North Carolina:

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) late Wednesday night signed rushed legislation that, as is widely known, eliminates local governments’ ability to pass anti-discrimination measures to protect gay and transgender individuals. But what received less immediate attention was that the new law guts workplace discrimination protections for virtually everyone.

The bill also pre-empts local employment ordinances governing wages, benefits, employee protections and leave policies. It would prevent schools from allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender with which they identify.

The law also prohibits local ordinances regarding child labor.

Basically, assholes like businessman Art Pope used anti-LGBT bigotry to pass anti-worker legislation without a lot of people noticing (or caring–some people value their bigotry more than their welfare).

Indiana:

Gov. Mike Pence made Indiana the second state in the nation to ban abortions sought because the fetus has a disability, signing into law Thursday an expansion of the state’s already restrictive abortion laws.

Georgia:

HRC and Georgia Equality, the statewide LGBT advocacy organization, called on House Leadership and Gov. Nathan Deal to put a stop to the so-called “First Amendment Defense Act of Georgia,” H.B. 757. The bill, which just passed the Georgia Senate by a vote of 38 – 14 goes far beyond protecting the right to practice one’s religion and would instead put LGBT people couples, single parents, and unmarried couples at risk for discrimination.

The dangerous legislation goes far beyond protecting the right of free exercise of one’s religion. While falsely framed as prohibiting the state government from making funding or tax status decisions based on an organization’s views on marriage that are driven by religious belief, in reality it threatens to create a breakdown of state government services, opening the door to discrimination against same-sex couples, their families, and those who love them. Taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies could refuse to place children who are in desperate need of loving and caring homes with LGBT couples. State-funded homeless shelters could turn away unwed couples and their families. Government employees could refuse to file tax forms for same-sex couples or provide state benefits to single mothers.

Minnesota:

The battle over transgender rights has flared at the State Capitol as a group of Republican legislators unveiled a proposal Wednesday that would require people to use bathrooms and changing rooms that match their “biological sex.”

…

Gov. Mark Dayton on Wednesday decried the legislation, saying that he was “appalled” and that he would veto it if it were to reach his desk. “This is about pandering to their extreme issue,” Dayton said.

He added: “They just keep bashing people for their own political advantage. … They’re wrong on the issue, and they’re wrong on the morality.”

It’s kind of weird. Dayton is an extremely wealthy businessman, and once upon a time he would have been stereotyped right into the Republican party. But he’s a Democrat, and he’s also got all these liberal, progressive views and doesn’t think his position of power should be used stomp on the poor and give more advantages to his wealthy cronies.

I have to say that the original name was clumsy and not very catchy. But now RH Reality Check has been renamed to Rewire. Same great content, better look.

But I still have to explain that it’s a site that focuses on reproductive health.

Last month, Michael Balter published a story in Science about sexual misconduct in anthropology (I also mentioned it). A research assistant reported that Brian Richmond had assaulted her at a conference.

In late September 2014, less than 2 months after Richmond had begun at AMNH, he and the research assistant attended a meeting of the European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE) in Florence. The research assistant says that on the last night of the meeting, she, Richmond, and several young European researchers were out on the town, visiting bars and drinking red wine and shots of limoncello, an Italian liqueur. She recalls “walking around Florence and realizing that I was way too drunk.” The next thing she remembers, she says, is waking up on the bed in Richmond’s hotel room in the wee hours of the morning with him on top of her, kissing her and groping under her skirt.

This incident led to an investigation that found multiple women had been the target of Richmond’s advances. It’s the usual story: big name has a history of inappropriate behavior that is ignored for years, until it can’t be ignored any more…usually after some number of women have had their careers derailed.

Now there’s another twist: the reporter who broke the story has been abruptly fired. He admits to fighting hard to get the story published, and apparently annoyed some of the higher level management to the point that someone on high decided to just get rid of him.

Some commentators have pointed out in the past, and reminded social media followers yesterday, that Science and the AAAS have had a poor track record on sexual harassment issues. The Brian Richmond story was a chance for the magazine to redeem itself, and indeed it was already on the way to doing so with fine stories by my colleague Jeff Mervis, who broke the Christian Ott Caltech story. My own perception is that the magazine was caught between its desire to take credit for the Richmond story and its fear of a lawsuit. In prior comments to people about this, and on discussion lists, I have tried to give my editors credit for doing the right thing and publishing a hard-hitting story despite their fears; but in the end they have decided to shoot the messenger.

I’ve already talked above about the culture at AAAS that allowed four colleagues to be fired precipitously in 2014, and will not elaborate on that here–except to say that just as I was beginning the Brian Richmond investigation, one of my editors asked me to delete a key blog post about that episode in which I criticized our Editor-in-Chief Marcia McNutt for parroting the party line put out by former AAAS CEO Alan Leshner. I declined to engage in this sanitizing of the historical record, not least because I consider that episode to be one of the proudest moments of my life. It’s not often that one gets to put one’s career on the line for something one believes in, and I have no regrets.

He’s been a troublemaker before, when he publicly criticized AAAS management for their abrupt firing of four women on the staff. Apparently, Science is making it a habit to treat women employed there rather shabbily, and to swiftly terminate anyone who complains about it.

But what about McNutt, you might ask? I’ve never been particularly impressed with her — she seems to be a lackey to the powers-that-be.

