Just because you don’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there.*

You don’t see everything there is to see. I don’t, we don’t, everybody don’t.

By the same token, just because you do see something, doesn’t mean it’s all there is to see. (That’s the same thing really.)

Jeffrey Saltzman cites Daniel Kahneman on the subject.

Daniel Kahneman coined the acronym WYSIATI which is an abbreviation for “What you see is all there is”. It is one of the human biases that he explores when he describes how human decision-making is not entirely based on rational thought.

Traditionally, economists believed in the human being as a rational thinker, that decisions and judgments would be carefully weighed before being taken. And much of traditional economic theory is based on that notion. Dr. Kahneman’s life’s work (along with his co-author Dr. Amos Tversky) explodes that notion and describes many of the short-comings of human decision-making. He found that many human decisions rely on automatic or knee-jerk reactions, rather than deliberative thought. And that these automatic reactions (he calls them System 1 thinking) are based on heuristics or rules of thumb that we develop or have hard-wired into our brains. System 1 thinking is very useful in that it can help the individual deal with the onslaught of information that impinges on us each and every day, but the risk is when a decision that one is faced with should be thought through rather than based on a knee-jerk reaction.

System 1 decisions are easy, they are comfortable, and unfortunately they can also be wrong. But wrong in the sense that if one learned how to take a step back and allow for more deliberative thought prior to the decision, some of these wrong decisions or judgments could be avoided.

One of those would be items like thinking about whether there is a lot of sexism or racism or homophobia or classism or xenophobia etc in your society. You think about it – nope, not much comes to mind – you conclude that there isn’t much. Now imagine that the you doing the thinking is male and white and straight and securely middle-class and native-born. Do you see the problem? What comes up on the screen when you think about whether there is a lot of sexism or racism etc is going to be what you see, and what you see is going to be a product of what you’ve been in a position to see, which will be different from what women and people of color etc are in a position to see. See what I’m getting at? You can’t tell, just be flicking quickly through your experience, how prevalent sexism and racism and the rest are. You can’t. Your experience isn’t universal; it isn’t all there is.

WYSIATI is the notion that we form impressions and judgments based on the information that is available to us. For instance we form impressions about people within a few seconds of meeting them. In fact, it has been documented that without careful training interviewers who are screening job applicants will come to a conclusion about the applicant within about 30 seconds of beginning the interview. And when tested these initial notions are often wrong. Interviewers who are trained to withhold judgment about someone do a better job at applicant screening, and the longer that judgment is delayed the better the decision.

Relying on what you have yourself seen for your view of how much sexism and racism there is in your society is not a good way to figure that out. You need to delay judgment and gather more information.

*Ever noticed what a…grammar-free construction that is? Yet it works anyway? I use it all the time; I’d be lost without it; but it’s grammatically…eccentric.

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

Here again is the video Dawkins linked to, in case you missed it. It’s very cool.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAGEOKAG0zw

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

Yes! There is a possible happy combination of Dawkins and Twitter, and earlier today he found it. This is what the two of them were always supposed to be doing. This is how to use Twitter if you’re a great science communicator.

Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins · 11h
If our planet had been shrouded in perpetual fog, would eyes have evolved? In the sea, why not? But on land, what other sense organs?

Does evolution rely upon digital genetics? Could there be an analogue genetics? What features of life have to be true all over the universe?

Stuart Kauffman’s thought experiment: If evolution could be re-run 1000 times, would certain patterns predictably recur? Humanoids?

Why hasn’t biological (as opposed to technological) evolution given rise to sense organs and transmitters in radio frequencies?

Why do nervous systems use slow, chemically mediated pulses of voltage change rather than fast electric currents along wires?

My questions today about possible life forms are all questions that excite my sincere curiosity. Hope physicists might join in.

Why no biological wheels? Because no paved surfaces? Or because nerves & blood vessels would get twisted around axles?

“Why don’t animals have wheels?” Good little (anonymous) lecture here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAGEOKAG0zw …

Why do cells have the complete genome instead of just the part that’s needed for their function? Liver cells have muscle-making genes etc.

