Catholic Church apologizes for 150,000 forced adoptions

From ABC News:

It is believed at least 150,000 Australian women had their babies taken against their will by some churches and adoption agencies between the 1950s and 1970s.

Psychiatrist Geoff Rickarby has treated scores of affected women, and says it is a stain on Australia’s history.

[…]The chief executive of Catholic Health Australia, Martin Laverty, says he is sorry for what happened. […] “It’s with a deep sense of regret, a deep sense of sorrow that practices of the past have caused ongoing pain, suffering and grief to these women, these brave women in Newcastle but also women around Australia,” Mr Laverty said.

[…]Juliette Clough is one of the women who says she was forced to give up her baby at a Catholic-run hospital in Newcastle in 1970.

She was 16 at the time and says she was alone, afraid and desperate.

“My ankles were strapped to the bed, they were in stirrups and I was gassed, I had plenty of gas and they just snatched away the baby,” Ms Clough said.

“You weren’t allowed to see him or touch him, anything like that, or hold him and it was just like a piece of my soul had died. And it’s still dead”

[…]Greens Senator Rachel Siewert is chairwoman of a Senate inquiry currently examining the country’s former adoption practices.

“Women have told stories about going into hospital not realising that they were going to have to give up their babies, but that pillows were put over their faces, that curtains were put up so they couldn’t see the baby,” Senator Siewert said.

Women have also told the ABC they were given milk suppressing drugs that have now been linked to cancer, as well as barbiturates that caused sedation and in some cases delirium.

Mr Laverty says it is not a period to be proud of.

Bit of an understatement, Mr. Laverty. I kind of don’t think “I’m sorry” makes up for one hundred and fifty thousand women having their children forcefully taken away from them.
As if all the child molestation wasn’t enough. Why do people still associate themselves with this evil organization? I’m starting to lose patience for the excuses of culture and community. Pretty sure you can find a replacement religion that doesn’t molest and steal children. I hear the Unitarians are nice.

It’s not just atheists with a diversity problem…

Geeks have their fail moments too (emphasis mine):

I went to Comic-Con this year; on Thursday, I attended a panel titled “Oh, You Sexy Geek!” a discussion of the implications of “sexy women” in geek/nerd culture, and how that may or may not be used to pander to men. The panel consisted of moderator Katrina Hill and panelists Clare Kramer, Adrianne Curry, Bonnie Burton, Jennifer Stuller, Chris Gore (who almost no-showed), Clare Grant, Kiala Kazabee, and Jill Pantozzi.

I was excited for the panel, considering I am frequently frustrated by the media’s exploitative use of women (whether it be the host of a show, such as Olivia Munn, or booth babes at E3) to appeal to a market that they treat as exclusively male. However, my expectations were quickly dashed when discussion of media literacy was tossed aside in favor of accusations of jealousy. Bonnie Burton and Adrianne Curry mused that women who were critical of sexy geek culture in any way were just jealous, had no confidence, and were projecting their issues with self-esteem onto the women who felt empowered by walking the Comic-Con floor in a Slave Leia costume.

When Jennifer Stuller (one of the creators of the upcoming Geek Girl Con) suggested that women who criticized “sexiness” were more than likely deconstructing the media, and by extension a society that tells women their worth lies in their ability to appeal aesthetically to men, she was rebuffed by the other members of the panel. Later, Stuller attempted to turn the discussion towards media literacy, to which Clare Grant responded that she doesn’t read magazines, therefore the media has no influence on her whatsoever. Adrianne Curry added that women criticize one another “because we’re all a bunch of bitches.”

[…]There were many disappointing moments that had me almost leaving the panel entirely, but nothing was quite so horrifying as the one contribution Chris Gore made when he finally showed up five minutes before the panel ended. He took the stage, apologized for being late, and said “Hey, I’m here to represent all the guys in this room who want to stick their penis in every woman up here on this panel.” There was nervous laughter and a bit of applause. I don’t even need to explain how disgusting and problematic that is.

