I know you’re all tired of him, but NoelPlum99 is a sincere troll, so I’ll actually answer him, despite the fact that his sincerity is really just a side effect of self-absorption. So he asks in a video, where all the dissenters are (why in a video, I don’t understand; isn’t this a case where his written paragraphs are simpler, shorter, and easier to get through then 2+ minutes of yelling at a camera?)
PZ I ask you – given the footfall of Pharyngula; the contentious nature of the subjects in question; the substantial number of people who disagree with your position; the way in which you are regarded as a lead figure in many of these things; given all of this, is it really credible for you claim you don’t mind reasonable dissent when you appear, for all the world, to not have a single regular dissenter who has not been banned?
You may think I am a troll but please don’t mix up trolls with idiots. If you had a good couple of dozen REGULAR dissenting posters on these issues your arguments would look more convincing. In my couple of months before being banned I never encountered a single one. Not one. Nada. Zilch.
So where are these dissenters PZ? Is this just some incredible statistical freak of nature that you are the only person on earth with a substantial number of detractors but somehow none of them EVER bother to argue regukarlyon your blog, except the ones who are trolls????
Oh, yes. Why don’t I tolerate dissent, from a dissenter who posted here for over 4 months, making 168 comments. I have to say, this is a remarkably stupid question.
Why aren’t 50% of my commenters creationists, just like the American population? Why aren’t 90% of them Christians? Why aren’t a third of them Republicans? We can apply this to every site on the internet: why aren’t the comment threads at AVoiceForMen full of people aghast at the misogyny on display? Why aren’t 10% of the comments at RaptureReady people belittling the inanity of Bible prophecy? Perhaps NoelPlum99 ought to think it through a little bit, and wonder why he assumes that the internet ought to be a great gray panmictic uniformity.
But all right, I’ll just assume that he’s not very bright and explain the obvious. There are a number of reasons why you aren’t ever going to see mobs of angry dissenters here.
This is a self-selected community. Look at the header on the blog: liberals, atheists, science-minded people will congregate here. It’s a successful center for that kind of person, and that means that people with different views — well, those that have a speck of self-awareness — will know that they are going to be a tiny minority in a swarm of opinionated, outspoken, ferocious liberals. Venturing here will be daunting. The mirror of community is that there will also be self-selected avoidance.
I have commenting rules, linked to on the main page. It’s not just the community, but me: this is my party, and I am the bouncer. I keep on eye on things and disruptive intrusions will get shown the door. I hope it’s clear that this is not a completely open noise machine with no expectations or standards of behavior. Reasonable dissent is allowed, but the key word there is reasonable.
So why aren’t there a bunch of reasonable people here disagreeing with the major premises of the blog (there is, of course, a great deal of disagreeing going on in the comments — NoelPlum99 has to have his blinders on to fail to see that — but it’s just not over fundamentals, like the value of science)? Because they can’t disagree reasonably.
Part of the reason is that the culture here means people who have a minority view often charge in here with a chip on their shoulder, promoting confrontation for confrontation’s sake. They’re not here to have a conversation, or discuss issues philosophically; they’re here to assault the fortress, to do their best to piss everyone off. They want to disrupt rather than argue. And like any good bouncer at a party who sees the angry drunk blundering about interrupting conversations, I give them the boot.
Another reason is that when they aren’t aggressively abusive, these dissenters are often completely tone-deaf and unable to see beyond their own myopic little obsessions. Case in point: NoelPlum99. He wasn’t openly abusive; he didn’t charge in like another recently banned spammer who had the username “PZ MEYERS IS A FUCKING DOUCHEBAG”; he was just consistently narcissistic.
In this case, I posted my regrets that Natalie Reed was leaving FtB, and also pointed out something that NoelPlum99 ought to find ironic: that the trolls and abusers are driving someone out of their own space. Oh, no…the real problem, in NoelPlum99’s head, is that blogs have some expected range of behavior that might preclude the participation of assholes, but that those same resentful assholes might be actively trying to shut down entire blogs and blog networks? No, not an issue. No worries. Create an environment of such unremitting hostility that people can’t bear the pressure of posting on their own sites is OK, but how dare a blog ban NoelPlum99?
So NoelPlum99 got banned for a couple of things. One was the complete inappriateness of jumping into a thread regretting Natalie’s departure with the deep sentiment that he didn’t like her. Another was the complete lack of awareness of context: it’s all about him, everywhere. And finally, there was the absurdity of a guy complaining now about how we don’t allow dissent arguing at length in that thread (completely off topic) about how skeptics ought to be able to disallow certain topics, such as gender politics.
And there was another obvious reason why some dissenters get banned: they are obtuse and don’t listen. There are regular commenters here who are similarly obstinate, but at least this is their space and they have voluntarily joined up with a group sharing similar views. If you’re a dissenter, holding a minority view, there’s an expectation that you’re actually here because you’re looking to learn about a different point of view (although, as I said above, usually you’re here about confrontation for confrontation’s sake). You’re getting dogpiled; there are 20 people telling you you’re wrong. Then what happens, typically? You pick the worst possible argument (it’s true, sometimes people I agree with in general do make bad arguments), ignore all the reasonable arguments, and never ever listen. NoelPlum99 was notorious for that. He hung around for 4 months and never changed his tune, never addressed any sensible arguments, and never acknowledged any points that might represent serious concerns by commenters here.
Imagine a party where some boor keeps walking up to conversational groups, announcing his position on some sociopolitical point that may not have anything to do with what the conversation was about, and when the others actually try to engage him, he goes glassy-eyed, ignores them, and eventually wanders off to assert his great truths to a different group. That was NoelPlum99. That was not reasonable dissent.
One last remark: sometimes there is no such thing as reasonable dissent on certain issues. Sometimes trolls are idiots. NoelPlum99 lasted as long as he did because he didn’t come right out and shout some intolerable stupidity; I will, for instance, ban racists on sight, because their arguments are not in any way scientifically or ethically defensible, and in fact are simply odious and evil. NoelPlum99 was smugly privileged and dense, but there was some faint hope that he might actually wake up and recognize his own blinkered view, a hope that faded fairly rapidly.
But otherwise, there are views that I find insufferably stupid, that only idiots would hold, and I’m happy to make this environment as hostile as possible to them. There are no rational grounds, no context for reasonable dissent, for being anti-feminist, for instance, or denying that our culture is deeply patriarchal and sexist. I can see reasonable argument about how we ought to deal with this fact of life, but denial (or worse, the kind of inane argument so many make that “why, calling someone a ‘cunt’ is not a reflection of de facto sexism!”) is going to be fired upon with all ferocity and anyone holding such a view is going to find interacting here intolerable and infuriating, leading to them lashing out and trying to turn the whole blog into a brawl over some really idiotic issues.
And then they get banhammered.
Because really, how do you express “reasonable dissent” from the view that women are people, and that our society institutionalizes discrimination of all sorts?
*snicker* A couple of amusing presuppositions present there. I’ll leave it to the horde’s imagination…
patrickdoyle:
Whenever I see one of these sorts of priggish complaints to use more decorum on FtB, I always imagine Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka saying it:
You lose! GOOD DAY SIR!
myuido:
It’s all hyperbolic nonsense–unless you want to make a different point about it.
You find it slightly interesting that you noticed a woman’s comparison right away, but not a man’s lengthier comparison. And your first thought for a reason for that? Maybe you skimmed.
HAHAHAHAHA
I read this comment as a very poor attempt at privilege shaming CR. myuido can only understand concepts of social justice (like privilege) when they benefit myuido.
* very few people have washing machines in their bedrooms so it really doesn’t work on any level
Myuido is discovering that sometimes it takes a lot of hard work to gin up a good quotemine.
Compared to what? Lets say we where talking about the amount of sewage in rivers, 200 years ago. Would that fact that there was decidedly less in the Thames than in some other river make it “not overly polluted”?
You can argue that its improved. You can argue that, in many contexts, its less common in the next generation than it was in the prior one, and I can even see that between just my age, and my brother’s, who is 10 years older than I am, so grew up with more awareness, and thus corruption, from it. You can make all sort of arguments about how it has improved, in general, within the context of overall society. But, then.. you have to look at the
1. Business world, and the insane arguments given for why a false bias exists there.
2. The military, and all the arguments that are still being made for why progressive choices have been horrible ideas.
3. At TV, and magazines, and other media, which refuse to change, in no small part because their readership is a) mostly still in the same mix of people, b) in many cases exist to sell products that only exist themselves *because* such biases where part of society, and now need to “sell” the idea that they are still useful, and c) the majority of the new readers are either still driven by the messages, or have been given all new ones (like the hyper-pinkification of everything female, including toys, which is a “recent” development).
4. At politics, which is, too much, an extension of the corporate world, or vis versa, but in either case, the same nonsense driving ideas about women CEOs are driving ideas about women presidents.
Finally 5. At the mess of people that still push, teach, and even, damn near regionally, push the same old rules, and biases, on the next generation, for the same reason they can get by with pushing anything else – they will probably never set foot any place, unless its to show up and protest how horrible liberals are, where their biases are not *still* as common place as they where 200 years ago.
So, yeah, its not “overly” anything, as long as you ignore all the parts that are, and only focus on where progress has happened. The problem is, for those people actually having to deal with all the places, and contexts, where it **is** still a serious, to major, problem, the argument sounds, as stated above, like claiming that a river has “less sewage” in it, without actually providing any real argument for why that level of it should be “safe”. I don’t think there is likely to ever be a time when it will go away at all, any more than you can make a river 100% free of things you don’t want to drink (since the animal population isn’t going to stop pooping near water sources), any more than we will ever get rid of some percentage of men that had bad experiences with women, or the other way around, or someone with different color hair, or.. whatever, who won’t hold bloody stupid opinions about those people’s “right place” in society. But, “incidental” cases, like that, are the only “acceptable” level of it, because they are unavoidable.
They are also not what is being argued about. What is being argued about is these ideas, often traceable to one, or a few, people with serious problems with some group, or category of people, creating an “institution” around the idea that those false biases are real ones, and then enforcing them. And, there is **no** argument that can be made, especially with modern psychological research, which would imply that this isn’t “precisely”, how ever unintentional it may be in some circles now, even out of shear momentum, how we got to, and have seen perpetuated, precise the problems being talked about. And, the solution isn’t to go, “Well, its not as bad as it seems, because everyone keeps pointing out specific contexts, in which is ***is*** that bad, or worse, instead of ignoring the super neat ‘bigger picture’.”
How do you imagine that the big picture would look like it does now, if people where not nitpicking over all the smaller bits, where the problem is serious, and real? Hint: it looked much worse not long ago, and even worse before than, and absolutely horrible every earlier than that. Basically, someone had to point out that the swimming hole was flooded with sewage, before it occurred to people that the river smelled iffy too. Now, we have you coming along and saying, “Yes, but the river doesn’t smell so bad any more!”, as though this matters, at all, to individual people, who still have to deal with persistent problems, which stem from the still, very real, muck of rules, assumptions, and biases that still plague nearly every corner of society. Worse, the best argument that could be made is, “Most people are telling their kids not to piss in the river any more!” Yeah, OK.. its an improvement, but meaningless if the guy three miles up river is still not only encouraging their own to still do so, but also dump in their cat box, and anything else they are still being told its OK to dump in it.
So.. yeah, what exactly is, “not overly so”, in your mind, and why should its victims care?
myuido doesn’t do thinky.
I always wonder where they learned the concept of how you say thing means more than the content of what you say. Unless one does diplomacy for a living, it simply isn’t the case.
If someone is raised in a culture that tells them that they and only they have a right to a voice, an opinion, to be heard and to never be criticized, what they say no longer matters. So, really, the only way to show off how totally brilliant and superior they are to all the OTHER dudes raised in the same culture to believe the same thing, is to hold a thesaurus in one hand while typing.
@Kagehi
My guess:
“Enough for me to notice and/or care. What victims?”
Considering that we already know what they use the other hand for, what do they type with?
Dangit… read that as “overly so” without the not… move the not to the beginning of my quoted area.
Dang, where’s my snark glasses? This thread
is gettinghas gotten overly bright…Oh, that’s what they’re holding in that hand?
(oh my, did I just say that?)
Are we back to peeking down underwear again?
They have monkeys with typewriters to do the actual typing — an IBM Selectric, for example. All they really do is just the dictating (and masturbating). Like Hitler.
Wait, we were supposed to stop?
I guess it never ends
Yes, I am reusing it again in the same thread. Why waste a good joke?
Maybe I skimmed or maybe it was something else. You know what “maybe” means, right?
Nerd of Redhead @508:
I think it comes hand-in-hand with the mentality that discussions are just mental jousting for the purpose of showing one’s wit, not because anyone should actually care about the underlying issue. Anyone who actually dares to show some emotion or concern about the topic isn’t playing the game right, and gets told some nonsense about how “whoever is getting angry is losing the debate.” And you get jackasses who show up and spend an hour arguing that, e.g., a fertilized egg is a life and so shouldn’t all abortions be illegal, and when someone gets pissed off about the idea of being treated as society’s brood mare, suddenly it’s “oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m pro-choice too, I just like playing devil’s advocate”
Which is, of course, a form of privilege — it’s easy to be cavalier when you don’t really have anything at stake, when your rights aren’t at stake.
screechymonkey:
Indeed, and as myuido illustrates, it’s ever so easy to handwave sexism away, when all you do is scan for things which confirm your own bias and sexism.
Once upon a time, myuido found it hilarious that we all didn’t immediately notice Shermer’s sexist remark only seemed to get outraged when Shermer responded by doubling down. Once upon a right now, myuido is getting defensive about how xe didn’t notice Shermer’s NAZI WITCH HUNT diatribes in those responses. I wonder if myuido still thinks not noticing things immediately is inherently funny. Because I certainly don’t, but at least I can still find the uproarious humor in the current situation. Because irony and hypocrisy are the greatest sources of comedy.
Actually, it’d be very easy to quote-mine. There’s regular, well respected, posters here that were telling noelplum99 to fuck himself with a screwdriver and die as painfully as possible. There’s people here who were telling him that he was a rape apologist, that he was scum, and that he was “the patriarchy personified”.
Weren’t you looking for quote-mines, “paraphrases”, and outright lying, myuido? Not meanness? Can you stop being a dumbfuck for two fucking seconds?
No, remember. I added another category. Obnoxious bullying crap.
Myudio
Those links, where are they?
Oh that’s right you’ve wasted too much time here….
Wait
Really…
#523: Ah, not enough time to back up what you claim, but you still found time to quotemine.
Citations, Sweetpea, citations. Provide quotes and links for that claim – and until you do, stop making the claim.
myuido, you are still pretty active in the comments for someone that does not have time to find the links to back up your claims.
Maybe you should stop commenting for a few minutes and actually find them. That comment was listed as having been posted at 2:51, your last was at 4:48; surely you could have found a few of those links in that time.
I also find that slightly interesting myuido. Now here comes the next step, the moment where your critical thinking is pushed to the limit and you may come to a real important conclusion: What does that say about you? You sided with Shermer without knowing he compared Ophelia to a Nazi and sided against Ophelia despite saying you read posts where she DENIED calling Shermer a Nazi. Do you think this says things about your biases? Why or why not?
Hilariousness ensues
Only when you couldn’t find anything to back up your first several categories. We call that “moving the goalposts”.
If he indulged in rape apologetics, then yes, he was being a rape apologist. As to his being scum, that’s a matter of opinion. Personally, I don’t think highly enough of him to consider him scum. As for being “patriarchy personified”, yep, I’d agree with that one. He’s a walking, talking sexist assclown. And there’s a shitload of evidence for that one. AGAIN, YOU DIMWIT: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/11/27/douche-defends-douching/ AND http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/02/matt-dillahunty-being-all-reasonable-and-stuff/#comments
Yeah, you added that after the fact, when the only shred of evidence you could find to back up your initial claim was something mean. Are you going to concede your initial claim or not?
Really, that you decide to add a “new category” to your initial claim, that has nothing to do with the theme of “dishonesty” of the original categories, and proceed to devote yourself entirely to this “new category” in order to avoid admitting that your initial claim, with its initial categories, were wrong, is just the height of hilarity. I think that being accused of dishonesty from such a forthright luminary as yourself should’ve been taken as seriously as it deserved to be from the outset. About as seriously as we would take a third-grader accusing us of being stupidheads.
Let me predict the response: *mumble**mumble**non sequitur**smug*
I started drinking in that time, and… uh, no. Tomorrow (it would seriously be half assed if I posted it now).
That you either did or didn’t. Come back when you say something useful. If you did just skim over it, that doesn’t indicate you’ve been considering all of this honestly and thoughtfully, does it? And if you didn’t, then you’re just straight-up lying. Which would you prefer?
Not okay. When did this happen? Is this how you’d characterize pharyngula in general (or maybe FTB), or what one person said one time?
Those are fine, if they’re in line with what he was saying. They’re certainly not “obnoxious bullying crap,” if that’s your implication. When did this happen?
anteprepro #522:
“Maybe” that will be clearer to myuido.
….StevOR?
If anyone was indulging in “obnoxious bullying crap”, it was NoelPlumJim. He said some of the most toxic shit about women I’ve heard anyone say at Pharyngula, and that is seriously saying something. He’s an arrogant, pompous blowhard who is so in love with the sight of his own text I’m surprised he’s even aware there are other people on the planet.
Adding to the desultory asides on commenting policy: one thing I would really like to see is a more thorough application of the 3-post rule. Perhaps per thread, because that reset helps new people who are not aware of a troll’s context. Or perhaps via a link to a thread with “you’ve already had your 3-post chance, creep!” – to make it clear that the 3-post rule is being honoured.
We do tend to pile on the n00bs and assume bad faith rather than cluelessness. And yes, I know, given the existence of the pit and the patriarchy this assumption is correct at least 95% of the time. But still, an explicit chance for a newbie to say “whoops, sorry I trod on your foot” before the pile-on gets started would be a good thing.
Can you remember an instance where he did that Caine? A specific thread? There’s quite a bit of obnoxious bullying going on right above you. Its of the attempted, impotent sort, but still. Would you call it out for what it is?
Yes Myuido, Caine does remember instances of Noelplum being an asshole. I know she remembers it because SHE LINKED YOU SOME THREADS IN POST 534. If you cared enough to click the links and do a Ctrl+F for “Noel” you’ll find some of his noxious posts.
This is why people are calling you a liar myuido by the way. You are asking for evidence that has already been given several times.
How are you not suffering any ill effects of Irony Poisoning yet?
Are you trying to say that we are bullying you now? But didn’t you accuse us of being dishonest? I believe, if I remember your posts correctly, that accusations like that completely warrant any and all overreactions we can muster. Or was St. Shermer the only one given that privilege?
Incidentally I find it quite amusing that in a thread about people complaining about PZ banning all the people he disagrees with we’ve had about 4 or 5 people swarm in to complain and had no bannings.
So close myuido! It’s unfortunate that you needed to qualify it with possibly but I will give you a cookie for being slightly better at critical/skeptical thought than noelplum.
There’s quite a bit of obnoxious bullying in your evidenceless posts claiming foul by the horde. If you can’t prove it, it is bullying on your part. PUT UP OR SHUT THE FUCK UP. And that is what rational folks of honesty and integrity would do. Liars and bullshitters can’t put up, and won’t shut up. Chose wisely cricket…
@Alethea #541
I agree – it’s incredibly hard to remember the three-post rule, especially when (according to my interpretation) it’s meant to happen at the start of each thread, so that grievances aren’t immediately carried forward in spaces that are not Thunderdome.
I’ll do better to remember that in the future.
@myiudo
Could you please preview before you post with quotes? The resulting format of your comments is extremely hard to read.
Yeah sorry. Not closing block-quotes or something.
Yes, I can. I provided you with two godsdamned links to Jim’s offensive idiocy and assorted assholery. On the previous page of comments, Tethys provided you with four links. Go and read, fuckwit. Or do you expect us to do that for you, too?
That would be nice, otherwise i’ll do it tomorrow.
Oh, and myuido, on the previous page, Mythbri provided a link to Jim’s assholery and narcissim. Try godsdamn reading what people provide.
