Soraya Chemaly has some trenchant thoughts on the Steubenville rape case and the culture that enables such cases.

While teaching people about consent isn’t going to change the behavior of predatory serial rapists, it will cultivate a culture that encourages effective bystander intervention and teaches both women and men how to reduce risk.  What we have now and by default are subtle and overt messages that teach children, like the two Steubenville boys and the kids who watched them, to treat other human beings — disproportionately female ones — as dehumanized prey instead of as people for whom they should feel compassion.

Seriously, what is that? Why did everyone else just let it happen? Why didn’t anyone stop it? How horrible that is. Imagine you’re at a gathering with a lot of adults and one person – a woman – becomes ill, and gets so groggy and dizzy that she can’t respond properly. What happens? A couple of men proceed to pull some of her clothes off, and stick their fingers up her, and text their friends about it, and drag her around the room, while everyone else stands around and laughs?

Well, no, at least I hope the people you know aren’t like that. No, people help, and suggest going to the ER, or lying down for a minute, or whatever seems appropriate.

So what the hell is this? What’s wrong with everyone? I know teenagers don’t have a complete prefrontal cortex yet, but that doesn’t mean they’re grizzly bears.

In the meantime, kids in Steubenville will pay a high price. The thing is, the boys probably are basically “good.” Although I think they are clearly at fault for violating this girl’s body and human rights, I do not think it’s their fault that they were born into a culture where “nice guys” rape all the time and get away with it.  We could avoid an awful lot of hardship and wasted lives if we disregarded the repugnant antics of those who are aggressively opposed to a fairer distribution of rights and confronted these issues head on.

As I recently said when participating in a Women Under Siege forum on victim-blaming, explaining context and shifting the focus from individual people to the systems that produce them isn’t a mentality of victimization, it’s a critique of the deeply entrenched, destructive attitudes at the heart of violence and oppression, and the first steps toward dismantling them. That is a matter of personal responsibility.

Tame the grizzly bears.

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

What we’re learning from the Steubenville rape trial.

We’re learning that there were text messages. Lots of text messages.

A state forensics investigator, Joann Gibb, methodically quoted from text messages that she said came from the phone of one of the defendants, Trent Mays, 17, and from the phones of friends and classmates. The messages described the inebriated girl as “dead” or as a “dead body” and stated that Mr. Mays acknowledged penetrating the girl with his fingers.

Because that’s what you do. If there’s a girl at a party who passes out from drinking too much, you stick your fingers up her.

The texts read from the witness stand by Ms. Gibb suggested that Mr. Mays and his friends grew concerned about how many pictures were being shared on social media, how the episode would affect his role on the football team, what the reaction would be from the girl’s father and, ultimately, that if charges were ever pressed, whether the authorities would examine Mr. Mays’s cellphone messages.

One text sent from Mr. Mays’s phone to an acquaintance stated that “if they press charges, they are going to look at all my texts,” according to the testimony of Ms. Gibb.

“Delete them,” the acquaintance responded.

Interesting what they grew concerned about. Not the possibility that they’d done a shitty thing to the girl, and a whole series of new shitty things by texting about it; not the possibility that the girl had been harmed; but the possibility that their doing a shitty thing and then bragging about it might turn out to be detrimental to them.

They sound like really great kids. I hope their football team is proud.

On the witness stand, Ms. Gibb also described text messages suggesting that the 16-year-old girl did not know what had happened to her that night, and that she grew angry and vulnerable as she learned more.

“I wasn’t being a slut. They were taking advantage of me,” stated one text message sent from the girl’s phone, according to Ms. Gibb’s testimony.

To a friend of Mr. Mays, the girl wrote in another text message: “Who was there who did that to me?” She added, “You couldn’t have told them to stop or anything?”

“I hate my life,” the girl also texted, stating at another point: “Oh my God, please tell me this isn’t” true.

Yes but she’s not on the football team, so who cares about her.

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

The new idea about the Neanderthals is that they had very big eyes, so they had a lot of visual processing equipment which means they had little room for higher order thinking. It’s like eagles. Eagles have enormous eyes and most of their headspace is devoted to visual processing. They can see like demons but they’re lousy conversationalists.

It was dark up north in Europe, see.

The research team explored the idea that the ancestor of Neanderthals left Africa and had to adapt to the longer, darker nights and murkier days of Europe. The result was that Neanderthals evolved larger eyes and a much larger visual processing area at the backs of their brains.

