This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Bloody climate change! After the mildest winter here for years the temperature is forecast to shoot up 10C by the end of the week. It’s too soon. Hottest year on record coming up? Take that, deniers.
Samantha has a very interesting hobby.
Nightjar and Carlie, from where I’m sitting, you are both making excuses, and by doing that, you’re enabling unacceptable behaviour and providing cover. Especially in using “hey, SG approved this person” nonsense. SG is not a saint, and can be mistaken about a person’s character. Also, people can change when it comes to attitudes and opinions, making that line of reasoning even sillier. That’s all I have. I’m gonna go clean now. Closing Tdome tab.
The Pharyngula wiki: I think I’m probably still technically an admin, but haven’t logged in or edited, or even looked at the place, for about two years. I have no idea what’s going on there now.
Cross post. URGENT. If you can, please contact Monarch Airlines and ask them not to participate in the deportation of Mariama N, a lesbian asylum-seeker who is facing forcible return to The Gambia.
In other news, I’ve also complained to the BBC this week about the misgendering of Chelsea Manning in its news coverage, which I found horrifying.
Oh and a happy dance occurs somewhere near StevoR’s home street.
CC, I hope you find peace in browner pastures with giant prickly things growing in them.
Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have shared my perspective on why I think things happened this way based on my experiences at the Wiki and on my reading of the logs, because if there’s a way to do it without sounding like I’m making excuses I clearly failed at it. Fine, I’ll shut up now.
By “SG gave them admin status” I was just trying to explain that this person is an admin and had not shown this level of assholishness before (that I saw), on the contrary, and that is why I, personally, am inclined to have a more charitable interpretation. Which doesn’t mean anyone else should do the same, or is wrong to not do the same. But, again, it would probably have been better to keep my interpretation of the events to myself. Point taken.
One more thing, Nightjar and Carlie, if you come back to read – what you both did, from my perspective, is to tell Chris his experience was not what he thought it was. Please think about that, and why it’s not okay.
Now I am out of this thread for a while.
I could go for a Bacardi and coke right about now
Try a grog on the house. It looks like the serious celebration of today’s banhammer application is still going strong.
I’m trying to cremate a troll over at No Country For Women. On the post: Men Secretely Want Their Girlfriends or Wives To Be Less Successful… The troll must be eviscerated!
Caine: I don’t think it’s as simple as that. It would seem that a large portion of the harm derives not simply from belittlement, but the intent to belittle. In that this is something that CC inferred rather than experienced, it is important. That being said, if Chris doesn’t feel appreciated or welcome (even if I wouldn’t feel the same in his position) it’s a shame and I respect his decision.
Rationally or not, I feel some guilt in Chris Clark leaving. I was rather difficult on him in his last thread.
For what it’s worth, hold you in high esteem Chris. Good luck on your newest and all future ventures.
Wait, what? When/how/why did Chris leave? I’ve been a bit ex-loopus lately.
I think Chris interpreted everything exactly as I would have. That is exactly what it looked like. The guy was an asshole, and saying I don’t know if he meant to be an asshole is not meant to take away from his having been an asshole, or Chris having taken him as one. I didn’t, and don’t, advocate trying to reinterpret the event. My only intent was to say that this is the kind of thing that can happen when things that are associated with a community are run by someone who isn’t familiar with or keeping up with the community, and I’m sorry that I didn’t communicate that more clearly.
Ooooo! I love the woman in the picture for this thread.
Yes (except I’m not entirely clear on this person’s gender, so I’ve been trying to use neutral pronouns).
In related news, in my efforts to avoid things like this from happening, I just found something else on the Wiki that is rubbing me the wrong way and I suspect people here won’t like it either. I’m too tired to tackle it now, though, so it will have to wait.
I’m….personally not a fan of the first picture on PZ’s page
….Not funny.
This kind of BS leads me to despair:
Tony Abbott talks values at a school that describes homosexuality as an abomination.
Seriously, fuck him and anyone that votes for this duplicitous sack of shit.
Here is a recap on his views on abortion:
http://theconversation.com/ru486-hits-abbott-again-13777
Good news is the current government has promised $8 million towards stopping homophobic bullying in schools. Bad news is they probably won’t get back in.
Government is the biggest enabler of hate.
Ok, I’ve read Chris’ post and I agree someone was being an asshole about the wiki. I have a question, though, and maybe someone smarter here will tell me I’m misreading and I will be happy if I am. But, does this:
refer to this:
Is he describing the fight against sexual harassment at cons as a “petty shitfight”?
Portia
Unlikely in the extreme.
You could ask Chris at his blog.
Portia:
I seriously doubt that was what he was referring to.
Portia, Chris is the only one who can answer that and I cannot speak for him. My personal reading was that he was disgusted that everything he has done and written is swept aside as of minor importance so that a rather needless reference to CFI could be made. There is a lot that could be written about feminism and Chris Clarke (hell, he’s specifically written about himself and how he relates to feminism as an identity before), but instead it’s reduced to a statement about CFI devoid of context.
Had there been a paragraph about what he’s written regarding sexual harassment, abuse, etc., that would have been perfectly at place there. In a two paragraph wiki entry, having the entirety of the second paragraph devoted to his refusal to speak at CFI events seems rather inappropriate and belittling of his actual work. He has had a long career and performed far more activism than just not going somewhere.
Imagine if Ophelia’s entry was only two paragraphs long and that was the second paragraph on hers. It’s an insult to the work of the person in question and it’s using the serious issue of sexual harassment as little more than a segue.
You know what, Sally? THIS comment of yours here is you being a deliberate jerk where it’s completely unnecessary. You saw where I said I wasn’t intending to comment, and therefore you got your little personal dig in. That’s low, and also completely unnecessary because I explicitly said “I don’t except myself.”
Besides which, I doubt you could come up with even two or three specific examples where I was a deliberate asshole without provocation. That would make your “often:” a lie.
In short, fuck you sincerely. Look in the fucking mirror: you’re a dick.
Chas, take your own advice.
Time for some good news…AIG’s favorite schools has closed at least for now.
I wouldn’t take that bet
Hey Chas,
If you are still reading, congratulations on the new job (I saw that you posted over at CC’s). I wish you the best, and envy your soon to be desert home.
Chas:
You couldn’t make your point without the gendered slur?
Ich bin ein Frankfurter!
Doctor?
The whole michael shermer debacle is problematic.
you lot are CERTAIN this man is a rapist, and you literally aren’t doing anything about it! you think he’s raped MULTIPLE people, and the best response you’ve come up with is to complain about him on your blog? that is just so fucking pathetic
“oh fuck you shitlord etc,” you say; “we’re warning people about him.”
SOME people, people who read pharyngula, people who like and listen to PZ and freethoughtbloggers. there are lots of women that don’t read it, lots of women who haven’t heard of it, and more who disagree with feminism and what freethoughtblogs stands for in general, and who won’t listen to the accusations, and will act very little different around shermer.
you can’t go to court, of course, because that’ll violate the identity of the woman who sent in the message!
I refuse to believe that people here are so naive that they thought that shermer wouldn’t respond with legal action; it’s very possible that there’ll be a court case surrounding it and her identity will be revealed anyway, so that just isn’t an excuse to sit back and do nothing as this serial rapist goes around.
so if he is a rapist, you’ve done nothing except maybe possibly people who like freethoughtblogs will avoid him. people who don’t won’t, but you can’t blame that on them by any stretch of the imagination. or are women who don’t believe the accusations “rape apologists” too? and if one ended up being a victim of shermer, would she still be a “rape apologist”?
if he isn’t a rapist, congrats.
Damn, I don’t have any popcorn handy.
imkindaokay, well done, it was smelling far too fresh in here.
Hello Portia, I have just toasted some poppy seed bagels – you are welcome to one instead of popcorn :)
@ imkindaokay
So, what do you think PZ should have done? Given the facts as we know them–that the rape occurred several years ago, that the woman doesn’t want to be publicly identified and doesn’t want to go to the police–what should PZ have done with this information?
That sounds delicious. With butter applied right away so it’s all runny on top.
imkindaokay
What do you want?
Will you want the same thing tomorrow?
Your concern is noted.
Belatedly:
Thanks for your thought on my earlier question, folks. The Mellow Monkey makes a lot of sense. It just raised my eyebrow for a minute. I’m not concerned enough to go over there and make Chris defend it or anything. I thought if he saw it here, I could talk to him about it, now I feel like I’ve been gabbing behind his back. *shrug* I’m gonna stop overanalyzing now.
@chigau
what i want is for people here to have strength in their convictions. if he is a rapist, if he rapes again, what can any of you say you did?
@cyrano
i would have sought legal advice
You clearly don’t have even a basic understanding or knowledge of the facts relevant to this discussion.
Shoo.
Should we beat him up?
Wow, so you’re not above it all after all? Good to know.
And yeah, I am being an asshole–to you. I’ve been in a bad mood, and you ARE a jerk a lot of the time, and I don’t care if you think I’m making it up.
imkindaokay,
Why do you assume that PZ didn’t seek legal advice? Why do you assume that the legal advice would have been different than, “You can’t force her to go to the police, but you can warn people about him”?
As for what we can say we did–um, warn people? Be more cautious ourselves? What else can we do? Go full Batman on Shermer? For real, what is it that you’re suggesting?
What am i missing? the fact that it happened years ago makes no difference to whether it’s possible to take it to court or not (it’d just make finding evidence harder).
the fact that she doesn’t want to be identified is kind of negated by the fact that it’s very possible that the current process will mean she will be identified.
the fact she doesn’t want to go to court is problematic, and understandable, but it doesn’t make doing this the best course by any means.
considering you haven’t achieved anything…
Probability. Balance of evidence. Epistemological uncertainty, reasonable belief.
You’d think a skeptic would know about these things.
-imkindaokay
PZ put out a warning to as many people as he could through the best means he had at his disposal.
How would your “legal advice” have done that?
Two neurons to rub together.
Seriously though, PZ has gotten legal advice. Derp.
—
I feel like with all the emails with comments I’m getting from the subscription, imkindaokay poked the Horde-net’s nest with their idiocy.
New pun!
he pretty much said that.
and what of the numerous women who don’t really care what happens on freethoughtblogs?
fine, you have “reasonable belief”, i’m over your semantic distinction
negligible amounts of people
yes he has. congrats. fortunately i’ve not disputed this. maybe i was unclear. i would have sought legal advice before doing a big blog post.
“negligible amounts of people”
Right there is a fuck you moment.
ONE person warned is enough.
Y’know, I started to rebut some of this bullshit but I realized, I’m too tired and I don’t really give enough shits to take the energy.
You’re a dumbass.
If they’re planning on going to see Shermer speak or whatever, you should warn them not to drink with him.
1) Nope; likely, believable, not certain (certainty exists in math)
2) Nothing we can do (we’d talk about him less if trolls would stop defending him)
3) Not our choice; that would be that of the victim.
4) Yes; the victim sure is pathetic for wanting to protect herself.
Ah, the nirvana fallacy. No, not everyone will get it. Then, not everyone will hear about it if this went to court. Indeed, the courts may make information travel more difficult.
Plus, people have a habit of defending known rapists (Staubenville, Rehtaeh Parsons, Roman Polanski, etc). It’s incredibly unlikely any sort of message would be recieved and believed by everyone.
Plus, all the people flipping shit to defend Shermer are introducing a nice little Streisand effect.
Again, not our choice. I don’t control the victim. I can’t.
1) Then don’t. I called a legal threat at least when I first read the post, as did many others.
2) Maybe; the possible ensuing court case will likely revolve around establishing actual malice. It may be unnecessary to reveal Jane Doe’s identity.
3) WE DON’T CONTROL THE VICTIM. Going to the police is HER choice; we can’t make that for her. What the fuck is wrong with you?
1) Well, them and many others; we had plenty of people spreading the word (thanks whiny trolls!).
2) Indeed.
3) Possibly; not necessarily.
4) I get the feeling you don’t actually know how rape apology works.
Alright dipshit, listen: whether or not Shermer get’s legally accused is the victims choice. She makes that choice. Right now, she seems to want to protect herself. God knows I’d probably want to if faced with the prospect of dealing with a years old rape claim against a popular figure. Going up against a couple of highschool kids with video evidence was difficult enough. So take your holier than thou bullshit and go fuck yourself.
false. this would be true if shermer was going to rape except for the people who were warned.
he is not.
one person warned is nowhere near the equivalent of one rape prevented.
IF YOU CAN’T TELL EVERY PERSON ON THE PLANET ABOUT IT DON’T TELL ANYONE DUH THAT’S HOW THIS WORKS.
@Portia – I agree…
Troll is steering towards obvious trollness
And yet, it’s still one person aided. And it’s one person who can warn others. Helpful, no?
Portia: but they didn’t like women warning each other privately on the conference circuit either. AND THAT WAS WORKING SOOO WELL i’m going to run out of caps tonight.
*ahem* Sorry for yelling everybody. Had to be heard over the massive stupid that just strolled in.
just pointing out nothing said here has prevented shermer doing anything evil if that is his intent.
Use your shift key.
Citation FUCKING needed.
(I got you on the caps if you run out, Pteryxx : )
And also, you’re right, Pteryxx, this is another lovely catch 22 in which women need to just shut up about whatever abuse they suffer and get the fuck over it.
Is that really a semantic distinction?
@32 imkindaokay
No shit.
You’re new to this, aren’t you?
Except that we have.
Certainly looks that way.
What was that you were saying about not doing anything?
Your concern is noted.
Yep.
Good thing we have people like you around to explain these things to us or we’d never have guessed any of that.
Also because the woman in question doesn’t want to. Because it won’t do any good.
Ah, another shitwit who hasn’t even read the grenade OP. Color me surprised.
1) Nothing is not what we’re doing.
2) The accuser’s explicit desire to not take this to court is a very good reason not to do anything more than what we’re doing.
Which, as much as we wish it wasn’t, is probably the best we can hope for, not least because the world is full of assholes like yourself.
I’m not convinced that’s true but, in any case, why would we?
If they defend their refusal to believe with the same hyperskeptical magical thinking that the rest do, absolutely. There’s nothing about being female that precludes being a rape apologist, not least because rape isn’t a thing that happens only to women.
There’s nothing about having been raped that precludes being a rape apologist any more than being female precludes it. There’s also nothing about someone being a rape apologist that would preclude us from provisionally believing that person if they were to claim to have been raped.
You seem to be laboring under the delusion that Michael Shermer has suffered some kind of consequence from all this.
What the fuck are you doing here? Go make a citizens arrest. Get Shermer for us. You’ll be our hero and we’ll all swoon.
I’ll elaborate, in case you didn’t catch it. If even one person knows to be cautious around Shermer, that might be one person out of his clutches. Ergo, he may be prevented from doing evil.
Lawyered.
One person can warn others?
Gee, math – how the fuck does that work?
You know this for sure? How?
no, i’m pointing out that he hasn’t. you surely must think he has, and that is that women will avoid him
Oops forgot my snark tag – was not against you Jacob Shmidt :)
I am a woman. I didn’t know to avoid him before. Now I do, and I will. Your central premise is destroyed. Shut up now?
Again, what is the source of your knowledge about Shermer’s current status or recent actions?
I had heard about him about a year earlier, so I guess I don’t count, eh?
do you seriously think all, or even most, women who will come into contact with shermer will avoid him because of a blog post?
Well, extrapolating from Pteryxx’s point, then it was just women lying to each other and all that is is gossip, and well you know women and their gossip…
I got nothin’.
You ignored the part where your argument is making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Well I missed a lot of fun in the last Thunderdome. But it looks like the celebration is over already!
BZZZT.
I guess I really don’t understand how you young people use the word “literally”.
So, we have people on one hand complaining about how the sky is falling now that PZ published Bad Words about Big Atheist. And we have people like yourself, complaining that anything short of PZ hunting down Shermer and kickboxing him all the way to the gallows is worthy of nothing but spittle of contempt. What do you idiots actually fucking want?
(Actually, I know the real answer is “shut up and ignore the problems so I don’t have to be bothered with them”, but I want to see if you know that)
Don’t worry, Shermer came up with a brilliant plan to combat that problem. Skeptically google “Streisand Effect”.
Women on the side of misogyny? IMPOSSIBLE AND UNPRECEDENTED!!! No one ever adopts popular cultural opinions or positions held by respected, influential figures that happen to be harmful for themselves! It just doesn’t happen!
Pay no attention to black, Latino, female, gay, poor, and/or non-Christian Republicans!
Says the person who just whined about someone else’s “semantic distinction”.
Some will avoid entirely. Some will avoid drinking with him. Some will avoid being alone in a room with him. Some won’t change their behaviour at all. Again, Nirvana fallacy. We never could warn all or most.
Are you saying Shermer has faced 0 harm from this incident? Then he can’t sue. Simple as that. Defamation requires actual defamation.
nope. because you’ve not prevented anything. shermer will just go after women who haven’t read this/don’t believe it.
someone posted a comment a while ago about how women learning self-defence/being given guns/pepper spray is a stupid idea because if a rapist sees that a woman is resistant he’ll just move on to someone else, making no net change
@70 imkindaokay
Do at least try to keep up with yourself, champ. Here’s what you said(emphasis mine):
If he isn’t a rapist, and there have been no consequences*, it’s kinda no harm, no foul isn’t it? Wtf are you congratulating us for then?
*Whether there have been consequences seems to depend on which line of which of your posts one happens to be reading at any given moment.
wow, so enlightened, pz and you lot all instantly found the exactly perfect middle ground!!!
