So, it’s a guy from Argentina, and he’s calling himself Francis 1.
It’s still the Catholic church though. Still the Vatican. Still a ridiculous archaic intrusive institution.
Atheists lack a sensus divinitatus, you see.
Yemisi Ilesanmi commented on Peter Tatchell’s Huffington Post article yesterday about the inadequacy of the queen’s putative “support” for LGBT rights in the Commonwealth. Her comment is a valuable short article in itself.
There is a reason many government officials especially politicians prefer the ‘other grounds’ clause to a more specific mention of sexual orientation, it gives them a leeway to squeeze out of any obligation not to discriminate, jail or kill on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Speaking as a Lawyer, Advocate and solicitor, I know from experience that ‘Other grounds’ clause could be held to mean so many things and also held to exclude so many things by government not willing to respect the rights of others. New International human right treaties now explicitly mentioning sexual orientation, this new Commonwealth charter should not be an exception.
As someone who was part of the team that made an input into the draft Commonwealth charter, our suggestion of including sexual orientation as an explicitly mentioned ground was ignored because it made commonwealth members that want to keep discriminating and persecuting LGBTs in their countries, uncomfortable. This also means if we ever decided to use the charter as a defense of LGBT rights, we have to waste precious time proving that ‘Other grounds’ includes sexual orientation; this could have been avoided if it was explicitly mentioned.
Needless to say, in many African countries that already signed on to international treaties with the ‘Other grounds’ clause, affirming that sexual orientation is included in the ‘other grounds’ clause has been tedious for LGBT advocates. This new charter has not in any way simplified the burden borne by many LGBTs in many African Commonwealth nations.
It is good to have knowledgeable people on the case.
You people in and near London are in luck – you have a chance to go to a talk by Leo Igwe. Grab it!
Breaking the Taboo of Atheism in Black Communities
Monday, March 25, 2013 6:30 PM to
270 Mare Street, E8 1HE London, London
Leo Igwe, Nigeria’s most prominent humanist, and a human rights activist, will be giving a ground-breaking talk on ‘Breaking the Taboo of Atheism in Black Communities’ during a short visit to London to attend the NSS Secularist of the Year Award event before returning to Africa to continue his research into witchcraft.
People ‘of all hues’ who are sceptical of religion are encouraged to show their interest and support for this event as black non-believers, in London and elsewhere, start to become more confident and active in openly challenging the over-bearing presence of religion within their families and communities and its negative social, financial and educational consequences.
This talk is part of increasing efforts to encourage black non-believers to ‘come out’, to find a supportive environment when dealing with family and social reactions, to voice their opinions and be more proactive in the humanist, secularist and atheist movements. To paraphrase the African saying “It takes a village to raise a child. It takes all of us to change this religious BS”.
It is organised by London Black Atheists (http://www.meetup.com/London-Black-Atheists/ and https://twitter.com/LdnBlkAtheists) and supported by Central London Humanists (http://www.meetup.com/Central-London-Humanists/).
You are so lucky!
My friend Mary Ellen Foley – who blogs at M E Foley’s Anglo-American Experience Blog – shared a story with me.
So I went to a Tai Chi class today, taught by an Englishwoman who has studied Tai Chi for years, including various stints in China (one as long as 6 months), and she told some stories, including the one about how she went over there to study with a particular master and found that he didn’t like her, didn’t like women, probably didn’t like foreigners — he clearly could teach her a lot of stuff, but she wasn’t welcome and he made sure she knew it. But she was determined to win him over, so one day she came early, picked up a bamboo broom (bundle of bamboo sticks tied together with the leaves left on at one end of the stalks), and started to sweep the leaves from the courtyard where they were going to be practicing. The master came up, clearly unhappy with this, said something in Chinese that she didn’t understand, and took away the broom. Hmmm. Then here he came with a different broom, with a very short handle, and indicated that she should sweep the courtyard with that, which was a lot harder, because you had to bend over so far to do the work, but she did it.
