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Saturday, February 12, 2022

Links - 12th February 2022 (2 - General Wokeness: Cultural Appropriation etc)

Ian Acheson on Twitter - "It's clear from the video that the attackers are people of colour. @ing  the cops in any scenario says a lot about a person's politics imo, but in this one – given what we know about how PREVENT and stop and search are used to terrorise Black & brown people – it's appalling."
"Never mind the Antisemitism, feel the deranged grievance."
If "minorities" are attacking other "minorities", it's racist to call the police

Sara McLanahan, Who Studied Single Motherhood, Dies at 81 - The New York Times - "Dr. McLanahan’s research grew in part out of her personal experience as a single mother to three children, but it was also driven by her disappointment at the limited data available on single motherhood at the time. She was further prodded into action by an article she read.  While completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Dr. McLanahan came across “The Underclass,” a 60,000-word article by Ken Auletta that appeared in three consecutive issues of The New Yorker in 1981. (It was later expanded into a book.) In it Mr. Auletta argued that the “weakened family structure of the poor’’ was a major reason for poverty in the country.  She set out to design her own studies, hoping to contradict the thesis of “The Underclass.” But her research consistently found that single motherhood came with increased risk of income loss, conflict and poorer overall outcomes. “Her research showed that growing up in this single-parent family, even as you control for as much of the observables that you could possibly do with data, was damaging,” Dr. Garfinkel said in a phone interview. “And children did less well, and that was not very welcome news.”... Though her findings rankled some advocates for single mothers, Dr. McLanahan continued to publish books and papers on the topic.  “We reject the argument that people should not talk about the negative consequences of single motherhood for fear of stigmatizing single mothers and their children,” Dr. McLanahan and the researcher Gary Sandefur wrote in their 1994 book, “Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps.” “While we appreciate the compassion that lies behind this position, we disagree with the bottom line. Indeed, we believe that not talking about these problems does more harm than good.”"
This won't stop liberals continuing to pretend that there's nothing wrong with single motherhood and demanding ever more money for them, with the delusion that that will fix things (money is free to liberals, so there's no harm anyway)

Imam Tawhidi - Posts | Facebook - "How terrorist sympathizers stay relevant:
1- Find a victim
2- “Support” the victim
3- Distract the victim
4- Attack the victim
5- Play the victim
6- Cry the victim
7- Write a book about being a victim
8- Find a new victim"

Powerful: LeBron James Pulls Over To Lecture Homeless Man On His White Privilege | The Babylon Bee

Meme - "Fucking racist with his confedarate flag *Norway*"

49ers' Mike McDaniel is not worthy of a head coaching gig yet - "Sure, Mike McDaniel seems cool, but he’s not worthy of a head coaching gig yet
Please stop and think before you inadvertently dub another young, white guy as the next hot NFL coaching prospect
Editors’ note: We learned after the publication of this article that 49ers OC Mike McDaniel, whom we describe as a “white guy,” is in fact biracial. The article’s original text remains below. We regret the error."

Marvel Shang-Chi Star Simu Liu Under Fire for Old Reddit Posts - "In addition to making casually sexist remarks about women being inferior athletes to men, and inelegantly expressing disdain for extremism in a way that carried Islamophobic overtones, NippedInTheBud (and by extension, Liu) came under fire for participating in r/AZNidentity, a subreddit that’s known as a hub for an Asian-identified subset of the Men’s Rights Activist community."
As with so many SJWs, the lady doth protest too much, methinks

The Failure of Occupy is Almost Complete - "Many have politics I just find inscrutable, as is common with young adults. Most, I imagine, will end up like the vast majority of today’s screaming social justice set, in that in 10 or 15 years they’ll just be busy little Democrat soccer parents, people who vote blue and put some sort of sign up in their lawn but who are basically apolitical in every meaningful sense... What unites just about all of the hundreds of young left-leaning people I’ve talked to in the past five years or so is that they have essentially given up on opposing the interests of capital. They don’t realize they have, but they have. They don’t even conceive of the left’s one true traditional enemy, the heart of our animus and the source of our problems, as a political actor at all. They might have some vestigial instincts that corporations are bad or that investment banks are particularly bad, but they have no particular passion in that direction and no policy preferences beyond a vague desire to raise taxes. But why would they feel visceral antagonism towards the moneyed and corporations? Whose example would they be following? How often does the liberal intelligentsia talk about the depravations of the wealthy and the corporations they run, relative to the pathetic fringe of the ultra-right? When the newsmedia wants to represent a conservative threat today, it’s always some yokel with a 4chan account and an AR-15. When young left-of-center people conceive of a right-wing enemy, all they think of are “the fash.” They think Charlottesville and Kyle Rittenhouse epitomize the contemporary American political struggle. That those are utterly remote threats to the vast majority of poor and oppressed peoples in the United States today doesn’t seem to occur to them. Again, we have armies of people who insist they’re willing to take part in meaningless street combat with whatever right-wing losers show up, and take photos for social media the entire time, but we have far fewer who will actually show up week after week to do the slow and laborious work of canvassing, phone banking, tabling, handing out leaflets, and otherwise slowly changing minds. If it doesn’t feel cool, today’s left want do it. The only politics they desire is the politics of catharsis. Occupy Wall Street’s deficiencies have been chronicled by many, including me, in the past decade. Even its signature idea, “We Are the 99%,” has its flaws. Most obviously it obscures meaningful class differences within the 99% that are arguably more consequential for day-to-day life than the 99%-1% split... Too much progressive messaging suggests that we can just tax Elon Musk and be done with it. But it will take a lot more, and the trouble is that liberalism’s takeover by an educated elite is now complete, and so the people who would fight for these tax increases are the people who would receive them, and so unsurprisingly it’s not happening... “we are the 99%,” frequently attributed to the late David Graeber, was elegant, direct, and fundamentally class-oriented; it stressed that people of all colors and kinds were united by our mutual exploitation by the ruling classes of society... All contemporary liberals and leftists want to do is to chop that 99% up into smaller and smaller chunks, insisting to many of them that their problems aren’t really problems, setting up a hierarchy of suffering that is as inhospitable to real solidarity as I can imagine. There’s almost zero interest in a politics oriented around opposition to the kleptocracy that runs our system and steadily takes from those with too little and gives to those with too much. Yet that’s the biggest source of real human suffering in this country, need, unnecessary economic need that could be ameliorated by more equitably spreading the wealth. This is deeply related to the identity-based injustices that liberals are now fixated on seemingly to the exclusion of all others. I promise you, as desperately as we need policing and criminal justice reform in this country, poverty hurts more Black people more deeply every day than police do, by a country mile. And yet even the racial justice conversation has little time for questioning the basic distribution of money and power in our society. It’s far more invested in what I’ve called the Rainbow Oligarchy, diversifying our autocratic elite rather than tearing it down. The lack of any clear class consciousness permeates the left (or “left”) conversation and its priorities. I think about the wearying discourse of deplatforming. “Deplatforming WORKS!” they snidely exclaim, not seeming to realize that, for example, it was conservatives who effectively canceled Milo Yappadapolous, not leftists, or that Alex Jones still has an audience of millions and is a very wealthy man. But those points are less important than recognizing that their targets are all fundamentally irrelevant media personalities, and that they fixate on them precisely because they can’t deplatform the forces that actually hurt poor people in this country... This is what happens when the left gives up on its core commitment to restructuring society at the economic level. You get caught up in this politics of celebrity, where what matters to your movement is the people who most defy its cultural leanings, rather than the structures of money and power that condition human lives... Maybe
1. People have given up. It feels impossible so they just don’t try.
2. Identity politics has so effectively carved up the left’s traditional constituencies into little grievance fiefdoms that there simply isn’t room for the solidarity that’s necessary to wage this fight. We’re talking about a political movement where, if you say “hey what about this group of poor people over here, can we help them?” a significant member of the liberal party will accuse you of “centering” white people or whatever the fuck, instead of saying yeah let’s help all poor people. And maybe that just can’t be a mass movement, a real movement, a winning movement.
3. Liberals and the “left” really just want to diversify a rotten system; as long as there’s enough Black and trans faces in Harvard and Goldman Sachs and the Stonecutters they don’t give a fuck...
Go on Instagram and follow as many “social justice” accounts you can. You will be amazed at how little they talk about socioeconomic inequality as such or poverty as such or hunger and need and want as such. They will do so as intensifiers to complain about the usual identity oppressions, but the economic issues at the core of all of it? Most couldn’t care less.  Capital is adaptable. Capital is savvy. It’s a mistake to think that capital is conservative; capital has no attachment to conserving or progressing. Capital just wants to accumulate more money and more power and more stuff... Tear down the 1%? Honey, we’re not even going to try."

SalomeSalvi ⭐ PocketStars on Twitter - "why you shouldn't be doing ahegao if you're not asian: a key point in understanding why this isn't ethical for non-asians (especially white people) to do is acknowledging that there are stereotypes specific to the sexuality of women of color, which constantly disempower us.
examples are the "angry black woman", the "fiery and sexual latina", the "asian dragon lady". and the "submissive asian slut". these stereotypes prevent us WOC from being taken seriously and from claiming sexual autonomy.
kindly note that there aren't any stereotypes reserved for white women that are as widely used and are as harmful as the ones for WOC. sexist issues often intersect with racial issues, with WOC and LGBTQ+ POC enduring the worst of it.
ahegao represents the worst aspects of the "submissive asian slut" stereotype. while it's often argued that it's merely an unbecoming, funny o-face that anyone in the throes of pleasure can pull, we have to remember the context it's most often used in...
muting this. i said everything in the thread. not about to waste my time explaining to non-asian male weebs that liking anime and appreciating a culture does not give you the opportunity to say what's racist or not against asian women. if you want to engage do it on my onlyfans."
How much more ridiculous can "cultural appropriation" get?
If ahegao is associated with the ""submissive asian slut" stereotype" isn't it good for non-Asians to use it, to "break" the "stereotype"?

