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Allison McKim

@allisonmckim.bsky.social
789 followers 691 following 221 posts

Sociologist of gender, punishment & society, welfare state, law, drugs. Professor at Bard College. Author of Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration.

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Reposted by Allison McKim
Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
A new thing that I hate: I’m reading a book right now that uses endnote citations, and directs the reader to SCAN A QR CODE to access the endnotes.
static.klipy.com
Dan Levy's Iconic 'Absolutely Not' Moment
Alt: Dan Levy's Iconic 'Absolutely Not' Moment
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Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 11/10/2026
The police said she lied about being raped. Then she hit record.
motherjones.com
Police didn’t believe a 12-year-old who said she'd been raped. Then she hit record.
“If I didn’t find the evidence for them, I wasn’t too sure they would find it.”
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Pro-rape parties want the assaults to continue and the victim to be further terrorized and that's not even unusual, I regret to say, but it would be super-nice if Letitia James would investigate and prosecute whoever's doing this.
cnn.com
Cornell’s Jane Doe is ‘terrified’ after death threats and a swatting incident, her lawyer says | CNN
One month ago, the woman now known to America as Cornell’s Jane Doe was living in New York City and trying to break into the hotel industry, her lawyer says. Now she’s facing threats and hiding out at...
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
This thing has made me go do a lot of reading tonight, and the Wikipedia page about the last public execution in the United States is well-written. It was Rainey Bethea, a Black man hanged in front of a crowd of 20,000 in 1936, a spectacle which embarrassed Kentucky enough that they ended hangings.
Hanna placed the noose around Bethea's neck, adjusted it, and then signaled to Hash to pull the trigger. Instead, Hash, who was drunk, did nothing. Hanna shouted at Hash, "Do it!" A deputy then leaned onto the trigger, which sprang the trap door. citation needed! Bethea fell 8 feet (2.4 m), and his neck was instantly broken.
Afterward, two doctors confirmed he was dead.
His body was taken to Andrew & Wheatley
Funeral Home. Icitation needed! He wanted his body to be sent to his sister in South Carolina so that she could arrange for him to be interred next to his father, but against these wishes, he was buried in a pauper's grave at Owensboro Cemetery (also known as City Cemetery and
"Potter's Field") in Owensboro. 14]It was estimated that a crowd of about 20,000 people gathered to watch the execution.!9! One man, 36-year-old Leonard A. Peters, was killed in a car accident while driving to Owensboro to witness the hanging. Three others, including his wife, were injured. 15. Afterwards, Hanna complained that Hash should not have been allowed to perform the execution in his drunken
condition. Hanna further said it was the worst display he experienced in the 70 hangings he had supervised. citation needed]
The spot where the scaffold stood
(approximately 37.775248° -87.116462°) is now part of a drop-off/pick-up lane in front of the Owensboro Convention Center. citation needed]へ
End of public executions in
Kentucky
As the Kentucky General Assembly had been meeting in its biennial sessions at the time, the media circus surrounding the Bethea execution embarrassed members of the Kentucky
legislature. In spite of the humiliation, they could not amend laws regarding executions until the next session in 1938. However, the trial judges in two separate Kentucky rape cases ordered that the hangings of John "Pete" Montjoy and Harold Van Venison be conducted privately. Montjoy, age 23, was privately hanged in Covington on December 17, 1937.On January 17, 1938, William R. Attkisson of the Kentucky State Senate's 38th District (representing Louisville), introduced Senate Bill 69, repealing the requirement in Section 1137 that executions for convicted rapists be conducted by hanging in the county seat where they raped their victims. The bill was promoted in the Kentucky House of Representatives by Representative Charles W. Anderson Jr., one of the attorneys who assisted Bethea in his post-conviction relief motions.
After both houses approved the bill, Governor Chandler signed it into law on March 12, 1938; it became effective on May 30 of that year.
Chandler later expressed regret at having approved the repeal, claiming, "Our streets are no longer safe." The last person ever legally hanged in Kentucky was Harold Van Venison, a
33-year-old African-American singer, who was privately executed in Covington on June 3, 1938.
