What’s wrong with invoking “the rules” when you’re trying to explain a perceived problem with certain kinds of speech or action or display or performance? Is there anything wrong with it? I think there is, yes, so I’m thinking about why. (This started with a reply to Minnow on The proud tradition of a free press.)

What’s wrong with it? It’s that it doesn’t get at the issues. It’s a shortcut, and shortcuts aren’t good for getting at issues. It doesn’t help significantly to talk about unwritten rules, because the rule quality remains, and that’s what falls short.

There are things I strongly think people should not do, though, so doesn’t that amount to rules? No, I don’t think so, although I could put them into rule form if I had to.

• don’t make fun of the school bus driver and tell her how ugly and fat and hopeless she is
• don’t call the high school atheist an evil little thing, especially in public, especially if you’re a legislator
• don’t make clucking sounds while a legislator who is a woman is speaking

That helps to clarify one reason it’s not useful to invoke “the rules” – it’s because such rules shouldn’t be needed, because they fall under a broader heading, which isn’t itself really a rule, it’s more like a basic requirement for being a decent human being. It’s basically “don’t be shitty to people”…and I think that isn’t a rule so much as an orientation.

It isn’t a rule because people shouldn’t want to be shitty in the first place. If they don’t have that basic gut-level instinct, they need more work than rules can give.

But then we disagree on the details. I argue that personal insults=being shitty, but challenging beliefs is not being shitty. Others argue that challenging beliefs is indeed shitty; others again argue that challenging beliefs is shitty if it’s done in a particular way – with cartoons for instance.

I argue that personal insults in the form of group-based epithets – racist, ethnic, homophobic, nationalistic, and sexist – equal being shitty. Others argue that personal insults in the form of group-based epithets – racist, ethnic, homophobic, nationalistic, but not sexist – equal being shitty. Somebody was arguing that at me yesterday on Twitter, and very annoying it was. I don’t think I have yet seen anyone argue that racist epithets don’t equal being shitty, but I’m sure such people exist.

So would rules help to settle these disputes? Maybe. Possibly. Sexist epithets are popular because they’re popular; if rules made them less popular, they would spread less, and maybe the fashion would simply wither and die. But what rules wouldn’t do is get people to understand why they’re shitty in the first place.

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

Sofia Ahmed, activist, student, and aspiring journalist, takes to the Huffington Post UK to explain why watching people applauding Malala Yousafzai makes her want to puke.

The sight of white men in suits applauding and gushing at Malala Yusufzai’s speech at the United Nations, the media frenzy and vociferous support on social media was nauseating for me. Not because I deny Malala the right to campaign for what she does.

That’s very generous of her, isn’t it.

It was more due to the sickening double-standards at play and the thought that while she was being lauded hundreds of other Muslim girls were being blown up, raped and bombed into oblivion because of those very men sitting with her that day.

During the period of time that Malala addressed the UN, hundreds of Muslim girls were being blown up, raped and bombed into oblivion by “white” military forces? I don’t think that’s true.

So it was refreshing to see that there were some commentators out there who have the moral courage to look beyond the PR stunts and tactics and analyse the deeper motivations behind this entire charade. However, there does seem to be a systematic attempt at stifling debate on this matter, with stooges of the West trying to use petty tactics, straw man arguments and accusations of “jealousy” in order to curb diversity of opinion.

One comment piece that struck me as particularly nefarious was Tehmina Kazi’s (British Muslims For Secular Democracy) for the Huffington Post UK. It was the most self righteous and sanctimonious load of drivel I have ever had the misfortune to read.

I knew before I even began to read it that essentially it was not a defence of Malala at all – it was quite obviously a thinly-veiled attempt to degrade those who refuse to fall into line and stand in defence of Western imperialism and those who help to impose a universal liberal agenda.

Ah yes that terrible “universal liberal agenda” – the one that opposes any kind of imperialism and that defends universal human rights; what a terrible agenda. It’s so much better to have purely local rights, like the right to be married off by one’s father at age 9, the right to be kept out of school, the right to be whipped for refusing to wear a hijab or a burqa.

When I tried to offer my comments and criticisms of Tehmina’s piece on the Facebook page for BMSD, those great bastions of all things “liberal” and “democratic” chose to censor me and curb my fundamental right of freedom of speech by removing my comments and blocking me from the page within minutes of my first post. Kazi also went on to personally contact at least one news outlet in order to ask them not to print anything I submit.

