clairehanrahan:

More men like this please! This guy is pretty much the perfect template for what masculinity should look like if you ask me. Strong, intelligent and not afraid to speak up and challenge the way things are done. 

How to be a male feminist

nathanjurgenson:

There’s no shortage of news stories about potentially-compromising photos of young girls and women being spread around by boys and men. Over and over these articles expound, often with the help of medical professionals, on why-in-the-world these girls could possibly want to have and/or share nude images—usually, at worst said to be a pathological cry for attention, at best simple adolescent absent-minded short-sightedness. The articles conclude with advice to girls and sometimes their parents and other authorities. This framing is classic victim-blaming and furthers the sexism behind the very real issue of women’s privacy being violated by men.

I’m not saying anything new here. Many following these stories, especially those in my awesome-politics-having academic circle, know well the prevalence of the victim-blaming of women in discussions of privacy violations as they flow on-offline. Let me simply throw another on the pile just to further explicate the trend: this piece by Kashmir Hill on the Forbes privacy section. And, to be clear, I’m writing about Hill not because I think she is sexist and should be ignored, quite the opposite: her privacy blog is terrific, I read nearly every word she writes and am convinced she understands the nastiness of the issue and is genuinely concerned for the victims. Even those with otherwise awesome politics often write about privacy violations through a victim-blaming frame, and I’d like to encourage them to rethink this strategy. It isn’t hard to do, and I think this is an issue we actually can agree on with some open discussion. So here goes.

The article looks at a New Jersey story where a boy screen-captured Snapchats sent by girls in his class and posted the nude photos on Instagram. Next, a Tennessee story about teenagers starting a “nude-photo-blackmailing-ring” around their girlfriends not to just share the photos beyond the women’s consent, but to force them to send more photos under threat. Most alarmingly is the thirteen year-old girl having a video-chat screen-captured without her consent, who is then threatened into meeting boys in the woods where she is further assaulted, and, again, filmed. The stories here get more violating, leading to more assault, and rape. It is despicable what these boys did, as is the normalcy of their behavior.

Here, a “wise” psychologist is quoted,

adolescents are still developing in their mind the ability to think ahead to the consequences. They’re in the moment, and they’re thinking of shock value or just being funny

Disturbingly, he’s not speaking of the boys, the abusers, the rapists, but instead the girls, going on to say,

What they’re not thinking about is the footprint they’re digitally leaving for themselves

The consequences not being thought about aren’t what the boys are doing to the girls, but what the girls seemingly did to themselves. Predictably, the article here concludes with advice. Advice for the girls. Not one word of advice for the boys. The boys here are (rightly, but still not strongly enough) labeled as “jerks”, and are left further unaddressed to conclude with advice only to the victims of photo-sharing,

warning kids about online virality is just as important as telling them about STDs

This is an issue founded in the everyday and normalized violating, abusing, and assaulting of girls by boys (i.e., rape culture), and it is offensive to frame the article, exclusively, around expounding on and advising girls. What if we spent equal time—hell, allthe time—speaking to the sexism that makes boys sharing compromising photos normal? What is happening in our culture that leads to boys doing such terrible things, with such ease? What can we do to teach our boys differently? What if the professionals didn’t pathologize healthy consensual sexual exploration but instead the boys willingness to purposefully and explicitly violate this and other boundaries of consent?

Laurie Penny articulates this brilliantly in her difficult and important essay discussing the how the normalcy of sexual violations/assault is exemplified by the fact that the Steubenville rapists shot video of their assault,

Here we have incontrovertible evidence of happy young people not only hurting and humiliating others, but taking pleasure in it, posing with their victims. The Abu Ghraib torture pictures were trophies. The Steubenville rape photos are trophies. They’re mementoes of what must have felt, at the time, like everyone was having the sort of fun they’d want to remember, the sort of fun they’d want to prove to themselves and others later. The Steubenville rapists had fun, and they broadcast that fun to the world

Speaking of people who write about these issues better than I, let’s take note of Amanda Hess’ non-victim-blaming takeon the issue of nude photos being shared online,

Punishing 10 girls for a schoolwide phenomenon only reinforces the idea that girls who sext should be publicly shamed, while boys who sext—and share—are empowered to keep their selfies safely in their pockets. If the school really wants to mitigate the damaging consequences of sexting, it ought to crack down on nonconsensual forwarders, not self-exploratory photographers

See, it’s not hard: when writing about nude photos spreading online, please start by criticizing those who violate consent, privacy, and other humans.

thepeoplesrecord:

There are now more Americans in jail than were in Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago
May 9, 2013

There are now more Americans in jail — 6 million — than there were in Stalin’s Gulag, reports Fareed Zakaria, in a column called “Incarceration Nation.”

And it’s not just a relative population thing.

The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. How does that compare to other countries?

