- America Ferrera Rejects Criticism That ‘Barbie’ Is an Oversimplification of Feminism: ‘There Are a Lot of People Who Need Feminism 101’ Variety
- America Ferrera and the ‘Barbie’ Monologue We All Talked About The New York Times
- America Ferrera Says Greta Gerwig Making Her ‘Barbie’ Character Latina Helped Her Land the Role Rolling Stone
- ‘Barbie’ Star America Ferrera on Wrapping Up One of the Biggest Years of Her Career Hollywood Reporter
- America Ferrera credits Latina background for getting Barbie role Bozeman Daily Chronicle
Tag Archives: Feminism
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- Chinese fans praise ‘Barbie’ as rare chance to see feminism on the big screen CNN
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Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie discuss Barbie’s surprising feminism | 7.30 – ABC News In-depth
- Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie discuss Barbie’s surprising feminism | 7.30 ABC News In-depth
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- ‘Barbie’ director Greta Gerwig wants the movie’s viewers to ‘feel like I did at Shabbat dinner’ JTA News – Jewish Telegraphic Agency
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David Carrick: London Metropolitan Police officer admits to dozens of offenses against women, including 24 cases of rape
London
CNN
—
A serving officer in London’s Metropolitan Police has admitted to 49 offenses, including 24 counts of rape over an 18-year period, reigniting calls for urgent reform in the United Kingdom’s largest police force.
David Carrick appeared at Southwark Crown Court in the British capital Monday to plead guilty to four counts of rape, false imprisonment and indecent assault relating to a 40-year-old woman in 2003, the UK’s PA Media news agency reported.
At the Old Bailey criminal court in London last month, Carrick admitted to 43 charges against 11 other women, including 20 counts of rape, between March 2004 and September 2020, according to PA.
A series of recent scandals has shed light on what the UK police watchdog called a culture of misogyny and racism in London’s police service.
In September 2021, Metropolitan Police officer Wayne Couzens was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the abduction, rape and murder of Sarah Everard, a case that horrified the nation and sparked debate about violence against women.
The Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner Cressida Dick resigned from her post in 2022, after a damning review by the Independent Office for Police Conduct issued 15 recommendations “to change policing practice” in the country.
London’s Metropolitan Police are now investigating as many as 1,000 sex offenses and domestic abuse claims involving approximately 800 of its officers, the force’s Commissioner Mark Rowley admitted Monday.
“That’s 1,000 cases to look at. Some of those will be things of no concern in the end when we look at them because it will be an argument overheard by neighbors where inquiries show there’s nothing to be concerned about,” Rowley said in an interview with UK media.
“But in there, I’m sad to say, there will be some cases where in the past we should have been more assertive and looked to throw officers out and we haven’t done.”
“We are going to turn all those stones over, we’re going to come to the right conclusions and we’ll be ruthless about rooting out those who corrupt our integrity. You have my absolute assurance on that,” he said.
The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) called Carrick’s case one of the “most shocking” it’s ever seen.
“The scale of the degradation Carrick subjected his victims to is unlike anything I have encountered in my 34 years with the Crown Prosecution Service,” CPS Chief Crown Prosecutor Jaswant Narwal said.
“I commend every single woman who courageously shared their traumatic experience and enabled us to bring this case to court and see justice served,” Narwal continued while speaking outside Southwark Crown Court Monday.
The senior investigating officer in the case, Detective Chief Inspector Iain Moor, called Carrick’s crimes “truly shocking.”
“The police service is committed to tackling violence against women and girls in all its forms,” Moor said, adding “no one is above the law.”
Assistant Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Barbara Gray also apologized on behalf of the police force to all the victims.
Gray said Monday that Carrick “should have been dismissed from the police service a long time ago.”
She later added: “We should have spotted his pattern of abusive behavior and because we didn’t, we missed opportunities to remove him from the organization. We are truly sorry that Carrick was able to continue to use his role as a police officer to prolong the suffering of his victims.”
