And now for a bit of hilarity.

Greta Christina has a new post at Freethought Blogs.

Not everyone uses social media the same way.

I would have thought this was obvious. But it seems not to be. So here comes the measured rant.

There’s this pattern I’ve been seeing for a while. I keep seeing people pay intense, microscopically-close attention to other people’s behavior on social media. I don’t mean “things people say on social media”: I mean their behavior. Who are they friends with? Who are they not friends with? Who did they un-friend or un-follow or block? What posts did they like or share or re-Tweet? What posts did they not like or share or re-Tweet? A lot of people pay intense, microscopically-close attention to this social media behavior — and then tie it in with a micro-analysis of the thoughts and feelings and intentions that supposedly lie behind it. People make assumptions about shifting alliances, secretly-held opinions, behind-the-scenes machinations — based entirely on this friending and unfriending, this blocking and un-blocking, these likes and dislikes. I’ve started calling it “reading the Facebook tea leaves.”

Why yes, yes they do.

Like, for instance, the way they did that about me, just three short months ago – the way they went trawling through a large busy Facebook group to record the few comments I had made there, and even what I had Liked there, and used that as items in long wordy prosecutorial venomous accusations against me. Why, even some of Greta Christina’s very own friends and colleagues at Freethought Blogs did that. Greta herself blocked me on Facebook at that time, presumably partly because of that very trawling through my Facebook activity. Greta was vocally and explicitly happy to see the way our colleagues were trashing me on their blogs, partly on the basis of that creepy intrusive secret-police-like trawling through my Facebook. So this post strikes me as very funny – and, of course, disgusting.

Not everyone uses social media the same way.

Some people use social media more for their personal lives, to stay connected with friends and family. Some people use it more professionally, to promote their work or do research or maintain professional connections. Some people have a couple hundred friends, or fewer, mostly or entirely their actual friends. Some people have hundreds or thousands of “friends”: their actual friends, plus colleagues, neighbors, friends of friends of friends, people they met at a party or a conference that one time, people they friended because they made a funny comment on someone else’s page, pretty much anyone who sends a friend request.

Some people “like” pretty much everything they see on their feed. Some people “like” only things they feel strong agreement or affinity with. Some people “like” posts to express agreement or support. Some people “like” posts to keep track of the thread, so they’ll get notifications when new comments appear. Some people share or re-Tweet only when they agree with something. Some people share or re-Tweet to increase the visibility of ugly opinions they think people are ignoring or denying.

True. So where was all this last July and August? Nowhere, that’s where.

So it’s a really, REALLY bad idea to make assumptions about people’s thoughts and feelings and intentions, their shifting alliances and secretly-held opinions and behind-the-scenes machinations, based solely on what they like or don’t like on social media, who they are and aren’t “friends” with, who they do and don’t “follow.”

Uh huh. Well spotted. Shrewd observation. Cool that it’s safe for you to make it now.

Again, I’m not talking about the things people actually say on social media. The words that come out of people’s mouths and fingers are, I think, a pretty reasonable guide to at least some of their thoughts and feelings and intentions. But when it comes to the other ways people use social media — liking and friending and following and blocking and the rest of it — can we please quit using it to decipher hidden meanings? Can we please quit trying to read the tea leaves? They’re a crappy news source, about as reliable as the National Enquirer. And trying to read them just adds more misinformation, more paranoia, more general noise, to an Internet that seriously doesn’t need any more.

Well done, Greta. Really, really well done – saying it now, instead of saying it last summer when it might possibly have gotten through to some people. You self-important coward.

So there’s this fella Kevin Swanson. He’s the one who organized that National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa where Ted Cruz said men have to start the day on their knees to qualify to be president. Miranda Blue at Right Wing Watch tells us about him:

After yelling quite a bit about Leviticus, Swanson clarified on Saturday that he does not actually want the U.S. to implement the death penalty for gay people at the moment, but instead to wait and give them time to repent first.

Then, in the same speech, Swanson declared that anyone who believes in God must see that there “might be a connection” between wildfires and flooding in Colorado and the state’s government refusing to enforce biblical law, and specifically a picture that ran on the front page of the Denver Post showing Colorado’s House speaker kissing his husband after a vote on civil unions.

