Barefoot and Pregnant

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Mongrel
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Tue Oct 24, 2017 12:02 pm

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François
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby François » Tue Oct 24, 2017 1:34 pm

Dammit, who the fuck told O'Reilly "blame yourself or God" and didn't expect this to happen?

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Wed Nov 01, 2017 6:14 pm

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Re: Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Thad » Sun Nov 12, 2017 5:23 pm

Oh hey, remember this from 2015 (back on page 1)?

Thad wrote:
Jennifer de Guzman wrote:Another prominent publisher is attempting to woo young readers, especially young girls, even as it employs an editor who has a history of being accused of sexual harassment.


She doesn't provide any other information on what publisher or editor she's talking about. A trip to the duckmobile turns up a post by Alex de Campi indicating that the publisher is DC but not naming the editor, and a post at The Outhousers suggesting that it's Eddie Berganza but, again, not actually saying his name:

Jude Terror wrote:Which senior editor is de Campi talking about, and does his name rhyme with Tony Danza? Well, we can't answer that, because she didn't say, but you can take a look at the credits in a Superman or Wonder Woman book and take your own guess.


And this from 2016 (comics thread)?

Thad wrote:The pointed discussion among fans and some pros about how DC didn't fire Eddie Berganza when he was repeatedly accused of sexual harassment but just fired one of the best editors it's ever had is a whole other subject. But I think it's a fair thing to point out in criticizing the company's priorities.


Well, DC has suspended Berganza:

DC Entertainment has immediately suspended Mr. Berganza and has removed him from performing his duties as Group Editor at DC Comics. There will be a prompt and yet careful review into next steps as it relates to the allegations against him, and the concerns our talent, employees and fans have shared. DC continues to be extremely committed to creating a safe and secure working environment for our employees and everyone involved in the creation of our comic books.


Good job, DC, but that's not what "immediately" means!

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Mon Nov 13, 2017 9:37 pm

Extensive longform article from the New Yorker on gender discrimination in Tech

At Tesla, as at many tech companies, gallows humor prevailed among some of the women. There was a sense that the male executives had little understanding of the challenges women faced at the company. One former Tesla employee told me that women made up less than ten per cent of her working group; at one point, there were actually more men named Matt in the group than there were women. This became a source of rueful comedy. One male colleague quipped that they should change the sign reading “Women’s Room” to “Matt’s Room.”

Whitney Wolfe, a co-founder of Tinder, filed a lawsuit after one of her fellow co-founders, whom she had previously dated, allegedly began harassing her. She was twenty-four at the time. The C.E.O., who was the accused harasser’s best friend, pushed her out of the company. In one text message, the ex-boyfriend, apparently fearing that she was seeing someone else, allegedly wrote, “You prefer to social climb middle aged Muslim pigs that stand for nothing.” (The lawsuit was settled with no admission of wrongdoing. Wolfe is now the C.E.O. of the networking app Bumble.)

In [Ellen] Pao’s recent book, “Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change,” she satirizes the over-the-top money culture that resulted [in the wake of Facebook's incredibly lucrative IPO]. At Kleiner Perkins, “managing partners were always competing for more—more board seats, more houses, more land, and, always, more jets,” she writes. They coveted professional basketball teams, Hollywood movie-producer credits, and “private-jet escape routes to New Zealand” (in case of rising water levels, plague, or a proletarian revolt).

In this environment, Pao argues, there was little awareness of the ways in which the industry’s gatekeepers had made it difficult, or even impossible, for outsiders to break in. “It’s just this reinforcing cycle, and everyone has built a culture around it. How do you break that cycle, in a way that’s meaningful?” Pao said. “Adding a few women to the mix is not going to fix this.”

At one point, [Erica Joy] Baker said, she was working as an engineer in a group that provided technical support to Google’s top executives. She told me about a day, in 2008 or 2009, when her teammate, a man named Frank, was out of the office and she was sitting in the executive-tech-support room on her own. Google’s C.E.O., Eric Schmidt, walked into the room in need of help, and asked where Frank was. “He’s not here, is there something I can help you with?” Baker recalled telling him. She said that Schmidt asked her to leave Frank a message describing his technical issue, which she was more than qualified to address. “I said, ‘Oh, I can take care of that for you.’ And he said, ‘Oh, you’re not his assistant?’ ” Baker recalled. Schmidt then suggested she put a sign on the door explaining her role, even though other offices didn’t have such signs. She added that senior Google employees often confused her with the sole other black woman in a technical job on her team. “We used to jokingly call ourselves the Twins, even though we don’t look anything alike,” Baker said. Her impression was that many of her colleagues couldn’t “distinguish two completely different black women from each other.” (Google did not respond to requests for comment about the incident.)

