An ad I keep noticing here and there. The copy says
How Cruise Lines Fill All Those Unsold Cabins
And the image is
It couldn’t get much cruder, could it. (Well it could. It could skip the bikini and aim the camera up between her legs. But other than that…)
Hay! Look! Legs bum sex! Now click on the ad.
(I suppose they fill all those unsold cabins with women’s bums? That must be it?)
There are important questions that remain unanswered when all the facts are in.
Martin Pribble discusses the results of his 3 Questions project, Part One.
The first question was
How does your worldview, (atheism, skepticism or agnosticism, whichever is applicable to you), influence your life?
Martin summarizes the replies:
It seems to me that atheism/agnosticism/skepticism is either seen as a platform from which to build all of life’s experiences, or that it is just accepted as “the way things are”. In either case, it does inform parts of the respondents’ lives, particularly when it comes to the analysis of doubtful claims.
What it does show is that, of the 326 respondents, there is a level of certainty about how their worldview of atheism/agnosticism/skepticism influences their lives, and that most respondents did see this as an important part of them being themselves.
Many of the replies that Martin quotes are skeptical more than atheist; I chose to answer as an atheist. Atheism is more close to the bone, in a way – it’s about rejecting one tyrant, one Big Boss, one imposed celestial dictator. Theism is the model for all kinds of tyranny, so it shapes our thinking in bad ways. The Boss in question is a big deal, and makes big demands on us. Not believing in it makes a difference specifically because of that. I replied from that point of view.
My atheism frees me from thinking I have to obey a mysterious hidden god that I’ve never met or encountered or had any communication with. It frees me from thinking I have to obey rules I think are vicious and horrible. It frees me to judge moral questions in human, this-world terms.
I never stop being grateful for that.
Don’t miss Bruce Everett’s great piece, “…assuming the mantle”.
I’ll give you a teaser to make sure that you don’t.
I didn’t get it, and I haven’t got it for most of the time. I’m only just getting it – the faux-masculine shibboleths that I’m expected to observe, in order to be ‘one of the guys’.
Especially the degradation of women as rite of passage.
Don’t get me wrong…
I’m nobody’s knight in shining armour (I think this will be the last time I repeat this for some time), and I don’t believe in chivalry towards women – chivalry, as opposed to decency, assumes that women are frail objects to be protected like delicate porcelain in a world they’re not equipped to deal with. Women are no such thing.
I’ve got an interest in this. If pseudo- and actual misogyny are used as defining criteria for what it is to be masculine, then I consider that an imposture. I don’t want that group identity lumbered on me, and moreover, I’m willing, if imposed upon, to fight for my stake in masculine culture to the exclusion of other men.
Gentlemen, if you’re going to make an asshole out of yourself in the first instance, I’m not going to take much notice when you make squeals of indignation, when you get a little comeuppance. That is unless, I find it justifiable, useful, and entertaining, to laugh at you.
Seriously though, some men really shit me. The things that some of you expect me to take on board as normal, or healthy, or unappealing-but-otherwise-not-rebarbative.
Brian Earp is unimpressed by the American Academy of Pediatrics ’s (how do you make a possessive out of that, anyway?) revision of its policy on circumcision.
They now say that the probabilistic health benefits conferred by the procedure just slightly outweigh the known risks and harms. Not enough to come right out and positively recommend circumcision (as some media outlets are erroneously reporting), but just enough to suggest that whenever it is performed—for cultural or religious reasons, or sheer parental preference, as the case may be—it should be covered by government health insurance.
That turns out to be a very fine line to dance on. But fear not: the AAP policy committee comes equipped with tap shoes tightly-laced, and its self-appointed members have shown themselves to be hoofers of the nimblest kind. Their position statement is full of equivocations, hedging, and uncertainty; and the longer report upon which it is based is replete with non-sequiturs, self-contradiction, and blatant cherry-picking of essential evidence. Both documents shine as clear examples of a “lowest common denominator” mélange birthed by a divided committee, some of whose members must be well aware that United States is embarrassingly out of tune with world opinion on this issue.
