Should going for a walk be legal?
Should listening to music be legal?
Should reading poetry be legal?
Should non-marital sex be legal?
It’s not currently legal in Morocco, and as it turns out it’s not even safe to say it should be. [Read more…]
Here’s another comrade – Liberal Will. He’s over there, where Maureen and Alex and Rhys and Hayley and Amy and Melanie and many other swell people are. There are a lot of comrades. Don’t let the blowhards fool you about that. The anti-feminists aren’t taking over.
Even if you’re in the friendliest safe space ever, you need to have a harassment policy. The world does not work on SimCity rules, where you don’t build a fire department until the first fire breaks out. It needs to be there. Harassment at any type of convention is common, and the skeptic community should know pretty damn well it’s a problem, especially after “Elevatorgate“. And women, sadly, are the target of most harassment. How many men have personal attack alarms? And how many women do? How many straight people, cis people, white people fear harassment, compared to queer people, trans people, people of colour?
This is privilege, guys. Check it once in a while.
And to claim that people are being feminiazis or FTBullies over this? Really? Oh, those oppressive feminists! Fighting for their right to be respected! For a movement that is mostly liberal or libertarian, it runs the risk of creating unholy alliances with conservatives to push and keep these historically oppressed minorities down. And without any sense of irony and despair at their arguments being appropriated.
Never mind the Olympics. This is the kind of internationalism that doesn’t melt away after a couple of weeks.
Update: Monday: Once again I made the mistake of forgetting that not everyone reading would know what prompted this post. What prompted it was this comment on my post about a dopy BBC film clip about natural selection and slavery and fast runners.
———————————
Oh, so it’s a thing. I didn’t know it was a thing – this “you have to be all ecstatic about the Olympics” bollix. Joan Smith says about it.
Some things matter more than sport. But I’ve come back to my own country to discover Olympic fervour encouraging a species of emotional correctness, where anyone who doesn’t care for competitive games is regarded as a killjoy. [Read more…]
Chris Rodda wants it known far and wide that she accepted a challenge from David Barton’s radio co-host to show specifics of where David Barton tells untruths in his book The Jefferson Lies. You have your mission.
Chris knows what she’s talking about. She does the time-consuming work of following up Barton’s references.
Get the word out!
James Fitzjames Stephen was a forthright kind of guy. Blunt, even. As such he offers a useful window into the most forthright kind of imperturbable contempt for women.
From chapter 5 of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, in which he disagrees with John Stuart Mill’s views on gender equality.
Now, if society and government ought to recognize the inequality of age as the foundation of an inequality of rights of this importance, it appears to me at least equally clear that they ought to recognize the inequality of sex for the same purpose, if it is a real inequality. Is it one? There are some propositions which it is difficult to prove, because they are so plain, and this is one of them. [Read more…]
I know a new thing now, a thing I didn’t know before. I know that there’s something – something bad – called “camel toe.” I know what it is. I know it via the tweets of Another Angry Woman @stavvers and this post that she linked to, The Miracle Bajingo Shoehorn.
A staggering 55% of women, irrespective of age, size or weight, experience camel toe at some point.
Many women have even gone to extreme lengths to rectify the camel toe problem, resorting to expensive and risky surgery. [Read more…]
A great post by Alyson Miers (whom I met at WiS in May) on bullying and imperfect victims.
There’s this meme –
See Alyson’s response to that.
This is good. American Atheists announces that Anthony Grayling is the keynote speaker for their 2013 national convention.
Yay! I’m going to be there too, and Anthony’s a friend.
Ok this is a good one. From a comment on Jen’s post on blunderfoot.
“Freethought” means you use reason and logic to come to a conclusion, and not believing everything anyone says — even a close friend — at face value.
Hahahahahahahahaha yes right that’s what freethought means. A close friend tells you she has a headache and you interrogate her for an hour trying to get her to demonstrate that fact beyond a reasonable doubt.