Update: oh and there’s also PZ’s account. So that’s two non-anonymous sources.
Slime pitters are all agitated, asking me in unapproved comments if I have a source for the non-anonymous allegations of Shermer’s sexual harassment. I’m pretty sure I’ve already posted this, and I’m not here to do homework for the slime pitters, but all the same – here it is again.
Jason. Last November. Carrie Poppy and the Nay-sayers.
Carrie Poppy has been extraordinarily well-placed in some of the bigger scandals regarding sexual harassment and sexual assault recently, in having been employed as communications director for JREF and having resigned after six months due to, let’s say, philosophical differences with DJ Grothe, president of the organization. Well, if you can classify her stating her reasons for leaving as mere philosophy, being his “constant duplicity, dishonesty, and manipulation”.
So people rushed then to attack Carrie Poppy, to destroy her as an irrational harpy with a bone to grind and an axe to pick against Grothe. So when she recently decided to suggest that women should generally stay away from TAM because the JREF was unlikely to treat any incidents with any level of seriousness, people naturally resorted to the same trope — that she was trying to destroy TAM and JREF.
Only the strange thing is, the corroboration of her claims came from those very people that you’d least expect. The ones who have been trying to naysay the whole thing all along.
Carrie was tight-lipped about why at first, but the nay-sayers brigaded as they normally do. When asked what JREF / TAM could do to make things better:
The answer is going to sound very vague and like the JREF *must* already be doing this, because who in their right mind wouldn’t? But from my vantage:
1. Do not allow people who have assaulted others at your conference, or you have reasonable suspicion that they have done so, back at the conference.
2. Take women’s complaints (and any victim’s complaints) seriously. Investigate them fully.
3. Have an infrastructure for reporting complaints, where people feel safe and listened to.These are reasonable complaints, and her putting them forward here suggests she knows that, at least when she was in a position to see it, that they were not in place. She’s evidently seen enough to know this is a trend, not a one-off.
But people keep pressing her for evidence or at least concrete examples, and she eventually talks to her lawyer:
Hi everyone. I just spoke to a lawyer about sharing this information with you, and feel comfortable telling you this one thing (though it is one of several):
D.J. Grothe told me and others, repeatedly, that he (DJ) had personally witnessed Michael Shermer groping a female TAM speaker’s breast, unprovoked and against her protestations. She has confirmed this, since. D.J. continued to invite that speaker to TAM in subsequent years. D.J. has stated this much over and over. So please, do feel free to ask him yourselves.
(By “that speaker,” I meant Shermer.)
That’s where. That’s my source. It’s DJ Grothe, via Carrie Poppy.
So, again Shermer gets dredged up in “you’re destroying a man’s life”/”You are completely ineffectual at destroying a man’s life! haha!” because observations were made on this joke “global” organization? So when a couple of people respond to this obvious bs, I guess we’ll be back to “you’re trying to destroy a man’s life”, never minding who brought this up again.* Streisand Effect anyone? Thing is, I’m pretty sure they are well aware of this, and don’t really have the respect they that they claim for the image of Shermer (or whomever), who they just use as a pawn for their little arguments. They are essentially dragging him around the same way they like to drag around their enemies (say, Watson).
*Seems to be a feature of those communities. Keep bringing stuff up and embellishing the stories until they are unrecognizable, then complain that other communities are responding to it. It’s all very convoluted and senseless.
Bit odd that we don’t seem to know who was the victim, when this happened, or what exactly DJ actually said about the incident in question. A skeptic might ask for a bit more than what you’ve got here before they decide that Shermer should be blackballed.
Note to self: never attend events hosted by Damion Reinhardt.
Damion, you might click through and read…
Masked Avenger, you’re asking a bit much. A true sceptic™ never follows links or sources. They get everything handed to them on a silver plate preemptively
Tr00 Skepticism, a short play by Unknown Eric:
A tr00 skeptic stands in an empty room. Michael Shermer enters, stage left.
MS: Hi, I’m Michael Shermer. I like to grope women against their will.
(Shermer exits, stage right)
Skeptic (to himself): Hmm, but can I trust my own ears? It’s not enough evidence. I still don’t think he did it.
CURTAIN.
Damion, Shermer’s target has been named on the JREF Forum before. I’ll not do it here because of the additional harassment she will receive. The first time Shermer met this particular target in 2008, he drunkenly lunged at her breasts. There were witnesses, including DJ Grothe, who was not JREF president at the time.
In her TAM 2012 talk, she mentioned that she had randomly had her tits and ass grabbed and slapped, and that this is part of what it means to be a woman in science and skepticism. She did not mention Shermer’s name, nor hint at his identity.
She has said that she wasn’t asked back to TAM 2013. She has not been a TAM speaker since. There’s no concrete evidence of a blacklist against Shermer’s target, but it does not seem far-fetched.
Shermer’s TAM speakership has, and never will be, in doubt.
Shermer emailed his target last Halloween to deny that the assault, that was witnessed by DJ Grothe and others and recounted by him numerous times, had occurred. If it were me, I would have taken the email as a threat, but who knows what he meant by it?
There’s no evidence, it’s all anonymous!!
-Yes, there is; No, it isn’t.
Well, that’s not enough to convict in a court of law!!!
-This isn’t a court of law.
Well, nyaner-nyaner, he’s still popular.
-Yeah, that’s the problem. Remember when you goofballs tried to argue there was no sexism problem in the atheist/skeptic community? The gloating is making the point, nicely.
Damion @ 2
For the second time – it’s not “ostracism” and it’s not “blackballing” to not ask someone to speak at a conference. Just as Elliot Rodger was not automatically entitled to sex with women, so Michael Shermer is not automatically entitled to speak at conferences. The natural state of affairs is not “Michael Shermer must be invited to speak at all the conferences.”
Sally – You’re in luck! I’m not involved in organizing anything at the moment.
Masked Avenger – Poppy’s facebook post isn’t showing up, alas. Did DJ ever publicly confirm what she wrote? Did the victim ever confirm?
When did “skepticism” come to mean “arrogantly aggressive ignorance”?
“The natural state of affairs is not “Michael Shermer must be invited to speak at all the conferences.”
It sounds like you do, in fact, want organizers to stop inviting him to speak or otherwise represent secularism. If you don’t want to call that “blackballing” we can call it something else.
That’s what I’m saying. It’s not “blackballing.” Yes, we should call it something else.
Clueless as ever, Damion.
Just a massive failure on your part. Massive.
You might want to look up the definition of “enabler”. Jerry Sandusky had Joe Paterno. Even though Paterno knew Sandusky was doing things wrong, he swept it under the rug and allowed him to have basically unfettered access to more victims.
Enabling is wrong, Damion. You should know that. Please stop.
And you’re remarkably incurious. Ever stop to wonder why I wouldn’t go, no matter how tempting the line-up? Here, I’ll tell you: it’s because you’ve demonstrated that we can’t count on you to disinvite people who are known to be sexual harassers and sexual assaulters (aka “gropers”) to any event you’re organizing. You don’t see the point. You think it’s “blackballing” to not invite people who assault other people to an event.
Please continue to not organize any events.
Damion, yes Shermer’s victim confirmed the (attempted?) assault . This was posted on the previous thread, so the evidence has been available to you. And you can find elsewhere that both Grothe and Barbara Drescher confirmed that Grothe had been telling the story for years.
So we know the victim, we know when this happened. We don’t know exactly what Grothe said about it, but we know that he wasn’t critical of Shermer. We know his victim is justifiably nervous about further damage to her career. Shermer has no fear of damage to his career or speaking engagements.
“Let me put this more clearly: Because someone witnessed a man in power attempt to grab my boobs, I have been warned that I need to worry about my career being actively destroyed by others.”
I think that’s fucked up, and that’s why I find the pro-harassment JREF repugnant.
kellym -“And you can find elsewhere that both Grothe and Barbara Drescher confirmed that Grothe had been telling the story for years.”
Elsewhere?
Sally Strange – “…you’ve demonstrated that we can’t count on you to disinvite people who are known to be sexual harassers and sexual assaulters (aka “gropers”) to any event you’re organizing…” – Sally
Since I’m not organizing, it is not incumbent upon me to maintain a blacklist. It is refreshing for someone to openly admit that this is all about selecting which people need to be disinvited, however.
Call it “blackballing” I don’t care.
When I’m organizing a transfeminist conference, I wouldn’t dream of inviting Michael Kimmel: he’s said incredibly fucked up things about trans people, with no seeming awareness or remorse at all. What could he possibly have to add to a transfeminist conference?
Is that blackballing? Yes? Fine. I’m blackballing him.
Neither am I inviting Henry Kissinger to a conference on non-violence. I’m black-balling him from the non-violent speaking community.
Now the Shermer thing is a bit different. He does have something to say about skepticism and he’s looking to speak to a skeptical community, not to a “people who don’t assault women” community. But, and here’s the deal, the men of the skeptical community have been fairly begging skeptical women to tell them what could be done to increase women’s attendance at skeptical events. Quite a number of us have said that we would attend if we felt more safe, if we felt that we were less likely to be assaulted and that, if that horribleness occurred, we were nearly guaranteed to have quick and just accountability imposed.
Men have asked us, “but how can we make you feel that accountability will be quickly and justly imposed until after the fact? We’ve promised already, what do you want?”
Women have said in reply: You can make us more confident that future assaults will be handled appropriately and future assailants will face accountability promptly and justly when you impose any accountability at all for those assaults that we already know to have happened. So long as the powers that be continue to dismiss concerns that a woman’s career has been threatened while Shermer has faced no consequences, we will continue to have quite a bit of confidence that future assaults will NOT be met with quick and just accountability.
You can continue to invite Shermer as often as you like to speak on as many topics as you like. And we’ll shut up about Shermer’s invitations at the precise moment when he’s only invited to speak to men-only gatherings that are quite clear that they aren’t interested in having women attend, safely or otherwise.
But you can hardly expect us to fail to point out the lack of accountability – and the disparate consequents for assailant and victim – while men are still asking us “Why won’t you come to our really cool hang-out?”
Blackballing? You can call it that. It’s also simple accountability for bad behavior that makes a particular speaker inappropriate for a particular setting, given the stated goals of the organizers. But if it makes you feel better to call for me to call it “blackballing”, I will:
I am for blackballing unrepentant practitioners of misogynistic assault from venues where increasing women’s attendance is a priority.
Why yes. I do think someone who sexually assaults other people should not be invited to social events.
I’m waiting for you to explain why that’s a bad thing.
Ah but thinking someone should not be invited is not the same thing as selecting which people need to be disinvited. Not inviting is not the same as disinviting. Damion is being very consistent in using tendentious translations to make his pseudo-points.
The JREF has no problem with disinviting harassment victims. Their values are the opposite of mine in this regard.
Damion, since you are too lazy and/or dishonest to look up the link, hereis Barbara Drescher publicly confirming that DJ witnessed Shermer grope a woman at a conference (not TAM). Also, the incident was well-known, and absolutely not a problem for the JREF.
“I’m waiting for you to explain why that’s a bad thing.”
If someone is known to sexually assault people, as you have claimed of Shermer, then of course I wouldn’t want to socialize with them. I’d want a certain level of certainty before disinviting people from all secular and skeptical events.
