URGENT: We’ve just heard that Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court has decided to uphold Raif Badawi’s sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison. Let’s remind them that blogging is NOT a crime! http://amn.st/6187hAbD
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From the Guardian:
The cruel and unjust sentence passed on the Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes, has been upheld by the supreme court in Riyadh. Hopes that the court might reduce or even commute the sentence, particularly as the holy fast of Ramadan begins next week, have been dashed. The only remaining appeal now is to the Saudi monarch, King Salman. From Quebec, where she has been granted asylum with their children, Mr Badawi’s wife Ensaf Haidar has said that she fears the public flogging – 50 lashes at a time every Friday after prayers – might resume as soon as this Friday.
I’ve often quarreled with the Guardian, but it gets this one … Read the rest
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Elinor Burkett wrote a think piece for today’s New York Times.
She asks if women and men have different brains, and notes that an affirmative answer to that question has been known to elicit heated dissent.
… Read the restBut when Bruce Jenner said much the same thing in an April interview with Diane Sawyer, he was lionized for his bravery, even for his progressivism.
“My brain is much more female than it is male,” he told her, explaining how he knew that he was transgender.
This was the prelude to a new photo spread and interview in Vanity Fair that offered us a glimpse into Caitlyn Jenner’s idea of a woman: a cleavage-boosting corset, sultry poses, thick mascara and the prospect
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Originally a comment by chrislawson on It’s up to individual pharmacists.
As a fellow of the RACGP, I’m extremely proud that they’ve taken this stand after many years of not addressing it. An observation for those of you outside the medical field or Australia (I don’t know how applicable this is in other countries)…
Most pharmacists I know dislike stocking all the natural remedy stuff. The problem is that, much as I love Australia’s socialised medical system, one of its deep flaws is that governments keep trying to save money in the system where it’s easier to make cuts rather than where it’s sensible to make cuts.
One of these flawed money-saving approaches is that the government has completely … Read the rest
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Holy crap. Libby Anne did some Google-sleuthing after the Duggar parents’ interview, and she found something pretty…telling.
While Josh initially molested his sisters while they slept, he eventually began molesting them while they were awake, too. Did the family value personal space so little that the girls seriously had no idea this this was inappropriate?
“We pulled him out [of the home], and he went through working with that man.”
What man, pray?
“This man really reached his heart.”
“This man” is convenient shorthand for “I don’t want to tell you who.”
But there were clues.
… Read the restHe was running a little training center in Little Rock Arkansas. And under the roof of that training center, you had Little Rock
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Quoting a public post by Josh Spokes on Facebook:
Give the gift of a life determined by the person who lives it—fund an abortion today. The National Network of Abortion Funds pays for women to have abortions they couldn’t otherwise afford. That’s right. They don’t “raise awareness,” or “help women with the very difficult life choices that these issues raise,” or any of that happy-pappy bullshit designed to avoid saying “having an abortion is a very good thing if you want one.”
They just flat out pay for them. Please help.
You can donate to honor Dr George Tiller if you like.
… Read the restDonate to honor Dr. George Tiller, killed for helping women
The day that
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I saw about half of the Duggar sisters’ interview on Fox last night, and it was revolting. It turns out that Josh Duggar did nothing wrong and the Duggar parents did nothing wrong, and the real perpetrator here is the wicked secular agenda-driven news media, for reporting on Josh Duggar’s sexual abuse of his younger sisters.
The Washington Post has highlights.
… Read the rest“We are victims,” Dillard tearfully told Kelly in another portion of the interview. Explaining her reaction to the moment when allegations against her brother came to light last month, she said: “They can’t do this to us.”
“I see it as a re-victimization that’s even 1,000 times worse,” Dillard said.
…
As their parents had in an interview with
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How ironic…or maybe it’s not, maybe it’s classic rather than ironic. Or both. Being marginalized doesn’t prevent the marginalized from marginalizing others, which is perhaps both ironic and classic. (Yes, that applies to me too. Yes, you alone among mortals are immune. Please sit down now.)
The Human Rights Campaign is a white guys club.
A new internal diversity report reveals the Human Rights Campaign has a sexist work environment where only ‘gay, white, male’ employees advance into leadership positions.
Well you see it’s like this – having a leadership position isn’t a human right.
Bullet dodged!
… Read the rest“As a woman, I feel excluded every day,” says an employee of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT civil rights
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This is cool.
Trans People Are Creating Their Own Vanity Fair Covers With #MyVanityFairCover.
Laverne Cox recently began a dialogue on her Tumblr concerning the beauty standards surrounding trans women in light of Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover.
“It is important to note that these standards are also informed by race, class and ability among other intersections. I have always been aware that I can never represent all trans people. No one or two or three trans people can,” wrote Cox.
So: more “Vanity Fair” covers.
… Read the restCall me Crystal.
A lot of people have explained it better than me recently, but a large contingent of the trans community has engaged in a lot of dialogue the past few days,
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The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has told GPs to stop prescribing homeopathic remedies and says pharmacists must also stop stocking such products for the same sort of reason they shouldn’t prescribe/stock candy or kale or blueberries as medicine.
