I have my disagreements with Chris Stedman — he’s kind of representing the ooey-gooey side of atheism, while I’m typically on the harsh, strongly worded side (I know, you’re surprised). So, goddamn it, I hate it when I have to admit that he’s right, and that my side has been too accommodating to the fanatically godless side, which just luuurves ’em some alt-righties.
I’m still an activist, but after nearly a decade of active participation in online atheism (a loose community of forums, blogs, YouTube channels, and fandoms of figures like evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and writer Sam Harris), I mostly stepped away from the online side of atheism a few years ago. One of the biggest reasons for this was my growing concern over its failure to adequately address some of its darker currents—such as overt sexism, racism, and anti-Muslim bias.
I’ve been backing away myself, and I was smack in the middle of online atheism for years. It’s for the same reasons.
By neglecting to address its darker currents, online atheism has perhaps unknowingly planted the seeds for the alt-right’s harvest. Three years ago Reddit’s atheism subforum, perhaps the largest community of atheists on the internet, was found to be the website’s third most bigoted—meaning not just tolerant of overt displays of bigotry, but actively supportive of them. Last year, the Daily Beast revealed that the study’s most bigoted Reddit subforum, the Red Pill, was founded by Robert Fisher, a Republican state lawmaker who is also an atheist.
The problem is more widespread than figures like Spencer and Fisher, too. While championing liberal views on some issues, many of atheism’s most prominent advocates—the majority of whom are, like me, cisgender white men—have expressed troubling sentiments that align with views held by the alt-right and faced little to no consequences.
Last year Sam Harris hosted Charles Murray—who has famously argued that black people are genetically predisposed to lower IQs than whites—on his immensely popular podcast, calling Murray a victim of “a politically correct moral panic.” Harris has in the past called for profiling “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim.” (When I challenged him on this, he suggested I “wear a t-shirt stating ‘There is no God and I am Gay’ in Islamic countries and report back on [my] experiences.”) Outspoken atheist Bill Maher rightly came under fire last summer for using racist language on air. He has also argued that “most Muslim people in the world do condone violence,” told “transgendered” [ sic] people to be quiet, and gave alt-right darling Milo Yiannopoulos a sympathetic interview on his HBO show. Lawrence Krauss, a popular skeptic who now faces numerous sexual harassment allegations, has criticized the #MeToo movement. Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most famous atheist in the world, has mocked women for speaking out about experiences of sexual harassment, shared a video ridiculing feminists, and railed against “SJWs” (short for “social justice warriors,” a derisive term for social justice activists). Look beyond atheism’s biggest names and you will find vocal Trump supporters like author Robert M. Price and immensely popular atheist YouTubers with more than a million subscribers. Their views are likely shared by more atheists than many would like to admit.
Yeah, what good is atheism as a philosophy if it can’t even find within itself a reason to condemn Nazis, bombing campaigns against Muslim countries, and discrimination and harassment against women? I know that several of the big organizations, like the Freedom From Religion Foundation and American Atheists, are quite clear that they are pro-feminism and anti-Nazi, but it seems like the base have been drifting away to the siren song of the anti-Muslim, racist right (or, as they prefer to call themselves to the point that the word has lost all meaning “centrists”).
Trav Mamone has identified one of the deeper problems in the atheist movement.
One thing I suggest is getting rid of the concept of the atheist celebrity. By declaring just a handful of prominent atheist activists to be the movement’s leaders, it creates a hierarchal system where the same arguments against God get repeated ad nauseam, and newer ideas about how to put humanist values into action are ignored. Everyone should be a leader in the atheist movement, whether that person is fighting for church and state separation in a small town in Pennsylvania or creating a community for liberal atheists living in the Bible Belt. Martin Luther King once said, “You don’t have to know the theory of relativity in order serve.”
There’s always got to be a figurehead, apparently — even MLK has become one. I agree wholeheartedly that we have to get out of that stupid “four horsemen” mindset and recognize that an effective movement has ten thousand leaders, and no one is just a follower, and we’re always ready to criticize, and listen to criticism. Another of our problems is that our “leaders” have been remarkably thin-skinned and unwilling to tolerate disagreement, let alone act on it to change course. We need to be more adaptable.
Until we achieve that kind of breadth and resilience, though, clearly we need to make Trav the King of Atheism. All bow down and worship their wise words.
I think we need to accept that for a great many people, atheism wasn’t (and isn’t) a carefully considered philosophical position based on a thorough understanding of epistemology, it was just an excuse to sneer at religious people and indulge in self-congratulation about being smarter (and therefore “better”) than them. So it’s not really that surprising to me that many of those people have now branched out into sneering at – and claiming to be smarter / better than – lots of other groups too.
@PZ, check your pronouns.
Admittedly I still associate Stedman’s name with blogosphere shouting matches from I-don’t-even-remember-when. I don’t remember any of the specifics, but these days I wonder if people on the other side were more correct than I gave them credit for.
100% of people born, were born without belief in any gods.
Everyone who believes in gods, was
brainwashedtaught about gods.“atheism” is a return to the pristine state.
Siggy @3, accommodationism.
Look, I understand we of the left are upset that our former hopes (preconceptions?) of building a humanist movement within atheism has run up against a wall of prejudice – but that wall exists in every religious, philosophical and political group no matter what – no matter what.
It isn’t enough to taint association with atheism either as a term or as an idea by a long-shot.
I’m an atheist. I’m a social-justice atheist, but I’m an atheist and I will always be an atheist and self-describe as an atheist. It does not mean I cater to or will ever tolerate those atheist platforms that try to umbrella right-wing ideology. I feel no guilt by association, nor will I ever feel compelled to broaden my self-description to a less useful or less precise term. I’m not a none, I’m an advocate of godlessness, total and unequivocal.
The way we should be attacking them is to point out their hypocrisy in favoring “dictionary atheism” five-ten years ago chastising those who wanted to describe their humanist ideals through an atheist identification, when that is precisely what they are now doing themselves with conservative dogma. That’s what we should be shouting each and every single time someone screams “SJW!”, not distancing ourselves from the only real term in the entire language that describes disbelief in gods. It’s ridiculous that we would even consider doing that.
Yes, it makes more sense to us that humanist mores follow logically from a disbelief in gods than traditionalist mores, yes we win the logic argument, but nobody seems to care about that argument on the other side.
@Siggy #2
Ah yes, and it seems they’d make a great first Quing of Atheism, if anything.
(From this link: bold mine)
Maybe they’ve expressed other pronoun preferences/requirements elsewhere (I think I’ve read them about, tho I’ve been listening to podcasts less, that’s one I’ve been meaning to get to for some time), but that’s definitely something PZ should fix in the OP.
=8)-DX
Oh, well.
I’ll probably be dead soon.
Bow down before me!
(Also, thanks for fixing the pronouns, PZ.)
Trav Mamone @9:
Maybe if you could do a few more prog rock podcasts. I could manage a respectful nod, at least, if you covered Relayer, Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, or The Power and the Glory.
What’s a good rebuttal to this? It comes up a lot and I’m not really sure of a good response.
chigau @8: Not before I get my double Armagnac!
It’s a red herring.
Whether any foreign individual is willing to break our laws is not established to be correlated with that individual’s government’s willingness to replicate our laws.
Further: say some authoritarian jerkwad encourages bad behavior towards a minority. Then say that foreigners identifying themselves with that minority while in that authoritarian’s country get a rude or rough reception from that authoritarian’s most enthusiastic followers.
Does that mean that no person from that authoritarian’s country should be allowed to travel overseas?
OptimalCynic @11: Challenge the person to wear the same shirt in rural Alabama or Texas.
Siggy@3 — I still don’t agree with Stedman on his accommodationism, but I agree 100% with the quotes PZ posted above.
I can’t agree. Stedman’s criticisms are valid, and in keeping with mine, and I would concur if I knew nothing of his prior history. But in light of the past several years, I can’t accept him as a good-faith broker. He’s long attacked and misrepresented outspoken atheists and critics of faith as atheists and critics of faith, promoted others who’ve done the same, and generalized from a few people to an entire movement. The “mint julep” episode summed it all up. It’s true that Dawkins and other alleged atheist leaders are thorough assholes with their own bigoted motives, but, again, Stedman had for years attacked them/us not for these faults but for open opposition to faith. He’s long argued that atheists are lacking compared to religious people. IIRC, he didn’t stand up for atheists when we were excluded from official “interfaith” ceremonies after tragedies. And I’ve been suspicious for a while of these elite academic humanist centers, especially because people like Stedman would never answer questions about their funding and direction.
Religious faith is a scourge, and fundamentally opposed to humanist values, regardless of the character of the people who’ve been promoted as atheist leaders, and I’m not going to back off on pointing that out.
And, yet, David Silverman has thought it a good idea to recruit at CPAC. Apparently the pro-feminism and anti-Nazi positions go right out the window when it comes to “advocating for strict government neutrality.” Need I say more?
@15, chrislawson
I guess my question is “Does Stedman even agree with his acommodationism anymore?” If he cannot agree to acommodationism within the atheist community, why would he agree to it outside the community? (I may be incorrectly remembering what the whole accomodationism thing was about, too.)
@9, Trav Mamone
I guess I missed an earlier version of this that had a different pronoun than “their”? Surely anyone can be king, right?
Gah – his article is just a continuation of everything he wrote in the past:
Not one word about how the solid base for Trump, Putin, and far-Right European leaders is the Religious Right. This is just such bullshit.
Of course the links here are both to thehumanist.com.
Faitheist was published in 2012, and he was attacking atheists well before that. He has a penchant for misrepresenting atheism and his history with respect to it.
(To be clear: I share the disgust with the social views of several of the declared leaders of atheism. I think Stedman at root means well. But he’s not trustworthy in this context.)
When siggy mentioned the pronouns I went back and read the post again and all I could find was “King”, but “King” is not a pronoun. Then I thought perhaps PZ already changed the guilty pronouns but, reading back a third time, all I could see was one pronoun that could have been changed (“his” to “their”). I didn’t notice that the first time. And, of course, “King” is still there. All of this indicates how difficult it can be to get it right and how odd it still sounds to use gender neutral pronouns (and nouns). I am, of course, entirely happy to use them, but it’s going to take time to assiilate it naturally into the language.
As an aside (because what follows is not a issue regarding trans pronouns), I recently realised that I had been using the word “layman” on this blog (and, interestingly, no one seemed to notice) and have recently changed this to to “layperson”. Words like layperson and chairperson already no longer sound odd as they did many years ago when they were first introduced. However, I do think some thought has to be given to how many trans pronouns we try to assimilate into the language. Obviously, face to face, I would call a person by their preferred pronoun whatever that might be, just as I would call someone “Chris” instead of “Christine” if that was her wish.