“The duration and nature of Carrick’s offending is unprecedented in policing. But regrettably he is not the only Met officer to have been charged with serious sexual offences in the recent past,” she said.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “Londoners will be rightly shocked that this man was able to work for the Met for so long and serious questions must be answered about how he was able to abuse his position as an officer in this horrendous manner.”
Khan commented that work to reform the culture and standards of the Met has already started following an interim review and that a new, anonymous police complaints hotline and anti-corruption team has recently been established by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley.
“But more can and must be done,” added Khan on Twitter. “It’s vital that all victims of crime have confidence in our police, and we simply must do more to raise standards and empower police leaders to rid the Met and all other police services of those officers who are clearly unfit to serve.”
Women’s rights organizations called for an inquiry into the Met following Carrick’s case.
UK domestic abuse charity Refuge called Carrick’s crimes “utterly abhorrent.”
“When a man who has been charged with 49 offences, including 24 charges of rape, is a serving police officer, how can women and girls possibly be – or feel – safe,” Refuge tweeted Monday.
UK organization End Violence Against Women also posted on Twitter: “This is an institution in crisis. That Carrick’s pattern of egregious behaviour was known to the Met and they failed to act speaks more loudly than their empty promises to women.”
“Solidarity with the victims & all who are feeling the weight of the traumatic details being reported,” it added.
The British Women’s Equality Party tweeted: “The Met knew about the allegations for TWENTY years. They did nothing as a serial rapist abused his power. They are complicit. Misogyny will never be stripped from the police without a nationwide, statutory inquiry.”
The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality and women’s rights, said on Twitter: “Any act of sexual violence is a disgrace. But it is particularly harmful when, yet again, these crimes have been perpetrated by a person who has additional responsibilities to keep the public safe.”
Tosca Musk, Elon’s sister, has a business venture of her own — and it’s all about romance and female sexuality
Atlanta, Georgia
CNN
—
Tosca Musk strides onto the red carpet at a Regal Cinemas, statuesque in a white pant suit and glistening burgundy silk top.
A hush comes over a group gathered outside the theater’s doors. Some whip out cell phones and start recording her every move.
It’s a chilly October night in Atlanta, and the fans are here for the premiere of “Torn,” the second in a trilogy of romantic fantasy movies based on books by author Jennifer Armentrout. The group of mostly female fans range in age from their twenties to their seventies, and some flew in from Boston, Detroit and other cities.
This is a big night for Musk and her five-year-old streaming service Passionflix, the backer of the movie. It’s their first public film premiere since the pandemic started.
She floats from one group to another, chatting effortlessly with Passionflix’s superfans, known as Passionistas. Her older brother, Elon Musk, may be the most famous sibling in the family, but he’s not the only one who’s founded a company.
Musk, 48, is the force behind Passionflix, which adapts romance novels into movies and streams them to a devoted niche audience. Romance novels are the most popular genre of books in the United States, and Musk is tapping into that market with stories about sultry, powerful female leads and handsome men with chiseled abs. She directs some of the films herself.
“Passionflix focuses on adapting romance novels exactly as the fan and the author envision it,” Musk says in a separate CNN interview. “We focus on connection, communication and compromise – and remove the shame from sexuality, specifically for women, because it empowers women to both acknowledge and ask for pleasure.”
Days earlier, on the set of a Passionflix movie, “The Secret Life of Amy Bensen,” Musk provides a few glimpses into life with her famous family.
Perched on a navy blue couch in a room tucked inside a warehouse in suburban Atlanta, she chooses her words carefully when asked about her older brother, who was on the verge of his Twitter acquisition.
The Musk children – Elon, Tosca and another brother, middle child Kimbal – were born in South Africa and spent time in Canada before coming to the United States. Their father, Errol, is an engineer and property developer, while their glamorous mother, Maye, is a model.
Tosca Musk attended film school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and moved to California after graduation. For three months, she worked for one of Elon Musk’s companies, Zip2.
“I realized every time I stepped out of the film world, I was just not happy,” she says. “It just wasn’t my thing.”
