The headstrong survivors of the Magdalene laundries are threatening to go on a hunger strike if the Irish government doesn’t set up a redress board.

Steven O’Riordain, a representative of the Magdalene Survivors Together, has warned  some women will go on hunger strike if the government does not meet their demands.

“There is a possibility that this will happen. Some of the women have said if they do not get proper redress from a state which was responsible for being abandoned in these institutions. Many of them say they are at that age now where they have nothing to lose if the government fails to set up a scheme that will give some compensation for what happened to them,” he said.

In 2011, the UN Committee Against Torture called on the Irish government to set up an inquiry into the treatment of thousands of women and girls.

It has been estimated that up to 30,000 women passed through the laundries and had to wash clothing and bedding for bodies ranging from the Irish army to hotel groups in the republic without any pay.

…

Three orders of Catholic nuns – the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, the Religious Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd – ran the Magdalene laundries.

Nuns ran these slave camps for “headstrong” girls. How charitable, how merciful, how like a good shepherd. Thank you very much.

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

John Walsh on the Irish government and the Magdalene laundries.

These were places where “loose girls” or “fallen women” could be packed off to, girls impregnated by their fathers or uncles or the local priest, girls who were considered too flightly or flirtatious or headstrong to be biddable members of society. They could be put to work all day, washing sheets for the military, fed on bread and dripping, forbidden to speak and offered no way out, or any explanation about why they were imprisoned. Half of them were teenagers, doomed to spend their best years in a workhouse, being humiliated by nuns, told they’d offended God and that their parents didn’t want them.

Prisons. Slavery. For girls who were considered too something or other.

Ireland has had a chronic problem of keeping church and state matters apart. Government and church traditionally, if tacitly, support each other – which meant, in the past, the authorities turning a blind eye to abusive priests. The girls sent to the Magdalene Laundries had committed no crime – they were accused of committing sin – but they could be taken by Gardai and locked away in prisons funded by the state.

No wonder the government didn’t want the ghastly business coming into the light. It’s vital Mr Kenny tries to frame some response to the victims’ families beyond feeling sorry for what the victims endured. And the Magdalene report confirms the importance of keeping church and state matters separate – even if, as we’ve seen in this week’s historic Commons vote, the institutions are heading for a fight.

More important to frame a response to the victims than to their families – they’re not all dead, after all.

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

A Catholic bishop says Obama is a negation of Lincoln because Lincoln was all “freedom” and Obama hates freedom.

He has chosen to use the bully pulpit not to call upon us all to be nobler and to embrace each child, regardless of origins and circumstances; rather, he has been a proponent of an expediency that is shameful and criminal in the eyes of Almighty God.

The bishop knows that about the eyes of almighty god how? No how. He doesn’t. He just says he does. He may think he does, or he may pretend he does, but either way, he’s wrong.

In my view, those who voted for President Obama bear the responsibility for a step deeper in the culture of death. Under the cover of women’s issues, we now see an assault on religious freedom and personal conscience.

Well that’s an easy dismissal, and a slyly dishonest accusation. “Under the cover of women’s issues”? That’s just a pretext, and really it’s for the sheer fun of ending pregnancies?

No. It’s about women’s need to be able to decide how their lives will go in matters that are physically subject to control. That ain’t no pretext.

I would have hoped that the first African-American president of the United States would have stood on the side of freedom for all. Instead, he stands on the side of political expediency.

“Freedom for all”? By which the bishop means “including freedom for bishops to take away women’s freedom to control their own reproduction.”

That’s not a reasonable understanding of the word, Biship DiMarzio.

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

Mother Jones‏@MotherJones

Boy Scouts say they need more time to reconsider ban on gay scouts. Wait, isn’t their motto “be prepared”? http://bit.ly/WubiMp

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

A woman in Somalia said she was raped by some security forces, so she has been given a year in jail “for making a false accusation and insulting a government body.”

Judge Ahmed Aden Farah said the woman would not go to jail immediately as she is caring for a young child.

How very generous.

