In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Misogyny; racism; appropriation; exploitation] An online collective of Black Women, AfroIndigenous Women, and women of color have written a statement about their social media strike in response to being treated as "unwaged labor in our little corner of the internet that feeds a movement." In the same space, you will also find individual personal statements, and I highly encourage you to check out the #ThisTweetCalledMyBack hashtag on Twitter.

[CN: Police brutality; racism] An update surrounding the death of John Crawford, the 22-year-old Ohio black man who was killed by police after another customer called 911 to report a man waving an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle at Walmart, though it was actually a BB/pellet rifle which is sold at the store: "Police aggressively questioned [Tasha Thomas, John Crawford's girlfriend]—accusing her of lying, threatening her with jail, and suggesting that she was high on drugs." Video shows police forcing Thomas to swear on her family's lives that Crawford "had not been carrying a firearm when they entered the Walmart in Beavercreek, near Dayton, to buy crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars on the evening of 5 August. 'You lie to me and you might be on your way to jail,' detective Rodney Curd told Thomas, as she wept and repeatedly offered to take a lie-detector test. After more than an hour and a half of questioning and statement-taking, Curd finally told Thomas that Crawford, 22, had died. 'As a result of his actions, he is gone,' said the detective, as she slumped in her chair and cried." Fucking hell.

[CN: Police brutality; racism] Local (to me) activists rallied for racial justice this weekend, and one of the central points of their protest was jaywalking, which is really interesting not only because it's an important local issue at the juxtaposition of police harassment, racism, and classism, but also because of the history of jaywalking being used to redistribute ownership of the streets.

[CN: Transmisogynist violence; death] A US Marine has been charged with murdering a Filipina trans woman. And, naturally, the US military is being as resistant as possible, without causing a major international incident, to his being held accountable by a foreign government.

[CN: Gender essentialism] What in the shit is this? "The Vanishing Male Worker: How America Fell Behind." There is SO MUCH to unpack in this article, I hardly know where to begin, but this is really breaking my brain: "Men today may feel less pressure to find jobs because they are less likely than previous generations to be providing for others. Only 28 percent of men without jobs—compared with 58 percent of women—said a child under 18 lived with them. A study published in October by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies estimated that 37 percent of the decline in male employment since 1979 could be explained by this retreat from marriage and fatherhood." The AEI is, of course, a conservative think [sic] tank. But even provided their numbers are right, what the fuck does that even mean? Don't men still have to work to provide for themselves even if they're not providing for wives and children? How does not providing "for others" subvert the "pressure to find jobs"? I also find it interesting that if a man doesn't have "a child under 18" living with him, then that means no responsibility for providing for anyone else. Uh, okay. But the rest of the article is talking about young men who can't leave home because they can't find work (so aren't there lots of dads still supporting kids older than 18), and isn't the disparity in the number of unemployed women with kids under 18 and men without kids under 18 attributable to kids living with mom, which doesn't mean that dad doesn't pay child support? (Or should be paying it anyway?) This shit so glaringly questionable with even the most basic scrutiny that there's no way it belongs in an article in the New York Times, but there you go.

[CN: Homophobia] So, a bunch of homophobic dipshits who call themselves Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gay (PFOX), because homophobes are as uncreative as they are indecent, put up a billboard in Richmond, Virginia, featuring the image of twin white men and text reading: "Identical twins: One Gay. One Not. We believe twins research studies show NOBODY IS BORN GAY." Well, leaving aside the fact that if identical twins are nurtured in the same environment and only one is gay, that doesn't actually seem to suggest what they think it does (science is hard), it turns out their billboard models are actually just one dude, twice, who is not a twin and is also openly gay. Whoooooooops!

Senator Elizabeth Warren is still saying she's not running for president: "I am not running for president. You want me to put an exclamation point at the end?"

Meanwhile, here's a cool headline from HuffPo: "The Speech That Could Make Elizabeth Warren the Next President of the United States."

[CN: Animal endangerment] 44-year-old Angalifu the White Rhino died this weekend of old age at the San Diego Zoo. "Following his death, there are just five northern white rhinos left worldwide, all in captivity. ...Like other rhinoceros species, the northern white rhino population was decimated by poachers, who take and sell the animal's horns." And it's never just one thing: Human encroachments on the white rhinos' territory also contributed to their demise. So fucking sad.

This Saturday Night Live mash-up of The Hobbit and The Office (UK) is absolutely perfect.

And finally! A wee bulldog puppy shows the stairs who's boss. Aww lol!