After a brief stint at the Los Angeles office of Canadian media company Alliance Atlantis, she began directing and producing films while still in her twenties.
Musk produced romance films for the Lifetime and Hallmark channels and in 2005 launched a comic web series, Tiki Bar TV, which was hailed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs as ahead of its time in the emerging field of vodcasts – or video podcasting.
Then came Passionflix. Its origin story is a classic tale of when one door closes, another one opens.
About five years ago, Musk got an email from a woman who wanted her to turn her script into a movie. Musk loved the script, but there wasn’t much interest from production companies.
“People weren’t really that interested because it was too risque … It was an adult movie with a little bit of reincarnation, things like that,” she says. “It just wasn’t one of those things that regular network television wanted to do.”
But Musk met the woman, Joany Kane, in Los Angeles, and they bonded over their shared passion for romance novels. During that conversation, Kane brought up the idea of turning romance novels into movies and creating a streaming platform for them.
And with that, Passionflix was born – with Musk at the helm and Kane as a co-founder.
“We had no investors. We had to go out and find every investor. So it was a matter of going out and pitching every single person,” Musk says. “We pitched every friend, every family member, everybody just for that small bit of angel investment. It was hard. The first money in is always the hardest money.”
Musk declines to say whether her brother Elon was one of her original investors. But she says she can always count on her two brothers, including restaurateur Kimbal Musk, to give her advice on her business ventures. She tries not to ask unless she really needs to.
“I get advice from them to a certain degree when I ask for it. But no unsolicited advice,” she says. “If I ask for advice, I have no doubt that he (Elon) will give it to me. And then I have to take it, because he’s going to be right. So you have to really want to know what you want to ask. But most of the time when I’m with my family, we talk about family things.”
So what does she think about her brother’s new role as CEO of Twitter – and the flurry of headlines surrounding it?
No comment.
Passionflix’s first film was “Hollywood Dirt,” based on a best-selling novel by Alessandra Torre about a Southern woman who finds romance with a Hollywood star when he comes to her small town to film a movie.
“During that shooting of that movie, we were struggling,” Musk says. “Are we going to get money? Are we going to be able to finish it? We were not really sure. We basically were just sort of piecing the dollars together.”
In May 2017, Musk played a trailer of the movie at a romance novel convention and asked attendees to prepay $100, as founding members, for a two-year Passionflix subscription. About 4,000 people signed up, Musk says, and she and Kane used that to show potential investors they were onto something.
“Trying to raise money for a female-driven platform on romance was just not high on anybody’s priority list at the time,” she says. “But as soon as we showed there was that many people that would come on board, the investors just started flying in.”
Passionflix has since produced more than two dozen feature-length and short films, according to the Internet Movie Database.
The company remains lean – it has a core team of seven people who each wear a lot of hats. In addition to producing its own content, Passionflix also licenses films for its platform.
“I think the biggest challenge for Passionflix is we can’t produce enough content to satiate the fans,” Musk says. “It’s a struggle with so many streaming platforms, when people want original content all the time.”
With more than 200 streaming services now competing for viewers, such niche markets face a myriad of challenges, says Dan Rayburn, a streaming media expert and consultant.
Creating, licensing and marketing content is very costly, he said. And while romance is the biggest-selling genre of books in the US, that doesn’t necessarily mean its popularity translates to movies.
“That’s comparing apples to oranges. Books are different,” Rayburn says. “This business is beyond tough. It’s highly competitive and requires an absolute large sum of money.”
Passionflix charges a subscription fee of $5.99 a month. The company does not disclose its subscriber numbers. Musk says subscribers are in the “six figures,” but declines to offer specifics.
Rayburn says it’s hard to determine the company’s profitability without knowing its expenses, including production and licensing costs.
“OK, if you don’t have subscriber numbers, what’s the usage? How many hours per month do people watch it? How much are you spending on content licensing?”
A deep dive into Passionflix’s online movie catalog reveals a mix of contemporary romance, fantasy romance, paranormal romance, erotic fan fiction and related sub-genres.
