab girls' bodies. This is in part because during the teen years, male gender stereotypes start to incorporate ideals of male dominance, aggression and sexual callousness, while female ideals start to center on sexuality and attractiveness.
[When feminism is met with violence]
In adulthood, men who adhere strongly to norms of masculinity are more likely than other men to sexually harass and sexually assault women, possibly because, as psychologists theorized in a 2015 paper, they "feel compelled to be sexually aggressive and/or coercive toward an intimate partner to maintain their need for dominance." Because gender stereotypes are such a powerful risk factor, a 2016 CDC report argued that to combat sexual violence we need strategies that "influence both male and female gender norms."

We won't be able to change our country's gender stereotypes overnight. But parents, grandparents and teachers can make headway. First, starting in toddlerhood and throughout the school years, we can encourage cross-gender interactions, which lessen the development of gendered behavior and stereotypes. Parents of girls should invite boys over for play dates and vice versa; have kids join mixed-gender sports teams. We should encourage our kids to try counter-stereotypical activities, too. And parents of boys should push against the stoicism stereotype by communicating that it's okay to have feelings, because when boys are made to feel ashamed for feeling sad or afraid, they are more likely to turn those feelings into aggression.

Parents should also ease up on gender labels - replace "girls" and "boys" with "kids" or "students." Teachers, too, should avoid mentioning and categorizing students by gender in unnecessary contexts (which will avoid alienating gender atypical students, too). In a series of studies designed to help us understand the development of prejudice, developmental psychologist Rebecca Bigler and her colleagues had preschool and grade-school students wear blue or red T-shirts every day in their classrooms for several weeks. (The T-shirts created a new kind of social category that the students could easily see, much like gender.) In classrooms in which the teachers never mentioned the shirt colors, students developed very little prejudice against kids wearing the other color. But in classrooms in which teachers drew attention to the colors in a neutral way - saying "good morning, blues and reds" and decorating their cubbies with blue or red labels, as teachers often do with gender - the kids developed much stronger prejudices, in that the blue-shirted kids claimed they were smarter than the red-shirted kids and vice versa. Teachers at some preschools in Sweden now avoid using gender labels, and research suggests the students in these schools develop less pronounced gender stereotypes.

We also need to talk to kids about sexism and stereotypes. When a child says something like "Only girls like to dance" - as they inevitably do - push back. Point out similarities that exist across the sexes (Don't you know a couple of boys who do like to dance?) and differences within the sexes (Some girls don't like to dance, right?). If you see gender stereotypes on TV, bring them up and discuss them (Why do you think four out of five of those superheroes are boys?). These kinds of discussions call attention to gender but in a potentially constructive way. They help kids recognize and push against the stereotypes they will inevitably see and hear outside the home instead of merely tacitly affirming them, as in Bigler's T-shirt experiments.

Teachers shouldn't shy away from discussing sexism, either. Kids now learn about civil rights and racism in elementary school, but they're rarely taught about sexism. Yet without any knowledge of gender discrimination, kids are more likely to attribute the hierarchical differences they see in society, such as the fact that we have never had a female president, to innate differences between the sexes. Many will assume that women haven't been elected because they aren't good leaders or don't want to be president. One of Bigler's studies, which she co-authored with psychologist Erica Weisgram, found that when girls were taught about gender discrimination in science, they became more interested in science than before - perhaps because, Bigler and Weisgram wrote, the knowledge quashed their belief that they wouldn't be capable scientists. School administrators should also incorporate formal socioemotional or anti-bias programming into their curriculum. When teachers are invested in them, these programs can boost empathy and reduce bullying and sexual violence.

It is far easier to fix a problem before it starts. Although the causes of sexual violence are undoubtedly myriad and we need much more research, we can start to chip away at the problem by instilling in our children the notion that their gender doesn't define who they are and that the beliefs that fuel dangerous sexual scripts can change, beginning with them.

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We need to teach kids about gendered stereotypes if we want to prevent sexual violence - The Washington Post

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Since the start of the #MeToo movement, our country has come a long way toward acknowledging the realities of sexual violence. Although holding perpetrators accountable is an important step, it's not going to solve the problem. We need to prevent sexual violence, not just punish it when it happens.

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A university in Sydney, Australia has lowered entrance exam scores for females applying for majors that are seen as "male majors".

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The University of Technology Sydney is trying to encourage more young women to study engineering, computing and construction degrees by adjusting year 12 entry scores for female applicants.

The university has received approval from the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board to make a 10-point adjustment to the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of female students applying for those degrees for the 2020 academic year.

The university hopes it will help address gender imbalances in those male-dominated industries.

UTS Women in Engineering and IT director Arti Agarwal insisted the move would not lower standards.

"We're not taking in underperforming students or doing tokenism here," she told Guardian Australia. "Nobody is getting a free pass ... They all have to do all the degree requirements [and] internships."

Agarwal said the move was part of the university's 30-year effort to improve gender equity in engineering, which includes primary school and high school outreach programs and mentoring for female engineers.

"We looked at the performance of Atar and the performance of [grade point average] so a lower Atar did not mean they would get a lower GPA. A higher Atar did not mean they were best in the class," Agarwal said.

She noted a large number of engineering students gained entrance into the undergraduate degree through other pathways, which often were lower than the year 12 Atar minimum score.

Agarwal said previously that, on average, females received 4-8% of UTS offers to study mechanical engineering/mechatronics. The university expects the score adjustment will increase female study offers to about 20%.

In civil engineering on average 16% of offers are to female students and this could rise to 20%. In computer science 10% of offers are to female students and this could lift to 19%.

According to Engineers Australia, 84% of Australian engineering graduates are men. Female engineers make up 13% of the workforce. Australia faces a looming shortage of engineers.

A 2017 Engineers Australia report found part of the problem was low levels of female high school students were studying the prerequisite subjects. Less than 6% of girls nationally studied physics in year 12, with advanced maths at 6.2%.

Engineers Australia's professional diversity manager Justine Romanis backed the UTS move.

"We need to be disruptive - what we have been doing to date is just not working," she said.

She said to attract more females to engineering it was important to plant the seeds early with research backing career discussion with children as young as year 4.

Virginia Singh, who studied a double degree in mechanical engineering and science at Deakin University and now works in the defence industry, does not think it is a good idea. There were two female students in her mechanical engineering course. Singh's father and brothers are also qualified engineers.

"I don't necessarily think that it's the score stopping females from joining engineering, there's more so a stigma associated with it or Stem in general," Singh told the Guardian. "There's a perception that you need a strong Stem and technical background and although you need that, most of the day-to-day work is soft skills as opposed to ... technical calculations every day."

The UTS announcement has attracted some criticism on social media.

Sophie Baker (@SophiesBaked)
As a woman I'm offended! This move reinforces the myth that women as not as smart as men.

🦝shaniqua707🐩🤡🦟🧮 (@shaniqua7071)
Many universities allocate adjustment points based on disadvantage or illness, but UTS Director of Women in Engineering and IT, Arti Agarwal, said she believed the university would be the first to base them on gender.
So being a woman is a disability now?

Godot (@GodotIsW8ing4U)
If you think the best way to get more women into engineering is to lower the standards, aren't you kind of openly saying you think female engineers aren't as good as male engineers

In 2016, the Australian National University announced that it was broadening its admission processes for engineering degrees away from reliance on Atar scores towards broader selection criteria.

Atar is a number between 0.00 and 99.95 that indicates a student's position relative to all the students in their age group.
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University lowers entry score for female applicants in male-dominated courses

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The University of Technology Sydney is trying to encourage more young women to study engineering, computing and construction degrees by adjusting year 12 entry scores for female applicants. The university has received approval from the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board to make a 10-point adjustment to the Australian Tertiary Admission Rank of female students applying for those degrees for the 2020 academic year.

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An article from Stanford examines how violence and inequality in the workplace affects a woman and her opportunities in relation to her career.

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In 2018, UN Secretary General António Guterres described violence against women and girls as a "global pandemic" and "a mark of shame on all our societies." Indeed, gender-based violence affects 1 in 3 women globally. Of its many forms-including physical, sexual, psychological and economic-physical and sexual violence carried out by intimate partners, or domestic violence, is the most widespread.

Among their many negative effects, domestic violence and sexual harassment interfere with women's full and equal participation in the workforce. They impair employees' physical and mental health and well-being, leading to stress, anxiety, loss of self-esteem, motivation, and even job loss. It contributes to the gender pay gap, and affects women's opportunities for advancement and career progression. Women usually bear the brunt of gender-based violence, although others are at risk, including men and members of the LGBTQI community.

In addition to its serious human impacts, gender-based violence negatively impacts business productivity and reputation. For example, a study in Papua New Guinea, where gender-based violence is widespread, estimated that staff members lose an average of 11 workdays per year as a result of gender-based violence: two to presenteeism, five to absenteeism, and four to assisting other survivors of violence. Reduced staff time alone costs companies between 3 percent and 9 percent of payroll. In the United States, one study found that women who have suffered from intimate partner violence work 10 percent fewer workdays per year than women who have not been subject to violence.

Meanwhile, sexual harassment claims frequently mar companies' brands and reputations (and bottom lines). Allegations of sexual harassment by senior staff and drivers at the ride-sharing company Uber, resulted in 56% of survey respondents refusing to use their services.. In another example, allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct by construction workers on a major Ugandan infrastructure project resulted in the World Bank cancelling $265 million of funding and issuing a public statement. In fact, research has shown that sexual harassment claims have a greater effect on a company's reputation than other forms of misconduct like fraud.

Businesses Can Be Part of the Solution

One point of light is that new legal frameworks are emerging that require more action and accountability from businesses than ever before. In June 2019, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a United Nations entity tasked with setting labor standards, agreed to a global treaty that sets out the first globally recognized standards for addressing violence and harassment. One of the most significant implications of the new agreement is that companies will be required to respond to gender-based violence in a more-comprehensive way than before-including taking steps to prevent violence, to protect survivors through remedy and compensation, and to develop reporting and grievance procedures. The new agreement will become effective one year after two ILO member states have ratified it.

But beyond meeting legal requirements, businesses have a tremendous opportunity to help shift social norms. As Our Watch Australia, a nonprofit working to end violence against women and children, has noted, "Every workplace conversation, policy and action has the potential to either reinforce or challenge gender inequality and the kinds of attitudes and norms that drive violence." Given that social movements depend on the human tendency to, as University of Florida's Annie Neimand puts it, "gather in social tribes based on our identities and look to them for what is socially acceptable," embedding gender equality across workplace cultures, policies, and practices can have a significant impact on both individuals and businesses.

