Friday, December 21, 2018

Unplanned Post

I wasn't planning on returning at all:

"Planned Parenthood is accused of mistreating pregnant employees" by Natalie Kitroeff and Jessica Silver-Greenberg New York Times  December 21, 2018

NEW YORK — Discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers remains widespread in the US workplace. It is so pervasive that even organizations that define themselves as champions of women are struggling with the problem.

That includes Planned Parenthood, which has been accused of sidelining, ousting, or otherwise handicapping pregnant employees, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees.

In these interviews and legal documents, women at Planned Parenthood and other organizations with a feminist bent described discrimination that violated federal or state laws — managers considering pregnancy in hiring decisions, for example, or denying rest breaks recommended by a doctor.

In other cases, the bias was more subtle. Many women said they were afraid to announce a pregnancy at work, sensing they would be seen as abandoning their colleagues.

Some of those employers saw accommodating expectant mothers as expensive and inconvenient. Others were unsympathetic to workers seeking special treatment.

At Avon, which calls itself “the company for women,” two employees in a cosmetics-testing lab have sued for being forced to handle toxic chemicals while pregnant.....

Related:

"Johnson & Johnson failed to reverse a jury verdict that awarded $4.69 billion to women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in the company’s baby powder and other talc products. The verdict, one of the largest personal injury awards on record, was upheld by Judge Rex Burlison in a circuit court in Missouri. Documents used in the case and reported last week by The New York Times and Reuters revealed Johnson & Johnson knew for decades about the risk of asbestos contamination in its talc, but fought to keep negative information behind closed doors. Johnson & Johnson said the verdict could still eventually be reversed in an appeals court. The company faces thousands of plaintiffs who have claimed that talc particles caused their ovarian cancer or that asbestos in the talc caused mesothelioma. Johnson & Johnson has prevailed in some cases; others were declared mistrials, an appealed nearly all those that have gone in the plaintiffs’ favor. The company has yet to pay out any awards to plaintiffs."

The "health" conglomerate acting like a tobacco company, and poisoning women?

Also see:

"Johnson & Johnson may be sending a peace signal after two years of warring over allegations that its baby powder causes cancer. The world’s largest health care products maker and its talc supplier agreed to pay more than $1.5 million to a woman who claimed J&J’s baby powder gave her cancer, according to people familiar with the accord. “They are tired of dealing with headline-grabbing verdicts,” said Elizabeth Burch, a professor at the University of Georgia. Media reports last week disclosed J&J has been worried since the 1970s about asbestos, a carcinogen, showing up in its talc-based products. J&J declined to comment; an Imerys spokesman said the company had resolved its part of the case. J&J has steadfastly denied that its baby powder contains asbestos. “We unequivocally believe that our talc, our baby powder, does not contain asbestos,” Alex Gorsky, J&J’s chief executive, said on CNBC Monday. Many other women have blamed J&J and Imerys for giving them ovarian cancer. Juries in several states have handed down more than $5 billion in awards to plaintiffs, some of which were thrown out on appeal, while J&J has won verdicts or hung juries in other cases. J&J faces more trials in 2019, including several in St. Louis — the site of a $4.67 billion verdict earlier this year."

It's all a problem of perception, so the best thing to do is stop powdering up before bed.

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They wanted you to abort so they could sell the fetus (you don't want to know where the tissue ends up, either).

I wonder who they could get to direct the movie:

"Bernardo Bertolucci, ‘Tango,’ and #MeToo" by Ty Burr Globe Staff  November 26, 2018

Bernardo Bertolucci was one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation, a protean talent whose impact on the cinema of the 1970s was incalculable.

It must come with the territory.

Bernardo Bertolucci was a director who orchestrated the onscreen assault of an actress in ways that traumatized her for the rest of her life.

It is up to each of us to discover an algorithm that allows us to hold both facts in our heads and hearts simultaneously.

This calculus has become one of the necessary reckonings of the #MeToo tsunami that has been rolling forward since The New York Times and Ronan Farrow published the first reports on Harvey Weinstein a little over a year ago. (I know, it already seems like centuries.) The more stories we hear, the more the greater public understands such stories have always been there, untold or unbelieved or given a pass because “it was the era.”

The era in this case was the early 1970s. Bertolucci, the bad boy of Italian cinema who died Monday at 77, was making a movie with Marlon Brando and French actress Maria Schneider about a desperate, no-names-attached sexual affair between an aging widower and a woman three decades his junior. “Last Tango in Paris” is about sex, certainly, but it’s also about politics and movies and grief and male fears of impotence, both physical and existential. Mostly, it’s about Marlon Brando.

The film’s frankness about nudity and male-female power dynamics made it seem shocking, revolutionary; I remember my mother hiding the issue of Time magazine with the nude photos of Brando and Schneider from my very curious 14-year-old eyes, and, as came out in a 2013 Bertolucci interview that was more widely reported on in late 2016, the filming of those sex scenes was only partly — and even then, very arguably — consensual.

I don't need to know what was in his closet as a teenager, and from what he has said so far the film is a piece of sick shit (like most of what Hollywood and ma$$ media trowel out).

Schneider was 19 at the time. Brando was 48 and a legend on the rebound: His comeback in “The Godfather” hit theaters during the filming of “Last Tango.” Bertolucci was coming off “The Conformist” (1970) — possibly his greatest work and the film that, if any, you should watch this week in commemoration — and was at the apex of his auteurist cachet. You did not say no to these men, and so Schneider very grudgingly assented to a scene in which Brando’s character, Paul, roughly forces her character, Jeanne, to have anal sex.

If you want to do that you have to go to North Hollywood or Malibu, right?