The humans that stayed in Africa, on the other hand, continued to enjoy bright and beautiful days and so had no need for such an adaption. Instead, these people, our ancestors, evolved their frontal lobes, associated with higher-level thinking, before they spread across the globe.

And now we get music, and the internet, and the Mars Rover.

Don’t start dissing the Neanderthals again though.

Oxford University’s Prof Robin Dunbar, who supervised the study, said that the team wanted to avoid restoring the stereotypical image of Neanderthals.

“They were very, very smart, but not quite in the same league as Homo sapiens,” he told BBC News.

“That difference might have been enough to tip the balance when things were beginning to get tough at the end of the last ice age,” he said.

They weren’t really like eagles. Just not up to putting a rover on Mars.

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

Huh. Even North Korea goes in for sexist insults. Who knew?

When North Korea blamed President Park Geun-hye’s “venomous swish of skirt” this week for tensions on the Korean Peninsula, it brought up an issue that had been mainly unremarked upon in South Korea: Would their leader’s gender color the latest confrontation between the Koreas?

The North Koreans, masters of outrageous propaganda, no doubt picked their phrase carefully for the South’s first female president. “Swish of skirt” was long an insult in Korean culture, directed at women deemed too aggressive, far from the traditional ideal of docile and coy.

The old damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Either you’re too aggressive and undocile, or you’re a feeble little nothing. So sorry, those are your only choices.

For many in South Korea, Ms. Park’s gender has long been a secondary concern, even as vestiges of the country’s patriarchal past remain. She was elected in good part because she is the daughter of a dictator who is rated South Korea’s most popular former president.

Oh, well that’s different. If she’s there because she’s an important man’s relative, then she’ll be exempt from the usual rules. Until she’s not, of course.

Several analysts said that the North Koreans — who have held on to their patriarchal traditions even as the South has rapidly become more egalitarian — are aware of Ms. Park’s reputation. The North got a direct glimpse of her in 2002, when she traveled to meet Kim Jong-il.

“I don’t think her gender is a disadvantage,” said Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea specialist at Korea University. “The North Koreans know that she is not an easy woman, or an easy female leader, to deal with.”

But Andrei Lankov, a North Korea scholar at Kookmin University in Seoul, is less convinced. He called the North “a deeply patriarchal culture where women are believed to be generally unsuitable for any position of power and influence.”

“Hence,” he said, “they might assume that President Park is weak and irrational.”

Or too aggressive, far from the traditional ideal of docile and coy. Or both.

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

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville has her experience of being both an atheist and a woman.

The religious community in which I’d been raised did not allow female ministers, did not allow female presidents of the congregation, did not allow female elders, and did not, for most of my childhood, even allow female lectors to read the selected Bible readings during the service each week.  Women were for teaching children—and for cleaning: Communionware, the kitchen, maybe a vestment.

I started asking questions about this disparity at age 7, possibly earlier.  I got the usual bullshit answers that are used to justify these things.  I was good enough to be an acolyte (especially since there were precious few teenage boys willing to do it) and scrub the toilets—both of which I did countless times—but not good enough to be ordained.  I was less than.

Further, my objections to being told, on the one hand, that we are all equal in the eyes of god, and, on the other, that my gender nonetheless rendered me incapable of serving god in every capacity available to men, were greeted with contempt—and sometimes outright hostility.  One minister told my mother that I needed to stop asking questions.  Another told me I was “divisive,” at an age that required my looking up “divisive” in the dictionary when I got home from church to understand his meaning.

She disliked all that, a lot, and she got out of it before she got out of theism.

Then she found movement atheism – and found the same inequality all over again.

There were precious few visible atheist leaders: The most prominent male atheists were very enamored with one another, and not particularly inclined to offer the same support to women, via recommended links and highlighted quotes and inclusion in digital salons about Important Ideas.  They wondered aloud where all the female atheists are, and women would pipe up—”Here! Here we are! We’re right here!”—only to then go back to the status quo, with explicit or implicit messaging that women just weren’t working as hard as they are, just aren’t as smart as they are, or else they’d be leaders, too.

That’s a very good point. I’d noticed the phenomenon, but hadn’t quite managed to see it in those terms. You know what it reminds me of? I’ll tell you. It reminds me of the all-male mutual admiration society that was the group consisting of Martin Amis and Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens. They were very enamored with one another, and not particularly inclined to offer the same support to women.

