“Woman” is a gender, not a marker of fecundity.

Leah Torres is an OB/GYN who tweets at @LeahNTorres. She was praised today on Twitter for being gender-neutral in her advocacy for trusting pregnant people with their rights to an abortion — a stance I share, back and categorically endorse.

Earlier, she wrote:

Our ex-colleague and recent embracer of all things TERFy Ophelia Benson sought this tweet out and attacked Torres for it, repeatedly chastising her for saying “pregnant person” instead of “woman”.
Continue reading ““Woman” is a gender, not a marker of fecundity.”

“Woman” is a gender, not a marker of fecundity.
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John Oliver on online harassment

This is an experience that I’ve been steeped in and have been actively fighting for almost a decade now. I’m exhausted. It’s why I really just want to blog about things I like right now.

Being in possession of a white penis as John Oliver says (and/or being perceived to be same when I was anonymous so many years ago; see comments for nuance with regard to trans folk), I received a tenth the harassment I saw others receive. I only drew people’s ire when I pointed this out, and only attracted haters and slime pitters to swarm me and attack me when I dared defend their targets or interrogated their questionable logic. They are entirely disinterested in me as long as I turn a blind eye to the damage they do. It’s a built-in defense mechanism, I think. And it’s a winning strategy — a decade of seeing the dregs of humanity tear down everything you try to build does, in fact, wear at you.

You wonder why I am tired? This is why. Because there’s a cadre of people who act as a katamari of awful, rolling from one community to another, genuinely believing in their campaign to push interlopers off of the internet, picking targets and slowly eroding their confidence and destroying their lives, pushing them out of the public sphere. It is censorship of a creeping and insidious sort, and a far more insidious censorship than “waah, someone said that thing I said is objectively harmful even though I’m free to say it, they shouldn’t be free to say otherwise because free speech”. Rape threats and death threats and defense of same as “criticism” is shameful, attacking legitimate criticism as “witch hunts” and “lynch mobs” is shameful, and it’s shameful that anyone with a shred of intellect (*coughdawkins*) might be suckered into that narrative just because they themselves are criticized for saying sexist, racist or otherwise societally harmful things.

John Oliver on online harassment

My obligations.

Recently, Hemant Mehta has implied that I have an obligation to apologize to Ben Radford because with the settlement of the lawsuit he brought against Karen Stollznow, her original claims — which I’d detailed and scrupulously withheld judgment on the merits of, going so far as to expressly forbid “playing the villain ball” to explain any aspect of the case even in the comments — have been proven false. That I have an obligation that, because I’d given “near-daily updates” on the case when it broke, I should have been up to date on it as soon as the news broke and should have immediately posted and decried Karen’s lying liar-ness as far and wide as I’d discussed her original allegations.

I have no such obligation.

(Here’s Rebecca Watson’s excellently titled response, since she, like me, has nothing to apologize for either. Here’s also Stephanie Zvan’s devastatingly succinct point form reply to Mehta’s demands. They are both far better reads than this post, or Mehta’s.)

Continue reading “My obligations.”

My obligations.

Getting off on the charges of getting off without consent

Content note: sexual assault, non-consensual sexual activities.

Been a while, I know. This story reignited the RAGE BLOGGER in me, and this is a good thing, because I’ll need the warmup for what I’ve got rattling around in my head the past few days.

Apparently, in Tokyo, a man responsible for ejaculating on non-consenting, unaware women over a hundred times on Tokyo’s train system has finally been caught.

A middle-aged man, Tetsuya Fukuda, 40 has been arrested for the attacks on crowded trains between Kinshicho and Akihabara stations in the capital Tokyo.

Continue reading “Getting off on the charges of getting off without consent”

Getting off on the charges of getting off without consent

The sophistry and revisionist history in Skeptoid Brian Dunning's statement

My understanding of Brian Dunning’s cookie-stuffing scheme is fairly thorough at this point. I’ve read the articles in major news organizations about Dunning and Shawn Hogan’s scheme, and I happen to understand to a very high degree of fidelity the workings of the World Wide Web and cookies. So when I read the statement that he wouldn’t allow copying-and-pasting on, I balked. Not only at the lies, misdirection and obvious con-man level sophistry going on in the post, but that anyone who claims to have pulled off such a job might think that what they claim to have done is actually plausible.

