Equal Rights // Current

Domestic violence PSAs only give half the story...

39% of victims of domestic violence are men, but you'd never know it from these public... more

MEnglish
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4 days ago
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1 comment

Gay Leaders Partly Blame Obama for Loss in Maine

National gay rights leaders are blaming scare-mongering ads – and President Barack... more

The_Global_Report
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11 days ago
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0 comments

Marriage Equality - A Life Long Republicans Point of View

Philip Spooner, an 86 year old veteran and life long republican gives his point of... more

SageRockandRoll
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1 month ago
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12 comments

Lesbian high school student fights for yearbook photo

An openly gay honor student in a small Louisiana town wants to wear a tuxedo in her... more

shorescope
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1 month ago
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new gay anthem "SameOl Me"

Female rapper; indi artist from upstate NY getting busy! Fight for equal rights... more

Suntrana_Allen
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1 month ago
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Volunteer Vacation to Protect Maine Equality

Volunteers are needed in Maine. Do you want to be part of history?

uroborus8
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2 months ago
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5 comments

Grassroots Movements Mobolizing all over Country for Queer Rights March October 11th in DC

Efforts are being led by many grassroots organizers to mobilize for this October's... more

hardluck12
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2 months ago
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0 comments

Walking in the Know with MaShiAat Oloya and Dr Nandi Crosby

MaShiAat and Dr Crosby discuss gender classification in our society today.

AhSatiNu
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2 months ago
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0 comments

Sinead's Hand

Marriage equality now. A fantastic commercial from Ireland which drives home the... more

Chris_Globus
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3 months ago
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Questions for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Part of this week's NY Times special issue, Saving the World's Women. Discuss all the... more

fountaingoats
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3 months ago
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"Good ideas have no genitals," so why's advertising still a man's game?

"It was basically an episode of Mad Men," says one female creative director of her industry. And while we love that actual ad pros also use the show as a reference point, it doesn't sound like it's changed that much:

It says something when the industry theoretically geared towards reading and determining the collective psyche is, at the creative level, overwhelmingly male-dominated, particularly at the higher (yes, Don Draper) level. According to a piece on AdAge, this was "a hot issue" at the magazine's annual "Women to Watch luncheon," whose very existence in 2009 is somewhat telling. While women are well-represented at the executive level, they're still lagging in "creative," and fewer women go into that end of things. In a video from the event, Tiffany Kosel, creative director and VP at the Crispin Porter & Bogusky agency, paraphrases one woman's explanation: the issue, she says, is the classic "tightrope" : "be confident, speak up, get respect, while still being feminine enough that we're not seen as overly aggressive."

And she ends with an eerie and perhaps unconscious paraphrase of one of Mad Men's more memorable lines, the savvy Bobbie Barrett's sage advice: "(N)o one will tell you this, but you can't be a man. Don't even try. Be a woman. It's powerful business, when done correctly." While in the context of the show, there's the ever-present implication of sexual power and a set of weapons no more at a woman's disposal than a man's overt power to sexually harass his assistant, it's essentially Kosel's message: women bring something different to the table - in fact, the perspective of more than half the population, which would seem to be a valuable commodity in an industry largely geared towards selling to that percentage.

It's interesting that the discrepancies should exist in creative, rather than executive spheres: it seems like the issue is exactly what that one woman elucidated, that of balance. A woman can be business-minded. She can be soft and creative. But the two are still not reconciled in our culture. Take the heroines of most movies: ethereal free spirits and uptight control freaks pretty much cover the waterfront. Advertising is one of the businesses that's always mixed commerce and creativity most overtly, and from the beginning: and the industry, of course, perpetuates and crafts these continuing perceptions. In a sense it would be peculiar if that industry itself didn't cleave to the same standards. There was a really interesting quote on the estimable Media Commons blog dealing with Mad Men: the show, the authors averred, is essentially "about subjectivities in the making: how men construct identities for women and how women struggle for narrative space in and through those representations." I'd go so far as to apply that construct to most creative industries, a lot of life, and certainly the business of selling image."It was basically an episode of Mad Men," says one female creative director of her... more

fountaingoats
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3 months ago
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1 comment

The male plight

Gordon E. Finley, Professor of Psychology, Florida International University - Miami... more

MotherForTruth
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4 months ago
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25 comments

Law based on a social science research or ideology?

Family roles have changed substantially since the 1950s. Mom now works outside the... more

MotherForTruth
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4 months ago
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0 comments

The future for men in US.

Gates was arrested last Thursday in broad daylight at his Cambridge, Massachusetts,... more

MotherForTruth
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4 months ago
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21 comments

Jimmy Carter Leaves Church Over Treatment of Women

He is a true Hero! After more than 60 years together, Jimmy Carter has announced... more

SushiBandit
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4 months ago
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145 comments

What is Marriage - What Makes a Family?

A friend of mine recently wrote me to ask my opinion about Section 297.5 of the California Family Code that grants all the rights and responsibilities of marriage to same sex couples and what is the big deal about Proposition 8 in California. Below is what I wrote him in response. I would love to hear your comments about the issue of marriage. What is Marriage? Now? In History? What makes a family?