Five Steps Companies Can Take

Many companies seem willing to tackle gender-based violence but are unsure where to begin. With this in mind, Business Fights Poverty, a social impact platform, partnered with businesses and NGOs (including Anglo American, International Finance Corporation, Primark and CARE International) to develop a series of case studies others can learn from, as well as a five-step framework for action:

1. Prevent Violence and Harassment by Identifying Potential Risks

To one degree or another, gender-based violence affects all businesses. It's important to understand where problems are occurring and what the causes are. Tools like the Business for Social Responsibility Diagnostic designed to help large companies with complex value chains identify where the problems are and how to tackle them. The tool enables a company to self-assess how effectively their existing policies, programs, culture, leadership, and strategy are tackling violence and harassment. Under each focus area, there are a set of guiding questions for companies to develop a score. The scores help a company identify where its doing well (high scores suggest it is 'leading') and where it needs to do better (low scores suggest it is a 'beginner').

Two organizations making progress on prevention are the mining giant Anglo American and the luxury fashion brand Kering Group. In South Africa, Anglo American became concerned about growing levels of violence against women and vulnerable groups, and wanted to better understand how this was affecting its operations and communities. By way of response, it recently partnered with the NGO International Alert to carry out a series of baseline studies around the experiences of women and vulnerable groups at work. There are early indications that a lack of awareness about what constituted sexual harassment has contributed to the normalization of certain unacceptable behaviors. Anglo American has commissioned further studies, and is feeding the results of these into its inclusion and diversity strategy.

Meanwhile, Kering Group has developed an innovative internal training program with its foundation to provide a supportive and safe work environment for employees experiencing domestic violence. The company has rolled out the program's three-hour, introductory curriculum in Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, and China, in partnership with local NGOs that adapt the content to local contexts. Staff interest in the issue also prompted the company to create a level-two, full-day course to become "internal advocates," which goes further to address how to concretely support survivors internally.

2. Commit to Gender Equality and Diversity Across the Workplace

CEO and senior leadership commitments to diverse, equal, and respectful workplaces- backed by adequate resources and action- form a necessary foundation for addressing gender-based violence. It tackles the root of the problem (gender inequality) and creates trust amongst staff. Without this foundation efforts to 'raise awareness' about gender-based violence can appear tokenistic and lack legitimacy.

As an example, recent research by the communications company Vodafone Group, in partnership with the polling service Opinium, revealed that one in three working adults (37 percent) had experienced some form of domestic abuse and that it had significantly impacted their career. In response, Vodafone now provides 10 days of paid "safe leave" across its 26 markets for any staff member experiencing domestic violence and abuse. The policy also makes provision for human-resources and line-manager training to identify and assist people experiencing abuse. Vodafone's longstanding organizational commitment to gender equality helped enable the change in policy. The new policy builds on a vision to make Vodafone the "the world's best employer for women by 2025," and follows the establishment of a global maternity policy with a minimum of 16 weeks leave, regardless of the market (2015), and a ReConnect program that aims to re-recruit 1,000 people following career breaks (2017).

3. Protect Employees With Supportive Policies and Procedures

Clear policies and procedures-including reporting and grievance mechanisms-not only empower staff to take appropriate action when needed, but also reassure survivors, bystanders, accused perpetrators, and whistle-blowers that the company will handle cases effectively.

In 2013, Unilever Tea Kenya undertook an independent review on how to prevent sexual and gender-based violence that was distressingly prevalent across the tea plantation sector. The review resulted in a series of recommendations, including a multi-sectoral approach to reporting and supporting victims. After training, awareness building and employee engagement, the number of reported cases began to increase as employees' trust in the system grew.

Drawing on its experiences in Kenya, Unilever then partnered with UN Women in 2016 to develop a human rights-based intervention program across the tea supply chain. This resulted in the 2018 publication of "A Global Women's Safety Framework in Rural Spaces," which includes case studies, practical tools, and a comprehensive theory of change that businesses can apply to a range of agricultural commodity supply chains.

4. Collaborate and Campaign Beyond the Immediate Workplace

Sector-wide approaches to reducing gender-based violence, such as efforts across the alcohol or garment sector in a particular country, can help raise standards with suppliers and build a stronger overall ecosystem to tackle deeply ingrained issues. Companies also have the ability to influence societal norms and behaviours on gender-based violence through advertising and campaigning, particularly when the issues align with core business aims, and include culturally relevant reference points or actors.

As one example, alcohol producer Diageo recognized that Cambodia was a high-risk market, where women beer promoters were particularly at risk of violence and harassment by customers. It took a holistic approach to tackling the issue in partnership with the NGO CARE International, using CARE's gender-equality framework, which analyzes individual skills, community relationships, and policy environments that prevent gender equality. Together, the organizations helped create a solidarity network among the women promoters and established Beer Selling Industries Cambodia, an industry association for major breweries operating in Cambodia. All the members of the association agreed to a code of conduct to improve the health, safety, and working conditions of beer promoters by setting industry standards. They also influenced the Ministry of Women's Affairs to strengthen the prevention of harassment-at-work laws by including entertainment workers. This bottom-up and top-down approach created the opportunity for greater systemic change.

5. Be Accountable and Monitor Action

Companies taking action to tackle gender-based violence want to know whether those actions are benefitting employees. They also want to know how to most effectively comply with legal changes. Currently, the best approach is to adopt the standards set out in the new ILO treaty or use the Business for Social Responsibility Diagnostic tool. Then, set up feedback mechanisms to assess employees' uptake of new policies and programs-conduct regular employee surveys and invite staff to share views on prioritizing resources to tackle the issue.

For example, in 2018 Diageo and CARE International undertook an extensive benchmarking exercise across Diageo's value chain using the draft ILO treaty. This included ensuring that relevant policies addressed violence and harassment; adopting a comprehensive strategy to implement measures to prevent and combat violence and harassment; establishing and strengthening enforcement and monitoring mechanisms; ensuring access to remedies and support for victims; and developing tools, guidance, and training. The process highlighted bright spots (such as community programming initiatives focused on the sales environment), as well as opportunities to strengthen Diageo's protection and response policies (such as replicating and scaling up these initiatives).

Through our research, we came away with three main insights for businesses:

It all starts with inclusivity. Companies big and small need to establish diverse, equal, and respectful workplaces to build the trust necessary for developing violence and harassment policies and practice.

Businesses need to embrace a new spirit of openness. Taking the steps outlined above can increase the number of staff who report incidences, and who use trainings and hotlines. We must collectively recognize this as a positive step toward improved practice that will result in the retention and wellbeing of workforce members, increased productivity, and less risk to brands.

Developing more open reporting on the success or failure of approaches is critical, as many of our case studies reveal a lack of ability to track real impacts. This could include gathering sex disaggregated data in staff surveys to better understand employees experiences or partnering with monitoring and evaluation experts to develop appropriate indicators to measure progress.

Gender-based violence is not an easy issue to tackle, but businesses have an important, norm-shifting role to play-and a lot to gain by their efforts, including improved overall performance, productivity and retention. Those experiencing gender-based violence deserve a strong commitment to change.

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How Businesses Can Take the Lead in Combatting Gender-Based Violence (SSIR)

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In 2018, UN Secretary General António Guterres described violence against women and girls as a "global pandemic" and "a mark of shame on all our societies." Indeed, gender-based violence affects 1 in 3 women globally. Of its many forms-including physical, sexual, psychological and economic-physical and sexual violence carried out by intimate partners, or domestic violence, is the most widespread.

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This article explores pain thresholds between men and women and how each gender is perceived to deal with pain.

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It's a commonly held belief that women are better able to tolerate pain than men. The reasoning behind this is often that women are built to withstand pain because of how frequently they experience pain in their lives from events such as periods and childbirth. On the other hand, when a typical man gets a cold, he's often laughed at for suffering a bout of "man-flu."

There are clear and consistent gender differences in the perception and experience of pain. But are such views really a helpful way of thinking about men and women's pain? After all, men will never experience period pain or childbirth, so why are we speculating how they would cope in such a situation? Why do we dismiss male pain responses as exaggerated and trivial, and what effect does the normalization of women's pain have on treatment?

If we're really to understand the differences, we need to move beyond simplistic generalizations.

Science Fact Not Fiction

Surveys and clinical studies have confirmed that women actually experience more pain, with greater frequency and intensity. They take more painkillers, suffer more from common pain-related conditions such as migraine headache and musculoskeletal disorders, and visit their physician more often with pain-related complaints. Interestingly, there may also be gender differences in responses to some analgesics, including possible side effects.

However, lab-based studies also find men demonstrate a higher pain threshold (the point at which you first detect pain) and higher tolerance to pain, compared to women. This doesn't mean that men are immune from pain and pain-related suffering - of course not - but they do point to women being particularly vulnerable to pain. However, there is still a lot we don't know around the impact this has and how this may affect pain treatment.

Subjective and Biological

Pain is subjective - and diagnosis requires you to say how much pain you are in, where it is located, and so on. So the gender differences reported in some studies, like the ones above, could, therefore, be down to a reporting bias - in that men simply don't like to admit to being in pain and only turn to their physician when it gets really bad. Men are still often expected to suppress certain emotions and action, such as crying for example, and these beliefs may also affect how pain is expressed, viewed, and responded to.

But explanations for such gender differences in pain are more than a social construction based on gender stereotypes. There is evidence that there are biological mechanisms at work, especially hormonal factors. For example, gender differences in the incidence of some painful conditions, such as temporomandibular disorder, which affects the jaw joint, and headache, are more pronounced during the reproductive years. Research has also shown that pain sensitivity, the disruptive effects of pain, as well as symptoms associated with certain pain conditions, can all vary across the menstrual cycle. Explanations are therefore going to be multifaceted, and will reflect both biological and psychosocial influences.

Scientific Inertia

Despite these gender differences being consistently reported in research, there is still considerable inertia in the wider scientific community around the issue. Historically, females have been excluded from clinical trials, and even today, few studies are actually designed with gender differences in mind. "Female pain" is often seen as normal, and ironically this could be why it has not been taken more seriously. Worryingly, many studies that do acknowledge gender differences statistically control for them, rather than look at them as an important outcome in their own right.

Steps are being made to change this indifference to gender, but unfortunately this is being done more by stick than by carrot. Some national funding agencies stipulate that studies need to consider possible male-female differences, and some leading academic journals require authors to report relevant analysis.

It's also equally important that when we find similarities as well as differences between men and women, these are reported as well. There is, after all, going to be variability within the sexes, which point to other moderators of pain, such as age.