Let me ask a fairly straightforward question, if I may. How much time elapsed between the events in question (DragonCon ’08?) and the first time an actual eyewitness publicly recounted the events in question?
Occam’s Fucking Razor, Damion.
Scenario 1: Everyone just has it in for Shermer for some mysterious reason or to make an example out of him on the burning pyres of social justice.
Scenario 2: Shermer acted like a lech numerous times, was observed by several people in at least one of those instances, and has probably done much worse.
Exercise some critical thought here.
Damion sez:
Fixed that for you, dishonest assbag.
Damion – for fuck’s sake – I just said that not inviting is not the same as disinviting. Stop talking about disinviting until/unless that’s actually the issue.
For clarification, or emphasis, Brandeis disinvited Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It invited her and then rudely told her she was disinvited, and then rudely lied about it in its press release. That’s disinviting. Not inviting in the first place is not the same as that.
For clarification purposes, it was Sally Strange who introduced the idea of disinvitation @15.
I apologize for my imprecision with language. Both are true. Shermer should not be invited in the first place. If someone messes up and invites him all unaware of the record of his actions, then he should be disinvited.
There is a high enough probability that Shermer sexually assaulted people that the cost-benefit analysis of including him in mixed company does not warrant including him.
Go ahead, explain why THAT is a bad thing.
We had better not hear about Damion Reinhardt EVER wondering why there’s a dearth of women at atheist/skeptical events ever again.
This is exactly why. Shermer, and Damion, and the hundreds of men like Damion who value Skepticism™ over respecting women’s desire not to risk being sexually harassed.
Does “Skepticism™” carry a different meaning than ordinary skepticism?
I respect those who desire not to risk sexual harassment, just as I respect those who desire not to be marginalized based on hearsay. There is nothing overly skeptical about trying to gain a degree of certainty before banning or blackballing or disinviting or failing to invite (take your pick) someone who was previously in good standing.
Any takers on my question @23?
Damion,
Have you publicly expressed your opposition to Richard Dawkins’ “blackballing” of Rebecca Watson, and demanding that convention organizers reject Dawkins’ ultimatum about inviting her? Since this seems to be an important matter of principle to you, I expect you were quite persistent and vocal on the subject.
Damion, I don’t understand the question. Are you implying that the witnesses or the victim are lying about Shermer’s groping of her? Because it took so long for Grothe’s eyewitness account to become public?
Dawkins’ alleged ultimatum was hearsay born of eavesdropping in a situation where the source admittedly “…couldn’t hear everything…” so I’m not brimming with confidence in the reportage there. That said, assuming (for the sake of argument) that the Sara’s report is accurate, then I would oppose taking such a petty and vindictive approach, given that she had done nothing worse to him than say “I will not attend his lectures or recommend that others do the same.”
With that sort of mutual animosity, what an awkward speaker’s lounge that would have been.
“Are you implying that the witnesses or the victim are lying about Shermer’s groping of her?”
No.
“Because it took so long for Grothe’s eyewitness account to become public?”
I’ve yet to hear Grothe (or Plait) speak out on this, only hearsay from Poppy and Drescher.
So, rather than think bad of big names, you’d rather presume an axe to grind and disbelieve anything any one says because their motives must be nefarious because they’re little people? Unilateral skepticism is what the charge du jour is, perhaps it’s simply projection.
Damion Reinhardt is playing the Hyperskeptic™ game. Despite reliable witness statements, Reinhardt refuses to accept that Shermer groped a woman because…well, just because. Reinhardt pretends that Grothe didn’t admit multiple times in front of a fair number of other people that he had witnessed Shermer doing the grope. The victim has identified Shermer, Grothe has identified Shermer, but that isn’t good enough for our Hyperskeptic™.
BTW, Reinhardt, aren’t you the guy who pretended not to notice you had a picture taken of you underneath an elevator sign? I need notarized statements from all the witnesses to that picture before I’ll believe you’re not lying about “not noticing.” Until you produce those statements, I’ll just assume everything you say is a lie because you’ve already proven you’re a liar.
Damion continues to lie and dissemble. Boring.
Believe it or not, even being in good standing does not translate to a permanent invitation to speak at conferences. It doesn’t translate to a lock on such invitations. There are far more people in good standing than there are speakers at conferences – there’s nothing that says X Must Be Invited simply because X is in good standing.
You (Damion) keep assuming that Shermer is somehow Supposed To Be invited to speak at conferences, but why would that be?
@ Damion Reinhardt 31
>”Does “Skepticism™” carry a different meaning than ordinary skepticism?”
Without the hyperbole rational skepticism is different and better than from reflexively doubting/questioning, or doubting/questioning everything as a universal reaction. The reason for the skepticism is it’s proper application. In the situation of an accusation you have opposing realities to consider. Neither side should be privileged in resolving the dispute.
A person would ideally withhold skepticism until comparing specific evidence to reality claims on their own merits while accounting for things that make evidence harder to assess and find. Only after claims are assessed can skepticism be rationally applied as the evidence’s fit to reality is determined.
Yes, and your pose as someone who isn’t intelligent enough to immediately grasp the difference is yet another lie.
“…keep assuming that Shermer is somehow Supposed To Be invited to speak at conferences, but why would that be?”
That is not quite what I’ve been saying, Ophelia. What I have been saying is that I’m not yet convinced that he should never be invited to speak at conferences, or to represent secularism in a new “global” think-tank, or what-have-you. Are you?
Al Dente: “The victim has identified Shermer…”
He wasn’t named in her post of 2013/11/06 but presumably you are thinking of a collateral source?
Spokesgay: “Boring.”
Agreed.
You don’t think that the people who say they witnessed Shermer sexually assaulting someone are lying, yet you wouldn’t strike him from your list of speakers.
That’s fucked up, dude.
I mean, pick a random man. Odds are relatively small that he’s a harasser and an assaulter. Maybe 10%, maybe less.
With Shermer, I’d say the odds are definitely better than 50% that he really is a man who serially sexually assaults people.
That’s enough for me. I don’t know how other people make these calculations, but if odds are better than 50-50 that this person will assault me or anyone else, I don’t want to be around them and I don’t want my friends to be around them.
Damion seems to be seeking some sort of statistically significant, 95% confident, p-value <0.01 degree of certainty that is generally unavailable outside rigorously controlled scientific trials.
Exactly what level of certainty would lead you to prioritize my basic fucking safety over Michael Shermer's paycheck, Damion?
You haven’t heard Grothe speak about this. Others have.
He hasn’t discussed it publicly. That doesn’t mean that he hasn’t discussed it.
Is DJ Grothe’s the ultimate word on whether or not this particular event (of all the many instances of groping and sexual misconduct that have been alleged against Shermer) happened? Perhaps if Grothe admitted it publicly, you would then decide that he could of course be lying or mistaken, and without video evidence of the scene in question not inviting Shermer to the things is a grave injustice.
Stacy @45:
It’s actually a bit worse than that:
Now, it’s possible Poppy just made that up, in which case she just set herself up for a libel case she’s almost guaranteed to loose. All Groethe would have to do is sink a few thousand into a filing against her, and she’d buckle like a belt.
It’s been about nine months. No buckling has happened. This means that it’s likely that Groethe testified, in court, that Shermer sexually assaulted someone. That’s the gold standard of truth for the ‘Pit.
Yet it’s not sufficient evidence for Reinhardt to come to ANY conclusion, even the most tenuous one.
“This means that it’s likely that Groethe testified, in court, that Shermer sexually assaulted someone.”
Which court? Which state? Which case? What did DJ actually say?
“That’s the gold standard of truth for the ‘Pit.”
Rumors of an unnamed case with no public records to back it up isn’t the gold standard anywhere.
“I’d say the odds are definitely better than 50% that he really is a man who serially sexually assaults people…”
Based entirely on something that happened in 2008 and wasn’t (so far as I can see) written down until 2013?
I’d be interested to know who besides Shermer should never be invited to speak anywhere again.
One-trick pony. Liar.
If you don’t think the people who witnessed Shermer assaulting people are lying, then why WOULD you want to invite Shermer to anything?
Either you like hanging out with harassers, or you think those people are not lying, but deluded.
Damion Reinhardt @47:
Suppose I had an answer for all of those questions. Would that change the fact that Poppy claimed that Groethe testified in court? Isn’t that the most salient fact here? The rest is just garnish on top.
You don’t need details here, Reinhardt. You need to show it’s plausible that Poppy is lying about the court thing.
So it doesn’t count as evidence of sexual assault unless it’s written down? Does this mean you think bruising and live video don’t count as evidence? Also, no-one has said anything about whether or not it was written down. Why do you assume it wasn’t, when you have no information either way?
Reinhardt @48:
At this rate, you. Despite multiple witnesses and probable court testimony, you’re unable to say anything on whether or not one person may have sexually assaulted another. At the same time, if seven anonymous reviews told you a restaurant gave many people a case of food poisoning, I bet you’d steer clear of the place.
You’ve got a very large blind spot towards sexual assault, one that’s very likely specific to that topic and impervious to logic and reason. That’s rather worrisome.
Hj Hornbeck wrote:
Indeed. As I’ve said before, if people like Damion applied the same level of bullshit hyperskepticism they apply to sexual harrasment charges made against prominent dudebro atheists to everyday aspects of their lives they’d never go within 50 yards of a street crossing before obtaining certificates of mechanical soundness for every car on the road.
Here, let me make this a easy as possible on you, Reinhardt.
That is strong and valid inductive reasoning. If you reject C1, then you are claiming at least one of those three premises is improbable. If you instead find all of them probable while still rejecting C1, then you are openly defying reason by considering a likely event to be unlikely.
What is your choice?
> ________________
“Despite multiple witnesses and probable court testimony, you’re unable to say anything on whether or not one person may have sexually assaulted another.”
If there was actually testimony given, let’s see it. It would be very interested to know what exactly the alleged multiple witnesses (who?) actually said about what really happened that night. As to evidence that does not rely upon fallible human memory, there are extant photographs of the night those two met at Dragon*Con. Drs. They certainly looked to be having a great time, but maybe he did actually sexually assault her as soon as they were first introduced, as she claimed in the article linked @16.
It’s hard to see how this all hangs together, but who knows?
“If you don’t think the people who witnessed Shermer assaulting people are lying, then why WOULD you want to invite Shermer to anything?”
People are quite often mistaken or exaggerating even when they aren’t lying. This isn’t exactly news.
Please strike
Drs.from 54.I am spoiled by the JREF edit button.
Well, Damion, I guess your risk assessment meter is calibrated slightly differently than mine. That’s fine for you, but I expect that you won’t be asking anymore why women won’t be coming to your events. This is why.
Reinhardt @54:
You’ve missed a spot or three:
See, women are taught to accept assault as normal, just part of their life. Gay herself responded by going into denial at first, according to her narrative, so even if those were taken immediately after the incident the fact she didn’t demonstrate obvious hostility doesn’t prove the incident didn’t happen.
Secondly, I double-checked Gay’s narrative and she’s silent on when the event occurred. Did it happen when her and probably-Shermer first met, or later that evening at the bar? Those photos could easily have pre-dated the incident. Or are you going to argue that because she consented to being touched on the shoulder, she consented to being touched on the breast?
