I hate irony. Or at least I hate “irony.” I hate the kind of “irony” that was those teenage boys tormenting Karen Klein on that schoolbus.
Justin thinks what Abbie Smith and the gang at ERV do is irony. I don’t.
How could it be? How would that work? Is the idea that they don’t loathe the people they call cunts and baboons and all the rest of it? That’s just silly; of course they do.
So where’s the irony?
It’s something about 4chan. Fuck 4chan. There’s not some special extra dimension where loathing becomes irony and where Karen Klein and those boys could kick back and lol at all those insults.
Fortunately, the sun is out from behind the clouds here and it’s not raining for the first time in three days, and I get to go out on a boat for awhile. A totally unironic boat.
Bring a magnet on that boat, and you’ll almost certainly find something ironic.
I think Justin’s very confused about what his point is. I think he thinks he’s enlightening all of us to the fact that a lot of the slimepitters aren’t sitting there thinking “I’ll call her a ‘cunt’ because I HATES THE WOMENS!!!!!!!” Yes, we know. We know that almost all of them don’t think of themselves as misogynists. They think they’re being bold and brave and standing up to the “bullies” who suggest that maybe using hurtful language is … hurtful. We’re talking about the same great thinkers who believe that hoggling is some bold act of protest.
Justin did the equivalent of scoring an “own goal”
I am speechless.
Sounds like relaxing fun. Among the best kind there is.
By the way, we just pulled the boat in and the clouds are gathering, here. But we’re a bit upstream, as it were, from Duluth, so only some of our roads are washed out. Nice thing about this part of Minnesota (Cass County): It’s can’t flood. That happened 10,000 years ago and the waters are still receding.
I think I threw up inside after reading that.
The boat was good fun, but I’m still…whatever this is.
Justin supports Abbie Smith, in giant letters – in giant letters, Justin supports Abbie Smith in her project – sustained for a year so far and not stopping – of publicly demeaning me day in and day out.
Wow.
On 4chan everyone is anonymous, so everyone has nothing to lose. It’s completely uninhibited bullshitting, role-playing, and occasional seriousness. 99.99% of it is trash. Some of it is funny and original. Most internet memes originate there.
On the other hand, Abby is never funny.
I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck what 4chan is. I’m not 4chan, this isn’t 4chan, the world isn’t 4chan.
I’m going to quit this blogging crap and go get a job as a school bus monitor.
Thanks Justin for giving those jerks one more space to tell lies about me personally. FFS.
Well, Justin now thinks that wasn’t such a good idea after all. He didn’t really like the ERVites’ performance of “irony.” Ironic, isn’t it.
And they showed up to the dance all covered in nuance and wearing their absolute best shades of gray. Poor lambs.
It’s like rain on your wedding day.
Sgt. Griffith’s point seems to have been that, although he personally is of course hip to the whole 4chan thing, you know, way back haha, well maybe other people just don’t get it. The irony, you know. So but he totally supports Abbie anyway? Because hey.
I made a long comment there. I tried hard to see what Justin seemed to think he’d written, to see what he meant. Sigh. If the people you say you agree with are all over you for what you’ve said, you’d best consider the possibility that you either communicated very poorly (either by the actual words or by ignoring context) or else that you’re wrong. Alternatively, maybe you don’t really agree with the people you think you agreed with. Simple, no?
If he really does agree with the people he thinks he does, as far as I can tell, he communicated poorly (somehow not realizing what this is in the middle of?) and is woefully ignorant on a bunch of basic feminism and issues of privilege in general. And he presents this to we who have been going at the harassment policy (and later TAM) thing for 5 weeks now, and he says he wasn’t expecting the response he got! I was stunned and sickened. Feel like having that Lorax with megaphone scream right in his ear. I tried to respond in a measured way and made much use of someone else’s metaphor, but really, his apparent view and his questions… I’m not up to it now and I doubt I’m the only one.