The films, which stream on the Passionflix site and on Amazon Prime Video, are rated on an escalating steaminess scale Musk calls a “barometer of naughtiness.”
The five categories: Oh So Vanilla, for wholesome romcoms; Mildly Titillating; Passion and Romance; Toe Curling Yumminess; and NSFW (Not Safe for Work). The latter category has risque plot lines and more sex – think “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
But Musk says that even the naughtiest Passionflix movies don’t reach the soft-core porn threshold.
“When we first started Passionflix, somebody asked us if we’re going to rate using MPAA,” she says, referring to the Motion Picture Association of America’s movie ratings such as PG-13, R, etc. “I don’t actually like any of those ratings. They’re not specific to women. I wanted something that could rate our shows and create more of a tongue-in-cheek conversation.”
Musk says she’s a romantic at heart and is a big fan of the genre.
“Love is amazing, it’s incredibly powerful. I love to tell stories of love, all kinds of love,” she says. “So parental love, friend love, family love, and love between any kind of couple.”
That broad range of romantic genres, and its sexy content, are what sets Passionflix apart from channels such as Hallmark and Lifetime Movie Network, says romance novelist Tamara Lush. She believes the romance genre has been especially popular during the pandemic because people seek comfort in stories with happy-ever-after endings.
“Hallmark is romance-centered but the stories are very, very sweet. Passionflix tells a wider range of stories, and the ones romance readers want to watch,” Lush says.
“The popularity of ‘Bridgerton,’ ‘After’ and ’365 Days’ on Netflix should tell streaming services all they need to know: that romance is a lucrative and sure bet for viewers.”
Passionflix’s original subscribers, known as founding members, get access to movie premieres and filming sets.
Last month in Atlanta, about four dozen of them piled into the Regal theater for the premiere of “Torn.” Following the movie, Musk hosted a question-and-answer session with the lead actors, followed by an after-party at a bar across the street. Fans and actors mingled over drinks.
Debbie Parziale, 67, says she flew in from Boston for the event. One of the founding members, she says she spent the pandemic years curled up on her couch, watching Passionflix movies.
“I love Tosca’s premise of empowering women and making sex not such a taboo subject,” she says. “She’s so true to the romance novels. When you read a book and watch one of her movies, it’s the book you read.”
Amanda Cromer, 32, says she signed up for Passionflix at a romance book convention. She loves the camaraderie that comes with being part of the Passionistas. The group has a virtual book club, called Passion Squad.
As one of the original members, Cromer can visit sets and interact with the actors. Cromer, who lives in a suburb of Atlanta, says that during a visit to the set of “Torn” she became an extra in a cafe scene.
“I love the empowerment the movies bring,” says Cromer, who attended last month’s “Torn” premiere with her mother.
“They choose books with strong female leads. They’ve done such a good job of portraying the female persona as a strong independent female, and not a timid person.”
Back on the set of her latest romance movie, Tosca Musk moves from one sparsely furnished room to another.
Musk lives in suburban Atlanta with her two children, 9-year-old twins who were conceived through in vitro fertilization using an anonymous sperm donor.
She’s getting ready to fly to Italy with the twins to film “Gabriel’s Redemption,” the third book in a series by Sylvain Reynard about a Dante scholar and his passionate affair with a younger graduate student. She says they plan to enjoy lots of gelato in Florence and visit Oxford, England, so the kids can see some of the locations where the Harry Potter movies were filmed.
As a single mother, Musk says she marvels at the path that led her to a job she loves.
She hopes Passionflix will help convince the film industry’s big names that adopting romance novels into movies is a worthy investment.
“The entertainment world is controlled mostly by men. At the end of the day, the decisions tend to sway toward the male audience as opposed to the female audience,” she says. “They also tend to be more about the victimization of women than they are about sexually free or sexually empowered stories about women.”
And for Musk, there’s also a simpler reason for her filmmaking ventures.
“I’m a storyteller at heart,” she says. “I just want to be able to tell stories.”
