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      in Elections

      Madeleine Albright hailed as a 'trailblazer' by colleagues – video

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      Madeleine Albright, who fled the Nazis as a child in her native Czechoslovakia and rose to become the first female US secretary of state and, in her later years, a pop culture feminist icon, died on Wednesday at the age of 84, her family said. Colleagues across the US state department and the UN have remembered Albright as a ‘trailblazer’ whose impact is felt ‘every single day’

      Madeleine Albright, first female US secretary of state, dies aged 84
      Madeleine Albright obituary
      Madeleine Albright: ‘The things that are happening are genuinely, seriously bad’ More

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      in US Politics

      Republican senator Josh Hawley worries feminism has driven men to ‘pornography and video games’

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      RepublicansRepublican senator Josh Hawley worries feminism has driven men to ‘pornography and video games’Far-right senator from Missouri ridiculed for his homilies on ‘manly virtues’ Adam Gabbatt@adamgabbattMon 1 Nov 2021 13.14 EDTLast modified on Mon 1 Nov 2021 14.03 EDTThe effort to combat toxic masculinity in the US has led men to consume more pornography and play more video games, the Missouri senator Josh Hawley claimed in a speech to a group of Republicans.Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, Hawley addressed the issue of “manhood”, which he said was under attack, and called for men to return to traditional masculine roles.The Donald Trump supporter who notoriously raised a fist in support of a mob outside the US Capitol on 6 January appeared to echo talking points made by the likes of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that opposes feminism and believes men are under attack from liberal elites.“Can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing into the enclave of idleness and pornography and video games?” Hawley said.“While the left may celebrate this decline of men, I for one cannot join them. No one should.”Hawley, 41, did not cite sources for his belief that men were watching pornography more frequently. Nonetheless, on Monday his speech was republished by the Federalist, a rightwing outlet. In the address, Hawley said he wanted to discuss “the left’s attempt to give us a world beyond men”.“The left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic,” he said. “They want to define the traditional masculine virtues – things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness – as a danger to society.”Hawley is the son of a banker who attended private school before studying at Stanford and Yale. He clerked for the supreme court’s chief justice, John Roberts, and later became a law professor.Given his background, he has repeatedly raised eyebrows for railing against elites. Hawley’s apparent claim to speak for all men, in the name of a return to a vaguely defined masculinity of old, swiftly became a new subject of ridicule on Twitter.If Josh Hawley is an expert on masculinity then I’d like to take a few minutes to share my thoughts on quantum physics.— Jason Kander (@JasonKander) November 1, 2021
      In the good old days, uncriticized American men fucked real top-heavy silicone queens and machine-gunned their way through actual space aliens on a daily basis. Also, don’t shake the junior Missouri senator’s hand until you see him wash it. https://t.co/VrN3irWqKy— David Simon (@AoDespair) November 1, 2021
      Josh Hawley says American men are “watching porn and playing video games because their masculinity is being criticized.” Mostly by their parents who keep asking, “Josh, when are you going to move out of our basement, stop picking your nose and get a job?” pic.twitter.com/NSY6sbo2aP— Paul Rudnick (@PaulRudnickNY) November 1, 2021
      Hawley, who was a staunch defender of Brett Kavanaugh when he was accused of sexual assault during his supreme court nomination hearings in 2018, claimed: “Boys are increasingly treated like an illness in search of a cure.”“Hollywood delivers the toxic masculinity theme ad nauseum in television and film,” he said, going on to link traditional masculinity as “vital to self-government”.“Observers from the ancient Romans to our forefathers identified the manly virtues as indispensable for political liberty,” Hawley said.As well as pornography, Hawley tied the supposed decline in masculinity to issues including unemployment, people marrying at a later age and the preservation of liberty.Hawley said: “For centuries, lovers of liberty have praised these qualities as the highest standard of manhood. That’s not to say that women don’t possess them. But it is to say that these virtues are the bright side of the aggression and competitiveness and independence that psychologists, no less than philosophers, have long observed in men.“Assertiveness and independence are strengths when used to protect and empower others.”Hawley offered few solutions to the problems he claimed to present. On Monday, he used Twitter to promote his new podcast, co-hosted with his wife.“In the second episode of This is Living, Josh and Erin Hawley share the story of how they met, what drew them to each other, and how two people so different decided to get married,” a blurb for the podcast reads.The Hawleys met while studying law at Yale. Erin Hawley also clerked for Roberts and became a law professor.TopicsRepublicansThe far rightFeminismGenderUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      It’s clear capitalism isn’t working when US politicians try to bring back child labor | Arwa Mahdawi