Third, why are you bringing up Pamela Gay? Are you trying to duck out of the argument I gave over Carrie Poppy’s claim in #53? C’mon now, I’m still awaiting your answer:
> ________________
Hj Hornbeck
She states the date:
OK, when is Ophelia going to blog about the sexual harassment accusations against PZ Myers, and the rape allegations about Lousy Canuck, and of course, the issue of Ogvorbis, a man who admitted he raped minors. Ophelia is not angry with ANY of these people, which is odd, because Ophelia shares the default FTB position of “always believe the victim”.
Obviously, Ophelia doesn’t like to blog about uncomfortable issues, and doesn’t like to allow comments pointing this out.
And then there’s this:
“Often,” yes, for one person’s account of an event. Even two.
Five or six or seven people making the same type of mistake independently about the same person, or exaggerating about him in the same way?
Not so much.
I don’t dare even ask what Damion thinks would lead someone to mistakenly think that someone was groping a person who later agreed that indeed she was being groped.
The level of tail-chasing logical circularity is astounding, really.
You people are truly morally decrepit.
HJ Hornbeck asks “Why are you bringing up Pamela Gay?”
Because kellym claims that Dr. Gay was the unnamed TAM speaker from the OP in the post @16. That seems correct to me, given the timing and context, but I’m happy to change my mind.
As to her being “silent on when the event occurred” that isn’t quite true, either, since she alleges that the (attempted) groping happened “at the moment of our introduction.” Maybe that detail is a bit off, I don’t know.
The main reason I don’t know is that the third parties who actually were there (Grothe, Plait, Kovacs, etc.) haven’t yet spoken up about the incident in public. The consensus here seems to be that we should place the utmost faith in Poppy as to what she claims someone else said in an unnamed court case, but unsworn hearsay seems more than a little tenuous as chains of evidence go, given that the obvious remedy in such cases as this is to completely ban the perpetrator from all future events.
SallyStrange asks that conference organisers prioritise her “basic fucking safety” such that she and her friends no longer have to “be around” people like Shermer. Not inviting them to speak obviously isn’t enough if he is indeed “a man who serially sexually assaults people,” the organisers must go a step further and ban them from registration and attendance, since his power to make a space unsafe doesn’t depend upon his status as a speaker so much as his (alleged) willingness to flout ordinary social norms.
SallyStrange — “I expect that you won’t be asking anymore why women won’t be coming to your events.”
I don’t recall ever asking that, and the only event that I host these days is a Wednesday luncheon. We are expecting to see gender parity today, unless the RSVP count changes.
Furthermore, how many people have you become (platonically) intimate enough to put your arm around in that manner on the occasion of first meeting?
Even draping himself over people tends to suggest, at least, a rather overfamiliar approach to socialising at Cons, particularly given his position. At worst, it just looks like predatory behaviour, particularly knowing that it is apparently on first meeting.
This is high risk behaviour, and even if Gay was comfortable with it, if it is a pattern of behaviour it will sooner or later cause someone embarassment and discomfort. Being touchy-feely with strangers is a bad idea, because social situations and the accompanying cultural expectations limit people’s opportunity to express discomfort. Even asking directly, can I give you a hug?, may not allow someone to say no if they feel sufficient social pressure to comply in public.
Casual interactions are not always easy and straight forward, and initiating intimacy in those situations is simply a minefield which requires both parties to be able to freely express expectations and understanding.
And if Shermer is singled out in this example, this is why Cons need general harassment policies and behaviour guidelines (which are enforced), to ensure that everyone behaves well, and everyone can feel safe. Shermer is becoming a known quantity, and at least women may be better forewarned about his reputed behaviour, the challenge is to deal with him and people who cross the lines for the first time.
@ John Gobb 60
>”Obviously, Ophelia doesn’t like to blog about uncomfortable issues, and doesn’t like to allow comments pointing this out.”
Ha!
>”OK, when is Ophelia going to blog about the sexual harassment accusations against PZ Myers, and the rape allegations about Lousy Canuck, and of course, the issue of Ogvorbis, a man who admitted he raped minors. Ophelia is not angry with ANY of these people, which is odd, because Ophelia shares the default FTB position of “always believe the victim”.”
Translation: “Talk about anything but the subject at hand! I have to create a sense of unfairness by trying to make you do things!” Retreat!
“Furthermore, how many people have you become (platonically) intimate enough to put your arm around in that manner on the occasion of first meeting?”
Not many, now that you mention it, Bernard. Then again, I rarely find myself at the sort of parties where some degree of mildly intimate touching (e.g. a woman casually resting her hand on a man’s chest) appears to be somewhat less taboo than usual. Social context should count for something, we are expected to comport ourselves differently in different circumstances. That said, I don’t really disagree with anything you wrote here.
@Damion,
Social context counts for a lot, and there are some parties where touchy-feely is part of the scene. There are plenty of people who would have no problem with that sort of physical contact in any situation.
The allegation here, lest it looks as though I’m denying it, of course goes far beyond simply accidentally making someone uncomfortable. I was simply pointing out that even gaining consent for mild intimacy, such as putting your arm around a stranger is not always straightforward in a social situation.
The pictures do not tell whether that was sought or freely given (or if so, who initated it), but I think we can all safely say that groping is not a natural extension of hugging.
Also – in direct response to the picture you linked to – Plait and Gay had been friends for many years in 2008. I have no wish to question the appropriacy of intimacy amongst friends.
Damion sez:
Equality by numbers at a luncheon? How fucking egalitarian of your benevolent self! Why would you even bring that up?! Oh yeah, and the parity only exists in the binary world. Don’t worry though, because I’m sure if a transitioning man were to show, you’d have the parity still equal since they’re “half-man, half-woman”, amirite? I mean, the fact that multiple people have attested to an encounter isn’t enough for you, because the big names haven’t denied it yet, the default is to presume that the little people are lying about everything or just imagined something.
Fuck you Damion, also, for not even answering why your default is to wait on a denial or admission from the accused perpetrator, before you decide the “truth”. Any reason why the people who’ve spoken up are untrustworthy? Because, if they were lost under a Greyhound, then we’d have much less to lose without them in the “movement”? That’s probably it.
Damion is a big ol’ ball of ego and hobnobbery masquerading as skeptic.
And we still have the same situation I pointed out in the first post – Damion is not taking seriously the possibility that the allegations about Shermer are, simply, true. He’s not spending any energy at all worrying about what that would mean for World O’ Skepticism and the Secular Coalition and the Global Secular Council, and for women who might want to be involved in any or all of them. He’s happy with the status quo, it seems, where many Thought Leaders and bosses are perfectly happy to put harassment-happy men at the top of all the bills, and to exclude women who object to that state of affairs.
Shermer has suffered professionally not one jot from the allegations being made public, although we might hope that it has become just a little bit more difficult for him to inappropriately touch anyone.
Personally, I would be very happy if it was made a little bit more difficult for me to inappropriately touch anyone: a) because other people would feel safer; b) because I don’t go around inappropriately touching people. But that is also why I don’t require that anyone be forewarned about my patterns of behaviour.
Shermer is not even necessarily the scariest of those leaders – he is a dangerous symptom of a general apathy by organisers and executives towards properly enacting anti-harassment rules and protecting the less powerful members of that movement.
The scariest thing is that those people charged with implementation of policies and events are so beholden to the celebrities of the movement that they enable exploitative behaviour. That is a common theme in the many and various flavours of organisations that have turned a blind eye to routine abuse of power.
Damion goes on record as not giving a fuck whether women participate in the atheist/skeptic movement.
/Slymed
“And we still have the same situation I pointed out in the first post – Damion is not taking seriously the possibility that the allegations about Shermer are, simply, true.”
That is demonstrably not so, Ophelia. I said in post 63 exactly what I think should happen if a certain set of accusations (as framed by SallyStrange) do turn out to be true:
How you read this as not taking the possibility seriously is difficult to understand.
“Damion goes on record as not giving a fuck whether women participate in the atheist/skeptic movement.”
It is unclear to me, SallyStrange, how you derived this startlingly sexist paraphrase from my earlier admission that I haven’t publicly asked about the events which I personally organise. Certainly it seems odd to claim that I don’t care about this problem in general when I spent an entire post trying to quantify just how bad it is at present.
“Shermer has suffered professionally not one jot from the allegations being made public…”
Well put, Bernard. That is essentially what I was saying in the post quoted from the JREF forum in the OP.
Reinhardt @63:
I know kellym was talking about Gay, but we were talking about Poppy. Why did you change the subject?
I double-checked her blog post, the primary (and as far as I know, sole) source of her side, and that detail was there. Fair enough. But that doesn’t change the fact that you changed the subject.
Ah, so you trust third-party witnesses more than you trust the victim herself. But that’s still talking about Gay, and still a change of subject.
False. What happened (as far as I can tell) is that most people developed the same sort of argument I did at #53, in a less formal fashion, were unable to challenge P1-P3 (or their equivalents), and were forced to conclude C1. It’s telling that when you were presented with that strong argument, you instead ran away to discuss a weaker, independent one. Even if Gay’s claim were shown false (and also shown to be about Shermer, as contra kellym Gay has never confirmed it was him), that has no bearing on Poppy’s claim.
Why the intellectual cowardace, Reinhardt? Why the blind spot over sexual assault? I, and I suspect many others reading this thread, would like your answer. But I recommend you first return to the argument you continue to dodge:
> ______________________
Hahahaha! And here I thought your stupidity was just a pose.
Hint: the “/Slymed” part of that post was an indication that I recognize that that would be a deeply unfair reading of what you had said, and Slymepitters are known (to non-Slymers, of course) for using such unfair tactics. It was a twofer of mockery.
For the record, such unfair interpretations are hardly necessary to conclude that you obviously don’t give a fuck about women in the movement. Your ongoing defense of including a known harasser at skeptical and atheist events is testimony enough to that fact.
Would you put the probability that the statement “Michael Shermer is a sexual harasser” is true at below or above 50%, Damion?
Am I to understand, SallyStrange, that “Michael Shermer is a sexual harasser” is the same as “Michael Shermer has sexually harassed at least one person in his entire life” for our purposes? If that is what you’re asking, I’d say the odds are relatively high. Take the dropped chicken incident, for example.
“Ah, so you trust third-party witnesses more than you trust the victim herself.”
She said it happened, he said it never happened. Need someone to break the tie, HJ.
Damion Reinhardt @48
Damion Reinhardt because of his hyperskepticism and his outright lying.
@HJ Hornbeck #46
I knew that, and left it out of my brief description because I knew that Reinhardt would go exactly where he’s gone with it.
(P.S. It isn’t just Poppy. Brian Thompson heard DJ talk about the incident as well. And hasn’t Barbara Drescher also admitted that she’d heard DJ discuss the incident?)
Let me repeat the rest of my comment, slightly rephrased:
If Grothe admitted it publicly, Reinhardt would then decide that DJ could of course be lying or mistaken, and without video evidence of the scene in question not inviting Shermer to the things is a grave injustice
In other words, Reinhardt’s “skepticism” comes down to this: without 100% certainty, we are not justified in acting on evidence.
Given the obvious ontological impossibility of having 100% certainty about anything, I must assume that Reinhardt checks to make sure his bedroom floor is still there before getting out of bed in the morning.