'We have clearly failed': Property agents apologise for cultural appropriation in flat showcase video - "Shared on their YouTube channel on Sept 6, the video featured the two ethnic Chinese agents marketing a five-room flat in Jalan Bukit Merah for sale — while dressed in traditional Indian outfits, spouting phrases in Malay and Tamil, and performing a dance routine that was neither here nor there in terms of cultural accuracy. The head bobble was repeatedly imitated as well... The motivation behind the video was driven by the fact that the Bukit Merah flat can only be sold to non-Chinese buyers due to the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP), commonly known as the HDB racial quota... The couple did seek out the unit owner’s consent before kicking off their marketing plan, devised in the hopes that it would garner attention from potential buyers."
Abolish Racial Harmony Day!

Joy Reid Accuses Elon Musk Of ‘Misappropriating Black Vernacular’ - "MSNBC host Joy Reid accused SpaceX CEO Elon Musk of “misappropriating black vernacular for misogynistic purposes” after his Twitter feud with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren when he called her “Senator Karen.”... Reid has interestingly used the term “Karen” herself."
I thought Karen was how liberals diss white women now

How is it decided which names constitute cultural appropriation? : namenerds

The Joy of Appropriation - "For the most part, mainstream institutions have not come to the defense of these embattled innocents. The Los Angeles Times covered the Trader Joe’s story with strained neutrality, citing one former customer who bemoaned the company’s “failure to reflect on what their goal is in this movement” for racial justice—as if the grocery chain were a student activist who had overslept and missed a demonstration. The New York Times ran a pitiable op-ed by a confused young person who broke up with a romantic partner because of their ethnoracial differences. (What greater appropriation could there be than to take another into your heart?) The BBC has solemnly reported about the efforts of haute couture to eliminate such transgressions as cornrows on “white” male models. It would be nearly unthinkable for any establishment media outlet today to run an op-ed defending, say, the wearing of dreadlocks by a person of European descent—even though this hairstyle was known as the plica polonica or “Polish plait” and associated with the Tatar horsemen who inhabited the Polish-Lithuanian duchy long before it was associated with the African diaspora. Yet, outside of our current cultural context, such arguments seem moderate and reasonable. Cultural appropriation is far too widespread a process to be classified in Manichean terms like good and bad. It is simply a general law of culture: it explains why, for example, horses and guns are to be found in nearly every populated corner of the world, why there are Muslim Indonesians and Christian Inuit, why the Taliban use Toyota pick-up trucks, and why I like Siberian epic poetry. I want to focus here on the kind of case that is now most frequently derided as “problematic”: freely adopting aspects of another culture simply because one values them as crystallizations of human excellence. Cultural appropriation, in this narrower sense, is an unqualified good—and to oppose it is nothing less than anti-human. The most familiar critique of cultural appropriation is that all cultures are made up of borrowings from one another... For most early anthropologists, the human species is one, and the variety of its cultures is a flourish upon that underlying unity. To lose sight of this unity is as great a failure as to forget to value cultural specificity. As G. W. Leibniz put it as early as the seventeenth century, both the entire natural world and the human world contained within it are characterized by “unity in variety.”... A version of this naturalistic universalism came to dominate mid-twentieth-century theories of language, thanks in no small measure to Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar. Vladimir Propp identified the thirty-one basic structural elements of folktales, showing that to tell a story is not so much to engage in pure literary invention as to follow the rules of a combinatorial game. Claude Lévi-Strauss pursued this project further by seeking the underlying patterns in Native North American myths, while Alan Lomax studied the folk music of the American South, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe in order to build an invaluable archive of cultural expressions. Like many of his contemporaries, Lomax was driven by a desire “to explore and sustain the world’s expressive traditions with humanistic commitment and scientific engagement.” It is just such commitment and engagement—such love of culture and of learning about other cultures—that the campaign against cultural appropriation would, should it prove successful, destroy... The opponents of cultural appropriation fail to identify the real sources of exploitation. It is not, for example, the individual “white” American musician who is guilty of exploitation, unable as he is to avoid channeling the Black musical forms in which he has been immersed his whole life. It is the record companies that cynically promote him, even as they deny the same opportunities to equally talented Black artists. We can see one egregious example of this misunderstanding in the infernal question of Halloween costumes. It is not enough to problematize cultural appropriation by invoking the common slogan my culture is not a costume. For it is difficult to see what a culture could be other than the sum total of such things as recipes, songs, lines of epic poetry, prayers and, yes, costumes. I myself have memorized significant portions of Sakha epic poetry, and have worn the traditional costumes associated with its recitation—in order to work my way into the culture as best I can, with the encouragement of those born into it. Anyone who insists that a culture is not a costume has never put on the right costume in the right cultural context. What the slogan really should signal is opposition to the decontextualized appearance of serious elements of culture in a setting of charivari and subversion... There is a fine line between mockery and homage, between the subversion of a tradition and its perpetuation. Much of the best art leaves us wondering whether it is an instance of the one or the other. Yet our current cultural landscape gives us no opportunity to process this wonder, and no one to turn to, to help us process it. We have all but abandoned the fields of cultural and art criticism to a generation of zombie pseudo-critics, who do not know what art is, but only how to apply the Bechdel test, tally up the number of people from different identity groups in a given movie, and enforce a hundred other rules to ensure an entertainment stays on message. The ascendant class of cultural philistines seems to have decided on the nuclear option for combatting cultural appropriation. There can be no such thing as appropriation if there is no culture at all."

Kendall And Kylie Jenner Have Crossed Yet Another Line With Cultural Appropriation - "One of the items that’s drawn a lot of attention so far is the “Lee Leather Clutch,” a handbag modeled after a Chinese takeout box... As Teen Vogue pointed out, it’s troubling that the Jenners, who have been accused of cultural appropriation many times already, used a typically Asian name for the name of the handbag. The sisters are also selling a $45 fortune cookie coin purse, according to People."

Rihanna accused of cultural appropriation after models wear braids during Savage X Fenty show - "Rihanna is facing criticism and accusations of cultural appropriation after her latest Savage X Fenty fashion show saw models who are not Black wearing their hair in braids."

How to be a witch without stealing other people's cultures - "While there are more ethical ways to practice modern witchcraft, you can never truly “decolonize” it... For a long time, Aurora Luna explained, the modern reclaiming of witchcraft was about women taking back Neo-pagan religions like Wicca from the men who made them. These feminist reclaimings often still grounded witchcraft in cis, heteronormative gender binaries though. “What gets lost is that the traditions blended into witchcraft were always very queer practices, because it's based off of energy,” said Aurora Luna. “You can't put genitals on energy.”... Both the past and present of witchcraft owes quite literally everything to the most oppressed groups in American history. If New Age witchcraft isn’t grounded in finally starting to do better by them, then who is modern witchcraft actually for and what does it serve instead? Hint: The answer rhymes with shite wupremacy."
So much for being the granddaughters of the witches they didn't burn. I guess the women the Church burned in Europe weren't really "witches"

There's No Alternative to Cultural Appropriation - "The point when rejecting the cultural appropriation discourse is not merely to say that we should be able to mix and match cultural products to produce something new and better, though of course we should. The bigger point is that there is no alternative. There is no such thing as cultural change that does not include cultural mixing and exchange. The woke Völkisch movement is based on a completely impoverished notion of how human beings develop cultural products like food, literature, visual arts, and music... Cultural exchange always goes both ways. Yes, jazz is a quintessentially Black American artform, though all of the greatest Black jazzmen have given great credit to the white musicians who participated in its production. But to call jazz Black does not and cannot mean that it’s entirely distinct from white art as well. Jazz drew from ragtime, also “coded” Black, but ragtime drew from marches, drawn in great measure from white men John Philip Sousa and (eep) Wagner. Of course, there’s also march music from Bangladesh, Japan, Colombia, Turkey, even the Caucasus, home of the literal Caucasians, who are not very white. It’s turtles all the way down: you can’t ever get to the pure origins, because there are no origins. There’s mitochondrial DNA in culture, pure essence of human creativity that has no bedrock beyond what’s shared in the human experience. Trying to shed the bad adulterants and get to the pure cultural product, crafted only by the legitimate owners of that product, was stupid and futile when Goebbels attempted it and it’s just as stupid and futile when some Evergreen College sophomore tries to do it on social media using a iPhone that draws parts from 43 countries and scientific influence from vastly more. Gospel was a white artform before it was a Black one. Does that invalidate gospel as a part of the Black experience, make gospel “less Black”? It’s an absurd question. Yes, early rock and roll was deeply influenced by rhythm and blues and the Black artists who pioneered it. But it was also influenced by the skiffle movement among white artists in the United Kingdom - which in turn drew from Black jug bands, but also from white folk acts, who in turn were influenced by traditional European musical styles, which did not spring fully formed from the head of Odin but from a panoply of earlier predecessors that stretch back to the dawn of civilization"
SJWs also claim it's racist to reject foreign cultures, so there's no winning

