A friend drew this Comment is Free piece by Meredith Talusan to my attention.

When I heard that Caitlyn Jenner debuted her new name, her upcoming Vanity Fair cover and a new Twitter account, I went online to welcome her. Then I noticed a trend on my Twitter feed: people – including feminists, people of color, queers and transgender folk – commenting on how beautiful she looks. While I welcome all the positive affirmation of Caitlyn Jenner’s gender identity, it’s important to not forget how the forces of economic privilege and beauty standards affect most trans women. And, though all women are subject to conventional beauty standards, the ability and even necessity to adhere to them is rife with even more tension for trans women.

Of course it is. So wouldn’t it be nice to do our best to erode that necessity? To keep trying to nudge the world into realizing and accepting that not all women are gorgeous, and that gorgeous is not all any woman is?

Jenner’s womanhood and the beauty for which she went through many trials to gain certainly shape the person that she is, but it’s vital to ask ourselves whether our acceptance and celebration of her humanity is partially predicated on that beauty. If we accept her in part because she fits into our understanding of the gender binary, then we’re celebrating not just her transition but her economic privilege and her allegiance to a beauty standard that, for non-trans, cisgender women, may mean being more desired or liked, but for trans women is often an insurmountable barrier to being considered women at all.

That’s not worded well. The beauty standard emphatically does not mean, for non-trans, cisgender women, being more desired or liked. It can mean that for the women who succeed in meeting the standard – but at the same time it can create even more hostility. And as for women who don’t succeed in meeting the standard, and/or don’t want to and don’t try – nope, it doesn’t mean being more desired or liked for them, for sure.

But having said that, yes of course for trans women it can be an insurmountable barrier to being considered women at all. There are many reasons to stop treating beauty as a requirement and duty for women, and that’s one of them.

The way in which socially progressive, cisgender people – who are otherwise critical of conventional beauty standards and economic privilege – give themselves permission to talk about trans women in aesthetic terms reveals a certain truth that sometimes feels insurmountable to trans people: affirming trans women’s attractiveness also often affirms our sometimes-limited understanding of the gender binary.

Exfuckingactly. That’s what I was talking about yesterday. People who know better than to reduce cis women to their looks fall all over themselves to do that to Jenner, and I would like to know why.

In Jenner’s case, there’s little doubt that she desires to be complimented for her attractiveness, and it’s hard to fault people for giving her that. But there’s a fine line between complimenting Jenner and considering her beauty a condition of her womanhood, and that line does not escape other trans women. As my friend Lilith Gütler wrote on Facebook: “I’m sorry, it’s hard to be ‘proud’ of someone who has had the financial means to achieve unrealistic goals for girls like us”. She then explained how painful it is to see someone spend as much money as Jenner did to look good, while Gütler has been unable to put together enough funds for the sexual reassignment surgery of which she’s dreamt for many years. Her understanding of the economic conditions required to transition with such aplomb were echoed by a number of other trans women on my social media feeds, even those who celebrate her visibility: we all know too well how difficult and expensive it is to be a certain kind of pretty.

And how oppressive and claustrophobic it is to be expected to.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Ed has a post on what’s been going on with Taslima lately and who did what to help and what should happen in the future.

I am very happy to announce that Taslima Nasrin, whose life was threatened by the same people behind the brutal murder of at least three Bangladeshi bloggers in recent months, is now safely in the United States and out of harm’s way. I want to share with you how this happened because a lot of people need to be thanked and it provides a great example of humanists coming together to help someone in need.

On May 5th, the night before I was leading a civics/lobby day for CFI Michigan, I got an email from Taslima that included a link to this news report from India about the direct threat made on her life by the same people who murdered Avijit Roy and two other atheist bloggers in Bangladesh. She had been living in India, a few hundred miles from where those murders took place.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBNOe32pywk

When I got this email, I was on my way to Lansing to meet with Michael De Dora, head of CFI’s Office of Public Policy, who was helping lead the lobby day. Michael and I had talked a few times in the past year or so about the need for some sort of program that would help get atheists who are at great risk, primarily in Muslim countries, to the West where they could be safe. We both agreed that it would be best if one of the big atheist/humanist groups would do it.

So they combined forces, and gave their thumbs a damn good workout, and got things going.

The need was for

a fundraiser to pay for Taslima’s flight to the U.S., set her up with a place to stay and provide for a few months to pay the bills while she establishes a life in this country.

Ron Lindsay and CFI stepped up to the plate.

I got an email back from Ron Lindsay saying that he would check with his staff to see if they could handle all of that.

