That had to hurt


Michael Nugent has compiled some examples of ‘nasty pushback’ against some atheist/skeptic feminists on the Internet. I found it painful to read, and could only wade in through the first half dozen — I think I was the target of some of them. I don’t envy Michael the effort of dredging them up.

Comments

  1. says

    Yeah, it was a bit shocking – I don’t visit the Slymepit ever, so I don’t really see it all concentrated in one place like that. I’m guessing that #3

    But for her victim ploy [named person] needs to believe that there are people who want her to be raped, and all her little smelly-skepchick-snatch-sniffers are more than happy to magic them into being in their own tiny shiny minds.

    is about me, WRT Thunderf00t’s anonymous commenter who said he would track me down and rape me, which the slimers maintain was actually me. Of course Tf00t did nothing. But the sad thing is, it could be someone else. *sigh*

  2. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    But…but Pitchguest is making the argument that equally repellent words can be found at Pharyngula. So it is all alright!

  3. Susan says

    I posted over there, challenging Gemmer to show where he was called a rapist here (directly,) where his family was insulted, and how he was mocked for his interracial relationship. I know the latter could not have happened on Pharyngula, and that he was never directly called a rapist.

    I also noted that Pitchguest would have to go back years to find equivalent remarks on Pharyngula, which the commentariat abandoned. These things are not only tolerated but welcomed in the Slymepit.

    Sure enough, PG came up with stuff from years ago. Predictable.

    And I don’t agree with Nugent AT ALL that any of those comments were acceptable as jokes or satire. He should never have conceded that much, as it now gives the ‘pitters an excuse to cling to.

    I’m not going back, not having the stomach for abuse that other women get. But I’d be curious to know if Gemmer comes up with the “proof” of the comments he claimed to receive, or if he can justify his being banned because he is a “white man.” Sheesh.

  4. Susan says

    Oh, and you notice that the ‘pitters simply claim that “we all know how bad the comments are over at Pharyngula” without giving any examples–recent ones, that is?

  5. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Edward Gemmer was mocked for being stupid. He was not called a rapist.

    What a pathetic example of humanity.

  6. Susan says

    Sorry, I may have made a mistake and am not in the mood to go back and check. It may not have been Gemmer who said he was banned because he was a white man. If it wasn’t him, I apologize.

  7. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    plus, come on, some of those were jokes!
    don’t you get it?

    I hope your tongue was all the way through your cheek ChaAs…

  8. Susan says

    Ugh. I think I read most of that thread. Am I allowed to call him stupid?

    And sorry, I still can’t figure out how to do quotes. I am not very blog literate.

  9. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    (blockquote)Quote.(/blockquote)

    Replace the brackets with the symbols you see below and you are good to go.

    And, yes, you are allowed to call him stupid. You have all the proof you need.

  10. omnicrom says

    I’m so glad Pitchguest over there found a post linking to a bunch of examples from over two years ago, I guess that proves that both sides are bad as the other and there’s nothing wrong with the slymepit right? Yeah I’m gonna have to go with false equivalency for 600 Alex.

  11. Susan says

    Goodbye Enemy Jane, (off topic)

    I’m sorry, but “replace with symbols you see below” … I see lots of HTML tags but am not sure how they fit in with what you wrote. I am really, really bad at this.

  12. throwaway, promised freezed peach, all we got was the pit says

    <blockquote>Stuff to quote</blockquote>

    Exactly as above.

  13. says

    Type what Janine said but use the less-than and the greater-than sign instead of the left and right parentheses. It should show up as a blockquote if you Preview.

  14. omnicrom says

    Oh that’s nice. Steersmen, over in the other thread is using lots and lots of complicated words to say that all the nasty words are a result of Pharyngula. Yes, how horrible it is for the feelings of one blogger to create a massive vitriolic hatefest somewhere else entirely.

  15. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    I’ve had my say over there. There’s not really much else to do but point out that trying to equate individual viciousness at Pharyngula to the Slymepit’s ongoing co-ordinated hate campaign aimed at silencing people who want to make the atheist community more diverse is a profoundly dishonest move.

    But there’s no way they’ll ever admit to that.

  16. zhuge says

    I imagine I was the one who “called him a rapist”. I called him a rape apologist and said that him being a rapist trying to cover-up or deny his crimes was the only other interpretation of his statements I could fathom. I also apologized and withdrew the statement. My point was to demonstrate how fucking creepy he sounded, that these were the only things that would even make sense to me as explanations for his behvaviour. But I admit it may not have been the most tactful way of expressing the thought.

    But if he wants to believe I called him a rapist that’s fine. It’s not true. I would, however, call him a sexist irrational obtuse obsessive dumbass fuckface with the intellectual capabilities of a tadpole and honesty of a Republican.

  17. mythbri says

    To clarify and support zhuge’s statement at #23, Edward Gemmer was pretty much called a rapist, but that was in a thread over at Crommunist’s place – not Pharyngula. And it was after Gemmer derailed two threads about sexism and victim-blaming to say that maybe we should focus on educating young women if we want to prevent rape. You know, something new and innovative and exciting that NO ONE IN THE HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE WORLD has EVER TRIED. I thought that the accusation of trying to justify a past crime was going too far, and I said so. The only thing Edward Gemmer proved himself guilty of was being an insensitive asshole, particularly when he demanded specifics from someone who shared the story of their rape, and then refused to apologize for disbelieving his story.

    And he wasn’t mocked for having an interracial marriage/relationship. He was mocked for thinking that having such a relationship made him immune to saying racist things.

  18. mythbri says

    Oh, and that compilation that Michael Nugent put together…

    I’m happy to be a nobody, if being a nobody is the price I pay for not being the target of such filth. It only increases my admiration for the people who deal with that shit on a daily basis.

  19. zhuge says

    Mythbri, just to add one more thing, it wasn’t just the victim blaming that set me off, or even the comments where he utterly dismissed someone’s assault and disbelieve them, but it was that combined with his view that rapists should be less punished that so infuriated and perplexed me. I’ve seen lots of victim blaming, but rarely with so much of a pro rapist position attached. But he’s clearly a twit.

  20. Susan says

    Thanks for all the information/clarification of block quoting.

    And Janine, I’m sorry for getting your name wrong. I spend all day at the computer writing, and sometimes I see/type words wrong.

  21. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Thus speakth Pitchguest:

    Stacy – continuing with the revisionism that the ‘Pit started out as a forum of hate. Two things: No, it fucking isn’t, and no, it’s not its raison d’etre. Bugger off with that. Are you frightened of actually supporting your claims with proof? There is plenty of backstory to the creation of the ‘Pit, *if* you care to look. And for crying out loud, the Slymepit is *not against the equality for women*, hence it would *not be akin to a racist forum fighting against racial prejudice.* You’re doing my fucking head in. Sort it out.

    Just ignore the people in the pit with connections to AVfM. And ignore the videos made by Slymies that are featured at AVfM.

    Or am I being unfair?

  22. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Oops! I think most of the readers can figure out which are my words.

  23. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Thus speakth Pitchguest:

    Wowbagger – Yes. Photoshopping. That bit of harassment. But you lost me where you once again make shit up about the Slymepit. Like, for example,

    where’s the alleged photoshopped “porn” on the ‘Pit?

    where’s the fat-shaming, racism and *trans shaming on the ‘Pit?

    I must be blind or otherwise visually impaired, because I haven’t seen any of that in the close to five months period I’ve been there.

    He is truly oblivious. Yet he maintains that EllenBeth Wachs is abusive and hateful.

  24. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Justicar has shown up to do more obfuscating. Seriously, he does so much handwaving I’m in fear for his wrist joints.

  25. says

    Gemmer is a dungeon dweller? figures. anyway, he’s been making the same deeply obtuse arguments at my blog, insisting that oppressed people totes have a duty to explain everything to the privileged. tedious.

  26. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Jadehawk, when Gemmer was here, he argued that if this abuse of women were ended, men like him would be fair game.

    He was not even at Pharyngula for a week yet the tedium was almost as notable as the stupidity.

  27. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    That Justicar! What a joker!

    Jafafa Hots:

    Very well then.

    Gals, do not leave a bar at 4 in the morning, invite someone back to your hotel room and then take no for answer before harmlessly going on your way. It would be wrong of you.

    (gosh, I hope that doesn’t leave me open to a charge of trying to tell women when, where and with whom they are permitted to speak in public)

  28. says

    I had a rather unpleasant interaction with Justicar on twitter a while back.

    In that interaction I referenced the “too ugly to rape” comment someone had made, and attributed it to the wrong person.
    Justicar and that wrong person piled on me for being a liar.
    I did some investigating and found that I was wrong – the quote was “too ugly to molest,” and it was not uttered by the person I accused.
    Instead the person I accused had merely retweeted it and laughed and AGREED with it.

    That is very different! I am not to be trusted!

  29. says

    I kind of lost interest in the comments there when I saw this:

    Out of curiosity, is anyone on the FTB side willing at this late date to admit that the guy in the elevator didn’t do anything wrong? Wowbagger? Sally? PZ?

  30. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Justicar could use his comments on that thread to qualify for a PhD in theology, and then give lessons to the hagfish on how to be slippery.

  31. says

    it’s never going to stop being about dudes resenting the suggestion that cornering people clearly not interested in sex in a small space with no exit in the middle of the night and propositioning them is kinda creepy and maybe should be avoided, is it

  32. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Yeah, it’s turned into an asshole lovefest over there. They’re very conspicuously avoiding the idea that not all insults are created equal, though, so I’ve thrown a pretty blunt cat amongst those particular disingenuous pigeons* – I can almost guarantee they’re going to dig themselves deeper trying to get out of that one.

    *Why yes, I do mix my own metaphors. Why do you ask?

  33. says

    I wonder what Michael Nugent will feel he has learned from this experiment?
    I’m interested to see what any follow-up post might be.

  34. says

    I wonder what Michael Nugent will feel he has learned from this experiment?

    Knowing Mick just a tiny bit I would suspect that he did not mean this as an experiment, but rather a sincere attempt at a dialogue with Vacula, with a vague hope in mind that something productive and useful may come out of it if it is carried out in the open and not in private.

    Personally, I have no such hopes when it comes to pitters. They’re a bit like North Korea, they have no interest at all in peace talks, because then their whole raison d’etre would go up in smoke. Without an enemy, they have and are nothing.

  35. strange gods before me ॐ says

    raison d’etre

    I actually feel just a little bit disappointed when longtime Pharyngulites spell this “correctly.”

  36. says

    I actually feel just a little bit disappointed when longtime Pharyngulites spell this “correctly.”

    Lacks the accent on the e, but I couldn’t be bothered to look up the code.

  37. Ermine says

    @#47:

    *snicker!* Yeah, I was wondering why nobody’s been using raisin dates either.

    Man, they don’t get more obtuse than that, do they? I gotta say, I have never before seen such a foaming lot of hypocrites before in my life. It’s really sad to see that they’re “my own people”, the skeptics, the freethinkers, the free-from-religion’s-shackles – And just as pigheaded, bigoted, and mindlessly hateful as the religious. *sigh*

  38. Stacy says

    with a vague hope in mind that something productive and useful may come out of it if it is carried out in the open and not in private.

    Personally, I have no such hopes when it comes to pitters.

    I can’t speak for Nugent, obviously, but my take–and certainly my hope–is that revealing the slime to the greater community will help to marginalize them further. Sunlight, disinfectant, all that.

    Yeah, I know. A girl can dream, can’t she?

    I think I should stop commenting there; I want to counter their lies yet at the same time I sorta feel as though too much engagement takes them more seriously than they deserve.

  39. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Stacy wrote:

    I think I should stop commenting there; I want to counter their lies yet at the same time I sorta feel as though too much engagement takes them more seriously than they deserve.

    Likewise. You can only provide creationists with as much evidence for evolution – er, pitters with as many explanations for why their long-term campaign of misogynistic & bigoted abuse against specific atheists ≠ sporadic viciousness between individuals before you realise it’s denial, not ignorance you’re up against.

    At this point, though, there should be enough examples of their unabashed scumbaggery over there that anyone who didn’t already know will have a better idea, particularly when their arguments went from ‘We don’t do that!’ to ‘We only do it because they do it at Pharyngula’ to ‘All insults are equal’.

    I’m surprised none of them has come out with ‘but my wife’s a woman, and she finds it funny!’ yet. That was NoelPlum99’s schtick, wasn’t it?

  40. thumper1990 says

    Wow… I couldn’t even read the whole thread of examples from the pit. That’s what it’s likee over there? I’m glad I never visit.

  41. strange gods before me ॐ says

    I see the “poison c***” comment is being defended over there. The discussion lacks some context: he was also called

    He/she

    She/he

    S/h/it

    by three different people, because he’s genderqueer and that’s how pitters disagree with a genderqueer person.

  42. says

    I was reading the examples on Michael Nugent’s post and I got uncomfortable. How can anyone be immersed in that kind of speech and not think something’s wrong with it? Are the Pitters just so blind and deaf to their privilege that they tune out that kind of language? Doesn’t anyone there think “you know… we really are saying some pretty nasty stuff, maybe we should tone it back a few clicks?”

  43. Pteryxx says

    Doesn’t anyone there think “you know… we really are saying some pretty nasty stuff, maybe we should tone it back a few clicks?”

    If they do, they don’t stick around for long; so the pit self-selects for those who tolerate and enjoy the hateful shit speech. Probably normalizes it, too.

  44. says

    The best argument the ‘pitters over there have seems to be that the Slymepit is an anarchy where anyone can say anything, and no one is responsible for anything except their own words, whereas FTB comments are (somewhat) moderated and commenters subject to banning. Therefore a little nastiness on FTB weighs more heavily than a lot on the Slymepit, and PZ shares the moral taint when someone here says something reprehensible. Or something.

    I’ve never read the Slymepit — do they ever discuss anything of substance there? Or is it just a whine/hate fest for FTB, Skepchicks and How Feminism Is Poisoning Atheism?

  45. says

    The best argument the ‘pitters over there have seems to be that the Slymepit is an anarchy where anyone can say anything, and no one is responsible for anything except their own words, whereas FTB comments are (somewhat) moderated and commenters subject to banning.

    And they’re wrong. Example of both moderation (comment edited) and a threat of banning on the slimepit (thanks to another pharyngula poster whose name I forgot):
    http://slymepit.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=243&start=3600#p59269

    The difference is not one of whether there is a line that you cannot cross or not, it is a question of where different spaces draw the line.

  46. saukko says

    I disagree with Michael’s blogpost, if any of those were intended as joke, where is the punchline, at what part I’m supposed to laugh at?

    And reading through comment section made my opinions about these guys even lower than they were.

  47. says

    Eamon Knight @56

    Well, I’m new to paying attention to that particular hive of scum and villainy, but this recent thread of theirs trying to be about cataloging the supposed “hate” from us suggests a bit of a monomaniacal focus, a complete echo chamber of misogyny with little “anarchic” variety, and a complete lack of understanding what hate looks like (I think my favorite part is where we were apparently acting like scared baboons filled with hate for using the terms PUAs and MRAs).

    Overall, the whole character of that brief glimpse reminds me a lot of the MRAs I see highlighted on Manboobz. Similar bizarre double standards where their open rape and murder threats are considered equivalent or less important than frustrated profanity from their victims, same demand that the feminists “clean up their spaces” first that has the feminist space on the defensive, same monomaniacal focus on those few sites that call them out for their hateful behavior, same obsession with “doxxing” the commenters of said sites in order to intimidate them, same obsession with rape threats and borderline stalking in order to discourage certain posters feeling comfortable online, same whiny defensiveness about “free speech” meaning “freedom from critique or consequences”, and even same attempts to claim that being noted as a misogynist, a creepily specific apologist about rape, or otherwise called a creep or an asshole is the “real hate speech” and retroactively justifies the behavior that was already going on before the supposed “inciting incident”.

    Based on that, I would suspicion that the two communities probably have an unfortunate amount of overlap in that regard. Either that or misogynist tactics in attempting to silence feminists online really doesn’t change from community to community.