Wow. I’ve just been reading some of noelplum99’s posts in the links that Caine provided and yeah… I can agree with assertion that he is patriarchy personified.
Galactic Fork:
Yes, he was something alright. You really don’t want to miss his performance in this thread, starting here:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/20/so-do-they-stamp-a-symbol-on-the-side-of-the-cockpit-for-each-one/comment-page-1/#comment-540934
There we get sexist narcissism personified.
myuido here’s the links provided thus far.
By Caine: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/11/27/douche-defends-douching/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/02/matt-dillahunty-being-all-reasonable-and-stuff/#comments
By Tethys: http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/10/heeeeeres-rebecca/
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/09/everyday-sexism-2/
Both Caine and Tethys linked two threads, the ones on this blog.
You keep saying how busy you are, and how much you have to do. Well, now you don’t need to find threads with the guy. They are right here.
Homework for tonight: Read those threads and do independent research into what the patriarchy is. I know you are totally super busy and all, so do try to find time for this. It will be very helpful to this discussion.
Extra Credit: Learn how tags work, and where the Preview button is. These are helpful tools.
By the way, it was Jim’s incessant narcissism, so breathtakingly on display in the thread linked @ 556 which got him banned.
I’d like to know what happens if someone makes a YouTube comment that is then minimized as “flagged as spam” or receives “too many negative votes.”
Let’s say someone looks on my YouTube account feed for comments I’ve made on videos. They then go to those videos and downvote all my comments. In the absence of upvotes, would that be “too many”?
It seems that YouTube uploaders might want to address those points about their own comment sections. You can read the spam/negative votes comments, but most won’t bother unless they’ve received a reply. The spam and negative votes categories, where those aren’t disabled, puts a freeze peach denial into the hands other than the uploader’s. Yes, the channel owner can unmark them as spam, but how often do they bother? Can there be a merry-go-round of owner/reader not spam/spam clicks?
And really now. Have you been to some of the channels to see an annoyingly long string of “great video!” or “you told him!” nothing-added comments? When PZ writes a poetic piece like “The present is the past, the past is the present,” he gets some of those. But all the time? Sheesh.
…
I’ve got nothing. If you seriously read through Noelplum’s greatest hits and found nothing noxious and repellant in that person’s egocentric sexism then I don’t know what to tell you. If you are seriously so blind to his sexism I don’t even know where to begin.
But on second thought I’m doubting your intellectual honesty myuido. You’ve been laying down heavily on the tone trolling, you defended Shermer reflexively, you attacked Ophelia even in the face of contradictory evidence, and you’ve repeatedly defended Noelplum and claimed he was a victim of quote-mining in the face of what he actually said. You’ve repeatedly acted like a rank sexist in this thread myuido, if you really ARE examining your biases into question like you claim you are I suggest you speed it up. You aren’t as bad as Noelplum but it sure as hell isn’t for lack of trying.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/11/27/douche-defends-douching/comment-page-1/#comments
Very first comment from PlumIdiot:
Sexist asshole denying sexism.
Second comment:
Sexist asshole continues to deny sexism, doubles down and tosses in the “hey, biological! women, babies!” shit.
Third post:
Going full court, drag out every fucking stereotype I can think of sexist asshole.
It simply gets much worse from there, and there are two pages of his sexism, narcissism and idiocy. So, myuido, you’re reading your hero’s posts, but you aren’t reading any of the responses. That’s not how one does homework, dear.
I’m half expecting this wasn’t an attempt at humor on myuido’s part.
does indeed sound a lot like StevoR.
Here’s an example of noelplum99 referencing himself, in order to refute accusations that he was just there to “disagree” without providing anything substantive. This is him linking to his own work, as if the stupid things he said in his referenced comment were somehow mitigated by the fact that he agreed that the MRAs in the Reddit thread were being disgusting assholes:
Noelplum99 asserting that he doesn’t always just disagree with PZ and Pharyngula in general:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/02/matt-dillahunty-being-all-reasonable-and-stuff/comment-page-1/#comment-526341
And here is the comment that he himself linked to, which to me comes across as trying to prove is cred as someone who is not a reactionary against topics regarding sexism, issues that affect women and feminism:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/27/is-innumeracy-a-prerequisite-to-being-an-mra/comment-page-1/#comment-521578
To quote some portions of that second linked comment that I think support the assertion that noelplum99 was, at least, a sexist, though I tend to agree with Caine that he’s an example of personified patriarchy:
The bolded portion here shows what I think indicates a profound (and, given the number of times it was explained to noelplum99 at Pharyngula and other FTBlogs, willful) misunderstanding of the idea behind Schrodinger’s Rapist. And the implied comparison between the fear of sperm-jacking and the fear of rape is dishonest and false.
Noelplum99 doesn’t go into detail here, and in the next sentence he says that there’s not really an alternative – it is the woman who will bear the physical brunt of pregnancy. But he supplements that statement with this one:
That “49%” figure that he quoted is not, in fact, accurate. He said that the woman in question was a casual partner. Other than fucking and possibly impregnating her, what say does noelplum99 have in whether or not she keeps a pregnancy that was obviously unexpected? The correct answer is 0%. She makes the decision, and if she makes the decision to carry the pregnancy she faces another decision – whether or not to ask noelplum99 for child support, or give the child up for adoption, or whatever. To automatically assume that he would have any amount of say in that initial decision, let alone 49%, seems to me to indicate a massive sense of entitlement. It makes me wonder how much responsibility he took in conversations about contraception with his partner, and how much control he exercised over the types of contraception he could control.
And here noelplum99 assumes that PZ’s post (please read for context) implies that PZ thinks that fathers are “second-class parents”:
“Trying to throw off the straitjackets of our biological past.” “We still automatically see fathers as second class parents.” In the past, the same past that noelplum99 is talking about, the parents that were considered “second class” were the mothers, not the fathers. Because U.S. culture back then, the “1950’s Nuclear Family Ideal”, if you will, emphasized the “distant provider” and “head of the household” role for the father. This was nothing close to an equal partnership. And when women faced fewer obstacles to obtaining divorces, and therefore sought divorces more often, courts started to decide custody cases based on the best interests of the child. And who were the caregivers in this case? The mothers. And in many of these divorces, and still today, the woman’s living situation is significantly reduced. Child support payments come nowhere near close enough to live on for ONE person, let alone one person with children.
And too often, talk of “biological past” is used to restrict women’s choices, when those restrictions are really the result of societal constructions. This reads, to me, as an argument from biology (on the mother’s side) and a whiny complaint about the resultant perception of fathers.
Noelplum follows the text quoted above with this:
This is a (intentional?) misrepresentation of what PZ was saying.
no, myuido is trolling.
He never read any of Plum’s… plums.
he literally is just here trying to get a reaction.
Why do idiots hear the word sexism, and immediately leap into authoritarian fantasy land?
The best part of the Natalie Reed thread was that noelplumjim finally met the banhammer. I also thought it was pretty funny when Throwaway delurked specifically to tell him to fuck off.
—-
Caine
SG and SC! Wow, that sounds like a battle royale. All three of you are very formidable opponents.
Wow. Everyone else in the thread did the homework. That’s so collusion right there.
You know, it’s amazing, it really is, that even when that fuckwit NoelPlumIdiot isn’t here, the thread is still about him. I’m sure he’s pleased.
@Caine #567
Well, yeah. :/
But PZ started it!
Tethys:
Oh, no. It was me getting smacked by Truth Machine and SC. I was a noob in those days, not remotely formidable. And I had said something right stupid. Learned me good, they did. ;D
I didn’t.
;)
I’ve posted here once before, and it was to disagree with PZ. I somehow have not been banned though. So I guess now I’m 50/50 agreeing/disagreeing.
I’m probably not the only one who thought this fellow was calling himself an idiot when he mentioned that trolls were not necessarily idiots….
Mythbri:
Hahahahahaha. Weeeeelll, I disagree. It seems that NoelPlumJimBobWhatever started it, with his video. I think he misses Pharyngula. Pity we don’t miss him.
@ 570
I’m scowling at you so hard.
Theomanic:
Uh oh. Proof people aren’t autobanninated for dissent. We better hide you, in a hurry.
People here disagree with PZ all the time. They also agree with him a lot. Conversation, how in the fuck does it work, eh?
@Caine
On the contrary, I think that commenters at Pharyngula hit every “argument” he tried to make. The only one “missing” anything was him, and that was several hundred valid points, as I recall.
Mythbri:
He first showed up here in a spirit of dishonesty – he never had the slightest intention of listening to anyone else or considering anything they had to say, that was obvious. He came here to *pontificate*, thinking this would be the same as his yootube experience. He’s an idiot, as well as a pompous windbag.
yup. no avoiding it. I feel no spite because RummyPlummy might be jolly though.
everyone has to get off somehow, I’m just glad I don’t have to witness his.
So much for Censoring® (banning) Rational Dissent™.
Going back over the Matt Dillahunty thread, in which Jim made a Plum Idiot out of himself, it’s good to note this particular comment by PZ, which is also relevant to this thread:
Skipping to the end of the thread (yes, I AM reading the comments before posting myself, with this one exception!) to say that this
Is fucking creepy. Stevecarlos has officially moved out of the merely “dense” column and into the “dense and really creepy” column.
Lordy, lordy, lordy here we go again. I haven’t posted much on this blog, but I do read it (religiously? faithfully?) frequently. Whenever I see hundreds of comments on a post I know we’re into one of Those Things.
The mental image I get is a high school lunchroom, with the nerds sitting at one table and the jock-wannabes at another, taunting and shooting spitballs.
I don’t get what’s so hard to understand. Let me offer an analogy: In our house we don’t permit smoking. Not only do we object to the smell that lingers forever, and the film that covers everything, I am allergic to it and it gives me asthma. Anyone is welcome to come in, sit at our table and engage in lively discussions (even arguments) about politics, religion, whatever. If they feel the need to light up in order to have that discussion — they’re no longer welcome and not invited back. It takes someone with an obtuse and overbearing sense of self-entitlement and privilege to violate our ground rules. Smoking is non-negotiable
It shouldn’t take anyone any real exposure to this blog to understand the ground rules. Even the emphasis on gender-neutral pronouns telegraphs them: sexism is non-negotiable. It takes someone with an obtuse and overbearing sense of self-entitlement and privilege to violate those rules.
I must comment on something captainmjs said earlier, speculating on PZ’s interaction with his students. I’ve seen many on this blog that have a hair trigger, PZ himself included. Not that it’s never warranted — if someone came in, spewing sexist, racist, ageist bile they would (and should) expect to be banned summarily. PZ himself calls this a “rude” blog. I hope he keeps his hair trigger and rudeness confined here and not in his classroom (I have no evidence that he does not).
I know what it feels like to be called an idiot before a class by a professor (even though I was in the right); and what it feels like to receive a tepid not-pology from the guy the next time class met. It was over 35 years ago and it’s still the most vivid memory of my higher education.
Fixed that for ya, myuido.
Biases that you share with Noelplum. Guess that might have something to do with why you leaped to his defense in the first place, yeah? Maybe? Maybe?
Having biases doesn’t make you a bad person. Denying you have biases and attacking those who point them out does.
kc9oq:
You don’t seem to read as much as you insist, if you think PZ has a hair trigger. He’s damn near comatose in the laid back sense, when it comes to the sheer amount of assholes who show up here, spewing some of the most toxic and offensive stuff you have ever seen. It takes a great deal to get PZ to wield his banhammer and he almost always gives out warnings first, often multiple times. A fair amount of people are simply quarantined to Thunderdome in lieu of banning.
As for rudeness, well, I’d say you haven’t listened to PZ speak much. He’s quite soft-spoken and just because someone speaks the unvarnished truth, rather than taking time to wrap it in sugar, doesn’t make them rude. I think you’re mistaking being insulting for being rude.
SallyStrange:
Yes, it was. It was flat out bizarre, too, making the jump from names to lace underwear.
And from lace underwear to five-year-olds.
Yeah, really, like, all five-year-olds have knowledge about the gender breakdown of underwear as worn by adults? CREEEEEEEPY!!!
Mythbri:
Yes. That was scary creepy, especially coupled with the “brute fact” business. I seriously hope he doesn’t have children, but he probably does. But he’s not sexist, nope.
(Pokes head over battlements)
Oooh, bleeding troll carcasses!
(Ducks back under cover)
Carry on, Horde. Just affirming why this is my favourite blog site.
Sally,
Also weird was that lacy undies identify individuals as female, but it is to be contrasted with beards hinting at male-ness. But that’s something every 5 year old knows. Except I’m pretty sure I didn’t.
I’m still trying to figure out why “Caine” is supposed to be male in the same sense that “Michael” is. I know a number of Mikes, they’re all male. I don’t know a single Caine (well, didn’t … until she showed up) so when the ‘nym appeared I might have assumed the “default” (sexist assumption) that the person behind was male, but it wouldn’t have been because the name led me astray.
I have to say to all the regulars… Thanks for giving these trolls and idiots a (verbal) drubbing.
Well, I was at work all day, but the Commentariat did a wonderful job. Yes, I did just spend a pleasant bit of time reading the thread, and if I’d been around during the day, I would have participated as part of a delightful Sunday afternoon.
Now why won’t these foolish Freeze Peach enthusiasts go somewhere else to have all their Freeze Peach? Really, guys, GO YOUR OWN WAY ALREADY. The Internet is big. Go somewhere else on it.
Stop trying to make sure that I and other feminists don’t have a single solitary fucking spot on the Internet to talk. Because that is what it appears you actually want – to make sure that there is no discussion of feminism on the Internet. None. At. All. Jebus Freaking Christ on a Cracker, I’m a crazed militant anti-theist feminist, and I don’t spend ANY of my time trying to keep AVfM or Focus on the Family or other such folks from being able to spout their rubbish. I would like to have the same consideration extended to me, but then I’m a feminist. What do I know?
Mattir:
Gad, I don’t want *anything* to do with either of those groups. At all. In any way. If I had to, I’d rather deal with Focus on the Family, simply because there would be a better chance they’d at least admit I was a human being.
I can’t say I like people such as those at AVFM spewing their hatred about all over, however, I’m not going to campaign to have their presence scrubbed from the ‘net, either. Nor would I ever consider engaging in a years long campaign of harassment, distortion, threats and lies.
Caine – that’s precisely the point. Why can’t they simply go their own way already? I obviously don’t like AVfM or Focus on the Family, but I also don’t spend all my time trying to keep them from speaking, obsessively reading every single word they write, making photoshops and calling them names, or otherwise centering my online life around their existence. And then complaining that their decision to ban me was a violation of my inalienable right to express myself on their bandwidth.
dontpanic:
In fairness, it is a traditionally masculine name. The Celtic meaning is ‘tribute’. These days, the variant spelling Kayne is more likely to be seen. However, that still doesn’t make Steve’s point for him, because all manner of female babies have been given traditionally masculine names (such as Madison) for ages now. The distinction is no longer clear and it’s simply stupid to make gender assumptions on the ‘net.
I kept wondering what Steve would do if he met an androgynous person with an androgynous name. Oh Pat…
Y’know, I made a long post trying to Vulcanly answer Patrick Doyle’s argument, and in the end, I deleted it and went with…
SERIOUSLY, you’re going to cite Girl Writes What?
By the way:
Yes. Again, yes. I did read what Dr. Myers wrote. Did you read what noelplum wrote? If you did, you certainly haven’t evidenced it here.
Maybe I missed it, but in all your whining about censorship, you didn’t actually cite any of the content that was being censored. One would think such context would be relevant. Again, did you even bother to read what noelplum wrote, or are you just here to high-mindedly censure without evidence?
Asshole.
Mattir:
Exactly – and that’s what is so incredibly creepy about it all, the obsession. Unless someone brings up what’s going on with FotF or AVFM or the ‘pit, I have no idea of what they’re on about at any given time.
Caine:
He can JUST TELL. See #374:
Confirmation bias ahoy!
@Mattir:
Now now, don’t you know that criticizing them is the same thing? I mean, you just said you don’t like them!
I’ll concede you haven’t photoshopped them or harassed them in their private life. But isn’t what you’ve done horrific enough? You monster! /snark
Hmmm…..
Not so much cite as blindly reference with no real citation.
Pteryxx:
Heh. I wonder, does he demand people strip down so he can see the undies? (Not that it would be terribly helpful. He’d be well shocked to see what’s under a lot of 3 piece suits and skirts!)
Caine: if the convo had gone that way, I was going to start with the ‘oh, you’ve already been wrong, you just don’t know it’ path.
But given the ragefit he threw over something as trivial as your nym, I have a much better appreciation of the hatred behind the slur ‘trap’.
Pteryxx:
Yeah. I was seriously taken aback that I was “fooling” him into sexism. There’s a power I didn’t know I had. Before this thread, I had no idea that Steve existed, but nonetheless, I had my cunning trap laid in wait, just for him to step into it!
@ glodson:
Here you go
A brilliant reader may note that the 1st link is commentary, the 2nd link provides a direct link to the video in question, and the 3rd link is a direct link to the reddit content described in the 1st link.
5 seconds with google. Done. The first rule of accusing people of being unable to cite is being unable to do a web search.
Now, if you’re unfamiliar with this community, you might be unfamiliar with the fact that what GWW has to say is not an unfamiliar or uncommon topic
Hey look, the formatting of the links took longer than looking it up. Though with the preview borked, I might have failed to close a tag, despite my efforts.
Independent investigation. Google searches. Searching the archives of this very site. SO VERY HARD!
It can’t possibly be that the strict normative gender binary concept fails. Not when so many sexist folks depend upon it for their peace of mind. No, the only possible explanation must be… sabotage!
*joins the Genderbread Legion*
The reaction to getting the gender wrong was… odd. At least, I thought it was. A simple “Oh, my bad, I didn’t mean to assume…” would have been good. But to try to turn it around? Yea… that was.. I don’t know what that was.
It sucks to get the gender wrong. I know I’ve been embarrassed when I’ve done it to people, face to face. You apologize and move on. Sadly, it happened more than I care to admit when I was a waiter. Mostly because I was off in my own little world, operating on auto-pilot. And I know us waiters do it more than you might think.
@ 602
I know about Girl Writes What. It was just an attempt at humor as Patrick Doyle said that quote directly in response to being challenged about Girl Writes What.
And yep, looks like I failed to close a tag. Let’s try this again.
Here’s a discussion of GWW at manboobz.com
Here’s a direct link to the content referred to therein. Note that GWW’s comment is downvoted, so you might have to (gasp) look for it.
Here’s commentary to indicate that GWW is, in fact, a known quantity around here. For instance, we have Cristina Rad here and Ophelia Benson here.
Do you need more citations? I feel I’ve clearly demonstrated that GWW is a known subject in these parts. Thus, I felt it was OK to appeal to community awareness. If you were unaware…. well, it took me 5 seconds to bring up those links (though obviously quite longer to format them!).
RESEARCH. You can do it!
P.S. Seriously, FTB, fix the preview function. /sigh
Ah hell, and here I’d responded to you again out of frustration to borked links. :)
Pteryxx:
Perhaps I should be “Caine, venus trap” :D I really doubt Steve would understand he was actually talking about a person’s sex, not their gender. He couldn’t even seem to grasp that there hosts of young women out in the world sporting traditionally masculine names. The horror! When he was going on about ‘Michael’, I kept wanting to bring up Michael Learned.
Joins with you.
But we all know a Venus Trap only attracts male flies! Gender ambiguity is therefore rendered null and void.
Ha, I noticed the links were busted… but honestly, I’m exhausted so I didn’t say anything just in case I was doing something stupid out of a lack of sleep. Which is quite possible.
Still, I remember that stuff. I was hardcore lurking then. Which is how I found out about GWW. I kind of wish I never found out about her. She’s…. terrible. Some of the stuff I didn’t believe she could have said, until I checked for myself.
Patrick, Glodson doesn’t need to be schooled. It was ‘patrickdoyle’ who stated GWW had interesting views and when loudly called out about that, claimed to know nothing about those views held by her and proclaimed he did not need to provide citations.
