The BBC reports terrible news from Bangladesh:

A Bangladeshi publisher of secular books has been hacked to death in the capital Dhaka in the second attack of its kind on Saturday, police say.

Faisal Arefin Dipon, 43, was killed at his office in the city centre, hours after another publisher and two secular writers were injured in an attack.

They are the latest victims in a series of deadly attacks on secularists since blogger Avijit Roy was hacked to death by suspected Islamists in February.

Both publishers published Roy’s work.

I can only swear and swear and swear.

Earlier on Saturday, armed men burst into the offices of publisher Ahmedur Rashid Tutul.

They stabbed Mr Tutul and two writers who were with him, locked them in an office and fled the scene, police said.

The three men were rushed to hospital, and at least one of them is in a critical condition.

The two writers were named by police as Ranadeep Basu and Tareque Rahim.

It’s a horror.

Happy gendered Halloween, girls and boys. (Did you see what I did there? I put girls first. That’s very rebellious of me. Girls are supposed to come second. It’s boys and girls, not girls and boys. Isn’t that funny?)

The New York Times has such a fun scary story about how gendered everything is in kidworld, and how badly it fucks everything up. All that work we did, undone by marketers. Oh well – I guess we’ll just have to do it all over again! Or you will, because I’ll be dead by then, and your grandchildren will, if the glaciers haven’t all melted yet.

A web search for Halloween costumes of scientists produces only boys wearing lab coats and goggles. A search for nursing costumes turns up girls in skirts with stethoscopes. Cats and cupcakes are also girls, while sharks and astronauts are boys.

The same gender division exists not just in toys — blue toolboxes and trucks for boys, pink play kitchens and dolls for girls — but also in nearly every other children’s product, including baby blankets, diapers and toothbrushes.

These distinctions have long-term effects on children’s notions of gender roles, social scientists say. Costumes, toys and many other environmental cues can influence the subjects children choose to study, the jobs they pursue and the roles they play at home and in society.

But marketers being the enlightened people they are, that won’t mean girls are shunted into nursing while boys go into science…

…oh wait.

“If you drop the gender marketing, rather than narrowing a set of interests based on gender, it widens the possibility for the child to pursue interests that he or she cares about and has a talent for,” saidCarol J. Auster, a sociologist at Franklin and Marshall College who studies gender, work and leisure. “Way down the road, it allows a grown man or woman to pursue an occupation that is well matched with their talents or skills.”

But but but but gender is our favorite thing. If you drop gender marketing, that deprives us of all the joy and excitement of gender. Gender is fabulous!

…toys are more strictly gendered today than they were 50 years ago, when adult gender roles were much more separate, according to research by Elizabeth Sweet, a sociologist at the University of California, Davis.

Until the 1960s, girls’ toys focused on homemaking and boys’ on work in the industrial economy, she found. That changed significantly with the rise of the feminist movement of the 1970s. But in the 1990s, gendered toys returned with a vengeance, resulting in the action heroes and princesses available today.

In the Sears catalog ads of 1975, according to Ms. Sweet, just 2 percent of toys were marked as girls’ or boys’; on the Disney Store website in 2012, according to a study in which Ms. Auster was a co-author, all toys were labeled that way.

All of them.

But at least they’re careful to make sure the girls get toys that don’t just train them in passivity, right?

Boys’ toys and costumes tend to be associated with action or destruction: objects that move, characters that save the day and animals that prey. Girls’ toys and costumes are more passive: objects to be looked at, characters that are rescued and animals that are docile or pretty.

In the 2012 study analyzing toys on the Disney Store website, girls’ toys were mostly pastel and related to caretaking or beauty, like dolls and jewelry. Boys’ toys had mostly bold colors and related to action and building, like cars and blocks.

Oh.

It’s impossible to disentangle all the elements that shape children’s notions of gender roles or to separate nature from nurture, and no major longitudinal studies have been done. But researchers say drawing clear distinctions between genders a significant role in pushing children down particular paths and creating stereotypes.

Lynn Liben of Penn State University and Lacey Hilliard of Tufts University studied preschool students. In some of the classrooms, teachers made no distinctions between boys and girls. In others, teachers differentiated between them, such as asking them to line up separately.

After two weeks, the children in the group where distinctions were made were much more likely to hold stereotypical beliefs about whether men and women should be in traditionally male or female occupations, and spent much less time playing with peers of the opposite sex. Even saying “boys and girls” instead of “children” had the effect.

And everything does say “boys and girls” (in that order); every damn thing, all the time.

There’s this:

And there’s this:

Notice anything?

The male figure is standing straight, hands in fists.

