It turns out that real women don’t need feminism, and that there’s a documentary that “undercuts any strength that might be attributed to the feminist worldview.”

Notable women’s advocate Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum explains it simply.

“The problem with feminism, I think the principal problem, is the cultivation of an attitude of victimization. Feminism tries to make women believe they are victims of an oppressive, male-dominated, patriarchal society. They wake up in the morning with a chip on their shoulder.”

Ah how familiar that sounds. I think I saw versions of it several times on Twitter alone just in the past few hours. It’s “Sisterhood of the Oppressed” and “Professional Victims” all over again – or rather, the … Read the rest

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In a village in Afghanistan what? Not a potluck. Not a Chatauqua lecture. Not a quilting bee. Not heartwarming stories of crotchety but lovable neighbors and mischievous but lovable children and the dogs who love them all. No, the other thing – staring eyes, a woman who dishonored the universe by running away with a man (while the man simply had a good time), a father who asked the local “religious leaders” for advice, a fatwa, a mob, a murder of a woman by her own father in front of that mob.

The woman, who has two children, was shot dead on Monday 22 April by her father in front of a crowd of about 300 people in the village

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

He must be following Mehdi Hasan on Twitter.

 … Read the rest

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Update: A helpful informant got curious and did a little digging on Vacula’s timeline and came up with…quite a lot of Vacual prodding me to go on his podcast, just since March 3 – less than two months. To wit:

Mar 3, 6:35 PM Vacula: “Ophelia, you should be guest on future show” https://twitter.com/justinvacula/status/308360095786483713

Mar 3, 6:38 PM Porter: “we would love to have your humor @OpheliaBenson and TY for all the promotion.” https://twitter.com/karla_porter/status/308360678056538112

Mar 4, 2:18 PM Benson: “And no, I’m not calling in to your stupid podcast.” https://twitter.com/OpheliaBenson/status/308657805366267904

Mar 4, 2:20 PM Vacula: “You wouldn’t want to have a candid productive conversation outside of Twitter? ” https://twitter.com/justinvacula/status/308658344007176192

Mar 23, 7:27 PM Vacula: “45 chatters – too bad

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Oh really?

Critical thinking has so thoroughly colonized our idea of education that we tend to think it’s the only kind of thinking. Tests try to measure it, and ritzy private schools all claim to teach it. Critical thinking–analysis, not mere acceptance–is a skill we can all learn. And we’ve learned it too well.

Really? Really? Who, where?

That’s an article at The American Conservative, by Eve Tushnet. (She must have had a difficult childhood.)

We’ve learned only critical thinking skills, and not the equally challenging skills of prudent acceptance: We don’t even realize that we need to learn when to say yes, and to what.

Is that right? I see people all around who do lots of … Read the rest

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An Iowa anti-abortion fanatic muses aloud on YouTube that it would be quite a good thing if someone killed the people who recently reopened a Kansas abortion clinic.

[Dave] Leach posted the comments this month on YouTube. His posting includes a recorded phone conversation he had with another man, whom Leach identifies as abortion opponent Scott Roeder. Roeder is serving a life prison sentence for the 2009 shooting death of the Wichita clinic’s then-owner, Dr. George Tiller.

Leach has previously suggested that other men were justified in killing other abortion providers. He notes in the video that Tiller’s old clinic was recently reopened by a new abortion agency.

“If someone would shoot the new abortionists, like Scott shot

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She’s allowed to commit suicide, because suicide was decriminalized in Ireland in 1993. But she has MS, so she can’t commit suicide, and what the state won’t allow is help from someone else.

That’s exactly the situation Eric MacDonald’s wife Elizabeth was in. It’s a bad situation. Knowing you’re going to become ever more disabled, and that the more disabled you are the more suicide becomes physically impossible – it’s terrifying. It could happen to any of us, and it’s terrifying.

Ms Fleming, a former lecturer from County Wicklow, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1986.

She is cared for by her partner, Tom Curran, and has two adult children.

The four-day appeal hearing was told that she is

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Update: Notice (as I didn’t until prodded) that the date on the item is August 24, 2011. Still worth knowing about.

One for the Jaw Dropped in Horror files. A Pennsylvania judge sent children to prison in exchange for money.

Accused of perpetrating a “profound evil,” former Pennsylvania judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. has been sentenced to 28 years in prison for illegally accepting money from a juvenile-prison developer while he spent years incarcerating thousands of young people.

Prosecutors said Ciavarella sent juveniles to jail as part of a “kids for cash” scheme involving Robert Mericle, builder of the PA and Western PA Child Care juvenile detention centers.

