Goodness, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? In case the embed doesn’t work for you, the Storify is here.
Harassment
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Such a Busy Week
Need more examples of why you don’t include the handle of people who have blocked you when you tweet about them? Here’s the crap I’ve been alerted to over the last few days by responses and Storify collections, plus some random nastiness that was waiting when I searched on Storify. If the embed doesn’t work for you, the Storify is here.
In Which I Harass Someone Off the Internet
Or, How Stories Change
Yesterday, someone pointed me to a tweet aimed at Elyse Anders of Skepchick. To put the tweet in context, Ben Radford posted a picture on his Facebook wall Saturday night, claiming it was a retraction from Karen Stollznow of her sexual harassment and assault allegations against him. Elyse made some angry comments on his wall and some angry tweets because the statement was unsigned and uncorroborated by Stollznow, yet people were taking it at face value. (You can read how all that played out here.)
The next morning, Elyse found a bunch of the ugly messages in her Twitter replies that many female skeptics receive if they suggest that accused harassers shouldn’t immediately and automatically be believed. To quote a few: Continue reading “In Which I Harass Someone Off the Internet”
Skeptech: Updating a Harassment Policy
Last year, Skeptech asked me to join their Safe(r) Spaces committee. I said, “Yes”, as I try to do whenever a student group asks me for help, and I’m really glad I did. One of the tasks of this committee was revising Skeptech’s harassment policy after having it in place for one conference. They started with the Geek Feminism Wiki’s sample policy, which worked well enough but wasn’t perfect, as templates almost never are.
I’ve been asked to comment on policies in the past, but this was the first time I had a hand in shaping a policy to meet specific needs. I learned a good deal. With the permission of Skeptech organizers, I want to give you a little peek into how the process went. Continue reading “Skeptech: Updating a Harassment Policy”
In Which Sara Mayhew Abuses Copyright to Harass
Four months ago, I documented the fact that Sara Mayhew had libeled Rebecca Watson. The next day, I followed up by reporting her response to that documentation. Since that time she has continued to repeat the libel.
Yesterday, out of the blue, Mayhew decided to comment on that post to assert a copyright claim on her response.
You do not have permission from me, the artist, to download and repost my art. This is a commercial website and your use of the artwork in its entirety for non-educational purposes does not meet standards of fair use. Your reproduction has the potential to impair the market for this work, by hosting it on your server and therefore discouraging traffic to the original work.
Please delete the image from your server.
I’m careful about copyright issues here and decently educated on fair use, so I was pretty sure her claim was unfounded. I went back and checked anyway, because, you know, careful. Then I laughed, forwarded the notification of her comment to Ed Brayton because I tell him about even bizarre claims about the legality of what happens on his network, and responded. Continue reading “In Which Sara Mayhew Abuses Copyright to Harass”
Low-Information Harassers
I should really be working on a blog post for one of the people who’s donated to get me to Women in Secularism 3. I should really be applying for jobs. Instead, I woke up to a bunch of people I had blocked in my Twitter mentions. Here was my morning.
The Storify is here if the embed doesn’t work for you.
How to Suppress Writing Women
Last night I saw the most recent anonymized culling of quotes from a science fiction and fantasy forum populated by some of the genre’s malcontents. The occasion of this particular outbreak is (long story short) a petition by a non-member of SFWA on the topic of the potential future actions of a non-existent review board with which the yet-to-be-hired editor of the SFWA Bulletin might some day have to work. I would tell you what the petitioners were asking for if I knew, but the petition itself is a bit of a “First Amendment”, “bikinis”, “tyranny” mess. The people who signed the petition don’t seem to agree what the point of it was in their statements elsewhere, merely that it’s very important and there are some bad people around. Also, as it protested something that wasn’t happening, it’s moot.
I will note, however, that as the associate president of a non-profit organization, I have a tiny bit of experience on this. We’re currently working to hire a new volunteer editor for our monthly newsletter. Not only will this person work closely with an editorial board, but for the first couple of months of their tenure, they’ll be sharing content-acquisition duties with the board so they can get a feel for the priorities of the organization. We’re currently deciding between two very good candidates, neither of whom has expressed anything other than eagerness over the arrangement.
But this isn’t about the petition. This is about the responses to the petition and to the news that the petition wasn’t met with joy and gratitude. You see, when I looked at those quotes last night, I noticed that many of them centered around one woman, Mary Robinette Kowal. (Full disclosure: Mary is a good friend of good friends of mine. I’ve met her in passing at a couple of cons and been part of a couple of email chains she was also part of. I also happen to like her style.)
Following Mary and the petition kerfuffle both on Twitter, I knew Mary hadn’t gotten that involved in it. Some work to get all the facts. A certain amount of time spent reminding people that this petition was something launched against SFWA, not by it. She retweeted some snark, but she added next to none of her own. She also retweeted people linking to non-hyperbolic, if implacable, posts like this one. Over on Facebook, she shared what is easily the most sympathetic post about the whole thing. But on the forum, Mary was the face of evil and the orchestrator of all the…oh.
That was when it clicked. Somebody had a case of Watson Derangement Syndrome, except that Rebecca Watson wasn’t the center of the delusion. Mary was. And everything they were saying sounded so damned familiar.
Yesterday, I saw a link to the actual forum thread. The similarities continued to mount. So, with apologies to Joanna Russ over the fact that I’m doing far less work than she did, here’s how you go about suppressing the women who are doing that terribly inconvenient writing. Continue reading “How to Suppress Writing Women”
The Cyber Spirits Favor Her
A little conversation about the denial-of-service attack on Freethought Blogs, Skepchick, and Feminist Frequency. With libel for…spice?
The Storify is here if you can’t read the embed.
Puppies, the New Accuracy?
When I talked about the reaction to Skepticon’s handling of the threat that happened there, I mentioned that Sharon Hill of Doubtful News claimed not to have received a response from Skepticon. I also linked to Skepticon’s original response and their response to her and noted that she hadn’t asked any questions of them that I could find. I called her tweet claiming a lack of response “blatantly untrue.”
In response, she could have pointed out that I’d missed something. (Having looked again for any questions that had gone unanswered, I don’t think I did, but there could have been private correspondence.) She could have apologized for saying something poorly in 140 characters and clarified what she meant. She did neither.
Instead, I found this in my Twitter mentions last night.
The puppy also made no statement about Skepticon. On the upside, it also managed to avoid argument ad hominem and suggesting that discussing the accuracy of claims indicates mental illness.
Yay, skepticism?
Sara Mayhew's Response (Updated)
I guess Mayhew didn’t like having the actual story behind “ugly Jew” made public.
Something about a good defense? Or the only defense?
Update: Oh, apparently there was also this outstanding rebuttal. That‘s what you find when you actually go looking.