Harvey Weinstein’s 2nd sexual assault trial begins with eight accusers set to testify, prosecutors say
CNN
—
Eight women who say they were sexually assaulted by movie producer Harvey Weinstein will testify at his criminal trial in Los Angeles over the coming weeks, prosecutors said in opening statements Monday.
“Each of these women came forward independent of each other, and none of them knew one another,” prosecutor Paul Thompson told the jury, according to a pool report.
Four of the women’s testimony will be directly connected to specific charges. These women include Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom; Jane Doe 1, a model and actress who lived in Italy at the time; Jane Doe 2, a 23-year-old model and aspiring screenwriter; and Jane Doe 3, a licensed massage therapist, according to a pool report.
The most recent indictment in the case indicated there were five women directly connected to charges. CNN is working to clarify the difference between that indictment and the prosecutors’ opening statements.
In addition, four women will testify as “prior bad acts” witnesses, meaning their testimony isn’t related to a specific charge but can be used by the jury as prosecutors try to show Weinstein had a pattern in his actions. These women will testify about assaults outside of Los Angeles jurisdiction, Thompson said.
Weinstein, 70, has pleaded not guilty to charges including rape and forcible oral copulation related to incidents dating from 2004 to 2013, according to the indictment.
In court Monday, he appeared hunched over as he clambered from a wheelchair into a chair at the defense table. Wearing a suit and tie, he primarily looked at jurors throughout the proceedings.
The trial in California is his second such sexual assault case since reporting by The New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017 revealed Weinstein’s alleged history of sexual abuse, harassment and secret settlements as he used his influence as a Hollywood power broker to take advantage of young women.
At the time, Weinstein was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and helped produce movies such as “Pulp Fiction,” “Clerks” and “Shakespeare in Love.”
The revelations led to a wave of women speaking publicly about the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and harassment in what became known as the #MeToo movement.
Weinstein was found guilty in 2020 in New York of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape and was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Yet he has maintained his innocence, and New York’s highest court agreed in August to hear his appeal in the case.
In opening statements, Thompson outlined the women’s accusations and noted the similarities in their stories. The women will testify that Weinstein lured them into private meetings, often in hotel rooms, and then sexually assaulted them, Thompson said.
“I’m shaking and I’m kind of being dragged to the bedroom,” he quoted one woman as saying, according to the pool report.
Thompson also highlighted the women’s understanding of Weinstein’s imposing physical size as well as his power in Hollywood to make or break careers, the pool report said.
“I was scared that if I didn’t play nice something could happen in the room or out of the room because of his power in the industry,” one woman said, according to Thompson.
The women allegedly told friends and family members about their assaults, and those people may also be called to testify in the trial to confirm or deny such conversations.
Notably, the licensed massage therapist told Mel Gibson, the famed actor and director, about her assault, Thompson said.
The trial in Los Angeles comes two years after Weinstein was convicted in New York of similar charges featuring different women.
The New York charges were based on testimony from Miriam Haley, who testified that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in 2006 at his Manhattan apartment, and from Jessica Mann, who testified that he raped her in 2013 during what she described as an abusive relationship.
He did not testify in his own defense, but at his sentencing he offered an unexpected, rambling speech which oscillated between remorse, defense of his actions and confusion.
“I’m not going to say these aren’t great people, I had wonderful times with these people, you know,” Weinstein said of the women who accused him of assault. “It is just I’m totally confused, and I think men are confused about all of these issues.”
The former movie producer appeared in frail health during the trial and used a walker as he arrived to and left court each day. He used a wheelchair to arrive to the sentencing in March 2020 as well as in a court hearing in Los Angeles in July 2021. His attorneys have argued the lengthy prison sentence was a de facto life sentence due to his failing health.
Here’s who made Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list for 2022
The competition to be listed among Fortune’s Most Powerful Women has gotten a little stiffer this year. In recognition of just how global business has become, Fortune decided to merge its domestic and international lists of top corporate women leaders.
Still, in some ways, this year’s top 10 list is similar to last year’s with a few exceptions.
