Creepy Uncle Jordy has some advice about rape

He has sympathy for the idea that rape is not a property crime, but a crime against a person, BUT…

Sure, you can say that untrammeled sexual access to a woman is a crime, but it needs to be criminalized in such a way that men still flock to her defense. It’s not sufficient to have a society where a woman can say “no”, you also have to arrange it so that she will have enraged masculine protectors surrounding her.

Continuing this reasoning based entirely on the idea that women are helpless, I don’t think it’s sufficient that it’s against the law to beat up weak old men and steal their money, we have to rally beefcake to defend them when they step out on the street. Likewise, it’s terrible that birds are preyed upon by cats…we need to put an army of strong young men who are angry on patrol in our parks.

This is the logic of a bully who thinks the solution to everything has to be force, preferably force delivered by some brutish male. Reduce everything to a question of whether a gang of men will support it — that’s the way the Proud Boys think.

Quickly, before they usual mob starts screaming about “CONTEXT!” — that short clip comes from a nauseatingly long (one hour and 45 minutes!) interview by Louise Perry, a conservative “feminist”. This clip comes from around 1h 30m in the whole thing, and precedes a bit where he explains that “unsophisticated women” don’t say “no” soon enough or strongly enough, but hey, he’s not blaming the victim, he says. If we could fix this, we wouldn’t have this huge debate about consent on college campuses, he claims.

What debate? I think it’s settled. Non-consensual sexual assault is bad. No debate necessary.

I didn’t listen to the whole thing. Five minutes of pompous babbling with weird hand gestures is about all I can take.

First, get rid of all the misogynists

OK, it’s not just conservatives. It turns out that progressive movements have a long history of informants blending in and disrupting the efforts of the group, and they’re usually men.

To save our movements, we need to come to terms with the connections between gender violence, male privilege, and the strategies that informants (and people who just act like them) use to destabilize radical movements. Time and again heterosexual men in radical movements have been allowed to assert their privilege and subordinate others. Despite all that we say to the contrary, the fact is that radical social movements and organizations in the United States have refused to seriously address gender violence as a threat to the survival of our struggles. We’ve treated misogyny, homophobia, and heterosexism as lesser evils—secondary issues—that will eventually take care of themselves or fade into the background once the “real” issues—racism, the police, class inequality, U.S. wars of aggression—are resolved. There are serious consequences for choosing ignorance. Misogyny and homophobia are central to the reproduction of violence in radical activist communities. Scratch a misogynist and you’ll find a homophobe. Scratch a little deeper and you might find the makings of a future informant (or someone who just destabilizes movements like informants do).

It’s a long article, but worth a read. It got me thinking back to all the warning signs we should have seen in the Brave Leaders of Atheism, who routinely dismissed those little problems of sexism in the movement as trivial obstacles to advancing the Cause…and who ended up seeing that movement rip itself apart.

Hey, also consider all the spousal abuse among the police. It would probably be a great step forward if they immediately fired everyone ever guilty of wife-beating.

I listened to an “evil” song and survived

I heard a little buzz about the Grammy awards last weekend — there was one song performed that infuriated the culture war conservatives. It got Ted Cruz mad.

“This… is… evil,” Cruz wrote on Twitter, the ellipses perhaps representing the breaks he took to consume more pornography. His post was a re-tweet from conservative commenter and former OANN presenter Liz Wheeler, famed for having the kind of brain you normally find in an aquarium. “Demons are teaching your kids to worship Satan,” she wrote. “I could throw up.”

Well, then. As an atheist in good standing, I had to look this performance up. Here you go, everyone can watch the Sam Smith and Kim Petras song, “Unholy.”

They lied to me. Oh, sure, Sam Smith wears a top hat with devil horns, but the song isn’t about Satan worship, it’s all about people of ambiguous and not-so-ambiguous gender gyrating on the dance floor at a hot club, with lots of lascivious behavior. Anyone interrupting the proceedings with a sermon about Satanism would be a killjoy, and would probably be thrown out. It wasn’t about God or Satan at all, it was about sex.

That’s what make the conservatives uncomfortable — it’s simply their current obsession with changing mores about sex, and the fact that a singer wears a hat with horns allows them to claim it’s all about their religion. It’s not. Christians have sex, too. Some of them are gay or trans even. All that’s going on is that they’ve got an excuse to exercise their authoritarian purity culture.

