All Posts Tagged as 'Exclusivity'

Yesterday (November 19), Tory MP Ben Bradley woke up and thought, ‘Today is the day I finally call for more rights for society’s most marginalised: straight white men’. With this little seed in his brain, Bradley headed to the House of Commons, stood up, and maintained a straight face as he bemoaned there being a minister for women but not men, complained about there being more women than men in higher education, and mourned the death of “banter”.

“Men are talked about, all too often, as a problem that must be rectified,” he said, criticising the discourse of “male privilege, toxic masculinity, and men as oppressors”.

Bradley condemned the Equality Act as being “wilfully and regularly misapplied across gender, race, and every other characteristic”, and urged the government to “recognise that we all have equal protection under this law… whether gay, Black and minority ethnic, female, or a straight white man”.

He went on to assert the importance of “holding the door open for a lady”, expecting a man to “provide for his family”, and “wanting to be a man’s man” who goes “down to the football at the weekend” and has “some banter with the lads”. Bradley then complains: “That banter is now bullying.”

My parents are currently trying to “help” my 29-year-old brother by allowing him to move out to their new beach house and subsidizing his rent so he can get a fresh start in life.

My parents have always seemed to favor my brother, and I was finally able to heal and move on from the hurt a few years ago. I am two years younger and my husband and I have our own house, own two new cars, and have two stable incomes.

I have worked for everything that I have in life, and I am grateful for how I was raised because being forced to earn everything, including my parents affection, has allowed me to have the life I do now

My parents have always supported my brother emotionally and financially. They currently pay for his phone plan, his cell phone, his car loan — after he totalled his last car two weeks ago — and now his rent.

He depends on them for almost everything in life. They are encouraging him to move to get a fresh start on their dime instead of taking a leap and getting an apartment. They are doing this because they didn’t want him to have a mortgage.

Meanwhile, I am finishing my accounting degree before sitting for the CPA (my husband and I are paying 100%), and my parents are encouraging me to NOT get my master’s degree because it’s useless and would make my brother feel worse. They say that we are already married and have a house so why do we need more.

During the meal Franklin, the one and only person of color in the core Peanuts gang, ends up sitting on a different side of the table from the rest of his friends and is seated in the only piece of "non-proper" furniture, a lawn chair. The scene, for some, has undertones of racial bias and, as it does every year, has prompted some to take to social media to speak out about the moment. Here is a selection of what people are saying and be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Wearing a mask is important. For you and those around you. For elected officials? Not so much.

Actually, all the COVID rules are for us, not them. COVID-19, and the accompanying lockdowns, have made it painfully clear: We plebes have to follow the rules; the elites do not.

Start with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last week groveled for forgiveness after being caught attending a large birthday dinner at The French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley. When pictures from the event surfaced, the hypocrisy was glaring: The governor was seen with his wife at a large table full of maskless lobbyists, all sitting in close proximity.

But, hey: You’re not the governor — so if you want to celebrate Thanksgiving in his state, remember: “No more than three households, including your own,” at the gathering, and keep your distance.

Newsom isn’t the only one to live it up while everyone suffers. Gov. Cuomo, for example, is rarely seen in a mask, yet his Twitter feed never stops harassing you to “mask up.” (And, by the way, he’s just thrilled with himself over his handling of the COVID-19 crisis, even though it resulted in more deaths than any other state and, according to The New York Times, seeded the virus throughout the country.)

A Hasidic wedding in Brooklyn slipped under the radar of city officials as it crammed 7,000 maskless people into a synagogue in defiance of Governor Andrew Cuomo's coronavirus restrictions.

On November 8, crowds gathered shoulder to shoulder in the Yetev Lev temple in Williamsburg to celebrate the nuptials of Yoel Teitelbaum, grandson of Satmar Grand Rabbi Aaron Teitelman.

To keep the celebration under wraps, the community shared information on the wedding only by word of mouth as organizers schemed to avoid it being broken up by 'the ravenous press and government officials'.

