Why I don’t love the “atheist community” chapter 782. A public Facebook post by “The Amazing Atheist” who is sadly unamazing. Jaclyn Glenn shared it in a public post of her own.

PZ Myers is a pile of shit in a man suit. So here he is attacking Jaclyn Glenn for daring to not identify as a feminist. That’s feminism for you: “Women can make any choice they want! Except the choice not to be feminists!”

His main argument is the Jaclyn’s video fails because she uses some comedic exaggeration in it that he feels distorts a position. Was the position distorted? I’ll let you guys watch the video and read PZ’s blog post and decide for yourselves.

Oh, and

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Well we all know the rules. Women are either fuckworthy, or killworthy. There is nothing else. (Just this morning on Twitter someone called me “old superfluous prune” – meaning, I should be dead, because I’m too old and ugly to be still alive using up resources. Old ugly men are ok because men have multiple uses but old ugly women are not ok because women have only one use.)

Hadley Freeman considers one instantiation of this universal law.

You’ll be thrilled to know – and I’m sure May will be absolutely delighted to know – that this week a male writer for the Spectator officially declared her to be hot; hotter, even, than Jemima Khan, just in case

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So the Russian separatists are busily hiding and destroying all the evidence. If neutral parties show up and try to stop them doing that, they fire warning shots, and the neutral parties leave.

The OSCE was trying to gain access to one part of the large crash site but the commander of a rebel unit, known as Commander Glum, blocked them. After the warning shot, the OSCE convoy departed.

There is also confusion over the black boxes and other devices apparently salvaged from the plane. A rebel military commander initially said he was considering what to do with them, while another rebel leader, Aleksandr Borodai, contradicting his colleague, said the rebels had no black boxes or any other devices.

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There was a pretty good Fresh Air yesterday based on a book, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves.

The new book Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is a collection of essays describing the varied experiences of transgender people — and the social, political and medical issues they face. It’s written by and for transgender and gender-nonconforming people.

The idea was inspired by the groundbreaking 1970s feminist health manual Our Bodies, Ourselves.

That book “was put together … by a group of women who … weren’t getting the care that they needed from what was mostly male physicians at the time,” the book’s editor, Laura Erickson-Schroth, tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross. “And so they put together this really radical book that included

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And I’ve been trying to get to this all day. Honestly, Jaclyn Glenn and Dave Muscato between them have ruined my schedule.

Bill Maher @billmaher 23h

Dealing w/ Hamas is like dealing w/ a crazy woman who’s trying to kill u – u can only hold her wrists so long before you have to slap her

It’s so cool that the best way to talk about Hamas turns out to be to talk about hitting a woman. Hey, coincidence, Hamas like to hit women too!

It’s so cool that more than 26 hundred people have RTd that already and that there will be more.

It’s so cool that nearly 2 thousand people have favorited that.

It’s so cool that … Read the rest

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I love it when people who have zero experience of a certain kind of prejudicial treatment, because they’re not in the category of person who gets that kind of prejudicial treatment, gets all contemptuously dismissive about that kind of prejudicial treatment. I just love it. It’s so clever, so thoughtful, so reasonable, so everything a mature intellectual and academic should be.

It’s brilliant, that’s what it is.… Read the rest

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Originally a comment by Krasnaya Koshka on Feminist atheists are divisive!!1

When I was a Young White Lesbian, I fought for a lot of YWL shit. I had severe myopia. But I was, at least, fighting for something not already included in my everyday life.

Then I had a Black gf. Wow wow wow, there were a lot of things I’d never even had to consider before. Like, she would go into a motel near Disneyland and be turned down for a room. I would go in, with purple hair, and be given a key. We’d both, then, go to the front counter and just look at the clerk. Just look. WTF?

This video (I did watch it in its … Read the rest

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Big big big tent. Room for all the atheists. Except feminists of course – feminists are shit, because they’re so divisive.

[Description: part of a page at the Richard Dawkins Foundation, promoting Jaclyn Glenn's latest video.]… Read the rest

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Also on Dave Muscato’s Facebook wall – a public Facebook post by Jaclyn Glenn:

While many “hardcore atheists” are subscribed to any number of vloggers, you’re not always the target demographic. I’m trying to reach the undecideds, the a-curious. Each vlogger reaches, or speaks to, a different demographic. If I can reach some that wouldn’t click on Thunderf00t or TheAmazingAtheist or CultofDusy, then great!

With people who have been indoctrinated- for the majority, if not all, of their lives, repetition is necessary. Also, this subject is not as infinitely variable as you might think, and videos are going to always be somewhat derivative. I’m always trying to do things in a creative way- either by humor, including guests on

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Oh hooray, Jaclyn Glenn has yet another video attacking feminists and feminism.

Even better, Dave Muscato, the PR guy for American Atheists, is energetically promoting it. Thanks, Dave!

