Paul Fidalgo blogs Melanie Brewster’s talk which also sounds terrific, on the subject of why there aren’t more women in atheism. Brewster is an assistant professor of psychology and education at Columbia.

She cited many older studies that asserted some kind of biological or psychological traits of women that prime them for religious belief, but then revealed that these studies were done with no actual examination of the biological components, and often they came from sociologists working from explicitly religious universities such as Baylor, Brigham Young, and Holy Cross.

But these dusty studies still serve as the foundation for popular understanding of these perceived differences, even among seculars, and she cautioned us to bring our own prized critical thinking to

The fourth Women in Secularism is happening this weekend, and Paul Fidalgo is blogging each session. Maryam spoke yesterday.

At a time when the wearing of burqas and their beachwear variants is an incredibly heated topic, Namazie wasted no time, and withheld no ire, lambasting the enforced veiling of women in Islamic societies.

“Many feminists,” said Namazie, as well as other progressives and secularists, “defend the right to be veiled, but never the right to be unveiled and then live to tell the tale. What a betrayal.”

Secular Coalition tweeted:

.@MaryamNamazie shows a shocking billboard in Iran promoting the hijab, translation: "No one wants to eat the leftovers of flies." #WiS4 pic.twitter.com/I0Omdq8Sj7

— Secular Coalition (@seculardotorg) September

An item from Daily Nous:

Wednesday afternoon, Gordon Hull, associate professor of philosophy at University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and director of the school’s Center for Professional and Applied Ethics, put up a post on the Center’s webpage about the recent police shooting of an unarmed black man, Keith L. Scott (see the bottom of this post for that text).

The central message of the post was summed up in its conclusion:

I do not know exactly what happened last night, but even more than I hope that the CMPD will conduct a thorough and transparent investigation, I hope that something triggers white America to care about the deep structural racism that permeates so much of our society,

Wouldn’t you think editors and subs would learn to stop generating headlines like this? Especially after that conspicuous fuss about the Chicago paper that headlined “Football Player Name’s Wife Wins Medal”?

Tom Waits, his wife, John Prine receive songwriting awards

They just don’t even think we’re human, do they. We’re pets, or The Help.

H/t Jen Phillips… Read the rest

Michael De Dora writes:

Whatever you believe about police and race and racism in the United States, consider this: unarmed citizens who pose little to no danger to society or law enforcement — and, in some cases, citizens in need of help — are being killed in the streets by the very people responsible for keeping us safe. Leave aside for a moment the question of “why.” The bare fact is, this does not happen with such regularity anywhere else in the world. This should disturb as conscientious humans, frighten us as fellow citizens, and concern us very deeply as Americans. Because I can tell you from first-hand experience that in the international halls of power, in the highest

In a NY Times op-ed Lionel Shriver frames the moral panic over her Brisbane Writers Festival talk as a matter of conformity.

Viewing the world and the self through the prism of advantaged and disadvantaged groups, the identity-politics movement — in which behavior like huffing out of speeches and stirring up online mobs is par for the course — is an assertion of generational power. Among milliennials and those coming of age behind them, the race is on to see who can be more righteous and aggrieved — who can replace the boring old civil rights generation with a spikier brand.

When I was growing up in the ’60s and early ’70s, conservatives were the enforcers of conformity. It was

Trump doesn’t want debate moderators pointing out lies. Well he wouldn’t, would he. He lies the way the rest of us breathe, so naturally he doesn’t want reality-based people pointing out all his lies, not to mention his pig-ignorance.

Trump says it’s up to the candidates themselves to call out their rivals when they are wrong. Trump spoke Thursday in a telephone interview on “Fox and Friends.” He says the candidates should “argue it out.”

NBC’s Matt Lauer has received criticism for not pointing out factual errors by Trump at a recent forum on national security.

Errors and also lies. He tells lies. Big, glaring, shameless lies.