It’s 7-10X as high:

• Japan has 63 per 100,000,
• Germany has 90 per 100,000
• France has 96 per 100,000
• South Korea has 97 per 100,000
• ­Britain has 153 per 100,000

And it’s a rapidly exaggerating trend: In 1980, the U.S. only had 150 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. More than half of America’s 6 million prisoners are in jail for drug convictions, with 80% of those in jail for “possession.”

Source

Infographic Source

wheeliewifee:

I WAS GOING TO MAKE A SNARKY POST WITH THIS QUOTE!

I’m so glad you beat me to it, OP; this is awesome!!

neutrois:

ralphfrancisfox:

Thanks for everyone who contributed to this video. Expect more soon. www.mygenderation.com

My Genderation: a cinematic look at transpeople, by and for transpeople. Very awesome stuff!

socforce:

VICE: Crossing Mexico’s Other Border 

Investigative journalism at it’s best. They trace the route of migrants from Central America to the U.S.  

parachuuut:

Sisters in the Struggle by Dionne Brand & by Ginny Stikeman, National Film Board of Canada

merci @manyyyyyyyy

Discussion of racism in Canada. Many of the issues discussed are still ongoing despite the fact that this was made in 1991. 

culture-shocked606:

Teaching “Fat” in an English as A Second Language Context

“Fat” is one short word filled with overwhelming influence. It’s only three letters long, but it’s become jam-packed with meaning.

This is just another article I wrote for the Fat/Size Acceptance website glorify (http://glorifybasecamp.com/).  It deals with some of my experiences as a fat ESL teacher in China, specifically with the experience of teaching the word “Fat” to my first group of grade one students.

thepeoplesrecord:

equalityandthecity:

Media Consolidation: the illusion of choice.

Support independent media projects like: Democracy Now, TruthOut, TruthDig, The People’s Record (shameless plug), Media Matters, all the innumerable great blogs you come across, LinkTV, Free Speech TV, Occupy.com, AdBusters, WeAreMany, SocialistWorker, Lee Camp’s Moment of Clarity, All Things Harlem, just to name a few (literally there are so MANY more).

Please reblog with your own additions to keep the knowledge flowing.

thepeoplesrecord:

Police ‘cleaning up’ Detroit by kidnapping the homeless, stranding them in other cities
April 22, 2013

Imagine that you are homeless in Detroit. You have an area where you know you are safe, where you can find food and shelter if you ask. Now imagine that a cop grabs you from the street, throws you into a van, drives you to the edge of the city or even a suburb and then kicks you out. That’s what the ACLU is accusing the Detroit PD of doing.: they filed a complaint with the Justice Department against the DPB this week.

The complaint comes at the end of a year-long investigation into claims that the department routinely drove homeless people to areas unfamiliar to them, leaving them to get back on their own. They will approach homeless people, especially in tourist areas like Greektown, force them into vans and drive them miles away, the complaint alleges. Sometimes the officers would even take what little money they had, leaving them with no recourse but to walk back to the city. Sometimes the homeless victims would even be left in neighboring towns and suburbs like Dearborn and River Rouge.

Speaking for the ACLU of Michigan, staff attorney Sarah Mehta told the local CBS affiliate:

“DPD’s practice of essentially kidnapping homeless people and abandoning them miles away from the neighborhoods they know – with no means for a safe return — is inhumane, callous and illegal. The city’s desire to hide painful reminders of our economic struggles cannot justify discriminating against the poor, banishing them from their city, and endangering their lives. A person who has lost his home has not lost his right to be treated with dignity.” (source)

The ACLU was contacted by the St. Peter and Paul Jesuit Church Warming Center, a homeless shelter. They told the organization about several homeless people who were “taken for a ride” by DPB officers. One such story came from Andrew Sheehan, a 36-year-old who used to be homeless but is now working at a grocery store:

“I had my back turned to him and I did not see him approaching, and the first thing he did was he kicked me. He didn’t identify himself as an officer and he kicked me and told me to get up. I asked him if I was free to go. He told me no.” (source)

The organization has published the stories of five homeless people who were kidnapped and harassed by Detroit police. According to the ACLU’s complaint, some of the homeless who were taken had to walk many miles to get back to downtown shelters. This puts them in danger from a variety of sources, especially in the middle of winter.

The ACLU has asked the Department of Justice to investigate the allegations. They have also asked the city to issue a directive to police officers to desist this practice immediately.

This is unconscionable, but it’s not new. Removing the vagrants and undersirables from where the “regular” people might be upset by them is an old practice, according to Samuel Walker, a police accountability expert:

“This is a familiar story with a long history in policing. You do wonder what did this Police Department learn from the consent decree experience?” (source)

Detroit’s Chief of Police, Chester Logan, declined to comment, saying that he had not yet seen the complaint. The AP was also unable to get comments from Mayor Dave Bing or the city’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr. Not surprising.