Coming in at No. 1 for the second year running is CVS Health president and CEO Karen Lynch, who is leading the highest-ranking Fortune 500 and Global 500 company ever run by a woman. On her watch – she took the helm in February 2021 – the company’s revenue jumped 9% and its share price gains (up 42%) well outpaced performance of the S&P 500. CVS, meanwhile, continued to be a central player in the fight against Covid, and Lynch implemented a mental health program to help prevent suicide among its Aetna members.
Ranking close behind Lynch once again are Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture (No. 2); Jane Fraser, CEO of Citi (No. 3); and Mary Barra, chair and CEO, GM (No. 4).
But the No. 5 spot went to Jessica Tan, co-CEO and executive director of Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd, which is the 25th largest company in the world. Fortune notes that despite China’s Covid lockdowns and “skittish consumer sentiment,” Ping An under Tan’s leadership beat profit expectations in the first half of 2022 and aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030.
Also new to the top 10 relative to Fortune’s domestic list last year is Emma Walmsley, CEO of global drugmaker GSK. She spun off her company’s $13 billion consumer health unit. “That leaves the now exclusively pharma-focused GSK with a pile of cash to invest in promising drug and vaccine candidates,” Fortune notes.
Two executives, meanwhile, fell out of the top 10 from last year: Thasunda Brown Duckett, president and CEO of TIAA; and Ruth Porat, senior vice president and chief financial officer of Alphabet. But neither fell far, ranking as No. 11 and 12, respectively.
Here are the top 10 women executives on Fortune’s 2022 Most Powerful Women list:
1. Karen Lynch, president and CEO, CVS Health
2. Julie Sweet, chair and CEO, Accenture
3. Jane Fraser, CEO, Citigroup
4. Mary Barra, chair and CEO, GM
5. Jessica Tan, executive director and Co-CEO, Ping An Insurance
6. Carol Tomé, CEO, UPS
7. Rosalind Brewer, CEO, Walgreens Boots Alliance
8. Emma Walmsley, CEO of GSK
9. Gail Boudreaux, president and CEO, Elevance Health
10. Abigail Johnson, chair and CEO, Fidelity Investments
(For more on each of these executives, here is Fortune’s full list of the top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. Please note a subscription is required.)
Netflix’s Trans Employees Plan Walk Out To Protest Chappelle Special
Rejecting comments made by Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos in defense of Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy special, The Closer, a number of the streaming platforms transgender employees are planning a company-wide walkout on October 20th.
In the wake of the release of the new special—which features incendiary commentary on the LGBTQ+ community and Chappelle’s own proclamation that he identifies as a “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”— The Verge obtained an internal organizing message posted by a leader of Netflix’s trans employee resource group that takes the platform to task for failing to meet its mission of creating inclusive, universally enjoyable content.
“Trans Lives Matter. Trans Rights Matter. And as an organization, Netflix has continually failed to show deep care in our mission to Entertain the World by repeatedly releasing content that harms the Trans community and continually failing to create content that represents and uplifts Trans content,” the ERG message reads in part. “We can and must do better!”
Stirrings of an imminent walkout come just one day after it was reported that Netflix had suspended three employees for dropping in on a meeting without authorization during the platform’s two-day-long quarterly business review. At the event, Sarandos briefed the company’s top 500 employees on how they should respond to employees and talent expressing concerns over Chappelle’s remarks. One of the employees in question—the trans and queer-identifying Terra Field, who works as a senior software engineer for the company—reported that as of Tuesday night, she had been reinstated at the company.
“Netflix has reinstated me after finding that there was no ill-intent in my attending the QBR meeting,” Field wrote in a Tuesday evening tweet. “I’ve included the statement I requested below. I’m going to take a few days off to decompress and try to figure out where I’m at. At the very least, I feel vindicated.”
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Prior to being reinstated, Field had unspooled the damaging implications of Chappelle’s commentary in a now-viral Twitter thread, laying out the ways the “jokes” could be interpreted as directly harmful to the transgender community.
