I’m finding this one hard to read without nausea. Gang rape videos are a hot item in Uttar Pradesh.

According to Reuters, gang rape videos have become a popular seller in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state located in the northern region of the country.

Graphic cellphone videos depicting gang rapes are being bought and sold inside shops in the state. The videos last anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes, and can cost between 75 cents and $2. The disturbing trend is indicative that there has been an increase in gang rape perpetrators using mobile phones to document their horrific crimes — and an increase in demand to view such depraved content.

So there are gang rapes, and there is filming of gang rapes, and the resulting films are sold, and they’re popular.

There just is no limit to how much women are hated, is there.

The police say they’re trying to stop it, but it’s really difficult, Mom.

Reuters has more.

Last week, a woman and her 14-year-old daughter were dragged from their vehicle at gunpoint on a major highway and gang-raped for hours in nearby fields. Local media reported that initially the police did not respond to a call for help.

The daily Indian Express reported that this week another woman was gang-raped in Uttar Pradesh, and said the incident had been recorded on a mobile phone.

Increasingly, perpetrators are recording their crimes on mobile phones to use as a blackmailing tool and to dissuade victims from going to the police, the Times of India said.

That’s pretty astonishing – the perps document the crime, to prevent police action. I’m more used to a setup where documenting a crime makes it more possible to prosecute, not less.

Story via the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change.

Out Sports tells us about a not so festive chant in Rio:

Soccer fans at the opening matches of the Olympic women’s soccer tournament chanted homophobic slurs, among other horrible things, at various players on Wednesday. Reports from various sources say the Portuguese term “bicha” was tossed around liberally by fans during the matches; That is similar to the “puto” chants we have heard from fans of Mexico and other Latin American countries.

…

The Los Angeles Times‘ Kevin Baxter, who is in Brazil covering the Olympics, said that the homophobic slur was aimed at the U.S. Women’s National Team during its 2-0 victory over New Zealand on Wednesday. At least one of the USWNT players — Megan Rapinoe — is gay, as is head coach Jill Ellis.

You know what else about them? They’re women. Ew, sick, right?

The chant surfaced during the Australia-Canada match as well, in which at least four players identify publicly as LGBT. One of those players is Stephanie Labbé, the Canadian goalkeeper. Given the chant surfaces when the goalkeeper occupies the ball, it’s particularly gross that they would use it specifically targeting Labbé.

The use of “bicha” by fans in men’s matches isn’t new. Janet Lever talks about it in her 1995 book,Soccer Madness: Brazil’s Passion for the World’s Most Popular Sport, describing up to 100,000 people chanting the slur in unison. However, it’s a bit odd for the slur to surface in women’s matches, as it’s a term aimed at men.

Maybe everybody could chant whatever their own language’s word is for human being. Human being! Human being!!

It would make a change, at least.

Jesus and Mo last month:

That’s a core difficulty, isn’t it. It always surprises me how easily believers jump over it or ignore it or wave it away. Even if you accept ad arguendo that a god did reveal a holy book to a human being or some human beings, how do you know that the transmission has been unbroken? How can you be confident you can rely on the chain of transmission from then to now?

You could say the god has seen to it that the transmission has never broken…but then why hasn’t the god made that unmistakable to everyone? Believers say the god has done that, we unbelievers are just willful and bad – but if the god had made it genuinely unmistakable we wouldn’t be able to unbelieve, would we. It’s pretty impossible (barring a particular mental disorder) to disbelieve in one’s own existence, for instance – the god could have made it unmistakable in that way. The god didn’t do anything like that. All we have, from our secular point of view, is some people saying things year after year. That’s all.

And then if you don’t accept that a god did reveal a holy book to a human being or some human beings, you have that problem to deal with too. Why should anybody believe that? Because people have said so, but that’s not a good enough reason (given the nature of the claim). Why aren’t believers more bothered by the fact that human claims are all we have as “evidence” that a god revealed a holy book to one or several humans?

And then, as the barmaid points out, they all claim that.

