From last September, a Think Progress piece about a big UN report on the roots of sexual violence.

Among the conclusions…

Unhealthy attitudes about sexuality take root at a young age. More than half of the study’s respondents who admitted they had violated someone’s consent were teenagers when they first raped someone. Most sexual crimes recorded in the study occurred when men were between the ages of 15 and 19. The authors point out this finding “reinforces the need for early rape prevention.” Sexual violence prevention advocates in the U.S. say that this type of education can begin with comprehensive sex ed. Teaching kids about the bodies from an early age helps instill a sense of self-confidence and

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There are protests in India over the gang-rape and murder of that teenage girl in Kolkata.

Apparently the authorities are no longer talking about suicide.

She was then set on fire on December 23 and died in a state-run hospital late on New Year’s Eve, police said.

“She gave us a dying declaration in front of the health officials that she was set on fire by two persons close to the accused when she was alone at home on December 23,” local policeman Nimbala Santosh Uttamrao told AFP.

It beggars belief. They raped her and then to punish her for being raped by them, they set her on fire.

THEY SET HER ON FIRE.

What is wrong with people?

Several

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American Atheists are all in a lather about getting to 100,000 Likes on their Facebook page RIGHT NOW. I have no idea why, but they are. So fine, I’ll encourage people to go Like their Facebook page. If they get 100,000 likes then Dave will wink at the camera on Fox News on Tuesday. I don’t see that as an incentive; I hate winking. I think he should eat an olive, instead.

They offered this as an interim reward.

 … Read the rest

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Happy birthday to Waterford. Today is its 1100th birthday. It had a celebration with fireworks and pretend Viking ships.

Waterford was founded 1,100 years ago by the Vikings,and a free outdoor spectacle took place on the city’s quays tonight, produced by street theatre company Spraoi.

Telling the story of the arrival of the Vikings in 914 AD, the event had dance, performance, pyrotechnics, light, music, narration and special effects.

Three stylised Viking ships which took two months to build were also on display.

Thousands of people attended despite stormy weather with flooding.

Vikings! Fireworks! Viking ships! It sounds great.… Read the rest

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Melissa Harris-Perry apologized for what sounds like a mean joke.

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry offered a tearful and passionate apology to the Romneys on Saturday for remarks she and her panelists made about the family’s adopted black grandchild.

In a segment last week, Harris-Perry joked about the grandson while one panelist, actress Pia Glenn, sang “one of these things is not like the other” and comedian Dean Obeidallah sought to draw a parallel to the Republican Party’s problems with diversity. The remarks drew heavy criticism from high-profile conservatives like Sarah Palin and Scott Brown.

And today she apologized.

I wonder…did Rush Limbaugh ever apologize for calling Sandra Fluke a slut?… Read the rest

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Martin Robbins has a brilliantly lucid guest post, hosted by Janet Stemwedel (aka DocFreeRide), at Adventures in Science and Ethics about what was wrong with the way Bora Zivkovic returned to the internet.

First, the optimistic version of the story, then, what’s wrong with it:

Bora Zivkovic was an outstandingly talented science blogging expert. A fundamentally good man, he made some terrible mistakes that affected three women he worked with, although ultimately nobody was really harmed. Those mistakes cost him his friends, reputation and career. Now, he’s paid the price, and hopefully we can forgive him and welcome him back into the community he’s done so much for.

It’s a pleasing, comfortable narrative that many of us would love

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From a couple of weeks ago there is this Huffington Post article by Hilary Aked, finding deep sinisterness in the opposition to gender segregation at university events.

She starts by saying the furore was “sparked by” the Student Rights report. But that’s not clear at all – the report played a part, but far from the only part.

After that, there’s a lot of hand-wringing about the Henry Jackson Society, without anything really showing what difference it makes. She does at least admit as much, which is a nice change from Gopal and Penny, but she adds,

However, it is vital to situate the origin of such a controversy and origins like this should, I think, lead us to

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The Independent comments on Gove’s tantrum and Evans’s response.