Of course! Damion’s next feint is–OK MAAAAYBE that happened but it was just a one time thing fueled by alcohol! He was intoxicated!–
–which means the accounts of EVERY SINGLE OTHER person who’s witnessed sexually inappropriate behavior by Shermer will be subjected to the same hyperskeptical scrutiny.
You’d never get a guilty verdict in a court of law under Damion’s Sooper Skeptical Rools,
except for those crimes that were committed in front of multiple witnessesoops, problems with witness testimony.Damion, you may be a “skeptic,” but you’d have difficulty reasoning your way out of a mime’s invisible box.
Reinhardt @78:
Fascinating. One, because your ignorance, misunderstanding, or rejection of Bayesian inference has interesting implications for a science-loving skeptic.
Two, because this is now the forth time you’ve ran away from the argument I made in comment #53. I considered it so effortless that I did it subconsciously the first time around. It took me longer to write two words that work through the logic!
And yet you, again, retreat to a weaker argument rather that consider a stronger one. I’m not even going as far as SallyStrange at the moment, all I’m asking is a simple multiple-choice question:
1) Do you reject P1, and argue Poppy never made her claim about Groethe and Shermer?
2) Do you reject P2, and argue it isn’t probable that Poppy is telling the truth?
3) Do you reject P3, and argue it isn’t probable that Groethe is telling the truth?
4) Do you accept all the premises but reject C1, and concede you are holding an unreasonable position?
5) Do you accept C1, and agree it is more likely than not that Shermer sexually assaulted someone?
Pick an answer, or concede your cowardace:
> _____________________
HJ,
Did you provide your support (like maybe a hyperlink) for P1 in this thread or in another thread? I’m missing it somehow and would be very interested to read what exactly Ms. Poppy wrote. My apologies if it was merely oversight, there is a lot to wade through here and I do not care to respond to everything.
What a coward.
“Damion Reinhardt because of his hyperskepticism and his outright lying.” – Al Dente
Alas! My burgeoning crusade to become a Famous Skeptic take over Beigeland dies stillborn.
“What a coward.”
That may well be so, SallyStrange, but this feedback isn’t particularly helpful.
What a lazy coward.
Jesus tap-dancing Christ on a plate of frijoles rancheros. He’s been arguing for two days now and he hasn’t read what Carrie Poppy wrote.
You don’t need “feedback.” You need to examine your own goddamned bias and take your blinders off.
Y’know, whenever I find myself in threads on a certain ugly, spreading mess in the atheoblogoseptosphere, I keep thinking of this Simpson’s bit. Homer, growing the evil, mutant tomato cross. Lisa, trying to point out to him he’s got to do something. And somehow, Homer, the one guy who obviously actually _could_ do something, and with some despatch–possibly, one suspects, still with an eye on his heretofore obscene profits–is expressing his flummoxed sense of complete powerlessness over the situation. ‘I know, honey, but what can I do as an individual. I wouldn’t know where to begin…’
No idea why. Just crossed my mind, I guess. Isn’t free association an odd thing.
https://www.facebook.com/carriepoppy/posts/916696825331
Alas, I’m getting a “Page not found” error. Is that somehow my fault?
… umm… that was supposed to be ‘skeptosphere’…
(/But okay, Swype. Your suggestion has merit.)
Poor Damion, a victim of the ineluctable fact that information is only ever available on Facebook anymore. How sad.
Oh come on Damion – you know how Facebook works. It’s not a public post. That’s why I used Jason’s quote of it as a source. He quotes it directly. Jason’s quote is the source. Yes you have to trust that he quoted accurately, but there are a lot of people who can confirm that he did.
Nice try, slimers. Not disguised enough. Your feet and knees and elbows showed through.
“Jason’s quote is the source. Yes you have to trust that he quoted accurately, but there are a lot of people who can confirm that he did.”
Ophelia,
Let us say I take Jason’s quote of Carrie as read, at least for the sake of argument. How does that get us to the affirmation HJ has labelled as P1?
So to sum up, Damion can’t figure out how
gets us to
A True Skeptic™, ladies and gentlemen!
Every sworn statement in every court record was testified to in a courtroom?
Call me hyperskeptical, but I don’t think that is actually true.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck/2013/11/04/carrie-poppy-and-the-nay-sayers/#comment-186842
Quoth the screechymonkey “…anyone else know anything about this — the parties, a case number…?”
As I alluded to above, I would be very interested in seeing what was actually said instead of reading unsworn heasay about it.
*hearsay
** Hail Tpyos!
Damion no doubt you would be very interested in being a god and having a god’s eye view of everything, too, but life doesn’t work like that.
Damion, you have:
1. Carrie Poppy telling you Grothe said on multiple occasions that he witnessed Shermer grope a TAM speaker.
2. Brian Thompson telling you Grothe said on multiple occasions that he witnessed Shermer grope a TAM speaker.
3. Barbara Drescher, an employee of Grothe, telling you the victim confirmed the incident and that the incident is widely known.
4. The victim herself confirming the incident well enough that you’ve been posting pictures from the event where it happened.
Go on. Assign a probability that this incident–Shermer groping Gay–happened. Stop playing around. Stop telling us what information you’d like to see. This is the information you have, right here, right now. Assign that probability.
Damion @98,
In case you’re implying that I’m on your side on this: I was asking that because I was going to offer to try to dig up more info on it, not because I was playing hyperskeptic and refusing to believe what multiple sources have confirmed. I did not, and do not, have any reason to doubt Carrie Poppy or the others on this.
How about you assign a probability then. What percentage of sworn statements testified to in courtrooms are actually true? Greater or less than 50%?
Have you worked out yet the connection between Carrie Poppy’s statements and HJ’s P1, Damion?
I’m very disappointed in George Hrab contributing to the “there’s no problem at TAM” lies in John Rael’s new Ten Things To Do At TAM video. I know Hrab has openly criticized the skepchicks before on his podcast, but this was a real surprise.
The warning they give not to talk about “drama” and therefore not look out for each other is the equivalent of gaslighting in my mind. A sensible approach, rather than “nothing ever happened”, is choice.
It’s also amusing to see a skeptic fall for the conjunction fallacy.
Each premise in an inductive argument carries a probability. As these probabilities are dependent on one another, they combine multiplicatively. The probability of C1 being true is the odds of P1 times P2 times P3. As in the real world nothing is absolutely certain, each of those probabilities is less than one, and thus as the multiplications tally up the overall probability goes down. This is the mathematical basis for “Ockham’s Razor,” and explains why the P1 * P1A variation of my argument is weaker than the original one (if you’re confused, wait for the mod queue to clear).
But this also means “DJ Grothe testified in court, and the court case number is X” should be treated as less likely to be true than “DJ Grothe testified in court.” As human beings have a shitty understanding of probability theory, though, we frequently fall for this fallacy.
The “Which court? Which state? Which case? What did DJ actually say?” bit back in #47 also demonstrates you’ve missed the core of the argument. It’s not that Grothe testified in court, it’s that he made a statement he considered true, under threat of state sanction via a temporary removal of his rights. In legal standards, he was certain of his statement beyond a reasonable doubt…. assuming what I contend is the most plausible explanation, of course (mod queue).
Knowing which state he testified in does not alter the fact that he testified. Knowing which court or case or what he said is part of a deductive argument:
But note there’s a hidden premise there: “Grothe testified.” As that’s all we really care about, the argument is redundant. Likewise, “Grothe testified Shermer sexually assaulted someone” is the core premise behind “Grothe said X,” and by the same logic the latter is also redundant.
What amuses me most of all, above that conjunction fallacy thing, is demonstrating that a “social justice warrior” with no background in the skeptical movement has a better understanding of skepticism than a self-identified “skeptic.”
Convincing him doesn’t even matter. The whole point, whether believed or not, was that women need to be wary of someone who has had a history with such behavior. Awareness of the probability that it is true is really all that fucking matters. Not determining with 100% certainty that it did happen does fuck all for what the intended effect was all along. Getting Shermer blackballed is not the point. That’s a red herring. Keeping women safe is the point. For whatever reasons, protecting Shermer from being blackballed is more important than the safety of women at conferences to certain people within the “skeptic movement.” So spreading the word was necessary to ensure such safety.
So shove your hyperskepticism, it’s not even relevant Damion.
Oh geez, I’m feeling silly. Rather than calling that a “deductive argument,” it would have been more accurate to call it a tautology. Consider:
Each of the statements after 1. are logically equivalent to it, containing “no useful [additional] information” as RationalWiki explains, and hence are redundant as per above. In my defense, all deductive arguments are tautologically equivalent to their premises, so it’s easy to confuse the two.
Seriously? WTF? Does he actually think it makes a difference whether or not the statement was taken in an actual courtroom? Or is this simply the silliest attempt yet to drown out the signal with noise?
HJ Hornbeck, your attempt to school this foo and his slimey little friends (they’re following this thread–Hi Slimers! Hi DJ!–it’s beyond them, but they’re reading it–)
–is laudable, if futile.
@Hj Hornbeck #105
It is amusing in a frustrating sort of way, but not surprising. I’ve seen the phrase “cargo cult skepticism,” but really, skepticism is cargo cult argumentation and critical thinking. Bygum it can get to the bottom of ghost videos, though.
“Assign a probability that this incident–Shermer groping Gay–happened.”
Dr. Gay characterized ths incident as such:
That sounds like a (failed) attempted groping to me, but it is sort of had to say. The probabilty that *something* bad happened seems pretty high.
Were Poppy or Thompson or Drescher actually at Dragon*Con or are they all relaying what DJ said about what happened?
As my 11th grade chemistry teacher would say, “What do you think?”
Come on Damion. Show that all those years of involvement with the “skeptical movement” where you’re supposed to learn critical thinking and fun stuff like that weren’t wasted.
The information is contained right here in this thread. You can do this!
So, at least two incidents involving inappropriate sexual behaviour probably happened at different events? What is the threshold for taking action to protect others from that behaviour, keeping in mind that the action is not put him in prison?
“I did not, and do not, have any reason to doubt Carrie Poppy or the others on this.”
Disgruntled former employees are not exactly widely known for producing unbiased accounts of their former employers, screechymonkey. Carrie obviously has it in for DJ, so I’m not going to place great faith in her account of his words.
“Grothe testified in a deposition or a court room in a specific area…”
If it was indeed a deposition, HJ, then proposition P1 is plainly false. When you are making (or propagating) the sort of accusations that may decide someone’s fate in the movement, you should try to be factually precise about it.
“It’s not that Grothe testified in court, it’s that he made a statement he considered true, under threat of state sanction via a temporary removal of his rights.”
Do you have any idea what the substance of the actual statement was, HJ? Certainly “some of this has already been on court record” isn’t exactly what we could call precise. It does offer a ray of hope that someday we will get to read what was said under oath, but that is about it.
Giving hostage to fortune, for now, I’d be perfectly content to believe whatever DJ actually said. I know the guy, he seems like a generally righteous dude. Now we just need to figure out where to find these damnable court records.
“Getting Shermer blackballed is not the point.”