(How many thought I was going to say “Christopher”?)
I can’t agree with this, either! He hasn’t represented an ooey-gooey side of atheism, but a very not wishy-washy hostility toward atheism. For years.
At any time, he could have pointed to, say, you – or many, many others – as examples of atheists opposed to reactionary politics. Instead, he’s chosen to attack atheism and atheists.
You really are intent on wearing out your welcome, aren’t you?
You think some thought has to be given? You realize that half a second of thought is “some” thought, right? So you bring up this burning need to give “some thought” to the introduction of trans pronouns because why?
You really think that “some thought” hasn’t been given to the introduction of pronouns? Really? Please tell us why you think that.
I do not see atheism as a philosophy. It is simply a non-belief in gods. Humanism is the philosophy for those who have a non-belief in gods. So, who cares if white supremacists are atheists. We who are not white supremacists simply share the same non belief in gods with white supremacists. Why is this an issue? They don’t share our humanism, that is the point.
I am an atheist. But I am long past caring about the atheist movement. To advocate for atheism means to try to dissuade theists from their brief in their god, presumably because that belief comes along with loads of non-humanist moral baggage. So why not just promote humanism.
billyjoe is still around? JFC, how tiresome.
Crip,
I am concerned that it will prove to be too difficult to have the majority of the population accept, through gradual assimilation, a whole swathe of trans pronouns, whereas a few changes are going to be a whole lot easier to assimilate into the population over a reasonable period of time. Face to face is a different issue as I indicated in my post.
I once came across a list of about 30 trans pronouns. If someone has thought about this and, if there is a shorter, more manageable list that have been agreed on, I would be happy to have a link.
Telling me that you are an atheist really tells me next to nothing about you. It’s about as informative as telling me you are not a chicken. Fine, you’re not a chicken. So what are you?
If you tell me enough about who you are, I may realize you are a narcissist, or even a psychopath. In which case, your self-description of atheist is not accurate. As the old “dictionary definition” says, you are trying to tell me you believe in no god. But as a narcissisti you do believe in a god – yourself. Just because you don’t have a big religion named after you doesn’t mean you don’t see yourself as the supreme being.
And expecting some sort of humanism from a narcissist, to say nothing of a psychopath, is guaranteed to disappoint you.
billyjoe @20, an incidental comment in relation to the topic.
Contrary to your perception, it’s dead easy after a bit of practice, and it seems normal soon enough. That it seems odd to you merely indicates your thinking is still affected by your inculcation.
(Me, I read older texts, I am struck by the unthinking and irrelevant importance placed on gendering)
People do notice. They (and I) just don’t generally jump on every case of pointlessly-gendered language, any more than we jump on typos, solecisms, misspellings or homophonic errors. But they are indicative.
johnk83776:
Tired old trope, but very stupid. The concept of atheists who imagine they’re gods is an oxymoron.
John Morales @ #27:
And it often wasn’t unthinking.
(Ha! Looking at that old post I see that the one about atheists excluded from official ceremonies of mourning was the same month. I can’t remember if Stedman was still there at that time, and I’m only awake because I’m waiting for a Mueller filing so I’m too preoccupied to look into it further, but how coincidental.)
John Morales
I was referring only to people who consider themselves atheists because of their feeling of general superiority relative to other people, especially people who identify as religious.
Narcissism is of course generally seen as a fairly primitive defense against feelings of inferiority. None of this is related to the atheists whose cognitive processes don’t include those that result in the ability to believe based on a a particular set of stimuli that are defined as religion.
Not that these two populations are mutually exclusive.
My intention was to not make a big deal about the pronouns. It happens, it was fixed, just move on.
Jonathan Morales @5,
Yeah I know Stedman was in the accommodationist wars, but I don’t remember specifically what he said about it. IIRC he was accused of misrepresenting some anecdotes in his book, but I’m not sure if he apologized or if it even matters this many years later.
OptimalCynic @11,
That would be Sam Harris’ take on “Dear Muslima”. Gay people in Islamic countries have a hard time, why ever complain about anything else? It’s funny how Harris can say stuff like this and hardly anyone bats an eye–his fans have exceptionally low standards even when compared to Dawkins fans.
Siggy @ #31:
:|
I feel a need to comment on this quote from PZ:
But why?
In fact, it actually goes further than that, and here I include many commenters on this blog. Why be so harsh and “strongly worded” and, I could add, insulting and rude. What does this achieve, but something similar to what you are criticising on the other side. You accuse atheists of the other persuasion of driving liberals to the right, but aren’t you doing the same? You tend to look for the worst possible interpretation of what people you don’t agree with have to say and then hyperbolise it to justify your verbal insults. Why?
For example, I personally have been accused on the blog of being a racist, misogynist, rapist and, even worse, a Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, and Jordan Peterson fanboy. None of these accusations are true, however much some of you may want to believe it.
Some weeks ago, I saw a video of Jordan Peterson that impressed me (the Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman). However, to get a better impression of him, I watched many more videos of him expressing his views, and the more videos I viewed the less impressed I was. Like everyone else here. However, unlike many commenters here, I did not see any reason to actually misrepresent his views. There is enough to criticise without misrepresenting him. But merely pointing that out and going against the narrative here, I was slammed.
Same with Sam Harris. I’ve read his book “The End of Faith”, but I do not follow his blog’s or tweets. I have read from his blog only when linked to it from elsewhere. I don’t agree with everything he says but, again, I see no need to mischaracterise what he says. But many here take the worst possible interpretation of what he says or what others have said about him and just run wild with it, hyperbolisiing it over time, and adding the hackneyed expletives. Why do you think anyone besides yourselves would be impressed?
And Steven Pinker. A few weeks back, PZ re-posted a truncated video of Steven Pinker – which, ironically, originated from an alt-right site – which appeared to have him saying the reverse of what he was actually saying if you looked at the full video (PZ did post a link to that full video subsequently). But it fit that narrative here about that Steven Pinker being alt-right. But any reasonable interpretation of his position does not include that even as a remote possiblity. He shuns the alt-right. But why the attack? Why make the worst possible interpretation of what he is saying, hyperbolise it, and then through some perverse version of confirmation bias, see everything he says in that false narrative.
My point is that bloggers and commenters on your side of the atheist spectrum are doing as much to drive people to the alt-right as you accuse them of doing. Politically, I am left of centre and I have smpathies for both sides. Fortunately I’m pretty thick skinned and the push I have received here has not driven me closer to the right. However, if you think you are not having this effect, you are fooling yourselves.
Here is an example: I don’t know if you’ve been following the travails of that teachers assisstant in that Canadian university (the names escape me for the moment). Before the whole saga broke out, she self-identified as a liberal, but she recently dropped any allegiances she once had with the left. During this whole episode she was shunned and slammed an slanders by the left while being courted by the right. (I might detail this sorry episode in another post if I get the time).
and I’m only awake because I’m waiting for a Mueller filing
Here it is, by the way, cross-posted from the Political Madness thread.
Goodnight, all.
John Morales,
I agree.
The point is that I am not the only one, and not the worst example by far.
You have somehow to convince the general population to assimilate these pronouns naturally into their language and this is going to prove difficult if there are thirty pronouns to assimilate.
Follow-up post:
The person is Lindsay Shepherd and the university is Wilfred Laurier University in Ontario, Canada.
In the following video, Lindsay Shepherd details what happened:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ns89BugBvbs
Note that the interviewer is alt-right. The left was too busy slamming her for the crime of showing a video featuring Jordan Peterson even though he was debating trans pronouns with someone who was defending their use. A lively class discussion followed and a week later she was reprimanded for exposing students to the video. The pretense was that a student, or multiple students, complained. This seems out not to have been the case, however.
Here she is being wooed by right winger Dave Rubin:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpFUvfAvKs4
The video is fifty minutes long and you may not want to spend the time watching it, but it shows Rubin trying to pull her to the right. She’s not really buying it at this stage which makes for a somewhat awkward interview, which is also shorter than his usual interviews.
Here she is finally cutting her allegiances with the left:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpg6P1PNWR8
While the left was busy slamming and slandering her, the right wooed her over. All I can say is…you’ve lost a good one there. An erudite young liberal woman has been pushed to the right. I don’t think all is lost, but there are many Lindsay Shepherds out there being pushed out.
@billyjoe:
Try reading this. Refusing to treat terrible ideas as serious, reasonable ideas that just don’t quite make the cut has its own effects. They can be very, very good effects.
As for driving liberals to the right, I’m not sure what you mean. I do know that they argue for right-wing positions. It’s their arguments, not their im/propriety that is the problem. When a nice little old lady smiles sweetly and uses kind words to explain how terrible it is that whites can’t own slaves anymore, is she being polite?
One premise of this blog is that the content of your words holds far more power to insult, hurt, and degrade than the dialect or manner in which you express yourself. I’ve taken you to task repeatedly over the last few days not because I have a thing about you specifically, and not because I want to be harsh, but instead I’ve done it because you have several times ascribed things to other people that they simply didn’t say or otherwise expressed something hurtful.
I would have had no negative reaction at all if above you had said, “As we introduce new pronouns to the English language, there will have to be an ongoing effort to reassure and placate the people who are frightened, disturbed, angered or otherwise upset by these changes.”
But you said,
While you were polite as all hell, if you reread your statement you can easily see that if a person has not given some thought to a topic, then they obviously have given no thought at all. The obvious implication is that this thinking hasn’t been done.
But just because you haven’t done this thinking yet (which on its own isn’t a bad thing, we can’t each do everything, we can’t each be experts in every topic under the sun), doesn’t mean that I and others haven’t done a hell of a lot of thinking on this and similar issues. We’ve written journal articles. We’ve done actual, controlled field research on how the use of certain pronouns (yes, including “it”) affects the responses of trans and non-trans subjects in specific environments.
Although it’s implicit, not explicit, the way that you assume (and communicate) that this thinking hasn’t been done dismisses fucktonnes of work by a whole bunch of really good and really smart people. If I start telling physicists that at some point we’re going to need to do some research to more precisely measure the acceleration of gravity at earth’s surface than just 9.8 m/s, then I’m being a total asshat, even if I use polite language.
So around here we don’t fetishize politeness. We use targeted rudeness because we know that treating risible ideas as acceptable alternatives ends up encouraging more risible ideas. Yes, we want to target bad ideas with good arguments, but if the argument has been addressed before, and/or if the argument is, to a particular commenter’s sense of ethics, simply beyond the pale, then no. A given commenter may not even choose to argue against something.
