sexual harassment

Hey, it's Friday! Happy early weekend, and here's a bunch of news from around the web.

• The champion Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius has been charged with the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Though early reports speculated that the shooting death may have been a case of mistaken identity, Pistorius apparently has a history of domestic incidents. [The New Yorker]

• Tech entrepreneur (and former Bitch webmistress, back when we called them that) Lauren Bacon handily dismantles Forbes's recent argument that Etsy's approach to hiring female engineeers constitutes a double standard. You go, Etsy! [Lauren Bacon]

• Meanwhile, at the Atlantic, Bryce Covert debunks the myth of the "ambition gap" between men and women as a cause of workplace and wage inequities. [The Atlantic]

• Deadspin has a pretty upsetting longread about a University of Toledo running coach whose ongoing pattern of sexual harassment, inappropriate behavior, and general mindfuckery led to his recent resignation. [Deadspin]

• What romantic comedies teach us about sex—and why those teachings can be harmful. [Furious and Brave]

• If you've been a victim of revenge porn, the law firm of Ridder, Costa, & Johnstone has a list of helpful tips for taking legal action, as well as further links and reading. [Ridder, Costa, & Johnstone LLP]

• Buzzfeed's new LGBT channel has been crushing it since it debuted just weeks ago. Here, eight music videos that take their style from/pay homage to Jennie Livingston's 1990 documentary Paris is Burning. Know your vogueing references! [Buzzfeed LGBT]

• You're not the only one who's infuriated by the way politicians, including our president, refer to women only in relation to other people. We The People created a petition you can sign to urge Obama to cease using the "wives/daughters/mothers" frame in his speeches. [We The People]

• At Mommyish, Lindsay Cross has a personal essay about experiencing street harassment where you least expect it—namely, in front of your child. [Mommyish]

• If you have fond memories of Sassy magazine's "Dopey Fashion Poses," you'll enjoy the work of artist Yiolanda Dominguez, who recasts fashion-shoot poses in the real world, with striking (and often funny) results. [Messy Nessy Chic]

• Valentine's Day was yesterday, but we say it's never too late to celebrate with a bucket full of adorable sloths. [Gawker]

• And speaking of sloths: Have you seen the cover of our latest issue?

That's all for today! Have a wonderful weekend, and don't forget to share anything we might have missed below in the comments.

In fictional TV narratives, job interviews and negotiations are opportunities for farce. Especially when the manager is male and his subordinate is female, TV writers grab the opportunity to intersect career milestones with heterosexual complications. But when labor economics converge with gender in the real world, the result is far from uproarious.

Welcome to the latest installment of Ms. Opinionated, in which readers have questions about the pesky day-to-day choices we all face, and I give advice about how to make ones that (hopefully) best reflect our shared commitment to feminist values—as well as advice on what to do when they don't. This week: how to tell the difference between having coffee and Having Coffee.

I've been the coworker who never missed a chance to drink with coworkers and I've been the one who hated my job so much that the last thing I wanted to do at the end of the day was spend more time with my coworkers. That turned out to be a mistake, though: at my first job out of college, the occasional beer with coworkers kept me sane, but it took me a year to even consider it. One coworker there said I seemed “stuffy” to her, which would have been hilarious to the staff and volunteers at my next job. I drank with them regularly and developed a rep as something of a party girl. During the day, I fended off sexist comments and had to fight to be respected; being known as cool, fun and likeable probably worked against me.

A massively unfair catch-22, that: skipping the office Christmas party and keeping your head down at work can get you the wrong reputation in the office, but so can being known as the lampshader. (While men aren't immune to this kind of gossip, I frankly don't hear nearly as much murmured concern that the guy who got too lit last weekend might be a little more committed to the good life than he is to his job.)

• Have you been reading Ladydrawers' interview comic with Alison Bechdel? Catch up with part two of three over at Truth Out.
• Women's Media Center writes about Ibtihaj Muhammad's journey to become the first women to compete for the U.S. Olympic team wearing a headscarf.
• In the "Something actually good occuring at Penn State this week" category, Angela Davis and Eric Stanley spoke about Stanley's new anthology, Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex. (Thanks Toshio!)
• Ms. Magazine writes on the importance of net neutrality—and how lucky we are that Obama vetoed it.
• Sady Doyle gives the Spice Girls a second chance over at Rookie.
• Dahlia Lithwick writes about and the old-school misogyny and the frightening new-school sexual harassment denial surrounding the Herman Cain scandals.
• Maxwell Zachs weighs the pros and cons of the new BBC series, My Transsexual Summer.
• We're still taking who-to-follow recommendations for Twitter! Leave your suggestions in the comments.

Tell us what you think and what you've been reading in the comments below!

Everyone have a good International Women's Day/Feminist Coming Out Day? Check out these compelling links from this week, and feel free to share your stories below!