Why do cave-dwellers lose their eyes? They’re useless, but are they harmful? Costly to make? Or eroded by rain of uncorrected mutations?

The questions are interesting in themselves and as questions that an experienced scientist asks. They’re notations, and notations are interesting.

I keep saying Twitter isn’t as worthless as many people say; once you get the hang of it it can be very good for certain things. This is one of them.

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

Dear god. An Ebola quarantine center in Monrovia has been attacked by “protesters”; bloodstained bedding and mattresses were removed and at least 20 people who were being monitored have left the center.

The centre was set up to observe suspected Ebola patients and then transfer them to a main treatment centre if they prove positive, assistant health minister Tolbert Nyenswah told the BBC.

It is not known if those at the centre were infected with the virus, though one report suggested they had proved positive.

A senior police officer said blood-stained mattresses, beddings and medical equipment were taken from the centre.

“This is one of the stupidest things I have ever seen in my life”, he said.

Lordy lordy lordy; what not to do during an Ebola outbreak.

The Ebola epidemic began in Guinea in February and has since spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

On Friday, the death toll rose to 1,145 after the WHO said 76 new deaths had been reported in the two days to 13 August. There have been 2,127 cases reported in total.

The attack at the Monrovia centre is seen as a major setback in the struggle to halt the outbreak, says the BBC’s Will Ross, reporting from Lagos.

Health experts say that the key to ending the Ebola outbreak is to stop it spreading in Liberia, where ignorance about the virus is high and many people are reluctant to cooperate with medical staff.

So this is completely horrifying.

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

Carol Hunt expresses her outrage in the Independent.

It is with horror and not a little fear that I try to understand what happened to a young woman in our country recently. Faced with a crisis pregnancy and for reasons which we are not able to disclose, this young woman was not in a position (as so many thousands of Irish women have done, and continue to do, before her) to head to the UK or further afield to get the medical attention she wanted.

She only discovered that she was actually pregnant during her second trimester and consequently became suicidal. Under our new, much touted compassionate legislation – so hard fought for, so grudgingly given – this young woman should have been allowed to have a termination within this State if three expert professionals on a panel agreed that there was indeed a risk to her life if she proceeded with her pregnancy.

She presented herself to the three expert professionals – but that still didn’t work.

That should have been the end to the girl’s trauma, but then, seemingly, the consultant obstetrician on the panel ruled against the two psychiatrists That’s correct. The person who is not at all qualified to comment on the mental health or suicidal risk of a patient got to call the shots. This person decided that the pregnancy was probably far enough for the baby to survive outside the womb. The law provides that once a baby can survive outside the womb then its right to life must also be taken into consideration.

So she stopped drinking and eating, so the state forced fluids on her, and she gave up and agreed to the C-section.

In the eyes, once again, of this State, she was not a human being with rights, devastating problems and a condition that could kill her – she was just a vessel who would be forced to give birth. During the debate to legislate for the X-Case I asked, A) as a woman who has been pregnant and B) as a women who has experienced mental illness, why I should not be given the right to life under the constitution?

Am I somehow a lesser person, with fewer rights under Irish law because my life-threatening illness is mental and not physical? I recall asking, if I became pregnant and suffered from suicidal ideation, would I be kept in a “pregnancy mill” until I could be delivered of a live baby?

I thought that the new legislation would mean women who were genuinely found to be in danger of death by suicide would be treated as people and not just baby-carriers.

Nope.

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

You know that tweak to the Irish abortion law last summer, that was supposed to prevent another Savita Halappanavar case from happening?

Never mind.

The BBC reports the bare outline:

A “suicidal” woman has given birth by caesarean section in the Republic of Ireland after requesting a termination under the country’s new abortion law.

It is understood she requested an abortion late in her second trimester.

An expert panel assessed her as having suicidal thoughts but it was decided she should have a caesarean section.

She began a hunger strike and health authorities went to court to force her to end the fast. She later agreed to a caesarean and gave birth to a child.

