Zoskia Beliski at the Globe and Mail talks about the way women’s training in being polite and agreeable can interfere with their ability to stand up for themselves.

I didn’t want to seem frosty and I didn’t want to seem mad.

That was complainant Lucy DeCoutere during her time on the stand last month at the sexual assault trial of former CBC host Jian Ghomeshi, who faces a verdict Thursday. Asked to account for why DeCoutere had stayed at Ghomeshi’s house for an hour after he allegedly slapped and choked her, she explained that she had been brought up to make the people around her happy and comfortable, to “foster kind thoughts” with a “pleasing personality.” She said she’d been

The New York Times:

A series of deadly terrorist attacks struck Brussels on Tuesday, with two explosions at the city’s main international airport and a third in a subway station at the heart of the city, near the headquarters complex of the European Union.

At least 11 people were killed at the airport, according to news agencies, and the city’s transit agency said 15 were killed in the subway bombing. More than 130 others were reported wounded. At least one of the two airport explosions was touched off by a suicide bomber, officials said.

“We were fearing terrorist attacks, and that has now happened,” Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium said at a news conference, calling the attacks

Elizabeth Warren on Trump, the guy who loves to call people “Loser!”:

Let’s be honest – Donald Trump is a loser. Count all his failed businesses. See how he kept his father’s empire afloat by cheating people with scams like Trump University and by using strategic corporate bankruptcy (excuse me, bankruptcies) to skip out on debt. Listen to the experts who’ve concluded he’s so bad at business that he might have more money today if he’d put his entire inheritance into an index fund and just left it alone.

Trump seems to know he’s a loser. His embarrassing insecurities are on parade: petty bullying, attacks on women, cheap racism, and flagrant narcissism. But just because Trump is a loser

Ah yes, this again.

Melissa Block at NPR says Think Twice Before Telling A Woman To Smile.

After the primaries last Tuesday a cable news guy tweeted at Hillary Clinton: “Smile. You just had a big night.”

Suffice to say, women – were not amused.

“Said no one to a man, ever” tweeted one.

Another offered: “Women LOVE it when you say this.”

And on it went, until comedian Samantha Bee was prompted to launch the hashtag “Smile for Joe,” thereby prompting a slew of women to post selfies as they make like Grumpy Cat: frowning, grimacing, and scowling.

The cable news guy said predictable “lighten up ladies!” type of thing – so why is this so annoying?

Because

Chris Moos on Twitter:

So @nonajasmine, why did you delete ur tweet attacking Muslim women challenging gender segregation as “unfeminist”?

It is unfeminist to lecture other women on what they should do and think & I include Muslim women in that

No. Feminism is not endorsing everything any woman says or does or thinks. It never has been. Feminism is all about saying X is better than Y, and that of course includes saying it to women.… Read the rest

It would be nice if this had changed more by now. Tell children to draw a pilot or a surgeon and what happens?

No prizes for getting it right.

A new short film has highlighted how children as young as five years old have already learnt common gender stereotypes and think of certain career opportunities as being more likely to be filled by men.

Kids in a school were asked to draw people in job roles, including firefighters, surgeons and pilots.

“Have a think in your head what this person looks like to you,” one of the teachers asked them.

Out of the 66 pictures drawn by the children, 61 pictures were of men and only five were of women.

So the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) asked the internet for suggestions for the name of their new ship. Currently in the lead, whupping Endeavour, Henry Worsley, David Attenborough, Falcon, and similar grown-up names, is Boaty McBoatface. I think that would be a fabulous name for a boat – although Hotty McHotterson would also be nice.

The £200 million polar research vessel, which will be operational in 2019, is set to sail the waters of Antarctica and the Arctic carrying a team of 90 scientists and support staff.

In a statement NERC said: “Tonne-for-tonne, the ship – together with NERC’s existing two blue water research ships – will provide the UK with the most advanced floating research fleet in

Here’s Rebecca Reilly-Cooper at Coventry Skeptics in the Pub last Monday. I’m told it was the best-attended event they’d had in ages, and very well received.

She’s doing a talk at Conway Hall in May but that sold out on the first day.

… Read the rest

Meghan Murphy detects some incoherence in the libertarian feminist approach to “sex work.”

