Prepare to turn pale with horror, then scarlet with rage. Prepare also to send a message to the Texas Attorney General.

A court in Texas just exonerated a man who shot and killed a woman who had refused to have sex with him. She’s dead, and he will serve no time at all.

Here’s what happened: Ezekiel Gilbert shot and killed a Craigslist escort after she left without having sex with him. His lawyer argued that since he had paid her $150 for the evening, he was justified under Texas law in shooting her because state law allows people “to use deadly force to recover property during a nighttime theft.”

It’s legal in Texas to kill a woman for refusing to have sex?

Are you serious?

For that matter, it’s legal in Texas to kill someone for stealing $150? Provided it happens at night?

What is wrong with them?

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

I’m much more optimistic about the Dublin conference now* – and thus able to be excited about it again. It’s going to tackle important subjects, and Ireland needs it. Lucky lucky me to get to be involved.

There’s a bit of privilege for you.

The clouds really are parting here, the band of blue really is bright, the colorful sails on the many sailboats on the Sound are festive.

*Because there’s been some communication.

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

I’m still thinking about “privilege” and its discontents. It interestes me, for several reasons, not just the ones that have to do with Ron’s talk at Women in Secularism 2 and the disagreements and battles that ensued.

Sometimes (often in fact) people hear things that aren’t intended in the use of any particular claim or word or phrase. Words and phrases can be used in many ways, some of them less reasonable than others.

Is that enough platitudes to get us started?

I do have a point. I’m thinking that one thing people who bristle at the word “privilege” hear is an added “unearned” in front of it. That can be massively annoying if one has in fact earned the privilege in question (or the privilege one thinks is in question even though in fact it isn’t).

Maybe you can see where I’m heading.

Often these discussions happen between men who have some power and influence and women who have much less. The tricky part there is that usually the men have the power and influence because they’ve earned them. Not always, and even less always all of it – the more power and influence you get, the more you can leverage it to get more and to squelch people who are trying to compete with you, sometimes in illegitimate ways. But apart from inherited “nobility” and people born rich and the like, usually power and influence (and piles of cash) have been earned at least to some extent. In some cases they’ve been earned with real talent and effort.

The word “privilege” can sound to such people like a denial of the earning. Sometimes it even is that.

That’s got to be annoying. You know? “Yes, I’m Mr Big, but I’m Mr Big because I’ve written ten critically-acclaimed best-sellers about science and atheism. Is that a bad thing? And by the way I’m not preventing you from trying to do the same thing. Go ahead!”

So that’s one item. I’d say more but I have an appointment, so later.

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

Some Alabama pastors say they don’t want any pesky Boy Scout troops meeting in their churches now that the organization has gone all queer.

The Rev. Mike Shaw, of the First Baptist Church of Pelham and former president of the Alabama Baptist Convention, says his church will no longer sponsor Troop 404 after the policy takes place next year.

“We’re not doing it out of hatred. The teachings of the scripture are very clear on this. We’re doing it because it violates the clear teaching of scripture,” Shaw told the Birmingham News.

And obviously a three thousand year old book is right about everything, and its “clear teaching” must be obeyed, and never mind what actual thinking about the issue might come up with instead.

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

The hacker known as KYAnonymous went after the rapists in the Steubenville case:

he obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about the incident and belittled the victim.

The FBI busted him, and if he’s convicted he could get a lot more time than the rapists did.

He’d read about the Steubenville rape in the New York Times, but didn’t get involved until receiving a message on Twitter from Michelle McKee, a friend of an Ohio blogger who’d written about the case. (You can read about her story here.) McKee gave Lostutter the players’ tweets and Instagram photos, which he then decided to publicize because, as he put it, “I was always raised to stick up for people who are getting bullied.”

Oh, she wasn’t getting bullied. That was just dissent and disagreement. She needs to get a thicker skin. She needs to ignore the trolls.

