What We Missed
No shocker here: the Department of Veteran's Affairs isn't meeting women's treatment standards.
The awesome Rinku Sen tells us what the NAACP means to her.
A female prison guard in the UK was fired for being "too pretty" and wearing clothes too "snugly fit."
A new video game for girls plays on Little Red Riding Hood in a really weird way.
Forbes releases their list of the most influential women in the media.
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I'm going to sound like a jerk for saying this... but come on, working in a men's prison isn't exactly a safe job for a woman who's "pretty" like her. Before anyone gets pissed off at me, let me point out that MY boyfriend is in state prison and has been inside for about exactly three years and 2 months now. I have never served in jail or prison, but I know that it's not a pleasant place. My boyfriend often complains to me about what sexist, chauvinistic assholes some guys in his block are.
Again... this is going to make me sound like a jerk, but that woman should have known better if she really did wear clothes too "snugly fit" and wore make-up while working in a prison full of MALES. Prison isn't exactly known for being socially progressive. But then again, maybe she didn't do any of that, maybe everyone were just lying, out to get her.
I like that NAACP article written by Rinku Sen.
It isn't really a good idea for a woman to wear make-up and snug fitting clothes at a frat party, either. That's not the point. All women, in all situations, should be able to wear what ever they want without having their safety or their job compromised. Punishing women for being too attractive is wrong, and we should call it out whenever we see it.
I'm not sure how I feel about this particular case, but are you really saying that ALL women in ALL situations should be able to wear whatever they want without losing their job? Its almost not worth typing this because I'm sure you were exaggerating, but what about, say, any job that requires a uniform? Or any job that requires safety gear? Should a factory worker be allowed to wear a bikini and long jangly jewelry while dealing with dangerous machinery?
As for this case, I think it comes down to how accurate the article is. If they fired her for simply being too pretty, that's not ok. But if they fired her because she wasn't maintaining a professional distance and authority from the inmates, well, that might make sense.
the article wasn't really clear about that. Obviously, if she wasn't being professional or wore a proper uniform like you said, I wholly support her firing. If you got a job and you signed a contract on how to maintain yourself and how to dress, you are supposed to abide by the rules. No ifs, no buts.
haha. you're actually comparing a FRAT PARTY to prison? Uhh, okay, right, being in the same room with drunk college boys is NOT the same as being in a prison full of criminals, rapists, murderers, child molesters, thieves, and arsonists.
What a stupid analogy.
I can't wear shorts, high heels, skirts to my job. I've also worked at jobs where I was forced to wear smocks that were really hideous. Same with the guys who have worked these jobs with me.
I don't think it's fair to say that women should be able to wear what they want, when they want without getting fired. It obviously depends on the situation.
Men are often forced to adhere to clothing standards, as well - standards that women aren't forced to follow - like ties (and trust me - the gendered bias in this really bothers me too).
I don't think that this woman really did anything bad in terms of her uniform. I mean - they probably gave her the uniform. If it's too small for her - why didn't they just give her a new one? I thnk she got fired for political reasons and they just needed some excuse to feed her with.
Good grief. Who gets to decide which women are "too pretty" to work as a correctional officer? or any other job for that matter.
Further details of the case can be found in this article. Ms. Kajla resigned because she was being bullied and harassed by her coworkers not the inmates. It should also be pointed out that her uniform was altered because she's a US size 0 - I'm betting they didn't bother issuing her a uniform in her size, if they even offer it.
The article you present says that she would sit with the inmates during free time, wear jewelry & be friendly to the inmates. True, she shouldn't have ever been reprimanded in front of the inmates and the "I'll take you back to my cell" reason is bullshit (she could be "butt ugly" and a prison inmate would probably still say it just to get a rise out of an officer) but it doesn't seem like her behavior was proper or safe for a prison. Being buddy-buddy with inmates is not a good idea. Wearing jewelry is dangerous when one might be attacked - they give something for the attacker to grip on.