And I don’t believe that Sam Harris is driving conversations (or “liberals”) rightward simply because he says “fuck” a lot. I think he does that because he on numerous occasions he’s promoted policies or ideas that the right wing find favorable.*1 So I, at least, am not being inconsistent when I say that Harris and too many others who should know better are inappropriately promoting right wing ideas just because I myself say “fuck” a lot.
It’s never the fucking that’s the real problem.
===================================
*1: On top of that, but separate from whether the ideas are right-wing, a number of those same ideas have been rejected as bad ideas/polices by actual experts on the matter under discussion. Sam Harris has chosen not to heed those experts in more than one case. Which means he started by pontificating in an area where he was relatively ignorant, and then arrogantly dismissed the knowledge and analysis of appropriate experts. It’s that arrogant ignorance that makes me more angry more quickly than anything else.
@ billyjoe, #33
I can’t speak for anyone else’s reasons, and I’m not even an atheist anymore, but when I have spoken rudely about religion it has been because it’s personal to me. Christianity has been a font of terrible things for me and people I care about a great deal, and certain things some Christians do are objectively harmful.
There is no value in pretending that I’m not pissed off when a non-binary kid is bullied to suicide, or a when children are terrorized with the doctrine of Hell, or when anti-choice assholes try to control women’s bodies. I do have rational, reasonable arguments against those things, but the people here already know them (probably better than I do). So if I make a comment about those things here, it’s probably going to be to vent my disgust and anger.
I don’t resort to hyperbole to demonize my enemies, because I know what they mean behind the doublespeak and polite façades they put up. You may think it’s hyperbole when I or someone else strips away the niceties and lays bare the actual positions of the alt-right, when it’s merely cutting through the bullshit and getting to the heart of the matter.
Pro-lifers, for example, aren’t actually pro-life. We know this because the policies they steadfastly support result in more suffering and death, not less. We are not obliged to cater to their whims by pretending they actually care about women and children, and it’s actually harmful to do so because it allows them to control the narrative.
I also called you a “smarmy, preening hemorrhoid.”
I’m not getting into yet another debate about that disingenuous pro-torture hack, but it’s awfully hard to mischaracterize someone who seems to take every position about every subject he discusses, just so that he’ll be able to deny he really meant whatever he said by pointing to this other thing he said without ever actually engaging with the first thing he said and… Jesus fuck, I’m already tired of him, and this just a vague hypothetical.
He can “what if” and waffle all he wants about torture- the answer is always “no,” and he’s always going to be an asshole unless he gives it up. Same with racial profiling, same with IQ, and on and on it goes.
I have no interest in impressing anyone, unless you mean impressing upon people that torture is never, ever an acceptable answer.
Steven Pinker pushes the “PC run amok!” narrative so popular with conservative twits, which is a major talking point for the alt-right. And before you start, I watched the complete vid.
I shun Nazis, but if I started spreading the blood libel as though it was fact, rather than an ugly bit of anti-Semitic propaganda, then people would be right to say I’d be acting as though I were a Nazi ally.
If a person is so incapable of self-reflection that they never bother ask themselves why people are being ‘rude’ to them, then what kind of allies are they going to be? If they’re willing to completely switch allegiance because some people called them names, what kind of allies are they going to be?
The answer to both: Fickle, untrustworthy, and dangerous.
If you fuck up and do or say something harmful to others, and they call you a few names in the process of letting you know it, that doesn’t mean you’re suddenly the real victim. Now, some people can take it too far, and you can actually become a victim, but that doesn’t retroactively justify what you did in the first place.
I for one am definitely not interested in winning over sniveling “liberals” (or any kind of liberal, for that matter), especially ones that are idiotic and weak-willed to be won over by mewling neofascists.
Lindsay Shepherd and “liberals” like her can sit and spin for all I care.
If harsh language is all it takes for you to embrace right wing ideas, You’re not worth the time and effort it takes to “win you back”
QFT!
Yeah, yeah. We all know you have this delusion*; there’s no need to keep repeating it. You’re tone-trolling is really tedious, and completely pointless.
*I’m being generous here, obviously.
Grrrr. You’re -> Your @41.
…and apologies for misnaming you @40, Porivil Sorrens.
Porivil Sorrens, #39
Yeah, how does that even work?
“I was against ethnic cleansing until someone who was also against ethnic cleansing called me a mean name. The utterance of the mean word towards me made the ethnic cleansing position the correct position at that point.”
Leo Buzalsky@17 —
I have no idea if Stedman has changed his views on accommodationism, but I’m very doubtful given the quote provided above by Salty Current where Stedman goes beyond just noting the failure of atheism to protect against alt-right thinking (a very reasonable lament) and tries to pin some of the foundational blame for the alt-right movement on atheism (a very unreasonable smear).
Saad@44–
“Someone told me to check my privilege and now genocide* doesn’t look so bad.”
* substitute with gay-bashing, anti-Semitism, pro-Confederacy, “scientific racism”, etc. according to context.
Crip Dyke–
Some people seem incapable of distinguishing politeness of syntax from politeness of beliefs.
billyjoe, #33
That’s because you say racist and sexist things. I don’t understand your point. When would it be okay to call someone a racist or misogynist if not when they’re behaving in a racist and misogynist way?
Let’s try that again:
billyjoe, #33
None of this makes any sense. “Being driven closer to the right” will only happen if you think the positions of the right are fine. This “liberal” being courted by the right means she likes racism, misogyny, etc to begin with. You’re not making any sense. If a group of progressives/liberals/social justice advocates starts calling me names, it won’t make me change my mind about the fundamental rights of LGBT people. What a non-sequitor.
chigau@4:
This statement seems incontestable to me. But I’m not sure that I can accept any definition of “belief” under which any newborn has any belief in anything.
Leaving that aside, this next statement,
seems (to me) very unlikely to be true. Certainly whoever it was, long ago and far away, who first came to believe in gods, couldn’t have been taught about them! (And presumably there were many, many such first-believers, in many different places and times.) [My personal favorite just-so story about how belief in gods started is that humans, trying (as we do) to understand our world (William James’s “blooming, buzzing confusion”) the better to survive in it, came up with their own just-so stories (before you’ve got physics, polytheism might be the best you could do; only after you’ve stumbled into hierarchical, patriarchal proto-societies might it be reasonable—for the hierarchs and patriarchs!—to
teachbrainwash monotheism into their underlings). But just-so stories are just stories.]Finally,
smacks of tabula rasaism. Just because the deplorable Pinker makes terrible arguments against “tabula rasa” theories doesn’t mean they are correct. I could agree (and perhaps I ought to, given my deep unease with the notion of babies being born with “beliefs” of any sort) that newborns are dictionary atheists, but I read you as asserting more than that (and if you are, I’d like to see your arguments for whatever you’re asserting).
Well it does if billyjoe is working up to announcing a conversion to the alt-right (following all the “I’m left of centre” reminders), and blaming Pharyngula meanies for it!
I would simply take it to mean billyjoe was always from the alt-right, and has been concern and tone trolling us for weeks.
billyjoe@20
Usage is further adapting these as the “person” part is really redundant as long as it’s clear in context you’re talking about a human and it nearly always is. So “chairperson” becomes “chair” and “layperson”…hrm.
I hope to contribute to the public good.
Knowledge is something we all experience. I think it reasonable to ask a religious person how their god learned.
Recall Carl Sagan described a man who spoke of his great joy when he destroyed a species (He shot the last bird of a species.)
I think there are people who consider their contribution to the extinction of the human race as the glorious finale to their own lives.
jack16
@Billyjoe
I would say you are both correct and technically wrong. You are correct that assholes like you see a lot of in this corner of the internet DO push people to the alt-right. I’ll use a very common example from the topic here of trans pronouns. Discussion is brought up in a college class not unlike what happened with Shepherd in Toronto (hopefully in a more appropriate setting). Someone like the assholes here (a great non-gendered pronoun) behave like the assholes here, and some kid in the class, who knows or is friends with a transgendered person who doesn’t care about the pronoun issue, gets treated like shit and goes from a position of yea its reasonable to just call people by what they want to be called, to the position of ‘fuck those sjw assholes, you can’t force me to use different pronouns’. So yes, in the ideological stance, the assholes here can push people to the alt-right. But most likely, this kid is still going to have their trans friend, treat their trans friend the same, treat other trans people the same as before. The only real difference made in this person, is that they are going to be bias to and hostile towards sjw assholes. The assholes in this corner of the interwebs are not really pushing people toward the alt-right, they are moving the line of what is liberal and alt-right.
I’ve used this asshole pronoun argument against a lot of Peterson fans, saying if misgendering someone with pronouns is not discrimination then I’ll simply use the pronoun asshole to refer to Peterson and any follower who agrees with his pronoun position. But it works fine for the other side as well. In general I find pronouns to be ambiguous and use them rarely and never purposefully misgender someones pronoun. If I am going to insult or denigrate someone I will not do it by passive aggressively using the wrong pronoun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAGcDi0DRtU
I had a relative who, over some vague argument neither of them even remembered, spent every day for the next 40 years, until one of them finally died, never talking to each other, despite literally living across the street from one another. So.. No, I don’t find it “impossible”, personally, that someone might be driven to consider, or embrace, horrible ideas, just because the people where far nicer to them. But, I do agree that their needed to be a seed there, something they believe, or respond to, in their own life, or beliefs, which makes it easy to go from, “These people are treating me badly for no reason.”, to, “These people are treating me badly because they are wrong, and this proves what my new friends tell me about how everything bad in the world is caused by them.” The more poorly informed someone is, and the more misinformed those new allies can make them, by lying about history, or distorting facts, etc., the more likely this is to happen. Some of these people we lose should, perhaps, be pitied, and yes, maybe some questions asked as to how much effort was made to explain to them why people where attacking them, or, if they where just victims of some sub-group who, like so many “celebrity” causes seem to throw everyone else out, or under the bus, when their problems become inconvenient. It can, and does, happen, to the detriment of *every* social movement that starts out trying to help everyone, and instead becomes some narrowly defined obsession, for a few people that deem themselves “more important” than everyone else.
And, its yet another problem we should be fighting against, every time we see it, because, it inevitably leads to policy and decision that ignore what the original people the cause was intended to help want/need, in favor of the new leaderships self aggrandized “solutions”, and high opinions of what real problems they need to be solving, instead of “distractions”, among other counter productive choices.
