Yeah here’s Wooly Bumblebee’s “Anatomy of a Bully” post.
Her name is Kristina Hansen, by the way, she made it public the other day on a blog post about how evil atheism+ is. Hansen is easier to type than Bumblebee, and besides Bumblebee makes her sound cuddly. That doesn’t work for me.
So here’s her “Anatomy of a Bully” post that all the FTB haters were so wowed by.
What is bullying?
Bullying is persistent unwelcome behavior, mostly using unwarranted or invalid criticism, nit-picking, fault-finding, also exclusion, shunning, being singled out and treated differently, being shouted at, humiliated, excessive monitoring, having verbal and written warnings imposed, and much more.
Excessive monitoring! Funny she should mention it. Hansen and her friends monitor a few selected people they hate very excessively indeed – daily and hourly, via tweets and blog posts. They seem to do nothing else while online. And then there’s “humiliated”…Not to mention unwarranted or invalid criticism, nit-picking, fault-finding, exclusion, shunning, being singled out and treated differently. Check check check check check check check.
Bullying is present behind all forms of harassment, discrimination, prejudice, abuse, persecution, conflict and violence. When the bullying has a focus (e.g. race or gender) it is expressed as racial prejudice or harassment, or sexual discrimination and harassment, and so on.
No comment necessary.
Gang bullying is a serial bully with multiple partners. Gangs can occur anywhere, but flourish mostly in corporate, educational, and on-line arenas. If the bully is an extrovert, they are likely to be leading from the front; they may also be a shouter and screamer, and thus easily identifiable. If the bully is an introvert, that person will be in the background initiating the mayhem but probably not taking an active part, and may thus be harder to identify.
Half the people in the gang are happy for the opportunity to behave badly; they gain gratification from the feeling of power and control, and enjoy the patronage, protection and reward from the serial bully. The other half of the gang is coerced into joining in, usually through fear of being the next target if they don’t. If anything backfires, one of them will be the scapegoat on whom enraged targets will be encouraged to vent their anger. (Sound familiar, FTB?)
No, Kristina, not in the way you intended. It sounds like you and the other obsessives.
Cyber bullying is the misuse of email systems or Internet forums, Social media, blogs, etc for sending/writing aggressive, abusive, or belittling messages, statements, e-mails, or articles.
There is quite a good example of this happening recently on Greta Christina’s Blog, and on the Lousy Canuck where they thought it would be funny to take over the Twitter hashtag #FTBullies and use it to mock Paula Kirby who had written an open letter titled Sisterhood of the Oppressed, as well as any, and all those on Twitter who are speaking out against FTB and exposing their bullying for what it is.
No, it had nothing to do with Paula Kirby, or any other individual; it was mockery of the hashtag itself. It wasn’t personal and vicious the way Hansen’s disgusting post about Mike McCreight is.
The expert on bullies is a mind-searingly vicious bully herself.
That would the excuse for a human being whose response to Jen stopping blogging was to put up a video with images of Prozac, tissues, and a diagram for a back-patting advice. I do believe she’s an expert on bullying. I don’t believe she can say anything honest about it, however.
She’s a fucking nightmare. Like everyone’s worst dreams of junior high school or something.
Ugh, what a vile human being. Remember kids, profound cognitive dissonance isn’t something only the religious experience.
Since Kristina is so adamant about dragging this to grade school level, need we remind her:
You all started this situation.
Every response from anyone at FtB or Skepchick has been a response to the hatred and vitriol THEY created by starting this shitstorm.
Tag jacking is bullying now?
This is exactly how bullies respond to confrontation IRL. When they are confronted about their behavior they pretend to be victims of a bully to deflect attention away from their own behavior. It makes it extremely confusing for people trying to sort out who is actually bullying who. It isn’t a tactic that works out well online because there are transcripts of who said what and when, however. I am sure most people can figure out the difference between criticism and verbal abuse, and which camp FTB falls into.
