Worlding – Page 26 – CULTURE/PEDAGOGY/BELONGING

August 6, 2013August 6, 2013

Sex sells? Think again

The backlash against sexual imagery in the media is gathering steam as feminists and child-protection experts make common cause with conservatives, religious groups and, yes, the Daily Mail to decry what they see as degrading attitudes to women.

A British marketing consultation firm recently ran the below story warning companies to back off on “sex sells” thinking.

“From the Prime Minister’s online porn clampdown, announced last week, to the continuing campaigns against lads’ mags and The Sun’s Page 3 models, UK media is on notice that the gratuitous use of raunchy images is becoming unacceptable.

“David Cameron’s plan for ISPs to automatically activate filters, which users would have to turn off to access porn, sounds to many people like a sensible balance between protecting children from inappropriate material and respecting adults’ rights – and any move designed to tackle child sexual exploitation is widely applauded. But some worry that adult sexuality and child abuse are being deliberately lumped together to promote repressive and prudish attitudes to sex.

“The issue is riven with contradictions. Cameron was somewhat at a loss last week to explain why The Sun’s “tit pics” – widely seen by children across the country – are acceptable when online porn is not. However, his reply that buying the newspaper is a free consumer choice might have something to it. The Sun’s circulation has fallen by 40 per cent over the past decade to 2.25 million, arguably a reflection of the growing distaste for a publication that uses breasts to promote itself. Continue reading “Sex sells? Think again”

August 5, 2013

Gender and car shopping

Women are more likely to prioritize safety and affordability in shopping for cars, while men appear to seek out cars based on exterior styling and “rugged” reputations. From the ground-zero of car culture, the LA Times reports:

“Like comparing apples to oranges, men and women have different factors of importance when choosing a vehicle, influencing their brand research based on qualities that matter the most to them,” said market intelligence manager Diana Duque-Miranda. She noted older men typically gravitated toward “heritage” brands they grew up with – Lincoln, for example, and Buick.

“Search data showed 76% of women in the study sought out safety features in their next new car purchase, compared with 61%. That surprised Arthur Henry, another Kelly Blue Book manager. “When I think of solid cars, I also think of safety,” a priority analysts found more often in women’s searches. The survey data showed men tended to gravitate toward models considered “rugged,” Henry said. Twenty-eight percent of men were more likely to shop for such vehicles, compared with 19% of women, he said. Duque-Miranda noted women were more likely to seek out features once considered luxury – such as leather seats, USB ports and parking sensors – that are now becoming standard in lower-priced vehicles.

“Fuel efficiency also ranked high among 67% of women, compared with 48% of men. So how did brands fare in the battle of the sexes? Lincoln, Audi, Jaguar, Scion and Cadillac topped the list of 10 makes most likely to be sought out by men. Women were more likely to browse options from Volvo, Infiniti, Fiat, Acura and Nissan.

More at: http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-gender-differences-car-shopping-20130730,0,7235355.story

August 4, 2013August 6, 2013

Talking with the doctor

An estimated 70 percent of Americans are taking at least one prescription medication, so it is good news, maybe, that they seem to talk to doctors relatively often.As health experts increasingly focus on the medical benefits of a healthy lifestyle and preventative healthcare, Americans say their doctor does commonly discuss the benefits of healthy habits with them- so says Gallup:

“Specifically, 71% say their doctor usually discusses the benefits of engaging in regular physical exercise and 66% the benefits of eating a healthy diet. Fewer, 50%, say their doctor usually discusses the benefits of not smoking, although that number jumps to 79% among smokers.These data are from Gallup’s annual Consumption Habits poll, conducted July 10-14.Physicians are more likely to discuss regular exercise and eating a healthy diet — positive behaviors related to maintaining a healthy weight — with Americans than not smoking. This may reflect the prevalence of these issues in the U.S.: while 19% of Americans in Gallup’s July Consumption Survey say they currently smoke, 45% say they are overweight.

“Half of Americans overall say their doctor usually speaks with them about the benefits of not smoking, but that percentage soars among smokers (79%), who are significantly more likely than nonsmokers (43%) and former smokers (45%) to say their doctor usually discusses this. It is certainly logical that physicians would intensify their efforts to speak about not smoking with current smokers, compared with nonsmokers and former smokers — especially considering the time constraints during doctor’s appointments. However, increasing the frequency of these discussions with nonsmokers could prevent more nonsmokers from ever starting and more former smokers from returning to old habits. Smokers are no more likely than nonsmokers and former smokers to report that their doctor discusses exercising regularly and eating a healthy diet, reinforcing that doctors tend to tailor their message when it comes to smokers.”

More at: http://www.gallup.com/poll/163772/americans-say-doctors-advise-health-habits.aspx?utm_source=feedly

August 4, 2013

Professors aren’t retiring

Since the economic downturn, many experts on the academic work force have worried that professors will delay retirement (given that their investment accounts took hits), and that an already-tight job market will get even tighter. InsideHigher Ed reports that:

“A new study takes more of a long-term view, but ends up confirming those fears. Examining trends at a large private university from 1981 to 2009, the study finds faculty members are likely to take much longer to retire. And unlike the more recent studies focused on the impact of the economic downturn, this study covers time periods in which retirement accounts would have been up and down several times. The dates in the study come before and after 1993, the last year in which colleges and universities were permitted to enforce a mandatory retirement age of 70. (An abstract of the study appears here. The paper, by Sharon L. Weinberg and Marc A. Scott of New York University, is in Educational Researcher.)

“While Weinberg and Scott stress that they have studied data only for one university (and urge similar research at other institutions), they also suggest that the logic behind lifting mandatory retirement for higher education was flawed. Most other employers were barred by law in 1986 from using mandatory retirement, but colleges were given an exemption for a while, based on concerns that delays in retirement would make it difficult for colleges to hire people in emerging disciplines, and to diversify their faculties. But Weinberg and Scott note that these arguments became considerably weaker when the National Research Council issued a study in 1991 predicting that those things would not happen.

“At most colleges and universities, few tenured faculty would continue working past age 70 if mandatory retirement is eliminated,” says the NRC report.

“At the university studied, that was decidedly not the case. Among the findings were that while 11 percent of faculty members at this university during the era of mandatory retirement worked after age 70 (with special arrangements), 60 percent of faculty members now work beyond the age of 70, and 15 percent retire at the age of 80 or older.”

August 3, 2013

Looking younger but not better

Facial plastic surgery may turn back the hands of time, but new research suggests it may not, alas, boost attractiveness, reports a study discussed today in WebMD:

“For this small study, 50 strangers were asked to guess the age and subjectively rank the attractiveness of 49 patients after viewing photos of them either before or after facial plastic surgery.

“The bottom-line: Surgical intervention shaved a few years off perceived age but did almost nothing to boost patients’ overall attractiveness. What’s at issue is patients’ expectations, said study lead author Dr. Joshua Zimm, an attending surgeon at Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Institute of North Shore-LIJ Health System in New York City.

“When we’re doing this kind of surgery I’m telling patients that they’ll look fresher, more energetic and less tired, and we have some data in the literature that indicates you will look younger, as we found,” Zimm said. “But clearly I cannot say that they will look more attractive.” He emphasized, however, that the findings represent the work of just one surgeon and that the study design had limitations. “This is not the final word on the subject,” Zimm said.

“But certainly I think you can take away from this that if you’re looking to have aesthetic facial surgery to look younger, we’ve shown that you will,” he said. “Beyond that … it is not clear that everyone will definitely look more attractive.”Zimm and his colleagues discussed their findings in the Aug. 1 online edition of the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery. Continue reading “Looking younger but not better”

August 3, 2013

Many ambivalent about marriage

Although about the half the total U.S. population is married and the numbers continue to drop, Gallup today reported that only 5% say that they never ever, ever, ever want to tie the knot. About 20% are out there hunting, and the rest are divorced or just disillusioned

These results are based on a June 20-24 Gallup poll, which reports thus: It is not known whether the percentage who don’t want to marry was lower in previous years or decades. But 5% is a low absolute percentage, regardless of what it was in the past.

“Attitudes about marriage are important in the context of a declining marriage rate in the U.S. The Census Bureau reports that the rate of marriage is down, from 9.9 marriages per 1,000 Americans in 1987 to 6.8 in 2011. In addition, researchers at the University of Maryland found that the marriage rate per 1,000 unmarried women fell from 90 in 1950, at the height of the baby boom, to just 31 in 2011.

