Quickies

Quickies: Satanists fighting for abortion rights, Rihanna’s new video and white feminism, and NZ’s new anti-troll law

  • Why Satanists are fighting America’s restrictive abortion laws – “The seemingly unusual alliance between Satanism and abortion rights activism becomes far more plausible when you consider the Temple’s central tenets: The first is that one’s own body is inviolable, subject to one’s will alone; another states that members’ beliefs should conform to the best scientific understanding of the world and that no one should ever distort scientific facts to fit her own way of thinking.”
  • Black America’s Bill Cosby nightmare: Why it’s so painful to abandon the lies that he told – “To have Bill Cosby, the most iconic representation of Black achievement and racial respectability prior to Barack and Michelle Obama emerge as a violent, sexual predator feels like too much to take. He signals just how hollow the project of racial respectability for achieving freedom really is.” From Ray.
  • This is what Rihanna’s BBHMM video says about black women, white women, and feminism – “Let me tell you what I see when I watch this video: I see a black woman putting her own well-being above the well-being of a white woman. Let’s be clear: white women put their own needs and well-being above those of black women every day and call it “feminism.”” From Ray.
  • New Zealand’s anti-troll law: gift to trolls, bad for free speech – “Under the new system, trolls who mass-dox or denial-of-service attack a victim could make all of her online presence disappear with impunity, and face no penalties at all for abusing the procedure. If the victim did manage to attempt a counterclaim to keep her online life intact, it would require that she disclose her home address and other details to her attackers.”
  • Why women make gifted coders – “In the 1970s, there was punk; that drove the whole generation. This generation is all about software,’ she says, with just a trace of evangelistic fervour. ‘A single line of code can affect millions of people.’”
  • Cute Animal Friday! From nowoo, a dog, 8 birds, and a hamster who are best friends.

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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10 Comments

  1. I’d be more impressed with Rihanna’s video if it showed her taking revenge against someone who looked like the person who’d actually committed violence against her — Chris Brown — rather than some white woman who’d never physically abused her.

    1. How do you get from “It’s okay for a black woman to make a metaphorical video in which she puts her own well-being above a white woman” to “is it okay for a black woman to rape a white woman”?

      1. She undressed her. How is torturing and murdering someone some support someone’s well being? Why was only the woman undressed? Would we cheer if we saw a white woman metaphorically sexually torturing white man? We already see women being sexually tortured as a form of entertainment and its prominent in the most popular forms of media. A bunch of dudes jerked off to that video not caring about any metaphors.

        Why not just steal her purse? Rob the man? Tar his reputation? Make a video where white women are serving her?

  2. I can’t imagine how Satanists supporting progressive causes could be a good thing. I really wish they would step off and go back to just doing cheesy rituals and listening to Asp.

    1. Nice… Why do I suspect you know jack all about them? Also, this is a religious war – we have already conceded, by allowing them the power they have at all, that it is such, and that, thus, no secular argument can/will ever hold muster against religious bullshit, when fighting the far right politics on “morality” and “freedom”, at least so long as the courts, especially the highest one, is stacked in favor of precisely this sort of BS pandering “believers”. So, how exactly would you prefer this was fought? By continuing to play the game of, “We have no religion, but that is still religion, when talking about rights, but even if it wasn’t, we have this endless list of ‘allies’ who have a wishy washy tendency to pick and choose when its ‘convenient’ for them to actually appose the extremists.”?

      These are, basically, atheists, who have cloaked themselves in religion, sufficiently that the true wackos actually take the claim of them having one seriously (after all, they do all sort of cheesy rituals, and listen to questionable music, just like the ‘true believers in the one true god(tm)!), and as such they can do what the rest of us can’t – fight in terms of religious freedom, instead of “freedom from religion”, the latter of which not one single freaking right wing fundie believes is even a concept, let alone a legal defense.

      So, you go do what ever silly rituals you do (we all have some silly stuff we do, even if we don’t call it religious), and listen to what ever silly music you do too (betting someone thinks your musical tastes are horrible, somewhere), and let these people fight the fight, OK? When they actually do something worthy of pissing on them, the rest of us will get back to you about how they should crawl away and not embarrass poor little you.

      1. I have no problem with what they actually stand for. But people calling themselves “Satanists” supporting ANY cause are likely going to turn a lot of people off it. I’m hope I’m wrong, and if I am, more power to them.

        1. To clarify: it’s not that I personally find them distasteful. I actually find them amusing. I’m not sure I can assume most people would have the same reaction, based on their name alone.

  3. So, black women have violent racist misogynist fantasies. But that’s okay because…black. And we wonder about Bill Cosby? If he’d only kept his victim roster white (like Eldridge Cleaver) he’d be a Freedom Fighter?

  4. When exploited and oppressed people exhibit rage and in frustration strike out at other exploited and oppressed people (who have often done the same thing for the same reasons to them), it is understandable but it is not truly productive in terms of ending the exploitation and oppression.

    This is a situation, often deliberately foisted on the victims, but even when not deliberate, is usually tolerated and encouraged by the exploiters to keep their victims from uniting against them.

    On the other hand, the revenge fantasies can keep you going through the worst times.

    P.S. the plot of the song/video is a lot more complicated than it appears on the surface. There is all sorts of stuff going on that I don’t understand on first viewing. For example, at one point I thought the kidnapped woman was lounging on the yacht with the kidnappers. Stockholm* Syndrome? Was she in on the plot all along? Or just misidentification? Was the sheriff (Eric Roberts?) involved, or trying to shake them down, or just investigating? Anyway, my point is Rhianna seems to have a more nuanced view of this than appears at first sight.

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