I don’t think that is quite true, throwaway, since several people have called for him to stop being invited or even allowed to attend. Carrie Poppy wrote “Do not allow people who have assaulted others at your conference, or you have reasonable suspicion that they have done so, back at the conference.” SallyStrange @15 says that the community should count on organizers to “disinvite people who are known to be sexual harassers and sexual assaulters.” Ophelia agreed @13 that she wants organizers to stop inviting him to speak with the caveat that it should not be called blackballing.
Personally, I tend to agree with Poppy that the point of the exercise should be to identify the people likely to make a given place unsafe and then keep them out and although I would want somewhat more confidence than “reasonable suspicion” to implement that solution, it seems like the way to go.
Your alternate solution, throwaway, seems to be that women will be kept safe via rumors of accusations that make their way around from the 2% of us who keep up with blogs to the rest of the secularist or skeptic movement. This sounds far less effective than Ophelia’s suggestion that we simply stop inviting known harassers, Sally’s suggestion that we disinvite them, or Carrie’s suggestion that we “[d]o not allow people…back at the conference.”
“What is the threshold for taking action to protect others from that behaviour, keeping in mind that the action is not put him in prison?”
That depends on what particular remedial action you have in mind, Bernard. Harsher penalties require more certainty, one would think.
What evidence do you have for her “having it in”? I don’t suppose anyone has testified in court that Carrie Poppy has it in for DJ. It’s not the dreaded “hearsay” which you so readily discount when it’s hearsay that provides you with conclusions you don’t like, is it?
And, Throwaway is correct. The point is not to punish Michael Shermer. The point is to keep other people safe from sexual harassment and assault. Not inviting him or disinviting him from events, not asking to speak, etc., are means to that end. I suppose you could still invite him to speak but keep him in, like, a mobile cage or something. If you’re THAT into Michael Shermer. And that determined to demonstrate your contempt for the concerns of women.
Also, “reasonable suspicion” is the bar that police have to exceed to arrest someone or get a warrant. Why are you setting the bar higher when it comes to simply excluding someone from social events to ensure other attendees that management doesn’t allow sexual harassment?
No, it’s not PLAINLY false. It’s partially false. The testimony happened, but not in a courtroom. The location of the testimony has no bearing on whether the content of the testimony was false or not, so this is a red herring. One that was already addressed.
Truly, your Skeptiness™ is dizzying.
I just remembered the term for what Damion’s doing: Gish Gallop. Incredible.
Yes, as soon as any argument he raises is refuted, he moves on without addressing that he was wrong.
DID you ever figure out the connection between Carrie Poppy’s statements and HJ’s P1, Damion? I mean, you’ve made reference to P1 a couple of times since you claimed not to see the connection. Did anything change? Did you work out what it was you were missing?
No. Not a penalty for Shermer. Taking action to protect others is what I wrote. That may require that Shermer is not invited, but the primary reason for that is not to punish him.
If one of your friends made the others uncomfortable and that was because they had probably made inappropriate sexual remarks to one and probably attempted to grope another, would you continue to invite them to parties?
What more certainty would you require? I mean, you could ask the alleged harasser, who would of course answer the allegation truthfully, or you could wait for your other friends to provide evidence of sufficient value to convict in a court of criminal law. You could do that.
SallyStrange @114 — I have it on good authority that Carrie wanted DJ fired for “continuous unethical behavior” and that she said that his “prejudice toward women was one undeniable factor.” If I believed that DJ was really that bad (as I imagine most of the B&W regulars do) then surely I’d have it in for him as well.
Also, let’s just note that Shermer failing to actually grab hold of Dr. Gay’s breasts does not mean that he failed to sexually harass her. What is the difference between a “failed” sexual assault and a successful one from the perspective of the person whose breasts are being targeted? Lack of bruising? It’s still alarming and humiliating either way. That Shermer tried ought to be enough. Damion’s nit-picky focus on Shermer’s “failure” or “success” in actually grasping the breasts of another TAM speaker is kinda creepy.
Reinhardt @113:
There we go, a clear attack on P2. I’m short on time at the moment, but I’ll deal with that one later today (I hope).
And if it was not, then P1 is plainly true. That’s the beauty of inductive logic: you can entertain both possibilities simultaneously and yet still reach a conclusion. Do you know anything about induction, Reinhardt?
Josh @118:
Not quite, in order to be a true Gish Gallop there has to be an avalanche of questionable claims that the opponent can’t deal with in a given timespan. He is does rely on many of the same fallacies that creationists do, however, like playing with the bar of evidence:
Or ignoring counter-arguments and blindly repeating their original argument, as if that makes something more true:
And, of course, attacking a weaker argument when presented with a stronger, independent one. It’s a disappointing day when a self-identified “skeptic” uses the same tactics of denial as creationists and 9/11 Truthers, and other self-identified “skeptics” will cheer them on.
What a curious double standard. Carrie Poppy’s testimony is trustworthy when it comes to establishing that she bears a grudge against DJ Grothe, which means that… Carrie Poppy’s testimony is untrustworthy when it comes to establishing that Carrie Poppy heard DJ Grothe tell several different people that he witnessed Michael Shermer sexually harassing people.
You believe Carrie Poppy when believing her serves your predetermined conclusions, but you don’t believe her when believing her doesn’t. Skepticism™ in action!
And of course asking Damion to consider whether the probability that Poppy is lying about P1 is lowered by the fact that other people have reported the exact same thing would be asking too much of this Skeptic™. Context must be abolished, everything exists in isolation from everything else. Let the Gish Gallop continue!
And failing to actually make the desired contact in one sexual assault, certainly won’t reassure any potential victims that he will fail if they are targeted in future.
The outcome of the risk assessment remains the same.
Josh @118:
With a side order of Ham: WERE YOU THERE?!?!?!?!?!
“Taking action to protect others is what I wrote.”
Penalties are generally designed to protect others. This is true in rugby (sin bin), in contract law (liquidated damages), in the penal code, etc. If you’d prefer to use a different term to describe restricting someone’s access to a given venue for the sake of others, it doesn’t matter overmuch to me.
“…would you continue to invite them to parties?”
Probably not, but I’m puzzled by the way people keep focusing tightly on invitation here. People can just buy tickets and show up to events like TAM, or just plain show up to events like Skepticon or Skeptech. What action should be taken to protect others in that event?
“The outcome of the risk assessment remains the same.”
Clearly, but I wasn’t doing risk assessment. Instead, I was trying to assess whether the original events had suffered some degree of exaggeration over the course of multiple retellings. This isn’t exactly an unknown phenomenon, and it’s not nearly hyperskeptical to look out for it.
I don’t find it curious at all, Sally. People are more reliable when speaking of their own motivations than when recounting other people’s testimony, especially other people that they want to see fired.
Really? How do you know? Do you have a citation for that?
(Two can play this extremely boring, pointless game. Consider coming out and saying what the fuck your point is at some point.)
(Any scholarly citations for the reliability of different types of testimony are going to come from the dreaded realm of social sciences, of course, and if Damion start regarding the social sciences as a legitimate field of scientific inquiry, he’s going to have trouble maintaining his hyperskeptical stance vis-a-vis the need for feminism and social justice.)
Wut?? People are very UNreliable when speaking of their own motivations. Fundamental attribution error? Cognitive dissonance?
That’s not even skepticism 101, it’s skepticism for toddlers.
Translation: “I was fishing around for anything, no matter how silly or trivial, that might cast doubt on the entirely reasonable conclusion that Michael Shermer is a serial sexual harasser who should not enjoy the level of fame and respect that he does among my peers.”
That seems a rather pointless discussion to have. The point is that penalties are generally understood (and defined by the O.E.D. of you really insist on semantic arguments) to be punishments. The primary reason to exclude probable harassers is to protect those who are attending events.
Invitation to speak, to lead, in this case. But a ticket can be thought of as an invitation for the purposes of this discussion, since the organisers will reserve the right to refuse entry/continued participation (certainly if they have effective harassment policies).
You should be. Firstly, risk assessment is a probability based exercise and therefore a reliable tool for any skeptic, if used properly. Secondly, risk assessment is what responsible people do to protect others.
Are you claiming that there is some meaningful distinction between trying to touch a stranger’s breast and actually achieving it? Or groping and groping specifically targeted towards a breast?
You’ve already acknowledged that Shermer probably behaved badly at two different events – why is that not sufficient for him to be excluded from future events?
It’s entirely possible, Damion, that every single person–6 separate accounts, I think–who has recounted either witnessing someone else’s account of Shermer sexually harassing people or directly witnessing it is deluded, mistaken, exaggerating, or lying. Possible, of course, is not the same thing as probable. (One would think you would have figured THAT out after so many years hanging out with Skeptics™. Oh well.)
Go ahead, Damion. Assign a probability (with a NUMBER, even if it’s just less than or greater than 0.5) that ALL of these accounts are so corrupted by mistakes or dishonesty that it’s totally responsible and not at all disrespectful to women and anyone who cares about ending sexual harassment to continue to invite Shermer to public events.
[Editor’s note: I’m changing the time stamp on this so that people won’t overlook it, because it’s been in the queue for 12 hours, but note that it came in 12 hours ago so it fits in that stage of the argument. OB]
Sheesh, I leave for a few hours…
OK, Reinhardt, your primary attacks are on P1 and P2; it is more unlikely that Carrie Poppy claimed DJ Grothe testified in a courtroom than it is likely, and it is more unlikely that Carrie Poppy is telling the truth than it is likely. I’ll admit I wrote P1 based off of memory, and given another chance I’d word it differently.
But P1 is by no means indefensible. First off, this isn’t just the word of Thibeault; other people that you trust more have backed up the fact that she made her claims. Now as noted above she didn’t explicitly say “DJ Grothe testified in a courtroom,” something you pounced on in #95 and #97.
You forget I was making an inductive argument: They don’t have the same rules as deductive arguments, for instance:
Mucking up a premise in a deductive argument is fatal, but in an inductive argument you can repair the damage by adding another premise, at the cost of weakening the argument:
P1A: … which is the most plausible interpretation of “the major players already told a judge” and “court record, under oath,” among other key statements in her Facebook post.
Because who are the “major players” here? The most plausible candidates are Shermer, Grothe, the victim, and Poppy herself. In an earlier part of the post, she says Grothe bragged about in on multiple occasions to multiple people, a statement supported by multiple people. As the head of the JREF and a key person in organizing TAM, he’d be an important person to call forward as a witness. And as for the court thing, I’ve done some digging; while you can get sworn testimony out of a courtroom, which could be subsequently entered into a court record, there wouldn’t be a judge present at that time.
If you wish to argue P1 and P1A are more unlikely than likely, you have to present an alternative scenario where “the major players already told a judge” is not most plausibly explained by “DJ Grothe testified in a courtroom.” If you fail to do so, you are opposing a reasonable conclusion for no good reason, and thus acting contrary to reason.
“Are you claiming that there is some meaningful distinction between trying to touch a stranger’s breast and actually achieving it?”
In terms of intent? Probably not, unless we’re talking about a last-minute realization and pull back. Which is possible, I suppose, but too speculative to seriously put forward.
“Or groping and groping specifically targeted towards a breast?”
Obviously, erogenous zones are more off-limits than, say, shoulders or forearms.
…risk assessment is what responsible people do to protect others.
Since I’m not in a position to invite or disinvite or exclude the alleged serial harasser under discussion, any risk assessment I might do is purely academic.