-Pours one out for all those strident liberals who instantly became nazis because a leftist called them an asshole that one time-
How sad and ironic that everyone, in response to my post yesterday, confirmed what I was saying in that post. You are still using expletives for no reason. You are still accusing me of positions I don’t hold. You are still insisting Sam Harris and Steven Pinker hold positions that they clearly do not hold. I asked for reference to trans pronouns and was given a lecture on my phrasing. And, instead of understanding the point of my anecdote about Lindsay Shepherd you chose instead to try to justify the abuse she suffered at the hands of the left. These are the reasons the left is failing.
Stop using expletives for no reason – it is not an argument.
Stop accusing people without reading and understanding what they have said.
Stop making the worst possible interpretation of what people have said.
Stop hyperbolising your worst interpretations of what people have said.
Stop making enemies of friends over minor disagreements.
Stop accusing people of positions they clearly do not hold.
Or keep doing these things and keep failing.
I don’t think BillyJoe is arguing that being mean to liberals would turn them into nazis, but rather it would push them more to the right (and on to the center).
@Billyjoe
Stop tone trolling.
And did you learn anything from the lecture?
Anyone who gets pushed to the right over some harsh language was never a “friend” and would make a terrible “ally”.
If the acting definition of “winning” is wasting time and energy on easily-influenced ~liberals~ who will fall for the first nazi that woos them, fuck winning.
Why hasn’t BillyJoe shut the fuck up, like a person of honesty and integrity would do?
I won’t bother with his bullshit. I’ve heard it for decades.
Logicalcat,
Yeah, Stop tone trolling, I missed that one ;)
Crip,
Yeah, that I have to think very carefully in choosing my words or someone will jump right on top, miss the point I was making, and derail into a tangent.
Porivil,
How about, towards the right, or away from the position of that abusive unkind leftist person whose views probably reflect his demeanor.
The real victims. :(
****
I never, ever trust anyone who hasn’t shown themselves to be a genuine proponent of my values offering unsolicited and unwelcome advice about how feminists/antiracists/animal liberation activists/atheists/student gun-control supporters/the Left generally… are totally screwing up and alienating people and hurting the cause. In my experience, they inevitably prove to be hostile posers.
Funny how YOU have shown NO evidence to convince my otherwise.
Stop lying and bullshitting, which is trolling us.
Nerd,
Honesty and integrity?
Like the person who completely misread a comment I made on another thread, had it pointed out not one but twice by some else in that thread and, instead of apologising, went off in a huff of indignation.
This is an example of honesty and integrity?
@Crip Dyke
BillyJoe learning anything is an uphill battle.
@Porivil Sorrens
Fuck winning? Not winning means another Trump in the white house, or worse (much worse). Appealing to centrists is how you improve things. Making it more palatable to entertain left wing values means getting them to have an open mind. I myself have done some real head way into convincing a centrist libertarian friend of mine to curb his alt-right flirtations. Now mind you, I did not do it with the cuddly “lets all be nice” bullshit Billyjoe is pushing. Oh no Ive used insults, but Ive also used listening to them, understanding their concerns, and using good arguments (a contrapoints video was also really helpful, who btw, is not leftist but rather liberal like me). Shame is a tool, and I fear a lot of leftists misuse that tool.
Saying “fuck winning” is a privileged position. They are the ones we need to reduce further violence and bigotry and the rise of authoritarian right wing. You are not going to convince the ones on the right, because they dont care about facts. Not the ones on the left, because they already share your views. That leaves center leaning people as the only pool for growth, but not when you reinforce all the negative they have learned about the left.
No, you are not going to win over the centrist who goes to the alt-right when someone is being mean to them. But you can get that centrists who believes in dumb centrist shit. Centrists like Lindsey Shepard in the video BillyJoe linked to. Wasting her time with a hearing where they accuse her of bullshit she didn’t even do cemented her centrist positions. Making it that much harder to dismantle. Also on a side note, self censorship is an oxymoron Ms. Shepard.
You know what I fear? That the same thing that happened to atheists, will happen to the left. Where in their pursue of aggression (sometimes necessary) they leave themselves open to people who only want that. That is what happened to the atheist community. A lot of people joined the movement not because they believe in it, but because it made them feel superior. Not because they understood the valid arguments and reasoning behind being left/atheist, but because they feel special. In that intellectual void, you open yourself up to all manner of stupid shit.
Shame and rudeness are tools, but if you don’t know how to use them…don’t. And if you are not sure then, to be safe just don’t.
I mean, billyjoe’s legitimate commitment to “left of centre” values has been super evident on this and other threads.
JFC, logicalcat, the statement was “If the acting definition of ‘winning’ is wasting time and energy on easily-influenced ~liberals~ who will fall for the first nazi that woos them, fuck winning.” You then translated that as simply “Fuck winning.” Come on.
@SC
Maybe Ive jumped the gun.
But my concerns with how the left use shame are still valid.
@68
If you interpreted my post as somehow abandoning the concept of winning as a whole rather than specifically rejecting the idea of kowtowing to wishy-washy centrist idiots, I don’t know what to tell you.
You can waste your time trying to court idiots like Shepard, but I’m not going to join you in bashing your head against the wall to win weak-willed “allies” who will flip the first second they hear a bad word.
Logicalcat,
You misunderstand what I’m saying.
Note: I’m being kind here, I could have mimicked the average commenter on this blog and said “you are [expetive] lying about what I’m saying, you [expletive]” :)
I haven’t exactly been “nice” myself, so I’m hardly likely to demand that approach for anyone else. But I believe I’ve been “measured”. But, by no stretch of the imagination, is calling someone a racist, misogynist, alt-rightie, white supremacist, and rapist a measured response to what I’ve said. And flinging out expletives for no reason at every opportuity sort of loses its impact when it is really called for.
My own opinions have changed dramatically over my lifetime and mostly as a result of strongly worded arguments and evidence against my position that were certainly not “kind” but were “measured” and well meant. That’s all I’m calling for.
@ billyjoe, #58
I gave you a reason. From my comment at #38:
You want more? Fine:
1.) When I was a Christian, I policed my every thought, word, and action, hoping that it would help keep me out of Hell. I still have scars from where I’d punish myself for thinking/saying something that might offend God, even though I stopped doing that more than a dozen years ago. I swear because I’m free of that.
2.) My parents also violently policed my language. Saying so much as “crap” was apt to get me beat, if they were in the mood. I swear because I’m a grown-ass man who is happy that he no longer has to walk on eggshells all the time.
3.) My dearest friends swore constantly, especially my bestest bestie, who was a veritable poet of profanity. My mentor swore in Russian, but I don’t know how to spell any of those words. They’re dead and, though it’s been 15 years, I miss them every day. Swearing makes me feel a little less lonely.
That’s four. So no, I’m not going to stop swearing (unless PZ Myers tells me to knock it off; it’s his blog).
In the course of responding to your comment, I read it several times. I understood it quite well. I’ve read the same tired arguments many times, and you added nothing new, interesting, or important to your tone-trolling.
Again, I addressed this bullshit in my last comment. I’m not making the “worst possible interpretation” of the twits referenced. I’m just refusing to let them rig the game in their favor by setting all the rules of conversation. I object to their blatant dishonesty, and I refuse to entertain them by pretending that their lies are true. Pigs do not fly under their own power, and I will not play along with people who want to claim that flocks of flying pigs are a serious aviation hazard.
We ain’t friends. This is not a “minor disagreement.” I am anti-torture, anti-racial profiling, and anti-white supremacist. These are pretty much bedrock positions of my political ideology, and people who push back against those with disingenuous ‘thought experiments’ that actually normalize and excuse those very things are my enemy.
Harris is a torture apologist. Pinker pushes “political correctness run amok” narratives. Peterson is a conservative fool peddling a tired ideology with a larger than average vocabulary.
billyjoe, you habitually descend into worrying about how you are perceived and how you perceive others. Are you aware of that?
(Also, what you’ve been saying is what every concern troll ever has said, ad nauseam — it ain’t novel, you ain’t a voice in the wilderness, and nobody cares)
Logicalcat and Porivil, her name is Lindsay Shepherd. Interestingly I initially misspelt her name also but managed to correct it before posting. So no big deal, except perhaps for Lindsay Shepherd.
logicalcat:
I believe your (given my knowledge of you to the best of my recollection) concerns in general are valid. But “how the left use shame” is uselessly vague. I’ve expressed similar concerns, but about the statements and actions of specific people and groups. If you don’t talk about specific examples, you give support to fake allies who make bogus and disingenuous claims about what people are saying. It’s a complicated subject, and it serves no purpose to go along with false claims of illegitimate shaming, criticism, or ridicule.
(OMG, I’m flashing back to an argument on Ophelia Benson’s blog in which someone claimed that atheists using shame at all opened the door to like Stalinism, and I kind of think Sedman supported that view. But I could be completely misremembering the situation.)
The best laid sentences of mice and men often get autocorrected.
That said, can’t say I’m too broken up over a typo made about a person I dislike who will, most likely, never see the post.
John,
I don’t “worry” about it. I’m just pointing it out. I’ve been around long enough not to let what some anonymous person on the Internet, who wouldn’t have the slightest idea of who I am, says about me, bother me. And I don’t get the accusations of “tone troll” and “concern troll”.
billyjoe, if you’re put off by swearing, you will never get by here. I’m serious. That’s the losing battle of losing battles.
Step 1 to intellectual honesty is getting past your fucking vapors.
Vucodlak,
I sympathise. My situation was similar without the physical abuse. It ruined my childhood and adolescence. I can see how difficult it would be to not keep your emotional reactions out of your posts. I’m inclined to do that with religious apologists and fundamentalists. But they are still not arguments, and I believe it is counterproductive to emotionally attack someone, as the example of Lindsay Shepherd demonstrates.
“No one can define this Wahhabism.”
Billyjoe says:
Jeez Vucodlak, stop being so hysterical.
For reals billyjoe, there’s nothing wrong with adding a splash of color to one’s dialog, especially on some bloke’s blog. This isn’t sunday school.
This is why you’re repeatedly being called a tone troll.
@72
Except that they don’t turn when they hear a bad word. They don’t turn at all. They stay centered and its when you present the left as authoritarian and needlessly aggressive. Sorry, but what the administration did to her was authoritarian shit. Kow-towing to centrist “idiots” is how you win. SC had me thinking that maybe I misinterpreted you, but now I’m starting to think I was spot on. What other form of winning is there other than helping the centrist guide them along into thinking correctly (and critically)? They are what is ultimately needed in order to neuter the alt-right. Ive done this myself so I know it can be done. To be clear, I am not talking about people like Sargon, I’m talking about people like Lindsey Shepard. Sorry she doesn’t already come prepackaged with all the ideas and reasoning that would make her an good ally.
