Never Forget

Jun 20th, 2013 2:22 pm | By

Dan Cardamon looks back on The Great War and rallies the troops. He exaggerates the time a little – it’s two years, not three – but it feels like twenty, so hyperbole makes sense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYw-HjKrmY4

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Even schoolgirls

Jun 20th, 2013 9:17 am | By

Jinan Younis, for instance, who started a feminist society at her school.

I am 17 years old and I am a feminist. I believe in genderequality, and am under no illusion about how far we are from achieving it. Identifying as a feminist has become particularly important to me since a school trip I took to Cambridge last year.

A group of men in a car started wolf-whistling and shouting sexual remarks at my friends and me. I asked the men if they thought it was appropriate for them to be abusing a group of 17-year-old girls. The response was furious. The men started swearing at me, called me a bitch and threw a cup coffee over

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Jinan Younis started a feminist society at school *

Jun 20th, 2013 | Filed by

‘We were told that our “militant vaginas” were “as dry as the Sahara desert”, girls who complained of sexual objectification in their photos were given ratings out of 10.’… Read the rest



Definitions

Jun 19th, 2013 2:16 pm | By

A funny bit on Hemant’s post about AA and Ed Clint and the lawsuit. One branch of the conversation somehow turned to harassment, when one wag (nymmed ”whatever”) joked that the fashion for conspiracy theories started with my documentation of harassment. Others disagreed and it went on as such things do.

Martin Wagner to Whatever

So people are harassing her on Twitter (which you admit), she complains about it (understandable), and your reply is that she has it coming. Glad we got your number on all this.

Whatever to Martin Wagner

        So people are harassing her on Twitter (which you admit)

No, I admit to no such thing. Ophelia calls it harassment. I call it a lot of shitty little

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Good neighbors

Jun 19th, 2013 2:05 pm | By

Update I had about two minutes before I had to dash off and I wanted to flag up these two posts but I didn’t have time to say anything.

I meant to say how proud I am to have Nirmukta among us.

Because of Anita’s wonderful post Why Your Daughter’s Marriage Shouldn’t Be Your Biggest Dream For Her for instance,

Placing emphasis on marriage means raising girls in a manner primarily aimed at moulding them into a societal expectation of what an ideal bride or wife should be like, instead of fostering and encouraging individual characteristics. And in a patriarchal society, these demands are never free of misogyny. The perfect wife looks like Aishwarya Rai, talks like Mother Teresa and

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What “conscientious” means

Jun 19th, 2013 11:45 am | By

Margaret Doughty has decided to become a US citizen – and has hit an obstacle.

…an USCIS official asked Doughty to confirm that, when asked, she would take up arms in defense of the United States. Doughty, who had just been made to swear an oath to tell the truth (as is customary with citizenship applications), felt honor-bound to answer the question…truthfully. She responded that she would be unfailingly loyal to the United States, but that her conscience doesn’t allow her to inflict violence on another person.

The immigration agent explained that the question, in Doughty’s case, was pretty much academic. The United States does not put sexagenarians on the front lines. Doughty, however, felt helpless to change her

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Opened fire on students writing their final year exams

Jun 19th, 2013 11:36 am | By

Boko Haram has been busy killing people again.

Residents of Maiduguri, the Borno State capital, said suspected members of Boko Haram on Monday killed 22 persons in separate attacks. They said the terrorists were on a revenge mission against youth vigilante groups that have been hunting them.

The gunmen on Monday at about 3 p.m. attacked a secondary school, Ansarudeen Private School, Maiduguri, and opened fire on students writing their final year exams. Nine students were killed, while several others were seriously injured in the attack, residents of the area said.

The incident occurs less than 24 hours after gunmen attacked a school in neighbouring Yobe State, killing seven students and two teachers. Borno and Yobe, alongside Adamawa, are under

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Bringing the college into disrepute

Jun 19th, 2013 10:45 am | By

What is the difference between Bishop Burton College in Beverley, Yorks, and the Taliban?

Not much.

A young woman was suspended from college after accusing fellow students of rape and  sexual assault, a court heard.

Three men have gone on trial at Hull Crown Court accused of abusing the woman on  campus at Bishop Burton College.

The alleged victim, who is in her late teens, gave evidence to say she was told  to leave the college after reporting the men to staff.

Bishop “Taliban” Burton College.

The woman told the jury her parents persuaded her to report it to the police  after she received a letter from the college recommending she be excluded.

“I told the college I had been

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Another emetic

Jun 19th, 2013 9:52 am | By

House Republicans have succeeded in passing a bill (which won’t make it through the Senate) demonstrating their hostility to women.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday passed legislation severely restricting abortions, a move that could alienate women from the conservative party.

The bill would ban abortions 20 weeks after fertilization occurs, a time when a fetus begins to feel pain, Republicans said. The legislation makes exceptions for victims of rape and incest as long as they first report the crime to authorities.