‘Cultural Appropriation Is Wrong,’ Says Dude In A Dress | The Babylon Bee

Who polices the cultural appropriation gatekeepers? - "Another week, another row over cultural appropriation. But this one is different. It’s not a white artist being accused of appropriating the cultural forms of a minority community but an Indigenous Canadian artist being condemned for using the musical style of another Indigenous community.  Connie LeGrande, who performs under the name Cikwes, was nominated at the Canadian Indigenous Music awards in the best folk album category. LeGrande is a Nehiyaw, or Cree, one of Canada’s First Nations. On her album Isko, she uses katajjaq, a style of throat singing culturally and historically linked to Inuit groups. First Nations are Indigenous groups south of the Arctic Circle, Inuits those who live in the Arctic.  For her Inuit critics, Cikwes did not have “permission to… take something that isn’t hers and make an album, and put it on iTunes, and have it for sale”. A number of Inuit artists are boycotting the awards in protest.  Lisa Meeches, who oversees the awards, insists that cultural appropriation is not possible within the Indigenous community. Her critics accuse her of “pan-Indigenising” and speaking from a First Nations point of view rather than from an Inuit perspective. What the row exposes is that such controversies are less about equity and opposition to racism than about cultural gatekeeping – self-appointed guardians licensing themselves as arbiters of the correct forms of cultural borrowing. Such policing is deeply problematic, both artistically and politically"

Multiculturalism, or Cultural Appropriation? Progressives Can’t Have It Both Ways. - "According to law professor Susan Scafidi, author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law, cultural appropriation consists of “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc. It’s most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways.”  Even if one takes this dubious definition seriously, though—what would constitute “unauthorized use?”—policing cultural appropriation quickly falls apart when applied to actual human behavior. A group of students at Pitzer College, for example, declared that hoop earrings should be off-limits to white women. But how can any culture lay claim to determining the size and shape of acceptable jewelry for individuals to wear? Critics should never assume, though, that bad ideas will die a natural death. In 1991, Antioch College gained national fame—and ridicule—by mandating that each step of a sexual encounter receive express permission from the participants. Lawyerly protocol replaced spontaneity, and process replaced passion. Saturday Night Live mocked the school, showing hormonal undergraduates uttering stilted authorizations. But what was once fodder for comedy is now law, at least in California and New York. Progressive goals have a way of becoming mainstream edicts.   In Salem, Massachusetts, the Peabody Essex Museum offers a case study in the mainstreaming of cultural appropriation. Cross-cultural appreciation has sustained the museum for centuries. America’s oldest continuously operating museum, PEM has long displayed exotic artifacts associated with the maritime trade—but patrons must now read a guilt-ridden disclaimer when visiting the museum’s exhibits. “Cultural appreciation and exchange are vital parts of any society, but appropriation is complicated and tied up with complex power dynamics and histories of oppression,” the message reads. “Cultural appropriation occurs when ‘appreciation’ becomes theft, when ‘exchange’ is one-sided, or when marginalized cultures are reduced to stereotypes.”  As with other definitions of cultural appropriation, the PEM statement does not offer any guidelines on how to know when “appreciation becomes theft” or when “exchange is one-sided.” The best it can offer is a statement from Jezebel founder Anna Holmes: “You can’t always prove appropriation. But you usually know it when you see it.”  No well-intentioned person favors “marginalized cultures” being “reduced to stereotypes,” but cultural-appropriation watchdogs see these offenses everywhere, even in instances where harm was clearly not intended. Consider the case of high school senior Keziah Daum, who wore a cheongsam to her prom, setting off a Twitterstorm of condemnation. Daum chose the dress because she thought that it was beautiful and would set her apart on a special night. But activists admonished Daum, who is white, for wearing a traditional Chinese garment. Her defenders, including some Chinese-Americans and native Chinese, argued that her selection complimented Chinese culture. Critics attacked them in turn as inauthentic, or—in the case of Chinese nationals—lacking the social authority to speak about American minorities. To Daum’s woke critics, every ethnic group must stay in its own lane. Another puzzling aspect of the cultural-appropriation focus is that it seems clearly to clash with another progressive imperative: the need to nurture multicultural appreciation... “You can’t steal a culture,” as Columbia University linguist John McWhorter has observed."

Mixed-Raced Woman Slammed Over Daughter's 'Tiana-Themed' Birthday: AITA

Los Angeles classroom is decorated with Palestinian, BLM and Gay Pride flags together with posters - "A Los Angeles school classroom has been pictured covered in flags and posters that include the messages 'F*** the police' and 'F*** America.'  Pictures posted to social media detail anti-America propaganda on the walls of Alexander Hamilton High School located in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).  They also included a pride, transgender pride, Black Lives Matter and Palestinian flag. Meanwhile, a stars and stripes flag could be seen flung over a piece of wooden furniture in the corner of the room. Although the pictures were taken by a pupil at the school, they were seen by a parent who called them a 'disgusting brainwashing of students with taxpayer dollars.' Alongside an anti-police poster, an anti-American poster depicts Christopher Columbus and the U.S. as being tied to the Ku Klux Klan... One poster states 'F*** Amerikkka, This is Native Land' while the anti-police poster goes into some detail as to the stance.  'Policing is a violent, anti-black settler institution that originated as slave patrols,' the poster reads.  'Their primary mandate is to protect property and to militarily enforce white supremacist capitalism. They are doing their jobs as they are trained and paid to do. You can't fix what isn't broken. That's why we fight for police and prison abolition. F*** the Police.'... 'Any displays that are determined to be overtly and objectively political or otherwise run afoul of our policies of inclusion and respectful treatment of others will be taken down and will be handled administratively,' read a statement from LAUSD...  in a high school in Portland, a teacher removed the American flag from her classroom, saying it represented 'violence and menace and intolerance' in protest of a new ban on Black Lives Matter and Pride symbols... Gail Grobey removed the American flag from her classroom at Newberg High School 'because that's the most political symbol there is'... 'That symbol doesn't stand for freedom or justice or equality anymore. It stands for violence and menace and intolerance, and I will not fly that in my room.' Two other teachers in California have been put on administrative leave and are set to be fired after they displayed controversial flags in their classroom.   Kristin Pitzen, of Newport Mesa School District in Orange County caused a stir when she posted a since-deleted TikTok video claiming that the American flag made her 'uncomfortable' and had her students say the pledge of allegiance to the gay pride flag.   Meanwhile, Gabriel Gipe, of Inderkum High School in Sacramento, faced complaints from parents when a student reported that the Antifa flag and Chinese Communist Party poster that he hung in his classroom made them uncomfortable."
No indoctrination in schools, no. The same people who get very upset over tax dollars supposedly going to religious schools (in the form of school vouchers) love this
We're still told that liberals don't hate their countries

Oregon school board bans Pride and Black Lives Matter symbols in classrooms | Toronto Sun - "An Oregon school board on Tuesday voted to ban educators from displaying Pride flags, Black Lives Matter symbols or other emblems in the classroom that are considered “political, quasi-political or controversial,” despite pushback from teachers, lawmakers and residents...   “We don’t pay our teachers to push their political views on our students. That’s not their place,” Shannon said. “Their place is to teach the approved curriculum, and that’s all this policy does is ensure that’s happening in our schools.”  The policy was denounced by the School Board’s three liberal members, who accused the conservative majority of passing a measure that the community did not want... “We cannot let this group of 4 impose their own political agenda, erode our rights, and strip our support of our students. Our educators are united in their goal to create classrooms where students can walk in and feel like they belong.”...   “A simple pride or BLM flag in a classroom shows the love and acceptance that we need,” Till said. “Pride flags can literally save someone’s life, and you’re just going to take that away?”"
Liberals aren't against indoctrinating kids. Just indoctrinating kids about things they don't like
Banning the imposition of a political agenda is apparently imposing a political agenda
Apparently a flag saying your life is not indicative of "fragility"

Teacher Removed From Classroom After Flag Video - "  She goes on to explain that there is no American flag in the room where she teaches.  "It used to be there, but I took it down during COVID because it made me uncomfortable," she says in the video. But one day, a student commented on the lack of flag.  "But my kid today goes, 'Hey, it's kind of weird that we just stand and we say it to nothing,'" Pitzen said, adding that she told the student she is working on finding it.  "In the meantime, I do have a flag you can pledge your allegiance to. And he looks around and goes… oh that one?"  Pitzen then pans across her classroom to a pride flag tacked to the wall...   A spokesperson told NBC News that the district has a policy regarding flags...   It adds that individuals may choose not to participate in the flag salute for personal reasons"
Of course, liberals pretend that everyone is forced to worship the flag

