Sometimes I can hardly believe what I’m reading. Student Rights reports:

Last week both Yusuf Chambers of the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA) and Uthman Lateef appeared at the University of Nottingham as part of ‘Discover Islam Week’.

Given that both these speakers have a record of expressing homophobic sentiment, student journalists both approached LGBT Network members and questioned the two men on their beliefs.

Calls for intolerant speakers to be allowed to speak in order for their bigotry to be exposed are common from students, so you would think that this would have been acceptable behaviour.

Instead a statement has been released by the LGBT Network and the Islamic Society at the university which targets those journalists for trying “to provoke an antagonistic atmosphere” on campus.

What?

What is this, India? Is the University of Nottingham operating under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code?

Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.— Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.

Religions have tenets, beliefs, claims. Chambers and Lateef weren’t there to do a fashion show or a dance recital; they were there to share their ideas. People get to challenge those ideas. They get to do that without being accused of “trying to provoke an antagonistic atmosphere.”

In addition to this, the Islamic Society President states that “such attacks were problematic and contributed to a sense of marginalisation and discomfort towards many Muslim students on campus”.

That challenging someone with a history of homophobia over their bigoted views can be described as an ‘attack’ and as marginalising Muslim students is incredible, and demonstrates a deep intolerance of legitimate criticism.

Legitimate criticism is legitimate.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s not just new laws and restrictions, it’s not just protesters outside clinics, it’s not just Catholic hospitals gobbling up secular hospitals – it’s also training, and how difficult it is to get it. The Daily Beast reports on the scarcity of medical training in abortion.

…abortion training is still largely isolated in freestanding clinics and the relatively few OB-GYN residency programs that provide comprehensive training. Although the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education—the governing body which sets nationwide rules for medical residencies—put abortion training on the curriculum for all OB-GYN programs in 1996, Congress took the unprecedented step of nullifying that decision soon afterward. To this day, any program that does not abide by the ACGME guidelines won’t lose its federal funding, and only 40 percent of OB-GYN programs in the country offer comprehensive abortion training.

“It’s this cuckoo level of micromanaging,” Carole Joffe, a sociologist and author of two books on the history of abortion rights, said of Congress’s decision. “In theory, it’s not illegal for them to do that, it’s just unprecedented.”

Congress micromanaging medical education to make sure abortion training is not required – wonderful, isn’t it? Nothing is too much when it’s a question of making sure women don’t have rights.

“We had one OB-GYN resident come work with us, and her hospital was affiliated with a Catholic hospital and she was getting no training in abortion whatsoever,” Debra Stulberg, a family practitioner and researcher at the University of Chicago, told The Daily Beast. “Often, having the elective time and being able to find an experience where you can get training is not the same.”

Even when motivated medical students and residents can find abortion training, they’re not always able to make use of those skills later on. Some private practices and hospitals have been known to make physicians sign contracts saying they won’t provide abortions—even at an outside clinic—while on staff.

“The real problem facing abortion provision—besides the stuff you know about Texas and admitting privileges—is at a much quieter level,” Joffe told the Beast.“It’s becoming hard for those who are trained to find places at which they can practice. From a hospital administration point of view, do you want picketers? Do you want hassles? No.”

They don’t need to overturn Roe v Wade. They can just make it too scary to provide abortions, and the result is the same.

Stulberg has observed the same thing. In 2011, she published a paper in which she found that, while 97 percent of OB-GYNs encountered patients seeking abortions, only 14 percent provided them.

“The tactic on the religious right to stigmatize abortion has translated beyond just making it hard for women to seek abortion,” she said. “Hospitals, medical schools, others who you would think might be neutral or even take a pro-reproductive-health stance, often are just afraid—afraid of protests, afraid of attention. They would rather just fly beneath the radar.”

Only 14% of OB-GYNs provide abortion.

14%.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

No reason, just because.

H/t Roland

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuI__CKP-3o

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Chris Stedman did a piece on this question of homophobia in atheism at Religion News Service after that Twitter exchange I quoted.

Discussions around sexism among atheists have been gaining momentum for years, but it’s clear that sexism is still a problem in certain segments of movement atheism. I’ve seen manifestations of it, and I am far from alone. And regarding anti-LGBTQ attitudes: I’ve heard from atheists who say that I’m too “effeminate,” that my being gay makes atheists seem “like freaks,” or that my “obvious homosexuality” makes me an ineffectual voice for atheists.

To paraphrase Clay Shirky for the thousandth time: if the voice of authority is always male, people will think the voice of authority is supposed to be male – and not just male but MALE; hyper-male, exaggerated-male, stereotypical-male. Poofters and bitches need not apply.