“You’ve already acknowledged that Shermer probably behaved badly at two different events – why is that not sufficient for him to be excluded from future events?”
That is a perfectly valid question, and to be honest I’m sort of on the fence about it. The “naughty girl” remark would be merely playful banter under different circumstances, but the alleged lunging/groping seems well beyond the pale. I’ve no idea why Plait invited Shermer to speak at TAM 7 in 2009, assuming that he knew about what went down at the Pimps and Hoes party back in 2008. I also have no idea why Poppy is focusing her wrath on Grothe (respecting Shermer) given the precedent set at TAM 7.
I will just warn you that I’m not going to distract from the established thread by continuing my slightly tangental discussion, I am very aware that my questions offer much more wriggle-room than the questions from Hj Hornbeck.
Basically, you have the opportunity to strongly condemn someone you accept has probably at least attempted sexual assault, and whether or not anyone else has reacted well, you are hiding behind the therefore (in your opinion) significantly lower probability that the allegations are manufactured, in order to avoid doing so.
I’m not sure my questions offer many more hairs worth splitting.
Damion Reinhardt,
An attempt to touch someone’s breast without consent is an assault whether that attempt succeeds or is foiled at the last minute by whatever means – intended victim jumps back, nearby person places himself in between, Jesus Christ himself arrives on a bright orange Vespa, whatever.
Why? Because assault is putting someone in fear that they are about to be touched, that old mens rea thing again.
We do not need you to pronounce a final judgement. For a start you do not have sufficient information either about these events or about life generally but also you are evidently incapable of being objective.
Someone who expends this many pixels trying to pick holes in one set of stories and to find excuses for the other – curiously divided entirely on gender lines – is neither a skeptic nor a Skeptic™ but a partisan of that political movement which believes the law should not apply to people who are even slightly famous. Oh and male.
Maureen Brian,
Greetings! Nice to meet you.
Mens rea is a legal term of art the refers to the mental state of the perpetrator rather than the victim. As a concept, it flies in the face of the “intent is not magic” mantra that you may have heard elsewhere on this website.
As to whether Shermer actually put Gay in a state of fear that evening, it is curious to see them smiling together with his arm around her at the party, presumably after they were first introduced. This is somewhat tricky to square with her narrative about that night.
Thank the gods. At this remove in time and space all I have to go off of is unsworn hearsay from someone who apparently wants to get her former boss fired, and maybe a couple of other well-after-the-fact retellings. The thing about retelling, though, is that things tend to become more exaggerated over time, as PZ pointed out earlier.
Oh, come now. I never ever said, anywhere, at any time, that anyone should refrain from filing a police report and pressing charges whenever they are criminally assaulted. You would do better to criticize something I actually wrote — there are so many pixels to choose from.
Because you’d never, ever go around suggesting that other people’s risk assessments and their recommendations and judgments based on those risk assessments are so unreasonable. Except you do, and that requires some other (lower) assessment of the risk posed by Shermer to be declared “reasonable”. So you’re either doing your own risk assessment that doesn’t match up with what you’ve said here, or all those suggestions are based on a “reasonable” assessment you’ve made without actually considering the evidence.
Which is it?
Whoops, missed a spot:
Reinhardt @114:
It is precise, as it denotes Grothe or someone testified the event occurred beyond a reasonable doubt, under threat of state sanction. I pointed this out earlier, and again you don’t even bother to acknowledge that, preferring to repeat your assertions.
I don’t compare you to a creationist lightly. But, back to P2.
Few would disagree that Poppy does not like her former bosses at the JREF. You are arguing that because she was disgruntled, her accusations of Grothe’s blatant sexism and ethics violations are unfounded. That’s a non-sequeter; it’s possible that she is disgruntled and therefore taking it out on Grothe, that she’s disgruntled because Grothe was blatantly sexist and unethical. One is justified, while the other is not.
If we deny the possibility of blatant sexism on the part of Grothe, though, we ignore the fact she has repeatedly explained that the she left the JREF because of Grothe’s sexism and unethical behavior. This has been a persistent theme to this day.
And I already mentioned back in comment #46 that her speech carries serious consequences. Committing libel over the contents of a legal matter should be a trivial matter for the courts, yet despite having the means, motive, and opportunity neither Shermer nor Grothe have attempted a defamation suit. To the “it can’t have happened if they didn’t take it to court” crowd, that’s damning right there. To the rest of us, the silence of both over this matter suggests those two cannot refute the claim, or see insufficient cause to refute it. Either case speaks poorly of them.
Your task, Reinhardt, is to come up with a plausible alternative scenario that has Poppy being disgruntled with Grothe, making public statements that suggest it was due to unethical/sexist behavior, and having a strong legal disincentive to make such statements, she nonetheless made false statements. For my part, I can only think of one scenario:
Carrie Poppy is Evil. As in, she behaves in harmful ways contrary to logic and reason because that is her intrinsic nature. It’s no small irony that your best alternative is religious thinking, forcing you to fully embrace your creationist tactics.
I doubt you’ll make that move, which is a shame because even you concede a plausible alternative scenario is difficult to craft:
Damion Reinhardt @122:
If you don’t believe DJ is that bad, though, then you must think Poppy is a liar. So what is your alternative scenario, then? If you fail to came up with one, you are again unreasonably rejecting the most reasonable answer. The longer you go without providing that scenario, the more justified we are in claiming you are a denialist, on par with a creationist.
Your silence will speak volumes.
Damion –
I told you – this is not Freethought Blogs. It’s Butterflies and Wheels (which is a blog rather than a website). It’s not part of a group blog, it’s a blog on a network. It’s independent. Stop addressing your comments to Freethought Blogs.
And now it becomes obvious why Damion so assidiously avoids making positive statements.
Not really. Pointing out that a thing does not have magical powers is not the same thing as asserting that that thing never matters.
Translation: Damion thinks Dr. Pamela Gay is deluded or a liar. He can’t dismiss this possibility. Because photo. SKEPTINESS!
We are attempting to change cultural norms and social mores; your only contribution is to command us to go to the police. Since most of what we are trying to do pertains more to society and culture than it does to law, you are effectively attempting to silence us, whether you admit this to yourself consciously or not. Sexual assault such as has been described here has been illegal for a few decades. It continues to happen because people like you reject any effort to get social mores and cultural norms to keep up with the law. We don’t outlaw things because we love calling the police. We outlaw things because we want them to happen less, or not at all, if possible.
So yeah. The act of attempting to cast doubt on the idea that a harasser is really a harasser, to suggest that a highly respected female scientist might be lying to everyone about her experience of harassment on the basis of a photo of her smiling with her alleged harasser is an intensely political, and politically very sexist act.
Let us pause to note the continued lack of citations regarding the reliability of self-reporting motives vs. the reliability of self-reporting the behavior of others that one has witnessed.
[TRIGGER WARNING: Shit’s about to get real.]
Reinhardt @141:
No, not in the slightest. Human beings have a variety of reactions to trauma, which can range from extreme distress to numbness, confusion, and disorientation. It’s entirely possible Gay went compliant or confused, and Shermer took advantage or simply didn’t realize what state she was in.
It’s also possible she was in denial. That’s a common reaction to sexual assault, and it would result in her shrugging it off as “a drunk ass tried to grab my boobs,” something she admits to doing in her narrative, and I’ve already quoted in this thread:
Thirdly, coming forward with your story is frequently worse than the assault itself. Women get this hammered into their head, especially, and hear horror stories of police walking all over the victim or the retaliation they face from their attackers, and this knowledge is a major reason why most sexual assaults go unreported. Up in Canada, a mere 6% ever make it to the police. While there’s no way Gay could have predicted the aftermath of the assault, what did happen fits perfectly with this background:
If you were a proper skeptic, you would have done a bit of research, or at least held off acting authoritative on a subject you don’t know. Instead, you have your head shoved so far up your thought-leader’s ass that you’ve gone full-blown creationist and become an apologist for sexual assault, policing how a (probable) victim should act based on nothing but pure, distilled ignorance. You don’t even realize the full extent of how contemptible you are, even after a half-dozen people in this thread have been shouting it in your face.
My Dog, I honestly wish you’d embrace your inner creationist and convert to Catholicism. The skeptic community would be better for it.
“Disgruntled former employees” is a phrase usually associated with people who have been fired.
Carrie Poppy was not fired. She quit.
She left at no small personal cost (she did not have another job waiting for her).
Bit of backstory: Carrie knew DJ socially before he hired her. They used to hang out. She knew him and had no negative feelings toward him when she went to work at the JREF.
So, why did Carrie quit, Damion?
That is correct. And would explain Carrie’s quitting the JREF and her subsequent animus toward Grothe, would it not? That’s the explanation Carrie herself has offered.
It’s a scenario that fits the facts we have, and also meshes well with the general hypothesis laid out here regarding Shermer’s behavior: Shermer is a serial sexual harasser* (at best); Grothe has shown disregard for women by covering up what he knows about Shermer and continuing to promote and invite him to TAM.
What’s your hypothesis, Damion? Why did Carrie quit JREF? What’s her beef with Grothe? Why have so many people expressed disgust with Michael Shermer’s behavior toward women?
Is it all a big Conspiracy by FreethoughtBlogs joined by a mysteriously “disgruntled” Carrie Poppy? Is she lying about DJ testifying to witnessing Shermer groping someone? Why? What motivation could she have for that?
.
* There is of course no reason to assume that this particular groping story is the only one Grothe knew, or even witnessed; it’s just the only one we’ve been told he’s testified to.
Damion @ 141:
Thank you for finally admitting that! I had a suspicion you thought Shermer’s target was lying, even though you denied it in #35. And, as a skeptic, I’d hate to accuse someone of something without proof. Do you think Shermer’s target wasn’t asked back to TAM because she lied about the incident? Because I think she hasn’t been asked back to TAM because she told the truth.
Someone’s taking a picture so they’re all leaning in for the shot, but Gay does not look very comfortable and chummy w/ Shermer. The photo looks incredibly awkward.
Damion is a lost cause. He’s such a dedicated misogynist that he has decided that his biases and guesses mean more than women’s account of events they actually experienced. Why bother with him? He’s made up his mind that women should be assumed to be liars who sully men’s” good names” out of pettiness and spite when they come forward about harassment, assault or rape. Discussions with him are pointless.
Damion Reinhardt @ 141,
Greetings my arse!
Of course I know what mens rea means. Many people do and I have the good fortune of being able to remember much of my A Level Latin. I’ve also had some legal training though I’ve no formal qualification in the law. I’ve written a couple of articles on technical subjects for law journals. You sure you want to pursue this line?
I also, Damion, have this very strange habit of not writing more than the odd caustic aside, either for publication or on the internet, unless I’m fairly sure I know what I’m talking about. I look things up. I ask for second opinions. Of course, I might still be wrong and, unlike you, I actually engage with the persons who disagree, who have more recent information or who see the question from a different angle.
But back to the question of mens rea and its relevance to breast clutching, whether in the case of Dr Gay or more generally. It is perfectly possible for women, using her very own brains, to work out what is going to happen next when they see a hand approaching at breast level – just as you, I hope, would be able to work out what would happen next when you saw someone drunkenly driving a 10 tonne truck straight at you. I sincerely hope you would be able to work that out in time but perhaps not.
