Year: 2010

So. There was this widow in Afghanistan; she was 35, and pregnant. So, the Taliban decided the thing to do with her was first to imprison her for three days, then to whip her in public: to whip her two hundred times, in public, being pregnant and all, and a widow. And then to shoot her in the head. And then to dump her body somewhere.

Why? Well the Taliban said she’d committed adultery. The thing to do with a woman who has committed adultery is to whip her two hundred times in public, and then shoot her in the head.

The man, not so much. The man wasn’t punished. The man didn’t get so much as a tap on the hand with a pencil in private. Nothing bad happened to the man at all, while the woman was imprisoned for three days then whipped two hundred times in public and then shot in the head.

Why? Well, clearly, because men are the right kind of people, and women are the wrong kind. Clearly because men are of value and women are so much garbage. Clearly because women are so foul and disgusting and horrible that it is simply not possible to punish them harshly enough. Killing them isn’t enough – you have to flay them alive first in front of an audience, and even that isn’t really enough, but the arms get tired.

Bibi Sanubar was a widow, so she wasn’t even being unkind to her husband by having sex with a different man. It’s just that she had sex without the Taliban’s permission, and that she was a woman at the time.

Sarah McKenzie points out that religion and atheism both need smart women.

Part of the problem, I think, stems from the brand of atheism that is dominant today. Many people, especially women, might find it intimidating or unappealing…Atheists must be prepared to actively defend their non-belief, a process that by definition will offend many believers.

While there is most definitely a place for this so-called “militant” atheism, it is little wonder that some women might find it off-putting. After all, girls are taught to be sensitive and emotional, to not cause trouble or be particularly forthright with their opinions.

Some girls are. I can’t say that I remember being taught that, and if anybody really did attempt to teach me that, it obviously didn’t work. If anything it’s the other way around – I’m a woman, and women are seen as weak and placating and ingratiating, so I owe it to the gender to be abrasive and obstinate and contentious. That’s not it, of course…it’s not a matter of owing anything, it’s a matter of a visceral loathing of that image, and of wanting no part of it. I refuse to be weak and placating and ingratiating. So I get called a lot of hard names by a lot of threatened men, but I also have a good time. And maybe, who knows, I’m clearing a little ground for other women.

McKenzie seems to think so, much to my surprise. Kiran Mehdee pointed out this article to me, saying it mentioned me. I turned an unbecoming shade of puce when I found it was true.

All of this is not to say that there are no vocal or intelligent women out there talking about the role of religion, sharing stories about their own loss of faith and generally waving the atheist flag. However, we rarely hear the names of Dutch activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali or author Ophelia Benson mentioned alongside Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens.

There’s a treat! Putting me in that company. Excuse the narcissism, but…well you see I’m a shy blushing violet really, despite all the above, so I don’t expect this kind of thing, so when it comes along I have to boast about it as loudly as possible. Right? Right.

Oh, sad – Gillian McKeith is in trouble for saying what her spa can do. The Advertising Authority thinks she might not quite be on firm ground here.

Scottish nutritionist Gillian McKeith is to be reported to the advertising authorities over claims that visitors to her new age health resort can be healed by mystic powers.

The Perth-born health guru has set up a Wellness Retreat in rural Spain, which boasts that its “amazing energy vortex” can help to heal and rejuvenate visitors as well as assist them in losing weight.

Yes – so? Maybe it can. Spain is a mystical kind of place, especially rural Spain, so maybe its energy vortices can do just that.

Promotional material for the venture, on McKeith’s official website, states: “I want you to be able to literally detox from the world in a most glorious location with unsurpassed nurturing mountains, swooning eagles, a magnificent lake, big blue skies and an amazing energy vortex for rejuvenation, weight loss and vitality.

“Feel the vibration of the energy vortex of this spectacular location, and be healed by it! It is a moment that will stay with you forever.”

Swooning eagles! Okay I take it back – swooning eagles are dangerous. Thousands of people die of broken necks every year because eagles swoon on them from a great height. If they’re a feature of the magic energy vortex spa, then the detox comes at too high a price.

Jay Rosen on “the church of the savvy” is great; thanks to Physicalist in comments for pointing him out.

Though they see themselves as the opposite of ideological, the people in the national press actually share an ideology: the religion of savviness.  Since it differs from both liberal ideology and conservative ideology and from political thought itself, savviness often eludes description, or even recognition as a set of beliefs.

Oh is that what it’s called – the way they’re always talking about the process at the expense of the policy. “How will this affect the November elections?” is always the point, after a perfunctory and unenlightening glance at the substance. So that’s savviness.

The savvy do know how things work inside the game of politics, and it is this knowledge they try to wield in argument…. instead of argument. In this sense savviness as the church practices it is the exemption from the political that believers think will come to them because they are journalists striving only to report on politics or conduct analysis, not to “win” within the contest as it stands.

And that’s what makes them so boring and depressing – they report as if the process were an end in itself as opposed to…the process. They report as if winning were the only aim and as if all of us should be as enthralled by the contest as they are, when in fact most of us don’t give a flying fuck about the process, we want to know how they expect us to cough up thousands of dollars for health insurance every month.

Prohibited from joining in political struggles, dedicated to observing what is, regardless of whether it ought to be, the savvy believe that these disciplines afford them a special view of the arena, cured of excess sentiment, useless passon, ideological certitude and other defects of vision that players in the system routinely exhibit…[T]he savvy don’t say: I have a better argument than you… They say: I am closer to reality than you. And more mature.”

And that explains why they think they get to lecture people who are much older and wiser and cleverer than they are; it’s because they’re savvy. Yes that does explain a lot.