“Promoting TERF ideology (which is what we did by giving it a platform yesterday) directly harms trans people, it is not some neutral act,” Field wrote in the series of tweets. “This is not an argument with two sides. It is an argument with trans people who want to be alive and people who don’t want us to be.”
Despite the fact that Chappelle’s anti-trans sentiments drew fierce criticisms online in the wake of the special’s release, Sarandos had seemingly fanned the flames of outrage with an internal memo that Variety obtained a copy of.
“Chapelle is one of the most popular stand-up comedians today, and we have a long-standing deal with him,” Sarandos wrote to Netflix staffers. “His last special “Sticks & Stones,” also controversial, is our most watched, stickiest and most award winning stand-up special to date.”
“As with our other talent, we work hard to support their creative freedom — even though this means there will always be content on Netflix some people believe is harmful,” he added.
The organizing message posted by Netflix’s trans ERG group seemed to specifically take issue with the way that some of the company’s corporate communications seemed to imply that the streamer’s LGBTQ-identifying employees were taking a short-sighted view of the controversy.
“As we’ve discussed through Slack, email, text, and everything in between our leadership has shown us they do not uphold the values to which we are held,” the message reads. “Between the numerous emails and non-answers that have been given, we have been told explicitly that we somehow cannot understand the nuance of certain content.”
Apple Accused of Retaliation After Workers Spoke Out
The National Labor Relations Board is investigating charges from two Apple employees alleging coercion and retaliation in the workplace after employees spoke openly about workplace conditions such as pay equity and sexual harassment.
Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act this month in one case describe a series of reprisals against a senior engineering program manager, Ashley Gjovik, who identified herself in the press. Gjovik said the company had placed her on administrative leave, reassigned her position, and reduced the scope of her responsibilities in violation of employee rights after she’d been vocal about issues at the company.
The labor board investigates all claims and says it prosecutes whenever a case has merit.
In a phone interview, Gjovik said Apple had meant to silence her. She remains on paid leave, but said not by her own choice. “I spent so much time making really good products, I want to do really good work,” she said. “I believe in the brand, but I’m having big issues right now with the company.”
Gjovik has also accused Apple of ignoring harassment by a manager, and of subjecting her to hostile and unsafe conditions. She also claims to have been identified without consent to a person who was anonymously reported for sexual harassment.
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“I appreciate that Apple likes to post about human rights and social responsibility, but its actions don’t align with the words,” she said.
Gjovik said she’s been bombarded with questions from journalists, adding she expects the publicity may have already damaged her career. “At this point, I already feel like I’m screwed,” she said. Gjovik said she intends to continue speaking out, nonetheless. She wants others to know they can, she said, and wants Apple to do better.
“It’s the biggest company in the world,” Gjovik added. “A role model for other companies globally.”
Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the company told Reuters late Thursday it investigates all concerns raised by employees. The company reportedly declined to comment on any specific allegations citing “respect for the privacy of any individuals involved.”
Cher Scarlett, an Apple engineer, told Bloomberg she had filed the second complaint.
Scarlett told reporters she had attempted to start a workplace Slack channel dedicated to discussing pay equity issues but had been rebuffed by the company, which said the topic wasn’t work-related. Scarlett said another channel had been approved and was dedicated to the game foosball.
Speaking with Gizmodo last month, Scarlett said Apple had repeatedly stifled employee efforts to conduct a pay transparency survey, as first reported by the Verge in August. Gizmodo confirmed last month as many as 2,300 Apple employees had taken the survey; however, it wasn’t enough to provide a clear company-wide picture.
The complaints follow a rare burst of activism within Apple by, so far, a small number of workers. The workers organized under the hashtag #AppleToo last month with the stated aim of exposing “persistent patterns of racism, sexism, inequity, discrimination, intimidation, suppression, coercion, abuse, unfair punishment, and unchecked privilege.”
“For too long,” they said, “Apple has evaded public scrutiny.”
Update, 11pm: Added remarks from Ashley Gjovik.