Category: Notes and Comment Blog

  • Culturally pressured

    Kiran Opal has marked International Women’s Day by putting together accounts by 17 ex-Muslim women on her blog.

    For those of us who have left Islam as a faith and as an identity, the pressure to stay silent is intense. For many ExMuslims, the price for speaking out about their skepticism, atheism, or agnosticism, is often very high. There is no one monolithic Muslim identity; there is nothing essentially, inherently “Muslim” about someone born into a Muslim family. Yet, for too many people, Islam has become a racialized identity. Many Muslims and non-Muslims see the Muslim identity as a race, not just a doctrine. Although ExMuslims, whether ‘out’ or ‘closeted’, do not identify as Muslim, others often insist on imposing this identity on us.

    From the page on Muslim privilege:

    Question:
    What are the privileges you do NOT have as an Exmuslim woman that you did have as a Muslim woman? (e.g. speaking openly about your beliefs, etc.)

    Taslima: I no longer have the luxury of openly speaking about my beliefs and opinion of Islam without offending my family and friends. My family makes sense, because they are Muslim, but as an ex-Muslim woman, I am more or less culturally pressured into silence by a lot of American “progressive” friends who will openly tell me to “stop being so Ayaan Hirsi Ali”.

    From the page on ex-Muslim privilege:

    Question:
    What are the privileges you DO have as an Exmuslim woman that you did not have as a Muslim woman?

    Maha:

    I’m freer than I would have ever been had things not gone the way they did ten years ago. I get to experience life to the fullest – the good and bad. I know what it’s like to fall in love, to be in a relationship, and to fall out of love or have my heart broken. I know what it’s like to try to make ends meet while working paycheck-to-paycheck. My friends hop, skip, and jump from longitude to longitude. I get to travel freely, explore freely, and think as much as my mind wants without the threat of hell or shame from a fake community.

    The day I left Islam was the day humanity and science released me from the hell of religious solitary confinement.

    I get to hug a dog and fall in love with him because he’s a beautiful soul – without horrifying screams from Muslims about washing my hands seven times to get rid of the pup’s kisses.

    Read the whole thing.

     

     

  • Many chairs

    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.

    View image on Twitter

  • Born of necessity

    Leymah Gbowee says in Al Jazeera “Let’s celebrate International Women’s Day by remembering women around the world working towards peace.”

    I am an optimist; there is beauty despite the ugliness. The bravery and strength of our mothers, daughters and sisters give me hope. Even when they are the ones that have been raped, abused and battered, they take part in the process of rehabilitation and resolution – from a neighbourhood conflict to an outright war. I am in awe of the ability of women to keep communities and families together even in the midst of wars and crises.

    I have just returned from the Democratic Republic of the Congo where I travelled with the Nobel Women’s Initiative delegation. War and violence have ravaged the nation, especially the women. We listened to stories that would keep you up at night. For too many of the women, each story started with “I was raped; I was in pain; I was upset and distraught…” But in the middle of their narrative, the beautiful is revealed: “…and then the women came; my sister came; my mother came; a women’s association heard and came…. They took me to a doctor; helped me with clothes; talked to me and then I regained strength… and now I am able to at least think about living again.”

    The beautiful line is how women, despite the ugliness of violence, have an unshakeable sense of sisterhood and solidarity. Regardless of what the world calls DRC, I call it the “Capital of Sisterhood and Solidarity”. Their enduring hope compels every one of us to fight for peace.

    Maybe with peace there will be less solidarity, because less need for solidarity. It would be worth it.

  • Guest post: You can’t teach if you are not a learner

    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.

  • “Women Empowerment: An Alternative in Focus”

    How to celebrate International Women’s Day at Aligarh Muslim University.

    Women students in flowing burqas talk about how purdah is the “purest form of existence for a woman”. They explain how capitalism — with its notions of financial independence or a career for women — is anti-women.

    Models are on display to help explain how purdah is to be observed.

    And then, apparently in a concession to more “modern” views, the women also speak about dowry, foeticide, sexual violence and women’s health.

    All this is part of a three-day exhibition that started on Friday at one of Aligarh Muslim University’s women’s hostels, Abdullah Hall, to — ironically — mark International Women’s Day.