At first, he thought the FBI agent at the door was with FedEx. “As I open the door to greet the driver, approximately 12 FBI SWAT team agents jumped out of the truck, screaming for me to ‘Get the fuck down!’ with M-16 assault rifles and full riot gear, armed, safety off, pointed directly at my head,” Lostutter wrote today on his blog. “I was handcuffed and detained outside while they cleared my house.”

Because hackers are notoriously violent.

Lostutter believes that the FBI investigation was motivated by local officials in Steubenville. “They want to make an example of me, saying, ‘You don’t fucking come after us. Don’t question us.”

If convicted of hacking-related crimes, Lostutter could face up to 10 years behind bars—far more than the one- and two-year sentences doled out to the Steubenville rapists. Defending himself could end up costing a fortune—he’s soliciting donations here. Still, he thinks getting involved was worth it. “I’d do it again,” he says.

Ten years for hacking, one or two years for rape with aggravated Twitter. Something amiss here.

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

Maureen Brian at Pharyngula, on PZ’s post about the limits to any perceived right to anonymity on the internet. She addresses a couple of commenters.

You both seem to be to be ignorant of or deliberately ignoring a key aspect of how we human beings work.

Plead innocence and confusion all you want but it is a factor which the bullies and harassers know well and exploit to the full.  Bullying and harassment work by the cumulative effects of abuse, lies, threats over time.  We may appear to brush off an individual incident but that does not mean we are unaffected or that we recover instantly from the hurt.  Bullies know and exploit this, keeping up the pressure and even working as a team so that their target never, ever recovers and can then be “teased” by which I mean abused for being over-sensitive / making it up / having no evidence.  (Sock-puppeting is just a pretend version of working as a team in the hope you won’t be spotted quite so quickly.)

This is why it is so hard to get, say, the police to take matters seriously  –  they look at a series of discrete acts no one of which is absolutely outrageous and fail to spot the cumulative effect.

This is the psychological equivalent of the old death by a thousand cuts and it’s time that all the “yes, but” brigade recognised that and stopped pretending not to understand.

It’s cumulative all right. Trust me on that.

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

From Jason’s megapost on privilege and strawprivilege.

Our minds are notoriously buggy machines, being made of meat and all. We’ve evolved toward certain biases in daily living, one of the biggest of which is that we can filter out things as white noise. Normally this is a huge advantage — there is so much going on all the time that we would be immobilized by trying to process it all, since our brains — fast though they are — are pitifully underpowered. Evolution came up with the trick of being able to ignore certain inputs as unnecessary. Thus, you stop hearing rain on your window after laying in bed for a while. Thus, you stop noticing every tiny irrelevant movement on your periphery while driving down the road, focusing only on that which presents an immediate danger to you. You ignore the flock of birds flying overhead, the cloud that looks like a bunny, while you get on with your business of avoiding the child that just chased a ball into the street.

Privilege is interpreted as white noise. You don’t see the smooth, clean road as a piece of information you need to interpret while you’re driving it — you notice the potholes and obstacles, though. You filter out the clean smooth road. You sink into a daily routine and don’t notice all the ways in which you have it better than the next person, until that next person starts itemizing them.

It surprises me a little that this is even contentious. Isn’t everybody familiar with the way you don’t notice something and then once it’s drawn to your attention you do, and you wonder how you missed it for so long? Also with the way you don’t know things and then when you learn some of them, that changes the way you understand a lot of things? Doesn’t it happen all the time?

The funny thing about privilege is, it’s not rational, at least not any more than it is conscious. It’s a blind spot. It’s your inability to recognize the scope and depth of a problem because it is a cognitive bias.

In sociology (which is, in fact, a science, like it or not!), the term privilege has remarkable descriptive power with regard to the power dynamics we experience, because the term is in fact, definitionally, one pole on those power dynamics (the opposite being “underprivilege”). So when someone says, for instance, “check your privilege”, they mean to check your blind spot. They mean that you should be aware that you may not be equipped to recognize the scope and depth of a problem because of the cognitive biases that keep you from seeing the problem to begin with.

