”The amendment appears on a funding bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. If it remains in the final bill, the amendment would cut 15% of federal adoption funding to states and localities that penalize adoption agencies that refuse to place children in families that conflict with the agency’s ‘sincerely held religious beliefs or convictions.’
The amendment also bars the federal government from refusing to work with adoption agencies that discriminate.”
You know those movies about those little nerd boys who get with really hot girls, and those girls eventually learn to settle for a little nerd boy because he’s kinda nice sometimes? Propaganda.
You know those movies and shows where the little nerd girl has to change absolutely every aspect that makes her, her, starting by her appearance, so she can get the really hot boy, while when it’s the other way around the girl just settles with the nerd boy? Propaganda.
During the 1980s, more gay men died in New York City during the AIDS crisis than all recorded deaths of American soldiers in Vietnam. You need to know that.
“But women earn more degrees” and still get paid less, so eat my whole ass
Something I see a lot of people missing in the reblogs: KIDS KIDS KIDS THIS IS LIKE 92% ABOUT KIDS
Yeah, there’s other factors too, but “women don’t ask for raises” and “pink-collar jobs aren’t valued” are smaller factors than the simple fact that caring for your own children is mandatory for women and optional for men.
Here’s the life story of, I’m going to say, about half the women I’ve ever worked with:
– Had children. Possibly voluntarily, possibly through lack of contraception education and/or funds.
– Broke off relations with the father. Frequently this was for a reason that was not a choice on her part, like he abused her or went to prison or just plain disappeared.
– Kept the kids. Even if it was an amicable split, she likely has weekday custody and is the one who takes charge of the vast majority of their needs.
– Dad may or may not pay child support, but even if he does, the average child support is $2550/year and the average cost of raising a child in a low-income family is $8610/year.
– The mother can’t afford paid childcare, but she has some friends/family members who watch her kids, but they can’t commit to a consistent schedule, which means she can only work limited hours and has to take a lot of unplanned time off.
– This drastically limits both which jobs she can take and how much she can earn from those jobs, and completely locks her into poverty until the youngest child is old enough to be home alone. But by then she’ll have an unimpressive resume of assorted part-time gigs, plus likely health problems from 15 years of eating junk and barely sleeping, so it’s not a fabulous career launch point.
There’s lots of factors in why women get paid less than men, but lack of childcare is hugely, gigantically more important than stuff like “women don’t speak up enough in meetings,” or even stuff like “female neurosurgeons make less than male neurosurgeons.”
During the 1980s, more gay men died in New York City during the AIDS crisis than all recorded deaths of American soldiers in Vietnam. You need to know that.
The Army is discharging immigrant reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a promised path to citizenship, the Associated Press reports:
The AP was unable to quantify how many men and women who enlisted through the special recruitment program have been booted from the Army, but immigration attorneys say they know of more than 40 who have been discharged or whose status has become questionable, jeopardizing their futures.
“It was my dream to serve in the military,” said reservist Lucas Calixto, a Brazilian immigrant who filed a lawsuit against the Army last week. “Since this country has been so good to me, I thought it was the least I could do to give back to my adopted country and serve in the United States military.”
Some of the service members say they were not told why they were being discharged. Others who pressed for answers said the Army informed them they’d been labeled as security risks because they have relatives abroad or because the Defense Department had not completed background checks on them.
Spokespeople for the Pentagon and the Army said that, due to the pending litigation, they were unable to explain the discharges or respond to questions about whether there have been policy changes in any of the military branches.
some stuff isn’t just a trope, you know? in the movies, we’re introduced to women who are “experts” who have trained for years, who live and breathe and are willing to die for whatever the male main character has never even experienced before. and then he takes the reigns and upstages her, instantly, with a little bit of friendly bewilderment because, come on, it’s not antifeminist, he’s just good, he’s standing there having shown he’s actually more powerful than she’ll ever be – and we buy it. and then we go home and when we live and breathe something we still ask ourselves. “am i actually good at this? or is some fool going to walk into this presentation eighteen minutes in and offer a sarcastic and biting correction?” we wait for the man to show up and prove that, despite awards and training and an excellent job position, we’re actually just secretly incompetent.
the trope isn’t just setting up for us “this man is good at what he does” – the fact that the trope demands our male hero upstage the woman says: even an incompetent man will always be better than the best woman. he could have upstaged the sage boss or whatever other male in power exists in the movie. but he doesn’t. he upstages the woman to earn his pack order because she is, intrinsically, the weakest link. the real fight will be man against man. it always is.
and i wish, i wish it stopped outside of the theater. but the number of men who try (gently) to assure me that they’re actually better at what i have multiple degrees and years of experience in – it tells me it worked. men are always looking to be the hero, to interrupt, to upstage, to flip the woman on her back and expose her to all your fellow men – see! for someone who has been doing this forever, she’s just another woman. i am reminded by a man this is called mansplaining. i said “it’s a system of silencing women” and he said, “no, it’s just an accident.” in the movie, he sees himself pointing to my equation on the board, having just walked in. “here’s the flaw,” he says. in the real life, i’m too frustrated to speak. in the movie, he’s inevitably right.
elle woods flipping her hair and saying what, like it’s hard? was a funny line. it’s funny because in every other movie, it’s said by a guy.
wupacing 