Better to teach than to mutilate

Dec 16th, 2013 10:14 am | By

A slice of life in rural Tanzania…

Lozwi Longinai was preparing for her wedding day last month in northern Lingate village, but at the last minute her groom changed his mind after realising that his 18-year-old fiancée had not been circumcised.

“This is very bad.  We are being rejected by our own society because we have refused to be circumcised,” Longinai complained.

While female genital mutilation (FGM) is on the decline in Tanzania, the practice remains widespread in some rural areas, and in Maasai communities like Lingate in the northern Arusha region, dozens of women are being turned away in marriage because they have refused to be cut, according to an NGO working in the region.

That’s grim. I’m guessing that in rural areas in developing countries there aren’t a lot of possibilities for women who don’t marry.

Women rights groups say the best way to stop FGM is by engaging those who have abandoned the practice to educate society about its risks – including the family of girls like Sara Lukumai, a Maasai woman who narrowly escaped the procedure.

She was 16 when her mother told her it was time to face the knife as part of the Maasai tradition that prepares girls to be women.

“As I was coming from school one day, I saw a group of women gathered at our home singing and ululating. I realised it was my turn, but I strongly refused,” the woman, now 19, told Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

Her father, Lengai Ole Lukumai – a Maasai herder in the village of Oldonyosambu, about 35km from Arusha – supported his daughter’s refusal because his six other daughters did not benefit from undergoing the procedure.

“I have had enough of it. I know it is a break in tradition, but I wanted to show how bad some of our customs are,” he said. “I am still a follower of my traditions, but I just don’t want any more cuts for my children because I have realised it brings more harm than good.”

His wife was not pleased because their daughter’s rejection of the ritual was a disgrace to the family and would be seen as an act of cowardice, but she could not argue with her husband.

The girl, meanwhile, was ridiculed by friends who had been circumcised, but she saw it as a necessary act of defiance to tell villagers that it was high time to abandon outdated traditions.

In her impoverished community, many parents are unable to afford school fees and so marry their girls off at a young age. Uneducated and too young to fight back, many girls undergo FGM as the traditional precursor to marriage.

Grateful that her father supported her, Sara Lukumai sees education as the way to fight poverty and FGM.

“I want to study. It is through education that I can help my family get out of poverty,” said the girl, who is now in her second year at a secondary school in Arusha. “I want to be a teacher so that I can help fellow citizens to reject bad traditions.”

Good luck to her.

H/t leftoverunder.

 

 

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Twitter and the lost bear

Dec 15th, 2013 4:48 pm | By

Have a heartwarming story because why not. It’s a reunion story. I love reunions. I’m like Shakespeare in that way (and no other) – he was always staging separations so that he could stage reunions in Act 5. Cymbeline, for instance; there are so many reunions at the end of that play you have no idea who half the reunited characters are, but you soak your hanky just the same.

This reunion is a little girl and her stuffed friend Roar, whom she accidentally left on a train from York to London. Someone named Lauren found Roar at King’s Cross and posted pictures on Twitter.

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She took a lot of pictures of Roar having adventures while waiting to be found, and they’re very funny and touching. Check them out for yourself. Having tea, at a pub, at the panto, at a hotel, on a morning walk on the quay in Newcastle, on the train back to London.

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The Twitter saga worked and the little girl who lost Roar, who was devastated, is now happy again. Heartwarming eh? Go ahead, laugh; I don’t care.

Update: I forgot to mention: the tweet before the Roar series is an RT of Robin Ince. It all makes sense.

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Advice from robots

Dec 15th, 2013 4:02 pm | By

Since Maryam saved the original UUK guidance, I’m reading pages 27 and 28 again for the nostalgia. It read as if it had been written by a robot.

The segregation request is not yet in the public domain but the students’ union has an active feminist society which is likely to protest against the segregation request. Other societies are likely to express similar concerns. The event is also due to take place a few days after a number of campus-based activities to coincide with International Women’s Day.

See what I mean? A robot or an extra-terrestrial. There – might – be – some – groups – who – would – not – like – the – idea – of – segregations – by – sex – at – a – public – event – at – a – university. Ya think??? Only it wouldn’t be some groups, it would be everyone. You don’t have to be organized, you don’t even have to be political, to bristle at the suggestion that some reactionary external speaker gets to tell you where to sit and separate from whom.

Things to consider

Legal framework – points likely to be particularly relevant

  • Aside from freedom of speech and the S.43 duty, the paramount issue is to consider how equality obligations apply, and how those interact.

Robot again, you see? As if everyone needed to sit down and think really hard and make a list of issues and decide which ones are paramount.

Some issues have been decided. There’s a ratchet, and where there’s not there should be. We don’t wake up every morning and re-decide what we think about slavery. That’s over. Slavery is out. Burning people for heresy is out, genocide is out, letting children work in factories and coal mines is out. We don’t need self-appointed university unions starting over from scratch; we already know what we think about gender segregation.

Granted there are people who go berserk and dynamite the ratchet, but that doesn’t mean university boffins should be following their lead. We don’t need robots here.