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Yvonne Lam @yvonnezlam.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I had never thought about how insurance for frats works, so I had to stare into space for a while when I read this: sorayachemaly.substack.com/p/33-underst...
Assault and sexual assault are so prevalent in the Greek system that insurers won’t insure fraternities. They are considered a high-risk class because of decades of litigation costs related to sexual assault claims, the second most common claim type for frats (assault and battery is the first). When frats do get coverage policies typically exclude crimes, explicitly citing sexual misconduct. Alcohol-related violations are also commonly excluded.

Because of this profile, fraternities have to self-insure, collectively funding through an entity like the Fraternity Risk Management Trust, an instrument members pay into. The amazing thing about this setup is that in the case of criminal findings, excluded from coverage, financial risks flow to individual men’s families’ homeowners insurance policies, not upstream to local fraternities or their national organizations.
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Reposted by Allison McKim
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
This is very good (although I've been told by a researcher in this area that National Panhellenic Conference sororities overturning their alcohol ban is "never gonna happen" for insurance reasons)
vitalcitynyc.org
Finding New Ideas for Campus Sexual Assault Prevention
Learn from schools with better climates.
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
I spent a year watching school administrators do their jobs—and interviewing the students most impacted. I spoke to @thecut.com in a long-form Q&A about what I saw. Mainly, a system designed to protect perpetrators and punish victims in each and every case.
thecut.com
The Reason Why Colleges Still Fail to Address Sexual Violence
The “Cornell Seven” case highlights what’s wrong with Trump’s Title IX rules — and how the system was always designed to fail.
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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Incarcerated women report rampant sexual abuse by guards and the guards retaliate by spraying them with chemical agents and sending them to the hospital as a warning. Rape culture and brazen misogyny from the highest institution to the lowest.
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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
The number of YT comments on this one: "But mutual aid!" My guy... slavery is de facto legal in this country. We ain't gonna fix that with food pantries & bail funds.
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Jessica Pishko @jesspish.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
A heartbreaking story by @lilianasegura.bsky.social on Christa Pike, a victim of abuse from the people around her, including the criminal system. She is scheduled to be executed tomorrow. theintercept.com/2026/09/27/c...
theintercept.com
The “Satanic Panic” Made Her a True-Crime Obsession. The Truth Is More Haunting.
After 30 years on death row, Christa Pike faces execution for a grisly murder she committed at 18.
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Erik Loomis @erikloomis.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
This Day in Labor History: September 30, 1919. A shootout occurred between armed guards protecting a union meeting of sharecroppers in Elaine, Arkansas and whites seeking to intimidate them. The next day, the governor ordered the military to crack down. Let's talk about the Elaine Massacre!
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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
We have answered so many of these questions dozens of times. Sometimes in giant multimillion dollar studies and politicians just refuse to listen.
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Julian Go @juliango.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Latest news: 2 of my sociology colleagues, John Levi Martin & Geoff Wodtke & I each wrote separate reviews of the Vanderbilt-Wash U Report on Sociology by A. Rubin. For my brief opinion and links to all 3 reviews, see this blogpost: scatter.wordpress.com/2026/09/19/g...
scatter.wordpress.com
guest post: scholarly malpractice and the vanderbilt-washington university report on sociology
The following is a guest post by Julian Go. By now readers of scatterplot will be aware of the Sociology portion of the Vanderbilt-Washington University Report (VWUR) by Ashley Rubin. Part of the “…
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Wtaf is this question my university just asked me about my project?
Does the project involve any work that could be interpreted as promoting DEIA, climate change research, or non-compliant to any Presidential Executive Orders?
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Kim Weeden @weedenkim.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Every story I read about rising food prices ends w/ tips that boil down to, "women should do more unpaid labor." - shop coupons & flyers - scrutinize per unit prices - buy produce from local farms - buy in bulk and preserve - eat at home - plan meals carefully to reduce waste @jessicacalarco.com
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Joel S. @joelhs.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
The fact that a small fraction of the people who read the original article will read this response is emblematic of how slanted our public discourse on higher education is.
