Vox

Beyonce is the First Black Woman to Headline Coachella

INDIO, CA – APRIL 14: Beyonce Knowles performs onstage during 2018 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival Weekend 1 at the Empire Polo Field on April 14, 2018 in Indio, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Coachella)

You may have heard that the California music festival Coachella began this past weekend. You may also have heard that Beyonce was going to headline the festival.

Heard of her?

Unless you were living under a rock, you know that Queen Bey preformed an absolutely epic two-hour set Saturday night at Coachella. Not only is this befitting a QUEEN, but it absolutely fits the first Black woman to headline the festival.

Can you believe it?! It’s true!

Beyonce is the first Black woman to headline Coachella. She was originally tapped to headline last year’s festival, but had to pull out due to her pregnancy. Beyonce is only the second woman to headline, after Icelandic singer Bjork. (Bjork headlined in 2002 and 2007.)

She’ll perform next Saturday night in the second part of Coachella. If you’re not one of the lucky few to see her perform in person, watching this past Saturday’s performance is the next best thing!

Grindr Allowed Third-Party Companies to See Users’ HIV Status

Grindr Logo (TechCrunch)

Yesterday, “BuzzFeed” broke the news that Grindr, the dating app aimed at gay men, had been selling users’ data to two third-party companies. Among the data sold were users’ HIV status.

Grindr admitted that it sold data to Apptimize and Localytics. (No word on how these companies were using the data.) Grindr users can provide their HIV status and date of their last HIV test in their profile on the app. The two third-party companies would’ve had easily identifiable information because the HIV status data was sent along with “users’ GPS data, phone ID and email.”

Norwegian research nonprofit company SINTEF was the first entity to find the problem. Though Grinder said that the information sent was encrypted (simply put, made into a code that’s not easily broken), the company also revealed that the data provided from Grindr could be further hacked.

In recent months, Grindr has made more strides related to HIV. The app nows offers ad-targeting to HIV-testing websites, and users can sign up for HIV-test reminders.

Though Grindr announced plans later yesterday to discontinue sharing HIV data with the third-party companies, the damage has already been done. It will be interesting to see if this data breach will affect the app’s number of users in the near future.

Grindr reports 3.6M+ “daily active users” worldwide.

Going Dark for “A Day Without A Woman”

A Day Without A Woman (Women’s March on Washington)

Today, I’m going dark for a cause: A Day Without A Woman.

Guidelines for the day via A Day Without A Woman:

Anyone, anywhere, can join by making March 8th A Day Without a Woman, in one or all of the following ways:

Women take the day off, from paid and unpaid labor

Avoid shopping for one day (with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses).

Wear RED in solidarity with A Day Without A Woman

This day coincides with International Women’s Day (IWD) and the International Women’s Strike (IWS). The day will also spotlight all the financial power women possess:

The idea behind a women’s general strike is that if women refuse to do all of their typical work for a day, it will force people to notice how important and under-appreciated that work is.

And that economic impact will be felt:

Women make up nearly half of the U.S. labor force and influence about 73% of all household spending.

Though I’ll be working today at my office job, I plan to show my support by wearing red, reading feminist literature (currently deciding between “We Should All Be Feminists” by Chiamanda Ngozi Adichie and “Bad Feminist” by Roxane Gay), and masturbating.

See you on March 9th!

School Districts Shutting Down For “A Day Without A Woman”

$1950s female teacher (Masterfile)$

1950s female teacher (Masterfile)

Tomorrow is A Day Without A Woman, a day to call attention to women’s economic power and labor (including the unpaid and emotional kind). Because women do have economic power: Studies show that “women make up nearly half of the U.S. labor force and influence about 73% of all household spending.”

One profession that is traditionally female-dominant is teaching. The National Center for Education Statistics found that for the 2011-2012 school year, female teachers comprised 76% of all public school teachers. (This gap is especially prominent in elementary schools.) These so-called “pink collar” jobs are ones where women dominate, but can be considered to be “lower” in status because of the feminine association (which is wrong, wrong, WRONG!!).

Naturally, the public school system might be hit hard tomorrow. Some school districts have already cancelled classes as a result of teachers taking the day off to strike. The Alexandria, Virginia public school system reported receiving over 300 requests for the day off. Brooklyn preschool The Maple Street School and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro public school system in North Carolina (where 75% of employees are women) will also be closed. All schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland, will also be closed, after 1.7K teachers and 30% of transportation staff requested the day off.

Ohio Bans Abortions After 20 Weeks

Ultrasound of fetus at 20 weeks (The Times in Plain English)

Another blow for women’s health: Ohio Governor John Kasich (yes, the former Republican presidential hopeful) signed a bill to approve banning abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy. (To put this in context, most pregnancies are around 40 weeks long.)

The Senate Bill 127, signed December 2016, does not allow for exceptions in rape and incest cases. Supporters of the bill claim that the fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks. (I’m curious how they know this; did they ask the fetus through the ultrasound?) The only exception will be for women whose pregnancy puts their health at risk.

Providers caught performing abortions after 20 weeks will charged with a “fourth-degree felony.”

Earlier that month, Kasich tried to sign a “heartbeat” bill, which would ban abortion after six weeks. A heartbeat pulse can generally be found around that time, though women may not know they’re pregnant. He eventually vetoed it due to overwhelming public pressure.

Around 1% of abortions occur after 20 weeks. The new law takes effect Mar. 14, 2017.

Tracee Ellis Ross Becomes the First Black Woman to Win a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a TV Comedy Since 1983

Tracee Ellis Ross, Golden Globes 2017 (Elle)

Last night at the Golden Globe Awards, the always amazeballs Tracee Ellis Ross won the award for Best Actress — Television Series Musical or Comedy. Ross plays Bow Johnson, badass doctor and matriarch of the Johnson family in the ABC comedy “Blackish.”

Ross is also the first Black woman to win that category in 34 years. The last Black woman to win in that category was Debbie Allen for “Fame.”

In her historic moment, Ross’s acceptance speech celebrated inclusion, especially for women of color:

This is for all the women, women of color, and colorful people whose stories, ideas, thoughts are not always considered worthy and valid and important. But I want you to know that I see you. We see you.

Congratulations, Tracee, and keep being you!

Men Hostile Towards Women More Likely to Support Trump

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (US Weekly)

If you know any men who come off as hostile towards women (and let’s be honest, we’ve all ran across more than one) they’re more likely to support Trump. It’s science!

Three researchers at The Washington Post surveyed 700 U.S. citizens this past June. (Keep in mind that it was before Trump’s hot-mic revelations that he’s sexually assaulted women in his past.) The goal was to see how ideas about gender, specifically women, affected a potential voter’s ability to support Trump. The researchers tested for this by giving respondents surveys with statements about women and feminism, and then asked who said respondent was supporting in the presidential election.

The results are interesting:

We found that sexism was strongly and significantly correlated with support for Trump, even after accounting for party identification, ideology, authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. In fact, the impact of sexism was equivalent to the impact of ethnocentrism and much larger than the impact of authoritarianism.

To put this plainly: “Hostile sexism was nearly as good at predicting support for Trump as party identification was.”

No wonder all the woke baes are all #ImWithHer.

Hillary Clinton Spoke 38% of the Time During the First Presidential Debate

Hillary Clinton (ABC News)

The first presidential debate aired this past Monday night between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump. It was clear that Trump interrupted Clinton many times (51 times, to be exact), but his talking time massively negatively impacted Clinton’s.

Clinton spoke only 38% of the debate running time.

How do we know this? Twitter crunched some numbers surrounding the frequency of the hashtag #debates, and possibly how many times the two nominees’ names (and maybe quotes) were mentioned. (I couldn’t find the methodology behind Twitter’s data, so I couldn’t delve into it. Sad.)

By contrast, Trump spoke for 62% of the time. Given his verbose tendencies, this hardly comes as a surprise.

Burkini Sales Rise by 200% After French Ban

Burkini designer Aheda Zanetti (Saudi Gazette)

Earlier this summer, coastal French towns courted controversy when their respective mayors decided to ban burkinis on beaches. The burkini consists of a long-sleeved top with long pants and a head covering, and was developed for women who follow Islamic modesty standards so that they could go swimming while still covered. The term “burkini” comes from a portmanteau of the words “burqa” and “bikini.”

Despite the ban, burkini creator Aheda Zanetti says that online sales of now-famous swimwear have risen over 200%+ recently. (Now, we don’t know what her sales had been previously, or what the year-over-year change has proved to be, so unfortunately we have incomplete information.)

Zanetti says that her customers are not homogeneously Muslim. She reports that about 40% of her customers are from other faith traditions, such as Judaism and Mormonism, that adhere to modest dress standards.

The burkini ban stems from a stringent French view on separating religion from the state. The French government has banned religious symbols from government buildings since 2004. A ban specifically on burqas was passed in 2011.

Right now, about 30 French towns have instituted the ban, though the town of Villeneuve-Loubet has since overturned it.

Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang

Statistics. Economics. Sex.

Vox