A popular tweet:

Shari VanderWerf ‏@shariv67 11 hours ago
Excuse me, sir. Do you have a minute to talk about global warming?

Cosby has been to court for his arraignment.

Judge Elizabeth McHugh ordered him to surrender his passport and to avoid contact with Ms. Constand.

Judge McHugh concluded the proceeding after about 15 minutes by saying, “Good luck to you, sir.” He replied, “Thank you.” He will remain free on bail of $1 million.

Mr. Cosby then headed to the Cheltenham Township Police Department to be fingerprinted and to have a photographs taken. A small gathering of people outside shouted, “You’re a monster” and “Shame on you” as he walked into the station. He said nothing.

I’m wondering if this will play out the way the OJ Simpson case did. The other day at the local branch library I happened to see a shiny new copy of Jeffrey Toobin’s book on the Simpson case and decided to read it. It brings it back…the disgust of watching the defense turn it into a (parody) “civil rights” case, while the domestic violence aspect just slipped away. The disgust of watching that actually succeed.

My guess? I don’t think it will. Cosby’s defenders, if he has any, are keeping a very low profile.

There was no Larry Wilmore show in 1994.

Maajid Nawaz expands on his thoughts about “wear hijab day.”

Simply wearing a headscarf on World Hijab Day falls terribly short of our moral responsibility. It is, after all, being called World Hijab Day. So, it is not only Western Muslim women who must be considered here, but the millions of Muslim women who live under theocracies around the world, for whom World Hijab Day is enforced every single day, and for the rest of their lives.

That’s why I would never in a million years wear any form of hijab.

Did these non-Muslim women—indulging their Orientalist fetish by covering their heads—not stop to consider for one moment that their counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and under Taliban or ISIS rule also require our solidarity in taking their hijabs off?

It is simply an undeniable fact that most Muslim women attacked around the world for how they dress are attacked by other Islamist and fundamentalist Muslims, not by non-Muslims.

…

When I suggested this in a tweet, it caused a bit of a Twitter storm, which, sadly, was predictable.

I am a liberal. The headscarf is a choice. Let Muslim women wear bikinis or burqas, liberal societies have no business in legally interfering with the dress choices women make. I have consistently opposed the ban on face veils in France, just as I oppose their enforcement in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Outside of this legal debate though, and as a reforming liberal Muslim, I reserve the right to question my own communities’ cultural traditions and taboos. And, as a liberal, I reserve the right to question religious-conservative dogma generally, just as most progressives already do with Christianity.

But people jump all over him when he does. I’ve seen some remarkably ugly (and casually made) accusations over the past week.

Why is a woman in a headscarf deemed more modest than one without, and what implication does that have in attitudes toward the “honor” of women who do not cover? Only a racism of low expectations would prevent liberals from asking these questions of my religious-conservative fellow Muslims. No idea is above scrutiny, just as no person should be beneath dignity.

Sounds fair to me.

Monday I mentioned a BBC photo of a heartbreakingly huge pile of full bin-bags outside a bookshop in Hebden Bridge. Today I read in the Guardian:

Authors including Jon Ronson and Ian Rankin have joined efforts to help a bookshop badly hit by the floods that have swept the north of England. The Book Case in the West Yorkshire town of Hebden Bridge was one of the businesses in the town wrecked when the town was hit by the severe rain battering the region.

Sam Missingham, head of events at publisher HarperCollins, and Yorkshire-based husband-and-wife author team Bob and Carol Bridgestock, who write crime fiction as RC Bridgestock, have been lobbying authors to provide signed copies of their books to sell in an auction to raise funds for the Book Case – and among those who responded to the call are fiction author Marian Keyes, Rebus author Ian Rankin and journalist Jon Ronson.

A series of eBay auctions have been the authors’ donations – and for precious collectors’ items donated by book lovers – to raise money for the Book Case, which has been in business for almost 30 years and hosts a local writers’ group, author readings and book signings.

…

Kate Claughan of the Book Case said on the shop’s Facebook page on Tuesday: “Obviously the last few days have been shocking and very difficult, but we have truly been amazed and overwhelmed by the support and solidarity from our customers and the wider publishing and writing community.”

The shop didn’t have flood insurance because Hebden flooded very badly three years ago.

Deborah Cameron talks about some Words of the Year.

If this blog could ban a word in 2016, that word would be ‘banter’. Banter cropped up in the news several times during 2015, and on each occasion it revealed itself, once again, as a term whose main function is to normalize misogyny. Of course it’s true that getting rid of the word wouldn’t eliminate the thing itself. But it might make it harder for people to pretend that sexist verbal abuse is just a bit of harmless fun, in a totally different category from the racist or homophobic equivalent.