    What did they say about dowry and sexual violence? That they’re the “purest form of existence for a woman”?

    Anam Rais Ansari, one of the organisers, and a student of law, said they were providing “Islamic solutions” to women’s problems.

    The group has organised a talk titled ‘Women Empowerment: An Alternative in Focus’, at Kennedy Hall on the campus on March 8.

    Fliers on campus, and a huge poster at the university gate, show senior lawyer and feminist Vrinda Grover as one of the speakers.

    However, when contacted, Grover said she had pulled out of the function after she came to know about the group and its activities.

    “I am no longer part of (the AMU) function. The views of the organisers are extremely regressive. They are trying to tell women how to dress and how to live,” Grover said.

    But Abdul Rauf, a representative of the group, who is a research scholar at the biochemistry department, said: “We have invited Grover. She will come.”

    I love the title. “Women Empowerment: An Alternative in Focus” – yes that’s an alternative all right.

    ‘Students of AMU’ was formed in 2010, and has significant influence on the campus now. It enjoys the support of some teachers and students and, apparently, of AMU authorities as well. The group is known for its regressive views on women and women’s rights.

    A recent post on its Facebook page reads: “Sisters, even though our brothers are responsible for their own gaze, we are responsible for what we give them to gaze at!!” One of the posts profiles four Western women who recently converted to Islam.

    One of the over 30 lectures the group has organised in the past was titled ‘Hijab: The beauty of Islam’. The group is alleged to have recently scuttled an initiative to get men and women students of the campus together on a single platform to protest against the alleged molestation of a Kashmiri student by a teacher.

    A student of the law faculty said: “‘Students of AMU’ is subverting the secular discourse at the university, and is promoting conservatism on campus. They prefer to call themselves an Islamist body.”

    It all sounds very familiar. You get the same thing at UK universities, with the addition of clueless students who think they’re supporting something progressive and leftwing by supporting Islamists.

  • Pieces of chewed gum

    Women who are Mormons are noticing that Mormonism isn’t very friendly to women.

    Last year, when Kristy Money was planning a baby-naming ceremony in her Mormon congregation, she asked if she could hold her newborn during the ceremony, sitting or standing inside the circle of men who would bless her daughter.

    “All I want is to hold my baby,” Dr. Money, a 29-year-old psychologist in Santa Monica, Calif., said she told her bishop. She said he refused, explaining that only men who hold the priesthood could participate.

    So Kristy Money should get out of that congregation and that religion so that her daughter will not be raised in a religion that treats her as an inferior. I don’t suppose she will though.

    The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose priests and governing authorities form an entirely male gallery of leaders, is facing a geyser of questions from women who want more participation and visibility in virtually every aspect of Mormon life. While many Mormon women say they are satisfied with the way things are, others want to hold the priesthood along with men, essentially erasing the faith’s long-held idea that God wants men and women to perform different roles.

    Not just different. Don’t sugar-coat it, New York Times. It’s the religion’s long-held idea that God wants men to have all the authority and women to be subordinate to them. “Different roles” is way too euphemistic. Don’t do that.

    In response to an article in The New York Times on Sunday, in which church leaders said they were interested in expanding opportunities for female members, Mormon women poured out requests: to be Sunday school presidents, to plan worship, to be allowed to teach seminary while they have children under 18, and to let their daughters serve as ushers.

    “My husband’s group of young men recently trained to climb Mount Rainier together,” Jennifer McDonald, a 36-year-old clinical psychologist in DuPont, Wash., who supports women’s ordination, wrote in an email. The corresponding activities for young women were “quilting, making friendship bracelets, and hair styling,” she said.

    See that? That’s “different” but it’s also better versus worse, higher versus lower. Crafts are fun, but not when they’re the only option.

    Many asked that church authorities stop trying to inculcate chastity by comparing women who have had sex outside of marriage to “pieces of chewed gum, boards with holes nailed into them, muffins that someone else had already tasted,” said Elisa Koler, 29, a teacher and former missionary who stopped attending church because of concerns about how women are treated.

    Elisa Koler had the right idea. More women should do that, and so should more men. Get out.

