“Today’s science-oriented atheists call us into right relationship with our time, and that means using all of our best information and cross-cultural experience.”
Author: Ophelia Benson
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Hamas tightens the rules on women
Last year Hamas tried to prevent female lawyers from appearing in court without wearing a hijab. Step by step.
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Women in Mexico get long prison sentences for abortion
Six women in conservative Guanajuato have been sentenced to 25 to 30 years in prison for abortions…or one miscarriage.
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Casual sexism is misogyny
Hags, dogs, whores, bitches. How do you spot a woman-hater? By the way they talk about women.
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Nina Power on equality as a race to the bottom
We do a disservice to the aims of feminism if we believe that it is enough to have a job, regardless of what it is.
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Israel: some Haredi women wear the burqa
A few women in Beit Shemesh chose to don the burqa three years ago in a bid to “protect their modesty.”
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It’s a mistake to libel people via Twitter
All Ben Goldacre asks is a retraction, yet it’s not forthcoming.
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A loose end
So, as I mentioned, a late reply to Mooney’s post about me on July 12.
We stopped allowing Benson to comment here back in mid 2009, for very good reasons–among other things, she was sending us emails demanding to have other posters’ comments deleted. We had a better solution.
You can read the thread where they made this reasonable decision. My comments are numbers 35, 37, 90 and 92. They’re not flamey. Then at 104 we get TB:
When Ophelia Benson claims through her “questions” that Chris and Sheril have no evidence she is not telling the truth. It’s one thing for people who haven’t read the book to assert this – she has the book.
So let me say that again and more emphatically: She is lying…Benson doesn’t just disagree. She lies and asserts that they have nothing to back up their assertions…
Benson is a troll – she’s added nothing to the conversation and deliberately misleads people about the content of the book. She has her own site to do that on – ban her here.
I asked M&K to delete the assertions that I was lying – I didn’t “demand,” I asked – but they did what TB demanded instead, and banned me shortly after that. I think that’s disgusting. Today, on the other hand, Mooney deleted part of a comment by Hitch, that Hitch then posted elsewhere:
And how Jean used snide remarks against New Atheists throughout.
That’s it – that’s what Hitch wrote, that’s what Mooney deleted. His rules are somewhat arbitrary.
The whole of the rest of the post deals with the fact that I said it was “bilbo” who called me a liar; my mistake, it was TB. That makes M&K look even worse, actually, because TB (Tim Broderick) is still a valued commenter, who has just succeeded in bullying Hitch off the Intersection. “bilbo” was one of “Tom Johnson”‘s sock puppets, but TB is a real and trusted regular fan and commenter – who announces that people are lying when they’re not. I should have checked again, of course; I should have gotten the right name; but the defense of allowing their fans to call their critics liars while preventing the critics from replying is not convincing. It’s also distasteful that it is made on a post where the comments are closed. It was distasteful on the “new atheists are medieval witch hunters baying for blood” post at Talking Philosophy, it was distasteful on the “Believe Me” post at Kazez’s blog, and it’s distasteful in Mooney’s post about me.
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Incomplete
Mooney has done another “What Tom Johnson has taught Me” post. It repairs some previous omissions, so it is a small improvement, but it is flawed.
I regret that I gave this story undue prominence, and I want to apologize to all who were affected by that action.
No he doesn’t, not really. As usual, he omits some people, so he doesn’t want to apologize to all who were affected by that action. He doesn’t want to apologize to me, for instance. I was affected by that action. He shouldn’t give himself the moral credit for a blanket apology when he’s not in fact making one.
Mooney goes on to insinuate that gnu atheists did something to make Tom Johnson so crazy – but – that is
no justification for the trumped-up original story or for his other actions—which, as we now know, included creating multiple sock puppets over a long period of time and using them to nastily trash his “New Atheist” opponents.
Yes, and it was Mooney who hosted those sock puppets; it was Mooney who banned me for asking him questions about his book while allowing those sock puppets to trash-talk about his gnu atheist opponents, for months. Mooney helped to create the climate in which TJ grew and festered. Mooney obviously liked the nasty trashing of the gnu atheist opponents; that’s obvious because Mooney has a very quick hand with the delete button, so if he doesn’t delete something, it’s safe to assume that he likes it. TJ is the child of Mooney – that is, a product of the vituperative atmosphere Mooney created.
We are left with no reliable evidence of loud, boorish, confrontational public behavior by atheists at events with religious believers. Those who have problems with the “New Atheism” should not use this line of argument in their critiques, unless or until such evidence is produced.
We never had any such reliable evidence. We’ve had ten months with this lie out there, painting gnu atheists as rude stupid belligerent vulgarians. It’s ten months too late to say we have no reliable evidence for that now. We never did have. Mooney should have been able to see that last October.
