I’m sure you’ve all heard the tragic story of Amanda Todd, the teenage girl who killed herself after prolonged bullying. Normal human beings will read about her and be near tears; she was broken by callous sexual predators, her life made miserable, and she finally gave up on it.
The Amazing Atheist is not a normal human being.
Instead, The Amazing Atheist raged at the fact that this young woman was getting attention when other people have died, too. She was a well-off Western girl with plenty of privileges, so how dare we consider her story particularly tragic? There are so many other people who are worse off than she was!
Well, you know, we have a couple of choices in our lives.
We could, for instance, search the world for that one person who is in the worst circumstances of anyone; the person who is suffering the very most right now. We can do this while turning up our nose at each other afflicted individual who isn’t hurting enough for our standards; why, you’re a quadriplegic dying in a ditch? But you don’t have shingles! And both your eyes are intact! I’m sure we can find someone worse off than you. And then when we find that ultimate person in pain, we can promise to do everything we can to help them.
But I’ve noticed that people who make that kind of argument aren’t actually offering to help anyone. Their perversely inverted, demanding standards are really an excuse to turn away from the miserable they consider undeserving, to justify refusing to help…because that ultimate sufferer will never be found.
But you do have a choice. The other thing you could do is recognize deep pain in others and do what you can to help them. If one person had sincerely and honestly turned to Todd when she was being abused, and offered to help, maybe she’d still be here, and the world would be a slightly better place.
She wasn’t asking for much.
The Amazing Atheist begrudges her that much.
I don’t see any difference between him and the bullies who beat her up and mocked her on facebook and poured scorn on her in school.
And some people wonder why there is a growing rift in the atheist movement. All you have to do is look at people like the Amazing Atheist to see that some atheists, people who are convinced that there is nothing beyond ourselves, that we are dependent entirely on our fellow human beings and nothing more, lack that humanity that is our only source of unity and our only true reason for living.
Don’t be surprised that some of us want nothing to do with such sociopaths.
And the sad thing is that this is totally expected from him. Apparently, he lack the ability to understand that a person in pain is a person in pain, and that they deserve help, no matter how “trivial” he may think their problems are. Of course, this also the nation with a political party dedicated to telling people in pain that they should be in a bit more pain so rich people can buy a new private jet. The Amazing Asshole: current king of the A*-ers
Paul Zachary Myers, I am proud to count you among my friends.
As I said over at my post, I am absolutely unsurprised that a misogynist bully would want people to pay attention to things other than the fact that misogynist bullies sometimes drive people to suicide.
Since he lives such a privileged life as a white male American, maybe he should stop sharing his imagined slights, since there are people out there with way more legitimate gripes than anything he could whine about.
I mean, if he’s applying his rationales consistently, anyway.
I remember this story from Slate.com. I wonder where the adults in her life were when she was being bullied (i.e., parents, teachers). The “Amazing” Atheist sounds like someone who lacks sympathy for everyone. He sounds like a bully himself.
The amazingly awful arrogant asshole atheist is simply disgusting.
Oh, he is. You don’t want to hear how he browbeat a rape survivor and threatened her with rape.
QFT. It was bad.
Exactly.
Well, one thing I’d strike: the ‘they consider undeserving’. It’s redundant. Tho’ I guess that’s implicit, here.
As there’s actually no one they consider deserving.
‘There’s someone worse off’ is quite the flexible excuse, too, innit?
‘Dear Muslima’…
I guess it’s on another level, but the parallel still strikes me. And note it’s dismissal again of this apparently ‘privileged’ Western woman’s issues getting attention, and that’s the excuse–ridiculously thin as it is, here. We just can’t have that, apparently. Doesn’t matter what the level is, whether it’s a perfectly calm ‘guys, don’t do that’ or a video suicide note.
Impressive, really. Despairing enough to fucking kill herself, and no, we still don’t give a rat’s ass, but, see that’s really only because there’s someone starving in Africa.
OK, on beyond my previous “I love you maaan” sentiment:
There seems to be a tendency in certain quarters of the atheist/skeptic movement to view with disdain anyone who thinks that there’s a greater good outside of simple self-centeredness. If you give a shit about anyone outside yourself that’s an “agenda” or a “belief.”
I try not to assume that people’s behavior online precisely reflects who they are offline, because there are a lot of people who choose to use the Intertubes as the venue in which they exorcise their own personal demons. But even keeping that in mind, there seems to be a whole lot of sociopathy out there.
That guy should do some fact-checking. It is a fairly known medical fact that middle class money is not an effective treatment against depression, and that there is no known correlation so far between wealth and happiness. I wouldn’t bother judging his opinions because he’s simply wrong on the facts and therefore his opinion is necessarily wrong.
Tip: Practice skepticism: let facts inform your opinions.
Goddamn, he sucks.
jose: The problem here is that the individual in question has a known history of indignant behavior.
TJ, TJ, TJ…
Once upon a time I thought you were articulate, funny, and smart. From time to time I thought you made some very good points about politics and society. However, I now see that you seem content to be stuck in some sort of perpetual adolescence where you are convinced of your own “genius” while running down everyone who does not met your impossible-to-reach standards. I had hoped that maybe you’d eventually see reason and grow up a bit, but those days are long over.
Get over yourself, kid. The world doesn’t revolve around you.
I don’t have any words so I’ll just quote someone else’s
Here is a less deadly but still unpleasant electronic interaction; the comments to the story contain plenty of examples of atheists-who-should-not-be-imitated (and of course sexual slurs directed at the female victim). What the original offender did is being defended as a criticism of religion when in fact it was a gratuitous personal attack. There are good ways to say that you don’t think people should be excused from classes for religious holidays, but this was not a good way.
I just heard about what The “Amazing” Atheist said on manboobz, and I could not help but this that he was a perfect example of the problems we encounter in the atheist community (misogyny, slut-shaming, arrogance, poor temper, and general misanthropy) and a really good indication of what not to do” as an atheist.
Then, as if a gift from his noodliness, a wild PZ Myers appears! He used “compassion”. It was very effective. And it gave me hope, and relief, and reassurance that I can be safe and wanted as a woman in the skeptic movement.
PZ is the only prominent atheist speaker I’ve been able to see in person, and I’m glad it was him. I cheered like a baws when he said that the atheist community needs to recognize the contributions of women.
So I heard that there is like, more than one thread on Pharyngula. Weird stuff to be sure.
*standing ovation*
Well said, sir.
And some wonder why we think A+ not only necessary but very relevant. The only thing remotely amazing about this douchecanoe is his utter lack of humanity.
@jose
Your advice is as misplaced as a discussion of proper lapel shape is when one’s advisee hasn’t yet discovered which end of their body the underwear goes on. TAA has a long way to go in self-development before accurately applied skepticism is an issue.
A. R, people has focused on his morally low opinion, I thought I would just evaluate whether it’s a justified opinion; turns out it isn’t. So it’s not only nasty, it’s also objectively wrong because false facts can’t sustain an argument. I think that’s an important thing to point out.
just another internet narcissist
except for the dead girl.
Dang, this is why I read this blog. There is a lot of fuckwits who don’t really give a shit about their follow human beings. TAA is definitely one of them. PZ, CC, and the horde have their priorities where they should be.
jose: He is obviously objectively wrong, but the issue here is the need for a social justice-positive movement within the atheist community, given the abhorrent behavior of a popular atheist vlogger.
You can be good without god, it’s true.
You can also be an evil fucking asshole without god.
I had to look. The “Amazing Atheist” is holding up a sign to mimic the ones in the video. It says: “I am the other hundreds of thousands of people who died today OTHER than Amanda Fucking Todd.”
Well, yes. I guess I am “amazed.”
And the other hundreds of thousands of atheists who are NOT Amazing Fucking Atheist are also amazed. But, not in a good way. I think he’s done.
I’d say that there is a tendency in certain quarters of human race to view with disdain anyone who thinks that there’s a greater good outside of simple self-centeredness.
Kincaid’s existence merely shows that once religion’s status as the Big Absolute Standard of Personal Worth™ starts to weaken, sociopaths who might have in other times and places pretended to be devout believers in order to justify their own behavior just drop the pretence.
Which is actually one of the reason I tend to sneer at people who say, with starry eyes “Imagine a world with no religion”: I’ve seen this world, and it’s a lot less sexy than you imagine: instead of being called by psychopaths, you’re called by the same people. You know: “Progress“
So which logical fallacy is AA’s “reasoning” an example of, Argumentum ex culo or “not as bad as”?
Thanks for this PZ. I live in the same metro area as Amanda Todd did, and have been paying close attention to the story. For those who wonder where the teachers were, and the parents, Amanda’s mom was interviewed here.
Amanda’s mom is a teacher in the same school district, and from what I can tell she’s been there all along for her daughter. Given how much Amanda was emotionally tortured by her tormentors, she needed more than her mom could give.
It’s such a horrifying story. And anger-inducing. Speaking as a parent I can’t imagine the agony that Amanda’s mom must be feeling right now. Her daughter seemed to be a sweet, lovely girl. And now the world doesn’t have her anymore. Makes me want to cry all over again. :(
Translation: the Amazing Atheist wants more attention for himself.
Amazing indeed.
*barf*
Amphiox: Ah, but what else to expect from the YouTube cupcake-in-chief?
Fuuuuuuuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. He certainly lives up to his ‘nym, in ways I hope he didn’t intend (I guess it’s somehow comforting to imagine that he must have some sense of shame, however deeply buried it may be). And to think that I sometimes doubt that I feel enough empathy.
I’d also told myself I’d had my last drink of the night. Now I think I might need a couple more to let go of this for a while. Fuck.
Shame?
He has None
@laurentweppe #35: Hence “imagine”. I’m pretty sure I particularly edited that word (from “think” and/or “suppose”) for pretty much that reason.
Fuck this guy. As if he wasn’t already one of the most colossal festering douchenozzles on the internet, he’s now slagging off a teenage suicide which came about after extensive bullying.
As a depressive who copped his fair share of shit in his teens (but who was lucky enough to have a loving family and great friends), I say again:
FUCK THIS GUY. And fuck anyone who still calls themselves his fan.
Um….possible trigger warning? Personal testimony. (New to this.)
silomowbray @ 31:
That’s why this kind of thing is always so personal to me, and why that scene in Family Guy where Lois just hands her daughter a Sylvia Plath book and a whole bottle of sleeping pills pissed me off so much (assuming I wasn’t misreading it, which I don’t think I was). I was emotionally bullied, and even had my pain marginalized by people who didn’t consider it “real” bullying, you know, the kind with black eyes and broken arms, or at least a few wedgies. No, this was “girl” bullying, which is a joke because anyone who is “strong enough” will survive–and as for the weak, they get what they deserve and you can’t blame the kids who made their lives a living hell because, after all, they didn’t actually touch their victim so it wasn’t bullying! Just like that!
Thing was, physical bullying for me was not a problem, kids realized quickly that I was well equipped for that kind of bullying (I seem mild-mannered, but I have a real rage that can come out that surprises some people, sort of a Jekyll/Hyde thing). But against emotional bullying I had absolutely no natural defense, and the other kids quickly figured that out and capitalized on it to hurt me–and for about a year and a half (from 12 to 13 1/2) I was quite suicidal and actually planned for it several times–even had the knife to the wrist, alone in the dark at 1 am trying to think of one reason not to just pull it across, not believing that even my parents would care if I was gone.
And now my parents often ask “why does this upset you so much, can’t you just get over it?” and as much as I love them I’d love to slug them for that. But then I have to remind myself that I suffered this alone, and they only heard about it many years later and even then not in it’s full form. Instead, I remind them of a few things:
First, I still have suicidal tendencies to this day because of that mistreatment, burned deep in some unconscious or subconscious part of my mind, that still explodes to the forefront for various reasons. It is not something I always have control over and, for the moment, is often just barely kept in check by my tendency to kind of “freeze” physically when I get that upset or depressed or emotionally stressed out. Given the right set of circumstances, I could still kill myself in the future. Hell, my brother’s wedding (more like a funeral to us) had me at that precipice just last year! (They worry about this when I drive it home like that, but dammit, when they say things like “just get over it”, I take it to mean they are in dire need of hearing some very upsetting but very real and serious truth with no punches being pulled.)
Second, I WAS LUCKY. I reached that point where you either kill yourself or…something snaps, and suddenly you don’t care about whether these people live or die much less what they fucking thing about you or say about you–which does turn out to be the best defense there is, as it really makes those kinds of bullies walk away with deflated egos and confused expressions and a disinclination to bother you further because of it–but I had to build that defense with years and years of ugly and painful scar tissue that almost cost me my life and continues to hurt to this day. And at this moment, there are still kids out there taking this kind of bullying, having their pain marginalized as “not really important”, thinking there’s no way out, feeling utterly alone without a friend in the world, thinking that no one really cares if they live or die, some of whom will not be as lucky as I was. (They try to justify by saying “if you did it, anyone could, so you shouldn’t have any pity for those weaklings”, and then I let loose on them. I am no better than any of those kids who actually did commit suicide. I just happened to hit the right set of circumstances that enabled me to find a way out, and that does not make it “easy” for them nor does it make me “stronger” or “better”. Seriously, that smacks of a privileged Republican saying “I ‘built’ an empire, so anyone can, so all those ‘entitled’ poor people should just stop being so lazy and squalling for their right to live, they have no excuse to be poor so they don’t deserve help or even consideration’.(*)
Third, and this is the one I really punch to them: THAT COULD HAVE BEEN ME, YOU STUPID SELF-RIGHTEOUS FOOLS!!!! For about a year and a half there was a REAL possibility that you could have woken up in the morning to find your daughter had slit her wrists shortly after everyone went to bed! DOES THIS NOT BOTHER YOU? DO YOU NOT COMPREHEND THE SEVERITY OF THIS? DO YOU NOT APPRECIATE YOUR CLOSE CALL, THAT ABOUT TWENTY-ODD YEARS AGO YOU MIGHT HAVE BURIED YOUR DAUGHTER INSTEAD OF ATTENDING HER COLLEGE GRADUATION? THIS IS NOT ME BEING MELODRAMATIC OR HYSTERICAL OR EXAGGERATING FOR EFFECT! THIS IS WHAT REALLY COULD HAVE HAPPENED!!!
And doesn’t it bother them that other people are actually living through that nightmare today, because of the same kind of bullying? They were fortunate, but they might not have been so, and to dismiss these suicidal victims of bullying as “weak”, or marginalize the problem as something people need to “get over” is the epitome of privilege and blindness and self-righteousness.
They squirmed a lot when I got to that third point. I was glad. And the more I have punched these points home, the better they have gotten about the issues, the more they have chosen sympathy over judgment, and the “weakling” comments have become rare. I even defended my brother’s abominable wife about her HS cutting problem (that it’s not an indication of “weakness” or some kind of moral failing on either her part or her mother’s–if it is, what does that say about the mother whose daughter tried to kill herself?), even though I hate her, because fair is fair and mental illness/distress, cutting, and suicide are not to be trifled with or used as weapons for any reason, and I think that got to them how serious I consider these kinds of issues that I could defend someone I hate that much, that the seriousness of this issue is something that transcends my dislike of her, or even my own emotional problems. Progress!
(*)They both suffered hardships themselves as kids–my dad growing up malnourished under a Soviet occupation and my mom being abandoned by her own mother to live with an aunt who regarded her as a “duty” and made that clear–so they will often take the same route as TJ there, marginalizing someone’s pain either because “everyone suffers, get over it” or “mine was worse, so shut up”. I don’t think that theirs is caused by the same sociopathic ignorance and cruelty that TJ’s is motivated by though–just basic ignorance and assumptions that can bury reason and empathy in even the best of minds. There’s hope for them, even in old age, but not so much hope for TJ. Occasionally I have to speak bluntly and even cruelly to bring out the point to their liberal and empathetic sides. It’s an infuriating flaw in a couple of otherwise lovely and generous people.
That misanthrope is certainly not amazing, and his ego needs to be knocked down to size. Better to call him by his real name, Terroja Lee “TJ” Kincaid of Louisiana.
There have always been people who take pride in their own lack of empathy, but it seems like those individuals who revel in being utterly callous and heartless are multiplying at an alarming rate. The immediacy and scope of online interactions is certainly a contributing factor. Even the most loathsome commentary receives a certain amount of positive validation in some venues and we all know there are people who thrive on any type of attention, including the most harshly negative censure. I’m just baffled at how anybody can carry around that much hatred day after day without becoming emotionally exhausted. The constant vehemence and vitriol you see from someone like TAA cannot possibly fall under the definition of trolling. Not even by the disturbingly low standards of the misguided and wrongheaded MRA sympathizers. Although, I freely admit, I could be mistaken in that assumption. Maybe these individuals blurt out their hateful comments and shrug off the revulsion they generate or perhaps even take pride in being reviled. It would be easy to dismiss such a damaged psyche if they weren’t doing real damage to innocent people with their words and actions and the insensitivity they breed in others of similar mindsets.
Hi. I am in the UK and haven’t heard as much about this kind of story although I know it happens. As a teacher in a secondary school we make our students aware about online predatory behavior.
This really highlights a need for great internet policing and punishments for those found to be harassing and bullying. I know it is easier said than done but I feel very little is done to regulate this. Some websites are even set up with the intention of getting young people to bully each other (littlegossip and its like).
The Amazing Atheist is very unamazing. I feel sorry for him and am really disappointedat all the “likes” on his blog at his photo. I would leave him a post but don’t want to add to his ego. What a dick. Abandoning common sense must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
( Martin Niemöller )
We should never stop speaking out about suffering.
This makes me sad, but it’s far from shocking. The plight of women in the atheist movement is disgusting and unforgivable for supposed “freethinkers”. I have been active in the atheist community for many years, but only in the more recent few have I been attending conventions and the like. I have not personally had a bad experience, but I felt utterly creeped out by the sexual desperation at some of them, to the point that I won’t return. Is THIS how men behave at all conventions? I don’t know.
A+ is definitely needed, because it is quite clear that enough men see us as bed-warmers, and believe they have a right to have sex with SOME woman wherever they go- and will hurt you if you disagree. I have collected now several rape threats for arguing this point online, to the point of which I no longer think of my fellow atheist men as my allies- indeed too many are not. TJ? No ally of any woman, even the young and vulnerable.
Misogyny and rape threats are not funny, not acceptable, and NOT going to be a part of my life. I no longer speak out much for participation in atheist events, I would feel horrible if I brought a female in and she was hurt. This is a shame on the whole movement, no different that christianity- no different at all.
PZ, you are a true gentle man, and a gentleman. Thank you sincerely for what you do.
QFT
I really wonder why some people think their atheism has any value when it can carry no weight of morals or ethics or social responsibility or intellectual insight.
What good is it to anyone?
Allow me to make an observation – Atheism *isn’t enough*. Sure, there is no god. And just as believing in magic space pixies isn’t enough to make you good, neither is disbelieving in them. Facts don’t make ethics.
