The Asian Sex Trade

“The sex trade now accounts for 14% of Thailand’s economy.” Your Thoughts?

Louisiana To Require Ultrasounds Before Abortions

It was a unanimous 79-0 vote: Women seeking abortions in Louisiana will be required to get an ultrasound first, even if they are a victim of rape or incest, under a bill that received final legislative passage Wednesday. The bill by Democratic state Sen. Sharon Broome of Baton Rouge was sent to the governor’s desk [...]

Sex And The City 2 (And Religion) (And Feminism) (And Race) (And Homophobia)

Diana Bass complains: It just wasn’t very funny to see four smart American women parading western consumerism and sexualized identity in blatantly insensitive and anti-religious ways in a traditional world.    Wait a minute, what she describes may not be funny but it’s certainly the best thing I’ve heard about the film from everything that I’ve [...]

Daily Hilarity: Best Of Sarah Haskins’s “Target Women”

Sarah Haskins always provides the most hilarious and incisive commentary tearing into the lousy logic and vapid condescension packed into advertisements targeted at women on her recurring Infomania segment called Target Women. Her dry witted satirical media criticism would be a perfect fit on The Daily Show and in logic classes. Every time I watch one of [...]

Tony Blair On Our Allies Who Live Within Theocracies

Michael Shermer got the chance to ask Tony Blair how we spread various central Western ideals of democracy, education, civil liberties, equality, etc. in hostile theocratic countries without resorting to military force.  Part of Blair’s answer: “It’s one of the great myths perpetrated in our own societies is that somehow people who live in oppressive [...]

American Academy Of Pediatrics Reverses Support For Female Circumcision “Compromise”

The American Academy of Pediatrics had proposed permitting American doctors to ritually “nick” the clitorises of girls whose parents want to maintain their customs in America.  The thinking was that this compromise would prevent such parents from going underground to have a fuller mutilation of the clitoris carried out instead.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues that [...]

Marriage As Rooted In Pre-Social Goods And As Having Radical Potential

Courtney at Feministing is quite skeptical of marriage but characterizes Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame) as making a relatively compelling case for “the radical potential to be found in the privacy of the family unit” in her new memoir, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage: [Gilbert] writes, “It is not we as individuals, [...]

Women’s Ordination: Another Route To Automatic Excommunication

Not only does approving an abortion necessary to save a woman’s life in a case where her fetus would die in either case get you automatically excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, but so does seeking ordination while being female.  Lifelong Catholic Janine Denomme this week was denied a Roman Catholic burial for having the [...]

Saudi Girls Pepper Spray Religious Enforcers

On the heals of the story we highlighted the other day in which a Saudi Woman attacked a member of the Saudi Commision for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice for harassing her over her clothing, Ashaq Al-Awsat reports another heartening incident along the same lines: Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat- Members of Khobar’s Commission [...]

RapeAway!™

Pharyngula profiled this Egyptian ad last week, which advised women to veil themselves using an illustration: In response, BewareTheLizards42 has unveiled a new product: Your Thoughts?

Moral Actions, Moral Sentiments, Moral Motives, and Moral Justifications: More On The Nun Excommunicated For Approving A Life-Saving Abortion

In reply to my post on the story of Sister Margaret McBride whom the Catholic Church “automatically excommunicated” for helping to give the go-ahead to an abortion claimed necessary for saving the life of an 11 week pregnant mother, I have already received two interesting replies.  The first challenged the medical argument for the necessity of [...]

Saudi Woman Beats Up “Virtue Cop”

The Jerusalem Post reports: When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition. But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping. A member of the Commission for the [...]

Are Legal Burqas A Security Risk?

Now in Australia, a senator is making this argument: Tasneem Chopra comes off most impressive. Your Thoughts?

Poisoned For Going To School?

First it was malicious misogynists attacking Afghani school-going girls with acid in their faces, now it appears they’re being poisoned: Local doctors suggested the Taliban may be the perpetrators of possible poison attacks. At least 88 girls and teachers became ill in separate cases at three girls’ schools. The cause of the illnesses was not known, [...]

Mafia Prostituting Kids On Craigslist

No, human sex trafficking doesn’t exist only in impoverished countries, far far away, it’s as close as the United States’ 6th most popular website, the universal classifieds of the 21st Century.  We’re all trafficking through a site where humans are being trafficked. the Gambino crime family, one of the most famous mob names in the U.S., [...]

Egyptian Cleric Mazen Al-Sarsawi Gives Brutal Advice For Treatment of Wives

Forced marriage, marital rape, tying the hair of two wives together and beating them, etc.  Simply stomach-turning misogynistic stuff, broadcast on Al-Nas TV in Egypt, January 7, 2010. (via Atheist Media Blog) Your Thoughts?

Depicting Mohammed (Watching Insubordinate Women Tortured In Hell)

(For “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” I’m moving this post back to the front page.) This is a fascinating link to plenty of Islamic artistic renderings of Mohammed from before prohibitions were created.  From the site: In 1999, Islamic art expert Wijdan Ali wrote a scholarly overview of the Muslim tradition of depicting Mohammed, which can [...]

Daily Hilarity: Betty Bowers Awards Sarah Palin “Worst Mother Award”

Your Thoughts?

Breast Cancer Awareness

This past week on Facebook women have been posting their bra colors (just the colors with no explanation) as a gesture to raise awareness of breast cancer.  But the kind of awareness the well-intentioned meme winds up re-raising in breast cancer survivors who’ve undergone mastectomies is a cruelly ironic one: Other cancer survivors joined in, [...]

Daily Hilarity: Sarah Haskins On What She Learned Watching Ads All Year

Hilarious and insightful as usual, Sarah Haskins looks back at 2009 in commercials targeted at women: Your Thoughts?

David Vitter Confronted By Rape Victim About His Vote Against Rape Victims’ Rights To Sue Haliburton

A month ago we highlighted the unconscionable decision of 30 Republican senators to vote against Al Franken’s bill which would assure that those who were raped in connection with their employment at Haliburton’s would have rights to sue Haliburton.  In this tense exchange, a rape victim confronts one of those senators, David Vitter. A transcript [...]

Evangelical Christian Sexism Galore

Mark Driscoll the mainstream megachurch pastor at Mars Hill Church attacks stay-at-home dads as “not real men” and, my favorite, “worse than unbelievers.”  Ouch dudes, you’re worse than us atheists if you stay home to take care of your kids!  Oh snap!  Enjoy being on the bottom of the pecking order!  We atheists who have real [...]

30 Republican Senators Vote Against Rape Victims’ Rights To Bring Charges In Court

Yesterday, 30 Republican senators opposed an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill that would prohibit federal defense contractors like Halliburton/KBR from getting money “if they restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court.”In other words, 30 GOP senators want to deny rape victims their day in court. Just stupefying and [...]

Nobody Cares About The Losers

Robin Hanson notes that as sensitized as we are to various marginalized groups there are other categories of people who suffer from huge inequalities but for whom there are no sympathies to be found.  Hanson writes: There is no social pressure whatsoever against maligning these groups. Especially striking are inequalities in attractiveness as a friend, [...]

Daily Hilarity: Target Women

The satire of drug commercials and religion I posted earlier put me in the mood for this classic from the ever-awesome Sarah Haskins: