১৭ মে, ২০১৪
"Should Paid 'Menstrual Leave' Be a Thing?"
"Some countries mandate a legal right to leave for women during their periods. Is that reverse sexism or the right thing to do?"
Anyway, "menstrual leave" is just another benefit for women, like "free" birth control, so you might as well expect politicians to propose this. I suspect that talking about it will cause too much discomfort, and that should cramp the flow of pro-woman benefits. Look, just call in sick if you must. It's absurd to have to say it's your period. Does anyone even want to do that? What message to put out there: that menstruation is disabling. How does that do anyone any good?
Meanwhile: "Women in Nepal Suffer Monthly Ostracization."
Japan has had menstrual leave since just after World War II. According to the 1947 Labor Standards Law, any women suffering from painful periods or whose job might exacerbate period pain are allowed seirikyuuka (literally “physiological leave”)....This gave me a (hot) flashback to high school gym class. Having your period was considered a reason not to take a shower (in the ridiculous group-shower setup that was, in fact, never required at the end of gym class (it was always potentially going to be required, but every single time, in the end, we were given a skip-the-showers reprieve)). At the beginning of gym class, we'd be lined up, and the girl at the front of the line would go to each girl and ask — and this is the question verbatim — "Are you?" This was to determine who was exempt from the shower that was never going to be demanded anyway. Such was the absurdity of life in the 1960s.
Taiwan’s current menstrual leave legislation is much newer. The 2013 amendment to the country’s Act of Gender Equality in Employment guarantees female workers three days of menstrual leave a year, in addition to the 30 days of half-paid sick leave allotted to all workers. The act originally folded menstrual leave into the regular 30 days of sick leave, prompting a gender-diverse coalition of politicians to claim this was a violation of women’s basic rights...
Anyway, "menstrual leave" is just another benefit for women, like "free" birth control, so you might as well expect politicians to propose this. I suspect that talking about it will cause too much discomfort, and that should cramp the flow of pro-woman benefits. Look, just call in sick if you must. It's absurd to have to say it's your period. Does anyone even want to do that? What message to put out there: that menstruation is disabling. How does that do anyone any good?
Meanwhile: "Women in Nepal Suffer Monthly Ostracization."
"We had our own grocery stores, black doctors, lawyers, dentists, hotel, movie theaters, shoe repairmen, our own segregated YMCA."
"It was a community, she says, where she felt supported, valued and welcomed. And where, because local colleges refused to hire black professors, her education in segregated schools was never substandard. 'Some of our teachers were Ph.D.s, or Ph.D. candidates,' [Carmen] Fields recalls. 'We had the best of the best, the talented 10th, if you will, and they expected the best of us.' Segregation should not get in the way of excelling, Fields and her peers were told. They had to be ready to inherit the integrated world their elders were fighting for, and the wider opportunities that would surely accompany it."
NPR marks the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education with a piece titled "Nostalgia For What's Been Lost Since 'Brown V. Board.'"
NPR marks the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education with a piece titled "Nostalgia For What's Been Lost Since 'Brown V. Board.'"
The NYT calls it "Pedigree vs. Policy," but I disagree.
On one side in this race for County Board of Supervisors, you've got Bobby Shriver, a Kennedy family person, so I'll accept "pedigree" for that. But on the other side, you've got Sheila Kuehl.
Ms. Kuehl, under the name Sheila James, played Zelda on “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” a situation comedy that ran from 1959 to 1963, and she went on to become the first openly gay member of the California Legislature. “I have a lot of, can I say, good will because of my TV work,” she said. “I don’t believe a day goes by that someone doesn’t come up to me and say, ‘I know you are running, I wish you luck, but I loved that TV series.’ ”I call that pedigree. (And I loved that TV series.)
"Estimated percentage of U.S. female CEOs who are overweight : 10... Of U.S. male CEOs : 65."
The last 2 items on this month's Harper's Index. (You might need a subscription to get there.)
What does that gender disparity mean?
Is it that a particular type of woman makes it to the top whereas a more general, closer-to-average sort of man does? Is it that the category of male CEOs is just much larger, and statistics tend toward the average as the group gets larger?
