From Nirmukta:

Ajita was raised in the city of Coimbatore, India. His passion for science and reason went back to early childhood.

…

Ajita was an active participant in freethought throughout his years in America, forming ties with freethinkers who would become part of Nirmukta’s extended family. Employing his versatile talents, his contributions towards the cause of reason were manifold: as a prolific and edifying writer, as an insightful interviewer, as an adept podcast host, as an energetic community organizer both on-ground and online, and as a welcoming mentor to many freethinkers young and old taking their first steps towards embracing freethought.

In 2008, he started what would later become our organisation known as Nirmukta.

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

What? What’s that?

It’s a fun game in India and Bangladesh: stalking and/or taunting women. It has a funny jokey haha name, so obviously it’s totes harmless, even though some women kill themselves to get away from it (silly bitches) and some people get murdered trying to stop it.

Young women often face verbal abuse and taunts in Bangladesh, and sometimes stalked by colleagues at school or other young men.

Some young women, unable to bear the repeated insults, have even gone so far as to commit suicide.

…

The High Court last week asked the government to take measures to stop sexual harassment and stalking of women after a number of suicides and killings related to the issue in recent weeks.

Activists say more than 24 people, most of them young girls, have died because of bullying and harassment since the beginning of this year.

In recent weeks, some of those who spoke out against sexual harassment have been murdered, causing public outrage.

A 50-year-old woman died after a motorcycle was driven over her when she protested against the bullying of her daughter last week.

A college teacher who spoke against bullying was also murdered. The killings led to a series of protests across the country.

That was November 2010. A year later, in Bombay -

…two men were attacked and killed after they had defended women from harassment outside a restaurant in Mumbai (Bombay).

The public abuse of women – called “Eve teasing” – is rampant in India.

A Facebook campaign calling for justice for the dead youngsters has picked up tens of thousands of followers.

I just joined that group.

…a small group of young people had left a restaurant together in a smart district of Mumbai.

Outside, some of the women in the group were harassed by men standing nearby.

Two of the women’s friends confronted the men, who fled. But shortly later they returned and attacked the pair.

The two men who came to the women’s defence, Keenan Santos and Ruben Fernandes, received injuries so severe that both subsequently died.

Apparently the right to bully and taunt women is so important that it’s worth killing for.

Valerian Santos, the father of one of the two dead youths, said he was proud of his son and urged more men to take a stand against the public harassment of women.

“I have another two boys and I have always maintained that if a woman or someone is in trouble, don’t look at your life – go and help that person,” he said.

“These people, they don’t realise it until it happens to one of their loved ones. Then they will cry for help.”

“Eve teasing” makes life miserable and even dangerous for women who go out in public and who use public transport.

Oh come now, BBC, talk about something important. The mere “teasing” of women can’t possibly be important enough for a serious news article. Get a real job.

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

Of local interest – I’m told that the historian Olivier Zunz has written a very good book on philanthropy. He’ll be at Town Hall January 16 at 7:30.

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

Yet another petition. But it’s a good one. I couldn’t resist (typical woman, eh).

After 4 years of marketing research, LEGO has come to the conclusion that girls want LadyFigs, a pink Barbielicious product line for girls, so 5 year-olds can imagine themselves at the café, lounging at the pool with drinks, brushing their hair in front of a vanity mirror, singing in a club, or shopping with their girlfriends. As LEGO CEO Jorgan Vig Knudstorp puts it, “We want to reach the other 50% of the world’s population.”

That makes my head want to explode, so I signed.

As representatives of that 50%, we aren’t buying it! Marketers, ad execs, Hollywood and just about everyone else in the media are busy these days insisting that girls are not interested in their products unless they’re pink, cute, or romantic. They’ve come to this conclusion even though they’ve refused to market their products to the girls they are so certain will not like them. Who populates commercials for LEGO? Boys! Where in the toy store can you find original, creative, construction-focused LEGO? The boy aisle! So it’s no wonder LEGO’s market research showed girls want pink, already-assembled toys that don’t do anything. It’s the environment and the message marketers have bombarded girls with for over a decade because, of course, stereotypes make marketing products so much easier. But we remember playing with and loving LEGO when we were little girls.