Viewpoint from Sudan - where black people are called slaves - "There was little take-up in Sudan of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Instead many Sudanese social media users hurled racial abuse at a famous black Sudanese footballer, Issam Abdulraheem, and a light-skinned Arab make-up artist, Reem Khougli, following their marriage. "Seriously girl, this is haram [Arabic for forbidden]... a queen marries her slave," one man commented on Facebook after seeing a photo of the couple. There were dozens of similar comments - not surprising in a country where many Sudanese who see themselves as Arabs, rather than Africans, routinely use the word "slave", and other derogatory words, to describe black people.  Sudan has always been dominated by a light-skinned, Arabic-speaking elite, while black Africans in the south and west of the country have faced discrimination and marginalisation. It is common for newspapers to publish racial slurs, including the word "slave"... And almost all media outlets describe petty criminals in the capital, Khartoum, as "negros" as they are perceived to be poor and not ethnically Arab... the head of a women's rights group, No To Women Oppression, commented on a photo showing a young black man with his white European wife by saying that the woman, in choosing her husband, may have been looking for the creature missing on the evolutionary ladder between humans and monkeys.  Following an outcry, Ihsan Fagiri announced her resignation, but No To Women Oppression refused to accept it, saying she did not mean it. Racism is insidious in Sudan, historically and since independence when most senior positions have been filled by people from the north - the Arab and Nubian ethnic groups... The racism goes back to the founding of Khartoum in 1821 as a marketplace for slaves.  By the second half of the century about two-thirds of the city's population was enslaved.  Sudan became one of the most active slave-raiding zones in Africa, with slaves transported from the south to the north, and to Egypt, the Middle East and the Mediterranean regions. Slave traders are still glorified - a street in the heart of the capital is named after al-Zubair Pasha Rahma, whose 19th Century trading empire stretched to parts of what is now the Central African Republic and Chad.  Historians say he mainly captured women from the modern-day Sudanese areas of Blue Nile and the Nuba Mountains, as well as South Sudan and Ethiopia's Oromia region. He was also known for his slave army, made up of captives from South Sudan, which fought for the Ottomans.  Another street is named after Osman Digna - a slave trader and military commander, whose lucrative business was curtailed by the then-British colonial administration when it moved to outlaw slavery. The practice was only officially abolished in 1924, but the decision faced strong resistance from the main Arab and Islamic leaders of that era... The women and children abducted by Arab groups to work for a "master" for free often never saw their families again, though in some cases their freedom was controversially bought by aid groups such as Christian Solidarity International... One of the few black ministers, Steven Amin Arno, quit within two months of taking office, saying in a resignation letter which appeared on social media that nobody was listening to him.  The government did not comment on his allegations, which he says proves his point."
Damn white supremacy and Western colonialism! Damn cultural imperialism of the British banning slavery, putting an end to brown people's longstanding traditions!

No white engineers - unless they are Cuban - "White South African engineers are held in high regard all around the world – except in South Africa, where the ANC has waged a successful campaign to get rid of them... From the 1990s on, white engineers found it increasingly difficult to get jobs. The employment agencies said that affirmative action, or “transformation”, was their top priority, almost their only priority. White engineering graduates need not apply. Most of my engineering friends have emigrated, many unwillingly, to Australia, Europe and North America. All seem to be doing well, earning more than they would have in South Africa, and the ANC is delighted with their departure.  In general, the ANC wants to drive out skilled whites, but there are two exceptions. For occupations that directly and personally serve the ANC elite, they want whites. Eskom serves them indirectly and impersonally, so ideology is more important than quality of service, and they want black affirmative action appointments and no whites. Teachers teach ANC children personally and directly, so quality of service is more important than ideology, and they want whites. No affirmative action schools for the ANC elite! Affirmative action teachers are for the poor black working-class masses.   The other exception is Cubans. However white the Cubans may be – and the Cuban revolutionary ruling class is almost entirely white – Cubans are always acceptable to the ANC...   Cuba had been one of the most advanced countries in Latin America, with excellent education and health services; Castro ruined just about everything except for the latter two. The ANC regards him as a hero. Its nominal reason is pure fiction, the notion he helped overcome apartheid by his “victory” over South Africa in Angola in 1986. Castro was trying to extend his imperialism over various parts of Africa, including Ethiopia, always with ruinous results for local people. In Angola he tried to take over the whole country for his MPLA clients. UNITA, the rival Angolan movement, asked for South African help to resist them. South Africa sent in a small force, which smashed the Cuban/MPLA forces, inflicting heavy casualties, stopping Castro in his tracks and forcing him back, far further than they had intended, to Cuito Cuanavale. Castro hastily sued for peace.  The real reason why the ANC likes Cuba’s white government is because it opposes the West and hates capitalism. It doesn’t matter that Castro ruined Cuba. (Indeed, the ANC seems to admire leaders who ruin their countries. It worships Robert Mugabe.) What matters is that he screamed against the West and chanted Communist slogans, which is what the ANC wants to do. This is why the ANC is anxious to support the failing Communist regime in Cuba. Cuba is falling further into ruin and is desperate for foreign aid. South Africa is essentially giving foreign aid to Cuba while it pays huge sums of money for Cuban doctors and engineers. The ANC takes South African taxpayers’ money to give to the tyrants who run Cuba, who will keep most of it themselves and give a small fraction to their engineers in South Africa...   One of the main reasons for the failure of clean water supply in our municipalities is the same as a main reason for the ruin of Eskom: the expulsion of qualified and experienced white engineers. (Getting rid of white engineers at Eskom was sometimes known as “space creation”.) Expelled from South Africa, these engineers are doing a good job in providing clean water in Australia. In Cuba, the water supply system is falling apart; it seems worse than ours. It is estimated that water losses in Cuba are about 60%, compared with about 35% in South African municipalities. At times, tens of thousands of people in Havana, the Cuban capital, have to get their water by tanker trucks. South Africa is going to pay a fortune for the Cuban engineers who presided over this collapse, when the South African engineers who did a good job with our water supplies have been driven out.   The future of engineering in South Africa looks bleak, and so does any chance of preventing further de-industrialisation. Since the ANC is intent on getting rid of white engineers, perhaps it should prevent white students from studying engineering, and replace the white engineering lecturers with black affirmative action ones – and white Cubans."
Larry Elder brushes off LA Times column that called him 'the Black face of white supremacy' - "Republican California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder dismissed a column that called him "the Black face of white supremacy" as par for the course because liberals are "scared to death" that he could actually take control of the state.   The Los Angeles Times published a column on Friday titled "Column: Larry Elder is the Black face of white supremacy. You’ve been warned," which accused the Republican of using "overly simplistic arguments that whitewash the complex problems that come along with being Black in America." L.A. Times columnist Erika D. Smith said Elder uses "taunting and toddler-like name-calling of his ideological enemies" before belittling the gubernatorial candidate with her own insults... "I anticipated that would happen. This is why a lot of people don’t go into politics because of the politics of personal destruction," Elder said.   "This is not the first time the L.A. Times has attacked me, there is another writer who all but called me a Black David Duke," Elder continued. "They are scared to death."   Many observers have noticed that attacks from the left on Elder appeared to increase as he performs well in the polls" Hot Takes Nobody Asked For - Posts | Facebook - "The hot take here is the choice of photo. Larry Elder is about to hug Soledad Ursua of the Venice Neighborhood Council. This picture with the accompanying headline makes it appear as if the altercation was Elder attacking this woman. The actual incidents were people attacking Elder. A woman in a gorilla mask threw eggs towards Elder. She and two others physically assaulted one of his aides. However you feel about Larry Elder, the point is that the photo was misleading and to me that counts as misinformation. Many people don't look beyond the headlines. At least the LA Times eventually did change the image preview pic after many on Twitter criticized them, but the damage had long been done."

Ridiculous Zuccs: Times Live (Dean Hutton - "*** W*** People")

Addendum: To add insult to injury, a previous version of this post got unpublished by Blogger after it "was flagged to us for review" because "Your content has violated our Spam policy". So it looks like Google's algorithms have also gone mad. Unfortunately, I've had to redact select bits to try to keep this version of the post up.

Blogger's Community Guidelines claim that "Hate speech is content that promotes or condones violence against or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or any other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization". Apparently, mentioning the results of a court case and/or documenting Facebook censorship is hate speech. Go figure.

Since this version of the post neither uses disparaging language nor mentions any protected group, hopefully the algorithms will not go crazy this time.

In April 2021, I got a 30 day zucc (there's a bug where if you're a repeat offender, it will not show the true duration in the alert) for accidentally sharing a link (damn embedded share buttons on websites) from Times Live, which is "South Africa's second-biggest news website".

"'*** W*** People' exhibition is art‚ not hate speech - court (this was on Dean Hutton's racist "art exhibition"). [Addendum: The URL is https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2017-07-05-warning-explicit-language-f-k-w****-people-exhibition-is-art-not-hate-speech-court/ - replace the asterisks with the rest of the word beginning with "w" for the true URL]

The zucc was upheld on appeal, too. I was so pissed off, I tried to go to the appeal board, but they didn't want to hear my case.

Presumably the algorithm (and human reviewer) saw "w*** people" and "hate" and/or "f-k" together, and concluded that this was hate speech. Even news sites are not safe to share on Facebook. Addendum: Nor, it would seem, Blogger.

Links - 12th February 2022 (1)

Watch: Woman practicing yoga on the beach gets bitten by iguana

Need to Recover from a Workout? Fast Food Is Just as Effective as Supplements - "  The multi-billion-dollar sports supplement industry is a true behemoth. With catchy taglines and sparkling testimonials from top athletes, they've convinced millions of people to use their products. University of Montana graduate student Michael Cramer decided to find out if their claims of superiority stood the test of science, so he pit some of the most oft-used supplements, including Gatorade, PowerBar, and Cytomax "energy" powder, against a few of McDonald's most vaunted contenders: hotcakes, hash browns, hamburgers, and fries... athletes completed the time trial just as quickly after eating fast food compared to supplements. Moreover, levels of muscle glycogen were actually higher for the fast food (FF) group than for the supplement (SS) group, though the difference was not statistically significant. Glycogen is a key energy source in muscles that's primarily replenished through carbohydrate intake. Think of glycogen as your muscles' fuel; when it's depleted, exercise performance suffers. Furthermore, Cramer found no difference in insulin, glucose, cholesterol, or triglyceride levels. Subjects reported equal amounts of stomach discomfort."

