Kate Smurthwaite at the Jack the Ripper “museum” protest today:
At Warwick
Oct 31st, 2015 4:59 pm | By Ophelia BensonMaryam gave her talk at Warwick on Wednesday. The Student Rights blog reports:
Namazie’s visit to Warwick first gained media attention last month when the Student Union attempted to bar her from speaking on campus.
Thanks to a vocal campaign by Warwick Atheists, Secularists and Humanists (WASH), which saw widespread media coverage, the ban was overturned.
The president of WASH, Benjamin Davids, welcomed a packed lecture hall to the event on Wednesday, before Namazie spoke about the need to challenge Islamist groups – stressing that too often these movements are wrongly conflated with Islam and Muslims.
I have friends in and around Coventry. They were probably there.
… Read the restStudent Rights also spoke to Davids, who said that:
“
Feminism’s focus on women
Oct 31st, 2015 4:04 pm | By Ophelia BensonLaurie Penny explains about feminism to a wondering world.
First of all there’s the subhead, which is probably not her doing, but it does rather set the tone.
Feminism’s focus on women can be alienating to queer people and anyone questioning the gender binary. But it doesn’t have to be.
“Feminism’s focus on women” – pause to savor that. How dare feminism focus on women? Other people have problems too ya know! And yet would BuzzFeed remark that anti-racism’s focus on people of color can be alienating? Would it fret that the labor movement focuses on labor?
I don’t think so. It’s only feminism that the libertarian left is so relentlessly eager to ostracize. It’s as if feminism has somehow … Read the rest
What appears to be a coordinated attack
Oct 31st, 2015 11:47 am | By Ophelia Benson… Read the restIn what now appears to be a coordinated attack, at least one person has been killed and three people have been injured, in two attacks on publishing houses in Dhaka, Bangladesh this afternoon.
First, three men, all secular bloggers, one also a publisher and another also a poet, were attacked at Shuddho-Shor, a publishing house for progressive and secular books in the Lalmatia neighborhood of Dhaka. The attackers were armed with machetes and firearms, and it is likely the publisher Ahmed Rashid Tutul, who had received direct death threats from Islamists unhappy with output, was the primary target. The six or so attackers appear to have tricked their way in representing themselves as book-buyers.
Oh no no no no
Oct 31st, 2015 11:17 am | By Ophelia BensonThe BBC reports terrible news from Bangladesh:
A Bangladeshi publisher of secular books has been hacked to death in the capital Dhaka in the second attack of its kind on Saturday, police say.
Faisal Arefin Dipon, 43, was killed at his office in the city centre, hours after another publisher and two secular writers were injured in an attack.
They are the latest victims in a series of deadly attacks on secularists since blogger Avijit Roy was hacked to death by suspected Islamists in February.
Both publishers published Roy’s work.
I can only swear and swear and swear.
… Read the restEarlier on Saturday, armed men burst into the offices of publisher Ahmedur Rashid Tutul.
They stabbed Mr Tutul and two writers
Would you rather be the author or one of the characters?
Oct 31st, 2015 11:10 am | By Ophelia BensonHere’s my column for the Freethinker for this month. It’s another wallop at that idea that religion alone can give people [a sense of] meaning.
… Read the restThe most obvious flaw is that it’s not at all clear how God does a better job of providing “meaning” than anything else does. How is that even supposed to work? How exactly is it more meaningful to be a character in a story someone else creates rather than the protagonist of the story you create? How, that is, is that more meaningful to us, as opposed to the people who administer the story?
It’s easy to see why priests and mullahs find that story rich with meaning: it makes them important characters, who shape
Boys get blocks, girls get jewelry
Oct 30th, 2015 4:50 pm | By Ophelia BensonHappy gendered Halloween, girls and boys. (Did you see what I did there? I put girls first. That’s very rebellious of me. Girls are supposed to come second. It’s boys and girls, not girls and boys. Isn’t that funny?)
