Alex Gabriel alerted me to a gem: an EU promotional video to get girls interested in science.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZtMmt5rC6g

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

The Southern Baptist Convention…

A day after electing their first African-American president, Southern Baptists on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution opposing the idea that gay rights are the same as civil rights.

The resolution adopted at the denomination’s annual meeting in New Orleans affirms Southern Baptists’ beliefs that marriage is “the exclusive union of one man and one woman” and that “all sexual behavior outside of marriage is sinful.”

Oh give it up, baps. Drop it along with the “Southern.” Just let it go, you’ll feel better.

It’s sex. Do you take sneezing to be sinful? Eating? Scratching?

Give up “sinful” while you’re at it. You’ll be amazed at how much better you get along. You’ll know better than to bully people on buses, and you won’t try to take people’s rights away.

“We deny that the effort to legalize ‘same-sex marriage’ qualifies as a civil rights issue since homosexuality does not qualify as a class meriting special protections, like race and gender,” the resolution says.

Because they say so. It was good enough for Moses, so it ought to be good enough for us.

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

Now this is bullying. A 68-year-old woman driving who’s a monitor on a school bus was taunted by four teenage boys.

ABC News says that despite the relentless taunting from the group of boys about her weight and physical condition obviously bothering her, 68-year-old Karen Klein will not leave position as a school bus monitor.

In the video, shot on a school bus in Greece, N.Y., four teens repeatedly call Klein fat, make fun of her hearing aid and, and one point, call her “dumb, poor and sweaty.”

I haven’t looked at the video and I’m not going to. I can’t stand that kind of thing – and I mean literally can’t stand; I’m going all scrunched inside just thinking about it. I’ve told you the story about that time I was on a bus…

…well I say “you” but it’s not the same “you” over time, so I’ll just tell it again. I was on a bus and a woman got off and then a teenage boy in the back got up and rushed to the door to call after her – and I felt faintly pleased, thinking he was going to tell her she’d forgotten her sweater or something helpful like that – to call after her, “Miss? Miss? Lay off the doughnuts!” Some other asshole laughed. It was well over ten years ago but it’s scorched into my memory.

That’s bullying. Humiliating people because they’re fat, ugly, old, brown, black, poor, sweaty, wearing a hearing aid, spotty, shabby, foreign – that is bullying.

You browse #bullies at Twitter and you see a lot about Karen Klein and a lot about school kids…and some guy ranting about “FTB.”

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

I’m as bored with the subject as you are now, but there were some questions outstanding and I can answer some of them now, so I’ll do that.

To put the conclusion first: I think the threats weren’t really threats. They were advice about my safety at TAM, but they were so over the top that they read more like veiled threats than like advice. But I now think they weren’t.

Jason checked out the headers for me on Tuesday, and found nothing sinister. Tim Farley, with my permission, investigated further yesterday and today. Tim did useful investigating of Dennis Markuze last year, so I was very glad to have his help. He phoned the guy who sent me the “advice” this morning, and what he told me was enough.

But I’ll show you the substance of the emails, so that you can see for yourselves. The sender told me to feel free to share anything from them when he first sent them. I’m not going to give any personal details about him.

The relevant part of the first one:

Please honor (and that word is chosen sincerely) your commitment to TAM by appearing there for your scheduled talk.

I share your concern that for you, things will not simply be as bad as they ever were for a female at any previous TAM, but may even//will likely be worse now that you are somehow associated with those who are said to “have it in for TAM.”

BUT, if you attend, Ophelia plan seriously, and seriously plan, for your own safety. That is, forget any philosophical nuances between “safe places,” “feeling safe,” and places that may be “unsafe.” Ophelia, please plan to actually BE safe wherever and whenever you are at TAM.

(a) Please plan to take a “secret” hotel room far away from the TAM venue, without giving up your assigned TAM room. Insist that JREF reimburse you for that room, and that JREF *not* know, during TAM, the whereabouts of that secret hotel room. In addition, take, for the week, a cell phone with a number hitherto unassociated with you.

(b) Please don’t show up at TAM one second before you must be on stage.

(c) Don’t stay at TAM one second after you have finished your talk and left the stage.

(d) INSIST that you have access to a secure “Green Room” immediately before your talk, and that you have access to that secure “Green Room immediately after your talk, while you await your escape taxi. (This is, Ophelia, nothing more than a star performer would expect, and you are certainly a star performer for JREF!) If JREF cannot accommodate you in this respect, then PLEASE decline, even at this last minute, to attend TAM. Then blog about it.

