The latest uproar from the misogynist mob is over a rumor that there is a secret list of people who won’t get invited to conferences. There is no list. There are petty people who think calling someone ugly is reasonable behavior, people who have not yet grown out of junior high school. There are personal preferences, as well.
For instance, I will not participate in any conference in which Abbie Smith is a speaker. If I’m invited, and later discover that she is also invited, I will politely turn down the offer.
I could find myself spending a lot more time at home, which wouldn’t be bad at all, except that she doesn’t get invited out that often, and her coterie of slimy acolytes are virtual non-entities, too. It is a positive aspect of the growing atheist movement that it tends to be progressive, egalitarian, and not particularly supportive of shrieking over-privileged children.
Now I have to stroll out to a bäckerei for coffee and pastries.
Louis, I am in genuine awe.
Gregory Greenwood, #489 and #494,
Oh no, dear sir. They are very much yours. You said what I wanted to with less crap, fewer words and far better. If I was wearing a hat, I’d damned well take it off to you sir!
Louis
P.S. ZOMG TEH GROOPTHINK? Shall we proceed to DEEEEEEEP RIFTS? Who do you fancy in the rugby tomorrow? Quins or Tigers?
In Getting Off: Pornography and the end of masculinity robert jensen said that watching pornography for academic study (like counting aggressive phrases and actions) resulted in him having thoughts that ranked women as sexual objects. He found these thoughts disturbing. When he wasn’t participating in studies that required watching it he didn’t tend to have that problem (after a decompression period). He quit doing that type of study for that exact reason.
It is more than pornography of course, the capitalist Beauty Industrial Complex trains men and women to grade women for their utility as fuck toilets constantly. The “before” shot of every beauty product establishes a new standard for men to judge women, and for women to feel poorly about themselves.
Everything in this culture encourages that type of thinking. Most dudes aren’t willing to put in the effort to overcome that.
All this stuff about people’s appearances reminds me of a time I was trying to get a dude to leave my property, he refused and opted instead to insult my appearance, like I gave a shit. The most insulting horrible thing his tiny brain could conjure up was that he personally didn’t want to have sex with me, it was supposed to break my heart. The shitty thing is that most women would probably feel ugly when such a tirade is unleashed.
Dennisburger, #499,
Gotcha, it has got a little involved. No worries.
I don’t use facebook, and I would not file you under “assholes I don’t really like” any more than I would so file any one else I don’t know. But thanks for the offer.
Do what I did, hang about here a bit, have a few arguments, get told you’re a sexist muppet. It happened to me, mainly because I was (am) a sexist muppet. Not intentionally, not by design or choice, very much like yourself I have always been in favour of equal rights etc for men and women. But I learned I was DOIN IT RONG. No one is hounding you out of here….well some of them might, and perhaps rightly so, but I’m not, and so far PZ is not and he is the one that counts. He wields the banhammer. Take my advice, never make bad puns about shitzus….
I don’t claim the Pharyngula Way is the only Way, far from it. But the stuff that trips people up here is not the high-fallutin’ complex top end of feminist thought, it is feminism 101. The real basics. Shit a child could grasp if they were so inclined. That’s is where you have fucked up, it’s where I fucked up and continually fuck up, it’s where a lot of people fuck up. Basically it’s a big fucking mess!
As for disagreement, well sadly there really isn’t much to disagree with in my post. Shocking I know, I wrote it! But this is partially my point, the stuff in it really isn’t controversial, it’s basic.
If you’re smart, and I hope you are, you’ll pause here. Go away and do a lot of thinking. If you come back with identical claims and ideas, go away and think again, especially about the MLK quote. Pick up a copy of The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir as well. It might just blow your mind.
Louis
Gen, #500,
Well there has been a
queue pile for Teh Groop Secks™ With Louis for a whileOkay, so I started it, but that’s not the point!
Louis
Louis, 484: Yeah. That. Fucking wow.
I CAN FUCK UP HTML!!!!!! WOOOOT!
Louis
Louis, I’m already Josh’s fake third wife, but can I be your fake girlfriend too? I promise I won’t try and use it to angle for a better place in line.
Skeptifem,
I am largely pro-ethical porn, obviously anti the standard stuff. In other words I think that ethical porn can and does exist, however, I think you have advanced one of the best arguments against a lot of the so called “main stream” porn. Not only does it frequently represent the abject humiliation/subjugation of women (and I am not talking about a come shot here, but IMO far more serious things), but it reinforces/creates certain stereotypes. Just like the beauty industry example you give.
Oh and your last paragraph:
Insulter: “I do not wish to have sex with you”
Insultee: “And this would be a bad thing why?”
The man’s cluelessness. It was Teh HEOOOOGE!
Louis
Carlie,
Well I’m Josh’s (only? Not sure if that’s still the case) Fake Husband and your Brother Husband as you are Sister Wife to Caine et al.
I think that means:
a) We’re already there.
b) We can pretty much already do what we like.
c) It’s less a queue and more a sweaty writhing mess. The problem with Teh Groop Secks™ is people can easily start whilst one is getting a gin and tonic at the fully stock, and free, bar. Your position in the important areas of the pile is assured and always has been, never fear.
Well, maybe just fear a little bit to help the erotic tension. I know I’m fucking terrified. Have you any idea how much of a mess this is going to leave on the carpets? The cleaning bill alone is already larger than Graham’s Number.
Louis
I can’t help but LOL at this and wonder what, pray tell, dennisburger, the arbiter of what is and what isn’t sexist, feminist and acceptable, would classify as “actually communication”. Several thousand words, in written format, to be referred back to again ad infinitum is NOT actual communication?
?:(
Louis: Oh, I see. It’s a de facto line. Gotcha.
Gen,
LOL!!!
Oh yes, there’s a lot of de facto going on there.
Louis
@ Louis;
You are too kind, sir, too kind I say!
(Can I haz favourable position in teh groop secks ball?)
Here, I must disagree. I am pretty sure that you said a lot more than me, covered a far greater proportion of the topics relevant to the conversation, and said it with greater style, humour and general aplomb.
Mutual hat-doffing it is!
That sounds a bit kinky actually…
It is worse than that – I do not follow rugby. In point of fact, I do not care for the sport at all…
Now that is a DEEEEEEP RIIFFFFFT.
Ok, so way back at #321 (on the first page), this happened.
I don’t know what ryan has to do with what I wrote, but anyway..
Yes. No one mentioned Abbie’s recent facebook escapades, or wherever it was, until much later in the thread. I don’t follow these things and PZ made no mention that this was part of why he said these things.
(I don’t consider it much of a threat either. It’s just AS being a belligerent so and so on the internet yet again).
Rights don’t even come into it. My only issue is that PZs relative community “power”, if you like, might have effects that are in excess of his, quite reasonable and justifiable, motivations for this action.
This doesn’t strike me as a terribly controversial notion. The problematic situation I speak of may never even arise. If it does turn out that organisers are often having to drop Smith in order to keep PZ on the bill, maybe consider introducing some flex.
It’s perfectly understandable not wanting to associate with her. But I’m not sure she deserves getting dropped too often for it (NB: If that’s how it turns out)
Louis – hooray!
I have access to several acids from work, so the carpet could always be entirely nuked.
Gregory Greenwood, #14,
I…I…I…
{faints}
Louis
The fuck? You waltzed in here with your little chip on your shoulder and your little “tee-hee! But I’m not sexist”s, spoiling for a little rough ‘n’ tumble, and now you tell us you’re done and want to go?
You don’t just change your mind, you fucking tease. This isn’t about you and who you want to have a nice little conversation with.
I’m not done having my fun with you.
Louis! Come back to us, Louis! Here’s some smelling salts.
That’s ok, Gregory, I’ll save you a place next to me in the groop secks ball.
@Gregory Greenwood
LOL! And sadly, that’s about the truth of the matter.
Fuck, lost my place. I’m on a new page of comments now and have to go back and find the comment where I left off. What number was it again? *Searches comment-page-1 for “bloodily”*
Sort of on topic… but is there a reason one can no longer view comments for posts over at
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/
Is it part of the “great renovation”?
David Utidjian, #22,
As far as I know, which isn’t far, yes it is part of the renovation process.
Louis
We gotta have our own Westboros, don’t we? Wouldn’t want them to go away or anything.
What dennis seems to be really saying is “I came here to be an insulting bigot troll, and you’re throwing all kinds of fact and solid argument at me. So, let me run away with tucked tail before it becomes even more clear I’m in way over my head”
Why are you threatening to gang rape HTML to death?
Then why am I standing here with a number in my hand that reads 1,546,333,982,001?
No, that would be mutual hat-boffing.
Ogvorbis,
Oh I promise I’m not threatening to gang rape HTML to death. Sorry, I should have said “mess up”. I realise by using a reasonably well understood colloquialism that anyone could deliberately misconstrue for rhetorical purposes that I was in fact making entirely equivalent threats to all rapists in the world at all times ever.
As for that ticket of yours, what did I tell you about buying tickers off that website? Ignore it, pile on in!
Louis
Lois
I don’t like the sounds of this…
and
as I recall the Louis Groop secks thingy™ was my idea.
Chigau,
Fret ye not, I’m not going anywhere just yet. I just have Goals, and a few things I want to do before I am 40 in a couple of years time, so I will have to manage some of my time a little differently I think.
As for the Groop Secks Thingy&tarde;, ah yes! I think it was. My apologies for failing to remember and give proper credit.
Louis
louis
gross. theres this and all the talk about how huge your knob is or how so and so has balls and blah blah blah, what the fuck?
Skeptifem,
Well I can only apologise if you don’t like my humour. I do make sex/knob jokes, but I hope, perhaps wrongly, that they are taken in the spirit they are intended (not magic, I realise) and with a nod to some familiarity with my sense of humour.
If I’ve fucked up, and it’s more than possible, then I’m happy to be corrected and knock it on the head. As I’ve intimated, I’m still learning.
Oh the the balls comment was entirely deliberate. Mind you, I had a small discussion on the problem with ironic sexism, it’s almost impossible to tell it from real sexism. So my bad.
Not to dob the poor bugger in, but the gang rape comment was a response to another poster who had already made the point and that entire paragraph was a parody of yet another commenter’s “argument”. I’d like to think the context made that clear, but apparently not.
Louis
Louis @484
Awesomesauce!
Well said, duder. That post is why I read Pharyngula. That and the squid.
Pharyngula; “come for the squid, stay for teh awesome”
@ Aratina Cage;
That would be comment number 489 – the long one that doesn’t make much sense. It is a few posts further down from the even longer one by Louis that makes perfect sense.
Hmmm… I should probably try to avoid including the words ‘bloodily’ and ‘gonads’ in the same sentence again. I don’t want to cause innocent pharynguloids everywhere to start crossing their legs involuntarily in discomfort at the image.
Somewhat more on topic: Abbie Smith has explained what she meant by the ostensibly Christina-threatening Faceb**k post. I thought that somebody ought to
stir the potmake it available over here so that everybody’s on the same page.Most of the text is apparently cut-&-pasted from the Faceb**k page (wall? whatever) in question; it’s a dialogue between Smith and Chris Stedman. I’ve tried to set this part off with a blockquote (italics in original).
Executive Summary: At some upcoming conference or convention or something at which both are scheduled Speakers, Ms. Smith intends to confront Greta Christina verbally, in person, mano-a-mano, about…something. Internet behavior, apparently, or something somebody said about something or somebody on the Internet. Questionable advice is offered about optimal debating tactics. The putatively threatening ‘citation’ of Kill Bill was in fact just a gratuitous Y*ut*be link to the theme song (apparently intended merely as an implied humorous hyperbole comparing Speaking at conferences or conventions to fictional serial gory revenge-killing). PZ Myers is a poopyhead.
Even shorter version (by J.C. Welch):
So here’s what she sez:
[start quoted material]
[end quoted material]
So I think that clarifies a few things.
@ carlie;
He is Ok, isn’t he? I imagine it must come as a huge shock that the pasty, overweight British guy doesn’t enjoy sports…
Oh, you tease…
;-P
What the hell kind of world is she living in??? Not the one that is related to reality, as far as I can tell.
Ah, I have just started the last year’s countdown to that particular milestone myself, and have renewed some Goals. Nothing like arbitrary number points based on planetary rotations to urge one on to action. :)
But also opens up new questions, like who this organizer of FreeOK is? We don’t “love to hate” the slimepit. I think we’d all be better off and happier without the slimepit, just like we’d all be better off without the Bible.
And also, Abbie has a lot of nerve blabbing about being tough on the blog but nice IRL. If anyone watched her “debate” with Sally Kern’s husband, she was gratuitously nice to him.
Carlie, #36,
Ahhhh yes, arbitrary numbers are SRS BSNS!
Louis
It doesn’t seem like the big deal PZ made it out to be, but I’m not the putative target, so what do I know?
“…and then, and then, I’m gonna fly away with my awesome friends on our spacercycles. And PZ and Greta will be all like, ‘Buh, wha?’ an’ I’ll be all like ‘Pew! Pew! Why yes, Mr. President, I will accept the position of Sheriff of Science.'”