The two men came up with the idea of using a stick of butter for lubrication. They didn’t tell Schneider. In the 2013 interview, the director claimed he wanted to film her reaction “as a girl, not an actress.” “I didn’t want Maria to act her humiliation, her rage,” Bertolucci said. “I wanted Maria to feel, not to act, the rage and humiliation.”

Mission accomplished, I suppose. “Even though what Marlon was doing wasn’t real, I was crying real tears,” Schneider recalled in a 2007 interview. “I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn’t console me or apologize. Thankfully, there was just one take.”

A little raped — that’s enough, don’t you think? Schneider remained on good terms with Brando until his death in 2004 but never made up with Bertolucci.

Now was it real or was it not? 

I mean, there is no being a little bit pregnant, right?

Now Bertolucci is gone, and I opened this assessment of his legacy with its darkest moment (I hope) because to gloss over the crime — and it was a crime — is to ignore the damage people can do in the name of art, or what they believe is art.....

Even though there is an ART to it.


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If only more director's were female, 'eh?

"Report: ‘SMILF’ creator Frankie Shaw was investigated after complaints of on-set misconduct" by Kevin Slane Boston.com Staff  December 18, 2018

Nooooooooooo! 

She a great liberator of women and a role model for success

So it made Southie look bad, so what

She's come a long way, baby, and you better get ready to see more of her (and less of him).

On Monday, The Hollywood Reporter published a report stating that numerous people involved with the production of the Showtime TV series “SMILF,” created by and starring Brookline native Frankie Shaw, have lodged complaints, triggering an investigation by producer ABC Studios.

The Reporter quoted staffers who said Shaw “uses this idea of being feminist and a progressive as camouflage,” and that “people were really traumatized” on the set of the series, which films in the Boston area and wrapped its second season earlier this year. None of the sources with grievances spoke on the record with The Hollywood Reporter out of fear that Shaw would attempt to “sabotage them professionally.”

Additionally, while the Reporter said that no writers for the show have filed formal complaints through the Writers Guild of America, several sources told the trade publication that writers of color were segregated from the show’s white writers, and that their ideas were being “exploited without pay or credit.”

Finally, The Hollywood Reporter reported that actress Samara Weaving left the show due to the handling of her sex scenes. On “SMILF,” Weaving plays Nelson, the love interest of Rafi (Miguel Gomez), who is the father of Shaw’s character’s child.

RelatedEliza Dushku: I worked at CBS. I didn’t want to be sexually harassed. I was fired

Maybe thi$ will make things better?

Also see: CBS says Les Moonves misled company about misconduct claims, won’t receive $120m severance

That was their deci$ion, and did you know Moonves had a network employee who was ‘‘on call’’ to perform oral sex (being a network president can be very, very stressful)?

It's apparently a Colbert joke now, and at least she wasn't killed. He should have retired to Everett to serve out his sentence.

According to the Reporter, during season one filming Weaving was asked to perform a nude love scene with only 40 minutes’ notice despite her contract’s no-nudity clause. (Per the Reporter, “An insider says a waiver had been prepared but wasn’t signed.”) When Weaving balked, Shaw reportedly pulled Weaving into a trailer and “yanked off her own top and demanded to know why Weaving had a problem being nude” when Shaw did not.

A second issue arose during a day when Shaw wasn’t on set. Prior to Weaving and Gomez performing a love scene, they told “SMILF” director Cate Shortland about Shaw’s previous behavior and requested a closed set with outside monitors turned off during filming, according to the Reporter. When Shaw texted a staffer to ask how shooting was going and was told that the monitors had been turned off, she reportedly ordered them turned on, an order that staffers carried out without telling Weaving and Gomez.

Variety reported on Monday that ABC Studios has completed an investigation into Shaw’s alleged misconduct that was prompted after Weaving complained to a director and to actress Rosie O’Donnell, who plays Shaw’s mother in the series. According to Variety, O’Donnell forwarded Weaving’s complaint, leading to a human resources investigation at ABC Studios. Variety reported that ABC Studios “concluded that there had been no wrongdoing on Shaw’s part” but that Weaving “was released from her contract at her request, and is not expected to join the show for a potential third season.”

Looks to me like she was fired, and and Rosie has the gall to criticize the President of the United States!?

I'm glad she got kicked off television because of her calling attention to WTC 7, but she quickly got back in line when she realized her career was at stake.

In a statement given to The Hollywood Reporter through her attorney, Shaw said that she works daily “to create an environment in which everyone should feel safe, and in which I can continue to grow as a leader and manager.”

“I am now and always have been open to hearing and addressing all concerns and issues that fall within my control,” Shaw told the Reporter. “It pains me to learn that anyone felt uncomfortable on my set. I sincerely hope we can work together to resolve any and all issues, as I am committed to creating a workplace in which all people feel safe and heard.”

Boston.com confirmed that the planned Jan. 20 premiere date for the show’s second season has not changed and that season three of the show has not yet been ordered.

In an e-mailed statement, ABC Studios said that the company “is committed to a safe work environment, and when we are made aware of issues we address them appropriately.”

“Complaints were brought to our attention after season two production wrapped, and we are investigating,” ABC Studios said in the statement. “We will take appropriate steps going forward if season three is ordered.” 

I was told it had been completed! 

WTF?

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Related:

Padma Lakshmi explains what prompted her to write about being a rape survivor

Maybe it is time for someone to make amends, 'eh?

I wonder where they are learning that stuff.

"The Boston school system is facing two lawsuits from female administrators in the central offices who describe a difficult work environment, offering a rare glimpse at the culture inside the notoriously dysfunctional School Department headquarters......"

HUH?