Two women entered a building.

Violent protests have paralysed the southern Indian state of Kerala after two women made history by entering a prominent Hindu temple.

Schools across the state are closed and public transport too has been suspended. One person was killed in clashes on Wednesday.

Here’s a bit of advice. If your god or gods think their Rules of Exclusion are so important that you should risk death to defend them, you need a new god or gods. Rules of Exclusion are a bad thing. Seeing people as contaminants, even if it’s only One Week Per Month contamination, is an idea that leads straight to horrors. Don’t have gods of that kind, because they’re bad gods.

Right-wing groups, supported by India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), demanded a state-wide shutdown. They wanted schools, colleges and businesses to remain closed as a sign of protest.

The state government, which supports the Supreme Court ruling, stepped up security and deployed police across the state for protection.

But fearing violence, schools and shops were closed. And buses did not run as protesters blocked highways and other roads.

In total, more than 700 people were arrested on Wednesday and Thursday. Sixty police officers were injured, more than 80 public buses were damaged and at least a dozen police vehicles were attacked.

All because of a crazed male terror of menstrual blood and of fuckable women.

Police told news agency AFP that at least 15 people were injured after protesters hurled stones at them.

According to local media reports, around 100 people were arrested by police in one district, where a mob assaulted a woman police officer.

…

Several journalists were also attacked in the protests that engulfed the state capital, Thiruvathapuram. Police said they are investigating the matter.

Women and journalists; it sounds so familiar.

The Kerala state government supports the court verdict and Mr Vijayan has repeatedly said his government will provide the security to enforce it.

But India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has argued that the court ruling is an attack on Hindu values.

The issue has become increasingly contentious in the run-up to India’s general election, scheduled for April and May. Critics have accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of pursuing a religiously divisive agenda to court the BJP’s mostly-Hindu support base.

Riling up the base. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Even the protests have turned into an ideological battle between the right and the left – most of the protesters belong to right-wing groups affiliated to the BJP; and those who support the court ruling are affiliated to Kerala’s left-wing coalition government.

“Even”? Of course they have, that’s what protests are – ideological battles, usually between some form of the right and the left.

Maybe the BJP could figure out a way to get rid of menstruation entirely.

Oh, we’re doing this again.

US agents have fired tear gas over the border into Mexico at migrants trying to enter the country illegally.

Around 150 Central Americans tried to make the crossing near the town of Tijuana to the south of California on New Year’s Day.

One US official described the migrants as a “violent mob”.

Was his name Ronald Stump?

Here they are – a few of the MILLION who formed the chain.

A video of the hundreds of thousands of women that formed the human chain in Kerala protesting against the ban on women entering the Hindu Sabarimala Temple. An amazing example of the power of united women. Here’s to 2019, to direct action and the destruction of patriarchy. pic.twitter.com/OO53IdQCAY

— Rosa Tully (@rosatullyyy) January 2, 2019

How not to help girls and women escaping from forced marriage:

The Foreign Office is seeking to recoup the cost of repatriating young women who have been forced into marriages overseas, it has been revealed, prompting charities to criticise the government for making women “pay for their protection”.

An investigation found that many of the 82 victims of forced marriage repatriated in 2016-17 had to pay for living costs incurred between making distress calls and returning home, as well as their airfare, while others received loans from the Foreign Office.

They had to give up their passports as a condition of the loan until they repaid the debt, with a surcharge added to unpaid bills after six months.

That. That’s how not to do it. Don’t do it that way.

Four young British women imprisoned and tortured at a “correctional” religious school in Somalia ahead of expected forced marriages told the Times they each had to pay £740 to return home, where the burden of the loans allegedly contributed towards them becoming destitute.

Pragna Patel, the founder of Southall Black Sisters, a charity that helps women escape from forced marriages, told the Times: “These are vulnerable young women who have been taken abroad through no fault of their own and forced into slavery, and yet they are being asked to pay for their protection. It can’t be right. Protecting victims from forced marriage must be seen as a fundamental right and not a profit-making business.”

