Laura Clawson says

A Human Rights Watch report based on interviews with dozens of farmworkers as well as many attorneys, service providers, law enforcement officials and others involved in the agriculture industry details the problems these women face. The problem is widespread:

A 2010 survey of 150 farmworker women in California’s Central Valley found that 80 percent had experienced some form of sexual harassment, while a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that a majority of their 150 interviewees had also experienced sexual harassment.

Because assailants are often supervisors, women who resist sexual harassment or assault are often fired in retaliation, sometimes along with their entire families or with coworkers who try to stand up for them

Source: Daily Kos

It's just so... conceited to claim that people trafficking into commercial sex is the only conceivable thing we should be worrying our pretty little heads about. My only quibble would be that the report makes it sound as though only women in precarious, smuggled, or trafficked agricultural work are subject to sexual harassment and sexual coercion, but that's just a quibble: it matters more that anyone at all is acknowledging that "non-sex" smuggled, trafficked, and otherwise poorly-documented workers are at risk. Especially since credible reports suggest that they (along with trafficked manufacturing, domestic, and hospitality workers) make up close to 90% of humans trafficked worldwide.

Speaking of that article about of male Catholic clergy (literally!) Lording it over their female counterparts, I still really balk at the Church's fundamental justification for a) objecting to the positions (some) nuns are taking and b) for allowing only male clergy to "rewriting the group's statutes, reviewing all its plans and programs — including approving speakers — and ensuring the organization properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual."  From the same Seattle Times article...

"Some commentaries on 'patriarchy' distort the way in which Jesus has structured sacramental life in the church," the authors of the report wrote.

This almost certainly refers to Pope John Paul II's 1994 invocation of "infallability" that since Jesus selected only male apostles he must have explicitly intended that only men could be priests.  This has never particularly held water for me.  For instance, the later ministry of Paul to the Gentiles notwithstanding, while Jesus had many admirers from all over, not only did he select only men as apostles, he also selected only practicing Jews as apostles.  And while Jesus had many admirers he selected only Jewish men from the vicinity of Galilee.  (Ok, except for Judas, who was from Kerioth of Judah in Hebron, but how did he work out!?!?!)

And yet John Paul never balked at the ordination of non-Jewish priests or of priests who had never even seen the Sea of Gallilee, let alone grown up around it.

This is not, incidentally, a minor issue.  Because while at several points in the Gospels Jesus expresses toleration for gentiles he couldn't be more clear about the intensity or the scope of his focus on the Jews of Israel.

Thus while there really isn't any reason to belief that Jesus was disinterested in the salvation of gentiles his express selection of only Israeli Jewish apostles is at least as unambiguous as his selection of only male apostles.

Jesus certainly never appointed a Polish gentile any more than he appointed an Israelite Jewish woman, yet John Paul II never questioned his own claim to the priesthood, let alone the infallibility of his pronunciation against women.

Despite having carefully read the Church's arguments I happen to believe John Paul II was entirely suitable to have been ordained as a priest, same as all other non-Jewish, non-Gallilee-native priests.  However, having read the same arguments I believe the only reasons women of faith continue to be excluded from the priesthood are based not on Jesus's choices but instead on hubris, over-reliance on tradition, and a peculiar argument against the possibility that Jesus could accidentally have made a mistake that has perpetuated for 60 generations... and a giant, walloping dose of self-serving, pulling-up-the-ladder patriarchal distortion.

David Taintor reports that

The saga continues over former Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch’s (R) “inappropriate relationship” with a subordinate staffer. Michael Brodkorb, who served as Koch’s executive assistant and communications director, claims that he was fired after the relationship was discovered because of his gender. He also says he has proof that other female staffers who had relationships with legislators were allowed to keep their jobs.

Source: TPM News

On the one hand, good for Brodkorb! The only men who come close to full-fledged "slut shaming" are men in (or presumed to be in) relationships with women in recognizable positions of power. And by all the evidence available publicly before trial the treatment he's received from supervisory staff who ultimately report to Majority Leader Koch does smell like classic fall-out and cover-up behavior tarnishing. And yeah, whatever one might think of canoodling with one's boss, or with marital infidelity, or even Republican double-standards when it comes pre-marital sex, extra marital sex or (lately) any sex at all, it's still the case that one shouldn't suffer employment discrimination based on either your sex or the sex of your higher-up paramour. Or at least you shouldn't suffer more than comparable members of other sexes. So again, yeah, good for Brodkorb for dragging this out into the open.

That said...

This part from the story isn't so great: Brodkorb appears to be upping the pressure for a settlement by threatening to depose other women who have had affairs with male legislators but were merely transferred rather than fired.  He also plans to depose those male legislators as well.

While generally strategically offering to embarrass 3rd parties in order to pressure a settlement is probably standard courtroom maneuvering and not even hardball tactics, in this particular case -- subjecting subordinate women potential humiliation by forcing them to disclose (under threat of either contempt or perjury no less) their current or erstwhile relationships with powerful men I think the strategy is pretty rotten.

Does anyone think there'd be nearly the same kerfuffle about insurance-provided birth control pills and other contraception if it was for men instead of women?

Does anyone seriously think Republicans like Senator Blount, political party enforcers like Rush Limbaugh, or Presidential candidates like Rick Santorum would be so recklessly intent on driving their party over a cliff if the issue was male contraception?

To be fair, I think the Catholic Bishops are consistent enough that they'd be trying to stir up a fuss about it.  But what are the chances that 'winger conservatives would be any less disrespectful of Catholic opposition to male birth control than they are about, say, Catholic opposition to capital punishment or Catholic support for the poor and the sick?

Would 'wingers go running around the countryside with poorly-spelled handmade signs on posterboard trying to stop men from getting a "The Pill?"

I mean, yeah, sure, Patriarchy, misogyny, slut-shaming, "sanctity of 'life,'" yada, yada, yada.  All that.

But...

It's like... even after the Utah State Legislature gets through with "sex education" people are still going to understand that it's... pretty irrelevant who's using the contraception.  They're going to realize that women can be just as "promiscuous" if men are using contraception as when women do.  They're going to realize that if the whole point of keeping contraception out of the hands of women is really to raise the consequences of sex such that women are unwilling to have it or else be so wracked by anxiety that they can't enjoy it then all that would still go out the window when men bring the contraception instead.

So on paper you'd think they'd be as liable to throw temper tantrums about male contraception as about female contraception.

But...

But...

I'll ask again, does anyone think there'd be nearly the same kerfuffle about insurance-provided birth control pills and other contraception if it was for men instead of women?

I just don't think so.

That's just so weird to me.

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For the record, repeated market studies show that if or when a contraceptive "pill" for men became available roughly as many men say they're willing to use it as women say they're willing to use The Pill.  Not all men, no, but then not all women do either -- it's about the same either way.  But, as with The Pill for women, you don't need 100% adoption for it to be pretty darn successful product.