Or is it something more like what I think the Harper's Indexers are trying to put into your head: The standards are different for women, and women are expected to look better while men's deficiencies are overlooked?
Or is it that women are getting a boost because of their looks and men get to the top more on job-related merit?
Or perhaps leadership and work stress affect female and male bodies differently, so that females bodies reduce fat but males bodies add it....
What does that gender disparity mean?
Is it that a particular type of woman makes it to the top whereas a more general, closer-to-average sort of man does? Is it that the category of male CEOs is just much larger, and statistics tend toward the average as the group gets larger?
Or is it something more like what I think the Harper's Indexers are trying to put into your head: The standards are different for women, and women are expected to look better while men's deficiencies are overlooked?
Or is it that women are getting a boost because of their looks and men get to the top more on job-related merit?
Or perhaps leadership and work stress affect female and male bodies differently, so that females bodies reduce fat but males bodies add it....
The National Journal ends commenting.
"For every smart argument, there's a round of ad hominem attacks—not just fierce partisan feuding, but the worst kind of abusive, racist, and sexist name-calling imaginable."
The debate isn't joined. It's cheapened, it's debased... research suggests that the experience leaves readers feeling more polarized and less willing to listen to opposing views.They've left the comments open on that article. Sample responses:
The problem isn't unique to National Journal; it crops up on almost every news site.
Some sites have responded by devoting substantial time and effort to monitoring and editing comments, but we'd rather put our resources into the journalism that brings readers to National Journal in the first place. So, today we'll join the growing number of sites that are choosing to forgo public comments on most stories.
"I have decided to override her refusal to have a C-section," wrote the doctor...
... on the hospital record of the woman who is suing.
In this case, the doctor allowed the woman (who had had 2 previous C-sections) to attempt to go through labor:
Dr. Howard Minkoff, chairman of obstetrics at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, whose articles on the subject of patient autonomy have been published in medical journals, said he believed that women had an absolute right to refuse treatment even if it meant the death of an unborn child. “In my worldview, the right to refuse is uncircumscribed,” Dr. Minkoff said, cautioning that he was not commenting on the particular facts of Mrs. Dray’s case. “I don’t have a right to put a knife in your belly ever.”Doctors perform too many C-sections because they're too afraid of malpractice lawsuits. That risk-aversion could be balanced by liability when the doctor does perform the C-section.
Such a person might be accused of being immoral or a terrible mother, he said, “but we won’t tie you down.”
In this case, the doctor allowed the woman (who had had 2 previous C-sections) to attempt to go through labor:
১৬ মে, ২০১৪
"Every generation has its great personal controversy, a name or two that evoke passion and fury everywhere from the dinner table to the editorial pages."
"Our parents had Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers. Their parents had Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Our generation has Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill."
Those are the opening lines of Nina Totenberg's 1994 review of "Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas," by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. I was looking up old reviews of the book, because the fall of Jill Abramson is the big story of this week (in the United States, anyway). I thought the lines were funny because who knew in 1994 that Monica Lewinsky would soon arrive on the national scene, delivering her extra-large pizza-with-everything that, as a controversy, would eclipse this little pubic-hair-on-a-Coke-can that had (such a short time ago) seemed so generation-definingly meaningful?
And now, here we are, 20 years later, and Abramson has risen beyond her co-authored book about the empowered black man and the gender victim, up through the heights of the NYT and summarily ousted, herself possibly a gender victim, and — look! — they replaced her with a black man. That's the kind of strange justice called poetic justice. It's hard to sort through all of this and figure out what was fair and what was unfair. Alger Hiss and Sacco and Vanzetti — they were all guilty, right? And what of Clarence Thomas? Well, let's see what Totenberg said about what Mayer and Abramson said:
Totenberg continues:
The arc of a generation is long, but it bends toward poetic justice.
Those are the opening lines of Nina Totenberg's 1994 review of "Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas," by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson. I was looking up old reviews of the book, because the fall of Jill Abramson is the big story of this week (in the United States, anyway). I thought the lines were funny because who knew in 1994 that Monica Lewinsky would soon arrive on the national scene, delivering her extra-large pizza-with-everything that, as a controversy, would eclipse this little pubic-hair-on-a-Coke-can that had (such a short time ago) seemed so generation-definingly meaningful?
