And this is…news?

To anyone? Srsly?

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picture of the headquarters of the Southern Baptist convention.

News Alert
May 22, 4:01 p.m. EDT

Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, lied to members about secret database, explosive report shows

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention released a major third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top leaders in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Read more [@Washington Post]

Why? So we can “learn” that the hierarchy at an ultra- conservative, openly misogynist, church has a hideous history of sexually abusing women and girls (and probably boys and men too) and covering it up for decades?

You guys, it’s so weird! I feel like I could have written this exact story, word for word, without seeing anything more than the headline.

Yeah, I must be psychic or something. ‘CUZ THAT’S THE ONLY EXPLANATION THAT MAKES ANY SENSE AMIRITE.

Emoji: big eyeroll

 

Happy International Women’s Day! Or, not!

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. The day was first professed by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, the idea arising from women’s rights movements in industrializing nations around the turn of the last century. Its purpose is to celebrate the achievements of women throughout history, as well as engage in the ongoing struggle for gender equality.

March is also Women’s History Month. <-That is a website curated by the U.S. Library of Congress that showcases women’s battles and triumphs with interesting and informative stories, audio, video and still images.

If you are a dude and still reading this post: here, have a cookie. (I baked them myself.) That’s for seeing the word “women’s” and not immediately deciding to GTFO.

However, if you are a dude blogger, social media influencer, or a Big Willie with a platform of any kind? [Read more…]

Hey, can we get some of that up in here?

[CONTENT NOTE: sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape and rape culture.)

You know, I have not been able to write about Afghanistan, and this is mainly because I have not been able to think coherently about Afghanistan.* See, I get flooded with All the Feelz, and flashbacks to the war crimes of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice regime, CIA black sites, serious debates at the highest levels of government and across mainstream media platforms about the pros, cons, legality and morality of torture FFS, and every single evil spawned from U.S. conservative war lovers** since the events of 9/11, which were traumatic enough for me thankyouverymuch, and right up to and including the suicide bombing at a Kabul airport gate today.

Nevertheless, I was struck by a sentence in this morning’s New York Times email briefing:

[Read more…]

Conservatives still ruining everything: Turkey edition.

[CONTENT NOTE: graphic descriptions of violence against women including murder.]

[via The Guardian*/Beril Eski and agencies]

A rally to mark International Women’s day in Istanbul where protesters demanded government commitment to the European accord on violence against women. Photograph: Bülent Kılıç/AFP/Getty ImagesA rally to mark International Women’s day in Istanbul where protesters demanded government commitment to the European accord on violence against women. Photograph: Bülent Kılıç/AFP/Getty Images

__________

Protests as Turkey pulls out of treaty to protect women

 

[Read more…]

Men, get to work.

[CONTENT NOTE: gendered violence, murder, suicide.]

OCTOBER 26, 2020
 BREAKING NEWS 

Man shoots girlfriend dead on Manhattan street, then commits suicide in front of shocked onlookers

Bursts of gunfire sent passersby running for cover just before 9:20 a.m. at Morris St. and Trinity Place in the Financial District, where violence is rare.

Read the Latest

[Read more…]

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Oregon…

…some shit is really pissing me off. And there’s something YOU can do about it.

[CONTENT NOTE: racist police, prosecutor, judicial and parole office malfeasance toward an innocent, mentally ill child, denial of care, unjust sentencing and imprisonment of a child, racist bullying, racist harassment and public violence against black people by other community members with no police action taken, sexual harassment, physical and sexual assault, self-harming…fuuuuuuuuck.]

The following is an email I received this morning from change.org.

change.org

Iris — 14-year-old Saraya Rees battles with mental illness. After being abruptly taken off her antidepressants by a local pediatrician, she suffered a mental health crisis. She poured gasoline on the living room carpet and her parents contacted Coos Health & Wellness for help. But the clinic called the police. Saraya was arrested and sentenced to 11 years in juvenile prison. Kelsey and more than 250,000 signers say this is inhumane. Add your name to demand that Saraya’s case be reopened and the charges reassessed.

painting of a teenage biracial girl (uncredited).268,349 have signed kelsey darragh’s petition. Let’s get to 300,000!

Well that all sounded pretty fucked-up to me, but this was just a summary. Even before my morning coffee, it occurred to my sleepy, chemo-addled brain that there were pieces missing in this story, some of which could be enormously consequential and thus color the true picture, in one way or another. So rather than sign-now-with-a-click and move on in the direction of my coffee pot, I read the rest of the email. And readers? When those gaps were filled in, the picture became so much uglier and far more disturbing than anything I could have imagined.

[Read more…]

The invisible victims of Trumpism.

blackupsidedownusflag

[CONTENT NOTE: harassment, abuse, assault.]

I’m sure you’ve seen some of the various online accounts (like this one) of violence, harassment, assault and abuse, after the worst elements of our society were emboldened by the election of perhaps the most despicable human being I have known of in my lifetime. Not all of these stories make it to a hashtag much less a news story, and I have a sickening feeling there are orders of magnitude more of them that don’t than do. Here is one from a dear friend of mine, posted here with permission (names and other identifying details have been altered):

[Read more…]

OWN THAT S#!+.

Somebody commented on my cross-post about the election at my other blog. Well, “commented” isn’t quite the right word—more like “Demsplained.” I’ve been seeing a lot of this, and I am not having it. I’ll spare you the whole self-righteous rant, but I do want to address the overall gist by responding to a few brief excerpts.

Stop blaming Bernie supporters.

Not if they stayed home on election day, no. They absolutely share the blame. (I voted for Sanders in the primary.)

Stop blaming white people.

The ones who overwhelmingly voted for Trump? The ones who stayed home or cast third-party votes in swing states? No.

Stop blaming Black people or Latinos.

Only a Trump-magnitude asshole would ever do that.

Stop blaming people who voted their conscience.

Jeezus Christ. EVERYONE voted their conscience, and even people who stayed home did so because of conscience. Their consciences suck. I can and will hold accountable every single one of them if they had any part in this outcome. Lard knows they’re highly unlikely to ever do it themselves. Especially not with people like you ranting about how blameless they all are.

You’re looking for me to suck it up and sing kumbaya with people who by their own action or inaction threw women, LGBTQs, immigrants, Muslims, Native Americans, the disabled, blacks and Latinxs, the poor, the environment, 20 million people who will lose health insurance etc. under the fucking bus because “They want us fighting among ourselves,” “They want us divided,” and “That’s how they always win.” No. That is an abuser’s tactic, and that shit does not fly with me. Not any more.

I am not the one who did the fucking “dividing” here; YOU are refusing to hold accountable those who are actually responsible. They, and you, need to OWN THAT SHIT.

__________

If you’re getting a sense of deja vu like I am, I think its because the parallels to Big Tent Atheism™ are only too obvious.

And it’s not even my birthday!

[CONTENT NOTE: misogyny including slurs, racism, violence against logic, incoherence, banality, Nazis, sex toys.]

I had almost forgotten about this, what with all my squirrel monitoring duties and sofa painting and suchlike. But buried in my inbox was a gift from the WordPress gods in the form of two consecutive auto-moderated comments, written in response to a post I wrote back in July about the harms of benevolent sexism, and purporting to offer “an opposing viewpoint.”

[Read more…]