feminism
gregladen | December 7, 2012The other day, PZ Myers noted in a Blog post the remembrance of the École Polytechnique massacre in which Marc Lépine hunted down and killed 14 women, injured another 10 women and a handful of men, as his way of striking out against feminism. To be clear, he was hunting down and killing feminists because he felt that feminism had caused his application to the school to be rejected.
PZ made the rather bold implication that the MRA’s, anti-feminists and slymepitters of today’s Skeptic and Secular movement were part of the same entity … cultural manifestation, way of thinking, whatever … as…
gregladen | November 12, 2012This is the year of the woman in the US Congress and elsewhere, despite the best efforts of some to make sure that the opposite happened.
This is the year in which the Right Wing carried out the most anti-woman campaign ever since suffrage, or at least, so it would appear, along with a continued attack on non-hetero persons. A defining moment in this campaign occurred in February, when the Republican controlled House carried out a nearly comical hearing on women’s reproductive rights.
Three Democrats walked out of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing on religious liberty and the…
esiegel | October 4, 2012“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.” -Joan of Arc
Regardless of what intrinsic differences any person or group of people have from another, everyone deserves to be treated as an individual, afforded the same opportunities to pursue their passions, goals and dreams, and evaluated on the merits of their performance. Although this is not yet the way the world works, I am confident that many strides are consistently being made in the right direction, and I was…
gregladen | June 30, 2012Secular Woman is a organization that just formed, and is currently filing for 501(c)(3) status. I just joined it and you should to. Here's the mission statement:
Mission
The mission of Secular Woman is to amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious women.
Vision
Secular Woman envisions a future in which women without supernatural beliefs have the opportunities and resources they need to participate openly and confidently as respected voices of leadership in the secular community and every aspect of American society.
Values
Humanism
We embrace human-centered ethics informed by…
gregladen | June 3, 2012First, a little Benazir Bhutto story, since we are on the subject of women leaders.
A friend of mine was to be on the podium of Harvard's graduation the year Benazir Bhutto was to give the keynote, and heard this conversation. John Galbraith, the economists who was also a professor at Harvard, Bhutto's former undergraduate advisor, and her friend, was also to be on the stage, and all the famous people who were to be on that stage were to walk out in procession. The Secret Service, who were protecting Bhutto who at the time was Head of State, arranged the people so that two or three guys,…
gregladen | January 20, 2012The More than Men Project is an effort initiated by the Women Thinking Free Foundation to develop a space where men, often white and/or straight and/or Of Priv, could spend a little time and energy telling their fellow Hetero-occidentaloid-Y-chromosomists something useful or interesting about diversity, and to encourage the promotion of said diversity.
When I was asked to contribute to this project (which was being cooked up last July) I had some concerns. I wasn't sure if I needed a space to do this, since I have a widely read blog in which I am constantly telling my fellow Hetero-…
sastyk | October 10, 2011Perhaps the first widely read piece I wrote was entitled "Peak Oil is a Women's Issue" and focused on the ways that an energy decline might affect women. At the time it was written (the earliest version appeared in 2004) the peak oil movement was largely a group of men, mostly geologists, oil men, a few economists and journalists interested in a growing issue.
My argument (more refined variations of which I've continued making for years) was that women need to organize around energy and environmental issues, because they stand to lose a great deal in a society that has fewer resources to…
gregladen | October 10, 2011The following photograph is a Facebook Peme (Pic Meme, sometimes spelled "peem"). In its original form it had a caption that was sexist and offensive, feeding the idea that girls can't do math (innately) and also suggesting that a good backup plan for a middle schooler frustrated with academics is sexual self-objectivictoin.
I've blogged about this at The X Blog. Here, I'd like to ask you to suggest alternative captions for this photograph. And by "alternative" I mean positive. Or funny but not sexist.
pharyngula | July 31, 2011We've been missing one piece of information in all the condemning and howling and insanity of the Rebeccapocalypse: the notorious talk at CFI in which Watson hatefully and viciously tore into a poor innocent student and ripped her to shreds in public…or, at least, that's how it's been characterized by some people. Omission corrected: here's the youtube video of the infamous talk:
Wow. Excellent talk, and guess what? The poor student was discussed civilly and without victimization. She didn't even make up an insulting name for her.
It's rather clear that the focus of her talk was presenting…
pharyngula | July 25, 2011Wait, I don't think this was intended as a joke. Esquire introduces an article on oral sex with Dominique Strauss-Kahn's maid.