Umm… Women will do as they please, but now they have more information for making that decision.
You don’t understand the concept of a warning, do you?
I’m having a mental image of the man taking a survey of potential targets. “Do you happen to have an interest in the atheist blogosphere? Yes? Check, please.”
What are you thinking, asswipe? I can’t even with this shit.
Do you seriously think that none, or not even some, women who will come into contact with Shermer will have seen that post, believed it, and avoid him because of it?
Also: you forgot to preface your statements with “Dear Muslima”. You make for a very poor letter writer.
You’re mistaking ineffective for totally impotent. You’re also confusing proaction for reaction.
ty, piegasm, i forgot i wrote
Wow, way to avoid actually giving us a coherent position! It’s sneers and True Skepticism all the way down with the Manskeptics.
More to the point, thanks to all the noise about this, the odds are now substantially greater that women attending conferences will have some warning, AND they will warn others, AND they will be keeping a closer eye on Shermer and on the conferences he’s at. And the next person, if any, that Shermer does target will have a much greater chance of finding sympathetic reporters ready to hold that conference to account if it should turn its back on any future incident.
Women don’t exist in a vacuum either, imkindaokay.
i’m having a mental image of you having a lengthy conversation with michael shermer and then suddenly remembering, as opposed to staying away completely and actively avoiding him…
or maybe i’m thinking it’s probably pretty obvious when someone is acting somewhat off with you because they think you’re a rapist
Seriously? We’ve simultaneously ruined his life and have achieved nothing?
@87 imkindaokay
HAVE THERE BEEN CONSEQUENCES OR NOT?!?! PICK ONE AND STICK WITH IT PLEASE!
jesus fuck, you can’t even get through one post without losing track of your own fucking words…
I have learnt something new today: rapists have Terminator vision with a steady readout of potential victims and their vulnerabilities and abilities. (Martial arts – avoid!)
Oh wait… They don’t.
Teh Fluffy Lady Brains! They’re too fluttery to remember anything. They get all confused when men are around!
okay right for people who so pride themselves on their LOLSNARKZ and their SNIDENESS and their LOL WE SO SARCASTIC this is disappointing
(the joke was, i didn’t write it, and you, piegasm, acted like i did. i didn’t, though. that was the joke. that i didn’t. you acted like i did.)
Because women are socialized to treat creeps like they’re creeps. Oh wait they’re not.
Because rapists aren’t pushy assholes who don’t give a shit if you’re “acting somewhat off” because that’s probably just another boundary to cross to them. Oh wait, they are.
Fuck you.
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW.
Yes, ruining Shermer’s life, and making everything shit. Indeed. That is a totally accurate description of things that are happening and definitely will happen, without a Skeptical shadow of Skeptical doubt. It is such an apt description, such refined truth. You should take up a career in writing, to bring the message to the masses. But obviously blogs are too petty for you. Have you considered writing music for an emo band? I think you would be a perfect fit. Just make sure that you find a band who doesn’t care much about logic or reality. I’m sure if you find a group of other knee-jerk reactionaries defending Shermer for no particular reason, you’ll be well on your way.
no, i’m saying this is unlikely. right lesson learnt, don’t be sarcastic. i’ll preface the following bit.
WARNING: SARCASM. today i learnt that it is impossible to tell whether someone likes/has an active interest in you or hates you/thinks you’re a dreadful person
If a “joke” falls flat in the Thunderdome, and everyone’s around to hear the “womp” was it really a joke?
lets assume, because we know it to be true, that shermer knows about the accusations. you don’t think that would inform him in any way?
I have no idea. Is that a requirement or something?
Actually identifying specific people who are likely rapists seems far more effective than telling women to be ready to pepper-spray EVERY man they come into contact with.
Do you disagree? Can you explain your reasoning?
$10 says you can’t explain, because you’re a sneering fuckwit.
When women are socialized to be polite and accommodating, yeah, this is fucking true, you myopic jerkwad.
Well that just bring us to the original question (you know, the one piegasm asked?). What are you congratulating us for? It’s not sarcastic; it’s not sincere. What’s it there for? Do you just suck at writing? Do you have a habit of writing in superfluous bullshit?
Congratulations, you’ve failed both at making a compelling argument and a coherent joke. Are you aiming to fail at every aspect of communication here today?
@96 imkindaokay
I acted like you implied there were consequences because you congratulated us for something. If there were no consequences, why are you congratulating us?
Words!! How the fuck do they work?! Halp!
i do not disagree. that was my point. pepper spray etc is ineffective.
idc, if someone obviously takes what you said out of context in the thunderdome, was it ever in context? a question for the philosophers
For there to be context to take it in, you have to be saying something coherent. You’re not.
for just publishing a big lie, i would assume? i dunno it’s probably not the best idea is it. maybe he could have been friends with portia
“Actually identifying specific people who are likely rapists seems far more effective than telling women to be ready to pepper-spray EVERY man they come into contact with.”
That’s not a bad tactic… I will take my chances for the sake of a better world :)
( seriously, that is the puppetmistress’s default attitude and I am fine with it )
LOL, that’s cute, you thought you had a point.
*pats head*
Fuck you.
—
(Am I being oversensitive or does that look like a veiled rape wish to anyone else?)
So warning people about Shermer was simultaneous totally impotent and actually kindof effective. Basic coherency, how does it work?
Is your goal here to make me laugh? If so, mission accomplished.
Jesus fuck, but you’re an odious shithead.
Nope not just you, Portia. Creepy fucker.
Hey imkindaokay. You absolutely positive you haven’t raped anybody, and are having an emotional reaction about this whole Shermer thing because the cognitive dissonance is being too overwhelming to continue to ignore?
You are?
OK then. Just checking.
genuinely, if you thought it was the latter, i am very very sorry
well you managed to jump from position to contradictory position without a care in the world. when i disagreed with you i was wrong, when i agreed, i was wrong :(
Thanks SallyStrange…I’ve been having a gaslighty day.
becoming, not being…
And I’m off to bed soon.
Show, don’t tell, kiddo.
Are you high on something? Did you take five hits of whippets before coming here? Do you even know where you are and what you’re trying to prove?
I thought the “he” was PZ, not Shermer. But, as I said, the communication fails are strong with this one.
Not having a point != being wrong. Still struggling with those…word…thingies, aren’t we?
ahhhhhh i misunderstood this bit. i thought sally meant identifying people who are likely rapists and being like no you’re shit, don’t do that, rather than teaching women to avoid this specific people
I thought it was Shermer based on my announcement that i would now avoid him. Thus, if PZ hadn’t published that, I wouldn’t avoid him. Ergo, we could be “friends”… *shudder*
—
imkindaokay:
To demonstrate that you’re sorry, could you please explain to me your understanding of what you have to be sorry for?
Still maintain I contradicted myself, diddums?
Uhhh… yeah. Warning people about Shermer. Telling him he’s shit for doing it. Telling women to avoid him. Neither is mutually exclusive, you know.
That’s it. 5 hits of whippets it is. Tell Anthony K he’s figured out why our trolls are so stupid.
Comments are open on the grenade thread.
@ sally nope, i was mistaken
so what i was trying to say was that if michael shermer was not a rapist and these accusations had never been published, you wouldn’t have avoided him, and you could have been buddies
but i think what you think i was trying to say that if michael shermer was a rapist and these accusations had never been published, you wouldn’t have avoided him, and could have been “buddies”. i did not mean that.
chigau:
Wait wut why? What’d I miss?
obviously in a more … sophisticated way than blog comments, i’m not sure that’s efficacious
So there’s a lesson here, imkindaokay. Think before you type. What you wrote just now was clear. Think more, type less.
Ah, I see. And yeah, creepy.
Dare you wish for the impossible?
imkindaokay with a keyboard is like a 12-year-old with a gun. Bad aim. Without adult supervision, will probably hurt someone, including hirself.
That’s kind of how I felt when I posted it, like “Why the hell not, here we go for shits and giggles” but then… at least with comprehension of my problem with what they said.
Having to do as many clarifications as they have, you’d think they’d get a clue about how low their thinking/typing ratio is right now.
Portia
dunno
comments are open and there’s a live one
(damn. shift-key deficit is contageous)
chigau: noticed, I sent a note.
right well i just think there’s a better way to handle it than what PZ did
obviously you all disagree furiously and think i’m an idiot, and i do actually have respect for you pharyngulites, so i’ll leave it. i don’t think i’m going to change my mind
imkindaokay,
you keep saying that “there’s a better way to handle it” but you’ve failed to say WHAT THAT IS, except to assume that PZ didn’t seek legal advice and that he would have been advised to do anything different.
So–what should have happened given the facts as we know them? (ie, that the victim doesn’t want to be made public, and does not want to file a police report)
1) Like what? Ignore the victim’s request?
2) Obviously
3) Yes, you’ve communicated this quite effectively (in totally unrelated news, my sarcasm meter just broke)
You’d be a tiny bit more credible if you actually said what the fuck that better way was.
Yeah, the live one managed to step into two of my favorite little Manskeptic talking points right at the end: conflating the blog post with a courtroom and complaining about how nobody went to the cops. They really do worship at the altar of Teh Law. And these assholes are supposed to be less authoritarian than non-skeptics. Terrifying.
Also notable is that particular idiot took a comment that was about how women have to deal with inappropriate contact on a daily basis and seemed to think that the original comment was strictly about rape. Manskeptics and reading just don’t go well together.
(I can’t comment in the grenade thread in good conscience, since it is probably only open again in error)
I don’t think you have actually described what you think ‘it’ is nor how you would handle ‘it’
Intellectual honesty seems to be sooooo last season.
anteprepro
PZ re-opened the thread.
Go to town.
Well, I took a swing. Might need to apologize for that. PZ can just delete it if he wants, yes?
I’m out for the night. Have fun, y’all.
In other news, I feel SO respected right now. I mean, I just got accused of hopping from position to contradictory position with nary a care in the world, then, when it was revealed that the accusation was really caused by a misunderstanding borne of my accuser’s stupidity, there was no apology, just a flat 4-word retraction.
Plus, there’s this whole phenomenon of “I could do it better but I won’t tell you how, so there, nyah!” DAMN, that is so respectful.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Find out what it means to me!
Gnight all.
“I can’t comment in the grenade thread in good conscience, since it is probably only open again in error”
Oops, good point. I just commented and asked if someone could paste the educational reading links again.
Really? Well now I feel even more obligated to read the roughly 3800 comments I haven’t got to yet. Hope I can scrounge up the free time!
Bye Portia! Will have more bagels tomorrow :)
well i disagree on this point, yes.
well my point is (was meant to be, whatever, i can’t type or read etc etc etc etc) that this actually won’t have made a difference to shermer and his tactics (as you yourselves maybe kind of admit when you say there are no consequences)
if it was my friend, i would have just done all i could to make sure she was okay, and if she didn’t want to go to the police, i would have been wary were i ever at a party with this person, but i wouldn’t tell everyone, because most people wouldn’t believe me. i think it probably just fuels all these ‘false rape accusations!!!’ MRAs that jolt about without actually making a practical difference.
I’m outie.
One of these things is not like the other.
Oh word, we should totes only care about the social justice stuff that will make bigots happy. That’s a super effective strat, thanks!
you should definitely care about convincing them that they’re wrong
Bigots generally can’t be reasoned with. They must be marginalized and shouted down instead.
See? I was suspicious when you implied (incoherently so maybe I just misunderstood your incompetent flailings) that you actually CARED about what’s “efficacious” at stopping sexual predators.
I don’t think you give a fuck.
I don’t think you even know what the fuck “reasonable belief” and “epistemological uncertainty” even mean, otherwise you wouldn’t be claiming with such apparent certainty that there are going to be zero consequences for Shermer.
If nothing changes from here on out, here are the consequences Shermer is likely to face:
1. Some women will avoid him. I have no idea how many.
That’s literally it. That’s not a lot, but it’s better than what you’re advocating, which is basically nothing, while simultaneously getting all high and mighty and accusing US of being ineffective.
FUCK. YOU.
You’re an arrogant, useless, idiotic pissant. The greatest gift you could give the world right now is your silence.
@150 imkindaokay
So you’re willing to throw the people who would believe you under the bus just because not all of them would believe you? You are a vile human being.
I should add that there are people who do try to educate racists, sexists and other bigots. I generally think it’s a big waste of time because the positions they hold aren’t reasonable and shouldn’t be deigned to be argued with as though they are rational.
I will not comport my feminism to what MRAs might or might not take out of context, twist or use for their malign purposes. Not the least because those shitbirds will use literally ~anything~.
Because they are, unlike you, capable of revising their opinions upon the receipt of new knowledge?
*spits*
Note that whatever Shermer’s been doing has gone on for years. Why come forward about it now? Because several years of discussion about feminism, harassment, and rape has raised awareness sufficiently in this community (and the SF/F, gaming, and geek communities) that Jane Doe finally felt her report would be taken seriously. Not by the conference (she tried and it wasn’t) and not by the police (see EEB’s post and the stats on police revictimization). This community was the ONLY group ready to hear her report.
So yeah. For what it’s worth, WE would probably believe you. In a few more years, maybe you would believe you, too.
Sally,
OT but I’ve been thinking a lot about the rhetoric that worked for me. I used to be a fundamentalist xian, total anti-gay bigot, anti-evolution–all the typical bullshit. It wasn’t rational response that worked for me. It was 1. my best friend coming out and 2. a forum, much like this one, where commenters didn’t take any shit and told me to do my fucking homework. I made a lot of friends there…eventually. But they didn’t sugarcoat how wrong I was, and they didn’t coddle my hurt feelings. It made me mad. But it also forced me to read and to learn (at first because I wanted to one-up them, then because I was changing my mind.)
So, there’s something to be said for both an emotional crisis (my friend coming out) and a rough-and-tumble intro to reality.
@Cyrano
And maybe the “insistent gentle logical persuasion” works best for some people… in which case, imkindaokay is free to persuade the bigoted fuckers hirself. Me, I’ve tried and banging my head against a wall is less painful and irritating.
Oh for sure, Sally. I do think it takes all kinds, and people should do what they have the spoons for. I’m more just spitballing that all this “you guys aren’t very effective” shit is not only annoying, but also untrue.
Shorter imkindaokay, “bitchez be lying.”
How do you know it won’t have made a difference? Would you say you’re CERTAIN of this? If the entire world doesn’t know about the accusations (since we can’t make that happen and thus it’s irrelevant to what we should make happen), does that mean* the same thing as having no difference at all?
*Yes, another “semantic distinction,” unfortunately. Because, as I’m sure you know, those are what different things mean. (Hint: different things generally mean different things.) Brush this one aside too if you like, or pretend you had it right all along, or whatever bullshit you’re going to come up with this time.
Why wouldn’t most believe you? Because you suck at communicating even basic concepts, even in a written format where you have the chance to reflect on it and make any number of distinctions and clarifications and so on before committing to what you mean to say, and in which you have plenty of opportunities to respond to others’ comments with something more thoughtful and useful yet you consistently fail to do any of that? Is that why?
What the fuck are you concern trolling us about, here? What fuels that? The fact that we don’t do impossible things even though you claim we should?
So, I go to bed and look what happens. A live one shows up here on Thunderdome, the Grenade post is re-opened and judging by the Recent Comments side bar there’s stuff happening there too. Fucking time zones.
Anyway, I only have time now to mention that the thing I mentioned yesterday I didn’t like on the Wiki? It’s actually similar to one of the stupid things this imkindaokay person is saying, and it really should be deleted from the Wiki altogether along with an indication that it doesn’t reflect the communities’ position on this issue and is problematic. Or something. Anyway, here is what I’m talking about:
Yeah, this has to go. I’ll do it today when I have the time, unless someone gets there first.
***
NightShadeQueen:
You’re right, I agree. We should try to find a better photo of PZ to replace that one.
Yeah, that “responsible investigative journalists” stuff is silly.
I’m tired of people going “oh, PZ, you should have done this! And that! Tell the police! Tell investigative journalists! Settle this in court! Charges! Prison!”
Apparently, “respect the victim’s wishes and put her safety first and don’t force her to go through something she’s not ready nor willing to go through” does not even begin to cross their mind. It’s like she doesn’t exist or doesn’t get to have any say on the matter or something. I seriously don’t understand people sometimes.
I’m wondering if Simon over in the grenade thread might be a sockpuppet based on how far out of his way he’s gone to declare that he has no association with the atheism community or skepticism and doesn’t really like Shermer all that much anyway and is totally nobody you’ve ever encountered before just some random person who happened to notice the instant the grenade thread reopened. *shifty eyes*
OMG. Why is that thread open again? I wonder if it’s an accident. It’s a strange decision, if not. I mean, anyone wanting to rehash that convo can do so in El Thunderdome, as notactuallyokayatall was demonstrating. Maybe somebody wants the thunderdome to be for different topics?
I belatedly wrote something about that intelligence-correlates-with-atheism study. “Critical Thinking Training Makes Kids Smart And Also Atheist“
I miss Chris Clarke :( I liked his writing. And I’m pissed that, after being forced to leave under circumstances which originally pissed me off, he has now had this indignity piled on top. Who is this Centuri whatstheirface? Have they apologised yet?
@Caine
Oh, BelieverSkeptic turned out to be a right raging arsehole? I’d love to say I was shocked; in actuality I’m just a bit sad. I encounter far too many arseholes since I’ve started reading here (that’s no reflection on the regular commentariat). And, as with BelieverSkeptic, I’m in the habit of being, initially at least, afr too charitable towards them.
