Meanwhile, on the South Bank…

I wish to register a complaint! A giant dead parrot has been unveiled in London to mark the Monty Python live show’s TV broadcast:

Via Digital Spy on Facebook

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

Josh posted this on Facebook yesterday and I demanded permission to post it here and he gave in.

I don’t like the message, “Trust women to make their healthcare decisions,” many organizations are using. This is not about trust. The idea of “trust” has nothing to do with the anti-choice measures. It’s not that antis don’t “trust” women to “make the best decisions.” This is not an in loco parentis relationship where the antis genuinely have the best interests of their charges at heart.

1. Women are not their charges. 2. They don’t care about women being “trustworthy.” They don’t want women to have options. That’s it.

They want to take the ability away from women to have rights over their body. That’s it. That’s all. This “trust women” message concedes too much. There is NO situation in which the antis could “trust” a woman to “make the right decision.”

And it concedes illegitimate authority. Why are you asking authoritarians to “trust” women? Why are you *asking* them anything? This is typical liberal politics: concede things that shouldn’t be conceded, even rhetorically. Then act like being “nice” will work.

How do women feel about this? I can tell you I’d be fucking FURIOUS with a gay advocacy group saying to Republicans, “Trust gays to make the right decisions.” Words matter. Tone matters. Rhetorically conceding to an enemy an illegitimate form of power contributes to the very problem we fight.

Antis aren’t sitting around saying, “OK. I’ll trust her. If she’s really trustworthy and decides on an abortion, then I’m satisfied.” Come the fuck on.

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

Now that’s how to say it. Rebecca Traister at the New Republic on that much-discussed much-disliked (for good reason) about that Esquire piece saying, with immense generosity, that not all 42-year-old women cause projectile vomiting on sight.

I thought the article was a piece of sexist tripe, celebrating a handful of Pilates-toned, famous, white-plus-Maya-Rudolph women as having improved on the apparently dismal aesthetics of previous generations; my primary objections to the piece have been ably laid out by other critics. Chait tweeted that he viewed the piece as a “mostly laudable” sign of progress: a critique not of earlier iterations of 42-year-old womanhood, but rather of the old sexist beauty standards that did not celebrate those women; he saw it as an acknowledgment of maturing male attitudes toward women’s value. 

Oh, goody; being told that not all 42-year-old women cause projectile vomiting on sight is such a huge gift to women; thank you for the favors. Traister is happy that she doesn’t feel any obligation to feel grateful for that kind of favor.

Instead, I’ve been thinking about an anecdote in Tina Fey’s Bossypants. Amy Poehler, then new to “Saturday Night Live,” was engaging in some loud and unladylike vulgarity in the writers’ room when the show’s then-star Jimmy Fallon jokingly told her to cut it out, saying, “It’s not cute! I don’t like it!” In Fey’s retelling, Poehler “went black in the eyes for a second, and wheeled around on him,” forcefully informing him: “I don’t fucking care if you like it.”

I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. Just this week, the journalist Megan Carpentier wrote a piece about the evolving public appraisals of Hillary Clinton’s facial expressions that concluded with her suggestion that we get over the idea of 2014 being “the year of the strong female politician” and aim instead for “the year of the strong female politician who doesn’t give a fuck if you think she’s pretty.”

Because believe it or not there are other things women are interested in. Strange but true.

I suspect that a lot of this irritation over the small stuff right now is directly related to the fact that we’re mired in a moment at which lots and lots of women are not good*, for reasons far graver than anything having to do with Esquire, Jimmy Fallon, John Legend, or Hillary Clinton’s Bitchy Resting Face.

*not “good” meaning not “fine thanks without kind offers of tiny havors”

Jada’s story recalls too many otherrecentheadlines, but happens to have come out at the same time as last weekend’s lengthy New York Timesinvestigation of Hobart & William Smith’s handling of charges that football players sexually assaulted a freshman girl. The Times story was about a lot of things—differences between campus and police investigations, a heightened public awareness about the frequency of coerced or violent sexual encounters on college campuses. But at its heart, it was a story about how women are assessed: by disciplinary committees, police departments, their friends, the public, and by the people they identify as their assailants. It was about how female availability and consent and intoxication are appraised based on how women look, dance, dress, and act, even when those appraisals are at odds with medical evidence, eyewitness accounts, inconsistent stories from accused parties, and certainly with the woman’s own interpretation of her experience or intentions.