Days Gone Actor Says Natives Aren't Hired For Roles Because It's "Cost Prohibitive" - "“Because casting out of various cities and then flying that talent to LA is cost prohibitive,” Witwer responds. “Also, most people with the most acting experience in the States are either in New York or Los Angeles. If native speakers can be found, they find it. If not, you get what you get... So there ya go.”... there were around 720,000 Native Americans living in California as of 2010, as per the official California Courts website. As of the 2020 Census, that number is still over 632,000. Meanwhile, the 2019 Census for New York notes that there are currently over 194,000 American Indian and Alaska Natives in New York state. It's also worth noting that both states are incredibly cosmopolitan.  Witwer’s assertion that people with acting experience need to be flown out to California and New York is not only misleading, but actively dangerous. “If native speakers can be found, they find it” is a lazy answer that dismisses the problem as one of cost, despite the fact that these games have multi-million dollar development budgets. If you can afford an actor, you can afford to cast correctly, regardless of where they're from. This comes in the wake of Days Gone creative director John Garvin blaming the game’s underperformance on Sony’s desire to cater to “social justice warriors.”"
Virtue signalling is not free. But of course SJWs think any cost is worthwhile, since they don't need to pay the bills

Ideologically And Politically, Mass Effect Is Stuck In The Past - "It’s worth pointing out that Mass Effect, at the time it originally launched, was brave. Despite being largely conformist to heteronormativity, it allowed you to experiment with sexual orientation in ways that were unheard of before, even if its LGBT+ options feel dated by today's standards... But Mass Effect’s courage stopped there. Sure, you can go Renegade, but it never quite reaches Fuck The Police. You can punch an annoying reporter, dismiss a companion’s death as necessary and unimportant - hell, you can even consign the Citadel Council to death. But even if you do these things, even if you intentionally act as Renegade as the game allows you to, you’re still bound to the predetermined and prescribed onus of being a hero. Sure, you can withhold knowledge from the Council, but this is more conducive to becoming a heroic demagogue than anything else. In Foucauldian thought, “there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.” The entire dynamic between Shepard and the Council is one born of perceived power held, and so it is at odds with any idea of unity - whether you act in tandem with the Council or alone, there is never any bona fide challenging of a broken status quo, let alone a means of actually implementing a new system. I mean, even if you go full rogue and support Cerberus every step of the way, at the heart of Mass Effect, after all is said and done, you’re Alliance brass through and through... No matter how Renegade you are, there is no way to play this game that does not support the military-industrial complex. There is no way to play this game that does not acknowledge that law enforcement is stunted not just by bureaucracy, but by systemic corruption, racism, and self-preservation that enable and perpetuate it. True enough, the impending doom of life as we know it may not be the ideal time for unbridled anarchy, at least in a fictional video game burdened with telling a coherent story. And yet anarchy would free Shepard far more so than killing the Council ever would... Mass Effect as a whole is a game that teems with space fascists. You can disagree with them, sure, and occasionally kill, convict, or disempower them, but you cannot suggest or implement a counteractive ideological structure that is conducive to the construction of a world beyond the existing status quo... The core ideology of Mass Effect is to play nice on the universal stage but plot secretly on the world one, for each and every world in existence. It is politically volatile and ideologically juvenile. It’s not ideologically incomplete, though. On the contrary, Mass Effect is packed with opposing ideological state apparatuses, defined by Louis Althusser as societal structures from which we derive a sense of self as opposed to propagating our own. From the Alliance to the turian military, to krogan tribes and the quarian flotilla, each species in Mass Effect is defined by a proprietary order designed to be in inherent conflict with each other one. This leads to a degree of interpellation that breeds self-centrement, an internalized collective value that is at odds with all similarly internalized collective values to the point of universal distrust. The geth hivemind is far more revolutionary than the Systems Alliance ever could be because it is built around unity and leaves no logical room for exclusion based on perceived differences. If Lacanian thought suggests that there is no reality without an existing discursive system, the geth’s uniformly open and unprejudiced rhetoric leaves language built to facilitate derogatory discourse in a metaphorical Stone Age, where collective progress is buried beneath thousands of years’ worth of internal conflict rallied to a unanimously recognized redirection towards other species... This is an old series, one that came out in 2007 and ran through to 2013. It was not made in the impression of contemporary events and causes. That’s why its value now predominantly lies in how evidently dated it is, how we can look to it and say “this is tactless”... The real enemy is not the Other - the real enemy is not even Saren, or the Reapers. The real enemy is the systemic structure in place that problematizes recognizing evil and acting to expunge it"
From the same shit site. This is a good illustration of the slippery slope. And of why it's pointless to try to pander to a liberal wishlist, since it's never-ending
I like how the "real enemy" is what Critical Theory identifies, instead of the aliens who are going to wipe out all life in the universe

Quinton Flynn Replaced as Kael'thas Voice Actor in WoW; Despite Judge Ruling Sexual Misconduct Allegations Came from Obsessive Stalker - "Blizzard Entertainment have replaced Kael’thas’ voice actor Quinton Flynn in World of Warcraft, likely due to allegations of sexual misconduct; despite a judge ruling the allegations came from an obsessive stalker.  Flynn had voiced Kael’thas Sunstrider until patch 9.1.0; where his old lines in The Burning Crusade expansion and new lines in Shadowlands have been replaced by a new voice actor."
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Too bad it didn't save Blizzard when the allegations against it came to light

A Family Sought Revenge Against a Tormentor. They Shot the Wrong Man, Police Say. - The New York Times - "Their son, Joe Argueta, 19, had been feuding with another teenager and his friends who had been harassing the family for weeks, slashing their car tires and shooting at their house in Houston... The driver of the Dodge, Eddie Reece Clark III, 29, pulled on to a yard to try and flee, crashed into a tree and then ran out. Mr. Clark, who had been shot in the torso, was pronounced dead at a hospital. He had never even met the family before that night"
This won't stop idiots glorifying vigilantes

Facebook - "Why are some (not all) of the people who speak the most about 'trauma', caring for your 'mental health', 'abuse', 'violence', and feeling 'unsafe' some of the angriest and most abusive people on the internet towards others?"
Just like those who say you should "be kind" often are anything but

Oceanfront Property Tied to Obama Granted Exemption From Hawaii’s Environmental Laws - "  The shoreline permit, issued by Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting on Monday, clears the way for the controversial multimillion-dollar renovation of a century-old seawall in the heavily Native Hawaiian community of Waimanalo.  Under state and county laws, such projects are typically banned. Scientists and environmental experts say seawalls are the primary cause of beach loss throughout the state, and officials expect older ones to fall into obsolescence...   Doorae Shin, coordinator for the local Surfrider Foundation, said she’s concerned that the approval sets a “dangerous precedent” for the expansion of many old seawalls, noting similar arguments could be made in their favor."

Maria Gaani's answer to Is Pycelle right that Tywin is all that a king should be? - Quora - "All those who are saying that Tywin wouldn't make a good king because he's a bad father or because he's a bad person have missed the point of ASOIAF. Good, bad doesn't matter in Martin's fantasy world. Martin doesn't give reward for being a good, honorable person. Just ask Robb's decapitated body. Being good doesn't make someone a good ruler. Martin, in fact, hate the idea that a good man makes a good king;
“Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?” – (GRRM on Tolkein)
What makes someone a good ruler is competency. A ruler must know what is the right thing to do, and he must not hesitate to do what need to be done for the greater good. Sometimes, the right thing to do is to show mercy. And sometimes, doing the right thing requires you to become a butcher king.  Tywin Lannister has all the qualities that need in a good ruler. He's practical. He knows when he needs to show mercy. He knows when he needs to be cruel. He's competent at everything he does. He never hesitates. He never failed or was disappointed in his entire life.  He ruled the seven kingdoms successfully as the hand of the king for 20 years, and in those 20 years he gave the realm peace and prosperity.  Tywin is a cruel man, no doubt. A bad father. But the man doesn't lack in wisdom and competency."

Caduceus - Wikipedia - "The caduceus (☤; /kəˈdjuːʃəs, -siəs/; Latin: cādūceus, from Greek: κηρύκειον kērū́keion "herald's wand, or staff") is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology and consequently by Hermes Trismegistus in Greco-Egyptian mythology... It is relatively common, especially in the United States, to find the caduceus, with its two snakes and wings, used as a symbol of medicine instead of the Rod of Asclepius, with only a single snake. This usage was popularised largely as a result of the adoption of the caduceus as its insignia by the U.S. Army Medical Corps in 1902 at the insistence of a single officer (though there are conflicting claims as to whether this was Capt. Frederick P. Reynolds or Col. John R. van Hoff). The Rod of Asclepius is the dominant symbol for professional healthcare associations in the United States. One survey found that 62% of professional healthcare associations used the rod of Asclepius as their symbol. The same survey found that 76% of commercial healthcare organizations used the Caduceus symbol. The author of the study suggests the difference exists because professional associations are more likely to have a real understanding of the two symbols, whereas commercial organizations are more likely to be concerned with the visual impact a symbol will have in selling their products. The long-standing and abundantly attested historical associations of the caduceus with commerce are considered by many to be inappropriate in a symbol used by those engaged in the healing arts. This has occasioned significant criticism of the use of the caduceus in a medical context."

