A couple of days ago Michael Nugent posted two questions for Justin Vacula about ‘nasty pushback’ against some feminists online.

Justin Vacula has published a video (here with transcript) titled “Feminists’ million dollar question” in which he elaborates on his advice “for people who face criticism and hate on the internet.”

While I fundamentally disagree with his analysis, I am interpreting his intentions charitably, and I would like to ask him two questions.

Justin asks why some feminists receive what he calls “nasty pushback” while others don’t, and he concludes that it is because of the way that they present themselves on the Internet. He says of this “nasty pushback”:

“It’s not to say the nasty pushback is morally justified, but it’s just to state a fact; it’s just to state how the internet “is.” It’s not to justify the behavior.”

Justin, here’s my first question for you. Can you go a step further than that, and say that at least some of “the nasty pushback” is morally unjustified, and can you give some examples of morally unjustified nasty pushback?

I don’t think Vacula has answered yet – he was too busy doing an hour-long podcast devoted to examining a few comments of mine on Facebook – but Vacula did a post purporting to answer Nugent’s questions but actually failing to answer them; meanwhile Nugent has posted Examples of ‘nasty pushback’ against some atheist/skeptic feminists on the Internet. Boy has he ever. He went to the slyme pit and dug deep and came up with a big, dripping, stinking, oozing collection of examples. I haven’t seen anyone else do that before apart from us – the targets of the slime – and we do it only sparingly. This should make some heads explode. [Read more…]