FluffyMuffin

The following five statistics prove that women are suffering most here at home from class oppression – and for each, there’s at least one action we can all take to change them. 

1. 18 Million Women Live in Poverty in the US Alone

Despite the overall poverty rate declining in America, 18 million women remain below the poverty line. That’s one in seven American women – and 40% of women who head up families.

Women are poorer than men in every state, regardless of education or geographic location. And for women of color, elderly women, and LGBTQIA+ women, it’s even worse.

The poverty rate for Native American, Black, and Latina women is almost double the poverty rate for white women. 27.6% of Native American women and 26.6% of Black women live in poverty.

5.1 million LGBTQIA+ women are on the brink of poverty, and only 24% of LGBTQIA+ women would say they are “financially thriving.”

For LGBTQIA+ workers of color, and especially women and gender-nonconforming queer workers of color, a lack of workplace protections and career-oriented resources and opportunities leaves many in the community unemployed, financially insecure, and all-around flat broke.

The rate of elderly women in poverty skyrocketed up 18% in 2012, and retired women are twice as likely to live in poverty than their male counterparts.

2. Domestic Violence Survivors Lose 8 Million Days of Paid Work Per Year

Women are the majority of victims of intimate partner violence and domestic violence – and the abuse they suffer keeps them struggling financially.

Nearly 8 billion days of paid work per year are lost due to domestic violence, and 96% of victims experience problems at work related to their abuse.

A majority of Americans have observed and believe that the Great Recession and a long-standing economic downturn has made things worse for domestic violence victims – victims who may stay in a relationship with an abusive partner for economic reasons or face worse abuse due to economic stressors.

3. 12,728,000 Women Work in Low-Paying Fields

Women are often pushed into “pink collar jobs” – like teaching, nursing, and service jobs – that pay less, in part due to gender discrimination that lets us consider “women’s work” less valuable than work fields dominated by men.

In 2007, 43% of women in the workforce were employed in just 20 disciplines, all with a median income of just $27,383 per year.

In the same year, less than 15% of women were employed in management, financial operations, or business jobs. For women of color, segregation into low-paying jobs is even more common,and leadership even more rare.

Moreover, women make up a majority of low-wage service-sector jobs, such as fast food front-line work, and retail positions.

For women, and especially women of color, the fight to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 or $15 is very personal – and could be the difference, for them, between barely surviving and finally thriving. 28 million workers would benefit from a raise if the Minimum Wage Fairness Act passed through Congress, and a majority of them would be women.

4. Women Make at Least 23% Less Than White Men at Work

The Equal Pay Act, which banned gender-based wage discrimination, was signed into law in 1963 – over 50 years ago. Although we’ve seen slight progress since then on closing the wage gap for women, discrimination persists – and its impact haunts women for the rest of their working and retired lives.

Overall, women earn, on average, 78 cents to every white man’s dollar in America. That means that over a lifetime, women lose an average of $434,000 to the wage gap. This kind of inequality is seen across fields and seniority, and is actually worse for women of color, LBTQIA+ women, and women with more academic achievements.

Black women make 64 cents on that white man’s dollar, and Latina women make only 54. 

This means that although all women are suffering economically from the wage gap, women of color carry an even heavier burden. A recent study also found that even in states with the smallest wage gaps, women of color experienced some of the largest gaps in the nation. On top of the wage gap, LBTQIA+ women suffer from penalties for their gender identities and sexualities in the workplace.

And the reason so many elderly women live in poverty is because the impact of workplace discrimination like the wage gap leaves them with less overall earnings, a smaller pot of money in their savings, and less financial security throughout their lifetimes.

Closing the wage gap would cut poverty for working women in half. But attempts to do so have been met with a lot of political and social backlash, including claims that the scientifically proven wage gap doesn’t exist. (Pro tip: It does.)

5. 43% of Women Leave the Workforce After They Have Kids

Whether it’s poor maternal leave policies, an inability to structure their jobs and access flexible work environments, or the caretaking duties – which so often fall on their shoulders – the careers of women with children are suffering simply because of their gender.

Some of those women leave because caring for a family becomes too imposing to allow them to keep up at work. They’re more likely than men to experience career interruption after starting a family, andresearch has proven that those interruptions become obstacles to future employment and success for working moms. When parents don’t live together, women are more likely than men to shoulder childcare costs, and even in partnered households they do a brunt of the unpaid and often unappreciated domestic labor. But even when everything is good at home, pregnant women and mothers still suffer at work.

