God I hate finding myself agreeing with Brendan O’Neill…and not just for political reasons, but because he’s so transparently and irritatingly a Self-conscious Preening Contrarian. But it can’t be helped: for once Preening Contrarian has a point.

If you want to know how crazy, even Kafkaesque, this young millennium has become, consider this: yesterday it was reported that a person with a penis — Caitlyn Jenner — will be named Glamour magazine’s Woman of the Year, while over at Cardiff University a woman who has done more than most to secure the liberation of womankind — Germaine Greer — was denounced by a swarm of Stepford Students as ‘transphobic’, someone who should make all right-minded people feel ‘sick

But don’t worry – Huffington Post UK has a post by another Cardiff student who explains why it’s such a good idea to cancel Germaine Greer’s lecture.

So, notable second-wave feminist writer and scholar Germaine Greer is transphobic (more specifically transmisogynistic).

That’s the first sentence. It made me want very badly to stop reading. Why? That stupid “second-wave” shit. That label makes it sound as if Germaine Greer simply stopped thinking around 1975, and morphed into a statue that can be wheeled out to say 1975 things but nothing else.

Also, of course, the “transphobic (more specifically transmisogynistic)” part, which I have learned to be deeply suspicious of.

But maybe the student, Payton Quinn, goes on to make a case?… Read the rest

Another one.

A petition, by a student at Cardiff University, to Cardiff University, demanding that it cancel a scheduled lecture by Germaine Greer.

The lecture is scheduled for November 18 and according to the CU blog it’s fully booked.

Academic and broadcaster Professor Germaine Greer will deliver this year’s Hadyn Ellis Distinguished Lecture on Wednesday 18 November 2015.

Professor Greer is widely considered one of the most influential commentators on 21st century life. She has made her presence felt on everything from Newsnight Review to Celebrity Big Brother. A former professor of English at Warwick University, Professor Greer became a household name when she published The Female Eunuch, attracting praise and criticism in more or less equal measure. She

Ensaf Haidar shared a selfie on Facebook:

… Read the rest

Michael Moorcock talked to Andrea Dworkin for the New Statesman in 1995.

Michael Moorcock: After “Right-Wing Women” and “Ice and Fire” you wrote “Intercourse“. Another book which helped me clarify confusions about my own sexual relationships. You argue that attitudes to conventional sexual intercourse enshrine and perpetuate sexual inequality. Several reviewers accused you of saying that all intercourse was rape. I haven’t found a hint of that anywhere in the book. Is that what you are saying?

Andrea Dworkin: No, I wasn’t saying that and I didn’t say that, then or ever. There is a long section in Right-Wing Women on intercourse in marriage. My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a

Guest post by Bjarte Foshaug.

Hardly anything has greater potential for introducing absurdities into an argument than using words in a different meaning than your opponent while continuing to act as if you were both still talking about the same thing. Now, obviously words don’t mean anything in themselves, but get their meanings from us. If someone wants to apply the word “fish” to what most people call “bird”, and vice versa, they are free to do so. But then it’s either disingenuous, or stupid, or both, to go on talking as if everyone else were using the words in the same way. It’s as if we were having a conversation about clubs for hitting baseballs (let’s call them … Read the rest

Justin Trudeau says he’s a feminist, and proud to be one.

In an interview, co-sponsored by the Toronto Star, which aired on Monday night before the election (Oct. 18), Trudeau was asked by journalist Francine Pelletier if he would describe himself as a feminist.

“There seems to be a lot of anger,” Pelletier asked, “not just at women, but at feminism and feminists. Would you describe yourself as a feminist?”

“Yes. Yes, I am a feminist,” said Trudeau. “I’m proud to be a feminist.”

And not only that…

Trudeau added that the public should pay more attention to developments in popular culture like Gamergate—a long-running controversy about sexism and violence toward women in video game culture.

“The things

In 1987, Ursula K. LeGuin sent a letter to an editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich who had asked her to blurb a new anthology of science fiction stories.

John Radziewicz
Senior Editor
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
111 5th Ave
New York NY 10003

Dear Mr Radziewicz,

I can imagine myself blurbing a book in which Brian Aldiss, predictably, sneers at my work, because then I could preen myself on my magnanimity. But I cannot imagine myself blurbing a book, the first of the series, which not only contains no writing by women, but the tone of which is so self-contentedly, exclusively male, like a club, or a locker room. That would not be magnanimity, but foolishness. Gentlemen, I just don’t belong

This is very funny but also painfully true:

SIX WORDS TO REMOVE FROM YOUR VOCABULARY TO BE A BETTER ALLY TO ME by Wayne Gladstone.

