What's really scary about this is that the police and NGO workers who have so much power over sex workers' lives have no idea what those lives are actually like - they just repeat the same bullshit stereotypes they see on TV.
"What they found was that the narrative of commercial sexual exploitation of children (or CSEC) they had been sold by local activists—one where knife-wielding pimps lure girls into prostitution then brutalize them into compliance—existed in only rare cases and didn’t describe most people’s experiences." Slate
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"So why don't airlines use the best methods?
A great question. These methods are all unquestionably faster than the standard method, so would speed up the turnaround times, theoretically saving airlines money. But almost none of them use it.
One possible answer is that the current system actually makes them more than they'd save by switching. As Businessweek pointed out, airlines often allow some passengers to pay extra to board early and skip the general unpleasantness. If the entire boarding process was faster to begin with, many people might not pay extra to skip it." Vox
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"Wages for Housework understood how much damage a refusal to do unwaged labor could inflict on a capitalist system. In her 1970 pamphlet “Women and the Subversion of the Community,” Dalla Costa wrote, “women are of service not only because they carry out domestic labor without a wage and without going on strike, but also because they always receive back into the home all those who are periodically expelled from their jobs by economic crisis. The family, this maternal cradle . . . has been in fact the best guarantee that the unemployed do not immediately become a horde of disruptive outsiders.”"
"Young people in the West who have spent their formative years in the workforce as freelancers, part-timers, adjuncts, unwaged workers, and interns are beginning to feel — granted, later than most of the world — that they’re not compensated for the work that they do. Not “not paid enough,” but not paid at all, since the ballooning service, communications, and private-care industries increasingly demand the kind of work that people are expected to do out of love. Under these circumstances, the longstanding critique of the exploitation of mothers, wives, grandmothers is felt with new force, among a much younger and much wider population of women and men, with children and without.
It’s an improvement, if a somewhat discouraging one. The belatedness with which mainstream culture has come to recognize the value of unwaged work seems to confirm that women’s issues only become relevant once they’re successfully recast as “general” issues that pertain to men. (“Patriarchy hurts boys,” we’re told. It does — but does it have to in order for us to care?)"
n+1 magazine
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I'm currently reading Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith. It's set in a world where a virus has killed all human males, and rendered females capable of reproducing asexually. So we have a stable society that is comprised entirely of "women". (I use scare quotes to distance myself from the essentialist notion that all people with lady-parts are "women", or that the concept of "women" would even exist in a society with no gender binary.) Anyway, taking on the board the assumption that *every* character in the book is a woman, I'm finding it interesting how frequently I start thinking of a new character as a man and have to catch myself. It's also interesting for *which* characters this happens. For instance, when I'm introduced to children playing in the street, my immediate instinct was to think of them as boys.
Anyway, I'd recommend the book!
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"What they found was that the narrative of commercial sexual exploitation of children (or CSEC) they had been sold by local activists—one where knife-wielding pimps lure girls into prostitution then brutalize them into compliance—existed in only rare cases and didn’t describe most people’s experiences." Slate
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"So why don't airlines use the best methods?
A great question. These methods are all unquestionably faster than the standard method, so would speed up the turnaround times, theoretically saving airlines money. But almost none of them use it.
One possible answer is that the current system actually makes them more than they'd save by switching. As Businessweek pointed out, airlines often allow some passengers to pay extra to board early and skip the general unpleasantness. If the entire boarding process was faster to begin with, many people might not pay extra to skip it." Vox
>>><<<
"Wages for Housework understood how much damage a refusal to do unwaged labor could inflict on a capitalist system. In her 1970 pamphlet “Women and the Subversion of the Community,” Dalla Costa wrote, “women are of service not only because they carry out domestic labor without a wage and without going on strike, but also because they always receive back into the home all those who are periodically expelled from their jobs by economic crisis. The family, this maternal cradle . . . has been in fact the best guarantee that the unemployed do not immediately become a horde of disruptive outsiders.”"
"Young people in the West who have spent their formative years in the workforce as freelancers, part-timers, adjuncts, unwaged workers, and interns are beginning to feel — granted, later than most of the world — that they’re not compensated for the work that they do. Not “not paid enough,” but not paid at all, since the ballooning service, communications, and private-care industries increasingly demand the kind of work that people are expected to do out of love. Under these circumstances, the longstanding critique of the exploitation of mothers, wives, grandmothers is felt with new force, among a much younger and much wider population of women and men, with children and without.
It’s an improvement, if a somewhat discouraging one. The belatedness with which mainstream culture has come to recognize the value of unwaged work seems to confirm that women’s issues only become relevant once they’re successfully recast as “general” issues that pertain to men. (“Patriarchy hurts boys,” we’re told. It does — but does it have to in order for us to care?)"
n+1 magazine
>>><<<
I'm currently reading Ammonite, by Nicola Griffith. It's set in a world where a virus has killed all human males, and rendered females capable of reproducing asexually. So we have a stable society that is comprised entirely of "women". (I use scare quotes to distance myself from the essentialist notion that all people with lady-parts are "women", or that the concept of "women" would even exist in a society with no gender binary.) Anyway, taking on the board the assumption that *every* character in the book is a woman, I'm finding it interesting how frequently I start thinking of a new character as a man and have to catch myself. It's also interesting for *which* characters this happens. For instance, when I'm introduced to children playing in the street, my immediate instinct was to think of them as boys.
