I have developed superpowers.
I’m not friends with this person and have had zero interactions with her recently – I would estimate at least a year.
#tookmymeds + beta-blockers and double melatonin-> some hope of a) not bursting a vessle and b) sleep. Thanks a fucking heap, Ophelia Benson.
I make people suffer misery in their struggle to explain to the world how horrible I am.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Someone is impersonating me to leave terrible transphobic comments on blogs.
If you have a blog and you get a comment from “opheliabenson@freethoughtblogs.com” that’s not from me, it’s an impersonator.
Please share that information.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Gautam Trivedi@Gotham3
Breaking News: A police officer in Netherlands found a baby owl roaming on the streets today.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Ok. It’s too late for this (but then it probably always was), because there are a lot of people just hell-bent on spotting a TERF in the bushes and not changing their view no matter what; the well is thoroughly poisoned and is going to stay that way. The poisoner oolon, who went to Pharyngula to work up the troops against me yesterday, is one such; that dude wants scalps, period.
But there are, I’m told, people who are just plain hurt and upset, especially trans people, and I don’t to hurt people. Therefore I’ll try to clarify what I meant by refusing to answer yes or no.
(It’s like Bill Clinton and “is” – that was treated as a joke, but there actually is more than one meaning to “is.” Rumsfeld and his unknown unknowns were also treated as a joke, but he too was quite right – it’s only a pity he didn’t take the unknown unknowns a lot more seriously.)
There’s a difference, for instance, between an ontological is and a political is.
The more I think about the ontology of gender, the less I think I understand it. It’s slippery. That makes it impossible to answer yes/no questions about it.
But politically? Do you mean, will I take trans people’s word for it? Will I use their right names and pronouns? Of course I will. Do I want to make them jump through hoops to prove something to me? Of course not.
Do I get that trans people are severely marginalized, and have to jump through kinds of hoops I have no idea of? Hell yes.
I have thoughts and questions about gender, broadly speaking; gender as if affects all of us, and women in particular. I don’t think those thoughts are transphobic.
Jenora Feuer’s new guest post on the subject is illuminating, I think. Read it in tandem with this.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Originally a comment by Jenora Feuer on We’re going to end up putting feminist intellectual history through its own extinction event.
I can’t comprehend what it means to “know that you are male/female,” because I don’t particularly “feel” my gender.
Me either.
There was a comment at We Hunted the Mammoth a few weeks back (I commented on it here before) where someone said that they had found two different groups of people who really didn’t ‘get’ trans issues intuitively. One was the group of people who strongly identified with their gender, assumed everybody else was like that, and therefore that anybody who didn’t identify with their gender was wrong in some way. The other was the group of people who don’t strongly identify with any gender at all, and don’t really understand what it’s like to have a strong identity, particularly one that doesn’t match your physical body. Both of these groups have the same apparent problem on the outside, but completely different ways of getting there, and need different approaches. Especially since the first group is often personally invested in the concept of a gender binary, while the second group will consider the binary to be a default assumption if they haven’t thought about it, but they don’t really care about it to the same extent.
I get the impression most of the original TERF types were in the first group, or at least certainly acting like it: they were being explicit gatekeepers to the concept of ‘being a woman’, drawing boundaries, and in general acting like a mirror image of the problem they were ostensibly fighting against. But a lot of the people here I’ve seen here (including myself) are in the second group; we may make mistakes, but we’re not trying to draw bright line boundaries at all and don’t really intuitively grasp why other people are. Which often puts us on the wrong side of a lot of different lines that other people DO insist on, just because we don’t necessarily see them.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Originally a comment by A surprise to many on The art of the question.
What the hell is so difficult about a yes-and-no answer to the “trans women are women” question? For some, perhaps even most, purposes, yes, absolutely. For other purposes (women’s reproductive health, family policy, FGM), no.
This is no different from any other socially constructed group identity. Is Barack Obama African American? Yes. And no. Is the Nigerian immigrant who runs the pizza place near my job? Yes. And no. Is someone with a Jewish father a Jew? Yes. And no. Are messianic Jews Jewish? Yes. And no.
Am I a woman? Yes. And no. Even though I was identified female at birth and have gestated and lactated, there are ways in which I do not feel particularly comfortable being labeled “woman” and in which some people would classify me as not-a-woman. Being a woman is a social identity grounded in part, but only in part, on physical characteristics. It’s not a you-are-or-you-aren’t category.