Child health experts in Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada say there is no meaningful benefit and it shouldn’t be recommended. Seems fair. There is no meaningful benefit, so don’t snip off a bit of the penis. Err on the side of not snipping off, because no meaningful benefit.
In view of this empirical uncertainty on the medical question, it is problematic to assert, as the AAP does in its new report, that a person does not retain the right to decide whether he wishes to keep his own healthy foreskin–and preserve his genitals in their natural form–and that the right belongs instead to his parents.
Which is odd, because they have their own genitals. Why don’t they alter their own if they want to alter? Why is it always vicarious?
A more reasonable conclusion than the AAP’s, then, is that the person whose penis it is should be allowed to consider, for himself, the available evidence (in all its chaotic murkiness) when he is mentally competent to do so—and make a personal decision about what is, after all, a functional bit of his own sexual anatomy and one enjoyed without issue by the vast majority of the world’s males.
Ah but liberals. Choice. Secularism. Community. Just ask Giles Fraser.
I didn’t get it, and I haven’t got it for most of the time. I’m only just getting it – the faux-masculine shibboleths that I’m expected to observe, in order to be ‘one of the guys’.
Especially the degradation of women as rite of passage.
Don’t get me wrong…
I’m nobody’s knight in shining armour (I think this will be the last time I repeat this for some time), and I don’t believe in chivalry towards women – chivalry, as opposed to decency, assumes that women are frail objects to be protected like delicate porcelain in a world they’re not equipped to deal with. Women are no such thing.
I’ve got an interest in this. If pseudo- and actual misogyny are used as defining criteria for what it is to be masculine, then I consider that an imposture. I don’t want that group identity lumbered on me, and moreover, I’m willing, if imposed upon, to fight for my stake in masculine culture to the exclusion of other men.
Gentlemen, if you’re going to make an asshole out of yourself in the first instance, I’m not going to take much notice when you make squeals of indignation, when you get a little comeuppance. That is unless, I find it justifiable, useful, and entertaining, to laugh at you.
Seriously though, some men really shit me. The things that some of you expect me to take on board as normal, or healthy, or unappealing-but-otherwise-not-rebarbative.
[Trigger warning: There isn’t anything explicit beyond this point, but the subject matter is rather dark, delving into the dank, unsanitary world of misogyny, as it does].
***
Back in the early 1990s, I liked to particularly geeky genres – anime and horror. And I don’t mean just any old anime – the big budget stuff, with watercolour landscapes and the like. As for horror, I liked a good dose of black humour and slapstick – not the sadism that passes for a horror movie these days.
So… I was introduced by one of The Guys, to another one of The Guys, who knew a thing or two about anime – this guy was really nerdy, as in poor social skills, and never talking to women. All the same, I took the guy’s recommendation on face value.
I had no idea what I’d unleashed.
So I forked out $35 on a VHS cassette of some anime that I hadn’t seen before, that was horror, and was R-rated. Nothing on the cassette, at first glances, even suggested what sadistic crap I was going to be exposed to (and keep in mind, my revulsion, even though this stuff was heavily censored).
Basically, the Internet being what it is, people are going to have some idea of what I ran into. Rape, murder, torture, cannibalism, all sensationalised and eroticised, little of which even the cutting of swathes of footage managed to hide particularly well.
(No, I’m not advocating censorship – I’m pointing out how rotten the uncensored product, and the mind of its creators, must be).
This wasn’t a horror movie, although I was horrified – traumatised into disbelief, at first, actually. This was animated snuff for sickos.
And the sickest part, you ask?
The level of acceptance amongst some of The Guys. Hell, there was backslapping, and in-jokes, and ideations, and apologetics, and… You don’t want to know.
Suffice to say I conveniently lost contact with all of the individuals concerned by the end of the 90s, before I lost all control and went on a rage.
***
I didn’t get then, that the degradation of women was expected as a practice amongst the group members. Why would this be necessary?
It gets worst, it seems, the older the guys get. Or at least, the older and lonelier the guys get.
(It never occurs to them, that being like they are, being left well alone may actually be on balance, morally desirable – context like mental health care, to be taken into account).
