Girl Scouts return huge donation after donor requests it not benefit transgender girls

I don’t really know what the Girls Scouts are, but this was incredible to read.

A $50,000 donation is cause for celebration at the Queen Anne offices of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington. [The council’s CEO, Megan Ferland] came back to the office earlier this spring and announced that she’d just landed a $100,000 donation… Not only did it represent nearly a quarter of the council’s annual fundraising goal, it would pay to send 500 girls to camp. “We were thrilled,” Ferland says.

Except there was a catch. In late May, as news of Caitlyn Jenner’s transition was blowing up your Facebook news feed, she received a letter from the donor with a brief request: Please guarantee that our gift will not be used to support transgender girls. If you can’t, please return the money.

I don’t know how one reads that favourably. But that was Ferland’s response.

In a short letter, she informed the donor that she would, in fact, be returning the money. Her reasoning was simple. “Girl Scouts is for every girl,” she says. “And every girl should have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout if she wants to.”

Every girl. No matter what you or others decide they are.

You can read the whole story here, including the support they’re getting and, importantly, the support they need – it’s incredible reading that organisations reaffirming transgender people as belonging can do wonders to help the trans folk, since it helps combat stigma that leads to the awful situation so many live in.

Indeed, if you want an outline of what that looks like (at least in America), Last Week Tonight had an excellent segment.

Oliver and his crew are suuuuuuuch an SJWs.

Has Ann Coulter written the most Ann Coulter article ever?

Yes. Yes, she has.

Soocer – or “football”, as “Europeans” like to “call” it (seriously, what’s up with conservatives and their fucking quotation marks?) – is coming to eat your children. It shall do so using the bizarre numbers from metric system, not allow you to use your hands like we’re cavemen or something, and bring about seas of blood. Something, something, moral decay. File. Check please!

Ann Coulter’s soccer piece is a work of trollish genius.

I could only muster one response.

What’s weirder is how much of her argument reads exactly like a letter Avi got.

I hurt a nerdbro’s feelings

So you might’ve seen this comment on a previous post about fake nerd girls from some brave hero called “wtfwhateverdood“. I’m waiting for some work to download, so I thought I’d give a response, because I’m such a nice guy and must continue to defend “the honour” of women (that’s from the comment before)

F you and your encouragement of the cultural appropriation of nerd culture:

First fail. My comment policy clearly indicates no swearing and yet that’s the first thing you did. Welcome to the banned list, bro. But please do link to me when you write your thoughtful ranting elsewhere on the big wide internet, as I am under no obligation to continue to provide a platform. Please, really do: I can’t wait to waste my life reading your deep thoughts about them nasty hot girls, destroying your life with their existence in your vicinity.

“Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture.[1][2] It can include the introduction of forms… “

Zzzzzzzz.

Thanks for the Wikipedia entry, bro. I like that you didn’t even remove the footnote numbers. Cute. If you were my student, I’d fail you for not (1) providing a source of your quotation, (2) not indicating it’s not your words thus becoming plagiarism, and (3) using WikiPedia instead of another source.

Also, boring.

“Here’s a quiz Tauriq”

I love quizzes from strangers demanding I give them attention! Please! MOAR!

how do you feel about Dartmouth canceling a Cinco De Mayo Fraternity fundraising “Phiesta” because one young woman complained about the cultural appropriation?

http://campusreform.org/?ID=5576

Eh. What?

Fake girl nerds, with the emphasis on fake

+ have no understanding of what it was like to grow up a nerd
+ were usually the oppressors of nerds
+ take on nerd costume as a way of seeming cool
+ oppress the real nerds still. That is, in their new fake girl nerd role, they still shun nerds

You don’t define “fake” so I don’t know what it means. Emphasising is not the same as defining.

“[They] have no understanding of what it was like to grow up a nerd”. And?

“were usually the oppressors of nerds” – so?

“take on nerd costume as a way of seeming cool” – What a crime! Arrest them!

“oppress the real nerds still. That is, in their new fake girl nerd role, they still shun nerds” – Circular arguments make me dizzy, bro. They oppress because they oppress. Wow. Insight!

Are you trying to justify why it’s ok for bros to be dicks to women? If you’re explaining why it happens – that’s one thing. If you’re justifying it, that’s another thing entirely. And I don’t think you’re interested in explanation, since you’d be indicating it’s wrong to unnecessarily target women. Even make-believe ones like “fake nerd girls”.

