About that Daily Mail on Sunday story that was all over the place yesterday -

Yes, what about it? Just, how horrible it is; how perfectly hateful it is.

What the hell is that even for? To demonstrate that someone who goes to considerable trouble to ask for help eventually gets help to the tune of a few bags of food items? Why is that supposed to be a bad thing?

Why do so many people make a point of being so hateful?

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

David Cameron threw a little Easter party the other day. He stood on a box and addressed a bunch of people who stood facing him with their hands folded tidily in front of them like subdued schoolchildren, and what he said was, there should be more of this kind of thing all around.

LAST week I held my fourth annual Easter reception in Downing Street. Not for the first time, my comments about my faith and the importance of Christianity in our country were widely reported.

Some people feel that in this ever more secular age we shouldn’t talk about these things. I completely disagree. I believe we should be more confident about our status as a Christian country, more ambitious about expanding the role of faith-based organisations, and, frankly, more evangelical about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people’s lives.

Who’s we, kemosabe?

What horrible bullying garbage that is. It’s not a “Christian country”; that’s not a meaningful description, and if it were, the UK still wouldn’t fit it. Heads of state government shouldn’t make untrue and coercive statements like that; it others most of the population.

Crucially, the Christian values of responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility, and love are shared by people of every faith and none – and we should be confident in standing up to defend them.

Well then they’re not Christian, are they. Then there’s no point in calling them Christian, is there. If you want to talk about good values, do that; there’s no need to call them Christian, and it’s bad and harmful to call them Christian.

People who, instead, advocate some sort of secular neutrality fail to grasp the consequences of that neutrality, or the role that faith can play in helping people to have a moral code. Of course, faith is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality.

That makes no sense. It’s also untrue apart from the last sentence. It’s also stupidly vague – what “consequences of that neutrality”? It’s also utterly pointless, since he admits that “faith” is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality. Quite right, it’s not, so shut up about it.

Many atheists and agnostics live by a moral code – and there are Christians who don’t. But for people who do have a faith, that faith can be a guide or a helpful prod in the right direction – and, whether inspired by faith or not, that direction or moral code matters.

But secularism doesn’t mean obliterating that “faith” with fire and sword. It doesn’t touch it.

I call that party a dud.

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

Here’s someone I’ve never read – the historical novelist Philippa Gregory. She has a history PhD but got it just in time for Thatcher’s cuts to university courses, when jobs teaching 18th century history became scarce. She wrote a novel for the fun of it and whoops it was a best-seller so the university job was no longer required.

Her nose for a good story continued to serve her well, however; when Gregory “discovered” Mary Boleyn, she had been all but forgotten.

“There wasn’t a single book or essay about her. She was in the footnotes of other, allegedly more interesting, lives and only very occasionally at that. It took an exjourno and a woman historian to spot that actually she was rather extraordinary.”

To this day, Gregory is amazed at the patchy recording of women’s history – “We don’t even have a birth date for someone as famous as Anne Boleyn!” – and has made it her “life’s work” to balance out the history books.

“Even now there’s a prejudice that women didn’t operate the levers of power, weren’t effective and are innately not interesting.”

The “are innately not interesting” is the real killer. It’s why almost all movies are about Men, with women in bit parts as the Men’s recreational objects, when they’re not entirely absent. It’s why so many male novelists are so bad at writing women characters. It’s part of why women just get shoved aside and overlooked.

While people will always disagree about the interpretation of historical characters – “If you and I had a mutual acquaintance it’s unlikely we’d hold exactly the same view of her and we’d both have evidence to support our views” – there is no place for historical anachronism in Gregory’s world.

“I remember years ago reading [Hugh] Walpole’s novel on Judith Paris and she escapes by opening a window and climbing down a drainpipe – before sanitation had been invented. I was loving the novel up until that point but it completely lost me then and I always hold it in my mind as the sort of thing I don’t want a reader of mine to experience.”

Somebody invented the drainpipe? They weren’t just there, like leaves?

Given her fascination with kings and queens of the past, it comes as some surprise to learn that Gregory is a republican whose interest in our current monarchy is about as great as her interest in reality TV family The Kardashians.

“I have no particular interest in the goings-on of a group of wealthy, privileged people… it seems to me most of what they do is just gossip.

“There isn’t any real power there. They’ve become celebrities more than anything else and that doesn’t interest me at all. I’m in favour of a reduced monarchy. I think the idea of a social structure that isn’t democratic or meritocratic has no real place in modern society.

