Preamble: This essay focuses on a common source of contention in discussions of accusations of rape. It is understood that for some rape survivors, this article will file under “Too Long – Didn’t Read”, purely for reasons of mental health and self-preservation. An obligatory trigger warning also applies.

It is also understood that for many people, a simple “fuck off!” is the best, and a perfectly justifiable, response to what I am calling ‘The “Good Juror” Pose. I’m tentatively offering my prescription to those best able to help, rather than making expectations of those who have been hurt.

I think there is a need, for those in a position to make a difference, for more reflection on what is actually being said, and on where distinctions and demarcations can be made in order to prevent a lot of unnecessary acrimony.

***

Recent discussions of Woody Allen, and revived accusations levelled against him by Dylan Farrow, have drawn the usual roaches and lice out of the woodwork – specifically, those with an interest in the spoils of providing earnest character references for, and supererogated defences of, the accused. [Read more…]

A slice of life in Sydney.

A Sydney man has been refused bail after being charged over a live-in sexual relationship with a 13-year-old girl.

The pair were living together in Sydney’s west.

Police sources say the 26-year-old man and the girl were “married” in an Islamic religious ceremony in the Hunter region last month.

The marriage has no legal standing in Australia because of the girl’s age. [Read more…]

A story from Pakistan a couple of months ago:

A 72-year-old British doctor is in prison in Pakistan for “posing as a Muslim”, charges that reveal an escalating ideological fight that often spills over into violence.

Masood Ahmad is a quiet, reserved widower who returned to Pakistan to open a pharmacy in 1982 after decades of working in London to pay his children’s school fees, his family said. [Read more…]

Now for the very bad thing: Woody Allen’s letter to the New York Times. Ashley has a thorough takedown analysis, which is how I learned there was a letter. There’s no need for me to add anything but I don’t always do these things based on need…and I can’t resist, because it’s so revolting.

TWENTY-ONE years ago, when I first heard Mia Farrow had accused me of child molestation, I found the idea so ludicrous I didn’t give it a second thought. We were involved in a terribly acrimonious breakup, with great enmity between us and a custody battle slowly gathering energy. The self-serving transparency of her malevolence seemed so obvious I didn’t even hire a lawyer to defend myself.

What a self-serving self-absorbed empathy-free piece of shit. [Read more…]

A good thing (before I get to a bad thing) – someone sent an email to the people at The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe complaining about Rebecca feminism agenda females stopped listening fan ruined yadda. Steve Novella replied in a very good way.

Thanks for your feedback. Sorry you are unhappy with the “this day in skepticism” segment.

To investigate your claim that the segment overemphasizes feminism to a disgusting and off-putting degree, I tallied the last 52 TDIS segments (essentially the last year). This is what I found:

Topic did not involve a specific person – 24
Topic was a man – 21
Topic was a woman – 7

It seems you feel that men should be the focus of TDIS more than 3 times as much as women, or that using 13.5% of TDIS segments to highlight women in science is excessive.

Fabulous, isn’t it? 7 women compared to 21 men, and that’s a crushing stifling unbearable Ima stop listening agenda. [Read more…]

Toronto’s fun-loving mayor Rob Ford didn’t like the rainbow flag that went up on one of the many flagpoles outside city hall on Friday, and he tried to have it taken down.

The flag-raising was meant as a response to Olympic host country Russia’s anti-gay laws. Several other municipalities around Canada have done the same.

Ford wanted it taken down as soon as he saw it. 

The Olympics, “is about being patriotic to your country, this is not about someone’s sexual preference,” he told reporters.  [Read more…]

I’m reading Maajid Nawaz’s book Radical. It’s intensely interesting, and (not surprisingly) disturbing.

One thing about it that’s slightly odd is that so far, at least (Part One), he describes a totally male world and discusses it from a completely male point of view. Women just aren’t there, nor are girls in his childhood. He mentions women only as consumer items, things to “chase.”

Sometimes their absence is really surprising. For instance there’s a part where he writes about his older brother Osman’s shift to Islamism. It includes one of those offhand mentions of women as things –

Osman started going with Nasim to his talks and study circles, and pretty soon became a changed person. Everything we’d been doing together – going to clubs, chasing women – was now anathema to him. [p 48] [Read more…]

Quoth the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion:

The games have always been a little gay. Let’s fight to keep them that way.

I just wasted a few minutes arguing about sexism and language. Always a waste of time! And yet I keep doing it.

The issue this time is the insult of telling men they’re not men. The claim is that it’s not always insulting to women, because it doesn’t always mean “you’re a woman”; sometimes it just means “you’re a failed man.” [Read more…]