Leave it to Vacula

And Vacula is still working overtime displaying his bullying skillz to an admiring world.

justy2

Karla Porter‏@karla_porter

People don’t take yourselves so seriously. We are all blips on the cosmic clock. Enjoy or short life, don’t be miserable =)

Justin Vacula‏@justinvacula

Ophie asks “who the fuck is @karla_porter anyway?” Interesting she forgot about this FB conversation from July 2012 – http://www.justinvacula.com/2012/08/ophelia-bensons-continuing-complaining.html …

Justin Vacula‏@justinvacula

@ElevatorGATE What nonsense. Ophie also complained much about July 2012 podcast w @karla_porter http://nepafreethought.org/podcast/episode?p=15 … – #bravehero [Read more…]

“People trying make a name for themselves by posting fluff”

Another week begins. Mayhew is still at it, still publicly fuming about the way I blog. It’s on Google+ this time, and she did some research. She also did some attempted argument.

I pointed out the lazy blogging habits of certain Freethoughtblogs authors because it bothers me to see people trying make a name for themselves by posting fluff, when there are so many quality, hard working science advocates and educators out there.

That’s the argument part.

It’s a stupid argument.

One, “trying make a name for themselves”? How does she know that’s what we’re doing? How does she know all of us or any of us are doing that? How does she know we’re doing that more than anything else, or to the exclusion of anything else? She doesn’t. She doesn’t know any of those things. My main reason for doing it is the fact that I like doing it. When I started doing it I had no reason to think anyone would ever read a word of it. [Read more…]

The status of women

Here’s something to follow in case you want a good thing to follow today – #CSW57, the Committee on the Status of Women at the UN. Michelle Bachelet is speaking right now.

United Nations CSW‏@UN_CSW

“1 in 3 girls in developing countries is likely to be married as a child bride.” – Ms. #Bachelet at #CSW57 opening. #endchildmarriage

UMWomen‏@UMWomen

Bachelet: Ending violence against women is the missing Millennium Development Goal that must be included in all future discussions. #CSW57

Anna Johnson‏@annaj21

Bachelet: it’s for Malala that we must come to a strong, action-oriented outcome. This is a historic opportunity #CSW57

@COSATU TODAY‏@_cosatu

@myworld2015Up to 70% of women in some countries face physical and /or sexual violence in their lifetime.” – Ms. #Bachelet at #CSW57

Michael Nugent visits the slime pit

A couple of days ago Michael Nugent posted two questions for Justin Vacula about ‘nasty pushback’ against some feminists online.

Justin Vacula has published a video (here with transcript) titled “Feminists’ million dollar question” in which he elaborates on his advice “for people who face criticism and hate on the internet.”

While I fundamentally disagree with his analysis, I am interpreting his intentions charitably, and I would like to ask him two questions.

Justin asks why some feminists receive what he calls “nasty pushback” while others don’t, and he concludes that it is because of the way that they present themselves on the Internet. He says of this “nasty pushback”:

“It’s not to say the nasty pushback is morally justified, but it’s just to state a fact; it’s just to state how the internet “is.” It’s not to justify the behavior.”

Justin, here’s my first question for you. Can you go a step further than that, and say that at least some of “the nasty pushback” is morally unjustified, and can you give some examples of morally unjustified nasty pushback?

I don’t think Vacula has answered yet – he was too busy doing an hour-long podcast devoted to examining a few comments of mine on Facebook – but Vacula did a post purporting to answer Nugent’s questions but actually failing to answer them; meanwhile Nugent has posted Examples of ‘nasty pushback’ against some atheist/skeptic feminists on the Internet. Boy has he ever. He went to the slyme pit and dug deep and came up with a big, dripping, stinking, oozing collection of examples. I haven’t seen anyone else do that before apart from us – the targets of the slime – and we do it only sparingly. This should make some heads explode. [Read more…]

Sarah Palin what now?

Oh this is fun – I was poking around with Google, searching for this and that, and turned up this 2010 post at Jezebel on “Sarah Palin Feminism.” Say what? Yes, apparently Sarah Palin was calling for a new, conservative feminism (starring Sarah Palin, presumably?), and Kate Harding came up with five ways to look at it.

All this would hardly merit more than a quick Inigo Montoya impression, if not for the fact that people won’t quit trying to make the idea of Sarah Palin Feminism happen. And if the fringe right has taught us anything over the last few years, it’s that the more the media takes your horseshit seriously, the more people start to forget that you’re completely disingenuous and/or out of your friggin’ mind. [Read more…]

The cardinal tripped and fell below the standards

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, after saying “I never!!” for several days, has given a delicate admission that he was sexually…well he doesn’t say exactly, apart from admitting that it wasn’t quite the done thing. Well he’s a Catholic priest, and a high-ranking one, you can’t expect him to just come right out and say he fucked goats or had affairs with slabs of liver or raped children in the confessional. [Read more…]

Another “resistance movement”

The Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser does not welcome the “Vaccine Resistance Movement” on campus. It has issued a statement to say so.