It’s fallibility all the way down.

The Patreon

From the “oh dear god how many times do we have to spell this out before you get it” files – the American Bar Association needs to add a rule telling male lawyers not to make sexist remarks to colleagues in court.

When Lori Rifkin asked the opposing lawyer to stop interrupting her while she questioned a potential witness, he replied: “Don’t raise your voice at me. It’s not becoming of a woman.”

The remark drew a rebuke and fine in January from a federal magistrate who declared that the lawyer had “endorsed the stereotype that women are subject to a different standard of behavior than their fellow attorneys.”

Of course a lawyer is always going to want to throw off “the opposing lawyer” because that’s how opposing works – you use every trick you can think of. But some tricks are impermissible, and sexist remarks should be one of those.

“I got the pat on the head,” said Jenny Waters, chief executive of the National Association of Women Lawyers, referring to what she encountered while in private practice.

The group, which represents 5,200 women, has been backing an effort to add to the American Bar Association’s model rules of professional conduct an amendment to prohibit harassment and discrimination by lawyers in the course of practicing law. Bar associations in 23 states and the District of Columbia already have some kind of protections against harassment and discrimination by lawyers in the conduct of their profession, but the proposal would establish a standard nationwide.

Thus interfering with our precious freedom to have individual states where women can be belittled freely, as God intended.

But critics of the proposal argue that a rule would inhibit lawyers from speaking freely on behalf of their clients and circumscribing the way they run their practice.

“It would change the attorney-client relationship and impair the ability to zealously represent clients,” said Kim Colby, director of the Center for Law and Religious Freedom at the Christian Legal Society, which opposes the amendment.

Oberlin has placed Joy Karega on administrative leave while it investigates her anti-Semitic postings.

In February, the news site The Tower published the posts made by Dr. Karega, an assistant professor who teaches rhetoric and composition, most dated back to early 2015. The private liberal arts school in Ohio at first defended its faculty members’ rights to express personal views, but in March, Clyde S. McGregor, the board chairman, wrote in a statement on behalf of the college’s board of trustees that “these grave issues must be considered expeditiously.”

That statement also described the posts Dr. Karega made as “anti-Semitic and abhorrent.” In her posts, Dr. Karega suggested that the Islamic State was funded by the C.I.A. and the Mossad organization, the Israeli intelligence service, and that Mossad was behind the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris.

But what about academic freedom? But then again what about basic intellectual values?

On Facebook, Dr. Karega seemed to respond: “Equitable?” she wrote on Wednesday, before adding that she had no comment and was on vacation with her daughter.

On Wednesday evening, Dr. Karega shared a statement written on her behalf by Chui Karega, an attorney based in Detroit. The statement accused Oberlin of “pandering to the dictates of a handful of vocal and wealthy religious zealots.”

The statement continued: “It is truly regrettable that an institution such as Oberlin College, with a historical legacy of activism and social justice, particularly in terms of African Americans, is being used as a personal tool of religious extremism by a small number of people.”

It’s also regrettable that an institution such as Oberlin College should employ academics who peddle tin-hat conspiracy theories.

Texas is holding hearings on a “fetal remains” rule “that prohibits hospitals, abortion clinics and other health care facilities from disposing of fetal remains in sanitary landfills, instead allowing only cremation or interment of all remains — regardless of the period of gestation — even in instances of miscarriages.”

With little notice and no announcement, the proposed change was published in the Texas Register on July 1. In a fundraising email sent to supporters last month, Abbott said the rules were proposed because he didn’t believe fetal remains should be “treated like medical waste and disposed of in landfills.”

That prompted outrage from the reproductive rights community, which accused state leaders of placing unnecessary regulations on abortion providers. Medical professionals also raised concerns about who would bear the costs associated with cremation or interment — a figure that can reach several thousand dollars in each case — and why the rule change does not allow an exception for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.

Is the state going to follow up on all the women who produced the fetal remains to make sure they’re mourning properly? Is the state going to monitor the women’s levels of grief for a state period – a month? Six months? Ten years?