Yeah, badass monuments to the word ‘cunt’ are only appropriate on badasses’ blogs.
hee hee!
perfect
[yeah ok sorry no really seriously fucking off now; mt work here is done.]
“it’s a dialogue between Smith and Chris Stedman.”
Planet FB. It’s a strange place.
Right. I mean, it’s not like PZ could respond: “I’ve raised a family (including nonhuman animals), done scientific research, taught science to young adults for decades, alerted thousands of people to harassment and threats against vulnerable people and rallied communities to their support and defense, supported and promoted other science bloggers (e.g., Abbie Smith), informed untold numbers of people about major social problems caused by religion and religious institutions, taught and entertained people and promoted debate through a global blog, traveled the world educating people about science and skepticism, established a community of atheists and freethinkers where people have developed connections with those they wouldn’t know otherwise and formed local social and activist groups, created a forum where people leaving religion can feel comfortable talking with others who’ve gone through the same thing, written a book for atheists,…”
If I were Greta, I would not want to attend unless the organizers could guarantee that Smith would get nowhere near me. Even then, I’d be wary due to this showdown theme, and seriously consider withdrawing.
I appreciated the clarification from the FB. Thanks.
My second thought upon seeing a pretty girl, to clarify, is ‘she probably hates me’ followed quickly by fleeing back home, to never talk to anyone ever.
My day is made.
***
The number of debates in which this would be relevant in the slightest would have to be miniscule.
@SallyStrange: bottom-feeding, work-shy peasant #341:
I referred to a an iconic movie moment where a character is crushed to do the evoking because the possibly shared memory of the film would do the heavy lifting for me. If I’d put added effort into purple prose (which I couldn’t do well anyway), it’d send a signal that I’m advocating for the pit, rather than speculating what might’ve sent them off the rails.
I was trying to distinguish between the humiliated feeling the character had at that moment and the violently unhinged character she became as a result. One of the ongoing themes here has been about violent interpretation of rhetoric and I didn’t intend my post to be mistaken part of that.
Someone was wondering what was going on in their heads to be so provoked by “don’t do that”. I guessed based on a talking point I recalled had been used on Pharyngula (I’d get a headdesk concussion if I took a second glance at the slimepit threads). People usually don’t subjectively see themselves as the villains, though I’m still struggling to comprehend hateful people. BrianX #294 had a fantastic objective assessment however.
Good thinking. You’d best stop posting here, just to be on the safe side.
Speaking at an event should involve, at most, challenging questions in the Q&A and perhaps respectful disagreement in social conversations. It should not require you to contend with some yapping chihuahua leading a pack.
Missed this
Setar @479 wrote;
No. I. Did. Not.
Equivalency does not mean what you think it means.
Ryan, #(5)43,
Do you also go down the garden to eat worms?
It doesn’t count if you don’t eat worms.
Louis
Indeed it does. It clarifies that Abbie Smith is indeed threatening to be an obnoxious and perhaps disruptive asshole who intends to ruin the conference for other participants and should be disinvited and banned from the premises.
That little girl really needs to grow up already, and fast.
I never tease! I just flirt outrageously.
I’ll be giggling about this all day.
That reminds me. There’s a mod for Skyrim that replaces the bow’s *twang* sound with a person saying “pew”. I really need to try this out.
That’s cute, Erülóra. BTW, I like the (slightly modified) nym!
Some more things about that FB reveal via Chas:
First, sometimes I think we need more tribalism, not less. But did anyone else listen to PZ’s debate with Chris? While I didn’t think Chris did bad, PZ was hardly spineless. He said some pretty harsh things to Chris’s face that Chris took with stride. Contrast that with Abbie’s “I don’t have anything against religion” that she threw out there to coddle up to the husband of Sally Kern, a woman who has said gay people are worse than terrorists!
Who was it who told off Sy Whats-his-face at the Reason Rally? And who threw his debate notes in the air after listening to a full-throttle Gish Gallop (which is the first time I’d heard of the Cracked Candy Cane, btw)? And who said that the Bible is crap? And who “desecrated” the Koran, a cracker, a banana, and Dawkins’ godless manifesto? (We’ll forget about the Ruse incident–heehee.) Yeah, PZ may be known as a teddy bear, but he is not known to be two-faced or a coward when he has a problem with something or someone.
“To be quite frank, though, I’ve stuck around here far longer than I wanted to already, and I don’t find our massive replies to one another really conducive to actually communication.”
So Phalloburger, you prefer to leave before explaining exactly why you and Abbie collaborate to harass wimyn in elevators ? or admitting the personal connection between your phallocentric opinions and genocide in Rwanda.
Typical.
Yet another perfect example of how misogyny and rape culture affects men as well as women.
PZ, you explicitly endorsed the views of the more, er, aggressive posters here once when I asked you. You may not remember it, it was at the point when you lost credibility and became a general laughingstock I think. Something about a gelato store owner who put up a sign and you went out of your way to act horribly to him despite his own genuine humanity he showed to you.
It’s been more than a decade since you’ve actually done any science hasn’t it? What kind of conferences still invite you anyway? Probably not the same sort that invite Abby who, last I checked, was still actually doing science. I know the echo chamber here will soothe you of any self-doubt you may have, but hate speech is hate speech. And dogma is dogma. And when someone gets so wrapped up in a personal dogma like yours, getting so stupidly mired in it that they actually proclaim science is a replacement for religion, that they find ways to excuse hate speech or claim that it isn’t hate speech because religion is really awful, well, you made the bed, you lie in it.
Religion will go exactly as fast whether you attack it or not. It is no longer able to do what it once could. Your stupid ego notwithstanding. You have no effect whatsoever, nor does any ‘atheist’ movement. Religion is fading anyway. If anyone wants to be helpful they will marginalize the atheist movement just as the other religions are marginalizing themselves before it actually does spend a little while as the replacement for the older religion in some small location on the globe.
Forgiveness does not need to involve enabling or passiveness. Nelson Mandela was pretty successful without using hardly any hate speech or judgement. So too was Gandhi. Leaders who vilify the ‘other’ however, also have a sort of common thread in history.
Enjoy your echo chamber. I do speak out. I do write. I am involved. And my voice will be in opposition to yours as well as to any other who presents solutions to problems which involve eliminating the others who cause it. :)
Cheers. I’m mostly signing off the web today except as my real life self which doesn’t include a lot of message board argument posts, so I figured I’d say a last goodbye and speak my piece here to whatever effect. Finding a petty ego-analgesic post from you was the perfect inspiration. Go get ’em tiger. May your days be filled with happiness. May your intellect be used to find common ground and bridge divides. I think you could maybe let the ERV thing go without any serious ill effects. At least, it would let one of your burdens go. Perhaps she would let hers go too if you just talked to her. And listened to her.
bwe4:
Classy. Lie. Leave. Lament.
And this is the echo chamber?
No. I already knew she was psychotic. Didn’t need that example of her re writing reality to see that.
Was bwe4 pulling an agnostic “I’ll pray for you”?
bwe4
Who are you?
R. Johnston
OK.
But this…
Abbie Smith is an adult, not a little girl.
Well, yes.
bwe4 is just echoing my comment #60.
@Antiochus Epiphanes
The evidence indicates fairly conclusively that however many years it may be since her birth, Abbie Smith is not an adult. She’s a particularly inane and nasty Junior High student, as are the people gathered around her.
Fuck off concern troll. You said nothing of cogency or relevancy, just fuckwittery. Because PZ is at a TEACHING UNIVERSITY, and not doing graduate work like Abbey, making comparisons of research idiocy on your part. You know nothing, nor can you think…
He was one of the idiots from an other “rationalist” site who slimed this place during the Gelato Mio blow up. They argued that the owner actual gave a gracious apology and was now an “ally”. They were also trolling this place. They were congratulating each other at their blog about how easy it was to get us going. He is playing the silly game of an enemy of my enemy is my friend. So he had to blow his butt trumpet in triumph over how Abbie has shown us up.
Yeah, worthless troll is worthless.
bwe4,
WTF was that?!
Yup.
Question: what did the trite and self-absorbed do before the passive aggressive smiley was invented?
Apparently xe is someone who doesn’t like to argue. Or even discuss. So rather than do either, xe drops the ERV talking points onto a thread and then, before anyone can respond, leaves.
Odd that we keep reading, virually verbatim, the same talking points from ERV regulars (?I think?) but Pharyngula, with all of the disagreements even on this thread between regulars is the echo chamber. Odd that.
R. Johnson, do not play this game here. Most of the people here will not take kindly to it. Abbie has enough slime on her hands, there is no need to even look like some one is playing a sexist game.
Personally I don’t rank people by how sciency they are. I admire PZ Myers and Neil deGrasse Tyson not because of their work as scientists (how could I? I don’t even have a bachelors) but for their work as people. I admire the contributions they’ve made for secularism, the passion with which they’ve combated pseudo-science.
I understand Ms. Smith is working towards her doctorate and that her’s being a science blog she (and her supporters it seems) are going to view scientists (particularly real scientists, whatever they are) as being above the hoi polloi. But a person, and their contributions, aren’t summed up by the initials attached to their surname or how often they’ve been cited through google scholar.
We’re more than that and I’d admire the force Prof Myers speaks with when combating religion whether he was a PhD or an Esq or an MD. His focus might shift from biology to law to medicine but what makes him admirable would still be there.
Sorry. I assumed xe was from ERV. I wasn’t aware xe was from another site. I apologize for my egregious mischaracterization.
Ah.
A tongue in search of an ass, in other words.
@pentatomid
It was a brilliant example of a starfart.
Chigau:
An idiot from Talk Rat*, who had his ass handed to him repeatedly during the Gelato Guy threads. He’s an idiot at Talk Rat too, however, it’s more suited to his particular brand of idiocy – he has plenty of company. (Yes, yes, I was/am Sinister over there – to the idiots, deal. I like it here better.)
*Talk Rational
BWE – way to highlight your inability to argue and your cowardice. Here’s a nice decaying porcupine for you, Cupcake. Don’t leave ass prints on our nice, sniny doors, okay? And please don’t sick the idiot brigade on the commentariat – the stupid is simply too painful.
They can’t read this blog very much if they think that it takes an “outsider” to get us going.
We can get ourselves pretty worked-up sometimes.
That she is. Which why her trying to play the victim should be met with scorn and contempt. She’s an adult who’s spent a sizable portion of her time behaving like a bully, making false accusations and using targeted sexist slurs hoping to hurt and wound people she doesn’t like. As an adult she should be held accountable.
@Janine #70:
I suppose I should have said “little child” rather than little girl.” And I’m definitely not playing games. She is not an adult and there’s no use pretending that she or her fellow cesspit dwellers are.
She’s a graduate student–I think that comes after junior high.
If you find her immature, it is only because she is an adult and you expect her to behave like one.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And just so you know, “little girl”, “young lady”, and other feminine-dimunitive terms are often silencing weapons in the arsenals of assholes. I’d use it with care, lest you be misconstrued. A few weeks ago, an older male colleague trotted the self-same phrase out in an argument with my spouse, and nearly lost a kidney.
R Johnston, drop it. You are wrong.
R Johnston:
Referring to someone as imature may, in certain circumstances, be acceptable. Referring to a woman as a ‘little girl’, as you did further up, is a misogynist silencing tactic. Implying that women are children, or, as you did, stating it clearly, really is an effective way to tell women to shut up and listen to their betters. And it is bullshit.
Stop trying to defend it.
Nah, the agnostic’s prayer is much more entertaining.
Atheism is a religion?
Someone is eliminating people?
(I guess there’s no point in waiting for a response.)
It’s also an easy way to dismiss someone’s wrong doing by thinking of them as a “child” and therefor unable to help themselves. ERV is an adult. Treat her like one.
Starting a flame war and trolling the net is an achievement now?
Do they award themselves trophies every time they manage to get 75% of the stream into the bowl?
What a bunch of underachievers. It’s no wonder that they’re so obsessed with their heroes’ CVs.
I didn’t think of it in that way but, in retrospect, you are correct. Sorry.
I don’t comment here a lot, but I was reading over this thread and noticed something interesting in dennisburger’s “conversation” with Louis.
Dennisburger at 453 said this:
This really jumped out at me. So he respects Abbie enough to say outright that if she asked him not to do something, he would never do it again. I wanted to ask him (before he flounced) how that jibed with what Louis said at his EPIC #484 here:
I find the parallel here fascinating…
To make this point clear enough even for dennisburger: imagine if ERV had just given a talk (which you attended) about she hates it when guys talk about her breasts, spent four hours in a bar socializing with people (including you) and talking about the talk she had just given about how she hates it when people talk about her breasts, and finally wound it all up with a declaration that she didn’t even want to THINK about breasts for the rest of the week…
At which point you walked up to her and asked, “Can I see your tits?”
What exactly do you think a question like that would say about the person who asked it? About the environment (which is what Louis so admirably explained) in which that person thought it would be okay to ask it?