Damn right. Well I didn’t play with LEGO – it hadn’t been invented in the 1890s – but I did play with cowboy paraphernalia, and Lincoln Logs, and an electric train (my older brother’s, to be sure, but there was no need for two of them and I played with it), and trees (by climbing them), and forts (by building them), and all sorts. I also liked making doll houses. I was eclectic. But I sure as hell did not play with anything pink and stupid.

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

And while we’re at it…we might as well be at it, don’t you think?

Silencing.

The purposes of debate.

Have I removed it enough yet?

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

Jesus and Mo today.

If you haven’t already, sign the petish.

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

Josh Rosenau has tweeted and done a post about how stupid I am to think beliefs aren’t a matter of identity*. Well that would be somewhat stupid if I had just stated it like that, but I didn’t. As is typical of Rosenau, he ignored all the qualifying language that would have made it clear that I wasn’t just stating it like that, and quoted 15 words as if they were all I had said.

Rosenau’s version:

beliefs aren’t actually a matter of identity and shouldn’t be treated as if they were.

With his commentary:

This claim seems so obviously false that I can’t really imagine how she could have written it.

The version I actually wrote:

What if there are people whose New Age or “alternative” beliefs feel like commitments and part of their identity?

Well there are such people, and there are also their cousins who are that way about their religious beliefs. So actually articles about whacked beliefs can draw a lot of heat, and can make people feel very outraged.

That’s a kind of category mistake, in my view, because beliefs aren’t actually a matter of identity and shouldn’t be treated as if they were.

That’s one way to make the distinction that Eric asks about, but it won’t be as satisfactory to people who do think of their beliefs as their identity as it may be to us.

Ironically, or something, Rosenau ends the post with a paragraph that says pretty much what I was saying.

What was the point of truncating what I said so drastically, do you suppose? Just a friendly gesture?

*And Chris Stedman agrees with him. Surprise!

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

This is a bad day. Ajita Kamal has died – in “an incident” in Tamil Nadu, which sounds as if he was killed, which seems different from just dying. Anyway he’s gone, which just sucks.

He founded Nirmukta. He was an inspiration to a lot of people.

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

NPR’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty haz a sad about the war on religion in the US.

If you’re looking for evidence that the Obama administration is hostile to faith, conservatives say, the new health care law is Exhibit A. The law requires employers to offer health care plans that cover contraceptives. Churches don’t have to, but religiously affiliated charities, hospitals and colleges do. That doesn’t sit well with the Catholic monks at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina.

“When the government said to them, you’re going to have to fund contraception, sterilization, in violation of your deeply held religious convictions, the monks at Belmont Abbey College knew that they just couldn’t do that,” says attorney Hannah Smith at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

Oh the poor poor poor martyrs. How dare the evil gumbint force their colleges to offer health care plans that cover contraceptives? They have deeply held religious convictions which tell them that they – monks – get to prevent people from separating sex from conception. How evil of the gumbint to interfere with their convictions just because the disgusting secular harlots want contra hissssssssss ception.

Religious conservatives see an escalating war with the Obama White House. One Catholic bishop called it “the most secularist administration in history.” Another bishop says it is an “a-theocracy.” Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., who heads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ new Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, believes the First Amendment is clear: The government cannot make people choose between obeying the law and following their faith.

Oh yes? What if “following their faith” means having sex with children or murdering rebellious daughters?

The piece goes on and on and on in this vein, with a very brief interlude to hear from Rob Boston of Americans United. It’s…tawdry.

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

Eric asked, on the last thread,

When, say, Muslims say that, if we speak of their religion is such and such ways, they simply get angry and can’t see our point, what response do we give? For that’s what so many people have been saying about the new atheism. They’ve been calling it strident and shrill and things like that, and we’ve been accused of writing about religion in ways that simply offend the religious instead of engaging with them. Is there are clear way to make the distinction between the first point about taboo words, and the second about ways of expressing our distaste for, or our criticism of, certain ideas?

I had some related thoughts while these posts were gestating yesterday.

