The second one was the next day, after I’d re-read some Anne.

May 25, 2009

But physical punishment or ‘correction’ has been morally unproblematic until very recently, some of you retort.

I don’t buy it. I’m at least very skeptical. I agree that it’s been widespread – but not that it’s been morally unproblematic. Of course it was morally unproblematic to some people, to many people, but I’m claiming that to a substantial minority it was not. (I’m talking about the 19th century onwards, if only because there’s so much more literature for children and about children starting then. I could talk about Hogarth on cruelty – but I won’t, for now.)

After writing about Anne of Green Gables from … Read the rest

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I’m leaving tomorrow to go to the Reason for Change conference in Amherst (outside Buffalo). Things will be slow here.

If any of y’all have something you want to say in a guest post, send it to me in the next few hours and I’ll schedule it for while I’m gone (unless it’s no good, but how likely is that?).

Also, go to the conference!

Critical thinking is not an end in itself. It is a means to effect positive change, to transform our world for the better. At “Reason for Change,” the Center for Inquiry’s 2015 international conference, we’ll bring the skeptic and humanist communities together to do just that.

And we’ll do it in a place that many

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Meanwhile, in another part of the primeval forest…

Steven Spielberg has been trolled by numerous Facebook users after a photo was shared of the director with a mechanical Triceratops on the set of 1993 film Jurassic Park.

The image was posted on the Facebook page of Jay Branscomb as a joke, alongside the caption:

“Disgraceful photo of recreational hunter happily posing next to a Triceratops he just slaughtered. Please share so the world can name and shame this despicable man.”

Incredibly, a fair few members of the public didn’t grasp that the picture was taken from the Jurassic Park set, believing that Spielberg had actually poached a dinosaur…

Well and besides, it’s obviously not dead – it’s resting.… Read the rest

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Federal appellate court to Texas women – Sorry, sucks to be you.

A federal appellate court upheld some of the toughest provisions of a Texas abortion law on Tuesday, putting about half of the state’s remaining abortion clinics at risk of permanently shutting their doors and leaving the nation’s second-most populous state with fewer than a dozen clinics across its more than 267,000 square miles. There were 41 when the law was passed.

Ten clinics, for a state bigger than France.

Bigger than Germany, bigger than the UK.

A three-judge panel of the appellate court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, sided for the most part with Texas and the abortion law the

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First ever  UK prosecution for forced marriage:

A 34-year-old Cardiff man has become the first person in the UK to be prosecuted under forced marriage laws introduced a year ago.

The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was jailed for 16 years after admitting making a 25-year-old woman marry him under duress last year.

He also pleaded guilty to charges of rape, bigamy and voyeurism at Merthyr Crown Court.

The “under duress” sounds mild. The details are not mild.

The judge said the offences began when the woman became engaged last year and in March 2014 he took her to his house under the pretence of having a meal with his wife.

“Your house was empty, you

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Karen James has good things to say on Twitter about this “phwoaaar women in the lab eh” bullshit. (That’s something Twitter is good for. Arguing about complicated subjects, no. Commenting on sexist or racist bullshit, yes.)

Karen James ‏@kejames 6 hours ago
That Tim Hunt & others feel comfortable being overtly sexist in public says a lot about the larger environment in science.

Brava @girlinterruptin on the larger problem around Tim Hunt’s remarks, this para especially. http://occamstypewriter.org/sylviamclain/2015/06/09/cry-cry-cry-for-backwards-nobel-laureates/ …

I dislike the workforce argument 4 why sexism & other isms are wrong. MT @royalsociety Science needs women http://ow.ly/O5t5c #wcsj2015

I had the same thought when I read the Royal Society’s statement. It annoyed me. Never mind the faff about “we need … Read the rest

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Is it something in the Bovril?

Cat Ferguson at BuzzFeed reports:

Tim Hunt, who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on cell duplication, was speaking at an invitation-only lunch in honor of women in science. He reportedly opened his talk by saying: “Thanks to the women journalists for making lunch.”