  48. says

    Oops, forgot about the blanket ban of comments that link to Slymepit. Ended up losing a comment noting that based on an attempted post of theirs to argue that “nuh uh, FtB are the real haters”, there seems to be a monomaniacal focus and complete lack of self-awareness that was eerily similar to the sort of behavior of the MRAs quoted by Manboobz or the regular trolls they receive. Which led me to note the probability of strong overlap between those communities and the universality of misogynist backlash against feminist participation in online spaces in general.

    So… er, yeah. Whoops.

  49. jackiepaper says

    Ed Germer is complaining of how he was treated?
    That’s rich.

    He was absolutely awful to a rape victim. He was a dedicated rape apologist who suggested that lighter sentences for sexual assaults would somehow lessen sexual assaults. He was rude and incredibly dense.

    Now I can add “dishonest” to that list of descriptors.

  50. Rich Woods says

    @Marcus Ranum #60:

    “horse overs”

    Yeah, we’re seeing a lot of those in the UK right now.

  51. Owlglass says

    Some context and perspective.


    Term............. FTB General....Pharyngula
    Fucking.......... 15,200.........6,760....
    Asshole............7,870.........4,490....
    creationist........5,900.........2,880....
    misogynist.........5,220.........1,900....
    You are a moron....2,560.........2,200....
    Scum...............2,300...........916....
    Fuckwit............2,020........ 1,300....
    Fuck off and die...1,110...........787....
    Racist scum..........861...........530....
    Fuck Sideways........581.......... 395....
    Die in a fire........165.......... 112....

    Method: take this link and replace with whatever term you like to see the actual results, and remove “pharyngula” obviously to see results of this blog only. Keep in mind that dublicates (quoted from some else) are possible as well as some special contexts. But the results are so plentiful and illustrative. I almost feel sorry for posting this, but let’s keep some honesty and perspective.

    the porcupines are still located to the left of the door as you leave. Grab on. Shove it where it will do the most good (to the entire world), and then go die in a fire. Slowly. —–source

    Go fucking die in a fire, Lion. And, no, I am not fucking kidding. –source

    And so on.

  52. Susan says

    Owlglass, where are the gendered insults on Pharyngula? Even “dick” has been retired. Where are the attacks on women? And how far back did you go to find “Die in a Fire” and “Porcupine” which are no longer used on Pharyngula, when “cunt” and “bitch” and threats of rape still occur among the mildew crowd every day, here and now?

    I’m sorry, (not) but moron and fucking and asshole and scum are all-purpose slurs, not directly aimed at one gender or less privileged class of people. There is simply a world of difference.

  53. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Owlglass, I am so fucking happy you are willing to pass judgment upon me without know the history with Lion.

    At least you gave me the final reason not to give a flying fuck about anything coming from you.

    You head is crammed so deeply up your own ass, you are a human ouroboros.

  54. Illuminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle says

    And how far back did you go to find “Die in a Fire” and “Porcupine” which are no longer used on Pharyngula, when “cunt” and “bitch” and threats of rape still occur among the mildew crowd every day, here and now?

    C’mon, he dreged up comments from a year ago! neatly and conveniently ignoring how everything he quoted has since been very publically reconsidered, and abandoned.

    I mean, sure, the slimepit is actively and continously bigotted to this very day, but Pharyngula had a few non-bigotted, but not very friendly memes a year ago. That’s TOTALLY the same thing! no, in fact it’s worse because reasons!

    sidebar: I, personally, miss PYGMIES + DWARVES.

  55. says

    Owlglass, why even bother including “misogynist”, “creationist”, and “racist scum” in the first place, unless you are trying to make your “perspective” seem ridiculous?

  56. Owlglass says

    Abusive swearing is “just” that, and takes a number of forms (including genitals, “dirty” body parts and so on–dirty is in quotes for a reason, thank you), and is intended to create an emotional reaction. It has little to do with political agendas. Pinker also noted the “euphemism threadmill” that goes with words like retard, moron, mentally challenged and so on. But the point there is, that moron also has an eugenics context. I’m trying to be somewhat fair, so here is Chris Clarke recently commenting that he hates the term “moron”.

    Steven Pinker wrote: First, words are not thoughts. Despite the appeal of the theory that language determines thought, no cognitive scientist believes it

    The words themselves are no good way of indicating false ideologies. Hence, the whole thing collapses. It is thus a more balanced and rational stance to be against abusive swearing, because it is abusive in general. I don’t or try not to use insults for that reason.

    Also consider the difference between: “Person is an asshole” and “Person is a racist”. One is primarily aimed at angering the target person and generally considered an opinion, wheres the other is intended to defame a person in the eyes of other people and can be viewed as “a matter of fact” claim, because groups who identify as racists actually exist. The latter is much more severe and considered a crime in some countries (so called crime against honor in Sweden and Germany for example), and punishable with up to five years in prison! Trolling is typically in the former category, intended to anger the target person, even when photoshopping and or making songs is used.

    66, Goodbye Enemy Janine wrote: Owlglass, I am so fucking happy you are willing to pass judgment upon me without know the history with Lion. At least you gave me the final reason not to give a flying fuck about anything coming from you.

    I didn’t, just grabbed two random examples and didn’t pointed out your name (but had to provide a source). You also weren’t really on the edge of considering what I write so nothing changes anyway.

  57. says

    Owlglass @62

    So… you’re point is that we’re foul-mouthed uncouth fuckers? Well, no shit, Sherlock and if this was the Civility Olympics where the style of your words mattered more than their character, maybe you’d have a shitlicking deity-fucking goddamn good point to make.

    Except it’s not. It’s about the substance of the invective. And that’s the thing. Every time professional misogynists of any community try and argue that feminists are the real meany-poopyheads, they invariably cite frustrated exasperated incivilities. Things like “fuck off” or “what the fuck is wrong with you”.

    When feminists or people with eyes cite their haters, it is invariably something larger. Organized harassment campaigns, rape threats, dehumanizations of targets based on minority-group membership, dehumanization of target in order to justify invective, calls to violence.

    More importantly, in the real world effects of the two languages, the number of feminist-identified people who have gone on to kill what they saw as misogynist forces is so small it is counted on one hand and endlessly traded in misogynist spaces as proof of the villainy of all feminists, whereas the number of misogynist-community-identified people who have gone on to kill what they saw as feminists is so many that most feminists have long since stopped counting.

    Thee contexts, mixed with the contexts of the one side’s vastly different level of harassment, focus, stalking, and outright hate in content compared to the other, makes any claim of parity or the other side’s villainy so transparently deviated from reality that it only makes sense as a deliberate self-delusion or an intentional means of harassment.

    -Cerberus

    P.S. Fuck mothering, shit skipping damnations.

  58. Owlglass says

    Screwed up the links again (I always include a wrong letter so they show correctly in preview). I will provide them, once I cobbled them together.

  59. Owlglass says

    Here we go:
    1) Steven Pinker explains abusive swearing. I believe it was in this video. There are some others by him, and should you be really interested in the topic, consider watching them.

    2) Here is the link to Chris Clarke’s comment on why he hates “moron”.

    3) And the PDF to the paper where I found that Steven Pinker quote I added in 69.

  60. says

    Owlglass @69

    Really?

    You’re really arguing that it is worse to be correctly idenitified as a complicit member of a system of oppression and bigotry by one’s demonstrated actions than to be a victim of that hate and bigotry and call someone out on it.

    What shit pissing planet is that fucking crap supposed to make sense beyond the Calvinball lands that misogynist trolls apparently belong to?

    You’re efforts to insult our intelligence seem to have gone awry because of a small damn problem between frontal bone and cervical vertebra.

  61. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Screwed up the links again (I always include a wrong letter so they show correctly in preview). I will provide them, once I cobbled them together.

    Don’t bother. You have no point except in your own head. You can’t convince us you are right, when you aren’t being truthful by twisting facts, and including that which shouldn’t be included. So, why even bother? Except you give us something to point and laugh at for how not to make your argument in a logical and cogent fashion.

  62. omnicrom says

    Owlglass is there a point to what you’re posting? If your point is just “The meanies at Pharyngula use bad language” then please leave, you add nothing to the commentary or conversation.

  63. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Owlglass is playing the same fucking game as is going on in Micheal Nugent’s thread about the pit. Look at this! The regulars at Pharyngula use profane language so they have no right to complain about out gendered insults.

    Mind you, human ouroboros. I am not calling you a member of the pit. But you play the same asshole game.

    I am not fucking sorry that, collectively, we are not nice to racists, misogynists and other assorted asshole.

    And for shits and giggles, fuckface, you really should look up the posts of Lion IRC.

    But please, keep blowing your one note butt trumpet.

  64. mythbri says

    @Owlglass #69

    Also consider the difference between: “Person is an asshole” and “Person is a racist”. One is primarily aimed at angering the target person and generally considered an opinion, wheres the other is intended to defame a person in the eyes of other people and can be viewed as “a matter of fact” claim, because groups who identify as racists actually exist.

    Pretty please and forsooth good sir, can you clarify, perchance, upon whether or not it is acceptable, in thine estimable view, to call someone out (ever so politely!) for a racist statement they no doubt made quite by accident, even if that person does not explicitly identify theirself as a racist?

    Because oh my! And lawks! It might well be the case that one might unconsciously absorb the opinions of the society in which they were raised, and that some of those opinions could be construed as somewhat racist?

    If so, could the same also apply to unconscious sexism, when the person (accidentally, I’m sure!) continues to make sexist statements while not being a card-carrying member of (oh dear – this will be rude, and I apologize in advance) the He-Man Woman-Haters Club?

    (I feel ever so icky just typing that. Please accept my politest apologies for the intrusion.)

  65. says

    Also consider the difference between: “Person is an asshole” and “Person is a racist”.

    Yes let’s.

    One is primarily aimed at angering the target person and generally considered an opinion, wheres the other is intended to defame a person in the eyes of other people

    Stop it right there you fucking dishonest carbuncle. You have presented no evidence of either the idea that the people who have been called racists were not, and that the intent of those applying the label were doing so with the intent of defaming their character by calling them racists when they were not. With this sentence alone you have shown that you’re a dirty fucking liar who shouldn’t be listened to. But I already copy pasted the rest of your pathetic drivel, you disgusting taint-pimple, so get ready for some more naughty language.

    and can be viewed as “a matter of fact” claim, because groups who identify as racists actually exist.

    You ALMOST said something true here, but then you went and ruined it with the implication that only people who identify as racists can justifiably be called racists. This is a claim which, if you are in fact making it, can be easily disproved simply by checking out the Twitter feed of @yesyoureracist, which does nothing but retweet racist remarks by people who preface said racist remarks with the phrase, “I’m not racist, but…”

    The latter is much more severe and considered a crime in some countries (so called crime against honor in Sweden and Germany for example), and punishable with up to five years in prison!

    Citation please for your implied claim that the mental state of being a racist is prosecutable anywhere.

    Obviously, you are obliquely referring to hate speech laws (in a manner vague enough to allow you to weasel out of taking responsibility for the implications which I noted above, like the dishonest shitstain you are), which criminalize certain types of speech which are defined as encouraging racial hatred and racial violence. Tell me, if you are making racist speech, and someone says, “That was racist,” and it turns out that the speech was in fact racist enough that a judge in Sweden would send you to jail for it, how on earth do you reach the conclusion that the person who noted that your speech was racist at fault?

    Trolling is typically in the former category, intended to anger the target person, even when photoshopping and or making songs is used.

    How is it that you have so much insight into the mental states of so many people? Call the JRF, we’ve found our psychic! Personally, calling someone an asshole is more of a catharsis for me than anything else; I’d prefer that the person I call an asshole feel shamed rather than angered, but whatever. You just keep making shit up like the pathetic dirty fucking liar you are.

  66. mythbri says

    @Janine #78

    I’m afraid the only remedy I can recommend for vapours is to imbibe strong liquids in copious amounts.

    Please accept my humblest apologies, madam. I will attempt to be less uncouth and more civil in future.

  67. Owlglass says

    73, Cerberus@69 wrote: Really? You’re really arguing that it is worse to be correctly idenitified as a complicit member of a system of oppression

    Yes, I am serious. And the laws are as well. You can’t call someone a future child rapist for example without getting into serious trouble. Other than that, “complicit member” of a system has been debunked by the links I provided above. And if there are really reprehensible people, duke it out with them on the actual topics or leave them alone. You still can’t defame someone. Well, you can, but you can’t claim moral high ground then. At the end of the day if the commentariat didn’t mention certain places and people all the time, I for example, had absolutely no idea they even existed.

  68. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Owlglass and the ‘pitters are also conveniently ignoring – or, at least, they were – is the context.

    At Pharyngula, the harshness was aimed at posters who came to the blog to voice their opinions and were responded to by individuals. Once gone, they were rarely discussed anymore.

    How often has Ophelia commented at the Slymepit? Rebecca Watson? Surly Amy? Melody Hensley? PZ? Greg Laden? Any of the other dozens of people they insult?

    I’d say almost never. But the abuse continues, and occurs elsewhere – other people’s blogs, twitter, Facebook etc. Ophelia cannot even tweet without it being reported somewhere, captured in Storify and mined for any possible misinterpretation or distortion.

    To even consider the two situations analogous is profound intellectual dishonesty. It’s the difference between yelling at someone when they’ve come to your house and angered you and searching the streets in packs looking for individuals you’ve got a grudge against to harass them.

    Not even close to the same thing.

  69. says

    You still can’t defame someone.

    Calling a racist a racist is not defamation, you dirty fucking liar.

    Am I defaming you by calling you a dirty fucking liar? Bring the lawsuit then, asshole.

  70. says

    Other than that, “complicit member” of a system has been debunked by the links I provided above.

    Liar. Those links did no such thing.

  71. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    You can’t call someone a future child rapist for example without getting into serious trouble.

    Fuckfaced fool! Usually one cannot tell if a person is a future child rapist by what that person says. But if a person repeatedly says racist statement, that person is a racist.

    That is not even a valid comparison. But it is about what I expect from a fool like you.

    I have a mission for you, fuckfaced fool.

    GO TO THE PIT AND MAKE THE SAME ARGUMENT THERE!

  72. mythbri says

    @Owlglass

    Forgive me yet another extremely polite question (to which you’ll no doubt respond at your leisure):

    If “Owlglass is a racist” is considered defamation, then is “Owlglass is a cunt” also considered defamation? Your Wikipedia link was unfortunately less than helpful in negotiating this nuance.

  73. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    SallyStrange, please remember, the fuckfaced fool did call you a fascist because of the joke moniker you used to have. When questioned about it, he felt that he was justified.

  74. says

    misogynist.........5,220.........1,900....
    Racist scum..........861...........530....

    I find this useful. If Pharyngula is responsible for more than half of the uses of the rather specialized phrase “racist scum” on FTB, but significantly less than half of the instances of the word “misogyny,” it seems clear we need to step up our work in identifying misogyny and calling it out. Thanks, Owlglass! Though I don’t know why you mixed those objective terms in with things like “fuckwit.” Seems like a category error to me.

    As a side note I’ve personally deprecated the phrase “die in a fire” since the moment last year when a friend’s mom did just that.

  75. says

    I had forgotten that, Janine. Holy shit, what a doucheweasel.

    Yo Owlglass. As per Justin Vacula’s suggestion, could you please let us know which epithets you find most disagreeable so we can be sure to use those to make you feel as uncomfortable as possible around here? I don’t like sharing space with lying shitbrains.

  76. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Then there’s the why. At Pharyngula, the vitriol was used to either drive the person away or let them know their behaviour was unacceptable (or both) – which, as I’ve noted, is not the case with the Slymepit because the people being harassed don’t even go there.

    It’s about protecting the status quo. The Slymepitters were happy with the atheist community a few years back, because the bloggers and writers and podcasters and conference organisers catered almost exclusively to their tastes – the tastes of, for the most part, educated, straight, white, middle-class males. They got to laugh at the stupid things the religious did and feel better by comparison from hearing about the evil things they did. Ditto all the other ‘skepticism’ they celebrated, like not believing in bigfoot or homeopathy.

    But a couple of years back that changed. Greater numbers of people started talking more about things like feminism and diversity and social justice and inclusivity.

