Kissing

Nov 6th, 2016 8:55 am | By

Speaking of Indonesia…I’m hearing from friends that their Indonesian friends are disappearing from Facebook.

A couple of weeks ago…

Two [Indonesian] men have been arrested after a photo of them kissing was posted on Facebook.

The 22-year-old student and 24-year-old office worker from Indonesia were arrested after uploading the picture which was captioned: “With my dear lover tonight. May our love last forever”.

Homosexuality is not illegal in Indonesia but the two men are expected to be charged for breaking anti-pornography laws.

…

The identities of the two men have not been disclosed and although they are currently not in police custody they could be jailed if they are found guilty.

That’s “liberal” majority-Muslim Indonesia. Not all that liberal…

 

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868 fewer places to vote

Nov 6th, 2016 7:56 am | By

Ari Berman points out that There Are 868 Fewer Places to Vote in 2016 Because the Supreme Court Gutted the Voting Rights Act.

What does it mean when there are fewer places to vote? Longer lines. What do longer lines do? Suppress voting.

When Aracely Calderon, a naturalized US citizen from Guatemala, went to vote in downtown Phoenix just before the polls closed in Arizona’s March 22 presidential primary, there were more than 700 people in a line stretching four city blocks. She waited in line for five hours, becoming the last voter in the state to cast a ballot at 12:12 am. “I’m here to exercise my right to vote,” she said shortly before midnight, explaining why she stayed in line. Others left without voting because they didn’t have four or five hours to spare.

The lines were so long because Republican election officials in Phoenix’s Maricopa County, the largest in the state, reduced the number of polling places by 70 percent from 2012 to 2016, from 200 to just 60—one polling place per 21,000 registered voters. Previously, Maricopa County would have needed federal approval to reduce the number of polling sites, because Arizona was one of 16 states where jurisdictions with a long history of discrimination had to submit their voting changes under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. This part of the VRA blocked 3,000 discriminatory voting changes from 1965 to 2013. That changed when the Supreme Court gutted the law in the June 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision.

Dirty, isn’t it.

Arizona, the poster child for voting problems in the primary, closed the highest percentage of polling places in the study. “Almost every county in the state reduced polling places in advance of the 2016 election and almost every county closed polling places on a massive scale, resulting in 212 fewer polling places,” says the report (emphasis in original). Tucson’s Pima County—the second largest in the state, which is 35 percent Latino and leans Democratic—“is the nation’s biggest closer of polling places,” from 280 in 2012 to 218 in 2016.

Many of these counties have been hot spots for voting discrimination. Cochise County, on the Mexico border, which is 30 percent Latino, was sued by the Justice Department in 2006 failing to print election materials in Spanish or have Spanish-speaking poll workers, in violation of the VRA. Today, the county “is the nation’s biggest closer by percentage,” having shuttered 63 percent of its voting locations since Shelby. There will be only 18 polling places for 130,000 residents in 2016, down from 49 polling places in 2012.

Texas has closed more than 400.

Medina County, a heavily Republican area in South Texas, closed a polling place in the town of Natalia, which is 75 percent Latino and the only Democratic-leaning part of the county. “We’ve had a polling place for at least the last six decades,” Emilio Flores, a local activist and registered Republican, told me. When Flores asked the county elections administrator, Patricia Barton, how low-income and disabled Latino voters were supposed to vote without a polling place in their town, he said she told him, “If you think it’s such a big issue, why don’t you shuttle them yourself?” Last week the county commission approved a polling place in Natalia for Election Day after local activists like Flores raised alarms, but Medina County will have only eight polling places in 2016, down from 14 in 2012.

…

In June 2013, Percy Bland was elected as the first black mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, where the Ku Klux Klan abducted the civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner during Freedom Summer in 1964. A month after Bland’s election the Supreme Court gutted the VRA, and in 2015 the majority-white board of elections in Lauderdale County closed seven polling places over objections from the mayor. That included eliminating a polling place at the historic Mt. Olive Baptist Church, a major site during the civil-rights movement, as the place where the singer Pete Seeger announced that the bodies of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner had been discovered after they were missing for 44 days. “In an effort to honor the legacy of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in order that we enjoy our civil rights, we proudly offer our historic facilities [as a polling site],” said church spokesman Ronald Turner.

“Things have changed dramatically” in the South, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the Shelby decision. “The tests and devices that blocked ballot access have been forbidden nationwide for over 40 years.” But as we’re seeing clearly in 2016, the states previously covered by the VRA keep finding new ways to undermine the right to vote.

Easy for John Roberts to say.

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Well the damage is done

Nov 5th, 2016 5:16 pm | By

Ok. Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway admitted the campaign lied by saying the FBI was going to indict Clinton – and she was unapologetic about it. So that’s where we are; ok.

MSNBC’s “11th Hour” host Brian Williams asked Kellyanne Conway about a report from Fox News in which two anonymous “sources with intimate knowledge” of an FBI inquiry into the Clinton Foundation said an indictment of Clinton was “likely.” Trump recounted a version of the report to a crowd in Jacksonville, Florida on Thursday, crowing that “FBI agents” said his opponent would be indicted.

“This has been walked back, the indictment portion, by Fox News who originally reported it and by NBC News which has done subsequent reporting on this,” Williams said. “Will Donald Trump amend his stump speech to walk back the same thing?”

“Well, the damage is done to Hillary Clinton,” Conway replied. “No matter how it’s being termed the voters are hearing it for what it is—a culture of corruption.”

In other words no, we’ll tell any lie we want to and you can’t stop us, neener.

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He speaks for them

Nov 5th, 2016 4:58 pm | By

Classic. A NY Times piece on feverish “militia” types in the rural South, hoping Trump wins and practicing their shooting skills in case he doesn’t.

During two days of conversations, grievances poured forth from the group as effortlessly as bullets from a gun barrel. On armed excursions through sun-dappled forests, they spoke of a vague but looming tyranny — an amalgam of sinister forces to be held at bay only with a firearm and the willingness to use it.

They are machinists and retirees, roofers and factory line workers, all steeped in the culture of the rural South. They say Mr. Trump, a Manhattan billionaire and real estate tycoon, speaks for them.

