Posts Tagged ‘ FTB ’

More angry at women, more hyper-masculine in their beliefs and attitudes

Jan 3rd, 2014 3:04 pm | By

A study by David Lisak of U Mass Boston, Understanding the Predatory Nature of Sexual Violence [pdf]. A significant point:

There is also a set of newer myths about rape, myths that have been
spawned by the new generation of victimization studies that have emerged since
the 1980’s. These studies documented that rape was both far more prevalent than
traditional crime surveys indicated, and that most rape victims did not report
their victimization. These studies also clearly revealed that most rapes are not
committed by strangers in ski masks, but rather by “acquaintances” or “nonstrangers.”

These realizations led to the general adoption of new language and new
categories of rape. Terms such as “acquaintance rape” and “date rape” emerged
and

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



Tub-thumping jingoism

Jan 3rd, 2014 12:24 pm | By

The Independent comments on Gove’s tantrum and Evans’s response.

Today, one of Britain’s most eminent historians hit back at what he described as an “ignorant attack” by Education Secretary Michael Gove on his analysis of the conflict.

Writing in the Daily Mail yesterday Mr Gove accused Professor Sir Richard Evans of failing to acknowledge the debt owed to the soldiers that were killed in the Great War claiming he had previously dismissed attempts to honour their sacrifice as “narrow tub-thumping jingoism”.

Sir Richard, Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson College Cambridge, suggested the criticism stemmed from his vocal opposition to the Education Secretary’s ill-fated attempts to reform the way history is taught in schools.

Professor Evans told 

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Gove takes to Daily Mail to set historians straight

Jan 3rd, 2014 12:11 pm | By

Once again, I find myself surprised. I didn’t know anyone bothered to defend the First World War these days; I didn’t know anyone had bothered to do that since about 1930. I was under the impression that the defenders started falling silent at a pretty sharp clip in 1915. (That last one is hyperbole. There was a lot of oppression and repression of opponents of the war as long as it was going on. Bertrand Russell did a stint in the slammer for it.)

But once again, I was wrong. Michael Gove is bothering to defend it, and talk smack about people he dislikes in the process. The Daily Mail (yes) is on the case.

Left-wing myths about the

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It’s all about the hits

Jan 3rd, 2014 11:44 am | By

Says a guy at pubshare, and he ought to know.

He starts with a picture of a not-hot woman saying women are not for decoration, while hot women laugh at her. Geddit? Feminists ugly, hot women not feminists. Ugly women feminists because ugly, hot women not feminists because not ugly.

Then he explains that provocation gets hits, so when women talk about sexist shit, they’re just making sexist shit more popular.

Feminists always feel the need to fight misogyny. To fight the trolls. To voice their disagreement. Sorry feminists, but when you do that all you do is empower the people you are trying to destroy. You bring eyeballs to an article that says the opposite of what you

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People’s Front of Students v Students’ Front of People

Jan 3rd, 2014 8:51 am | By

The Times Higher reports on…well it’s too complicated to paraphrase.

Headline: Students’ unions hit back at group monitoring campus extremism

Subhead: Student Rights’ agenda questioned by LSE, Birkbeck, Goldsmiths unions

The article starts:

Three students’ unions have condemned a group that monitors extremist speakers on campus for “targeting Muslim students”.

Student Rights, which refutes* the students’ unions’ claims, released a report in May 2013 on events organised by Islamic societies that found that a quarter of those it monitored had enforced gender segregation.

That’s what the Times Higher reports on.

And we’re in the weeds right at the outset. I disagree that monitoring for instance Islamist speakers equals “targeting Muslim students.” Equating the two implies that all Muslim … Read the rest

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Nothing but shame

Jan 2nd, 2014 6:15 pm | By

Shaheen Hashmat has thoughts on Islam and Honour Abuse.

It’s not just Islam. On the other hand it’s not completely independent of religion either.

I look back on my own experiences and I know that religion was used as justification for absolute control and horrific abuse. Some awful things were done to me by my family.

That’s the thing, you see: it’s used as justification. Nothing else can do that as effectively. One of the projects of atheism is to make it less effective that way.

It doesn’t work to say “I forced my fourteen-year-old daughter to marry a man of fifty because we’re socialists.” Or “…because we’re Federalists” or Labour or Tory or Christian Democratic or Communist … Read the rest

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“This PC gender politics thing”

Jan 2nd, 2014 5:59 pm | By

The Wall Street Journal talks to Camille Paglia about “a feminist defense of masculine virtues.” Oh god no, not this crap again.