Sigh. If slurs and threats are Fe-ish, it makes little difference as to if it’s ok. Fe-ish slurs make said slurs normalized language and we don’t want the damned slurs to be normal! But often, they’re only claimed to be Fe-ish when someone takes offense. Who that uses slurs Fe-ish doesn’t also use them without any Fe-ishness involved? I highly doubt that’s at all common.
Justin’s performance was very disappointing. And it had been such a good day till then. Off to Greta’s to get some hope. I may have to take another break from reading this stuff. It’s overwhelming. I do have eye-runny: I’m crying.
What the hell, Justin? Why would you support any of these people?
I mean, don’t get me wrong I actually do like 4Chan. 4Chan has redeeming qualities, like the ability to create some of the best homebrew RPG settings around. The slimepit, on the other hand, does not have redeeming qualities, and atheist blogs are not the place to encourage the type of shitty behavior regularly evident on 4Chan. Hell, even 4Chan isn’t, a lot of the time.
If these people want to act like they’re on /b/, why can’t they do what someone fucking sensible would do and be on fucking /b/ when they do it? I would posit that they aren’t acting, and are just actually shitty people.
Note: Rereading that thread, I’m seeing some pretty awful things that would have made me not post it if I had noticed them before. So, probably people should avoid reading that if they’re likely to be bothered by that kind of thing.
Trigger Warning, is what I’m saying.
Hope the boat trip is nice Ophelia.
Don’t really have much else to add except that Justin seems to be doing the cognitive dissonance thing big-style; ‘Abbie Smith is my friend, she likes 4-chan’ is trying to coexist with ‘rape jokes are bad’.
You know, it’s sad. As a result of various people’s bizarre reactions to Elevatorgate and their asshole behaviour (to varying degrees), I haven’t read their blogs for ages. I occasionally look at WEIT – but never go into the comments. I am not inclined to read Miranda Hale or Metamagician’s Hellfire Club even if I’m totally bereft of stuff to read. OTOH I was never a reader of ERV before, and only am inclined to look in every so often to see if I am being libelled again this month, or not.
In general, I don’t go searching out stuff that is going to enrage me, and am not inclined to go out of my way to make trouble for other people. Which is why it really surprises me to see the same gruesome personalities, mainly hiding behind their pseudonyms, popping up on blogs they don’t like to argue against ideas they don’t like. It seems rather obsessive to me. Nearly twelve months have passed, haven’t you got another habit you can engage in? Apparently no. The trolls from ERV – such as the ones currently frothing away on Justin’s thread – simply can’t stay away from B&W or the other FTB blogs. It’s a really funny way of demonstrating their hatred of all things feminist or intersectional. (By funny, I don’t mean humorous.)
Thanks to Justin Griffith, FTB has been graced with its first post mocking (and possibly attempting to trigger) rape victims:
Concentratedwater, OM says:
Ugh…
That’s not the first. If you’ve been on Pharyngula during the date rape discussions a lot of apologist engage in that sort of thing.
My mistake. However, The Cephalopod King is usually very assiduous in getting rid of the most repellent posts. I wonder if Justin Griffith will show the same concern?
It’s a simile!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT1TVSTkAXg
Do you know what I find MOST ironic? Justin thought he could straddle both worlds and have a leg in both camps.
The people here that explained to him why what he did was wrong are most likely to understand his naiveté and forgive his breach and put it in the past even though he unleashed another shit-storm.
Hoo-boy, more “irony” – Phil Giordana dropped in on Justin’s thread to say
Unveiled threats!!!!!!! I made no threats whatsoever.
Last I heard, last night, Justin was desperate to close the comments but didn’t know how. Too bad he didn’t figure it out – they’re still open.
Ftr: Amanda Marcotte has a post up dissecting sexism in geek culture with her customary sharp scalpel.
