Category: Gender studies

Could a Black judge have obtained consideration for the Supreme Court job by identifying as a woman?

by philg

I haven’t been following the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson (CNN) closely, but it seems that nobody could apply for the job unless he/she/ze/they identified as a “Black woman”. From state-sponsored NPR:

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity. And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court. It’s long overdue in my view.

A person who switches racial identity from white to Black may be condemned (see Nkechi Amare Diallo, formerly “Rachel Dolezal”), but we celebrate those who change gender identity from “man” to “woman” (see Rachel Levine, for example).

If a Black judge who previously identified as a “man” had, after Dr. Biden’s husband announced his hiring policy, said “I identify as a woman and am proud to be a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community”, would that judge then have become eligible for the Supreme Court position?

William Thomas, for example, who was nominated by President Obama (see “Rubio Withdraws Support for Gay Black Judge’s Nomination to the Federal Bench” (NYT)) and who continues to serve as a judge in a Florida state court. Judge Thomas was already identified by the newspaper of record as “Black” and, under our prevailing theories of gender, only Judge Thomas can pick his/her/zir/their gender ID. What would have stopped Judge Thomas from being considered for the Supreme Court job as a “Black woman”?

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How is Women’s History Month going?

by philg

How is Women’s History Month going for you? Here’s what happens when you type “women’s history month” into an incognito browser (i.e., not affected by your previous search history):

Note that Black History Month and National Hispanic Heritage Month are related events, as far as Google is concerned. I’m not sure what corner of Google’s algorithms decided that “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” was a good theme song for the month.

Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard
But I think “oh bondage, up yours!”
One-two-three-four!
Bind me, tie me, chain me to the wall
I wanna be a slave to you all

Here’s another choice from Google for “Women’s History Month” music, “Girls Need Love”:

I just need some dick
I just need some love
Tired of fucking with these lame n****s
Baby, I just need a thug
Won’t you be my plug, ayy

Do the above lyrics fall into the “resilient”, “brilliant”, or “boundless” category? (from the preceding image)

(Separately, if the girl seeking a “thug” to be her “plug” is also seeking $millions in tax-free cash, she might wish to verify the thug’s income with IRS Form 4506-C and also arrange for the plugging to occur in a state where unlimited child support profits are available. What rhymes with “4506-C” for updated lyrics?)

The first page returned by Google includes a link to a Presidential proclamation. Dr. Biden’s spouse notes that “LGBTQI+ women and girls are leading the fight for justice, opportunity, and equality — especially for the transgender community.” (contrast to the use of “2SLGBTTQIA+” by Justin Trudeau) Yet Mx. Biden never defines what he/she/ze/they means by “women” or “girl.” Maybe that is a job for a new committee?

I established the first White House Gender Policy Council to advance gender equity across the Federal Government and released the first-ever national gender strategy to support the full participation of all people — including women and girls — in the United States and around the world.

Readers: What have you done so far to observe Women’s History Month 2022?

In our family, we showed the kids Welcome to Earth, Descent into Darkness, in which Will Smith goes down in a research submarine with Diva Amon, who apparently identifies as a “woman of color” (26:40):

A big part of my work is trying to change that. I’ve been on like 16 expeditions now and there is hardly ever anyone who looks like me. Whether it’s a woman, a person of color, or a person from a developing country. And I want that to change. That’s a big part of why I do what I do.

Dr. Amon provides a technical explanation of the sub at 25:00 in which she explains that there is “horrible creaking” that is “unnerving.”

A person who doesn’t look anything like Diva Amon makes an unfortunate appearance at 3:09. It seems that the technical aspects of the dive and the submersible and, therefore, the safety of Will Smith and Diva Amon, are entrusted to someone who could appear in Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male Power.

