How ugly is she?

Sexism? What sexism? I don’t see any sexism. There’s no such thing as sexism.

A New Hampshire Republican has sparked outrage after he called a Democratic congresswoman “ugly as sin” and claimed she would lose to her female Republican opponent because she’s more “attractive.”

New Hampshire state GOP Rep. Steve Vaillancourt wrote an incredibly sexist blog post last week in which he compared current Democratic US Rep. Anne McLane Kuster to opponent Marilinda Garcia. Specifically, he attacked Kuster’s appearance while creepily praising Garcia’s.

So let’s go straight to the blog post.

Vaillancourt starts with a warning, “to avoid the PC police sending out  a warrant for my arrest.” Haha. See what he did there? Haha. The guy’s a wit. [Read more…]

A shoddy and dishonest claim

Christina Hoff Sommers is bragging about being at the top of Amanda Marcotte’s list of seven anti-feminist women in Salon.

Christina H. Sommers @CHSommers · 10h
Cathy Young & I at top of SALON enemy list. We are both pro-choice, pro-LGBT,libertarian-leaning feminists. Our crime? We check feminist facts.

No, that’s not it. If she just did that I’d be all for it. Fact-checking is good. She does much more than that. Amanda summarizes a little of it: [Read more…]

Annals of dismissive contempt

Oh, god, here we go. Again.

Richard Dawkins subtweets about the Oppenheimer article:

“Officer, it’s not my fault I was drunk driving. You see, somebody got me drunk.”

Let’s see, now, what was published a few hours before that tweet? Oh yes…Mark Oppenheimer’s article.

…one of the biggest draws [at TAM] was Michael Shermer, a swaggering historian of science who, after an earlier career as an ultra-long-distance bicyclist, founded Skeptic magazine. [Read more…]