Kaveh Mousavi alerted me to a news item that he discusses at Margin of Error:

It’s always good to see good news after a week of horrifying news. Last week we saw serial acid attacks against four women in the Iranian province of Isfahan. Today people have poured into streets in both Tehran and Isfahan to protest these heinous crimes.

I’m not sure I think that quite amounts to good news.* There are some kinds of good news that are so dependent on previous terrible news that it’s hard to see them as really good. “People protest the random torture of women” – well good, but better if people just didn’t randomly torture women.

Still. I know what he … Read the rest

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Dawn reports that Chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) Maulana Mohammad Khan Sheerani has said a Muslim woman cannot object to the second or subsequent marriages of her husband.

Presiding over a meeting of the council here on Tuesday, he said a woman could not demand divorce if her husband married a second, third or fourth time.

He said Islam had given the women the right to separate from her husband, but another marriage could not be a valid ground for doing so.

So a married woman gets no choice and no say how she lives her life. If her husband decides there will be one or two or three more women living with them, she doesn’t get … Read the rest

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Jessica Valenti is more optimistic than I am. She says GamerGate is the last gasp of the angry white guys. I wish.

As the cultural relevance of angry white men on the internet withers away and ends, their last words – muttered angrily at an empty room – will surely be“Gamer … gate”.

The recent uproar – said to be over ethics in journalism but focused mostly on targeting outspoken women who aren’t journalists at all – is just the last, desperate gasp of misogynists facing an unwelcoming future. But this particular bitter end, while long overdue, is loud, angry and extremely dangerous.

I wonder what gives her the idea that this is the last gasp and … Read the rest

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Rebecca has a post giving 10 good reasons to ban her from the Bay Area Science Festival.

Two weeks ago, PZ Myers pointed out that Dr. Eliza Sutton of the University of Washington in Seattle was the source of a rumor that PZ had contracted gonnorhea at SkepchickCon last year. Sutton posts on blogs and social media as “Skeptickle” or “Skeptixx,” where she has been open about her profession as a doctor, and has also previously declared her own name.

Obviously, a medical doctor diagnosing hated enemies with an STD is a gross breach of medical ethics, which is why a link to PZ’s post was Tweeted from the Skepchick Twitter feed, which we use occasionally

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Via several thoughtful and informed comments.

By quixote:

Childhood leukemia is one of the big recent success stories of clinical medicine. The girl’s chances would definitely be better in the hospital. About 90% better.

But.

I’m a biologist. I’ve worked with scientists all my adult life. We’re human. Which means we’re only one tiny smidgen less susceptible to the Old Boy Net than your average curmudgeon in the street. Which means scientists are just as capable of ignoring the obvious in favor of dogma as anyone else.

Just one example. Plants with some kind of pharmacological activity are on the order of 1% in the Amazon rainforest. For plants in native pharamcopoeias that rises to 30%. So when Merck

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Democracy Now did a segment on Anita Sarkeesian and #GamerGate yesterday.

Anita Sarkeesian, a prominent feminist critic of video games, was forced to cancel a speech at Utah State University last week after the school received an email threatening to carry out “the deadliest shooting in American history” at the event. The email sender wrote: “feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge.” The sender used the moniker Marc Lepine, the name of a man who killed 14 women, most of them female engineering students, in a mass shooting in Montreal in 1989. Sarkeesian canceled the talk after being told that under Utah law, campus police could not prevent people from bringing guns. We speak to Sarkeesian

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From the National Post:

For Laurie Hill, resident of Canada’s largest aboriginal community, it’s just wrong to suggest that modern medicine is the only way to treat cancer and other serious diseases.

She stands firmly behind the Six Nations neighbours who took their 11-year-old daughter with leukemia out of chemotherapy, and are treating her with traditional, but unproven, native methods and other alternative health-care instead.

“Unproven” is a bit of a euphemism. Surely it’s more a matter of having abundant reasons to think traditional methods and alternative health-care aren’t effective against leukemia.

“There’s a fear of [aboriginal remedies] or denial of it. If things can’t be quantified or qualified, to them it’s irrelevant,” said Ms. Hill, as she shopped

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People at schools in various parts of the US are freaking out about Ebola because of a very flawed knowledge of geography, basic geography, as in, Africa is bigger than Rhode Island.

For instance, at a school in New Burlington, New Jersey, two Rwandan students are staying at home due to other parents’ fear that they will infect other children with Ebola. Rwanda is as close to the Ebola outbreak as New York City is to Seattle.

In Hazlehurst, Mississippi, a school principal’s recent visit to Zambia has led to a lot of parents choosing to keep their kids at home. But Zambia is in Southern Africa, over 3,000 miles away from the Ebola outbreak — the

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More provocations by former philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers. She obviously does them to provoke, because she knows it teases, so I’m being very kind and generous to her by calling attention to them. Or, if you prefer, I’m taking her bait like a damn fool. Whichever. But I just keep being fascinated by the trashiness of it all.

There are two sides, she says.

Christina H. Sommers @CHSommers · 21 minutes ago
Why is Wash Post taking sides rather than offering readers honest account of both sides of #Gamergate? @caitlindewey

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/14/the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/ …

Feminism is dangerous.

Little evidence that video games cause harm. But overexposure to hardline feminism appears to cause personal & social harm. Studies needed.

Nanananana, … Read the rest

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Here is Efua Dorkenoo’s page at Equality Now.

Efua Dorkenoo became the Senior Advisor to Equality Now on the issue of female genital mutilation (FGM) in February 2014, after having served as the Advocacy Director, FGM programme in Equality Now’s London office. She is also a trained  bio-social scientist in public health and an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Health Sciences at City University, London. Starting in the early 1980s, her pioneering work on FGM has contributed to the international recognition of FGM as a public health and a human rights issue. From 1995-2001, she worked as the WHO’s first technical expert at their Geneva headquarters and assisted the organization in introducing FGM onto the agendas

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Another big loss.