@imjindaok
I’m confused. What, exactly, would you have done differently? If you were presented with the same information under the same circumstances as PZ, what course of action would you have taken, and why?
Thumper, “forced to leave”?
Here’s what he wrote:
Seems clear to me he made a decision to leave (as in stop posting blog entries) for his own comfort, rather than being forced to do so.
(Kinda hard to think of him having left when I can see his picture and profile on the sidebar and read his comments here!)
—
Chris is done with that — I quote again: “Final update: the person who was demanding proof has acceded to my request. We’re done.”
Imkindaok: On advice of counsel, I do not talk about this case. Which ought to tell you right there that the wheels are turning, and your expectation of instantaneous painless justice is pure idiocy. So shut the fuck up, or I’ll shut you up.
@imkindaokay
Except that Shermer has no idea who has or has not heard the story. If he tries the same tactics at a conference again, he will have no idea who is watching him and what they are thinking. The consequences of him trying the same thing again could have far more serious repercussions for him than anything he has encountered so far, and he will know that. Even if many of his potential targets remain oblivious to the danger, he will not know who has or has not heard the stories and that will surely give him pause.
@175: If it doesn’t give him pause, then he’s a lot less intelligent than people make him out to be. His cover is blown. It’s not like speaker lists are hard to find. He’d have to hope that not one attending person with a conscience had heard anything about it.
There’s faint hope, and then there’s forlorn hope. This hope looks up to those and wishes it could someday grow up as big and strong as they are.
Oh, cool, I replied to myself! Comment was to procrastinatorordinaire. :)
Lovely moving goalposts.
“You put this out there and tried to warn people? Well, you can’t warn everybody, so you’re just SHIFTING targets, and there will certainly be no heightened awareness of what goes on around Shermer.
“And I wouldn’t have told anybody.”
Firstly, that heightened awareness?
Let’s all take a moment to think about these words: SOCIAL LICENSE TO OPERATE.
If you’re unfamiliar with them, you haven’t done the fucking 101 reading. Step back. Go back. Read all of Caine’s links that she dropped on the grenade thread.
Is Michael Shermer’s SOCIAL LICENSE TO OPERATE at all changed?
That’s not even a question at this point. We all know it is.
So the idea that when handed information like this you wouldn’t publish it? YOU WOULDN’T CHALLENGE THE SOCIAL LICENSE, BASICALLY.
You would maintain a culture of silence, which is the place where rape culture flourishes.
You would give him ongoing permission to do whatever, as long as it stays quiet.
FUCK THAT NOISE.
Howard Bannister
mix?
These words just make me so happy. Carry on.
…nevermind, carry on, I’m being stupid again.
[Quick explanation, since I’ve apparently managed to fuck up my social conventions: “mix” is shorthand for “hey, I think you’re in the wrong thread” where I come from.]
@NightShadeQueen: It does get nicely confusing when trolls are popping up in all threads with the same talking points, doesn’t it? I maybe should have referenced imkindokay by name or number.
Nightjar @167:
—(TW because my answer’s even worse)—
…not to be depressing, but a large fraction of the predators know a victim that reports is going to go through hell while posing no serious risk, and they bank on that and probably enjoy it. I expect that when they’re first learning how to be rapists, others teach them how to get away with it… some peers, some like-minded adults who do the covering-up for them. (See Steubenville, etc.)
I read an example – an actual, quoted example of a predator telling his victim to go ahead and report him, when he’s acquitted it’ll make all his future victims that much less credible – but I haven’t found it in my collection yet. If I do I’ll refer back.
You’d think that, but it turns out that skepticism is actually just reflexive white male libertarian denialism dressed up with intellectual wankery.
imkindaokay, how do you realistically expect anyone to be able to warn everyone? And you saying that the victim’s wishes for the handling of the issue don’t matter if, ultimately, her identity becomes known…what next? How much would you like it if your wishes on such a personal issue were so glibly ignored?
If her identity is revealed now, then it’s revealed Forever, whereas might, in the future, be revealed also implies, might not. Burn that bridge when you get to it.
More people are now “looking”. And he knows it.
There are reasons why criminals prefer not to do their thang in the public square. What is the Eleventh Commandment? Class?
And he will know this, how? Maybe he’s got all the wrinkles worked out on that whole telepathy deal?
Now, where did I put the Trollbane…?
–
Indeed. It is “Nuh uh” issued from an ivory tower, repeated ad infinitum, perpetually in defense of the status quo. It is the call to rally for mindless authoritarians who wish to think of themselves as keen intellects and rebellious contrarians.
It is such a shame what True Skeptics have done to poor little skepticism.
All the CCC people, I think we need to talk about a change to CCC, including some things about fully informed consent.
testing whether I’m in moderation or not… if you see this, everything is fine.
>_>
Hey folks, I suddenly found my comments awaiting moderation in the thread about Elyse. Is it just caution on that thread, or is my username flagged?
This is something that’s been on my mind for a while. A lot of so-called skeptics seem to think that skepticism is all about debunking things; especially things like Bigfoot and homeopathy.
It’s not. Those aren’t the meat and potatoes of skepticism; those are the training wheels (if you’ll excuse a mixed metaphor). You start out with the easy, obvious subjects, like Nessie or dowsing, in order to train your skeptic muscle. They’re nice big targets, so even if you’re a bit off, you still hit and you’re encouraged to do more. You take pot shots at them, so you’ll learn to recognize the common errors and tricks.
The idea, however, is that at some point, the training wheels are supposed to come off. You’re supposed to move to the harder targets, like racism, sexism, or political spin doctoring. Subjects that are slightly more relevant to the real-life concerns of normal people than intergalatic visitors with a fetish for dissecting cattle.
Of course, if you graduate to these harder targets, you increase the risk of occasionally missing. Worse, you increase the risk that you suddenly find yourself staring down the barrel at a mirror with a familiar face in your sights, being forced to seriously reevaluate your self-perception.
Such things are hard to do. It’s tough on the ego. Nobody likes having to admit that they’re wrong. It’s much easier to just stick with the old, easy targets; the ones you can hit with your eyes closed and that are comfortably far from any of your own holy cows.
However, knowing every inch of the kiddie pool doesn’t make you a champion swimmer. Knowing all the tricks involved in spoon-bending doesn’t make you a skeptic. It makes you a little kid playing at being grown-up.
Growing up means moving on. Put aside childish things and use your skepticism to focus on real problems. Skepticism isn’t about debunking claims so you can feel smugly superior. It’s about sorting through evidence to better understand the world and thus find way to make things better for people.
If your skepticism doesn’t end up making the world a better place, what good is it really?
… too quiet ..
Well, fuck and all. I posted four comments in the [Lounge] and all four are “awaiting moderation.”
WTF?
So, I’ve just had a comment disappear down the moderation hole and I’m not sure why. No links or anything. PZ hasn’t instituted a max length on comments, has he?
Here’s Wikipedia’s introduction to Adolf Hitler:
“Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the Nazi Party. He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. Hitler was at the centre of Nazi Germany, World War II in Europe, and the Holocaust.”
Here’s their first lines on Slobodan Milosevic:
“Slobodan Milošević was a Serbian and Yugoslav politician who was the President of Serbia from 1989 to 1997 and President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000. He also led the Socialist Party of Serbia from its foundation in 1990.”
While we’re at it, let’s read something about Osama bin Laden, too:
“Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda, the Sunni militant Islamist organization that claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the United States, along with numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets. He was a Saudi Arabian, a member of the wealthy bin Laden family, and an ethnic Yemeni Kindite.”
I’m copying and pasting all this just for the sake of contrast. Contrast with what? We have the guy responsible for the holocaust, the butcher of the balkans, and the guy who did 9/11. Let’s contrast their descriptions with… Rationalwiki’s description of Cathy Brennan!
“Cathy Brennan, in case the name isn’t met by you with immediate, horrified recognition and a shiver down your spine (as thunder claps and the horses whinny), is one of the most vocal, adamant and bitter of the transphobic wing of radical feminism.”
The Rational, it burns!
Okay, we need to revise the CCC, to include something about (fully) informed consent. Help and suggestions wanted! We’ll keep the discussion here, for convenience.
True Skepticism has become a religion. It’s all about tradition and belief and holier-than-thou. And smarter-than-thou, for most of it They believe they are smart, and they believe they are making good arguments, and they believe they have the truth, and no need to ever examine themselves, their motives and their precepts, like every other damned religion.
True Skeptics are the children of religious parents, thinking they are all grown up and rebellious, finding another religion and doing the dogmatism just like they learned in church. They may have a rather different drummer, but they are marching just the same as every other kid who dumps his parent’s religion for some equally-crazed cult.
True Skeptics are dogmatists who have happened into a worldview that is largely true, which just makes them even more smug and confident, and even more of a raving pain in the ass. Their belief is very hard to shake with reason and logic, because they think it is reason and logic, even more than most religions.
Atheists do not believe that there is a god. True Skeptics believe that there is no god.
True Skeptics are the atheists that fundamentalists believe all atheists to be, and I don’t believe that either bunch is going to figure out the difference. True Skeptics are believers, atheists are not.
@jose
So, you’ve clearly demonstrated that wikipedia and rationalwiki have different standards for their articles. In other news, scientists at MIT have determined that black and white are in fact different colors and not, as previously assumed, completely identical flavors of ice cream.
Anything else?
This was a great chance to accidentally forget jose’s comment in the moderation queue. Oh well. Maybe next time.
Menyambal:
I disagree. I know more than a few hyperskeptics who were raised with no religion at all. I also know more than a few people who were raised in a fundamentalist religion who are fine critical thinkers and not remotely hyperskeptical.
Jose:
Oh, it only burns you, Jose, because you’re an idiot, and the fire loves itself an idiot. There are times I wish gods existed, because I’d love to call Brighid down on that shriveled brain of yours.
Wow jose that’s monstrously disingenuous. What you actually did is quote a quote, that paragraph is actually taken from Natalie Reed put in at the top of the Rationalwiki page for Cathy Brennan. Rationalwiki often does that to outline people with similar feelings to the editors, but the article itself is usually closer to the standards put out by Wikipedia. Since you’re being so disingenuous I’ll aid you and put the actual first paragraph of material created explicitly for Rationalwiki:
“Catherine “Cathy” Brennan is an attorney[2] in the state of Maryland and a prominent supporter of “trans-critical” radical feminism. Her main accomplishment in this regard is coauthoring a letter to the United Nations, insisting that trans people should not be extended human rights protections.[3] She is also a frequent columnist for Baltimore OUTloud’s LGBTQ blog section, which she uses to warn of the coming “lesbian annihilation” at the hands of “the queers” and trans people[4] and stridently argue against legislation protecting gender identity. ”
Now Rationalwiki isn’t and doesn’t pretend to be completely unbiased, but it’s opening is much fairer than you dishonestly suggested it was jose. Rationalwiki is also very clear in their content guidelines that they don’t intend their articles to be written exactly like wikipedia so it seems misguided to hold that against them. Of course since you didn’t actually sample any Rationalwiki text I very much doubt you were ever interested in making a thoughtful critique of Rationalwiki articles.
@ CripDyke
[Sorry for not responding earlier]
“Nauseous” vs “nauseated” as an emotion…. Could we settle for “deflated”?
@ chigau
Ich bin Ein Frankfurter.Ich ben neues einer Feiner Nürnberger Oblaten Lebkuchen!
theophontes
google translate:
I ben a new Fine Nuremberg Oblatenlebkuchen!
Shirley you jest.
Party at Manboobz courtesy of Jason Thibeault and the letters A, V, F, and M:
http://manboobz.com/2013/08/30/a-voice-for-men-falsely-accuses-a-male-feminist-blogger-of-being-a-confessed-rapist-because-karma-is-a-bitch/
Streisand effect? What Streisand effect? *crackle crackle WHOOOSH*
@ chigau
Tomorrow is Saturday, so it must be Prague. I hope I don’t burn out before my clients run out of energy. We are not gonna stop to smell the daisies!
Jose:
So in your world if someone is not as bad as Hiter, they are not vile people? Cathy Brennan hasn’t slaughtered millions, so she is magically not a despicable human being ? Pat Robertson has not killed anyone so he is not despicable?
What is your problem?
You ask stupid questions. You make racist statements. Your lack of critical thinking makes my head hurt. You contribute nothing but noise.
WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU HERE?
Oh, so sorry. It appears I misread you jose.
Your “point” was even more ridiculous than my version.
My question stands-The Fuck Are You Doing Here?
Inquiring minds want to know your “intentions”…..
I think hyperskepticism is a misnomer. These people aren’t hyperskepticalabout everything…just things that they disagreed with. It’s more like lectoskepticism….
*shakes head*
No. That’s not right. DDMFM! Please name this using Greek roots only.
Maybe omphaloskepticism is a better fit.
Tony:
To demonstrate how much the rational burns his poor head.
Shit, we have a tornado headed this way. Bleh.
Rob Grigjanis: I like the cut of your jib.
Caine
Be Safe
Caine
Keep your head down.
Rob:
Now that’s lovely. Thank you.
Dalillama, will do. I’m not too worried, there’s been some thundergrumbling and a bit of wind, nothing major. I’ve sat through 80mph windstorms here before. What the weather peoples call ‘Almont’ is a massive area, and they are mostly talking about West Almont, which, although being on maps, doesn’t actually exist. Well, the land exists, but there’s no “West Almont”. I expect people in New Salem had best have their heads down, though. Also, I have a massive basement and a root cellar. And the rats are out and about, thieving, and they are a *great* weather warning system.
I just googled “tornado north dakota almont”.
Top result was an ad for house insurance.
Chigau, I’m so surprised! ;D You have to know how to search: Almont, ND weather gets you there. Right now, it looks like we’re graded with severe thunderstorms. http://www.wunderground.com/weather-forecast/US/ND/Almont.html
Nothing so far, outside of a little wind and continued thundergrumbling. Even our coyote decided to nap, and she hates thunderstorms.
Does anyone want to comment about the mayor of Osaka, Toru Hashimoto’s comment that it was necessary to have comfort women be repeatedly raped by the Japanese military in order to maintain the soldiers’ collective virility by sating their collective lust?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/14/world/asia/japan-hashimoto-comfort-women/
Personally, I have about all the rape discussion I can cope with today.
Theo sez: I must pee on all the things!
Ah, Theo. Nothing like a good rat pee to make a night.
Stanton:
I condemn rape. Across the board. The mayor of Osaka is an asshole for saying that.
Did *you* want to say anything about it?
MM:
Theo is being a walking puddle of piss right now. I suspect he senses some non-piss filled disturbance in the force.
Caine, perhaps he thinks the Great Sky Rat is coming in the storm and he can scare it away with enough urine?
MM:
Either that, or Vasco Stormrat told him to spread some Rat juju around to keep us safe. I haz faith in Plague of Rats. Amen.
Heya, it was a Rain Piss! We’re getting a nice, steady rain now. We need it. Thanks, Theo.
Caine, I’m giving you the biggest hug in my mind. I need it too. You know the reasons.
SallyStrange, I do. *Universe-sized hug to you*
An interesting and informative day at Pharyngula.
I’m so glad I didn’t pick today to stop drinking.
There is blood *everywhere*. All over the one rat condo, all over the playstations, on the floor, in drawers, mass amounts of damn blood, and I can’t find one fucking rat who is bleeding or injured. Aaauuugh.
Chigau:
I wish I could *start*.
Caine, do you ever have “strangers” try to move in with your rats?
–
Caine
re: blood
have you seen the monster dogs?
the cats?
the Mister?
Just a random thought: Given the tenor and topic of the Stunned Silence thread, I hope that if some random asshole troll barges in to spout talking points, PZ will nuke them from orbit without mercy.
On the opposite end of that, every day in the last month or so has seemed like a prime day to start drinking for me. But I always just settle for aspirin, caffeine, and antidepressants. It’s good enough to get me out of the bed in the wee hours of the afternoon, so it’ll have to do for now.
Sorry. That’s not really funny.
I wasn’t kidding about the drinking.
Caine:
Geeze. That sounds creepy as all fuck (that phrase really makes no sense, does it). At least for me, given what I just posted in The Lounge.
Cicely:
Not so far. But, if they are “strangers” I know, wouldn’t bother me.
Chigua:
Monster dogs are with us, they’re fine.
Cats are out.
Mister is in Gladstone.
Oliver is the only one I can’t find. I even found The Invisible Rat™, Dexter. That boy does not like having his cover blown. From what I can tell, someone has taken one helluva a chomp to the tail. I think. I hope. The last incidents of mass amounts of blood were when Sam and Merlin took severe bites to the tail. Mr. “my dick is the most important thing in the universe” Merlin is in lock up right now, and it’s not him.
Just found Oliver, he’s okay. Havelock has a scrape on his tail, not bad enough for all the blood. I reiterate, Auuuuugggh.
Apologies, I didn’t mean to come off as insensitive. I was only half-joking myself and I guess I didn’t realize how my comment could be interpreted.
Anyway, I’m sorry. And good luck.
Caine,
I lived in Minot for 6 months, starting in summer. Apparently the winter before hadn’t been cold enough so there was a summer plague of locusts. Or something. It was pretty buggy. Then winter came. I was warned not to wear water-based makeup or lotion ( I was a teen), and when I was waiting for the school bus the cord from my disc-man to my headphones would get so cold that it wouldn’t work. The scenery was lovely though.
–
Sadly, I think my favorite memory was taking the train to Portland (the Empire Builder) in January, it was so lovely, snow covered plains, the bright sun, the smoking-car with the impromptu bluegrass jam going on. Someday I’ll come back.