In questioning the health-related justifications for the proposed rules, Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice Texas testified that state health officials have not provided any evidence that current methods used by abortion providers to dispose of fetal tissue — which have been approved by the state for 20 years — are less safe or not optimal for public health and safety.

State officials have defended the rule change, saying it was proposed in “the best interests of the public health of Texas.” They also say the proposed rule change reflects the state’s efforts to affirm the “highest standards of human dignity.”

Ah there you go – human dignity. It’s a backdoor way of trying to compel everyone to agree that the fetal remains are in fact the corpse of a Baby, and must be treated with reverence. The implications are obvious.

The possibility of a legal challenge to the rule change hung over the hearing, with many repeating a warning by reproductive rights lawyers that the proposal “will almost certainly trigger costly litigation.”

In a letter sent to health officials ahead of the hearing, the Center for Reproductive Rights — which represented abortion providers in their recent landmark victory over Texas’ 2013 abortion restrictions — argued that the rules are “plainly in violation” of the legal standard abortion regulations must meet to be deemed constitutional.

That legal standard was clarified by the U.S. Supreme Court in its ruling overturning the 2013 abortion restrictions, which spelled out that lawmakers must provide evidence that an abortion regulation furthers a state interest, like promoting health, without placing an undue burden on women’s access to the procedure to be constitutional.

There is no state interest in promoting the “human dignity” of fetal remains. That should be the business of the parents, and no one else.

H/t Gretchen

Glosswitch wrote a horror-struck post yesterday about teenage girls and breast-binding.

I’m not supposed to call them young women. They’re non-binary individuals or trans men and that, we are supposed to think, is what makes the binding okay. Whatever the risks – “compressed or broken ribs, punctured or collapsed lungs, back pain, compression of the spine, damaged breast tissue, damaged blood vessels, blood clots, inflamed ribs, and even heart attacks” – binding is justified because of the psychological benefits. There’s no other way, you see.

I look at arguments such as these and I literally want to scream.

You know, women used to bind their whole torsos. Remember that? Lacing? Corsets? Corsets crushed internal organs, and prevented women from breathing properly. It was impossible to draw a deep breath while wearing a corset. I posted about it a few months ago, via Elizabeth McGovern saying how awful it was wearing them on Downton Abbey:

‘There is no way,’ she says, speaking heavily and with the conviction that can be born only of bitter experience, ‘that I can convey to you what a profound experience it is not to be wearing a corset. In the series, we’ve been through the years leading up to the First World War, the years during it, and now we’re in the years after it, and I have actually physically inhabited the clothes of each era in that I have not only tried them on but spent the major part of my days wearing them.

‘Corsets are so uncomfortable that they drive me mad, and it is incredible how much it changes your world view to be out of them. You can move around so much more freely, and the passage of air is not constricted – you have more oxygen making its way to your brain so you have much more ambition, much more desire to achieve things and connect with the outside world…’

So isn’t it…something, that we’re back to mutilating women, and that that’s being portrayed as progressive.

Back to Glossy:

We need to call the rise of binding, puberty blocking, mastectomy, testosterone prescriptions and hysterectomy for girls and young women what it is: Female Reproductive Mutilation. Just as with FGM, it is a practice in which females are complicit not because they are foolish, nor because they are morally weak, but because they are trying to survive in a culture which does not respect the full humanity of a female body that grows freely, intact and unharmed. The feelings of a girl who wishes to take a knife and slice off her own breasts are absolutely valid. She is not faking it. We should be listening to her, respecting her suffering. But this complicity? This acceptance of the hatred that has been growing in her year on year?

I think more highly of women and girls than that. I will not accept the racist Western bullshit that decrees that when others remove the clitorises of girls, they are barbaric, but when we bind their breasts and cause their uteruses to atrophy, we are merely respecting their true identities. We are not. We are turning away from their pain, concluding that if they are willing to take it on themselves, who are we to stop them? It’s a horrendous abnegation of responsibility.

