Another blasphemer: Penny White at Feminist Current on why she no longer hates “TERFs”:

Women are socialized to be caretakers. We learn to put everyone else’s needs before our own and, likewise, we are socialized to believe that everyone else’s oppression is more important than ours — especially the oppression of biological males. The oppression of men of colour by whites, for example, has always been taken more seriously than the oppression of women of colour. Police violence against women of colour receives far less coverage than police violence against men of colour.

…

Recently Caitlin Jenner was honoured at Glamour’s “Woman of the Year” awards, but Chaz Bono has yet to be nominated as “Man of the Year”

Huh. Assigned Male has a new strip out.

Wednesday’s update is a collaboration I did with Eli Erlick. Don’t appropriate trans experience!

So…trying to escape or reject or disavow gender altogether is appropriating trans experience?

What does that mean, exactly? That everyone has to be either trans or cis? That choosing a third option is appropriating trans experience? That trans people have a monopoly on how we all think about gender? That trans people have a veto on what we say about gender?

That’s not how any of this works.… Read the rest

Glosswitch notes a certain lack of cordiality toward women who forget how to be young.

Being an older women is, by all accounts, grim. It’s not just that women in their fifties are hit hardest by the gender pay gap, with most drives for pay parity aimed at their younger countertparts. Nor is it simply that, to quote a recent Guardian correspondent, older women “face daily insinuations in the media that we are ugly”. As women get old, their age is seen to cast a shadow over every contribution they make and every belief they hold.

As shown by the recent furore over Germaine Greer lecturing at Cardiff University, it’s not enough to disagree with an older woman. One

And now for a bit of hilarity.

Greta Christina has a new post at Freethought Blogs.

Not everyone uses social media the same way.

I would have thought this was obvious. But it seems not to be. So here comes the measured rant.

There’s this pattern I’ve been seeing for a while. I keep seeing people pay intense, microscopically-close attention to other people’s behavior on social media. I don’t mean “things people say on social media”: I mean their behavior. Who are they friends with? Who are they not friends with? Who did they un-friend or un-follow or block? What posts did they like or share or re-Tweet? What posts did they not like or share or re-Tweet? A

So there’s this fella Kevin Swanson. He’s the one who organized that National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa where Ted Cruz said men have to start the day on their knees to qualify to be president. Miranda Blue at Right Wing Watch tells us about him:

After yelling quite a bit about Leviticus, Swanson clarified on Saturday that he does not actually want the U.S. to implement the death penalty for gay people at the moment, but instead to wait and give them time to repent first.

Then, in the same speech, Swanson declared that anyone who believes in God must see that there “might be a connection” between wildfires and flooding in Colorado and the state’s

Religion must never be free and voluntary; atheism must never be a viable option. On your knees, peasants.

Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Friday that he believes anyone who wants to be president must fear God and pray daily.

Speaking at the National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa, Cruz joined other GOP presidential candidates for a discussion about the persecution of Christians in the U.S. and around the world. After some very extreme, very weird comments about homosexuality, right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson introduced Cruz to the stage to ask him how important it was for candidates to submit to Jesus Christ as “the king of the President of the United States.”

“Any president who doesn’t begin every

Originally a comment by iknklast on 13 administrators.

And does she think the professors are her substitute parents?

In a word, yes. This is actually the message being given to many faculty. I have recently sat through a 2 day faculty meeting where the main message to professors at our school was to be “best friends” and “parents”. We talked a lot about making students happy, making them feel at home, about enhancing relationships, and zero about increasing the rigor of our courses, achieving high standards, or ensuring that our students got the education they came for. We are expected by our students and by our bosses to be substitute parents, substitute best friends, and personal life coaches/counselors. If … Read the rest

And then there’s Yale. Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic:

[N]o fewer than 13 administrators took scarce time to compose, circulate, and co-sign a letter advising adult students on how to dress for Halloween, a cause that misguided campus activists mistake for a social-justice priority.

It’s easy enough to think of costumes one would really prefer students not to wear – minstrel show type stuff, KKK sheets, Nazi uniforms, you know. But does it take 13 administrators to say that? “A word to the wise, students: no racist costumes. You know what we mean by that. Thank you.”

Erika Christakis wrote and sent an email putting in a word for imagination and not stamping out every spark of it.