What was done to the women would be crimes if done in the UK, and the CPS doesn’t make victims pay for prosecutions, I’m pretty sure. How about not doing that when it happens abroad either?

Originally a comment by iknklast on $1000 a ticket.

As an American (sigh), my experience here in the Midwest is that the people who vote for Trump (and those who didn’t) pretty much regard the president almost as a king in terms of power (he isn’t; the Constitution left him weak, but 20th century presidents grabbed tons of power and Congress let them do it). The Trump voters actually think that stuff is good, and will make America Great Again, by which they mean 1950s for women and children, and 1880s for business [women baking cookies all day and vacuuming in pearls; children being whacked in school when they act up (not their children, because their children are brought up ‘right’); children being required to pray, salute the flag, and have devotionals in school; and business not being fettered by unions, environmental regulations, or minimum wage].

They actually believe that making the world better for everyone actually made it worse for them, mostly because they believe in their own superiority and are sure that in a world freed from ‘liberal tinkering’ they would be on the top of the heap, rich and powerful, and respected both at work and at home. They are not aware that they are where they are because of unions, college grants/loans that allowed them to get their education, and women who did all the damn work so they could succeed. They do not realize that their most likely location in the hierarchy would be working long ass days without a guaranteed lunch or weekend, being paid in scrip they can only use at the country store, and dying young in an industrial accident. That’s because, in this part of the country at least, the educational system has been afraid to tell people anything other than the rah rah creation story of the country where simple farmers went out and won the war without any help (I had no idea the French helped us until college, where history was taught somewhat more accurately). They have been taught that they are the chosen, filled with manifest destiny, and that Western men (and only men) have built things, created things, discovered things, killed things, and established things.

In their world, history was simple and clean until FDR messed it up with the New Deal, and liberals took over and started running everything. Even when Reagan was in power, even when Bush was in power, even with Trump in power, even when conservatives have all three branches of government, they still believe liberals, Jews, women, and gays hold all the power and control all the governmental functions, money, and everything else. No matter that none of those groups have ever held power in this country, and that every small step we’ve taken we’ve had to fight, sweat, and die for, they believe that we have swept through the nation, carpet bombing conservative communities, taking sledgehammers to churches, and castrating males, while demanding worship and veneration (not all literally, of course, because they can see that the churches are still standing and that their balls are intact, but in a real way nevertheless).

So when Trump comes along, they embrace him because he believes those things, too, and is willing to say out loud what these guys have been saying (most of them out loud, in spite of what you hear in the media) for years. I know they’ve been saying it out loud, because I live right here in the heartland, where I can hear it even with my hands over my ears. It’s the same dynamic I saw here one summer when the farmers moaned that there had been so much rain they couldn’t get the irrigators in the fields. They can see the truth, it’s obvious, but they can’t see it because it doesn’t fit the picture of reality they have built.

One woman on the City Council translated to women running everything, though we’ve never had a woman mayor (and the woman who ran for mayor in 2016 was roundly defeated). One gay pride parade on the main street of town (which is not, of course, Main Street) and the gays have taken over everything. One Muslim working at our school teaching economics, and the Muslims are plotting to destroy the white man. Anywhere they see someone in power who does not look like them, and it’s Armageddon for middle-class white males. It’s like someone put paranoia juice in the water supply, or something.

Elinor Lipman has another of her brilliant short topical poems:

Who said my wall’s a "metaphor"?
I’ve never heard that word before.
To me it sounds elite and funny.
At Penn, I only studied money. #StableGenius

— Elinor Lipman (@ElinorLipman) January 2, 2019

Back in September…

India’s supreme court has ruled against a ban on girls and women of menstruating age from entering a prominent Hindu temple in southern Kerala state, upholding rights to equality of worship.

The authorities at the Sabarimala temple, which attracts tens of millions of pilgrims every year, have said the ban on women and girls aged from 10 to 50 was essential to the rites related to the temple’s chief deity, Ayyappan, who is considered eternally celibate, and were rooted in a centuries-old tradition.

