From hacking to acid-throwing

Update for you creeps from the mildew pit –

No it’s not that I think I’m that important, you assholes. It’s that you do. You’re the ones who act as if I’m pretty much the most important person in the world! Along with eight or ten others. You’re the ones who monitor my every move every hour and every day. You’re the ones who focus a creepy amount of attention on me. I don’t think I’m that important at all! I don’t think I’m worth that kind of attention – not from people who like me and not from people who hate me. No, I don’t think maybe someone will eventually attack me because I’m so important – I think that because you people are so fucking unhinged and obsessive and you keep ratcheting up the hatred. I am very small potatoes, yet there you are, staring and frothing and hating.

I hope that clears that the fuck up.

————

The Bolshoi sounds like “the atheist community.”

The artistic director got acid thrown in his face yesterday. Apparently the Bolshoi is riven with deeeeep rifts. (That’s good, isn’t it? Riven with rifts? Same root, no doubt. I can’t say I use “riven” much. Every now and then though – well it’s the word that fits in the slot.)

…even before police find the culprits – if they ever do – many will connect the attack to the ongoing squabbles and infighting that have been plaguing this jewel of Russian culture.

Most of the squabbles that have affected the theatre have not been about money, but about personal competition, and they appear to have degenerated into nasty attacks on the talented dancer-turned-director.

Before acid was used in Friday’s attack, Sergei Filin had already received numerous phone threats, and his email and Facebook accounts had been hacked.

Interesting. One minute it’s just hacked Facebook accounts, the next it’s acid attacks. Maybe I should start wearing protection.

 

Uglies v pretties

Seen the 9 Ugliest Feminists In America thing?

It ends with a bizarre non sequitur.

Feminists want to be valued for their brainpower and ideas above all else, but they still engage in professional photoshoots to push the prettiest picture of themselves on their web sites and book jackets. I guess even feminism can’t completely demolish a girl’s desire to be pretty.

Well one reason for that might possibly be the way people like this “Roosh” fella like to shame feminist women for being ugly.

I’m fortunate to be too obscure to be on the list, but I certainly get plenty of shaming-for-being-ugly elsewhere, especially of course on the mildew pit (let’s give it a new moniker for a change). I get double shaming because I’m not just ugly, I’m also a million years old, so I get all the old AND ugly shaming. My name is Prune. This of course is because it’s a crime to be ugly, also to be a million years old, let alone to be both at once.

This has always been the way – the hyena in petticoats, you know. But the Internet provides a cornucopia of new ways to disseminate the ugly-shaming. It’s no longer necessary to get on a bus in order to shout insults at ugly women. You can just set up a website or a forum or a blog for the purpose, and then besides there’s also Twitter and Facebook. Life is good! [Read more…]

Distinctions

Some things are even worse than colonialism – at least the people of northern Mali feel that way after months of being oppressed and tormented by Islamists. They wave Frech flags, they smile, they want the French to stay.

Mali was one of the most successful democracies in Africa until insurgents began trying to take it over.

Besides taking many lives, the insurgents have destroyed historic shrines in Timbuktu that date to the 15th century. The attackers say the shrines offend Sharia law. [Read more…]

Both barrels

One good thing – although really it’s only the undoing of a bad thing. Obama’s new moves on gun control included 23 unilateral orders, which included an end to a ban on gun-violence research by the CDC. A what? An end to a ban on what? Yes: a ban on gun-violence research by the Centers for Disease Control. The NRA has way too much power.

NBC goes into more detail.

Obama issued a presidential memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other scientific agencies to research the causes and prevention of gun violence — and he called on Congress to provide $10 million to pay for it.

“We don’t benefit from ignorance. We don’t benefit from not knowing the science from this epidemic of violence,” he said.

The move effectively reverses 17 years of what scientists say has been a virtual ban on basic federal research… [Read more…]

The heroic standard is too high

I’m thinking about the Romantic cult of the hero, and what a bad insidious idea it can be.

Yesterday Sara Mayhew made a rather pointed remark on Twitter.

If a retired US AirForce Col. who pioneered as one of the 1st female pilot and flight surgeons voices critique about your feminism, listen.

Here again is what I quoted Harriet Hall saying in Shermer’s hit piece on me [update: with Shermer’s prefatory phrase added]

As for why the sex ratio [among atheists and skeptics] isn’t perfectly fifty-fifty, Hall noted: “I think it is unreasonable to expect that equal numbers of men and women will be attracted to every sphere of human endeavor. Science has shown that real differences exist. We should level the playing field and ensure there are no preventable obstacles, then let the chips fall where they may.” [Read more…]

In which I get closer to Shermer’s word count

Ok so now Shermer’s “response” is online, so I can look at a couple of other details I omitted because I didn’t want to retype the whole damn thing.

By the way I get to respond in the next issue. I’m going to do that. I’ll be briefer, and more polite, and I won’t pretend to think anyone is going to “come for me.”

When self-proclaimed secular feminists attacked Richard Dawkins for a seemingly innocent response to an equally innocent admonishment to guys by Rebecca Watson (the founder of Skepchicks) that it isn’t cool to hit on women in elevators, this erupted into what came to be known as “Elevator­gate.” [Read more…]

Shermer responds. Again.

So, that was interesting. I collected the big bag of held mail yesterday, and sorted it, and found the latest Freethinker with my column in it, and the latest Free Inquiry with my column in it. Late in the evening I flung myself down to read the Free Inquiry – and was brought up short on the contents page. “Oh? Eh? Wha? Really? Er…uh oh.” Because why? Because

53 Response

A Guy Thing? Secularism, Feminism, and a Response to Ophelia Benson

Michael Shermer

Huh, I thought. Huh. But he already did respond. At some length. With considerable heat. With, in fact, quite a large helping of righteous indignation. With an air of “who is this woman to criticize something I said?” He really needed to say more? [Read more…]

Last geography lesson for now

Taking off yesterday from San Jose, we flew straight south at first. I know, it’s to do with the prevailing winds, but I kept wanting to shout “Hey! North! Seattle is north!”

But then we did the big turn to go the other way, and I had a window seat on the left side so I got a terrific view of Monterey Bay – the same view I’d had all morning from Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, but from 30 miles away and higher up. I could see Point Pinos, where the Monterey peninsula turns the corner to Asilomar, right next to where I’d been staying. I could also see…the Santa Cruz wharf. That was a funny experience. It was the only human-made feature I could see on that whole crescent around the bay. Quite cool.

It’s been slightly grim weather to come back to – colder than usual and dull. There’s a beautiful lurid sunset now though, so that’s all right.

Pelicans. I love seeing Pelicans. There are no Pelicans around here at all whatsoever.