 

I watched a little of that and found it very disturbing. It’s disturbing that men who want to be elected president of the country perform at a National Religious Liberties Conference organized by him.

That, by the way, is genuine hate speech, the real thing. Blaming sets of people for natural disasters and accusing them of insulting Almighty God – that’s hate speech, the kind that can incite violence.

“You see, when this happens, it is the most egregious, the most abominable, the most arrogant insult to Almighty God,” Swanson said of the Denver Post photo. “And then, the very same year, we had the very worst fires, the most devastating fires we ever did in the state and the worst floods. In the very same year, we had the most devastating floods and the most devastating fires and the worst possible legislature in terms of well, any standard of God’s laws as conveyed in [the Bible].”

“You’ve got to believe that God is the judge of the earth and indeed there might be a connection between the worst flood, the worst fires, and the worst government in the history of the state of Colorado,” he said.

He then defended his statement that thanks to gay rights and pro-choice laws, Colorado might be becoming worse than North Korea, saying, “Well, they murder. We put homosexuals on the front page of newspapers.”

Right – not equivalent then. Not equivalent, not related, not connected, not comparable in any way. Murder is bad. Having a picture of two men kissing on the front page of a newspaper is not bad.

Kevin Swanson is one scary guy.

Religion must never be free and voluntary; atheism must never be a viable option. On your knees, peasants.

Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said Friday that he believes anyone who wants to be president must fear God and pray daily.

Speaking at the National Religious Liberties Conference in Iowa, Cruz joined other GOP presidential candidates for a discussion about the persecution of Christians in the U.S. and around the world. After some very extreme, very weird comments about homosexuality, right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson introduced Cruz to the stage to ask him how important it was for candidates to submit to Jesus Christ as “the king of the President of the United States.”

“Any president who doesn’t begin every day on his knees isn’t fit to be commander-in-chief of this country,” responded Cruz.

You have to be a man, first of all, and then you have to grovel on the floor first thing in the morning, declaring your submission to an imaginary god, in order to be in charge of the US military.

I suppose it’s very wrong of me to expect people who want to be president to make efforts to be reasonable and grownup and decent.

Originally a comment by iknklast on 13 administrators.

And does she think the professors are her substitute parents?

In a word, yes. This is actually the message being given to many faculty. I have recently sat through a 2 day faculty meeting where the main message to professors at our school was to be “best friends” and “parents”. We talked a lot about making students happy, making them feel at home, about enhancing relationships, and zero about increasing the rigor of our courses, achieving high standards, or ensuring that our students got the education they came for. We are expected by our students and by our bosses to be substitute parents, substitute best friends, and personal life coaches/counselors. If we have any time left over, well, maybe we’ll get to teach them a thing or two before we leave. We are supposed to text them, tweet them, and friend them on Facebook.

I have heard students complaining about one of the English professors here who tells them up front he is not their friend, he is their instructor. As far as I can see, he is accessible, helpful, and a good teacher. But this is too much for them. How dare he? The fact that I don’t put myself out there as surrogate parent also gets some bad vibes from my students occasionally, even though most acknowledge that I am friendly and approachable, and that I do a lot to help them survive my class (Survive is not overstating in their world; I am told my tests are lethal).

The fact is, if education means being made a bit uncomfortable, we are supposed to move the other direction. After all, education is a business, and students are customers. That’s the current picture. Make the customers happy.

And then there’s Yale. Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic:

[N]o fewer than 13 administrators took scarce time to compose, circulate, and co-sign a letter advising adult students on how to dress for Halloween, a cause that misguided campus activists mistake for a social-justice priority.

It’s easy enough to think of costumes one would really prefer students not to wear – minstrel show type stuff, KKK sheets, Nazi uniforms, you know. But does it take 13 administrators to say that? “A word to the wise, students: no racist costumes. You know what we mean by that. Thank you.”

Erika Christakis wrote and sent an email putting in a word for imagination and not stamping out every spark of it.

I wanted to share my thoughts with you from a totally different angle, as an educator concerned with the developmental stages of childhood and young adulthood.

