I get email

I had no idea that Rich Sanderson still existed, but gosh, he was turning up on Twitter a lot this week. You may recall Sanderson from about 5 years ago, when his thing was repetitively harassing women and feminists: he called himself Atheist, skeptic, aka THE KING! Coiner of the term #FTBullies. I guess he still does. That’s his grand claim to immortality, that he coined the hashtag #FTBullies. That’s kind of…it. It’s rather sad, really. I’m picturing his poor mother getting together with her girlfriends, and they’re all bragging about their childrens’ accomplishments, and all she’s got is that her little Richie has a hashtag that only he uses in his obsessive campaign against Rebecca Watson and PZ Myers, still, and he thinks he’s a KING.

Anyway, his name keeps popping up in this twitter thread, where he’s babbling about the time I was threatened with a rape accusation. Let it go, little Richie. Let it go.

Then this morning I got some email. I suspect it’s from him. It sure sounds like him, and contains his predictable hobby horse.

Dear PZ,

Don’t “dear” me, you demented wackaloon.

If you are sincere about your support for #MeToo campaign, if you’re sincere in statements like “You screwed yourself while trying to screw others, and no one feels any particular reason to redeem you.” If you really believe that, why have you not even discussed the time an adult woman sexually harassed you by threatening to accuse you of rape?

Hey, you disingenuous goober, the only reason you know about that incident is because I openly discussed it. I wasn’t sexually harassed; a student tried to extort a better grade out of me by threatening to lie. It was handled quickly and appropriately.

If you are sincere, you will name and shame her, or you will at least discuss the issue in relation to this latest movement to end sexual harassment. If you don’t want to or are afraid to, can you explain why that is?

Sincerely yours,

Critically Thinking

You want me to torment a student who made a mistake 25 years ago? No.

But wait. I can make a contribution to the #MeToo campaign! I can tell everyone how to handle that rare circumstance in which a man is unjustly accused of sexual misbehavior! I have experience! Unfortunately, it’s not very useful experience, because it doesn’t happen very often. But I can tell you exactly how to cope.

So imagine a woman accuses you of improper behavior towards her at work. What do you do?

  • First and most importantly, be innocent. That means that you must treat all women fairly and not take advantage of your position to take liberties with her, or to belittle her. I know that seems to be surprisingly difficult for way too many men, but it’s a necessary prerequisite for this technique to work. If you aren’t innocent…well, bugger off, you horrible little man. You’re deservedly screwed.

  • Next, you need to acknowledge that this person is trying to do you harm. What should you do? Get out of that situation. Leave. Don’t try to argue, and for jebus sake, don’t try to dominate and suppress them — that’s playing into their hands and creating a situation they can use as evidence that you’re abusing them.

  • Report. Go to human resources, your supervisor, anyone with any authority. Describe the situation honestly — if you can’t describe it honestly, you shouldn’t bother following this script. You’re screwed. But if you’re innocent, you should be completely open and transparent and document the event to a third party.

  • Step back and wait. You’re done. Any further interaction will involve other people looking deeper into the matter (and you’re innocent, remember? So they’re not going to find anything inappropriate, right?) In my case, another faculty member, a woman, was delegated to hear the student’s side of the story. It fell apart immediately, she was contrite, and the situation was over.

  • It is possible that a determinedly vindictive woman could push it further. But again, you’re innocent — there isn’t any evidence of misbehavior, right? She doesn’t have dick pics on her phone, there aren’t witnesses to you slapping her butt, you didn’t get drunk and proposition her at a party, you aren’t on record with unwarranted punishments or promises? Right? If there are, fuck you, go away, you’re going to get what you deserved. Otherwise, if your behavior has been spotless, back off, be impersonal, get a lawyer, let it be handled by professionals.

Easy!

Notice that you, a man, have advantages here, and this plan takes advantage of them. Women ought to be able to follow the same plan too, when faced with a nefarious male with bad intentions, but the good deal for you is a) you won’t be automatically disbelieved, b) you won’t be immediately labeled a disruptive influence, and c) you won’t be fired as a shortcut to silencing a complaint. We can get our concerns addressed. In a perfect world, when a Matt Lauer or a Harvey Weinstein importunes a woman, she ought to also be able to immediately walk away, report the situation, and get a third party to look into the matter objectively, and take appropriate action against the guilty party, whoever it may be.

