A profane creation

Nov 28th, 2013 10:56 am | By

Another thing to have GMO-panic about – an apple that doesn’t turn brown when it’s cut.

In test fields in New York and Washington state stand about 100 trees bearing the Canadian-designed Holy Grail of fruit science: an apple that cannot brown.

…

But as the Arctic Apple wends its way toward final approval in both the United States and Canada, genetic-engineering alarmists and entrenched apple interests alike are increasingly framing the new fruit as a profane creation of perverted science.

Because if god had meant apples to stay pale when sliced then god would have made them that way. On the other hand it’s the opposite with penises – god doesn’t like the way god made them, so humans have to slice off a bit at the top.

On Nov. 14, the B.C. Fruit Growers Association joined the fray, calling on Ottawa to ban the Arctic Apple before it could even reach final market approval, arguing that even considering the apple was inalterably damaging its business.

“The public thinks of apples as a pure, natural, healthy and nutritional fruit,” said association president Jeet Dukhia in a statement. “GM apples are a risk to our market image.”

Because GMO=impure and unnatural. That of course is despite thousands of years of cultivation and manipulation, which doesn’t count as GMO because people hadn’t heard of genes then. It’s all in the attitude, you see.

 

 

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“A standard surgical procedure”

Nov 28th, 2013 10:33 am | By

The National Post gives more detail on the Israeli woman fined by a rabbinical court for refusing to allow her infant son to be circumcised.

The mother, whose name was given only as Elinor, said her son had been born with a medical problem that prevented him undergoing ritual circumcision on the eighth day after birth, as is customary in Jewish law.

“As time went on, I started reading about what actually happens in circumcision, and I realised that I couldn’t do that to my son.

“He’s perfect just as he is,” Haaretz newspaper quoted her as saying. In their ruling, the three rabbis wrote: “Circumcision is a standard surgical procedure that is performed on every Jewish baby boy, so when one of the parents demands it, the other cannot delay it except where it is proven to be medically dangerous.”

What? That “so” is bogus – what comes after it doesn’t follow from what came before.

One, “standard surgical procedure” is meaningless and deceptive. “Standard” how, in what sense, according to whom, and above all for what medical reason? In other words, no it’s not. Yes it’s “surgical” in the literal sense, and “standard” in the sense that a lot of people do it, but “standard surgical procedure” implies that it’s medically required or at least beneficial, and it’s neither. Two, given the emptiness and deception of that clause, the claim that “the other cannot delay it” is arbitrary and ridiculous. That’s why rabbis as rabbis should have nothing whatsoever to do with ordering people to have their infants cut up.

To put it another way, religious law should never ever be enforced on people who don’t want to be bound by it. That’s because it has no legitimacy derived from this-world principles of representation and universality.

“Fulfilling the command of circumcision is not a [mere] surgical medical act … Brit milah [the rite of circumcision] is exactly what it says: a covenant that God made with His chosen people, the nation of Israel.”

And that is precisely why it can’t be binding on anyone who doesn’t accept it, including believers who don’t accept specific “laws” and “covenants.”

The judgment was upheld by a higher rabbinical court after the mother appealed against the decision. The appeal ruling warned that a verdict in her favour could trigger “a flood of [similar] cases,” giving a “terrifying dimension” to divorce proceedings.

“This trend must be stopped immediately for the common good, which takes precedence over that of the individual,” the judges concluded.

So all the boy infants must have their penises cut “for the common good.” Even though the actual “common good” is very hard to discern.

They added: “Removal of the foreskin prepares the soul [of the baby] to accept the yoke of Heaven and study God’s Torah and commandments.”

All the more reason to refuse! Keep your fucking yoke of heaven and your fucking god’s commandments.

Rabbinical courts are part of Israel’s judicial system and are overseen by the ministry of religious services. In addition to holding exclusive jurisdiction over the marriage and divorce of Jews, they have the power to rule on matters of personal status, alimony, child support, custody and inheritance.

That is terrifying. There is no secular marriage for Jews in Israel, so that means all married Jews in Israel are subject to the power and arbitrary decision-making of rabbis on things like alimony and child custody. All of them! Including the atheists!

Their rulings are enforced by the police and other legal agencies in the same way as those of civil courts.

