The Culture War Over Pregnant People

(Apologies -- initially uploaded this with the wrong episode number/URL, so here's a corrected redo.)

An update on Katie's face, Catie's Correction Corner, the world's only black nonbinary conservative, the bizarre newspeak pertaining to females being embraced by major liberal institutions, personals, and Ellen Pao's very strange New York Times op-ed about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos.

Show notes/Links:

Full, correct context for Daniel Lavery criticizing someone for reporting a home break-in: https://www.reddit.com/r/DearPrudence/comments/lzge8x/comment/gqdp0vz

Troubled Daily Beast piece about Carson Griffith: https://www.thedailybeast.com/gawker-writers-quit-over-editorial-director-carson-griffiths-offensive-tweets-workplace-comments

The articles notes in its subhed: “The new site’s only two full-time writers exited Wednesday in protest of editorial director Carson Griffith’s offensive remarks about everything from race to penis size.”

There is no subsequent explanation of the claim that Griffith made an “offensive remark” about penis size — instead, she forwarded an email thread in which other people were joking about someone’s penis size, but which also contained information pertinent to a potential story idea.

Tani writes: “Kosoff additionally told HR of an exchange in which Griffith took a dismissive stance towards the recruiting of a writer who identifies as non-binary. Kosoff, who was tasked with recruiting some new editorial staff, wrote in a Slack message that she was going to meet with a potential staffer ‘who is a person of color and nonbinary (uses they/them pronouns).’ When she returned from the meeting two hours later, Griffith initially laughed off the preferred pronouns. ‘lol is [name redacted] a girl?’ Griffith asked.”  But Slack logs included in Griffith’s complaint show that when Griffith said that, it wasn’t in the context of responding to this individual being nonbinary, but was rather simply a question about their sex/pronouns: https://postimg.cc/yJwcRZ6k

Now, this screenshot doesn’t include the mention of “who is a person of color and nonbinary (uses they/them pronouns),” so it’s unclear when that was said. But there’s no evidence, within this excerpt, of Griffith responding directly to the applicant being nonbinary.

Tani writes: “The two reporters also relayed to human-resources instances in which they believed Griffith—who holds a management role at the site—expressed an uncomfortably negative attitude on issues related to workplace diversity. In a Slack message reviewed by The Daily Beast, Griffith seemed to brag to Gawker staff that she had gotten them out of a company-wide diversity training session, though neither Kosoff nor Breslaw had asked her to do so. The two ended up attending.”

Griffith claims she did not know this was a diversity meaning, and sure enough in the Slack log in question there is no mention of that aspect of it — she simply says she got them out of most of a long meeting that had been blocked off on their calendar (apologies for low quality): https://postimg.cc/PvqDsz2V/483230fa

ACLU tweet: https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1439259891064004610

Interview in The Atlantic in which Emma Green asks the ACLU’s Louise Melling about language like “pregnant people”: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/09/pregnant-people-gender-identity/620031/

AOC on AC360 (note that she uses “menstruating person,” not ‘menstruator’ as Jesse says in the show): https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/09/08/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-texas-abbott-abortion-ban-ac360-intv-sot-vpx.cnn

Transcript: https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/acd/date/2021-09-07/segment/01

Lancet tweet/cover: https://twitter.com/TheLancet/status/1441372277786951681

Who Ellen Pao is: https://www.thecut.com/2017/08/ellen-pao-silicon-valley-sexism-reset-excerpt.html

Her complicated departure: https://www.vox.com/2015/7/10/11614622/pao-out-as-reddit-ceo-co-founder-huffman-takes-over

“The Perverse Incentives That Help Incels Thrive in Tech”: https://twitter.com/ekp/status/991817194987114496 

Even crazier: https://www.wired.com/story/ellen-pao-the-perverse-incentives-that-help-incels-thrive-in-tech/ 

Her crazy NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/15/opinion/elizabeth-holmes-trial-sexism.html

Actual information about what Holmes did: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/podcasts/the-daily/elizabeth-holmes-trial-theranos-silicon-valley.html

DoJ release noting she was was indicted alongside Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani who is very much male!): https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/theranos-founder-and-former-chief-operating-officer-charged-alleged-wire-fraud-schemes

Tom Cotton op-ed: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html

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