As an aside, to the regulars here and at the rest of this network:
I think I’m finally starting to (barely) understand this privilege thing and holy fuck, I feel like a fucking ass. This whole feminist awareness thing on FtB has to be one of the most profoundly uncomfortable lights I’ve ever shone on my own life.
wmdon:
Congratulations! I mean that most sincerely. Does us all a world of good when someone groks it. Keep on learning. There’s nothing at all to be embarrassed about or uncomfortable about – we’re all sexist and we all have privilege, to varying degrees. It can be difficult to take the blinders off, however, things are much, much clearer without them.
wmdon
Have some frozen grog.
@wmdon #86:
While it’s still fresh,
any constructive feedback about what approaches were most/least effective for you? Or was it mainly a response to seeing blatantly inconsistent people?
wmdon:
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. :)
Privilege can seem like a real minefield, but it is actually sort of a reverse-minefield… when you step on a mine, you’re blowing someone else up. You can either apologize and try not to make that mistake again, or you can double down and go on the offense and write yourself a ticket to the Slime Pit.
Wmdon,
And that is EXACTLY how I feel.
To put yourself in someone else’s shoes and realise what an utter arse you’ve been, when you thought you were being a decent human being, or at least not indecent,* is a fun experience. A really pleasant sinking feeling in the gut as things hollow out and the total chagrin takes over.
I’m a big fan, clearly! Luckily I get to do it a LOT!
Louis
*Yes, yes, I’ve always been indecent! ;-)
Fine. I apparently mistook your really bad writing for genuine stupidity.
Ah. So BrianX’s assessment was a novel idea for you? Really?
And yet I remember seeing your name around you for some time… six months at least, possibly more than a year. Haven’t been paying much attention, then? Here’s BrianX’s comment again, just for the record:
It does support Aratina’s opinion that we need more tribalism. I personally am a big fan these “deep rifts.” We need to know if there are people in the movement who aren’t willing to make the minimal effort required to avoid large swaths of the population. Someone postulated that maybe Abbie isn’t really doing misogyny because she may be maintaining the Slimepit out of spite for someone else. I put it to you that supporting sexism out of indifferent or circuitous motives is just as sexist as supporting sexism out of actively hateful motives. It may be easier to convince someone who is sexist out of indifference to change their behavior than someone who is sexist out of genuine contempt for women, but the end result is still misogyny.
wmdon, even knowing what privilege is does not necessarily render one immune from the associated behaviors. One may recognize that one has privilege in one aspect of life and fail to recognize it in another, or recognize that you do have privilege but fail to realize the extent to which you have it.
The whole point about unrecognized privilege is that it is difficult to recognize, because it is often something one has always had, and one has no experience of what it is like not to have it. The human brain evolved the ability to have empathy through the mechanism of projection. You empathize with another by imagining yourself in their place, and this is difficult if you have no prior experience upon which to root your imagination.
It is not infrequent that I do not recognize my own privilege until I behave in a privileged manner and someone points it out to me. The test of any individual’s character lies not in the privileged behavior itself, but in how they react to having their privilege pointed out. Do they acknowledge it and modify their behavior, or do they recoil into a self-justifying defense shell of escalating denial, and steam drill their way down their self-excavated hole?
Wmdon:
Discomfort is a good thing. Really.
I thought of myself, a few years back, as someone who really believed in and supported human rights — for all humans. I was aware, quite painfully, of my racism and have, since I became aware of the concept back in high school, tried very hard to not display my culturally-derived racism and, at the same time, have actively told people to knock it off when they told a racist joke.
Yet, while I was dealing with the reality of my racism, I had no problem with jokes about rape. I had no problem with comments about women and their percieved desirability. When the reaction to Rebecca Watson’s infamous talk hit the fan I felt very, very, very uncomfortable and even a little nauseous. Why? Because I was seeing, in print on my computer screen things that a year before I would have agreed with and, at the same time, I saw those same ideas, those same epithets, those same ‘jokes’ deconstructed and the misogyny exposed for what it was.
The vitriol thrown at those who argued that treating women as human beings would lead to the extinction of the human race sickened me. The innevitable course and not-even-close-to-amusing mutations of Rebecca’s name frightened me. And, even worse, when I jumped into the 5k3d threads and tried, again and again and again, to point out why the nonsense was nonsense, I was subjected to some of the same abuse. As were the regulars here who participated even more fully in the defense of human decency.
I have since learned, much to my chagrin, that awareness of privilege, that awareness of societal sexism, that awareness of my own failures, is a continuing process. At the beginning of the month, I managed to, in one comment, come off as sexist, ablist and fat-shaming. In one comment! And me, a good liberal, progressive atheist. So, although I recognize my privilege, I recognize the sexism, ablism, and racism that I have learned through the conditioning of society, I still have to, far too often, pull up the reins and think about what I am writing or what is about to come out of my mouth (or, even worse, when I become aware of what I have written or what I have said (that is far worse)).
Anyway, nice to know that others find the same enlightenment here. Kind of scary to look into a cesspool of hate and see myself staring back out.
Shit. Sorry for the tl;dr.
Ahahahah! Sometimes, you make a mistake and it’s no big deal–the real meaning of the phrase is obvious. Other times, not so much.
should be
Gee, only barely over a page. Not close to approaching DDMFM territory (who is always read, like you). Forgiven.
@SallyStrange #(5)92:
Really. I was familiar with the individual tropes and the tendency for libertarians to glom onto them, but hadn’t noticed them packaged together quite so concisely.
My nym was a response to when ScienceBlogs instituted required signing-up to comment. That was a long while ago, but my involvement in comments rather than just reading the articles was gradual and sporadic. When I’m around, for the most part, I shut up and listen, except occasionally to post a related link, address a basic misconception, or ask a question. As you’re eager to note, I should not feel competent enough to participate very heavily.
No disagreement on that. Apparently more bad writing on my part. I was speculating about the former who are fairly alien to me (for understanding their narratives/misconceptions to steer them to sanity, or at least avoid the mindfields in their heads that explode and derail), in contrast to the very alien hateful people who I can’t begin to comprehend.
Ah, fuckwits. So boring.
Got a publication coming out this fall, got a major grant award, was the keynote speaker at SDB in Hawaii, UNLV White Distinguished Lecture, taught a standard 3/2 load (including developing a new upper level elective), had 35 advisees, have 3 students working with me this summer on a new field project.
Now, bwe4, your turn to recite your scientic accomplishments this year. Oh, nothing? You’re just a random asshole passing by who knows nothing about my work, but feels free to invent lies about it? Fuck off.
OMGs, I thought these 94 replies were the whole thread until I saw int he first couple that amazing things have been written in the first 500. I am off to read the entire thread, but want to say thank you to Ogvorbis for another moving post (#94).
I’m going to have to up my game. Speed reading or something. I am missing too much great stuff on PHaryngula and FTB!
Now, now. You have to give bwe4 time to respond.
Ouch. PZ just slammed it down!
CompulsoryAccount7746, Sky Captain:
Nonsense. Like all else in life, it takes practice and a good critique should be taken in and thought on. Few places are as good as Pharyngula for sharpening the critical thinking ability as well as improving communications skills.
I know you have dipped into some of the previous threads dealing with sexism (at sciborg and here), however, I think it may be a problem that you seem to hit your frustration limit quickly and leave the thread.
I understand that frustration, we all do. However, if you’re looking to understand how such peoples think (those who are alien to you), you need to stick it out in those threads and even if you’re not one of the commentariat arguing your arse off, read. No, the discussion isn’t productive in the ways you’d like, however, it is actually productive on more than one level.
“…and then, and then, I’m gonna fly away with my awesome friends on our spacercycles. And PZ and Greta will be all like, ‘Buh, wha?’ an’ I’ll be all like ‘Pew! Pew! Why yes, Mr. President, I will accept the position of Sheriff of Science.’”
This is why I’m not leaving my place in the cue for Brownian, to jump ship for Louis just yet.
I can see the reply now…
“But apart from…
… what
have the Romans everyou donefor us?”It’s also an easy way to dismiss someone’s wrong doing by thinking of them as a “child” and therefor unable to help themselves. ERV is an adult. Treat her like one.
it’s not an issue of being unable to help themselves, but rather being young means being inexperienced and vulnerable. Especially grad students are under a lot of pressure. It’s unsurprising that if a young person feels they are being attacked, they will surround themselves with whoever will offer to provide a shield for them.
got nothing to do with disrespect, so you might want to ease off that angle.
I thought the Louisian sex ball was taking place in the Brownian line.
I thought the Louisian sex ball was taking place in the Brownian line.
oh dear. the cue must be longer than I thought.
*grabs binoculars*
oh ryan…
if you still haven’t figured it out: Walton
unfortunately, the annals of Early Walton seem to have been lost in the SB renovation, but let’s just say Early Walton was an annoying, severely underinformed little twerp. And a libertarian to boot.
The size of the queueue doesn’t matter.
The queue may be quantum. That would explain a lot.
Oh. Ouch.
I don’t like libertarians though. I saw a chart saying ‘More freedom: Less freedom’. On the ‘Less freedom’ I saw ‘Universal Healthcare’ and I just cried inside.
I don’t understand how many Americans are so blind to the fact that the American healthcare system is like … far behind all socialised healthcare programs.
(Anything to win desperately-needed Brownie Points!)
The queue may be quantum.
I think we should get Ken Miller and Deepak Chopra to debate this.
I don’t understand how many Americans are so blind to the fact that the American healthcare system is like … far behind all socialised healthcare programs.
do you want to know how a large group of americans has been convinced to vote against their own best interests?
read this, it’s free.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
link to his book is in the upper left corner.
oh yeah: Walton’s British. So, Early Walton was a British, libertarian, annoying, severely underinformed little twerp.
he got better. much better.
And a libertarian to boot.
don’t forget:
-Royalist
-AGW denier (when he was a Monckton fanboi)
he’s much better, now.
I personally never believed Walton would grow, but he did.
I view Ryan the same way.
patronizing of me, I know.
*shrug*
well, he never did grow out of the royalism.
oh well, no one’s perfect.
Nothing wrong with being British!
Being a libertarian in Britain seems strange though; socialist programs have worked out really well for us, and we can look a bit across the continent to see that the much more left-wing Sweden and Norway and Finland are just recklessly good.
socialist programs have worked out really well for us
I’m sure with even a cursory look-round, you will find plenty of of your countrymen who would vehemently disagree.
hell, socialization in NZ is even better than the UK (given the smaller population), yet you will find a large number of Kiwis whinging about it here, too.
again, read the book I linked to. I do believe this explains at around 80% of this.
well, he never did grow out of the royalism.
really?
oh well.
speak of the devil…
where is walton anyway?
haven’t seen him much of late.
I will read it in a few weeks, I can’t now, mid-exams and all.
My group of friends are all socialist/social democrats, though yeah there are a few right-wing people at my school but they all tend to be vastly ghastly.
My parents are also very right-wing, but even they appreciate the NHS.
Oh, and concerning Royalism, my basic understanding of it is this:
The Royal Family gets about forty-million pounds a year, as a result of a deal ages ago.
It was the George in charge at the time of the American Independence War (second or third, I forgot). Anyway, he decided to give all the money he earned off of his lands in exchange for a fixed amount of money.
That money now is two-hundred-million pounds a year. Whether or not that justifies it, I don’t know. I suppose they should just give up their lands.
What? I’m supposed to be handing out points now too?
[Looks at length of line. Takes half-hearted stab at creating criteria for Brownie Points™. Gets bored. Opens up Yo, Is This Racist? Only one new entry. Finds roach in old cigarette pack. Fires it up. Plops RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 CD in the ol’ DVD drive. Ahh.]
Gets bored. Opens up Yo, Is This Racist? Only one new entry
have you visited 27b/6 lately?
Oh, I forgot — if that lack wit bwe4 shows up again without giving a short list of his recent scientific contributions, he will be banned. Goose, gander, etc.
@ryanwilkinson, and everybody:
Is that -ism what this vid from a trivia channel was about then?
Video: CGPGrey – The True Cost of the Royal Family Explained
I’m not sure if Royalism is about giving them political power or just keeping them, but if its the latter then there are just some severe difficulties with it.
And yes, I imagine it is.
Yo is this racist now has yo should I dump this asshole, if you haven’t checked that out yet. it’s awesome.
Walton said he needed to pull back from the internet to focus on school and life stuff.
Louis! OMG! The awesome! I must join the groope secks queue/pile/whatevs immediately.
RJohnson, I did get your point, but it’s still not good to use that language. It’s belittling to call an adult a child – but since that happens to women all the time, it’s not clear that your aim is at a very specific woman rather than all women. Yes, even with the preceding paragraph.
Oh wait, all that’s been said already. Several times. Eh, never mind, everything good here has been said already.
You know what, as a South African, I’m gettin seriously pissed off at people who have no fucking clue what the fuck actually happened in my fucking country spouting off their ignorance by way of holding up Nelson Mandela as the best example of non-violent “nice”, accomodationalist resistance since Ghandi.