We also need to go beyond mere description - we not only need to know when differences occur, but why they occur, and what the implications might be. Pain affects all our lives, with the staggering costs associated with pain and its treatment predicted to rise. Knowing more about how we all experience pain and the different types of pain we have needs to be fully considered, rather than trivialized, ignored, or left to stereotypical preconceptions to define.
This article was originally published on The Conversation by Edmund Keogh. Read the original article here.

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There are clear and consistent gender differences in the perception and experience of pain. But are such views really a helpful way of thinking about men and women's pain? If we're really to understand the differences between men and women, we need to move beyond simplistic generalizations.

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Women are experiencing unwanted sexual attention on their girls nights out, so much so that they may turn into girls nights in.

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This is the third in a series of articles discussing a recently released comprehensive evaluation of the Queensland government's 2016 policy reforms to tackle alcohol-fuelled violence and the implications for liquor regulation and the night-time economy in Queensland and Australia. A summary report is also available.
A disturbingly high proportion of young people, particularly women, experience unwanted sexual attention in entertainment districts across Queensland.

This is the bad news from a two-year, independent evaluation of the Queensland government's 2016 "Tackling Alcohol-Fuelled Violence" (TAFV) policy (the good news included a significant statewide reduction in serious assaults).

Read more: Lessons from Queensland on alcohol, violence and the night-time economy

One in three patrons reported unwanted sexual attention - including harassment, unwanted touching, or sexual gestures - in or around a licensed venue in the preceding three months. Among those who reported unwanted sexual attention, two in three women (68%) also reported physical and/or verbal aggression.

The rate of unwanted sexual attention was highest for young women (ages 18-24). More than 50% had experienced this harm in the previous three months, as the chart below shows.

In the Fortitude Valley entertainment district, a staggering one in four reported unwanted sexual attention on the night they were interviewed (26% of 262 female patrons interviewed and followed up the next day).

Over the two-year evaluation, 4,055 patrons (43% female) were interviewed on Saturday nights on the streets of three entertainment districts - Cairns, Fortitude Valley (Brisbane) and Surfers Paradise (Gold Coast).

While the rates fluctuated over time in these areas, the rate of unwanted sexual attention didn't change when comparing the months before and after the TAFV policy took effect. The chart below shows the trend for Fortitude Valley.

Uncomfortable truths

These findings highlight some uncomfortable truths.

First, the unwanted sexual attention young women experience in the night-time economy is an intransigent public health and safety problem.

Second, the issue is considerably under-researched.

Third, overcoming the problem requires discussion beyond alcohol accessibility and drinking practices.

The findings of the evaluation sit against a backdrop of increasing global intolerance of the sexual abuse and harassment of women. For example, the number of women reporting sexual assault to Queensland Police has increased for the past six years. This increase might be attributable to the raising of public consciousness (e.g. the "Me Too" campaign).

Read more: #MeToo has changed the media landscape, but in Australia there is still much to be done

Such awareness-raising has had impacts on broader social norms around sexual aggression towards women. But the evaluation suggests this messaging has largely failed to permeate the social norms of the night-time economy.

Why haven't nightlife norms changed?

Understanding and addressing the mechanisms behind unwanted social attention in this context is particularly challenging. In addition to the broader social norms, licensed venues have their own cultural norms - including sexualised environments and heavy drinking - that often contribute to unwanted sexual attention.

Read more: Queenslanders are among our heaviest drinkers on nights out, and changing that culture is a challenge

Recent experimental research suggests unwanted sexual attention in these settings may be related to males misperceiving the social environmental cues. They read alcohol presence, alcohol consumption and revealing dress by females as signs of sexual interest. They might have been influenced by decades of sexualised alcohol marketing.

Such research highlights the need to better understand the risk and protective factors affecting victims and perpetrators of sexual aggression, and how these factors interact with cues in the physical environment.

Responsibility is broadly shared

These findings have many implications for policy and practice.

For a start, many experiences of unwanted sexual attention sit beyond the boundaries of the law. This raises a number of questions. Who is responsible for acting on unwanted sexual attention in and around licensed venues? And is it time to reassess the individualisation of responsibility in entertainment districts?

One strategy that attributes some responsibility to venue staff has been trialled in cities such as London, Chicago, Vancouver and Melbourne. The Good Night Out initiative aims to train and empower licensed venue staff to act as capable guardians (instead of bystanders) who intervene in incidents of unwanted sexual attention. While theoretically such approaches are promising, the evidence for such targeted strategies remains limited.

The pervasive problem of unwanted sexual attention in night-time economies also requires attention from local and state governments. Strategies that specifically address this harm should be embedded in alcohol policy.

Without a more sophisticated approach that targets all types of aggression, young women will likely continue to experience high rates of unwanted sexual attention on their nights out.

Read more: No harm done? 'Sexual entertainment districts' make the city a more threatening place for women

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Unwanted sexual attention plagues young women going out at night

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This is the third in a series of articles discussing a recently released comprehensive evaluation of the Queensland government's 2016 policy reforms to tackle alcohol-fuelled violence and the implications for liquor regulation and the night-time economy in Queensland and Australia. A summary report is also available.

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An article from the Washington Post reveals that rape isn't about what she was wearing, but rather the power men feel in sexual situations.

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(iStock)

A pair of pajamas.

Track pants.

A child's T-shirt.

The clothes, which were reportedly being worn by rape victims at the moment they were attacked, are part of a chilling exhibition in Brussels intended to dispel the "stubborn myth" that clothing can be used as justification for sexual violence, according to the news website Flanders News.

"When you walk around here, you immediately notice they are very normal-looking pieces of clothes that everybody would wear," Liesbeth Kennes, with CAW East Brabant, a victim-support group organizing the exhibition, told VRT1 radio in Dutch.

"There is even a child's T-shirt with a 'My Little Pony' in the exhibition. This too is the harsh reality," Kennes added. "Most rape victims know exactly what they were wearing at that moment."

A student's chilling photos put sexual assault in focus

The exhibition, titled "Is it my fault?" addresses the question that some victims of sexual assault - and sometimes society - ask about violent sex crimes.

"The so-called 'victim blaming' occurs in both directions," said Kennes, who told VRT1 radio that she was a victim as a child. "Assailants would, for example, say against their victims, 'How did you dress at that moment?' or 'How did you act up - you were so drunk?' A victim of sexual violence will often ask themselves if they were part of it; for example, if it was their outfit or the way they behaved at that moment."

As The Washington Post reported in 2015, a Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll on sexual assault on college campuses in the United States showed that nearly 6 out of 10 women said it was commonly believed that women who go to parties wearing provocative clothing are "asking for trouble." But the majority of men surveyed disagreed.

Kennes told VRT's De Redactie in 2015 that only about 10 percent of sexual assault cases in Brussels are reported to local authorities. Then only about 10 percent of those cases that are reported result in a conviction, she said.

"Behind those figures are people of flesh and blood, women, men and children," she said in Dutch, according to BBC News. "Our society discourages victims from speaking about what they have experienced."

As BBC News reported, Kennes said victims should never be blamed for the sexual crimes against them.

"There is only one person responsible," she said, "one person who could prevent rape: the perpetrator."

Amar Nadhir contributed to this report.

'You took away my worth': A sexual assault victim's powerful message to her Stanford attacker

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The persistent myth that revealing clothing leads to rape

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A pair of pajamas. Track pants. A child's T-shirt. The clothes, which were reportedly being worn by rape victims at the moment they were attacked, are part of a chilling exhibition in Brussels intended to dispel the "stubborn myth" that clothing can be used as justification for sexual violence, according to the news website Flanders News.

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A court case of a white woman committing a crime against a black man is finally brought to justice after multiple Black Lives Matter protests.

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UPDATE (October 2, 2019, 5:14 pm. E.T.): Amber Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of Botham Jean after a two-day sentencing hearing.
When off-duty Dallas police officer Amber Guyger shot and killed an unarmed Botham Jean in his own apartment after she entered it without his authorization, I was almost certain that she would get away with it - as were many Black people. America has a long history of letting the murderers of unarmed Black people off the hook - whether in the thousands of sometimes anonymous and rarely prosecuted lynchings, in the death of Trayvon Martin at George Zimmerman's hands, or in any of the cases of other Black men murdered by the cops whose names have become synonymous with Black Lives Matter, such as Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice or Philando Castile.

And, as the details of the case unfolded, it was increasingly clear that her explanation of how she came to enter someone else's home and shoot him to death revealed a deep level of disregard for the basic standards of the training she had received from her own department. Yet, I didn't dare to get my hopes up that justice would be served, especially not as the trial started and it became clear that Guyger's defense relied on the enduring mythos of a white woman's fragility to put Botham on trial for eating ice cream in his own home.

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And then, on top of the usual racist narrative that Botham's race and size made him scary enough for Guyger to be justified in killing, the judge ruled during deliberations that the jury could consider the Castle Doctrine in their decision. Akin to the same legal logic as Stand Your Ground laws (which assert that someone who feels threatened has no duty to retreat), Castle Doctrine laws say that a person has right to defend themselves and their home with lethal force if they deem it necessary. Despite the fact, that it wasn't her home, I was afraid that somehow Botham's apartment would be considered Guyger's castle to defend just long enough to let her off the hook for killing him.

Mine was not an unreasonable concern: Data shows that, in Florida - which had the first Stand Your Ground law - defendants who invoked it at trial were half as likely to be convicted if their victims were nonwhite. In the first seven years the Florida law was in effect, an analysis by the Tampa Bay Times suggested that 70 percent of defendants who invoked the law were likely to face no legal consequences. Nationwide data suggests that, when white people invoke the defense in cases involving black victims, they're 11 times more likely to walk away than in the reverse situation.

Fortunately, the prosecution's argument that Guyger made a series of unreasonable decisions that cost an innocent man his life worked and Guyger was convicted of murder Tuesday. Prosecutors were even able to use body cam footage of her behavior after the shooting - failing to render aid and heard worrying more about her job than the man whose life she had just taken - to prove their point that she hadn't shown a reasonable level of concern or remorse. Her own testimony that she shot to kill even made their point that she had not chosen to act reasonably.

Her assertions of self-defense failed, as it was clear to both the general public and the jury that she had no right to enter someone else's home, decide that he was a threat and kill him. It wasn't the first time an attempt to argue a version of Stand Your Ground failed recently: Michael Drejka's attempt to use it to justify shooting an unarmed Markeis McGlockton over a handicapped parking spot in July of 2018 failed this summer, and he was convicted of manslaughter. (Drejka's sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 10.)

