Oh ffs, Barack. Really? Really? You don’t know better than this?

Instead of leaving the Bay Area Thursday after what would have normally been a quiet two-day fundraising trip, President Obama faced some criticism for  calling California’s Kamala Harris “the best-looking attorney general in the country.”

Obama’s comments came at the second of two fundraisers in Atherton Thursday  and began with praise for Harris’ performance as attorney general.

“You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is  administering the law and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,”  Obama said. “She also happens to be

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Soraya Chemaly explains, again, that internet harassment and threatening are not trivial or no biggy or “harmless expressions of free speech.”

Often, these incidents come down to a group of men targeting a woman because they perceive a potential threat to men’s “free speech” and that this threat trumps a woman’s rights — to free speech and to actual, physical safety.

Take Rebecca Meredith. Two weeks ago, as she wrote about in an article in the Mail Online, she participated in a formal university debate. Some students, most, if not all, of whom happened to be men, heckled her.  Fine, everyone gets heckled.  But then, when she and her female debating partner confronted the hecklers for the sexist tone

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Something I didn’t know about – a guy who pretended to self-identify as female to run for Women’s Officer at UCL. Oh ha ha, I can smell the jokes from here.

The UCL student uploaded a video of a woman being punched by a man and a photo with the slogan “memes are gay” as part of his campaign. Sneade, who is now claiming discrimination, reportedly likened his plight to the communist persecution in Nazi Germany.

Sneade’s original manifesto stated:

• Kirk Sneade has self defined as a woman ever since he realised it gave him legal access to the women’s changing rooms at the Bloomsbury gym.

Kirk wants to make clear his desire to attend all Women’s forums to

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Stephanie discusses the “advice” Justin Vacula gives on how to deal with being harassed. I put “advice” in scare quotes because it’s not really advice in the ordinary understanding of the word; it’s more of a bullies’ formula than advice. “I’ll stop harassing you if you stop doing all the things that motivate me to harass you” is about the size of it.

Then Justin Vacula showed up, still trying to peddle the idea that the harassment is just the little price that some of us have to pay in order to have an opinion. Novella pointed out that he was both minimizing and mischaracterizing the situation. So Vacula (in a comment that included a couple of quotes for

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Ben Radford has been exposed to some straw feminists, and he wants us to know he’s over them.

I am over the male bashing often inherent in feminist writings and slogans; “All men are rapists” is neither true nor fair nor helpful.

“Often inherent in feminist writings and slogans”? What does that even mean? He must mean “inherent in many feminist writings and slogans.” But then what does he mean “inherent”? That’s a very odd word to choose. It’s not “inherent” in anything; it’s either put in by the writer or it’s not. Maybe he means “inherently illiberal” or something like that. It’s a pity he’s not more inherently careful when writing.

And then, he’s right about the silly … Read the rest

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Jessica Valenti has a great article in The Nation, written as a letter to male relatives on Facebook who “like” things like haha-funny videos of men running up to women to grab their bums. Haha funny, right? Great joke?

Here’s the thing: those guys running up to women just to grab their ass? Stuff like that happens to women all the time. It’s happened to me. When I was your age, guys—from boys in school to men on the subway—used to grope and touch me against my will too. I don’t know if any of them videotaped it or if they did it as a “joke”—all I know was that it was really scary.

Well yes but that’s … Read the rest

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Via Taslima, Mona Eltahawy talks to Robin Morgan. Mona is determinedly hopeful, but not blind to the reality.

Mona: I think we’ve reached the stage in Egypt where people understand that with a president from the Muslim Brotherhood movement and a still very powerful military, we’re caught between a very bad rock and a very horrible hard place because you’re talking about two sides of one coin: authoritarian, totalitarian, doesn’t believe in civil liberties and for whom and for which women’s rights are, absolutely at the bottom of any totem pole hierarchy and one of the highlights in my last visit to Cairo was attending a meeting that veteran feminists Nawal El Saadawi called in which it brought

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Good old glib smug “mainstream” journalism, sneering at anything non-majoritarian or insurrectionist. Dana Milbank at the Washington Post apparently thinks secularism is just a big joke.

The nation’s atheists went to Capitol Hill on Monday to launch an effort that they hope will someday give them the lobbying clout of the Christian conservative movement.

They don’t have a prayer.

He sneers smugly. Is he pleased that theocrats have more lobbying clout than secularists? Does he think theocracy would be a good thing?

But that obvious fact won’t stop them from exercising their God-given right to petition their government for a redress of grievances. And their grievances are many, including:

● the “In God We Trust” national motto.

● the

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EllenBeth Wachs and Rebecca Watson were at the Humanists of Florida Association conference this weekend, and so was Kelly Damerow of the Secular Coalition for America. They both separately chatted with her face to face about the appointment of Justin Vacula as co-director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the SCA. They also asked questions during the q&a after her talk.

Rebecca told Damerow that Vacula had written for the site that called Rebecca a stupid whore and that he had harassed Amy Davis Roth. Damerow was obviously upset by this, but she gave no ground.

During the q&a Rebecca described Vacula’s activities for the audience, and she reports that there was an audible gasp and then things got very … Read the rest

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Oh, so it happens in the UK too, eh. Michael W Story says it does, at least.

I like going to public lectures; I’ve met some great friends and friends who became colleagues there, many of whom I saw last weekend at the post Pod Delusion Live drinks. I’ve spoken at Ignite, done the odd Skeptics in the Pub as part of a double act with Martin Robbins and will be giving a solo presentation about my own hobby horse at Leicester in January, but I don’t feel that my attendance at things like Skeptics is an identity that represents me the way that some of the hardcore members do. So maybe it’s not my place to join

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