The largest police union has endorsed the fascist misogynist lying thieving cheating bully Trump.

The Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Donald Trump for president on Friday, praising the Republican nominee’s “real commitment to law enforcement.”

Trump met with the 33,000-member police union in early August and its endorsement bolsters his claim that he is the “law and order candidate.”

Oh really? What about all the stealing and lying and cheating? What about the fraud?

Clinton has made reforming the criminal justice system a centerpiece of her campaign, highlighting it during a particularly violent July week in which a pair of unarmed black men were killed by police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana, leading to nationwide protests. At one such protest in Dallas, a gunman opened fire on law enforcement officers, killing five of them.

The former secretary of state’s calls for reformed policing tactics have been met with criticism by some in the law enforcement community who see her stance as opposition to law enforcement. Trump, by comparison, has more strongly taken the side of police officers in speeches and at campaign events.

Yeah god forbid we should say cops may not kill people over a few cigarettes or a failure to signal a lane change or a toy gun. God forbid we should say some cops get things wrong sometimes, or that some police departments need thorough reform.

A woman in Italy killed herself after a terrible year of revenge porn and social media shaming.

Tiziana Cantone, 31, was found dead at her aunt’s home in Mugnano, close to Naples in the country’s south, on Tuesday. Her funeral procession was televised as commentators grappled with the tragic outcome of her torment.

Cantone’s death came a year after she sent a sex video of herself to some friends including an ex-boyfriend .

The video was subsequently posted on the web and viewed almost a million times. The phrase “You’re filming? Bravo”, spoken to her lover in the video, became a derisive joke online and was printed on T-shirts, smartphone cases and other items.

She quit her job, she moved, she tried to change her name.

After a long court battle she won a “right to be forgotten” ruling ordering the video to be removed from various sites and search engines including Facebook.

But she was also ordered to pay €20,000 in legal costs, in what several Italian media outlets dubbed a final insult .

And now she’s dead.

Sandra Laville at the Guardian reports:

The government must carry out a full review of family courts to stop them being used by violent men to perpetuate abuse against their partners and children, MPs have said.

They called on the justice secretary, Liz Truss, to act swiftly to tackle deep-seated cultural attitudes among family court judges which put the rights of abusive men over the safety of women and children.

MPs were debating research by Women’s Aid which revealed that between 2005 and 2015, 19 children in 12 families were killed by violent fathers who had been allowed to see them through formal and informal child contact arrangements.

Women who leave their husbands to escape violence and coercive control find they have to face them again in family court.

MPs said the family court system was allowing violent men to re-victimise women. Increasing numbers of men were representing themselves and re-traumatising their victims when they made repeated and often spurious applications for access, they said.

Peter Kyle, the Labour MP for Hove, said: “The family courts are being used to perpetrate abuse against extremely vulnerable women … One of my constituents has been cross-examined by her former partner on three separate occasions, the man who beat her, broke her bones and battered her unconscious.”

O J Simpson would say that’s a sign he really really loved her.

What comes next is upsetting.

Angela Smith, the Labour MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, raised the case of her constituent Claire Throssell and her children, Jack, 12, and Paul, nine, as Throssell watched from the public gallery.

Throssell’s estranged partner, Darren Sykes, a perpetrator of domestic violence who had threatened her and his children, murdered both boys during a contact visit to his home in 2014 by enticing them to the loft with a new train set. He then set 16 fires in the house and barricaded the home.

He had been given contact by the family court despite the authorities’ knowledge of his violence and the children’s expressed fear of their father.

Smith read Throssell’s own words to MPs: “It took just 15 minutes on 22 October 2014 for my life and heart to be broken completely beyond repair. My happy, funny boys were killed by their own father … The police later told me that Jack was still conscious when he was carried out and he told them: ‘My dad did this and he did it on purpose.’ This was taken as his dying testimony.”

Paul died in his mother’s arms in hospital, while Jack lived for another five days, MPs were told. Sykes died in the fire.

I wonder if any of this is a product of the Men’s Rights Movement. Child custody is one of their core grievances.

Keir Starmer, the former director of public prosecutions and Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, said it was important to look at the changes made to the criminal justice system to better protect victims of domestic violence – including special measures for victims and witnesses, and the presence of independent abuse advocates – and ask why the family courts were not making similar changes.

