Transportation: A Fantastic, Fossil-Fuel-Free Future

Because they know what's best for us, Bay Area central planners have been discouraging driving by means of high gas taxes, underfunded road repairs and road building, high parking fees, unique (i.e. high-priced) gasoline formulations, and shrunken driving lanes. If they want us to take mass transit, at least they're making trains more attractive, right?

Wrong: ‘I was scared for my safety’: Harassment, threats, violence follow women onto public transit

I often disembarked at Montgomery St. Station, 1988-2008

In August, Alliance for Girls released a report titled “Together, We Rise: The Lived Experiences of Girls of Color in Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose.” According to the report, girls in each city said they’d been harassed and stalked on public transportation.

“Girls know that this is an issue, and we ignore it until it’s too late,” said Emma Mayerson, the executive director of Alliance for Girls. “Public transportation is one of the greatest barriers to access services, to basic mobility, to economic empowerment.”

A 2019 report jointly released by four organizations, including the UC San Diego Center on Gender Equity and Health, found that 77% of women surveyed had been sexually harassed in a public space. Twenty-nine percent said it happened on public transportation.

BART logged 535 reports of sexual assault and lewd behavior on its BART Watch app this year through October. During the same period in 2018, there were 501 reports.

In Bay Area transportation there are fewer choices, higher prices, and low reliability. And with BART there's a bonus: sexual assault and lewd behavior with most of the victims being lower-income women of color.

It's too bad that some people are getting hurt on the way to a fantastic, fossil-fuel-free future.

New Job for a New Century

Maya coaching "Bald Soprano" actors (Chron photo)

A new job for a new century: Intimacy Choreographer. The Chronicle profiles Maya Herbsman:

Her work, staging intimate scenes in plays, “could include a simulated sex scene, a kiss, a hug between family members, nudity, a first touch between ‘Romeo and Juliet’ … whatever feels vulnerable and intimate” ....

Herbsman makes those scenes “specific, technical, repeatable and highly choreographed.” She compares her job to fight choreography, in its use of standardized practices to keep actors and everyone else in the rehearsal room safe — physically, emotionally and psychologically.

In the era of the #MeToo movement, provoked especially by bad actors in the arts and entertainment industry, the Intimacy Choreographer fills a need that didn't seem important a few years ago:

“But I find when I work with actors over the age of 40, it sort of takes on this whole new meaning, because they realize all that they’ve been putting up with for their whole career. In that moment they realize the things that they didn’t know how to say no to, they didn’t know they could say no to, they didn’t know they were allowed.”

There are lots of choreographers on LinkedIn but so far no "intimacy choreographers." That omission should change in the near future.

Dropped From Sight

In this week's version of "it's the end of America as we know it" President Trump will soon nominate another Supreme Court Justice. Anthony Kennedy retired last week, kicking off a nomination firestorm that will dominate headlines into fall.

For perspective I pulled up the 2018 Time covers to see if the overturning of Roe v. Wade (a threatened occurrence, BTW, with every Supreme Court nomination by a Republican President since 1987) would be more outrageous than any of the other things that Donald J. Trump was responsible for this year.

There were several weeks of #MeToo coverage that recounted numerous incidents of sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault that predated not only President Trump but also the 21st century. Yes, let's shame or prosecute the people responsible, but at least give President Trump indirect credit. #MeToo would never have happened under President Hillary Clinton, with big-time supporter Harvey Weinstein yukking it up with the Big He in the Lincoln bedroom.

Then there are President Trump's inflammatory speeches and tweets directed at Kim Jong Un. Time's February mushroom cloud (which indeed would have been worse than anything going on with the Supreme Court) was superseded by the June cover that showed the two leaders talking amiably.

And what happened to those determined, angry kids who want gun restrictions? I agree that stopping school shootings has to be a national priority. Despite the polarization, surely we can reach common ground on mental illness, rapid-fire technology, and background checks. Or was it all a voter registration drive for Democrats?

Then there are the pictures of border families and crying kids who seem to elicit powerful emotions from people on all sides of the illegal immigration issue. Here's where over two decades of screening grant requests has hardened my heart. Everyone who wants money knows that crying babies trump nearly all rational consideration. OK, reunite the border families, but you still have to deliberate over the adults, some of whom are using their children to catch a break. Note: in California alone there are over 50,000 children separated from their parents by Child Protective Services, undoubtedly for good reason. Over 20,000 are age 5 or younger; I'll bet some of them cried when they were taken away, but their pictures aren't on the cover of Time. I do get it, CPS good, border patrol bad. Indeed, I have to work on my hardened heart.

Other observations: 1) the portraits of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a sexual-predator felon are both cast in shadow. I wonder what Time's editorial position is on these guys. 2) Pictures or representations of President Trump appear on four covers, only one of which is non-hostile. If Time were a person, I'd advise it to get therapy for its obsession. 3) What happened to Russia-Russia-Russia and the anytime-now impeachment of Donald Trump? 4) What happened to the tariff wars that will plunge the world into the next Great Depression? (I'm actually worried about this one and wonder why they're not using this to undermine the President's support from business.)

Now that I've done the half-year in review I feel a lot better. These "crises" must not have been so important after all because they've dropped from sight.

The Old Reasons Haven't Gone Away

(UCSF photo)

Headline: UCSF fired head of sexual harassment prevention office [bold added]

she ordered an employee to falsify dates on complaints to make it appear that they were handled more efficiently, The Chronicle has learned. The medical school confirmed that it fired Cristina Perez-Abelson in April after an investigation prompted by a whistle-blower found she also had instructed her staff to hide files from an auditor.

Be honest, what was the first thought that crossed your mind after seeing just the headline? Right, another one--probably a man--bites the dust for sexual misconduct or worse.

What a relief, it was plain old falsifying data. We have new reasons to fire or even prosecute people, but the old reasons haven't gone away.