(Disclosure: I too am a member of the frightening gender discussion group. Anyone who’s spent more than 5 minutes reading the group will note that there are many different opinions on gender and trans gender issues held by members of the group. I’ve learned a lot and been challenged to think of better arguments as a result of participating in the group. I’ve found myself agreeing and arguing with Hungerford in different threads on different topics. Gender is not an easy thing to define or analyze, and if we’re going to discard every single writer or forum with whom we don’t completely agree, we’re going to end up putting feminist intellectual history through its own extinction event.)
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Ashley Ford interviewed Nona Faustine for Elle.
Nona Faustine’s photographs are blowing up on Facebook and no one is more surprised than her. Born and raised in Brooklyn, with a distinct city accent, her tone is as light as her work is somber. In the “White Shoes” photo series, Faustine appears in the places where African slaves were bought, sold, and traded in 1620’s New York City. Her expression is solemn, in some photos there is a shackle on one of her limbs, and aside from her shoes, she is completely naked.
Go to the article to see some of the pictures. I saw the first one on Twitter a few days ago; it’s very powerful.
I like to think that every piece of art has an inciting incident, some happening or realization that plants the seed of its own creation. What would you say was the inciting incident for your “White Shoes” series?
I always wanted to make a really powerful piece of work, and there are things you carry with you throughout your life: ideas, incidents, and history. The story of my life is a family impacted by the fact that I had a great-grandmother who was an enslaved African, and my mother grew up with her. She told [my mother] all the stories of her life. Then there was me, being a born and bred New Yorker, discovering the African Burial Ground and realizing there was slavery here in this city.
…
For some people, your photos have been a revelation. They didn’t realize slave trading ever happened in New York City. Why do you think people remain unaware of this city’s history with slavery?
I don’t know because it is not a secret. It’s like anything. You just pick up a book on whatever topic you’re interested in and you’ll find a lot of information.
I wish we were a lot better at knowing our history though.
What kinds of reactions has “White Shoes” elicited from people around you?
My Facebook page exploded, friend requests exploded, my Instagram exploded. I’m not really great at Instagram, but I have an account, so when those numbers went up I knew something happened here. Lots of black women have embraced the art. It’s talking about pain and it’s talking about celebration, and they want desperately to see themselves in the larger media. It’s not often we see someone who looks like me out there, and they embrace that. People have reached out to me from Tasmania, Paris, Germany, some guy told me all of Africa was behind me, and I thought Really? All of Africa? [laughs] You sure about that?
Wellll people exaggerate. They don’t read history, and they exaggerate.
ny negative reactions?
You expect that from white men because they always want to try to talk about black women’s bodies, and they stay lusting after black women and secretly fetishizing black women. Yet, they’ll publicly get on an article that’s talking about me and make a derogatory comment about my body. But when you see people who go out of their way to come to my Facebook page and leave a message under whatever article, “No one wants to see your big ass.” I laugh because at this point, I’ve accepted my body and who I am, whether I lose weight or not. I have self-love. I have walked the walk, I have paid the price, and I accept myself with love. So, I laugh because those people have a problem that has no relation to me.
Do you know what it takes—knowing how the world looks at fat people, imperfect bodies, or old women—to actually say I’m going to strip my clothes off and I’m going to put myself out there? I’m not putting myself on a pedestal, but I’m saying know how the world looks at that action. Know how the world feels when I defy that and say, “I don’t give a shit.”
I do know. I gasped at her courage when I first saw that photo.
Any advice for a young woman of color who dreams of being a photographer?
Go for it. We need more artists of color out there. And we need artists of color who are going to go the distance. Don’t them stop you. There are so many roadblocks, ones they put out there for you, and ones you put out there yourself. I did that. I put roadblocks up for myself, and it took family support to encourage me to go back to it. It took me maturing a bit.
My life changed when I had a baby. I had to think about what was really important, what was the message I wanted to hand down to my daughter. You’re talking about legacy? I wanted my daughter to be proud of me. I didn’t want to have to tell her I gave up on my dreams.
Photography, and being an artist is not a career, it’s a calling.
Go for it. Always go for it.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Ew. Now they’re monitoring what comments I like on Facebook, and blabbing about them on Twitter. It’s exactly like the slimers – they too obsessively monitor every word of mine that they can get access to. It’s creepy and disgusting and loathsome.