And I don't think the frat party is an apt analogy. Prison is not supposed to be a party.
Beauty has nothing to do with professionalism however the way you dress and present yourself does. The fact she happens to be thin and conventionally attractive is fairly irrelevant to the fact that it was thought she was being too intimate with prisoners. Similarly just because you are an attractive female doesn't mean you have to wear flattering clothes or makeup.
While at size 4 you would need to alter trousers a top would be fine for most business as you aren't in a work environment looking for something flattering. Having worked in a shop with a set uniform and being able to buy size 4 clothes I am able to say while the shirts available didn't flatter me they just hung loose and wouldn't need to be altered to be professional.
The question of whether it is appropriate to dress sexually in such an environment is a valid one. In a professional capacity I think it is reasonable to require all workers to follow a uniform code that is reasonably equal and professional (so getting women to wear bikinis and men suits is not OK but both suits is fine). Outside the prison she can wear what she wants but inside it is reasonable to follow a code which may be there for a number of reasons. It is not just about safety but about maintaining a distance that the prison considers appropriate from the prisoners and commanding respect and even perhaps fear.
If she disagrees with an individual prisons definition of appropriate then it seems the thing to do would be try to bring up the issue or move elsewhere not just go against the rules. Certainly there have been complaints against Brinsford for the relationship between inmates and staff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brinsford_(HM_Prison)) so maybe this is an issue with how the prison is run in general. In which case it is useful that this case highlights that. However judging from the report it is difficult to tell and my lack of knowledge or prisons means I don't know what normal guard behaviour is.
Yes it may turn out to be sexism, it is hard to tell from reports or comparing her behaviour to that of others. Also the relationships between guards and inmates can vary between prisons. I don't think we can say from what we are given who is in the wrong but we do need to be careful. Dressing professionally isn't an unreasonable requirement however the definition of professional can make it so. I feel that in most situations where the uniform can be justified logically and is the same or similar for everyone it is difficult to argue against and even in a lot of cases support it.
Wasn't victim-blaming outlawed with the new rules for comments?
nope, I wasn't blaming the victim. It's about using common sense. We're talking about PRISON here, for god's sake.
Kathie Lee is ahead of Rachel Maddow? I guess being on the eleventh hour of the Today show qualifies her as "influential." Give me a break.
While I'm on the topic of women from the Today show, I never noticed how beautiful Ann Curry is. Great picture of her in that slide show.
I'll have to play The Path and give my thoughts on it, but based on reviews I've read, I think women will get more out of the game than men. While Brathwaite saw the immediate danger of rape, I don't know that male players will see that cig part as anymore than the "drugs experiment" trial simply because they don't have those types of fears like women do (in a general sense, I mean). The male reviewers I read on traditional gaming blogs were both bored and said one needed patience to play the game. The one female reviewer I found (on an indie games blog) followed the creators' thoughts and liked the game.
I'll have one of my artsy male friends who loves weird stuff like this play it too and see what he thinks.
I'll bet the age of the gamer will have a lot to do with weather a male player finds it a good gamine experience.
Having come up with PC games like 7th Guest and a bunch I can't even remember the titles of any more I find I'm more patient with the slower paces cerebral games, whereas the younger people I play with have been fed almost nothing but FPS and twitch games and have no desire to figure out things by "moving a lever one notch then running back three levels to see if a light changed color" (Anyone who played Myst or the sequels will know about doing a lot of that).
The thing about The Path, though, is that it's not really a game. The only decision you get to make is which direction you go; interactions with the world are set and happen when you get close to something and take your hands off the controls entirely.
Furthermore, I thought the resolution of each girl's journey just flat-out didn't make any sense. I can't really say why without spoiling it, though.
I don't know. I had high hopes for The Path, since I love me some fairy tales and reinterpretations thereof, but the game itself struck me as trying to disguise style for substance.
Have you played American McGee's "Alice"?
While more of an FPS game, it's a pretty badass female protagonist perspective game.
