Woman Cop Fired Because of Pregnancy?

A woman from Georgia was notified that she was being let go of her job as a narcotics police officer shortly after she informed her boss that she was pregnant. They asked her to hand in a doctor's note stating what parts of her job she was still able to perform and if her pregnancy would keep her from certain tasks required by her job.

After being informed of her termination, she received a letter stating that her pregnancy was high risk and there was no safe position they could put her in on the force. Does this mean that the reason she was fired was because of her pregnancy? Thompson reports that her doctor gave her permission to still perform four of the six major tasks of her job, and her pregnancy was never referred to as high risk.

Thompson was also given a disciplinary letter stating that she needed to remain more careful on her job and the discipline was due to issues with keeping herself safe.

The Chief of Police was interviewed but he did not give any comments on the situation, instead referred the interviewer to another source, that of which was also unable to answer any questions.

I think that if a woman who is pregnant does not feel safe in her work environment and considers herself to be largely at risk, then she will quit or inform her superior of this. It is unfair to just assume that a woman who is pregnant is unable to perform her job as she has been doing for previous years. I'm sure that there are desk jobs in the police station that she could have been switched to.

Here is the link to the video found on CNN:

Cop Gets Pregnant, Loses Job

The Birth Certificate Issue in NYC

When an individual identifies as transgendered, how hard is it to change the gender on their birth certificate after undergoing hormone therapy? Apparently this has been quite an issue in New York for a woman named Joann Prinzivalli, formerly known as Paul.

Most transgendered people don't just have an ah-ha moment sometime in their teens or early thirties where they think they should be the opposite sex. It is usually something that they know and feel at a very young age. Joann says that she knew she was supposed to be a woman when she was four years old.

She underwent electrolysis and hormone therapy to give herself the outward appearance of a man, but was not able to complete this transition with a genital change surgery. She is currently suing New York City for not allowing her to change the sex on her birth certificate. It seems that the city requires proof of surgery before allowing someone to make this change...which is something that Joann did not have done.

After her public appearance about this issue, a few other transgendered individuals have decided to sue the city as well for similar reasons. They describe in the article that they have had a hard time either obtaining a new driver's license after moving to a different state or getting a job because their birth certificate does not match other forms of identification. The Board of the Health Department does not agree that they should change their requirements because they say that there could be misuse of the certificates without proper proof of sex change surgeries. I am not exactly sure what the worst is that could happen if they give these people what they want and I believe rightfully deserve, but this is not up to me to decide.

If you would like to read more about this here is the link to the article:

Transgender People Contest NYC Birth Record Rule

International Women's Day

I know that I'm a couple weeks late on this one, but I had no idea that there was an International Women's Day which was on March 8, 2011. I came across this holiday when I was reading an article about whether or not women political leaders actually do anything to help further women in society. The article didn't really interest me, so I decided to search for something about this date that I had no idea existed.

I found the International Women's Day website which contains tons of information about the events going on in each country around the world and also shares a press release containing information on how IWD got started.

The press release states that the first IWD was celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland in 1911, so this year was the 100th anniversary of the holiday! This day is considered a national holiday in countries such as China and Russia. It is a day to celebrate all of the women in your life, which makes it completely different from Mother's Day because obviously not all women are mothers. I had read another article on IWD that was not very lengthy, so I'm not going to include it in this blog, but I noticed that there was a comment made about the article stating that if this world valued equality, there would be an International Men's Day. I found this very disheartening, but I'm sure that this man is not the only one who feels this way.

Well, here's the link to the IWD website to check out what happened in other countries on this holiday and posts by women who celebrate this day with pride:

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

Same Sex Experimentation in College

Just because it is Spring Break and we all know how peer pressured some women can get to drink as much as they can and perform sexual acts with other women, I decided to blog about this article that I found in the NY Times. It is called Study Undercuts View of College as a Place of Same-Sex Experimentation by Tamar Lewin.

The article describes studies that have been done to look at how women's level of education (whether or not they obtain a high school diploma or college degree) correlates with any same-sex experimentation. I found this article interesting because a lot of the TV shows I have seen have that one line in the dialogue where the woman says about kissing another woman "oh that was just something I tried in college" or "that was just a phase in college." I didn't assume that this would automatically happen to any young woman who was attending college, but from watching these shows when I was younger, I just thought that when you went to college you, your eyes were opened to more diversity and more experiences and this could be one of them.