Surprise! Gaming is a sexist industry that pornifies women. Through a particularly hypocritical post, even for Jezebel, it has come to light that Microsoft hired women in sexualized Catholic schoolgirl outfits to dance at an afterparty hosted by Xbox in San Francisco during last week’s Game Developer Conference.

Welcome to the industry, laydeez.

One woman who attended the party, named Kamina Vincent, a producer at an Australian games studio, told Jezebel that she spoke to one of the “dancers,” who told her “they had been hired to speak with attendees and encourage them to the dance floor.” Vincent correctly pointed out, “Decisions like these

That day in the forest was traumatic for Reserve Police Battalion 101. They didn’t like shooting people in the head all day. A few of them asked for and got transfers.

Christopher Browning continues:

The problem that faced Trapp and his superiors in Lublin, 
therefore, was not the ethically and politically grounded oppo- 
sition of a few but the broad demoralization shared both by those 
who shot to the end and those who had not been able to 
continue. It was above all a reaction to the sheer horror of the 
killing process itself. If Reserve Police Battalion 101 was to 
continue to provide vital manpower for the implementation of 
the Final Solution in the Lublin district, the psychological 

From 2005, a visit to the Zendik commune:

Lunch at Zendik is, like much else at the commune, more than it appears to be. Long before the farmers finish scraping their bowls, the group-therapy session starts up. A thin, blond woman in her mid-20s garners attention with an “Ahem, everybody” and tells the table that Helen has something to share. Helen’s a short, stout woman who “realized everything was bullshit,” dropped out of Harvard, and moved to Zendik. (She has since left the commune.)

Helen shares that she has “a date” with a guy at the table named Talon. She plans to get pregnant. Talon drops his fork, then goes back to eating lunch.

Helen’s declaration of intent to

Kimberly Winston at Religion News Service reports on the debut of a new atheism plus social justice network, The Orbit. You may have heard about it a couple of months ago when there was a leak.

“The Orbit,” a collection of 20-plus new and existing blogs,  took off Tuesday (March 15) and will focus on social justice and activism through an atheist lens.

“This group is founded from the beginning as a group dedicated to atheist social justice voices,” said Greta Christina, author of an eponymous blog on The Orbit. “We were also focusing on a diversity of voices when we were building this network from day one.”

Look at all the good they do.… Read the rest

From the Onion, a first-timer messes up the Iditarod.

After running directly into the grandstands during the Iditarod’s ceremonial start and veering 55 miles off course late Tuesday to chase a marmot, Siberian husky and rookie sled dog Melvin apologized to his musher and fellow canines Wednesday for making a complete fool of himself in the early stages of the annual 1,150-mile race.

“First Iditarod jitters, I guess,” the visibly contrite Melvin told reporters Wednesday at the Rainy Pass checkpoint. “I feel like such a moron. Here I am in the last great race on earth and I’m blowing it. I mean, 100 times out of 100, when my musher yells, ‘Gee,’ I turn right. But yesterday I go

So many of my friends shared this piece by Jemima Lewis in the Telegraph. (Yes, the Telegraph. Why do you think I mentioned the many friends?)

A primary school in Hartfield, East Sussex, held a “transgender day” recently, to encourage the tots to explore issues of gender-fluidity.

But was it to encourage them to explore? Or to teach them the formulas they’re expected to repeat. The current version of transgender dogma doesn’t welcome exploration, as Lewis points out.

I want my children to be open-minded about gender and sexuality. I want them to have the run of the dressing up box, from Cinderella to Spiderman, for as long as they feel drawn to sparkly nylon. I want the

The “industry” that like to gamble with other people’s money and make us pay for it when the gamble doesn’t go their way – that industry doesn’t like Elizabeth Warren because she thinks it should be sensibly regulated in order to avoid global financial meltdown like the one in 2008. Since this highly useful and public spirited industry doesn’t like Warren, Republicans also don’t like Warren.

A Republican congressman on the House Committee on Financial Services thinks Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of the most vocal advocates for Wall Street reform, needs to be “neutered.”

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) made the comments during a panel discussion at an American Bankers Association conference Wednesday. According to Politico, Luetkemeyer said people