Listen to the whispers

As PZ already has covered, there has been some revelations about problems with two former board members of American Atheists. One was Mandisa Thomas, who has been a major voice among Black American atheists, but whose behavior has caused major rifts in that community. I have little knowledge about neither Mandisa Thomas nor the situation, but I firmly support the people who have left Black Nonbelievers as a result of Mandisa Thomas’ behavior.

The other former board member of AA was Andrew Torrez, someone I know a lot more about. Andrew Torrez was a popular legal podcaster as the co-host of Opening Arguments and Cleanup on Aisle 45. I was a supporter on both podcasts on Patreon. As the stories of his behavior have started to come out, it has also become clear that several organizations and associates, including several podcast hosts, had heard about these problems as far back as in 2017. It appear that there was an incident in 2017 that was shared broadly.

What is certainly clear, is that there has been rumors about Torrez on the whisper network for years (something PZ alludes to in his original post on the subject). The problem with the whisper network is that it is by nature vague, and that you only hear it if you are connected to it in some way. This makes it easy to ignore, but that’s a mistake. The reason why the rumors tend to be vague, is that there is a constant worry of law threats (something we certainly know the risk of here at Freethoughtblogs), especially when it involves a lawyer.

I am not particularly connected to the whisper network, but I have occasionally heard names through it, and in just about every case, later revelations have show the whisper network to be right.

This is also the case for Torrez – someone I had really hoped the network was wrong about, but which it again turned out to be right about. Looking back, I really should have known better than to ignore it enough to financially support the podcasts, thus helping platform an abuser. I apologize for that. What I did do right, was to stop recommending the podcasts as soon as I heard the whispers – and this is something we all can do. If we hear that someone is problematic, stop recommending them, until you have looked into the allegations at depth.

I don’t say that you should uncritically believe any rumor you hear, but you should remember that when people step forward, even just on the whisper network, they risk serious repercussions, so it is not something that most people would do frivolously, so you definitely shouldn’t them out of hand.

The Met Police has a serious problem

Content warning: rape, murder, sexual assaults, police brutality

A couple of days ago, an police officer from London’s Metropolitan Police was convicted for rape and murder, and sentenced to a whole-life prison term, which means that there is no chance of a parole.

It is always shocking when a police officer breaches the trust in such a way, but now the Mirror shows that he was far from the only one.

Fury as 26 Met police colleagues of Wayne Couzens committed sex crimes since 2016

A damning probe into the Met Police today reveals 26 colleagues of murderer Wayne Couzens have committed sex crimes since 2016.

Offences included rape and possessing indecent images of children. Two officers were jailed in April, a month after Couzens raped and killed Sarah Everard.

The alarming figures uncovered by the Sunday Mirror come as pressure mounts on Met Commissioner Cressida Dick to stand down – and for the force to be given a radical overhaul to end a sexist culture.

Labour’s Harriet Harman said: “Women’s confidence in the police has been shattered.”

A staggering 27 Met Police officers were convicted of sex crimes in the past five years, a Sunday Mirror probe has found.

As happens in all institutions where sexism has been allowed to stay unchallenged, it has grown into much worse things. The leadership of London’s Metropolitan Police has accepted a culture, where the police officers have felt safe being sexist or worse

Former Det Supt Paige Kimberley tells how – days after Sarah was murdered – she warned Dame Cressida about a WhatsApp group where male officers were sharing pornographic images and offensive remarks

A panel found their behaviour to be “distasteful” but did NOT amount to misconduct. It is now known the group is similar to the one Couzens and colleagues used in the run-up to 33-year-old Sarah’s death.

The leadership has failed, and there needs to be a reckoning – and there needs to be a purge of the officers in the force, removing everyone who has either participated in these things, or turned a blind eye to it.

The iceberg theory of sexual harassment

Danish politics is right now rocked by Morten Østergaard, the leader of the mid-center party Radikale Venstre, stepping down due to a 10-year old case of sexual harassment. The case that led to him stepping down, was the report of him groping a female member of parliament from the same party when she first became a member of parliament, 10 years ago. It came out when the party decided to have a 24-hour session, where people could call in and report or talk about past cases of sexual harassment. This is part of the party’s attempt to change the sexist political culture in Denmark.

