Is sexual harassment a thing? Is it just a fantasy of whack-job feminists (who of course are all way too ugly to be sexually harassed)? What about the military, for example? Lots of discipline there; probably there’s no sexual harassment in among all that discipline, right?

Well, one third of women in the military reported being sexually harassed in 2008. That seems like a thing. Maybe they were all whack-job feminists, but given the bad press feminism gets, I kind of doubt it.

The ACLU considers it a thing.

While it is estimated that over 19,000 sexual assaults occurred in the military in 2010, a rate far higher than among civilians, the government has failed systematically to investigate complaints, appropriately punish perpetrators, and treat trauma and other health conditions suffered by survivors. The profound personal and social consequences that arise from the government’s systemic failures are powerfully profiled in the new film, The Invisible War. Turning a blind eye to these crimes has allowed them to continue, imperiling the lives of victims and degrading their service.

Is it Talibanesque to think that’s a bad situation?

The US State Department has a sexual harassment policy. Is that Talibanesque? Should the State Department allow sexual harassment to go on its merry way, as one of our precious freedoms that we don’t want the Taliban to destroy?

You be the judge.

Annals of horror. “Recovering” children from autism by dosing them with MMS, “Miracle Mineral Solution” aka bleach.

Basically, MMS is 28% sodium chlorite in distilled water. In essence, MMS is equivalent to industrial strength bleach. Proponents recommend diluting MMS in either water or a food acid, such as lemon juice, which results in the formation of chlorine dioxide. [Read more…]

Is a no harassment policy like the Taliban?

Let’s start a little farther back. Is feminism like Nazism?

No, feminism is not like Nazism.

Nazism tried to kill all the Jews in Europe. Feminism does not try to kill all the Jews in Europe. [Read more…]

I just took my temporary housemate, a black Lab named Cooper, to the beach for a good vigorous outing with the chuckit and tennis ball. We came back. I sat down at the desk, and he asked to go outside. I let him outside. He went around to the garden and then came back and sat outside the sliding screen door staring at me and making a low growly noise in his throat, as he does when he wants me to grasp that he wants something.

I got up to open the sliding screen door so that he could come in. He didn’t come in, but stood still staring up at me, with his roadkill toy* at his feet. I was supposed to join him in the garden for a game of ‘throw the toy.’ I pointed out that we had just played and I wasn’t going to play any more right now, and closed the screen door.

I sat down at the desk, he went around to the garden and then came back and sat outside the screen door staring at me and making a low growly noise in his throat. I got up, saying ‘Cooper you’re being a pest.’ I opened the sliding screen door so that he could come in. He didn’t come in, but stood still staring up at me, with his tennis ball at his feet. ‘You don’t want to play with roadkill; you want to play with ball?’

Cooper in outside the door mode

A flat plush squirrel with Xs for eyes and a tire tread across its middle

For Cooper as a puppy – [Read more…]

I’m reading Martha Nussbaum’s new book The New Religious Intolerance, and finding it as exasperating as I expected.

For one thing, there’s what (or who) is not in the index. She puts much of the focus on Islam and what she uncritically calls “Islamophobia,” but who is missing from the index? Maryam. Irshad Manji. Kenan Malik. Taslima. Tarek Fatah. Deeyah.

She argues that “European nations tend to conceive of nationhood and national belonging in ethno-religious and cultural-linguistic terms” [p 94] and that that makes it hard for immigrants to be seen as belonging.

As we’ve seen, there is another option, realized in a wide range of nations around the world: to define national belonging in terms of political ideals, in which immigrants can fully share, despite not sharing the ethnicity, religion, or customs of the majority. [p 95]

That seems to me to be bordering on self-contradictory, unless you add further stipulations about religion and customs (which she does not do).

Look: some tenets of most religions are the opposite of the kinds of political ideals she has in mind (she didn’t suggest Nazi Germany as one example of that kind of nation, nor apartheid South Africa – she did suggest post-apartheid South Africa as one). She means political ideals like equality and universal rights. Well most religions include tenets that rule out equality and universal rights. So do many “customs.” How can it, then, be true that [all] immigrants can [without further ado] fully share in those ideals despite not sharing the customs of the majority?

