The Irish Examiner:

A US film studio has threatened to sue an Irish autism-rights advocate if she continues to speak out against its controversial anti-vaccine documentary, Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe.

West Cork-based mother, Fiona O’Leary, who wants to block the film’s release in Ireland and Britain, said she was outraged to receive a legal letter from California-based Cinema Libre Studios over the weekend.

The letter claimed that her public comments about the 90-minute film were defamatory and that her comments about the filmmaker were libellous.

They demand that she immediately shut up, or else.

“In the event that you do not comply with this demand, we intend to file an action against you. We will ask for punitive damages and financial compensation for all losses to our business directly resulting from your actions.”

The documentary alleges that the US government agency charged with protecting the health of US citizens destroyed data from a 2004 study that showed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

It is directed by discredited anti-vaccine activist, Andrew Wakefield, whose controversial 1998 study first suggested a link between autism and vaccines.

Why is he discredited? Because his “study” was fraudulent. Wikipedia:

Andrew Jeremy Wakefield (born c. 1957) is a British former gastroenterologist and medical researcher, known for his fraudulent 1998 research paper in support of the now-discredited claim that there was a link between the administration of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and the appearance of autism and bowel disease.

His fraudulent 1998 research paper. The “discredited” above is polite, given the facts. More Wikipedia:

On 28 January 2010, a five-member statutory tribunal of the GMC found three dozen charges proved, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children.^[12] The panel ruled that Wakefield had “failed in his duties as a responsible consultant”, acted both against the interests of his patients, and “dishonestly and irresponsibly” in his published research.^[13][14][15]The Lancet fully retracted the 1998 publication on the basis of the GMC’s findings, noting that elements of the manuscript had been falsified.^[16]The Lancet’s editor-in-chief Richard Hortonsaid the paper was “utterly false” and that the journal had been “deceived”.^[17] Three months followingThe Lancet’s retraction, Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register, with a statement identifying deliberate falsification in the research published in The Lancet,^[18] and was barred from practising medicine in the UK.^[19]

He directed this dangerous film, and the film company has the gall to threaten a critic and tell her to shut up.

It’s Trump-level disgusting.

Irony stretched to the breaking point – a Facebook rant (sorry, I instantly forgot who posted it so can’t link) about how pathetically unelectable the Dems are, because all the people who spoke last night – Cory Booker, Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren among others – never struggled a day in their lives, so how can they possibly lure voters away from Trump?

What universe is this? Trump is the one who inherited millions. Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Warren grew up working class. Cory Booker’s parents were IBM executives, but I don’t think we should be assuming that even comfortably middle class black kids grow up with zero struggle, especially compared to rich white kids.

People seem to confuse Trump’s incredible vulgarity with his being somehow working class and not privileged and representative of the struggling masses, and the striking unvulgarity of Booker and Obama and Warren with silver spoon births. That’s ridiculous. Trump is indeed a boor, and ignorant, and profoundly trashy – but that’s not because he ever had to “struggle” – it’s because that’s what he’s like.

The BBC reports fallout from its own reporting on the “hyena” in Malawi who cheerfully admitted that he’s HIV-positive.

An HIV-positive Malawian man, who says he is paid to have sex with children as part of initiation rites, has been arrested on the president’s orders.

Eric Aniva, a sex worker known in Malawi as a “hyena”, was the subject of a BBC feature last week.

He told the BBC that did not mention his HIV status to those who hire him.

President Peter Mutharika said the police should investigate and charge him over the cases of defilement he had seemingly confessed to.

“Defilement” is a horrible choice of word. He apparently confessed to potential infection.

“While we must promote positive cultural values and positive socialisation of our children, the president says harmful cultural and traditional practices cannot be accepted in this country,” presidential spokesman Mgeme Kalilani said in a statement

Mr Avena would “further be investigated for exposing the young girls to contracting HIV and further be charged accordingly”, he said.

The president had also ordered all men and parents involved should be investigated, Mr Kalilani said.

“All people involved in this malpractice should be held accountable for subjecting their children and women to this despicable evil,” the statement said.

Well, good. That’s a cultural practice that should come to an immediate end.

When choosy-choice libertarian “feminism” meets Porn Culture Today – and the result is hipster bullshit.

Can a feminist have rape fantasies?

According to feminist pornography producer Pandora Blake, who runs the fetish porn site Dreams of Spanking and frequently portrays fantasies of “non-consent”, the answer is a no-brainer. “Absolutely.”

