Oh hooray, Jaclyn Glenn has yet another video attacking feminists and feminism.
Even better, Dave Muscato, the PR guy for American Atheists, is energetically promoting it. Thanks, Dave!
Updating to add the intro to the vid:
Published on Jul 17, 2014
A video about Atheism+ and pussies. How appropriate. For those of you wondering- Atheism + is pretty much atheism plus radical feminism. This is my skit explaining my feelings on it 😉
She’s such a Future Thought Leader, isn’t she? Full to overflowing with the logic and reason and honest engagement of reality that we’ve come to expect.
Isn’t there actually a definition of ‘radical feminist’?
Because I see that used all the time as a pejorative. Didn’t the pope call some nuns radical feminists for wanting to focus more on poverty than anti-gay, not even suggesting women be in the clergy? Certainly I see it from right-wing nuts all the time for pretty much any feminist demanding more than voting rights and the right to own property. MRAs and slymepitters are pretty vocal about ‘radical’ feminists being anyone wanting more than not blatant legal discrimination, and especially being against sexual harassment or rape other than the stranger in the bushes sort.
In contrast, there do seem to be some actually self-identified radical feminists. But I mostly only see them in the ‘trans women are violent males / TERF is a slur’ arguments.
Is Atheism+ even a thing anymore? It was a great idea, but these days I only ever hear about it from misogynists and women who think we had it better in 1950.
So in order to complain about “drama” in the atheist community, she invents a fictitious character saying incredibly stupid things, and rails dramatically against these imaginary enemies of common sense atheism? There’s a word for this, her pal thunderf00t uses it all the time, starts with “stra” ends with “man”, it’s on the tip of my tongue…
She should keep her day job
I won’t be watching- but it looks dreadful. Is there a transcript somewhere? Then again, something accommodating like that is much more in line with Atheism +, so probably not.
She wants a career in youtube atheism….those people do it for the hits.
I can think of some awesome exceptions and serious people…but the subset of attention seekers…. Amazing Atheist, Thunderfoot…et al… are all lowlifes as far as I can tell.
PZ is on point as usual.
No money will be going to any of these orgs from me any longer. They are run by reactionary assholes.
She has now firmly committed herself to being heinous. That Dave Muscato — who holds that position — could endorse such drivel makes him even more heinous. I am embarrassed to have ever supported American Atheists.
Yeah!! Just like those damned atheist skeptics!! Always picking fights and telling people they’re not real skeptics unless they deny that any god of any kind could ever possibly exist!! They’re not real skeptics! They’re not real skeptics at all!! This is just skepticism + drama! Real skeptics shut the hell up about religion!! Especially when they’re being actively discriminated against by those religions.
The word you’re looking for is strampleweevependleman. It’s where a pair of kittens organise a house party, but invite nobody but seagulls. Actually, quite a fun weekend.
As crass, juvenile stunts playing to the peanut gallery go, this isn’t even topical. Really, I’m sure this plays very well to a certain constituency, and perhaps she is very happy to achieve celebrity within the stunted group that will actually understand this tacky in – joke, but it really speaks of a lack of ambition to engage with meaningful targets. In short, this is familiar YouTube fare.
This is that same old negativity, utterly untempered by any sort of desire for improvement or change, which has characterised a certain stance since the beginning. Malice and futility in one dull package.
If Atheism + really is so ineffectual and irrelevant, then why have so many electrons been tasked to countering it? And as we all know, my Dear Muslima, there are bigger issues for True Skeptical Atheists to turn their globe-spanning attention to.
Women being vocally anti-feminist does seem to be a pretty popular gig.
First mention I saw of this video was JT tweeting it. I didn’t see more than Atheism + as the title (at work, shitty signal) and was worried it was some nonsense, but couldn’t check it out.
It’s getting awfully disappointing how many atheists and atheist organizations are doing shitty stuff. People like PZ and Greta and The Atheist Experience, among others including Ophelia, were some of my main original exposure to the atheism movement and got me really fired up about having a virtual ‘home’.