Here we are, pretty clever primates by historic standards, stuck on our Pale Blue Dot, and (as my Mars song says) entropy’s journey is only one way. It all comes to an end, and wherever we find pain and injustice, if we’re not trying or at least aspiring to fix that, we are betraying that altruistic element that has been the key to our survival, and even betraying that Dawkinsian rebellion against our selfish genes that wider altruism implies.
I guess that’s why I’m an Atheist in fact, but a humanist in practice. PZ, well said, sir.
Oh, we used to dream of having a ditch to die in!
I don’t know how many people you got to know ovr the internet first and then in meatspace later. It’s something that happened to myself many times and so far, people where the same online and offline. Are people quicker to say something stupid on the internet? Yes. But the reason that they don’t do it offline isn’t because they’re aware of negative consequences for themselves, not because they consider it wrong.
demonhype
I’m sorry this shit happened to you and I hope you can get the help and support you need.
+++
I was wondering how kids become so shitty that they would laugh at a girl who tried to commit suicide. Well, they probably had adults like TJ or Wooly Bumblebee in their lives who taught them all about bullying.
This is fucked up. Suffering is personal, it happens within individual brains – it is not ratified after interpersonal validation.
I consider myself a determinist, and and a cynic, and mostly painfully anhedonic. Still, sometimes, things move me, and I am conscious of and grateful for these occasions – so, thank you, PZ. Furthermore, my appreciation of A+ just reached a new level, considering how much irresponsible douchebaggery is on exhibit in the various links posted in the comments…
WE had to make do with a shoebox!
Tried to watch a bit. Almost managed but was overwhelmed by the lack of humanity. What a…. Can’t think of anything insulting enough.
I think the countermovement to A+ will turn out to be a Social Inactivism movement with the slogan “Pretend to think globally so you can do fuck-all locally”.
people’s behavior with one group rarely “precisely” reflects their behavior with another, regardless of medium. Nonetheless, idiotic myths about internet being some alternate, mind-altering dimension, my experience (which is very extensive, since virtually all my friendships and relationships have started online and then migrated from the internet into meatspace) is actually that the only notable difference is that meatspace-shy and meatspace-introverted people communicate more easily online. People simply do not come with two completely unrelated personalities, one for meatspace and one for the internet (and maybe a third one for when they’re drunk, another popular and dumb idea).
there’s a “notwithstanding” missing from my last comment.
The older I get the more it seems that empathy is what makes us human. The ability to understand how others feel joins us to them as fellow humans. Not even making the effort to consider how others feel and only thinking about how we ourselves feel is what drops us individually out of the human race. Self-awareness is only the first step . . .
The saying drunken words are sober thoughts comes to mind here. Anonymity can have a similar effect. Though there are those who say things without hiding behind pseudonyms, which is even worse. I suspect the presence of like-minded people only encourages him further [dare I state the obvious].
Indeed. I doubt that they care all that much about these other people in far-off lands who have much worse problems.
Speaking of which, that attitude annoys me to no end. To say that we should ignore local problems [I would say with relatively simple solutions, but I’m not entirely sure about that bit] in favour of tackling remote and complex problems, when the only time they refer to those problems in other countries is when they wish to trivialise local problems.
In vino veritas. We’ve known this shit forever, but we seem to keep having to re-learn it.
It’s pretty clear that those who don’t care about anyone other than themselves are more than likely going to be atheists (including those who pretend to be otherwise because it’s convenient to do so), so I imagine we have more than our fair share of sociopaths, misogynists, misanthropes, and the lot. Lots of stable cleaning to be done.
I doubt that’s true. Being religious gives someone who doesn’t care about people the perfect out for even slightly feeling guilty about being so misanthropic – god will take care of them, so you don’t have to, and anyway, people are fallen creatures so it’s natural to think they’re awful. And, of course, anyone who is suffering must be getting what they deserve.
I checked the original story – it says there are 41 comments, but comments have been disabled and I can’t get the ones there to be visible. I assume people were saying horrible things there, too, and that’s why it got shut down. What the hell is wrong with people?
@ AJ Milne #9: When I read this this morning:
I too immediately thought of “Dear Muslima.” It’s been a while, and yet I still cannot get over what a douche move that was. It’s a terrifying thought that so much of this is hiding in plain sight. Dawkins was one of my heroes for years; I had read nearly every one of his books (though I admit I was somewhat lost in The Extended Phenotype), and yet I never saw that coming. If I ever meet him I will moon him.
“TAA doesn’t have the strength of character it takes to exercise”, full stop.
I’m confused by this paragraph. I know we are dependent on nature, our biology, our ecosystem and all, but when it comes to our humanity, what more are we dependent on than our fellow human beings? The confusing bit is “some atheists…are convinced…that we are dependent entirely on our fellow human beings and nothing more…” Am I parsing this wrong, or is there a typo?
I think that what one might call one of the moral hazards for atheists would be a kind of nihilism, a sense that since there is no inherent meaning in nature, that there is no constraint on how selfish, hedonistic, or unconcerned about fellow humans one is. This would be the most extreme sociopathy, and is the straw man of religious critics of atheism.
Another moral hazard might be an extreme libertarian individualism, a sense that everyone is responsible only for themselves and nothing more. No obligation to community, no solidarity with other humans (outside family at a minimum).
Part of what gives our lives meaning is the extent to which, beyond seeing to our own survival and selfish needs, we contribute something with our energy and intelligence to better the lives of those around us, that we in some way contribute to a non-zero sum game that helps elevate the circumstances of our species in the future, that helps create the conditions for peace, prosperity, and contentment of all humans, or all species for that matter. This is the obligation we inherit along with our cultural and genetic inheritance. This is what it means to be human, to be a social being that needs others, but also needs to feel needed and important to others. This is the role we have inherited, and the role that our own happiness and the happiness of others depends on.
It seems that Amazing Atheist, rather than recognizing the interdependence of humans, is denying that. Am I confusing something here and misinterpreting the last paragraph, or is it written ambiguously? How do others see thus bit?
That’s what PZ said.
It’s very similar to the Dawkins reply to Rebecca Watson.
Just because there is something worse in the world doesn’t mean this particular bad thing shouldn’t be dealt with. There are a whole lot of us humans, the divide and conquer things actually works pretty well.
One quick citation. jose mentioned that there isn’t a correlation between money and happiness. There is, actually, but only to $75,000. They claim thats when most financial needs are met. i.e. You achieve most happiness when you don’t have to worry about money. (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html)
TAA sums up his position on the Amanda Todd suicide:
“Amanda Todd shouldn’t be sainted and raised up as an example of something admirable. That’s it. Anything you have inferred beyond that is the product of your fevered imagination looking for something to be offended by.
Saying someone isn’t worthy of the secular equivalent of sainthood is not even in the same ballpark as saying that they deserved to die.”
Unemotional? Yes. A distinct lack of empathy? Some could say so.
I can’t help but think that this whole situation is a perfect storm of poor parenting, societal ambivalence towards bullying, a touch of missing white woman syndrome, a Jerry Springer-worthy episode of misplaced blame, the criminal involvement of producing kiddie porn and blackmail wrapped up in adolescent sexuality and hormones.
We can learn a lot from this whole situation. Bullying is only one part of a whole network of hings that failed this girl.
TJ’s comment, while somewhat crude, does help point out that this girl had every advantage, and when the chips came down those advantages didn’t shield her from the consequences of her actions. I think he was merely pointing out that there are many, even in British Colombia (Look up Robert Pickton or the Highway of Tears) who do not even have that shield of being white, young, pretty and middle class.
Not proven, just asserted. Why wasn’t support available to end the bullying? TAA seems to think there was some. Show us the evidence that the bullying was actively being stopped.
You know… this brings into focus something that has been percolating in my brain for awhile. A little triggering stuff in the beginning.
I saw a video the other day of a bus driver assaulting a young woman on his bus. The commentary was “hey! you shouldn’t hit a woman!” which bothered me a lot. Then of course there were people who said the opposite, that we should have real equality and women should get punched in the face too. I thought maybe because that was a little bit sexist, but then the real issue came to me: HEY! YOU SHOULDN’T HIT ANYBODY!
Culturally, it seems like we’re really broken and backwards and going the wrong way. We look at public employees who have decent insurance and pensions, and instead of demanding that we get the same benefits we’re convinced that the answer is to take those benefits away from them. We see people without jobs and instead of thinking “that could be me, maybe we should have a safety net” we say “screw them, they must not want to work, let them starve. And when we see someone bullied, too many of us think about the times we were bullied and instead of standing together against bullying, we say “I took my lumps and lived, and if you can’t take it then fuck you.”
It is like we’re stripped of empathy for ourselves first, so of course there’s nothing left for anyone else. We’ve decided to forget about making things better for ourselves, so all that’s left is dragging down other people. Culturally, we know our place and we’re making sure everyone else knows their place too.
@ Nerd of Redhead
But she did have the advantages of being young, white, pretty, in a white culture that places a great deal of emphasis on young, whiteness, and beauty.
We can’t say that blacks and other minorities are disadvantaged because they are not young/white/pretty but turn around and say that YWP people are advantaged.
Correction:
We can’t say that blacks and other minorities are disadvantaged because they are not young/white/pretty but turn around and say that YWP people are NOT advantaged.
Irrelevant, and you know that. Where was the help when she needed it? That is utterly and totally relevant.
MutterC, the “dear muslima” apology is fucking bullshit, and you haven’t demonstrated it isn’t. You OPINION is not evidence.
Uh, who has declared Amanda Todd a saint, or said that she did something admirable?
She made a mistake when she was young, and she was tortured psychologically for it. That’s the reality. What the story highlights is the casual cruelty that so many people practice, and what TJ reveals is that there are people who regard bullies as negligible, and their victims as unimportant.
Have you noticed how people focus on “young and pretty” as reasons not to care about what happened to her? Being young and pretty does not make you disposable, or deserving of torment because of those advantages. I’ve also noticed that being the opposite — old and homely — doesn’t seem to make one immune to public abuse.
She did not have every advantage. She was psychologically fragile, prone to depression. Mental illness is real, as real as poverty, and just as much of a disadvantage.
And are you seriously trying to blame the victim here? She was harrassed for years by an internet stalker — a disgusting thug who is still free, still uncaught, still unnamed, and still FREE FROM THE FUCKING CONSEQUENCES OF HIS ACTIONS. You want to blame someone, blame the person who tried to extort a child into performing to satisfy his perversions.
Unless something has changed, going to an authority to stop bullying only made it worse in my experience. The only thing that ever helped was beating the fucking snot out of whoever was doing the bullying, and the authorities were only to happy to suspend me if it was ever reported. Needless to say, I don’t hold school administrators in too high regard.
The comments on Huffington Post (yes, that shithole) are pretty disgusting.
@ PZM
I am most certainly not blaming the victim. Her being bullied is a terrible thing. As a victim of bullying who came close to the edge, but not over, I can fully empathize.
The point I’m trying to make is that, while what TJ said we cruel, it contains a whole lot of truth about our society. About how we treat those who are YWP and those who are not, about how we deal with bullying, how youth can be ostracized to the point of depression and suicide, about how young adolescents can be backed into a corner after one mistake in their lives.
Most importantly, it shows how our society clearly and obviously values the lives of some over others. How North America is a fickle and cruel bitch who will use up and toss away people, even those born into the best of circumstances. TJ merely brought race, class, and creed into the conversation. Not as eloquently as I would have, but digging a little bit into the situation behind the tragedy never hurts.
Bullying is not the only issue here. My previous posts comment on how adolescent sexuality, poor parenting, unsupervised internet usage, and rash youthful behaviors all have a part to play in this. To deny that is to be disingenuous.
mutterc, she didn’t have the advantage of not being stalked and bullied to the point of suicide, asshole.
Has anyone heard of Corey Harststone? He is one of many trolls, I’m certain, but he’s been posting the photographs and death/rape threats to the girls friends and supporters since yesterday afternoon. I know he’s been reported but FB hasn’t even removed the DEAD-CHILD PORN from the site. He’s not the only one by a wide margin.
Wtf is wrong with people? Still hounding a dead girl.
*Hartstone
mutterc:
And therefore… what?
Really, I’m asking – she had societal advantages and therefore, we should conclude… what?
Or is it – she had societal advantages and therefore, she should have… what?
Your thought seems unfinished here, please complete the point you are trying to make.
@Jafafa
Didn’t ever say that she did. Nor did I imply it.
I don’t think you guys understand. I feel deeply for this girl and her family. Their situation is a heartbreaking one. But I’m not going to be so superficial as to lay the entirety of it at the feet of bullying and call it a day.
The school, Canada’s culture regarding the mental health of young people, our throwaway attitude regarding race and class, our permissive views of the internet and our inability and flat out refusal to understand just how fucking deep the rabbit hole goes in a unbalanced teenager’s head all have a role in this.
mutterc,
You are not blaming the victim?
You wrote that
Consequences of her actions.
Is being bullied to the point of suicide a natural consequence of unthinkingly sending someone a topless photo?
Are you one of those malicious little weasels that secretly rejoices when a rich or famous person commits suicide because “money didn’t help them now har har”? Like now “being young and white and pretty didn’t help her”. Are you enjoying that in your withered little excuse of a hart? Because that is the only reason I can imagine for you to go and say somethign so callous.
@ Anri
I was talking about white privileged in Canada and how we like to rest on our laurels when we take a stand with a young, white, pretty face as a poster child, yet completely ignore the situation when the victim is doesn’t fit the mold.
Canada is terrible for that, especially with our treatment of the Aboriginal population.
Sorry, but I do not believe you.
If you think TJ gives even the tiniest shit for those who are not white, young, pretty, and middle class, you are fooling yourself. He cares about exactly one person on the planet.
@ Beatrice
I am most certainly not one of those people Beatrice. I take no relish in the death of another human being.
The point I’m making is that, for all her advantages, one small mistake managed to end the life of a young lady. A tragedy stemming from a poor choice. The circumstances that developed from that small mistake say a lot about Canada’s society, both how people reacted to her (bullying) and how the media responded.
I find it fascinating that when people decide these “truths” need to be made apparent and some genuine victim is held up as an example for all of us to learn from, the victim is usually a woman and/or minority. How can anyone listen to Rebecca Watson, when women in the Middle East are oppressed? How can anyone sympathize with Laci Green receiving death threats and pictures of her home, when people of color also receive death threats? How can anyone weep in empathy over Amanda Todd being driven to death, when there are other people in the world who are also bullied? And those LGBT youth who commit suicide because of bullying? Pfft, it’s not like they’re the only people in the world suffering.
Strangely, when a straight white cis male is victimized, instead of that being used as an “example” of “truths about our society” and how he had “every advantage”, I’m more likely to hear those exact same people suddenly pipe up about how straight white cis males are the true downtrodden.
@ Matt Penfold
Good for you. That does not change the fact that if I could change the situation, I would. She would not be dead and her tormentors would be suffering the consequences of their actions.
Just because I can see past the looking glass and understand how North American society reacts to a particular situation doesn’t make me callous.
The only truth he demonstrated is that he’s poison. It is true that most tragedies occur in silence, but that wasn’t the point he was making. He was merely exploiting those other tragedies as a tool for hammering down that uppity dead bitch.
I still don’t believe you. You do not act like someone who cares.
I agree that if she had been black, this story would not have drawn the attention it has, and that is deplorable. But the fact that racism is endemic in our culture should not be used to diminish the death of a person because she is not black, either.
How about if we focus on the tragedy of an abused human being, who was not trying to be a proxy for her race?
And how about if we try to pay attention to the abuses against people of all races, and all sexes, and all states of beauty?
No, what you have said here makes you callous. You really should pay attention to what you have said. I will remind you:
Care to explain how you can escape being considered callous when you say crap like that ?
mutterc,
I was taking a stand against people considering one person a hero while ignoring others in the same situation just the other day. (With Malala and everyone ignoring the other two girls who were shot in the same attack)
I mention that because I’m not completely unsympathetic to the idea that we sometimes put people on the pedestal and safely ignore those we deem not as important.
That is not what is going on here.
This time the story is of a girl who was psychologically tortured, assaulted and pushed into a suicide. ENcouraged into a suicide.
I think everyone here realizes that stories of minorities and other disadvantaged individuals are often pushed behind the carpet. Most often by the media, so that the rest of us don’t even know about them,
What you are doing here isn’t standing up for the disadvantaged, it sounds much more like relishing the fall of someone you consider having advantages which in the end didn’t help her.
Maybe, maybe your intentions are good, but the way you are going about it makes you look like a heartless bastard and sorry excuse of a human being.
And you are blaming the victim. And you are blaming her parents. YOu are actually blaming those much more than you are blaming the real villains: those little shitheads that pushed this girl into suicide. Those little monsters who sent her messages after her last attempt with wishes that she had died.
Bullshit.
Comment 64. You said she “had every advantage” as part of your derision of her.
She did not have the advantage of not being driven to suicide.
You also mention “responsibility for her actions.”
As I understand it, her actions were to post an image of herself online.
So what are you telling me… she had to expect it, dressed like she was?
She should have known better than to be seen in public like that?
What did she expect would happen?
Is that the gist of it? Is that the kind of point you were trying to make?
Nope, not at all. And you are apologizing and ‘splain’ about a piece of fuckwittery that shouldn’t be defended, only condemned. There is nothing in TAAs idiocy that is cogent or relevant other than to his ego.
Nope, you only claim you can. Unevidenced assertion *POOF* dismissed as fuckwittery. Still nothing cogent said in the defense of the indefensible.
The claim that Amanda Todd had every advantage is just a lie. She was mentally ill. Would we say a girl her age who died of leukaemia had every advantage ? If no, why say it when the disease is severe depression ?
I don’t recall anyone but bigots objecting to Matthew Shepard becoming a symbol of the gay rights movement, an example of the hatred directed toward gay people and the literal physical danger people face if they’re out, or even just suspected to be gay.
He had attributes that afforded him social privileges, too.
He’s still just as dead.
From what I recall they did help her by moving her to a different school but the guy still found her. Its more help than a lot of other kids would have gotten from parents. She may have felt judged by her parents or other adults or couldn’t really talk with them for a variety of other reasons. The society we live in would not hesitate to label her a slut for all eternity.
mutterc, please stop blaming the victim.
Then why didn’t he say that, clearly and concisely, instead?
And we even have victim blaming (the bolded parts). Thank you, mutterc.
And more victim blaming.
A tragedy stemming from her choice? So the stalker who victimized her had nothing to do with it, it is all her fault?
But aren’t you telling us that our reaction is wrong? That we are, through our limited intelligence, missing the Truth?
wtf seriously?! I’ve heard of so many people having their mastectomy scar photos and breastfeeding photos removed by FB quickly, but they won’t fix that? arg!
mutterc obviously considers himself a Vulcan who can see all the facts without being hindered by all these pesky emotions the rest of us have.
To bad he doesn’t reason all that well, or has any of the intelligence.
skeptifem: More proof that FB is evil, I suppose.