Thinking back on how the atheo/skeptical movement started; On youtube specifically it did not start with rudeness. It started with facts and good arguments. I learned a lot in those early years about the differences between positive and negative claims, on falsification, and many other concepts I never heard of or had the vaguest sense of. I came into that sphere an agnostic who thought that hard line atheism was foolish (basically a centrist). I changed. Yes, shame was a part of it, but it was only when it got too brash and too rude where things started to go awry. When the content was more about pwning, than about substance. I admit, I loved it even then. I reveled in the pwnage. In not giving a shit about their bad and awful ideas. But it eventually became clear that it was no longer a movement about intellectualism and skepticism, but on acting superior. I fear the same can happen with leftism. On feeling so superior, that you ignore or are blind to your movement’s own bullshit. Where shame overrides all. And maybe with college administrators, that already happened (if there is truth to Ms. Shepard’s claims about silencing).
billyjoe @79, heh. Thus your immediate retort exculpating yourself, yet again.
—
@81
How’s your theory of mind? Because that second clause could be rewritten as “I believe you make no arguments and you counter-productively emotionally attack people such as [LS]”.
(I note you make no argument as to why [they] are purportedly not arguments any more than you attempt to justify your alleged belief, indicating you do not practice what you preach)
SC,
I’m not “put off” by swearing as such. I just think swearing for no reason is counterproductive. It’s definitely not an argument. And, what do you do then when swearing is really called for? Nothing I have said justifies how people have reacted towards me and what people have said about me. How about actual arguments. Despite what many pretend, most of my arguments have remained unchallenged. They simply repeat their unsupported claims and add in a few expletives and false accusations impugning my character, rather than bother about any actual arguments.
BiilyJoe, third party evidence is your friend, not your slimy word. You do lack honesty and integrity.
Either put up or shut the fuck up every time you speak. Third party evidence pointing to your claims. Or no claims.
I don’t expect you to show integrity. Like with Trump, it is a concept you aren’t familiar with.
@84
Like I said, feel free to waste your time converting wishy-washy centrist idiots. Have fun with it. I’m not going to join you.
I have better things to do, like idk, literally anything else.
John,
All I said is that emotional reactions and outbursts are not arguments and tend to be counterproductive. If there are actual arguments as well, the emotional outbursts tend to detract them. They certainly don’t enhance them, or add to their persuasive effect.
Sure, champ.
Nerd,
Anything but an apology for your obvious error in that thread, hey?
Anyone can make a mistake, no big deal, but not to admit it and apologise…
I wouldn’t have bothered mentioning it here, and I didn’t on that thread either, but when you presume to come onto another thread and speak about my honesty and integrity….
Again, this is uselessly vague, and not responsive to the arguments made.
The atheo-skeptical movement started literally thousands of years ago. And it faced massive problems then, many of them similar to those we encounter now.
Speak for yourself, not a movement.
Me in 2012: “Apropos of not much…Thomas Paine, a cautionary tale.”
Mak,
The very definition you supplied shows why the accusations that I am a tone troll are false. To be clear, I wasn’t saying that I did not understand the meaning of tone trolling. I was saying that I don’t understand why that accusation was leveled against me.
So let’s get this clear:
If someone insults me WITHOUT offering an argument that is an ad hominem fallacy on their part. If I react to that, I am reacting to an ad hominem, I am not tone trolling.
If someone insults me AND offers an argument and I respond to the insult but not the argument, then I’m tone trolling.
I haven’t done the latter.
Offer something other than YOUR WORD to support your fallacious allegation…
Those of us who have been here a while know better….
billyjoe will be the arbiter of argument status.
@SC
The example I used is the one where Ms. Shepard’s college tries to silence her with bogus accusations. Other ones I have are even more personally anecdotal. I’ll give only one since I type slow and responses on here are fast. keep in mind I am not convinced (yet) that this is a big problem. Just a potential one. I don’t know what happens on colleges as I’m no longer a student nor faculty, but I do believe Lindsay Shepard on her accounts.
My personal example is with that libertarian friend, who btw is quite islamophobic. I’m not going to go into details but during an exchange on facebook with myself and his leftist friends about something racist he said, I was the only one who reached him. Not the leftist who called him racist (even tho it was true). I didn’t call him a racist at all, but rather i explained to him that his arguments were fallacious, and one of his ideas was straight up fascist. I shamed him, but not by going for straight up rudeness. No, I used counter arguments. Where is that study that says you convince more people through arguments than through facts? The fact was that he was racist, but that was not what convinced him he was wrong.
In the end I did make one big mistake…I did not call him a racist at all. I should have, but not initially like all the others. It would still be the wrong move to open up like that. I should have called him that after I made a breakthrough, but in a manner that explains myself and my reasoning behind calling him that. Because I think he needed to hear being called a racist, but coming from someone who took the time to have a conversation with. Not someone who instinctively blurts it out. He is still Islamophobic to a certain extent. I missed my opportunity where i could have done more.
I use this example because I am not dismissing the value of rudeness. Ive been rude unapologeticly many times and that will not change. But people wield it incorrectly. hell there have been times Ive noticed where being rude was the only way to reach someone. But it was rudeness that was more well thought out. More often than not this blog wields it well, and maybe because of that reading experience its worth was inflated among the commentariat including myself.
My problem is that I don’t want people to write off centrists. We cant all be fantastic critical thinkers who gets shit right the first time. Be as rude as you want when it works. And among the alt-right, fuck it. The same friend used to link to stuff with Milo (he’s stopped now) and when i called Milo a Nazi he said to be “I don’t care that word has been used so much its lost all validity.” And maybe from his perspective its true. He has probably seen leftist call people Nazi over the vaguest thing. But I answered that with “I calls em like I sees em. Its not the frequency that matters, but rather its accuracy. Accurately speaking Milo is a Nazi”. That worked out better than calling him a Nazi apologist. Even tho it would be true. There are exceptions no doubt.
MLK said the real obstacle towards equality were the moderates. I believe him, and see changing their mind as the solution.
This is the last comment from me because I make it a rule not to post a lot. I get really addicted to posting and stay up late into the night when I should be asleep. I’ll read any response after time has passed.
Actually one more thing, since I’m a Contrapoints fanboy and relish any opportunity to shill her videos, here are two criticizing the way people on the left communicate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEyL1rDe60w&t=2s
Meh, sad to see Contra went so milquetoast. Another ~liberal~ for the garbage bin.
Logicalcat at #84,
Thanks for that contribution.
It states more clearly than I have, the point I am trying to make.
Lindsay Shepherd made a recording of the meeting with the administrator, the professor, and a anti-discrimination representative. Her decision to record the meeting was prompted by that fact that the letter demanding her attendance at the meeting made reference to an anti-discrimination representative being present. The recording is available on the internet but is 45 minutes long and you may not want to listen to it. But, as you can see from the video link I supplied above, and despite claims by Internet bloggers to the contrary, she says that they were respectful and that she did not feel bullied. So she is at least trying to be fair.
But they were trying to silence her. Henceforth, she was not allowed to show a video of people they consider not suitable, even though the particular video that she showed included opposing views by well known public figures on the use of trans pronouns, and was followed by a discussion between her and the students which she describes as being lively and respectful. No student seemed upset and no student complained to her. The idea that the views of a prominent public person should be off-limits under any circumstances in any discussion on a university campus, is manifestly absurd.
And the claim that a student or multiple students complained has not been substantiated. The professor would not identify the person or persons who made the complaint (fair enough, and she did not demand that they should), but they would not even tell her what the specific complaint or complaints were (not fair enough! – how do you respond to accusations when you are not told what those accusations are?), and they wouldn’t even tell her how many complained (apparently this would be a transgression of “the confidentiality clause” as well!). She does not believe any student actually lodged a complaint, but cannot prove this.
Billyjoe said:
In response to this, which I posted (a snippet from this page, which goes into further detail and includes examples):
Billyjoe said (in no particular order):
Billyjoe also said:
I think I’ll leave that there and let people come to their own conclusions.
And as an aside:
Gosh, I’ve probably had to learn, like… hundreds of individual people’s names in my lifetime, and will probably have to learn at least thirty more before I die. I’m just going to call everyone ‘Sawyer’ from now on, and they’re just going to have to deal with it, because I can’t be arsed to learn all those names and why should I be expected to?
@ billyjoe, #81
I’m not going to provide you with any statistics or scientific papers in response to your claims, if that’s what you’re after. This isn’t that kind of discussion, and even if it were it’s not like you’ve provided any evidence of that sort to support your assertions, so why would I respond with facts of that nature?
Like it or not, humans are not rational creatures. A great deal of what we do and why we do it is largely emotional in nature.
To the extent that I actually bother to argue with such people, I don’t swear. I don’t even try to shake their faith most of the time, because I know that’s asking. It’s not my place to destroy their world. It is my place to prevent them from harming people I care about, though. I will be as rude as I have to be to impress upon them that they don’t have the right to dictate that others must live by their rules. But that’s one argument that will not be won by reason alone.
Huh. I’ve written thousands of words of argument in response to your comments over the past few months, but you never actually address those. You respond to some superficial aspect of the comments I make (the type of quote marks I used, for example) and ignore anything of substance. If you keep it up, I’m going to start peppering my replies to you with lyrics from whatever song I happen to be listening to at the time, just to make it fun for me. If you think I’ve got a dirty mouth, just wait ‘til I’m quoting Uta Plotkin or Gen Vincent.
logicalcat,
Your examples are your anecdotal readings of two cases. Even if your interpretation is/were correct, it’s not valid to generalize from those, much less to determine that the troll has a point in another situation or in general.
Different people respond to different things – I know I have. (And you never know what it will be!) My “approach” is to be honest with people. I present my views and tell people what I think of theirs, including when I think they’re assholes or trolls or fakers or being bullshit artists or lying to themselves. My rudeness, anger, outrage, suspicion, and profanity are from the heart. I’m not trying to manipulate anyone, and I recoil from any attempts to do so, even if they’re well-meaning. This doesn’t mean strategy is unimportant, but any strategy has to recognize that people are intelligent agents and not manipulable objects.
****
LOL.