Of course, the two groups probably overlap quite a lot, so it’s not particularly shocking.

LAN bans women to protect them from misogynists

A LAN party for Battlefield 3 in Texas had this lovely bit of logic in its rules:

Nothing ruins a good LAN party like uncomfortable guests or lots of tension, both of which can result from mixing immature, misogynistic male-gamers with female counterparts. Though we’ve done our best to avoid these situations in years past, we’ve certainly had our share of problems. As a result, we no longer allow women to attend this event.

Yes. To protect the women from misogynistic assholes, we must ban the women. Instead of, you know, banning the misogynistic assholes.

…

That popping sound was my brain exploding.

This is post 37 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Bill O’Reilly is a misogynistic moron

What’s new, right? Here’s what Bill had to say about the recent recommendation that birth control be subsidized:

“Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex. They’re not going to use birth control anyway.”


Yep. Women only get pregnant because they’re drunk sluts who don’t care about birth control.

…I don’t even have to say anything else, do I?

This is post 31 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

How to cure feminism

According to the purported manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, who recently confessed to being responsible for the Norway killings:

1. Limit the distribution of birth-control pills (contraceptive pills): Discourage the use of and prevent liberal distribution of contraceptive pills or equivalent prevention methods. The goal should be to make it considerably more difficult to obtain. This alone should increase the fertility rate by 0,1 points but would degrade women’s rights.

2. Reform sex education: Reform the current sex education in our school institutions. This may involve limiting it or at least delaying sex education to a later age and discourage casual sex. Sex should only be encouraged within the boundaries of marriage. This alone should increase the fertility rate by 0,1 points.


3. Making abortion illegal: A re-introduction of the ban on abortion should result in an increased fertility rate of approximately 0,1-0,2 points but would strip women of basic rights.


4. Women and education: Discourage women in general to strive for full time careers. This will involve certain sexist and discriminating policies but should increase the fertility rate by up to 0,1-0,2 points.


Women should not be encouraged by society/media to take anything above a bachelor’s degree but should not be prevented from taking a master or PhD. Males on the other hand should obviously continue to be encouraged to take higher education – bachelor, master and PhD.


He’s right. Want to control women? Reduce them to baby making machines.

(Side note: Why is it still okay for women to get PhDs? …Why am I trying to use logic to analyze something like this?)

The really scary part? While people while be eager to dismiss this as the crazed ravings of a madman, these are the exact tactics the religious right is using in the United States. And that’s a hell of a lot more than one person.

(Via Pharyngula)

This is post 28 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

“Men should have veto power over abortions; Women should be held criminally liable if they refuse”

Put on your rage hats, folks. This one’s a doozy.
Keith Ablow – psychiatrist, psychological thriller author, and Fox News personality – thinks that not only should men have veto power over abortions, but women who ignore said veto should be held criminally responsible. Why? Take it away, Keith.

I have limited the scope of my argument intentionally, in order to focus on what I consider to be a question that puts fairness front and center: If a man has participated in creating a new life and is fully willing to parent his child (independently, if necessary), why should he not have any control over whether that life is ended?

Because I man doesn’t have to carry said child for nine months. When we achieve the technology to remove a fetus and put it in a mechanical womb chamber, then we can have the discussion on paternal input.

We are ignoring the quiet message that current abortion policy conveys to every American male: You have no voice in, and, therefore, no responsibility for, the pregnancies which you help to create. Your descendants are disposable, at the whim of the women you choose to be intimate with.


Or maybe you should know if a woman is pro-choice or not before you stick your penis in her, and if it’s so goddamn important to you, then don’t stick your penis in her. A mindblowing proposal, I know.

Giving would-be fathers a lack of veto power over abortions is connected psychologically to the epidemic of absentee fathers in this country. We can’t, on the one hand, be credible in bemoaning the number of single mothers raising their children, while, on the other hand, giving men the clear message that bringing new lives to the planet is the exclusive domain, and under the exclusive control, of women.


