Jeff Tayler profiles Inna Shevchenko

January 2, 2018 • 10:30 am

Several times I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and talking with Inna Shevchenko, Ukrainian head of the feminist organization FEMEN. Morally and philosophically, she’s years ahead of her age (only 27)—as well as of Authoritarian Leftists and feminists twice her age. She’s also been jailed, physically assaulted, and had her life threatened at gunpoint for protesting against patriarchal religion and sexism in Ukraine and Belarus.

Inna is ignored or criticized by some Leftists because she strongly attacks the anti-woman bigotry of Islam, and so she’s simply written off as an “Islamophobe.” But her protests (usually involving nudity) aren’t just against Islam, but against all religions and states that turn women into second-class citizens. The nudity thing I have mixed feelings about, for while it brings attention to FEMEN’s causes, it does so by attracting attention to women’s bare breasts.  On the other hand, I can understand this tactic, and of course Inna and the women who do this regularly get beaten up and jailed for it.

Inna now lives as a refugee in Paris (pursuing a master’s degree in political science), and is always in fear of her life, for that’s the upshot when you repeatedly criticize Islam and once helped edit an issue of Charlie Hebdo. Having met Inna and heard her speak, I’m a big admirer.

So is Jeff Tayler, Atlantic correspondent and author who’s put a new article up on Quillette, “Femen’s Inna Shevchenko: Fear of causing offense has cost too many innocent lives.” It’s a profile of Inna as well as an interview, and here you hear a young woman speaking with a wisdom that has yet to trickle down to the Authoritarian Left or those feminists who refuse to discuss or even mention the crippling sexism of Islam (see here and here).

Here are a few excerpts from Tayler’s piece. Jeff also links to two videos about Inna (one a full-length movie in French), and be aware that there are topless women, so don’t watch the clips at work.

When it comes to Islam’s relation to terrorism and women’s rights, the betrayal by many so-called liberals has really stung [Shevchenko]. “So many on the left – in English they’re called regressive leftists, but here we call them Islamogauchistes — have ceded to manipulations by Islamists. For these leftists, “communautairisme” – ethnic identity politics, roughly, a negation of the French ideal of égalité – “has become like a new faith.” She takes a deep breath. “When you see so many who should be supporting you give in to manipulation by your enemy, you just despair. There’s this argument out there that to criticize Islam is considered racist. This is toxic for public debate. I don’t have any problem with being called an Islamophobe. I am indeed a religio-phobe. It’s not a crime to be afraid of religion. To be afraid of religion as a woman is normal.”

She categorizes the regressive left’s stance on Islam as “insulting toward the Muslim community. It suggests that all believers are a homogenous group of people. Because of the regressive left’s outcry and hysteria, moderate Muslims like Maajid Nawaz and ex-Muslims like Sarah Haider and Ayaan Hirsi Ali have to struggle to be heard.”

How does she feel when regressive leftists tell her that her stance on Islam is “offensive?”

“It’s a sign that someone is trying to deprive me of my right to free speech and impose censorship on me. It’s a sign that they’ve given up their own right to freedom of expression because of a wish for comfort and a fear of being called racist. They’ve given up the common fight and gone over to the side of the Islamists. But the right to free speech is the most precious right, the foundation for all other freedoms.”

. . . She reserves intense scorn for those liberals who urge against criticizing Islam because this would, in their view, amount to helping the “narrative” about Muslims advanced by Trump, France’s Marine Le Pen, and other right-wing leaders. Such “liberals,” she says, are really proposing “to give up on the defense of women’s rights, to give up on the security and well-being of little girls, to give up our fundamental right of freedom of speech, to give up even our right to our own lifestyles and to dress the way we want and to laugh loud in the street, and all this just so as not to be associated with opinions of the far right! For me, this is no solution – this is cowardice and really dangerous. It will leave xenophobes as the only critics of Islam and give the stage to the far right. But this isn’t a question for the far right. It’s a question for society as a whole. When I hear liberals talking this way, I understand that they and the Islamists want the same thing: the silencing of progressive voices. If you try to silence these voices, you become an ally of Islamism.”

