Laurie Penny is tired of “Not all men!!” and similar petulant irrelevancies. True, it’s not all men, but that’s not the same thing as not a problem.

You can be the gentlest, sweetest man in the world yet still benefit from sexism. That’s how oppression works. Thousands of otherwise decent people are persuaded to go along with an unfair system because it’s less hassle that way. The appropriate response when somebody demands a change in that unfair system is to listen, rather than turning away or yelling, as a child might, that it’s not your fault. And it isn’t your fault. I’m sure you’re lovely. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a responsibility to do something about it.

Dealing … Read the rest

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Guest post by Dan Bye, originally a comment on Not prepared for what happened.

Everyone agrees there is “a” problem, and nobody is claiming that philosophy’s problem is the worst of all academic fields. So what’s left is whether philosophy has a *bad* problem.

Massimo points out that there is no evidence that philosophy has a particularly bad problem, and leaves it at that. And it’s also true that the existence of male majorities can be the result of societal pressures (i.e. sexist attitudes in the world at large) rather than sexist hiring practice, which Massimo also leaves there.

What we’ve got here is a lecture about the nature of evidence. Thanks very much. The implication, of course, is … Read the rest

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The hell with Strong Female Characters.

What what what? What should we want, weak female characters?

No; characters with more than one adjective.

Sophia McDougall explains in the New Statesman.

…the phrase “Strong Female Character” has always set my teeth on edge, and so have many of the characters who have so plainly been written to fit the bill.

I remember watching Shrek with my mother.

“The Princess knew kung-fu! That was nice,” I said. And yet I had a vague sense of unease, a sense that I was saying it because it was what I was supposed to say.

She rolled her eyes. “All the princesses know kung-fu now.”

No one ever asks if a male character is

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That’s how to make girls eager to go to school – force them to undergo “virginity” tests. Way to go, Indonesia.

From the Guardian:

A plan to make female high school students undergo mandatory virginity tests has been met with outrage from activists, who argue that it discriminates against women and violates their human rights.

Education chief Muhammad Rasyid, of Prabumulih district in south Sumatra put forward the idea, describing it as “an accurate way to protect children from prostitution and free sex”. He said he would use the city budget to begin tests early next year if MPs approved the proposal.

“This is for their own good,” Rasyid said. “Every woman has the right to virginity … we expect

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Education is important, right? It’s important to do the early stages of it well, not just the last stages, right?

Teaching is hard work. Teaching in a middle school is crazy hard work. A Facebook friend who just started teaching in a middle school posted an account of his third day, and gave me permission to quote it. It is, frankly, horrifying.

Oh oh. Day3 was worse than Day1. My 3-day experience of teaching has been pretty horrific overall. I estimate my half-life as a teacher, before I have to bail to live, is just a few more days. Jail would be better. (I could read and sleep more.) The amount of work involved is insane – and I’ll have

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Emery Emery, the “Great Penis Debate” guy, the Ardent Atheist, the guy who wrote that stupid piece about how we all just hate sex – Emery Emery has a new wheeze. His new wheeze is a fundraiser to donate to Michael Shermer’s legal fund.

I’M JUST A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY

• My name is Emery Emery and I am launching this fund raising effort for two reasons.

1. As a show of public support for Michael Shermer.

2. To help alleviate the expenses associated with Michael’s effort to defend his name.

• I do not know Michael Shermer personally and he has no idea I am setting up this fund raiser. I will be making sure that all money donated

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Via Sanal Edamaruku, NDTV on the passage of that law in Maharashtra.

The state government today cleared an Anti-Superstition and Black Magic Ordinance to replace a Bill that had been approved by the cabinet but had lapsed before it could be taken up in the assembly. The Bill has been pending for eight years.

Among other things, the law seeks to make it punishable for self-styled godmen to prey on people by offering rituals, charms, magical cures and propagating black magic.

Dr Dabholkar had relentlessly campaigned for a law against superstition and black magic in the face of criticism from right-wing groups who had called him “anti-Hindu”.

Sanal also linked to a separate story about a “godman” – one … Read the rest

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The IHEU has compiled reactions to the murder of Narendra Dabholkar.

The Humanist and rationalist community in India has reacted with dignified anger and sadness, remembering an effective and stalwart campaigner, dedicated to the people of Maharashtra but always ready to cooperate across organizational boundaries. He was one of India’s foremost rationalists, working for social justice, against  caste discrimination, and exposing the so-called miracles of exploititive ‘godmen’. His work was well-known, and some aspect of it is widely believed to have motivated his killers.

The law against fraud via superstion was passed.

Dabholkar also lead the campaign for an anti-superstition Bill in Maharashtra state, and in the space of two days since his assassination, the state government has —

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The BBC reports a situation.

