Irshad Manji speaks up for freedom of speech and thought in Islam.

Last year, Al Jazeera aired an intense debate about Muslim reform between me and the British commentator Mehdi Hasan. Hate mail followed. So did love bombs. But I did not receive any death threats. To be sure, the reality remains that those who shatter age-old taboos within Islam do have to fear for their lives. While it is true that every religion has its extremists, in no other religion do mainstream believers routinely shrug off the murder of dissenters. This is a life-and-death difference. All the more reason for ijtihad to be revived in the 21st century.

Nowhere does the necessity of ijtihad seem more urgent than in the wars over freedom of expression. One might say that the UK led the way. More than 25 years ago, a puny hive of British Muslims demanded the death of novelist Salman Rushdie even before Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini issued his infamous fatwa.

Yes, but that was after India banned The Satanic Verses. The Bradford book-burning took its cue from the Indian ban. Not that I’m disagreeing with her, just mussing up the picture a little.

Earlier this year, I watched the British brouhaha over my friend Maajid Nawaz, the prospective Liberal Democrat candidate for Kilburn and co-founder of the counter-extremism outfit Quilliam. Nawaz had tweeted a cartoon called Jesus and Mo. Jesus to Mo: ‘Hey!’ Mo: ‘How ya doing?’ The end. That was it. Two top-tier prophets swapping props.

I call that catchy: two top-tier prophets swapping props.

The question is simple: can Islam be reconciled with free expression? The answer is yes. The Qur’an points out that there will always be nonbelievers and that it is for God, not for Muslims, to deal with them: ‘The truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills — let him believe; and whoever wills — let him disbelieve.’ (18:29). Moreover, the Qur’an states that there should ‘no compulsion in religion’. (2:256). Nobody should be forced to treat tradition as untouchable, including traditions that result in the messed-up Muslim habit of equating our very human prophet with an inviolable idol. Monotheists are to revere one God, not one of God’s emissaries. That is why humility requires people of faith to lampoon themselves, and each other, once in a while.

But even revering one god is revering a human conception of that god. But I’ll try to stop quibbling. I’d rather have believers of the Manji & Nawaz type than the Just Follow Orders type, so I shouldn’t quibble.

For me, embracing freedom is an act of faith. Recognising the Almighty’s infinite wisdom means acknowledging my limited human wisdom. As a monotheist, I am not God. Nor am I entitled to behave as God. Hence my duty to let a thousand nonviolent flowers bloom. In short, to devote myself to Allah is to love liberty.

Ok, but you can do that without Allah. You get to the same place. And if you take seriously the idea of an “almighty” who has infinite wisdom, it seems all but inevitable that you try to figure out what that Almighty thinks, and back come the orders and limits and veils and priests.

I just can’t stop quibbling, can I.

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

Do legislatures these days just sit around all day looking for new and more abhorrent ways of instantiating their hatred of women?

There’s one making its way through the process in Kansas that would mandate the reporting of all miscarriages.

A bill advancing in Kansas would mandate reporting for miscarriages at any stage in pregnancy, the first step along the path to criminalizing pregnant women’s bodies. Under an amendment attached to HB 2613 — which was originally intended to update the state’s procedure for issuing birth certificates for stillborn babies — doctors would be required to report all of their patients’ miscarriages to the state health department.

HB 2613 initially sought to provide an alternative to the state’s current stillbirth certificate, which some parents believe over-emphasizes their child’s death in an emotionally painful way. Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook (R), one of the most ardent abortion opponents in Kansas, added the miscarriage reporting requirement last week. Now, the bill’s original author is withdrawing his support from his own legislation.

Nice that it’s a woman doing the hating.

…enacting additional regulations related to the end of a pregnancy threatens to turn pregnant women into suspectsin the eyes of the law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) has documented hundreds of cases of women being held criminally liable for decisions they made while pregnant, particularly if they later suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth. Anti-abortion advocates also tend to pressure states to increase the criminal penalties for violent acts that result in the loss of a pregnancy, an area that can open the door to potential attacks on reproductive rights.

According to Nash, HB 2613 fits into this broader approach.

“The whole point is to further the idea of the fetus as a person. It’s a way of establishing the groundwork for making abortion harder to get, and eventually illegal,” Nash [Elizabeth Nash, the states issue manager for the Guttmacher Institute] explained. “This is one tiny piece of that overall effort. At the end of the day, this is not the way to go to provide support for a woman who has had a later miscarriage. This doesn’t make up for the loss of a wanted pregnancy, and could also end up infringing on abortion rights.”