    They didn’t like that. Not one bit. Because it wasn’t about them. It didn’t make them feel better, or smarter, or like they’ve achieved some massive intellectual success – you know, the way being told how totes awesome they are for not believing in gods does.

    And they got angry in that petulant, whiny way only someone accustomed to privilege has of reacting to having their toys taken away – you know, like a spoiled toddler. They screamed; they stamped their feet; they held their breath; they broke their other, lesser toys.

    Once they realised there were others reacting the same way and had gathered together, they found their way to the Slymepit. Since then they’ve been carrying on their temper tantrums and channelling that into the bullying and harassment they spend so much time on, and also working very hard at coming up with rationalisations for why they’re doing it that having absolutely nothing to do with the actual reasons – “protecting Abbie Smith’s honour”, “I support free speech”, “I don’t see race/gender”, “I believe in equality for all, not just women”.

    Which brings us up to now.

  77. says

    It’s a backlash, and, as a friend of mine who studies the history of activist movements pointed out to me last night, you only get backlashes when you’re effective.

  78. jackiepaper says

    Owlglass, are you saying that it is just as bad to call out racism as it is to perpetrate racism?

    You do know that most racists will say that they are not racists, right? They believe sincerely that people of color are simply X,Y, and Z. They’ll say that this doesn’t make them racist, just not “politically correct”. They will claim that they are brave to point out such unpopular sentiments. They aren’t just being horrible, wrong, awful people for the fun of it. They really believe that crap. Sexists, misogynists and rape apologists will make the same claim. Maybe you don’t know that because you are lucky and don’t have the misfortune to meet this sort of person regularly or maybe you’re just in denial. I don’t know. I just know that where I live there are people who fly the rebel flag, have lawn jockeys, belong to Sons and Daughters of Confederate Soldiers (or whatever it’s called) and would beat their daughter for dating a black man, but are sure they aren’t racists. Maybe you’d agree with them. I do not.

    We have a local museum and high school named for a confederate general. We used to have a monument to him too. Yeah, I want out of here yesterday.

    Also, in what way is pretending to be able to predict future crimes the same as identifying racism when it rears it’s ugly head? I just don’t see the analogy there.

    You are going to rape a toddler! =/= You are racist. or That was a racist thing to say. For one thing, people are not psychic. However, people are able to correctly discern racism when they see it. It doesn’t require magic.

    I’d also like to add a “Fuck!” to the tally. I just like the idea that they’re being counted.

  79. jackiepaper says

    Sally, a friend of mine used to say often, “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” I hope that’s true in this case.

  80. mythbri says

    @jackiepaper #92

    Tsk tsk tsk. “Fuck” is one of those Bad Swear Words, you know.

    Oh dear! You made me say it!

    Fuck.

  81. Ichthyic says

    Oh, and you notice that the ‘pitters simply claim that “we all know how bad the comments are over at Pharyngula” without giving any examples–recent ones, that is?

    one, I was witness to this at the time, and the invective was not directed invective, no more than saying “fuck off” is directed invective.

    two, even THEN it was dropped after discussion.

    no comparison to directed, sexist, slurs maintained and encouraged towards specific targets for specific reasons.

    sorry, I refuse to paint ANYONE using the “porcupine” meme with the same brush as the ‘pitters.

    it’s false equivalence, so don’t go accepting it for some misplaced sense that “fairness” must be maintained.

    It’s a dishonest argument when ‘pitters use it, so why accept it for any reason?

  82. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    The Slymepitters hide behind the “Oh, but it’s only misogyny if you have a signed, notarised affidavit from the person saying that they do officially and unequivocally hate all women; everything else is just for laughs and therefore totes okay!” defence.

    Which is, of course, bullshit of the highest order.

  83. Owlglass says

    One last comment for today.

    83) You just have to consider an edge case to see that an “racist” allegation can be defaming and actually cause someone to lose their jobs or worse. Even “communist” used to bring people into serious trouble, whether it is truthful or not is another issue. The discussion is again unpleasant, when people react in extreme ways when presented with –I think so– reasonable arguments that aren’t outlandish. There are lawyers and courts, as the matters aren’t always clear cut.

    85) Someone on this side tweeted recently that another person might be a future rapist of someone else’s daughter. I know, it’s okay in your moral system. In mine it’s not. Look for it yourself.

    86) I would count the first as a potential defamation, the other as an insult. One is designed to anger and denigrate the person directly or intended to lower their status in the current situation (cunt, to some people), whereas calling someone a racist is making a factual claim of someone’s views or behavior. Not only don’t you know that (if they haven’t identified themselves as such), it is intend to destroy a persons reputation. Again, you can’t do that and normal people typically have a sense that this isn’t okay. Think about it. Walk around and tell everyone a neighbor is an asshole or cunt, and then walk around and tell everyone that neighbor is a racist, potential rapist etc. Do you really don’t see the difference in both quality and severity?

    87) That’s what I call scouting (you want others to dogpile me for your fake story). And its ad hominem again. Do you think I spent all day explaining myself? Weak as usual. Actual situation: SallyStrange called herself fascist at that time, next to her name. This was a fact at that time. Keep this in your mind. Being German and seeing that real fascists exist, there is nothing to joke with and is also not a term that you can “own” (to turn into something positive). I find this appalling for good reasons. That’s the context. But I did not comment on it out of myself. SallyStrange called me an asshole or something and my retort was simply that I would take this as compliment when it comes from a reprehensible self-described fascist (self described matter of fact, again!).

    Now my posting time is up. You folks don’t have any rational arguments to offer anyway. It’s one sided as usual and you react in extreme and unfair ways, which I hope has been demonstrated. You may want to discuss comment no. 215 of Michael Nugent’s blog where someone compiled a list of sexist and racist comments from the organization’s Irish forum, where Nugent is chairman.

    We will see if your outrage is adequate when you see all the “bitch” and racist comments. My guess is that you are somewhat mild, where you would otherwise campaign for weeks. Maybe you also want to see this page, with “irish up bitches” T-Shirts and so forth, also from a guy named Michael Nugent, and is supposedly the same person. I don’t have time to research this. Maybe it’s someone else, it’s all a big misunderstanding and so forth. Let’s wait and see. :)

  84. Ichthyic says

    You can’t call someone a future child rapist for example without getting into serious trouble.

    hmm, so,. Owlglass…

    If I asked you if that was something you specifically worry about yourself, which link would help me classify that question?

    At the end of the day if the commentariat didn’t mention certain places and people all the time, I for example, had absolutely no idea they even existed.

    Ignorance is bliss, ain’t it?

    It feels great when you’re a kid, have many kinds of friends, and have no clue that racism still exists, even in your neighborhood.

    But, then you become an adult, and when it is pointed out to you… shooting the messenger isn’t helping.

  85. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    You just have to consider an edge case to see that an “racist” allegation can be defaming and actually cause someone to lose their jobs or worse.

    No citation to show this is the case. Nothing but bullshit.

    would count the first as a potential defamation,

    Truth isn’t defamation. You haven’t shown we aren’t calling obvious non-racists racist. Nothing but a bullshit argument. Still not proving your case, as your OPINION is not and never will be evidence. But then, tone trolls like yourself think they are the last word in morality, but we know better. They specialize in bullshit rationalizations.

  86. Ichthyic says

    You just have to consider an edge case to see that an “racist” allegation can be defaming and actually cause someone to lose their jobs or worse.

    you know what? If pitters really HAD a problem with slander or defamation, don’t you think THEY would be doing something about it?

    why do YOU feel the need to jump in with irrelevant missives?

    are you “Lawyer Man!”, or his sidekick?

    thanks for telling us all it’s illegal in several states to not wear your seatbelt when driving.

    run along.

  87. Susan says

    one, I was witness to this at the time, and the invective was not directed invective, no more than saying “fuck off” is directed invective.

    no comparison to directed, sexist, slurs maintained and encouraged towards specific targets for specific reasons.

    sorry, I refuse to paint ANYONE using the “porcupine” meme with the same brush as the ‘pitters.

    it’s false equivalence, so don’t go accepting it for some misplaced sense that “fairness” must be maintained.

    It’s a dishonest argument when ‘pitters use it, so why accept it for any reason?

    Ichthyic,

    Was this aimed at me? We are in agreement on all these issues. I think you read into my comments something that wasn’t there. I was making a particular point, not suggesting there was an equivalence.

    I’ve been following this since the beginning, though I just started commenting. I feel every bit as strongly about this as you do.

  88. Ichthyic says

    You folks don’t have any rational arguments to offer anyway.

    right….

    so,. because people disagree with your take on things, and point out your inconsistencies and irrelevancies, they are “irrational”.

    got it.

  89. Susan says

    Oh, and I said the exact same thing you did, in different words, on Nugent’s thread before I decided I didn’t want to deal with people who would make me upset.

  90. Anthony K says

    You just have to consider an edge case to see that an “racist” allegation can be defaming and actually cause someone to lose their jobs or worse.

    I’m someone who has actually suffered “worse” because of an allegation of racism.

    When I need you to defend me, I’ll fucking ask you to, Owlglass.

  91. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Any bets Owlglass thinks that Schrodinger’s Rapist is telling all men they are rapists? Only an egotistical idjit would think that.

  92. Anthony K says

    You just have to consider an edge case to see that an “racist” allegation can be defaming and actually cause someone to lose their jobs or worse.

    Yeah, Zimmerman really got the short end of the “worse” stick, didn’t he?

    That’s the kind of edge case you mean, right?

  93. Ichthyic says

    Was this aimed at me?

    yes and no. I recognize you see the false equivalencies NOW between FtB and pitters.

    However, I was using your comment to highlight a common issue I have seen arise frequently since the days of the attacks on the “porcupine” meme over on Mooney’s blog, namely the fact that you don’t even need to include “recent” in what you said. The pitter’s use of the porcupine meme itself was incorrect and twisted beyond all recognition.

    there is NOTHING they can use that is actually equivalent. NOTHING that is meant as a directed and sustained attack like what happened to Rebecca Watson, among many others.

    just a warning to all not to accept their claims of equivalence, no matter how far back they go. i’ve been here the WHOLE time, and there really has NEVER been an equivalent comparison.

  94. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Owlglass wrote:

    You folks don’t have any rational arguments to offer anyway.

    Funny how you seemed to skip my comments at 82 and 90. Why is that?

    You may want to discuss comment no. 215 of Michael Nugent’s blog where someone compiled a list of sexist and racist comments from the organization’s Irish forum, where Nugent is chairman.

    Have you any evidence to suggest that these sexist and racist comments were made by the same people over and over again, against the same targets, on numerous places around the internet – including Facebook, Twitter and other blogs?

    Because if you can’t, it’s false equivalence. As I said at 82 – which you conveniently skipped in your rebuttal – there’s a difference between yelling at someone when they’ve come to your house and angered you and searching the streets in packs looking for individuals you’ve got a grudge against to harass them.

  95. mythbri says

    @Owlglass #97

    I would count the first as a potential defamation, the other as an insult.

    Huh. That’s not what your Wikipedia link says. I quote:

    Defamation…is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, religion, or nation a negative or inferior image. This can be also any disparaging statement made by one person about another, which is communicated or published, whether true or false, depending on legal state. In common law it is usually a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed…

    So, why isn’t “Such-and-such person is a cunt”* considered to be a claim that might give that person a negative or inferior image? That’s certainly what the insult is intended to do. “Cunt” is one of the worst insults/swears there is because it compares its target to something that is clearly “inferior” – female genitalia. And you can’t claim that calling someone a “cunt” is a factual statement, even if they are female, because if you’re going to get that nit-picky about it, obviously that person does not consist entirely of genitalia. So why is “racist” defamation, and “cunt” merely insult?

    *I didn’t want to give the impression that I was trying to insult Owlglass by using the word “cunt”. I had second thoughts about the phrasing in my original comment, and I regret it. As much as I disagree with you and your false equivalency, Owlglass, and as much delight as I took mocking you with “polite” and “civil” language, I would not use the word “cunt” to describe you. I apologize to you and others if it came off that way.

  96. Ichthyic says

    ” The pitter’s use of the porcupine meme itself was incorrect and twisted beyond all recognition.”

    ..as it was at the time, by the acolytes of Mooney, and Mooney and Kirschenbaum, and especially Mr. “you owe me a Leica Rangefinder PZ!”

    Yeah, I might even still have the links showing what a bunch of crap the arguments by Mooney’s gang against the “rusty knife” and “porcupine” memes were.

    nothing more than witlessly trying to claim moral high ground in a transparent effort to hide their dislike of being called out for their lies and distortions, and in at least one case, behavior bordering on stalking.

  97. says

    I came back here today thinking that in my late night tired commenting over at Michael Nugent’s blog I may have said something to be embarrassed about.

    I have now read Owlglass’s comments and I am not at all worried about mine anymore.

    Kinda like being worried you made a social faux pas by spitting in public, and then you notice you’re floating in the middle of the Pacific.

  98. says

    You folks don’t have any rational arguments to offer anyway.

    You know, if that’s really your opinion, you’re welcome to fuck off.

    The amazing thing about THAT is, nobody here will track you down and insist on presenting our “irrational” arguments to you once you’ve decided you don’t want to hear it anymore. We won’t tweet at you. We won’t write things on your facebook page. We won’t screenshot your tweets and save them so we can pull them out a year later and attempt to embarrass you. We won’t do podcasts about your tweets and your facebook pages. We won’t create entire websites to insulting you and advancing our “irrational” arguments and talking about how wrong you are.

    A courtesy which the slimers are incapable of extending to us.

    Please, keep lying about how both sides are the same. It just reinforces how much of a dishonest asshole you are. Hey, wait, the epithet “fascist” really bothers Owlglass so obviously that’s his weakness. Yo Owlglass. You’re a fascist. We don’t like fascists around here. Go away, you fascist.

  99. Susan says

    yes and no. I recognize you see the false equivalencies NOW between FtB and pitters.

    However, I was using your comment to highlight a common issue I have seen arise frequently since the days of the attacks on the “porcupine” meme over on Mooney’s blog, namely the fact that you don’t even need to include “recent” in what you said. The pitter’s use of the porcupine meme itself was incorrect and twisted beyond all recognition.

    there is NOTHING they can use that is actually equivalent. NOTHING that is meant as a directed and sustained attack like what happened to Rebecca Watson, among many others.

    Ah, but I never did think any of this. I was approaching the whole issue from an entirely different direction. Since I haven’t commented until recently, you don’t, of course, know me or what I think. I have considered the two kinds of insults equivalent. I have been upset for days over things that have been said to Rebecca and others. It has affected me very strongly as a woman and feminist. You’ll just have to take my word for it: I never considered the equivalence as anything but false. I don’t know how I can make it any clearer than that.

  100. vaiyt says

    Owlglass:

    If I defame a mysoginistic scumbag by calling them a mysoginistic scumbag, I can still claim the moral high ground by virtue of, oh, not being a mysoginistic scumbag. If you can’t even grasp this, there’s little hope for you.

  101. Susan says

    It was all this that inspired me to start a woman’s Atheist (am I supposed to capitalize?) group in my city, when the main organization fell apart due to infighting. My group, albeit small, is still going, while the other one has never reformed. I was so terribly shocked by the misogyny in the Atheist movement that I was truly disillusioned, believing rational people would be above and beyond this. I now realize there was sexism in the city Atheist group, but I was too naive to recognize that only certain voices (older white men) were really considered important. (We have a couple of men try to join my group, claiming discrimination. Fortunately, they haven’t tried to sue us or anything.)

    (I’ve been lurking on Pharyngula for years, and only recently dared to post because this issue is so important to me.)

  102. Ichthyic says

    sorry Susan, again, just to be clear, I am using what you said as an example.

    it’s not specific to you, ok?

  103. ChasCPeterson says

    This is Free Thought Blogz! You can Capitalize whatever the Fucke you want to, and employ variant Spellings too, if’n ya wish, or dialect. Whatever! It’s the Internetz!

  104. says

    I took a bit of Owlglass’s advice, and used his link (well, the Google.com version of his link) to search for the phrase “future child rapist.” Strangely enough, there were no results. So I tried just “child rapist,” and found 102 posts, mostly about Joe Paterno and the Catholic Church.