Oh, it’s cute. Oh, what does it matter? Oh, it’s just a name.

No, it’s cultural appropriation, it’s disrespectful, it’s oppressive.

Yes, disrepectful. Totally. The elders of nerdom must be appeased!

Oppressive. Wow. Yeah, really oppressive when non-existent groups of people enter your conventions and… “oppress” you. What does this mean? You keep saying oppress and shun and so on, but never provide examples. Just their presence apparently is enough.

That says more about you than the women, bro. Also, how come men aren’t guilty of these crimes? When I was bullied, it was by other boys my age. Not women.

So well done there bro, you’re totally not looking like a sexist jerk.

Portlandia, written and starring two nerds, including a real nerd girl, understands what you are too much of a dipsh*t to understand

REAAAAAAAL NEEEEEEEEEERD GIRLLLLLLLLL! SHE HATH PASSED TEH TRIALS SET BY THE LORDS OF NERDOM, AROSE VICTORIES THROUGH THE FIRES OF GEEKERY! PRAISE BE HER NAMES! [sic]

Go away. You are boring, bro. And this is incredibly, incredibly sad.

UPDATE (because of Comment #1):

It seems as though the commenter’s only way to communicate on the Internet is through my blog’s comment section. This leaves me in a dilemma! What should I do?! He’s already so oppressed!

Clearly the entire rest of the Internet is closed to him – that’s the only conclusion I can reach from his desperation to appear on my blog.

UPDATE #2 Men cry foul cos evil feminism makes hitting on women more difficult

Would probably helped if I linked to the piece: Here.

That’s a piece I wrote, as a response to a Guardian post which – to say the least – I didn’t like. The piece claims campaigns like Everyday Sexism make hitting on women harder, because it makes all them “females” think confident flirtation is same as harassment.

Er, yeah. No.

I also commented directly on the piece itself, in the comment section, which got one… strange response.

Some readers can’t locate my comment Guardian site. I’ll reprint it here:

Since I’ve been following Everyday Sexism for a while, I find the author’s characterisation of the project different to mine. I’d be interested to see where exactly the claims come from that indicate all men do this – considering the campaign has been encouraging and welcoming men’s voices, too, who speak out and discourage this behaviour.

I’d also be interested where exactly the claim is made that mild flirtation is equated with street harassment. It seems to me if you can’t distinguish between the two then maybe that’s a serious problem and you should rethink what you mean by flirting – not what the woman you’re flirting with is “doing wrong”.

Of course, your intention could very well be one that truly is harmless and is non-threatening – but misinterpreted. And this I understand, to a small degree.

But considering, as you know, the environment in which women live and what some face everyday, that’s just… well… TOO BAD. Yes, it sucks that it’s harder to intitiate conversation and flirtation without being perceived as “yet another creep”. Yes, it sucks that women have been so constantly bombarded with such idiocy they change their behaviour, time of day for jogging or walking or doing basically anything (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/02/apps-and-online-programs-offer-new-ways-to-report-street-harassment.html), – because victim-blaming also is this pernicious, see?

It’s easy for us men to claim “but we’re nice guys and never do that” – but again, I assume most people can distinguish between the two behaviours.

There will exist genuine mistakes and misinterpretation – as there is in everything we do. Except here it’s compounded by the environment that so many women live in, everyday. The name of the project says it all.

In a world screaming for their attention, namecalling them when women refuse to give it, we shouldn’t be wagging our fingers when our kinder voices go unnoticed. We should be empathetic, target the environment and other men doing this – and also respect women enough to, you know, be able to tell the difference between harassment and harmless flirtation. I don’t see Everyday Sexism as ushering in the downfall of sexual freedom – I see it as protecting it, particularly women’s, so that we can all live in a better world.

(Weirdly, Dawkins linked to this comment – even though his quotation indicates his support of the very article I was criticising in that comment.)

PS: Ophelia also has some important insight, as always.

On leaving the “online atheism” community

My friend from “down under”, Martin Pribble, wrote a short post – that has been reworked for Slate – on why he’s “quitting the online atheism community”. Quoting from the Slate piece:

For the last five years I have considered myself an “activist atheist.” I trolled Facebook and Twitter for theists and told them why they are wrong. I made fun of them for their unreasonable beliefs. I would analyze and nitpick their statements, show examples of just where they went wrong and why, and even at times ridicule them when there seemed to be no option left, all in the vain hope that I might be able to sway them to a more rational way of viewing the world and the universe. This could be extremely satisfying, and sometimes I found I could even come to a level of agreement with a believer about the realities of life. I even have friends among my Twitter following who are priests and strong Christians.