@97 logicalcat
Lindsey Shepard is not some simple innocent victim. She played a Jordan Peterson video aimed at attacking trans protections in the middle of a class that was not about that topic just to spark “discussion”. At least one trans person was in that class (I am not sure if they were the one to complain). Do you have any idea what it is like to have to stay in a class where people debate your rights and you can’t leave because you need the course? I do on this exact same subject. It is humiliating, frightening, and creates an extremely negative educational experience.
In addition to this she took her fame from this event and brought speakers for a “controversial speakers” week that included bring in a neo-Nazi to speak on campus.
If you think Ms. Shepard was ever left you are clearly wrong. She was someone trying to become a YouTube/media celebrity and it worked like a charm. At the expense of trans people like me.
Logicalcat at #98,
Thanks for that contribution also.
But I see the vultures are already circling. :(
But, as to Islamophobia:
This is a much abused term. Strictly “islamophobia” translates as “fear of Islam”. Depending on what you mean, this could be an over-reaction, or it could be spot on. For example, “fear of fundamentalist Islam” is justifiable because it advocates throwing acid in the faces of women who dare to get an education, cutting off the heads of apostates, and throwing homosexuals off buildings. But, “fear of moderate Islam” is less justifiable. I say “less” because, even moderate Islam advocates for sharia law. In practise, however, this is not a real threat in western nations. Muslims in western nations are a small minority, tend to be moderates, and do not strictly follow all the tenets of their religion. Just like most Christians. So it’s an unreasonable fear.
However, whenever anyone says anything critical of Islam they tend to be labeled as “Islamophobic” translated as “anti-Muslim bigot”. The strategy is to silence them with this epithet. But, if all they are doing is criticising the tenets of the religious ideology called Islam, this labeling, with its intended translation, is unjustified. Criticising Islam is no different from criticising Christianlty and criticising fundamentalist Islam is no different from criticising fundamentalist Christianity. Of course, you do need to be aware that your audience may misinterpret this as attacks on Muslims or Christians and make clear that you are attacking the ideology, not people who believes in some unspecified version of Islam or Christianity.
Attacking Muslims and Christians is anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Christian bigotry. Attacking Islam and Christianity is not.
@105 billyjoe
“But, “fear of moderate Islam” is less justifiable. I say “less” because, even moderate Islam advocates for sharia law.”
Citation please. If you are trying to not look like a bigot you are doing a very poor job of it.
And to think the original post was about movement atheism and who represents it and the consequences thereof, including its palatability to the alt-right and libertarians.
—
BJ:
(sigh)
“…which I mention not at all out of the blue or as a distraction, because it’s totally been…a central theme of this thread…”
after being asked if he learned anything, billyjoe replies:
By which, one can only reasonably conclude, billyjoe means that it is necessary to start writing what is actually intended to be communicated or else the resultant sloppy writing will include unintended errors…at which point someone will quote that error and, instead of agreeing with a perfect conclusion that does not follow from the flawed argument, actually demonstrate how the quote was in error.
Meanwhile, billyjoe has not once, not a single time that I’ve noticed, actually conceded making an error. I haven’t even seen billyjoe write something tentatively, like:
Nope. In billyjoe’s writings, things just are. Assertions are facts. Critiques of failed arguments are attempts to derail the conversation away from the conclusions that logically follow from failed premises.
Look, billyjoe, it’s pretty easy to back up what you’re saying. Many of us have quoted you in order to make specific critiques of specific statements or premises (implied or explicit) then gone on to demonstrate exactly how those statements or premises are in error (or at least attempted a clear argument that they are in error, not merely asserted that they are). You are free to do the same. But when you simply announce that someone took someone else out of context or missed the point, with no comment numbers and no quotes, it’s going to appear to everyone around you as the incompetent whinging of a child who doesn’t know how to make an argument, but just knows everyone else is wrong.
This is especially true, and should be especially embarrassing, ever since you linked to that graphic presenting a hierarchy of argumentation by quality which encourages specific quotes paired with specific arguments. If that is what you want, then why should others deserve less?
If that isn’t what you want, then why were you so dishonestly dissembling when you linked that graphic?
Actually inquiring minds want to know.
You know the saying: Science progresses one funeral at a time.
The mix of political beliefs among atheists will probably change any way through generational turnover. A generation from now, white-nationalist beliefs will probably be common among white atheists because today’s liberal atheist Boomers, who couldn’t adapt to the changing order of affairs, won’t be around to dispute these beliefs.
Ooops. I used “he” for billyjoe: billyjoe, if he isn’t the most respectful pronoun to use in referencing you, I apologize. And, frankly, I apologize for the assumption even if I happened to get the pronoun right by luck.
Anna,
Thanks for your mischaracterisation of the Lindsay Shepherd controversy.
False.
She played a video which showed a discussion between two well known public figures, one who argued against the use of trans pronouns and one who argued for the use of trans pronouns. This was a lead in to a class discussion regarding trans pronouns. She is a teachers assistant in a language class, so the topic is hardly irrelevant.
Your claim that her aim was to attack “trans protections” as you put it, is ridiculous and slanderous. No one has ever suggested that before to my knowledge. She has specifically stated that she supports the use of trans pronouns. She remained neutral in the class discussion because she wanted to hear what the students had to say uninfluenced by her own view. She says the discussion was lively and respectful. Do you have evidence to the contrary.
There is very little evidence at all that anyone in the class actually complained. Apparently, because of a “confidentiality clause” they were unable to tell her who complained, they were unable to tell her what the actual complaint was even though she was supposed to respond to it, and they were unable to tell her how many complained.
It depends on how that discussion was conducted.
How do you know that “they” were debating the rights of a trans person in the class? How do you know there was a trans person in that class who wanted to leave but couldn’t. How do you know the trans person didn’t participate in the debate?
You are just making up a narrative about what happened when you wouldn’t have a clue what happened in that class. I haven’t heard of anyone coming forward to contradict her account of what happened in the class. If you have information to the contrary, I would be pleased to have a link and I will reconsider.
Took her “fame”. She has become a pariah as a result of this episode. She has been slammed, shamed, and slandered all over the Internet. I wonder how you would have fared under such a sustained attack such as she was subjected to.
But, I agree, that this was probably a mistake for her first “controversial speaker”. But she judged otherwise. Big deal.People disagree. However, having been invited, she had a right to be heard and for the audience to hear her speak. However, a group of students decided otherwise and disrupted the speech and succeeded in having it cancelled. Another victory for advocates against free speech.
Congratulations!
Yeah, she was lying when she said she is a feminist, a supporter of action on climate change, an environmentalist, a supporter of trans people and trans pronouns. In fact, she said that she had never thought of her views in terms of left/right politics but that obviously her views would put her in the left/liberal camp. But, of course, you know better what her views are.
And yeah, she showed that YouTube debate, not to explore the use of trans pronouns in her language class, but because she had the long range plan of being a youTube/media celebrity! That sounds like a guaranteed strategy that should work like a charm to become a media celebrity – show a video of a debate about trans pronouns in your language class!
So a crypto-bigot used her class as a platform to spread propaganda featuring an actual open bigot, and then proceeded to invite a neo-nazi to campus, and we’re supposed to feel bad that she’s faced criticism for it?
Cry me a goddamn river. Like I said earlier, she can sit and spin.
@105
Where’s my bingo card.
@112
Frankly I’m kind of fucking tired of cis people constantly trying to “debate” trans pronouns, as if they’re any sort of authority on the matter that gets to speak over us, especially if it’s brought up as a matter of ~language purity~.
Gender identity has been “debated” for decades. The debate is OVER. Trans people exist and deserve to be respected. Science acknowledges us and acknowledges our identity and our need to be respected as who we are. There is no “both sides” to this discussion. It is DONE.
And hey fun fact, someone can claim to be a trans advocate and then do things that hurt the very trans people they claim to support, knowingly or not.
@billyjoe 112
Taking your arguments in order
1. I did not say she was trying to attack trans pronouns I was referring to Jordan Peterson in the video. So drop your first argument.
2. The complaint was made through the student Rainbow Centre by a GLBT student but they will not violate the students confidentiality and name them. It was a real complaint. Many other students in the class have also spoken to the press saying they felt the video was not relevant to the class material and it made them uncomfortable. This is the evidence for why I did not make up the narrative and that there were complaints.
3. You claim she was shunned and shamed but she gained over 50,000 twitter followers. Almost every right wing or centrist media outlet in the country has supported her in print. The university caved and apologized to her. I don’t see her facing any negative consequences of any note.
4. The speech was not cancelled by the university but by a fire alarm being pulled. We do not know who did that and even if it was a student why do you feel that a neo Nazi anti immigrant speaker losing their platform is somehow a loss for free speech?
5. She has said she supported left wing causes before the conflict but much like you saying you are a progressive without actually standing by anything progressive in your comments; she has no real history of any action in the area. Honestly, if she really was a believer in those left wing views they wouldn’t change because someone is mean.
This link verifies the complaint and that other students felt uncomfortable but there are many other sources to this: http://www.macleans.ca/lindsay-shepherd-wilfrid-laurier/
I am baffled by the notion that people say “fuck” only under extreme duress.
I work in places where, “Pass the fucking ketchup, please.” is SOP.
@Mak:
Frankly I’m kind of fucking tired of cis people constantly trying to “debate” trans pronouns, as if they’re any sort of authority on the matter that gets to speak over us,
Preach.
@billyjoe:
Fuck you. It’s not intended to be an argument. And everyone who swears has a reason, even if it’s just that it’s a comfortable personal habit or a matter of style.
Not everything is about you. If I want to quote Emily Dickinson because it makes me feel better, then I’ll quote Dickinson. If a shortened quote makes me feel better, then I’ll just say dick.
@Billy, Lindsey Shepherd was 100% in the wrong, likely unintentionally, but because of the subject matter the incident has been completely blown out of proportion. First she was a grad student assistant teacher, meaning the actual teacher has every right to tell her what and how to teach and if she wants to keep her job she should do so. Secondly it was arguably very inappropriate setting. They were talking about pronoun use in a basic composition class. Giving them a video on a controversial hot political topic without any formal education before or after the video is completely inappropriate in any level of teaching. Lastly the school has rules about discrimination and confronting her to explain how what she did was pushing the boundaries of the rules, so it wouldn’t happen again, is absolutely the correct way to address the problem, regardless on how what happened in class came to the attention of the administration.
This is a complete non-issue except in so far as why it has been made an issue, schools need clearly defined rules, and when something is not directly addressed by the rules then a libertarian approach to say it is acceptable until there is reason to make a rule against it is the best approach.