Here is what I wrote to my friend:

What most gay people want is Federal Marriage Equality. The LGBT community is split on whether or not to call it Marriage, Same Sex Unions, Civil Unions or Domestic Partnerships. Personally I don't care what they call it so long as the rights are equal as far as both State and Federal law are concerned.

However, there are those in the LGBT community that will not be satisfied unless it is called Marriage and it is recognized by all 50 States and the Federal Government. Some of the vocal activists are actually working for the opposition but their job is to make the other side seem utterly rediculous and to influence the position of swing voters. But that is another story entirely.

I did a paper on Marriage for my Sociology, Anthropology, and Writing classes and I had to study the definition of marriage now, in the recent past, and throughout history. What I discovered is that marriage has meant many different things at different times. What constituted a kinship family tie and the motivation for creating unions has also changed throughout time and in different parts of the world. There has not been ONE version of marriage that has remained constant over the entire world. Of course many people are ethnocentric or plain self centered and don't have an awareness radius of more than 5 feet around them. So these people, who lack much awareness of the bigger picture, assume that whatever is currently their definition must be THE DEFINITION now and for all time. These ignorant people aren't to blame, they are products of the education system they were immersed in and the cultural systems they were immersed in as well.

Since the days that Empires came into existence, marriage within the boundaries of an Empire such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, or Early American (when women didn't have any rights to vote or own property) marriage was a way of conveying wealth and ensuring succession of power and land rights etc. Marriage was a financial contract and the consolidation of the wealth of two families.

In other parts of the world, no empire, marriage has been more fluid and varied. For example, in Island nations of the Pacific, marriage rights and property ownership was vested in the woman. She selected her husband she owned the property. Where as in Native American tribes of North America, marriage/kinship was between a brother and sister as the core group, while the brother chose the father of the baby, the parents were the brother and sister, the father of the child had no parental rights. Other North American tribes had various versions of what constituted a couple and many made accomodations for people they considered "third sex" or "two sexed". Some people have concluded that this was talking about gays or intersexed/hermaphrodite individuals. In most tribal cultures, these people were considered especially blessed by the spirits or gods because of their differences to the majority. And in some places there are formal contracts for marriage whereas in other parts there are informal contracts made on a word; a promise. Does a piece of paper make a marriage?

Well in America today, marriage is still about economics and raising families, only attitudes have changed such that people of same sex can have children either through in vitro or donated sperm or ova. They can form informal families without a paper, but the sticky thing becomes when there is an issue that involves either Federal or State law. It has been proven time and again that no state is under obligation to honor the laws of other stA friend of mine recently wrote me to ask my opinion about Section 297.5 of the... more

jubal
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4 months ago
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19 comments

2009 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade

On Sunday (06-28-09) was the 36th Annual San Francisco LGBT Pride Parade. The gay... more

ccdvproductions
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5 months ago
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7 comments

Supreme Court ruling offers little guidance on fair hiring

In ruling for a group of white firefighters in New Haven on Monday, the Supreme Court tried to address a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t quandary for many cities and other employers: what they should do when an employment test yields results that overwhelmingly favor whites.

But many legal experts said that instead of setting forth clear new rules, the court’s decision left things as muddled as ever for the nation’s employers — and seemed to ensure much more litigation over the explosive issue of employment discrimination.

“We don’t see clear, bright-line guidance here,” said Lars Etzkorn, a program director with the National League of Cities. “This is going to be good for employment lawyers.”

The 5-to-4 ruling applies largely to public-sector hiring and to civil service exams, but could also affect private employers that use tests or other screening methods. The court said that if an employer used a hiring or promotion test, it generally had to accept the test’s results — unless the employer had strong evidence the test was flawed and improperly favored a particular group.

With the court’s ruling making it harder for cities and other employers to throw out tests they conclude are unfair, employers are expected to work harder to make sure their written tests — indeed their entire selection process — are fair.

“The ruling gives employers less flexibility to change the selection process once it’s established,” said Katharine Parker, a lawyer with Proskauer Rose who is chairwoman of the Labor and Employment Committee of the New York City Bar Association. “As a result, employers will want to try to establish bulletproof selection criteria.”

Some may abandon written tests altogether.

To avoid charges of discrimination, many cities have already been moving away from such tests in favor of other methods of hiring and promoting employees in places like fire and police departments. They say written tests are often not the best way to determine who can perform best.

In New Haven, city officials, having concluded that their written test was flawed, said there was another, trusted method to select firefighting lieutenants and captains that posed less of a disadvantage to blacks and Hispanics. That method relies largely on assessment centers where applicants are evaluated in simulated real-life situations to see how they would handle them.

Supporters of the idea say assessment centers do far better than written exams in measuring leadership and communications skills and an applicant’s ability to handle emergencies.In ruling for a group of white firefighters in New Haven on Monday, the Supreme Court... more