For some pregnant workers, asking for accommodations at work or even doing as their told by a doctor during the workday can leave them without a paycheck or a job.

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act was put in place 37 years ago to end this kind of gender-based discrimination against expecting employees, but complaints about pregnancy discrimination have actually been on the rise. One even went before the Supreme Court this year.

And after they’ve had children, women can expect to pay the “Motherhood Penalty” at work.

They miss out or be passed over for advancement opportunities, see an overall stagnation or decrease in earnings, and potentially go up against inflexible environments that make it impossible for them to balance their career and their families.

Men who parent, however, are rewarded for doing so with higher earnings and more opportunities for advancement.

Natural Black Hair Tutorial! Usually Black hair is excluded in the hair tutorials which I have seen so I have gone through it in depth because it’s really not enough to tell someone simply, “Black hair is really curly, draw it really curly.” 

Woman Publicly Sodomized in Gas Station Parking Lot by Cops Because they ‘Smelled Weed’

Charnesia Corley was on her way to the store to get medicine for her sick mother last June when she was detained by police for allegedly running a stop sign. Within minutes, this routine traffic stop turned into a waking nightmare.

The deputy who pulled Corley over asked her to step out of the vehicle after “smelling what he believed to be marijuana.”

However, during a search of Corley’s vehicle, without her consent, no illegal plants were found. But this sadistic cop wasn’t done just yet. He knew deep down that this woman’s story about getting medicine for her mother was a lie, and she must have been smuggling this evil plant inside her body somewhere. The deputy then handcuffed Corley and placed her into the back of his cruiser.

Being a male, the deputy felt that it would be in poor taste to penetrate this woman’s bodily orifices himself, so he called a female deputy over to conduct the public roadside sodomy in a politically correct fashion.

Upon arriving, the female deputy ordered the handcuffed woman out of the car and into the parking lot.

“She tells me to pull my pants down. I said, ‘Ma’am, I don’t have any underwear on.’ She says, ‘Well, that doesn’t matter. Pull your pants down,‘” 

Because Corley didn’t immediately prostrate herself to be vaginally raped by a peace officer’s appendages in search of an illegal plant, the deputy charged her with resisting arrest.

In spite of her verbal protests, Corley was then stripped down in public and forcefully penetrated by this public servant — in the best interests of society, no doubt.

“I bend over and she proceeds to try to force her hand inside of me. I tell her, ‘Ma’am, No. You cannot do this,‘” Corley explained.

Corley maintains that at no time did she ever consent to be sodomized by deputies.

Who is “served” by the actions of these officers? Who exactly are the police “protecting” by publicly humiliating and sexually assaulting this poor woman in a gas station parking lot?

Please share this article with your friends and family to help wake them up to this very real American Horror Story.

Think this is an isolated incident? Think again. Earlier this year we reported on the story of Jennifer Stelly, who is just a few miles down the road from Charnesia Corley. When Stelly and her boyfriend were returning from a visit to the beach, they were stopped by four officers who claimed that her boyfriend “smelled like weed.”  Within minutes, Stelly was in handcuffs and found herself thrown up against the police cruiser with cop fingers inside her body. The evil and rapacious actions of these Texas cops were caught entirely on their dashcam.                            /source/

I guess we all DO want to protect this girl and our relatives from such a blatant injustice. We can’t ignore the fact that police abuse their power, The freedom of a human being bordered by the freedom of the other human. But here we see the violation of the rights of American citizen, here we see the violence and brutality by the cops. That’s the real threat. Cops on duty did something we cannot accept, we gotta make this story public! This is the only way to demand #justice. We the people have the right to protect ourselves from police, cause THEY do extremely opposite to “serving & protecting” things.

#Corley #Police #Cops #Houston #TX

MENTALLY ILL WOMAN TASED TO DEATH WHILE SHACKELED, BEATEN, AND HANDCUFFED

Natasha Mckenna, a mentally ill woman who died after a stun gun was used on her at the Fairfax County jail in February, was restrained with handcuffs behind her back, leg shackles and a mask when a sheriff’s deputy tasered her four times, incident reports obtained by The Washington Post show.

Six members of the Sheriff’s Emergency Response Team, dressed in white full-body biohazard suits and gas masks, arrived and placed a wildly struggling 130-pound McKenna into full restraints, their reports state. But when McKenna wouldn’t bend her knees so she could be placed into a wheeled restraint chair, a lieutenant delivered four 50,000-volt shocks from the Taser, enabling the other deputies to strap her into the chair. 

