Kathryn Joyce answers a question I’ve wondered about – yes, the way unmarried mothers were treated in the US (and elsewhere) was as bad (or almost as bad) as the way they were treated in Ireland, and yes, there were a lot of them, and yes, their babies were taken away from them.

It’s a time that in the United States is often referred to as the “Baby Scoop Era,” and during it some estimates hold that a full fifth of all children born to never-married white women relinquished their infants for adoption. For women sent to maternity homes, that number rose to 80 percent, comprising anywhere from 1.5 million to 6 million women.  [Read more…]

I’ve been thinking about memory, naturally. I often do anyway, and Dylan Farrow’s open letter has brought it to the fore again. I was thinking yesterday about how non-specific and narrative and composite my memories are, at least the older ones. I set myself a question: can I summon up a clear distinct visual memory that I know to be one memory, like a photograph?

I tried hard for some time, and couldn’t do it. I suspect it can’t be done. If I see something only once, I don’t properly remember it at all. If I see it repeatedly, I can visualize it, but I can tell the visualization is composite – it’s not a one-time look that gets frozen. [Read more…]

I was reading this article about child sexual abuse and belief, in which Andrea Grimes starts by telling us a little about herself –

I am an only child and I have awesome, twangy Texas-raised parents who Texas-raised me. My best friends are brilliant academics who sort of hate academia. I am overly friendly in awkward situations. I am funny and I love Star Trek. I throw big parties. I do yoga at home so I can skip savasana. I talk too much.

And when I was a kid, a relative sexually abused me.

I was reading this article, I say, and when I read that sentence I suddenly remembered that I can say the same thing, and that it was odd that I hadn’t thought of that while thinking about memory and Dylan Farrow. [Read more…]

An interesting article by Rumy Hasan in Open Democracy last December: Beware of Islamism with a liberal veneer. We’re well familiar with that phenomenon. The two women sitting next to Abhishek and Chris on The Big Questions were classic examples – using liberal rhetoric to defend illiberal traditions and practices, while enveloped in degrading black bags.

The recent outcry among British politicians and the London press over gender segregation in universities has shone a light on a relatively new phenomenon: the recourse to the foundational principles of liberal democracy by Islamists in pursuit of their agenda. This approach appears to be working as is evidenced by Universities UK’s (UUK) policy guidance (now withdrawn) on gender segregation at events organised by Islamic Societies. In very reasonable language, UUK advised:

“Concerns to accommodate the wishes or beliefs of those opposed to segregation should not result in a religious group being prevented from having a debate in accordance with its belief system”.

A thoroughly reactionary, sexist, practice was justified on the basis of rights – specifically the right of Islamist speakers and Muslim women to have segregated seating. [Read more…]

Charlie Klendjian says it’s time to pick a horse.

In censoring themselves Channel 4 News and Newsnight not only failed in their task of reporting the news to their viewers – to enable their viewers to form their own opinion about the cartoon – but they also reinforced the very religious taboo that Nawaz had received death threats for challenging and which had landed Chris and Abhishek in hot water with the Libyan School of Economics – sorry, the London School of Economics. As Nawaz tweeted:

“Thank you @Channel4News you just pushed us liberal Muslims further into a ditch #LynchMobFreeZone #TeamNawaz”. [Read more…]

An item from Twitter by someone who goes by @vrunt.

 

Something called SOAS Muslim-Christian Dialogue has written an open letter to Student Rights. (SOAS is the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.)

As members of SOAS Christian-Muslim Dialogue Society, we oppose your vilification and targeting of university Islamic societies including SOAS Islamic Society on the issue of gender segregation in their events.

We support the right of each student to act according to his or her personal religious convictions. For some, segregated seating serves these convictions and allows participation in mixed events. We support the right of SOAS Islamic Society to accommodate both segregated and mixed seating in any event. [Read more…]

This is a horrifying development – from The Guardian Comment is Free:

For A-level students in the UK, there is only one exam board that runs a real philosophy course. And that’s about to be changed into yet another religious education course.

For the last nine years, I have taught the AQA’s A-level philosophy course. It’s a good course, and the only one to represent the breadth of philosophy as a discipline in its own right. So I was somewhat surprised to learn that the AQA have this week, without warning or consultation, published a completely new draft syllabus, which is now just waiting to be rubber-stamped by Ofqual.

The new specification completely excludes the previous options to study aesthetics, free will, all European philosophy since Kant, and – most significantly – political philosophy. This will be all replaced with a compulsory philosophy of religion topic, which will make up 50% of the AS course. [Read more…]

I’m going to do a Miss Manners thing here and propose a rule of etiquette.

If you’re in a couple, don’t start fucking one of your partner’s children. No, even if that child is adopted. Really. That’s a rule. It’s a good rule. Follow it.

No, even if that child is no longer a minor. No, don’t stay with your partner waiting patiently until that child turns 18 and then pounce.

No, even if the child says you were never a parental figure. Even if you were always buried in a newspaper or playing a video game whenever that child was in the room – even then, don’t start fucking that child. [Read more…]

One take, by Robert Weide in The Daily Beast. First, who he is:

I produced and directed the two-part PBS special, Woody Allen: A Documentary, that premiered in the U.S. on the “American Masters” series. I also supervised and consulted on the brief clip montage that aired as part of the recent Golden Globes telecast, when Allen received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Now, his take:

I was actually somewhat impressed with Ronan Farrow’s now-famous tweet from the summer of 2012: “Happy father’s day—or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law’s day.” [Read more…]