Nicely done. Trump the New York billionaire real estate tycoon who cheats workers and contractors – they say he speaks for them. Clearly Marx had it all wrong. Class has nothing to do with anything. The important thing is being a belligerent asshole. That’s what unites people under the banner of…erm…being belligerent assholes.

Solidarity forever!

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So regularly reduced

Nov 5th, 2016 4:24 pm | By

The Harvard women’s soccer team wrote a statement on the 2012 men’s team’s “scouting report.” I wrote my post on the report before reading the women’s statement, so I’m interested to see that they say what I said.

On Monday, October 24, The Crimson published a story detailing a “scouting report” written by members of the 2012 men’s soccer team regarding incoming female recruits on the women’s soccer team.

We are these women, we are not anonymous, and rather than having our comments taken, spun, and published behind the guise of a fake anonymity offered to us by numerous news outlets, we have decided to speak for ourselves.

When first notified of this “scouting report” each of us responded with surprise and confusion, but ultimately brushed off the news as if it didn’t really matter. As if we weren’t surprised men had spoken of us inappropriately. As if this kind of thing was just, “normal.”

The sad reality is that we have come to expect this kind of behavior from so many men, that it is so “normal” to us we often decide it is not worth our time or effort to dwell on.

That. It is normalized all over the place. It’s normalized on the most popular US sitcom, The Big Bang Theory. It’s normalized in all those Judd Apatow-Seth Rogen movies. It’s normalized in a billion jokes and cartoons and songs. It’s normalized. Women aren’t people, they’re a thing men want for fucking purposes.

In all, we do not pity ourselves, nor do we ache most because of the personal nature of this attack. More than anything, we are frustrated that this is a reality that all women have faced in the past and will continue to face throughout their lives. We feel hopeless because men who are supposed to be our brothers degrade us like this. We are appalled that female athletes who are told to feel empowered and proud of their abilities are so regularly reduced to a physical appearance. We are distraught that mothers having daughters almost a half century after getting equal rights have to worry about men’s entitlement to bodies that aren’t theirs. We are concerned for the future, because we know that the only way we can truly move past this culture is for the very men who perpetrate it to stop it in its tracks. [emphasis added]

Hello, UN? This is why Wonder Woman was a terrible idea, especially paired with the refusal to appoint a woman General Secretary or to promote women to more than 4% of the upper level jobs. 4%!! Do you get it now?

Having considered members of this team our close friends for the past four years, we are beyond hurt to realize these individuals could encourage, silently observe, or participate in this kind of behavior, and for more than four years have neglected to apologize until this week.

Friends don’t do that sort of thing.

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Fight fiercely Harvard

Nov 5th, 2016 3:58 pm | By

Oh what a surprise. The Harvard Crimson October 25:

In what appears to have been a yearly team tradition, a member of Harvard’s 2012 men’s soccer team produced a document that, in sexually explicit terms, individually assessed and evaluated freshmen recruits from the 2012 women’s soccer team based on their perceived physical attractiveness and sexual appeal.

The author and his teammates referred to the nine-page document as a “scouting report,” and the author circulated the document over the group’s email list on July 31, 2012.

In lewd terms, the author of the report individually evaluated each female recruit, assigning them numerical scores and writing paragraph-long assessments of the women. The document also included photographs of each woman, most of which, the author wrote, were culled from Facebook or the Internet.

I seriously could not be less surprised unless you told me Donald Trump bullied someone. Of course he did, of course they did. That’s what Facebook originally was, doesn’t anyone remember? It was Zuckerberg’s catalogue of gurlz, complete with photos so that You Too could decide if she was hot enough or not.

The author of the “report” often included sexually explicit descriptions of the women. He wrote of one woman that “she looks like the kind of girl who both likes to dominate, and likes to be dominated.”

Each woman was assigned a hypothetical sexual “position” in addition to her position on the soccer field.

Of course she was. That’s what women are for – so of course men have to grade them. You don’t go to the supermarket and just grab some tomatoes at random do you? You examine them first. Same with women.

The “report” appears to have been an annual practice. At the beginning of the document, the author writes that “while some of the scouting report last year was wrong, the overall consensus that” a certain player “was both the hottest and the most STD ridden was confirmed.”

Several members of the 2012 men’s team declined to comment on the document, including whether subsequent men’s soccer teams continued to create similar “reports.”

What would they say if they did comment? This kind of thing is totally normalized, so you can’t expect them to burst into tears and swear they’ll never do it again. This is PornWorld, and women are meat that talks.

Director of Athletics Robert L. Scalise viewed the document for the first time Monday and said he had been unaware of the document until then.

Directly after seeing the document, he said “Any time a member of our community says things about other people who are in our community that are disparaging, it takes away from the potential for creating the kind of learning environment that we’d like to have here at Harvard.”

Hahahaha oh brilliant. Yeah don’t do it to fellow Harvard students, go to Roxbury Community College for that kind of thing.

He added: “It’s very disappointing and disturbing that people are doing this.”

Do I believe he means it? No.

Scalise said the document reflects issues that extend far beyond Harvard’s campus.

“We’re not insulated from these types of things,” he said. “These things exist in our society. Society hasn’t figured out a way to stop these things from happening.”

“Whenever you have groups of people that come together there’s a potential for this to happen,” Scalise added.

“It could be an individual, it could be a group, it could be a rooming group, it could be an athletic team,” he said

Yeah, people, that’s what it is. It’s just people. Random sets of people, of all different kinds; no pattern to it at all. It means nothing that this was the men’s team, and it was the women’s team they did it to. Oh look, a squirrel.

Though Scalise said his first steps for responding to the document would “certainly” include speaking to coaches of both men’s and women’s athletic teams, he added that “there’s a role for the administration at the College to also play in this” in addition to the athletics department.

Any reaction to the document, though, should be “an internal Harvard matter,” Scalise said.

“This is not a media thing,” Scalise said. “This is something that should be looked at by us in the administration to figure out what our steps are, but we shouldn’t do anything more with the media on this other than ‘thank you for letting us know about this, okay. We need to look at it.’”

