Author: Ophelia Benson

The statues join the Magdalen laundries protest in Dublin.

Jane Austen on £10 banknotes? Good idea. Caroline Criado-Perez’s campaign to make that happen? Good idea. Twitter campaign to bombard her with rape threats? Not a good idea. Bad idea. Shitty idea. Horrendous, terrible, stinking, crap idea.

Women ought to be able to show their heads above the parapet without being punished for it by Twitter campaigns to bombard them with rape threats. It’s that simple.

The feminist campaigner who ran the successful bid to get a woman on British banknotes has revealed she has got “up to 50 rape threats an hour” on Twitter.

And prominent journalists, showbiz stars and politicians are rallying to support Caroline Criado-Perez, who runs the Women’s Room, threatening to quit the site if nothing is done to stop the abuse.

Criado-Perez said she had been getting the threats for almost 48 hours since the announcement by the Bank of England that it would put Jane Austen on the £10 from 2017.

Twitter does a really bad job of dealing with abuse.

Tweets to her account, many of which are too grotesque for publication, include one user who said: “Everyone jump on the rape train, @CCriadoPerez is the conductor.”

Another wrote: “Hey sweetheart, give me a call when you’re ready to be put in your place.”

A petition on Change.org has attracted almost 12,000 signatures, calling for Twitter to address the issue.

I’ve signed it.

Laurie Penny said a true thing in one tweet.

Germaine Greer once wrote that women have no idea how much men hate them. Thanks to the internet, now we do.

Really. Not all men, certainly, not men as such, but damn – some of them, a lot.

[Caitlin] Moran suggested many prominent Tweeters and supporters leave Twitter on August 4th, International Friendship Day, for 24 hours, in solidarity with Criado-Perez and victims of online abuse.

Ok, let’s do that. August 4th. Remember that.

Tony Wang, the general manager of Twitter UK said in a statement on the site: “We take abuse seriously and will investigate reports made via https://support.twitter.com/forms.

“We don’t comment on individual accounts, but we have rules which people agree to abide by when they sign up to Twitter. We take online abuse seriously and provide advice and guidance to our users.”

That is bullshit. No they don’t.

Criado-Perez told him so.

Wow. Desmond Tutu says – echoing Huck Finn – he would rather go to hell than to a homophobic heaven.

That’s really quite amazing (in a good way). Since he’s an archbishop, he takes those categories seriously (as Huck did). That means he would give up a lot of massively important goods for one that for him is even more important. That’s impressive.

He also says he would prefer that hell to worship of a homophobic god. That too is impressive.

(It’s unfair, in a way, that theists get credit for this when atheists don’t. But atheists aren’t giving up anything in saying that, while theists are. I find it hard not to give Tutu credit.)

Desmond Tutu has said he would rather go to hell than worship a homophobic god.

The retired archbishop was speaking at the United Nations’ launch of its gay-rights program in Cape Town, South Africa, a country where there is still much prejudice against gay people.

He said: “I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I would much rather go to the other place.

“I would not worship a God who is homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this.

“I am as passionate about this campaign as I ever was about apartheid. For me, it is at the same level.”

Props.

The Secular Student Alliance is doing a crowdfunding campaign to fund a Rapid Response Organizer who will zoom off at a moment’s notice to give support or help to a student who needs support or help. This is obviously a hella good idea. You can donate to it on this page.

You can read more on the information page.

Part organizer, part crisis manager, part mediator, and part journalist, the Rapid Response Organizer (RRO) will travel anywhere in the country on short notice to support and amplify the work of secular students.

When secular students find themselves in a firestorm of controversy for insisting on the separation of government and religion, the RRO will ensure students know they are not alone and that an entire movement stands beside them.

When secular students are denied the same rights as other students, the RRO will document the situation, educate the administration on the law, and escalate to legal resources if less formal resolution fails.

When secular students do especially amazing work, such as two SSA affiliate groups in Minnesota putting on a large scale conference on secularism and technology, the RRO will be there to document exactly how other groups can replicate that scale of work.

And the next time a public school administration brings in a preacher, a secular student stands up for their rights, or a secular student group is going the extra mile on their amazing project, they will know the Rapid Response Organizer will be there, ready and able to support their secular activism.

