Paul Braterman doesn’t like being told what he can say. I know the feeling.

(Mind you, there are some things I think people shouldn’t say. I think most people think that, whether they admit it or not. I frown on personal insults. But I also know the feeling when people try to exercise close-up control of what I say.)

I’m an atheist, and I’m feeling insulted

Insulted by Greta Christina’s article, “9 Answers to Common Questions for Atheists – So You Don’t Insult Us By Asking.” Insulted by the condescending and preachy answers offered on my behalf. Insulted that the author presumes to speak on my behalf at all, as if she were the privileged custodian of some kind of atheist credo. But above all, insulted by the suggestion that I am so intellectually fragile as to find the questions insulting.

I’ve never liked Greta’s air of being a privileged custodian of all the subjects she’s taken under her wing (or into custody, so to speak). I never voted for her for that role.

Ok, then, here are the questions to which Christina objects (I think it’s fair use in a review like this to just copy them), which she doesn’t want to hear again because she believes she has answered them once and for all, and, for what they’re worth, my own answers, which I promise you are a lot shorter than hers:

1. How can you be moral without believing in God?
2. How do you have any meaning in your life?
3. Doesn’t it take just as much faith to be an atheist as it does to be a believer?
4. Isn’t atheism just a religion?
5. What’s the point of atheist groups? How can you have a community for something you don’t believe in?
6. Why do you hate God? (Or ‘Aren’t you just angry at God?’)
7. But have you read the Bible, or some other Holy Book, heard about some supposed miracle, etc?
8. What if you’re wrong?
9. Why are you atheists so angry?

Some of them are very well-worn, of course, and answering them doesn’t seem to make any difference to anything, so if you spend a lot of time arguing for atheism you get tired of them. It doesn’t follow however that any one answer is definitive, not even if it’s Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris uttering it. Actually especially not, because they share that unfortunate habit of acting like privileged custodians of some kind of atheist credo.

Braterman gives his own, non-custodial, non-definitive answers to the questions.

Saving the worst till last

But maybe you could do a little Googling before you start asking us questions that we’ve not only fielded a hundred times before, but that have bigotry and dehumanization and religious privilege embedded in the very asking.

No, I do not expect people to do an online search before I condescend to talk to them about my beliefs, or the lack of them. Perhaps, after all, they want a conversation, are interested in seeing how an actual person responds, want to get to know me better, or simply want to spend time over a pint. And I detest the collective “we”; it should be obvious from the above examples that the way I field these questions is very different from the way someone else might. We are, after all, discussing questions about how we as individuals view the world, rather than questions about how the world is. So it is the height of arrogance for any of us to speak for the atheist community, as if we were compelled to march in step.

Well guess what, bub, we are compelled to march in step!

Hahaha just kidding, but there are those who think we are. I prefer the other kind.

Jesse Singal tweeted:

Is this a common belief among reproductive rights researchers? Natal sex doesn't matter?https://t.co/mKz2niiR2k pic.twitter.com/rwh45q99kO

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) September 12, 2016

Singal’s linked article is about pinning down the numbers on how many trans youth need pregnancy services. Within that is the exchange with Saewyc:

During an email exchange with Science of Us, Elizabeth Saewyc, a youth-health researcher at the University of British Columbia and a co-author on the study, said that she was about to head off on a trip and wasn’t able to break down the pregnancy numbers by natal sex for me in time for this post, but pointed out that in the broader survey from which these numbers were drawn, about 75 percent of the sample was female at birth, and that she thought it likely the percentage would be about the same in her subsample (Veale, the paper’s lead author, echoed this in an email). But she also said she didn’t think this was particularly important: “I’ve been a public health professional and researcher involved in sexual and reproductive health issues both clinically and from a public health perspective for 20 years, but I’m not sure what the public health issue is that would require a focus only on those who become pregnant, as opposed to any of those involved in pregnancy, either becoming pregnant or causing someone else to become pregnant.” More broadly, Saewyc had “always been curious as to why people put so much emphasis on pregnancy-related research and monitoring that is solely focused on the person with the uterus, when, at least for this age group, there are always two people involved in creating a pregnancy, whose lives and decisions are often affected by this reproductive moment, and who may be further involved in parenting, if the pregnancy leads to a birth.”

She isn’t sure what the public health issue is that would require a focus only on those who become pregnant, as opposed to any of those involved in pregnancy, either becoming pregnant or causing someone else to become pregnant.

She’s in the nursing department at UBC. She’s in the nursing department, and she isn’t sure what the public health issue is that would require a focus only on those who become pregnant? She isn’t sure why the focus isn’t equally on the people causing someone else to become pregnant?