Let’s see what notorious libertine and Catholic League president Bill Donohue has to say about it all.

Kim Petras is a man who thinks he’s a woman, or what is today called a “transgender person” (they really don’t exist, but that’s for another day). He said he “personally grew up wondering about religion and wanting to be a part of it, but then slowly realizing it doesn’t want me to be a part of it.”

He did not say who told him he could not be a part of whatever religion he was talking about, or why. But he did admit that “as a trans person, I’m kind of already not wanted in religion.” He did not explain why that might be.

Wow. Donohue has always been an ugly little man, but he really embraces the hatefulness. Also obliviousness.

Petras says she (a person who really exists) was sympathetic to and curious about religion, but was rejected by religion. Donohue then stupidly complains that she didn’t say who or why she was told this religion would not accept her, or why she might not be wanted by that religion. I mean, read what you wrote, Bill. You are a shining example of the problem.

Man, I haven’t read anything by Bill since those long ago days when he was happily hating me. I think he’s gotten worse.

By the way, about the song: I didn’t much care for it, and it won’t be getting much play around my house, and that’s OK! It’s not evil, it just wasn’t to my taste. If you liked it, that’s OK, too! This shouldn’t be about the song, but about authoritarians who want to dictate your personal preferences.

Science fiction isn’t gendered anymore

I like reading space opera when I have the free time, but did not realize how many space operas were written by Cisgender Women, Non-Binary, and Trans People. That link will take you to a spreadsheet listing 750 authors meeting those criteria.

I’ve got a lot of reading to do.

Maybe I should have been aware, because looking over the list I’ve read a lot of Cherryh, Wells, Jemisin, Martine, Leckie, Okorafor, Bujold, and Hurley, and my taste runs to a lot of non-cis-male writers. And now I have more to read!

I remember a time when most of the popular SF writers were men (with notable exceptions). I think the tide has changed.

Felicia Entwhistle has the deets

She’s speaking out on Facebook about the problems with Andrew Torrez. It’s all about constant harassment, violation of boundaries, unwanted innuendo, etc. An excerpt:

Here’s what I find particularly infuriating: several well-known atheist groups were “aware of multiple instances [of harassed individuals] with Andrew and none of them have cut ties with him at this time” and also “I’ve left all these communities. I felt unsafe and frankly unwelcome. People with power to do something have done nothing.”

I’ve also abandoned so many atheist communities after seeing this behavior time after time, which has made me one of those people with no power to do anything. I’ve heard similar stories so many times, just the names change…but it’s like there’s an endless reservoir of sex pests out there who ruin everything.

A deficiency of education in language

What a sad etymological confusion.

Many words have Trans in them. Transport, translate, transcribe etc
But Cis? Before recently it was only used in one word before it was hailed as “How To Describe Not-Trans People”
A cistern. Ya know, that thing in a toilet
They’re comparing biological women to toilets. Lovely

It’s also in “transparent transformer” and “transition”. Also “transacetylase”. You’re reaching if you find that list of words relevant.

No, this is not an insulting comparison, not on multiple levels. “Cis” is a reasonable common prefix — it just means “on the same side.” It’s unfortunate that some people’s education is so lacking that they don’t understand the term…or rather, willfully misinterpret it.

“Cistern” doesn’t have the same derivation (I looked it up, and it comes from the Latin “cista”, or box). Saying that someone is cis is not comparing them to a toilet, or a box for that matter, nor it is in any sense pejorative.

Also, a cistern is not a toilet. It’s a storage container. I hope she hasn’t been excreting in a cistern, that would be very, very bad.

Don’t worry, she has an excuse — she doesn’t care about those obscure technical words, and she’s going to blame it on her father.

Oh wow so it’s in some obscure technical words, too? Well that’s me shut up.
Except no. I was having a chat with my lovely Dad who is a translator from Latin, Greek, Swedish, Italian, Spanish, French & German.
He understands the nuance of etymology vs the context of language

Sorry, wrong again. If he was telling you that calling someone cis is comparing them to a toilet, he really doesn’t understand the nuance of etymology. I suspect, though, that that was an invention of Ms Rosetta. Poor dad.

Really, just look it up in a dictionary, or recognize the common usage. I’m cis, I’m not uncomfortable saying so, and no one I know associates it with being called a toilet. That’s just stupid.

