*Trigger warning: sexual assault*

"Kelly Ellis is a software engineer at Medium. She’s verified on Twitter and has roughly 11,000 followers. And for the past week or so, Ellis has been the subject of relentless targeted abusive tweets from @fredcarson915. Among the barrage of 70 tweets (all of which were posted to Medium by Ellis), @fredcarson9151 tells Ellis he wishes she would be raped and calls her a 'psychotic man hating ‘feminist.’' When Ellis reported the abuse, Twitter... replied that its investigation found the alleged violent and abusive tweets did not violate Twitter’s rules, which prohibit tweets involving violent threats, harassment, and hateful conduct. Twitter’s rules explicitly state that one may not 'threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.' Anyhow, here are some tweets that Twitter says do not rise to the level of violent, abusive, or hateful." - BuzzFeed

"Earlier this month, Massachusetts became the first state to prohibit employers from asking applicants about their salary history during the job interview process. Now, a trio of Congressional Representatives announced Tuesday that they plan to introduce a bill that would extend that same right to job-seekers across the country. Eleanor Holmes Norton, delegate from Washington, D.C. (and also the first female chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), along with Ro...sa DeLauro and Jerrold Nadler, Democratic Representatives from Connecticut and New York, respectively, say they’ll introduce a bill when Congress returns from its summer recess that will prohibit employers from asking about salary history before they make a job offer or specifying a salary. 'The bill seeks to eliminate the wage gap that women and people of color often encounter,' Holmes’ office said in a news release. 'Because many employers set wages based on an applicant’s previous salary, workers from historically disadvantaged groups often start out behind their white male counterparts in salary negotiations and never catch up.'" - TIME

*Trigger warning: sexual assault*

Anna Voremberg, managing director of the organization End Rape on Campus, said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed that she does not believe alcohol bans will prevent rape. 'Schools definitely have a responsibility to prepare students for safe drinking habits. That’s important,' she said. 'But putting such policies in the context of preventing sexual assault misses the mark.' [Ralph Castro, director of the Office of Alcohol Policy and Educa...tion at Stanford] said he understands the concerns, but added that there are connections between different campus problems, including sexual assault and binge drinking. 'Nothing’s in a vacuum,' he said. 'Obviously the issue of sexual violence is a live conversation on campus, and we’re all involved in those discussions, but we’re very careful and clear to distinguish between the two,' Castro said. 'My lens of looking at this is: How can I impact the alcohol culture to lessen the impact that this is going to have on students’ emotional functioning, academic functioning, physical functioning.'" - TIME

"Fifteen towns in France have issued bans on the full-body swimsuit worn by some Muslim women and nicknamed the 'burkini,' citing public order and security concerns. According to the ordinance in Cannes, 'Beach attire that ostentatiously displays a religious affiliation, while France and places of worship are the target of terrorist acts, is likely to create risks to public order.' How do pants, a long-sleeve shirt and a head covering made of swimsuit material threaten public... safety? According to France’s prime minister, Manuel Valls, the suit is part of 'the enslavement of women.' In a newspaper interview, the mayor of Cannes, David Lisnard, said: 'The burkini is the uniform of extremist Islamism, not of the Muslim religion.' These explanations may seem ludicrous, but Mr. Valls and Mr. Lisnard perfectly summed up the two contradictory public order rationales that European courts all the way up to the European Court of Human Rights use when dealing with Muslim women in religious garb. According to Europe’s highest court of human rights, Muslim women in head scarves and burqas are simultaneously victims, in need of a government savior, and aggressors, spreading extremism merely by appearing Muslim in public." - The New York Times

"Look, I get it. Trump’s aggressive, blatant, hurtful, oppressive political speech is so shocking that it’s reached the point of theatrical absurdity, and we all are tempted to just laugh as we cry, with it all. The Daily Show mode of liberal politics has encouraged us all to succumb to mockery when we no longer have the refuge of logical argument; of a political opponent that understands neither reason nor empathy; of a political space so tragically fragmented there can be n...o dialogue, only derision...But when we laugh at naked Donald Trump in Union Square, tug at his penis, stare, point, and mock, who are we really laughing at? Are we laughing at Donald Trump because Donald Trump is naked, and fat, standing in front of us? Are we mocking the fact that anyone who has cellulite or a gut or a figure that’s not valued by a capitalist, health obsessed, body-shaming society dares to be nude in a public space? Are we laughing at Donald Trump because we believe that men should be manly, and that manly means to have a big penis, and that anybody who doesn’t fit into that violent, cissexist masculinity is worthy of contempt? Are we really turning the tables on the oppressor, or are we continuing to stomp on the oppressed?" - Meghna Sridhar, via Feministing.com