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James M. Thomas (JT) @insurgentprof.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Women. Women will be hit the hardest.
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Adam Sawyer @adamjst.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
“If immigration hadn't picked up my brother, my sister-in-law would still be alive, and the children wouldn't be going through this sorrow,” he said. “Unfortunately, immigration — the [U.S.] government — doesn't see that. It makes no difference to them.” www.stlpr.org/law-order/20...
stlpr.org
Overland couple shot dead in Guatemala after local ICE stop led to deportations
The couple’s 14-month-old daughter was found crying beside her mother’s body in a sugarcane field last week, according to Guatemalan authorities and media.
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🎃 Spooky Shoshana 🎃 @shoshana.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Come to Boston, we're peaceful and flexible! 🕊️ 🧘🏻‍♀️
Map and chart of gun ownership and yoga interest showing Massachusetts having low gun ownership and high yoga interest.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
maybe we can just trying briefly turning gender off and then on again
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Jessica Nix @jessicanix.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
NEW: As cyclosporiasis cases jumped, the company linked to the outbreak - Taylor Farms - effectively delayed a recall that mounted in consumer confusion. Gift link for @business www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
bloomberg.com
As Parasite Spawned Chaos, Taylor Farms Slow-Walked Its Response
The US Food and Drug Administration had apologized, Taylor Farms said in a post on X. An agency lab test linking its produce to the country’s worst cyclosporiasis outbreak in decades was a false posit...
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Laura Bassett @lebassett.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
Casually threatening mass rapes
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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
It's not "DOGE cut one program." It's "We knew this was brewing, & underfunded it for nearly a decade."
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Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
What happens when two sociologists turn their analytical lens on parenting itself? In this edition of Ideas, Allison Daminger and Nina Bandelj dissect the “emotional economy” of modern parenting—arguing that today’s exhaustion is socially produced. press.princeton.edu/ideas/from-i...
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Kate Jewell @katejewell.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
Here’s the thing: I could probably come up with lots of creative, AI-proof online approaches. But finding the time to reflect an innovate comes at a premium. I often revamp my courses, but this is an order of magnitude much higher in redesign. AI is not a pedagogical crisis, it’s a labor crisis.
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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
You know, when you’re talking about forced intercourse, I think it’s fine to use the word “rape.”
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Moira Donegan @moiradonegan.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Second wave radicals like Shulamith Firestone and Ellen Willis knew they had to break off from the anti-war movement and start independent feminist groups when women tried to speak at an anti-Nixon protest, and men in the crowd yelled “Take her off the stage and fuck her.”
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Nicole Bedera @nbedera.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
In my research, I’ve reviewed cases where perpetrators were offered impunity because: - The victim was polite to the perpetrator the next day - The victim‘s socks were found at the crime scene - There were “too many victims” - The victim withdrew consent “too early” in the evening
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Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
And the contracts they want you to sign: you've only agreed, by email, to give a talk, but they want copyrights and rights to use your words and likeness and so forth for any purpose, "in all media now existing and yet to be invented," which I call the naked hologram clause.
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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
We're headed towards the largest loss of health insurance coverage in US history. Along with millions losing Medicaid, Obamacare private plans are entering a death spiral--reduced federal subsidies pushed people out, and with falling enrollment, prices rise even higher www.wsj.com/health/healt...
wsj.com
Exclusive | Obamacare Insurers Seek Big Rate Hikes, Again
Affordable Care Act plans are citing rising healthcare costs and falling enrollment.
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Hannah BW @hbwhbwhbw.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
a huge win for these brave FL faculty members and a good reminder for the rest of us that sometimes putting your head down and hoping things don’t get worse is not the right strategy. sometimes you need to fight in order to win.
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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
I have made it an annual tradition to document Mark Twain’s hatred of July 4th celebrations, but I saved something special for America 250. Twain was part of the centennial celebration in Philadelphia in 1876. He was part of what the dubbed the “Congress of Authors”…
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McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 30/06/2026
"I’m transitioning so I can join the girls’ basketball team and win everything. Yeah, it’s a totally normal thing for a straight guy with no gender dysphoria like me to do, that’s for sure."
buff.ly
Guys, I Swear I’m Only Transitioning So I Can Cheat at Girls’ Sports
“I’m transitioning so I can join the girls’ basketball team and win everything. Yeah, it’s a totally normal thing for a straight guy with no gender dysphoria...
