One of the inescapable tropes about feminism is that there are two kinds of feminism, the good kind and the bad kind. You know how that goes. There’s the good sensible who-could-possibly-disagree kind that’s about equal pay and maybe more daycare, and there’s the bad crazy who-could-possibly-agree kind that’s about how people actually think and talk about women. This binary gets different names depending on who’s talking. One popular pair of labels is equality feminism v gender feminism. A new one I hadn’t seen before is equal rights feminism v protectionist feminism.

Protectionist. Hmm. That’s interesting. It’s interesting because it’s so insulting – as if not wanting to be treated like shit is somehow precious and spoiled and princessy.

Anyway, … Read the rest

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It’s funny how there’s Sheryl Sandberg, and there’s also Facebook. Sandberg is the COO of Facebook, and she’s a critic of sexist stereotypes, yet…Facebook is notoriously bad at doing anything about overt, vicious misogyny-mongering on Facebook. Soraya Chemaly wonders why that is.

For example, this morning, a Duracell battery ad is visible on a group page called “I kill bitches like you;” Sexy Arab Girls, “join our page for more porn videos,” was sponsored by the Wilberforce Dinner “Honoring Cardinal Timothy Dolan,” and the now-removed page, “Domestic Violence: Don’t Make Me Tell You Twice,” populated by photos of women beaten, bruised and bleeding, was the platform for Vistaprint.

“We occasionally see people post distasteful

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Heartwarming update to the Katelyn Campbell story. Her principal threatened to call up Wellesley, where she is accepted as a student next year, to tell them what a backstabbing slut she is. After posting about it I went to find her on Twitter, and found this -

Wellesley College ‏@Wellesley19h

KatelynCampbell, #Wellesley is excited to welcome you this fall. http://bit.ly/13jqRet 

Ahhh. That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Nicely done, Wellesley.… Read the rest

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Another brave high school student stands up to religio-conservative coercion.

A West Virginia high school student is filing an injunction against her principal, who she claims is threatening to punish her for speaking out against a factually inaccurate abstinence assembly at her school. Katelyn Campbell, who is the student body vice president at George Washington High School, alleges her principal threatened to call the college where she’s been accepted to report that she has “bad character.”

George Washington High School recently hosted a conservative speaker, Pam Stenzel, who travels around the country to advocate an abstinence-only approach to teen sexuality. Stenzel has a long history of using inflammatory rhetoric to convince young people that they will face dire

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Terry Glavin doesn’t approve of forced ingestion of bromides from Mr Rogers in the wake of horrible events like the Boston bombings.

The Iranians have a word for it. It’s “hambestagi.” It roughly translates as “solidarity.” It is a condition of humankind that is always present and quite ordinarily blossoms in crisis. It was everywhere in evidence Monday in Boston and well beyond.

Solidarity is a good thing. I’m very big on solidarity. The more solidarity the better, especially international solidarity.

In place of actual acts of journalism related to Monday’s barbarism, was it  really necessary for the Globe and Mail, Time Magazine, Slate and the Washington  Post to gang up on everybody with pieties out of the cardigan-wearing  Presbyterian

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How to get around those pesky religious rules that say women are sluts unless they’re nailed and sealed into a marriage? How can men have fun if women are all nailed and sealed into a marriage? There is a way. The men can marry them, but just for a few minutes. Win-win!

I knew this was popular in Iran, but it’s apparently big in India. too.

Men from around the Islamic world have been traveling to Hyderabad, India, to purchase marriage contracts lasting four weeks. These “one-month marriages” provide men with young Indian wives, generally from poor families, who must consummate the short-term arrangements. Essentially, men—often already married—come to India with the intent of having religiously sanctioned sex with

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Besides, Amy did this post two years ago, based around this photograph -

Um. Over to Amy:

This isn’t the first time Mr Dunning has put up an image of an attractive woman while simultaneously insulting the majority of all other women present. He did it when he opted to show a woman he said was, “easier on the eyes” instead of showing the actual photo of the first woman to fly in space, astronaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova. He later apologized. One could assume it was a poorly designed joke and forgive his insensitivity to the plight of women in the sciences and in skepticism, once. We all make mistakes. But here he has done it again. And

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So this happened – Brian Dunning pled guilty to wire fraud. I wasn’t aware of Brian Dunning before – my knowledge of the Skeptics’ Who’s Who is shamingly incomplete or even in fact inadequate. The “skeptic community” is much upset at the revelation that Dunning is imperfect, as PZ notes.

Everyone seems to be regarding this as a great tragedy and the loss of a hero, and I agree that there is an element of that — it certainly is a personal tragedy for Dunning. But maybe we should also recognize it as a gain, the exposure of a criminal and the cessation of illegal activity. People aren’t one-dimensional heroes or villains, and Dunning, like everyone, is a bit

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Lilandra has a post in solidarity with Amanda Brown and her father Roger Gorley.