It’s a blind spot. Like the one just over your shoulder when you’re driving. It’s not an insult or an attack, it’s just a blind spot. You can turn your head and look.

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

Tunisia is considered one of the more secular states in the region. And yet -

Thirty-year-old Tunisian blogger and secular activist Lina Ben Mhenni is concerned about death threats posted on her Facebook page and sent to her mobile phone.

“You see this message is in Arabic, it reads: ‘You infidel, we will kill you.’”

Pointing to another message, she says: “And this is just as clear: ‘We will find you.’”

If there’s anything that’s not secular, it’s the concept of being an “infidel.”

But many of the country’s more radical religious groups do not like people like Ms Ben Mhenni pushing to keep post-revolution Tunisia liberal and secular.

“This is not Tunisia it used to be,” she laments

“Radical Islamists are flourishing in the new Tunisia. They are a minority but have become very vocal.”

Ms Ben Mhenni says those who disagree with her do not limit their criticism to Facebook or texts.

“I have often been harassed by hardliners on the streets physically and verbally.”

Well she’s an infidel.

Ms Ben Mhenni showed me a recent YouTube video of a leader in the hardline Ansar al-Sharia group – which supports the introduction of Islamic law – attacking her on Tunisian TV.

“His statements are misleading really and taken out context to frame me,” said Ms Ben Mhenni, who teaches linguistics at Tunis University.

But she’s an infidel. That’s what one does to infidels.

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

Continuing in the poetic vein – the Cuttlefish has a great one.

I love to start fires; it’s just what I do—

I’ve started them all over town—

But recently, folks have begun to complain,

And they’re working on shutting me down.

I’m just having fun, but they say that it’s wrong;

I’m a danger, or that’s what they say.

I want lots of fires; they’re screaming for none:

Why can’t they just meet me half way?

Read the whole thing.

The analogy speaks to me, because about 20 years ago there was a bad arsonist at work in North Seattle, where I lived at the time. His fires were frequently very close to my neighborhood. Worse, my place had a lot of the features shared by places he struck, and he did his thing in the middle of the night. He scared me. His fires killed at least three people.

I don’t like arsonists.

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

Mona posted a sonnet poem on my Facebook page.

You have no enemies, you say?
Alas, my friend, the boast is poor,
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes. If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never set the wrong to right.
You’ve been a coward in the fight.

– Charles Mackay (26 March 1812 – 24 December 1889), author of a history of popular folly, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”

It’s very appealing, but I have an inner daimon or teaser or pest or red flag or something, that won’t let me accept the compliment, much as I’d like to.

Why? Well because it works in one direction but not the other. Yes if you’ve never ever pissed off a single person, you probably haven’t done much righting of wrongs. But that doesn’t mean that the more people you’ve pissed off, the more righting of wrongs you’ve done.

Think Galileo. Yes, people thought Galileo was wrong. That doesn’t mean that just because people think you are wrong, you are therefore right.

Think Bill Gates. Yes, there must have been people who thought he was daft to drop out of Harvard. That doesn’t mean that everyone who drops out of college will become another Bill Gates.

I frequently piss people off by being an asshole. Sometimes, I think, I’m an asshole but still right about whatever it is I’m being an asshole about. But not always, and I don’t necessarily have to be an asshole about it. Sometimes one has to be an asshole, but not always. Sometimes I’m an asshole and wrong besides.

(But then there’s the whole thing about different standards for asshole status depending on whether you’re a woman or a man. That complicates things.)

Having said all that, I certainly enjoy getting flattering sonnets on my Facebook page!

Probably because I’m an asshole.

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

In better news – althought it’s better news we shouldn’t have needed in the first place – the Obama admin has lost its more-Republican-than-thou battle to delay a ruling that makes emergency contraceptives available to women and girls of all ages.

Three judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit did grant the White House its requested delay to keep one-pill products, like Plan B One-Step, restricted to females 15 and over. The court will not, however, allow any age restrictions on other two-pill emergency contraceptive products.