Guess what? Mandela (or Madiba, as we affectionately call him), was not non-violent. He planted bombs. He fought as part of an armed political struggle. Fought in the literal blood in the street and on everyone’s hand sense here, not just with words. Hell, he was the LEADER AND COFOUNDER of the military wing of those opposing apartheid!
So for fuck’s sakes, if you want to admire him (and there really IS so much to admire, don’t get me wrong!) just get it fucking right, okay?
Further, 18 years on, there are a growing and vocal portion of the previously disadvantaged who feel that Mandela sold them out. That he didn’t broker hard enough, for long enough, to get enough people enough means to lift themselves out of poverty enough. His ex-wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is one of those, AFAIK.
So please, before you use the name “Mandela” to mean accomodationalist nice guy who got shit done in such a thorough way yet so very nicely that they damn well stayed done, get your facts straight.
Walton said he needed to pull back from the internet to focus on school and life stuff.
our little boy is all grown up.
*sniff*
So please, before you use the name “Mandela” to mean accomodationalist nice guy who got shit done in such a thorough way yet so very nicely that they damn well stayed done, get your facts straight.
I missed where someone did this, but it’s a good point nevertheless.
thanks
Louis:
As a female engineer, especially as I became an experienced and then senior engineer, I became aware of the privilege that engineers had (in the engineering company that I worked in – the CEO’s were always engineers). Many people treated me differently dependent on whether I was recognised as an engineer or not. Watching attitudes change mid-conversation was enlightening.
The attitudes of people around you rub off a little, and I needed to make a conscious effort to become “one of the girls” as well as “one of the guys” (having not had many girls around me during the maths/physics specialisation of school and engineering degree didn’t help matters).
There is a tone-deafness that is required to swim against the tide in the first place, and the feeling that the privilege has been earned is quite seductive. It was not immediately obvious that the quality of fierce independence (i.e. not listening to advice) that allowed me to become an engineer in the first place was going to be a hindrance after a certain point.
In a similar way to Louis, I am slightly sympathetic towards the misogyny of ERV and other women who have spent years not listening to all the cultural and personal messages discouraging them from being scientists (or other non-traditional professions). However, the explicit rejection of cultural norms that was required to succeed is going to make ERV a difficult person to work with, thinking especially of the misogynistic way she belittles Jen’s scientific prowess. A certain amount of collegiality is necessary, despite the need to for women to fight to ensure that we don’t fade into the background (as tends to happen if women are not assertive enough).
Well, I see this shit is still going on. Jebus.
I see that the trolls have been stomped on.
Wmdon, congratulations. You have taken the step to being a good person. Keep up the good work! And yes, it will be hard. The social cost – depending on the company you keep – may be high.
But in the end, you will be able to look at yourself in the mirror without flinching.
Walton, I believe, is currently en route from the US to the UK. He just finished law school.
But I still want to hug him.
Wait, he’s gone? No more stateside Walton? :(
Dang, I can’t keep up these days…
True. But DDMFM doesn’t dump angst all over the screen.
Thanks, but I always feel guilty when I start angstrambling.
Yes, Walton graduated from Famous American University this week and headed back to Merrie Englande today.
Walton left the US either today or yesterday. Yes, we all haz sadz.
Ogvorbis, I love you and one of these days we will come learn all about trains…
She had a post a few years ago* about how she was seriously thinking of going into engineering until an encounter (I think it was a phone conversation) with a condescending, sexist engineer (I think he was an academic) led her to conclude that she didn’t want to put up with years of that and to go into biology (which I’m glad has worked out for her). At this point, I’m not sure what effect this knowledge has on my level of sympathy.
*Which others always have far less difficulty finding than I do.
But that episode of her life is irrelevant. It really has nothing to do with her eagerness to vilify others or her inability to admit failure. However sad a story (and it’s a wretched thing to happen to a student) it’s not going to create the type of behavior we’re seeing now.
Of course I really don’t know anything about teen development so that para probably doesn’t mean much.
By the way, women now receive, I believe, slightly more than half of the doctorates in “biological and agricultural sciences.”
Which are the best sciences, needless to say.
the same idiot who whined that PZ isn’t sciency enough was rambling about how non-judgmental Mandela was.
Constructing an “I’m not weak like those other women who whine about sexism and harrassment. If anyone pulls that on me, I stand up to it! I bulldoze right past it!” persona is often a response to having experienced it yourself as a member of an oppressed group and the sense of helplessness and other fears and emotions this calls forward. It’s a defense that might be helpful to you personally but can have negative effects on other people in your category who might remind you of all of this.
It’s a defense that might be helpful to you personally
More superficially, of course – not in the sense of your development as a human being.
Sure, Mandela was non-judgmental when he’d won, because he believed that such a policy of reconciliation would be the best choice for South Africa to move forward. It was a gutsy tactic, but it remains to be seen whether it was effective or not. It’s astonishing how conveniently many people forget that Gandhi, Mandela, Martin Luther King, and a lot of other icons of “niceness” were engaged in a life-or-death struggle for liberation and what is conveniently remembered as “niceness” was usually just one of many tactics employed in the service of that struggle.
Wait a minute….
That means the concentration of Limbaugh-level stupid in North America has just gone up….
NO!
Why, Walton, WWWWHHHHHYYYYYY?????
QFFT. I may have to make this into a t-shirt or something.
SC, you’ve got that exactly right:
The tricky bit is that the part that I’ve bolded is necessary, the part in italics is harmful, because if you think this way, you have just turned your own gender into “other”. And that really can screw a person up.
Standing up has its risks and costs, but not standing up is costlier, in my experience.
And worse, when you then treat your own female students like shit because they need to “learn how to deal with life the way I did”, and no way in hell are you going to let them get through easier than you had it. I’m really glad I never dealt with any female role models/mentors like that, but I’ve heard stories.
That sounds painfully familiar. It’s the attitude many senior members of the armed forces have towards hazing. Because they endured it and life was miserable for them as they rose through the ranks who’re are new pfcs and lance corporals to complain.
They should be happy that it isn’t worse.
I hope, ERV never gets to that point while in a position of authority over others. Personal bullshit does not warrant messing with someone else’s career and life.
Hm. I see what you’re saying, but I can’t agree. I don’t define weakness in the same way. I mean, you don’t have to stand up to every instance of oppression to “prove” that you’re strong. I think your decision to stay in engineering was strong, and I think the same about hers to go with another option that’s fortunately suited her.
I think what’s necessary is to realize that there’s no invulnerable individual who can stand up to institutionalized oppression on their own. As individuals, we’re all weak. However people respond personally to individual acts of oppression, what matters is recognizing the reality and finding strength in solidarity.
Why am I sounding like a union pamphlet all of a sudden?
Deep Thoughts, with Salty Current.
SC:
Basically, that’s what happened, albeit in a more personal way (I hesitate to use the word intimate, for the obvious reasons.) I don’t remember the details now, but it was something to do with how she was treated over an attempted rape or a rape threat. I recall that she felt the fuss over Egate was both demeaning to those with more serious experiences and a sort of real life derailment. She wasn’t right, of course, however, I refused to give her grief on that score then and I maintain my stance. Some people deal with a situation like that by basically punching their way through to the other side.
As for her apparent dislike of PZ these days, early in Egate, she requested a chat with him about her experience and her viewpoint privately and when that didn’t happen, she sort of punched all the way through to the other side on that, too.
All that said, she jumped off the cliff with determination early on in regard to Egate and sexism in general. She’s wrong and I expect she knows that full well. Right now, she’s feeling strong and confident from what she thinks is defiance, and what comes across to every one else as spite.
Abby has a great deal of difficulty in accepting the fact that yes, it’s possible for her to be wrong. So far, that hasn’t led her into making good decisions and it’s led to some seriously bad fucking behaviour.
No, I was just responding in kind. You’re the one who is trying to dissect PZ’s annual CV additions for some reason. Nothing about his was stretched – you do understand the concept of academic freedom? That he can do research on whatever the hell he wants and it still counts? And your little snipping at it was mostly conjecture, not based on any hard pieces of information. And the conjecture itself was based on a lot of faulty assumptions. I’m not criticizing your resume, I’m criticizing your thought process.
SC,
Hmm, I don’t actually disagree with your disagreement at all. I must have messed up what I was trying to say. I was really trying to convey that women do need to assert a strong presence in a traditionally masculine environment to find a decent niche in the pecking order. The substantive point I was trying to make (and clearly failed to) was that bolstering courage by considering other groups of people weak is a bad mistake. Especially if this is a group that you actually belong to.
bwe4
Fuckin’ snob.
Why the hell does PZ’s academic record matter anyway? I read his blog for the social commentary, much more than for the science, as I’m sure many do. He could be an unemployed spanner-passer’s assistant for all I care. The words matter, not the source.
You’re not even making any sense. You’re saying that PZ lied and that your accomplishments are identical to yours, but you only got to that point by making leaps of conjecture about what you think he’s doing and what you think that means (I gave the one example of what you seem to think having an advisee means, which is wrong).
Oh really? Who said this, then…?
Fuck off.
As another example, you said:
And then you went on nattering as if it was indeed a publication about science communication, which was something you made up wholesale in your mind. You then proceeded to use this same tactic several more times. Do you understand that your interpretation of what he said is entirely made up in your own head?
Banhammertime?
PZ Myers
25 May 2012 at 5:41 pm
Oh, I forgot — if that lack wit bwe4 shows up again without giving a short list of his recent scientific contributions, he will be banned. Goose, gander, etc.
It means spending time with them each semester going over their goals and program plan, generally around a half hour each. For 35 students, that’s almost full work week per year right there. That’s the minimum, though. Advisees, particularly at small campuses, also drop in from time to time with various issues, problems, forms, just to talk about their goals in life, etc. Estimate another hour or so total for each, and you’re up to two full work weeks per year. And that’s not counting the ones who are needy; I know students who meet with their advisors weekly. Now add in the work needed to stay up on all the curriculum changes not just in your program, but also in gen ed and other distribution requirements, and that’s at least a couple more days. 35 students at minimum take up close to two full weeks’ worth of work, often three, and sometimes up to four. So you’re looking at between a half and a whole month of work time devoted solely to advising, not counting anything else that’s part of the job.
Christ but I do hate you ivory tower assholes who think you’re so much better than the rest of us.
Fuck you.
You dismiss someone’s accomplishments and then belittle them as not a real scientist because they’re in a teaching position. And now you go on to pretend you meant nothing by it.
bwe4 deliberately forgets to mention the publication, the grant, and the field project, persists with the claim of “no science”, ignores the fact that teaching IS a scientific contribution as important if not more important than any primary research (what use is any scientific finding if the knowledge is not taught so that people will know it and be able to use it?), and then has the hypocritical temerity to call PZ a liar?
What a pathetic, dishonest, hypocritical fapwit.
Boring poisoning the well arguments are boring.
I don’t know how much this has to do with anything going on with ERV right now. The quoted portion above more or less summarizes my IRL reputation (not that I am tough exactly, but that I don’t put up with crap from people). You can either “stand up” to sexism by participating in it to a certain degree and pretending it doesn’t matter OR you can try to get other women on board and agitate. It so isn’t a matter of what you’re willing to put up with, it is a matter of how someone goes about resisting.
re:toughness. It is kind of a weird thing in our culture. Being tough usually means having a totally immature reaction to anything unpleasant (beating someone up for implying you are gay) OR pretending to not have any feelings (like after seeing something traumatic), both are maladaptive reactions to conflict. It is intended to mean that a person can deal with anything, but its an idea in a comic book, not real life. Real life people who pride themselves on their toughness are usually ill suited for dealing with real problems.
And no, the fapwit’s little snark referred to in @171 doesn’t count, but just accentuates the odious hypocrisy.
Fapwit certainly deserves the banhammer even more than TZT denizens like rajkumar. Those still contribute something of at least some interest. This fapwit contributed NOTHING.
julian, this fapwit is no “ivory tower asshole”, its own so-called accomplishments are far too meager to qualify for any sort of tower. It’s just a plain asshole.
When you question the credentials of others, you had better be prepared to defend your own. Glass houses and all.
You are the one being dishonest. And comparing apples to oranges. PZ teaches at a TEACHING UNIVERSITY. You are attempting in your inane mind to compare him to someone at a RESEARCH UNIVERSITY. Category error, which makes you a liar and bullshitter.
Citations needed, or you aren’t scientific. Play the game properly, or shut the fuck up like you loser you are.
Always was at the ACS meetings I attended. Why are you lying?
Asserted without evidence, *POOF*, dismissed without evidence. Those without evidence tend to be liars and bullshitters. You are fitting that bill. Rethink your methodology.
You’re making your own bed of lies, bullshit, and fuckwittery.
We are surprised at your self-delusion, and lies you keep repeating without evidence. Show us your credentials…PZ’s is on the sidebar.
You want us to listen to you??? Back off, and document your claims, and apply the same reasoning to your inane efforts in the sciences. That should keep you quiet.
And notice how yet another defender of Smith has turned out to be an intellectually dishonest, hypocritical, lying specimen lacking in even the slightest hint of the barest bit of basic human decency.
Not really surprising. Ethically decent people do not try to defend the indefensible.
