Sometimes I have the sense of humor of a five year old

Me: *heading to friend’s birthday party* Hey, what sort of booze do you like? It’s your gift.
Friend: Um, I like wine, and rum, and vodka.
Me: What kind of rum?
Friend: As long as it isn’t clear and doesn’t come in a plastic bottle, it should be fine.

Me: *in liquor store* I know nothing about good rum… How do I pick between all of the nice rums that are about the same price?
Bottle: MT. GAY RUM
Me: …Hehehehehehe. …Meh, that’s good enough selection criteria *buys it*

Apparently it was tasty, and we (me and a bunch of straight guys) somehow ended up at an awesome gay bar by the end of the night. Subliminal messaging FTW.

And now I’m going to go watch a bunch of burly men in tight spandex pile on top of each other. Can this weekend get any more fabulous?

That look of disgust looks about right

Bill Nye the Science Guy, personal hero of mine and Humanist of the Year, recently visited the Creation Museum in Kentucky. And by visited, I mean he drove up, look a picture of the side-show, and drove off. How do we know? Because Big Brother Ken Ham was watching.

While I understand the need for surveillance cameras at any big building with a lot of traffic, it’s a bit off putting that he’ll slap any images from it on the internet. Here’s Ham’s proof:Yep, that seems to be the appropriate reaction to the Creation Museum. I can hear the thoughts running through his mind just by his expression. “The stupid, it burns! It burns!”

Off my ASS for the SSA – Week 5

Starting weight: 186.4 lbs
Last week’s weight: 178.6 lbs
Current weight: 177.2 lbs
Weight loss this week: 1.4 lbs

Getting there! Just two weeks left until the SSA SoCal conference. JT is currently beating me by a tiny bit, so I may be ramping up the exercise for the remaining time. Should have gone by percentage lost – it helps when you weighed more to begin with. *cough*JT*cough*

It’s funny. I keep thinking about the happy dance I’ll do when I make the 10 pound mark, but that’ll still only put me at my weight when graduating undergrad. I’d need to lose another 15 to get back to my high school weight, when I was still out of shape and a little pudgy. I’d like to blame the ramen and peanut butter sandwiches that basically made up my diet for four years, but that doesn’t excuse the grad school weight.

Oh well – I’m almost there!

You know, maybe they’re right

Maybe my profile picture on my blog is just begging for harassment and sexist comments. I mean, look at how slutty I look, what with part of my collarbone showing, and that big smile. God, I can’t believe I had it up so long without noticing how horrible it is.

But I know a lot of other atheist and skeptical blogs have photos on their main page, so maybe it’s not just putting up a photo at all – maybe I was choosing inappropriate content. After much consideration on what all of these photos had in common, I found some photos of myself that fit in better with the overall theme:
Not pictured: Multiple Livestrong bracelets, baggy cargo pants
I’m not sure which one I like better, though. What do you guys think? Bro Jen, Or Pseudo Penn Jillette? I personally prefer Bro Jen, but you can still see a hint of boob, which, I know, is totally unacceptable.

You know, maybe they're right

Maybe my profile picture on my blog is just begging for harassment and sexist comments. I mean, look at how slutty I look, what with part of my collarbone showing, and that big smile. God, I can’t believe I had it up so long without noticing how horrible it is.

But I know a lot of other atheist and skeptical blogs have photos on their main page, so maybe it’s not just putting up a photo at all – maybe I was choosing inappropriate content. After much consideration on what all of these photos had in common, I found some photos of myself that fit in better with the overall theme:
Not pictured: Multiple Livestrong bracelets, baggy cargo pants
I’m not sure which one I like better, though. What do you guys think? Bro Jen, Or Pseudo Penn Jillette? I personally prefer Bro Jen, but you can still see a hint of boob, which, I know, is totally unacceptable.

India: Astrology is a science

Why? Because their high court says so. So there.

Because we all know saying “______ is science” makes it so. Not, you know, if it’s based on evidence or experimentation. I mean, come on. Astrology uses stars and angles. Super scientific.

And I thought it was just the creationists who used this tactic…

And these are the same people who hate burkas?

tl;dr Sexism is my fault because I don’t hide that I’m female. From here and here:

“STOP TAKING EVERYTHING PERSONALLY. If you don’t want people to make fun of your looks take your picture off your blog. No one would ever know you were a woman if you didn’t constantly try to draw attention to your vagina. Grow up.”

