Mary Cain, a middle-distance runner, reports that her male coaches' constant demands she get “thinner, and thinner, and thinner” hurt her health and career. The crux of the problem: she joined a program operated by Nike, whose priority is selling shoes, not training athletes.

The New York Times:

The problem is so widespread it affected the only other female athlete featured in the last Nike video ad Cain appeared in, the figure skater Gracie Gold. When the ad came out in 2014, like Cain, Gold was a prodigy considered talented enough to win a gold medal at the next Olympics. And, like Cain, Gold got caught in a system where she was compelled to become thinner and thinner. She developed disordered eating to the point of imagining her own death.

“America loves a good child prodigy story, and business is ready and waiting to exploit that story, especially when it comes to girls,” said Lauren Fleshman, who ran for Nike until 2012. “When you have these kinds of good girls, girls who are good at following directions to the point of excelling, you’ll find a system that’s happy to take them. And it’s rife with abuse.”

It's a big warning to young athletes: Nike doesn't need all of its mannequins to be winners. The head coach, Alberto Salazar, would weigh her in front of her teammates and humiliate her if she failed to reach his arbitrary targets.

Consider how even after years of constant scandals, this sort of abuse still thrives at the place two opposed goals meet. Read the rest

The "pick-up artist" community, a sexist self-improvement cult centered around manipulating and bothering women into sex, needs no introduction. Like many of its stars, Adnan "Addy A-game" Ahman is little more than an incel who graduated to sexual harassment. He's off to jail for two years, and on to the sex offender's registry for ten. BBC Scotland reports:

Ahmed was convicted last month of threatening and abusive behaviour towards five women. The 38-year-old from Maryhill, Glasgow, has also been placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years. ... Five young women, aged between 16 and 21, gave evidence at his trial about how they had been intimidated by Ahmed in Glasgow city centre and in Uddingston, South Lanarkshire.

Another woman broke down in court as she described how Ahmed followed her through Glasgow city centre and grabbed her head as he tried to kiss her.

YouTube failed to remove Ahman's videos, many depicting him following and pestering women and girls in public, until the BBC broadcast the exposé about them that led to his charges. In one example, he boasts of exposing himself to a woman and asking her if she's ever seen circumcised dick; in others, he records sexual partners without consent and posts audio and video online.

"Not for the politically correct," as he used to say. Read the rest

10-15 is Customs and Border Protection's code for "aliens in custody"; "I'm 10-15" is a secret Facebook group for current and former CBP officers whose participants create and share a torrent of racist and sexist memes, as well as jokes about the deaths of migrants in their care. Read the rest

Jeff Bezos and a "dozen tech titans" enjoyed a mini-conference in a medieval Italian hamlet, reports GQ magazine. Leading the story was a group shot of the gang, which includes only two women: Ruzwana Bashir and Lynn Jurich. Problem is, Bashir and Jurich are photoshopped into the photo, as demonstrated when BuzzFeed's Ryan Mac noticed their odd poses and @benjymous found the untamperered original on LinkedIn.

I got some questions about this story on "tech titans" in Italy, and uhhh I think this photo is photoshopped? ... Look at the woman, supposedly SunRun CEO Lynn Jurich, in the background. Some weird stuff is going on with her leg, which isn't aligned with the rest of her body.

Here is the LinkedIn post where it came from that went up a week ago. The person is Ferdinando de Bellis, a corporate communications professional who has worked with Cucinelli from Milan.

(This will inevitably be taken down, so enjoy while you can.) https://t.co/8mV2jhqFWg pic.twitter.com/DL7dAGidjt

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) June 12, 2019

Is two women enough to photoshop into the techie trip to Umbria? They should have photoshopped in at least four. Read the rest

@BUGPOSTING discovered something funny and desperately sad at Target: "womens" laxatives in a special pink box at more than twice the price. The real difference appears to be that they are "Comfort Coated", i.e. enteric coated so they dissolve slower.

paying the big bucks so i can perform gender, with my Ass pic.twitter.com/IYJo9SMMTh

— ask not for whom the bug posts (@BUGPOSTING) May 28, 2019

Read the rest

Larry Nassar, the USA Gymnastics doctor who sexually assaulted hundreds of young girls, will spend the rest of his life in jail. USA Gymnastics circled the wagons and shredded the files, and as a result it's hard to understand details of how it faciliated and protected Nassar. But Kerry Howley's startling article in New York Magazine shows how important medical bullshit was to his strategy and how the fraternal relationship between medical and administrative authority covered for him.

17-year-old Brianne Randall filed a complaint with Meridian Township police and had a rape kit administered at the local hospital. Detective Andrew McCready called Nassar and asked him to come in for questioning, which he did. Nassar told McCready that he had indeed touched Brianne’s perineum, that it was part of a treatment called “sacrotuberous-ligament release,” and that the treatment was “published in medical journals and training tapes.” He also gave McCready his PowerPoint presentation on said ligament, in which he is pictured cupping a girl’s buttocks and pressing near a girl’s vulva. McCready then called Brianne’s mother to tell her the case would be closed and that “no crime was committed.”

And:

in 2014, cheerleader Amanda Thomashow reported an assault to one of MSU’s Title IX investigators and university police... Thomashow, concluded [investigator Kristine] Moore, failed to understand the “nuanced difference” between osteopathic manipulative medicine and sexual massage. “Dr. Nassar has presented on this nationally and internationally,”

This sort of thing was constant and typical. It's hard to see where dumb respect for the doctor stops and willful contempt for his victims begins. Read the rest

Former Google executive Andy Rubin was credibly accused of "coercing" a colleague into oral sex. Google believed the victim and quietly forced Rubin out with a $90m payoff, according to a bombshell story in The New York Times. Staff at Google offices worldwide walked out in protest today.