Oh yes sir. Definitely sir. Sorry to trouble you sir. It’s entirely a matter for the people of the Harvard community, sir, and I’ll take my prole self out of your sight this instant. Thank you for not whipping me, sir.

First contacted about the document late Friday afternoon, Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana did not respond to multiple requests for an in-person meeting to view the document. College spokesperson Rachael Dane wrote in an email that Khurana was unavailable for an in-person interview. Khurana instead emailed a statement, after Dane had viewed the document herself in person.

“As a human being, and a member of the Harvard College community, I am always profoundly disturbed and upset by allegations of sexism, because I feel it is wrong and antithetical to this institution’s fundamental values,” Khurana wrote. “No one should be objectified. In light of all the attention that has been given to issues of inclusion, gender equity, and personal integrity at Harvard and elsewhere, we must work together to build a community of which we can all be proud.”

Maybe they should call in Wonder Woman to help.

The document, though written four years ago, surfaces amid a year at Harvard defined, in many ways, by campus discourse about gender equity and campus sexual harassment. It also comes at a time in which national conversations on the current presidential campaign focus on the same subject. After the surfacing of a 2005 tape in which Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump boasts about groping women, Trump dismissed his comments as “locker-room banter.”

What I said. It’s normalized. It’s silly to pretend it isn’t.

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Warner Bros. and DC Comics approached the U.N.

Nov 5th, 2016 11:36 am | By

Ok this makes it even more annoying – the Wonder Woman thing was suggested by Warner Bros. and DC Comics. NPR reports:

…the decision has outraged many women’s rights advocates, including hundreds who’ve signed a petition against it.

“It’s an insult, frankly,” says Anne Marie Goetz, a professor of global affairs at New York University and a former adviser on peace and security issues to the United Nations agency, U.N. Women. She says a big issue is the timing.

The U.N.’s anointing of Wonder Woman has actually been in the works since last spring. That’s when Warner Bros. and DC Comics — which owns rights to the character — approached the U.N. about celebrating her 75th birthday and an upcoming movie with a joint social media campaign promoting women’s rights through tweets and Facebook callouts.

But news of the plan only started to filter to women’s rights advocates over the past week — right on the heels of a disappointing, yearlong grass-roots effort to get the U.N. to choose its first female secretary-general.

“This was months and months of campaigning by feminist organizations around the world for a woman to be selected,” says Goetz.

And the result? “No, girls, you can’t be secretary-general of the UN, but you can be represented by a comic book character in a bustier and underpants! Run along now.”

Seven women — including a prime minister and other highly qualified individuals — were in the running, an unprecedented number. But earlier this month the Security Council went with a man — Antonio Guterres. So the selection of Wonder Woman to represent women’s issues for the U.N. came off to Goetz and others as a sort of demeaning consolation prize.

“It’s frivolous, it’s fatuous and it reduces an extremely serious human rights problem experienced by half of the world to a cartoon,” she says.

And not just any cartoon, adds Goetz. Wonder Woman in her view looks like a Barbie/Playboy pinup. Like most female comic action figures, she has big breasts bursting out of a skimpy outfit and an impossibly tiny waist.

“The message to girls is that you are expected to meet a male standard in which your significance is reduced to your role as a sexual object,” says Goetz.

Exactly. And the fact that some girls and women don’t notice that that’s a message just makes the message that much more powerful. It certainly does not demonstrate that it’s not a message at all.

Maher Nasser, the U.N. official who essentially brokered Wonder Woman’s appointment, says he and other U.N. colleagues were aware of those concerns.

“I mean we have had these discussions, of course, with our partners,” says Nasser, who directs the Outreach Division of the U.N.’s Department of Public Information, which handles partnerships with celebrities and entertainment figures.

Cool! He was aware of the concerns, and he ignored them! Because hey, they’re not his concerns, so who cares, right?

But then, boringly and frustratingly, NPR talks about and to Jill Lepore, and the point gets lost. Typical NPR.

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How about Pippi Longstocking?

Nov 5th, 2016 11:21 am | By

Sanam Naraghi-Anderlini at Sister-hood on Wonder Woman and the UN.

For those of us who ever feel conflicted about the United Nations, the past month has been an exercise in managing absurd cognitive dissonance. First, on October 21 2016, the United Nations announced that the 1940s comic book heroine, Wonder Woman would be its new mascot for promoting the empowerment of women and girls.  The news naturally sent serious women around the world into a collective swirl, and then a reach for their golden lassoes, to capture the attention of an institution that seems perpetually tone deaf on the issue of basic equality and respect for half the world’s population. It also prompted female staff at the UN to protest in silence, through literally turning their backs on the occasion. Then, on October 25th the UN Security Council held its annual open debate on the groundbreaking ‘Women, peace and security agenda’, now in its 16th year of existence – still full of promise, and yet barely realized.

So what’s going on?

The story so far: In the age of Trumpism, just weeks after women’s rights activists globally were disappointed to learn that a woman was not selected to head the UN, hard on the heels of a year when the outgoing UN Secretary General appointed men to 96% of the senior jobs in the system, some folks at the UN thought having Wonder Woman as the icon for gender equality for the global organization was a good idea. Not so much.

Here are a few reasons why not: First off, the UN is a post-war institution, dedicated to ending the scourge of war and, by extension, violence. It is an institution founded on diplomacy and the principle of negotiating differences, not vilification and use of force.  Wonder Woman, on the other hand, was a product of the World War II propaganda of superheroes that fight ‘evil’, using violence in the name of ‘good’.

That’s a point I overlooked. Wonder Woman is a Trump-style “hero” – a bully. That too is not empowerment. The real heroes, Naraghi-Anderlini points out, are the ones brave enough to be non-violent.

We did not fight for women’s equal rights to fight, die and kill alongside men. We fought so that neither women nor men had to live through the horrors of war. We fought so that women peacemakers could have equal space with the militias and politicians at the tables where the future of peace and security in their countries is determined. We fought to end the wars that exist, and to prevent future wars. 9/11 changed the course of history, but the spirit and vision of 1325 shouldn’t get lost in the fog of perpetual war and hyper militarization.