As a former preschool teacher… it is hard for me to give credence to a claim that there is something objectionably “appropriative” about a blonde ­haired child’s wanting to be Mulan for a day. Pretend play is the foundation of most cognitive tasks, and it seems to me that we want to be in the business of encouraging the exercise of imagination, not constraining it.

And more in the same thoughtful vein.

That’s the measured, thoughtful pre-Halloween email that caused Yale students to demand that Nicholas and Erika Christakis resign their roles at Silliman college. That’s how Nicholas Christakis came to stand in an emotionally charged crowd of Silliman students, where he attempted to respond to the fallout from the email his wife sent.

And the students lost their shit.

“In your position as master,” one student says, “it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students who live in Silliman. You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?!”

“No,” he said, “I don’t agree with that.”

The student explodes, “Then why the fuck did you accept the position?! Who the fuck hired you?! You should step down! If that is what you think about being a master you should step down! It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here. You are not doing that!”

She ended by screaming at him, “You’re disgusting!”

She’s clearly correct that it’s not about creating an intellectual space. It should be though.

Check out today’s marvelous Google doodle, stashed on YouTube –

Very good news: elections yesterday in Bihar, India, were a resounding rejection of Modi and the BJP.

Prime MinisterNarendra Modi of India suffered a severe political setback on Sunday when the voters of Bihar, the country’s third most populous state, overwhelmingly rejected his party in state assembly elections.

Mr. Modi, who had eagerly cast the Bihar elections as a referendum on his first 17 months as India’s leader, acknowledged defeat shortly after noon.

Recriminations were swift within his Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. Some party leaders questioned whether Mr. Modi had erred in the closing weeks of the Bihar campaign by elevating hard-right appeals to Hindu nationalism over his more unifying message of “vikas,” or development, for all Indians.

Those appeals — in which Mr. Modi depicted his opponents as favoring Muslims and insulting cows, a revered Hindu holy symbol — fell flat in Bihar, a desperately poor state in eastern India where millions of people eke out a living as subsistence farmers without electricity, plumbing or even two meals a day.

“Favoring Muslims and insulting cows” – would you believe it? Grown-up politics? It’s almost as embarrassing as US politics…and quite a lot more lethal. (People got killed over that bullshit about cows, you may remember.)

The battle for Bihar, fought through five rounds of voting over the past five weeks, played out against a raging national debate over whether Mr. Modi’s India is becoming increasingly intolerant of secularists, Muslims and political dissent in general. According to the police, four Muslims were attacked and killed by mobs of Hindus in the past six weeks because they were suspected of stealing, smuggling or slaughtering cows.

Hundreds of writers, filmmakers, scientists and academics have protested what they see as rising intolerance by signing petitions or returning awards they had received from government-supported bodies.

I learned about this because Gita Sahgal posted a marvelous picture:

Two writers – Nayantara Sahgal ( on right) and Kiran Nagarkar ( on left) watch Bihar election results at the home of Neelam Mansingh, one of India’s leading theatre directors. Hearts in mouth, waiting for fantastic election results.

Congratulations, India.

I also like the Starbucks red cup.

I like red, I like shades of red. It’s a nice cup.

Apparently there’s a pretend-controversy about the cup as a new front in the war on Christmas.

Ok so have this one then.

Jamilah Lemieux

Problem solved.

I can’t help loving it that Ben Carson has a painting of himself with his buddy Jesus.

Not just with Jesus, either, but with Jesus dropping a matey hand on his shoulder, and with the other hand telling the world, “Behold, here is my beloved Ben Carson, in whom I am well pleased.”

Although…are they really sure that is Jesus? It’s not Ben Carson’s trainer? I’m not sure why Jesus would be wearing a snowy-white bathrobe, or sporting a ’70s goatee.

But no, I’m just being blasphemous, I’m sure that’s the authentic Jesus, after a vigorous session on the elliptical.

The wife of one of the men injured in the Dhaka attack October 31st lives in Montreal. Nick Logan at Global News reported her story a few days ago. It includes gut-wrenching photos of him in the hospital.

Monika Mistry said her husband, Tareq Rahim, was hacked multiple times in the head, hands and torso and was shot in the stomach. His condition has improved but he remains in critical condition, with a bullet still inside his body. Mistry’s afraid he could be attacked again.

