After revisiting the nonsense of “femmes” and how much better they are than those horrible people called “women,” we need Meghan Murphy on our need to be braver.

We live in a time wherein basic feminist ideas have become unspeakable, while anti-feminist slurs and smears are widely accepted and even celebrated by those who claim to be social justice activists and progressives.

Regardless of the risks, I cannot, in good faith, support the neoliberal, individualistic notion of “gender identity”  — not as a feminist who understands how patriarchy came to be and continues to prevail or as a leftist who understands how systems of power work. I do not wish to be silent in the face of regressive and anti-feminist discourse, because I know that my silence does not help empower other women to speak out. I do not wish to abandon my sisters who have already suffered immensely for speaking out.

And another thing: it’s only getting worse.

As feminists, what we really are doing is working towards an end to gender — a thing that was invented and imposed in order to naturalize the sex class hierarchy that positions men as dominant and women as subordinate. One has to ask how progressive it is, from a feminist perspective, to accept the notion that gender is both real and innate — a thing that one can be born with, as this is precisely the tactic used historically by men to defend the idea that women should not be permitted to vote, work outside the home, or hold positions of power in society. Women were constructed as naturally “feminine,” which meant we were too emotional, irrational, and weak to engage in the public sphere as men did. Men, by contrast, were said to be more suited for public office and to hold positions of power as they were innately assertive, rational, unemotional, and tough.

Are we, as feminists (and as a society) really comfortable moving backwards in this way, by accepting gender roles (which exist only to naturalize and enforce sexism) as innate rather than socially constructed?

And then dressing them up as “femme” and pouring scorn on actual women for not being hip enough to “identify” as “femme” instead of just being a tedious boring afab woman.

It’s time to put our fear aside. Here is what I have learned about feminism (the real kind of feminism — not liberalism, not queer politics, not pro-capitalist rhetoric centered around personal feelings of “empowerment”): Regardless of what we do or say, as radical feminists, we are persecuted, smeared, and silenced. This happens because we stand up for women, hold men accountable, and criticize patriarchy unapologetically. We are called “SWERF,” “TERF,” “whorephobic,” “femmephobic,” “transphobic,” “anti-sex,” “moralistic prudes,” and so on, not because we are terrified of trans people, prostituted women, and sexuality, or because our politics are centered around “excluding” particular individuals (unless, of course, those individuals are anti-feminist — then yes, you will likely feel “excluded” by feminism), but because these terms and slurs effectively silence and exclude us. We are no-platformed and blackballed, discredited at any opportunity, to the point that others cannot associate with us, support us, or share any of our work (regardless of the content of said work), lest they too be tarred with the same brush.

Been there. Got the Tshirt.

You can call us whatever you like, because we know what you really mean: Feminist. Not the fun kind.

Anti-feminists are winning and will continue to win so long as we stay silent. They will continue to claim the identity of “feminist” while smearing and vilifying movement women. Leftist men will continue to proudly call us anti-feminist names and censor our work, comforted by the support and silence of these “queer activists,” “sex worker rights activists,” and liberal feminists — people who have shown themselves as traitors to women and whose politics consist of inventing new words to disguise male supremacy and violence against women. It’s up to us to speak out and to stand by our sisters, despite the repercussions.

Because by god nobody else will.

Like a leopard going back to a rotting carcass, I’m going back to that “Roundtable” on what we mean when we talk about femme, even though I said yesterday I couldn’t stand any more of it. Maybe if I just limit myself to the parts where the awesome femmes throw shit at women, I can get through it.

In my experience, many cis women of all ages feel that my identity as a non-binary femme somehow invalidates theirs. Lots of people like to consider themselves radical without actually being able to make any space for people coming from a different place. My experience of femininity is linked to empathy and understanding that to be feminine is to be less safe in this world, so I understand the need to have spaces that are exclusionary out of respect for our right to protect and value ourselves. But there is a large community of feminists who are misleading in terms of how inclusive they’re actually willing to be.

But being “inclusive” isn’t the goal, nor should it be. Black Lives Matter isn’t required to be “inclusive” of white people in the sense of including them as Black. Feminism shouldn’t be required to be “inclusive” of people who aren’t women. Feminism is about women. We’re allowed to say that.