Help us make this vision a reality. We estimate the total annual cost of the RRO will be $100,000 (between personnel-related expenses and frequent, extended, last-minute travel).  We will be fundraising from July 25, 2013 to August 25, 2013.  Once we reach our goal, we will begin interviewing candidates so we can make the organizer available as soon as possible.

I look forward to the secular student super hero.

Now let’s leave Turkey and head south to Morocco, where an 18-year-old girl was sentenced to three months in prison for smoking during Ramadan.

Le juge a rejeté la demande de liberté provisoire sous caution de la famille de la jeune fille. Cette dernière a expliqué qu’elle avait mal à la tête et avait besoin de fumer une cigarette pour se calmer.

Cependant, la police lui aurait fait subir un examen médical pour trouver toute indisposition qui pourrait l’exempter du jeûne, en vain.

The judge rejected a request by the family to release her into their custody even though they explained that she’d had a headache and needed a cigarette to relax. Clearly there was no point in requesting that the case be thrown out because how the fuck is it the business of the law if someone smokes in public during Ramadan?

Pour rappel, selon l’article 222 du Code pénal marocain, est passible d’un 1 à 6 mois de prison, assortie d’une amende, « celui qui, notoirement connu pour son appartenance à la religion musulmane, rompt ostensiblement le jeûne dans un lieu public pendant le temps du Ramadan, sans motif admis par cette religion».

Article 22 of the Moroccan penal code – 1 to 6 months in prison for one who, well known to belong to the Muslim religion, apparently breaks the fast in a public place during Ramadan, without any motive recognized by that religion.

Oh fuck off.

There’s a guy in Turkey – a lawyer – who’s pissed off that heavily pregnant women go out in public, because ew, gross.

Turkish lawyer and Sufi thinker Ömer Tuğrul İnançer has sparked a public outcry after telling state television station TRT 1 that it was immoral for pregnant women with huge bellies to reveal themselves in public.

“Announcing pregnancy with a flourish of trumpets is against our civility. [They] should not wander on the streets with such bellies. First of all, it is not aesthetic,” İnançer said. “After seven or eight months of pregnancy, future mothers go out their husbands by car to get some fresh air. And they go out in the evening hours. But now, they are all on television. It’s disgraceful. It is not realism, it is immorality.”

Yeah? What if some heavily pregnant woman doesn’t like Ömer Tuğrul İnançer’s face, and goes on tv to say he shouldn’t reveal himself in public, because it is not aesthetic?

There is not isolation against women in Islam, and being a mother is a gift, Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate said in a statement following the reactions.

“There is nothing like isolation against women in the religion. There is no isolation for pregnant women, either.  On the contrary, being mother is a gift,” the statement said, while still calling on pregnant women to dress modestly. “However, pregnant women should be more careful about their dressing – every woman should. [They] should not wear clothes showing their bellies or backs.”

It also emphasized that “we learn religion from the Quran and the life of the Prophet Muhammad.”

Problem solved. No isolation for pregnant women. On the other hand, pregnant women should not wear clothes showing their bellies. If it turns out that isn’t possible for pregnant women – well what can you do? It’s all right there in  the Quran and the life of the Prophet Muhammad.

H/t Torcant.

In my opinion, you should avoid taking two baskets when you go shopping.

Via the Facebook page of a Moroccan-French ex-Muslim –

First guy: Come on, we’re heading for the vegetables. Smart shopper: But… Second guy: Dude! Leggo my wife, yours is over there!

I just took a few recreational minutes to get on GoogleEarth and retrace part of a long walk I took in Dublin the Monday morning after the conference. Down Winetavern Street to the Liffey, along the river on the south side to the next bridge, up Lower Bridge Street up the hill and into the grounds of St Audoen’s church, along the High Street.

It’s an interesting thing to do because it digs up bits of memory that would be totally lost otherwise. I already remembered the church grounds, because I lingered there, but retracing that whole segment of the walk I recognized more nondescript places, like the big busy intersection before you get to St Audoen’s. It’s not particularly interesting, so I wouldn’t have remembered it, but “walking” GoogleEarth I did remember it. It’s an odd sensation.

Strangely enough, I didn’t get it on the part along the Liffey, between the two bridges. None of that came back in the same way. Silly memory – it grabs a dull intersection and misses the whole of the river walk. I know I went there but it’s now just narrative memory, a fact – I went down the hill from one church and up the hill to another and along the river between the two.

Memory is very peculiar.