I am not surprised by Tehmina’s tactics and attempts at shutting down debate. Ordinary Muslims who may have alternative views have been progressively marginalised and shouted down by these purveyors of a particular brand of Islam tinged with a Eurocentric fundamentalism.

A Eurocentric fundamentalism – what’s that when it’s at home? Belief in universal human rights and secular government, perhaps? The opposite of fundamentalism?

Tehmina and her ilk have one goal, and that is providing ideological support to the advancement of colonial interests and Western tyranny. Her article is not about the defence of Malala, it is about defending the privileges and opportunities of the elite.

I can’t help hoping Sofia Ahmed fails in her aspiration to become a journalist, at least unless she learns a good deal first.

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

En français.

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

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

Sexism? What sexism?

The sexism where a male conservative MP makes clucking noises while a female Green MP is speaking.

The incident was widely denounced as sexist in a country where the word chicken is often used as a derogatory term for women.

Véronique Massonneau was forced to stop her address to the National Assembly in Paris when her conservative rival, Philippe Le Ray, began to make the noises.

However, as she resumed her speech on planned pension reform the heckling resumed, prompting the president of the National Assembly to step in.

Watch the video. See the other conservative male MP, talking to the camera in the hall outside afterwards, say “Vive le macho!” and walk away then turn around to smirk happily.

Yeah.

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

As Bjarte mentioned – the Hawkeye initiative is pretty funny.

About THI and FAQ

About The Hawkeye Initiative

Created on December 2nd 2012, The Hawkeye Initiative uses Hawkeye and other male comic characters to illustrate how deformed, hyper-sexualized, and impossibly contorted women are commonly illustrated in comics, books, and video games.

Like so:

themenarchbutterfly:

From Red Hood and the Outlaws, Issue 14. Art by Pascal Alixe.

John Holbo has a great post on Mannerism and the Hawkeye Initiative.

I’m reading a book on Mannerism [amazon] and stumbled on a pair of amusing quotes. The first, from Alberti’s On Painting (1435) really ought to be some kind of epigraph for The Hawkeye Initiative. (What? You didn’t know about it. Go ahead and waste a few happy minutes there. It’s hilarious. Now you’re back. Good!)

As I was saying, here’s Alberti, warning us that, even though good istoria painting should exhibit variety and seem alive with motion, you shouldn’t go all Escher Girl boobs + butt Full-Monty-and-then-some:

There are those who express too animated movements, making the chest and the small of the back visible at once in the same figure, an impossible and inappropriate thing; they think themselves deserving of praise because they hear that those images seem alive that violently move each member; and for this reason they make figures that seem to be fencers and actors, with none of the dignity of painting, whence not only are they without grace and sweetness, but even more they show the ingegno of the artist to be too fervent and furious [troppo fervente et furioso].

The chest and the small of the back at the same time – yeah that would be a tricky pose.

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

Malala’s getting a head start on the prize-winning.

Malala Yousafzai, who was shot last year by Taliban militants for her advocacy of girls’ education, has been awarded theSakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by European lawmakers.

The 16-year-old, considered a contender for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, joins previous winners of Europe’s top human rights award, including Peace Prize laureates Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela.

You know, maybe shooting her in the head wasn’t such a good idea after all. Talk about a Streisand effect…

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

Malala was on the Daily Show on Tuesday.

Check it out.

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

Another UK religious state school interfering with students’ science education.

The Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Exam board (OCR) launched an investigation into exam malpractice at the Yesodey Hatorah Jewish Voluntary Aided girls’ secondary school after the National Secular Society formally asked it to follow up unconfirmed reports that teachers had redacted questions in this year’s GSCE science exam.

The precise questions that were blacked out has not been revealed by OCR, but earlier this year a Jewish education consultant warned that evolution in the new GCSE science curriculum could pose problems for strictly Orthodox schools.

The investigation confirmed pupils were left disadvantaged by being unable to access 3 marks out of 75 for a unit in a higher GCSE science exam, and 1 mark out of 75 for a unit on a lower paper.

Earlier this year, Rabbi Avraham Pinter, principal of Yesodey Hatorah, admitted “sometimes Charedi schools, if they find anything in the paper which could be offensive to parents, advise children to avoid that question”.

Because people who are deeply entrenched in their ancient obsolete religion find science “offensive” and allow that infantile attitude to impede their children’s education, and state schools help the parents do that.