I know back then I would probably have been pretty vulnerable to some of the arguments from some of the others, so I’m glad I got started just where I did. Helping me be a better person and all.
But this kind of stuff (AA sporadically backing anti-feminists, etc) is awfully dampening to the enthusiasm.
So are American Atheists actually backing anti-feminists, or is it just that individuals in important positions in the organisation doing so?
My internet presence has been very sporadic for the last year or two, so I only have a sunlight-through-the-trees-when-you’re-driving-at-60mph-style picture of recent events in atheism, so sorry if the answer to that question’s obvious to anyone who’s been paying proper attention.
No, it’s never easy keeping track of this kind of stuff, athywren; no need to apologize.
As far as I can tell Muscato is the only AA person specifically promoting this particular video (but then it’s new…), but AA does have her as one of its three “special correspondents” (whatever that is).
Well that was embarrassing. And not funny. And just kind of weird. But I’m sure it’ll be lapped up by anti-feminists.
“You silly feminists, caring about the effect of language and wanting to be inclusive! Haha, that’s just like objecting to the phrase ‘furry friends’! I mean, the two things aren’t in anyway the same, but haha!”
At the risk of pissing off many friends and colleagues, I think that there are a few people on the other side of this conflict who have made valid points at various times in the past two years. Buried in Glenn’s video are her legitimate concerns as well as her very real feelings of hurt and rejection.
However, the way she attempts to make those points is so completely dismissive of the valid concerns of the feminists and social justice activists with whom she disagrees that her valid concerns get lost in the mockery. Only my actual familiarity with the conflict that she is trying to illustrate allows me to tease out any actual content from the exaggerated portrayal of those who have criticized her.
Certain acts and statements take a conflict from a condition where it can be resolved with better communication to a condition in which harm must be redressed if the two or more sides are ever to work together again. In the world of schoolyard fights, these are called “fighting words,” words that inevitably escalate the conflict beyond solving without help. This video is the “f*** your mama!” of the conflict between Glenn and other feminist atheist bloggers like you, Ophelia, and supporters of the principles of A+.
The atheist movement desperately needs:
1. To kick anyone who has made, supported or excused threats of violence to the metaphorical curb.
2. Someone to step in from a restorative practices framework to help resolve that which is resolvable between people who have enough in common to continue to work together.
Sigh. Jacklyn made a very bad choice in making this foolish, harmful video. I wish we were capable of seeing it as sad evidence of how hurt she is feeling and how that hurt has led to self-protective, self righteous escalation, rather than taking the bait.
Sigh.
And yes, Dave needs to rethink his support of this foolishness and quickly.
Of course there are a few people on the other side of this conflict who have made valid points at various times in the past two years. I would say there are many such people. It would be very odd if there weren’t!
But when the valid points are so lavishly mixed in with invalid and prejudicial points, the valid points become irrelevant.
As someone who only became aware of Glenn recently, I wonder what happened to her? Can I ask who rejected her? I totally understand if that is not public information.
WWJTD? Fall further into the anti-feminist pit because we weren’t sufficiently grateful to him and awed by him or something.
I think a lot of people *think* they have valid points, and don’t react well when they’re not accepted.
It does seem like there’s been plenty of attempts to reach out. But, for example, with the Atheism Plus thing, it’s so hard to see anyone being at all reasonable when it’s mixed with so much ridiculous strawmanning vitriol and mockery.
I’m no longer at all optimistic that it’s some mere miscommunication that can be cleared up if only we could get some calm discussion.
After all, I see thoughtful and careful pieces by Greta and Stephanie get vilified all the time, not some polite disagreement. I just see rage about ‘drama blogging’ and ‘whining’ and ‘playing the victim’.