Trump says there’s pressure on NBC’s Holt ahead of Monday’s debate at

From Amy Dickinson aka Dear Amy at the Washington Post:

Dear Amy: You used the word “mansplaining” in your reply to “Perplexed.” I don’t think it means what you think it means.

Mansplaining is a sexist word used by feminists to shut down any debate with a man if they think they can’t win with their argument.

Your use of it in your column is offensive to anyone who is capable of a logical discussion.

Mark R. Bates, National Coalition for Men

Mark: Others complained that I had misused the word “mansplaining,” but you are the only person to mansplain while doing it.

“Mansplaining” is a slang term used for when men co-opt ideas, thoughts or concepts generated by

Janice Turner in the Times:

I have complained to the BBC for the first time in my life, about an episode of Radio 4’s iPM in which Jennifer Tracey interviewed a ten-year-old who we were told “identifies as gender non-binary”. The mother said she’d spotted “signs” her daughter wasn’t truly a girl: aged three she wanted a pirates (not princesses) birthday party, disdained dolls, liked Peter Pan, Iron Man and Wolverine.

Instead of buying books on lady pirates, declaring girls can like superheroes — indeed girls can like, do or wear anything! — this mother “did a bit of research on the internet”. Whereby she concluded her daughter was a trans-boy and asked what name she’d like to

This is a useful compendium of Trump’s bad actions, by Keith Olbermann. Mind you, the first item on the list is a dud, because it’s “he attacked the pope.” Verbally, I presume, and I think the pope richly deserves verbal attack. But after that it’s a good list. I’ve been wanting a master-collection, and this is one.

Trump is a guy…

Who lied about why he wouldn’t release his taxes, because he was being audited and proved himself a liar by saying he would release his taxes if Hillary Clinton released her e-mails; who lied about how much money his father gave him or helped him get, coming out of college; who lied about sending his private jet to

Sarah Ditum wrote in the New Statesman today about being genderqueer as a child. No I’m just kidding, she wrote about being a child who thought her favorite cartoon character was a girl.

My reasoning went like this: I am the most important person in the world and a girl, therefore the most important person in my favourite cartoon must also be a girl. And many happy games of Muskehounds were played by me, in my dungarees, oblivious to the unlikelihood of a children’s cartoon having a female lead in the first place, let alone giving that female lead the lovely Juliette as a romantic interest.

Then she realized her mistake, and grew up to be a feminist. I recognize … Read the rest

Jesus explains to Mo about cultural appropriation.

The Patreon is here.… Read the rest

Speaking of Trump and Trump Junior and racism and the alt right and Pepe the frog…ok we weren’t actually speaking of Pepe, but I was reading about Pepe in another article about Trump Junior, and I learned just the other day about Pepe’s status as a meme for the alt-right…so speaking of that, here’s a meme from an Australian political campaign:

Comforting, isn’t it.… Read the rest

The Times reports that Trump Junior is a nasty man just like his darling papa.

Donald Trump Jr. is facing intense backlash on social media after he posted a message on Twitter Monday night that compared Syrian refugees to a bowl of Skittles sprinkled with a few that “would kill you.”

“This image says it all. Let’s end the politically correct agenda that doesn’t put America first,” the post said.

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/778016283342307328

The image doesn’t “say it all” of course. Quite the contrary – the image says nothing. It’s the language above the image that says what Trump means.

It says that three toxic Skittles in a bowl of sixty or so make it dangerous to sample the Skittles. Analogously, … Read the rest

In Ireland, four former sex workers tell their stories.

Ne’cole Daniels

I was taught from the tender age of seven that my worth was between my legs. How I knew this was that I was raped repeatedly by a family member at the age of seven.

It was only reinforced by my mother, who was a prostitute, that my value was between my legs. As long as I had a vagina, I should never be broke. I believed this.

So when I was poached at the age of 15 by yet another family member, I had already been groomed. I lied to myself and stayed in the life until my own daughter was sexually assaulted.

What I know now