Terrifying.

The rulings were made against a backdrop of rising concern in Israel over recent attempts in Europe and elsewhere to prohibit ritual circumcision on humanitarian grounds. Israeli officials and rabbis claim the trend is prompted by anti-Semitism.

Israel’s foreign ministry condemned the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe last month after it adopted a resolution calling for regulation of religious circumcision, which is also carried out on Muslim boys shortly after birth.

The foreign ministry demanded that the resolution be annulled, saying it “casts a moral stain on the Council of Europe and fosters hate and racist trends in Europe.”

No, actually, it’s the other way around. Accusing a humanitarian prohibition on cutting infants’ genitalia of fostering hate and racist trends casts “a moral stain” on Israel’s foreign ministry.

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Dayna Morales may have made it up

Nov 27th, 2013 3:40 pm | By

Yes, that New Jersey server may have faked the note and the refusal to tip, many news outlets are reporting. Salon reported this morning:

…earlier this week, Morales’ story took a twist — when the family she said stiffed her contacted NBC News to dispute her claim. The husband and wife produced their copy of the receipt, which showed an $18 tip, and what they say is their Visa statement, which likewise reflects the larger total. They also say the alleged snarking on Morales’ appearance went down differently – they say they’d been told their server would be “Dan,” and when Morales appeared, they said, “Whoa, you’re not Dan.” The husband told NBC he didn’t even vote for Chris Christie because Christie doesn’t support marriage equality. “Never would a message like that come from us,” he says.

Oops.

 

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For someone from New Jersey

Nov 27th, 2013 3:06 pm | By

The Los Angeles Times spots an opportunity to bash atheists, and seizes it with both paws.

A New Jersey-based atheist organization is castigating the work of Pope Francis  and others who respond to natural disasters with prayer, Bibles and rosaries.

That’s a remarkably snotty way to describe American Atheists. Why not just say American Atheists? What’s with the “New Jersey-based”? Are we supposed to think it’s just a pathetic little local startup that will be gone in a few minutes? One of many fly-bitten atheist organizations based in somebody’s borrowed garage?

Anyway. To the substance, such as it is.

American Atheists announced Monday that it was unveiling digital billboards  in the central part of that state that carry just such a message. The  designs, seen here, are variations on the following: “Disaster  victims need prayer… real help.”

The billboards then encourage people to go to Atheists.org for more information, including a list of  secular agencies that American Atheists endorse for disaster relief efforts.

The organization accuses religion in general, and Pope Francis in particular,  of exploiting natural disasters to bring more people into the fold. Pope  Francis, the organization noted, used Twitter to ask followers to pray for typhoon victims, and was  retweeted more than 35,000 times.

“Imagine if the pope had asked for people to send money to victims or to send  needed supplies. How much more useful would that have been to the people of the  Philippines?” American Atheists President David Silverman said in a statement,  going on to say the pope’s actions were “repugnant.”

“Natural disasters should not be viewed as opportunities for  proselytization.”

We called the organization to find out why they thought it was their place to call out people who wanted to pray, or send Bibles or rosaries to affected  areas.

Well why does the Los Angeles Times think it’s their place to call out American Atheists? And notice that that’s not accurate anyway; Dave didn’t mention people who wanted to pray, he mentioned the pope asking people to pray.

Dave Muscato answered the question by saying that helping requires actually doing something.

Could that same criticism apply to the American Atheists? Their billboards  are being use to drive people to their website.

Is that a form of exploitation?

The difference between asking people to pray and urging them to do something real instead of praying remains a real difference.

The billboards are being carried by Clear  Channel Outdoors. A representative for Clear Channel told the Los Angeles  Times that four billboards are up and running.

And the public’s reaction so far?

Crickets.

What kind of insect does Rene Lynch (the reporter) expect in response to a billboard?

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And still no response from UUK

Nov 27th, 2013 12:20 pm | By

The Universities UK blog continues to get strongly critical comments on Nicola Dandridge’s post defending its position on gender segregation. It also continues not to reply to any of them.

The latest is by Chris Moos, summing up the state of play.

43 comments, each and every one of them negative. And still no response from UUK.. Who is charge of PR again? or is everyone too busy writing reports that figure out how to [defend?] other kinds of segregation practices?