Sadly it doesn’t matter anything you say here. The impotent asshats here will quote mine, strawman, and ad hominem you to death. Stop addressing every individual statement and person who misrepresents you. State your positions in a clear summary and leave the jackals to behave like animals. Take a picture and send it to national geographic.
billyjoe since you seem comfortable giving orders here’s one for you, stop pretending that rudeness, meanness, and insulting speech don’t work. Stop claiming that it does not good because I’ve seen and experienced otherwise. You are utterly fucking wrong.
I’m one of the people it works on. In fact when I decided to become overtly political here on FTB it Caine, chigau, gilell and others critisized me with all the same vitriol you’ve seen and I’m grateful for it. I was politically immature and I needed to learn to control of my reactions and now I’m stronger for it. I had my own tantrum, some anxiety attacks and I paid attention to what was happening. I saw what they were talking about, the niceness did not work. People weren’t listening. Bad behavior continued. I had a moment where I flipped my own switch and overtly declared that I gave up on sticking to niceness. I started using the targeted rudeness that cripdyke mentioned. And I still got repeated harsh criticism where I needed it.
And I’m saying that as a person with Tourette’s Syndrome, a group of people who respond more strongly to intense emotion than average. You enabling and coddling toxic social behavior and if I can do it so can they. They look like whiners to me.
People used to being in charge in society don’t know how to handle criticism and harsh words. The term “white fragility” exists for a reason and the concept applies to anyone used to social privilege. I couldn’t handle it, I couldn’t see wat people were telling me and now I’m better because of the public criticism. I’m not saying everyone does, in fact now I’m anticipating it and planning for it.
The schism that occurred in the skeptic/atheist community resulted in the people with shitty behavior concentrating themselves into their own places like the slymepit. I was good with that at the time (despite the need to deal with the organized abuse from there) and now that we’re seeing the alt-right and other white supremacist groups eat each other politically I’m more happy with it. It let’s us point out the toxic behavior easier and their inability to maintain healthy groups contributes to dealing with the shitty behavior.
Additionally since a major thing those deplorables were against was things like taking harassment, bigotry and abuse seriously, and we now have the meetoo movement and won the battle involving harassment policies just being taken seriously I have reason to believe that this is a good strategy.
Why the fuck should anyone listen to you?
Why should I be concerned if a person chooses to stereotype all left-leaning criticism aimed at them because some was only insulting in content (your example from Canada)? If they decide to act like a bigots and join the other bigots they will earn consequences just like many women supporting misogynists learn that they will be abused when they step out of line.
This is a feature if the system and not a bug.
More generally why is FUCK offensive?
To me that’s the most important thing because things should be offensive for good reasons. I see no reason to respect being offended by words fuck or shit and I like to undermine that when I can because they have no damage associated with them beyond the social feeling we invest in them. When true obscenities like bigotry are ignored because of the presance of symbolic ones it’s the rest f society with the problem. Fuck that bullshit.
@Brony:
Exactly. If there’s nothing wrong with fucking, there should be nothing wrong with naming fucking.
Likewise, I try to avoid “asshole” as an insult. I’m not perfect, because people around me use that insult as often as they use any other insults. But I use it rarely out of conscious consideration of the consequences of demonizing our own bodies.
Also, our anatomical assholes serve an important, even indispensable function. I don’t want to accidentally imply that Donald Trump does the same.
@Brony:
Exactly. If there’s nothing wrong with fucking, there should be nothing wrong with naming fucking.
Likewise, I try to avoid “asshole” as an insult. I’m not perfect, because people around me use that insult as often as they use any other insults. But I use it rarely out of conscious consideration of the consequences of demonizing our own bodies.
Also, our anatomical assholes serve an important, even indispensable function. I don’t want to accidentally imply that Donald Trump does the same.
Whoa! That was weird. I really did hit the button only once, and if I’d hit it twice, it would normally give me a “you already said that” warning anyway. Wonder what went wrong. In any case, sorry for the double-post. I really had no control over it.
CD
Nah, billy is a shitlord, and nobody here is fooled by his constant presence in threads where he asserts the same wrong shitlord opinions over and over and over. Despite his obnoxious and juvenile behavior, I too made sure that he was his preferred pronoun before addressing them using he or him. I am so done with grown ass adults claiming that basics of manners are so difficult they can’t be blamed for being rude.
billy,
Yeah, fuck off troll. Sealions and pearl clutching shitlords are treated exactly as they deserve here at Pharyngula. You want to play shitlord games? Oh cupcake, we have un unlimited supply and the horde will happily feed you with shovels until you trolsplode, or get banned for boring the Overlord.
@Crip Dyke
I’ve been avoiding “butt hurt” but asshole is one I’ve not thought about and the idea of negative associations influencing cultural problems there is worth thinking about. The gendered ones have been easier to let go of.
The snowflake sensitivity associated with people having their humor analyzed is paired with one associated with analysis of what we consider obscene. These are social tools, we need to understand how they work and why we use them. Then we can choose ones that actually work to make society better. I have no patience for people with a knee-jerk resistance towards thinking more deeply about the social tools they simply use on instinct, it smacks of fear of discovering how they are part of the problem.
I’ve thought more about humor than obscenity, but this one is worth it. Why fuck? We have so many hangups about sex as a society I can’t help but think that the negative feeling associated with public discussion of sex that so many have is related to this choice of “worst word”. It’s appearance seems to conjure those feelings up in some fashion but beyond that my own experience of our language makes interpretation difficult (our language is embodied and my cognition tends to have a very “action oriented” character, the more one can invoke physical experience in language the more effective it is in triggering strong feelings it seems). But despite that it’s not impossible to just accept strong language as information and extract it as well as the rest of a person’s communication.
Frankly the fact that someone can shut down upon the words appearance and ignore actual obscenity (like what happened at Ferguson and my family reacting to my Facebook post) is more of an “emotional reaction”* worth opposing than anything billyjoe has complained of so far. The people in power try to control what is considered obscene and those choices tell us useful things about them that we can manipulate in order to render their language less effective. (Preferably while being overt and explicit about said manipulation. I think there should be an obligation to explain any social manipulation while it’s being used so people have the tools to be in charge of themselves, but that’s colored by the fact that I’ve found Tourette’s Syndrome to lend social manipulation skills and I don’t trust myself, there’s benefits in a lifetime of controlling socially impulsive behavior but I have the instincts of a demogogues, useful when things worth fearing are identified as opposed to the things society often chooses to fear).
People who get tired of thinking about pronouns have no idea how deep we will have to ultimately go in being introspective about our language use if we wish to fix our society. There’s so much wrong in there and the people who gain from the wrongness will resist giving up their illigitimate tools of social manipulation (this goes for the left and right despite the right’s greater threat level, casual ablism is common here at FTB). Fortunately it seems those tools can be dealt with and manuvered around, but figuring out how requires introspection and understanding if just how one is and has been using them.
*There’s no such thing as an “emotional reaction” as it’s typically understood because literally every conscious action, mental or physical, is emotional. Feelings of emotion are part of all conscious thought. Claims that someone is acting emotionally are basically accusations that someone is being irrational without associated observations of irrational behavior. Rather the person accusing another of “acting emotionally” is the one that can’t handle the emotion present (and that’s billyjoe’s problem, I’d rather be able to interact with all the kinds of emotional content so I can understand people independent of agreement/dissagreements)
To add to my last part where I mentioned being able to handle strong emotion expressed by others, that’s independent of socially opposing toxic social behavior like bigotry. Being intolerant of toxic social behavior is not the same as being able to accept profanity expressed by someone who has to put up with bigotry. I’m sure it sometimes like an irrational “emotional” reaction to someone with unconscious bigoted behavior outside of explicit slurs, but again and again I can’t get those people whining of being called racist, sexist, islamophobe to get specific about precisely what they were supposed to have done to earn the characterization. Never one quote, not even from the same page (I’ve asked billyjoe for similar quotes before).
My socially predatory side finds that very interesting.
What I find so fascinating is the voluminous words wasted on strawmen.
Even if I clearly and unequivocally state my opinion on a topic, commenters here will still insist on re-interpreting that opinion into something they can attack. The reason is twofold, in my opinion: you have the attitude that, if I don’t totally agree with you, then I am totally against you, and totally wrong, not just wrong in the parts on which I disagree; and you don’t have sufficiently convincing arguments against where I actually disagree.
Out of all your false strawmen narratives about my opinions, you then weave a straw man narrative about the sort of person I am, because it’s so much easier to attack an extreme person who is a racist, misogynist, white supremacist, and rapist, than the reasonable person who I actually am, who simply sees things slightly differently from you. These slight differences are, of course, really important to you because, at base, they mostly concern your conceptions – I would say misconceptions – about free speech, which is sort of your bottom line.
If I don’t agree with your misconception of free speech, I am totally bad and all my other opinions are totally wrong, meaning that if they aren’t obviously wrong you will make them wrong by mischaracterising them, hyperbolising them, and even occasionally lying about them. You can then feel justified in labeling me a racist, misogynist, white supremacist, and rapist, who should just shut up and go away and not upset the wholesome narratives being circulated here.
Case in point. I think I was pretty clear when I said that I am not offended by those expletives: I’ve been around for a while; I have a thick skin; I react either with detachment or mild amusement if someone looks like they’re trying to be particlarly unkind; etc. But that doesn’t suit your narrative, does it: I have to be offended; I am obviously lying when I state clearly that I am not offended.
Another case in point: I have on at least two occasions acknowledged that I was wrong in what I said and I have apologised for it. No, I can’t quote you or remember what I apologised for, or to whom. Not that it made any difference because, on both occasions, my apology was simply used as more ammunition to use against me. But, despite two clear cases, which at least some of you must remember, you prefer to say that I have never acknowledged that I was wrong.
On the other hand, none of you have ever apologised for your numerous mischaracterisations of what I’ve said, or what others I’ve reference have said; or for your slanderous accusations about the sort of person I am. Nerd of Redhead was only one obvious recent example, where she clearly and unequivocally misread what I said, had it pointed out to her twice by another commenter and then, instead of retracting and apologising, indignantly left the conversation.
I suppose the only person who has tried to actually engage is Crip. Unfortunately, although he is very precise in his language to the degree I cannot claim for myself, he is pedantically precise. I don’t really have any interest in pedantically dissecting the language I use, when it should be very clear from context what my meaning is. For example when I said recently that “some thought” should be given to the large number of trans pronouns, I obviously did not mean that no one anywhere has ever given it a thought. I simply meant no thought about that has been expressed in this blog commentary. I expected perhaps some discussion about the number of trans pronouns, not a pedantic dissection of the actual words I used in that comment.
shorter BJ: me, me, me and me — and my grievances.