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Who sits where

Dec 15th, 2013 12:36 pm | By

Kate Maltby on the gender segregation dispute.

I spent much of Tuesday afternoon shivering outside the offices of Universities UK. I was there to protest their publication of guidelines which suggest segregated seating of men and women may be legally required where guest speakers demand it. It’s reassuring to learn that protest sometimes works: by Friday, the beleaguered body had shifted their position twice within 24 hours, thanks in part to criticism by Michael Gove and David Cameron.

It is reassuring, isn’t it. I’m still surprised at the speed with which it happened.

But for all their fair words, I’m told the Cabinet have no plans for legislation to clarify the law. And I hear some members of the Islamic Education and Research Association, the group behind most confrontations over this issue, are agitating to launch a test case, heading to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary, to argue that their Islamist speakers do not enjoy freedom of speech unless they can speak to audiences segregated exactly how they like.

And, if they succeed, setting a useful precedent for racist groups, anti-Semitic groups, the WBC…Oh yes, that should work out really well.

… this isn’t some hypothetical we can forget about: as Nick Cohen notes, a notorious incident occurred earlier this year at my university, UCL. Meanwhile, the University of Leicester’s Islamic Society has been in the spotlight for routinely running segregated events, including several with the iERA.

Most such Islamic societies are affiliated to the student union, receiving funding and support. As I told Radio 4 yesterday, as a member of the same student union, I have a right to engage fully with the intellectual life of the campus. The ECHR protects my right to education regardless of sex – and as a woman, even if I’m allowed the privilege of a seat, I don’t engage intellectually on equal terms at an event whose organisers think I need to be kept away from men in public.

And the union of university vice-chancellors doesn’t get to impose such a situation on students who have the bad taste to be female.

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There is nothing left for theology to examine in a rational and rigorous way

Dec 15th, 2013 11:44 am | By

Having so appreciated Manfredi La Manna’s comment on the gender segregation issue, I took a look at his website and found a page of contributions to the Times Higher Education Supplement aka the Times Higher aka THES. It’s good value. There’s one on Keith Ward, for instance; Keith Ward is someone I like to see disputed.

Keith Ward’s attempt to portray himself as a persecuted seeker of truth deserves comment (THES, October 11). First, it is misleading to lump theology with the humanities and to see the well-deserved criticisms to the former as a general attack against the latter. The humanities are qualitatively different from theology in so far as they have different methodology, aims and ethos. Indeed, after the phenomenon of religion is explored by history, literary analysis, and moral philosophy (as well as by sociology, psychology, and economics), there is nothing left for theology to examine in a rational and rigorous way. The fundamental difference that seems to escape Ward’s attention is that, unlike the sciences and humanities where the ideal is the rigorous quest for an as-yet-undiscovered truth, theology inverts the process and starts from a revealed “truth” to be imposed on reality.

I’m interjecting here solely to introduce a paragraph break that’s not in the original

Second, it is significant that Ward underplays the moral dimension of religion. Theology is not “an attempt to understand the hopes, desires and feelings of human beings”, but rather the underpinnings of a specific world-view aimed at making human beings conform to some pattern of behaviour. Third, Ward conveniently ignores the fact that, unlike the scientists he quotes, who owe their status to peer-sanctioned rigorous contributions to the advancement of knowledge, his claim to be heard by the scientific community and his own “academic” status are based on the conventions, procedures and values of the religious establishment. People like Ward are best advised to restrict their pronouncements to the self-selected audience of church congregations; serious scientists and humanists should reject the application by theists for membership of the club for the quest of truth and knowledge and remind themselves that behind the mantle of “academic” respectability lurks the very same intolerance that persecuted Galileo and Giordano Bruno and that condemns billions of people to a life of superstition.

I’m very glad to have been made aware of Professor La Manna.

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Guest post by Manfredi La Manna: gender equality in civil society is not optional

Dec 15th, 2013 9:00 am | By

Originally a comment by Manfredi La Manna on Any Questions.

Hate to self-publicize, but the follow-up programme “Any Answers?” has a brief comment of mine exposing a common misunderstanding about the odious document on gender segregation on UK campuses and criticizing Shami Chakrabarti for not taking UUK to task (24:10 into the broadcast). For a longer comment, read on.

What is wrong with “voluntary” gender segregation?

The recent debacle by Universities UK, who had to withdraw their odious document on gender segregation on British campuses, has highlighted a number of interesting issues on the relationship between universities and the public sphere. Before addressing the issue of “voluntary” gender segregation, a few comments on the governance of British Universities are in order.

British academics and especially University vice-chancellors have not covered themselves in glory during this incident. I have not seen a single public statement by any vice-chancellor denouncing the document, issued on their own behalf by UUK, as contrary to the ethos of British Universities. The opposition to gender segregation was not started by academics (Nick Cohen and Polly Toynbee having played a major role) and some lonely open letters to vice-chancellors asking them to take a stance received no replies and little support.

The way in which the UUK document was prepared gives an illuminating insight into the mind set of the new class of bureaucrats ruling British Universities, who manage to combine illiberal values with practical incompetence, free, as they are, from any form of effective monitoring and accountability.

