“Treds Tire and Wheel, All Girls Tire Shop, Sticks It To Pep Boys”

Taken from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/13/treds-tire-and-wheel-all-girls-shop_n_1882294.html

September 13, 2012

At Treds Tire and Wheel in San Antonio, Texas, there’s a certain irony that Pep Boys is just across the street. Not because it’s a small business thriving in the shadow of a chain store, but because Treds Tire and Wheel is run entirely by women.

“I’m a strong believer that women can do things that men can do,” manager Andrea Rodriguez, 19, told ABC News. “I have four brothers so I was raised with that mentality. I can do things that my brothers could do.”

The way Rodriguez sees it, it doesn’t matter what color the tire jack is (pink) or if the tools look different (they have polka dots). The girls-only garage does great work either way.

“We are definitely going to get the job done right. Just because we are girls doesn’t mean we don’t know anything. We definitely know.” Andrea said to KSAT.

So far, the shop’s male competition doesn’t seemed to mind, though the ladies believe their friendliness has more to do with the view than anything else. “They flirt, but I keep it all professional,” said Erica Hinkle, a mechanic at the shop.

Andrea’s mom bought the property some months ago planning to put in a tire shop. Several previous tire shops in the location had failed before, but the ladies say business has been steady so far, reports the Daily Mail. Andrea came up with the idea of a female-run auto shop, and says finding employees was a snap.

The shop currently employees six women full time, and one intern.

Treds Tire and Wheel isn’t the only business looking to benefit from appealing to female sensibilities. Bic Pens made a dubious move for womens’ wallets earlier this year when the company released a ”For Her” stylized pen. The product earned more than a few hilariously satirical reviews on Amazon, but last we checked, Bic is still pushing the idea.

“Jenna Talackova Removed from Miss Universe Canada for Being Transgender”

Taken from: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20581831,00.html

March 26, 2012

Should transgender women be allowed to compete in female beauty pageants?

That’s the question at the center of a heated scandal involving one Canadian pageant contestant. Jenna Talackova, 23, was born male but has identified as a female since age 4. She began hormone therapy at 14 and underwent gender reassignment surgery at 19.

On Friday, Talackova, a Vancouver resident, was booted from the Miss Universe Canada competition “because she did not meet the requirements to compete despite having stated otherwise on her entry form,” the organization said in a statement. “We do, however, respect her goals, determination and wish her the best.”

According to The Province newspaper, Talackova was selected among 65 finalists for the 2012 competition. She was removed from the competition despite there being no mention of rules regarding sex changes, The Province reports.

“I am very disappointed with the decision taken by the Miss Universe … organizers,” Talackova said in a statement released Monday. “However, I will look to turn this situation into a positive so that other people in a similar situation are not discriminated against in the future.”

In a 2010 interview for Thailand’s Miss International Queen, a pageant for transgendered women, Talackova was asked whether she regards herself as transgender or as a woman. “I regard myself as a woman … with a history,” she said.

But the head of the pageant says there are rules regarding a contestant’s gender at birth. The national director of Miss Universe Canada says that Talackova indicated on her registration form that she was born a female but later admitted that she was born a male, India Today reports.  ”She feels like a real girl and she is a real girl. She didn’t expect people to question it,” Denis Davila told the publication. “She was hoping we could put her back in the competition, but the rules are very clear, and there’s no way we can go back on it.”

Reactions to Talackova’s story have been mixed. Detractors maintain that only natural-born women should be allowed to compete in traditional women’s beauty pageants. But the ousted beauty queen also has her supporters – more than 20,000 of them and counting. A change.org petition has netted 20,171 signatures in an effort to reverse the decision to disqualify Talackova from the the Donald Trump-owned pageant. Talackova is expected to release a statement this week after speaking with her lawyer.

In a statement Monday afternoon, the Miss Universe Organization said: “As with any competition, the Miss Universe pageant has rules which apply to all of its franchises around the world. Such rules include, but are not limited to citizenship, age, and marital status requirements. Additionally, the rules currently state that all contestants must be naturally born females. After review, organizers discovered that Jenna Talackova falsified her application and did not meet the necessary requirements to compete in the 2012 Miss Universe Canada pageant.”

