A scalding post by Janet Stemwedel, on the expectation of trust. It’s a ventriloquial sort of post, speaking in the voice of someone else. It’s variations on the theme: “you should trust me.” It’s extremely well done.

Yes, I used the cover of friendship, your loyalty and my apparent track record of not-misbehaving with hundreds of women (including you!), of being a good guy except for one single lapse of judgment (which I swore was not as bad as it sounded, because that woman who you didn’t know was trying to take me down), to ask you privately to convince a couple other people that I was still a good guy. I guess it was awkward when you discovered I’d split up the list of people who needed convincing and asked other people to do this too? And when you discovered that I described the task with one of the people I assigned to you as “getting her to put down the pitchfork”. In retrospect, that probably seemed kind of manipulative of me.

But you should trust me, I totally get how what I did was wrong, and I won’t do it again.

Sure, I haven’t actually acknowledged that lying to you and trying to manipulate you to protect my reputation and relationships was a bad thing to do. I haven’t acknowledged that it harmed you. I haven’t said sorry.

But you should trust that I am sorry and that I won’t do it again. I shouldn’t need to say it.

Ouch.

You may remember that yesterday I quoted a comment that Janet posted on Martin Robbins’s post:

I[t] would be a mistake to think that Bora hurt exactly three people here. Or that he has apologized to all the people he harmed.

I say this as someone he harmed, someone he has not apologized to as yet.

I wondered when I read it and then when I quoted it what the harm was. Now I know. Now we know.

Scorching.

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

There are people who say that Dallas hospital is getting the law wrong.

The hospital says Texas law prohibits it from following a family directive when a pregnancy is involved, although three experts say the hospital is misreading the law in question.

There’s something very wrong with this country. On the one hand, “stand your ground” laws, so if some guy thinks a kid in a hoodie might be up to no good, he’s allowed to kill him to be on the safe side. On the other hand, technology can re-start a pregnant woman’s heart even after the brain is already stone dead and the fetus’s brain probably is too, but neither can be allowed to die the rest of the way until the woman’s body expels the fetus. No big deal about the kid in the hoodie, but ignore every right the pregnant woman ever had just in case the fetus might survive. Something definitely wrong there.

Hospital spokeswoman J.R. Labbe said she isn’t permitted to confirm that Marlise Munoz had been declared brain-dead, only that she was pregnant and hospitalized in serious condition.

“We are following the law of the state of Texas,” Labbe said. “This is not a difficult decision for us. We are following the law.”

But three experts interviewed by The Associated Press, including two who helped draft the law, said a brain-dead patient’s case wouldn’t be covered by the law.

“This patient is neither terminally nor irreversibly ill,” said Dr. Robert Fine, clinical director of the office of clinical ethics and palliative care for Baylor Health Care System. “Under Texas law, this patient is legally dead.”

Yes but fetus. The hell with Renisha McBride, shot dead for asking for help after she crashed her car, but when it comes to fetus – nothing else counts.

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

Katha Pollitt has a roundup of the year in feminism. Again, 12 and 13 are among my favorites.

11. After Savita Halappanavar was killed by sepsis in 2012, because her doctors refused to complete her miscarriage while the doomed fetus showed signs of life, Ireland passed a law permitting abortion to save a woman’s life. Well, it’s a start. In other Irish news, the McAleese report linked the government to the infamous church-run Magdalene laundries, where “fallen women” were imprisoned until 1996.

12. Women in Britain discovered their inner rebel. The website and hashtag Everyday Sexism laid bare the daily reality of misogyny for ordinary women. Massive grassroots efforts succeeded in putting Jane Austen on the ten-pound note, despite threats of rape and death against campaign leaders Caroline Criado-Perez and MP Stella Creasy.

13. Last year’s horrible rapes from Delhi to Steubenville sparked an ongoing wave of news coverage and feminist activism. Real change will have to wait till next year, though. This year, Jameis Winston, who evaded rape charges as many athletes do, won the Heisman Trophy.

A prediction: real change will always have to wait till next year.

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

Darlise Munoz of Dallas was 14 weeks pregnant when she died suddenly of what doctors think was a pulmonary embolism. Her husband found her at home; he performed CPR and called for an ambulance, and she was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth.

Electric shocks and drugs started her heart again and it continued beating with mechanical support, but her brain waves were completely flat. She had gone without breathing for too long to ever recover.

