A native of Compton, Calif., much of Palmer's life as a child and young adult centered around basketball. She played from junior high through college, attending California Polytechnic State University on a full athletic scholarship. Palmer holds two NCAA Women's Championship from her time at the school.

She describes what it was like to officiate her first game in 1997. (Not going to lie here, that would scare the crap out of me, too):

"I was scared out of my wits. It was so much going on, so much excitement. But for me, as soon as I walked out on that floor and we tossed the ball, now it was time to go to work."
And as you probably guessed, Palmer faced a ton of discrimination. She's pretty much heard it all:

"Every negative thing you can think of, they've thrown it at me...'You're not going to make it.' 'Why are you here? Go back to WNBA.' 'Players and coaches are not going to accept you.' 'Your guys that you work with, they're not going to accept you.' "

I’ve watched in awe and appreciation for the past week as a Twitter hashtag created by writer and activist Suey Park, “#NotYourAsianSidekick, has achieved the impressive feat of trending on the social network, sparking a global discussion about Asian stereotypes, Asian American identity and especially, the challenges faced by Asian American women.

Park first used the hashtag on Sunday, December 15 to promote a Twitter conversation the next day about how feminism had minimized and marginalized Asian American women. “Be warned,” the tweet announced. “Tomorrow morning we will be have a convo about Asian American Feminism with hashtag #NotYourAsianSidekick. Spread the word!!!!!!!”

The conversation couldn’t wait ’til the next morning. It began right away, and led to a torrent of posts from Asian American women who aired their frustration and anger, inspiring others to add their voices to the chorus.
Writer Kai Ma summed up in an excellent essay on Time.com, “#NotYourAsianSidekick Is Great. Now Can We Get Some Real Social Change?” how the hashtag caught the cultural zeitgeist:

At this point, the cycle is familiar. A commentator writes an article telling women how they can avoid rape through individualistic, ineffective methods. Dress conservatively! Shout loudly! Stay sober! The piece never addresses how we, as a community, can resist violence, and it shifts the focus from perpetrators’ wrongdoings to the “mistakes” of survivors. In response, the feminist internet rises up to condemn the victim-blaming. The fury dies down and, a few weeks later, another, similar article emerges again.

In these reactive conversations, we rarely get the chance to dig deeper and proactively consider the roots and harms of victim blaming. We sat down (at our individual computers, thousands of miles from each other ) to take a stab at that conversation.

How has victim blaming affected you personally?

Lori: Like many of my friends, I’ve found myself on more than one occasion policing my own style based on fear of being perceived as a “slut” and thus being exposed to social judgment and in some cases actual physical danger. This phenomenon plays out in a way that is inevitably gendered, and isn’t limited to preemptive self-policing, either. If I’m ever catcalled or street harassed, especially if I’m wearing something that might be more revealing than pants and a t-shirt, I find there’s still a small voice inside me that says “I deserve this, and whatever might follow” even if I liked my outfit and felt it was appropriate for whatever activity I was up to. I know so many people who have stories like these, and this is even mild compared to people who have actually been blamed for their own assault or rape. I think we talk a lot about how victim blaming affects victims or survivors of assault, but less so about the chilling effect it has on everyone else in society, every single day of their lives.

Veronica: Lori, I am right there with you on the questioning of my clothing — i.e. what I’ve done to “deserve” harassment — even though I know this is absurd. I vacillate between sometimes wanting to wear revealing clothes and censoring myself to avoid harassment, which makes me feel like shit, and saying “fuck that noise” and dressing as slutty (said here with 100% positive connotations) as I want and more often than not getting harassed, which makes me feel like shit. Lose-lose.

This has to be my favorite quote to come out of the whole Occidental College fiasco; it’s staggering in its moral blindness and fanaticism and its complete lack of self-awareness. It also captures well the peculiarly self-defeating quality of so much Men’s Rights rhetoric and, er, “activism.”


John “The Other” Hembling on MRAs spamming Occidental College with false rape reports: “Go forward, brothers, and f*ck their sh*t up!”



The backstory here: the commenter in question is none other than John “The Other” Hembling, the Number Two (or Three? I can’t tell) boy at A Voice for Men. He’s responding to an article on Raw Story that’s indicative of the incredibly (and justifiably) bad press Reddit MRAs have gotten for spamming Occiental College’s anonymous rape reporting website with false reports of rape, some of which may have named real people at the school as the “perps.”

At this point in the story, even the normally obtuse Men’s Rights Redditors realize they have a disaster on their hands, and are trying to blame anyone else they can.

But Hembling thinks it’s the perfect time to cheer on the false accusers amongst the MRAs.

That’s right: apparently jealous of all the attention Reddit MRAs have gotten for their cloddish “activism,” he’s decided to jump aboard this train — after it’s left the station, derailed, and fallen into a ravine.