The Nadir submersible is an off-the-shelf product described in “Blue Planet gives super-rich their new toys – submersibles” (Guardian), a Triton 3300/3. The engineers who designed it are not credited in the show, but searching for the sub’s name eventually leads to the Triton Team page and the engineering team that made the machine possible:

Plus two engineers on the top management roster:

In addition to being an inspiring story for Women’s History Month, by not mentioning any of the engineers who made the dive possible, the show serves as a great lesson for anyone considering making the mistake of majoring in engineering!

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Blueprints for International Women’s Day

by philg

We happened upon these blueprints that are relevant to International Women’s Day:

The house was designed for a couple with no pronoun imagination (“his” and “hers”). “HER BEDROOM” is the size of a studio apartment. HER walk-in closet is 11×11′, the size of an average child’s bedroom. HER bathroom includes a luxurious recessed tub, a shower, a bidet, a toilet, and enough open space for an additional bed. “HIS BEDROOM”, on the other hand, seems to be about one third the size of HER domain.

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Racism against Asian American and Pacific Islander women

by philg

On International Women’s Day (however the term “women” might be defined), we can celebrate Eileen Gu’s successful escape from racist America to non-racist China.

Despite President Biden’s efforts, “74% of Asian American, Pacific Islander women experienced racism in past year, report says” (NBC, 3/3/2022):

As anti-Asian attacks on Asian American and Pacific Islanders continue to rise, a report released Thursday underscores how women in the racial group endure a disproportionate number of such incidents.

The research, spearheaded by the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, revealed that 74 percent of Asian American and Pacific Islander women reported having personally experienced racism or discrimination in the last 12 months, roughly the time since the Atlanta-area spa shootings, in which eight people, most of them Asian women, were murdered, the report pointed out.

Russell Jeung, a co-founder of hate incident tracking forum Stop AAPI Hate, which also worked on the report, said many are likely to be dealing with the intersectional harassment of being both Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders and women.

With an anti-racist president in the White House, who could be responsible for this?

Choimorrow said the results show that the danger that women across ethnicities in the community are in goes far beyond issues caused by racist “China virus” rhetoric and long predate the pandemic. It’s why, Choimorrow said, the solution isn’t as simple as passing hate crime legislation, like the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act.

“To be honest, if you think about it, having something like the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act also sort of reinforces that notion that this is a creation of Covid, and therefore we’re addressing it as that,” Choimorrow said. “There’s no recognition of what we have endured as people for hundreds of years. You’re not looking for the right solutions if you’re only looking at the context of the last two years.”

The article illustrates the importance of wearing masks outdoors (2/15/2022 in NYC):

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Resisting on International Women’s Day

by philg

Nostalgia for our old neighborhood, a lawn sign in front of a successful divorce plaintiff’s $1.8 million (Zillow estimate) house:

One good thing about Massachusetts family law is that it relieves quite a few people who identify as “women” from the need ever to work at a W-2 job again and thus these folks can resist on a full-time basis.

Readers: What are you doing to celebrate International Women’s Day? If you’re looking for suggestions, how about a Melinda Gates video watch marathon?

Speaking of Melinda Gates, a former Microsoft employee, “52% of women believe their gender is limiting their careers in the tech industry” (Atlas VPN):

Today we can celebrate many great women who have helped shape the world of technology as we know it. From Katherine Johnson, a mathematician whose pioneering work at NASA was instrumental in the success of sending astronauts into orbit, to Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Girls Who Code, which aims to increase the number of women in computer science — these and many other talented women continue to pave the way for others in tech.

Nevertheless, women are still largely underrepresented in the tech industry and face many obstacles when pursuing a career in the field. According to data presented by Atlas VPN, 52% of women believe their gender is limiting their career in tech, and one-fifth of women are thinking about leaving their current position.

Despite increasing discussions about gender diversity in the technology industry, men still hold the vast majority of positions in tech, even in top companies.

If “top companies” are measured by stock market valuation, see Six-year anniversary of the SSGA Gender Diversity Index ETF.