“I’M NOT OKAY WITH CHRIS BROWN PERFORMING AT THE GRAMMYS AND I’M NOT SURE WHY YOU ARE”

Taken from: http://hellogiggles.com/im-not-okay-with-chris-brown-performing-at-the-grammys-and-im-not-sure-why-you-are

February 11, 2012

I’m sick and tired of people acting like it’s no big deal that Chris Brown will be performing at the Grammys.

I’m frustrated that the mainstream media is covering this story like it’s any comeback story, like an exiled prince’s return to a former glory, like this is another political timeline — as though some rich and powerful old white men in the music business have not just issued an enormous ‘f**k you’ to every woman who has been, is or will be on the receiving end of domestic violence.

We should be furious.

Why aren’t we?

A Long, Long Time Ago, or Three Years Ago, But Who’s Counting?

For those of you who are currently listening to ‘Look at Me Now’ and wondering what the big deal is, a quick recap: The night before the Grammys in 2009, Chris Brown got angry at his girlfriend, Rihanna, and he took it out on her face. She went to the hospital and then to the LAPD, where this photo was taken and promptly leaked to TMZ. (The LAPD issued a stern statement on the leak, threatening penalties “up to and including termination”. TMZ reportedly paid $62,500 for the photo.)

Both Rihanna and Brown had been scheduled to perform at the Grammys the following evening. Neither did.

Instead, Chris Brown turned himself into the LAPD at 7 pm, was booked on suspicion of criminal threats and was released on $50,000 bail.

Then the Internet exploded.

I was a full-time entertainment writer at the time, so I had a front-row seat to the action. This is what I expected: I expected a string of celebrities to comment on how horrific this situation was, how sad and angry they were for Rihanna, how domestic violence is unacceptable in any context, how as a nation we need to condemn this and condemn it loudly.

Instead, Hollywood went silent and, when they did speak, they teetered on the brink of defending Chris Brown.

Carrie Underwood: “I don’t think anybody actually knows what happened. I have no advice.”

Lindsay Lohan: “I have no comment on that. That’s not my relationship. I think they’re both great people.”

Nia Long: “I know both of them well. They’re young, and all we can do is pray for them at this point.”

Mary J. Blige: “They’re both young and beautiful people, and that’s it.”

Jay-Z, one of Rihanna’s mentors, spoke up: “You have to have compassion for others. Just imagine it being your sister or mom and then think about how we should talk about that. I just think we should all support her.” In a sane world, Jay-Z’s statement would sound insane. Why would he have to remind his fans to support Rihanna afterwhat happened is that she got hit in the face?

Jay-Z issued that statement because the Internet was, in early February 2009, engaged in a very serious conversation about whether or not all of this was Rihanna’s fault. In fact, large segments of the Internet had devoted themselves to making Rihanna the scapegoat for any woman who ever had the gall to do something worth getting hit, and then the cloying self-esteem to go to the cops about it. Bloggers and their commentators flocked to Chris Brown’s defense in droves. It was a full-blown tearing-down of female self-worth, an assault on any progress women have made in this country in the past 200 years, and the mainstream media ignored it.

It horrified me. It still does.

Later in February, a photo of Brown riding a jet ski in Miami hit the Internet, and singer Usher was caught on video commenting on it: “I’m a little disappointed in this photo,” Usher says in the video. “After the other photo [of Rihanna's bruised face]? C’mon, Chris. Have a little bit of remorse, man. The man’s on jet skis? Like, just relaxing in Miami?”

The backlash was so severe that Usher was later forced to publicly apologize.

“I apologize on behalf of myself and my friends if anyone was offended,” he said. “The intentions were not to pass judgment and we meant no harm. I respect and wish the best for all parties involved.”

The message we sent to young women was unmistakable: You are powerless. You are worthless. You will be a victim, and that will be okay with us.

The Fall-out, and the Lack Thereof

In August 2009, Brown was sentenced to five years probation and 180 hours of community service after pleading guilty to felony assault.

In December 2009, he released his third studio album. It sold over 100,000 copies in its first week and debuted at #7 on the Billboard charts.

On June 8, 2010, Brown was forced to cancel his tour dates in the UK when the British Home Office refused to grant him a work visa on the grounds of “being guilty of a serious criminal offence”. Less than three weeks later, he performed ‘Man in the Mirror’ at the BET Awards’ tribute to Michael Jackson.