@skeptifim
It looks like they tame the pic down when it crops up, but not the people posting it so they just put it right back up. I would think that a criminal offense like that would get you removed altogether.
Part of the problem is sheer numbers. He’s not the only one posting the pics, although he has made comments that allude to him being the one who started all of it. Of course he could be trolling for attention.
mutterc #80
It wasn’t until people started pointing out your victim blaming that you started saying how much you “feel deeply” about Amanda’s death. Before then, you were saying
She was stalked from school to school, bullied on the internet and in meatspace, driven to depression so severe that she committed suicide. So who do you blame? The victim and British Colombian society. How about blaming the bullies?
FFS she was not unballanced. She was stalked by what prior to the internet age would only exist as a lovecraftian monster. It was unknown, unstopable, always found her and had the power to make people around her turn on her like screeching pod people. If you removed the bloody internet its a thing from a horror story…and there’s no reason she was its chosen victim, it could have been many people, and honestly probably will be. She encountered a juggernaut of abuse and she killed herself because there was no other way to escape.
Rodney Nelson,
Well, the society should be blamed for the consistent dismissal of bullying as normal children’s behavior instead of recognizing it as harassment, assault, psychological torture, sexual predation or whatever else it actually is in any particular case.
Not to dismiss the guilt of bullies themselves, of course.
@rabdtreeweasel
I seriously doubt the duagnosis that people troll for attention. Its more like vandalism or hunting than a temper tantrum
I’m having one hell of a hard time figuring out how people can tell women how to go about not getting raped and how to behave to minimize danger, and yet not understand how this has caused a huge segment of us to default to being cautious and uncomfortable in situations with men.
How can we be expected to do both? I’d like to ask those who are of this mentality…
I know, I know… Damned if we do (take precautions and see each and every man as a potential rapist and dress conservatively and not attend parties and not drink, and get raped anyway) and damned if we don’t (fail to default to being wary around men without knowing the man in question, wear revealing clothing, go out at night, drink, and get raped.)
Do I go on, after having been raped by someone I’d previously trusted and even been intimate with, acting like every man is just a good guy and not fear them for fear I might offend them with my discomfort? Or do I go on and only judge after a good long trial run, thereby offending all men I meet?
How can someone not see this glaring reality?
Um, wrong thread…. sorry!
@ing: Agreed. I wasn’t referring to the fact that he was trolling but to his tacit claim that he was the one who took the pictures in the first place. If it’s not true, then I can see no other reason for making that claim other than being an attention seeker. He could just as easily make those claims in meat space as in cyber space. The fact that he is doing so while trolling is a whole other can of worms.
I can’t help but wonder about all the people who say they want to point out that others have it worse, that if Todd were black this would have gone unnoticed, etc. Wouldn’t they be better off spending their time bringing the worse injustices they say they’re concerned about to light rather than worrying about whether Todd gets too much attention? For example, which is more effective in bringing abuses in Islamic society to light: Dawkins’ “dear muslima” letter or Nasreen’s detailed documentation of specific abuses that have occurred? One can’t help but feel that Nasreen has more real concern about Islamic women than Dawkins. And she does it without losing compassion for the “spoiled” women-and men-of the “western” world.
Yes, apparently she had it so good it literally killed her.
Consequences of her actions?
Consequences of her. fucking. actions?
She flashed on a webchat once.
Being haunted, followed from school to school by an obsessive creep are not consequences of her actions. They are consequences of somebody deciding to be a misogynist criminal.
Being beaten up isn’t a consequence of making out with a boy. It’s a consequence of those girls beating up the evil bitch instead of taking it to the boy who betrayed her.
Consequences of her actions my fuck.
Take your godsdamn victim-blaming to TJ, he’ll like it.
Bullshit. TJ gives fuck all about anybody else.
You know what?
The girl is dead. A 15 year old kid. Anybody arguing how good she had it is just an asshole.
Obviously not.
No, not as long as you from your comfortable armchair can go on tormenting her parents and the people who loved her a bit.
You hide that really well.
Caerie
QFFT
Somehow, suddenly, when we’Re talking about the horrible fate of a young girl people come and tell us to Stop it! Discuss more important things! Of people who have it worse! Blacks! Privilege!
Yes, mutterc, you MOST CERTAINLY ARE.
You are callous for entirely different reasons.
For what it’s worth, the RCMP have devoted about twenty full-time investigators to the Amanda Todd case. Tips are coming in. Hopefully some of these will turn into useful leads. You know, I still feel my heart get heavy when I see a photo of Amanda. :-(
I’ve been hugging my kids pretty constantly lately. They’re very young, so it’ll be some years before they enter what seems to be a “danger age” for bullying, but I admit I’m anxious when I think about it. My spouse and I will be watching their Internet usage like hawks watching a field.
By the way, it’s British Columbia.
And while it may well be true that if she had not been young, pretty and white, her video would not have garnished as much attention.
However, victim-blaming, callous jerks like mutterc and TAA pretending to be “reasonable” seem to have forgotten one salient fact (reasonable people aren’t supposed to ignore facts).
All this attention only came after she had killed herself. Sadly, the attention probably wouldn’t have been given if she hadn’t.
And that means that the attention does her no good at all. In this situation, being young, white, and pretty gave her, personally, ZERO advantage, ZERO privilege. Maybe it privileged her in other aspects of her life, but not in this one.
If she had not been young, white, and pretty, the bullying situation would have not been different. And that means that in this aspect she was NOT PRIVILEGED.
Maybe it will privilege her parents, who might derive some small comfort from the attention she is receiving now, but it does not privilege her.
For her, it is too late for privilege.
Neither mutterc nor TAA understand what privilege actually means, and have no business pontificating about it.
Beatrice #106
You’re right. North American society does little to support and protect the victims of bullying. Some religious fanatics object to anti-bullying measures because they want to bully GBLTs, especially GBLT children, because that’s what God wants. So it is reasonable for mutterc to point fingers at society.
My complaint about mutterc was how xe was not blaming the bullies for their bullying.
Someone who truly sincerely does, DOES NOT MAKE the kind of comments you have been making.
So no, you do NOT feel “deeply” for these victims. You are either outright lying to save face or you are someone who does not understand what it means to “feel deeply” about anything, and has never actually experienced what it is like to do so in your entire life.
In which case, I pity you.
Point of order: she was webchatting with friends, and this predator (posing as a friend, likely as a fellow student) flattered and cajoled her and pestered her into flashing the webcam. And, he was ready and waiting to take screenshots for blackmail when she finally gave in.
She didn’t simply decide it’d be fun to flash on webcam. She was tricked.
@Amphiox
Point of order: predators of all stripes tend to learn how to be very good at pretending to care deeply. Its noted child molesters do this not just to groom victims but to condition authorities when inevitable accusations come.
silomowbray #114
Not according to my spell checker.
It’s certainly more common than I would have thought. Might encouraging people to kill themselves be a way to feel the powerful high of being a murderer at a minimum risk?
There were at least two people whose deaths Melchert-Dinkel encouraged, and then Carr is reported to have encouraged one woman into an attempt with the possibility of more being investigated
And here’s another:
And then there was Dr. Kevorkian — he claimed 130
Rodney @ 120
Very strange. Can you update it with the correct spelling?
I originally spelled British Columbia with a u but the spell checker said that was wrong and should be Colombia. I’ve just googled Colombia and that’s how the South American country is spelled.
Pteryxx
Absolutely.
This person was out to ruin her from the beginning. Still it wouldn’t be any different if she had just done it for fun and the bastard had just sized the oportunity.
It was a small thing.
This kind of thing is devastating. One of my close friends’ son committed suicide with a handgun after an argument with his girlfriend. That kid grew up with us. I’m still in shock and it’s been two years. My friend has been drunk ever since but he carries on. Luckily he has one of those cushy college professor jobs.
And some folks are upset that “Atheism Plus” changes the meaning of the word “atheism” detrimentally.
I’m starting to think that “Amazing Atheist” does the same thing for “atheist.” I wish he’d picked some other aspect of his worldview to make “amazing.”
Yeah, but the “Amazing Asshole” would appeal to a very different demographic.
And he’d likely face stiffer competition in that niche.
Plus, Goatse already exists.
>_>
+1
Pteryxx:
Point of order yourself: Even if she had decided to flash on webcam for fun, that doesn’t count as consent for the screenshots or justification for the blackmail. A person can be an enthusiastic participant in one thing, and that doesn’t erase their rights when it comes to other things. Someone doesn’t have to be perfectly “innocent” to be called a victim or to be worthy of compassion and respect.
The amount of torment she suffered due to the fact of having been a fallible human being reminds me of something.
Hmmm…something about unending punishment being inflicted by a supposedly “superior being” for minuscule transgressions that in no way harm the “being.” It’s on the tip of my keyboard…
There are really only two types of privilege that really matter in this case. The privilege not to be targeted and tricked by predators online, and the privilege not to have a single instance of a spur of the moment display of indiscretion result in vilification, ostracization, and psychological abuse.
Amanda didn’t have either of these privileges.
You’re correct and I agree. I should have clarified my point: those folks eager to say “kids don’t know any better to trust strangers on the internet” are factually wrong and eliding the existence of skilled adult predators who actively work to appear as friends. I think that erases the blame FROM the predator.
Well, she was 13 at the time, so she wasn’t capable of being an “enthusiastic participant” in the sense of giving consent. That’s not to say that if she were a consenting adult who did the same thing and therefore wasn’t “perfectly innocent,”* it would’ve made any relevant difference. Nothing whatsoever would justify what she experienced. But I think we should still try to avoid using a narrative which puts an adult in her place.
*As if flashing people is somehow a bad thing, making her (if she were an adult) guilty of something. I don’t which sort of puritanical asshole’s standards we’re supposed to be referring to here, but it probably doesn’t matter. There are so many levels of fucked up in our society, as this whole story makes abundantly clear, that it’s hard to keep them all straight.
hmm…. I lost a word somehow, in that convoluted mess of a comment I just made.
Also, I need a fucking drink.
Remember 2 years ago when TJ was humiliated and bullied by people spreading pics from what he thought was a private webchat that involved a banana? I think he’s jealous that someone is getting sympathy than he did.
Well: simple: you have to be confortable and laid back with everyone, and the day a man cross the boundaries of what’s acceptable
Simple, huh?
Pteryxx & consciousness razor:
My point is that in the same way we need to not treat children like adults in conversation to avoid falling into certain traps, there’s also the trap of painting someone as “worthy” based on certain factors without which someone could claim they are “unworthy.”
It is similar to how in the abortion debate, people focus on “health of the woman” and other categories of “acceptable” abortion which means by default that there are other “unacceptable” abortions that we can safely ban.
Does that make sense? Maybe I need a fucking drink too.
laurentweppe #138
That’s it!!!
The solution was there all the time.
@nerd of redhead
“It seems that Amazing Atheist, rather than recognizing the interdependence of humans, is denying that.
That’s what PZ said.”
This is what I would expect PZ to mean, but I can’t see how to read that last paragraph to get this meaning. It appears to say that those who think we depend on fellow human beings and nothing else are those who lack humanity. I can’t see another way to read it as typed, so there must be something missing.
Here us a rewrite that is consistent with what I expect it is trying to say:
All you have to do is look at people like the Amazing Atheist to see that some atheists, people who are convinced that there is nothing beyond themselves, who can’t see that we are dependent entirely on our fellow human beings and nothing more, lack that humanity that is our only source of unity and our only true reason for living.
This way makes sense to me, but as written in the post it says something opposite. So either I’m entirely confused about the intended meaning, or else it wasn’t clearly phrased to begin with.
If it really says what it was intended to mean, then the question becomes: what are we dependent on, other than our fellow human beings?
Jeffrey G Johnson,
I think you misread the meaning, but I see how the language isn’t crystal clear. Either the Peez was saying what you think he meant based on your rewrite, or it makes no sense… so I think it is safe to assume that your rewrite carries the intended meaning.
pneumo #59:
TAA demonstrates yet again that he is a sad excuse for a human being and the only thing you have to contribute is a derisive remark on his physical health (playing right into the tired old myth that fat == unhealthy == lazy == weak of character)?
There’s an actual moral failing to remark upon here and (spoilers!) it’s not his weight or his fitness.
Try harder next time or, at the very least, keep your bigotry to yourself.
I don’t have a problem getting there.
Who gives a shit about your rewrite?
Some folks don’t think humans with lady parts are fully human.
I think it does. Have a fucking drink anyway. ;)
———
Hmm, it is a little unclear. Two or three sentences would probably have been better than one. Maybe try reading it this way:
The part in bold is describing what atheists ought to be or how they would tend to characterize themselves despite doing shit which tells a completely different story, not that atheists like the
AmazingAppalling Atheist is really like that by taking the idea and actually applying it to his life (at least in this case). The final phrase is supposed to contradict the ones before it, and it’s supposed to be the one telling the actual story here — the stuff in the middle is only there to set up that juxtaposition between what they say and what they do.Is, are: they be the same word.
*drink*
Ayn Rand was this kind of atheist.
My son recently lost one of his friends to suicide. It was a complete disaster for the entire community. Trolls like this jerk who never knew the victim leave nasty comments on the memorial page to further injure the survivors.
@PZ Myers
I must ask this: Do you actually believe what you write or are you just a shameless opportunist ?
Even a mole couldn’t be so blind not to see that there was something special going on that caused the widespread, inapprehensibly harsh reactions to a young girl’s death, something which is generally met with empathy, usually even by those who otherwise can’t bring themselves to give a sh*t about what happens online. I don’t really feel like descrambling this incident for you, something tells me you wouldn’t care.
Out of curiosity – Did you really think you’d get away with using the girl’s death to your own advantage, declaring a “rift in the movement”, positioning yourself on one side and pushing all of your opponents on the side where the evil and inhumane TAA, one of your dearest enemies, resides?
I know they call you “Sleazy Myers” for a reason but even you couldn’t have believed that such a nasty slide of hand would go unnoticed or that anyone would fall for this kind of amoral blackmail …
Or did you?
@The Mellow Monkey: Caerie #86
I believe you’re wrong about this. It doesn’t seem to matter how many privileged groups a person belongs to when they commit suicide. Suicide is strongly associated in western culture as running away and cowardice (and increasingly, homosexuality), not mental illness. So regardless of if the victim is a DnD nerd or captain of the football team, they’re not going to get sympathy from the kinds of people who do this victim blaming. The word “coward” is so intertwined with suicide that people constantly describe the 9/11 suicide bombers as cowards (while I don’t think they count as brave, they would not have been cowards).
For example, there was a story not too long ago about a woman teacher who was sleeping with a minor male student. After law enforcement got involved, and the teacher was ordered to stay away from the boy, which prompted the boy to make suicide threats. You’d be surprised how many bloggers, commenters, etc had no sympathy for the boy, and went on and on about how he was “lucky” (usually after commenting that the teacher was “hot”) and that threatening to commit suicide over this was cowardly.
Don’t get me wrong, though. When the victim wins the privilege lottery, that does mean you’ll get more expressions of sympathy in general and have people more willing to change things to prevent future suicides. It just doesn’t eliminate the anti-suicide victim blaming assholes.
Yawn, I see a probable banned idjit trolled is still morphing…how many suckpuppets in its shriveled holster???
Of course, when “straight white cis males” are reported as having committed suicide, the first thing people do is speculate that they were gay, which handily removes some of the protection privilege would’ve provided. I mentioned that case above simply because the story had some elements that would discourage that particular charge, so it truly was a “straight white cis male”.
This girl did nothing wrong. Certainly nothing worthy of the response she got. It’s like a human can’t be a sexual being in this world without being exploited, targeted, victimized, beaten and harassed or something!
…which is kinda weird, considering we’re designed to BE sexual beings in the first place… hmm.
I dunno. Does that strike anybody else here as, you know, strange?
/sarcasm
Okay, seriously again, she did nothing wrong. She did nothing to deserve this. I read some of the youtube comments… big mistake, right? They are all blaming her, calling her names, talking about her sex life and her victimization as though that means it “serves her right”, or that it becomes her fault.
How can these people exist? How can these people with so little empathy spit on the grave of a poor child who was tormented so much already? What is wrong with the human race that so many people can do this, endlessly?
The Amazing Atheist is a piece of shit, and he’s as bad as the bullies who killed this girl. Worse, because he’s an adult. His arguments are terrible for all the reasons other people have already given.
How about you tell us what fucking special thing was going on? What the fuck are you talking about?
Says the person, online. It’s also kind of funny that you won’t just write the word “shit.”
So you’re not going to explain what the fuck you’re talking about? What the fuck is scrambled about it, that you’re not doing yourself?
It’s “sleight of hand,” dipshit.
Anyway, take away all the bullshit rhetoric: have you said anything? I don’t see a fucking thing.
OH, and tiberiusbeauregard, be sure to link every accusation you make to valid source. Otherwise, what is asserted without evidence, and that is everything you say, *POOF* can be dismissed without evidence as fuckwittery and slander.
tiberiousbeauregard:
What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you evil, or just a piece of pathology?
Your lack of detail on those “special” circumstances makes us suspect you have none to offer. And if anyone is using this story for his/her own selfish purposes, your use of it to slam PZ would be a fairly egregious example.
Take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. Take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooon.
@consciousnessrazor, @improbablejoe
Thanks for clarifying.
I was reading the word ‘people’ in the second clause, and implicit in the third clause, as referring to “some atheists, people like Amazing Atheist”, as opposed to what PZ must have intended it to mean, “atheists in general”. The linkage between the clauses really is ambiguous. Thanks again.
Thus trumpeted tiberiusbeauregard;
Out of curiosity, do you think that PZ tricked the Amazing Asshole to put up that post? Did PZ make TAA take the position that he did?
This rift was around long before the news of Amanda Todd was around. No lines will be drawn because of this, the line already existed. PZ did not have to push TAA anywhere, TAA willingly went there.
TAA already was known for being an asshole. This was just a very big mark on the ledger.
So, what was the point of your turd? Do you hate PZ so much that you cannot stand that PZ is showing an empathy that is beyond TAA to show?
All your howitzer whine has shown is that you are willing to twist facts in order to show off your hatred.
You are a sad sack of shit, tiberiusbeauregard.
I don’t know if tiberiusbeauregard is a single person or a series of slymepitters using the key phrase “sleazy myers” while making a sole post on a thread. They all make unevidenced accusations, which can and will be dismissed, show attitude, and say nothing cogent, which makes me, and I’m sure most of the regulars, extremely skeptical of everything they say. I pity him/them if that is all they can do in life.
Noone said that. I just found it suspicious that so few people (if any, TAA included) actually understood why they were attacking her.
I freely admit that it took me quite a while to understand what the girl had done to unsettle so many peoples’ minds in a way they would react in such ghastly ways.
Oh that’s a safe bet. You just haven’t realised yet that this blog’s dungeon is the center of the problem and slowly sinking into the grave it dug for itself.
I’m just waiving goodbye, Baby.
Actually, I’d really like to hear that explanation. What “something special” makes Amanda Todd’s death one that we should respond to with callous contempt?
