Originally a comment by canonicalkoi on The arbiter of what feminists should or shouldn’t get upset about, with added video.
I wish someone could explain something to me. Nugent has 12 kittens and 35 cows over tone and language. He gets extremely prissy about language, about how it’s not right to demonize people over things that they haven’t been convicted of in a court of law. So, here’s where I’m confused:
On Nugent’s website, he has a list, a directory if you will, of atheist/secular songs. All well and good. One of those songs is by the extremely talented and personal favorite of mine, Tim Minchin. The Pope Song. C’mon, you know the one that starts out, “Fuck the motherfuckers…..” It seems a strange choice for Nugent to list since it’s chock full o’ outrage (rightfully so). It’s a good song, but let’s look at this. It deals with:
A. Calling the Pope to account for something he was never charged with in a court of law.
B. Equating him and anyone who supports him with a rapist.
C. Equates anyone who ever covered up for an abuser with a rapist.
D. Deals with assuming the stories of all child-abuse victims whether or proven in court or not, are facts.
E. Uses naughty language that could, in no way, be considered conciliatory.
F. Expresses extreme outrage.
So, apparently, if it’s dealing with the Pope and child-abuse, outrage, “naughty language”, assumptions of guilt, are all just fine. If, on the other hand, you have feminists discussing the sexual misconduct of someone in the atheist/secularist “Holy Trinity”, depending on the stories of far more than one woman, dealing with stories that describe a “hunting pattern” astonishingly alike in each description, or dealing with another of the “Holy Trinity” comparing rape with drunk driving and yet a third member saying that that danged estrogen-vibe is why we can’t wrap our lady-brains around logic, we’re to watch our tone and our language, our outrage is all just a fake and, since nothing’s been proven in a court of law, it shouldn’t be brought up in the first place.
I see. If someone could explain that strange dichotomy to me, I’d appreciate it. And Mr. Nugent? You might want to give another listen to The Pope Song. This verse might get it across, especially if you add the words, “or anyone else” to the end of the last line:
“And if you don’t like this swearing this motherfucker forced from me
And reckon it shows moral or intellectual paucity
Then fuck you motherfucker, this is language one employs
When one is a little bit cross about fuckers fucking boys” – Tim Minchin
… Bada-BOOM!
It’s not that complex.
We’re atheists. They’re theists. We got to stick together*. Bad behaviour is only bad when it can be used as an example of why religion is at fault.
*This would look to the untrained eye as simple ‘tribalism’, but in reality, it’s only tribalism when FtBloggers and commenters agree on some issue and disagree with Nugent-Approved Thought Leaders.†
†This is not a hypocritical stance. It is actually just rationalism. Deciding god is not real is the equivalent of having Deep Blue inserted right into your brain: everything you think after that is rational by definition.‡
‡ Unless you’re a feminist.
If you criticize your ‘loyal ally’ you’ll be ‘playing into the hands of…..’ fill in the blank with the scary enemy du jour.
The ‘playing’ language is from Orwell, and he was writing about the unwillingness of the Left to permit criticism of Soviet tyranny. It IS horrifying to see the same kind of reflexive huddling together with ‘allies’ who one wouldn’t want to share a cup with.
Feminism DID lose some cred by academic tolerance for generic woo-woo, Freudian bullshit, and epistemic relativism. An emotional twitch around that stuff is justifiable, but that has nothing to do with issues like abuse of authority, harassment, and downplaying rape and assault.
oh come now if we have to list the inconsistencies and hypocrisies , my entire work day will be over.
My favorite one is those who complain how people use the “militant” atheist , don’t know what real militants do are also the one who use “witch hunt” or “thought police from 1984” or “the french revolution”