Where’s the brain bleach.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Originally a comment by A Masked Avenger on The art of the question.
M. A. Melby @11:
As a recovering fundie, I can tell you that there’s only one answer to a question that ends with, “…yes or no?”, and that’s “Fuck you.”
Lawyers get to say “…yes or no?” because you’re compelled by the court to answer. You’ll go to jail for contempt if you don’t. And you’ll face contempt if you answer a yes/no question with a question, or a long answer, or a non-response. [Unfortunately] the lawyer is allowed to make such demands, because they are empowered to compel a response, and to punish you for your refusal.
Inquisitors get to say “…yes or no?” for the same reason: an inquisitor is a prosecutor, generally in a religious court, and can have you tortured or executed not only for giving the wrong answer, but for refusing to answer.
Back in fundie-land, I’ve been asked [and, to my shame, I’ve asked] these “…yes or no?” questions. The asker does it because they think they’re an inquisitor. Their intention is to either force compliance with some norm, or to identify you as an outsider as a prelude to punishing or expelling you from the community. They have the power to do that. Sometimes because they’re actual gatekeepers, like church rulers. More often because the social group stigmatizes the wrong answer to such an extent that it doesn’t matter how an answer is extracted from you; once you fail to say “shibboleth” correctly, you’re a heathen, infidel, outsider, unperson.
I find it hilarious–but in a sad way–to see “rational” or “freethinking” people set themselves up as inquisitors. It’s a healthy reminder that religion is just a well-adapted vehicle for delivering the toxin, and human nature is its source. The need to cement our “we” status by inflicting “they” status on someone else. I.e., self-righteousness. The inability to care for “us” without simultaneously hating “them.” Etc, etc.
“Yes or no?” Fuck you is my answer. Even if I agree with you, still fuck you.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Originally a comment by Blondin on An overzealous state trooper.
The cop did a u-turn and covered a lot of ground to catch up with Ms Bland. From her point of view I think she did what most people would do if they saw a cop car charging up behind them. Just that aspect of the story looks suspiciously like a despicable tactic. Anyone who gets out of his way but fails to signal gets pulled over, either because he has a quota to fill, because he’s a loathsome bully who gets a kick out of antagonizing the powerless, or maybe a bit of both.
I keep reading comments saying she should have just complied; she should have just put out her smoke and she would have been on her way. I don’t think that would have made any difference. Refusing to put out her cigarette was not her “mistake”. Showing her irritation was where she went wrong. Answering his question about why she was irritated is what sealed her fate. Calling “bullshit” on his bullshit was not a sin he could overlook.
We always tell our children to obey a policeman’s commands and answer his questions truthfully because we assume he has a legitimate reason for asking those questions or issuing those commands. We always advise people to show similar compliance with muggers but for a different reason. If a man waves a knife in your face and asks for your wallet you don’t want to piss him off or he might fuck you up. We should not have to worry about pissing off a cop because he might fuck you up.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Wikipedia entry: Loaded question.
A loaded question or complex question fallacy is a question which contains a controversial or unjustified assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt).[1]
Aside from being an informal fallacy depending on usage, such questions may be used as a rhetoricaltool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner’s agenda.[2]
…
President Bill Clinton, the moderator in a town meeting discussing the topic “Race In America”, in response to a participant argument that the issue was not affirmative action but “racial preferences” asked the participant a loaded question: “Do you favor the United States Army abolishing the affirmative-action program that produced Colin Powell? Yes or no?” [8]
By a complex question, in the broadest meaning of that term, is meant one that suggests its own answer. Any question, for instance, that forces us to select, and assert in our answer to it, one of the elements of the question itself, while some other possibility is really open, is complex in the sense in which that term is here employed. If, for example, one were to ask whether you were going to New York or London, or if your favourite colour were red or blue, or if you had given up a particular bad habit, he would be guilty of the fallacy of the complex question, if, in each case, the alternatives, as a matter of fact, were more numerous than, or were in any way different from, those stated in the question. Any leading question which complicates an issue by over simplification is fallacious for the same reason.
Yes/no or forced choice questions like “is this yellow or green?” force people to choose between two choices when the answer could be neither of the choices or needs more explanation. This generates more “interviewer-talks” moments, where the interviewer is talking and controlling most of the interview.[7] This type of question is also known as a false dilemma.