He said there was growing evidence that perpetrators of domestic abuse were using the family courts to continue to harass and control their victims.

There’s a whole throbbing culture now in which harassment and control of women is a full-time fun occupation for way too many men. Perpetrators of domestic abuse are right at home in that culture.

H/t Lady Mondegreen

A statement released by the Muslim Personal Law (MPL) Reforms Action Group in Sri Lanka consisting of individual human rights advocates, lawyers, and women, as well as community and women’s rights groups:

In 2014, a 14-year old Muslim girl in Eastern province was given in marriage and her schooling was stopped as a result. After a few months of marriage she applied for fasah divorce (initiated by wife) due to severe sexual torture by her husband. The Quazi instead of dealing with the case in a sensitive and appropriate manner chose to interrogate her for over two hours asking her specific details about the sexual violence. This in turn caused the girl serious psychological trauma that she attempted suicide and faced severe depression thereafter.

This case is one of many in which Muslim women and girls are not only affected directly by discriminatory provisions within the 1951 Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act (MMDA), but also as a result of the sub-par Quazi court system with untrained and unqualified Quazi judges.

There are major concerns that the MMDA violates the rights of Muslim women and limits access to justice, due process and redress. These concerns are with regard to provisions within the Act itself as well as practical problems with procedures and implementation via the Quazi court. For instance:

• The Act legally allows child marriage by not stipulating the minimum age of marriage for Muslims as 18 years (under the Act a Quazi can even permit the marriage of a child under the age of 12)
• There is no requirement of mandatory (and written) consent from the bride therefore forced marriages are technically legal
• There are different conditions of divorce for men and women
  • Only husbands are granted the right to unilateral divorce without reason
  • Process of divorce for wives lengthy, requiring reasons and evidence, witnesses and case hearings
• The provision for wife and child maintenance is decided arbitrarily by Quazis
• Under the Act qualified women not allowed to be marriage registrars, Quazis, jurors or Board of Quazi members. These are state-salaried and tax-funded position that legally discriminate against women simply on the basis of sex
• There is no mandatory requirement of qualifications or mandatory training for Quazis on MMDA
• The Act allows the practice of polygamy without requirement of consent from the wife/s or wife to be (and often without their knowledge) or without conditions of financial stability

Muslim women’s groups have been advocating for reforms of the MMDA for many decades and there have been at least four official committees set up since 1970’s with no progress on reforms. The current 16-member Muslim Personal Law (MPL) Reforms Committee headed by Justice Saleem Marsoof was set up in 2009, by the then Minister of Justice Milinda Moragoda in view that “certain reforms to the Muslim personal law was urgently needed”. Seven years later, the report is still pending.

Urgency in light of constitutional reforms

During the consultations conducted by the Public Representations Committee (PRC) on Constitutional Reforms, many women’s groups and women affected by discriminatory provisions under the MMDA and practices of the Quazi courts brought up concerns regarding the Act. Their submissions were with regard to the fact that the current Constitution grants an exemption for personal laws to violate fundamental rights though the existence of Article 16(1).

On August 24^th 2016, a group of fifteen Muslim women made an appeal to Honorable Mahinda Samarasinghe and the rest of the sub-committee drafting the Fundamental Rights Chapter of the new constitution. The appeal was simple – that Article 16(1) is repealed to ensure that the new Constitution is the supreme law of the land and that fundamental rights and gender equality are ensured for all citizens regardless of religion or ethnicity. They avered to the State’s responsibility to protect the fundamental rights of all its people irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, religion or any other identity markers.

However certain conservatives groups among the Muslim community – while acknowledging that there were major problems with the MMDA and its implementation – claimed that repeal of Article 16(1) is not necessary because the Muslim community will reform its own personal law “from within”, in order to address concerns of women and girls. They referred to the MMDA reform exercise as an example of how the community could address these grave and fundamental concerns.

Appeal to the MPL Reforms Committee and Sri Lankan leaders

At this crucial juncture, therefore it is important for the community in general and Muslim women in particular to know the outcome of the committee’s deliberations and as to how it compares with the protection and equality that Muslim women and children can avail of by calling for repeal of Article 16(1) in the new Constitution.