Teenager’s memory resets every two hours after being kicked in the head, meaning she wakes up thinking every day is 11 June - "A teenager wakes up every morning thinking it is 11 June as her memory “resets” every two hours after she was kicked in the head.  Riley Horner, 16, has no recollection of the day she suffered a traumatic head injury after she was hit by a student crowdsurfing at a dance... The former athlete and student, from Illinois, in the US, now has to keep detailed notes and photos with her at all times, and has a two-hour timer set on her phone... The teenager’s mother, Sarah Horner, said doctors have told her there is “nothing medically wrong”, although she added: “You can’t see a concussion through an MRI or a CT scan.”... According to brain injury charity Headway, the greatest visible progress is made in the first six months after a brain injury and then any improvement becomes less obvious.  However, the charity said the common belief that there is a “limited window” for recovery after a brain injury is now known not to be the case, and that people can improve for years afterwards."

Teen who couldn’t form memories after accident makes breakthrough at Utah treatment center

Greta Thunberg calls out China for ‘fat-shaming’ her in article doubting she’s a vegetarian - "Earlier this month, Ms Thunberg shared an article that revealed China’s annual emissions were greater than those of all developed nations combined in 2019."

Meme - ">walking home one night
>Mugger comes out of nowhere
>"Give me your wallet!"
>Unload my FN Five-seveN on him instead
>Realize that I used 20 rounds of 5.7*28mm ammo
MFW it would have been cheaper to just hand over the wallet"

Lifestyle Editor Says Parents Should Buy Sex Toys For Their Kids - "If you’re looking to get a head start on your 2018 Christmas shopping, the lifestyles editor at the United Kingdom’s Metro paper wants you to consider buying your children sex toys.  Ellen Scott’s article, which was named both “Why you should buy your teenage kids sex toys" and “Why you should buy your kids sex toys” according to an archived version of the story, claims that unless you buy your 11-year-olds sex toys, they may feel shame surrounding sex and be unable to understand how to have fulfilling sex lives.  Scott’s article claims that if you want to be a good parent, it’s up to you to buy sex toys for your young children...   The author draws from her own experiences as a child, suggesting that if her parents had bought her a vibrator when she was younger, she wouldn’t have had bad sexual experiences with various partners as an adult... Scott suggests explaining to your children—in explicit detail—different ways to masturbate. Scott claims it’s your duty as a parent to explain it to your 11-year-old child (or younger)"
So much for the sexualisation of children being a right wing conspiracy theory

i_amJeremy on Twitter - "Guard 1:ONE OF US SPEAKS NOTHING BUT TRUTH
Guard 2:THE OTHER NOTHING BUT LIES
Wizard: ok, i know this, we have to ask..
Barbarian: *takes ax and kills the first guard*
Wizard: WHAT THE HELL
Barbarian: *to remaining guard* is he dead
Guard 2:NO
barbarian: this one liar
#dnd"

Mom asks to borrow orange cat for dinner with 'Garfield-loving' kids - "Clara Edwards posted a “Wanted” ad on social media asking to borrow an orange-colored feline to have a “lasagna dinner with Garfield-loving 4-year-old and 2-year-old children.”  Edwards — who described herself as “an increasingly desperate (but not crazy) mom-of-two with no friends that own orange cats” — said she’s not looking to adopt the cat. Instead, she is asking to take temporary custody for two-days, tops, so “please take your cat back at the end.”"

Heart Attack Woman On Plane - 15 Cardiologists On Board - "Dorothy Fletcher can count herself lucky. When she suffered a heart attack on a transatlantic flight from Manchester to Florida, she turned out to be on a plane full of cardiologists. Fifteen experts on their way to a cardiology conference responded when a stewardess asked for medical assistance."

Meme [Pornhub]: "Damn that's was fuckin hot"
"Hey language please, my seven year old son goes on here"

WTF Church - "“We are aware of what ‘WTF’ originally stands for, and that is actually why we chose it,” says Rob James, with Copper Pointe Church, the Albuquerque, N.M., church behind the college and young adult ministry, Wake. “It is something that our target audience is very familiar with. We are a progressive college group located in Albuquerque, N.M., and we know that any college-aged person is a phone-weilding, text-sending machine. So why not use what they are familiar with?” “WTF” was on purpose. In fact, it’s a main cornerstone in their branding. Their url is wakeWTF.com, their Twitter handle is @WTFisWake and their Facebook page is Facebook.com/WTFisWake. “We have taken precautions so that nobody gets the wrong intention,” says Rob. “For example, it will never be seen on any of our media as a question. It is always a statement. WTF is Wake. Worship+Teaching+Friends is Wake. Those are the three standards we have based our college group on.” And so far the response has been positive, at least among the college students they’re trying to reach, with more than 300 students on seven campuses attending. As Rob explains “We often hear the question in excitement, ‘You guys are the WTF church, right?'” It puts Copper Pointe’s tagline in a new light: “Church like never before.”"

Studying logic - "According to Larson, it was simply meant to be a faintly surreal joke about how cows would be bad at making tools; it intends no deeper commentary. However, in the decades since, it’s become by far the comic’s most asked-about panel. People want to know why cows are making tools, what aspect of society it’s commenting on, and most critically, they want to know what the tools are for. The one on the right kind of resembles a carpenter’s saw, which leads folks to believe that the other three must have some obvious function too, if only they could puzzle it out. But they don’t. They’re just random shapes, and the comic as a whole was never intended to actually mean anything. I’ve become convinced that that’s the real secret to effective worldbuilding in gaming media. Certainly, the “core” of the setting should make sense, but all the peripheral stuff surrounding it? Just throw in a bunch of incomprehensible bullshit seasoned with the occasional bit that almost makes sense, and people will seize on those bits and ratonalise all the rest of it for you - and what they come up with is generally going to be way more interesting than whatever your original plan was, if indeed you had one at all. Then, once they’ve figured it all out, just nod sagely, congratulate their cleverness, and keep your damn mouth shut."
On The Far Side
This is why I am skeptical about Literature

Quote by Ernest Hemingway - "“Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.” ― Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961: Putting literature teachers out of a job

Sticky 🐢 on Twitter - "K-9 Bites Cow, Deputy Tases K-9, Cow Kicks Deputy"
"New rock paper scissors just dropped"

Meme - "Sesame Street Disorders
Ernie - Insomnia, ADD:
-Difficulty falling asleep
-Inability to focus or be still
- Short attention span
Bert - Asperger's Syndrome:
-Prefers to be alone and to not be bothered
-Shows no enjoyment in humor
-Unusual obsessesions (pigeons, paper clips, etc.)
-Difficulty managing anger
Big Bird - Schizophrenia:
-Frequent delusions and hallucinations
-Shows symptoms of depression
-Has imaginary friends
Snuffy - Depression:
-Low self-esteem
-Lethargic, slow-moving
-Sad and gloomy
-Narcoleptic
Elmo - Narcissistic Personality Disorder:
-Very high self-esteem
-Speaks in third-person (Dissociative Identity Disorder)
-Believes the world revolves around him (Elmo's World)
-Selfish
Cookie Monster - Binge Eating Disorder:
-Low self contro!
-Binge eater
-Habit of eating things with no nutritional value, including non-food items
Grover - Megalomania:
-Delusional
-Inflated sense of self-esteem
-Believes he has special powers, talents or abilities
Oscar - Compulsive Hoarding:
-Collects items that have no value (i.e. trash)
-Afraid to leave his home (Agoraphobia)
-Poor sanitation and personal hygiene
Count - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder:
-Compulsive need to count everything around him
Two-Headed Monster - Multiple Personality Disorder:
-Dual personalities
-Sudden behavioral changes"

Indian states by percentage of Vegetarians. : MapPorn
Only 29% of India is vegetarian, with a high of 75% in Rajasthan and it being as low as 2% in Nagaland (excluding 0% in Lakshadweep - offshore islands). The North West has the highest proportion of them

Meme - "The European Commission wrote an 18 page report on "far-right" humor. It's just about what you'd expect."
"Tay Day @TheTaylorDay: "IM FUCKING SCREAMING "Attempting to counter extremist humor with a form of alternative humor has proven very difficult in this context". They took 18 pages to say "The Left Can't Meme""

Alex Jones: Who is the ranting alt-right radio host and what are his craziest conspiracy theories? - "'I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!'"

Pesticide atrazine can turn male frogs into females - "Atrazine, one of the world’s most widely used pesticides, wreaks havoc with the sex lives of adult male frogs, emasculating three-quarters of them and turning one in 10 into females, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists."

A LIBERALS GUIDE TO LABELING - "Elizabeth Warren: NATIVE AMERICAN
Kamala Harris: AFRICAN AMERICAN
Michelle Obama: OPRESSED
Joe Biden: COMPETENT
George Floyd: HERO
Bill Gates: SCIENTIST
Greta Thunberg: EXPERT
BLM Riots: MOSTLY PEACEFUL
Caitlyn Jenner: FEMALE"

Meme - "Companies see a huge amount of profit, and a very invidious idea that cannabis is not harmful, is being pushed,' said the Law and Home Affairs Minister."
"UN decision on cannabis legalisation down to 'power of money', not rationality and science: Shanmugam"
"Money. Isn't that the same reason why we still sell cigarattes? And its the same reason why we have casinos, no? Alcohol is far more destructive than marijuana. Thats science. So why are we still selling alcohol? And while we're on the topic, what's the science behind making gum a controlled substance?"

