#institutional discrimination

Higher-Class Men Received More Interview Invitations at Elite Law Firms Than All Other Applicants Combined

[Image of a form letter from the Virginia DMV, with sensitive information redacted by the poster, addressed to (deadname) Hunt. Relevant portion reads: “Dear Mr. Hunt: The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has approved your request to have the gender indicator on your credential changed from M to F.” “Mr.” and “from M to F” are circled in red by the poster.]

Get your shit together DMV

That shouldn’t have been a hard one to get right

Also the letter was addressed to my deadname. Seriously?? I got my name legally changed back in November, and I have a name update form on file changing my name to reflect this, and I filled out the gender marker change request with my new legal name. When I got the letter in the mail and saw my deadname, I thought my gender marker change had been rejected until I read the letter.

It’s bad enough that I had to get a fucking note from my doctor confirming that I really am a woman (fuck anyone who can’t afford or find a trustworthy doctor, I guess), then wait two and a half weeks for a form letter only to be greeted with the wrong name and honorific applied to me in the context where it should be most obvious that isn’t appropriate. 

Constructive addition: Provide a field for people to select their pronouns and honorific, if any. That way you can correctly address your customers without y’all having to use any brain power whatsoever.

Guess what? With this EO, even academic publications are now bound by it. Journals published by US gov agencies must adhere to its language guidelines regarding sex and gender. If a manuscript doesn’t comply with the rules, they’re out. Marvellous.

Logic deduction: neither should healthcare or health policy.

Discriminatory behavior in public space happens structurally in the Netherlands and has serious consequences for the victims, according to the 2019 annual report of the Board of Human Rights. "The many anti-racism demonstrations underscore the persistence of this problem." The Board called on the Dutch government to appoint a coordinator to develop an "overarching, integrated and structural approach to all forms of discriminatory behavior."

Discrimination occurs throughout society and people are targeted for a variety of reasons. 28 percent of people who experience discrimination in public experience it on the basis of their ethnicity - so based on their skin color, ethnic- or national origin, or the language they speak.

Discriminatory behavior can have significant consequences for the victim. "People feel humiliated and unsafe. It also affects their right to be who they are," the Board said. No less than two thirds of victims display avoidance behavior, according to the report. They avoid certain public locations or online forums. Nearly half said they avoid certain websites or social media. A fifth avoids taking public transit. "So it restricts people in their freedom of movement."

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I don’t expect people to listen to this whole podcast, but it was really interesting for me.

It has 3 of the top what-I’ll-call “institutionalized diversity workers” in the camp world. They are closely connected with large, national organizations but also have exposure to justice and equity discourses. So they actually hear and spread more diversity and inclusion talk than social justice. And much more reformism than revolution. More gradual change than fundamental restructuring.

So this podcast is a weird mix where they call “camp a great equalizer” but then talk about leaving inclusion up to camps. Like, they have this idea of camps’ potential to challenge inequality in society, but then one of them talks about not forcing camps to include people (and everyone mmhmm’s right along)!

It’s wild that you can live in a world where 95% of resident camp directors are White, where camp access is deeply unequal & where the camp experience is inequitable once people arrive .. and you live in this world and then say camps on their own will suddenly stop being incubators of inequality and become an equalizing field.