Flannery O’Connor was both one of America’s greatest short story writers and one of our greatest snarky critics. Case in point, the following comments on objectivist “philosopher” and Atlas Shrugged author Ayn Rand:

I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.

Burn.

LGBTQ Legislation

+ Denmark became the first country to stop requiring a diagnosis of “gender identity disorder” for people seeking to change their gender on official documents.

Under the new law, expected to take effect in September, Danes changing their gender assignment will also no longer have to first undergo sex reassignment surgery and sterilization. All that will be required is a statement that someone wants to change their official document, which will be processed after a six-month “reflection period.”
+ New York’s State Assembly is considering a ban on gay conversion therapy for minors. If successful, New York would be the third state to put forth this kind of legislation.

Women Workers Organize, Resist, Tell Their Stories

+ MigraZoom is a photography project that gives migrant women cameras so they can document their journeys.

It is so important to consider the experiences of women immigrants as they cross the border, and there is a lot of really great reporting being done by talented and dedicated journalists out there to bring it to light. But having the perspectives of the women themselves — whether through photographs or their social media — is absolutely invaluable.
+ Patricia Valoy, a civil engineer, construction manager, and woman of color, describes her experiences with sexism and discrimination at work.

Valoy represents many women in her industry. The Department of Labor found that 88 percent of women in construction said they had experienced sexual harassment at work, compared to 25 percent of women in the workforce generally. And, according to NWLC, they “are more likely to be concentrated in office positions… and least likely to be found in more labor intensive positions,” but those office positions pay less.

So it begins again. Soldiers are systematically raping women, men, and children, this time in Syria. Piecing together testimonies gathered over the last three years, NGOs and journalists have identified case after case of sexual violence used to terrorise civilians.

The world is one in unanimous horror on this issue, but only in recent decades have governments and multilateral agencies classified rape as a crime against humanity.

Special tribunals for the prosecution of war crimes committed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia also investigate crimes of sexual violence, as does the International Criminal Court created under the Rome Statute in 1998. In 2000 the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1325, which called for a greater role for women in conflict resolution and peace negotiations.

And yet, as with prosecuting rape and sexual violence during peacetime, progress has been slow. Instead, there is a culture of impunity as around the world again and again soldiers “wage war on women’s bodies”.

Recently William Hague has taken up the cause and, working with the film star Angelina Jolie, begun an international campaign for justice and reparations for survivors. These efforts culminated in the End Sexual Violence in Conflict summit, which, thanks to the celebrity factor, attracted acres of news coverage and popular support.

What does this mean for the women, men and children being raped in Syria, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in South Sudan today? Can a renewed campaign address the needs of rape survivors in Bosnia waiting for prosecutions 20 years on? Is this the push needed to finally end sexual violence in conflict?

How One Student Uncovered Multiple Constitutional Violations at His High School

Isaiah (Issah) Smith just graduated from high school after a very eventful year in which he exposed all sorts of religious violations at his school. It’s as good a time as any to take stock of what he accomplished — and what he sacrificed to do it.

Earlier this school year, after being bullied for being gay, Isaiah decided to bring a Bible to school to explain to his classmates why the verses they cited didn’t actually condemn gay people. In the process, he ripped out the pages from Leviticus.

That caused Birdville High School Assistant Principal Glenn Serviente to pull Isaiah from class and warn him that he must not cause a “disruption” by ripping the Bible. (I guess the bullies were not seen as disruptive…?) Isaiah promised not to rip it up any more, but asked for (and received) permission to continue carrying that Bible with him.