Rahim, she said, was meeting with writer friends Saturday afternoon in the office of Shuddhashar publishing house, in capital city Dhaka, when a purported group of Islamist extremists stormed in and began hacking them with machetes and cleavers. “They didn’t even talk. They just started stabbing them,” she said.

…

Mistry had spoken with her husband just four hours before a friend in London, England called her in the middle of the night to let her know about the attack.

She said she feels powerless to be on the other side of the world while her husband is fighting for his life. Mistry, a Bangladeshi who came to Canada in 2006 and now lives in Montreal with her daughter from a previous marriage, said she can’t afford to go back to Bangladesh to be with Rahim.

In a way I’m glad she can’t afford to, because it would be dangerous for her.

Mistry said she wants her 32-year-old husband to be in Canada, where interfaith marriage is more accepted; she’s from a Hindu family, he’s from a Muslim one.

Something of an understatement there. Interfaith marriage is more accepted, secularism is more accepted, not being Hindu or Muslim or any other such label is more accepted.

Mistry fears Rahim’s life will continue to be at risk because he survived the attack and the assailants are waiting to finish the job.

“These killers, they’re on the street. You don’t know, maybe they’re walking around the hospitals because they couldn’t fulfill their mission. They wanted these people dead, but they’re not dead,” she said.

Indeed. You never know. They can burst in anywhere.

The Centre for Inquiry (CFI) Canada, a non-profit education organization, is leading calls for the newly elected Trudeau government to intervene in the case.

“CFI Canada is making an appeal to the Canadian government, and certainly Justin Trudeau, to ask for some compassionate support for someone who would have likely been coming to Canada if they hadn’t been attacked by terrorists before getting a chance to do that,” said Executive Director Eric Adriaans.

Well done CFI Canada.

Speaking of menstruation…

The UCLA student newspaper The Daily Bruin ran an opinion piece by Zoey Freedman arguing that necessary menstrual products should be covered by health insurance.

The editors attached a stipulation at the beginning:

Editor’s note: This blog post refers to individuals who menstruate as women because the author wanted to highlight gender inequality in health care. We acknowledge that not all individuals who menstruate identify as women and that not all individuals who identify as women menstruate, but feel this generalization is appropriate considering the gendered nature of most health care policies.

Yes, it’s such a shocking generalization to refer to people who menstruate as women.

Facebook thinks women are ooky. Kate Ng in the Independent:

A feminist blogger has been censored by Facebook for blogging about periods and the history of menstrual products.

Alaura Weaver, also known as ‘Bad-ass Motherblogger’, started an ongoing series of blog posts detailing the history of menstrual hygiene.

I took a look. It’s interesting. Well worth a read, and not worth censoring.

She tried to boost one of her posts on Facebook, and they said no, you can’t, not allowed.

According to Facebook, the post violated their Ad Guidelines, which state: “Ads are not allowed to promote the sale or use of adult products or services, including toys, videos, publications, live shows or sexual enhancement products.”

When she appealed, they said the problem was that there was a naked woman in her ad.

The image was of an 18th century painting of women bathing, which Ms Weaver then changed to a historical print of Greek mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Hypatia being dragged through the streets of Alexandria.

The ad was rejected yet again for violating Ad Guidelines.

Bad-ass Motherblogger has a public post about it on (appropriately) Facebook.

Bad-asses,

I’m in an ongoing battle with Facebook’s ad department and I need your help. I wrote a post for my blog about the history of menstrual products. Part of my marketing strategy is to boost posts on my Facebook page. However, Facebook keeps disapproving my ad because it violates their “Adult Products Policy.” As in, they consider tampons and pads to be sexual devices. Attached is a screenshot of the original disapproval message. When I appealed the rejection, they changed their story and I was informed that my preview image (an 18th century painting of women bathing) contained “too much skin.” and it violated the Nudity Policy.
So I changed the preview image to a historical print of Hypatia being dragged through the streets of Alexandria (cuz violence to women is so much less offensive than women bathing). The ad was rejected again. The reason: “Ads are not allowed to promote the sale or use of adult products or services, including toys, videos, publications, live shows or sexual enhancement products.”

*sigh*

I don’t know about you, but when I think about using a tampon or a menstrual pad, the last thing I think about is sex. Women’s health shouldn’t be a taboo subject. If you agree with me, can you please bring attention to this issue?