    More than 1,300 Mormon women have signed a manifesto outlining specific changes. The document, titled “All Are Alike Unto God,” asks the men who run the church to consider women’s ordination, which officials in Salt Lake City say is out of the question. Only opening the priesthood to women can address the gender imbalance in the church, contends Kate Kelly, a human rights attorney in Washington who founded the Ordain Women movement. “Not only do Mormons believe the priesthood is the power of God, and can perform and officiate in miracles, but it’s also completely intertwined with the governance structure of the church,” she said. “There is no amount of incremental change, and no amount of additional concessions that the church can make to extend an olive branch to women without changing that fundamental inequality.”

    Exactly. It’s not just a job, it’s the power structure of the whole organization. When women are officially excluded, women are officially an inferior class. That’s a bad arrangement.

  • Things that are not postmodernist

    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.

  • Teach the children well

    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.

  • Negative action

    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?

    affirm

    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.

  • Near you on Friday nights

    Another shrewd bit of ad-targeting on Facebook. Yes, I will certainly find this persuasive:

    catholic

  • Its high price in terms of the misery and suffering it inflicts

    More from that HRW statement to the Senate committee in 2012.

    The proliferation of super-maximum security prisons is a symptom of profound problems in the nation’s prison systems. Beginning in the 1980s, exploding prison populations caused by increasingly lengthy sentences and diminished opportunities for early release, constrained budgets, inappropriately low staff-to-inmate ratios, and punitive correctional philosophies limited the ability of officials to operate safe and humane facilities. Many turned to prolonged solitary confinement in an effort to increase their control over prisoners. A significant impetus for super-maximum security facilities also came from politicians, who found that advocating harsh policies for criminal offenders was politically popular. Reluctant to be accused of “coddling inmates” or being “soft on crime,” few politicians have been willing to publicly challenge the expanded use of solitary confinement on human rights grounds.

    Ok let’s take it back a step – why is that? If that’s the case here why isn’t it the case in Canada and Sweden and Japan and New Zealand? Why is advocating harsh policies for criminal offenders so politically popular here that politicians can’t resist doing it? And/or why are politicians here so unprincipled and self-centered that they can’t resist doing the popular but evil thing?

    I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe it’s partly because US politicians rely so heavily on tv advertising and because the money for doing that is almost entirely unregulated. (Hello Citizens United, may you rot in hell.) Maybe it has to do with religiosity. Maybe it’s something in the water. I do not know.

    There has been scant public debate until recently about the justification for prolonged solitary confinement, its high price in terms of the misery and suffering it inflicts, and the likelihood that it reduces an inmate’s ability to make a successful transition to society upon release. Judicial scrutiny has been limited by both the courts’ tradition of deference to the judgments of prison officials and by jurisprudence that sets an extraordinarily high threshold for finding prison conditions to be unconstitutionally cruel.

    This Committee’s hearing marks the end of an era of uncritical acceptance of or indifference to the use of solitary confinement in US prisons. It is particularly welcome because of the Committee’s recognition that solitary confinement raises serious human rights concerns.

    Right…I take it nothing much came of that.

     

  • A blot

    An item that’s been under my radar is the overuse of solitary confinement in prisons in the US. First there’s the radical, off the charts overuse of prisons themselves, then there’s the wild overuse of solitary in those prisons, and you have a shameful human rights situation. SHAMEFUL.

    Fresh Air did a couple of interviews on the subject yesterday.

    Human Rights Watch prepared a statement for a Senate committee in 2012.

    Solitary confinement in US prisons is imposed for different reasons, but most commonly it is used as punishment for breaches of discipline (“disciplinary segregation”) or to manage prisoners considered to be particularly difficult or dangerous (“administrative segregation”).[4] The increase in solitary confinement in the United States has occurred primarily through administrative segregation, particularly the segregation of prisoners in special super-maximum security facilities built solely for this purpose. Indeed, in our judgment, the proliferation of super-maximum security facilities is the most troubling development in US corrections in recent decades.

    Other developed countries don’t do this. They don’t throw people in solitary and leave them there. We actually have a constitutional amendment that forbids cruel and unusual punishment, yet here we are, resorting to this cruel and unusual punishment with wild abandon.