She manages to find numerous appalling examples without, somehow, a single mention of the atheoskeptic quagmire, but offers an insight that our local gynophobes evade with neurotic consistency:
I’m glad you had a good time having some space far away from all of this. 🙂
Yes it was fun! Absolutely gorgeous bright evening.
Pierce, you missed number 5 on that list.
Pierce, thanks for that link – I’m reading it – actually she does mention the atheoskeptic quagmire – it’s item 5. Links to Skepchick and all.
Oops! Missed Stephanie’s comment. Heh.
“Justin supports Abbie Smith, in giant letters – in giant letters, Justin supports Abbie Smith in her project – sustained for a year so far and not stopping – of publicly demeaning me day in and day out.”
This.
Nuance, irony, shades of gray, “free-speech”, etc. Whatever.
No decent person can be ambivalent on the subject of a year’s worth of internet thuggery and misogyny directed at Ophelia or Rebecca or Stephanie, and others.
If you say, “I support Abbie Smith”, that’s what you’re supporting, period. This is utterly non-negotiable.
No it isn’t. It could mean any number of things depending on the context. I don’t know what Sgt. Griffith meant but I doubt he meant he supports the harassment she’s hosted over the last year.
Yes it is. It is non-negotiable. The billboard makes it emphatic, and pointed, and (obviously) conspicuous. It (conspicuously) takes a side.
To me, that damn well is non-negotiable.
That’s personal; fine, it’s personal. Somebody enthusiastically provides a place for people to talk about kicking me in the cunt (and how ugly I am etc etc etc) for a year? That’s personal. People loudly declare that they support her? That’s personal too. That’s how these things work.
Again (I get so tired of pointing this out, but it does illustrate) – if Abbie Smith had been enthusiastically providing a place for people to call (say) Ian a “nigger” for a year – would Justin have put up that billboard? Would julian quibble over the “non-negotiable”? I don’t know, because it’s a hypothetical, but I strongly doubt it.
“It could mean any number of things depending on the context. I don’t know what Sgt. Griffith meant but I doubt he meant he supports the harassment she’s hosted over the last year.”
Are you saying that Sgt. Griffith put up the post, in some ignorance of the context? Because I read the post, and I didn’t find him uninformed. What I thought I read was that he is aware of the context (the misogynistic hate speech directed to specific bloggers, since last July) but he SUPPORTS ABBIE SMITH anyway.
Ophelia, this conversation is going to take a different turn, I think (Or, I hope.)
Sometime this morning Justin took down the I-support-Abbie billboard.
See, now it says
I think (or I hope) that’s going to be followed by Justin posting that he was wrong about the approval of free-speech to call women “cunts” and wrong abuot whatever else he previously though Abbie was so admirable for doing.
I really do hope so. I love Justin Griffith’s work for atheism. I hate to think that he could fail, after reflection, to get how that intersects with working for feminism.
I can’t speak for Sgt Griffith but yes, if he’d said he supported Abbie Smith after she’d hosted racist rhetoric and bullying for a year, I would still quibble over whether he was endorsing those views or not.
More than just the harassment aimed at Watson, yourself, Ophelia and others goes on at ERV. Whatever her obvious faults, ERV is still a staunch advocate for science and that’s the bulk of what she writes about. She was, as I’m led to understand, the introduction many skeptics had to her field of science. It’s natural some of her fans are going to continue reading and supporting her attempts at science advocacy.
I don’t know if that’s what Sgt Griffith is supporting but it’s a possibility.
The sexism she engages in, the bullying, the attempts to diminish the work of others (for example, Jen McCreight), is all damnable. But it doesn’t necessarily tar everyone who’s willing to read her or everyone who wants her to continue her science advocacy.
Hell, he may even mean it in a “I support her which is why I’m trying to change her” sort of way which while naive still wouldn’t be an endorsement of her bullying behavior.
hotshoe, I know, I said that last night. Justin isn’t at all happy with how this went. He is planning to write a new post, I think.
Probably off-topic but we have a triumph, folks.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has announced that women will henceforth be able to compete in the Olympics, starting with London 2012. This is a permanent policy decision and irreversible according to Frank Gardner of BBC.
Contrary to the worldview of certain naysayers this not achieved by mindless activism so there will be no grainy video of naked women climbing key buildings in Mecca during the Haj.
On the contrary, it was achieved by people inside the Kingdom and without who knew they had a case and kept on making it, calmly. That is constant firm pressure, much of it from educated and politically astute women.
So, as Margaret Thatcher said in a much less noble cause – REJOICE!
So, you really would say the same thing if it were “nigger”? I don’t believe you, Julian. And if you’re actually serious you frighten me.
And please stop with the “Sgt.” stuff. This isn’t a military base and his rank is irrelevant.
julian, could you not do the quibbling here? [cue the shouts of fascist censorship by evil ugly cunt]
Just not here, that’s all. Humor me. No: that billboard is non-negotiable.
If he’d just said it, and then explained some narrow meaning (such as what you’re suggesting), that would be different. But the billboard was a punch in the face. Non-negotiable.
As I said, I take this stuff personally. Very naughty and anti-skepticismal of me, no doubt, but that’s how we evil ugly cunts are.
That’s great, Maureen!
Off to find news links…
“On 4chan everyone is anonymous, so everyone has nothing to lose.”
They think that, yes.
That’s fine. I don’t want to turn into one of those people who add a headache on top of a bad day.
The way I understood Sgt Griffith’s post is basically like Julian described.
He thinks Abbie Smith is doing a lot of good science advocacy.
So he supports her in general despite the slimepit stuff. Which he appears to think is a 4chan-style free speech thing that got away from her. And maybe is more about tweaking people who get riled up at ‘bad words’ than actually being especially racist/sexist/whatever – which is something he thinks is wrong now and wants to get across to them is wrong.
It does look to me like at this point a lot of people are locked in to a ‘ERV is bad’ position and can’t see any nuanced view. (Which is primarily the fault of the ERV-ites for being very good at pissing people off.) But I do see what Justin means about people talking past each other, quite probably due to some different weights on various values, privilege, and etc.
in the sense of “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.” — Oscar Wilde
@Ophelia
It looks like Justin has partially retracted from the a re-edit of his post, and has removed “I support Abbie Smith” and replaced it with “I do not support myself.” He’s also locked the thread. Not sure what your take on all that is…but I am hoping this is a sign at least he’s coming to his senses.
Note to Darren @266 on same thread:
Yes, that was a terrible freudian typo which I believe I’ve made a number of times actually. My extreme apologies for that. 🙁
Well but actually I’ll also defend the principle, again, because it’s worth defending.
No. It’s not “tribal” or dogmatic to reject racism. If ERV hosted 20 thousand anti-Semitic comments I don’t think anyone here would say “but the science stuff is good so I support Abbie Smith.” If anyone here would say that, I disagree.
It’s a principle. It’s non-negotiable.
I, mad impetuous fool that I am, also apply that to anti-woman comments.
Oh and something else…what was it…I can’t quite…
Oh yes!
The fact that they are the ones being called ugly cunts day in and day out!
godalmighty.
Ophelia, I used to be ureasonable with a misplaced sense of priorities too, just like you. For years I just “talked past” people when they said Faggy McFaggerson I wanna bash you like Matthew Shephard you dumb faggot poofter queer sissy pussy. I had *such* a hard time properly recognizing that these people had a lot of good things to say all the rest of the time, and that they were good at their jobs. I was uncharitable and I made the mistake of not trusting them when my back was turned, just because they threw a year-long Fuck a Fag With a Baseball Bat party. It’s not like the party was all they did!
I’m glad that I grew up and realized how petty and irrational it was for me to see this as a deal breaker.
Shorter me: Go FUCK YOURSELF John-Henry Beck and the rest of you lot saying stupid appalling shit.
Yes. Take James Watson, DNA discoverer and racist ass. (Also, not surprisingly, a homophobic sexist pig.) At long last, Watson was forced to resign from Cold Springs Harbor Lab after blurting out one too many embarrassingly racist comments.
But but but the science he did was so good! How mean to force him to retire because he just wanted his natural freedom to keep publishing his bigotry! How dogmatic of us to reject his racism!
Keeping your racist mouth shut should be non-negotiable if you want to be in a position of public trust. Exactly as keeping your sexist mouth shut should be non-negotiable.
Damn right hotshoe. And it’s not as if there aren’t plenty of other good science bloggers. Who gives a shit about keeping Abbie Smith on the Roster Of People To Supportz!!!?
She ain’t indispensable.
Yes Watson is a good example. The science itself is still there, obviously. But Watson himself, as a communicator? That’s a different thing.
“So, as Margaret Thatcher said in a much less noble cause – REJOICE!”
Much less noble? Liberating people from an invasion ordered by a military junta notorious world-wide for the torture and mass-murder of its own citizens is ‘much less noble’ than letting a few women compete in the Olympics? On what planet?
Yet people had no trouble – rightly – calling out Margulis for being completely off her rocker in many ways.
It’s a title. For all I know the people using it do it as matter of politeness. Plenty of people call PZed “professor” without being facetious.
It’s possible to acknowledge that a person is saying vile things on one hand, but is capable of making good contributions in another area. But the way one does that is not to support the person as a whole, but to support the contribution. ie:
1. Abbie Smith has created an environment on her blog that is conducive to bullying and sexism.
2. Abbie Smith has made good discoveries in science.
3. I support the discoveries Abbie Smith has made, but I don’t support her other actions.
It’s the same as when I teach parents about disciplining their children–they have to separate the behavior from the child. Or buying Orson Scott Card’s books–the man is a bigot and sexist, but he’s written some good books. I don’t buy them, and I speak out about his behaviors and comments when I have the opportunity–but I do read his books in the library (though honestly, at this point the man bothers me enough that I don’t even read the books, but the example still stands).
Off-topic:
Oh…thanks Ophelia, for making that typo correction in the re-edit of my last post. I feel less embarrassed now. 🙂
I know that, but I find it annoying. In the states it often carries the connotation of undue respect and deference to the military in an almost, but not quite jingoistic way when it’s used outside military contexts. Sort of like the reflexive “thank you for your service.” It’s jarring and odd. I will address PZ as Professor, Ophelia as Ms. Benson, and Justin as Sgt. Griffith when we’re exchanging professional correspondence to transact business. Otherwise no.
Justin’s military rank is of no matter at all in this conversation. This is an aesthetic opinion, of course, and nobody needs to give a shit about my aesthetic opinions.
Welcome Utakata. It’s easy to do those so I do them when people say “oh darn I meant…”
Utakata,
many thanks for your clarification that you didn’t mean to mangle Justin’s name, but the apology really would have gone so much better on the original thread as well (I know it’s far too late, now that the thread is closed), since some ERV posters already attempt to give offense by misgendering people (trans* people especially), and earlier on in the thread the odious John Greg had already posted something indistinguishable from this type of offensiveness, addressed to Josh, Official SpokesGay:
And like Josh, I find that sort of assholish behaviour by John Greg contemptible, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen him do it.
The problem is that the slime-pitters play a ‘gotcha’ game, whereby they attempt to provoke the same sort of behaviour that deserves to be called out. I was amused (for varying definitions of ‘amusement’) to find a post by one of the slime-pitters which more or less openly admitted that he had sock-puppeted and trolled one of the recent threads on this very blog to add a rather horrible and offensive rape joke. This allows two possible gotchas:
1) If Ophelia doesn’t delete the rape joke, then it’s “Gotcha! Ophelia is in favour of having rape jokes on her blog – hypocrite!”