But a couple of days later, Serviente summoned Isaiah back to his office:
He asked Isaiah, “how would Muslims feel if a student was tearing up the Qur-an?” and then told him he was suspended. He then demanded Isaiah to give him the book. Isaiah said no, informing Serviente that he did not tear the Bible since being told on Monday that he could not do so. The assistant principal clarified that Isaiah was suspended for merely carrying a ripped Bible at school. He then reached for Isaiah’s Bible without his permission and slammed it on his desk. First he said Isaiah was suspended from school for the remainder of the day, but then changed his mind and told Isaiah he was suspended for three days. He also confiscated Isaiah’s Bible.
At that point, Isaiah contacted church/state separation groups on Facebook like the ACLU and the American Humanist Association. The AHA wrote back and eventually sent the district a letter letting them know they were violating the law by suspending Isaiah when, in fact, he did nothing wrong:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/06/15/how-one-student-uncovered-multiple-constitutional-violations-at-his-high-school/

Dizzy With Success: Paul Elam announces triumphant move of AVFM conference to less convenient venue

The only way you can get away with bullshit this brazen is if you’re a dictator or the leader of a cult – something that A Voice for Men has increasingly come to resemble. AVFMers are expected not only to accept Elam’s leadership; they’re expected to accept his distinctly non-consensus reality – a world turned upside down in which men are the real victims of domestic violence and rape and pretty much everything else, a world in which the Southern Poverty Law Center is a collection of evil bigots and his motley collection of misogynists is the true human rights movement of the twenty-first century.

Like a lot of cult leaders, Elam keeps his troops too busy to think straight in a continual frenzy of pseudo-activism. AVFMers are forever brigading comment sections of newspaper articles and YouTube videos in little squads (AVFMers almost always travel in packs), all reciting the same few talking points.

Weirdly, the dynamics of internet discussions can actually reinforce this kind of intellectual conformity, much as Stalin’s control of the media did in his day. No, AVFMers can’t avoid being exposed to facts that contradict the shared (un)reality of their ideological bubble.

But in internet discussions you don’t have to be right in order to convince yourself you’ve won an argument. You just have to be loud and persistent and unwilling to ever give in. You don’t have to convince anyone else of your arguments so long as you convince yourself. MRAs don’t win many arguments on their merits, but they manage to convince themselves they win every one.

The trouble is that when they step outside of their regular stomping grounds on the internet, this strategy – so effective in generating ideological conformity amongst cult members – falls completely apart.

The Princeton Review's college rankings can tell you which schools offer good value, where to find the swankiest dorms and whether a campus looks like something out of Reefer Madness. What those rankings don't tell you is whether your college pick has a rape and sexual assault problem.

The feminist group UltraViolet this week called on the Princeton Review to include such statistics in its publications. That information, UltraViolet argues in an online petition, "will motivate colleges across the country to get serious about the epidemic of campus rape."

The Princeton Review says that it will now link to campus security pages on its website, information that it has not previously included.

"Over the 2013-2014 academic year as news reports of crime — including very disturbing reports of sexual assaults — on college campuses increased, we look to ways we could responsibly collect and report information that would be helpful to the students, parents and advisers we serve," Rob Franek, Princeton Review's senior vice president and publisher, said in a statement.

Making up a fake number to give to an overly-aggressive guy at a bar is a tactic as old as phone operators. But why give the guy the number for your nearest Dominoes, when you could let him talk to feminist icon bell hooks?

Instead of making up a fake number, women can now give out this one: (669) 221-6251. Unwanted admirers will receive a text in response quoting writings of bell hooks (lowercase intentional), a feminist activist and writer and the author of the book Feminism is for Everybody. Her writings have inspired hundreds of feminists, and now they can inspire some people to be a little less aggressive in their pick-up strategies.

The creators of the site are still anonymous, but they did email The Hairpin to say that "the idea is to pass that off as one's own number if you're in a dicey situation, afraid to give out your personal cell phone number or outright reject someone."

I texted the mock number to give it a try (and for a little feminist inspiration). This is what I got in return:



http://www.vox.com/2014/6/13/5807468/bell-hooks-will-text-creeps-for-you

Give This Number to the Dude Who Won't Leave You Alone

because we're raised to know it's safer to give a fake phone number than to directly reject an aggressive guy.

because we're raised to know that evasion or rejection can be met with violence.

because women are still threatened and punished for rejecting advances.

because (669) UGH-ASIF, WTF-DUDE, and MAJR-SHADE were taken.
Since the service started, thousands of people have started using this number. Feminist Phone Intervention has more information on donating to help keep them in service, with extra proceeds going to a latina reproductive health non-profit.


Phttp://jezebel.com/give-this-number-to-the-dude-who-wont-leave-you-alone-1590501704