Chaos Theory

Jen Kirkman rocking it on street harassment

Compliment the clothes, not the bodies!

You're got a reputation now, boys

Shockingly, women don't want to work at Uber now. Sorry, recruiters! Of course, I don't think women are actually wanted there anyway, so I guess it's no big loss! 

That figures

"She predicts that white women will earn equal pay around 2059, followed by black women in 2124 and Latino women in 2248. That’s the 23rd century."

Hope that helps

Game Developers Respond To Nasty Tweets By Donating Thousands To 'Girls Make Games'

When you have nowhere to go

"Ultimately, these statistics point to one harrowing truth: Women's safety is either a privilege or an accident of fate, and not a fundamental right. They show that British nationals, and white women, are far more likely to be able to turn to a refuge in order to leave an abusive partner. It shows that the street you happen to live on could literally determine whether you live or die."

On a somewhat related note....

"Now—because literally feeding the mother of your child to a pack of dogs is apparently not such a bad thing in the world of professional sport—de Souza has been signed to Boa Esporte, a second-divison club, for two years."

Girls need to be able to run from terrorist attacks

"It's a story with a happy ending about a demonstration that didn't happen — after activist Afghan women beat back the Ministry of Education decision that schoolgirls must exchange their current already modest uniforms for styles that are more restrictive and concealing."

"That's your identity, and it sucks that sometimes your identity can get in the way."

What happened when a man and woman switched names.

"I had been signing all these outgoing emails as Nicole. I realized it was Nicole he was being rude to. For the sake of keeping a client happy, I said, “Hi, my name is Martin. I'm going to take over for Nicole.”

And there was an instant change in his approach. I didn't change anything other than my name. Suddenly I was being thanked. I was being thanked for questions. Information was presented freely instead of me having to tease it out of this gentleman."

"Clients stopped second guessing me and instead just answered all of my damn questions. When I signed emails as Nicole, I’d send a document to a client with a half dozen or so questions attached, and half of my questions would go completely ignored or unanswered. That didn't happen when I was Martin.

The pet names stopped. No one called me sweetie when I was Martin -- so that was nice. No one asked me personal questions when I was Martin."

What a third-grade geography lesson taught me about a woman’s place in the world

Washington Post:

Josh is Bolivia, Jon is Chile, Isaac is Brazil, Tim is Venezuela, Tyler is Mexico.

Mrs. Hinds moves back down the line. She tells Jessica she is a tree. Melissa is the Gulf of Mexico. Ashley is the Caribbean Sea, and I am a river I cannot pronounce. Here we stand: The boys as countries, endless, enormous. Their bodies represent millions of people. They are home to cities, buildings, mountains, rivers and lush green valleys.

As girls — as future women — we are the empty things that move in the spaces around them, beside them, are often used and abused by them. Men fight over us, or claim us, sail their boats through our expanse. They cast lines into our depths, drawing up our resources — fish and other animals — sold for their profit.

I am a girl and I cannot be a country, I realize, I cannot be a country.

I want to say something to Mrs. Hinds, want to tell her that I am strong enough to be a country, big enough, that my brothers have taught me many things — including how to build a fire and shelter, and pack mud into dense jumps for BMX biking.

Instead, the boys cluster. They cheer one another. The power dynamic is evident. Whatever sense of wonder Mrs. Hinds had hoped to cultivate is lost in our expressions: Us girls, our ponytails, insignificant things, we think, are we.

“Mrs. Hinds,” I say, my feeble protest. She swivels to look at me.

“Women can’t be countries,” she says, before I’ve even asked the question, no doubt the result of many years of this activity, as if that takes care of that.

Three decades removed, my mother still tells this story when someone asks what I was like as a child.

“She came home, threw her backpack down, and began screaming that she would be a country,” my mother says, laughing. My male friends roll their eyes. My female friends shake their heads. I remember stuff like this, they say, taking a long, thoughtful sip of merlot. But together we laugh it off. A young, defiant me, the very same person, they tease, I remain today.

Everyone has a moment that changes them forever. Mine exists in that classroom, in the knowledge instilled that day not of geography but of how hard the world will work to make a woman think she needs a man to be of value.

I have spent the whole of my adult life — more moments than I can count — trying to be a river for a man, a mountain for a man, trying to respond, in many ways, to Mrs. Hinds’s brand of misogyny. But now, in my 30s — despite the all-too-easy narrative of spinsterhood — all I can think is what a thrill, that no man has contained me, that I own a home and have a job and rescued a dog I love too much. How wild it is to finally be sovereign, to at last be a country.

The elephant in the valley

Why are men so awful to women (in Silicon Valley this time)? It always seems to boil down to "they won't stop trying to fuck them," doesn't it? 

Women in finance work just as hard as men — and are more likely to get fired (Washington Post)

"Data show men in the financial industry are three times as likely as women to engage in misconduct: fraud, negligence, risky investments. On average, they commit errors that are 30 percent more expensive to their firms. And they’re twice as likely to offend again.

Female financial advisers and stockbrokers who perpetrate similar wrongs, however, face a greater risk of losing their jobs."

So Hillary would have already been impeached by now, you're saying?

"But it’s clear that female leaders, in the rare cases that they’re elected or appointed at all, face higher bars for success and, in many cases, seem set up to leave office quickly or fail altogether. Then, countries are left mapping one failure onto an entire gender, and aspiring female politicians are left with one fewer role model to help them solve the ever-challenging puzzle of how to get to the top."