Americans are discouraged from being interested in how other people actually live in other countries. It is a combination of teaching american exceptionalism all through school (and media) combined with the narcissism inherent in consumerism. Americans take their information from talking points instead of groups like the WHO.
It is beyond annoying. When the health care debate was going on I was on the government payroll (because our hospital took state patients like prisoners and homeless people and such), and the dude who trained me went on a tirade about government workers. It was really puzzling. I said something to him about how I am not lazier because I work at hospital A instead of hospital B, and that he too was working for the government. I also couldn’t understand how people could work in the same ER as I did and conclude that things were okay, seeing as how homeless people came in with all kinds of complications caused by lack of preventative care. I learned that all the forces I discussed above made people blame the homeless for their plight. It is worse in Utah, with the rich being seen as the most righteous with god and all. I still have hope that if regular people saw what was going on in emergency rooms they would understand the problem much better. There are things that happened that I will never forget because they were so unfair.
I don’t know why PZ bothered to reply to the science credentials thing; it’s not like he needs it for anything we’ve been talking about. Maybe he’s jet-lagged and grumpy. FWIW, even if he were publishing in science communication rather than science direct, I don’t see any problem with that. Science Communication is a real field; I have friends with degrees in it who do good work. Perhaps BWE means to dis social science as not real or something?
Skeptifem,WRT:
This is a speculation as to how Abbie got herself to the position she’s in. It’s not exactly relevant to her any more, since she’s dug her hole so deep she’s due to come up somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean any minute now.
The problematic aspect is the bit I bolded: seeing yourself as the special exception and other women as contemptible. It’s very common for women in science to start there, because we’ve had to fight our way in. The system selects us for stubbornness and a certain degree of obliviousness to – or contempt of – social mores about gender. Eventually many of us discover that we’re not the only one in that boat, and find common ground. We usually learn better about whether the enemy is really those mean girls at high school who called you a nerd, or the patriarchal systems.
I agree with this. It was my fault for using “persona” when I meant “self-image.” I wanted to capture the lack of success of this constructed self-image, revealed in, among other things, its ridiculous, strutting “Lets play in real life,” “Thats what I thought, bitch” exaggeration.
And that’s not even dealing with the fact that graduate students have one job only, to do research. If they don’t have a research scholarship, then they have another job: the other is usually teaching a lab section or two, equivalent to 3-6 hours a week, generally not lectures. It really isn’t comparable to an associate professor’s load in any way. And I think it’s really stupid for bwe4 to start throwing down on research credentials on Abbie’s behalf, given I think it’s been mentioned that she doesn’t have any publications yet, and she’s been dissing Jen, who has earned a competitive NSF fellowship.
bwe4, do you see who’s not bringing up scientific credentials? PZ and Jen, because they know (as scientists do) that different fields have different publishing rates, because different institutions have different levels of resource support, because people at different stages of their careers have different research capacity. It’s apples and oranges and turtles. It’s generally people who don’t understand the field who try and convert a CV into numbers of some sort and then just compare the tallies, the way you are trying to do. Notice that actual scientists don’t judge each others’ work that way.
And it’s very easy to develop jealousy over another woman who seems to have gotten to the same place as you without making those sacrifices; if a woman has fought her way in by consciously burying her preferred external presentation of femininity and then sees another woman making it in with those mores intact, raginess can happen. (e.g. “In my day if I wore a pink frilly dress into the lab I would have been laughed out of it, and look at her flouncing in wearing one like it’s no big deal any more!”)
I’m not suggesting this was the defining event of her life. It was just a rare occasion in which she acknowledged the effects of sexism on her life without the machista framing. Not long after, she wrote something in response to a woman talking about the problem, about how she’d never experienced sexism in science. At the time, I was angry because it seemed to me such an obvious lie used to dismiss other women. Now I think it actually had more to do with constructing the defensive self-image, which puts it in a different light but of course doesn’t excuse her behavior. I’d say the same thing about men who go this route and hurt other people.
skeptifem @ 182;
Bashing government employees is always a popular pastimes with oblivious libertarians and small government conservatives, and all the more so in times of economic downturn. The hatchet job that the current UK government has performed on the NHS being a case in point.
How such people imagine that torpedoing health care with aid the economy is beyond me.
There are few things more disgusting than watching people clamber onto their high horse with self-righteous victim-blaming. They care not a whit for the human suffering before them, just so long as they can feel superior.
Isn’t that Christianity in a nutshell? For all its talk about the meek inheriting the kingdom of heaven and the logistical difficulties inherent in maneuvering camels through the eyes of needles, in practice it makes greed, unearned privilege, and ruthlessness virtues.
I am sad to say that I don’t share your optimism. Most people simply don’t want to deal with inequality and injustice like that; it makes them feel guilty, and thus uncomfortable, and so they simply avoid it. It is easier to close your eyes to iniquity than to confront it, especially when a major part of the source of that iniquity is the privilege you enjoy. The same mechanism applies to the problems we encounter here trying to explain male privioege to people and how it relates to misogyny – people just don’t want to hear it, and they will spend time and effort defending the clearly indefensible rather than admit, not that they personally are at fault, but that the privilege they enjoy is the product of a system that also, by its very nature, propagates bigotry toward socially disempowered groups such as women.
They would rather believe that their critics are howling, castration-obsessed she-beast feminazis than admit that they have bought into a system that is at its very core discrimiatory and, by the same token, the rich and successful in our society tend to cleave to the frankly ridiculous myth that such people got to where they are by ‘grit, determination and the honest sweat of their own brow’ – the very apotheosis of The American Dream(TM) – rather than acknowledge that the system was most likley rigged in their favour before they even started playing the game, and that every ounce of advantage they were given free and gratis was bought at the expense of other, less privileged social groups.
One has to keep the context of who the person works for into account. I work in private industry, and my public papers for years has been zero (I had a dozen or so prior to taking this job). The company considers my work their intellectual property, and not to put out to the public. But, this year alone, I have the equivalent of a major publication a half a dozen minor ones, all peer reviewed, as they need to be suitable for Agency review.
@bwe
You’re actually pretty lucky people like carlie are even bothering to give you detailed responses. Since your first post, all I can do is picture you as one of those wind-up monkey toys with the cymbals, because that’s all you’re doing; smacking your cymbals, making as much pointless noise as possible. You’re a time waster.
Anna Brown’s name should be raised constantly.
When I went to my college reunion last week, I was chatting with a friend from undergrad.
Said friend, in undergrad, was a frothing-at-the-mouth leftist.
She is now in her residency at Well-Known Hospital in Major City.
We started talking about the ACA and to my surprise, she started bashing it. For coercing doctors. And saying that Obama is a nasty person for telling doctors how to practice and trying to boss them around.
O_O
What goes on in emergency rooms? People insert things into other people, pretty simple concept. And then there’s the odd hero who is a legendary doctor and looks gorgeous at the same time, who gets to sleep with all the nurses, like me or George Clooney.
All a matter of context.
When Christians were poor, the rich were the camels.
When Christians were the weak and dispossessed, the meek inherited the kingdom of heaven.
When Christians became wealthy, greed became godly.
BWE,
You and your coterie of PZ haters at AtBC/Talk Rat/ERV are beyond pathetic. Just because you/they disagree with PZ over sexism (amazing how much of this came post Elevatorgate isn’t it?), some aspects of atheism, and don’t like his tone they feel justified to make a little campaign about it.
Guess what, I’m a scientist as you know. I don’t care if PZ is a better scientist than me, a worse one, an older one, a younger one (he’s not, the man is frigging ancient! ;-) ), does more research than I do, less, about the same or none. I even don’t care about his beard. And really, there’s no excuse for it.
None of it has any bearing on the accuracy of his arguments or not. None. Not a sausage. Just like Abbie’s hair colour or choice of dogs or particular style of communication. I may like or hate all of these things about all of these people and more, but it just simply does not matter when it comes to the validity of their arguments.
Interestingly, to take another example, secularism is something that can cheerfully be shared by religious and non-religious folks, it benefits us all. I can get together (and have) with a Catholic and work for secularism in a unified fashion. The fact that she thinks I’m a hellbound heretic and I think she is a deluded bliss ninny cracker worshipping fuckwit on the issue of religion is moot. It simply doesn’t interfere with the activism around our shared secularism, our other shared values, and most importantly the evidence behind, and logic of, those arguments.
When are you bunch of whingers going to wake up and realise that you’re just muddying the waters, and until you stop doing so, you are no more worth bothering with than the creationists and other such deluded fruitcakes? In other words: only to the extent of being mocked and being opposed when you get out of line and try to demand everyone do things your way or not at all.
Get a fucking grip.
Louis
Also, emergency rooms are great for rumours. A nurse who is one of my confidantes once asked me if it was true what was being said, that I had sex with *stunner overseas trained female doctor* in the disabled toilet during night shift. I wish it had been true, the reality was a little bit more mundane, we had snuck out for a cigarette…
yes, dramatic people love to work there. I was glad I only worked in the ER some of the time, besides being depressing I almost never got a lunch because of how busy it was on a swing shift.
I’ve heard that before, but honestly never experienced it to the extent that it exists here. The church practically forces members into poverty (marry young, have kids right away, get a degree from byu, but always pay your tithing!), so they have to sell the idea that poverty is deserved a bit harder than other churches.
But it really can happen to anyone, not just marginalized people. People with good incomes and insurance get bankrupted all the time. The only people who are safe are millionaires. I really believe that most people understand this. KSL ( a local news station) ran a headline that said “UTAHANS OPPOSED TO HEALTH CARE REFORM”, but the poll showed that utahans only opposed one part of the reform. The majority approved of every other measure. I think most people know someone who got sick and lost everything, or almost did, and tend to think it isn’t right.
Being in a marginalized group of course worsens any mistreatment. mental health treatment, OBGYN, bariatric medicine, etc are full of outrageous abuses. I don’t want to minimize the importance of that when discussing the problems with american medical treatment.
Waaahahahaha! So long, sucker!
I feel sick. This is the first I’ve heard of it.
I would *like* to believe that most people understand this, but from what I’ve seen… not so much. People really do believe, in the deepest depths of their hearts, that they are not destitute because of some moral or other inherent superiority instead of just dumb luck chance.
I’ve seen this too. And the rationalization always goes: yes, but [friend/relative] isn’t like *that*. It wasn’t their fault.
With the implication that unlike the friend or relative, when other people become bankcrupt or destitute, it IS their own damn fault. Somehow. It must be. Otherwise it can happen just as easily, in between one blink of an eye and the next, completely randomly and undeservedly to me. And that can’t be right.
Oh, and don’t even get me *Started* on Ob/Gyn treatment, marginalization, people who love to judge women for the ob/gyn choices they make because OMG TEH BABBY!@!!! and that whole fucking can of worms.
One other area I see a lot of abuse is geriatric care. Shocking, horrible. Sometimes I really don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
@skeptifem;
I am probably with Gen, Uppity Ingrate on this. Bankruptcy can and does happen to anyone, and yet the attitude is still widespread in our society that poverty is a just (even divine) punishment for a personal moral failing, no matter how much evidence is amassed that points to the contrary.
Just caught up with the entire thread. It was interesting. Some questions occur to me.
How come we’re the echo chamber when all the ‘dissenting opinions’ from the slimepit are starting to sound like blatant copypasta?
Why do we still need to explain that what Watson said amounted to a polite ‘Guys, don’t do that’ after someone hit on her in an elevator despite her express wish not to be hit on and was in no way some harsh demand that no one ever hit on anyone again? (if I got that wrong somehow someone please correct me)
Why does bwe4 think he’s clever?
QFT This was a seriously good read – like most of yours Gregory Greenwood. Also on last page.
Louis 484 I need to copy that and put it in a file marked “THis, just this”
Regarding Abbie, I agree with Caine and SC. And, it is hard to feel sympathy for her motivations/emotional reactions because all women face the same thing and most seem to manage not to attack other women so constantly and viciously.
the rich and successful in our society tend to cleave to the frankly ridiculous myth that such people got to where they are by ‘grit, determination and the honest sweat of their own brow’ – the very apotheosis of The American Dream(TM) – rather than acknowledge that the system was most likley rigged in their favour before they even started playing the game, and that every ounce of advantage they were given free and gratis was bought at the expense of other, less privileged social groups.
Whilst I don’t agree that rich people are only rich because of hard work – a lot of it is luck and ‘who you know’, as it were.
But this seems to miss that in favour of the idea that no unprivileged people can get rich, which simply isn’t true. By this, a rich Indian woman has every right to be a libertarian, as she would have fought against class system and overcome her lack of privilege.
Now white men are the richest and yes, are far more likely to be well off, but they are not the only rich people. Not everyone got to being rich by playing off of privilege.
Typical slimepitizen tactic of twisting reality 180 degrees and of pretending it is a pit of good slime when it is a pit of bad slime.
A grip that has, apparently, slipped off the handlebars.