A spokesperson for OCR said: “We have tried to respect the religious and cultural sensitivities of this community whilst protecting the integrity of our exams. That said, we do not consider obscuring aspects of question papers to be good exam practice. We are raising the matter with the Department for Education and Ofsted as well as our fellow Awarding Bodies, through the Joint Council for Qualifications. We are also in the process of agreeing safeguards with the centre to ensure good exam practice in the context of today’s pluralistic society. Ofqual are also fully aware of our investigation and its outcome.”

I wish officials of all kinds would just stop saying things like that. It shouldn’t be the job of secular officials to “respect the religious and cultural sensitivities” of any community or of all communities. Furthermore, officials should stop talking about “communities” in that way at all, because it assumes that everyone in the putative community thinks exactly the same. It ignores the part played by coercion and pressure and approval/disapproval. It ignores how suffocating and stultifying it is to be trapped in a “community” and jostled into accepting all its beliefs, no matter how wrong and unsupported by reasons.

Yesodey Hatorah was founded in 1942 and operated as a private school until 2005 when it opted in to the state sector. It was launched as a state school with a high-profile visit from faith school enthusiast Tony Blair, then prime minister.

Girls attending Yesodey Hatorah are strongly discouraged from going to university. According to Rabbi Pinter: “Our experience, is that the better educated girls turn out to be the most successful mothers. For us, that’s the most important role a woman plays.”

Who’s “us”? Who’s the we in that “our experience”? And what good is that experience when it’s the product of coercion such as “strongly discourage[ing]” girls from going to university?

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

There’s a place for Subjects. Under Subjects, there’s a place for Islamic Studies.

At the heart of Al-Madinah School is the Quranic and Islamic Studies department, supported by a team of experienced and dedicated servants of Islam. Our commitment to Islam in the school is reflected by the fact that each week, six lessons will be dedicated to Islamic, Quranic and Arabic Studies in the secondary school along with numerous lessons in the primary school. In this programme, great attention and effort will be geared to subject areas such as Quranic reading with the correct pronunciations (Tajwid), Quranic translation and commentary (Tafsir) and the memorisation of the Quran (Hifz). In addition to this we also teach Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh), the flawless biography (Sira) of Prophet Muhammed (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), Islamic history, Islamic beliefs (Aqidah) and Islamic morality (Akhlaq).

In other words, time will be taken from other subjects and spent on items like the flawless biography (Sira) of Prophet Muhammed (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him).

Also, is taught in those many lessons will be utter shite. The lessons will be taught by dedicated servants of Islam.

Every effort will be made to imitate the way medieval people thought, when they didn’t have the accumulated stores of knowledge that we have, nor the much-tested and refined methods of inquiry that we have.

All this in a school funded by the state.

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

Originally a comment by zibble on First rule: make them insipid.

I think the problem isn’t even that they have to keep the characters pretty.  The problem is that they define female prettiness as an absence of features.

It’s like the bad-anime face.

The total lack of identifiable human features forces you to project idealized features onto their void of a face.  There are enough face-like qualities for the mind to recognize that a face is supposed to go there – but with no specific information, your brain picks all the features it likes the best.  Whereas if they tried to make a female character actually modeled off of a real female face, like Angelina Jolie, they have to deal with the fact that not everyone finds that specific face attractive.

I think that’s the core problem with objectification.  It’s not just that women are sexualized – when you watch cartoon films like Hercules or anything by Don Bluth, the men are designed to be sexualized and pretty too.  It’s just done in a radically disparate way, in which women are sexualized not according to their individual characteristics, but by having their individuality covered up.  It’s essentially the same mentality as a burqa – an attempt to define women as only being one particular set of things through a campaign to hide their actual attributes.

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

It’s sad being a Disney animator if you have to animate women, we’re told. Fortunately the problem doesn’t arise much because hey – Toy Story? Lion King? But when it does arise, damn, it’s difficult.

Lino DiSalvo, the head of animation on Frozen, claimed that it was “really, really difficult” to animate women because they have to be kept pretty while expressing emotions:

“Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they’re echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna being angry.”

I have a solution. Ditch the rule. Ditch the “you have to keep them pretty” rule. Forget all that. Just think of them as people, instead of as girruls, who have to be pretty no matter what.

There are other reasons to ditch that rule, actually, such as the fact that it imposes such a narrow range of types. Male characters don’t have to meet that kind of criterion, so why should female characters? You really don’t have to keep them pretty; you don’t even have to make them pretty to begin with.

Try thinking of women as being just as varied and complicated as men are and it will instantly become clear to you that keeping them “pretty” just doesn’t have to be a rule. It works quite well in real life, too.

