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Fight fiercely Harvard

Nov 5th, 2016 3:58 pm | By

Oh what a surprise. The Harvard Crimson October 25:

In what appears to have been a yearly team tradition, a member of Harvard’s 2012 men’s soccer team produced a document that, in sexually explicit terms, individually assessed and evaluated freshmen recruits from the 2012 women’s soccer team based on their perceived physical attractiveness and sexual appeal.

The author and his teammates referred to the nine-page document as a “scouting report,” and the author circulated the document over the group’s email list on July 31, 2012.

In lewd terms, the author of the report individually evaluated each female recruit, assigning them numerical scores and writing paragraph-long assessments of the women. The document also included photographs of each woman, most of

… Read the rest

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Warner Bros. and DC Comics approached the U.N.

Nov 5th, 2016 11:36 am | By

Ok this makes it even more annoying – the Wonder Woman thing was suggested by Warner Bros. and DC Comics. NPR reports:

…the decision has outraged many women’s rights advocates, including hundreds who’ve signed a petition against it.

“It’s an insult, frankly,” says Anne Marie Goetz, a professor of global affairs at New York University and a former adviser on peace and security issues to the United Nations agency, U.N. Women. She says a big issue is the timing.

The U.N.’s anointing of Wonder Woman has actually been in the works since last spring. That’s when Warner Bros. and DC Comics — which owns rights to the character — approached the U.N. about celebrating her 75th birthday

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How about Pippi Longstocking?

Nov 5th, 2016 11:21 am | By

Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini at Sister-hood on Wonder Woman and the UN.

For those of us who ever feel conflicted about the United Nations, the past month has been an exercise in managing absurd cognitive dissonance. First, on October 21 2016, the United Nations announced that the 1940s comic book heroine, Wonder Woman would be its new mascot for promoting the empowerment of women and girls.  The news naturally sent serious women around the world into a collective swirl, and then a reach for their golden lassoes, to capture the attention of an institution that seems perpetually tone deaf on the issue of basic equality and respect for half the world’s population. It also prompted female staff at the UN to

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UDHR

Nov 5th, 2016 11:02 am | By

Here’s a wonder woman if you like.

 … Read the rest

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The epitome of a pin-up girl

Nov 5th, 2016 10:51 am | By

More coverage (so to speak) of Wonder Woman as the UN’s ambassador for women’s empowerment.

Somini Sengupta at the NY Times reported on a petition asking the UN please not to.

More than 600 United Nations staff members have signed an online petition calling on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, a professed feminist, to reconsider the appointment of the fictitious superhero as its ambassador for women’s empowerment.

More than 600 people who work for the UN itself have signed. It seems a little surprising that whoever had this bright idea couldn’t have seen the problems with it. Let’s read the petition:

On 21 October 2016, the Secretary-General of the United Nations decided that the new Honorary Ambassador for the

… Read the rest

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Another blasphemy march

Nov 5th, 2016 9:39 am | By

Meanwhile in Jakarta…

Tens of thousands of Indonesians marched in Jakarta on Friday, demanding that the city’s first Christian governor in decades be jailed for blasphemy. The rally was a show of strength by conservative Islamic groups, who were offended by his earlier remarks about the Quran and want to weaken him as he runs for re-election.

I guess that’s one thing we can be grateful for in the US: Trump doesn’t call his enemies blasphemers.

The governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, is an ethnic Chinese Indonesian and the first Christian in nearly 50 years to govern Jakarta, capital of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

He has been a political target of some Islamic organizations

… Read the rest

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Yes or no

Nov 5th, 2016 9:19 am | By

A guy on Facebook yesterday posted video of something a lot of my friends have been passionately discussing: a few minutes from the Parliamentary inquiry into Sharia courts on Monday, in which Bradford MP Naz Shah interrupts Maryam Namazie’s testimony to demand a yes or no answer to a misleading question and then simply attacks her for her views. It’s pretty horrifying.

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The most unforgivable of activists

Nov 4th, 2016 5:24 pm | By

Marina S. has an excellent response to Juno Dawson’s Glamour column.

So, Glamour went there. It printed a piece in which women are called “TERF”.

It was inevitable that the word “TERF” would become mainstream. The feminists slammed with this “description” are the most unforgivable of activists: women who stand for women, as women, and women only. Women without a modifier, women as members of no class other than their own, women as completely divorced from any political association with men.