That is why it is the “putting someone in fear of” and not the physical contact which is the test for assault.
As for smiling later, it will come as a total surprise to you but to no regular on this blog that women learn to perform being nice, being amenable, just as men learn to perform their own usually narrow version of masculinity. It’s about power structures and social expectations. I can remember a speech I made in Northern Ireland where the people who were hostile to what I was about to say had packed the first 5 rows to glare at me. The ones who wanted to hear were, in effect, having to hear me over a wall of hostility. There was quite a bit of acting then, I assure you, so that I kept my nerve.
As for your final paragraph, how long have you been hanging out on the internet? How many times have you read a woman’s account of being harassed, assaulted or raped then getting a totally useless response from a boss, a principal, a conference organiser, the police? And how many times have you read a woman say that she reported and was immediately asked what she was wearing, what wrong she had done to provoke and thus be responsible for something which, on paper, is a criminal offence? And how many women have you heard say that they did not report because there was good reason to think they would not be believed?
So, reporting offensive behaviour, Damion, is not a solution. If it were a solution we would be using it. Just how stupid do you think we are?
As for what faction you belong to, you have before you a series of first hand accounts and of witness accounts. These are evidence, not hearsay as you tried to imply. You also have accounts, again from witnesses, of people discussing a certain person’s behaviour.
So you have quite enough to accept the strong suspicion that some of this, if not all, is true or has much truth to it. And the rest of us are perfectly justified and sensible to say that there is evidence of a pattern of behaviour and also evidence that some notables have proved to be pretty useless at dealing with these matters.
If you want to destroy a case which already exists then the sort of hair-splitting, tweezer-wielding, buttock-clenchingly repetitive stuff you have been coming up with for days is not enough. Nor is the cod psychology.
You need proof. Do you have it? No, you don’t and that proves that your stance is is both political and partisan. It’s also unutterably boring.
I’d like Reinhardt to tell us why he rejects the evidence of Shermer’s sexual harassment. I want to know why
Reinhardt thinks Shermer is a good guy who should continue to be invited to conventions. Lastly I want Reinhardt to justify his misogyny. And yes, Reinhardt, I think you hate women. Exhibit A is your hyperskepticism about whether or not Shermer is a sexual harrasser.
Jackie the wacky, I understand your feelings but I think it’s worth pursuing the argument. It isn’t about convincing Damion personally. Rest assured other people are reading this thread.
I vote for laying the evidence out for all to see and keeping certain dishonest people’s feet to the fire.
I’d like to add my observation to amplify Stacy’s comment above at #153. To an observer such as myself Damion’s comments have resembled the flailing of a drunkard as he thrashes around in search of stable ground.
On the matter of mens rea, the action of attempting to grab someone’s boobs is, as Maureen points out, indicative of an intent to grab boobs, so in this case, it’s not fucking magic. If you actually understood what the phrase means, Damion, you might understand that it actually demolished your argument.
Keep on flailin’.
I’m with Xanthe on the flailing observation, I often don’t agree with Damion but I usually observe that he is more than capable at arguing his points well. Not at all here and quite starkly so. Usually the pitters don’t even try and argue points like this coherently, they just shout out sound bites and run away. Or get blocked due to the lack of content and/or amount of spurious insult. So it is interesting to see Damion try and so thoroughly get his arse handed to him. Mainly because he is spending all his time deflecting and avoiding addressing the simple questions.
> How likely do you think it is that Shermer, as Gay put it, “… tried to sexually assault her in a bar while intoxicated.”? [For me it’s almost certain he did, given the evidence. But I suppose there is always the possibility she is talking about someone else until or unless it’s confirmed.]
> How likely is it that he is a serial harasser? [Much less certain given the accounts of this are mostly anonymous, although more than a few are not so high 90s at least]
Then onto what should the consequences be for members of the community who do this? (ppl of any gender / agender)
> Is it reasonable to “blacklist” them and not invite them to conferences? [Yes, it is. Not just reasonable but essential if the skeptic community wants to be harassment free]
> What standard of evidence is required to determine that is the correct course of action? [The pit fantasy is that ebil feminazis will make up fake anonymous harassment complaints and get people blackballed so they can take over the skeptic movement!!eleventy1! If accounts are anonymous then I think it’s enough that they are out there and known so people can avoid that person. I doubt Shermers get them drunk strategy will be working these days, that’s a win for his anonymous accuser. If however like this one they are confirmed by multiple people then absolutely there should be no invites, disinvites, blacklists, blackballing whatever… Why not? Of course if Shermer had apologised for being drunk and stepping over the line then that’s a different matter. By the sound of it he did the exact opposite.]
As to the picture that Damion presumes is after they were introduced and the grabbing ensued … Well, it looks just as likely to me that his hand not around her in a headlock is moving purposely towards her chest…. But regardless you sound like a million other rape apologists and sexual harassment apologists when you start demanding victims act in exactly the way you expect them to in order to be believed. Her lying is your default position here, that’s fucked up.
So much this.
Oolon @156:
Thirded. False report rates tend to be artificially inflated, as sexual assault cases convicted beyond a reasonable doubt are compared to cases the detectives have a hunch about. The best numbers I’ve seen compare false report prosecutions to sexual assault prosecutions, and come up with a false report rate of 0.6%.
“She’s lying” should never be the default position.
Incidentally, casting around for those numbers got me in the mood to whip up a spreadsheet. I gathered together the assault claims and did a statistical analysis. I bent over backwards to be as charitable as possible; I ignored the misbehavior claims, even though they’d bump up the odds slightly, I assumed a ridiculously high false report rate of 15% (or 25% for anonymous claims and 35% for second-hand anonymous claims), I bet that Grothe would be 5% likely to lie while under oath, took into account the possibility of overlap between them all, and finally assumed Shermer would be 80% less likely to assault someone than a typical North American male.
The results aren’t that surprising, but it’s good to have some math to back up your intuition. Speaking of which, can I get some peer review over here? I’m self-trained in this, and the spreadsheet’s a bit complicated, so a sanity check would be much appreciated.
I like your spreadsheet, HJ Hornbeck, but am not qualified to peer review it.
Hj Hornbeck @159
I looked over your spreadsheet and I’m impressed. I’m an accountant and I was trained to do statistical analysis like that. Unfortunately I don’t actually do such analysis and my training was a long time ago. But based on my memory of how to do it, I didn’t see any obvious errors or contradictions.
Al Dente @161:
Excellent, because I had one of those 2AM “oh shit I did it wrong” moments. 😛
Let’s say Grothe is 95% confident someone was assaulted. Being infinitely mouthy, he tells an infinite number of people this. How confident should we be someone was assaulted, based solely on the people he told? 95%. Assuming instead he told only a finite number of people, who blabbed to us, our confidence should be (1 – multi(for all X)(witness X being a liar)) * 95%.
So the proper way to handle chains of witnesses is to take the odds of the original source and multiply their odds by the odds of each chain-link of witnesses. When dealing with Grothe, though, I was putting his original source into the mix multiple times, incorrectly treating dependent witnesses as independent ones. I’ve just cleaned that up, and it helped out Shermer quite a bit; the odds of him assaulting someone fell from 80% to 40% under this updated model, with all the ridiculously conservative probabilities I was plugging in.
If I download the sheet and plunk in more reasonable false report probabilities, in the 2-6% range, the odds of guilt quickly shoot up to 95%, even if I keep the background probability low and the odds of lying by Myers, Poppy and the rest high. That’s one reason why I made the thing public; download it, plunk in values, play around, and come to your own conclusions independent of mine.
Even if you do think the odds are small, low probabilities can still justify action. The odds of you getting into a car crash today are extremely small, yet I bet you put on a seat-belt. The expected cost of not preparing for an accident that does happen is far greater than the cost of preparing for one that doesn’t, so you prepare. The odds of me being assaulted by Shermer are extremely low, but I lose nothing keeping my distance. So why take that risk?
A conference organizer is in a much worse spot than I am. Even if the odds of Shermer assaulting a specific person are very low, he’s mingling with dozens or hundreds of guests. They have to weigh the benefits of bringing in him against the expected cost of having an assault at the conference, and compare that to the benefits of bringing in another A-lister against the expected cost of that person assaulting someone.
Even if the odds are low, it pays to keep some distance.
DJ Grothe has privately threatened Shermer’s target.
I guess blacklisting Shermer’s target from TAM isn’t punishment enough anymore.
Does Damion Reinhardt still believe that DJ Grothe is a “generally righteous dude” (@114) now that there is email evidence that DJ has threatened the target of a sexual assault attempt? Or Does Damion think that the skeptical position is to assume that the target is lying (again)? Or does DJ’s threat to her make him even more righteous to Damion?
kellym @163:
Technically, Gay still hasn’t named anyone. Practically, her “Person A and B” can only be Shermer and Grothe, respectively. That also backs up Poppy’s story of having audio recordings, too. It’s weird, after reading that I’m both more and less sympathetic to Grothe at the same time.
Thanks for the tip-off, I’ve added a comment to Thibeault’s timeline.
Also, Shermer’s lucky I have a perfectionist streak. The more I thought about it, the more I seemed to be mixing frequentist and Bayesian approaches when I should have been sticking to one or the other. My attempts at handling overlap seemed much too weak, as well. The result tilts even more in Shermer’s favor, and by plugging in ridiculously charitable odds I can get the probability down to 30%. If i download and plunk in the same almost-reasonable odds I detailed above, I’m still above 90%.
I might revise it further, to handle the case of Grothe directly witnessing what happened to Gay. And I still reserve the right to muck further with my overlap logic.
Where is Poppy’s story of having audio recordings, please?
@kellym #164
Brave Sir Damion seems to have run away.
Or maybe he’s taking the time to look at and mull over all the available evidence, in which case I shouldn’t make fun.
kellym @166:
I can remember reading it a while ago, back when Poppy’s allegations on this were fresh, but I’ve forgotten where and some searching doesn’t bring back a reference. I may have gotten my wires crossed over that one.
Stacy @168:
Thank goodness I bookmarked that link, as it appears Reinhardt has run away and declared us a lost cause for holding beliefs beyond what the evidence states. Laughter at his cowardice and ineptitude are now fair game.
I might be willing to argue about risk assessments (or anything else) but I have not been trying to persuade any given conference organizer to keep Shermer out or let him in. That is their call to make, in my view, and I’m not about to rageblog about them either way.
As to “considering the evidence,” Stephanie, I certainly do hope that more firsthand evidence is forthcoming. The only eyewitness do far declines to name any names at all.
Beyond reasonable doubt is an evidential standard for the finder of fact in criminal trials. You have no reason to suppose that is what was going on here, HJ.
No, I am not. Please reread what I wrote and you quoted.
This is trivially easy, HJ. She could be angry at Grothe for failing to completely ban Radford on account of the allegations made against him by Stollznow.
Very well, Ophelia. I meant to say “intent is not magic” here at Butterflies and Wheels.
The legal concept of mens rea still flies in the face of the mantra, either way.
I’ve yet to see that “translation” trope used to do anything other than mischaracterize the original speaker, Sally. I never said anyone is lying here.
I answered an accusation that “the law should not apply” to famous people by saying that the law should surely be enforced, and somehow this is taken to be a command? Ok.