Francis Collins made a triumphant declaration about his plan to “end sexual harassment”! Hooray!

Read my @nature article w/Mike Lauer & @NIH_COSWD on ending sexual harassment in all #NIH-supported environments: https://t.co/OhsB9RwUxO

— Francis S. Collins (@NIHDirector) March 4, 2016

Only…it was initially published in a closed-access journal, Nature (the article has since been opened up). And, say, Nature is a UK journal — why is the head of the NIH publishing his grand proposal to end all harassment in NIH supported institution there? It struck a lot of people as weird and tone-deaf.

And then I read the “article”. Rarely have I read something so empty outside of administrative memos from high-ranking academic bureaucrats. It’s truly impressive. The physicist will be jealous that the biologists have managed to create the most perfect vacuum known to humankind.

Here it is, sprinkled with a few annotations from yours truly.

As the leading US government funder of scientific research, we at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are deeply concerned about sexual harassment in science (Nature 529, 255; 2016). With the help of colleagues in government, academia and the private sector, the NIH aims to identify the steps [Isn’t “aims to identify the steps” kind of an empty way to say “do something, but we don’t know what”?]necessary to end this in all NIH-supported research workplaces and scientific meetings.

In September last year, we restated our expectation that organizers of NIH-supported conferences and meetings should assure a safe environment, free of discrimination (see go.nature.com/zmukk8).

Over the next few weeks to months, we plan to work with governmental, academic and private-sector colleagues to identify potential steps [“we don’t know what”] to translating our expectations into reality. An important first step will be to gather as much data as possible [“we’re going to flounder around for a while, trying to figure out what we’re doing”] to more fully understand the nature and extent of sexual harassment among scientists. These data should guide us in determining what kinds of policy and procedure are most likely to help. [“not that we have any policy, obviously”] We will also work to determine what levers [“We’ll figure out something to kick some butt, but we don’t know what”] are already available to influential stakeholders — us as funders, as well as university administrators and departments, journal editors, and organizers and hosts of scientific meetings.[stakeholders=buzzword for everyone involved. “We don’t even know who we’re going to work on yet”]

We owe this [What do you owe?] to our colleagues and the public, who trust in our ability to make the biomedical research enterprise the best that it can be.

Yeah, that fluff was a great use of page space in a high-ranking science journal. How about sparing us the finger-flapping until you’ve actually got something to say?

Hope Jahren has an excellent op-ed on sexual harassment in academia. I’ve always wondered how guys have the gall to even start these unsavory relationships, and she shares some of the email she’s received.

The evasion of justice within academia is all the more infuriating because the course of sexual harassment is so predictable. Since I started writing about women and science, my female colleagues have been moved to share their stories with me; my inbox is an inadvertent clearinghouse for unsolicited love notes. Sexual harassment in science generally starts like this: A woman (she is a student, a technician, a professor) gets an email and notices that the subject line is a bit off: “I need to tell you,” or “my feelings.” The opening lines refer to the altered physical and mental state of the author: “It’s late and I can’t sleep” is a favorite, though “Maybe it’s the three glasses of cognac” is popular as well.

The author goes on to tell her that she is special in some way, that his passion is an unfamiliar feeling that she has awakened in him, the important suggestion being that she has brought this upon herself. He will speak of her as an object with “shiny hair” or “sparkling eyes” — testing the waters before commenting upon the more private parts of her body. Surprisingly, he often acknowledges that he is doing something inappropriate. I’ve seen “Of course you know I could get fired for this” in the closing paragraph; the subject line of the email sent to my former student was “NSFW read at your own risk!”

I still can’t quite imagine it, but at least she has now spelled out the obvious warning signs.

And then, sadly, she describes the usual course of events, which is usually denial and blame from all the institutional resources that ought to be helping the student out. Here’s what she advises the women targeted by such behavior:

I teach her to draw strong professional boundaries and then to enforce them, not because she should have to, but because nobody else will. I insist that she must document everything, because someday he will paint this as a two-way emotional exchange. I wearily advise her to stick it out in science, but only because I cannot promise that other fields aren’t worse. And I hope that this is enough to make him stop. But it never, never stops.

Now that’s depressing.

Otherwise, I might have to pursue this alternative career path.

Also, I have to say, that if a professor wants to do porn in their spare time as a hobby, and it doesn’t affect their work, the University of Manchester has no good grounds for carrying out an internal investigation, and I should hope that at the end of it all, they would simply shrug their collective shoulders and recognize that it’s none of their business.

The Handbook of the Mount Saint Charles Academy, a Christian school, starts well.

Mount Saint Charles Academy admits students of any race, color, national origin or ethnic background to all rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin or ethnic background in the administration of educational policies, loan programs, and athletic or other school administered programs.

Notice anything missing? Nothing about sexual orientation, and nothing about transgender…oh, wait. They do have a statement on that last one.

Mount Saint Charles Academy is unable to make accommodations for transgender students. Therefore, MSC does not accept transgender students nor is MSC able to continue to enroll students who identify as transgender.

What special accommodations do you need to make for transgender students? Do they have special plumbing? It seems to me that transgender students are able to use the facilities they already have for men and women in the school, so this is a very strange restriction.

You know, if you lack something you need to support a set of your students, the right answer is to fix your facilities; the easy answer is to kick out those students. But that’s also the wrong answer.

Especially when your handbook babbles about the compassion of Christ.