The Left, she says, allows a certain amount of feminism, but only if it’s the male-friendly kind. Radical feminism refuses to be male-friendly, because it’s about women, not men.

That a “women’s” magazine (in reality, a publication

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Trump lawyer babbles

Nov 4th, 2016 4:22 pm | By

Trump and his campaign have been hit with a restraining order. Common Dreams has the story.

A federal judge in Ohio on Friday granted a temporary restraining order against the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, as well as his longtime adviser Roger Stone, to prohibit attempts to harass voters in the crucial swing state.

The case, brought by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is just one currently being weighed by numerous states alleging that representatives of the Republican Party and the Trump campaign are engaging in illegal voter intimidation efforts.

According to Cleveland.com, U.S. District Judge James Gwin “said he will order the restraining order against Trump’s campaign and Stone,” who runs the controversial “Stop the

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More hatred and violence

Nov 4th, 2016 11:28 am | By

The New York Times reports on communal violence in Bangladesh.

Crowds of Muslims attacked Hindu homes and temples in eastern Bangladesh this week, raising concerns that the authorities are not taking steps to curb rising religious tensions.

Attacks on Hindus are not unusual in Bangladesh, but it is rare to see multiple crowds targeting temples in an organized way as they did on Sunday and Monday. The country’s human rights commission has initiated an inquiry into the episodes, which the panel’s chairman says appear to have been coordinated.

On Saturday, an Islamic group in Nasirnagar organized a protest against a Facebook post it found offensive. The post included an image of the Hindu god Shiva appearing at a Muslim

… Read the rest

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Poking the hornets’ nest

Nov 4th, 2016 10:55 am | By

Glamour UK published a startling piece of garbage by Juno Dawson, who was called James Dawson until a year ago. The title, calculated to annoy (indeed, to insult) is “Call yourself a feminist?” I don’t much want newly-minted women telling me I’m not a feminist, thanks.

The subhead is equally calculated to annoy and insult:

Our transgender columnist Juno Dawson’s here to see if you really pass the test

No thank you. It’s not up to Juno Dawson to decide that.

And then the column itself is pure shite.

One of things I love about GLAMOUR Magazine is how it supports women’s choices. Indeed there is a whole section called Hey, It’s OK…because, when things are your choice, and

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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 11 comments


Guest post: Women beyond belief

Nov 4th, 2016 9:53 am | By

Guest post by Karen L. Garst, who has compiled a collection of essays titled Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion, available in print and electronic formats. It has been reviewed by Richard Dawkins, Valerie Tarico, Peter Boghossian, Sikivu Hutchinson and other atheist authors. Visit Dr. Garst’s blog at www.faithlessfeminist.com to pre-order the book.

“But at the end of the day, I kept coming back to one simple realization:
I fundamentally did not believe that one religion (Christianity) could tell
another religion (Hinduism) that it was wrong, that its deities did not exist,
that its moral compass was askew, that the beliefs of its people—while
noble—did not coincide with the lord-and-savior Jesus Christ and his
father-in-heaven God, and therefore … Read the rest

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The number of Americans who would rather elect a rapist than a female human being

Nov 4th, 2016 9:16 am | By

Sady Doyle, like so many of us, is sick to death of this fucking election.

I am tired of the lingering hangover of the Democratic primary, tired of what this conversation has shown me about the seemingly well-meaning, “progressive” men in my life. I am tired of seeing the damage that even the mildest, wimpiest, plaid-shirt-clad beardy-bro can do when he’s been given license to stop taking sexism seriously, and therefore stopped worrying that he might get somebody hurt.

I’m tired of the hurt. I’m tired of hearing from women who’ve been run off Twitter by harassment and death threats and doxing because they dared to express an opinion about a Presidential election. I am tired of arguing that

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An unlikely source

Nov 3rd, 2016 5:27 pm | By

Melania Trump has returned to campaigning for her owner husband. She’s chosen a theme: bullying. She’s against it.

Melania Trump returned from political exile on Thursday by making a rather eyebrow-raising claim: as first lady, she would combat bullying. That anti-bullying campaign, however, likely wouldn’t extend to her husband.

