A weekly news round up on the state of Body Politics & Body Justice

 

• Another young Black woman, a teenager, is ‘found dead’ after being held less than 24 hours in a Kentucky Detention center. Shaun King examines how the recent death of “Gynnya McMillen in police custody is a sure sign that we have become the incarceration nation — with black and brown people paying the biggest price….’  Black Girl Dangerous breaks down how the Netflix documentary series, Making of a Murderer erases race and gender. “[It] invites white people watching Making A Murderer to imagine themselves as objective, ‘neutral’ jurors weighing accusations of police misconduct in a vacuum, separate from issues of race and gender…. Making a Murderer focuses on feeling empathy for white characters who don’t ‘belong’ in jail.”

 

• February Keeney discusses the Gender bias when interviewing for jobs as a transgender woman. “It’s really hard to get a job as a woman in tech. The interesting thing is that for the first 15 years of my career, if I was brought in for an on-site interview, it always resulted in an offer. Every time. But for those first 15 years of my career I was perceived as a male.”

 

• At least 48 trans women have [been] murdered in Brazil in the first month of 2016, Globo reports. “These are scary numbers,” Glória Crystal, the assistant secretary of NGO Livre Orientação Sexual (Free Sexual Orientation) told Globo in an interview about two recent murders in the south of the country.”  The Advocate writes about the rebranding effort by The Huffington Post LGBT section to be more inclusive to the many Queer communities. An interview with Huff Post Editorial Director Noah Michelson reveals their efforts to become more intersectional and their new name: HuffPost Queer Voices.

 

• She Rights gives us some good news on 5 recent Abortion Rights Victories in United States. We are barely two months into 2016, and have already seen an unprecedented amount of victories for abortion rights. Kicking off the recent winning streak was Arkansas on January 19th, when the Supreme Court of the United States refused to review Arkansas’ blatantly unconstitutional ban on abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy. Quickly following suit, SCOTUS again refused to hear a similar case regarding an abortion restriction at as little as 6 weeks of pregnancy in North Dakota.

 

• Gina Mei discusses the unique complexities of cultural appropriation when you are mixed race for Racked. There is widespread debate as to whether Coldplay’s latest video featuring Beyonce, displays cultural appropriation of Indian culture. Rashmee Kumar of The Guardian lays out a convincing argument for the appropriation argument. Deepa Lakshim of MTV News argues that the video is not approrpriative. Whatever stance you take, Salon hits it on the head, in explaining how this marks the second time Coldplay has used a Black female pop star to promote exocitification and orientalism and it’s really disturbing….

 

• Stephanie Kurlow is a 14 year old from Sydney, Australia who dreams of becoming a professional dancer. She intends to be the first Muslim hijabi ballerina in the world. According to Mashable, “[s]he started a crowd-funding campaign to try to make her dream a reality — and to help other young people who feel like they can’t pursue their endeavors without discrimination.”

 

• Cherno Biko shares their vision of a Black future for the #BlackFutureMonth series on Huffington Post. “Our unique perspective of inhabiting the space between masculine and feminine further equipped us to seek truth and often overlooked perspectives. Before western concepts of gender bankrupted our social capital, we served as the mediators, the healers and the griots. It’s my hope that in the future black trans folks will be loved, respected, included, paid, healthy and free. Simply, it’s my hope that #BlackTransLivesMatter, too.”