I know why. I have no medical training, but I know why. Pregnancy happens inside bodies, and it causes huge changes to those bodies, and some of those changes are very uncomfortable, and some can be dangerous. Also, the future baby that the pregnancy is gestating may have some medical needs during the pregnancy. Also, the future baby that the pregnancy is gestating will do better if the pregnancy-haver does certain things and avoids doing certain things. That’s why. None of that applies to the people causing someone else to become pregnant.

She’s a nurse, and she has always been curious as to why people put so much emphasis on pregnancy-related research and monitoring that is solely focused on the person with the uterus, when, at least for this age group, there are always two people involved in creating a pregnancy? It’s for all the above-mentioned reasons. Pregnancy is internal to one body, and that body is what needs medical attention. The body can, with luck, do the whole thing by itself, but pre-natal care improves the odds and the comfort of the pregnancy-haver enormously, so that’s the reason for the emphasis that Saewyc claims to find so mystifying.

The people causing someone else to become pregnant may well need all kinds of social help and support, but they don’t need any medical support connected to the pregnancy. I hope most nurses have a firm grasp on this point.

Catherine Bennett on Keith Vaz and that home affairs select committee report:

The first fact mentioned in the new report on prostitution by the home affairs select committee is that “around 11% of British men aged 16–74 have paid for sex on at least one occasion”. The home affairs select committee is composed of eight men and three women. Given the men’s ages, their resources and arguably enhanced opportunities, as MPs, to conclude such transactions, maybe it is not so remarkable that at least one of the parliamentarians deciding on the future legality of prostitution may also have been a sex buyer.

It’s more surprising, really, that no one on the committee, principally its chairman, Keith Vaz, seems to have questioned whether, with that level of gender imbalance, it was the ideal investigator of the overwhelmingly gendered issue of prostitution. During its second hearing, an entirely male committee would question two women, both former sex workers. Vaz assured witnesses that he approached the hearings with no “preconceived views”, as required. “After we have completed our inquiry, parliament probably will not look at this again for many years.”

No preconceived views…except of course the view that men are entitled to buy access to women. But what relevance could that view possibly have to an inquiry on prostitution?

For his supporters, of course, none of this, any more than his alleged unsafe sex or companions’ use of cocaine (and poppers), has a bearing on the Vaz prostitution report. We would not, Peter Tatchell argued, “demand that MPs who drink and smoke declare an interest when they discuss legislation affecting the alcohol and cigarette industries”.

So Peter Tatchell thinks that prostitutes are commodities just the way alcohol and cigarettes are.

I’m sure he would say he didn’t, if you asked him, but that certainly is the implication of that silly argument.

Long before leading the inquiry, he advertised, in a 2009 debate, his opposition to interfering with paying sexual transactions. To be fair, a tender concern for prostitutes, or fallen women as they used to be known, is something of a parliamentary tradition, dating at least back to Gladstone. “Ministers have used the phrase, ‘Let us tackle the demand for sex,’” Vaz objected. “We cannot just say to people, ‘Do not have sex’, or, ‘Do not have sex in these circumstances’; governments should not be involved, in my view, in making such statements.”

Presumably this very clear position changed at some point before he assumed command of a government inquiry set up to, among other things, examine the “demand which drives commercial sexual exploitation”. Anyway, full disclosure: I was recently a member of a commission that supported the introduction in Britain of “Nordic model” legislation that aims, precisely in the way once unacceptable to Vaz, to reduce demand for prostitution by penalising the buyers and not, as now, the sellers of sex. Introduced in Sweden in 1999, and now enacted, with variations, in four more countries, including France, the legislation proceeds from the principle, endorsed by the European parliament and many women’s organisations (and opposed by an equally vehement lobby), that prostitution amounts to acutely gendered exploitation, with horrifying costs to the many of the women and girls whose bodies are thus commodified.

To take just one figure that emerged in the Vaz hearings, when assistant chief constable Nikki Holland wanted to illustrate prostituted women’s vulnerability: “We have had 153 murders since 1990, which is probably the highest group of murders in any one category, so that gives the police cause for concern.”

But murders, such as those of five women in Ipswich, and a recent homicide in Leeds, did not appear to worry Mr Vaz overmuch.

Because it’s not his problem, is it. He’s not a worker, he’s a buyer. He’s not motivated to protect the workers, he’s motivated to protect the buyers.