This comfort with group assessment of femininity in turn reminds me of the ease with which women’s choices regarding their bodies, futures, health, sex, and family life are up for public evaluation. Women are labeled as good or bad, as moral or immoral, by major religions and “closely held corporations,” whose rights to allow those estimations to dictate their corporate obligations are upheld over the rights of the women themselves by high courts.

It has lately been made perfectly clear, for example, that while in many places women should not be allowed—and increasingly are not allowed—to run their own independent calculations about whether or not to get abortions, other people, unspecified people standing outside clinics, should be allowed—are now allowed—to get in those women’s faces and publicly render their judgments and voice their opinions about those women and their circumstances.

One way to put it is that women are treated as public property in a way that men are not.

I wish it were different. I wish that every woman whose actions and worth are parsed and restricted, congratulated and condemned in this country might just once get to wheel around—on the committee that doesn’t believe their medically corroborated story of assault, or on the protesters who tell them that termination is a sin they will regret, or on the boss who tells them he doesn’t believe in their sexual choices, or on the mid-fifties man who congratulates them, or himself, on finding them appealing deep into their dotage—and go black in the eyes and say, “I don’t fucking care if you like it.”

Which leads nicely into a guest post by Josh.

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

From the Onion:

LINCOLN, NE—Loudly demanding an immediate statement on the issue, Nebraska voters clamored this week for more information from female politician Elaine Romero, an Omaha businesswoman running in the state’s upcoming gubernatorial primary election, on whether she is, in fact, a mother first. “Elaine Romero has made her stance on the social and economic issues facing Nebraskans abundantly clear, but we will not rest until she states clearly and on the record whether she is a mom first and foremost, and a politician second,” local resident Martin McGlynn said on behalf of 1.9 million restless Nebraskans, all of whom were vehemently pressing for answers on whether the 45-year-old public servant prioritizes her family above all else, considers her three children to be her proudest accomplishment, and—most crucially—sees her role as a mother as her most important job.

There’s more. It’s funny, but not funny.

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

Sometimes there’s a conflict between the majority will and human rights. That’s one reason there’s a need for such things as high courts and international courts: to adjudicate between them.

It can be alarming when legislators seem to be blankly unaware of this. Commonplace, but alarming.

Today in Ireland for instance.

Tanaiste Joan Burton has ruled out an abortion referendum being held in the lifetime of this Government.

Ms Burton was responding to an impassioned plea from Independent TD Catherine Murphy who said many women were suffering needlessly because the law on termination of pregnancy on medical grounds was too restrictive.

Deputy Murphy said the referendum to safeguard the right to life of the unborn child was voted in 1983 and the country had changed a lot in the 31 years since then.

“Tanaiste we need a referendum to change this,” Ms Murphy told the Dail.

The Tanaiste said both she and her party had urged rejection of the abortion amendment in 1983.

But she said as democrats everyone must accept the will of the people.

Not true. Suppose the will of the people is that all children of unmarried parents must be imprisoned from birth to the age of 18, as so many such children were in Ireland until very very recently? Is it true that democrats “must” accept that? No. It would be a gross violation of the rights of those children and of their parents, as it was in Ireland and elsewhere for many decades.

Also, Michael Nugent points out, the UN Human Rights Committee has just told Ireland that that argument is “totally unacceptable.”

…just this Tuesday, in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Committee had told Ireland that this was a “totally unacceptable” reason to deny Irish women their right to an abortion consistently with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The UN Human Rights Committee told Ireland that human rights cannot be denied by a majority vote in Parliament or in a referendum, and that the whole point of international human rights law is to avoid the tyranny of the majority.