Next time I get someone’s gender in wrong in person, I am going to take a page from steve’s book and get all huffy about how I wouldn’t have made that mistake if we were talking on Facebook or a tech forum. And then I would proceed to talk about how my mistake was ultimately all their fault, and say that I would’ve apologized if they had been nicer to me. Real Ultimate Social Skillz.
I work with two people named Chris and Alex.
Neither of them are male. They have to deal with people making assumptions about their gender all the time, and I sometimes do, too, since I go by a shortened version of my name that isn’t terribly common.
Not entirely true. I still got much to learn. ;)
But I can see how easy it is to make the mistake with a fledgling poster.
Patrick:
Well, ‘poisoned chalice’ certainly didn’t provide a clue and neither did my overtly feminine avatar.
Mythbri:
Heh, my name is Chris. So, that wouldn’t have helped out poor ol’ Steve at all.
@ 612
I think I am going to make it my default reaction when I get anything wrong about a person I’ve met. I mispronounce their name? “Why are you trying to trick me with hard words to say?! Gfsdfsdfsdfsdfsd!”
anteprepro:
You must make sure to question them about their underwear. I’m sure that’s an important step.
@ Caine/glodson:
Yeah, my fail there. I got … riled up reading this thread. I mean, a commenter identifying as Patrick was mucking up the thread. Not only that, someone upthread used the moniker “PatrickD”! You can see why I got upset. :)
I can only hope my failure at links (and correction — though the first one wasn’t properly done) will provide some service to people who weren’t aware of GirlWritesWaitSheWroteWHAT?!.
Too subtle, apparently. But let’s be fair: I knew you were female from earlier posts where you identified as such. I never actually looked at your avatar. And poisoned chalice is recent, no? From my commando-style keyboard position, all I see is Caine. Well, and I see a whole lot of rats. For obvious reasons.
PatrickG, oh I understand. It was a frustrating thread at times. I know that I’ve jumped the gun before in other places where I’ve posted before. It happens.
I guess I suck at the mapping of names to other names and categories. Seriously, until you pointed it out I never associated Caine with Kayne. And until recently, last six months ( with a growing incidental cultural awareness of some rapper or other) or so, i wouldn’t have ventured to attempt to gender Kayne with any kind of “default”.
It wasn’t until my mid 20s that someone pointed out to me that certain last names were supposed to be “Jewish” or “Italian”. And even those didn’t have particular stereotypes associated with them; “learned” (awkwardly goggled at the stupidity of them, but saw how they fitted into cultural tropes) them along the way. Literature and such make “more sense” (in a understanding the underlying assumptions, not a rational way) when one is keyed into such. Damn neurotypicals and your taking names as anything other than semi-unique (yeah, I know… self contradictory) identifiers.
@ glodson:
Thanks for your understanding, much appreciated.
Now where’s the delicious nectar I’m told this hive enjoys? :)
PatrickG: a gentle suggestion – try saving your blockquote tags in a handy document somewhere and copy-paste them. Might save you some borked previewing.
Patrick:
Yes, it is. However, I have had all kinds of people assume I’m male with the ‘fleur du mal’ also.
dontpanic:
Don’t worry about it. It would be a lot better if everyone lost the gender baggage attached to names. Same with ethnic baggage, too. Given how many people are in mixed race marriages now, adopted, etc., you can’t really tell anything about anyone that way, either. At least not reliably.
Had a friend who had one of those tongue twisting Armenian last name. But she looked to be of north European descent.
She was adopted.
She found it amusing.
Caine, poisoned chalice:
The ‘fleur du mal’ somehow sounded female to me. Flowery, maybe.
And you were one of the people here that I had “gendered”, for your stout defense of women’s rights and for your wrath at the use gendered insults. For which “Brava”, by the way … no, make that “Thank you.”
PZ,
I find this post to be strongly in opposition to what you said to me personally in our chat last week. You asserted there that the only thing that gets someone banned is “your manner of expression”. You gave the example of someone who drew scatological pictures, and stated that if someone like that “…can’t string a few words together to state their position, then f*ck ’em…”
If I understand your position correctly, you’re now saying that there are two reasons people should be posting.
1.
in which case they get more latitude in form of expression (I’m paraphrasing), and
2.
So, you either agree with the group’s specific views, or you can sit quietly and be educated? What about the idea of a rich and varied discussion with dissenting opinions discussed, evaluated, and critiqued?
Can you clarify how far criticism of your post can go before it becomes unacceptable? What concerns me about the case of NoelPlum is that there doesn’t seem to be any rule he violated besides being in bad taste or too persistent.
Lastly, I think it’s worth noting that NoelPlum probably shares 95% of your views on the topics in question. The idea that he comes here just to snipe or be disruptive isn’t supported by his history of commentary, in my reading. Is there not any room in the community here for people who are frequent contrarians or social gadflys, but otherwise allies of the movement?
c0nc0rdance.
What about the idea of having a scientific (evidenced) discussion versus you bloviating your opinion?
Then you aren’t reading what he did for comprehension. Jim had a history of ME, ME, Mendaciouc, Meritricious ME. He made every thread about him with his preaching. He never discussed, which allows the possibility he was wrong. Since he couldn’t be wrong, he preached. Just as it appears you are doing with Slymepit Opinion Post #6.
I wish you were joking.
marksheffield:
Here is some seriously good advice: don’t post another word until you read every single comment in this thread. PZ commented further, many times. You’d do well to pay attention to what the commentariat has had to say as well.
The hell he does! He spent all his time here being a mansplaining, condesplaining, arrogant, sexist asshole. It was his intense narcissism which finally resulted in his banning. You would know this if you read the damn thread. For the third time, for your edification, the thread which resulted in his banning: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/20/so-do-they-stamp-a-symbol-on-the-side-of-the-cockpit-for-each-one/comment-page-1/#comment-540934 – read it.
This keeps coming up. What topics? I’m sure NoelPlum is 95% as atheist as PZ Myers. Possibly even 100%.
Ok then. That’s settled. There must be a difference somewhere, however, otherwise that 5% wouldn’t be pertinent. Wait, I know! We can examine the evidence!
If you read the threads that led to noelplum99’s banning, you’ll find a very common thread.
Feminism.
Wait, let me rephrase that.
FEMINISM.
That’s only 5%, eh?
And please don’t ask me to provide evidence. When reading this thread earlier I found multiple people linking to threads in which noelplum “contributed”. Go read them. Particularly the most recent thread that led to his banning (i.e. PZ’s post on Natalie Reed leaving the network).
We’ve read them. Come back when you have.
Menyambal:
Yes, it means ‘flower of evil’, from Baudelaire. And thank you.
Let’s skip to the end. The banning statement tells you all you need to know. He wasn’t banned for being contrarian, and he made it clear is wasn’t party to an important issue for many here. He was banned for a pattern of behavior which was being played out in a comment thread lamenting the leaving of a great writer on this network due to harassment.
Well, I have to declare it a night, as thanks to the power being out most of the day, I didn’t get jack done. So, I must to sleep, so I can rise fairly early. If CluelessSheffield returns, have a good chew, everyone!
Heck if anyone knows if PZ’s even still reading this time of night. *shrug*
Um, there ARE regulars here who are frequent contrarians and have been for years. Depends on whether they bring good arguments, as opposed to just being contrary for the sake of fighting and pissing people off. Also what the topic of contrariness is and whether there’s good evidence supporting differing views. Oxford comma? Great. Gun ownership? It’s been done. There’ve been long heated battles over veganism resulting in a general truce.
Claiming women as a group are liars, whites are more civilized, homeopathy really works, evolution’s untrue because monkeys? Not worthy to be characterized as “dissent” by either ethical or evidential standards.
Y’all are being more than a little bit ridiculous with the preening about how successfully you made mountains out of molehills. The achievment is impressive, to be sure, but only in our collective diminishment.
Is it really so difficult to predict that going from zero to hostile over what was obviously a harmless oversight would be .. unlikely to produce other than a defensive response? Bear in mind, the consequence for the very high bar for Internet Conduct you yourselves established – if it seems like you’re picking a fight, you *are*. There can be no mistaking your meticulously assumption and splash-damage free communications for anything other than precisely what you mean.
I congratulate you on winning today’s game of troll the puppy.
Tomorrow’s topics: “Remedial Target Recognition Algorithms”and “Friendly Fire, Still a Bad Idea”.
Friendly fire, because Michael is friends with misogynists.
Because gender equality is a mere molehill.
@ marksheffield
Once again, I must needs quote from: Pharyngula Standards & Practices:
NoelPlum boring, NoelPlum bye bye…
That you, “I was fooled!” Steve?
I give your effort a 1.5 – gotta do better than that.
Okay, for real g’night now.
Mister Michael,
I’m sure that incoherent rant means something to you, stuffed if I know what.
@ Mister Michael
If you have come out of your way to bore us, then refer to my # 639 above.
marksheffield/c0nc0rdance:
There’s an imbalance in talking about the Pharyngula comment policy and YouTube comment policy as carried out by Noelplum99. PZ has control of everything in his post; Noelplum99 has control of everything in his video.
PZ (and now Chris Clarke as co-blogger) has a variety of control methods over the comments: disemvoweling, editing (now including replacement with bunny videos), deleting, and banning. Noelplum99 has marking as spam, downvoting, deleting, and blocking. In the video that is linked in this post, there are comments that are marked as spam and downvoted. Noelplum99 twice commented that he would block one commenter if he didn’t stop spamming. The thing about the control, however, is that marking as spam and downvoting are also in the hands of the commentariat. It’s the YouTube version of a dogpile, and the refrain “Don’t Feed the Trolls” is meant as a deterrent so that spam/negative vote comments are not replied to, thus quickly falling off the front page.
And, as seems to be indicated by the unbelieving attitude we got from Stevecarlos, the idea of reading every comment on a post (let alone ones minimized as they are on YouTube) was ridiculous. The fact that we didn’t see it as usual to compose a comment, then refresh to see if it was already said, made him mock us as “professional blog readers” and to say it no wonder that there weren’t many “fresh faces” around here.
What is this inability to see that different platforms can require different methods? Why is Noelplum99 letting his commentariat click the spam button or the downvote and then follow the mantra “Don’t Feed the Trolls” not your platform’s version of what’s done here? Why isn’t the arbitrary nature of it discussed hotly among you at YouTube?
The smaller atheist channels respond more quickly to criticism than do you larger YouTube uploaders. All it takes is one or two persistent commenters–not even ones who are spamming, mocking, or lying–and the rate of video output falls. I’ve watched it happen. That may be an entirely good wheat from chaff thing overall. However, it does point out the other end of the tale for you large channels: the sheer number of viewers who are willing to do as little as click a thumbs down even if they don’t comment–they police your comment sections; they determine the speech they–and the uploader–are willing to accommodate.
It’s easier to pick apart PZ’s methods. He’s taking on the responsibility. I see you at YouTube often letting the mob decide.
dang: “see it as unusual…”
I’m going to assume Mistermichael that was a dig about people calling Michael Shermer out on being sexist. If so either read this thread or one of the threads about him and educate yourself on WHY this is a problem or fuck off.
omnicrom:
He wanted to tell us generally that we were bringing down the political party…I mean, the bad apples spoiling the whole bunch…I mean, gay marriage ruining traditional marriage.
In other words, we are big silly meanies trolling puppy Noelplum99 just because he made a video about us. It’s evident in our “meticulously assumption.”
Dear Sirs
I have been reading Professor Meyers’ blog for over 70 years. I long for the days when I could come here to discuss the many rational, logical topics that interest me, such as biology, not believing in any gods, and feeling smug because I don’t fall for alternative medicine scams. Indeed, I am a most devoted follower and reader of your discussion board, Professor Meyers.
However I feel I must express my dismay at the direction this discussion board has taken. No longer can I come here to escape from the constant misandry that permeates the rest of the internet and world. Instead, Professor Meyers, apparently with full support from his loyal followers, has chosen to focus on minority issues of no interest to any of us. Issues such as harmless flirting at conferences and simple misunderstandings expressed repeatedly and frequently on twitter. I cannot stand by silently while Professor Meyers and his readers allow this discussion board to deteriorate in this way.
I must advise you, as a neutral and dispassionate observer, that my extensive experience of the internet suggests this is not an advisable tactic. I am appalled to see that my once-favourite website has become a place of censorship, oppression and genocide. I must speak up against the unconscionable treatment of dissenters to your groupthink, thousands of whom have been dragged from their beds in the night to be enslaved and starved in internment camps until they die or are euthanised. It is unacceptable that the commentariat condones this widespread unlawful detention and execution, without trial no less!
The horrific sight I have witnessed today, of no less than two commenters who bravely dared to dissent being burned at the stake while still alive, for the amusement of the others, will live with me forever.
I am afraid that unless you change your ways, the internetional community, represented today by me, will have no choice but to stop reading and commenting on this discussion board. I realise these sanctions are a severe and harsh measure, and many of you will suffer as a result, but there can be no other response. If you wish to engage in peace talks, you may do so on my youtube channel.
I remain
Yours respectfully
Mr. Michael Mansname
WTF PANTIES?
Have a Balloon, I totally want to polyga-marry your comment @647.
Oops, I was going to put that in the lounge. Damn tabbed browsers. However I suppose it works here, too. Except a little more EW and less WTF is needed here.
Also I really love how Caine is misgendered. Clues, could you actually provide any more? Have you considered Miss Pretty Princess Caine of PinkSparklyLand? That might get through the troll thick-headedness. Maybe.
(* I’m not sure now whether to run away, or offer a bucket. OK, buckets and brain-bleach all round. I definitely asked for the clean-up duty.)
I blame Stanley Milgram!
Look how I blurted that out. You’re good, Have a Balloon…I mean Mr. Michael Mansname. Sir.
Genius, you would do well to refine your assumptions. The thought process at work in your two followups is a textbook example of what’s irked me into delurking.
There are certainly classes of poster that deserve crushing – I resonate perfectly with PZ’s theories of how to approach the willfully ignorant and the malevolently misogynist (convert them into entertainment – it’s all they’re good for!)… but it’s not clear that this poor schmuck was in those categories.
Look through the conversation again after sleeping on it. Then ask yourself whether this helped advance the cause of gender equality at all, whether it taught anyone anything … or simply used the cause of gender equality as a fig leaf to cover a textbook case of schoolyard bullying.
Sigh, yet another person who yearns for understanding yet can’t be troubled to read through the many linked comment threads involving the person who is the subject of the OP.
Jeez. “A textbook case of schoolyard bullying” or a warranted response to repeated trolling/idiocy over a period of time?
Mister Michael, I’d ask you to be the judge, but you apparently can’t be troubled to look at the evidence.
Improbable Joe
I find it ironic how the commentariat is so quick to accuse innocent, antisocial individuals of being rapists, and yet here we have a textbook example of aggressive sexual language directed at someone who merely dared to express an alternative viewpoint.
athyco
I would request that you refrain from ad-hominem attacks, and address my argument directly, thank you.
It is exactly this type of behaviour that has led me to leave Freethought Blogs.
It is exactly this type of comment that prevents me from going to bed. Chortling is not conducive to sleep.
Well done, Have a Balloon. Well done, indeed. :)
Complete free expression is over-rated. There are certain views that simply should not be permitted to spread and I trust intelligent people like PZ Myers to decide which views these are. How can the truth be spread if there is opposition to it? It would be droned out by untruth! There is no winning arguments when all arguments are on equal footing. Some views simply deserve to be given a greater status because they are that obvious. To challenge them would be absurd. There would be no progress if all our best ideas were challenged. The truth deserves strong people who are willing to protect it from accusation of falsehood. Argument alone is inefficient. Some views are sacred and feminism is one of them. Thank you, PZ.
Yes, equality is a foundational principle. You got a problem with that?
Not to defend creepy gender-essentialist douche, but there are cultures where peopel are more relaxed about bodies and stuff, even around children.
And I tell you it ain’t pretty if your kid pulls your neckline in public and asks loudly “Mum, are you wearing a bra?” ;)
concordance
Since you are here, regarding your video, can you tell us why it is more important to give some rape-apologist a space to spew their shit at the expense of rape-victims who are triggered and silenced as opposed to give rape-victims a space where they can safely talk about what happened to them which is often important for coping with the trauma at the expense of rape-apologists being silenced?
Or do you think that you can do both? If yes, how?
I will second Giliells question to Concordance. I am quite curious.
Alethea:
Oh, uh…where’s that bucket?! I find myself unable to sleep, and now I’m afraid to try again, gad this could cause nightmares! (I kid, I kid…I think.)
PatrickG! Please! Tone it down!
Mr. Michael Mansname, Sir, has done the very best job in the world of itemizing (I can hardly say it) the “severe and harsh measure” that we’ll suffer! Think of how we’d fare talking it over in *quick breaths* YouTube comments if you antagonize him with chortling.
I really shouldn’t bother, but here goes anyway. No, “John Smith”, feminism is not sacred. Nothing should be considered sacred. To do so is to put something above questioning, above criticism and to stomp on thought. That’s obviously not the case with feminism, which, if you had the slightest bit of knowledge about, would know that it has changed as society and culture has changed. We are still fighting for some of the same things we did 40 years ago and we’re fighting for many new things now.
Your attempted jibe falls flat, a pathetic stain on the floor. If you don’t like feminism or social justice issues, why there’s a whole wide internet out there, most of it happily willing to cater to those who don’t much care for the uppity bitches and manginas. We have a very small bit of the ‘net here, one where we can discuss our concerns and social consciousness. No one is forcing you to click here, no one is forcing you to read. Given that revelation, I’m sure you can find a place more to your liking.
I, for one, welcome the comments by Mr. Michael Mansname. I suggest we should all fall on our proverbial swords and so relinquish the entire internets to him forthwith. For the Good of Humanity ™ .
I find it very disturbing that the horde engaged some of the best and brightest atheists and skeptics the Pit has ever seen…without me. Just taking a look at this thread…wow. the dissenters brought forth strong arguments. Their logic and reasoning permeated every comment. Some posters were so skilled at arguing that they proved how easily one can support an assertion with no evidence
All those minutes of searching for comments…why did no one mention
@ John Smith
You are being a tad ingenuous in coming to a sceptical blog and then trying to place certain concepts beyond question.
Would you like our responses to this to be polite and deferential rather?
[meta]
Well, I’ve just caught up.
(Shame I missed out on some specimens)
—
marksheffield who sigs as “c0nc0rdance”:
1. I disbelieve your claim that PZ asserted this was the only reason; because of that, I think you are bullshitting, and because of that I think you are a bullshitter.
(Feel free to point me to a timestamp or transcript showing otherwise, should you care to attempt to defend your character)
2. Yes, that is an example.
(There are other examples in the Commenting Rules, too)
#653 – Yikes! I was talking about the gender adventures with Caine and Steve, not the bloody Plum sod!
Per today’s example, you should now be ruthlessly excoriated for having employed poor assumptions in a potentially ambiguous situation…. (funny, that sort of thing, happening again on the internet).
However, I can see how my context could be misinterpreted since I put up the first flare without any hooks. Rookie move on my part – this is *really* asynchronous and hair triggers all around.
-Michael
*I think the difficulty of having a strong position like ours is that people can parody it by simply repeating it back yo us. This leads to confusion. How can we circumvent this embarrassing situation? As you can see from my previous post and the replies it received, simply repeating PZ Myers position back to him is seen by some -in our own community!- as an argument against the very position he argued! I find this very confusing. My suggestion is this. When we are simply stating out position we should preface with an asterisks (*), as I have done here, to indicate that it is NOT a self parody, but an honest statement of our position.
John Smith
A wise move. I find that it’s best not to distress the locals by exposing them to an alternative viewpoint. We will bow down to the untouchable sanctity of feminism that Professor Meyers, in his infinite wisdom, has chosen to worship in place of a god.
I admire you for sticking around and remaining so polite when your original, quite amusing, comment, was responded to so rudely and aggressively by the regular commenters. Sadly, you will come to see that this is a typical retaliatory tactic of theirs. They attack the man because they cannot attack the idea.
I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that I (as well as John Smith) have been polite and respectful throughout this discussion so far, and have not been responded to in kind. Once again I remind you that if nobody is able to address my valid concerns as expressed above, I will never again read or comment at FreethoughtBlogs.