I think her definition of bullying is functionally useless, because if you take it seriously, there’s no way to distinguish between a bully and the reactions of someone who is bullied. Standing up to a bully requires “persistent unwelcome behavior… …nit-picking, fault-finding, also exclusion, shunning, being singled out and treated differently, being shouted at, humiliated, excessive monitoring, having verbal and written warnings imposed, and much more.”
All of these things can be justified as a response to a bully. Therefore, this definition of bullying is problematic.
A proper definition of bullying would include a clause about this behaviour being unjustified, in which case, you can easily distinguish between the various behaviours of the people in group A (those who behave badly) and people in group B (those who remonstrate people in group A).
How do you think she got to be an expert in bullying? It seems she has done a lot of practice
Odious. Kristina Hansen is simply odious.
Fin: I disagree that there is a justification for this behavior. I’m not saying people don’t have a right to react and respond. But there is a point at which you start becoming that which you oppose.
I am amazed at how obsessed these people are with FTB. I mean, seriously obsessed (and it’s not directed at her). She seems to feel like FTB bloggers are accusing her personally of writing rape threats. It’s just… bizarre. I must admit that seeing how much time she devotes on this made my life feel really eventful by comparison.
About this phenomenon of bloggers writing 15 posts/tweets/comments about how a single post about harassment is excessive… I can’t tell if it is in fact satire by a conceptual artist depicting the sordid breakdown of modern communication. These people just can’t be that unaware of themselves.
“Bullying is present behind all forms of […] conflict.”
LOL
wow, I hope that last commenter (13) was on Kristina’s side. I’d hate to think that someone making so little sense agreed with me, even on something as obvious as this!
That’s Dennis Markuze/David Mabus, a known (and very troubled) troll. Just ignore him.
I don’t care who you are or what you believe. You don’t laugh and dance about someone who is at least honest and admits of having depression. You don’t fucking rub it in their face gleefully. You don’t sing and dance because someone is crying. No. NO, that is what a bully does. You can disagree. But to have a victory dance and taunt a person like that makes me sick to my stomach.
Ophelia, you might be interested in the results of a Google search on the text above, allegedly written by Woolly Bumblebee. It returns a bunch of sites with identical text, including http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/bully.htm and http://www.realpsychology.com/content/inside-bullying/how-are-bullies-created, both of which appear to predate the Is God a Squirrel post by months or years.
I also couldn’t find anything from her on bullying on Google Scholar.
Maybe her actual expertise is cutting and pasting?
(I will happily withdraw this claim if she can prove that she is the author of any relevant original text.)
In the long run, people remember who stood up and tried to build something new, and not the ones who tried to tear it down.
I’m on the periphery of all this Watson-hate, Atheism+ dissection and day after day I don’t understand how the simple idea of “atheism=good, social justice=good, atheism+social justice=even better” so enrages so many people.
If people don’t like the taste of chocolate and peanut butter together, they can eat them separately.
This is beyond vile behaviour.
Take note of the real names of these deranged bullies and their enablers, people. Call them out on their vile behaviour wherever or whenever you encounter them – in meetings, conventions or on the internet. I will.
I am so spitting angry that I want to do something constructive to help (not just rage on the bloody fucking internet) – what can I do?
<3 Big Hugs <3 to Jen M.
@18: I think it really comes down to them simply not believing “social justice=good,” or at least not “paying attention to what the victims of injustice are saying is needed to achieve social justice=good,” and all the sound and fury is them trying to bash their cognitive dissonance into submission, because I think they know deep down somewhere that being against social justice makes you a total fucking shithead, so they lash out…by being total fucking shitheads!
http://truthandoblivion.blogspot.com/
A webcomic dedicated to the anti-joke.
To say that Jen, Rebecca, Amy, Ophelia etc. are the real bullies is like beating up another person and accusing her of hitting your fists with her face.
@23: there’s a difference between anti-jokes and jokes that aren’t funny.
