Stephanie has some thoughts on Reap Paden. Who? I don’t know, really, except that he’s a friend of Justin Vacula’s. I saw a comment by him, or a mention of his podcast, or something, during the short period in which I was attempting to get Vacula to correct his misrepresentation of me on his podcast. (So many guys, so many podcasts.) That was all. I had no opinion on him until last Saturday, when someone pointed out a shouty podcast he’d just done and I listened to a bit of it. Man, it was shouty all right. He spent the first several minutes shouting at Stephanie louder and louder and louder and LOUDER. Calling her a fucking bitch over and over again. Not much substance, just louder and louder fucking bitch.
I skipped ahead and listend to a bit more – some more guys had joined him and they were talking about Rebecca (why? I have no idea) by pretending to be talking in her voice, saying, “I’m a stupid cunt” and “I’m a dumb cunt” and laughing a lot. Oh, so that’s who that is, I thought. Another one to avoid.
I see people saying it’s good they talk like this, because that way people can realize what they’re like. Huh. I don’t think so at all. It would be much better if they weren’t like it. Talking like this is what makes them like it, so if they stopped talking like this, they wouldn’t be like it, and that would be better. If people talk to me and don’t call me a fucking bitch or a cunting cunt, then that’s better than if they do and so I find out what they’re like. I don’t want to find out what they’re like if they’re like that, I want them to hide it.
So anyway this Reap Paden commented on Stephanie’s post. He showed us what he’s like again.
You already lost Stephanie. You are just too damn dumb to figure it out.
Listen to this well-
I don’t give a fuck what you say I don’t give a fuck what you do. There is nothing you can do to stop me from doing/saying what I feel needs to be said.
I’m one of those people you won’t make quiet. You can’t win
It doesn’t matter what simpletons like you say about me. Intelligent people will figure it out while you spin your wheels trying to make yourself look good.
Anytime you open that hole under your nose about me and I hear about it, I will have a reply to it.
In the future if you don’t want to be called a bitch I would suggest you refrain from being one, seems simple enough to me.
That last bit is especially interesting. He will call us bitches because we are bitches, and it’s our own damn fault that he calls us bitches, because we’re too bitchy to refrain from being bitches.
I have my doubts.
I’ve figured out Reap Paden. He’s arrogant, condescending, supercilious, conceited, and nowhere near as intelligent as he thinks he is. He thinks he’s a wise man but he’s only a wise guy.
Back around 1980 or so, as an 11-year-old, by friends and I would make “radio shows” on cassette tape on my primitive little tape recorder — half an hour of fart jokes, various slurs, uncontrollable snorting laughter, and things we thought were funny based on half-understood snippets of Saturday Night Live routines.
So this made me all nostalgic.
Yeah. I un-friended him on Facebook some time back. That and Reap Sow Radio.
A lot of rage. A lot of posturing. Not a lot of argument. A bit like listening to too much Iced Earth.
That being said, I’m not sure silent derision isn’t the best option in some of these cases. I mean, you can’t go after *every* individual misogynist out there, so there has to be a point somewhere where you snort and chuckle at their self-importance, then move on to more significant cases.
‘I don’t give a fuck what you say I don’t give a fuck what you do. There is nothing you can do to stop me from doing/saying what I feel needs to be said.’
How wonderfully self-regarding. I for one respect his first amendment right to talk to himself.
It’s complicated. My first reaction was, they exist whether they express that shit openly or not. Better they show their butts in public and let people see and discuss the ideas–loosely so called–they represent.
My second thought: well, it’s nice when some ideas become so unpopular people are embarrassed to express them.
Still, even then, those ideas exist, and have power. On the whole, I guess I to disagree with you, Ophelia.
Stephanie’s fisk pleased me.
Oh, silent derision is the usual mode, Bruce, I assure you. I ignore most of them! I was ignoring Mr Paden but then Stephanie tweeted this newer post and I couldn’t resist reading it, and there I was.
Hey! Don’t forget, he also yelled incoherently about me, too.
Stacy – But if that’s right, then the more people call us cunts and fucking bitches, the better. And by the same token, the more people call other people fucking niggers and fucking faggots and all the rest of it, the better.
I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think it is better.
One reason is that people work themselves up that way. You can hear Reap Paden doing it in that podcast. It’s quite creepy. His own screaming gets him more and more worked up.
I used to have similar arguments in work situations, when there would be big yelling matches at meetings and afterwards people would say that was great, it got it all out in the open and now it will be better. It never looked at all like that to me; all I saw was people getting angrier and angrier the longer the yelling match went on.
Oh yes – I had forgotten that he yelled at PZ too.
And the pony!
PZ Myers #6
Incoherence is his specialty.
