Here’s another comrade – Liberal Will. He’s over there, where Maureen and Alex and Rhys and Hayley and Amy and Melanie and many other swell people are. There are a lot of comrades. Don’t let the blowhards fool you about that. The anti-feminists aren’t taking over.

Even if you’re in the friendliest safe space ever, you need to have a harassment policy. The world does not work on SimCity rules, where you don’t build a fire department until the first fire breaks out. It needs to be there. Harassment at any type of convention is common, and the skeptic community should know pretty damn well it’s a problem, especially after “Elevatorgate“. And women, sadly, are the target

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Update: Monday: Once again I made the mistake of forgetting that not everyone reading would know what prompted this post. What prompted it was this comment on my post about a dopy BBC film clip about natural selection and slavery and fast runners.

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Oh, so it’s a thing. I didn’t know it was a thing – this “you have to be all ecstatic about the Olympics” bollix. Joan Smith says about it.

Some things matter more than sport. But I’ve come back to my own country to discover Olympic fervour encouraging a species of emotional correctness, where anyone who doesn’t care for competitive games is regarded as a killjoy. It’s like being transported to a Victorian public school,

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Chris Rodda wants it known far and wide that she accepted a challenge from David Barton’s radio co-host to show specifics of where David Barton tells untruths in his book The Jefferson Lies. You have your mission.

Chris knows what she’s talking about. She does the time-consuming work of following up Barton’s references.

Get the word out!… Read the rest

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James Fitzjames Stephen was a forthright kind of guy. Blunt, even. As such he offers a useful window into the most forthright kind of imperturbable contempt for women.

From chapter 5 of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, in which he disagrees with John Stuart Mill’s views on gender equality.

Now, if society and government ought to recognize the inequality of age as the foundation of an inequality of rights of this importance, it appears to me at least equally clear that they ought to recognize the inequality of sex for the same purpose, if it is a real inequality. Is it one? There are some propositions which it is difficult to prove, because they are so plain, and this is one

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I know a new thing now, a thing I didn’t know before. I know that there’s something – something bad – called “camel toe.” I know what it is. I know it via the tweets of Another Angry Woman ‏@stavvers and this post that she linked to, The Miracle Bajingo Shoehorn.

A staggering 55% of women, irrespective of age, size or weight,  experience camel toe at some point.

Many women have even gone to extreme lengths to rectify the camel toe  problem, resorting to expensive and risky surgery.

Now thanks to the Smooth Groove camel toe remedy, all women can get on with  their lives without having to worry about how they look.

After all, being a

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A great post by Alyson Miers (whom I met at WiS in May) on bullying and imperfect victims.

There’s this meme -

 See Alyson’s response to that.… Read the rest

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This is good. American Atheists announces that Anthony Grayling is the keynote speaker for their 2013 national convention.

Yay! I’m going to be there too, and Anthony’s a friend.

 … Read the rest

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Ok this is a good one. From a comment on Jen’s post on blunderfoot.

“Freethought” means you use reason and logic to come to a conclusion, and not believing everything anyone says — even a close friend — at face value.

Hahahahahahahahaha yes right that’s what freethought means. A close friend tells you she has a headache and you interrogate her for an hour trying to get her to demonstrate that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.… Read the rest

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Wow. Have some BBC pseudohistory and pseudogenetics about Y blak guize can runn fast.

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

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I’m kind of crushed that David Rakoff went and died. Fresh Air played a couple of interviews with him yesterday. They’re good.

On whether or not he had a happy childhood.

I had a beautiful childhood and a lovely childhood. I just didn’t like being a child. I didn’t like the rank injustice of not being listened to. I didn’t like the lack of autonomy. I didn’t like my chubby little hands that couldn’t manipulate the world of objects in the way that I wanted them to. Being a child, for me, was an exercise in impotent powerlessness.

Oh yes. That’s why youth is wasted on the young, as Shaw pointed out. (Was it Shaw? I think so.) I hated… Read the rest

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What about this then? From “Coffee Loving Skeptic” on Facebook.

Via Alex Gabriel.… Read the rest

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Lots of crazed reactions to Thunderf00t’s misuse of the FTB mailing list, although they’re a minority. There are frank falsehoods saying we tried to get Michael Payton fired, and there is shock-horror that we reacted to his tweets dismissing all of FTB.

That’s just nuts. To repeat – there are about 40 people blogging at FTB. Not all of them are polemicists or controversialists, not all of them are irritable, not all of them agree about everything – in fact none of them agree about everything.

It’s not fair to shit on the innocent just because one dislikes a few of the Freethought bloggers. It’s not even fair to shit on the innocent just because one hates a few … Read the rest

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We all know that Twitter is a gift to people who enjoy saying horrible things to people they dislike or disagree with. Think Jessica Ahlquist; think #mencallmethings. Even Olympic athletes get the treatment.

A 17-year-old boy arrested as part of an investigation into Twitter messages sent to the diver Tom Daley after he and team-mate Pete Waterfield missed out on a medal on Monday has been issued with a harassment warning….

The teenager was held at a guesthouse in Weymouth, Dorset, hours after Daley retweeted messages he had been sent soon after finishing fourth in the 10m men’s synchronised platform diving event. Daley, 18, retweeted a message that said: “You let your dad down i hope you know

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A runner broke his leg during an Olympic relay race and went on running to the end.

“As soon as I took the first step past the 200m mark, I felt it break.” Manteo told the USA Track and Field website.

“I didn’t want to let the three guys or the team down, so I just ran on it.”

Mitchell still managed to finish the opening lap in 46.1 seconds as the US team, also featuring Joshua Mance, Tony McQuay and Bryshon Nellum, went on to set a qualifying time of two minutes, 58.87 seconds.

“It hurt so bad,” the 25-year-old added. “I’m pretty amazed that I still split [close to] 45 seconds on a broken leg.”

USA Track

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