Therefore, we appeal to the members of the MPL Reforms Committee, Minister of Justice and Judicial Service Commission to inform the Sri Lankan Muslim community as to when the report is expected to be finalized. Also given its relevance to the constitutional reform discussion outlined above, we kindly request that they immediately share the salient outcomes of the reform discussions to date pending the release of the final report.

As the group that had been most intimately involved in this issue over the past seven years their informed intervention at this juncture will be invaluable. Of particular interest will be to see how the recommendations addresses discriminatory provisions currently in place that violate fundamental rights of Muslim citizens.

We appeal to the leaders of this country, and those formulating the new Constitution to continue to uphold a clear vision of equality for all citizens. The Muslim women and men appealing also firmly believe in the freedom to practice religion with respect and dignity for all, including women and not just men. Do not exclude Sri Lanka Muslim women and girls from fully enjoying their fundamental rights as full citizens of this country. Ensure that the new Constitution is in fact the heart and soul of a progressive nation that refuses to exclude any citizen.

I envy Canada Trudeau, but I also think he shouldn’t be endorsing gender-segregated mosques by paying them visits.

Trudeau was at the mosque Monday to mark Eid al-Adha, considered the holiest of feast days for the world’s Muslims. Three female MPs accompanied Trudeau during his brief remarks, though they had to arrive by a side door and stand with their heads covered. They did not address the mosque.

Worshippers at the mosque are separated by gender. Men were on the main floor where Trudeau spoke. Women and girls were in a balcony or in other parts of the mosque. [Asra] Nomani said that recent surveys indicate about two of every three mosques separate men from women, but that is up from a decade ago when only about half did.

He wouldn’t turn a blind eye if it were racial segregation; he wouldn’t turn a blind eye if Muslims were told to sit upstairs; so why does he turn a blind eye when it’s women?

“I will meet with Canadians regardless of where they are in Canada,” Trudeau told reporters Monday afternoon. “I will speak to inclusive growth, help for the middle class. I will talk about gender equality. I will talk about the rights of the LGBT community. We will continue to promote the values which bring us together.”

While Trudeau, in his remarks at the mosque did indeed speak about growth and the middle class, he made no mention of LGBT rights nor did he make any mention of gender equality.

Which is not surprising, since the mosque is opposed to gender equality. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t push women out of the main space.

He did acknowledge the gender separation, though, in his remarks at the mosque, saying, “Diversity is a source of strength, not just a source of weakness, and as I look at this beautiful room — sisters upstairs — everyone here, (I see) the diversity we have just within this mosque, within the Islamic community, within the Muslim community in Canada.”

Patty Hajdu, Trudeau’s minister for the status of women, was not at Monday’s mosque event but said it was important to be respectful of traditions for different places of worship.

“So whether you’re in an indigenous community or in a community of faith or in a military community … there are a number of traditions and cultures and standards that the community upholds and I think the respectful thing is to understand that it might not be your practice but it is theirs.”

No. It’s not “their” practice; it’s the practice of the conservative males, who impose it on everyone. No, the respectful thing is not to turn a blind eye – that’s not respectful to the women and girls banished from the main space.

Nomani said Trudeau and other politicians who support gender equality should refuse invitations from gender-segregated places of worship including mosques.

“They would be following the precedent of other Muslim men who are bold leaders in our community who are now refusing to go and stand at the pulpits of the mosques that segregate like that.”

There are liberal Muslims and conservative-to-reactionary Muslims, and it’s not necessarily “respectful” to side with the conservative-to-reactionaries.

Afghan Atheists posted a very pointed, and poignant, photo, with the caption “When the present meets its past.”

Frivolous interlude:

The Guardian has more on the rivers of blood in Dhaka yesterday.

Poor drainage in the city makes flooding a regular fact of Dhaka life. But the problem is rarely illustrated as vividly as it was on Tuesday, after thousands of sheep, goats and cows were slaughtered.

One of the two holiest events in the Muslim calendar, Eid al-Adha commemorates the willingness of the prophet Abraham to sacrifice his son at God’s request.

You know, that’s a terrible thing to commemorate. One, there’s the willingness to murder the child, and two, there’s the elevation of blind (and indeed horrific) obedience. It’s an abomination.

Authorities in Dhaka said they had established hundreds of designated sacrifice spots in the run-up to the festival to make it easier to clean away blood and animal carcasses.

