The epistemology of this stuff is so…horrendous.

Pink News: A transgender 4-year-old is transitioning before kindergarten.

Oh come on – what sense does that even make? What does “transitioning” mean for a 4-year-old? How can the parents possibly know the kid is “transgender”?

They will be the youngest person to transition openly in Australia, and will be settled in their new gender by the time they go to to school next year.

Despite the decision having been taken by the child’s parents to respect the child’s wishes to transition, and the opinions of gender specialist medical professionals, some have suggested that the child is “too young”.

What sense does it make to talk about the parents “respecting the child’s … Read the rest

Here we go again. Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to ten years in prison and 2,000 lashes for talking atheism on Twitter.

The 28-year-old reportedly refused to repent, insisting what he wrote reflected his beliefs and that he had the right to express them.

The hardline Islamic state’s religious police in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing Koranic verses, accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teaching fuelled hostilities.

So Saudi Arabia decided to demonstrate that the teaching of prophets does not fuel hostilities by sentencing a guy to ten years in prison, a huge fine, and 2,000 lashes for talking atheism on Twitter.

 … Read the rest

From our friend Pliny:

Reasonable woman: Do you ever wonder if you had, say, built low income housing for “our sins” instead of the martyrdom thing, whether your modern followers would have such a whiny-assed persecution complex?

Jesus and Spooky: Hey, needless suffering is our schtick.

Purvi Patel is out of prison.

A superior court judge in Indiana on Wednesday ordered the immediate release of Purvi Patel, the Indiana woman who was convicted of “feticide” and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2015 for losing her pregnancy, after resentencing Patel to less time than she has already served.

After Patel appealed the original sentence, her feticide conviction was vacated by an appeals court in July. She was still found guilty of a class D felony charge of child neglect.

In her ruling Wednesday, St. Joseph superior court judge Elizabeth Hurley “said a sentence of 18 months for Purvi Patel was appropriate for a felony charge of neglect of a dependent and that Patel does

Yes please.

… Read the rest

The paradox of the US – so rich, yet so third world by so many measures – like maternal mortality for instance. With all our piles of cash, we suck at keeping poor women alive throughout pregnancy and delivery. How shameful that is. We’d rather spend the piles of cash on making sure that rich people can buy all the houses they want than on good healthcare for all.

The good news is that maternal mortality rates are declining worldwide. The bad news? The situation for women in the United States is a glaring exception. And in Texas, where clinics serving women have shuttered and their health interests have been battled all the way up to the US Supreme

Leo Igwe tells us:

A victim of witchcraft accusation and witchcraft related violence in KENYA NEEDS YOUR HELP!

A 24-year-old woman is fighting for her life at Maua Methodist Hospital in Meru after her hand was chopped off and her private parts bruised after she was accused of witchcraft.

Mercy Nyoroka was assaulted for allegedly bewitching her neighbour and child at Kathelwa area, Igembe Central Sub County.—–

They later brought her back to her kitchen with deep wounds on her head and private parts. Her hand was also chopped off.

Richard Ntoiti, the victim’s husband, says he had gone to buy milk when his wife was abducted by the attackers.

Ntoiti, who is a casual labourer, is now appealing

Purple Sage has a post on a new “Safer Sex” guide for trans people. Read it all; I want to share a couple of her points here.

The guide begins by defining some terms:

“We, as trans people, use a variety of words to describe our gender and our body parts, and these words can be very unique and personal. There’s no one right way to refer to our bodies, but to keep things consistent in this guide, we’ve decided to use the following words in the following ways.

…

PARTS: We use this word when we’re talking about genitals or sexual anatomy of any kind.

DICK: We use this word to describe external genitals. Dicks come in all

Yes! The FDA has banned anti-bacterial soaps.

Antibacterial soaps were banned from the US market on Friday in a final ruling by the Food and Drug Administration, which said that manufacturers had failed to prove the cleansers were safe or more effective than normal products.

Dr Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA’s center for evaluation and research, said that certain antimicrobial soaps may not actually serve any health benefits at all.

“Consumers may think antibacterial washes are more effective at preventing the spread of germs, but we have no scientific evidence that they are any better than plain soap and water,” she said in a statement. “In fact, some data suggests that antibacterial ingredients may do more harm than

A new horror in the murder of Samia Shahid: she was raped before being murdered.

A British woman who died in Pakistan in a so-called honour killing was raped before her death, the officer in charge of the investigation has said.

Samia Shahid, 28, from Bradford, died in July in northern Punjab.

The Pakistani chief investigator also told the BBC Ms Shahid’s father and former husband carried out her murder.

He added he was seeking to have her mother and sister returned to Pakistan to be questioned about their role in the murder.

She never wanted to marry him in the first place. She was forced to marry him. She left him, and divorced, and married someone she did … Read the rest

A friend went to the Science Museum – you know, the prototype one, the original one, the one in South Kensington. The friend took pictures of an exhibit. I got permission to share them. They’re from a Wellcome Trust exhibition, Who Am I?

“Who am I?” is a somewhat odd question for a science museum. Science can tell us what we are but not really who. Who questions are conceptual rather than scientific.

“Gender identity” isn’t a scientific term. It’s political. It’s maybe literary, maybe philosophical; it’s conceptual…but it’s not scientific.

“Identity” too is not scientific. “Feeling” male or female is not scientific.

Not science.… Read the rest