The woman had reported the alleged rape at a police station in Hodan, a district in Mogadishu where many displaced people live.

“We sentence her for offending state institutions by claiming she was raped,” the AFP news agency quotes the judge as saying.

“She will spend one year in prison after finishing the breastfeeding of her baby.”

State institutions in Somalia sure are easily offended, aren’t they.

Last month, the UN special representative on sexual violence, Zainab Hawa Bangura, said the Somali government’s approach to the case did not “serve the interest of justice; it only serves to criminalise victims and undermine freedom
of expression for the press”.

Well the woman can consider herself lucky she wasn’t stoned to death. Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was.

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

As you may have seen via this comment on A fabulous Manly Meal, Harriet Hall has a long post on Gender Differences and Why They Don’t Matter So Much. The key point is -

Average Differences Don’t Tell Us Anything About Individuals

The point that often gets overlooked in these discussions is that gender differences are averages for the group. They are irrelevant to a discussion of what jobs any individual woman is qualified for or interested in. And it doesn’t mean we can predict what proportion of men or women will gravitate to any given area of human endeavor.

Precisely. I keep saying exactly that.

But even more interesting than the post, perhaps, is a comment by David Gorski (Orac, you know). It’s the 8th one down – there are no permalinks for comments.

To be fair, in another article Shermer did rather foolishly inflame the issue by calling the issue a “witch hunt” and including a mind-numbingly silly and gratuitous Nazi reference:

http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=fi&page=shermer_33_2

It was not one of Shermer’s finer moments, I’m afraid.

Also, to be fair, there is a misogyny problem in the skeptical movement. It’s hard not to come to that conclusion if you spend some time perusing the Slymepit:

http://slymepit.com

We’ve given Gorski a hard time here a few times lately (on and off) for not calling out Shermer’s Nazi reference when he did call out a considerably milder one of mine. (Milder in the sense that I didn’t compare Grothe to Nazis, I compared blaming women for complaining to blaming Jews for complaining in 1936 [i.e. Nazi but pre-Final Solution] Germany.) So there we go: now he has. Fair’s fair.

But what he says about the misogyny problem and the slyme pit is even more striking. Exactly so, and thank you for saying so. Seriously.

Stephanie recorded a lot of examples the other day, ending with one for me.

 ”I’M A BIT OF A CUNT WHEN I’M ON ACID!!!”

Geddit? I’m ancient and disgusting, I’m a cunt, and I deserve some acid. Funny stuff.

Yes, we have a misogyny problem in the skeptical movement. If the sane part of the skeptical movement explicitly distances itself from that kind of shit the way David Gorski did, then the problem will become much smaller.

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

A Catholic men’s organization invited Dan Barker to debate a Catholic theologian on the topic “Do The Gospels Give Us The Real Jesus?” and he was publicizing it along with them. But then he spotted something he hadn’t noticed before.

On January 29, as I was updating FFRF’s Events page, I went to the AOTM website for details. (http://www.aotmclub.com) I spotted this note at the bottom of the page announcing my event:

“$12 at the door (The total cost for the night) You will get great appetizers and beverages, hear one of the best inspirational stories you have ever heard about manhood and faith. Do all this while you listen and enjoy a fabulous “Manly Meal”. Men of all creeds and ages are welcome to join in the good humor, food, and fellowship. Priests and seminarians get in free but will not be shown partiality in debate. Fathers are encouraged to bring their minor sons.”

I almost glanced over that paragraph, but the last line caught my eye: “Fathers are encouraged to bring their minor sons.” What?! What about daughters? What about mothers? It was only then that I realized this event was not just organized by men, but it was for men. For men exclusively. (What exactly is a “Manly Meal”?)

So he asked the organizer about it, and the organizer confirmed that it’s men only, and Dan said can you change it for this event and the organizer said no.

So he decided not to do it.

