Gamers Against Bigotry hacked repeatedly by computer-savvy bigots

Example #645,257,329 of why one must always sanitize every piece of user input that your code has to process. Doesn’t matter how foolproof or dead simple you think the action will be, or how safe or sane your users — someone will try to buffer overrun, break out of the current SQL statement and inject their own code, or just generally find any way imaginable to deface or destroy your work. Especially if your work is a direct confrontation of a particularly entrenched bit of misogyny amongst a terribly entitled and relatively tech-savvy audience, and that audience is inclined toward trollishness to begin with.

A group of social justice advocates in the video gaming community put together a pledge website called Gamers Against Bigotry (WARNING: Chrome reports malware!), asking people to sign onto the following statement:

As a gamer, I realize I contribute to an incredibly diverse social network of gamers around the world, and that my actions have the ability to impact others. In effort to make a positive impact, and to create a community that is welcoming to all, I pledge to not use bigoted language while gaming, online and otherwise.

Bigoted language includes, but is not limited to, slurs based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disability.

Read more about the pledge, including what is and isn’t included, and the overall purpose here.

Read why you shouldn’t use the word “rape” casually here.

All in all, it’s a simple statement, and a rather unobjectionable one at that. The only way one can end bigotry within a community is to “be the change you want to see” — to never engage in bigoted behaviour, and to challenge it when one is able.

The response, however, was in no way proportionate to the pledge, especially given its entirely voluntary nature.
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Gamers Against Bigotry hacked repeatedly by computer-savvy bigots
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Petition to Chick-Fil-A: Stop serving cocks who like cock!

No, not cannibal chickens. This petition demands that Chick-Fil-A stop serving GAY chickens.

Chick-fil-A has a long history of supporting anti-gay organizations. Now their Chief Operating Officer (and founder’s son) Dan Cathy has said, “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage’. I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.”

But the harsh fact that Chick-fil-A ignores is that, as early as 1764, male chickens have been observed sexually mounting other cocks. How can Chick-fil-A claim to be truly committed to their selective and hateful misreading of the Biblical definition of marriage when the nearly 300 million sandwiches they sell yearly contain chickens, some or all of which might be gay?

Tell Chick-fil-A to put their money where their mouth is and only sell animals that are 100% heterosexual. (That rules out beef, too. Raccoon? Oops! There are homosexual raccoons, too. Er… maybe they can eat crow?)

CITATIONS:
Bagemihl, Bruce. “Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity.” St. Martin’s Press: New York City, 1999. (p. 83)

Neill, James. “The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations In Human Societies.” McFarland & Company: Jefferson, NC 2009. (p. 13)

So if you’re interested in reminding those folks of the ubiquity of homosexuality in the natural world, signing this petition is a good way to do it.

Petition to Chick-Fil-A: Stop serving cocks who like cock!

RCimT: Dispatches from the Misogyny Wars

I’ve had quite a week, and the well’s pretty close to dry as far as spare resources with which to blog. Thankfully, it’s not like the rest of the blogosphere runs on my specific contributions! Therefore, have a link roundup of things that people have written that are worth reading. The theme for this Random Crap in my Tabs round-up should be relatively obvious, given the current all-encompassing conflagration surrounding our attempt to evolve the atheist and skeptical movements into some sense of pluralism and humanitarianism.
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RCimT: Dispatches from the Misogyny Wars

Did Chick-Fil-A bear false witness not once but twice?

“Lying for Jesus” is not a new tactic, but it’s certainly a hypocritical one, if you’ve decided that it is more important to follow the rules set out in the Bible than to trust your basic human empathy to guide you in dealing with other human beings. It’s fascinating to me that someone can square a dogmatic need to force everyone to adhere to one lesser set of guidelines in the Bible involving where you’re allowed to put your penis, while completely failing to follow one major rule set forth as a Commandment: thou shalt not bear false witness. Bearing false witness means, in no uncertain terms, lying — the rule, therefore, means “do not lie”.

And yet, Chick-Fil-A has possibly lied twice in their recent PR campaign to weather a crisis caused by their anti-gay COO Dan Cathy.
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Did Chick-Fil-A bear false witness not once but twice?

Digital archaeology of Elevatorgate – a timeline

Oh, the huge manatee! Suirauqa has taken it upon xirself to chronicle the origin of the DEEEEP RIIIIIIFT that the community has found itself in, between people who think Rebecca Watson magically ruins everything by her mere presence, and people who think she’s just another human being. Xir googling efforts are chronicled here, and the proceedings of the event now known as “elevatorgate” make a sort of prequel to the harassment policies campaign in how major forces in the skeptical and atheist movements decided to align for and against female bodily autonomy.