The UN told Ireland to withdraw that argument as a reason for denying Irish women abortions, and after a break in the session, Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald did withdraw it. She accepted that “the will of the people” was not a justified reason to derogate from giving people their human rights under the ICCPR.

You know what else isn’t? The will of the bishops. Just saying.

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

Originally a comment by the philosophical primate on Not Thorita.

I think Lees’ criticism is… just damned silly. Yes, I get the critique of the “another strong woman” nonsense, but the idea behind this move in the comic is that Thor is a particular ROLE — a warrior deity — that a woman can fill as effectively as a man. The quoted passage about “Lady Thor,” “Thorita” and so on (which I’m confident has nothing to do with a transgender Eurovision contestant) is simply writer Jason Aaron explicitly saying that he is NOT going down the route of remaking the character in pink and fluff and ribbons and offensive feminine stereotypes just because said warrior deity is going to be a woman instead of a man in the upcoming reboot.

And although it would be nice if he could go without saying so at all, Marvel is making the announcement of the comic in *this* world, not a hypothetical possible world where no one would ever think that was something that might happen: Aaron mentioning such stereotypes to make it clear that he rejects them should not be used to infer that HE is inclined to think that way automatically; he just knows there are lots of sexist nerd-boys out there who will make that sort of criticism, and he is clearly (if perhaps a little clumsily) anticipating and responding to such criticisms.

It’s one thing to be annoyed that the only way women are portrayed positively in so much fiction is by being remade into a “man” as viewed by traditional, narrow gender-binary stereotypes. It’s another thing — a strange, foolish, axe-grindy sort of thing in my view — to single out a superhero comic about a warrior deity who wields a lightning-flinging warhammer against foes as a specific target in such a critique about those general patterns. There definitely SHOULD be more positive portrayals of women in media who aren’t just a gender-bent version of a stereotypical “masculine” hero; but that doesn’t logically entail that it’s always and necessarily wrong-headed and harmful and stereotype-perpetuating to portray women who do have some of those qualities. (Is “Aliens” less feminist because it’s an action movie whose women are portrayed as tough and capable of violence? I don’t think so.)

I found it especially amusing that Lees mentioned possible future movies in the context of this particular critique. Did she actually see “Thor”? In the first movie, the title character regains his divine power and the right to wield Mjolner when he learns not to be a macho, arrogant, violence-is-the-answer-no-matter-the-question, self-involved asshole, and instead demonstrates caring, compassion, and a willingness sacrifice his own interests for the welfare of others — you know, genuinely good human qualities often derided as “feminine”? That’s exactly the sort of narrow-gender-role-defying narrative Lees should be able to get behind, if she weren’t so busy putting axe to grindstone. (Mind you, that transformation happens far too quickly, and is undermined by being a part of a cliche woman-in-peril/love story narrative; I’m not saying it’s thought-provoking feminist cinema. But the story DOES make the unsubtle and explicit point that when Thor is a stereotypical macho-man type, he ISN’T really a good person or a hero to be admired — even though many DO admire him.)

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

A French blogger has been fined for writing a harsh restaurant review that got a high Google ranking.

I’m not making it up.

Ms Doudet was sued by the owner of Il Giardino restaurant in the Aquitaine region of southwestern France after she wrote a blogpost entitled “the place to avoid in Cap-Ferret: Il Giardino”.

According to court documents, the review appeared fourth in the results of a Google search for the restaurant. The judge decided that the blog’s title should be changed, so that the phrase: “the place to avoid” was less prominent in the results.

The judge sitting in Bordeaux also pointed out that the harm to the restaurant was exacerbated by the fact that Ms Doudet’s fashion and literature blog “Cultur’elle” had around 3,000 followers, indicating she thought it was a significant number.

Really? There are more of you than that. (Yes really. You’re a good-sized mob by now.)

The judge told Ms Doudet to amend the title of the blog and to pay €1,500 ($2,000; £1,200).

In her article, which has now been deleted, she complained of poor service and what she said was a poor attitude on the part of the owner during a visit in August 2013.

Restaurants can sue critics for writing bad reviews? And win?

Incroyable.

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

So what about THOR?