FullyVaxedJax 🤗 on Twitter - "Did y'all know Texas "won" its revolution by attacking the Mexican Army while they were sleeping (their traditional daily siesta of the culture) in a strategically vulnerable position? Real honorable victory huh? The things they *DON'T* teach us in school."
Comment (elsewhere): ""Always inform your enemy before you attack, and only at his most convenient time, " Sun Tzu, art of war."

Meme - "But some black men dont have big dicks sha.. Why did this stereotyoe last for so long? They They aren't even better in bed, because black women would statistically have more orgasms than their white counterparts, but that's not the case."
"A lot of them don't. Lmaoooo. The stereotype lasted because they had to at least have something."
"Right? Other races of men have something to brag about. Money, innovation business etc. Black men brag about their dick"
"But when Black men criticize how whack Black women are in bed, we're the bad guys."
"No one cares what broke conquered men think"
Apparently black women are the only ones allowed to criticise black men

Muscular Waifus - Posts | Facebook - "HUITLACOCHE: A RICH SOURCE OF NUTRIENTS SINCE AZTEC TIMES Mexican food is popular all over the world, but unfortunately, some people think it consists solely of tacos. While it’s true that tacos are popular in the country and are available almost everywhere, Mexican food consists of various dishes and ingredients that are beneficial to our health. Aztec and other indigenous traditions still influence the country’s modern cuisine, and one ingredient that is still important in Mexico and is growing in popularity worldwide is the earthy corn fungus known as huitlacoche. In English it’s known as “corn smut” or “devil’s corn,” and it’s delicious! What is huitlacoche? Huitlacoche actually comes from a fungus called Ustilago maydis that grows on a plant’s ovaries and keeps it from growing the way it should. When the fungus grows on corn it causes the kernels to grow in abnormally large sizes, eventually making kernels grow longer than they should. Considered an infection in countries like the United States, huitlacoche is a Mexican delicacy that is often added to quesadillas, used as a side dish, or used as a topping in other Mexican dishes such as huarache (a formation of dough that is shaped like an oval, fried, topped with beans, other ingredients of choice, and queso fresco)."

Watch: Florida school board has parent removed for simply quoting the graphic sex material they are teaching kids

Auron MacIntyre on Twitter - "Let’s check in on modern children’s literature"
"Who is Bono? Who was Che Guevara? Who is RuPaul?"
It's not indoctrination if the Left approves

Page 1 of comments at I did note see that coming! - "Why hello, are you torturing someone in your apartment? Are you harboring a hooker? Are you watching a porn marathon?
Can't think of any other other activities that would require the level and length of yelling and moaning involved 3 hours until 2AM - really?
Number of times I hear:
- Oh god oh oh oh = 22
- Yes baby yes! = 14
- I'm coming! - 3 (yeah right)
- I love it when you stick it in my ass = 1
If you or someone you know is being tortured, please call 911. I can also do it for you.
Or you could just be a considerate neighbor and turn it down a notch."
Mirror

Friday, February 11, 2022

Links - 11th February 2022 (2 - Hijab in Singapore Hospitals)

Pastafarian can wear strainer on head in license photo - "A woman who belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is allowed to wear a pasta strainer on her head in her driver's license photo due to religious beliefs... Lowell, Mass., resident Lindsay Miller says wearing the colander allows her to express her beliefs, like other religions are allowed to do"
If you allow religious exemptions, you need to permit them all to be consistent. This is the same strategy that Satanists in the US use to troll Christians who try to put religion in government. So liberals and Muslims in Singapore who want the tudung to be allowed in uniforms should be careful what they wish for (though of course the exceptionalism logic can just be rammed through)

Muslim writer says hijab should be banned from medical profession - "the morality council in Saudi Arabia had recently announced that no Muslim woman could go to a hospital without a male relative and woman had to be seen by female doctors.   These doctrines are increasingly be followed to the letter by so-called devout Muslims here too.   We are seeing the rise of Wahhabism, a 19th century Saudi Arabian invention, throughout UK society and now in our state hospitals. Liberal muslims like myself are furious and helpless to stop this spread.  Doctors and nurses in NHS hospitals are increasingly needing to confront the issue of so-called Islamic modesty code for women head on, either because patients demand it, or their own co-workers make it an issue.   I find that white liberal apologists are becoming complicit in the slow take over of a fascist element with Islam, that seeks to impose its views on the rest of us... Recently, an NHS consultant anaesthetist was suspended for confronting a Muslim surgeon who refused to remove her hijab for an operation.   The Trust reinstated him when a hospital investigation found he had simply being enforcing the Trust's own strict codes to minimise infection.   It said that religious headscarves are excluded in areas such as the theatre, where they could present a health and cross-infection hazard.  In Cairo in Egypt, the President of Cairo University has expanded his ban on the niqab face covering to all nurses, staff members of the faculty of medicine and female staff in the university's teaching hospitals, citing patient rights to know who is treating them... state run institutions including hospitals in a liberal society should be free from doctrine imposed by one section of society, not matter how intimidating and vocal they are."

Do dress codes lead to discrimination? - "Last week a Muslim healthcare professional left her agency post at the Royal Berkshire Hospital Trust in Reading, claiming she had been forced out because she refused to bare her arms.  The trust argued that the radiographer had known about its ‘bare below the elbows’ policy for staff in clinical areas when she began working there in June.  This is the latest in a series of incidents in which infection control policies and religious beliefs have clashed in the healthcare environment.  In February female medical students at Liverpool’s Alder Hey children’s hospital objected to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands and removing arm coverings in theatre. Similar concerns have been raised by medical students at the universities of Leicester and Sheffield.  According to Islamic law, a woman should cover her arms, including the wrist, at all times except in front of close relatives."
If we assume for the sake of argument that BBTE works, is religion more important than hygiene?

Domestic laundering of nurses’ uniforms: what are the risks? - "With rises in healthcare-acquired infections (HCAIs) and antibiotic resistance, understanding transmission routes of bacteria is paramount. One possible route is nurses’ uniforms, which they wash at home. A study found that trusts’ policies on home laundering were inconsistent and that staff did not always follow guidance. Another study showed that, when contaminated and sterile fabric samples were washed at 40°C, a small number of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus bacteria survived and cross-contamination occurred."

Not Your Hijab: Why Singapore Still Won’t Settle the Great Tudung Debate
Just because you don't like the conclusion doesn't mean it isn't settled
Liberals like to pretend that this shows that Muslims are oppressed, ignoring the fact that they have their own Minister and a whole parallel legal system, including polygyny
Those who claim there's special treatment for Sikhs ignore the fact that (as above) Muslims get even more special treatment, as well as the fact that Sikhs already compromise about the dulled/blunted kirpan
It's very interesting RICE plays the gender card without mentioning that many Muslim women are pressured into wearing the hijab by men (or, if you like, Muslim patriarchy, which other Muslim women contribute to as well)
RICE claims that the hijab isn't political, which pretends that its popularisation is not rooted in Wahhabi influence
It's amazing for an article about wearing the hijab in uniform to totally ignore the question of what a uniform is for

Taking a uniform approach to nursing attire - "most of the evidence supports the assumption that consistency in nursing attire communicates professionalism and lets patients identify nurses easily, meeting important goals of patient satisfaction"

