That title feels way more dismissive than I intend it to be, but I can’t think of anything else. And this is going to be a short one.
First… to Essence of Thought and everyone in the Trans community who was hurt by the actions of Rachel Oates and her followers… I apologize for not saying anything about it here or anywhere else. The honest truth is that I didn’t know it was happening.
I was subscribed to Essence of Thought before Stephen Woodford’s transphobia, so I knew about that, but most of the Rachel Oates drama happened on Twitter.
I don’t participate in Atheist YouTube anymore… I haven’t in years, and really have no interest in doing so anymore. Honestly, I went from being a fan and participator to hating it quite a bit. Although an anti-theist myself, I see the entire Atheist/Skeptic movement as just another religion, although in this case a secular one… or, perhaps more accurately… a Cult of Personality, infested with right-wing reactionary assholes. In fact, I consider Elevatorgate to be the spiritual predecessor to Gamergate (I’m slowly working on a post to expand on this idea, with evidence).
To be frank, I think I consider myself rather hostile to the whole movement at this point, especially while it continues to maintain people like Stephen Woodford, Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, David Silverman, etc, etc, etc.
I also don’t really use Twitter all that much anymore unless I’m sharing links or something. I definitely don’t follow the newsfeed or any of that. I don’t know what’s going on on Twitter unless one of the podcasts I listen to talks about it or one of the blogs I follow says something about it or a tweet shows up in one of the subreddits I follow. I find Twitter weird as a platform for engagement, and honestly do consider it to be quite toxic quite often. So I tend to stay off it.
Because I’m kind of not paying attention to said movement anymore except when yet another cis-het white atheist dude does yet another bigoted thing, and I’m not really on Twitter, I don’t know who a lot of the new players are in it, and that includes this Rachel Oates person. So I wasn’t aware that the Stephen Woodford bullshit was continuing on in this way. I wasn’t aware of any of this.
And I’m sorry. Had I been aware, I would have been out there defending Essence of Thought. The above is not an excuse… I’m honestly mad at myself for not being aware of it… I should have been able to at least signal-boost shit, and I didn’t even do that because I just wasn’t paying attention. Had I been, I would have been out there calling out the transphobic bullshit.
Because let me be clear… Trans Rights are Human Rights, and like PZ, I will not be entertaining a single argument to the contrary. Gender is not a binary; it’s a spectrum. Trans women are women and valid, trans men are men and valid, and all those who are non-binary are valid, as well. Their rights are human rights, their rights are important, and I won’t even engage with arguments claiming otherwise. It is indeed transphobic to question a woman who wants to play with her fellow women in a sport just because she is a trans woman. Essence of Thought has done a brilliant job explaining why in a lengthy playlist, and we won’t be doing that here. We also won’t be discussing sexual attraction and transphobia, either. This blog, like (I hope) all blogs on this network, is explicitly, strongly, and immovably in support of trans people and their right to be treated as equals, to be given the respect they deserve, to be given the health care they deserve, to be gendered correctly, and to not be discriminated against.
I take it as rote, as a given, and if you have a problem with that, you can go complain somewhere else… not here. This is a trans-friendly space, and will continue to be so. I will strive to do better in defending and signal-boosting, as well. If you want me to signal-boost something going on on Twitter, here, my Facebook, and Reddit are all good places to grab my attention, because… as I said… I don’t really use Twitter all that much. Maybe I should use Twitter more often, but the honest truth is that it scares me a little bit…
And with that in mind, please go subscribe to Essence of Thought if you haven’t already; it’s an amazing and informative channel. The videos can be very long, so make sure you have time planned, and maybe make yourself some food and drink, but definitely make that time… you’ll learn a lot there.
As usual, you’re way too hard on yourself. Missing some information that was on a social media platform you weren’t a part of is completely understandable. Rather than beat yourself up over the past, use it as a way to reassess your priorities. If you want to be a better ally to transgender people, take some time to come up with better ways to accomplish that.
I hope that post gets published, I’d love to read it. My own views are pretty similar. A religion is essentially a self-perpetuating mental structure that uses statements contrary to reality to justify certain behaviours. Swapping “Gods says X” for “Science says X” doesn’t change the underlying structure, doesn’t prevent you from using the same building blocks in both. I’m reminded of Innuendo Studio’s latest footnote, which is titled “How the Alt-Right is Like an Abusive Relationship” but points out there’s a significant overlap with cults. The same techniques used to keep people in cults or abusive relationships can be used to prop up other social structures, even disorganized ones like the alt-Right.
The post is going to lean very heavily on why I think Elevatorgate is the spiritual predecessor to Gamergate (which, as we know, lead to the rise of the Alt Right). Originally I was going to try and show it to be the literal predecessor, but my attempts at finding direct connections to big names behind Gamergate and big names behind Elevatorgate has turned up… nothing, really.
For example: for years the name Eron Gjoni was familiar to me, but I could never figure out why. A little more recently (but still a couple years back), I for some reason thought it might be because he was a minor player in Elevatorgate. However, despite searching pretty darn thoroughly, I can’t find that connection at all. I can’t even find evidence of Eron being aware of Elevatorgate. Which, of course, leaves the mystery of why his name has always been so familiar to me unexplained.
The closest I can get is that minor names and trolls in Elevatorgate were also part of Gamergate, but there doesn’t appear to be any overlap amongst the big names that I can find, yet… and I’m honestly thinking I won’t at all…
However, I do strongly believe that Elevatorgate emboldened a reactionary wing in the atheist/skeptic movement that went and glommed on to Gamergate, which, again, helped lead to the rise of the Alt-Right.
So… that’s what I’m attempting to give evidence for… it’s proving to be a hard one to right, though, which sometimes has me thinking that I’m just wrong.. But I’m also stubborn, so… we’ll see. If it honestly requires just too many giant leaps and ridiculous assumptions, I will abandon the thought. But it makes sense to me, so I’m hoping I can come up with something persuasive and interesting…
Well writ and seconded by me.
Thankyou.
& Thankyou also to HJ Hornbeck and others who have spoken out on this and doen the work of informing us and fighting for peoples rights. Trans rights.
For whatever little it may be worth, I hadn’t already. I now have. I wish I had more time. I will indeed check it out.