In Guyger's case, despite her defense relying on the idea that Botham Jean was a threat because of his size and race, her actions and training belied her testimony. But, in many ways, her words mirrored that of Michael David Dunn who shot Jordan Davis after an argument over loud music in a parking lot and claimed he'd been threatened; Dunn, too, was convicted. Like Dunn and Drejka, Guyger seemed to be certain that, despite being the only armed person present, her fear (or annoyance) justified taking a person's life.

There is an argument to be made that someone like Guyger (who was a trained law enforcement officer) rightly should have been held to a higher standard for use of lethal force, and perhaps that was a factor in her conviction. But, much like with Drejka and Dunn, there's a fundamental flaw in any legal doctrine that positions white equanimity as more valuable than a human life. Twisting the idea of "a right to self-defense" to the point that a person can kill over annoyance that someone is using a parking space or playing loud music, let alone over supposed confusion about what floor she is on, beggars all logic and reasoning.

In many ways the convictions of Guyger, Dunn and Drejka reflect the slowly shifting tenor of American ideas around race, self-defense and policing. As the message that Black Lives Matter permeates the culture - albeit slowly and inconsistently - juries are starting to reject defense arguments that the mere presence of a Black person is a threat to a well-armed white person. Black Lives Matter has been effective, despite criticism that the slogan should be "All Lives Matter," and despite the investigation by Trump's FBI of "black identity extremism" (like Black Lives Matter) as a potential terrorist movement.

Black Lives Matter persevered despite the responses in New York City and other cities like Chicago with long histories of police brutality that positioned Black people wanting to live as an attack on police. Whether it was Blue Lives Matter protests, the Oath Keepers staring them down with guns in St. Louis and all the various efforts to intimidate the organizers, discredit the intentions and discourage people from participating, Black Lives Matter has continued to be a message that permeated American culture, in a continuation of the anti-lynching crusades that can be traced back to the 1890s and Ida B. Welles Barnett.

It's clear from the verdict that some part of America has been listening to over a 100 years of assertions that Black life matters. Perhaps, at last, American justice for the deaths of unarmed Black people is merely deferred and not denied.

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Opinion | Amber Guyger's verdict, sentence are proof that Black Lives Matter had an impact

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UPDATE (October 2, 2019, 5:14 pm. E.T.): Amber Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of Botham Jean after a two-day sentencing hearing. When off-duty Dallas police officer Amber Guyger shot and killed an unarmed Botham Jean in his own apartment after she entered it without his authorization, I was almost certain that she would get away with it - as were many Black people.

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A trans woman tells her story about how transitioning made her less competent in her coworkers eyes as well as others around her.

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'I transitioned and lost my male privilege' - BBC News

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Sexual assault on college campuses has become the norm, but minority females are at the most risk for experiencing sexual harassment or assault.

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While it is common knowledge that sexual assault is a significant issue on almost every college campus in the nation, many would be surprised by the rate at which it continues to increase. According to RAINN, 11.2% of graduate and undergraduate students in America "experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation."

This unfortunate statistic includes the University of Wisconsin. According to the most recent campus climate survey, 26.1% of female undergraduates have experienced sexual assault since starting college. This is comparable to the national average, where one in four undergraduate female students reported being sexually assaulted. It is clear that college poses additional risks in terms of creating safety measures against sexual violence.

The prevalence of sexual assault is not limited to female undergraduates - this continues to disproportionately affect minorities, students with disabilities and LGBTQ+ students. The 2019 preliminary findings by UW found women and TGQN students reported the highest rates of sexual assault - though the rate for the latter did decrease since 2015, from 29% to 28.4%.

While this increase in sexual assault reports among female undergraduates does not necessarily translate to increasing rates of the crime occurring, the fact that a quarter of female undergraduates have been or will be sexually violated is horrifying. Similarly, a decrease in reports from transgender, genderqueer or gender-nonconforming students does not mean reduced crime rates. More likely, there are several social factors disincentivizing minority victims of sexual assault from reporting their crimes.

LGBTQ+ students experience higher levels of poverty, social marginalization and overall reported increased accounts of alienation. All these factors contribute to increased vulnerability to sexual assaults. Moreover, it may account for underreporting of sexual assault from LGBTQ+ students.
Steering clear of the cliff: UW strives to educate students on 'clear and obvious' consent despite limited legal language A quick stroll through the Student Activity Center will reveal they've done some redecorating. Whereas the construction of the new Read...
Since 2016, hate crimes have been reported to have decreased five-fold at UW. But this does not take into account cases of sexual assault which victimize minorities as a form of a hate-motivated crime. The excessive rates of sexual assault against the LGBTQ+ community and nontraditional students on campus beg a more in-depth look into the nature of these crimes - the unique experiences that make them vulnerable to being victims of sexual assault.

Sexual assault training for professions can be considered superficial in nature and may not address the differences between LGBTQ+ relationships as opposed to heterosexual relationships. Often times, violence - sexual or otherwise - within an LGBTQ+ relationship does not conform to what is traditionally understood as violent behavior.

Even if the case seems black-and-white and its violent nature incontestable, these social factors may lead some to stay silent. As it goes unreported, the victim may continue to be in an abusive environment, further driving them to remain silent about their continual assault.

Unfortunately, this story of institutions perpetuating victim-shaming does not end with the LGBTQ+ community. According to End Rape on Campus, "While 80% of rapes are reported by white women, women of color are more likely to be assaulted than white women."

This gross underreporting of sexual crimes is the outcome of centuries-long perpetuated rape myths, including victim-blaming and the general hostility experienced by African-American women within the legal system.
ASM hears from chancellor about diversity, sexual assault The Associated Students of Madison heard from Chancellor Rebecca Blank and voted to move forward with adding mental health hotline Read...
Women in poverty can similarly relate, as their cases are often not even taken into consideration for the select few that do report their crimes.

Poverty includes an additional aspect to the barriers of sexual assault - the expenses associated with being sexually abused are often not taken into consideration. Evidence collection, loss of jobs and mental health issues are all common and incredibly expensive consequences of sexual assault. Students themselves can experience further education-related financial burdens as their GPAs decline. They might lose their scholarships, which negatively affects their later employability. Considering the damages accumulated over a survivor's lifetime, rape can cost between $151,423 - $265,400.

Following the AAU survey, Chancellor Rebecca Blank released a statement expressing her goals for addressing the issue.

"Reducing sexual violence at UW will require changes in behavior and culture as well as in resources and the campus environment," Blank said.

This sentiment accurately reflects the necessary social change needed for increasing minority representation among survivors who report their sexual assault.
UW Homecoming video emblematic of deep-seeded racial issues at UW The University of Wisconsin Homecoming Committee posted a video Sept. 30 intended to generate excitement about the upcoming homecoming events. Instead, Read...
It is crucially important that sexual assault professionals understand that sexual assault cases do not merely include a victim and a perpetrator. They include a highly complex, well-established system of shifting paradigms of what it means to be sexually assaulted. It requires them to take into consideration communities or individuals that perpetuate victim silencing and how these people affect the victim themselves.

It is no surprise that sexual assault has devastating consequences, both financially and academically. However, it can be especially devastating for survivors of assault who live in environments that actively discourage reporting it.

Creating mandatory programs for undergraduate students which informs students about sexual assault and alcohol safety are excellent programs that have increased student understanding of sexual violence. Even so, the disproportionate rate of minority students sexually assaulted calls for a massive overhaul on a societal level and suggests additional training for professionals to understand the unique nature of minority victims and the barriers preventing them from getting help.

Discussions of race, socioeconomic status and sexual orientation and how they relate to the prevalence of sexual assault are paramount to reducing sexual assault rates among minority individuals and encouraging minorities to speak up and seek help.
Samiha Bhushan ([email protected]) is a freshman studying neurobiology and English literature.

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Intersectionality in sexual assault: How race, gender identity and other factors impact sexual crimes

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While it is common knowledge that sexual assault is a significant issue on almost every college campus in the nation, many would be surprised by the rate at which it continues to increase. According to RAINN, 11.2% of graduate and undergraduate students in America "experience rape or sexual assault through physical force, violence, or incapacitation."

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Fox News released an article about Ilhan Omar, a muslim woman who is part of a group of representatives aiming to impeach President Trump. She states that being a woman of color terrifies the president and his tendencies of intersectionality.

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She's a woman, she's an immigrant and she's Muslim -- and that "intersectionality" of identities has President Trump "terrified," U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., claimed in a television appearance Wednesday night.

Omar, a member of the "Squad" of far-left congressional Democrats, made the remarks on the late-night comedy show, "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee."

The freshman lawmaker, who came to the U.S. with her family from Somalia when she was a teenager, said she never imagined when she was a child that she would someday be part of an effort to impeach a U.S. president.
REP. MAXINE WATERS DEFENDS CALL TO PUT TRUMP IN 'SOLITARY CONFINEMENT': I AM A 'RESPONSIBLE' AND 'SERIOUS' PERSON
"A lot of people think we take joy in impeaching this president because we don't like him," Omar said. "But we take joy in making sure that when we say we're going to protect the rule of law, that the American people know that we are serious about that."

"A lot of people think we take joy in impeaching this president because we don't like him. But we take joy in making sure that when we say we're going to protect the rule of law, that the American people know that we are serious about that."
- U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

"I, however, am just always so happy when I think that Don Jr. is upset," host Samantha Bee told the congresswoman.

"That does slightly make me happy," Omar jokingly agreed.

While Omar often criticizes the president, she is also a frequent target of Trump's as well..

"Why do you think that the president focuses so much on you?" Bee asked.

"I think he is terrified by any women who are practicing 'Shine Theory,' who have each other's back," Omar responded, referring to a concept of mutual empowerment developed by American businesswoman Aminatou Sow and journalist Ann Friedman. "But for me, I think he is terrified at the fact that I sit on the intersectionality of many identities that he really despises: a woman, an immigrant, Muslim, refugee, and Punjabi in one beautiful package."

When asked how she felt about "perpetually being taken out of context" by her political opponents, Omar simply told Bee she "doesn't really care that much" about that because her critics "are just vilifying and dismissing my voice anyway."
CLICK HERE FOR THE ALL-NEW FOXBUSINESS.COM
"The fact that I live rent-free in their head doesn't mean they get to live rent-free in mine," Omar said.

"The fact that I live rent-free in their head doesn't mean they get to live rent-free in mine."
- U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

She later expressed how she thinks "rehabilitation" is possible for "white supremacists" like White House adviser Stephen Miller, adding that they could "use some light, some love, some joy" in their lives.

Previously, Omar vowed in July that she would continue being President Trump's "nightmare," after Trump said that Omar and her Squad colleagues should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came."