Sure, you’re a good person. Each day you learn a little more about the rest of humanity, and just by clicking this link you’ve already shown your interest in being a better ally. But while you’ve living a good life, checking your privilege and learning about people of different races, religions, social orientations and identities, there’s an ally opportunity you might have overlooked. The smallest minority. Me. And while I may be a minority of one, I must remind you that my opinion of you is not based on a measured consideration of your cumulative

Newsweek Pakistan reports:

The death toll from last month’s haj stampede has topped 2,000, according to tallies given by foreign officials, making it the deadliest disaster in the pilgrimage’s history by far.

Saudi Arabia has yet to provide an updated death toll after saying 769 people died in the tragedy near Mecca, home of Islam’s holiest sites. But figures given by more than 30 governments around the world show that at least 2,097 foreign pilgrims have died.

That’s so horrific. It wasn’t an earthquake or a flood or a mudslide, it was just way too many people in one place, trying to carry out a “religious obligation” that dates from a time when Islam was a local religion and … Read the rest

If gender is social rather than natural, change and variability are always possible. Hence continuities also require a social explanation. One important continuity is the hierarchical relationship between women and men, which has persisted despite many changes in the meaning of femininity and masculinity and in the social activities of women and men. While male dominance can and does change in form and degree, it seems that gender hierarchy can coexist with a wide variety of beliefs about gender and with different divisions of labour between women and men. Gender thus denotes a hierarchical relationship between women and men, not merely differences between them. If gender is understood to be social, this hierarchical relationship needs to be explained as a

Remember when the interim director of the Berkeley Astronomy department said: ““Of course, this is hardest for Geoff in this moment”?

Now it’s Oscar Pistorius who is “in need of healing.”

[A] justice system serves society with a split purpose. There’s punishment of the perpetrator and an element of rehabilitation (which has been vigorously stressed in this case – the terms of his house arrest include community service).  And there’s also the strong social message that the justice system serves: through its sentencing, it makes a comment on the seriousness of the crime and how profoundly it will be perceived. This is the sticking point.

…

Judge Thokozile Masipa had to deal with the facts in front of her,

So now North America is wholly ruled by Absurdly Gorgeous Men.

I feel as if I should be indignant about this, because what does Absurdly Gorgeous have to do with governing or administration? Nothing. (Diplomacy though? Different story? In which case maybe not nothing at all to do with governing? Persuasion is a necessary skill in governing, and charisma is part of persuasion. We ugly people are not useful in that way, fairness or no fairness.)

Maybe I’ll be indignant about it next week or sometime, but right now I’m just amused.

Hottie McHotterson 1, 2, 3.… Read the rest

Another thing about that CisPrivilege Check List – item 22.3.1 again:

I was trained into whatever gender was appropriate for me, and so I am prepared to live in my current gender, without having to go back and learn vital skills I was not taught when I was young.

That’s privilege because trans people don’t have that: they were not trained into their “appropriate” gender, so they are not prepared to live in their current gender without going back to learn vital skills.

But isn’t it supposed to be trans-exclusionary for women to point out that trans women who grew up as boys don’t have the experience of being the lesser, the subordinate, the inferior, the feeble, the not very … Read the rest

Noah Smith of Bloomberg View reports on this defunding of the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The BLS is one of the most important economic data-gathering agencies in the U.S.

Employment numbers? Inflation statistics? Those all come from surveys run by the BLS.

Unfortunately, the Republican-controlled Congress is allowing the bureau to wither on the vine, and there are signs it will get worse. During the past five years, funding has stagnated as inflation has risen, meaning that in real terms the agency’s budget has fallen by 10 percent. Now the Senate is proposing to cut funding by about 4 percent more, in real terms, this year.

This is a dangerous game. The rewards from cutting BLS funding are minuscule.

Robert Reich on Facebook:

The first thing tyrants do is close schools. The second thing they do is burn books. The third thing is cut off information. Right-wing Republicans are on the way to doing all three: State legislatures continue to cut school budgets; local Republicans are reducing budgets for libraries. Congressional Republicans are now cutting off information — slashing the budgets of the most important sources we have for collecting data on what’s really happening to jobs, wages, and the economy: the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Because of such cuts, the BLS can no longer collect data on mass layoffs or how Americans are using their time; the cuts may also make employment data

The Indian “spiritual” site Speaking Tree warns of bad Vastu.

India has the Himalayas in its North, which – Vastu experts say – goes against Vastu. It is the reason that poverty remains an unending issue in our country.

Huh. So, could they move them to the south?

Facebook readers are not convinced.… Read the rest