Hipster guy tells Rebecca Watson what’s what. Really funny stuff that nobody’s thought of saying before, like hey you’re an adult and you’re all upset that some guy wanted to fuck you, grow up, people like to fuck, especially at 4 a.m. See what I mean? Witty.
Tim Minchin commented. Hmph. Rebecca has all the fun – well, except for being called a cunt 85 times a day. Anyway Tim Minchin commented.
No permalink – how tiresome. Use CTRL F. Thanks Aratina.
I stay in a lot of hotels and travel in a lot of elevators. They are very helpful, what with their elevating properties and all. Sometimes, I am in an elevator with a woman. Just me and her. In this little, quiet, rumbly box. Actually, this happened this evening here in New York, just a couple of hours ago.
And I thought to myself, “What would it be like right now if I asked this woman for a coffee”? I’ve pondered this many times in the months since Rebecca’s video managed to unlock the secret door into the mysterious fuck-head chamber of the personalities of a thousand commenters, and the answer is always: fucking weird.
It would be really pretty fucking weird. No, not “deserving-of-arrest, definitely-a-rapist, just-as-bad-as-female-circumcision” kind of weird. But just about weird enough to justify, say… a comment. Y’know, the sort of comment you might make if you were, say, a video blogger who talks about life and skepticism from a woman’s perspective.
I have been substantially depressed by the scale and tone of the subsequent brouhaha.
Some advice, if you’ll forgive me, from someone who has, in the past, been rude to people on the internet, and also has been the subject of plenty of abuse:
Just don’t be cruel to ANYONE, ever. On the internet, or in your life.
Just imagine, as you sharpen your pen, that every man is your uncle or your brother, and that every woman is your mother or your sister. Just don’t spread vitriol. It’s not clever, it’s not funny, it doesn’t improve anything, it fails to educate, elucidate or encourage debate. It’s lazy. It’d be boring if it wasn’t so awful.
Just stop. Breathe. Don’t be defensive. Think hard about what you think. Clarify your point of view in your head. Try to find a way to articulate it – if you still feel you must articulate it – in a manner that assumes the person you are addressing is an actual human.
Preferably make it rhyme. Rhyming your anger seems to help, in my experience.
Go on, I dare ya – go all fucking Gandhi on their arses. Even if you hate them. It’s a good feeling. Little glasses, sandals, chilling out and drinking chai. Trying not to have sex with your great niece. Lovely.
You can experiment on me, if this post ignites your ire.
It’s too chilly for sandals right now, let alone the loin cloth, but apart from that – Gandhi R us.
Jamila Bey was asking Rebecca earlier why this stuff happens and why it doesn’t get called out. I don’t know why it happens, although I have some ideas, but – it does get called out now. We’re all over the calling out.
Just don’t be cruel to ANYONE, ever.
Most depressing comment I’ve read this year – if it means there will be no more Pope Songs…
Hahahahahaha – yes I had the same kind of thought. He can’t really mean it.
The pope is one of the few people I do call rude names – not, certainly, cunt or its relatives, but still, rude names. But I do think that’s only fair, because he not only has huge power, he is also entirely unaccountable, and he lays down “rules” that he pretends to derive from some sort of relationship to an absent and thus unaccountable Magic Agent. His power is about as illegitimate as power can get, yet he wields it with supreme confidence. He calls us rude names – Nazis, for instance. (Ok he doesn’t actually call us Nazis, but he insinuates that we are like Nazis, we could end up being Nazis, etc.)
One of the many bullshit things the Systematic Misogynists have been saying is that the targets of their Systematic Misogyny are “public figures” and so just have to put up with it. Right…a few atheist feminist bloggers are “public figures” in just the same kind of way as a politician or CEO, so we just have to put up with being called cunts all the time. I don’t think so.
I think there’s a difference between cruelty, mean and rude. Cruelty (may just be the word though) brings up images of trying to cause ‘real’ hurt to someone just for your entertainment. Like a child ripping the limbs off insects with a smile on their face before tossing them onto a hot pan.
That’s them misunderstanding the point of public vs private figures (which isn’t to say I get it either.) They’re there to preserve public criticism of important and influential people by means of protecting those that might be honestly mistaken in repeating this or that false charge.
I don’t see how using racist, sexist or any kind of slur really should be protected once it’s become clear you have no criticism to make. ‘He’s a dumb fucking cracker’ really isn’t the sort of thing that screams ‘I have a point to make that should be heard.’ More like ‘I’m a nasty irritant festering on the side of humanity with nothing to add or contribute.’
Besides, what does this have to do with law? Unless of course they’re afraid someone might get fed up with the rape threats or calls to have their cunt kicked in and decide to look into legal means of stopping that kind of harassment. Prepping their legal defense maybe?
Oh I think they’re mostly trying to make the moral case for themselves. I (to take one example) am a “public figure” (by their definition) and I “chose” to use my own name therefore it’s part of Our Sacred Freedoms for them to call me a cunt. Same of course goes for Rebecca Watson and all other such “public figures.” That’s what John Stuart Mill had in mind. You betcha.
Not that Hipster Guy doesn’t deserve to be insulted, but I don’t think that calling him “a totally flaccid tool” (as one commenter did) is quite the right way to do it in this case.
Either that, or it’s exactly the right way. Quid pro quo, you know. Sauce for the goose.
What I find puzzling is not they they seem to think it’s their sacred right to call you/us “cunt”. What is a puzzle is that somehow it becomes censorship and suppression and wrong – and not remotely our sacred right – if we call them “disgusting misogynist slime” when they do.
@Alethea H. Claw
That’s because calling someone a misogynistic is a deeply hurtful and truly dehumanizing thing to say. Not at all comparable with calling someone a man-hating bitch.
<snark>Well of course it does. After all, calling people twats and cunts is friendly, welcoming talk! Didn’t you know that? Calling them MRAs and misogynists for doing so and running them off our blogs is giving them the message to stay away from us. It’s tribal, like religious shunning and political censorship. We’re creating an elitist clique based on language etiquette when we do that. Can’t you see that?! Free thought? Bah! More like free of thought.</snark>
It’s a very warped lens through which they look, like kids who took, “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me”, a little too much to heart. It’s divorced of reality.
Oh, and since it got erased during the outage, here is the permalink again to Minchin’s comment: http://skepchick.org/2011/11/kurt-metzger-totally-pwned-me/#li-comment-137078
Well now if it’s their sacred right to call us cunts then it is our sacred obligation not to call them misogynist slime for doing so. That’s the point of the “sacred.”
Ahmen. No, I mean Ah women. No, not that either. Now I’m really even more confuseredarer than before.
All those negatives must clog up my iron fillyter, or whatever nicallit.
Perhaps it’s that word, “sacred”, that’s bent? Yes, let’s point to that and call it banana. No. Sorry, that wasn’t a very fruitful explanation either.