Today, one of Britain’s most eminent historians hit back at what he described as an “ignorant attack” by Education Secretary Michael Gove on his analysis of the conflict.

Writing in the Daily Mail yesterday Mr Gove accused Professor Sir Richard Evans of failing to acknowledge the debt owed to the soldiers that were killed in the Great War claiming he had previously dismissed attempts to honour their sacrifice as “narrow tub-thumping jingoism”.

Sir Richard, Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College Cambridge, suggested the criticism stemmed from his vocal opposition to the Education Secretary’s ill-fated attempts to reform the way history is taught in schools.

Professor Evans told 

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Once again, I find myself surprised. I didn’t know anyone bothered to defend the First World War these days; I didn’t know anyone had bothered to do that since about 1930. I was under the impression that the defenders started falling silent at a pretty sharp clip in 1915. (That last one is hyperbole. There was a lot of oppression and repression of opponents of the war as long as it was going on. Bertrand Russell did a stint in the slammer for it.)

But once again, I was wrong. Michael Gove is bothering to defend it, and talk smack about people he dislikes in the process. The Daily Mail (yes) is on the case.

Left-wing myths about the

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The Times Higher reports on…well it’s too complicated to paraphrase.

Headline: Students’ unions hit back at group monitoring campus extremism

Subhead: Student Rights’ agenda questioned by LSE, Birkbeck, Goldsmiths unions

The article starts:

Three students’ unions have condemned a group that monitors extremist speakers on campus for “targeting Muslim students”.

Student Rights, which refutes* the students’ unions’ claims, released a report in May 2013 on events organised by Islamic societies that found that a quarter of those it monitored had enforced gender segregation.

That’s what the Times Higher reports on.

And we’re in the weeds right at the outset. I disagree that monitoring for instance Islamist speakers equals “targeting Muslim students.” Equating the two implies that all Muslim … Read the rest

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Wow – libertarianism in all its glory.

Amy Alkon @amyalkon

@kilianhekhuis @hypnotosov @OpheliaBenson @mistersugar Again, we have people CLUELESS about def of harassment – “severe, pervasive”

@kilianhekhuis @hypnotosov @OpheliaBenson @mistersugar Would you expect a man offended by convo to speak up or to go fetal position & tattle

@kilianhekhuis @hypnotosov @OpheliaBenson @mistersugar My suspicion: These ladies & others have it in for men & Bora was conven located.

Jesus. She accuses the women of lying, even though Bora never denied their accounts.… Read the rest

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From 2012 – how advertising today really is not all that much more “advanced” than it was in the 50s.

Man standing on a woman then? Man with a heavily shod foot on her throat now. The contemporary one is “advanced” in the usual sense that it makes her look as if violence=hawt sex.

Check them out. The Dolce & Gabbana gang rape one is especially…contemporary.… Read the rest

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Apparently in Australia they do prosecute FGM, or at least attempt to, or at least have made one such attempt. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A Sydney father has been charged by police over the alleged genital mutilation of his infant daughter while they were holidaying overseas.

Police said the man and his family were on a holiday in February 2012 when the father allegedly organised for his nine-month-old daughter to undergo a procedure known as female circumcision.

About six months later, the child’s mother took her daughter to a doctor for treatment, and the NSW Police Child Abuse Squad was alerted.

That sounds like a hidden story. One imagines the mother’s reaction after the genital mutilation which she … Read the rest

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Guest post by Reese Matthews.

Some in the US military’s chain of command are upset with the judicial system which has convicted at least one soldier of rape and harassment.

In their minds, any convictions amounts to an unfair trial system.

Dustup Over Military Appeals Judge Delaying Cases

Dozens of military criminal cases have been thrown into limbo because of a legal challenge over whether Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel improperly appointed a judge to the Air Force’s highest court, with attorneys raising questions about the judge’s independence amid increasing pressure over the military’s handling of sexual assault cases.

[...]

“The Secretary of Defense has been making a lot of statements related to sexual assaults, and here he is appointing Judge

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