Much of organized atheism has a frat house or locker room or comedy club atmosphere. That doesn’t help.

The bottom line is this: Atheism is not an inoculation against prejudice. Being an atheist does not prevent you from being influenced by the homophobia and misogyny that permeate our culture. It may seem like an obvious point but it’s important to remember, lest we operate under the false idea that atheists are somehow immune.

No, it’s not, and in fact it can be an encouragement to certain kinds of prejudice. It’s sad but it’s true.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Inside Higher Ed reports on cyberbullying at university.

There are confession pages and websites, on Facebook and elsewhere. Universities have no way to block access to them.

Most posts are innocent confessions about crushes and pranks — or just hoaxes — but occasionally, students use the sites to launch anonymous attacks and start rumors. That’s what happened recently at Hopkins, where a confessions page on Facebook turned into “a hub for cyberbullying and controversial posts about race and sexual orientation,” according to the independent student newspaper The Johns Hopkins News-Letter.

“It’s unfortunate that from time to time, at colleges across the country, these things pop up,” O’Shea wrote. “It’s unfortunate that a very few people are willing to hide behind the mask of anonymity to say things to which they would never attach their names and reputations.”

One correction: it’s not “a very few.” It’s a lot. A lot of people are willing to do that, including some respectable people, like doctors and government bureaucrats and the like.

More privately hosted sites have appeared in CollegeACB’s wake, including Bored@, which deems itself as an “anonymous social network for educational institutions.” At Dartmouth College, the site is known as Bored@Baker, a reference to the Baker-Berry Library. Membership is restricted to users with an email address ending in “dartmouth.edu” or “alum.dartmouth.org” — in other words, current and former students.

Dartmouth recently launched an investigation in response to a freshman who said she was sexually assaulted after having been named in a “rape guide” posted to the website. The case did not turn up a report of sexual assault in connection with the post, but the university was able to identify the author, who is now undergoing Dartmouth’s disciplinary process, Anderson said.

Just what every university needs, a rape guide.

In many cases, students enjoy First Amendment protection and can’t be held liable for their posts, but Tracy Mitrano, the former director of IT Policy at Cornell University, said some speech may be seen as an assault under criminal law.

“Colleges and universities would do well to borrow these legal concepts and formulate through campus discussion and debate reasonable definitions and standards to incorporate into campus codes of conduct,” Mitrano, who also blogs for Inside Higher Ed, said in an email, adding that “an individual member of the community may enjoy free speech but may also within the community find their speech implicates other provisions under the campus code.”

The “rape guide” was in other words a clear violation of Dartmouth’s campus code — not to mention Bored@Baker’s terms of service – which spurred the university into action.

“While we certainly have a healthy respect for the First Amendment, we also want to make it clear that as a community, we have standards and and expect that … we will treat one another with respect,” Anderson said.

Is a “rape guide” protected under the First Amendment anyway?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The back and forth over American Atheists and the Conservative Political Action Conference continues today. There are people calling it a “witch hunt”…which is odd, because from what I’ve seen it’s mostly feminists who are annoyed by what they think looks like an effort to use abortion rights as a bargaining chip to attract conservatives to AA. (I don’t think that’s what it was, myself, but I get why it looked like that.) Not for the first time I note how ironic it is to use “witch hunt” as a term of abuse for feminist disagreement with something. It’s not normally women who do the witch hunting, and it’s not mostly men who are the victims of witch hunts. Maybe another phrase would be better.

Be that as it may, earlier today Chris Stedman disputed Dave Silverman on a couple of points, and Dave said he would amend his argument. (So, you see? Not a witch hunt. A productive discussion and disagreement. No witches put to the fire.)

Chris Stedman @ChrisDStedman

@MrAtheistPants And you implied on Twitter that there aren’t anti-gay atheists? I’ve actually encountered/heard from many anti-gay atheists.

David Silverman @MrAtheistPants

@ChrisDStedman That’s disturbing. I’ve only heard such from ppl who claim to be atheists (I get that a lot) but I don’t believe them.

Have you actually met, personally, atheists who are anti LGBT equality? I have not.

Chris Stedman @ChrisDStedman

@MrAtheistPants I have, and I’ve also heard from a number of atheists who say my “obvious homosexuality” makes me a bad rep for atheists…

…because it makes us seem like “freaks” or seem “weak,” etc. These folks definitely exist.

David Silverman @MrAtheistPants

@ChrisDStedman Well, that sucks. Sorry you experienced that. Will research and tweak my argument.

So, good outcome; listening and adjusting.