“There is significant variation across age groups in the four marriage categories, mainly driven by the increase in the “married” or “previously married” percentage as age increases. Nine percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 are unmarried and express no interest in marrying, but 56% of this group is unmarried and does want to get married. This high level of interest in marriage suggests there is little widespread attitudinal aversion to first-time marriage among the nation’s younger unmarried residents.

“Nonwhites in the 18- to 34-year-old age group are significantly less likely than whites of the same age to be married. But 61% of the never-married younger nonwhites want to get married, meaning that 81% of this group is married or wants to be, only slightly lower than the 87% of young whites who are in these two categories. Continue reading “Many ambivalent about marriage”

August 2, 2013August 2, 2013

University racial inequality grows

The nation’s system of higher education is growing more racially polarized even as it attracts more minorities:

White students increasingly are clustering at selective institutions, while blacks and Hispanics mostly are attending open-access and community colleges, according to a new report discussed in the Washington Pos. “The paths offer widely disparate opportunities and are leading to widely disparate outcomes, said the report released Wednesday by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

“Students at the nation’s top 468 colleges are the beneficiaries of much more spending — anywhere from two to five times as much as what is spent on instruction at community colleges or other schools without admissions requirements. And students at top schools are far more likely to graduate than students at other institutions, even when they are equally prepared, according to the report. In addition, graduates of top schools are far more likely than others to go on to graduate school.

“The financial implications of those differences are huge: A worker with an advanced degree is expected to earn as much as $2.1 million more in his or her lifetime than a college dropout, the report said. Also, the report said graduates of selective colleges earn an average of $67,000 a year 10 years after graduation, about $18,000 a year more than their counterparts who graduate from non-selective schools.“The American postsecondary system increasingly has become a dual system of racially separate pathways, even as overall minority access to the postsecondary system has grown dramatically,” said Jeff Strohl, the Georgetown center’s director of research, who co-authored the report. Continue reading

August 2, 2013August 2, 2013

Why women live longer

There are many causes of women’s longevity, some apparently biological (such as their more resilient immune systems) and some more man-made (such as lower rates of accidental, homicidal, or suicidal death).But the overall survival advantage is an outcome of social dynamics. The Atlantic discusses the factors:

“In the United States, women’s advantage in life expectancy at birth is just less than five years, but it was almost eight years in the 1970s. Demographers have determined that the major driver of the 20th century trend was smoking (there is a similar pattern in much of Europe).

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“Smoking is a big issue. More than 80 percent of American men born in 1901 did by the time they were in their thirties, which accounts for the early deaths of millions of men into the 1970s (in the 1950s Americans consumed about 12 pounds of tobacco per person annually, three times current levels). In contrast, young women’s smoking rates never passed 55 percent, and their peak was later, in the 1970s. Since 1965 smoking rates have fallen by more than half, and the gender gap has dropped by more than two-thirds, so women’s survival advantage may narrow further.

“Smoking is a major factor globally, and many countries could be going through what the U.S. did in the last century. The World Health Organization reports that smoking is more common for men than for women in every country except Austria, and in many countries the difference is huge. Continue reading “Why women live longer”

August 1, 2013

Tattoos that hide melanoma

Millions of Americans head to the tattoo parlor to get “inked” each year, but a new study suggests that getting a tattoo over a mole or birthmark may not be healthy. As WebMD reports:

“That’s because having a tattoo over a mole especially can make it difficult to detect the development of skin cancer, the researchers said. Reporting July 31 in the journal JAMA Dermatology, researchers in Germany pointed to the case of a young man who developed melanoma on a pre-existing colored skin lesion (mole or birthmark) within a tattoo during and between phases of laser tattoo removal. Sixteen other cases of melanoma developing within tattoos have been reported in English-language journals, the study authors said.

“In general, tattoos should never be placed on pigmented lesions; if they are, the tattoos should never be treated by laser,” said the researchers, who were led by Dr. Laura Pohl of Laserklinik Karlsruhe. Dermatologists in the United States concur that moles should be no-go areas for tattoos. “Fifty percent of all melanomas develop in pre-existing moles,” said Dr. Hooman Khorasani of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City. “It is harder to do surveillance on moles that are covered by tattoos, as the tattoo ink camouflages the mole and sometimes interferes with some of the tools we use for detection.” Tattoo removal can make mole surveillance more difficult too, he said. Continue reading “Tattoos that hide melanoma”

August 1, 2013August 1, 2013

The Dove “Real Beauty” debate

Dove’s Real Beauty campaign purports to replace idealized (skinny) images of women with more realistic ones, with the tagline. “You’re more beautiful than you think.”