The author describes a term that is used in situations like this; it is known as LUG (lesbian until graduation). I personally have never heard of this term before, but it was very interesting to me, so I read on. A study was described where the findings were that with almost 14,000 respondents, a small percentage of women (10%) with Bachelor's degrees had disclosed having a same-sex experience. The percentage for those who had no high school diploma was a little higher (15%).

I think the article makes an interesting point that society just likes to believe that women are sexually interacting with each other during college because those are the best years of your life, aka you don't have to think about what you're doing and you should just go crazy. I do think that society has a different view on two women kissing and two lesbians kissing. I feel that if it's labeled as a relationship, some people have a problem with it, but if it's just innocent college experimentation then it's sexy.

Here is the link to the article:

Same Sex Experimentation Among College Educated Women

Jersey Shore

When Jersey Shore first came out, I thought that I would never ever want to watch it because it just sounded like another one of MTVs really stupid reality series that was filled with drama and had no plot. I would still use those same words to describe the show, but I did start watching it during the second season, and well needless to say...I am hooked. I don't watch it for the supposedly attractive cast or because I feel the need to know about the process of GTL, but I find it interesting how this show portrays so many double standards. I also find a lot of their arguments very petty and amusing.

When I started to watch the second season, I thought that Vinny was the only good guy on the show and that all of the other male cast members were just "creepin" on girls in the clubs and creatively came up with ways to label them based on their looks. And by creative, I mean very insulting to women. It turns out that Vinny isn't such a good guy after all. In a recent episode in the third season, Vinny gives Snooki a hard time for "sleeping with all of Seaside" when in fact he does just the same and the only reason he's saying this is because she had brought home two different guys a night apart. All of the guys in the house do the same exact thing, but they don't judge each other for it, unless they brought home a "grenade" or an "A-bomb."

This bring up the double standard that seems to be in effect in society today, especially when it comes to sex. The cast seems to know that there is this double standard, particularly the women because they have called each other sluts and whores for doing the same exact thing they are. I think that these words are permanently ingrained in their vocabulary and I have even seen my friends who watch this show talk like them as well...so much for our generation not being susceptible to media.

Our America

We were talking in class about the media and the kinds of shows that we watch as a class. Someone had mentioned the show Our America and how recently they had an episode on transgendered persons. I decided to search on YouTube to find a video of this and a segment popped up.

This specific portion of the show is about a family where the youngest child named Harry was born male, but he identifies more as a girl. The young boy was more drawn towards dolls and girl's clothing and in self-portraits he drew him as a girl. He even renamed himself Haley all on his own. Lisa Ling is the host of the show and she interviews the parents to get a sense of how they are dealing with everything.

Here is the link to the clip of Our America:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5P9kUz0yO0

One of the concerns that the father mentions about raising a transgendered child is that he fears that she will not have a normal life and he questions who is going to love her? I am assuming that he also fears the issue of hate crimes committed against transgendered individuals. I found an article that describes how 14 states so far have changed a bill to include gender identity or expression to the list of factors (including race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) that would result in an increase of a person's prison sentence. Those who decided to have this addition to the bill passed felt that it would act as a deterrent against hate crimes towards transgendered people. This ensures that those who "attack" a transgendered person because of the way they are, will get a fitting punishment and prison sentence.

Here is the link to the article:

Transgender Laws

Trading Breast Milk On the Internet

I was searching on CNN for a story about gender that might be interesting to post something about and I came across a video under the Breaking News section about online websites whose sole purpose is for women to find other women who have extra breast milk for sale. The video I found is a news anchor interviewing a doctor to see if there should be any health concerns with this kind of online trading.

Dr. Lori Feltman-Winter is being interviewed and she expresses her concerns about the fact that there is no screening process for this milk that is being traded over the internet. There is a nationally recognized milk bank called the Human Milk Banking Association of North America that has a pasteurizing process that the milk goes through before it is sold to mothers in need of it.

Lori explains that it is best for a mother to breast-feed up through the time period of 6 months after birth (possibly up to a year) and that society expects that all mothers are able to do this. Sometimes there are problems and the body just stops producing the natural milk, but mother's still want their children to be on breastmilk, so they have started to look into these other options. which could pose health problems for their children. Some of these websites have names like Milkin Mamas, which makes me think that it doesn't even sound like a good idea just looking at the name. I agree that there is a societal pressure for women to breast feed and those that don't want to are not regarded as the best mother they can be because formula isn't as good for a baby as breast milk is.

Trading Breast Milk