But when the heartbroken family was ready to say goodbye, hospital officials said they could not legally disconnect Marlise from life support. At the time she collapsed, she was 14 weeks’ pregnant.

And because doctors could still detect a fetal heartbeat, state law says Marlise Munoz’s body — against her own and her family’s wishes — must be maintained as an unwilling incubator.

But the fetus had gone without oxygen too. The fetus’s prognosis is not good. Also, both Munozes had discussed this situation and didn’t want the dead-but-breathing-by-machine scenario.

Marlise and Erick Munoz, the parents of a young son, both worked as paramedics for the town of Crowley. Because their jobs brought them into routine contact with sudden death and suffering families, they had conversations about their end-of-life wishes.

Marlise had made it clear she would never want to be kept artificially alive with no hope of recovery.

“Being active paramedics and knowing the facts, they know that people who have this happen to them don’t come out of this very well,” said Crowley Fire Department Lt. Tim Whetstone, a member of the town’s firefighters association that has rallied around the Munoz family.

But that’s all beside the point, because the law.

Hospital authorities have declined all comment, other than to say they have no choice but to follow state law.

According to a 2012 report by the Center for Women Policy Studies, laws governing end-of-life preferences for pregnant women vary by state. Texas is one of 12 that automatically invalidates a woman’s legal prerogative if she “is diagnosed with pregnancy.”

“These are the most restrictive of the pregnancy exclusion statutes, stating that, regardless of the progression of the pregnancy, a woman must remain on life-sustaining treatment until she gives birth,” the report says.

If the bitch didn’t want that the bitch shouldn’t have gotten pregnant, right?

H/t Ewan

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

Some grey bloke has 17 predictions for 2014.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt_AMQSB3o4

I especially like 12 and 13.

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

From last September, a Think Progress piece about a big UN report on the roots of sexual violence.

Among the conclusions…

Unhealthy attitudes about sexuality take root at a young age. More than half of the study’s respondents who admitted they had violated someone’s consent were teenagers when they first raped someone. Most sexual crimes recorded in the study occurred when men were between the ages of 15 and 19. The authors point out this finding “reinforces the need for early rape prevention.” Sexual violence prevention advocates in the U.S. say that this type of education can begin with comprehensive sex ed. Teaching kids about the bodies from an early age helps instill a sense of self-confidence and ownership in them. Then, they’re more likely to avoid violating another person’s consent, or be more willing to speak up when someone tries to violate theirs.

Men rape because they have been taught that they have a right to claim women’s bodies. One of the fundamental concepts at the heart of “rape culture” is the idea that rape is inevitable, men can’t help themselves, and women must therefore work to protect themselves against it. Within the context of rape culture, the idea that men are entitled to sexual experiences is deeply entrenched. The UN researchers found that this attitude is pervasive among the rapists they surveyed. Among the men who acknowledged they had sexually assaulted someone else, more than 70 percent of them said they did it because of “sexual entitlement.” Forty percent said they were angry or wanted to punish the woman. About half of the men said they did not feel guilty.

It’s about attitudes. Attitudes matter. Attitudes have an influence on what happens, on what people do, on actions and agents. That’s so obvious it seems idiotic to spell it out, yet there are still a great many people who think that trying to change attitudes to, say, women, or the relations between women and men, or aggression, is terrifyingly “radical” and exactly like the Nazis and the Stasi.

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

There are protests in India over the gang-rape and murder of that teenage girl in Kolkata.

Apparently the authorities are no longer talking about suicide.

She was then set on fire on December 23 and died in a state-run hospital late on New Year’s Eve, police said.

“She gave us a dying declaration in front of the health officials that she was set on fire by two persons close to the accused when she was alone at home on December 23,” local policeman Nimbala Santosh Uttamrao told AFP.

It beggars belief. They raped her and then to punish her for being raped by them, they set her on fire.

THEY SET HER ON FIRE.

What is wrong with people?

Several hundred activists on Wednesday protested in Kolkata over the crime, which was shocking in its brutality, even after a year when sex crimes have been widely reported in India.

Meanwhile, Taslima’s serial, which might have raised some consciousness about the way women are treated in South Asia…will not be seen, because someone thought it might offend someone. Fabulous priorities.