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Ilhan Omar says Trump 'terrified' of her 'intersectionality' as a woman, immigrant, Muslim

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She's a woman, she's an immigrant and she's Muslim -- and that "intersectionality" of identities has President Trump "terrified," U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., claimed in a television appearance Wednesday night. Omar, a member of the "Squad" of far-left congressional Democrats, made the remarks on the late-night comedy show, "Full Frontal with Samantha Bee."

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A kid-friendly video explains the basis of intersectionality and how Kimberly Crenshaw first experienced it in her personal life as a black woman.

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A young woman who marches for her fellow women and their experiences with intersectionality and false expectations women experience each day, no matter race, class, religion or sexuality.

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Refinery29 is partnering with Girls Who Code for the #MarchForSisterhood on International Day of the Girl. This is the first-ever all-digital global march. Come back each day this week to learn about why different young women are participating, and join us as we #MarchForSisterhood on any of your social media channels this Friday, October 11, 2019.

My life was irreparably changed on February 14th, 2018. That day, I made a forced passage from simple student to an activist on the national scale. That day, a gunman stole 17 lives from my classmates and so much more. But that day also began the rest of my life, known as the March For Our Lives. Fighting for peace, for youth, for our lives - it's been the most insane and incredible experience of my life. But my fight did not begin that fateful Valentine's Day. No, this is a fight I'd known for much longer. Something primal. Something shared by so many others. The fight for sisterhood.

Sisterhood, oppression, and equality were terms I first learned in high school. Sneers of "feminazi" and "SJWs" had floated around my campus, but I chose early on to take the plunge into social justice. Websites like Tumblr and Twitter radicalized me, a reblog seemingly turned an act of protest. In hindsight, much of what I learned was juvenile and exclusionary, but it was still the starting point for a lifetime of learning. I would take my knowledge to confront my peers on passive racism, or lack of political engagement. I was, in my mind, an upstanding feminist, ready to take on the world. Then I was forced to actually take on the world.

Navigating the field of activism can be quite daunting, especially for anybody that's not a straight cis white man. Even passively, people and platforms would ignore the voices of women, members of the LGBTQ community, and people of color. I watched as privilege shaped our national platform, and the discourse around the painful issues at hand. It became easy to see just how many perspectives were missing from these spaces that claimed to uphold themselves as the pinnacle of social justice.

Frequently, I would attend female-centered events and women's summits, and find myself on a stage, speaking where it wasn't quite my place. Sure, I'm a woman, and in some ways a survivor, but my privilege isn't so easily ignored. There is a reason myself and my Parkland peers were given our platform, and it had a lot to do with the color of our skin. I tried at those summits and many other events to raise the microphone to groups so often ignored, to acknowledge my blind spots as much as possible. I couldn't just preach intersectionality, I had to practice it.

That practice of intersectionality became a part of my informal education as I listened to stories of women all across the world with different backgrounds yet a collective pain. The societal pressures, the misogyny, the oppression - they were all a familiar facet of our daily lives. It was in those many months that I carved my niche as not just a gun violence prevention activist, but an activist for women and femmes everywhere. Every issue intertwined: class, gender, race, sexuality, disability, and more. It's impossible to ignore. I just have an obligation to speak up about it.

So, as my work with the March for Our Lives continues, I continue to learn and grow. I know the power a platform like mine can hold, especially for every little girl looking for guidance. I want nothing more than to be the powerful role model a younger me wishes she had. For that younger me, for my sister, for every little girl, I bring my best self. I take to the realm of academia, pen in hand, to learn of feminist theory and social justice. I read and I write and I weaponize my words in the familiar fight. Now, I know more. I am more. I am ready to take on the world, the good and bad. I am ready to March for my sisters. For what is right. For our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our voices, ourselves. I march for me and I march for you. I march for the future. I march for sisterhood.

Delaney Tarr is a co-founder of the March For Our Lives and an advocate for equality, youth empowerment, and gun violence prevention. She is currently a sophomore studying journalism and women's studies at the University of Georgia

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Refinery29 is partnering with Girls Who Code for the #MarchForSisterhood on International Day of the Girl. This is the first-ever all-digital global march. Come back each day this week to learn about why different young women are participating, and join us as we #MarchForSisterhood on any of your social media channels this Friday, October 11, 2019.

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One of the first abortion clinic escorts shares her story of harassment and struggle with power as she guided women to clinic that performed abortions.

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Laurie Bertram Roberts is familiar with the scene outside the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi. She volunteered as one of the abortion clinic's first patient escorts in 2013, putting herself between anti-choice protesters and the patients she guided into the building.

The protesters were often so close she could feel their breath on her neck, Roberts said. There were, after all, few legal protections keeping those seeking care safe from protesters.

"They want to be intimidating. They want the experience to be scary and shameful," Roberts told Rewire.News. "What they do influences people's behavior, and they know that. They want you to be uncomfortable. It's all about power."

Now, an anti-choice group is challenging a new Jackson ordinance protecting clinic patients and staff from harassment. The buffer zone ordinance, passed this month by the Jackson City Council, prohibits protesters from gathering within 15 feet of the entrance to any health-care facility, including Jackson Women's Health Organization, the state's only abortion clinic. The ordinance bans protesters from coming within eight feet of patients or staff, unless the person they're approaching consents to receive a pamphlet.

The Mississippi Justice Institute filed a lawsuit in the Hinds County Circuit Court on behalf of the anti-choice group, Sidewalk Advocates for Life, claiming the ordinance violates the protesters' rights to free speech.

"Our clients are engaging in quintessential free speech, and they are doing so peacefully and respectfully," Aaron Rice, director of the Mississippi Justice Institute, said in a statement. "They care deeply for the unborn and feel morally led to offer life-affirming alternatives to people entering an abortion facility. Jackson's new ordinance is an attempt to silence our clients' speech, and we are proud to stand with them and defend their rights."

In the six years since Roberts first volunteered as a patient escort, the anti-choice protesters outside the Jackson clinic have only escalated their tactics, often stepping into the road, blocking traffic, and creating chaos in the business district where the clinic is located. At the urging of the business community, the Jackson City Council passed the buffer zone ordinanc e in a 3-1 vote. Violations could result in a $1,000 fine or 90 days in jail.

"They have gotten away with a lot, and it's chaotic for patients," Roberts said. "There is no other medical procedure where people have to go through this. There are other procedures people may object to being done, but you don't go through this."

The challenge to Jackson's buffer zone ordinance comes as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to consider a challenge to a similar ordinance in Chicago that prohibits protesters from coming within a 50-foot radius of a clinic entrance. The Chicago ordinance establishes a "bubble zone" around people entering and leaving a clinic, banning anyone from coming within eight feet without permission.

In 2014, the Supreme Court struck down a Massachusetts buffer zone law that banned protesters within 35 feet of an abortion clinic. Anti-choice activists challenging these ordinances say buffer zones infringe upon their free speech rights, but the goal of these laws is to protect patient privacy and safety, said Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute.

"This is harassment and intimidation. This isn't about free speech or having a marketplace of ideas," Nash told Rewire.News. "Clinic violence is pervasive and ongoing. What we are talking about is protecting those going in and out of abortion clinics. In the last couple decades, patients, staff, and volunteers have been subject to harassment and violence."

Abortion providers are facing unprecedented levels of violence and threats, according to the National Abortion Federation (NAF), which tracks incidents of disruption and violence against providers. From 2017 to 2018, NAF members reported a 78 percent increase in incidents of trespassing and acts meant to obstruct access to clinics.

The elimination of buffer zones around abortion facilities would not only make the scene around abortion clinics more dangerous; it could also prevent people from accessing abortion.

"Clinic violence furthers stigma," Nash said. "We're talking about people trying to do their jobs or access a health-care service. We have been seeing increases in violence, which leads to less understanding and more stigma, and can keep people from accessing services. People are so intimidated by what they see that they can't even make it to the front door."

Roberts said the anti-choice protesters in Jackson claim they are counseling patients on alternative choices to abortion. Roberts, who founded the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund in 2013 to provide financial and logistical support to people seeking abortion, said many callers opt to travel to surrounding states for abortion care in order to avoid the protesters.

"No one should be harassed for their personal health-care decisions," Roberts said. "Abortion is legal and people are conducting their own personal, legal business. Abortion is a human right and abortion is health care. Free speech does not equal harassment."

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'It's All About Power': Mississippi Anti-Choice Group Targets Buffer Zone Ordinance - Rewire.News

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Laurie Bertram Roberts is familiar with the scene outside the Jackson Women's Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi. She volunteered as one of the abortion clinic's first patient escorts in 2013, putting herself between anti-choice protesters and the patients she guided into the building.

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Actress Denise Bidot speaks out about prejudice towards Arab Latino women in the movie business. She also discusses body image and how "thick" women are body shamed and expected to edit cellulite out of their pictures.

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Breaking through the prejudices that besiege us is not easy, but when you have to fight in more than one front and you are still victorious, you are opening the way for everyone else.

This is just what happens to Denise Bidot. First, she is a curvy model in a world where to be photographed naturally without masking the cellulite or the wide hips is such a sign of self-confident as feminist activism.

But also because Bidot is half Puerto Rican and half Kuwaiti, and has become a mirror for Arab Latinas in the United States who demand greater visibility:

"Growing up, I felt like I was the only girl in the world who was Latino and Arab, and that's when Shakira began to talk about her roots and I thought I had found someone like me," she said to Emperifolla in an interview where she also referred to her lonely youth in Miami and the career she embarked on 12 years ago, consecrating her as one of the world's most respected curvy models.

"We feel alone because no one sees us and the same thing happens with the Afro-Latino community"

"This generation is quite impressive, there are no longer all those labels that used to put on us and that was hard for me related to my identity," she stated. And she added that she was relieved that her daughter could grow up in that other generation that is pushing the boundaries.

"Representation is important, we feel alone because no one sees us, and so is the Afro-Latino community," concluded Denise Bidot, who has a fairly large public forum with more than 655 k followers on Instagram.

Hispanic Arab Celebrities

An Afro-Latino girl's mother, the model, who grew up in a family where she was different - "my cousins are red and my grandmother has blond hair and green eyes," she says -, would like to show her daughter other women who look like her on television and in music.

Something that despite the prejudices and the glass ceiling that weighs on women, especially if they have certain origins, happens more and more often. And there are even very well-known ambassadors.

Actress Salma Hayek ("Frida", "Desperado"), whose father is Lebanese, made some very harsh statements a couple of years ago at the Cannes Film Festival where she charged against machismo and racism in the film industry:

"I came to Hollywood not only as a woman but as an Arab-Mexican. People laughed at me for having the dream of working as an actress," she confessed in a forum dedicated to women.