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      The Week in PatriarchyFeminismIt’s clear capitalism isn’t working when US politicians try to bring back child laborArwa MahdawiThere is something very, very wrong with a system that would rather recruit more kids instead of paying better wages and providing more benefits to adults Sat 30 Oct 2021 09.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 30 Oct 2021 09.02 EDTSign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday.Build Back Better (with child labour)Back in the good old days American children didn’t sit around playing video games, making TikToks, and bingeing Netflix. They worked long hours in factories and sweatshops; they knew the value of hard graft. They didn’t take sick days either, they just died of diphtheria. It was a simpler time.Some US politicians, it would seem, are trying their best to return the country to a golden era of loose labour laws. The Wisconsin senate recently approved a bill that expands the working day for minors, allowing 14- and 15-year-olds to work until 11 pm on non-school nights. Must be fun being a child in Wisconsin! Not only do adults want to take away your free time, they also want to take away your free food. Over the summer school board members in the Waukesha school district made headlines after they voted to leave a federal free meals program because they worried it made it easy for families to “become spoiled” or develop an “addiction” to the service. Imagine if kids became addicted to the government ensuring they didn’t starve, eh? They might not be so keen to work for peanuts until 11 at night. Then you might have to start paying adults a living wage and the whole system would fall apart!As I’m sure you are aware, the United States – along with much of the world – is facing a dramatic labour shortage amid what has been termed the Great Resignation. Earlier this month the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that an unprecedented 2.9% of the workforce, about 4.3 million people, quit their jobs in August. Republicans have been doing their best to starve people back into the low-paid jobs that keep the economy running by cutting off pandemic unemployment benefits, but that hasn’t immediately solved the issue. So some bright sparks have been turning to child labour instead. Over the summer New Jersey passed legislation temporarily increasing the number of hours that kids aged 16-18 are able to work. Meanwhile, fast-food chains across the US have ramped up their efforts to recruit kids. Last month a McDonald’s in Oregon sparked headlines after it put out a banner urging 14- and 15-year-olds to apply.There’s obviously nothing wrong with teenagers getting summer jobs. But there is something very, very wrong with a system that would rather recruit more kids into the workforce instead of paying better wages and providing more benefits to adults. There’s something very wrong with a system where billionaires have seen their net worth balloon during the worst public health crisis in recent memory – and politicians seemingly have no desire to make them pay their fair share in taxes. There’s something very wrong with a system where minimum wage isn’t enough to afford a two-bedroom rental anywhere in the US. And, increasingly, people aren’t putting up with all this any more. They’re not swallowing the lie that if they just buckle down and work hard, they can achieve the American dream. They’re not quietly getting on with it, they’re organising: the past year has seen a wave of labour uprisings across America. Meanwhile, socialism (once an incredibly dirty word in the US) has been gaining popularity among young Americans. And that last bit should surprise no one. If politicians are trying to bring back child labour to plug labour shortages then I think it’s pretty clear that capitalism isn’t working.Kellogg’s to give staff in the UK fertility, menopause and miscarriage leaveThe company has said it is aiming to help staff feel “psychologically safe” at work. Not sure if that ethos extends to its employees in the US: 1,400 Kellogg’s workers recently went on strike to protest against poor working conditions.Women are better investors than menWomen’s investment returns were 0.4% higher than men’s, according to Fidelity’s 2021 Women and Investing Study. While that’s not a huge difference, it’s just the latest study to show that women tend to be better with money than men. Women tend to hold their investments for longer and are less prone to panic selling.Men are increasingly worried about their biological clocksSirin Kale profiles the men who are afraid they’ve left it too late to have kids.US tech investor Joe Lonsdale thinks men who take paternity leave are losersThe multimillionaire venture capitalist tweeted that men with important jobs shouldn’t be taking extended time off to spend with their newborns. “In the old days men had babies and worked harder to provide for their future – that’s the correct masculine response,” he tweeted. The father-of-three has refused to apologize for his comments. Real men don’t apologize, doubling down on looking like an idiot is the correct masculine response!Sexual misconduct complaint filed against Andrew CuomoThe former New York governor continues his dramatic fall from grace. Still, things aren’t too bad for him: at least he has that $5.1m payout from his book on leadership to fall back on.Polish parliament debates bill banning LGBTQ pride paradesPoland has become an increasingly hostile place for LGBTQ people in recent years.US issues its first passport with ‘X’ gender designationX-citing news for non-binary people!Study finds California condors can have ‘virgin births’Researchers believe it is the first case of asexual reproduction in any avian species where the female had access to a mate.The week in phonecall-archyLike every sensible millennial, I do not pick up my phone to unknown numbers under any circumstance. Nor, it seems, does a hiker who got lost in Colorado recently and repeatedly ignored phone calls from a search and rescue team because he didn’t recognize the number. I appreciate the dedication to avoiding spammers, but that was a very bad call.
      Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for pre-order
      TopicsFeminismThe Week in PatriarchyUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      'A breath of fresh air': readers on women who changed the world in 2020