MS Magazine’s Danielle Nelson analyses what else is going on in the Dove ad video.

“At first glance, this video seemed comforting, almost therapeutic as an antidote against our airbrushed versions of beauty typified by Hollywood and glossy magazine covers. Instead of telling women to lose weight, apply makeup correctly and dress for our body

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shapes, Dove (which sells skin and hair-care products) reassured us that we are beautiful despite our self-confessed flaws. But there was something deeply distressing about the message behind this Dove ad:

“With soothing music playing in the background, the ad traces various women as they describe themselves to a former forensic artist. From behind the curtain, he sketches, following their lead while also completing a second portrait—one based on how a stranger describes the woman. At the end, the artist unveils the two portraits side-by-side. On the one hand, it is quite moving to see the women tear up as they see that others find them more attractive than they see themselves. What woman doesn’t want to feel empowered and confident in her own skin? But among many other problematic aspects of this ad, Dove wants us to know that being beautiful is still what matters most. And by beautiful, they mean society’s narrowly defined cultural perception of beauty — i.e., white, thin, young, blonde. Continue reading “The Dove “Real Beauty” debate”

July 31, 2013

Coffee may reduce suicide risk

We know this sounds far-fetched but a new study has shown that drinking a lot of coffee may reduce suicidal thinking in some, due to the mood altering effects of caffeine.

Apparently, people who drank more than four cups of coffee a day were 53 percent less likely to commit suicide than those who drank less than one cup a day, a new study found. WebMD reported today that

“Those who drank two to three cups of coffee a day had a 45 percent lower risk of suicide, according to the analysis of data from more than 208,000 people who were followed from 1988 to 2008. During that time, there were 277 suicides, CBS Newsreported.

“The study was published in the July issue of the World Journal of Biological Psychiatry.

“The researchers said that caffeine in coffee can increased neurotransmitters, which can lift a person’s mood and act as a mild antidepressant, CBS News reported.

“Unlike previous investigations, we were able to assess association of consumption of caffeinated and non-caffeinated beverages, and we identify caffeine as the most likely candidate of any putative protective effect of coffee,” study author Michel Lucas, a research fellow in the department of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, said in a news release.

Full story at: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20130730/coffee-suicide-risk?src=RSS_PUBLIC

July 31, 2013

College student poverty

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 29 percent of students nationwide have household incomes below $20,000, 79 percent work full or part time in addition to taking classes, and 35 percent are parents or have dependents (17 percent are single parents). ThinkProgress reports that “These financial burdens can constrain college students’ potential. Many are forced to drop out of school, creating a vicious cycle of poverty because without education, it is increasingly difficult to emerge out of poverty and enter the middle class.

“Overall, more college students are having to work long hours to finance their educations. The American Community Survey found that in 2011, 19.6 of undergraduates nationwide worked a full-time, year-round job. By contrast, in 2005, just under 10 percent of college students were working full time.

“The Census paper also notes that 63.3 percent of college students live with their parents or relatives, suggesting that the sluggish economy is making it difficult for students to attend college further from home and live on their ownPoverty rates in many areas of the country decline significantly when they exclude off-campus college students living on their own, a new Census Bureau working paper finds.The Census Bureau calculated that 15.2 percent of the population officially lives in poverty. But for college students living off-campus and not living with relatives, the poverty rate is 51.8 percent. When eliminating them from the official poverty rate calculation, only 14.5 percent of Americans live below the poverty level.College students who live in dorms are automatically eliminated from calculations of the poverty rate, but students living off-campus are not, so the Census Bureau isolated data for these students recorded by the American Community Survey from 2009 to 2011. Continue reading “College student poverty”

July 30, 2013

Major ruling for transgender students

Last week’s settlement between the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights and a California school district may have been issued at the K-12 level, but the newly clear message that federal laws prohibit discrimination based on gender identity applies to colleges too, experts say.