At the same time, Michael was also communicating with Ron (literally, we were sitting in the same House office building cafeteria, both texting and emailing back and forth) and he told him that he would handle all of the logistics if necessary — whatever it would take to make sure Taslima was safe. By the end of that incredibly busy day, Ron had emailed back and said that the staff had “eagerly embraced” the opportunity to make this happen and that the amazing Debbie Goddard and Martina Fern, the new development director who was also in Lansing with us, had agreed to oversee the whole thing.

…

FTB’s PhysioProf said that he had hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles and would be happy to use them to get the plane ticket.

And he did.

A few words about Taslima, if you don’t know who she is. Taslima is a renaissance woman — a poet, novelist, physician and activist for atheism, humanism and feminism. That activism got her exiled from her native Bangladesh more than 20 years ago and put a high price on her head from Muslim extremists. She lived in Europe after being exiled, but settled in India in 2004. Alas, that was temporary as she was chased out of Kolkata and had to move to New Delhi.

She has spent the last 20+ years moving and hiding, never feeling truly safe, but the danger to her life has never been higher than it is now. Everyone involved in this process has been terrified for her and desperate to get her to where she would no longer have to hide in the shadows or look over her shoulder. Taslima is a beacon of light in the humanist community and a shining example of courage in the face of barbarism and brutality. And we now have the opportunity to help her build a new life free from the constant threats. I hope that all who can afford to do so will help us do that. You can donate here.

The people mentioned above deserve enormous gratitude. I want to personally thank Ron Lindsay and CFI for stepping up and making this possible, especially Michael De Dora, Debbie Goddard and Martina Fern. And I’d like to thank that PhysioProf guy, who may come off as gruff but is a deeply caring and compassionate person.

I second and third and fourth that.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Originally a comment by Charles Freeman on The Shroud of Turin continues to sell tickets.

The article has given rise to a lot of interest and outside the authenticists’ websites very positive. For those who read the original to the end, you will see I never argue that the Shroud was a fake. There were hundreds of thousands of painted linens around in the medieval period and they were widely used in churches, especially during Lent when opulent altars and statues were traditionally covered up.

If you were a forger hoping to get away with a burial shroud you would stick to the gospel sources and certainly not add images. The most successful shroud relics in the medieval period were single cloths WITHOUT images – better still if you brought yours back from the Holy Land.

The Quem Queritis Easter ceremony when they held up a cloth from a makeshift ‘tomb’ to show that Christ had risen is the best fit explanation for the origins of the Shroud. We know that the linen was often painted and a single sheet.

I have never seen anyone except David Roehmer put forward this second century Gnostic theory – so I don’t know what historical or scientific work he is relying on.

When you wanted to paint a linen in medieval times, you gessoed it on the surface and once it was sealed then you painted on top. Some of the few surviving examples are vastly more sophisticated than the Shroud ever was. The trouble was that the painted surface easily disintegrated although the Shroud seems to have kept pretty intact until the nineteenth century. The present discoloration of the linen appears to be the result of centuries of the weave being overlain by the gesso and paint. It is only a surface disoloration – presumably the gesso stopped the images penetrating further – and the varying thicknesses of the original paint left a sort of negative image behind. It is all too often assumed that the images left today are the images that were originally created and all kinds of ingenious methods, from laser beams to scorches, have been devised to recreate them – but you would have to seal and paint the linen according to the medieval manuals and leave it in place for several centuries and then when it disintegrated we would probably have similar images. See you in 500 years time!

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

What the hell is this about?

Jezebel on Facebook:

You look great, Caitlyn! Can’t wait to see more.

Then a glam photo of Jenner in a strapless dress with long flowing hair and tasteful makeup.

Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair Cover Is Here, and She Looks Amazing

Caitlyn (née Bruce) Jenner has revealed her name (spelled with a C!) and her new look—photographed by Annie Leibovitz—on the cover of next month’s Vanity Fair.

So she looks great, so what? Isn’t Jezebel supposed to be at least nominally feminist? Isn’t feminism in large part about not reducing women to their looks? Why does that suddenly change when the subject is a trans woman? What am I missing here?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Maria Popova at Brain Pickings shares a stash of public domain owl and osprey portraits.

Indian fish-owl

Burrowing owl

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Taslima tweeted a cartoon:

Sums it up, doesn’t it. Creative people create beautiful things. All the tyrants of IS know how to do is smash all the beautiful things.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Alan Strathern wrote a backgrounder piece for the BBC on why Buddhist monks attack Muslims a couple of years ago.

Of all the moral precepts instilled in Buddhist monks the promise not to kill comes first, and the principle of non-violence is arguably more central to Buddhism than any other major religion. So why have monks been using hate speech against Muslims and joining mobs that have left dozens dead?

