Here’s another comrade – Liberal Will. He’s over there, where Maureen and Alex and Rhys and Hayley and Amy and Melanie and many other swell people are. There are a lot of comrades. Don’t let the blowhards fool you about that. The anti-feminists aren’t taking over.
Even if you’re in the friendliest safe space ever, you need to have a harassment policy. The world does not work on SimCity rules, where you don’t build a fire department until the first fire breaks out. It needs to be there. Harassment at any type of convention is common, and the skeptic community should know pretty damn well it’s a problem, especially after “Elevatorgate“. And women, sadly, are the target of most harassment. How many men have personal attack alarms? And how many women do? How many straight people, cis people, white people fear harassment, compared to queer people, trans people, people of colour?
This is privilege, guys. Check it once in a while.
And to claim that people are being feminiazis or FTBullies over this? Really? Oh, those oppressive feminists! Fighting for their right to be respected! For a movement that is mostly liberal or libertarian, it runs the risk of creating unholy alliances with conservatives to push and keep these historically oppressed minorities down. And without any sense of irony and despair at their arguments being appropriated.
Never mind the Olympics. This is the kind of internationalism that doesn’t melt away after a couple of weeks.
Oh really? Thats sounds like a broad, sweeping generalization that can’t possibly be true in all cases. On what basis are you making this extraordinary claim?
Why? It seems to me that the skeptic community should be skeptical of this claim.
Thats the justification? A person’s account where no sexual harassment actually occurred? This guy doesn’t sound skeptical at all.
We need to keep reminding ourselves of, paying attention to and offering support for the rational people who understand “free speech” doesn’t mean a bully’s right to intimidate others into silence. It means responsible, respectful speech. And we need to focus on US, on finding EACH OTHER. I think ignoring the thugs dissolves and disappears them. The more one looks @ something, the larger & more important it appears. Let’s celebrate each other and let the bullies wear themselves out on the other side of the protections we create for each other. They’ll wear themselves out pretty quickly & turn on each other. So we can get the work done.
Yeah, like “people breathe.” This is about as ordinary a claim as can be, especially when you consider that women in general get harassed at least once weekly, and in some cities/workplaces, several times DAILY. The idea that women would go somewhere and all of them would NOT be harassed is, in the experience of the vast majority of women, an extraordinary claim. The idea that hundreds of people could get together and not have a few assholes, given the natural incidence of assholes in the general population, defies all inferential statistics.
Yeah–people are reporting being mistreated. Let’s prioritize being skeptical over showing concern for our fellow human beings. I guess we should also be “skeptical” of climate change and evolution… Given the very large numbers of reports of sexual harassment and the numbers of women who have spoken up about it, not to mention the avalanche of threats and cyberstalking skeptic women have faced over the past year, you have to be ignoring a mountain of evidence about the problems in our community.
Yes, Elevatorgate was an incident of sexual harassment, you callous, self-entitled, willfully ignorant motherfucking douchebag. Isolating someone in an enclosed space and issuing a thinly-veiled suggestion of sexual activity in the dead of night is harassment by the definition of anyone who isn’t an denialist asshole. I also suggest you consider the mountain of rape and death threats Rebecca Watson got for speaking up, which are ALSO instances of sexual harassment.
I think you’re confusing “skeptical” with “privileged, mansplaining, blinkered, obtuse, denialist, and utterly unwilling to proportion belief to appropriate evidence when it contradicts one’s entitled little worldview,” so kindly please fuck off.
VERY FIRST COMMENT is “bitches be lyin.” It’s like they lie in wait.
Rogi: no, ignoring the thugs means that the problems continue to fester and those who are the targets of that harassment have to suffer in silence, while the trolls get more persistent and more self-entitled and never have to face any meaningful resistance or interrogation of the cultural norms that allows them to think and act like that. If ignoring a problem meant it would disappear, then sexism should have magically vanished sometime in 1957. And yet, strangely enough we only seemed to make progress on these issues when loudmouths actually stood up and “looked at it” in the 60s and 70s…go figure, sometimes magical thinking is no match for actual goal-directed activism.
LSP, Rogi has been pushing the “Ignore the trolls” canard just about everywhere, and in fact making videos about it. They really seem to believe that it works, but… well, my opinion of their powers of perception is not high.
Free speech is not an issue of politeness but the much more narrow one of state censorship of public expression.
