Eyes, Ears, Nose, Mouth, Shoulders, Skip to the Knees . . .

The first time I was supposed to be taught about sex, we were 10 and the teacher was a nun. I think she was actually going to give an in depth technical explanation of reproduction (there was a chalk drawing of a flaccid penis on the board, not that I realized it at the time), but the girl sitting next to me had a tonic clonic (grand mal) seizure before the nun could begin, and that was the end of sex ed. (Apparently, you either got sex ed on that day or you didn't get it at all.)

Until I was 14, and the football coach walked into homeroom and said something that has stuck with me ever since. "When you're little your parents tell you these are your ears" points to ears "and these are your eyes" points to eyes "and this is your nose and this is your mouth" points "these are your shoulders" touches shoulders "and then they skip down to your knees as if there were nothing in between."

And he was right, in my case anyway. Which made it way more difficult than it should have been to tell my mom when I had a UTI- the main symptoms of which are frequent urination and a burning sensation in the urethra when urinating. If you can't discuss your urethra, it's kind of hard to discuss a UTI.

I'm not bashing my mom here. She graduated high school in 1961 was a faithful Catholic- up until my father leaving with a woman younger than me and the priest child abuse scandals hit simultaneously and she was left bereft and righteously pissed about it.

The thing is, until the football coach told me so, I had no idea my vagina and my urethra were not in the same place*. Think about that for a second. At 14, I could have a reasonably intelligent discussion about my amygdala and duodenum (I was a strange child), but I thought I peed out of my vagina.

I was absolutely determined that no child I had responsibility for would grow up so ignorant of their own body. Which is how I became the preferred sex ed teacher for a good portion of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It's not just my family and my husband's family that send their kids to me. I've had friends and coworkers** ask me to give their kids "the talk".

Anything to avoid saying "penis" or "vagina" to your own child, I suppose.

Why? I know and I don't know. "Penis" and "vagina" are medical terms, just like "duodenum" and "amgydala". I don't think anyone would have a problem discussing lungs with their child, but get to what's covered by their underwear, and all of a sudden they're whipping out phrases like "down there" (Australia, perhaps?) and "privates" (in the Army?).

There has been quite a trend lately to start telling even tiny tots all about the human body and its capacity for reproduction, in scientific and clinical terms. Some parents do this because they shun "lying" and insist on telling the two-year-old just exactly how his baby sister got into mommy's tummy--oh, wait, into her uterus--while others believe that child development requires frank talk about sex as soon as a young child asks any questions. I was not a part of that generation and don't really think it's a good idea; while you can, certainly, give a child all the anatomical names for body parts and explain to him or her using simple charts or diagrams just what reproductive activity involves, you can'tgive him or her an adult understanding of these matters. Which means, at the very least, you can't stop him or her from shouting out in church, at a crowded restaurant, or on a plane "My [anatomically correct body part] is really itchy!" or from telling a pregnant neighbor, helpfully and in detail, just how that baby got into her uterus.

I fail to see the problem here. I don't think this person would be upset if their child said "my elbow is really itchy!" And wouldn't you want to know if your child's labia are "really itchy"? That could well be an infection or allergic reaction. It's the sort of thing you'd think a parent would want to know.

I also want to know why small children can't handle knowing how fetuses end up in uteruses. Would this person quail at telling their small child how their lungs work? I think not. Ignorance is only a virtue with itchy labia and fetuses, I guess.

As for the child telling a pregnant woman how she got pregnant (a) so what? I'm sure the pregnant woman knows how that happened, and (b) you can stop that conversation by saying, "Honey, she's pregnant. She knows how that happened, and we don't discuss other people's sex lives. It's rude." End of conversation.

I fail to see how ignorance, which leads to pregnant teens with syphilis is better than a lapse in etiquette.

*For any guys out there wondering how crazy I am, female genitalia is a black box unless you get out a mirror and are particularly flexible. It's not right out in front like a penis is. Women have to work to see their own genitals.

**I've done it for friends, but not for coworkers. I don't want a coworker freaking out on me at work after discovering I've told their teenage daughter there's nothing wrong with kink if that's what you're into.

MLK Day Race Fail

Racefails, aren't they awesome?