“Let’s see. You don’t want any comments about your breasts. One way to reduce the chance of that happening would be to have a picture that does not prominently feature your breasts.”

“You have a picture of yourself on the side. The title of your blog is “Blag Hag”. You have an icon of a girl beside your header. It’s not a fair comparison. “

“Ok so heres your problem. Reddit for the most part still has a large view that women dont exist on the internet. The second problem is that reddit also has the strange notion that when women present something or an image or information they some how try to tie in a picture of themselves…. I came here looking for a good article and right off the bat… Theres your photo… I didn’t have to click on an about you page or images. ITS RIGHT THERE trying to show something off. What is that, that your a woman? That you have a nice smile? What do you want me to think of how this is setup? Do I stop from the visual que to continue reading or do I get drawn to the pretty colors of the photo?”

“But what’s really bizarre is that your blog is deliberately gender branded (titled “Hag” and featuring a picture of a cutesy girl at the keyboard), yet you complain when people notice your gender. But hey, it gives you something to blame other that yourself when you fail at something right?”

“This won’t be popular, but you may want to reconsider complaining about sexist comments when immediately below your photo, you describe yourself (among others) as a pervert, and anyone who Googles you instantly finds “boobquake” attributed to you. You have every right to say what you want, but cannot be shocked when the idiots respond to a woman who brags about being a pervert. Probably confusing for the youngsters, making it more difficult to take you seriously.”

“There is a simple solution to be not treated this way. Dont put up your photo in your blog. Dont tell your gender. Is it really necessary? Or on a second thought the comments like “nice boobs” are the better option? And you know this fact too, thus this post makes you an attention whore. (Or simply stupid for pointing out the obvious) “

“Don’t post pics with tits hanging out and expect no reaction- NOT FUCKING ROCKET SCIENCE”

Wow, I forgot I needed to be totally neutered on the internet! Just how Hemant Mehta and PZ Myers don’t show pictures of themselves and obsessively remove any mentions of them being male. …Oh, wait.

Thanks for proving my point, guys!

Man, sometimes I revel in the power of feminism to bring out the trolls. How dare you criticize the in group!

What stereotypical response should I highlight next? Women claiming things aren’t sexist because they don’t think it’s sexist? Comments about me being fat? You can’t get rid of sexism so you should just shut up about it? Learn to take a joke? That I’m just an attention whore desperate for blog traffic*. The possibilities are endless!

*Did I mention I don’t give a damn how many people read my blog, and I’ve gained basically no regular readers via reddit? Weeeee!

Vote for Blag Hag for Best Religion Blog in the Bloggies!

Holy crap! My blog was nominated for the Best Religion Blog in the 2011 Weblog Awards! I didn’t even realize it until Hemant started smack talking me over twitter because Friendly Atheist was also nominated. I must defeat Hemant! Vote for me!

Though really, if Hemant won, I’d be happy too. I love his blog, and it would be awesome for an atheist blog to win the Religion category. It’s great that two are nominated.

Wait…that just means we’re going to split the atheist vote! Noooooo! Clever, Bloggies, very clever.

It’s shit like this, r/atheism

I know this is just going to dig my hole even deeper, but I’m a blogger, so speaking my mind is what I do.

A couple of months ago I made a passing comment that I don’t like the atheism subreddit that much because it comes off as very sexist. Sexist comments can pop up on reddit as a whole (sometimes heavily upvoted, to my dismay), but sexist comments on r/atheism affect me more. For one, I tend to hold atheists to a higher standard, so it saddens me when they act irrationally about gender.

But two, the comments are personal. Whenever I see that I got an uptick in traffic from reddit, I’m always afraid to go check the link. Because inevitably when someone links to my blog, many of the comments will be disparaging remarks about my gender or looks. Hell, even some of the positive comments are about my gender or looks, which are still annoying – can we please comment about the content, and not my boobs, please?

So I lurk around r/atheism, but I rarely comment and never post my own stuff because I don’t want to deal with the flack. It’s not worth the frustration usually. But today I did submit my post about atheism in high schools, because it’s so important that I wanted to make sure a wide audience saw it. Young people are the future, blah blah.