What does that sound like? The Catholic church in Ireland, and judges who … Read the rest

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I was out all afternoon and now I can’t get caught up.

This morning, on the page o’ nonstop bullshit, I added this:

April 28 part deux because I missed it before -

Justin Vacula tweets

@caias@OpheliaBenson@karla_porter Too bad Ophelia won’t come on #BraveHero but we appreciate early promo. Maybe she will chat at #wiscfi ?

Ok this is specifically for Vacula: do not approach me at WiS2. Stay away from me.

As you know, ignoring such instructions is grounds for removal. If you don’t stay away from me I will make an official complaint.

____________

I also sent Vacula a direct message on Facebook -

Justin Vacula - 

I saw the

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One of the owners of the factory building that collapsed in Dhaka has been arrested; he’d been in hiding ever since the building fell down.

There has been widespread anger at the disaster and six people, including three factory owners and two engineers, have now been arrested. The building housed several garment factories.

By Sunday evening the confirmed death toll had reached 377, but hundreds more are still missing.

Well that would explain the anger. That’s a lot of people.

Police said officials had ordered an evacuation of the building on Tuesday after cracks appeared, but that the factories ignored them and were operating the next day.

That would explain the anger even better.… Read the rest

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Have a useful post listing times the anti-vaccination movement has been wrong.

Anti-vaccinationists have made a wide range of claims about the dangers of vaccines. In spite of the fact that they have generally had neither data nor a plausible mechanism for the claimed effect, several of their claims have been investigated by researchers.

As it turns out, the anti-vaccinationists are remarkably consistent. Time and time again, they are shown to be wrong. I’m not sure how many times a group needs to be wrong before people stop seeing them as credible. Perhaps people need to be reminded of how many times this group has been wrong?

So there are some reminders.… Read the rest

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Oh, how familiar. Via Stephanie – at Dartmouth,

some students at Dartmouth College interrupted an evening of entertainment for prospective students with a brief protest against racism, homophobia, sexism, and rape culture on campus. This protest was met by additional racism, homophobia, sexism, and rape culture in comments posted online. The college cancelled classes for a day to address the problem.

And how are they addressing the problem? By blaming both parties – the people making anonymous threats and racist sexist comments, and the people protesting that kind of thing.

Sy Mukherjee, who graduated from Dartmouth in 2012, explains.

In a campus-wide email sent out on Friday, Dartmouth College’s Board of Trustees Chair Steve Mandel appeared to equate the actions

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So according to Wikipedia, you have American Novelists and then you have American Women Novelists, and no the first does not include the second – the two are intended to be separate, though the separation hasn’t been completed yet.

Gee, what a brilliant idea. You have normal, and then you have normalette. There are the Smurfs, and then there’s one Smurfette.

The intention appears to be to create a list of “American Novelists” on Wikipedia that is made up almost entirely of men. The category lists 3,837 authors, and the first few hundred of them are mainly men. The explanation at the top of the page is that the list of “American Novelists” is too long, and therefore

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A BBC story on the trial of four would-be mujahideen helps to back up what I always think about these projects: a lot of it is about adventure and spectacle and attention-seeking and thrills, more than it’s really about theocracy or sharia. The theocracy is a kind of excuse or shortcut-reason.

These four dudes went off to Pakistan for what they thought would be glam exciting dangerous training, and turned out to be a nightmare camping trip from hell. They lasted two days.

Conditions were, according to Ishaaq Hussain’s account, primitive. They slept on bare ground in sleeping bags, with a hole in the ground for a loo.

What little food they could get was a far cry from Mum’s

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Mehdi Hasan is back on Twitter. (He was busy interviewing BHL in the meantime.) He’s fighting dirtier than ever.

“Poor diddums” – my god he’s vulgar. I told him he has a squalid mind and mouth.

That Mohamed guy is cool; I followed him.

 … Read the rest

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The Appignani Humanist Legal Center is filing suit against a Mississippi high school that forced all students to attend a lecture on “finding hope in Jesus.”

(Washington, DC, April 25, 2013) —The American Humanist Association’s legal center filed a lawsuit at 2:30 p.m. ET yesterday against Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, Mississippi, challenging the school’s recent mandatory student assemblies that presented a Christian message as a violation of the separation of church and state.

The Appignani Humanist Legal Center learned from Northwest Rankin High School students that a mandatory assembly was held during school hours on April 9 where a representative of the Pinelake Baptist Church spoke of finding “hope” in “Jesus Christ.”

According to students present, those who

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)