Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Jury finds Deanna DeJesus guilty of child neglect

    Mistrial on aggravated manslaughter charge for failing to prevent her heavily armed husband from killing their child.

  • The sacred right of creepy dudes

    David Futrelle is on the Vacula story, in a post titled Why is the Secular Coalition for America giving Justin Vacula — online bully, A Voice for Men contributor — a leadership position? Why indeed.

    The assholes of the internet still haven’tforgivenWatsonfor her assault on the sacred right of creepy dudes to creep women out 24 hours a day, every day.

    Watson is hardly the only skeptic to face vicious misogynist harassment for the crime of blogging while feminist. Last month, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag announced that near constant harassment from online bullies was wearing her down to such a degree that she felt it necessary to shut down her blog – hopefully only temporarily.

    …

    McCreight’s harassers and their enablers were delighted in this “victory,” taking to Twitter to give McCreight some final kicks on the way out the door. “Good riddance, #jennifurret , you simple minded dolt,” wrote @skepticaljoe. “I couldn’t be happier,” added @SUICIDEBOMBS. “Eat shit you rape-faking scum.”

    One of the celebrators that day was an atheist activist named Justin Vacula, who joked that “Jen’s allegedly finished blogging…and this time it’s not her boyfriend who kicked her off the internet.”

    Not a friendly joke, not a hahaha we’re all in this together joke, not a between-colleagues joke. Not really a joke at all; more of a jeer. A bullying taunting giggling jeer. (I hear a voice from the audience crying out that Jen has a “big platform” while Justin has a “small platform” and therefore Justin can’t be the bully. Oh really; is that a fact. Well in that case why wasn’t “Dear Muslima” a case of bullying, given the relative platforms? Why wasn’t “irresponsible messaging coming from a small number of prominent and well-meaning women skeptics” a case of bullying, given the relative platforms? I would love to know.)

    So here’s the latest twist:

    Justin Vacula has just been given a leadership position in the Pennsylvania chapter of the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for secular Americans whose advisory board includes such big names as Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Susan Jacoby, Wendy Kaminer, Steven Pinker, Salman Rushdie and Julia Sweeney.

    It’s an astonishing choice. In addition to gloating that bullies had led McCreight to shut down her blog, Vacula has harassed atheist blogger and activist Surly Amy, including writing a post on A Voice for Men (yes, that A Voice for Men) cataloging all the sordid details of his supposed case against her. At one point he even posted her address, and a photo of her apartment building, on a site devoted to hating on feminist atheist bloggers.

    Yes but. They’re in a hurry. They want to have lots of state chapters. What kind of chapters doesn’t seem to be part of the equation.

  • Soldiers forced to attend prayer for suicide prevention

    The students were not given an opportunity to remove themselves. The entire theater was forced into a mass christian prayer.

  • Varieties of relativism, and Eric Hobsbawm

    In memory of Eric Hobsbawm, an old post from 2007.

    From Taliban, Ahmed Rashid, page 114:

    Until Kabul, the UN’s disastrous lack of a policy had been ignored but then it became a scandal and the UN came in for scathing criticism from feminist groups. Finally the UN agencies were forced to draw up a common position. A statement spoke of ‘maintaining and promoting the inherent equality and dignity of all people’ and ‘not discriminating between the sexes, races, ethnic groups or religions.’ But the same UN document also stated that ‘international agencies hold local customs and cultures in high respect.’ It was a classic UN compromise, which gave the Taliban the lever to continue stalling…

    In the chapter ‘Women and Cultural Universals’ in Sex and Social Justice Martha Nussbaum tells ‘true stories’ of conversations at the World Institute for Development Economics Research, ‘in which the anti-universalist position seemed to have alarming implications for women’s lives.’ Pp 35-6.

    At a conference on ‘Value and Technology’ the economist Stephen Marglin, a leftwing critic of classical economics, gives a paper urging the preservation of traditional ways of life in a rural part of Orissa, India, citing for example the fact that unlike in the West there is no split between values that prevail at work and those that prevail at home. His example of this: ‘Just as in the home a menstruating woman is thought to pollute the kitchen and therefore may not enter it, so too in the workplace a menstruating woman is taken to pollute the loom and may not enter the room where looms are kept.’ Some feminists object. Frédérique Apffel Marglin replies: ‘Don’t we realize that there is, in these matters, no privileged place to stand? This, after all, has been shown by both Derrida and Foucault.’ Those who object are neglecting the otherness of Indian ideas by bringing their Western essentialist ideas into the picture.

