You are currently browsing the daily archive for August 13, 2012.
A neat tidbit from the slacktivist. I’ve excerpted a bit here:
“If you’re a disabled worker, then you’re protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. If you’re a pregnant worker and not hindered in job performance, or if you’re pregnant and completely unable to work, then you’re protected under the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. But if you’re a pregnant worker and able to perform some, but not all, of the functions of your job, then you slip through the cracks and you’re SOL. That means that some pregnant women may be forced to choose between keeping their job and keeping their pregnancy.
Now, since the “pro-life” and “pro-family” movements of the religious right are all about preventing pregnant women from choosing not to keep their pregnancies, this would seem like legislation they ought to be supporting.
And yet, as I noted last month, I haven’t yet seen any support for this, or even any mention of it, among such groups. The PWFA would help to remove one powerful economic incentive for abortion — a real situation that real people face. Anti-abortion groups therefore ought to support it. But if any of them are supporting it, they’re doing so very, very quietly.
Maybe I’d just missed their statements backing this bill? To double-check, I asked the folks at NWLC if they had heard of any support for this workplace protection from anti-abortion groups. Liz Watson, a senior advisor at NWLC, responded:
Supporting pregnant workers so that they can continue their jobs and have healthy pregnancies, is something people of all political stripes should agree on, regardless of their stance on other issues, including abortion. As yet, we are not aware of any support from pro-life groups, however.”
Hypocrisy in action. *sigh*
I keep telling myself, “Arbourist, you need to post more stuff you write as opposed to other things gleaned from the net”. The problem is that the net has a lot of awesome on it that does it better than I. Consider Sociological Images. They present a concept, concisely explain said concept and then reinforce the learning with a spot-on video. SI, you do are doing it right. From SI:
“Microaggressions are “brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative… slights and insults” (source). These are often subtle. So the recipient feels badly, but it can be difficult to explain exactly why, especially to someone who isn’t sympathetic to issues of bias. The Microaggressions Project has hundreds, maybe thousands, of examples.
In this video, Franchesca Leigh poses as a “White girl” and says many of the things that she and other “Black girls” hear routinely. To Leigh, these are microaggressions. They variously trivialize and show insensitivity towards race and racism, remind the listener that she is considered different and strange, homogenize and stereotype Black people, and more…
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…