Joint statement on legal note to Universiti​es UK against their guidance condoning gender segregatio​n

We are pleased to learn of the legal note submitted to Universities UK (UUK) yesterday in the name of Radha Bhatt, a student of Cambridge University, against their Guidance condoning gender segregation. Legal note can be found here [pdf].

We share Radha’s apprehensions that gender segregation reinforces
negative views specifically about women, undermines their right to
participate in public life on equal terms with men and
disproportionately impedes women from ethnic and religious minorities,
whose rights to education and gender equality are already imperilled. [Read more…]

This happened:

Aitzaz Hasan, 15, was with friends outside school when they spotted a man wearing a suicide vest.

Despite the pleas of his fellow students, he decided to confront and capture the bomber who then detonated his vest, his cousin told the BBC.

So that’s the end for Aitzaz Hasan, at age 15. [Read more…]

A jaw-dropper from York University in Toronto.

After refusing to honour a male student’s request to be separated from his female classmates for religious reasons, a York University professor has found himself at odds with administrators who assert he broke their “obligation to accommodate.”

Say WHAT???

There’s an obligation to accommodate a male student’s request to be “separated” from female students? Are you fucking kidding me? 

Do these administrators not realize where this goes? It goes back to what we’ve been struggling to escape from for centuries. Men getting “separation” from women means women are imprisoned in seclusion, purdah, the harem, the kitchen. [Read more…]

Via Leo Igwe:

Pew did a survey on –

well this is how they titled the summary:

How people in Muslim countries prefer women to dress in public

Which is annoying, because there aren’t “Muslim countries.” Even the ones that have constitutions saying Islam is the official religion aren’t “Muslim countries”…

…but never mind, one knows what they mean.

Then again it’s annoying for another reason, which is that it sounds so bossy.

Never mind, never mind – what about the survey?

It’s depressing. Almost everyone in every country surveyed thinks women should have their heads bandages up to one degree or another. Lebanon did manage a whopping 49% who think no bandage at all is best, but even that is under half. In Saudi Arabia 63% opt for the black bag with a slit for the eyes.

Liberty is not happy about the Anti-social Behaviour Crime and Policing Bill.

The Anti-social Behaviour Crime and Policing Bill proposes to replace existing orders (such as ASBOs) with a new  generation of injunctions which are easier to obtain, harder to comply with and have harsher penalties.

The Bill would also introduce unfair double punishment for the vulnerable, as social tenants and their families will face mandatory eviction for breaching a term of an injunction.

Other measures in the Bill include some restrictions on Schedule 7 stop and search powers which, while welcome, unfortunately come nowhere near addressing the dangerous breadth and intrusiveness of these powers.

The Bill also weakens key safeguards in our already heavily-criticised extradition system by removing the automatic right of appeal against extradition orders.

Another item to keep a beady eye on then.

Originally a comment by Dan Bye on He looked it up in a dictionary.

Those who think the law as written is potentially a danger to free speech are quite correct, and it’s also worth noting that it mirrors the law in relation to snail mail, originally dating to 1935, where case law has established (my source is the commentary in Halsbury’s Laws of England) that “The test of obscenity is objective and the character of the addressee is immaterial.”

In the wake of the Gay News Trial in the UK, the then editor of The Freethinker, the late great Bill McIlroy, was fined for sending copies of the poem through the post. He was hoping to trigger another blasphemy prosecution at the time, but the authorities sidestepped that embarrassment by using different legislation! [Read more…]

From the Borowitz Report at the New Yorker – dateline Minnepolis:

The so-called polar vortex caused hundreds of injuries across the Midwest today, as people who said “so much for global warming” and similar comments were punched in the face.

Stay safe, people.

The meteorology professor Davis Logsdon, of the University of Minnesota, issued a safety warning to residents of the states hammered by the historic low temperatures: “If you are living within the range of the polar vortex and you have something idiotic to say about climate change, do not leave your house.”

Say it to the mirror, or the dog.