At Songdhammakalyani monastery in Thailand…

The unassuming monastery in Nakhon Pathom, an hour west of Bangkok, is the only temple in Thailand exclusively devoted to female monks, known as Bhikkhunis. In 2003, its abbess, the Venerable Dhammananda became the first Thai woman to ordain as a Bhikkhuni in Theravada Buddhism – defying tradition by travelling to Sri Lanka for the ceremony. Her decision sent shockwaves through the deeply conservative Thai Sangha Council, which explicitly banned the ordination of women in 1928.

But now it’s all ok? No. The Sangha continues to be against it.

According to the abbess, the challenges reflect decades of institutionalised patriarchy, rooted in the belief that being born female is a manifestation of bad karma and that women cannot attain enlightenment. Women are not even allowed to touch monks out of fear that it might pollute their sanctity. Traditionally, female monastics are confined to the life of the white-robed Mae Chees, or lay nuns, deemed so inferior that they are only permitted to serve food and clean for the men.

The Vatican has learned to disguise that by calling it “complementarity,” but the outcome is exactly the same – women are permitted only to serve food and clean. That’s their special purpose in life, along with of course babies and not marrying priests.

Analysts say the Bhikkhuni controversy mirrors a broader culture of misogyny in Thailand, which persisted despite the election of the country’s first female Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra in 2011. “During her campaign, she claimed to care about women’s issues, but since coming into government the only thing she has done is create a women’s fund,” says Dr. Sutada. (Shinawatra was ousted as prime minister in early May.)

Thai women still hold only 16 percent of parliamentary seats and only four percent of political positions at the local level, while domestic violence is a rampant problem – affecting a staggering 33 percent of families. Activists say it is directly linked to patriarchal notions about karmic justice, which serves to perpetuate the practice of victim blaming.

“When my father became violent, my mother would say ‘This is my karma,’” says Ouyporn Khuankaew, Director of International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice, a grassroots organization that trains monks and nuns on gender and LGBT issues. “And when my sister was in an abusive relationship – a monk told her the same thing.”

And who else says that? Yes! All the other religions; that is correct.

Buddhist notions about karma have a particularly harmful effect on women, the disabled, and the LGBT community, warns Ouyporn, adding that even the most progressive monks are susceptible to these prejudices.

Not prejudices! Spiritual beliefs! Totally different thing. Or rather, identical.

Ironically, the ordination of women has caused more of a stir than a string of high-profile scandals to rock the Thai monkhood. Last year, 33-year-old Wirapol Sukphol, nicknamed the jet-setting fugitive monk, shot to the headlines amid allegations of wide-scale corruption, promiscuity, and crimes ranging from statutory rape to manslaughter. Although he was promptly expelled from the Sangha, there remains little public scrutiny over the monkhood. Meanwhile, the Thai Sangha has stayed curiously tight-lipped over the rise of Buddhist extremism in neighboring Myanmar, where the hate preacher Wirathu is leading a vicious campaign against the country’s Muslim minority.

Again, very Vatican-like: child abuse is something you hide and excuse, but ordination of women is a terrible sin and contraception is an outrage. It always boils down to men domineering over women as The Most Important Thing.

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

Jesus and Mo is now on Patreon.

This was my idea. [smug]

So if you want to help Jesus and Mo thrive and prosper, and get a reward, you can do that.

Here is the new Jesus and Mo:

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

A federal judge in Pennsylvania today ruled a state ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

“By virtue of this ruling, same-sex couples who seek to marry in Pennsylvania may do so, and already married same-sex couples will be recognized as such in the Commonwealth,” wrote U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III.

The ruling comes in a case filed in July by 11 gay couples, two teenage children of one of the pairs and a widow. The couples include Deb and Susan Whitewood of South Fayette, Diana Polson and Dawn Plummer of Point Breeze, and Lynn and Fredia Hurdle, of Crafton Heights.

It overturns, <<unambiguously>> and with rhetorical flourish, the 18-year-old state Defense of Marriage Act.

And the kicker is – did you spot that name? U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III? That’s Judge Jones! The judge in Kitzmiller! The judge appointed by Bush, the Republican judge, whose ruling in Kitzmiller is a joy to read.

O blessed judge.

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

This is what we were laughing about – Soraya had said “I’ll text you” to Taslima and I pointed out that she’d automatically made the flashing thumbs gesture while saying that, so we all laughed and did flashing thumbs and typing gestures.