*Absolutely! A good point. I would have placed an asterisk in front of my previous comment, but I posted it without refreshing the page or reading to the end of the comments. Apparently this also is a bannable offense.
John Smith: you sure look like you’re trolling, to me.
<snicker>
Care to attempt to give a précis of this purported common position that you imagine is self-parodying when it becomes a quotation?
Very right and proper as you’re definitely A*.
how time consuming it would be to click on the links provided to search for evidence?
Tony:
It didn’t take place and won’t take place because myuido is making shit up out of whole cloth. There’s no evidence to back up their claims, which is why they kept moving the goalposts.
[meta]
John Smith, your trolling is exceptionally weak, but most amusing as you clearly imagine you’ve being clever.
(Your grasp of HTML is much more powerful, feeble as it is ;) )
Giliell @ 658
Tough question, but I think I owe you an answer. It’s a fine line that must be drawn between words “as communication meant to exchange ideas” and “words used to harm or suppress communication”. The former are protected legally in some places and are a fundamental part of a free expression culture, the latter are distinctly not. Words used to harm or suppress aren’t welcome in any of my forums either… though I am more tolerant of people who just want to verbally abuse me as the content’s author. Intentional triggering and particularly around issues of assault or rape or psychological or sexual abuse I won’t tolerate either.
To answer the latter portion of your question, I would suggest on a purely tactical level that open forums are not a good place for rape victims to meet and share their psychological trauma… there are just too many creeps and jerks in the world. You certainly would not want to have this discussion on YouTube or Facebook or Reddit. A user-whitelisted or private forum would be a much safer place, and have the added benefit of concealing private conversations and IPs from the public. I can’t see how anything less would ever be truly safe for someone with trigger concerns. I’m very sorry that this is the case. Banning would be a poor stop-gap measure, because the ban would come after the damage is already done.
I want to make sure I am not misunderstood. I am in favor of giving dissenters and critics a chance to confront a content producer over the arguments advanced, so long as their speech falls into the “free expression” category. I am not in favor of the abuse of free expression policies to actually suppress other people’s rights or terrorize them.
In reading NoelPlum99’s content across several threads here at Pharyngula, I think he falls pretty safely into the “free expression” category. His comments on the post announcing Natalie Reed’s departure, while in slightly questionable taste or timing, didn’t seem to have any intent besides expressing his feelings on Natalie’s arguments.
My apologies for a slight thread derail. Merely answering a question from Giliel @ 658. I hope I’ve clarified my position.
You managed to miss all the parts where Neoplum was being really very sexist, on a blog that does not tolerate sexism because there is *no* reason to tolerate sexism?
marksheffield:
Leaving aside that “dissenters and critics” ≠ ‘repetitive hobby-horse riding windbags’, did you even read the OP?
I here quote PZ’s little snark for your benefit: “Oh, yes. Why don’t I tolerate dissent, from a dissenter who posted here for over 4 months, making 168 comments. ”
(You seriously think that’s not giving NoelPlum99 “a chance”?)
marksheffield:
And what makes you think we don’t know that? Do have even the slightest glimmer of what it is like to be a woman? What our lives are like, every single day?
Just so you know, Mark, Pharyngula is considered to be a safe space for those who have been abused, assaulted and raped. There are a whole lot of us here who fall into those categories. We not only work to make this a safe place, we fight like hell to correct misconceptions about abuse, assault, harassment and rape. According to your thoughts on such matters, it’s perfectly okay to give a rape apologist free reign, as that’s simply a matter of expression. You might want to think that one over a bit.
It may seem “free expression” to you, however, that’s not how people here perceived his fuckwittery. He never once stopped to listen to anyone else, he only showed up in threads dealing with feminism, sexism or women, to condescendingly mansplain to us how we women should feel, after all, “his wife…” made him an expert, you see. He was insulting, offensive and blatantly sexist, often reveling in that. All he ever did here was to continually repeat himself, over and over.
As for what he said about Natalie Reed? You think that was simple disagreement with her arguments? Are we reading the same language?
This ^ doesn’t provide you with a bit of a clue?
This ^ didn’t provide a clue? (Here’s a hint: Jim thinks *everything* should be about him and what interests him.)
Let me guess – you didn’t even fucking get this ^ at all, did you?
Then there was this, which was a blatant lie:
And on and on it goes. I honestly don’t see why I or anyone else can treat you with good faith when you’d defend such utter shit, and the bits I quoted are hardly the worst of Jim, they simply demonstrate his narcissism, his shallowness and his complete disregard for people who don’t manage to magically “interest” him.
Pharyngula is highly invested in social justice and Jim didn’t care for that very much. We’re working to change things here, which is one of the reasons we don’t hide in a locked forum to discuss things like rape. Hiding behind closed doors is exactly where rape culture tries to place us. Repeatedly. If a person has been given every opportunity to understand the harm they are doing, had plenty of time for discussion and argumentation and persists, well, they can go pontificate elsewhere. It’s a big ol’ net.
athyco @ 643
Very good points, and I appreciate your thoroughness.
For the record, NoelPlum threatened to block a spammer who was copy-pasting “Racism is code for anti-white” rhetoric, though he needn’t have bothered… it was auto-SPAM marked by YouTube’s algorithm that notices repetitive content. Dumb comments tend to get lost in the pile because no-one is interested in replying to them.
The YouTube comments system is deeply flawed and getting worse. Google have one thing in mind with the future of YouTube; commercial appeal. I won’t defend too strongly the system I’ve come to hate, and for a lot of the reasons you mention. On the other hand, there are other precedents for up-thumb, down-thumb types of rating systems. Reddit comes to mind. The appeal of such a system is that it minimizes summary decisions by a moderator. Policies like PZ’s “bans can be arbitrary whims” create a lot of bad feeling outside his core. There’s a sense of injustice when people perceive that they aren’t going to be treated fairly, and that invites trolls to come and create a little chaos as revenge.
Again, I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your comment. It’s not my intention to “pick apart” PZ’s policy, though I do hope to influence it a bit. Pharyngula was at the top of my blogroll once, and I lurked a bit to read the comments and discussion. I’d love to see the culture here become more open to outsiders and new commenters with something to offer. Treating each new person as a “chew toy” creates the wrong environment for that.
Delivery for Caine!
1 bucket
1 bottle brain bleach
Assorted mops and cleaning cloths
And a fine single malt to clear up any remaining bad taste.
marksheffield:
Good call, given your efforts herein.
If it’s not open, what are you doing here? ;)
(Obviously, in your ontology you are an outsider, since clearly you have nothing to offer)
You are supremely clueless, but you imagine you know this place.
(Bah)
What makes you think it isn’t? We have new people delurking all the time. That’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t know if you weren’t a regular here, now is it? So why do you think you’re qualified to lecture us all? Here’s a big old clue by four: you aren’t.
We get new people who become regulars all the time; we get new chewtoys all the time. It’s a party.
Also, I just have to know, why in the hell do you and so many other people, who have no interest in becoming part of the commentariat, feel they *must* provide their so-called sage advice on how this community could be better, how it could be this, could be that, yada, yada, yada.
Either you’re interested in being part of the community here or you aren’t. If you aren’t, why this odd need to show up here and lecture people? We aren’t in need of lectures, or help, or “sage” advice. This community is thriving, full of vibrant, diverse individuals and we change things all the time, we discuss said changes, we argue, we have fun, all that stuff. This is a very strong community and no, it’s not like many others on the ‘net. That’s okay, we’re fine with being different.
Alethea:
Oh, thank you so much, that will do the trick!
Let’s do an experiment. Hi all, I’m a new commenter! (I read the comments a lot, but tend to lurk)
That’s nice. I fail to see, however, how anyone has a right to comment on PZ’s blog, or how banning someone terrorizes them.
[meta]
Dammit, Joe! :)
(Being a lurker, I hope that you know that had I any basis upon which to dispute you, I damn well would)
Hi, Joe. Welcome in. How long have you been reading? The Lounge is here and the other open thread, Thunderdome, is here.
Note for Mark’s benefit: this is a standard welcome to new peoples.
John:
Yes, but any lurker would know that’s your raisin date, John. ;p
[snip]
All true as far as it goes. But here’s the thing, how are people suppose to find these hidden and whitelist protected venues?
Pharyngula is an open forum in which an astounding number of people have had the courage to share their experiences of sexual assault and rape. The safety to do so is fought for tooth and nail by the horde and violating that safety is a quick ticket to ban hammering by PZ. All of this does great good by showing people they are not alone in their pain and that there is at least one place where their voices will be heard. And yet at the same time the efforts and rules that creates this safer place results in virulant criticism from those who prize some twisted notion of free speech above all else.
It’s a no win situation: always hide the horrific stories of abuse in our society away from view for the ‘safety’ of the victims and you allow that society to continue to pretend that the problem isn’t prevalent enough to warrant being addressed vigourously. Claw out a highly visible space that’s safe enough to allow anyone to share their experiences with sexual assault and rape and be damned for it by the Freeze Peach crowd.
Eh, Caine’s faster than I am, but still.
Well, you’re clueless and your tactics fail on several levels.
First off, around 15% of all of us have been raped. That goes for the entire Internet, the entire USA, and with some variation in the stats, the whole world. Whenever a couple dozen persons interact, odds are one or more of them are survivors of some rape or other. Even if the group’s all men.
Second off, the creeps and jerks are everywhere too. Any woman on the Internet who speaks up about anything is going to get rapey comments and threats, whether she’s actually a survivor or not. The douchebags just hurl rape and slut remarks at every woman they target. Similarly, rape culture is everywhere in full public view, infesting popular media and organizations from courtrooms to grade schools. Many rape victims know instantly they won’t be believed, before they’ve ever seen or heard the words of another rape survivor. Their rapists may flat out tell them so.
Third, rape survivors don’t have flashing neon signs either. How else are we supposed to recognize each other except by someone daring to speak up? Of the thousands of lurkers who read this blog, hundreds will be rape survivors, of all genders. They can see survivors telling of experiences like theirs and arguing against rape culture here, which is rare in any internet venue one cares to name. That’s safer for understanding than blindly entering a private forum with no idea what the culture there will be like.
So walling off victims en masse does us a disservice, isolating the lurkers, silencing the vanguard, and keeping potential allies ignorant, while leaving the field open for random rape apologists to continue spreading harmful mythology as is the status quo. Sure, there are also private spaces for survivors of rape and abuse. How do they know they can trust those spaces, or even find them? By what the public survivors say about them.
Aaaand that makes three. /hivemind
Mark Sheffield/ Concordance
See, we have a problem here.
Because apparently those things can be one and the same thing.
To you “women should take precaution for their own safety so they don’t get raped” might be an “exchange of ideas”. For a rape victim that is the same shit she has heard all her life and has been asked all the time ever since it happened.
I haven’t been raped. One guy tried to assault me, once. I barely made it to my car, just in time. The reaction of the only person I ever told in meatspace: “Why did you park there?” Shut me up pretty quickly. That shit isn’t tolerated here. People aren’t banned for saying it, their argument is torn apart. Only if they can’t stop making it they are banned.
There’s another problem: Intent isn’t magic. The fact that I didn’t intentionally fall off my kitchen counter doesn’t make the bruise any smaller, the fact that you didn’t step onto my toe doesn’t make the toenail grow back any faster.
But here’s the thing: Actually, we treat unintentional harm as an occasion to learn. People are ignorant on rape culture and rape apology. I was ignorant when I first came here. People being ignorant isn’t a problem. But as soon as people have been informed that their conduct causes harm and who continue doing so are causing harm intentionally.
So, you’re fine with excluding about 25% of women and up to 10% of men from public discourse? Because that shit is everywhere. It’s on every youtube video where a woman says something a guy doesn’t like and the top-rated comment says something like “The bitch should get a dick up her ass”. But you complain about people like PZ turning off the comments.
It’s also a nice catch-22: If rape victims themselves voice their opinions and tell about the harm it does and how they are hurt you say they shouldn’t go there. If somebody like me who escaped sexual assault says something I get to hear that “I don’t speak for victims”. In short, it gives the rape apologists free reign. Why do you value their right to “free expression” higher than the rights of rape victims to participate in life?
Well, we’re doing that here. The reason people feel safe to share their trauma is not because there are no idiots to come along and make stupid comments. It’s because we identify the rape-apologist as the one who should shut up and go away, not the victim.
Well, I’ve discussed the problem about “free expression” vs. “abuse” above. Again “dissenters” get their chance to say what they want. But not unchallenged and forever. There’s a whole thread here where people can say as much bigotted bullshit as they want to.
See what Caine wrote.
Noelplum came to that thread to voice his disagreements with Natalie and insisting that it would actually be appropriate to use gendered slurs to describe her if only we weren’t that stuck up PC.
Interestingly, I’ve seen this community grow, change, expand over the time. And I’m by no means one of the oldest commenters here.
Sure, this community isn’t for everybody, not even for everybody who actually agrees with PZ or the Horde. That’s how life is and once people are out of kindergarten we expect them to understand that not everybody will be their BFF and that it doesn’t mean that those folks are bad people.
Pteryxx:
Yes it is rare and how many people have we had, over the years, who have de-lurked to share their particular experience or to thank us for fighting against rape culture so hard, for providing strength and solace? I’ve lost count. What we do matters.
[meta]
FossilFishy, Pteryxx indeed.
I really don’t know what the Pharyngula commentariat gender split is, but in my estimation it approaches parity; also notable is the number of non-heteronormative people (in any one of a number of axes) who feel comfortable enough to be themselves and therefore identify as such.
(This is not insignificant)
Caine: I lost count too, but when I did it was somewhere above 50. (That was the epic thread where about a dozen of us told our stories one after another.)
Pteryxx:
Yeah, and that was Sciborg, too. There’s been a lot more since then.
Giliell says:
That’s the core concept of all the tl:dr, right there.
Caine,
Once again, chapeau.
(Black with a red band, of course.)
I hope you get enough sleep to stay strong!
Carry on, Horde.
Definitions of ‘feminism’ [-i-niz-uhm]
(noun)
1. support of social, political, and economic rights for women equal to those of men.
See, it’s just like a religion!!! How dare you force this view on me,?? I have rights you know!!!
In fact, my right to dissent to the above idea is a sacred and fundamental part of a free expression, which is MY birthright as a man!
No, you may not question or dissent against my birthright to question the idea that women have birthrights, you fascist. No, sir! You must be in lockstep. No disagreement here.
@ 650 Alethea H. “Crocoduck” Kuiper-Belt
I’m late, but I can’t resist mentioning that recently I corrected Caine on misgendering someone else. You know how she responded?Acknowledged the error and thanked me.
Bloody ball-busting feminazis.
Hey! I’m a “regular dissenting poster”! I mean: while I don’t disagree on the broad range of ideas PZ has and positions he holds, I nevertheless regularly criticise in comments when I think PZ’s off the mark, misrepresenting some person or idea.
I’d like to think that unlike NoelPlum99 I actually aknowledge my assholery when I’m wrong, am ready to learn, listen to arguments and am interested in interacting with the community here instead of just trying to attack or prove how wrong people are and how clever I myself am.
I wish to second everything that Caine and Giliell have said.
Also, this whole issue of rape (and by extension rape apologists) goes further than the immediate victims. It harms everone connected to them, it hurts communities and whole societies. What reason could any thinking, caring person have for supporting such on any level? It would be like cheering for a disease.
…
Some good breaking news wrt our cause: The pope has resigned
Caine
Sir,
What you and PZ Meyers evidently fail to grasp is that we, too, are part of the commentariat. I myself have been reading and occasionally commenting on Pharyngula for over 70 years. However your obsession with political correctness means that even respectful disagreement is no longer tolerated, while regular commenters are allowed to break the rules with impunity as long as they tow the party line. For example: I have seen a commenter torn apart by wild dogs for the mere (reasonable) assumption that everyone everywhere is from America. Yet, the same commenters will immediately ostracise anyone who follows non-American cultural norms. I myself am from England, where we call men and women ‘c*nts’, and yet I am not allowed to use the word here because I am forced to abide by PC American rules.
Those of us who are able to look at the issue calmly and rationally can clearly see that this is off-putting to a great many people, such as myself. It is understandable that in your emotional state you would not immediately be aware of this, so I merely point it out to aid your understanding.
The situation is simple: unless you take on board the sensible and logical advice I have provided, I and others may have to find an alternative discussion board, which discusses real proper important issues.
@707
Bye then!
We’re not all American, by the way. Gendered slurs are wrong regardless of geography. Using ‘cunt’ as an insult, like calling someone a ‘pussy’ or ‘like a girl’ are all saying in no uncertain terms that being a woman (or at least having a vagina) is a bad thing(tm). Wouldn’t be insulting, otherwise.
Doesn’t matter a bit if everyone does it, it’s still wrong. Aussie here, the land of “Straya Cunts”, so don’t go all ‘it’s ok when-we- do it!’ on me. I’m not inferior because I’m a woman. Use my gender as an insult and you’re saying I am.
Sophia
Pssst, Have a Balloon is proving Poe’s Law to be absolutely true ;)
Giliell:
Certainly fucking hope so. Heh, hair-trigger indeed ;)
@ Sophia
Check out Mr Michael Mansname’s comment here.
;)
And suddenly it makes sense.
So many condescendingly hilarious word soufflés in this thread I netted me a papier maché one. GO TEAM! Poe’s law, whilst odious, is indeed A Thing. I’ll just re-aim that comment slightly. It’s bound to hit a real target, there’s plenty in here.
Mark Sheffield egotist
You fall prey to the same evidenceless ME, ME, ME as braindead egotitst Jim did. Evidence for your inane claim is nowhere to be found. No links to show you are right. Nothing but your OPINION. Sorry. your OPINION isn’t and never will be evidence of anything. That is the problem you have. And the whole MRA contingent has. They can’t provide evidence for their claims. But they sure can supply OPINION and attitude. Which is why they are obnoxious fools like braindead Jim was, and get their asses banhammered.
Common decency? After all, you made an accusation of systematic dishonesty against the regular commenters on this site. When challenged on such an accusation, a decent person you would either back it up or withdraw it.
I have just read this entire thread.
I am a slow reader, so I’m completely exhausted!
All the energy I have left to do is to say Thankyou! To everyone that’s posted here – I have learned SO much!
My wee brain is exploding – but its all good!
Thankyou x gazillions. Thats all I can manage right now.
marksheffield\Concordance:
Repetitive content. That describes NoelPlum99 perfectly. And the main reason a lot of people are banned in these comments. You mentioned that you read his comments throughout his time here. Did you also read the responses. All of them? Not just the rude ones(not that the rude ones are useless)?
This isn’t an opinion board. The blog post comments are a discussion board with the blog post as the topic starter. Discussion. You don’t come here just expecting to have your opinion heard. You have to expect to be able to defend it. “It is my opinion” means absolutely nothing without backup. So if one doesn’t defend their opinion when it’s addressed, but then in a later discussion expresses the same opinion without backing it up or addressing earlier or current responses, it starts getting repetitive. So after a while, what’s the point? Why even try discussing something with this person if they won’t even address the responses? It’s like talking to a brick wall. And why the hell do I care what a brick wall thinks?
If you want to express your dissenting opinion without backing it up, you are a troll because you’re only saying what you are saying for attention and not for discussion.
Yesterday, I posted a comment on FTB for the first time. I am sure you will all be happy to know that this will be my last. I had never commented here before, as the topics of the posts were things I heartily agreed with, and I have no interest in simply playing “cheerleader”, or they have been topics which, while legitimate, were either not of great interest to me, or in which I had not enough background to comment.
I would like to applaud @Atheist as the ONLY person on this site who actually addressed the topic of my post, rationally and politely, and note that one other actually addressed the topic, though with profanity and insult.
No one else actually engaged ANY argument I had made in my original post, preferring ad hominem attacks and demonization. When I dared to mention GGW I was provided ONE citation of her awfulness, and I must admit that, even in the context of the article she was commenting on, I found her comment to be wrong. However, as I had said, she still has some videos where she makes good, reasoned arguments. I apologize that feminism is not the focus of my life and thus I have only seen a couple of her videos.
I had come here hoping to find that all the internet chatter about FTB was wrong, but apparently, there is much more to it than I thought.