. . . I ask Shevchenko how she evaluates the struggle with Islamist terrorism in Europe and the United States. Her response is scathing:

“It took [the authorities] two years to even name the enemy, to even use the term ‘Islamic terrorism.’ They were afraid to associate terrorism with Islam, and oh God, that they might offend anyone! They needed so many deaths of innocent people in bars or café terraces here in Paris, before they would even name the enemy. This was a huge failure, an unjustifiable failure that cost so many lives. And it took so many horrible terrorist attacks in Europe for countries to even begin sharing intelligence. But we have to fight not particular people with guns, but the ideas that lead them to take up their guns; we have to go to the root of the problem and challenge these ideas better. We can’t be afraid of naming these ideas or laughing at them. Charlie Hebdo does this, and look at what happened to them. They’re still being threatened. We see how Europe and the United States are failing in fighting fundamentalist ideas, in challenging Islam as a set of dogmas. After all, again, it’s not a question of guys with guns, but of guys with dogmas in their heads, dogmas that lead them to pick up their guns.”

A related piece by Jeff on Islamophobia appeared in Quillette about a year ago, and bears reading again: “Free speech and terrorism—Whatever you do, don’t mention Islam!”

Here’s a TEDx video of Inna:

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 2, 2018 • 9:00 am

Pete Moulton is a crack wildlife photographer, takes some really good shots of birds, and is a dab hand with insects as well. These photos regularly appear on his Facebook page, where in the comments I beg and grovel to be allowed to post the photos.  After I’ve pleaded for a while, and posted photos of myself importuning him for his pictures, he relents, for he’s busy. And so today we have a set of Pete’s bird and insect photos that he sent a few days ago (indented captions are his). It was worth the wait.

Here at long last are a few pix for you. It’s been a tough fall for me, as we’ve been moving our warehouse from one location to another, and the process necessitated moving twice(!). Still, I’ve managed to get in some shutter time, and even have a few pix that you and your readers might find interesting, or even aesthetically pleasing.
Let’s start with this one, partly because it isn’t very recent and wasn’t taken here in Arizona. It’s here because it’d been several years between my last North American (north of Mexico) life bird, and this guy. It’s a Tufted Flycatcatcher (Mitrephanes phaeocercus), which spent the summer and early fall in Carr Cañon in the Huachuca Mountains. The Arizona bird was too far away for photography, and unapproachable, so this image is from Costa Rica.
Everybody seems to like owls, so here’s a Burrowing Owl, Athene cunicularia, from a local park where artificial burrows have been provided for owls displaced by road construction. I’d intended to go to that park last Friday, but the afternoon light wouldn’t have done me or the owls any favors, so this is a pic from the same park a couple of years ago that I found hiding among unprocessed images.
Another owl, but one which is much rarer in my area: a Northern Saw-whet Owl, Aegolius acadicus,  in Gilbert the last week of November. It may still be there for all anyone knows, but roosting in more secret spots. My favorite owl, and one I see all too rarely.
Once upon a time, birders were very scarce, and I learned early on that photographs were the ‘gold standard’ for identification of rarities. That’s still my main approach, and it’s turned out to be very useful, as more rare birds than usual have come through the Phoenix area during this fall’s migration season. Here’s a doc shot of one of them: a female Surf Scoter (Melanitta perspicillata), also in Gilbert. Not the most colorful of birds, but a new one for my Arizona state list, so that’s exciting.
I haven’t forgotten the bugs this year. This is a potter wasp, which the good folks at BugGuide.net have kindly advised me is Eumenes bollii (apparently no vernacular name) from along the Rio Salado north of Mesa in October.
 I went back to the Rio Salado a week later, and found this Great Purple Hairstreak, Atlides halesus. It’s always a pleasure to see and photograph one of these, because they spend most of their lives high enough above ground that they’re difficult to see. In the fall, however, nectar sources are scarce and the hairstreaks will come down closer to the ground to feed. This little stand of jimmyweed was well past its prime blooming season, but was still the only game in town for nectar-feeders, and was doing a land-office business.
JAC: Notice the false head markings on the hindwing, which are likely to have evolved to distract a predator’s attention from the real head, so that the predator (probably a bird) may strike at the wrong end of the insect, allowing it to escape:
 This Palmer’s Metalmark (Apodemia palmeri)was feeding less than a meter from the hairstreak. Metalmarks (Riodinidae) are named for the metallic markings on the dorsal surfaces of the wings, but Palmer’s lacks these.