Brian D Engler

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

One of my favorites of Brian Engler’s many fabulous photos from Women in Secularism, which he kindly permits me to post.

This is a couple of minutes before the panel on multiculturalism started; Taslima and Soraya and me having a laugh.

Brian D Engler

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

Ok be warned: this is shocking and horrible.

The Independent reports on a young woman whose employer poured boiling water on her. I can hardly stand to read any more than that.

A Filipino woman was left with severe burns after her Saudi Arabia employer allegedly poured boiling water on her.

The 23-year-old household service worker, from Pikit, North Cotabato, suffered burns to her back and legs after being doused with the scorching liquid in the incident in Riyadh on 4 May, ABS-CBN News reported.

…

According to ABS-CBN News, the mother of Fatma’s employer became angry after Fatma was slow to bring her coffee and then poured boiling water on her.

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

Originally a comment on Missing parts

There’s a pattern, here–and forgive me if I’m restating what others might find obvious–but the general inappropriateness of citing Mill to justify misogynistic harassment–it fits again so well, I guess I felt noting this again is almost a forced move.

Mill’s essay is largely about the relationship between the state and dissenters, but not quite so exclusively–as it’s also more generally about relationships between majorities and minorities. The conclusion I can summarize quickly–anyone wants to argue otherwise, let me know, but to borrow from Mill himself: ‘… the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection…’

… note that Mill doesn’t restrict this to physical coercion and legal penalties (also his words). Look at the sentence right before that one, which mentions also ‘the moral coercion of public opinion’. And yeah, that’s an important addition, and a thought provoking one, I’d say. Mill seems to have recognized well enough the immense informal power a social hegemony can have. You don’t have to have formal laws forbidding the expression of a particular opinion if there’s sufficient dislike of it within a community*.

Anyway, I wonder if the people citing Mill figure that’s their out: they figure they can say, look, you can’t silence my odious opinions and threatening speech, with or without the force of law (and, okay, yes, I’m probably giving them too much credit; did they actually read Mill? Reilly-Cooper, I suspect, would equally wonder, but anyway, but this may be irrelevant; let’s just parse the logic of it anyway, I guess), because this isn’t really about self-protection…

Completely overlooking the reality that, yes, if they continue, en masse, to threaten anyone speaking for feminism, they’ve become, in fact, the very overwhelming, silencing social force Mill’s essay seeks to defang. Any number of targets of such harassment will tell you how very difficult it becomes simply to go on, simply to continue expressing themselves, under a sufficient volume of such vitriol. Even as their harassers warp themselves in this convenient cloak of victimhood, loudly proclaiming how stifling progressives are. It’s a bit of a confusion, I think, born of this technology**: a mob wielding truncheons and growling ‘shut it bitch or this is going to get ugly’ is more visible in physical space; in this decade, it hides from making such an evocative spectacle of itself in discrete packets, delivered a kilobyte at a time…

And, of course, arguing it’s not about self-protection is to have a rather precious and self-serving definition, too, of just what constitutes harm. No one I think at all responsible seriously questions that these campaigns of hatred can genuinely hurt people. One skilled harasser can drive their target to suicide, and it will make the news; what a mob of them can do is likewise clear enough.

What would Mill have said? Honestly, I find it a bit of an academic question, anyway; it’s the same problem we get when we make idols of the US founding fathers and ask what would the framers of the constitution have made of whichever point of contemporary law…

The point being that the question is more for ourselves: yes, still considering these larger principles held up in the past with some reason as wise, what matter of society do we want to make, given this new connected, online world, immediate communication, the ability to put hate mail on someone’s desktop half a world away with the click of a mouse or tap on a touchscreen?

And about this inversion of victimhood. Again, it’s probably saying the obvious, but I figure this is much of the source of mischief, here. People can become right rat bastards, whenever they imagine themselves the wounded party. Seems pretty much to take the ethical brakes right off them. Am I hounding someone to their grave with my hatred? Whatever. They’re a feminist, and I’ve managed to convince myself feminists are this terrifying social force; they’ve taken over the courts, they’re dominating the conversation; I’m just looking out for my remaining rights, under siege, as I’m sure they are. That I’ve got to pick my evidence rather selectively to believe this, well, whatever; I have so done, so have at them. This, I figure, is much of what makes the MRAs so incredibly toxic: this imagined victimhood, this very cooked sense of injustice. When a de facto hegemony with really rather overweaning economic power and ongoing social advantages they keep working to avoid even noticing convinces itself they’re this hunted, besieged minority, watch out.