On the idea that an older generation of people think only women should claim the word femme: I’m afraid I don’t even get that argument, possibly because I’m not super smart but also possibly because that argument is bananas? Cis men are described as “butch,” so does that invalidate an entire self-identified group within lesbian history? No? They get to keep that one? It’s almost like the femme identity… is invisible. Sorry. No, kidding, but I think femme has always been relevant. I don’t think we’re reinventing or reclaiming the word, I just think it’s not been seen.

Right. Nobody saw anything until last week. Feminists never had a clue about any of this until people born after 1999 explained it to them.

The word femme, for myself specifically, is a departure from traditional femininity. I see femme as the rebellious teenage daughter of femininity. Femme is the process of taking the feminine words that were placed in my body, words like “soft, weak, quiet” and transforming them into: “wild, loud, confident.”

No, that would be “feminism” actually.

Femme invisibility is still very real, and extremely difficult to navigate. And I do think that a lot of it has to do less so with any sort of purposeful femme erasure in queer communities (although that is extremely prevalent), and much more to do with the fact that it’s an identity being co-opted by folks who aren’t queer. I think a lot of our discussions around femme invisibility in queer spaces center around masculinity, and those are valid and important discussions, but I’d love to see the conversation change and try to look at the ways our identities have been taken by straight (white) women who want cool points.

Bingo! Women fuck up everything. Cunts.

And that’s the last one – the “Roundtable” wasn’t as long as I thought.

After reading this I have even less idea than I did before why Sincere Kirabo thought it was a good idea for him to say that Women in Secularism is about women and femmes. Femmes appear to despise women, and reject all identification with them, so why would Women in Secularism be about women and femmes? It’s like saying Black Lives Matter is about black people and racists. It’s about saying that and calling it inclusive.

It never stops amazing me how willing and eager people are to treat women as an evil oppressor class.

It’s Trump’s world, and we have to live in it.

A GOP candidate for Kentucky’s state house was caught posting racist images of the Obamas — and his defense was that “Facebook’s entertaining.”

Dan Johnson, who is also the bishop of the Heart of Fire Church in Louisville, KY, posted and shared at least two photos of the Obamas portrayed as apes. A sign in front of his church reads: “Jesus and this church are not politically correct.”

Right. It’s “politically correct” to refrain from publishing photoshops of people as chimpanzees.

Johnson went on to insist that the offensive posts are the norm for presidents throughout history and, therefore, not racist.

“I looked this up. There has been no president that hasn’t had that scrutiny. Not one. I think it would be racist not to do the same for President Obama as we’ve done for every other president,” he said.

Oh yes, it would definitely be racist not to publish photoshops of the Obamas as chimpanzees.

Trump world.

Huh. It turns out that Women in Secularism isn’t about women. It’s about “women and femmes.” I have no real idea what that’s supposed to mean, since it obviously doesn’t mean femme lesbians, because they are of course women so there’d be no need for an “and.”

At least, it’s about that according to Sincere Kirabo, who attended the one last weekend. It’s not about that according to CFI, which holds the conference, but hey what do they know.

This past weekend, my colleague Jessica Xiao and I had the honor of attending the Center For Inquiry’s Women In Secularism 4(WIS).

The honor? Attending isn’t an honor. That sounds like having the honor to ride the bus or see a movie. Buying a ticket to something doesn’t confer honor.

Anyway – on to the femmes.

This conference brought together a diverse lineup of speakers—including American Humanist Association President Rebecca Hale—to address both the progress and challenges uniquely related to the lives of women and femmes.

Women and femmes. Women and femmes, when it’s always been women until now. Why isn’t “women” good enough? Why does Sincere Kirabo – a man – feel the need to shove women aside so that they don’t hog their own movement? Why can’t it just be women?

Whether people wish to recognize it or not, events like this exist and are made necessary due to a continued lack of balanced representation within secular circles. Bias has a lot to do with it, of course. As writer Soraya Chemaly noted in her talk focused on the marginalization of women/femmes in society, sexism shapes human knowledge and behavior.

Did she? Did she say that? I don’t know, I wasn’t there and I saw only tweets and Paul Fidalgo’s blog post, but I doubt it. I read Soraya regularly and I don’t recall seeing her talk about “women/femmes” as if that were a thing. If she didn’t, I find it pretty obnoxious of Kirabo to put words in her mouth.

And more directly, I am beyond tired of seeing people hell bent on forcing women to be “inclusive” in the sense of ceasing to talk about women and instead talk about women-and. It’s just more All Lives Matter, but somehow when it’s women being made to do it, it becomes right-on and “progressive.”