So, in short, it turned out that she had no rights of her own at all. Her pregnancy had rights that canceled all of her rights.

The Irish Independent has important details:

The young woman at the centre of the first known test of the country’s new abortion laws feared her life was in danger, the Sunday Independent has learned.

The woman, who is not an Irish national, believed there was a serious threat to her safety and well-being, though not on medical grounds, as a result of her pregnancy.

Earlier this summer, the woman sought an abortion under Section 9 of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, 2013 as she claimed to be suicidal. Her case was assessed by a panel of three experts, as set out under the legislation passed last summer. The panel was made up a consultant obstetrician and two psychiatrists.

The psychiatrists on the panel determined her life was at risk as she had suicidal thoughts.

But the consultant obstetrician said the baby could be delivered as it was far enough into the pregnancy.

A week after the young woman first presented she was informed she was to be refused an abortion.

No rights for her, rights only for her pregnancy, the pregnancy she did not want.

The young woman was in the second trimester of the pregnancy when she discovered she was pregnant and requested the abortion. For reasons that cannot be disclosed, she was not in a position to travel to the UK for the termination.

In what is believed to be one of the first cases under the new abortion laws, the woman sought a termination as she claimed to be suicidal.

The woman’s suicidal thoughts are understood to have been underpinned by fear of her family’s reaction. She is also understood to have been deeply concerned about the reaction of one individual.

According to two sources familiar with the case, there is a suggestion that the young woman may have become pregnant as a result of a rape, although this has not been confirmed. According to the new abortion laws, there is a duty on doctors to preserve the life of the unborn as far as practicable.

So the state forced her to have major abdominal surgery, against her will.

I don’t suppose her worries about “the reaction of one individual” have been much alleviated by this outcome.

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

Another win for forced religion by the state.

In June, the U.S. Navy ordered housekeepers at thousands of Navy-owned guest lodges near U.S. and international bases to remove the Bibles and any other “religious materials” from their rooms. Scriptures would remain available on request.

But public outcry, prompted this week by a social media alert from the American Family Association and protests by the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, led the brass to reverse course Friday (Aug. 15).

Now, the Navy’s “religious accommodation policies with regard to the placement of religious materials are under review,” Navy spokesman Cmdr. Ryan Perry wrote in an email to Stars and Stripes, the daily military newspaper. Meanwhile, the Bibles (New Testament and Psalms but no Hebrew Bible) will be tucked back into nightstand drawers.

Public outcry about what? About not forcing religious books on people who don’t ask for them? Even though all that people who do want them have to do is ask for them? Why is it so important for the government to thrust them on people rather than providing them if asked?

Why stop there then? Why not have the cops come to everyone’s door and shove a bible in? Why not arrest people who aren’t in church on Sunday morning? Why not order people to pray at gunpoint?

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

This actually happened. Earlier this afternoon.

I was walking past one side of the library – the local branch of the library, which is a nice old Carnegie one -

and I went around that corner you see there and approached a middle-aged couple hanging out at that brick wall you see, which around the corner is at the right height to sit on. The man was lighting a cigarette just as I got near them, which made me do my internal grumpy protest at the universe, but then I was distracted from that by what he was saying, in a loud brook-no-denial voice. “That’s the problem with women here in Washington.” Pause. I had just passed them so I turned to look, at that, then turned back. “They think they have so many god damn rights.” Pause. “They’re not responsible.” Then I was out of earshot.

I’m not making it up.

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

I never thought I would have anything good to say about Narendra Modi, but I guess I have to. In his first major address he spoke out about rape and violence against women.

In speaking out, Modi challenged citizens and government alike to change the way that rape is thought about. “Today as we hear about the incidents of rapes, our head hangs in shame,” he said in his wide-ranging address. “I want to ask parents when your daughter turns 10 or 12 years old, you ask, ‘Where are you going? When will you return?’ Do the parents dare to ask their sons, ‘Where are you going? Why are you going? Who are your friends?’ After all, the rapist is also someone’s son. If only parents decide to put as many restrictions on their sons as they do on their own daughters.”