    Although there are differences between the specific conditions of solitary regimes in different prisons, they share a basic model. Prisoners in solitary typically spend 22 to 24 hours a day locked in small, sometimes windowless, cells sealed with solid steel doors. They lack opportunities for meaningful social interaction with other prisoners; most contact with staff is perfunctory and may be wordless (such as when meals are delivered through a slot in the cell door). Phone calls and visits by family and loved ones are severely restricted or prohibited. A few times a week, prisoners are let out for showers and solitary exercise in a small, enclosed space, sometimes indoors. They often have extremely limited or no access to educational and recreational activities or other sources of mental stimulation, and they are usually handcuffed, shackled, and escorted by correctional officers every time they leave their cells. Assignment to super-maximum security facilities devoted solely to solitary confinement—e.g., Colorado State Penitentiary, Pelican Bay State Prison in California, or Tamms in Illinois—is usually for an indefinite period that often lasts for years.

    In some prisons, prisoners in solitary can purchase radios or televisions; participate in educational and skills-enhancing in-cell programs; and access books, newspapers, magazines, and the like. In others, prisoners are denied access to anything more than the basic necessities of survival. The restrictions can exceed the fathomable. In Pennsylvania’s most restrictive units, for example, prisoners have all the usual supermax deprivations plus some that seem gratuitously cruel: they are not permitted to have photographs of family members or newspapers and magazines (unless they are religious).[5] In some prison systems, prisoners who follow the rules and who engage in prescribed programs can earn their way out of solitary; in others, prisoners can languish in segregation for years, even decades, with little idea of what—if anything—they can do to be re-assigned to a less harsh form of imprisonment.

    Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib…and Pelican Bay and Tamms.

    There is something wrong with us in this country.

     

     

  • Behold the great image of authority

    The bishops of the military will retain their grip on the prosecution or non-prosecution of sexual assault cases.

    An ambitious bill seeking to stem the rise of sexual assaults in the military died Thursday after senators from both parties refused to limit the role of commanding officers in deciding whether to prosecute such cases.

    Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) pushed the issue to prominence during this congressional session, arguing on behalf of victims who testified that they feared retaliation for pressing assault allegations up the military chain of command. Her bill — which won support from 17 of the 20 women in the Senate — would have shifted sexual assault investigations to military prosecutors.

    Instead senators advanced a competing bill sponsored by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who agreed with military brass that removing commanders from investigations would undermine their authority with troops.

    And failing to prosecute sexual assault won’t undermine their authority with troops? Which troops are we talking about? Are we assuming that most of the troops are sexual assaulters or fans of sexual assault? Are we assuming that a permissive attitude toward sexual assault is a majority view in the military? If so…might that undermine the authority of the military overall? Might it encourage endemic sexual assault in the military?

    The scope of the problem was underscored late Thursday when the Army confirmed it was investigating its top sexual assault prosecutor, Lt. Col. Joseph Morse, on allegations of making unwanted sexual advances two years ago to a lawyer who worked for him.

    “We can confirm that this matter is currently under investigation and that the individual in question has been suspended from duties, pending the outcome of the investigation,” an Army spokesperson said.

    Also Thursday, Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, one of the highest-ranking officers ever to face a court-martial, pleaded guilty at the start of his trial to several charges, including having an illicit affair with a female captain, impeding an investigation and pressuring other female officers to send him nude photos.

    See what I mean?

     

  • Single-digit heaven

    Wendy Doniger reports that Penguin’s failure to continue defending her book has caused it to…become much more popular than it was.

    What is new, and heartening, this time is that the best are suddenly full of passionate intensity. The dormant liberal conscience of India was awakened by the stunning blow to freedom of speech that had been dealt by my publisher in giving in to the demands of the claimants, agreeing to take the book out of circulation and pulp all remaining copies.

    I think the ugliness of the word “pulp” is what struck a nerve, conjuring up memories of “Fahrenheit 451” and Germany in the 1930s. The outrage had been pent up for many years, as other books, films, paintings and sculptures were forced out of circulation by a mounting wave of censorship.