A lot of people have of course focused on the so-called irony of the leader having to step down due to the very problem the party is trying to fight. Which of course shows that people really don’t get the whole concept of trying to change the culture.

Morten Østergaard has himself explained that he stepped down not because of the old incident, but rather due his handling of the case after it came out, trying to claim it had been handled internally, without admitting it was him who had done it.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of people attacked the woman, Lotte Rod, who stepped forward, claiming that it was a coup – apparently in coordination with Sofie Carsten Nielsen, the woman who took over as leader of the party, even though Lotte Rod didn’t support her as the new party leader. They also make a great point of it being a very minor transgression (an unwanted touch) which in no way should lead to such drastic results.

I, on the other hand, was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

You see, I have developed something I could call the iceberg theory of sexual harassment (note, I am not using theory in the scientific way here). It goes something like this: Any credible report of sexual harassment about a person or organization, hides a equal or larger number of unreported cases. Unreported in this case, might not be internally, but definitely not known to the general public/surroundings.

The iceberg theory is based on empirical evidence, but is also based on the simple fact that people who are unwilling to respond boundaries in one case, is likely to not be willing to respect boundaries in other cases. This is true for sexual harassment, and it is true for things such as sexual assaults and rape (see e.g. Repeat Rapists on Campus, which explains that repeat rapists are responsible for a majority of rapes). Do note, that I am not claiming that people who commit sexual harassment will go on to commit sexual assault or rape, but that the same type of mechanisms are in play.

On the organizational level, it has been shown many times that an organization that accepts sexual harassment in one case, has also accepted it in many other cases.

And of course, the other shoe also dropped in the case with Morten Østergaard, who admitted that there was also a complaint about him from 2016. This time, from a 21 year old intern. This was apparently not know to the other members of parliament for the party, which is quite likely due to legal reasons.

Is this the last case? Only time will tell, but it certainly did show that his decision to step down was the right one, and that there is a lot of work left to change the political environment. Both in Radikale Venstre, where the process has started, but also in the other political parties, which to a large degree seems either to ignore the problem or to deny that there is one.

Note, there is comment moderation switched on, which means that if you haven’t had a comment approved before on this blog, your comment will be put into a queue until I approve it. I will try to check regularly for new comments, but I am somewhat away from my computer most of this weekend, so it might take a little time before I notice and approve the comment.

It should go without saying that sexist, bigoted and slanderous comments won’t be approved.

Lazy linking

A few links to articles and blogposts that I think worth sharing

Laurie Penny has written a long-read article about not debating people: No, I Will Not Debate You

Civility will never defeat fascism, no matter what The Economist thinks.

Professor Julie Libarkin of Michigan State University has compiled a list of know harassers in academia

Rates of sexual abuse and harassment in academic science are second only to the military. It’s estimated that at least half of women faculty and staff face harassment and abuse and that 20 to 50 percent of women students in science, engineering, and medicine are abused by faculty. Those numbers are generally based on surveys, which are an important way of getting a handle on the problem and how it changes women’s career trajectories.

But when it comes to holding institutions accountable and making meaningful changes, naming perpetrators may be even more powerful.

Julie Libarkin has taken on the challenge of creating a database of harassers. She’s a professor at Michigan State University and she heads the Geocognition Research Laboratory. She’s compiled a list of some 700 cases of sexual misconduct in academia.

The human league: what separates us from other animals? by Adam Rutherford

You are an animal, but a very special one. Mostly bald, you’re an ape, descended from apes; your features and actions are carved or winnowed by natural selection. But what a special simian you are. Shakespeare crystallised this thought a good 250 years before Charles Darwin positioned us as a creature at the end of the slightest of twigs on a single, bewildering family tree that encompasses 4bn years, a lot of twists and turns, and 1 billion species.

Republicans hoped voters would forget they tried to kill Obamacare. They bet wrong. by Andy Slavitt

Andy Slavitt described his article thus on twitter:

Do you notice this phenomenon where your MOC behaves differently in odd numbered years and even numbered years? My @USATODAY column this week explains.

There’s overwhelming evidence that the criminal-justice system is racist. Here’s the proof. by Radley Balko

This is very relevant to my earlier post about the need for a reform in the US judicial system.

