Tag Archives: misogyny

`Study Finds Over 33 Million Instagram, TikTok Posts Promoting Harmful Content to Kids

The Ekō report came as a U.S. Senate panel held a hearing about online child sexual exploitation featuring testimony from five Big Tech CEOs.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 1-31-2024 by Common Dreams

As five Big Tech executives appeared before the U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee on January 31, 2024, Ekō held a protest at the U.S. Capitol and released a report about platforms promoting harmful content to children. (Photo: Ekō)

As five Big Tech executives appeared before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, the group Ekō released a report highlighting how “social media companies are not only failing to safeguard young users from harm, but actively profiting from it.”

“This briefing serves as an urgent call for legislative action,” says the 17-page publication from Ekō—previously called SumOfUs—which is addressed to the Senate panel on the first page and urges constituents to contact their members of Congress.

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Elon Musk’s Twitter is more dangerous than you think

Beyond Musk’s oft-repeated rants about free speech, may lie shadier plans to recoup the $44bn he paid for the site

By Adam Ramsay  Published 11-11-2022 by openDemocracy

The world is burning and Ukraine is trudging into a winter of war. Prices are spiralling and the NHS is limping. The US and Brazil have held the line against fascism, just, while Italy has fallen to the far right. Watching the disastrous takeover of Twitter by the world’s richest bam can feel a little frivolous. So what if it becomes a rich boy’s toy? It often felt like that anyway.

But the thing is, we can’t solve the world’s problems without talking, and social media has become the way we do that. At its best, a space beyond the increasingly oligarch-owned press where citizens of the world can chatter, gossip, joke and revolt; can organise into new collectives and explore new identities and senses of self. At its worst, well, I don’t need to tell you. Continue reading

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Investigation Shows Hundreds of US Cops Being Trained by Far-Right Extremists

“Bad training is instilling bad behavior,” said one criminal justice reform advocate.

By Kenny Stancil  Published 5-6-2022 by Common Dreams

Photo: Tony Webster/flickr/CC

Hundreds of cops across the United States have been taught by individuals who espouse far-right extremist views, according to a new investigation that was published Friday to sound the alarm on a burgeoning and unregulated private training industry.

Reuters identified five law enforcement trainers who have been hired by police and sheriffs’ departments nationwide despite their support for right-wing militia groups, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters; the QAnon conspiracy, which baselessly claims that Democrats and Hollywood stars belong to a cabal of Satanist pedophiles and cannibals; and former President Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. Continue reading

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Misogyny helped South Korea’s president win. Now feminists are fighting back

Yoon Suk-yeol was swept to victory on a wave of ‘anti-feminism’ among young Korean men. Now, he wants to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality

By Hannah Pham.  Pubished 3-26-2022 by openDemocracy

Yoon Seok-youl leaves the main opposition People Power Party’s headquarters in Seoul on July 30, 2021 Photo: 고려/Wikimedia Commons/CC

“I threw up and cried.” This was 30-year-old Haein Shim’s reaction to the results of South Korea’s presidential election, held on 9 March. As the senior director of foreign media of Seoul-based feminist group Haeil (translated as ‘Tsunami’), Haein had felt neither candidate was necessarily a strong or progressive choice. But ultimately it was Yoon Suk-yeol of the People Power Party – in Haein’s eyes, the worse of two evils – who won.

“We have to choose the head of the state, but there is no candidate for women to choose from,” says Haein, who originally hails from Gwangju in south-west South Korea and now lives in the US. “No candidate sees women as they really are.” Continue reading

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“In Case There Was Any Doubt Regarding ‘Stand By'”: Four People Stabbed After Pro-Trump DC Rally

“This is all on you, Republicans. You have enabled all of this.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 12-13-2020

Proud Boys in Washington DC on December 12, 2020. Photo: Julie Pillay/Twitter

At least four people were stabbed Saturday as supporters of President Donald Trump, including maskless Proud Boys in helmets and bulletproof vests, descended on the nation’s capital and clashed with counterprotesters—violence that some critics tied to the president’s pre-election directive to the self-described “western chauvinists.”

During a debate ahead of his loss in November, Trump had told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” which swiftly elicited criticism that he was inciting violence. Designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Proud Boys are known for their white nationalistanti-Muslim, and misogynistic rhetoric as well as their presence at the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. Continue reading

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Call Katie Hill’s “Scandal” What It Is: Sexual Assault

The Congresswoman resigned after having an affair with a campaign aide, but she’s also a crime victim, and those two facts don’t cancel each other out.

By . Published 10-31-2019 by YES! Magazine

Katie Hill speaking with attendees at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention at the George R. Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Photo: Gage Skidmore/flickr

 

“Someone asked me to write about Katie Hill,” I told my husband over dinner this week.

“Oh,” he said, “the woman who had the relationship with her staffer?”

“The woman who was sexually assaulted,” I said. Continue reading

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What an American Terrorist Looks Like

Despite racist and anti-immigrant scapegoating, data shows that most American terrorists are resentful White men inspired by White supremacist and misogynist rhetoric.

By . Published 8-13-2019 by YES! Magazine

“Invasion.” President Trump has used that very word about immigration at the southern border 19 times at rallies since he took office, according to a recent USA Today analysis. And six tweets between October 2018 and June 2019 use the word “invasion” that way.

An arrest affidavit for 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, the man charged in the Aug. 3 mass shooting in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart that left 22 people dead and 24 wounded, reportedly says Crusius told police he was targeting Mexicans. Crusius allegedly referenced wanting to stop a “Hispanic invasion” of Texas in a statement on a right-wing online messaging board about 20 minutes before the shooting.

In one week, between July 31 and August 3, three White men massacred and wounded dozens of people in Gilroy, California; Dayton, Ohio; and El Paso. Media often jump to analysis of mass shootings around gun control and mental illness. But what about their connection to electoral politics? Or misogyny in the face of feminist movements?

A lot of data exists to answer some of these questions and challenge notions that a mass shooter is likely a jihadist, or a mentally ill person illegally stockpiling assault weapons. In fact, the rise in these public-place mass shootings and extremist violence correlates with the rise in rhetoric on White supremacy, xenophobia, and misogyny. In the data, a picture emerges of the American terrorist and what sets him off

 

Tracy Matsue Loeffelholz is the creative director for YES! Media. Find her on Twitter @LoeffelholzDunn.

 

This work is republished under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

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‘Embarrassing Nepotism’: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro Appoints Son as Ambassador to US

One critic said that it’s “only a matter of time now before the son of Brazil’s wannabe despot has an official meeting with the daughter of America’s wannabe despot.”

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 7-12-2019

Eduardo Bolsonaro (L) joined his father, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, for a March 2019 meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House. (Photo: Eduardo Bolsonaro/Instagram)

In a move critics condemned as “embarrassing nepotism,” right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday appointed his son Eduardo to serve as ambassador to the United States.

Though the appointment still needs approval from Brazil’s Federal Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a confirmation vote by all members of the upper house, Eduardo has said he would resign from his current post in the lower house of the country’s National Congress to serve as ambassador. As Eduardo put it, according to Reuters, “If it is a mission given by the president, I would accept.” Continue reading

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