What Westerners get wrong about the hijab - The Washington Post - "In the West, the hijab is often treated as a traditional feature of Islamic culture. But in Egypt and elsewhere, widespread use of the hijab is a relatively new phenomenon. This complexity was best captured by the bewildering case of Belgians and Brits debating the use of the full-faced veil, while Muslims in the Middle East were debating a less controversial head cover — both defended by supporters as the hijab mandated by sharia.The move toward Egyptian women wearing the hijab had a far more diverse array of causes than Westerners might expect: They included sociopolitical and religious events, the growing access to education outside of the elite, migration, the proliferation of private religious media outlets and social pressures to improve women’s chances of attracting husbands. Most significantly, the transformation illustrates how Egyptian society has grown more religious over time, while also revealing that adoption of the hijab isn’t simply a symbol of extreme religion, as critics like Johnson assume.That becomes obvious if you look at class pictures from Cairo University over the past 60 years. The 1959 black-and-white photo of Cairo’s English department was taken during the reign of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the popular Pan-Arabist leader and proud nationalist who wanted to emancipate the country from the vestiges of colonialism... Movies during the 1950s and 1960s portrayed women engaged in a quest for independence. The movie “Ana Hora” (I am free) was released the same year the Cairo University class picture was taken. It focused on freedom and feminism, featuring a main character who dreamed of independence. Actress Faten Hamama also made a big splash at the time with movies highlighting social issues related to women.This flourishing film scene meant that Egypt drew people from all over the Arab world who wanted to practice the arts. Screens showed scenes of kissing, bikinis, alcohol, dancing and casinos, a sign of growing liberalism in Egyptian society.The 1959 class photo reflected the culture nurtured both by Nasser and the film scene: The women wore dresses and short hairdos.But things began to change in Egypt shortly thereafter. In 1967, Israel defeated the Arab armies — signifying the failure of the region’s secular post-colonial regimes. A growing number of people began to embrace religion as an alternative, culminating in the Iranian revolution, the Siege of Mecca by extremists and the jihad in Afghanistan — all in 1979.At the same time, economic grievances caused many in Egypt to migrate to Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in search of jobs. At that time, the Gulf region was in need of laborers, doctors, engineers and teachers. When they began to return to Egypt, however, they brought with them fundamentalist versions of Islam, such as Salafi Islam, common in countries like Saudi Arabia, and full head covers for women.During the 1970s, Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, gave the Muslim Brotherhood a degree of freedom, aiming to use the group to help confront communists. He freed members of the Brotherhood jailed during Nasser’s reign.By the 1980s, the Brotherhood and Salafi influence started to be widely felt in the streets and mosques — especially the Brotherhood’s. Its members blended in easily. Beards were optional and regular clothes were worn. The group focused on educational institutions and targeted the working class. It supported lower classes, through charities and service provision. All of this led to newfound influence.The second of the university pictures, taken in 1987, therefore, represented the end of an era. Women sported flared pants with big hair — and none wore hijabs. But the photo was deceptive. By the time it was taken, the Muslim Brotherhood’s campaign was succeeding in transforming perceptions of the garment. The hijab began to appear on campuses across Egypt by the mid-1970s. But as one 1975 graduate explained, “When we saw a woman in hijab at the time we thought she might be an extremist.” Within a decade, however, this woman started wearing the garment herself, revealing the dramatic shift that took place.By the mid-1990s and early 2000s, businesses motivated by profit, not a desire to proselytize, sensed a hunger for religious content, and pounced... women adopt the hijab for complex reasons tied to politics, fashion, entertainment and religion, not simply because they embraced extreme strains of Islam"
So since the tudung is not just about religion, trying to make it out purely as a religious thing is dishonest

5 Muslim Scholars On The Permissibility Of Not Wearing The Headscarf - "It is enforced as a religious obligation, sometimes under great moral duress. A young Muslim Canadian was murdered for not wearing it. On the other hand, other Muslim women, who elect to be visible by donning the headscarf, have been physically assaulted. A vast majority of Muslims believe in the obligation of the headscarf. How much of that stems from the rise of populist Islamic movements since the 1970s may be gauged from Leila Ahmed's book "A Quiet Revolution."Muslim feminists correctly argue that it is a matter concerning women, who have been given dictations by men. Indeed, the case for obligation is predominately made by male scholars and by male chauvinists who promote inane memes comparing women without headscarves to uncovered lollipops. Projecting themselves as custodians of Islamic values, they often sideline contrarian positions as stemming from secular or feminist values...
1. Khaled Abou El-Fadl
El-Fadl finds it ironic that the headscarf has become "symbolic of Islamic identity," as for him it is "not at the core of the Islamic faith." He critiques the predominant Muslim position of viewing the khimar (veil) as a piece of cloth that covers the head and face or just the head. For El-Fadl, evidence does not exist that pre-Islamic women in Mecca covered their face or hair. He even mentions a great descendant of the Prophet known as Fatima al-Kubra who refused to cover her hair along with the noble women of her time. Moreover, he also points out that slave women had their heads uncovered so the issue for classical jurists on the dress code was not sexual seduction but rather social status. El-Fadl mentions that the illa (operative cause) for the injunction to cover was to protect women from harm and to avoid undue attention from mischief mongors. He also states that the ma'ruf (generally accepted as good) and the munkar (socially recognized as unacceptable) are based on pragmatic and practical experience. Therefore, he argues that if the headscarf itself causes women to stand out and put them in the way of harm and if uncovering the head is not considered socially immodest or licentious then it would be permissible for Muslim women to not wear the headscarf.
2. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi
Like El-Fadl, Ghamidi opines there were injunctions exclusive for the wives of the Prophet. He argues that there are only four instructions that pertain to Muslim women. These include lowering the gaze, wearing modest clothing, covering the bosom with a piece of cloth and not displaying ornamental embellishments before unrelated men. No other injunction other than these has been imposed on Muslim women. Ghamidi's affiliates like Farhad Shafti have clearly mentioned that the khimar (veil) was neither a religious act nor did it pertain to modesty and even the Qur'an uses the word without legal connotations. Another affiliate, Moiz Amjad also argues that, "Islam does not make it mandatory for women to cover their heads". He succinctly states that headscarf is not part of the sharia and that donning it is a personal choice.
5. Nasr Abu Zayd
According to the late Abu Zayd, both the awrah (intimate parts) and the hijab (veil) are subject to socio-cultural norms and therefore are changeable and not fixed. He opined that both are not legislated by Islam but are rather specific to the Arab culture."
If we must listen to Muslim women's voices, what does it say that there seem to be no high profile Muslim women scholars?

The Hijab Crisis - Unveiling Islamic Privilege in Postcolonial Nigeria - "the hijab controversy is part of a broad campaign to enthrone Islamic privilege in postcolonial Nigeria... colonialism was seen to have privileged Christianity. The state was largely perceived as Christian and western. The Islamic establishment treats the ‘state’ with suspicion and mistrust unless in situations where it is qualified as Islamic. Muslim ideologues believe that the project of statecraft was rigged against Islam, and to deny Islam the privileges that it had long enjoyed.So, the post-colonial Nigeria has been characterised by a fierce and sometimes, vicious battle and competition for religious influence and control. And sections of the country such the central and Southwest Nigeria, where the two faiths do not command an absolute majority have been fierce battlegrounds. In an attempt to reassert Islamic privilege in postcolonial Nigeria, the Islamic establishment has used two main strategies. They are the majoritarian and human rights strategies. How do these strategies work? In parts of Nigeria where Muslims are dominant, the Islamic establishment employs the majoritarian device to secure a special treatment Islam and for Muslims. They insist that the state and society be organised on the basis of Islamic norms because Muslims are in the majority; they outnumber those who belong to other religions... During the Sharia crisis in the early 2000s, Muslim authorities claimed that sharia law would apply only to Muslims. But that did not happen. Today, sharia is applied to everyone, both Muslims and non muslims alike. In line with their majoritarian strategy, the Islamic authorities capitalise on their number to get everyone to abide by Islamic norms while ignoring that this approach infringes on the rights of non-muslims.In parts of the country where the Muslim population is a minority or not as significant, the strategy is different. The establishment uses the human rights mechanism to realise a special treatment for Muslims and Islam. It portrays Muslims as victims of human rights abuses and persecutions, and Islam as an endangered religion. For instance, in Lagos, Oyo and Osun states, Muslim authorities have argued that refusing the use of hijab in state schools constitutes a violation of human rights. They have made a similar case in their agitation for the construction of mosques in Cross River and other states in southern Nigeria. Islamic authorities use litigations to secure special status for Muslims. Actually, they take the cases to state courts where Muslim judges constitute the majority and are compelled either by personal faith or religious pressure to rule in favour of the Islamic establishment. With their majoritarian and human rights strategies, the Islamic authorities are seeking to establish or re-establish Islamic privilege across the country and to get all Muslims in various parts of the nation, whether they are in the majority or in the minority, to enjoy rights and advantages which people of other faiths or none in the country do not possess... If Muslim girls are allowed to wear the Islamic veil as part of their uniform, then other children should also wear their religious veils and symbols as part of their school uniform. Anything short of this is patent discrimination and a slippery slope into anarchy, chaos and confusion in schools. The stubborn refusal by the Islamic authorities to understand the destabilising potentials of their hijab campaign is quite disturbing. Their unwillingness to accept that what applies to Muslim school girls equally applies to all school children drips with fanaticism."

Facebook - "Raneem Wael is a 16 year old girl from Egypt who was ran over by her own mother as a punishment simply for discussing taking her hijab off.  Forced to wear it since she was a child, Raneem recently brought up the courage to talk to her mum about removing the hijab. Consequently, she was beaten and threatened by both her mum and uncle - shown in one of the photos carrying a knife.  A few days later, she was home alone waiting for her mum to come back from work, when she got a phone call from her mother telling her she now approves of her taking the hijab off, and to get herself ready as she will be taking her out for dinner as a treat. Raneem dressed up and got in the car, elated to be free from hijab for the first time in years. However after a short drive, her mum suddenly told her to get out of the car. As Raneem was walking away, her mum ran her over, almost killing her. Bystanders then took her to hospital, where it was found that she had fractures in the pelvis. Raneem later filed a case against both her mum and uncle but was treated like a criminal by Egyptian police and was threatened to be thrown in prison by an officer unless she dropped the charges against them. Having no choice but to do so, she is now in hiding and in fear for her life... In any normal society, victims of abuse find protection and sympathy. This case is a clear example of how victims of abuse in the Islamic world are shamed and shunned for speaking up. Pictured below are the public’s reaction to Raneem’s live stream (mostly angry faces) vs the sad reactions to her mother’s live stream in which she admits that she hit her daughter solely for wanting to remove the veil and therefore “walk free” and “be out of control”. The support that the mum received from the general public only shows that the idea of having the choice to take the hijab off is not only unacceptable but enough for a woman to lose any sympathy. Women having autonomy over their bodies or speaking up against a person who resembles authority, changes the power structure and endangers the patriarchal hierarchy of control. While western liberals and feminists try to portray the hijab as a symbol of empowerment, hijab for Muslim women is nothing but a tool of systematic oppression that will always be used against them."

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