    Strange, that there would be so few instances of “child rapist” and so many of “racist scum” when Owlglass seems to think that they’re somehow equivalent or comparable terms. I mean, it’s true, being called either one could affect how people (including potential employers) see a person, and false accusations of either one are certainly despicable.

    So why, oh why, would one phrase be so much more common here? Could it be that a lot more people openly say and do scummy racist stuff in a society that incorporates and perpetuates lots of racial inequality and racist memes than people who are found to rape children in a society that is largely intolerant of child-rapists and takes measures to prevent child rape?

    Could it be that Pharyngulites don’t attack people for immoral (and illegal) acts that they might commit in the future, but instead attack people for the immoral acts (and statements) they make (or have made) right now?

    I’m gonna take a page from Andrew Ti and throw this out there: if someone is seriously concerned about what it might do to their reputation and job prospects if they’re called “racist scum,” it would probably behoove them not to say or do scummy racist things. Just a thought.

    Teal deer: don’t shoot the messenger.

  105. says

    Seeing as Owlglass thinks his ever-so-rigorous Google analysis is somehow meaningful, what happens if we apply the same to his “team”?

    Let me just alter the list a bit first…


    TERM....................PHARYNGULA...SLYMEPIT...RATIO
    Fucking.................6,820........165,000....24.19
    Asshole.................4,120........81,000.....19.66
    Scum....................922..........29,700.....32.21
    Fuckwit.................1,320........14,800.....11.21
    "Fuck off and die"......576..........60,000.....104.16
    "Die in a fire".........99...........10,600.....107.07
    Ugly....................2,750........43,100.....15.67
    Fat.....................2,020........54,700.....27.08
    Bitch...................1,160........88,000.....75.86
    Whore...................474..........18,300.....38.61
    Twat....................137..........39,500.....288.32
    Cunt....................751..........141,000....187.75
    "Asking for it".........1,600........43,300.....27.06
    For baseline comparison:
    Science.................10,300.......107,000....10.38

    The relative frequency trends certainly tell an interesting story…

    – Looks like the baseline difference in word frequency is somewhere around 10x.
    – The Slymepit’s interest in discussing FOAD and DIAF far outweighs the actual (tiny) incidence on FTB, and is about 10x more important to them than to us.
    – Talking about bitches, cunts & twats is clearly a big deal over there, at around 10/20/30x more frequent respectively.

    I hope Owlglass realises whatever defense he might formulate for these shocking — shocking, I tell you — numbers… will only serve to highlight what a stupid bloody exercise it was in the first place.

  106. says

    Ye gods:
    Just wasted a good chunk of the day reading the OP and most of the subsequent comments. The pitters’ revisionist history, cries of “they do it too”, and refusal to abandon sexist terms are about the only “arguments” they could muster.

  107. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Kagato, thank you!

    That is all and said in all earnestness.

    Thank you!

  108. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Heh. They tried to tu quoque Michael Nugent on racial/sexist abuse on one of the forums he’s involved with; he’s posted a lengthy response apologising, thanking them for pointing it out, explaining that he’s removed the offensive posts and announcing exactly what standards will be put in place to prevent any further such incidents.

    Made. Of. Win.

  109. says

    As long as you’re considering baselines, note that “cunt” is pretty much a thoroughly taboo word around here: it only gets used in discussions of deplorable behavior, and when trolls charge in and start flinging it about. So that 751 is basically a measure of noise — that isn’t, for the most part, people abusing other people with the term.

    But then the meaning of the whole exercise starts to fall apart. Terms like “ugly” and “fat” aren’t used as pejoratives against individuals, either: we might talk about an “ugly idea” or a “big fat problem”.

    And then on the other side there is confusing weirdness, too. Isn’t there some user over there going by the name “Cunt”? There goes the word count validity (although you could argue that he’s just an example of using the word for sake of its shock value, so maybe it should count.) And really: they’re talking about science that much? Good for them…or is it an artifact of some other feature, like a group tag that automatically sticks the term “science” in a whole subset of their posts?

    I think Owlglass’s initial superficial analysis was pretty dumb, and I’m going to have to regard Kagato’s analysis the same way. It’s all meaningless without context.

  110. says

    PZ

    I think Owlglass’s initial superficial analysis was pretty dumb, and I’m going to have to regard Kagato’s analysis the same way. It’s all meaningless without context.

    I think Kagato was waiting for Owlglass to work that one out for themself.

  111. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I think Kagato was waiting for Owlglass to work that one out for themself.

    I don’t believe that Owlglass is capable of working that out for themselves. Neutronium denseness at work….

  112. says

    Yeah, that was kind of my point. (Though I regret that it was a pretty big waste of my time too; putting that list together took longer than I’d have liked.)

    Any attempt to point out why those numbers don’t (necessarily) reflect badly on the Slymepit will only serve to show how meaningless the numbers are for FTB as well.

    Phrases like “DIAF” are mostly not being used over there, but parroted (ad nauseam) as examples of FTB’s horridness… but by the same token, a lot of the instances on FTB will be pushback and discussion of the same. Fat, ugly etc will almost never show up on FTB as insults, but I’d wager the majority of uses on the Slymepit are. The mere occurrence of a word or phrase tells you nothing without context, and this word count game gives you none.

    The specific count of a word doesn’t even have anything to do with how often people write it, but how often Google picks it up off the site. Caches of the “recent posts” and “recent comments” lists both get picked up in the search results, so if the word is in a topic title, the word count gets ratcheted up a lot.
    “Science” may only rank as highly as it does on the Slymepit, because the word appears in the title of one of their forums — “Freethought, Atheism, Skepticism and Science”.

    The “interesting story” I suggest the numbers tell would as likely as not belong in the “fiction” section.

    If someone wanted to, perhaps some meaningful language analysis could potentially be done; but not through a naive word count, and certainly not using a weak tool like a Google search which doesn’t distinguish between actual content and site-structural text.

  113. vaiyt says

    I’ve used phrases stronger than “die in a fire” in this blog (mostly towards that racist genocide advocate asshole StevoR), and I don’t regret any of it.

    If any ‘pitter’s going to take issue with that, they better sit down because there’s no foreseeable fucks given from me any time soon.

  114. says

    vaiyt:
    I do not recall any such comments by you, so I will take your word for that.
    That said, any wish for someone else to be hurt or killed makes me very uncomfortable. I do not like seeing that here. I would hope that those who feel such a way will curb their expression of any such desires (if not outright abandon them as they do not square with humanistic views)

  115. chigau (違う) says

    Whoever said it (Twain, Darrow, Mencken, etc.)
    “There is no one I wish dead but there are many obituaries I have read with pleasure.”

  116. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    What was said is a heck of a lot less important than why it was said. Is anyone here trying to bully into silence those who are trying to make the atheist community more diverse/inclusive?

    If not, there’s simply no comparison.

  117. says

    Hmm, may I just peek my head in? That vicious quote of mine that Pitchguest used as an example of abuse on Michael’s post was used to mock and ridicule me in the pit and on twitter and on elevatorgate’s blog for a few days. What they don’t know is that I actually had a reason for saying that. I have a cyberstalker that watches everything I do (other than the slymepitters) and he rejoices in defaming me in any manner and on any venue he can. That comment was intended for his benefit. It hit its mark, as a matter of fact, as he ended up posting it on his Facebook page.

    Oh, and wouldn’t you know? He joined the slymepit.

  118. Aratina Cage says

    The mere occurrence of a word or phrase tells you nothing without context, and this word count game gives you none.

    The same goes for Philip Jr.’s list of naughty phrases he googled up from Pharyngula three years ago that were reposted at Michael Nugent’s blog today by that dishonest, sniveling fuck, Pitchguest (who might actually be Philip Jr. from the Intersection for all we know continuing on with some never-ending grudge). Back when you could actually follow all the links, you could get the context of each phrase and see that none of them reflect badly on Pharyngula despite some of them seeming totally outrageous. In fact, plenty of those phrases were deliberately fabricated by Philip Jr. or modified by Philip Jr. so that they appear much worse than the actual phrases (the slimepitters do that all the fucking time). Also, what Ichthyic said in #95.

  119. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    EllenBeth Wachs wrote:

    What they don’t know is that I actually had a reason for saying that.

    Knowing isn’t going to change anything. They know full well there’s a fundamental difference between the insults there and the insults here; they’re simply denying it because not having that to hide behind reveals most of them are bigoted assholes with an agenda – with a few clueless hangers-on too foolish/ignorant to realise the harm they’re doing.

  120. says

    I know the latter could not have happened on Pharyngula, and that he was never directly called a rapist.

    I’ve had a lingering suspicion for some time that some of the “I was called a rapist” guys go through the following steps:
    A) Discussion of something that is rape (like getting a woman drunk so she can’t consent anymore)
    B) Realization that he has done the thing discussed
    C) Follows that he was called a rapist.
    Now, technically that is true. If I say “somebody who crosses the street although the lights are red is a jaywalker” and you have done so, then I said you are a jaywalker because the condition is true.
    But since they don’t own up to their behaviour (in which case they would actually get called a rapist, but then you’d always have their own words to prove it), they just make the claim they were called a rapist.

    Owlgass

    <The latter is much more severe and considered a crime in some countries (so called crime against honor in Sweden and Germany for example), and punishable with up to five years in prison!

    Hihihi, hohoho, hahaha.
    Cupcake, insulting somebody is against the law already in Germany. Claiming that somebody is a racist isn’t, unless there are very specific requirements fulfilled, like not having anything to base your comment on.
    As for Pinker: he should read up some sociology on the effect of slurs. I actually agree with him that you cannot go from one incident and conclude what somebody actively thinks. Because we’re all raised in a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, transphobic society. But the touchstone is when somebody is challenged on the language.
    But as for the article: Lots of basic 101 linguistic stuff and then some things that show the problem:
    His argument is that not words are the problem but the concept as such. His “euphemism treadmill” explains why there are 762185 words for toilet: Because as soon as everybody knows that it’s where you go to shit and pee you need a new word*.
    Now, if we follow that idea it leads us to the conclusion that the problem isn’t c*nt, tw*t, p*ssy, but the fact that vaginas are, indeed, icky like toilets. And that really there is something bad about disabled people and no amount of language sensitivity can cure that.
    Oh, and let’s not forget that we mustn’t be upset when some poor old country bumpkin uses highly offensive language, they just might not know that the n-word is out of fashion…
    * It should be noted that duh, actually language and attitudes change hand in hand. Because eupehmisms for “toilet” have become something to make fun of, because the bodily functions become less and less stigmatized. You can also note the change in what words children are taught for their genitals. 30 years ago simply using the correct anatomical terms was unthinkable…

    You can’t call someone a future child rapist for example without getting into serious trouble.

    That’s because you are accusing them of a crime, dumbass.

    Someone on this side tweeted recently…

    Hey, how do they call that in Sweden, when you make a vague accusation without giving evidence nor context? Bullshit perhaps?

    One is designed to anger and denigrate the person directly or intended to lower their status in the current situation (cunt, to some people), whereas calling someone a racist is making a factual claim of someone’s views or behavior.

    So, saying that somebody is not fully a human being and inherently icky is less severe in your eyes than saying that somebody has harmful views and behaviour which they can change.
    Got that.

    SallyStrange called herself fascist at that time, next to her name. This was a fact at that time. Keep this in your mind.

    So, which one is it now? Is it Pinker and his “nonono, words don’t mean thoughts and really, stop making a fuss” or is it “horrible, irredeemable”? And how do you feel justified in saying that some people are fascists? Isn’t that defamation?

    Katago

    Seeing as Owlglass thinks his ever-so-rigorous Google analysis is somehow meaningful, what happens if we apply the same to his “team”?

    Another point is that the word count means shit. My post contains the words “c*nt”, “tw*t” and “p*ssy”** yet I didn’t call anybody either of those slurs.
    The only reliable information that search gives you is a quanititative one, it’s not a qualitative one. Yu would have to further look at how those words are used, and by whom.
    From the top of my head I can think of two hypothesis that you coult test:
    A) On Pharyngula, sexist slurs are not used by Regulars against people. They are used by people arguing against Pharyngula or by new commenters who don’t know that yet. The words are used as terms of discussion by Regulars
    B) The higher frequency on the Pit correlates with a higher usage as a slur against people.

    **They were spelled out originally, until I noticed that this might trigger the spam filter…

    Phrases like “DIAF” are mostly not being used over there, but parroted (ad nauseam) as examples of FTB’s horridness… but by the same token, a lot of the instances on FTB will be pushback and discussion of the same.

    Not to forget that it has been discussed here and that people have argued against it and asked others to refrain from using it.

    Ellen Beth
    Hi *waves*
    They are sure giving you a hard time.
    Booze is in the Lounge

  121. says

    *Waves back* Thanks everyone! I’ll be sure to meander over to the lounge when I find some time. Btw, I can shed some light on the infamous tweet I believe Owlglass is referring to. *Raises hand* However, he/she has not given it any context or background (of course). I note with amusement that immediately prior to raising that issue, Owlglass talks about how horrific it would to be branded, say, a RACIST, precisely what some pitters did to me there and for hours on twitter. It was a response tweet demonstrating how defamation works and asking how he liked it. Of course, that was my mistake, thinking I could have a rational discussion with any of these people. THEN, da da da dum, Justin fucking Vacula inserted himself into the discussion and later quotemined a modified tweet for his own self-serving purposes. Shocker, I know?!

  122. says

    Owlglass @97

    You just have to consider an edge case to see that an “racist” allegation can be defaming and actually cause someone to lose their jobs or worse.

    Oh NOES!

    Except, oops, no, most people don’t “lose their jobs” simply because of some dickwad somewhere personally calling them a racist on a blog. Hell, most people don’t lose jobs simply from accusations of racism. The best you can hope for is someone losing their jobs because they were racist, did something specifically racist to a customer or coworker and that coworker or customer was lucky enough to be patronizing somewhere that cares enough to do something rather than one that’s just going to through up a mandatory “sensitivity training” for all staff (one that doesn’t actually ask people to be less racist, but to get more subtle about it, so the company can’t get sued) and pretend like that magically fixes everything.

    You know what does “lose your jobs” in a way that actually fits your communism argument in a legitimate way rather than a desperate stretch made by a misogynistic moron?

    Being a member of an oppressed minority group. Right now, my bosses are bending over backwards to find any excuse at all to eliminate me, because I was foolish enough to believe in my legal rights to be visibly trans* at the workplace and ask for the permission to be so. Because I’m a transwoman in a skirt and the conservative workplace I work for is freaking out about it.

    And I can compare my fate to people at my company who actively are racist and treat our primarily non-white customers poorly because of it. Hint, they’re not being pushed out and no “accusations of racism” would ever be likely to put them in the same position that I find myself in just because of the way I was born.

    So, Owlglass, misogynist lying fucker that you are. You can go take your fictional martyrs and your “me too” stories of oppressor classes being held under the bootheel of PC fascism and you can stick them back in the ignorance box you call a brain, because we’re not actually as stupid as you seem to sadly assume we are.

  123. says

    Ichthyic @95

    I want to belatedly echo Susan @101 in agreeing with this comment. Feminists are always asked to scramble and scrub out “Word X that is not equivalent” by disingenuous trolls engaging in harassment campaigns because the trolls know that feminists actually care about what their words might be saying and will more often than not scramble to the request (thus giving the misogynist a flush of power from making an uppity woman do something on their behalf).

    It’s a terrible false equivalence and that’s even true if, after thinking about it, you find the phrase is worthy of retirement in the community on its own merits.

  124. says

    I have a cyberstalker that watches everything I do (other than the slymepitters) and he rejoices in defaming me in any manner and on any venue he can. That comment was intended for his benefit. It hit its mark, as a matter of fact, as he ended up posting it on his Facebook page.

    Oh, and wouldn’t you know? He joined the slymepit.

    Abbie will be so proud over the new addition. I’m sorry this happened to you. Invite to the Lounge thirded.

  125. says

    Chas
    Because it happened before that a post in which I had used a lot of slurs in a row to discuss them disappeared never to be seen again, probably because to the spam filter it looks like some Pitter shouting abuse.