His fourth studio album, released in March of last year, debuted at #1.

In December 2011, Billboard crowned him their artist of the year.

And, this week, Grammy producers confirmed that Chris Brown will be performing on Sunday’s show.

“We’re glad to have him back,” said executive producer Ken Ehrlich. “I think people deserve a second chance, you know. If you’ll note, he has not been on the Grammys for the past few years and it may have taken us a while to kind of get over the fact that we were the victim of what happened.”

Read that quote again. Think hard about what is being said. Here is what this quote says to any woman who’s ever been abused:

• By blacklisting Chris Brown from the Grammys for a “few” years (actually, a grand total of TWO Grammy Awards), the Grammys have gone above and beyond expectations for the social exile of an adult man who hit his girlfriend so hard she went to the hospital, and honestly it was really, really hard for them to show even that much support for victims of domestic violence worldwide.
• It was rather thoughtless of Rihanna to go and get herself hit in the face by her boyfriend, because it’s put such a burden on the Grammys. Maybe if she hadn’t made such a big fuss out of it, things could have been easier for everyone.
• The Grammys think that they were the victim of Chris Brown hitting Rihanna in the face.
• The Grammys. Think. That they. Were the victim. Of Chris Brown. Hitting. Rihanna. In the face.

Hitting People Is Wrong, Y’All

I agree that people deserve a second chance. It’s great that we live in a country with a justice system that allows offenders to reclaim themselves and their lives after their sentence. I’m happy about that, and I hope Brown is a changed man at the end of his sentence. (The US justice system has Chris Brown on probation through 2014. It was nice of the Grammys to let him off a couple years early for high record sales good behavior.)

And my suspicion is that Rihanna has no interest in being a poster child for victims of domestic violence. She probably wishes this would all disappear, and I don’t blame her for a minute. She didn’t ask for this – for any of it – and she’s under no obligation to speak out about it.

But someone has to. Because what is happening here is unmistakable. It is, in my eyes, so unmistakable that I wonder if I’m wrong, if I’m missing something huge, because I cannot believe more voices aren’t railing against this.

We – the grown-up influencers in this country, the people with platforms and with educations and with power — are allowing a clear message to be sent to women: We will easily forgive a person who victimizes you. We are able to look beyond the fact that you were treated as less than human, that a bigger, stronger person decided to resolve a conflict with you through violence. We know it happened, but it’s just not that big of a deal to us.

We were so mad when the Komen Foundation pulled its funding for breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. “This is not fair,” we shouted. “This is not fair to women, and this is not fair to the women who don’t have a voice, and we will not allow it.” We shouted it so loudly that Komen reversed its decision in three days. We forced the resignation of one of their top executives.

Planned Parenthood, no doubt, has a well-funded and fine-tuned PR machine, adept at galvanizing a population against a perceived injustice. They outmaneuvered Komen easily.

Does domestic violence have a less sophisticated PR machine than Chris Brown does?

Because to me, this situation isn’t all that different. Accepting that Chris Brown gets to perform at the Grammys because some people bought his album is no different from accepting that women without health insurance don’t get to be screened for breast cancer because some VP at Komen is anti-abortion. It may happen, but that doesn’t mean we should tacitly accept it. What if Chris Brown had hit your sister that night? Or your daughter? (What if Chris Brown had hit Taylor Swift that night?)

We’re accepting the message that women just aren’t that important, that their health and their safety and their self-respect is only important until it stops being convenient for everyone. We should be angry about this, and we should be angry publicly about this.

So I want to say this to anyone who is listening: This is not okay with me. A man hitting a woman in anger is unacceptable and is not easily forgotten or forgiven. A man who hits a woman in anger deserves to be reported to the authorities and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, regardless of who might be inconvenienced in the process. A man who hits a woman in anger may eventually be permitted to go on with his own life, but he is not permitted back in my life, even if it’s been three whole years.

“BAFTA Rising Stars Snub Women, Simon Pegg Displeased”

Taken from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/bafta-rising-stars-snub-women_n_1199466.html?ref=entertainment

January 10, 2012

This past year wasn’t a very good one for Hollywood by box office standards, as ticket sales slid to a 16-year low. One bright spot, however, came in the form of a number of terrific young actresses who broke out into the spotlight.