Who could have predicted that a document mandating compulsory gender segregation on UK campuses would have generated widespread opposition? Not Nicola Dandridge who apparently did not submit the draft of her guidance document to UUK board members for prior approval. Who could have predicted that such inflammatory recommendation as compulsory gender segregation would require scrupulously careful legal advice? Not Nicola Dandridge who consulted a senior legal counsel (Fenella Morris QC, who must be busy clearing egg from her face) after the eruption of public outrage. Who, when consulting on a major policy document on freedom of speech, thought that it would not be appropriate to approach the leading human rights organization, namely Liberty (formerly the Council for Civil Liberties)? Not Nicola Dandridge, who, on the other hand, sought the opinions of the Church of England, of the Union of Jewish Students,  of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, even of the obscure Lokahi Foundation. Not a mention either of the National Secular Society which, one might have thought, could have had something to contribute on freedom of, and from, religion.

Following such a humiliating defeat, that has resonated on a worldwide basis, the resignations of the CEO of UUK, Nicola Dandridge, should have been demanded as a matter of course.

In a sense Ms Dandridge should be thanked for  her incompetence and lack of sensitivity because by recommending mandatory gender segregation she has managed to create a much wider front of opposition than would have been the case had she merely advocated “voluntary” gender apartheid.

So what is wrong with “voluntary” gender segregation? The debate on this matter in the last couple of weeks has, in my opinion, missed the main point at stake, in so far as it has centred on whether women who endorse gender segregation are truly free or whether they display “false consciousness”.

My contention is that gender equality in civil society is not optional, to be adhered to or not depending on one’s religious belief. Whereas the choice of following any one religion (with its own particular customs which may include gender segregation, special clothing requirements, dietary restrictions, etc.) is, obviously, a matter of personal choice and free from any state interference (in a secular state), dispensing with gender equality is not open to any individuals as citizens, i.e., as members of civil and political society. When attending an event organized on a non-religious basis, individuals cannot demand that their refusal to behave as citizens be respected by other citizens. I may want and indeed desire to be humiliated and treated as a sexual object in the confines of my private life, but this does not give me the right to be so treated in the public sphere. Gender equality is not a gift from god, indeed it is an ideal that had to be fought for against almost every religion. Gender equality is a constituent right of individuals as citizens, who may decide not to avail themselves of it in their private relationship but cannot be divested from in civil and political society.

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Any Questions

Dec 14th, 2013 5:32 pm | By

I’m listening to the bit of Any Questions – starting 38 minutes in – where they talk about gender segregation. I’ve paused it after Amjad Bashir said his piece (he’s the first) because it’s so good. (It made me get something in my eye for a second.) First of all he just said No, and got applause. Then he said about growing up in Bradford (and he has the Yorkshire accent to prove it) and meeting everybody, from primary school on. Mixing. Meeting all kinds of people. And his children, and his grandchildren, they do the same. This is not Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to meet people.

Yes exactly. It’s not just the meddling with everyone’s rights. It’s the horrible narrow pinched impoverished way to live, and way to think about people, that they want to promote as pious and good. It is horrible. Bashir said his time at Bradford University was the best time in his life, meeting people – and you could hear it in his voice. The whole point of this vile segregation nonsense is not doing that, not expanding and broadening and becoming richer.

Down with it!

Having listened to the rest…

Yes Shami Chakrabarti was great – especially when she resisted Jonathan Dimbleby’s attempt to interrupt her by saying she’d talked less than any of the men and then pointing out that oh look we’re all minorities here but I’m still the only woman.

She said what I’ve been saying all along, if this were about segregating by race we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, and why is it so different when it comes to women? Women are the last apartheid, she said.

Thanks Bernard for telling us about it and how many minutes in it starts.

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Santa just is white

Dec 14th, 2013 4:36 pm | By

Didja see Jon Stewart taking on Fox News on the war on Christmas and Festivus and beer cans and Santa is white god damn it of course he is?

(Before I get to that though – how not to start a piece. Also how not to continue it and how not to end it. The sfgate piece on the subject:

Hide your kids, hide your wives because the War on Christmas is here and no ugly sweater or racial stereotype is safe.

Don’t do that. Don’t assume only men can read. Don’t assume you’re talking exclusively to men.)

Medialite has the clips.

Stewart shows a bit of the “discussion” between Bill “the Catholic League” Donohue and Shmuley Boteach and Dave Silverman. Stewart needs to have Dave on to talk about this nonsense. Stewart’s been a touch Fox Newsy about atheism himself in the past, so he needs to have Dave on.

Pull quote from Fox:

Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change.

Eloquent.

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They do not show women as doctors, engineers or philosophers

Dec 14th, 2013 4:00 pm | By

Taslima is writing a script for a Bengali tv serial about women’s oppression.

Coming slightly more than a year after her book launch was cancelled at the Kolkata Book Fair following protest by religious fundamentalists, the script will deal with atrocities on women. ‘Dusahobas’ (translated roughly as living difficult), which would be shown on the small screen from December 19 on “Aakash Aath” channel, tells the stories of women in distress and how they are fighting against it.