    Cerberus

    Except, oops, no, most people don’t “lose their jobs” simply because of some dickwad somewhere personally calling them a racist on a blog.

    It should be noted that Owlglass says he’s German, which means he lives in a country where people have ample protections against being fired. I’d like to see that trial where somebody challenges them being fired because somebody said they were racist

  126. says

    I just read this thread, start to finish. Yikes.

    So, quick general response (more for catharsis than any other reason):

    I was never really comfortable with the rusty knife, as I’m not one to wish other people harm. (Hell, even Lilly Allen’s otherwise wonderful song “Fuck You” is marred by the line “It’s people like you who need to get slew.” Not just because it’s unwieldy, but because it wishes death on another person.) I kind of enjoyed the whole porcupine meme while it was fresh (not the porcupine, the meme), but was glad when we had that big long fat ugly conversation about it.

    I was very glad we came to a good consensus and stopped wishing harm on others (even facetiously).

    But at no fucking point did we ever truly wish harm on others (this was evident by the outrageous nature of the suggestions). Nor did we wish torture or rape on anyone, even in jest. I’m with Ichthyic. The whole argument against us is based on a false equivalence. And it’s telling they didn’t form their little clique because we instructed someone in the creative uses of a rotting porcupine, but because someone was kind enough to offer the advice, “Guys, don’t do that.”

    Owlglass, you’re a fucking dolt. If you’re going to come in an use some kind of tone-troll/tu quoque argument against us, at least attempt to understand the differences between our arguments and insults and those of the pit before you attempt to paint us all with the same broad brush. I’ll cop to the similarities: both groups use Bad Words, which seem to make you uncomfortable. Both groups insult other folks, which seems to make you uncomfortable. But the pit blatantly defends misogyny, uses the threat of rape as a silencing tactic, misrepresents arguments (quote mines, unsupported assertions, etc), and spend the bulk of their energy proselytizing their hatred. The substance of our discussions is of a much higher quality, in general. And the fact we use these differences to demonstrate your tone-troll argument is invalid doesn’t mean those arguments are irrational. It just means you don’t understand the difference between substance and presentation.

    Finally: I couldn’t make it through Nugent’s list. My brain just can’t handle the way some people refuse to apply their vaunted rationalism to social justice.

  127. says

    I thought it was more our decision, anyway, to eliminate the DIAF, porcupine, and rusty knife talk. It made me uncomfortable when we used it on the denizens and on detractors, and I think we’re better for it.

    (Also OT: Has anyone else noticed that there are some formatting weirdness in the comments box? The font of “Submit Comment” is different from “Preview” and there’s a wider box for the first checkbox as opposed to the other two.)

  128. Amphiox says

    If I defame a mysoginistic scumbag by calling them a mysoginistic scumbag, I can still claim the moral high ground by virtue of, oh, not being a mysoginistic scumbag.

    It is also not defamation if the description is true.

  129. Owlglass says

    That c-word is an example of an insult, intended to elicit an emotional effect on the target. It is mostly harmless and exactly as strong as it is made to be. Disseminating the claim that PZ Myers uses “Crelm toothpaste against communism” might fall under defamation, where it is at first not important whether it’s true or not, but whether or not smearing him, his name, lifestyle etc. causes him harm. When it does, he may have a point in court.

    Regarding the truthfulness: you aren’t the arbiter of truth and I’ve seen often enough where severe accusations are dished out nilly-willy. Generally, your elbow room ends where that of another person begins. They can ruin their reputation themselves, and you can help them, but you can’t simply start rumors or pollute search engine results with extreme accusations. Other people can’t know that you are from another galaxy where common sense is unheard of.

    Sally Strange (112) wrote: “Yey, wait, the epithet “fascist” really bothers Owlglass so obviously that’s his weakness. Yo Owlglass. You’re a fascist. We don’t like fascists around here. Go away, you fascist.”

    Yep, that’s how I expect it from this place. Almost meme-worthy. “Eats meat. Complains about keeping of animals.” Whatever your plan was, looking like being on the moral high ground didn’t exactly work out. But you have a problem with pranks and spoofs. Exactly my point. Thanks for the illustration.

    Speaking of which: context matters. But I fail to see how “die in a fire” somehow comes out favorable in a different context, or stuff like “Don’t be fooled by his game when he rapes your daughter” (Ellen Beth Wachs). People will not research all the instances why someone was called a fascist or potential rapist, or why it seems to be the case. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I really have a hard time in finding this remotely okay. Copy and pasting the C-word all over the place because people go ballistic on the other hand, as a typical slymepit action, strikes me as a kind of prank. And where there are multiple topics about “them” (including this one), they have the ongoing thread about FTB. Here I fail to see how the argument one side was more obsessed with the other has any traction. Not that it is unusual that a blogosphere has a lot of cross talk. Also noteworthy; their pointing out the issues on Michael Nugents own turf caused him to clean up in front of his own door. So they did cause a good effect.

    Last but not least, I’m adding why I am sympathetic to Lulz and when. Years ago, I did all kinds of activism (by the way, feminism was on the list as well). Stuff like ad busting, communication guerrilla or cultural jamming where you insert perplexing or disorienting messages into public spaces (often attempting to poke fun at people abiding what they read/see), usually to make a point or people think. Modifying or replacing gender/sex symbols at club toilets are one example where you can cause some mayhem (not in Berlin though where nobody cares whose loo is for which kind of person). I also like Lulz online when it goes against authorities, higher ups, opinion leaders and so forth, or when the Lulz party is the David against the Goliath. I’m also a Yes Man fan and so forth. You get the idea. A lot of people really have a talent of almost begging for being trolled and ridiculed. Where I indeed think its part of their own fault and often deserved. Normal trolls go away when ignored. However, I completely hated the prank, where someone hacked a forum of people with epilepsy and inserted a super flashy animation–and stuff like that, where people already worse off, victims, weaker and so on are targeted.

    I also think that switching to lulz behavior in a debate, when else fails, is acceptable and it’s often the only sensible way to deal with Windmill Politcians. Finally. Blasphemy is completely accepted standard practice, by me at least. I fail to see why one form of ridicule that someone personally finds offensive is okay, and in other cases it should not be. That makes no sense.

    TL;DR
    To sum up, making fun of people as long it’s clear, hardly does real harm–whereas affiliating people with all kinds of reprehensible groups in order to demonize them and to smear them is quite a different story, especially when its mostly made up.

  130. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    whereas affiliating people with all kinds of reprehensible groups in order to demonize them and to smear them is quite a different story, especially when its mostly made up.

    Until you can show with solid evidence it is made up, all you have is the fuckwitted OPINION of a TONE TROLL.

  131. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Funny how Tone Trolls rarely can show with real and conclusive evidence they have a legitimate point. OPINION not being an evidenced point….

  132. Owlglass says

    153, Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
    Until you can show with solid evidence it is made up, all you have is the fuckwitted OPINION of a TONE TROLL

    Can you back this claim up? Do you have citations? Or do I smell an opinion here? You may also check out the links, there are some actual examples. And trying the method above you should find 112 examples of “die in a fire”. You’re welcome.

  133. says

    Congratulations, Owlglass, you’ve just tried the same stupid trick a dozen or so other idiots have tried previously.
     
    You’re not just stupid, you’re stupid and unoriginal.

  134. mythbri says

    @Owlglass

    Nope. I’m not buying your distinction between “insult” and “defamation”.

    And did you just say that you support anti-blasphemy laws? Really?

  135. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Owlglass, you haven’t responded to my comment #82. So, here it is again so you don’t have an excuse:

    Owlglass and the ‘pitters are also conveniently ignoring – or, at least, they were – is the context.

    At Pharyngula, the harshness was aimed at posters who came to the blog to voice their opinions and were responded to by individuals. Once gone, they were rarely discussed anymore.

    How often has Ophelia commented at the Slymepit? Rebecca Watson? Surly Amy? Melody Hensley? PZ? Greg Laden? Any of the other dozens of people they insult?

    I’d say almost never. But the abuse continues, and occurs elsewhere – other people’s blogs, twitter, Facebook etc. Ophelia cannot even tweet without it being reported somewhere, captured in Storify and mined for any possible misinterpretation or distortion.

    To even consider the two situations analogous is profound intellectual dishonesty. It’s the difference between yelling at someone when they’ve come to your house and angered you and searching the streets in packs looking for individuals you’ve got a grudge against to harass them.

    Not even close to the same thing.

  136. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Can you back this claim up? Do you have citations?

    Fuckwitted tone troll, you are making the claims. Either put up, shut up, or prove to the world you are a liar and bullhshitter. But then, we both know the liar and bullshitter fits those without honesty and integrity. Which you don’t have. Proven and cited fact.

  137. Owlglass says

    @155, myeck waters
    Where is the trick? And of all the things, you find this worth criticizing? Nah, no need to object to Sally Strange (112) calling me fascist because it might upset me, for example. Perhaps I should improve my grammar and style. It is really bad. And the verbosity. Abysmal.

    @156, mythbri
    What a wonderful idea. Now my blasphemy is “supporting Anti-Blasphemy law”! ORLY!? I’m sure you can nitpick this into position. No need to try, I believe you already.

  138. John Morales says

    [meta]

    Owlglass:

    And trying the method above you should find 112 examples of “die in a fire”. You’re welcome.

    You’ve just provided one of your own. ;)

    (There are 113 now!)

  139. says

    I have just as much basis for calling you a fascist as you did for calling me a fascist, you lying hypocrite. Hell, you’re probably just oversensitive about the word fascist because you’re secretly a fascist and prefer that nobody find out. That’s why you had such a reaction to my name. Makes as much sense as concluding from the ‘nym “Elite Femi-Fascist Genius” that the person seriously considers herself a fascist.

    Go ahead and whine about the high moral ground some more, Owlglass. Here’s a hint: pointing out your rank dishonesty does not require ceding any moral high ground.

  140. mythbri says

    @Owlglass

    Actually, I was confused by your phrasing. You said this:

    Blasphemy is completely accepted standard practice, by me at least. I fail to see why one form of ridicule that someone personally finds offensive is okay, and in other cases it should not be. That makes no sense.

    The bolded portion is what caused my confusion. I thought that what you were saying was related to what you were saying about defamation (which you’re against), and that somehow blasphemy wasn’t acceptable because some people find it offensive. If you don’t support anti-blasphemy laws, then you don’t, and that’s my mistake.

    I disagree with you strongly, Owlglass, but I’m not trying to “trap” you into anything.

  141. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    I’m going to call you a coward, Owlglass, because you are one.

  142. Ichthyic says

    The relative frequency trends certainly tell an interesting story…

    man, it’s far more lopsided than I had even guessed at!

  143. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Still no evidence from the opinionated tone troll. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Hence, Owlglass’s opinions are *floosh* dismissed to the the toxic waste center.

  144. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    What Owlglass the coward is avoiding is that which all the ‘pitters are avoiding during these discussions – that their use of offensive, vitriol in comments is part of a systematic bullying campaign by multiple people to silence those who want to change things in the atheist community, as compared to Pharyngula, where it took place between individuals, unplanned and without any larger agenda.

    Sure it might look the same – if you’re choosing not to look very hard…

  145. says

    Owlglass tries to hang me for something I already brought up? Oh, by the way, John Brown and I have gotten over this exchange so YOU should. He issued a video apology to me tonight.

  146. Owlglass says

    @Sally Strange
    You called yourself that way, next to your name and I retorted using it when you attacked me for something. Nothing else happened. Why does this even matter? Because the “Scout” (Janine in this case) pulled out older stories in order to have a platform for others to launch their attacks from. Noticed this trick already. And of course the original context is not provided, because the rules and standards you ask me to abide never apply for your side.

    @ Wowbagger
    Plenty of people get mentioned here all the time without participating here. Or they are banned. It is actually fairly usual in a blogosphere that people each write on their own turf about what other people say and do elsewhere, including people from other blogs. Your other claims aren’t backed up by evidence, methinks. Nerd, don’t you agree? Oh, I forgot. Doesn’t apply to your side. Of course. déjà vu.

    @Nerd. You got some examples above. Just look them up. I can’t click the links for you. We both know that they won’t make a difference anyway. You’re just stalling and everyone knows it. So just copy and paste your robot message, kthxbye.

  147. Ichthyic says

    owlglass…

    It is mostly harmless and exactly as strong as it is made to be.

    what in the fuck does that even mean?

  148. Ichthyic says

    Yep, that’s how I expect it from this place. Almost meme-worthy.

    yep, doesn’t get satire, doesn’t realize what, even we are laughing at him FOR.

    wow.

    pathetic wanker.

  149. Owlglass says

    168, EllenBeth Wachs
    Yeah right. When I am not providing an example, people have an issue and when I do people have an issue. I provided the example because it was recent and knew how to find it.

  150. Owlglass says

    172 Ichthyic wrote: yep, doesn’t get satire, doesn’t realize what, even we are laughing at him FOR.

    170, Ichthyic wrote: what in the fuck does that even mean?

    172, Ichthyic we are laughing at him

    170, Ichthyic pathetic wanker.

    Come on, please! It should read pathetic onanist. It is okay though. No need to worry about it.

  151. says

    Owlglass @151

    That c-word is an example of an insult, intended to elicit an emotional effect on the target.

    No. I mean, yes, it is, but it’s not like calling someone a fucker or a poo-poo head. It’s a deliberate dehumanization of a class of people, an attempt to equate full human beings with genitalia.

    And that on its own doesn’t rise it to the level that it really is as a word that resonates with hate speech connotations.

    What does is this:

    TRIGGER WARNING for hate words. Someone I encountered was trying to explain why the word “tranny” was so powerfully terrible. Their great way of explaining it was to note “Tranny is the last thing many trans* people hear before they are murdered.” And that’s the real point. Tranny has a history of being used as deliberate hate speech by people who mean the trans* community real legitimate harm. And in the USA where many commenters are from, cunt is the same for women. Cunt is the last thing many women hear before they are murdered. Either by abusive partners, spree killers, or misogynist terrorists. And thus resonates with that power, especially when wielded by people who are very much invested in a misogynistic culture and who are engaging in other activities like harassment and stalking.

    Attempting to minimize this fact and argue that it being used in its most hateful of contexts by people who are more importantly demonstrating raw hatred of women for being uppity is somehow equivalent to saying someone’s father smells of elderberries is just… Well, frankly, if you didn’t have the protection of your immense privilege, I’m not sure how you would be able to sleep at night.

    It is mostly harmless and exactly as strong as it is made to be.

    As stated above, it depends on context.

    TRIGGER WARNING for use of word for purpose of examples. The book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence uses the word as a reclamation attempt by the community the word has been used against, reducing its hateful power in similar ways as to how the African-American community has been doing with the word nigger. These actions however DO NOT lessen the hateful intent behind bigots using those words in their original contexts as specific hate words designed to wound which have the historical context of being the last thing those minority group members heard before they were murdered in hate crimes. (And sorry to everyone else for using these words for the purpose of illustration).

    Disseminating the claim that PZ Myers uses “Crelm toothpaste against communism” might fall under defamation, where it is at first not important whether it’s true or not, but whether or not smearing him, his name, lifestyle etc. causes him harm. When it does, he may have a point in court.

    A) This “example” sounds like it was written by a chimpanzee banging on a typewriter.
    B) From what I can decipher of your point… um, no.

    It really does matter in a defamation case whether or not the accusation is true. If I was accused of being a zaftig shot-put throwing transgender sass machine, I couldn’t go “oh noes, defamation of character”, because well, it’d be a true statement about me. Defamation is specifically about false claims made about someone.

    If something is true, but presented in a way for the express purpose of encouraging harassment of a target, that’s a completely different kettle of fish and claiming defamation will do little to address the real issue (harassment). The same is true if something is true but hidden for reasons of avoiding discrimination and the information is outed for the purpose of triggering that discrimination.

    But hey, I guess, the truth is a small casualty in the name of avoiding having to acknowledge that your false-equivalence concern trolling is fractally wrong.