President-elect Joe Biden got testy with a CBS News reporter who asked him a question on Friday about his plan to get children back into classrooms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tense exchange took place just as Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were wrapping up a meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in Wilmington, Delaware.

‘In my Oval Office, mi casa, you casa,’ Biden, who turned 78 years old on Friday, is heard telling the senior Democratic Party leaders.

At that point, a Biden aide asked the assembled gaggle of reporters to leave as the photo op concluded.

My husband and I have been together for four years and married for one. I love him immensely and would do just about anything for him—except have kids. We discussed this before getting married, and I was indifferent. I pushed past not wanting to get married, so I thought I’d be able to push past how I felt about raising children.

Then I came up with a solution that may be extremely harmful to us or may be the answer to our prayers. I’ve suggested he co-parents with someone local, with whom he can have shared custody. He would be able to interact with his child every day—nurture, love, and raise them. The child can live with us occasionally, and I could be like an aunt: caring but ultimately not responsible. My husband did not initially like this idea. He saw it as intentionally having an “outside” child and felt he’d be painted the unfaithful partner whose wife was gracious enough to accept his infidelity. He argued that no one would believe that it was my choice. After the nth conversation, I think he realized that what was indifference from me has turned into an actual no. So now he’s come around.

But now a new problem has arisen: Hearing him talk about this potential child and opportunity and how he would spend hours a day away so he could get maximum time with this child has made me … jealous? I’m not even sure what this feeling is, because I can’t identify it. I don’t even recognize myself—I’ve turned into a monster who is threatened by a nonexistent child. I actually feel ashamed. Now I’m stuck. On one hand, if we negotiate a co-parenting situation, he could be satisfied and even happy. Yet this feeling I’m having is starting to get worse. I’m thinking about all the possible ways it could go wrong: custody battles, garnished wages, him leaving me for this woman he will be co-parenting with, and (shamefully) my feelings being hurt. I don’t know if we’d survive, and I feel he’d blame me if it went awry. On the other hand, he wants kids, and there’s a very real possibility he could leave. There’s a part of me that says I could just have his kids and solve this problem, but then I’d be the miserable one. Is there a solution somewhere that I’m not seeing?

—His and Not Hers

Gay and bi men in the US had an average of 2.3 more sexual partners at the height of the first wave of the COVID pandemic.

Meanwhile the men reported sharp rises in their levels of binge drinking and drug use.

That’s according to a study by the Center for Sexuality and Health Disparities, University of Michigan in the USA. The authors published the study in the AIDS and Behavior journal.

They found only half the men recognized that you could get coronavirus through having sex. But 64% didn’t think they needed to reduce the number of sexual partners.

In fact, most men recognized that kissing is the highest risk for passing on COVID-19 and knew anal sex is comparatively safer.

He noted that while 94% recognized you could pass on the virus through kissing, half believed you couldn’t pass it on through anal sex.

He concluded: ‘If half the gay men in this study were any stupider we’d have to water them once a week.

A 15-year-old girl was allegedly forced to listen to a recording of a man raping her for four hours, by male leaders of a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation to get her to say the encounter was consensual, the Utah Supreme Court heard this week.

The court heard arguments on Monday in a lawsuit where a woman sued four elders of the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses in Roy, Utah, the religion’s national organization and the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society for intentionally inflicting severe emotional distress upon her.

The woman claims she was 14-years-old when an 18-year-old male, who was also a Jehovah’s Witness, bullied her and began to sexually assault her in December 2007.

LGBTQ acceptance is eroding even among young people. What are we going to do about it?

By Adam Zivo

There is some very bad news that not nearly enough people are talking about. Acceptance of the LGBTQ community is significantly declining in the United States and has been for several years now. Almost two years ago, a national annual survey by GLAAD found that, since 2016, Americans have become much more uncomfortable with LGBTQ folks. Though the report has since become slightly dated, little research has been done on the issue since. Other statistics, such as consistent increases in anti-LGBTQ hate crimes, suggest that the problem has not abated and may even be getting worse.