I know what it is like to want to disappear. I know what it is like to reject femaleness. I also know that you can reach a point of wanting to grow, of finding a way through it, even though the discomfort never fully leaves you. We are denying girls the chance to make that choice later in life and we are endorsing their suffering now. It is unforgivable.

Foot-binding. Corsets. High heels. FGM. Breast-binding. It’s all the same shit.

Typical Everyday Feminism.

Being feminist means more than just organizing under the singular goal of “smashing the patriarchy.”

It also means understanding and acknowledging the ways that race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability, global location, and citizenship or national identity affect how patriarchy impacts each of us differently.

Funny how it’s only and always feminism that is told to be about everybody else’s concerns as well as women’s. Funny how it’s only and always women who aren’t allowed to have a movement that’s about their own subordination and othering. Funny how it’s only and always women who are constantly offering up their masochistic refusal to say their own movement is about their own oppression.

And what’s all this preliminary self-abnegation in aid of? A po-faced discussion of fashion choices. That’s Everyday Feminism for you – so “intersectional” and so frivolous right at the same time.

It’s no secret: Our individual fashion choices communicate a lot about us – both intentionally and unintentionally – from our gender identities and class backgrounds, to our personal beliefs and subcultural affiliations.

Our personal fashion choices also affect the people around us deeply – both intentionally and unintentionally as well.

Spoiler: all this heavy breathing is about camouflage clothes. Don’t wear them, because soldiers kill brown people, and that’s not intersectional. That’s what being feminist means.

Fathers and daughters, Swansea and Jeddah.

A woman who claims her father has kept her locked up against her will in Saudi Arabia must be allowed to return to Britain, a UK judge has ruled.

Amina Al-Jeffery, 21, who was born and brought up in Swansea, was taken to Jeddah in 2012 by her father, Mohammed, who said he did it to “save her life”.

She says he did it because she kissed a guy.

The judge said the father had to let her return and pay her airfare – but he also said there was no way to compel him.

Mr Justice Holman added: “There are no conventions between Britain and Saudi Arabia. The courts in Saudi Arabia would not even recognise the basis of the claim, because it does not recognise dual nationality.”

Some more things Saudi Arabia doesn’t recognize: human rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, secular law, international law…

Meanwhile, as Trump burbles about nukes and crying babies and angry Muslims with thick accents, Obama writes a piece for Glamour about feminism.

He points out that it’s not just about changing laws, it’s about changing ourselves.

As far as we’ve come, all too often we are still boxed in by stereotypes about how men and women should behave. One of my heroines is Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who was the first African American to run for a major party’s presidential nomination. She once said, “The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, ‘It’s a girl.’ ” We know that these stereotypes affect how girls see themselves starting at a very young age, making them feel that if they don’t look or act a certain way, they are somehow less worthy. In fact, gender stereotypes affect all of us, regardless of our gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

They’re probably the stereotypes that affect us all the most.

I also have to admit that when you’re the father of two daughters, you become even more aware of how gender stereotypes pervade our society. You see the subtle and not-so-subtle social cues transmitted through culture. You feel the enormous pressure girls are under to look and behave and even think a certain way.

And a lot of men are not aware of that.

We need to keep changing the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticizes our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear. We need to keep changing the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs.

We need to keep changing the attitude that permits the routine harassment of women, whether they’re walking down the street or daring to go online. We need to keep changing the attitude that teaches men to feel threatened by the presence and success of women.

We need to keep changing the attitude that congratulates men for changing a diaper, stigmatizes full-time dads, and penalizes working mothers. We need to keep changing the attitude that values being confident, competitive, and ambitious in the workplace—unless you’re a woman. Then you’re being too bossy, and suddenly the very qualities you thought were necessary for success end up holding you back.

They are necessary for success, but all the same if you’re a woman you’re punished for them. You can’t win.