There’s also one from a University of Manchester physicist.

UUK: Perhaps you might like to take a look at the top of this page where you say:

“We are the representative organisation for the UK’s universities”

No you are not. You have just abdicated any right to be regarded as a respected organisation as a result of your astonishing Kristallnacht against women in UK, in 2013. Unbelievable!

So take away that header please, and stop insulting us.

Zing.

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Figures of speech

Nov 27th, 2013 11:43 am | By

Figures of speech are interesting. Sometimes they illuminate, sometimes they amuse, and sometimes they lead us astray. Far far astray – up the creek, down the steep mountainside, into the brambles.

If you do a bad thing, and you never take it back or apologize for it, and it does spreading harm for a period of years…and then someone asks you about it, the correct answer is not “that’s water under the bridge.” It’s not water under the bridge. There are reasons for that.

“Water under the bridge” is the right expression for something that’s over. It’s not the right expression for something that did damage that was never repaired; it’s even less the right expression for something that did damage that was never repaired and that is still happening. Like, if you make and sell a toxic food product, and that product is still on the market and still toxic, and someone asks you about it, you don’t get to say it’s water under the bridge.

The mere fact that something started a long time ago does not mean it’s now water under the bridge. The mere fact that you, the initiator of the something, are tired of it, does not mean that it’s water under the bridge.

Now if you have a quarrel with a friend, and then the two of you talk and it gets resolved, that becomes water under the bridge. If a third party asks about it you can say it’s water under the bridge. That’s fine. It’s resolved, it’s over, it’s in the past. But if the step with talking and resolving never happened, then it’s not water under the god damn bridge. It’s still dirty smelly water right there in everyone’s face.

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Self-interviewing and “followers”

Nov 27th, 2013 11:24 am | By

Ok this is funny. Edwina Rogers is the new Executive Director of the RDF, and the RDF interviewed her for its Secular VIP of Week. So who made that decision? Was it the exec – oh wait. Couldn’t have been.

What if you allied the biggest secular groups in the United States and placed their political goals in the hands of someone who’s worked in the White House? And again in the White House, and for four US senators? This week we interview our very own Edwina Rogers, Executive Director of the Richard Dawkins Foundation, in her other role as head of the Secular Coalition for America.

Good idea! Then next week you can interview Richard Dawkins in his other role as head of All the Atheism. Then the week after that Edwina Rogers and Richard Dawkins can have a dialogue about what it’s like to be the head of everything.

RDF: You run both the Richard Dawkins Foundation and the Secular Coalition for America. Where do you get your energy?

Edwina Rogers: Well, I’m happy to do it.  At the Secular Coalition for America our mission is to facilitate coordination for all secular groups, to unify the movement.   We are perfectly placed to provide back-up office support for any of the non-theist groups.

Bwahahahahahahahahaha – fabulous hard-hitting question there. Let’s continue.

Why are you so fabulous?

Just born that way I guess.

What made you so glorious?

I can’t explain it.

Where is anyone as fine as you?

I’ve looked everywhere and I still don’t know.

No no, for real now:

RDF: I heard you brought Richard Dawkins to Congress.  How did that go?

Edwina Rogers: We were very fortunate to have Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker offer a briefing for the House Staff and for the Senate Staff.  Richard did meetings with several members of the Science and Technology Committee, and answered any questions they had about science and gave advice.  It went very well.  A lot of the members knew who Richard was, or their children were big fans.  Some of them brought in books to be signed.

Hahahahahahaha – “I heard you brought Richard Dawkins to Congress” – heard where? On the grapevine? It’s RDF who asks, yet RDF heard Rogers “brought Richard Dawkins to Congress” as if it were gossip or a rumor?

The Secular Coalition for America has a newsletter, Twitter, and Facebook, and a list of 50 state chapters.

Want your secular group or leader to be picked as Secular VIP of the Week and featured to Richard’s 1.7 million followers? Email johnny@richarddawkins.net.

Ok seriously now – “Richard’s 1.7 million followers”? Followers? What the hell do they mean “followers”?

It’s gone to his head. Badly.