Ophelia: It is absolutely none of my business except to have one of my favorite bloggers continue blogging and one of my favorite callers of bullshit continue to call bullshit, but things have changed since you agreed back in the early spring to speak at TAM. You now know that you, and only you, will be responsible for your own safety at TAM and for your own sense of safety. You cannot count on JREF and/or on DJ Grothe and/or (unfortunately) on James Randi … to give you any comfort, or any reassurance, or any protection, or any hearing, fair or otherwise, or any redress (or even any address!) if anything untoward happens. Any of these (comfort…address) MAY be proferred, but you cannot count on any of them!

Ophelia, Schroedinger’s rapists are real and they inhabit spaces other than elevators. You, especially you, have no RATIONAL reason to feel safe anywhere at TAM or anywhere in TAM’s conventional hotel. In light of the past two or three weeks, you, of all persons, have every reason *not* to feel safe. Go into TAM space seldom, go there sparsely, and when you do go there, Ophelia, go with the utmost caution.

But go. If you get the minimalist security you need, the security I’ve adumbrated above, then go to TAM. Go because you promised to do so. Go because you can deal with assholes, because you can deal with misogyny, because you can deal with cluelessness. I know all of this is true because I’ve seen you do it over and over again, and I’ve seen you do it extraordinarily well.

Go, above all, because you have something to say — something important to say to the TAM audience — something that might wake up Randi — something that might finally get through to D.J. Grothe. But above all, go because you have something to say that almost certainly will both instruct and inspire those who have come to hear you.

I thought that was way over the top. Kind, in many ways (and I feel mean revealing it, but I think I kind of have to), but way way way over the top. I was dreading TAM because I did think it likely that I would get very overt in-my-face hostility, but that’s all.

I replied to that effect:

I really don’t think things will be as bad as that. I’ll have some friends there. I think it could be extremely awkward at times, and I’m dreading that, but I don’t think I’ll be torn limb from limb or anything. PZ went to the GAC and we know there were people there who hate him, but nothing happened.

The second message was the one that made me get nervous, and ask others what they thought.

Ophelia, it really, really, really may well be “as bad as” all that. This stuff has gotten nasty in the past several weeks, including a message today or yesterday about “we don’t want you (Ophelia) at TAM.” The past several weeks’ nastiness changes the equation IMHO, from when you agreed to be there.

Please consider, at least, staying at a non-conference hotel and going back and forth in taxis or limos.

I’m happy that PZ was not shot (gun or uppants camera) at GAC, but that gives me scant reassurance that you will *not* be shot either way in Las Vegas.

Please do not respond to this message. If you adopt safety measures, whether I’ve suggested them or not. DO NOT TELL ANYONE, including me.

The last two paragraphs, especially.

It just creeped me out. I went back and forth for a few hours, and then I decided I just couldn’t stand it any more. That’s all.

So that’s it. No, I’m not going to report it to the cops. No, I don’t think I over-reacted.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a much nicer invitation today (TBA), so my mood is improved beyond all recognition.

The end.

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

There’s a thing I don’t understand. Well there are a lot of those, but one in particular. I saw a re-run on Nova last night of a 2010 episode about telescopes and the universe. (As usual I was multitasking at the time, so I probably missed some technical information.)

They showed us one of the giant telescopes, this one in Arizona; the narrator said dramatically that they open the eight-story doors while we saw the doors opening. We saw lots of images via that telescope and the Hubble and others, while various people explained that they can see to the very edge of the universe.

That’s what I don’t understand. Eight stories tall, that’s all very well, but it doesn’t amount to much when stacked up next to the universe. Hundreds of billions of galaxies, you know, each with hundreds of billions of stars, all howevermany light years apart. Eight stories, one story, sixteen stories – what difference does it make?

I don’t understand how we can make a telescope that can see these distances. That’s all. I accept the brute fact, because I’m obedient that way, but I can’t get my head around it.

It’s fascinating though. Humans, eh?

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

Uganda continues on its terrible course.

Uganda plans to ban 38 non-governmental organisations it accuses of promoting homosexuality, the Minister for Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo has said.

…

The minister says the organisations are receiving foreign support for Uganda’s homosexuals and accused gay people of “recruiting” young children into homosexuality, Reuters reports.

On Monday, police raided a gay rights conference being held at a hotel just outside the capital, Kampala.

Gay activists from around the region were detained for a few hours.

Not recruiting. Not promoting. Demanding equal rights for. There’s a difference.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone in the world understood this?

Feminists don’t “recruit” anyone to be a woman. Feminists don’t “promote” being a woman. We just demand equal rights for women. Mutatis mutandis the same applies to other kinds of people where “kind” is not any kind of crime or harm. Criminals and people who do harm also get to have human rights, but the arguments and campaigns are somewhat different. But when it comes to what people just are, then the basic claim is the same: this particular status or identity or label is not a reason to deny people of that status or identity or label their rights.