    Regarding the truthfulness: you aren’t the arbiter of truth and I’ve seen often enough where severe accusations are dished out nilly-willy. Generally, your elbow room ends where that of another person begins. They can ruin their reputation themselves, and you can help them, but you can’t simply start rumors or pollute search engine results with extreme accusations. Other people can’t know that you are from another galaxy where common sense is unheard of.

    Who could ever know if someone is racist or not. Or even human or not. Can you tell I have a face? How could you? Therefore every claim made about everyone is always defamation. All the time.

    Or maybe this is pathetically fictitious and racist and sexist actions (as well studied by decades of ethnic studies and women studies academics) can in fact be easily identified and called out by people who actually know what they are talking about rather than over-privileged concern trolls trying to pretend that recognizing bigotry is worse and more damaging to people than bigotry itself.

    Tell you what, buddy, the next time somebody is being deliberately targeted by their company for firing on par with my current situation with my employer over a false accusation someone made about them being racist on a blog somewhere, you can call me, but in the meantime, do yourself a favor and shut the fuck up about your privileged white cis-male ideas on what “oppression looks like”. Okay, honey?

    Sally Strange (112) wrote: “Yey, wait, the epithet “fascist” really bothers Owlglass so obviously that’s his weakness. Yo Owlglass. You’re a fascist. We don’t like fascists around here. Go away, you fascist.”

    Yep, that’s how I expect it from this place.

    Mockery, sarcasm, and deliberate bait for you to trip and fall on.

    Yes, yes, you really should expect that from us. We will mock the shit out of idiots and disingenuous hacks. It’s what we do. And we’ll do it with an infinite less amount of hate in our hearts than the misogynists and whiny douchebros who obsess about us… you know, people like you.

    Almost meme-worthy. “Eats meat. Complains about keeping of animals.”

    Add memes to the list of things Owlglass knows shit all about.

    Whatever your plan was, looking like being on the moral high ground didn’t exactly work out. But you have a problem with pranks and spoofs. Exactly my point. Thanks for the illustration.

    As well as sarcasm.

    Speaking of which: context matters.

    Really?!? My God! This new and unnoticed piece of information changes everything. Why, we might be able to note context and see how people are treated, the cultural soup that actions and words exist in, maybe even the relative behavior of various communities. Why, concern trolls might even have to acknowledge that their bullshit obvious false equivalences are so transparently off mark a child could-

    But I fail to see how “die in a fire” somehow comes out favorable in a different context,

    Ha ha, false alarm. Feminists are the real monsters and their harassers are all Saints martyred on the cross of accusations of racism and sexism.

    Also, context boy, “die in a fire” (115) was at the time a popular internet meme used in various internet forums and comment threads on multiple blogs as a non-serious non-intended-threat colorful way to tell someone to fuck off. It has fallen out of disfavor in several blog communities including this one because it can be seen as violent language and imagery of wishing for someone else’s death. Oh, and the only comment thread community I can remember who has ever used “die in a fire” as anything more than a flippantry would be the MRA community who has used it as a call to a MRA hero who burned himself over a child custody case wherein he had abused his partner and kids and who called for others to burn down courthouses and kill police in his name.

    or stuff like “Don’t be fooled by his game when he rapes your daughter” (Ellen Beth Wachs).

    Add lolwhut to the list of things that Owlglass is an ignorant prat about.

    People will not research all the instances why someone was called a fascist or potential rapist, or why it seems to be the case.

    Everyone encounters every sentence with alien confusion. What is this word, what context could it possibly have. I couldn’t possibly read the handful of sentences it appears around or use even a tiny modicum of snark-awareness. Reacting to linguistics as if context was like real, and that the usage of words matters more than their existence as if certain words were simply bad for amorphous ephemeral reasons is like tout suite the most natural and human reaction most people have.

    Or maybe all the chickens you could possibly hope to fuck couldn’t possibly make us stupid enough to fall for this pathetically desperate attempt at justifying what has always been an attempt to deny away the very real harassment on the part of the forces you are clearly ideologically aligned with.

    I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I really have a hard time in finding this remotely okay. Copy and pasting the C-word all over the place because people go ballistic on the other hand, as a typical slymepit action, strikes me as a kind of prank.

    So on your Bizarro World, a troupe of hyper-obsessed stalker/harassers who have a stated goal of driving out women from the atheist community through targeted campaigns trading hate words in hate contexts for the purpose of encouraging continued dehumanization of said targets as people in order to justify the vile attacks they perform to themselves are “a kind of prank” whereas a bunch of feminists just minding their own business and using swear words or calling people who say sexist or racist things or do sexist or racist things sexists and/or racists is double-plus hitler and equivalent to castrating a man’s balls and feeding it to him.

    And you expect us to take you seriously?

    I take it back Owlglass, comedy is one of the things you know something about.

    And where there are multiple topics about “them” (including this one), they have the ongoing thread about FTB. Here I fail to see how the argument one side was more obsessed with the other has any traction.

    Earlier in this thread, I googled my handle and slymepit. I haven’t been back in the community long, have never previously glanced in their direction, have never ventured over or commented on their site, and so on. I’m listed in one of their threads as an example of FtB villainy and real hate speech yadda yadda.

    Note I did this on a whim and a curiosity. In the post I was cited, there was an obsessive level of detail about all our comment threads, a petty list of petty infractions none of which rose to the false equivalences they and frankly you are claiming they do.

    From what I’ve gathered from commentary around the slymepit, the monomaniacal focus defines them. We at FtB represent the uppity female given housing and social suppport, therefore we must be taken down in the name of men everywhere, etc… As someone who follows a number of feminist blogs, I know this type well and no, despite the attempts by concern trolls like you, no equivalence can be made between the actions of a group tired of being targeted and harassed sometimes vaguely noting their harassers and a group designated and deliberately trying to harass away an entire community off the internet.

    In short, take your false equivalence with you when you decide to let the door hit you on the way out.

    Not that it is unusual that a blogosphere has a lot of cross talk. Also noteworthy; their pointing out the issues on Michael Nugents own turf caused him to clean up in front of his own door. So they did cause a good effect.

    You sure are awfully invested in creating a fictional narrative for a harassment campaign blog. Shame that reality is googleable.

    Last but not least, I’m adding why I am sympathetic to Lulz and when. Years ago, I did all kinds of activism (by the way, feminism was on the list as well). Stuff like ad busting, communication guerrilla or cultural jamming where you insert perplexing or disorienting messages into public spaces (often attempting to poke fun at people abiding what they read/see), usually to make a point or people think. Modifying or replacing gender/sex symbols at club toilets are one example where you can cause some mayhem (not in Berlin though where nobody cares whose loo is for which kind of person). I also like Lulz online when it goes against authorities, higher ups, opinion leaders and so forth, or when the Lulz party is the David against the Goliath. I’m also a Yes Man fan and so forth. You get the idea. A lot of people really have a talent of almost begging for being trolled and ridiculed. Where I indeed think its part of their own fault and often deserved. Normal trolls go away when ignored. However, I completely hated the prank, where someone hacked a forum of people with epilepsy and inserted a super flashy animation–and stuff like that, where people already worse off, victims, weaker and so on are targeted.

    I also think that switching to lulz behavior in a debate, when else fails, is acceptable and it’s often the only sensible way to deal with Windmill Politcians. Finally. Blasphemy is completely accepted standard practice, by me at least. I fail to see why one form of ridicule that someone personally finds offensive is okay, and in other cases it should not be. That makes no sense.

    I’m not a square overly-privileged defender of the status quo. I once did some minor anarchy-lite actions that were careful not to actually end up saying anything as part of an over-privileged movement of bored white guys. THINK OF ME AS INTERESTING!

    P.S. Like all misogynist concern trolls, I was once interested in feminism and feminist activism before I realized that women were the real sexists, etc…

    TL;DR
    To sum up, making fun of people as long it’s clear, hardly does real harm–whereas affiliating people with all kinds of reprehensible groups in order to demonize them and to smear them is quite a different story, especially when its mostly made up.

    I am a massive tool and I’m getting visibly agitated by the fact that the sex I am supposed to be superior to by right is not buying my half-hearted bullshit attempt at a concern trolling.

    Also, you are never ever getting me to actually look at whether or not people are accused of sexism and racism here because GASP they are actually being sexist and racist or being complicit and supportive of sexist/racist systems of oppression and the mythologies supporting them.

  152. says

    Owlglass @151

    First attempt got eated, let’s see if this fares better.

    That c-word is an example of an insult, intended to elicit an emotional effect on the target.

    No. I mean, yes, it is, but it’s not like calling someone a fucker or a poo-poo head. It’s a deliberate dehumanization of a class of people, an attempt to equate full human beings with genitalia.

    And that on its own doesn’t rise it to the level that it really is as a word that resonates with hate speech connotations.

    What does is this:

    TRIGGER WARNING for hate words. Someone I encountered was trying to explain why the word “tranny” was so powerfully terrible. Their great way of explaining it was to note “Tranny is the last thing many trans* people hear before they are murdered.” And that’s the real point. Tranny has a history of being used as deliberate hate speech by people who mean the trans* community real legitimate harm. And in the USA where many commenters are from, cunt is the same for women. Cunt is the last thing many women hear before they are murdered. Either by abusive partners, spree killers, or misogynist terrorists. And thus resonates with that power, especially when wielded by people who are very much invested in a misogynistic culture and who are engaging in other activities like harassment and stalking.

    Attempting to minimize this fact and argue that it being used in its most hateful of contexts by people who are more importantly demonstrating raw hatred of women for being uppity is somehow equivalent to saying someone’s father smells of elderberries is just… Well, frankly, if you didn’t have the protection of your immense privilege, I’m not sure how you would be able to sleep at night.

    It is mostly harmless and exactly as strong as it is made to be.

    As stated above, it depends on context.

    The book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence uses the word as a reclamation attempt by the community the word has been used against, reducing its hateful power in similar ways as to how the African-American community with words used against it. These actions however DO NOT lessen the hateful intent behind bigots using those words in their original contexts as specific hate words designed to wound which have the historical context of being the last thing those minority group members heard before they were murdered in hate crimes.

    Disseminating the claim that PZ Myers uses “Crelm toothpaste against communism” might fall under defamation, where it is at first not important whether it’s true or not, but whether or not smearing him, his name, lifestyle etc. causes him harm. When it does, he may have a point in court.

    A) This “example” sounds like it was written by a chimpanzee banging on a typewriter.
    B) From what I can decipher of your point… um, no.

    It really does matter in a defamation case whether or not the accusation is true. If I was accused of being a zaftig shot-put throwing transgender sass machine, I couldn’t go “oh noes, defamation of character”, because well, it’d be a true statement about me. Defamation is specifically about false claims made about someone.

    If something is true, but presented in a way for the express purpose of encouraging harassment of a target, that’s a completely different kettle of fish and claiming defamation will do little to address the real issue (harassment). The same is true if something is true but hidden for reasons of avoiding discrimination and the information is outed for the purpose of triggering that discrimination.

    But hey, I guess, the truth is a small casualty in the name of avoiding having to acknowledge that your false-equivalence concern trolling is fractally wrong.

    Regarding the truthfulness: you aren’t the arbiter of truth and I’ve seen often enough where severe accusations are dished out nilly-willy. Generally, your elbow room ends where that of another person begins. They can ruin their reputation themselves, and you can help them, but you can’t simply start rumors or pollute search engine results with extreme accusations. Other people can’t know that you are from another galaxy where common sense is unheard of.

    Who could ever know if someone is racist or not. Or even human or not. Can you tell I have a face? How could you? Therefore every claim made about everyone is always defamation. All the time.

    Or maybe this is pathetically fictitious and racist and sexist actions (as well studied by decades of ethnic studies and women studies academics) can in fact be easily identified and called out by people who actually know what they are talking about rather than over-privileged concern trolls trying to pretend that recognizing bigotry is worse and more damaging to people than bigotry itself.

    Tell you what, buddy, the next time somebody is being deliberately targeted by their company for firing on par with my current situation with my employer over a false accusation someone made about them being racist on a blog somewhere, you can call me, but in the meantime, do yourself a favor and shut the fuck up about your privileged white cis-male ideas on what “oppression looks like”. Okay, honey?

    Sally Strange (112) wrote: “Yey, wait, the epithet “fascist” really bothers Owlglass so obviously that’s his weakness. Yo Owlglass. You’re a fascist. We don’t like fascists around here. Go away, you fascist.”

    Yep, that’s how I expect it from this place.

    Mockery, sarcasm, and deliberate bait for you to trip and fall on.

    Yes, yes, you really should expect that from us. We will mock the shit out of idiots and disingenuous hacks. It’s what we do. And we’ll do it with an infinite less amount of hate in our hearts than the misogynists and whiny douchebros who obsess about us… you know, people like you.

    Almost meme-worthy. “Eats meat. Complains about keeping of animals.”

    Add memes to the list of things Owlglass knows shit all about.

    Whatever your plan was, looking like being on the moral high ground didn’t exactly work out. But you have a problem with pranks and spoofs. Exactly my point. Thanks for the illustration.

    As well as sarcasm.

    Speaking of which: context matters.

    Really?!? My God! This new and unnoticed piece of information changes everything. Why, we might be able to note context and see how people are treated, the cultural soup that actions and words exist in, maybe even the relative behavior of various communities. Why, concern trolls might even have to acknowledge that their bullshit obvious false equivalences are so transparently off mark a child could-

    But I fail to see how “die in a fire” somehow comes out favorable in a different context,

    Ha ha, false alarm. Feminists are the real monsters and their harassers are all Saints martyred on the cross of accusations of racism and sexism.

    Also, context boy, “die in a fire” (115) was at the time a popular internet meme used in various internet forums and comment threads on multiple blogs as a non-serious non-intended-threat colorful way to tell someone to fuck off. It has fallen out of disfavor in several blog communities including this one because it can be seen as violent language and imagery of wishing for someone else’s death. Oh, and the only comment thread community I can remember who has ever used “die in a fire” as anything more than a flippantry would be the MRA community who has used it as a call to a MRA hero who burned himself over a child custody case wherein he had abused his partner and kids and who called for others to burn down courthouses and kill police in his name.

    or stuff like “Don’t be fooled by his game when he rapes your daughter” (Ellen Beth Wachs).

    Add lolwhut to the list of things that Owlglass is an ignorant prat about.

    People will not research all the instances why someone was called a fascist or potential rapist, or why it seems to be the case.

    Everyone encounters every sentence with alien confusion. What is this word, what context could it possibly have. I couldn’t possibly read the handful of sentences it appears around or use even a tiny modicum of snark-awareness. Reacting to linguistics as if context was like real, and that the usage of words matters more than their existence as if certain words were simply bad for amorphous ephemeral reasons is like tout suite the most natural and human reaction most people have.

    Or maybe all the chickens you could possibly hope to fuck couldn’t possibly make us stupid enough to fall for this pathetically desperate attempt at justifying what has always been an attempt to deny away the very real harassment on the part of the forces you are clearly ideologically aligned with.

    I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I really have a hard time in finding this remotely okay. Copy and pasting the C-word all over the place because people go ballistic on the other hand, as a typical slymepit action, strikes me as a kind of prank.

    So on your Bizarro World, a troupe of hyper-obsessed stalker/harassers who have a stated goal of driving out women from the atheist community through targeted campaigns trading hate words in hate contexts for the purpose of encouraging continued dehumanization of said targets as people in order to justify the vile attacks they perform to themselves are “a kind of prank” whereas a bunch of feminists just minding their own business and using swear words or calling people who say sexist or racist things or do sexist or racist things sexists and/or racists is double-plus hitler and equivalent to castrating a man’s balls and feeding it to him.

    And you expect us to take you seriously?

    I take it back Owlglass, comedy is one of the things you know something about.

    And where there are multiple topics about “them” (including this one), they have the ongoing thread about FTB. Here I fail to see how the argument one side was more obsessed with the other has any traction.

    Earlier in this thread, I googled my handle and slymepit. I haven’t been back in the community long, have never previously glanced in their direction, have never ventured over or commented on their site, and so on. I’m listed in one of their threads as an example of FtB villainy and real hate speech yadda yadda.