Wow. That’s the kind of thing that gets a person branded a “radical feminist” (and not in a good way) around here.

Though only time will tell whether the Modi government acts on the rhetoric seen in his speech, Tanvi Mandan, head of the Brookings Institution’s India Project told ThinkProgress in an email, the fact that they are even being talked about in this way is significant. “This is the first time that a prime minister has spoken about violence against women in this fashion, especially using such a prominent platform – the closest American equivalent of the Indian PM’s independence day speech would be the president’s State of the Union speech,” she wrote.

“Moreover, Mr. Modi spoke of an aspect of this that Indian civil society has helped highlight publicly over the last couple of years – that this is not just a legal issue, but a societal one; not just about having the right laws in place, but also about changing culture,” Madan continued.

That kind of thing. You can’t talk about “culture” over here in the US without getting a hail of obloquy and epithets and assorted insults.

Modi also used his speech to speak out against the practice of Indian family’s selectively aborting females in the woman or abandoning female babies once they’re born. Earlier this week, the Indian government announced that the sex ration among children 0-6 — standing at 927 girl children per 1,000 boys — is the lowest it’s been since India’s independence in 1947.

“Have we seen our sex ratio? Who is creating this imbalance?” Modi asked. “Not God. I appeal to the doctors not to kill the girl child in the mother’s womb. I request the parents not to kill daughters because they want a son. Don’t kill daughters in the womb, it is a blot on 21st century India. I have seen families where one daughter serves parents more than five sons.”

Modi of all people. It’s disorienting.

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

The nuns are still fighting back. Heidi Hall at RNS reports:

Sister Elizabeth Johnson, a theology professor at Fordham University, accepted the Leadership Conference of Women Religious’ top award and then lambasted bishops for criticism of her book “Quest for the Living God,” saying it appears they’ve never read it.

“To this day, no one, not myself or the theological community, the media or the general public knows what doctrinal issue is at stake,” she told the Nashville assembly of about about 900 sisters representing 80 percent of the nation’s nuns.

Omigod a room full of radical feminist nuns listening to a radical feminist nun. Be afraid.

In her 20-minute acceptance speech, followed by a standing ovation, Johnson suggested the conference’s support of her work prompted the investigation by the church’s top enforcer of orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

Johnson’s book includes chapters on black and feminist theology and interfaith engagement. She said book sales skyrocketed after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized it.

Yeah. Anything the USCCB doesn’t like is bound to be good.

The LCWR has been undergoing a Vatican-ordered doctrinal investigation since 2009. In 2012, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered nun’s group to reform its statutes and appointed Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain to oversee changes, including a rewrite of the group’s charter and approval of all speakers at future assemblies.

In April, a top Vatican official warned the LCWR that in recognizing Johnson it would provoke the Holy See.

This from the band of brothers that has been covering up and protecting child-rape for decades, in fact probably centuries. What on earth gives them the idea that they have moral (or “spiritual”) authority over anyone?

It’s unlikely the sides can come to a solution, said Bruce Morrill, a Vanderbilt University professor of theological studies and a Jesuit priest.

At the conflict’s heart is a difference in approach to hierarchical chain of command: the top-down, morals-emphasizing Vatican versus the collegial, social-justice oriented nuns.

“As far as the U.S. bishops and Vatican officials are concerned, this is not a debate,” Morrill said. “The hierarchy expects the women religious to obey their directives.”

The nuns are social justice warriors!

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

Have a tv interview with Lt. General David Morrison, the head of the Australian army who last year made heads snap upright with an uncompromising talk on sexual harassment. “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”; remember that guy?

In this interview he talks to Annette Young of France 24. He starts off by talking about the necessity of empathy, which is not something I usually expect from military brass. Young asks him if he calls himself a feminist and he says, with speed and emphasis, “Yes. Proudly.”

I wish we had generals like him in the US military.

H/t Stewart

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

Christie Aschwanden in the NY Times a few days ago on sexual harassment in science.

