Tag Archives: Gender

State-court judge ordered Kansas stop changing trans people’s sex listing on driver’s licenses

Transgender-Drivers-License

Deuteronomy 22:5 “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.

Important Takeaways:

  • District Judge Teresa Watson’s order will remain in effect for up to two weeks, although she can extend it.
  • … transgender people have been able to change their driver’s licenses in Kansas for at least four years, and almost 400 people have done it.
  • Kobach contends that a law, which took effect on July 1, prevents such changes and requires the state to reverse any previous changes in its records. It defines “male” and “female” so that Kansas law does not recognize the gender identities of transgender, non-binary or gender non-conforming people.
  • “Compliance with state legal requirements for identifying license holders is a public safety concern.”
  • The new Kansas law defines a person’s sex as male or female, based on the “biological reproductive system” identified at birth, applying that definition to any state law or regulation.

Read the original article by clicking here.

The Trevor Project took a poll: Are Parents comfortable with their child deciding to come out or transition?

Romans 1:28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

Important Takeaways:

  • Two-thirds of US adults would be OK if their child came out as lesbian, gay or bisexual, but only 50% are fine with a trans kid
  • Nearly two-thirds of adults in the United States say they would be comfortable if their child came out as lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to a new survey, but only half would be comfortable with having a transgender or nonbinary child.
  • The poll released Thursday by The Trevor Project, a nonprofit group focused on suicide prevention and mental health for LGBTQ and questioning youth, analyzed overall knowledge, understanding and comfort regarding sexual orientation and gender identity among U.S. adults. More than 2,200 respondents answered questions
  • Some 72% of adults said they are confident that they would be able to understand and support their child if they came out as trans or nonbinary.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Exclusive-U.S. SEC advisers push for details on gender, racial diversity at fund boards

By Ross Kerber

(Reuters) -Mutual fund boards would be required to disclose information on the gender and racial diversity of their directors under a rule change recommended to the top U.S. securities regulator.

The suggestion from an advisory subcommittee of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which would need further approval, goes further than subcommittee members had outlined in the spring and mirrors a growing focus from other quarters on the financial industry’s lack of diversity.

At present, there is “virtually no representation of women and minorities” on the boards that set policies across the $29.3 trillion U.S. mutual fund industry, Gilbert Garcia, chair of the subcommittee and managing partner of a Houston investment firm, said in an interview late on Monday.

Garcia said the subcommittee does not have a specific set of disclosures in mind, but said in general more data should lead to more diversity. “The theory is that by shining transparency on this, market forces will change the makeup” of boards, he said.

The push for new information is in line with other steps aiming to show the lack of women and minority representation in many realms of U.S. business. A new Illinois law requires public companies headquartered in the state to list the race and gender of each director, for instance.

Fund boards are distinct from the directors who run publicly traded asset-management businesses like BlackRock Inc or T. Rowe Price Group, and traditionally face less public scrutiny. Fund boards oversee areas like the fees that funds pay to managers and their performance.

Garcia had said on March 19 the subcommittee would likely recommend other changes including having investment advisers report on the race and gender of officers.

That idea remains among the official recommendations the subcommittee has made to the SEC’s asset management advisory committee ahead of its Wednesday meeting, according to a subcommittee report.

Other recommendations include calls for demographic details on fund firm workforces, for new SEC guidance on how asset managers are chosen, and for a study of how political contribution rules could influence asset allocation at the expense of smaller firms owned by women and minorities.

Gary Gensler, the SEC chair appointed by U.S. President Joe Biden this year, said at a conference last month he has asked staff to propose “human capital disclosure” details that could include information on diversity and other workforce demographics.

Skeptics worry Gensler and other officials will adopt regulations that are hard to enforce on areas outside of traditional finance. Beyond social issues like board room diversity these include climate change considerations and executive pay metrics.

Speaking on a panel organized by the conservative-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, which was webcast, Jennifer Schulp, director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute think tank in Washington, said the SEC could move too quickly or overstep its mandate.

“We’re going to suffer from haste here,” she said.

(Reporting by Ross Kerber in BostonEditing by Matthew Lewis)

Poll: Hugs and dirty jokes – Americans differ on acceptable behavior

People participate in a "MeToo" protest march for survivors of sexual assault and their supporters in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, U.S. on November 12, 2017.

By Chris Kahn

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Americans differ widely in their views of what constitutes sexual harassment, with age and race as well as gender throwing up the dividing lines, posing a challenge for those who police for such conduct in the workplace.