    Note I did this on a whim and a curiosity. In the post I was cited, there was an obsessive level of detail about all our comment threads, a petty list of petty infractions none of which rose to the false equivalences they and frankly you are claiming they do.

    From what I’ve gathered from commentary around the slymepit, the monomaniacal focus defines them. We at FtB represent the uppity female given housing and social suppport, therefore we must be taken down in the name of men everywhere, etc… As someone who follows a number of feminist blogs, I know this type well and no, despite the attempts by concern trolls like you, no equivalence can be made between the actions of a group tired of being targeted and harassed sometimes vaguely noting their harassers and a group designated and deliberately trying to harass away an entire community off the internet.

    In short, take your false equivalence with you when you decide to let the door hit you on the way out.

    Not that it is unusual that a blogosphere has a lot of cross talk. Also noteworthy; their pointing out the issues on Michael Nugents own turf caused him to clean up in front of his own door. So they did cause a good effect.

    You sure are awfully invested in creating a fictional narrative for a harassment campaign blog. Shame that reality is googleable.

    Last but not least, I’m adding why I am sympathetic to Lulz and when. Years ago, I did all kinds of activism (by the way, feminism was on the list as well). Stuff like ad busting, communication guerrilla or cultural jamming where you insert perplexing or disorienting messages into public spaces (often attempting to poke fun at people abiding what they read/see), usually to make a point or people think. Modifying or replacing gender/sex symbols at club toilets are one example where you can cause some mayhem (not in Berlin though where nobody cares whose loo is for which kind of person). I also like Lulz online when it goes against authorities, higher ups, opinion leaders and so forth, or when the Lulz party is the David against the Goliath. I’m also a Yes Man fan and so forth. You get the idea. A lot of people really have a talent of almost begging for being trolled and ridiculed. Where I indeed think its part of their own fault and often deserved. Normal trolls go away when ignored. However, I completely hated the prank, where someone hacked a forum of people with epilepsy and inserted a super flashy animation–and stuff like that, where people already worse off, victims, weaker and so on are targeted.

    I also think that switching to lulz behavior in a debate, when else fails, is acceptable and it’s often the only sensible way to deal with Windmill Politcians. Finally. Blasphemy is completely accepted standard practice, by me at least. I fail to see why one form of ridicule that someone personally finds offensive is okay, and in other cases it should not be. That makes no sense.

    I’m not a square overly-privileged defender of the status quo. I once did some minor anarchy-lite actions that were careful not to actually end up saying anything as part of an over-privileged movement of bored white guys. THINK OF ME AS INTERESTING!

    P.S. Like all misogynist concern trolls, I was once interested in feminism and feminist activism before I realized that women were the real sexists, etc…

    TL;DR
    To sum up, making fun of people as long it’s clear, hardly does real harm–whereas affiliating people with all kinds of reprehensible groups in order to demonize them and to smear them is quite a different story, especially when its mostly made up.

    I am a massive tool and I’m getting visibly agitated by the fact that the sex I am supposed to be superior to by right is not buying my half-hearted bullshit attempt at a concern trolling.

    Also, you are never ever getting me to actually look at whether or not people are accused of sexism and racism here because GASP they are actually being sexist and racist or being complicit and supportive of sexist/racist systems of oppression and the mythologies supporting them.

  153. says

    You called yourself that way, next to your name and I retorted using it when you attacked me for something.

    Yeah, and I distinctly remember that you never dealt with the fact that “fascist” and “femi-fascist” are two different things, which is something that EVERYBODY knows except dishonest shits like you.

    How come you didn’t know the difference between a fascist and a femi-fascist, Owlglass? If you didn’t know, why didn’t you ask at the time?

  154. says

    I’m not a square overly-privileged defender of the status quo. I once did some minor anarchy-lite actions that were careful not to actually end up saying anything as part of an over-privileged movement of bored white guys. THINK OF ME AS INTERESTING!

    P.S. Like all misogynist concern trolls, I was once interested in feminism and feminist activism before I realized that women were the real sexists, etc…

    Haha, nailed it. I always did think those “culture jammers” were super pretentious.

  155. Ichthyic says

    Come on, please! It should read pathetic onanist. It is okay though. No need to worry about it.

    oh, sorry dear.

  156. Ichthyic says

    Years ago, I did all kinds of activism

    was that when you lived in a shoebox in the middle of the road?

  157. Ichthyic says

    I’m not a square overly-privileged defender of the status quo. I once did some minor anarchy-lite actions that were careful not to actually end up saying anything as part of an over-privileged movement of bored white guys. THINK OF ME AS INTERESTING!

    better yet…

    IGNORE ME!

    ;)

  158. says

    Cerberus

    . Cunt is the last thing many women hear before they are murdered. Either by abusive partners, spree killers, or misogynist terrorists.

    Doesn’t even have to be murder. But there’s always that violent component to it. Look at the “Everyday sexism” on twitter. There’s a reoccuring story that goes like this:
    -Total stranger tries to hit on woman in public space/catcalls/wants phone-number etc.
    -Woman rejects advances
    -Guy becomes very upset, menacing, uses cunt and bitch and things.
    I’m argumentative. I’m not a withering poor flower. But for hell, when a guy uses these words I’m going to get some space between him and me. It’s the moment I know my personal safety is at risk. That effect still holds true on the internet when the guys are conveniently behind an ocean.

    Owlglass
    Well, since you keep ignoring my points above, I’ll be nice and try again:
    How is it not defamation calling a woman a cunt and thereby insinuating that she is inherently icky and not fully human? How’s that any different from “Saujud” “Spaghettifresser” and “Kanake”?

  159. says

    I am sure others have already refuted you Owlglass, but it bears repeating:
    “Cunt” is not ‘mostly harmless’.
    You have the privilege of not being a woman on the receiving end of a slur that *only works as a slur* if there is something wrong with having a vagina (and by extension, being a woman). Have ever stopped to wonder why the use of slurs is shitty?
    Do you understand why ‘nigger’ is a slur?
    Do you understand why ‘faggot’ is a slur?
    What about ‘trannie’? Do you understand how and why that word is so offensive?
    That you do not understand why ‘cunt’ is a offensive slur makes me wonder if you understand the nature of slurs at all.
    Must be nice to wallow in privilege.

  160. says

    Owlglass:
    Do you understand why slurs are offensive?
    Do you understand that slurs target marginalized groups and are worse than insults that can apply to anyone (c.f. ‘faggot’ directed at a gay person vs. ‘asshole’ directed at anyone)

  161. says

    Tony

    Owlglass:
    Do you understand why slurs are offensive?
    Do you understand that slurs target marginalized groups and are worse than insults that can apply to anyone (c.f. ‘faggot’ directed at a gay person vs. ‘asshole’ directed at anyone)

    Can I answer for him?
    No.
    This is the guy who thinks that talking about race makes you racist, so better don’t change your nym back…

  162. says

    Owlglass, NO, it is not okay to use mine as an example because my comment wasn’t intended as an insult. My tweet was to prove a point back to the person that was defaming and insulting me.

  163. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Owlglass wrote:

    Plenty of people get mentioned here all the time without participating here. Or they are banned. It is actually fairly usual in a blogosphere that people each write on their own turf about what other people say and do elsewhere, including people from other blogs. Your other claims aren’t backed up by evidence, methinks.

    And how many of them are stalked on Twitter? How of many of them have had Twitter accounts parodying them? How many of them have photoshopped pictures of them? How many are the subject of literally dozens of podcasts – including one where a single comment on Facebook was discussed on an episode an hour long – and blog posts?

    This isn’t a case of two groups simply slagging each other off. Only one side has engaged – and is still engaging in – systematic, co-ordinated harassment of prominent members of the atheist community with an interest in social justice, with the goal of preventing changes to the makeup of the community.

    Cut the false equivalence schtick. It’s not working for you.

  164. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    You got some examples above. Just look them up.

    Non-sequiturs. Typical of tone trolls. You wouldn’t recognize real pertinent evidence if you tripped over it. Still waiting for you to prove your case that we call non-bigots bigots.

  165. glodson says

    Catching up on this thread.

    Wowbagger @84

    But a couple of years back that changed. Greater numbers of people started talking more about things like feminism and diversity and social justice and inclusivity.

    They didn’t like that. Not one bit. Because it wasn’t about them. It didn’t make them feel better, or smarter, or like they’ve achieved some massive intellectual success – you know, the way being told how totes awesome they are for not believing in gods does.

    This hit me hard. But it is why I stick around, why I tend to read the posts on feminism and equality more. I’m an entitled douchebag of a white straight male. I know this.

    Because of this awareness of my own shitty bias, I try to correct my own thinking. When I came into skepticism and atheism, I had to start with myself. When I started the effort to be more rational, I had to start with myself. I’m never satisfied with my own answers. I want to do better.

    I don’t see the point in laughing at people who buy into bigfoot. Bigfoot is a good tool for showing how to think critically, the importance of the null hypothesis, how to look at data, and reasons to reject or accept a belief. It is a good way to practice the tools needed to dismantle religious beliefs. It is a good way to get some of these ideas past the internal censors of the theists.

    At least, that is how it worked with me. But rejecting god, rejecting religion, means nothing if you don’t follow through, if you don’t accept the full consequences of living in a godless universe. As such, social justice is an even bigger concern now for me than it ever was. There’s no god to clean up the mess, to set things right in a magical afterlife.

    As such, I have to look hard at my own attitudes. Do they help? Are they symptoms of a larger problem? Are my own attitudes toxic? It isn’t fun to pick through your own beliefs, and ideas. It isn’t fun to actually apply the tools of skepticism to your own attitudes, attitudes you didn’t even realize that you’ve developed over the years by not paying attention to the culture around you.

    Too many just accept it. And they don’t want to talk about it. They don’t care. They don’t want to go any further than looking down on those who still hold on to a belief in god. I don’t want to look down on the theist. I want them to follow my lead, the lead of countless other atheists, and reject their religion. Reject their god.

    Religion is a poison. I thought the point wasn’t to show how wrong the religious are, or sit in judgement over how evil they can be. I thought the point was to get them to stop. To see there’s a better way, a way were everyone can enjoy life.

    Reading the comments, both complied by Nugent and posted on his blog disturbed me. And it just increases my resolve to be even louder on this issue. With every stupid comment they make, they just give us more evidence that they are self-centered and egotistical. They want to say whatever stupid thing is on their mind, and not face the consequences.

    Sorry, I know I’m reinventing the wheel. This is likely old-hat stuff, but I’m still working through some of this.

  166. Owlglass says

    181, Cerberus wrote “@151. First attempt got eated, let’s see if this fares better. […]

    There was hope. And you wanted to correct my non-native-speaker language? But I’m impressed with the shadow boxing. You clearly spend a long time in front of a mirror. It looks like you wanted me to assume the role of the person who defends various types of insults, sexism and misogyny–kind of as a foil–so you can have the feeling you did something good today. But you already spent too much time admiring yourself in a mirror and I think it went into your head already. So the answer is no, I won’t do that for you. The reason is that what you wrote has practically no relevance whatsoever when it comes to my actual views. Obviously, I might add. Let me know when you are done objectifying me. It’s kind of creepy. Typical for creeps to treat someone they directly write to as mere objects, and insert all kinds shallow abstract musings, while claiming they care for anyone. I envision you more like this guy (literal trigger warning. Video contains actual footage of Cerberus when at his computer). What a creep. Besides, why I’m not doing certain actions anymore has other reasons. You can save the world when you are an early twen, but there then are other phases in life that move priorities around a bit. I haven’t lost touch with it completely, though, and my views haven’t really changed.

    195, 196, 197 EllenBeth

    You mean “watch out this guy may rape your daughter” (paraphrased, please find the link above) was not meant as an insult? Okay then. I don’t plan to refer to this example anymore and will add the reference that you didn’t mean it that way.

    [added for comedic effect] 199, Nerd of Redhead: prove your case

    Prove how someone is not something? How and who exactly? Are you are future child molester, Nerd? Not intended as an insult, see Ellen Beth Wachs reasoning. Prove it, Nerd! And citation please.

    194, Giliell
    Do you understand why slurs are offensive?
    Do you understand that slurs target marginalized groups and are worse than insults that can apply to anyone (c.f. ‘faggot’ directed at a gay person vs. ‘asshole’ directed at anyone)

    Alright, it’s your turn. Yes and yes.

  167. says

    Seriously Owlglass, how DO you explain your shameful ignorance about the difference between a fascist and a femi-fascist? How are you not embarrassed?

  168. glodson says

    That’s because I’m aware.

    Okay, I exaggerate my faults a bit. But I remember my history as well. I was largely ignorant of many issues, and bumbled through life without a thought about how some of my words, and attitudes, could effect others. I would have been angry if you told me some of my attitudes were homophobic. Or if you told me I was transphobic. Of if you said I had racist and sexist attitudes, and some of my ideas were misogynistic.

    And you would have been right.

    It is much like cognitive bias. It is easy to spot them in others. The real trick is to be aware of them in yourself. Some people seem to get really uncomfortable when the spotlight is shined on their faults. I know I do, but I try to set that aside and see what’s wrong. I try to fix it.

    Maybe that will prevent me from continuing being a douchebag. However, looking inward, I still think I got a lot of work to do.

  169. Owlglass says

    204, SallyStrange wrote: Seriously Owlglass, how DO you explain your shameful ignorance about the difference between a fascist and a femi-fascist? How are you not embarrassed?

    Why do you keep bringing this up? I don’t know what a femi-fascist is supposed to mean, and don’t use that word myself. As I have explained it to you a few times, you called me names at that time, and I merely retorted with a one liner where I picked up the word you had standing next to your name, which included the word “Fascist”. The original “joke” was more like “your insult coming from a self-described fascist feels more like a compliment” or something like that. Yet, you keep over-interpreting it. I deliberately didn’t add the “femi” because I didn’t want to come across as reinforcing some underlying insult or assumptions that certain goes with “Femi-Fascism”. And yes, I think it was wrong from you in the first place trying to wear such names for whatever reason. But once more! I didn’t bother bringing this up myself. It was a retort. Is this enough now?

  170. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Are you are future child molester, Nerd?

    Non-sequitor. And you know that. You haven’t proven your claims Owlglass. You avoid real evidence showing we call truly non-bigots bigots, and that we harrass and stalk folks online, unlike the ‘pit. Your case would be dismissed by any court as not having achieved a minimum evidence for guilt. Why don’t you quit while you are behind? That’s what anyone with a modicum of intelligence would do. You will never be ahead. That requires something other than your OPINION. Which is all you really have.

  171. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    The reason is that what you wrote has practically no relevance whatsoever when it comes to my actual views.

    And your views have no relevance whatsoever to the reality of this situation. Which has been the point of us here all along. Nothing but irrelevant tone/concern trolling OPINION. Which *floosh* can be dismissed as it is without real and relevant evidence to back it up…

  172. says

    Owlglass:

    You mean “watch out this guy may rape your daughter” (paraphrased, please find the link above) was not meant as an insult? Okay then. I don’t plan to refer to this example anymore and will add the reference that you didn’t mean it that way.

    So, are you under orders to only use quotes out-of-context, and willfully ignore any attempt to put those quotes back in context? Or are you simply not understanding that your use of that quote completely misrepresents what was said at the time?

    Using that quote over and over doesn’t help your case. All it does is make you look desperate to find one single thing on par with any of the quotes in the article linked in the OP.

    Face it. The pitters completely out-douche us. They’ve chased away good feminist bloggers, harassed them until they quit blogging, and then celebrated at their success in silencing a feminist voice. Name one instance of us doing anything similar.

    Hell, good luck just finding a single quote that matches the shit listed on the page linked from the OP.

  173. says

    Owlglass @201

    There was hope. And you wanted to correct my non-native-speaker language?

    If that’s all you got from my post, I’m gonna have to add “reading comprehension” and “internet slang” to the list of things you don’t know a damn thing about.

    But I’m impressed with the shadow boxing.

    More full-service mockery. Think of it as a service I provide, free of charge, for particularly… deserving targets, such as full-of-themselves dishonest hacks who can’t even be bothered to address things like the real impact of hate slurs used as hate slurs or what oppression actually looks like or any of the other half-dozen points that show how feeble your attempt at a rhetorical dance really is.