Which was the goal.

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

There is at last a legal fundraiser for Karen Stollznow. She needs $30 thousand to defend herself against Radford’s defamation suit.

My name is Karen Stollznow. I am an author and researcher with a PhD in Linguistics. In recent months, I wrote an article for a Scientific American Mind blog in which I spoke out about sexual harassment I’d endured from a male colleague for several years. I did this to highlight the wide problem of sexual harassment in the workplace for women, including those in scientific and academic fields. Many people who read the article immediately identified my harasser by name, and spoke publicly about my situation on their own blogs and other social media. They knew who my harasser was because he had recently been disciplined by his employer for his behavior.

As a result, my harasser filed a defamation suit against me, trying to bully me into silence. Although he’s spent thousands of dollars on a lawyer to clear his name, he knew that I could not afford the same. In my attempts to settle out of court he has tried to bully me into signing a retraction, which claimed that I had lied about the whole ordeal, including his ongoing harassment of me, and assaults at one of our professional conferences. Although I didn’t sign the retraction, he posted the document on his very public Facebook page and announced victory over me. This also led to false public edits being made to my Wikipedia page.

I never lied about the harassment I endured and I have evidence and witnesses to attest to my experiences. The only crime I have committed is not being rich enough to defend myself. If you believe in justice and in protecting victims who are bullied into silence, please dig deep and help support this legal fund. I must raise $30,000 in the next two weeks in order to find legal counsel to fight these allegations and clear my own name. If my harasser succeeds in bullying me into silence, it will only serve to embolden harassers, and teach victims that they should never speak up, lest it ruin their lives.

Any money raised through this campaign that is not spent on these legal expenses will be donated to Colorado’s Sexual Assault Victim Advocate Center.

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

Maryam considers the question of who gets to speak for British Muslims. Her answer is no one and everyone.

She says there’s been a huge fuss about the fact that Maajid Nawaz included her in the brief film he made for Newsnight.

In the programme I explained why I define myself as an ex-Muslim. It is not enough for me to call myself an atheist when I receive death threats for leaving Islam. Calling myself ex-Muslim is a public challenge to Islam, Islamism and its death penalty for apostates. Until people are free to come and go as they please and without fear, there is a political necessity to label myself in this way.

Of course it made sense to include her in the film. Vyckie Garrison and Libby Anne have a lot to tell us about the Quiverfull version of Christianity, and ex-Muslims have a lot to tell us about being Muslim. The experience of exes is highly relevant to understanding religions, and all the more so when they are categories who are disadvantaged by those religions.

The point of the programme though is not that I represent the “Muslim community” but that regressive self-appointed imams and Islamist organisations do not necessarily do so. This is an important point that is often ignored in the media and by Government.

There is no homogeneous “Muslim community”. The “community” includes feminists, gay rights activists and those deemed apostates. Muslim does not equate Islamist; Muslim does not equate support for stonings, amputations, gender segregation and women’s inequality.

After all, people’s ethnicity, religion, gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, identity… do not define them; it is their politics and choices that do.

Well I would say both do, but I know what she means – it’s the things we’ve chosen that we really want to represent us, portray us, be what people associate with us.

I have just as much a stake in this debate as anyone else – Muslim or not – because to a large extent my life depends on it. As Islamists tell me all the time, no one is allowed to leave Islam and doing so especially publicly goes beyond the matter of apostasy to a matter of treason. This is they say is deserving of capital punishment in all countries.

You’re not allowed to leave Islam and you’re especially not allowed to talk and write about why you left Islam – it’s all or nothing; permanent or treasonous; total commitment or total crime. A nightmare.

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

An article in Psychology Today – psychology for people who know nothing about psychology (like me), or more politely for the wider public – describes research that suggests that dogs have a rudimentary Theory of Mind, or one piece of a TOM.

Experimenters tested whether dogs beg more (or less) from people who (they can see) can’t see them or from people who can. It was the second. This of course causes not the faintest surprise in anyone who’s spent any time with dogs. Of course dogs cue in on human attention. I make eye contact with dogs in the street. I smile at them. They react. And these are stranger dogs. Of course dogs pay attention to human attention, including their line of sight.

And so the experiments confirmed.