If Vaz’s interim report is not dismissed as fatally compromised, family guy now buys sex with the official blessing of the home affairs committee. Sceptical of most research, it is airy about trafficking, artful in describing rights-based arguments as quaintly “moral” and wilfully obtuse about the power imbalance between sex buyers and sellers. In what, on the evidence of his hearings, may well be the authentic voice of Vaz, it denies any connection between sexual exploitation and “prostitution between consenting adults”. Maybe that’s his way of declaring an interest.

Listen to the sex buyers.

Sikh 2 Inspire are posting drivel on their Facebook page to justify their disruption of someone else’s wedding today.

Five hours ago:

Our brothers peacefully protested in the form of a sit down protest chanting vaheguru mantar at leamington spa gurdwara sahib, and are currently being arrested.

What is their crime?

No violence was committed, no one used a Sri Sahib, and no foul language was used.

More information and videos can be found on Sikh youth Birmingham page.

To clarify one key point, the Sikhs protesting were not ‘armed’ with anything other than their kirpans which a Sikh must wear always being amritdhari. This is yet again the police and press twisting facts to suit their headlines and over the top responses to a peaceful a Sikh protest.

Sikh to inspire support the need for a gurdwara committee sudhar lehar where Beadbi of guru sahib takes place.

Today in Leamington Spa:

Armed officers were called to a Sikh temple in Leamington Spa on Sunday morning after more than 50 men, some carrying blades, entered the building to stop an interfaith marriage service.

For around eight hours, the group, described by a trustee of the Gurdwara temple as “fanatical extremists”, occupied the foyer, forcing the postponement of a wedding between a Sikh bride and a Hindu groom that had been scheduled for Sunday.

That’s nice, isn’t it? Interrupting and stopping someone else’s wedding because the couple don’t have the same religion.

Late in the afternoon the police arrested 55 men – 55 men who forcibly halted a wedding that was none of their business. Weapons were seized; all but one of them were kirpans, those ceremonial daggers that have become a “religious rights” issue when they are banned from schools.

It was the third or fourth time in recent months that a group of men had attempted to gain entry to the Gurdwara over the issue of mixed marriages. On previous occasions they were resisted by temple security staff, according a trustee of the Gurdwara.

He told the Guardian the intruders were carrying ceremonial Sikh blades and other knives and occupied the temple reception area. At the time a routine early morning religious service was under way attended by several dozen worshippers.

“They pushed around a couple of people, grabbed a tie, grabbed someone’s phone and they were trying to threaten people,” claimed the trustee, who asked not to be named. “People were scared. When a normal person goes to the Gurdwara they go to pray and be at peace. People are really, really annoyed with them.”

Religious fanaticism is no one’s friend.

Peter Beinart points out in the Atlantic that Hillary Clinton is hated in a way that other recent Democratic candidates haven’t been.

According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 52 percent of white men hold a “very unfavorable” view of Clinton. That’s a whopping 20 points higher than the percentage who viewed Barack Obama very unfavorably in 2012, 32 points higher than the percentage who viewed Obama very unfavorably in 2008, and 28 points higher than the percentage who viewed John Kerry very unfavorably in 2004.

Some of that, it seems to me, could be because people don’t want yet more Clinton. But the way it’s expressed…yeah that’s just good ol’ misogyny.

At the Republican National Convention, this fervent hostility was hard to miss. Inside the hall, delegates repeatedly broke into chants of “Lock her up.” Outside the hall, vendors sold campaign paraphernalia. As I walked around, I recorded the merchandise on display. Here’s a sampling:

Black pin reading don’t be a pussy. vote for trump in 2016. Black-and-red pin reading trump 2016: finally someone with balls. White T-shirt reading trump that bitch. White T‑shirt reading hillary sucks but not like monica. Red pin reading life’s a bitch: don’t vote for one. White pin depicting a boy urinating on the word Hillary. Black T-shirt depicting Trump as a biker and Clinton falling off the motorcycle’s back alongside the words if you can read this, the bitch fell off. Black T-shirt depicting Trump as a boxer having just knocked Clinton to the floor of the ring, where she lies faceup in a clingy tank top. White pin advertising kfc hillary special. 2 fat thighs. 2 small breasts … left wing.

I blogged about some of that at the time. I also didn’t blog about some of it, but rolled my eyes instead. But, yeah – it’s permanently disconcerting to see how instantly disagreement with a woman morphs into loathing and contempt for her femaleitude.

Standard commentary about Clinton’s candidacy—which focuses on her email server, the Benghazi attack, her oratorical deficiencies, her struggles with “authenticity”—doesn’t explain the intensity of this opposition. But the academic literature about how men respond to women who assume traditionally male roles does. And it is highly disturbing.