She writes here about her father’s run in with hospital authorities and his partner’s family for simply wanting to hold his gay partner’s hand. The family had no authority to ask him to leave as he has power of attorney. Gorley should have the same rights as heterosexual domestic partner to care for an ailing spouse. The reality of the situation is that that only works when people respect those rights. He was eventually handcuffed and dragged out of the hospital by the police.

You may have already heard of Amanda Brown from her work on We Are Atheism. A project that encourages nonbelievers

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A finding that will astonish no one.

Working women who engage in feminist activism report more experiences of gender harassment on the job, regardless of whether or not they identify themselves as feminists, a new University of Michigan study indicates.

“A woman who personally adopts the feminist label may not ‘out’ herself as such to others,” said Kathryn Holland, the study’s lead author and a graduate student in women’s studies and psychology. “Women openly engaging in activism for women’s rights may pose a more obvious threat to the existing gender hierarchy—a hierarchy that grants more power to men than women.”

I could give a shorter version of that. Women who engage in feminist activism experience more gender harassment. Everybody … Read the rest

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Good lord.

A Republican New Hampshire lawmaker referred to women as “vaginas” in an email to colleagues on the official legislative electronic mailing list earlier this month, drawing outrage from women’s rights groups.

No. Nobody did that. Right?

State Rep. Peter Hansen (R) made the comment, first reported by New Hampshire political blogger Susan the Bruce, in an April 1 email debate with colleagues about a “stand your ground” gun bill. Hansen’s colleague, Rep. Steve Vaillancourt (R) had delivered a lengthy floor speech about the benefits of retreating instead of using deadly force, to which Hansen replied in an email:

What could possibly be missing from those factual tales of successful retreat in VT, Germany, and the bowels

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Farah Rahman has a great post on the Amina-Femen-”imperialism”-too busy being awesome thing.

So let’s look at these accusations of ‘imperialism’. Many of those on Facebook (mis)using the word ‘imperialism’ are, it seems, Western-based Muslims who have grown up under liberal laws. They have no idea what it’s like to actually live in a country where you might be forcibly silenced for your politics. In my opinion, you do have to be pretty privileged to cry out the word ‘imperialism’ so often and with such wild abandon. What is really and truly awful is not that some Muslim women feel upset, but how playing the victim can so effectively erase the original victim herself, in this case Amina. There where

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Amina Tyler has told us (via Femen) where she’s been and what’s been done to her.

…she was beaten, kidnapped and drugged by her family after posting pictures of herself baring her breasts online.

The 19-year-old was also forced to endure a humiliating “virginity test” in the aftermath of her protest, which inspired women’s movement Femen to organise a“topless jihad” in support of her.

Speaking to Femen leader Inna Shevchenko from an undisclosed location via Skype, she told her harrowing story, but was adamant she will continue her struggle for women’s rights in the Muslim country.

Assuming she can. Her relatives seem to be determined to treat her like a piece of livestock.

Amina, who was threatened with stoning after

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Alex has a post about the god panel at QED, which he attended, along with a lot of other people I know and a lot of people I don’t know.

Yesterday on QED’s second and last day, Carrie Poppy of Oh No, Ross and Carrie! fame (her talk on anecdotes, by the way, was excellent) moderated the ‘God Panel’, a discussion between Mitch Benn, Richard Dawkins, Mike Hall and Lawrence Krauss and the programme’s one specific atheist event. When a question was posed about mistakes our movement had made, the first example given – I think by Mitch Benn, though it might have been Mike Hall – was Atheism Plus, an answer audience members seemed to like and onto

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The Protestants were in on the “imprison the children” routine too. That’s nice. Very ecumenical, very interfaith.

Abuse survivors of the Protestant Bethany Home care institution are to accuse the State of being complicit in the manslaughter of 63 children at the home when they meet Justice Minister Alan Shatter on Tuesday.

The manslaughter charge now being made by the Protestant survivors represents a major escalation in their battle with the Government for inclusion in the State’s redress scheme for abuse victims.

Bethany Home was a Protestant evangelical institution for unmarried mothers to give birth, before being forced to abandon their children, and was a place of detention for Protestant women on remand, or convicted of crimes from petty theft

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Oh whew, what a relief, Pope Frank isn’t going to relax the discipline on those pesky radical feminist nuns who are giving the Vatican such a splitting headache. Thank you, Mr Pope!

Pope Francis has reaffirmed the Vatican’s criticism of a body that represents U.S. nuns which the Church said was tainted by “radical” feminism, dashing hopes he might take a softer stand with the sisters.

Nah. Don’t worry about that. Nobody’s going to take any kind of softer stand with any sisters, because that’s where it all stops. If men ever give up the right to tell the sisters to stfu, then it’s all over – the very principle of arbitrary hierarchy and dominance and superiority will be at … Read the rest

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