There is some irony in Glenn’s choice of cat vs dog analogy. Dogs generally have a physical advantage over cats. A certain percentage of dogs go out of their way to antagonize and attack cats. There’s a culture of “dogs will be dogs” if an otherwise upstanding dog attacks a cat, and cats should just be kept inside for own safety.
What I find the most disheartening about the AA leadership (as well as anything with “Council” in the name) is that they don’t give a shit about anything beyond that which pokes at religion. There’s nothing wrong with helping create support/space/validation for atheists in our culture and combating harmful religious ideas, but to do that at the expense of other causes that have far more impact on our lives is, well, simply ridiculous.
yazikus raises a good point. Rebecca @ 16 – what feelings of hurt and rejection are these? She’s hugely popular on Facebook, and she’s officially promoted by both the Dawkins foundation and American Atheists. Dawkins frequently tweets about how great she is. What are the feelings of hurt and rejection?
(If that’s private information, as yazikus suggested, I don’t see why it was cited here.)
2012 called. They want their anti-A+ rage video back.
A radical feminist is any feminist that isn’t currently attacking feminism. She did have one video about the sexist comments she gets, but she never brought it up again so I guess she doesn’t get sexist comments anymore. Either that or she learned that she’ll be tolerated just so long as she never brings up sexism that can’t be blamed on religious people.
I just read the comments to Dave Muscato’s post and was trying to leave my own when he evidently deleted the whole thing.
Hmm. That’s a good question, Ophelia.
Admittedly, I am making guesses based on observation. (Perhaps I should have stated that to begin with but my wife is always telling me that I weaken my arguments when I hedge them with “I think…” or “I’m guessing…”) But as a counselor, my ability to interpret observed behavior is pretty strong.
The behavior in the video is the behavior of someone who feels hurt and rejected and escalates in response. “You don’t like me? Well I don’t like you either because you act like [exaggerated illustration of that which has upset the speaker].”
To continue with my schoolyard metaphor, for whatever reason, popularity doesn’t seem to protect a person from having their feelings hurt, so the fact that she is being supported by Dawkins and AA doesn’t negate the emotions. Plus, Jaclyn probably knows deep down that Dawkins supports her because her position supports him, not because he values or respects her.
In the video, she says more than once that she is attacked for any disagreement. Is she? In reality, it isn’t simply disagreement for which she is attacked. And, at least initially, it wasn’t attack, but simply criticism. However, it is worth noticing that to Jaclyn it FEELS like it is just for disagreeing and it FEELS like being attacked.
In particular (and this is a common emotional reaction, not just Jaclyn Glenn) if every time a person gets something wrong she is criticized — without substantial effort to praise her for the ways in which she sometimes gets things right — it feels as if EVERYTHING she says is wrong in the eyes of those making the critiques. And once that panicked “everything I do is wrong” feeling has teen triggered, there is a sense that no matter what she says, unless she agrees EXACTLY with those criticizing her, she will get attacked.
Now, in Jaclyn’s case, there must be some awareness that she is stuck. Even if she started out agreeing with other atheist feminists 90% of the time, now if she publicly supports their positions, she loses the support of the powerful backers she does have. Because you know if she disagreed publicly with Dawkins he would drop her in a heartbeat.
Does she look like she is enjoying herself? She’s not. Happy people don’t act like she did in the video. That was the act of a frightened, hurt person. Her feeling victimized is not helping her make better decisions any more than any of us feeling victimized helps us make better decisions.
Should people be nice to her or let it slide because she is unhappy? No, especially not the latter. But if we act on the assumption that she is acting from a position of power, rather than a position of fear, we will make mistakes ourselves.
Once again, this is all based on my observations of her behavior. The only way to really understand what is going on in a conflict is for those in the conflict to sit down in private with someone both compassionate and objective who can help them talk about it. I’m not saying you and Jaclyn Glenn would come out of a “restorative dialogue” as BFFs, simply that you each could have a better understanding of what has happened so far, simply by hearing the other’s experience of the conflict. And having been heard might decrease the urge to further escalate the conflict.