Months ago, while the Internet, and in particular the atheist part of it, were arguing about male privilege, and neckbeards, and sexual harassment, and sexual liberalism, and the like, I was gradually, and unwittingly extricating myself, via conflict, from the company of a few sad old men. I treated it, as a one-on-one, man0-a-mano (if you’ll allow the mistranslation), arrangement, where I’d pick my differences with one of the guys, and nobody else was bound to pick a side.
As I whittled my way though acquaintances, as the remainder of the group became smaller and smaller, my understanding became deeper, and my barbs more articulate. Eventually, I was able to cut to the wrongness underpinning people’s behaviours – self-pity, the objectification of women (and girls), sexual entitlement bias, selfishness, victim-blaming in matters of sexual harassment, and so on.
Once the penny had really dropped, all of a sudden, my one-on-one style of conflict, which had unanimously been agreed to be a virtuous approach, was up-ended, and the remainder of the group simply rounded the wagons and cut me off. The group, defended as a group, and as far as I’m concerned, marked themselves as pathetic in the process.
Don’t think though, that I’d reverse the consequences – I’m much happier now.
***
It’s not just the sexually pathetic, though. Old rockers, old punks, and other aging edgy sorts, too often when meeting me for the first time, use the words ‘cunt’, ‘slut’, ‘scrag’, ‘bitch’, and the like, the way the occasional rapping grandpa uses a back-to-front cap. ‘What’s up, my dawgs?’
This does not impress me.
Why on Earth do I have to take just an even share of the masculine group identity with this sad bunch? Why am I expected to assumed the mantle shared by yet another tragic victim of the male menopause?
Men can be better than this.
And don’t go all old school on me, you ‘Women Know Their Rights Too Well These Days’ tragics. You know what’s also a masculine tradition? Stepping outside.
Yes, I know it’s a stupid tradition – I just find it odd that while some guys think it’s stupid as well, they’re still happy to hold onto the misogyny.
***
There’s a silver lining on this aerial-turd of a dark cloud. (If you think this is a mixed-metaphor, wait ‘till it starts raining).
I’ve literally spent years ruminating on this garbage, which has made me investigate, which has made me sick and depressed, which has made me ruminate, which has made me… ad nauseam.
(This actually has, ultimately, induced nausea and vomiting).
During the less sane, more-damaged periods of my life (1998-2001), while not actually making me dangerous, this culture of misogyny has driven me to scary, unpredictable, social ineptitudes, miscues, and miscommunications. I’ve since fought back from there, obviously, but it’s still been perplexing and frustrating.
The upside, if you can call it that, is that I can intuit this kind of thing now. I’ve got a feel for what makes these guys tick, and I don’t have to engage in any lengthy study to get the needed grasp. I don’t need to damage myself anymore, through the high-fidelity surveying of the sewers of the woman-hating mind.
I’m now a position to retaliate, with less risk to my own mind.
No, I’m not about to single anyone out, or psychoanalyse them. I have no business deploying professional diagnostic tools in such a capacity.
My angle is playing on the insecurities, the infantile pettiness, and the absurdities that underlie this broken, failed masculinity. If anyone will be outed, it’ll be the neckbeards outing themselves in fits of rage, if they choose to retaliate.
I enjoy being a man. I don’t enjoy having my satisfaction disrupted by men who need to feel bad about women, just to feel good about being men themselves.
This is my shtick – where there is entitlement, and self-pity in these matters, I’m going to be unsettling. I’m not responding so much to recent events in the atheosphere (although there is that), and again, I’m not singling-out or piling-on.
A need to do this has been around longer than the recent clashes in my social proximity, and it’s a need that’s at least deeply engrained within me – carved into me.
I hope to unsettle, to induce doubt in misogynists (and racists, and ablists, and racists, and homophobes, and so on), through short fiction, poetry and satire, directed at the commonplace. I want to implicitly suggest uncomfortable questions, and yes, I will enjoy watching certain types of people squirm as they doubt themselves.
I shall not assume the mantle that is expected of me.
The historian Tom Holland came close to saying Mohammed may not have existed at all in that Channel 4 documentary on Islam last week. Result: almost 550 complaints to both Ofcom and Channel 4. Also lots of outraged tweets. (Well that goes without saying at this point.)