The also kinda a funny thing: I like Mill***, but he did write this bit a little while ago, and it did have its context and thrust. And, of course, in fact, we actually have laws against threatening speech, and I’d say for good reason. That this becomes very quickly real intimidation very likely to suppress ongoing expression from the recipient–and see again what Mill makes of silencing speech in general; this being, generally his concern inOn Liberty. (And note also, as I’m amused to do, one of his clear reasons for defending speech as he does: that suppression of an idea that may well be correct does us a disservice, if we miss hearing a good idea just not popularly held; it’s a bit of a stretch seeing this applying terribly well to physical threats, and hateful taunts, in general****.)

But it continues to amaze me. Got into–or I guess more just witnessed–another thing online just last week–yer standard MRA going on about how it was somehow a dreadfully oppressive thing he was being asked to examine his own privilege. And I think, watching that, growing rapidly into the same bleating dimensions of how victimized he apparently was as always, and watching it start to creep again to really rather (I thought) pushy, abusive behaviour–that it’s mostly, again, largely about privilege: roll it back, even a tiny bit–hell, even seem to come within a mile of doing so–and all of a sudden whomever had it is deeply aggrieved. It’s the peculiar blindness of that state, I figure: when you don’t know how good you got it (or, the more suspicious man in me keeps whispering, were working rather hard not to know), being asked to take a look does cut awfully close to the ego. Shitty behaviour will follow.

Recommendations for addressing this? I dunno. A little introspection, I guess, might cure a few things. Recognizing that look, just because you were bullied in high school or women rather generally rejected your requests for dates ten years ago doesn’t suddenly mean you can’t become the socially poisonous force that’s driving all the oxygen out of the discussion today. The monsters in the room happy deliberately to terrorize won’t be reached by this, but at best, I guess, I can hope people might avoid making themselves their accessories.

Know thyself, I guess. We’re back to that. Be prepared to acknowledge the bully within. I guess I’m probably not going to get it published as a classic essay, in that state, but anyway.

(*As any atheist, for instance, who lives in a nation where theoretically freedom of religion is guaranteed, but voicing certain opinions aloud will kill your social life–and potentially your business–as dead as if it had been hanged; I expect I should be preaching to the choir here.)

(**Or, okay, this is probably naive. Born of the technology, or enabled by it? As I do expect some of the more deliberately manipulative asshats in this thing know perfectly well what they’re doing, and use this feature knowingly. And are probably just as honest in their pose of ‘victimhood’.)

(***Oh, fun if mostly I guess irrelevant fact: I’m probably related to Mill myself, if less directly than Ms. Reilly-Cooper–Mill’s father was born a Milne, in the same general bits of Scotland I got that surname from myself; his mom allegedly found the name sounded too yokel-ish, in an era that was kinda the perception of Scots. But I suspect my forebears were the poorer relations in that bunch, and that’s saying something–more rag and bone men and sharecroppers, not so much shoemakers; anyway. Anyway, you needn’t file this particularly under ‘annoyed relatives of Mill’ so much as ‘annoyed/amused readers of Mill’. But yeah, still, whatever, this being 2014, let’s see what else we can’t cook up, here, anyway, shall we?)

(****Also for your consideration, maybe not so directly relevant, but still something to put in your file: read the dedication to On Liberty. And Mill’s own The Subjection of Women. I expect the precious wankers who pull this crap will insist oh, they’re all for equality, really, rape threats employed to silence notwithstanding, and somehow Mill would have agreed with them–forgive me, Ms. Reilly-Cooper, yes, we’re probably better off not even considering this–mind, so, yeah, it’s probably hardly worth mentioning.)

AJ Milne

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

Via Gnu Atheism on Facebook

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

The new Free Inquiry is out, and my column in it is online.

The takeaway:

The more we buy into the meme that abortion is always a tragic lesser-of-two-evils situation, the more we lose sight of the reality, which is that for a woman or girl who does not want to be pregnant, abortion is a glorious human invention, a life-salvaging bit of technology.

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

Jafafa Hots said:

(keep searching and searching for justifications for continuing to do what you were always doing for totally unrelated reasons once people start demanding you justify your actions… lemme see. Leaving genitals intact destroys the sanctity of traditionally-altered genitals? Have we tried that one yet?)

So good I just wanted to repeat it.