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

Did you (those of you in the US) see Frontline on football and concussions last night? It was pretty fascinating. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) has been reporting a lot on hockey and concussions, too. The Frontline show made some interesting points about how violent, and intentionally violent, football is. It’s marketed as violent, and apparently people like that.

Huh. Why? What a strange thing to like.

It reminded me of a lot of things. Jousting, for instance. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and Tenniel’s illustrations of them. Jousting must have caused a lot of concussions and CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy). Henry VIII received a bad head injury in a joust, and he was a monster as he aged – maybe the two were connected.

I don’t like watching athletes padded up like bolsters, so that’ll be part of why I’ve never liked (US) football. I like soccer-football, where it’s just shorts and jerseys and running like hell.

It’s all quite sick, in my view. I’ve always thought boxing is sick and shouldn’t be allowed; now I think the same about football. The game is designed in such a way that head injuries cannot be avoided. Bad idea, folks. Jousting wasn’t a good idea, and football isn’t a good idea. Fix it. Make it into a different kind of game.

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

Captions: two buttons: one says

KFC Hillary special

2 Fat Thighs

2 Small Breasts

…Left Wing

The other says

I still hate Commies…

even after they

changed their

name to Liberals

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

Al-Medinah school wants (or pretends to want) incompatible things. It says so right on its home page.

Our vision

…

One of Al-Madinah Schools’ strong characters is the schools extended services program in which pupils will learn independence, self-control, social skills and community conscientiousness. These skills are vital if our pupils are to become self-regulating teenagers and adults. [para 3]

…

One of Al-Madinah Schools’ distinct features is the offering of an Islamic Studies program, which will include Quran reading with pronunciations (Tajweed), translation of the Quran (Tafseer) and Quran memorisation (Hifz). We will also teach Islamic Jurisprudence (Fiqh), biography (Seerah) of the Prophet Mohammed (SAW), History of Islam, the Oneness of God (Tauheed) and Islamic Beliefs (Aqeedah). [para 5]

Those two things fight each other. Pupils can’t learn independence and at the same time learn slavish dependence via indoctrination in “Islamic jurisprudence” and the like.

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

Al-Madinah school in Derby is even worse than everyone thought. The Independent reports:

A Muslim free school has been warned it faces closure if it does not take action to eradicate practices which discriminate against girls and women within a week.

The blunt warning was delivered yesterday in a letter from Lord Nash. the Minister with responsibility for free schools and academies in a letter to the chair of its governing body.

Lord Nash warned the Al-Madinah free school in Derby that the trust running it had “manifestly breached the conditions of its funding agreement by failing to ensure the safety of children at the school: delivering an unacceptably poor standard of education, discriminating in its policies towards female staff and failing to discharge its duties and responsibilities”.

An unacceptably bad standard of education? Like under the heading of Books and teaching resources for example?

In each and every department, all efforts will be geared
towards ensuring the books and resources conform to the
teachings of Islam.

Sensitive, inaccurate and potentially blasphemous material
will be censored or removed completely. If and when
teachers are required by the curriculum to convey teachings
that are totally against Islam¹ , the Director of Islamic Studies
will brief the relevant teachers and advise accordingly.
With regards to songs and music, we acknowledge that it
can be an aid for learning, in particular in primary school.
Under the guidance of the Director, it shall only be used as
a learning aid, not for entertainment and amusement
purposes.

Muslims are encouraged to reflect on Allah’s beauty in his
creations. The art lessons will be used as a platform to fulfill
this religious duty. At the same time however, great care will
be taken to ensure artwork produced or shown in lessons
conform with the specific teachings of Prophet Muhammad
(peace be upon him).

_______________________

¹Darwinism, for example

This is a madrassah trying to pass itself off as a school which can get funding from the government as a state school.

Ofsted shut the school down over an issue about background checks on staff but allowed it to reopen on Monday after that issue was settled.

But then there was the issue about girls being made to sit at the back and women teachers being made to wear religious costume regardless of their religion and their preferences.

In his letter to Shazia Parveen, who chairs the Al-Madinah Education Trust, Lord Nash delivers the sternest warning ever given by a government minister to one of its flagship free schools, saying: “Unless swift action is taken to address these concerns in a comprehensive way I will be compelled to terminate the school’s funding agreement.”

In particular, he wants the Trust to ensure by next Tuesday, that all Criminal Records Bureau checks on staff have been completed and written references for every employee taken up.