Whether stated or not, the underlying message of withholding from men their proper rights to father the children they create is that they are not proper custodians, nor properly responsible, for their children.


The notion that there is no emotional injury done men by depriving them of decision-making power as to whether the children they father are aborted is naïve.


Just in my own practice of psychiatry, I have listened to dozens of men express lingering, sometimes intense, pain over abortions that proceeded either without their consent, or without them having spoken up about their desires to bring their children to term and parent them.


Should we really continue to give men the clear message that that they should deny, and that we have no regard for, their feelings about the unrealized lives of their potential sons and daughters?

Isn’t it interesting that we don’t generally even ask fathers how they are feeling in the days leading to abortions, nor in their aftermath? We don’t even ask how they are feeling in the aftermath of abortions of fetuses who have reached the second trimester, even if they have been seen by their fathers during ultrasound imaging. Aren’t we at risk of suggesting that we don’t much care how they feel?

Men haven’t been taught that they should consider the lives they help create as their responsibility from conception (other than providing financially for the child if born), but I believe those lives are their responsibility. And I believe that with that responsibility ought come certain rights.

Citation needed.

I understand that adopting social policy that gives fathers the right to veto abortions would lead to presently unknown psychological consequences for women forced to carry babies to term. But I don’t know that those consequences are greater than those suffered by men forced to end the lives of their unborn children.



Um, actually, the consequences aren’t unknown, because we have data from thousands of years of women not being able to have abortions. We’ve historically been nothing more than baby incubators, and that’s exactly what you want to return to. And you know what happens when women are forced to carry babies to term? They still try to get back alley abortions, and women die.


Adult humans dying. Kind of more important than emotional consequences or the abortion of some cells that don’t have feelings or memories or dreams.

And I am absolutely certain that no woman needs to become pregnant who wishes not to become pregnant. Women taking full responsibility for their sexual activity and their bodies would mean that no woman would face the prospect of being compelled to bring a child to term.


But men can’t take responsibility for their sexual activity by choosing to have sex with someone who’s anti-choice. Because that would restrict men’s ability to have sex freely, when this issue is really about punishing women who have sex.


Seriously, if this paragraph doesn’t illustrate that mindset, I don’t know what will. In what world do we live in that we force people to suffer through all negative consequences instead of trying to alleviate them when possible? If you go skiing, you know there’s a chance you might break your leg. If it happens do we scream “WELL YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE GONE SKIING, SUFFER THROUGH IT!”?


No, we let you go to the fucking doctor.

It’s time to give men their due as fathers—from the moment of conception. Allow men who want to be fathers, and who could be good parents, to compel the women they impregnate to bring their children to term.


Because a man’s feelings are more important than control over your own body. Hear that, ladies?

Look, I do think open communication is important in relationships, and that serious issues like abortion should at least be discussed before making a decision. That’s assuming a healthy relationship, and not cases of rape, incest, abuse, etc where the woman’s disclosure may put her at risk. But we can’t ignore the fact that there’s a biological difference here – women carry children, men do not. That’s why the final decision ultimately lands in the hands of the woman, even if it does cause some distress to men. There’s absolutely no reason to give a man veto power other than the patriarchal idea that men deserve control over women.

I wish I didn’t have to explain this, but anti-choice and anti-women sentiments are rapidly growing in the US. A fact more terrifying than any of this guy’s novels.

This is post 26 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Should we make science girl friendly?

A recent study in the British Journal of Educational Psychology found that using stereotypically feminine examples gets girls more interest in science:

After examining a wide array of science textbooks, University of Luxembourg educational researcherSylvie Kerger concluded that most present real-world examples are “embedded in masculine contexts.” But wrapping scientific subjects — at least initially — around female-friendly topics could kindle interest in scientific fields under-populated by women, Kerger says. Studies have shown that interest counts more than ability toward choosing a major or a career.