…
Professionals at risk for using suggestive questions
Interrogators and police
Unethical or unskilled police officers can use suggestive questioning in interrogation rooms. Such interrogators use different kinds of techniques and questions in order to get people to confess. They use response framing when getting people to falsely confess. This is when they purposely limit certain answers and suggest others.
Did you follow all that? Yes or no.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
I got a long condescending mansplaining email from James Billingham today telling me how terrible and telling it is that I refused to answer a question that demanded a yes or no response, and how extremely simple and uncontentious it should be to answer the question with a “yes” end of story.
That claim betrays an unfamiliarity with thinking.
Thinking just doesn’t work like that. If you can answer yes or no, there’s precious little to think about. Yes or no is for simple factual questions, or practical plan-making questions. Is the light on? Did you get milk? Are you ready to go? Did you feed the cat?
Questions that are more complicated than that can pretty much never be answered with a yes or no.
You could demand of me, “Are women equal to men? Yes or no.” I would refuse to answer the question in that form.
Why? Isn’t it simple? Shouldn’t I just say yes, of course?
No, because I wouldn’t even know what was meant by “equal to” – so I couldn’t answer until I did know. Therefore I would have to refuse to answer at all, if the other party had been such an asshole as to order me to answer yes or no.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Originally a comment by sambarge on An overzealous state trooper.
The mentality isn’t that you can’t back down. It’s that you can’t escalate needlessly. As you mention, you negotiate or talk. You don’t have to be a social worker but you have to be a human being. You don’t demand something of a person that you don’t have a very good reason for demanding. Because officers are armed and empowered to use force on their own judgment, they have to be of the very best judgment. That is not what we have now.
In short, I agree with everything you’ve said.
I was discussing the Bland case with a good police officer (one who believes he serves the public) and he recounted a story of a welfare call on a pregnant woman who had been involved in a dispute. They were checking in to make sure she was okay because she had fallen during the disturbance/dispute and left the scene before they arrived. She wasn’t happy to see them and told them to “f*ck off.” His partner wanted to push past her and search her house. Why? Because she was rude and she swore at them. The good officer (and the senior in this case) pointed out that there was no law that said people had to be polite to police officers. She’s pregnant, she’s just had a shitty day and of course she’s going to be rude. But he could see her the next day on the street and she’d be friendly and smiling. He had to physically restrain his partner from tackling a pregnant woman half his size because she wasn’t nice to him. I mean.
Too few officers have his approach to it though. And, the result is that POC are paying the ultimate price while white folks wonder at what’s going on.
Perhaps not surprisingly, he’s thinking of leaving policing.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A very interesting Fresh Air a couple of days ago about making the movie Tangerine, about a friendship between transgender sex workers in LA.
When film director Sean Baker moved to Los Angeles three years ago, he found himself drawn to one of the city’s most infamous intersections. The corner of Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard is “an unofficial red light district,” Baker tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. But Baker’s interest in the area went beyond the usual transactions: “I thought there must be some incredible stories that take place on that corner.”
Baker wanted to tell those stories, so he and co-screenwriter Chris Bergoch began walking the streets in search of a collaborator who could act as their “passport” into an unfamiliar world.
Many of the women Baker and Bergoch approached assumed they were cops and refused to talk. But then they met Mya Taylor and something clicked: “There was just something about Mya — she attracted our attention from 40 feet away — and we went up to her and introduced ourselves and started talking about this project and it was that ‘eureka’ moment where she expressed just as much enthusiasm back to us. … She was that collaborator we were looking for.”
She played one of the two main parts but she also collaborated on the writing and directing and probably more. It was her idea to make it a comedy, which Baker didn’t like at first but now thinks was the only way to go “because it wasn’t condescending to the subjects.”
Mya Taylor: It was a very sensitive time of my life, because I went through life with my transition keeping shades on my face and covering up with a whole bunch of clothes — like turtlenecks and jackets and things — because I wasn’t comfortable with my body or with my face at that time, because I knew that it wasn’t developed to the way that I wanted it to be, and I knew that it was going to take a few years…
During the filming and everything I was very comfortable, though, because of the crew and Sean and Kiki [co-star Kitana Kiki Rodriguez], those are the two people that I’m closest to, but I was very comfortable during the whole thing, I guess, because [by] acting I kind of took my mind away from that.
It’s not one of those happy-clappy stories about how great sex work is. Taylor didn’t like it at all.