It’s not that easy. She makes it sound easy, and it’s not easy. It’s not easy and it doesn’t always happen. The demographics of US immigration are handing the Catholic church ever more power; I’m not comfortable saying that, but it’s true. The “good” news is that home-grown religion is reactionary and sexist too, so what the hell, but that doesn’t mean Nussbaum should skate over the tensions quite so fast.

More later.

Hey how about this – Melody tweeted a link to a story about two women honored in Norway

 for their outspokenness across cultural lines. Both have immigrant backgrounds, from Algeria and Syria…

Oh! thought I, I might know one of them, and hastily skimmed down the page, and sure enough!

Sara Azmeh Rasmussen, who immigrated to Norway from Syria in 1995, has been carrying on her efforts to promote tolerance, improve the rights of persons regardless of sexual identity and criticize Islam over what she views as its lack of tolerance and repression of women and homosexuals. Rasmussen has been a frequent participant in demonstrations and commentator in the media, not least in newspaper Aftenposten.

I know her. When I was in Stockholm I went to a meeting of a group of atheist-humanist feminists who focus on women’s rights: Christer Sturmark, Sara Larsson, and Ulrika Magnusson of Fritanke, who published Hatar Gud Kvinnor? and were my hosts, and Lena Andersson, Eduardo Grutzky, a couple of other people whose names I have somewhere but don’t remember at the moment – and Sara Azmeh Rasmussen! She’s very, very cool. Everybody there was.

That’s seriously exciting.

Indigo Jo takes a look at that myth via the report on sexual harassment in London.

The second [striking thing in a discussion on BBC London] was the suggestion (which I recall Simister saying the police had given to her after her assault) that women should “just ignore it”, which prompted me to write an email to the show (which Feltz read out), because the police have said the same thing to people suffering from the anti-social behaviour of local yobs and to people with disabilities who are being harassed by yobs or haters. It’s a fallacy particularly beloved of teachers as well, who will say the same to a child who complains of being teased in the playground (even if the “teasing” is not just verbal or if it is stopping them going about their business): “ignore it and it will go away”. The problem is that it just is not true: if you ignore a harasser who is trying to get a reaction, they will escalate their behaviour to physical intrusions and assaults [Read more…]

Surprise shock revelation: there is sexual harassment in London.

The harrassment ranges from wolf-whistling and lewd comments to physical groping and sexual assault.

Campaigners say that reported cases represent “the tip of the iceberg” and that authorities can no longer afford to ignore the issue.

Research released today by the End Violence Against Women (EVAW) coalition shows 41 per cent of women under the age of 34 have been on the receiving end of sexual harassment in the street.

Blacklist! Witch hunt!! Innocent until proven guilty!!! Feminazis!!!!

Plus, you’re ugly!!!!!

The true extent of sexual harassment across Britain is difficult to judge. Campaigners say there is an acute shortage of academic studies looking into women’s experiences. But anecdotal evidence and the few studies that exist suggest unwanted sexual attention is frighteningly common. Fiona Elvines, from the Rape Crisis Centre, south London, is one of the few academics researching public sexual harassment for a PhD. “The issue has been trivialised for so long that is hasn’t been seen as a valid subject to study,” she said. “But the effect it has is enormous, from everyday decisions women have to make to avoid such harassment – like pretending to talk on your phone – to longer term effects on how they view their bodies.”

Whiners! Victims!! Waaaaaaa!!! Sluts!!!! Bitches!!!!!

Sexual harassment victims speak out

Lisa, Bath

“It seems quite minor, but for me it really summed up how some men are such knobs sometimes. I was walking across [town]. A guy shouted ‘hello’ at me, I ignored him and carried on walking. He then shouted ‘what, not good enough for you? It really angered me that he turned his douchebaggery round on me. Suddenly, in his mind, he’s not an ass for shouting at me, it’s that I’m a bitch because I ignored him. So typical.”

Smile, you bitch!