Now the bad news, from the same source –

Our urgent action is needed over the next three days to stop the deportation of another Yarl’s Wood lesbian asylum seeker, this time to Uganda. Aisha N has lived here for 11 years. Like most LGBT people seeking a sanctuary in Britain she did not claim asylum on sexuality grounds – you don’t know if it is safe to ‘come out’, and indeed sexuality was not clearly or securely established as a possible basis for asylum at that time. Instead she claimed asylum on political grounds – in fact she had been involved in political activity against the Kenyan government even though that was not the main reason for her seeking asylum – but she was refused anyway. Like so many victims of inherently racist immigration policies Aisha had to stay here by any means necessary – until she was arrested and imprisoned for possessing a false passport in 2010, making her, in the Government’s eyes, a ‘foreign national criminal’. Her history has been used by the Home Office and the Immigration Judge as reasons not to accept her credibility as a lesbian: everything that the immigration and asylum system forced Aisha to do in order to stay safe from anti-gay violence in Uganda has been turned into a so-called ‘justification’ for sending her back there.

…

Now Aisha has been given ‘removal directions’ via Kenya Airlines for this Saturday, 27 July at 8.00pm on flight KQ101 from London Heathrow, Terminal 4.

Movement for Justice has suggestions on what to do to prevent Aisha N’s deportation.

First, the good news – Josephine Komeh’s deportation was canceled on Tuesday, the day before she was due to be sent back to Sierra Leone. That’s tremendous news. And it’s possible that all of you who signed and shared the petition helped make it happen.

This week the fight by asylum seekers, women detainees in Yarl’s Wood detention centre, refugees and supporters organised by the Movement for Justice, and the determination and leadership of Josephine Komeh and Mariama N themselves stopped the deportation of both these courageous women. Josephine & Mariama with other Movement for Justice women in Yarl’s Wood organised their own petition campaigns inside the detention centre in co-ordination with the petitioning, demonstrating, calls and e-mails to the Home Office and the airlines and the online publicity organised outside.

Josephine Komeh was trained to follow her grandmother and mother as the ‘cutter’ carrying out female genital mutilation (FGM) in their community in Sierra Leone, but she refused to continue the brutal practice and to stood up against the threats from traditional elders. She was brutally tortured and escaped to join her son & daughter in Britain where she claimed asylum. Josephine resisted one attempt to deport her on 5 June and won the time to build her support, gather more evidence and get new legal representation. The attempt to deport her this week was an outrageous attempt by the Home Office to get rid of her before her ‘Fresh Claim’ could be submitted. It failed: on Tuesday afternoon her removal was canceled.

Yessssss.

In honor of the conviction for fraud of one of the guys who sold empty boxes as “bomb detectors,” a post from January 2010.

Flashing lights, and a beeping noise

Call me sentimental but I do think this is a quotation for the ages. It’s from the guy who made the ‘bomb detector’ thingy out of an antenna and a hinge and a plastic tag, and sold lots of them for $40,000 each, and got arrested on suspicion of fraud for doing that.

We have been dealing with doubters for ten years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.

Do admit. The sunny innocence, the tenderly confiding honesty of that brings tears to the eyes, does it not? He sweetly admits there are ‘doubters’ – people not convinced that a stick and a bit of duct tape and a ‘card’ and a bit of plastic can actually detect explosives. He admits that one little stumbling block (to what? charging $80,000 apiece?) is that the ‘machine’ (the bendy stick with the bit of plastic inside) looks a little primitive even though in reality of course it is more elaborate and complicated and technical and sciencey than an MRI or a particle accelerator or an iPod or an electric toothbrush. And then, in the bit that is so limpid and childlike and of the dawn dawny, he murmurs of his exacting technical labors on a new model with flashing lights. So what you would have then, see, would be a bendy stick with a ‘card’ and a bit of plastic all topped, like a car wash, with flashing lights. So there you’d be shuffling around the checkpoint in Afghanistan, swinging your bendy stick around sniffing for explosives, and your life would be made more glamorous and exciting and Christmassy and convincing by these exciting flashing lights on your bendy stick. Until you stepped on the bomb, of course.

That guy who put handles and antennae on boxes and sold the result as “bomb detectors” has been found guilty of making and selling fake bomb detectors. There are some things you really don’t want fakes of – bridges, medicine, fire trucks – stuff like that. Bomb detectors are high up on that list if you live in an area where bombs are a real possibility. Lots of people do. Many many many people live in places like that.

