Old people tend to get a pass when it comes to hate speech. “They’re from a different generation,” people say when dismissing racist or sexist remarks. Writing on her blog, Writeous Sister Speaks, Aaminah Hernández calls that dismissal into question, saying that older generations should know better. After being verbally abused by an older man in a supermarket for wearing a niqab, Hernández writes:

Now, my son is pretty compassionate and says to me “he was really old mom, and sometimes they just aren’t right in the head.” And he’s right of course. That may very well be the case. But it’s certainly not always the case, and it doesn’t make it less disturbing.

(Thanks, Racialicious.)

—Bennett Gordon

Women are less likely to have their academic papers published when the reviewers know that the author is female, according to a recent study published on ScienceDirect. Researchers looked at two scientific journals of similar subject matter, one where the reviewers knew the author’s gender and the other where the author’s gender was unknown. When the author’s gender wasn’t known, the percentage of women-authored papers went up. According to the authors of the study, “this increased representation of female authors more accurately reflects the (US) life sciences academic workforce composition, which is 37% female.”

—Bennett Gordon

(Thanks, Kottke.org.)