She was the only Mexican and Latina in drama school - except for Benicio del Toro, who is Puerto Rican, that is, half American, and is a man. "No one laughed at him," she recalls. "They also laughed at me in Mexico (...) as well as all the agents and all the film studios."

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Denise Bidot: The curves of Arab Latino feminism

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Breaking through the prejudices that besiege us is not easy, but when you have to fight in more than one front and you are still victorious, you are opening the way for everyone else. This is just what happens to Denise Bidot.

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After a video of a gay student getting punched was released, the boy's mother speaks out about homeschooling due to the mishandling of LGBTQ violence in her son's school.

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A viral video of a gay teen punching a classmate who had allegedly been harassing him underscores "a systemic failure" to address the prevalence of anti-LGBTQ bullying in schools, according to some experts and advocates.

The video shows gay student Jordan Steffy, a junior at LaPorte High School in Indiana, yelling at a classmate who can be seen slowly walking toward him. Steffy can be heard telling the other student to stop calling him a "faggot," to which the classmate responds by using the slur repeatedly. In the video - which has been widely shared on Twitter since it was first posted by Steffy on Friday - the gay teen can then be seen shoving and punching the other student. At the end of the video, an off-camera voice, widely assumed to be that of a teacher, can be heard saying, "Whoa, whoa, whoa whoa. Hey, Jordan," presumably telling Steffy to stop hitting his classmate. It is unclear, however, what led up to the recorded incident.

The anti-gay taunting seen in the video was not an isolated incident, according to Steffy's mother. Angela Fillmore told NBC News that her son had started being bullied in the second grade, and that the bullying grew worse after he came out as gay in seventh grade. From being harassed to having food thrown in his face, Fillmore said he'd grown accustomed to the bullying, but that he had reached his limit following a recent cyberbullying incident.

"I was tired of him being bullied, and he was tired of being bullied," Fillmore said. While she added that she does "not agree with violence," she said she's happy her son "stuck up for himself."

Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, deputy executive director of GLSEN, an LGBTQ education advocacy organization, called the circumstances surrounding the video "heartbreaking."

"While we don't condone violence, it reflects the trauma that LGBTQ youth have endured and the fact that they feel they need to fend for themselves in school," she told NBC News. "Jordan deserves better. All students deserve better."

Nearly 60 percent of LGBTQ youth feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, according to GLSEN's most recent annual National School Climate Survey. More than 70 percent of LGBTQ students report being verbally harassed, while nearly 30 percent report facing physical harassment.

This pervasive harassment and violence are exemplified by many of the Twitter responses Steffy received, which praised the student for "sticking up for himself."

"I don't hold with violence but I do hold with self-defense and I think you did a very very good thing," one Twitter user wrote. "Maybe this youngster will think twice before trying to build himself up by being an idiot. Good for you!"

"Jordan, I am so proud of you. I wish I had your courage when I was in school. You probably don't even realize that you just spoke for so many kids that get bullied," another user wrote. "You will see how many other kids you inspire to be themselves and stand up for themselves."

Willingham-Jaggers said that so many people could relate to Jordan's experience of being bullied is reflective of the fact that schools aren't doing enough to prevent harassment and violence.

"How can you legally require young people to be in a space, but not ensure their safety?" she said. "We need to prioritize school policy that enumerates sexual orientation and gender identity as protected identities and train educators to intervene in ongoing bullying - not just when it gets physically violent, but well before."

While nearly 80 percent of LGBTQ students report that their school has an anti-bullying and anti-harassment policy, only around 13 percent of students said their school had a comprehensive policy that specifically addressed sexual orientation and gender identity, according to the aforementioned GLSEN report.

LaPorte High School did not respond to NBC News' requests for comments regarding the incident and how it would be addressed, but the school's principal, Ben Tonagel, shared a statement on the school's website saying the "matter was addressed immediately and an investigation continues." Tonagel also noted the school "conducts its anti-harassment program for students each year" and its policy "prohibits harassment, fighting" and "disruptive behavior."

Fillmore's mother said that Steffy and the classmate in the video were suspended from school following the incident. She also said that she planned to homeschool him "because she doesn't agree with how it was handled." The two plan to clean out his locker on Friday.

"We need to stop bullying," Fillmore said. "Everyone's different, and we need to accept and respect people. Leave people in peace; there's no reason for constant hate and harassment."

Beverly Tillery, executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project, an organization that works to prevent violence against LGBTQ people and empower survivors of violence, compared the incident involving Steffy with that of Abel Cedeno. Cedeno, who came out as gay upon his arrest, stabbed a classmate to death and seriously wounded another at a Bronx high school in 2017 after he was allegedly bullied for his perceived sexuality. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for manslaughter, eight years for assault and 90 days for criminal possession of a weapon.

"No one should have lost their life or be injured. Too often, there's so many people ignoring the situation - teachers, students, administrators - until things get physically violent," Tillery said. "We need schools to step in and take this seriously, because right now they're not doing their job to protect students."

Both Tillery and Willingham-Jaggers called on schools to reimagine their approaches to addressing anti-LGBTQ bullying. For example, instead of focusing on disciplinary action, Willingham-Jaggers said schools might think of incorporating "restorative justice practices," which tend to focus on finding a solution to the issue versus simply punishing students and can include setting "community agreements" in classroom settings to foster healthy relationships among peers.

They also cautioned against sensationalizing the violence in Steffy's video or viewing it as a sport.

"The gut reaction to the video might be, 'Yay, this is vindication for the bullying,' but what happened is tragic," Willingham-Jaggers said. "It points to a systematic failure."

For students who don't feel supported or safe at their schools due to their sexual orientation or gender identity, Tillery and Willingham-Jaggers recommend confiding in an adult or seeking support from a local advocacy organization. According to the Trevor Project, LGBTQ youth who report having at least one accepting adult were 40 percent less likely to report a suicide attempt in the past year.
If you or someone you know is being discriminated against for their sexual orientation or gender identity, or feeling hopeless or suicidal, contact The Trevor Project's Trevor Lifeline 24/7 at 1-866-488-7386. Counseling is also available 24/7 via chat every day at TheTrevorProject.org/Help, or by texting 678-678. Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram

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Viral video of teen punching classmate draws attention to anti-gay bullying

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A viral video of a gay teen punching a classmate who had allegedly been harassing him underscores "a systemic failure" to address the prevalence of anti-LGBTQ bullying in schools, according to some experts and advocates. The video shows gay student Jordan Steffy, a junior at LaPorte High School in Indiana, yelling at a classmate who can be seen slowly walking toward him.

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New York author Jia Tolentino brings attention to women and how the internet "paints a picture of how our lives should be" as women. She also touches on how men and women are viewed in two completely different sexual lights.

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After graduating from college I began reading feminist blogs, and it was as if I had discovered that I'd been living in The Truman Show. At sites like Jezebel, Feministing, and Slate (under its now-deceased DoubleX vertical), I absorbed political and cultural news through an anti-patriarchy filter. Lightbulbs blinked on as my brain was reprogrammed. The most important lesson was that criticism of women did not reflect a flaw in that particular woman but instead demonstratedour culture's inability to accept women who didn't conform to the patriarchal prerogative.

Celebrity women were and remain at the heart of the online feminist discourse, their journeys through public life offering miniature morality plays about the circumscribed roles that women are required to perform. A particular celebrity would find herself under attack for one reason or another; sites would rush to her defense, and thus in theory contribute to the work of liberating women everywhere. Supposed "divas" were recast as women demanding respect and equality. So-called "sluts" were reconfigured as normal sexual humans. And so were we, the readers, likewise recast and reconfigured.

But after a year or so, by the end of 2011, I stopped reading these sites. There was a predictable formula to the posts, and I could tell from a headline what the story beneath it was going to argue. The feminist internet kept on cranking without me. Blogs defending celebrities turned into books defending celebrities. But as New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino argues persuasively in her new essay collection, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, that approach to feminism is increasingly self-defeating. A reflexive defense of anyone discussed in gendered terms leaves no space for evaluating women who are actually behaving badly. At its worst, it becomes a kind of performance in itself.

Tolentino's subject in several essays is the warping effect the digital world has on our lives, but the dynamic she describes has everything to do with our political moment, too. The distraction, pettiness, and chaos that Tolentino observes at the level of the individual plays out in grand scale in our politics, which are now inextricably bound up with the rhythms and imperatives of the internet. "What's amazing," she writes, "is that things like hashtag design-these essentially ad hoc experiments in digital architecture-have shaped so much of our political discourse." She is diagnosing a problem that will come crashing down on all of us unless our politics can intercede.

The recurring and terrifying theme of Trick Mirror is the way the internet has turned our lives into online performances. This is not a luddite's lament; the author has been, as she writes, an internet addict since childhood. Tolentino, in her beautiful prose, is trying to tease out the process whereby the internet thwarts the larger ambitions it opens up for us. The internet feminists, for instance, succeeded in changing the terms upon which women understood their own lives-a significant victory-but then fell into a Groundhog Day situation, waking up every morning to find a woman in distress on the internet and rushing to rescue her without stopping to build upon the successes they had made. Tolentino's observations remind me of my own time on the feminist web-a place where groundbreakingpop feminism somehow became more of a performance than an intellectual and moral endeavor.
Siloed into lonely performances of our better lives, constantly trading solidarity for personal gain, we seem determined to foreclose any possibility of collective action.
The failure doesn't belong to any particular site or ideological group; in Tolentino's telling, it's practically coded into the internet and the media that rests uneasily atop it. The internet "collapses identity, opinion, and action," she writes. Drawing on the mid-20th century sociologist Erving Goffman, she argues: "The internet is engineered for this sort of misrepresentation; it's designed to encourage us to create certain impressions rather than allowing these impressions to arise 'as an incidental by-product of [our] activity.'" The personal is the performance of the political.

Nowhere is the failure of the pop-feminist celebrity discourse more evident than when applied to the women of the Trump administration: Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Hope Hicks, and Melania Trump. When comedian Samantha Bee chided Ivanka Trump for failing to condemn her father's family separation policy, she criticized Ivanka as the woman who claims the mantle of the pro-mommy, pro-family advocate in the administration. "Do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless cunt!"

