Last week, more than 120 girls and three teachers were admitted to a hospital after a similar suspected poisoning.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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Witch-hunts: The darkness that won’t go away
Children who are accused of being witches by their families are often chased out of their homes. These abandoned children can fall prey to child trafficking and abuse.
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The angel Jibril speaks
And Jesus doesn’t get to choose what’s for dinner.
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Sentenced to death for singing and dancing at a wedding
“The local clerics issued a decree to kill all four women and two men shown in the video,” district police officer Abdul Majeed Afridi said.
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World Health Assembly discusses child marriage
The WHO finds that complications in pregnancy and childbirth are the leading cause of death in girls aged 15-19 in the developing world.
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Something that is actually like the Taliban
Mariz Tadros gives a vastly depressing account of life for women in Egypt.
…on the streets of Egypt, inch by inch, bit by bit, women’s rights are shrinking. Women, Muslim and Christian, who do not cover their hair or who wear mid-sleeved clothing are met with insults, spitting and in some cases physical abuse. In the urban squatter settlement of Mouasset el Zakat, in Al Marg, Greater Cairo, women told me that they hated walking in the streets now. Thanks to the lax security situation, they have restricted their mobility to all but the most essential of errands. Whereas a couple of years ago they could just inform their husbands where they were going (visiting parents, friends or going to the hairdresser for example), now they have to get their husbands or older sons to accompany them if they go out after sunset.
And the Islamists have made it worse. A Coptic Christian woman said to me “we and our Muslim friends who do not cover our hair get yelled at by men passing by telling us ‘just you wait, those who will cover you up and make you stay at home are coming, and then there will no more of this lewdness’”. It was, she said, as if they were gloating over the fact that we were being pushed off the streets.
As if? Surely there’s no “as if” about it – gloating is exactly what they were doing.
Another woman told me that girls and women wearing mid-sleeved clothing had been slapped on their bare arms by men on bicycles shouting slurs. Another told me she had been spat on by men telling her to cover up. Another told me that she had her hair up in a pony tail and a young man pulled it so hard that she thought her head was going to fall off. Another recounts how she was pushed and elbowed by a passerby telling her to cover her nakedness (she was wearing a mid-sleeved blouse and trousers).
This seems to be about 80% of what Islamism is about – rabid hatred of women. Hatred, loathing, contempt, disgust, and desire for anihilation. They want women not just to “cover up” but to stay at home – i.e. inside, locked up, out of the public realm, thus non-existent in the larger world. They feel entitled to assault any woman they see.
And some Coptic Christian bossy types are imitating the Islamists, telling “their” women to “cover up.” Some of those women staged a protest on May 18. Tadros was one of them.
As one of the organisers of this protest, I tried to explain why we couldn’t wait. I explained that if there is talk of women’s modesty today, tomorrow there is more pressure on veiling, the day after it is going to be a socially imposed ban on trousers, after that a ban on women’s freedom of mobility, until bit by bit, inch by inch we are driven back home.
Back to the world our great-grandmothers had to put up with. No thank you.
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Egypt: women’s rights are shrinking day by day
Men shout at hijabless women, “Just you wait, those who will cover you up and make you stay at home are coming, and then there will no more of this lewdness.”
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It was a joke, huh huh huh
Elyse Anders was the keynote speaker at Skepticamp Ohio last weekend, and had an unpleasant experience at the end.
Then, at the very end, when everyone was preparing to leave, and I was packing up the Hug Me table, answering questions, and generally socializing with other speakers and attendees, thinking about how fat my check is going to be from Big Pharma when one man and his wife, whom I’ve become vaguely acquainted with on Facebook in the last week, approached my table. He said, “Here’s a little something to remember us by” and handed me an upside-down card. I turned it halfway over, glanced at it peripherally, then thanked them.
A minute or so later, I had a “wait… what?” moment, then flipped the card over and looked at it not peripherally to discover I had not been handed a business card, but a card with a naked photo of the two of them, with their information on how to contact them should I want to fuck.
TMI – with “I” meaning not information but intimacy. Too much intimacy with strangers, without invitation or permission or preliminaries. People, don’t do that.
I cannot think of a single situation where it’s ever appropriate to hand someone an invitation to group sex if you haven’t already had or discussed having sex. I think a nice rule of thumb on handing out such things is: Have you discussed or engaged in sexual activity with this person? If yes, hand them the card. If not, do not hand them the card. If you’re sad because you never had the opportunity to discuss such an opportunity with them, the thing to do is not to shove your card in their face. The thing to do is accept that sometimes, it just doesn’t happen. There isn’t a shortage of humans in the world. You can find another one to have sex with.
There you go, you see – If not, do not hand them the card. Don’t start from zero with “wanna fuck?”
