On my previous post about the horrific fraternity/rugby team chants at the University of Mary Washington, I neglected to mention the most horrific part of it all. A woman, Grace Mann, was murdered. As Dave Futrelle explains today:
The rugby team was suspended in March. Mann, a prominent member of the group whose activism led to the team’s suspension, was murdered in April. The suspect, a returning student named Steven Vander Briel, was a former member of the rugby team.
There’s this story going around about why believers are afraid of atheists, and here’s a video that summarizes it.
It annoys me in a couple of different ways, I’m sorry to say.
I do love me some Prince.
It’s surprisingly upbeat for the topic…but maybe a hopeful note is what we need right now.
The video got blocked overnight — here’s an official source where you can hear it.
Good on him: Dan Dennett has pulled out of the World Science Festival because they’re sponsored by the Templeton Foundation, a very good reason.
Look at this abomination, the product of godless manipulation by farmers, turning it into a nightmarish version of its pure, natural, original form.
Terry Dean, Nemmers, better known around here as Comma, wouldn’t do that, would he? He wrote a screed to the Monitors list this morning, didn’t he? I won’t include the text here, though, will I, since he also posted the whole thing and more on his website, hasn’t he? He’s also collecting IP addresses of all visitors, so I’m sure he’d be thrilled to get more, wouldn’t he?
Big piles of cash have been getting sucked up into the for-profit college scam — con artists figured out ways to tap into federal student aid money by providing a crappy, cheap ‘education’ to poor but ambitious students. It’s been exploitation all around: there are lots of desperate academics willing to take any job, the economy has been poor and young people see education as a way out, and you just knew someone would see a way to bring those two together and make a buck off it.
It looks like the gravy train might be ending, though. Corinthian Colleges are in collapse.
What’s widening the rifts? The fact that growing diversity within movement atheism is tearing away from a bitterly misogynistic core. A core that is becoming the fringe.
Harassment and excluding people from your movement will be your downfall, atheism. Please take this as a warning, and an attempt to right the wrongs within your movement before it collapses. From now on, I’m a secular humanist, feminist, mangina-loving, vegetarian socialist, and nothing else, until you clean up your act.
Jenny McDermott
Soraya Chemaly describes the fraternity scene on college campuses.
Feminists United, a group at the University of Mary Washington, has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education asserting that their school did little or nothing to address death and rape threats made on Yik Yak [an anonymous social media app] after they protested a rugby team’s sexist chant and argued that there was a connection between Greek culture and sexual assault. Sexual assault ranks second in fraternity insurance claims, men in fraternities are three times more likely to rape than their non-fraternity peers, they consume more objectifying content and are more accepting of rape myths. The connection is entirely valid and well-documented; it’s just that no one likes the information.
Oh, those feminists. Complaining about a song? About idle chatter on social media? It’s harmless! They’re just venting! Free speech! Get a thicker skin!