Jean Kazez…has been sorely and unjustly abused online over this affair…
Bullshit. She’s been disputed and criticised, not abused and not unjustly. She wasn’t, for instance, called anything even approaching “useless putrid twat.” I was. Kazez was not subject to any misogynist raving, but I was. Yet Mooney weeps crocodile tears for Kazez and doesn’t mention me. Mooney probably realizes that he did a lot to create TJ and his sock puppets, and thus that he did a lot to inspire the sewage that TJ and his socks flung at me; but he doesn’t mention me. Mooney is at fault here, but he doesn’t mention it. His post is, as I mentioned, incomplete.
In conclusion, I want to thank everyone who has tried to establish and to explain the truth here: “Johnson’s” adviser and Jerry Coyne; and also TB and Jean Kazez.
That’s another one of those fake blankets. I did a lot more to try to establish the truth “here” than TB and Kazez did. I also did in fact point some of it out a hell of a lot sooner than they did – starting last October. So when Mooney says “everyone” he is misleading the reader; he doesn’t mean “everyone” at all. He doesn’t, for instance, mean me. Well he should. I suspect he knows he should. But he won’t admit it.
Furthermore, to repeat, TB is not a truth-seeker. TB called me a liar just for asking M&K a list of questions about their book. I was not lying when I did that. TB is not an honest broker here.
I’m disturbed that someone on my “side” of this debate would do the things “Johnson” has done, painting a group as uncivil based on what is at best a serious exaggeration, while simultaneously spewing reams of incivility towards that group online, under multiple identities. There is no excuse for such behavior–and moreover, there has been a very big cost in this case to a lot of people, both in time and in grief.
Quite, and I’m the one who got the worst of the spewed reams of incivility; yet Mooney never mentions me throughout the post.
If there is any silver lining at all here, perhaps after working to find out the truth together about “Tom Johnson,” so-called “New Atheists” and “accommodationists” might feel the inclination to be just a little bit more civil and trusting towards one another. We do have a shared commitment to the truth, and a means of discerning it—and those have won out in this case. Let’s not forget that as we carry on the argument for science and reason in the future.
Oh dear god. Mooney is the one who picked this fight, and then went on picking it and picking it and picking it – pissing on gnu atheists in every major media outlet that invited him, for months – yet he pretends both sides are equally to blame. And as for the shared commitment to truth…………that’s just beyond even ridicule. Let’s not forget that Chris Mooney is the last person in the world to be giving advice on either “civility” or truth-seeking.
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Do alligators count as fish for Catholics?
No. Do Catholics count as lunch for alligators? Yes.
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Saira, 19, recalls attempted honour killing
“My mum said, ‘He is your husband, even if he kills you we don’t care’.”
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Sherrod plans to sue Breitbart
Brent Bozell, of right-wing Media Research Center, said “I hope this champion of honesty will stop lying about Fox News.”
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Gove welcomes “atheist” schools
Because he thinks a secular school is an “atheist” school.
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UK govt response to petition to ban halal slaughter
“The Government recognises the needs of certain communities” to kill animals without stunning them first.
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Extended interview with Hitchens
“I’ve only got one side of the brain that works. The other is sort of walnut-sized. I think I’d do better to stay with the essayistic form.”
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Ron Lindsay on how to discuss religion
Religious truth-claims should be subject to examination and criticism, just like any other claims about reality.
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Visible or Invisible: Growing up Female in a Porn Culture
At a lecture I was giving in a large West Coast university in the Spring of 2008, the female students talked extensively about how much they preferred to have a completely waxed pubic area as it made them feel “clean,” “hot” and “well groomed.” As they excitedly insisted that they themselves chose to have a Brazilian wax, one student let slip that her boyfriend had complained when she decided to give up on waxing. Then there was silence. I asked the student to say more about her boyfriend’s preferences and how she felt about his criticism. As she started to speak other students joined in, only now the conversation took a very different turn. The excitement in the room gave way to a subdued discussion on how some boyfriends had even refused to have sex with non-waxed girlfriends as they “looked gross.” One student told the group how her boyfriend bought her a waxing kit for Valentine’s Day, while yet another sent out an email to his friends joking about his girlfriend’s “hairy beaver.” No, she did not break up with him, she got waxed instead.
Two weeks after the waxing discussion, I was at an East Coast Ivy League school where some female students became increasingly angry. They accused me of denying them free choice in their embrace of our hypersexualized porn culture. As the next generation’s elite women, this idea was especially repugnant because they saw no limits or constraints on them as women. Literally two minutes later, one of the students made a joke about the “trick” that many of them employ as a way to avoid hookup sex. What is this trick? These women purposely don’t shave or wax as they are getting ready to go out that night, so they will feel too embarrassed to participate in hookup sex. As she spoke, I watched as others nodded their heads in agreement. When I asked why they couldn’t just say no to sex, they informed me that once you have a few drinks in you, and are at a party or a bar, it is too hard to say no. I was speechless, not least because they had just been arguing that I had denied them agency in my discussion of porn culture, and yet they saw no contradiction in telling me that they didn’t have the agency to say no to sex. The next day I flew to Utah to give a lecture in a small college, which although not a religious college, had a good percentage of Mormons and Catholics. I told them about the lecture the previous night and asked them if they knew what the trick was. It turns out that trick is everywhere, including Utah.
