Sofia Ahmed, activist, student, and aspiring journalist, takes to the Huffington Post UK to explain why watching people applauding Malala Yousafzai makes her want to puke.

The sight of white men in suits applauding and gushing at Malala Yusufzai’s speech at the United Nations, the media frenzy and vociferous support on social media was nauseating for me. Not because I deny Malala the right to campaign for what she does.

That’s very generous of her, isn’t it.

It was more due to the sickening double-standards at play and the thought that while she was being lauded hundreds of other Muslim girls were being blown up, raped and bombed into oblivion because of those very men sitting with her that day.

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

En français.

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

 … Read the rest

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

Sexism? What sexism?

The sexism where a male conservative MP makes clucking noises while a female Green MP is speaking.

The incident was widely denounced as sexist in a country where the word chicken is often used as a derogatory term for women.

Véronique Massonneau was forced to stop her address to the National Assembly in Paris when her conservative rival, Philippe Le Ray, began to make the noises.

However, as she resumed her speech on planned pension reform the heckling resumed, prompting the president of the National Assembly to step in.

Watch the video. See the other conservative male MP, talking to the camera in the hall outside afterwards, say “Vive le macho!” and walk away then turn around … Read the rest

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

As Bjarte mentioned – the Hawkeye initiative is pretty funny.

About THI and FAQ

About The Hawkeye Initiative

Created on December 2nd 2012, The Hawkeye Initiative uses Hawkeye and other male comic characters to illustrate how deformed, hyper-sexualized, and impossibly contorted women are commonly illustrated in comics, books, and video games.

Like so:

themenarchbutterfly:

From Red Hood and the Outlaws, Issue 14. Art by Pascal Alixe.

John Holbo has a great post on Mannerism and the Hawkeye Initiative.

I’m reading a book on Mannerism [amazon] and stumbled on a pair of amusing quotes. The first, from Alberti’s On Painting (1435) really ought to be some kind of epigraph for The Hawkeye Initiative. (What? You didn’t know about it. Go

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

Malala’s getting a head start on the prize-winning.

Malala Yousafzai, who was shot last year by Taliban militants for her advocacy of girls’ education, has been awarded theSakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by European lawmakers.

The 16-year-old, considered a contender for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, joins previous winners of Europe’s top human rights award, including Peace Prize laureates Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela.

You know, maybe shooting her in the head wasn’t such a good idea after all. Talk about a Streisand effect…… Read the rest

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

Malala was on the Daily Show on Tuesday.

Check it out.

 … Read the rest

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

Another UK religious state school interfering with students’ science education.

The Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Exam board (OCR) launched an investigation into exam malpractice at the Yesodey Hatorah Jewish Voluntary Aided girls’ secondary school after the National Secular Society formally asked it to follow up unconfirmed reports that teachers had redacted questions in this year’s GSCE science exam.

The precise questions that were blacked out has not been revealed by OCR, but earlier this year a Jewish education consultant warned that evolution in the new GCSE science curriculum could pose problems for strictly Orthodox schools.

The investigation confirmed pupils were left disadvantaged by being unable to access 3 marks out of 75 for a unit in a higher GCSE

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

There’s a place for Subjects. Under Subjects, there’s a place for Islamic Studies.

At the heart of Al-Madinah School is the Quranic and Islamic Studies department, supported by a team of experienced and dedicated servants of Islam. Our commitment to Islam in the school is reflected by the fact that each week, six lessons will be dedicated to Islamic, Quranic and Arabic Studies in the secondary school along with numerous lessons in the primary school. In this programme, great attention and effort will be geared to subject areas such as Quranic reading with the correct pronunciations (Tajwid), Quranic translation and commentary (Tafsir) and the memorisation of the Quran (Hifz). In addition to this we also teach Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh),

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

Originally a comment by zibble on First rule: make them insipid.

I think the problem isn’t even that they have to keep the characters pretty.  The problem is that they define female prettiness as an absence of features.

It’s like the bad-anime face.

The total lack of identifiable human features forces you to project idealized features onto their void of a face.  There are enough face-like qualities for the mind to recognize that a face is supposed to go there – but with no specific information, your brain picks all the features it likes the best.  Whereas if they tried to make a female character actually modeled off of a real female face, like Angelina Jolie, they have … Read the rest

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

It’s sad being a Disney animator if you have to animate women, we’re told. Fortunately the problem doesn’t arise much because hey – Toy Story? Lion King? But when it does arise, damn, it’s difficult.

Lino DiSalvo, the head of animation on Frozen, claimed that it was “really, really difficult” to animate women because they have to be kept pretty while expressing emotions:

“Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having

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

Did you (those of you in the US) see Frontline on football and concussions last night? It was pretty fascinating. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has been reporting a lot on hockey and concussions, too. The Frontline show made some interesting points about how violent, and intentionally violent, football is. It’s marketed as violent, and apparently people like that.

Huh. Why? What a strange thing to like.

It reminded me of a lot of things. Jousting, for instance. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and Tenniel’s illustrations of them. Jousting must have caused a lot of concussions and CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). Henry VIII received a bad head injury in a joust, and he was a monster as he aged – maybe the … Read the rest

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

Captions: two buttons: one says

KFC Hillary special

2 Fat Thighs

2 Small Breasts

…Left Wing

The other says

I still hate Commies…

even after they

changed their

name to Liberals

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

Al-Medinah school wants (or pretends to want) incompatible things. It says so right on its home page.

Our vision

…

One of Al-Madinah Schools’ strong characters is the schools extended services program in which pupils will learn independence, self-control, social skills and community conscientiousness. These skills are vital if our pupils are to become self-regulating teenagers and adults. [para 3]

…

One of Al-Madinah Schools’ distinct features is the offering of an Islamic Studies program, which will include Quran reading with pronunciations (Tajweed), translation of the Quran (Tafseer) and Quran memorisation (Hifz). We will also teach Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh), biography (Seerah) of the Prophet Mohammed (SAW), History of Islam, the Oneness of God (Tauheed) and Islamic Beliefs (Aqeedah). [para

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

Al-Madinah school in Derby is even worse than everyone thought. The Independent reports:

A Muslim free school has been warned it faces closure if it does not take action to eradicate practices which discriminate against girls and women within a week.

The blunt warning was delivered yesterday in a letter from Lord Nash. the Minister with responsibility for free schools and academies in a letter to the chair of its governing body.

Lord Nash warned the Al-Madinah free school in Derby that the trust running it had “manifestly breached the conditions of its funding agreement by failing to ensure the safety of children at the school: delivering an unacceptably poor standard of education, discriminating in its policies towards female

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