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

American Atheists are all in a lather about getting to 100,000 Likes on their Facebook page RIGHT NOW. I have no idea why, but they are. So fine, I’ll encourage people to go Like their Facebook page. If they get 100,000 likes then Dave will wink at the camera on Fox News on Tuesday. I don’t see that as an incentive; I hate winking. I think he should eat an olive, instead.

They offered this as an interim reward.

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

Happy birthday to Waterford. Today is its 1100th birthday. It had a celebration with fireworks and pretend Viking ships.

Waterford was founded 1,100 years ago by the Vikings,and a free outdoor spectacle took place on the city’s quays tonight, produced by street theatre company Spraoi.

Telling the story of the arrival of the Vikings in 914 AD, the event had dance, performance, pyrotechnics, light, music, narration and special effects.

Three stylised Viking ships which took two months to build were also on display.

Thousands of people attended despite stormy weather with flooding.

Vikings! Fireworks! Viking ships! It sounds great.

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

Melissa Harris-Perry apologized for what sounds like a mean joke.

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry offered a tearful and passionate apology to the Romneys on Saturday for remarks she and her panelists made about the family’s adopted black grandchild.

In a segment last week, Harris-Perry joked about the grandson while one panelist, actress Pia Glenn, sang “one of these things is not like the other” and comedian Dean Obeidallah sought to draw a parallel to the Republican Party’s problems with diversity. The remarks drew heavy criticism from high-profile conservatives like Sarah Palin and Scott Brown.

And today she apologized.

I wonder…did Rush Limbaugh ever apologize for calling Sandra Fluke a slut?

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

Martin Robbins has a brilliantly lucid guest post, hosted by Janet Stemwedel (aka DocFreeRide), at Adventures in Science and Ethics about what was wrong with the way Bora Zivkovic returned to the internet.

First, the optimistic version of the story, then, what’s wrong with it:

Bora Zivkovic was an outstandingly talented science blogging expert. A fundamentally good man, he made some terrible mistakes that affected three women he worked with, although ultimately nobody was really harmed. Those mistakes cost him his friends, reputation and career. Now, he’s paid the price, and hopefully we can forgive him and welcome him back into the community he’s done so much for.

It’s a pleasing, comfortable narrative that many of us would love to subscribe to. It’s also toxic and wrong, and an acknowledgment of this from Bora (and his supporters) would be a welcome step on the road to genuine redemption.

The first problem is that by any objective, clear-headed assessment, Bora was incompetent. He didn’t lose his positions at ScienceOnline and Scientific American as a punishment for doing bad things, or to somehow ‘pay’ a ‘price’ – as if these jobs were his to give away – he lost them because it became apparent that he wasn’t fit to do them, and in fact never had been.

Why? Because the parts he failed at are not peripheral but central.

…this isn’t a set of scales were balancing. We’re not weighing good against bad here, because the things that Bora fucked up are not optional. ‘Not sexually harassing women’ is not a ‘bonus extra’ in the job description. He harassed professional contacts for sex, brought his employers into very public disrepute, seriously damaged the reputation of a major conference, and undermined relations in the communities in which he worked.  Bora was one of the community’s key gatekeepers, and months later men and women are left wondering if the course of their career was altered for better or worse by one man’s sex drive.

That’s not trivial or minor, you see.

The second problem is the nature of sexual harassment, and how that fits in with the stories of Monica Byrne, Hannah Waters and Kathleen Raven – three names entirely absent from Anton Zuiker’s grueling 5,000 word ode to rare vegetables, incidentally.

A key thing to understand about harassment is that it’s usually part of a long-term pattern of recidivist behaviour, often by people who are not obviously ‘villains’, who rely heavily on psychological manipulation and the abuse of power structures within their communities or institutions.

The evidence we have here, in the form of testimony and e-mails, shows a clear pattern of deliberate behaviour repeated on many occasions over at least two years. The women were identified, targeted, isolated, manipulated, and their boundaries repeatedly tested, often in professional contexts, over a sustained period of time. The methodologies of these incidents are so uncannily alike that even the same pick-up lines are used.

That’s something to take seriously. It’s not something to shrug off after six weeks.