This has got to be a doozy of an excuse.
Still waiting.
We are waiting for real evidence tiberiusbeauregard that will pass skeptical scrutiny, which everything you say deserves….
Come, on, put up or shut the fuck up if have honesty and integrity. Failure to put up or shut the fuck up shows you to be a liar, bullshitter, and troll.
There is never any reason for harsh reactions to a child’s suicide. Never. The only explanation is abject lack of humanity on the part of the people who have those reactions.
Gee, still no response from tiberiusbeauregard. Like it’s acknowledging tacitly it has nothing but bullshit OPINION for evidence….
PZ, don’t you understand? She showed her titties on a webcam! This is about consequences for actions… and in this case, the consequence is death.
…I wish I was making this up, but I actually spoke to a person today who said this about the young lady in question. Who actually said that because she used a webcam, she deserved the consequences of her TERRIBLE HORRIBLE action.
Basically, it’s slut-shaming and witch-hunting and all the evils in the world rolled into a singularity of cruelty and callousness.
Take longer.
Because you still don’t understand anything.
MRA paranoid fuckwittery in other words. Nothing cogent. Just scared of reality, that they might not be superior to those with lady parts, hence must try to negate reality.
Oh OK, I was going to bed but if you’re waiting, give me some time to write… I’ll submit it and look for replies tomorrow (1:43AM here)
The treatment this youngster and other girls is getting is our society’s version of how the Taliban treats girls. If they could take girls to the town square and shoot them in the head I bet they would jump at the chance. She was a child and the victim of a crime. I can only hope her tormentors and her original assailant are prosecuted. I won’t hold my breath.
Writing in irrelevant to the linked evidence. But then, if you are even semi-intelligent, you know that. I suspect nothing of significance given any amount of time, otherwise you would have already linked to it….
tiberius is a bit constipated. We have to be patient and await the turd he is plopping on the rug.
Tiberious, you’ve taken the time to leave three comments here without even giving us a hint as to your “special” circumstances. What gives?
Really, I’ve always considered it a terribly low blow to toss out vague insinuations that someone has some dark secret or has committed some horrible act of depravity without offering anything like specifics. To do so while targeting a deceased, defenseless teenager is mind-blowing.
You’re a bottom feeder.
And the fact that people were attacking, both during her life and after her death needs to be understood by the people doing the attacking?
What the fuck?
They do not need to understand, it just needed to be brought to an end.
It matters not what Amanda Todd did. What matters is why her attacker felt that she had to be punished for it. Start with them. Not Amanda Todd. Not PZ for condemning the actions of one jackass.
The Dungeon of this blog has jackshit to do with the actions of anyone harassing and attacking Amanda Todd.
I would advise that you do not come back to answer for a thing. You have already shown that you are an uncaring asshole who will point at a tragedy to defend the actions of other assholes. Anything you say will just make it more clear that you are defending the indefensible.
Now go back to the Slyme Pit or what ever hole you crawled out of and shout about how you stood up to one of the worst people online. You are useless for anything else.
Seconded. Do tell.
As interesting as the derailers are … Meanwhile, in another part of cyber space, the bullies continue to hound a dead girl.
http://www.facebook.com/corey.hartstone
But yeah, let’s focus on PZs motives when he pointed out that TAE, like this Hartstone kid, are serious A-holes deserving of derision. That’s clearly more important than the fact that people within the atheist movement are taking part in beating the memory of dead person.
About 2.5 hours after PZ demanded evidence, not OPINION. I suspect nothing is forthcoming, as the fuckwit is nothing but an evidenceless MRA troll. Waiting to see EVIDENCE otherwise. *snort*
Over two hours earlier you claimed that you already knew precisely what to write, but you just couldn’t be bothered to.
To claim “not enough time” now is just pathetic.
You are pitiful.
My bet: the troll either won’t return, or will return only to spew more insults to those present and make vague insinuations about the dead girl. It’s not interested in clarity, it wants to keep people wondering and speculating nasty things about her.
No evidence, hyperskepticism says it is a liar and bullshitter that should be ignored. MRA’s hate to have their word ignored as bullshit without evidence. And they never, ever, have evidence, as their OPINION isn’t evidence…Must be a character flaw…
Lucky me. I wasn’t so stupid to submit my writing without using the magical F5 button first. And I’m sorry – 5k chars have just been flushed down the toilet.
You people are -without any exaggeration- unworthy of anything anyone might consider giving you.
*Unsubbed*
100% pure, unadulterated lie.
Wow… can we PLEASE hope that Tiberius the sociopathic troll will stick the flounce?
How much more stupid and disgusting could you be? None more. The answer is none more stupid and disgusting.
What ended her life had absolutely nothing to do with a mistake. What ended her life was consistent, calculated, deliberate harassment and torment. There was no mistake about that. It was on purpose.
You victim blaming scum.
Ah, nothing but OPINION of a confirmed abject loser troll. Not surpised. Your OPINION is dismissed before you give it. Lead with a link to real evidence or shut the fuck up….
tiberiusbeauregard @180 and elsewhere
You really are a cowardly piece of shit.
Hah! Dog ate your homework. Lovely excuse.
@klatu #143
klatu, I read that as a play on words – “strength of character” and “exercise”, meaning that TAA lacks the strength of character to even exercise empathy with anyone. I didn’t read it as an attack on his physical condition, although of course that’s what it may be. I’m simply pointing out an alternative meaning.
…
And for any of those lying trolls who “unfortunately” deletes 5,000 characters worth of explanation as to why we should NOT feel any sense of loss about the tragic suicide of this young girl, I’m going to use a nostalgic phrase back from my believin’ days:
You all can go to hell.
So what’s the running count now, three, four, five?
How many more variants will we see of “I’m too much of an intellectual coward to actually answer the question” barfed up by the pathetic troll?
Stay tuned!
tiberiusbeauregard
Next time, compose your brilliant™ response in a word processor and copy-paste it here.
Be sure to Save frequently.
That will thwart that evil dog.
You know…
I just don’t get it. There’s a dead human being here, and there are people who want to score points against her corpse? I can’t even comprehend the lack of basic human decency behind these people. Can’t drop their petty grievances, can’t get past their own personal bullshit, can’t allow a single gram of empathy to seep through. How can these people exist?
I want to be able to hurt the people who hurt this girl so badly that she killed herself. How can anyone live with themselves that they act like they wish she were still alive so they can hurt her some more, and they’ll satisfy themselves with hurting the people who care about her?
“I am a pathetic, useless, unredeemable piece of scum” would have said the same thing in just 52.
Brevity is the soul of wit. Of course the pitiful troll doesn’t actually have any.
Against her grieving family is what it actually boils down to.
Amphiox,
I don’t think these cretins can see that far. I think they are so broken and limited that all they actually see is a corpse, which is a victim who can’t fight back… and that’s the perfect target to them.
mythbri,
I am with klatu.
looks like fat shaming to me. Very common thing for children to be bullied with.
pneumo #59 is being an arse.
testing testing testing pressing F5 now
huh…MY comment remained in the box even after a reload.
Intersting
No, no, no, you guys aren’t getting it. The troll didn’t lose the explanation by accident. It refreshed before posting to check if our anticipation was obsequious enough, saw all the aspersions cast its way, then deleted the whole thing on purpose.
(Or it never wrote a thing knowing it would be provided with some excuse to call us unworthy.)
I think people like TAA or tiberiusbeauregard are trying to score points against using her corpse.
Ing
When I do a refresh in Firefox the contents of the comment box are still there.
IE not so much.
I still say beau should compose in Word (or something confusingly similar).
Or a simple select-all/copy (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C) every minute or so. Using a computer for any significant amount of time tends to ingrain that habit quite quickly.
So all we’ve had from Tiberiusbeauregard so far is:
(1) An insinuation that the dead girl deserved the bullying but no explanation or argument as to why.
(2) Sideswipes at PZ and Pharyngulites. Apparently we are all mole-blind to the obviousness of why Amanda deserved her lot, and so deserve his tongue-lashing.
(3) A promise to tell us his argument.
(4) A dog-ate-my-homework excuse when it doesn’t appear.
(5) A flounce, which may or may not stick.
You know, I won’t dehumanise Tiberiusbeauregard, because he deserves more consideration than he gives this teenager. But I really don’t want anything to do with this person. He might not personally have bullied this girl, but he shows every sign of being one of the bullies’ tribe.
I really do hope he sticks the flounce and stays away.
Dammit. He was going to tell us the secret truth and you all scared him away!
Couldn’t you see he was the most important person in the whole discussion?!
Pah.
Yeah, I too have read the troll’s comment as “I won’t tell you because you don’t deserve it” rather than “The dog ate my homework”. Since nothing was said about the troll between #168 and #180 that was harsher than what was said between #159 and #168, my conclusion is that the troll never had anything substantive to disclose in the first place, and simply came over to make shit-stirring insinuations and then bolt when asked for details.
Good riddance.
jeez, people
beau isn’t flounced
xe’s gone to xis pod the refresh
xe’ll be back
Without ever realizing that they are the mindless wolves using her corpse.
Wow. Just occasionally there is a thread that you really think no-one could stoop so low as to troll. But tiberiusbeauregard actually pretends there was something this poor kid did that caused people to bully her to suicide and continue railing against her even after her death.
She did nothing. Nothing that could “unsettle” anybody. The scum who bullied her and torment her family chose to do that; the sewer-scouring who deliberately started it all chose to hound her. TAA chose to add his voice to those of the bullies. She did nothing to “unsettle” anybody, nothing at all. And tiberius picks this as his excuse for his pathetic posturing here, with all this “I could tell you something but I won’t so there” bullshit? Beyond despicable.
What I find the most absurd is the notion of some people that there are ANY mitigating circumstances. What can a 15 year old child possibly do to deserve torture, universal opprobrium and death?
Tiberiusbeauregard, what is fucking wrong with you?
I really shouldn’t have looked at that facebook link earlier in this thread. I’d just finally gotten the paralyzing rage from talking to these sickos earlier out of my system.
I am not a misanthrope. But just… it’s just frustrating and disheartening and is it okay if I express a little bit of sorrow here, and want to cry a bit?
If I had been a child today instead of over a decade ago, it would have been me who had died… I know this without question. If I’d grown up with the same ubiquitous internet access, I’d be dead right now. I know it in my heart, and I know it from how I was treated. I’m still not really over it, I’m still not “better”, and the truth is that any pain I feel is a thousand times less than the pain of so many other people here… but when I was harassed, and got death threats at my house, and when even the teachers defended the actions of my bullies, I never wanted to die, mostly because I could escape from it, usually. Except for the death threats on my home phone.
Now, there is no escape, there is no respite. Improbable Joe asked how people like this could exist. From my experiences, with teachers and students and school administrators and random people on the street… well, let’s be honest. This is just humanity’s natural state. I’m not a Catholic anymore, but the ideas behind Original Sin, which holds that all of us are fallen and sinful, never really seemed that off to me. After all, the same children who would pray in Church beside me would then taunt me about “not popping the Golden Bubble” as soon as we left. (The golden rule, do unto others as you would have done unto you… morphed into a simple “not touching you!” game because they thought it funny, because I dared point out what we had JUST been in Church hearing about.)
I saw a few of them a couple years back. Apparently they were from a year ahead of me, and I didn’t remember them. They remembered me. Somehow, they immediately started taunting me again, in the five minutes I was in the same place as they, teasing about some bizarre adolescent bullshit as though they were in grade school again. We are all in our mid-twenties. No, I wasn’t hurt the same way I was when I was a child. Their insults were so bizarre and childish that I was too perplexed and stunned to be angry.
I saw them again a few weeks later, when they hurled taunts at me from their car, driving beside me as I drove down the road. If I ran into them again, I’m sure they’d do it again.
Even when they grow up they don’t change. Even as adults they don’t stop. I don’t feel safe in my hometown, not really. I don’t honestly feel emotionally safe anywhere, and as an adult I’m so would up with hatred and rage that deep inside I think that nobody could ever love me if they knew the extent of it, knew the depths of hate that fills my very center.
…but compared to this girl? I’m lucky. Because Facebook wasn’t invented yet. Because I could hide at home, away from them. This girl couldn’t. This girl is me, if I was born a decade later.
[OT]
anthonyrosa:
You may no longer identify as Catholic, but your mindset clearly remains so.
(Fallen from what, and what is ‘sin’?)
…yes, the mindset of a sarcastic comment in the context of a long speech about how I was bullied by my hilariously unself-aware Catholic schoolmates.
Yes, that is the context from which to pull that out, and try to criticize me by teasing out silly minutia.
Would you like me to explain these concepts to you? Are they so foreign that you don’t understand them? Well not everyone got a Catholic education whenever the metaphorical beatings stopped, so sure, why not.
In Catholic bullshit mythology, humans are fallen from grace, after the first woman was convinced by a talking snake (which Catholics seem to assume is Satan, but which is not said to be such in the actual story) to eat a piece of fruit that a bizarrely abusive petty god told her not to. Before this oddly not-so-omnipotent-at-the-time god caught her, she already convinced the first man to eat from the fruit as well.
Sin, of course, is defying the will of said petty tyrant god, and the Catholic Catechism in fact says this outright, among other ways to pretty it up.
Now that you understand these foreign concepts, you’ll understand a little bit of the bullshit that was inflicted on me by my teachers, even when my fellow students weren’t stealing my homework and vandalizing my possessions.
[OT]
anthonyrosa, you’ve just claimed that what “never really seemed that off” to you is bullshit.
(You can’t have it both ways, you know)
—
Unless you’ve been to seminary retreats and spent years at Catholic boarding schools and as an altar-boy, I’ve had much more such “education” than you.
(Your assumptions are poorly-based)
…you know, that was rude of me. I’m in a particularly bad mood after today. A few things rubbed me raw, and so I’m a tad over-sensitive.
The proper response should be something along the lines of…
“No. Nooooooo no no. It seems you’ve misunderstood a sarcastic reference of my childhood as a currently held belief, and seem to have suddenly othered me into an enemy that needs to have his beliefs challenged and questioned even at a time of emotional vulnerability and frightening truthfulness. Have enough empathy to pick and choose your battles a little better.”
So anyway, sorry for the sarcastic reply. I’m still incredibly annoyed with you though.
I’m really sorry about what you’ve been through, Anthony.
…or you reply again with further scorn, while I was typing my response.
Okay, time to try out a bit of that Pharyngula scorn I never use:
Shut the hell up, you tone-deaf piece of shit. I’d ask what the hell was wrong with you, but no, I get it. You’re so busy trying to play a dick-measuring game about Catholicism with someone who doesn’t believe one whit of it. It’s like a dog barking at its own shadow, or the proverbial barking up the wrong tree.
It’d be funny, if you didn’t pick such an insulting and denigrating moment to do it. Shame on you.
I don’t think so, John. While I recall your ex-denomination, you did ask a question which could be understood as sincerely asking what the dogmas are.
+++++
anthonyrosa,
If I were you, I would not waste my time replying to John in this thread. It will be unsatisfying, diminishing returns.
Forbidden Snowflake:
Well, thank you, I deeply appreciate it. Please don’t imagine my post above was directed towards you! Cross-posting can mess things up real good, so to speak.
[OT]
anthonyrosa, if your “I’m not a Catholic anymore, but the ideas behind Original Sin, which holds that all of us are fallen and sinful, never really seemed that off to me.” was intended as sarcasm, then I (obviously) failed to see it as such.
(Glad to know you too think it’s bullshit)
Anthony,
thanks for sharing that and *hugs*. I, too, can relate to what you said. I, too, am thankful I could escape the taunting and violence by, say, climbing out a window in last period physics and running home. I, too, am immensely grateful that my horrific experiences of bullying occured decades before the interweb & cellphones. I, too, can see me killing myself were I not able to escape.
I cried for a long time after watching Amandas video. then watched it again, read the interview with her mother and cried some more. And although I’ve never had religion foist upon me, I have to agree with the blindingly fucking obvious point you were making – unless taught otherwise, humans are absolute fucking shitbags. The “amazing atheist” being a brilliant example thereof.
John Morales,
WTF? I’d like to assume it was a catastrophic brain fart, but your subsequent posts disallow that option. I’ve seen more sincere notpologies than yours from MRAs. Why the fuck would you shit on Anthonys painful disclosure at all, let alone like that? utterly. fucking. reprehensible. its like you’re channeling TAA……
tiberiusbeauregard: I do believe you are a liar. Here’s the deal: the next comment you post will be that promised explanation, or you will be banned. Or you can just never appear here again.
We should all know that nothing Beauregard can say could possibly provide justification for the bullying. Even if he revealed some hitherto unknown depravity of the victim, even if Amanda Todd were a serial killer, nothing justifies the bullying. Bullying is at best a form of vigilantism, a cyber lynchmob. If people are guilty of crimes, they should be arrested and tried under rule of law. Everyone else should be allowed to live in peace, even the absurd, the foolish, the infantile, and the troll. This is known as civilized society, a concept foreign to the troll and the bully.
The desired response is to make the bees swarm angrily around the hive, to see that they are emotionally impacted. We shouldn’t gratify that. We should ignore, forget, understand that the troll is an impotent nullity with zero to contribute. It is already a dismissed and forgotten.
I absolutely do not believe this to be true. Rates of bullying differ greatly depending on all kinds of variables. Being shitty towards others is as ‘natural’ as being kind. It is as though people see social structures (in this case its schools) as being devoid of instruction about these matters when the truth is that the authoritarianism of schooling makes bullying a natural consequence. The big people (teachers, principals, older kids) get their way without question because they are bigger. They use their authority to enforce stupid baseless rules all the time. Many parents run their households this way as well. Kids are measured and graded and grouped by ability, and they learn derision for people different than they are from such an experience. They are also age segregated so it is impossible to see long term consequences for behaviors like bullying, it also means no one is expected to take care of each other (like helping younger kids). It is an environment that shares its values with the common bully, and most kids get at least 12 years of experience in it. If nothing else it makes people apathetic about the bullying that they witness other children taking part in. Things really do not have to work the way that they do; bullying to me seems to be a microcosm of other social systems in western society. Democratic alternatives (or even voluntary association) could be antidotes to what has been built.
I was not raised Catholic (Calvinist, natch), but what I think Anthony was getting at is that the doctrine of Original Sin seems to be hinting at what he perceives to be that many people are inherently assholes / bad people.
@ anthony: I owe you an apology, I should have put a TW on that link. I’m sorry that it was so upsetting for you. I was bullied through all of school and my usually response to seeing things like that is unbridled anger. I didn’t take the time to consider that other people might respond equally as passionately in other ways and for that I am sorry.
@skeptifem: I agree with your assessment. I’m a grade school teacher and I find myself in situations everyday where it would be SO EASY to repeat the things I heard as a kid; “I don’t care who started it,” “I don’t want to hear about it, you need to work it out yourselves,” etc. And I am struck each time these scenarios come up with the thought that I could never even imagine those words crossing my lips. It is so obviously, patently wrong, that the teachers who said it when I was a child had to have known it. I don’t know if they were jaded because they felt their hands were tied by the system but I suspect they just really didn’t want to hear it.
