Ew. Now they’re monitoring what comments I like on Facebook, and blabbing about them on Twitter. It’s exactly like the slimers – they too obsessively monitor every word of mine that they can get access to. It’s creepy and disgusting and loathsome.
Where’s the brain bleach.
We often laugh at Dawkins and the like for invoking witch-hunts and inquisitions and McCarthyism. But this really is like that.
Will you recite the creed? I warn you failure to recite the creed can and will be used against you.
We have here a list of your known associates. Looks like you have some explaining to do.
I share your disgust. It’s sickening, this cult-like behaviour.
Silentbob:
What? Not even slightly.
It’s a bunch of people working themselves into a fervor, no more.
(It’s all very meta)
It really is like McCarthyism. The inspection of tiny details to find flaws, the examining of known associates. But it’s also different in that they have much less power. They can only harass, not jail. Whether they can blackball is yet to be seen.
Alethea,
Yes, it’s like it in attitude, not in actuality.
(Actuality matters more)
I hope these intrusions don’t interrupt your blogging, Ophelia.
Your blog is one of the most important atheist resources, and I especially appreciate your coverage of global issues not always detailed in the mainstream media. It would be a deep shame if this was diminished in some way.
Please keep rolling. It has been your best response to negative drama over the years, and it would be much appreciated.
I’m sorry, but this is bullshit. If I notice a bigoted public Facebook post gets liked by a public blogger (especially one I respect), it’s right to call them out. If they agree with the post they liked and don’t think it’s bigoted, they’re free to defend it.
And I’m a lurker, but have followed this latest blowup. From my perspective, it only started when Ophelia approvingly quoted a friend comparing trans women to Rachel Dolezal. Other commenters saw no other interpretation than that trans women aren’t real women, and that’s what led to the “yes or no” question. Since then, it’s just been a lot of acrobatics in evading people’s questions.
John, something being “like” something else does not imply identity. It implies similarity. Your nitpick is uncalled for here.
Alethea, similarity in some abstract aspect is not sufficient for a fair analogy absent qualification, particularly when the dissimilarities overwhelm the comparison.
But fine, you say “It really is like McCarthyism.”, I say “bullshit!”.
PS Alethea, be aware that you support this gossip in Pharyngula:
(Such drama!)
@ John Morales
Alethea Kuiper-Belt interpreted me correctly. I was not, of course, suggesting people were being cross-examined before Senate committees and pleading the fifth. I meant “really like” in character. It’s the guilt-by-silence and guilt-by-association aspect of the questioning and investigation that, to my mind, makes the inquisitorial metaphors pertinent in a way they were not pertinent when – for example – Shermer invoked them after being criticised for his “more of a guy thing” comment. YMMV.
I’m not a “gawking at the accident” kind of person or anything but can someone link me to these dastardly FB comments that were liked?! I feel like everyone is talking about a party I didn’t go to and I cannot understand the conversation.
sambarge, look at #346 in my link @8 above.
Incidentally, in the linked thread PZ (a) posted a robust defence of Ophelia’s non-TERFness, with a rebuke to the ongoing circlejerk among her attackers; and (b) wound up closing down the thread as intolerable.
That might help a little, but I’m not hugely hopeful about it 🙁