discrimination

The Kids Aren't Alright: Your Prom King Is Wearing A Dress

Foster Kamer · 11/08/09 09:30PM

Every six weeks, someone comes out with big, exasperated "sigh, kids these days" issue piece about the changing makeup of America's Youth. Today, it's actually about the makeup! And the kind of boys who wear it and girls that don't.

We Predict More Lawsuits in Dov Charney's Future

The Cajun Boy · 07/27/09 12:54AM

Here's a shocker: According to a tipster, American Apparel's pervy madman CEO, Dov Charney, is demanding the firing of employees he deems unattractive and thus detrimental to the "AA aesthetic," as he feels they may be hurting his bottom line.

'Sexual Predator' CEO Accused of Attacking His Assistant

Owen Thomas · 03/03/09 01:33AM

Greg Shenkman, CEO of a San Francisco software company, allegedly used work visas to import an Eastern European woman as a sexual plaything, according to a former assistant who is charging him with sexual battery.

FriendFinder's Latest Scandal Sexier Than a Penthouse Letter

Owen Thomas · 02/26/09 01:00PM

A porn star draping boobs over an employee's head. Lapdances on the company dime. $50 million in back taxes. These are just some of the charges Penthouse publisher FriendFinder Networks is facing from an ex-employee.

Yahoo Flack Quit After Lawsuit Leak

Owen Thomas · 02/17/09 01:45PM

One of the messes Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz must clean up is a three-year-old investigation into claims of discrimination by a black female lawyer. After a leak of confidential documents, it's now even messier.

Gays now entitled to inept online dating

Owen Thomas · 11/20/08 03:40AM

eHarmony does not hate gay people. It is merely ignorant of them. That is the dating site's excuse for excluding same-sex customers — a practice that led a gay New Jersey man, Eric McKinley, to file a complaint with New Jersey's attorney general which eHarmony has just settled, paying a $50,000 fine to the state and $5,000 to McKinley. eHarmony was founded in 2000 by Neil Clark Warren, an evangelical Christian and a psychologist; he is still the company's chairman.To settle the complaint, eHarmony is also launching Compatible Partners, a gay dating site. But the Compatible site, as proposed is not just separate; it's also unequal. eHarmony executives have long insisted that they didn't want to serve gay daters because their site used an algorithm based on long-term studies of straight couples. Compatible Partners, which must launch by March, will use the same questionnaire as eHarmony — but the company admits it has no idea if it will work to find good matches. Compatible Partners users will see a warning to this effect: "The statement lets customers know that eHarmony, Inc. has not conducted research on same-sex couples so that they have the information they need to decide whether to use our service." If anyone shows up that is; eHarmony will give away 10,000 free accounts, but it's hard to think that a dating service chaired by a conservative Christian will prove much more popular than, say, Manhunt, the gay personals site whose chairman donated to John McCain's campaign. The politics of sex aside, the website's clearly going to suck. This should sound so familiar to people who build websites for a living: A poorly thought-out product, based on insufficient research, rushed out on an artificial deadline. But in this case, it's the government, not inept managers, who are ordering it up. They're from the government, and they're here to help your dating life! If gays can't get married in California, don't they at least deserve the benefit of their own pseudoscientifically valid hookups? (Photo via Magicmud.com)

Valley companies half as likely to have a woman on board

Owen Thomas · 11/12/08 04:00PM

A press release from Spencer Stuart, the executive recruiting firm, celebrates a "milestone": More than half of the Silicon Valley companies it tracks now have at least one woman on their boards of directors. This is not the accomplishment they would have you think: Among the boards of companies on the S&P 500, 89 percent have at least one woman, and women make up 15.7 percent of S&P 500 directors, versus 8.9 percent in the Valley. Progress, perhaps, but progress that highlights the tech industry's lingering sexism.