One traditional place for the ‘harmless banter’ argument to surface is in discussions of the shit that gets said to and about women by sportsmen, sports fans and sports pundits. In March, when the FA made a statement condemning sexist chanting at football matches, women involved in the Beautiful Game were supportive, but also sceptical. Carolyn Radford, the Chief Executive of Mansfield Town, contrasted attitudes to racist abuse (which was condoned for far too long, but is now subject to a zero tolerance policy) with the endless trivialization of sexism and misogyny. ‘Because it’s “banter”, so to speak’, she said, ‘I’ve got to flick my hair and just accept it’.

I just saw a public Facebook post in which a guy gave an eloquent rant about Tory Education minister Nicky Morgan, which ended with this:

You utter, vacuous, woo-believeing, backward, medieval, anachronistic, tory, pasty-faced, oleaginous, imbecilic, obambulating, tory, self-serving, cumbercunt of a twatmangle.

He’s a decent guy, a Facebook friend, and I strongly doubt he would call say Bill Cosby or Anjem Choudary a cumbernigger of a niggermangle – but it’s ok to call women cunts and twats. All the comments on that post were men going teehee, you called her a cunt, teehee.

So, yeah. We’re supposed to flick our hair and accept it. We don’t count.

Just to be clear, I’m not really in favour of banning words. On the contrary, one depressing feature of this year has been the continuing determination of some feminist organizations to purge their political vocabulary of terms that refer to women as a class. A proposal to drop the word ‘sister’ from future campaigns was approved at the National Union of Students’ annual women’s conference. The Midwives’ Association of North America rewrote its core competencies document replacing the phrase ‘pregnant women’ with ‘pregnant individuals’. As more and more organizations campaigning for abortion rights took the word ‘women’ out of their literature, the Nation columnist Katha Pollitt wrote:

it feels as if abortion language is becoming a bit like French, where one man in a group of no matter how many women means “elles” becomes “ils.”

My first ever post on this blog pointed out that ‘woman’ has a long history of being treated as a ‘dirty word’, and that reclaiming it from silence and euphemism was one of the goals of the Women’s Liberation Movement. The new argument for avoiding it (that it’s exclusionary) may look different from the old one (that it’s ‘indelicate’), but if you’ve been around for long enough to remember when the old one was common-sense, you’ll find it difficult not to notice certain similarities. There is a persistent distaste for the idea of embodied femaleness which has deep historical and cultural roots. And that, I believe, is something feminism must continue to challenge.

Banter or no banter, Cosby or no Cosby, Facebook or no Facebook.

Larry Wilmore on Cosby last July, after the New York Times published that deposition in which Cosby admitted drugging women in order to fuck them. (In other words, as Wilmore emphatically points out, to rape them.)

Because it made me laugh my insides out.

Taslima mentioned this on Twitter, so I looked it up. International Business Times reports:

Indian Army personnel allegedly gang-raped a 14-year-old girl Monday in a moving train in the eastern state of Jharkhand, according to local reports. Police in Jharkhand reportedly detained one of the men and said the other two would be arrested soon.

The girl ran away from her home Sunday and was travelling alone on a train bound for the town of Amritsar, in the northwestern state of Punjab. Her family alerted police of her disappearance, who informed railway authorities.

The Times of India reported officials spotted her boarding a train car reserved for troops.

Railway police rescued the girl, who later said in a complaint that one of the soldiers offered her liquor and two others raped her after she was drunk. The man who offered the girl liquor was arrested and the other two were absconding, DNA newspaper reported.

Taslima had guys tweeting at her that the girl drank liquor!! the girl got in a traincar with soldiers!! In other words she asked for it. Taslima explained to them that she didn’t.

Rape is a crime. It’s not a judicial and fitting punishment for running away, or disobeying parents, or skipping school, or drinking, or getting on a train with men. It’s a crime and a violation of rights; it’s an act of violence. Nothing justifies it.

Originally a comment by Samantha Vimes on For no reason at all.

There are some uninformed people speaking up this time.