And the one thing that we all seem to agree on is that this is getting worse, not better. How would it hurt to try a different strategy, since the current strategies aren’t working?
skasowitz, yes, Dave Muscato just deleted both Glenn-related posts. He does that – when there’s contention he just deletes the whole thing without warning. I’d forgotten that he does that; I should have included a warning.
Rebecca – that all may be true, but the trouble is, this isn’t personal. It’s about public discourse. Glenn is a very popular YouTube personality. The PR person for American Atheists is promoting her. I think it’s worth countering the hostile and erroneous things she says in her very popular heavily promoted videos. That’s all this is about.
It just made me wonder, did someone affiliated with A+ personally hurt Glenn? Is Glenn hurt & rejected by someone specific or the movement itself? And it if is the movement, not a specific person, that doesn’t make sense, unless she tried to join the super secret A+ club and they wouldn’t let her.
–
The first mentions of her around FTB were all positive if I am recalling correctly. If we are to assume that she has truly been hurt and rejected by feminists and A+ as a movement (what would that even look like?), her response is still awful. If we assume anti-feminist spokesperson is a lucrative gig, that doesn’t speak well of her character either.
I doubt it. I mean, I’m sorry if I’m being uncharitable, but this just seems like another instance of someone learning which side the establishment is on, and that they can get a lot of approval and support from supporting the ‘don’t take about sexism!’ stance.
Just like Sara Mayhew once wrote a few kinda-feminist things and talked about actually enjoying Rebecca Watson’s work. Then she found out that it’d make her more popular if she made it her mission to slam FTB/A+/Skepchick as much as possible and she never looked back.
Fair enough then. In that case, I won’t stop giving AA my generous donations of nothing each month. 😛
Being a special correspondent might be a thing, but then there might be good reasons for it, I don’t know (sunlight through the trees again – I’ve only ever heard of her through this site as far as I can remember).
@rebeccahensler, 16
I do see what you’re saying, and on a certain level I agree… but… for the past couple of years, on and off, I’ve been trying to engage with the anti-feminist contingent in a reasonable and patient manner, and I’ve seen very little success. There have been a few individuals who responded to that approach, but they’ve never been the ones who start out with strawmen and act as if being criticised for using terms that they’ve been told hurt people is “looking for excuses to be offended and play the victim.” Almost invariably, they’ve been the ones who, upon noticing that some of the problems that men face in the world are not well addressed, ended up among MRAs, became startled about what they were hearing about feminism, and then acted like skeptics and made an effort to understand feminism.
Maybe I’m just being defeatist, but I don’t think there’s a way to fix this ‘miscommunication’ in most cases, because I think most of them don’t actually care whether their narrative of feminism matches up with reality. This might not be true of Jaclyn Glenn, I don’t know, I haven’t seen much from her, but considering that this video is such an obvious strawman, I’m putting my money, tentatively, on the idea that she honestly doesn’t care about the truth here.
@5…sadly, this is her day job.
She earns her living being a professional “skeptic”, making YouTube videos, selling T-shirts, doing speaking engagements…that kind of thing.
Speaking of that, the talkingstove, – Anyone else noticed that over the last several months Sara Mayhew has really laid off of the anti-feminism/anti-Skephick/Anti-FTB bstuff?
I don’t think I’ve seen it in a really long time. She’s started saying out of these conflicts and stopped saying offensive and embarrassing stuff as far as I can tell.
So, if she writes, directs, and performs little dramatic sketches for her audience, wouldn’t that make her a (gasp!) dramablogger?
(Yes, ok. Dramavlogger, technically.)
yazikus, well my first mentions of her weren’t positive, I know that much – the first I heard of her was her video saying misogyny had nothing to do with Elliot Rodger’s killing spree, and I had non-positive things to say about that. Then she said more things of that kind. That’s all I know of her.
screechy – no, because words like “drama” and “divisive” and “for the hits” apply ONLY to the pro-feminism side of the Deep Rifts.