Three of those stars — Jessica Chastain, Felicity Jones and Jennifer Lawrence — were initially honored on the long list of eight names eligible for the BAFTA’s prestigious Rising Star Award. But when the final ballot was announced, none of those three made the final list that was chosen by the public.

Simon Pegg, who was on the jury that selected the initial candidates, tweeted his distaste for the way the final offering of potential winners looks.

“Sad to see no women on the BAFTA rising star shortlist. The panel that determined the long list had no say in the final five,” he wrote on Wednesday. “There were however women in the BSG final five. Two, to be exact but to reveal their identities would be unfair to lucky few who don’t know,” he continued.

The all-male list includes Chris O’Dowd (“Bridesmaids,” the British sitcom “The IT Squad); Chris Hemsworth (“Thor”); Eddie Redmayne (“My Week With Marilyn”); Tom Hiddleston (“Thor,” “War Horse”); and Adam Deacon (British show “Adulthood”).

For comparison’s sake, let’s look at the ladies who were snubbed.

Chastain starred in a long slew of films this year, earning a Golden Globe nomination for her work in “The Help” and taking home a number of critics awards for her turn in “The Tree of Life.” She also featured in “The Debt,” “Texas Killing Fields,” “Take Shelter,” “Wild Salome” and “Coriolanus.” Next year, she’ll star in “Wettest County” with Tom Hardy and Shia LaBeouf, “Tar” with James Franco and Mila Kunis, and “Mama” with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Megan Charpentier.

Jones was the star of the semi-improvised romance “Like Crazy,” for which she won the Special Jury Award at Sundance; she also featured in “Hysteria” with Maggie Gyllenhaal.

As for Lawrence, she also featured in “Like Crazy,” and earned an Oscar last year for her turn in “Winter’s Bone.” She’ll become an international sensation this March when she stars in “The Hunger Games.”

““Sexist” new Lego range targets girls”

Taken from: http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/sexist-lego-range-targets-girls-184205804.html

January 6, 2012

Despite producing a staggering 400 billion bricks in a mind-blowing number of configurations since production started in 1958, there’s been one thing Lego has had trouble building.

A female audience.

As a company, Lego has rarely been in stronger shape, having more than doubled its 2006 revenue to over a billion dollars in annual sales, but it’s still trying to reach beyond its primarily young, male demographic. Since 2007 the company’s been plotting what execs are hawking as the biggest Lego launch in a decade, and this month rolls out a controversial line of over 20 new sets aimed squarely at young girls.

So out go the distinctive, squat proportions of the timeless Lego “minifigure,” replaced by taller and slimmer “ladyfigs” with noticeably feminine curves. The new range of characters have names, backstories, personalities, and even mottos (inspiring nuggets like “Let’s get to work!”). They come complete with playsets themed after veterinarians, convertible cars, beauty shops, and dog shows, done up in pastel hues.

Dubbed “Lego Friends” (the logo comes with both a heart and a butterfly, in case you were in any doubt about its intended audience), the new set launched in the U.S. on January 1 and should be showing up in retailers soon. You’ll find it in the aisle with the Barbies and hairbows, not in the no-girls-allowed Lego section — or that’s the plan.

It’s far from the first time Lego has reached for the female demographic; the firm’s been making intermittent attempts to hit the “other 50%” of children since the 1970s. Prior attempts, however, never managed to gain much traction. Toy collectors may be reminded of Hasbro’s 1967 launch of the G.I. Joe Nurse Action Girl, a similar spin-off that failed in dramatic style, disappearing from store shelves after just a year and winding up a highly valuable rarity.

And although you might expect a range of girl-friendly construction toys to go down well with women’s rights groups, it’s proving a surprisingly tough sell to some.

Enraged by what they see as gender stereotyping, pressure group SPARK started a petition on web sitechange.org asking Lego to stop “selling out girls.” Thus far it’s attracted nearly 3,000 signatures.

“Raising healthy girls and boys is all about creating a wide range of possibilities and options for our children,” says SPARK co-founder (and developmental psychologist) Dr. Lyn Mikel Brown in the petition’s preamble. “The rainbow of colors and a range of options for young children to create the scenes they are most interested in is much better for them than feeding them a narrow set of stereotypes.”

It’s also sparked something of a backlash from Lego-loving parents, many of whom have been happily giving “boy” Lego sets to kids of both genders for years.