But I’m through with it, and I no longer want to be part of the online atheist “community.” What I was once a proud member of, a group who fought against the evils of deliberate misinformation coming from religious groups and people, has become, at least on the surface, a parade of contradiction and caterwauling against theists who have no clue that there could be an alternate viewpoint or understanding of the universe than their own. The times of satisfaction are outweighed by feelings of frustration and hopelessness.

Through the piece, Martin details his frustrations with “debates with theists who make a ludicrous claim, then base their evidence on the very book from which their ludicrous claim originates.” This is because, says Martin, “Faith overrides knowledge and truth in any situation, so arguing with a theist is akin to banging your head against a brick wall: You will injure yourself and achieve little.”

I don’t dispute that and it’s one reason I stopped doing “it” some time ago, at least on this level. I don’t consider what I do entirely comprised of “atheist activism” or “online atheism” – I am part of a blog network comprised of nonbelievers but almost no one here is devoted solely to Bible criticism or undermining religious claims wherever they may sprout. Indeed, for my part, most of what I write on isn’t premised on whether it’s religious madness but just general immoral actions or thoughts.

Martin seems to take this course, too:

“This will not change an awful lot in what I do online. But I think I’ve come to a point where I am only injuring myself if I were to continue engaging in theistic debating about things like the efficacy of the Noah’s Ark story. If someone is espousing beliefs that are actively harmful—i.e., promoting intolerance based on belief systems—expect me to be the first to stand up and say something. I can’t allow this kind of thinking, and if I can help it, I will move to sway the believer into rethinking their position. But this will be done with reason and rational discourse, not with contradicting the finer points of the religious texts.”

However, I’m struggling to understand Martin’s point: Who says online atheism is about debating or “contradicting finer points of religious texts”? Who says it has to be about knowing religious doctrine and theology and focusing on inconsistencies that even most believers wouldn’t know or care about? As I say, I don’t consider what I do atheist activism, but it makes no sense to say that the whole enterprise is not worth engaging because of what appears to be a small – and frustrating – part of it.

Martin also equates atheist activism with online atheism, which is probably unhelpful, since activism exists in multiple formats including online blogging and “real life” protests. Indeed, speaking only of “online atheism”, it can be comprised of engaging in science, morality, politics, history; about argument and evidence. To shrink it down to the worst elements and claim you’re abandoning the whole project is not only fallacious but untrue: Martin himself is not giving up writing about harmful beliefs and articulating bad ideas. He’s just reasonably giving up the part that appears most pointless. And who would disagree?

Martin is an excellent writer and a generally thoughtful blogger. However, I don’t quite understand the point of this piece, who it is aimed at, or what he was trying to achieve by writing it. No one would dispute the frustrations he’s experienced and that his continued efforts are more important in those areas actually harmful (not boring Bible studies and theology); his declaration itself highlights even the importance of the parts he finds frustrating, despite himself giving them up; and it seems unnecessary and fallacious to dismiss the entire enterprise, when online atheism or atheist activism is compromised of a variety of enterprises and disciplines – each of different levels of interest, successes, frustration, etc.

 

I can’t say it, but Nehru can

Friends and Comrades,

The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere. I do not know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader… the Father of the Nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that. Nevertheless, we will never see him again as we have seen him for these many years. We will not run to him for advice and seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not to me only, but to millions and millions in this country. And it is a little difficult to soften the blow by any other advice that I or anyone else can give you.

The light has gone out, I said, and yet I was wrong. For the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light. The light that has illumined this country for these many years will illumine this country for many more years, and a thousand years later, that light will be seen in this country and the world will see it and it will give solace to innumerable hearts. For that light represented something more than the immediate past, it represented the living, the eternal truths, reminding us of the right path, drawing us from error, taking this ancient country to freedom.

All this has happened when there was so much more for him to do. We could never think that he was unnecessary or that he had done his task. But now, particularly, when we are faced with so many difficulties, his not being with us is a blow most terrible to bear.

…There has been enough of poison spread in this country during the past years and months, and this poison has had an effect on people’s minds. We must face this poison, we must root out this poison, and we must face all the perils that encompass us, and face them not madly or badly, but rather in the way that our beloved teacher taught us to face them. (source)

Vale Nelson Mandela.