Or maybe it would be better just not to “sacrifice” animals at all.

But local media said most residents eschewed the special areas, preferring to make sacrifices in their garages or on the streets outside their homes.

The result was a nightmarish blending of blood and water that filled streets and narrow lanes across Dhaka from Tuesday morning.

Twitter

“I felt I was walking through a post-apocalyptic neighbourhood,” said Atish Saha, a Dhaka-based artist. “To be honest, I was scared. It was an image of mass violence that shouldn’t ever be experienced.”

Particularly jarring was said to be the sight of families, including infants, wading into the flood in celebratory “Eid day” moods. “It made me speechless,” he said.

Yay, blood and slaughter!

Yassmin Abdel-Magied tells us why it was so important for her to walk out on Lionel Shriver’s talk.

As I stood up, my heart began to race. I could feel the eyes of the hundreds of audience members on my back: questioning, querying, judging.

I turned to face the crowd, lifted up my chin and walked down the main aisle, my pace deliberate. “Look back into the audience,” a friend had texted me moments earlier, “and let them see your face.”

The faces around me blurred. As my heels thudded against they grey plastic of the flooring, harmonising with the beat of the adrenaline pumping through my veins, my mind was blank save for one question.

“How is this happening?”

Histrionic much?

Shriver said things Abdel-Magied disagreed with and disliked, but the histrionics make it sound as if she said something frankly evil, and she didn’t.

So what did happen? What did Shriver say in her keynote that could drive a woman who has heard every slur under the sun to discard social convention and make such an obviously political exit?

Nothing. That’s the thing.

On and on it went. Rather than focus on the ultimate question around how we can know an experience we have not had, the argument became a tirade. It became about the fact that a white man should be able to write the experience of a young Nigerian woman and if he sells millions and does a “decent” job — in the eyes of a white woman — he should not be questioned or pilloried in any way. It became about mocking those who ask people to seek permission to use their stories. It became a celebration of the unfettered exploitation of the experiences of others, under the guise of fiction.

Again – how does anyone go about asking permission to tell a story about someone from An Other Community? Someone fictional? If you’re to dense to notice that that’s not something anyone can do, because there is no Bureau of Community Permission, and if there were it wouldn’t be able to speak for any particular community anyway. This idea that one should get “a community’s” permission to write about a fictional member of said community is just an absurdity. Shriver made fun of it. No doubt that was annoying to many, but it wasn’t a crime.

It’s not always OK if a white guy writes the story of a Nigerian woman because the actual Nigerian woman can’t get published or reviewed to begin with. It’s not always OK if a straight white woman writes the story of a queer Indigenous man, because when was the last time you heard a queer Indigenous man tell his own story? How is it that said straight white woman will profit from an experience that is not hers, and those with the actual experience never be provided the opportunity?

That’s not how that works. Preventing a white guy from writing the story of a Nigerian woman won’t get a Nigerian woman published. It won’t do anything. Whether or not a Nigerian woman gets published is a separate thing. It’s not like a place on a lifeboat that means someone else drowns. I want to see lots of Nigerian women tell their stories and get published, and yes I would rather read their accounts of Nigerian lives than the accounts of people who don’t know anything about it – but all the same an outsider writing about people doesn’t remove their chance to write about themselves. It’s not necessary and it’s not productive to make a ferocious rule about it, and then pitch fits when someone says the rule is stupid.

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The Guardian too is reporting on the criticism of the Science Museum’s pink and blue brains exhibit, and wording it more sharply than Pink News did.

The Science Museum in London is facing criticism for a “junk science” exhibit that asks visitors to test whether they have a blue or pink brain.

…

Prof Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, an expert on the teenage brain at University College London who has been advising the Science Museum, said the exhibit in its current form was “out of date, to say the least”.

She added: “I saw it recently and was pretty shocked by the misleading message, which doesn’t correspond to the scientific evidence.”

Prof Gina Rippon, of the University of Aston, said: “The stereotyped view of a ‘hard-wired’ link between sex and gender is wrong and potentially harmful as it implies that this is somehow the ‘natural order of things’.”

And that it really is ok that men dominate STEM fields…except ones where the pay and status are low, the way they used to be in coding.