And the notion that only “responsible, respectful” speech should be allowed is pretty much the exact opposite of freedom.
Rogi: Show me one single example of a situation where ignoring harassers and bigots has worked. ONE. If not, shut up with that lying bullshit.
peterhearn says:
Really? You’re going to use that as argument? Even if you put the best possible light on the elevator incident itself and say it was not harassment at all, the point is that ‘Elevatorgate’ has resulted in massive discussion of harassment with endless explanation of what it is and why it’s wrong and what its effects are. you’re still not on board with the concept that harassment happens and it’s not ok and we should do something about it?
Ignoring bullies doesn’t work because what they WANT is passivity. Passive victims, and passive bystanders.
“Ignore them and they’ll go away” is BS.
Then again I guess I’m ignoring the achievements of the 1950s and 1960s Civil Rights Passivists.
Rob:
Which those of us reasonable types wouldn’t do, because y’know, we don’t get to decide for others what is and isn’t sexual harassment. But I guess it wasn’t Rebecca Watson in the elevator with that guy, it was peterhearn.
rogi:
Where does this line of “thinking” come from? Your gut? Intuition? Wishful Thinking?
It sure isn’t borne out in reality.
Those were Pacifists, not “Passivists” (does such a thing even exist?!). The key being non-violence, not acquiescence. There’s a big difference between making a really big, visible deal about how non-violent you’re being while you actively promote social change and speak out against injustice, versus being passive and letting things continue to happen and/or not paying attention to them.
Tony •King of the Hellmouth• – Yeah it must have been one hell of a crowded Elevator…
Emotionally I feel very strongly about this issue, but at a purely intellectual level I feel so… LOST. I genuinely cannot grasp where those who are taking the harassment does not happen/is not an issue/is not an important issue/exists somewhere but not in our movement etc etc are coming from.
They just have to be deluded, oblivious, intellectually dishonest, privileged, trolls, misogynist assholes or some combination thereof.
@Rob: From watching this thing from the beginning, the opponents basically come into two (overlapping) camps.
First, you have the “chill” people. These are the people who like a free-wheeling social culture, and think that anti-harassment policies work against that. They do, and they’ll have to learn to live with it, as it’s their desired behavior which is aggressive here.
Second, you have all the people out there who have turned this into a big proxy battle. Proxy battles are very common (and they’re also one of my big pet peeves). They’re actually fighting the fight over Libertarianism/Progressivism or Us vs. Them political games or Judgmentalism/Using social pressure to change behavior or whatever.
I do think the second group is MUCH bigger than the first group, although I could be wrong.
Nathair @ 7 —
In some places (e.g. California, where I’m writing from) “free speech” has meaning beyond “government interference with the absolute and holy right to use one’s property in order to communicate”. In some places, “free speech” means “right to express ideas in places open to the public, as long as you don’t actively interfere with other people’s activities”. Handing out pro-union materials in an open-air mall, for instance (an actual case which the California Supreme Court ruled on based on the broader-than-Federal free-speech rights in the CA Constitution), isn’t “free speech” in the Libertarian reading of the term, but it is quite definitely within the concept as defined here.
@17 —
*beyond “no government…etc.
I agree with Rogi. Speech should be respectful, like spamming comment threads with the word “rape” for the lulz. Totes respectful.
Well spotted Tom Foss.
No, I’m referring to civil rights passivists.
Like my dad, who is all for equality and is not a bigot but sat out the civil rights movement because confrontation or even change makes him feel nervous and ill.
He didn’t support Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and still doesn’t care for him or for admiration of him because he did “useless” and “divisive” things like protesting and marching, and didn’t “work within the system to change it.”
There are many activist pacifists, some might call me that (I’m not sure they’d be right in the use of either word.)
I know many activists who are pacifists.
I don’t know of any activists who are passivists, which is what the MRAs want us to be. I don’t think there are any because it seems to me to be an oxymoron.
Thanks for incorrectly explaining to me what I meant, while actually accidentally agreeing with me, though. 😉
Yeah Tom, thanks.
(what the hell is up with all of that, anyway?)