“It talks about courageous women who became victims of various crimes like dowry, forced marriage, trafficking, rape or were forced into prostitution, etc. It shows that women will keep fighting for their rights,” said the feminist author who drew the ire of fundamentalists for her controversial books like ‘Lajja’ and ‘Dwikhandito’.

Talking to PTI from Delhi, the 51-year-old author said the women in her story fight against social evils directed against them. “Unlike other TV serials which glorify women as being submissive or relegate them to the role of housewives, this serial will portray them as strong individuals,” Nasreen said.

I wish we could have something like that on US tv.

Controversy and Taslima go hand in hand. As recently as last month, an FIR was lodged against the author in Lucknow for allegedly hurting religious sentiments in a tweet. She said the idea of the serial had come up in 2006, but after she was bundled out of Kolkata to Delhi by the government after violent protests over renewal of her visa the project could not get going.

“Now once again the producers have taken the courage to start it,” she said adding that although she is not in Kolkata, her adopted home, she would like to connect with the city through her writings. “I am happy if my work reaches people,” she said.

The official release of the seventh part of Nasreen’s book ‘Nirbasan’ (Exile) at the Kolkata Book Fair was cancelled last year following protests by religious fundamentalists.

Because they just won’t leave her alone.

Taslima has opinions on the way women are portrayed on tv.

Kolkata: Foraying into television with the Bengali serial ‘Dusahobas’, based on her story, exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen Wednesday slammed certain serials for “glorifying submissive women” and not portraying women in strong characters.

She felt the makers of such small screen ventures do not see women as figures of authority and emphasised ‘Dusahobas’ will portray women in strong roles, fighting against oppression and demanding their rights.

“Some women-based serials portray women being submissive and glorify submissive women. I will not show the women in my serial like that…I will not glorify submissive women,” she told the media here during a video conference to launch the serial.

“Women are so decked up (in some Hindi and Bengali serials)…the way they are shown to serve their husbands, in-laws as if they are meant to do this.

“I think people, who are misogynist who see women in bad light probably, make these serials. They do not show women as doctors, engineers or philosophers…in majority of Hindi and Bengali serials, women are relegated to the role of housewives,” she said.

But according to Taslima on Twitter, Islamists are trying to get her tv serial stopped.

taslimanasreen@taslimanasreen

Islamic fanatics trying to stop my TV megaserial in West Bengal. They shd be challenged. Should West Bengal be silent?

Let’s hope they fail.

 

 

 

 

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Classmates were reveling in her humiliation

Dec 14th, 2013 12:23 pm | By

Al Jazeera America reports on online harassment and revenge porn. It’s a revolting read.

Lena Chen, as a freshman at Harvard, started a blog called Sex and the Ivy, where she wrote about her hookups, self-medication with alcohol, recovery from an eating disorder and crushing desire to be liked. All standard stuff for a college student. But then an ex-boyfriend posted naked pictures of her on the Internet.

For some, this was righteous comeuppance for the campus harlot. For others it was just great gossip. Classmates and other titillated parties reposted the images around the Web, and comment threads exploded with colorful debate.

You know the kind of thing. Ugly, whore, disgusting, blah.

Chen wasn’t so shaken by the original sin; the ex-boyfriend was a troubled person, she said. But she was horrified that classmates were reveling in her humiliation. “It was much more dismaying to me that people behaved in the way he wanted,” she said.

Quite. It is dismaying to discover how many people there are who revel in watching and participating in the energetic harassment of total strangers. One starts to think the percentage of psychopaths in the population is upwards of twenty percent or so.

A few months after the photos were posted, the now-defunct online forum JuicyCampus “outed” Chen’s new boyfriend, a Harvard Ph.D. student and her former teaching assistant, Patrick Hamm. For weeks, there were multiple posts a day about how Hamm had supposedly taken advantage of Chen while she was still his student. In some versions, he outright raped her. This blew up into entire blogs dedicated to “exposing” the scandal, which the anonymous harasser, or harassers, then emailed to Harvard deans and professors in Hamm’s department.

The spelling mistakes and gross language were giveaways that this person likely wasn’t an upstanding, whistle-blowing citizen. But if the goal was to make Hamm desperately uncomfortable around everyone he worked with, it was a thumping success.

All for the lolz.

When it comes to being a target of anonymous Internet hate, Chen has some eminent company. Kathy Sierra, a successful Web developer and author, once ran a tech website about software designed to make people happy, called Creating Passionate Users. In 2007, her comment section was overwhelmed with abuse, such as, “fuck off you boring slut … i hope someone slits your throat and cums down your gob.” Someone posted her photo with a noose around her neck and a muzzle over her mouth. Her Social Security number was leaked.

“I have cancelled all my speaking engagements,” Sierra wrote on her blog. “I am afraid to leave my yard, I will never feel the same. I will never be the same.”