Criticism rained down on Bee, whose comment was taken not as a criticism of Ivanka's faux-feminism but as the real sexism. "Bee apologized, and I felt as if a feminist praxis was turning to acid and eating through the floor," Tolentino writes. Instead of actually trying to uproot sexism, "to the great benefit of people like Ivanka, we've been adjudicating inequality through cultural criticism. We have taught people who don't even care about feminism how to do this-how to analyze women and analyze the way people react to women, how to endlessly read and interpret the signs." The project of eradicating sexism was constantly being eclipsed by the momentary gleam of a celebrity woman in distress.

"In the future, we will inevitably be cheapened," Tolentino predicts in the first essay, titled "The I in the Internet." "Less and less of us will be left, not just as individuals but also as community members, as a collective of people facing various catastrophes." The internet is dismantling our economy and corroding our social connections, yet most of us stay on Facebook and Instagram; we continue to order from Amazon. It's a pernicious trait of our online existences that we are isolated while also obligated to follow the crowd. This-the herding of atoms-is also part of the process of political erosion.

The Russian émigré Masha Gessen has documented what happens to a society when a majority of its citizens abandon the world as they see it for a reality that's been created for them-by the Kremlin, in Gessen's case. The decision to accept this new reality, based on facts invented by the government, is so corrosive that it leads to social decay. "You were going to be corroded by the system because the essential tools of living with others are taken away from you," she recently observed. "When this happens we become isolated and we start disintegrating as a society." This loneliness, she continued, borrowing from Hannah Arendt, is the basis upon which a totalitarian system is built. "The reason [people] become lonely is because politics, in its truest sense, is completely destroyed. Politics as a negotiation-on how we live together in a building, a city, a country, a world-disintegrates. You're left alone. You can only receive reality from on high, and you can't share it with other people."

There are essays in Trick Mirror, particularly one on the internet and one on political and economic scams, that help elucidate how the internet has primed us for this kind of attack from the state, turning us into distractible and lonely subjects for an anti-reality government to conquer. When Tolentino's arguments extend from the individual to society, they still circle the same problem: a world in which individuals lose their connection to the whole.

Siloed into lonely performances of our better lives, constantly trading solidarity for personal gain, we seem determined to foreclose any possibility of collective action. The result, Tolentino argues, could be apocalyptic. It's easy to gloss over the gravity of her warning because it's so dire. I had to read this part twice before it sank in: "What could put an end to the worst of the internet? Social and economic collapse would do it, or perhaps a series of antitrust cases followed by a package of hard regulatory legislation that would somehow also dismantle the internet's fundamental profit model. At this point it's clear that collapse will almost definitely come first."

There are plenty of examples to contradict this: millions of people joining the Women's March after Donald Trump's inauguration, thousands of people rushing to the airports a week later to protest Trump's anti-Muslim travel ban. Even the #MeToo movement. But the truth is, I found Tolentino's dark prediction almost reassuring. It was comforting to know that the dread I feel, the sense of a dead end having been reached, was not only explicable and nameable but shared by others.

Trick Mirror isn't all doom and gloom. In perhaps the most lighthearted of her essays, "Reality TV Me," Tolentino reflects on her own appearance on a reality TV show as a high school senior. She'd auditioned for Girls v. Boys: Puerto Rico with the confidence of someone who believes she is "special"-in her second audition tape, she promised "the girls will not win-I mean, they will win-with me on the team." Having earned a spot, Tolentino flew to Puerto Rico in December of her senior year to claim the prize money for her and the other girls. She figured it would help pay for Yale, where she'd already been accepted for the following fall.

Except the girls lost. Without the prize money, Tolentino opted instead for a full ride to the University of Virginia, against the wishes of her parents, who couldn't understand giving up the prestige of an Ivy League school. They "retained a faith in the transformative power of institutions," Tolentino writes, "a faith I shared until I abruptly did not."

"Losing the reality show marked some sort of transition," she continues. "I started to feel that the future was intractably unpredictable, and that my need for money cut deeper than I'd imagined, and that there were worse things than making decisions based on whatever seemed like the most fun."

The University of Virginia turned out fine for Tolentino, of course. But the lesson feels applicable today. We assume in our young country that everything will work out, that our institutions will protect us. But at what point do we lose that faith and contemplate the alternative?

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After graduating from college I began reading feminist blogs, and it was as if I had discovered that I'd been living in The Truman Show. At sites like Jezebel, Feministing, and Slate (under its now-deceased DoubleX vertical), I absorbed political and cultural news through an anti-patriarchy filter.

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An article published in The Signal, a New Jersey journal, touched on a story about privilege. A college held a workshop to unpack the "invisible knapsack" that is white privilege throughout their students.

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The Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion held the final workshop for the Diversity Education Series on Nov. 22 in the Brower Student Center Room 225.

The last session was titled "Racial Privilege: A Primer," which Robin Parker, the executive director of the Beyond Diversity Resource Center, described as the most challenging of the five-part series.

Parker reviews the working definition of race with the audience. (Jennifer Somers / Photo Editor)

The session encouraged participants to put on their "racial clothing," as referred to by Parker, to explore how racial privilege, or the absence of it, influences people's lives through interactive exercises and discussions.

"If we understand privilege, we understand what we are walking through the world with every day," Parker said. "It can be painful to look at. Nevertheless, we believe it's very healthy."

Parker began the session by explaining and expanding the working definition of race as a social construct, which she said places African-Americans at the very bottom of the established racial hierarchy.

"They were seen as cultureless, savage, from the 'dark' country ... unfortunately, that legacy is still with us today," Parker said. "There is no magic about racial categories. They are simply invented."

Pamela Smith Chambers, the training director of the Beyond Diversity Resource Center, then led the audience in a discussion of the origin of the concept of white privilege.

"What continues to lag is the issue of oppression in society," Chambers said.

Chambers credited activist Peggy McIntosh to a great shift of culture in America, as she referred to her list of white privileges from the article "Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," which has been shared on racialequitytools.org. McIntosh's list, as explained by Chambers, became the foundation on which anti-oppression work began to teach and initiate the conversations.

"The concept of white privilege is difficult because it changes the responsibility for what it means to work on the elimination of oppression," Chambers said.

Chambers discussed how McIntosh's list guided one's understanding of privilege and oppression, and utilized the list in an activity with the audience. Every participant was asked to close their eyes and get comfortable in their seats while Chambers asked them 50 questions.

"If you are white, as you listen to the list of racial privileges, think about what the presence of those privileges have meant in your life," Chambers said to the audience. "If you are a person of color, think about what the absence of these privileges have meant in your life."

Following the exercise, Chambers invited the audience members to a group discussion, where they deliberated their general feelings after listening to the reading of the questions. Chambers asked the white audience members and people of color what the presence of privilege meant to them.

"Life can be hard for everyone," Chambers said. "But the conversation is powerful if we can dig into, in spite of that, what the presence of privilege means to ... an individual."

Cynthia Fulford, the assistant director of the Support for Teacher Education at the College, attended the meeting and believed the discussions were important in the College's environment.

"I think it's important so we can help students see that no matter our racial backgrounds, we all need to be learning and engaging together," she said.

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College diversity workshop covers white privilege

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The Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion held the final workshop for the Diversity Education Series on Nov. 22 in the Brower Student Center Room 225. The last session was titled "Racial Privilege: A Primer," which Robin Parker, the executive director of the Beyond Diversity Resource Center, described as the most challenging of the five-part series.

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The Orange County Register published an article that takes a different spin on intersectionality. Political figure Elizabeth Warren talks about her intersectionality as a white woman and how it creates a barrier in reaching all levels of class in her area of election.

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When she first announced her run for the White House, Elizabeth Warren seemed a breath of fresh air - a brainy and relentless campaigner for the middle class, willing to take on tech and other oligarchs. As an old colleague who met with her told me, she seemed very much "an old-fashioned New Deal Democrat" focused primarily on addressing the massive inequalities that hurt our society and families.

But rather than focus on basic issues that appeal to a wide number of Americans, Warren's campaign has morphed into something of an intersectional nightmare. The notion of intersectionality holds that progressives must embrace the demands of any of the various strains within the progressive Democratic Party. You cannot just be an economic progressive but must also endorse every demand of militant greens, the Bernie Bro socialists, the professional race hustlers or the extreme feminists.

Like one of Pavlov's dogs, the intersectional habit has led Warren to back the left fringe positions on such likely electoral losers as free health care for the undocumented, decriminalizing illegal entry into the country, reparations for slavery and the Green New Deal.

She would be better off focusing on basic issues, like addressing corporate power and supporting health care reform that allows for private insurance.
The demographic equation
As a white woman (Warren no longer claims Native American ancestry) from a state that is over 70% white, well above the national average, she has never made strong inroads in minority communities. Her base consists largely of upper-middle class educated whites like those that elected her. Lucky for her that the first two primaries are in states even more homogeneous than Massachusetts.

Yet as the primaries roll on, she will have to campaign in states - notably South Carolina and Nevada - where the electorate, particularly Democrats, is highly diverse. To be sure, some minority voters favor relaxed immigration policies, but many would not embrace the idea of decriminalizing the border. Roughly two out of three Latino voters, according to Gallup, favor mandated checks on immigration status or workers, while 82 percent of African Americans feel the same.

Reparations are not too popular either, outside the black community, with half of Latinos opposed as well as two-thirds of all voters. Instead of embracing this position, Warren would be better off addressing the fundamental economic challenges faced by many minorities. But sadly, the idea of growing the economy - a position embraced by liberals from Truman and Roosevelt to Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton - seems all but missing from Warren's platform, along with those of most of her rivals. This inattention to growth could be a weakness if the GOP points out that Latinos and African Americans have gained more in terms of employment and income under Trump than previous Democratic or Republican regimes.
The social engineers' compulsion
New England progressives, inheritors of the Protestant reforming tradition, long have sought to impose "morality" on the rest of society. This led them not only to promote things like clean government and improved sanitation, but their zeal also had a darker side, including the embrace of eugenics, considered by one of its proponents as "the science of being well born."

In place of the market, and allowing people to choose their way of life, Warren's predecessors often favored enforcement of morality - for example, Prohibition. Today's progressives like Warren don't talk in conventional moral terms about personal or family responsibility but embrace a trendy morality that opposes any manifestation "male patriarchy" and has little interest in the traditional family. "We're not here today because of famous arches or famous men," she told a rally in Washington Square Park earlier this year. Do most Americans think Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton did not have much to do with creating the republic in the first place?

Warren's up-to-date New England morality also includes such things as a virtual right to abortion at any time, despite the fact that just 13% of Americans think third-trimester abortions should be generally legal, compared to the 60% who think first trimester abortions should be generally legal.