FHS disavows any support or affiliation with Vaccine Resistance Movement

The Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) was surprised to learn that SFU has rented space to the “Vaccine Resistance Movement” for their Summit 2013 at the Harbour Centre Campus. Renting space to  outside organizations for events such as these is done without any  academic oversight. FHS disavows any support or affiliation with this  event which we believe to be  anti-science and contrary to good public  health practice. We are deeply concerned that the public will perceive  the SFU venue as legitimation of the dangerous misinformation that the  Vaccine Resistance Movement is known for. Please accept our sincere  apologies for the inappropriate use of SFU facilities to promote this  event.

That is forthright. Well said.

 

One particular kind of harassment is “just a joke”

Catching up. This is from way back in January but I didn’t get to it then. It’s a post on the Ms blog about online harassment of women and what men can do about it, by Ben Atherton-Zeman.

He starts by saying that women get more online harassment than men do.

Racists harass people online; so do homophobes. Most people agree this is harassment. But my gender’s online harassment of women seems to go unquestioned, even defended, in most circles. Yet men’s online abuse of women has been well-documented by women such as Laurie Penney, Jennifer Pozner, Emily May and many other women.

“The sad part is that it works,” says feminist blogger Soraya Chemaly. “I have spoken to many, many women writers who ‘tone down’ their voices or stop writing entirely as a result of threats. … I mean, who wants to wake up in the morning to ‘Stupid cunt’ or ‘I’ll go from house to house shooting women like you.’” [Read more…]

Who was that masked pineapple?

By the way, that whole pineapple thing? Mayhew’s witty “Pineapple go home!” on Facebook, Vacula’s witty repetition of “Pineapple go home!” farther down the thread on Facebook, “Pineapple go home!” as the title of the first episode of Vacula & Porter’s new podcast, Mayhew’s witty cartoon of “Pineapple go home!”?

I take it they have no clue what the pineapple is about. It’s about something. I didn’t make my profile picture a pineapple just because I wanted a piece of fruit as my profile picture. No. No, I made my profile picture a pineapple in solidarity with the Reading University Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society. There was a little incident last October, which I blogged about several times. I first blogged about it on October 5.

I will just repost the whole thing here, because it’s mine, and I can do that.

Either the pineapple goes, or you do       

 

And on the same day, in another part of the forest…

…another busy representative of another university Student Union meddled with another Atheist, Humanist, and Secularist Society. Reading University this time, and RUSU and RAHS. This time not a Jesus and Mo toon on a Facebook page, but a pineapple named Mohammed.

The NSS quotes a statement by Tim Rouse of the Atheist, Humanist and Secularist Society:

Among the material displayed on our stall was a pineapple. We labelled this pineapple “Mohammed”, to encourage discussion about blasphemy, religion, and liberty, as well as to celebrate the fact that we live in a country in which free speech is protected, and where it is lawful to call a pineapple by whatever name one chooses.

Towards the end of the afternoon, we were informed by a member of RUSU staff that there had been complaints about the pineapple, despite the fact that no complaints had been made at any point to anybody on the stall. Our commitment to freedom of expression meant that we refused to remove the pineapple from our stall. After a few minutes, we were told by another member of RUSU staff that “Either the pineapple goes, or you do”, whereupon they seized the pineapple and tried to leave. However, the pineapple was swiftly returned, and shortly was displayed again, with the name Mohammed changed to that of Jesus.

Shortly afterwards, the second RUSU staff member returned and ordered RAHS to leave the Freshers’ Fayre. At this point, a group of around five students, some of whom self-identified as Muslim, approached the stall and began to criticise us, asking and telling us to remove the pineapple. Though these students mainly engaged in discussion, one removed the label from the pineapple without our permission.

And on it went, wrangle wrangle, until they felt forced to leave, although they continued to hand out leaflets outside the event.

One fire is put out while another is set ablaze.

———————-

Back in the present now.

So you see the pineapple has a meaning – one that even Justin Vacula and Sara Mayhew might appreciate. But they’ve been too busy making videos and podcasts to jeer at us, or cartoons of angry pineapples to jeer at us, to pay attention to things like the above incident. So they jeered at the poor loyal pineapple. Sad, isn’t it.