Part one is the thought that any discussion that features claims or assumptions that people of a particular type or group are inherently inferior is not going to remain on the level of reasoned inquiry, at least not if the people in that group are part of the discussion. (That’s one reason ingroups can be so sinister.) Reasoned inquiry is easier when you’re talking about something that doesn’t make you the fool or the loser or the subordinate or the horrible female genitalia. Ben Radford’s article wouldn’t have drawn such heat if it had been about the Loch Ness monster.

Or would it? What if there are people whose New Age or “alternative” beliefs feel like commitments and part of their identity?

Well there are such people, and there are also their cousins who are that way about their religious beliefs. So actually articles about whacked beliefs can draw a lot of heat, and can make people feel very outraged.

That’s a kind of category mistake, in my view, because beliefs aren’t actually a matter of identity and shouldn’t be treated as if they were.

That’s one way to make the distinction that Eric asks about, but it won’t be as satisfactory to people who do think of their beliefs as their identity as it may be to us. Then again, we could always undertake to avoid epithets when discussing their beliefs. Could I do that? Hmm…would I have to abandon the word “woo”? I’m not sure I could manage that.

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

Ron Lindsay wrote a post about freedom of expression and critical inquiry a couple of days ago, prompted mostly by the controversy over Ben Radford’s post (this is getting too meta already – so often the case) about pink toys and sexism.

Ron said:

The cornerstone of our mission is freedom of expression and critical inquiry. We see freedom of expression and critical inquiry as indispensable tools for arriving at an accurate understanding of just about any issue of importance, including, but not limited to, the truth of religious or fringe science claims.

Indeed.

There is a trope out there (this is nothing to do with Ron Lindsay) that goes something like: the “radical feminism” of a subset of atheists is a disgrace in people who claim to value critical inquiry and free thinking.

I think that’s wrong but not obviously wrong – or to put it another way, there’s some truth in that but it can’t and shouldn’t be helped. (Well, I don’t think there’s some truth in the claim that it’s “a disgrace,” but the claim isn’t always made in those terms. I think there’s some truth in the claim that there’s a tension or a difficulty.)

The trouble is, there are two categories in play here: the epistemic and the political. The two are inherently in at least potential conflict…and I don’t think that can be helped; I think all we can do is be aware of the tension, be honest about it, point it out if others seem to be missing it, and the like. I don’t think we can do away with it.

Free inquiry is one kind of thing, and commitment to equality is another.

We keep finding ourselves in slow motion train wrecks because of this fact. Greta posts something uncontroversial about a new podcast by Rebecca Watson on Facebook and promptly gets a slew of hostile comments; she posts about the absurdity of that, and promptly gets more hostile comments. Specifically, she gets comments from a guy who says he is just “disagreeing” with her…

And that’s where the wheels come off. Maybe he is. But given all the background noise, that claim can be hard to believe at this point – and that’s a distortion. It’s a kind of bias. But that doesn’t make it false! Weird, isn’t it. Both can be true: we (we feminist atheists) are acting like trigger-happy paranoiacs, and the people who claim to be just “disagreeing” are actually expressing hostility to the idea that women should be treated as equals. It could be true that we’re right to act like trigger-happy paranoiacs, because what we think about the people who are “disagreeing” with us in a certain way is accurate, yet at the same time there we are acting like trigger-happy paranoiacs, which can’t be good for our critical thinking skills.

But it can’t be helped. It can be, I think, compensated for, but it can’t be just ended. That’s because that’s how it is with discussions that have a bearing on equality. They tend to mix the empirical and the political. Think the Bell Curve. Think Larry Summers. Think James Watson.

But the problem with this of course is that it creates taboos, and in free inquiry one doesn’t want taboos, to put it mildly. In political commitments, however, one does (in a sense).

These two things don’t go together well.

To be continued.

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

Last night the CBC’s the fifth estate reported on the murder nearly 12 years ago of Jassi Sidhu, and the fact that her mother and uncle are suspected of having arranged the murder but have never been arrested.

You’ll already know from that what kind of murder it probably was. When Jassi was 2o her family wanted her to marry a man in India who was 40 years older and a stranger to her. She didn’t want to. She married someone else instead, because she liked him, but he wasn’t rich (or 60) and he drove a rickshaw.

Her mother and uncle have been arrested.