Stanley Coren sums up:

Over all these results suggest that dogs do have a strongly entrenched, perhaps genetic, predisposition to try to “read the mind” of humans, at least at the level of understanding that humans must pay attention to them if they are going to be able to get them to respond. Wolves can learn this, at least at a low level for the most obvious of cues (when an individual has their back turned) but not for the more subtle cues, such as the familiar situation where a human is looking at a book and thus not attending to what is going on in front of them.

Or when she is looking at a computer screen and thus is not attending to the dog. Cooper starts awake when I put my reading glasses down on the desk. Yes, he knows from attention all right.

So, can dogs read your mind? Well they certainly seem to have a theory of mind and they are trying to figure out what you are thinking so that they can communicate with you and get a bit more of what they want out of life.

But do they have an elaborate enough theory of mind that they think about the feral cat outside who might be hungry and thus might want some of their food? Do they have an elaborate enough theory of mind that they then decide to leave some of their precious food behind for that possibly hungry cat outside who might come inside and eat it?

Uh, no.

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

Originally a comment by Seth on Like the lights being turned off.

Recently I spoke with a friend of mine who happens to be a Muslim woman; she does not wear hijab, though every few years she struggles with the urge to cover her hair, because some part of her feels it’s essential to her religion. But she told me something curious about some of the ‘cultural’ reasons for wearing the niqab, which arguably predate the invention of Islam; basically, some Muslim women take to the full-body veil because they feel they are ‘too beautiful’ to go through their daily lives without sexual harassment from all of the men around them.

Thus we see in microcosm something that Christopher Hitchens condemned for religion in general; it is at once the height of abjection and servility, combined with the quintessence of arrogance and solipsism. Men are the favoured of God, entitled to all of the power and property and respect, but they are base animals who cannot be expected to control themselves if they see the curve of a woman’s chin; it’s the wretched woman’s fault for putting herself in ‘civilised’ company, distracting from the business of the day, for being too beautiful and perfect a creature to do anything but be admired in the home of the man who owns her. This utter debasement of men and women (with its concomitant erasure of non-cis, non-heterosexuals) is present in all of the major religions, but it is rarely so blunt and transparent as we find in Islam.

I am glad that I live in a country where a woman can wear the niqab if she chooses…but I’m much more concerned with providing women the space and freedom to take it off if they choose, as well. I wish there were women’s shelters designed specifically to accommodate women and their children fleeing religiously-inspired abuse (no matter what religion), spaces for women to take refuge away from the patriarchs who seek to enforce their control by force. And I believe that all children must attend a public, secular school, where they interact at least a few hours a day with kids of every gender, kids whose parents aren’t the same religion, or colour, or economic status. Children have a right to a diversity of opinion and experience, a right that trumps any self-proclaimed right of parents to cloister them into only one worldview. These measures are by no means sufficient conditions for the dismantling of sexism inherent in religion, but I believe they (or something like them) are necessary.

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

In the argument about whether dogs are likely to leave some of their dinner for a stray cat who might come into the house later to eat it (let alone whether the dog knows the cat is pregnant and is feeding her because she’s pregnant…), someone linked to this interesting research that seems to show that rats can do altruism.

In the new study, Mason, Bartal and University of Chicago colleague Jean Decetyplaced pairs of rats in Plexiglass pens. One rat was trapped in a cage in the middle of the pen, whereas the other rat was free to run around. Most free rats circled their imprisoned peer, gnawing at the cage and sticking their paws, noses and whiskers through any openings. After a week of trial and error, 23 of the 30 rats in the experiment learned to open the cage and free their peers by head-butting the cage door or leaning their full weight against the door until it tipped over. (The door could only be opened from the outside.) At first the rats were startled by the noise of the toppling door. Eventually, however, they stopped showing surprise, which suggests that they fully intended to push the door aside. Further, the rodents showed no interest in opening empty cages or in those containing toy rats, indicating that a break out was their genuine goal.

In this first set of experiments, most rats seemed quite willing to help their peers, but Mason wanted to give them a tougher test. She placed rats in a Plexiglass pen with two cages: in one was another rat, in the other was a pile of five milk chocolate chips—a favorite snack of these particular rodents. The unrestricted rats could easily have eaten the chocolate themselves before freeing their peers or been so distracted by the sweets that they would neglect their imprisoned friends. Instead, most of the rats opened both cages and shared in the chocolate chip feast.

That’s pretty cool.

Mason’s new study is one of the most recent in a series of experiments changing how scientists think about empathy and altruism in the animal kingdom. At first, most people agreed that true altruism was a uniquely human characteristic requiring an awareness of one’s actions as selfless. Now it seems that many animals have evolved instincts to help others, even at a cost to themselves, and that we inherited these same instincts. “The bottom line is that helping an individual in distress is part of our biology,” Mason says. “It’s not something that develops or doesn’t develop because of culture.”