I keep seeing your assertion, but evidence for your allegation is lacking. Put up a chart, or shut the fuck up…
And where is the evidence that PZ is doing that? I see nothing but bullshit in your allegation. Show the organization he is doing, or shut the fuck up…
Assertions, but no evidence. Now show some links to prove your case or shut the fuck up. All evidenceless assertions, which is all you have presnted to us, can and will *POOF* be dismissed without evidence (read your Hitchens quotes).
Your OPINION only. Explaining his policy in public? Not bullying if he never goes beyond that point, and you would know that if you understood the difference between aggressive and assertive. PZ is being assertive, not aggressive.
Nope, not from what I see. He isn’t being aggressive, but assertive. But then, anything other than agreeing with you is considered aggressive in your deluded mind.
Then you should be looking in the mirror. You are trying to bend us to your will. You haven’t evidenced your case, and it is nothing but your OPINION…When asked to provide evidence, you ignore it. And that tells me the passive-aggressive game you attempt to play to manipulate people…Typical loser ploy.
Still waiting for you to quit lying and bullshitting by showing real evidence for your claims.
Each and every one of them. Either you tell the truth or you don’t. Show us here you tell the truth. Including you not being aggressive with your passive-aggressive behavior by trying to change out minds with your OPINION only. Welcome to science, where you are considered a liar and bullshitter without evidence. Start the links or go away…
I’ll see you progress, or lack thereof, in a few hours.
@ niftyatheist;
I’m glad you liked it.
——————————————————————
@ ryanwilkinson;
Agreed.
Perhaps I expressed myself poorly – it was not my intent to suggest that less privileged people can never become wealthy. Rather, I was pointing out that the bulk of those people who are wealthy come from background of privilege that grants them a level of advantage that they rarely acknowledge. The playing field is, in most intances, far from level, but they pretend that everyone has an equal chance at success, and they simply worked harder for it. That attitude often leads them to judge the poorer members of society as morally lacking – as being somehow wilfully poor. As you yourself point out, it is no coincidence that white, middle aged heterosexual men are somewhat over represented amongst the most powerful and wealthy in our society.
She would be entitled to believe whatsoever she chose, like we all are, but she would still be contributing to a socially harmful meme is she went on to say that her success proves that there are no insurmountable or particularly great obstacles to success such as her own among the less privileged members of society, and so that other people from less advantaged backgrounds who have not replictaed her success are to be somehow viewed as morally inferior.
By ‘every right to be a Libertarian’, I mean, ‘would be somewhat justified in this stupid life-choice’.
TLC,
I have no concrete idea why PZ gets the drivel he does from (supposedly) “within” the atheist/sceptic/rationalist community*, I have a few suggestions:
1) There are a LOT of quite recalcitrant sexists out there who definitely were smoked out of their rat holes by Elevatorgate. The observable fact that roughly a year later we’re still getting “herp derp but how do we hit on people then, feminazi?” and sundry horseshit is just the start of the evidence for that! There is so much more, and some of it is even mentioned in this thread.
2) PZ is prominent. Why do some many people have a go at the Prime Minister or the President or whoever, and do so on the basis of MASSIVE ignorance? Because that person is the Big Giant Head, and that’s who you shout at. PZ doesn’t need to be right or wrong, he just needs to be prominent and relatively powerful for some inadequates to start throwing shit.
Don’t mistake me, I think speaking truth to power, criticising the powerful and influential and generally shouting at the Big Giant Head when informed are all good things. There’s much I disagree with PZ on. And I’m happy to poke him with a stick and shout at him. Although why anyone thinks PZ is the be all and end all of anything is beyond me.
I don’t say this nastily, but I bother to post at Pharyngula because there are some people here who I find challenge me. PZ among them. They make me question my assumptions. They know vastly more than me on topics I’d not even considered. THIS IS A GOOD THING!!!!! Some of them, a minority, even like my jokes. Weird I know. As I said up thread, it’s about the only place (in fact 99% of the time now it is the only place) I bother to post on the web. Time limits apply even to verbose motherfuckers like me.
I read what PZ posts because I find what he says largely interesting, he’s changed my views about a couple of things, as have many people here, and that’s about it. I read a huge amount of things, a large section of my day is spent reading on and off line, both professionally and personally.
However, I no more post here because of PZ, per se, than I did at AtBC because of Wes Elsberry. Both people I admire for one reason and another, both people I find interesting and intellectually stimulating. I imagine I am far from alone in any of this.
I get the fact that PZ is a prominent atheist/counter-creationist figure, see 1), but I’ve yet to sign a contract which permits me to post at Pharyngula only if I agree with every word the man says and adore him from afar.
Hell, I don’t even agree with every word I say. PZ doesn’t stand a chance. When did “post at a blog” equate to “worship the blogger”?
3) PZ is outspoken and “rude”, although I rather think his standards of what constitute “constructive rudeness” and mine align quite often. Whether it be crackergate, elevatorgate, gelatogate or some unrememberedgate, the amount of tone trolling is enormous. Pierce a cracker with a nail and through it the trash? Get death threats and screamed at by people on radio talk shows. Actually try to support women’s right and treat them like people as opposed to ambulatory fucktoys? Get screamed at and called wonderful things like “mangina”. Don’t accept the apology of some intemperate little gelato vending bigot? You are satan for all eternity. And double mean.
And yet these self styled (pseudo) “critics” never focus on the people flinging the shit, giving the death threats or exhibiting the bigotry. It’s always PZ’s (or someone’s) fault for standing up and disagreeing in a manner they disapprove of. I wonder why that MLK quote is so apt, so often. Negative peace. Best phrase ever.
The worst, absolute WORST, criticism I can apply to anyone I deal with on the web is that, on a specific topic, they are simply not worth talking to. I haven’t yet found that topic with PZ, perhaps I will one day, who knows. And hopefully out there there are trenchant critics of PZ and atheism and rationalism and science and feminism and so on that will eventually convert me to a PZ hating, Baptist, Bliss Ninny, Homeopath who thinks that wife beating should be made an Olympic sport and that everyone has their own truth, man. That will be a hell of a party. The gauntlet is down woo-peddlers, I’m ripe for conversion! And when I say “ripe” I guess I mean I just want a fight every now and then! ;-)
Those not worth talking to about a topic move from a file marked “interlocutor” to a file marked “mock/ignore” when the topic is up. Too many people of late are doing this on the issue of sexism. There are many disagreements we could have about some aspects of feminism, for example I (probably due to personal ignorance) think there are still open questions about porn and sex work, but to have those discussions the discussants need to able to understand what privilege actually is as a starter! If “guys, don’t do that” equates to “guys never hit on women ever because sexual desire is TEH Evil and makes you hate women or something” in the minds of these bozos that’s the “world is 6000 years old” of feminism. It just renders one a mockable fuckwit on the topic, or at least worth ignoring.
Meh, rambling post is rambling.
4) Why does BWE think he’s clever? I have no idea. Perhaps he is. He always seemed like a nice enough bloke on AtBC, I think perhaps he’s jumped the shark on a motorbike powered by PZ hate.
Either way, there’s this weird idea out there in the minds of some deluded fuckwits that PZ is some kind of idol (sorry PZ, you ain’t an idol, and I rather suspect you don’t want to be) and think the way to disagree with him is to knock him off that alleged plinth. Almost exclusively their critiques are about Pseudo-PZ-Idol the man, and not his arguments. It’s piss poor stuff. At least the bit I’ve encountered is largely as substance free as a homeopathic remedy. In fact, that is all BWE and others have, 2 parts legitimate point diluted by an ocean of envy, hate and inadequacy.
Louis
* I wonder if these bozos realise they are no more my ally, for example, than the aforementioned Catholic secularist is. There is no US and THEM, there is only an US. There’s common ground everywhere. I share common ground with the Catholic secularist and at the same time, perhaps different, perhaps similar, common ground with the sexist atheist. I don’t share common ground on the issue of the former’s Catholicism, or the latter’s sexism.
Thanks a lot Louis, I was most definitely not expecting such a detailed and well thought out answer to my mostly rhetorical questions.
If I’m ever in the UK we should definitely smoke and drink a few.
bew4 lying again I see.
It’s either that or the odious idiot doesn’t even know what “academic credentials” mean, and is too lazy and dishonest to find out and use the term properly.
Or for that matter, what “pissing contest” means.
BWE,
Tell you what, I’ll get back to you, here, later on. If I can be remotely bothered. I’m off out for several beers.
As far as I’m concerned you, and several other AtBCers, have jumped the shark. Take that however you like, spin it however you like, seriously, go for it. It’s just very, very likely to be beyond pointless discussing any of this with you based on what you’ve said here and elsewhere.
Don’t you get it yet that no one here is responsible for what PZ says or does, or what I say or do, or what you say or do? My posting here is not tacit agreement with something. Would I have accepted gelato guy’s apology? Meh, who knows, I wasn’t there. Do I even care? You know, not much. PZ’s an adult, free to do as he will. Writing about his experiences on his blog are not a command for troops to act upon. I can’t remember the city or the name of the gelato shop owner, I don’t care to find out. If I go there and fancy a gelato, and the store happens to be the one mentioned, I’d buy a gelato there in blissful ignorance.
Just like if I ever organise a conference or meeting and have the opportunity to have Abbie speak, unlikely but bear with me, PZ’s decision to not appear on a stage with her is his decision, not binding on me. Why you and your coterie of shitheads seem to think it is, is utterly beyond me.
Louis
Can we just call it ice-cream? I keep having to read Gelato several times to pronounce it all possible ways to make sure I’ve got it right…
You haven’t demonstrated that he did so. And in response to your going “YEAH BUT CREATIONISM,” I’ll point out that you asked what kind of conferences still invite PZ. He answered, it wasn’t the answer you wanted to hear, and so you’re moving the goalposts.
bwe4 @ #218:
You didn’t. See http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/special-pleading
Why is this thread active again? Oh, because some tedious concern wanker has strolled in with a credential dick-measuring contest. Well, ignoring that for a second…
Religion is fading away all by itself? With no help from any outside movements directing criticism at all its weak points and providing alternative modes of thinking and lifestyle? Wow, who’da thunk it.
Cipher, Cipher, Cipher! Please grab my email address from my zenfolio and email me, please – I haz something for you. /OT
Rey:
It sure as hell isn’t in my neck of the woods. Or most of the rest of ‘merica either.
BWE,
Sorry, but where have I commented on anything to do with PZ’s academic credentials? I believe I’ve made no comment on the issue. So how am I “accepting intellectual dishonesty” from “my side”?
I wasn’t even aware I was on a “side”. And that I think is a large part of your problem. You don’t get this.
More than that, if PZ has misrepresented his credentials then that’s dishonest, bad, and all the normal things it would be if anyone did the same thing. Clear?
If he’s done this, then hey, whaddya know, you’ve found a topic on which PZ and I disagree, I think lying about academic credentials is bad, if he’s lied, apparently he doesn’t. Hurrah! I’ve not seen any evidence of this because, if I’m honest, I’m not really interested. Egotistical pissing contests and blog wars and personality clashes and soap operas are not my thing.
To be more honest, I can’t really be bothered to be dragged into your little hate-PZ-fest, it’s so orthogonal to my interests as to be hilarious.
I don’t have stand up rows with every single one of my friends (who I am now late for!) about every single issue we disagree upon. And there are many, a lot of the time I simply keep schtum and enjoy their company. I’m not saying that’s what I am doing here, far from it actually. What I’m saying is I don’t, and can’t, fight every fight with equal fervour. I have to pick and choose. If PZ has been dishonest, and there’s evidence, then maybe that’s a fight worth having.
But as I said, given your track record and “HA GOTCHA” horseshit, I’m not really minded to even consider your case. What you’re not getting is it’s not allegiance to PZ that fuels my disinterest, it’s your ridiculousness.
Louis
*For whom I am now late ;)
Caine,
Okay! :D
Wait, that’s what you think the point of his post was???? No, he was simply expressing his opinion about not wanting to personally associate with the kind of person who says the kind of shit Abbie says about people.
Go to scienceblogs dot com, look for ERV. After the slimepit thread started it quickly became just about the only one that anybody bothered to comment on (her other posts got far fewer comments), so if it’s still like that, odds are that at least a couple of the “recent comments” on the sidebar will be to that thread, whatever it’s named now.
it’s not, because you have provided absolutely no proof that he misrepresented them in any way.
Aside from the last claim being false, this whole “point” makes zero sense. Much of the discussion on this thread has revolved around Smith’s snarling bluster prior to an event at which she and Greta Christina are invited speakers. Even if PZ did no science, even if his record were only comparable to Smith’s, Greta Christina isn’t a scientist at all. This is the case with many of the invited speakers at atheist and freethought events, which wouldn’t be the place to present a scientific paper (other than maybe a social scientific one) in any case.
What? That doesn’t make any sense either. They’re in entirely different fields, and would therefore never be at the same conferences no matter how much research each was doing. Hell, they work on entirely different kingdoms of organisms. Do you think that there are conferences of “science”? Jeez, that’s on par with the line from The Lost Skeleton of Cadavara: “Seriously, Betty, you know what this meteor could mean to science. If we find it, and it’s real, it could mean a lot. It could mean actual advances in the field of science.”