A B.C. woman and her brother have been arrested in connection with the 2000 slaying of the woman’s daughter, Jassi Sidhu, and the attempted murder of the young woman’s husband in India in what has been described as an honour killing.

Malkit Kaur Sidhu, 63, and Surjit Singh Badesha, 67, Jassi Sidhu’s uncle, were arrested Friday in the Vancouver suburb of Maple Ridge.

The two were taken into custody after the B.C. Supreme Court issued arrest warrants under the Extradition Act and will be held pending an extradition hearing, said Cpl. Annie Linteau.

…

Jassi Sidhu had met her future husband during a visit to the Punjabi village where her parents were born, but according to court testimony, the man had no money, no property and his only income came from driving a small taxi called an auto rickshaw.

The fifth estate reported that Sidhu knew that her wealthy Canadian family would never approve of her choice of husband, so the couple married in secret, enraging some members of her family.

As always with these things, I can’t get my head around it. They were displeased with her choice of husband – that’s not hard to understand. It’s the next step that’s so odd. They were displeased with her choice of husband, so they wanted her to be dead? This is the woman’s daughter we’re talking about. I’m used to small pedestrian comprehensible things – anger, alienation, quarrels, yelling, tears, silence. I’m not used to the idea of taking that next step. I can never grasp it.

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

You have got to be kidding, Beeb.

Headline:

Do politicians ignore the ‘men’s vote’?

Listen to the Westminster political debate in recent months and you will hear one group regularly given special attention: women.

Ed Miliband has accused the government of introducing changes in areas such as social security that are “hitting women twice as hard as men”.

Meanwhile, David Cameron says that, with government initiatives like lifting over a million people out of paying tax, “it is mostly women who benefit”.

But what you will not hear is the opposite – top politicians saying they have policies specifically directed at male voters, or “male issues”.

You’re joking. You’re joking. Please tell me you’re joking.

But some men say they feel increasingly alienated from politicians who seem to talk less about their concerns.

Glen Poole is strategic director of the Men’s Network based in Brighton, which recently held a national conference to raise awareness among other men’s groups and policy-makers about their agenda.

You have got to be kidding!

They don’t talk about “their concerns” because they take them for granted because men are the assumed sex and women are the weird pathetic aberrations who need special frowning worried mention. This is not because women are stealing all the things!

This goes back a long way. From the moment women achieved the vote in the 1920s, political campaigners have targeted them and what are categorised as “women’s issues” – family, for example, or household spending.

Or baby food, or how to get the floor sparkling clean, or shoes, or The Shopping Channel. The kind of shit women pay attention to.

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

Rushdie on Hitchens is simply…unbetterable.

I have often been asked if Christopher defended me because he was my close friend. The truth is that he became my close friend because he wanted to defend me.

The spectacle of a despotic cleric with antiquated ideas issuing a death warrant for a writer living in another country, and then sending death squads to carry out the edict, changed something in Christopher. It made him understand that a new danger had been unleashed upon the earth, that a new totalizing ideology had stepped into the down-at-the-heels shoes of Soviet Communism. And when the brute hostility of American and British conservatives (Charles Krauthammer, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and Paul Johnson) joined forces with the appeasement politics of sections of the Western left, and both sides began to offer sympathetic analyses of the assault, his outrage grew. In the eyes of the right, I was a cultural “traitor” and, in Christopher’s words, an “uppity wog,” and in the opinion of the left, the People could never be wrong, and the cause of the Oppressed People, a category into which the Islamist opponents of my novel fell, was doubly justified. Voices as diverse as the Pope, the archbishop of New York, the British chief rabbi, John Berger, Jimmy Carter, and Germaine Greer “understood the insult” and failed to be outraged, and Christopher went to war.

He and I found ourselves describing our ideas, without conferring, in almost identical terms. I began to understand that while I had not chosen the battle it was at least the right battle, because in it everything that I loved and valued (literature, freedom, irreverence, freedom, irreligion, freedom) was ranged against everything I detested (fanaticism, violence, bigotry, humorlessness, philistinism, and the new offense culture of the age). Then I read Christopher using exactly the same everything-he-loved-versus-everything-he-hated trope, and felt … understood.

QFT.

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