My 11 year old niece was aghast when she discovered that I was working on Martin Luther King Day. "How can you work on Martin Luther King Day?! He had a dream and then he gave a speech and that got rid of racism!" Yeah, so we need to have a talk* (with the school board about their curriculum), but at least she has a basic understanding of what MLK was about. Racism. Ending it. I'll take what I can get from 11 year olds.

C. Jane, however, is not 11. So this racefail is not excusable.

If this holiday is all about having a dream, I'd like to declare mine: I have a dream where I get a private audience with Mormon writer Emma Lou Thayne. We'd have tea and readings. Tea and readings--doesn't that sound nice?

No, Martin Luther King Day is not about having a dream. And even if it were, his dream was for equality and opportunity and an end to bigotry and racism. Your dream is to drink tea with someone. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent time in jail to achieve that dream. He suffered terribly, he sacrificed greatly and then he died for it.

And you fucking want tea.

Thus answering the question of how much of a self-indulgent spleen weasel one can be. From now on, we will refer to being truly self absorbed as cjane. As in, "Yeesh, what a cjane he is!" or "How cjane can you be?"

*I tried to explain about nonviolent resistance, but as she said, if that worked why are we always at war? I sputtered something about Ghandi and then went to cry for lost innocence somewhere private. (The bathroom.)

Sorry, "Stroppy" Is Not an Excuse for "Slut"

(h/t to boganette)

Apparently, you just can't say it enough: calling someone a slut is not okay. I really would not have thought that I would have to say that a school administrator calling a 14 year old a slut is not okay, but there it is.

I hadn’t intended to deal with the story about 14 year old Newlands College student, Amethyst Staladi, being told by dean Angela King to pull her skirt down because she ‘looked like a slut’. That was until I saw her mother, Kahira Marshall, onOne News last night telling the country that she considered Mrs King’s verbal apology a couple of days ago ‘doesn’t go far enough’ and that what she wanted was ‘a letter of apology to go on both Amethyst’s and the dean’s personal file’. At that point my blood began to boil.

Wow, my blood boils, too, though not for the same reason the writer's does.

Think about this incident for more than two seconds. Not only do we have slutshaming of a 14 year old girl, which is just totally out of bounds, but we have a serious power imbalance as well. The slutshamer is an adult and a school administrator. The shamee is 14 and a student at the school.

Suppose I stopped by the school to drop off a forgotten lunch for a neighbor's child and Ms. King told me I looked like a slut. As an adult unrelated to the school, I have options. Using that language in front of children is still unacceptable, but I can leave or read her the riot act. What can a 14 year old do? She can't leave. She can't retort. She is shamed, as Ms. King clearly intended, in front of her peers with no recourse.

I have no problem with her mother demanding a written apology. If I were her mother, I'd be demanding Ms. King's dismissal. Ms. King is a slutshamer, a power abuser and I am very uncomfortable with her remaining in charge of children. A written apology is the least she could do.

But no, sluts deserve slutshaming. Victims deserve blame.

Well, let’s look at the players in this mini-drama: a stroppy 14-year-old girl with behavioural, discipline and attendance issues who’s received previous warnings about breaching the school’s dress code; a highly professional teacher with an impeccable record, supportive of and popular with students, described by her colleagues as someone ‘who helps everyone really’. (The staff had sent her flowers because she was upset.)

I see. So it's totally okay to slutshame a 14 year old girl (cannot be said enough) as long as you are nice and popular and the girl in question is "stroppy". Oh, and I am crying a fucking ocean over Ms. King, Ms. King!, being upset over the incident. Fucking seriously? She called a 14 year old girl a "slut" and she's the one who gets flowers? You know what, I want a written apology from the entire staff after reading that.

So who needs to be taking a good look at themselves here – Mrs King or Amethyst’s parents? Which would be more appropriate – teaching Amethyst a little respect for her teachers and for the rules of the school, or encouraging her to be a smart-arsed little bush lawyer, trumpeting her 14-year-old rights on television.

You know who needs a lesson here? You, you ignorant asshat. Ms. King abused her authority and abused a 14 year old girl. There are few things worse in the world of a 14 year old girl than being called a slut and the one throwing that word around does not deserve my sympathy. Absolutely this 14 year old girl has a right not to be slutshamed by a school administrator and I don't care how "stroppy" or "little bush"* she is.

