Oh hooray, Jaclyn Glenn has yet another video attacking feminists and feminism.
Even better, Dave Muscato, the PR guy for American Atheists, is energetically promoting it. Thanks, Dave!
Updating to add the intro to the vid:
Published on Jul 17, 2014
A video about Atheism+ and pussies. How appropriate. For those of you wondering- Atheism + is pretty much atheism plus radical feminism. This is my skit explaining my feelings on it 😉
Way to deal with the post-Hobby Lobby US, Salem. (The witch thing is forgiven. It’s over. Done.)
Gordon College is a small Christian university that has publicly declared its desire to claim a special right to discriminate against LGBT students, staff, and faculty. Salem, Massachusetts, is a small progressive town with an LGBT non-discrimination ordinance. For years, Salem contracted with Gordon to manage its Old Town Hall. But when Gordon announced its desire to a special right to fire LGBT workers, Salem canceled the contract, finding that the university’s stated discriminatory intent directly violated the town’s non-discrimination ordinance.
The Guardian discusses the report on Islamist infiltration of Birmingham schools.
A damning report into extremist infiltration of Birmingham schools has uncovered evidence of “coordinated, deliberate and sustained action to introduce an intolerant and aggressive Islamist ethos into some schools in the city”.
Meanwhile, on the South Bank…
I wish to register a complaint! A giant dead parrot has been unveiled in London to mark the Monty Python live show’s TV broadcast:
Josh posted this on Facebook yesterday and I demanded permission to post it here and he gave in.
I don’t like the message, “Trust women to make their healthcare decisions,” many organizations are using. This is not about trust. The idea of “trust” has nothing to do with the anti-choice measures. It’s not that antis don’t “trust” women to “make the best decisions.” This is not an in loco parentis relationship where the antis genuinely have the best interests of their charges at heart.
1. Women are not their charges. 2. They don’t care about women being “trustworthy.” They don’t want women to have options. That’s it. [Read more…]
Now that’s how to say it. Rebecca Traister at the New Republic on that much-discussed much-disliked (for good reason) about that Esquire piece saying, with immense generosity, that not all 42-year-old women cause projectile vomiting on sight.
I thought the article was a piece of sexist tripe, celebrating a handful of Pilates-toned, famous, white-plus-Maya-Rudolph women as having improved on the apparently dismal aesthetics of previous generations; my primary objections to the piece have been ably laid out by other critics. Chait tweeted that he viewed the piece as a “mostly laudable” sign of progress: a critique not of earlier iterations of 42-year-old womanhood, but rather of the old sexist beauty standards that did not celebrate those women; he saw it as an acknowledgment of maturing male attitudes toward women’s value.
LINCOLN, NE—Loudly demanding an immediate statement on the issue, Nebraska voters clamored this week for more information from female politician Elaine Romero, an Omaha businesswoman running in the state’s upcoming gubernatorial primary election, on whether she is, in fact, a mother first. “Elaine Romero has made her stance on the social and economic issues facing Nebraskans abundantly clear, but we will not rest until she states clearly and on the record whether she is a mom first and foremost, and a politician second,” local resident Martin McGlynn said on behalf of 1.9 million restless Nebraskans, all of whom were vehemently pressing for answers on whether the 45-year-old public servant prioritizes her family above all else, considers her three children to be her proudest accomplishment, and—most crucially—sees her role as a mother as her most important job.
There’s more. It’s funny, but not funny.
Sometimes there’s a conflict between the majority will and human rights. That’s one reason there’s a need for such things as high courts and international courts: to adjudicate between them.
It can be alarming when legislators seem to be blankly unaware of this. Commonplace, but alarming.
Today in Ireland for instance.
Tanaiste Joan Burton has ruled out an abortion referendum being held in the lifetime of this Government. [Read more…]
Cameron does Cabinet reshuffle. Cameron increases the number of women in the Cabinet. News media report on reshuffle and increase in number of women.
What’s the next sentence? You know this one.
Today’s coverage in the London Evening Standard was shocking. The male subjects who were profiled had standard bios – career highs and lows, nothing about their personal lives. Michael Gove was said to have “one of the most acute political brains of his generation”, while Philip Hammond apparently has “a hard edge” and set up his own companies at a very young age.
The profiles of the three women who’d been promoted, although containing factual and some complimentary descriptions, all mentioned their marital status and how many children they had. The unmarried woman – Esther McVey – was singled out for special treatment. In the West End final version of the paper, there were not one but two photos of her, one as a young TV presenter in a revealing crop-top and skin-tight satin trousers, and the other as she was this morning, the wind blowing up her otherwise respectable business skirt such that the slit parted and revealed a bit of thigh. In the text, of all the thousands of phrases she’s ever uttered in her time on GMTV, the journalist chose one in which she mentioned sex, and readers are also helpfully informed that she once flashed her underwear on air. Most disturbingly, she has an entire paragraph about her relationship status that would not be out of place in a gossip column. In it, we learn that although she’s “unmarried”, she’s been “linked” with two prominent men, one of whom proposed marriage. (One cannot help suddenly picturing her as a feisty Lizzy Bennet, spurning not only Mr Collins’ advances, but Mr Darcy’s as well!) Coyly, the piece concludes that she “shares a flat” with a male MP, and allows readers to draw their own conclusions.
Originally a comment by the philosophical primate on Not Thorita.
I think Lees’ criticism is… just damned silly. Yes, I get the critique of the “another strong woman” nonsense, but the idea behind this move in the comic is that Thor is a particular ROLE — a warrior deity — that a woman can fill as effectively as a man. The quoted passage about “Lady Thor,” “Thorita” and so on (which I’m confident has nothing to do with a transgender Eurovision contestant) is simply writer Jason Aaron explicitly saying that he is NOT going down the route of remaking the character in pink and fluff and ribbons and offensive feminine stereotypes just because said warrior deity is going to be a woman instead of a man in the upcoming reboot. [Read more…]