Another popular blogger, Anita Sarkeesian, started a Kickstarter campaign last year to make a video about the representation of women in video games. On top of the torrent of rape and death threats, someone went to the trouble of making an online game, “Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian,” in which players could bloody her face.

Earlier this year, Emily May, the co-founder of HollaBack!, a nonprofit dedicated to ending street harassment, told Ms. magazine about all the rape threats and comments she’d received, like how no one would bother raping her because she’s fat and ugly.

“Once, after reading all these posts, I just sat in my living room and bawled like a 12-year-old,” she said.

Jennifer Pozner, director of Women in Media & News, a group that advocates for women’s presence in the media, says a man even once placed a letter at her real-life door saying he’d “find you and your mom and rape you both.” In female blogging circles, rape threats are now considered something of a “rite of passage.”

And on and on it goes. All for the lolz.

There’s a lot more. It’s a lengthy detailed report. None of it is happy reading.

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The strength of political consensus

Dec 14th, 2013 11:33 am | By

Student Rights has a useful post on the victory, with many links for reference.

The news that Universities UK has announced that it will be withdrawing guidelines which excused gender segregation on UK campuses is a great success for those who have been campaigning on this issue since the guidelines were released in November.

It’s a success in this particular case and, even more, it shows that such a success is possible. So often there are protests but nothing changes; it’s very heartening to see a real result.

A demonstration outside UUK’s offices showed that people were willing to turn out on the streets to support the rights of women on campus, and this brought the issue to wider public attention.

This led to vocal opposition to this practice from both Labour and the Conservative Party, showing that this was a non-partisan issue, and giving the campaign the strength of political consensus.

There was a crucial intermediate step between the protest and the opposition from Labour and the Tories, and that was the coverage by Channel 4 and the Independent and then the BBC.

H/t Dave Ricks.

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Shoulder to shoulder to shoulder

Dec 14th, 2013 11:12 am | By

There was a new comment yesterday on Nicola Dandridge’s November 25 blog post about the gender segregation bit of Universities UK’s guidance on external speakers. The new comment is by Jane Kelly, who went to the protest.

Seats For Women!
On Tuesday 10th December  I joined  ex Muslims from One Law For All, and various secular groups to attend a demonstration outside 20 Tavistock Square,against sexual segregation at lectures and debates. My mother laughed heartily at the thought of me going on a demo, something I have not done for thirty years, not since I was supporting Polish Solidarnoc. I promised her I would resist knocking off any police helmets.

The demo was for a cause which should get the attention of anyone interested in basic, long held principles of equality. Astonishingly sexual apartheid has just been allowed by UUK, the body which represents university Deans and faculties. This has been done to appease Muslims, probably in the hope of getting more wealthy students in from the near East.

Only of course it didn’t and wouldn’t “appease Muslims,” because so many Muslims want nothing to do with it and are insulted that university administrators would think they do. Islamists are not all Muslims.

There was about fifty of us there in the cold and fog, including Yasmin Alabi Brown, who is a tiny lady but speaks very forcefully. The following day  the event was reported on Today, but Maryam Namazai,  http://www.onelawforall.org.uk/ who is behind it,  can never get interviewed by the BBC, and is ignored by Woman’s Hour. The radio report also included a report from the LSE where some atheist students were banned from having a stall and wearing T Shirts bearing the names Jesus and Mohammed, in case they offended Muslims.

It’s not quite true that Maryam can never get interviewed by the BBC, I think.

If these segregated university lectures go ahead, there are plans to disrupt them which may mean  women like me dressing up as Muslim clerics to get into meetings to sit among the men.  Later at my church coffee morning, I mentioned what I had been up to. One of the older ladies, who spends most of her time cooking for our social events, got very excited.
‘I fought for gender equality’ she expostulated.

Well yes. We older ladies did fight for gender equality. Noisily, visibly, obstreperously. We older ladies aren’t from Victoria’s day, yaknow. We’re battleaxes from the 60s and 70s.

Many people who were students in the 1960s believe that they did this, even if they never left the bar or library. I told her about the plans to disrupt segregated meetings. ‘I’ll come, I’ll do that!’ She said, and I think she will. Suddenly I was back in another age, one we thought was long, long dead, my Grandmother’s time, when she as a young woman had to take a view on her sisters who were joining the Suffragettes. Some women in our family were chaining themselves to metal railings in Liverpool, while others, like my Granny, remained quietly at home.

When I was a teenager I saw a wonderfully good BBC drama series called, ‘Shoulder To Shoulder,’ about the suffragette movement and how I longed to join Christabel Pankhurst’s radicals, and then Sylvia’s socialists. Those women were all the world to me for awhile, but it was fiction and it was history. But now in 2013,  the same issues of equality before the law have to be redefined and fought for all over again – I once regretted not being able to join a struggle which started in 1903 and ended in 1914, now I am getting into a struggle which also  has the disadvantage of being utterly unnecessary before international law, and absurdly forced on us by men from Pakistan.

And resisted by other men and women from Pakistan and Bangladesh and India and Iran and Algeria and Egypt to name only a few. Shoulder to shoulder.

