I hadn’t heard of Backbone Zone before. Ant Allan informed me via tumblr. They have some great posters.
You can order them at their site.
I like this one, too:
I like it because I detest the “shame men by calling them girls” trope. It makes me feel murderous.
Another good one (they’re all good):
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
About Polk County and the 14-year-old girl charged with first degree murder of her newborn…and about Amanda Todd, and many other people and incidents, and a way of thinking.
From the Handmaid’s Tale, chapter 13. The scene is a Testifying session during the re-education phase of Gilead.
… Read the restIt’s Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. She told the same story last week. She seemed almost proud of it, while she was telling. It may not even be true. At Testifying, it’s safer to make things up than to say you have nothing to reveal. But since it’s Janine, it’s probably more or less true.
But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A 14-year-old girl in Lakeland, Florida has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in the death of her newborn infant. You probably know the story: secret pregnancy, birth in the bathroom of mobile home with mother a few feet away, dead infant in shoebox under the bed.
They’re trying her as an adult, which is moronic, since that’s just what she isn’t. But no surprise – this is Lakeland, Florida. It’s Polk County. It’s Sheriff Grady Judd.
… Read the restPolk County, where Cassidy attended high school, teaches community-based abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula in its schools. Nurse Jamie Kress facilitates Polk County’s Prevention Program that brings registered nurses to schools to cover a variety of subjects that might fall under the
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Soraya says hell yes she’s a feminist.
Remember the woman who asked Romney about the wage gap?
… Read the restYou know what she got for her efforts? A good and proper Slutshaming 101 from conservatives who dug up her Facebook page and her Twitter account to reveal that she has in the past used alcohol and maybe suggested her interest in sex. Like Sandra Fluke, she’s a whiny, entitled trollop who should shut up and go home. Now, Fenton might not have memorized the Slut Manifesto, but she sure as hell knows that a man asking this exact same question would not be treated this way. Just like Jim Lehrer’s weight hasn’t become an Internet discussion point, while Candy
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
This is a nice story. Huge map collection not thrown in the garbage, given to Los Angeles public library instead.
… Read the restThe occupant of the 90-year-old cottage had died in February. Greenberg’s job was to empty the home so it could be demolished and its 18,000-square-foot lot, near the top of Canyon Vista Drive, divided into two parcels. His clients had told him to rent a Dumpster and throw away whatever he found inside.
But Greenberg couldn’t bring himself to do that, especially after he read a recent Los Angeles Times article about the Central Library’s map collection. Instead, he invited its map librarian, Glen Creason, to Mount Washington to look at the trove.
Creason called the find unbelievable. “I
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Somebody asked me yesterday about the Library section of the first B&W, so I dug it up on the Wayback Machine and sent him the link. I was quite fond of that section, so I thought I would post a few items from Favourites.
Frederick Crews ed., Unauthorized Freud
Unauthorized Freud is a collection of excerpts from books and articles by eighteen writers, all of whom as the title hints are Freud-skeptics. The collection is edited and annotated by Frederick Crews, whose own article ‘The Unknown Freud’ in The New York Review of Books in 1993 generated a torrent of controversy. The authors include Frank Cioffi, Malcolm Macmillan, Frank Sulloway, Stanley Fish and Ernest Gellner. Crews’ Preface and Introduction … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Summer 1983. A Massachusetts woman, Carrel Hilton Sheldon, was eight weeks pregnant and had a life-threatening medical problem. Alternet goes on:
… Read the restSheldon’s doctor advised her that the overdose of Heparin might have also harmed her 8-week-old fetus and, given the possible fatal repercussions to her, he recommended that she abort her pregnancy.
Sheldon, a mother of four at the time (a fifth child had died as an infant), was then a practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), outside of Boston. The LDS leader in Massachusetts at that time, called the “stake president,” was a Harvard-trained physician, Dr. Gordon Williams, and he counseled Sheldon to follow her doctor’s advice to terminate the pregnancy and
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
From Janet L. Factor
Hello fellow freethinkers! My local group, Springfield Area Freethinkers, is undertaking an action this Sunday that we would like more of the secular community to be aware of. We are going to picket an honest-to-goodness cathedral! Since you are a person in a position to spread the word, I am sending this information to you in hopes that you will blog or otherwise report about this event in advance. Feel free to forward this info if you have contacts who might be interested in writing about this as well.
While our group has existed here for years, this will be our first venture into public protest. It’s important that it be a success. We would like … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Yes Malala may be doing better, but gurlz still must not be allowed to go to school in Pakistan. Everyone knows the whorey little sluts only want to go to school so that they can fuck all the boys there. Bitches.
Another school was blown up today, bringing the total for the year to 18.
… Read the restOn September 7th a school was blown up by suspected militants in Swabi, northern Pakistan.
Two improvised devices had been planted in the veranda of the school which went off one after the other during night.
Two classrooms of the school building developed cracks and were rendered useless. The watchman of the institution survived the attack.
On September 9th militants blew up a government
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A doctor tells us about Malala’s progress in a video.
She’s communicating freely, though she can’t talk until the tracheostomy tube is removed, probably in a few days.
She thanks everybody for the messages.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Janet Stemwedel has a sharp and to the point post on sexism among scientists, The point of calling out bad behavior.
There’s a blog discussion of a particular guy and his particular sexism, with lashings of sexism-denial Bingo. Free speech! Whassa big deal?! Give the guy a chance to grow!
