And now for something completely different – the anti-Michelle Duggar – Farzana Yasmin in Bangladesh.

A top human rights group in Bangladesh has praised a bride who disowned her husband within minutes of their wedding because he demanded a dowry.

Sultana Kamal of the Ask rights group said that Farzana Yasmin had taken a “principled and brave stand against the gross injustice of dowry payments”.

…

“Already she is facing recriminations with several parties trying to defame her and portray her as a loose woman. In fact she is a heroine of Bangladesh.”

Ms Yasmin’s decision to divorce her husband within minutes of their wedding in the conservative southern district of Barguna has sent shockwaves through the country, with

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See what it’s like to grow up as a Quiverfull child.

I’m the oldest of 12. I was 13 when my baby sister Tess slept in my room. I was responsible for changing and feeding her in the middle of the night (she was 6 months plus…I don’t remember exactly). That was pretty much the beginning. (To be fair, she was one of two babies who was passed off so young, but still.)

My second sister (seven years younger than me) is mother to our second-youngest sister, Abby. I don’t say second mother. I say mother. After a high-risk pregnancy, mom had an emergency C-section, and Abby became Beth’s buddy. She couldn’t nurse, so she was purely bottle-fed. Beth

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So I watched the Duggars for half an hour or so last night. I hadn’t seen them before apart from a few minutes once, before I knew they were Quiverfull. The whole thing is, not surprisingly, blood-curdling. Especially Jim Bob. God he’s awful – genial and ignorant and intrusive. They all went to Edinburgh (apparently because Jim-Bob is under the delusion that “King James” translated the bible), their first time ever out of the country, and perhaps even Arkansas – and on their very first afternoon there, Jim Bob got in a friendly chat with a street performer and damn if he didn’t come right out and say “what’s your faith background?” No really, he did – 90 seconds into … Read the rest

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And speaking of Facebook, it didn’t cover itself with glory in the matter of Charlie Hebdo, either. Charlie H says Facebook prevented CH from moderating its own Facebook page.

Charlie Hebdo’sFacebook page has been swamped with 13,000 messages, many of them threats and insults, since the publication of this week’s issue retitled Charia Hebdo and featuring a cartoon of Mohammed on its front cover.

But its moderator cannot remove them, the blog says, “under the pretext – surprise! surprise! – that Charlie Hebdo is not a ‘real’ person” and because it breaches a ban on “publications featuring nudity or other sexually suggestive content”, says the satirical paper’s blog, launched on Thursday to show that it is

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Someone who blogs at the CHE under the title “Female Science Professor” ruminates on how to respond to sexist comments.

The incidents themselves are not what generates the debate on my blog. Instead, the sometimes-heated discussion focuses on how I have chosen to respond to such slights: that is, my tendency to react in a calm, polite way, perhaps with a bit of humor or gentle sarcasm. Except in extreme cases, I prefer not to respond to insulting remarks with anger, and I try to move on with the research, teaching, or service task at hand.

No wonder there’s debate.

Granted, it’s sensible to respond calmly and politely, in a professional setting. You don’t want to turn purple in … Read the rest

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

Update: Facebook caved, fixed it. Let the experts do the magic realism, please.

Facebook decides to try its hand at magic realism. If cool people like Salman Rushdie can play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, why shouldn’t Facebook do likewise? And how better to do that than by playing silly buggers with the identity of Salman Rushdie himself?

So what Facebook does is, it de-activates Salman Rushdie’s Facebook account on the grounds that it (Facebook) thinks it’s an impostor. That’s a very silly claim, because if Facebook had taken the trouble to read a few posts and comments it would have seen that it wasn’t. But then it wouldn’t have been able to play around … Read the rest

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

Current glitch is that comments are coming in but they’re not visible (except to me), and that the two “wait patiently” posts I did today are gone. The comments are excellent, especially one from a student at Penn State – good luck with Westboro! – and they will show up eventually, so keep commenting.… Read the rest

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