Here’s something to take our minds off the election for a few minutes – or maybe just my mind: an article by Ellen Granfield posted at Everyday Feminism that recycles some so 1990s ideas about science. Some bad so 1990s ideas about science.

It’s posted at Everyday Feminism, so Twitter trolls are screeching that this kills feminism dead. (Yo, Everyday Feminism isn’t even feminist, let alone representative of all feminism. Feminism has an anti-science irrationalist wing, but that’s far from all of feminism.) But it was reposted from The Establishment. The Establishment is that site where Aaron Kappel wrote that appalling piece bashing feminism because one woman asked him clumsy questions about his “identity as non-binary.” Publishing the … Read the rest

A Facebook friend posted some very useful information that needs to be widely known, and gave me permission to share it here. Guest post by EP.

Dear local friends – there was a letter sent home with the kids today about Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes. Please, PLEASE do not participate. Although the info presented seems lovely, this is deliberate and cynical marketing ploy. The scheme is run by Samaritan’s Purse, one of the most criticised religious charities in the world. The founder, Franklin Graham is one of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters and donators. His Twitter feed just spews racism, homophobia, misogyny and plain old madness constantly. He is a vocal supporter of the idea of building a wall between Mexico … Read the rest

Pliny the In Between:

… Read the rest

Well this is like a cool drink of water in a wide desert – Samantha Rea rebuking Juno Dawson in the Independent.

There were furrowed brows last week, in response to a column by author Juno Dawson in Glamour magazine. Dawson identifies as a transgender woman. In a column entitled, “Call yourself a feminist?”, she refers to feminist academic Germaine Greer as a “TERF” explaining that the acronym means, “trans-exclusionary radical feminist.”

Dawson tells readers that TERFs are: “A subgroup of feminists who steadfastly believe me – and other trans women – are not women.” Explaining how this is an issue, Dawson says: “The key battle ground between TERFs and trans women is the issue of toilets.

Ah the joys of religious state schools in the UK. The Daily Mail (sorry) reports that the government ordered four Islamic schools to shut down after bad Ofsted reports, but they appealed to the courts so pending the outcome they remain open. Oh well, it’s only students.

One allegedly taught girls that men can beat their wives. Another distributed leaflets saying music is an ‘act of the devil’.

They could continue operating for months, if not years, after launching legal appeals against closure. The four fee-paying independent establishments include a girls’ boarding school, Jamia al-Hudaa in Nottingham, that was ordered to close last month after Ofsted found books in the library by individuals banned from entering Britain.

Ministers told the

The sociolinguist Deborah Cameron has a fascinating essay on the question of whether or not “TERF” is a slur. You should read it.

Near the end she writes:

If a word is just a neutral description, you might expect it to be used mainly for the purpose of describing or making claims about states of affairs. If it’s a slur, you’d also expect it to be used for those purposes, but in addition you might expect to see it being used in speech acts expressing hatred and contempt, such as insults, threats and incitements to violence. (By ‘insults’ here, incidentally, I don’t mean statements which are insulting simply because they use the word in question, but statements which say

Meghan Murphy is another not impressed by Juno Dawson’s lecturing feminists from the vantage point of a whole entire year living as a woman.

It was only last year that Dawson “came out” as a transwoman, but this hasn’t stopped the writer from dictating how women should be approaching their ongoing fight for liberation from male oppression. In fact, the entire column essentially describes the ways women are doing their own movement wrong, indeed rejecting basic feminist tenets and failing to recognize that maybe — just maybe — feminists who’ve been at this for many decades now have thought this through a little more than Dawson has.

Imagine some white guy (it has to be a guy) goes on that … Read the rest

Oh hai, Comey says he was just kidding. The people who voted after his intervention and before his just kidding? Oh well!

The F.B.I. informed Congress on Sunday that it has not changed its conclusions about Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, removing a dark cloud that has been hanging over her campaign two days before Election Day.

James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, said in a letter to members of Congress that “based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”

…

In the immediate term, the letter removes a cloud that has hung over the Clinton campaign for a

The Guardian reports on a study that found men don’t love stag parties but go along with them because of bullying. That doesn’t surprise me – the way men bully other men is horrifying.

…a study suggests that men do not enjoy the debauchery or the “extreme shaming, humiliation, and deviance” that are part and parcel of most modern stag dos.

According to the report, men succumb to peer pressure to celebrate one final night of “freedom” with the groom-to-be, despite the fact that the hedonistic experiences can leave them feeling scared and degraded.

So the experiences can’t be all that hedonistic, can they.

The researchers found instances of men being pressured into doing things they did not enjoy but

Speaking of Indonesia…I’m hearing from friends that their Indonesian friends are disappearing from Facebook.

A couple of weeks ago…

Two [Indonesian] men have been arrested after a photo of them kissing was posted on Facebook.

The 22-year-old student and 24-year-old office worker from Indonesia were arrested after uploading the picture which was captioned: “With my dear lover tonight. May our love last forever”.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia but the two men are expected to be charged for breaking anti-pornography laws.

…

The identities of the two men have not been disclosed and although they are currently not in police custody they could be jailed if they are found guilty.

That’s “liberal” majority-Muslim Indonesia. Not all that liberal…… Read the rest

Ari Berman points out that There Are 868 Fewer Places to Vote in 2016 Because the Supreme Court Gutted the Voting Rights Act.

What does it mean when there are fewer places to vote? Longer lines. What do longer lines do? Suppress voting.

When Aracely Calderon, a naturalized US citizen from Guatemala, went to vote in downtown Phoenix just before the polls closed in Arizona’s March 22 presidential primary, there were more than 700 people in a line stretching four city blocks. She waited in line for five hours, becoming the last voter in the state to cast a ballot at 12:12 am. “I’m here to exercise my right to vote,” she said shortly before midnight, explaining

Ok. Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway admitted the campaign lied by saying the FBI was going to indict Clinton – and she was unapologetic about it. So that’s where we are; ok.

MSNBC’s “11th Hour” host Brian Williams asked Kellyanne Conway about a report from Fox News in which two anonymous “sources with intimate knowledge” of an FBI inquiry into the Clinton Foundation said an indictment of Clinton was “likely.” Trump recounted a version of the report to a crowd in Jacksonville, Florida on Thursday, crowing that “FBI agents” said his opponent would be indicted.

“This has been walked back, the indictment portion, by Fox News who originally reported it and by NBC News which has done subsequent reporting

The Harvard women’s soccer team wrote a statement on the 2012 men’s team’s “scouting report.” I wrote my post on the report before reading the women’s statement, so I’m interested to see that they say what I said.

On Monday, October 24, The Crimson published a story detailing a “scouting report” written by members of the 2012 men’s soccer team regarding incoming female recruits on the women’s soccer team.

We are these women, we are not anonymous, and rather than having our comments taken, spun, and published behind the guise of a fake anonymity offered to us by numerous news outlets, we have decided to speak for ourselves.

When first notified of this “scouting report” each of us responded with