Park51 turning into Abbey Mills re-run
I haven’t commented on the Park51 affair yet — the 13-storey mosque and community centre that some group wants to put up in Lower Manhattan — mainly because other Muslims (and others) have said...
Category: Politics
Rape is not funny. Yes, even when it’s George Michael. (updated)
A couple of hours ago I went downstairs to chat to my sis who is visiting with her little girl, and one of the new generation of comedy shows, Mock the Week, was on....
Sweden: exposing Sharia and rape myths
Swedish elections: The impact of immigration | World news | The Guardian This is an article about the rise of the “Sweden Democrats”, a far-right party which has been increasing its share of the...
British footballers, privacy and gender
Wayne Rooney’s infidelity exposes law’s misogyny | Media | The Guardian This week it was announced that Mr Justice (David) Eady, is being replaced as head of the Queen’s bench jury and non-jury lists,...
The Humanist dream school
Welcome to my dream school | Education | The Guardian This article appeared in the Guardian last Friday, but only now I've got round to commenting on it. I read it eagerly and think...
How to get women into tech
Why We Don’t Need More Women In Tech… Yet « I just saw an article on why calling for "getting more women into technology" is useless, namely that there just aren't enough female computer...
Bidisha and feminist language policing
Sluts and sweethearts | Life and style | The Guardian Yesterday I saw an article by feminist novelist and arts commentator Bidisha promoting a feminist language-policing site called Name It, Change It which presents...
Seize their buildings
Earlier today I watched the Dispatches programme, Britain’s Secret Slaves (in the UK, you can watch it on their 4oD service), about the mistreatment of domestic workers in the UK. The first half, roughly,...
France niqaab ban “not meant to help women”
France’s ban on the Islamic veil has little to do with female emancipation | Law | guardian.co.uk Joan Wallach Scott, the author of The Politics of the Veil, on the real motivation behind the...
Faith schools are no menace
Last week, Richard Dawkins delivered a polemic on the British digital TV channel, More 4, against the principle of government support for faith schools. (It is available for viewing at 4 On Demand, although...
Let in immigrants, get extremists
This is something I got through a tweet from 5CC or Tabloid Watch, but Osama Saeed jogged my memory about it. An election campaign card which was used by Phil Woolas during his (successful)...
Crime victims’ groups round on crime victim
Yesterday it was reported that Ian Huntley, the man convicted of the murder of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham (a village near Cambridge, in England) in 2002 and who was attacked...
Tabloid feeding frenzy over Venables
The past few days have seen one ghoulish story about Jon Venables (or the person formerly known as such), one of the two boys who murdered a toddler, James Bulger, on Merseyside in February...
Doctors scare chronically sick patients too
Dr Rob, an American primary care doctor (or GP), recently published a “letter to patients with chonic disease”, quite an interesting article in which he informs them that doctors are actually scared of them...
Muslim country bans niqaab shock!
This didn’t quite come too late for yesterday’s entry on niqaab, but that was dragging on too long and I had an appointment this morning that I should have been preparing for while I...
Nessie allows bigoted ‘debate’ about niqaab
This morning Vanessa Feltz, the host of the BBC London morning phone-in show, had among her topics the question of whether the so-called burqa should be banned (you can listen to it, if you’re...
Raoul Moat: just a thug
Last week I heard an awful lot of nonsense in the media about why there were so many people willing to sing the praises of the murderer Raoul Moat, who killed his ex-girlfriend’s partner...
Why no compromise on rape anonymity?
Last week it was reported that the coalition government is to go ahead with plans to change the law to give men accused of rape the right to anonymity up to the point where...
Which of these women looks sick?
ButYouDontLookSick.com is a website by a woman with lupus (she wrote the Spoon Theory I referred to in a previous post). In her biography, she says that, despite suffering a wide range of symptoms...
A new light on the harms of porn
A few months ago I read a book called Living Dolls by Natasha Walter, who argued that the "new feminism" she thought was emerging in the 1990s had given way to a culture in...