The Old Bailey heard the devices made by Gary Bolton, 47, were nothing more than boxes with handles and antennae.

The prosecution said he sold them for up to £10,000 each, claiming they could detect explosives. The trial heard the company had a £3m annual turnover selling the homemade devices.

Bolton, of Redshank Road in Chatham, Kent, had denied two charges of fraud. Sentencing has been adjourned.

Richard Whittam QC, prosecuting, told the court that Bolton knew the devices – which were also alleged to be able to detect drugs, tobacco, ivory and cash – did not work but supplied them anyway to be sold to overseas businesses.

No fraud though! Just an honest mistake. He thought attaching antennae to the empty boxes turned them into bomb detectors.

Bolton claimed his own devices worked with a range of 766 yards (700m) at ground level and as far as two and a half miles (4km) in the air.

He claimed they were effective through lead-lined and metal walls, water, containers and earth.

In 2010 a Home Office defence expert tested Bolton’s GT200 detector at the request of the Office of Fair Trading and found it had “no credibility as an explosive detector” because it had no functioning parts.

Further stringent “double-blind” tests carried out on the GT200 by Dr Michael Sutherland of the University of Cambridge found that it worked successfully twice in 24 tests searching for TNT, which was less than the probability of finding the explosives at random.

Which is not surprising, because the box was empty.

It’s a bit like Harry Lime and the diluted penicillin. Not just fraud but lethal fraud. Not nice.

The Family Research Council doesn’t like Nina Pillard.

Unfortunately for Americans, the Senate won’t have to dig too deep to uncover some of Pillard’s shockers. Among some of her greatest hits, the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General argues that abortion is necessary to help “free women from historically routine conscription into maternity.”

Yes – and? Can Tony Perkins really think it’s not true that sometimes women have been made pregnant when they didn’t want to be? Really? Can he even think it wasn’t very common before contraception became widely available, and still is in many parts of the world where women don’t have the right or ability to say no?

As if her militant feminism wasn’t apparent enough, she takes the opportunity in some of her writings to slam anyone who opposes the abortion-contraception mandate as “reinforce[ing] broader patterns of discrimination against women as a class of presumptive breeders.”

The Family Research Council should be called the Family Is Mandatory Council.

Amanda also points out something I too have been pointing out for years – “radical feminism” isn’t.

There is no such thing as a “radical feminist” anymore.

Don’t get me wrong! There was. In the 60s and 70s, there were radical feminists who were distinguishing themselves from liberal feminists. Radical feminists agreed with liberal feminists that we should change the laws to recognize women’s equality, but they also believed that we needed to change the culture. It was not enough to pass the ERA or legalize abortion, they believed, but we should also talk about cultural issues, such as misogyny, objectification, rape, and domestic violence.

And media representations of women, and sexist jokes, and who does the housework, and cookies don’t just bake themselves you know. And don’t call me “Honey,” and I’m not here to make coffee, and do you realize you’ve interrupted me every single time I’ve tried to say something this evening? And street harassment, and no, knowing how to clean the toilet is not congenital, and will you please stop using the word “girl” as an insult? And sport, and the military, and double standards in everything, and wtf are cankles?

In other words, what was once “radical” feminism is now mainstream feminism.

Exactly.

I realize there are anti-trans, anti-sex feminists out there who call themselves radical feminists, but I, simply put, don’t agree. What’s radical about them? They are to the right of the mainstream feminist movement. They often have more in common with the conservatives decrying mainstream feminism as “radical” than they do the original radical feminists who had consciousness-raising groups and abortion speak outs and who started Ms Magazine.

When Sarah Palin says she’s a feminist – you don’t have to believe her.

Georgia – not the Paula Deen one, the other one – has a “test the bride for virginity” service, the BBC tells us.

Maintenance of virginity before marriage is deeply entrenched in the Orthodox
Christian country, although not everyone’s happy with the idea of it being
documented. One young interviewee branded it “disgusting”. She told the TV
reporter: “I would say no if I were asked to do this… if I am to spend my
whole life with him, he should trust me.” Web users also mocked the inspection
service, circulating a digitally-altered image of an ID card with an added
“virginity status” parameter.

Yes I don’t see that being a very pleasant conversation with the future mother-in-law.