Taylor: I’ve done sex work in my life and it’s not fun, it’s not easy and it’s nothing that you can just get used to. I was pretty much thrown away from my family when I came out to them when I was 18. … I left and I moved to LA with another family member, who actually treated me horribly. … I was forced out to the streets and I came across the youth center — at the time it was called the Jeff Griffith Youth Center — and I went to the center and they helped me a lot with housing and everything to pretty much get myself back on my feet.
But I was constantly surrounded by all these sex workers and drug dealers in the area, and I needed money and I was applying for all these jobs over and over and over and I was like “Why am I not getting any jobs?” So eventually I started applying for more, I did 146 jobs in one month and the last month that I applied for jobs, before all this movie stuff, was 186 jobs and I found myself being discriminated against and I could actually prove it. So you have to ask yourself, “Why are there so many sex workers on Santa Monica and Highland?” Me personally, I did it, because I could not get a job.
It’s scary.
Taylor: When you’re getting inside a car with somebody, it’s scary as it is, because you never know what they could do to you, or you never know if they’re a cop that’s going to take you to jail. It’s really, really, really scary. I think I was more scared of being taken to jail, which I had been [to] already, quite a few times, for doing that. … The whole time, every time I got out there, my heart was always just pounding and pounding. It pounded even harder when a car would pull up, because I know that this person is here, but I know that I need this money.
From the transcript: Gross introduces a bit of dialogue from the movie:
In the opening scene, the two women are in a doughnut shop, talking about what happened on the block while Sin-Dee was in prison. To understand what they’re talking about, you need to know that Chester, the guy they’re going to talk about, is Sin-Dee’s boyfriend and a pimp. And the word fish is used here as a slang term for a woman born with a woman’s anatomy. Alexandra, played by our guest, Mya Taylor, speaks first.
RODRIGUEZ: (As Sin-Dee) I’ve been keeping a secret about me and Chester.
TAYLOR: (As Alexandra) Girl, (laughter), I know what it is. You’re breaking up with him. Thank, God because Honey, for him to be cheating on you like that…
RODRIGUEZ: (As Sin-Dee) Wait, wait, whoa, whoa – what?
TAYLOR: (As Alexandra) You didn’t know?
RODRIGUEZ: (As Sin-Dee) How the [expletive] would I know?
TAYLOR: (As Alexandra) Girl because everything that you been hearing on the block about the girl that he’s been with.
RODRIGUEZ: (As Sin-Dee) Girl, you’re the first girl I seen on the block.
TAYLOR: (As Alexandra) You…
RODRIGUEZ: (As Sin-Dee) Who is she?
TAYLOR: (As Alexandra) Girl, she’s some white fish, I don’t know.
RODRIGUEZ: (As Sin-Dee) Chester’s gonna cheat on me with real fish?
TAYLOR: (As Alexandra) Like, a real fish, Girl – like, vagina and everything.
RODRIGUEZ: (As Sin-Dee) I been gone for 28 days, and you mean to tell me that he’s been out here cheating on me with fish?
TAYLOR: (As Alexandra) Yeah.
RODRIGUEZ: (As Sin-Dee) Do I know her?
TAYLOR: (As Alexandra) I don’t know, I just know that her name starts with a D. It’s something like Danielle, Desiree, Deedee. I don’t know, girl.
Um, thought I. “Fish”? That sounds pretty…contemptuous.
I thought they were going to gloss over that, but they didn’t.
GROSS: I want to ask you about the word fish, which is used in the movie by the trans sex workers to describe cisgender women – like, women who are born with a woman’s anatomy and are comfortable with that…
BAKER: Right.
GROSS: …And identify with that.
BAKER: I guess the proper term these days is chromosomal female.
GROSS: Oh, is it changed already from cis?
BAKER: It’s already changed (laughter). That’s semantics.
GROSS: Wow, I can’t keep up with it. It’s chromosomal now?
BAKER: Nobody can keep up with it. Yes, nobody can…
GROSS: So it’s chromosomal woman.
BAKER: Female.
GROSS: Chromosomal female. OK, so, Mya, have you been hearing fish for a long time? Is that a new word or an old word? I’d never heard it.
TAYLOR: It – you know what, it’s an old word, and I used it in the film because I knew that it’s used in that area a lot. But, like, I knew how to use it, but I cannot tell you exactly where it came from. I just know how to use it. I do not use it in my daily speech (laughter).
GROSS: It sounds a little derogatory (laughter).