She and some colleagues sent an online questionnaire to science writers.

We received responses from 502 writers, mostly women, and presented our results at M.I.T. in June during Solutions Summit 2014: Women in Science Writing, a conference funded by the National Association of Science Writers.

More than half of the female respondents said they weren’t taken seriously because of their gender, one in three had experienced delayed career advancement, and nearly half said they had not received credit for their ideas. Almost half said they had encountered flirtatious or sexual remarks, and one in five had experienced uninvited physical contact.

Obstacles, handicaps, impediments.

…our survey of writers grew out of well-publicized harassment accusations against a prominent male editor who was a mentor to many female writers. Those incidents led women to come forward with their stories of discrimination throughout the profession.

In academia, accusations of sexual harassment or assault are usually handled internally, Dr. Clancy says, and this can create powerful incentives to cover up bad behavior, especially among perpetrators with tenure and power. “I’ve heard too many stories about the professor who isn’t allowed to be in a room with X, Y and Z anymore,” she said. Sometimes perpetrators even benefit by getting out of dreaded teaching assignments while keeping their jobs.

Harassment among science writers spawned a hashtag, #ripplesofdoubt, to describe how harassment undermines women. Some women who had been passed over for jobs wondered if they had been rejected for their looks rather than their work. Others worried that they might not have attained their positions on merit.

You see that’s not the way to achieve equality. Creating extra obstacles for one kind of person doesn’t promote equality.

Whether harassment or discrimination takes place at a field site in Costa Rica or in a conference room, the problem will not be solved with new rules archived on unread websites. The responsibility for pushing back should not rest solely with the victims. Solutions require a change of culture that can happen only from within.

It will take chief executives, department heads, laboratory directors, professors, publishers and editors in chief to take a stand and say: Not on my watch. I don’t care if you’re my friend or my favorite colleague; we don’t treat women like that.

I would like to see that happen more, and then more again.

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

Jessica Valenti talked to Rebecca Solnit a few weeks ago. She asked Solnit how she felt about being seen as the coiner of “mansplaining.”

A really smart young woman changed my mind about it. I used to be ambivalent, worrying primarily about typecasting men with the term. (I have spent most of my life tiptoeing around the delicate sensibilities of men, though of course the book Men Explain Things to Me is what happens when I set that exhausting, doomed project aside.) Then in March a PhD candidate said to me, No, you need to look at how much we needed this word, how this word let us describe an experience every woman has but we didn’t have language for.

And that’s something I’m really interested in: naming experience and how what has no name cannot be acknowledged or shared. Words are power. So if this word allowed us to talk about something that goes on all the time, then I’m really glad it exists and slightly amazed that not only have I contributed about a million published words to the conversation but maybe, indirectly, one new word.

(Note that the fact that every woman has the experience does not mean that every man provides the experience. Yesallwomen but notallmen.) (That’s me tiptoeing around the delicate sensibilities of men, because there is already some notallmenning in the comments on an earlier post about Solnit.)

So does it still go on? Why yes, yes it does.

Social media are to mansplainers what dogs are to fleas, and this recent feminist conversation has brought them out in droves. I mean, guys explain ridiculous things to me like that the Louisiana Purchase gave the United States a Pacific Coast. But more than anything since I wrote Men Explain Things to Me, they’ve explained women’s experience to me and other women. With this explosive new conversation since the Isla Vista murders, there’s been a dramatic uptick in guys mansplaining feminism and women’s experience or just denying that we need feminism and we actually had those experiences.

If there were awards to be handed out, one might go to the man who told me and a woman friend that 1) women actually like all those catcalls 2) as a man who’s spent time in men’s-only locker rooms, he knows men don’t actually speak to women that way. So we like street harassment, but that doesn’t actually exist, because we’re just crazy that way, us subjective, imaginative, unreliable ladies. Just ask an expert. Who is not a lady.

Isla Vista, yes…and there were so many people, including some women, saying that was nothing to do with misogyny no nothing at all. Solnit is optimistic though.