So the choice of Wonder Woman kicking, punching and lassoing her opponents is downright offensive and simplistic.

Herein lies the irony: just ten days ago, Marvel comics unveiled a new digital comic with Syrian mothers as the story’s heroines. So we are living in an age where institutions dealing in fiction recognize and revere contemporary facts, but institutions dealing in reality are stuck in an imaginary past.

Second, if we need a mythical figure, how about Shehrzad of the 1001 Nights? She used her words, wit and imagination to save the lives of women and turn a despotic king into a compassionate wise ruler. She is recognized across many countries and cultures – still relevant across time, and far more representative of an iconic and emancipated woman than Wonder Woman. Or, as one long-time UN staffer suggested, if its fictional figures, why not Pippi Longstocking? She was strong, creative, and definitely no pin-up girl.

…

Others have already commented on the sartorial faux pas of selecting Wonder Woman. But there is a political and security dimension to this choice. Women are already fighting the backlash of conservative forces that believe their struggle for rights or voice in political spaces is a ‘western agenda’ designed to undermine their power structures. Having a female figure in a low-cut bustier/corset covered in the American flag is just adding ammunition. Don’t get me wrong; I loved the kitsch Lynda Carter TV shows and comic books too. But Wonder Woman is clearly the figment of some 1940s male comic strip illustrator’s imagination.

Other than that, great choice.

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UDHR

Nov 5th, 2016 11:02 am | By

Here’s a wonder woman if you like.

 

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The epitome of a pin-up girl

Nov 5th, 2016 10:51 am | By

More coverage (so to speak) of Wonder Woman as the UN’s ambassador for women’s empowerment.

Somini Sengupta at the NY Times reported on a petition asking the UN please not to.

More than 600 United Nations staff members have signed an online petition calling on Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, a professed feminist, to reconsider the appointment of the fictitious superhero as its ambassador for women’s empowerment.

More than 600 people who work for the UN itself have signed. It seems a little surprising that whoever had this bright idea couldn’t have seen the problems with it. Let’s read the petition:

On 21 October 2016, the Secretary-General of the United Nations decided that the new Honorary Ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls will be Wonder Woman, a fictional character, the rights to which are owned by DC Comics, a for-profit entertainment corporation.

Since that date, over 16,000 people have expressed their concern with this appointment.
Wonder Woman was created 75 years ago. Although the original creators may have intended Wonder Woman to represent a strong and independent “warrior” woman with a feminist message, the reality is that the character’s current iteration is that of a large breasted, white woman of impossible proportions, scantily clad in a shimmery, thigh-baring body suit with an American flag motif and knee high boots –the epitome of a “pin-up” girl. This is the character that the United Nations has decided to represent a globally important issue – that of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls. It appears that this character will be promoted as the face of sustainable development goal 5 for the United Nations at large.

At a time when issues such as gender parity in senior roles and the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse of women and girls is at the top of the United Nation’s agenda, including the “He for She” campaign, this appointment is more than surprising. It is alarming that the United Nations would consider using a character with an overtly sexualized image at a time when the headline news in United States and the world is the objectification of women and girls.

Is that a “shallow” argument? I don’t think so. I don’t think a fantasy woman who is painted as an exaggeratedly and consciously sexy figure is any kind of ambassador for empowerment. Here’s a news flash: looking hot or sexy or seductive is not empowering. It’s passive. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, end of story – but it certainly is to say it’s a bad fit with a campaign that’s explicitly about empowerment. The message an image like that sends is that women are of no interest or importance unless they’re sexy, indeed sexier than nearly all real women on earth. It sends the message that women have to be sexy first of all, and any other talents they may have come a distant second, so distant that you can’t tell what they are. It sends the message that women have to arouse men before they do anything else, and thus that men are the people who really count while women are an afterthought who should go away unless they’re fantasy-level sexy. It does not send the message that women can be scientists and judges and farmers and anything else they aspire to.

The message the United Nations is sending to the world with this appointment is extremely disappointing. The bottom line appears to be that the United Nations was unable to find a real life woman that would be able to champion the rights of ALL women on the issue of gender equality and the fight for their empowerment. The United Nations has decided that Wonder Woman is the role model that women and girls all round the world should look up to.

Having strong (living, breathing) female role models is a critical aspect of the goal of empowerment of women and girls. If the United Nations would like a list of incredible extraordinary women that would formidably carry out this role, we could surely be able to come up with a list from which the Secretary-General could choose.

Since 2007, the Secretary-General has launched campaign after campaign under the banner of the empowerment of women and girls. However, the United Nations cannot on the one hand claim that “providing women and girls with equal access to education, healthcare, decent work, and representation in political and economic decision-making processes will fuel sustainable economies and benefit societies and humanity at large,” and on the other, award this key ambassadorial role to Wonder Woman, relegating the importance of the issue of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls to the previous appointment of fictional characters for ambassadorial positions, such as Tinkerbell (Ambassador of Green) and Winnie the Pooh (Ambassador of Friendship).

In other words it looks as if the UN is trivializing the issue, and the UN shouldn’t do that.

Back to the Times:

Privately, several United Nations officials have expressed concern about the choice of a comic-book character. Publicly, its leaders have described the decision as a creative way to reach younger audiences, in advance of a new Hollywood film starring Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman…

Women’s advocates inside and outside the United Nations say the selection of Wonder Woman is particularly ill timed because the United Nations this month rejected seven female candidates for secretary general. The next leader will be António Guterres of Portugal, even though many had hoped a woman would take the helm for the first time.

Raimonda Murmokaite, the permanent representative of Lithuania, reacted to the news of Wonder Woman’s appointment by asking on Twitter why “real life women” could not be selected.

Anne Marie Goetz, an academic and a former adviser to the United Nations who had campaigned for a woman to be secretary general, called the choice “disgusting” and wrote on Twitter that Wonder Woman should use her “lasso of truth” to expose the United Nations’ “hypocrisy.”

I suppose they couldn’t find a woman with big enough tits to be Secretary-General.