Rodney Nelson:
Give the man his due Rodney. He said intelligent people would figure him out and they have.
I know that I’m rather new to all this, but this is what I understand:
1. What he’s doing there by screaming obscenities and serving up word-salad is DIALOGUE and CRITICISM and PRINCIPLE. He and his sort encourage and promote inquiry and science and stuff. This sort of radio show is a prime example of principled skeptical investigation.
2. But by talking about it, you are engaging in BULLYING and WHINING and CLIQUISHNESS (sorry, CLICKISHNESS if you are an adult illiterate) and CULTISM, and DIVIDING THE COMMUNITY.
3. True balance in the atheist/skeptic community will not be restored until heroic MEN like HIM are free once again to CALL WOMEN CUNTS without being criticized and/or SNICKERED AT, which leaves them feeling INSECURE and ANGRY and also a little TIRED and HUNGRY, which in turn deprives the scientific community — nay, the entire world — from their VALUABLE INSIGHTS via a method that is akin to CENSORSHIP and BRUTALITY.
I think you’ve caught on PRETTY WELL, Ken, for a NEWBIE at the whole SHOUTING FURIOUSLY racket.
I suspected as much, Ophelia. Sarcasm seems to be a proxy voice for silent derision. 😀
(And yes. Someone once actually laughed at me for saying clique instead of click.) (But then someone else once laughed at a friend of mine for pronouncing the name of the pizza restaurant Pagliacci correctly. “It’s Pag Lee Atchy,” this person said with immense disdain.)
I cannot begin to tell you how sad this makes me. Reap is (was) a supporter/defender of mine. He helped me when I was facing all of the persecution in Polk County by Sheriff Judd.
I listened to the beginning of that podcast and was simply appalled at the attacks on good people I admire and consider friends.
Put me on the side of the “bitches” please.
Really?! I didn’t know that. That’s horrible, EllenBeth.
[links arms]
Gah… that’s awful, EllenBeth. My sympathies, too.
…some more guys had joined him…
So even when this guy is recording a video in the relative safety of wherever he was, well out of the reach of whoever he was screaming at, he STILL had to have a posse with him? That just adds one more layer of pathetic to an already sagging rotten layer cake.
What a joke.
Hey, if being outspoken and honest and passionate makes one a “bitch”, it’s something to be proud of.
‘Least that’s how I see it.
These people are scary. I’d never heard of Reap Paden until now, but I have every intention of staying well away from him. What an awful person.
subscribe
I’m saddened by your disappointment, EllenBeth.
Our PM gives the fundi catholic opposition leader a decent helping.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/10/julia-gillards-misogyny-speech.html
You know, one thing I find interesting about this muck that his been stirred up since Rebecca requested not to be corned in an elevator at 4am by random dudes, is that Team Douchebag, above all else, is just petty.
Say what you want about A+ and such, but at least it’s an attempt to engage wider social and political issues, but here we have someone TOTALLY ENRAGED about just vapid, nonsensical personal conflict.
I have paid little attention to whatever started this little flare up, something with a guy on a message board being banned and someone resigning from something, who gives a shit? I mean, really, who cares? We have an important presidential election and I just cannot sum up the energy to give a fuck about whatever that guy was screaming about.
I suppose you could argue that the FtB side of things (for lack of a better group designation) is equally petty for engaging with these weirdos, but the asymmetry is clear: Team Douchebag gets criticized as exemplars of larger social trends. The argument has always been, “the skeptical/atheist community is not exempt from problems caused by ________,” with sexism being the main driver, but I’m sure we’ll get to the others soon enough.
On the other hand, we just have, “How dare you be mean to my buddy Justin, you don’t know him, YOU DON’T KNOW ME, Jerry, YOU DON’T KNOW ME!”–(left something similar on the radio show page). It’s so prosaic and limited on that side.
I just can’t believe the sheer number of fabrications these “new contestants” make up and run with about us. Their lack of integrity is astonishing.
EllenBeth Wachs, I read about your lawsuit, wow. Thank you so much for standing up to that sheriff!
About Reap – whom I have never heard of before now – helping you in that sort of situation is commendable and hints at a considerable level of decency. It occurs to me that you may be in a unique position to, I don’t know, eek a civil conversation out of him about misogyny…?
Am I being completely unrealistic? Stranger things have happened.
I appreciate the sentiment. Things are still shaking out with Sheriff Judd and I.
As far as Reap goes, I have considered approaching him and speaking with him. I knew him to be a good guy. He helped raise money for my legal defense and performed at a benefit concert held on my behalf. The behavior exhibited of late is shocking to me. I think it would be best to wait a while until the dust settles and emotions calm down.
Looks like someone’s living rent-free in Reap’s head…