“The Tudors are interesting to me because the personality of the monarch determined their political role and vice versa. The sort of person they were affected the whole kingdom. But that hasn’t been the case for a long time now.”

I never have figured out who the Kardashians actually are. I think they’re an invention, like drainpipes.

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

This is very cool. A panel discussion in 2009, with Dawkins, Tyson, Druyan, and Stenger, moderated by Grothe. At the Q and A there’s a question about genetic differences between women and men and their representation in science. Tyson takes it, and makes the point that we keep keep keep making. Druyan, on his left, is enthusiastic. Dawkins, on his right…maybe not so much.

That part starts at one hour one minute fourteen seconds.

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

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

Heyup, there’s a new conference on the horizon. Here are details via Ed Brayton:

Foundation Beyond Belief, the nation’s largest humanist charitable organization, is holding its first national conference, “Humanism at Work,” July 18-20, 2014 at the Hilton Rosemont in Chicago, Illinois.

This conference, the first of its kind in the freethought community, centers on how nontheists can put their compassionate humanism to work for a better world. It will include TED-style presentations on philanthropy, volunteering, and community building, as well as practical workshops, panels, and hands-on volunteer opportunities.

Speakers include:

• Evidence-based giving expert CAROLINE FIENNES
• Nigerian humanist and human rights activist LEO IGWE
• Atheist homelessness activist SERAH BLAIN
• HEMLEY GONZALEZ, a humanist at work with the poor in Calcutta
• Atheist authors HEMANT MEHTA and GRETA CHRISTINA
• Social psychologist DR. BRITTANY SHOOTS-REINHARD
• THE PATHFINDERS, three humanists just returned from a year of global service

To register, go to the Humanism at Work website. We’ve worked hard to keep the conference affordable at $129 before April 15 and $149 after that date. Included in that price is a formal dinner at which we will give away the Heart of Humanism awards to those who have put humanism into action in their local communities and around the world.

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

Passengers on a plane in Sweden went on seat belt strike and saved a refugee from deportation to Iran.

Last week, an Iranian man reluctantly boarded a plane in Sweden. The refugee was being forced to return to his native country, where his life would likely be in danger, even though he had a wife — a Swedish resident — and two young children in Östersund.

So, before the flight, Ghader Ghalamere’s family and friends informed other passengers of his situation. Once aboard, the plane passengers banded together and refused to fasten their seat belts in a moving display of solidarity. The flight did not take off with Ghalamere aboard, the Independent reported.

According to local reports, though Ghalamere had a legal right to stay in the country through his marriage to a Swedish resident, he needed to secure permission while outside Sweden. He initially tried to do so by traveling to the Iranian Embassy in Norway to obtain a passport — since he arrived in Sweden as a refugee without identification in 2007 – but was denied. It was then that Sweden’s Migration Board reviewed the Kurdish man’s case and ordered his deportation to Iran.

The Migration Board has opened a new case now. The news coverage has made Ghalamere somewhat conspicuous, which might turn out to be sufficient reason not to deport him to Iran. Score.

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

Racking your brains for the right Easter present? (You do give Easter presents don’t you? Doesn’t everyone?)

I recommend some Swirly Crucifixion Pops – they’re on sale for 39 cents.

Or you could get a fancy chocolate or vanilla crucifix lollipop for $4.50.

Enjoy those edible torture devices!

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

Doctor NerdLove also talks about the bullying of women in geek culture.

Cold hard fact: geek culture has a problem with women. We have shown it time and time again. Tess Fowler. Anita Sarkeesian. Mattie Bryce. Zoe Quinn. Lea Hernandez. Colleen Doran. Gail Simone. Kate Leth. Laura Hudson. Jennifer Hepler. Alice Mercier.Courtney Stanton. Elizabeth Sampat.

Whenever the subject of how women are treated in geek culture comes up, people will immediately rush to dismiss and diminish and derail the conversation. They will argue that everyone takes shit online. Or that women just need to learn to grow a thicker skin because this is how the big boys do it. There will be people who want to say “it’s important to note that guys get this too!” or rush to complain that it’s not all men who do this. They will want to play “devil’s advocate” or complain that they don’t harass women so it’s unfair for people to bring it up because it’s “tarring men with a broad brush” or maligning otherwise well-meaning dudes so just shut up about it already because it’s not really a problem anyway because theirfriend is totally a woman and is cool with this shit and never gets threatened.

And so on and so on, and it’s all bullshit.

Because when people rush to qualify how it’s “not all men” or “it’s not a problem”, it’s a way of distracting from the two real issues at hand.