Paris Lees at the Guardian asks.

Hurrah. Marvel comics have revealed that Thor, the God of Thunder, has become a woman. Not in a transgender way, not in a “When Mr Thor gets back from the summer holidays he will be wearing a dress and called Ms Thor” way. No, Thor is simply a woman now and that’s that. And you needn’t worry about her going all soft and silly. As Jason Aaron, writer of the new Thor series, puts it: “This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is THOR. This is the THOR of the Marvel universe. But it’s unlike any Thor we’ve ever seen before.”

Excuse me?

Why would it be She-Thor or Lady Thor or Thorita?

That’s like thinking a woman who writes has to be a writeress, and a woman who flies planes has to be a pilotess, and a woman who sciences has to be a scientistess.

We’re not that weird, you know. We’re not that different. We’re not so weird and different that a gender switch necessitates the addition of layer upon layer of fluff and lace and ribbon and meringue.

Anything that breaks up our rigid ideas of just what men and women are supposed to be is a good thing. I’m just not entirely sure that a female THOR does anything to truly challenge the status quo around gender.

Putting women in men’s roles only gets you so far. Sexism didn’t disappear when women started wearing trousers. It’s wonderful that the fairer sex were able to undo their corsets and take on things that were traditionally seen as masculine – whether that be sports, political careers or plain old dungarees – but it has done little to challenge the scapegoating of femininity. We live in a society that still systematically celebrates masculinity while ridiculing all things feminine.

Oh well, give it a few more centuries.

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

Wow. Breaking news – a Federal judge just declared the California death penalty unconstitutional.

A federal judge in Orange County ruled Wednesday that California’s death penalty violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney, ruled on a petition by death row inmate Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was sentenced to die nearly two decades ago.

Carney said the state’s death penalty has created long delays and uncertainty for inmates, most of whom will never be executed.

He noted that more than 900 people have been sentenced to death in California since 1978 but only 13 have been executed.

“For the rest, the dysfunctional administration of California’s death penalty system has resulted, and will continue to result, in an inordinate and unpredictable period of delay preceding their actual execution,” Carney wrote.

Well that does sound like torture.

Carney, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, said the delays have created a “system in which arbitrary factors, rather than legitimate ones like the nature of the crime or the date of the death sentence, determine whether an individual will actually be executed,” Carney said.

In overturning Jones’ death sentence, Carney noted that the inmate faced “complete uncertainty as to when, or even whether” he will be executed.

The “random few” who will be executed “will have languished for so long on Death Row that their execution will serve no retributive or deterrent purpose and will be arbitrary,” Carney said.

You’re there 20 years, you’re a different person, and then finally the state comes ambling along, yawning and picking its teeth, and says, “yeah ok we’re ready to off you now. Sorry about the wait.” It does seem pretty pointless.

And if it’s pointless after 20 years…then it’s pointless anyway, right? If it doesn’t accomplish anything after a long delay, how much can it accomplish if it’s done promptly?

Natasha Minsker, a director of the ACLU of Northern California, said Wednesday’s ruling marked the first time that a federal judge had found the state’s current system unconstitutional. She said it was also “the first time any judge has ruled systemic delay creates an arbitrary system that serves no legitimate purpose and is therefore unconstitutional.”

And it’s a Bush judge, a Bush 2 judge, a judge appointed by the Shrub. There’s something satisfying about that.

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

Damn, I’ve been neglecting to pay attention to Mars Hill church – which is local to me – and clearly that’s a mistake. It’s been melting down, and people have been spilling truckloads of beans.

There are emerging stories of sensational kangaroo courts and “sex demon” trials, like something out of the Salem witch hunts of the 1600s. Even more devastating to individual members are the ways in which they are shamed, taught to blame themselves and each other when they see problems, and to formally shun people who step out of favor with church leaders. Shunnings, both formal and informal, have caused the outcast to spend years in isolation, cut off from friends, sometimes suffering deep clinical depression, nightmares, disillusionment and shattered faith.

Ah yes shunning, one of the gems of human ingenuity.