I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.

A Mighty Girl:

“my fabulous mighty girl daughter wants to be a firefighter for halloween. because of this, we have had to endure the following from lovely, well-meaning people:

– oh, she wants to be a firefighter? does she have brothers? (no, shockingly, she has thoughts of her own! all by her girl self!)
– while holding ava: hi, where are your firefighter costumes? how old is he? she’s almost 3. what size is he? she’s a 3. does he need a hat? (aaaaarrrrgggh!)
– a firetruck! so cute! do you put your dolls in it? (do you ask boys this question?)
– she’s going to be a fireman? (if she can say ‘firefighter’ at TWO, i’m sure you can, too…)

dear well-meaning world. gender stereotypes suck. and we need feminism more than ever. thanks much for listening to my rant.

– mommy of a little girl who just wants to be whatever she wants to be.”

Kudos to Kim for supporting her Mighty Girl’s interests wherever they take her and thanks for sharing this fantastic picture!

If you’re looking for an empowering costume for your Mighty Girl, our Halloween Costume Guide features 400 options for all ages, infant through adult, on a variety of themes, including many occupational-themed costumes.

If your Mighty Girl likes to pretend to fight fires, you can also find many related toys, including the Fire Truck Pedal Car pictured here, in our “Pretend Play Occupations” section.

And, if you’d like to introduce more gender diversity into your children’s LEGO collection, the Community Minifigures Set includes 22 figures in a variety of community roles, including both male and female firefighters.

Here’s another atheist in Pakistan who could use help.

Aatif is an atheist living in Pakistan, where blasphemy laws carry the death penalty. It is common for street mobs to assault anyone suspected of being insufficiently Islamic. In the face of this reality, Aatif runs an atheist Facebook page. That is how I met him.

His conservative Muslim family has rejected him. He was forced to move away and then to go into hiding. His abusive father and older male relatives have tried to force him into an Islamic reprogramming institute, beating him when he resists.

Though he has a master’s degree in Computer Science, where he now lives he earns barely enough to rent a room and feed himself; he often cannot even afford over-the-counter medicine to treat his health problems.

The GoFundMe.

Not cool.

The headline: Female molester facing strict release conditions

The story:

A woman convicted of sexually assaulting children will have to reside in a halfway house after completing her sentence due to concerns she is a risk to reoffend.

Jeez, you think, women don’t usually sexually assault children.

According to documents from the Parole Board of Canada dated Sept. 1, Madilyn Harks, who was formerly known as Matthew Ralf Harks, will face a residency condition upon her statutory release.

Oh. So…Madilyn used to be “known as” Matthew.

She will also be required to follow a treatment plan, respect a curfew and follow psychological counselling.

She will be prohibited from having any contact with children under the age of 18 unless supervised by an adult who is aware of her criminal history, and must avoid locations where children may be expected to congregate.

Harks began serving a three-year sentence for sexual assault against a seven-year-old female in April 2007.

She was released in 2010 and began a 10-year long-term supervision order.

At the time of Harks’ offence in 2007, she was on probation following two convictions of sexual assault against two children aged four and five years old.

“You have also admitted to having approximately 60 victims and you estimate having committed 200 offences, with some of those offences being multiple offences against some of your victims,” the parole board stated.

The board noted that in April 2006, Harks was identified in a dangerous offender psychiatric assessment as having an “all encompassing preoccupation with interest in sexually abusing young girls.”

The documents indicate Harks could also be facing charges for three alleged offences that took place recently while she was in custody: assault, unlawful confinement and sexual assault.

Harks is also subject to conditions imposed by the court in March 2014 that prohibit her from attending facilities including daycare centres, school grounds or playgrounds.

She is also banned from using a computer system for the purpose of communicating with a person under the age of 14.

Harks has undergone gender reassignment, and legally changed her name sometime between April 2010 and August 2012.

Oops. Roy Moore has been suspended without pay and ordered to pay costs.

Saying that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore violated judicial ethics when he ordered judges not to respect the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling on same-sex marriage, Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary suspended Moore for the rest of his term in office.

The order also requires the head of Alabama’s highest court to pay the costs of the proceedings against him and stipulates that he will not be paid for the remainder of his six-year term.

Once his term is up his age will disqualify him from running again.