That brings me to Bora’s return to world on online science on January 1st, accompanied by his friend and ScienceOnline co-founder Anton Zuiker’s epic meditation on friendship and something called ‘Piper Methysticum roots’. Zuiker begins his post with what he believes is a sparkling and colourful anecdote about some sort of vegetable brewing, but that isn’t his most serious mistake. Indeed, it probably isn’t even in the top five.

“It’s good that Bora offered his apology, and I believe he did so contritely and humbly,” he writes, failing to link to this apology because at the time of writing it simply did not exist. He mentions the need to be “sensitive to the women who spoke out,” yet in 5,500 words that include two substantial diatribes on the apparently substantial difficulties he experiences procuring root vegetables, he fails to mention any of them (though links were later added).

…

Zuiker’s worst mistake though was publishing this self-absorbed, history-rewriting, pseudo-intellectual clusterfuck when he sits on the board of one of the organizations still trying to deal with the fallout from Bora’s actions, ScienceOnline. They were forced to issue a statement on Friday in response to Zuiker’s post: “given the close personal and professional history between Bora Zivkovic and Anton Zuiker – and their connection with ScienceOnline – we’ve asked Anton to refrain from any public communication about Bora and that all official communications from ScienceOnline come from the entire board or its Executive Director, Karyn Traphagen.” Nonetheless, this casts a shadow over the upcoming conference.

Martin ends with a response to Bora’s questions about what he should do next. Martin advises forgetting all about trying to get anything back, and instead starting over. Eventually that may result in getting anything back, but that shouldn’t be the goal.

Janet Stemwedel adds an important piece of information in a comment.

I[t] would be a mistake to think that Bora hurt exactly three people here. Or that he has apologized to all the people he harmed.

I say this as someone he harmed, someone he has not apologized to as yet.

That right there is one reason he should be starting over instead of trying to get anything back. He hasn’t even done the basics yet.

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

From a couple of weeks ago there is this Huffington Post article by Hilary Aked, finding deep sinisterness in the opposition to gender segregation at university events.

She starts by saying the furore was “sparked by” the Student Rights report. But that’s not clear at all – the report played a part, but far from the only part.

After that, there’s a lot of hand-wringing about the Henry Jackson Society, without anything really showing what difference it makes. She does at least admit as much, which is a nice change from Gopal and Penny, but she adds,

However, it is vital to situate the origin of such a controversy and origins like this should, I think, lead us to pause and consider whether the narrow framing of this issue is problematic. Is the current discussion, provoked by Student Rights’ report, more about feminism or Islamophobia?

It depends on which people and organizations you’re talking about, surely. The existence of the HJS doesn’t do much to change that fact.

Several commentators believe it is largely about the latter, and so do many students. Apart from being busy fighting to keep their campuses cop-free, a growing number are also giving their support to a campaign called ‘Real Student Rights‘ (RSR), founded to expose and oppose ‘Student Rights’ (far more, I should add, than the turned out for the demo outside Universities UK, which despite what some media reports suggest, was very small and not attended by many actual students - though it was able to compensate for this thanks to a handful of vocal journalists).

“A growing number” – well that could mean it was two yesterday and today it’s three.

There’s a lot more in the same vein, with lots of pointing and suspecting but very little real substance. I think Aked could do a lot more to undermine prejudice against Muslims by marginalizing far-right Islamist groups rather than by trying to marginalize people who resist them.

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

The Independent comments on Gove’s tantrum and Evans’s response.

Today, one of Britain’s most eminent historians hit back at what he described as an “ignorant attack” by Education Secretary Michael Gove on his analysis of the conflict.

Writing in the Daily Mail yesterday Mr Gove accused Professor Sir Richard Evans of failing to acknowledge the debt owed to the soldiers that were killed in the Great War claiming he had previously dismissed attempts to honour their sacrifice as “narrow tub-thumping jingoism”.

Sir Richard, Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College Cambridge, suggested the criticism stemmed from his vocal opposition to the Education Secretary’s ill-fated attempts to reform the way history is taught in schools.

Professor Evans told The Independent: “I never said that at all. I said his proposals for the National Curriculum were narrow tub-thumping jingoism and there is some relationship between that.”

History according to the Tory party. Sounds about right.

Professor Evans accused Mr Gove of oversimplification.  “How can you possibly claim that Britain was fighting for democracy and liberal values when the main ally was Tsarist Russia? That was a despotism that put Germany in the shade and sponsored pogroms in 1903-6.”

