Jesus and Grumpy Cat.
Butterflies and Wheels
Gnu atheism, women's rights, internationalism, universalism, and gossip
Jesus and Grumpy Cat.
An Irish university student goes on the pill. She tells her mother; her mother is fine with it. Then she goes home to the west of Ireland, and has to renew her prescription. Her local GP is not so fine with it. He asks her a lot of impertinent questions and gives her a lot of unwanted advice.
This horrible catholic guilt regarding our own sexuality still festers in the more rural parts of Ireland. It makes me furious that the general psyche of our nation would accept that a doctor reserves the right not to administer this drug. I had done three courses of the pill, I was well aware of the risks and consequences and I am a consenting adult choosing to be responsible; yet the doctor still asked were my parents aware of why I was there. [Read more…]
Sometimes the aphoristic compression of Twitter can be useful.
Noel McGivern @Good_Beard
The Ten Commandments are a useless code of morality they ignore rape and child abuse and put the vanity of an imaginary deity before murder.
Harper @Irishbloke
@Good_Beard Would you mind giving me your 10 commandments since you consider yourself greater than God?
Harper’s reply sums up a lot of what’s so wrong and terrible about religious thinking, in just those few words. [Read more…]
Rupa Jha talks about sexual abuse at home as opposed to out in the streets or on the buses.
She lived in a huge family in a two bedroom flat.
Distant relatives and cousins kept coming and going through the family home.
Being the youngest girl in the family, I was “loved” by them.These love sessions would happen only when I was alone with one of them.
I hated it but, like many others in the same situation, I was too petrified to talk about it.
Getting rubbed, touched, kissed or being locked in bathrooms was the “love”.
Even though the house was always full, I felt completely lonely and violated. [Read more…]
This again. In Sudan, a woman is threatened with flogging for refusing to wear hijab.
Can we please never again hear from anyone saying that wearing hijab is a choice?
Amira Osman Hamed faces a possible whipping if convicted at a trial which could come on September 19. Under Sudanese law, her hair – and that of all women – is supposed to be covered with a “hijab”, but Hamed refuses.
Ruby Hamad comments on the trend.
As mainstream Islam grows increasingly conservative, there is no doubt that the situation for many Muslim women, both in Sudan and elsewhere is deteriorating. Indonesia, for example, a once “moderate” country which has also been cracking down on women’s dress in recently years, is currently sparking international outrage for its plans to subject teenage schoolgirls to virginity tests. [Read more…]
You remember how that went, right? Anil Dash tweeted
Wow, didn’t realize @businessinsider had hired such an asshole in @paxdickinson. Getting memcache to build made him an expert on misogyny!
Pax responded with the inevitable “you gonna say that to my face?” so Anil said sure, so they met. Anil tells us about it.
People who know me know that my offer was sincere, because while I was not trying to get Pax fired (though I certainly am not sorry that he was, and everyone including Pax agrees it was the right decision), I was definitely trying to find some way to understand if a constructive form of accountability could be attached to this incredibly shitty circumstance. I would still like to see Business Insider’s management explain how they’re structurally addressing their failures that allow a toxic culture to thrive for years with no accountability. [Read more…]
A month ago Steven Pinker had a long article in The New Republic in praise of “scientism.” One part I particularly like:
In which ways, then, does science illuminate human affairs? Let me start with the most ambitious: the deepest questions about who we are, where we came from, and how we define the meaning and purpose of our lives. This is the traditional territory of religion, and its defenders tend to be the most excitable critics of scientism. They are apt to endorse the partition plan proposed by Stephen Jay Gould in his worst book, Rocks of Ages, according to which the proper concerns of science and religion belong to “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science gets the empirical universe; religion gets the questions of moral meaning and value.
Unfortunately, this entente unravels as soon as you begin to examine it. [Read more…]
Did you know that one of the members of ABBA is a pillar of the secularist-humanist community in Sweden? I did. Sven Grundberg tells about it for a Wall Street Journal blog.
STOCKHOLM – Björn Ulvaeus, one of the two Bs in ABBA, sat down with Speakeasy on a sunny summer day in central Stockholm at a hipster coffee shop. The joint is located just around the corner from the capital’s buzzing club scene that has hatched several global music wonders in recent years, including Swedish House Mafia and Avicii.
Sweden has long played an outsized role in the global music industry, providing a host of songwriters, producers, technological innovations and successful performers.
A solid musical education system, general prosperity and a deftness at imitation have all been mentioned as drivers. But one of the patriarchs of Swedish pop has a different explanation: godlessness. [Read more…]
A good thing. Manitoba has passed a piece of anti-bullying legislation.
Bill 18, the Manitoba government’s controversial anti-bullying legislation, has been passed.
The public schools amendment act (safe and inclusive schools) passed third reading 36-16 late Friday afternoon.
NDP MLAs stood up and applauded after the vote results were announced, with some hugging Education Minister Nancy Allan.
A clause in the legislation has concerned some religious educators and community members because it would require schools to accommodate students who want to start specific anti-bullying clubs, including gay-straight alliances (GSAs). [Read more…]
