Good stuff.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I have been told that the divisions over sexism racking the atheist movement are a purely American problem — this simply isn’t an issue in Europe. There’s also the implication that it’s a phony concern, ginned up by bloggin’ malcontents.
So I guess the University of Nottingham is located somewhere in Iowa, then?
And she should be. She speaks out about the photo hacking and the culture that encourages it.
The effects are good: the court has denied appeals on same sex marriage rulings.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the hotly contested issue of gay marriage, a surprise move that will allow gay men and women to marry in five states where same-sex weddings were previously banned.
By rejecting appeals in cases involving Virginia, Oklahoma, Utah, Wisconsin and Indiana, the court left intact lower-court rulings that struck down bans in those states.
Other states under the jurisdiction of appeals courts that struck down the bans will also be affected, meaning the number of states with gay marriage is likely to quickly jump from 19 to 30.
We had a brief intrusion by a few trolls over #gamergate: they were trying so hard to seem polite and rational while being obsessive and repetitive and tedious, clearly hiding their true goals under a veil of politeness. I’ve seen similar behavior from cultists, and it’s rather creepy.
In an opinion piece in a Turkish newspaper, Melis Alphan considers the ongoing national debate on the appropriate clothing for women — the veil, for instance, was once imposed on women as a marker to distinguish them from prostitutes and slaves. What’s interesting, in particular, is that she has a view that the West is more liberal than we really are.
I don’t expect to win this one: it’s gotten the attention of github, the core of the dudebro universe, and it’s already gone far in the direction of delusion, with swarms of self-righteous gamer goons rushing to vote for their bias. The poll asks, What do you think is at the heart of GamerGate? (and like all badly designed polls, uses choices to split the vote). Here’s the status so far:
And this is right after the article tells you to go read a summary written by the GamerGate goons which starts like this:
We’ve got years of social justice ideologies, largely radical-feminist rhetoric, once thought safely contained within small blogging communities such as Tumblr, becoming more and more prevalent within games reporting.
How do you look yourself in the mirror in the morning if you are willing to so openly condemn “social justice”? Isn’t it also clear that what bothers these guys most is feminism?
Go vote. Despair that you’re outnumbered, but just remember: you’re atheists. You’ve always been outnumbered. You’ve also always been right.
Robyn Pennacchia writes about how the non-bros of progressive communities can be just as bad as the dudebros we spot so easily — she’s mainly addressing the alt-lit community and Stephen Tully Dierks, but she mentions the recent paroxysms in the atheist community as well — and she answers the question about how come just about every time I hear about a new and interesting progressive group, it turns out to be in the context of blatant sexism or sexual assault. It’s because it’s harder to police your own than others.
You people exceeded our goal in less than 24 hours!
I guess I’ll be meeting some of the Ada Initiative people at Skepticon this year.
Uh-oh. The Ada Initiative has piece about me, now. With pictures. I should have sent them a collection of George Clooney headshots.