He said that unlike Germany where male suffrage was universal – 40 per cent of those British troops fighting in the war did not have the vote until 1918. “The Kaiser was not like Hitler, he was not a dictator. He could never make his mind up and changed his mind every five minutes. The largest political party in Germany in 1914 were the Social Democrats,” he said. “Germany was a very divided country in 1914 and becomes more so as time goes on. It is not Nazi Germany,” he added.

Don’t pester the Education Secretary with pedantic details like that. He’s a busy man.

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

Once again, I find myself surprised. I didn’t know anyone bothered to defend the First World War these days; I didn’t know anyone had bothered to do that since about 1930. I was under the impression that the defenders started falling silent at a pretty sharp clip in 1915. (That last one is hyperbole. There was a lot of oppression and repression of opponents of the war as long as it was going on. Bertrand Russell did a stint in the slammer for it.)

But once again, I was wrong. Michael Gove is bothering to defend it, and talk smack about people he dislikes in the process. The Daily Mail (yes) is on the case.

Left-wing myths about the First World War peddled by Blackadder belittle Britain and clear Germany of blame, Michael Gove says today.

The Education Secretary criticises historians and TV programmes that denigrate patriotism and courage by depicting the war as a ‘misbegotten shambles’.

As Britain prepares to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the war, Mr Gove claims only undergraduate cynics would say the soldiers were foolish to fight.

Oy. Lots of people at all levels of education (well ok not kindergarten) have been saying that for many decades. For almost all ten of the decades in the centenary.

Has Michael Gove not been informed of what the war in question led to over the following two decades? And then the nasty incident that took place over the six years between 1939 and 1945?

Mr Gove turns his fire on ‘Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths by attacking Britain’s role in the conflict’.

He singles out Richard Evans, regius professor of history at Cambridge University, who has said those who enlisted in 1914 were wrong to think they were fighting to defend freedom.

Mr Gove writes: ‘Richard Evans may hold a professorship, but these arguments, like the interpretations of Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder, are more reflective of the attitude of an undergraduate cynic playing to the gallery in a Cambridge Footlights revue rather than a sober academic contributing to a proper historical debate.’ 

While writing anti-intellectual bullshit for the Daily Mail is soberness itself.

What an ignorant hack.

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

The Times Higher reports on…well it’s too complicated to paraphrase.

Headline: Students’ unions hit back at group monitoring campus extremism

Subhead: Student Rights’ agenda questioned by LSE, Birkbeck, Goldsmiths unions

The article starts:

Three students’ unions have condemned a group that monitors extremist speakers on campus for “targeting Muslim students”.

Student Rights, which refutes* the students’ unions’ claims, released a report in May 2013 on events organised by Islamic societies that found that a quarter of those it monitored had enforced gender segregation.

That’s what the Times Higher reports on.

And we’re in the weeds right at the outset. I disagree that monitoring for instance Islamist speakers equals “targeting Muslim students.” Equating the two implies that all Muslim students are fans of Islamist speakers, and they’re not.

Isn’t it one of the claims of people who talk about “Islamophobia” that “Islamophobes” equate all Muslims with the most fanatical of Islamists? Yes, it is, so what can be the point of framing things as if monitoring Islamist speakers meant “targeting Muslim students”? Islamists aren’t the friends of liberal Muslims, they’re their deadly enemies.

Last month, unions at the London School of Economics, Goldsmiths, University of London and Birkbeck, University of London all passed motions claiming that the group indulges in “sensationalism” around Muslim students.

These motions have been coordinated by a group called Real Student Rights.

One of its supporters, Hilary Aked, a doctoral student at the University of Bath, argued that the Student Rights report, Unequal Opportunity – Gender Segregation on UK University Campuses, had exaggerated the proportion of events that are segregated because it monitored only Islamic events where the speaker had a history of extreme views, or where gender segregation was explicitly promoted.

So…Student Rights monitors only the reactionary Islamist groups, yet somehow doing that is “targeting Muslim students.” Isn’t it, rather, the opposite of that? Isn’t it not targeting Muslim students, but instead, targeting reactionary Islamist speakers and groups?

She also argued that Student Rights’ focus was disproportionately on Muslim groups, rather than on far Right extremists.

What?

Islamist groups are far Right extremists.

*sic. Should be “rejects”.

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