That business of wondering where all the female atheists are, and women saying right here, god damn it, and being ignored – that’s one reason I found the Cara Santa Maria-Michael Shermer exchange so irritating: the gabbling about “why so few” when we’re not so few and at this stage of the game both of them should know perfectly well that we’re not so few. And then from “why so few” it’s such an easy hop to “it’s more of a guy thing” – i.e. we’re just not working as hard as they are, we’re just not as smart as they are, or we’d be on that panel too.

There was the exclusion from conferences, the sexist posts, the sexual harassment, the appropriation of religious and irreligious women’s lived experiences to Score Points and the obdurate not listening to those women when they protested.

In fact, female atheists’ protests were greeted much the same way with which my protests had been met in my patriarchal church.  Silencing.  Demeaning.  Threats.

All of this felt terribly familiar.  A bunch of straight, white, male gatekeepers pretending there’s no gate.

And it’s still going on, while we’re still pushing back, and on and on and on.

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

The Guardian had a bit more yesterday on UCL’s decision not to be besties with iERA any more. Most of it we already know, in fact some of it could have come from here, but it tells us some new things.

Saleem Chagtai, head of PR at iERA, expressed disappointment at the ban and denied that the group had tried to enforce segregation at the event.

The group has put a time-lapse video of the audience taking their seats before the event on YouTube. But as there is no sound, it does not reveal whether or not men and women were asked to sit separately when they came into the lecture theatre.

It is also unclear whether the video ends when the whole audience had arrived and taken their seats.

The time-lapse video is totally unhelpful, and it’s laughable that they pointed to that to back up their claim of no enforced segregation. Mostly what the video shows is that there were very few women visible.

Chagtai claimed that the group had offered audience members separate seating, with mixed-sex seating at the front of the lecture theatre with rows only for men and women who wished to adhere to their religious beliefs further back.

He said: “I would classify segregation as people saying, ‘you’re a man you sit there, you’re a woman you sit there’. We understood that we could not enforce separate seating but we could facilitate it.”

Uh huh. Try that with other terms.

Chagtai claimed that the group had offered audience members separate seating, with mixed-race seating at the front of the lecture theatre with rows only for whites and blacks who wished to adhere to their religious beliefs further back.

He said: “I would classify segregation as people saying, ‘you’re a white you sit there, you’re a black you sit there’. We understood that we could not enforce separate seating but we could facilitate it.”

It’s not a thing that should be “facilitated.” The world doesn’t need people “facilitating” inequality and domination/subordination.

UCL spokesman Dominique Fourniol said representatives of iERA met the university’s senior administrative officer, vice provost Rex Knight, and a diversity officer on Tuesday when the issue of segregation was thoroughly examined. He added that the event was not originally booked by iERA but an individual.

Oh yes? That grad student in the chemistry department perhaps? That sounds like more trickery and deception and bait-and-switch.

Speaking of trickery…Christopher Roche – the guy the iERA tried to eject from the debate for sitting in the “women’s” section, you remember – told me about this piece in the Standard and especially the comments on it.

Salahuddinlives20 hours ago

This debacle is unbelievable. UCL would not exist as an academic university without the Muslims. In fact UCL should apologise to the the Muslims and be thankful to them. WHY? Because the institution that we know today as university a centre of academic excellence only came into existence because of Islam. The Oldest University in the world University of Al-Karaouine: Located in Fes, Morocco, this university originally was a mosque founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, A WOMAN. It developed into one of the leading universities for natural sciences.

ChrisRoche1 day ago

In fairness, we only made a complaint against the fact that they didn’t let us sit between the women. Why should anyone be offended if I sit besides them??

MichelleSuzu1 day ago

Because you are a PERVERT Chris. We CHOSE to sit separately from the men, but you FORCED yourself on us.

That “ChrisRoche” who commented? That’s not Christopher Roche. The deceptive trickster shits impersonated him.

Notice “Salahuddinlives” – perhaps the same commenter who commented here as both “Adam Stanford” and “Salahuddin” on Monday. And I doubt that “MichelleSuzu” is a woman at all – the same person probably did all three comments.

What sleazy people they are, these people who want to take away our rights.

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

There were two other girls shot along with Malala that day. One of them is trapped at home in Swat, unable to go back to school.