Well good. Thank you for small favors.

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

Jessica Valenti is not a fan of “don’t feed the trolls.”

Don’t feed the trolls: it’s probably the most common refrain in online  discussions, especially when dealing with misogynists in feminists conversations. The idea is that the best way to deal with sexists is to starve of them of the attention they’re so clearly desperate for. Besides, we think, why sink to their level?

But the high road is overrated. It requires silence in the face of violent misogyny, and a turn-the-other cheek mentality that society has long demanded of women. A vibrant feminist movement has ensured women don’t take injustices  lying down offline—so why would we acquiesce on the Internet?

Because it’s trivial. It’s just messing around. It doesn’t matter. It’s not as if it’s like racism or anything.

When I started Feministing in 2004, the  hate mail started to pour in right away. At first it felt easier to ignore the  haters, but it was incredibly difficult to write about feminist issues every day without acknowledging the awful backlash we were experiencing behind-the-scenes.  So we created a series of posts called “Anti-Feminist Mailbag”—we published our  hate mail, mocking the often mystifyingly stupid prose. (“Why do you have to be  for abortion to be for women’s rights? How can it be a part of your body if it  is a male?”) It was a way to take back power through humor, while revealing just  how much hate is still directed at women who speak their mind.

It was also a way to demand accountability in a space that’s often dominated  by hate speech made anonymously. If someone was thoughtless enough to message us  from a easily-tracked e-mail address, we outed them. One lucky young man who  called me a “stupid cunt” turned  out to be the public relations officer for his college republican group.  Good times ensued.

Omigod! Doxxing!! They doxxed people!!! People who all they did was send hate mail. Somebody send an Open Letter to someone! Better yet, lots of people send lots of them. Plus a petition. With Jessica F. Valenti among the signatures. LOLZ

For Lindy West, staff writer  at Jezebel, engaging with hateful detractors is not just important as a way to  bring attention to misogyny—“A lot of those attitudes are poisoning our culture,  and it’s too easy to write them off as some fringe opinion,” she says—but also  because it can be cathartic. Recently, West has been taking on sexists on  Twitter over rape  jokes and their cultural consequences. “If talking back to some random idiot  makes me feel better—if it’s fortifying for my mental health—then I don’t care  if I give some dumbass with thirteen followers the flash-in-the-pan attention  he’s been craving.”

“I’m in this for the long haul. It’s not a game to me. I’ve been lucky enough  in my career to get to the point where I can talk about things and people  listen. And now that I’m here I have an obligation to keep going, and, by  extension, to do whatever I need to do to keep my brain intact,” she says.

For me, sometimes, it takes a whole roll of duct tape.

The downside of engaging with sexists is that in an online culture where common  knowledge says ignore trolls, speaking out becomes “asking for it.” You don’t  get a ton of sympathy for egging on assholes. While ignoring haters can  sometimes be the best move, putting the onus on women to stay silent is not. So  though I still believe in picking your battles, I’ll continue to get down in the  muck with misogynists from time to time—because the low road needs feminism too.

Putting the onus on women to stay silent is not the best move. No it is not.

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

Lindy West gets a torrent of abuse for…the horrible crime of arguing that

comedy’s current permissiveness around cavalier, cruel, victim-targeting rape jokes contributes to (that’s contributes—not causes) a culture of young men who don’t understand what it means to take this stuff seriously.

What kind of abuse? Silly. You know what kind. She screencapped a slew of it. Ugly, nobody wants to rape you, cunt, fat, panties in a bunch. That kind.

Take a look. You’ll recognize one or two of the fun-loving abusers.

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

It gets crazier every day. You would think it couldn’t, but it does.

The new thing is to send open or closed letters to Michael Nugent, telling him a pack of lies about me (mixed with a small amount of truth) and demanding that he take a stand and denounce me.

