Confluence Daily is your daily news source for women in the know.

In the category of:  We’ll see.

Barr says redacted version of Mueller report to be released within a week

In the category of:  It’s about time.

Time’s Up for Abusers in the Workplace: Rep. Ayanna Pressley Introduces Sweeping Anti-Harassment Legislation

Joined by workers, survivors, and advocates from across the country, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and other congressional Democrats have introduced new, comprehensive legislation that tackles harassment in the workplace. The multifaceted “Be HEARD Act” is aimed at bolstering protections for workers, particularly those in lower wage and entry-level jobs where employees tend to be most vulnerable.

The bill was authored by Rep. Pressley and three other Democrats, all women: Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), and Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL).

Introducing the bill on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning, Pressley recalled the people who inspired her to help draft the legislation.

“I am thinking of the brave women of the Boston Fire Department who day in and day out risk their lives for the safety of our community and face harassment from male colleagues in their fire houses,” Pressley said in prepared remarks. “I am thinking about the hotel workers I worked alongside when I was scraping money together to help my family. I am thinking about the transgender men and women who face discrimination for living their truth. I am thinking of my mother Sandy and my daughter Cora—my past and this country’s future.”

Continue

In the category of:  Do you know what your kids are playing.

A scholar of gaming culture on what went wrong with “gamer” culture — and why white nationalists see gamers as potential allies.

A rot has quietly spread among video gamers — a reactionary political culture from which outright white supremacist groups have begun recruiting America’s men and boys.

In 2014, a group of self-described gamers viciously harassed feminist game developers and cultural critics, regularly threatening one of these women’s public appearances. This so-called “Gamergate” movement caught the attention of Megan Condis, a professor of communication at Texas Tech. Condis is both an avid gamer and a professional student of gaming culture, and wanted to understand the attitudes fueling Gamergate itself.

In her research since then, she’s found that the misogyny of Gamergaters is part of a much bigger reactionary tendency among a certain subset of men and boys who play video games, an ideologically charged “gamer” identity that centers a stereotyped white male nerd as the “authentic” gamer. This kind of gamer reacts angrily to individuals who they think threaten their “safe space,” as Condis cheekily termed it — a kind of attitude that has white supremacists see as signaling openness to their even darker worldview.

Continue