I strongly suspect that cognitive dissonance is exactly what this is about, although the dissonance may come from a slightly different source: To admit that their targets are not monsters after everything that has happened would be a confession that they have worshiped and defended some people who are assholes (*cough*dearmuslima*cough*) and gotten their own hands irredeemably dirty in the process.
Glendon Mellow @ 18
It is a puzzler for sure.
Maybe some folks feel they are being corralled into defending aspects of society they do not particularly get excited over…I do not know.
I can quite understand the religiobunnies busting an eyeball or two due to blood pressure over the empowerment that atheism+ can stand for…they might indeed feel disenfranchised from pretending only jeebus drooling is a force for social justice and empowerment in society…certainly on their terms…social justice apparently is only good if a religiotard can spin the parameter.
But why some so-called rational atheists get scrunched up cod pieces over the matter…not a clue!
I am also finding rather obtuse to try and understand just WTF is happening with Jen…and her father…that is just very sick.
Jen writes…or wrote…a blog…if you do not agree go elsewhere and read something else…or argue the points in a concise fashion
But cyber bullying…because that is precisely what it is and as such cannot be justified, or indeed tolerated…the perp needs to be exposed for the vicious little package of slimy bile it is!
Just pathetic and rather sad beyond words, methinks Mabus is not the only brain damaged cretin out there!
Can not the ISP be traced or something…surely it amounts to harassment?
Yes, you can definetly see that people are making resonable criticism, supported by evidence and aimed at furthering critical dialogue if the best punchline they can come up with is “feminists don’t give blowjobs”
Kristina Hansen, as with so many who have unmasked themselves as bullies during this long, sad affair, seems to be genuinely obsessed by her self-righteous cause. It is a sickness.
If these people think there are better, more productive things to do under the banner of atheist, skeptic, or whatever the self-identify as, then why aren’t they doing it? Why do they expend so much energy trying to destroy, rather than build?
No kidding! Both of you! But this could explain it:
If it was not Kristina Hansen’s original work but instead a lot of copypasta mixed in to make it look like it was her work (all quotes have to be marked and attributed to their actual authors–and sloppiness does not excuse her from what looks to be plagiarism) then she probably did not put the time into it necessary to come up with a useful and coherent definition.
Besides that, reading pieces of Hansen’s post makes me think that she didn’t even understand what she was talking about in the first place. For instance, under “Regulation Bullying”, she tries to tie that in to people publicly recalling being harassed at TAM events in response to DJ Grothe saying that such things never happened. If Hansen can’t understand the material she is copying, which she shows there, then of course her post is not going to make a lot of sense.
@31 (and by extension 17) WOW that sure pokes holes in the bullying “expert” credential she put forth. Has anyone gone through and shown what specifically was plagiarized? Since so many people watching this are skeptics it seems important to point out when people are claiming a fraudulent credential. If no one else wants to do it I could.
@skeptifem
It’s easy. Just highlight and copy the places where she gives definitions and paste that text into Google and it pulls up numerous other websites dedicated to bullying, almost word-for-word. There is only one reference on the post, and it is cryptic, giving authorship to one Kris Mendez. And who might that be? Is that Kristina Hansen’s name too? And if not, then which parts did Kris Mendez write?
These people are absolutely revolting. I’ll echo what godlessfeminist said a bit further above: decent people don’t enjoy watching other people suffer. They don’t laugh about other people’s pain, even if it’s someone they don’t agree with or even like.
To gleefully attack someone, and then to go after her father for having the temerity to suggest that people ought to be less awful to his child, is morally revolting. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, however legitimate they may believe their criticisms of Jen are (not at all, in my opinion).
I do see way at the bottom of her post in smaller type (underneath where she has an update in red letters that she says she doesn’t claim to be an expert) that does appear to be a authorship credit of sorts:
Plagiarism too, eh. Fascinating.
What does it mean to “author” a workshop? I don’t understand that. Or how one edits a workshop.
The same way you architect a building, or surgeon a tumor.
