An unpleasant man, who is the Executive Director of The Sydney Institute, a conservative think tank, talks some drearily familiar unpleasant crap about Jane Caro and sexist epithets and destroying the joint.

Who would have thought that a throwaway piece of old fashioned Australian slang  could, within a few days, become a matter of international interest?  But that’s  the modern world of instant communications , home to the ”IIA” syndrome.   Meaning ”insult, indignation, apology” in that order.

And?

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If the “throwaway piece of old fashioned slang” (of whatever nationality) is a sexist or racist or homophobic epithet, it’s not automatically a bad thing if someone kicks up a fuss about it and attention is … Read the rest

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I wasn’t going to say anything about this (because it’s too goofy), but other people are, so I will after all, because it’s there – the Comment is Free piece on Atheism+.

First, before we even get to the article – there’s the subhead, and the url. The subhead says

A new movement, Atheism+, has prompted non-believers to spit venom at one another rather than at true believers

And the url obligingly includes the words “spit” and “venom” – and yet Peter McGrath did not use the word “spit” in the article. Venom, yes, but spit, no. So the editor gave the article an extra dose of nasty, just for the fun of it. Andrew Brown at work?

The article … Read the rest

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Jane Caro is feeling sympathetic toward men. It must be embarrassing “to see your normally rather pleasant and decorative gender being represented by such a pack of loudmouthed fools.”

Men like Todd Akin for instance. Or the Anglicans.

In what they clearly regarded as a great leap forward into the 15th century, the Sydney Anglicans triumphantly announced that they had changed the female version of their wedding vows so that women no longer promised to obey, but merely to  submit.

And the difference is…?

The next bloke to trash the male gender’s reputation was ex-Liberal Party  machine man, Grahame Morris. Asked what he thought of the ABC’s 7.30 presenter Leigh Sales’s withering interview with Tony Abbott, he remarked  that

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The Everyday Sexism Project keeps track of that very thing. If you follow it on Twitter you see a lot of items that people send in. One today was the children’s magazine rack at Tesco.

Picture by @sconesgone… Read the rest

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Round 873 of “there’s rape and then there’s just getting a little frisky.”

Naomi McAuliffe lays it out.

Yesterday, US Representative Todd Akin reinvented female biology by telling us that we can’t get pregnant from “legitimate rape”. But there is a rich history of rape being redefined to suit the occasion; whether it is former Presidential candidate Ron Paul’s concession that victims of “honest rape” can get an abortion or the Roman Polanski rape of a 13 year-old which wasn’t “rape-rape”.

All of these manoeuvres have an ulterior motive – either to outlaw abortion in all circumstances or to exonerate an accused celebrity. What they can all draw on and feed is the belief that there is “bad

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A little more about this one crux in Jean’s argument about two types of skeptics-about-feminism (or particular feminist claims), because I think it is one place a lot of wheels came off, so better understanding might help…at least with understanding.

To rehearse the claim again:

The respectable skeptic may be on board with all substantive feminist goals, but they lean very liberal on sexual issues and libertarian-ish on rules and codes. They may also have distinctive positions on purely empirical matters, like how often harassing incidents occur, and what the impact is of discussing them at blogs. Their views on what will advance the status of women may also be distinctive. It strikes me as inflammatory and distorted to accuse

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There are two (yes two!) women working at Gizmodo now. One of them has a few tips for some of their readers.

Some of you seem to be under the misguided impression that sexual favors are the only way a woman could possibly end up writing for a tech blog—wrong. And you know what? It’s not just wrong, it’s rude.

It’s rude to come into our posts and say that the only reason we have the jobs that we do is because Gizmodo needed to fulfill some imagined gender quota. It’s fucking rude to say that we’re only writing for Gizmodo because we “lipstick shampooed” some guy’s “jock” to “get our job.” (Your over-evolved metaphor only further proves your

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Wow.

Last January the first meeting of the All-Party Women’s Group in the UK Parliament met to discuss “The Media: A Female Politician’s Worst Enemy?” Well there’s a subject, eh?

British women no longer apologise in a whisper: they blame themselves and each other in loud and strident voices, refusing to admit or allow any vulnerability, and advocating nothing more to counter misogyny, sexism and gender discrimination than an upper lip so stiff even Brief Encounter’s Celia Johnson would have balked.

“Have you all finished whingeing?” Janet Street-Porter shouted at the rest of the panel of female politicians and leading journalists. “What you lot have to get your heads around is that we’re our own worst enemies. That you get

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Foster Disbelief is pleased to see the new trend.

After watching certain atheists say hurtful, hateful, idiotic, misogynistic things directed atRebecca Watson, the whole Skepchick crew (especially Surly Amy recently), other women in skepticism who dared to speak out, and the men who understand that there is a problem and want to do something to fix it, it is refreshing to see this quote from President of the American Atheists, Dave Silverman:

[you know the quote]

The minute I saw this quote at Butterflies and Wheels I decided to join American Atheists.  I’ll be proud to be a member of an organization that gets it, and that stands by its members even in the face

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More from Enlightened Sexism.

Because women are now “equal” and the battle is over and won, we are now free to embrace things we used to see as sexist, including hypergirliness. In fact, this is supposed to be a relief. Thank God girls and women can turn their backs on stick-in-the-mud, curdled feminism and now act dumb in string bikinis to attract guys….According to enlightened sexism, women today have a choice between feminism and antifeminism, and they just naturally and happily choose the latter because, well, antifeminism has become cool, even hip. Rejecting feminism and buying into enlightened sexism allows young women in particular to be “one of the guys.” [p 12]

So enlightened sexism also includes in-your-face sexism,

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Amy has the second in the series. Read the whole thing.

Excerpt.

For the past year I’ve been shaking my head in sick disbelief at the abuse many women in the freethought movement are getting, but I’ve stayed silent. I’m not talking about the discussion of gender and privilege itself, which (to my surprise) still needs to happen in some depth, but at the insane, hateful attacks, including literal threats of rape and murder, that are raining down on the Skepchicks and others taking part in that important discussion.

Silently shaking my head does nothing. The women under this kind of attack can’t hear my head rattling, so they can only assume I don’t care, when I actually

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Leeds Skeptics in the Pub replaced Steven Moxon’s planned talk titled  “Why aren’t there more woman in the boardroom?” with an open debate on “How should Skeptics Deal with controversy?” Tom Williamson of Skeptic Canary reports.

After that, the debate moved onto the question of “are there any subjects which just cannot be discussed in skepticism?”. My answer was a strong and unequivocal “no”. Skepticism by its very nature is based on questioning. If someone puts up a barrier saying “you cannot question this” I find that to be an affront to skepticism. Also, I find that some people confuse the idea of questioning something with a desire to challenge and reject it. For example, if you asked the

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There’s a very informative comment on Pamela Gay’s talk, by “Stella Luna.”

I was unable to attend TAM this year due to my work schedule, but I very much wanted to go because I enjoy it so much – and also to be another woman in the crowd. While I personally have not experienced a grab or offensive comment at TAM, I will absolutely make it clear that as a very experienced mid-level manager at the Fortune 500 company I work for, I am the target of off-color remarks, double entendres, “praise” for my skills that might add praise for my wearing a skirt that day, or even unwelcome hugs in lieue of handshakes from the program director. (I’ve yet

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