The more I hear about this particular story, the better I actually feel about the current state of the school system (at least in BC) because they did every damn thing they were legally allowed to do. Not obligated to do by law, but permitted. They took an active role in trying to protect her. It wasn’t good enough, which means the laws regarding harassment and stalking, both online and in person, mistakenly labeled as “bullying” and so easily passed off as “kids will be kids,” need to be addressed in this context.
Kids will be HUMAN, and humans react to being institutionalized in precisely this manner. It’s prison rules, and it needs to change.
I find it quite astonishing how he even receives any attention. He’s inane, sociopathic, cliched, boring, and unimaginative. He should just be the troll of the internet comments who we dismiss; can he really have any fans after this?
Hey, easy on the use of the word “sociopath/psychopath”. While I would agree that TJ seriously lacks empathy, the psycho/sociopathy checklists require much more than just one trait. I don’t think people understand the gravity of these two words, they’re serious conditions with even worse consequences.
Wait, what? anthonyrosa shares his deep pain, and John Morales picks out an exceedingly minor point to criticize? Whaaaaat?
anthony, I’m so sorry to hear of your anguish. You should be able to feel safe here. And Morales, seriously? Are you some kind of fucking robot? If someone steps on a nail and it goes through their foot, do you correct their grammar while they’re screaming in pain? JESUS FUCK.
@225
Yeah he actually might.
I’ve heard it said that a lot of people seem to have a real problem with the whole concept of compassion. All I can really say is that if you read between the lines, all TAA (and tiberius) is doing is trying to accuse people of whiteknighting without actually using the term, presumably because they know what a complete crock of bullshit we understand the term to be.
forjo:
I think it’s easy to see why. I have Facebook
friendsacquaintances who keep posting pictures that ultimately ask the point, “Why are we so concerned about her? There are others that are bullied and/or commit suicide, too! She only gets attention because she’s attractive!”This ignores the fact that she effectively posted her suicide note on Youtube, and she has become a catalyst for a discussion about suicide and bullying.
I get the impression people are so dismissive of her because, well, she’s a girl. What about all the menz committing suicide? Think of the menz!
It’s not surprising folks would be fans of someone who is sooooo edgy and anti-establishment, speaking truth to power like that. I mean, what of the menz?
@rabidtreeweasel: Don’t apologize, or feel bad about that point… I’d been in a bad mood over this thing the entirety of yesterday.
The truth is, and I may have mentioned this in passing, I had actually gotten into a conversation with a few of these anti-Amanda Todd people. It was so sickening that I could only stare on in despair as they said that because of these minor, stupid reasons, she deserved to die. She deserved the horrible treatment that led her to suicide… it was people who refused to understand that a person’s personal life is none of their business, who demanded I give them respect in the same breath as they called Amanda a slut in the comments of, essentially, her suicide note and memorial.
So yeah… it wasn’t anything you did, really, it certainly wasn’t anything you should feel bad about. Honestly, hearing that there is a school teacher like you out there who gives a shit gives me more hope than anything. I had SOME good teachers, of course, and not everyone treated me bad, so it’s not that I have a blanket distrust of everyone at all times… but it’s good to hear from one of them anyway, you know?
@skepfem: Yeah, I know. Human beings aren’t all bad at all times, I see that as much as the other in my day-to-day life. I have friends and family who love me, and that was another reason I survived. (Even if Amanda did too, it doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t have to deal with Facebook. Just the occasional threatening phone call. I still don’t know which of them did it…)
But it’s easy to fall into that sort of thinking anyway, sometimes. It’d be easy for me to, after seeing all that I’ve seen, just isolate myself from everyone, and mark all of them as threats, potential or otherwise.
I’m not going to do that. But I can’t say it doesn’t affect the way I deal with everyone else in the world.
You guys seem easily excitable, just what makes you think the amazing atheist’s statement was so unjustifiable?
One question, reliwhat. What did Amanda Todd do to deserve the treatment she has received the last three years of her life and how people like TAA speak about her in death?
@reliwhat
Are you hard of reading?whole post on it sugar balls
Ing, just an other troll JAQing off and needing to be lead by the hand.
What EVIDENCE do you have that it was justifiable. That is where the burden of evidence lies, on TAA making the claims…
What makes you think everyone here is male?
Omg, stop attacking me with your fact and your well structured arguments, oh wait, nvm.
but enough screwing around. What if the amazing atheist is trying to raise awareness to greater problems by making a shocking statement like that, in hope that maybe some people are gonna act and save lives. And let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that some people do end up saving lives because of that, lets say 3 lives. Then, according to an utilitarian point of you, it would be a morally correct thing to do. And even if no lives are saved, if the intention was to save lives, then, according to Kant and Kohlberg, it would be morally acceptable. If we don’t not even bother trying to find a justification for TAA’S behavior, we could just stay here all night hating on him. That’s why i find this site so boring, its too one sided, you need people to defend the other side, even if its just test the arguments.
So, saying so what about the bullying and torment of Amanda Todd will shock people into making sure it does not happen to future Amanda Todds.
That is insane troll logic.
reliwhat:
Can you describe the mechanism whereby insulting the suicide, and the youtube suicide note, of a teenage girl will save people?
Unevidenced OPINION IS BULLSHIT.
Why should WE justify his existence. That is up to TAA to evidence that his existence helps, not causes problems…Which is the case at the moment.
Where is your EVIDENCE, and your OPINION isn’t EVIDENCE?
Irrelevant, the intention is what counts. But, for the sake of the argument, lets say he thought that, if people were so saddened by death of a girl, maybe, if they could see that her situation wasn’t as bad as, lets say a dying kid in somalia, maybe they will be even sadder and maybe this will push them to give money to a charity or take a plane to africa and volunteer.
Intent is not fucking magic, shit for brains.
Also, you have not answered how sneering at a suicide is going to “shock” people into preventing future suicides.
I can understand why you do not want to answer that.
Intent is not magic. And I seriously doubt TAA intended any such thing anyway.
Why should we defend things there are no valid arguments for? This isn’t a high school debate club. You want to defend him. Come up with real reasons why not, not badly written screeds.
Sneers are all reliwhat has.
No fuckwitted idjit, the results are what counts. Any fool knows that, which makes you less than a fool.
Intent is not magic. Not only that, how do you know what TAA’s intent actually was?
So as long as one person on earth is more oppressed, more abused, more harassed, more stalked, then no one can complain about anything? After all, a Muslim woman in Afghanistan has it far worse than any woman in Canada, so women should just shut the fuck up and take whatever men give them, right?
So what is the actual mechanism whereby insulting the suicide, and the youtube suicide note, of a teenage girl will save people? Not a just so story, but a little bit of evidence that this just so story has basis in fact?
@ Janine
i never said it would prevent suicide, but i did give an answer. let me just copy it right here: “But, for the sake of the argument, lets say he thought that, if people were so saddened by death of a girl, maybe, if they could see that her situation wasn’t as bad as, lets say a dying kid in somalia, maybe they will be even sadder and maybe this will push them to give money to a charity or take a plane to africa and volunteer.”
@ Ariaflame
1. Intent is not magic, but it is a base for judging on the morality of actions.
2. Neither one of us really knows TAA’s real intent, we can only speculate on it.
3. I’m not defending anyone, i’m just not gonna judge TAA without proper knowledge of his intention.
4. No, this is not a high school debate club indeed, to have a debate, you need two opposite sides. here, we only have one.
5. It saddens me that you dont consider my “reasons” to be real.
6. sorry for my bad english, im french.
An excellent example of magical thinking.
And the root source of all human religion and spirituality.
Her misery is not as bad as an other person’s misery so it should be discounted.
You are a fucking moral monster.
Choke on your words.
Well, really the problem is that no one is spreading and no one is looking bored and flipping a pen. And no that’s not the sort of spreading I’m talking about, for crying out loud get your minds out of the gutters.
I’m completely unqualified to participate in high school debate anymore, as I can’t flip a pen.
@ Amphiox
also the basis of Kant’s moral theory which greatly helped human rights
@ Janine
Are you familiar with the utilitarian philosophy? here’s a little example of an moral dilemma:
A train is coming towards 2 people, you can make it change direction by pressing a button, but it will kill 1 person, who’s standing the other rail. What do you do? an utilitarian would push the button, saving 2 people and killing 1. He still killed some one? is he a monster?
Are you familiar with fuckwitted idjits? Look in the mirror. Only an abject fool thinks we haven’t heard that bullshit before.
The monster is the one who tells the grieving relatives to get over it because 50 people died in a train accident in India last week.
Fuck your hypotheticals.
Alright, i wasnt sure of it before, but nerd of redhead is definitely trolling. Nice one redhead, you got me.
reliwhat:
You do know that we are discussing a real human being who killed herself? Not a philosophical abstract? You do know that, right?
And what is the actual mechanism whereby insulting the suicide, and the youtube suicide note, of a teenage girl will save people?
And the answer will be found here, not in YOUR OPINION.
As a regular, I can’t troll. Only newbies like you troll. I’m just describing your intellect, or rather, the lack thereof. If you had an intellect and honor and integrity, you would shut the fuck up as you can’t cite evidence to back up any OPINION.
@ Ogvorbis
I think you might be a little quick to disregard philosophy. You can find many examples similar to the one i used that have happened in the real world, to real people. Hiroshima is a great example, by bombing the city, the us president wanted to stop the war and possibly prevent more people from dying. Those were real people, and they died on the principle that maybe, it would save more people. Now i’m not expressing my approval of this tactic, im just pointing out the similarities.
Given that you show no signs of being philosophical or evidential, you have no business lecturing anybody on anything.
That doesn’t mean Hiroshima wasn’t a terrible thing and that we can’t use it as an argument for nuclear disarmament. Likewise, just because other people die doesn’t mean Amanda Todd’s death wasn’t a terrible thing, and that we can’t use it as an argument against bullying.
I’m quoting word for word the utilitarian philosophy. Check it out yourself
reliwhat:
Nice attempt at a derail. We are discussing the beyond the pale reaction of TAA to the victimization, stalking, abuse and bullying of a girl who killed herself. Does mocking her really advance anything other than TAA’s hit count?
You post videos instead of the peer reviewed literature at a science blog? What an abject loser….
Maybe, how can we know, we’d have to ask every one who has heard of it, and follow them during the rest of their lives, and ask them what impact TAA’s response had.
And as far as TAA is concerned, if we do not really know the intent he had, we cannot pass judgement. As a optimist, i don’t think he wanted to cause more harm, i believe he wanted to remind people of priorities (1 girl dying < 20 000 kids dying in somalia for exemple). Now, i do not say i agree with him, but, if his intentions were noble and morally correct, there's no reason to call him a sociopath who has a lack of humanity.
Oh, this is a fun game!
For the sake of the argument, let’s say TAA thought that if people could see that her situation wasn’t as bad as, lets say, a dying kid in Somalia, they would wail, pull out their hair in fits of despair and then cascade into the streets to murder small furry animals.
For the sake of the argument, let’s say TAA thought that if people could see that her situation wasn’t as bad as, lets say a dying kid in Somalia, they would build rocket ships and go to the moon.
Meaningless and inopportune hypotheticals is my very favorite game; I’m so glad that we’ve started playing! Just so we’re clear, the following hypothetical is meaningful and relevant, so it doesn’t follow the rules:
For the sake of the argument, let’s say TAA thought that if people could see that her situation wasn’t as bad as, lets say a dying kid in Somalia, they would make nasty comments about her and other bullied and/or suicidal children on the internet.
All the hypothesis that you put forwards are possible. Again, we would have to ask him before passing judgement. But it’s good to see someone is picking up on the argument.
You do realise that the last hypothetical that Nepenthe wrote wasn’t really a hypothetical at all? It actually happened.
I hope you are not that stupid.
The result happened, but how can we really know if that was his intent?
Yeah, the key paragraph was this one:
There may be a bit lost; I speak neither French nor Annoying Twerp, so cannot translate to them from my mother tongue of Sarcasm. Written English will have to do.
oh, i knew it was sarcasm, i was being sarcastic too. And if you want to say that it french, it goes like that : “Le feu sur le cheval être brisé.”
What part of “Intent is not magical” do you not understand? If I refer to ‘frog-eating surrender monkeys’, but claim I did not intend to refer to the French (as they are perceived by some right-wing USAnians), is my intent magical? Does my intent mean that no French should be insulted?
And who would you be referring to?
reliwhat:
Oh, I didn’t intend that to refer to you. See? Intent trumps all, right?
You appear to think that people who see this will have a light bulb moment and go out and start saving children in Somalia.
Less stupid people will realise that TAA will have some followers who will emulate him and go on to do hurtful things to others.
I think TAA is less stupid than you.
@ koshka
I never said i thought people would do anything at all. i said that, if he had acted with that intent in mind, it could be morally justified.
@ogvorbis
i know you were not referring to me, but you must have been referring to someone, and therefor your action is immoral, because the sentence you used was racist. On the other hand, if you had truly thought that sentence was a compliment, it would have been a morally correct thing to say.
Isn’t there a brazilian monkey that lives on a diet of frogs?
I believe that it is endangered due to logging of the rainforest and when they hear bulldozers they get so frightened they fall out of their tree.
That reminds me – I need to donate to an environmental cause.
Thanks Ogvorbis!
Many people believed that african slavery allowed the slaves to be freed from disease and poverty and hence was morally justified.
Shove your magical intent up your arse.
an ethics system in which intent is more relevant than outcomes is a harmful ethics system, and thus to be discarded.
Actually he was fuckwit. Stupid you be.
reliwhat:
That Vooshing sound was the point missing you. Completely.
If you really believe that someone’s intent trumps how the statement is received, you are a sad example of modern humanity.
@Obvorbis
It’s CHEESE eating surrender monkeys
Ing, not funny.
Wait. Back up a minute. Did reliwhat actually state that
So the assholes I went to high school with were morally correct in referring to African-Americans as Ni***rs? and the gay-hating fundogelicals are morally correct because they believe the shit they spew?
I didn’t want to make it too obvious. It was all part of a subtle plan to . . .
Nope. Gotta be honest. I screwed the pooch on that one. Sorry.
Time for bed.
Sorry, Ing. I just read #270.
@ Jadehawk
Kant’s ethic theory is based on intent.
@ koshka
TAA sent a picture stating that 1 death got more attention than 100 000, by doing so, he did not do anything fundamentally immoral. On the other hand, slavery goes against freedom. According to kant (we’ll use kant for this example) “Freedom is the ability to set and pursue your own purposes as long as they do not interfere with anybody else”, and that freedom is a fundamental idea of kant’s theory. Kant established rules, which we call in french “impératif catégorique” like you should never kill, those rules have to be followed at all times, so if your intent was to free africans from disease and poverty, you’d have to find another way.
and? it’s still harmful.
@jadehawk
kant’s ethic theory played a huge part in the creation of the human rights, it’s one of the most important work of philosophy ever made and it is taught all around the world.
and yet, it’s still harmful. as in: it causes harm. the rest is not relevant to anything; it would still be harmful of the gods themselves delivered it to us on a golden platter
I dont understand. What you’re saying is, we should get rid of kant’s philosophy because it’s harmful?
seriously, who gives a fuck who created a harmful ethics system, or whether at some point in the past it was used as a tool for getting rid of even worse ethics systems? that’s the same worthless arguments Christians make for the bible.
the only relevant thing is this: does your ethics system cause harm to people? yes? then it belongs on the thrash-heap of history.
trash-heap, even
…therefore, TAA is justified to mock a bullied teenaged girl who committed suicide.
Nice way to ignore the rights of Amanda Todd, you sack of shit.
Choke on your fucking words!
of course. all ethics systems that promote harm should be disregarded in favor of those that prevent, ameliorate, and correct harm. no sense in retaining them just because some famous dude invented them; not even if maybe at some time in the past that ethics system might have been preferable to others.
You truly thought wrong.
1) Not everyone should be complimented about everything, so not all compliments are good (or “morally correct”).
2) We can never figure out what someone was thinking, since even that same person may not really understand their own thoughts; so even if it were good, it can never be a useful rule to follow. (I’d argue useless rules aren’t good, but that’s sort of another issue.) There’s no practical way to implement it to do anything, other than create ambiguity or give people the benefit of the doubt when it isn’t warranted.
3) Even if someone doesn’t have bad intentions, that by itself makes no difference to anyone else. If some person isn’t intentionally racist (for example), that doesn’t mean others won’t be affected by it just the same as if they did have racist intentions. Again, it makes no fucking difference and does no useful work — not even in that person’s mind, since they don’t have total access to all of the causes of their own thoughts either, which is even assuming (for no good reason at all) there ever could be a case in which the contents of some person’s mind were harmful by itself, while not having any other tangible effect.
But that is not what he did.
He mocked her death. Maybe you don’t understand that because English is not your preferred language but that is what he did. And that is harmful. Directly harmful to her friends and family. And indirectly harmful to people who have had to deal with suicide, depression bullying etc. More people will be harmed as people copy what he did.
And your insistence that he was intending to make the world a better place is another kick in the guts to the people who are going through this.
@ Jadehawk
1.It wasnt used to get rid of a worse ethic system.
2. Kant’s ethic theory is still relevant today
3. There is no ethic system that can’t prevent harm from being done, they will always cause some sort of harm. The train example shows it pretty well.
4. Had you ever heard of kant before this discussion?
Well, sort of, but not really. His psychological theory in general influenced his ethics. Not surprisingly, given all the progress science has made since the 18th century, that turned out to be wrong. The ethics are also wrong, factually and (to the extent there’s a difference) ethically.
1)if true, it would have been worthless even then, but let’s face it, you already contradicted that when you said “kant’s ethic theory played a huge part in the creation of the human rights”
2)for the study of history maybe; as an applied system of ethics however, it is harmful and needs to be done away with instead of promoted
3)irrelevant, since it’s obviously true that some ethics systems are more harmful than others.
4)HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I read the fucker in the original German, you condescending dolt. It was bullshit; religion-inspired, harmful bullshit.
seriously, all deontological ethics are harmful bullshit. kantian ethics are not an exception
@ consciousness razor
It really depends on which philosophy you base your analysis on. Your statements are correct if you base it on a result over intent philosophy like the utilitarian. So yeah, good points.
@ Koshka
So, you came to the conclusion that TAA’s statement had for sole purpose to insult the girl, her family and all the people who have to deal with suicide and bullying. I have tried my best to get you not to pass judgement too quick, but you have made up your mind, and its fine with me.
@ Jadehawk
really, take like a second, and look up kant’s philosophy, it doesnt cause harm, you are really talking out of your ass here, it’s an universally respected philosophy that helped 3rd world countries enormously.
incorrect. and in any case, looking up the philosophy won’t actually tell you whether it causes harm. you have to look at applications thereof to be able to tell
and you condescension and inability to read what I write continues to be noted.
do you know what an argumentum ad populum is?