Harassment in the news

If there is one thing I think 2017 will be remembered for, it is how the climate has changed in regards to sexual harassment and sexual assault.

In the past, these subjects were often ignored or actively covered up, and in the rare cases where they made the news, it usually ended up with the victim’s reputation being attacked and life made hell.

In 2017 this has changed someone – now it is rare to read the news without new articles about sexual harassment and assault, and there is often consequences for the perpetrator.

Given how widespread sexual harassment and assault has been, and still is, I expect that we will continue to see more and more articles about these subjects.

Note content warning for all links: sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, bullying

Today I have seen these stories:

‘A Complete Culture of Sexualization’: 1,600 Stories of Harassment in Higher Ed

She created a survey in which academics and former academics can submit their stories about sexual misconduct, and their responses will be shared anonymously online.

On Tuesday, 12 days after the survey was posted, more than 1,600 people had submitted stories. Academics wrote about being groped or kissed by Ph.D. advisers, being subjected to sexual comments in front of peers, being stalked by a professor.

…

Q. Did you anticipate it would be that many?

A. I am not surprised at the number. I am surprised at the severity of many of the stories. I expected more quid pro quo or handsy passes made after drinking at an open bar at a conference. I didn’t expect as many stories of rape and stalking and abuse.

The two expat bros who terrorized women correspondents in Moscow

Twenty years ago, when I was a Moscow correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, two Americans named Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames ran an English-language tabloid in the Russian capital called the eXile. They portrayed themselves as swashbuckling parodists, unbound by the conventions of mainstream journalism, exposing Westerners who were cynically profiting from the chaos of post-Soviet Russia.

A better description is this: The eXile was juvenile, stunt-obsessed and pornographic, titillating for high school boys. It is back in the news because Taibbi just wrote a new book, and interviewers are asking him why he and Ames acted so boorishly back then. The eXile’s distinguishing feature, more than anything else, was its blinding sexism — which often targeted me.

Sir Peter Jackson: Harvey Weinstein made me blacklist stars

Sir Peter Jackson has described the Weinstein brothers as “second-rate Mafia bullies” and accused them of orchestrating a smear campaign that led him to blacklist actresses Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino.

Jackson, speaking to Stuff for the first time since multiple sexual assault allegations emerged against the disgraced Harvey Weinstein, said he had “no direct experience or knowledge of the sexual allegations” against the Hollywood powerbroker, but had earlier made a conscious decision to never work with him again.

The later story is particularly interesting, since I think it could be the basis for a lawsuit against the Weinstein brothers by Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino. If that happens, I hope they take everything from the Weinstein brothers.

Sexual harassment is everywhere

Content note: Sexual harassment and sexual assault (especially at the linked stories)

More and more stories about sexual harassment and sexual assault is coming out.

It has been happening for at least the last 36 years at the US olympic sports organizations

More than 290 coaches and officials associated with the United States’ Olympic sports organizations have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct since 1982, according to a Washington Post review of sport governing body banned lists, news clips and court records in several states. The figure spans parts of 15 sports and amounts to an average of eight adults connected to an Olympic organization accused of sexual misconduct every year — or about one every six weeks — for more than 36 years.

The figure includes more than 175 officials convicted of sex crimes as well as those who never faced criminal charges and have denied claims, such as Andy Gabel, an Olympian and former U.S. Speedskating president banned from the sport in 2013 after two women alleged he forced himself on them; and Don Peters, the 1984 Olympic gymnastics coach banned after two women alleged he had sex with them when they were teenagers.

It happened at TED

I was a member of TED’s Office Culture Task Force, a committee of people appointed to help make the office a desirable place to work. While I think we did a great job planning fun activities, the committee functioned beyond it’s intended scope. It was the default HR team – TED didn’t have HR for most of my time there.

While in that role, many people told me in confidence how they were harassed. We all felt conflicted – do we tell our stories and risk losing our job at TED and the community surrounding TED that we love so much, or do we carry on and deal with it as best we can?

It also happened at DC comics

Eddie Berganza, a top editor at the company who oversaw Superman and Wonder Woman properties, faces allegations from several colleagues

And of course it happened at Hollywood, at Fox, at Congress, and everywhere else. Now, it seems like it might have consequences ( but then, Trump is still the elected president of the US)