The judgment against Moore was unanimous. But the nine-member court also noted that the decision is based on a review of Moore’s behavior and decisions, not on the justices’ views of the Supreme Court’s June 2015 ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry — contrary to Alabama’s law, adopted in 2016, that had reserved marriage for heterosexual couples only.

Saying that “some members of this court did not personally agree with” the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling, the judges wrote, “This court simply does not have the authority to reexamine those issues.”

Because that’s what the “Supreme” in “Supreme Court” means – it’s at the top of the hierarchy, and lower courts don’t get to overturn its rulings.

For Moore, this is the second high-profile dispute that has cut short his term leading the Alabama Supreme Court. In 2003, he was removed from office after refusing a federal court’s order to remove a prominent display of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building. Alabama voters elected him to the office again in 2012.

Too bad, Alabama voters.

Remember that Ari Berman article in the Nation that I blogged about yesterday? About Wisconsin’s obstructionism in voter registration? Well no biggy, it merely prompted a judge to order an investigation, that’s all.

The state of Wisconsin must investigate a report that Division of Motor Vehicles employees gave false information to people who applied for IDs to vote, a federal judge ordered Friday.

Judge James Peterson’s order followed a report this week by The Nation that cast doubt on whether Gov. Scott Walker’s administration is following a judge’s instructions in a court challenge to the state’s voter ID law.

The Nation report featured recordings of exchanges with DMV employees that appear to thwart efforts by a homeless man to obtain an ID to vote in the November election.

Peterson, who is presiding over one of two pending legal challenges to Wisconsin’s voter ID law, ruled in July that the state must promptly provide voter ID credentials, valid in the November election, to people who request them — even if they lack some of the underlying documents needed to obtain an ID.

In his order Friday, Peterson said recent reports by The Nation and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel raise the question of whether the DMV is following his instructions.

“These reports, if true, demonstrate that the state is not in compliance with this court’s injunction order” from July, Peterson wrote.

“Respect cultural differences!” – Like the ones that throw people in jail for “insulting” the local religion or head of state? Let’s not respect those, shall we?

A teenage blogger has been handed a prison sentence after he was found guilty by a Singapore court of “wounding religious feelings”.

Amos Yee, 17, will spend six weeks in jail for deliberately posting videos and comments critical of Christianity and Islam.

Judge Ong Hian Sun told the court that Yee’s actions could “generate social unrest”.

Any actions could generate social unrest. It’s neither possible nor desirable to write the laws in such a way that they rule out all possibility of social unrest. Christianity and Islam themselves could cause social unrest, and they often do.

Also, it seems very far-fetched that one teenager’s videos and comments could cause social unrest. On the one hand the principle is wrong and on the other hand the factual claim seems extremely weak.

Singapore has thrown Yee into jail before for the same footling reason.

Yee was jailed for four weeks in 2015 for criticising Christians, and was accused of insulting Lee Kuan Yew after he posted a video online in which he likened the late Singaporean leader to Jesus Christ.

Such actions are considered a serious crime in a country which takes a zero-tolerance approach towards insults of race and religion.

In other words a country with no respect for freedom of thought and expression.

You know who’s bad for the economy? Billionaires.

Perhaps no group bears more responsibility for the plight of the middle class than billionaires. An IMF study confirms that increasing inequality, especially at the very top of the wealth and income scale, is weakening economic growth.

I wish everybody would stop saying “middle class” when they mean at least middle-and-working, and often just working. I wish “working class” weren’t such a taboo category in mainstream US political discourse. It’s not as if the middle class is in a plight while the working class is just doing fabulously.

Anyway.

“In contrast,” the report found, “an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher … growth.” And higher growth means more jobs.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, a world-leading expert on inequality, writes, “Our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth.” But instead of ensuring that lower-income and middle-class people share in economic growth, the opposite has been happening: Even after last week’s improved economic news, most of the economy’s gains are still going to the wealthiest Americans.

There we go – lower-income along with middle. That’s better.

It’s the old Henry Ford eureka moment – if you pay the workers a decent wage, they can buy your product! Awesome! But of course billionaires want everyone else to pay decent wages to support consumer spending, while they pay shit wages to support their houses and yachts and Mercedes SUVs.

The 0.01 percent — the 16,000 wealthiest Americans — have as much wealth as 80 percent of the nation’s population, some 256,000,000 people. Their shared wealth comes to $9 trillion. And at the end of 2015, a mere 536 people in the United States had a collective net worth of $2.6 trillion.