Updating to add the intro to the vid:

Published on Jul 17, 2014
A video about Atheism+ and pussies. How appropriate. For those of you wondering- Atheism + is pretty much atheism plus radical feminism. This is my skit explaining my feelings on it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a61ZgjPN3is… Read the rest

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Way to deal with the post-Hobby Lobby US, Salem. (The witch thing is forgiven. It’s over. Done.)

Gordon College is a small Christian university that has publicly declared its desire to claim a special right to discriminate against LGBT students, staff, and faculty. Salem, Massachusetts, is a small progressive town with an LGBT non-discrimination ordinance. For years, Salem contracted with Gordon to manage its Old Town Hall. But when Gordon announced its desire to a special right to fire LGBT workers, Salem canceled the contract, finding that the university’s stated discriminatory intent directly violated the town’s non-discrimination ordinance.

Yessssss.

Ah but that’s not all; that’s just step one.

After Glenn Beck’s The Blaze picked this story up, right-wing

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The Guardian discusses the report on Islamist infiltration of Birmingham schools.

A damning report into extremist infiltration of Birmingham schools has uncovered evidence of “coordinated, deliberate and sustained action to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamist ethos into some schools in the city”.

The conclusion emerges from a leaked draft of a report, commissioned by the former education secretary Michael Gove and written by Peter Clarke, the former head of the Metropolitan police’s counterterrorism command, which is due to be published in the next 24 hours.

Clarke said there was a “sustained and coordinated agenda to impose upon children in a number of Birmingham schools the segregationist attitudes and practices of a hardline and politicised strain of Sunni Islam”.

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Meanwhile, on the South Bank…

I wish to register a complaint! A giant dead parrot has been unveiled in London to mark the Monty Python live show’s TV broadcast:

Via Digital Spy on Facebook… Read the rest

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Josh posted this on Facebook yesterday and I demanded permission to post it here and he gave in.

I don’t like the message, “Trust women to make their healthcare decisions,” many organizations are using. This is not about trust. The idea of “trust” has nothing to do with the anti-choice measures. It’s not that antis don’t “trust” women to “make the best decisions.” This is not an in loco parentis relationship where the antis genuinely have the best interests of their charges at heart.

1. Women are not their charges. 2. They don’t care about women being “trustworthy.” They don’t want women to have options. That’s it.

They want to take the ability away from women to have rights … Read the rest

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Now that’s how to say it. Rebecca Traister at the New Republic on that much-discussed much-disliked (for good reason) about that Esquire piece saying, with immense generosity, that not all 42-year-old women cause projectile vomiting on sight.

I thought the article was a piece of sexist tripe, celebrating a handful of Pilates-toned, famous, white-plus-Maya-Rudolph women as having improved on the apparently dismal aesthetics of previous generations; my primary objections to the piece have been ably laid out by other critics. Chait tweeted that he viewed the piece as a “mostly laudable” sign of progress: a critique not of earlier iterations of 42-year-old womanhood, but rather of the old sexist beauty standards that did not celebrate those

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From the Onion:

LINCOLN, NE—Loudly demanding an immediate statement on the issue, Nebraska voters clamored this week for more information from female politician Elaine Romero, an Omaha businesswoman running in the state’s upcoming gubernatorial primary election, on whether she is, in fact, a mother first. “Elaine Romero has made her stance on the social and economic issues facing Nebraskans abundantly clear, but we will not rest until she states clearly and on the record whether she is a mom first and foremost, and a politician second,” local resident Martin McGlynn said on behalf of 1.9 million restless Nebraskans, all of whom were vehemently pressing for answers on whether the 45-year-old public servant prioritizes her family above all else, considers

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Sometimes there’s a conflict between the majority will and human rights. That’s one reason there’s a need for such things as high courts and international courts: to adjudicate between them.

It can be alarming when legislators seem to be blankly unaware of this. Commonplace, but alarming.

Today in Ireland for instance.

Tanaiste Joan Burton has ruled out an abortion referendum being held in the lifetime of this Government.

Ms Burton was responding to an impassioned plea from Independent TD Catherine Murphy who said many women were suffering needlessly because the law on termination of pregnancy on medical grounds was too restrictive.

Deputy Murphy said the referendum to safeguard the right to life of the unborn child was voted in

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Originally a comment by the philosophical primate on Not Thorita.

I think Lees’ criticism is… just damned silly. Yes, I get the critique of the “another strong woman” nonsense, but the idea behind this move in the comic is that Thor is a particular ROLE — a warrior deity — that a woman can fill as effectively as a man. The quoted passage about “Lady Thor,” “Thorita” and so on (which I’m confident has nothing to do with a transgender Eurovision contestant) is simply writer Jason Aaron explicitly saying that he is NOT going down the route of remaking the character in pink and fluff and ribbons and offensive feminine stereotypes just because said warrior deity is going to … Read the rest

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