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Another blasphemy march

Nov 5th, 2016 9:39 am | By

Meanwhile in Jakarta…

Tens of thousands of Indonesians marched in Jakarta on Friday, demanding that the city’s first Christian governor in decades be jailed for blasphemy. The rally was a show of strength by conservative Islamic groups, who were offended by his earlier remarks about the Quran and want to weaken him as he runs for re-election.

I guess that’s one thing we can be grateful for in the US: Trump doesn’t call his enemies blasphemers.

The governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, known as Ahok, is an ethnic Chinese Indonesian and the first Christian in nearly 50 years to govern Jakarta, capital of the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

He has been a political target of some Islamic organizations since taking office in 2014. Some of those groups seized on comments he made in September to a group of fishermen, in which he lightheartedly cited a Quran verse that warns against taking Christians and Jews as friends.

His comments circulated on social media, and hard-liners accused him of blasphemy, which is a criminal offense in Indonesia, and pressured the police to investigate. Mr. Basuki has repeatedly apologized to Muslims who were offended by his remark, but he has rejected calls to withdraw from the election for governor in February, which he is heavily favored to win.

Blasphemy is a criminal offense in Indonesia. Worth noting.

“Precisely because religion and ethnicity are as such not electoral factors, Ahok’s opponents have to up the game,” said Marcus Mietzner, an associate professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, who closely follows Indonesian politics. “Instead of claiming that Ahok shouldn’t be governor because he’s a Christian — which hasn’t worked — they try to portray him as a blasphemist who violated the law.”

The reason, said Bonar Tigor Naipospos, vice chairman of the Setara Institute, a Jakarta organization that promotes religious tolerance, is simple but desperate: an effort to force the governor out of the race, which will go to a second round if none of the three candidates gets 50 percent of the vote.

So it is, if they’re right, a cynical ploy – but the ploy wouldn’t be possible if “blasphemy” were not an issue.

Protesters on Friday, many of whom had arrived in groups from neighboring West Java, chanted, “Hang Ahok, hang the traitor,” and, “Cut off a hand and foot and deport him.”

Maybe they didn’t get the memo about the cynical ploy – or maybe they were just giving a good performance.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog


Yes or no

Nov 5th, 2016 9:19 am | By

A guy on Facebook yesterday posted video of something a lot of my friends have been passionately discussing: a few minutes from the Parliamentary inquiry into Sharia courts on Monday, in which Bradford MP Naz Shah interrupts Maryam Namazie’s testimony to demand a yes or no answer to a misleading question and then simply attacks her for her views. It’s pretty horrifying.

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The most unforgivable of activists

Nov 4th, 2016 5:24 pm | By

Marina S. has an excellent response to Juno Dawson’s Glamour column.

So, Glamour went there. It printed a piece in which women are called “TERF”.

It was inevitable that the word “TERF” would become mainstream. The feminists slammed with this “description” are the most unforgivable of activists: women who stand for women, as women, and women only. Women without a modifier, women as members of no class other than their own, women as completely divorced from any political association with men.

The Left, she says, allows a certain amount of feminism, but only if it’s the male-friendly kind. Radical feminism refuses to be male-friendly, because it’s about women, not men.

That a “women’s” magazine (in reality, a publication whose aim and purpose is to inform the subordinate class about the terms on which its subordination is to be carried out) should be among the first mainstream media organs to legitimise a word that is used as a cover for lurid fantasies about inflicting snuff-like violence on these insubordinate, obstinate, monstrous women who continue to insist that “women” means something and that women matter, is not surprising. It’s not even ironic. It’s completely predictable.

Women’s magazines exist to tell us what we are not allowed to be. Fat. Hairy. Ugly. Old. Ambitious. That a women’s magazine should take it upon itself to thickly hint that one additional thing we are not allowed to be is partisans for our own political class – that we are not, in fact, allowed to insist that we are members of a political class that really exists and has a right to organise and agitate on its own behalf – is one hundred percent in accordance with the mission statement of such a publication. In a world in which it has become socially gauche to tell women outright that feminism will be stigmatised and punished, a workaround has been found: narrow the definition of permissible feminism down such as to exclude almost all serious political activity, then call women who don’t conform names.

Also shun them, expel them, tell everyone else to shun them, tell lies about them, pretend they’re violent, pretend they’re murderous.

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Trump lawyer babbles

Nov 4th, 2016 4:22 pm | By

Trump and his campaign have been hit with a restraining order. Common Dreams has the story.

A federal judge in Ohio on Friday granted a temporary restraining order against the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, as well as his longtime adviser Roger Stone, to prohibit attempts to harass voters in the crucial swing state.

The case, brought by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), is just one currently being weighed by numerous states alleging that representatives of the Republican Party and the Trump campaign are engaging in illegal voter intimidation efforts.

According to Cleveland.com, U.S. District Judge James Gwin “said he will order the restraining order against Trump’s campaign and Stone,” who runs the controversial “Stop the Steal” organization, which is recruiting so-called “Vote Protector Exit Pollers” for election day. Gwin “did not order it against the Ohio Republican Party, saying there was not enough evidence to show that a restraining order against it was needed.”

Recruiting people to intimidate voters is not so much controversial as illegal.

Throughout his presidential campaign, the GOP nominee has repeatedly called on his supporters to help ensure “ballot security” on election day.

Attorney Subodh Chandra, who documented Friday’s hearing on Twitter, noted that during the trial Gwin referenced these statements, insinuating that they were inciting aggressive poll-watching.

Stone was reportedly ordered to testify during a similar hearing in Nevada on Friday.

Ahead of the trials, Rick Hasen, professor of law and political science at University of California Irvine and blogger with the Election Law Blog, who has been following the case, said that “the lawsuits have already borne fruit by getting the campaign on the record with its plans and promises not to intimidate voters.”

Hasen wrote at Slate on Friday:

In an important development on Thursday afternoon, the Trump campaign in response to the lawsuits sent an email to Nevada campaign workers describing for them what constitutes illegal harassment and what constitutes good behavior. By getting Trump on the record promising not to harass voters with its “ballot security” activities, the Democrats have significantly lessened the chances of Trump-driven voter intimidation on Election Day.