Due to complications, her home recovery lasted several months. To this day, she endures severe nerve pain and still does not have full function of her hand.

“I want go to school even if the Taliban comes for me again. I will never give up,” Kainat said. It was a gentle resolve, the kind of fortitude that cannot be taught, only earned. When I told her I was a doctor, she beamed. “I want to be a doctor too, so I can help people.”

The “I” in the story is Seema Jilani,

a physician who worked extensively on medical evacuation flights for critically ill children. She specializes in pediatrics and has done humanitarian aid work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and Bosnia.  Reporting for this piece was done during a trip to Pakistan in November 2012.

Kainat is much worse off than Malala.

Since the shooting, neighbors have repeatedly told Kainat to stop going to school. Some have even accused her of inviting the Taliban’s wrath onto the community. When I asked her why she kept the shawl from the shooting, she responded: “It is the only emblem of my life, with the stain of my blood, my struggle.”

Weeks later, I woke to the shrill jingle of my mobile phone. Kainat was scrambling for breath and anxious. There had been an explosion at the house next door to hers. “Maybe it was a natural gas explosion, but maybe it was the Taliban. They blame me. I wake up with nightmares. The neighbors all tell me to leave.” Her voice splintered, “We have no money to escape. I am scared for my life.”

Despite her valiant efforts, Kainat has only been able to attend school twice since last December. All modes of transportation — buses, taxis, and private cars — refuse to drive her to school. She studies from home now. The Pakistani Army has cautioned the family that their safety cannot be guaranteed outside their home, so they remain under house arrest after dark. Kainat has not left her home in over three weeks.

There is no physical therapy available for her wound recovery, nor is there any mental counseling for her PTSD. For this brave 15-year-old girl, there are no visits to friends’ homes, no trips to the market. She cannot even walk outside her home.

Jilani has been trying to get help for Kainat, and getting nowhere.

Shazia Ali has set up an Indiegogo fundraiser for Kainat. It’s at $920, aiming for $5000.

Please spread the word.

Thanks to Avicenna for spreading the word.

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

Chris Moos updated us a couple of days ago, and I missed it until now.

I would like to inform you that UCL has banned the iERA, Hamza Tzortzis
organisation, from holding further events on campus:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0313/11032013-meeting?utm_source
=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

We are now informing all universities that Hamza Tzortzis is set to
speak at, according to his website (
http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/events-media/events/islamic-awareness-tour-
2013/ ) on the issue.

Next are:
11 Mar: Kings College London – “The Existence of God”
12 Mar: Salford University – “Muhammad: Liar, Truthful or Deluded?”
Chapman Building, 5PM.
13 Mar: Medway University – “Has Evolution Been Misunderstood?”
18 Mar: Aston University – “Atheism or Theism?”
21 Mar: Brunel University – TBA
King’s College London has not responded yet.
Salford University told us that “this event is no longer taking place at
the University tomorrow.”

Well done Salford University. Now for Aston and Brunel…

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

Wait there’s more. Abishek Phadnis found a conference a year ago called The Seeds of Change.

Lauren Booth – sister of Cherie Booth.

Then there’s the Deen Institute, with its “who we are” page.

 You’ll have to click the link to get the full effect. I’ll just say it’s not an accident that you see men first and then women. Last of all is the brazen slut with no hijab.

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

Allen Esterson alerted me to a real gem – iERA’s page “Meet our speakers”…

Classic, isn’t it?

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

CFI issued a press release on the prospects for a better future with a new pope.

Ron Lindsay’s hopes are not stratospherically high.

As with anyone taking on a position of substantial responsibility, in which decisions can affect the lives of millions, we sincerely hope for the best for Pope Francis. However, even leaving aside the fact that the institution he oversees is based on a fundamentally false understanding of reality, at this stage one cannot be too optimistic about the prospects of Francis bringing the Church into the 21st century. Indeed, even the Church’s dipping a toe into the 20th century seems unrealistic.

Like much of the Church’s hierarchy, his views stem from beliefs and myths formed in previous millennia. For example, his prior hateful statements about same-sex marriage, calling it a ‘move by the father of lies to confuse and deceive the children of God,’ indicate a mindset that gives priority to dogma over basic human compassion. His labeling of the adoption of children by gay parents as ‘discrimination against children’ shows a backward and almost flippant view of the plight of those who suffer from genuine discrimination.