And ask the Republican Party for forgiveness.

Republican leaders inserted an amendment to the bill that allows rape or incest victims to get an abortion if they reported the crime – a change abortion rights advocates said

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Republican-led House passes bill restricting abortion *

Jun 19th, 2013 | Filed by

The bill would ban abortions 20 weeks after fertilization, when – Republicans claim – a fetus begins to feel pain.… Read the rest



Dan Cardamon says science shows racism, sexism NBD

Jun 18th, 2013 7:07 pm | By

There’s a study.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue9Ao_bdX6Y

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“Grow up”

Jun 18th, 2013 6:56 pm | By

Hmm.

Right, because I’m exactly the same kind of thing as a politician and I should be subject to exactly the same kind and degree of “satire.”

Who should be doing the growing up here?… Read the rest

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Oh yes, that guy

Jun 18th, 2013 2:57 pm | By

Meet Dan Cardamon!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lIW6RsUt-s

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Nobody likes a surprise

Jun 18th, 2013 12:00 pm | By

Stonewalling is bad management. It’s unprofessional. It’s not what a good boss or CEO does. It’s sometimes what a good military officer or emergency services chief does, when orders have to be obeyed promptly, but apart from emergencies, it’s not the way to supervise.

Another thing that’s bad management is springing things on people. It’s doing things in a high-handed manner when it would have been perfectly possible to do them with consultation and discussion and agreement. I talked about this some yesterday.

The problem here, if I understand it correctly, is that feminism is a big tent, and there are some woo branches of feminism. I don’t think the woo part is a very big fraction of feminism,

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A failure to communicate

Jun 18th, 2013 9:21 am | By

There are lots of people who think the reaction to CFI and the statement and Ron’s activities is excessive. Some of those people even see flaws in Ron’s activities but still think the reaction is excessive. Maybe it is, but I think there are reasons for that, reasons we can figure out and look at and maybe learn something from.

Or to put it another way – I think I know what it was about the whole thing that got my irritation cranked up past a simmer, and I don’t think I’m particularly special, so maybe the same applies to other people.

It was the stonewalling.

If we’d been able to talk to him – we attendees and speakers at … Read the rest

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More documenting the harassment

Jun 18th, 2013 6:28 am | By

June 18

She just can’t stop.

June 16

A whole week with no documentation! That was a nice break.

 

June 9

A new one.

I borked the last tweet and the account (it was a new one, six tweets, all of the same type) is gone, so I’ll include the screencap too.

 

June 3

#bbpBox_339179886746935296 a { text-decoration:none; color:#B40B43; }#bbpBox_339179886746935296 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }I guess @ doesn't realise that @ @ @ are pseudoskeptic faux feminists who bully secular women.May 27, 2013 5:42 pm via TweetList!ReplyRetweetFavorite@saramayhewSara E. Mayhew

Wow. She tagged Michael Nugent. She’s actually actively trying to get me disinvited from a speaking engagement at a … Read the rest

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The exodus

Jun 17th, 2013 5:45 pm | By

So that’s two people cutting ties. Maybe that’s what CFI wanted, but I doubt it.

Rebecca is one.

Do not support an organization that does not have the courage to stand up for women. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. If you are a speaker at a paid event for these organizations, cancel your appearance. If you regularly donate money to them, stop. If you work for them, look for a new job. I have a lot of friends and loved ones who currently do one, some, or all of those things, and I trust we’ll continue to be friends regardless of what happens. But I do think that continued support of CFI will send

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In the mail

Jun 17th, 2013 2:04 pm | By

I went out to do some things, as one does, and when I came back I found an envelope from Free Inquiry in the mail. I thought it must be the check for my most recent column, although it was an odd envelope for that – brown, and larger than a letter envelope. I opened it and found another envelope, a letter one this time, addressed to me c/o Free Inquiry.

I opened that and found a sick little thing from Martin Wiesner, aka Pogsurf, who started trolling me a week or so ago, for reasons I don’t know.

At the top it says

A SHORT QUIZ ABOUT THE PANELISTS @

Empowering Women Through Secularism,

Dublin 2013

Then it has … Read the rest

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Teach the controversy

Jun 17th, 2013 11:10 am | By

So it’s Monday, time to do the things that hung fire over the weekend…like release any little statements that might have piled up on Friday afternoon. This one from CFI for example, stemming from the meeting of its board last week:

The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.

The Center for Inquiry, including its CEO, is dedicated to advancing the status of women and promoting women’s issues, and this was the motivation for its sponsorship of the two Women in Secularism conferences. The CFI Board wishes to express its unhappiness with the controversy surrounding the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.

CFI believes in

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That’s much better

Jun 16th, 2013 6:12 pm | By

Via Maryam – how to tell “conservatives” from “reformers” in the Iranian elections.

 … Read the rest

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