Yes, so much suppression and exclusion of women is rooted in a centuries-old tradition. It’s been a centuries-old tradition to treat women as the property of men and as fundamentally insignificant for millennia. That’s not a reason to keep on doing it. Many centuries-old traditions are unjust or cruel or both. Let’s unceremoniously dump them.

And it’s so circular, in the way it takes male subjectivity as decisive and female subjectivity as irrelevant. The temple’s chief deity is male and is considered eternally celibate, therefore women represent nothing but A Threat To This Man’s Celibacy – as walking sex-slots, basically. The idea that their presence in the temple would be for their own reasons, that have nothing to do with sex, isn’t even rejected, it makes no appearance at all.

Lauren Frayer and Sushmita Pathak at NPR December 22:

The Sabarimala temple is famous for this pilgrimage. It attracts millions of Hindu devotees each year. But most of them are men, because the temple is also famous for something else: a partial ban on female worshippers.

The temple is dedicated to Lord Ayyappa, a Hindu god who devotees believe is celibate and cannot have contact with women of menstruating age. Some believe that’s because such women are impure. Others believe it’s because they are of childbearing age — fertile and thus a temptation to Lord Ayyappa. (Hinduism has no central authority on religious doctrine, and believers’ rationales vary.)

“We need to keep the bitches ladies out; never you mind why.”

The fact that the rationales are plural hints that it’s rooted in plain old misogyny. The men just don’t want women around because women are inferior goods because they’re not men. If a temple is special then it should be reserved for men because men are best and women are meh.

In September, India’s Supreme Court ruled that Sabarimala’s age restrictions on women amount to gender discrimination. Justices ordered the temple to admit women of all ages, immediately.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of protesters, male and female devotees and some right-wing Hindu politicians have turned out to block women from approaching the temple.

Not one woman between the ages of 10 and 50 has been able to reach Sabarimala since the court ruled Sept. 28 that they should be able to do so.

Serves the sluts right, the whores.

Many say that women’s presence at Sabarimala offends their faith and that the Supreme Court ruling infringes on their freedom of religion.

But what about the freedom of religion of women between 10 and 50? The ban infringes that, so what’s the solution?

Thousands of protesters, including local politicians from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, have been arrested since September for taking part in violent demonstrations against the court’s verdict.

Some female devotees have taken part in the protests, arguing that they do not want the right to visit the temple — and vowing to block others who do.

Ancient traditions can do that to people – convince them of their own inferiority, for instance.

When NPR journalists — two women under age 50 — visited the area to report this story, police offered a patrol car and several officers to escort us, to ensure our safety. Several taxi companies refused to drive us to Nilakkal, the temple’s base camp, about 13 miles from the temple. The closest we could persuade a driver to take us was to another town, Erumely, about 20 miles from the temple.

So the ban extends – however informally – 20 miles out from the temple. That’s quite a ban.

When a prominent Hindu feminist, Trupti Desai, announced in October her intention to visit Sabarimala, she says, she received hundreds of death threats.

“They said, ‘If you come to Kerala, we’ll break your limbs. We’ll cut you up into pieces,’ ” Desai recalls.

Sweet.

In recent years, India’s Supreme Court has delivered landmark rulings to protect the rights of women, religious minorities and homosexuals. But some Indians see that trend as too progressive, too Western.

“What is progressive for you may not be progressive for me. Merely because something happened in America or in Europe, it need not be necessarily applicable to or acceptable to the culture of this country,” says Cyriac Joseph, a retired Supreme Court justice who disagrees with his former colleagues’ decision to allow women to go to the temple.

As a member of India’s Christian minority, Joseph believes the court should be especially careful to protect the rights of any religious group to worship as it sees fit.

“For example, in the Catholic Church, only men are allowed to be priests. Will the court say this is against equality? That is ridiculous!” he says.