Trump is such a bully it takes a court order to restrain him.

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More hatred and violence

Nov 4th, 2016 11:28 am | By

The New York Times reports on communal violence in Bangladesh.

Crowds of Muslims attacked Hindu homes and temples in eastern Bangladesh this week, raising concerns that the authorities are not taking steps to curb rising religious tensions.

Attacks on Hindus are not unusual in Bangladesh, but it is rare to see multiple crowds targeting temples in an organized way as they did on Sunday and Monday. The country’s human rights commission has initiated an inquiry into the episodes, which the panel’s chairman says appear to have been coordinated.

On Saturday, an Islamic group in Nasirnagar organized a protest against a Facebook post it found offensive. The post included an image of the Hindu god Shiva appearing at a Muslim holy site in the Saudi city of Mecca.

A Facebook post. Ffs.

The crowd demanded that the young Hindu man who created the image be put to death. Nevertheless, the group was given permission to hold a rally the next day, and mosque loudspeakers were used to mobilize an even larger group, said Anjan Kumar Deb, the vice chairman of Nasirnagar subdistrict.

On Sunday, hundreds of Muslims entered a Hindu neighborhood, where they ransacked 15 temples and the homes of more than 100 families, Mr. Deb said. He said that the mob “used long, hard sticks and locally made sharp weapons” to assault Hindus they found there, and that at least 20 people, including a priest, were wounded.

Because one guy did a Facebook post. Can human beings not grow up?!

The Hindu youth who is believed to have posted the controversial image was arrested on Saturday.

Of course he was.

Hindus make up about 11 percent of the population of Bangladesh, where Muslims constitute the majority, according to government statistics.

Kazi Reazul Hoque, the head of the country’s human rights commission, said local officials made a “gross mistake” by allowing the crowd to regroup Sunday morning. Bangladeshi newspapers offered similar criticism. The Daily Star, in an editorial on Wednesday, called the government’s inaction “baffling.”

“Has the government lost confidence that the majority of the people of this country, although religious, believe in a pluralistic society?” the editorial asked.

Bangladesh is a tragedy.

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Poking the hornets’ nest

Nov 4th, 2016 10:55 am | By

Glamour UK published a startling piece of garbage by Juno Dawson, who was called James Dawson until a year ago. The title, calculated to annoy (indeed, to insult) is “Call yourself a feminist?” I don’t much want newly-minted women telling me I’m not a feminist, thanks.

The subhead is equally calculated to annoy and insult:

Our transgender columnist Juno Dawson’s here to see if you really pass the test

No thank you. It’s not up to Juno Dawson to decide that.

And then the column itself is pure shite.

One of things I love about GLAMOUR Magazine is how it supports women’s choices. Indeed there is a whole section called Hey, It’s OK…because, when things are your choice, and if they’re not hurting anyone else, it is OK. Women are sometimes made to feel guilty about their choices in a way that men are not – you shouldn’t eat that, wear that, think that, do that, say that.

I’m getting beyond tired of having brand new women lecturing me about women and feminism. I also don’t like shit writing, and that is shit writing.

What I also love about GLAMOUR is that, since 2001, it has encouraged women to feel confident about their choices while rarely using the word ‘feminism’. That was because, back then, feminism was something of a dirty word. It was a word that felt militant, angry, unconstructive and, frankly, unglamorous.

A steeply downward path, here. One, feminism is not about “feeling confident about choices.” Two, avoiding the word “feminism” is not a plus, especially for a putative “women’s” magazine. Three…oh dear what a shame that feminism sounded militant and angry. It should have sounded fluffy and seductive! And as for being unglamorous – what was feminism thinking?!

It’s interesting and non-random that Dawson doesn’t seem to notice that there could possibly be reasons for the fact that the word feminism “felt militant, angry, unconstructive and, frankly, unglamorous” to one James Dawson, reasons other than a simple equation of that “feeling” with a fact about the world. Maybe James Dawson had that feeling because feminism wasn’t all about James Dawson. Lots of men do feel that way.

Fifteen years later, thanks to a rebranding – although by no means a retooling – feminism is mercifully ‘in’ again. Caitlin Moran; Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Beyoncé, Lena Dunham, Amy Schumer and many, many more stars are proudly reclaiming the label. The goals of feminism are the same as they always were: social, political and economic equality between genders.

Jesus god. No, the goal of feminism has never been “equality between genders.” It’s about ending the system that makes men as a class dominant over the subordinate class that is women. And rebranding and being “in” again is just fatuous garbage. Juno Dawson has no business instructing anyone about feminism.

When I visit high schools with my novels, I always encourage teenage girls to call themselves feminists because I believe all girls need feminism. They need it to safeguard the rights they already have and those inequalities still not fought.

Oops. Can’t write. No editor, apparently. Can’t remember the beginning of the sentence all the way to its end.

Greer is not the first, nor will she be the last, TERF: a trans-exclusionary radical feminist. A subgroup of feminists who steadfastly believe me – and other trans women – are not women.

Who believe me are not women. This is a professional writer! We can assume Glamour paid actual money for this crap.

It’s all this bad; I need to jump ahead to spare us all boredom.

It’s frustrating that trans women, including myself, constantly have to defend ourselves. I feel perpetually on the back-foot, constantly grovelling, almost apologetic for my inclusion in womanhood. I can only speak for myself, but by being a woman, I don’t feel I’m holding back cisgender (not-trans) women or taking anything away from them. I don’t think my choice to initiate a medical transition impacts on the choices of any other women.

True enough, but writing this column? That’s another story, innit.

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog | 11 comments


Guest post: Women beyond belief

Nov 4th, 2016 9:53 am | By

Guest post by Karen L. Garst, who has compiled a collection of essays titled Women Beyond Belief: Discovering Life without Religion, available in print and electronic formats. It has been reviewed by Richard Dawkins, Valerie Tarico, Peter Boghossian, Sikivu Hutchinson and other atheist authors. Visit Dr. Garst’s blog at www.faithlessfeminist.com to pre-order the book.