This is happening in two countries separated by well over 1,000 miles of Indian Ocean – Burma and Sri Lanka. It is puzzling because neither country is facing an Islamist militant threat. Muslims in both places are a generally peaceable and small minority.

But there’s always something. There’s always some pretext for attacking an otherized group.

[H]owever any religion starts out, sooner or later it enters into a Faustian pact with state power. Buddhist monks looked to kings, the ultimate wielders of violence, for the support, patronage and order that only they could provide. Kings looked to monks to provide the popular legitimacy that only such a high moral vision can confer.

The result can seem ironic. If you have a strong sense of the overriding moral superiority of your worldview, then the need to protect and advance it can seem the most important duty of all.

Exactly. There’s nothing like the belief that your worldview derives its moral superiority from a god or a supernaturally Wonderful Person for justifying anything and everything.

So, historically, Buddhism has been no more a religion of peace than Christianity.

One of the most famous kings in Sri Lankan history is Dutugamanu, whose unification of the island in the 2nd Century BC is related in an important chronicle, the Mahavamsa.

It says that he placed a Buddhist relic in his spear and took 500 monks with him along to war against a non-Buddhist king.

He destroyed his opponents. After the bloodshed, some enlightened ones consoled him that the slain “were like animals; you will make the Buddha’s faith shine”.

There you go – the application of holy sanctification in action.

In Burma, monks wielded their moral authority to challenge the military junta and argue for democracy in the Saffron Revolution of 2007. Peaceful protest was the main weapon of choice this time, and monks paid with their lives.

Now some monks are using their moral authority to serve a quite different end. They may be a minority, but the 500,000-strong monkhood, which includes many deposited in monasteries as children to escape poverty or as orphans, certainly has its fair share of angry young men.

Combine angry young men and moral authority and you may end up with a Jurassic Park type scenario.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Buddhism is in many ways an exception among religions…but it’s not always as much of an exception as it could should would be. The BBC considers this unsurprising fact.

The principle of non-violence is central to Buddhist teachings, but in Sri Lanka some Buddhist monks are being accused of stirring up hostility towards other faiths and ethnic minorities. Their hard line is causing increasing concern.

Are they simply being accused of doing that, or are they in fact doing it? The second sentence seems to say they are.

[U]pstairs, a burly monk in a bright orange robe holds forth – for this is one of the main offices of a hard-line Buddhist organisation, the Bodu Bala Sena or Buddhist Power Force (BBS).

The peaceful precepts for which Buddhism is widely known barely figure in his words. Instead, the monk, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero, talks of his Buddhism in terms of race. Most Buddhists here are ethnically Sinhalese, and Sinhalese make up three-quarters of the island’s population.

“This country belongs to the Sinhalese, and it is the Sinhalese who built up its civilisation, culture and settlements. The white people created all the problems,” says Gnanasara Thero angrily.

He says the country was destroyed by the British colonialists, and its current problems are also the work of what he calls “outsiders”. By that he means Tamils and Muslims.

Aka foreigners aka immigrants aka others aka mongrel races aka infidels aka vermin…

This firebrand strain of Buddhism is not new to Sri Lanka. A key Buddhist revivalist figure of the early 20th Century, Anagarika Dharmapala, was less than complimentary about non-Sinhalese people. He held that the “Aryan Sinhalese” had made the island into Paradise which was then destroyed by Christianity and polytheism. He targeted Muslims saying they had “by Shylockian methods” thrived at the expense of the “sons of the soil”.

And later, in 1959 Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike was assassinated by a Buddhist monk – the circumstances were murky but one contentious issue was the government’s failure to do enough to ensure the rights of the Sinhala people.

Now they’re turning their attention from Tamils to Muslims.

They are not the only Sinhalese who express discomfort at a visible rise in Muslim social conservatism in Sri Lanka. More women are covering up than before and in parts of the country Saudi-influenced Wahabi Muslims are jostling with more liberal ones.

Yet there is no evidence of violent extremism among Sri Lankan Muslims. Rather, they have been at the receiving end of attacks from other parts of society.

In the small town of Aluthgama last June, three people died in clashes that started when the BBS and other Buddhist monks led an anti-Muslim rally in a Muslim area. At the time, I met Muslim families whose homes and shops had been burnt and utterly destroyed, and who were cowering in schools as temporary refugees.

Complicated, isn’t it. “Muslim social conservatism” is a bad thing, cf the part about more women “covering up”; at the same time you don’t want to resist Muslim social conservatism in such a way that Muslims become targets.

Moderate Buddhists have also been targeted by hard-line ones.