Just to give you an idea of how boosting impacts the reach of a post: I have 730 “likes” for my page, yet without an ad, the post has only been seen by 8 people over the past 24 hours.
It scares me that advocates for women’s health and gender equality may not be able to share their message with their audience because the largest social media platform thinks women’s health products reside in the same category as sex toys.

Here’s the link to my blog post, in case you’re curious.

Facebook needs to lean in.

More from Maryam:

Maryam Namazie ‏@MaryamNamazie Nov 7
Banner of women protesting stoning of Rakhshana #Afghanistan:
“End reach of merchants of religion from our country”

More photos:

There are more at the link.

Via Maryam on Twitter:

Maryam Namazie ‏@MaryamNamazie Nov 7
Mothers against execution in Iran
Long Live.

An editorial from the Daily Times in Pakistan:

Pakistani society’s deep rooted acceptance of despicable misogynistic behaviour once again came to light recently when a mixed gender group of students at Karachi University (KU) who were playing a casual game of cricket together within the bounds of the university were assaulted for doing so by the activists of the notoriously thuggish fundamentalist Islami Jamiat-e-Talba (IJT), the student wing of the Jamat-e-Islami. The IJT and its members are a menace across the universities of the country, and they have defaced and perverted these supposed places of learning and critical reflection into fearful places of demagoguery and reactionary backwardness.

Imagine if Mormons or Baptists were doing that on university campuses in the US – assaulting people for playing cricket (or baseball) without segregating by sex.

Interaction between grown adults of the opposite gender is a particular target of their crusading violence and they are emboldened to carry out their disgraceful actions due to the authorities and police in particular turning a blind eye to their actions. For decades this student organisation has carried out its hooliganism with impunity, terrorising students who are legal adults and not beholden to have their behaviour policed according to the precepts of some moralising band of roving fanatical vigilantes.

Imagine living in a place where you were always subject to being policed by some moralising band of roving fanatical violent vigilantes.

In the KU case, eyewitnesses report that the students were merely passing the time while waiting for their conveyances after classes were over, when the bunch of IJT goons took issue with men playing with women and demanded they stop, which resulted in an acrimonious exchange and the aforementioned attack. The attack resulted in injuries to five students, including the female students.

Police arrived and stopped the attack, but the IJT goons were promptly released.

In all likelihood, the police will not prosecute these thugs and as per its past record, deem such an issue a trivial annoyance and sweep it under the carpet. The IJT will continue to operate freely, while rival student organisations have long since been banned, ostensibly to prevent rival student groups’ violence. This state of affairs is shameful and cannot be condemned enough. The police and the university are making a statement by their inaction that they do not see this brand of violent evangelicalism to be problematic and do not consider the participation of women in public life, let alone their right to enjoy regular activities without trauma, a matter of any significance.

Because they’re just women. They don’t matter.

John Knight, LGBT Project Director at the Illinois ACLU, posts about a suburban Chicago school district that refuses to let a trans girl use the girls’ locker room, instead making her use a separate room.

My clients started meeting with the District more than two years ago to explain why their daughter should be treated as a girl at school in all ways, including when using the locker room. As the District has no policy guiding the treatment of transgender students, the parents had to initiate the discussion regarding how the school would treat their daughter in accordance with her gender. They provided medical information regarding her diagnosis with gender dysphoria and her transition to living fully as a girl, including legally changing her name and changing the gender on her passport.

In response to claims by the school that they had not had to deal with transgender students before, the parents brought in representatives from the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance to educate the school administration and staff. The parents made clear to the District that their daughter’s gender and her medical condition is not a choice and that it is essential to her health and her ability to succeed at school that she be treated as a girl, and that means being treated like a girl in all respects including locker room access.

What the District offered was a separate restroom, down a long hallway, where my client has been forced to dress for gym and the athletics she is involved in. The separation serves as a daily reminder that the school does not regard her as a girl or even a human being but as some undifferentiated “other.”

Does it? Does the separation really say (or “serve as a reminder”) that the school does not regard the student as a human being?

I don’t think it does. I think that’s rhetorical inflation.

