This is both hilarious and disgusting – the New York Times solemnly reporting on a male composer who gets extra super-duper creative by dominating his wife. The Times says this is “kink” but it sounds much more like the same old arrangement there always was.

The OkCupid message Mollena Williams received in December 2013 was, in some ways, standard. It was complimentary: “Wow — your profile is great.” It was confident: “I am an artist, very successful (probably member of the top 10 or 20 in my genre in the world).” It was polite, signing off with “warm wishes.”

But something was a bit out of the ordinary, speaking to its author’s interest in domination and submission. The central desire?

So we can’t escape the influence of the Duggars after all. The “Learning Channel” is still advertising them to us as wholesome fresh-faced Good People who keep women chained to the stove and permanently pregnant.

After costarring on TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting, Jill and Jessa Duggar have landed their own series Jill and Jessa: Counting On, premiering on the cable channel on Tuesday, March 15, Us Weekly has learned exclusively.

Following their three-part special of the same name that aired on TLC last year, the series will follow the lives of the two sisters as they deal with life’s challenges, including raising their own families. The episodes will show Jessa and husband Ben Seewald bonding with son

A Gujarat village has forbidden unmarried female humans to use cell phones.

The Gujarat village of Suraj in India has reportedly banned girls and unmarried women from the use of cell phones, threatening fines for possessing or using a phone unless the call is from a relative and received on a parent’s phone, according to Hindustan Times.

Because they could use their phones to make appointments for fucking.

“Why do girls need a cell phone? Internet is a waste of time and money for a middle-class community like us. Girls should better utilize their time for study and other works,” said Devshi Vankar, sarpanch (elected head) of the village.

Oh yes? Why just girls then? I suspect Mr … Read the rest

The Senate Republicans yesterday formally announced that they’re refusing to do their job.

President Obama, don’t even bother.

That was the clear message from Senate Republicans on Tuesday as they decided to formally ignore any nominee the president appoints to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee—the panel responsible for vetting court picks—emerged from a private meeting Tuesday afternoon and declared there was a “consensus view”among them not to grant an Obama nominee a hearing, much less a vote, before the presidential election. The committee members then sent a letter to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell putting their decision in writing.

They should be impeached. They’re violating their goddam … Read the rest

Tarek Fatah wonders what on earth the city of Ottawa thinks it’s doing “celebrating” the hijab.

This Thursday, the City of Ottawa will be holding a public event celebrating the Islamist hijab; an article of cloth that many Muslim women consider akin to the medieval chastity belt.

He says we need to understand the history of the Islamist revolution in Iran to get what this is all about.

On March 7, 1979 the Islamic Republic declared that henceforth all Iranian women would not be allowed to step outside their homes if they did not have their heads covered by a chador (a black, blanket-like shawl) or a hijab.

Many Iranians first thought of this decree as a joke, but when

Peter Walker posted about a new occupation of Malheur.

There’s a new occupation of Harney County. They’re here to take back the land. They’re calling on millions to flock to their cause.

Follow the link to see all his photos of the occupiers.… Read the rest

The linguist Deborah Cameron asks an important question:

The question feminists should be asking about women calling each other ‘dude’ or ‘you guys’ isn’t why they’re talking like men (they aren’t), it’s why they can only express cool solidarity with other women by using prototypically male address terms. Aren’t there any female terms that would serve their purpose just as well?

In principle there are, sure. In practice, there aren’t any yet.

I propose Bletchley.… Read the rest

The Guardian reports:

In Australia, 853 people have made a claim or substantiated complaint of child sexual abuse against one or more Christian Brothers, with 75% of victims under the age of 13 at the time, a royal commission has heard.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse has turned its attention to the Christian Brothers as the third round of its hearings into the diocese of Ballarat began on Monday. A religious community within the Catholic church, the Christian Brothers primarily worked in educational facilities for children.

Where they had a selection of children to predate on, and a veil of piety to hide behind. Perfect setup, innit.

The commission’s data showed that the highest

From the Huffington Post UK:

A transgender student is set to make history and represent the UK’s female students by running to become the National Union of Students’ women’s officer.