Listen, guys: there’s this thing you might have heard of called “socialization”. It’s where people form opinions, values, and behaviors based on what the people who came before them and live around them think, do or say. It’s the reason why so many people have a low opinion of women. It’s not that women are, in general, so bad at life that we deserve to be mocked and scorned. It’s that when you were boys, the men around you taught you to deride women. She’s angry? Must be that time of the month; it cannot be thought that he did something genuinely wrong and is being told about a legitimate grievance. She’s asking if you want to eat? She must be a fucking passive-aggressive manipulator– it can’t be that eating is a social thing and she thinks it would be more polite of her to wait a while if you aren’t ready to eat with her now. You had an argument and she expects an apology, even though *she* apologized? It must be that she is actually crazy, not that her socialization taught her that all arguments end with both people apologizing to each other to show the relationship is more important than the topic of disagreement, so she swallowed her pride and apologized even though she was right, and now you’re just sitting there, smug, thinking you “won”, when she was just trying to show you how much she cares.

Look, men and women are socialized differently, and the way to deal with that is to open up more lines of communication and talk about why things aren’t working smoothly if both people just act the way they were taught to act.

For instance, “spread for me” is a horribly sexist sounding phrase to a woman’s ears, because it reduces your lovers to passively granting access to sex, rather than reflecting enthusiastic consent and partnership. It also sounds objectifying.

Furthermore, demanding that a woman “ask you” for things is demeaning. These are not the days where a man must provide for a woman. We can buy our own food. She doesn’t need your permission to eat. She just wants your fucking company, so don’t pretend like it’s a huge favor you’re granting. Do you want to eat or not? If she asks and you aren’t hungry, how about saying how long you think it will be before you are ready to eat? (My husband is diabetic. Sometimes we actually can’t eat at the same time, and sometimes I get low blood sugar – more likely to make me cranky than PMS ever would – because I wait too long for him… but I’ve learned to grab a snack, I just want to know what size snack to get.)

Pull up your chairs for a lesson in Spoilers and Social Justice. Shut up, this is important.

First of all – is it hypocritical to want spoiler alerts while thinking trigger warnings are out of hand or silly or both? Yes, yes it is. Thank you for asking that question. The answer is yes.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get down to the real politics.

Spoiler warnings are an intersectional social justice and accessibility issue. For example, I am rarely able to experience media right away. I don’t get to see movies when they come out because I work a lot of hours, I’m a student, and I’m usually totally broke. Spoilers are a constant reminder that I’m too poor to have the benefit of seeing movies opening weekend (or even in the theater usually), too poor to watch shows on cable, or too poor to read books right away. Helping me to avoid spoilers by labeling them helps me to experience media the way people with more money and time than me get to experience that media. When I’m angsting about not wanting a movie spoiled for me, it’s not because I’m a hypocritical jackass. It’s because I’m a poor college student who has to wait a few weeks to see a movie I’m excited about but cannot afford the time or cash to see yet.

We just don’t think, do we. We forget all about poor people, shivering in their rags and unable to see the new Star Wars movie the day it opens. We just stride past them, holding out their sad little tin cups, on our way to buy a $200,000 T shirt and tickets to the new Star Wars movie.

From an accessibility perspective, there are many people with a wide variety of disabilities who may not be able to see a movie when it is in theaters, or who may not get through a book quickly.

That’s true, that’s true. I’d better stop talking about books, and articles too, because who knows how many people haven’t had time to “get through” them yet, who are nevertheless reading my blog posts?

People with PTSD, agoraphobia, or a myriad of other concerns may be unable to see a movie in a theater but will be thrilled to see the same film in their living rooms. I love to watch movies with my friend with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome, and would hate to have those movies spoiled for her just because her condition makes the loud sound systems of movie theaters intolerable. Should I feel free to spoil a book that my dyslexic friend is in the middle of reading just because I read it faster?

Hell no! That would be awful! That would be the worst kind of cishet white ablebodied privilege. I feel sick just thinking about it.

Trigger warnings are essential for making our writing, classes, and world more accessible for people. Spoiler warnings are, too. Let those of us who, for whatever reason, get to a piece of media after you enjoy it the same way you do. I know you’re a mega-fan who got to see Long Awaited Movie on opening day, but I have to wait until payday. Then I’ll go to the theater, with a pair of earplugs for the loud bits, and with your help I’ll get to experience it the same way you did on opening day.

I see Utopia arriving.

Oh wait, is that a spoiler?

Feel a need for the Third Man theme music? Of course you do.

https://youtu.be/r8jN1treRKQ

Glosswitch has an amusing satirical post purporting to be a speech by the CEO of Sexism Inc at the end of their AGM.

The market has seen some tough times lately, what with the resurgence of interest in feminism since its early noughties slump. There was a time, two or three years ago, when some of you expressed concerns that we might not get through it. Certainly there was a need for some restructuring but, while we were all sad to see Mr Clarkson and Mr Buchanan go, I know that they, too, saw the need for sexism to move with the times.

