Now it’s the National Women’s Law Center.

Starting in just 10 minutes we'll be tweeting with @ABetterBalance to support pregnant people in the workforce! Join us with #PDA38!

— National Women's Law Center (@nwlc) October 28, 2016

Starting in just 10 minutes we’ll be tweeting with @ABetterBalance to support pregnant people in the workforce! Join us with #PDA38!

The National Women’s Law Center avoiding the word “women.” When talking about pregnancy.

38 years after the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, too many people are still forced to choose between a paycheck & a healthy pregnancy. #PDA38

— National Women's Law Center (@nwlc) October 28, 2016

38 years after the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, too many people are still forced to choose

More bro culture and its hostility to women, from Gemma Clarke.

Football has a problem with women. It was there every day, in every training ground, every stadium and every press box I entered. The five years I spent working as a football journalist were so steadily and fiercely degrading, they very nearly destroyed me.

A good day meant being belittled, having my knowledge questioned, or my attire, or being complimented on the quality of the pastries at half-time because I stood too close to the catering table. A bad day meant being harassed, phoning a player for an interview to be told he was naked and intending to discuss a very different kind of performance.

I could try

Peggy Orenstein looks at Trump the pussy-grabber as one bead in the necklace of temporary outrage.

In each case, by the time it’s over, we turn away from the broader implications toward a more comforting narrative: The perpetrators are exceptions, monsters whom we can isolate, eliminate and occasionally even prosecute.

Certainly, such behavior is not representative of men, not by a long shot. Yet neither is it entirely atypical. Sexual coercion, in one form or another, is as American as that baseball metaphor — a metaphor that sees girls’ limits as a challenge boys should overcome.

And this isn’t anything new. Those struggles in the back seats of cars have been a staple of movies and sitcoms since…well maybe since … Read the rest

So, Sincere “women and femmes” Kirabo included a link for the “femmes” part: a link to What We Mean When We Say “Femme”: A Roundtable. So let’s read it. It’s guaranteed to put us off our dinner, but let’s read it anyway. It’s from July, so not too out of date yet.

Femmes. We live in different places. We’re different ages. We have different gender identities. Some of us are people of color, some of us are white. In this representative sample, we are Autostraddle writers, or artists, or musicians, or educators, or all of these things. The only thing we have in common is that we’re queer and that, in our own deeply personal way, we breathe life

Via the brilliant Glosswitch on Twitter – buzzfeed and Elle are giving advice on how to rock that binder. Yay, let’s go back to squashing women’s bodies again! And this time let’s pretend there’s something social justicey about it!

Buzzfeed:

For many people, wearing a chest binder is simply part of the daily routine in this thing called life. But it can be a real strain, both mentally and physically.

So can foot binding, or wearing a corset. Here’s a thought: don’t do it.

There are tons of reasons to bind. Many people find that wearing a binder helps ease the discomfort that comes along with gender dysphoria.

Are we sure about that? Are we sure none of those … Read the rest

Amanda Marcotte posted this publicly on Facebook:

I never check my message requests, but apparently I should. Do you think I should report this guy, or is public shaming enough?

I looked at his wall and found another screenshot:

I also saw that he’s quite popular in the “atheist community.”

We can at least warn people.… Read the rest

Whitman-Walker Health posted on Facebook about its “Safer Sex for Trans Bodies” guide, the one that says women have front holes while trans women have vaginas. A woman commented to say it’s misogynistic to call vaginas front holes.

Whitman-Walker Health replied.

Whitman-Walker Health In developing the content of this guide, Whitman-Walker and HRC held focus groups and discussions with members of the transgender community and physicians to identify terms that were used within, and supportive of, the community. We aimed to make the language in the guide most affirming of all different bodies, transition, gender identity, and gender expression. We chose to use “front hole” in the place of “vagina” for that reason. Many trans men and non-binary individuals

The Guardian reports that police in various bits of England and Wales are considering the creation of a category of misogynist hate crime.

The initial success of Nottingham’s crackdown against sexist abuse has drawn national interest after the city’s police revealed that they investigated a case of misogyny every three days during July and August, the first months to see specially trained officers targeting behaviour ranging from street harassment to unwanted physical approaches.

…

Dave Alton, the hate crime manager for Nottingham police, said: “The number of reports we are receiving is comparable with other, more established, categories of hate crime. We have received numerous reports and have been able to provide a service to women in Nottinghamshire who perhaps

Irene Young on Facebook a couple of days ago:

There is criticism this morning that Hillary Clinton did not smile enough last night during the NBC Commander in Chief forum. I have a 2-part comment about this.

First, Trump NEVER smiles and is NEVER personable, yet there is no mention of it.

Secondly, I say this not just in response to this campaign, but because of my 40 years as a pro photographer in the independent music business with over 600 CD covers to my credit. It is just a fact. I have seen and heard it a million times. If men don’t smile in their photographs, it’s considered cool and strong. If women don’t smile, even if the

The Telegraph reports an ugly story out of France.

Two families on a cycle ride in Toulon, southern France, came under violent attack after assailants hurled insults at two female partners for wearing shorts, according to prosecutors.

The attack, carried out by a group of youths from a housing estate in the Mediterranean port town, has sparked claims that parts of France are prey to an Islamist “morality police”.

There were two couples, three children and a friend, out on bicycles and roller blades.

They were passing near the Cité des Oeillets, an estate in eastern Toulon, when a group of adolescents starting insulting the women of the group because of their shorts, including jibes such as: “Dirty

I’ve been watching the reactions to the reporting of the murder of Clodagh Hawe and her three children for the past few days. Allison Morris at The Irish News sums it up.

