I scan the main page of Freethoughtblogs every day, and here are a few of the stories that caught my eye this time around.
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Black Skeptics has posted a list of books by and about African American atheists. I’ve read one, Moral Combat. I’m getting on Amazon to order a few more — I’ve heard Anthony Pinn speak several times, so I should definitely pick up one of his books, he’s good.
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Jason Thibeault finds an excellent post on io9 about recent sexist dust-ups in geek communities. It compares ReaderCon (SF), DefCon (hacking), and TAM. It’s a good objective article on the topic, and I’m afraid TAM comes off the worse in the comparison, and DJ Grothe appears to be an evasive jerk who rejects the solutions found in every other organization.
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Maryam Namazie has just discovered Atheism+. She likes it.
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AronRa has also thought about Atheism+. He’s not jumping on the bandwagon, but he sees it as a “new civil rights movement, stripped of religion.”
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An Arizona judge has declared that women ought to stay out of bars, unless they want to be blamed for sexual assault, says Zinnia Jones. Interesting. I wonder if owners of bars in Arizona are now freaking out at the tremendous loss of business that would entail, or if they’re all high-fiving each other and looking forward to evenings with drunken bros everywhere?
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Dana Hunter is teasing us with promises of dragonfly porn. All right, already, deliver. I’m going to be teaching all morning, I can’t possibly hit reload on her blog every minute.
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Did you know Brianne works as a clinic escort? You should read some of her stories: she deals with screamers and the biggest assholes in the universe.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Vile Human Being says
Awesome, nice to know that the victim actually meets Coyote’s (not to be confused with The Laughing Coyote’s) his strict dudely standards for victimhood. But, of course, he still had to wag a finger at all those irresponsible drunken sluts who have nobody to blame but themselves getting raped, which of course is an act of nature like rain falling from the sky.
Improbable Joe says
I’m sick of hearing “I support everything A+ stands for, but I hate A+ because Richard Carrier doesn’t want to hang out with sociopaths.”
sunsangnim says
I’m just sad to see Jen McCreight going on indefinite hiatus due to the overwhelming amount of abuse she’s been receiving. At least there are plenty of other great bloggers around here.
David Marjanović says
The judge who is frankly unfit for that office is a woman.
I’m not the one who’s kidding here.
Tony •King of the Hellmouth• says
The stories Brianne shares about being a clinic escort are both frustrating (the shit the women have to deal with just trying to _walk_ to the clinic) and uplifting (how those women feel knowing that someone is on their side and willing to assist if needed).
Crissa says
I’m not sure permanent bans are appropriate except in narrow cases. Certainly, exclusion has its place, but permanently is a long, long time.
a miasma of incandescent plasma says
That’s not that surprising actually. In psychology we learn that on average a woman is more likely to try to find what another woman that was raped “did wrong”, this is a defense mechanism to give the observing woman a sense of control over a situation she really has no control over. This way a woman can (incorrectly) say “well it won’t happen to me then because I won’t do X and Y…”
In fact, in court cases jurys with more women jurors tend to acquit more than male-dominated jurys.
Pretty gross, we’ll throw fellow humans under the bus just for a little delusional sense of security.
Jamie says
Thanks for highlighting interesting reads.
jonmilne says
PZ, how could you fail to mention the highly engaging debate between Kazim and Stephen Feinstein, where Kazim has made the fourth response out of five planned responses to him? Granted, this does mean the debate isn’t quite finished yet since both Feinstein and Kazim essentially have one more post left in the five post limit for the debate, but I’d have still loved to hear your basic thoughts so far, even if all it may have consisted of could have been “Man, I haven’t seen Kazim so thoroughly and enjoyably school a theist in a debate since his Ray Comfort AXP interview”. Otherwise, some pretty interesting (not to mention horrifying) stuff within the mix.
Here’s a question to everyone (especially the guys) here. I am a guy. PZ is a guy. There is a whole number of guys within the membership of Pharyngula and FTB, as well as outside it, who actually understand these really basic principles: you don’t sexually harass anyone, you don’t engage in victim blaming, you don’t try your hardest to make women feel like shit. This sort of stuff really horrifies and upsets me (as I’m sure it does for other guys around these parts and outside these parts) so why is it that WE understand these really simple concepts and yet others can’t wrap their heads around the sort of shit that even a fucking toddler could understand? Where are people falling down on this stuff?
Setár, self-appointed Elf-Sheriff of the FreethoughtBlogs Star Chamber says
Sikivu Hutchinson is going to be giving a free lecture in Vancouver sometime around next weekend; I’ll see if I can pick up Moral Combat then.