I have seen comments in this thread about people disagreeing with the way this is run wanting to “shut down” FTB. In my case at least, nothing could be further from the truth. Many of us, as friends, fellow skeptics and atheists, sincerely believe that something very bad is going on here. Not bad for US – bad for FTB.
Your conduct here does nothing to promote this as a site for rational discussion. While most of the blogs remain solid, the community seems poisoned, and this is sad indeed. The rest of the world is not a terrible place full of rape apologists and privileged misogynists (though some certainly exist). I fear that you are well on your way to becoming the Westboro Baptist Church of the “skeptical” community.
Enjoy the increasingly marginalized echo chamber. If I want irrational, angry arguments, I’ll get them from creationists. It’s far less depressing. The rest of us will be out in the real world hoping to see you emerge someday.
P.S. – No need to wear out the “banhammer” I have no interest in visiting or commenting here again.
No, any more than calling someone a dick is saying that having a penis is a bad thing. You can have a cunt, and not be a cunt; you can have a pussy and not be a pussy; you can have a dick and not be a dick. You’re taking it literally so that you can be offended, but ironically the actual usage is a form of shaming behavior, which is the mirror of your response. Saying it’s sexist, especially when you have to reinterpret it to do so, is shaming behavior.
Anti-feminism isn’t synonymous with saying women aren’t people. This has been debunked endlessly. That society institutionalizes discrimination is an unsupported claim, prejudging a load of interesting psychological questions.
See, the problem with framing feminism like this, both falsifying it’s core dogma and taking dodgy assumptions as beyond reproach, is that you’ll never understand why an anti-feminist might be as much an egalitarian as you. For someone making a lot of noise about non-reasonable dissent, you’re not presenting much of a reasonable position to start with. It’s your blog, you can obviously do what you want, but strawmanning your detractor’s position so flagrantly is the most intellectually disingenuous way to go about criticizing the “reasonableness” of those same detractors.
Lee coye shows us how to remove all connotations and cultural history from derogatory sexist slurs. What a champ.
By the way, we don’t tolerate the use of gendered slurs at all here, including ‘dick’.
Voicing your inane opinion isn’t making an argument. An argument is made with evidence: “this is what I believe, and this (link) is the evidence to back it up”. You made no arguments where facts, not opinion, could be discussed. That was your failure to argue your point with evidence, not ours, and is the problem with the whole anti-feminist atheist contingent. Which you are prima facie evidence of why they are nothing but loudmouthed idjits. Which, is an insult, not an ad hominen.
Then you should have no problem supplying links to back up such inane opinion. You, like most sexists, don’t understand the differnce between evidence (found here) and opinion, found in videos and MRA sites.
And mine.
I am sexist, racist, bigoted, you name it. Why? Because I was brought up to be sexist and racist and bigoted, I was socialized to be sexist and racist and bigoted, and I was trained to think of men as being human and everyone else as children (including adult women and some men). Yet I was raised in a liberal household. So how did this happen? Easy to answer: I am not separate from the social paradigm. Neither are you. Nor is Dr. Myers, or Caine, or Tethys, or any other human being on the planet.
The trick is to know enough about our biases (and we all have them, every single one of us), to be aware of your privileges, aware of your -isms, so that we can think about what you are about to say, think about what you are about to write, and try to minimize the manifestations of our -isms. Two or three years ago, I thought of myself as a good progressive, all up with human rights, equality, I was pro-gay marriage. And then the bloodthirsty and misogynistic reaction to Rebecca Watson saying, “Guys, don’t do that,” woke me up with all the force of a 400 pound halibut upside my face.
Here, on the screen, were the exact same things that came out of my mouth — but they were being used to silence women. They were being used, by atheists, to reinforce biblical patriarchy.
So it is good that you recognize you have biases. Now think, long and hard (and it will hurt, it will make you uncomfortable, it will make you want to smack yourself upside the head) about those biases and the advantages those biases give you. And, more important, the disadvantages those biases put on other people, other human beings.
Tricky things, biases. They make it possible to defend ideas that deny human rights to human beings. And I was there (still am, but I’ve gotten good at recognizing what I am doing).
Yes, there is.
I doubt that there are any regulars here who have not had dustups with other regulars, or even PZ. I have written things that seemed good at the time and, it was pointed out by others, turned out to be fat shaming, or ableism, or sexism.
Some serious misogynists have been here for for months at a time (Joey, noelplum). There are some rather obvious bigots, too. The fact that I am a regular, or anyone else is a regular, does not mean that we can spout sexist, or racist, or bigoted, or what-ever-ist things and not be called on it. A very respected commenter recently went down a portion of the victim-blaming rabbit hole and got called on it big time. So yes, there is room for contrarians but it does not mean that I, or any one else, has to let something go without challenging it.
Last I checked, women comprise slightly more than 50% of the worlds population. How does 1/2 become 1/20?
Human rights is not a molehill.
Because (and I’m just guessing here) concordance has no horse in the race? For hir, it is a an academic exercise.
When the one who made the assumption of gender was called on it, xe freaked out and blamed Caine. That was the point when things went wahoonie shaped. Unexamined sexism is normal and regrettable. Doubling down on unexamined sexism is reason for mockery.
Don’t you fucking dare try to silence me or any other survivor.
And I, and othes, used our “free expression” to tell him why, in no uncertain terms, he was not only wrong but was, in fact, contributing to the culture that accepts rape as normal.
BINGO!!!! That is exactly what noelplum never even tried to do.
And using gendered slurs (or racist, bigoted, etc slurs) are an effective silencing tactic.
Additionally, think on this. A really good car salesperson who drives a really hard bargain might be called a dick and that gendered slur carries with it a positive!, specifically, that he makes more money because he is a dick. While calling someone a cunt or twat invariably means stupid, or weak, or panicky, or hysterical. Understand?
And no, ‘dick’ is also not acceptable here.
At my house, there is no smoking indoors. That is a house rule. One of the house rules here is that gendered insults, any insult that results in spash damage, is not acceptable. Don’t smoke in my house.
PatrickDoyle:
I think you posted that just to prove my point. Thank you.
Aside from not being true, this proves you do not read responses. Specifically, you are STILL claiming to be the victim of ad hominem attacks. When a few posters had corrected you on it.
Jadehawk here
Josh, Official SpokesGay here
Ze Madmax here
Dalillama, Schmott Guy here
Also, I’m pretty sure Atheist was making fun of your letter format when they responded in kind. And several people responded to your points.
They didn’t agree, therefore it was not a response.
Hey, Patrick Doyle
Why don’t you tell us what reasonable positions GWW has? Because you’ve been provided with evidence that she’s an asshole, but you haven’t given any that she has some good points.
Asserted without evidence, dismissed with evodence, in thist case.
Ogvorbis
Concordance/Mark clearly identifies as male.
Lee coye:
Feminism, the apparently heretical idea, has the goal of elevating women to equality with men in political, social and economic areas. That women do not have full equality in these areas should be readily apparent to one who searches with a critical, rational eye. Not possessing full equality with men means that–although on paper, women and men are equal–women are treated as second class citizens, as *people*, who do not get the full range of human rights that men do. Lacking human rights, treated as second class, discriminated against…this calls to mind another group of people treated as less than human.
If you are an anti-feminist, you stand against the egalitarian goal of seeking full equality for women in all walks of life.
Standing *against* equality for any minority group means one does not treat that group as equal human beings.
Standing against feminism does indeed entail treating women as if they are not people.
As for the rest of your massively insulting bullshit, tell me, what does it mean to call a woman a _cunt_? What does that word mean and how does it function as an insult?
So what are you doing here, then? You don’t seem to be interested in the community here, nor do you seem to know much about it. You also don’t seem interested in feminism, and you seem to be lacking that background as well.
You just can’t be bothered to name any?
If only.
Sorry.
billingtondev
@715
Seconded.
All at one sitting, and with minimal coffee intake too.
G
Another old white cis hetero male lurker here who considers himself extremely fortunate to have stumbled across this blog. I came for the atheism and stayed for a much-needed education in social justice, sexism, the nature of privilege, and the application of rational criticism to my own assumptions rather than just those of other people. It’s been very uncomfortable at times, and continues to be so when yet another of my unconcious assumptions is challenged. I thought of myself as a rationalist, feminist, and all round decent person, but reading PZ’s posts and the comments from the regulars here has made me realise how much of it was just relishing that smug sense of superiority at having achieved the relatively simple intellectual task of working out that there are no gods.
One of the most uncomfortable moments was recognising that my “decent person” self-image had far too much in common with the classic sexist “Nice Guy” stereotype. I was totally unaware of how widespread and toxic sexism still is and the extent to which I was going along with it. I even came close to posting that “cunt” wasn’t really a sexist term as I’m a Brit and it’s used differently here! I now feel a pang of embarrassment whenever that gets mentioned, but that’s a good thing as those pangs help to keep us honest.
I had assumed that speaking out against religion, and by extension looking at everything more rationally, was automatically leading to a more equitable society as there is no rational argument in favour of discrimination and lots of arguments against it. It was therefore somewhat shocking when people who described themselves as rationalists and sceptics attacked Rebecca Watson for her very mild and reasonable comments about addressing sexism within the sceptic movement. Not only is the level of hatred and viciousness totally unacceptable for decent human beings, it’s also highly dishonest and irrational. For it to continue in this way against anybody who supports feminism is just bizarre. Any division within the sceptic “movement” (whatever that means) has been caused by the anti-feminists revealing their true feelings, not by those who had the courage to draw attention to the problem. And I have nothing but contempt for all the pseudo-rationalists, such as noelplum99, who see all the irrational viciousness aimed at those promoting social justice but are more concerned about preserving their own self-important facade than they are about equity and justice and examing their own prejudices.
Anyway, that’s a very wordy thank you to PZ and The Horde for opening my eyes, it’s never too late to learn more about the world and about oneself. It takes a lot of courage to stand up to the bullies who want things to stay as they are and who don’t care how they go about it, especially when doing so means reliving painful experiences. I’m filled with admiration for they the way people on this blog, and elsewhere, refuse to be silenced by the reactionaries and keep on battling the dishonest trolls until they leave or fall over. Honest impassioned rudeness is infinitely better than detached two-faced politeness any day of the week.
PS,
Have a Balloon – you rock :)
tinkerer:
Thanks. This place woke me up, too. Nice to know that us old white guys are still capable of learning.
@lee coye #718
How about we take a look at your comment through a slight re-framing, shall we?
The bolded parts are my edits. Do those insults still scan the same way to you? Do you not see a difference between an insult that reinforces centuries of oppression and bolsters the ruins of an unjust society, and an insult that does NOT carry that kind of connotation?
Is it acceptable to listen to a black person speak, and call them a “nigger” when you decide that you don’t like what they have to say? Is that person “re-interpreting” your remark in order to be offended?
tinkerer.
Well said.
Me too, all of it.
I can’t type for toffee, you managed to say all i’ve wanted to say much better than I.
Thanks
G
@ 730
That was great.
I can’t think of a better way to perpetuate rape culture and delay the advent of full equality for women and non-gender conforming people of all varieties than to insist that victims of rape, who constitute anywhere between 18% and 30% of the population, depending on which studies you look at, refrain from talking about their experiences because society has collectively decided that the free speech rights of victimizers and rapists trump those of the people they victimize. I hope that Concordance reconsiders his position on that.
*spits*
I knew colonelzen was familiar: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/07/04/what-kind-of-atheist-are-you/
@Ogvorbis (end of 722)
Is calling someone a dick equivalent to saying having a penis is a bad thing?
This is the most convoluted reasoning I’ve encountered in a long time. Let me see if I can rephrase it to help you understand why this is nonsensical:
No, it doesn’t, in either case, carry a “positive” simply because behaving in such a way makes them more money. Lets try another:
So no, I don’t “understand”.
This is the same sort of narcissism that PZ demonstrates in casting anyone who disagrees as “unreasonable”, implying that agreement is the only reasonable course, and thus, the fact that so many regular commenters agree with him is simply “reasonable people” agreeing in a reasonable manner. Even if their arguments are unreasonable or irrational in the extreme. Nothing narcissistic about that.
Lee, calling someone a pussy, for example, is equating that person to a female’s body part and calling that person weak, equating the ideas. So using the word dick forms a double standard, and it equates acting like a forceful jerk with a male’s body part. Allowing one while disallowing the other is a double standard, and both serve to reinforce sexist ideas in our culture.
Your counter-example is poor. While psychopath can be used as an insult, it can also be used as a psychological diagnosis. So your example doesn’t work.
No, but it implies that a penis is a bad thing, or can be.
Personally I find “dick” and “prick” to be gendered but not sexist.
Many people I deal with are both deserving of the connotations and appropriately gendered and if it’s not sexist then it’s not offensive (to me).
The local commentariat has consensused that male-gendered epithets should be avoided, largely, I think, for the sake of avoiding the appearance of hypocrisy, and I respect this local convention because it doesn’t hurt.
@726
Tony, two quibbles here:
1. If men and women are legally equal on paper, but express different interests and pursue different careers, the outcomes will be different. The evidence for this disparity in interest is manifold. One particularly notable example cropped up in my last conversation here on Phary, when it was found that only 10% of military women were interested in opening front-line roles to women, while 70% of men were behind the idea.
2. You grant full “paper” equality, and then say “Lacking human rights” in the next sentence. Look, I’m in full support of equal legal rights for men and women, equal opportunity for everyone. I’m against artificially changing the rules to ensure that women, men, minorities, majorities, or anyone, is “represented” on the back end. Different demographics have different interests, and while it’s unfair to use average characteristics of a demographic to measure a single person, it’s perfectly reasonable to accept that average characteristics (i.e. interest) will predict a lower/higher representation of that demographic.
An example of this is teaching. 85% of schoolteachers are women, yet ostensibly men and women are given equal opportunity to become teachers. I don’t know of anyone suggesting that men are being systematically discriminated against for teaching jobs, do you? Clearly there is an interest disparity that, while not accurate in predicting the interests of any individual, do have something to say about how many men vs. women will pursue that career.
So yes, women are obviously people, but calling them “people” doesn’t erase the fact that women are interested in different things than men. Ignoring that simple, empirical observation in favor of using the gov’t to force equal representation is a bad idea, and is in many cases just compounding perceived discrimination with actual discrimination.
@lee coye
So, by your reasoning, using a slur that denigrates someone on the basis of an immutable characteristic is okay as long as you feel that they deserve it (based on actions, behavior or speech, I suppose).
Does this mean that it’s okay for me to call a black person a “nigger” if I disagree with them or don’t like what they’re saying?
Does this mean that it’s okay for me to call a gay person a “faggot” or “dyke” if I disagree with them or don’t like what they’re saying?
What is the difference between using these insults and using the words “cunt” or “bitch” to refer to a woman who says things that I don’t like?
How generous of you.
And for those people who complain that this blog is hostile to people of differing ideas, may I present Lee Coye. Watch how he wants to be able to place women in a different category of human.
Please, explain to me just why I should take him seriously. What good the the exchange of ideas with someone like him does for me.
“..the fact that women are interested in different things than men.”
Oh, FFS.
That has nothing to do with the sexist culture we live in, right, Lee?
We are not raised from birth being told what to be interested in, right?
Women aren’t treated as interlopers in certain fields, right?
Gender-norm conformity isn’t constantly policed and enforced in our society?
You really are clueless, aren’t you?
Bless your heart.
I simply can’t reconcile these two sentences. If, as you claim but I deny, gendered insults like “dick” and “prick” “impl[y] that a penis is a bad thing, or can be”, how on earth do you then turn around and say it’s not sexist?
Well therein lies the problem. If women have been “culturally conditioned” to be interested in X over Y, and freely choose X, how are we bad people for letting them? Taking your assumption on board, the problem isn’t women’s, or men’s, choices, but “society”. Gaming the system is akin to treating the symptoms, rather than the disease.
I brought up this exact point on Noelplum’s channel. I don’t think his criticism is as uniformly accurate as he portrays it, but I do agree that there is a discussion to be had about the patterns that emerge in the commentariat here.
Translation: Special privileges for me, not for thee!
And those “interests” are totally biological and not all the result of societal pressures, lack of opportunity, etc. Nope, bitches like the pink ghetto. It’s UNFAIR to encourage anyone but white men.
And societial influences have no bearing whatsoever. Nosiree. Bitches LIKE the Pink Ghetto.
LOL holy fuck you have not even a vague grasp on reality. Diddums, did you ever stop to think about this before typing it? Do you really not see the huge and glaringly obvious bullshit in here?
Translation: you bitches don’t shut up on command!
LOL oh course, leveling the playing field is “gaming the system” because not privileging white dudes over everyone else is unfair.
I wonder if he realizes what he’s really telling us is “If the competition is fair, I won’t win!”
@ lee coye
Calling someone a dick is belittling in that it is saying that said person can be defined by the same definition as a penis. However, it is also gendered slur and regurgitates in its expression all the liabilities of sexist stereotypes. It hones in on a group of people (here penis-havers) and targets them for derision in a discriminatory fashion.
Bonus: Can you see why it is different from the term “arsehole”, you arsehole?
@746
1. Special privileges for no one.
2. It’s uncontroversial in psychological circles to recognize the biological and cultural forces that, in tandem, can predict behavior. It is extremism to claim behavior is entirely cultural, or biological. The “blank slate” is as much a myth as Intelligent Design.
3. Again, as I said in 744, a properly conditioned person is going to be interested in X, rather than Y, as a result of that conditioning. It harms no one for women to be more interested in teaching than men, and thus over-represented in that career.
Interestingly, you can look at this from another perspective. To what, pray tell, are you appealing in behavioral terms, when claiming that “conditioning” has modified “normal” behavior, such that absent the conditioning (or forcing accurate representation), women will be more interested in construction, or men more interested in teaching? Is there a biological median somewhere that we can test? Is there any evidence that a different cultural setting would yield the same interests in men and women?
@Chas:
We don’t allow the word dick because it’s a gendered insult. No hypocrisy involved.
@Lee:
If you start spouting evopsych bullshit, I’m going to bite you. You’re already spouting gender essentialist bullshit, so you’re getting on my angry side.
Rights in accordance to one’s gender.
Lee,
My husband is in a social service field. He’s been through nurse’s aid training. He’s worked at a daycare and volunteered with the Special Olympics. He’s a nurturer. He’s compassionate. He’s awesome at his job. Because of this, he is often judged to be gay, effeminate and has been told that his “man card” should be revoked. (I guess “real men” punch rattlesnakes in the face for a living, or something. Ugh, there is so much bigoted baggage to unpack….just…bleh.)
Yes, there are far more women than men in his area of interest. You think that might have something to do with the cultural backlash that men receive when the wish to be caregivers or that women receive when they don’t wish to be caregivers? Or could it be that traditionally female careers are usually underpaid and unappreciated? That sounds like enough to make many men move on to other areas of interest, even if a teaching, social service or nursing career was their first choice.
I have a neighbor who is a carpenter. She regularly get’s to hear things at work like, “If it was easy, women and n****** would do it.” Do you think the prevailing racism and sexism might have something to do with or even be a strategy to keep those jobs the domain of white men?
Which definition, in what dictionary, is the derogatory term “dick” equivalent to the term “penis”? It’s like calling someone an ovary to call them a penis; it’s incoherent defined literally, and defining it literally is the only way you can turn it into sexism.
@ lee coye
If women have been “culturally conditioned” to be interested in X over Y, and freely choose X, how are we bad people for letting them?If slavery have been “culturally conditioned” to be interested in slavery over freedom, and freely choose slavery, how are we bad people for letting them?
(You do realise this is a major problem with modern day slavery? The slaves do not have to be shackled to prevent running away. They have been culturally conditioned.)
As homework, try filling in X=religion, Y= reality… etc etc. You might start to understand why yours is such an obtuse argument.
@Lee 750:
YARGH! *bite* Evopsych is BULLSHIT! Playing the evopsych card as an explanation why women are culturally and socially discriminated against is the clarion call of the useless bullshitter.
Gender essentialism wrapped up in sexist bullshit. God dammit I can call it a mile away now!