The New York Times has such a fun scary story about how gendered everything is in kidworld, and how badly it fucks everything up. All that work we did, undone by marketers. Oh well – I guess we’ll just have to do it all over again! Or you will, because I’ll be dead by then, and your grandchildren will, if the glaciers haven’t all melted yet.
… Read the restA web search for Halloween costumes of scientists produces only boys wearing lab coats and
Posing
Oct 30th, 2015 4:06 pm | By Ophelia BensonThere’s this:
And there’s this:
Notice anything?
The male figure is standing straight, hands in fists.
The female figure is at an angle, head tilted, one foot partly off the floor, one knee bent, palms outward.
Now this – a photo of women scientists who are spending eight days in an experimental capsule at Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems,
the latest in a lengthy series of tests carried out by institute specialists studying the effects on human physiology and emotions during life among the stars.
Well no, not among the stars. Outside earth’s atmosphere, but still 93 million miles from the nearest star. Anyway, the photo:
What on earth? They’re adult scientists, not teenage cheerleaders. Why are they bending their … Read the rest
Women are bearing the brunt
Oct 30th, 2015 3:11 pm | By Ophelia BensonEaves Charity is closing down as of today.
… Read the restEaves has been a member of the End Violence Against Women campaign – an unprecedented coalition of individuals and organisations set up in 2005 who are calling on the government, public bodies and others to take concerted action to end violence against women.
But Eaves has been operational since 1977 and is particularly known for its specialist services for helping and supporting women victims of violence.
These include the Poppy project, the London Exiting Advocacy and the Alice project.
The Poppy project has supported some 2000 women victims of trafficking since its inception and helped 45 women bring their traffickers to justice, obtaining combined sentence of 423 years.
The London Exiting Advocacy
We see girls who are bleeding heavily
Oct 30th, 2015 10:50 am | By Ophelia BensonFrom the Independent: IS is shutting down gynecology clinics in Raqqa, clinics which are more than ever needed because IS is also raping little girls. A one-two punch.
… Read the restIsis is believed to have ordered the closure of all women’s clinics supervised by male doctors in its Syrian heartlands in its latest assault on the rights of women.
A culture of rape, forced marriages for child brides, the persecution of doctors and the exclusive use of medicines for militants have resulted in a crisis for women’s health under Isis’s brutal regime.
According to activists, Isis has drastically restricted the work of male gynaecologists in accordance with its leaders’ belief that men and women should be kept apart at all costs.
By thinking more like men
Oct 30th, 2015 10:12 am | By Ophelia BensonOy. Seen on Twitter –
I match 3 items under “you have a male brain if” and only 1 under “you have a female brain if.” I must be trans!
Or wait, maybe the list is bullshit.
Again
Oct 30th, 2015 9:48 am | By Ophelia BensonAt the Saudi embassy in Oslo today:
Ensaf reports that Raif was not flogged today – which is a big relief after the news that the flogging was going to resume. But that’s only this week…… Read the rest
Family members found the child lying unconscious and bleeding
Oct 29th, 2015 1:36 pm | By Ophelia BensonTwo young girls – a toddler and a 5-year-old – have been raped in separate attacks in New Delhi, police said Saturday, in the latest incidents of sexual violence against girls and women in India.
A 2 1/2-year-old girl who was playing outside her home was raped in a west Delhi suburb Friday evening, said Delhi Police deputy superintendent Pushpendra Kumar. Family members found the child lying unconscious and bleeding in a park three hours after she went missing during a power outage in the neighborhood.
Two and a half years old, grabbed and penetrated, then thrown aside in a park like so much garbage.
… Read the restThe rapes occurred a week after a 4-year-old girl was found
More threats
Oct 29th, 2015 11:50 am | By Ophelia BensonReporters Without Borders last week:
… Read the restReporters Without Borders condemns the threats against news media and bloggers contained in a email that was sent to a score of Bangladeshi print and broadcast media outlets on 19 October, and calls on the authorities to take concrete measures to protect all those targeted.