Also sprach the Taliban, I know. The cool right on anti-Taliban thing to do is just say “wanna fuck?” to anyone you consider hot enough to fuck, just in case. Treat the whole world as a cruisey park where people are there for instant fucking, to let the Taliban know it’s not the boss of us. Except no, don’t. Don’t treat women who are there to work as if they’re really, under the mask of doing-something-else, there to have sex with you.
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The sacking of a library in the middle of the night
The what? Yes – and by a Labour council at that. The Kensal Rise branch library, at 2 a.m., with an army of cops.
Kensal Rise library was emptied of its books and stripped of the plaque commemorating its opening 112 years ago by Mark Twain in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Residents who for more than a year campaigned to keep the library open were alerted in the middle of the night that Brent council workers, backed up by police, were stripping the branch of books, furniture, murals painted in the 1930s and the plaque marking the opening in 1900 by Twain. The move follows the council’s failed attempt to clear the library earlier this month, when they were stopped from removing books by protesters.
Members of the writers’ community are not amused.
Local people, backed by literary names, including Philip Pullman and Alan Bennett, have challenged the decision to close six libraries in the north-west London borough at the high court and supreme court, but were told in February no further appeal would be heard. They are now hoping to run the Kensal Rise branch themselves as a volunteer facility, and pledged this morning that the removal of books from the library would not stop them.
“The cowardice of Brent’s Labour council in stripping Kensal Rise library, and the philistinism of unscrewing the brass plaque remembering Mark Twain from its wall, in the middle of the night, would horrify anyone who still recalls Labour’s founding mission to share education, knowledge and hope with the people. We will continue to fight for our library,” said the author Maggie Gee, vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature.
The playwright Michael Frayn also condemned the move. “They took the books out and the plaque down? So the library is now an unlibrary, in the way that people became unpersons in the darkest days of the Soviet Union. I hope they took the titles of the books off as well. Removing unbooks from an unlibrary – who could possibly object?”
The biographer Sir Michael Holroyd said: “The wanton destruction of the Kensal Rise Library – its books removed, its history erased – is a gross act of philistinism which will bring lasting shame to all involved.”
I don’t know the background, but…I don’t like to see libraries closed.
Photos via Save Kensal Rise Library
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The myriad other ways the comparison to the Taliban doesn’t fit
‘Ere we go ‘ere we go ‘ere we go – the “Taliban” thing is becoming the latest casus belli for the you know whos. I’ve got one of them right here playing musical IP addresses and calling me every name in the book. Misogyny lives!
Jason has a good post on the subject.
The repeated comparison of this harassment policy to Taliban-like laws, is entirely about the “sexualized clothing” bit. Apparently all the rest of the proposed policy is perfectly fine to these people, and anyone pushing back against the meme is just strawmanning. Never mind all the myriad other ways the comparison to the Taliban doesn’t fit — like the actual protection of women, rather than slut-shaming and stoning them to death; like allowing them autonomy and self-direction instead of subjugating them to man’s will.
And don’t forget the part about not blowing up schools!
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Not ready for the flood
Paul Fidalgo did another good roundup of Stuff on Women in Secularism last week (“another” in addition to the one I linked to before that one).
He quoted Jen on the perils in talking about “commonly-showcased speakers who are also bad-actors toward women”:
Look at what happened to Rebecca Watson when she simply said “guys, don’t do that” about an anonymous conference attendee. Imagine the shitstorm if there were public accusations of sexual misconduct of some very famous speakers. I’m not ready for the flood of rape and death threats. I’m not ready to be blacklisted and have my atheist “career” ruined by people more powerful and influential than me. I’m not ready to be sued for libel or slander. I’m not ready for the SSA or other organizations I’m affiliated with to also be harmed by association. And that’s exactly how all of these other women feel – hence the silence.
And commented on this situation himself:
The fact that we have a prominent leader in our movement—or anyone in our community—who has to be concerned about a “flood of rape and death threats” has to be a screaming alarm for us to change our attitudes and confront reality. We are the reality-based community, after all. And we are also (many of us) humanists, and the fear and repression that this atmosphere represents is contrary to those values, contrary to basic morality, and is truly the very thing we as a community claim to be against when it comes in a religious context. I hope that a result of this discussion is not more vitriol and defensiveness, but a newfound resolve to act and make things better. We’re hypocrites if we don’t.
So far there has been some more vitriol and defensiveness, but also their opposites, so I’m cautiously optimistic.
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Opponents of this crop trial are blind to the food crisis
Preventing experiments such as this, where there is clearly a public benefit if it works, will do nothing to solve the coming food crisis of the 21st century.