The problems in the church haven’t always been so obvious. In the beginning, Mars Hill church was a grassroots Seattle start-up with a 90s indie rock approach to organized religion.

Exuding charisma, the church’s young leader, Mark Driscoll, managed to make stories from the Bible entertaining and accessible. Unlike many other Christian evangelicals, he did not think that beer, electric guitars, married sex and mixed martial arts were at odds with Jesus.

Driscoll preaches a theology that counts homosexuality as a sin. He casts females as destined to play a supporting role, always orbitting the male lead. Though many didn’t like what Driscoll had to say, or how he said it, quite a few people did.

Apparently there are always quite a few people who like that way of casting “females”; not all of them are men, by any means.

Patterns of abuse, particularly the psychologically damaging practice of shunning, first came to widespread attention for many outside Mars Hill with reporter Brendan Riley’s Kiley’s 2012 expose, “Church or Cult?” published by the Stranger, which detailed the shunning of a young man for not repenting to the degree that church authorities thought he should.

“To them, repentence is groveling at their feet as if they are god,” said former member Rob Thain Smith — who was pushed out of the church and has a blog, Musings from Underneath the Bus.

Hm, we seem to have a theme today – male personality cults and the abusive behavior they foster.

Smith’s reputation was destroyed, he said, when Driscoll labeled him “divisive.” In the highly charged environment of Mars Hill, this became one of the most feared words in the English language, akin to being labeled a counter-revolutionary in Maoist China. Repentence trials seemed more like class struggle meetings. Still, many stayed quiet, out of fear or misplaced loyalty, sometimes even coming to believe the charges against them, and quietly leaving the church in shame. Though the only weapons were words, the words were like a spiritual death sentence.

Oh gawd, even that is familiar – we (we rebels against The Cult) are constantly called “divisive.”

It was during this period, around the mid-2000s that Driscoll started using more violent language to discredit people.

“I think these guys were trying to do due diligence and to rein Mark in in a healthy way, and at some point he got tired of being reined in,” said Wendy Alsup, who led theology classes for women at Mars Hill. She recently helped start the website “We Love Mars Hill,” one of many sites where former members are posting stories, and has her own blog Theology for Women.

Driscoll would talk about an ex-elder having been “put through the wood chipper.” He also likened someone to “a fart in an elevator.” At one point, on a church social networking site, he told a man to “shut up your wife or I’ll do it for you.”

“He was just brutal,” she said. “When he said these things, we all just hung our heads.”

Alsup quickly learned to fear the power of group disapproval.

“They’re going to project onto me that I am a bitter, nagging, contentious, gossip, manipulator. I learned to rein in my own voice.”

Check, check, check, check.

We humans just aren’t very good at group behavior, are we. We rely on it but we’re bad at it.

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

Via RH Reality Check

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

Did somebody mention sexism in science?

The accused is Dr. Aurelio Galli, whose research deals with dopamine transport and signalling.

At a conference the professor “… required the female graduate students to attend a boat party where the male professors became intoxicated and were allowed to make romantic and sexual advances on the students.”

Then there’s this: The professor “would routinely call her ugly, fat and … a stupid in front of other students.”

The suit alleges he knew the graduate student was a recovering alcoholic and told her he wished she “would start drinking again because she would be more fun,” and that “… she would be less stressed out if she had more sex.”

She would be less stressed out if the professor didn’t keep calling her ugly, fat, and stupid, too.

How did the department chair handle it?

According to the lawsuit, when the student reported the conduct to the professor’s supervisor he informed her “that in his opinion it was nothing but a personality conflict.”

Unsurprisingly, Vanderbilt says it will “vigorously defend itself.”

It’s all a personality conflict, isn’t it – between the normal, male personality and the crazed moon-ridden unfathomable female personality.

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

Mathematigal has her views on Feynman and the hero-worship of Feynman and what that hero-worship implies for women in science and mathematics.

She starts with some of the special treatment she has received, such as…

I have had men in academia disparage me to others, and dismiss both my interests and accomplishments as trivial. I regularly deal with comments like “PRO TIP: Mute the video, sit back, and admire the cute girl” regarding my outreach work. I have had jobs (multiple) where I was harassed and propositioned by my own boss.