First: that it’s directed at women specifically because they are women. I write a lotabout feminist issues. I even have my own dedicated haters who crop up in the comments to complain every time I talk about anything smacking of feminism. And not only do I not get even a hundredth of the shit that Asselin has – or Lea Hernandez or Kate Leth or any of the other women I’ve mentioned earlier – but I’ve never had rape threats directed at me. Nor have 99% of the high-profile male writers and bloggers who cover the same issues. Nor do any of us get the same volume of violent threats. Or the stalkers. Or the harassment. Because for women, this doesn’t just stay on the Internet. It follows them  everywhere.

The second is that when people argue or derail the conversation about it, they’re trying to distract from the fact women are being threatened in order to shut them up. To make them go away. To chase them away from the community entirely. The “Beat Anita Sarkeesian” game wasn’t about refuting her arguments, it was about making the scary woman who (they think) is going to rob them of their gaming T&A go away. The harassment that Zoe Quinn faced for her game Depression Quest was because people wanted to make her stop talking. Jennifer Hepler had her children threatened because people didn’t like what she had to say about Dragon’s Age 2, a game she helped write. Janelle Asselin gets rape threats for criticizing a comic book cover. Kate Leth – an outspoken critic of the casual harassment and misogyny in geek culture – gets targeted by men who are determined to “punish” her for… making comics they don’t like.

Hating and bullying women is the cool thing. How did that happen?

Doctor goes on to say that just not bullying isn’t enough, because silence just enables the bullying.

…just “not being that guy” isn’t enough. If you don’t want to be tarred with the same brush as the cancerous assholes who target the women in our community, you need to speak up. Because this isn’t women’s problem. This is a man’s problem. It’s men who are the cause and it’s men who can and need to be the solution.

Because our silence is enabling them. Our silence is seen as approval. It’s validating their shitty behavior because nobody is speaking up against them.

And that is true in the community of atheists and skeptics, too.

See, we have the platform. We have the voice. We have the male privilege that says male voices have more impact, that we aren’t dismissed as easily. And we need to use it. We have to be the ones who make geek culture a place where this sort of toxic hate and abuse of women is unacceptable. Do not let this behavior go unremarked. Push back against idea that belittling, harassing or abusing women is somehow a masculine virtue, that it’s acceptable because “Internet, lulz” or “guys just being guys”. Marginalize these people. Isolate them. Excise them from the community – we don’t need them, we sure as shit don’t want them.

Atheists and skeptics please note.

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

The Guardian put the count of missing schoolgirls in Nigeria at 88 last night, with 24 more having escaped.

The Borno state education commissioner, Musa Inuwo Kubo, said on Friday night some of the latest escapees were found on Wednesday nearly 50km from their school.

Extremists had attacked schools and slaughtered hundreds of students in the past year. In recent months they began kidnapping students, who they used as cooks, sex slaves and porters.

But this week’s mass abduction was unprecedented. The attackers also burned down many houses in the town.

I don’t even think “extremists” is the right word. They seem more like psychopaths. Their only goal seems to be to kill and destroy, while having slaves to cook for and fuck them when they’re not on the job of killing and destroying.

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

Something I missed back in 2008 – which doesn’t surprise me, because I don’t pay attention to the minutiae of election campaigns – was a throwaway characterization of Hillary Clinton by Christopher Hitchens.

I happened to see a reference to it in a book, one that has nothing to do with atheism or the atheist “movement” or the deep rifts in the atheist “movement” or anything like that. I wasn’t looking for it, I just happened on it.

But it’s a moment when I’m particularly tired of the atheist movement’s habit of drooling over the same 5 or 6 men year after year after year, especially when the men in question have a habit of dismissing or insulting a woman now and then for no apparent reason.

It’s in a Slate from January of that election year, and it’s mostly about Obama and the focus on race.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool. He sometimes claims credit on behalf of all Americans regardless of race, color, creed, blah blah blah, though his recent speeches appear also to claim a victory for blackness while his supporters—most especially the white ones—sob happily that at last we can have an African-American chief executive. Off to the side, snarling with barely concealed rage, are the Clinton machine-minders, who, having failed to ignite the same kind of identity excitement with an aging and resentful female, are perhaps wishing that they had made more of her errant husband having already been “our first black president.”

Well, she was running for president, and casual insults of every kind are just inevitable when you do that. But still – that’s everybody’s lamented hero, The Hitch.