And now, here we are, 20 years later, and Abramson has risen beyond her co-authored book about the empowered black man and the gender victim, up through the heights of the NYT and summarily ousted, herself possibly a gender victim, and — look! — they replaced her with a black man. That's the kind of strange justice called poetic justice. It's hard to sort through all of this and figure out what was fair and what was unfair. Alger Hiss and Sacco and Vanzetti — they were all guilty, right? And what of Clarence Thomas? Well, let's see what Totenberg said about what Mayer and Abramson said:
There is no way in a short review to summarize all the bits and pieces of evidence that Mayer and Abramson have amassed. But among other things, they have turned up many new witnesses who testify that Thomas had an avid interest in pornography at the time of the alleged Hill harassment — harassment that Hill said involved his talking to her about pornography. One woman, Kaye Savage, a civil servant who worked in the Reagan White House and who was friends with both Thomas and Hill, describes her shock when she walked into Thomas' apartment and found the walls covered with pictures of naked women. Several co-workers are quoted as saying they heard of Thomas' making remarks about pubic hairs on Coke cans — one of the most peculiar things that Hill alleged, and one that she was accused of making up.Are "pictures of naked women" pornography? I wonder if civil servant Kaye Savage is shocked when she walks into an exhibition of impressionist paintings. So... the evidence is, the man liked pornography. That puts him into a set of just about 100% of men. Now, if you told me civil servant Savage was shocked when she walked into Thomas's apartment and found the walls covered with pictures of Coke cans or pictures of single strands of pubic hair, that would be some impressive corroboration.
Totenberg continues:
Mayer and Abramson have also spent a considerable amount of time examining the lives, loves, careers and ambitions of Thomas and Hill. Thomas comes out as an often brooding, angry and contrary man....The angry black man. The classic stereotype of a black man. And now, replaced by a reputedly amiable black man, Jill Abramson is exposed to the world as the classic stereotype of a successful woman: the bossy bitch.
The arc of a generation is long, but it bends toward poetic justice.
"Jill Abramson lost her job, but so far she's winning the press relations war."
"In the 24 hours since she was fired from The New York Times, her downfall has become a flashpoint for a national conversation about gender and inequality that is all but eclipsing what sources cite as the reasons for her termination."
Why didn't the Times get out in front with its first-ever! black executive editor story?
Commenter MayBee said "The fury of women journalists" sounded like one of those old "terms of venery" like "a murder of crows" and "a crash of rhinos."
So beware. Don't assume race beats sex. Obama beat Hillary, but it's a little more complicated than a generic approval of first black over first female. There's an elaborate political/PR game to be played, and the winners and losers are determined subjectively within human minds, those minds are affected by what is written, and, for things to be written, there must be writers.
And — look out!!! — there's a fury of females.
Why didn't the Times get out in front with its first-ever! black executive editor story?
Far from celebrating Baquet, the Times leadership instead finds itself scrambling to deflect charges of sexism surrounding the termination of its first-ever female executive editor.Race can trump gender. "Trump" is a card-game word, and we're talking about race and gender cards. But in a card game, you have to play the card to win. And in the race-and-gender card game, you lose if you look like you are playing. In this race-and-gender game, it's not the NYT or Jill Abramson who is out there playing the cards. Others are doing the commentary, and there are so many writers — especially female journalists — who are ready to play, as I noted a couple posts down, quoting "The fury of women journalists who identify with Abramson stems from what we know: that excellent performances are not enough."
Commenter MayBee said "The fury of women journalists" sounded like one of those old "terms of venery" like "a murder of crows" and "a crash of rhinos."
So beware. Don't assume race beats sex. Obama beat Hillary, but it's a little more complicated than a generic approval of first black over first female. There's an elaborate political/PR game to be played, and the winners and losers are determined subjectively within human minds, those minds are affected by what is written, and, for things to be written, there must be writers.
And — look out!!! — there's a fury of females.
If Donald Sterling sues, he "could attempt to use pretrial discovery to portray NBA owners as hypocritical."
"He'd argue that if he is being expelled over bigoted comments, he'd want to know why other owners haven't suffered the same fate over similar statements. Along those lines, Sterling would likely demand that former commissioner David Stern testify about his knowledge of owner misconduct."