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

January 2, 2018 • 6:30 am

Good morning and welcome to National Cream Puff Day AKA profiterole or choux à la crème. They’re really easy to make, so give it a try. Here’s a variation of them without the cream.

Jerry reports that he’s experiencing lovely temperatures in Delhi, with highs of about 72°F (22°C)—although it’s smoggy—and cooler evenings, with lows of about 45°F (7°C). But look at these wind-chill equivalents he’s missing in Chicago; these are New Year’s Day! Brrrr!!!! Those equivalents are in Fahrenheit, though at -40 Fahrenheit and Celsius are the same. “Lakefront” is where he lives.

 

Here’s a roundup from Twitter.

An otter enjoying a belly-rub (be sure to turn the sound up to hear its adorable chirps):

https://twitter.com/CutestOtters/status/947905968607768576

Not the smartest dog in the world [JAC: Well, I’m not so sure. . . ]

The nice tolerant Pope comes out as pro-het marriage and anti-contraception. Quelle surprise.

If you think I’m interpreting it incorrectly, here’s one from two days before.

Some pig-shaming. Be more like this pig.

Or be less cynical and remember that dreams sometimes do come true

May your grafitti artists always be like this one

Reader Sebastian sent a photo of his Polish cat (she’s named “Frytka”) reading the Polish translation of WEIT. But she seems to be reading the back cover only!

 

Finally, Hili is engaged in her own mission impossible.

A: What are you looking at?
Hili: I’m looking out for a black horse but in this darkness you can’t even see a black dog.

In Polish:

Ja: Czemu się tak przypatrujesz?
Hili: Wypatruję czarnego konia, ale w tych mrokach nie widać nawet czarnego psa.

Hat-tip: Matthew

The one-dollar dinner at INSA

January 1, 2018 • 2:00 pm

They provide three meals a day to people staying at the guest house at the Indian National Science Academy. Breakfast, which includes eggs, toast or chapattis, coffee, and juice, is 50 rupees (78 cents US). Lunch is a thali (a tray of different dishes including rice and chappatis), and that costs 60 rupees 94 cents).

And here’s tonight’s dinner, which was preceded by a cup of spicy tomato soup and a papad. What you see below is a thali dinner, including clockwise from 11 o’clock: chappatis, a big bowl of rice cooked with peas, raw vegetables (I don’t eat those: unsafe for tourists), daal (lentils), matar paneer (peas cooked in tomato sauce with Indian yogurt-derived cheese), dahi (yogurt), and to its lower left a sabzi, or vegetable stew with peppers, beans, and potatoes, and, finally, right below the yogurt is a sweet, a longish gulab jamun.

All this cost 70 rupees, or $1.09 U.S. It was good, too, and of course healthy. And they gave me extra chappatis, for I’m a bread man rather than a rice man. (I did have a big glob of rice topped with daal.)