Despite the seriousness of this issue, there appears to be little awareness within the LGBTQ community that its public support is eroding. This ignorance within the wider community is mirrored by a lack of serious analysis by queer leaders and researchers. That needs to change.

And let’s not fool ourselves that this is a US-only problem. While it’s unclear how much this backlash is mirrored in Canada and Western Europe (which share similar historical trajectories on LGBTQ rights), both of these regions have also seen notable increases in anti-LGBTQ hate crimes – so there is good reason to be pessimistic. However, only real research focused on social attitudes will give us clarity. For whatever reason, this research isn’t being done in earnest.

If public health officials want to get people to wear masks to curb the spread of Covid-19, they might take a lesson from what is now a widely accepted aspect of American life: buckling up.

Beginning in the 1950s, the effort to get people to adopt seat belts took legislation, enforcement, and public health campaigns. And, especially in its early days, it was met with misinformation and pushback, especially around personal freedom.

“Industry didn’t want to bring up the issue of safety,” Ralph Nader, a consumer activist and early seat belt champion, told STAT. “They were selling high performance, speed, and glamour.”

Morgan Wallen is among the country singers who say they're ready to start booking concerts again — spurred by the sight of election celebrations that took place across America this weekend.

"The hypocrisy is unreal," Wallen wrote on Instagram on Sunday, after sharing footage of the crowd gathered at Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C.

"Time to start booking shows...If you don't agree with me, fine. We can still be friends. But I have a family, band, and crew that need to be provided for and taken care of. If it's OK for us to party in the streets with no 'social distancing' then we can book shows right now."

EBT, also known as food stamps or SNAP, is a government-run program that gives individuals with low incomes a small budget every month to buy groceries. And the idea that the government should control what EBT recipients are allowed to buy is a talking point often made by conservatives who would like to see the program either reduced or cut entirely. (Trump, for example, has proposed getting rid of EBT and replacing it with preset boxes of food, in which the recipient has no choice in what they get.)

Suffice to say, Keke was ratioed pretty hard on Twitter for her suggestion — generating a lot more comments than likes.

SNL executive producer and creator Lorne Michaels was known for employing several of young female assistants — who the Saturday Night Live cast members called the “Lornettes.” And eventually, he married one of them.

A New York Magazine profile on SNL from a seemingly ancient era of the sketch series — the mid-’90s — painted a fascinating picture of the show’s working environment, dictated mainly by how Michaels operated as Saturday Night Live’s executive producer.

Apparently, in every entryway in Michaels’ office area, “a blond wicker basket of warm kernels precedes him, usually delivered by one of several blonde female assistants in their early twenties.”

These assistants of Michaels were so pervasive — and identical — that other SNL staffers had a unique name for them.

“Cast members call these high-strung women the Lornettes,” the magazine reported.

Our federal workplace, under the Cares Act, permits parents to work 75 percent of their hours (30 hours/week, any days or times) for the same pay. I’m glad not to lose my teammates and work friends, and glad they can better balance their personal lives and work, but this has translated to a heavy burden on those of us who are child-free. I’m overloaded, and the assignments just keep coming, with no legitimate-enough excuse to make my “no, thank you” stick. The constant narrative from leadership is what heroes parents are — and they are, but those of us without kids are doing so much heavy lifting, and we have families, too.

I know that even though parenthood is a choice, having kids at home during a pandemic wasn’t. As an employed, teleworking, snugly housed and safe person, I know I’m privileged. That said, my workplace feels very unequal right now. It sounds ugly out loud, but as a married woman without children, I’m losing my empathy and patience after months of being treated as though my time is therefore infinite.

Karla: As I once said in response to a child-free worker disgruntled by parents working from home with kids: One worker’s right to work-life balance does not trump another’s.