Caine
Good then.
Maybe they all need butt-armour.
Caine:
…aaaaand Pearl?
I was catching up on the “Stunned silence” thread and feeling utterly gutted by it, and depressed by the fact that I bet slymers and their allies are probably reading it as well and doing their usual dismissive things. Anyway, it did get me wondering if anyone knows of any ‘pitters or MRA types that have realized how vile they are and have changed. I read Pharyngula a lot, including the comments, but since I only comment a few times each week I find that the stories do not stick in my head very much, so I am not sure if I have read comments by ex-pitters or not. I also do not follow any of this on Twitter or Facebook because it is hard enough to handle it here. Anyway, totally off topic but I guess that is what this thread is about.
Caine, what I was wondering was, how territorial are rats? Would they violently drive away an interloper?
–
anteprepro
I was responding to my own insensitivity about Caine’s blood situation,
You and I cross-posted.
I’ll accept your apology if you’ll accept mine.
*facepalm*
Okay, that also makes sense. Apologies exchanged.
(I’ve got to be a little less egotistical it seems and stop assuming every comment is about me, me, me! I’m getting too big for my internet breeches!)
Tony:
Outside of being offended and pissed off at me for having the nerve to find her and pick her up, she’s fine!
Cicely:
Oh, most likely yes. Our first rat, Ash, bit every single cat in the house, as a warning. Generally, he got them in the ear. He even bit my beloved Sullivan, (a Siamese), who was sound asleep in my desk chair. If you’ve never been bitten by a rat, there’s no way to get across how fucking painful it is – I have permanent nerve damage from a bite.
If there was a feral rat in the studio, it’s a little harder to say what would happen. There might be a big ass fight, there might not be. If it was a mouse, mouse would be dead in a most violent and grisly manner. There would be parts scattered about. A squirrel would most likely incite violence, all the way around. A kitten would be fine, and left alone for the most part, as would a puppy. Same for a bunny. Rats tend to like and adopt fuzzy babies. If a ferret got loose in here, dead rats all over.
I suspect a tail bite, because in several places, the blood is in a long, sinuous trail, which happens with tail bites. I am, at this time, still fucking clueless.
Travis:
I haven’t heard of any, but I don’t get around on the ‘net as much as others do.
Aaaaaaand, it looks like Merlin got chomped on the tail again. I guess that will happen when you’re Mr. Fight and Fuck.
I spent the better part of the evening reading about the orthodox church, so thanks.
Soooo I +1’d the Elyse post on my G+ and one of my followers shared it and within 10 comments a rape apologist shows up and says basically she deserved it because she was drunk. So of course I carefully explained to him why he’s a complete shitwit (slightly more diplomatically than that) and then got told by the person who shared that we needed to agree to disagree.
Which, on the one hand is fine because it’s her G+ page if she doesn’t want it hijacked by us that’s fine but…
AAAARRRRRRRRRGGGHHHH. This is not a matter of opinion upon which one can agree to disagree. We’re not debating favorite ice cream flavors here. Blah.
piegasm,
Could you give the ice cream flavor example to your friend and check with your friend whether (s)he realizes how it’s hardly a matter on which it is easy to agree to disagree since people’s bodily integrity and health depend on people correctly knowing to identify what is rape?
(personally, it’s highly probable that I’d slink away with the tail between my legs, fuming, and ignoring this person’s G+ circles for a while, but I’m giving a suggestion in case you decide to be more confrontational)
I considered posting something similar, but she’s not someone I know well…just sort of randomly followed me having seen me involved in another conversation somewhere. I did in fact make the ice cream analogy to the shitwit dudebro earlier in the convo.
It’s not really even that I think she doesn’t understand the importance of it based on comments I’ve seen her make elsewhere. I more think she just didn’t want her G+ page hijacked by a contentious conversation so I invited the guy to come comment at my page if he wanted to continue the conversation.
Weird little tidbit, right before she told us both to go cool off: he admitted to having been raped while he was drugged after an operation, though the way he explained it made it clear that he doesn’t consider it rape. The way he presented it was in a similar to the ‘gotcha’ tone the guys who show up and go “well what if my wife and I get drunk and have sex?! What then smarty pants?!?”
I said well yeah, technically that’s rape though I wouldn’t presume to dictate to him how he should view it or deal with it.
Then one post later comes back and says he was just awarded $20k for having been falsely accused of rape as if that was supposed to settle the matter. Which makes me really wonder whether he might not have been the perpetrator in the rape story above. Not that someone false accused of rape can’t have been raped themselves: it was just a really odd juxtaposition that he would confess to being a victim and then immediately come back with the other story.
stnaton@218,
I already did comment on the vile comments of Osaka’s mayor, somewhere on Pharyngula. There’s a petition about it here.
Do not (and will not) have time to converse. Also, I do not want to derail the Stunned Silence thread. But I have to express my outrage at the slyme and their follow twitter followers who go off about #FtBullie being #WomanAbusers. And yet lots of women feel safe enough here to share their very painful stories if only to try to help others.
What the fuck is wrong to those (slyme) people?
The same thing that is wrong with modern culture.
As if pre-modern culture was any better.
True.
The problem is, modern culture is pretty much pre-modern culture with better communications. And far more ways to harass. And abuse. And hurt.
A part of me is grateful that, when my rapist took photos of me, it was pre-digital, pre-internet.
Sorry. Not what you meant, but my mind is trying to panic right now.
In relation to the talk of rape/rape culture: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sex-between-students-and-teachers-should-not-be-a-crime/2013/08/30/dbf7dcca-1107-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html
Fucking infuriating.
Lumi:
To say the least. It would be so nice if we lived in a world where adults were expected to behave like adults.
lumi, Caine,
*headdesk*
Yeah, nothing to worry about in teacher-student relationships. It’s not like one of the people in that kind of relationship has a significant amount of power over the other, which could make the other feel unable to decline no matter how pure and sincere teacher’s love might be and no matter how much they would never ever use the power they have.
Yeah. I’m damned sick and tired of reading constant excuses for adults who just can’t manage to keep it in their pants. (Men and women.) Why is this so difficult? Because, you know, it’s not difficult. At all.
Yeah, my two older daughters are 18 and 14. The oldest has begun college, and even though she has a backbone of steel, she’s shy and quiet which looks like easy prey. My 14-yr old is only into girls but I can see her getting a crush on a teacher. We talk about these issues as much as I feel comfortable with (not enough) but it shouldn’t be up to them to know how to stop it. It shouldn’t start at all if a teacher is ethical.
And now’s the part where I get all intro-specty about why I don’t fully outline the dangers the world holds. I don’t want my daughters to be afraid. They have been very lucky in their lives to not meet anyone who means them harm. I’ve been afraid basically my whole life, but I see them so happy and I don’t want to take that innocent joy away. But then if I don’t I’m not sending them out in the world truly prepared. It’s so hard to realize I’m going to have to hurt them (by telling the truth) to maybe save them.
lumi,
Letting them know you’re a person they can come talk to anytime, whatever happens, means a lot.
Indeed. In fact, we know they can because you rarely find teachers whipping it out in the middle of class. That’s what you’d expect if they truly couldn’t control themselves, but we don’t see that. Instead, we see that they defer gratification until a situation arises where they think they can get away with it.
The asshole brigade often tries to frame this as some unreasonable demand for people to be saints and exercise super-human levels of self-control. It’s not. It’s the same damn thing you do every single time you go: “No, I shouldn’t act on that impulse.”
We all do it in some respect, every day, all day. When you decide that having cookies for dinner is a bad idea. When you decide that calling your boss an incompetent mini-Mussolini would result in unpleasant consequences. When you want to follow that guy who cut you off in traffic and ram him off the road, but you think better of it.
We do it all the time. They do it all the time. They can control themselves. They just don’t want to.
@ Caine:
Do you have any local scuttlebutt on Craig Cobb and his machinations up the road from you in Leith? I have my torch and pitchfork at the ready, should they become necessary.
Oh hell, I’ve had a *lot* of sexual urges in my life, many of them quite strong, but I’ve managed to stay in control and have a think about said urges before acting, if I act at all. Yeah, sexual feelings can feel overwhelmingly strong. That is not an excuse to refuse to think prior to jumping, nor is it an excuse to happily dump your ethics out the window, ’cause you just really, really, have to jump that. It’s an exercise in treating people as things, in this case, things which are there for you to scratch your itch.
Boygenius, nope haven’t heard any scuttlebut here in Morton County, outside of people wanting to spit in Cobb’s face and kick him clear off the planet. There really isn’t anything bad enough to say about this asshole. He scares me silly. Count me in on the torch and pitchfork crew.
Cobb has seriously angered people here, I don’t think his dreams of founding the New Aryan Brotherhood here are going to fly. I sure as fuck hope not.
Sounds like a charming fellow.
Yeah, fuckin’ adorable. Search his name, you’ll read all about it. Basically, Leith is ghost town territory. Asshole bought up mass amounts of acreage there, wanting to have a big ol’ white power music festival and found a nice, “hey, we’re harmless” white brotherhood town on said acreage. People are a tad upset.
Fortunately, he will probably fail miserably, based on history. I’ve heard of a dozen people just in my lifetime who’ve tried this, with various ideologies, and no-one’s ever made it happen. The people who try to set up somewhere that isn’t already a settlement can sometimes put together a few hundred like-minded fellow settlers, but they never last very long because they’re ideology-blinkered idiots who have no fucking conception of what infrastructure is, let alone how to make any, and anybody that obsessed with ideological purity has a nasty tendency to schism, usually acrimoniously.
As more and more of our small rural towns succumb to ghostification, I suspect that the ideologically marginalized groups will attempt this sort of thing on an increasing scale.
Couple the decline in property values (many properties can be purchased for just the taxes owed) with the absence of any effective municipal governance, and you have a ready-made Garden of Eden for separatist/racist movements to exploit.
Imported from Stunned Silence thread:
Okay, Caine! So, look, the thread does need to be a safe space for people who have been raped and assaulted to share their stories, so I’m pulling other discussions out here.
But it’s one thing for Mattir to share her story of her assault, and another for her to passive-aggressively smear a group of people who are also survivors, by saying that they told her her experiences made her a rape apologist, by distorting the actual discussion so as to hide the fact that she was erasing the experiences of other rape survivors.
How’s THAT okay for a safe space?
I love the way the Thunderdome looks by gas light.
Boygenius:
Yeah, I think this is going to be a major problem. Makes me feel filthy to be in the same State. I want these assholes off the planet.
Chris:
:snort: Yes, all us canaries love that sort of thing.
Flewellyn, I sent an alert already. If you’re smart, you’ll go away. I suspect you aren’t overburdened with smarts though.
You know what? No. Somebody alerted me to this and I’m not watching it happen. Mattir left out the context that her experience took place immediately after multiple rape survivors, including me, had left the space because it was made unsafe by rape apologia, including hers; the other people in question, who asked her to please fucking stop projecting her own experiences onto us because ours were different (which is how other people experienced the events she’s relating here), were also rape survivors. This experience was fucking devastating for me, as a survivor, and her behavior was fucking devastating and triggering, and I’m not watching myself and other people who lost our safe space and our trust in our friends to this bullshit be lied about here. If you weren’t there, please stop fucking piling on the Poor Mattir train because you heard her version first.
LykeX:
You talk as if we have free will or something.
I was fucking there and I made every possible effort, in almost every literal fucking comment, to say that Mattir’s experience was valid, but that she could not extrapolate it to other people, and to see her lying through her goddamn teeth in that thread and everyone believing it without knowing anything at all about the group of survivors who she actively pushed out of the group is honestly the most devastating thing so far. I would rather she had punched me in the face than lie like that. I don’t want anything to do with a forum that bears the Pharyngula name at this point because it isn’t a safe place for anyone who doesn’t let Mattir extrapolate her experience to literally every other rape victim in the goddamn world.
I was THERE. You want to talk about gaslighting? How about saying I said literally the opposite of what I said and people I respect who have never even met me screaming at people who point out that I, and the people I was allied with, did no such fucking thing? How about Mattir deciding to air that particular dirty laundry in a forum where she fucking knew that people who had been involved were likely to be reading and participating and might want to share their own experiences? How about the fact that it was rape victims who were telling her that she could tell her own stories but not others’, and that was the only problem?
I’ve been raped, and I feel safer talking about it in literally almost any place other than Pharyngula.
And I’m kind of devastated. Most of you don’t even know me anymore because I migrated to Facebook from here. I like and respect a lot of you, and it doesn’t matter, because she can lie through her teeth and I am suddenly fucking scum and a shitty rape victim.
Fuck her and fuck this place.
And Caine, I’m a fan. I always have been. I love and respect most of what you have to say. I probably never would have said anything, but I’m sorry that well was poisoned anyway. Fuck.
Oh fuck off, joey. Not the time or place.
mother-of-god
and now joey
Gertrud:
I am sorry too. I am not going to disclose what I have been told or what I know about this. I hope you all understand that invading a thread which is a safe space for survivors to tell their stories is not okay, and I thank you for keeping this on Tdome. Also, feel free to argue all you wish. I have nothing further to add, outside of my continued defense of the Stunned Silence Thread.
For what it’s worth, as someone who trusts both Mattir and Flewellyn (and I wasn’t witness to the original discussion at issue) I note that nobody else picked up on the mention of A+ at all. Nobody said “Oh those nasty A+ people” or even mentioned A+ again until Setar came in. If that was an attempted smear on Mattir’s part, it got no traction. IIRC all folks said was that erasing someone else’s experience is never okay. I don’t think you’ll find objection to that.
*on refresh* And I also trust Cipher. Without witnessing the discussion, though, I don’t see what else we could have said *before y’all gave the other side* beyond “erasing someone else’s experience is never okay”. It is never ever ever okay. So yeah. Mattir’s comment raised an asterisk in my mind.
Pardon if this double-posts, my connection is really irregular right now.
I’m a survivor and it would be considered an invasion for me to talk on that thread because Mattir made her story about how a group of people who, themselves, need a thread like that, should shut the fuck up.
She made that her post in order to deliberately silence me and other people who were involved. And we’re invading if we talk about it.
That’s fucking abusive on her part because she knew that was what she was doing.
(For a frame of reference, I was on here last year as Jennifer: Uppity Bitch and General Malcontent. Some of you may remember me.)
Gertrud, I remember you, and thank you. I’ll have a good think about what you said.
The invasion was Mattir’s bringing it up to begin with, because it was wildly inappropriate and off-topic, and had the silencing effect that Gertrud and Cipher have mentioned.
But you were right about needing to bring the continued discussion here.
(I don’t appreciate being lumped in with Setar about it, though. Setar’s post was a true derail, and I did not support it.)
One more thing – Mattir notwithstanding, the thread has become a safe haven for people to relate their stories, so no, I don’t think it should become argument central. I am sorry you feel you aren’t able to defend yourself. I really have to prioritize those who are coming out with their stories. Sorry.
I’m closing this tab out now, I’m at my limit for what I can deal with right now.
Caine, maybe you’ll listen to me. (I know, LOOOOOONG time no see. I’ll give an update on Munchkin in a post-script.)
I was there. My impression of what happened is that Mattir said something, and knowing her, very likely intending something much better than how it came across to multiple people. We are imperfect communicators, myself most of all. Language, and especially English, is but an imperfect and lossy medium to carry all this information we expect it to carry.
So given this, sometimes we say something and it comes across badly, and people interpret it very differently from its intent. This happens to me quite a bit. This is what it looks like happened to me. Good will, good intent, miscommunication. Then people try to correct it, because they’re hurt, and feeling unsafe.
And Mattir didn’t walk back the miscommunication. She did not apologize. She did not respect the feelings of others, and trust me, as someone who was there, people like Gertrud *tried* for HOURS to work on this. Respectful, clear, repeatedly telling Mattir that she was allowed to feel as she does about her own experiences.
I know how hard it is to admit fault. I can be very stubborn.
What Mattir did here, was make that thread unsafe for all of the rape survivors who were involved. She did that by bringing this dirty laundry out, and then everyone reacts badly to people saying she’s wrong.
I get how it can look like gaslighting if you’re only hearing one side. I saw it all. Its a big complex ball of hurt, on all sides.
I lost several relationships with people I value and care for highly because of this.
Basically, what I’m saying is, as someone who was there, who participated as well, Mattir gaslit everyone who took issue with what she was saying. She poisoned that well.
I understand your instinct to defend people you care about. Its very strong in me too.
=====================================================
Postscript: Sadly, Munchkin passed away a two months ago. She was happy and healthy and utterly spoiled until the end, when she developed renal failure. Apparently some family lines of piggies are very prone to this. I have her ashes in a nice box and I miss her. A lot.
I can’t discuss my stories because it was made excessively clear that we’re not welcome on that thread. I’m not the only one. I understand that order of priorities, but it’s based solely on who was there first. We can’t get priority because Mattir has the cultural cache here, and everyone else has to either shut up or get teeth buried in their throat. We don’t get to have stories now. Not there. We don’t matter because solidarity is for Mattir, and for no one who upset her, regardless of how much she may have triggered people.
I would have liked to discuss my stories. I just know that I didn’t even bother showing up in the thread and I was still smeared. I dread what would have happened if I had actually tried. No. Priority is for those who came first and have the cultural cache. That’s not your problem, but this was vile.
gertrud,
I remember you. Hi
/I don’t feel qualified to argue, but I’m not ignoring what’s going on so I’ll just grumble that everything sucks. sorry
I’m listening to this. While I’m inclined to trust Mattir in general, if she had actually laid into someone else even obliquely for the mere act of speaking up on that thread, I would have shut that crap down. (If I were awake, if I saw it first, and if my connection held out.) I know that’s not enough to undo the fear that comes from seeing her statement stand, nor does it mean much now since the situation didn’t arise.