There was no good reason to exclude women from that event. Although I am sure the AOTM club, a private religious organization that meets in a Catholic church, would deny they are causing any harm, it seems clear to me that they are perpetuating the same Old Boys Club mentality espoused by the Pope, their church leaders, and their bible, which demeans women and tells them to “keep silent” in the church that is run by “men only.” I can’t change their minds, but I am sure not going to play along with such bronze-age discrimination.

All that and the Old Boys Club also makes rules that women are (religiously speaking) required to obey, despite having no role in making them.

Good job Dan Barker.

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

Susan wrote this as a comment on The romance novelist and the guy with a truck from last month.

This post is especially  relevant to me.  I am a feminist, and here is the great irony in my own life … I have been writing romance novels for 20 years. And I have resisted  the stereotypes almost every step of the way. When I began,  when “strong” female characters were becoming as common as “damsel” characters, I began with women who dressed in jeans and boots and such.  I think I must have had “heroines” who wore skirts and heels, but of course I was basically writing some avatar of myself in both male and female characters, and I stopped wearing skirts and high heels after college (and only wore them before them to special events such as weddings, or to job interviews).

After the first few novels, I increasingly tried to write women who were fully equal to the men, but even in the 90’s there was (and still remains) the expectation that the man will ultimately be the protector/dominant. That expectation became increasingly frustrating to me, to the point that that (along with the expectation of frequent sex scenes) led me to hate the genre. ( I was constantly thinking …. oh, is the heroine “too” strong? Is the hero not strong enough for the readers and my editor?)

I  continued to write in it because I am good at love stories and because it’s my sole way of earning money, but trying to buck the system ultimately led to my being let go and losing 3/4 of my income.  (I might add that my disinterest in loves scenes is not prudishness; I actually enjoy writing “bondage” type sex–which is only appropriate in some novel settings–but I find average sex scenes rather boring compared to other aspects of building a relationship.  And I’ve literally written hundreds of “love” scenes, as they have always been euphemistically called in the genre … though perhaps not now that erotica is so hot.)

Now I have realized that writing romance has almost destroyed my writing soul, and though we will be very tight financially, I will not be writing another romance novel. Instead, I am writing fantasy—my first urban fantasy (based on Norse mythology, set in San Francisco) will be out in July from TOR books.  I loved being able to make the woman protagonist earthy and “masculine” in the way I am, not interested in conforming to gender expectations, and as much or more likely to rescue the male protagonist/love interest as the other way around.  I loved writing my version of mythical Loki as a pansexual trickster who prefers to embody himself as a man but can as easily appear as a woman, who loves sex, and who messes with everyone sexually and emotionally while not being quite the villain he seems to be.

I guess what I’m getting at is that I have had constant conflicts in my mind and heart over writing in a genre I know most fellow feminists probably despise, trying to hit the right buttons for the readers, and keeping my writer’s soul from withering.  It’s been a balancing act that ultimately, after 20 years, hasn’t worked.  And yet though I’m not ashamed of most of what I’ve written, I’ve felt ashamed among feminists to admit what I’ve done for a living.

This is all a rambling way of saying (as I finish what I hope will be my last romance novel forever) that I’m sick of boxes, and of feeling ashamed, and yet not fulfilling/able to fulfill genre expectations well enough to continue a career in the field. I have felt bizarrely alone in this way since I began my career and knew I didn’t fit in with most of the other romance novelists I know. Your post , though not specifically on the subject of romance novels in general, just got me going on things I’ve been thinking about for a long, long time.

It has been a very strange, sometimes rewarding, often painful and confusing way of making a living.  I hope I can make enough money writing fantasy so that I can continue, since that is what my heart truly loves, and where I don’t have to worry if the main female character is often “stronger” in some way or other than the male. And that the men don’t have to be stereotypically “masculine” or the women “feminine” and the characters can be who they are. (And even so, I know I still fall into gender traps without realizing it. All I can do is try!)

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

So there’s this blob on a wall where some water damage happened, and damned if that blob isn’t the spitting image of The Virgin Mary™ – or rather of the outline of one of those creepy statuette things that are supposed to represent The Virgin Mary™.