Earlier this year, the Department of Labor conducted an initial audit of Google’s pay practices, and found, according to court testimony in April, “systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce,” showing, one official has said, six to seven standard deviations between pay for men and women in nearly every job category. Google, however, repeatedly refused to hand over fuller pay data to the Labor Department, and, after the government sued to obtain it, fought the case in court for months, arguing that the demands constituted unreasonable search and seizure. In a statement, the company said that its own internal analysis had found no imbalance.


As Melinda Gates is quoted in the article “Obviously I’m outraged, but what I’m not is shocked”
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Thad » Thu Nov 16, 2017 12:36 pm

Al Franken stuck his tongue in a model's mouth without her consent, and groped her while she was sleeping. And had a picture taken of him groping her.

(Warning: link has auto-play audio. Plus, everything else that's fucking horrible about it.)

This is heartbreaking. I really thought he was one of the good guys. If he has any integrity at all -- and that's a big "if", I now see -- then he should resign.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Thu Nov 16, 2017 3:24 pm

Aw geez.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Blossom » Thu Nov 16, 2017 4:49 pm

Yes, he absolutely should resign. This is disgusting. He admits to it, even. I'm seeing a push for Ellison to take his seat, which I'd support.

The neolib take on the subject is ... unsurprising.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby beatbandito » Thu Nov 16, 2017 5:43 pm

I'm calling it now.

2018: The Year of Shady Ds
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Metal Slime » Thu Nov 16, 2017 5:59 pm

Oh, they were rubbing their hands with glee last night before the story even dropped officially.



Stuff like that makes me suspicious on if 100% of the story is true and they don't want people staring too closely scrutinizing some of the details and hoping for the reactionary immediate judgment that we are so reliable in doing.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Thu Nov 16, 2017 6:09 pm

TA wrote:Yes, he absolutely should resign. This is disgusting. He admits to it, even. I'm seeing a push for Ellison to take his seat, which I'd support.

The neolib take on the subject is ... unsurprising.


To be fair, it's harder to condemn the naked politicking when we're actually PAST the point where the senatorial majority is literally life or death for some people.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Thu Nov 16, 2017 6:14 pm

Metal Slime wrote:Oh, they were rubbing their hands with glee last night before the story even dropped officially.



Stuff like that makes me suspicious on if 100% of the story is true and they don't want people staring too closely scrutinizing some of the details and hoping for the reactionary immediate judgment that we are so reliable in doing.

I noticed he's not actually groping her per se in the photo. His hands don't appear to be touching her so much as mugging the action for the camera (though it's hard to really tell from the angle), which made me pause for a bit and re-read.

Still, even frat boy jokes which wouldn't "technically" be sexual assault can still be a violation, as this clearly was, not to mention crass and insulting. More importantly, he's already posted an apology which contests none of Tweeden's claims, so at this point I don't think there's anything to doubt. He did it.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Thad » Thu Nov 16, 2017 6:44 pm

Mongrel wrote:
TA wrote:Yes, he absolutely should resign. This is disgusting. He admits to it, even. I'm seeing a push for Ellison to take his seat, which I'd support.

The neolib take on the subject is ... unsurprising.


To be fair, it's harder to condemn the naked politicking when we're actually PAST the point where the senatorial majority is literally life or death for some people.

Yeah, my privileged ass isn't going to judge people who are afraid of what's going to happen to their health and safety if Franken leaves. But my feeling is that there comes a point when you have to do the right thing even if it costs you politically, and if this isn't past that line, then what the hell is?

And if we really WANT to boil it down to crass political calculation / Greater Good balancing, then it seems to me that expelling Franken is still the right thing on those terms.

If Democrats care about sexual misconduct and Republicans don't, I guess I can see how that's a political weakness in the short term. But in the long term, I think this is one of those moments where in a Telltale game you'd see text in the corner reading "The voters will remember that." If one party supports sexual predators and the other doesn't, I guess I'm still enough of an optimist to believe that the latter is going to win in the long term.

And even if it isn't, Jesus Christ, the very idea that political calculation even enters into the discussion is part of why I'm not a Democrat.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Mongrel » Thu Nov 16, 2017 7:29 pm

Well, in this particular case it's a non-issue politically, because one assumes Mark Dayton will just appoint another democrat.

One thing I am wondering about is where the line is drawn as far as immediately demanding resignations goes. I understand that the Democrats want to be seen as holding the moral high ground here, I think Franken's actions are pretty clearly sexual assault - he was in a position of some power and he abused that - and there's no major political cost for his resigning. So it's easy to say, yeah, he should resign, but without discounting Tweeden's feelings, we can still say what Franken did is not on the order of some of the other recent accusations against other major public figures.

