Part II: Speed
If Brendan Eich’s employment should be protected, shouldn’t everyone’s? Photo-illustration by Juliana Jimenez Jaramillo. Photo courtesy Darcy Padilla/Mozilla Foundation
Why Are Conservatives Only Interested in Defending Mozilla’s Brendan Eich? Jamelle Bouie
[Time 2]
The Internet is currently worked up over the resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who left the company on Thursday following controversy over his support for Proposition 8 in 2008. As my colleague Will Oremus explains, Eich had given $1,000 to the anti-gay marriage campaign, which sparked a minor controversy when it surfaced in 2012, but didn’t affect his standing at the company, where he served as chief technical officer. After he was named CEO, however, this changed, and he was forced out by a combination of internal unrest and public condemnation.
Defenders of the outcome say that it’s a question of public morality; opposition to same-sex marriage is the same as opposition to interracial marriage, and that both are unacceptable opinions for people leading public companies. Critics, on the other hand, see Eich’s forced resignation as a chilling attack on free speech. Writing on his website, Andrew Sullivan calls it a “hounding” and wonders, “Will [Eich] now be forced to walk through the streets in shame?”
National Review takes its outrage even further: “The nation’s full-time gay-rights professionals simply will not rest until a homogeneous and stultifying monoculture is settled upon the land, and if that means deploying a ridiculous lynch mob to pronounce anathema upon a California technology executive for private views acted on in his private life, then so be it.”
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[Time 3]
Eich is just the highest profile victim of a status quo that threatens countless workers.
Comparing Eich’s critics to a “lynch mob” is a bit much, especially given the actual violence gay people have faced for exercising their rights. Beyond that, it’s hard not to see some irony in these complaints, given National Review’s support of “religious freedom” laws in states like Arizona and Tennessee, and its broad view that the free market is sufficient to punish anti-gay businesses and business owners. The Mozilla situation seems emblematic of what conservatives want when it comes to the relationship between business, public opinion, and public sanction.
But let’s grant that Sullivan and the National Review are right. That Eich’s forced resignation is an attack on speech, and that this is an ugly bout of bullying against someone who hasn’t expressed his views in the context of his job. If that’s true, then Eich is just the highest profile victim of a status quo that threatens countless workers.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act might protect workers from discrimination on the basis of their race, color, religion, sex, age, or national origin, but almost everything else is fair game for private employers who want to get rid of workers. Not only can you be fired for your political views—for sporting the wrong bumper sticker on your car, for instance—or for being “sexually irresistible” to your boss, but in most states (29, to be precise), you can be fired for your sexual orientation or gender identification, no questions asked.
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[Time 4]
Overall, the large majority of Americans have at-will employment, which means that—outside of protected classes such as race or religion—they can be fired for any reason at all. For someone like Eich, this isn’t a huge deal: He will survive his brush with joblessness. The same can’t be said for millions of low-income workers who face termination lest they give their bosses their complete obedience.
For a taste of what this looks like, and if you’ve never worked a retail job, you should read former Politico reporter Joseph Williams on his time in a sporting goods store. For a pittance of a paycheck, he consented to constant searches, unpaid labor, and borderline wage theft. It’s a precarious existence, made worse by the fact that saying the wrong thing at the wrong time—either on the job or off it—could result in you losing your job, with no recourse.
And of course, employment discrimination against LGBT Americans is a real and ongoing problem. According to a 2011 report from the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, at least 15 percent of gay Americans have faced discrimination and harassment at the workplace on the basis of their orientation, and at least 8 percent report being passed over for a job or fired. A whopping 90 percent of transgender individuals report some sort of harassment on the job. It’s doesn’t minimize Eich’s situation (if you’re opposed to his resignation) to note that gay people are far more likely to face discrimination than opponents of same-sex marriage.
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Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/mozilla_and_brendan_eich_s_resignation_why_don_t_conservatives_want_to_protect.html?wpisrc=burger_bar
Could Brad Pitt be the key to encouraging men to stand up against rape? Photo by Joe Klamar/AFP/Getty Images
A Movie About Steubenville From a Male Perspective Is a Great Idea Amanda Marcotte
[Time 5]
Plan B, Brad Pitt's production company that recently financed 12 Years a Slave, grabbed headlines this week with the news that it had purchased the film rights to the Rolling Stone article, "Anonymous Vs. Steubenville." Written by David Kushner, the piece chronicles the efforts of online activists, flying under the name Anonymous, to get justice for a high school rape victim in Steubenville, Ohio. The protagonists of the article are a bunch of young white men who were touched by this girl's suffering and angered by what they deemed a town cover-up of the crime, and set out to make things right.
You can see the appeal of this story from a Hollywood perspective: Young men go up against a football town to rescue a female rape victim. But Tara Culp-Ressler at ThinkProgress is not happy about the male-centric nature of the story and thinks it is typical of Hollywood's inability to do social justice stories any justice:
In a culture where rape survivors’ voices are often ignored, and women’s stories about their own lived experiences of sexual violence and oppression are constantly brought into question, it’s discouraging to envision a movie about one of the most famous rape cases in the country that places a “white knight” at the center. Although it’s likely not the intention of Plan B Entertainment, that framing choice ends up further obscuring the real women who are victimized by sexual assault. [246 words]
[Time 6]
Usually, I would agree. Hollywood has a tendency to tell the stories of oppressed people not from their own points of view, but from the point of view of a privileged outsider who comes to the rescue. (The Help and Schindler's List come to mind.) That's why 12 Years a Slave was so essential—because it made an enslaved man the protagonist of a story about slavery, something that should seem like the obvious thing to do but is often not. And the Steubenville movie may end up being more of the same. But I'd like to withhold judgment until it comes out for this major reason: Rape is one of those issues where we desperately need white knights.
Rape is traditionally considered a "women's issue," but really it's more of a men's issue. Men commit nearly all rapes, even rapes of other men and boys. The phrase "rape culture" that feminists kick around describes, above all else, the way that sexual predators move about freely because other men don't stand up to them (or, in some cases, actively support them, as we see in the newest reports about the latest charges against Jameis Winston's teammates). Women can oppose rape until we're blue in the face, but as long as rapists can look at other men and see indifference or active support, they're going to remain emboldened.
Look, women can rescue themselves through political activism on nearly all feminist issues. Women got themselves the vote. But when it comes to sexual assault, we need more men to say, at the very least, "Dude, that is messed up." If this movie ends up showing young men a new model for masculinity, one where you stand up for a woman's right to safety instead of wallow in a "bros before hos" mentality, then I will consider it a win.
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Source: Slate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/04/04/brad_pitt_s_plan_b_buys_the_rights_to_anonymous_vs_steubenville_a_male_centric.html
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