Everyday sadism

Another chapter in the annals of harassment, especially harassment of women. A guy called Hunter Moore posted a photo of a young woman that had been hacked from her computer on his Revenge Porn website. Her mother had worked as a private detective, and she got on his case.

I emailed the site owner, Hunter Moore, and asked him to take down the photo in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He refused.

I was not surprised. By this time, I’d perused Moore’s online TV and newspaper interviews. He called himself a “professional life ruiner” and described his website as “pure evil.” He threw legal letters in the trash, addressed his followers as “my children,” taking a page from the Charles Manson handbook; and regularly taunted victims, encouraging them to commit suicide. People claimed to be afraid of him. He had no fear of lawsuits; he knew a victim would be unlikely to sue because a civil suit would cost $60,000 (according to attorney Marc Randazza), and forever link a woman’s name with the image she hoped to hide.

Moore maintained that his victims were sluts, asked to be abused and deserved to lose their jobs, embarrass their families and find themselves forever ruined. Below photos on the site, his followers posted crude and mysogynistic remarks. Victims were taunted as “fat cows,” “creatures with nasty teeth,” “ugly whores,” “white trash sluts” and “whales.” One commenter said, “Jesus, someone call Greenpeace and get her back in the water.” The website was not about pornography; it was about ridiculing and hurting others. [Read more…]

To seek alternatives to chemotherapy

This seems unlikely to end well.

A 10-year-old Amish girl with leukemia and her parents have left the country to seek alternatives to chemotherapy, according to the family’s attorney.

Sarah Hershberger and her parents oppose chemotherapy, and have been fighting the Akron Children’s Hospital in court after the family stopped Sarah’s treatment. Her parents said the treatments have caused their daughter a great deal of pain, and they’d rather focus on herbal and natural remedies. [Read more…]

UUK has made an idiot of itself

Now 99 comments on the Universities UK blog. One of the news ones is a very valuable one from the always-valuable David Colquhoun.

I notice that Nicola Dandridge starts by describing Universities UK as being “the representative organisation for the UK’s universities”.  It is nothing of the sort,  It is the representative organisation for (mostly male) vice-chancellors.  That was obvious from its much more honest previous name “The committee of vice-chancellors and principals”,   That’s the same group that supported high tuition fees.

It isn’t fair to blame Nicola Dandridge,  She’s paid to say whatever words are put in her mouth by her bosses.

The outcry against this iniquitous policy document appears to be just about universal. UUK has made an idiot of itself.  The only way UUK can save any sort of credibility is to retract it at once.  But it is not in the nature of powerful organisations to apologise for mistakes.

Fair point about Dandridge. Still…it is a blog post, with her name on it. That’s not quite the same kind of thing as a press release.

When a woman goes swimming

The subhead of an article in India Today:

“When a woman goes swimming, as the word for sea is masculine, when “the water touches the woman’s private parts, she becomes an ‘adulteress’ and should be punished.”
– Summary of a report titled “The misguided Fatwas of the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis”, as published in the Al Masry Al Youm.

That item is reported in other places, all apparently from the same source. Even Counterpunch reports it. [Read more…]

A fruitless attempt at dialogue

Peter Boghossian said something interesting on Facebook (via Twitter, I take it).

I was just called a radical feminist for opposing gender segregation at universities.

I’d just been talking about someone going by the name Abdullah Ali who commented on the Universities UK blog and blamed “EDL white surpemacists and radical feminists” for their knee-jerk responses to gender segregation, so I was interested, so I commented. But I should have known better, because I got called “cupcake” for my pains. It’s radical feminist of me to take exception to that.

A revival in adherence to normative Islamic practices

The iERA, the Islamic Education and Research Academy, has issued a press release agreeing (surprise surprise!) with UUK’s guidelines on girl cooties gender segregation. Tl; dr: it’s religious freedom, it’s great.

The debate about separation came to the fore earlier this year at an iERA event entitled: “Islam or Atheism: Which Makes More Sense?” between Hamza Tzortzis and Professor Lawrence Krauss at the University College of London (UCL) on 9th March 2013. UCL subsequently refused to take any further bookings from iERA, accusing them of “forced segregation”.

iERA later released its own findings of an externally supervised investigation into the accusation of forced gender segregation at the debate. The investigation concluded that there was no such policy or evidence that it occurred on the night. Rather, in line with its duties under the Equality Act 2010, iERA had attempted to provide for the needs of all attendees by providing separate areas of seating for men and women (for those that wished to adhere to their deeply-held religious beliefs) as well as a mixed seating area. [Read more…]

Distracted by the shapely bottom

There are now 81 comments on the Universities UK blog post “explaining” UUK’s policy on gender segregation. There is at last one that agrees with and praises the policy.

Abdullah Ali

says:

I see theres been a quite severe knee-jerk response form the white, Islam-ignorant reactionaries here. Men and women sitting in two equal groups isn’t in any way, shape or form comparable to apartheid in Soth-africa, and as a Muslim I find the comparison insulting and, quite frankly, racist. This may make some of you’re liberal feminist heads explode, but the separation is actually mosstly for the benefit and protection of women! Bet you didnt see THAT coming! :)  It allows women to feel more safe, it keeps them from having to interact with potential abuser’s, and it keeps a mea from being distracted by the shapely bottom sat in front of him :)  [Read more…]