LOL
Yep. bwe4’s cluelessness extends well beyond not even know what the slimepit is. You’d think at some point it would occur to him to shut the fuck up, just for the sake of not spewing irrelevant bullshit.
We’re talking about speakers for the 2012 Oklahoma Freethought Convention, right?
Christina: not a scientist— withdrawnLack: scientist (professor and clinical psychologist)
MacBain: not a scientist
Mehta: not a scientist
Silverman: not a scientist
Smith: not a scientist (grad student studying to become one)
Tabash: not a scientist
Notice a pattern?
Whoops, I left out Andrews. Couldn’t find a bio or a cv, but I’m pretty sure he’s not a scientist.
Well, I’ll say this for you. You haven’t let your ignorance put a damper on your righteous indignation.
You apparently have no idea why PZ has taken the position he has wrt Smith.
Smith and her coterie have been verbally attacking various female bloggers for going on a year. Their savaging of Rebecca Watson has been particularly personal–prolonged and gleefully misogynist.
The whole thing started with elevatorgate, which I’m sure you–oh wait, you don’t know anything about that, either, do you?
I didn’t know GC had withdrawn. Good decision, but awful that she had to make it.
First time poster here. I am relatively new to this community but have been an Atheist for as long as I can remember. I have only been to two conferences but have had the privilege of seeing Abbie and Greta speak. I live in a small town in Oklahoma and was very much looking forward to seeing both of them this year at Free Ok. I had no idea that there was this much hostility in our movement. A good portion of you are just plain RUDE to each other! Maybe I haven’t found my place after all. As a newbie just getting a start figuring out the Blog world and internet community I must say that I am not impressed. There are bigger egos here than during my church days.
Les..
New Speaker Announced:
Due to misogynistic verbal attacks on Greta by Abbie Smith and her pit of slimeballs, more like.
I wouldn’t call it ego, though that may be part of it. I would call it a willingness to tolerate and encourage people who do not think women are actual human beings.
And thank you so much for the tone troll. We’ve never, ever, ever seen that before.
@leslie
I’m not sure who you were directing that at here, but pretending to be nice to each other while putting up with misogyny is something people in churches do well, not us. Some of the things Abbie Smith herself has said about different FTB bloggers have gone way past the point where you ignore it. Something needs to be done about it. Tell you what, you go read Abbie Smith’s comments about Greta, then substitute your name for Greta’s and reread them, then come back here and tell us what you would have done.
leslie:
Goodness me! Perhaps your naivete in regards to the secular/rationalist/atheist sphere on the net has something to do with your disenchantment? There’s a whole fucktonne of history being referenced in this thread alone you’re ignorant of, and while ignorance is fine, refusing to remedy it is not. You might want to start with the S&P here: https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2011/08/01/pharyngula-standards-practices/
Then you might want to actually read this thread for fucking content, dear. We don’t much care for Tone Trolls™.
Aratina Cage:
I’m sure that crap has not helped. And Abby and her pet misogynists play all wide-eyed and innocent whenever someone brings up the fact that they are one of the reasons a lot of women are uncomfortable with the idea of attending conferences. Yep, bullying and misogyny on tap, c’mon and join the party!
Tone Troll?? I am not taking sides with anyone I was just making an observation. I don’t know either of them and was actually impressed equally (in different ways) with both of them in person. Whatever is going on I hope that you guys figure it out. Back to my bridge.. LOL
Les
and who does have one published paper already, IIRC.
a rich Indian woman would likely still operate with some privileges that those Indian people who haven’t gotten rich don’t have, even if it’s only a question of having been born with (and having had the opportunity to hone) very high intelligence, a ridiculous amount of willpower, and a thick skin.
Doesn’t mean she didn’t put a fuckload of work into becoming rich against the odds, but really: none of us can escape systemic effects, but if you think about it, someone has to be that “one” in “one in a million” (what sucks though is when that “one” is then used to lie about what the odds are). it’s not quite the lottery, but a lot of sheer luck is still involved.
seconded.
I’m sorry, would you prefer if we did it like the churches do and be superficially all politeness and civility, while condoning and promoting bigotries of all kinds underneath?
sorry, but fighting bigotries can’t be done without some “rudeness”.
you’re trolling about the tone of our conversation to the exclusion of subtance. that’s the (admittedly local) definition of tone troll.
As you noted above, how sad that after Smith’s open belligerence and threats to nip at GC’s heels and make the event a totally unpleasant experience for her, the response is this:
Was that really from an organizer? If so, it’s shockingly disrespectful to GC, an invited speaker, and the commmunity in the state deserves better.
bwe4 has been banned for extreme idiocy. Now you also see why I usually don’t bother to respond to these morons: he demands my cv, I give him some recent efforts, and he lies about an invited lecture at a Society for Developmental Biology meeting (on science communication…but apparently he is now moving the goal posts to demand what subject I’m allowed to present), mangles my recent pair of talks in a distinguished lecture series (hint: two talks, one a public lecture, the other a science talk to the biology department), maligns an upcoming letter with Elizabeth Lloyd that he does not know the title of, let alone subject, somehow manages to pretend that a major grant is meaningless, smears my students (yes, they’re undergraduates…this is an undergrad institution), and then accuses me of misrepresenting my work.
That’s the thing: I’ve learned that no matter what you tell these clueless ignoramuses, they’ll just lie about it to continue in their insane preconceptions that a biology professor at a liberal arts college is just loafing about. I won’t bother again.
Tone trolls never take sides, and while their “observations” must not be well-informed, they must be expressed with indignation. I only wish there were a more rude way of saying “congratulations.”
bwe4 has been banned for extreme idiocy
harrumble!
PZ:
Yabbut you’re not doing science, man! You know, science. Sciencey science, the non-specific, mostest importantest science there is known to humankind!
… it might be a smart thing to watch and learn for a while, yes?
I won’t bother again.
quite right.
I’ve never seen that guy post anything of substance in the last 5 years, anywhere.
oddly, he used to make more sense once upon a time. Makes me wonder if he has a degenerative mental condition of some kind.
mostest importantest science there is known to humankind!
yes, it’s obvious PZ will not be nominated to the Sheriff of SCIENCE* position any time soon.
*nods to Brownian
What in the sweet fuck all does tone trolling have to do with taking sides? Honestly, showing up wearing your stupid hat with waggling finger out, it’s not helping. Tone trolls are those people who glom onto the *gasp* tone of a discussion, rather than the substance and decide to lecture all of us about how rude we are – remember typing that ‘rude’ in all caps? By the way, using all caps is bad netiquette – makes you rude, Cupcake. Welcome to the intertubes.
bwe4 ban
*whew*
I wasn’t looking forward to that on TZT
A good portion of you are just plain RUDE to each other!
*sigh*
I’ll go get the fainting couch, again.
I dunno why ‘Tone Trolls’ are such a bad thing…
It’s observable that all the mostest-famousest leaders in the atheist movement don’t end every speech with ‘Fuck you you horrible person’.
It’s not even like leslie stated he was opposition, it is possible to agree with someone but not like the way they express it.
Now can you (PZ) do something about rajkumar?
That’s because you’re clueless and don’t know when to fuck off.
Effectively, they’re derailing. They’re changing the subject from [whatever] to the way the feel it should be expressed.
ryanwilkinson:
Oh FFS. Do you just have to jump into the asshole end of the pool every few posts? Go and read the fucking Pharyngula Wiki – search for it, because links to it dump you into moderation. Again. (Oh PZ!) In particular, look at the section Memes.
Tone Trolls are boils on the arse of humanity. They never, ever have one damn thing of substance to say, it’s all surface crap. We have a fucktonne of experience with them, all the way from the Leslies of the world to the pros. By the way, you don’t know that Leslie is a male. Watch the gender assumptions.
But the way something is expressed is extremely important; it affects who it reaches and whether or not they listen.
I, for instance, have now decided to disregard all comments by Consciousness Razor, because he’s a bore.
I’m well aware I’m not very …popular… on this wiki, but Leslie wasn’t trying to ‘distract’ from some argument he was making by pointing out tone, he was just saying you appear rude. Though he didn’t do it in a tactful way, no.
PZ Myers tends to be much more reserved in his actual posts than he is in the comments, because I’m sure he’s aware that being so polemic and vitriolic all the time simply isn’t productive.
And I’ve said this before, I think, I’m well aware that in America a lot of things are intensely shit and so probably require a more aggressive fight than I have to do in England, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who disagrees with you is in some way a ‘troll’, and it doesn’t mean that everyone who disagrees with you (as inevitably seems to be the case) should be told to ‘fuck off’.
people who focus on tone to the exclusion of content are contributing nothing of value to the conversation but do occasionally manage to derail said conversations.
it’s also observable that even RD gets called “rude” and “militant” and all that shit. similarly observable is that trying not to use “bad” words in conversation with many tone trolls just gets one ignored (or accused of being rude anyway). I’ve tried that a couple times, just to see what would happen.
*pictures BWE peddling a bike while his face grinds on the ground*
@Louis.
Yeah, didn’t BWE even take over moderating ATBC a few years back?
Do you recall that was when I pulled up stake and stopped posting there?
He seems to be sliding ever downhill in his thinking. Makes me a bit worried, frankly.
(Sorry for the repeated gender assumptions).
I did look at the Pharyngula Wiki and by that definition he isn’t a tone troll, because he didn’t necessarily say you were the opposition.
I’m well aware I’m not very …popular… on this wiki, but Leslie wasn’t trying to ‘distract’ from some argument he was making by pointing out tone, he was just saying you appear rude. Though he didn’t do it in a tactful way, no.
you know what will NOT ingratiate you with this crowd?
wasting space trying to debate tone trolling.
leslie was focusing on the tone to the exclusion of the content, namely the bigotry spilling from the slimepit. it’s a derailing tactic when done on purpose, annoying distraction and a waste of time when done accidentally.
Think if Richard Dawkins had the opinion of people on this site – lets say Richard Dawkins had the charisma of Consciousness Razor.
He would never have been able to so virulently throw atheism into the zeitgeist, he would have been ignored and mocked and ridiculed.
Just because you have less impact, doesn’t mean you should take less care.
I wonder how many times you’ll have to be told that not everyone here is American before it gets through?
also, what makes a tone troll is to complain about tone while completely ignoring the substance of a discussion and contributing nothing worthwile at all.
kinda like you’re doing right now.
Show me, with thread and number, where anyone has been called a troll just for disagreeing. I disagree with people here. Other regulars disagree. Trolling is very specific behaviour and complaining about the tone, as opposed to substantively, or humourously, contributing to the conversation, is trolling as it derails the conversation at hand.
To quote Stacy at #220,
Absolutely hit the nail on the head. This is what I find most annoying about all this crap. It’s not about facts it’s about tearing down the Big Giant Head for whatever reason.
[Evil Willow]
Bored now.
[/Evil Willow]
Anyway, I see PZ has already let the Inevitable Ban Hammer descend. So meh, guess what, I can go back to a state of sublime indifference about how poopyheaded and mean the Blog Overlord is and instead concentrate on the ideas.
And dick jokes. Always dick jokes.
Louis
I can’t remember the number but someone said Muz said something along the lines of although agreeing with PZ’s position generally, he didn’t think it was fair of PZ to say no to all conferences with Abbie.
For this, he got told to ‘fuck off’ because he was a ‘horrible excuse for a human being’.
I agree with PZ, even if you agree with Abbie’s general horrible nature, it seems odd to suggest that PZ shouldn’t have any choice over which conferences he goes to; but calling Muz a horrible excuse for a human being doesn’t seem very … necessary.
he is being ignored, mocked, and ridiculed by some. so are we.
on the other hand, we do get through to some people, and make them rethink their positions (after they cool off; or just from reading the arguments here), as they repeatedly tell us. there is no evidence that our methods don’t work.
you think we throw insults carelessly?
how cute.
Ryan:
Liar. You just don’t care for being called a fuckwit. You’d do well to pay attention to CR, you could actually learn one hell of a lot, like how to think critically and argue effectively. You could also learn when it’s a good time to shut up, read, learn and think.
Right now, you are being an asshole and a fuckwit, Ryan. Derailing to defend tone trolls? Asshole. Doing it with moronic arguments? Fuckwit. Yes, by the wiki definition, Leslie was indeed tone trolling. You might think we actually know what that is, and I can assure you, we do.
You might want to consider the first rule of holes. Now.
Brownian said it best: talking to a tone troll is like pointing something out to a dog. The dog just looks at your finger, and never sees what you’re pointing at.
very little on the internet is “necessary”. quite a lot however can be useful, helpful, and effective.
Jadehawk:
Mmm. Ryan is now combining Tone Trolling with Concern Trolling to derail this thread.
Ryan, stop derailing the fucking thread. Take this shit to TZT if you must carry on digging that hole you’re in.
I see ryanwilkinson is yet another one of those avid hole diggers who just won’t be dissuaded, no matter what, from his fevered self-excavations.
ryanwilkinson
I strongly urge you to stop commenting and lurk for a few months.
