Not Close: Gun Violence Higher in Red States

The region where New York City is located is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence, while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s. On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute, regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades. 

Violence and the threat of violence has always been control tactics of hierarchies. In the United States, it appears from this article that states dominated by Republicans, who are mostly hierarchy-builders, have a higher level of gun violence than blue states. No surprise at all. 

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/23/surprising-geography-of-gun-violence-00092413

Most Adults Value Reproductive Rights When Deciding Where to Go to College

A new poll shows that incoming and current college students are thinking about whether their school is in a state with reproductive rights and available health care. 

Among adults in the United States ages 18 to 59 who are not enrolled in a college and do not have a degree, 60% said reproductive health laws are at least somewhat important to their decision about whether to enroll in a particular college or university.

The survey results may foreshadow a particular problem for states that are hostile to reproductive rights. The data show that students may be more likely to consider leaving their state for college or ruling out going to school in a state that otherwise would have been a contender.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/20/health/reproductive-rights-college-decisions-wellness/index.html

What's The Matter With Men

Idrees Kahloon, in an article in the New Yorker, states that "In academic performance, boys are well behind girls in elementary school, high school, and college, where the sex ratio is approaching two female undergraduates for every one male. (It was an even split at the start of the nineteen-eighties.). Men have a greater tendency to drop out of the workforce, and have a higher suicide rate than women. 

He also states that how men are faring in school and at work may not arouse everyone’s concern, but how men choose to pursue politics inevitably affects us all. For instance, the turn to support of the Republican Party by Hispanic voters is mostly because of Hispanic men. 

Our studies have shown that as men are being forced to relinquish many of the perks they received from the gender hierarchy, they have not been historically made to cope with such possibilities. They have, instead, relied on control tactics of the hierarchy, not taking responsibility for the results of their actions expecting someone else to pick up the pieces. 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/01/30/whats-the-matter-with-men?source=Paid_Soc_FBIG_CM_0_DPA_0_NYR_US_Prospecting%28Broad%29_CM_PAC_Facebook_Desktop_Feed_NYR&utm_source=facebook&utm_meduim=Paid_Soc_FBIG_CM&utm_brand=tny&utm_campaign=DPA&fbclid=IwAR1k7wHl7L_x4xuX5B1siCSZM18q-RnY4CLlzejs_y-6MBNiQIjGWWonBvY

Two Spirits in Mexico, Neither Woman or Man

In the town of Juchitán de Zaragoza, located on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca, one variation of a local legend goes something like this.

San Vicente Ferrer, the patron saint of Juchitán, was carrying three bags of seeds meant to be distributed around the world. The first contained male seeds, the second contained female seeds and a third bag contained a mixture of the two. But as San Vicente was passing through Juchitán, the third bag ruptured – and from it sprang the town’s famed community of muxes.

Muxes, a group long recognized within the indigenous Zapotec people of Mexico, are often referred to as a third gender. Embodying characteristics of both men and women, their existence challenges the gender binary that is so deeply entrenched in Western society.

“We are people of two spirits,” Felina Santiago says in the Oaxaca episode of “Eva Longoria: Searching for Mexico.” “We are the duality, neither man nor woman. You are neither less nor more.”

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/muxes-mexico-gender-binary-cec/index.html

U.N. Male Workers Stay Home As Taliban Disallows Female U.N. Workers

 The United Nations said the 3,330 Afghan men and women it employs stayed home for a second day Thursday to protest the Taliban's ban on U.N. female staff working in the country as it continued to press for the decision to be reversed.

The United Nations on Wednesday called the ban an “unparalleled” violation of women’s rights, unlawful under international law, and unacceptable to the 193-member international organization.

Amazing what men will do to keep the gender hierarchy alive.

https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-women-un-taliban-ban-ffd060752e5f0d48c4eb60ff79aa2dbb

Florida NAACP Votes to Urge Black People Not to Visit or Move to Florida

The Florida arm of the NAACP has suggested to its national board that they issue a travel advisory for Florida, urging Black people to avoid visiting or moving there.

“All of this is a tipping point,” Yvette Lewis, the NAACP Hillsborough County Branch president, told Yahoo News. “We encouraged more people to vote and that didn’t work because [extremist Republicans] gained more power and this is where we’re at. We had to take a strong stand because it has gone too far.”

https://news.yahoo.com/florida-naacp-black-people-critics-african-american-desantis-the-plan-backfire-185133748.html