BAKER: Yeah, I think that’s where, (laughter) I think we all know where it comes from.
GROSS: (Laughter) Right.
BAKER: I mean, it’s a derogatory…
TAYLOR: Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah it does. Yeah, I don’t use that in my daily life. I don’t talk like that.
It was a nice conversation. They were able to laugh about not being able to keep up with the changes in vocabulary, and at the fact that calling cis women “fish” is an insult based on the old “eww women smell like fish” trope, and to agree that it’s not all that cool to insult women, no not even if you’re trans women.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Oh my god.
I tell you what, one thing I will cop to is putting off stories I know are going to be unpleasant to explore. I do that. So it’s only just now that I started to watch the video of Sandra Bland’s arrest and jesus christ. I’m only 2.18 minutes in and I’ve stopped because it’s hard to take.
The cop simply loses his fucking temper because Bland has the gall to talk back to him.
He picks a fight from the outset, going up to her car window and after a few seconds saying “You seem a little irritated.” She says she is irritated, since all she did was get out of his way. He tells her to put out her cigarette, and she says she’s in her own car and she doesn’t have to. He tells her to get out, she says no, he flings the door open and keeps escalating his orders to get out of the car, and then he pulls his stun gun and sticks it in her face.
It’s horrifying. It’s a traffic stop and he pulls his god damn stun gun on her because he’s in a snit.
I wouldn’t put anything past them after that.
Representatives of Sandra Bland’s family said on Wednesday that a dashboard camera video of her arrest, three days before she died in a Texas jail, showed an overzealous state trooper who had no reason to resort to force or to arrest her.
The video released on Tuesday showed a confrontation between Ms. Bland, 28, and a state trooper, Brian T. Encinia, that quickly escalated from why she had been pulled over, to whether she should extinguish her cigarette, to whether she had to get out of her car, until the trooper drew a stun gun and threatened, “I will light you up.” After she exited the car, out of view of the camera, a scuffle and yelling can be heard, including Ms. Bland saying that the trooper had slammed her to the ground.
I stopped the video after they stepped out of view. I don’t want to watch the rest, but I will.
The family’s lawyer, Cannon Lambert, cast doubt on the conclusion that Ms. Bland’s death was a suicide. Primarily, he and Ms. Cooper pointed to the video as vindication for their claim that a minor traffic stop in Hempstead, Tex., northwest of Houston, should never have landed her in jail.
“Right out of the gate, you see from that dashcam that this could have been easily avoided,” Mr. Lambert said. “There was very little reason that can be gleaned from the dashcam why Sandy had to be asked to put the cigarette out, why Sandy had to be asked to get out of the car, why Sandy had to be subject to having the officer point a Taser at her, why Sandy had to be thrown to the ground and hurt.”
The only reason there was, apparently, was that the cop wanted deference and humility instead of irritation, and he didn’t get it. So he arrested her – for nothing.
It’s as if the cops get to go around testing our obedience whenever they feel like it. They don’t. They don’t get to issue us orders to see if we’ll obey and then arrest us if we don’t. Sandra Bland wasn’t doing anything – just DWB.
The Texas Department of Public Safety said on Friday that Trooper Encinia did not follow a policy requiring troopers, in dealing with the public, to be professional and courteous, and to explain what is going to happen. He has been placed on desk duty.
He should be placed on unemployed duty.
But Sandra Bland is still dead.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
First, the claim about what I said:
Improbable Joe @ImprobableJoe Jul 21
@latsot @oolon How about this question: “did you know that the people you’re friendly with are incredibly abusive to trans people?”latsot @latsot Jul 21
@ImprobableJoe Well how about it? I’d want to know more about the abuse, I guess. @oolonImprobable Joe @ImprobableJoe Jul 21
@latsot @oolon The response I got was “how dare you question my online associations”
Then, the actual exchange:
Improbable Joe:
Hey, do you mind if I ask you why you follow obvious terrible bigots like Sarah Ditum and Helen Lewis?
Me:
Hmm. I suppose I do mind a bit, because I think the whole monitoring who follows whom thing is…silly, at best. Twitter isn’t Facebook, and following isn’t friending. At least not in my mind. I’m extremely promiscuous about following, and I follow people for a variety of reasons.
I don’t know enough about Ditum or Lewis for it to be obvious to me that they’re terrible bigots.
And I don’t consider following any kind of endorsement or alliance or friendship.