In addition, he wants written confirmation that any discriminatory practices which have led to women and girls being treated “less favourably than men and boys” have ceased – and that staff have been told they are not required to cover their hair if it is contrary to their religion or beliefs.

One law for all, in other words.

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

In case we’re not already sufficiently fed up with the Catholic church today, we learn that

The Catholic Church tried to strike an agreement with New South Wales Police that would have helped shut down investigations into paedophile priests and placed police in breach of the Crimes Act.

Police records, accessed under freedom of information laws by Greens MP David Shoebridge, show two attempts were made to finalise memorandums of understanding (MOUs) between police and the church over how to deal with complaints of sexual and physical abuse by Catholic Church personnel.

 

Disgusting, isn’t it. “Church authorities shall cover up crimes committed by church employees unless prevented by court order.” Because after all it’s just child rape, nothing that matters.

Barrister Geoffrey Watson SC says the agreement would have placed police in breach of the Crimes Act.

“If you become aware of a serious criminal offence, you’ve got to tell the police,” he told the ABC’s Lateline program.

“When I looked at the MOUs they were really in effect trying to get the police to condone the failure to comply with that law, or even perhaps worse, get the police to participate in that.”

Dear police, can we please break the law? Thank you very much, the Catholic church.

In June 2003 Michael McDonald from the Catholic Commission for Employment Relations wrote to the Child Protection Squad: “I, therefore, seek your confirmation that the unsigned memorandum of understanding with the police remains in place.”

The Catholic Church could not tell Lateline why Mr McDonald was writing to the police, but Kim McKay from the Child Protection Squad was unequivocal in her written response to Mr McDonald.

“Please note that his (sic) draft unsigned MOU has not been approved by the NSW Police Service, and the arrangements proposed by the MOU are not currently in place,” she said.

“The arrangements proposed by the draft MOU appear to be in direct conflict with the explicit legislative requirement of section 316 of the Crime Act.”

Before this letter was sent by Superintendent McKay, the church was under the assumption the agreement was in place.

It’s so unfaaaaaaair.

After Superintendent McKay had made it clear in her letter that the unsigned agreement would have breached the Crimes Act, the church and police started negotiations to draft another agreement.

The second draft agreement, dated August 2004, includes a clause that states: “The Catholic Church or (additional party) shall make available the report of an assessment and any other matter relevant to the accused’s account of events only if authorised in writing by the accused or if required to do so by court order.”

Mr Shoebridge says the second draft agreement goes even further than the first one.

“The church wanted to effectively give the accused priest a veto power about whether or not to provide crucial information to the police – utterly extraordinary when you think that that’s less than a decade ago.”

It is, isn’t it. Just jaw-dropping.

H/t Leonie Hilliard.

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

Pteryxx collected more material on this and it’s damning, so I’m just going to add it all. Commentary Pteryxx’s.

The Nebraska Supreme Court refused to hear the girl’s appeal.  Here’s the decision she was appealing.

After advising the girl that “when you have the abortion, it’s going to kill the child inside you,” lower court judge Peter Bataillon denied her request for a waiver. Bataillon, who according to RH Reality Check, had been an attorney for extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, found that the girl was not mature and informed enough to make the decision to have an abortion. He also found that the girl should have sought consent from her foster parents, even though the girl’s foster parents are not her legal guardian and the state regulations governing the Department of Health and Human Services gives minors in its custody the right to consent to abortion, without seeking permission from the Department.

From Operation Rescue lawyer to judge… seems fair and impartial.

More from RHR, both about the case and about Bataillon.

After holding the minor to the same pleading standards as attorneys, then punishing her for failing to meet them, the justices continued to ignore the law that clearly states minors in state custody have the right to consent to abortion on their own, by stating that because of the 2011 change from parental notification to parental consent those regulations were no longer valid. Since that 2011 change, the department hasn’t issued any new regulations, meaning that the even if those regulations were still valid thanks to this decision they likely aren’t anymore.

With the issue of whether minors in state custody can consent to their own abortions now upended, that leaves the petitioner in this case, and future wards of the state in similar quandaries, with only the possibility of convincing a judge via a judicial bypass proceeding that she’s sufficiently mature enough to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy on her own. And we know how those decisions turn out for the minors involved.

[...]