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

glosswitch on Snow White vs The Evil Queen: Some thoughts on feminism’s “generation gap”. It starts with a movie, Snow White and the Huntsman.

It’s everything that’s terrible about how mainstream feminism is marketed and it’s a bloody fairy tale. Just what is wrong with the world?

Charleze Theron’s Ravenna, the villain of the piece, is a cross between Tampax Pearl’s Mother Nature and Valerie Solanas. She is pitched against Kristen Stewart’s Snow White, who is young, beautiful and feisty, all set to overthrow a patriarchal regime that demands all women be young, beautiful but not particularly feisty. Snow White rebels by remaining young and beautiful while also having agency™ and being empowered™ – go her! Meanwhile Ravenna, the Evil Queen, can only maintain her youth and beauty by being evil. Deep down she’s an ageing minger and therefore not worthy of exerting any power or influence. So Snow White kills her. Yay feminism! Kill that stupid, youth-addicted, power-hungry, post-menopausal waste of space!

It’s interesting how familiar that sounds.

It’s obvious that Ravenna ought to just get old and lump it rather than try to beat the system. The camera lingers over ancient (late thirties) Theron’s face, comparing it unfavourably with Stewart’s pure, unlined visage. It’s not clear whether “the system” here is fairyland or Hollywood – perhaps there’s no real difference. Anyhow, the message is this: if you’re going to be a rebellious woman, be a very young, pretty one who only rebels against other women, preferably the older, less pretty ones. That way you can put on a sexy show of beating the system while the system remains firmly intact.

I can’t help thinking this is the perfect metaphor for the so-called generational model of feminism, one that sees women proceeding in successive waves, each one trashing the one that came before it plus the one that follows. Ravenna is to Snow White what second wavers are to younger feminists today, and what first wavers were to second wavers. She’s demonic, extreme, deluded. She doesn’t “get it” in the way Snow White does. She’s a misogynist caricature whereas Snow White, once you strip away the agency bullshit, is a patriarchal fantasy woman, a cool girl feminist par excellence. And that’s the story of feminism. Either you’re an evil witch – a racist-transphobe-frigid harpy who doesn’t know her time is up – or you’re an ineffectual sexy faux-rebel, storming the castle and swishing your hair with no clue that actually, you’ll get old too. One day you’ll be the past-it minger to whom no one wants to listen. Queer gender all you like but one day you’ll be placed on the same old scrapheap of womanhood as the rest of us.

No. That won’t happen. There’s a new system in place now – for the first time in history, all the women who are young and pretty now will stay that way forever. They will also continue to “get it” forever; no one will come along in five years rolling her eyes and getting it better.

Misogyny is clever these days. Women are so empowered we’re allowed to project manage our own women-hating via the medium of feminist discourse. I’ve noticed this recently in response to the New Statesman’s series of essays on second-wave feminism. The belief that older women’s work is of no value – that they are indeed evil witches – is very much to the fore in the knee-jerk responses from people who (I’ll hazard a guess) have not read the work of the thinkers they deride:

Plus also sexy and not ugly.

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

An excellent piece by Massimo Pigliucci saying why Neil deGrasse Tyson is wrong to say philosophy is timewasting bullshit that gets you hit by cars because you’re too busy asking yourself whether cars are real or not.

Neil made his latest disparaging remarks about philosophy as a guest on the Nerdist podcast [4], following a statement by one of the hosts, who said that he majored in philosophy. Neil’s comeback was: “That can really mess you up.” The host then added: “I always felt like maybe there was a little too much question asking in philosophy [of science]?” And here is the rest of the pertinent dialogue:

dGT: I agree.

interviewer: At a certain point it’s just futile.

dGT: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. My concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it’s, what are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning?

(another) interviewer: I think a healthy balance of both is good.

dGT: Well, I’m still worried even about a healthy balance. Yeah, if you are distracted by your questions so that you can’t move forward, you are not being a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world. And so the scientist knows when the question “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” is a pointless delay in our progress.

[insert predictable joke by one interviewer, imitating the clapping of one hand]

dGT: How do you define clapping? All of a sudden it devolves into a discussion of the definition of words. And I’d rather keep the conversation about ideas. And when you do that don’t derail yourself on questions that you think are important because philosophy class tells you this.

Sigh. That really is…ungood. Childish.