Update: the fan boys react.

defense

Update 2: Oops another fan boy.

defense2

Dawkins sure does have classy fan boys.

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It’s a matter of priorities, Barmaid

Nov 27th, 2013 10:16 am | By

Jesus and Mo stand up for gender segregation and the religious freedom of people who demand gender segregation.

J and M Author tweeted this one twice.

Gentlemen, there’s a new J&M up on the internet: http://www.jesusandmo.net/2013/11/27/rights/ …

Ladies, there’s a new J&M up on the internet: http://www.jesusandmo.net/2013/11/27/rights/ …

Geddit?

rights

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Reckless anti-science alarmism

Nov 26th, 2013 6:08 pm | By

Simon Davis wrote a great article on the main Greek opposition party’s bad move in attempting to block legislation that would bring down generic drug prices, and using alarmist anti-science rhetoric to do it.

The main reason why their handling of this issue is so misguided is because they are relying on reckless anti-science alarmism. Leading the charge is SYRIZA party leader Alexis Tsipras, whose statements today about “cheap and dubious [generic] drugs” have absolutely no demonstrable scientific basis.

In addition, there is no logical basis nor has anyone articulated any convincing rationale about how SYRIZA’s position is even remotely related to their stated left-wing party principles. The proposed legislation sets a price ceiling of 50% of the innovator drug price or the average of the lowest prices in three other EU countries, whichever is less. It also mandates that all generic drugs are priced at a maximum of 65% of their off-patent equivalents. In other words, when an innovator drug’s patent expires, patients will have access to generic alternatives that are priced at a maximum of 32.5% of the price. The only reason why off-patent medication is available today in Greece at relatively high prices despite a lack of patent protection is because of the manufacturers’ name recognition. So when SYRIZA decides to oppose sensible legislation that limits the price of off-patent medication, the result is that they [are] siding with large drug companies’ profits.

Doesn’t sound like a brilliant way to get votes, does it.

 

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Swimming in Tukwila

Nov 26th, 2013 5:20 pm | By

Jeez, even here in Seattle. Although this time it’s about women-only (and sometimes also men-only) times at municipal swimming pools. That’s a bit of a special case, in a way, since it requires being sparsely dressed. But…it’s also the thin end of the slippery nose under the tent. Wait, that’s not quite right…

Earlier this month, a resident filed a gender-discrimination complaint with the state Human Rights Commission (HRC), challenging not the women’s swim time at the Tukwila pool but the men-only component, after she said she was unable to accompany and supervise her 11-year-old son there.

Last Thursday, the HRC closed the complaint, saying that since the pool offers swim times for both women and men, no gender discrimination exists under state law. The pool also offers swim times for families.

Although the ruling clears Tukwila, it raises a legal question for other cities and programs that offer women-only swims without a male-only option.

Laura Lindstrand, policy analyst for the Human Rights Commission, said it’s possible such a facility  could be in violation of state law. “We would need to closely look at the facility’s reasoning for having such a policy,” she said.

Because god, comes the reply.

But such legal matters were far from the minds of the more than two dozen women — many dressed in the Islamic hijab — and a handful of men as they spoke emotionally to commissioners in Tukwila about how they and their families use the pool.

“This isn’t just something I’m doing,” Farole said. “ It’s a commandment from God; men and women are not to mix together. That’s my religious belief.”

Ah. Well in that case you’ll have to do your swimming at the mosque, because city governments don’t take commandments from God.

Councilmember Dennis Robertson said while he understood the need for the single-gender swim times, city officials needed to be careful not to contribute to gender inequality. “It’s not what this country is about,” he said.

The arguments being used to support single-gender swim times were used to justify racial segregation in the South, he said. “We are walking on dangerous grounds here,” he said.

Carroll, who also spoke, echoed that position.

Their comments worried Farole and the other women who at last week’s meeting submitted petitions bearing 132 signatures defending the program.

“For the first time as a resident I felt unwelcome,” Farole said.

But after listening to the women, Robertson appeared to be walking back his earlier position on the women-only swim times.

While he pointed out that many business deals historically have been made in settings where women have been denied access, Robertson said it’s clear this is not one of those settings.

“It’s easy to jump to conclusions, and I jumped to the conclusion about what this might mean,” he said.

