I did not know – some male students at St Paul’s College at the University of Sydney set up a pro-rape Facebook page.

The group, which was named “Define Statutory”, described its members as “anti-consent” and was listed in the sports and recreation section of the site…It was shut down at the end of [October], but had been live on Facebook since August, according to an investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald…The Sydney Morning Herald said the page was part of a broader culture at the residential colleges that “demeans women in a sexist and often sexually violent way”.

And here I was fuming (or should I say bitching?) about sexist epithets and men who type thousands of … Read the rest

Compassion is at the heart of every great religion.

Laurie Taylor kept a diary when he was at school, filled with the doings of himself and his best friend Richard.

But nowhere in the closely written pages is there a single reference or a solitary allusion to the most significant feature of my life at boarding school with Richard. There is not a word about the fact that at the time we were both being sexually abused by two of the priests who ran the school…We talked to each other about what was going on. We knew that it was not right but both of us were caught in the trap that has been described so well by other

I’m reading Nicholas Wade’s book The Faith Instinct. The core of his claim is that religion is part of human nature and that it has evolved because it helps people survive because it fosters group cohesion. He argues that belief in supernatural agents who are watching and will punish wrong-doing and cheating is a powerful way to enforce group norms and that this is very useful for survival, especially in primitive societies without secular mechanisms for law enforcement.

Not wholly new, and not wholly mad. But – I have to wonder. CNN last night was showing UN trucks in Porte-au-Prince trying to distribute food, and what I kept seeing was a lot of men pushing each other and shoving … Read the rest