You know what, Brian Edwards? Fuck you. Seriously, go die in a fire. But don't get upset about that, okay? You totally deserved it, so I'm sure you'll be okay with me telling you to shut your twatting** mouth, you ignorant asshole. ($5 says he's more okay with 14 year old girls accepting abuse than himself accepting abuse.)

*Is it just me, or does all New Zealand slang sound a little sexual?

**I bet that's the wrong use of that word, but it felt right. Oh so right.

It's Illiterate and Ignorant

atheism, atheist, christian, christianity, fundamentalism, fundamentalist, fundy, funny, god, ignorance, jesus, poe, religion
From the Rapture Ready message boards, WarrioroftheFather (the truth reveils[sic] itself) declares the War on Athiesm[sic]!!! Behold the random cApiTalizatiOn, bizarre grammar, humorous misspellings and amazing ignorance that is Wisdom and Truth:

I think we should all work together and Bring out the true Flaws of their False Religion. atheism. is. not. a. religion. Atheists Believe in Nothing more than flawed scientific theories. you'll see.

I thought of a couple questions that should need explaining on from their Opinion/Side of the Conflict. wait for it.

1) If the Big Bang did occur form a single point of energy or heat, exploded like a Supernova does. please, please, just a damn verb! Why didn't it implode and just turned into a Giant Black Hole? Distorted Space? aaaahhh! why doesn't your head just implode into a tiny black hole? Anyway, a concise explanation of Big Bang Theory.

2) What explains why we are more Logical, Understanding, and Reasonble than any other Creature on Earth or it's history, if we Developed during the same time frame? a concise explanation of evolution After this supposed Meteor crash now he's moved on to the fact that man and dinosaurs did not coexist. and made the planet desolate. Did Dinosaurs own shops and drive cars? i can't even imagine wtf he's talking about here. apparently somebody found dinosaur bones right next to the fossilized remains of giant cars?

3) What explains Genders? sexes is the word your looking for. gender has to do with societal expectations. Why do we only have two? realistically, we have more than two. there's hermaphrodites, XYY, XXX, XXYY, etc. Why would energy create a species that requires Birth? yeah. wow. Why is it unscientific that Cats and Dogs cannot mate? is this a poe? They still forms of Life. what do you have against verbs?

See where this is going... not really, no.

I Urge Everyone here to think of Questions that would reinforce or pose Real Questioning actual intelligent questions would be nice to Atheists and Such and such? agnostics? unaffiliateds? why they are so Flawed in Believing why we are Deluded or Holding on to Fairy Tales. stop it! just stop abusing the english language. it did nothing to you! Their Belief in Flawed Science will get them Nowhere.

If I get Enough Support from Most Christians here we can Truly Save some Lost People before it's too Late, before Judgement is upon them! not with those arguments, you won't.

I want us together to build up on this, then with Mods permission post it as a sticky.

Pray for New Found Wisdom! And Show them Truth! the truth of what? catdogs? car driving dinosaurs?

There is a Santa Claus!

Conservapedia's article of the year is on atheism! There is a Santa Claus! I am going to have so much fun with this! It'll be like the above picture times a million! (Yes, yes, I know, egregious overuse of exclamation points. I get a little overexcited sometimes. In case you can't tell what the above picture is, it's a head being exploded by a sniper rifle headshot. Too bad you can't hear the accompanying exploding-melon sound.)

Tomorrow. I'll have time for this tomorrow.

Barack the Magic Negro

If someone does not know why this is very, very wrong, then I can only suggest one thing: admit that you are a racist. You are an ignorant, hateful bigot. You judge people on the basis of their skin tone, as if the amount of melanin in someone's skin could tell you anything at all about them. You are stupid.

We don't want you anymore. You don't belong here.

Shut the fuck up.

Go away.

We're not playing anymore.

(This goes for homophobes, too.)

Once More With Feeling

"Allah" is simply the arabic word for "god".

Let me put this another way.