…

To understand this reaction, start with what social psychologists call “precarious manhood” theory. The theory posits that while womanhood is typically viewed as natural and permanent, manhood must be “earned and maintained.”

I’ve noticed that. It’s “man up,” never “woman up.” It’s “be a man” but not “be a woman.” I’ve interpreted that as being because man=good and woman=not so much, but that does make it precarious. If you’re female you’re already second-rate so there’s nothing to fall off from, but if you’re male you can let the side down by not being awesome enough.

Among the emasculations men most fear is subordination to women.

…

Why is this relevant to Hillary Clinton? It’s relevant because the Americans who dislike her most are those who most fear emasculation. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, Americans who “completely agree” that society is becoming “too soft and feminine” were more than four times as likely to have a “very unfavorable” view of Clinton as those who “completely disagree.” And the presidential-primary candidate whose supporters were most likely to believe that America is becoming feminized—more likely by double digits than supporters of Ted Cruz—was Donald Trump.

No surprise there.

Another troubling omen comes from Australia and Brazil, where, in recent years, pioneering female leaders have suffered a brutal backlash. To be sure, some women leaders—Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Indira Gandhi—have thrived despite sexist opposition. Still, research suggests that women leaders are less likely than their male counterparts to be accepted as legitimate, a problem that plagued both Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who was ousted in 2013 after only three years, and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached earlier this year for corruption even though her male predecessors and some of her key male tormentors had likely done worse.

When men do it it’s dashing, when women do it it’s ugh witch harpy demon ball-eater.

I wish Canada would adopt us.

From A Mighty Girl:

Happy 62nd birthday to Ruby Bridges! As a six-year-old, Ruby Bridges famously became the first African American child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in the South. When the 1st grader walked to William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960 surrounded by a team of U.S. Marshals, she was met by a vicious mob shouting and throwing objects at her.

One of the federal marshals, Charles Burks, who served on her escort team, recalls Bridges’ courage in the face of such hatred: “For a little girl six years old going into a strange school with four strange deputy marshals, a place she had never been before, she showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier. We were all very proud of her.”

Once Ruby entered the school, she discovered that it was devoid of children because they had all been removed by their parents due to her presence. The only teacher willing to have Ruby as a student was Barbara Henry, who had recently moved from Boston. Ruby was taught by herself for her first year at the school due to the white parents’ refusal to have their children share a classroom with a black child.

Despite daily harassment, which required the federal marshals to continue escorting her to school for months; threats towards her family; and her father’s job loss due to his family’s role in school integration, Ruby persisted in attending school. The following year, when she returned for second grade, the mobs were gone and more African American students joined her at the school. The pioneering school integration effort was a success due to Ruby Bridges’ inspiring courage, perseverance, and resilience.

The BHA’s Stephen Evans on the “faith” schools issue.

Theresa May confirmed today that the government plans to capitulate to the demands of religious groups by relaxing admissions rules for faith-based academies, allowing them to select all of their pupils along religious lines.

It’s hard to think of a more regressive policy than the facilitation of greater religious segregation of children and young people in our education system.

And what are we to make of the government’s warnings about schoolchildren having little or no understanding of others, when their policies seem destined to exacerbate exactly that? Only last year the schools minister Lord Nash said the government had “no plans to review the 50% limit for faith-based admissions to free schools”, describing the cap as “an important way of supporting these schools to be inclusive and to meet the needs of a broad mix of families”. So what changed?

Well the PM changed, for a start, but Evans cites the fact that more school places are needed and “free schools” are seen as part of the solution.

The success of free schools policy very much relies on school sponsors coming forward – and until now the Catholic Church has been reluctant to do so, rejecting limitations on the extent to which it can discriminate against non-Catholics. It insists that the public money it receives to run schools should be spent on providing schools to serve only people of the Catholic faith.

Here’s the thing, though, education is one thing and indoctrination is another. Good education, properly understood, is fundamentally opposed to indoctrination. Schools should not be Catholic or Islamic or Lutheran any more than they should be Nazi or SWP.

It’s clear that this latest proposal to relax admission arrangements follows relentless lobbying from religious organisations of the government to remove the 50% cap. But by rushing to satisfy the demands of faith-based education providers, the government risks recklessly neglecting the civic purpose of state education – which surely includes preparing children for their role as equal citizens of a multicultural, religiously diverse liberal democracy.

Not just the civic purpose. The government even more risks neglecting the intellectual purpose of state education.

The British Humanist Association:

New Government plans announced today are very serious – and we need to mobilise against them.