It’s a mammal thing. Oxytocin. Caring.

In earlier work, McGill University psychologist Jeffrey Mogil and his colleagues showed that mice recognize their peers’ pain—what researchers call “emotional contagion”—and spend more time with suffering cage mates. His team also developed a scale to measure pain expressed on the faces of mice.

Mogil was impressed with Mason’s study, but had some questions about the findings. “This is surprising because it’s not clear what the motivation for the prosocial behavior is, although the prosocial behavior is clearly there,” says Mogil. Both Mogil and Mason point out that because trapped rats squeak out alarm calls now and then, which stress out any fellows that hear them, the rats opening the doors might be trying to silence their peers. Mason thinks the alarm calls aren’t frequent enough to motivate the rats, but Mogil is not so sure.

So it could be just “stop making that noise.” Or it could be freedom, freedom, freedom.

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

This story is hugely popular on Facebook, and it’s a sweet story, but it seems extremely implausible to me. But I seem to be alone in that. I’m curious what you savagely skeptical people think.

My mother’s friend adopted this lovely dog after he was abandoned by his previous family. His name is Shaun.

Shaun had always been very good at eating all his food. Every last bit that was, he ate it.

One day he started leaving a little bit behind. He wouldn’t eat everything, no matter what. He always left a little behind.

Every morning when my mother’s friend checked Shaun’s bowl, the food was gone. That was very strange, because Shaun always spent the night by her side.

One night she decided to investigate the food situation. She waited quietly by the food bowl and then, in the middle of the night, a cat came through the window and ate the remaining food. She noticed the cat was actually pregnant.

She realized that Shaun had been saving his food for the mommy cat. A week or so later the cat came into her house and gave birth to six little kittens.

Shaun took care of them as if they were his own babies. My mother’s friend adopted the cat too (her name is Meow) and they took care of the kittens until they all found loving homes.

Nowadays, Meow and Shaun live happily together as a family and they each have their own bowls of food.

It’s the “She realized that Shaun had been saving his food for the mommy cat” bit that I don’t believe. I don’t think she did realize that, and I have a very hard time believing Shaun was doing any such thing.

What about you?

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

Creeping Refusal to Serve for Bad Invidious Reasons strikes again – a notary at a New Jersey bank yesterday refused to notarize some documents for Amanda Knief and Dave Silverman for, the notary said, “personal reasons.”

Via American Atheists:

BREAKING: An important message from American Atheists Managing Director, Amanda Knief:

—-

I was just refused service — because I am an atheist. It was embarrassing, humiliating, and pissed me off.

A notary at a local bank, where I have gone more than a dozen times to have work documents signed, asked me to explain what we were having notarized. The documents were charitable organizations registrations for American Atheists in several states. So I told her what AA is about. She looked down, then looked at me and [American Atheists President] Dave Silverman and said she couldn’t sign the documents because of “personal reasons” and went to find another notary who was eating his lunch to come do the authentications. 

I have been called names, threatened, hated on and all manner of ridiculed because of my atheist activism, but I think sitting in a bank and having another professional refuse to do business with me because I am an atheist was the worst slight I have ever received.

In New Jersey, notaries are not required to abide by any code of conduct or ethics that prevents them from refusing service to people based on “personal reasons.” Even though we had a valid, legal document and valid, legal identification–she was legally able to refuse me service.

Time to write legislation that won’t let this happen to anyone else. Fuck this.

—-

The bank is question was the TD Bank in Cranford, New Jersey (where American Atheists national headquarters is located).

This is completely unacceptable, and far from over.

- Your friends at American Atheists

—
Become a member at http://www.atheists.org/membership

Support the cause at http://www.atheists.org/donate

Follow us at http://www.twitter.com/AmericanAtheist

Subscribe to our quarterly magazine athttp://www.atheists.org/magazine

 

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

More to chew on – Mehdi Hasan talks to Mona Eltahawy in front of an audience in Oxford.

http://youtu.be/5vWHJczVRwM

A few pull quotes from Mona:

I’ve been a feminist since I was 19.

Moving to Saudi Arabia as a young girl was like the lights being turned off.

I consider the niqab an erasure of women.

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

Oh looky here, what do you know…From an article titled Scabs: Academics and Others Who Write for Free by Yasmin Nair.

