Author: Ophelia Benson

So, as I mentioned, Stephanie did those two posts on sexual harassment among teh atheists and what to do about it, and others did related posts, some of which I linked to yesterday, and then naturally Abbie Smith and her pals responded that THEY ARE ALL TOO UGLY TO BE HARASSED SO HA, and Jen hinted that there’s something just a little childish about that approach. (Still with me? And this isn’t even all of it, I assure you.) Now PZ has a post saying he won’t be accepting any invitations to conferences where Abbie Smith is also speaking.

The latest uproar from the misogynist mob is over a rumor that there is a secret list of people who won’t get invited to conferences. There is no list. There are petty people who think calling someone ugly is reasonable behavior, people who have not yet grown out of junior high school. There are personal preferences, as well.

For instance, I will not participate in any conference in which Abbie Smith is a speaker. If I’m invited, and later discover that she is also invited, I will politely turn down the offer.

Why? Well, “adamgordon” dug up one example of why, quoting Abbie Smith commenting on her own blog in comment #14:

Im not working full days this week because Ive got a bad cold (*sigh* virologist infected with a virus). How is Jen reading blog comments/writing posts/etc in the middle of a work day? Weird…

I guess when youre young and pretty like her, you dont have to work as hard as other scientists.

http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2011/11/26/periodic-table-of-swearing/comment-page-50/#comment-42913

That’s why, along with many more of the same quality.

Jen was awarded a NSF grant fellowship about a month ago, you know. Those aren’t easy to get, to put it mildly. I’m not completely sure she needs Abbie Smith’s advice on how to do better.

A guest post by “Inglourious Basterd”

I was fortunate to grow up in Athens, Greece to a middle class family before moving to the US a few years ago. Sadly, Greece has been getting a lot of attention in the news for the last two years. It was the first domino to fall in the still unresolved European debt crisis that saw the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the IMF – collectively called the “Troika” – negotiate two rounds of emergency loans in exchange for tax hikes and spending cuts (mostly cutting salaries and laying off workers) at a time of already deepening recession that started in 2008. These austerity measures are so harsh that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was reported to have said about them before they took effect: “We want to make sure nobody else will want this”. The results are predictable: decreases in GDP, rising unemployment above 20% including half of all young people, rises in suicides, homelessnes, and violent crime.

The communists and far left political parties have achieved record polling numbers with populist rhetoric as working people abandon the two centrist political parties that supported the latest round of austerity measures and seek to take a harder line against the Troika while still largely supporting EU and Euro membership.

At the same time, the number of immigrants from other poverty and war stricken countries like Albania, Pakistan, and Afghanistan has been rising due in no small part to a broken EU refugee policy referred to as the Dublin regulation that dictates that asylum claims are to be processed in the EU state of arrival. According to Human Rights Watch “With more than three-quarters of migrants who enter the EU irregularly by land coming across the Greek border from Turkey, the Dublin regulation means that an EU country ill-equipped to assess asylum claims or to treat migrants humanely has to manage a disproportionate number of arrivals.” This means that hundreds of thousands of poor immigrants with are left to fend for themselves either in horrible detention conditions or in legal limbo.

A mass media landscape dominated by entrenched business interests that have profited immensely from the status quo is not keen on people questioning EU calls for further privatization and weakening of collective bargaining rules. Instead, viewers are inundated with sensational allegations of rampant crime by immigrants and constant scare-mongering about food and medicine shortages unless the Troika demands are not immediately met.

How this translates politically and socially has also been predictable. Violent organized racist attacks against immigrants – once unheard of – have now become a terrible reality in many working class neighborhoods. What was once a marginal fringe party called “Golden Dawn” went from .3% in the 2009 elections to almost 7% in 2012, more than enough to get representation in parliament for the first time.