We need to keep changing a culture that shines a particularly unforgiving light on women and girls of color. Michelle has often spoken about this. Even after achieving success in her own right, she still held doubts; she had to worry about whether she looked the right way or was acting the right way—whether she was being too assertive or too “angry.”

Remember the 2008 campaign? Yup.

I can’t see Trump ever writing an article like this.

The BBC reports:

The headless, mutilated body of a gay Syrian man has been identified by gay housemates in Istanbul who say he had been gang-raped previously.

The friends of Muhammad Wisam Sankari told a Turkish gay rights group, kaosgl.org, that they had been threatened by violent male gangs.

“I am so scared,” one of them said.

Mr Sankari, a refugee, arrived in Istanbul a year ago. His body was found in Yenikapi, a central district, on 25 July. No arrests have been made.

He was trying to get out of Turkey because his life was in danger.

In June, Turkish police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse gay activists who tried to hold an LGBT rally in Istanbul, despite a ban on the Gay Pride parade.

Homosexuality is illegal in many countries in the Middle East and although it is not against the law in Turkey, analysts say homophobia remains widespread.

Allah hates fags, no doubt – and as for dykes –

The Turkish authorities cited “safeguarding security and public order” as the reason for banning Gay Pride in Istanbul this year. The parade was also banned last year.

Assaults on LGBT people in Turkey have mostly been blamed on ultra-conservative Muslims and an ultra-nationalist youth group, the Alperen Hearths.

The harassment is also related to a rise in homophobic rhetoric in conservative media and social media, Cagil Kasapoglu [of the BBC Turkish Service] says.

Yeah we get that here too.

A series of tweets yesterday by John Noonan. Here’s his current Twitter blurb:

Did national security for @JebBush, @MittRomney. Bourbon helps. Sell your bonds and pray for America. #NeverTrump

Here’s what he said (I expanded a few of them from Twitter shorthand):

I can’t get this in one tweet. So bear with me as I air some laundry here on Scarborough’s claim Trump’s interested in nuclear First Use

Pulled 300 nuclear alerts, 100 ft under the Wyoming turf. Job is serious and full of serious people.

When we went into ICBM training, we went through a battery of tests and interviews. Are you sane? Are you willing to turn your key?

I see how those might sound at odds.

But the whole idea behind nuclear deterrence is that you don’t use the damn things. So I thought the mission credible and worthy.

There are a hell of a lot of bad actors out there who have nukes. They are restrained only by our ability to instantly lay waste to them.

The nuke triad, which Trump doesn’t have a clue about, has been the single greatest contributor to global peace for decades. You heard me.

I dont know if Scarborough is telling whole truth here. Anonymous sources suck. BUT… if he is… buckle the hell up.

Because Trump would be undoing 6 decades of proven deterrence theory. The purpose of nukes is that they are never used. Trump disagrees?

This would be the single greatest strategic shift in US national security in decades. In a Trump Presidency, our foreign policy would be this. “Leave our alliances, fall back on a nuclear first use policy.” Does he understand just how fucking dangerous that is?

But what really concerns me, as a former nuke guy, is the idea of a narcissist walking around with nuclear authenticators.

I could sit 100ft underground, on alert, knowing that the POTUS would not make me do my duty — not unless it was absolute last resort.

But imagine having to turn launch keys not knowing if we were under attack or if it was because a foreign leader said a mean thing on twitter.

The power is there to kill millions. Permanently alter the geopolitical landscape. It is a sacred, sobering responsibility.

Idea that nukes would be used, say over Raqqa or Mosul, simply because we have no more allies and it’s a simple, easy fix is nauseating.

Simply signaling that you’re open to using strategic weapons as a tactical solution rewrites the rule book. Russia, China, others will respond. Nuclear deterrence is about balance. Trump is an elephant jumping up and down on one side of the scale. So damn dangerous.

But geopolitics aside, I can’t get my mind off the young officers on nuke alert right now. Wondering if they’ll soon answer to a madman.

And be asked to do a duty that should morally be asked of no human being, ever.