We know that doesn’t happen often enough. It’s grossly unfair. That’s why women are using the “#MeToo” hashtag, to publicize the frequency of this injustice. Because we men have made justice our privilege, and made the world a hell for those who do not recieve what ought to be universal rights. There’s even a song about it now.

You don’t get to use my example of an innocent man who got a swift and fair response as a reason to further trivialize the right of women to also be treated equitably.

You fucking dishonest wanker.

By the way, this twit emailed me using a throw-away email account, “[email protected]”. It’s blocked now, along with all the other accounts he’s used to pester me with in email.

Men have got some learning to do

Well. You know that #NotAllMen hashtag? Somebody quantified it to find out exactly how many men, and the results are not encouraging.

The research group asked over 1,000 Americans “What do you think counts as sexual harassment?” in an online survey. They were told to select all that apply.

The survey found that 91 percent of women and 83 percent of men thought “being forced to do something sexual” fit the bill.

If that doesn’t count as sexual harassment, what does? Who are the 17 percent of men and 9 percent of women who don’t agree?

Men were even less likely to characterize behaviors that didn’t involve physical touch as sexual harassment. Twenty-four percent thought flashing someone doesn’t count and 30 percent thought making sexual comments about someone’s body isn’t harassment.

So…1 in 6 of your male friends think they can find an excuse for forcing themselves sexually on a woman, and 1 in 4 think that sending a dick pic is not harassment. So it’s true, it’s not all men, but it’s also not just a couple of nasty felons hanging out in a dark alley — it could be 80 million ordinary, ignorant, selfish American men.

Oh, gosh, what can Matt Lauer do to redeem himself in our eyes?

I guess Matt Lauer is full of regret and is soul-searching and wants to repair the damage he has done, so he is weeping to the press.

There are no words to express my sorrow and regret for the pain I have caused others by words and actions, Lauer said in the statement released to the network. To the people I have hurt, I am truly sorry.

Lauer said that some of what he has been accused of is untrue and mischaracterized but said, there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.

Translation: he’s sorry he was caught, can he get back on the gravy train now, please?

I’m sure he is embarrassed now. But the man had a trapping button installed in his desk — you came in to meet the boss, he’d press his secret button, and click, you were trapped in there with him and couldn’t get out until he let you. Not only is that creepy as hell, but required forethought and intent and planning and assistance to install. Was that one of the incidents he now claims was mischaracterized?

Here’s the deal, Matt. You screwed yourself while trying to screw others, and no one feels any particular reason to redeem you. You were a dime-a-dozen talent who was paid $25 million a year, doing a job that any of thousands of women could have done better, with more class and insight than you ever demonstrated…and they wouldn’t be leaving a trail of slime everywhere they went. You’ve got millions of dollars socked away, I’m sure, and can just go sink out of sight, to everyone’s relief. Disappearing without a fuss would be in your interest, too, because all you’re doing now is reminding us that you have a fat bank account full of undeserved loot, and a trail of women whose careers were stunted by your selfish actions.

Vanish, little man. Your deflation has only just begun.

Can you say “toxic masculinity”, boys and girls?

Even liberals can fall prey to it. Here’s an article about those vile Southern Baptists having a vile conference in which they rail against all them gay sissy boys and transgernders and baby rapers, except Roy Moore, who is their kind of baby raper, and I can share the author’s sentiments about how awful and hypocritical these bigots are. Unfortunately, what caught everyone’s attention is the opening performance of the conference. This one. Of a guy doing a rainbow flag dance.

The comment from our liberal colleague about this performance:

But wow — they opened their conference with the gayest performance they could find among their “straight” participants.

I guess us straight people aren’t allowed to dance, even badly, without turning gay. You know, all those gay people with their flamboyance and their colorful displays and their uninhabited behaviors. We’ve got to categorize people. Men who dance: gay.

We’re all shackled throughout our lifetimes by these expectations that we have to conform to certain behaviors to fit in to our expected roles. I have no desire to dance, not in the slightest, because I’d be really, terribly, embarrassingly bad at it. And why am I bad at it? Because in my narrow little world, it was not encouraged, and you were weird if you, white boy, were dancing. We get it shamed out of us. It’s another stereotype that white people can’t dance, but it’s not because we’re lacking in a basic human capability, it’s because we’re discouraged from learning.