Right now I think that a lot of people get it and a lot of people are getting more engaged with the ideas, with the issues, and with the urgency of the situation. I feel like I’ve been waiting all my life for women to be talking the way we are right now, and that many men have joined in the conversation or support from the sidelines or get it is magnificent and inspiriting. (And then, yeah, those other guys. “Not all men”.)

Yes but…I could have sworn women had already been talking the way we are right now, and that many men had joined in. So I don’t really find it magnificent and inspiriting, because we seem to keep having to talk this way over and over and over again forever. We don’t seem to get to move on to a new, better stage.

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

From Rebecca Solnit’s essay (which later became a book) “Men Explain Things to Me”:

Every woman knows what I’m talking about. It’s the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men’s unsupported overconfidence.

I wouldn’t be surprised if part of the trajectory of American politics since 2001 was shaped by, say, the inability to hear Coleen Rowley, the FBI woman who issued those early warnings about al-Qaeda, and it was certainly shaped by a Bush administration to which you couldn’t tell anything, including that Iraq had no links to al-Qaeda and no WMDs, or that the war was not going to be a “cakewalk.” (Even male experts couldn’t penetrate the fortress of their smugness.)

Arrogance might have had something to do with the war, but this syndrome is a war that nearly every woman faces every day, a war within herself too, a belief in her superfluity, an invitation to silence, one from which a fairly nice career as a writer (with a lot of research and facts correctly deployed) has not entirely freed me. After all, there was a moment there when I was willing to let Mr. Important and his overweening confidence bowl over my more shaky certainty.

Never be a person you can’t tell anything. Never be that person.

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

A Georgia school district is letting coaches use the football program to promote religion to the students, so the American Humanist Association very properly told the district that’s a violation of the Establishment clause. Result? Accusations that the American Humanist Association is bullying the students. Oh yeah? What about the coaches?

Acting on behalf of an unnamed Hall County citizen, the AHA accused the county of violating the First Amendment by allowing Gainesville’s Chestatee High School football coaches to organize team prayers and promote biblical messages on team documents and pre-game banners.

“At times, the head coach has led the prayers, which is an egregious violation of the Establishment Clause,” the AHA alleged in a letter to school officials Tuesday. “This involvement in prayer as a ‘participant, an organizer, and a leader’ would unquestionably ‘lead a reasonable observer to conclude that he was endorsing religion.’”

In response to the complaint, hundreds of Gainesville community members gathered in the middle of the CHS football field for an impromptu prayer rally on Wednesday and Thursday.

[Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.)], a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and a former Baptist pastor, defended the school’s religious practices in a statement Wednesday, accusing the AHA of bullying students.

It’s the coaches and the district who are bullying. They’re the ones with the power in this situation.

“The liberal atheist interest groups trying to bully Chestatee High School kids say they have a reason to believe that expressions of religious freedom are ‘not an isolated event’ in Northeast Georgia,” Collins said. “They’re right. In Hall County and throughout Georgia’s 9th district, we understand and respect the Constitution and cherish our right to worship in our own way.”

Oh but that’s just what they’re not doing. Of course they have the right to worship in their own way; what they don’t have is the right to impose that on all students in their control in school hours on school property.

AHA legal director David Niose criticized Collins for “name-calling” and accused the conservative lawmaker of “grandstanding” in a statement to The Huffington Post Friday.

“Collins apparently doesn’t need to investigate facts or consider the legitimacy of complaints from religious minorities — he just dismisses them,” Niose said. “Obviously, he is pandering to the worst emotions and fears of his constituents. True leadership would step up and show genuine concern for everyone, including religious minorities.”

Since the AHA filed its complaint on Tuesday, the group has “received numerous communications” from other residents expressing concern over “the religious domination of the culture” in Hall County schools, according to Niose.

See? That’s the bullying.

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

Two UN officials have condemned the avalanche of sexual violence that IS is perpetrating on Iraqi minorities.