—-
trinioler, I’m so sorry about Munchkin. Thanks for mentioning her, and for spoiling her.
@joey:
Thank you for demonstrating, once again, that your purpose in life is to be an asshole, and that you don’t have the free will to not be an asshole.
gertrud
What was made clear in the Stunned thread was that the discussion about what happened at A+ was unwelcome.
Not that you are unwelcome.
I, too, would have sent an alert had Mattir tried to continue that discussion.
I’m not going to be drawn into that tedious discussion, especially with an intellectual ant like yourself. Philosophical discussions are irrelevant for this purpose. Instead, I will simply point out that for any practical purpose, we do have free will.
The behavior outputted by the brain is under the control of that brain and absent any severe damage, that brain is perfectly capable of responding to social pressure with appropriate action, such as suppression of impulses, as evidenced by the fact that all the brains in question do exactly that on a daily basis.
When presented with serious likely consequences, brains are generally capable of suppressing impulses to anti-social actions. Anything beyond that is just irrelevant, point-dodging bullshit.
<blockquote While I’m inclined to trust Mattir in general, if she had actually laid into someone else even obliquely for the mere act of speaking up on that thread, I would have shut that crap down.
I appreciate that, but she deliberately poisoned the thread for a very specific group of people before that could even be a possibility.
How welcome would you feel if someone lied viciously about what you had actually said to them, posited that you said that they could not talk about their own experiences as a rape survivor in a thread dedicated to rape survivors telling their stories, and then people who said that was untrue were jumped all over? Because I don’t feel very fucking welcome.
For the record, though a minor point, it did not happen at A+.
It happened on the Facebook Pharyngula group.
But, Caine was right that further discussion about it on that thread was not appropriate. Hence moving it here.
Borked blockquote. Let’s try again:
I appreciate that, but she deliberately poisoned the thread for a very specific group of people before that could even be a possibility.
How welcome would you feel if someone lied viciously about what you had actually said to them, posited that you said that they could not talk about their own experiences as a rape survivor in a thread dedicated to rape survivors telling their stories, and then people who said that was untrue were jumped all over? Because I don’t feel very fucking welcome.
Flewellyn, Cipher, gertrud, trinioler:
I was not there. I don’t know anyone involved well enough to be able to say “well, I trust this person’s account over anyone else’s.” I don’t know anything about the group where this all happened. I know nothing about this beyond what all of you and Mattir have said. When she was the only voice I had heard on the topic, I offered my support as I’d offer it to anyone who gave a similar story. I can’t accurately judge any one person’s account, but I can judge that there has been a lot of hurt and for that I’m very sorry.
I don’t want anyone to feel silenced. Everyone should feel safe to be able to tell their stories. Solidarity should be for every survivor.
I don’t know what to say to make things right or stop people from feeling silenced and unwelcome. That shouldn’t happen, to anyone.
Gertrud, I don’t think you’re scum. Please don’t believe that’s what people here think of you. It’s not true.
Of course you did. This community has a reputation for defending the vulnerable to the teeth, and it’s a good reputation to have. It’s a good impulse. I would have done the same in that thread. That’s part of what makes me so angry about this: it’s a mischaracterization that takes advantage of the best impulses of this community so as to shut people up.
I appreciate that, but she painted those of us who weren’t on “her side” of the conversation as trying to silence her when she talked about her experience of rape. She did so in a thread that was explicitly geared towards rape survivors sharing their narratives. In that kind of thread, people who try to silence rape survivors are scum–never mind if they are themselves rape survivors, and if they are actually saying that telling your own story is fine so long as you’re not making it someone else’s without their invitation to do so. There, anyone who doesn’t agree with Mattir about the situation is gaslighting her and is someone who silences rape survivors. It’s the being grotesquely and unnecessarily lied about right in the middle of a good discussion of experiences that just kills me.
As someone who saw the fight (and yes, it was a fight, and it got ugly) go down, I’m going to speak up in support of Gutrud’s (et al) take on it.
When Mattir posted, I was shocked, because what she related was so far from what happened that I barely recognized it.
For the record, I am the one who made the “Vox Day” comment. Which is to say that what I said was that Mattir’s rhetoric came close (but ultimately stopped short) to rhetoric I might expect from him. I did not say so idly. I get that people think I overstated it, and, ultimately, I’m fine with that. While I understand that that was not her intention, what she said was profoundly hurtful and triggering for rape victims.
Speaking purely for myself, though, I will say that if she gave any hint that she recognized that (her intent aside) her words were hurtful and triggering and that she regrets this and wants to have a discussion of this, I would be happy to, and walk back my own commentary. But she has not shown that indication.
And that’s all I have to say on that topic. Seriously, I have no interest in rehashing a month-old fight that was epic in its horribleness. I am, however, disgusted that she waded into that thread – a painful but necessary safe space where victims are sharing their stories – and posted what she did.
Thank you for your perspective, Esteleth. That helps a lot.
Again, I’m sorry to all of you who were involved and hurt by this. I can’t offer anything more than my words, but they are sincere. You deserved safe space, too.
I thought it was really inappropriate and borderline mean, in a passive-aggressive way, for Mattir to drag an old argument into the open, that was sure to rub raw nerves, in the Stunned Silence thread. I witnessed part of the argument, and I don’t fully agree with Mattir’s encapsulation of it, but I don’t feel comfortable bringing it up in that thread because it would be derailing, not to mention, I’ve no wish to add to Mattir’s pain about the whole thing. I also thought Setar was out of line to launch his defense of A+ there rather than in the Thunderdome. She really put a lot of people in a very unkind bind with what she chose to include and where she chose to include those words.
I would just like to second what The Mellow Monkey just said at 303.
Fuck it, may as well burn the house down.
That fight was ugly. It was unkind, and horrid. Lines were drawn and people of good faith found themselves on either side of the line. Mattir’s view of the world is what it is. She is entitled to it. It is not the whole story. And dragging it here, to a place where others would become involved as if she was the only fucking victim is behavior I never expected of a woman who used to be my friend. I understand that she is hurt, and that she fully believes that her version of reality is all there is. However, it’s simply not the case. That thread had at least three *other* survivors who were also triggered *by what Mattir said*. She was trying to explain her own experience, but the way it was communicated read to *many* people as if she was generalizing in ways that reinforced rape culture. People *over* and *over* validated Mattir’s own experience while suggesting it was inappropriate to generalize to other survivors. Mattir was triggered as hell as well and things spiraled quickly out of control. No one was evil, no one was deliberately cruel. But, to phrase it the way it was phrased in the stunned silence thread was way the fuck out of line, a month later.
By putting it in that thread it *ensured* that none of those people who were triggered in the thread she mentioned could speak. It ensured that I, who *never* talk about the not-a-real-rape could not speak.
I wouldn’t have posted in that thread anyway – for obvious reasons. And I have no interest in hurting Mattir. But I felt incredibly betrayed by what happened in the group (consider how ridiculously unexpected it was for a Pharyngula group to suddenly have rape apologetics in it, including coming from people I know and care about), and I am startled and crushed to learn that distorted versions of those extremely hurtful events have been and are being passed around to people I respect, as well as being posted in spaces that should be safe for the other people involved. I can’t convey to you all how heartbreaking this is for me, for this to happen here.
It makes sense to me that the responses to Mattir’s post should be redirected here…but Mattir’s post is still present, and still making that thread a hostile space for the survivors who she spoke about in such inaccurate ways, who can’t respond there now because it would be derailing.
So why is her post allowed to stay? Or at least, that part?
Ogvorbis
What did you have for supper tonught?
I spent severral hours today reviewing screencaps and transcribing what I wrote over those 36 hours. Frankly I am pretty satisfied. I said some things clumsily, but when I’ve discussed these clumsy things in correspondence with commmenters who aren’t convinced ex ante that I am a wicked and unforgiveable person, we have clarified meaniing and identified some fairly small points of disagreement, mostly about how to respond, as a parent, to sexual activity between teens below the age of consent. I will post what I wrote in a couple of following threads.
So there you have it. I was clumsy, but rape culture means that we have one single word for a huge range of consent and non-consent to sex, from “I’ll give you a blow job so I can go to sleep sooner” to “You’ve basically imprisoned me in a suburb of a city 50 miles from home, without transportation and gotten me drunk” to “daddy touching me when I was five.” We do not even have good language to TALK about how to consent or refuse to consent. We don’t have specific vocabulary for economic or emotional coercion. We don’t have words to distinguish “I’ll have sex even though I don’t feel horny because I want you to be happy” and “I’ll have sex with you even though I don’t feel horny because I don’t want you to sulk if I say no.”
We do not have the vocabulary or framework even to talk about this.
I should not have spoken up there, at all, and wish I hadn’t. If the discussion hadn’t continued about me, by name, in front of my kids who were still were (and in one case are) members of the group, I probably would have let it drop. I definitely learned something very very very important about when and how rape survivors are supposed to speak up, and if Anders had pissed someone off by talking about changing her mind or realizing that she couldn’t have consented while isolated or intoxicated, that conversation might well be happening about her now, because the kind of re-evaluation she relates is almost exactly how I’ve re-evaluated my assaults in the decades since they occurred.
One other thing – I am 50 and started college at 16. In the late 70s, date rape was not a thing. My women’s college had a senior pre-graduation event where women drank and related stories about coming out of blackouts with naked men they did not know chasing them around an unfamiliar bed. This was funny. It was entirely the woman’s fault. That is why I did not know I had been raped when a friend of a friend invited me to a nearby city, drove me there, offered me a couple drinks, and then initiated a group sex scene I had not planned and did not want.
What the fuck was that?
How am I supposed to follow that?
That everything that I wrote in a Facebook group over a couple of days. I couldn’t and wouldn’t put in other people’s comments, but those are the words that I got called out for writing.
Yes, it’s clunky and awkward, and frankly I don’t expect anyone to actually read it, but if people here really want to tell me I repeat rape apologetics, I figure they should have the precise words that constituted those offenses.
I regret the use of the word unwarranted. That would be one of those things that was hashed out in private conversation later. It’s a tad impossible to have such difficult discussions when the entire army of righteousness is shouting at you.
My point was that the person who accused a friend’s son of rape was not malicious or lying. Xe may have been developing a more accurate understanding of what had happened to xir.
With some people, and then elided in your public account of how you were terribly, terribly wronged and told to shut up about your experiences. Along with all of the context, including the supposed attempts to shut you up, and oh, by the way, the thing the “fuck you!” at a 70-year-old woman (I’ll leave the pondering of the relevance of that to other people) was a response to, namely the fact that when several survivors spoke up about how triggering the thread had been up to that point, and pointed out multiple actual instances of very standard rape apologia (which other people involved recognized and apologized for), said 70-year-old woman accused us derisively of having to make everything all about us and our pain. So, you know. Not buying it even a little.
So when you said unwarranted, you’re saying now, you actually meant the opposite of unwarranted?
grrgfnjol”!!&6
I do not necessarily write clearly and non-clumsily when I am (a) switching medications, (b) dealing with both sleeplessness and severe trauma nightmares, (c) upset about scary things happening to a kid I have known for several years and the news that someone the kid has been involved with has been severely hurt, whether he intended to or not, and (d) engaged in highly emotional conflict with people I had respected.
I’m asking you a direct question, Surprise, because what you wrote is in direct conflict with what you’re saying now was your whole point in writing. Your writing was not unclear in the slightest.
And you’re trying to say now that what you meant was that Fernand was probably only just realizing that xe was raped. And that that writing above is a clumsy, unclear attempt to say that Fernand was coming to an accurate conclusion about what had happened to xir.
Oh, but when it’s you it’s clumsy writing and triggered and stress. When it’s the other people involved, who were also triggered and stressed, it’s all they didn’t want you to talk about your experiences, they called you a rape apologist for talking about being a survivor, maybe you should smear them to their friends behind their backs. And dire warnings about how no one will tolerate people talking about realizing after the fact that they were raped. (Which is especially revolting considering that, well, hi *waves* realized I was raped RIGHT HERE ON PHARYNGULA!)
IIRC Setar identifies as non-binary gender, not male. (Sorry if this is inappropriate, and I’m not trying to speak for hir; I’m just not sure if xe is reading this thread.)
If anyone wants to label a discussion of the classic “I never called it rape” type experience as rape apologia, then they are seriously stupid. There’s a book by that name which you’d think any feminist worth hir salt should at least be aware of – it was the classic blasting open of the whole previously un-named unspeakable concept of date rape.
And I can actually see them doing it right here, so I don’t need to to struggle back to read all the (deleted, anyway) history to be able to trust Mattir’s account. Posts *right here* blame her for rape apologia (multiple times), victim blaming, triggering people, rhetoric like Vox Day (FFS!! Really?!)
Honestly, if a rape victim speaking up about her experience is unacceptably triggering to you, and you want to call her a rape apologist and tell her to shut up because hers wasn’t identical to yours, then you shouldn’t be reading threads about rape. That’s the whole purpose of trigger warnings.
Cipher at #316.
You’ve edited A Surprise to Many’s comment to make it say what you wanted to show her saying.
Now how about posting an actual unedited quote by StM saying what you claim she said.
Aaaargh. I’m getting complaints from both sides about this argument, and it’s clear that no matter what I say I’m going to get blasted. So I’m doing nothing for now.
I will say that we do have a rule here about not bringing in grudges from old threads, and that should go double for threads from other sites on the web. I’m also only going to be hands-off while it’s in the Thunderdome…if it starts to spill over into other threads I will shut it down.
Also, everyone has valid points. I would appreciate it if you tried to set aside old hurts and resentments and try to actually listen to what each of you is saying.
Are you fucking serious right now? Did you skip all the fucking parts where we said “It wasn’t her speaking up about her experience that was the problem, it was her projecting it onto other people (and using it as a reason to call whether their rape accusation was fair into question)”? And I very seriously resent you buying into the part of the narrative where we supposedly won’t accept the “I never called it rape” experience, Alethea, because of what I said above: I had that experience too. Fuck’s sake.
And bastion, please enjoy comment 322.
Mattir has edited her comments; they don’t say what they originally said. She also has not included what she was replying to so as to make it an honest dialogue. She is not providing any context, and her entire account was disingenuous. She did not bother announcing to everyone that she was horribly triggered until after she had horribly triggered a lot of people, and she was the only one using that as an excuse for saying things that, whether or not she meant them to, came across as saying that a teenager was incapable of knowing whether or not she had been raped. She was literally saying the opposite of what she claims to have said, and that was what we were arguing against because several of us are mentally ill, were raped as teenagers, and some of us realized it later.
But, of course, as those of us who read Pharyngula know, you can always trust an account of a conversation given by someone who doesn’t give both sides of it, or the entirety of it.
If any of you honestly think that we decided that Mattir, and just Mattir, was being too triggering by doing literally nothing more than giving her account of having been assaulted, then I don’t know what to fucking say to anyone here. That is absolutely not what happened and, honestly, she’s a fucking liar and I’ve lost all respect for her in the past day, watching this unfold. Not because she’s a victim of assault providing her own account of having been assaulted, but because she is a manipulative liar, and being a victim of assault doesn’t make that okay. Being a victim of assault doesn’t make it okay to smear other victims in a forum dedicated to victims telling their stories. It doesn’t make it okay to lie about what happened and edit transcripts to reflect the exact fucking opposite of what happened. It just make it fucking tragic.
And, if anyone wants to know why I’m not willing to give good-faith assumption here, it’s mainly that Mattir is a fucking liar and took the time to, without provocation, smear me and people that I care about for what appears to be the sole purpose of making it clear that we are not welcome to either post or fucking read in a thread that is supposed to be for us, too. Good faith has jumped the goddamn shark here.
And, for the record, Mattir, all this situation would have taken was you saying:
“Oh my god, you think that’s what I was saying? That is the opposite of what I meant. Since a lot of people took it that way, I must have said something wrong. I’m so sorry to have miscommunicated like that; I’m switching medications and a lot of this conversation has been really triggering for me, too, and that can make it hard to communicate properly. That wasn’t at all what I meant. I would never say that.”
Instead you talked about how you were triggered and that meant that we were being giant meanieheads for not reading what you meant (which you never told us) instead of what you actually fucking said. Then you smeared us behind our backs to people who hadn’t seen it. Then you went into a thread that was for survivors and smeared us in an intensely fucking triggering way. Then you fucking edited the transcripts and gave them without any context.
And you did all of that when all it would have taken was a simple admission that you misspoke and an explanation so that we could actually talk to you, too. I mean, yeah, by this point I’ve decided that you’re pretty fucking irredeemable, but it took a fucking lot for me to get there. You’re willing to sink to pretty much any depths to ensure that you “win” this conflict, including lying and triggering survivors who you just don’t like out of a thread that is about them, too. Anyone who talks about it there is derailing, despite the fact that your original derail stands, safe and sound. You made it crystal fucking clear to survivors who sit on your bad side that they are not welcome, and that they are terrible people and bad survivors who just don’t deserve solidarity, too. I would never have fucking done that to you. None of us would have. I spent a good chunk of yesterday sitting there and crying–finally, for the first time after the giant blowup–over how fucking far this has descended. A lot of people are deeply wounded right now at your vile manipulations right now.
