It turns out that the real oppressed groups are the ones who have always had privilege and suddenly have it taken away. Who knew?

“I actually feel like women are taking over the world,” says Ishwar Chhikara, a 36-year-old investment officer at an international development bank, citing statistics showing more women now have college degrees in the US than men. He says this laughing, but with no audible irony.

“I feel bad for men, especially those who don’t go to school, or study. The whole system is changing drastically with the coming of the information age. It’s not about strength anymore, it’s about the brains.”

While muscles at the center of an economy made the physically stronger sex have more

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