Not surprisingly, the trial court judge has a history of anti-choice sympathies. In 1990, as a private attorney, Bataillon successfully defended 17 Operation Rescue protesters in Omaha against charges of clinic trespassing, by advancing a “necessity defense” and arguing their trespassing was necessary to prevent the “grave evil” of abortion. Scott Roeder tried unsuccessfully to advance a necessity defense during his trial for the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Three years later, Bataillon represented an anti-abortion activist accused of stalking an abortion provider including approaching him at an Omaha airport and telling him, “You deserve to be blown away.”

Extracts from the court filing and more references to Bataillon’s history here:

The trial court judge, Peter Bataillon, went against her at every turn, deciding that even though her biological parents had relinquished their parental rights, she still required a foster parent’s consent under the law; that the “victim of abuse” exception to the consent requirement only applied to abuse by one’s current parents, and not to the abuse she had suffered from her biological parents; and that she was insufficiently mature to make this decision without their consent.

Today’s 5-2 decision affirmed Judge Bataillon’s decisions on the facts and law, with much deference to his evaluation of this young woman’s maturity:

   In evaluating her maturity, a trial court “‘may draw inferences from the minor’s composure, analytic ability, appearance, thoughtfulness, tone of voice, expressions, and her ability to articulate her reasoning and conclusions.’” The latter items are matters that we cannot discern from the cold record before us and are another reason why we elect to give weight to the fact that the trial judge heard and observed petitioner in finding her not to be mature and well informed.

Below the fold, why Judge Bataillon really can’t be trusted to protect women’s rights to make their own health care decisions. You’ll be appalled.

The girl’s attorney testified to the court that Bataillon should have been recused, but the SC refused to address that point.

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

Kamila Shamsie talks to Malala for the Guardian.

Learning from her parents is something Malala knows a great deal about. Her mother was never formally educated and an awareness of the constraints this placed on her life have made her a great supporter of Malala and her father in their campaign against the Taliban’s attempts to stop female education. One of the more moving details in I Am Malala, the memoir Malala has written with the journalist Christina Lamb, is that her mother was due to start learning to read and write on the day Malala was shot – 9 October 2012. When I suggest that Malala’s campaign for female education may have played a role in encouraging her mother, she says: “That might be.” But she is much happier giving credit to her mother’s determined character, and the example provided by her father, Ziauddin, who long ago set up a school where girls could study as well as boys, in a part of the world where the gender gap in education is vast.

She misses Swat though. Birmingham is not as beautiful as Swat.

Perhaps meditating on the value of peace and mercy is an entirely sane way of coping with bullets and invective. But, all the same, it must hurt to find yourself reviled – and not only by the Taliban. In her book she writes of how her speech at the UN received plaudits around the world, but in Pakistan people accused her of seeking fame and the luxury of a life abroad. When I ask her about this, it is one of the only times in the conversation that she turns to Urdu to express herself: “Dukh to insaan ko hota hai jab daikhta hai kay uss ka bhai uss kay khilaf hai.” (“Naturally it’s hurtful when you see your brothers turn against you.”) Her voice is pained, but she quickly switches to English and the more philosophical tone emerges again. “Pakistanis can’t trust,” she says. “They’ve seen in history that people, particularly politicians, are corrupt. And they’re misguided by people in the name of Islam. They’re told: ‘Malala is not a Muslim, she’s not in purdah, she’s working for America.’ They say maybe she’s with the CIA or ISI [Pakistan's intelligence service]. It’s fine; they say it about every politician too, and I want to become a politician.”

I hope she does become a politician, and survives and prospers.

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

Amanda Marcotte reminds us what popes and bishops really care about.

Remember Pope Francis said some pretty stuff about how Catholic authorities need to be less obsessed with their attempts to control human sexuality and more interested in helping the poor, and how a bunch of liberals who are grading the pope on a massive curve got excited? Remember how meanie atheists said that it doesn’t matter and we can tell you right now that nothing will change?

It turns out we were wrong?

No.

Think Progress reported yesterday that the United Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter urging House Republicans to shut down the government rather than let women use their earned insurance benefits to buy contraception without their employers’ permission. So important is it for the Catholic bishops that your employer get veto power over how you spend compensation you paid for with your labor that they are now openly ranking it over….feeding babies.

That’s because keeping women down is the most important thing.

The government shutdown means that WIC is going to run out of money to feed infants. (At first, it was assumed they would only have enough to last a day, but they’re funded through the rest of the month, something the bishops could not have known when they sent the letter.) More than half of babies born in the U.S. get some of their nutrition through WIC.

God will provide. God will feed all those babies, but women getting contraception, that has to be stopped, by bishops.

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