Oh I don’t believe in them either. Just explaining where the religious people are coming from. They have a completely different worldview that includes supernatural elements, and their understanding of issues like abortion flows from that.

Yeah. It’s interesting to discuss this stuff with thoughtful religious folks. I grew up in a fairly fundamentalist environment and have a lot of highly educated non-fundamentalist Christian friends now. To be fair, lots of people have thought long and hard about it. When you get your soul is a topic of theological…

Well for Catholics it’s a matter of dogma, they have the concept of papal infallibility and whatnot. Otherwise, I think it tends to come down to belief in a soul (and that a soul is what makes you a person), and when you believe the soul is acquired. If you believe in a soul that is instilled at conception, then…

They accuse those women of committing “white genocide” by creating impure babies.

Be fair to the original Nazis, they were pretty clear that (white) women were only good for making Aryan babies and keeping house. “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” and all that.

It is. They call it a “fashy”. Seriously. 

I struggle when I hear about people who were actually named Sean to be pronounced “Seen” or Siobhan to be pronounced “Si-ob-han” because their parents had only seen it written down. Your name is pronounced however you pronounce it, but it’s kind of painful to hear.

It’s kind of a self fulfilling prophesy. They are marginalised which leads to criminal behaviour which leads to marginalisation which leads to criminal behaviour. It’s all a bit chicken and egg, who knows which came first? The traveller lifestyle basically leads to minimal education, getting married and having…

That’s dickish. I used to work with a horrible ward sister who constantly mispronounced the (not difficult) name of a Botswanan doctor she’d been working with for at least two years. I don’t think it was deliberate, she just couldn’t be arsed to learn how to say it properly after two fucking years.

I didn’t realise how unfamiliar English people are with Irish names until I moved here. I mean, I wouldn’t expect people to be able to parse Caoimhe (Keeva) but I thought Niamh was common enough. Turns out people see it written down and think it’s Vietnamese...

“It’s a cynical move in response to recent move by the British government that allows women in Northern Ireland, where abortion is illegal, to travel to England for the procedure.”

They’ve been around for a little while now. They are trying to position themselves as the reasonable middle ground between the Bernie Smyths (look her up - she’s a real class act) and us baby killers.

From the linked article:

It was so enraging. I think a lot of people didn’t get it because she wasn’t “naked” in the end by French standards. Certainly people around me didn’t. But I would not feel comfortable walking around in what she was left with, because I normally would be much more covered up. I can only assume she felt as violated as…

So you’re saying that when you see a woman in a burqa, you see someone who is not worthy of respect? Apologies if I’ve misunderstood you.

Not forced. Chose to cover because she didn’t like being leered at by sexist assholes. A grown woman making a decision.

And “modern”. I don’t think they’ve ever seen an episode. Oh Sandi, what have you gotten yourself into?

“It’s got a new tone to it; it’s got a new comic riff to it and I think that feels modern and future-facing. So it’s a show that a lot of people love but with a slight Channel 4 spin which is exactly what I hoped it would be.”

I can empathise, I don’t like drawing attention either. I don’t disagree that it’s a bad sign when women are expected to be completely covered (especially in places like Saudi Arabia, where it’s the actual law) but I don’t think we can look at an individual woman who is wearing a burqa and presume to know why she is…

It’s just a little insulting and infantilising to women who wear various forms of Islamic dress to assume that they are doing it because they are forced to and not because they are making a choice. I mean, I’m not going to deny the misogyny inherent in traditionalist interpretations of all the Abrahamic religions, and…