I was struck by what Chris said, because it sounds so familiar in a way. So I added my two cents.

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson

@ChrisDStedman @MrAtheistPants That’s gross. (Such ppl prob think the same abt women – weak & freakish, leave them out.)

There is a HUGE segment of movemt atheism that’s self-consciously macho. It’s driving a lot of us out.

It is. And you can’t have everything. You can talk about a big tent all you want, but in practice, it breaks down. You can have a big tent for some, limited purposes. You can recruit people to join you on a single issue. But for a movement, over the long term? It will break down. People will leave a movement that is too full of members who are belligerently hostile. A movement full of racists will lose people who dislike racism, and a movement full of people who dislike racism will lose racists. That’s how it is. People go where they want to go. Except when it’s life and death in the short term, you’ll have a very hard time persuading people to work with others who despise them. It’s all very well to make jokes about witch hunts and the People’s Front of Judea; you still can’t force people to work with those they consider hostile.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

A post about “sex positive feminism” at the New Statesman.

Time was when the very word “feminist” was transgressive. These day people rarely object to it. There’s a bitter irony to the fact that “but I’m a feminist” has become one of those phrases by which male dominance can be positively reinforced. “But I’m a feminist and I don’t mind objectification / unpaid work / sexual harassment / being called a cunt!” The implication is that we’ve come full circle. Feminism has worked through all of its issues and realised that the grown-ups were right all along. All that stuff we used to call oppression? We’re totes cool with it now.

It’s certainly not true that “these days people rarely object to” the word “feminism.” Hah! If only. And usually the people who make a big show of not minding sexual harassment or being called a cunt are not people who self-identify as feminists. But other than that, yes; there’s a real point there; not a new point, but a real one. There’s a surprisingly large amount of hipster sexism out there, of people who think it’s just so last century to pay any attention to things like sexist epithets or sexual harassment, who think the only right response to such concerns is “lighten up” or “shut the fuck up, cunt.”

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

So at CPAC they had a panel on GOP outreach to minorities.

John Hudak of the Brookings Institution is livetweeting CPAC and he tweeted a picture of the audience at that panel.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Originally a comment by Gordon Willis on Teach the children well.

I am a private teacher, teaching one-to-one. I teach both adults and children. Some of the children, invariably girls, come from Hong Kong or mainland China. They come aged 13 or 14 or 15, like English children to a boarding school, except that they come alone, because their parents can’t afford the fare for both themselves and their daughters. And they find digs and join a new school of completely foreign people, and they stay, and they learn, and they do not (apparently) suffer trauma and angst and complexes and lack-of-religion, even though their English is terrible (one young lady of 17 studying A-level music with me a couple of years ago told me that she preferred it here, though she hadn’t seen very much of her parents since she was 13, and her English is still pretty bad). Though they are very much alone they just get on with it. Culture, probably. They believe in what they are to do, and they do it. It’s amazing and admirable.

There are problems sometimes, of course. Part of being a teacher is to recognise problems and deal with them. The secret is to shut up and let the student just be. There is no reason to suppose that one has answers, but there is great benefit in simply listening and offering something immediately practical, something that can be grasped and used. Poe clearly feels that he ought to intervene and offer a life strategy to each student, as though each student were not an individual and discrete person but an object which must be changed and directed for life. He feels responsible, by which I mean that he feels that he ought to direct, not merely teach, as though he aspired to offer a life-plan for every young person. Teaching is about learning, and you can’t teach if you are not a learner.

A teacher is not someone who knows everything (and so can “teach”) but someone who understands learning, and the vital importance of learning, and who knows that learning never ends, and that whoever stops learning is not an “accomplished” adult but a carcass fit only for worms or the crematorium. A good teacher can transform a child’s life, but it might not happen, and if it does one might never know. A good teacher is just a teacher.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Not everything is postmodernist. Not even everything you dislike is postmodernist. Some things are not postmodernist.

Artistic license is not postmodernist. It has been around for a long time, longer than postmodernism.

Why am I telling you this? Because of some literal-minded bozos who have been complaining that a Hollywood movie about Noah and his big boat CHANGED SOME OF THE THINGS IN THE STORY.

At the request of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), Paramount added a disclaimer which reads, in part, that “[t]he film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”

The movie isn’t the story in Genesis told in pictures. That fact is not postmodernist.

Brian Godawa, a screenwriter whose Christian films have repeatedly failed to be profitable at the box office, wrote that Noah‘s script “is deeply anti-Biblical in its moral vision.”

“Noah is a kind of rural shaman and vegan hippie-like gatherer of herbs. Noah explains that his family tries to study and heal the world whenever possible, like a kind of environmentalist scientist,” Godawa writes.