Theresa May’s plans entail removing the current cap on religious discrimination in English schools so that new schools can discriminate by religion in 100% of places.

This is a direct result of lobbying from the Catholic Church, whose policy has been against any requirement for Catholic pupils to mix with those of other faiths and no faith.

But the evidence is crystal clear that discrimination by religion compounds social selection and leads to segregation by class, race, and even gender in schools across the country. More discrimination of this sort serves no one’s agenda but those of religious leaders – and it threatens to undermine integration in our communities.

We have to act quickly and we need your support to act decisively. Joining the BHA adds to our weight as a campaigning organisation and fund us to do more to stop these plans. Please, will you join us? The link to do so is humanism.org.uk/join. Thank you.

Well I’ll be damned – the Obama admin has paused the construction of the Lake Oahe section of that North Dakota pipeline.

The Obama administration said it would not authorize construction on a critical stretch of the Dakota Access pipeline, handing a significant victory to the Indian tribe fighting the project the same day the group lost a court battle.

The administration said construction would halt until it can do more environmental assessments.

The Department of Justice, the Army and the Interior Department jointly announced that construction would pause on the pipeline near North Dakota’s Lake Oahe, a major water source on the Missouri River for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

The agencies will now decide whether they need to reconsider permitting decisions for the pipeline under the National Environmental Policy Act.

“The Army will move expeditiously to make this determination, as everyone involved — including the pipeline company and its workers — deserves a clear and timely resolution,” the agencies said in a statement. “In the interim, we request that the pipeline company voluntarily pause all construction activity within 20 miles east or west of Lake Oahe.”

The Lake Oahe crossing was a major concern for the tribe, which worries about the impact a leak in the pipeline would have on the lake.

In the light of the Flint disaster maybe we should be more careful with people’s water supplies, yes even people who aren’t rich and powerful and gleaming-white.

A federal judge Friday denied the tribe’s request to halt construction on the 1,170-mile pipeline. The administration’s decision came shortly after that decision.

The tribe had sued over the Army Corps’ approval of the project under a historic preservation law, but the judge ruled that regulators had acted properly when issuing permitting for the project.

Despite the ruling, the agencies said, “important issues raised by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations and their members regarding the Dakota Access pipeline specifically, and pipeline-related decision-making generally, remain.”

You don’t see that happen every day – agencies actually paying attention to concerns and protests.

Dave Archambault II, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, hailed the decision, and vowed to continue fighting against the project.

“I want to take a moment and reflect on this historic moment in Indian Country,” Archambault said in a statement. “But I know that our work is not done. We need to to permanently protect our sacred sites and our water. There are areas on the construction route that do not fall within federal jurisdiction, so we will continue to fight.”

Let’s do this kind of thing more often.

And now Facebook has admitted it was being ridiculous.

On Friday, following widespread criticisms from news organizations and media experts across the globe, Facebook reversed its decision, saying in a statement to the Guardian: “After hearing from our community, we looked again at how our Community Standards were applied in this case. An image of a naked child would normally be presumed to violate our Community Standards, and in some countries might even qualify as child pornography. In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time.”

The statement continued: “Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed.”

It said it plans to do better in future.

Facebook v Norway, part 2.

Facebook has deleted a post by the Norwegian prime minister in an escalating row over the website’s decision to remove content featuring the Pulitzer-prize winning “napalm girl” photograph from the Vietnam war.

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or swear or question one’s grip on reality.

Erna Solberg, the Conservative prime minister, called on Facebook to “review its editing policy” after it deleted her post voicing support for a Norwegian newspaper that had fallen foul of the social media giant’s guidelines.

Solberg was one of a string of Norwegian politicians who shared the iconic image after Facebook deleted a post from Tom Egeland, a writer who had included the Nick Ut picture as one of seven photographs he said had “changed the history of warfare”.

But Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t take any crap from Scandinavian prime ministers.

In her intervention on Friday, the Norwegian prime minister wrote that the photograph, entitled The Terror of War and featuring the naked nine-year-old Kim Phúc running away from a napalm attack, had “shaped world history”.

Solberg added: “I appreciate the work Facebook and other media do to stop content and pictures showing abuse and violence … But Facebook is wrong when they censor such images.”

The Guardian asked her what she thought of Facebook’s deletion of her post. She said, probably sardonically, at least we have to give them credit for not discriminating. Yes it’s very egalitarian, but on the other hand not discriminating between child porn and the photo of Kim Phúc is not the right kind of non-discrimination.

Now I have to go post that photo on Facebook.