… Read the restThe official body for Australian GPs has asked pharmacists to strip their shelves of homeopathic products and warned doctors not to prescribe them because they do nothing.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) has formally recommended GPs stop prescribing homeopathic remedies and says pharmacists must also stop stocking such products because there is no evidence they are effective in any way.
The RACGP’s position statement on homeopathy, released on Wednesday, follows recent findings by the National Health and
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A bat signal. The Indian Atheists Facebook page has been banned as unsafe. This needs to be reversed.
… Read the restSorry, are you trying to promote rationalism and secular humanism in India, you may be unsafe for Facebook.
The Facebook page Indian Atheists is an initiative by the Nirmukta community. Our mission is to bring together a community of Indian Atheists and to build a society based on science, reason and humanistic values.
Yesterday we found that content from this page could not be shared as it has been flagged as unsafe. Facebook policies are such that, in case of an objectionable content, the said post would be removed by Facebook. But we found that no specific post was removed as objectionable.
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Never forget, children: priests and bishops are better than the rest of us. They’re holy, good men who follow church teachings and serve God.
Except for the archdiocese of Minneapolis-St Paul, that is.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis is facing criminal charges after US officials said church leaders ignored reports that a priest was molesting children.
It’s the archdiocese that’s charged, as a corporation, not people.
… Read the restOfficials alleged that the archdiocese “turned a blind eye” to complaints about priest Curtis Wehmeyer for years.
Wehmeyer, now defrocked, was convicted of molesting two brothers in 2013.
`It is not only Curtis Wehmeyer who is criminally responsible for the harm caused, but it is the archdiocese as well,”
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I’ve squandered a lot of time today arguing (hello SIWOTI) with people busy claiming I’m a transphobe or a friend and helper of transphobes or at least someone who doesn’t point and hiss loudly enough when a transphobe walks by – and I was rewarded for my efforts by this staggeringly credulous and illiberal comment:
And you know what? Once someone points out her transmisogyny to you, congratulations. She IS a “known transphobe” to you. You thank them for helping you get yourself together…
After the ellipse there’s a stupid jibe about my getting my feelings hurt, which is not the issue at all.
The issue is the very thing denied by that ridiculous assertion. Oh right, once … Read the rest
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Originally a comment by Jenora Feuer on The schools, financed by the government but run largely by churches…
never speak in your mother tongue to anyone, fellow student or staff, on penalty of a beating.
Yeah, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” was pretty blatantly the point of the system. Forced assimilation and conformity. Utterly destroy any sense of being different and actually deserving of respect. Eradicate the local cultures.
Titles like “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” reek of cover ups,
Well, despite Prime Minister Harper officially apologizing on behalf of the federal government at the time this Commission was set up, his actions in general over the years leave little doubt that he’d be happy if that apology were … Read the rest
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About Canada’s residential schools…
… Read the restOTTAWA — Canada’s former policy of forcibly removing aboriginal children from their families for schooling “can best be described as ‘cultural genocide.’ ”
That is the conclusion reached by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission after six years of intensive research, including 6,750 interviews. The commission published a summary version on Tuesday of what will ultimately be a multivolume report, documenting widespread physical, cultural and sexual abuse at government-sponsored residential schools that Indian, Inuit and other indigenous children were forced to attend.
The schools, financed by the government but run largely by churches, were in operation for more than a century, from 1883 until the last one closed in
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Josh thought he was making a joke, but it’s real. They’re really here. They’re replacing us while we sleep.
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Ok as I’ve mentioned I have reservations about people talking about trans women purely in terms of (a familiar, approved, acceptable, what you might call cisnormative form of) beauty, not least because I think it puts yet more burden on trans women who can’t or don’t want to attain that form of beauty. People on Facebook are saying I’m the worst kind of TERF as a result. But there are other contexts in which “you are GORGEOUS” seem right even to me.
This tweet by Kadar Sheikhmous gives one such context.
Kurdish women remove dark dress after fleeing #isis west Tel Abyad nr #Kobani.
Oh yeah. That is gorgeous.… Read the rest
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Jill Filipovic has a brilliant piece on the Duggars’ interview.
What viewers got was a long defense of the Duggar parents, a minimization of Josh’s crimes, and a fuller illustration of why a misogynist “purity culture” is bad for girls, boys, and sexual assault victims in particular. What the Duggars proved is that their own self-interest in gaining status, influence, and money outweighed the needs of their own daughters — and that Michelle and Jim Bob aren’t just kooky religious extremists, but parents capable of remarkable manipulation and cruelty.
Nobody’s a kooky religious extremist; that’s not a thing. Religious extremism is too destructive and terrible to be kooky.
… Read the restJosh comes to his parents to say he’s molested his sisters
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I wrote this post on March 27, 2010. For some reason it feels peculiarly relevant again today.
The LA Times notices that the pope has a problem. The problem is that instead of just saying ‘We did a terrible terrible terrible thing, and we did it for decade upon decade,’ the Vatican is lashing out at 1) news outlets that report the terrible things the church has been doing and 2) other institutions that do terrible things. This is infantile and disgusting, and it is unworthy of an institution that (to repeat a point I’ve made a few hundred times) purports to have a higher and better morality than anyone else. It is unworthy because it persists in … Read the rest
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