Ophelia, yeah, but you were legitimately critiquing her vlog… Which I guess, could lead to her having hurt feelings? I just don’t think those hurt feelings qualify as ‘legitimate concerns’ although they could certainly be her ‘very real feelings’. I’m thinking thetalkingstove is right.
–
After perusing Dave Muscato’s facebook, I saw this lovely bit
Later, someone in his comments reminds him that he basically is a social justice advocate and he responds
This coming a week before promoting her video seems fairly certain which side of the ‘rift’ he is on.
Somehow, I don’t buy that an attractive YouTuber with 200,000 subs and the fawning approval of stars like Richard Dawkins is dealing with feelings of rejection.
I get that it isn’t personal. And certainly that it is important to respond politically to political attacks. And the video is certainly an attack — and yes an attack of a straw man — rather than criticism of a position.
That said, I think that there are conflicts within the atheist movements regarding feminism that have escalated unnecessarily in ways that could be prevented by better communication and a restorative approach. Yes, that would involve treating certain political conflicts as personal, but we are still a small enough set of communities that we could benefit from that practice. We aren’t too big to sit down together in a room yet; let’s not wait until we are.
There are also conflicts that cannot and should not be resolved, except by absolutely everyone who wants to work with any local, regional or national secular organization disavowing certain practices and anyone who engages in those practices. Namely: violence and threats of violence, including indirect threats such as “I won’t be surprised if someone…” When I suggest that individuals or groups could resolve some of their conflicts I am NOT including those who engage in this behavior.
Restorative principles and Humanism have a great deal in common. If you are still bothering to read my comments, you might want to google the two and see how they line up. Restorative practices can’t solve every conflict, but they might help de-escalate one between people who are still able to recognize that they have many goals in common, even if they currently feel very far apart and are as angry as two of the sides in this conflict are at each other.
Rebecca – Well I’ve dealt with (meaning, tried to respond to, etc) at least 3 sustained attempts to persuade me to agree to and persuade others to agree to “sit down” with people on the other side of the deep rifts, and I wasn’t persuaded by any of them. They weren’t persuasive. The request was to sit down with people who spend much of their time publicly calling me (and others) a cunt and telling lies about me.
My answer to that is just no. I don’t want to sit down with people who have spent 3 years calling me a cunt.
Glenn isn’t in that category though (although she’s edging up to it with calling us pussies). But as for sitting down with her in a room, well, we’re not in the same city. Anyway I doubt that she knows me from Adam – she has 2 billion fans or whatever it is, and people like that don’t notice the proles. In short I don’t really get what you’re suggesting. I don’t know Glenn personally; I can’t try to sit down in a room with everyone I disagree with; I’m a writer rather than a diplomat.
When I was a Young White Lesbian, I fought for a lot of YWL shit. I had severe myopia. But I was, at least, fighting for something not already included in my everyday life.
Then I had a Black gf. Wow wow wow, there were a lot of things I’d never even had to consider before. Like, she would go into a motel near Disneyland and be turned down for a room. I would go in, with purple hair, and be given a key. We’d both, then, go to the front counter and just look at the clerk. Just look. WTF?
This video (I did watch it in its entirety) is embarrassing. For Jaclyn. It makes me think she’s never lived as a minority, at all. And, I will be ageist here, ahoy, she’s probably not run into any problems for being simply atheist.
She may coast the borders of being wholly acceptable her whole life and may never learn. I hope, for her, she does learn because the passion burns brighter and life is much better when you are actually fighting FOR something.
A couple of things.
1) The “doin’ it for the hits/money” argument is no more valid when we use it against antifeminist YouTube vloggers than when they use it against “drama bloggers” and FtB.
2) The “someone must have hurt/rejected her” faux-psychoanalysis argument is no more valid against anti-feminists than it is when religionists use it to dismiss atheist critiques (“did someone in the church hurt you?” etc).