Sent by Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a militant Islamist group that has claimed the murders of four bloggers this year, and signed by a person identifying himself as ABT spokesman Abdullah bin Salim, the Bengali-language email constituted a clear threat to all media that fail to adhere strictly to Islamic law.
The email included a demand for news media to fire all female employees and to refrain from publishing
The Sakharov prize
Oct 29th, 2015 11:34 am | By Ophelia BensonTake that, Saudi theocrats: Raif Badawi has won the Sakharov prize.
The announcement was greeted on Thursday with a standing ovation at the European parliament in Strasbourg, France, but will be seen by Saudi Arabia as another diplomatic slight at a time when its domestic and international policies are coming under growing criticism.
What do you mean “but”? That’s an “and.”
Martin Schulz, the European parliament president, said: “I urge the king of Saudi Arabia to free him [Badawi], so he can accept the prize.”
And be free, and not be flogged, and be with Ensaf and their children again.
… Read the restNamed after the Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, the award was created in 1988 to honour people and
Yell at little kids and call them frauds
Oct 28th, 2015 3:42 pm | By Ophelia BensonJonathan Rosenberg has a cartoon. The protagonist looks kind of familiar…
What Greer stands accused of is thoughtcrime
Oct 28th, 2015 1:07 pm | By Ophelia BensonRebecca Reilly-Cooper makes an important point about the campaign to no-platform Germaine Greer:
… Read the restGreer said nothing about what rights trans people ought to have or how they ought to be treated, and certainly nothing that could plausibly be interpreted as an incitement to violence. Believing that trans women are men is neither an incitement to violence, nor is it dehumanising, unless you also happen to think that men deserve violence and are not human. So the two main offences she is accused of are ones she openly admits to: not believing that transgender women are women, and not believing that transphobia – prejudice and bigotry towards transgender people – exists.
Both of these offences are solely concerned with the propositional
Often the face of evil
Oct 28th, 2015 12:40 pm | By Ophelia BensonNPR asks an always-timely question: Why Are Old Women Often The Face Of Evil In Fairy Tales And Folklore?
Because everybody* hates old women.
Typecasting is one explanation. “What do we have? Nags, witches, evil stepmothers, cannibals, ogres. It’s quite dreadful,” says Maria Tatar, who teaches a course on folklore and mythology at Harvard. Still, Tatar is quick to point out that old women are also powerful — they’re often the ones who can work magic.
Well, “powerful” until they’re killed at the end. Not a particularly desirable brand of power.
… Read the restTatar says old women villains are especially scary because, historically, the most powerful person in a child’s life was the mother. “Children do have a way of splitting
Guest post: With my personhood totally stripped from me
Oct 28th, 2015 11:01 am | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by iknlast on Preserving the sanctity of the big tent.
Make a new twitter account using a man’s name. Choose a picture not of a person but one with masculine bent. Use that account at least a week, but longer is better.
My son actually tried this experiment in reverse. He gamed as a woman. And as a man in the same setting at a different time. His results were predictable, and eye-opening, even to someone like my son who was already fairly enlightened about the issue. The amount of hate he got was intense – and he wasn’t even talking about feminism or the rights of women, he was just playing a game as a … Read the rest
Preserving the sanctity of the big tent
Oct 27th, 2015 6:33 pm | By Ophelia Benson… Read the restThis week, you announced a decision so mind-numbingly shameful, it’s a wonder that the collective spleens of everyone involved didn’t spontaneously combust from the overload of self-loathing. I speak, of course, of your Neville Chamberlain-esque choice to cancel a panel on harassment in online spaces, featuring Katherine Cross, Caroline Sinders, and Randi Harper, due to (and I can’t believe I have to type this) overwhelming harassment from those opposed to said panel — i.e., Gamergate (a group you conveniently allowed to have their own panel without following any of the listed application rules, in a fascinating display of fear-profiteering that would make Dick Cheney blush).
Then, you inexplicably tried to justify the unjustifiable,