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'“Men Working Above” signs are a common sight when window cleaners and other high-rise workers are on the job on streets across Canada, but one Vancouver resident thinks they’re discriminatory, and is now calling on his city to do something about it.
Glyn Lewis said he realized it when he saw one while he was out on the streets of Vancouver.
“I thought to myself ‘well there’s no way that this company only hires men, right,’ so there’s gotta be women who are window cleaners and there’s going to be days where they’re above that sign and it’s a woman working, and yet the sign below says ‘men working above.’ I thought that was discriminatory, I thought it was offensive, and I just don’t think that’s the kind of public message that we want in our city.”'
'There has been a stir recently at Ryerson University due to the Ryerson Student Union (RSU) declining to grant campus group status to the Ryerson Men’s Issues Awareness Society (MIAS). The MIAS appealed this decision all the way through the RSU’s appeals system and then, when the appeal process did not change the RSU’s decision, the MIAS went further and sued the RSU for breaching their freedom of association and expression.
The RSU’s arguments hinged on the fact that the MIAS was working with the Canadian Association for Equality, which has also supported groups such as Voice for Men who have been linked to violence against women on various university campuses. The RSU has various campaigns focused on furthering women’s rights and pushes for the expansion of such rights across campus.'
'Ms Black spoke out as MPs called for misogyny to be treated as a hate crime.
...
Conservative MP Philip Davies asked whether misandry should also be a hate crime in exactly the same way, adding: "If she doesn't, could she explain why she thinks there should be one rule for one and one rule for the other?"
Ms Onn replied that he had the opportunity to raise that issue in parliament, but added "it does not form part of my suggestions today, which are focused on misogyny - there is a power imbalance in society that disproportionately affects women negatively, so I think misogyny should be an exclusive strand of hate crime".
...
Answering the debate for the government, Home Office Minister Victoria Atkins said hate crime currently covers offences that target race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity, but a "fundamental aspect of the legislation is that these motivations can be proven and demonstrate the hate element."
'Five years ago, when actor Michael Douglas candidly revealed that his throat cancer was linked to having oral sex, two things happened.
...
Since then, scientists have made headway in figuring out why HPV, the human papillomavirus, has this glaring gender bias. Men are four times more likely than women to be diagnosed with oral cancer, a hard-to-detect, hard-to-treat disease that has overtaken cervical cancer as the most common HPV-related malignancy in the United States.
To be sure, changes in sexual norms over the last few generations have played a role in this alarming trend. But research increasingly shows the real problem is something men have practically no control over: their immune response.
Compared with women, men are more likely to get infected with HPV – including “high-risk” cancer-causing strains. They also are less able to wipe out infection on their own, and more likely to get reinfected. The reasons are unclear.
'I never used to miss an International Women’s Day march. Too much was at stake not to attend: our atrocious lack of reproductive rights, sexual discrimination, the hidden epidemic of domestic violence and many other vital issues. It was important to stand up and be counted, to march alongside other feminists in support of our shared goals, to bang drums, wave placards, making a blaze of colour and noise in the street.
'The evidence is “overwhelming” that more women soldiers have led to better decision-making, the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, Vice-Admiral Mark Mellett has declared.
Speaking at an International Women’s Day conference on Women in Peacekeeping in The Hague, he said a better gender balance benefits all levels of military forces.
Better gender balance was a driver of military capability, he argued: “Capability that has utility on land in the air and at sea; capability that has utility in peacemaking, peacekeeping, stabilisation and civil society”.
Therefore, in military organisations women, gender, equality, diversity and inclusion are all matters of leadership, leadership that will enable women in peacekeeping to become force multipliers for better outcomes.
He said the Defence Forces, which has targeted women in recruitment campaigns in recent years in an effort to increase the current level of around 6.4 per cent, needed more women for practical reasons.'
'The return of the comic book character "Jessica Jones" on Netflix promised a season full of women (directors), and it will deliver a season full of women (directors). With so many women, we'll need a few binders on hand to keep track.
In line with "Transparent" creator Jill Soloway's decree that no "white cis men" should have creative control over women characters, "Jessica Jones" season 2 has made sure that no man will get a chance to manspread in the director's chair.
Originally, "Jessica Jones" showrunner Melissa Rosenberg only sought to include more female directors on the show, but in the name of "being inclusive" made season 2 exclusively female when Netflix's VP insisted the show be entirely female-driven.
"It didn’t take a lot of effort to fill those slots," Rosenberg says. "There’s a lot of highly qualified and talented female directors out there, so what we did was simply open the door. It wasn’t like we had to give a bunch of women their first break. It was just being inclusive."'