“With the Lego ‘Friends’ collection, my daughter is being firmly taught her place in our culture,” says one sarcasm-oozing Amazon review. “Her place is pink and pastel, and it is focused on her appearance, leisure activity, homemaking, baking, or the care of animals. Thank God! Thank Lego!”

Other fans channeled their creativity into their models rather than their wit — and one was quick to seize the potential of the brand-new pastel shades, reworking the new pieces into ”Pixie Poison,” a sleek, tasteful, lilac space vessel.

But who’s driving it? An old, genderless minifigure, its hairstyle — often the sole difference between male and female Lego characters — replaced by a gender-neutral helmet.

Half the Sky

“The best way to fight poverty and extremism is to educate and empower women and girls.” – Half the Sky

Half the Sky lays out an agenda for the world’s women and three major abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence including honor killings and mass rape; maternal mortality, which needlessly claims one woman a minute. We know there are many worthy causes competing for attention in the world. We focus on this one because this kind of oppression feels transcendent – and so does the opportunity. Outsiders can truly make a difference.

So let us be clear up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts. It is a process that transforms bubbly teenage girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen. You can help accelerate change if you’ll just open your heart and join in.

You can buy the book, Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl Wudunn, at their website: http://www.halftheskymovement.org/

“Facebook is Fine with Hate Speech, as Long as it’s Directed at Women”

Taken from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/04/facebook-hate-speech-women-rape?fb=optOut

October 4, 2011

It doesn’t matter how hard I study Facebook’s terms and conditions, I still can’t find the bit where it says: “Like Humpty Dumpty, Facebook is at complete liberty to interpret the words used in this document in any way it sees fit.” And yet that’s obviously what Facebook executives have been doing: making words mean what they want them to mean, or else they’d have removed the pages that promote rape and other forms of violence against women months ago.

The specific clause in Facebook’s statement of rights and responsibilities that’s supposed to protect groups against violence and hate speech instructs the user: “You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” However, Facebook has now defended the numerous pages that clearly violate these terms by claiming: “Groups that express an opinion on a state, institution, or set of beliefs – even if that opinion is outrageous or offensive to some – do not by themselves violate our policies.” Which is strange, because if a page entitled “Roses are red, violets are blue, I’ve got a knife, get in the van” isn’t hateful, threatening or gratuitously violent, I don’t for the life of me know what is.

It was back in August that feminists first began to notice the proliferation of pro-rape pages on the popular social networking site. Two months later over 176,000 people have signed a US-based petition calling on Facebook to take them down, and nearly 4,000 people have signed aUK-based petition calling for the same. The Facebook pages, such as the one cited above and others that include “You know she’s playing hard to get when your [sic] chasing her down an alleyway” still remain.

Facebook’s initial response to the public outcry was to suggest that promoting violence against women was equivalent to telling a rude joke down the pub: “It is very important to point out that what one person finds offensive another can find entertaining” went the bizarre rape apologia. “Just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook.”

And in some ways they’re right: telling a rude joke probably wouldn’t get you thrown out of your local pub. I’d suggest, however, that propping up your local bar while inciting others to rape your mate’s girlfriend “to see if she can put up a fight” would not only get you thrown out, it would in all likelihood get you arrested as well. Still, at least you could log on once you got home and post your offensive comments on Facebook instead, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t do anything about it.

What Facebook and others who defend this pernicious hate speech don’t seem to get is that rapists don’t rape because they’re somehow evil or perverted or in any way particularly different from than the average man in the street: rapists rape because they can. Rapists rape because they know the odds are stacked in their favour, because they know the chances are they’ll get away with it.

And part of the reason rapists get away with it, time after time after time, is because we live in a society that all but condones rape. Because we live in a society where it’s not taken seriously, and where posting heinous comments online that promote sexual violence are not treated as hate speech or as content that threatens women’s safety, but are instead treated as a joke and given a completely free pass.

By refusing to take these pages down, and by resorting to such a ridiculous and quite frankly offensive “rude joke” analogy to justify their decision, Facebook executives have made absolutely clear where they stand on the issue of gender hate crime. It’s fine to post hateful or threatening content on their site, just as it’s fine to post content that incites violence. Well, as long as it’s primarily aimed at women, that is.