The female figure is at an angle, head tilted, one foot partly off the floor, one knee bent, palms outward.

Now this – a photo of women scientists who are spending eight days in an experimental capsule at Russia’s Institute of Biomedical Problems,

the latest in a lengthy series of tests carried out by institute specialists studying the effects on human physiology and emotions during life among the stars.

Well no, not among the stars. Outside earth’s atmosphere, but still 93 million miles from the nearest star. Anyway, the photo:

What on earth? They’re adult scientists, not teenage cheerleaders. Why are they bending their knees and pointing their toes and tilting their heads and simpering?

They did press conferences at which people asked them how they would survive eight days without makeup.

The wacky world of gender.

Eaves Charity is closing down as of today.

Eaves has been a member of the End Violence Against Women campaign – an unprecedented coalition of individuals and organisations set up in 2005 who are calling on the government, public bodies and others to take concerted action to end violence against women.

But Eaves has been operational since 1977 and is particularly known for its specialist services for helping and supporting women victims of violence.

These include the Poppy project, the London Exiting Advocacy and the Alice project.

The Poppy project has supported some 2000 women victims of trafficking since its inception and helped 45 women bring their traffickers to justice, obtaining combined sentence of 423 years.

The London Exiting Advocacy (LEA) project for women exiting prostitution was linked to unique primary research with 114 women and a specialist exiting prostitution training programme.

The Alice project has averted homelessness for 294 women this year – women with multiple and complex disadvantages including no recourse to public funds, mental health, benefit “sanctions”, child custody, needing access to foodbanks and transport and basic welfare etc.

Why are they closing? Not enough funds.

Cuts, reductions and closures have of course hit a whole range of non-governmental organisations, however, there is much evidence to suggest that women are bearing the brunt.

Fair Deal for Women found that it is women who have paid off 79 per cent of the deficit to date.

It is more likely to be women in low-paid, insecure, part-time and public sector work, it is more likely to be women with caring responsibilities who may have to top up their incomes or rely exclusively on benefits and it is more likely to be women who need to rely on public, voluntary sector and specialist services.

Yet these are precisely the areas being cut.

I guess they should have thought of that before they decided to be women.

From the Independent: IS is shutting down gynecology clinics in Raqqa, clinics which are more than ever needed because IS is also raping little girls. A one-two punch.

Isis is believed to have ordered the closure of all women’s clinics supervised by male doctors in its Syrian heartlands in its latest assault on the rights of women.

A culture of rape, forced marriages for child brides, the persecution of doctors and the exclusive use of medicines for militants have resulted in a crisis for women’s health under Isis’s brutal regime.

According to activists, Isis has drastically restricted the work of male gynaecologists in accordance with its leaders’ belief that men and women should be kept apart at all costs.

That women and men should be kept apart at all costs and that men should get all the good things while women make do with the crumbs, if there are any.

Earlier this year, doctors in Isis’s Libyan territories reported a dramatic increase in cases of miscarriages and STDs among young women, as girls are forced into unions with fighters.

One gynaecologist told The Times in May that girls taken in to clinics were often so young they had no real sense of what was happening to them. “We see girls who are bleeding heavily from their genital area. Some of them don’t know what sex is — they come into the clinic playing with their dolls.”

That’s why IS likes them – tiny holes, you see. Tiny holes that bleed heavily after rape.

God hates little girls.

Oy. Seen on Twitter –

I match 3 items under “you have a male brain if” and only 1 under “you have a female brain if.” I must be trans!

Or wait, maybe the list is bullshit.

At the Saudi embassy in Oslo today:

Ensaf reports that Raif was not flogged today – which is a big relief after the news that the flogging was going to resume. But that’s only this week…

News from Delhi:

Two young girls – a toddler and a 5-year-old – have been raped in separate attacks in New Delhi, police said Saturday, in the latest incidents of sexual violence against girls and women in India.

A 2 1/2-year-old girl who was playing outside her home was raped in a west Delhi suburb Friday evening, said Delhi Police deputy superintendent Pushpendra Kumar. Family members found the child lying unconscious and bleeding in a park three hours after she went missing during a power outage in the neighborhood.

Two and a half years old, grabbed and penetrated, then thrown aside in a park like so much garbage.

The rapes occurred a week after a 4-year-old girl was found dumped near a railway track after being raped and slashed with a blade.

A series of recent attacks has renewed public fury and horror over India’s inability to halt chronic violence against women and girls.

That is gender as hierarchy.

Reporters Without Borders last week:

Reporters Without Borders condemns the threats against news media and bloggers contained in a email that was sent to a score of Bangladeshi print and broadcast media outlets on 19 October, and calls on the authorities to take concrete measures to protect all those targeted.