2) If Ophelia does delete the rape joke, then it’s “Gotcha! Call yourself freethinkers, but you deleted my comment, which is suppressing free thought – hypocrite!”
I’ll let you guess which particular eventuality occurred and which option they went with.
Occasionally an event happens that makes me proud to be a Canadian. A person in Toronto, ON decided to try to raise some money to send this woman on a vacation. His goal was %5.000. Last time I checked, he was on his way to collect $500,000 from people who cared.
Bruce – I know. I saw him on the CBC last week. Good guy.
Philip – I’m guessing I found and ditched it, because I don’t think you would let it sit there if I’d missed it.
Those shits.
(One of the Johns – Greg or Welch – tried to tell me on “Ask an Atheist” [remember that?! it seems like months ago!] that my statement “I’ve never called anyone a cunt in my life” was unskeptical and false and bad because hey, I’d been drunk plenty hadn’t I, like everyone else, and I’d been around lots of years so I’d had plenty of time, so I simply couldn’t be sure I’d never called anyone a cunt.
Yes I fucking can.)
Imagine being one of those people. [shudder]
These pathetic, desperate excuses for abusive behavior just make me want to lock myself in a room and never talk to people.
@Philip Legge
Sorry about that…but thread had already been locked when I noticed Darren flagging me over it. So I thought it was best to deal with my spelling erratum here. Not really desirable, because it’s also off-topic, but it was the best I could think of under the circumstance.
As for John Greg, he’s a real piece of work. Ever since he kept obsessively hounding Watson over at Skepchic with his psuedo rationalism and double speak after Elevatorgate (which he got bandhammmered for eventually)…he represents everything I despise about ERV and MRA’s in general. Because Greg, like everyone else there and every other MRA, uses the same hat tricks I’ve seen used by climate denialist, accommodationist, religious apologizers, young earth creationists, flat-Earthers, you name it. I am not sure the word is hyper-skepticism, more like selective skepticism…where one applies Occam’s Razor to prove existence of a god, because it’s the simplest explanation for example. How convenient. But I digress…
…and yes, Natalie Reed has also caught Greg using what is to be off the cuff transphobic slurs. So yeah again, I wouldn’t be surprised he types his trolls wearing a white sheet…because you never know.
But again, my apologies for that mistake. I am terrible at spelling names correctly…and I am surprised I haven’t spelled OB’s name Offelia yet. This and the rest of my typos, and I shouldn’t of been surprised when the Pharyngulites assumed English wasn’t my first language when I first posted over there…even though it is. /red face 🙁
@67
That’s not surprising is it? I mean from people describing their personal experiences here, one thing that’s come across is that someone who’s bigoted about one thing is far more likely to be bigoted around others.
Also I promise not to grammar nazi you *crosses heart*. It’s a personal flaw I’m working on. Fwiw, I’ve never had any trouble understanding your comments.
Stephanie Zvan @ # 30 & Ophelia Benson @ # 31 – thanks for reading my recommendation more closely than I did.
I got two excuses: shock at the sheer crassness of the previous specimens of bad conduct, and embarrassment at recognizing by name only one (1) of the fifteen pictures shown – serious geekitude is a moving target…
I corrected the billboard, when I realized that my shit blogging skills made it look like an advertisement to others.
I had it in large print simply to break up sections like an author would use ‘chapters’.
I’m stupid and crazy and probably irretrievably jaded from reality… but this thing; it was an accident. Apologies either way.
PS: Don’t call me Sgt. Griffith unless you’re military and/or trying to help me circumvent my command’s (perhaps unfair) order not to represent myself as a soldier in the media. Either of those situations, I may perhaps endorse, but I can’t commit to such opinion.
It’s the former however tempting the latter is. I like the rule but, honestly, when the fuck do believers and Republicans ever listen to it?
Take care of yourself, Justin.