The general consensus in the feminist porn movement is that no fantasy, no matter how anti-feminist the subject matter appears to be, is off limits. To tell a woman what she is and is not allowed to be turned on by is just about as anti-feminist as it gets.

No, it really isn’t. We know the advertisers and marketers and porn producers want you to think that, but if we think really hard we can come up with a reason for that that’s separate from “because it’s true.”

First, “allowed to” isn’t the issue. That’s where the bullshit comes in – it’s dishonest. Saying X isn’t feminist does not equate to saying X isn’t allowed, much less you’re not allowed to X. None of this has anything at all to do with permission or commandment.

Second, it’s possible to be turned on by something that makes you feel uncomfortable to be turned on by. Third, it’s ok to talk about that, in fact it’s good to talk about that. Feminists have been trying to figure out the guilty pleasure of rape fantasies since forever. Trying to figure it out is one thing, and claiming it’s obviously and “absolutely” feminist in itself is another.

Feminists routinely fight for sexual agency – a woman’s right to make decisions about her own sexuality, including when and with whom to have sex, and when, if ever, to get pregnant. Feminists traditionally rebel against the forces that would hem in these rights: the puritanical voices that say that a woman who enjoys sex is a slut, that would restrict access to contraceptives, that claim that dressing provocatively is inviting rape.

Following that logic, feminists argue they shouldn’t invoke shame around the sexual fantasies of others – even if those fantasies include images of kink and domination, or even rape.

But not invoking shame is one thing, and celebrating is another.

“There’s a clear distinction between fantasizing about being coerced, and actually being coerced,” Blake says, explaining that just because she has (and depicts) dark fantasies doesn’t in any way mean that she’s endorsing real-life nonconsensual sex acts.

Wait. They keep sneaking extra claims in here. Having fantasies is one thing, and depicting them (and distributing and profiting from the depictions of them) is another.

The feminism of Trouble and Taormino’s porn isn’t limited to the content – they are also strongly committed to a safe and comfortable work environment, fair pay, and a creative voice for their actors. This behind-the-scenes work is especially important for porn like Blake’s. While Blake doesn’t believe that the content of her work is at odds with her feminism, where it gets complicated, she says, is in portraying and sharing those fantasies without promoting actual violence toward women. In a world where porn is the de facto sex education for any teenager with an internet connection, socially responsible producers have to think not only about what will get people off, but what people will learn.

Well exactly. So why begin the piece with all that dishonest blamey crap then?

Because it’s hotter that way, I suppose.

Erdoğan is zeroing in on the journalists now.

One journalist, who was on vacation, had his home raided in the early morning by the police. Others were called in to their bosses’ offices last week and fired, with little explanation. Dozens of reporters have had their press credentials revoked.

A pro-government newspaper, meanwhile, published a list of names and photographs of journalists suspected of treachery.

The witch-hunt environment that has enveloped Turkey in the wake of a failed military coup extended to the media on Monday, as the government issued warrants for the detention of dozens of journalists.

Erdoğan never has liked to see journalists just doing journalism, without any helpful guidance from him.

Many dozens of journalists have lost their jobs during his tenure. Others have been arrested over their coverage of national security issues. Still others have been charged with insulting the president, a crime in Turkey.

…

Among the journalists on the list to be detained on Monday was Nazli Ilicak, a prominent television commentator who was fired several years ago from Sabah, a pro-government newspaper, after criticizing the government during a corruption scandal.

Oh well, governments are always perfect, so there’s no need to have journalists who criticize them.

As the government has detained journalists, it has also begun censoring the internet, blocking access to more than 20 websites, including the news sites Gazetport, Haberdar and Medyascope.

The Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council also canceled broadcasting licenses for 24 television and radio stations with suspected ties to Mr. Gulen.

The Turkish government has not spared foreign journalists in its attacks, verbal or otherwise, on the media.

Officials have singled out news outlets such as the BBC and The New York Times for what they called “pro-coup coverage,” saying the outlets’ focus has been more on Mr. Erdogan’s sweeping purge rather than on the assault on Turkey’s democracy from the coup itself.

The coup was over in hours. The purge is going on and on and on…

A 28-year-old woman from Bradford dies suddenly while visiting relatives in Pakistan.

Police are investigating the death of a British woman in Pakistan after her husband claimed she was the victim of an “honour” killing for marrying a man from outside the family allegedly against her parents’ wishes.

Samia Shahid, a beauty therapist from Bradford, died on Wednesday while visiting relatives in Pandori village near Mangla Dam in northern Punjab, the Foreign Office confirmed.