I do think if we’re critiquing the generally shitty arguments of antifeminists, we should probably avoid making the same shitty arguments.
That said, Glenn seems to have a pattern of being incapable of (or unwilling to) address criticism with any measure of intellectual honesty. Her notpology/backpedaling/quasi-response to critics of her Elliot Rodger video was the prime example, and I’d be surprised if the choice of a blond wig and an outdated lashing-out at Atheism+ weren’t a swipe at ZOMGitsCriss, who dissected Glenn’s asinine, ableist, denialist videos about that shooting.
We don’t need to speculate about her motives to point out that she has aligned herself with an online culture that promotes and perpetuates certain antifeminist views and memes, and doesn’t much care about sound reasoning or intellectual honesty so long as mildly talented/entertaining people confirm their preexisting beliefs.
@42 Tom Foss–
Exactly. She’s being accepted. By YouTubers. She’s Chill.
That makes sense. Except the part about her not knowing who you are; I suspect she does. But one always has the right to say “I don’t want to try to resolve this conflict in that way.” I hear that all the time. And the practicalities of being in two different places does constitute a stumbling block to my proposal.
Oh well, thanks for engaging anyway. Be well, Ophelia.
Sitting down together in a room can only work to solve problems if both sides are interested in solving those problems. Nothing I’ve seen, heard or read in the last couple of years has lead me to believe that they’re interested.
Thank you too Rebecca.
Rebecca, if you are still reading, thanks for what you do. It was during a period of grieving that I deconverted, and I had heard you on Seth Andrew’s podcast and well, just thanks.
lol radical feminism.
these youtube celebs are children.
<snicker>
Her dramatic analogy is…ridiculous.* The sad thing is that the real animal liberation movement is facing the same issues as the atheist movement. Women have been the backbone of animal liberation. There’s a rich literature on animal liberation from feminist and social justice writers and activists,** offering perspectives which are absolutely essential to meaningful change in humans’ relationship with other animals (the converse is also true: human liberation requires ending the oppression and exploitation of our fellow animals). But these voices are marginalized, sidelined (and even mocked) in favor of the Serious Business of rights arguments made by men. Big organizations regularly use and support sexist, racist, and homophobic campaigns and messages. Influential men in the movement are often tone deaf when responding to these messages and the objections to them.***
***
In addition to my annoyance, I feel a good deal of pity for this group of women. At some level, they have to know that they’re only acceptable as long as they toe the line and remain silent about the bad behavior of their patrons. At the same time, they’re constantly nudged toward more demeaning displays, confirming prejudices against themselves and attacking other women who are fighting back against sexism and misogyny. It has to make for a lot of anxiety.
***
No offense to your wife, but this never made sense to me as a general point. Arguments should be presented with the certainty with which you’re honestly making them. There’s no p in writing, so we have phrases that communicate where your level of certainty is, and they’re an integral part of discussions. The problem, to which your wife might be referring, is when people develop bad habits of hedging arguments about which they’re quite certain with the language of uncertainty (women are often led to do this) or stating claims about which they’re actually not at all certain as bold declarations (men are often led to do this). But presenting speculative ideas as speculative is what we should all do, as basic intellectual honesty and an aid to good communication.
* Which isn’t to say that “companion animals” and “guardians” aren’t better terms than “pets” and “owners.”
** See, for example, Women and Animals, The Sexual Politics of Meat, Beyond Animal Rights, Woman and Nature, Brutal, Critical Theory and Animal Liberation, Animal Oppression and Human Violence.
*** By the way, Richard Dawkins impressively manages not only to bring a sexist perspective to both movements but to multiply the sexism when combining them.
SC@50,
Word.
Hey, rorschach. Hope you’re doing well.
All good.
Dawkins tweeted (sigh) about this video, calling it ‘brilliant’ and saying that anyone who was offended by it was probably doing something wrong.