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Concerns

Dec 13th, 2013 5:44 pm | By

You’re wondering what Sayeeda “Baroness” Warsi is concerned about these days, aren’t you. I know how you are. You can’t sleep nights for wondering about it. Well I’ll tell you. I found out via the Telegraph. She’s concerned about the possibility that laws introducing same-sex marriage might not contain enough protections for religious groups. What have they got to do with anything, you’re probably asking yourself. The Telegraph explains.

The former Conservative Party chairman said she could not support the Government bill during votes in the Lords because of “reservations” about how clauses designed to prevent faith groups being sued for refusing to perform gay weddings would work in practice. 

She raised the prospect of smaller churches, mosques and temples which are linked to local community centres, finding themselves in a legal grey area when same-sex marriage becomes possible from March next year.

Uh oh uh oh uh oh uh oh. She’s concerned about smaller churches, mosques and temples that don’t want to marry same-sex couples and might get in trouble if they stamp their feet and say no. Well that is the important thing after all – not people who want to marry being able to marry, but people who want to stop them because a made-up god said Ew. What a good thing to be concerned about – not enough protection for people who want to prevent other people from marrying.

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Duck’s off

Dec 13th, 2013 4:42 pm | By

From Gnu Atheism at Facebook.

Photo

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Maltby and Barkatulla on PM

Dec 13th, 2013 12:15 pm | By

Radio 4′s afternoon news program PM had the UUK-gender segregation story as its lead item, and then its first in-depth story. The talking heads were Kate Maltby, a Christian and a PhD student at UCL, and Fatima Barkatulla of Seeds of Change which (PM failed to say) is part of iERA.

Barkatulla pushed the UUK line that it’s voluntary, with extra added “live and let live” and “religious Muslim women just want a space.”

But that’s all nonsense. You can’t have separate space in a public auditorium or class room or lecture hall without keeping the “wrong” people out, so it can’t be voluntary. The minute some “wrong” person tries to sit in that space, some sort of action is required to keep that wrong person out. It might be just a very polite request, but that still makes the keeping out not voluntary.

Suppose a bunch of women went together and went very early, so that there was a big bloc of women. Then maybe any men who came later would simply decide not to sit there, to be polite. That’s still not voluntary. It may look voluntary to the willfully naïve onlooker, but it’s not.

And anyway it’s all just fake. it’s at a university. People mix there, all the time. Trying to create segregation at particular debates isn’t really for the sake of people who go all wobbly without it, it’s to make a point. A bad, illiberal, creepy point.

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Those who wish to sit in separate areas

Dec 13th, 2013 11:14 am | By

The Telegraph has the skinny on what the Equality and Human Rights Commission thinks of the gender segregation issue.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) announced it will help re-write guidance, published by Universities UK (UUK) last month, which said Muslim societies and other groups were entitled to practice gender segregation at public meetings on campus.

Mark Hammond, the EHRC’s chief executive, said gender segregation was “not   permissible” under equalities laws, adding that UUK’s guidance required clarification.

By agreeing to go back to the drawing board with the EHRC’s help, the vice-chancellors’ organisation appeared to have headed off the prospect of a legal challenge from the official watchdog.

There: the Telegraph described UUK properly: it’s “the vice-chancellors’ organization”; it’s not the representative of the universities.

Its controversial guidance   to universities across Britain said segregation could be acceptable as   long as men and women were seated side by side rather than with women at the back.

It also said that any event where some segregation took place for religious reasons should also provide a separate, non-segregated area.

Mr Hammond said: “Equality law permits gender segregation in premises that are permanently or temporarily being used for the purposes of an organised religion where its doctrines require it.

“However, in an academic meeting or in a lecture open to the public it is not, in the commission’s view, permissible to segregate by gender.”

What we said all along. Public meeting or debate or lecture. That’s what the “guidance” was about and that’s what we disagreed with so strongly.

The EHRC’s announcement came after UUK’s chief executive insisted gender segregation was not completely “alien” in British life.

Nicola Dandridge said: “It’s not something which is so alien to our culture that it has to be regarded like race segregation, which is totally different and it’s unlawful and there’s no doubt about that whatsoever.

“This is about ensuring that everyone has the right to sit where they want, including those who wish to sit in separate areas.”

You know…Dandridge really ought to stop saying that. She’s not thinking it through. (Why the hell not? Since it is after all her specialty?) She is forgetting that “those who wish to sit in separate areas” can include those who wish to sit in areas with no Jews / blacks / foreigners / dalits / you name it. This attempt to control and purify and sanitize public spaces from the pollution of filthy Others is at the heart of racism and all its cognates. It’s the direct opposite of equality and as such it is not a “right”. She might as well claim that white people have a right to swim in separate municipal swimming pools.

 

 

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Meanwhile, in Turkey

Dec 13th, 2013 10:42 am | By

A court has sentenced Sevan Nisanyan to jail for two years for illegal construction…in a country where illegal construction is ubiquitous.

A prominent Turkish-Armenian blogger accused a Turkish court on Friday of issuing a “politically-motivated” verdict after being sentenced to jail on charges of illegal construction.