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The Take the Flour Back group did not have enough support
Another message from Sile Lane (Sense About Science):
Dear Petition Signatory,
The planned direct action against the GM wheat experiment at Rothamsted did not happen yesterday. The Take the Flour Back group did not have enough support to storm the field and the local police kept them off Rothamsted’s grounds. Last night hackers attacked Rothamsted Research’s website but it is now back online. Your support has not only helped the scientists bear up under the pressure of the last few weeks but also made the threat to their research retreat in the face of opposition. There has been lots of media coverage in the last few days, including editorials in the Observer and the Times and articles in the Telegraph and Independent (links below).
Some of you came to Rothamsted Park yesterday to tell the protest group why you didn’t want them to destroy publicly funded research. We have gathered some of the comments of support from the 6000 petition signatories as a PDF on our website at http://www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/Dont_destroy_research_public_support.pdf
If you would like to get general news from Sense About Science you can sign up for our newsletter here http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/support-us.html and keep up to date with the fantastic work of the researchers at Rothamsted on their website http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/
Thank you again for your support.
Best wishes,
Síle Lane
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/27/observer-editorial-gm-crops-research
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/leaders/article3427878.ece
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No religious test except for this one tiny thing
When I sat next to Wafa Sultan at the dinner weekend before last, she asked me if there were any penalties for being an atheist in the US, and I told her there were two states that ban atheists from running for office. She was amazed and incredulous, and I assured her it was true; Tennessee and I think Arkansas, I added.
But I was wrong. It’s not two, it’s seven.
[Update for clarification: these are all articles of state constitutions, and (I’m told) (by Matt Dillahunty) they could never be enforced. I kind of assumed that anyway, but it’s better to spell it out.]
Matthew Bulger of American Humanists lists them.
Arkansas, Article 19, Section 1: No person who denies the being of a God shall hold any office in the civil departments of this State, nor be competent to testify as a witness in any Court.
Maryland, Article 37: That no religious test ought ever to be required as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in this State, other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God; nor shall the Legislature prescribe any other oath of office than the oath prescribed by this Constitution.
Mississippi, Article 14, Section 265: No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office in this state.
North Carolina, Article 6, Section 8 The following persons shall be disqualified for office: Any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God.
South Carolina, Article 17, Section 4: No person who denies the existence of a Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.
Tennessee, Article 9, Section 2: No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this state.
Texas, Article 1, Section 4: No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his religious sentiments, provided he acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being.
I love the Maryland one – no religious test except for belief in the existence of God. Oh is that all!
Via Paul Fidalgo.
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US states that ban atheists from holding public office
Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas. “No religious test…other than a declaration of belief in the existence of God”!
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Go, and report child rape no more
Good to see the Catholic church learning (however slowly) from its mistakes.
The Italian Bishop’s Conference (CIE) has issued guidelines on child protection that inform its bishops that they are ‘not obliged to report illicit facts’ of child abuse to the police.
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In their new five page document which advised Italian Bishops on how to deal with paedophilia they failed to focus on one of the most important and obvious means of combating the crime – informing police authorities.
Instead the document read: “Under Italian law, the bishop, given that he holds no public office nor is he a public servant, is not obliged to report illicit facts of the type covered by this document to the relevant state judicial authorities.”
Not learning from their mistakes after all, then.
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Italy: bishops ‘not obliged’ to report sexual abuse to police
The Italian Bishop’s Conference (CIE) has issued guidelines on child protection that inform its bishops that they are ‘not obliged to report illicit facts’ of child abuse to the police.
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Morocco: more than 30,000 children employed as servants
The “little maids” are for the most part “badly paid and submitted to physical and economic violence.”
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Woman convicted in faith-healing death of son
In relying on prayer to heal her diabetic son, Grady, a member of the Church of the Firstborn, told police, “I didn’t want to be weak in my faith and disappoint God.”
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The Taliban comes to Foggy Bottom
Is sexual harassment a thing? Is it just a fantasy of whack-job feminists (who of course are all way too ugly to be sexually harassed)? What about the military, for example? Lots of discipline there; probably there’s no sexual harassment in among all that discipline, right?
Well, one third of women in the military reported being sexually harassed in 2008. That seems like a thing. Maybe they were all whack-job feminists, but given the bad press feminism gets, I kind of doubt it.
The ACLU considers it a thing.
While it is estimated that over 19,000 sexual assaults occurred in the military in 2010, a rate far higher than among civilians, the government has failed systematically to investigate complaints, appropriately punish perpetrators, and treat trauma and other health conditions suffered by survivors. The profound personal and social consequences that arise from the government’s systemic failures are powerfully profiled in the new film, The Invisible War. Turning a blind eye to these crimes has allowed them to continue, imperiling the lives of victims and degrading their service.
Is it Talibanesque to think that’s a bad situation?
The US State Department has a sexual harassment policy. Is that Talibanesque? Should the State Department allow sexual harassment to go on its merry way, as one of our precious freedoms that we don’t want the Taliban to destroy?
You be the judge.