I can’t understand why even a person misguided enough to admire the video’s message could believe that it was brilliantly executed. And if being offended by gross and deliberate mischaracterisations of one’s position is wrong, so much for being right.
Warning: Long rant to follow
American Atheists’ incredible hubris has really been sticking in my craw lately. What other organization that claims to represent an entire subset of people (Americans who are atheist) OPENLY goes around telling a subset of that subset (Americans who are atheist who care about social justice) to shut up, sit in the corner, and still give them money? None. Why?
BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE ASININE
I mean, it’s an open secret that, say, the Human Rights Commission has no love for the BT part of the LGBT equation, but the leaders of the organization don’t go onto Twitter and say, “bisexuals are whiners who should be quiet?” Why?
BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE ASININE
The American Cancer Society would never go on their Facebook page and say “Sorry, we only care about Lung Cancer now. Everybody with other types of cancer, we’re not concerned. You should still support us because ALLIES!!11!! but your concerns are unwelcome here.” Why?
BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE ASININE
If someone in the high levels of a major organization went on their own Twitter account and started ripping into groups of people their organization claims to represent, they wouldn’t be in the high levels of that organization much longer. Why not?
BECAUSE CONTINUING TO EMPLOY THEM WOULD BE ASININE
Yet, here we are, with the heads of American Atheists making it abundantly clear that they think “social justice warriors” and “professional victims” (which, in my opinion, describes THEM quite well, but that’s another story) should shut up for the good of the movement and yet… they’re still employed. They’re still respected.
THEY are supposed to represent US. A representative doesn’t get to tell their base what their concerns are. The base tells them. And if we are, supposedly, a tiny minority in the “movement”… then just fucking IGNORE us or pay us lip service then do nothing to help us. But nobody with any sense in their head would OPENLY alienate an entire subset of potential members/contributors/allies. Why?
BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE ASININE.
I can’t bring myself to watch the video.
Has Glenn done anything within the atheist community other than make execrable intellectually dishonest videos ?
This is so funny. I haven’t visited these parts in a long time and I don’t have a horse in the race. But I just wasted about 20 minutes of my life watching these video and the PZ blog’s reaction to it and find this all perfectly hilarious.
First thing I see out of PZ’s mouth is “So in order to complain about “drama” in the atheist community, she invents a fictitious character saying incredibly stupid things…”
Whoa! Stop right there! I stumbled across Jaclyn’s video, instantly was able to grasp what she was trying to say, and thought it was spot on and hilarious. Come on PZ et. al, pull your heads out of the sand. You look silly by not even being able to comprehend where she was coming from with her video. You guys just end up looking stupid at the end of the day. Oh did I say ‘guys’?! How incredibly crass and sexist of me! Oh my! lololololol
And then came to leave a comment on a different blog. Or you consider any blog where PZ leaves a comment as his blog, whatever.
You aren’t even contesting the comment. Glenn did create a ridiculous caricature, and she did use it to spout idiocy. That you were “able to grasp what she was trying to say, and thought it was spot on and hilarious” should tell you that you actual do have a horse in the race. On one side are people demanding things get better. The opposing side thinks everything is fine and absolutely despises the idea that things must change. In less than 200 words you manage to go from declaring a position of neutrality to inane mockery. You’ve chosen a side.
Mike/#58:
It’s amusing, seeing this fanboi claiming those who take issue w/ Ms. Glenn’s generally pathetic effort simply aren’t ‘able to comprehend’…
I more generally look for that kind of dodge from the religious, when you point out the utter vapidity of their claims. What, you have failed to accept my lord Jesus Christ as your personal saviour? Well, let me explain once more, clearly you just didn’t understand…
And sorry, dear. Nice try. Ain’t quite about what people comprehend. Or not quite so as you seem to be assuming…
Quite the contrary. The real problem–much as, again, in the parallel discussion of religion–is they understand too much.