Not clear on the “free speech” concept, I guess

North Dakotans are making themselves look like idiots again. They’re trying to pass a bill that literally criminalizes free speech.

A Republican lawmaker in North Dakota introduced a bill that would fine people $1,500 if they refer to trans people using their correct pronouns, rather than the pronouns they were assigned at birth.

The rule would apply to organizations that receive state funding—which includes public schools. That means schools and teachers could be fined for using their trans colleagues’ or students’ pronouns.

‘Words used to reference an individual’s sex, gender, gender identity, or gender expression, mean the individual’s determined sex at birth, male or female,” states Senate Bill 2199. “Any person that violates this section must be assessed a fee of one thousand five hundred dollars.”

Remarkable. So, if a teacher uses a student’s preferred form of address, they can be slapped with a $1500 fine? Just for saying “he” or “she”? I’m glad I don’t live in North Dakota, or I’d be bankrupt right now, all for respecting students’ identities.

Thank goodness it’s still legal to reference David Clemens as a horse’s ass with a bad haircut, who looks like he’s trying out for a remake of Dumb and Dumber. At least that’s an upgrade from being known as a member of the North Dakota state senate.

North Dakota Republicans…enough said

They’re up to their usual tricks, pushing more hate bills.

Six Republican members of the North Dakota Legislature introduced a bill Wednesday that would send a clear message to nonhuman-identified students: You’re not wanted in the Roughrider State.

The two-page bill, which is primarily a measure seeking to prohibit schools in the state from accommodating transgender youths,

Wait. Stop there. The bill is mainly about discriminating against trans kids, but that isn’t newsworthy enough anymore, so the news article is focusing on…furries. It turns out the sponsors of the bill have been listening to propaganda about litter boxes. To resume…

includes a subsection aimed at a different — and theoretical — category of students.

“A board of a school district, a public or private school, or a teacher in a public or private school may not … Adopt a policy establishing or providing a place, facility, school program, or accommodation that caters to a student’s perception of being any animal species other than human,” the bill, labeled an “emergency measure” by its authors, states.

This section of the bill appears to be connected to an urban myth about litter boxes in U.S. schools that spread among conservative Republicans ahead of the November election. An NBC News report published in October found this myth — about schools providing accommodations, like litter boxes, for children who identify as cats — to be untrue.

Do you think this is stupid? Wait until you hear directly from the ditz behind it all. She’s posing in front of some sort of Christian slogan, which is totally unsurprising.

The interviewer asks exactly the right questions: “Do we have any confirmed sightings of furries in North Dakota schools?” I don’t specifically have a confirmed number on that. She doesn’t know any. And she repeats the litter box myth. This is all a purely hypothetical exercise. Then she says it is happening in Minnesota! No, it’s not. You don’t get to use my state as a shield for your stupidity, lady.

But let’s not forget that she’s using this nonsense about furries as a stalking horse for her real agenda: she’s a transphobe elected to state congress who wants to implement her hate and religious dogma in North Dakota law.

A complete story with a satisfying conclusion

Act I: The story begins with a Christian apologist named David Falk making some scathing comments about a Biblical scholar named Francesca Stavrakopoulou.


From what I’ve seen of Stavrakopoulou, she seems professional and competent. Falk, on the other hand, has something wrong with his brain.

Act II: a fellow named Dan McClellan replies and calmly minces him to a fine pulp. Wow, this is thorough.

Act III: Falk makes a pathetic not-pology.

Act IV: The Vancouver School of Theology, where Falk used to be employed, follows through with a finishing move.

Post-credits teaser: “I’ll have my revenge!” cackles a vanquished Falk.

Stay tuned for the sequel! Oh, wait, Netflix already cancelled it.

Every state should do this

At least Minnesota has the right priorities.

Today, lawmakers in the Minnesota House of Representatives voted to pass HF 1, the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act. This bill protects Minnesotans’ right to contraception, the right to carry a pregnancy to term, and the right to abortion, and ensures the right to privacy for personal reproductive health decisions. It also prevents interference by politicians who seek to enact or defend medically unnecessary barriers to comprehensive reproductive health care.
…
The bill enshrines protections for all reproductive health care, including but not limited to contraception, sterilization, preconception care, maternity care, abortion care, family planning and fertility services, and counseling regarding reproductive health care. The bill now awaits action from the Senate.

Also, keep it up, Leslie Jones.