Too Early in the Day...

...to be reminded of how dangerous it can be to be a woman who displeases a man/men. I swear, I was reading news links sent to me, and here are three of the first five:

Doctor guilty in wife's cyanide murder:

[Yazeed] Essa laced his wife's calcium supplements to escape a loveless marriage.

Man killed ex-lover over Facebook photo with new man:

A woman was stabbed repeatedly by her ex-lover after he saw a picture of her with her new boyfriend on Facebook.

Paul Bristol, 25, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering Camille Mathurasingh, 27, at her east London home in April 2009.

The IT technician, who lived in Trinidad and Tobago, flew to London within two weeks of seeing the picture and killed the accountant.

Bartender says exotic club demoted her because she was pregnant:

Due to the tough economy, [Jennifer] Paviglianiti says she needed this specific bartending job and feared she'd soon be out of work. To protect herself, she decided to secretly record her boss on tape.

On those recordings [John]Doxey can be heard saying, "Customers don't wanna come in and see a pregnant woman behind the bar!"

[snip]

In other recordings, Doxey is heard suggesting that Paviglianiti's appearance is hurting business. "Maybe they don't go there because the bartender is pregnant and doesn't look sexy."

I know this woman could possibly lose her livelihood, not her life, like the other cases, but imagine losing your job, with a new baby in this economy. And if you have never had a workplace environment that you felt was hostile, let me tell you it can be one of the most draining, self-doubt-inducing, literally depressing things in the world.

In addition to the second story, I also received two links to stories about how Facebook can work against women wrt their lives and their jobs:

Teacher killed herself after ex-boyfriend posted naked photos on Facebook:

A British teacher working in the Middle East killed herself after an ex-boyfriend posted naked pictures of her on Facebook, an inquest heard yesterday.

Emma Jones, 24, drank poisonous cleaning fluid after confiding in friends that she feared she could be jailed in the Muslim country [UAE] over the explicit images.

And lots of female colleagues have been circling this one, warning each other to be on guard:

Professor Fired for Disgruntled Posts on Facebook:

Last week Gloria Gadsden, an associate professor at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania who had been telling her FB followers stuff like "Does anyone know where I can find a very discrete hitman? Yes, it's been that kind of day," was put on indefinite paid leave when the school found out about it.

When I first heard of it, I thought, "Why is she even using language like that?" then wondered about the risque things I say (not violent, but my friends and I discuss "sexy" topics all the time). Of course, that FB account is under my pseudonym, but it's not like I'm all that well pseudonym-ized. What really has my colleagues and me cautious is this observation that Gadsden made in another article that reported on the case:

Gadsden... says that university officials have been discriminating against her ever since she wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education saying universities don't do enough to retain minority faculty.

Those kinds of political games are what terrify me about this profession.

Now, I hope I made your day as bright as mine :-(.