That’s familiar too. Theocrats always do target secular believers.

Another country where fierce Buddhism has recently made headlines is Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. A Buddhist faction there, the 969 movement, is known for strident anti-Muslim campaigns that have triggered widespread violence.

Its leader, Shin Wirathu, was recently invited to Sri Lanka by the BBS. Both organisations say that even if Buddhism predominates in their own countries, overall it is under threat. “We want to protect it, therefore we signed a memorandum of understanding on forming alliances in the Asian region,” says Withanage.

Fighting Buddhism; just what Asia needs.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

I’ve seen a couple of ads for new or returning network tv shows recently, both on ABC. One is called The Astronaut Wives Club. The other is called Mistresses.

Um…

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Taslima tweeted an article in the Times of India: Bangladeshi blogger gets death threat on Facebook.

He will be ‘The Next’, Ananya Azad was warned on a social networking site. A day after ‘The Guardian’ broke the story of how the 25-year-old Bangladeshi blogger was living a life of fear, Ananya spoke exclusively to TOI on Friday.

Speaking from Dhaka, Ananya – who is on a hit list containing the names of 84 atheist bloggers – said: “I am no stranger to death threats and bloodshed.

“My father, author Humayun Azad, was attacked on the streets. But what shocked me was the nature of threat that I got on Facebook. It addressed my father as ‘Nastiker sardar’. It means the leader of atheists. It said being his son, I would meet a gruesome death. My throat would be slashed at Dhaka University’s Raju Bhaskarjya!”

We know these guys don’t mess around.

Ananya is not the only blogger suffering. TOI traced another blogger who is now in hiding in Dhaka. On May 12, a gang of masked assailants had hacked to death blogger Ananta Bijay Das. Ever since, his fellow blogger Monir Hussain has gone into hiding. Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin, in New York now, is trying to help him move out of the country. Monir has stopped updating his blog. Speaking from an undisclosed location in Dhaka, he said: “For 15 days, I have been locked in a room. No TV. No newspapers. I’ve deactivated my Facebook profile.”

Taslima said: “I’m trying to help these bloggers get out of Bangladesh. I am requesting organizations in America and Europe to invite these bloggers to their countries. I have requested the Swedish embassy to grant visa to Monir. Bloggers in Bangladesh are panic-striken. The government isn’t giving them any protection.”

It’s a nightmare.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Not funny. Not “ironic.” Not meta. Just everyday sexism.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Newsweek Europe does a rather silly interview with Dawkins.

With no good evidence whatsoever, I sense in him the potential for great anger.

“Other people have said that. I don’t believe it. Anger isn’t the right word.”

“Rage?”

“No. I do use ridicule a lot.”

“Waspishness” is how it strikes me. He gets irritable easily, and it manifests as waspish retorts – or, as he says, ridicule.

Ridicule is tricky, especially for someone like him. That’s why Dear Muslima was so odd: it apparently never crossed his mind that that level of waspish irritable ridicule of someone way below him in the pecking order might be not so much ridicule as bullying. By “someone like him” in this case I mean someone with his level of fame and, in many quarters, adulation.

Ridicule is tricky even between equals with no fame or adulation. Ridicule can wound, annoy, humiliate. It’s not to be used lightly. It’s not to be used of people “a lot” – yet he says he does use it a lot. That…well, that says a lot about him.

Dawkins has never shied from controversy. In 2013 he provoked considerable outrage on Twitter after tweeting that “All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though”.

“That,” he concedes, “was a mistake. Lalla [his third wife, the actress best known as Romana, companion of her former husband Tom Baker in Doctor Who] and I had been to dinner with the then chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. About 20 leading Jews were there.”

He was informed that “between a quarter and a fifth of Nobel Prizes had been won by Jews. We also learned that the total percentage of Jews in the world is below 1% [and that] only one or two Muslims had ever won a Nobel Prize”.

“They were boasting?”

“Yes but with good reason.” The number of Muslims in the world, Dawkins says, “Is gigantic compared to Jews. I wrote a tweet about it, then I thought, I can’t send that. So I crossed out ‘Jews’ and I put ‘Trinity College Cambridge’.”

Um…oh gawd. Where to begin. He did manage to notice that he’d said something he couldn’t say – because it was a shitty thing to say. But he didn’t manage to notice all the ways it was shitty, so he simply dropped one word and substituted a Cambridge college. That explains so much, and yet so little. Why can’t he expand “then I thought, I can’t send that” to cover more of what he says?

Richard Dawkins is a kind of equivalent, in the digital age, of the professor who can’t be trusted to post a letter. He described Nadia Eweida, the British Airways check-in clerk who was fired for wearing a crucifix as having “one of the most stupid faces I have ever seen” and observed that “Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse”.

