So, my very first real job was as a copygirl at a great metropolitan newspaper at which I hoped to become a reporter. Nearly everyone who started at the great metropolitan newspaper in those days began as a copyboy or copygirl. We filled actual paste pots and distributed spikes on which editors slammed down torn off copy from the wire services, and fetched coffee, and got files from the morgue (library) and we did things like take the subway to remote areas of the city to get quotes for someone else’s story. We did this 8 or 10 or 12 hours a day for abysmal pay and then we worked on our own time on stories we reported on our own time and hoped that someone would see fit to publish them. (This was actually far more fun than it sounds, because just being there was exciting and the copy kids traveled as a pack and encouraged each other and ate cheap potluck group dinners together in our crappy apartments and kept terrible hours and we were all in our early 20s when you could do all this and still work 18 hours a day.)
It was very important to find mentors. It was very important to build relationships with editors who could help and guide and advocate. And one of mine was a deputy on one of the important news desks. And one late night, when I was banging away on a typewriter (yup) on a piece I was working on, he offered to drive me home, which meant that I didn’t have to figure out either how to pay for a cab or how to navigate a walk in a city that was not safe. And I thought we could talk shop and this would be great. I, of course, was wrong.
Three stories below ground, in a shadowy parking lot, in his car, he jumped me. I was not raped. I talked him into stopping. I didn’t get out of the car. I actually let him drive me home. Because my big fears were not losing my job, and not embarrassing HIM and trying to figure out what I had done to wrong. I mean, I must have encouraged him, right?
I later found out that I was by no means the only copy girl he had done this to. And I reported him. And just getting the words out of my mouth to describe it — to another woman, no less — made me gag with shame. And, of course, nothing happened.
I’m 62 now. This was 40 years ago. And I’m positive that every single woman who reads this tonight can tell a similar story or a much worse story or many much worse stories about violence and humiliations visited upon her. And the shame.
It’s not us; it’s them. It’s not our fault; it’s theirs. It’s not our shame; it’s theirs. But it continues.
*
And THIS deserves our thanks and gratitude:
"Emily Doe," the anonymous sexual assault victim whose impact statement was read by millions before the #MeToo movement caught fire, will appear on "60 Minutes," putting her own voice, name and face to her powerful words. Chanel Miller tells her story for the first time in an interview with Bill Whitaker to be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday, September 22 at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT on CBS.
*
And THIS deserves our outrage and condemnation:
Prosecutors in El Salvador have announced that they will appeal against last month’s acquittal of a young woman accused of killing her stillborn son, marking what would be her third trial in the socially conservative Central American country.
***
(Evelyn) Hernández, 21, said she was raped by a gang member and was unaware of her pregnancy until just before delivering a stillborn son in early 2016.
***
From an excellent diary by Galtisalie, which you should read and recommend RIGHT NOW.
*
Women and girls throughout the world have always been shamed for our bodies. We are too old or too young or too fat or too thin or we don’t do something with our hair or we have menstrual periods (or, later, no longer do). It’s always something.
And misogynists — the toxic men and the smug women who enable them — are never content. This is what the current Administration is doing to girls and young women (like Evelyn Hernandez) who are trying to escape from the routine violence of their home countries:
19 states filed a lawsuit in California this week against the Trump administration for the indefinite detention of and conditions endured by migrant children and their families. Among the charges of hygiene deprivation for children detained at the border—including the alleged lack of basics like toothpaste and bars of soap—is insufficient access to menstrual products and care. Testimony in the lawsuit included that: “Girl(s) at the facility…were each given one sanitary pad per day. Although the guards knew they had their periods, they were not offered showers or a change of clothes, even when the other girl visibly bled through her pants.”
*
Survey Says: Things Republican Men Believe (Read the whole thread: I’m just posting excerpts)
(Banging head on desk.)
And this:
(Simple Answer: The FDA is run by the Trump Administration.)
Actual Science Matters.
Five medical associations and the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published a joint editorial September 4 online, emphatically supporting the protection of abortion rights afforded by the US Supreme Court in Roe v Wade. The associations are: American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, American Gynecological & Obstetrical Society, Council of University Chairs of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Society for Academic Specialists in General Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Society for Maternal–Fetal Medicine (SMFM). Many medical associations have long since (and repeatedly) taken this stance publicly too, so the pressure's rising.
Read the Editorial Here.
OMG:
The M.I.T. Media Lab, which has been embroiled in a scandal over accepting donations from the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, had a deeper fund-raising relationship with Epstein than it has previously acknowledged, and it attempted to conceal the extent of its contacts with him. Dozens of pages of e-mails and other documents obtained by The New Yorker reveal that, although Epstein was listed as “disqualified” in M.I.T.’s official donor database, the Media Lab continued to accept gifts from him, consulted him about the use of the funds, and, by marking his contributions as anonymous, avoided disclosing their full extent, both publicly and within the university. Perhaps most notably, Epstein appeared to serve as an intermediary between the lab and other wealthy donors, soliciting millions of dollars in donations from individuals and organizations, including the technologist and philanthropist Bill Gates and the investor Leon Black. According to the records obtained by The New Yorker and accounts from current and former faculty and staff of the media lab, Epstein was credited with securing at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, including two million dollars from Gates and $5.5 million from Black, gifts the e-mails describe as “directed” by Epstein or made at his behest. The effort to conceal the lab’s contact with Epstein was so widely known that some staff in the office of the lab’s director, Joi Ito, referred to Epstein as Voldemort or “he who must not be named.”
“Media Lab.” Jeepers.
Thus, why this is hard to read:
Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press used to maintain an online directory of media owned and operated by, for and about women.
We do not include men’s “women’s magazines” (magazines directed at women), even if they have a female staff. We do include many academic periodicals which are published by institutions, but only those where women determine content and make up the majority of the staff. If a woman’s media feels it fits our definition, we usually include them.
The first print edition of our annual Directory of Women’s Media came out January 1975. Our last print edition is the 2017 Directory of Women’s Media. We launched this online version in 2001.
...We are no longer publishing the Directory of Women’s Media or updating this online version. It was last updated in 2017. We will be taking down this online version in the coming months….
More here.
Other News:
Thank Goodness for States with Democratic Super Majorities:
Thank Goodness for Democratic Governors:
A handful of Wisconsin Republicans are bringing back legislation to ban the use of aborted fetal tissue in research.
The bill, authored by Sen. André Jacque of De Pere and Rep. Janel Brandtjen of Menomonee Falls, began circulating for cosponsors Wednesday and would prohibit the use of fetal tissue obtained from abortions for research or any other purpose.
Previous iterations of the bill have failed to become law in recent sessions under complete GOP control of state government, as they faced opposition from the scientific and medical research communities.
And with a Democratic governor in office who has already vetoed four abortion-related bills in his eight-month tenure, it’s all but certain the legislation would face a roadblock in Gov. Tony Evers.
Read More Here.
Thank Goodness for Progress:
Sisterhood IS Powerful!
*
As always, WOW is a group effort. Thanks to my sisters, Besame, mettle fatigue, SandraLLAP, elenacarlena, Tara the Antisocial Social Worker and Angmar.