This self-described “notorious Amazon feminist” isn’t telling anyone to Lean In or asking Why Women Still Can’t Have It All. No, her indictment may be as surprising as it is wide-ranging: The military is out of fashion, Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, and sexiness is dead.

They’re joking, right? Surprising? What on earth is surprising about any of that? It’s been Paglia’s shtick for decades.

The fact that the acclaimed book—the first of six; her latest, “Glittering Images,” is a survey of Western art—was rejected

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“These ladies have it in for men”

Jan 2nd, 2014 5:15 pm | By

Wow – libertarianism in all its glory.

Amy Alkon @amyalkon

@kilianhekhuis @hypnotosov @OpheliaBenson @mistersugar Again, we have people CLUELESS about def of harassment – “severe, pervasive”

@kilianhekhuis @hypnotosov @OpheliaBenson @mistersugar Would you expect a man offended by convo to speak up or to go fetal position & tattle

@kilianhekhuis @hypnotosov @OpheliaBenson @mistersugar My suspicion: These ladies & others have it in for men & Bora was conven located.

Jesus. She accuses the women of lying, even though Bora never denied their accounts.… Read the rest

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Oh but now it’s ironic

Jan 2nd, 2014 1:54 pm | By

From 2012 – how advertising today really is not all that much more “advanced” than it was in the 50s.

Man standing on a woman then? Man with a heavily shod foot on her throat now. The contemporary one is “advanced” in the usual sense that it makes her look as if violence=hawt sex.

Check them out. The Dolce & Gabbana gang rape one is especially…contemporary.… Read the rest

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What is “toxic feminism”?

Jan 2nd, 2014 12:26 pm | By

Yesterday was happy new year, so it was a time for new beginnings and startings over. (But was it? Was it? Was it really? No, not really, but maybe starting a new calendar is enough to make it seem as if it is.) One starting over was that of Bora Zivkovic, who returned to Twitter for the first time since October 16. His first new beginning tweet heralded a blog post by Anton Zuiker, the co-founder (with Bora Z) of Science Online.

Bora Zivkovic @BoraZ

From @mistersugar, the best friend one can ever hope to have: Roots and bitters http://mistersugar.com/2014/01/01/roots-and-bitters … Happy New Year!

Roots and bitters is a long (5500 words according to Zuiker) post about…Bora Zivkovic, mostly, … Read the rest

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The child’s mother took her daughter to a doctor for treatment

Jan 2nd, 2014 11:39 am | By

Apparently in Australia they do prosecute FGM, or at least attempt to, or at least have made one such attempt. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

A Sydney father has been charged by police over the alleged genital mutilation of his infant daughter while they were holidaying overseas.

Police said the man and his family were on a holiday in February 2012 when the father allegedly organised for his nine-month-old daughter to undergo a procedure known as female circumcision.

About six months later, the child’s mother took her daughter to a doctor for treatment, and the NSW Police Child Abuse Squad was alerted.

That sounds like a hidden story. One imagines the mother’s reaction after the genital mutilation which she … Read the rest

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Guest post: Brass bawls

Jan 2nd, 2014 9:39 am | By

Guest post by Reese Matthews.

Some in the US military’s chain of command are upset with the judicial system which has convicted at least one soldier of rape and harassment.

In their minds, any convictions amounts to an unfair trial system.

Dustup Over Military Appeals Judge Delaying Cases

Dozens of military criminal cases have been thrown into limbo because of a legal challenge over whether Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel improperly appointed a judge to the Air Force’s highest court, with attorneys raising questions about the judge’s independence amid increasing pressure over the military’s handling of sexual assault cases.

[...]

“The Secretary of Defense has been making a lot of statements related to sexual assaults, and here he is appointing Judge

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Remember eleven days ago?

Jan 1st, 2014 5:00 pm | By

There was a lot of news coverage of LSE’s apology to Chris and Abhishek on December 20, which I somehow missed because I was looking at something else.

The BBC for example.

Prof Paul Kelly of the LSE told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme: “The law in this case was complex and given the complaint, with the backing of solicitors, looking for judicial review, we had to take legal advice.

“This was always a grey area. So yes, I got the judgement wrong but it was a complex decision and it’s important to make that clear.”

Prof Kelly added that in the UK there was no US-style First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech “without qualification”.