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      Amanda Gorman‘She was a breath of fresh air on inauguration day’She is a young, intelligent and brilliant woman who will accomplish great things for good causes such as feminism, [and fighting] marginalisation, oppression, racism, etc. Our world today needs women and men of this calibre in order to live better together. In this difficult period, with the Covid-19 pandemic, it was so wonderful to get a breath of fresh air on Joe Biden’s inauguration day, and the accompanying enthusiasm to maintain good mental and physical health. Young people, especially, need hope for a future that looks so bleak. Nicole Dorion Poussart, retired historian, Quebec City, CanadaGreta Thunberg‘She dedicated her childhood to defend this planet’She dedicated her childhood to defend this planet. She is still very young but knows how to address the public and express her ideas and ideals. I don’t know how she came to be so dedicated – it’s outstanding! We need people who can persuade politicians to do something and cut emissions, save our flora and fauna and the land.Australia could become a desert if we don’t do something about water and stop the multinational companies from making millions from destroying this environment. We have a beautiful country and lots of people I know want to keep it beautiful, but it is difficult. We need people like Greta – I hope she lives for ever! Nathalie Shepherd, 79, originally from Holland but living in Adelaide, AustraliaAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘She is a political powerhouse’AOC is a Democratic representative from New York’s 14th congressional district. She is a political newcomer and a rising star because of her popular democratic-socialist policies and ideas. It’s ideas like the “green new deal”, tuition-free public college, affordable housing and many more that have gained traction among the working class and future generations.Love her or hate her, you’ve got to admit AOC is a political powerhouse. She works tirelessly to amplify progressive voices that have been neglected by our government for decades. It feels really good having a member of the government actually care about the people rather than the handouts they receive from oil companies and evil corporations. Never has a member of Congress been so transparent and supportive of effective political reform. Abdullah Chaudhry, 19, student, Texas, USZelda Perkins‘She’s been really brave in speaking out against Harvey Weinstein’She has been really brave in speaking out about her regret around the NDA she signed [in 1998] after allegations against Harvey Weinstein, who was convicted of rape and sexual assault in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison. Breaking the NDA, and the debate this sparked about how pernicious they are in enabling abusive behaviour to go unchecked, makes her a really important figure and unsung hero in the post-#MeToo landscape.She’s really committed and brave, and clearly not in it for the fame. She has articulated really well the hold that men like Weinstein have on the women who have come into contact with them, and why this is not just about Weinstein, but addressing a toxic power imbalance. Ruth, 45, LondonStacey Abrams‘She’s been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for her work in the 2020 US election’She is a US democratic politician, lawyer, author and voting-rights activist who played a significant role in getting the state of Georgia to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 US presidential election. She was also largely instrumental in ensuring that the new Democrat government had a working majority in the Senate by getting Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff elected in the runoff election that took place in January 2021. She has recently been nominated for the Nobel peace prize for her work in the 2020 election.In this time of political turmoil, I am inspired by Abrams because she has shown what is lacking in so many of our politicians in the UK and US – intelligence, honesty, bravery, transparency, decency, pragmatism, hard work and a wonderful sense of humour. She has shown that an individual can make a difference, and without cynicism. We should thank her, for we owe her a lot. John Glasser, 74, retired computer consultant, Tring, HertfordshireHannah Gadsby‘She touches on topics such as abuse and autism and puts them in easy words’She’s an Australian standup who has done two Netflix comedy specials. Her second one, which was released in May last year, was on her autism. It’s super-funny, but at the same time touches on so many important topics and subjects that are usually quite hard to explain. I’ve watched both her shows at least 10 times so far and I will probably watch them again at some point, because they don’t get boring.She inspires me by putting subjects such as abuse and autism in easy words and explaining feminist concepts so well. It’s highly educating and encourages me to fight my own feminist battles, to put my own struggles in words and explain them to others. I’m still much less agreeable than she is when I’m talking about feminism, so I hope I will be able to put things into words as lightly and at the same time convincingly as she does. Anna, Berlin, Germany More