…

The environmental message, however, is not Godawa’s central complaint — he is mostly considered concerned with the “postmodernist fancy” that Aronofsky brings to the script. He initially acknowledges that anything not explicitly written in Genesis 6 is fair-game for creative license. “Saying ‘That didn’t happen on the ark,’” he writes, “is sheer ignorance because nobody knows what happened on the ark, because it wasn’t written down!”

However, “postmodernists fancy playing God and changing the meaning of texts to suit their agenda because they believe language creates reality. Therefore, it’s okay to ‘make the Bible say what we want it to say.’ This is manipulative narcissistic nonsense[.]”

No, Brian Godawa, that is not postmodernism. It’s just retelling the story. You know who else did that? Shakespeare. He used other people’s stories, and he changed them any old way he felt like. Shakespeare was not a postmodernist. Changing stories is not a new thing and it’s not blasphemy and it’s not postmodernist.

I’m sure you won’t make that mistake again.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Atlantic has a very long wordy windbaggy article arguing that universities should teach students religion; not about religion, but religion. Why? Because they’re adrift, and only religion can fix their adriftitude.

Long long long introductory passage that tells us far more than we want to know. He used to teach. He got to know some students.

What I discovered was that many of the students I talked to were disappointed, confused, and lost. They were bright kids. Many of them had looked forward to going to the university all their lives. College was, in their imaginations, a sort of promised land, a place where you find your calling and get the skills necessary to pursue it. What they found, however, was not a promised land at all. To them, the college curriculum was a bewildering jumble of classes that led to nothing in particular. 

And so on and on and on in that style, loose and relaxed and endlessly explaining the obvious.

I also learned that because they were adrift in so many ways, they suffered. It was not difficult to get them talking about their distress, probably because no one at the university had ever thought to inquire. There were those who drank too much and got into trouble. There were those who were full-blown alcoholics or drug addicts.

And on and on and on through every type he can think of. Bad writing! We get it; a couple of examples will do; we get the idea. Cut to the chase.

He himself had a crisis once. What to do? Psychiatrists were not much help; they couldn’t get at the core problem. What to do? Religion.

What to do? I had never been religious. Far from it, I was a confirmed atheist. But, in desperation, I began to attend what might generically be called a “spiritual program.” Some call it a “religion” and others call it a “practice.” It doesn’t matter. The important point is that the people in this spiritual program embraced me, identified with me, and told me to do a specific set of things. There was talk of God, but they explained that talking was secondary to doing. I didn’t have to believe in God, they said, all I had to do was practice the teachings of the “religion.” If I did that, they said, I would be relieved of much of my suffering.

And it worked. Why? Because it gave him a way of life.

Without a way of life, I would say, one’s thoughts and actions tend to move at random, like water poured on a surface, spreading out and seeking the lowest places. With a way of life, I would continue, one’s thoughts and actions move in a single direction, like water poured in a channel, moving in a single direction toward a final end.

And that’s why he thinks it’s a remedy for everyone. Kind of pathetic, isn’t it.

There are a few hundred more paragraphs about why it’s ok to teach this to students.

American higher education has, however, one glaring deficiency: it does not teach its undergraduates how to live. It teaches them when the French Revolution was, what the carbon cycle is, and how to solve for X. It does not teach them what to do when they feel confused, alone, and scared. When they break down after a break-up. When they are so depressed they cannot get out of bed. When they drink themselves into unconsciousness every night. When find themselves living on someone’s couch. When they decide to go off their meds. When they flunk a class or even flunk out of school. When they get fired. When a sibling dies. When they don’t make the team.

Believe it or not, there’s more like that. More examples; more “when they”s. That guy cannot write for shit. He should have skipped the religion and maybe even skipped graduate school and just learned how to write.

I do not think he gives good advice about what to teach students.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

We know affirmative action is a bad thing, right? At least we keep being told so. “People must be selected on merit, not having the right genitalia.”

What about negative action? Is that a bad thing?

Like that applied to Jenny Collier for example?

Haslemere Thursday 15th May – cancelled

7 March 2014 17:32

Hi Jenny

I’m really sorry but the venue has decided they don’t want too many women on the bill and unfortunately we need to take you out of this one. We hope that this doesn’t cause any inconvenience.

Oh no, of course it doesn’t. How could it possibly cause any inconvenience to be “taken out” of a gig you were scheduled to do, on the grounds that the venue doesn’t want “too many” of you pesky women?

No, it’s totally understandable. Don’t forget: women aren’t funny.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)