[…]Kerger gave 294 eighth- and ninth-grade boys and girls questionnaires asking them whether they would like to study biology, physics, information technology or statistics the following year. Instead of naming these subjects, the questionnaire presented each science through topics found in previous studies to be either male- or female-friendly. “How does a laser read a CD?” was a masculine way to ask about physics, while “how is a laser used in cosmetic surgery?” addressed stereotypical girls’ concerns.

The youngsters rated their interest on a scale from one (not interesting at all) to five (very interesting). Presenting these sciences in a feminine way increased girls’ interest in physics about a half-point, in information technology more than 0.75 of a point and in statistics more than a full point.

But the male-versus-female presentations didn’t affect girls’ interest in biology. (“Watch blood coagulate from a small wound,” appealed to them as much as “reflect on how skin tanning comes about in the summer.”)

“Girls are already very interested” in that science, even when presented in a male-friendly way, says Kerger.

Increasing the girl-friendly content had a predictable effect on boys’ interest. When researchers couched information technology as learning “how to order clothes over the Internet” rather than figuring out “how the inside of the computer is structured,” boys’ interest dampened in that science.

Faced with this zero-sum result, Kerger and her colleagues don’t argue for single-sex classes. This is a cross section, so while some girls aren’t interested in stereotypically feminine topics, they point out, some boys are. The reverse also holds true. So they recommend teachers offer a choice among several modules dealing with the same scientific concepts wrapped around various male- and female-friendly topics.

tl;dr making stereotypically girly science examples increased interest from girls, but decreased interest in boys

I have a couple of concerns before we automatically insert hyperfeminine examples into science textbooks. For one thing, how did they determine that some of these standard examples are “masculine?” What’s masculine about reading CDs or blot clotting? Am I just one of those outliers for finding these things way more interesting?

It seems the real problem is that boys and girls are told from an early age what they’re allowed to be interested in because of their gender. That’s what we should be fighting. We need to destroy the notion that girls can only like science if it’s about makeup and that boys can only like science if it’s about blowing things up. Pandering to these stereotypes only perpetuates the problem.

But on the flip side, that doesn’t mean we have to avoid feminine examples in text books. We shouldn’t leave out the science of skin tanning because it seems too girly – it’s still a relevant and interesting biological question. There’s nothing inherently wrong with femininity, so it shouldn’t be excluded.

I can understand the practical desire to get more girls interested in science, but overall this just rubs me the wrong way. Instead of trying to get them with girly things when they’re almost in high school, why not cultivate a gender neutral interest when they’re even younger? If we fight stereotypes when they’re little, it helps both science and equality.

This is post 13 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Is society taking a step backward?

Our first top donor question:

“I was a teenager in Southern California during the 70s. I was raised in an environment where feminism was considered the norm. Imagine my surprise when 30 years later I find the social climate seems to have taken a step back. I’m often thinking, “Didn’t we already cover this?” Feminism is just one example. The persistence of anti-science views such as anti-evolution and anti-vaccinations are others. Lack of tolerance for anyone who doesn’t adhere to society’s norms. I’ve always assumed that as a society we are moving forward, but I’ve never looked for concrete confirmation. Are there objective measures for things like social tolerance? If so, how are we doing?”

I’m not sure if there’s a truly objective measure – you can’t whip out your Tolerancometer and see how many milliKings a person is emitting. But we can estimate how much progress is being made in social movements by comparing where we are now with where we were ten, fifty, or a hundred years ago.
And I think that’s what you have to keep in mind – that we need to look at general trends. Social progress, like many things, is often two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes the current climate is certainly daunting – evolution and climate change deniers being as loud as ever, women’s health being thrown by the wayside, gays still not being able to have the same rights as straight couples.

But in the big picture, we have come a long way. Science triumphed over ignorance in the 2006 Dover trial, unlike in the Scopes trial. Birth control is one step closer to being subsidized, where 40 years ago you couldn’t even get a legal abortion. More and more states are legalizing gay marriage, when coming out in the 80s could get the shit beaten out of you.