In addition to holocaust denial, requiring journalists to stand in deference at their press conference, breaking up book presentations, a logo resembling a swastika, and a Nazi-like salute, Golden Dawn also made thinly veiled anonymous threat of violence against journalist Xenia Kounalaki last April on their WordPress blog. WordPress was notified and promptly took it down, however they still maintain many local blogs on Google’s Blogger platform despite Google’s terms of service having explicit prohibitions against hate speech and threats of violence.

Google has a staff in Greece. I find it hard to believe that they are unaware of the presence of this dangerous group on their service. Nonetheless, they must be banished from Blogger. Google cannot continue to provide a platform to this dangerous group in perpetuity. Despite repeated terms of service violations, the blogs are still there. The time has come for public pressure. With new elections in Greece on June 17, every day that goes by means more votes and more legitimization for Golden Dawn.

Please join me in signing this petition to tell Google’s Board of Directors to shut down the Golden Dawn blogs on their Blogger service.

More than 40,000 Haredi men filled a New York baseball stadium on Sunday to talk about Oh noes the internet.

Men. Not women. This isn’t like women just not showing up at wrestling matches because they’d rather do something else – it’s women not being allowed to attend. Not being allowed – as if they were children.

The organizers had allowed only men to buy tickets, in keeping with ultra-Orthodox tradition of separating the sexes. Viewing parties had been arranged in Orthodox neighborhoods of Brooklyn and New Jersey so that women could watch, too. 

Typical New York Times; typical mainstream media. That’s not “separating the sexes”; it’s banishing one sex. Separating the sexes would be having them in different parts of the stadium, with a big heavy cloth and some guards in between. That’s not what this was.

The rally in Citi Field on Sunday was sponsored by a rabbinical group, Ichud Hakehillos Letohar Hamachane, that is linked to a software company that sells Internet filtering software to Orthodox Jews. Those in attendance were handed fliers that advertised services like a “kosher GPS App” for iPhone and Android phones, which helps users locate synagogues and kosher restaurants.

Oh noes the non-kosher internet.

Ron says we need another Women in Secularism conference. Why do we? Well because not everything got said.

This conference was rich and varied in its content, but it seemed to me that it merely served as an introduction to the contributions, perspectives, and concerns of women. It was a prologue, establishing the agenda and background for a more thorough investigation and analysis of the relationship between secularism and feminism, but we need to follow through on that investigation and analysis. And then we need to follow that with concrete action, the specifics of which also need to be hammered out.

I like the idea of building on the first. Thinking about it caused me to have the idea of a book (a collection), which could also build on it, and look ahead to the next one.

Now here’s a huge surprise – Saudi Arabia isn’t “allowing” “its” women to participate in the Olympics. It has excellent reasons, of course.

Beans on toast are a powerful female aphrodisiac.

No, that’s not it. Rain makes Arab women go a funny greenish color.

No, Arab women are allergic to chips.

I’m being silly, I know this one – London streets are full of litter and coughed-up phlegm, so the women might slip and fall and get pregnant.

Wait. It’s high heels worn with jeans, that’s it – high heels worn with jeans are apostasy.

No actually it seems to be not about the UK at all, but about sports, and not to put too fine a point on it, any physical activity at all. Saudi women and girls are a kind of mushroom, raised in a dark corner of the basement.

Discrimination against women and girls in sports in Saudi Arabia – as in so many other areas of their lives – is entrenched in government policy, including:

·         Beginning from childhood, the government bans millions of Saudi girls from participating in physical education classes in state schools.

·         The kingdom discriminates against women by denying them access to sports facilities, including gyms and swimming pools.

·         The government has shut down private gyms established by women in recent years on the pretext that they were unlicensed.

·         There are no sports clubs for women, compared with 153 government-supported clubs for men.

·         The Saudi National Olympic Committee has no women’s section and does not hold sports competitions for women to allow them to qualify for national teams and international competitions.

See? Nothing. And it’s not as if they can go out running, is it. Fancy running in an abaya?

Stephanie Zvan has a pair of great posts on…well I’ll let her tell you, in the first one:

It had its genesis on stage, when Jen McCreight mentioned that, when she started speaking at conferences, multiple people contacted her behind the scenes to tell her which male speakers she should steer clear of.