He said the university had

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No principle at stake here

Jan 1st, 2014 3:31 pm | By

Another New Statesman piece on “Islamophobia” – as usual not defined or specified, as usual functioning to conflate dislike of Islam with hatred of Muslims and thus make the former taboo along with the latter.

Last week I was asked to think of an issue on which I’ve changed my mind. I said the Iraq war, but if I’d been asked this week I might have said something else: Islamophobia. I used to think it wasn’t a problem.

Before I explain why, let’s look at one particular news story, by which I mean embarrassingly trivial non-story. Marks and Spencer is allowing its Muslim employees not to serve alcohol or pork products. A privately owned company has a policy that

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From across the community

Jan 1st, 2014 2:50 pm | By

Fortunately the pesky secularists and liberals and feminists don’t get to have it all their own way. Week before last there was a meeting of “Muslim women united against attack on gender segregation”…in other words united in favor of gender segregation. A site called 5pillarz has a carefully worded report.

Around 150 Muslim women attended a community event last Friday evening, organised after the attack by politicians and the media on the Islamic practice of gender segregation.

Not the “Islamic practice” as such, no. The “attack” was and is on attempts to impose the practice at university lectures and debates open to the general public; it was and is not on the practice in mosques and other religious and/or … Read the rest

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Millions missing

Jan 1st, 2014 11:55 am | By

At 50 Million Missing, a post about the axing of Taslima’s tv serial.

Feminist author Taslima Nasreen’s scripted television series (in Bengali) titled ‘Dusahobas’ meaning ” Unbearable Cohabitation,” although ready for telecast has been “indefinitely postponed” for airing, because of pressure from Islamic clerics in the state of West Bengal.

Abdul Aziz of the religious group Milli Ittehad Parishad said their group had written to the producers of the show and told them to withdraw Taslima’s name and reference from the serial, even though Taslima has scripted the show! Aziz said, “We have been told that there are some scenes in the serial that might hurt our sentiments,” even though he does not specify as to what exactly

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Kolkata: another gang-rape victim dies

Jan 1st, 2014 11:34 am | By

The Times of India reports:

A year after the Nirbhaya horror, yet another gang-rape victim lost her battle for life at the state-run R G Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata on New Year’s Eve.

The 16-year-old, a resident of Madhyamgram in North 24-Parganas, was gang-raped at Badu on October 25. The next day, while on her way back home from the police station after lodging a complaint, she was allegedly sexually abused all over again.

The teenager and her family were so traumatized by the sequence of events that they chose to shift to another tenement close to Kolkata Airport. But there was no respite. The miscreants continued to hound her till she finally poured kerosene

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A priest explains “gender ideology”

Jan 1st, 2014 10:55 am | By

Thanks to a comment by Ariel, we can read this interview with a priest, Dariusz Oko from the Papal University of John Paul II, translated from Polish and titled Gender ideology destroys a cradle of humankind – a family. This is good because I was just wondering what the Vatican thinks it means by “gender ideology.” Let’s find out.

Anna Cichobłazińska: – In media there appear more and more terms: gender, ideology of gender, totalitarianism of gender, philosophy of gender. What does this term mean and why is it so dangerous?

Fr. Dariusz Oko: We should speak not so much about ‘philosophy’ but about ‘ideology’ of gender. Philosophy is a radical search for the truth and the good,

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The huge interrogations

Jan 1st, 2014 9:54 am | By

Sunday morning at 10 a.m. UK time, BBC1 The Big Questions will be asking the ridiculous question, ”Should Human Rights always outweigh Religious Rights?”

But the good news is that Chris Moos and Abhishek Phadnis will be taking part, so it should be interesting.

Mind you, I can ruin the suspense right now by saying yes, of course they should. Any religious practice that violates one or more human rights should not be allowed. There is no “religious right” to enslave people or cut off their genitalia or keep them out of school or deny them medical treatment or prevent them from getting birth control.… Read the rest

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One in six

Dec 31st, 2013 5:06 pm | By

It has come to my attention that I don’t have anxiety, and that a lot of people do, and that I’m damn lucky not to. Or maybe I mean I don’t have Anxiety, or an anxiety disorder. It’s not as if I never get unreasonably jittery about something. I’ve told you how absurdly jittery I get whenever I travel (and how promptly I get over it once I’m at the airport). But compared to real anxiety, that’s nothing.

Scott Stossel has a long article about his in the current Atlantic.

I’ve finally settled on a pre-talk regimen that enables me to avoid the weeks of anticipatory misery that the approach of a public-speaking engagement would otherwise produce.

Let’s say

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