“Our culture has gotten too mean and too violent,” the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a crowd here in the suburbs of Philadelphia. “It is never OK when a 12-year-old girl or boy is mocked, bullied or attacked. It is terrible when that happens on the playground and it is unacceptable when it’s done by someone with no name hiding on the internet.”

If she really thinks … Read the rest

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Coming up roses

Nov 3rd, 2016 4:38 pm | By

Marc Fisher at the Washington Post ponders how Trump deals with his failures.

When Donald Trump loses, he lashes out, assigns blame and does whatever it takes to make a defeat look like a win. When that isn’t plausible, he pronounces the system rigged — victory wasn’t possible because someone put in the fix.

It’s what makes him great. I mean terrible. It’s what makes him terrible. I mean it’s one of the many things that make him terrible.

Trump calls defeats “blips.” Losing the race for the most powerful job on the planet is no one’s idea of a blip, and if that happens, Trump is highly unlikely to slip away and accept life as a historical footnote,

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Vigilante voter intimidation

Nov 3rd, 2016 10:25 am | By

Trump people are due in court to answer charges related to voter intimidation.

A federal judge Tuesday ordered representatives from the Donald Trump campaign and the Nevada Republican Party to appear at a hearing in his courtroom Wednesday afternoon in a lawsuit filed by Nevada Democrats accusing them of the engaging in voter intimidation tactics.

U.S. District Judge Richard Franklin Boulware also ordered the Trump campaign and state party to turn over any training materials they provided to “poll watchers, poll observers, exit pollsters or any other similarly tasked individuals.”

At the hearing, the Trump campaign and the Nevada GOP should be prepared to respond to the motion for a temporary restraining order that the Democrats requested in the lawsuit,

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Vive la laïcité

Nov 3rd, 2016 6:22 am | By

Maryam received a Prix international de la Laïcité yesterday in Paris. She posted her acceptance speech on Facebook:

I am truly honoured to have been awarded the International Secularism (Laïcité) Prize from the Comité Laïcité République in Paris on 2 November. The wonderful Malek Boutih won the National Prix and Étienne-Émile Baulieu the Scientific Prize for 2016. Here is my acceptance speech in English.

Thank you for this wonderful honour. I am so glad to have the support of so many present here, including my husband and son, as well as my Muslim parents.

We live in an age where totalitarianism is masked as divine righteousness, theocrats legitimised, dissent vilified and victims blamed for their own murder.

This is

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No gurlz

Nov 2nd, 2016 6:02 pm | By

So the pope got chatty on the plane back from Sweden, where he’d gone to celebrate the anniversary of the Reformation, so have a good laugh about that before we proceed.

A journalist for the Catholic News Agency was there to catch the pearls of wisdom as he dropped them. The hot news flash is that he said the church isn’t budging its shiny little ass on the question of women priests. That’s still a big No and always will be, the affable theocrat said.

During a press conference Tuesday aboard the papal plane from Sweden to Rome, Pope Francis said the issue of women priests has been clearly decided, while also clarifying the essential role of women in the

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No longer a lock

Nov 2nd, 2016 4:30 pm | By

Jeff Sharlet wrote a powerful public post on Facebook a few hours ago. It’s a “why we have to vote for Trump anyway” post but one that doesn’t minimize the things we dislike about Clinton – on the contrary it goes into some detail on them, via his own investigative journalism.

I’m so tired of Hillary Clinton posts, but I’m going to write one anyway. This is directed at my friends and acquaintances who, like me, are very critical of Clinton’s corporate centrism, cronyism, elitism, and militarism: Please consider voting for her anyway, even if you live in a “safe state.” Clinton is probably going to win, but it’s no longer a lock. Trump has a narrow but real potential

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Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 7 comments


UN Ambassador Wonder Woman

Nov 2nd, 2016 3:18 pm | By

I was startled by the part where Suzanne Moore said Wonder Woman has been named a UN ambassador so I followed her link.

“This is the most fun the UN has had, I’m pretty sure right?” Diane Nelson, president of DC Entertainment said at a ceremony appointing Wonder Woman as the United Nations’ honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls. The ceremony was meant to honor the fight for gender equality and the 75th anniversary of the character.

Pause to stare in amazement.

How insulting is that? What, because the empowerment of women and girls is so trivial and such a joke that a comic book character might as well be ambassador for it?

Also…

Not really … Read the rest

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