Why?

EllenBeth Wachs and Rebecca Watson were at the Humanists of Florida Association conference this weekend, and so was Kelly Damerow of the Secular Coalition for America. They both separately chatted with her face to face about the appointment of Justin Vacula as co-director of the Pennsylvania chapter of the SCA. They also asked questions during the q&a after her talk.

Rebecca told Damerow that Vacula had written for the site that called Rebecca a stupid whore and that he had harassed Amy Davis Roth. Damerow was obviously upset by this, but she gave no ground.

During the q&a Rebecca described Vacula’s activities for the audience, and she reports that there was an audible gasp and then things got very quiet. EllenBeth asked about the percentage of women in leadership positions on their state boards, and Damerow floundered as she admitted only one leader was a woman.

Do a thought experiment here. Imagine that this is not about women. Imagine that it’s about race. Imagine that Vacula had posted on a notoriously racist site. Then imagine the SCA appointing him co-director of a state chapter.

It seems incredibly unlikely, don’t you think?

Well what we keep wondering is – why is sexism so fucking much more acceptable than racism?

 

Not lord of the manor

Tessa Kendall has a post on Bullies and predators, expanding on Michael Story’s post yesterday.

Because of the stupid libel laws in this country, the Offender cannot be named publicly, which makes him harder to deal with.

I’m one of the hosts of London SitP, along with Carmen and Sid. When I started going to SitP, very few women came. Sometimes I was the only woman there at the King’s Head in Borough. Over the years, we’ve worked hard to encourage women to come and now a lot do. We want them to feel safe and comfortable. This isn’t a major problem, we don’t want to blow it out of proportion, but we do want to act responsibly and nip it in the bud. [Read more…]

Getting disturbingly touchy-feely with women

Oh, so it happens in the UK too, eh. Michael W Story says it does, at least.

I like going to public lectures; I’ve met some great friends and friends who became colleagues there, many of whom I saw last weekend at the post Pod Delusion Live drinks. I’ve spoken at Ignite, done the odd Skeptics in the Pub as part of a double act with Martin Robbins and will be giving a solo presentation about my own hobby horse at Leicester in January, but I don’t feel that my attendance at things like Skeptics is an identity that represents me the way that some of the hardcore members do. So maybe it’s not my place to join in with the current schism, and plenty of very knowledgeable people have already written on this topic, but it seems like recently everyone has been having their say over the latest atheists/skeptics contretemps  so I’m going to demonstrate the levelling power of the internet and stick my oar in. [Read more…]

A throwaway piece of old fashioned Australian slang

An unpleasant man, who is the Executive Director of The Sydney Institute, a conservative think tank, talks some drearily familiar unpleasant crap about Jane Caro and sexist epithets and destroying the joint.

Who would have thought that a throwaway piece of old fashioned Australian slang  could, within a few days, become a matter of international interest?  But that’s  the modern world of instant communications , home to the ”IIA” syndrome.   Meaning ”insult, indignation, apology” in that order. [Read more…]

Whose spit, which venom?

I wasn’t going to say anything about this (because it’s too goofy), but other people are, so I will after all, because it’s there – the Comment is Free piece on Atheism+.

First, before we even get to the article – there’s the subhead, and the url. The subhead says

A new movement, Atheism+, has prompted non-believers to spit venom at one another rather than at true believers

And the url obligingly includes the words “spit” and “venom” – and yet Peter McGrath did not use the word “spit” in the article. Venom, yes, but spit, no. [Read more…]

Destroying the joint

Jane Caro is feeling sympathetic toward men. It must be embarrassing “to see your normally rather pleasant and decorative gender being represented by such a pack of loudmouthed fools.”

Men like Todd Akin for instance. Or the Anglicans.

In what they clearly regarded as a great leap forward into the 15th century, the Sydney Anglicans triumphantly announced that they had changed the female version of their wedding vows so that women no longer promised to obey, but merely to  submit. [Read more…]

She wrote it three times and deleted it twice

Laurie Penny, motivated by the Assange-Akin confluence of the past few days, has written a long, wrenching piece about being raped. It was a “nice guy” liked by everyone, including her; it was at a party, where she felt ill and went to sleep. She woke up to find him raping her (although she didn’t call it that at the time).

I asked him if he had used a condom. He told me that he ‘wasn’t into latex’, and asked if I was on the pill. I don’t remember thinking ‘I have just been raped’. After all, this guy wasn’t behaving in the manner I had learned to associate with rapists. Rapists are evil people. They’re not nice blokes who everybody respects who simply happen to think it’s ok to stick your dick in a teenager who’s sleeping in the same bed as you, without a condom. This guy seemed, if anything, confused as to why I was scrabbling for my things and bolting out the door. He even sent me an email a few days later, chiding me for being rude. [Read more…]

The phenomenology of harassment

Stephanie has a post about whose is the liberty in “libertarian” on sexual issues, which follows up on a comment she made here on the temperature post.

The proof comes when women start going after what they want.

He wants the freedom to hit on me at any time and any place? Fine. Liberty in action. Maybe a little crass, but….

I want the freedom to call him a disgustingly selfish piece of shit? I want the freedom to determine whether I want to deal with him based on whom he treats well and whom he doesn’t? I want the freedom to use tools under my personal control to keep him from interfering in my projects? I want the freedom to gather with people who share my values rather than his?

That’s when I’m abusing my power. That’s when I’m “Talibanesque” or “femistazi” or “Orwellian”.

In a comment smhll suggests this is partly a matter of not sharing the experience of being harassed.  [Read more…]

Prior to each insertion

George Galloway is certainly being disgusting on the subject of the rape allegations against Assange.

In a thirty minute podcast, the controversial anti-war MP said it was “an extraordinary coincidence that public enemy number one, Julian Assange, somehow gets inveigled with two women with incredibly complex political backgrounds who just, at the right time, come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against him”. [Read more…]