In which Heather Hastie defends me against the charge that I’m not a feminist “ally”

January 1, 2018 • 12:30 pm

Oy! You can’t win these days. I recently put up a post about Anna Muzychuk, a woman Ukrainian grandmaster in “blitz chess” and “speed chess” (two forms of chess in which you must make rapid moves). Last year Muzychuk was the world champion in both evens, but declined to participate in this year’s official championships (run by the spineless international chess organization FIDE, which should be called FIDO as it’s the running dog of Islamism) because the tournament’s being held in Saudi Arabia. Muzychuk explained on her Facebook page that she wouldn’t participate in the Saudi scheme because it required modest dress and for women and for female players to obey the other demeaning rules imposed on that sex in Saudi Arabia. Muzychuk’s words:

In a few days I am going to lose two World Champion titles – one by one. Just because I decided not to go to Saudi Arabia. Not to play by someone’s rules, not to wear abaya, not to be accompanied getting outside, and altogether not to feel myself a secondary creature. Exactly one year ago I won these two titles and was about the happiest person in the chess world but this time I feel really bad. I am ready to stand for my principles and skip the event, where in five days I was expected to earn more than I do in a dozen of events combined. All that is annoying, but the most upsetting thing is that almost nobody really cares. That is a really bitter feeling, still not the one to change my opinion and my principles. The same goes for my sister Mariya – and I am really happy that we share this point of view. And yes, for those few who care – we’ll be back!

I called my post “A real feminist”—clearly not to denigrate other women who weren’t “real” feminists, but to extol a woman who sacrificed income and career on altar of her principles. When you lose world championships in defense of women’s rights, well, that’s real feminism! (We can see this happening in Iran right now, with some women ripping off their hijabs as part of the protest against that country’s theocracy, a momentous event that’s barely been covered by left-wing websites.)

Sadly, my approbation of Muzychuk’s action wasn’t good enough. Though I never read responses to my tweets (which go automatically from this site to Twitter), reader Paul Coddington in New Zealand did, and sent me some responses by a woman I don’t know:

This is one reason I almost never read responses to my Twitter posts: people like this Pecksniff start snuffling around for the scent of ideological impurity. Apparently, my title “a real feminist” is such an impurity.

I didn’t respond to her bait, but Paul did in an email to me, and asked me to send it to Heather Hastie, as he knew she’d have her own take on feminism and my lack of “allyship”. Sure enough, Heather wrote a brief response on Vansteenwinckle’s attempt to enforce her brand of feminism on me, and you can read it at Heather’s site in a post called “Homily: an ill-informed feminist attacks Jerry Coyne (plus tweets).”

I’m not going to reprise Heather’s take on this kerfuffle, which you should read for yourself, but I will reproduce Paul’s comment that he emailed me (with permission):

It strikes me that this comment is both patronising and sexist. It smacks of the idea that truly supporting the rights of women is a privileged club which one needs permission from an insider to join. Also, it is also unclear what is meant by “he still has a long way to go”. Is this a reference to “ideological feminism” (as opposed to that form of feminism which is essentially humanism, basic respect and common decency with a topical focus on women’s issues)? It appears to me you support the latter and not the former and that perhaps it is being implied that this is simply not good enough.

Also, “Jerry missed some levels, but pretends he didn’t” is an accusation that I can’t see as justifiably having arisen from anything that you have written in that particular article or any other, but perhaps there is some private correspondence that accounts for it.

No, there’s no private correspondence I know of that explains which “levels” I’ve missed. I don’t know who “Vansteenwinckel” is, nor, as I recall, have I ever had any interaction with her.

Heather has more to say, using some rather pungent language.

My view: I won’t have other feminists label me “not an ally” because I don’t adhere to one particular view of feminism. My own view, which I have—to borrow a phrase from Nixon—made perfectly clear, is this: “Women should never be discriminated against on the grounds of sex or gender, and should have equal opportunity from the very onset of life to achieve everything they can.”

It goes without saying that this means that women should be free from harassment and sexual malfeasance or assault, because of course those are forms of discrimination as well as tactics that constrain women’s freedom and opportunity.

