Meanwhile, among Britain’s political elite…a Tory MP says publicly that he’d like to punch Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the throat to shut her up.

She was on a tv chat show with the vile (and misogynist) Rod Liddle, and she told him she loathed him.

Fabricant, who has his profile picture on Twitter as ice skater Jimmy MacElroy from Blades Of Glory, chipped in.

I could never appear on a discussion prog with @y_alibhai I would either end up with a brain haemorrhage or by punching her in the throat

He then retweeted someone who called for Alibhai-Brown to be deported.

[Read more…]

Meanwhile in Norrköping in eastern Sweden, there’s a lot of FGM going on.

Some 60 cases of genital mutilation have been discovered in Norrköping in eastern Sweden since March with all 30 girls in one school class found to have undergone the procedure.

Of the 30, some 28 of the girls were found to have been subjected to the most severe form of genital mutilation, when the clitoris and labia are completely cut away and the genital area sewn together except for a small opening.

[Read more…]

One of those times when the jaw actually drops in astonishment. Al Jazeera reports:

Kuwaiti domestic workers are being named and shamed on an Instagram (link is external) account called Mn7asha, or “runaway”.

The account description reads, “An account to display pictures of servants fleeing in Kuwait, together to put an end to this phenomenon.” The account lists a number to send photos to via the mobile messenger Whatsapp and says, “Hand in hand we can make a difference, even a small one.”

“Runaways” are “fleeing” – quite as if slavery were legal. [Read more…]

Penn Jillette’s assholeness goes way back. (I wasn’t paying attention to him then. I can’t pay attention to everything. I’m a nerd. Quit looking at me like that.) Massimo Pigliucci was pointing it out way back in 2009.

…as we have learned recently from the Atheist Alliance / Dawkins Foundation / Bill Maher fiasco, “skepticism” is sometimes too broad a label, as someone can be properly skeptical in politics but not about pseudoscience (Maher), while someone else may be great at debunking astrology and magnetic therapy, and yet also unable to shed some huge blinders when it comes to politically charged issues. The latter is, unfortunately, P&T’s case, as made excruciatingly clear by the 2008 (season 6) episode “Being Green” of Bullshit! [Read more…]

Oh yes, there are such people as libertarian feminists. No not Christina Hoff Sommers, but there are such people.

Marwa is there to talk about her Ex-hijabi fashion blog.

The St Louis Post Dispatch decided it can get along without George Will after that column he wrote last week about how women long for the high status of being a rape victim.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Page Editor Tony Messenger writes that readers — both liberal and conservative ones — have lobbied the paper to change its lineup of conservative columnists. But apparently a bit of a push was necessary.

That came from a recent controversial piece by Washington Post columnist George Will — the one about the “supposed campus epidemic of rape” and the way in which “victimhood” serves as a “coveted status that confers privileges.”

It’s so fashionable right now, all this yelling about “victimhood” and “patriarchy” and “ideology.” They’re all just passing the same stale tropes back and forth endlessly, like a joint. [Read more…]

Libby Anne talks about the way evangelical concern with “forgiveness” makes things harder for victims and a lot easier for perps.

Evangelical teachings on repentance and forgiveness create a tremendous problem when it comes to rape or other forms of abuse. If you commit a sin and repent of it, God forgives you. I remember hearing Psalm 103:12 quoted constantly: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Of course, this was always said in a positive way—isn’t it awesome that God forgives us no matter what? But it doesn’t must mean God forgives us. It also means God forgives rapists, child molesters, and so on—fully and completely.

I was taught that bringing up sins that someone had already repented for was wrong. If the transgressor had repented, after all, God had forgiven him, and had had removed those transgressions “as far as the east is from the west.” Those sins were gone, totally and completely, and should not be mentioned again. The slate was clean. Now this may make sense when applied to more petty offenses—it’s never fun to have your mistakes constantly brought up, even when you’ve tried to make good—it also applies to rapists, child molesters, and so on.

[Read more…]

I hate most kinds of shopping, and most kinds of shops. Confined spaces, lots of strangers everywhere, no trees or birds or large bodies of water – what’s to like about them? But I can tolerate them for the time it takes me to find the milk or socks or shampoo I need to get, usually. Unless there is Christmas music playing – then I really can’t tolerate them, and postpone non-essential shopping until after the season is over.

But there are some extras I can think of that would make a shop even more hellish. A bunch of polar bears roaming around hungrily? A raging fire? A broken sewer pipe?

Shoppers roaming around with shotguns slung over their backs? [Read more…]

Another item from the Annals of Brutality – in Iran a woman who was forced into marriage at 14 is going to be executed for killing her husband.

Razieh Ebrahimi was forced to marry at the age of 14, became a mother at 15, and killed her husband at 17. Now at 21, she is on Iran’s death row.

They left out a step: she was raped at 14, no doubt repeatedly. [Read more…]

Have another Big Questions, this one asking: Should the British stop tolerating intolerance? (Michael Frayn got there long ago, in the 60s, with BBC talking heads and all.)

Five minutes in, Maajid Nawaz responds to the host’s devil’s advocate question “If an area is 95% Muslim shouldn’t the schools in that area focus on that?” with a forthright defense of secularism including in state schools.