More legal details here.
The NBA is well-poised to argue that Sterling's pending ouster is mainly due to the impact of his conduct -- which nearly triggered a player boycott, caused sponsors to drop the Clippers and led to critical words from President Obama -- rather than the conduct itself.How "well-poised" do you think that argument is? The legal question seems to depend on rules that the owners all signed onto and whether Sterling violated those rules, not on whether other people were ready to engage in damaging conduct in response to things Sterling said.
More legal details here.
"The fury of women journalists who identify with Abramson stems from what we know: that excellent performances are not enough."
"Women must be completely different from the men they replace (or who replace them), apparently – they must adapt to the power they are briefly allowed to hold without transgressing the gender roles they aren't allowed to escape."
That's Emily Bell at The Guardian, and I'm quoting that representative of about 10 things I've already read this morning, all the female columnists doing pretty much the same thing, and I feel some pressure to do it too. And I suspect Jill Abramson herself is working on a screed — something that doesn't violate whatever secrecy agreement she has with the NYT. A year from now, Abramson will have some book, some variation on "Lean In" about the heights and pitfalls of female leadership.
So there's pressure to churn out the text, but all the women writers are writing about this instantly, furiously, copiously. Are women pushy? I feel pushed to talk about pushiness. And I feel irked to accept Jill Abramson as the face of the topic of The Problem of Female Leadership. I don't particularly like her, and I suspect she did not do a good job for The New York Times, and they had every reason to oust her.
But I'm pretty sure it's also true that things she did were not perceived exactly the same way they'd be perceived if they'd been done by a man and that as a woman, to get where she did, she needed to act in a way that would not be perceived in such a negative light if done by a man. I'm about the same age as Abramson, and I'm not the "lean in" type at all... or not much. I may lean into this discussion again later.
That's Emily Bell at The Guardian, and I'm quoting that representative of about 10 things I've already read this morning, all the female columnists doing pretty much the same thing, and I feel some pressure to do it too. And I suspect Jill Abramson herself is working on a screed — something that doesn't violate whatever secrecy agreement she has with the NYT. A year from now, Abramson will have some book, some variation on "Lean In" about the heights and pitfalls of female leadership.
So there's pressure to churn out the text, but all the women writers are writing about this instantly, furiously, copiously. Are women pushy? I feel pushed to talk about pushiness. And I feel irked to accept Jill Abramson as the face of the topic of The Problem of Female Leadership. I don't particularly like her, and I suspect she did not do a good job for The New York Times, and they had every reason to oust her.
But I'm pretty sure it's also true that things she did were not perceived exactly the same way they'd be perceived if they'd been done by a man and that as a woman, to get where she did, she needed to act in a way that would not be perceived in such a negative light if done by a man. I'm about the same age as Abramson, and I'm not the "lean in" type at all... or not much. I may lean into this discussion again later.
The gods beneficently bestow text upon the humble people.
NPR reports:
By the way, did Schucman assert that Jesus dictated like a boss with a Dictaphone? Did he say "comma," "period," and "new paragraph," and so forth? Surely, even in these divinely inspired texts, the human author in giving some form to the material.
What happens in cases where a human author has related a story told by another human being? I think the person who sets it down in writing owns the copyright. For example, if David Sedaris writes a story that quotes one of his sisters telling some long anecdote, can the sister say it's hers? People are talking all the time, spewing out their stories, and authors nick these things all the time. Maybe one of you copyright experts knows about some cases like this.
I've linked to to NPR which seems mostly to think it's funny to see these legal entanglements following on the absurd claim that Jesus poured His words into the vessel that was Helen Schucman, but it's not necessary to snigger at religion. How many artists have expressed a belief that a text came from them from beyond, that they were merely a channel for the words that flowed from an unseen source? I think Bob Dylan has said things like that. And I'll just preempt the commenters who are ready to say NPR may laugh at Schucman but it wouldn't write an equivalently humorous article about the idea that the Quran has no human author.
Meanwhile, at the same NPR link, there's news of the very best human authors — Jonathan Safran Foer at the head — teaming up with Chipotle to print stories on the chain restaurant's paper cups. We all need inspiration, and if we've left all our books and other reading devices behind and the voices in our head aren't saying anything interesting, we might be sitting in a restaurant someday, staring a blank paper cup wishing there were some text there to read.