Sorry, but Kristina Hansen-Mendez is or was her name according to Google. It’s the same person, the same Bumblebee. So yes, it still looks like plagiarism and that she copied the text from online sites and passed it off as her own work.
Well except a surgeon really does do surgery on a tumor. Nobody “writes” a workshop…does it?
But so anyway – that presumably means that the Joel Mendez who “edited” the workshop is that ikonographer guy – the one who tweeted at me out of nowhere to say “blah blah bitch don’t bother to reply, blocked.” The two of them love to tweet about how ugly & repulsive I am. Two arch-bullies ran a workshop on bullying for a Montreal school. Uh oh.
No, I suppose no one does “write” a workshop.
I have never ran a workshop, but I would imagine written materials are needed to make sure all the topics are covered.
True. And people who go to the supermarket co-author their shopping lists, and the co-author is also “Editor”…
In short it looks like enhancing their CVs just a little bit, to make them sound slightly more expert-like.
Rory:
There are a few exceptions to that rule.
To quote a dear friend of mine, “When my rapist is found dead in the gutter someday, there will be champagne and cake.”
Nope; doesn’t count. Note she doesn’t say “When my rapist is being tortured…”
Ophelia: I am Daisy’s friend in question. (I also prefer “they” pronouns, but there is absolutely no way you could have known when referring to me.)
I would rejoice at his eventual death. Especially if it were a painful one, though preferably not at the hands of someone else for a number of reasons, unless it was someone trying to defend herself.
Nonetheless, his preferably painful end would result in champagne and cake.
I normally just lurk and read, but this time I took a moment and posted on Jen’s father’s blog to let him know that there are a lot of us out there that support him, Jen, and anyone that has to put up with this crap.
I need to lurk less.
I always find it amusing how some of the anti-FTBs people react to anything that has to do with something negative happening to the bloggers here. I just shows far gone they are.
Hold on, weren’t these the folks who opposed fashioning con policies against persistent unwelcome behavior?
Plagiarism is definite now. Strange Gods Before Me on Pharyngula tracked down Kristina Hansen-Mendez’s alleged writing as actually coming from the late Tim Field in two separate pieces, one on bullying and the other on narcissistic personality disorder. For those interested, you can follow the links to Tim Field’s work from the Thunderdome here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/09/09/thunderdome-5/comment-page-1/#comment-453240
As a newbie to this FTB and Twitter world, I admit I don’t know the whole story. Nonetheless from reading but one of Hansen’s posts I can tell exactly what brand of human she is: an abuser. Abusers rarely change their behavior. While I agree that calling out such behavior is important to avoid it spreading or going unacknowledged–we must not be bystanders–there is the caveat that raising awareness of it can backfire and fuel the abuser as it appears to have done in this case. Surviving interactions with infantile and hurtful people requires setting boundaries: recognize whether their behavior is legally actionable; decide whether to take action if it is; and if it is not, shut them down by removing yourself as fast as possible from any further engagement. That is how to survive abusers–state that the conditions are unacceptable, and if they do not improve, leave.
It concerns me that as a community we allow such derisive and unproductive people to have even a moment of our time. We have much bigger fights to fight, and we cannot afford to waste time on insignificant people who serve only to detract from our presenting a unified front. There will always be people who dance unabashedly on the pain of others, but they won’t matter if we don’t let them–they aren’t worth anyone’s time or acknowledgement. Our energy should be reserved for the most effective and impactful uses; we can support each other without chasing down every coward who hides behind their right to free speech on the internet. Why not focus instead on supporting the people who have been hurt? Let’s let these abusers discover what it is to be quickly and severely without an audience.
If tagjacking is bullying, look what happened to the #atheismplus tag. Or don’t, if you just ate.
Ooh, juicy. Shame I commented before refreshing. So Wooly Bumblebee is a plagiarist too, huh? On top of being a damned hypocrite and bully herself? Just too horrid.