Anyway, I'd recommend the book!
>><<
More on gender-neutral public toilets.
"She said university representatives during open negotiations seemed particularly swayed by testimony from students and other witnesses describing harassment in gender-specific bathrooms. One student even described going to the bathroom in the woods surrounding campus to avoid such restrooms, she said. Others go to unhealthy lengths to avoid relieving themselves at all while on campus. Another witness, an administrator of an LGBTQ-friendly program on another campus, framed the issue historically, saying that when she was a graduate student some years ago, there were no women’s restrooms in the chemistry department." Slate
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Interesting discussion of how Facebook is attempting to increase the "quality" of links that bubble up in our newsfeeds.
"At the same time, Facebook has begun more carefully differentiating between the likes that a post gets before users click on it and the ones it gets after they’ve clicked. A lot of people might be quick to hit the like button on a post based solely on a headline or teaser that panders to their political sensibilities. But if very few of them go on to like or share the article after they’ve read it, that might indicate to Facebook that the story didn’t deliver." Slate
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A criticism of the current practice of students evaluating teachers (at university level). Thoughts?
"Bias in evaluations is widely accepted, so much so that some who use evals as assessment tools already control for it:
@pankisseskafka we discuss those things (compare women to average among women, not pure averages, for example). 1/2" Slate
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"I think that one big problem we have on the left is we don’t really have a strong critique of bureaucracy. It’s not because we like bureaucracy very much; it’s just that the right has developed a critique. I don’t think it’s a very good critique, but at least it’s there. I think this is a perfect left critique of bureaucracy: Who are all these people — and this goes for private bureaucracies as well as public ones — sitting around watching you, telling you what your work is worth, what you’re worth, basically employing thousands of people to make us feel bad about ourselves. Just get rid of those people; just give everybody some money, and I think everyone will be much better off." PBS
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"In these campaigns, the masculine mystique is still very present, albeit a kinder, gentler version. By flattering men’s strength and asking them to use it to protect women, we once again place men in the driver’s seat of culture, asking for them to renounce violence and be less vile guardians." sherights
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This was trending a few days ago, but I think it's a rather silly article. The basic issue is a disagreement with DA policies, which is totally valid, but it's utterly ridiculous to fault Maimane for attempting to promote them through charismatic sloganeering. That is the whole game of politics, and the politicians whose policies you happen to agree with do it too. Africa is a Country
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Some background to the breakdown in US-Russia relations that contributed to the current Ukraine crisis. Reuters
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Trouble at Crossrail.
"The culture at the site of the east-west rail link is "almost entirely counterproductive" to delivering the project safely, on time and on budget, according to a damning internal analysis seen by the Observer. It adds that injured workers are "afraid to report due to the likelihood of being laid off"." The Observer
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I don't think this is perfect, but it's a useful example of how fear of sexual violence is used to police women's access to public spaces and meeting strangers (when, of course, they're far more at risk in private spaces, from people they know). Home is where the internet is (which is a great blog title, incidentally)
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A financial assessment of the state of the platinum mining industry in SA, claiming that it would be possible to pay miners' the wage they are demanding, R12.5k a month. As ever, how the surplus of production is divided depends on the balance of power between capital and labour. Daily Maverick
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"Here’s the secret truth of poly: it allows you to successfully date people you could never marry. You see the pressures of the Great Monogamous Victory crushing otherwise-happy relationships: I think we all know a couple who got along just fine as long as they had separate apartments and just had fun going to movies , but the moment they moved in together they devoured each other. But that monogamy train, man, it keeps on moving; if you’ve been dating casually for a while, well, eventually you gotta Get Serious." The Ferrett
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I'd like to hear thoughts on this, as I'm deeply a priori sceptical of claims that woman-on-man sexual violence is anywhere near the magnitude of man-on-woman violence. Of course there are going to be cases, and the article is useful insofar as it outlines how expectations about masculine sexuality can disempower victims. But I worry that these shocking statistical claims depend on very inclusive definitions of "violence".
"In a largely overlooked study focusing exclusively on college males, 51.2 percent of participants reported experiencing a least one incident of sexual victimization, including unwanted sexual contact (21.7 percent), sexual coercion (12.4 percent) and rape (17.1 percent)." Vocativ
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A good, honest account by a journalist of the pitfalls of interviewing sex workers, and some guidelines on how to get things right. Chooniverse
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On the other hand, this article criticising the DA is rather good, focusing largely on its authoritarian internal culture and how this impacts on the relationship between government and the public. Sacsis
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A case for online pseudonyms, as opposed to real identities on the one hand, and complete anonymity on the other.
Many thriving communities allow pseudonymous participation, using various ways of making history and reputation visible. On Twitter, you can see users’ past tweets and number of followers just by clicking on their name. Disqus provides the commenting interface for millions of sites and allows people to choose whether they want to be anonymous, fully identified or pseudonymous. Their assessment? “Pseudonyms are the most valuable contributors to communities because they contribute the highest quantity and quality of comments.” Wired
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