Good lord.

A Republican New Hampshire lawmaker referred to women as “vaginas” in an email to colleagues on the official legislative electronic mailing list earlier this month, drawing outrage from women’s rights groups.

No. Nobody did that. Right?

State Rep. Peter Hansen (R) made the comment, first reported by New Hampshire political blogger Susan the Bruce, in an April 1 email debate with colleagues about a “stand your ground” gun bill. Hansen’s colleague, Rep. Steve Vaillancourt (R) had delivered a lengthy floor speech about the benefits of retreating instead of using deadly force, to which Hansen replied in an email:

What could possibly be missing from those factual tales of successful retreat in VT, Germany, and the bowels of Amsterdam? Why children and vagina’s of course. While the tales relate the actions of a solitary male the outcome cannot relate to similar situations where children and women and mothers are the potential victims.

Well that’s remarkable.

Farah Rahman has a great post on the Amina-Femen-“imperialism”-too busy being awesome thing.

So let’s look at these accusations of ‘imperialism’. Many of those on Facebook (mis)using the word ‘imperialism’ are, it seems, Western-based Muslims who have grown up under liberal laws. They have no idea what it’s like to actually live in a country where you might be forcibly silenced for your politics. In my opinion, you do have to be pretty privileged to cry out the word ‘imperialism’ so often and with such wild abandon. What is really and truly awful is not that some Muslim women feel upset, but how playing the victim can so effectively erase the original victim herself, in this case Amina. There where whole days of outrage and little concern for where Amina was. It turns out she was being tortured by her family, her aunts stripped her naked to force a ‘virginity’ test on her and she was made to recite passages from the Koran against her will. [Read more…]

Amina Tyler has told us (via Femen) where she’s been and what’s been done to her.

…she was beaten, kidnapped and drugged by her family after posting pictures of herself baring her breasts online.

The 19-year-old was also forced to endure a humiliating “virginity test” in the aftermath of her protest, which inspired women’s movement Femen to organise a“topless jihad” in support of her. [Read more…]

Alex has a post about the god panel at QED, which he attended, along with a lot of other people I know and a lot of people I don’t know.

Yesterday on QED’s second and last day, Carrie Poppy of Oh No, Ross and Carrie! fame (her talk on anecdotes, by the way, was excellent) moderated the ‘God Panel’, a discussion between Mitch Benn, Richard Dawkins, Mike Hall and Lawrence Krauss and the programme’s one specific atheist event. When a question was posed about mistakes our movement had made, the first example given – I think by Mitch Benn, though it might have been Mike Hall – was Atheism Plus, an answer audience members seemed to like and onto which other panellists piled.

Mitch Benn (again, it may have been Mike Hall) said A+ makes atheism into more than non-belief.

I can interject here to clarify, because Mitch Benn tweeted at Rhys and me to explain that he has no problem with the principles, only the name. Oh well then! I’m not invested in the name, and not sure I like it either. That’s that sorted. [Read more…]

The Protestants were in on the “imprison the children” routine too. That’s nice. Very ecumenical, very interfaith.

Abuse survivors of the Protestant Bethany Home care institution are to accuse the State of being complicit in the manslaughter of 63 children at the home when they meet Justice Minister Alan Shatter on Tuesday.

The manslaughter charge now being made by the Protestant survivors represents a major escalation in their battle with the Government for inclusion in the State’s redress scheme for abuse victims.

Bethany Home was a Protestant evangelical institution for unmarried mothers to give birth, before being forced to abandon their children, and was a place of detention for Protestant women on remand, or convicted of crimes from petty theft up to infanticide.

In 2010 it was discovered that 219 Bethany children were buried in unmarked graves in Mount Jerome Cemetery. [Read more…]

Oh whew, what a relief, Pope Frank isn’t going to relax the discipline on those pesky radical feminist nuns who are giving the Vatican such a splitting headache. Thank you, Mr Pope!

Pope Francis has reaffirmed the Vatican’s criticism of a body that represents U.S. nuns which the Church said was tainted by “radical” feminism, dashing hopes he might take a softer stand with the sisters.

Nah. Don’t worry about that. Nobody’s going to take any kind of softer stand with any sisters, because that’s where it all stops. If men ever give up the right to tell the sisters to stfu, then it’s all over – the very principle of arbitrary hierarchy and dominance and superiority will be at risk, and if there’s anything we can’t have it’s that. Why? Because little boys have to be able to pump up their egos as they grow up by constantly reminding themselves and each other that at least they’re not girls. [Read more…]

Leo Igwe’s talk in London last month, courtesy of London Black Atheists. (Which by the way is for all atheists; it’s “Black” to help more Black atheists come out, but not to limit it to them.)

Another artist convicted of a non-crime in Turkey.

A Turkish court has convicted pianist and composer Fazil Say of blasphemy and inciting hatred through a series of comments he had made on Twitter last year.

According to his lawyer, Meltem Akyol, the musician was given a suspended 10-month jail term. Akyol also said that his client would have to serve the term if he committed a similar offense within the next five years.

Ten months in jail for saying something “blasphemous” on Twitter! Suspended, but not suspended if he does it again in the next five years. “Blasphemous” for fuck’s fucking sake – a non-existent “crime” against a non-existent “deity” who is supposed to be all-powerful and all-knowing which if it is why would it give the tiniest damn in the world about one human being saying something? Why would it want that human being punished for saying it? [Read more…]

Guest post by Torcant Torcant.

Sevan Nisanyan is a Turkish citizen of Armenian origin, living in Turkey, who is openly Atheist. He is also a public figure, an activist, an historian, a conservationist, an etymologist and more.

He spares no words when it comes to Islam and religion in general. He has many published books, is active on Facebook, twitter, and has a blog.

Of course he gets a lot of death threats.

But this video against him is especially interesting:

[Read more…]