    My case was simply the last straw, in part because of its timing, just when many in India had begun to view with horror the likelihood that the elections in May will put into power Narendra Modi, a member of the ultra-right wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

    If Mr. Batra’s intention was to keep people from reading the book, it certainly backfired: In India, not a single copy was destroyed (the publisher had only a few copies in stock, and those in bookstores quickly sold out), and e-books circulate freely. You cannot ban a book in the age of the Internet. Its sales rank on Amazon has been in single-digit heaven.

    Streisand effect innit.

  • Pastor under fire for pro-LGBTQ stance

    Sikivu Hutchinson tells an important story at Religion Dispatches.

    On Sunday morning I went to a church service for the first time in decades.

    I was there as a community member to support Pastor Seth Pickens of Zion Hill Baptist church in South Los Angeles. A few days before, I’d received an urgent plea from Teka-Lark Fleming, publisher of the local Morningside Park Chronicle newspaper, encouraging progressive black folk to show up at Zion Hill in support of Seth’s pro-LGBTQ stance.

    After publishing a column entitled “The 10 Reasons I Love LGBTQ folk” in Fleming’s paper, Pickens came under fire from church officials.  The controversy erupted on the heels of internal criticism he’d received for performing a marriage ceremony for a lesbian couple last year.

    Well yes; that would be a compelling reason to go to a church service.

    The controversy at Zion Hill is emblematic of a national climate in which traditional black churches are increasingly being challenged on their homophobic policies. Nonetheless, the rhetoric that homosexuality is a white European phenomenon artificially imposed on African descent peoples is still a recurring theme in some black churches. Recently the ATLAH church in Harlem made headlines for a viciously homophobic marquee sign equating homosexuality with whiteness. And terrorist anti-gay legislation in Uganda and Nigeria (sparked and endorsed in no small part by the anti-gay crusades of white American evangelicals) has heightened the stereotype that both African and African descent people are inherently more homophobic than other groups.

    Leo Igwe and Yemisi Ilesanmi have both written about this “homosexuality is un-African” bullshit. Props to Sikivu for doing what she can to support Pastor Seth Pickens.

  • Upskirt navigation

    If there’s a thing too ridiculous and hostile and contemptuous to be said, you can be sure there will be people to say it. On Reddit. To be passed on by Manboobz.

    Demonspawn [-1] 6 points 7 hours ago (26|20) Wearing a skirt has consequences. If we use state violence to protect women from the consequences of her choice to wear a skirt, we remove her agency. This man didn't assault her, didn't touch her... all he did was take a picture of what her choice in clothing exposed to the public. How is that criminal to the point of deserving of state violence upon him? This is saying that protecting women from the consequences of their choices in clothing is more important than men's freedom. permalink save source save give gold hide child comments [–]nigglereddit 5 points 6 hours ago (13|8) You're absolutely correct. If you wear clothing which exposes parts of your body from some angles, you have to expect that someone at that angle will see those parts of your body. You can't tell everyone not to see you from those angles because you're not comfortable with that part of your body being seen; that's ridiculous. If you're uncomfortable it is your job to cover that part of your body. permalink save source save parent give gold [–]DaNiceguy [-2] 4 points 4 hours ago (11|7) Ah but you see the wrong man saw it. That makes him a criminal, right?

    Her choice in clothing didn’t expose what he took a picture of to the public. He didn’t take a picture of her shins or her knees, he took a picture of the section of her that was under the skirt. It’s exposed to the sidewalk and the floor, but it’s not exposed to the public.

  • Massachusetts will no longer be a refuge for upskirters

    The Massachusetts legislature fixed that particular omission.

    Massachusetts lawmakers Thursday passed a bill banning “upskirting” in response to a ruling by the state’s highest court that said a law aimed at criminalizing voyeurism did not apply to the snapping of secret photos up a woman’s skirt.

    The bill now goes to Gov. Deval Patrick, who has publicly committed to signing it, his office said Thursday.

    The bill would make photographing or recording video under a person’s clothing illegal, according to a statement from the office of Senate President Therese Murray.

    Good. Thank you.

