Chris Rodda points out a really staggering example of abuse of privilege: an Air Force Major defaming enlisted service members who can’t reply because he outranks them. You probably won’t be astonished to learn that the Major is a Christian, and a proselytizing one at that, while the soldiers he goes after are atheists.

For the past three years, an atheist Army sergeant has had to remain silent as lie after lie was told about him by an Air Force Major named Jonathan Dowty. Major Dowty, a.k.a. JD the Christian Fighter Pilot, is a Christian officer who belongs to the Officers’ Christian Fellowship (OCF), an organization that thinks the real duty of a military officer is to raise up

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All your bases are belong to us, or, Freethought blogs assimilates more of the very best secular and/or atheist bloggers, or, yee-ha! Coming soon to a Freethought blog near you:

Kenan Malik

John Loftus of Debunking Christianity

Richard Carrier

Do admit.

 … Read the rest

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This is no good. No good at all. The video of the Haught-Coyne Q and A is mysteriously gone. Just gone. Page unavailable.

Perhaps there is some explanation other than the obvious (and discreditable)? I don’t know. I await further knowledge.… Read the rest

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From Tigerbeatdown, less than a month ago.

It’s concerted, focused, and deliberate, the effort to silence people, especially women, but not always, as I can attest, and particularly feminists, though again, not always, as I can attest, online. The readers, the consumers, the fans, may not always notice it because people are silent about it. Because this is the strategy that has been adopted, to not feed the trolls, to grin and bear it, to shut up, to put your best foot forward and rise above it.  To open your email, take note of the morning’s contents, and then quickly shuttle them to the appropriate files for future reference or forwarding to the authorities. To check on the server,

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And here’s the New Statesman on the subject.

Helen Lewis-Hasteley -

The sheer volume of sexist abuse thrown at female bloggers is the internet’s festering sore: if you talk to any woman who writes online, the chances are she will instantly be able to reel off a Greatest Hits of insults. But it’s very rarely spoken about, for both sound and unsound reasons. No one likes to look like a whiner — particularly a woman writing in male-dominated fields such as politics, economics or computer games.

Hmm…I don’t seem to have that problem. Maybe that’s because I don’t see talking about it as being a whiner at all; I see it as political. That’s because it is political. The … Read the rest

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Wo. What was that we were saying about misogynist comments and sexist epithets and stereotype threat and the way racist and homophobic comments are uncool but misogyny is edgy and funny?

Maybe there’s actually something in it?

Crude insults, aggressive threats and unstinting ridicule:  it’s business as usual  in the world of website news commentary – at least for the women who regularly contribute to the national debate.

The frequency of the violent online invective – or “trolling” – levelled at female commentators and columnists is now causing some of the best known names in journalism to hesitate before publishing their opinions. As a result, women writers across the political spectrum are joining to call for a stop to the

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)