Another example: I spent the first dozen or so years of my life singing, several times a week, in church choir, where we got real training, and where, I like to think, I was even getting pretty good. And then I left religion, and with that, there was the unintended side effect of my voice drying up, because the only situation in which ordinary, poor or middle-class people sing is in church…and hell no, atheists don’t go to church. Sometimes I want to sing, but the only relic of my past training is an acute consciousness of how bad my singing is now.

I’m also afraid that any attempt at trying would conflict with my identity as a straight white atheist.

We’re all going through life pulling on straitjackets, aren’t we?

Burn it all down

Now a Minnesota state senator, Dan Schoen, is resigning.

Lindsey Port, a DFL candidate for office in 2016 who is running again for a House seat next year, said Schoen grabbed her buttocks at a Democratic National Committee meeting in Minneapolis in 2015.

Rep. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, said Schoen sent her a string of text messages when she was a candidate for office inviting her to drinks, including one not intended for her that read: “I almost got her. Working on her pretty hard, but I almost got her.”

A Senate employee said Schoen sent her an unsolicited photo of male genitalia.

What the fuck has been going on? It’s about time these jerks got booted out of office, but now I’m wondering where all these men who disrespect women came from, how they endured so long without exposure, and how they managed to get elected to office. I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable just giving a friendly hug that women invite, even, and I can’t quite imagine reaching out and grabbing the butt of a co-worker under any circumstances. I also can’t imagine trying to “get” someone.

Never mind me. I’m just an alien from planet Flooforb who accidentally stumbled through a one-way portal to your planet, and I haven’t adapted at all to your social politics yet.

Nor do I want to. Way too much involuntary manipulation and exchange of bodily fluids. Ick.

Christmas must be coming, because the snowflakes are raging

It is becoming one of the most dreaded days of the year: Starbucks announces the pattern on their holiday cardboard cups. Will it be Cthulhu, devouring the world? Will it be the heat death of the universe, captured in a dull gray pattern representative of the faint hiss of radiation from dying galaxies? Will it be a festive splatter of Jesus’s blood as he’s tortured, surrounded by gleeful legionnaires raising their cups of holiday cheer? You never know. It doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, the wattles of the faithful will tremble with rage.

And here they are…

According to a spokesperson,

This year’s hand-drawn cup features scenes of celebrating with loved ones — whoever they may be. We intentionally designed the cup so our customers can interpret it in their own way, adding their own color and illustrations.

And with that, a few loons are off to the races. It’s the GAY AGENDA, they squawk.

Oh, fuck it. Who cares? Go ahead, wax wroth over the pathetic imaginary enemies in your heads, you kooks.

Rules for Gentlemen

Actually, the Rules for Gentlemen are the same as they’ve always been, but unfortunately, there has been one major change: all the get-out-of-jail-free cards have been cancelled. Rendered null and void. Deleted. They aren’t making any more. If you try waving one, it’ll just make you look more corrupt — what made you ever think you deserved an exemption?

So I’m going to be specific. We don’t get to make these excuses ever again.

  • The autistic/mentally ill exemption. Ugh. Gross. Do not ever pull a James Damore and blame your bad behavior and ignorance on autism. Autism doesn’t turn you into an asshole. Neither does mental illness. You don’t get to drag down a lot of innocent people with you and increase their stigma to save your butt.

  • We men are such lovable klutzes. Wrong. Pretending to be ignorant of the rules of normal human behavior isn’t lovable at all. Especially since 5 minutes after you beg unawareness of how to do laundry and complain about the impossibility of navigating the complex social mores of interacting with feeemales, you’re going to hop on the internet and brag about how your sex includes Alexander the Great, Gutenberg, and the guy who invented http among its members.

  • It’s our Man Genes. Nope. There are no such things as Man Genes that dictate your behavior. From the raw material of our genetics, society constructed Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Darwin, and Nelson Mandela. People are complicated and your naive reductionism is noted and dismissed as stupid.

  • The she-was-a-slut excuse. The grossest. It doesn’t matter if she posed for Playboy, had sex with the Philadelphia Eagles, and was standing naked in front of you coated in lube — if she says no, if she doesn’t give consent, you don’t have an invitation to demand so much as a kiss. Her sexual history does not give you liberty to take liberties. I don’t understand why, but this seems to be extraordinarily hard for some people to grasp.

  • But it was only once! It’s never only once. But even if it was that miraculously solitary, incredibly rare, unusual exception of an event, it doesn’t matter. The harm was done. We don’t get permission to run a stop light just once, or to commit murder just once — you don’t get a crime punchcard that lets you off the hook once for each error of judgment.