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      in US Politics

      What a picture of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a bikini tells us about the disturbing future of AI | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Want to see a half-naked woman? Well, you’re in luck! The internet is full of pictures of scantily clad women. There are so many of these pictures online, in fact, that artificial intelligence (AI) now seems to assume that women just don’t like wearing clothes.That is my stripped-down summary of the results of a new research study on image-generation algorithms anyway. Researchers fed these algorithms (which function like autocomplete, but for images) pictures of a man cropped below his neck: 43% of the time the image was autocompleted with the man wearing a suit. When you fed the same algorithm a similarly cropped photo of a woman, it auto-completed her wearing a low-cut top or bikini a massive 53% of the time. For some reason, the researchers gave the algorithm a picture of the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and found that it also automatically generated an image of her in a bikini. (After ethical concerns were raised on Twitter, the researchers had the computer-generated image of AOC in a swimsuit removed from the research paper.)Why was the algorithm so fond of bikini pics? Well, because garbage in means garbage out: the AI “learned” what a typical woman looked like by consuming an online dataset which contained lots of pictures of half-naked women. The study is yet another reminder that AI often comes with baked-in biases. And this is not an academic issue: as algorithms control increasingly large parts of our lives, it is a problem with devastating real-world consequences. Back in 2015, for example, Amazon discovered that the secret AI recruiting tool it was using treated any mention of the word “women’s” as a red flag. Racist facial recognition algorithms have also led to black people being arrested for crimes they didn’t commit. And, last year, an algorithm used to determine students’ A-level and GCSE grades in England seemed to disproportionately downgrade disadvantaged students.As for those image-generation algorithms that reckon women belong in bikinis? They are used in everything from digital job interview platforms to photograph editing. And they are also used to create huge amounts of deepfake porn. A computer-generated AOC in a bikini is just the tip of the iceberg: unless we start talking about algorithmic bias, the internet is going to become an unbearable place to be a woman. More

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      in US Politics

      Women march against Trump and Republicans in major US cities

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      Thousands of mostly young women in masks rallied on Saturday in Washington DC and other US cities, exhorting voters to oppose Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans in the 3 November elections. The latest in a series of rallies that began with a massive women’s march the day after Trump’s January 2017 inauguration was playing out during the coronavirus pandemic. Demonstrators were asked to wear face coverings and practice social distancing. Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March, opened the Washington event by asking people to keep their distance from one another, saying the only superspreader event would be the recent one at the White House. She talked about the power of women to end Trump’s presidency. “His presidency began with women marching and now it’s going to end with woman voting. Period,” she said. More