Well, Neil, consider this your follow-up call, just as you requested. Not that you didn’t get several of those before. For instance, even fellow scientist and often philosophy-skeptic Jerry Coyne pointed out that you “blew it big time” [8] when you disinvited philosopher David Albert from an event you had organized at the American Museum of Natural History, and that originally included a discussion between Albert and physicist Lawrence Krauss (yet another frequent philosophy naysayer [9]). Moreover, when you so graciously came to the book launch for my Answers for Aristotle a couple of years ago, you spent most of the evening chatting with a number of graduate students from CUNY’s philosophy program, and they tried really hard to explain to you how philosophy works and why you had a number of misconceptions about it. To no avail, apparently.

So here we are again, time to set you straight once more. This, of course, is not just because I like you and because I think it is in general the right thing to do. It is mostly, frankly, because someone who regularly appears on The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, and has had the privilege of remaking Carl Sagan’s iconic Cosmos series — in short someone who is a public intellectual and advocate for science — really ought to do better than to take what amounts to anti-intellectual (and illiterate) positions about another field of scholarship. And I say this in all friendship, truly.

Quite so, about the positions. He has a big microphone; he should not use it to say ignorant and disparaging things about philosophy. We do not need less philosophy and philosophically-informed thinking in this country. No, that is not what we need.

Massimo then gives some bullet points by way of trying to clear things up for NdGT. A sample from one -

I suggest you actually look up some technical papers in philosophy of science [12] to see how a number of philosophers, scientists and mathematicians actually do collaborate to elucidate the conceptual and theoretical aspects of research on everything from evolutionary theory and species concepts to interpretations of quantum mechanics and the structure of superstring theory. Those papers, I maintain, do constitute a positive contribution of philosophy to the progress of science — at least if by science you mean an enterprise deeply rooted in the articulation of theory and its relationship with empirical evidence.

And then there’s the chair issue.

A common refrain I’ve heard from you (see direct quotes above) and others, is that scientific progress cannot be achieved by “mere armchair speculation.” And yet we give a whole category of Nobels to theoretical physicists, who use the deductive power of mathematics (yes, of course, informed by previously available empirical evidence) to do just that. Or — even better — take mathematics itself, a splendid example of how having one’s butt firmly planted on a chair (and nowhere near any laboratory) produces both interesting intellectual artifacts in their own right and an immense amount of very practical aid to science. No, I’m not saying that philosophy is just like mathematics or theoretical physics. I’m saying that one needs to do better than dismiss a field of inquiry on the grounds that it is not wedded to a laboratory setting, or that its practitioners like comfortable chairs.

Massimo showed the piece to NdGT, they had an email conversation about it, but no result. I find that disappointing.

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

The philosopher Becca Reilly-Cooper on Twitter (@ boodleoops – yes it’s true, not all philosophers take themselves terribly seriously:

I’m pretty sure my grandfather *didn’t* fight for your right to threaten women with rape, torture and mutilation actually, free speech bros.

And I’ve read On Liberty several times, but I missed the part where Mill defends harassment, or threats to invade and cut women’s genitals.

Same here!

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

So I was on a panel on multiculturalism should we worry about it on Saturday, moderated by Rebecca Goldstein, with Taslima and Katha and Sarah Jones. At one point Rebecca said we were agreeing too much so it occurred to me to try to fix that by bringing up not female genital mutilation but the male kind. (Instead of cries of outrage, though, there was some applause. Yet more agreement! What can you do.)

You already know what I think, unless you’re a new reader. I don’t think it’s parents’ “right” to cut off healthy bits of their infants for non-medical reasons. I don’t. I think the only reason we don’t recoil in horror at the very idea of cutting off a bit of the penis for no real reason is because we’re so damned used to it. Well isn’t that always the way violations of human rights go unnoticed for year after decade after century.

On the other hand to (some) religious people it’s a foundational part of their “community” and not doing it would deprive the child of the right to be included in that community. If you take that as a right, you have competing rights here. I don’t take that as a right, but some parents do.

Seen on Twitter just now:

The Circ Decision @TheCircDecision 19 h

[with a logo saying PARENTS KNOW BEST]

Circumcision is a choice for parents of a baby boy to make. Read & make an informed decision http://babies411.com/babies411/articles/circumcision-whats-your-decision-xnew.html …#wiscfi#wis3

No. It isn’t. It isn’t “a choice for parents of a baby to make” whether or not to cut off a head or a nose or an arm, and the same applies to a bit of the penis. Parents don’t have carte blanche to mutilate their children.

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