13 August 2014 – Two senior United Nations officials today condemned in the strongest terms the “barbaric acts” of sexual violence and “savage rapes” the armed group Islamic State (IS) has perpetrated on minorities in areas under its control.

In a joint statement from Baghdad, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence (SRSG) in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov urged the immediate protection of civilians.

“We are gravely concerned by continued reports of acts of violence, including sexual violence against women and teenage girls and boys belonging to Iraqi minorities,” Ms. Bangura and Mr. Mladenov said.

“Atrocious accounts of abduction and detention of Yazidi, Christian, as well as Turkomen and Shabak women, girls and boys, and reports of savage rapes, are reaching us in an alarming manner,” Ms. Bangura and Mr. Mladenov stated, pointing out that some 1,500 Yazidi and Christian persons may have been forced into sexual slavery.

The officials condemned, in the strongest terms, the explicit targeting of women and children and the barbaric acts IS has perpetrated on minorities. Acts of sexual violence are grave human rights violations that can be considered as war crimes and crimes against humanity, they warned.

There seems little chance that it will end anytime soon.

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

I got permission to quote a brilliantly shrewd Facebook comment on a long thread on Martin Wagner’s wall that was full of guys explaining at great length what’s wrong with feminism today. You already know what they said, because you’ve seen it many times before.

Here is that comment, by Justin Connelly:

1907: “Feminism? Bunch of men-hating women that don’t know their place. They don’t want equality, they want to be men”

1930s: “Feminism?! Pft. Ugly lesbians that just want to do men’s work if you ask me”

1960s: “Feminism? Bunch of ugly, man hating, bra burning hippies. Who needs it”

1990s: “Feminism? Radical man-hating liberal PC Police. Nothing more”

Today: “I just hate how feminism has been hijacked by radicals to be anti-man, rather than for equality the way it used to be. Feminists should abandon the label because it doesn’t mean equality anymore”

If you think your “observation” that the feminist movement is polluted by “man hating radicals” is some new, nuanced critique of a movement that has abandoned the cause of promoting social equality….you’d be wrong. You are, in fact, repeating the exact same tired slander and accusations that have been leveled at the movement since before women had the legal right to vote.

I find this nostalgic harkening back to the “good ol days” of feminism, before the radicals “ruined it” to be as disingenuous as it is historically ignorant. Feminism has ALWAYS been a movement aimed at addressing long-standing gender inequity, from the vantage point of the underprivileged class. And it has ALWAYS been marginalized or dismissed as the crazed ravings of radicals, lunatics, and misandrists. This. Isn’t. New…. You. Aren’t. Clever.

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

It’s not just Kenya that has nasty new legislation in the pipeline; we do too. (Well of course we do. Congress is full of terrible people.)

…a newly proposed bill from two GOP Senators would allow faith-based adoption agencies opposed to marriage equality to deny service to gay and lesbian couples.

The Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2014 was introduced last week by Republican Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Representative Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania because, apparently “some people in positions of power are essentially discriminating against people of faith.”

By “discriminating against” of course they mean “expecting to follow the law like everyone else.” But this is Hobby Lobby America, where the whole point is that People of Faith don’t have to follow the law like everyone else.

This is no doubt in reference to several Catholic-based agencies in states where marriage equality exists shutting down their adoption and foster care programs rather than place children with married gay couples, despite the fact that in many of these cases the programs were supported directly by state funds. According to a statement from Senator Enzi, it seems like he would like to get around this separation of church and state by providing federally sanctioned exemptions for religious organisations.

Faith-based charities and organisations do an amazing job of administering adoption, foster care and a host of other services. Limiting their work because someone might disagree with what they believe only ends up hurting the families they could be bringing together.

No no no it’s not because “someone might disagree with what they believe” – it’s because they refuse to serve people for bad, rights-denying reasons. It’s not about what they believe, it’s about what they do.