And then she goes on to explain how Feynman and the cult of Feynman relates to that kind of thing.

Because every time I hear someone in my department or in one of my classes go on about how Feynman was so awesome I mean he was kind of a jerk to women but whatever, I file him (and it is almost always always a him) away as someone who would have sided against me in every single one of the situations I’ve mentioned. Every time I see a joking tweet or post about how Feynman’s second wife divorced him because she didn’t like that he was always doing calculus in his head, while totally ignoring the fact that the divorce papers indicate that he would fly into a rage, attack her, and break furniture whenever she interrupted said mental calculus, my world gets a little bit smaller.

Now, that may not be totally fair to every Feynman fan out there, but let me tell you, life as a woman in phenomenally male-dominated fields is pretty damned unfair. I put people into boxes about stuff like this – not because I think all of the people who hero-worship Feynman (and countless other mathematicians/scientists with similar track records) approve of how he treated women, but because there are actually some that do. As in, there are people today who think that lying to women and treating them like prizes to be won is totally fine. And some of them are researchers, professors, PhD candidates. And I know from personal experience that if I found myself once again in a situation where a prominent man was abusing his power, there would be people who would bend over backwards to protect his reputation, to the detriment of mine. That is the ugly side of hero worship. People like me get the message that great scientific achievement will totally outweigh reprehensible and hurtful behavior towards, well, people like me.

And it is exactly the same way out here outside the academy, in the secular / atheist / humanist movement, where hero worship and cults of “leaders” are also endemic. The heroes and “leaders” are all male, and people – especially women – who criticize or challenge them are treated like enemy agents in wartime.

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

Have an early morning (well it’s early morning here – I realize this is an eccentric lightly-populated time zone) picture of Jupiter and Io.

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

I’ll have to start following this inquiry into child abuse in the UK. Yesterday’s news was that the judge who was appointed to chair it had stepped down because of conflicts of interest.

May had made clear that as far as she was concerned the inquiry was not being set up to replicate a police investigation into claims of a child sex ring at Westminster. Instead she said its job was to consider whether public bodies such as the NHS, the BBC and non-state institutions such as the churches “had taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse”.

It was widely expected that Butler-Sloss, 80, would convene a panel of legal and child protection experts, and come up with recommendations on child policy to ensure that a Jimmy Savile or a Stuart Hall could not get away with what they did for so long ever again.

A brave new world in which adults don’t get to treat pools of children as their personal sex toys. What a concept.

The idea was that Butler-Sloss would review the documentary evidence from the myriad recent official inquiries into child abuse across the country rather than interview witnesses who might themselves still be subject to criminal investigations.

But May also opened the door to a different kind of inquiry, saying that if Butler-Sloss deemed it necessary the government was prepared to convert it into a full public inquiry in line with the Public Inquiries Act 2005.

This immediately raised expectations among victims’ groups and media organisations that not only would the voices of victims who continue to suffer from sexual abuse inflicted on them 20 or 30 years ago be heard, but their allegations would be taken seriously.

So that wasn’t the expectation before? The expectation had been that their allegations would not be taken seriously? That seems unfortunate.

The emergence of the fact that Butler-Sloss’s brother was Lord Havers, who as attorney general in the 1980s had been responsible for some of the decisions not to prosecute, undermined her credibility but should not have proved fatal if she was only looking at the current institutional response to child abuse.

However, the subsequent disclosure that she herself had had the name of a bishop allegedly involved in child abuse withdrawn from her 2011 report into abuse in the Church of England was to prove fatal.

Uh, yeah – that’s fatal.

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

Thank you but feminism doesn’t need that kind of help.

A self-styled battalion of the far-right group Britain First has “invaded” a mosque in south London.

The stated aim of the altercation on Sunday was to “demand the removal of sexist signs” outside the Crayford Mosque.

The signs designate separate entrances for men and women, so they can enter for segregated worship as is the custom in most mosques, as well as Orthodox Jewish synagogues and Sikh gurdwaras.