[citation needed]
reliwhat
I have never said anything like this.
You are a lying sack of shit.
Citation needed : UN
Argumentum ad populum: alright, as you wish, lets discard this argument, even though i could just say respected in the field of philosophy, law and rights.
Also, you seem to ask me to justify everything i say, how about you justify how kant’s philosophy causes harm.
unless this is a reference to the creation of human rights, at which point you’re back to contradicting yourself, since you just claimed that kantian ethics weren’t used to replace a worse ethical system (in this case, one that lacked the concept of universal human rights)
I can’t have a discussion with someone who doesn’t know what their stance on an issue is.
That is what we should base our ethics on, because that is the only way ethics can work. If there is nothing to observe, then there is no way to make any ethical judgment about it.
i didnt contradict myself, there’s no such thing as an universal ethic system, it didnt replace anything, you could live by the utilitarian ideas, the humian ideas, locke’s philosophy, spinoza, whatever you like. And we are not currently living under any imposed ethic system, so the human rights are not part of an ethical system, they’re two separate thing, kant just played a big part in it.
reliwhat, many of us are aware of Kant, but on this thread we are increasingly more aware of your cant. We know TAA’s likely intent for this post of his from past experience as his output is there for anyone to read.
I really
hatePhilosophy101.@ consciousness razor
dude, that’s the whole point, we’re saying the same stuff. Results are observable reality, if i want to kill a bee that’s on your face and i end up punching you in the face and not killing the bee, the intent would say i was correct, and the result would say i wasnt, the intent being not observable and the result being observable.
1)it’s deontological and as such doesn’t permit discussion of its anxioms; OTOH, it does allow for the forceful imposition of conditions it considers “right” regardless of whether they’re bneeficial or harmfult to the people they’re done to. Many top-down “humanitarian” international missions are examples of the a priori assumption that we’ve got the correct ethics and everyone else is by definition wrong
2)it assumes that what makes an action ethically right is intent, which means that it actually thinks that a road to hell actually doesn’t really lead to hell if paved with good intentions. that too is shown to be false in many interventions in other countries
Kantian ethics have been a primary source of “white man’s burden” bullshittery for centuries, and certainly continue to be used that way. It’s shitty and harmful, because it assumes universals where the reality is a lot messier and localized than that.
this is whargarble
@ john phillips
Personally, i’ve seen nothing wrong in TAA’s past video. I haven’t seen them all, but i could hardly condemn his present actions based on his past statements. But maybe you’ve seen more of his stuff than i did.
and since in observable reality the action was harmful regardless of intent, it is obvious that intent-based ethics are garbage. which is what we’re trying to say.
Look jadehawk, i don’t get what you’re doing. I’ve said things about kant, at that point, you should know i’ve had to study it, so why insist on making up stuff. If you read the original in german, you should know that there are Categorical imperative. I really shouldnt have to explain that to a kant connaisseur.
anyway: Kantian ethics are a good example of “rationalism” in its original sense: the preference of mental masturbation to empiricism
Reasonable analogy.
If you are trying to get a bee off someone you don’t punch them in the face. If you do you apologise and admit you should have done it differently.
If you are trying to make a point that thousands of children are dying around the world you don’t mock a child’s suicide. If you do you apologise and admit you should have done it differently.
No, we’re not.
This is very confused. If you there’s a bee on my face, the ethical question here is this: what should you do? It is emphatically not: how can I excuse whatever behavior I’ve decided to do?
Should you punch the bee while it’s on my face, without warning me, without getting my permission, without finding out if I’m allergic to bees (which would result in more harm than being punched)?
NO. It’s fucking obvious that you shouldn’t do that.
Why should none of these results matter, with only your ridiculous fucking intention to fall back on, when you make a long series of completely avoidable mistakes? I get punched, and all you can say is “well, pbffrrrr, uh…. I didn’t mean to.” That’s supposed to be perfectly okay?
and the categorical imperative is not empirical, nor an admission that there can’t be a universally objectively “right” moral axiom; and it assumes that it’s possible for humans to just think your way to a universally applicable ethics. this is false.
@ koshka
indeed, the intent wasn’t necessarily bad, if the action was, then he could apologize, but again, he could also justify not apologizing, by saying that, let’s say, the media and the people who over glorified the death belittled the suffering of people in somalia (lets use somalia again). and so he could say he was just putting people on the right track.
@ Jadehawk
Oh, so the Categorical imperatives are not empirical? really? so i guess when he says that killing is bad based on his universallisation theory, we should give it a try and see if it works or not.
seriously: an action is ethically right/good if it prevents harm, not because of intent (or in Kantian terms, out of a sense of “duty”). why something is done is rarely relevant; in fact, it’s pretty much only relevant in trying to figure out the ways in which to change these behaviors, since changing human psychology does sometimes require understanding intent.
Yes, my dear, if you read the original, in German, it’s in German, did you know that? I know. That it’s in German. I mean, you probably know it, but you definitely haven’t read it in German, like I sort of did. Right? This is supposed to be very impressive or something.
@ consciousness razor
Exactly what i said. in a result based philosophy, it wouldnt be alright to punch you in the face, the intent would be irrelevant.
What is it with you and hypotheticals?
Have you ever had to deal with reality before?
Do you realise that this post is about something that actually happened?
A girl has died. She was bullied and threatened. She committed suicide. An arsehole mocked her death. She was a real person. Have you considered this at all or are to too busy masturbating to Kant.
except for the part where we already know which contexts killing is bad (AKA causes harm) and in which it doesn’t. Killing is not universally “bad”. Not even killing humans (which I assume is what you meant).
sseriously, that’s not a fucking argument. some kinds of killings are bad because they cause harm, not because killing has been deontologically designated as bad. Which incidentally gets us to an example of deontology causing harm, since the “killing humans is bad” deontological imperative is one reason medically assisted suicide is illegal in many places.
@ Sallystrange
no, i didnt read it at all, jadehawk said she had read the original in german, not my fault.
I was the one who pointed out that I’ve read Kant in German (it’s unreadable in English, since most of it ends up in German anyway), to mock the condescending question in #295
of course he could, but that wouldn’t make his behavior actually ethically acceptable. Bullshit excuses for behavior don’t actually make things ethically right.
@ Jadehawk
what i meant was kant’s universal law. Ill explain it to you miss or mister “i read the original in german”, the law is, apply the act to every person and see if it leads to the destruction of humanity, if it cancels the action or if a morally decent person would do it.
Not exactly, but I doubt you’re too concerned about exactitude.
Why are you advocating a philosophy that isn’t based on reality? We haven’t gotten an explanation of that yet, other than Kant is one of the great philosophers.
@ consciousness razor
I did, i talked about the utilitarian philosophy, which was brought into the modern well i guess, by Bentham and stuart mill. And how is result and reality different. The result is the impact of the action on reality.
Really people? you’re letting obvious troll derail you into seriously trying to discus fucking Kant with him?
how am i a troll?
as soon as a guy disagrees with you he’s a troll. ffs.
no responds??? did i win the internet??? omg, im so proud
they didnt even say goodnight. how bout some decency.
GOOD NIGHT PEOPLE.
You are derailing the thread dipshit.
obvious troll declares victory 4 minutes in
reliwhat is an obvious troll. I had him hushed from way earlier so he has some history doing bullshit like this
reliwhat, let me spell this out for you…
your philosophical dissection of ethics can get fucked…
This girl was a victim… of what we can discuss, but she was victimized, and all your Kantian babble won’t change that she is dead, and your precious TAA made light of that fact and tried to score points for himself, because he’s a douche.
Keep defending that and you’ll be sure to gain respect here. /sarc
amusingly enough, the destruction of humanity is also not unethical. an end to humanity that didn’t actually harm already existing people would not in fact be unethical.
empirically, of course, there are virtually no acts that, if applied universally, would lead to the destruction of humanity, other than restrictions on breeding (or even: socioeconomic systems that result on voluntary restriction of breeding below the replacement rate) and murder of people who haven’t bred yet.
as such, that would be one shitty metric for ethics
you don’t even understand how this is tautological bullshit, do you.
and that’s entirely aside from the part where “morally decent person” is not an empirically sound concept. no such humans, as a distinct category, exist
No, you didn’t. That is not an explanation of why you’re advocating this bullshit.
and in any case, the Categorical Imperative really just demands that an action be done out of duty to an ethical Maxim, and the ethical maxim would have to be one you’d like to be applicable universally*. this is ethically empty.
*”Der kategorische Imperativ ist also nur ein einziger und zwar dieser: handle nur nach derjenigen Maxime, durch die du zugleich wollen kannst, daß sie ein allgemeines Gesetz werde.” — Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals)
my translation: “The Categorical Imperative is therefore only one, this one: act only according to that maxim which you will also be able to want to become universal law.”
gah. tagfail.
are you fucking serious. people don’t respond to you within 3 minutes, and you declare victory? pathetic.
Obvious Troll is obvious
I guess he can’t *sunglasses* Kant defend his position
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
I guess he *sunglasses* Kant defend his position
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
this discussion about outdated 18th century ethics systems is pointless, since none of them actually would turn TAA’s behaviors ethical (unless you want to devise a deontological system in which denigrating suicide victims is defined as ethically moral)
that pun was in-hume-ane
In the face of ignoring the harm done to Amanda Todd and all of the other bullied people out there, reliwhat veering to a discussion of Kantian ethics is pure bullshit.
Fuck off, troll. You are disgusting.
Jadehawk
*har*
Agreed, but I’m not sure how much of a derail it really is. Kantian ethics is tailor-made for coming up with bullshit excuses, after all, and we have been getting a lot of that. It’s certainly not the main reason for their behavior — run-of-the-mill dumbassery and hatefulness take care of that — but it still seems it’s probably somewhat relevant, at least tangentially. A lot of people do think that way, not just a few random (and obvious) trolls.
Besides, it’s easy enough to demolish if it’s not especially relevant. If they want to make themselves even more ridiculous with this extra bit of nonsense, they’re welcome to it as far as I’m concerned.
Kant is one of my fonder memories from university. I found his clunky and over-explanatory style a delight to read, in the same way I’m fascinated by picking a scab – but it’s still a periodic work at best. Moderately progressive for its time, by the standards of any decent living person today it’s really just religiously dogmatic repressive slave-philosophy.
But even then, I think it’s doing a disservice to old Immanuel to use his system of ethics or any other system of fucken ethics to defend the mockery of a child driven to suicide.
What Chigau said.
@reliwhat
Your hypothetical is stupid and you should feel stupid.
What we’re seeing in practice is that TAA’s dismissal of a teenage girl’s suicide is attracting the exact type of callous, unfeeling people who would dismiss a teenage girl’s suicide.
What part of realising Amanda’s situation “wasn’t so bad” (she’s gone! What more do you want?) involves saying she deserved to die or accusing her of deserving her suffering because she was a Slutty McSlut?
Yeah, I wrote 355 without seeing most of the worthless discussion with the troll, including a couple comments that said exactly the same as mine.
@ vaiyt
Who said she deserved to die?
Yes, vaiyt? What is wrong with TAA mocking a dead bullied teen aged girl just so long as it shocks people into helping the truly deserving people?
Vile fucking troll.
Yawn, troll reliwhat is boring, insipid, and irrelvant.
I expected more of a scientist and biology professor!
This pathetic text shows your lack of intelligence.
Thank you for reminding me that i’m not a REAL human being, because i give a fuck when people die, because that’s life.
Amazing Atheist: Wins!
PZ Myers: LOSES!
There is something deeply wrong with rexxars.
Take a breath, your brain needs the oxygen.
rexxars, I think you need to work on your reading comprehension.
Or perhaps it is your writing – did you want to write something along the lines of “Thank you for reminding me that i’m not a REAL human being, because i don’t give a fuck when people die, because that’s life”?
Oh, and
FTFY
No i’m completely right.
You people need to accept how things work in this Universe.
Death is like breathing, it’s a natural process.
The Amazing atheist is completely right, and proves again how stupid and ignorant humanity is.
You are not even trying now, Trolly Trolliton McTrollson.
watch and realize your stupidity!
watch?v=G-qgARGjT6s
New Video from the Amazing Atheist!
Fuckface is too incompetent to create a link to a video.
First, it’s tiberiusbeauregard with “don’t u people realize what a monster this girl was, what crimes against humanity she has committed that have doomed her to her well-deserved fate, how can you defend such a horrible person who has committed such monstrous atrocities as showig her titties once, you might as well be defending Hitler!!!!”
Then we have reliwhat, derailing the discussion with “Y u no be fair to TAA, give him the benefit of the doubt, he probably had very good moral reasons that will totally make the world a better place, and don’t all u people realize the great majesty of Kant, now let’s all stop talking about the irrelevant bullied dead girl and instead bask in the much more relevant topic of Kantian utilitarian philosophy!”
And now, with rexxars, it seems the thread has gone from morally bankrupt, to morally bankrupt pretentious pseudointellectual wanking, to utterly incomprehensible babbling. I’d call it morally bankrupt too, but I’m still trying to figure out what the hell xe’s even talking about–considering the fact that PZ was lamenting this girl’s death and TAA was mocking it as if it didn’t matter one bit. It’s like xe’s writing from some alternate dimension where PZ is like Jerry Falwell or something.
Just another example of an MRA in action. Inarticulate, incompetent, unintelligent, angry, and boring.
Isn’t it a bit awful to call someone inhuman and a sociopath without listening to their argument? I don’t think you’re stupid but I would like you to consider TJ’s point of view. I don’t know about you, but if I was called some sort of monster by someone as visible as yourself for expressing an opinion, (excepting something truly horrific, like being in favor of child rape or murder, etc.) then I would be somewhat devastated.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-qgARGjT6s&feature=g-all-u
I’m not saying you have to agree with TJ, but please consider what he has to say.
Is taking advantage of a young girl, stalking her, abusing her, beating her, and driving her to suicide natural?
We have, and its a fuckwitted point of view, not worthy of respect.
Why should we give that jackass the time of day? Or you for that matter? If you want to show what an asshat you are, keep posting your special pleadings for understanding that jackass. Otherwise, show some intelligence, and fade into the bandwidth.
Something like “I don’t care that this girl killed herself and neither should you.”
–
Called it.
I try to be at least somewhat civil and I get called an asshat. I don’t even agree with everything TJ says in the video; I think some of the bits in the video are a bit ridiculous and hypocritical. But he does have some valid points; I just objected to his being called a sociopath. What do you have to gain by belittling me for expressing an opinion?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoRcj7h3Fcc&feature=g-all-u
Here’s a video that deals with some of the things in TJ’s video that I personally disagree with. Consider it a peace offering.
If you do watch that video, TW for violence about 4:15.
TW for angry stupidity from 0:00.
(Video in #370, not #374. I didn’t refresh.)
I have just unfollowed ‘white, fat guy’, The Amazing Athiest, on Twitter. Why don’t other followers do the same, in solidarity for this tragic child who died at the abuse of people such as he? I hope he notices we are unfollowing him.
In fact, follow him just so that you can unfollow him! What an absolute cabbage. And you, dear PZed, for posting this, ‘You are a rose. An absolute rose.’ I know all you Americans will recognise that quote, as it’s from your greatest novel!
What a tragic waste of a beautiful life.
Look, the reason this case has garnered so much attention on social media is not because it is more important than any other case. It’s because it is more accessible on social media than other cases. No-one on the internet (well, except me, and maybe a few people who’ll read this) cares about my cousin who committed suicide, because, well, it was before YouTube and the internet.
He has half a point about class sizes and bullying prevention programmes. I live in a place where we strictly limit class sizes to 30 and have 2-3 adults in each classroom. It absolutely makes a difference. School inspectors report on anti-bullying initiatives. This can be done; it’s a choice a polity can make.
He has a dubious line of argument about limiting access to social media, but this is really a sort of victim(-parent)-blaming. (“There are horrible people out there! What kind of parent lets their kids out in the real world? Bad parent! Bad kid.” Yeah, we know there are horrible, stupid people commenting on YouTube. How about we think about stopping, or at least discouraging them?)
But the stupidest thing for me is that someone is complaining that a tragic case is getting attention because of YouTube, on YouTube. My ironyometer just bent its needle against the should-not-happen pin.
@357:
For starters, the other troll just above you, along with a whole bunch of people supporting TAA’s mockery of Amanda’s death. We’re not seeing concerned people wanting attention drawn to others who have been dying overlooked; we’re seeing callous assholes spitting on Amanda’s grave. Quel surpris.
I can see where he’s coming from, really. In my country, there’s this real phenomenon where hundreds of horrific crime-related deaths of poor/black people go unnoticed, but the moment a middle-class white student is a victim, it becomes national news and generates outcry.
The correct answer, however, is definitely not to make “Dear Muslima: Teenage Suicide Edition”. Amanda’s ordeal doesn’t matter less than anybody else’s. Unfortunately, that’s the message TAA ended up sending.
incandenza
Welcome to Pharyngula!
The bible makes some valid points too, (Killing is bad, stealing is bad, lying is bad) but I still reject it as a moral code.
Why are you assuming the horde didn’t watch TAA’s video and are completely aware of the contents? Did you miss the self-centered, asshole move of TAA whining that Amanda’s suicide is getting too much attention? Hint- this is why you are being called an asshat.
Perhaps you should look up the definition of sociopath? TAA’s posting of this video qualifies as sociopathic behavior.
Hopefully, an ally who will recognize and condemn sociopathic behavior rather than defending it, as you are doing here.
@anthonyrosa: Wow. Your douchebag bullies still haven’t quit? It’s absolutely amazing that there exist some people who continue to live such warped, shriveled, evil, petty little lives long after HS. It makes me think of Ed Bundy, who “got four touchdowns in a single game” and lived the rest of his life riding on that one accomplishment–if you can call it that. Once I got on FB, I had a ton of people from the old school friend me–not any of the most vicious bullies, true, but definitely some of the lesser bullies, and a few of the stand-and-watch types. None of them started in on me and one guy was surprised to find out I was suicidal at that time due to bullying. He was one of the quiet ones who didn’t actively bully me or stand on the side laughing either, but he did state something about how one of the kids (let’s call him George, for convenience) would have really done something to protect me if he’d known that I’d been hurt so badly, and I had to point out that “George” was one of the most prominent and prevalent in my memories of being bullied. He didn’t have much to say after that.
So from what that sounds like, one of the biggest bullies was only bullying me with his chums and pushing me toward suicide because he liked me? Sounds to me like a very boneheaded method of showing affection, if true. Of course, I have to wonder if some of these asshats have a similar investment–if they haven’t themselves bullied some girl because they liked her and don’t want to think of themselves as having caused her suicide, so they need to justify this somehow in their heads. Like the rape apologists who either desperately defend rape as being not wrong, or desperately want to either blame the victim or redefine rape.(I don’t know if that makes sense, and I don’t know if there’s any truth to it, but I sometimes wonder.)