The issue has been thrown into the national spotlight as a string of prominent men in U.S. politics, entertainment and the media have been felled by allegations of sexual misconduct in recent months.

A Reuters/Ipsos national opinion poll, released on Wednesday, asked more than 3,000 American adults to consider eight different scenarios and then prompted them to decide if they would personally label each to be an example of sexual harassment. The variation in responses showed a need for employers to spell out expected standards, employment experts said.

While most adults in the Dec. 13-18 poll agreed that acts such as intentional groping or kissing “without your consent” amounted to sexual harassment, they disagreed over a number of other actions.

When asked about “unwanted compliments about your appearance,” for example, 38 percent of adults said this amounted to sexual harassment, while 47 percent said it did not.

Some 41 percent of adults said they thought it was sexual harassment when someone told you “dirty jokes” but 44 percent said it was not. And 44 percent of adults said that nonconsensual hugging was sexual harassment, while 40 percent said it was not.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency that enforces workplace discrimination laws, says sexual harassment can include unwelcome sexual advances as well as other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that affects an individual’s employment, interferes with their performance or creates an intimidating or hostile work environment.

But courts have disagreed on when individual actions cross the line into harassment. And many workplace sexual harassment cases are settled by employers before they ever reach a court, so there is not a constant judicial airing of standards.

TOUCHING AND HUGGING

Since people come to work with different ideas of what is appropriate, managers should train their employees and develop clear lines of conduct so that there are no misunderstandings, said Suzanne Goldberg, director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School.

“The onus is on employers” to set the tone, Goldberg said. “Even if the co-workers don’t object or go to management to complain.”

In the Reuters/Ipsos poll, for example, 19 percent of men said that touching someone intentionally without their consent was not sexual harassment, compared with 11 percent of women. The poll did not specify exactly what was meant by non-consensual touching.

Fifty-two percent of people from racial minorities said that they considered non-consensual hugging to be sexual harassment, compared with 39 percent of whites.

While most adults said they thought that it was sexual harassment to send “pornographic pictures” to someone without their consent, younger people appeared to be more permissive.

Eighty-three percent of millennials, or those adults born after 1982, said it was sexual harassment, compared with 90 percent of gen-Xers (born 1965-1981) and 94 percent of baby boomers (born 1946-1964.)

Experts in sexual harassment law said it is understandable that women, especially women who are racial minorities, define sexual harassment differently than men, given that many have experienced it first-hand.

“Men do not cross the street to avoid people,” said Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who specializes in workplace equality. “Virtually all women do, whether or not they’ve been attacked before. It’s part of growing up in a group that’s been victimized for so long.”

WORKPLACE STANDARDS

Clear workplace standards would help everyone, including those who are accused of sexual harassment, said Minna Kotkin, director of the Brooklyn Law School Employment Law Clinic.

Kotkin, whose clinic provides legal help for people dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace, said she recently advised a man who said he was fired because he misunderstood where the line had been set.

“He worked in retail, and this was a place where there was sexual banter going around,” Kotkin said. “And one day he made a comment about a co-worker’s breasts. And then later she claimed that he grabbed her by the waist.”

“He got fired, and he was really surprised,” she said. “He thought that conduct was part of their relationship … But the question is, maybe this woman tolerated this all along and then finally had enough?”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout the United States. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points for the entire sample. The credibility interval is higher for subsets based on gender, age and race, as the sample size is reduced.

 

(Reporting by Chris Kahn; Editing by Frances Kerry)

UK Votes Against Banning Sex Selective Abortions

The British Parliament has voted against a bill that would prohibit a woman from getting an abortion based on the sex of the child.

The 292 to 201 vote against the amendment has caused pro-life groups across Britain to react in horror.  The groups say that the Parliament has failed to protect the lives of millions of unborn girls who will be killed solely because of their gender.

“Parliament yesterday failed in its duty to ensure women are not discriminated against at all stages of their lives. Instead, it caved in to the intense lobbying efforts of the abortion industry and its advocates, against the outlawing of sex selection abortion,” UK pro-life group LIFE said in a statement.

“The abortion of girls because of their sex has no place in modern societies which embrace equality and non-discrimination against women.”

Politicians who voted against the measure tried to claim that existing law prohibits sex selective abortions.  Prime Minister David Cameron said the law could have potentially blocked women from obtaining abortions in the event a child has severe abnormalities.