Step back and take an honest look at what you’ve let yourself become over being incapable of saying something simple like, “I miscommunicated.” Because it’s despicable.
gertrud:
And here’s where we run into a HUGE problem.
I am shocked and dismayed that Mattir would post actual transcribed comments (regardless of who wrote them) from a private facebook group in a very public forum. I can’t even fully express what I’m feeling about this– let’s just say that it’s not fucking good.
Being one of the mods of said fb group, I am pleading with all current and former members: please please please don’t post any more actual comments from that shit fest. I know that there are various people who have saved the threads in question– I am asking you to respect all of our privacy and please don’t copy/paste the conversation(s) here.
Audley, I never would have done that, but now the only record that stands is her (edited) one. I don’t have any transcripts, so I can’t post, but no, I don’t think it’s fair that she gets to lie and then prove fake documentation of her lying and then everyone else has only their own hearsay. What she’s done here is unspeakable.
I know, Gertrud. It’s a shitty situation and I’m sorry that Mattir gets the last word. I’ve just seen so much damage done to the group because of this* that I can’t support anyone having their privacy violated any more.
I’m not sure what else I can do.
*The entire shitfest from the beginning, not just the blow up here.
You’re in a shitty situation, Audley, and it’s not your fault, and you have to do what you can to protect the group. I understand that.
It’s just, whether it’s the being asked not to derail the victim thread or knowing that posting an actual transcript here won’t work, somehow we end up being the ones who don’t have any real say. That hurts immensely. You didn’t do it and it’s not your fault, but it still hurts a lot.
Sorry for barging in, but maybe PZ should remove Mattir’s post since it obviously contains real names of people who can possibly be recognized?
Beatrice, that’s a wonderful concern. She edited the names (along with her other edits) so that they wouldn’t be the original names, though, which is at least on its own an edit that I think was right to do.
Mattir changed the names to protect people’s identities. I’m “Humberto” above.
I’m going to write this out. Trigger warning, which I realize is late:
—–
First, a brief summary of my relevant experiences. I was raped by my high school/college boyfriend, repeatedly, during a relationship that to others appeared dysfunctional but consensual. This was the “I never called it rape” experience I discussed above. It was rape. He knows it was, too. Later, I was raped again and abused by a person that I believe was a serial predator, who I believe targeted women perceived to be “crazy,” because I was neurodivergent, mentally ill, and into kink. He also made statements that he had recognized that I had been abused as a child, which is something I don’t talk about here but that I did talk about in the group in question. This sounds irrelevant but it does provide a context from which to view the stuff I’m about to say.
—-
The discussion in question started when a relative of a person involved in that group was accused of rape by their partner. The person who was in the group whose relative was accused, referred to Surprise above as Barry(I think? the pseudonyms were a good idea but there are too many of them) was essentially blameless here and I regret that her pain has been brought up again. What matters here is that the discussion started as one of a putatively false rape accusation, leveled against someone we like. And that could have been fine. We could have comforted the person and supported them and everything would have been okay. A lot of us did. But unfortunately, what happened then is that reasons that the accusation was probably false started being raised (Again, I regret having to bring some of this up, since the people who said a lot of these things have basically apologized and retracted. It’s only necessary to understand what is going on with Surprise now.):
1. The person accusing had made rape accusations before, whereas the person accused had not been accused before.
2. The person accusing showed signs of mental illness, possibly arising from past abuse.
3. The couple had started being involved in kink at a young age, deemed too young.
4. The person accused was nice and a feminist.
5. The relationship outwardly appeared to be consensual.
With the context I gave above, you can see why these things did not go over well with me. You can still see traces of some of it in the edited, framed, contextless, still ungainly mess above, including the discussion of BPD. This was a from-a-distance diagnosis of a person accusing someone-we-like of rape. It was not done in any kind of neutral context.
When we tried to point out that while comforting Barry was important, using these forms of “evidence” that the accusation was false was not okay and was doing splash damage to us, we were yelled at and shamed for that by a person that Surprise refers to above as a 70-year-old-woman (I don’t know the pseudonym) and some of us yelled back and left. That’s the spinning-off context for the ageism thread and line of discussion above.
After that, the thing with the “I didn’t call it rape” experience happened. You can see a lot of this above. If you bother to read the parts I quoted, at least, you’ll see that far from merely discussing her own experiences, Surprise was in fact discussing someone else’s alleged experiences, and rather than talking about how they were probably accurate, she was talking about how that person probably genuinely believed they were raped, but that wasn’t consistent with what they thought of the relationship at the time, and maybe it was because of mental illness or past trauma, and the accusations were hence unwarranted. Surprise then pointed out that she herself had experienced a developing understanding of her rapes, and that we are imperfect observers of experience whose perceptions change over time, discussing various examples, including the former-atheist-turned-Catholic. As other people involved have already stated, they were at pains, particularly poor gertrud who has been really heavily misrepresented here, to reassure Surprise that no one thought her experiences or talking about them were invalid. What we objected to was the fact that this was used in the service of calling into question a person’s account of their rape, and the fact that this calling into question was doing splash damage to the other victims involved.
Oh, and if you look at the thing above (or, really, take my word for it) you’ll see Mattir objecting to someone bringing up the possibility that the person accused of rape may have actually raped someone. Yes, in the context it was a very ugly thing to say bluntly and very painful for everyone involved, but that particular objection really gives the lie to the account of events that she’s clinging to now, where she was just a.) talking about her experiences and b.) using them to validate the “I never called it rape” narrative of another survivor.
Gertrud:
Thank you very much for understanding my position. And yeah, I know how shitty I just made everyone feel. :(
Ah, never mind then.
I’m sorry this is such a mess.
Exactly. Mattir was not discussing her own experiences devoid of context and getting shouted down. She was saying that they probably applied to someone else, and yelling at anyone who wanted more caution that they were trying to erase her experience as a rape victim. Hers is such a ridiculous, flagrant misrepresentation of what happened that it is literally unrecognizable. It’s the exact opposite of what happened.
And Audley, you didn’t make anyone feel shitty. Mattir did, and put you into a shitty situation in the process. It’s not your fault.
No one’s coming out of this not feeling shitty (at the very least).
Perhaps someone could explain to me the issue they have with what Mattir posted from an FB group.
There is clearly no issue of privacy involved, since she only posted what she said and changed the names of the innocent and guilty she referred to. So we can rule privacy out as a reason to object. Which leave only not very good reasons as best I can tell. Mainly to do with wanting to silence her.
It’s not clear that there is no issue of privacy involved.
Also, “innocent” and “guilty”? WTF? Are you TRYING to poke a hornet’s nest?
Not clear enough for you to explain though.
So my question still stands, only now it looks like you cannot answer it.
Part of it is that if what she posted is incorrect in some way, it’s hard to contradict it without posting something we actually don’t have the right to. I’m actually not sure about the ethics of that – if someone has a more accurate account of what she posted, would that be okay to post, or would it not be because it wouldn’t be our own words? Anyway, there’s no reason people would be interested in silencing her – her own account, as I demonstrated above, contradicts what she’s saying now.
How about the objection that she’s presenting a wildly distorted, inaccurate picture, at times diametrically opposed to what happened, which is damaging to other rape survivors?
Is that no good reason to object, Penfold?
But that is NOT an issue of privacy, which is what Al said the problem was.
It seems you cannot answer the question either.
Matt, the only issue that I have with it is that she edited it into unrecognizability and gave zero context for her comments. And I do believe you can shut your fucking mouth about silencing, considering the bullying I’ve seen you engage in elsewhere in order to shut up people you don’t like. You are habitually verbally abusive and have literally nothing to say about silencing that is worth hearing. There are so many red flags that go off in my head every time you speak by now that I’m honestly alarmed every time you open your mouth.
She posted a comment that abusively lied about a fight solely for the purpose of making clear that a certain subset of rape survivors were Not Welcome Here. You want to talk about silencing? That fucking there is silencing. No one said that Mattir could not say what she would about her own experiences, here or there. There, we said that it is wrong to say that your own experiences supercede someone else’s. Here, we are saying that the account of the fight–and that alone–was wrong to post in this public place because, regardless of whether the account is accurate or not (and it is not, as is evidenced by her need to edit the fuck out of what she said to make herself look sympathetic), it made the space unsafe for survivors she doesn’t like to read or participate in.
It also seems that you cannot answer my objection.
Again, you have not answered the question.
Three replies. One simply did not answer, two answered but clearly did not understand the question. No surprise there.
Matt Penfold,
I have no idea about the conversation that actually transpired, so I’ll comment purely on the problem of publishing parts of it.
If I remember some talks about Pharyngula facebook group correctly, it’s a private place where people are pretty strict on who’s allowed to join. A safe space, if you will. So, even with names changed, I’m not sure how ok it is to air people’s private conversations from there, even with the author publishing only her own parts of conversation. This of course rises another problem, which is lack of context. You have a part of the conversation, but it’s pretty unclear what was actually going on without seeing the rest of the dialogue.
You confused invasion of privacy, which was Al’s complaint, with a complaint of inaccuracy. You are not alone though. Several others have been equally thick.
So not one person is able to answer it seems.
What you actually said: Someone should explain the issue. It’s not privacy and we can rule out privacy.
Response: Here are some reasons other than privacy.
You: Since the reasons you gave aren’t privacy, you’re not answering the question.
YOUR QUESTION WAS:
We answered that.
If you have now decided that by “the issue”, you really meant “how does it constitute a privacy issue?”, then fuck you, you don’t get to change your meanings behind your back and berate us for not reading your mind. You asked about “the issue” that we have. Each of us may have our own issue or two with it, and they may not be the same issue. You don’t get to decide that if our issue doesn’t match the one you had in your head, we are not answering your question.
That’s the sort of behavior an abusive asshole would engage in.
The privacy thing and the inaccuracy thing are related. By posting an inaccurate version of what transpired, Mattir has left everyone else in the position of having to choose whether to allow the inaccuracies to stand, or to further violate the privacy that was implicit in the understanding that this was a private group.
So Cipher, you have had several goes but still cannot cite on what grounds privacy is a problem with what Mattir posted.
It seems you cannot be honest and just admit that though. But then you are not known for your honesty, so I was not expecting anything different.
Wow, Matt Penfold, what is your problem? Since when is Cipher not known for her honesty? Why are you being such a flaming asshole?
What the fuck? Was Matt Penfold replaced with an illiterate idiot? Because I don’t understand how he can read this
and answer with
And of course, I don’t see how accuracy is irrelevant here either.
Again. What the fuck?
No, you think you answered it. Which is not the same thing at all.
As for being an abusive arsehole ? Well you are the one with far more experience at being one than me.
And I mean seriously – PRIVATE group. It’s kinda right there in the name. It’s even called the secret group from time to time. Yes, Mattir violated the trust of the people who posted there by doing this, even if she included only what she said. She violated that trust when she chose to insert this fight into the middle of a conversation about surviving rape. I would never have done that, no matter how upset I was feeling about how I was treated by the other members of the group, because I would consider it inappropriate. Both for the members of the group, and for the people who were not involved, who have now been drawn, without their permission, into the ongoing conflict.
I’m not. I asked a question no one has actually answered.
Chris Clarke is right. The commentariat here really is pretty vile. And when someone like Chris Clarke thinks you are vile, you most probably are.
That’s your initial post on the subject Matt. That’s you, quite explicitly looking for reasons other than privacy for objecting to what Mattir posted. Jesus fuck.
Sounds like you have already decided that nobody could possibly have a valid objection to what Mattir did, and are now just searching for justifications to hurl all kinds of insults at anyone who does, Matt.
So please, no complaints about how vile OTHER people are.
I’d like to know this too.
You fuck.
Matt, fuck off.
You are not helping.
You are making things worse.
Your bulldog tenacity and refusal to actually read what people write are a toxic combination. This situation is bad enough without you adding your bullshit. You have done this many times in the past. Knock it off. Seriously.
Because here’s what I see from where I’m sitting, Penfold (whom I notice hasn’t replied to me because you would be absolutely demolished):
There is someone on Facebook whom I honestly believe you bear an unsettling amount of malice towards. I have watched you verbally abuse him in multiple forums. You have repeatedly harassed him and literally said that his having a conversation anywhere at all, without involving you anywhere in it, was harassment of you. I am completely fucking creeped out by how committed you have been to harassing him.
I honestly don’t think you give two shits about this particular conflict. I think that you see a chance to hurt people whom you perceive as being on this person’s side in a fight. I think that you are literally that fucking twisted and you scare me. Go away.
I was keeping quiet yesterday, because things were unclear, and I’m still trying to restrict my comments only to the question on whether it was right to publish one side of a private conversation (two problems there – that it’s half a conversation and that it was private). So no, I don’t feel I’m being vile.
Matt Penfold, could you maybe go to the beginning of this and reread what people have written?
Because you are being an asshole and making little sense while at it. Like, being really really obtuse and misreading people’s comments in rather magnificent and way too obvious ways for it to be accidental.
Sounds like you have already decided that nobody could possibly have a valid objection to what Mattir did, and are now just searching for justifications to hurl all kinds of insults at anyone who does, Matt.
So please, no complaints about how vile OTHER people are.
Trying to tiptoe carefully – I’ve been off of facebook for two years now, but even that long ago there was a marked difference between Pharyngula the site and Pharyngula the fb community. I would imagine that they have probably deviated even more in the meantime. There were a lot of people who posted things on the fb group who specifically said they would not reveal such things about themselves on the site, because of the lessened privacy in an open blog, and I assume that’s still true. And a lot of people post on one much more than the other. Even just having one person’s responses is giving some amount of information as to what was being discussed in the private area- we now know that someone who is probably a commenter here has a relative who has been accused of rape, and that person probably feels really shitty right now that the information is now public even though we can’t tag it to the actual person who said it.
Is there another way to bring out what happened and who people think was “right”? Nope, probably not. It ends up remaining in the realm of “people who weren’t there don’t know”, so just have to take the word of those who were that they all have their own problems with it and we shouldn’t second-guess whatever they hold against the other people involved. That also means not to bring in stuff from other sites in the first place. I’m conflict-averse in general, and can barely handle dealing with the fights that come up right on the site in front of me. I am highly uncomfortable with any discussion of a fight that happened elsewhere that is attempting to prove one side or the other, especially given that it happened in a private space.
Thank you, Ogvorbis. And, I’m sorry that you have gotten drawn into this, it must be stressful for you. This is exactly why I think it was inappropriate to bring that fight into a public forum. Ogvorbis and Matt Penfold were not initially involved. Now, I can see, sides will inevitably form and be taken and the conflict and hurt feelings will spread. This is a predictable result of what Mattir chose to do, which is why I disagree strenuously with her decision to do that.
Matt, how about you shut the fuck up until you can explain yourself or apologize?
Matt, those last couple of personal attacks were uncalled for. I don’t want to pick a fight with you, and I know this situation is already horrible and intensely stressful for everyone concerned, but please, think about what you’re saying.
I’ve been around for all of this, but I am not going to talk about things that happened on Facebook, for many reasons. I can only say that I’m sad to see so many people (on all sides) about whom I care, and many of whom I’ve known for years, in so much pain.
May or may not? It is valid, unless you are collectively accusing me, Audley, Cipher, Gertrud, and everyone else who has said this of lying. Also, the concern about privacy is valid, regardless of your declaration that it is not.
Given your behavior right here, I am glad you are no longer a part of the group. I would not trust you with the details of who said what in that long, drawn-out, confused painful fight wherein many people said hurtful things in various directions, and many people posted while hurt, angry, triggered, dealing with PTSD, etc. I find the mere suggestion that you might be given the privilege of looking over this raw outpouring of emotion to “check” whether our contention that Mattir misrepresented some things is “valid” to be rather creepy. You’re not a judge or a mediator, why would anyone want to let YOU of all people determine what’s what?
Aannnd… this is just weird. It doesn’t seem relevant to anything to do with this conversation at first glance. At second glance, it seems vaguely threatening, but I’m hoping that I’m just being oversensitive.
Jesus, this is the Thunderdome, but…could all of you at least try to give everyone else in this wrangle a tiny benefit of the doubt and try to come to some mutual understanding?
And yes, Matt, gunning for individuals is not a good strategy for accomplishing that.
I rarely comment on here anymore. In fact, it’s been so long I’ve literally never commented in the Thunderdome.
I was part of the fb group. I left quietly when this conflict started, because it was very, very stressful. No one knew I’d gone. I didn’t make a fuss. I just could not handle watching it happen in a place I loved, so I left in order to maintain the sense of security that I had had in that community. Yes, it was an illusion, but it was one I knew I needed.
I am so terribly, deeply upset that it was dragged out into this public forum. It was absolutely a private fight that happened, and it’s unbelievably insensitive that it was thrown into the face of every commenter who reads this site. It’s comparable to a group of friends having a fight in private and then one of them barging into a rape survivor support group to hash it out in front of people who have no context and who have not asked to be part of it.
Regardless of whether Mattir is right or wrong in her presentation of the events, bringing it here in the way she did was absolutely wrong.
I have now been exposed to something I never wanted to see and in fact gave up an entire community to avoid. Sure, I could’ve just not read it (and in fact, I didn’t read her comment dump, because for seriously fucking real, I do not want to see this). But that does not change the fact that my exposure to it was increased, because I now have other places I have to avoid in order to get away from it.
I still love Mattir. But I am hurt by this. There is a lot of collateral damage that didn’t have to happen.