It’s cool, too, because on the wall to her right hangs her son on his execution-by-torture device. Idn that pretty? They’re together again, or at least little statue-type deals that are supposed to represent them are together.

(Have you ever noticed that it’s oddly hard not to see dolls and stuffed animals and the like as just a little bit sentient? Because I have. I guess that’s just because the recognition of what is sentient is so deeply rooted and automatic that it’s hard to over-ride it even though you know the fuzzy puppy doll is no more sentient than a brick.)

(This is Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2. There are some System 1 things you can’t not do – one nice example he gives is “think of Paris when you hear the capital of France.”)

(This could explain a lot about the fuss over abortion.)

Veronica points out

It will take more than a miracle for the Catholic Church to placate the thousands of parishioners who are outraged by church closures and who are disgusted with the behaviour of the clergy in the diocese.

Someone should design a really cuddly priest doll.

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

Yo! Breaking news – Malala has indeed been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Yessssssss.

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

Michael Nugent points out a classic example of the special rules by which what would be an utterly normal tone of voice and wording and manner in a man get called “shrill” when it’s a woman speaking. The woman is Senator Ivana Bacik, asking questions at the parliamentary hearings on abortion law. She speaks firmly, and with an edge, but not the least bit “shrilly.” But hey, she’s a woman, and she’s talking firmly and with an edge to men. Must be shrill. Stands to reason.

In an opinion piece titled ‘We can’t be cowed by shrill voices’, editor Michael Kelly wrote:

“Ms Bacik clearly disagrees with the Catholic view that all human life is sacred and that in pregnancy mothers and their unborn child should have an equal right to life. Can’t she disagree politely, however?

A gentleman is one, the old saying goes, who can disagree without being disagreeable. The same surely applies for ladies.

Shrill caricatures have no place in mature debates. It is becoming increasingly difficult in modern Ireland to have a calm and rational debate about things people disagree about.”

He makes her a child, too, and one who has no place in parliamentary hearings (despite the fact that she’s a Senator).

Well maybe Michael Kelly divides humanity into two types: potential priests, and shrill babies.

Senator Bacik speaks at 2:36:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLrKNmocTNQ

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

Here are Michael Nugent and Ivana Bacik responding to abortion law questions at an Irish parliamentary hearing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLrKNmocTNQ

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

Aw, another innocent marketing decision goes awry.

Sandwich shop chain Pret A Manger has withdrawn a new “Virgin Mary” brand of crisps following religious complaints.

The firm, with about 350 shops in the UK, launched the spicy tomato crisps – based on the non-alcoholic version of a Bloody Mary cocktail – last week.

This prompted complaints, including from Catholic groups, that it was an offensive reference to Jesus’s mother.

A company spokesman said it had noted complainants’ “strength of feeling” and withdrawn the product to avoid offence.

Now look here, Jesus’s mother isn’t the only virgin Mary in the world. How do the complainers know that Pret A Manger didn’t mean their cousin Mary age six? How do they know Pret A Manger meant just that one virgin Mary and not any other virgin Mary?

(I bet I know how Pret A Manger is pronounced, and I bet it’s not prounounced as if it were, you know, French. I bet it’s pronounced PRETTaMONjay. It’s certainly not spelled as if it were French.)

The Reverend Nick Donnelly, deacon of the Diocese of Lancaster and author of Protect the Pope website, was among those who complained to Pret A Manger.

Following the decision to withdraw the crisps, he wrote on the Protect the Pope site: “Clive Schlee and Pret A Manger deserve our unreserved thanks for listening to our concerns as Catholics and for acting so quickly to remove the brand of crisps.

“It seems fitting that Pret A Manger are planning to give any unsold crisps to the homeless.”

He added: “One of the things we need to go away and think about is what this incident tells us about how we defend our faith in the future.

“We’ve been passive for too long in the face of mockery of our faith and discrimination against us as Catholics.”

Yeah? How noisy have you been about child-raping priests? Ireland’s industrial schools? Lies about condoms?

H/t Roger.

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