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Six-year anniversary of the SSGA Gender Diversity Index ETF

by philg

Happy 6th birthday to the SSGA Gender Diversity Index ETF (symbol: SHE):

Seeks to provide exposure to US companies that demonstrate greater gender diversity within senior leadership than other firms in their sector

Companies in the Index are ranked within each sector by three gender diversity ratios

The Index seeks to minimize variations in sector weights compared to the composition of the index’s broader investment universe by focusing on companies with the highest levels within their sectors of senior leadership gender diversity

There are nearly 200 holdings in the fund out of the roughly 3,500 significant publicly traded U.S. companies (Wilshire 5000, in which 3,500 is the new 5,000). In other words, roughly 5 percent of U.S. public companies do things the correct (gender diverse) way.

To celebrate Dr. Marissa Mayer‘s brave stewardship of Yahoo! (history, which included 30 days of daily new logos in 2013) we should get a custom chart comparing SHE to the Wilshire 5000 over the past 6 years from Yahoo! Finance.

The stocks of companies that failed to enter the gender diversity Olympics were up by roughly 107 percent in nominal dollars (but don’t forget that inflation eroded these gains; a house in our Florida neighborhood has gone up in price by much more than 107 percent in the same period and even the government’s cooked CPI number is up roughly 20 percent). Stocks of companies with people identifying as “not men” in leadership positions were up by 44 percent.

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Can Ukrainians identify as female and leave the country?

by philg

“Ukraine men ordered to stay and fight Russia as others flee” (New York Post, 2/25/2022):

Ukraine announced late Thursday that men between the ages of 18 and 60 were forbidden from leaving the nation, which has been under martial law since the start of the Russian invasion.

The Ukrainian authorities “were nice, not rude, but they said that men have a duty to defend the country,” said Erzsebet Kovacs, 50, at a train station.

I asked a Ukrainian-American friend whether this was a practical obstacle. “Why can’t anyone who wants to leave say ‘I identify as a woman’?” He responded, “It’s another example of male privilege. The border agents would probably shoot you in the balls.”

He speaks and reads Russian and travels regularly to Ukraine, yet in early January 2022 he estimated the chance of an invasion at only 10 percent, upping his risk assessment somewhat after Joe Biden hinted that a “minor incursion” would be tolerated (NBC). His U.S.-educated child: “This war makes me realize how trivial are the concerns that we’re taught to worry about in [public] school. The microaggressions, the gender pay gap, and Covid. What’s really important is where to hide money and how to get food.”

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Is skating to Elton John the best way to establish heterosexuality?

by philg

Watching figure skating is nearly impossible in our household due to shouted “Boring!” objections from the 6- and 8-year-olds (What do they love? Luge crashes, bobsled flip-overs, skiing yard sales, etc.). Eventually they go to sleep, however, and it is time for 15 minutes of replays from the rink. American sensation Nathan Chen was in the news even before the Olympics. “Straight figure skater offers sincere apology after saying it’s a ‘homosexual-dominated sport’” (Pink News, July 31, 2021):

Olympic figure skater Nathan Chen has apologised after giving an “ignorant” remark about the sport being “homosexual-dominated”.

In a video statement released on Tuesday (27 July), he acknowledged that he gave an “ignorant” response on a podcast in answer to a question about patriarchal stereotypes in skating.

Asked whether he’s ever been advised to play hockey because it’s more “masculine,” Chen replied: “Yes, certainly. Especially as a male athlete… as a straight male athlete in a fairly homosexual-dominated sport, or LGBTQ-dominated sport.

“I think that there is that connotation and there is that ‘Well we don’t really wanna watch guys skate around’, and we’d rather watch hockey or we’d rather watch females do that, which I think is pretty messed up in itself,” he continued.

“It’s a genuine sport, we spend our whole lives trying to hone this craft, and to just sort of be belittled like that is not something that is generally taken lightly.”

The clumsy comment saw Chen accused of perpetuating standards of toxic masculinity and homophobia.