An appeals court in the western coastal city of Izmir sentenced Sevan Nisanyan to two years in prison on charges of building without a permit.

An Istanbul court in May had also sentenced Nisanyan, a self-confessed atheist, to one year in jail for blasphemy over a blog post supporting the controversial anti-Islam film “Innocence of Muslims” but he has appealed the verdict.

So while they’re waiting they’ll convict him of something else. Whatever works.

Nisanyan, who also faces up to 16 years in prison on other charges related to construction work on his hotels in the village of Sirince near Izmir, said he would be sent to jail next week.

But in a country littered with illegal constructions, he said the court ruling on Thursday was punishment for his outspoken views about restrictions on freedom of expression in Turkey.

“It is politically motivated because in this community, those who try to be an individual and stand firm on their ideas have always been punished,” he told AFP.

He must have hurt the feelings of the community.

Nisanyan was convicted of blasphemy over his September 2012 blog defending the anti-Islam film that ridiculed the Prophet Mohammed and sparked angry protests across the world.

“Mocking an Arab leader who centuries ago claimed to have contacted God and made political, financial and sexual benefits out of this is not a crime of hatred,” he wrote.

His words touched a nerve in the staunchly secular but majority Muslim nation and he received hundreds of death threats after the court decision.

Turkey has long been criticized for a lack of press freedom and dozens of journalists are in detention, accused of plotting against the Islamist-rooted government or having links with outlawed movements such as the Kurdish rebels.

“Staunchly secular”? A “staunchly secular” nation doesn’t produce hundreds of death threats over an observation like that.

H/t torcant

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UUK has withdrawn its advice while it has another think

Dec 13th, 2013 9:07 am | By

The Guardian reports. Universities UK, the bod that represents university vice-chancellors (not universities themselves, contrary to what the Guardian says),

has withdrawn guidance on the gender segregation of audiences in lectures and debates after the prime minister, David Cameron, said it should not be allowed to happen.

So……………for once, IT WORKED. Making a stink worked. It was just a few people making a stink at first. You know that; you saw the whole thing.

Universities UK said a controversial case study setting out the guidance was being withdrawn while it reviewed its stance, but insisted the legal position remained unclear on whether the voluntary separation of men and women could be allowed at events such as lectures on Islam by visiting speakers.

Cameron’s spokesman had earlier said Universities UK should urgently review the guidance.

His intervention followed comments by the education secretary, Michael Gove, who accused the body that represents universities of “pandering to extremists”.

It’s a damn good thing Jack Straw talked to the Today programme yesterday, so that we don’t have to think this is a purely Tory view. Nevertheless…why is UUK stupider about human rights than the Tories are (on this particular issue)? Awkward!

Universities UK issued the guidance following a series of Islamic events at campuses at which male and female students had been separated.

They weren’t “Islamic events.” They were open to the public. That’s the issue.

The prime minister’s spokesman said: “There is an issue around speakers who are invited into universities. He doesn’t think that guest speakers should be able to address segregated audiences and he thinks that Universities UK should urgently review its guidance.

“There is an important issue around principle and possible risks around discrimination. I think [Cameron] feels very strongly about this.”

The spokesman made clear that the PM wanted a ban on gender-segregated audiences on campus even where men and women voluntarily separated themselves.

He also stressed that the prime minister’s views did not extend to places of worship such as mosques, synagogues or gurdwaras.

Well, I gotta bite the bullet and go with Cameron on this one.

The intervention comes the day after the education secretary said the guidance, which has also been branded not permissible by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), was a “disgrace”.

“We should not pander to extremism. Speakers who insist on segregating audiences should not be indulged by educators. This guidance is wrong and harmful. Universities UK should withdraw it immediately,” Gove told the Daily Mail.

On Thursday Universities UK, which represents more than 130 higher education institutions, said it was seeking a definitive legal view on the issue from the EHRC after its London headquarters were targeted by student protesters this week.

The EHRC said it was involved in redrafting sections in guidance that said that Muslim and other groups were permitted to voluntarily segregate men and women at events. Its chief executive, Mark Hammond, told the Telegraph: “Equality law permits gender segregation in premises that are permanently or temporarily being used for the purposes of an organised religion where its doctrines require it.

“However, in an academic meeting or in a lecture open to the public it is not, in the commission’s view, permissible to segregate by gender.”

Yesssssssssss.

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Shohana Khan

Dec 12th, 2013 6:24 pm | By

On the other hand there’s a post by Shohana Khan, Women’s Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir Britain. Her post is not a good post.

Placard reading “we reject gender apartheid” waved at a winter evening protest. Fiery discussions about the imposition of medieval practices in Universities, unleashed in the media, as yet again another Muslim practice is in the firing line. The report issued by Universities UK which has allowed Islamic societies to practice voluntary gender separated seating in their events, has created uproar. Allowing this Islamic practice in UK Universities would be a travesty for women’s rights. Apparently.