It’s important for any organisation, even one that doesn’t prioritise the subjugation of half the human race, to stay nimble and flexible. That’s why in May this year I was absolutely delighted to announce the acquisition of Libfem Corp and its subsidiaries, Everyday Feminism, Amnesty and NUS Women. While these will now operate as part of Sexism Inc family, they will retain their unique brand identities, finding new ways to market objectification and sexual exploitation to women without recourse to the more “traditional” messaging favoured by our more established brands.

Haw!

It’s Patriarchy 2.0, you see.

Now, the material exploitation of female bodies is available on a pay-as-you-go basis. Want sex? You’ll be doing sex workers a favour. Want to father some kids? Take your pick from a wide range of overseas surrogates. Need your kids to be white? Buy the eggs elsewhere. The key word here is choice. Choice and self-validation. Remember, it’s all about you.

The operating system used by Patriarchy 2.0 is Queer Theory. It did require some tweaks from the original version presented by Ms Butler – Ms Serano did some sterling work on this – but I think we’ve found something every modern-day patriarch should like. The fundamentals of sex-based exploitation are still in place – we all know the anatomy of the people who’ll be doing most of the world’s unpaid work – but our special override function renders them indescribable. It’s ingenious (any problems with the online version can be dealt with by pressing caps lock and typing TERF).

That part isn’t really satirical, it’s just straightforward description.

From the office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights:

Two UN human rights experts have urged the Zambian Government to show it is serious in its efforts to tackle gender-based violence and sexual violence against women and girls by ending the impunity of Zambian singer Clifford Dimba, who was convicted in 2014 for the rape of a 14-year-old girl and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Mr. Dimba was pardoned by President Lungu after serving one year of his sentence and subsequently appointed as an ambassador in the fight against gender violence.

Got that? A convicted rapist was appointed as an ambassador against gender violence. What a calculated insult to women and girls.

“Such an outrageous release and appointment as an ambassador for the fight against gender-based violence not only traumatises the victim all over again but discourages other victims from reporting similar offences,” said Dubravka Šimonović, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences.

“The pardon and appointment undermine the strong message against sexual abuse of women and girls that was sent with the original sentence and trivialise the serious nature of these offences,” Ms. Šimonović said. “Rather, Clifford Dimba has been placed in a prominent position and even portrayed as a role model to fight violence against women.”

Since his release, Clifford Dimba has allegedly been involved in two other incidents of violence against women. “This clearly shows that impunity for these offences generates more violence and harm,” said Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

“Furthermore it constitutes an utter disrespect for women and girls in Zambia who might rightly feel that their Government is not protecting them. The pardon has meant impunity for an abhorrent crime and his subsequent appointment as ambassador for the fight against such violence is more than cynical and adds insult to injury for the victim,” she added.

Deliberate, sarcastic, mocking insult, is what it looks like.

A meme rejected.

I get so tired of the sitcom view of women. Yeah sure we’re all crazy bitches who always think it’s the other person who is wrong and who demand apologies for no reason whatsoever. Haha, so funny, what’s for dinner?

Yes.
#ExMuslimBecause December 21:

#ExMuslimBecause if there is a God he would have to ask Yazidis, holocaust victims, Rwandan genocide victims for forgiveness

@luke_khan77

The UK Education Secretary thinks state schools should be pushing Christianity.

Schools must teach pupils that Britain is a mainly Christian country and have “no obligation” to teach atheism, the Education Secretary has said.

Seeking to clarify a High Court ruling last month, which found the Government had unlawfully excluded non-religious views from the curriculum, Nicky Morgan said schools are still free to prioritise religious teachings.

New guidance from the Department for Education insists that non-religious beliefs need not be given “equal parity” with religious belief and that non-faith schools should reflect the fact that British religious traditions “are, in the main, Christian”.

Seeking to clarify? That sounds more like seeking to ignore. The High Court ruled that the Government can’t exclude non-religious views from the curriculum, and Nicky Morgan is saying yes it can too so.

A recent case, brought by the British Humanist Association (BHA), sought to ensure that alternative world views were put before pupils in secondary schools.

Judges ruled last month that it had been wrong to suggest the content of the new Religious Studies (RS) GCSE could fulfil all of a school’s religious education obligations.

Teach anything about religion you like, as long as it’s Christianity.

Morgan is said to have been concerned that humanists were using the court ruling to pressure schools into giving non-religious views more prominence:

This Government is determined to protect schools’ freedom to set their own religious studies curriculum, in line with the wishes of parents and the local community.