What our client wants is pretty basic – to be accepted for who she is and treated just like other students. Other students accept her. The school board and administration apparently do not. These adults should remember that many students are unhappy with their bodies – body image issues can be serious in a world filled with unrealistic and often oppressive images of physical beauty particularly for young women and girls. But no other students – no matter how uncomfortable they are with their bodies – are required to hide them. Imagine how it feels for a girl to be told that her body is so unacceptable that she must dress apart from everyone else – even if she might otherwise choose to do so. The message is loud and clear – transgender students should be ashamed of how they look and who they are.

But if these adults should remember that many students are unhappy with their bodies, then that applies to the girls in the locker room in general, not just to the trans girl.

It is upsetting to see the superintendent say that the District is “sensitive” to the needs of transgender students and supportive of them. The District’s actions are the farthest thing from being supportive. You can’t defend discrimination by claiming you’re nice about it. Most damaging, the superintendent asserts that a girl who is transgender has a “male body” and that transgender students are “of the opposite sex” when defending the District’s position. Such assertions are wrong as a matter of science and offensive because they serve to challenge and undermine the very core of a person’s identity.

In what sense are such assertions wrong as a matter of science? What science is it that says a transgender girl has a female body?

And then this business of the very core of a person’s identity…what exactly about that is immune from challenge? What are the criteria? Are there any limits? If people say their identity is something that doesn’t comport with the apparent facts, does the world have to agree in all circumstances no matter what? Or does this new rule apply only to trans gender people? If so, why?

A transgender girl is female. She is a girl through and through – not something in between as the District suggests.

“Through and through” – what does that mean? How does John Knight know?

I don’t think this kind of magical thinking is going to help anyone in the long run.

The Guardian reports on A New Study that finds that children from godbothering families are less altruistic than children from non-godbothering families.

Academics from seven universities across the world studied Christian, Muslim and non-religious children to test the relationship between religion and morality.

They found that religious belief is a negative influence on children’s altruism.

“Overall, our findings … contradict the commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind towards others,” said the authors of The Negative Association Between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism Across the World, published this week in Current Biology.

I can’t say that that surprises me. I don’t think religion necessarily makes people less altruistic, or that atheism necessarily does the opposite. But I do think there are aspects of religion that pull in that direction, in particular, the focus on a god as opposed to humans (and other animals). Obedience to a god just is not the same thing as concern for humans.

The findings “robustly demonstrate that children from households identifying as either of the two major world religions (Christianity and Islam) were less altruistic than children from non-religious households”.

Older children, usually those with a longer exposure to religion, “exhibit[ed] the greatest negative relations”.

The study also found that “religiosity affects children’s punitive tendencies”. Children from religious households “frequently appear to be more judgmental of others’ actions”, it said.

Sure. That’s the obedience to god thing. The god is by its nature a tyrant – a being vastly more powerful than we are, demanding that we obey it – so it’s going to encourage a tyrant-based morality. Obey the tyrant, and judge harshly anyone who doesn’t.

The report was “a welcome antidote to the presumption that religion is a prerequisite of morality”, said Keith Porteus Wood of the UK National Secular Society.

“It would be interesting to see further research in this area, but we hope this goes some way to undoing the idea that religious ethics are innately superior to the secular outlook. We suspect that people of all faiths and none share similar ethical principles in their day to day lives, albeit may express them differently depending on their worldview.”

Well said; not triumphalist. It’s always a mistake to be triumphalist about one New Study.

There was a big rally in Madrid today to protest violence against women.

The rally, organised by feminist groups, was attended by representatives of all the main political parties.

Activists dressed in black [lay] on the ground to remember hundreds of women murdered over the years in what they described as “macho terrorism”.

They said laws against domestic abuse should be extended to include all violence against women.

Isn’t violence against women kind of last century? Kind of second wave? Kind of over?

A survey carried out by the European Union last year estimated that 13 million woman in Europe experienced physical violence in 2013.

But statistics and surveys suggest the problem is less prevalent in Spain than other European countries, our correspondent says.

But he adds that violence against women is high in the public’s conscience in Spain, and the rally has succeeded in reasserting the issue on the political agenda – only six week’s before an unpredictable general election.

Has anyone figured out how many of the women had it coming?