Inside Higher Ed reports that “The U.S. Departments of Justice and Education jointly determined that California’s Arcadia School District violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination, by barring a transgender student from sex-specific facilities and activities. All schools and colleges receiving federal funds are obligated to comply with Title IX or risk losing that funding.

“In a 2010 “Dear Colleague” letter, OCR said schools must work to prevent gender nonconformity discrimination — when, for example, a student who is assigned a male sex at birth but does not act as a stereotypical boy (maybe by using female pronouns, or wearing dresses) is bullied.

“But this resolution agreement takes that a step further by covering gender identity discrimination — when the same student described above is barred from using the female restroom. She is not being excluded because she doesn’t act like a stereotypical boy and is therefore nonconforming, but because she has a transgender gender identity; her identity doesn’t match the sex she was assigned at birth. Continue reading “Major ruling for transgender students”

July 30, 2013

Univ of Calif affirms speech rights

The right of faculty members to speak out on matters affecting their colleges and universities has long been viewed as central to the way academic freedom and shared governance are supposed to work in American higher education, reports Inside Higher Ed

“The University of California Board of Regents affirmed that right this month with an amendment to the system’s “Statement on the Professional Rights of Faculty.” In so doing, the board sought to undercut the impact of a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that has been used in some cases to question the faculty right to speak out on institutional governance.

“The new language states that faculty members have the “freedom to address any matter of institutional policy or action when acting as a member of the faculty whether or not as a member of an agency of institutional governance.”

“While many faculty members might just assume that they have that right, the 2006 decision (which was not about higher education) led some courts to question such rights. That ruling, Garcetti v. Ceballos, was about a suit by a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who was demoted after he criticized a local sheriff’s conduct to his supervisors. The Supreme Court ruled that First Amendment protections do not necessarily extend to public employees when they speak in capacities related to their jobs. Continue reading “Univ of Calif affirms speech rights”

July 29, 2013

Why writers drink

Olivia Laing’s second book, “A Trip to Echo Springs,” takes its title from a line in Tennessee Williams’s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. It’s an apt phrase for a book about writers and alcoholism, with its combined dose of the sublime and the helplessly mortal. But “Echo Spring” is only the liquor cabinet, named after a brand of whiskey, as discussed in a review in the New Statesman

“Laing’s ear was apparently made to catch such notes of melancholia; the book’s subtitle, Why Writers Drink, undersells her achievement. She has produced not an answer to a glib question, but a nuanced portrait – via biography, memoir, analysis –of the urge of the hyperarcticulate to get raving drunk.

“The biographical focus is on the lives of six writers – Williams among them – and Laing visits the places in America where they variously lived, drank and dried out. The journey imposes a stagey narrative that the book could have done without, but Laing’s experiences give line-by-line pleasure and make for bright collisions with the past. A pastrami sandwich from Katz’s Deli in New York in hand, she walks to the Queensboro Bridge and remembers that this is where “John Cheever once saw two hookers playing hopscotch with a hotel room key”. Continue reading

July 28, 2013

The “ambisexual” Stravinsky

Today’s edition of Edge carries a review of Robert Kraft’s new book “Stravinsky: Discoveries and Memories”(Naxos Books), with some biographical insights not hitherto examined.

“Craft’s book drops a bomb that, in the tawdry modern way, could yet overshadow the other Rite thinking that has attended the recent 100th anniversary.

“Calling his revelation “long overdue” yet timely in sense that things have changed, the world has changed, and these things can now be talked about, Craft writes, “It will come a surprise to most people that in the early Diaghilev period Stravinsky was exclusively in an ambisexual phase while writing ’Petrushka’ and ’The Rite of Spring.’ ”

“Even without the head-scratchers of “exclusively,” “ambisexual” and “phase,” “surprise” is a stunner of an understatement predicting the storm of controversy his assertion that Stravinsky had sex with men in the period in which he was composing “The Rite” would stir up, as it has. It would have been a poor calculation for Craft, whose career as a musician and writer, and whose own personal fame, rest on his long association with Stravinsky as colleague and confidant, to steal his master’s thunder in the Rite Year. But Craft had to know that his contention, and the raft of evidence of whatever reliability he has supplied to support it, would sell books. Whatever else, Craft is back in the news, right alongside the master. Continue reading “The “ambisexual” Stravinsky”

July 28, 2013

American’s have least vacation

One thing many working people in American don’t know that they don’t know is how poor our social benefits are compare with those enjoyed by workers in other countries, reports Sociological Images.