@21 Jafafa, I guess my sarcasm meter is broken! I’ll go and get a new one tomorrow…
Simple rule of thumb: Jafafa is always being sarcastic. ‘cept when he ain’t. 🙂
It doesn’t actually matter if sexual harassment occurred in that elevator, because the casual mention of the incident immediately incurred a still-ongoing avalanche of vicious and undeniable sexual harassment, including rape and death threats. Thus, Elevatorgate proves harassment is a problem in the skeptic community, whether you start counting at the elevator or a week later.
Nice piece. I do have a few nits to pick though. There is no “we” that includes the anti-feminist crowd and me at the same time, and “we” sure as hell are not “on the same side”.
Actually, I don’t really mind if someone prefers to focus exclusively on empirical claims, and not get bogged down in politics. However, there’s a major difference between staying out of a discussion altogheter and actively opposing anyone who seeks to improve the status of women and minorities. As I commented on Natalie Reed’s blog, it’s ironic how so many of those who scream and shout about “keeping politics out of skepticism” etc. seem to confuse the “unpolitical”, “neutral” position with the most conservative and downright reactionary postion imaginable.
@17
So, just to clarify, this is an entirely pedantic quibble about free speech rights in California shopping malls, one which in no way whatsoever applies to the specific discussion we are having or to the assertions regarding “free speech” equaling “reasonable and respectful” speech?
@Bjarte Foshaug, That is an incredibly good point!
Well, I’m skeptical, peterhearn.
After reading many of your posts, I’m skeptical that you have ever spent more than 5 minutes critically examining your own beliefs and motivations.
I’m skeptical that you care about reality.
I’m skeptical that you aren’t more interested in protecting your personal interests, even when they interfere with the rights of others.
I’m skeptical that anything you say is honest and in good faith.
Heck, I’m even skeptical that your bombast & B.S. aren’t a product of your internet persona and you aren’t such a dick in meat space – but I could be wrong about that.
Oops, and the “dick” was a reference to Plaitt’s “Don’t be a dick.”, not intended as a sexist insult to those who come equipped with one.
Karmakin, you seem to have a lot of pet peeves, and most of them revolve around people doing activism in any way that makes you uncomfortable. Your assertion that a lot of people are involved in this “on both sides” not because they give a damn about women’s rights but because they want to play “political games” says more about you than it does about anybody else.
Tom, Rogi did that at Natalie’s and Greta’s as well.
It may be worth pointing out that free speech does not mean speech without consequences. If someone chooses to troll and attack, those attacked will object. That’s not an infringement of free speech, it’s an example of free speech. Those who don’t like being accused of misogyny, dishonesty and trolling can modify their behavior. If they want to be jerks they have to accept that they will be called jerks.
@Peter: It’s also important to remind people that “free speech” doesn’t mean that you have to provide a platform for people to speak on. Kicking TF00t out of FtB isn’t a violation of his free speech rights, because he has the whole rest of the Internet to speak on (and the comment sections of FtB, should he so desire). Even saying “gee, I hope conferences stop inviting this unethical, antagonistic asshole to speak” isn’t a violation of his free speech. He isn’t entitled to a spot at the podium.
@Ms. Daisy Cutter: I heard she posted it at Natalie’s, but I think it was removed. Hadn’t heard about Greta’s. But, that’s why I phrased it as “spamming.”
I’m seriously astounded as to what sorts of behaviors they can engage in while still framing themselves as rational dissenters and FtB as “bullies.”
So sorry that I actually care about other people and think certain things are too important to actually see them be defeated…and they actually could be.
If you’re upset about that, that’s on you, not me.
Thanks for your concern, Karmakin.
Eh?! I thought karmakin’s comment about proxy battles was very good and interesting.
I agree with Ophelia Daisy, I think Kamarkin’s comment was meant to describe the two flavors of asshole in this debate, the chills and the frauds, not a both sides do it approach at all.
The comma’s in that comment could be better arranged. There should be one after “Ophelia”.
@26
This. I never understood this. So you don’t care about social justice. Fine. But why do you have to threaten with rape and death those who do? Why not just shut up and keep writing about things for which there is “evidence”? If the rest of us are distracting everyone from “what really matters” in skepticism/atheism, why not leave us alone and write about “what really matters”? Sigh.
Liberal Will: “Even if you’re in the friendliest safe space ever, you need to have a harassment policy.”
I’d say it’s *part* of having a safe space. It’s not an if or a but.
Alison Miers: “It’s like they lie”
I’d entirely agreed with you by this point.