The 72-year-old scientist went on to say that he has a reputation as a chauvinist, and that labs should be segregated by sex. The problem with female scientists? “You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them, they cry!”

“You” of course are a heterosexual male. Isn’t everyone? Everyone who counts?

Hunt is a member of the

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Originally a comment by Salty Current* on Living in the box [guest post by Seth].

There are so many other things going on here. Survival. Solidarity. Empathy. To me those are the keys… not making sure everyone is on the same page theoretically. Imagine one person saying, “I’m just trying to breathe here” and receiving the answer, “But what does that mean for ME?”

This strikes me as a strange argument. Taking into consideration how our actions affect others who are oppressed and struggling, listening to their concerns and taking them into account, is pretty much the definition of solidarity.

There was a great interview by Chris Hayes of Brittney Cooper several months ago, at the time the hidden-camera … Read the rest

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Zinnia has a terrific post from last December explaining how and why trans people got shoved into hyper-gendered boxes.

When it comes to transitioning, many people seem to equate living as a woman with being stereotypically feminine. It’s a common assumption that trans women express their womanhood via conventional or even excessive femininity. Movies and TV shows often depict trans characters as far more feminine than most cis women – at times absurdly so. Tabloids focus on conventionally attractive models and actresses; when Christine Jorgensen became one of the first widely known trans women in 1952, front-page headlines described her as a “blonde beauty”.

Sound familiar? It sounds to me exactly like the reactions to Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair … Read the rest

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Originally a comment by Salty Current on Nail polish.

I think part of the problem is the conflation of identity with all of the cultural baggage that’s come to be associated with being a man or a woman. I’ve always felt that I’m a woman, felt that my woman’s body was “right,” and this has never had anything whatsoever to do with my preferences, interests, emotions, or abilities. I didn’t question whether I was a boy because I liked sports and math and had no interest in dolls or having children. I wasn’t confirmed in my girlness because I nurtured (stuffed and real) animals or liked playing with other girls or dancing. The thought that I might actually be … Read the rest

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Originally a comment by Seth on We need to talk.

I think Ian Cromwell (www.crommunist.com, formerly of this very blogging nexus) has made some very cogent analyses of race that can, mutatis mutandis, be appropriated to gender analysis with respect to gender identity and gender expression. To paraphrase Ian, race is a social construct, and as such is equal parts ‘how one sees oneself’ and ‘how one is seen by everyone else’. (There is more involved, to be sure, but Ian’s archives are free for the perusal of the curious.)

Similarly, I think gender can be described as a confluence of ‘how one sees oneself’ and ‘how one is seen by everyone else’. Ophelia, MrFancyPants, and I are more-or-less … Read the rest

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Jane Clare Jones at Trouble and Strife puts it this way:

Feminism, as a political movement aimed at the liberation of women, has long theorized gender not as an innate essence, but as a hierarchical system enforcing women’s subservience. Characterizing certain personality traits – compliance, nurturance, the desire to be pretty or objectified – as ‘natural’ to women, is, according to feminist analysis, a primary mechanism for maintaining gender hierarchy. As a result, many feminists have genuine questions about trans ideology’s assertion that ‘gender identity’ is both natural and universal. It comes perilously close to naturalizing the oppression of women.

This is not trivial, and it needs to be discussed. But it has been decreed that it cannot be

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Elinor Burkett wrote a think piece for today’s New York Times.

She asks if women and men have different brains, and notes that an affirmative answer to that question has been known to elicit heated dissent.

But when Bruce Jenner said much the same thing in an April interview with Diane Sawyer, he was lionized for his bravery, even for his progressivism.

“My brain is much more female than it is male,” he told her, explaining how he knew that he was transgender.

This was the prelude to a new photo spread and interview in Vanity Fair that offered us a glimpse into Caitlyn Jenner’s idea of a woman: a cleavage-boosting corset, sultry poses, thick mascara and the prospect

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