That response is classic, too

http://manboobz.com/2013/12/19/john-the-other-hembling-on-mras-spamming-occidental-college-with-false-rape-reports-go-forward-brothers-and-fck-their-sht-up/

As Indigenous women and girls who have experienced centuries of colonial male violence, the decision by The Supreme Court of Canada to strike down the existing prostitution laws comes as no surprise. Our histories, our laws and traditions, and our worldviews have been purposefully omitted from the Supreme Court decision. Once again, not only our voices, but our bodies and our lives have been dismissed as inconsequential. As women and girls indigenous to this land, who have resisted centuries of colonial oppression, we assert our right to our lands, cultures, laws, and body sovereignty. We reject any ruling that interferes with these unalienable rights. We pledge to continue in the proud tradition of our Mothers and Grandmothers and to continue to fight for our children and grandchildren.We are in a pivotal moment. We have the ability – and the responsibility – to change the course of history. We urge all those who seek justice, freedom, and equality to look beyond the decision rendered by the Supreme Court and to listen to the voices, experiences, and wisdom of Indigenous women and girls. Prostitution was not and is not a traditional practice among Indigenous peoples. We ask all those who seek justice, freedom, and equality to view prostitution as a colonial system and as a form of violence against women and girls that must be abolished.
We see an opportunity for all of us to work toward a better future – a future in which our daughters are not handed over to pimps and johns to be violated, abused, and thrown away. We see hope in the supreme court’s decision to decriminalize prostituted women and girls. The next step is to stand up for the rights of Indigenous women and girls by criminalizing the source of the harm in prostitution – the pimps and the johns. This would be a truly progressive act in the interest of women’s equality.

In addition to laws that criminalize the pimps and the johns, we also demand funding for social policies and programs that prevent women and girls from entering prostitution in the first place, and that help us as we exit and heal. This includes, but is not limited to, safe and affordable housing, guaranteed livable income, counseling, job training, and women-only detox and recovery services. We also demand the government educate itself and the public about prostitution as a form of colonial male sexual violence against women and girls.

We ask the public and policy makers to stand in solidarity with us and to adopt the Nordic Model of prostitution policy. Do not be “tricked” into supporting the decriminalization of pimps and johns as progressive legal and social policy. We are Indigenous women and girls who have survived hundreds of years of colonialism, male violence, and capitalism, and we are not going away. We are proud to be part of a global feminist abolitionist movement, and we ask you to join us in our fight for freedom.

Men's rights activism — a term most often applied to wounded community of daft, delusional, and often malignant denizens of the Internet who think that feminism threatens their basic rights and that rape isn't even that big of a deal — has had a busy week bringing shame to its already quite besmirched name. In the past few days, MRAs have launched a defamatory campaign against Kate Winslet over poorly-supported fears that she's hogging the custody of her children, and they've inundated Occidental's anonymous rape reporting form — which is meant only to gather data on sexual assault, not to accuse anyone of anything — with false claims. Ugh, fending off the creeping Feminazi Apocalypse is hard work. Good thing someone's out there to keep those rape victims from oppressing and silencing us all.

MRAs Flood Occidental College's Rape Reporting Form With False Claims
In response to a federal Title IX lawsuit filed in April, Occidental College settled with several students and made a public commitment to making… Read…
And so it's beyond vindicating to see that a self-proclaimed former MRA has posted a rant about the movement on Reddit, where the MRA hivemind lurks. (Yes, I'm aware that this could be fake — but I WANT TO BELIEVE, and it's prompted a lot of interesting discussion). The Redditor, writing under a throwaway account, points out that men's rights could be a useful movement, and it's a fair point:

For example, men who put other men down for liking feminine traits, or how male rape/molestation victims aren't treated with the same respect as female ones. While feminism does work to address these problems, it would be nice to have a "men only" type safe space/group that other men could use to vent, talk, or show SUPPORT against the way society puts men in these awful constraints or stereotypes.

It's true that a lot of the oppression that MRAs think they face is oppression that feminism broadly addresses — feminists work against all forms of domestic violence, feminists fight against the constrictive gender norms that constrain both men and women, feminists do not want to keep men in cages, etc. But if the men's rights movement worked with feminism, instead of against it, and functioned as a safe space for men to share their specific experiences navigating masculinity, that would be great. Everyone could be happy. With that said, the current MRA movement is terrible. As the former MRA puts it:

Did you know it's possible to make the concept of promise rings even more gross? I would have thought, "No, a father giving his daughter a fake wedding ring to remind her that he — well, he and Jesus — are the most important men in her life so she better not even think about fooling around with anybody else is about as gross as it gets," but unfortunately, as this Pinterest post shows, I was wrong and it does indeed get more shudder-inducing.

Accompanying the photo of a gold ring shaped like a crown is the following caption:

A Father gives his daughter this ring for her 16th birthday (when dating is officially allowed) to wear on her left ring finger—to remind her that she will always be HIS little Princess first— and to remind her to only date boys who will treat her like a Queen—the way her Heavenly Father sees her!!
BAAAAAAAAAARF. Oh, barf. I can't even — just barf. Barf barf barf.

