What we have looked upon as safety

Rebecca Carroll yesterday at Comment is Free.

Six black women were shot to death during a community prayer service by a young white man who allegedly declared: “You rape our women.”

These women and men welcomed a white man into their close-knit church, and likely encouraged others in their community to join and listen and pray and let God into their hearts.

I read somewhere else yesterday that during the hour discussion that preceded the terrorist attack, while the terrorist sat at the back of the church, people at the front several times urged him to join them. That fact breaks my heart.

And think of it. He sat there for an hour, staring ahead at a group of kind, warm people who tried to welcome him…and then he went ahead and took out his gun and shot them. [Read more…]

Liars for Wall Street

The Wall Street Journal says hey, at least this wasn’t institutionalized racism. Media Matters quotes:

Amid the horror of Charleston, it is also important to note that the U.S., notably the South, has moved forward to replace the system that enabled racist killings like those in the Birmingham church.

Back then and before, the institutions of government–police, courts, organized segregation–often worked to protect perpetrators of racially motivated violence, rather than their victims.

The universal condemnation of the murders at the Emanuel AME Church and Dylann Roof’s quick capture by the combined efforts of local, state and federal police is a world away from what President Obama recalled as “a dark part of our history.” Today the system and philosophy of institutionalized racism identified by Dr. King no longer exists.

Then where did the terrorist come from? Is he a pod from outer space?

Disproportionate to what?

While we’re on the subject of Famous Pale Male Scientists Defending Other Famous Pale Male Scientists From Witchy Baying Feminists, there’s also Brian Cox.

The scientist and broadcaster Prof Brian Cox has said it was wrong the way a Nobel laureate scientist was “hounded out” of his university post over controversial comments he made about women working in laboratories.

Cox said the remarks by Sir Tim Hunt had been “very ill-advised” but that the response – which saw him give up positions at University College London (UCL) and the Royal Society – had been disproportionate.

Disproportionate to what?

UCL and the Royal Society want to attract women to science. They don’t want to repel women from science. They don’t want to alienate women already in science. So why is it disproportionate for them to dump a Famous Pale Male Scientist who goes to a conference in a foreign country and gives a talk in which he talks about women as if they were pets or small children? [Read more…]

“The baying witch-hunt”

Richard Dawkins is at it again and still – he is still at it, and he has produced another specific instance of it. The “it” in question is his determined, condescending, angry, vindictive attack on feminism. (Why “vindictive”? Because to all appearances it started with Dear Muslima, and he’s made it very obvious that he’s deeply pissed off at all of us who pushed back against Dear Muslima.)

We saw him at it just a few days ago, in a pair of tweets he sent on Sunday, perhaps while still at the CFI Reason for Change conference. Maybe he sent them Sunday morning while listening to Stephen Law’s talk – I know he was there because he was the first to ask a question at the end. I was there too. If only I’d known I could have flung myself at him and knocked the phone or tablet from his hands, thus saving him from yet another self-exposure as a raging anti-feminist bully. (Yes, bully. He’s using his fame and star status to do what he can to repress feminism and incite his fans to do even more of that. I know he knows that because I fucking told him so.)

Those tweets again:

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins Jun 14
“A moment to savour”? Really? Please, Guardian, could we just lighten up on the witch-hunts? #ReinstateTimHunt. http://reason.com/archives/2015/06/13/the-illiberal-persecution-of-tim–

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins Jun 14
@SquashedLumps I didn’t like Tim Hunt’s joke. But I loathe and detest mob rule and witch hunts and politically correct feeding frenzies.

Now he’s sent the content of the tweets to The Times. Yes really: he sent a letter to The Times complaining of a “baying witch hunt.” He actually did that. [Read more…]

What terrorists destroy

Back to BuzzFeed’s reporting on the victims of the terrorist attack at Emanuel AME church in Charleston.

More on Cynthia Hurd, the librarian.

[Her brother Malcolm] Graham, a former state senator, told the Charlotte Observer that his sister would have turned 55 on Sunday.

