Bad journalism department. The Warrington Guardian reports on a guy who thinks his son’s autism was caused by the MMR vaccination.

A STOCKTON Heath father, who believes his son became autistic after being given the MMR vaccination, has welcomed a landmark Italian court ruling.

Judges in Rimini awarded the Bocca family £140,000 after the Italian health ministry conceded the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine caused autism in their nine-year-old son.

The result has given fresh hope for many parents with similar cases who feel the British legal process has failed them…

Oy. How to inspire new flocks of people to refuse to let their children be vaccinated.

Oliver’s family said he ‘markedly regressed’ within weeks of the jab from a bright boy who could point to every letter on a bedroom alphabet freeze to someone who lost all his skills and language  and was in a ‘world of his own’.

Therefore…

sigh

Everyone says the CFI student leadership weekend was fantastic. Ed Brayton said so, and all the people tweeting about it at the time said so, and the pictures that Paul Fidalgo tweeted said so. (There was one of “James Croft with his invisible yo-yo” that cracked me up.)

CFI goes from strength to strength. Noticed that?

Maryam reports that the Council of Ex-Muslims 5th anniversary bash was also fantastic.

Good things!

So anyway.

Way back last month I did a brief post on Martha Nussbaum’s new book on religious intolerance. There’s more to say. I’ll say a little of it now.

The overall point is just that she leaves out a lot. She puts a thumb on the scales by leaving out a lot.

I had the same problem with the Opinionator articles the book expands on. I wrote about them on July 20, 2010 and July 22, 2010. Maybe I said it all in there, but I’ll say some things before I look to find out. [Read more…]

Meta. God this is boring. As briskly as possible –

Verbose S

to call the situations “threatening” runs a massive risk of saying that they were intentional threats, not that the person was reasonable to feel, at least, that there might be a threat.

What “massive risk”? There was nothing at stake. No one was named. What possible “massive risk” could there be? Harm to the reputation of [????????] That’s not a risk.

Verbose S again

 Thus, the “risk” I am talking about is another type of risk, the risk of using the word “threatening” to refer to the intentions of people as opposed to what people like Watson and Ophelia might feel based, which is wrong.  Thus, it opens up the risk of being wrong.

Oh that massive risk. So it’s massively risky for me to use the word “threats” to refer to threats but it’s fine for you to warn of the “massive risk” of…being wrong.

Verbose S again

If someone says that “X was threatening you”, then the implication is always that that was intentional, and not just that the person found it threatening.

But that isn’t what I said. I said I got email threats. The whole rest of your reply is subject to the same objection. Careless; points deducted.

S Beesley

your original post stated, unambiguously, that you had “got email threats about TAM”. No ifs, no buts, no nuance.

But getting threats doesn’t mean one thing and one thing only. I did get threats: threats about what was likely to happen, and how likely it was. Somebody telling me that it was very likely that I would be shot at TAM felt like a threat to me. That’s a perfectly normal use of the word. People talk about a threat of rain, for godsake.

My personal opinion is that you made a error of judgement in your original post.

By saying I got email threats when I did get email threats. That’s ridiculous.

I fear that you’re defending the indefensible

See above.

S Beesley again

The clear meaning here was that the emailer threatened her.

No. One possible meaning; not the clear meaning.

S Beesley again

My observation is that Ophelia is now complaining that reasonable people are not taking a nuanced approach which would not be possible from the original post.

Yes it would; see above.

It’s very kind of both of you to spend this much time and effort trying to show that I was wrong to say I got threats when I got threats, but really, it’s not necessary. I got this.

Amanda Marcotte is familiar with the problem. She doesn’t stare in bewilderment if you mention it. She doesn’t tell you to lighten up or to ignore it or to grow a pair or to stfu.

I’ve got a toe in some geek stuff, but mostly I watch the culture from the outside, and I have to say, from an outside perspective, it actually looks like geek culture has allowed a form of entrenched and vicious misogyny to flourish. It’s not the majority or anything like that, but there’s a loud minority of geek men who have a hate-on for women that’s so grotesque that it often gets to fundamentalist Christianity levels.

That’s the problem. Amanda is familiar with it.

