Watch Peter Tatchell ask panelists at an iERA debate to say whether or not they condemn the death penalty for blasphemy, amputation, and stoning for adultery, and the panelists refuse to reply.
That’s one time when a yes or no question is not out of place.
Katy Murphy and Thomas Peele at Inside Bay Area ask if the “swift” departure of Geoff Marcy signals “a profound shift in how society reacts and responds to sexual harassment and abuse on campus and in corporate boardrooms?”
No, it doesn’t, because it wasn’t “swift” at all. It took years. See astrokatey on Twitter:
Katey the Astronomer @astrokatey Oct 16
@dalcantonjd 3 years to compile stories. 3 to find ppl willing to come forward. Hours of phone convos about strategy. It succeeded.
Three stinkin’ years, and all that hard work. This is no swift departure.
Back to Murphy and Peele:
… Read the restBut in a flash last week, the white-hot glare of social media revealed the darker side of the
This from rubyfruitz at Sisterhood is Powerful a year ago is of interest:
… Read the restIt doesn’t matter what kind of politics a feminist has, unless she is fully accommodating to men (in the shape of anti-feminist, queer gobbledygook and other woman-haters) she will be attacked. Attempts will be made to silence her through a systematic campaign of hatred and intimidation.
…
There has been a recent bout of attempts to stop individual feminists from speaking at events. The chosen method is to call someone ‘phobic’. You can put any word you want in front of it. It doesn’t have to be a real word, you can just make it up. In circulation, we currently have: biphobic, transphobic, whorephobic, lesbians who are
This probably belongs in the Withdrawing Room, but I feel like giving it some space. (I think soon I’ll make a page for Patreon patrons that will be about frivolities and other random things.)
There’s this conversation on Facebook about farmers’ markets, and we were told about the St Jacobs Farmers’ Market, which looks killer. It has a soup vendor! Who creates wonderful new soup recipes (and the soup itself).
And there are Mennonites.
And crafts, and all the good things.
It put me in mind of the Oxford Covered Market, which has been around for centuries. So I found it – and of course it has a Facebook page too.
It’s a lovely place, the Covered Market.
Glosswitch talked about the “pregnant people” issue back in February.
… Read the restLast week I wrote an article on the discrimination suffered by pregnant women and new mothers. In doing so I wished to stress that such discrimination is rooted not in the nature of pregnancy itself, but in the low status accorded to women as a class. If the rules changed overnight and people of higher status – men – got pregnant, we would treat the whole process very differently. Instead, we live in a world where 800 women die every single day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. This isn’t because pregnancy happens; it’s because it only happens to people who don’t matter. These people we call
Giles Dilnot @reporterboy
Amazed. That’s quite a sign for a London street in 2015.
Description: a demonstration, with one person in the foreground holding a sign that reads:
… Read the restTHIEVING MURDERING “ISRAELIS” GO HOME TO POLAND, GERMANY, USA
It sounds like a sweet idea for schools – have children fill a box with toys and essential items and the Christmas Box charity will send it to a child who is living in poverty. But. There’s more to it.
Emma Williams at Humanist Life reports:
… Read the restOperation Christmas Child is run by Samaritan’s Purse, a huge and zealous organisation led by Franklin Graham, son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham. Not only is the organisation openly homophobic, it seeks to proselytise in a manner that most people, including liberal Christians, find unacceptable. As a humanist, I am naturally disquieted by the idea of people performing evangelical work with the intended purpose of conversion; but I am positively offended when this
Merrill Miller at The Humanist:
Recently, certain individuals have appropriated the term “humanism” in an attempt to legitimize their anti-women, anti-feminist message. Masquerading as “activists” for men’s rights, these people do not concern themselves with serious problems faced by men in the United States today such as the disproportionately high incarceration rates for Black men or the shocking percentage of workplace injuries that lead to fatalities for male workers. Instead, they spout regressive, sexist views on the Internet that blame feminism and women for society’s ills while promoting a version of masculinity that applauds men who can coerce women into dating and having sex with them.
It’s a popular catch-phrase for anti-feminists – “I’m not a feminist, I’m a … Read the rest
This is something I didn’t know was happening. Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Ed reports that colleges and universities are taking money from a corporation to teach Ayn Rand. She cites
… Read the resta forthcoming paper in the Journal of Academic Ethics, called, “BB&T, Atlas Shrugged and the Ethics of Corporation Influence on College Curricula.” It says it is the first study to track a particular set of donations by the financial services holding company BB&T to colleges and universities stipulating that they teach the works of free-market capitalist Ayn Rand and address the “Moral Foundations of Capitalism.”
The paper says these agreements, which have largely ceased, happen under a veil of secrecy, often without the knowledge of faculty members,
The actor Jennifer Lawrence talks about realizing she was paid a lot less than her male colleagues, and getting annoyed at herself.
… Read the restWhen the Sony hack happened and I found out how much less I was being paid than the lucky people with dicks, I didn’t get mad at Sony. I got mad at myself. I failed as a negotiator because I gave up early. I didn’t want to keep fighting over millions of dollars that, frankly, due to two franchises, I don’t need. (I told you it wasn’t relatable, don’t hate me).
But if I’m honest with myself, I would be lying if I didn’t say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my
At Feminist Current, Susan Cox interviews Mary Lou Singleton.
… Read the restWho gives birth? The answer used to be: females. Today, it’s considered politically incorrect to say that it is women, specifically, who get pregnant and become mothers. Thus, in the name of inclusivity, a number of women’s reproductive health groups are changing their terminology in order to degender the language of birth. Several organizations now refer to “pregnant people,” “pregnant individuals,” and “birthing parents” instead. Feministing writer Jos Truitt recently demanded we “Stop saying and stop thinking that abortion is a women’s issue.”