I’m a trans-woman, where do I fit in your evopsych-gender-essentialist-bullshitting!? Nowhere, cause you go ahead and wiffle-waffle with the “well, there are outliers” stupidity without thinking that the FACT there are outliers is reason to toss the entire bullshit “science” out on its head.
*snortle* Of course. This is going to be epic. Tell us, Lee, what “biological behavior” of women points them towards occupations in the pink ghetto, or to be paid less for the same job as men?
“Properly conditioned”?? So, you admit, now, that these choices are not biological, but due to social conditioning. And you’re apparently in big support of that conditioning that benefits you.
I did not think you’d admit that so easily. Thank you.
Re: teaching: Except for that fact that teaching is a deliberately underpaid career . Doesn’t THAT hurt women?
You should also be aware of the fact that when men do enter the teaching area in higher numbers (professors) they still make more money than their female counterparts. Despite your now recanted assertion that women choice teaching because of their ovaries, care to explain, if the reason isn’t discrimination?
Seriously, does fucking Google not exist in Bitches Ain’t Shit land?
theophontes (坏蛋):
Don’t be such a leecoye, theophontes.
Lee, you do realize that you are hear telling us all how men and women are simply not interested in the same things, in a place where men, women and non-gender conformative folks regularly gather to discuss shared interests?
I see. So special privileges for women, but not for men.
*here*
I’ll just be over here yelling at my clumsy fingers.
And Myeck Waters wins the thread!!
Please pass Go to collect your Awesomesauce Crown.
Translation: Privileging anyone but white men is unfair!
@ lee coye
Your arguments are becoming peurile. Next up, we shall hear that when you call someone a pussy you are refering to a cat.
*yawn*
Lee, what special privileges are you referring to?
Honestly, I haven’t the foggiest notion of what you’re talking about.
On the contrary, that’s what you’re saying when you say “legal equality” isn’t good enough.
No. As a tiny little experiment, would anyone else like to point out why this is wrong? Just to see if anyone is willing to criticize one of their own. Hint: it’s not a natural law. Go.
@ myeck waters
I trust this is not a gendered slur? (We all have one.)
No, the discussion should be about your lack of citations, and use of OPINION, to back up your sexism. Why can’t you cite the literature? Right, you are wrong….
You really are not aware that dick is a vulgur term for penis ? Are you sure your English skills are upto this conversation ?
Oh, and as for what dictionary ? Try the OED.
Power imbalance. Assymetry of oppression. Punching up vs. punching down.
Why don’t you read what I wrote? I said that the reason that gendered insults are verboten is to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy. There’s nothing inherently wrong with gender. ALmost all people are gendered. Many words are too. This is no problem. The real problem with ‘cunt’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘twat’ as insults is that they’re sexist, not that there’s anything inherently wrong with gender. If I call somebody a ‘dick’ I am contributing in no wauy to a culture of oppression. I am instead accusing somebody of personifying certain toxic (and stereotypically male) personality attributes.
There’s a real difference but continue with your attitude of crusading purity anyway, I don’t care. Like I said, I respect the local convention.
Legal=/=actual.
I can write on paper, “All dogs have spots”. That won’t make it so. There are more barriers firmly in place and removing those barriers will take more than a piece of paper.
What exactly is it you are arguing for? Are you saying that you like those barriers being in place or are you in complete denial that they exist? Just..you know…for clarity. I’d like to know what brand of asshat I’m dealing with.
you know nothing of science.
Lee Coye, I was making a translation. Yes, for you, rights are based on one’s gender. That is because the desire of males and females are so different.
But what ever. Play with the people who want to play “Feed The Troll”. I will be on the sidelines, laughing.
Don’t be such a leecoye. I like it!
My goodness, you have the the intellectual depth of a fucking puddle. So, in your world, there is no gender discrimination, no racial discrimination, no sexual orientation discrimination, etc etc. All those minorities are just lying whiners because The Law(tm) totally makes them already totally equal, expect when it doesn’t.
Thank you for confirming that you can’t win if you have to compete on a level playing field.
Because “legal equality” won’t erase history. It won’t erase you saying that women go into the lower paying fields of teaching and nursing because they are more interested in it and not because historically those were two of the few socially acceptable careers for women. And that if a man is interested in nursing, he is seen as less of a man, or someone who couldn’t be a doctor. And of course male teachers are often fast tracked to administration.
theophontes (坏蛋)
RE: arsehole
We may all have one, but sunshine and rare orchids come out of mine.
No it’s not. De facto as well as de juri equality is the goal.
#776
You made me snortle.
snort+chortle
@ myeck waters
Pluck you!!! ;)
How does someone who is “culturally conditioned” freely choose anything? How does anyone freely choose anything?
Weapons-grade obtusium.
Lee, since discrimination based on religion is illegal, does that mean it no longer exists?
In most states atheists can hold for public office. Yet, there are very few who do. Is that because atheists are innately disinterested or ill suited for holding public office? Does religious discrimination still exist in the work place, the courts and in our schools?
^Scratch out the “for”. Crap. I’m done. Can’t type fo shit. Back to lurking.
It isn’t like he’s going to answer my questions anyway.
Ah, see, this was when he was still trying to pretend that there was no social conditioning involved in the decisions people make.
He then did a 180 and called it “proper” conditioning, thereby admitting that it is social conditioning, and he supports it because it means he doesn’t have to compete on a level playing field, which would mean he wouldn’t automatically win.
but we’re all “legally” equal now, apparently, so it’s all good.
You have plenty of dissenters here. I for one will dissent with you every time you imply that “rational” and “thoughtful” necessarily implies “liberal” or that being blindly antiwar is a bit rational.
One tiny truth about dissenting is that I don’t always. Anyone who is thoughtful and outspoken is capable of dissecting another person’s stance to reveal the things they agree with and the things they don’t.
Another truth is that it isn’t always worth it to waste time commenting. I typically have neither the time nor the care to wade through the mess that is these comment threads. There is always something wrong on the internet and if I followed around my sense of righteous outrage, I would never get anything done that is actually worth doing. Fact of the matter is that I don’t particularly care what most commenters say about anything: my arguments are restricted to what I read in your actual posts… and as I can’t expect _you_ to ever notice anything I say amid the noise here without being more malignant than I am and wasting a lot more time than I have available, what the point of trying? That doesn’t mean I don’t read the articles, or not disagree when I see your blind liberality overwhelming your rationalism. I’m just aware that nothing I say will change your mind about anything. Nor does that particularly matter to me because I do agree with quite a lot of what you say.
Yeah, I wouldn’t be pointing that thread out if I were you.
Yes, the man will most likely earn way more money and be given more benefits. But I guess that’s just the ways things is, huh?
lee coye 739:
You don’t know enough about the history of education to say anything about that. Not anywhere close to enough to look anything other than ridiculous.
http://www.menteach.org/news/a_discussion_about_men_teachers
Don’t you get it? Men, especially white men, already have privileges.
Legal equality is not enough. There is still sexism, racism, bigotry, anti-LGBTQ social norms, despite legal equality. Christians are privileged over non-Christians (in the USA). Whites over people of colour. Men over women. Adults over children. Non-disabled over those with disabilities. So, right. Legal equality is not enough.
patrickdoyle:
Why in the world can’t you and the rest of the interloping dissenters learn the first little bit about reasonable, rational discussion? When you present a claim, it is expected that you also present evidence to support and clarify that claim. If you find GGW’s arguments good and reasonable it is up to you to reference such good and reasonable arguments and explain why they satisfy those requirements. Instead, you leave the task to others and howl when they present different evidence. If you meant different arguments, it was up to you present and support them. If you can’t do this, don’t make the claim in the first place or withdraw the claim.
I am flabbergasted at the utter inability of these people to make and support a claim with any evidence whatsoever.
Lee,
It’s not clear at all that our gender disparities “harm no one” – we’ve been finding, as we proceed in our social experiment of being less like tribal jackholes that there is strength in diversity. So there may be real opportunity costs associated with some of our biases, if the “best” people for certain jobs are avoiding them due to personal or professional hostilities, or because they’ve been socialized in such a way that blinds them to the option. But even if all that were a wash, it’s not clear that “harms no one” is identical to “can’t be improved”. If we take equality of opportunity seriously, shouldn’t we take a hard look at how our culture may be sabotaging that ideal?
Your argument sounds remarkably similar to the arguments of religious cultural conservatives. We should be as we [have been/ are now] because [god / nature] made us this way. The religious adherents of this argument have *always* been wrong, both on the obvious metaphysics and in the failure to notice that the culture they are fighting to “preserve” is in truth different from its progenitor. See silly arguments on gay marriage, and claims about what the insitution of marriage has ‘always’ been, for perfect exemplars of such.
I’m not ready to assume we finally have it right, yet. You shouldn’t either.
-Michael
They are utterly blind to their male privilege. The privilege that says since they are adult (insert series of stereotypical privileges) male, they must be believed without question, as they never, lie, bullshit, or tell tall tales. It also shows up when they claim we have to be skeptical of everything a woman like RW says.
Which is why I never believe anything they say, inverting the skepticism back upon their claims.
You’re a penis.
You’re a dick.
Which one is an insult? Go reread my comment, you ovary.
I don’t get the whole “you have to listen to everybody’s opinions all the time” thing. This isn’t the fucking United Nations, it’s PZ’s blog. Those who comment here regularly do so because we enjoy reading PZ’s blog (and the community). Why in fuck’s name should anybody and everybody be able to write anything they want here? They can make their own blog and call it “Atheisming Correctly.” And we can stay here and talk about the things we want to talk about. Jesus on a pogo stick, IS THAT SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?
What an astoundingly persuasive argument! Look at all those citations to support the premises, and the clear and convincing chain of logic from premises to conclusion!
Waaaaaiiiiiittt a minute, Lee are you a minor?
butbutbut, UnknownEric, however will we stupid cunts learn about the real world of total equality that we don’t want because we want special privileges, like being paid less for the same job, if not for the sooper smrt doods who don’t get to comment here because they’re pre-banned?
Illuminata: From South Park, of course.
Privilege everyone equally, and no one is privileged. I advocate special privileges for no one. Derp.
This is a popular truism, but no, there isn’t. There is strength in focusing on merit over skin color or gender, in choosing the best person for the job. That’s not diversity, at least not as it’s practiced in reality. Ensuring that there are enough women or protected minorities in a job means you’re choosing people for reasons other than merit. Alternatively, if you’re blind to skin/gender in choosing the best person for the job, and this happens to foster a representative sample of the population, the strength is not the diversity, but the merits of each individual.
The claim that women chose teaching over other jobs due to traditional pressures just assumes that they’re doing so now.
The comparison to slavery is…interesting. Still, taking it as an analogy, lets wonder further: was the moral solution to slavery to engineer more black slaveowners, and more white slaves? Or was the solution to abolish slavery?
My critique of this outcome-engineering is that even if you accept “cultural conditioning” as the impetus for “free” choices, without addressing the underlying problem you will, at best, disregard the autonomy of individuals to choose their career, and at worst, actively shut out individuals who are as or more interested in those careers than the individuals who “qualify” (via discrimination) for the job. You are advocating for precisely the behavior you vilify, and somehow the irony is just wizzing past your heads.
As long as we’re taking this apart:
Real life example: hiring women for professional symphony orchestras. Historically orchestras have been 95% male, and the explanations given by the judges who listen to auditions have always been that men tend to excel more, be more driven, have greater dexterity or breath control or whatever explanation for judging that they just play better. All completely legal; there can’t be discrimination if it’s all merit-based, right?
Enter screened auditions, where the musician performs behind a screen so the judges never see them. Suddenly the rate of women winning these auditions soared. Now women receive as many as 50% of professional orchestra positions wherever blinded auditions are used. No laws changed, only a change in audition procedure.
So just how does merely outlawing discrimination prove women just aren’t interested enough, again?
References:
News article: “Blind” Auditions Putting Discrimination On Center Stage (1997)
Cited 1997 paper: http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/5903.html (PDF available at link)
Abstract:
Well, that was a well timed failure to refresh on my part.
Merit-based hiring, as it’s practiced in reality, IS biased because the people doing the hiring think their unconscious biases ARE judgments of merit. See the orchestra auditions above; also plenty of research using identical resumes with names or photos switched. An organization with diverse membership is more likely to represent merit-based performance than an organization that defaults to thinking white males are more competent than they actually are.
It means we enforce the laws.
Indeed. What’s the difference between a culturally conditioned free choice, and a “genuinely” free choice? If I’m convinced that I desire a career as a doctor, for whatever reason, who are you to tell me that’s just my upbringing? What about farmer? Marine? At what point do I get to choose, and when is my choice valid?
Is it only valid if it’s consistent with what you think I should want?
No. Just plain no. To help you with this, it harms *both* genders. Men who want to be teachers are looked down on by society, especially if they want to be teachers at the grade school level. People wonder if they’re pedophiles, or gay, or too stupid to be in some other field.
Veterinary medicine is now a primarily female field that used to be mostly male. The male veterinarian at my work has had clients outright ask him “Why didn’t you become a human doctor?” That question has never been brought up to the female vets. And on a similar vein, while the field is predominantly women, I still have clients asking me if there’s a guy that can help them with their big dogs. I can lift 100# dogs but they attempt to brush my help aside.
Such conditioning hurts both genders very much.
In regards to the usage of dick: it is used to indicate stupid aggressiveness, unthinking or entitled behaviour. Because, remember, men have 2 brains and only enough blood to use one at a time! So a dick is thinking with his penis, and the penis is rude, crude and wants to stick itself wherever it wants to stick itself because penises can’t help being that way. Tada… can be sexist towards men.
In regards to ‘legal equality’: how exactly does that help me when I get paid less, and people think I can’t do parts of my job because I have a vagina instead of a penis?
LOL This one’s braindead, Jim. Cowering away from answering direct questions, he’s just going to continue on this “I can’t win if we’re all equal” track until he has to go back to school.
Well, the answer to this is clear: Put lee in charge. He’ll chose all the white men best suited for the job, for sure!
Again, the solution is to counter-act this bias, conscious or unconscious, NOT enshrine a bias in the opposite direction. I’ve seen the research, as it was presented to me mid-argument on Crommunist’s blog. Assign numbers, blind trials, the same things we do to counter-act bias in science.
The reason we do double-blind studies, rather than just fiddle-fucking the data on the back end after the scientists “check their privilege”, is because it’s the only effective, uniform method for eliminating bias.
Could not resist. I’m back.
Lee, I have asked you several questions. You have not answered any of them. Could you at least answer this one?
You seem to suggest that either women and other minorities don’t want higher paying / more respected jobs or that there are more white men in those jobs now because white men are simply more qualified for them.
Is that what you are suggesting?
Here, have some more research:
http://www.esa.org/esablog/research/better-a-john-than-a-jennifer/
PDF available here: PNAS link
Sound like familiar arguments so far? Here’s the opening paragraph:
And with regards to free choice: My mother grew up hearing she could only be a nurse, a teacher, or a mom. Her father point blank said to her that women are inferior and less intelligent than men.
My parents, on the other hand, avoided as much gender stereotyping as they could with me. I was told to choose a career that I wanted to do. I love the sciences and spent a long time wanting to be a paleontologist or archaeologist. But my love for animals and a really active job won out and I am happy as a registered veterinary technician. I get a good workout dealing with the large dogs each day and have a mentally stimulating job. It happens to be predominantly female, but that actually caught me by surprise. I had assumed, going in, that it would be fairly even.
Well, see, we want to be paid less because Biology – no wait, we want to be paid less because we’ve had “proper conditioning”.
And i asked him a bunch of questions to. Shall we hold our breath til he answers? ;)
#783 – Or, he simply meant it in the context of the example he was using-(successfully/thoroughly/completely/properly/normally) conditioned. Your line of attack is ill considered and has weakened your position.
“It means we enforce the laws”
WTF?
Yes or no, Lee.
Illuminata, we better not.
Lee Coye. You argue from ignorant opinion (since it isn’t backed by evidence, that opinion can and will be *floosh* ignored as fuckwittery). We argue from linkable facts. You lose each time we link, and you can’t/won’t respond in kind. That is tacit agreement you are wrong.
It is time for you to upgrade your argument to a fact based one. Link to substantiate every claim. If you can’t find a link, don’t make the claim. That is how those with honesty and integrity argue. Why can’t you do that. I await your avoidance of the question, which is tacitly agreeing you aren’t being honest and have integrity….
While it’s adorable that you – whoever you are – think your opinion of lee’s opinion is somehow interesting, since he didn’t clarify what he meant, despite being asked, you’re attempt at shaming has weakened your position.
@ c0nc0rdance
and
conclusion: rape victims apparently can’t be “new commenters with something to offer”.
seriously though, how can you say that a blog should be more open to new people with unique contributions, and also say that rape victims shouldn’t contribute their experience on that blog? How is such a contradictory statement possible, unless the only “new people with something to offer” you’re considering are those who already have the rest of the internet to expound their opinions, while ignoring the typically silenced voices?
——
@ Patrickdoyle
everyone who’s actually read yesterday’s conversation knows that this isn’t actually how it went, since a large number of people, including me, addressed the question of promoting freethinking multiple times, while you preferred to focus on other things; and that there wasn’t a single ad hominem committed against you.
optimism bias, just world fallacy, privilege.
wishful thinking, availability heuristic
——
@ lee coye
ROTFLMAO
go back to AVFM, where such ignorant shit will be taken seriously.
LOL omg Jadehawk I totally missed Lee writing that. Why do we keep getting trolls from A Voice for Bigots? Do they not have hobbies, or friends or anything?
this is of course an universally applicable solution, because of course names are the sole clue to identity on which bias might act upon in many cases.
I’m aware that some of you are uninterested in discussion, and would much prefer taunting, snarky rhetorical barbs, but it’s making it very difficult for me to parse legitimate responses to my arguments(and for sincere commenters to see mine). If you could, perhaps, space those out a little, rather than 15 useless, substance free posts for my every one, the discussion would be much easier to follow.
Trust me, I’m not even reading them, and some of you I’m skipping entirely. Go do something else while the adults talk.
Lee translated: Stupid bitches making so much noise. Let the Mans talk and go get in the kitchen!
@rowanvt
Did you choose to be a veterinarian? Would it be insulting for me to imply that you didn’t actually choose that freely, and that what you really wanted to do was be a high end executive? You don’t really love animals, you love money, right?
Translation: I’m not a coward! I’m just deliberately ignoring that which doesn’t agree with my my clearly incorrect argument!
You are the one uninterested in both an intellectual discussion, and what an intellectual discussion really means. Intellectual discussion is you backing up your ignorant OPINION with evidence. I believe this, and (link) this backs it up. You are absolutely uninterested/incapable of holding up your end of an intellectual discussion.
Now, when will you stop lying to yourself, and then show honesty and integrity by quit lying to us, and backing up all your claims.
Discuss =/= voicing your opinion while dismissing evidence against your position.
translation: “contracausal free will is real. no really, it is, why are you laughing at me?”
As 60+ year old adult male, I’ll tell you when you are engaging in adult talk. That starts when you evidence your sexist opinion, and not until then. You aren’t an intellectually mature adult yet.
Lee, put up or shut up. Stop ducking questions like a coward. You’ve failed to impress anyone with your pretense of being above the fray. You’ve been outed as clueless, bigoted and unable back up anything you’ve asserted.
Citations or gtfo.
leecoye
You are being disingenuous by claiming that the people who are addressing you are uninterested in discussion.
If you’re getting too many “barbs”, its because your claims aren’t worth discussing beyond pointing and laughing at the stupid.
But go on, claim that you are the adult and continue to mansplain. It’s a little early for popcorn, but watching idiots such as you be virtually eviscerated is always entertaining.
OMG… You actually think veterinary technicians (I’m like an RN. Reading comprehension.) and veterinarians make lots of money?
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…….. *wipes tears from eyes* Oh my gosh. That’s hilarious. You should tell that to a veterinarian in person so they can laugh in your face. Priceless.
I chose to work with animals in part because I have over active mirror neurons and a form of mirror-touch synesthesia that causes me to feel pain when I see things are injured. I can get the aches and muscle spasms and other sensations from looking at freakin’ trees that have broken. It’s rather annoying. So I rescued (and still do) worms and rollypolly bugs from the sidewalks. It’s why I took on a 15 year old neighborhood stray cat who had to be euthanised 2 weeks later because it turns out he had lung cancer. It’s why I rescued most of the animals I rescued (and I’m at 20+ rescues total in the last 15 years). I then find those animals new homes, and rescue another one.