Anna Lee, a student at Lancaster University who describes herself as a “queer trans disabled lesbian woman”, is the first openly trans woman to stand for election in a national role. Lee is currently her students’ union’s vice president for welfare and community, and says she is “passionate” about equal rights.

There’s a Facebook page for her campaign.

“I never believed that running to be national women’s officer was a possibility,” she said in a Facebook post. “I felt that I had hit a glass ceiling. Now, I

You probably saw about the meta-study of all the studies the other day that found – surprise! – that homeopathy is as worthless as it says on the tin. The guy who chaired it did so much meta-studying he got bored.

Professor Paul Glasziou, a leading academic in evidence based medicine at Bond University, was the chair of a working party by the National Health and Medical Research Council which was tasked with reviewing the evidence of 176 trials of homeopathy to establish if the treatment is valid.

A total of 57 systematic reviews, containing the 176 individual studies, focused on 68 different health conditions – and found there to be no evidence homeopathy was more effective than placebo

This piece by Bailey Lamon, Why This Radical Leftist is Disillusioned by Leftist Culture, is being passed around. I certainly recognize the culture she’s talking about.

I’m tired of the cliques, the hierarchies, the policing of others, and the power imbalances that exist between people who claim to be friends and comrades. I am exhausted and saddened by the fact that any type of disagreement or difference of opinion in an activist circle will lead to a fight, which sometimes includes abandonment of certain people, deeming them “unsafe” as well as public shaming and slander. It is disgusting that we claim to be building a new world, a new society, a better way of dealing with social problems — 

This is why yes we do get to discuss gender:

Let Clothes Be Clothes

On the right: a blouse with pink flowers and frills and lettering and the words “Berry cute like Mummy”

On the left: a sweatshirt with blue spots and collar and the words “Wheelie cool just like Daddy”… Read the rest

From the Space Needle webcam this morning (click to embiggen):

… Read the rest

Have a brilliant Storify by Blair Braverman about a 200 mile dogsled race interrupted by finding a hypothermic musher lying in the snow.

After we left downtown, the trail ran between a highway and stormy @LakeSuperior. 45mph wind, whiteout conditions. I couldn’t see my dogs.

2:33 PM – 18 Feb 2016

The third stage of the race was when things got exciting. The dogs looked great and I was feeling good about our chances of finishing.

23 miles into the wilderness, I came around a corner and there was a woman lying on the trail.

She could barely talk. I put hand warmers on

So. Let’s drop in on the Socratic Club at Oregon State University for a moment.

They were going to hold a debate about gender, but then they decided not to.

We are sorry to have to inform you that the debate on Thursday, February 25th on the topic “Is Gender a Choice?” has been canceled. Our debaters were informed that some students on campus are offended by the topic of the debate and may plan to protest the event as transphobic, despite the fact that we had both sides fully represented. Because of this one of our speakers did not feel comfortable proceeding with the event. We are disappointed, but understand.

Both sides of what? There are two sides, … Read the rest

Speaking of faking up the wildlife footage – you know that trope about lemmings throwing themselves off cliffs? To quote Elaine in Seinfeld: fake fake fake fake.

Snopes has the story:

Some of the most memorable scenes in White Wilderness, Disney’s 1958 Academy Award-winning “True-Life Adventure” nature documentary about wildlife in the snowy northern portions of the North American continent, were ones featuring the death of lemmings who drowned after jumping off cliffs and into the sea. But the scenes shown in the documentary were staged by filmmakers in order to replicate supposed real-life behavior of lemmings that could not be captured on film, and thus did Disney perpetuate for generations to come the legend of periodic,

There’s a popular open Facebook group, Occupy Menstruation.

Today it has a post excited about degendering menstruation.

Degendering Menstruation: It’s Beginning

I see a shift happening in the collective consciousness of the menstrual activist community. People are posting simple reminders that it is not only women who bleed, and slowly this is changing the language chosen for posts—rather than talking about women all of the time, people can start talking about menstruators.

Well thank fuck for that, right? I’m so sick of people talking about women all the time. Goddam women – they suck up all the oxygen in the room and then ask for even more. Women dominate everything, and nobody else can ever get a … Read the rest