Carroll said her main concern is that young Muslim women feel they cannot be safe around men in a community where she lives.

“If I was convinced we were initiating women-only swims to empower women, I would be very happy about it,” she said. “But I fear that we are just introducing the 21st-century version of more marginalization.”

In the end, there appeared  to be reason for optimism, from all sides.

Commissioners announced the single-gender swims would continue at the pool, and Carroll and some of the women and men discussed their differences.

I dunno. I’m not crazy about it, but I don’t feel anything like as strongly as I do about gender segregation of public debates and other public functions at universities, as if women are so fragile they can’t ever be around men at all.

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The gender segregation stipulated by Islam is not implemented

Nov 26th, 2013 4:49 pm | By

This is an interesting example, from Germany in January 2012.

A German man has created a new website to arrange shared car trips with a twist – it’s targeted toward Muslims, and drivers can only offer transport to members of the same sex.

Called Muslimtaxi.de, the site is based on the same principle as other popular websites like mitfahrgelegenheit.de , which lets cost-conscious Germans arrange shared car rides.

Those interested in offering rides specify their gender, asking price and how many passengers they can accommodate. Potential passengers contact the driver directly.

…

In operation since late last year, the website has attracted its share of criticism. People have accused Reid of trying to create a parallel society and supporting immigrants who don’t want to integrate in German culture.

But Reid says the response from thousands of grateful riders has showed him he’s filling a niche.

“Many Muslim brothers and sisters complained that they can’t use conventional offers because the gender segregation stipulated by Islam is not implemented,” he added.

I do like to see the niches created by stupid bigotry filled by enterprising go-getters like that.

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The pope urges everyone to be passive and blank

Nov 26th, 2013 1:26 pm | By

I thought I couldn’t hate popes and their bullshit any more than I already did, but pope Frank really knows how to push the right buttons. He did a “homily” the other day shitting all over curiosity and saying it’s the opposite of god. (He’s right, but for the wrong reasons. Or for the right reasons, but he doesn’t weigh them correctly.) It’s truly disgusting.

The spirit of curiosity generates confusion and distances a person from the Spirit of wisdom, which brings peace, said Pope Francis in his homily during Thursday morning Mass at Casa Santa Marta. 

The hell with peace (of that kind). We get that when we’re dead; while we’re alive we should make the most of it.

That which God asked of Abraham—‘Walk in my presence and be irreproachable’—is this: this peace. To follow the movement of the Spirit of God and of this wisdom. And the man and woman who walk this path, we can say they are wise men and women… because they follow the movement of God’s patience.

Nonsense. Word salad.

In the Gospel, the Pope underlined, “we find ourselves before another spirit, contrary to the wisdom of God: the spirit of curiosity”.

“And when we want to be the masters of the projects of God, of the future, of things, to know everything, to have everything in hand… the Pharisees asked Jesus, ‘When will the Kingdom of God come?’ Curious! They wanted to know the date, the day… The spirit of curiosity distances us from the Spirit of wisdom because all that interests us is the details, the news, the little stories of the day. Oh, how will this come about? It is the how: it is the spirit of the how! And the spirit of curiosity is not a good spirit. It is the spirit of dispersion, of distancing oneself from God, the spirit of talking too much.”

Terrible. Awful. Anti-human, anti-life, anti-thought. All that peace and union is just nothingness, it’s stagnation, it’s stasis. It’s death. The church claims to be pro-life but that he’s recommending right there, that’s death.

“The Kingdom of God is among us: do not seek strange things, do not seek novelties with this worldly curiosity. Let us allow the Spirit to lead us forward in that wisdom, which is like a soft breeze,” he said. “This is the Spirit of the Kingdom of God, of which Jesus speaks. So be it.”

No.

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A correction

Nov 26th, 2013 12:50 pm | By

Several people have informed me that I was completely wrong about selfies, and since they’re all people whose judgment I respect and I wasn’t all that committed to my (admittedly hasty) view anyway, I’ve decided what the hell, they’re right. There was one sentence in the Jezebel article that did neatly sum up a certain genre of selfie that I don’t like – or rather, that I think is demeaning. But meh; that’s not very high up on the list of things to object to, and anyway it’s only one genre, and I wouldn’t want to be without selfies of people with their dogs draped over their shoulder or their cats leering into the lens.