Sent by Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a militant Islamist group that has claimed the murders of four bloggers this year, and signed by a person identifying himself as ABT spokesman Abdullah bin Salim, the Bengali-language email constituted a clear threat to all media that fail to adhere strictly to Islamic law.

The email included a demand for news media to fire all female employees and to refrain from publishing any ads that show women or any photos that include a woman not wearing a burqa.

This isn’t “high ideals” or any kind of altruism, even a distorted kind. This is just power-crazed theocratic men doing their best to stamp women and secularists and atheists into submission or death.

Imran H. Sarker, one of Bangladesh’s most popular bloggers, with about a million followers on social networks, received similar death threats on 17 October from a Facebook account apparently linked to the Islamic State.

All of the bloggers murdered since the start of 2015 – Washiqur Rahman, Ananta Bijoy Das,Niloy Neel and Avijit Roy, the founder of theMukto-Mona discussion website – criticized religious fundamentalism and advocated tolerance, free speech and freedom of thought in their blogs.

And they can’t allow that.

Update: bdnews24 reports that a rival group faked the threatening emails.

The media was threatened in an e-mail by none other than the leaders of an Awami Ulama League faction that used the name of banned militant outfit Ansarullah Bangla Team, its rival group alleges.

A faction led by Ilias Hossain bin Helali and Delowar Hossain made the claim at a press briefing on Wednesday.

It said “truth will be unveiled” if leaders of its rival faction, led by Aktar Hossain and Abul Hasan, were interrogated.

But Hasan rejected the allegations.

“The charges are false,” he told bdnews24.com in his reaction. “Helali is running a snide campaign against us as we speak of Bangabandhu, the Awami League and the Ulama League.”

Charge and counter-charge; totally unclear who is telling the truth.

Take that, Saudi theocrats: Raif Badawi has won the Sakharov prize.

The announcement was greeted on Thursday with a standing ovation at the European parliament in Strasbourg, France, but will be seen by Saudi Arabia as another diplomatic slight at a time when its domestic and international policies are coming under growing criticism.

What do you mean “but”? That’s an “and.”

Martin Schulz, the European parliament president, said: “I urge the king of Saudi Arabia to free him [Badawi], so he can accept the prize.”

And be free, and not be flogged, and be with Ensaf and their children again.

Named after the Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, the award was created in 1988 to honour people and organisations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Let him go.

Jonathan Rosenberg has a cartoon. The protagonist looks kind of familiar…

You can support the cartoonist on Patreon.

Originally a comment by iknlast on Preserving the sanctity of the big tent.

Make a new twitter account using a man’s name. Choose a picture not of a person but one with masculine bent. Use that account at least a week, but longer is better.

My son actually tried this experiment in reverse. He gamed as a woman. And as a man in the same setting at a different time. His results were predictable, and eye-opening, even to someone like my son who was already fairly enlightened about the issue. The amount of hate he got was intense – and he wasn’t even talking about feminism or the rights of women, he was just playing a game as a woman.

If people really want to know when I feel like a woman, it is when being met with blistering contempt, bored indifference, or violent hostility toward some activity I am performing or some argument I am making. I feel it in my classroom when I have my students draw a picture of a typical scientist, and they all draw men (beards are required to be a scientist, apparently), even though there is a woman standing in front of them, a trained scientist who has published scientific research, and is in the process of teaching them about science. At those times, I actually do feel like a woman, with my personhood totally stripped from me.

Chris Kluwe gives SZSW hell.

This week, you announced a decision so mind-numbingly shameful, it’s a wonder that the collective spleens of everyone involved didn’t spontaneously combust from the overload of self-loathing. I speak, of course, of your Neville Chamberlain-esque choice to cancel a panel on harassment in online spaces, featuring Katherine Cross, Caroline Sinders, and Randi Harper, due to (and I can’t believe I have to type this) overwhelming harassment from those opposed to said panel — i.e., Gamergate (a group you conveniently allowed to have their own panel without following any of the listed application rules, in a fascinating display of fear-profiteering that would make Dick Cheney blush).

Then, you inexplicably tried to justify the unjustifiable, with one of the most mealy-mouthed, corporate nothing speak emails I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading; all in the hopes that this would somehow explain your craven actions.

Behold that email:

On the one hand, we are an event that prides itself on being a big tent and a marketplace of diverse people and diverse ideas. On the other hand, preserving the sanctity of that big tent at SXSW Interactive necessitates that we keep the dialogue civil and respectful — so that people can agree, disagree and embrace new ways of thinking in a safe and secure place. We have already received numerous threats of violence regarding this panel, so a civil and respectful environment seems unlikely in March in Austin. For this reason, we have also canceled other sessions at the 2016 event that focused on the GamerGate controversy. We are strong believers in community at SXSW — and a healthy community sometimes requires strong management. Preserving the sanctity of the big tent is more important than preserving any particular session.