Why do these dads want to own their daughters' vaginas so much? Come on, dads! Leave your daughters' vaginas alone! If they're about to fool around with their boyfriends, you are the very last thing they want to be thinking about and if that's NOT the case, then something is very very very wrong.

Also, what is going on here? Is your daughter a princess or a queen? THIS POST HAS LEFT ME VERY CONFUSED AND NAUSEATED.

Granting basic rights to the LGBT community is an issue of basic economic justice, legal equality, and human dignity. Traditional Jewish law has no established model for gay marriage, but this is an entirely separate matter. We have no right to coercively prevent, by force of civil law, an individual from enjoying true happiness and fulfilling their life potential when it poses no harm to any other. Our stance on religious law and our stance on political law are not intertwined. This is not about any particular religious rule or custom but about the grander ethos of the Torah. Denying gay people the right to marry is contrary to basic justice and therefore contrary to Jewish ethics. We must support all safe families for children and build our society around strong, loving homes. The Jewish tradition cherishes values of love, intimacy, family, and creating sacred homes where G-d can dwell and mandates that we support them.

Our obligation is derived from our shared history as Jews, religious Jews in particular. We have been very successful change makers in the world because throughout history we have often been outsiders, and we can empathize with the plight others who have been, or are being, excluded or discriminated against. However, the Jewish people are today generally accepted in America, and due the comfort of inclusion, we sometimes lose sight of our tragic heritage and the sensibilities and responsibilities we ought to have as a result. For this reason, among many others, religious Jews should support those struggling for their basic rights in America and keep in the forefront of our minds the not-so-distant exclusion, violence, and vitriol we endured in our own struggle for basic human rights.

I know from my own personal relationships, many of my religious students have suffered from severe depression and have become suicidal because of harassment, bullying, exclusion, and cruelty that they have suffered for simply existing as who they are. Legal inequality is another part of the larger cultural oppression that subsequently leads to higher LGBT suicide rates. I will no longer sit on the sidelines stuck in moral paralysis while this crisis continues. Any alternative to allowing all to marry in civil law would feel anti-religious to me, as it continues to alienate and endanger a vulnerable population. Granting full and equal rights is the only moral option. But let us not delude ourselves: If marriage equality is granted, but nothing else changes, that suicide rate won't change much either. There is still a broader cultural ethos of treating all others with dignity that must be addressed, and on this issue, religious leaders must set the tone.

The focus on controlling civil marriage definitions distracts from more important religious issues of sexual ethics, such as adultery, modesty shaming, objectification of women, rape culture, sexual purity, and a responsible sexual ethic for intimacy. By focusing on gay marriage in a cultural context in which the nation as a whole simply does not and will not accept the premise that marriage needs to be defined by G-d and the Bible, traditionalists are losing credibility and causing people to ignore religious leaders when we discuss holiness in sexuality. This true and beautiful concept has come to be perceived as coded language for anti-gay sentiment as all meaning of sexual ethics has collapsed into anti-gay-marriage politic. The religious-sexual conversation has lost credibility, and that is a terrible misstep. Today it is critical that we emphasize our most important religious values such as tzedek (justice), rachamim (compassion), and pikuach nefesh (saving lives) as we further a discourse around the spirituality of intimacy. We have caused too many to turn from religious values or discount us as bigoted or no longer relevant.

For the past two decades, urban planners and architects in Vienna have been considering how women and men use the city. An article in The Atlantic earlier this year explained that, when asked about their daily lives in a planning survey, “The majority of men reported using either a car or public transit twice a day — to go to work in the morning and come home at night. Women, on the other hand, used the city’s network of sidewalks, bus routes, subway lines and streetcars more frequently and for a myriad reasons.” ”The women had a much more varied pattern of movement,” city administrator Ursula Bauer told the Atlantic. “They were writing things like, ‘I take my kids to the doctor some mornings, then bring them to school before I go to work. Later, I help my mother buy groceries and bring my kids home on the metro.’”

As a result, Vienna is a friendlier city for women and easier and safer for them to navigate. Their use of the city isn’t biological mandated, but squarely pegged to gender roles and their effects, like women’s desire for better lighting to improve their safety. It’s also useful to men who are now more involved in daily child care.

What Vienna did is known as gender mainstreaming. It’s a strategy for creating more equitable societies that fairly allocate resources by considering a diversity of needs. Vienna’s urban planning initiative is a good illustration of how gender mainstreaming not only considers how certain goals impact everyone, but how goals actually change when you give everyone consideration.

The approach, however, is still not typical. Not even in seemingly simple and intuitive ways. For example, until relatively recently, using only male body crash test dummies resulted in the deaths of many more women in car accidents. Having “unisex” military uniforms built for men endangered female soldiers. Thinking of female bodies as exceptional, basically as a preexisting condition, meant our insurance and health care solutions failed us disproportionately. There is no shortage of examples where focusing on the male body alone creates problems or makes existing ones worse.