She lists six examples of battles within geek culture over misogyny and feminism. Number 5 will ring a bell.

5) Let’s not forget the ongoing battles over sexual harassment at geek-intensive skeptics events. It appears that women who speak out against sexual harassment with an eye towards making the conferences better and more fun for everyone can expect to be dismissed, minimized, and even directly lied about at Psychology Today. Apparently, a whole lot of people would far rather preserve their right to be hostile to the few women who show up at their events rather than create an atmosphere where more women show up and actual fun is had.

That first link is to the video we here at FTB did a week ago. The second is to that horrible article by Doctor Marty Klein telling a prettied-up version of how the swingin’ couple approached Elyse Anders.

There do seem to be a whole lot of people who are desperate to preserve their right to be hostile to the few women who show up at their events.

 

A very apposite tweet just now…

Dan Savage‏@fakedansavage Thank you for supporting marriage equality, @gopmommy, but respectfully: If you think I’ve bullied people, you don’t know what bullying is.

Been there! Been there, been there, been there.

So has Jason.

A piece of good news, for once – thanks to Maureen Brian for alerting us.

Saudi Arabia is allowing women to compete in the Olympics.

A statement issued by the Saudi Embassy in London says the country’s Olympic Committee will “oversee participation of women athletes who can qualify”.

The decision will end recent speculation as to whether the entire Saudi team could have been disqualified on grounds of gender discrimination.

And it will also…you know…allow women to compete.

Mind you, because of the stifling rules women have to obey in Saudi Arabia, and the lack of provision for athletic activities for women, there are few women who can actually take advantage of this permission…In fact there’s one. But, baby steps.

There is almost no public tradition of women participating in sport in the country.

Saudi officials say that with the Games now just a few weeks away, the only female competitor at Olympic standard is showjumper Dalma Rushdi Malhas.

But they added that there may be scope for others to compete and that if successful they would be dressed “to preserve their dignity”.

In practice this is likely to mean modest, loose-fitting garments and “a sports hijab”, a scarf covering the hair but not the face.

“Modest loose-fitting garments” could of course hinder their performance in most activities…But, baby steps.

 

I hate irony. Or at least I hate “irony.” I hate the kind of “irony” that was those teenage boys tormenting Karen Klein on that schoolbus.

Justin thinks what Abbie Smith and the gang at ERV do is irony. I don’t.

How could it be? How would that work? Is the idea that they don’t loathe the people they call cunts and baboons and all the rest of it? That’s just silly; of course they do.

So where’s the irony?

It’s something about 4chan. Fuck 4chan. There’s not some special extra dimension where loathing becomes irony and where Karen Klein and those boys could kick back and lol at all those insults.

Fortunately, the sun is out from behind the clouds here and it’s not raining for the first time in three days, and I get to go out on a boat for awhile. A totally unironic boat.

I was looking through The Random Things this morning and found this 1994 (yes! the clock goes back that far!) interview with Katha Pollitt. It reminds me that none of this crap is at all new or even surprising. I’ve been thinking and saying “But I thought everyone knew…” [that you don’t call women cunts, that you don’t assume women are lying if they even say some stranger made a pass at them, that you don’t blame them for discussing sexual harassment], but that’s stupid.

For instance.

Q: Do you find yourself a feminist among civil libertarians and a civil libertarian among feminists?

Pollitt: Although there are certainly particular issues where you might find your wish to see women safe and cheerful conflict with your civil-libertarian outlook, basically I see these as having much more in common than opposed. [Read more…]

Some people just will not get the point. Take the Taliban, for instance – they are so confused.

Taliban leaders in Pakistan are blocking a polio vaccination campaign that was to target 161,000 children in North Waziristan.

The Taliban commander Hafiz Gul Bahadur is demanding that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) halt drone strikes, which have heavily targeted the mountainous region, according to a story in the New York Times. The move could prove a setback for the global initiative to eradicate polio…

Oh, no no no no, that’s all wrong. You’re supposed to impose suffering on yourself, not on 161,000 children! It’s so basic. You go on hunger strike, you don’t block polio vaccinations.

Hopelessly confused.