That’s a discouraging first paragraph. Demands for gender segregation at university public events is not “another Muslim practice.” It’s an Islamist practice. Islamists don’t represent all Muslims, nor do they speak for them. The report was not confined to events exclusive to Islamic societies; it was about public events; that’s exactly why there is outrage. (What the hell would Lawrence Krauss have been doing at an Islamic society event? He was at a UCL event.) The practice is not an Islamic practice, it’s an Islamist practice. That’s a lot of smokescreen for one paragraph. I’m starting to think maybe I shouldn’t trust anything she says.

First let’s be clear that this voluntary gender separated seating, takes place in events that are specifically designed for Muslim students, for whom this practice is an integral part of their faith. If anything I remember from my days at university, is that the very purpose of these societies are to meet the extra curricular needs and interests of University students. Therefore if Muslim students attend Islamic society activities for this very reason, why on earth is this a problem?

No. She’s flat wrong on that. The UCL event was organized by the iERA, but it was a public event. It was open to the public, not just to members.

Why not ask the opinion of those Muslim women who organise and attend these events, rather than ask those hurling the accusations with no real standing in the Muslim community – Did they feel denied of an ability to participate? Did they feel stripped of respect and value in such events?

Yes just ask the people who organized the event. That’s the way to sample opinions in “the Muslim community.”

Then the fact that segregation is being facilitated between men and women, by men and women in Islamic societies, shows the commitment to cater for both genders. Discriminating against women would mean denying women entry, or any participation in the venue. Neither of these takes place. And what is forgotten is that women are also part of these societies, co-organising if not leading activities.  We are talking about separated seating, not patriarchy.

And if they were all confined to a small dark room that would be ok too, because that wouldn’t be denying them entry. Absolutely. Nelson Mandela (whom she invokes) would be proud.

She explains the excellent reasons for gender apartheid.

Rather the concept of separating men and women in public spaces in Islam, is part of a wider objective. Islam has a societal view that the intimate relationship between a man and a woman is for the committed private sphere of marriage, and should not be allowed to spill outside of this sphere. This is because in society, men and women need to cooperate to achieve things in society whether in the work place, in education, in interactions across the public space. Islam firmly believes if the sexual instinct is let loose in this public sphere, it can taint and complicate these relationships. Therefore Islam promotes ideas such as honouring women which are upheld in society, but alongside such ideas specific rules and laws are implemented to help maintain the atmosphere of healthy interaction between the sexes. These rules aim to minimise the presence of this instinct in public life.  So minimising the mixing the interaction of the sexes in the public sphere unless necessary, the covering up of women and men through the Islamic dresscode, the prohibition of exploiting the sexuality of women in any profession, modelling to pornography, are all laws to help maintain an atmosphere in public life, where focus is not on the sexual element of women and men, but on the contributions they make.  The impact this has, and had in the history of the Islamic state, was that women were actually valued for their intellectual capability and what they could contribute regardless of gender, such as Fatima Al Fihri who founded the world’s first university in Morocco.

Yes! And like Malala Yousafzai, and all the teachers and girls killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan for teaching or going to school. Like all the women beaten for not wearing hijab, or wearing it wrong. Like the women politicians and police chiefs in Afghanistan, killed for being…politicians and police chiefs. Yes, the Islamic loathing of “the sexual instinct” has been a beacon for women for centuries.

Her bio at the end is…depressing.

Shohana Khan is the Women’s Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir Britain. A graduate of English, she writes and blogs about issues affecting women in contemporary society and specialises in presenting Islam, as a societal alternative to them. She has written about issues affecting the Muslim community in the UK, including producing an open letter for MP Sarah Wollaston following her attack on the niqab (veil). She speaks at events and has debated feminism at a London University. She writes for the Huffington Post. She is married and has three children she homeschools. tweet her @ShohanaK

She homeschools her children.

 

 

 

 

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It’s just a social norm, totally no pressure

Dec 12th, 2013 5:55 pm | By

Steve Bowen has a good post about UniversitiesUKgendersegregation. And, specifically, Nicola Dandridge. (She’s personally getting all the heat over this issue, but she’s the only name that’s been put out there. It’s almost as if she’s their sacrificial lamb or something…Except not quite because equality is in fact her field, as we learned last week. She’s a specialist in equality, and this is the dog’s breakfast she’s defending.

From Steve Bowen’s post:

There is no universal human right to non-association and nor should there be. If you are the kind of person who does not want the company of a certain gender, creed or race, your only right is to avoid places where those individuals go. Universities are open publicly funded spaces and whether or not the speaker is a Muslim or Haredi Jew, or even if most of the audience are, the fundamental principle should be one of equal and open access to all parts of the auditorium.

Dandridge also insisted that universities were not being advised to “enforce” gender segregation, but this is [dis]ingenuous. Social norms will always compel people to follow the stated protocols and if you happen to be, for example, a Muslim woman in that situation there is zero chance that you will risk the [dis]approbation of your peers by bucking the system. The very act of offering segregated seating, even if mixed areas are also available will mean that at least a proportion of the audience will be compelled to segregate whether they really want to or not.

Dandridge seems to be carefully oblivious to that obvious fact. It’s infuriating.

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