Minutes later, she stopped breathing. Days later, she died.

The truth is, though, that police have been covering up the real details on Natasha’s death for months. And, even after all of this, police are not quite clear on why Natasha McKenna was even jailed in the first place. On the day she was arrested, she had actually called the police herself to report being assaulted and appeared to be struggling mightily with mental illness before she bounced around between hospitals and jails for days.

Nothing has happened to the officers yet.

Source / Source / Source 

The short version is here, in Whit Taylor’s “The Fabric of Appropriation.” The long version:

Killer Mike, a rapper I grew up listening to and who Marvel recently paid homage to with the Run the Jewels variant covers, once said, “Closest I’ve ever come to seeing or feeling God is listening to rap music. Rap music is my religion.”

I can relate. A few years ago, I found myself in Tokyo for work. I don’t speak Japanese, but that didn’t stop me and my friends from running wild over the city for a few days. One of my favorite experiences—a cherished experience—was when I ended up in Shibuya looking at shops. I found a streetwear spot that was down some stairs and around the corner. It didn’t look like a streetwear shop from the outside, but the signage and windows had a vibe, so I stepped in.

Inside were a couple customers and two shop workers. I was the only black guy in the room, and it was small, so I shopped quickly and went to check out. The clerks didn’t speak English, but they definitely spoke hip-hop. They saw my shirt, a riff on Nas’s “Illmatic” cover, and we bonded over one of the greatest rap albums of all time, kicking favorite lines back and forth. I paid and left, richer for the experience. We connected because we’re part of the same culture.

I say this not to brag, but to emphasize this: I’m squarely in the target audience for the rap covers you’re homaging, and I know first-hand how incredible rap music actually is.

Rap is worldwide, but rap is black, too. There’s white in there, and where would rap music be without our latin brothers and sisters, but in terms of perception, coding, impact, and legacy: it’s a black art form. Undeniable, like saying “Midnight Marauders is the best A Tribe Called Quest album.” (That’s a rap joke, too.)

One issue with Marvel publishing hip-hop-themed covers in the wake of not hiring black creators is that…a dialogue goes two ways. Axel Alonso said Marvel has been in a long dialogue with rap music, but that isn’t true. It’s a long monologue, from rap to Marvel, with Marvel never really giving back like it should or could. Break the Chain was decades ago, you know? (I did appreciate the Aesop Rock shout-outs in Zeb Wells & Skottie Young’s fantastic New Warriors from way back, however!)

One has to do with the other because of optics. If you don’t employ black creators, and then you purport to celebrate a black art form for profit (and props on hiring a few ferociously talented black artists for the gig!), people are going to ask why that aspect of black culture is worth celebrating but black creatives aren’t worth hiring. I know how many black writers Marvel has hired and allowed to script more than two consecutive issues of a Marvel comic. Do you? Do you know how many black women have gotten to write for Marvel?

Or, more directly: Storm is the highest profile black character in comics. Which is great! But…she’s mostly been written by white men, and a very small fraternity of black men, throughout the decades. Imagine what a black woman could bring to the character. Shouldn’t a black lady get a chance at bat? I grew up on Alison Sealy-Smith, and I’ve got a soft spot for Halle, but there’s a gap there.

Back to optics: you can’t celebrate and profit off something without also including the group that you’re profiting off the back of. Marvel has made a lot of money off brown faces. A portion of X-Men’s juice is from the struggle for civil rights, and we all know what the phrase “black Spider-Man” has done for the perception of your company. (He’s Puerto Rican too, tho.) So to see Marvel continue to profit off something very dear to black people without actually giving black people a seat at the table…I was going to say it “stings,” but in actuality it sucks. It makes Marvel look clueless and it makes black people wonder why they bother with your comics.

Whit Taylor’s “The Fabric of Appropriation” went up this week. It’s a measured look at cultural appropriation, both why it happens and how. Her last point (which I’m going to spoil, forgive me) is that “maybe it’s not so much about who has control over a design, but whether the people it originates from feel in control of their identities.”

With these hip-hop covers? You’re in our house. (“Whose house?”) These albums changed lives, provided the soundtrack to our youth, or maybe just sounded really nice with the bass cranked and the treble at half on the EQ. To claim you’re paying homage (for profit, with no-doubt rare variant covers to be sold at a mark-up to an audience that often does not include the people these albums were created by) while simultaneously not being willing to hire the people who could bring those concepts to your comics in an authentic fashion…the optics are bad, man.