Justice is complicated. Removing sex from the equation for a moment, "I punched a guy" vs "I stabbed a dozen people" are both clearly assault, but society still recognizes there's a difference in severity. At the same time, we must consider how the victim was affected: Punching someone can still cause lasting trauma (perhaps even worse than stab wounds though obviously that's less likely), the relation of the victim to the attacker - co-worker, spouse, stranger, weaker, stronger, etc., and the victim's feelings as a result of the act all matter.

Add to that the attacker's level of remorse or repentance and you can end up with a very complex decision to make. Where does a rather gross forced kiss and sexual jokes made at the expense of an unknowing victim lie? Is it enough to demand a man resign his job ten years later? I mean, I'm not trying to defend Franken - his position as a Senator means his position isn't "just another job" and he's expected to demonstrate moral responsibility - I honestly don't know if that's just. Should he be given a chance to atone? Especially given the American judicial custom of punishing lesser sexual offences as severely as far more serious ones.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby IGNORE ME » Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:12 pm

I wouldn't think twice about the ramifications of any of this if not for all the people who somehow think it means they're allowed to put a babyfucker in the senate now.

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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Blossom » Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:29 pm

Mongrel wrote:Well, in this particular case it's a non-issue politically, because one assumes Mark Dayton will just appoint another democrat.

One thing I am wondering about is where the line is drawn as far as immediately demanding resignations goes. I understand that the Democrats want to be seen as holding the moral high ground here, I think Franken's actions are pretty clearly sexual assault - he was in a position of some power and he abused that - and there's no major political cost for his resigning. So it's easy to say, yeah, he should resign, but without discounting Tweeden's feelings, we can still say what Franken did is not on the order of some of the other recent accusations against other major public figures.

Justice is complicated. Removing sex from the equation for a moment, "I punched a guy" vs "I stabbed a dozen people" are both clearly assault, but society still recognizes there's a difference in severity. At the same time, we must consider how the victim was affected: Punching someone can still cause lasting trauma (perhaps even worse than stab wounds though obviously that's less likely), the relation of the victim to the attacker - co-worker, spouse, stranger, weaker, stronger, etc., and the victim's feelings as a result of the act all matter.

Add to that the attacker's level of remorse or repentance and you can end up with a very complex decision to make. Where does a rather gross forced kiss and sexual jokes made at the expense of an unknowing victim lie? Is it enough to demand a man resign his job ten years later? I mean, I'm not trying to defend Franken - his position as a Senator means his position isn't "just another job" and he's expected to demonstrate moral responsibility - I honestly don't know if that's just. Should he be given a chance to atone? Especially given the American judicial custom of punishing lesser sexual offences as severely as far more serious ones.


Okay, first? It's not a contest. Assault is assault, predation is predation, and past the line is past the line. We are not weighing assaults to determine the relative severity of response. This is not the criminal justice system, calculating the exact crime to determine the exact sentence.

I also feel like you're glossing over the "groping someone while they're asleep, and taking a picture on their phone so they'll be sure to find it later" part when you talk about this as being just some jokes.

He can try to atone in private life. He needs to get out of the Senate, immediately. We can't allow ourselves to tolerate sexual assault for political expediency.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Joxam » Thu Nov 16, 2017 8:41 pm

I'm not defending what the asshole did and I think he should have ALREADY resigned, but by the victim's account the picture was taken by a photographer for the USO tour AND given to her as a part of the press kit at the end of the event, not taken on her phone for her to find later.

If anything what actually happened was even more gross, like don't get me wrong they were surrounded by a bunch of army men for however long a USO tour lasts, and they were probably all competing to fit in the most but that the official Photog for the USO tours thought that what he was seeing was not only A-OK but also something worth not only taking a picture of but also including on a CD of pictures given out to everyone who participated in the event is just FUCKED.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Blossom » Thu Nov 16, 2017 9:01 pm

Ah, you're right, my bad.

Either way, this is incredibly disgusting and not just something to write off as jokes. Yes, it's absolutely more than enough to demand he resign his job.
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Re: Barefoot and Pregnant

Postby Metal Slime » Thu Nov 16, 2017 9:06 pm

and Tweeden accepted the apology. http://thehill.com/homenews/news/360709-woman-who-accused-franken-says-she-accepts-his-apology

She said it's up to Congress to decide if it wants to have an ethics investigation into Franken's behavior, adding that she isn’t calling for Franken to step down, unless more women come forward.

“People make mistakes. I’m not calling for him to step down. That’s not my place to say that,” Tweeden said.

She said she wasn't "looking for anything" when she shared her story.

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