“Basically Nathan Chen had the opportunity to use his in-sport privilege to: support queer athletes as an ally, talk about how figure skating is for everyone, discuss the types of expression rewarded at competition,” commented the non-binary figure skater Racheline Maltese.

“Instead he: told us he was straight, equated feminine with queer and implied they were both negative, implied he is oppressed by queerness in the sport.

So… the tabloids follow this famous person around and haven’t seen him with one or more girlfriends. He describes himself as “straight”. What music does he select for his program? I was expecting perhaps Ice Cube, Kanye West, or DaBaby. Instead it was… Elton John.

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Is it sacrilegious to step on a rainbow flag?

by philg

Happy Valentine’s Day! Let’s talk about love…

I shared some photos from a visit to Atlanta in a chat group, including the following:

A friend who lives in San Francisco:

This is hateful and disrespectful, because people step on the flag with their feet.

If we accept that Rainbow Flagism is a religion and, therefore, that the rainbow flag is a religious symbol, why is it okay to step on the flag?

Sign on a restaurant door (Flying Biscuit) at the same intersection, noting that the door “stays locked for safety purposes” (but it is wrong for nearby Buckhead to try to secede from Atlanta and run its own police!):

The free newspaper offers by Caribou Coffee (in the above photo):

The Waffle House where we ended up because it was impractical to get a table at the Flying Biscuit:

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CNN educates us regarding the glass ceiling

by philg

An immigrant friend’s comment on news from the CNN executive suite:

These are defenders of liberal morality and destroyers of glass ceilings

A Google search for

“glass ceiling” site:cnn.com

yields 2,520 results. “10 reasons single women should be mad” (2017) is typical:

Many voters are upset with the status quo this year, but single women have an especially long list of reasons to be mad. Simply being born female in the United States means you’ll probably earn less than your male peers and pay more for life’s basic necessities.

American women get less money than men. Females earn 84 cents for every dollar a male does, according to Pew Research. PayScale says the gender gap is even worse: women make only 77 cents for every dollar that men do.

(Companies aren’t smart enough to cut their payroll costs by hiring only women, who do the same quality of work for 20 percent less.)

Whether you call it a glass ceiling or a pink ghetto, the reality is there aren’t many American women who make it to the top. PayScale found that the wage gap gets worse the higher up the career ladder women go. No wonder there are fewer female millionaires and billionaires.

Only 24 CEOs at America’s 500 biggest publicly traded companies are female. And the pipeline behind them isn’t encouraging. At large corporations, only 16.5% of the top five positions are held by women, according to a CNNMoney analysis last year.

More recently we learn from these experts on gender equality about a path to an executive VP job at CNN for a person who identified as female. From “CNN’s worst-kept secret that even NYC doormen knew about: Staff at swanky apartment building where Zucker AND his staffer lover had apartments would try to stop his wife from ending up in same elevator as her” (Daily Mail):

Ousted CNN President Jeff Zucker’s relationship with his subordinate Allison Gollust was such an ‘open secret’ that even doormen at the building where they both had apartments tried to ensure that Zucker’s wife and Gollust were never in the elevator together.

Zucker resigned from his $6 million-a-year job at the network on Wednesday, following an internal investigation into his relationship with Gollust, who works as CNN’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

‘Jeff and I have been close friends and professional partners for over 20 years,’ she wrote. ‘Recently, our relationship changed during COVID. I regret that we didn’t disclose it at the right time.’

But media sources have said the affair was an ‘open secret’ for more than 10 years – and even the doormen at their Manhattan apartment building tried to keep Allison and Zucker’s wife, Caryn, from interacting.

Their affair reportedly stretches back to when they both worked at NBC in the late 1990s. Zucker worked at the network from 1986 to 2010, becoming executive producer of the Today show, then head of NBC Entertainment before becoming president and CEO of NBC Universal.

America’s #2 expert on COVID-19 was also tied into this story…

In 2012, Gollust was picked by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo to serve as his communications director, before Zucker brought her into work at CNN, where he became president in 2013.

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