I want to return to a thread I introduced in that earlier piece with much greater force: That those who write for free or very little simply because they can afford to are scabs.  This would include not just academics with tenured or tenure-track positions, but adjuncts, professionals (like paid activists and organisers), as well as, really, just about anyone who writes for places like Guernica, The Huffington Post,open Democracy.net, and The Rumpus (and this is a very, very tiny list).*

…

Guernica and openDemocracy are both 501(c)3s. Where, in the case of the former, does that money go if they’re not paying for writers like Tariq Ali, and guest editors like Clair Messud? Their labour is provided gratis, as a symbol of their entrance into the upper echelons of the writing world.

OpenDemocracy’s funders include The Open Society, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Tides Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Apparently, not one of these highly reputable funders thinks it’s a problem that a publishing organisation asks for money but can’t be bothered to even pay the writers without whom it simply would not exist.  

Ah. Oh.

Well, fortunately, it turns out I’m not a scab, because I refused to treat the article I wrote at their request for free as a “draft” and their “editorial suggestions” as commands I had to obey despite not working for them and not being, you know, paid. I gather that means they won’t be publishing it, although I don’t know for sure, because they didn’t reply to my reply.

Which itself is interesting. Not only do they not pay despite all those funders, they’re fucking rude besides. I suspect that the fact that they don’t pay causes them (ah this is so obvious) to view writers with contempt. “We don’t even pay you, you’re not even worth being paid, so why the hell should we be minimally polite? Why should we answer your outrageous email in which you dare to refuse to do any more work for zero dollars? Who do you think you are? Out of our sight, peasant.”

I might as well share my reply with you.

No, sorry. Way too much additional work for an unpaid article. In any case I’m not interested in writing to someone else’s recipe; I don’t see the point. I tried to make it approximately what you asked for, but if you want something that specific and tailored…I don’t see why you don’t just use an algorithm. I don’t see the point of soliciting writers because you like their work and then trying to make them follow your particular recipe.

If I’d known about the funding from The Open Society, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Tides Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and apparently others, I would have been much much ruder.

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

Watching that Newsnight segment again. One thing Maajid says in his film:

The media rightly sought to hear from the Muslim voice. But that voice tended to be male, middle-aged, and mostly conservative.

Then there’s a clip from Citizen Khan, then Adil Ray explains about Citizen Khan. I want Adil Ray for my new best friend. In the clip a guy asks Citizen Khan what he does and CK says “I’m a leader of the community.” Guy asks what that entails, exactly, and CK says “I lead the community.” I love that, because I’ve been putting “community leader” in scare quotes for years. If only the BBC would learn how idiotic that idea is.

He introduces us to Dr Mohammed Fahim of South Woodford mosque, and notes that he recognizes that those who shout the loudest are those who dominate the debate:

Unfortunately Muslims are not used to discuss or to respect the other opinion. It is either my way or the highway.

Then Maajid says another thing I’ve been saying for years:

There’s an increasing number of Muslims who use their faith identity to advance a progressive agenda, yet we seldom hear from them.

Why do we seldom hear from them? Why is it always the anti-progressive ones who dominate the coverage and the debate?

Why didn’t the BBC invite any of them to talk on Newsnight instead of Mo Ansar and Mehdi Hasan? Why not Omar Kuddus whom Maajid talks to after he says we seldom hear from them. Why not Sara Khan whom he talks to after that? Why not Gita Sahgal, Tehmina Kazi, Maryam Namazie?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, he does talk to Maryam in this film.

More, BBC. More progressives, less of people like Hasan and Ansar.

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

Hemant Mehta – the “friendly” atheist – has a post about a creationist complaining about not getting equal time with Cosmos. Mehta is scornful.

Of course, Faulkner has this crazy idea that Creationism and evolution are deserving of equal time even though only evolution is backed up by the evidence… and considering how little time is allocated to legitimate science programming these days, we should be seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson making the argument for equal time, not a Creationist.

Tell you what: I’m sure Cosmos will give you equal time on the show as soon as pastors start giving equal time to atheists in church. That makes just as much sense as whatever Faulkner said.

Or as soon as atheist bloggers start giving equal time to pseudo-secularists who campaign against abortion rights? While refusing to give equal time to atheists who defend abortion rights?

With friends like these…

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

Ah good, there’s a longer version on YouTube.

This time, they actually show the cartoon. The one they made a big show of refusing to show in January, thus drawing even more opprobrium (and threats) down on Maajid.