That’s my piece, now read Heather’s (and enjoy her collection of tweets).

 

A few snaps from Delhi

January 1, 2018 • 10:45 am

I have a lot of photos yet to post from my visits to Bangalore and Trivandrum, but those are substantial posts and I’m short on time.  So today let me just post a few random photos from Delhi, where I’m staying in the guesthouse of the Indian National Science Academy, a centrally located and comfortable place. But the smog is godawful here, as everyone knows. Caused largely by the burning of crops in surrounding regions, it’s deeply unhealthy and also contributes to the fog that often cancels flights from Indira Gandhi Airport.

Here’s a smoggy view from my guesthouse window. It’s not overcast: that is BAD SMOG! Read about the problem here.

Besides giving a talk here on the fourth, I’m also in town to attend a wedding celebration hosted by my good friends Kunal and Shubhra (below). Kunal teaches at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Shubhra at Delhi University. I’ve known them since we met years ago at Bellagio, Italy, doing a month’s research gig at the gorgeous Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation. Since then they’ve visited in Chicago and, more often, I’ve visited them Delhi and their ancestral city, Calcutta. We’ve also traveled together several times.

It so happens that their son Baishakh got married in Calcutta about ten days ago, but although this was a secular wedding, there were still two parties in Calcutta: one thrown by the bride’s family (her name is Poonisha) and the other by the groom’s. I’m not sure which one included the formal wedding. Now there must be a third party in Delhi because Kunal and Shubhra live here and their friends must share the festivities.

So, tomorrow afternoon I’ll get dressed up and head to JNU, where there will be a large tent sent up for the festivities: a 90-minute classical Indian music concert on sarod, accompanied by tabla, followed by an hour of “nibbles” and then a formal dinner at 8. I’m told the dinner will be Kashmiri food—something I’ve not tasted—and will be catered for 160 people (that’s a small wedding party!). The sweets will be Bengali, specially flown in from Calcutta and made by the factory of Mr. Das, the subject of my children’s book. (He came to one of my talks in Bangalore.) I’ll take lots of photos.

This morning I took an auto-rickshaw into town, a ten-minute ride that cost about eighty cents. The auto-rickshaws (below) are the cheapest way to travel in Indian towns, but be prepared for some fierce bargaining (meters “don’t work”). Fortunately, I knew what the correct fare was supposed to be.

Near the auto-rickshaw a lone figure dressed in colorful clothes stood silent and immobile on the sidewalk. I’m not sure what this person was doing, but I couldn’t catch his/her attention to ask permission to take a photo:

My goal for today’s trip was some shopping and some food (lunch).  I visited some of the state emporia, government stores that sell handicrafts from each state (one state per store), as well as the “all-India” Cottage Industries emporium.

But I soon realized that, over the years, I’d bought everything for myself in India that I ever wanted. I have a big collection of Ganeshas (I added a small one this time, as I always buy at least one Ganesha per trip), weavings and hangings, a very nice collection of Indian kurtas and trousers (with some nice silk ones), and various other oddments. I therefore confined myself to buying a couple of presents while coveting some of the Ganeshas that were beyond my pecuniary means or my ability to carry (below).

Ganesha’s “vehicle”, the animal that carries this elephant-headed god of good luck about, is a rat, which you can see in the second and third photographs):

I have a huge collection of Ganeshas, all different and most in brass. Here’s one for sale in polychrome wood, standing on his vehicle:

Here’s a lovely woven shawl at Cottage Industries, hand embroidered with flowers and birds. It was about two hundred dollars, as I recall. (I didn’t buy it: I was just looking.)

Close up:

I then went to the Khadi Bhavan to buy handmade soap for myself (one of my indulgences is having nice soap at home and in my lab). They have a gazillion soaps, each scented with purely natural products. Here are the five I purchased at about a dollar each. The coconut milk soap smells fantastic.