    Then Frédérique Apffel Marglin gives her paper, which expresses regret that the British introduction of smallpox vaccines to India eradicated the cult of the goddess Sittala Devi. Another example of Western neglect of difference. Someone (‘it might have been me’ says Nussbaum) objects that surely it is better to be healthy than ill. But no:  ‘Western essentialist medicine conceives of things in terms of binary oppositions: life is opposed to death, health to disease. But if we cast away this binary way of thinking, we will begin to comprehend the otherness of Indian traditions.’

    This is where it gets really good. Eric Hobsbawm has been listening ‘in increasingly uneasy silence’; now he rises to deliver a ‘blistering indictment of the traditionalism and relativism’ on offer. He gives historical examples of ways appeals to tradition have been used to support oppression and violence. ‘In the confusion that ensues, most of the relativist social scientists – above all those from far away, who do not know who Hobsbawm is – demand that Hobsbawm be asked to leave the room.’ Stephen Marglin, disconcerted by the tension between his leftism and his relativism, manages to persuade them to let Hobsbawm stay.

    That’s good, isn’t it? Feel for poor Stephen Marglin, confronted by outraged relativist social scientist colleagues who don’t know who this tiresome old geezer is and don’t like his blistering indictment, demanding that Eric Hobsbawm be thrown out! It would be funny if it weren’t, at bottom, so disgusting.

     

  • Ikea apologizes for airbrushing women out of catalogue

    “We are now reviewing our routines to safeguard a correct content presentation from a values point-of-view in the different versions of the Ikea catalogue worldwide,” it said.

  • Journalism at its finest

    Good old glib smug “mainstream” journalism, sneering at anything non-majoritarian or insurrectionist. Dana Milbank at the Washington Post apparently thinks secularism is just a big joke.

    The nation’s atheists went to Capitol Hill on Monday to launch an effort that they hope will someday give them the lobbying clout of the Christian conservative movement.

    They don’t have a prayer.

    He sneers smugly. Is he pleased that theocrats have more lobbying clout than secularists? Does he think theocracy would be a good thing?

    But that obvious fact won’t stop them from exercising their God-given right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. And their grievances are many, including:

    ● the “In God We Trust” national motto.

    ● the National Day of Prayer.

    ● the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.

    ● the practice of opening sessions of Congress with a prayer and ending oaths of office with “so help me God.”

    “What does that do to our non-theist community?” asked Edwina Rogers, executive director of the Secular Coalition for America, which bills itself as the only full-time lobbying group for atheists, agnostics, humanists and the like. “What does that do to our minority religions like voodooism, etcetera?”

    No doubt it makes them mad enough to cast a hex.

    Again with the smug jokes. Is shallowness a requirement for doing mainstream journalism? Yes, probably. Shallowness and casual conformity.

    Rogers, in a glittery gold blouse and knee-high boots with four-inch heels, acknowledges that she has a bit of a challenge to match the $390 million she says religious groups spend on lobbying each year.

    Milbank, in a vomit-stained T shirt and a purple thong, should switch to writing copy for clothing catalogues.

  • Washington Post reports on Secular Coalition lobbying

    “Rogers, in a glittery gold blouse and knee-high boots with four-inch heels…” Say what?

  • Eric Hobsbawm 1917-2012

    An unrepentant Marxist, he acknowledged the failure of 20th Century communism but said he had not given up on Marxist ideals.

  • Secularism in Warsaw

    Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland attended the annual OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) human rights meeting in Warsaw in Poland yesterday.

    Ireland and Poland – both priest-ridden countries, to use Joyce’s phrase.

     …we will speak against blasphemy laws, religious oaths and the need for secular education. Atheist Ireland will also host a side meeting to highlight the need to respect the human rights of atheists and nonbelievers.