No it is not; it is far from ridiculous. Religions make huge claims on people, telling them what is good and what to believe; making religions a male monopoly gives men sole authority over what women as well as men are told to do and think.

News from Kerala:

Women in the southern Indian state of Kerala have formed a 620km (385-mile) human chain “in support of gender equality”, amid a row over access to a prominent Hindu temple.

The Sabarimala shrine was historically closed to women of “menstruating age” – defined as between 10 and 50.

Because they’re dirty? Because they can be impregnated? Both? Is there any difference?

It’s interesting, isn’t it, as an aspect of human nature, that the thing most humans probably value above all others, to wit the ability to keep the species going, the tribe going, the village going, the family going…is also the thing that is seen as dirty, disgusting, contaminating. Women are magical because they can make new people in their abdomens, but women are a taint because they can make new people in their abdomens. It’s a sacred thing women do, and it’s also a filthy polluted treacherous thing women do. Let’s be on the safe side and keep them out of everything.

India’s top court overturned the ban in September, but protesters have since attacked female visitors.

The “women’s wall” was organised by the state’s left-wing coalition government.

Officials told BBC Hindi’s Imran Qureshi that around five million women from various parts of Kerala had gathered across all national highways to form the chain, which stretched from the northern tip of Kasaragod to the southern end in Thiruvanthapuram.

Five million.

Five million.

That is some kind of organizing.

The Supreme Court decision to let women worship at the Sabarimala shrine came after a petition argued that the custom banning them violated gender equality.

But India’s ruling party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has argued that the ruling is an attack on Hindu values.

That’s another interesting thing about humans: the fact that the more fanatically a religion is held the more determinedly misogynist and oppressive to women it is. There is no fundamentalism that treats women as equals.

Hinduism regards menstruating women as unclean and bars them from participating in religious rituals – but most temples allow women to enter as long as they are not menstruating, rather than banning women in a broad age group from entering at all.

As if that’s an improvement. That menstruation that is considered unclean? It’s how we all got here. Every last damn one of us. It was our breakfast lunch and dinner while we gestated; without it we would have shriveled and died and been expelled. It should be worshipped, but god-botherers decide it’s ewwwwww yucky. “God” is a bratty little boy.

Twitter bans Meghan Murphy for saying true things about Jonathan Yaniv, but refuses to do anything about a rapist who uses Twitter as a tool for collecting victims. Interesting priorities.

The Twitter account for a rapist photographer has finally been removed after a judge had to order the company to take action.

Nigel Wilkinson was recently convicted for a second time after drugging and raping young men he had lured with free photoshoots.

After Twitter initially failed to remove his account, the judge in the case issued the order forcing the firm to take it down.

…

In 2016, he was jailed for 11 years and six months for a series of sex offences.

The court heard he preyed on the young men who came for photoshoots at his studio in Bristol, drugging them and raping or sexually assaulting them, as well as spying or filming them.

While in prison, he was charged and convicted of another set of offences when new victims came forward after reading about the 2016 case.

…

The trial had heard Wilkinson used social media – particularly Twitter – to search for his victims, inviting them for photoshoots before drugging and attacking them.

But despite his 2016 conviction, the judge in the December 2018 case found that Wilkinson’s Twitter account was still open.

He issued an order forcing Twitter to take it down, which has now taken place.

Although his Facebook and Instagram accounts had both been deleted, American social media company Twitter had thus far declined to remove the account, despite his criminal conviction.

Twitter declined to comment.

So much woke bro.

https://twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1079872396230868993

https://twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1080101494895112192

https://twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1080159100992921604

https://twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1080173592589914112

Funny how hating women is the new right-on, isn’t it.

Jan 2: updating to add: account suspended. Those tweets will never appear again!

Sigh.

NARRATOR: There are in fact no "heads of countries" calling asking why Sen. Schumer is not approving "otherwise approved Ambassadors." The heads of other countries know that McConnell, not Schumer, is majority leader, and that there is only a 50-vote threshold for confirmations. https://t.co/R9RBbfP7aG

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 31, 2018