I think I can skip this one

The Minnesota Republic is another of those fringey conservative student newspapers that get surprisingly well funded by the Republicans, and aren’t at all representative of the campus as a whole. This one is on the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota, and they get enough money that they’re bringing in a couple of well-known speakers to discuss an issue of concern.

That issue is feminism.

And to discuss it, they’re flying in two people. Guess who? Hint: they’re not well-informed experts. They have more of a reputation as anti-feminist ideologues. Try to come up with the two worst names you can imagine.

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I never have to smile

I don’t. I could stop smiling forever right now, and it would just make me a Very Serious Person. I remember job interviews — what I had to do was convince the committee that I had what it takes to do the job. “Ingratiating” could be a perfectly alien concept to me, and I could still function perfectly well.

So it’s eye-opening when Sady Doyle flips the table.

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No Roosh

Do I need to mention Roosh, he of the books full of rape stories, he of the cunning plan to end rape by legalizing it on private property, he who announced a world-wide set of meetings of his fellow pick-up artists, he who cancelled all of those meetings as people around the world learned of them and laughed at him? Yes, I do, but I’ll be brief. He had a “press conference”, that started like so:

All right, so the world has gone insane in the past week. Why? Number one, I had organized meet ups around the world for men to enjoy a social happy hour to meet in private and talk about anything. Work, politics, girls, just to meet. Okay? Number two, a year ago I wrote an article How to Stop Rape. This article, to a 10-year-old, was obvious that I didn’t intend to legalize rape or cause harm against women. But starting on Sunday, a lot of you have lied by saying that I am a pro-rape advocate. He wants women to get hurt! And then the third thing, you said the meet ups are about rapists. They want to gather to learn how to rape. They are going to exchange tips. Some of you have called it a rape rally! What the hell is that? A rape rally? So because of that I’ve been all over the world in terms of the news. Over 100 articles have been written.

I think Dave Futrelle has Roosh’s history covered. Social meetups are not the problem. The problem is that Roosh brags about traveling around the world “banging” women who are drunk, unconscious, or otherwise unable to consent, he publishes recipes for tricking women into sex, he regularly disparages women, and yes, he published a bizarre article in which he suggested that rape would go away if the law disallowed charging men with rapes that occurred on their own private property — after all, the woman consented to entering his rape cave, therefore she consented to anything he might do to her there. So basically his “press conference” was all about lying about what he does.

But the operative sentence is that last one: Over 100 articles have been written. That’s exactly what he wanted. His plan was a success.

Therefore, I now declare Pharyngula to be a Roosh-Free Zone. I won’t be mentioning him in the future. I’m entering his name into the blacklist, so don’t even bother trying to mention him in the comments. Defending him will be grounds for an automatic ban.

Beware of snakes in your ovaries!

The Abolitionist Society of Fort Worth is one of those organizations that encourages the vicious goons who stand outside of Planned Parenthood, screaming and waving placards of photos of bloody embryos at women trying to get medical care. They are going to be distributing a pamphlet that is the graphical equivalent of their incoherent shouting, and here is one of the informative illustrations from it.

ovariansnakes

You’ll probably have to click to get a larger size, and even then it’s going to be a difficult read: who thought that a wall of small all-caps sans serif text would be readable? Probably the same people who thought their hate tactics were rational.

Hey, maybe those women aren’t going in for abortions, but to take advantage of Planned Parenthood’s ovarian snake removal services, did you ever think of that, huh?

(via Beth Presswood)

It’s not just astronomers

Add molecular biology to your list of fields that have a sexual harassment problem. A biologist at the University of Chicago (where only a quarter of the senior faculty are women, the article points out) has resigned in the midst of some damning accusations.

The professor, Jason Lieb, made unwelcome sexual advances to several female graduate students at an off-campus retreat of the molecular biosciences division, according to a university investigation letter obtained by The New York Times, and engaged in sexual activity with a student who was “incapacitated due to alcohol and therefore could not consent.”

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Feminism isn’t a side issue, it is a central issue in any movement with a pretense to rationalism

Richard Dawkins has issued a formal statement via CFI on his disinvitation from NECSS. It is civil, polite, and rational, and concludes this way:

The science and scepticism community is too small and too important to let disagreements divide us and divert us from our mission of promoting a more critical and scientifically literate world.

It misses the point.

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Disgraceful exploitation

A woman says she was raped by Neil deGrasse Tyson in grad school. She contacted me and asked me to share her story. But here’s the disgraceful exploitation that’s going on.

She did not know who I am, at all. She came to me because she was advised to…by slymepitters. The same people who have been indignant for years that women might speak out against harassers. They are trying to deploy this woman as a weapon.

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