One other issue Warren is out of step with Americans on is taxpayer-funded sex changes. Warren has reversed past positions and now embraces the clearly unsaleable idea of having taxpayers pay for prison inmates' sex changes.
The Green New Deal: Replacing capitalism with rule of the betters
The moralism of the turn-of-the-century progressives turned them against the market and capitalism, with its out-of-control fluctuations, in ways resonant with Warren's program.

"As Christians they judged laissez faire to be morally unsound," writes historian and scholar Thomas C. Leonard in "Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era," "and as economists they declared it functionally obsolete."

The Green New Deal, which would essentially put control over the entire economy into the hands of credentialed regulators, epitomizes this mind-set. Given the imminent threat to the planet, they argue, the hoi polloi need not be consulted. Those of us who live in California have an advance glimpse of what this rule from above is like.

Californians may put up with such loss of jobs and freedom, at least for now, but eliminating virtually any economic activity dependent on fossil fuels may not play so well in the rest of the country. A recent Harris-Harvard poll found that three-fifths of Americans reject the portfolio of Green New Deal policies, including a third of Democrats and half of people under 25.

Just imagine what will happen if a President Elizabeth Warren follows through on her plans to ban fracking in places like Texas, North Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. In Texas alone, by some estimates, 1 million jobs would be lost. Overall, according to a Chamber of Commerce report, a full ban would cost 14 million jobs - far more than the 8 million lost in the Great Recession. And the environment itself would be somewhat of a loser in this game - fracking-generated natural gas has done more to reduce emissions by displacing coal than all the greens' efforts.
Warren needs to get back to basics
It won't be easy to run as the candidate of the middle class while fundamentally opposing how they live - largely in auto-dependent suburbs. Even more alarmed by her proposals will be the millions of blue- and white-collar workers in fields dependent on cheap reliable energy, including manufacturing, logistics and agriculture.

As former Chicago mayor and Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel has suggested, the best way to get rid of the odious Donald Trump is by "sticking to an agenda that meets voters where and how they live their lives." This means largely focusing on economic issues, and basic things like health care, roads and industrial competitiveness, rather than prioritizing extreme positions on such things as gender, environment or undocumented immigration.

To win, Warren needs to stick to her basic populist persona. There has never been a greater opportunity to take on the overweening power of the tech oligarchs and corporate concentration. This could win support among some Republicans and businesspeople, who are concerned that oligarchic control is restraining entrepreneurship, particularly among the young.

Warren would do best as what one observer called a "Teddy Roosevelt trust-busting progressive populist." She need not become a born-again corporatist. The refusal of Democrat fat cats to fund her campaign can, and should, be used as badge of honor, and could be potent against long-time corporate Democrats like Joe Biden. It will make a useful contrast in the fall when Trump's coffers will be filled to overflowing with corporate contributions.

By embracing all the odd proposals and centralizing notions of the intersectional left, Warren has obscured the very issues - inequality and oligarchical power - that provide the rationale her candidacy and could still win her the White House. These issues, not all the peripheral ones, are most likely to resonate with voters in November 2020.
Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org).

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The prisoner of intersectionality: Joel Kotkin

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When she first announced her run for the White House, Elizabeth Warren seemed a breath of fresh air - a brainy and relentless campaigner for the middle class, willing to take on tech and other oligarchs.

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This piece discusses the value in teaching children that their opportunities for learning are not based on gender. A couple outside texts are examined to further develop the idea that gender is not how you are born, but rather who you chose to become, on your own terms.

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Classroom as a space for research is intriguing since it encompasses individuals who might or might not be, from beforehand, recognizing themselves as gendered individuals. At the same time, it is for a lot of people, a site for learning and building one's own orientation to a particular gender. It is an interactive space of learning and unlearning or re-learning, in order to have a better understanding of ourselves as well as of the world we live in. Through seven periods of tackling with the concept of gender, I hereby attempt to provide you with a moment of flashback or nostalgia, in case you are no longer a part of any classroom. And if classrooms are still an active part of your life, this article would help you negotiate and comprehend the space better, hopefully.

First Period: What Is This Noise Called "Gender"?

Studies of the categories of gender have been evolving for over a century all around the world. For a long time, men and women (since Queer/non-binary discourse was hardly in the picture) were exclusively recognized as homogenous categories in themselves characterized by their biological or genital features in their bodies. The category of gender on the other hand, had too been limited to ideas of femininity and masculinity. However, more recently, "gender" as a category of analysis has been constructed as opposed to the biological determinism of individuals with respect to their sexual differences.

For Judith Butler, gender is "an aspect of identity" or "the cultural meaning and form that the body acquires", gradually. Since gender is often assumed to be an extension of nature, its social manifestations and public function is often ignored. Her work repeatedly emphasizes on rejecting the binary of the categories of gender that is often fed to us in various ways, and in turn recognizing an essential self that has been constructed beyond these systems of gender binaries.

Classroom as a space for research is intriguing since it encompasses individuals who might or might not be, from beforehand, recognizing themselves as gendered individuals.

Second Period: Why Look At Gender In The Classroom?

Simone de Beauvoir in her book, " The Second Sex (1949)", asserts how, " One is not born, but rather, becomes a woman. " Beauvoir understands gender as a category of "becoming" rather than that of "being born into". It encompasses an intrinsic dynamism and or a "process" of constructing ourselves.

This process is carried out throughout our lives, initially beginning within various social institutions such as the family, the educational organizations, the religious institutions, media etc. These institutions present their distinct pre-constructed or newly constructed, acclaimed and popularized discourses which act as counterparts to their former agendas. Thus for example, religious institutions often come up with newer ways of establishing a better hold over their disciples, but they do not completely transgress the former orthodox ideologies that were proclaimed by their leaders or "gurus".

One such space of socialization is the classroom. Here, the student is confronted with various already existing and socially constructed thought processes in their curriculum. They are also confronted with such ideas in classroom interactions between the teacher and the students or among students.

Third Period: How Do We Engender Ourselves In The Classroom?

This "process" of "becoming a gender" does not entail a single sided phenomena where the student is simply consuming what they are presented with. If we look carefully, in Beauvoir's definition, gender is voluntaristic rather than ascriptive, which therefore again acknowledges, a contrasting, also often overlapping concept of personal agency.

Image Source: UNICEF India

In the construction of categories of gender and its understandings, it is to some extent true that often hegemonic ideas tend to overshadow and influence the mindsets of the students. For example, heteronormative texts, which reiterate how a boy falls in love with a girl, reproduces heterosexual relationships as the only or "most normative" and therefore the only acceptable form of sexuality. But if socialization was a one-sided process, then people with "Queer" sexualities wouldn't have existed at all. This proves that there must be some personal agency that is exercised while consuming the prescribed texts in the curriculum and this personal agency often attempts to transgress the normative conceptions to claim a space of their own.

Simultaneously, one also needs to acknowledge the presence and influence of the teacher in a classroom. The teacher too resides in themselves the autonomy to a certain extent where they may go beyond the popular binaries of understanding gender through their individual ways of teaching.

Fourth Period: The Teacher And The Learner

Simultaneously, one also needs to acknowledge the presence and influence of the teacher in a classroom. The teacher too resides in themselves the autonomy to a certain extent where they may go beyond the popular binaries of understanding gender through their individual ways of teaching. The teacher has a uniquely gendered self, whose ways of understanding their life-world influences their teaching processes.

Image Source: Brookings Institution

Lastly, one should also recognize the role of discourses within the entire system that, to a large extent, shapes the discussions and dynamics of the classroom. Even though popular texts recommended in primary and secondary learning institutions usually promote the hegemonic ideas of gender, few of them (feminist or Queer discourses/texts) however attempt to showcase the other subordinated concepts. They are often attacked by people in power who demand complete autonomy of the hegemonic discourses. However, there still exist various discourses that challenge the prevailing ideas of heteronormative binaries and demand the recognition of other important discourses.

Also read: The Difficult Art Of Being A Feminist In An Economics Classroom

Fifth Period: Classroom As A Space For Learning Moralities A.K.A. "Value" Education

The classroom is also a site where different structures and understandings of moralities are constructed and maintained with respect to gender categories. Often these cater to the lives of women and influence their everyday. It is essential for us to understand the classroom dynamics because often subordinated gender identity categories, be it Queer or Women, is appropriated and understood by masculine voices which elaborate their theoretical standpoints through experiences of heterosexual men.

This creates and deepens the gap between theory and praxis, whereby women, for example, find it difficult to relate to the ideas that are structured primarily by men. This male-stream approach across disciplines generates patriarchal ideas of thinking about the world around us. They are taught to perform their expected gender roles, thereby gaslighting them into restricting any sort of transgression of these forms of gendering.

Sixth Period: Bell Hooks And Her Experiences As A Teacher

Bell Hooks' work on classroom interactions, in " Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994)", " Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003)", and " Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (2009)", addresses some of the most compelling issues teachers face in and out of the classroom today. She advocates the process of teaching students to think critically and raises many concerns central to the field of critical pedagogy, linking them to feminist thought. Teaching students to "transgress" against racial, sexual, and class boundaries in order to achieve the "gift of freedom" is, for Hooks, the teacher's most important objective.

Bell Hooks
Image Source: The Badger Herald

Hooks, during her undergraduate and graduate school years, saw that only white women professors were involved in developing Women's Studies program. When she taught her first class on Black feminism, it was in the context of Black Studies Program. White women professors were not eager in any feminist thinking on the part of black female students. Yet their lack of interest didn't discourage her from involvement with feminist ideas or participation in the feminist classroom.

It was a space where students could ask critical questions about pedagogical processes. When Hook herself started teaching, the first idea that shaped her way of teaching was that the classroom should be an excitingplace and should never be boring. Conventionally, excitement was viewed as potentially disruptive in the atmosphere of seriousness, which was assumed to be essential to the learning process. " To enter classroom settings in college and universities with the will to share the desire to encourage excitement was to transgress," Hooks believes.

Also read: Creating A Feminist Classroom: Why Should Marx Have All The Fun?

Last Period: Unlearning

Butler too, through her scholarship, reminds us that one does not " author one's gender, for its terms are always negotiated within collective social contexts. " The classroom is one such context and therefore categories of gender cannot be only thought of as an individual affair or as a product of external influences of socialization, but rather has to be recognized as a nexus of both of them working on the individual's social and psychological understandings.
Featured Image Source: Hindustan Times

Pragya Roy is a Master's Graduate in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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Revisiting, Revising And Reviewing Gender In The Classroom

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Classroom as a space for research is intriguing since it encompasses individuals who might or might not be, from beforehand, recognizing themselves as gendered individuals. At the same time, it is for a lot of people, a site for learning and building one's own orientation to a particular gender.