Well it’s partly about what they believe, but only after it’s about what they do. People who run adoption agencies are allowed to refuse to let people adopt if the reasons are relevant and valid: if there are good reasons to think the people in question will be bad parents who will do harm to the adopted child or children. They’re not allowed to refuse for bad reasons, such as No Gayz, so to that extent it’s about what they believe. But it wouldn’t be about what they believe if it weren’t about what they do, first.

If passed into law (assuming it would be constitutional, and it might not be), it sets a very dangerous precedent. Like corporations before it, these adoption agencies would now be able to claim that they as agencies have religious beliefs:

Child welfare service providers, both individuals and organisations, have the inherent, fundamental, and inalienable right to free exercise of religion protected by the United States Constitution.

Nah, they don’t. I know what the Hobby Lobby ruling said, but I disagree with it, and I get to say that organizations, not being persons, have no rights. I’ll just quote from Ginsburg’s dissent in Hobby Lobby here:

Until this litigation, no decision of this Court recognized a for-profit corporation’s qualification for a religious exemption from a generally applicable law, whether under the Free Exercise Clause or RFRA. The absence of such precedent is just what one would expect, for the exercise of religion is characteristic of natural persons, not artificial legal entities.

The bill itself is quite clear on the purpose being proposed:

The Federal Government, and any State that receives federal funding for any program that provides child welfare services under part B or part E of title IV of theSocial Security Act (and any subdivision, office or department of such State) shall not discriminate or take an adverse action against a child welfare service provider on the basis that the provider has declined or will decline to provide, facilitate, or refer for a child welfare service that conflicts with, or under circumstances that conflict with, the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions.

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

A Catholic archbishop in Oklahoma City, with the church’s usual unerring nose for what’s important, is all in a lather about the blasphemous misuse of a thin biscuit for something called a “black mass.” Dude…it’s just a thin biscuit. None of the magic makes it anything else, neither your magic nor the satanists’.

The purported use of a consecrated Host at a planned satanic black mass at an Oklahoma City civic center would be a “terrible sacrilege” that requires a prayerful response, the local archbishop emphasized.

Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City in an Aug. 4 message lamented that the city-run Civic Center Music Hall was selling tickets for the event “as if it were merely some sort of dark entertainment.”

Rather, he said, the ritual was “deadly serious” and “a blasphemous and obscene inversion of the Catholic Mass.”

Not to be all Dear Muslima about it, but seriously, if you’re going to fret, fret about something real.

In July, an official with the city music hall defended the decision, citing the hall’s neutrality policy. She told CNA that as long as no laws were broken during the event itself, the city hall was not concerned with whether laws may be broken in obtaining a consecrated host ahead of time. She said that similar events scheduled in previous years had poor or no attendance.

Archbishop Coakley said that there are no indications the city intends to prevent the event from taking place. He encouraged Oklahomans to contact the office of Oklahoma City mayor Mick Cornett.

“I am especially concerned about the dark powers that this Satanic worship invites into our community and the spiritual danger that this poses to all who are involved in it, directly or indirectly,” the archbishop said. “Since it seems this event will not be cancelled, I am calling on all Catholics of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City to counteract this challenge to faith and decency through prayer and penance.”

Honestly I think there’s more “spiritual danger” from the Catholic church itself.

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

Pink News reports that a new bill to allow gays to be stoned to death is under discussion in Kenya.

A new Anti-Homosexuality Bill has been submitted by the Republican Liberty Party in the National Assembly.

It would introduce harsh punishments for homosexuality, with life imprisonment or the death penalty for ‘aggravated homosexuality’.

The bill’s author, Edward Onwong’a Nyakeriga, said: “The petition aims at providing a comprehensive and enhanced legislation to protect the cherished culture of the people of Kenya, legal, religious and traditional family values against the attempts of sexual rights activists seeking to impose their values of sexual promiscuity on the people of Kenya.”

Damn I wish people would stop thinking it’s a cherished part of their cherished culture to ostracize and persecute and murder people. That’s not a culture to be proud of! And it’s not special to Kenya, either. Homophobia was part of the “culture” over here in the “West” until five minutes ago, and still is in big swaths of it. It’s not something to be proud of.

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