  • The punishment is too severe. All right, I sort of sympathize with this one — we seem to find ourselves in a world where the only choices are “look the other way” or “nuke it from orbit”, with no gradations in between. But the problem is…we built that world. We looked the other way for everything shy of cannibal baby rape, and our failure to respond to constant escalation of harassment means we haven’t created an appropriate social response to all those intermediate offenses. We put off paying the prices for millennia, and it’s all finally coming due.

  • OK, but I’ll get to pick my penance. Sneaky. You’ll request an ethics review of your actions. By your peers. Who are almost all men. Who include a majority of Republicans. It is very brave to be willing to abide by their judgment, when you know the outcome will be a pat on the back, apologies for dragging you through this process, and uninterrupted resumption of your privilege. Christ, we saw Jeff Sessions glide through his pro forma hearing, suffering only a little finger wagging and ending up…still the attorney general of the whole goddamned United States.

Got it, gentlemen? Pull out your wallet and dump out all those cards granting you exemptions, splash them with a wee bit of your whisky, and set them on fire. You can sit back and sip the remainder of the bottle while weeping — that’s fine. You probably feel naked and vulnerable now, just like everyone else. It’s extremely uncomfortable.

Maybe we can start from scratch and build more equitable principles for dealing with others that gives all of us some protection.

A different version of the Onion Test

The denizens of 4chan/pol have got it into their tiny little heads that the way to Save Western Civilization is for them increase their testosterone levels. There are a few little problems with that idea: they haven’t made the connection between “more testosterone” and “civilization”, and given that testosterone is an extremely common steroidal hormone in all vertebrates, and that bears get rather high testosterone levels without building cities and discovering writing, any connection would be tenuous. But apparently they’re fixated on this idea about manliness, and are looking for ways to naturally elevate their testosterone, and so have started consuming onions.

Wait, why onions? There’s another tenuous connection. Onions are high in antioxidants that help break down free radicals, free radicals are produced in greater volumes in metabolically active cells, some very active cells are sperm cell precursors that are dividing rapidly, so we should eat onions to preserve our precious Western male bodily fluids! There have been serious studies on this subject, and I found one in Experimental Biology and Medicine that reports a substantial increase in sexual activity in rats fed onion juice.

Onion (Allium cepa) is one of the most commonly cultivated species of the family Liliaceae, and has long been used in dietary and therapeutic applications. Treatment with fresh onion juice has been reported to promote testosterone production in male rats. Testosterone is the male sex hormone responsible for enhancing sexual libido and potency. This study aimed to investigate the effects of onion juice on copulatory behavior of sexually potent male rats and in male rats with paroxetine-induced sexual dysfunction. Sexually experienced male rats were divided into seven groups: a control group, three onion juice-treated groups, a paroxetine-treated group, and two groups treated with paroxetine plus different doses of onion juice. At the end of the treatments, sexual behavior parameters and testosterone levels were measured and compared among the groups. Administration of onion juice significantly reduced mount frequency and latency and increased the copulatory efficacy of potent male rats. In addition, administration of onion juice attenuated the prolonged ejaculatory latency period induced by paroxetine and increased the percentage of ejaculating rats. Serum testosterone levels increased significantly by onion juice administration. However, a significant reduction in testosterone because of paroxetine therapy was observed. This reduction was restored to normal levels by administration of onion juice. This study conclusively demonstrates that fresh onion juice improves copulatory behavior in sexually potent male rats and in those with paroxetine-induced sexual dysfunction by increasing serum testosterone levels.

So, in this one study, they found that rats who were juiced on onions had sex more often (and more quickly, but let’s gloss over that). I guess if you think ejaculating rats is a good proxy for civilization, that might be suggestive.

Except…

Don’t tell /pol/ this, they might panic…

The authors of the study are…Mohammed Z Allouh, Haytham M Daradka, Mohammed M Al Barbarawi, and Ayman G Mustafa. This might throw them over the edge. They’re already suspecting that they’re being tricked into gnawing on raw onions.

Should we tell them there are different varieties of onions, and not all of them are as sharp or astringent as the ones they’re suffering with? My father used to eat raw onions — but they were varieties like the Walla Walla Sweet onion, which as you might guess from the name, has a gentler flavor. He was also civilized and manly, which meant kind, supportive, and hard-working. I don’t think that’s the kind of civilized those guys are aiming for, though.