This is not the end, this is not the beginning

At least 20 immigrants have been taken into ICE custody at Penn Station since June, law enforcement officials said, as part of an aggressive crackdown by the federally run Amtrak Police Department on anonymous sex at the transit hub's notorious bathrooms.

Nearly 200 people were arrested or detained since the start of June for alleged public lewdness or indecent exposure in the station’s men’s bathroom near its entrance at Eighth Avenue and 31st Street, Amtrak Deputy Police Chief Martin Conway confirmed to Gothamist. NYPD data shows only 12 people were arrested for public lewdness in and around Penn Station during the first five months of the year. But the data from Amtrak shows arrests for the violation skyrocketed since then. [...]

The Amtrak Police Department has deployed undercover cops into the bathroom to catch people seeking illicit meetups, according to a police officer who took part in the crackdown and asked not to be named because he was not authorized to talk about the operation. But he said the enforcement caught nearly two dozen men with ICE “detainers,” which flag people to be taken into custody for deportation proceedings. [...]

State and city laws ban New York police departments from turning over people in custody to ICE. But because Amtrak is a federal agency, its police department is required to alert ICE if someone has been flagged in its system. [...]

A similar crackdown was subject to a major settlement against the Port Authority in 2022.

According to the settlement in the Southern District of New York, the interstate agency used discriminatory practices with plainclothes officers, falsely arresting and accusing gay, bisexual and gender nonconforming people of public lewdness and exposure in the terminal’s men’s restrooms because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation. The settlement suspended the practice, required LGBTQ+ sensitivity training and found multiple officers and the Port Authority liable for violating the Fourth and 14th Amendments.

We must teach them the Lore of things,

When i hear complaints about gen x i say " did not gen x bear the brunt of AIDS and the creation of the 'inner city'? wasn't it gen-x marching for queer rights and women's body autonomy and a change in corrupt banking policies in some of the largest protests in the country's history?"

when i hear complaints about millennials, i say "have not millennials fought against and lived through so many 'once in a generation' disasters they should by all rights have given up by now? Are not millennials those who rally against the status quo? the industry killers, the cop protesters, they who live through unending hardship as the economic noose tightens, leading the charge for sustainability and socio-economic reform?"

when i hear complaints about gen-z i say "hasn't gen-z gotten involved younger, and been involved stronger, in the continuance of these noble traditions? Are they not living without even the broken pieces of the promise given to the generations that came before? haven't they had their childhoods derailed by the imminence of consequences for actions they were never even present for?"

when i hear complaints about generation alpha i say "HOW DARE YOU. How dare you malign these souls who will have to fix so much that they did not have a hand in ruining... or else die of these mistakes made before they were born. How dare you do the work of our shared oppressors and alienate our fresh blood. You are not to mistreat and mock the youngest soldiers in this fight, no! you point out to them the best targets, you share your rations, you show them how to stay alive, because anyone in the trenches with us is our brethren, our sistren. Our safety and our strength."

like. does a woman politely listen to a man monologue at her because of some experience she had when she was twelve that magically cursed her to behave that way forever, or does she do it because the man has the power to hurt her and she knows it?

does a woman do all the dishes in her household because she is less capable of breaking out of a long-ago conditioned response than, like, your average trained dog, or is she doing that because she knows that all the men in the house will blame her if she doesnt and will make life worse for her if she speaks up?

maybe a lot of sexist patterns of behavior that are widely observed in society arent caused by women like, lacking willpower or backbone? maybe it is super fucking weird for supposedly feminist movements to imply this is the case when they talk about female socialization as the end all, be all of predicting human behavior?

For a while, the idea that the pay gap between men and women could be explained by women's reluctance to negotiate their salaries was fairly popular, to the point that the notion appeared in Sheryl Sanberg's 2013 book Lean In. It's an attractive idea because it's rooted in "female socialization" and provides us with an easy, individualist solution requiring no re-examination of systemic biases. To wit: What if we just asked women to negotiate more, to reach parity with their male counterparts? Surely, that would help narrow the gendered pay gap, yes?

Nope.

The pay gap has persistently remained while the negotiation gap has shrunk, or even reversed. As it turns out it, when women negotiate more, they also get turned down for pay increases more, and the literature on the "negotiation gap" itself has resulted in more sexist beliefs among managers in workplaces.

Women weren't reluctant to negotiate because of Female Programming that made them too shy, bashful, demure, or non-confrontational. No, women were reacting rationally to hostile, misogynistic workplace environments, correctly intuiting that attempting to negotiate for higher pay would result in refusal and being labeled a "problem". The issue was never one of whether women adequately assert ourselves, but one of gendered biases, one of women's labor and talent and intellect being underestimated and undervalued.

In short, it is a pervasive cultural and systemic issue, a reflection of society's misogyny and the belief that we are lesser, deserve less, and are not worthy of the same treatment as men. "Female socialization" is women reacting to social hostility towards us, taking the path of least resistance when we know that asserting ourselves will be met with punitive measures.

I'd also like to add that this devaluation, this dismissal of our worth and humanity, is something trans women also grapple with and deal with. We are so often treated as and told we are disposable, that our worth is nothing beyond our sexual utility, that we do not even deserve to participate fully in society and deserve to languish on the margins.