THE backlash following some of the fairly appalling early reporting of the murder of a mother and her three children in Cavan by a knife wielding maniac has by now – I hope – stimulated some real debate about domestic violence and the kind of men who beat and murder their partners.

An outpouring of sympathy for a man who acted savagely but was eulogised as a ‘pillar of the community’ was quite frankly sickening.

Clodagh Hawe and her three sons Liam, Niall and Ryan were initially

Heads we win, tails you lose. Jon Boone reports from Islamabad:

Family members accused of killing Samia Shahid, a British citizen who divorced and remarried without their permission, planned to use Pakistan’s much-criticised “blood money” laws to forgive her killer, a report into the case has alleged.

Police findings say the 28-year-old was the victim of “premeditated and cold-blooded honour killing”, which her family had hoped to get away with by exploiting Islamic laws the government has repeatedly promised to scrap.

The laws in question allow family members to pardon people who kill other family members – which of course makes “honor” killing risk-free: Daddy kills his daughter and her brother pardons Daddy. Everybody’s happy except the daughter, but … Read the rest

Planned Parenthood. A tweet.

Menstruators in New York started to #TweetTheReceipt celebrating the repealed tampon tax—but some are still charged. https://t.co/xnY5IaUZta

— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) September 2, 2016

Women. The word is “women.” Not “menstruators.” Women menstruate; men don’t.

Planned Parenthood should not be erasing women.… Read the rest

The BBC reports:

A comment in which a transgender Tory councillor was called “he” by a Labour rival is being treated as a hate incident by police.

Zoe Kirk-Robinson, 35, said Guy Harkin, 69, referred to her twice as a man in a debate at a Bolton Council meeting.

The hate crime ambassador, who transitioned 10 years ago, said the comments on 24 August “hurt a lot” and she reported them to police.

Mr Harkin has apologised. Police said “hate incidents are not tolerated”.

Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said it will resolve the incident, which was reported on 25 August, using restorative justice.

Mr Harkin said he “inadvertently referred to her as a he” during a debate about pensions

And speaking of sex-segregated branding, a friend on Facebook alerted me to the story of the Yorkie chocolate bar.

YORKIE – IT’S NOT FOR GIRLS!

In case we don’t understand the words or don’t know how to read, there’s also a stick figure with a skirt and a purse, with a line through her forbidden self. NO GIRLS.

Brilliant marketing, isn’t it, telling half your market NOT FOR YOU.

The Yorkie bar is famous in the UK for its former tag line: “It’s not for girls.” Nestlé first launched the slogans “Don’t feed the birds,” “Not available in pink,” and “King size not queen size” in 2002, but the bar has always been targeted at men ever since its

The whole point of women is to be machines for sucking the penis.

A giant banner sign posted at a home near the University of Cincinnati campus asking “Your daughter got a gag reflex?” has area residents, returning students, and alumni upset, saying it represents rape culture. They’re demanding the university take swift action against those responsible.

“Rape culture” isn’t even adequate to name that. It reduces female humans to literally nothing but holes for men to use as penis-pumping devices. I’m naïve enough to think that’s not the sum total of what girls go to universities for.… Read the rest

Michelle Cottle at The Atlantic warns us to be ready for a new avalanche of misogyny. Hahaha we’re already in that – she must mean a new even bigger avalanche of misogyny.

Raw political sexism is already strutting its stuff. At Donald Trump’s coming-out party in Cleveland, vendors stood outside the Quicken Loans Arena hawking campaign buttons with whimsical messages, such as “Life’s a Bitch—don’t vote for one” and “KFC Hillary Special: Two fat thighs, two small breasts… left wing.” One popular T-shirt featured a grinning Trump piloting a Harley, grinning as Hillary tumbled off the bike so that you could read the back of Trump’s shirt: “IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THE BITCH FELL OFF.”

That’s not new … Read the rest

A British Tory MP with Trump-envy, perhaps – Philip Davies gave a talk at a men’s rights conference to explain what spoiled bitches women are.

Philip Davies, the Conservative MP for Shipley, delivered a 45-minute speech at the International Conference on Men’s Issues, organised by the Justice for Men and Boys party (J4MB).

Davies, who sits on the Commons justice committee, told the conference at the ExCel centre in London that Britain’s justice system was skewed in favour of women and discriminated against men.

He sounds nice.

Davies, a pro-Brexit campaigner who backed Andrea Leadsom for the Tory leadership, appeared alongside anti-feminist bloggers who have likened the activist Malala Yousafzai to Osama bin Laden and called single mothers “bona

More on the endless loop of misogynist abuse of women who campaign against misogynist abuse:

Melanie Jeffs and Lydia Rye led research into hate crime in Nottingham which resulted in the city’s police becoming the first in the country to recognise street harassment as a hate crime earlier this month.

Both have since been subjected to personal threats, claims they were “not attractive enough” to talk about street harassment and posts telling them to “get cancer” at the rate of up to 100 messages a day.

One commenter told the pair he wanted all women to feel like “the retarded gutter trash that they are”, after a BBC reporter had sexual obscenities hurled at her while reporting on sexism on

The circle of abuse. There’s no escape, because if you try to do anything about abuse, the abuse intensifies. The abusers are busy demonstrating that to Melanie Jeffs in Nottingham.

A woman who helped launch a police campaign to record misogyny as a hate crime has received hundreds of abusive messages.

Melanie Jeffs said one person “threatened to put a machete” through the back of her head.

Nottinghamshire Police has received 22 reports and made two arrests since recording misogynistic hate crimes.

They included verbal abuse, threats of violence, assault and unwanted physical contact.

Ms Jeffs, centre manager at Nottingham Women’s Centre, said she was “stunned” by the volume of tweets and messages posted on Twitter and Facebook.