• Andrea Grimes at HAY LADIES! and Shelby Knox at change.org encourage us to demand an apology from the author of the horribly irresponsible New York Times article about an eleven-year-old rape victim. Over at the Rumpus, Roxane Gay speaks poignantly about the article and its connections to rape culture.
• Excited for the new collection Feminism for Real: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism, edited by Jessica Yee and featuring Latoya Peterson and Andrea Plaid? Us too! Read excerpts now at Racialicious!
• Also at Racialicious, Latoya writes about tokenism, the blogosphere, and book deals in "On Being Feminism's 'Ms. Nigga.'"
• Halle Kiefer responds to worries about the ephemerality of pop culture jokes on Splitsider.
• Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown writes about poet Diane Di Prima for Autostraddle!
• At Colorlines, Jamilah King reports on Cairo's Million Woman March, which overcame anti-feminist protesters.
• Also at Colorlines, Jamilah discusses the saddening need for the upcoming International Anti-Street Harassment Day.
• Still celebrating International Women's Day? Same here! Check out this list of IWD-related pieces from around the world, compiled by Bitch contributor Chally Kacelnik for Feministe!
• Beth Saunders shares the latest in bad abortion-restriction news at RH Reality Check.
• In good news, Renee at Womanist Musings reports that trans* prisoners in the United Kingdom are now allowed to dress to match their gender identity!
• At The Good Men Project Magazine, Amanda Marcotte explains how the more the wrongheaded Men's Right Activists sometimes recognize actual problems. Their solution? More feminism, natch! (via Feministing)
• Erica Payne at the Huffington Post talks about Wal-Mart vs. Dukes, calling the equal pay-focused case "one of the most important civil rights cases in the country's history."

Another week, another roundup! Here's what caught our eyes this week around the Internet:

• In the "Beyond WTF" file, Mother Jones dissects the proposed law in South Dakota that could have legalized the murder of abortion providers. Fortunately, Feministing announced Thursday morning that it's already been shelved.
• Racialicious editor (and Bitch contributor) Latoya Peterson has announced her conference and speaking schedule!
• After distasteful comments about Lara Logan's assault, the Huffington Post reports that journalist Nir Rosen has lost his NYU fellowship.
• Also at HuffPo: hurray for Facebook? The "Relationship Status" droplist now includes "In a civil union" and "In a domestic partnership!"
• The Riot's Catcaller Form reveals the misogynistic assumptions behind street harassment. (via Feministing)
• MTV EXIT debuts their "When Will I Feel Love" video about human trafficking by Black Iris and Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast.
• At RH Reality Check and Tiger Beatdown, Bitch contributor Sarah Jaffe continues to profile the ten Democrats who co-sponsored HR3.
• VivirLatino explores the misleadingly-named Secure Communities program, which targets immigrants under the guise of protection from crime.
• Yet another Bitch writer, Anna Clark, discusses the erasure of female voices in global literature over at Book Slut. In the same vein, author Eileen Myles responds to the Vida pie charts at The Awl.
• And last but not least, Sparky at Womanist Musings comments on the fierce heteronormativity of a recent holiday.

The widely popular video game Bayonetta boasts an advertising campaign that rivals the onscreen sexism of the game itself. In Tokyo, a large billboard in the subway invited passersby to literally strip off flyers to reveal Bayonetta naked underneath. The campaign perpetuates and encourages sexual and physical harassment against women, an epidemic in Japan (and many other countries, including the United States). Check it out:

In some ways, the news is anti-climactic: Michael David Barrett, an insurance executive of Illinois, pled guilty yesterday to the interstate stalking of ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews.

More specifically, Barrett admitted to buying information about Andrews over the internet; traveling to follow Andrews; staying in three hotel rooms next to hers (the hotels told him which room was hers); twice filming videos of Andrews while she was naked through the door's peephole; posting those videos online; and trying to sell the videos to TMZ.

It's just another chapter in the long, long story of the objectification of Erin Andrews.

But what stands out about yesterday's hearing is that for once, it gave the 31-year-old sportscaster the chance to speak for herself -- and what it is like for her to pursue a job she loves while navigating fierce misogyny and harassment.

Other than Jon, by and large, I have never been much of a watcher of late-night TV.  This is no doubt a function of my demographic.  I'm too young - I grew up post-Carson.   I'm also entirely too cynical to enjoy most celebrity interviews, because much of the time I'm thinking, "It's really bizarre that Kirsten Dunst is this inarticulate," or, "Why hasn't Jared Leto showered?"  There are too many books in the world to read, too many blogs to surf, too much sleep to be gotten for me to watch these people night after night, even in the age of the DVR.  And I've written in this space before about my suspicion that there isn't any grand standard of comedy anymore, and it seems to me like the non-Comedy-Central contingent of these shows still seem to harbour delusions on that score, of being the Great American Comedian, and so I just kind of tune them out.

So when this hullabaloo about David Letterman getting his pecker in his payroll started to kick up on Friday, readers, I yawned.  Having spewed venom all week over Roman Polanski and his defenders (Pedro, why, why??!!!), I was worn out.  Besides which, other than the extortion part, there seemed very little scandal in this scandal; the ladies involved were of age, and none appeared to be claiming coercion.  I'm not wild about professional men viewing nubile young women in the workplace as their rightful spoils, but I've been in enough exhausting conversations with male friends about such situations ("why do you want to Stand In the Way of Love?") to know better than to spend much time arguing with them about it.  I suppose Regina Lasko, Letterman's longtime girlfriend, feels somewhat differently about it, but I can't see how I or anyone else can be of use to her if we take to the soapbox to pontificate at length about just what a horndog she's married.