    Also, add fisking to the list of things you don’t understand. Also, note the things you don’t understand list is not about you speak english bad, but rather an appalling resistance to information. Google searchbars come standard with most browsers. It has never been easier to educate yourself about a subject. And yet, you regularly choose to remain ignorant or rather you wish to claim ignorance in order to perform the “baffled everyman encountering these strange customs for the first time” persona. And that’s why the persona falls flat. If it was true, that person would be an idiot for not educating himself. Especially considering that there are many here in this thread who are happily willing to educate him without him going through all the effort of typing a handful of words into a search field and clicking a link or two.

    You clearly spend a long time in front of a mirror.

    Fun fact, I actually don’t. Never have, really. It’s a whole gender dysphoria thing.

    What’s that? That wasn’t your point? You were trying instead to accuse me of narcissism (or to be more honest, you were hoping to distract away from where I countered specific points with regards to the impact of words, behavior, and context and towards a delightful non-sequitur)?

    Sorry, ksssh, can’t hear you, ksssh, going through a tunnel.

    It looks like you wanted me to assume the role of the person who defends various types of insults, sexism and misogyny–kind of as a foil–so you can have the feeling you did something good today.

    A) Yeah, my life is just bereft of deserving targets lately. I’d have to like go out of my way to like invent people who were like discriminatory or defending of discriminatory behavior. I don’t know where I would get my mango fix (yeah, I know you don’t know this one, but heh, who cares?) without transforming people like you into my unwilling playthings. Fuck, can I be fictional me? She sounds like her life is a fuckton less “fun”.

    B) You are not assuming the role of a person who defends sexism and misogyny. You are one. You chose that role of your own free will. I didn’t sneak up on you and force you to claim that slymepit’s harassment was “a bit of a prank” while trying to claim that calling racists racists was double-plus hitler. You did that of your own free will and now you are being mocked for it.

    C) And you’re being mocked for it because you are disingenuous. There is no purpose actually engaging with you in good faith, because your actions betray a lack of good faith. When actually cornered by the facts, you switch to a new tactic and you’ve yet to realize that your tired shtick is something we’ve seen a thousand times before from a thousand concern trolls before you. All who thought they were brilliant masterminds stumbling on a new tactic no one else thought of before. When the subject doesn’t care about their arguments, why should we? At least with mockery, someone gets something out of the exchange.

    But you already spent too much time admiring yourself in a mirror and I think it went into your head already. So the answer is no, I won’t do that for you.

    Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh wow. Yeah, WAY too late for that bro.

    The reason is that what you wrote has practically no relevance whatsoever when it comes to my actual views.

    Hey, you know what? I’ll give you this one… Largely because you have been so disingenuous, it is probably quite true that you don’t believe a word you are saying and you’re just still “for the lulzing” a group of women, wasting their time and trying to rile them up, because that’s the sort of thing that makes your dick hard and makes you feel less anxious about the existence of smart, snarky women.

    But of course, if that was the case, you kind of fucked up by trying the game here cause it’s clear u r all sorts of mad, bro.

    Or you’re just the dimwitted defender of sexism and intended hate speech you present yourself as and my snark has a laser-like focus on your “actual views”. And don’t bother telling me which is which. I couldn’t care less and you’d probably just lie to me anyways.

    Obviously, I might add. Let me know when you are done objectifying me.

    Add objectification to the List. Yo, dude, google, knowledge, get, now.

    It’s kind of creepy.

    … You think that someone shredding your comments with mockery on a blog you decided to troll at and who couldn’t care about you outside of here is “creepy”.

    Yeah, you wouldn’t last one single day as a woman and dealing with the crap they put up with every single day.

    And the fact that you don’t understand that is probably the central reason you are being mocked so “rudely” and “creepily”.

    Typical for creeps to treat someone they directly write to as mere objects, and insert all kinds shallow abstract musings, while claiming they care for anyone.

    Dude, are you actually trying to argue a false equivalence between “mocking someone with fisking” and objectification?!?

    Are you addicted to false equivalence or something? If you don’t make an analogy that insults people who are suffering from the real world consequences of an oppressive act within a set time, do you get the shakes?

    Hey, weren’t you attempting earlier this thread to claim that my noting that you are defending misogyny was “shadow boxing”? Amazing how you couldn’t even last one little paragraph without providing the self-refutation.

    I envision you more like this guy (literal trigger warning. Video contains actual footage of Cerberus when at his computer).

    And trigger warnings go on the List as well. Here, since you obviously lost your google finger in the war, let me help you out. Okay, moving the cursor…oh Bob, such a steep climb, typing it in, oxygen so scarce, feel so cold. Clicking the link, finger like lead and Trigger warning. Oh fuck, so much shooting pain, why did I mock how hard this was? How could I have been blind to the hardship of self-education! I swear on my life I will never mock a moron again (carefully confirm I have no life and… excellent)!

    Oh, and douchebro gamer culture is a soup of toxic masculinity desperately struggling to fit into a broken homosocial broader culture by deliberately targeting minority group members within the group for general harassment, vitriol, and silencing. Hint, hint, it’s not us who are the best analogy for that particular comparison, but then you knew that already.

    What a creep. Besides, why I’m not doing certain actions anymore has other reasons. You can save the world when you are an early twen, but there then are other phases in life that move priorities around a bit. I haven’t lost touch with it completely, though, and my views haven’t really changed.

    Yeah, see, this is why you’re an idiot. Because you haven’t yet realized that A) I don’t care, B) that little aside has nothing to do with the deconstructions of your points far more people than me have been providing and which you have been deliberately ignoring, C) I don’t care, and D) that that final bit was about how anarchy-lite that fails to say anything other than “the lulz” is a form of play-acting at anarchy and activism. By failing to be about anything and avoiding realms where it can actually deconstruct forced hierarchies and comment about social trends in the hopes of moving humanity forward away from reflexively defending systems of oppression because “we’ve always done it this way”.

    Like bathroom signs. You swapped some around or put up new names, because, hurr hurr people will be in the wrong gender, hurr hurr. Which is stupid. Gendered bathrooms are an easy point for making a larger gender point. Plenty of establishments put up new names and pictures for gendered bathroom setups? Is it because of complicit belief that the gendered system makes sense but it would be funny if someone got it “wrong”? No, it’s a deliberate attempt to counter the assumption that we should have gendered bathrooms. Instead of the bathroom being a random public space where people are unconsciously asked to enforce a rigid and inflexible gender binary out of habit, becoming honorary policepersons of gender, it is set as a space that is welcome to people of any gender. That such places can serve as a relief for genderqueer, trans*, and intersex people instead of a cudgel of societal disapproval.

    That you didn’t even think about that benefit shows how hollow your “activism” truly rang and how little respect your play-acting as “rebels” deserves.

    I couldn’t care less if you still think of it as awesome or not, cause that wasn’t the point of that particular mockery and it damn well wasn’t the central point of my lengthy deconstruction of your bullshit.

    And frankly, we both know that we both know that. And that’s why you’re getting mocked for your pathetic attempts at distraction.

    And since we’re back here, let’s hear your reason for why you are so compelled to minimize the actions of professional cyberstalkers and harassers. I’m sure, they are fantastic.

  174. says

    And yes, I think it was wrong from you in the first place trying to wear such names for whatever reason.

    Why?

    Excellent question, but I doubt it will be met with anything but illogical flailing from Owlglass.

  175. says

    SallyStrange-

    Apparently his point is “GOOGLE IZ HARD”!

    glodson-

    And it is appreciated. It’s not easy going in and looking for the unconscious stuff you’ve picked up from society or raising environment and taking the harsh light of day to it. And it often isn’t pleasant. More awareness means more things you can’t turn a blind eye to and ignore and more psychological weight. Often nasty reminders of where you were once complicit in a fucked-up system to someone’s detriment. These are hard burdens to bear, but I will always have nothing but the highest respect for those who choose to bear them and strive to improve.

    It is a bravery that is not praised enough, considering how easy it is for someone with privilege to just turn into an Owlglass instead.

  176. says

    Also, I love the occasional attempts he makes at being hurt and attacked. Dude, you came here to our pool to pis and shit and make a mess. We didn’t seek you out. When you eventually fuck off, we will not follow you to other blogs. We will not write long length posts about what you say on other parts of the internet. We will not try and remove you off internet communities you belong to or stalk you on Facebook and twitter and leave threatening comments everywhere.

    And that’s sort of the the ur-point being discussed. One group mocks deliberately antagonistic trolls who are desperate for any kind of “oppression-lite” story they can use to justify their vile actions only when they arrive and start throwing shit around. The other group specifically seeks out and targets victims for mass-scale harassment and actively tries to fuck shit up because the existence of minority group members just being allowed to discuss issues of oppression anywhere on the internet is seen as an existential threat to them.

    There’s never going to be an equivalence between those groups, because one group is the victim of the others’ harassment and no amount of rhetorical bullshit and snow-jobbery will change that one underlying fact.

  177. glodson says

    Cerberus:

    Thanks.

    I mean, we all carry around different baggage.

    A little story while I’m thinking of it. Last night, my wife showed me a video called “Same Love,” a song about gay rights. I watched it and thought about what was said. The guy ripped into people leaving comments, like “that’s gay.” It hurt to hear that knowing that, years ago, I would say that very phrase without thought or reflection. I would call my friends gay slurs, never once paying attention to what I was saying. I would cringe at the thought of two men kissing. I believed it was gross, and partly because I was told it was gross. Oh, I thought that gay people should have equal protection under the law, and that they should have complete marriage equality. I still had nasty and bigoted attitudes.

    Only when I finally took a hard look at myself did I see the faults. Only then did I see how bigoted I was being. I now see the beauty in two men kissing as they express their love and passion for each other. I see the problem with the phrase “that’s gay” and using gay slurs. To admit that, I had to accept I was being a poor human being.

    It gets easier to admit once I made the resolution to face it.

    This is a direct consequence of my atheism and skepticism. Before, I thought I was a good Christian. Now I see the problem. It was that I was a good Christian, but a bad human being.

    Having said that, those guys are assholes. I made mistakes and had shitty attitudes, but fuck. Some of the comments, and the subsequent apologetics, are disgusting. It is one thing to have the shitty attitudes included in our culture, it is another to deny them. But it is horrifying to see people grab these shitty attitudes and sprint away from humanity.

  178. says

    Owlglass:
    Are you this deliberately obtuse in meatspace or just online?
    Do you truly think the only possible reason Sally once had ‘fascist’ in her post nym is because she is a fascist and wears the name proudly?
    Here is a hint, the ‘Shoop’ in my post nym is a tongue in cheek jab at those people who view Pharyngula commenters as sheep who mindlessly follow PZs edicts. It does not mean I consider myself a sheep. Now from there, what could that tell you about post nyms for anyone else (here,I will hold your hand further-it says nothing about anyone because you cannot make any assumptions about someone based on their nym)

  179. says

    Owlglass:
    You could learn a lot by reading what glodson wrote @216 (as always, read for comprehension)

    I too am curious why you think Sally should not have included ‘fascist’ in her post nym. Are you the arbiter of standards? Is your job to police others to prevent them from referring to themselves however they choose? Have you figured out that maybe Sally was not completely serious using the word? Perhaps there was a point she was making. If you were to try that incredibly difficult google search thing that Cerberus so kindly explained, you might learn what words mean, rather than wallowing in a slime infested pit of ignorance.

  180. throwaway, promised freezed peach, all we got was the pit says

    HA! Cerberus @ 212… woooow! No wonder Owlglass was quick to insist on shadow boxing – they wanted out of the ring once the bell rang – and it’s a fair sight to behold your dismantling of their attempted deflections. Thank you so much for that grand spectacle! Molly would have been cheering in her ringside seat. ;)

  181. Ichthyic says

    Let me know when you are done objectifying me. It’s kind of creepy.

    actually, glass, you’re doing it to yourself.

    and yeah, I agree it’s creepy.

  182. Owlglass says

    Catching up…

    @ Tony the (Undefeatable) Queer Shoop & Jadehawk
    You can enter a name you want, and you will be called by that name. If you don’t want to be called “Queer Shoop” or any variation thereof, don’t call yourself “Queer Shoop”. If you don’t want to be called “fascist”, you shouldn’t add this next to your name. Normal people would think this to be quite easy and clear. Please let me know where you have difficulties, so I can understand your view better. I sure assist in explaining this with yet different words. If you are looking for some context, you should check out comments 89 and 206. I greatly sympathize with the attempt of dramatizing a one liner retort and find it quite fascinating what you do here. I will never be in the way for the Rule of Funny. How else can people keep emotional stability in this place… Wait…

  183. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Still haven’t proven your point Owlglass. You haven’t shown we call non-bigots, bigots, and that we harass and chase folks all over the internet like the ‘pit. Not good for us listening to your drivel. And if you are smart, you will admit you can’t prove that point and shut the fuck up.

  184. UnknownEric is high on Mountain Dew. says

    But that would require the ability to admit being wrong/mistaken/not perfect, which I don’t believe any of our usual cupcakes have.

  185. Wowbagger, Designated Snarker says

    Your capacity to link matches your capacity to think, Owlglass.

  186. Owlglass says

    228, Nerd of Redhead
    The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Or did you change your mind after all? You can’t trick this away by working with inverting the issue. I begin to panic when I–within the atheist/skeptics community–suddenly have to dig up “evidence” that God does not exist. It’s too late to scream without waking up the house, but you aren’t really suggesting this? Are we monitoring space tomorrow to make sure there really is no teapot? Then please go into some of these points:

    1) Accountability: People are individuals and you surely aren’t suggesting that PZ Myers or anyone else is responsible when someone who happens to be signed up here does something stupid. How do you establish accountability? What about moderated and unmoderated spaces? Does it have an effect?

    2) Evidence: You have to provide concrete evidence that issue X was orchestrated on a particular place. Let’s not forget, a lot of misogynist and racist crap was in the forum of Michael Nugent’s own organization. He apologized and cleaned it up in the meantime. But as you see, the fact that crap was written somewhere is not enough, otherwise Nugent’s forum is just as responsible.

    3) Contrast: Nugent has picked up some new workable examples. He writes in the first one that Slymepitters were “publishing actual photographs of a named couple’s wedding along with mocking comments about their weight and their marriage” . That’s maybe not nice, but this comment section is neither (and doesn’t wants to be, I know). Contrast this with the examples I gave above. You have to make your case without coming across hypocritical (which is my pet issue in these “difficult threads”).

    3) The Odds: What about the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. What about right wing evangelicals or creationists with reactionary views, followers of other religions who really treat women as cattle and find the idea that men criticizing their religion already unbearable, but may completely freak out to see skeptical women. A lot of anti-science whatever clowns exist and the more exposed a person is, the more likely they are targeted. In a sexist society, women may also be targeted more often as the general sexist will see them as easier targets. How do you rule out the more likely candidates for harassment?

  187. Ichthyic says

    I begin to panic

    you’ve been in a panic since you came here.

    sadly, I think the beginning of that must have been long beforehand.

  188. Ichthyic says

    Normal people would think this to be quite easy and clear.

    LOL

    mirror, you need you one, along with an ability to detect sarcasm, even in name.

    I’m curious what you think is easy and clear about your own nym?

    do, go on and explain the entire reasoning behind your selection of it. That should be far more entertaining than anything you’ve belched up so far.

  189. Owlglass says

    232 Ichthyic,
    you’ve been in a panic since you came here.

    Totally. Terrified even.

    232 Ichthyic,
    mirror, you need you one, along with an ability to detect sarcasm, even in name. I’m curious what you think is easy and clear about your own nym?.

    You mean like “Fascism, how sarcastic!”? Sounds totally fun. The context was all provided above in 227, which was a response to 219. My nym is taken from here, noting “in these stories, anything that can go wrong in communication does go wrong due to the disparity in consciousness”. I wonder if Cerberus–guardian of the underworld–is an euphemism for still living in mom’s basement.

  190. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Still no solid evidence, evidence that even sets up a PROPER circumstantial case from Owlglass. Almost like it knows he has nothing but attitude, dismissed OPINION, and hot air….