Pretty funny

Stephanie collected some of the nonsense from the distant watchers of Women in Secularism 3. It’s pretty pathetic, as usual.

I found this one amusing for its brazen…invention.

Photo: Yeahhhhh...no it's not.

Oh really? Who and where are all these women? I know of a handful on Twitter, but a handful is not “most” – there were far more than a handful right there at Women in Secularism, enjoying the hell out of it. I have a feeling Sara Mayhew is inventing that “most” out of thin air.

Tickling

A bookend for the Sara Mayhew item, because this one strikes me as peculiarly vicious and tiny-minded.

eli

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson     9 Nov

CFI combating superstition in Uganda http://dlvr.it/4HqYQp [link to guest post here by Bill Cooke]

Skep tickle @Ellesun         9 Nov

@OpheliaBenson Might I suggest link to original post at CFI on campus, 3/2013? Also, how to earmark? Donation link doesn’t allow that option

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson        21 h

Bill sent me the article directly, w/o mention of link. I didn’t steal it.

Skep tickle @Ellesun

Sure, I get that, & I know he welcomed help spreading word. But as his employer, CFI may hold © on original 3/2013 post, 1/2

and AFAIK mentioning it’d been previously posted, w/ link back to original, would be standard even if permissions all ok. 2/2

Ok can anyone explain to me what on earth is the point of that other than to be an obnoxious officious meddling aka harassing ASSHOLE? Because I can’t. For the life of me, I can’t. [Read more…]

It was so disruptive

So things must have been too calm and boring, so D.J. Grothe decided to throw a little bomb on Facebook and Twitter.

aa

No hyperbole: I just saw the worst-passing transsexual I’ve ever seen in the lounge here. It was so disruptive that I am forced to believe it was an intentional way to protest against rigid gender binaries. Or so I’d like to think.

There were some shocked comments, and then a bunch of “PC gone mad/it’s all the fault of rage bloggers” people rushed in to circle the wagons in such a tight circle that not even an atom could get through.

Update: Part of the wagon-circling: Sara Mayhew posted her view of the matter on that Facebook thread:

That’s PZ, me, Rebecca, Amy, Melody, and in the front row, Carrie and…Elyse. That last one is so vicious I can hardly believe my eyes.

The Monday mendacity

Sara Mayhew is still desperately seeking attention. Every once in awhile I grant her wish. Today is one such time. She fired off a bunch of tweets at me earlier today; I retweeted some; Nick Cohen (who’s a friend of mine) replied to one.

aa

Not quite accurate.

Page o’ nonstop monitoring and harassment

May 4

First thing in the morning. Again, why Twitter blocking doesn’t work – because any old asshole can reply to someone you’ve blocked and then her sniping at you turns up in your feed. Lucky you.

amb

AmbrosiaX tweets

One more thing, @OpheliaBenson , try doing some actual critical thinking instead of just applauding any article that makes men look bad.

Pfunk-the original @ Gluonsrule tweets

@AmbrosiaX@OpheliaBenson yeah, maybe that will happen.

“One more thing” is it – so there’s a whole series then. “AmbrosiaX” is obsessed with me, and I don’t even know who the fuck she is apart from being someone who spends hours every day sniping at me and other Hated Ones. Yet she accuses me of doing nothing but “applauding any article that makes men look bad.” Is that really what I do nothing but? No. [Read more…]

Who was that masked pineapple?

By the way, that whole pineapple thing? Mayhew’s witty “Pineapple go home!” on Facebook, Vacula’s witty repetition of “Pineapple go home!” farther down the thread on Facebook, “Pineapple go home!” as the title of the first episode of Vacula & Porter’s new podcast, Mayhew’s witty cartoon of “Pineapple go home!”?

I take it they have no clue what the pineapple is about. It’s about something. I didn’t make my profile picture a pineapple just because I wanted a piece of fruit as my profile picture. No. No, I made my profile picture a pineapple in solidarity with the Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society. There was a little incident last October, which I blogged about several times. I first blogged about it on October 5.