That’s a good point about social media too. My bullied period happened in the eighties, and I was out of it long before the internet became a widespread “thing”, so I never even thought about how different it might have been if I couldn’t escape it at home. (Of course, it was hard to be around a mother who explicitly defended my bullies and told me that I must “deserve” the abuse because “if everyone hates you, you MUST deserve it for some reason”, but at least she didn’t say that all the time–only when I expressed my distress over being bullied–so I had some reprieve.
On the other hand, if they were actively bullying me at home I would have had a “paper”-trail to prove to her just how ugly they were to me and why, rather than her just judging from my word that I was just being a weak little whiner, making a mountain out of a molehill–or convinced that I must be leaving out parts of the story to make myself sound like a victim. And them taking the bullying to our house would have made my mom take some damn notice–it’s one thing when they make my life hell at school, where she doesn’t see what happens and can make up any kind of thing she likes to dismiss my problems, but when they’re actually sending harassing or threatening letters to our house (either snail-mail or some kind of electronic method) she wouldn’t be able to ignore it or dismiss it as adolescent bullshit.
Seriously, one time after an ill-advised bid at Student Council (wherein I got ten votes total, which was publicly posted) I was walking to school with my mom (even in JHS, she was overprotective) and one of the really nasty bullies (accompanied by his chums, including “George”) started getting hateful toward me, calling me “Ms. Vice President” and mocking how few votes I got and what a worthless piece of unpopular shit I was, and my mother turned around and bombed the shit out of him, right there on the street, in public! That is, verbally, and when my mom goes off like that on someone they’re never the same again. The little bastard got a look on his face that was somewhere between embarrassed and pants-shittingly terrified. (remember the girl going of on the little bullies in “Tommy Boy”? My mom would totally do that.)Of course, all that taught them is to lay off when the momma bear is around, but it was still something.
None of that would help a kid who’s parents are neglectful or just plain not interested or concerned. Again, I was lucky, compared to some.
I was also in Catholic school, and noticed how these kids could, say, watch a show where an adorable little bunny who doesn’t fit in gets bullied, cry for the bunny, then come out of that room into the playground and make my life a living hell, so I can understand your sympathy with “all people are no damned good” perspective, whether it’s Catholic or otherwise. I ended up changing that to something more like “most people are stupid, tribal, easily-controlled, and have difficulty expanding their idea of humanity, empathy and ethics outside of carefully-defined, often self-aggrandizing in- and out- groups” eventually though. For example, the more people know a gay person, the harder it is for them to maintain their hatred (and support of bullying for) gay people, so people being brave enough to push these issues and make them impossible to ignore (and call out evil ideas and the people who promote them) does make a difference. (Why else is censorship such a popular idea among the powerful and their supporters?)
Nerd @ 369:
It is like MRA-style Neopolitan ice cream–instead of “chocolate, strawberry and vanilla”, you get “defensive, dismissive, and batshit”. We got the full compliment in this one thread!
Depends on how the OPINION is expressed. The strongest is “this is what I think, and this is the evidence (link to evidence) to back it up. But you just claimed misunderstanding, and told people what to do, namely watch the video of someone most of us avoid. Bad start, diminishing your OPINION to worthless.
Some folks, like MRA types, TF, and TAA think OPINION is everything, and trumps facts. You want to avoid joining/linking those groups/people.
@incandenza:
Poor timing. You immediately followed two bleeding asscracks and the audience was already a little angry at being sprayed with bloody feces.
I don’t think the assumption that no one bothered to listen to TJ’s argument is fair, also. That’s probably not winning you any points.
People can be motivated by considerations other than personal gain, you know.
Civility is irrelevant. It is the content of your words that mattered.
This entire thread, the OP and all the comments, exists ONLY because we have afforded TJ the privilege of having us spend our own limited time and energy to consider his point of view. If PZ hadn’t done that he would not have bothered to write the post at all.
We have considered his point of view far more than he deserves, thank you very much, and we repudiate it, and judge that the holder of that odious point of view, by dint of holding that point of view, is an asshole.
No he doesn’t.
Now if you should believe otherwise, you can provide some concrete examples, with links to provide proper context, and make your case.
So is smallpox. Do you vaccinate?
So is momentum. I take it you won’t object then, when the momentum of my fist smashes into your nose?
And I take it you are opposed to laws against murder, aren’t you? Death is just a natural process, isn’t it?
@Tethys Thank you for the civil response. On rewatching TJ’s video, I have come to the conclusion that he probably made the video largely as an effort to be contrarian, (admittedly, as he does quite often) and many of the things he said do not really hold up under scrutiny. For example, it would be ridiculous to assume that it is viable for every teen suicide in America to get equal media attention. It is also hypocritical of TJ to make the “starving children” argument (for reasons that are well explained by Coughlan, in the second link I posted).
I still believe there were valuable points made in the video though; his condemnations of the public school system and its inability to adequately deal with the problem of bullying I believe are spot on; I also believe he is accurate in saying that many people pretend to care about Amanda Todd’s death so they can feel good about themselves while doing nothing.
I made my first post largely as an emotional response–I am a longtime fan of TJ’s and I have a strong reaction to the word “sociopath;” I still do not believe TJ is one, (a sociopath, I mean, although he is certainly an asshole) although I have come to believe his actions and comments were largely wrong and I no longer condone (the majority of) them.
@ daniellavine I was not trying to imply that no one had listened to TJ’s argument; I was just trying to convince the people who hadn’t to give it a listen.
Which is why you need to take a deep breath before actually posting here. Reflexive unevidenced emotional responses do not go over well, as you found out the hard way. Your belief in TJ is still unevidenced, so *POOF* dismissed. Evidence your claims, as it helps here.
This use of the word “civil” makes you look like a tone troll. If you keep it up you will get hammered.
Do you really think people only pretend to care? I can accept that people probably don’t care a lot and they will quickly move on, but how can you say they are pretending?
And caring is not “doing nothing”. It may not be much but it is at least acknowledging the problem.
I suffered a personal tragedy just over 2 years ago. The most effective response for me, was for people to show, even just a little, care. I did not need them to donate to an applicable charity, or ring me up every day to see how I was coping. I got a small amount of relief just from people acknowledging I was suffering. I still have “friends”, 2 years later who have never mentioned it to me. This hurts.
If I was the parent of this girl, I think I would get some relief from people caring, even if not much.
However people making hurtful comments would further fuck me up.
What is a tone troll? I have never really posted on a blog of this sort before (or really any blog, for that matter) so I am unaccustomed to the format. I certainly picked a damn tough crowd to start on though.
incandenza, a tone troll is someone is someone who attacks the tone of an argument, rather than the substance. That is, greets a heartfelt statement with “Calm down!”
I was just trying to be nice with the word “civil.” I’m done arguing. You guys win. I acknowledge your positions as correct. I sincerely was not trying to be a troll. If I came across as one, I apologize.
incandenza
TAA has a history of sociopathic behavior, especially towards people of the female variety. *link below
You may be uncomfortable with the label, but it does not lessen the fact that by making that video TAA is providing a platform for misogynistic assholes to spout more shit about a girl who killed herself due to bullying by misogynistic assholes. Any valid point about bullying that comes out of his putrid little mind is absofuckinglutely irrelevant.
TAA self-immolates
As an ethical human, and atheist of the female persuasion, I refuse to support in any way misogynistic assholes who feel they are paragons of virtue and rationality due to their atheism.
Incandenza, the problem with tone trolling is that it is usually use to shut down debate.
That is, “why are you taking this so personally, you silly woman! I only said [sexist nonsense].”
@392 I will not touch that with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole.
We DO have them. They’re people like you.
Their arguments consistently fail to impress. Most of the time their arguments fail to actually be arguments.
Usually, as with yours, they reveal themselves to simply be badly-concealed demands that we shut up.
Awwww, c’mon! It’s just a few paragraphs if you skip the 1421 response comment thread. What a Grinch!
Seriously though, you really should educate yourself about why TAA is rightly considered to be a pompous, sexist, asshole, windbag across much of FtB.
He’s not a sociopath, he’s a contrarian. What ever society likes he hates, what ever society hates he likes. He got mad at people who were happy about Jerry Sanduski getting convicted. Hell, I’m sure he would befriend Jerry Sanduski given the chance.
incandenza:
Based on what?
Do either of you have some hidden information about the true intentions of many of the people who have reacted to Amanda’s death?
To have arrived at the position that you both have-that people are pretending to care about Amanda’s death-you and TJ must either be mind readers (I think we can toss that one out) or you’ve conducted a massive poll of the vast majority of people who heard about her tragic death.
mutterc:
I’m glad you cleared that up for me.
For a minute there, I was worried you might not be trying to blame the victim here.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
In case you have figured it out-that’s sarcasm.
Stop with the victim blaming.
Attempting to parse degrees of suffering is something that I have never understood. One night I was working with a coworker that had been on-shift for a really long time the day before. I said something about how I appreciated her help as she must be really tired. She agreed that she was, and I responded back about how I knew the feeling, as I have two very young children at home and one of them still has occasions where he doesn’t sleep through the night.She said something about how she shouldn’t talk about her level of tiredness, as it was lower than mine, and I responded back about how my being tired too doesn’t make her any less tired.
This is the key. I lived with an emotionally abusive alcoholic parent. Was I inherently less deserving of a better situation than a child beaten by their parent?
I don’t understand how anyone can reduce someone’s singular experience down to nothing on the basis that another person’s singular experience is worse. If my son and my daughter both scrape their knees, and hers is bleeding while his is not, it doesn’t make him cry any less.
No one man managed to ruin her life by deciding he was entitled to her body and seeking to find ways to control her.
adaml223, are you familiar with the concept of triage?
@John Morales
Triage as I understand it doesn’t apply here. Triage is prioritizing injuries to treat people efficiently and maximize the amount of help and resources for everyone. Yes it is extremely important in places like the ER or on a battlefield.
That is not what the “Amazing Atheist” was saying. He was saying that because hundreds of thousands of other people died on the same day, Amanda Todd’s death doesn’t deserve all the attention it is getting. He didn’t say that people who deal with worse situations should be helped first and Amanda Todd helped later, he said that because other people deal with worse situations, Amanda Todd’s death is no big deal and should be treated as such.
Let me get this straight
Either we must shed tears for her
Or
We lack humanity and we do nothing to help oh and lets not forget, a sociopath!
I think empathy lacking asshole is appropriate.
You do not have it straight, theresamiller.
The reason why the story of Amanda Todd has resonance is because her story is all too common. Many of the people who are reacting knows what this feels like, many have gone through something similar. And they would like to be able to end that kind of bullying.
Also, what is wrong with feeling disgust at a person, TAA, who mocks what this teen went through?
You do not understand what is going on at all.
I didn’t read every comment, but I read enough to see this is nothing more than a mutual masturbation society, and PZ sets the jerking order.
Did you all miss the point? Which was pretty, “white”, straight, western girl gets bullied to death, and gets a million likes on her Facebook, and 8 million views of her video, while Hispanic kid, or gay kid is ignored. Not to mention the 27000 brown kids starving to death every day.
I don’t blame you sheep, but I’m convinced PZ knows better. However he’s so eager to vilify TAA for his perceived misogyny that he’ll misrepresent him even when he’s pointing out a problem you so-called progressive social activists would ordinarily agree with.
No dear, you are missing the point. Which is that she gets fuck all from all the support she’s getting now that she’s dead.
Do you think you are helping non-white bullying victims by shitting all over a dead girl?
Again exactly the point TAA was making, and expanded on in his video. If you REALLY want to help people (rather than just make yourself feel better by showing how sympathetic you can be) then help living people who are currently being abused, or the 27,000 kids a day who are starving to death, and can easily be found. Saying “boo hoo, poor Amanda” helps no one.
You’re the sheep, baaing after your misogynic heros. We look at facts, like you’re an asshole lacking empathy.
In your OPINION. In ours, he made a non-empathetic ass out of himself. TAA doesn’t speak except for himself, and he is a twisted person.
No, her story had resonance because she was a pretty, straight, and white. As opposed to the Hispanic, and the gay boy who died as a result of bullying days earlier.
He wasn’t mocking, he was pointing out that her case deserved no more attention, or sympathy than the 100k people who died on the same day, or than the 27k children who starve to death in anonymity every day.
I don’t believe you, or PZ for that matter even know what empathy, or the term sociopath mean. If I, or TAA for that matter were sociopaths lacking empathy we wouldn’t give a fuck about Amanda Todd, or the 100k others who died that day.
The thing is our empathy isn’t limited to pretty, straight, white, females, who are already dead, and can no longer be helped.
Why do you come across why you don’t give a fuck about Amanda Todd, victim of sustained bullying until suicide? That is unempathathic behavior.
That’s not how you show that. You dismissed her, which shows a lack of empathy. You can’t claim empathy with your dismissal.
No one dismissed her. We give her equal billing with the other 100k, many who died a slow horrific deaths due to starvation, and disease, but I suppose if you feel no empathy for those deaths then equating them with hers would amount to dismissal.
It’s true that Amanda had a lot going for her: white, pretty, straight. It’s also true that the story resonates more because of that privilege, but it’s not because only privileged people matter. It’s because she was someone who can’t be easily dismissed as being inherently vulnerable. The protection of privilege that she had was not enough- what happened to her could happen to any girl.
Mocking a victim of bullying helps whom exactly? Saying that she brought it on herself or snickering about her being pretty didn’t help her helps?
It’s too late for Amanda, but pointing out her story does help others in her position.
It’s saddening that there is so many people who find the message
“hey, bullies, you killed this girl. Fuck you!”
something to argue about.
I would suspect there is much overlap between the people who disagree with your statement and the
“Women are human beings and all human beings deserve to be treated as human beings.”
bunch.
fify
I would think that the solution to the problem of certain victims not getting enough attention would be to simply bring more attention to them.
That is, if you’re not just a self-absorbed jackoff more concerned with scoring rhetorical points.
Yeah, you are just overflowing with empathy.
The fact that you think that our empathy is “limited” is entertaining. The fact that you think list “pretty” as if it were a factor here is telling. As is the fact that you list “female” as if it were just as much of a privilege as the being “straight” or “white” (or “pretty”, I guess).
Here’s the thing you fucking dimwit: When we are talking about Terrible Thing A, bringing up “well, Terrible Things B, C, and D are also Terrible, possibly moreso” is the very picture of lack of empathy. It is the most common way of dismissing the significance of Terrible Thing A. Do you really not see that, or are you just trying to be an argumentative asshole?
n qstn. Th rp vctm y clm ws thrtn by TJ. Hw dd y knw ths bv mntn ws rp? mn f smn tld y h sw flyng cw, d y blv t jst bcs sh sy t?
http://www.ytb.cm/wtch?v=G-qgRGjT6s Ths shld nswr why TJ pstd t.
Because rape and flying cows are comparably improbable, right?
Fuck right off.
Ah, another “don’t believe anything a womanz sayz” idjit. I’ll reflect that back as “I don’t believe anything it says”.
Just because he says “She consented.”, why would I believe it?
Men lie all the time: about the fish that got away, about their penis-size, about how much their car cost…
Don’t they?
Yes, men lie about those things. But women lie all the time about rape. Because something. Despite evidence that they don’t actually do that in any significant number. But that doesn’t matter. Because that is what lets entitled assholes sleep at night.
Men lie about women fucking consenting. Because it’s not like most of them would admit to rape.
You are a horrible human being. Because it would be okay to threaten someone who hadn’t actually been raped, with rape? Fuck off. It just adds horrible to do it to someone who’d been raped. And yes, because he said it.
I can relate to what Amanda Todd went through because I am pretty and straight. So good to know that you know me so well.
TJ is a great example of why people czant accept “I was just joking” as genuine EVER. So many of these dude bros do turn out to predatory assholes
mikepaps, pathetic liar, claims to have empathy for the 100k. Mikepaps, pitiful liar, does not. If mikepaps, inhuman liar, actually HAD real empathy for these others, mikepaps, odious liar, would be positively trying to elevate them to Amanda Todd’s level. He would NOT be, as he is, negatively trying to lower Amanda Todd to theirs. He and his even more pathetic idol TJ would NOT be complaining about the attention Amanda Todd’s story is getting. They would be using the attention Amanda Todd is getting to POSITIVELY raise awareness of these others. They would be saying that it is GOOD that there is so much empathy and attention for Amanda Todd, and look, here are some other people with troubles just as bad or worse than her, and here are their names and here are their stories, and here are some videos showing their stories, lets give them some empathy too.
Because empathy is not currency – it is not in fixed supply. One does not have to withdraw empathy from one thing to spend it on another. Empathy is a self-replicating entity, and the more it is primed for one thing, the more becomes produced to be available for other things.
At least that is the way it is with regular DECENT human beings, which evidently mikeapps, sociopathic liar, and TAA are not.
So no, mikeapps, transparent liar, does NOT have empathy for the 100k. They are not even human in his eyes, just a number and a statistic he can use as a weapon for his own rhetorical purposes, to garner attention for himself.
mikeapps, useless liar, also apparently has no empathy for Amanda Todd’s family, friends and loved ones, who may be hurt by how Amanda’s memory is being callously dismissed by shitheads like TAA.
mikeapps, lying asshole, also apparently has no empathy for all the people who have suffered similar torment as Amanda, who identify with her, and who may be triggered by seeing Amanda so callously dismissed.
mikeapps does not appear to even know what empathy means, and certainly has not demonstrated any evidence here of actually being capable of showing any, to anyone.
r y fckng dt? Tht’s nt my pnt. f sm gy tld y n rddt h wrks fr th FB. D y blv t? Sm t th bv mntn syng sh gt rpd, hw d y knw sh’s nt fckn’ rnd? bw t yr stpdty.
Even if someone lied about being raped TJ still showed he was fine capitalizing on rape to try to hurt someone. He’s happy piggypacking on a rapist’s work to advance his petty rage
Please, please drop the banhammer on the fucking troll. I do not want to sit here and listen to 9000 variations on “but she was totes lying about being raped.”
christtestter
Which “fucking idiot” are you addressing?
There are alot of us here.
Sh nvr gt rp. nd sh sd sh dd. Sh ctng s rp vctm mk m wnt t pnch hr n th fckng fc.Dsrv t b thrtn wth rp. Fckng ttntn whr. nd w gt whl lts f fckng dt t spply hr wth th ttntn sh wnts. Fck ll.
Citation needed….
cause you sound like such a stable reasonable person.
christtester:
Why does that matter?
What TJ said was disgusting and vile.
I have a question for you:
Do you know what rape is?
Do you know how much of a violation of another person it is?
Do you know how dehumanizing it is to have someone force themselves on you, denying your right to control over your body?
Imagine for a minute, deciding you were too tired to have sex one night, but your partner wants it anyways. Despite saying no, your partner goes ahead and forces him/herself on you. Imagine having an object thrust in your mouth, or your ass AGAINST YOUR WILL. Imagine feeling helpless to do anything about it. Imagine the feeling of someone violating you on a fundamental level. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine how you would feel after that?