Well, certainly at least one of those respected scientists must be (at least) mistaken about what happened that night, since one of them says nothing bad happened and the other claims sexual assault. I doubt whether anyone is lying outright, though. Human memories are not digital videos, they are surprisingly malleable.
Policing implies using force to keep things in line. I’ve done nothing of the sort, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever suggested that Gay did anything wrong at all. She should be able to tell her story, as she understands it, just as publicly as she sees fit.
Funny, that. Have the commentariat here at B&W managed to free many minds by shouting at them how contemptible they are? Serious question.
Please see my reply to HJ on that question. There is no reason to assume that Shermer/Gay was the case that really set Carrie on edge when Radford/Stollznow was an ongoing issue upon which Poppy forcefully spoke out. That said, I’ve no great insight into her personal motivations. You may ask her, if you like.
Maybe lying, maybe just exaggerating or misremembering. Upthread we saw what may have been merely a sworn statement given in deposition turned into “testified in a courtroom” so it is not as if such exaggeration doesn’t ever happen. Also upthread we’ve seen an attempted groping turned into a completed groping, just as you’ve done here. When you are trying to permanently shut someone out of a movement, you should at least get your facts straight.
See above. No idea why people keep talking about anyone “lying” as if anyone here made that accusation. Except towards me, of course.
@Damion Reinhardt #170
I have. I know her. I’ve discussed it with her.
You are wrong.
To be clear, Stacy, what exactly am I wrong about?
You seem to have some inside information that I’ve no way of knowing.
Blacklisting sounds a bit hyperbolic to me. She sounded a bit disappointed to be left off the roster in 2013, and frankly I agree with her on that, she would have made a great addition to the lineup.
I would say that blacklisting is more of a deliberate process of keeping someone off all the rosters, e.g. what FtB hopes to see happen to Shermer.
Damion. No. You said “it flies in the face of the “intent is not magic” mantra that you may have heard elsewhere on this website” – implying that it’s one of my slogans or catchphrases. But it isn’t. You’re doing that thing that your erstwhile friends do: taking items from the grab-bag of labels-for-Freethought bloggers and using them whether they apply or not.
And don’t come here and talk about “rageblogging.” Keep your slime pit vocabulary to yourself.
Carrie was publicly quite clear, IIRC, that it was not a single event, but a pattern of behavior, that caused her to quit her job with JREF and speak out about why.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/07/carrie-poppy-tells-all/
(Note that someone wishing to remain anonymous commented on the comment thread of the above-linked post:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/07/carrie-poppy-tells-all/comment-page-1/#comment-661694)
Damion for the third time stop banging on about “FtB”. This is not the place for you (or anyone) to keep recycling that trope. If you don’t knock it off I’ll start pre-screening your comments.
Stop playing games. You replied to me by saying:
To Hj you said:
That’s what you’re wrong about.
Then you said
–to which I replied. Yes, it’s true that I have some inside information. But even without my inside information, there is a body of evidence here that converges on a coherent picture.
Now, cut the shit.
You were asked, by Hj Hornbeck and by me, to present your own hypothesis that fits the evidence. You haven’t done that. Instead, you’re now reduced to playing games to try and distract and derail the main argument with irrelevencies:
Whether he gave his sworn statement in a courtroom or not is entirely fucking irrelevent to the point at hand.
My apologies if it seems I intended to say that this is one of your personal slogans.
The slogan does go unchallenged here, however: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22intent+isn%27t+magic%22+site%3Afreethoughtblogs.com%2F
I doubt that anyone in this thread (other than me) would be willing to challenge that mantra, to be honest.
“You were asked, by Hj Hornbeck and by me, to present your own hypothesis that fits the evidence.”
To explain Poppy’s multiple attempts to discredit JREF?
p.s. The link @178 is incomplete: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22intent+isn%27t+magic%22+site%3Afreethoughtblogs.com%2Fbutterfliesandwheels
“Whether he gave his sworn statement in a courtroom or not is entirely fucking irrelevent to the point at hand.”
Bolding and italicizing this claim is not going to help here. My point was that the story morphed over time from sworn testimony in some form into sworn testimony given in front of witnesses in open court.
And your point, such as it is, remains a distraction. We all know that stories can morph over time, but a single irrelevant detail mistaken by a commenter on a blog post is a single irrelevant detail, not a story.
And you are still playing derail.
.
(Slick way to tip your hand there, Reinhardt. I guess the “disinterested just-tryin’-to-be-a-good-Skeptic” mask is wearing thin, huh?)
There are–as you must realize–two different connected threads here.
To explain the facts that:
Michael Shermer has been repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct, by a number of different people at different times.
One such incident has been witnessed and testified to by DJ Grothe.
The woman in the incident witnessed by Grothe has said that other women came forward after she spoke out and said, “he did it to me too.”
http://www.starstryder.com/2014/05/31/my-mistake-of-silence/
Another woman has accused Shermer of rape. See PZ’s “grenade” post. (That post also contains corroborating testimony.)
.
Meanwhile:
The JREF lost three (female) communications directors within a year or two.
Carrie Poppy quit a job, ended a friendship, and turned down a sizable amount of money offered if she’d sign an NDA, and has publicly explained that the reason she did so was the behavior of JREF’s president.
Brian Thompson also left the JREF and has corroborated Carrie’s claims.
“Carrie Poppy is trying to discredit JREF” does not carry much explanatory power. Why would she try to do that?
She told the public why she resigned and why she has no faith in JREF’s president. Is she lying, Damion? Is Pamela Gay lying? Are all the women who’ve come forward about Shermer lying? Is Brian Thompson lying about DJ? Did Barbara Drescher lie when she admitted she’d heard the story about Shermer groping someone too? Did PZ and Carrie Poppy lie when they vouched for the character of the woman who made the “grenade” accusation? Did that woman (anonymous to the public but not to them) lie as well?
And don’t try to weasel by suggesting they could all have been “mistaken.” One can mistake strange noises in an old house for a ghost. The experiences people are talking about here are not the sorts of experiences that are easily mistaken for something else.
kellym @166:
Oh wait, aha, I forgot I linked to some evidence that supports that claim up-thread. Alas, that’s the best reference I can find (Poppy’s Facebook post isn’t accessible to the public anymore), so take of it what you will.
First off Reinhardt, I’ll give you props for coming back here. It’s tough to swim against the crowd, and you’ve pulled it off longer and better than most others could.
But is this your A-game? Pretending an entire blogging network is the Borg, sharing nonsensical Google searches (by your logic, it’s more accurate to say “intent is not magic” is a mantra at the SlymePit), telling (probable) sexual assault targets how they should act based on nothing more than ignorance and photos, and perpetually running away from all serious counter-arguments? If you’re just going to squawk talking points like a parrot with OCD, you were better off collecting high-fives in the JREF forums while shooting clay pigeons.
Stop saying you’re a skeptic, and start acting like one. Sally, myself, and others have posed actual counter-arguments to your points. Get refuting.
Oh also, Stacy’s been making some excellent points. Don’t forget her, too.
Reinhardt @180:
That’s an assertion without evidence. I have yet to see Poppy say anything further on the matter, and the mention of courtrooms has been informed conjecture from third parties. You’re free to show us otherwise, or show us that where the testimony takes place is more important than that testimony took place, or answer my charge of treating a tautology as something else.
Or you could just keep on running from arguments, like a common creationist.
That was clumsily put let me clarify:
The story in question was never “DJ testified in a courtroom! (Or not.)” The story was: “This happened. DJ has testified to this under oath.”
No. As I said already, and you ignored already, “intent is not magic” doesn’t mean “intent never matters.”
Have fun ignoring how this obvious truth refutes your point again!
LOL. Well, I guess you never explicitly said that you think Dr. Gay is lying. But those are the only two plausible explanations for why you can’t bring yourself to accept the possibility that she’s telling the truth. Now you’ve said that you “never SAID she was lying,” my impulse is to conclude that you think she’s deluded, but of course you might still THINK she was lying but have simply refrained from SAYING so, therefore my “translation” would be a “mischaracterization” of what you said. The upshot is that you’re a slimy dishonest weasel.
So you’re disputing the “command” characterization. But you’re not taking issue with my observation that you think that going to the police is the only reasonable response to the situation. Conclusion: another dodge away from addressing the actual objection to your position.
Let’s fill in the rest of my quote: So yeah. The act of attempting to cast doubt on the idea that a harasser is really a harasser, to suggest that a highly respected female scientist might be lying to everyone about her experience of harassment on the basis of a photo of her smiling with her alleged harasser is an intensely political, and politically very sexist act.
Noting that anyone might be mistaken about things in the abstract is not an adequate defense against the charge of sexism, when what you are doing is saying, “She can’t have been harassed by him because here is this photo where they are both in it, on the night when the harassment happened, and she is smiling!”
THAT shit is sexist. You are changing the subject again, like the slimy cowardly dodging expert in dodging and misdirection you are.
More quibbling about the exact words to describe Damion’s sliminess. Which only underscores his slippery refusal to deal with truth. How gracious of him to allow that Dr. Gay should be allowed to tell her story, though. How magnanimous. How valiant. Of course, if she ever does, Damion won’t believe it because Dr. Pamela Gay is obviously too confused, mistaken, or something (definitely not lying!) for some reason to be trustworthy source of information about things that happened directly to Dr. Pamela Gay.
No, you’re going to “rageforum” (see how silly your neologisms look?) about the people who do make recommendations and judgments. You’re going to try to persuade others that these people are terrible for saying that inaction in the face of the same kind of risk assessments you agreed to above is a bad thing because putting people at risk knowingly is a bad thing. You’re going to try to persuade people that your inactivity when you think people are at risk is somehow morally superior to speaking up and making a case for protecting people.
Dude, do you even logic? This is a post about Shermer. If what Gay has had to say is not enough for you to be comfortably certain she’s talking about Shermer, even in light of the information others have provided, you don’t have any “eyewitnesses”. If it is, the fact that she isn’t using names is irrelevant to how much evidence you have.
Damion @ 178 –
You have got to be kidding. You’re that obsessive? You took the trouble to Google whether or not I habitually say “intent is not magic”?
You are ridiculous, you and all these people who pore over our every word and comma. Talk about first world problems, talk even about Dear Muslima…
Get a more interesting and consequential obsession. How about train-spotting?
Also – you’re conflating use and attribution. I frequently cite clichés and slogans ironically, by way of pointing out their clichéd and hollow quality.
But seriously. You should stop organizing your life around hostility to a blog network. It’s silly.
Anyway, he FtB borg/collective/groupthink/thingy has already pronounced it’s judgement on “intent is not magic” and it turns out it doesn’t do the flying in the face it is being alleged to do.
I respect those who desire not to risk sexual harassment…
No, Damion, you clearly do not. You’ve consistently belittled and lied about those concerns, and placed certain men’s “right” never to be excluded from a certain event above the right of women to avoid the risk of harassment.
Just sorta loling at the fact that first hand accounts from people who were there is being called ‘hearsay’.
The thing I think is really damning is how hard she tried to make this go away and move on, it was other people that kept bringing it up so she now has to deal with it. That is not the reaction of a woman who made something up to destroy someone else’s reputation or to get attention.
To a Troo Skeptic™ like Damion, anything short of a trip in a time machine back to witness the event itself in person is “hearsay.”