Prof Joe Devlin, a neuroscientist at University College London, said there were well-established differences between the male and female brain, such as hormone levels, and that the male brain was on average larger, in line with body size. But it is not clear how these differences translate, if at all, to differences in cognition.

“That’s where things get really shady,” he said. “I’m worried about that stuff and I’m not sure there’s a good basis for any differences in cognition. The stuff about men being better at spatial things and women being better at language, that just seems like nonsense.”

Rippon agreed: “There are, of course, differences between the brains of men and the brains of women related to reproductive processes. But with respect to the structures and functions of the brain which are related to cognitive processes there really are none.”

Oh well, it’s only the Science Museum.

The London Abused Women’s Centre [that’s London, Ontario] posted on Facebook Monday morning:

London Abused Women’s Centre withdraws support of the 2016 Take Back the Night

The London Abused Women’s Centre is withdrawing from the Take Back the Night march on September 15, 2016. We are withdrawing because we cannot tolerate an environment that condones violence against women.

Four days prior to Take Back the Night, the Women’s Events Committee posted a request on Facebook for consultation on possibly having a pole-fitness group attend the Take Back the Night gathering. This does not allow proper time for community feedback. Moreover, the consultation was framed in a way where pole-fitness was stated to be “body-positive” and “empowering.” No alternative viewpoint was provided.

Pole-fitness emerged from pole-dancing in strip clubs—where women, whether there by ‘choice’ or not, are sexually objectified by men. They are leered at and groped at by men who view them as objects for their own sexual gratification. Women and girls are also sex-trafficked into strip clubs and other areas of the sex-trade. Pole-fitness cannot be separated from this history and context. The symbol of the pole is one of sexual objectification and violence against women. Thus, while pole-fitness may be empowering for individual women, it is not empowering for women as a whole. It is a reminder that our primary role in this society has been delegated to one where we are an object to be used and abused as men, and others, see fit.

Because of this, hosting a pole-fitness demonstration at a Take Back the Night is antithetical to its purpose. Take Back the Night is supposed to be an event where women demand their right to be free from violence, including sexual violence. It is an event where girls and boys have the opportunity to learn what rights and freedoms girls should have. A pole-fitness demonstration reinforces the daily messages girls receive that their primary purpose is to be sexy and an object for the purpose of pleasing men. This is especially concerning given that young women are at high risk of being both sexually assaulted and sex-trafficked.

The London Abused Women’s Centre does not believe in colluding with messages that support the objectification of women’s bodies and violence against women and thus will not be participating in the 2016 Take Back the Night march.

The Guardian published Shriver’s talk (uh oh will they get in trouble now?).

I’m afraid the bramble of thorny issues that cluster around “identity politics” has got all too interesting, particularly for people pursuing the occupation I share with many gathered in this hall: fiction writing. Taken to their logical conclusion, ideologies recently come into vogue challenge our right to write fiction at all…

…

The author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, Susan Scafidi, a law professor at Fordham University who for the record is white, defines cultural appropriation as “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorised use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”

Hang on – what does that mean, “without permission”? It doesn’t mean anything, because how on earth does anyone know whom to ask for “permission” of that kind? Who is in a position to give such “permission”? No one. The fact that Scafidi is a law professor makes that phrase especially absurd. If there’s anything lawyers hate it’s a dangling meaningless requirement like that. (That’s me appropriating the experience of lawyers. I don’t actually know that that’s their top hate. I made that up.)

What does “unauthorised use” mean there? Again, nothing, because how can it? Authorised by whom? Who has the job of authorising people to use “another culture’s cuisine”? Absolutely no one has that job, and the claim is grotesque. We don’t need authorisation or permission to go to a Thai or Ethiopian or Brazilian restaurant to eat some fabulous interesting food. We don’t need authorisation or permission to listen to foreign music (and nearly all music is foreign to all of us, because all cultures have music) or wear foreign clothes or dance foreign dances. That claim is ridiculous and hideously xenophobic, though it doesn’t intend the latter. People in Delhi don’t need my permission to eat McDonald’s french fries, and I don’t need theirs to eat chole masala.

We get closer by sharing.

I do think people get to look askance at appropriation of their religious stuff, because that’s a different kind of thing. There are probably other kinds I’d agree should be done with care and tact if at all. But a sweeping taboo like the one from Susan Scafidi? Forget it.