Rebecca Watson has done a thorough job at deconstructing the statement for what it is: a great ball of chaff thrown up to confuse the radars of so-called skeptics who are evidently unable to recognize such tactics. But there’s some nuance I’d like to add, specifically because there are parts that appear to directly reference something I blogged about recently, which has bubbled up to very near the top of search results on the terms “Skeptoid” or “Brian Dunning”.
Continue reading “The sophistry and revisionist history in Skeptoid Brian Dunning's statement”

The sophistry and revisionist history in Skeptoid Brian Dunning's statement

Why won't you "skeptics" let Skeptoid's Brian Dunning put his misdeeds into the memory hole!?

Brian Dunning issued a statement about his criminal acts and how everyone’s getting things wrong about him. However, people might find it difficult to copy and paste in order to rebut, or even to disseminate, because he included a little snippet of javascript that automatically kills your ability to select, copy or paste.

So, I’m going to paste the entire thing here where it’s more easily copiable by folks who might have a mind to do so who might not be technically inclined to be able to disable Javascript and/or edit from source.
Continue reading “Why won't you "skeptics" let Skeptoid's Brian Dunning put his misdeeds into the memory hole!?”

Why won't you "skeptics" let Skeptoid's Brian Dunning put his misdeeds into the memory hole!?

The virtual radio silence on Brian Dunning's fraud

Today, Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid podcast and brand, blogger at SkepticBlog, was sentenced to 15 months prison and three years supervised release.

Barely anyone’s talking about it, though (except, obviously, us Social Justice Bullies who will inevitably be accused of crowing about this news).
Continue reading “The virtual radio silence on Brian Dunning's fraud”

The virtual radio silence on Brian Dunning's fraud

On that quote purported to be by The Amazing Atheist

Yeah, it might really be a quote by TJ Kincaid, given some corroborative evidence, but the exact wording of the quote cannot be found anywhere else on the internet presently. Better to damn him by what we can demonstrate he really said, and we can demonstrate he said something very close in 2006.

However, no, you probably shouldn’t damn him for holding a terrible opinion in 2006 that he’s since walked back. Not that there isn’t lots else to damn him about.

Since he’s an antifeminist and has expressed a number of backward views on topics like consent, I’m going to go ahead and treat this as a good place to put a fold and trigger-warning you all.
Continue reading “On that quote purported to be by The Amazing Atheist”

On that quote purported to be by The Amazing Atheist

Quick, while I have the TERFs and MRAs distracted, go solve all the problems!

Nearly twenty years ago, when I was a sixteen year old wide-eyed innocent who believed the human race is generally good, I was victimized by someone’s lies. I told the story on this blog in hopes of achieving some measure of catharsis for myself, and providing real support to others for whom the same sort of lie had damaged their lives. However, I recognized later that the reason I got off so easy actually meant many people who were really hurt would never see justice, and that this was a problem with society that I would have traded more personal pain to see righted.

Today, someone who ostensibly agrees with me on the existence of the overarching problem with society threw those lies back in my face, attacking me because I disagreed with her that transgender folks should be protected from her attacks, in an effort to poison my Google search results for my name. That someone is Cathy Brennan. And she’s in totally appropriate company in the attempt at poisoning my search results — the same slander is also posted on A Voice For Men.
Continue reading “Quick, while I have the TERFs and MRAs distracted, go solve all the problems!”

Quick, while I have the TERFs and MRAs distracted, go solve all the problems!

Petition to remove judge who claims Down syndrome rape victim "didn't act like a victim"

IMPORTANT WARNING: After signing and putting my weight behind this petition, I learned that the person who created it is a Trans-Exclusive Radical feminist (TERF). Please bear that in mind before signing, if you are trans and need to protect yourself. While I strongly agree on this one issue, I am very keenly aware that TERFs have been known to and continue to victimize trans folk, and I don’t want to put any of you in harm’s way.
Continue reading “Petition to remove judge who claims Down syndrome rape victim "didn't act like a victim"”

Petition to remove judge who claims Down syndrome rape victim "didn't act like a victim"