You are trying too hard and you are digging yourself a hole.
Ryan:
Show me where every single member of the commentariat told this person to fuck off because he was a horrible excuse for a human being. Oh, every single member of the commentariat didn’t do that? Oh my. Perhaps you should shut the fuck up and stop assuming that anything one individual says is automatically agreed with and approved of by everyone else.
You should go back to lurking.
hell. the sheer fact that the Pharyngula comment section is one of the few places on the internet I never run into celebrations of stomach-churning levels of bigotry is evidence for the fact that our methods work, since there was plenty of misogyny etc. on Pharyngula in the past. which was effectively purged in a few years by very loud and vicious and decidedly rude disagreement with and condemnation of the use of transphobic jokes, misogynist slurs, rape-jokes, etc.
we do get through to some people, and make them rethink their positions
And that’s obviously great, there’s not much substance I actually disagree on with the vast majority of people here, I’m on Watson’s side come Elevatorgate, I’m on PZ’s side come this, I’m trying my bestest now not to use the word ‘cunt’ ever, and it was violent anger and ‘fuck off, you’re the worst that did it!’ Jadehawk actually took the time to explain to me why it was so bad, and I listened and that was great.
But yeah, sometimes I think more careful tact would be better, or at least should be deployed more often. With the vast majority of it being so polemic, a lot of people will be turned off – and it’s the readers, not the “trolls” that appear to be your concern. But I appear to be heh-heavily annoying Caine, and ‘derailing the conversation’ and I actually don’t want to massively irritate people here, (blockquote it and tell me how I’m failing!), and yeah, there are more important things to discuss than tone, so you can all tell me why I’m wrong and how aggressive language works and why I’m a wanker and asshole and fuckwit and shitbat and such forth and so on, and I won’t reply.
You could try learning something, Ryan, but apparently you’d rather dig that hole. Have fun, Cupcake. By the way, no, I’m not annoyed. I’m taking a break from studio work, that’s it. This is why focusing on ‘tone’ is utter shit.
Jadehawk:
QFT, to say the very least. I remember all that well. Thankfully, there are a whole lot of intelligent people here who got it, rather than fight it endlessly.
yes but why do you think that? AGAIN: the rudeness and blunt directness in combination with evidence works.
what evidence do you have to convince us that we should change our tactics? because just saying that other people are more likely convinced by thick layers of glopped on “civility” is merely an argument for multiple approaches, not for the abandonment of our approach.
You realize that most Christian Americans think he is Satan incarnate, right?
The thing about tone is that no matter how softly you say anything, no matter how obsequious you are, if it’s something people don’t like, they will interpret it as fire straight from the mouth of demons. (They will describe this as “uppity”.) Have you followed the US atheist billboard saga? Billboards saying “Atheist? You’re not alone” were defaced and rejected as being “too strident”; in response, a billboard saying nothing but the word “Atheists” was floated, only to be rejected in kind. There is no way to win the tone war, because the only way that the complainers will be happy is if you stop bringing up the uncomfortable subject that they’re wrong. The only way out is not to play along at all.
Is rajkumar wandering away from his confinement? I’m really limited by a poor Internet connection for a while, and may not be able to maintain as well for now.
Ryanwilkinson: you grow tiresome. You are confined to TZT until I get back into a situation where I can more easily review you performance.
Also…
Fuck you you horrible person.
Just because you have less impact, doesn’t mean you should take less care.
fuck me, but you’re slow on the uptake.
ryanwilkinson
Do you really expect people to take your hand and walk you through this?
Really?
Shut up and read.
I said I wouldn’t reply but you asked a question so is it okay if I answer?
Okay, if someone came in and said, in whatever words, ‘I want to rape women’, yeah, fine, be very rude to them.
Or if someone came in and said, in whatever words, ‘fuck gays/women/blacks/etc’ then yes, fine, be very rude to them.
I’m not saying never ever ever ever be aggressive, but not everyone holds their position because of malice or some such. I don’t hold the position of ‘don’t be extremely rude to everyone’ because I in some way want to intentionally anger you or derail the thread or anything else, but because I genuinely think it’s better.
Again – I understand that sometimes aggression is necessary: I just feel it is oft misplaced. I get very angry too, if anyone says anything homophobic I lose my shit. But if someone I know not to be homophobic uses the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory way, I don’t lose my shit, I just try and explain to them that using the word in such a manner is putting gay people down. (Oddly, realising I did this made me more aware of the whole ‘cunt’ situation – I was far more aware of my own lack-of-privilege than I was of other people’s, and was being unfair).
But yeah, that’s why when Muz said how PZ was being unfair, and someone told him to ‘Fuck off, you’re a horrible excuse for a human being’ I pointed it out.
Maybe you know Muz, and maybe he is a horrible excuse for a human being who said what he said to try and defend Abbie’s position. Maybe he is a terrible misogynist. Maybe he only will go away in response to such harsh language.
But even if that were the case, a lot of people reading wouldn’t know that, and a lot of people reading would find it off-putting that such vitriol came, from, seemingly, such an innocuous comment.
Sorry Caine.
(Sorry PZ I wrote it before I read that, I won’t comment again)
…and lest you again think this is America-specific, ryan, keep in mind that ahteist billboards which were entirely un-rude and civil and all that shit were rejected in Australia and Germany, and people got all sorts of pissy about the ones in London, too.
people who challenge the status quo are always going to be seen as rude, impolite, uncivilized, and all that shit (apparently the only protection against that is looking like Santa; don’t think anyone has accused Dennett of stridency and militant rudeness…)
and by the by… RD may be famous and “polite”, but Hitchens was famous and the worlds biggest asshole. And they both did a lot to bring visibility and momentum to the atheist movement
Ichthyic, #249
I vaguely remember something like that, but I seriously don’t care.
When the best any “critic” can do is something like “herp derp stoopid name” or “herp derp you used too many words” or “herp derp you love PZ” or “herp derp why are you posting if you don’t care?”* then they belong in the round file marked “mock/ignore”.
Louis
* Seriously, this one, this is the dumbest. An especially good example is BWE saying I am “accepting dishonesty from my side” (Who they? Ed.) when it’s an issue that, to that point, I’d never made a comment on. The fucking projection and mind reading abilities of these people is astounding, there should be some sort of grant.
PZ
rajkumar is not away from TZT, I’m just tired of him.
(sorry)
I said I wouldn’t reply but you asked a question so is it okay if I answer?
that’s one of those “If you have to ask…”
The fucking projection and mind reading abilities of these people is astounding, there should be some sort of grant.
It’s a big world, it wouldn’t surprise me if there is, actually!
rudeness doesn’t work on malice. rudeness works on those so thoroughly cushioned in cluelessness that they need to be shaken up.
by the by, you’ve just accused me of malicious bigotry, though of course you don’t know that. Because the rudeness of Pharyngula worked to make me realize some of the stupid-ass assumptions I’ve been holding.
what you want is entirely besides the point. also, unless you start providing evidence for your fuzzy feelings of preference for polite discourse, you really should shut up. There’s plenty of blogs even here on FTB that have “no personal attacks” in their comment guidelines (Greta’s and Natalie’s blogs, for example). go hang out there if the tone here is too much for you.
does nothing I say actually stick in your head, or are you not able to apply a concept to multiple situations? just like sexism is ubiquitous, making us all “a little bit sexist”, so is homophobia. using “gay” in a derogatory way is homophobic, and while you may have the luxury to take such things calmly, I see no reason to demand this from those whose lives are made harder by the existence of this ubiquitous homophobia.
Ryan, you’re free to comment, however, PZ wishes you to confine yourself to TZT for the time being. Comment your socks off in there – you’ll make a nice change of pace and you can discuss the whole tone/expression business to your mind’s content.
hm. my second quote starts later than I meant it to. now it looks worse than what ryan actually said :-p
ryanwilkinson
Here is a link to the bottom of the latest TZT.
You may say anything you want, there.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/05/12/tzt-7/comment-page-2/#comment-345924
oops, missed that. sorry for responding.
ryan, if you’re not going to leave for politer pastures, do go to TZT
*off to repost my comment to ryan there*
Ryan,
If you read this, try and follow the logical conclusions of this hypothetical scenario:
Assume I am appalled by nasty language and insults (I’m not, but assume I am). Assume I see a member of the KKK giving a speech on the evils of Jews and Black people, being egregiously racist and discriminatory in the worst possible way. This person we shall call person A.
Person B comes up to Person A and says “Fuck off you racist arsehole!”.
Taking into account that I abhor insulting and rude language, to whom should I direct the bulk of my disapproval?
Even assuming I am offended by Person B’s language and tone, and perhaps think he or she could have responded differently to Person A, Person A’s “crime” is clearly the greater “crime”, and thus should receive the bulk of my disapproval. I could ramble on for pages with some ethical and logical justification for that claim, but I’ll spare us all, because I think it is so manifestly obvious that virulent bigotry is a more serious infraction of any civil standard conceivable than is swearing or being unpleasant to people, that if you genuinely disagree with that, I’m not sure we’re even speaking similar enough languages to be able to communicate.
The fact that Person B could have said something different is not relevant when weighing the two “crimes”, the two acts of incivility, displayed above. Person A could also not be a racist, it’s not compulsory, people can stop doing it!
The problem with tone trolling is that it is aimed at changing the behaviour of Person B. Person B might be uncivil, but the level of their incivility pales into insignificance compared to that of Person A. Person A’s incivility causes measurable social harm directed to huge groups of people. Person B’s is a directed personal remark, not a work of advocacy for incivility. It is calculated to show contempt, disgust, abhorrence of Person A’s racism.
I don’t complain about the 100g weight dropped on my foot by a person who is also trying to stab my wife. I might, later, note a very slight bruise on my foot…as I sit by the bedside of my poor Beloved were this person successful. What I would do is “complain” about the guy trying to stab my wife! And my “complaint” would be more than verbal and extremely uncivil. Possibly uncivil to the point of mild to moderate moodiness. I might even be moved to say “Steady on” or “Now then, old chap, that’s a bit of a rum thing to do.” Strong words I know. I may even point at the fellow and wag my finger.
Hmmmm could there be a point to that comedy? Could it be standards of civility change? It was once bad manners for a black person to ride in the white section of a bus in segregated, pre civil rights America. MORE than mere bad manners. People who did so were breaking the law, rude, uppity, troublemakers. Like Rosa Parks.
Gee, I wonder what happened to Rosa Parks? IS she famous or something? I wonder why.
Rude ain’t always bad.
Louis
Wait, Greta has withdrawn? I imagine it’s for more powerful reasons than caving to Abbie’s verbal abuse and threats. Greta Christina’s no shrinking violet. There’s nothing on her blog about it yet, though. Does anyone know for sure?
Ryanwilkinson may be gone, but I cannot leave his greatest idiocy to stand unchallenged. Gelato is NOT THE SAME as ice-cream you culinary moron!
Now I want one of those hats with the finger. *nodnod*
I’m going to bed now. I am drunk, tired, and tone trolls are dull.
I demand you Americans rustle me up some interesting trolls by morning when I will be hungover and suitably mean. I may even use the word “fuck”. Possibly also “bumgambler” which I have yet to assign a proper meaning because I only just made it up. It was part of the phrase “oh do go and fist a dead donkey you monkey licking, fart sniffing, banana tree frottering bumgambler”.
Also, Jagermeister is good.
Louis
Jesus you’re hard of thinking.
Jen just tweeted:
Just got an apology from Abbie Smith of ERV for the unprofessional comments she made about me as a grad student. Apology accepted
Not specifically but she generally apologized for lashing out at me RT @MelodyHensley: How about the “ugly” comment?
Abby translation
“I am sorry for my most recent offense”
Gee, I’ll never get the evidence that PZ lied about his CV now, with the banhammer falling on a fuckwitted idjit. But then, I suspected the evidence was as thin as the luminous ether that the M-M experiment showed didn’t exist. Oops, that was evidence, wasn’t it? The tone/concern trolls will be on my case…
Josh:
Li’l Ryan is quoting you all over TZT, you big meanie.
Pteryxx:
Would you wear it to church? ;D
Hey now, there was actually reasonable a priori reasons to hypothesize the existence of the lumineferous ether, and the M-M experiment required very high precision measurements, and the data had to be analyzed very carefully to confirm that it did not exist.
Orders of magnitude more solid than anything that troll barfed up.
I think They™ should drop “dark matter” and recycle the word “aether”.
And they should use the ae ligature (to piss-off those Unicode snobs)
Ryan accused someone of being a bore? Something something pot kettle.
Way back at 274 by ryanwilkerson,
OK, so what if someone (named Leslie, for instance) comes onto the thread and says they love so-and-so (named Abbie Smith, for instance) even though so-and-so has been documented heaping on the misogyny against a handful of well known women who happen to blog at FTB? What then? Do we get your permission to be rude to them?
FFS…
Well, my bad.
Way up at comment #34, I asserted that Abbie Smith had not published any science, and it turns out I was incorrect. She was an author on this paper. I apologize for being wrong on the internet.
That was a bit redundant.