I’m certainly not in it for the money. *snrks*
Oh, and as to the high end executive? Desk jobs? ewwwwwww. I’m far too “ungirly” and physically active for that.
Which I had mentioned. Previously. In response to you.
SSHHHHHHH!!! how can he maintain the pretense of being the only macho macho man in the room if you point out the obvious?!
Lee, first of all, it is emphatically not an unsupported claim that society institutionalizes discrimination.
Second, in this statement,
you have an implied premise that someone somewhere is proposing that we “enshrine bias in the opposite direction.”
a.) What exactly constitutes “enshrining bias in the opposite direction”?
b.) Who is proposing that this would be a good thing to do?
Back up your claims with citations please.
Equally simplistic is the notion that white men at the top are just ignoring women and minorities. This is a complex issue, and I’m not denying entirely the notion that there is conscious and unconscious bias.
I heard this on Twitter the other day. A person I was discussing things with said I was uninterested in discussion. I think it was because I wouldn’t back off from pointing out that he was wrong. I think, to a lot of people, “discussion” entails agreement. Lack of agreement means there’s no discussion taking place. I can’t really think of any other explanation for this fairly widespread silliness.
@826
The more self-aware among you will notice my argument re: career choice is more or less proven in that comment. She doesn’t notice it, but hopefully some of you will.
Lee, what is infantile is your desperate attempt at a “gotcha”, and your, “Lalalalala, I’m not listening!” rather than engaging in the discussion at hand by actually stating your premise clearly or backing it up with facts.
I’m very much an adult, Lee. But I don’t need to be to engage you. Frankly, my teenager could hand you your ass in a debate. So go for it tough stuff, let us have it. Show us those amazing facts that reveal discrimination to be a thing of the past..or whatever it is you are arguing now.
…or you know, go off pouting to your MRAsshole buddies in shame.
you misunderstood. lee’s point is that your femaleness inherently makes you love animals more than money, which is why you’re a puppy-cuddler instead of a business exec. It’s predestined in your genes, because of free will. or something.
Well, this has been refreshing. It’s important that, as one of those pesky women who pursued an education and career in a traditionally male dominated field, I and every other woman who had to overcome social obstacles their male colleagues did not in order to achieve the same degree of success and still has to listen to stupid remarks denigrating their gender in the workplace (“It’s just a joke – stop being so sensitive!”), am reminded that we are, in fact, big fat liars and our observations are without value.
Thank you.
So anyway, I’m a heterosexual male who likes sports, yet I’m a librarian.
Why is that, lee?
Please answer Sally Strange’s #829, lee. Because that one is seriously weird.
So Lee, are you entirely unaware of human history?
Or are you only blinded to the parts that don’t effect you?
translation: “the existence of a female veterinarian proves my point, because I don’t understand the difference between free will and agency. why are you still laughing at me?”
Rowan, don’t you see? He’s saying that you chose to have a lower paying job because gender.
outliers prove lee’s point. non-outliers also prove his point. everything proves his point, because free will and genetics.
Indeed, there are no “free” choices.
So what’s the difference between “freely choosing” to go into teaching when many of the doors have been closed to me through a constant barrage of “women don’t do that…” “girls don’t like to do that stuff…” “women aren’t smart enough…”, and “freely choosing” to go into teaching because socio-cultural conditioning effectively railroads me into a narrow range of careers and I am unable to either contemplate other possibilities or overcome the barriers in my path?
In other words, yes it’s her choice to become a teacher, and that choice is valid, except that the choice didn’t spring sui generis into her life. The constant barrage of conditioning, then unending nudges to go in the socially-approved directions is called sexism. Yes, it’s institutionalized discrimination.
(bolds mine)
So Lee, remember when you said this?
Which is why I presented the blind audition research, and the resume research.
Given the proof that unconscious bias exists and significantly skews supposedly merit-based judgements, how do you justify saying this?
First off, hiring specifically for diversity isn’t an ideal fix. It’s a correction factor that produces a reasonable approximation of what the results of truly unbiased merit-based hiring SHOULD look like. As long as hiring’s done through old-boy-networks and face-to-face interviews, anonymized hiring will conflict with it. Making diversity a conscious concern obviates a lot of bias – and there’s research to back that up, too.
As for your continued claim that gender-skewed representation comes from women just being interested in different things than men, it’s unfalsifiable. Good luck finding an experiment where children were raised in completely gender-neutral cultures with equal representations of all genders in all roles (though there’s plenty of cross-cultural and historical evidence that shows the gender balance of a role varies with its status – see biology, teaching, and cooking for instance). When bias has been demonstrated, by experiment, to account for an imbalance in representation that matches the imbalance that actually exists in reality, why presume that some other factor must be primarily responsible?
one exists, the other doesn’t.
Here, I’ll try this again more specifically:
My parents encouraged me to do whatever I wanted. I have been extremely physically active from the get-go. My father had a desk-job and I used to go to work with him on weekends quite regularly. And I hated it there. It was dull, he was constantly sitting, it was too quiet, too indoors. I mostly read, or ran around outside, or helped one of his coworker collate things (she actually paid me for this too! nice lady. :3) or did all three depending on the day. And my impression of desk jobs was made: stultifying and definitely nothing I ever wanted to do.
Plus I was interested in science, something many girls are *not* encouraged in. And I was the best in my classes at math, much to the annoyance of all the boys who had always been told that girls suck at math.
Being a vet tech employs all my desires and strengths: physical activity walking/restraining animals, science via continuing education and research into new treatments especially for reptiles, math in calculating CRIs, drip rates, dilutions, pre-anesthetic drugs, etc.
I was offered the opportunities to go into business, or programming, or any number of things but they did not fit *my* strengths that my parents encouraged me to find. Strengths that go against the typical grain of what is a ‘feminine’ strength. I’m aggressive, I’m outspoken, I’m extremely physically active, I love science, I’m great at math, and I’m stronger than many men as at a mere 5’6″ tall I can pick up a 300lb standing human being and walk away with them with no difficulty on my part.
Preferring money over personal fulfillment? “That’s more of a guy thing.”
You’re just denying where that bias comes from, and the extent of its influence.
@837
Struck me as weird too, as the link in 786 is one example. The idea that she wants me to provide evidence for diversity initiatives is…bizarre, to say the least. It’s a little like asking me to provide evidence for the existence of snow.
no. you’re a puppy-cuddler, that’s why you’re a vet tech. what do you mean, the feminization of veterinary science has led to loss of prestige? that’s not institutionalized sexism, that’s just because women suck at things and made the manly job of treating farm animals into puppy-cuddling. true fact.
RE: Free will
We don’t have to resolve this age old question to further the argument I’m making. Insofar as people are capable of freedom, however this is construed, people like rowant will choose to be vets because they want to be vets. Why she wants to be a vet is her business, frankly, none of mine or yours. All of the reasons she presented were individual, not cultural.
Clearly, because you’re just that much smarter than those culturally conditioned het males who are conservatives. Clearly. Nothing narcissistic here…
diversity initiatives = enshrining bias in the opposite direction?
fascinating.
Correct!
Skepchick had a good post that might be of interest to Lee.
Proving and Quantifying Sexism: research shows that, contrary to the anti-feminist claim that gender imbalances are a result of meritocracy (presumably lack of interest in a field would make a person not very good at a job in that field), corporations with more women on the board outperform those with boards that have lots of men, hedge funds with more women on them outperform those with less, and female Congresscritters outperform their male counterparts in terms of legislation passed and securing funding for beneficial projects in their home districts.
Here is their testable hypothesis:
It shall, of course, be subject to revision when more data is revealed, but so far the data supports it.
Do you have any testable hypotheses, Lee?
I do thank everyone for the clarification. My eyes did skim over that, partly because I’ve been told, to my face, “Oh, you must make so much money!”.
I chose to make less money because money isn’t worth tedium. :P It’s also the reason I’m very unlikely to have children as my level of ‘woman nurture’ isn’t up to the idea of kidlets most of the time. It usually goes something like “Stuck … attached to screaming, peeing, pooping-on-itself thing for years…. *shudder*” My ‘maternal instincts’ are regularly dealt with via bottle-baby kittens. And they are able to be potty trained within 4 or 5 weeks. And then go to new homes within 8 weeks.
You didn’t make it clear that you consider diversity initiatives to be “enshrining bias in the opposite direction.”
Can you explain why it is that you think diversity initiatives enshrine bias in the opposite direction, rather than attempting to correct for existing biases? What are your criteria?
lol.
actually, it is my business, if the choices women are socially conditioned to make lead to severely biased outcomes because a)they’re conditioned into lower status jobs (and therefor lower incomes); and b)jobs that end up having large percentages of women in them end up losing status (and therefore pay); especially when point a) tends to happen as a result of toxic climates for women in male-dominated fields.
#797, Lee – interesting that you leap solely to gender and race as the only kinds of diversity that matter in your calculation. You are missing the forest for the trees – it’s really about diversity of culture. Race and gender are poor strawmen for this, but they’re how we flail.
Pterryx is doing an admirable job highlighting how diversity should be *expected* in a truly free (“meritorious”) market, in many cases (I recommend also looking at experiences with police departments). Absence of diversity is often a powerful indicator of something amiss. Where, and how to fix it – big questions. Few easy answers. But assuming there’s nothing to fix? Foolish in the extreme.
-Michael
Hey Lee…. psssssssst….
He said librarian not liberal.
Posting in the A+ echo chamber to see if it will actually get through.
No lee, it wasn’t Sally Strange’s post that was weird, it was your statement that she was responding to.
And I know that you know that.
So we can add dishonest to your list of attributes.
Good to know.
Except when you look in the mirror…
If by conservative, you mean sexist male pigs….yes. As is anybody who has challenged the orthodoxy of society.
For example:
If you have a testable hypothesis, it might be about the actual source of the bias, and the actual extent of its influence.
Lee Coye is an adult? That is so fucking cute.
Who’s the cute widdle voice for men?
Who’s the cute widdle voice for men?
The only way to further your sexist argument is by linking to the literature. Otherwise, you opinion is properly *floosh* sent where it belongs to the toxic waste center. Opinion only is for liberturds, theists, and other delusional fools who ignore reality.
SOMONE’S feeling threatened!
Yes. Because my parents actively avoided as much cultural stereotyping as possible. As I also said. I did not know that being a vet TECH or vet was a primarily female job. All the vets my dog saw when I was growing up were male. So were most of the techs. I thought it was a *male* job, or at least equal.
Women and minorities don’t make as much money because they just don’t want to? We’re free spirits that don’t see value in financial security? We just all live to nurture and the warm feelings we get are more than enough? We just like to leave all that money making to the straight, cis-gendered white men.
Holy shit, really?
You’ve substituted reality with hackneyed movie tropes?
Here’s the thing Lee. As individuals some men and women do choose to get emotional satisfaction over financial compensation. But saying that as a group X kind of people naturally do this is just pure bullshit.
Lets dial this back a little. First, the experiment accounted for a small disparity. You’re camp is asserting all sorts of additional reasons for the disparity, reasons I think are overemphasized, but they none-the-less must account for something as well, yes?
The problem is that, while I am acknowledging that there is conscious and unconscious bias, and correction should take the form of that screen thingy you linked to for the orchestra, you’re saying that an unmeasured bias can be corrected in a measured way. That’s bias in the opposite direction, rather than removing bias.
Individuals make decisions in a cultural context, influenced in part by their biology, and it’s not unreasonable to suppose that some disparity is going to outlive legal equality. Unless men and women are on average interested in the same things, and driven to succeed at the same rates, in biological terms, AND we can determine with some accuracy the cultural influences that counteract an individual’s “free” choices, we’re best serving society by avoiding the sort of outcome engineering that would stick Rowant in an office and Bill Gates on a farm.
So you chose a female dominated profession…freely. As a female. You’re so close, jus keep grinding those gears.
I repeat, Lee: what are you criteria for determining what constitutes “bias in the opposite direction” rather than “correcting for existing biases”?
that’s right, diddums, just keep pretending not to see that last line. What doesn’t help your incorrect, hilariously wrong argument just doesn’t exist.
keep cowering. it’s very amusing.
Jackie Paper:
From what I can tell, making it a law that people are equal makes all old biases and pretty much history go away.
WHOOPS! Missed that. Still, point more or less applies, just change conservative to Lawyer.
It would be ever so helpful if you’d come out and say what it is you’re getting at. What, are you afraid to make your point directly? Worried that laying it out with too much clarity would highlight its underlying weakness?
Until you choose clarity over snarky,* obtuse condescension, I’m going to assume that’s the case.
_______
*Nothing wrong with snark, so long as it’s paired with actual arguments with supportable premises, etc.
women value fulfillment more than money because they just can marry a man with money, and then “divorce rape” them.
Men on the other hand crave nothing so much as money, because high status = better mating potential, and because they need to afford good attorneys when their wives leave them, to protect themselves from the aforementioned “divorce rape”. and either way, they’re the ones expected to feed, clothe, entertain, etc. all the world’s children, including the ones resulting from sperm theft and other evil womanly schemes, because taxes.
IOW, yes: reality divorced lee coye a while back, and got all of his ability to think coherently as part of the divorce agreement.
it’s so sad that he really thinks this supports his argument in any way shape or form
Lee, did you miss my comment about a male social worker and a female carpenter?
You must have because you never responded to the questions in that comment.
However, as soon as an anecdote appealed to your bias, you were on it like white on rice.
Care to examine why you skipped the first two, then jumped on the third?
{Looks at thread}
{Sees 875+ comments}
{Realises high bar to thread entry and relevance}
{Sighs}
Louis
he actually did. his point is that as long as he can call it “free choice” because there’s no law against it, there’s nothing there to be upset about or try to change because it’s “frankly, none of mine or your” business. because “That society institutionalizes discrimination is an unsupported claim”.
It’s of course a point that can only be held by ignoring virtually all of sociology, but he probably thinks all of sociology has been refuted by EP
Of the three anecdotes, which one was by the actual person who chose the actual job? Which one outlined the reasons they chose that profession? Find me a male carpenter who chose that profession because he was culturally conditioned to do so, and you’ve got my attention. Personally, my career choices are my own. I do what I want.
How about you? Slave to the patriarchy?
It’s especially good evidence of his refusal to engage in good faith, since there were multiple comments about that whole “freely” chosen thing.
But this does fit nicely into the theory that sexism (like any form of bigotry) has its roots in the bigot’s insecurities. Lee needs to believe that women chose to do x, y, z because biology and/or “proper conditioning”, because that mean he’s naturally superior. So, here we are again, right back at “If the playing field is level, I won’t win. Therefore bitches like the pink ghetto”.
Insecurity is as bigotry does.
rowanvt
Thanks for the translation.
I was confused by leecoyes leap from sexist cultural bias, to political leanings.
(not that these two demographics don’t have a great deal of overlap)
So… raised by wolves, then. Gotcha. This explains a lot, actually.
Really, white man? That’s so facsinating. If only we could all be white men like you!
translation: “I’ma unique snowflake, don’t thread on me!”
“I do what I want” = agency, not free will. I’m sorry to disappoint, but no matter how much you may tell yourself this, neither what you want nor the options given to you to pursue your wants have been freely chosen by you.
Because declaring oneself a freethinker is a magical incantation that frees one’s brain of any influence from one’s parents, teachers, aunts, uncles, bosses, media, politics, and any artifacts of culture! Tired of being pushed around by your cultural programming? Just chant, I Am A FreeThinker, three times, then turn around slowly and place the chicken inside the circle. Then all your choices will be Free™ because you will now have Free Will™, unlike all those schmucks who think humans are obligate social primates who owe their evolutionary success to cooperation in community.
as opposed to?
Ah, that’s true. I should have assumed that any commenter here would disagree with me, and agree with Sally. Silly me.
I did find it strange, so you can take dishonesty off the board.
How does lee coyne manage to be completely and totally outside of society, yet mindlessly parrot the patriarchal sexism endemic in the modern societal paradigm?
It must be genetic. It’s the most parsimonious explanation, right?
because the modern social paradigm is merely the obvious, pure, unadulterated truth he freely chose to uncover with his powerful and culturally unadulterated mind. d’uh.
deep rifts!
Now you’re getting close. Bonus round: why do sexually dimorphous species evince disparate behavior patterns between the sexes? Why do we justify our decisions with post-hoc reasoning, rather than a priori reasoning?
Grand Prize: What do you get when you combine those two questions?
I Do What I Want
Argumentum ad Cartman?
shortened up same ol’ same ol’ talking points:
While unconscious bias exists and is quantifiable whether or not the cultural influences are known, which some of them are, but w’ev,
…You don’t know how hiring works, do you? Nobody goes to all-black schools and drafts their women students into medical school or Congress against their will. Systemic bias causes competent performance to be undervalued.
—–
(on refresh) Wow, lee’s almost up to claiming female vervets prefer careers as veterinarians.
What I outlined were the ways in which they were actively discouraged from taking those roles.
Holy mother of fucks, you are dense.
Lee, the patriarchy has it’s claws in us all. So does racism. Your denial will not protect you.
My choices are a combination of alot of things. My situation. My values. My skills. My level of confidence. My aptitude. My desires. All of which are greatly influenced by the culture I grew up in. I do the best with what I’ve got. That’s all we can do.
Again, Lee, lay it out. Or I will continue to assume that your refusal to do so represents at least a subconscious awareness that your points aren’t supported by the available evidence.
so sad lee thinks “Why do we justify our decisions with post-hoc reasoning, rather than a priori reasoning?” cannot be answered with “social conditioning”, and that he seems to think “Personally, my career choices are my own. I do what I want.” isn’t one of those post-hoc rationalizations
Oh noes, lee’s breaking out his supply of BIG WORDS! Quick! Put on your extra-broad shitproof sombreros!
given that this is actually the way society works now (ignoring the names for a second), this is an amazingly dumb thing to say, and a complete failure to understand feminist activism.
Lee, have you been to a toy store?
How many girls grow up being given tool sets or toy chainsaws? How man are given trucks and tractors?
How many boys are given baby dolls? What’s more, how many get panicked looks from parents or even called names when they pick one up?
All male carpenters were conditioned to understand their work as “men’s work”.
Got that attention yet?
Lee Coye, if you’re right, why do job options differ between societies over time. Look at teaching. It used to be mostly men, but then eventually women started outnumbering the men. So by your estimation, was there a biological change in the west that made women more teachery?
Amazing dumb thing to say? Hey Jadehawk, I don’t see a name on that quote, who said it?
Never mind.
No testable hypotheses so far, that I can see, Lee Coye. At least, I can’t spot any. Care to take a stab at condensing your hypothesis into something that’s falsifiable? Feminists have that. Why don’t you?
#902
At one time typing was cutting edge and considered too strenuous and technological for women to master. Things changed. Secretarial skills were more often associated with women. Now, the type writers is gone with the Dodo and computers have taken their place. We’re back at new machines being too complicated for the ladies. Tech jobs are the domain of men again.
The feminists are mature adults, Lee is stuck in late adolescence.
Great question. Short answer: no. The biology didn’t change, the cultural context changed. The status changed, the factors that determine which behaviors will accomplish underlying biological goals changed. Thus, the demographics changed.
Oh? So all I have to do is prove women aren’t people, then?
Because he’s properly conditioned.
This is the closest you’ve come to clearly stating YOUR hypothesis.
a.) What is a “biological goal”?
b.) What is the evidence for the existence of “biological goals”?
Lee, the cultural indoctrination of men to see themselves as being the only ones who belong on the job site is even in the comment where I quoted a common saying on construction sites, “If it was easy, women and n****** would do it.”
How does that not tell you that those white men had been raised to believe that they belonged in that work and that they were naturally better at it than women and minorities? Don;t even get me started on the homophobic shit that get’s said in jobs like construction and on the river barge companies etc. that are traditionally male dominated. They dominate those areas because they are taught that they belong there and the “others” do not.
