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Uber Scandal Highlights Silicon Valley’s Grown-Up Problem NY Times

A writer for San Francisco Magazine said this week that sources inside the company warned her that the company might monitor her rides. A Buzzfeed reporter wrote that when she attended a meeting with an Uber executive in New York, he was monitoring her arrival in one of the company’s cars. Add in an account by the author Peter Sims that his personal travel information was apparently shown on a wall at an Uber launch party, and the anecdotal evidence that the company has played fast and loose with its customers’ data is pretty compelling.

Big Daddy Is Watching You Uber Exec

With Anita Sarkeesian’s Reputation Under Assault, Sarah Lacy’s May Be Saved Due To Uber’s Dinner Gaffe AOC Anne’s Sensual Rebel Blog

Shailene Woodley Heats Up GQ

Crush of the Year: Shailene Woodley GQ

She is part sunlight, part rainbow, part child actor, part TED talk, part ICM agent. This is the Shailene Woodley who told a reporter she enjoys sunbathing naked to “give my vagina a little vitamin D.” People went nuts about that; it topped the lists of crazy shit that Shailene Woodley said that seemed to proliferate as 2014 went on.

Woodley uses the word ‘vagina’ a lot — which got us to wondering if the word is still banned on TV.

The movies The Fault in Our Stars (the love story about teens with terminal cancer) and Divergent (the new Hunger Games franchise, only with Shailene Woodley) were both hugely successful in a mainstream way and were both sold on the value of having Shailene Woodley in the starring role. People started saying, a lot, that Shailene Woodley is on the Jennifer Lawrence track. (When she was asked about this on late-night television, she said, “As women, we are constantly told that we need to compare ourselves to a girl in school, to our co-workers, to the images in a magazine. How is the world going to advance if we’re always comparing ourselves to others? I admire Jennifer Lawrence, but she’s everyone’s favorite person to compare me to. Is it because we both have short hair and a vagina?” That part got cut before the show aired. But that’s who Shailene Woodley is, long may she fucking remain so.)

Amy Schumer Works To Legalize Female Anatomy With TV Censors

Amy Schumer’s Censorhip Change Is A Victory for Engendered Language on TV Bustle

In a joint effort between Amy Schumer and Inside Amy Schumer executive producer Dan Powell, Comedy Central approved the use of the word “pussy” on the network. The seemingly casual announcement of the un-bleep is actually a huge, huge victory. Inside Amy Schumer aggressively attacks several women’s issues, from body-shaming to sexual assault in the military, so it’s important to be able to use such language. Much of the language banned by the FCC is engendered, so not only is it a victory for Comedy Central but for the (hopefully) eventual equality for language on television.

If saying ‘vagina’ is now legal on American television, reality is that most popular culture words that refer to a woman’s body are not. Still — vagina is a victory!!! No more vajaja!

Language is so important and powerful, and now especially, what can and cannot be said on television and web-produced shows is becoming more influential on common vernacular. Even though Comedy Central airs such subversive shows like Inside Amy Schumer, Key and Peele, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, they still have to align to certain guidelines. And because the list of banned words contains so many alternatives for the word “vagina,” it creates and maintains the stigma and demonization related to a woman’s body.

AOC Archives

18 Vaginas & Plenty Of Talking Points On Women’s Bodies After Sydney University Newspaper Censored