The first time I fought back against a bully in middle school and won the fight, guess what happened? The bully ran, RAN! straight to the principal’s office to tattle on me for picking on him. It was ugly, but we were 11-12 years old so he at least had that excuse. These are nominally adults we’re talking about here, engaged in constant bullying, who behave the same way as that silly little kid when he lost a schoolyard scuffle.
And you know what else is similar? Like that bully in 7th grade, I had NO IDEA WHO HE WAS UNTIL HE CAME AFTER ME. In the same way, the majority of the online bullies who are claiming to be victims are people who almost no one has heard of until they attack people here and make a nuisance of themselves. You don’t get to show up, get in someone’s face and call them names, and then shout “bully!” when they respond to your attack on them.
Has anyone any hope for the future of the internet? I ditched facebook awhile ago, hoping to bring sanity from being exposed to all the religious bullies and nonsense out there (lots of religious fam and friends). Didn’t expect it in the atheist community. I thought it would be all stars and sunshine, of course to a diplomatic degree. Apparently, not. I have lost an insane amount of hope for humanity, for social justice, etc, just by reading what people write online. But is social media going to be the next battle ground for a new integrity and equality? These battles I thought had been at least mostly won have been re-ignited. Which makes me think that these attitudes were all there the whole time still. People have been just holding their opinions inside, putting on a smile, and saying all the right things. I hope, I really really hope, that this will bring people (all of us) to be able to evolve to another level of awareness, humanity, compassion, and truth. …just putting that out there.
WoolyBumbleBee seems to be the wife of Ikonografer, another nasty tweeter.
@ikonografer
@Skavation my money’s on my wife @woolybumblebee she’s fucking awesome. @xxxild
Yes, they made a big point of that a few weeks ago when he got in my face out of nowhere and I did a post about the weirdness. Apparently it was super-stupid of me not to know their personal history. That’s a joke. The less I know about those two the better. It’s not as if they’re interesting.
godless feminist – yes, I do. Not blind hope, for sure, but hope.
godlessfeminist,
I was just thinking much the same thing, except you said it better than I was thinking it. I’ve about lost hope in the possibility of any kind of reasoned discourse. It seems that outright cruelty, serving no purpose but sick entertainment, is becoming common, and the Internet is where much of it happens.
It may be time to quit using the Internet for anything but tech support.
islandtrust wrote:
Ah, that makes sense; I’ve got that creep on my blocked list.
I suppose it’s a good thing that two such truly awful people are with each other rather than each being with someone decent and making them miserable. But I seem to recall mention of kids somewhere, and the idea of having to grow up with that vile pair as parents makes me very sad indeed.
I love, love blogs and twitter. I don’t comment much, haven’t the knack for it, but I follow closely, and occasionally respond. But yeah, despair at twitter being a rational place for discussion. It works great until a tag gets swamped with angry people. Then they pile up and attack anyone who shows their face.
It doesn’t take much to scare people off. I don’t think most people have a tough enough skin (or want to grow one) to cope with sexualized, violent slurs. I get them, and back off sharply, which is the intended effect. But I’m not going to respond in kind, as it’s unbelievably foul. Which leaves what, exactly? A few zingers, or dogged determination to fight it out, but the price is pretty damn high.
Yup, 4 kids apparently. When I stop daydreaming of having wooly insect’s words burst into flames and reduced to a fine ash, I worry a bit about her kids. Two foul bullies for parents. That will end well, I’m sure. I don’t see how it’s possible to write that stuff all day long and then compassionately parent, or interact with other humans in general.
She’s taken down the bit on her website where she talks about having developed an anti-bullying program for a couple of school districts in her area, Montreal. Maybe there’s a reason she’s not working right now, besides staying at home with the kids. Interesting to see the school identified in her other posts.
btw, islandstrust=felix3333=felixBC. Darned if I can get my logins straightened out.
Nicole:
Thank you for your concern. It has been noted and will be given the consideration it deserves.
Islandstrust:
That explains a lot.
Twitter, a rational place for discussion? It’s a great place for firing off quick quips or posting abbreviated links, but the format is terrible for in-depth conversation.