Bodily autonomy is a fundamental right that all human beings have.
No one has the right to force themselves on another human being. To do so is the ultimate violation of self. To do so means that the rapist places their desires and needs about their victim. They don’t care about their victim. Their victim is nothing to them. Their victim is less than human.
Whether she was raped or not (and given that the incident of women lying about rape is so incredibly low, I’m inclined to believe a woman when she comes forward and says she’s been raped), to threaten someone with rape is disgusting, monstrous and evil. TJ is saying he wants someone to force their will upon that girl. He wants someone to violate that girl on a fundamental level.
He wants someone to take another human being and treat them like they are nothing more than an object to be used for the pleasure of another.
That’s disgusting.
You’re a horrible, wretched human being.
And TJ is worse than you are.
Stats about women who lie about rape:
Exactly. If TAA cared about world hunger, he’d make a video about that, and not against some other thing. Accusing people of focusing too much on A. Todd while focusing on her himself is a bullshit trick, but it fools people like mikepaps.
Tony–Queer Duck Overlord:
Exactly. But it can be said stronger.
A rapist regards a woman’s entire life, health, happiness and rights as less important than the way in which he gets his rocks off, once. He will traumatize someone forever, ruin their entire sex life for the rest of their life, rather than masturbate on one particular evening.
Rape apologists aren’t much better, and those who argue that some rape reports are false aren’t even thinking.
First, many rapes don’t ever get reported. If the phrase “actual rapes” is taken to mean “all rapes that take place”, even those that don’t get reported, the percentage of false claims diminishes even further. You can’t talk about false claims without considering rapes not claimed.
Second, arguing that a false accusation of rape against a man, is in any way equivalent to the trauma that a woman being raped goes through, is just vile. Allowing a single rape in order to avoid a man being falsely accused is wrong, and another case of men being held more valuable. But the ratio is not one to one, it is rather hundreds of women being raped for every man falsely accused.
Third, a man falsely accused of rape is innocent, and such an accusation is indeed a bad thing. But every woman who is raped is innocent, and has been far more wronged that a man falsely accused. Again, the man’s innocence is more valuable than a woman’s, to rape apologists.
Fourth, a man falsely accused of rape has only been accused. He may be proven innocent, and should be. If he is wrongly convicted, the failure is in the legal system, not in the accusation. Again, if a man is affected by the very accusation, a woman who has been raped is very often accused of deserving it, asking for it, or lying about it. Speaking of false accusations is again placing more importance on the man than the woman.
Fifthly, if a man is falsely accused of rape, his life is not ruined, in a way that compares to rape. He can prove his innocence, sue for recompense, or just move to another town. If he is wrongly convicted, sent to prison, and there he is raped, he might finally have a comparison. But, again, the percentages are still way out of balance, and the women are the victims by overwhelming majority, and they have no way to ever be un-raped.
Anybody who brings up the topic of false accusation of rape in a discussion of rape is just as selfishly twisted as a rapist. The occurrences are so infrequent, and the consequences so slight, that it is another case of ruining women rather than inconveniencing men.
If that mention person got hurt by the word that TJ type. She shouldn’t be on the internet in the first place. We got threaten by internet tough guy all the time.In the end they never do why they say.
If that mention person got hurt by the word that TJ type. She shouldn’t be on the internet in the first place. We got threaten by internet tough guy all the time.In the end they never do why they say. TJ don’t give a damn about world hunger and thing like that he already say in his video that he is a horrible person. The recent A.Todd video he never say he care. All he did is ask why did the public care so much more about A.Todd than others who die and kill themselves.
christtestter, it seems you think the way you write, very damn poorly. Seriously, dude, you shouldn’t be commenting if you can’t write, and you shouldn’t be on the internet if you can’t think.
You say that “she shouldn’t be on the internet in the first place”. And why the hell not? She has a right to be here, and a right to say what she thinks. So do you, and I have a right to call you on your nonsense.
The public, meaning all the people, care more about Amanda Todd than about others because more people have heard of her. She got publicity, which in turn got more publicity, and that got even more people to hear about her. It’s the way things happen, and it doesn’t make anything wrong or right.
Individuals of the public care more about Amanda Todd because she seemed to have a lot to live for … yeah, that relates to her being “white and pretty and rich”. See, if someone who happened to be “non-white and non-pretty and non-rich” were to kill themself, a lot of folks would assume it was because they were non-white and non-pretty and non-rich, with no other motivation needed. So it’s a little hard to sort out, but some people are more shocked by somebody like Amanda committing suicide, because it emphasizes how bad the bullying was.
But you can’t comprehend, so I’m going to bed.
Menyambal. English isn’t my first language but you should be able to understand I say that if the person who claim she got rape was actually hurt by what TJ got to say she shouldn’t be on the internet since she can’t handle this kind of hollow threats.
There are actually tons of people who kill themselves and is not non-white and non-pretty and non-rich. To name a recent one. Rachel Ehmke, this is the link for the article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/08/rachel-ehmke-13-year-old-_n_1501143.html
So, something horrible happened to that woman, so the logical consequence for you is that she has to restrict herself and doesn’t get to participate in large parts of life because it’s too much for people not to be assholes.
Yes, got it. Victim once, victim forever, just get off and die already. It’s like she consented to being triggered by being on the internet. She probably even consented to being raped by walking around with a vagina…
Go fuck yourself you victim-blaming asshole.
I see fuckwit rape apologist didn’t get the disemvoweling hint. He needs to shut the fuck up. His words won’t be around much longer due to terminal idiocy.
Ahh, so now it’s the “bitches lie” routine.
It’s not that it actually matters because you made a general point that people who got traumatized have then to remove themselve from general life because asking people not to be assholes is just too much.
But I understand your perspective: For such an utter asshole as you are it would be hard to change your ways.
You really are a total asshole. Those of us who are triggered do not always know what will trigger us. For me, certain smells give me panic attacks from my work in New York City after 9/11. I also get panic attacks, sometimes, when I read certain things about the Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts. Other things, including a certain type of camer and lense, trigger me. By your argument, I should close myself up in a small room and never leave in order to prevent triggers. Fuck you, asshole. I will not let that happen. I am a victim but that will not rule my life you disgusting piece of shit.
Of course. Anything so that rapists are not responsible for rape.
Why are people like christtestter so all-fired interested in minimizing rape, in blaming the victims, in telling victims they need to disappear? Chrissttestter, are you trying to protect your own self-image?
If I tell you that I got robbed a few months ago, are you going to call me a liar?
If I tell you that I have PTSD, are you going to call me a liar?
If I tell you that some asshole hit my car in a parking lot, are you going to call me a liar?
If I tell you that I got the shit beat of me in a bar, are you going to call me a liar?
Probably not. Those are things you would, most likely, believe because I am a man, and men don’t lie, right?
So when I tell you that I was repeatedly raped by a cub scout leader, do I suddenly become a liar because it was rape?
Why do you think she lied? What evidence can you present to support your assertion that she lied? Why do you not believe her? Be specific here. Is it because she is female and you know that women lie about being raped so they can get sympathy? so they can get men in trouble? so they can excuse an unwanted pregnancy?
Why is it so important, to you, that, when it comes to rape allegations, women can never be trusted to tell the truth?
Oh, and work on your reading comprehension, christtestter. I called you a disgusting piece of shit because you said that anyone who might get triggered should never be on the internet.
Ah, I see that human is not christtester’s native language, either. However, he seems quite fluent in asshole.
Because, well, it’s a very likely thing?
Like, 1 in 4 to 6 women in the USA?
Apart from that, it’s absolutely irrelevant to the fact that both TJ Kinkade and you are despicable wastes of skin. One tried to actively use his knowledge to hurt her while you defend him and blame her.
Just turn off the Caps and leave, you make people sick.
Yep, unlike anything you say. If you question what anybody else says, your own word is questioned.
Victim blaming seems to just come naturally to christtester. Pitiful indeed.
christtester:
Cupcake. Sugar. Fuckwit:
You shouldn’t be on the internet. Not until you stop spewing your foulness everywhere.
You actually think if a woman were raped or said she was raped, she shouldn’t be on the internet? Wow. Why do you have this idiotic belief? Women should be apple to participate in all walks of life just as fully as men do. They shouldn’t have to limit themselves simply because some fucker on the ‘net (named christtester) thinks he gets to tell women what they can and can’t do.
christtester:
Yes. We do believe her.
Satisfied?
Are you happy now that you’ve found out we’re human beings who care about others and believe someone when they say they’re raped?
christtester, you really shouldn’t be on the internet. You read poorly, you write poorly, and you don’t think at all. And, hey, if English isn’t your first language, you really shouldn’t be on the internet. It’s not for people like you, you don’t deserve to be here. And you certainly shouldn’t be in this discussion, it’s for people who speak English, not for people like you. But I’m being sarcastic to make a point, and I think you are lying about English being your second language, to excuse the fact that you are stupid. Why should I believe you? People like you always lie.
You keep asking why we believe women who say they were raped. Really, I don’t “believe” anything that anyone says. I assign it a level of probability, and work with it, and watch for indications about its level of reliability. You, on the other hand, seem to be one of those people who just believe or disbelieve, for whatever dumb reason, then act as if you were infallible and on a mission from God. You do not understand how much different from you intelligent people are.
As was said above, I have little reason to doubt a woman who says she was raped. I wouldn’t run over and kill the man she says raped her, but I would hold him until the police arrived.
You missed the point of something I said above, of course. Amanda Todd happened to get more publicity than other, similar cases, because that just happens. These days, someone getting on the news is itself a news story, and that odd fact becomes newsworthy, then things really blow up. Remember when Anna Nicole Smith died? It was a media circus for no damn reason. Amanda Todd’s story got more attention than other stories that got less attention. It happens. You arguing that somehow that means she didn’t deserve any attention is sick wrong. The entire nation should stop everything until every girl who is being bullied is safe—but we can’t and we don’t, so we give attention to what we can, and do what we can. For you to be criticizing us for caring in a way that doesn’t fit your standards is sick wrong, because you are excusing bullies and rapists, while bitching at people who are doing their best.
English may not be your first language, but compassion isn’t always our first language. We make mistakes, sometimes, but we mean well. Give us a break, and give us a hand.
Or get the fuck off the internet.
Was she rape? All of you sound like she really did with a name like “IcumwhenIkillmen”. When I mean by she shouldn’t be on the internet in the first place is that if she wasn’t rape and got hurt by that hollow threats.
Help I’m responding to a moron!
Whoosh.
Where did you get that idea?
Who says we don’t?
She made a video which was widely disseminated.
She is now – that was Menyambal’s point.
Another post not to be believed at all by christtester. He won’t take a womanz word for something important, so intelligent people won’t take his word for anything. Presumption of liar and bullshitter in full force.
The past tense of the word ‘rape’ is ‘raped’.
I had no idea that “rape” was a person.
I don’t care about the language issues, I do care about the horrible blockquoting.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
nms:
christtestter
hahahahahahahhaaha
I doubt the person named “IcumwhenIkillmen” was rape because of the name.
I doubt that christtestter is either christ or a testicle.
Because of the name.
Sure.
Too easy.
@450. christtestter
No, you really don’t have to say it at all, asswipe. Also I’m guessing you’ve no idea how big a number a billion really is.
You don’t believe her and don’t think we should?
*WHY?*
Let me guess, sexism and buying into victim blaming bullshit on your part?
Yes. If someone tells me something unless I have very good bloody reason to assume their lying (like say the person telling me X is Mitt Rmoney!) then I’m going to accept what they say.
Wouldn’t you?
I strongly suggest you read and really consider what #451. Ogvorbis: broken and cynical wrote and answer his fucking questions if you can.
I’d also like to nominate that comment (#451. Ogvorbis: broken and cynical) for a New Molly Award if I may.
PS. This thread is still going? Wow.
@ ^ Make that :
Yes I do believe her. If someone tells me something unless I have very good bloody reason to assume their lying then I’m going to accept what they say.
chigau (棒や石):
vaiyt:
For fuck’s sake learn how to fucking blockquote correctly.
As anybody who understands language will tell you, when you doubted what she said. The implication that she lied was there. And you lie about not saying you said she lied. What a MF liar and bullshitter you are.
christestter:
Would you be so kind as to answer my questions up in #451?
In other words, a man claiming a crime isn’t doubted. A woman on the otherhand…Fuckwitted misogynist loser.
But my claim that I was repeatedly raped by a scoutmaster? That you would doubt? Why? Because being raped automatically means that you have to question whether the crime took place? Why do you think her claim that she was raped must be questioned? What evidence can you present to support your assertion that she might not be telling the truth? Why do you not believe her? Be specific here. Is it because she is female and you know that women lie about being raped so they can get sympathy? so they can get men in trouble? so they can excuse an unwanted pregnancy?
Why is it so important, to you, that, when it comes to rape allegations, women can never be trusted to tell the truth?
The key about whether to believe what someone tells is about credibility.
If a woman was to tell me she has been raped or sexually assaulted, then I will believe her. Rape and sexual assault are common, so it is quite credible that has indeed been raped or sexually assaulted.
If she was to add that the rape or sexual assault had been carried out onboard an alien spaceship, she becomes a little less credible and I left thinking either there was no rape or sexual assault, or that she has issues that make her especially vulnerable to those men who look for vulnerable women to take advantage of.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
:
christtestter:
Why are you willing to believe, with no evidence, that I got beaten up in a bar but will immediately question a woman who says she was raped? Why is it so important, to you, that, when it comes to rape allegations, women can never be trusted to tell the truth?
One doesn’t question the word of another unless you think they are lying. All misogynists and rapists play these word games, people who see women as people don’t. That tells us what you are. Now, why would you doubt the word of every woman, and not that of any man? The only answer is abject misogyny, lying, and bullshitting.
christtestter:
Earlier I asked that you answer my questions up in #451. And you answered two of the questions.
Which are, oddly, the two things on that list that have not happened to me.
My house has never been robbed but you have no reason to doubt me on that.
I probably do have PTSD (panic attacks, nightmares, the whole works) from working down in New York City after the terrorist attacks back in ’01.
My car has been hit in a parking lot (but, then again, that’s way too common). Yet you didn’t even mention that one.
I have never been in a bar fight in my life. Never been in a fight that involved alcohol. But again, since I am male and that is a manly thing to do, you don’t doubt me.
I was raped, repeatedly, but a cub scout leader. You didn’t mention that one, did you? What is it about rape and mental health issues that causes you to immediately doubt the veracity of the one making the claim? Are these things, that, to you, show weakness and anyone who is weak should be doubted? What is it about rape that makes it so important to you that rape victims be doubted?
Matt Penfold:
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
christtestter
When you type the second <blockquote> you must put a / in front of the word blockquote; </blockquote>
That way you won’t look like a complete idiot.
The content of your posts will take care of that.
Nerd:
Hateful troll:
Yep. Word games.
Alternately, it could hit the prominent “Preview” button before submitting the comment and find out that something is wrong with its formatting.
Of course that would require introspection, forethought, and a willingness to self-edit. None of which this particular troll seems capable of.
Utterly pathetic.
chigau @490:
Oh that ending zinger was totes awesome!
christtester:
What other areas do you employ this “doubt”?
When a friend tells you they won $100 in a scratch off ticket, do you doubt them?
When a coworker says they’re looking forward to their 2 weeks paid vacation, do you doubt them?
When a family member says their car was broken into, do you doubt that?
When a child has a black eye and tells you it’s from a fight with a bully, do you doubt the child?
If you’re going to be hyperskeptical about claims, you really need to be consistent across the board. If you’re not, you’re displaying your sexism for all the world to see. Well, actually you displayed that the minute you showed “doubt”.
There’s nothing remotely reasonable about doubting a woman when she says she’s been raped*. Aside from being an empathetic human being, exactly *how* is someone supposed to provide you with the standard of evidence necessary for *you* to accept that a woman has been raped? Do you have to follow her to the police station and watch her write up a report? Do you have to see the results of the rape kit? Do you have to follow her to court if she chooses to sue the guy?
Exactly *how* would a woman prove to *you* (and all the other assclowns out there that get hyperskeptical about rape, but *nothing* else) that she’s been raped?
Have you ever taken a critical eye to how fucking stupid it is that a woman should have to prove to you that she’s been raped?
*especially when you look at the statistics of rape and see that the percent of false rape charges is incredibly low. Factor that in with the number of women who *do* get raped, and you’ll see the vast majority of the time (anywhere from 90%-98%) women are not falsely accusing someone of rape. So there’s no reason to doubt them.
Yep, and you sound like a rapist or rape apologist for doing so. YOU EITHER TREAT THE CLAIMS OF WOMEN THE SAME WAY YOU WANT YOUR CLAIMS TAKEN, OR YOU ARE A MISOGYNIST. Otherwise, you would just shut the fuck up about the whole thing. But then, that requires honesty, and integrity, which you so obviously lack.
@christtestter, 475.
You liken the possibility of her rape being true with flying pigs. Don’t bullshit me.
How many time must I say this? I doubt her or not believe her according to some of you because of the name, and what harm do I done when I doubt some random girl on the internet? Do rape survivors around the world suddenly die?
You either accept her word, as you would have your word accepted, or you are a misogynist fuckwitted idjit who differentiates acceptance of claims based upon the gender of those making the claims. Which means you are sexist and a misogynist by definition. What part of logic don’t you understand? Oh, the part where you don’t treat all people the same way based on their plumbing….
christtestter:
You have no problem believing a pseudonymous male who claims to have been beaten up in a bar (I wasn’t, by the way, but you believed that with no effort at all) but will not believe the claim of a pseudonymous woman that she was raped.
Rape victims are very unlikely to report their rape because we are afraid that we will be blamed or we will not be believed. To spend so much energy claiming that this particular woman is lying (and yes, when you claim to doubt her story, you are accusing her of lying) gives support to rapists who claim that their victim is lying, gives support to those who deny rape really does happen with alarming and very frightening frequency, and contributes to a culture in which rape is considered a joke. Your claim that this pseudonymous woman is lying directly contributes to the continuation and propagation of rape culture. This has been explained over and over again on this blog and in myriad internet sites so I doubt your veracity in making this claim honestly.
In some cases, yes. They are killed by their rapists who are enabled, partially, by those who claim that women routinely lie about rape. I was lucky (I guess) in that, when my cub scout leader raped me repeatedly, involved me in child pornography, and manipulated me into hurting others (for which I still cannot forgive myself (but what do you care, right? rape victims are to be doubted)) but I was never in fear for my life. When my sister was raped, she was choked repeatedly, had her arm, ankle, four ribs and jaw broken, and suffered a severe concussion and she was in fear for her life. The men who committed these rapes knew they could, in all probability, get away with it without the crime even being reported because there are so many people in the world like you who make the claim, vehemently and consistently, that rape victims are liars.
Why is it so important to you to believe that women routinely lie about rapes? Are you protecting your conscience?
CL,either answer this question, or fade into the bandwidth…
What makes a random girl on the internet different from a random girl off the internet?