I have not, though I've heard good things about it.
For years I had a cheapo laptop that would kind-of sort-of if-you're-patient-and-desperate run things like Civilization IV and Neverwinter Nights (on nights with a full moon after sacrificing a white dove to the dark god Gates), so now that I have a much nicer computer I've been going back and picking up PC games for cheapsies. I'll definitely add this to the list.
I am not a fan of video games, but this one sounds interesting to me. I've studied Little Red Riding Hood in literature from the oral tale to Charles Perrault's version to contemporary variations, like Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves," which I highly recommend, if you have not read it. It is in her collection of feminist re-visioning of fairy tales, called _The Bloody Chamber_.
I don't know, I'm a sixteen year old male and I enjoyed the path.
I have been excited for The Path for a very long time. I highly recommend people check out some other games by Tale of Tales to experience how video games can be interactive art. The Graveyard is one of the most beautiful (and short) games I've ever played, and I still think about it. You simply play as an elderly woman as she walks through a graveyard and contemplates her life (subsequently your own). Also, The Endless Forest is an online game where you play as a deer with a human face as you interact with other deer-people in a Forest that never ends. It is full of magic and surprise, but has no real plot or objective. Some people may find it boring, but joy that comes from starting an impromtu deer-dance party without speaking a single word is beautiful. Tale of Tales is exactly where I'd like to see the games of the future. Does anybody know of similar companies?
I currently work in a juvenile detention facility... when I read the article about the woman prison officer who was fired from her job the thing that leapt out at me was
"Miss Kajla would go and talk to the lads. She lacked boundaries and assertiveness with the prisoners."
And I could see how that would get you fired, released, or whatever term you need for "not working there anymore."
Offenders in jail or prison, no matter who you are are going to try and undermine your authority... if they got to her she needed to find a new home.
I went to The Path's official website and it seems really interesting. I'm really interested in trying it. I love the Myst games so I like a slower pace in games. This seems more like virtual storytelling than a game, though.
Yeah, saying that she was fired for being "too pretty" is a really great headline, but doesn't convey the complexity of the situation at all.
First, I think ALL prison and jail guards should be fired. But if there's any truth to what her colleagues were saying about her behavior, she definitely should have been. Their argument of course is that by wearing makeup and jewelry and wearing a "snugly fit" (from the article, it sounds like that was her description?) uniform she didn't make a good enough jailhouse enforcer for the prison-industrial complex junior (this is a youth facility, remember). I think she should have been fired because based on the description, it sounds like she was coming on to some of the TEENAGERS while acting in her role as a jailhouse enforcer. Holy fucked up power dynamics, Batman. yes the reason they fired her for sounds fucked up and sexist, but she still sounds pretty fucking contemptable.
I worked in the prison system before, and from what I've read, that woman was being way too chummy with her inmates. I don't know about being too pretty, or wearing her uniform too tightly, but sitting with your inmates and talking with them is unprofessional and is a HUGE SECURITY RISK. She jeoparidizes the security of the entire prison. Also, the article suggests that several of the inmates knew her address, said things to her about how pretty she was, and she didn't address the issue by correcting the inmates. These kind of things have led to jailhouse romances between guards and inmates, inmates talking guards into smuggling in contraband items like cigarettes, liquor, or even weapons, or basically, allowing inmates to gain control over the situation by getting a "too friendly guard" to bring in illegal items for the inmate and than the inmate blackmails the guard by threatening to tell his superiors so that he can get fired. It's a favorite passtime among inmates to "hook up a guard" to see if they can get him or her fired. An inmate who can get a guard fired is a big hero in the cell block. There are reasons for why this woman was fired, and I don't think it has to do with her being a woman. For all we know, she could've been openly flirting with these inmates who are horny males locked up. A huge no-no. That said, male guards get fired for being too friendly with inmates as well. Unfortunately, there have been a lot of cases of forbidden romances between male inmates and female guards than male guards and