And here’s another one –

Young soldiers training at Deepcut Army barracks lived in a “highly sexualised” environment where senior staff preyed on recruits in an “abuse and misuse” of power, the British Army’s director of personal [CORR] services has admitted at the inquest into the death of Private Cheryl James.

A lack of supervision and welfare helped create such an environment at the barracks in Camberley, Surrey, Brigadier Donnelly said .

Pte James, 18, was found dead with a gunshot wound to her head in November 1995.

They did a new inquest because the one at the time may have missed some witnesses and some evidence.

There was a room for fucking set aside at the barracks.

Alison Foster

What is religion for? To strip away all rights from women and girls, in order to imprison them at home and prevent them from doing anything other than domestic and sexual / reproductive service. At least that’s often how it appears. Now it’s riding bikes, for girls over five. (Yeah, girls of six are such sluts – I notice that every day.)

An ultra-orthodox Jewish leader has reportedly banned girls aged five and older in some areas of Israel from riding bicycles – claiming it is “immodest”.

The rabbi of the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Nahloat distributed the stringent decree to his followers in synagogues across the area.

He had said young girls riding bicycles could “cause serious damage to

The victim of the Stanford rapist read him a letter describing the “severe impact” the assault had on her at his sentencing. BuzzFeed has that letter. Everyone should read it.

The woman, now 23, told BuzzFeed News she was disappointed with the “gentle” sentence and angry that Turner still denied sexually assaulting her.

“Even if the sentence is light, hopefully this will wake people up,” she said. “I want the judge to know that he ignited a tiny fire. If anything, this is a reason for all of us to speak even louder.”

So spread the word.

She doesn’t bury the lede:

You don’t know me, but you’ve been inside me, and that’s why we’re here today.

You shouldn’t … Read the rest

Susan Cox at Feminist Current reports an odd exclusion:

Lady*fest, a feminist festival scheduled to take place June 22nd – 25th in Heidelberg, Germany, has declared the clitoris “exclusionary.”

The festival, which features workshops, lectures, and art, had initially planned to include topics like, “clitoris/glitzoris” and “masturbation” as part of their art exhibition, but protocol documents from the last planning meeting now explain that the clitoris is “problematic,” because it refers to female anatomy.

Well excuuuuuuuse the fuck out of me – should we all get them chopped off then? Does that idea sound vaguely familiar?

I can’t wait for our trans racial allies to start saying black skin is “problematic” because it refers to something about black … Read the rest

Cats sleeping in awkward positions:

… Read the rest

Won’t somebody please think of the rapists? At least the white, handsome, star athlete ones?

A former Stanford University athlete convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months in county jail and probation in a case that has shed light on what advocates say is an epidemic of violence on college campuses.

Brock Allen Turner, a 20-year-old swimmer who dropped out of the elite California university last year, appeared stoic in court in Palo Alto on Thursday, two months after a jury convicted him of multiple felonies, including assault with intent to rape an intoxicated woman.

…

Turner, who is from Dayton, Ohio, was arrested on the Palo Alto campus on 18 January 2015 after

Unlike me, Anna Merlan at Jezebel didn’t like Jimmy Carter’s opinion piece on prostitution and decriminalization. She didn’t bother to be especially honest about it though.

Writing for the Washington Post, Carter editorialized that sex work is bad and oppressive. He’s against Amnesty International’s call to decriminalize all aspects of adult, consensual sex work, because he doesn’t think consensual sex work is real.

Some assert that this “profession” can be empowering and that legalizing and regulating all aspects of prostitution will mitigate the harm that accompanies it. But I cannot accept a policy prescription that codifies such a pernicious form of violence against women. Normalizing the act of buying sex also debases men by assuming that they are

Rachel Moran says there’s a lot wrong with Emily Bazelon’s NY Times Magazine piece about the decriminalization of prostitution.

Bazelon’s mischaracterization of the issue of prostitution, in my opinion, was confirmed and reaffirmed in her article in ways too numerous to document here. Her piece has had to be corrected three times (including her contention that Dutch prostitution is confined to Amsterdam, when it is, as any European could tell you, countrywide.) U.S. psychologist and academic Melissa Farley, who was quoted in Bazelon’s article, has filed a demand for correction of Bazelon’s misquote of Farley; as of this writing (June 1, 2016), the New York Times has refused to correct it.

Bazelon also stated that there had been no reported

Jimmy Carter in the Washington Post:

It is disturbing that some human rights and public health organizations are advocating the full legalization of the sex trade, including its most abusive aspects. I agree with Amnesty International, UNAIDS and other groups that say that those who sell sex acts should not be arrested or prosecuted, but I cannot support proposals to decriminalize buyers and pimps.

Some assert that this “profession” can be empowering and that legalizing and regulating all aspects of prostitution will mitigate the harm that accompanies it. But I cannot accept a policy prescription that codifies such a pernicious form of violence against women. Normalizing the act of buying sex also debases men by assuming that they

… Read the rest

Speaking of fascists…the Catholic church spent 2 million dollars lobbying against a New York law that would make it easier for victims of child sex abuse to sue their attackers. Tell me again about how religion is all about compassion. Tell me again about the connection between religion and morality.

The state’s Catholic Conference has hired some of New York’s most influential lobbying firms, including Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker, Patricia Lynch & Associates, Hank Sheinkopf, and Mark Behan Communications. They spent more than $2.1 million from 2007 through 2015 lobbying against the Child Victims Act and for or against other bills, according to state records.

The Child Victims Act, introduced by Democratic Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, would

Saletan on Trump’s open racism:

Republicans who have sworn allegiance to Donald Trump—the majority leaders of the United States House and Senate, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, and numerous governors and members of Congress—don’t think this country can return to the racism and fascism of the 20^th century. They want us to believe that Trump will respect the norms of the post-Holocaust, post-segregation era because they support him. In truth, their capitulation should alarm us. As other countries have learned, the first step in the descent to racism and fascism is to become numb to them. Over the past week, we’ve received fresh evidence that the numbing process is underway.

Most Germans didn’t … Read the rest

The BBC has a new horror –

At least 2,234 Indians have contracted HIV while receiving blood transfusions in hospitals in the past 17 months alone, say officials.

The information was revealed by the country’s National Aids Control Organisation (Naco) in response to a petition filed by information activist Chetan Kothari.

God damn. That’s appalling.

The highest number of patients who had been infected with HIV as a result of contaminated blood in hospitals, were from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh with 361 cases, Mr Kothari’s RTI (Right to Information) query revealed.

The western states of Gujarat with 292 cases and Maharashtra with 276 cases rank second and third respectively.

The Indian capital Delhi is at number four with

Iran’s Holocaust Cartoon Contest announced the winners at a closing ceremony on Monday. Here’s the winner:

Look closely at the drawer: the words are “Shoah Business.” The thing at the top is the front entrance to Auschwitz.… Read the rest

My former zookeeper side is obtrusive this week. I used to know a few gorillas quite well – not as well as their longstanding full-time keeper, but quite well. I felt very attached to them. Harambe’s death makes me sad and angry, even though I don’t think the zoo could have done anything else.

The police are investigating the family of the boy who jumped into the gorilla exhibit.

That sounds kind of absurd on the face of it – they surely didn’t tell him to jump in, or want him to. But. People can be amazingly irresponsible at zoos…except that irresponsible is too mild. People will go over and around barriers at zoos; that’s what I’m saying. People will … Read the rest