I awaited a reply, but found I was blocked, instead. Apparently my reply was so rude and offensive and outrageous it merited a block…and then, a few months later, a pack of lies about what he said and what I said.
I was actually a lot more polite than I wanted to be, because I felt sorry for Joe, because he often complained of loneliness and self-loathing. I used to try to include him in conversations because of that.
I wanted to be less polite first of all because frankly I think it’s creepy to go around checking on who is following whom on Twitter, and even more creepy to ask people why they are following This Person or That One. What the hell business is it of anyone else’s? What business was it of Joe’s?
And second because I was pretty sure that claim about Helen Lewis and Sarah Ditum was bullshit, but didn’t want to spend the time and energy to go snooping through their Twitter timelines to try to figure out what he was talking about. Plus when I even thought about it the whole “what business is it of yours??” question became all the more urgent.
And third because anyway I hate this ridiculous belief that following is endorsement.
And fourth because I’m bloody-minded and insubordinate and I just can’t stand people trying to tell me what to do for ridiculous flimsy reasons, especially people with as little connection to me as Improbable Joe.
There are now several people running around squawking that I’m a transphobe and a bigot, and that is bullshit. But I’ve seen it happen to other people as well as to me: the lie gets told and then it spreads and expands with every telling. One example of many: after I wrote that post about Jezebel’s fatuous coverage of Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover, one red-rager shouted at me that if only I’d used female pronouns, people wouldn’t be all blah blah blah. I replied that I had used female pronouns. That was the end of that conversation – but the red-rager went on red-raging elsewhere.
So that’s how this works.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
When she was 16, the daughter of a diplomat from a secular family and newly returned home to Kuwait after four years in Morocco, Elham Manea encountered a girl a year older than she was leading an Islamist religious group.
The sessions were fascinating. Our leader explained about the love of God. The moment we enter into Islam, she said, all our sins are washed away and we become equal. The fate of those who are not Muslims was never mentioned. She told us that we could be better people if only we embraced the message of Islam – the true Islam, not the corrupted form of our society. For a teenage girl, lacking direction, the message was mesmerising, and I embraced it wholeheartedly.
The changes in me were gradual. It started with language. Instead of greeting others with “good morning” or “good evening”, I used only the salute of Islam: “assalamu alaikum”, peace be upon you. Later I would learn that this salute is only reserved for Muslims. “Do not use it with non-Muslims”, I was told.
See that? That’s so ugly. Why would you not wish peace on people who are not part of your religion? Why would you choose and enforce that refusal just because they’re not part of your religion?
“You have to wear the hijab”, I was told. “Hell will be filled with women hanged by their hair because of the way they seduced men by their beauty”. I was used to walking with my hair open. I covered up nevertheless. I did not like it. It suffocated me. But I did it – if this is the price for God’s love, how could I object?
By wondering why a good god would want to suffocate you, as a first step.
I was told all those around me including my practicing mother were living in Jahiliyya – “the state of ignorance and false belief that prevailed before the time of Islam”. I was told that painting, sculpture, art and music were all part of Jahiliyya and prohibited by Islam. I started to feel uncomfortable.
Religious fanaticism is religious fanaticism is religious fanaticism. It hates everything good and loves only obedience to an imaginary god.
The more I embraced their message, the more I was drawn away from my father – an intellectual, a philosopher. He was a man of wisdom who taught me about life, philosophy and religion through poetry, books and critical thinking. My father was not my father anymore; he was an enemy of Islam, I was told. He objected to my wearing of the hijab. He objected to what I started to tell him about Islam and the world. He was telling me this is fundamentalism, and I was starting to be angry with him. When I told my group about our fights, they repeated the message about the companions of Mohammed and how sometimes they had to fight their own fathers, brothers and uncles, even on the battlefield.
As fanatics do.
Imagine how painful that must have been for Elham’s parents.
It was not just the militant dimension of their message that finally made me realise that something was fundamentally wrong with this group, it was the gender aspect. It was when I was told a saying of the Prophet about a woman who ignored her husband to visit her sick father. I was told the Prophet said, “the angels are cursing her, for she defied her husband’s order”. Later I came to understand that the Prophet might not have said this at all.
I left our meeting that afternoon knowing I would never return. Who should be cursed here, I asked myself, the woman who wants to visit her sick father, or this husband who has no mercy in his heart?
She was lucky enough, she points out, to have the tools to question what she was told. Not everyone does.