Are things perfect? Certainly not. That’s why it’s still important for people to be outspoken advocates for science, feminism, and gay rights. Because while it’s better now, we want to limit that one step back to just one step, instead of tumbling all the way back to the Dark Ages.

You also have to take location into account. Southern California isn’t exactly a typical representation of the rest of the world, the rest of the US, or the rest of California for that matter. There are pockets of places that are more progressive, just as there are pockets that have a lot of catching up to do. Hello, the Middle East. …And China. …And Africa. …And…oh dear, we have a lot of pockets to work with, don’t we?

So even if your little spot on this planet seems to be doing alright, activism is still important. I see a lot of apathy in Seattle because it’s basically godless liberal paradise. What people forget is that if all of your neighbors are socially regressive, their views and votes will eventually effect you. So stay optimistic about the future, but keep up the endless fight for progress.

This is post 6 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Is free birth control coming soon?

Possibly, and hopefully:

The Institute of Medicine recommended on Tuesday that health care insurers cover the cost of birth control under the new federal health care law. This was just one of the findings on preventive health care services for women from the Institute, the branch of the National Academies of Science tasked with providing research and information on medical topics. But like pretty much everything dealing with women’s health these days, this has turned into a debate about abortion.

The Department of Health and Human Services will get to make the ultimate decision about whether insurers will be required to provide birth control free of charge, but this is a good indication that it will. The new health care law requires insurers to cover preventative health care, and the administration directed the Institute to determine what that should include.


This isn’t just a matter of saving women some money (though I will personally cheer for that). From a purely practical standpoint, it costs much less money to provide birth control than it does to raise a child. The government should be happy to support this. Not to mention providing birth control also decreases abortions and teen pregnancies. I’m sure the religious right will be the first to promote free birth control, right?


If coming up with funding is an issue, maybe they can use this super cheap and highly effective birth control method:

As someone with two 4 year old nephews, I can attest to its effectiveness.

Dawkins announces funding for childcare at conferences

If you were following my mountains of tweets from TAM9, you would have gotten a sneak peek of this. But in case you missed it… at the end of Richard Dawkins’ speech on Saturday, he made a special announcement that the Richard Dawkins Foundation would be providing funding for child care at skeptical and atheist conference.
This was received to much applause, including my own. Having available child care at conferences has been one of the practical solutions I and other atheists have suggested repeatedly as a way to get more women to attend conferences. Yes, it certainly benefits both parents – but even amongst skeptics, mothers often end up (for whatever reason) in more traditional roles and are likely to be the ones stuck at home watching the kids.

Now, the motivation behind it? I can only speculate, since I can’t read minds. I suspect this is a very clever way of saying “Look how much I support women, now can we shush about this stupid elevator thing?” I know some people were upset that he didn’t give a direct apology, but for purely Machiavellian reasons, I don’t really care at this point. I’m glad something is actually getting done, instead of potentially throwing gasoline on the fire again.

Of course some are already seeing this as a victory against those Evil True Feminists who apparently crucified Dawkins. Apparently I didn’t blog about it quickly enough, because obviously writing a long post is my first priority, over catching up with sleep, work, and SSA business. Of course, I can’t take those arguments seriously when their only ammo is immature name bending like “Twatson.”

But can we please not use this positive development to shun feminists or those who disagree with us about what Dawkins said? Because Dawkins surely isn’t. When he appeared at the speaker’s reception, we happily waved at each other and proceeded to have an incredibly friendly chat about his upcoming book, and I thanked him for the childcare announcement (which was apparently Liz Cornwell’s idea, so I went over and thanked her too).

That was it. We both acted like mature human beings who happen to (strongly) disagree on one issue. As I and others joked, I’m going to stop buying Dawkin’s feminist books – but I still respect him for all the other wonderful things he does.

Anyway, I’ve totally derailed my own post – but hurray for a step in the right direction in making conferences a more accessible place for women, regardless of any political drama behind it.