I

Check out today’s marvelous Google doodle, stashed on YouTube –

… Read the rest

Very good news: elections yesterday in Bihar, India, were a resounding rejection of Modi and the BJP.

Prime MinisterNarendra Modi of India suffered a severe political setback on Sunday when the voters of Bihar, the country’s third most populous state, overwhelmingly rejected his party in state assembly elections.

Mr. Modi, who had eagerly cast the Bihar elections as a referendum on his first 17 months as India’s leader, acknowledged defeat shortly after noon.

Recriminations were swift within his Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. Some party leaders questioned whether Mr. Modi had erred in the closing weeks of the Bihar campaign by elevating hard-right appeals to Hindu nationalism over his more unifying message of “vikas,” or development, for all

I also like the Starbucks red cup.

I like red, I like shades of red. It’s a nice cup.

Apparently there’s a pretend-controversy about the cup as a new front in the war on Christmas.

Ok so have this one then.

Jamilah Lemieux

Problem solved.… Read the rest

I can’t help loving it that Ben Carson has a painting of himself with his buddy Jesus.

Not just with Jesus, either, but with Jesus dropping a matey hand on his shoulder, and with the other hand telling the world, “Behold, here is my beloved Ben Carson, in whom I am well pleased.”

Although…are they really sure that is Jesus? It’s not Ben Carson’s trainer? I’m not sure why Jesus would be wearing a snowy-white bathrobe, or sporting a ’70s goatee.

But no, I’m just being blasphemous, I’m sure that’s the authentic Jesus, after a vigorous session on the elliptical.… Read the rest

The wife of one of the men injured in the Dhaka attack October 31st lives in Montreal. Nick Logan at Global News reported her story a few days ago. It includes gut-wrenching photos of him in the hospital.

Monika Mistry said her husband, Tareq Rahim, was hacked multiple times in the head, hands and torso and was shot in the stomach. His condition has improved but he remains in critical condition, with a bullet still inside his body. Mistry’s afraid he could be attacked again.

Rahim, she said, was meeting with writer friends Saturday afternoon in the office of Shuddhashar publishing house, in capital city Dhaka, when a purported group of Islamist extremists stormed in and began hacking

Speaking of menstruation…

The UCLA student newspaper The Daily Bruin ran an opinion piece by Zoey Freedman arguing that necessary menstrual products should be covered by health insurance.

The editors attached a stipulation at the beginning:

Editor’s note: This blog post refers to individuals who menstruate as women because the author wanted to highlight gender inequality in health care. We acknowledge that not all individuals who menstruate identify as women and that not all individuals who identify as women menstruate, but feel this generalization is appropriate considering the gendered nature of most health care policies.

Yes, it’s such a shocking generalization to refer to people who menstruate as women.… Read the rest

Facebook thinks women are ooky. Kate Ng in the Independent:

A feminist blogger has been censored by Facebook for blogging about periods and the history of menstrual products.

Alaura Weaver, also known as ‘Bad-ass Motherblogger’, started an ongoing series of blog posts detailing the history of menstrual hygiene.

I took a look. It’s interesting. Well worth a read, and not worth censoring.

She tried to boost one of her posts on Facebook, and they said no, you can’t, not allowed.

According to Facebook, the post violated their Ad Guidelines, which state: “Ads are not allowed to promote the sale or use of adult products or services, including toys, videos, publications, live shows or sexual enhancement products.”

When she … Read the rest

More from Maryam:

Maryam Namazie ‏@MaryamNamazie Nov 7
Banner of women protesting stoning of Rakhshana #Afghanistan:
“End reach of merchants of religion from our country”

More photos:

There are more at the link.

… Read the rest

Via Maryam on Twitter:

Maryam Namazie ‏@MaryamNamazie Nov 7
Mothers against execution in Iran
Long Live.

An editorial from the Daily Times in Pakistan:

Pakistani society’s deep rooted acceptance of despicable misogynistic behaviour once again came to light recently when a mixed gender group of students at Karachi University (KU) who were playing a casual game of cricket together within the bounds of the university were assaulted for doing so by the activists of the notoriously thuggish fundamentalist Islami Jamiat-e-Talba (IJT), the student wing of the Jamat-e-Islami. The IJT and its members are a menace across the universities of the country, and they have defaced and perverted these supposed places of learning and critical reflection into fearful places of demagoguery and reactionary backwardness.

Imagine if Mormons or Baptists were doing that on university campuses in … Read the rest