Shahid’s local MP, Naz Shah, has demanded that authorities in Pakistan exhume her body and commission an independent autopsy.

Her husband was told she’d had a heart attack. Someone else told the Guardian it was asthma.

Her husband said he feared she had been killed by her family, who he says refused to accept their relationship, partly as he was an “outsider”. Shortly before Shahid and Kazam married at Leeds town hall in September 2014, she had left her first husband, a first cousin from their village in Pakistan.

The family denies it.

“This is a terrible tragedy but she died of natural causes,” said Mohammed Ali, a cousin in Bradford. “The family did a postmortem. There’s no evidence whatsoever of murder.” He disputed Kazam’s claim of marriage, referring to him as “that boy, Samia’s so-called husband”.

That’s not a good sign.

A family friend in Bradford said on Sunday the family were not happy when Shahid married Kazam but had learned to accept their relationship because they loved her.

The Guardian has seen a witness statement submitted to Pakistani police by Shahid’s father, Mohammed Shahid, in which he refers to his daughter’s husband as her cousin Mohammed Shakeel, not Kazam. The Guardian has also seen a copy of Shahid and Kazam’s British marriage certificate, signed on 24 September 2014.

Yeeeeahhhh – if the father is still calling the first cousin she left her husband, that kind of undercuts the claim that the family had learned to accept the second marriage, doesn’t it.

Kazam, a Pakistani national, claims Shahid’s family did not approve of their “love marriage”. He says she moved to live with him in Dubai in May 2015, but had been back to Bradford twice in the past year to persuade her parents to accept the relationship.

Kazam claimed that at the start of July, Shahid was encouraged to travel to Pakistan because one of her aunts had died, but she chose not to travel to the country.

Kazam claimed Shahid was told that a relative was gravely ill in Pakistan and she flew to Islamabad on 14 July.

Shahid was due to return last Thursday but Kazam said he received a call on Wednesday from one of Shahid’s cousins saying she had had a heart attack and died. He told the Guardian he did not believe his otherwise healthy wife would have died suddenly, and he flew to Pakistan to force the police to investigate.

If I were Kazam I wouldn’t believe it either.

Glosswitch ponders the way purity politics on the left ends up meaning misogyny just doesn’t matter enough to do anything.

Misogyny may be deplored in theory, but when you look at actual women, they are never good enough to merit protection. Men are. Men always are. There’s not a man on earth who doesn’t benefit from the unpaid labour of women, but that is only natural. As Andrea Dworkin put it, “God is the right, nature is the left.” There’s always a moral reason for hating women. Ruth Smeeth worked for an evil corporation, as have I. Screw us. While men’s humanity is not in question, women only get one humanity token and we blew it.

Today’s left wing men have their own bastardised version of intersectionality to use as an excuse for continuing to dismiss women’s issues and needs. I don’t think for a minute any of them have read any Crenshaw, yet they consider themselves experts when it comes to lecturing their female peers on privilege. Crenshaw had an important point to make about the way in which intersecting oppressions require specific analyses and practical responses as opposed to one-size-fits-all solutions. As far as your average lefty male is concerned, intersectionality simply means calling a woman a bigot whenever she seeks to articulate the material nature of female oppression.

It’s so thrilling for them when they get to do that.

Only a whorephobic bully objects to the sex trade. Only a transphobe considers abortion and surrogacy to be women’s issues. Only a middle-class bitch shirks the housework and pays another woman to do it. It’s funny, isn’t it, how the left-wing intersectional ideal ends up being not the liberation of all women, but ensuring all woman remain barefoot and pregnant, serving men.

…

And I’m pissed off with this. I’m pissed off with the fact not only that purity costs money (very few of us can afford to quit a job in moral pique) but that it imposes a specific, unacknowledged tax on women. We’re meant to shut up about rape threats for the sake of party unity. We’re meant to carry on cooking, cleaning, caring, serving, because it would be “exploitative” to expect anyone else to do it. We’re meant to pretend that Hillary Clinton is the same as Donald Trump even though Trump clearly thinks all women are scum. We’re meant to perform the exact same role capitalist patriarchy has always expected us to perform only don’t worry, girls! Come the revolution you’ll be scrubbing floors and sucking cock in a socialist utopia!

And nobody will ever utter the word “misogyny” again.

That’s not all Theresa Kachindamoto is working on. She’s also working on making it possible for girls to stay in school instead of getting married.