He said it was “typical” of her to be at the church on Sunday. He also fondly described her as a “nerd” who got a masters in library science from the University of South Carolina. [Read more…]

The Twitterstorm that wasn’t

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, who started the #distractinglysexy hashtag, explains that she didn’t get Tim Hunt kicked out of anything and neither did the hashtag.

Despite claims that the response to Hunt’s comments constituted an online “march of the feminist bullies”, no one who was part of this humorous attempt to highlight the varied and complex work of female scientists called for Hunt’s resignation or hounded him online, but that was the way it was framed.

There were undoubtedly unpleasant people on social media crowing about the man’s downfall but as far as I could see the discussion was largely jocular and – owing to the fact that many of the female scientists were posting photos under their own names – mostly professional.

The Hunt controversy continues to make headlines, with Boris Johnson and Brian Cox wading in this week as the backlash to the backlash. I even heard it said on Radio 4 this morning that “Tim Hunt was hounded from his job by a Twitterstorm”. This is patently not the case.

[Read more…]

Two of the nine

I can’t look at this without losing it but we all should be losing it, so.

BuzzFeed: the victims of the terrorist shooting at Emanuel AME church in Charleston:

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton

A 45-year-old mother of three, reverend, and high school track coach, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, was killed while attending a prayer group at Emanuel AME Church.

Coleman-Singleton coached the girls track team at Goose Creek High School. The school remembered her Thursday with a post on its Facebook page.

Her cousin, Constance Kinder, told BuzzFeed News that Coleman-Singleton was a “beautiful spirit.” [Read more…]

Guest post: This is the point that cis people miss

AMM’s very powerful follow-up comment:

Rob @14

@9: It’s like when my father convinced me (for an afternoon) that I could sell stuff door-to-door. I went out and canvased the neighborhood. And I realized: it’s just not me. I am not, cut out to be a salesman

@10: AMM, I love that analogy.
I don’t. Facile as it may seem this is because being a salesperson (in the widest sense) is a learnt skill, not a state of being. People we call naturals at sales simply have personalities that better enable them to quickly get over the hump of sucking at it and finding it hard. They probably learn how as kids. It’s closely linked to performing (acting). For the rest of us we practice, try and eventually get at least tolerably good at sales, but never actually enjoy it, even if we get satisfaction from our success.

You missed the point. Could I have learned to be a salesman if my life had depended upon it? Probably.

But I would have hated it. I would have had to spend every day stomping down my revulsion at what I was doing. I would have died inside, and at some point felt like dying was better than living. At some point, it wouldn’t have mattered whether I killed myself or not. I figured that out in a half-hour. And Rob, if you don’t believe I could figure that out in that short of a time, you simply have no clue, you are one of those “knows not, and knows not that he knows not.”

This is the point that cis people miss. [Read more…]

Guest post: A person, not an abstract

Next, a comment by besomyka.

We seem to conflate sex and gender in these discussions even though we know better. When we say I feel or don’t feel like a woman, for example. Do you mean woman in the social constructed sense, the stochastic physical sense? What?

When I say I’m a woman, I happen to mean both. I think that if you considered me a woman, that your mental shortcuts about what that meant would be more true about me than the other option. Is it perfect? No, of course not. I’m a person, not an abstract. But it IS more accurate.

I also mean it physically. I am quite sure that if we destroyed the concept of gender completely, that I’d still have dysphoria centered on my body. My heart would ache seeing a pregnant woman, knowing that it could never be me. I would have still felt so rigid hugging people without a bosom of my own. I know I’d still feel like a hollow mannequin when I looked in the mirror. [Read more…]

Guest post: That something just doesn’t fit

Now I’ve caught up somewhat after the conference, so I can do what several people requested and make guest posts of some of the comments from the Discomfort with the more social aspects of gender discussion last week.

I’ll start with one by AMM:

There’s something that a lot of trans people report and I’m becoming aware of in myself that doesn’t get mentioned in feminist discussions of gender.

It’s that feeling that at some fundamental level, you just don’t belong with the people you share a birth gender with, and in many cases you don’t feel right in your body. That something just doesn’t fit, no matter how perfectly you may seem to fit. And when you transition, medically and/or socially, you just feel right for once. [Read more…]