He was sort of a hero of mine too, starting in the mid-90s, long before god is not Great. But over the past few years I’ve gotten more (or re-) sensitized to casual sexist contempt, especially when it comes from heroes and stars. I admire Hitchens less than I used to. He was brilliant, but not brilliant enough to be beyond casual sexist contempt.

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

The newly elected mayor of Latta, South Carolina, just fired the town’s first female police chief because she is openly gay. She’s been a cop there for more than 20 years, with an exemplary record.

Bullard was recorded by a city council member making several unsavory statements about Moore and other town employee.

According to a local news report (which obtained the audio), Bullard said:

“I would much rather have.. and I will say this to anybody’s face… somebody who drank and drank too much taking care of my child than I had somebody whose lifestyle is questionable around children.Because that ain’t the damn way it’s supposed to be. You know.. you  got people out there — I’m telling you buddy — I don’t agree with some of the lifestyles that I see portrayed and I don’t say anything because that is the way they want to live, but I am not going to let my child be around. ”

I’m not going to let 2 women stand up there and hold hands and let my child be aware of it. And I’m not going to see them do it with 2 men neither.”

And I’m going to take their jobs away. And then I’m going to be in big big trouble.

Let’s hope so at least.

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

Amanda Marcotte looks at some of the laughably typical scandals plaguing the reactionary-Christian movement.

There’s the resignation of Doug Phillips, and even better, there’s what is revealed in the lawsuit filed by the woman he’d been “inappropriately” “romantic and affectionate” with.

While the complaint never mentions sexual intercourse, it does claim that he repeatedly groped and masturbated on her while she protested. The plaintiff alleges she was basically moved into Phillips’ house with his wife and children, taken on many family vacations, and given work as a caretaker for the family, all while secretly being bullied into sexual encounters without consent. She even claims that Phillips told her that they would marry soon, as he believed that his wife was about to die.

Torres-Manteufel’s lawyer provided me with a copy of the complaint. It is searing in its criticisms of Doug Phillips. “Phillips’s patriarchal movement teaches that men are, and should be, in the absolute control of women,” reads the complaint, claiming that Torres-Manteufel was therefore bullied into believing she had no choice but to submit to Phillips’ alleged sexual abuse, even though she feared it made her “damaged goods.”

“In other words, women within this movement are perceived to exist only for the end-goals communicated by the male leaders that perceive themselves as the ‘patriarchs’ of this world,” the lawsuit reads. The conclusion is that a woman who truly believed this—whose boss, mentor, and father figure taught her that total submission was her duty in life—was not able to effectively plot an escape from a sexually coercive relationship.

And that is the case with all patriarchal religions; that’s how they work. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

The scandal around Phillips is just the latest in a long line of ugly shocks to the far Christian right that threaten to destabilize and possibly capsize the community. As The Wire reported in early March, Bill Gothard, the leader of the Institute in Basic Life Principles, resigned his position in the wake of a series of accusations of alleged sexual abuse from dozens of women in the organization. IBLP, like Vision Forum Ministries, is a major clearinghouse for adherents to Biblical patriarchy, teaching members to shun contraception, embrace extreme forms of female submission, and, of course, use homeschooling to shelter young people from the outside world.

The better to exploit them in secret.

Similarly, both Bob Jones University and Patrick Henry College—schools that were established in no small part to give these homeschooled and sheltered kids from far Christian right backgrounds a place to go to college—have been at the center of accusations of indifference and even of allegedly covering up reported sexual abuse on campus. BJU received a lot of heat when they fired an outside firm that had been brought on to investigate accusations of sexual abuse, only to rehire them when it looked like they were punishing the firm for being too thorough in exposing the problem. Patrick Henry College was the recent target of an exposé in The New Republic that explored how young women who brought sexual abuse complaints to the school were frequently drummed out of the college or made to felt that they had somehow brought the abuse on themselves.

Sound familiar? Stone the woman who reports a rape?

The “pitch” of Biblical patriarchy, as epitomized by Michelle Duggar, is that women will be coddled and worshipped in exchange for giving up their ambitions and the autonomy to practice an extreme form of female submission. The unpleasant truth is that a culture that teaches that women are put on Earth for no other purpose but to serve men is not going to breed respect for women.

Not that atheism is doing a brilliant job either, so far…

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

I was hoping AA just hadn’t seen those painting, but no, that’s not the case. They tweeted one of them yesterday.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

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

Another psychologist explains PTSD. Caleb Lack asks Can one get PTSD via Twitter? and answers yes, easily.