Theresa Kachindamoto, the senior chief in the Dedza District of Central Malawi, wields power over close to 900,000 people… and she’s not afraid to use her authority to help the women and girlsin her district. In the past three years, she has annulled more than 850 child marriages, sent hundreds of young women back to school to continue their education, and made strides to abolish cleansing rituals that require girls as young as seven to go to sexual initiation camps. With more than half of Malawi’s girls married before the age of 18, according to a 2012 United Nations survey — and a consistently low ranking on the human development index, Kachindamoto’s no-nonsense attitude and effective measures have made her a vital ally in the fight for women’s and children’s rights.

Kachindamoto, who was born in Dedza District, had been working as a secretary for twenty-seven years in another district when she was called to come home and serve as a chief. Upon her return, she was dismayed at the sight of 12 year-old girls with babies and young husbands and quickly began to take action. Last year, Malawi raised the legal age to marry to 18, yet parental consent continues to serve as a loophole to allow younger girls to marry. Kachindamoto ordered 50 of her sub-chiefs to sign an agreement ending child marriage in Dedza District. When a few male chiefs continued to approve the marriages, Kachindamoto suspended them until they annulled the unions. In addition to annulling the marriages (330 in June of 2015 alone!), this fierce chief sent the children back to school, often paying their school fees with her own money. She has also asked parliament to raise the minimum age of marriage again to 21.

Good luck to her.

H/t Stewart

An “interesting” custom in Malawi:

In some remote southern regions of Malawi, it’s traditional for girls to be made to have sex with a paid sex worker known as a “hyena” once they reach puberty. The act is not seen by village elders as rape, but as a form of ritual “cleansing”. However, as Ed Butler reports, it has the potential to be the opposite of cleansing – a way of spreading disease.

Well, you know, how it’s seen by “the village elders” isn’t really the issue, since it’s not the village elders who are being fucked against their will. Note that the girls are made to “have sex with” this guy – in other words they’re raped. The fact that it’s potentially unhealthy isn’t the only problem.

Aniva is by all accounts the pre-eminent “hyena” in this village. It’s a traditional title given to a man hired by communities in several remote parts of southern Malawi to provide what’s called sexual “cleansing”. If a man dies, for example, his wife is required by tradition to sleep with Aniva before she can bury him. If a woman has an abortion, again sexual cleansing is required.

Required, required, required – the women are required to be raped for various stupid reasons. “Cleansing”=punishing a woman, just to be on the safe side.

And most shockingly, here in Nsanje, teenage girls, after their first menstruation, are made to have sex over a three-day period, to mark their passage from childhood to womanhood. If the girls refuse, it’s believed, disease or some fatal misfortune could befall their families or the village as a whole.

They’re raped over a three day period. They’re not “made to have sex” because being raped isn’t having sex. The rapist is having sex, but the rape victim isn’t.

“Some girls are just 12 or 13 years old, but I prefer them older. All these girls find pleasure in having me as their hyena. They actually are proud and tell other people that this man is a real man, he knows how to please a woman.”

Despite his boasts, several girls I meet in a nearby village express aversion to the ordeal they’ve had to go through.

“There was nothing else I could have done. I had to do it for the sake of my parents,” one girl, Maria, tells me. “If I’d refused, my family members could be attacked with diseases – even death – so I was scared.”

They tell me that all their female friends were made to have sex with a hyena.

Just to make sure, condoms are not permitted.

It’s clear, given the hyena’s duties, that HIV is a huge risk to the community. The UN estimates that one in 10 of all Malawians carry the virus, so I ask Aniva if he is HIV-positive. He astounds me by saying that he is – and that he doesn’t mention this to a girl’s parents when they hire him.

Ah. Brilliant.

Parents who have had more education than others may already choose not to hire a hyena, I am told. But the female elders I spoke to remain defiant.

“There’s nothing wrong with our culture,” Chrissie tells me. “If you look at today’s society, you can see that girls are not responsible, so we have to train our girls in a good manner in the village, so that they don’t go astray, are good wives so that the husband is satisfied, and so that nothing bad happens to their families.”

Definitely. You have to have the girls thoroughly raped (and infected with HIV) so that the husband is happy.

In Malawi’s central Dedza district, hyenas are only ever used to initiate widows or infertile women, but the Paramount Chief Theresa Kachindamoto – a rare female figurehead in Malawi – has made the fight against the tradition a personal priority.

She is trying to galvanise other regional chiefs to make similar efforts. In some other districts, like Mangochi in the east of the country, ceremonies are being adapted to replace sex with a more benign anointing of the girl.

But not in Nsanje.