Jay-Z once said, “I came back and it’s plain, y'all niggas ain’t rappin the same. Fuck the flow, y'all jackin our slang. I seen the same shit happen to Kane.” He was talking about biters, aka shark biters, aka culture vultures, aka cultural appropriators.

If you’re going to homage hip-hop, do it in the best way possible: keep it real and put some people of color behind the pages in addition to on them.

“Protons Electrons Always Cause Explosions.” Thus spake the RZA, whose favorite Marvel superhero is the Silver Surfer.

FEATURE: NEW COMIC BOOK ‘PARI(S) D'AMIES’ - FROM FEMINIST AND ANTI-RACISM ACTIVIST ROKHAYA DIALLO 

draw what makes you happy

work with your anxiety not against it

if working in a sketchbook makes you anxious, draw on printer paper or index cards

that way if that shit starts pissing you off you can literally toss it across the room

if one medium is giving you trouble try another

take a break from digital to work traditionally or vice versa 

draw from reference

trace over reference with the intention of internalizing shapes 

take what you love about other’s work and incorporate it into your own

if you need to work but are having trouble focusing, set a repeating timer

dick around for ten minutes and then work for ten minutes

if the timer goes off and you still feel like working, keep working

be kind to yourself

draw when you can as much as you can

do NOT beat yourself up for not being able to work

working in pen or marker can help you overcome fear of permanent mistakes

it can also help you work quicker and looser

do your undersketch in blue pen/marker and go over it in black

make corrections with whiteout or white gel pen

when you want to draw but don’t know what to work on, start by drawing circles or other shapes

fill a page with nonsense doodles

warm up your wrists

do the bean exercise

just fill a page with beans

For her birthday, we took my soon-to-be six year-old to Jurassic World. Prior to that, she had watched a bootleg copy of Fury Road with me after I had confirmed that it fit the levels of violence I consider acceptable based on what I know of my daughter.

The most interesting thing to me was her reactions after each film.

After watching MMFR, she talked incessantly about it. (She had talked during the film as well, making observations, etc.) Her name was suddenly changed to Angry Cereal, mirroring two of her favorite characters. She made a new Sims game, spending more time than she ever had before perfecting the characters - and giving them all pets. A Lego car set was turned into a crazy car that could fit into the Mad Max world. Barbies were now the Wives and her dad’s Diablo figurine was now Immortan Joe. It’s been a little over two weeks and she still talks about it.

When the credits rolled on Jurassic World, she said, ‘Can we go see another movie?’ –And that was it. The only other comment vaguely related to the movie was her assertion she liked dinosaurs. Nothing else. No elaborate recreations, nothing.

I had thought with MMFR that my excitement had rubbed off on her but that doesn’t seem to be the case. After Jurassic World, I was excited, encouraging her to talk about her favorite parts. She asked for a Happy Meal. When we went to spend a gift card at Toys-R-Us the next day, I pointed out all the Jurassic World toys. They had Blue! She barely gave them a second glance.

It didn’t jive. She had tons of dinosaur books. Why was she infinitely more interested in an adult movie that was pretty much one big car chase rather than a movie about dinosaurs? Was it because despite the differences in ratings, Jurassic World had frightened her more? Maybe. But when she picked out a new stuffed animal to buy with her gift card, she informed us the little owl’s name was Splendid.

And that was it.

She had watched Fury Road in almost complete silence until the first shot of all the Wives. Then she turned to me and said, “There’s so many girls!” That was her takeaway from MMFR: there were lots of girls! All the girls were fighting together against the bad guy! The girls were the heroes! That was important to her, seemingly even more important than it was to me. Maybe because she’s just getting her first taste of playground culture where boys and girls are separate and the two don’t mix often and it’s been confusing. Maybe because she just really liked seeing girls on the screen. When I ask her, she just shrugs and says, “I don’t know, mommy, I liked all the girls. I liked Toast.”

As an adult, I’m aware of issues with representation. I don’t remember consciously noticing it as a child but I remember Leia and Uhura and Janeway being my favorites. I remember dressing up as Dana Scully. As a mom, I watch my daughter gravitate to girls and women on screen. A movie I thought would a sure thing because DINOSAURS! became a total miss because for her, there was no one on screen that she left the theater wanting to dress up as. There was no incentive for her to change her name to mimic favorite characters. I left grinning because holy shit, raptor squad! She left wanting a cheeseburger.