Godlessfeminist/Peter the Mediocre, personally I think the internet has gotten much better in the last two to three years alone. Nobody used to challenge any of this stuff, ever, but it still went on, in spades.
Glendon Mellow @17:
No! Don’t you know? This whole “chocolate+” initiative is a naked power grab, designed to replace all chocolate with Reese’s peanut butter cups! Peanut butter doesn’t have anything to do with chocolate! Pretty soon, you’ll have to line up for the new Choconuttopope to place a peanut butter cup on your tongue and then shove it down your throat!
Her “work” on bullying apparently consisted of leading workshops when she was an undergrad in social work. There is no mention of any degree, license, or other qualification to practice social work on this abandoned website:
http://www.freewebs.com/biankaleduc/contactandbio.htm
or on this largely abandoned one (there is a current date-meter ticking, but otherwise it is not up-to-date. Senior project, maybe?):
http://www.freewebs.com/beingaparentinquebec/
All her “experience” seems to have occurred while she was a college student. There is no indication of any professional experience since she left college, at least as of early 2008.
I’m a big believer in the “old fashioned spam filter” – the scroll wheel. Just because its there doesn’t mean you have to read it or respond to it.
In FtB I rarely notice the bad trolls, because after reading one sentence I know to scroll away from their post and skip all future posts by that person.
Though I admit, it would be nice if there was an app that let me (automatically) highlight different aliases that I like/don’t like to read, so I can more quickly scroll through blog comments to find the pearls in the oyster guts. Sort of like how the blog owner’s messages appear in a different background, but individualized to reader accounts rather than common to all readers.
If you’re using Firefox, you can install Greasemonkey (a plugin that enables running customized scripts) and then use the killfile script developed by regulars at Pharyngula. That permits you to hide the comments of given users. As far as I know it should work on all FTB.
Brief instructions are here, or ask in the Pharyngula lounge:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/hallq/2012/08/05/how-to-install-killfiles-for-blog-comments-in-firefox-and-chrome/
The killfile script itself is the first entry below Greasemonkey here: (link altered to get past spamfilter)
pharyngula. wikia. com/wiki/Greasemonkey
There’s also a plugin called Tampermonkey for the Chrome browser that should be able to utilize the exact same killfile script; see comments in the instructions link above.
psanity:
Social service ≠ social work. The program mentioned is a three year program for what would be the American equivalent of a human service worker (direct care workers, aides). You can only be a social worker if you are licensed as one, and in Canada as well as the US, colleges have to be accredited to offer full Bachelor’s or Master’s level social work degrees.
(This public service announcement is brought to you by the letters H, E & L. Because oh HELL no, she is not a social worker. 🙂
Not that being trained as a social worker actually *prevents* you from being a bully… /personal experience
I do get your professional distaste, Onion girl. Fortunately, the person I’m thinking of does not practice.
skeptifem #6:
It’s things like this that make me view meatspace conversation as little more than a playground for bullies, whose tactics seem to just take advantage of every possible weakness.
Which makes me despair at the hope of changing anything in the bigger picture. -sigh-
@setar
There is some hope. Bullies can easily explain away specific behavior incidents, but they can’t explain away a pattern of behavior. If people talk about their experiences (and brave perhaps not being believed initially), bullies will eventually be outed for what they are.
By the way, the Anatomy post’s ending has been updated with this, new stuff in bold:
First, some of the best authors had and have pen names. She and others like her need to deal with it!
Second, it’s all well and good to point to sources, but the plagiarism part is that she is not demarcating which original thoughts are hers and which are other people’s. Instead, she runs other people’s original thoughts together with hers, editing them just enough to flow with her own and make them appear as if they are her own. Until that is remedied, it is still plagiarism. That is, unless this is an art performance or a game or a political statement against copyright, etc., the reader should not have to do the work in figuring out which thoughts are yours and which thoughts you are borrowing from other people.
Completely unacceptable behavior. We have to stand up, stop tolerating it, and let everyone know that we want better.