Um… it’s Crip Dyke. Should be a clue.
<snicker>
Such acumen!
(Hint: Nerd is a bloke)
—
I’ll give you this; you’re a whiner par excellence.
Got anything to say about my proposition @107?
Billyjoe, until you show YOU know how to say “I’m sorry, I was wrong”, don’t expect anybody else to do so. Lead by example, not whines. I didn’t flounce off. We old folks need our sleep.
So, when are you going to stop boring us with the same old crap we’ve heard for years from many other tone trolls?
Here’s a clue. You can post, but we don’t have to bother with your tripe. Freedom of speech also means our freedom to ignore you, and to point out where you are wrong. Again. lead by example in showing how to listen. Tone trolls never listen, they, like you, are too busy preaching and criticizing to shut the fuck up and listen.
Last I checked, you don’t have to apologize for correctly characterizing someone. Ergo, billyjoe is not owed any apologies ;)
billyjo
Who exactly? Normally I would say citations needed, but PZ in fact prohibits carrying grudges from other threads into new threads. BTW, we would be quite happy if you would improve your critical thinking skills so as to offer an intellectually stimulating discussion. Nobody demanded you follow some narrative when they attempted to correct your basic logic errors in multiple topics.
Those aren’t expletives. Clearly you are offended or you wouldn’t keep repeating this same complaint in every single OP.
Classic troll comment! Nerd she is not.
Fucking ( expletive) stupid (descriptor) shitlord. (biased personal judgement)
It is rather astounding how many gross cognitive errors billy has managed to make in so few words. If billy had managed to actually engage a brain cell before pulling assertions from his nethers, he would have searched this blog for trans and discovered CD’s rather excellent series of guest posts on that very subject!! I’m sure CD will be most gratified to know that billy has spent all of a few seconds thought on the subject and will now magnanimously gift us with blatherings and bullshit.
As an aside, why the fuckity fuck is the fucking dunderhead billy derailing yet another thread into endless whinging about Lindsey Shepard? I also want to see the scary list of up to 30!!1! pronouns that everyone must immediately start using. If such list cannot be provided, billy needs to shut up forever about the scary list of 30 words like they and them.
I’m weary of the baseless narrative that implies the transtapo are everywhere, and will come for you in the night if you make a mistake. I doubt they have any use for a self centered navel gazing manchild.
Billyjoe @128
This is a lie, because one of those times was to me, after I proved unequivocally that you were pulling shit out of your ass when you said I wanted to censor you. And while I didn’t verbally acknowledge it, I didn’t attack you either, or talk to you at all, because you said you were done with that thread.
You never apologized for the accusation, mind. Only for misreading my remark, after I repeated it five hundred times and you weren’t able to deny it anymore.
So you got huffy about it why? Oh, because you wanted to control the dynamics of the discussion and snottily scold people for not writing to your standards. As a tone troll tends to do.
*SNORT*
So you literally do not care that the content of your words have actual meaning, which could have actual effects on the people who hear them. Or see them, in this case. It’s too much of a bother for you to sit and think about what you might actually be stating when you choose to speak the words you say.
Well no, I guess you wouldn’t. You don’t seem to care about anyone but yourself. And nazis, I guess.
Do you think the commenters on Freethoughtblogs are responsible for deciding how trans people get to be treated?
Do you think the commenters on Freethoughtblogs get to be the arbiters of trans people’s preferred pronouns?
Do you think the “discussion” needs to be brought up here, in this comment thread, after it’s been brought up over and over and over and OVER AND OVER, in large part by people like you who think they have any sort of authority over what pronouns other people are allowed to use?
Do you suppose maybe that the trans people here have already given it considerable thought?
Do you reckon the commenters here have given it thought and decided that it’s not a fucking problem to respect people’s pronouns, whether there’s two or three or FIFTY THOUSAND, even if they didn’t personally express it to you for your vetting?
I don’t give a shit about the opinions of cis people over how many pronouns is ~too haaaaard~ for their mealy little cis brains to handle, because I know as well as you do that you aren’t as feeble as you pretend to be. That’s not the actual issue.
Crip Dyke wasn’t being pedantic. She very plainly and very patiently explained to you something that you yourself asked, namely why people sometimes chose to be harsh and insulting. The answer, which you might have gleaned were you not so busy getting in a snit at her for using too many words for your tastes or whatever the fuck, was that politeness has no bearing whatsoever on how nice or nasty the content of someone’s statement is, because y’all can say some really nasty shit, all prettied up in “polite” language, which demands to be called out.
THEN, as an example for what she meant, she went on to explain to you why she took you to task over the “some thought” remark–namely that it was condescending and insulting to imply that people just made up a list of words and then threw them out onto the internet for everyone to embrace, and that it didn’t take years and YEARS and lots and LOTS of thought from many different people.
It’s not pedantic to point out that when you ask if “some thought has to be given to how many trans pronouns we try to assimilate into the language” that you’re implying trans people are too stupid to have thought this over before we made some proclamation of ~fifty billion pronouns for everybody!~, and that we somehow need the help of magnanamous cis people to make sure that we aren’t being “unreasonable”.
It’s not pedantic to point out that when you say things, they don’t just evaporate into the aether like a fart on the breeze, with no effect on anything or anyone around you.
It’s not pedantic to point out ‘splaining is kind of insulting and demeaning to the people you claim to want to help by telling them shit they already know.
We don’t need to “discuss” our “pronoun problem” with you. There is no pronoun problem. You don’t get to tell us how many we’re allowed to have, or how quality they are, or how they’re spelled. You get to listen, and nod your head, and say ‘okay I will use that pronoun for you’, and then DO IT, just like you unquestionably and unthinkingly accept our names* when we tell them to you.
*Except when you don’t, as sometimes happens, because some cis people seem to think trans people are too stupid to have authority over their own given names, too.
Mak @133,
Well, given somewhat reasonable people, no.
But alas, non-reasonable people exist, as do trolls.
This very post and thread is an example of how easy it is:
@2, Siggy wrote “@PZ, check your pronouns.”,
@7, =8)-DX noted how it was (with a citation)
Whenceupon PZ (either realising or having checked) proceeded to fix it (whether before #7 or after being uncertain but irrelevant), so that:
@9, Trav Mamone wrote “(Also, thanks for fixing the pronouns, PZ.)”
Notably, PZ didn’t feel motivated to acknowledge the gratitude — because it was no biggie — but Trav did — because it was. (What, am I ambiguous or contradictory? Only on the surface)
Then #20 happened. The beginning of the derailment.
Jon Morales @134
Oh certainly, but in that instance the “problem” with pronouns is about like the “problem” with evolution that creationists insist is a thing, if you catch my drift.
Mak, sure. “Teach the Controversy” :)
never had a lick of sense anyhow
I think the leaders as such were assigned by the media and the detractors of atheism. My own experience was being drawn by Richard Dawkins to the RDF forums where I met hundreds of good people who were more interesting and more effective and who networked together.
Then Richard pulled the plug on us and called us some vile names. The diaspora ended up on many otther sites. On some the dark side has prospered. Here in Oz we seem to be slightly better at saying no to them.
I feel its time to let go of atheism as a movement though. Even A+. The mood is building for something more comprehensive.
@99
And I fear that leftism will be one day overrun by people as useless as you are. hell that’s partly the reason why I prefer liberals like contrapoints. Liberals and democrats can be problematic, but I handle problematic far easier than I do useless. Your contribution to this thread is on par with billyjoe, except you don’t get shat on for it.
@103
We approach the same. I go about it honestly, and different things work for different people. Hell on facebook I noticed when I try to be nicer, some people I do not reach at all. And yes my anecdotes don’t offer much strength to generalize, but I was more trying to explain that there are certain studies showing that arguments work better than facts-rude insults are the facts. I hope I’m coming across clear here. Like in my example; his being a racist is a fact, but that fact alone failed to make a change.
I don’t think there’s much disagreement between you and i. Assuming I’m interpreting your comment correctly.
@104
Those other stuff about her inviting a neo-nazi for “controversial week” I didn’t know about. That sucks. I definitely have less sympathy. Rename the event “waste of everyone’s time week”. But I still do believe her account. Its not an unreasonable one. She had a class on communications, taught from a social justice perspective (everyone forgets this part), and wanted to use an example on how communication can be used to. She decided to use the most current topical example, and she did. The video had a bigot in it, but it also had a non bigot countering his views. And yes I know the feeling of having a class discuss/debate your oppression/issues. Her example I saw as entirely benign compared to the shit Ive been through with right wing morons in class.
Even if her intent was wrong, the admins response was atrocious. It wasn’t just criticism, it was silencing and accusing her of doing shit she never did. Like for example, violating c-16. For god’s sake, these “leftist” are using incorrect information that right wingers push. Its entirely authoritarian. If it was her intent to become some youtube celebrity (presupposition accusations) then it definitely does not help in giving her the means to set that up. That youtube celebrity platter was given to her by the left. I still believe in her academic freedom. Criticize her, for sure, but don’t make shit up.
@105
No vultures. Even tho we share a couple of small relevant points, I did not waste my good will in making an ass out of myself in the Pinker thread. Yea, I remember that. Apparently we cannot use what he actually said to gauge what he actually thinks? lol, that man was a liar. Still a tone troll.
@139
If you think pinning all of your hopes and dreams on wishy-washy liberals that will jump sides the second a leftist criticizes them is being “useful”, I’m pretty cool with not being a part of that. As mentioned, have fun hitting your head against the wall to win useless allies who fold when things get too hot.
Just shows how hard it is.
I’ve gone with “Crip” for a while and forgot it was “Crip Dyke”.
And I mistook “Nerd of Redhead” for a female for some reason – maybe because I used to work for a Bryant and May, the manufacturers of “Redhead Matches” which displayed a female redhead on the cover of the match-box.
Again, I apologise…not that it will make the slightest bit of difference to anyone.
Poor tyke, shooting himself in the foot and then complains he can’t walk.
A sincere apology does not include multiple sentences justifying misgendering two different commenters because your reading skills are abysmal, whingeing about poor you, and three whole words apologizing. Dyke is right there in CD’s nym, and Nerd’s has always said Nerd of Redhead. (although truly, Nerd is misgendered by trolls so often that we jest that she is the only woman on Pharyngula)
In absense of noting obvious details, use gender neutral pronouns such as they, you,their, them, or you could politely ask the person if they have a preference. Claiming it is hard is neither true, or any sort of an excuse for someone in possession of the dread list of 30 trans pronouns.