A film of the encounter was posted on Facebook, set to dramatic drumming music and ending with the slogan: “Britain First Defence Force. No fear. No retreat. No surrender.”

All sporting matching black flatcaps, the group of five “activists” marched into the mosque and asked to speak to the imam, before quickly giving up and speaking to the first person they came across.

No no no no no, really. We’ve got this. Go away. Go all the way away, and when you’re there, cast about for a better hobby.

The leader, Paul Golding, announced: “We’re Britain First, yeah? We object to your signs that are outside, the signs for men and women… in this country we have equality.”

The man politely asked them to remove their shoes in a place of worship but the Britain First members ignored him.

“When you respect women we’ll respect your mosques and you’ve got signs out there that segregate men and women,” Mr Golding told him.

A female member of the group accused Muslims of taking equality back “a hundred years” and told him to take the signs down.

No. Just no. Go back to Kent; go inside; sit down and take some deep breaths. Keep doing that for 20 or 30 years.

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

The Muslim Council of Britain and Diabetes UK got together and put out a pamphlet for diabetics who plan to fast for Ramadan. It’s a little better in some ways than the NHS advice, but it’s still not good. It nowhere says you just shouldn’t fast if you have diabetes, period. It nowhere says you shouldn’t fast if you have diabetes and you don’t have to. It nowhere says fasting is optional.

It opens with

If you are planning on fasting and have diabetes, it is important to speak to
your diabetes healthcare team as early as possible before Ramadan. For some
people with diabetes, fasting can be dangerous or can cause problems to your
health. Your diabetes team will be able to advise you on whether it is safe for
you to fast. If you are able to fast, they will advise you on how to keep good
diabetes control throughout the fasting period.

That’s not good enough. It puts planning to fast first, and it shouldn’t. It should start with: If you have diabetes, you shouldn’t fast.

It doesn’t come right out and just say you shouldn’t fast. It mentions the risks but in a timid, non-urgent way.

From 2014, for the next several years Ramadan
in the UK is in the summer months and the length of
fasts is very long (17 hours +). Long fasts put you at
higher risk of hypoglycaemia and dehydration, which
can make you ill.
High blood glucose levels can also occur if you eat
excessively at Suhoor or Iftar.

So don’t do it. That’s a good reason not to do it, so just don’t do it. If you must do it, if you insist on doing it, here’s some advice, but you shouldn’t do it…they never say.

When we don’t eat during a fast, at about eight
hours after our last meal our bodies start to use
energy stores to keep our blood glucose (sugar)
levels normal. For most people, this is not harmful.
With diabetes, especially if you take certain tablets
or insulin, you are at risk of hypoglycaemia or
‘hypos’ (low blood glucose levels). This year, the
fasts are long and the risks of hypoglycaemia and
dehydration (lack of water) are high. Another
problem that can occur if you have diabetes, is
the risk of high glucose levels following the
larger meals that we eat before and after fasting
(at Suhoor/Sehri and Iftar).
Hypoglycaemia, high glucose levels and dehydration
can be dangerous for people with diabetes.

So people should not do it – but the pamphlet never says that.

I HAVE DIABETES
– CAN I FAST?

Most people with health problems, such as diabetes
are exempt from fasting. Choosing to fast is a personal
decision that you should make with advice from your
diabetes team. For some people with diabetes, fasting
can be dangerous or cause problems to your health.
Speak to your GP, diabetes nurse or diabetes
doctor before fasting.

That’s the closest they get to really warning people – that bold type saying speak to someone first. But still, they don’t say you just shouldn’t, they don’t say it’s a risk not worth taking, they don’t say you don’t have to.