In a remote village, I meet one of Aniva’s two wives, Fanny, along with his youngest baby daughter. Fanny was herself widowed before being “cleansed” by Aniva with sex. They married soon after.

Their relationship looks strained. Sitting next to him, she admits shyly that she hates what he does, but that it brings necessary income. I ask her if she expects her two-year-old to be undergoing initiation too in perhaps 10 years from now.

“I don’t want that to happen,” she says. “I want this tradition to end. We are forced to sleep with the hyenas. It’s not out of our choice and that I think is so sad for us as women.”

“You hated it when it happened to you?” I ask.

“I still hate it right up until now.”

Then Aniva says he doesn’t want it for his daughter either.

IS says it did it – sent the suicide bombers who killed 80 people in Kabul and wounded another 230.

The IS-linked Amaq news agency said two fighters “detonated explosive belts at a gathering of Shia” in Kabul.

The attack in Deh Mazang square targeted thousands from the Shia Hazara minority who were protesting over a new power line, saying its route bypasses provinces where many of them live.

…

An Afghan intelligence source told the BBC that an IS commander named Abo Ali had sent three jihadists from the Achen district of Nangarhar province to carry out the Kabul attack.

Only one of them successfully exploded his belt, so the death and injury toll could have been much higher.

A letter to the New York Times yesterday:

To the Editor:

As Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens’s mother, I am writing to object to any mention of his name and death in Benghazi, Libya, by Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party.

I know for certain that Chris would not have wanted his name or memory used in that connection. I hope that there will be an immediate and permanent stop to this opportunistic and cynical use by the campaign.

MARY F. COMMANDAY

Will Trump heed this request?

Any bets?

I was reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Prime of Life – the translation of La Force de l’Age, the second volume of her memoirs – last night and arrived at a sentence that I found supremely hilarious.

It’s November, and she and Sartre are sitting on the terrace of a café in Le Havre, as one does, “complaining at length about the monotony of our future existence.” That’s not it though. This is it:

If I drank a little too much one evening I was liable to burst into floods of tears, and my old hankering after the Absolute would be aroused again.

You’re welcome.

Tom Slater at spiked utters the familiar mindless platitudes about what he calls “free speech” when he’s actually talking about unchecked bullying and abuse.

For all of our 15 years, spiked has championed freedom of speech – with no ifs or buts. For us, it’s an indivisible liberty, a freedom that crumbles once you caveat or qualify it. More profoundly, it’s the foundation stone of politics, progress and solidarity. It is through having the freedom to speak our minds that we create the space to experiment with new, transformative ideas, and decide, collectively, what is important. That’s why the insidious creep of censorship – from hate-speech laws to Twittermobs – so troubles us. Each and every act of censorship chips away not just at free speech, but democratic life itself.

Blah blah blah blah, stirring music fireworks shots of the flag with fighter jets overhead. But free speech where? Free speech in what sense? There’s no such thing as total – “no ifs or buts” – free speech in all places and contexts. People with jobs aren’t free to verbally attack their co-workers without consequences. Teachers aren’t free to mock and ridicule and taunt their students. Nurses and doctors aren’t free to tell patients what stinking nuisances they are. I could go on this way forever. Most speech is protected from state interference. That’s not the same thing as “Twitter can’t ban people for relentlessly harassing women on Twitter.”

Let’s get one thing straight: Yiannopoulos shouldn’t have been banned. He stands accused of ‘siccing’ his followers on Leslie Jones, a black stand-up and one of stars of the new feminist-lite Ghostbusters reboot. He slated the film – deeming it an affront to masculinity itself – and goaded Jones on Twitter. Then some of his fanboys bombarded Jones with abhorrent racist abuse – many likening her to an ape. This was straightforward, pond-scum racism. Forget all those thin-skinned feminists who call the police when someone calls them an idiot. This was the real deal. But these 140-character c***s still had free will, and there’s no evidence Yiannopoulos engaged or even encouraged their attacks. This was just an opportunity for Twitter execs to shut up someone they, and the entire liberal Twitterati, hate.

Why do they hate him? Is it just random? Is it because of the dyed hair? The sunglasses? The hard to spell surname? No, it’s because of his long history of inspiring campaigns of abuse against individuals on Twitter. Twitter is a social media platform that journalists and people in related fields pretty much have to use in their work. If they don’t, they’re handicapped. People shouldn’t have to choose between being handicapped in their work, and having to put up with thousands of abusive tweets from fans of Milo Yiannopoulos.

Spiked is tiresome.