I tell this story because, on many levels, it neatly captures how the porn culture is affecting young women’s lives. The reality is that women don’t need to look at porn to be profoundly affected by it because images, representations, and messages of porn are now delivered to women via pop culture. Women today are still not major consumers of hard-core porn; they are, however, whether they know or it or not, internalizing porn ideology, an ideology that often masquerades as advice on how to be hot, rebellious, and cool in order to attract and keep a man. An excellent example is genital waxing, which first became popular in porn (not least because it makes the women look pre-pubescent) and then filtered down into women’s media such as Cosmopolitan, a magazine that regularly features stories and tips on what “grooming” methods women should adopt to attract a man. Sex and the City, that hugely successful show with an almost cult following, also used waxing as a storyline. For instance, in the movie, Miranda is chastised by Samantha for “letting herself go” by having pubic hair.
….The Stepford Wife image that drove previous generations of women crazy with their sparkling floors and perfectly orchestrated meals has all but disappeared, and in its place we now have the Stepford Slut; a hypersexualized, young, thin, toned, hairless, technologically, and in many cases surgically-enhanced, woman with a come-hither look on her face. We all recognize the look: slightly parted glossy lips, head tilted to the side, inviting eyes, and a body contorted to give the (presumed male) viewer maximum gazing rights to her body. Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver have morphed into Britney, Rhianna, Beyonce, Paris, Lindsay and so on. They represent images of contemporary idealized femininity – in a word, hot – that are held up for women, especially young women, to emulate. Women today are still held captive by images that ultimately tell lies about women. The biggest lie is that conforming to this hypersexualized image will give women real power in the world, since in a porn culture, our power lies, we are told, not in our ability to shape the institutions that determine our life chances, but in having a hot body that men desire and women envy.
In today’s image-based culture, there is no escaping the image and no respite from its power when it is relentless in its visibility. If you think that I am exaggerating, then flip through a magazine at the supermarket checkout, channel surf, take a drive to look at billboards or watch TV ads. Many of these images are of celebrities – women who have fast become the role models of today. As they grace the pages of People, US Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, and Vanity Fair, they seem to effortlessly pull together the hot look as they walk the red carpet, stroll the aisles of the supermarket or hit the nightclubs of New York and Cannes. With their wealth, designer clothes, expensive homes and flashy lifestyles, these women do seem enviable to girls and young women since they appear to embody a type of power that demands attention and visibility.
… People not immersed in pop culture tend to assume that what we see today is just more of the same stuff that previous generations grew up on. After all, every generation has had its hot and sultry stars who led expensive and wild lives compared to the rest of us. But what is different about today is not only the hypersexualization of the image, but also the degree to which such images have overwhelmed and crowded out any alternative images of being female. Today’s tidal wave of soft-core porn images has normalized the porn star look in everyday culture to such a degree that anything less looks dowdy, prim and downright boring. Today a girl or young woman looking for an alternative to the Britney, Paris, Lindsay look will soon come to the grim realization that the only alternative to looking fuckable is to be invisible.
This is an excerpt from chapter 6 of Gail Dines’s new book, Pornland: How porn has hijacked our sexuality, published by permission.
About the Author
Dr. Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston, an internationally acclaimed speaker and author, and a feminist activist. Her writing and lectures focus on the hypersexualization of the culture and the ways that porn images filter down into mainstream pop culture. -
Lauryn Oates on cultural relativism and FGM
Why do we worry so much about alienating people who hold down screaming little girls and butcher their genitals?
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What we can do
Christina Patterson accepts a little too much.
I accept that people should, except in certain professional situations which involve dealing with the public, be allowed to wear whatever they like, and that laws which prevent this are self-defeating, and that you can’t stop parents, or rabbis, teaching little boys that adult women shouldn’t even be brushed against on a bus, and I accept that some of these things are an inevitable consequence of a modern, and in many ways magnificent, multi-cultural society.
I don’t think we have to accept that you can’t stop parents, or rabbis, teaching little boys that adult women are contaminants. We have to accept that you can’t forcibly, physically stop them, but we don’t have to accept that you can’t slowly and carefully and fairly stop them by teaching them better. We don’t have to just shrug and say “oh well if parents or rabbis want to teach little boys that women are filthy, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Yes there is, and we have to do what we can about it, just as we do if parents or clerics are teaching children that black people, or dalits, or Jews, or foreigners, or atheists are filthy. We have to do what we can, consistent with liberal norms of freedom and autonomy, to counter ideas of that kind: ideas that are baseless and harmful and at the extreme dangerous.
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Gnu atheists close the bar
It was fun last night. PZ was there, Cam and Josh were there, and about thirty other interesting people were there. We bayed for blood, we cooked little children into soup, we tore up holy books, we made plans for world domination. The usual.