    By the way…Is it illegal in Massachusetts (and all the other states) to, for instance, drill a hole in a neighbor’s wall to insert a tiny camera for the purpose of spying on them? Is that covered by the law aimed at criminalizing voyeurism?

     

  • Register now!

    It creeps me out to do this because it’s so me me me but Melody says it helps so I’m doing it anyway. If you’re planning to go to Women in Secularism 3 but haven’t gotten around to registering you should do it today if you want the chance to win a signed copy of Why Truth Matters.

    Register here.

  • Help them pack

    A very important thing, that I did not know about: the white man march.

    If you go to the home page you will see a photo of four of the whitest white people anyone ever saw. They are dazzlingly white; whitely white white. They are posed as a family group but who knows if they are really a family. They could just be the four people who won the contest in each of four divisions:

    • whitest little girl
    • whitest little boy
    • whitest woman
    • whitest man

    What Is The White Man March All About?

    There’s an explanation or FAQ page for people who wonder what the white man march is all about.

    The White Man March is scheduled for March 15th, 2014, and will involve coordinated pro-white activity around the world. The purpose is to spread information through activism, but also to make a statement that White people are united in their love for their race and in their opposition to its destruction.

    Non-white groups such as La Raza have monthly marches and gatherings with many thousands of participants, while groups advocating for White interests remain relatively silent or hidden from the public. One of the major goals of the White Man March is to demonstrate that pro-White people are able to form a unified front and participate in large-scale action simultaneously, which will send a powerful message to our supporters, our enemies, and those of our race who are still on the fence. We also seek to set a precedent that other pro-white organizations can follow in the future.

    Where’s the part about why it’s a white MAN march?

    I guess that’s just taken for granted, because why would women be included? Crazy idea, amirite?

    3. What are the main political and cultural statements you are hoping to make with the White Man March?

    We are planning to show that White people are organized and impassioned, that we know what the anti-white agenda is all about, and that we are dedicated to waking up as many of our folk as possible. We will make it clear that we will not sit idly by as our race is discriminated against, mocked, displaced, and violently attacked, all of which amount to white genocide, according to the United Nation’s own definition of genocide. This is why one of our big messages, which will be displayed on many large banners, is “DIVERSITY” = WHITE GENOCIDE. These banners will spread the message to the public at large in the most effective way possible. This “diversity” agenda is being directed at white countries (and only at white countries) with various programs to ensure that there are less white people at schools and in the work force, which is unfair and discriminatory, taking away money and opportunities from the indigenous white people. “Diversity” is a codeword for White Genocide.

    The indigenous white people. This is an American group, a US group, and this guy thinks white people are indigenous here. Oy

  • Guest post: Knowing everything is just not possible

    Originally a comment by mildlymagnificent on Or even another Tosh.

    My own feeling about the far too many self titled skeptics that I deal with online is that they’ve not really learned to be appropriately skeptical. The first and most important lesson for a real skeptic is to acknowledge that it is no longer possible, if it ever really was, to be a “renaissance man” or a fully rounded autodidact.

    There really is a limit to how much of the available knowledge and skill in any given topic a non-expert can acquire. So the first responsibility of being skeptical is as accurate an assessment as possible of one’s own expertise.It really doesn’t matter how clever you are or whether you’ve acquired advanced qualifications of various sorts. Knowing everything is just not possible and you mustn’t let yourself fall into the trap of thinking you can know everything.

    To be thoroughly and conscientiously skeptical, you have to develop the skill needed to judge the value of the baying hordes of people claiming expertise in all sorts of areas. If you prefer to say that you can’t venture an opinion until you’ve worked whatever it is out for yourself, then you’re abrogating your responsibility to stick with properly evidenced positions. You simply cannot check all the work of all the astronomers and microbiologists and road builders and physicists and veterinarians and sociologists and epidemiologists and car mechanics and agricultural hydrographers and your own doctors, you have to pick and choose.

    It’s how well you pick and choose the experts you will listen to and how you go about judging the quality of the evidence you rely on that makes you properly skeptical. Not a cynical dismissive waving away of everything you’ve not seen with your own eyes or worked out for yourself from first principles. That’s not skeptical. That’s being arrogant or suspicious or untrusting or fearful or some mixture of any of those.