… Read the restIt’s almost like people have something invested in denying the existence of gender bias among scientists, the phenomenon of a chilly climate in scientific professions, or even the possibility that Dario Maestripieri’s Facebook post was maybe not the first observable piece of sexism a working scientist put out there for the world to see.
The thing is, that denial is also the denial of the actual lived experience
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
She’s awake, and she has stood up. She’s making good progress. She might make a full recovery.
… Read the restThe hospital held a news conference and said the teenager is aware of her surroundings and making good progress.
Malala, CBS News correspondent Charlie D’Agata reported on “CBS This Morning,” has some memory as to what happened, and remembers she was in Pakistan on a school bus one moment, and then, in the next, woke up in a foreign country. One of the first things she asked when she came out of her medically-induced coma Tuesday, D’Agata reported, was what country she was in.
…
At this early stage, in terms of neurological damage, doctors are say[ing] they hop[e] she will make
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
As many of you probably already know, Greta is in a situation where some financial support would relieve her of some extra worry that she doesn’t need. Passing on that message would help her too, including if you can’t help financially. Kind words also help. So do suggestions of stuff to watch or read while recuperating.
… Read the restIf you can’t or don’t want to donate money, but you still want to help, other helpful things would be:
Help spread the word about this fundraiser: on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, your own blog, any other reasonable means that you have access to.
Buy my book, Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and/or encourage other people
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
I just had a lively few minutes of being spammed by Be Scofield on Twitter. He’s written another article, and wants people to read it. Telling me it was about Atheism+ and interfaith didn’t do the trick, so then he told me he’d mentioned me in it so I might want to read it. Transparent, but effective – ohhhhhhhhhh all right, I’ll go see how you’ve dissed me this time. Fortunately it took only a few seconds to read, and I just said meh (in effect). Disappointing, so he tried telling PZ that he needed to stop doing what he was doing for the good of the whatever. Then he said he wasn’t telling us what to do. Good fun. … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
How useful, how apropos, how…right. An online article at the New Yorker on the wrongness of the idea that harassment is part of our glorious heritage of free speech.
It starts with Amanda Todd.
… Read the restTodd’s suicide is easily analogized to Tyler Clementi’s, mostly because the public has diagnosed both cases as the result of “cyber-bullying.” Yet, as a descriptive term, “cyber-bullying” feels deliberately vague. Somewhere in the midst of the “mob” there is usually at least one person whose cruelty exceeds the tossing off of a stray insult. In Clementi’s case, the magazine’s Ian Parker chalked the harasser’s motives up to “shiftiness and bad faith,” the kinds of things that criminal statutes can’t easily be invoked to cover. But with
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Almost as if in reply to the “liberal bullies” article, some US publishers say that words matter.
Despite promises to reform their textbooks, the Saudi education system continues to indoctrinate children with hatred and incitement. Seven current and former heads of major publishing houses address the critical importance of words.
The critical importance of words? But aren’t we always being told that words don’t matter? That we “radfems” are just batshit crazy, making all this fuss about mere “werdz” because it’s only fists and sticks that make any difference.
… Read the restAs current and former heads of major American publishing houses, we know the value of words. They inform actions and shape the world views of all, especially children. We are
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The pro-misogyny (yes, misogyny) crowd is passing around an article on “liberal bullying.” Of course they are. The people who stalk a few bloggers day in and day out for a year and a half are “brave heroes” and freedom fighters; the people they stalk relentlessly are liberal bullies.
Still, there’s something to it, at least if the descriptions are accurate.
… Read the restIncreasingly, I’ve started recognizing this kind of behavior for what it is: privilege-checking as a form of internet sport. It’s a kind of trolling, with all the politics I agree with, but motivations and execution that turns my stomach. It’s well-intended (SO well-intended), but when the motivations seem to be less about opening dialogue about the issues, and
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Here’s an interesting new development. Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary has expanded its definition of “misogyny” in response to Gillard’s speech on the subject last week.
The dictionary currently defines misogyny as “hatred of women”, but will now add a second definition to include “entrenched prejudice against women”, suggesting Abbott discriminated against women with his sexist views.
“The language community is using the word in a slightly different way,” dictionary editor Sue Butler told Reuters.
In her parliamentary speech, Gillard attacked Abbott, a conservative Catholic, for once suggesting men were better adapted to exercise authority, and for once saying that abortion was “the easy way out”. He also stood in front of anti-Gillard protesters with posters saying “ditch the witch”.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The philosophical primate recommended John Scalzi’s article on Redditt and Brutsch and “free speech” and creepy woman-hating shit, and sure enough.
… Read the restIf someone bleats to you about any of this being a “free speech” issue, you can safely mark them as either ignorant or pernicious — probably ignorant, as the understanding of what “free speech” means in a constitutional sense here in the US is, shall we say, highly constrained in the general population. Additionally and independently, the sort of person who who says “free speech” when they mean “I like doing creepy things to other people without their consent and you can’t stop me so fuck you ha ha ha ha” is pretty clearly a mouth-breathing asshole who
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
A guest post by the philosophical primate. Originally a comment on Using anonymity to speak more freely.
Reddit’s terms of service do not in any way guarantee users’ privacy, and anyone who thinks their privacy is protected when using the internet is an idiot anyway. The only privacy that actually *matters* here is the invaded privacy of women and girls having their images exploited without their consent, which is morally reprehensible regardless of its legality. John Scalzi wrote something particularly clear and scathing on this topic yesterday: I encourage all to read it.
The key idea that deserves attention here is that protection of privacy — even anonymity — has a purpose: Whether legally or morally speaking, that purpose … Read the rest
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