    We believe that the western world is in danger of crossing a significant line in the historic battle for freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. We are in danger of conceding the step between the state respecting somebody’s right to believe what they want, and the state automatically respecting the content of the belief itself – and insisting by law that citizens do so also.

    The Atheist Ireland delegation at the OSCE meeting is Michael Nugent, Chairperson Atheist Ireland; Prof David Nash, Oxford Brookes University UK, who is an expert on blasphemy laws; and Jane Donnelly, Education Policy Officer Atheist Ireland, who is an expert on secular education.

    Good luck to them.

  • Teach the conflict

    Some interesting comments on Rebecca’s post yesterday on the SCA and Vacula.

    Dale Husband:

     Voice for Men? How about a Voice for White People, a Voice for Christians, and a Voice for the Wealthy? Oh yes, we must always ensure that those who are already privileged in society get to yell louder then their opponents, to maintain the status quo in society, even if they are abusive and dishonest.

    To which nymchimpsky replies:

    What about the straight people?  WHY DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT THEM?

    *weeps for the straight people*

    Of course there are equivalents of Voices for white people, rich people, Christians, and straight people…But they don’t call themselves A Voice for. (The one for rich people pretty much calls itself the US government, frankly.)

    Bjarte Foshaug makes a good point (as he so often does) –

    …when the haters, and hyperskeptics and false-equivalence-spouting bothsiders go on about keeping politics/ideology out of atheism/skepticism, we should not let them get away with framing the most conservative and outright reactionary views imaginable as the “unpolitical”, “non ideological” position.

    Nor should we buy into the “let bygones be bygones” view when nothing has changed.

     

     

  • Reading material

    I have to rush off – Josh Spokesgay is in town! – but here for your reading enjoyment is Rebecca on the SCA and Vacula.

    As I was traveling to the conference Friday, a story broke that I found astounding: Men’s Rights Activist Justin Vacula was appointed co-chair of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Secular Coalition for America, the organization that recently came under fire for hiring Republican lobbyist Edwina Rogers.

    In case you’re not familiar with him, Vacula has written about the “feminist lies” of Surly Amy for A Voice For Men (the same site where Paul Elam wrote a short novella on what a “stupid, lying whore” I am, and some pseudonymous grandfather called me a “bitch”).

    He participated in the gleeful bullying of Jen McCreight, who was driven off her blog last month by trolls

    Read on.

  • Protect all the sentiments

    What goes around comes around department.

    Pakistan’s blasphemy laws may be used to punish Muslims suspected of ransacking a Hindu temple, an intriguing twist for a country where harsh laws governing religious insults are primarily used against supposed offenses to Islam, not minority faiths.

    And where the whole point of the country itself has always been that it’s not Hindu. That was the point of partition. India was secular but also majority-Hindu, so Pakistan was to be the opposite. How sad to see its laws used to protect Hindu “religious sentiments.”

    Police officer Mohammad Hanif said Sunday the anti-Hindu attack took place Sept. 21. The government had declared that day a national holiday — a “Day of Love for the Prophet” — and called for peaceful demonstrations against an anti-Islam film made in the U.S. that has sparked protests throughout the Muslim world. Those rallies took a violent turn in Pakistan, and more than 20 people were killed.

    Hanif said dozens of Muslims led by a cleric converged on the outskirts of Karachi in a Hindu neighborhood commonly known as Hindu Goth. The protesters attacked the Sri Krishna Ram temple, broke religious statues, tore up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, and beat up the temple’s caretaker, Sindha Maharaj.

    Nostalgia for 1947 was it?

    One wonders why the people in question couldn’t just be charged with vandalism and assault.

  • Pakistan: Muslims charged with “blasphemy”

    Protesters attacked the Sri Krishna Ram temple, broke religious statues, tore up a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, and beat up the temple’s caretaker.

  • Airbrush those whorey women out of the pictures

    Ikea did, for the version of its catalogue that goes to Saudi Arabia.

    So the familiar catalogue that shows a familiar world of people using furniture becomes a bizarro catalogue that shows a bizarro world that shows not people using furniture but just men and boys.

    The removal of women from the pages of the Saudi edition, including a young girl who was pictured studying at her desk, has prompted a strong response from Swedes, who pride themselves on egalitarian policies and a narrow gender gap.