Matt, I have nothing to say about what Mattir has, or has not, done. Same for everyone else with an oar in that stream. I’m saying this to you: you are not helping. Your bulldog tenacity, which has been displayed many times here at Pharyngula (remember the one when you accused some rape survivors of wanting a rapist to go free because you had neglected to include an important piece of information?) and what you are doing now is not helping. Get out of it. Your legalistic wrangling are not appropriate here.
And, by the by, the quote I used? What a perfect example of strawmanning.
PZ, here’s where it is from where I stand:
There was a huge blowup. It was so big that a bunch of people bled from the group in multiple directions. The conflict would have essentially stopped there since we stopped interacting. (As someone who left the group afterwards, I can’t speak for what it’s like in the group.) It was not permitted to stop, however, because of Mattir’s choice here to deliberately make the space unsafe by dredging this business up publicly in a way that would definitely ensure the silencing of anyone else involved. She then edited her own transcripts (that she shouldn’t have posted) in order to perpetuate what I believe is a vicious lie about what went down.
There is no good faith left. This is interpersonal nuclear fucking warfare. I would have happily read and maybe, on a lark, participated in spaces that Mattir was involved in, without malice in those situations. She brought it up in public. She provided an entirely one-sided account of the argument (and lied to support it, regardless of whether or not the people involved agree with her interpretation) for the purposes of excluding people she doesn’t like. My failure to assume good faith is after I argued for two days and gave every bit of latitude possible for the entire time, only to watch the whole thing implode, to be accused of saying things that I didn’t say privately, and then to be smeared in a forum that did actually mean a lot to me in a deliberately triggering way.
There is no good faith left. There is no mutual understanding here. Distance would have been sufficient and she removed that option. That is what made it unconscionable for her to do this.
@Matt Penfold
I’m a bit confused here, because it sounds like you understand the problem perfectly fine: We can’t check the transcripts because the discussion is private. As a result, disagreements about accuracy cannot be resolved.
The problems with passing on full transcripts is not unrelated to privacy, since no such problem would exist if the group wasn’t private to begin with. As people have already pointed out, when a partial transcript of dubious accuracy is posted, it puts other people in the situation of either letting it stand or breaking their own privacy and possibly that of others, in order to correct the account.
Surely you can see that the privacy issue is central to that problem. You can’t completely divorce the accuracy point from the privacy point because without the privacy, the accuracy issue would be easily settled. If there was no expectation of privacy, a full transcript could presumably be posted without any problem and this would be a non-issue.
So, I’m left with a feeling of “what was your point, again?” Looks to me like you’ve spouted a fair amount of venom for no apparent reason. Am I missing something here?
You are, as are many people. Penfold has a history of serially harassing a member of the group, and I legit believe that he is doing this solely for the purpose of teasing this person out and bullying him further. That’s why it’s incoherent: he doesn’t care about this particular fight so much as he cares about getting to him. I’m serious when I say that Penfold scares me. He has a long and storied history of abuse there.
And this kind of fucking business is exactly why the group business shouldn’t have been fucking brought up in public in the first goddamn place.
I left the group early in the fight, but I will personally attest to the fact that gertrud explicitly said that she was sorry for what Mattir had experienced and that Mattir was free to share her story, just not to over-extrapolate.
I didn’t see much else. The comments collapse, and I was uneasy with everything.
But that absolutely did happen.
It actually made me think I could leave the group for a few days or weeks, and it would all sort itself out. So I remember it very clearly. It was said in no uncertain terms at least one time by at least one person.
I apologize, then: I’m really not intending to strawman Matt. It does seem to me that he doesn’t want to recognize that there are valid objections to what Mattir did, and that he’s actively looking for reasons to insult people. Like, why accuse Cipher of dishonesty? Where did that come from?
I would very much like to be wrong.
Gertrud about has it. As I said above, I have no interest in hurting Mattir. I desperately wanted this to be over because it was heartbreaking for me. But I’m not going to watch myself and other people who suffered terribly from this situation be misrepresented. I’m not okay with people I respect being told half a story to soothe Mattir’s feelings. And I’m not okay with letting her drive survivors out of this space the way she drove them out of the other. I’m not sure where the benefit of the doubt would even go. What is there for me to interpret charitably?
Oh, I think I was unclear. I didn’t mean survivors generally, I meant certain individual survivors. Just to make sure.
Right – and of general dishonesty. A reputation for it! I thought the supposed problem with me was that I was too honest, and didn’t moderate my tone enough. Sheesh.
Cipher has been nothing but clear and honest in every communication I’ve seen. Its offensive to imply otherwise.
Excuse me, but where did gertrud say that, A.R? Because it’s not in this thread.
A. R, you think it’s okay to quote someone’s friends-only FB status on Pharyngula?
I think it is when it’s relevant to the discussion. Especially when she has a known history of arguing solely to win.
That was a gross violation of privacy, A. R. Gross in both senses of the words. If someone can send an alert, I’d really appreciate it.
This must be akin to Cipher’s known history of dishonesty, i.e., completely fictional.
Hell, I’m a monitor. I’ll send it.
A. R has provided verifiable proof he’s psychic. Unless he’s going off of impressions and assumptions about Gertrud, or using something she’s said. Its amazing how he knows someone’s intentions so well.
A.R, for your information:
When I talked about crushing someone under my boot in an online argument, I was talking about someone who referred to my children as a “fucking brood” who needed “swill” because I am “too stupid to find a job”. The status (that is on my private fucking Facebook and was about something you never saw, you fucking asshole) that you cited had absolutely zero to do with this conversation. Considering the fact that Pharyngula commenters take a certain amount of pride in their ability to polish their teeth on trolls, I think it’s fucked up to hold me to a different standard when I’m talking to someone who thinks that my children are subhuman. Fuck you, you manipulative piece of shit.
I never told you that you can’t be triggered. I told you that using that trigger specifically for the purposes of silencing people is wrong, which is (hilariously) precisely what Mattir (falsely) accused us of doing. I am not fucking rehashing that bullshit here because it brings even more people’s private business out into the public eye.
You certainly may go on thinking that I argue only to win. I don’t know what it would be like to go through life that wrong, but that’s your prerogative.
I hope you’re actually sending it, and not just using your status as a monitor as a rhetorical power play.
Fantastic. It’s good to know that Pharyngula monitors feel free to post people’s private Facebook statuses to threads. I mean, it’s fine for Mattir to post (fucking fake) details of a private argument here, so fucking go whole hog! Tell everyone my real name, while you’re at it! Who gives a shit? Let’s give everyone’s real names and tell all of their life details and who suffers from what illnesses and who precisely said what to whom, when, and where now, because there’s no fucking point because if A.R here is a monitor and feels free to do that then this is a fucking cesspool that isn’t worth saving.
I’ve used my monitor powers to ask PZ to take the post down. I don’t believe in privacy violations or using people’s past words punitively, and what I did here was not something I would do with a clear mind. I apologize.
A.R, you get zero credit or assumption of good faith from me. I don’t particularly care about my words being used in public, but my Facebook profile is set to private for a reason and you violated that privacy without so much as a by-your-leave or knowing the fucking context that I used those words in. I honestly don’t give a shit about you as a person anymore, considering how much value you place on other people’s words and their contexts. The ways that you and Mattir here have been willing to lie, twist, and violate people’s privacy (and that’s an argument that I’ve been persuaded by because yes, it is someone’s child who has been accused under discussion here, and even if I was unnamed I can’t imagine how fucking awful that would be) in order to get your way here is fucking vile and low and I have zero respect for either of you at this point.
Will you be resigning as monitor, then? Seems to me that was a clear breach of trust that compromises your ability to perform the role.
gertrud, #374, this thread.
And you accuse me of needing to win every argument at any cost. Go fuck yourself, you disingenuous piece of shit. I’m not willing to lie to win an argument. I’m not willing to twist people’s words to win an argument. I’m not willing to take a position that I fucking consider morally indefensible in order to win an argument.
You apparently are willing to do all three.
gertrud
That’s a stupid lie, gertrud. You’re here, you’re not silenced – quite the opposite – so whatever Mattir did, it definitely did NOT “ensure the silencing of anyone else involved”.
Whether that was what she hoped to do, or tried to do, is a competely different question. But you’re the one who chose (for whatever reason) to lie about what she actually did.
Fine, that’s your belief, and you’re entitled to it.
And then right back to your goddamn lies about what’s going on here. Nuclear fucking warfare? You are goddamned scum to write those words in what can only be seen as a cheap attempt to poison the well against Mattir.
You owe every single person who read those words of yours an apology for belittling the actual victims of actual warfare.
And again you lie about people Mattir doesn’t like (ie you) somehow magically being “excluded”. You talk as if Mattir is a wicked witch and with a few long posts can enchant us into hating you. No, you’re doing that all by yourself, gertrud.
Deliberately? Really? Again you’re using over-amped language imputing motives that you cannot possibly know, in your apparent attempt to damage Mattir here..
I don’t know either you or Mattir except from what you’ve written here And based on the horrible distortions and lies you’ve written, I know who I prefer.
Shove off, gertrude. Not because Mattir wants you “silenced” or “excluded” but because you’ve proved you have nothing truthful to add to this discussion.
You know what, SteveV? That’s fair. I can’t share the context for why I view it that way. I’ve watched Penfold engage in despicable abuse against someone in the group, and I’ve watched him attempt to silence someone by triggering them to shit. He’s willing to do literally anything to hurt this person, and I’m not willing to pull any punches in return because of his behaviour. And yes, his arguments would be absolutely demolished if he bothered to engage me. He doesn’t engage people he doesn’t view as weak, would be my guess.
The specific choice of wording was unfortunate, and I should have been more aware than that. I apologize.
I believe that gertrud was referring to the Stunned Silence thread, where the original post was made. Those of us who object to her version of events have been told not to respond to it there, which is completely reasonable, but unfortunately it does mean that if the other people who object want to participate in that thread, they have to ignore what they consider a standing smear against them above.
Please, hotshoe, tell me more about what went down, and about how you know exactly what happened without having been there. Please tell me about how this has absolutely nothing to do with your having read it from Mattir first. Please tell me exactly how disingenuous I’m being without having read a fucking real word of the argument that happened, that you shouldn’t have known about because she shouldn’t have brought it up in a public forum that she knew that other survivors who participated in it would be reading. Tell me more about things you don’t know anything about. It is so helpful.
cipher –
Jesus fuck, that’s a slimy thing to say. What on earth did you think you would gain from posting such slime?
You’re certainly not gaining friends and influencing people …
I’m sorry, but words do things. Like, I would absolutely hate the version of us that Mattir portrayed in her post, who attacked a rape victim who was just trying to talk about her experiences and who won’t accept that sometimes we realize we were raped afterward (that is not what we did, and as I’ve covered, OF COURSE we understand that rape survivors develop an understanding of what happened to them over time). It’s hardly magical thinking to worry about the effects of that narrative.
Flewellyn: The decision is not up to me, but if PZ decides to remove my powers (I only used them when someone in the Facebook group asked my to anyway), or even ban me, I would have no objection. In fact, the only thing I would explicitly ask PZ not to do would be outing me, because I haver serious security concerns that necessitate my use of a ‘nym.
And please tell me precisely how it isn’t silencing that I’m sitting here upset as fuck and having to fucking defend myself instead of being able to participate in and read a forum with other survivors who, if they knew that I had been part of the argument above, would condemn me, just like I saw happen there from people who only had her side.
And tell me more about how you aren’t responding this way because you first heard of me as a horrible silencer of rape victims.
You want to talk about slimy when I’m responding to someone actually posting people’s actual private words? You think it’d be my job to assume good faith and honesty in that situation?
And keep in mind that a lot of us have a lot to lose should someone like A.R, who has had a lot of our trust for a long time, suddenly decide that violating privacy is cool. I’m glad, A.R, that you’ve realized that was wrong, but I hope you understand why this would be the kind of violation of trust that made me doubt your good intentions.
A big part of why I left Pharyngula and the FB group. If your words could be twisted in such a way as to even rhyme with rape apologetics, then they are rape apologetics and you’re almost as bad as Vox Day. If you point out about a pattern of abusive behavior and silencing tactics, you’re tone trolling. If you point out that about 2 dozen women over 40 feel there are a lot of agism tropes being batted around, you get the Ron Lindsay treatment. The ole Block button’s been getting a workout, and that has really helped my mood, because who needs this shit?
gertrud –
Shove off, you scummy little liar. What I already wrote had nothing to do with “the argument that happened” which I freely admit I “don’t know anything about”.
What I showed you doing wrong is solely your conduct here – in this thread – which I directly quoted from you!
Now you come back and add to the piles of lies and distortions I already showed you had used in your horrible comment here, and you choose to add some more to the pile, this time lies about me. You lie that I was “tell[ing] more about what went down, and about how [I] know exactly what happened without having been there.”
You owe me an apology for lying about me. You can add that to the apology you owe everyone for the filth you wrote about “nuclear fucking warfare”.
And when you’ve done that, you can shut the fuck up because we don’t deserve to be forced to listen to any more of your filthy lies.
You know what, hotshoe? I don’t actually see the lies you’re supposed to have pointed out. I see things that you characterize as offensive exaggerations of intent, but I’m not sure what part you are saying is a lie. The only thing I think you understand to be a lie is the part about being silenced and excluded. If that’s a reference to the Stunned Silence thread, as I posited, it’s not a lie. Could you clarify?
@hotshoe
How about you take a break from calling people liars and respond to the point Cipher made at #412. It goes to the core of your complaint, so it seems a bit disingenuous when you ignore it.
Cipher –
Yes, of course. You don’t get a free pass to write like the Slymepit just because A.R. had previously done something bad.
You know, there’s even a fancy Latin phrase for the stupid trick you played, something about … quoque.
Yeah, I know, sucks that you have to behave like the hero or else people will confuse you with one of the bad guys. Life sucks, don’t it.
Writing like the Slimepit = suggesting that someone who had just blatantly violated someone’s privacy just might be dishonest?
Charming, hotshoe. Charming.
Just want to point out that some of the people who were upset about Mattir’s post in the Stunned Silence thread are only drawing more attention to it by your multiple rants about it, and her, here.
It’s like the Pharyngula version of the Streisand Effect.
It’s a crime to compare Mattir to Vox Day, but Cipher is compared to a ‘pitter for distrusting AR after he posted a locked-down facebook status when he didn’t have permission to?
That is just ridiculous. I don’t know you, Hotshoe, but that is seriously stupid bullshit right there.
As someone who is connected to AR on facebook–and as someone who has absolutely, unquestioningly, and unreservedly always respected his need for privacy–I am quite appalled that he did that. It was a serious violation, which even he admits.
I’m glad, bastionofsass. I want them to have the full story rather than half of one. If it’s going to still be up, then we ought to respond to it.
And another goddamned psychic douche weighs in with something xe has absoutely no way of knowing.
Tell me, LyleX, how exactly did you know that I was “ignoring” it, compared to, say, that I hadn’t happened to notice it, or hadn’t gotten around to replying to it yet, or merely didn’t think it worth replying to since it’s irrelevant (and does not go, as you apparently think, to the core of [my] disgust with gertrud’s lies).
Tell me, LyleX, where you got the psychic powers that let you claim I was “ignoring” it.
Tell me that, and when I get back, I’ll happily follow your orders to read and respond to someone else’s comment.
Then you’re going to need to explain what exactly those lies are, since they’re apparently not her claims to have been silenced and excluded [from that thread], which was the only possibility I got out of your post. I don’t know LykeX that I know of, and they also appear to have understood your post that way, so I think you were being unclear.
If you’re going to call gertrude a liar, what is your evidence?
Erülóra Maikalambe –
Yeah, it’s not like we don’t hear enough ageist shit in the rest of our culture. But at least the people who stak Opheia with ageist slurs are honest about their hatred. They’re not operating under the pretense of being allies.
I’ve been trying to think of something to say that won’t make things worse, and might possibly make them better. What follows is just a suggestion, I’m not pretending to have any authority or special insight.
I think everyone who was not privy to the original FB quarrel will by now have come to their own conclusions, and no further angry comments anyone on either side makes are likely to change those conclusions. Meanwhile, what’s going on here can only be giving comfort to the rape apologists and FtB-haters. So I suggest that participants in the quarrel here, without in any way implying that they concede anything, post a final comment saying no more than that they will say no more about it on FtB; and then say no more about it on FtB.
Again, you know absolutely nothing about the situation being discussed.
I’ll admit that Nick’s suggestion is in line with my interests, since I don’t have a single spoon left and am triggered and scraped raw right now for mostly unrelated reasons (although Matt’s baseless accusation and A.R’s posting of private information are not helping, since I’m extremely anxious about accidentally saying something that isn’t true and not being told about it/not being able to correct myself and people just thinking I’m a liar, and waaaaay more anxious about my identity being compromised), but I have a very very difficult to control distaste for being misrepresented. It’s worse than SIWOTI when someone’s talking about your experiences, especially when they weren’t privy to them.
Okay, I want to make one thing PERFECTLY clear: I would NEVER post ANYTHING that could compromise someone’s anonymity. It’s well known that my situation is one that requires enhanced security, so this is unthinkable for me. Please note that what I posted (and regret posting) was a part of a sentence from a status from a locked-down Facebook profile. Not exactly much to go on in terms of identifying someone.
@hotshoe
No psychic powers. I’m just going off normal expectations of human behavior. You didn’t respond to it, despite clearly having read past it and even though it directly addressed a point you made, which I took to be rather central to what you were saying. I.e. support for your accusation that gertrude was lying.
So, which is it?