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Prison Policy Initiative @prisonpolicy.org · 24/06/2026
Today marks 4 years since the fall of Roe v. Wade Now, for most women on probation and parole, the ability to receive abortion care depends solely on getting *permission* to travel out of state from an officer Access to basic health care should not be in the hands of officers
U.S. map showing that the vast majority of states have some kind of abortion ban as well as standard conditions of both probation and parole that restrict interstate travel. Source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2024/06/18/dobbs/
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John Pfaff @johnpfaff.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
And yes, I know. I know I know I know I know. I know I should know better than to get any even vague sense of my hopes up.
Lucy football meme, top says "that one promising SCOTUS case," bottom says "every case that follows it"
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Allison McKim @allisonmckim.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
😢
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Allison McKim @allisonmckim.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Senegal Rekk! Allez les Lions!
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Allison McKim @allisonmckim.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Metal birds!
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100 years ago news @100yearsagonews.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
June 11, 1926: The police raid a lesbian-friendly cafe in New York City’s Greenwich Village and arrest its owner, Eva Kotchever. Eve’s Hangout is a discreet hole in the wall where avant-garde poetry is read, sexual topics are freely discussed and a sign reads: “Men are admitted but not welcome.” 1/3
KotcheverThe building that contained Eve’s Hangout (129 MacDougal St.) in 1939
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
if faculty don’t control curriculum, it’s not actually a university. it’s just expensive high school for adults
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 06/06/2026
Remember the current NIH director going on about protecting researchers from government censorship? Today his people called the police in to forcibly remove my colleagues from their own society meeting for sharing an editorial published in their flagship journal that was critical of him. Gift link
nytimes.com
Police Remove Diabetes Experts From Conference for Distributing Critique of Trump Administration
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Puff the Magic Hater @mskellymhayes.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Since we're paying tribute to Anthony Head, what's your favorite Giles moment or episode of Buffy? Mine is definitely Band Candy, when rebellious youth-brained Giles steals that dope coat for Joyce and beats up a cop.
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Louise Seamster @louiseseamster.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
necropolitics are getting more and more literal
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Hildur Knútsdóttir @hildur.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Throwback to when a TV station in Iceland accidentally aired an episode of Teletubbies with subtitles from the Sopranos 👌🏼
Picture of a TV screen with teletubbies going to bed with the subtitles: I know you were high during my mother-in-laws wake
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Just deeply shocked and saddened to hear about Raúl’s passing. He was an exceptionally generous community builder in the scholarly world. He will be sorely missed.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 29/05/2026
Of all the harm this administration has done to US science, today's proposed changes to the way federal grants are awarded and administered is the most damaging yet. The text of the federal register document is impenetrably tedious by design, so here's an excellent summary of what it says.
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Gravel Influencer @gravelinfluencer.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Irony is dead
wcvb.com
Demand rises for handmade flags sewn by Mass. inmates ahead of America’s 250th
As demand grows ahead of the nation’s 250th celebration, inmates across Massachusetts are sewing thousands of American flags by hand.
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AAUP @aaup.org · 21/05/2026
The US Department of Education is currently overhauling federal accreditation rules for colleges & universities. The April 6, 2026, Proposed Changes to Initial Draft Regulations unacceptably seek to narrow & control what can be taught, learned, & researched on college & university campuses. 🧵 1
aaup.org
AIM Committee Negotiated Rulemaking Statement
If the regulations developed by the ED’s Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) negotiated rulemaking committee include a definition of academic freedom, it must be the foundational nation...
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Philadelphia Inquirer @inquirer.com · 13/05/2026
The Trump administration wants to decrease a mother's allotments for fruits and vegetables from $52 to $13 a month.
inquirer.com
Proposed WIC cuts could be detrimental to children's growth and well-being
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