We don't mean to be indelicate, but well, this whole thing has gotten a little indelicate, hasn't it? In the latest Newsweek, the maid who was allegedly raped by former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn gives a very graphic account of their time together, including some very indecent oral sex. And whomever you believe, that's a tragedy. Because as we've learned over the years from our sex expert, a blowjob need not be degrading or hurtful, for either party. Here, a…
gregladen | July 7, 2011Behaviors are not caused by genes. There is not a gene that causes you to be good, or to be bad, or to be smart, or good at accounting, or to like bananas. There are, however, drives. "Drives" is a nicely vague term that we can all understand the meaning of. Thirst and hunger are drives we can all relate to. In fact, these drives are so basic, consistent and powerful that almost everyone has them, we share almost exact experiences in relation to them, and they can drive (as drives are wont to do) us to do extreme things when they are not met for long periods of time. While eating…
pharyngula | July 5, 2011I think we've reached the saturation point, so comments are closed on this article. However, I do think I need to link to Rebecca Watson's summary of her recent absurdist travails. Or if you'd rather, try reading Schrödinger's Rapist and be enlightened.
This time, though, really, go over there if you feel the need to comment.
It is interesting that it is the jerk chauvinist skeptics and atheists who have turned Ms Watson into an angry feminist. It's all your fault, bozos.
gregladen | July 4, 2011Recently, Richard Dawkins said (full quote below) that a woman should not be concerned about her own safety if she finds herself in an elevator (under some sort of threat, presumably), because it is trivially easy to get out of an elevator if you are under attack. I'm sure Richard is a very smart guy and maybe he's right, but there is evidence to the contrary that women can just leave the scene if they are uninterested in being raped or groped.
For example:
Police are looking for a man they say sexually assaulted a woman in Manhattan about two weeks ago.
A surveillance photo of the…
pharyngula | July 3, 2011This is your last gasp on the topic of the proper way to make a sexual advance. I'm just going to wrap up a few dangling bits.
Jen has slammed Richard Dawkins for some comments here. I can confirm that those comments were actually from Richard Dawkins. I also have to say that I agree with Jen and disagree with Richard.
Richard did make the valid point that there are much more serious abuses of women's rights around the world, and the Islam is a particularly horrendous offender. Women have their genitals mutilated, are beaten by husbands without recourse to legal redress, are stoned to death…
gregladen | July 3, 2011And thus, structurally, Richard Dawkins, or his distant cousin Richard D. Poe (I am still not sure) has shut down the argument that the Elevator Guy acted inappropriately when he asked Rebecca Watson over for a cuppa joe at four O'clock in the AM, in an elevator, while she was on her way to bed.
Imma let you read all about it by following the threads upstream, but in the meantime I want to point out the fallacy at work here. It's called the Watch the Monkey strategy, and I've written about it before. I even drew a cute little picture of a monkey to illustrate the point. This comes from a…
vlicata | June 23, 2011Reblogitation (pronounced with a "j" sound for the "g", of course): the blogospheric phenomenon of reposting, and re-reposting, and re-re-reposting the information from the "apparent first" or "most snarky" report (or blog post) about a news item.
Mother-post: the "apparent first" or "most snarky" report of an item, that then provides "the facts" for most of the other stories about that item online (even those that don't reference or link to the mother-post).
The flurry of recent news about the question "Should evolution be taught in public schools?" that was asked of the recent crop of MIss…
mikethemadbiologist | June 16, 2011By way of Atrios, we come across this hideous display of victim blaming:
Many of the tragedies mentioned about spring from what I see as a naïve faith in the power of the modern sexual revolution. Women today are technically free to do all sorts of things that were forbidden to their grandmothers, which is all well and good. But in practice, rape and the notion of sexual conquest persist for the same reason that warfare persists: because the human animal-- especially the male animal-- craves drama as much as food, shelter and clothing. Conquering an unwilling sex partner is about as much…
mikethemadbiologist | June 12, 2011Nope. There must be something in the water in the mens' bathroom in the House of Representatives:
Congressman Bill Young (R-FL), the second ranking Republican on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is in Italy this week on a congressional delegation. A funny thing happened to the female Foreign Service Officer who organized Young's entire trip, and was supposed to travel with him to two Italian cities (in addition to Rome). The "control officer," as her job is called, got removed from her job handling the congressman's trip. Why? Because, my source tells me, his wife doesn't permit…
pharyngula | June 4, 2011Manal al-Sharif has been arrested for the crime of driving a car in Saudi Arabia while having a vagina. Sign the petition, watch the video, talk about it.
(Last edition of TET; Current totals: 12,492 entries with 1,393,155 comments.)
pharyngula | May 28, 2011Read this horror story of a failed pregnancy.
I was taking an afternoon nap when the hemorrhaging started while my toddler napped in his room when I woke up to find blood gushing upward from my body. Though I didn't know it at the time, I was experiencing a placental abruption, a complication my doctor had told me was a possibility. My husband was at work, so I had to do my best to take care of me and my toddler on my own. I managed to get to the phone and make arrangements for both of my children before going to a Chicago hospital.
Everyone knew the pregnancy wasn't viable, that it couldn'…