See, if you think it’s irrelevant, maybe you should say so explicitly and maybe add a comment or two about why. Instead, we get this. A vague hint that you could possibly have found it irrelevant for some reason, but you don’t even clearly state that this is in fact the case.
When you do this kind of thing, my bullshit alarms starts getting twitchy. If you simply hadn’t noticed it, then why not just say so? I’d be perfectly satisfied with that. It happens all the time, especially in fast-moving threads.
I perceive your behavior in this thread so far to be oddly aggressive and I’m not quite sure why. For example, the “follow your orders” crap. What the hell’s that about? I’m not giving you any orders.
You were making accusations about another poster being a liar and I pointed to the fact that a comment which argue against your supporting argument stood unanswered. I should think that was something you found relevant, at least if you expect to convince anyone else of your allegations.
@Nick Gotts
That may be best. This sure doesn’t seem to be going anywhere productive.
Thanks for that, A.R. As someone else who also really really needs anonymity, I hope you understand why the first thing that flew to mind was “A.R just broke privacy. A. R KNOWS MY NAME.” :/
A.R: Fuck yourself. Again, it’s not that you shared my words. It’s that you shared words that I put on Facebook for my friends, and you shared them without knowing the specific context. I could give two shits about the thread itself; I would happily post it and delete the names of everyone in it, but I don’t have their fucking permission and it’s not fucking relevant anyway. I would legitimately trust my seven-year-old with private information before I would trust you.
Hotshoe: I have no fucking idea what the hell I did to you, unless you either do not understand what a metaphor is or have had a literal interpersonal nuclear weapon dropped on your head and find yourself triggered by mentions of them. I’m ignoring you from here on out because there is absolutely zero way that you are a good-faith actor. Kindly fuck yourself.
I appreciate that you regret it, AR, but just so we’re clear, it is still a violation of privacy even if it doesn’t reveal identity.
So it’s a scary thing to see.
Things that I post on facebook are things that I have written or shared based off of knowing specifically who can see my timeline. Things I post here are posted with the understanding that anyone can see them. There is not always overlap.
(And, as someone who was aware of the context of that quote, I also hope you learned a lesson in making assumptions about people. Because you were way off.)
Actually, gertrude, I knew the context. The reason I posted them was because they so succinctly described your pattern of bullying. But if I had the choice to not post that quote in the first place, I sure as hell wouldn’t.
I don’t see this going anywhere at this rate, at least not until everyone drops of furious exhaustion.
So here’s what I’m going to do, with no criticism of any of the participants — we just need a cooling off period.
I’m closing this thread in one hour, at 4:00pm my time.
I will reopen it tomorrow, around 9am.
Everyone take that time to cool down and get away from the heat of the argument.
Fuck.
Dude, AR. She was defending her children from someone who said they deserved to be drinking swill.
That is not really an example of bullying. I’m sorry. Not in any universe.
No, that in particular is not bullying. I do not, however, retract my statement that she is a bully, and that those words are a perfect descriptor of her behaviour in general.
A.R, as someone who feels free to post whatever you want about whomever you want wherever you want in order to bolster your case regardless of context, I am deeply uninterested in what you believe does and does not constitute bullying. I find it particularly rich that you reach for that in a forum that tends towards hyperbole and metaphor as extremely as Pharyngula does. If I were a bully, I would have reached right into the thread where survivors were sharing their stories when Mattir posted for the sole purpose of making clear that anyone on the wrong side of her was unwelcome. I would have done so unhesitatingly. It was too fucking important that they be able to do that without even Mattir’s silencing of other victims becoming the topic of discussion, so I brought it here.
This is even though I was triggered and spent much of yesterday shaking and crying. It would not have been an excuse.
Yes, I am capable of typing quickly and fluently. That does not constitute bullying.
(And note that I don’t have a problem with metaphor and hyperbole, so long as people are aware of them and how they are used. They are just tools. I’m not saying that this makes Pharyngula bad; I’m just saying that it is a particular kind of rhetorical space.)
I dunno, you tell me. Those are the hypotheses YOU should have considered before you chose to claim that I looked “disingenuous when [I] ignore it.”
What’s the matter? You jumped to a stupid conclusion without considering the possible alternatives, and now you want to pretend it’s my fault? I don’t know, maybe that’s how you went wrong, and maybe it’s not, but it’s not me who was wrong there.
Damn, except I was wrong about LyleX, should be LykeX, fixed. Sorry.
gertrude, you are someone who believes that she can decide to tell someone that the faked their trigger and used it as a rhetorical tool. You are a bully.
I think it’s telling how you’d rather respond to LykeX ad nauseam than take the very simple step of responding to the post they pointed out, even if it’s to explain why it was supposedly irrelevant to your repeated assertion that gertrud is lying about nobody-will-tell-me-what.
I dunno, you tell me
Based on the information available to me, I’ll go with my original idea; you were deliberately ignoring it. Everything you’ve said so far points to that as the most likely explanation.
That should have been:
Based on the information available to me, I’ll go with my original idea; you were deliberately ignoring it. Everything you’ve said so far points to that as the most likely explanation.
But hey, if you prefer to be coy and not tell us why you’re not responding to a perfectly valid point, which, as far as I can tell, completely undermines what you’re saying, that’s fine. Just don’t expect me to take you seriously after that.
Open for business again.
While we’re at it, let’s see if .
Oh. Except that it surrounds stuff with quotation marks. Can you all live with that?
Well, Did that work?
Hoorays!
*knit octopi for PZ*
The quote marks are a little silly, but…, yay!
If you got rid of the quotes some people would start routinely using it for their entire posts. Then you would have to add that to the rules as a bannable offense, since it clearly can’t be tolerated.
Of course, what this means is that anyone who ever used the <q> tag instead of <blockquote> will have their quoted content show up in Comic Sans as well.
Oh well.
The reason that we originally suggested repurposing the <q> tag was that the stylesheets were set up such that it did nothing at all. One of the “fixes” (or changes) to the FTB system broke Comic Sans and, incidentally, fixed the <q> tag so that quotes did show up.
How about one of txpiper’s gems?
I don’t have I have .
It’ll do.
@ Cyranothe2nd
Copied over from an unfortunate Lounge posting while TD was closed:
I really wanted to say this in Thunderdome to Cyranothe2nd about the Stunned Silence thread…but TD is closed still.
Cyrano, I understand that you were triggered, and all sympathy to you in your grief and anger. But there were people on that thread like Jacob Schmidt who admitted to rape without being a survivor. Og’s posts were longer and clearly asking for sympathy, but Doe’s post @143 didn’t seem to be a plea for sympathy. It seemed the point of the story (as if there has to be a point for a survivor to tell her story) was that survivors don’t necessarily handle things well and that especially when children tend to repeat what was done to them. IIRC she said she hadn’t done anything like that since being a child. Then she talked about feeling like a monster.
I can’t speak for Jane Doe, but I know that my biggest fear is that someday I would become my abuser/s. Og, likewise, spoke about this quite explicitly. This is part of what it means to be a survivor. It’s a common experience where we are horrified at what was done to us, but for various reasons can’t place the anger where it belongs (my favorite hypotheses are 1) it’s not safe to be angry at someone who would do that to you & 2) you love the person who did that to you and so can’t reconcile the “monster” label with that person) and **you** become the monster.
Because human beings are human beings, there will always be something that the survivor *has* done wrong at some point. For kids it’s especially likely that that includes acting out abuse toward others, but even adults to terrible things. We yell at those who love us and are doing everything right b/c it’s safe to yell at them. We hit people we love b/c they walked up behind us – on the carpet.
If we can’t talk about how the rape colors those events for us, we can’t tell the stories of actual survivors. Ogvorbis is an actual survivor and his story is real, valid, & excruciating. If you can’t deal with that story, fine, don’t read it. But you are doing exactly what Elyse said not to do even though you claim to agree with her: she said not to tell a survivor their stories are too horrible to hear. It silences them.
When Elyse did tell rapists not to respond, she most certainly didn’t call out Ogvorbis or Jane Doe. And she went on to say that she was talking about people who “realized years later” that they raped someone. This flatly contradicts Jane Doe.
I think you should really think about whether it’s a good thing to ghettoize raped children to a rapists only thread because they didn’t handle it perfectly. Jane Doe was explicitly asking for people not to be demonized because of the effects on survivors. What you did showed contempt for her request as a survivor, and was not even supported by Elyse, the person you claimed as an ally in your statement against Og & Doe.
If you are a member of PET, please take a look at the current pinned thread for information about important changes. This is time-sensitive.
If you have no idea what PET is, don’t worry about it. :)
Things have been tough around here for many people. I just wanted to offer *hugs* and sympathy to everyone who needs it right now.
I’m sorry that I haven’t said much on most of the threads. Please don’t mistake this for lack of interest – I have been part of this community for years and care about the people here very very much, and I have read everything that’s been going on. I just fear making the current conflicts worse by getting involved in them. And when it comes to the threads about sexual assault, I tend to read and not comment, because I am not a sexual assault survivor, I’m speaking from a position of privilege and relative ignorance, and I don’t want to ignorantly weigh in and say something stupid. But I just wanted to say that I am so sorry that these things have happened. And I have a lot of admiration for the people who have come forward and shared their stories.
Not much to add, but ++ to Walton. I drafted and deleted at least six comments to the Stunned Silence thread and just couldn’t figure out what to say.
I’m…just going to leave a pile of hugs here. I haven’t been chatty for long, but I’ve been reading for ages.
~nightshadequeen
Honestly, I’m still pretty fucking shocked that PZ let A. R stay as a monitor despite his flagrant violation of rules. The rest of it, just, fuck it. I have wildly varying amounts of feelings about the whole thing.
A. R here intensely dislikes me and took the time to hunt me down on a thread that had nothing to do with him so that he could post information from my Facebook so as to make a (false, contextless) case against me (on a fucking unrelated topic). He is not trustworthy. But sure, let’s continue treating him as if he’s capable of anything like objectivity.
It’s not my blog. I don’t run it and so I can’t say how to run it. But I can say that this makes accusations of favoritism, both in the community and on PZ’s part, much more plausible. I didn’t buy it. Now I do. And I’ve lost a fucking ton of respect.
gertrud, what was said when you first noted that? or was it ignored?
Thanks, Walton. I worked professionally in rape/sexual assault/domestic violence prevention and response for ten or 12 years, depending on how you define it. I worked formally in a structured way as a volunteer for 6 more. Although I’m not doing it formally now, I still do a ton of informal stuff because people know my work and write to me. It makes it hard for me to contribute a lot, even though this is an incredibly important area of my life.
Frankly, I even feel guilty for not contributing my story to the list of stories. To have a place where non-trans* and trans* folk can all tell their stories together is something inconceivable 20 years ago and today it takes place without any comment on the fact of trans*/non-trans* shared space. Even as things get me down, that consoles me.
But still I find it hard to contribute. I know I should. I know that it’s weird if you have less than a critical mass speaking about how their race or how their trans* experience affected whether or not they got raped, how, and the recovery process therefrom. I want to contribute to the thread so that that critical mass exists. I want to write the things I have thought about how my race affected the experience, but I just don’t have it in me.
We can’t be all to all, Walton. Your work is incredibly valuable. Since finding out what you do, I’ve been paying attention to some of the UK cases you brought to my attention. It’s affected my life and what I am choosing to study for the remainder of my law school career.
So don’t feel you have to contribute to one particular thread. You are a cherished addition to Pharyngula regardless of whether you post in one thread or another.
Roxxi, PZ hasn’t acknowledged it. A few people have.
And Walton, I’ll throw in as well and say that you are absolutely not obligated to contribute. You’re fine and you’re awesome and I think that’s one thing that everyone can agree on.
Gertrud:
A.R is no longer a monitor.
Caine, that makes me feel much, much better, that at least that mattered. Thank you for the information.
And please, just in general, don’t assume that problems aren’t being addressed or that issues are being ignored. We are all working on them, as quickly as possible.
Gertrud:
You are more than welcome, and I am sorry I didn’t think to say as much sooner. We’re in too many places at once right now, trying to make things better.
Am I still “not overburdened with smarts”?
Thank you so much, CD and Gertrud. It means a lot. I don’t have a great past on these issues, given that I was a virulently sexist, homophobic, creepy douchebag in my early to mid teens (something I’ve mentioned here before), and a conservative for many years after that. Thankfully I learned better, and I’ve tried to make up for it in recent years.
==
And thank you, Caine, for keeping us updated. I think that was an appropriate decision, FWIW (not that my opinion is or ought to be especially relevant). Also, thank you for all of the hard work you’ve put into dealing with this.
Also, for those who don’t know: Mattir’s comment in the Stunned Silence thread has been removed.
Walton:
In all the time I’ve known you, I would never consider your opinion on anything to be irrelevant. I welcome your opinions, you are a very thoughtful, well balanced person. And thanks, that means a lot to me.
Flewellyn:
I’d say that depends. There are certainly days I’m not overburdened with smarts. If you wish an apology, I give you one: I apologize for saying that, Flewellyn. It was unnecessary and a product of my temper.
I appreciate that, Caine. Thank you.
If I had it to do all over again, I would have just dropped a comment in the thread saying “See thunderdome for important information.” And commented here instead.
I’m glad to know that Mattir’s comment has been removed as well. While I can’t say that the response to it, in the moment, overburdens me with confidence, that’s not so much a product of something bad about this community as it is this community’s reputation for surrounding vulnerable people and having very bitey teeth at anyone who seems to be attacking them, only stopping to ask questions about who and why and what happened after the ritual evisceration. That is a good kind of response to have in a thread like the Stunned Silence thread, where presumed belief of any and every claim has to be a given if victims are going to feel safe. It’s better to accept any comers than it is to meet their claims with doubt in order to prevent exploitation or misrepresentation.
I think that Mattir took grotesque advantage of that tendency a few days ago, but it was an inevitable occurrence given the situation and I wouldn’t change any of the impulses that were behind the response. I guess what I want is for it to not have happened, and that’s impossible.
Thanks for the cleanup. I really do appreciate it.
Also, I think that Praxis, at least, may appreciate knowing that A. R is no longer a monitor, so it may do to drop that in on the comment suggestion thread or to get ahold of her if she is no longer reading it.
Gertrud:
Yes, you’re right. I’ll get something in that thread. I wish I knew how to get ahold of Praxis privately, but I don’t. The thought of her leaving is extremely upsetting to me.
Oh. Damn. Hugs all around. I went camping. This was hard to come back to. Care all, I have some concern.
Dhorvath! Missed you.
Oh, dear. I’m trying not to giggle, and failing.
Dhorvath! Nice to see you again.
Heya, SC, haven’t seen you in awhile. What’s funny?
SC:
Please, giggle. Guffaw, even. It’s been one of those days. :D
@Caine,
So as not to clutter the thread, I didn’t reply to you there, but I appreciate the nice things you said about me in Stunned Silence.
Sending thank-you USB hugs
Crip Dkye, pfft, didn’t say anything that shouldn’t have been said. *many hugs*
Caine, do you mind if I shoot you an email? I’m in a pretty bad space right now and I’d like to talk to you about something quick. But it is related to the conflict so it might be spoon-drainy.
*pouncehugs* for The Walton and for Dhorvath.
–
Now off to catch up…elsewhere.
*grabbing the Kleenex*
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Cipher:
Shoot away.
I’m a rare commenter here these days, more a lurker, better known on PET. But I wanted to echo gertrud’s 480. It means a lot that the reflex to protect the vulnerable is so very strong here, and that fixing wrongdoing is possible and desired.
*uncloaks*
SC!
*shimmers and is gone*
The Mellow Monkey:
Oooooh yes I remember that sign incident. That one I grokked. Thanks for the example.
Vasco, Agnes, Basil, Dexter aka The Phantom Rat, and Beatrice are up at Rattitude.
And yet, predictably in my privilege pile over here, I’m learning even more about the problems with that sign from your link. So, thanks, again. I welcome any others.
Portia: I’ll try to expand on it further. It’s subtle, so I can understand where it could be hard to grok. Just as under patriarchy there’s an unspoken assumption that a generic human is a man, in white-dominated feminism there’s the unspoken assumption that “woman” means a white cis woman. And she’s usually middle-class at that.
Black, NDN and mixed-race women in particular have been codified as unrapeable in the US for a long time. Attempts to reclaim things like the word slut don’t really work if the world already views and treats you like a slut anyway, because female chastity has been codified as for white cis women. There’s a long-standing racist tradition of needing to protect the chastity of white womanhood from those evil minorities, too. All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave is a fantastic introduction to these concepts.
That awful “Woman Is the N***** of the World” sign really exemplifies this mindset. Guess what? Black women are already getting called the n-word. Aside from the offensive use of a slur, it’s straight up declaring womanhood as not belonging to black women. And I’ve got to point out here that this also combines into a terrible triple whammy for trans* WoC, as they get erased, silenced and attacked from multiple directions.
—
Caine: Eee! Ratty pictures! And Vasco, my stormrat love. ♥
Thanks for explaining in such grokkable terms. I’ve added that book to my amazon wishlist.
MM:
Vasco Stormrat is once again storming the chocolate puddle. He has resolved to slay it. :D
Crip Dyke
Well no. I admitted to sexual assault. The only reason I did so was to make Anon 143 feel less alone, and to reinforce hir point about demonizing.
I did mention my fear in admitting it, which I regret doing. That felt a little to much like co-opting. I’m sorry for that.
There was Grumps and twincats as well. Grumps got some good advice on how to work towards fixing it, so that was worthwhile, I think.