The Islamic Education and Research Academy has published a lengthy paper denouncing the programme. But historians have rallied to Mr Holland’s defence.
The Academy claims the programme’s assertion that there are no historical records detailing the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad is flawed, saying:
Holland appears to have turned a blind eye to rich Islamic historical tradition.
Ofcom, which has received 150 complaints about the programme’s alleged bias, inaccuracy and offence caused to Muslims, is considering an investigation.
I like the flourish of “rich Islamic historical tradition” – as if a “rich” tradition were the point instead of an accurate one.
Renee Hendricks has her facts wrong. She has a post on The Women Behind AtheismPlus, and she says there are three, and I’m one.
I’m going to try very hard to make this the last spiel I have on “Atheism Plus”. It’s hard simply because I hate seeing the community I’ve come to love be so divided and actually hampered by the creation of a group intent on co-opting not only the term “atheism” but also a logo (apparently the A+ logo on http://atheismplus.com is from a tee-shirt that has been available on Richard Dawkins site for over 4 years). What is more distressing and pertinent to women is that there are 3 women behind the “movement”: Jen McCreight, Ophelia Benson, and Rebecca Watson.
Nooo, that’s not right at all. It’s wrong on two counts – it counts two who aren’t and omits many who are.
Rebecca has said explicitly she’s not joining. I’ve said explicitly I consider it a description or label rather than a movement. Neither of us had anything at all to do with starting it or setting it up.
Hendricks of course considers her inclusion on the list as blame, while I’m disavowing the credit. Other people have put in considerable effort on the project and I haven’t, so I don’t get credit for doing so.
Normally, I wouldn’t give 2 shits about these women or the movement. But they are actively and divisively stripping apart atheism and attempting to bring together a happy little club of women and sycophantic men under the guise of being more socially responsible. Nothing could be further from the truth. These women are simply angry that they’ve been slighted/harassed/sexed in some way, shape, or form and feel their best course of action is to create a “special snowflake” clique.
We’re stripping apart atheism? Really? I wouldn’t even know how to begin. Also, atheism isn’t stripped apart. And then the “special snowflake” thing – that seems to be very popular with Hendricks’s clique. It’s kind of an ugly concept, at least it is if it’s applied too broadly. Sure, some people are way too quick to take offense. That doesn’t mean everybody is. It depends. There are particulars. Just calling everything “”special snowflake” doesn’t further the discussion.
She goes on to assert a whole bunch of things about all three of us that she can’t possibly (and doesn’t) know. She also says we don’t know what “misogyny” means, then tells us what it means, which I already knew.
Other than that, a valuable intervention.
Another petition you can sign, this one recommended to me by Bruce Everett. It’s to put some heat on Alan “destroying the joint” Jones. Formally it’s to urge advertisers to get him to apologize, but really I think it’s to get him to take some heat. (I mean who cares if he apologizes, really? What good is that? But some heat might décourager les autres.
The robot sucked the air into its big Sample Analysis at Mars instrument
to reveal the concentration of different gases.
They would still have the same curriculum though.
A Pakistani military helicopter plucked her from a prison yard on Saturday and flew her to a secret location after she was granted bail.
Via Lauryn Oates, a terrific article on the myth that the hijab protects women against sexual assault.
I was only 6 years old when my family was forced to flee the civil war in Afghanistan for Pakistan in the late 1980s. My sister, Neelo, who is five years older than me, was enrolled in a Saudi-funded Muslim Brotherhood-inspired public school for Afghan refugees. She, like many Muslim women, wore a simple headscarf.
I remember Neelo picking up her tiny bag, wrapping her scarf around her hair, and going to her first day of school. I also sadly remember her coming back from school that day and telling our parents: “The guards told me, ‘Either you are going to wear the full hijab or wear a chador [an Afghan burqa], or you can’t come to school.’” Her tiny headscarf was no longer enough.
Age 11. Ordered into a body bag at age 11.
Neelo was forced to wear the most restrictive form of the hijab—almost exactly like the woman in this image. Things were fine until the next year, when I started school myself. My mother sat me down and told me that from then on I would have to walk my sister to school every day.