It would be nice if everyone got that.

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

This one is on an oldish thread, and I wouldn’t want anyone to miss it, because it’s so…choice. It’s from someone indignant about my thoughts on the Vatican’s attitude to “radical feminist” nuns, so presumably from a devout Catholic, who presumably thinks that he is therefore A Good Person. [Compassion is at the heart of every great religion. - Karen Armstrong]

Here’s devout good Phil’s pious comment:

What a bitter and twisted immoral egotistical imbecile you are. No one wants your obedience, they would prefer your absence, permanently. No doubt you’ve found yourself a comfortable little billet where you can open your big mouth as wide as you like as often as you like with impunity. Bully for you. Lesbian narcissist. Go back to kissing your reflection.

Doncha just love the virtue of good Catholics like that?

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

A couple of good posts on how to not urinate on women.

Dana on How not to handle harassment.

Chris Clarke on Misogyny, the skeptics movement, and grand theft auto.

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

Once in awhile Twitter’s recommendations come in very handy – I didn’t know Sherry Rehman was on Twitter. I didn’t even know she was Pakistan’s ambassador to the US – last I knew she was one of two surviving politicians in Pakistan who favored reforming the blasphemy law, and thus in very serious danger. I’m profoundly glad that she’s now an ambassador and thus less likely to be murdered by one of her own employees the way Salman Tazeer was.

So in reading her Twitter feed I find Foreign Policy’s list of important women on Twitter. I wish it weren’t an afterthought to a list of just important people on Twitter that was nearly 90% men, and I wish it didn’t have a hot pink tweetybird on it, but it’s good to have a list. I’ll be Following some.

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

In a comment at Pharyngula responding to people saying things like

I find it sad that, for want of a better analogy, the terrorists seem to be winning… let’s not kid ourselves, this is a fight for our movement, and we have to be prepared to get your hands dirty if we don’t want this kind of dick head behavior to be associated with it.  Yet all I see is declarations of “oh, I’m not going, because poo-poo heads”… it should be more like “They what!?  Let’s take it to ‘em, troops”

Maureen said:

How dare you come here with so poor a grasp of what has been happening, such a complete blank in your brains?  How dare you suggest that we are failing to change the culture because we are too passive?  Some of us do have enough grasp of what is happening to know that sometimes in this fight the opposite of “passive” is “dead”  –  dead in a ditch like Emmett Till in an earlier struggle because he wasn’t quite passive enough, dead under the King’s horse at Epsom like Emily Davidson, dead like Brandy Martell just last month in Oakland CA but then you probably never heard of her.

Besides, guys, we are not on a martyrdom kick.  We are trying to persuade a bunch of entitled buffoons that the culture is changing, it is going to keep changing and, no, they can’t halt the change.  They can only drag it out a little, make it a little more messy.  To achieve that we have to be focussed and rational.  The delayers and disparagers can afford to be emotional and self-indulgent  –  as they have been of late.

What exactly is it that you want us to do?  All sell our houses and fly to Vegas so that we can wrap James Randi and his beard in Scotch tape?  Yes, that would be assault and you can be sure that by the time we finished the first roll every cop within 20 miles would be on hand to protect him.

People are getting away with behaviour on the ill-mannered to criminal scale because they are getting cover from both the arrogant and the dim.  They are getting encouragement.  They are being cheered on as they heap verbal abuse on those who have already been abused.  They are putting on stunts like the Great Penis Debate in the midst of all this and still claiming that it’s all a big joke.

There are two sets of people here  –  the ones who suggest that with some effort we could improve this, that or the other and the other set who say, “Naw, my grandpappy used to get away with groping all the women in his workplace and I want my share, too.”  Not difficult to see which set you lot jumped into bed with!

Now listen up, children.  I was 70 last week and I have been on to this since I was 12.  In my lifetime and in just one country I have seen changes to the teaching of maths and science, the professions opened to women, the banking system woken up so that it no longer demands a male countersignature, individual taxation for couples, women’s refuges and rape crisis centres, clarification of what rape is and stalking on the books as a criminal offence plus other changes to the law.  And so on and so forth.  And marched and wrote and spoke and supported comrades in the fight.

In the course of that I have met an amazing number of totally impressive people, people I have been so proud to know.  Not a few of them on this very blog where I come for the very clarity of thought, effective communication, depth of commitment and experience which has always proved to be far more effective than any amount of mealy-mouthed wanking.

