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Meta Stuff
The Final, Fond Farewell
I announced a little while back that I would be leaving Skepchick for the Freethought Blogs network. Now that the FtB redesign has been implemented, Heinous Dealings (with its lovely banner designed by Alex Gabriel) is a go, and this will be my final post on Skepchick. Back when I first responded to call for writers on Skepchick, I had…
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Religion
Did Luis Suarez’s Biting Break His Fast?: A World Cup / Ramadan Update
It’s a World Cup Ramadan, the first one since the 1980s. It’s like a White Christmas? Kind of? Except Ramadan is more like Lent than Christmas. Never mind. Today marks the third day of Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. This weekend, concerns over the Muslim World Cup players made their way across the internets. I happened across posts of the…
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Feminism
Bad Chart Thursday: Exposing Dov Charney & Terry Richardson
I had never thought much of Terry Richardson or Dov Charney, but all the information I’d heard about “them”, until very recently, somehow ended up in the same mental box, as it were. I instinctively thought they were the same person until the so-called “News Media”‘s propaganda machine told me that one is a photographer and one is the head of American…
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Religion
Fellow Atheists: Quit Bragging About Our Prison Underrepresentation
Dan Arel’s piece on atheists and the prison population has been making the rounds, along with the seemingly inevitable assertion that the statistics prove that atheists are no less (and perhaps) more moral than theists. I understand the impulse. Truly, I do. Every time I speak at a high school or in any other context where I’m engaging a theist…
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Activism
#TwitterTheocracy: How Anti-Blasphemy Laws Are Tools of Oppression
Recently, the case of Meriam Ibrahim made international headlines. The story was that she, a pregnant Christian woman married to a Christian, was being accused of apostasy and sentenced to death for it. Some but not all of the articles about it mentioned the most troubling fact about the case: she is not even a apostate in that she was a Muslim…
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Religion
Richard Dawkins: Likes & Dislikes
Dislikes The term “owned”. No worries if you use it in its actual form, “pwned”. Harry Potter. Like the religious fundamentalist parents fearful of its Satanic influence on their precious offspring, Dawkins has yet to read Harry Potter. Fairy tales. Santa (but not Christmas). Improper grammar, especially when part of a “coordinated campaign”. Likes Faulty comparisons. 1960’s-style psychedelic imagery from the 1990s that…
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Feminism
5 Things I Learned After My Partner Was Sexually Battered at an Atheist Conference
When you’re ethically non-monogamous, you end up engaging in a lot of meta relationship conversations. When you’re polyamorous and dating someone you met because you were both speakers at the same secular event, you end up discussing the potential effects of your relationship, likely and unlikely alike, on your respective careers. This is especially true when one of you has strong…
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Feminism
On the Pulse of Mourning: Maya Angelou & Me
I owe an apology to someone who, as of this morning, will never be able to hear it: Dr. Maya Angelou. A decade and a half ago, I was an adolescent attending secular public school after seven years of Islamic institutions. Our eighth grade literature textbook contained an excerpt from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: the chapter about Mrs. Flowers. As I…
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