I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

Around FtB

• Ayaan Hirsi Ali and CAIR–“Our choice shouldn’t be English Defence League or George Galloway. Our choice cannot be outright xenophobia and racism or rolling over and giving up.”
• Ghesas and Execution are the same–“By placing the responsibility of the execution on the aggrieved, the regime wants to normalise its brutality and evade accountability. But this is not possible.”
• Open Letter: 300+ Trans Women and Transfeminine People Stand Against Calpernia Addams and Andrea James–“Addams’ and James’ hit pieces exhibit a pervasive hostility to young, queer trans women, and indeed any trans woman who is uncomfortable with the use of transmisogynist slurs by cisgender drag queens like RuPaul.”
• Please Help Me Fight a Lawsuit–“So it looks like I’m going to be sued by a white supremacist who doesn’t like it that I’ve called him a white supremacist several times over the last few years.”
• And this is why you’re not allowed to practice medicine.–“She says, ‘What’s the difference between a coat hanger and curette?'”

The Wider Web

• Social Security, Treasury target taxpayers for their parents’ decades-old debts–“Now, Social Security claims it overpaid someone in the Grice family — it’s not sure who — in 1977.”
• Exclusion As Default: Female Geeks–“To make things worse, once he’d handed out the arses sheet, the MC started deliberately mispronouncing and mocking our team name when he read out the scores, something which he continued to do for the rest of the evening.”
• I’m not a feminist, but…–“On my second Breathless Reads book tour, I remember very clearly a man from the audience asking us if we felt guilty that we had written books told from a female’s point of view.”
• “I’ve been trying for a while to put my finger on what bothers me the most about these constant accusations of activist communities, particularly online ones, as being ‘toxic’ and I think I’ve finally got it: a certain amount of toxicity is inherent to any community of humans.”
• Mike McFadden fences with reporters and ducks specifics–“I realize I’ve been beating this please-be-specific-Mr.-McFadden drum for a while now, but it’s starting to catch on.”
• Washburn Center for Children: Where ‘the wild things’ are understood–“We took the kids in [the new open space] the day they got back on Monday, and the look on their faces was a thing that I really, really remember, which was a combination of awe and relief.”
• Violence is not a product of mental illness. Violence is a product of anger.–“‘And what were the voices telling you?’ the officer inquired supportively. She explained that the voices were telling her not to hurt the man, but he had gotten in the express checkout lane with more than 10 items, and that made her so mad that she couldn’t stop herself.”
• Before Batgirl, Weirder Than Wonder Woman: Lost Superheroines of the Pre-Code Era–“Born in the era of Rosie the Riveter, when there was a national campaign to get women into workplaces, these costumed heroines were brassy, hard-assed, snarky, and sometimes just plain weird.”
• Stop silencing people – I will destroy you!!!–“That is what silencing actually looks like. Silencing is making people terrified to express their opinion.”
• Interview with Soraya Chemaly–“There are people who really cannot imagine sharing public space – on line or off – civilly with women as equals.”
• Media must end its love affair with religious censors–“All three, and countless more religious rightists, have sold themselves as commentators, ‘community leaders’ and de facto spokesmen for Muslims (‘men’ is applicable here), grabbing the spotlight neither through skilled writing nor through views polls say are actually widespread.”
• A New Report on Obamacare Says It’s $104 Billion Cheaper Than Expected–“Republicans and their allies keep saying the Affordable Care Act will bankrupt the taxpaying public. Now there’s one more reason to think they are wrong.”
• Scarleteen and Its Awesome, Inclusive Sex Ed Are At Risk, But You Can Help–“A lot of the information out there about sex is really shitty — sexist, misogynist, unsafe or just plain wrong — the fact that anyone can create content related to sex can make it hard to find accurate, nonjudgmental information.”
• Bill Nye’s Take on the Nye-Ham Debate–“In this situation, our skeptical arguments are not the stuff of PhDs. It’s elementary science and common sense. That’s what I planned to rely on.”
• We don’t need stylish condoms—we need sex positivity–“It’s also interesting that all these ‘stylish’ condom-related products are marketed at women, not men.”
• The Bundy crisis in Nevada–“By any fair definition, this was an intense standoff with a very real possibility of significant casualties.”
• Help Without Heaven–“The secular community is actually the reason I was able to finally go to the doctor and get diagnosed with a mental illness.”
• Never an adult moment?–“Why aging parents in particular? Because their children are very likely to be involved at some level in their care, and because those same children are likely to be uncomfortable in discussions about their parents erotic interests.”
• GoDaddy Released My Personal Information to a Spammer Troll–“Yesterday, over 2 years after the original spam incident, I began to get emails from friends of mine forwarding a piece of creepy-looking spam they received that contained my name.”