We are not there yet and sometimes that get a bit frustrating.  Some of us, though, know exactly what we are aiming for and it is still eyes on the prize.

You don’t like that?  Tough!

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

I got email threats about TAM today, so I’m not going.

One less thing to worry about.

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

The popular Pakistani singer Ghazala Javed was shot to death in Peshawar yesterday along with her father.

Police official Imtiaz Khan said the ex-husband was suspected of involvement in the murders.

The singer had fled to Peshawar in 2009 to escape the then Taliban-dominated northwestern district of Swat as the army launched a sweeping offensive.

Ghazala Javed sung in her native Pashto language and released more than two dozen albums that were popular among Pashto speakers in the northwest.

She married businessman Jahangir Khan in 2010, but demanded a divorce after finding out he had another wife and because he tried to ban her from singing, the family said.

Not the Taliban, just a murderous possessive ex-husband.

Same thing.

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

The pope’s consigliere says it’s the devil who’s making things hot for them.

In a rare interview with the Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, accused the media of “intentionally ignoring” the good things the Church does while dwelling on scandals.

Yeah the good things! Like telling people condoms cause Aids! Like trying to stop people using any kind of birth control ever! Like trying to make hospitals promise never to save a woman’s life if it requires an abortion – never ever ever. Like excommunicating anyone who tries to ordain a woman. Like saying no no no no no no women can never be priests because they are women. Good things!

Bertone branded as false the image of the Vatican as a place of intrigue and power struggles, saying: “The truth is that there is an attempt to sow division that comes from the Devil”.

Nothing to do with any faults in the institution itself or its way of thinking about the world – such as claiming that problems are the work of the devil.

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

A few hours after we did the hangout video yesterday, Russell Blackford did a tweet.

I see that DJ Grothe is still Witch of the Week. #bullies

Followed by another.

Freethought Blogs – the haven of bullies, bully-enablers, and witch hunters. I’m sick to death of this. #bullies

Some hours after that, Jeremy Stangroom did one.

…the bullies at FreeThought Blogs run the risk of precipitating a tragedy. Bullying ruins – and sometimes ends – lives. #bullies

So now you know. We (we of Freethought blogs, we who did that video, we whom DJ Grothe accused of turning women away from TAM by discussing harassment issues, we who have been rejecting that accusation, we who have been getting shouted at by raging men on ugly videos) – we are bullies and witch hunters. We run the risk of driving people to suicide.

We are. We do. Really? How? Who is it who is being bullied by us? DJ? Apparently, according to Blackford. But DJ is the president of a big skeptics’ organization, and he has lots of allies. Is he really the powerless one here? And what exactly is it that we’re doing that constitutes bullying? We’ve been disputing what he said about us, certainly – but is that really bullying? I think it isn’t. In fact I think it was DJ who was bullying us. I certainly think it is some of DJ’s partisans who have been bullying us ever since – Emery Emery and Travis Roy, for instance. The people who call us cunts and fucking bitches on Abbie Smith’s blog, for instance.

Blackford knows all about that. He’s never said a word about it that I know of (and believe me, I’ve looked) apart from once saying the Abbie Smith gang should stop it because it’s not helpful to Stef McGraw. I’ve never seen him call it bullying. Not once. It’s been going on for a year, singling out Rebecca Watson, me, and PZ Myers for their most devoted attention.

Stangroom knows all about it too. He has friendly exchanges with some of the Abbie Smith gang. I’ve never seen him say a word about it, either. I’ve seen him say nasty things about “Freethought Blogs” many many many times, but never once anything about Abbie Smith’s blog, where the vilification goes on day in and day out.

So how does this work? What’s the thought process that sees us as bullies and witch hunters (and Talibanesque) while it ignores or even encourages the vicious bile at Abbie Smith’s blog and The Great Penis Debate?

I don’t know. It’s a poser. I don’t get it.

I’ll tell you what though. It makes me feel a little sick to see a couple of men calling a few women witch hunters and bullies when the women have been and are being regularly targeted by genuine misogynist bullies. It’s like a couple of white people calling a few black people who are being targeted by racist bullies “KKK” and “racist.” It’s fucked up. It’s backward. It’s appropriating words that are meaningful to a particular liberation struggle and using them to beat up on the very people doing the struggling.

Greg tried to get some light shed on this matter, but he was told to fuck off.

#bullies indeed. What a joke.

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

A pony, a pony, a pony!

The whole set is at Jason’s – Greta, Natalie, Sikivu, Rebecca, Taslima, Jen, Stephanie – The Horsewomen of the Feminist Apocalypse. Yesssss!