“No doubt one reason is the general media blackout about worker experiences in other countries. A case in point: vacation benefits.

“The Center for Economic and Policy Research recently completed a study of vacation benefits in advanced capitalist economies. Here is what the authors found:

The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation. European countries establish legal rights to at least 20 days of paid vacation per year, with legal requirements of 25 and even 30 or more days in some countries. Australia and New Zealand both require employers to grant at least 20 vacation days per year; Canada and Japan mandate at least 10 paid days off. The gap between paid time off in the United States and the rest of the world is even larger if we include legally mandated paid holidays, where the United States offers none, but most of the rest of the world’s rich countries offer at least six paid holidays per year.”

More at: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/07/27/the-unknown-world-2/

July 27, 2013

College enrollments drop

College enrollment fell 2 percent in 2012-13, the first significant decline since the 1990s, but nearly all of that drop hit for-profit and community colleges; now, signs point to 2013-14 being the year when traditional four-year, nonprofit colleges begin a contraction that will last for several years, reports the New York Times today. “The college-age population is dropping after more than a decade of sharp growth, and many adults who opted out of a forbidding job market and went back to school during the recession have been drawn back to work by the economic recovery.

“Hardest hit are likely to be colleges that do not rank among the wealthiest or most prestigious, and are heavily dependent on tuition revenue, raising questions about their financial health — even their survival.

“There are many institutions that are on the margin, economically, and are very concerned about keeping their doors open if they can’t hit their enrollment numbers,” said David A. Hawkins, the director of public policy and research at the National Association for College Admission Counseling, which has more than 1,000 member colleges.

“The most competitive colleges remain unaffected, but gaining admission to middle-tier institutions will most likely get easier.

“Colleges fear that their high prices and the concern over rising student debt are turning people away, and on Wednesday, President Obama again challenged them to rein in tuition increases. Colleges have resorted to deeper discounts and accelerated degree programs. In all, the four-year residential college experience as a presumed rite of passage for middle-class students is coming under scrutiny.”

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/26/education/in-a-recovering-economy-a-decline-in-college-enrollment.html?

July 27, 2013July 27, 2013

U.S. leads world in income inequity

Wealth data is not easy to get.

Still for three years now, Credit Suisse Research Institute has published an annual Global Wealth Databook which attempts to estimate global wealth holdings.

As posted today in Sociological Images: “The most recent issue includes data covering 2012. According to Credit Suisse, the goal “is to provide the best available estimates of the wealth holdings of households around the world for the period since the year 2000.”

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“According to the publication, global household wealth was $222.7 trillion in mid-2012, equal to $48,500 for each of the 4.6 billion adults in the world. Wealth is defined as “the marketable value of financial assets plus non-financial assets (principally housing and land) less debts.”

“Not surprisingly, average global wealth varies considerably across countries and regions. Continue reading “U.S. leads world in income inequity”

July 27, 2013July 27, 2013

United Nations: “Free and Equal”

Today, in the midst of a surge in anti-gay persecution and violence from Russia to Cameroon to Jamaica, and as LGBT rights issues continue to divide United Nations member states,

the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights launched Free & Equal, a major global outreach campaign for LGBT equality. Bilerico reports that:

“The year-long initiative, which will focus on public education and advocate for legal reforms, was launched at a press conference in Cape Town, South Africa. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay was joined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Justice Edwin Cameron of the South African Constitutional Court.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights promises a world in which everyone is born free and equal in dignity and rights – no exceptions, no-one left behind,” said High Commissioner Pillay, a native of South Africa. “Yet it’s still a hollow promise for many millions of LGBT people forced to confront hatred, intolerance, violence and discrimination on a daily basis.”

“Indeed, a press release from the human rights office notes that consensual same-sex relationships are still criminalized in more than 76 countries around the globe, discrimination against LGBT people is rampant in education, health care, and the workplace, and hate-motivated beatings, sexual assaults, and murders have been recorded “in all regions of the world.” Continue reading “United Nations: “Free and Equal””