That.

Stephanie summarizes via a FAQ:

Q: Do famous atheist speakers really act like assholes to women?

A: Yes.

Q: Really?!

A: I said, “Yes.” I’ve experienced some of it, in front of witnesses. I’ve talked to other women who’ve experienced it personally. I’ve talked to conference organizers who have strategies for minimizing the damage when they have to invite one of these men to one of their conferences.

Also, did you just express “skepticism” over this? It’s a completely uncontroversial statement. Unaccetable gendered behavior exists. Our movement is not immune. Men don’t become immune to bad behavior just because people like how they speak or write or organize. Yes, it happens.

Unwanted sexual overtures, is what this is about. Lunging, grabbing, cornering, flashing, leering, following. Not ”romance”; not “flirtation”; sexual harrassment; hostile work environment.

And then there’s who are they. (I knew one name before the conference. I now know three.) We’re not in a position to say.

Q: Why aren’t you naming and shaming?

A: Until a year ago, this was harder to explain succinctly. Now, sadly, it’s much easier.

Did you see what happened to Rebecca Watson? Have you seen what’s still happening today? That’s why.

And Rebecca didn’t even name.

Q: How bad can these guys be if they keep getting invited to speak?

A: As bad as they’re allowed to be. As I already pointed out, you’ve probably seen the public behavior of some of these guys already. Has it kept them from getting audiences and invitations? Has it kept them from getting jobs? Has it kept them from being treated as the cool kids?

No. It has not.

Not only are these speakers still allowed to show up, but they’re still in demand. Conferences need to sell tickets and fill seats. When organizers stop inviting some of the people on this list, unless sexism is a primary concern for donors, unless experiences are allowed to be made public, organizers get overruled. If the speaker is a draw, there is a limited amount organizers can do.

That’s the part that really bites. “Oh hey, so he makes a few women miserable, big deal – he’s a name and we can get him, so he’s in.”

Stephanie got the comment she needed, so that’s the starting point for her second post. Read Erista’s comment. It’s a scorcher.

Brian Engler has a bunch of photos from the WiS conference at Facebook, and I want to share one I particularly like. I might share others, too – I have Brian’s permission.

I give you Jamila Bey and Debbie Goddard, courtesy of Brian D. Engler:

Why women need freedom from religion, item #3,985,431.

A Sudanese judge, Sami Ibrahim Shabo sentenced to death by stoning a young woman accused of committing adultery.

Intisar Sharif Abdalla, believed to be between 15 and 17 years of age (although prison authorities claim she is 20) was sentenced to death in accordance with Article 146 of the Sudanese criminal law albeit without legal representation.

The judgment was made on May 13, 2012 after just one hearing and came after an “admission of guilt” plea following torture and brutal beatings by Sharif’s brother who instigated the case. Her co-accused however remains un-convicted and walks freely.

She denied the accusation. But.

Her lawyer, only able to access her after the judgment was made, understands that following her initial denial she was beaten up and tortured repeatedly by her brother forcing her to confess to committing adultery. With the ‘coerced’ confession, Judge Sami Ibrahim Shabo of Ombada General Criminal Court, Khartoum state, sentenced her to stoning after just one court session.

Brilliant. Her brother tortured her into “confessing” that she had sex without being married, and the judge seized this torture-compelled “confession” to a non-crime and ruled that she should be stoned to death.

60 Minutes had a segment on the death industry and oversight of cemeteries last night. Guess who was the official voice of the consumer who told Anderson Cooper (Anderson Cooper!!) what’s what.

Our friend Josh Slocum, that’s who.

Anderson said the industry says these unfortunate incidents in which bodies get dug up and thrown out so that people can re-sell their plots are just a few bad apples. “Oh nonsense,” says Josh very briskly indeed.

I wanted to embed it but it doesn’t work the way YouTube does so I don’t know how to do it. Click the link.