The guidance I have issued today makes absolutely clear that the recent judicial review will have no impact on what is currently being taught in religious education.

I am clear that both faith and non-faith schools are completely entitled to prioritise the teaching of religion and faith over non-religious world views if they wish.

A pop culture site drew up a list of most controversial tv show episodes. Coming in at number 2 is the one in which Maude (of Maude) had an abortion. It aired in November 1972.

If you think abortion is a touchy subject in pop culture now, imagine a TV show dedicating a two-part episode to it before the Roe v. Wade decision even came down. That’s exactly what the series Maude did in 1972 when it tackled abortion head-on in an episode where Maude discovers that at the age of 47, she’s pregnant. Throwing typical sitcom gags and quips out the window, this episode deals with the problem in a real world way, explaining the pros and cons of the decision, and letting us as viewers see how something like this can affect a person’s life.

In the end, Maude gets the abortion, but the subject is never treated as an easy decision for laughs. This is a serious matter, and the show did its best to highlight a woman’s right for a national audience. Despite its good intentions, the episode sparked a firestorm of controversy, especially within religious circles. Seeing the importance of such an episode, CBS regularly showed “Maude’s Dilemma” in reruns during summer hiatuses.

The Chicago Tribune did a piece on the episode twenty years on.

Twenty years later, it is doubtful a similar show could be broadcast on network TV.

In 1972, the word “abortion” was used exactly twice on “Maude`s Dilemma” – once on each show. Nowadays the “a” word has practically been purged from the prime-time vocabulary and is heard almost exclusively on talk shows and some daytime soaps.

A handful of programs- “Hill Street Blues,” “St. Elsewhere,” “Cagney and Lacey” -have tackled the issue, but for the most part, a major character`s having an abortion is not even considered an option on network programming.

These days, prime-time pregnancies usually result in a false alarm (a 1990 episode of “Roseanne”); a decision to have a baby, followed by a tear- drenched recitation of a previous abortion (a 1985 episode of “Cagney and Lacey”); or an affirmation of the right to choose even while deciding to have the baby (“thirtysomething” and this year`s controversial episode of “Murphy Brown”).

And why’s that? Money. Controversy—>money.

The reasons for this are twofold: the presence of organized pressure groups threatening to boycott the products of advertisers who sponsor shows they disapprove of, and the economic concerns of the networks, threatened by competition from cable TV and home video. These factors lead many people to believe that “Maude`s Dilemma” would not make it onto today`s TV schedules. “You automatically think, ‘Of course it could be done today, look what we did 20 years ago,'” said Susan Harris, who wrote the “Maude” abortion shows. “But we have a very interesting (political) climate today, with the influence of the religious Right. The economy is different today, and the networks would feel less likely that they could take a stand.”

Susan Harris. You know who Susan Harris is? She’s the creator and head writer of a slew of classic sitcoms, and besides that?

She has a son named Sam.

Ironic, isn’t it.

Much of Yorks and Lancs and Greater Manchester is still under water. The BBC has photos.

Central streets in York hip-deep in water, feet above the door sills of shops.

A heartbreakingly huge pile of full bin-bags outside a bookshop in Hebden Bridge.

A wholly submerged bridge in Cawood.

Two guys in water above their waists.

The north is a hilly area, but the towns and villages are mostly in the valleys. The valleys are river valleys.

To make it all worse, Cameron is there. Heckuva job, Davey.

The BBC reports:

An anti-Islamic State activist and filmmaker has been shot dead by assassins in broad daylight in Turkey.

Naji Jerf, 38, was shot with a silenced pistol in downtown Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, Turkish media reported.

Mr Jerf was the film director for Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently (RBSS), a group of journalists who risk their lives daily to report on IS abuses.

So he was slaughtered (silently) for reporting on slaughter. Of course he was.

It is the second murder of a member of the group in as many weeks, after Ahmad Mohammed al-Mousawas killed in Syria.

Mr Jerf was a vocal critic of the so-called Islamic State. He directed two recent documentaries about the group – one about the killing of Syrian activists in Aleppo, the other about the work of RBSS.

No wonder they slaughtered him.

This is not the first time IS has murdered a member of RBSS on Turkish soil. In October, Ibrahim Abdul Qader was beheaded in the southern city of Urfa.

Another journalist, Fares Hamadi, was killed in the same attack. IS subsequently published a video warning: “You will not be safe from the knife of the Islamic State. Our hand will reach you wherever you are.”

They can do it, and we know they can do it, and they know we know they can do it.