For the grandest human customers, the blank cup is enough to contain all knowledge: "Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they slip away across the universe."
But for the humble people, the routine Chipotle customer, the experience of the text-bereft paper cup is empty. Foer envisions persons "of extremely diverse backgrounds," perhaps lacking "access to libraries, or bookstores." And even though Foer has issued his screed against meat, he pictured all those lost souls and that empty paper in cup form, and "Something felt very democratic and good about this."
The gods beneficently bestow text upon the humble people.
In an unusually metaphysical copyright case, a German court has ruled that an American psychologist — and not Jesus Christ — is the author of a book that she said Christ dictated to her in a 'waking dream.' The late Helen Schucman said she was a vessel for the words of Christ in her book A Course in Miracles, and a German Christian group called the New Christian Endeavour Academy argued that they were therefore free to put text from the book up on their website without paying for it....Arguably, to defend ownership in the text is to undercut the truth and significance of the text. Kind of a Catch-22. I haven't read the court opinion, the attorneys' briefs, or the PR for the Foundation for Inner Peace (the copyright owner), but I'd say that even if we assume divine inspiration in the extreme — the human "author" merely took dictation — the activity of setting the words into written form, with sentences and punctuation, is enough to create authorship when there is no human competitor.
By the way, did Schucman assert that Jesus dictated like a boss with a Dictaphone? Did he say "comma," "period," and "new paragraph," and so forth? Surely, even in these divinely inspired texts, the human author in giving some form to the material.
What happens in cases where a human author has related a story told by another human being? I think the person who sets it down in writing owns the copyright. For example, if David Sedaris writes a story that quotes one of his sisters telling some long anecdote, can the sister say it's hers? People are talking all the time, spewing out their stories, and authors nick these things all the time. Maybe one of you copyright experts knows about some cases like this.
I've linked to to NPR which seems mostly to think it's funny to see these legal entanglements following on the absurd claim that Jesus poured His words into the vessel that was Helen Schucman, but it's not necessary to snigger at religion. How many artists have expressed a belief that a text came from them from beyond, that they were merely a channel for the words that flowed from an unseen source? I think Bob Dylan has said things like that. And I'll just preempt the commenters who are ready to say NPR may laugh at Schucman but it wouldn't write an equivalently humorous article about the idea that the Quran has no human author.
Meanwhile, at the same NPR link, there's news of the very best human authors — Jonathan Safran Foer at the head — teaming up with Chipotle to print stories on the chain restaurant's paper cups. We all need inspiration, and if we've left all our books and other reading devices behind and the voices in our head aren't saying anything interesting, we might be sitting in a restaurant someday, staring a blank paper cup wishing there were some text there to read.
For the grandest human customers, the blank cup is enough to contain all knowledge: "Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup, they slither wildly as they slip away across the universe."
But for the humble people, the routine Chipotle customer, the experience of the text-bereft paper cup is empty. Foer envisions persons "of extremely diverse backgrounds," perhaps lacking "access to libraries, or bookstores." And even though Foer has issued his screed against meat, he pictured all those lost souls and that empty paper in cup form, and "Something felt very democratic and good about this."
The gods beneficently bestow text upon the humble people.
In India, a landslide for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which is "is expected to steer India sharply to the right."
"The election result will be a crushing blow to the Congress party, which is led by the Nehru-Gandhi family and has dominated Indian politics since independence."
Accepting defeat, Congress President Sonia Gandhi said: "We humbly respect the verdict of the people."...ADDED: "The BJP calls the win 'a complete repudiation of what they call corruption and dynastic politics'..."
Even before the Congress party's announcement, there were scenes of jubilation outside the BJP's headquarters in Delhi. Firecrackers exploded and people handed out sweets....
More than 500 million people voted in what is the world's biggest exercise in democracy.
In addition to anti-incumbent sentiment... many voters are impatient for India to join the world's elite economies. [BJP leader Narendra] Modi, 63, has campaigned on a pro-business platform.Supposedly, the pro-business attitude is strong among younger voters, and "There are 100 million more voters that were added to the voting rolls since five years ago."
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