We can only hope that Pope Francis proves our pessimism wrong, but all evidence suggests a continuation of a most unfortunate status quo for a deeply troubled, and troubling, institution.

A mindset that gives priority to dogma over basic human compassion – that’s it in a nutshell. It’s a bad, wrong, backward way to do things, and everybody everywhere needs to learn that.

The foundation of the dogma and the preference for dogma is “God’s law over human law.” The irony is that what they call “God’s law” is of course human law, but human law made rigid and resistant to reform and improvement by being labeled “God’s law.” They say it’s “God’s law over human law” but really it’s “dogmatic coercive unaccountable law over reformable reasons-based accountable law.”

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

Earlier this afternoon Twitter – always helpful, always tugging on the elbow – told me to follow Cunt of the Day. Huh. No, Twitter, I’m not going to do that.

The current winners.

Cunt of the Day‏@cuntoftheday

A new pope as Cunt of the Day goes to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles as it pays out $10m to victims of sexual abuse. http://bit.ly/cFK35R

Cunt of the Day‏@cuntoftheday

North Korea’s tiny twat tinpot dictator Kim Jong Un is Cunt of the Day for making tiny dick threats of imminent war. http://bit.ly/cFK35R

Cunt of the Day‏@cuntoftheday

Cunt of the Day goes to officials in Fiji, condemned by the UN, who were filmed brutally torturing 2 prison escapees. http://bit.ly/cFK35R

Cunt of the Week‏@cuntoftheweek

Claiming to have murdered seven hostages, Cunt of the Week goes to Nigerian Islamist asshole terrorist outfit Ansaru. http://bit.ly/cFK35R

No, Twitter, I’m not going to follow Cunt of the Day.

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

Chris Clarke at Pharyngula quotes a comment:

As an Argentinian I can confirm your “rumours” and add that this guy was a collaborator with the military during the last coup d’etat during the 70′s : Among many things, he informed to the military that two monks that were working in a low income neighbourhood were no longer protected by the catholic church, facilitating their detention and posterior disappearance.

Mind you, to “dissapear” at that time meant to be detained by the military, held without rights or trial, possibly (and often) tortured under suspicions of being a Marxist/ “terrorist”, being completely incomunicated with your family and finally be killed and buried on an unmarked grave, or thrown form a plane into the river.

Thrown.

From a fucking plane.

Into the river. (Known as “deathflights”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights )

Argentina maybe not such a great choice after all, eh?

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

Ok here we go. Stewart posted the link to a piece from January 2011 in the Guardian, on what the high-ups in the Catholic church in Argentina did to help the miliatary dictatorship get away with crimes against humanity. Is the new pope there? Does a bear shit in the woods?

The extent of the church’s complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina’s most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentinian navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship’s political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate.  The most shaming thing for the church is that in such circumstances Bergoglio’s name was  allowed  to go forward in the ballot to chose the successor of John Paul II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment.

Oh.

Oops!

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

So maybe the new pope will be a little less ruthlessly murderous about condoms. Or maybe he won’t; at any rate we know he won’t be any less convinced that he gets to tell everyone what to do.

While the new pope is reportedly orthodox on matters of sexual morality, “he takes a slightly more pragmatic view on contraception, believing that it can be permissible to prevent the spread of disease,” according to a report in The Guardian.

What that might mean for groups like Catholic Relief Services, a humanitarian organization based in Baltimore that works to stem the spread of communicable diseases, isn’t clear. But the pope has an enormous power to shape the doctrine followed by millions of Catholics around the world.

“We’ll follow whatever the church says,” said John Rivera, director of communications for the organization, which works in 10 countries around the globe and has reached 300,000 people.

What an appalling thing to say. What an appalling institution the church is, to have that kind of power. How terrible it is that an institution like that is allowed to meddle in humanitarian work.

When it comes to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS, the group follows an improvised version of what is known as the ABC approach. They endorse abstinence (“A”) and being faithful (“B”), but they don’t support the “C” part of prevention — condoms.

“We’ve found that this AB approach has been effective,” said Rivera.

They might as well support staying home (“A”) and washing hands often (“B”) but not support vaccination to prevent measles.

Murderous bastards.

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

So, it’s a guy from Argentina, and he’s calling himself Francis 1.

It’s still the Catholic church though. Still the Vatican. Still a ridiculous archaic intrusive institution.

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