“But at the end of the day, I kept coming back to one simple realization:
I fundamentally did not believe that one religion (Christianity) could tell
another religion (Hinduism) that it was wrong, that its deities did not exist,
that its moral compass was askew, that the beliefs of its people—while
noble—did not coincide with the lord-and-savior Jesus Christ and his
father-in-heaven God, and therefore could not possibly be valid. To me,
Hinduism embraced beliefs and morals and a lifestyle that was so much
more relatable and beautiful than anything Christianity, even in the Seventh
Day Adventist form, had ever taught me. The thought of discounting all
of it to adhere to a religion that I was essentially born into by way of my
geographic location was completely backward. I couldn’t get over the
notion that devout faith to one religion obliterates the ability to believe
in another, despite the fact that so many millions of Hindus formulated
their realities and structured their (in my opinion much more meritorious)
belief systems based on those religious principles.” Taylor Duty

Taylor Duty was raised in a secular family but attended Seventh Day Adventist Camps as a youth. Her reflection comes after a trip to India with her mother. She is one of 22 authors who wrote an essay about her journey away from religion.

I became incensed when the U. S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby in 2014. This decision said that because of its religious views, Hobby Lobby, a craft store, would not be obligated to follow the dictates of the Affordable Care Act and provide certain forms of birth control to its employees. “Will we never end the fight for women’s reproductive rights?” I wondered. Once again, religion has influenced the laws of our land. Politicians cite their religion in supporting restrictions on abortion, banning funding for Planned Parenthood, and a host of other issues that are against women.

The first leaders of the New Atheism movement that arose after 9/11 were men: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. They came with backgrounds of science and philosophy. They launched a renewed effort to show people how destructive religion can be and how all Abrahamic religions are based upon an Iron Age mythology, borrowing from other mythologies of the time.

I want to add a focus on women and the role this mythology has played in the culture of many countries to denigrate and subordinate women. Religion is the last cultural barrier to gender equality, and more and more women atheists are speaking out. As we all know, if women leave the churches, they will collapse.

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The number of Americans who would rather elect a rapist than a female human being

Nov 4th, 2016 9:16 am | By

Sady Doyle, like so many of us, is sick to death of this fucking election.

I am tired of the lingering hangover of the Democratic primary, tired of what this conversation has shown me about the seemingly well-meaning, “progressive” men in my life. I am tired of seeing the damage that even the mildest, wimpiest, plaid-shirt-clad beardy-bro can do when he’s been given license to stop taking sexism seriously, and therefore stopped worrying that he might get somebody hurt.

I’m tired of the hurt. I’m tired of hearing from women who’ve been run off Twitter by harassment and death threats and doxing because they dared to express an opinion about a Presidential election. I am tired of arguing that their pain matters, that the attacks on them matter. I am tired of living in a world where a state Democratic Party chairwoman can record her death threats and post them on the internet, a world where that woman needs a bodyguard to visit the goddamn bathroom, and where feminists are asked to prove that this series of events is, in fact, a bad thing.

It’s interesting how we get it from all directions, isn’t it. I think women are unique that way. I suppose it’s because everybody hates Mommy or some such thing.

Doyle is tired of explaining it, too.

I’m tired of having to explain why it’s sexist for men to tell me how to do my feminism “right,” why they shouldn’t impose their self-declared authority on my liberation. I’m tired of explaining why barring women’s access to public life, penalizing their public voices through tactics like harassment and intimidation, is integral to the functioning of patriarchy. I’m tired of explaining why demonizing powerful women — calling Hillary Clinton a murderer, a criminal, a hag, a witch, a bitch, etc — is a tactic as old as witch-burning. I’m tired of explaining why “likability” is a trap designed to make women worry more about other people’s feelings than they do about their own lives — and why no powerful woman will ever be “likable,” because the only “likable” thing she can do is give away her power. I’m tired of reading shitty divide-and-conquer thinkpieces about the catfight between “old” feminists (evil, capitalist, wear pantsuits, loathe the young and wish to feast on their economically disempowered flesh) and “young” feminists (hot, cool, hip, fun, down with male power because they understand these silly identity-politics struggles don’t get us anywhere and sometimes men are just smarter, am I right, girls?) and I am supremely tired of looking at that thinkpiece, and others like it, and seeing a male fucking byline on it.

I get that a lot. Just the other day, on Twitter – some guy, explaining women and feminism to me for tweet after tweet after tweet. I let him go on for a couple of days because I was curious to see how far he would push it. Once it became apparent that the answer was open-ended, I stopped letting him go on.

Now at least people believe her about sexism, but at what a price.

After spending a goddamn year arguing about whether sexism even existed, let alone whether it influenced people’s votes, Hillary Clinton’s candidacy now depends on beating a guy who is sexism incarnate — the big, orange, pussy-grabbing monster who grew to Tokyo-stomping size while we were arguing the finer points of progressive self-identification. A racist. A con man. A fascist. A joke. An alleged rapist. An alleged wife-beater. An alleged sexual harasser. After all that arguing about sexism and its impact, in the end, we just had to point at Donald fucking Trump and let people draw their own conclusions.

Truth. There has been a gruesome kind of schadenfreude in the news items about Trump, because they do demonstrate how casual and taken for granted it can be.

But the larger truth is that the whole thing is deeply insulting.

It isn’t just an insult to Hillary Clinton that she wound up facing Trump. It’s an insult to all women; it’s confirmation of our darkest suspicions about sexism, that while women are killing ourselves to do better and be smarter and work harder, while we’re building resumes, accumulating qualifications, going to classes, applying for extra credit, the only thing all that excellence does, at the end of the day, is to put us on equal footing with some male idiot who’s done precisely none of the work. It isn’t fun, realizing that the most qualified candidate in modern history is considered roughly equivalent to a barely literate game-show host with no government experience, just because she’s female. It doesn’t feel good, knowing that even Hillary Clinton has to stand there and get screamed at by some Twitter troll, just because she’s trying to get a job.

