All Posts Tagged as 'Exclusivity'

Some passengers are out of control. Just over a week ago an American Airlines passenger handed a flight attendant a vicious note, calling her a “gloried maid,” “4 eyed c*nt,” and saying that if it wasn’t for this job, she’d be “cleaning motel rooms for $2 tips and meth.” Fortunately American Airlines acted swiftly to ban this passenger.

Well, now another flight attendant is reporting that she received a note from a passenger…

Even in a community outwardly campaigning for inclusion and acceptance, exclusion and judgement still exist on a personal level. Now, Bright Light Bright Light is shedding a light on his experience with that phenomenon within the LGBTQ community.

“Feeling like I belonged within the gay community I think has been a bit of a struggle," he said. "The LGBTQ+ community is such a vast umbrella; everyone is so different and trying to work out where you belong within that is hard. It kind of presumes that everybody queer gets on with each other, which they don’t, and that everyone is alike, which they’re not.”

Thomas also said that he wasn't considered "body-appropriate" to some in the community, which made him constantly feel like he was an outsider within a space built for him. “It doesn’t matter because those people don’t matter," he explained. "But I found that a huge struggle -- feeling invisible or not welcome in queer spaces -- even more heart-breaking than not being welcome in heterosexual spaces, because these spaces are there for everybody that needs them.”

Let’s imagine we were giving an award for the worst social problem in the world today. Do you have any nominations?

Did I hear someone say international conflict? Racial prejudice maybe? Environmental destruction anyone? Millions of homeless refugees? Exploitation of women? Turns out there’s one problem that connects all of those, and it’s one you hardly ever hear politicians talk about.

Overpopulation may not be root of all evil, but it is indeed at the root of many of the world’s other miseries.

Just do the math. As a minimum, every additional person needs a certain quantity of food to eat and clean water to drink. Extra people could, in theory, live without clothes on their backs or roofs over their heads, but most of us would not wish for a world with more people, if they had to live homeless and naked against the elements. Beyond basic needs for food, water, and shelter, more people need more energy -- to light their homes and cook their food, and if that level is reached, they’ll be in the market for still more -- to power their refrigerators and washing machines. At moderate levels of economic development, people start to desire cell phones, big screen televisions, and cars to drive. And at the highest levels, they want second homes and vacations in far-away destinations, which they reach by flying on gas-guzzling airplanes.

One solution is to simply open our borders, to allow more of the world’s desperate people to come to the United States, England, the Netherlands, and Germany. That is the case Samantha Power made in her painful stories of the desperate people she encountered as a journalist and later as U.N. ambassador, which triggered the earlier open letter. The statistics seem to indicate that most immigrants are not criminals or terrorists, but are, compared to those who grow up in first world countries, actually more eager to work long and hard hours. Cafaro acknowledges the obvious -- that the opportunities in a first world country are substantially greater than those in a third world country. And if you are rich or middle class American, there are benefits from immigrants – cheaper labor and better bottom-lines on stock dividends (as large corporations have used the availability of cheaper immigrant labor to break unions, and drastically cut salaries and benefits for their employees). But Cafaro notes that those economic benefits to middle and upper-class Americans translate into severe costs for the poorest Americans. Middle-class people are generally out of touch with how those economic benefits to them translate into the hefty costs associated with unemployment or underemployment among African-Americans, poor whites, and native Hispanics. Many of these less fortunate groups have lost the union jobs that permitted their parents to live reasonably comfortable lives. This in turn leads to loss of health care benefits, and many other unpleasant downstream consequences.

Maybe they should change their slogan to “Fly the Friendly — and very white — Skies.”

United Airlines packs its planes with young, white, blond, blue-eyed female crew — all chosen for their “sexual allure” — whenever the National Football League and Major League Baseball take charter flights, a new lawsuit alleges.

Meanwhile, flight attendants who are too old and too dark are barred from the plum routes, according to Bloomberg News, which reported the suit on Saturday.

TikTok has "shadow-banned" several hashtags relating to the LGBTQ+ community.

A report released by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute indicated that terms like "gay," "lesbian," and "transgender" were restricted in several languages for global users, "no matter where in the world they live."

"TikTok users posting videos with these hashtags are given the impression their posts are just as searchable as posts by other users, but in fact they aren’t. In practice, most of these hashtags are categorised in TikTok’s code in the same way that terrorist groups, illicit substances and swear words are treated on the platform. On some occasions, hashtags are categorised as non-existent, when in fact they’re tagged on videos across the platform.

In the celebrity blogosphere, TMZ has long maintained its reputation as a cut-throat gossip shark with little to no qualms about what it, as an institution, probably sees as “the ugly truth.” TMZ, for instance, has broken the news of deaths before the family had been notified, jumped on rumors of a death that were completely inaccurate, and used secret microphones to record court hearings. On its live show extension, the condescension creator Harvey Levin feels for women, people of color, and really, anyone who isn’t Harvey Levin practically drips off him like a toxic sweat. Is it really all that shocking that working for TMZ is a colossal nightmare clusterfuck?

The owner of the salon described Pelosi's appointment request to Fox News as a "slap in the face."

"I take responsibility for trusting the word of a neighborhood salon that I've been to over the years many times," Pelosi said. "As it turns out, it was a setup. So I take responsibility for falling for that setup."

In security footage obtained by Fox News, and timestamped Monday at 3:08 p.m. Pacific Time, the California powerhouse is seen walking through eSalon in San Francisco with wet hair, and without a mask over her mouth or nose.