I am sharing this personal story with you because it connects with the phone calls I receive nowadays from Swiss teachers, overwhelmed with changes they are witnessing in their students. It connects with the questions raised by European and North American policymakers on how to tackle militant Islamism. Those policymakers often seem content with policies that address the security dimension of radicalisation, focusing on violent Islamism but ignoring its non-violent version. When they attempt to chart preventive or de-radicalisation policies, they conclude that working with “non-violent extremism” can be the best antidote to violent extremism.
Wrong, she says. The “non-violent” version is just the entry to the violent version. Also, I would add, it’s violent itself in many non-literal ways. Saying “peace be on you” only to your in-group is a kind of violence. Ordering girls to suffocate in hijab is a kind of violence. Telling young people their parents are “enemies of Islam” is a kind of violence. It’s all intellectual violence.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Maajid Nawaz points out in a public Facebook post that liberalism is not extremism.
No, my secular liberalism is not the “other extreme” to Islamism (a desire to enforce a version of Islam over society). The other extreme is anti-Muslim bigotry & the desire to ban Islam.
My liberalism means a legal right for you to be religious, or not.
So no, I have not gone from ‘one extreme to another’. Nor have ex-Muslims for that matter, so long as they remain liberal, ie: support individual liberty.
But obviously, if your starting point is way out there with Islamism, then even conservative Islam appears “moderate” to you, and the idea of liberalism would appear like an extremely distant aberration, even extreme.
And for non-Muslims to adopt this trope & charge me with it, shows how low their expectations of Muslims have become. In fact, this tells us how far we all have to travel, yet, to reach a reasonable centre in this debate.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
An item from Andy McSmith’s Diary in the Independent:
Stewart McDonald, MP for Glasgow South, arranged a Commons debate on civil rights in Saudi Arabia during which he raised the Badawi case. Replying for the Government, [Foreign Office minister Tobias] Ellwood claimed “the case is in the Supreme Court and is under review. We therefore cannot interfere with that process, in the same way that the Saudi authorities would not interfere with our process.”
When challenged, he insisted: “The case has returned to the Supreme Court, which reflects the fact that the leadership has taken stock of international opinion. The punishment has stopped and is under review. Until that process moves forward, it would be incorrect to comment on another country’s judicial process.”
The last the world heard was that in June the Saudi Supreme Court had upheld Mr Badawi’s sentence, and it was reported then that his only remaining hope was a royal pardon. I asked the Foreign Office if they could throw light on Mr Ellwood’s statement. More than seven hours after he spoke, I was told that their Saudi desk was working on a reply. When it comes, I will gladly pass it on.
It’s confusing. It’s not clear if Ellwood has inside knowledge that the Supreme Court did not rule in June after all and is still reviewing the case, or if he just got it wrong (or obfuscated).
Pending.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Soooooo…stay out of the parks. Well just stay inside altogether. But they can come up to your windows I suppose, so…
I guess just kiss your ass goodbye.
The US Federal Aviation Administration says it is investigating an online video that shows an alleged home-made “drone” firing a handgun in the Connecticut countryside.
The 14-second video called Flying Gun shows a homemade multi-rotor hovering off the ground, buzzing furiously and firing a semiautomatic handgun four times at an unseen target.
It does, too. A gun. Firing. In a park.
It was posted on YouTube on July 10 and has been watched nearly 2 million times.
It was filmed by 18-year-old Austin Haughwout from Clinton, Connecticut.
Mr Haughwout is studying for a degree in mechanical engineering. Neither he nor police could be reached for immediate comment.
“The FAA will investigate the operation of an unmanned aircraft system in a Connecticut park to determine if any Federal Aviation Regulations were violated,” the group said in a statement.
“The FAA will also work with its law enforcement partners to determine if there were any violations of criminal statutes.”
Hey, if there’s no law against firing guns in parks, then there damn well should be.
But Mr Haughwout’s father denied his son had built a drone, which he said are pre-programmed, and said this device was manually controlled.
“People have been playing with RC [remote-controlled] toys for many decades,” he said.
“The proper name for this is an RC quadcopter.
“The media keeps using the inappropriate word because it helps you to generate fear.”
Because people shouldn’t have fear of some teenager firing a gun in a park? Is he serious?
The father said he doesn’t understand why people are making such a big deal of it. Sure, it’s just a gun, in a park. What’s to be afraid of?
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