As rorschach pointed out at the time, Chrys Stevenson has a great post in defense of selfies.

And Amy has a brilliant one full of art history and wit.

 First of all let’s back up for a moment and remember what “selfie” is actually slang for. The self-portrait has had a long and very important history in the art world. Painters have painted self-portraits or selfies if you will, for hundreds upon hundreds of years and one could even argue that cave drawings were representative of those very humans drawing on those very walls. “Look at me! I was here and this is how I looked and how I lived!” Since then, artists like Frida Kahlo have used paintings of themselves to express the myriad of human emotions. Yes, Frida wanted you to gaze upon her. She also wanted you to understand her joy and her severe physical and sometimes emotional pain.

Image above is an example of a Frida Kahlo self-portrait.

Image above is an example of a Frida Kahlo self-portrait
And when photography was invented the self-portrait shifted primarily to that new medium. Since then, artists have, over the years, made careers out of the selfie. I highly encourage you to take a look at the work of photographer and artist Cindy Sherman as an example.

If anything, Sherman took the selfie to the mountaintop and dismantled Ryan’s thoughts on the, “fucked up way society teaches women that their most important quality is their physical attractiveness.” Long before the word “selfie” was coined. Self-portraits can be feminist as fuck.

What I said before? Forget it.

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$140 per day

Nov 26th, 2013 11:50 am | By

What??

How is this even possible?

AlJazeera reports:

A religious court in Israel has fined a woman $140 each day that her one-year-old son remains uncircumcised. The Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem has reportedly rejected an appeal from the woman, who is currently going through a divorce and whose husband insists the procedure be carried out.

Rabbinical courts in Israel have jurisdiction in Jewish religious matters, including marriage and divorce. However, the woman’s lawyer reportedly argued that the court does not have the authority to demand the circumcision. According to +972 Magazine, there is no legal requirement for parents to have their sons circumcised.

What??

A religious court can require people to mutilate their infant’s genitals and fine them daily if they refuse? How does that even work?

Making the decision against circumcision is a controversial one in Israel. Circumcision has been an important Jewish tenet for millenia, and for the religious, it symbolises a covenant with God.

No doubt it does, but how can sane contemporary people try to require anyone to cut off a bit of their infant’s penis because it symbolizes a covenant with god? Both parts are baffling – the mutilation part and the covenant with a fictional character part.

“Rabbinical courts in Israel have jurisdiction in Jewish religious matters” but does that include requiring everyone to be religious in the first place?

Smh.

Via Joanne Payton

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Now recruiting

Nov 26th, 2013 11:28 am | By

Another illustration by Gnu Atheism.

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Universities once barred women altogether

Nov 26th, 2013 11:13 am | By

Polly Toynbee also objects to UUK’s separate-but-equal policy.

Separate but equal; where have we heard that before? Apartheid South Africa is no metaphor for anything else, but women of my generation and all those before were told over and over again that the sexes are different “but equal”, as an excuse for excluding them from places they didn’t belong: they should be doing “separate but equal” in the kitchen, bedroom and nursery. Whatever is segregated by diktat is rarely equal.

And not just our generation and older, but younger generations too; women are still told that. That is still official Vatican dogma – women are equal but “complementary” – women are equal but different, and they must not try to abandon their True Nature™.

Universities once barred women altogether. Now they strive to be emblems of enlightenment, temples to reason, equality, free speech and freedom of thought. But it’s not easy to balance conflicting freedoms. Universities UK, their representative body, has just published 40 pages of guidelines on External Speakers in Higher Education Institutions, wriggling and writhing over competing freedoms for women versus not causing religious offence: it ends up with excruciating nonsense.

Some students may want a “no platform” policy for speakers they find obnoxious – the BNP or members of unsavoury governments. Demonstrating opposition is a freedom, but banning or yelling down free expression within the law is a denial of freedom. However, Universities UK’s guidelines give the sexist eccentricities of some religions priority over women’s rights, by allowing religious speakers the right to demand women and men are segregated in the lecture hall.

The right to demand and have their demand satisfied.

