Who's afraid of female names? Hurricane Maria

Juan Gonzalez, Amy Goodman (DemocracyNow.org, Sept. 19, 2017); Editors, Wisdom Quarterly

Hurricanes with female names get no respect. More people die because fewer people listen to warnings regarding them, most likely due to our learned sexism, our implicit gender bias, which is mostly unconscious. Thanks to Maria, Irma, Katia, and Katrina, maybe we'll start giving them the respect they merit.

I'm the biggest Maria (Guadalupe)

In the Caribbean, Hurricane Maria strengthened rapidly today over the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean, growing from a Category 1 to a Category 5 storm [the strongest categorization with sustained winds of 170 MPH, which would make it stronger than Hurricane Irma, the strongest Atlantic storm to ever make landfall] in a single day and threatening Puerto Rico and other islands already suffering from Hurricane Irma’s landfall earlier this month.

I'm the 2nd biggest Maria (Kahlo).

On Monday evening, the storm’s eye passed directly over Dominica, where Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit wrote online, "My roof is gone. I am at the complete mercy of the hurricane. House is flooding."

He later said he had been rescued, but the island had been devastated. The storm also brought high winds and flooding to Guadeloupe, the staging ground for relief efforts for islands ravaged by Hurricane Irma.

Hurricane Maria now threatens the capital of Puerto Rico, San Juan, with a possible direct hit as a major hurricane. Democracy Now! speaks with Democratic Congressmember Luis Gutiérrez. More