The first was the work of Tim Skellett aka Gurdur, who took a violent dislike to me years ago – something to do with the closing down of the forum at the Dawkins Foundation, and my having the wrong attitude to it – and has occasionally posted nasty stuff about me ever since. His open letter is all about my criminal act of not sufficiently protecting the secrecy of people who drop in on my blog to harass or taunt me. He adds the story of Katie Graham and her tweet, and on that subject he tells the biggest lies in the whole post. Even Graham, who detests me, said the account is totally inaccurate and that I didn’t do anything wrong. It’s too bad she said it only on her blog (which she says no one reads) and not at the places where the inaccurate accounts are, but at least she said it.

So hey, this is a fun game, right? So others are joining in.

@Gurdur I'm going to scrap rewrite of my comment, and instead write something much longer re Benson/Zvan directly to AI/Nugent.

June 2, 2013 3:23 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Metaphoenix42

Metaphoenix42

@Metaphoenix42 @Gurdur As will I. Posting on his site or e-mail?

June 2, 2013 3:24 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SubManUSN

SubMan USN

@Gurdur A letter to @micknugenthttp://t.co/SdCfGq3Z01

June 2, 2013 4:07 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@SubManUSN

SubMan USN

“Sub man” posted his on his blog.

The blogs, as you know allow the author some revealing information merely by the person “logging in”. IP address, e-mail address, etc. How can women feel safe in voicing their opinion? Indeed, how can any of us who might suffer real life repercussions from having our atheism revealed to our bosses, clients, and social circles?

I hope you read that blog post as I (and many others) did, as the Nuremberg Race Law of 1935. It is the first step in declaring open war on those who do not walk in lockstep with the dogma. There will be casualties on both “sides” if this type of behavior is not met with harsh reprimands from conference organizers and leaders in the atheist community. You know the mood of this rift, both entrenched sides will declare ever more trivial “offenses” worthy of doxxing.

I am asking you, as a leader of a humanist organization to make a public stand denouncing this linked blog post and the consequences that any rational person can see for this type of threatening of and actual release of information which could cause real world harm to real world people on both “sides” of this rift.

Is this the type of “community” you want to be involved with? Please make a stand, sir.

Yours truly,

Submariner

And Michael Nugent tells them he will respond.

@SubManUSN @Gurdur I am aware of the recent online open letters to me, and I will be replying to them.

June 3, 2013 9:31 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@micknugent

Michael Nugent

So Nugent will respond, and no doubt he will “make a stand” and agree with Sub Man that my blog post about “Skep tickle” is like the Nuremberg Race Law of 1935. Either he will disinvite me from the conference, or I will be forced to withdraw, because the slime pit will do whatever it takes to hound me out.

Stephanie has some reflections on the slime pit. She includes a comment that represents their obsessive horror and disgust at my ancient dried-up genitalia.

Had Ophelia gone to the pit to check out the weirdness showing up in her comments, this is what she’d have seen:

Regarding Skep Tickle, I am too dense/do not read enough to have seen the alleged subtle outing of you already, but FUCK YEAH. EXPOSE THAT DRIED UP VAGINA TO THE WINDS OF TRUTH, AND WATCH THEM SCOUR AWAY THE DUST OF AGES.

Ahem. Or something.

I found a different one a few hours ago, when I looked for a sample to send to the president of Seattle Atheists, who had been pestering me about “Skep tickle.” It was on the page where “Skep tickle” incited them to rage by reporting my putative “doxxing.” She incited them all right.

Re: Jim the Pleb Made Me Do It

by Lsuoma » Mon May 27, 2013 9:12 pm • [Post 25431]

Skep tickle wrote:Okay, so let’s just say that Ophelia Benson emails me at an email address* that isn’t the one under which I posted at her site, one which I haven’t used it at FtB in many months (if not a year or so), and in that email addresses me by my professional title & last name, chastising me for my post(s) at her site today.

If that happened, would it be fair game for me to post the content of that email here? (With her email address, and mine, redacted. But without having sought, or gained, her permission to post it.)