    “You can’t remove or airbrush women out of reality. If Saudi Arabia does not allow women to be seen or heard, or to work, they are letting half their intellectual capital go to waste,” Ewa Bjoerling, the trade minister, said in a statement.

    Her sentiment was echoed by Swedish European Union minister Birgitta Ohlsson, who branded the incident “medieval” on social networking site Twitter.

    Well you know how it is. Furniture includes beds. You do the math.

  • Diplomacy and respect

    Kelly Damerow answers questions after her talk. The first question you hear is from Rebecca; the last two or three are from EllenBeth.

    I don’t want to beat up on her personally. It’s an exposed position, standing there with the camera trained on you. The problem is with some of the organization’s decisions.

    But having said that, her reply to Rebecca is strange. It’s that the SCA puts an emphasis on diplomacy and respect. Right; so why Justin Vacula? Is it diplomacy and respect to tweet

    So, Jen’s allegedly finished blogging…and this time it’s not her boyfriend who kicked her off the internet.

    when Jen McCreight reports that the constant harassment has triggered her longstanding depression?

    You tell me.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQL8ndi7ONY

  • Combating Exorcism-related Abuses

    Four family members in the UK have been jailed for life for murdering a pregnant woman, Naila Mumtaz, 21. They believed she was possessed by a Djinn or evil spirit. Muhammed Mumtaz, 25, husband, was sentenced by a British court along with his parents, Zia Ul-Haq and Salma, both 51, and brother-in-law Hammad Hassan. Mrs Mumtaz’s in-laws thought she was possessed by a Djinn and killed her in the course of driving out the harmful spirit. The ‘Djinn spirit’was believed to have been sent from Pakistan. This ruling should serve as a wake-up call to authorities across the world to ‘evil spirit’-related abuses in our communities. The belief in demonic forces -the devil and Satan – is very strong and often drives people to commit atrocities.
    These abuses are widespread in religious and spiritual families but nothing is being done to address them due to entrenched religious privilege. A very dangerous layer of the belief in evil spirits is the notion that human beings can be possessed by these demonic spirits. It is not clear how this possession takes place or can be confirmed.
    Generally evil spirit possession is associated with certain traits, particularly strange and abnormal behaviors. Believing folks associate spirit possession with psychological or psychiatric maladies. These associations are often rooted in or reinforced by sacred texts or religious indoctrination. Some self-styled god men and women have gone to the extent of stating specific behavioural patterns associated with evil spirit possession.
    For instance, one of Nigeria’s self-acclaimed witch exorcists, Helen Ukpabio, wrote in one of her books, Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft, that “If a child under the age of two screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan.” Such thoughtless pronouncements often cause believers to demonize and stigmatize persons who exhibit such traits. But the belief in evil spirits does not end with mere demonization of individuals. It is linked with the practice of exorcism. To exorcize means to force an evil spirit to leave a person through prayer or magic. Exorcism is informed by the mistaken idea that demons can be driven out of the possessed.  Exorcism is taken to be a form of healing – spiritual healing, a process of expelling the evil spirits from the bodies of possessed persons. The process of exorcism ranges from prayers uttered or recited to expel the demons, to psychological and physical torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of the ‘possessed’. In the name of exorcism, those believed to be possessed by evil spirits are chained, beaten, starved and forced to take health-damaging concoctions. Due to the fact that exorcism is taken to be a form of ‘treatment’ or ‘healing’, these abuses are largely ignored and perpetrators are not brought to justice.
    I hope the case of Mrs Mumtaz will help draw the attention of authorities to evil spirit-related abuses taking place in our families and communities. This has become necessary because those often targeted by exorcists are vulnerable members of the population – women, children and persons living with disabilities. There is need to monitor what goes on in ‘faith clinics’, spiritual homes and at deliverance sessions. These are spaces where serious violations are sanctioned and sanctified.
    But we must note that faith related abuses cannot be  addressed by legislation alone. These abuses are often a result of intense  brainwashing and indoctrination at homes, schools and worship centers, so there is an urgent need for public enlightenment and reorientation. We need to educate the  public to understand that belief in evil spirits is superstition. The belief is informed by fear and ignorance, and lacks a basis in reason, science and  common sense. Evil spirits do not exist except in the minds of believers. They  are creations of human imagination. Evil spirits are fantasies, not facts.  There is no evidence at all that any human being can be possessed by a spirit, good or evil. Spirit possession is a mistaken assumption invented at the infancy of  the human race, and then codified and handed down in the form of tradition, dogma and religion. Torturing people believed to be possessed by evil spirits is immoral and criminal. Members of the public must be made aware that the so-called exorcists who claim to have powers of delivering persons possessed by evil spirits are charlatans – and criminals – mining and exploiting popular fears, ignorance, anxieties and gullibility.