Lee Coye:
Cute, but no. When it started, more and more women were getting educated, and that allowed men to get better jobs so they could stuff those women into teaching (and pay them less than the men were being paid) because it was one of the few things women were allowed to do.
…You know, I’m starting to reach the conclusion that you don’t actually know what the words “falsifiable” and “hypothesis” mean.
Ahhh, one of my favourites.
This idea relies upon two equally flawed premises.
Premise 1: There actually is one person who’s best for the job.
Well, the world I come from looks more like a hell lot of people applying for a job and probably 50% of them being able to do that job 150%.
Premise 2: We actually have the means to find out who that magical unicorn applicant is without bias.
We have tons of “paper people studies” to show that this doesn’t work. In a paper people study large groups of people are given a job application. They’re all given the same one with one difference: Half of them gets one with a male name and half of them gets one with a female name and we get the consistent results that the male name ones are higher rated than the female name ones.
You can even twist this further: People get two different ones, where one applicant has experience but not education and the other one has education but not experience. And people will make the criteria for the job fit whatever the guy has. So if she’s educated, you need experience. If he is educated, that is the thing you’re looking for.
And unsurprisingly, the more “rational” and “unbiased” people believe themselves to be, the worse they do…
Reference: Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender
Underlying biological goals? Please be more specific as to these goals, and explain how it is relevant to the topic of career choice being affected by culture. Citations please!
And – think real hard now, derpy diddums – WHY did the status change? And WHY did you ignore the point about male professors being paid more, aside from the fact that it doesn’t help you?
Oh I am just dying to hear about my biological goals.
Lee, please don’t forget to cite your source. I’d love to know what wacky evo psych crap peddler is your personal favorite.
My biological goals include
-eating
-urinating and defecating
-sleeping
-occasional fucking
-not getting severely ill or injured
-not dying prematurely
Can’t think of any others.
It’s like clockwork: every time an anti-feminist approaches something resembling the slightest modicum of specificity with regards to how they think the world actually works, they vanish. If they stick around, it’s always to mumble vague, evidence-free platitudes.
Oh, Sally. You speak as if cluelessly privileged, insescure, sexist dudes have to prove what they claim. Don’t be silly. They should just be believed, because penis.
SallyStrange #917
That reminds me of Danger Mouse. He’s allergic to falling bridges and sudden death.
biology does not work that way.
Evolution is not teleological, except when it involves bitchez making babies.
I saw a biological goal once.
We were playing the Bio department at five-a-side and they scored.
I’ll get me coat.
Louis
Is it time to drop a bridge on lee coye?
Oh Janine! Not when everyone is having such….”fun”!
Louis
Hey, whatever happened to myuido and his big list of evidence? Tee hee.
Oh fuck. I see it coming: despite my headache, I’ll spend all night trying to catch up with this thread.
Also, Louis FTW.
David,
Word. I’ve read a little way in and I am yet to reach “read enough to coherently comment”.*
Louis
* Wait for it….with a straight line like THAT!
Goddammit, TV Tropes warning, Janine! Bridge, then Soap Opera Disease, leading to Incurable Cough of Death, then Definitely Just A Cold. Not fair. I’m supposed to be working.
Good one, Louis. :-)
I’m not gone, I’m just struggling to find a starting point. You’ve thus far fantastically failed to grasp even the most basic ideas (some exceptions notwithstanding) eg shifting recruiting from countering bias to blinding recruiters from bias factors. Pteryxx went on and on, oblivious to my comments accepting the data, and has since (apparently) dropped a bridge on himself.
Should I talk about mating strategies? No, that’ll go over like a lead balloon here.
What about adaptability? The idea that men and women conceptualize life goals differently? Maybe toss around a bunch of cognitive research. Meh, brain architecture is probably “culturally conditioned” as well.
I think I’m starting to understand why dissenters merely lurk, or just contribute elsewhere. Nothing I say, if right, will be either acknowledged or taken on board to further the discussion. Anything I say that can be twisted into something despicable will be reliably twisted thusly.
Still, I’m optimistic, because thinking as self-defeating as I’ve seen here is doomed to devour itself.
By the way, I am bored of the term “mangina”. From now on if any anti-feminist wishes to insult me as a feminist-allied (or feminist depending on your proclivities) male, then please refer to me as a Cocktraitor.
Thank you.
Louis
Lee, I suggest starting with ONE (1) falsifiable hypothesis which explains the things you think feminism gets wrong. For instance, you were talking about bias before. You think biases exist but you think that feminists have identified the wrong source. From your circuitous explanations, I can infer that you think the explanation has something to do with biological goals.
Once again, I am left with the impression that you are not overly confident in the strength of your arguments. That’s the most parsimonious explanation I can find for your coy (pun intended) refusal to clearly state your hypothesis.
Why are you obliviously assuming pteryxx is male?
Quoting your words is the opposite of twisting them into something despicable.
We are still waiting for an answer on what biological goals are lee coye. Its put up or shut-up time.
Question: does assuming that people are male unless specifically otherwise indicated (or even when specifically otherwise indicated) further any biological goals for you?
Pteryxx is CLEARLY male. Why she is operating a computer which is a man thing. Silly Ladies. Have your Pink Fluffy Biological Goal Oriented Lady Brainz™ become overheated again?
Go and look at a cake, or better yet, a baby. It’ll calm you down from being so HYSTERICAL.
Louis
P.S. This comment has been brought to you by the number 3 and a deep abiding love of sarcasm.
Sniny sniny mirror.
yes, lee, people asking you for evidence are just trying to attack you. Why, oh why, won’t they just accept what you say as the holy truth, right from god?
Since you haven’t produced a single shred of evidence, you can’t claim to be right but no one will admit it. You have to provide evidence, citations, etc. Which you consistantly fail to do.
Like several people did for you, which you ignored.
Spare us the crybaby martyr act and provde your citations.
I can’t see the difference “countering bias” and “blinding from bias factors”. Or, to be specific, the latter seems like a subset of the former.
There was a different phrase you used, which was “enshrining bias in the opposite direction.” To me, the latter seems like something rather different from either of the other two things you mentioned in the quote above. I distinctly recall asking you to explain what your criteria are for what distinguishes “enshrining bias in the opposite direction” to “countering existing biases.” Perhaps I missed something, but as far as I know, you never did explain what makes distinguishes those things. I asked you to explain, and you refuse to explain, and now you claim that we fail to grasp what you have so far refused to explain.
Par for the course with anti-feminists. Please, break out of the mold and give some specifics.
Lee, your statements are being taken seriously, the sarcasm not withstanding. It’s just that you’re spouting nonsense and refuse to engage even the rudiments of discussion.
It only looks like sense to you because you are woefully ignorant of the topic. And if you can’t be arsed to do your own research, why should we assume you’re correct (especially since many of us are aware of a rather hefty pile of studies which disagree with your ideas.)
Copy editing note: the second instance of the word “latter” in my post may be a bit confusing. It’s referring to the “enshrining bias” quote from Lee.
Sally: Where enshrining bias means paying any attention to merit. :\
Ok,
I totally sympathize with you PZ, as a former long-time board moderator. Hijacking, emotional tone-deafness, single-issue posters, and general boorishness are a pain in the ass, and it’s totally a judgment call as to whether or not to ban, which is entirely your business, because after all, it’s your blog.
Also, I really hate “concern” trolls. But…
When you throw jabs like that last sentence out, you really do need to justify yourself:
“…Because really, how do you express “reasonable dissent” from the view that women are people, and that our society institutionalizes discrimination of all sorts?…”
Are you implicitly claiming here, that NoelPlum does not believe that women deserve personhood? Or, that he wants women to be treated in some immoral manner? If so, where is your evidence for this claim?
If not, then why put this line in? It’s exactly the kind of passive-aggressive and unproductive derailing you claim to not appreciate.
SilentBob:
That’s me. :D Thank you so much for that correction, I got that so wrong. I really shouldn’t post before 2 cups of tea. Speaking of tea, I see AVFM has successfully railroaded the thread, so I’ll go wake up elsewhere.
If you’d read this thread, you wouldn’t need to ask that question.
Greggauthier:
This has been addressed in this thread, over 2 bloody pages of comments – READ! On this page alone, links have been provided, multiple times, to Jim’s idiocy, narcissism, sexism and all around offensiveness. READ.
By the way Greg, you’ve got a few responses to your post in the Thunderdome. Curious to see your reply, if you have any.
Thanks guys. I’ll read through the links.
I appreciate the effort.
I’ll get to the Thunderdome post later tonight.
Excuse my ignorance here but why is calling someone a ‘cunt’ an example of de facto sexism?
Jesus doesn’t hang out on this blog.
(couldn’t resist)
And Lee @ 930, if you’re really serious about finding a place to start, why not toss some of that cognitive research around? If it’s good science, lay it on us. This group loves good science. Stop vaguely referring to it and cite it. I, for one, am unaware of any cogsci material that examines, say, the causal relation between different brain development and the gender ratio in the California school system..
Even if you think we’re all just going to dismiss it out of hand, do it for the dissenters who don’t share your courage — nay! — your indomitable will.
Sheesh, I just don’t comment unless there’s a point.
Lee, I don’t buy that you accept the data demonstrating unconscious bias, because you haven’t engaged with them, critiqued them, or modified your arguments in any way to account for them. Just saying you’ve seen the papers before doesn’t count. You went right back to laws, interest levels, and drive, which are all hypotheses that research into unconscious bias is specifically attempting to counter. If you’ve got a real claim to make, get on with it already. Talk to SallyStrange for once.
—-
Yah Louis, neuter pronouns please, pardon me being slow to respond. It’s hard to type in a properly manly bepenis’d manner when teh foreskin keeps getting caught in the keys. <_<
To follow the 3 post rule? Or not to follow the 3 post rule? Urgh.
Hey, thisislame, why don’t you explain what you consider to be “de facto sexism”?
what an unthinkable idea that environmental factors could affect a highly plastic brain?! unpossible, never heard of, and absolutely never demonstragted to have happened!
lol. ignorant MRA is ignorant
All right cricket, why don’t you do your homework, and you read the previous 900+ posts in this thread, and then, after you show some real intelligence and ability to do your homework, you get back to us with an intelligent question. Or, maybe fade back into the bandwidth…
Hmmmm, to me it is no different then calling someone a ‘dick’ or ‘dickhead’. Calling someone a ‘pussy’, on the other hand, does seem sexist since you are equating being a wimp or scared with a female part.
@Chas:
Y’know what. Fuck you.
[speaking of distinguishing between countering bias with bias, and removing bias from the equation]
I could have been more clear, and chosen uniform terms, but I clarified in 804 and 868. Remember when you were asking for evidence of “bias in the opposite direction”? That seemed to indicate that you understood.
Also a response to 949 I guess, since the two comments I reference were directly responding to you, Pteryxx. A female. (apparently this is integral).
Wow, such a simple question arises such hostility… I figured I could save some time and have one of the enlightened folks here tell me. I’m just lazy is what it comes down to.
thisislame (#953)
Then it’s a good thing everyone else in the world uses and recieves words like that in the exact same way you think about them in your own head, right?
greggauthier, he’s asking Noelplum99 to explain the expressions from those like lee coye, who commented on the thread of that video (as Reerrpad5515) about his past commenting history and who is now back in this thread. Have you read his “reasonable dissent”? You can start at #718. Asking Noelplum99 “how” is not even implicitly claiming anything about what Noelplum99 believes. But here’s a recent exchange on the comments of his “A Question for PZ Myers” video that may show how he’s reasoning:
I’d say Noelplum99 changed the subject, provided no evidence, and expressed his boredom. What oh what will his next video on this topic be like?
thisislame: I wouldn’t say lazy. I would say fishing for a reason to be nasty.
Or do you routinely come to sites and defend the right to call people an offensive name based on being like ~50% of the population?
Umm, when did I defend the right of someone to do this?
lawl, and now you think that when called on your assumption with no evidence that I must be male, that the way to fix it is…. assume with no evidence that I’m female.
Where’d stevecarlos go with his magical gender-detecting skills? Lee needs a second opinion.
A. Noyd
This is exactly why I asked the question… not to defend anyone’s right to use it… to see why it can be considered sexist when in my head it is not.
thisislame, I don’t think you’re the slightest bit interested in an actual answer, however I’ll give you a good suggestion. Read the book Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice, by Jack Holland. It will not only answer your question, but has the added bonus that you’ll learn a lot. I did. If you have an e-reader, the digital book is only 10 bucks. It’s also widely available at libraries.
In any case, the subject of gendered slurs has been addressed so many damn times here already and this thread isn’t the place to derail for that same discussion. If you can’t let it go, take it to Thunderdome.
which is also a gender-based insult, with the main difference being that it doesn’t travel down a power-gradient and doesn’t reinforce any already present cultural tropes (unlike telling a man to “man up” or “grow some balls”, which does reinforce such toxic structures)
if you had the same question lobbed at you for the 1000th time, and every time it ended up with the asker defending the use of that word, you’d have no patience and politeness left over either.
Do your homework first. Then, and only then, are you fit to talk to the horde.
also, why the hell are you asking this question in this thread, thisislame?
also also… are you aware that your handle is ableist?
“Dick” (etc.) aren’t condoned around here either. Just so you know.
Pteryxx:
I’m not awake enough yet, but I wish we could figure out a set of pronouns out of genderbread.
Also Lee, your #955 is quoting and responding to SallyStrange’s #937, though mine’s the only name you used. Talk to someone you didn’t assume to be male, thanks. I don’t consider it a compliment.
*sits back and waits*
Pteryxx
It reminds me of noelplum99 jumping right to matriarchy when patriarchy was brought up, as if that’s the goal. There is of course, no middle ground.
heck, did I cite this already?
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/02/10/when-you-already-are-the-middle-ground/
Again, everyone here is saying I am defending the use of this word when I have not done so once. Plus I figured this would be the correct place in asking this question since the author did mention this in the post.
Also, how is my handle ableist? There are multiple def for lame.
I don’t care what gender you are. Call me she from now on, it’s irrelevant to your argument or mine.
thisislame:
Take this to Thunderdome right now. (Link conveniently provided in #963) If you persist in this derail, I’ll send an alert.
Can someone decipher this?
thisislame
Consider the subtext of the word cunt. Then go google punching up versus punching down, and splash damage.
The convention here is that gendered insults are not allowed at all. It does require a bit of creativity at times, which seems a small price to pay to avoid oppresive language.
*full disclosure- I have had a hard time removing both dick, and bitch (as in complain) from my language.
Lee, you’re responding to SallyStrange’s post, so address SallyStrange. I yield the floor to her.
LeeCoye:
Actually it’s very important to the overall argument. (Show of hands who knows why.)
thisislame, a response is waiting for you at the Thunderdome.
Galactic Fork @970:
Jim the Plum’s dislike of the prospect of a matriarchy tells me he knows very well that patriarchy is a bad thing – he just refuses to a) admit that there actually is a patriarchy (even though it’s a “soft” patriarchy and not composed of a literal body of Patriarchs, meeting in back rooms and actively conspiring against women) and b) cotton on to the fact that advancing feminism is not equal to instituting a matriarchy (in much the same way that correcting for a bias is not equal to shifting to an opposite bias).
There indeed appears to be no middle ground if you’re an anti-feminist. Either things stay the way they are (justified by biological Reasons, evo-psych Reasons or sexism-is-over Reasons) or things will go the way of a Bralek Vaginocracy (because of … other Reasons). The concept of seeking to create a world where nobody is socially, economically or in any other way privileged over anybody else due to some inherent or unchosen characteristic appears to be completely unimaginable.
thisislame: Let’s start with your user name, which is obviously the beginning of picking a fight both because of the site policy about using the word ‘lame’, and because your choice of user name indicates that, despite asking questions, you just want us to know you think the whole thing is stupid.
Your comment #953:
“Hmmmm, to me it (my comment: referring to the word cunt, as stated first in your comment @ #947) is no different then calling someone a ‘dick’ or ‘dickhead’. Calling someone a ‘pussy’, on the other hand, does seem sexist since you are equating being a wimp or scared with a female part.”
Response:
Why the arbitrary line between cunt and pussy? Both refer to what you stated (among other things): these terms are an unfavorable comparison between genitalia being used a slur and comparison to being female, in order to shame. And yet, suddenly, there’s an arbitrary distinction within the same class of insults. There are two likely causes. First, that you are under the impression that the basis of using the word ‘cunt’ is not that same comparison to female genitalia and weakness/unworthiness/disgust. This is highly unlikely, since you know to make the analysis on other terms in the same category.
The second most likely reason for doing so is that you’re stirring shit to make yourself feel justified in some preconception or later course of action (likely insults and a flounce you won’t stick). Because your user name functions in roughly the same fashion, this is the more likely possibility.
Moreover, the presumption for this comment is the relative harmlessness of the term ‘cunt’, or the presumption that comparing someone to stereotypically female genitalia is defensible. This sort of set up is used three different ways by trolls here: first, to state that using the term is okay because the troll likes it or his (9.99 times out of 10) friends like using it. Second, it’s sometimes used in London, therefore no other use of it is really a problem. Third, that there needs to be an insult for some sort of offensive behavior and the term cunt is handy.
Your comment #956:
“Wow, such a simple question arises such hostility… I figured I could save some time and have one of the enlightened folks here tell me. I’m just lazy is what it comes down to.”
Response:
After IDing pussy as an offensive term, any responses to the disingenuousness of the previous post are treated as overreactions to a “simple question,” with the clear implication that there should be no problem with asking a disingenuous question after clear indicating that the response is disingenuous through both framing and user name. The attempt here to frame any responses which do not ignore the disingenuousness of your name and previous comments as unreasonable and the sarcastic use of “enlightened” to describe your responders makes it clear that any meaningful analysis of your request (eg any analysis which acknowledges your attempt thus far to defend the use of the term and your framing of objection as unreasonable) will automatically be ‘unreasonable’, setting up the use of ‘women are too emotional/the subject is not rationally defensible’ as a latter attempt to muster support for your use of the word cunt.
The tl;dr version: Look here, you disingenuous asshole, I see whut you’re trying to do there. And, I’d imagine, so does everyone else.
Come back when you know what you’re doing.
Mandrellian:
Many anti-feminists are highly invested in the idea that equality is a zero sum game. They don’t see it any other way.
Actually, it’s really not. Having different (or identical) interests and goal behavior says nothing whatsoever about who is right, nor does would different interests or goal behavior imply inferior/superior intellectual capacity.
Of course, that’s not to say that some individuals *hint hint* don’t demonstrate a distinct inability to follow the arguments.
@thisislame
Um, you do know what the word ‘cunt’ means, don’t you?
‘Cunt’ refers to the same part that ‘pussy’ does. How can one of those words be sexist, and the other word not, when they both mean the same thing?
mouthyb, Vagina McTits, would you please take discussion of ‘cunt’ and so forth to Thunderdome, please. Trying to avoid a complete derail here. Thank you.
It’s imaginable. It’s been tried. It doesn’t work.
Caine: No problem. And will desist here.
That individual is you Lee. The one who refuses to evidence their claims, or acknowledge the evidence the refutes your sexist and inane claims. Get back to us when you mature and understand why your word isn’t worth the electrons to post your idiocy.
Thanks Cain, that was helpful. Not sure why the thunderdome will be better… I’m getting enough abuse here as it is ;)
Tethys, I can totally understand that gendered insults are not allowed and nor was I desiring to use one. Though I did google what you mentioned and failed to find anything relevant. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Where/when has it been tried? Do we know why it didn’t work? Do you have any citations for this?
Thank you, Mouthyb!
because that’s where completely beside-the-point arguments go. and your question about “cunt” and “lame” is entirely beside the point here right now. so, shoo.
:P
In any case if you are saying I can get a better answer in thunder dome, how is it I get there?
Obviously not you, lee coye. Not hard for anyone else.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/02/09/thunderdome-19
Heh. While he is no where near as profane, lee coye is arguing for the same points and for the same reasons as the former Frankosaurus.
lee coye:
*chortle*
Tried by whom, when and in what way?
And even if Whoever-it-was failed, is that actually a reason for us not to try it again and try to do better?
Or are you that kid who quit toilet training just because you shat your pants a couple of times?