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ismnotwasm

ismnotwasm's Journal
ismnotwasm's Journal
June 27, 2018

Record number of LGBT candidates running for governor

Rep. Jared Polis (D) on Tuesday won the Democratic nomination to be the next governor of Colorado, outlasting three other prominent Democrats with the help of millions of dollars he gave his own campaign.
In the process, Polis becomes the third member of the LGBT community to win a gubernatorial nomination this year -- the first time in American history more than one open LGBT person has won a nomination in any given year.

Polis faces a close race in a state that gave Hillary Clinton its electoral votes by just a five-percent margin in 2008. Democrats have won three gubernatorial elections in a row, though Republicans captured a U.S. Senate seat now held by Sen. Cory Gardner (R) in the 2014 midterm elections.

Polis will face Walker Stapleton, the first-term state Treasurer who won the Republican nomination on Tuesday. Stapleton, the second cousin of President George W. Bush, outlasted several other Republicans including Doug Robinson, an investment banker who is also Mitt Romney's nephew.


But his nomination is historic nonetheless, in a year in which more gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender candidates than ever before are running for office.


http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/394314-record-number-of-lgbt-candidates-running-for-governor?amp&__twitter_impression=true
June 26, 2018

There Is No Biological Difference Between Male And Female Brains

Pop neuroscience has long been fascinated with uncovering secret biological differences between male and female brains. Just last year, the Google engineer James Damore caused an uproar after publishing a manifesto detailing the various ways women were biologically different from men.

But according to Lise Eliot, a professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School and the author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain, anyone who goes searching for innate differences between the sexes won’t find them.

“People say men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but the brain is a unisex organ. We have the exact same structures,” she said onstage Monday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, which is co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic.“There is absolutely no difference between male and female brains.”

Eliot said neuroscientists have yet to find a single circuit that’s wired differently between men and women, and that differences between sexes are best explained by nurture, not nature.


https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/563702/?__twitter_impression=true
June 16, 2018

And they said rape culture wasn't real

I’m posting this, mostly, for myself, as this forum all but died. Remembering all The battles about rape, sexual harassment, rape culture, language, patriarchy at DU. The belittling, the minimizing, the disingenuous arguments, the bullshit. Every once in a while at DU, I’ll even see a bitter soul take a pot shot at “benevolent sexism” because nice guys or something. I got my first hide out of this group reposting a blogger who said instead of all women having to walk around in a state of fear of rape, it was just as logical for all men to be treated as walking around in a state of pre-rape. I still read Dworkin.

Interesting though, how the old van guard of second wave feminists, some of them, lost their way at as the results of their battles bore fruit in succeeding generations of women, reaping the benefits of Feminism. And Feminism itself found its newest rebirth at the crossroads of intersectionality. Interesting, and in retrospect completely logical, how the the most powerful feminist voices now are African American women, as well as other women of color. Trans women are also emerging as a powerful voice for women’s rights.

And here we are at another crossroads. As bigoted white men, and bigoted, complacent, white women voted for Trump, it broke something in people of goodwill and compassion and progressive thought. I think what broke was the desire to go along to get along when one has a privileged life. IF one understands what privilege is and what it isn’t. There’s still far to much pushback in the age of Trump. It comes from feeling that enough dollars saves one from bigotry


Weinstein and Cosby shows us that beauty, talent and wealth is not enough to protect women. The sheer horror of Trump shows us that seeing thing such as the unutterable pain at the southern border will affect us in such a way we can no longer ignore it. Or at least I can’t. I hurt every day, and every day I am angry. I welcome this. It doesn’t “damage” me. I am no passive soul searching for zen and comfort.

94% of Black women who voted voted for Hillary Clinton. There has been a number of attempts to minimize that remarkable statistic, the lastest being to simply ignore it. What did black women know that white women didn’t? If you ask them, they will tell you. It’s not for me to say. Me? I listened to their voices whenever I could. Still do. Often, I do it in silence, because white women, so many of us were so stunningly wrong in our political choices, there are very few I want to hear from. There are, of course, a few I do. As there are very few white men I want to hear from right now. (Plain, simple reporting aside)

Practically this means I watch no TV pundits at all, get my news on-line after I vet facts, from sources with proven diversity that isn’t tokenism. I pay little attention to memes unless they make me laugh. There is still tons of bullshit. Mostly from the right, who have appeared to have lost their damn minds for real, but the left is not immune from bullshit. Some of it I even like, as I lost any desire to “play fair” As someone recently said this isn’t middle school.

Because people have died, are dying, will die. And they will suffer before they do. I’m a nurse. I see a lot of suffering, enough death. When it’s preventable, that’s when I get angry as well.

When sexual harassment happens, it’s easy ― and not wrong ― to blame individual perpetrators, i.e., the “bad men.” And over the past couple of years, lots of men have been fired, demoted, arrested and publicly shamed for various acts of sexual misconduct.

But a major study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine outlines a more comprehensive way of looking at sexual harassment within organizations and identifies the strongest predictor of such behavior. Surprisingly, it has little to do with individual perpetrators.


The study finds that the strongest, most potent predictor of sexual harassment is essentially the culture of the company ― what the researchers call “organizational climate.”

If employees believe that their organization takes harassment seriously, then harassment is less likely to happen, according to the 311-page report released Tuesday. That faith in fair treatment acts as a deterrent against bad actors and encourages workers to speak up about harassment ― key to keeping bad behavior at bay.


https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5b23f8c3e4b0f9178a9cd6f5?ncid=APPLENEWS00001
June 8, 2018

Yup

The whole continuing sage of “they’re both the same bullshit” sounds like damage control from a failed “revolution” some members of which should have very guilty consciences instead of doubling down. A movement that was mostly for white people anyway.

Democrats have had their own come to Jesus moments after Trump, many of them...but they’ve done that despite Bernie Sanders, not because of him, his “movement” or whatever political party he chooses to align himself with.

Bernie...He’s a popular guy with a lot of people. Sure. But not nearly enough people and certainly not with the diversity we need. The Democratic Party does have that. The Democratic Party platform does have that. Elected Democrats are working their asses off to fight what’s happening right here, right now in real time. Thank God for Democrats I say. Thank God for the Democratic Party.

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About ismnotwasm

Whiteness is a scourge on humanity. Voting for Obama that one time is not a get out of being a racist card
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