Why?

We now know what we have long suspected, thanks to political science research published at Princeton University: Political decision-making in this country is driven by corporate and ultra-wealthy elites, not by the democratic majority. This oligarchical usurpation of influence has led office holders at all levels to implement policies that kill jobs, depress wages and increase inequality.

These policies include government spending cuts, tax giveaways to the wealthy and corporations, bad trade deals (which Trump says he opposes; the team suggests otherwise) and economically destructive deregulation.

But it’s all cool because a tiny number of people make out like bandits.

Know what also reduces inequality, helps create jobs and raises working people’s wages?Unions. It isn’t immigrants who are weakening the collective bargaining power of the American worker. Billionaires like the Koch Brothers are financing anti-union court cases and flooding our political system with cash to eliminate one of the 99 percent’s most effective tools for economic self-improvement.

Right-wing corporations and billionaires are conducting class warfare on the 99 percent and environmental warfare on the planet. That’s why we need to enact a new, broad agenda: higher taxes on the wealthy, an increased minimum wage, strengthened workers’ rights, sweeping environmental measures and greater government spending for critical needs like infrastructure health and education.

That would be good. I don’t see it happening any time soon, but it would be good.

Tom Flynn writes: This Cartoon Cost a Jordanian Blogger His Life.

On September 25, a gunman shot dead Nahed Hattar, fifty-six, a prominent Christian blogger, as he was about to enter a courthouse in Amman, Jordan, to face charges that a cartoon he had shared online was offensive to Islam. Hattar had been arrested on August 13 after he shared the cartoon on Facebook. The cartoon—ostensibly the work of an anonymous cartoonist known only as “M80”—showed a man in a tent lying in bed between two women while smoking a cigarette, asking Allah to get him some refreshments. Jordanian authorities deemed the cartoon offensive to Islam. Though Hattar apologized and removed the cartoon, by the time of his court date he had received some two hundred death threats.

…

Western media gave modest coverage to Hattar’s death and funeral. But they followed a familiar pattern in refusing to republish the cartoon at the center of the story. Users of social media could locate the image with varying degrees of difficulty, but consumers of mainstream print and broadcast media were, once again, limited in their ability to form a full understanding of the story because the image at its heart had been suppressed.

That’s why I posted it here, of course. But here is here, it’s not the mainstream print and broadcast media.

For that reason, Free Inquiry has done what it did twice before when cartoons with Islamic themes led to violence and death: publish the offending image(s) so that readers and website visitors can see for themselves. This commentary will also appear in Free Inquiry’s December 2016/January 2017 issue, published on or about November 7, 2016.

I have a column in that issue. I’m very happy it’s in that issue, along with the Offending Image. I’m very glad to keep it company.

Also in terrifying news, not related to Trump for a change – India and Pakistan are playing chicken. That’s bad because of the nukes.

Elite troops have launched “surgical strikes” on Pakistan-based terrorists in the contested territory of Kashmir, India said on Thursday, in a major escalation of a deepening crisis between the nuclear-armed rivals.

The Indian army said troops conducted multiple nighttime raids across the line of control (LOC), the ceasefire line agreed in 1972 that divides the Himalayan region, to attack militants preparing to cross into Indian-controlled territory.

That’s bad.

Zahid Hussain, a Pakistani security analyst, described Thursday’s attacks as a “very serious escalation”. “We have seen firing on the line of control before, but this is much more dangerous in the context of the rising tension between the two sides,” he said. “I am not saying that this could lead to a full state confrontation, but this is how things start to get out of control.”

India last announced it had conducted cross-border strikes in June 2015, when it targeted rebel camps in Myanmar in response to an ambush that killed at least 18 Indian soldiers in the north-eastern state of Manipur. Delhi described the raid as unprecedented at the time and signalled similar tactics could be used along its western border with Pakistan.

On Wednesday, in a sign of deepening Pakistani isolation in the region, India and three other countries announced they would boycot the forthcoming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit, which was scheduled to be held in Islamabad in November.

The Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has also raised the possibility of Delhi altering or walking away from a major river-sharing agreement that permits Pakistan to draw water from three rivers that flow downstream from India, providing water to 65% of the country’s landmass.

It doesn’t help that religious zealots are in power in both countries.