“Khadi” refers to homespun cotton cloth, an industry popularized by Gandhi as a way for Indians to stop relying on British goods and to engage in the meditative act of weaving. (Gandhi himself, of course, spun cotton.) The Khadi Bhavan is an enterprise honoring Gandhi by selling handloomed cloth and other handmade goods. A statue of the Mahatma himself greets you as you enter the store:

Only a block from Cottage Industries is a branch of Saravana Bhavan, a vegetarian South Indian restaurant that was the first place I dined on this trip (but at another branch). The food is fantastic and cheap, and it’s very clean and immensely popular. There are branches all over the world, including New York City and Texas! If one is near you, go!

When I got there for lunch at noon, hardly anybody was eating. I had a coconut uttapam with sambar and three chutneys (I do love my uttapams!). It’s always an eternal conundrum for me at South Indian places: uttapam or dosa? But there MUST be that white coconut chutney, one of the finest foods of India. Everything is eaten with the right hand, of course, and if you come to India you’ll have to learn to do without utensils most of the time.

A fresh lime soda, which is safe as it’s served with an unopened bottle of soda, which you add to freshly squeezed lime juice and then sweeten to taste with a shotglass of sugar syrup:

. . . and the denouement: good strong South Indian coffee, served boiling hot in a metal cup in a saucer. You can pour the coffee back and forth from the saucer to the cup to cool it, a talent I’m acquiring (fingers can be burned as the scalding liquid goes right to the top of the cup):

By the time I finished lunch it was 1 p.m.—Indian lunchtime—and there was a huge line out the door. I’ve learned to avoid the lunch rush:

I’ve seen exactly one cat in India: an orange moggie that darted into my hotel in Bangalore. But of course dogs are everywhere, and so, to placate the dog-lovers among you, here’s a line of sleeping canids on the street this morning, one with a close-up:

Tips for getting more to drink or eat on airlines

January 1, 2018 • 9:30 am

First, like many of you I chafe a bit when I ask for a soft drink on an airplane and get about 50 ml of Diet Coke in a cup jammed to the top with ice. Two good gulps and it’s gone!

A while back, I asked a flight attendant friend if it was impolite to ask for a whole can of Coke (or whatever you drink). Her answer: “It’s perfectly fine! But be sure to ask for a glass with ice, too.” (If you don’t do that, you might get a warmish can by itself.) Ever since then, I’ve always asked for an entire can of the beverage of my choice, and the flight attendants are glad to provide it. I’ve seen my seatmates look on jealously as I pour what seems to be the equivalent of about 3-4 drinks that they got.

As my father said, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.”

Now here’s something I always wondered: Can you get an extra meal on a plane when you’ve already consumed one? I’m sometimes hungry after an airline meal, though I never had the guts to ask for another. (This desire is very rare given how bad airline food is.) Nevertheless, Quora deals with this question in a post called “Can you ask for another airplane meal after you’ve finished the first one?”

The answer is a qualified “yes”, involving whether the plane is full, how polite you are, and what kind of flight it is.  For most people this would take more courage than asking for a whole can of drink, but I’d do it nonetheless if I were hungry on a long-haul flight and the food was good.

Here’s one of the answers to the query on Quora:

But if you don’t have the moxie to ask for more food, just remember this: unless you’re happy with 3 ounces of beverage on a plane, just ask politely, “Can I have a can of X with a cup of ice?”  You will get it. And tell them that Jerry sent you.

By the way, I had the worst airplane meal of my life on a SpiceJet flight (my hosts were very kind and bought the food option for my private airline bookings within India). What did I have? Well, the fruit juice was okay, but the only “meal” for me was a COLE SLAW SANDWICH. Yep, that’s the way it was labeled and that’s what it was: rabbit food on sliced white bread. Jebus!

I mean, I know many Indians are vegetarians, and I love their vegetarian food, but this is some barbaric perversion from British days. Why couldn’t they give me a samosa?