Efua Dorkenoo, widely seen as the mother of the global movement to end female genital mutilation, has died after undergoing treatment for cancer, her family have confirmed. She was 65. Dorkenoo – known affectionately to many as “mama Efua” – was a leading light in the movement to bring an end to FGM for more than 30 years, campaigning against the practice since the 1980s.

The girls’ and women’s rights campaigner saw the progression of the movement to end FGM go from a minority, often ignored, issue to a key policy priority for governments across the world. Proof of this arrived with the launch of The Girl Generation on October 10 – a major Africa-led campaign

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Pragna Patel on the difficulty of human rights work between conservative views of economics and law on the one hand and religious fundamentalism on the other.

First, we are compelled to challenge the state for removing legal aid from a huge range of civil and criminal matters which impact not only on individual rights but also on our demands for institutional accountability in the face of abuses of power that seem to be growing rather than diminishing. The government’s ‘reforms’ on legal aid are strongly located in a fiscal context that reiterate some of the key overarching aims of the present government: localism, alternative dispute resolution strategies, deficit reduction and deregulation. Taken together these measures are destroying one of

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Tolu Ogunlesi reports on another everyday hero.

Last month, the Nigerian government released the 2014 National Honours award list: more than 300 people, many of them serving government officials, seemingly recognised simply because of the public office they hold, not for anything particularly honourable or heroic. An outcry followed, largely due to the absence of one name: Dr Stella Ameyo Adadevoh. A government spokesman was forced to explain that the awards are never given posthumously.

The public’s indignation was understandable: Adadevoh was the Nigerian doctor who oversaw the treatment of Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian national who brought the Ebola virus to Nigeria. She died of the virus on 19 August, one of eight fatalities out of 20 cases (each

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Raif Badawy’s wife Ensaf Haidar writes about what Saudi Arabia is doing to her husband.

In May, his sentence was reduced to 10 years in prison, a fine of $100,000 and 1,000 lashes. He is to be lashed 50 times each Friday after prayers until it reaches 1,000 lashes.

Ra’if is not a criminal. He is not a murderer or a rapist. He is a blogger. That’s it. His only crime is being a free voice in a country that has no tolerance nor understanding for freedom.

He’s a blogger. I’m a blogger. I try to imagine being lashed 50 times to punish me for that. I try to imagine spending ten years in prison for that. I can’t.… Read the rest

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Mother Jones has a big story on #GamerGate. As it goes on it tells me some things I didn’t know.

Sarkeesian noted recently that she has been “subjected to the worst harassment I’ve ever faced” as part of a convoluted conflict known as #Gamergate, which has been roiling the gaming industry since August. Playing out primarily on social media, #Gamergate centers around several women who work in the industry and have criticized its dominant macho culture and frequent sexualization of women. Their critique has met with intense harassment and bullying. The FBI is currently investigating the threats against Sarkeesian and others, according to Vice.

Note, again, how familiar that is – their critique has met with intense harassment … Read the rest

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There’s further mainstream media coverage of #GamerGate, while Christina Hoff Sommers continues to tweet in support of the brave rebels.

Christina H. Sommers @CHSommers · 7 hours ago
Not a good idea to irritate hundreds of thousands of gamers. @Gawker #GamerGate Ht:@lizzyf620 https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=mk3y98Z5kuw …

Media has maligned & defamed millions of innocent gamers. Big mistake. You have awakened a sleeping giant. @Gawker #GamerGate

#Gamergate is not about misogyny.It’s a consumer rebellion against media bullies & shallow ideologies. & these r consumers who
like to win.

If you missed this Spike article, pease read it now! #Gamergate http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/gamergate-an-un-pc-rebellion/16029#.VEPxAoq9KK0 …

Gamers are one of the most diverse & welcoming groups I have ever known.But in the face of unfair attacks,they react. http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sd5gl1

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Strange doings at the University of Sydney.

The University of Sydney has suspended Prof Barry Spurr over emails in which he called the prime minister, Tony Abbott, an “Abo lover”, Indigenous Australians “human rubbish tips” and Nelson Mandela as a “darky”.

Don’t tell me let me guess – he was using those insults “ironically” – right? He didn’t mean them literally, it was just a performance, a many-layered meta-joke. Right?

Spurr, a poetry expert, was a specialist consultant to the federal government’s national curriculum review looking at English from foundation to year 12.

The emails, first obtained by website New Matilda, have seriously damaged the review’s findings, with Labor calling them “tainted” and the Australian Education

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Pacific Standard reports on an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum called Killer Heels: The Art of the High-Heeled Shoe.

I think high heels are one of the weirdest and most perverse customs we have over here in the putatively developed world. They’re temporary foot-binding, and if they’re worn long enough the damage becomes permanent. They don’t damage the feet as much as foot-binding did, but that’s not much of a distinction.

Now, they’re also “a choice,” and feminism is all about choice, and yadda yadda. But for one thing, they’re not a completely free choice, given all the contexts in which they’re more or less obligatory, and for another thing, I flatly reject the idea that all choices made … Read the rest

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The European Humanist Federation points out that the 2014 EU report on countries that are candidates for membership does a lousy job of monitoring abuses of the rights of non-believers in those countries.

…the 2014 reports have clearly failed to address the situation for non-believers in these countries, with not one single mention of their situation being present within the section on ‘Freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ in this year’s reports.

They do a good job on reporting violations of the rights of adherents of minority religions, but they leave out the rights of adherents of no religion. It’s as if rights came with religion but not with no religion.

Negating [neglecting?] to report on the

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