The employees are demanding several key changes in how sexual misconduct allegations are dealt with at the firm, including a call to end forced arbitration - a move which would make it possible for victims to sue.

Google chief executive Sundar Pichai has told staff he supports their right to take the action.

"I understand the anger and disappointment that many of you feel," he said in an all-staff email. "I feel it as well, and I am fully committed to making progress on an issue that has persisted for far too long in our society… and, yes, here at Google, too."

Remember James Damore and his fable of totalitarian feminism at Google? It will always be more real to those guys than any of this. Read the rest

Quick! Get some of these sexist facial tissues while you still can.

It took them 60 years but Kleenex is finally renaming their "Mansize" tissues after getting customer complaints. The facial-tissues-formerly-known-as-Mansize will now be branded "Extra Large."

Parent company Kimberly-Clark "succumbed to growing public demand to change the name, despite not itself believing that the Mansize branding suggests or endorses gender inequality."

Sam Smethers, chief executive at feminist campaign group, the Fawcett Society, praised the move, saying: "Rebranding mansized tissues is not to be sneezed at. Removing sexist branding such as this is just sensible 21st century marketing. But we still have a long way to go before using lazy stereotypes to sell products is a thing of the past."

(DesignTaxi) Read the rest

In a year of unprecedented involvement by women in politics, as candidates, as votes and as subjects of political debate and rancor, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints has an interesting proposal: women should quit social media for 10 days, right before the election.

With a major election less than a month away, Nelson’s timing was particularly unfortunate for women involved in politics. Parker is a member of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, a left-leaning group founded in the wake of the 2016 election to encourage LDS women to become politically involved. She is helping to organize a nonpartisan “voter prep party” in her neighborhood where women will gather to review the issues, with the goal of boosting turnout in the midterms. Her group had planned to distribute sample ballots and other mateials online before the party, but now they are handing out invitations and information by hand and hoping for the best.

Tax them. Read the rest

“Lying Skanks.”

That is what radio host and Fox News pundit Kevin Jackson (screengrabbed above) called Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's alleged sexual assault victims, in a series of tweets today. Read the rest

A group of women jobseekers, working with the Communications Workers of America and the American Civil Liberties Union, are "filing charges with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Tuesday against Facebook and 9 employers," reports the New York Times.

It's a simple case, as least in abstraction: Facebook let job advertisers target users by gender, but it is a violation of federal law to discriminate on the basis of gender or to aid and abet such discrimination.

“That seems pretty egregious,” said Ms. Katz, who specializes in bringing discrimination cases. She said Facebook’s technology made it akin to an employment agency. “The fact that they’re using this tool to facilitate discrimination absolves neither the hiring business nor Facebook.”

Facebook delenda est. Read the rest

Susan Greene, the editor of the Colorado Independent, was handcuffed and detained by Denver police while attempting to film them near the Colorado State Capitol building. When she points out to officer James Brooks that what she's doing is protected by the First Amendment, he claims that it does not supercede other laws, cuffs her, and orders her to "act like a lady."

Filming police officers in public is legal, and attempts to prevent it are oftentimes a warning that police feel they have something to hide.

Two studies have found that at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10 percent of families in the general population.

District Attorney Beth McCann "last week called Greene to inform her that the D.A.’s office would not be pressing charges against the officers."

Here's the photo Denver cops didn't want Ms. Greene taking, which she published in a post about the incident.

I’d have plenty of colorful things to write about the moment when the officers were pushing me toward the police car and one of them – Officer Brooks, I think – told me to “act like a lady.” Or maybe it was “try to act like a lady.” In any case, I’m curious to hear, after reviewing the body-cam video, Denver police officials explain how exactly a woman should behave on a perp walk after having been blocked from doing her job, obstructed from exercising her First Amendment rights, handcuffed and otherwise manhandled by an ignorant and over-amped police officer and his sidekick.

For at least a couple of years, Twitter has allowed one porn spam bot to clog up search results for common women's names, as well as for names of young female celebrities. It would not take a lot to create an algorithm to block this specific spam, but it's still here, because Twitter can't seem to address the platform's pervasive hostility to women. Read the rest

Facebook claims it is trying to limit fake news and hate speech. Facebook is not.

An investigative journalist who went undercover as a Facebook moderator in the UK says the company lets pages from far-right fringe groups “exceed deletion threshold,” and that those pages are “subject to different treatment in the same category as pages belonging to governments and news organizations.” The accusation is a damning one, undermining Facebook’s claims that it is actively trying to cut down on fake news, propaganda, hate speech, and other harmful content that may have significant real-world impact.

The undercover journalist detailed his findings in a new documentary titled Inside Facebook: Secrets of the Social Network, that just aired on the UK’s Channel 4. ... The documentary insinuates that Facebook takes a hands-off approach to such content, including blatantly false stories parading as truth, because it engages users for longer and drives up advertising revenue.

It sounds like the Trump-loving right is the advertising bonanza of the decade! Social networks are where advertisers can get to that audience without anyone else being able to tell who is marketing to whom. Read the rest

RateMyProfessors.com is like Yelp for college students, but until recently it also had an uncool "Hot or Not" setting where students could rate the attractiveness of professors, with those who were sufficiently hot "earning" a chili pepper next to their ratings. Read the rest

Mike from the Useless Duck Company simply wanted to make a dancing and talking banana robot. For his troubles, he got banned from Twitch due to racist and sexist content. Read the rest