When the translator showed up, he told her that the problem was that the long-handled broom was only for men; the short-handled one was a woman’s broom.
Wo.
Oh hai, I found that photoshop of me – the one that Michael Nugent reported on last week in his post Slymepit members struggle with the ethics of removing photoshopped naked image. I wasn’t looking for it, I was looking for something else, but the location of the something else was the location of the photoshop. I had vaguely thought it was gone, but no, it’s just that it’s not embedded there any more. That was clear from Michael’s post, but I had read it somewhat hastily.
Members of the Slymepit website have spent the last few hours struggling with the ethics of whether to remove a photograph, newly posted, of an identifiable person’s face photoshopped onto the body of a naked woman.
The Site Administrator’s decision: “I have deleted the tags which embed the image, but left the link. Note: this is a picture of a naked old lady’s body onto which the head of [named person] was photoshopped. Feel free to visit the link and see for yourself, but there is nothing useful to be gained by doing so.”
Oh, sure there is. There’s the pleasure of feeling contempt and loathing for a woman you hate. Totally useful!
What I was looking for was the origin of a cryptically quoted phrase in a tweet.
Now that’s what I call feminism. Also guts. Find somebody calling me despicable, then quote it without attribution on Twitter. Free speech at its finest. Philosophy on the front lines.
So I was curious, so I googled the phrase, and it went to a page at the slime pit where they were discussing the photoshop, so I found the photoshop.
Trigger warning, if the body of an old women is the most disgusting thing you can think of. The photoshop.
I apologize to whoever the woman is in that picture. I don’t actually find her body disgusting, believe it or not. What I find disgusting is this kind of shaming.
[Note: don’t run to the tip jar. You’ve been doing that lately as it is, so treat this one as off the record, or something.]
Peter Tatchell says no, the new Commonwealth Charter is not a big victory for LGBT rights.
Not surprisingly, the Commonwealth Charter does not include any specific rejection of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. This was vetoed by the homophobic majority of member states. They blocked its inclusion.
This makes the Queen’s charter signing even less of a big deal. It is certainly not the breakthrough for LGBT rights that some people are claiming.
Yemisi Ilesanmi says the same thing on her Facebook page Freedom to Love for ALL: Homosexuality is not un-African. [Read more…]
Via Dana who found it via Kylie, a Facebook note by Harriet Page. I know, not everyone is on Facebook. But that’s where it is!
She introduced it with
This week I wrote a response to the several occasions on which I had been challenged on my feminism by men and women who felt that I was misguided, wrong, aggressive or unhelpful in my responses to what I viewed as sexist behaviour.
Been there. Many times. I can remember heavy sighs back in the early 70s when I pointed out some (to me obvious, indeed blatant) bit of everyday sexism. And of course have been there again just lately, with people who consider themselves feminists nevertheless going into Full Outrage mode because I had the gall to criticize something sexist that Michael Shermer said.
(Really. Imagine it wasn’t Michael Shermer who said it. Imagine it was Mitt Romney. Imagine Mitt Romney was on a talk show and the conversation turned to the scarcity of women in politics. Imagine Mitt Romney said: “It’s who wants to stand up and talk about it, go on shows about it, go to conferences and speak about it, who’s intellectually active about it; you know, it’s more of a guy thing.” Imagine I did a blog post saying that was a sexist stereotype, and a particularly damaging one at that. Would there have been the same kind of outrage from the same people? [Read more…]
Sometimes bullying people just doesn’t work out, even if you do it on the internet, and even if all you’re doing is posting pictures of naked girls without their permission.
The founder of a so-called “revenge porn” website has been ordered to pay $250,000 (£170,000) in damages for defamation.
Hunter Moore was found to have made false claims about the chief executive of an anti-bullying website.
Mr Moore used Twitter to falsely claim James McGibney was a paedophile who possessed child pornography.
Mr Moore’s website used to post naked images of people without their permission. He closed it in 2012.
But three days later he was at it again. [Read more…]
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Hit the button under American Atheists to vote for them to get a booth at Netroots Nation and collect more atheists!