Well, okay then! Degendering women’s issues — I mean, “people’s issues” — is way progressive. But what are the costs of doing that? What are we
Kenan Malik wrote the introduction to a new Danish collection of Jesus and Mo cartoons and he has posted it on his blog.
… Read the restOne of my favourite cartoons shows Jesus and Mo explaining to the barmaid the Aristotelian idea, later picked up by both Islamic and Christian theologians, that ‘Everything that has a beginning must have a cause’ and ‘the universe has a beginning, therefore it must have a cause’. ‘Therefore?’, asks the barmaid. ‘Therefore no bacon’, replies Mo. ‘Or gay sex’, chips in Jesus. It is a typical dig at the illogicalities of religious faith. It also, in Jesus and Mo’s inimitable way, taps into one of the most difficult theological conundrums for believers, the tension between
The Guardian on Saba and Gulalai Ismail of Aware Girls:
… Read the restAware Girls was founded in 2002 and operates in the face of severe violence, not just in Peshawar but also in Pakistan’s tribal areas and other troubled parts of the country. It trains young women on their rights – and, through its Youth Peace Network, makes efforts to encourage more women into politics – who then try to stop their peers being radicalised, leaving Peshawar for villages and towns where they try to dissuade others from joining extremist groups.
In Peshawar, this is highly dangerous work – not least because Aware Girls is run mainly by women. One of its attendees in 2011 was Malala Yousafzai, whose own
Eiynah at Nice Mangos is feeling more than annoyed at the way ex-Muslims are ignored by nearly all political directions.
… Read the restAs the Canadian federal election date draws closer, I can’t get my mind off the niqab debate. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that this one issue demonstrates how voices like mine – fromwithin the Muslim community are routinely ignored, cast aside, betrayed by the illiberal ‘liberal’ West …simply for the crime of not fitting the simplistic tribalist narratives.
Zunera Ishaq – a Pakistani immigrant to Canada just like myself ….took on the government regarding the issue of niqabs during the citizenship oath and won the right to wear a mask in court when no one else is
So that’s a great journalist gone – Lyse Doucet on Sue Lloyd-Roberts.
… Read the restBBC journalist Sue Lloyd-Roberts, who forged a career in secret filming in secretive states, has died of leukaemia at the age of 64. Her courage, compassion and commitment to expose injustice the world over was an irritation to human rights abusers, and an inspiration to many journalists, including me. I’ll miss her as a loyal friend and colleague. And her brave journalism will be missed by many.
I always wondered : “How does Sue Lloyd-Roberts do it?”
How did she keep her nerve when she posed as a European gems importer and filmed with a hidden camera in Rangoon, under repressive military rule, in 2007?
How did
The Chronicle of Higher Education tells us that astronomy colleagues have been trying hard to get Geoff Marcy to stop being a creep for a long time.
… Read the restRuth Murray-Clay, an assistant professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara who earned a Ph.D. in astrophysics on the system’s Berkeley campus in 2008, says it was in 2004 that she first decided to approach Mr. Marcy about what she saw as his inappropriate behavior with young women. Ms. Murray-Clay was the graduate-student representative to Berkeley’s astronomy faculty at the time and was meeting with students about putting together an annual holiday play in which they would poke fun at faculty members.
“Someone suggested putting in a joke about
At the Faber & Faber blog, Kat Banyard tells the story of a trafficker who is also VP of an organization that heavily influenced the UN and Amnesty International in their moves to decriminalize pimping.
… Read the restOn Thursday 12th March 2015, 64 year old Alejandra Gil was convicted in Mexico City of trafficking and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Gil reportedly controlled a pimping operation that exploited around 200 women. Known as the “Madam of Sullivan”, she was one of the most powerful pimps of Sullivan Street, an area of Mexico City notorious for prostitution. Gil and her son were connected with trafficking networks in Tlaxcala state – site of Mexico’s “epicenter for sex trafficking.”
…
In
Pauline Gagnon tells another, a different, horrifying story about Geoff Marcy.
… Read the restI suspect that what has come out so far is only the tip of the iceberg. His inappropriate behaviour goes back a good thirty years, when he was teaching at San Francisco State University.
This is where I met him in 1985 when we both worked in the Physics and Astronomy Department while I was a Master’s student and a lecturer. It was well known that he had intimate relationships with several of his female students. But it is not the only aspect where I felt Marcy’s ethics were questionable.
In 1987, Marcy’s colleague in the search for exoplanets realized that he had handed her a revised copy
Dennis Overybye reports in the Times:
… Read the restGeoffrey Marcy, the renowned astronomer who was found guilty ina campus investigation of sexually harassing students, is resigning from the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where he has been a professor for 16 years.
In an email to members of the astronomy department on Wednesday, the interim chairman of the department, Gibor Basri, wrote, “This is to inform our community that Geoff has initiated the process that will lead to his no longer being a faculty member at U.C. Berkeley.”
In a statement announcing Dr. Marcy’s resignation, the university’s chancellor, Nicholas B. Dirks, and the executive vice chancellor and provost, Claude Steele, said they had accepted Dr. Marcy’s resignation
Pamela Gay was in San Francisco on Friday for a board meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the day the BuzzFeed story about Geoff Marcy broke.
… Read the restBy the end of the day, I was done with reality. I was ready to go back to my hotel room and just play Carcassonne on my iPad and wish for something I thought was impossible – a world that that didn’t hurt. But as we were packing up and sorting rides, I was offered a sweet distraction. Fellow board member Chris Ford offered me a chance to take a ride with him in his Tesla Model S over to his offices at Pixar.
What I didn’t know was he was asking