It is not fun, was not fun, has never been and could never be fun, spending nearly two years “debating” my own humanity through the lens of the biggest news story in the country. It has not been fun realizing that this matter was up for debate. I mean: By my count, Donald Trump currently has twelve standing allegations of sexual assault. Now, thanks to the magic of modern polling, I can see exactly how many of my countrymen don’t give a shit. According to FiveThirtyEight, the number of Americans who would rather elect a rapist than a female human being stands at around 45 percent.

And it’s only going to get worse.

In one scenario, Trump will win, and we’ll be governed by a man who is more vocal and unapologetic than most about believing women to be subhumans and second-class citizens. The sexism will flow down in terms of restrictive policies, cultural backlash, anti-choice and anti-female Supreme Court Justices, the incalculable harm done to younger generations by seeing misogyny legitimized and modeled by the most powerful man in the country. Or, Clinton will win, and she won’t have Trump to run against any longer — meaning that the sexism, “progressive” and otherwise, will come back every time someone gets frustrated with her or wants to delegitimize her, and we’ll have to argue about whether it exists or matters all over again.

I keep thinking it will take centuries, and then remembering that global warming means we don’t have centuries.

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An unlikely source

Nov 3rd, 2016 5:27 pm | By

Melania Trump has returned to campaigning for her owner husband. She’s chosen a theme: bullying. She’s against it.

Melania Trump returned from political exile on Thursday by making a rather eyebrow-raising claim: as first lady, she would combat bullying. That anti-bullying campaign, however, likely wouldn’t extend to her husband.

“Our culture has gotten too mean and too violent,” the wife of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told a crowd here in the suburbs of Philadelphia. “It is never OK when a 12-year-old girl or boy is mocked, bullied or attacked. It is terrible when that happens on the playground and it is unacceptable when it’s done by someone with no name hiding on the internet.”

If she really thinks that, she made a very bad marital choice. She’s married to the worst public bully I’ve ever seen in action – the.very.worst.

She’s been away until now, Eliot Nelson notes.

Her absence made the peculiar focus of her address all the more perplexing. Her husband has become infamous for his bullying ― both online and in person ― of virtually anyone who appears to oppose him. In fact, the National Education Association recently began a campaign to raise awareness of a “Trump effect,” in which children feel emboldened by the candidate’s behavior to engage in bullying.

The link under infamous for bullying is to that NY Times collection of his bullying tweets. I’m sure you remember just how extensive it is.

“We’ve seen this already,” Melania Trump said Thursday. “As adults, many of us are able to handle mean words, even lies.” (This very week, a social media campaign, #ImWithTur, has sprung up as a defense of NBC News reporter Katy Tur, whom the Republican nominee singled out for mockery during a speech in Miami on Wednesday.)

Trump also bemoaned that children are often picked on for their “looks or intelligence” ― even though her husband frequently attacks people based on those characteristics.

She’d probably better stay away from him for a few days.

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Coming up roses

Nov 3rd, 2016 4:38 pm | By

Marc Fisher at the Washington Post ponders how Trump deals with his failures.

When Donald Trump loses, he lashes out, assigns blame and does whatever it takes to make a defeat look like a win. When that isn’t plausible, he pronounces the system rigged — victory wasn’t possible because someone put in the fix.

It’s what makes him great. I mean terrible. It’s what makes him terrible. I mean it’s one of the many things that make him terrible.

Trump calls defeats “blips.” Losing the race for the most powerful job on the planet is no one’s idea of a blip, and if that happens, Trump is highly unlikely to slip away and accept life as a historical footnote, as Michael Dukakis did; to live out his golden years as a respected elder statesman, as Bob Dole has done; or to consider some other form of government service, as John Kerry did.

Well that’s because he’s terrible. Huge ego, huge vanity, no humility, no respect for people who aren’t Donald Trump.

In the final month of the campaign — even as he has contended that he will win — Trump has repeatedly said that a loss would be the fault of leaders of his party, the news media, pollsters, career politicians and federal investigators. At his final debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump refused to say he would accept the result of the election as legitimate. For more than a week after that, he added almost daily to the list of institutions he said were rigged against him: special interests, Clinton donors, big media companies, “global financial powers.” (That line of rhetoric grew less heated this past week, after FBI Director James B. Comey focused the nation’s attention back on Clinton’s emails, and Trump even suggested that things might not be as rigged as he’d said.)

It’s almost as if the whole thing is a colossal vanity project and nothing else.

Losing politicians rarely distance themselves from defeat this way. Traditionally, if they want to maintain their credibility so they can try again in another election, they eat crow, accept the wisdom of the voters and show a modicum of grace toward their victorious opponents. Trump’s approach is one psychologists say they see more often in sports, where defeated athletes sometimes immediately guarantee that they will demolish whomever just beat them, or in business, where executives with an unusually inflated sense of self-worth tend to blame failures on others.

It’s also something you see more in terrible people.

Trump’s classmates, neighbors, teachers and friends from New York in the 1950s are united in their recollections of a kid who had a powerful aversion to defeat — and a tendency to blast others when he lost. In sixth grade in Queens, his neighbor Jeff Bier said, he loaned young Donald his favorite bat during a baseball game at school, but when Trump failed to get a hit, he smashed Bier’s bat on the pavement, cracking the wood. Trump did not apologize, Bier said.

Terrible even at age 12.

In 1990, Bruce Nobles, president of the short-lived Trump Shuttle, told his boss that women were avoiding the airline because of the owner’s behavior toward women. “They don’t like what they’re reading about you in the paper,” Nobles told Trump. According to Nobles, the owner laughed and replied, “Yeah, but the guys love it.” (Bankers forced the sale of the airline in 1992; Trump blamed a weak economy.)

And not the fact that he’s terrible.

Over and over, moments that looked like defeat have become something else in Trump’s telling. In 1975, after the federal government sued Trump and his father, alleging that their real estate company systematically mistreated blacks and other minorities who wanted to rent apartments from them, the Trumps settled the case, signing a consent order that barred them from discriminating. Trump contended in an interview years later that the Justice Department suit “wasn’t a case against us. There were many, many landlords that were sued under that case.” The suit was filed solely against the Trumps and their company.

He’s a terrible liar.

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