The artist is embertine.

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

I mentioned yesterday that a Karachi police station was being attacked by a mob who wanted to kill a guy who’d been arrested for blasphemy. It was eyewitness news on Twitter, not published news. Now there is published news.

A police station in central part of the city was attacked by an angry mob on Sunday that tried to break into the lockups to kill a blasphemy accused.

The Taimuria Police Station in North Nazimabad became a warzone when it arrested and booked a man under section 295(b) on accusation of desecrating a copy of Holy Quran.

…

“Then slowly people started gathering outside and it turned into a crowd. The screaming mob was demanding of us to hand over the accused to them.”

Police claim to have recovered some drugs from his possession as well. As police resisted, the mob turned violent and barged into the police station, breaking furniture and beating at least one policeman.

Another step down the spiral.

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

Greg has an interesting followup comment on his claim about how intentional it all is.

I am not suggesting that people sat down in a board meeting and made a plan and DJ Grothe is carrying it out.

I am suggesting that a male dominated society within a society (JREF/TAM within Western Culture) is blind to certain things, and has certain self-serving expectations, and smooth sailing is defined when those expectation are not interfered with by, well, by “Feminist Bitches.”  Are there no conversations happening amongst (there’s that word again) JREF financiers, board members, DJ, others? Are there no emails distributed among any of the various mainly male defenders of DJ Grothe in social networking circles that say anything about anything?  Is there no background discussion going on at all?  Of course there are.  How organized is all that? Doesn’t matter. What matters is that an important part of the culture of the skeptical movement is being threatened and JREF is one of the pillars of that culture.  JREF, TAM and DJ Grothe do not need to defend the status quo, and they shouldn’t. Yet they are.  After a while, that ceases, all due respect to my colleague Crommie, to be attributable to incompetence.

Agreed. I don’t think it was a plan, but yes I do think it emerged from a particular culture (and is getting cheered on by that culture now).

I said this at Greg’s:

I think a lot of it is just dislike and contempt, simmering in those background discussions you mentioned. I think DJ blurted some of that out…maybe thinking that it was an “everybody thinks” kind of thing, because of the background discussions – and lots of people do think, so he wasn’t all wrong. I suppose he expected us all just to go “ouch” and creep away to the corner and stop bugging everyone until maybe late July or so. I don’t think he expected the conversation to go the way it has. But the idea that we’re (we pesky women, we feminist bitches, to use Rebecca’s term) threatening the Normal skeptical movement – yes, I think that.

I’ll say more here.

It’s like other male enclaves, or places that men think are male enclaves.

They think we’re going to make it all boring, and weak, and puritanical (or Talibanesque, however bizarre that might seem for feminists), and unfunny, and sexless, and schoolteacherish. They think it’s bean sprouts and Birkenstocks and puzzled frowns and homemade toothpaste.

They think they have a monopoly on all the good things – jokes, irony, sex, energy, noise, sex, color, hippitude, argument, sex.

The trouble with that is, The Great Penis Debate. Not funny.

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

I heard a bit of news on the radio late Friday evening that froze me to the spot with surprise -

A British Columbia Supreme Court judge has declared Canada’s laws against physician-assisted suicide unconstitutional because they discriminate against the physically disabled.

I thought immediately of Eric. I very nearly got back online to email him (but went to sleep instead).

In a 395-page ruling released Friday, Justice Lynn Smith addressed the situation faced by Gloria Taylor, a B.C. woman who was one of five plaintiffs in the case seeking the legal right to doctor-assisted suicide.

Taylor has ALS, a fatal neurodegenerative disease, and she sought the ruling to allow her doctor to help her end her life before she becomes incapacitated.

Because that’s the terrible fear with diseases like ALS and MS (which Eric’s wife Elisabeth had): the fear of being so incapacitated that you can’t kill yourself when you desperately want to because you’re so incapacitated.

In her ruling, Smith noted suicide itself is not illegal, and therefore the law against assisted suicide contravenes Section 15 of the charter, which guarantees equality, because it denies physically disabled people like Taylor the same rights as able-bodied people who can take their own lives, she ruled.

“The impact of that distinction is felt particularly acutely by persons such as Ms. Taylor, who are grievously and irremediably ill, physically disabled or soon to become so, mentally competent and who wish to have some control over their circumstances at the end of their lives,” Smith writes.

“The distinction is discriminatory … because it perpetuates disadvantage.”

I was staggered by that; it’s such good sense, and I thought I would never hear it.

I want to read the full decision. Legal rulings can be wonderful reading, and I’m told this one is.

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

Here’s what I was doing for the last couple of hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi_OsT7frPg

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