female inmates especially in my state because male prisons outnumber female prisons 20 to 2, but believe me, male guards do get fired for the same thing in the female prisons as well. In the prison where I worked, we could wear makeup, but we had to dress and act professional. Our uniforms weren't exactly made to fit us too tightyly, but it said that this woman was too tiny for the standard prison uniform, and she had to have her uniform sized down. For all we know, she may have had it sized down way too much. Anyway, horny male prisoners are deprived of female sexual companionship for a long time, and their senses are usually heightened more than the average persons when it comes being visually stimulated, or certain smells. One female guard had some VERY strong smelling perfume on, and her boss told her to wash it off. The last thing you want to do is stimulate these guys to something that they've been deprived of for a long time. Teenage juveniles are no different because at the correctional facitility for boys in my state, some of those "boys" are there until they are 21. Anyone, looking and acting inappropriately puts the safety of the entire prison at risk. A too friendly card is more likely the one that will be taken hostage first in a prison riot. There are far more inmates than guards. One female correctional officer actually smuggled a gun into the prison for her inmate boyfriend in one case. Like I said, there are legitimate reasons for why this woman was fired, and the so-called harassment by her co-workers may have been repeated attempts to get her to stop her actions. I know I wouldn't want her to jeopardize my safety in a prison where we are out number 20 to 1. Research has shown that women make very effective prison guards because they usually have very effective communications skills to creat a positive rapport with the inmates. That's very important as long as it's done professionally. Women correctional officers have done a lot to over come discrimination on the job and defending some twit like this is a knife in the back to the women correctional officers who actually overcame those barriers.
Yeah, I've been on the other side of the bars and fuck all COs, no matter their gender.
Well, if people like you learned to behave yourself instead of ending up behind bars, we wouldn't need any COs-male nor female-at all. Maybe you should use that as an incentive not to break the law you instead of complaining about people who are hired to keep your ass in line.
Yeah... fuck all CO's especially the ones that deal with murderers and DV abusers and all the other people that prey on the weak.
Fuck them. Its not like they are people with families.
And I wonder what category attentat fits into-murderers, DV abusers, or other people who prey on the weak like child molester, rapist, etc.?
Does not matter, she said fuck all COs.
All of 'em.
I fit into the category of people who go to jail for fighting oppression. The number of people behind bars who fit into those categories is much smaller than you two blithering idiots know. Most people are in on drug charges. A lot are in for trying to survive with the odds stacked against them. Why don't you two go back to whatever high-paying yuppie jobs you got and stop pretending to give a fuck about the "weak" when you support to the fuckers that keep them down.
I am one of those who you wish were fucked.
I work with juveniles... out of the 16 on my unit 5 have committed sexual assault. I also have an attempted murderer and people that robbed people because they were bored and wanted money for marijuana.
And a lot of people that are in for 'drug charges' area also in for robbery and assault. Its how they get money for the drugs in the first place.
Or sometimes they skip the middle man and just rob/assault the drug dealer.
While I worked at a probation office, not one of the people I supervised, did I hear about any other probationer being in supervision for stealing food or baby formula or any of that.
Good job minimizing though.
"I fit into the category of people who go to jail for fighting oppression."
Attendat, you said you were in JAIL. Jail and prison are NOT the same thing. Try being in prison long-term with a bunch of lifers who are in for the most violent offenses imaginable, and since your supposedly female, you haven't been in the male prison, so you have no fucking clue when it comes to what these guys are in there for. OTOH, female prisoners are notorious for not seeing themselves as criminals even when they're in there for murdering someone like their own kid. And female inmates are far worse to supervise on a daily basis. I actually prefered to supervise male prisoners because there was a lot less drama thats for sure.
I wouldn't say The Path is for girls. It's for adults. It's multi-faceted and strange and beautiful. Definitely worth the $10. Just don't expect a nicely wrapped up plot. The true plot is the experience of playing, not what happens in the game.