*It’s also not the email address I use for communication about the Nugent site…but it IS the email I use for the Slyme pit. Hmmm…

Zebra tits, I could tell by her responses today – including the use of your first name – that she’s aching to out you. She’s going to almost moisten her panties as soon as she can post any pointer to your identity online or offline.

As soon as you do what you’re suggesting, the floosh from her vajayjay will be like a fricking tsunami of dust, so wear a mask, and also be prepared for ALL your details to be <*>accidentally<*> leaked to the webz.

But this is a place where you can post what you want…

That’s where “Skep tickle” feels at home.

So what’s next? They’ll report me to the FBI? Interpol? The ICC? The UN Human Rights Commission?

I don’t know. I can’t guess. It will continue to escalate, but I can’t predict how.

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

In Greece the cops are torturing anti-fascist protesters, apparently; at least that’s what the protesters claim.

Fifteen anti-fascist protesters arrested in Athens during a clash with supporters of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have said they were tortured in the Attica General Police Directorate (GADA) – the Athens equivalent of Scotland Yard – and subjected to what their lawyer describes as an Abu Ghraib-style humiliation.

Members of a second group of 25 who were arrested after demonstrating in support of their fellow anti-fascists the next day said they were beaten and made to strip naked and bend over in front of officers and other protesters inside the same police station.

One wonders if the cops are Golden Dawn.

Several of the protesters arrested after the first demonstration on Sunday 30 September told the Guardian they were slapped and hit by a police officer while five or six others watched, were spat on and “used as ashtrays” because they “stank”, and were kept awake all night with torches and lasers being shone in their eyes.

Some said they were burned on the arms with a cigarette lighter, and they said police officers videoed them on their mobile phones and threatened to post the pictures on the internet and give their home addresses to Golden Dawn, which has a track record of political violence.

That is disgusting.

One of the two women among them said the officers used crude sexual insults and pulled her head back by the hair when she tried to avoid being filmed. The protesters said they were denied drinking water and access to lawyers for 19 hours. “We were so thirsty we drank water from the toilets,” she said.

One man with a bleeding head wound and a broken arm that he said had been sustained during his arrest alleged the police continued to beat him in GADA and refused him medical treatment until the next morning. Another said the police forced his legs apart and kicked him in the testicles during the arrest.

“They spat on me and said we would die like our grandfathers in the civil war,” he said.

Quick, somebody call for a chat over a beer. Surely they can just work it out.

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

London again: a protest calling for an end to deportations to Uganda of known lesbians who face death if returned there.

Around 20 protesters from Queer Strike (part of the Global Women’s Strike movement) and the Movement for Justice protested this afternoon against the deportations of gay asylum seekers to countries such as Uganda, where gays are persecuted and even killed.

The protest came months after lesbian Jackie Nanyonjo died following injuries inflicted on her during her forced deportation by thugs contracted to the UKBA in March, and a single day before flights are due to return Linda N on Qatar Airways and Josephine by Royal Air Maroc.

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

Why look who’s there.

More on Facebook.

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

But at least “Beatriz” got a C-section at last.

Health Minister Maria Isabel Rodriguez said the baby had died five hours after the C-section.

Doctors decided the procedure had become necessary when the woman started having contractions on Sunday night, Ms Rodriguez said.

She insisted that the medical intervention did not contravene the court ruling.

Under the ruling, she said, “mother had to be given all the necessary protection to save her life, while analysing how long one could wait and do the utmost to save the baby’s life”.

For no reason since the baby had no brain and would not survive more than a few hours no matter what. One should not have waited one single second.

A medical committee at her maternity hospital, the Ministry of Health and rights groups had supported her request to terminate her pregnancy.

But the Supreme Court argued that the “the rights of the mother cannot take precedence over those of the unborn child or vice versa, and that there is an absolute bar to authorising an abortion” under the Salvadoran constitution.

El Salvador banned all types of abortion in 1999. The sentence for doctors and women violating that ban is 50 years in prison.

50 years.

There’s just no punishment harsh enough for women, is there.

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