  • Couldn’t the UN just put a stop to it?

    Katha Pollitt on blasphemy. She starts with a public radio chat in which John Hockenberry said to BBC chief Jeremy Bowen:

    Hockenberry: I’m wondering if it’s possible for the United Nations to create an initiative that would talk about some sort of global convention on blasphemy, that would create a cooperative enterprise to control these kinds of incidents, not to interfere into anybody’s free speech rights but to basically recognize that there is a global interest in keeping people from going off the rails over a perceived sense of slight by enforcing a convention of human rights, only in this particular case it would be anti-blasphemy?

    So he wants a global convention to enforce an anti-blasphemy convention of human rights…not (of course) to interfere into anybody’s free speech rights, but to –

    Well how would you enforce an anti-blasphemy convention without interfering with free speech rights?

    So the only thing preventing some sort of international convention against “blasphemy” is that people can’t agree about what it is? Perhaps the UN could ask Vladimir Putin, who was eager to send three members of Pussy Riot to prison for appearing at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior to perform an anti-Putin “punk prayer” to the Virgin Mary. Their crime: “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” The rise of the Russian Orthodox church in the former Soviet Union, and its connections to a corrupt authoritarian regime, shows that Islam has no monopoly on religious freakouts or their exploitation for political purposes.

    Quite. We also know that the only reason the Vatican doesn’t do the same thing is because it can’t. When it could, it did. It didn’t stop because it got nicer; it stopped because that wouldn’t fly any more.

    Sorry, John and Jeremy, there is just no way to “control these kinds of incidents” without suppressing free speech, because the very concept of “blasphemy” entails powerful clerics deciding what a religion “really” says, and what questions about that are legitimate. And why shouldn’t religion be fair game for rude remarks, mockery and humor, to say nothing of bold challenges and open expressions of disbelief? Ethnic attacks like Geller’s ad are disgusting—calling Muslims savages is like calling Jews subhuman—but I’d say on the whole “blasphemy” has been a force for good in human history. It is part of the process by which millions of people have come to reject theocracy and think for themselves.

    When it comes to ideas—and religions are, among other things, ideas—there is no right not to be offended.

    Happy blasphemy day.

  • A less cheerful observation of Blasphemy Day

    In which protesters in Bangladesh torch at least four Buddhist temples and fifteen Buddhist dwellings, “after complaining that a Buddhist man had insulted Islam, police and residents said.”

    What did he say? Islam wears army boots? Islam has bad breath? Islam repeated the second grade four times?

    Muslims took to the streets in the area late on Saturday to protest against what they said was a photograph posted on Facebook that insulted Islam.

    The protesters said the picture had been posted by a Buddhist and they marched to Buddhist villages and set fire to temples and houses.

    Very sensible. One Buddhist allegedly did something (something trivial), and protesters set fire to temples and houses. Not the one Buddhist’s temples and houses, just…some temples and houses. Buddhist ones.

    Sohel Sarwar Kajal, the Muslim head of the council in the area where the arson took place, said he was trying to restore communal peace.

    “We are doing everything possible to quell tension and restore peace between the communities,” he told reporters.

    Good luck. Seriously.

  • Katha Pollitt notes that blasphemy is good for you

    The rise of the Russian Orthodox church in the former Soviet Union shows that Islam has no monopoly on religious freakouts or their exploitation for political purposes.

  • Protesters torch Buddhist temples over FB photo

    Hundreds of Muslims in Bangladesh burned at least four Buddhist temples and 15 homes after complaining that a Buddhist man had insulted Islam.