If I am in Mexico, I don't point at a dog and say "dog", I say "perro". I am not referring to any other animal, but if I said "dog", the Mexicans wouldn't have any idea what I am talking about. (Yeah, I'm pointing, but perhaps I am referring to the color of the dog, or the size of the dog, or the location of the dog. They wouldn't know.)

"Allah" does not refer to any specific god, any more than the english word "god" refers to a specific god. After all, I could use the word "god" to refer to Shiva or Krishna as easily as the christian deity.

Now that we have that cleared up, let's see what prompted it: a question on the RaptureReady bulletin board entitled Arabic Bible Version.

Shining Brightly: We recently purchased an Arabic/English Bible. However, upon reading the Arabic, I discovered to my horror that in reference to God it says Allah!!! You can handicap stupidity by the number of !s alone.

Allah: Derived from an old Semitic root refering to the Divine and used in the Canaanite El, the Mesopotamian ilu, and the biblical Elohim, the word Allah is used by all Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others.

This is a very popular version published by the International Bible Society. Does anyone here know of an alternative to this? Such as using the generic term for God "rabona". I cannot find the word "rabona" anywhere. If this is a generic term of "deity", it doesn't get used much. Probably because they're all using allah.

It is highly disturbing and misleading for the Arabic speaking world to read about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as Allah. Our God does have a name, but it is certainly not Allah. Do you typically refer to god as any of these? God has lots of names in the old testament, none of them are "god". Unless the poster is referring to "Jesus"? That's an anglicization anyway. The Hebrew for that is "Yeshua". Any help gratefully received.

A couple of respondents actually pointed out what I did, even adding that Arabic-speaking Christians referred to god with that word prior to the birth of Islam.

Antitox thinks that Arabic-speaking Christians are easily confused as to which religion they belong to: I think it is incorrect because today's arab/mideasterner is going to think of the Islamic god as Allah. That means the jihadist's god Timothy McVeigh was a Christian. Are all Christians domestic terrorists? is what they are going to refer to, not the God of the Bible. Ya know, unless they are christian. It just doesn't fly; it'll be too misleading, confusing, etc. This guy undoubtedly got all bent out of shape about Obama's name, too.

Faithmarie actually gets more disturbing than that: There is nothing to get upset over or is there? dumdumdum ...... BUT allah is not the word for god. It is a pagan gods NAME that existed before islam existed. Allah had three daughters. He was the moon god , I believe, that is why they kept the cresent moon. Mohammed kept the name from the pagan religion . Illah ( I don't remember the spelling) That is why the muslems say there is no Illah but allah. Illah= god.

Hey, why do christians celebrate the birth of Yeshua on December 25? Historical evidence definitively proves that he was born in March. Why do christians celebrate easter 40 days after the first full moon after . . . whatever? Why would it be a revolving date? You know why? Because when the christians moved into european pagan territory, rather than attempting to entirely replace the various pagan traditions with christianity, they simply placed the christian traditions right on top of them. Hence Christmas instead of the old winter solstice festival and Easter instead of Beltain (the spring equinox celebration and the most important pagan holiday of the year. pagans celebrated every phase of the moon, and ended up having celebrations about once every other week, but Beltain was the highlight of the year.)

This whole crescent moon thing with the three daughters is Jack Chick crap (WARNING: that link will bring you to the most hateful, bigoted shit you've ever seen. Seriously, Jack Chick makes the Grand Dragon of the KKK look like an open minded liberal). Yes, that was a belief system in place prior to Islam in those regions. It has less to do with Islam today than the old pagan traditions with christianity today.

So it is a BIG difference.no, there's not, but continue Christians will use allah because of the MANY years of persecution they have suffered. or because it is the Arabic word for god. Besides alot two freakin' words are nominal christians as in America. Even if Arabs are christians, they're not really christians. the only real christians are US christians.They are very big replacement theology, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA see above christians in Syria and Lebanon. That is the only countries I have experience with.America's word for god is god for all other gods but to use a capital G for God we are referring God The Father. they use a capital "a" to refer to their guy. capital "g" beats capital "a" why? Allah is NOT the same god as the Christian God. It is demon god. WHo thirsts for blood. vampire! allah is coming to suck your blood (bela lugosi voice)

Nobody even tries to correct this.