I grew to hate it. Every school day, for years, as the two of us walked toward Neelo’s school, men would stare at her, sizing up her body behind the dark clothes, whispering to each other, making signs with their hands, making catcalls, taunting her, and saying things like how pretty she was—even though the only thing you could see on my sister’s body were her eyes.
The men who passed us on sidewalks would say demeaning things—things sexual in nature that I was too young to understand. My mom and dad wanted me to walk her to school because if I wasn’t with her, who knew what these men would do? I grew up hearing stories about women being groped, punched, even abducted—all while wearing hijabs. The perpetrators were from all ethnic groups and were both Pakistanis and, like us, refugees.
The experience left me angry, helpless, and traumatized.
It’s hatred. Hatred, contempt, domination. It leaves me angry and traumatized too. It makes the world feel like an alien place sometimes.
The myth that there’s a correlation between the hijab and a low incidence of sexual harassment and violence against women actually systematically victimizes them. Men are doing women a disservice in that they are placing blame on women who don’t cover themselves, as well as insinuating that a woman who is attacked while wearing a headscarf somehow did something to deserve it. As with all victim-blaming, this prevents women from speaking up about sexual assault. Many mainstream conservative Muslim clerics and pseudo-social scientists—like Zakir Naik, in this video, which is a must-see for anyone wanting to learn about this issue—openly imply or proclaim that women who don’t wear the hijab are callingfor sexual harassment and sexual violence. They go so far as correlating a woman’s right to wear what she wants in the West with a high incidence of sexualized violence against women there.
That’s what it’s like. It’s as if, by going outside, you’ve actively asked for attention or interference.
I’m celebrating World Naked Head day.
Even if the only part of a woman’s body that shows is her shadow, harassers will sexualize and fetishize it.
The good news is, Rimsha has been granted bail. The bad news is, it’s about $10,500 or £6,200. The worse news is, would anyone keep her safe if she did make bail?
The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says Rimsha is the first person accused of blasphemy to have been granted bail by a trial court.
Blasphemy is not a bailable offence but her lawyers pleaded that she was a juvenile.
Blasphemy is not a bailable offence. Blasphemy is not a bailable offence. Would you believe it? It shouldn’t even be a crime, yet it’s such a crime that it’s not even bailable.
Honestly, you would think that Allah really existed and lived in an actual palace made of emeralds and appeared on the balcony to the whole world every day. You would think ah really existed and did wonderful things for people all the time, and that “blasphemy” did real harm to this real and beneficent Allah, and that everyone knew that, and that Rimsha had actually committed it, and there was actually reason to think so.
But none of that is the case, and “blasphemy” is not a real crime and doesn’t harm anyone and Rimsha was just throwing out some garbage anyway.
Rimsha’s safety upon her release is likely to be a key concern for campaigners. Her father has previously said that he fears for his daughter’s life and for the safety of his family.
Her parents were taken into protective custody at an undisclosed location following threats, and many other Christian families fled the neighbourhood after her arrest.
If her bail payment is met, Rimsha is likely to be reunited with her parents, correspondents say.
There have been cases in Pakistan where people accused of blasphemy have been killed by vigilante mobs.
But the imam in Rimsha’s neighborhood wanted the Christians out, so he planted evidence, and if Rimsha ends up killed by a mob – oh well.
This case has only served to intensify concerns over the misuse of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
Rights activists have long urged Pakistan to reform the laws, under which a person can be jailed for life for desecrating the Koran.
In March 2011 Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister for minority affairs, was killed after calling for the repeal of the blasphemy law.
His death came just two months after the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who also spoke out about the issue.
Despite no Allah, no emerald palace, no wonderful things, no reason to think so.
There was huge (two people) demand for a picture of the book so I took a video still. What Kurdish readers will see:
They are out of scale.
“This is not some short-lived phenomenon – this is an ongoing trend. You lose more and more ice and it is accelerating.”
Foreign Minister’s statement said Canada viewed Iran “as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today”.
Blasphemy is not a bailable offence but her lawyers pleaded that she was a juvenile.