This bad economy has seen an uptick in the homeless situation. Yes, it makes some of us uncomfortable to see them, perhaps because we see more of ourselves in them than we would care to admit. But ignoring the problem won’t solve it and taking these people to the edge of town and exposing them to danger is not the way to handle it. Detroit’s police need to look inside and find their better nature before they get someone killed.

Source

upworthy:

You’re More Likely To Go To Jail Than You Think. Take A Look.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world — higher than China, Iran, and Russia(!). That wasn’t always the case, But when we began sending people to jail for nonviolent drug offenses, the prison population skyrocketed.

Share now if you think the “land of the free” shouldn’t look like this. 

(Original by Wikipedia editor Pwrm. Based on Justice Policy Institute and Department of Justice statistics.)

womp womp

sociolab:

Black students most likely to have their school on Chicago Public School closure list

Nine out of ten of the Chicago Public School students potentially affected by school closings this year are black, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis has found, a discovery one community activist called a “lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Of those 129 schools located mostly on the South and West sides, 117 are majority black. And 119 of them have a percentage of black students higher than thedistrict average. At the 129 schools on CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s list of schools that could be closed this year, 88 percent of the students are black.

Schools with at least 90 percent black students account for 103 of the 129. Just nine are majority Hispanic.

The racial breakdown of the schools that could be closed is not in line with the overall demographics of the district. Across the city, 41.7 percent of CPS students are African American, 8.8 percent are white and 44.1 percent are Hispanic. The rest are Asian, Native American or members of other racial groups.

With the brunt of closings likely falling on black children, community members fighting to save schools are disgusted.

“It bothers me that schools that are in mixed neighborhoods, schools that are mostly Hispanic or Caucasian, they don’t seem to show interest to close them,” said Willetta Gary, a substitute teacher at Shoop Academy, who attended a recent school closing hearing on the Far South Side. “Children fare best when they can attend school in their own neighborhood where they live.”

Dwayne Truss of the Save Our Neighborhood Schools Coalition in Austin and North Lawndale, home to 16 of the schools on the list, was more blunt: “It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Byrd-Bennett insists race is not a factor in the process to close schools in an effort to “right size” the district. Rather, population decline has led to “under utilization” — or how empty or full a building is. The district, which this year decided to base school closings on capacity rather than the academic prowess of the students within, said schools targeted for closing are in areas that have lost population.

Indeed, the district claims the city has lost 145,000 children from 2000 to 2010, though school enrollment dropped by about 30,000 during the same decade. CPS cannot explain the disparity in the numbers.

African Americans of all ages left the city and number about 177,000 fewer as of the 2010 census than they did in 2000. During the same decade, the number of whites and Hispanics grew. Many of the schools considered overcrowded are in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods and, therefore, safe from closing or consolidation.

“Every child in every neighborhood in Chicago deserves to have a high-quality education that will prepare them to succeed in life,” Byrd-Bennett said in an emailed statement. “These numbers show that right now, that is not happening, and a disproportionately high rate of our African-American children are in schools that lack the resources necessary to give them an education we can all be proud of.”

The Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization called CPS’ under-utilization statistics a “manufactured crisis,” saying the district hasn’t lost as many children as it claims. The group testified before the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights that closing neighborhood schools has most affected minority children and violates the civil rights of children who then must travel to be educated.

When told of the list’s demographics, the organization’s education organizer Jitu Brown first let out a long sigh.

“The racial breakdown of the schools that are eligible to be closed is really an indictment on the fact that the district has operated without accountability in a two-tiered education system,” Brown said.

“What we should be saying instead of blaming parents, instead of blaming teachers or having low expectations, is, ‘Why can the school district set up excellent public schools on one side of town because it wants to keep that demographic there but starve out neighborhood schools in another community that’s African-American, and after the district neglects those schools, say ‘Look your schools are under-utilized, your test scores aren’t where they should be.’”

In Philadelphia, where dozens of public schools are slated to be closed come June, a community organization sued the School District of Philadelphia, saying its choice of schools to close is racially discriminatory.

The group, called Action United, claimed in January that African Americans made up 81 percent of students at the 37 schools the district wants to close but only 56 percent of the district’s students overall.

Last year, a group of Local School Council members in Chicago sued CPS, alleging that the 17 proposed schools targeted for major change were overwhelmingly African-American. That case was tossed in March from circuit court but continues on appeal in the Illinois Appellate Court.

“It’s criminal that in 2013, after all the sacrifices people have made,” Brown said, “that you still have a school system that looks at black children as if they are less.”

Outside Fernwood Elementary School in Roseland, an elementary school that is 97.7 percent African American, Cornelia Glover called the list “not fair.”

“They don’t care,” she said of the district, waiting to walk her three grandchildren home, “they just want to save money.”

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/18626817-418/black-students-most-likely-to-have-their-school-on-cps-closure-list.html