I will just repost the whole thing here, because it’s mine, and I can do that.

Either the pineapple goes, or you do       

 

And on the same day, in another part of the forest…

…another busy representative of another university Student Union meddled with another Atheist, Humanist, and Secularist Society. Reading University this time, and RUSU and RAHS. This time not a Jesus and Mo toon on a Facebook page, but a pineapple named Mohammed.

The NSS quotes a statement by Tim Rouse of the Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society:

Among the material displayed on our stall was a pineapple. We labelled this pineapple “Mohammed”, to encourage discussion about blasphemy, religion, and liberty, as well as to celebrate the fact that we live in a country in which free speech is protected, and where it is lawful to call a pineapple by whatever name one chooses.

Towards the end of the afternoon, we were informed by a member of RUSU staff that there had been complaints about the pineapple, despite the fact that no complaints had been made at any point to anybody on the stall. Our commitment to freedom of expression meant that we refused to remove the pineapple from our stall. After a few minutes, we were told by another member of RUSU staff that “Either the pineapple goes, or you do”, whereupon they seized the pineapple and tried to leave. However, the pineapple was swiftly returned, and shortly was displayed again, with the name Mohammed changed to that of Jesus.

Shortly afterwards, the second RUSU staff member returned and ordered RAHS to leave the Freshers’ Fayre. At this point, a group of around five students, some of whom self-identified as Muslim, approached the stall and began to criticise us, asking and telling us to remove the pineapple. Though these students mainly engaged in discussion, one removed the label from the pineapple without our permission.

And on it went, wrangle wrangle, until they felt forced to leave, although they continued to hand out leaflets outside the event.

One fire is put out while another is set ablaze.

———————-

Back in the present now.

So you see the pineapple has a meaning – one that even Justin Vacula and Sara Mayhew might appreciate. But they’ve been too busy making videos and podcasts to jeer at us, or cartoons of angry pineapples to jeer at us, to pay attention to things like the above incident. So they jeered at the poor loyal pineapple. Sad, isn’t it.

Lazy blogging. Bad writing.

Sara Mayhew must have wanted more attention, because as tonyinbatavia pointed out in a comment, she posted another random tweet about Stephanie and me, apropos of nothing.

mayhew2

Learn to summarize someone else’s point instead of quoting huge blocks of text. Lazy blogging. Bad writing. Examples: @OpheliaBenson @szvan

She’s weirdly persistent about picking fights with me. I don’t know why, apart from wanting more attention (but then there are billions of people in the world, and I don’t know why she wants attention from me in particular). I don’t know her. I haven’t written about her here (except about these bizarre random fight-pickings). I haven’t interacted with her. But pick pick pick.

She did a more extended version (less lazy! less bad!) on Facebook, too. It’s a public post. [Read more…]

The Special Lady Who Is Better Than All Other Ladies Because She Is One Of The Guys

Amanda Marcotte wrote a brilliant post on the peril of being a pioneer and looking down on everyone who isn’t a pioneer.

I’ve been watching with interest as Harriet Hall—a doctor, a skeptic and a blogger at Science-Based Medicine—flails around in her very determined but bizarre effort to denounce Women in Secularism (where I’ll be speaking, so come on out!) and all other efforts to improve women’s participation in atheist/skeptic movement stuff: It’s an amusing performance that veers between embracing deterministic arguments (she’s fond of the women-just-aren’t-as-into-that-rationality-thing-and-that’s-just-how-it-is-and-why-question-it argument) while insisting she is too a feminist, and, in the grand tradition of internet rabbit holes, getting into a long, digressive, but admittedly interesting debate about the meanings of words like “gender”, “sex”, “identity”, and “orientation” with Will at Skepchick. Hall has an interesting pedigree as a pioneering pilot and flight surgeon, which has been wielded to exempt her from criticism for her ideas, but which I say means that it’s important to be even more careful when examining her biases. [Read more…]