Update: 5 minutes in he talks to Maryam.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fb1LR6887cc

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

Oh dear god. At 8 minutes in, Jeremy Paxman asks, slowly and with deliberation because all three of the dudes suddenly stop shouting over each other to let Paxo have the floor – he asks, I say:

Why is it that we don’t see a broader range of Muslim spokesmen?

Why?? Because the BBC doesn’t invite them!

The BBC does invite Maryam occasionally, but not nearly often enough. It doesn’t invite any women often enough, especially not ex-Muslim women, secularist women, atheist women, liberal Muslim women.

The BBC should invite Maajid back and invite Tehmina Kazi and Maryam Namazie and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to talk with him. The discussion would be far more interesting and productive, and less shouty.

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

Wo, here’s a gem – Maajid Nawaz, Mehdi Hasan and Mo Ansar going at it on Newsnight last night, with Jeremy Paxman presiding. The subject is That Tweet, the one about Jeus and Mo.

I’m four minutes in, and Mehdi Hasan has just said to Maajid, ”You have a long history of offending people in the Muslim community in a gratuitous manner.”

Mo Ansar said he doesn’t himself find the cartoon offensive. He’s meta-offended. What he finds offensive is Maajid tweeting something that other people would find offensive. It’s meta and pre-emptive. Also ridiculous – as Maajid points out to Mehdi H, some people are offended by campaigns against racism.

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

Ok we allow women to do most things now, in Our Great Mercy, but there are limits. Women can’t be pope. Women can’t be intellectually active atheists. Women can’t be wait staff at the Nuclear Security Summit in the Hague.

The Nuclear Security Summit is in its second day in The Hague and has brought leaders from 53 countries together to discuss ways of combating nuclear terrorism. The catering company responsible for feeding the leaders and delegates has made a controversial staffing decision: No female serving staff are working in the plenary room where the main talks are being held. Instead, only men over 25 have been given the privilege of serving the working lunches at the World Forum. 

Gee, that is a new one. I thought serving food was one of the things women were allowed to do. Maybe it’s like cooking versus cheffing? Women are expected to do all the cooking, but men are expected to do all the cheffing. It’s easy to see why, when it’s lined up like that – cooking is something anyone can do, so women have to do it, while cheffing is skilled, so only men can do it. That’s how things are arranged. It’s not 100% accurate but by god it is simple and quick.

According to Dutch national newspaper the Algemeen Dagblad,the director of the catering company, Hans van der Linde, was looking to create a “uniform” look amongst his staff. They quote him justifying his decision in the following manner: “If 20 gentlemen are serving and three platinum blonde ladies, then that spoils the image.

“The personnel needs to act in as reserved a manner as possible, and you can’t achieve that by adding a couple of pretty, conspicuous ladies to the mix,” he added.

No, quite right. All women are platinum blonde and all are pretty and conspicuous, so obviously that is a very adequate and sensible reason for excluding them from the job of serving lunch.

In addition to the desire for uniformity, there may be other factors at play, says Jean-Paul Weijers, director of the Protocolbureau that is also involved in the summit. He believes that the decision for all-male staff within the main meeting area could be an attempt to prevent the world leaders from getting distracted. “Everything is taken into consideration when organising such an important gathering. That includes things like this.”

In addition, he says that the fact that there are world leaders from the Muslim world present may have influenced the decision making. “They understand that in the West there are different standards, but The Netherlands is a small country that is used to adapting quickly to bigger countries.”

Also very reasonable and adequate. There are many people – by which of course we mean men – who don’t want women around. It’s right and just for the Netherlands to take this natural desire into account, and exclude women from serving lunch.

In an attempt to clarify himself, van der Linde spoke to Radio 1 about keeping his female employees out of the plenary sessions. He denied ever mentioning hair colour, and told the station that he had initially come up with “the creative idea to only employ ladies to serve the world leaders, and to have them do that in little Delft Blue dresses.” His idea was apparently rejected by the ministry of Foreign Affairs, who made it clear that a more sober appearance would be appropriate. Van der Linde added: “We also have to go up a very steep flight of stairs, so little dresses wouldn’t be practical, as you wouldn’t be able to lift your legs high enough”.

You see, it just can’t be done. Van der Linde tried, he tried hard, but it can’t be done. You have them wear little Delft Blue dresses and then they can’t get up the stairs because they can’t lift their legs high enough. No matter what you try, women always have something wrong with them that makes the whole thing impossible.

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