I don’t really keep up much with drama and goings-on in the skeptoatheist online world. I’ve got friends who do, though, and they pointed me to a recent post with the in no way linkbaitesque title of:

Woman claims she has PTSD from Twitter and Cyberstalking

Twitter gave me PTSD’: Woman claims mean comments and ‘cyberstalking’ gave her an illness usually suffered by WAR VETERANS

I was asked by this friend, basically, “Can one get post traumatic stress disorder from Twitter?”

In a word: Yes.

That second link isn’t to a post at all, it’s to an article…in the Daily Mail. Yes, the Daily Mail – the UK tabloid sleaze-sheet, which yes, actually published an article echoing “Thunderfoot” jeering at Melody for having PTSD from being harassed on Twitter. That’s the kind of outlet that allies itself with “Thunderfoot” and his harassing friends.

I urge reading the whole post; it’s both interesting and informative. Here’s a takeaway:

TL;DR – PTSD occurs more often in females, as well as for a host of pre-, peri-, and post-trauma variables, with around 6-7% of the U.S. population qualifying for the disorder at some point in their lives, not just war veterans (although they have very high rates).

So, now that you know a bit more about PTSD than you did before (hopefully, anyway. If not, you may need to do some rereading), let’s return to the question at hand: can one “get” PTSD from Twitter?

Bullying has long been known to have a severe impact on mental health, particularly if the bullying is repeated and prolonged. While research has traditionally focused on youth (as briefly reviewed here), more recent work has examined it’s impact on adults. as well, particularly in the workplace. Research focusing specifically on cyberbullying has found very similar results to “traditional” bullying, in terms of increased risk of depression, suicide, and anxiety. In youth, around a third of bullying victims display quite high rates of PTSD symptoms and rates are perhaps even higher in adults who are bullied.

The comments are filling up with comments by people who like to bully demanding why Melody doesn’t just stay away from Twitter. They could instead be deciding not to bully people, but no, that’s not what they’re doing. They’re demanding why a victim of bullying doesn’t just deprive herself of one of the major social media outlets in order to avoid bullying by people like them.

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

The BBC reports on an academic study that finds the US is an oligarchy rather than a democracy. I knew that, but it’s interesting to have a study.

the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here’s how they explain it:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power.

The two professors came to this conclusion after reviewing answers to 1,779 survey questions asked between 1981 and 2002 on public policy issues. They broke the responses down by income level, and then determined how often certain income levels and organised interest groups saw their policy preferences enacted.

2002…long before Citizens United.

They conclude:

Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organisations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

Eric Zuess, writing in Counterpunch, isn’t surprised by the survey’s results.

“American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it’s pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation’s “news” media),” he writes. “The US, in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious ‘electoral’ ‘democratic’ countries. We weren’t formerly, but we clearly are now.”

It’s not a cheerful finding.

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

The BBC is still reporting on the kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria. Their reporter there, Will Ross, says the government is saying 99 girls are missing but parents are saying it’s 150 to 200.

The attack on the school in Chibok, a remote part of Borno state, happened late on Monday with gunmen reportedly storming the school, stealing food supplies and ordering the students onto lorries.

On Wednesday, the military said most of the abducted students had been freed “as troops pursuing the terrorists close in on the den of those believed to have carried out the attack”.

But Mr Olukolade said it was based on a report “filed in from the field indicating that a major breakthrough had been recorded in the search”.

“The report forwarded to the public on this issue was in good faith and not intended to deceive the public,” he said.

“The number of those still missing is not the issue now as the life of every Nigerian is very precious.”

Local education officials say 99 of the girls are unaccounted for, but some parents suggest between 150 and 200 are still missing, the BBC’s Nigeria correspondent Will Ross reports.

I still want to know why education is haram but kidnapping is halal.

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

Richard Attias at the Huffington Post points out the lack of coverage of the kidnapping of more than 100 schoolgirls in Borno, Nigeria.

The Western media has made barely a mention of this story and appears resigned to ignore this abduction, which is an act of terror and unprecedented barbarism against these students whose only crime was to go to school.

That’s actually not true. It may be true of US media, but it’s not true of for instance the BBC World Service – it was the top story on Wednesday and it got a lot of minutes. He probably had no idea how much coverage there was in French, German, Swedish, Spanish etc etc media. Be careful  not to say “Western” when you mean “US.”

But anyway, if the US media are ignoring it, that stinks.

The World Service said yesterday that Nigeria had had to adjust the number way upward – they were now saying it was over 200 girls.

It’s awful.

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