The compromise is that women can’t be put at the back: “The room can be segregated left and right, rather than front and back.” Depressingly, the National Union of Students has endorsed this. What’s wrong with “side by side” segregation? Just ask how that would look if universities allowed speakers to demand separation by race.

Muslim speakers demand segregation to make a very public point about their belief in women’s “separate” role in the universe, one step behind a man, even in a place of learning. After all, as Maryam Namazie, head of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, says, the speakers and the audience have all travelled there on trains and buses that are not segregated. Mosques and synagogues may hide women out of sight, but by agreeing not to “offend”, the universities condone what they should confront.

And so far, at least, there’s no sign that they’re listening to the objections.

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Rory Fenton condemns

Nov 25th, 2013 8:48 pm | By

At the New Humanist, Rory Fenton says no thank you.

It is astounding how quickly we forget or wilfully ignore that human rights are there to protect people – not beliefs. At the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies, of which I’m president, we increasingly see this confused notion of rights being applied on UK campuses. Whether it’s our student groups intimidated for “blasphemy”, as at LSE and Reading, or religious societies refusing unmarried women permission to speak, as at Bristol, this trumping of individual rights by the supposed rights of “beliefs” is increasingly common.

…

…nestled in the report was a bizarre and backward recommendation; universities should be willing to enforce sex segregation between male and female audience members if a speaker requests it.

The report’s peculiar logic ran as follows: speakers have the right to free speech but if their demands for sex segregation are not met they will refuse to speak. Therefore to not enforce sex segregation is to deny the speakers’ freedom of speech. The report is careful only to endorse the ‘nice’ kind of segregation with men and women split on the left and right hand sides of a lecture theatre rather than front and back, the logic here being that men and women are being treated ‘equally separately’, whatever that means.

That it’s equally insulting to both of them?

That wouldn’t be much of a recommendation if it were true, but it’s not true. So yeah, whatever does that mean?

This logic has echoes of the old racially segregated Deep South of the United States; separate but equal. To argue that segregation is not inherently unequal is to fail to see just why men and women are being kept apart in the first place; this drive for segregation stems from ideologies that view women as very much inferior to men. To allow these ideologies power in UK universities is to betray hard-won individual rights and the principle that in public spaces all must be treated equally. Separate is never equal.

That is correct. And it makes me very, very angry that UK university vice-chancellors are just flinging all that away.

The report goes as far as to say that non-religious beliefs, such as feminism, should take second place to “sincerely held” religious beliefs. That’s right; the mere fact that they are religious makes some beliefs more important than others because, of course, Feminist can’t be sincere in their beliefs.

Because those “beliefs” are secular, so they can’t be “sincerely held.” They can only be held, loosely and kind of sloppily, the way secular people do.

The Universities UK report focuses on sex because it’s an issue that has come up before but there is no reason for its logic to stop there. If a racist is invited to speak – should he not have the audience forcibly segregated into whites and non-whites? What if his beliefs are really “sincerely held”? Could the EDL insist on all Muslim students sitting separately? Of course Universities UK would never support this.

Just what I keep saying! I said it on their horrible blog post, too. I hope they (or rather, Nicola Dandridge) answer (answers).

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BHA condemns

Nov 25th, 2013 8:33 pm | By

The BHA condemns Universities UK’s guidelines on gender segregation.

BHA Head of Public Affairs Pavan Dhaliwal commented that ‘Universities are secular institutions, not places of worship, and sex segregation should have no place in secular spaces in which we expect to find equality between men and women.  It would be completely unacceptable if a visiting speaker tried to segregate an audience along racial lines, so sex segregation should be equally unacceptable.  Universities UK have characterised this as a freedom of speech issue, but this is misleading.  A visiting speaker’s right to freedom of speech entitles them to express their political and religious views, but not to impose these views on the audience.’

Damn right. If it’s obviously unacceptable on racial grounds, which it is, why is it acceptable on gender grounds?

It isn’t.

 

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They have to be separated in school

Nov 25th, 2013 3:35 pm | By

Thurgood Marshall arguing Brown v Board of Education before the Supreme Court in 1953.