What was he thinking of?

“I don’t remember that [last indiscretion]. I don’t think that these are interesting topics.”

WHAT????????

He doesn’t remember it??? He wrote a long post about it! There were hundreds of comments on it! It was a row that went on for days. How can he possibly not remember it?

And as for not thinking these are interesting topics – then why does he keep talking about them on Twitter?

Could such episodes have fostered the misunderstanding that he is aggressive?

“Clarity,” he believes, “can be mistaken for aggression. Maybe I’m a bit impatient”.

Know thyself.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Guardian also reports on the Haredi school in north London that bans children whose mothers drive them to school.

The group runs Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass, a boys’ primary school, and Beis Malka, a primary school for girls. Both have been rated good by Ofsted.

The schools had said that, from August, any child driven to school by their mother would be turned away at the school gates. The letter said the ban was based on the recommendations of Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach, the Belzer spiritual leader in Israel.

It said that if a mother has no other choice but to drive her child to school – such as a medical reason – she should “submit a request to the special committee to this effect and the committee shall consider her request”.

That “no other choice” is a bit opaque. It seems to consider the need of parents to be able to schedule their activities and divide the household labor in accordance with their own schedules and convenience to be a mere frivolity. Driving a kid to school isn’t a recreational activity or a hobby (although it can provide a rare few minutes of quiet time to talk). It isn’t optional, it isn’t a fun extra. Even leaving aside the gross sexism, it’s bizarre that a school would think it’s entitled to micromanage parents’ activities in this way…but then that’s the point of belonging to an ultra sect, I suppose – if there weren’t a lot of stupid fiddly intrusive rules and forbiddings, it would just be average and boring.

Outside the schools on Friday, the Guardian found parents were broadly supportive of the decree. Jacob – not his real name – who said he had sons at one of the schools, said he and his wife had actively chosen to be part of the Belz sect because of its strict regulations. “My mother drives, my mother-in-law drives, if my wife wanted to drive, she could drive tomorrow, we could take our children to another school. We’d have a discussion about it, as in any marriage.”

Wait. Stop right there.

No. Not “in any marriage.” It’s not just normal and routine to “have a discussion” about ordinary activities. It’s not the case that “in any marriage” wives have to check with their husbands before they do something as humdrum as driving a car. “In any marriage” a wife doesn’t have to discuss with her husband whether or not she can brush her teeth or drink coffee or wear jeans or go to the library or read a book or open a window. In healthy marriages spouses don’t see themselves as having an automatic veto over each other’s neutral actions – that’s not a normal or reasonable way to think about a fellow adult, even one you live with. If you itch to veto your spouse’s activities you have the wrong spouse, or shouldn’t have a spouse at all.

“It’s not forbidden in Jewish law. But this is our tradition, this is our choice to be a little more pious. So my wife doesn’t want to drive. This isn’t Saudi Arabia, no one’s going to be punished, or whipped or whatever, or even ostracised.”

But their children won’t be allowed into the school. That is both punishment and ostracism.

Jacob insisted the group did not want to impose its rules on others. “We’re not saying ‘all the women of London shouldn’t drive’, that would be ridiculous. We’re saying, let us get on living our lives how we want to live it – stop saying that we are oppressed.”

He’s not a very clear thinker, is he. Who is the “we” in this story? The school certainly is not saying “let us get on living our lives how we want to live it.” It’s saying if you do this thing that we forbid we will ban your child from our school. The school is telling the parents not to live their lives how they want to in this particular instance. People do have such a funny habit of translating even the most obvious commands into something that sounds liberal and rightsy. “Let us get on taking orders from a Rabbi in Israel about how we can transport our children to school! It’s our precious human right to be told not to drive!”

Another Stamford Hill man, who said he was part of the Belz community, said: “I agree with the policy of women not driving. Hasidic women have never driven cars. No one is unhappy. Not one of my friends would let his wife drive.”

So…that’s no one is unhappy? Or no man is unhappy? The two are not the same.

Also – in the real world, husbands don’t actually have the power to forbid their wives to drive. Marriage is a relationship between two adults; permission for ordinary activities doesn’t come into it.

Another Stamford Hill mother, who gave her name as Judith, said not only was she happy with the ban, but had rejected the offer of dispensation from rabbis who said she would be permitted to drive because she was divorced and had a disabled child. “I choose to be part of this community, it’s my choice,” she said. “Family purity is exceptionally important to us, there’s no bigger priority for us than raising a pure Jewish family.”

“Purity” – one of the most dangerous words in the language.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)