A friend of mine was curious about the ‘Deep Rift’ that has been cooking in the atheist-skeptic blogosphere for about a year now, culminating in the Twitter storm over the FTBullies hashtag. I offered to make a timeline with bullet points. Little did I know that chronicling those cataclysmic events was going to be such a monumental task, requiring the last drop of my Google-Fu and reading/listening comprehension. Anyhoo, I must admit it was eeriely fun revisiting those events, and consequently, wondering anew how, atheist-skeptic or not, we all are subject to the very human foibles and frailties of ego, prejudice, presumptions, and sadly, blind irrationality. Vraiment, the humanity of it all!

Well worth the read, if you’re unsure why people deluge Watson with hate for otherwise completely unobjectionable statements.

In case you missed the link the first time through, click here.

Digital archaeology of Elevatorgate – a timeline

Coles Notes and alt audio for Don’t Feed the Trolls

Matt Lowry was so kind as to post his notes on the Don’t Feed the Trolls panel, which while it’s not a full transcript, certainly pulls out a lot of the relevant details.

In Canada, you call that a “Coles Notes”, after the Coles bookstore from whence these synopsis books come. I hear in America, the same idea is called CliffsNotes. I like Coles Notes way better, not the least reason being the unpretentious space included between the two words.

I’ve also done an alternate audio recording from the panel, so if you’re interested in the original take by Cristina Rad’s friend which is uploaded to Youtube presently, but don’t have the tech to hit Youtube at the moment, or just want to grab the mp3 for posterity, you can use this podcast doodlybopper like what I done used for the other two panels.

[audio:http://cdn1.the-orbit.net/lousycanuck/wp-content/files/2012/07/2012-07-06-DontFeedtheTrolls-lr.mp3]

Also, here’s the mp3 link (20 megs) if you’d like to download it for later listening. Again, lose the -lr if you want a 128kbps version that doesn’t add much in the way of lost audio.

Don’t forget to visit Cristina’s original at her blog in case the ridiculousness in the Youtube comments didn’t do it for you with regard to rampant trolling and misogyny.

Coles Notes and alt audio for Don’t Feed the Trolls

Mission Creep

One of the main complaints we’ve seen recently about our ongoing conversation with regard to sexism in the skeptical and atheist communities, is one about mission creep — that we’re a community defined by our common ground, e.g. atheism/skepticism, and we shouldn’t try to hash out other differences about other things.

I couldn’t agree less.
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Mission Creep

HUGE news from American Atheists re harassment (now with link to press release)

David Silverman, Amanda Knief, and the rest of the crew at American Atheists have put together what I feel exceedingly comfortable in saying is absolutely the strongest anti-harassment policy implemented in this entire campaign. AA just closed a conference call (to which I was invited, though my day job impeded my participation). They have gone above and beyond my wildest expectations for delineating what actions are objectionable, and what might happen if you engage in those actions regardless. The policy hasn’t yet gone live but here’s what was apparently sent around to the conference bridge participants. In the event that this policy is significantly altered after I’ve posted this, I’ll amend.
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HUGE news from American Atheists re harassment (now with link to press release)

Bullying the bullies into stopping bullying

As I mentioned in my essay on safe spaces, sometimes bullies win.

Sometimes the bullies wear at a person’s resolve enough so that one little weird and probably innocuous incident from an unrelated source is enough to rattle that person. Enough to change the calculus used to determine whether something is worth doing, such that suddenly something that they were gung-ho to do (like Ophelia Benson speaking at TAM) becomes a headache just not worth undertaking.
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Bullying the bullies into stopping bullying

The FtB Conversation about TAM: Transcript pt. 2

Here’s the second part of the transcript for the big FtB Conversation from this past weekend, done once again by the indefatiguable Kate Donovan. She’s the poor soul who did the transcript for the “PenisGate Debate”, who volunteered for this as I guess a sort of palate-cleanser.

If you’re just joining in, read these two posts first:

In Medias Res: how to find the plot if you’re just tuning in
The harassment policy campaign timeline

Transcript pt. 1 is available here.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading “The FtB Conversation about TAM: Transcript pt. 2”

The FtB Conversation about TAM: Transcript pt. 2