I got the feeling on hearing the discussion yesterday that when you put a white child in a school with a whole lot of colored children, the child would fall apart or something. Everybody knows that is not true.  Those same kids in Virginia and South Carolina – and I have seen them do it – they play in the streets together, they play on their farms together, they go down the road together, they separate to go to school, they come out of school and play ball together. They have to be separated in school. There is some magic to it. You can have them voting together, you can have them not restricted because of law in the houses they live in. You can have them going to the same state university and the same college, but if they go to elementary and high school, the world will fall apart.

Cooties cooties cooties! Separate them or ew ew ew.

They can’t take race out of this case. From the day this case was filed until this moment, nobody has in any form or fashion, despite the fact I made it clear in the opening argument that I was relying on it, done anything to distinguish this statute from the Black Codes, which they must admit, because nobody can dispute, say anything anybody wants to say, one way or the other, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to deprive the states of power to enforce Black Codes or anything else like it.

We charge that they are Black Codes. They obviously are Black Codes if you read them. They haven’t denied that they are Black Codes, so if the Court wants to very narrowly decide this case, they can decide it on that point.

And what are Black Codes? Post-Civil War laws passed to keep slavery in all but name.

So whichever way it is done, the only way that this Court can decide this case in opposition to our position, is that there must be some reason which gives the state the right to make a classification that they can make in regard to nothing else in regard to Negroes, and we submit the only way to arrive at that decision is to find that for some reason Negroes are inferior to all other human beings.

And that is why separate is not equal.

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How to ensure that no one is unlawfully excluded

Nov 25th, 2013 12:49 pm | By

Nicola Dandridge of Universities UK has written a blog post explaining that UUK is not promoting gender segregation. That’s nice, but I don’t know of anyone who said it was. The objection is that UUK is treating gender segregation as permissible, and that it said it’s not unequal.

Since its publication, there has been some public debate on a small component of the guidance: a hypothetical case study (p.27) in which an external speaker on faith in the modern world requests that the audience is segregated according to gender. The case study reflects the challenges of accommodating everyone’s views, from those whose religious beliefs require them to sit separately with their own gender, to those who wish to sit with the opposite gender – hence the mixed seating alternative which is part of the solution in this case study. The issue is how to ensure that no one is unlawfully excluded from the event.

Ah that’s sneaky. The case study reflects the challenges of accommodating everyone’s views, from those whose religious beliefs require them to sit separately with their own gender - no no no, it’s not that easy. The religious beliefs “require” that everyone sit with her or his own gender. It is not a matter just of what I am required to do, it’s a matter of what others are “required” to do, and of the right of the male speaker to “require” it of everyone who attends the lecture, including people who share his religion but not his reactionary version of it, and people who don’t share his religion. Dandridge frames it as a matter of allowing people to obey their own religious “requirements” but ignores the issue of forcing other people to obey “requirements” that 1) are not theirs and 2) are on the face of it obnoxiously and impertinently discriminatory.

Suppose a white guest speaker says her religion “requires” white people to sit with white people and black people to sit with black people. I wonder if Dandridge would phrase that as “The case study reflects the challenges of accommodating everyone’s views, from those whose religious beliefs require them to sit separately with their own race, to those who wish to sit with the opposite race.” I wonder if she would feel more squeamish about that; I wonder if she would say it at all. My guess is that she would feel more squeamish and wouldn’t say it.

And nobody is “unlawfully excluded from the event” on the basis that she describes. A racist is not unlawfully excluded from the event if the racist says her religion requires racial segregation and the university refuses to arrange any such segregation. The racist can still attend the event; she is not excluded; she is simply not granted an unreasonable and malevolent demand.

Universities have a vital role to play in securing free speech and promoting debate. This practical guidance has been developed to ensure that as many debates as possible on sensitive and emotive issues can continue to take place. By promoting free speech and open debate the rights or wrongs of gender segregation can be challenged and discussed.

Bollocks. We can perfectly well challenge and discuss the rights or wrongs of gender segregation, and racial and ethnic and religious segregation, without putting the actual segregation into effect. We can also, frankly, perfectly well treat some questions as settled and just fucking move on. We don’t need to challenge and discuss the rights and wrongs of genocide, and we really don’t need to challenge and discuss the rights and wrongs of gender versions of Jim Crow laws.

 

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