Some young HIV patients are giving up their medicine after being told by Pentecostal Church pastors to rely on faith in God instead, doctors warn.

Medical staff told the BBC a minority of pastors in England were endangering young church members by putting them under pressure to stop medication.

It’s a test of faith, you see.

I wonder if those pastors ever test their faith by walking in front of trains.

The doctors and health professionals reported a variety of cases:

• Some said they had dealt with parents who felt under pressure to stop giving their young children their HIV medicine – and some had actually done so

• Others were breastfeeding mothers with HIV

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Massimo Pigliucci asked yesterday, “Does philosophy have a sexual harassment problem?” He asked it in response to Jennifer Saul’s article in Salon, which was titled “Philosophy has a sexual harassment problem.”

Last week Jennifer Saul, a philosopher at the University of Sheffield, published an article in Salon entitled: “Philosophy has a sexual harassment problem.” While there is much substance and nuance in the body of the article, I sincerely hope that Prof. Saul did not actually choose the title herself (editors often do that sort of thing), because the message it sends is anything but nuanced, and if taken at face value also not particularly constructive.

And that’s what he got from that article? That saying philosophy … Read the rest

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What the hell happened to personal responsibility? Eh? Waah waah waah, they provoked me, make them stop – that’s all we ever hear. Man up, anti-choicers! If someone offers you more wine an abortion clinic to target with violence, you can just say no.

Amanda Marcotte tells us the anti-choicers in Wichita are arguing over this point, now that a new clinic has opened where Dr Tiller’s used to be until an anti-choicer shot him dead in a church.

But now there’s a new clinic in town where Dr. Tiller’s used to be, and irate anti-choice groups are petitioning the city to have it shut down.

Their reasoning is that the clinic, the South Wind Women’s Center, provokes them into

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Sanal Edamaruku talks to Arun George about the murder of Narendra Dabholkar.

The murder of noted anti-superstition activist Dr Narendra Dabholkar in broad daylight in Pune not only highlights the risk a rationalist faces in the country, but according to some like activist Sanal Edamaruku, it should serve as encouragement to others to take up his cause.

“He was one of the most wonderful soldiers of rationalism in Maharashtra because he was taking the movement down to the villages on one side and the legislature on the other,” Edamaruku told Firstpost. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK8tnjks08I

Edamaruku may be right. Sometimes an assassination or an attempted assassination does inspire others to take up the cause. That’s happened with Malala Yousafzai, for example. It’s much … Read the rest

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Terrible news from India today -

Renowned rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, who fought for a law against superstition and black magic, was shot dead this morning in Pune in Maharashtra, an incident which sparked grief and outrage in the city and his hometown Satara.

The 70-year-old was on his morning walk when he was shot near the Omkareshwar Bridge in the city by gunmen on a motorcycle. The police said four shots were fired at him at close range, two of which hit him in the back of his head.

The authorities don’t think it was random.

In Dr Dabholkar’s hometown Satara, thousands came out on the streets to pay tribute to a man loved and respected for his campaign against

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Aha, a gap in my knowledge of popular culture. (There are a lot of those.) I didn’t know kawaii was a thing. I knew about the Japanese cult of cuteness, but I didn’t know it had a name, or that it was a fashion outside Japan.

(I know a woman, a PhD-MD, whose parents left Japan for the US when she was a child because they couldn’t stand to let her grow up under that kind of pressure – and that was decades ago.)

Wikipedia clued me in.

Kawaii (かわいい [kaw͍aiꜜi], “lovable”, “cute”, or “adorable”^[1]) is the quality of cuteness in the context of Japanese culture.^[2][3][4] It has become a prominent aspect of Japanese

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Jennifer Saul goes on to talk about the other ways women are belittled and overlooked in philosophy departments.

The blog also contains story after story of women whose point isn’t taken seriously until repeated by a man; or who simply aren’t called on during question periods.  And the Gendered Conference Campaign (run by the group blog Feminist Philosophers, of which I’m also a part) documents conference after conference with absolutely no invited women speakers. Recent work by Kieran Healy has dramatically demonstrated how infrequently work of women philosophers is cited.

What lies behind this?  There is undeniably still some outright prejudice in the field: One male philosopher I knew was well-known for openly declaring that women and black people are

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One item from What’s it’s like to be a woman in philosophy.

I was in my second year of studies at a top philosophy department in the US. I took a course in X that was offered by a very prominent male philosopher who also happened to be quite active and outspoken in attempts to improve the position of women in philosophy. Once after class I mentioned to him that I was considering the possibility of writing a dissertation under his supervision, and he seemed supportive as I was among the best students in his course. One evening toward the end of the term we discussed possible topics for my thesis in his office. At one point during that conversation

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