But it also set up an accidental experiment. What happens when a female submitter links to her own post, and a male submitter links to his post featuring the same story? That happened when JT Eberhard linked to his post on Atheism Resource a couple hours after I linked to mine.

Let’s compare! (at the time of writing this blog)

JT’s Post:

121 upvotes
24 downvotes

1 comment with contact information (by JT) (5.5%)
4 jokes about the content of atheist clubs (22.2%)
5 jokes about high schoolers (27.7%)
8 relevant remarks about high school atheist groups (44.4%)

Jen’s Post:

110 upvotes
44 downvotes

2 comments about the appearance of women/banging them (3.3%)
19 comments basically saying how much I suck (32.2%)
22 comments (a lot of them mine) defending me against said comments (37.2%)
16 relevant remarks about high school atheist groups (27.1%)

So JT gets mostly relative posts or light-hearted humor, while I get disparaging comments and thread derailing thanks to people trying to reply. At least there are people replying (and the bad comments are getting downvoted), but it’s still frustrating. What woman would be encouraged to join this community or share posts when she has to deal with this shit all the time? And it is all the time – if you look at other Blag Hag posts people have submitted, there will always be at least some comments about my boobs, or how I have a deformed chipmunk face (I still don’t quite understand that one).

It gets old, but I don’t have a solution other than escaping to 2Xchromosomes (…which reddit mocks repeatedly). I just want to point out why r/atheism doesn’t make me feel exactly comfortable, instead of people thinking I’m just another “crazy feminist” who’s “hypersensitive” and “making up sexism that isn’t there.” I know the majority of people at r/atheism are fine, but the few rotten fruit are certainly ruining it for some of us.

It's shit like this, r/atheism

I know this is just going to dig my hole even deeper, but I’m a blogger, so speaking my mind is what I do.

A couple of months ago I made a passing comment that I don’t like the atheism subreddit that much because it comes off as very sexist. Sexist comments can pop up on reddit as a whole (sometimes heavily upvoted, to my dismay), but sexist comments on r/atheism affect me more. For one, I tend to hold atheists to a higher standard, so it saddens me when they act irrationally about gender.

But two, the comments are personal. Whenever I see that I got an uptick in traffic from reddit, I’m always afraid to go check the link. Because inevitably when someone links to my blog, many of the comments will be disparaging remarks about my gender or looks. Hell, even some of the positive comments are about my gender or looks, which are still annoying – can we please comment about the content, and not my boobs, please?

So I lurk around r/atheism, but I rarely comment and never post my own stuff because I don’t want to deal with the flack. It’s not worth the frustration usually. But today I did submit my post about atheism in high schools, because it’s so important that I wanted to make sure a wide audience saw it. Young people are the future, blah blah.

But it also set up an accidental experiment. What happens when a female submitter links to her own post, and a male submitter links to his post featuring the same story? That happened when JT Eberhard linked to his post on Atheism Resource a couple hours after I linked to mine.

Let’s compare! (at the time of writing this blog)

JT’s Post:

121 upvotes
24 downvotes

1 comment with contact information (by JT) (5.5%)
4 jokes about the content of atheist clubs (22.2%)
5 jokes about high schoolers (27.7%)
8 relevant remarks about high school atheist groups (44.4%)

Jen’s Post:

110 upvotes
44 downvotes

2 comments about the appearance of women/banging them (3.3%)
19 comments basically saying how much I suck (32.2%)
22 comments (a lot of them mine) defending me against said comments (37.2%)
16 relevant remarks about high school atheist groups (27.1%)

So JT gets mostly relative posts or light-hearted humor, while I get disparaging comments and thread derailing thanks to people trying to reply. At least there are people replying (and the bad comments are getting downvoted), but it’s still frustrating. What woman would be encouraged to join this community or share posts when she has to deal with this shit all the time? And it is all the time – if you look at other Blag Hag posts people have submitted, there will always be at least some comments about my boobs, or how I have a deformed chipmunk face (I still don’t quite understand that one).

It gets old, but I don’t have a solution other than escaping to 2Xchromosomes (…which reddit mocks repeatedly). I just want to point out why r/atheism doesn’t make me feel exactly comfortable, instead of people thinking I’m just another “crazy feminist” who’s “hypersensitive” and “making up sexism that isn’t there.” I know the majority of people at r/atheism are fine, but the few rotten fruit are certainly ruining it for some of us.