PZ also did a post about Dawkins’s Outraged of Sevenoaks to the Times, I saw after I’d done mine. On it anteprepro wrote an extended comment which everyone should read.

A teaser:

Gather ’round, gather ’round! Won’t you join me? Come along, boys and girls, for another episode of Fun Times on Richard Dawkins’ Twitter Page!

Chapter One: A Tweeter Treatise on Witch Huntery, Tone For Thee but Not for Me, and Nobel Prize Granted Immunities, with guest star Gibbertarian Website Citation!

King Lord Dawkins, Noble Holy and Pure Knight Emperor of Logic-hood, doth proclaim:

“A moment to savour”? Really? Please, Guardian, could we just lighten up on the witch-hunts? #ReinstateTimHunt. http://reason.com/archives/2015/06/13/the-illiberal-persecution-of-tim-hunt …

And one his loyal subjects did

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Katie Mack tweeted:

Katie Mack ‏@AstroKatie 4 hours ago
It’s amazing how much paranoid hyperbole the act of speaking out against sexism can elicit. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/19/tim-hunt-the-victim-of-self-righteous-feeding-frenzy-says-richard-dawkins …

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Back to BuzzFeed’s reporting on the victims of the terrorist attack at Emanuel AME church in Charleston.

More on Cynthia Hurd, the librarian.

[Her brother Malcolm] Graham, a former state senator, told the Charlotte Observer that his sister would have turned 55 on Sunday.

He said it was “typical” of her to be at the church on Sunday. He also fondly described her as a “nerd” who got a masters in library science from the University of South Carolina.

Hurd lived with her husband Steve in the east side of Charleston, the Charlotte Observer reported.

Graham, who last saw his sister in May when she attended his daughter’s graduation, said she always acted like his mother. “She was the

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AMM’s very powerful follow-up comment:

Rob @14

@9: It’s like when my father convinced me (for an afternoon) that I could sell stuff door-to-door. I went out and canvased the neighborhood. And I realized: it’s just not me. I am not, cut out to be a salesman

@10: AMM, I love that analogy.
I don’t. Facile as it may seem this is because being a salesperson (in the widest sense) is a learnt skill, not a state of being. People we call naturals at sales simply have personalities that better enable them to quickly get over the hump of sucking at it and finding it hard. They probably learn how as kids. It’s closely linked to performing (acting). For

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Next, a comment by besomyka.

We seem to conflate sex and gender in these discussions even though we know better. When we say I feel or don’t feel like a woman, for example. Do you mean woman in the social constructed sense, the stochastic physical sense? What?

When I say I’m a woman, I happen to mean both. I think that if you considered me a woman, that your mental shortcuts about what that meant would be more true about me than the other option. Is it perfect? No, of course not. I’m a person, not an abstract. But it IS more accurate.

I also mean it physically. I am quite sure that if we destroyed the concept of gender … Read the rest

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Now I’ve caught up somewhat after the conference, so I can do what several people requested and make guest posts of some of the comments from the Discomfort with the more social aspects of gender discussion last week.

I’ll start with one by AMM:

There’s something that a lot of trans people report and I’m becoming aware of in myself that doesn’t get mentioned in feminist discussions of gender.

It’s that feeling that at some fundamental level, you just don’t belong with the people you share a birth gender with, and in many cases you don’t feel right in your body. That something just doesn’t fit, no matter how perfectly you may seem to fit. And when you transition, … Read the rest

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Update: this could be faked; see karmacat’s comment.

The butterfly on Taslima is no fake though. I was there, and they really were landing on people.

Another item from the Annals of Bigotry – the kind of bigotry that leads, at the extremes, to murders like the ones at the Charleston AME church, and the ones at Charlie Hebdo, and the ones in Bangladesh.

Eleanor Justice‎—>George Takei

My friend found this note taped to her door after hanging some colorful jar lights in her yard with her daughters. She’s responding to this nonsense with whimsy and has started a campaign to paint her whole house in rainbows — is there any chance you might share her info? http://www.gofundme.com/x6dkw9h

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The New York Times is doing live coverage.

What We Know

• A gunman identified by city and federal law enforcement officials as Dylann Storm Roof, 21, opened fire at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the nation’s oldest black churches, on Wednesday evening, killing nine.
• The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor and a state senator, was killed, according to the minority leader of the State House of Representatives.
• The police said the other victims were six women and two men.
• The Charleston police chief, Greg Mullen, called the attack a hate crime.

And then – a completely nauseating eyewitness account:

Sylvia Johnson, one of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney’s cousins, said in an interview with NBC that

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