“I was like, are you kidding me right now? Do I let this happen? What do I do?” Kious told Fox News, while noting that she "can’t control” what her stylists do if they rent chairs from her, as “they’re not paying” at this time.

Kious cast Pelosi’s visit as a double standard.

“It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know, that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work,” Kious told Fox News, adding that she “can’t believe” the speaker didn’t have a mask on. (From the footage, it appears Pelosi had some kind of covering around her neck.)

A Christian school in Texas has expelled a student for coming out as gay, and the school principal is defending his decision saying that Jesus wanted him to expel the student.

Devin Bryant, 17, has attended the Covenant Christian Academy in Dallas since he was in kindergarten, but last month his mother Consolata got a call from the new headmaster, Tony Jeffrey, telling her that Devin won’t be allowed to attend the school for his senior year because he’s gay.

An embattled Kentucky judge accused of having sex in her courthouse and letting staff drink alcohol at the office has been removed from the bench.

The Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission (KJCC) on Monday voted unanimously to remove Kenton County Family Court Judge Dawn Gentry after she was found guilty of 10 out of 12 misconduct charges brought against her in January.

A wild four-day misconduct hearing saw witnesses testify about how Gentry allegedly engaged in a threesome with two underlings in her chambers, allowed her staff to store and consume alcohol in court offices and hired people because she was involved in relationships with them.

Last June’s surprising Supreme Court decision granting LGBTQ employees protection under federal law would seem to put an end to workplace discrimination. But if you’re 50 or older, you may still experience an equally invidious form of discrimination: ageism.

According to a 2018 AARP survey, about three in five workers have experienced age discrimination in their jobs. A whopping 76 percent worried that ageism would hurt their job hunting. That fear is well-grounded. An analysis of employment data by the Urban Institute and ProPublica found that half of older workers were pushed out of jobs and 90 percent of them ended up taking a pay cut when they were finally rehired.

Being an older LGBTQ worker can make things even worse. Out LGBTQ workers have already had to deal with much higher levels of job discrimination and wage disparities. Now, despite the promise of job protections for being LGBTQ, they are finding that the pervasive problem of ageism serves as yet another threat to their careers and financial security.

Worsening the problem is the internalized ageism that many older LGBTQ people carry. A 2015 study of 312 gay men with an average age of 61 found that many felt aging was harder due to the perception that gay men primarily value younger men. No doubt, some of that carries over into the workplace as well.

An ex-security chief at CUNY’s Kingsborough Community College claims that the school president has been systematically phasing out male white employees replacing them with minority women, new court papers show.

James Capozzi, an Italian-American, claims he was unjustly booted from his job as Director of Public Safety at the Manhattan Beach campus in 2019 — and that he was only the tip of the iceberg, according to a discrimination suit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

The 58-year-old from Queens earned a $143,805 salary at the school in 2019, according to See Through NY.

College president Claudia Schrader — who earned $232,704 in 2019, according to See Through NY — told Capozzi, through his supervisor, that she wanted to go in a “different direction” when she had him fired just shy of his fifth year on the job, the court papers from Tuesday claim.

And Capozzi would have been eligible for a bonus if he’d made it through the fifth year at the school, the suit says.

Schrader replaced Capozzi with a black lieutenant who he says was less qualified, less experienced and less educated than Capozzi — whose qualifications included a law degree and 30 years in law enforcement, the court documents claim.

Police have allegedly told residents in Ellen DeGeneres' Montecito neighborhood that the recent burglary at the TV host's property was an 'inside job'.

On July 4 Ellen and wife Portia de Rossi's $27 million mansion was burglarized, with authorities saying at the time that the couple's home was targeted due to their 'celebrity status'.

The association reassured the residents that the community did not need to worry about more robberies taking place.

The ultra exclusive enclave is home to a host of billionaires and celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Ariana Grande and in recent weeks Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Tinder is charging straight men over 50 almost five times more than some other users to sign up for its premium service, according to a recent investigation by an Australian consumer advocacy group.

The consumer group Choice enlisted 60 mystery shoppers to sign up for Tinder Plus—a “premium subscription plan” that gives users the ability to undo accidental swipes, change their location, and dish out an unlimited number of “likes”—and compared the rates they were offered.

"Nowhere on Tinder's website, privacy policy, or in its terms and conditions does the company say that it will charge you a different price based on your personal data," Choice's Erin Turner told the ABC. The company further alleges that Tinder's terms of use aren’t transparent enough, since users aren’t told that pricing models are dictated by the details of their personal data.

Bill Clinton ‘strolled into the darkness’ with two girls while staying on pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island, according to papers released by a judge.

Roberts says the women were ‘two lovely girls who were visiting from New York,’ but does not identify them. She said they sat next to the former president at dinner.

‘Bill’s wife, Hillary’s absence from the night made it easy for his apparent provocative cheeky side to come out,’ Roberts wrote.

‘Teasing the girls on either side of him with playful pokes and brassy comments, there was no modesty between any of them.’

Clinton stayed in a villa on the billionaire pedophile's private Caribbean island because he owed him 'a favor', Roberts told investigators in the newly unsealed documents.

The accusation comes from Virginia Roberts, one of Epstein’s prime accusers and was hidden in a book proposal she had written, that was among the huge number of documents released late Thursday night.

In addition to Clinton, Roberts claimed in the unsealed testimony that she also recalled seeing former Vice President Al Gore, Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum on Epstein's private jet named 'Lolita Express'.

Roberts claimed that orgies were a 'constant' feature of life on the pedophile's island and they also took place on the plane.