They never say you don’t have to. Just: you don’t have to, period. On the contrary they imply that you do have to, unless you’re “exempt.” After the bold type they go on to:

Certain people and circumstances are exempt from
fasting. For example:
• children (under the age of puberty)
• the elderly
• those who are sick or have a certain
health condition
• those with learning difficulties
• those who are travelling
• pregnant, breastfeeding and menstruating women
• anyone who would be putting their health at serious
risk by fasting, eg people who treat their diabetes
with insulin and/or certain medication, people who
have diabetic complications (damage to eyes,
kidney or the nerves in your hands and feet), or
people who have poor control of their diabetes

Saying that some people are “exempt” implies that everyone else is required. What is this “exempt” nonsense anyway? Says who? By what authority? According to what? I know, it’s one of the 5 pillars, but why is that being treated as the equivalent of actual law? Everyone is fucking “exempt” from fasting at Ramadan.

Remember, if you cannot fast, you can complete
your duties by offering charity or providing food to the
poor. Speak to your local Imam for more information
about this.
Remember, if you cannot fast this Ramadan,
you may be able to make up the fast at a later date,
perhaps during the winter months.
You must speak to your doctor or diabetes nurse
about your diabetes treatment as early as possible
before Ramadan.

It’s better than nothing, but it’s miles from as good as “you don’t have to at all, and you shouldn’t – it’s too dangerous and too hard on your body.”

Then there’s a rather sad question, “Do I need to wake up for Suhoor?” And the relentless answer.

Long hours without eating increase the risk
of hypoglycaemia. You must try to eat a meal
at Suhoor just before sunrise and not at midnight,
as this will help to keep your glucose levels more
balanced through the fast.

In other words yes, you have to ruin your sleep by waking up at 3 a.m. to eat for the last time before 11 p.m.

At the end there are safety tips, which is good, but also bad, because the risk shouldn’t be undertaken.

Always carry glucose treatment with you.
• Always have diabetes identification, such
as a medical bracelet.
• Test your blood regularly to monitor your
glucose (sugar) levels. This will not break
your fast.
• Test your blood glucose level if you feel
unwell during the fast.
• If your blood sugar level is high or low,
you must treat this.
• If your blood glucose is less than 3.3mmol/l,
end the fast immediately and treat the low
blood sugar level.
• If your blood glucose level is 3.9mmol/l at
the start of the fast and you are on insulin
or gliclazide, do not fast.
• If your blood glucose level is higher than
16mmol/l, end the fast immediately.
• If you become dehydrated, end the fast
immediately and have a drink of water.
• If you start to feel unwell, disoriented,
confused, if you collapse or faint,
stop fasting and have a drink of water
or other fluid.
• You should never stop your insulin,
but you must speak to your doctor
because you may need to change the
dose and times of your insulin injections.

It’s so obviously not at all the right thing for diabetics to do. The pamphlet should say that clearly and say that you don’t have to. In plain English. Not “you may be exempt” but “you don’t have to in the first place.”

The reality is, this will make a whole lot of people sicker than they would otherwise be, all for a religious fast that’s treated as somehow mandatory. That’s a horrible, anti-human, pointless situation.

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

The New Yorker offers its Nadine Gordimer archive, which is well stocked.

Over the decades, Gordimer wrote dozens of pieces for The New Yorker. Her first, a short story called “A Watcher of the Dead,” was published in 1951.

After that, she continued to publish stories about life in South Africa, with occasional excursions into other genres. In 1954, she published a memoir of her childhood, called “Allusions in a Landscape”; in 1995, she wrote about being a juror at Cannes; and, in 2001, she recalled, in a short, pensive meditation on memory, running into an old friend on a London street.

But it was through her short fiction that Gordimer made her presence felt the most, and two of her short stories in our archive are available for anybody to read. Both happen to be about secrets revealed. “The First Sense,” from 2006, is about a woman who discovers that her husband, a cellist, is having an affair. (She works in an office; the affair is one more way in which his life is more exciting than hers.) “A Beneficiary,” from 2007, is about a daughter who discovers a family secret in her mother’s old papers. It poses a question that Gordimer asked in many of her stories: “How do you recognize something that is not in the known vocabulary of your emotions? … What do you do with something you’ve been told? Something that now is there in the gut of your existence.” It’s a theme Gordimer returned to again and again: the challenge of responding to the hardest facts of life.

These stories, and others by Nadine Gordimer, are available in our online archive.

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