That’s quite something, isn’t it. “Preserving the sanctity of the big tent” is so important it’s worth letting harassers harass them out of holding a panel. What about the women the harassers have been harassing for more than a year? Oh who cares about them – they don’t belong in the big tent.

First off, the panel was not on Gamergate, did not mention Gamergate, and the only tangential relation it had with Gamergate was that the odorous denizens of that particular hashtag have made it their mission to try and ruin the lives of the women involved in the panel (among others). The fact you felt the need to connect it to Gamergate shows quite clearly where the pressure to silence these voices came from.

Second, and perhaps more pertinently, you run a festival that features A-list celebrities and tech magnates worth collective billions, superstar athletes, and some of the biggest music acts in the world, and you’re telling me you can’t provide security for a panel of three women? That it’s beyond your resources to hire any sort of police presence when you shut down entire sections of Austin at a time? That the unceasing vitriol these brave individuals face on a daily basis is just too much for your tender feelings to deal with, when you’ve experienced the merest fraction of that torrent of filth they’re forced to endure?

And then he gets really angry.

It’s great stuff.

NBC News reports:

The popular South by Southwest festival said it was cancelling two panel discussions about harassment and the online gaming community due to threats of violence.

The decision prompted some big digital media companies, including BuzzFeed and Vox Media to withdraw from the festival — known as SXSW — in protest.

The festival — known as SXSW — said it had hoped that hosting the two panels “SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community” and “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games” would lead to a “valuable exchange of ideas.”

However, it said SXSW had received “numerous threats of on-site violence” related to the programs in the week since the March 2016 SXSW Interactive event panels were announced. It did not detail the nature of the threats.

Who would be doing that? The harassers, or the people they harass? Any bets?

The Opening Gaming Society said the “disheartening” move to cancel the panel came “as a shock.” It said that SXSW had been in touch to explain the decision — which came after receiving countless emails, phone calls and social-media messages about the panels.

“SXSW feels that both the organization and its staff have been under siege from all sides and from all parties since they announced the panels,” it said in a statement urging gamers not to attack the festival over its decision. “They want to encourage open discussions, but they don’t want to fuel a vicious online war between two sides who are extremely opposed to one another.”

Oh christ, it’s “both of you stop it” all over again. It’s not a war and it’s not two sides – it’s harassment and threats.

How pathetic.

Terrible awful horrifying news from Ensaf Haidar:

I was informed by an informed source, that the Saudi authorities have given the green light to the resumption of Raif Badawi’s flogging. The informed source also said that the flogging will resume soon but will be administered inside the prison.

It is worth mentioning that the same source had warned me of Raif’s pending flogging at the beginning of January 2015 and his warning was confirmed, as Raif was flogged on 9th January.

While I do not understand this decision especially as Raif’s case is still being reviewed by the supreme court according to a senior source in the Saudi Ministry of Justice and according to the statement of UK Foreign Office minister, Tobias Ellwood, who told the House of Commons in July that my husband’s case was still being examined by Saudi judges.

I call on his Majesty King Salman to gracefully end my husband’s ordeal and to pardon him. I also appeal to his Majesty to allow him to be deported to Canada to be reunited with his family and children, who have been deprived of their father for more than four years.

I take this opportunity to remind Mr. Justin Trudeau, the new Canadian Prime Minister, of his promise to support Raif badawi and ensure his release. I plead with him to give Raif a White Passport to enable him to be reunited with his family in Canada.

There’s a sub-conversation about “double standards” in the comments on A matter of simple semantics. That’s a conversation that’s basically going on all the time, with just about anyone who has moral or political views on things. The putative double standard boils down to: You think Question X is settled, while you think Question Y is not. You think there is room for discussion on Y but not on X. You think anyone who denies or disputes X is reprehensible, while you don’t think that of people who deny or dispute Y.

Well, yes. I do think some Question Xs are settled, or should be treated as settled.

Consider the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example. That’s a charter for establishing certain basic Xs as settled, for everyone.

I consider genocide a settled question. Slavery; forced “marriage”; judicial punishment for “blasphemy”; murder; rape; child abuse. I could go on.

It’s not surprising or shocking to consider some things more contentious than others. It would be strange to think of all things as exactly equally contentious.

Or to put it another way, this is the old “yes or no” issue again. Some questions can easily be answered with a yes or no, and others can’t. That too is not surprising or shocking.