Video here. It's primarily a discussion about the current replacement bill for the ACA ("Obamacare"). But it diverges a bit to discuss the day's events.
'Male readers of leftwing French daily Liberation were asked to pay 25 percent more for their paper on Thursday, to make up for the gender pay gap on International Women's Day.
The paper published two versions with different cover pages, one marked "for women, 2 euros, normal price" with a pictogram of a woman, the other marked "for men, 2.50 euros" with a pictogram of a man.
In a front-page message the paper noted that despite equal pay for equal work being enshrined by law since 1972, French women earn on average 25.7 percent less than men, according to a 2017 report from an inequality watchdog.
"To highlight this injustice Liberation has decided to apply the same difference to its sale price for a day, meaning 50 cents more for men," it said, adding that profits from the operation would be donated to France's non-governmental Equality Observatory.'
'In a Thursday column for Psychology Today, Professor Gad Saad argues that advocates of “toxic masculinity” theory are dangerously pathologizing manhood.
Professor Gad Saad of Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, argued in a column published on Thursday that gender theorists in academia are foolishly demonizing masculinity.
'Clemson University fraternities remain subject to strict new rules that were imposed in response to an alleged sexual assault, even after law enforcement determined that the report was untrue.
According to Fox Carolina, deputies investigated a report of a sexual assault at the Delta Chi Fraternity House on January 27, with Clemson Dean of Students Christopher Miller saying at the time that the accused individual was neither a student nor a member of a Clemson University fraternity.
On January 28, Landon Flowers, the president of the Clemson Interfraternity Council (IFC), issued a statement suspending all social events at fraternity houses indefinitely, prior to any investigative outcome, and specifically citing the alleged sexual assault.
However, WYFF 4 reported on March 1 that Clemson 18-year-old Sarah Campbell, the accuser in the case, is now facing a felony charge after sheriff’s deputies determined that she had lied about the sexual assault, concluding that the relations had been consensual.'
'Up to 150 far-left activists protested a speech by Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson at Queens University by barricading doors shut, smashing windows, with one protester caught carrying a potentially deadly weapon.
Dr. Peterson gave his lecture at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, on Tuesday this week to promote his new book and was met by a mob of around 150 far-left activists, some of who were students at the university.
The protesters proceeded to barricade the doors and one of the activists, a 38-year-old woman who does not attend the university, is said to have smashed a window and faces additional charges for carrying a concealed weapon, Global News reports.
According to local newspaper, The Kingston Whig-Standard, the 38-year-old was found in possession of a garrote, a weapon designed to strangle another person.
'The book is written by an author using a pseudonym, she says to protect herself, but it could be written by someone of either sex to make a point of how easy it is to destroy a male in our society. For example, the book describes how easy it is to bring an allegation to the media who has no liability for false sexual abuse claims since it says they were "alleged."
According to the book, "....an allegation does not require evidence to DAMN because through media manipulation, it becomes its own evidence. Thousands--even millions of people can become organized against one man." The book goes on to correctly describe how authorities which consist of police, judges, bosses, schools etc. take punitive actions against a man by firing him, dismissing him from school, ruining his reputation and even imprisonment. The book states that no one will want to be associated with the ruined man or even believe him.
'Spotify and Smirnoff have released the "Smirnoff Equalizer" - a feature that maps out a user's listening habits by gender and could change how you listen to music.
The tool has been released just in time for International Women's Day, which is Thursday March 8.
Like Spotify's percentage breakdowns of artists, songs and albums played, the equaliser reveals the percentage of music you listen to in terms of female versus male.
...
For people who listen to more male artists than female, Spotify will create a more gender-balanced playlist.
According to a press release, the idea for the equaliser stems from the fact that there was a lack of female representation in Spotify's 2017 Year in Music statistics.'
'Some top doctors argue that men are receiving a new message that they aren’t as welcome as females in the gynecology world. Dr. Carl Smith, the head of the OB-GYN department at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, says that men who have an interest in the OB-GYN department are in for a bit of a roadblock.
“It sends a horrible message to men who might have a nascent interest in OB-GYN that’s promptly quashed,” Smith said.
Carol Weissman an OB-GYN professor at Penn State made the argument it seems like some are saying that the field needs men to be sure that the field has the best possible people. “It seems to me that there’s some residual sexism in that view, that we need men to be sure that we’re training the best possible people for our specialty. I find that very odd,” Weissman said.'
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