This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Blessed be the nights not spoilt by Stevo’s whining.
I go ahead. I noticed that both Rebecca Watson as well as PZ Myers have expressed “issues” with evolutionary Psychology. Even though I know practically nothing of the specifics of this discipline, I hold Steven Pinker in rather high regard, who seems to at least build on Evo Psycholical findings (maybe I’m wrong). When humanist discplines at least start working with natural science findings (such as Theory of Evolution), I consider this at least as step into the right direction. What’s your take on it?
cm’s changeable moniker@627 on previous thread,
The Economist misses, in my view, the probable cause of this epidemic of well-behaved youth: unlike their recent predecessors, the youth of today have largely escaped lead poisoning – thanks, of course, to government regulation, not the market forces which drove the pollution, from lead paint and above all, leaded fuel.
edit:
humanisthumanities inclined, discplines within humanities or somewhat more aligned towards it, with the following caveat.I’m near the start of the unmoderated thunderdome?! Oh well hi everyone, happy (commercialised and obnoxious) V-day and remember to “fuck first”, as Dan Savage advises.
Apes have culture, too; and so do monkeys. Extrapolating from either makes no sense when their cultures can vary between and within species. And human cultures vary so widely that I find it impossible to believe that there is anything inherently ‘biological’ about most behaviour.
commercialised yes, but if you can make someone else happy–do it (always). Some people apparently need an excuse and/or reminder, which is better than nothing.
No Time for Bullies: Baboons Retool Their Culture
Dr Robert Sapolsky and the Keekorok Baboon Troop
Owlglass@2,
That Pinker;
a) Is a good writer, and has done serious work.
b) Takes the Just-so stories of EP* far too seriously.
c) Is prone to strawmanning his opponents: The Blank Slate was pretty much a prolonged exercise in strawmanning and false dichotomy, as the supposed “Standard Social Science Model”, that all is culture, is not “standard” at all; nor is it the only alternative to EP.
* I use “EP” or Evolutionary Psychology (note upper case initial letters) to refer to the specific school of thought associated with Tooby, Cosmides, Buss, etc., whose premises are summarised here. These are highly controversial and in some cases demonstrably wrong: modern people do not have “stone-age minds”: we know that learning to read, for example, causes extensive cortical rewiring. Pinker is closely associated with EP. I use “evolutionary psychology” for any psychology that focuses on how mentality has evolved, which need not mean accepting EP’s premises. It’s interesting that even in linguistics, where Pinker originally acquired his nativist tendencies from Chomsky, the Pinker/EP view of cognition as largely innately determined, and primarily reliant on specialist modules (for various aspects of language, for detecting cheating, for selecting a mate, for tracking animals…) is increasingly challenged.
Hubby and I are soppy. We rarely bother with doing anything special on the 14th of February. Because, as he said this evening, “Every day is Valentine’s for us!”
♥ ♥ ♥ =^_^= ♥ ♥ ♥
It’s challenged, I should say, in large part because it’s become clear that neural plasticity is much greater than had been previously thought, on all timescales (that is, areas of the brain can switch function on timescales from seconds to decades), and the genome cannot possibly specify the network of neural connections in detail – many orders of magnitude more information would be needed than the genome can contain.
@6, Tigger_the_Wing, Melanin Deficient
It appears to me that any monocausal view (all nature, all nurture) seems outdated. Hardly anyone (probably) would maintain that view for long. There are some apparent reasons. If we wouldn’t die, we didn’t have rites around death. If corpses wouldn’t rot and their presence wouldn’t cause all sorts of health issues, there would be no reason for a lot of culture surrounding death. It is just one extra obvious example how biological circumstances have a profound impact on how culture turns out, even though it doesn’t directly inform what kind of rites people perform or how they get rid of dead bodies. There are many more that readily appear as strong factors, having two hands with a thumb. Having a mind that can seemingly leave our immediate reality and project itself into other people’s views, stories, fictional universes. Our senses, and how we rely on them and yes, how we propagate our genes, which is different for the sexes and at least in animal kingdom apparently leads to different behaviors. I find it difficult to believe it is without any effect on humans.
Tigger_the_Wing,
I’m taking my wife out to our favourite restaurant (she does take me out, too, but Valentine’s is usually my treat at The Jewel in the Crown). Highly recommended if you’re ever in Aberdeen.
Owlglass@12,
This is all completely beside the point, because EP and Pinker claim a great deal more than the blindingly obvious points you make (see my #9).
Duh. Well of course it does. You won’t find many men breastfeeding, for example, or many women in doubt of whether a child is theirs (yes, I know this does happen). But again, EP’s claims are much more specific: that women and men have different “toolkits” of innate, modular, decision-making mechanisms, finely honed by adaptation, related to sex and reproduction, and (in practice) accessible through commonplace observations and stereotypes, and the survey responses of American undergraduates.
people criticizing EP should at least know something about cognitive psychology before they do so.
none of you do, so shut the fuck up already.
so tired of this.
No?
I find that assertion contrary to my experience. It’s most certainly the de facto standard belief of Pharyngula commenters, for example (lip-service aside).
Got a link to you third way?
and/or behavioral ecology.
But whadaya gonna do?
damn it
preview
Nope. The understanding that both experience and heredity are going to shape behavior is my “de facto standard belief”. I’m going to reject any thinking that we can explain behavior purely by biology; that is not the same as rejecting the contribution of biology.
A most sensible position, Prof. Myers.
But a) I do not include you among the group of “Pharyngula commenters”.
b) it’s difficult to tell the difference between a vague acknowledgement of “contributions of biology” and lip-service. Almost nobody will admit to being a blank-slater any more, yet de facto every single suggestion of a “biological contribution” to human behavior is attacked reflexively.
Well, I do have a first degree in developmental psychology and a doctorate in cognitive and computing sciences, so maybe you should shut the fuck up, Ichthyic.
Typically ludicrous straw-man. Of course there is a “biological contribution” – “essential underpinning” would be better – to all human behaviour, because our very behavioural plasticity is obviously dependent on our biology. Would you care to restate your claim in a less ridiculous fashion?
Until a genetic tie is confirmed, parsimony says culture, not biology, is responsible for the observation. That is the null hypothesis it appears everybody but you uses. Which is why you feel put upon.
What are, then, the not obvious biological contributions? What is considered at the forefront where experts™ begin to seriously consider them, but are still divided?
There are a lot of us. Who would you include? Presumably not yourself, but that doesn’t narrow it down much.
Practically anything to do with sex differences, for a start. But as I noted above, you get similar disputes, almost as rancorous, about language. Chomsky shattered the extreme behaviourist position that there’s nothing special at all about language acquisition – it’s all just stimulus-response learning – back in the 1950s. For several decades, his fairly extreme innatism – claiming that language or more specifically grammar is a self-contained faculty placing strong universal constraints on language – held sway (and Pinker still holds it AFAIK), but as I say (I don’t have references to hand), has been under increasing challenge, as more of Chomsky’s “universals” have turned out not to be, and as it’s become clear that one of his main arguments – that language learning would be impossible without such strong constraints because the sample of language children are exposed to would be inadequate without them – has been undermined by studies showing how much time and effort actually goes into language pedagogy.
Somebody resurrect Red Adair.
I’ve been blowing a gasket all day long… or maybe ever since BBC News and every fucking news site I read has been constantly going with Valentine’s Day themes. Stores are full of Valentine’s Day junk, even my friends are flooding my email with soppy well-wishes and I daren’t even think of Facebook.
I’ve always hated traditions like 14th Feb, but this one just takes the cake. I’m sick of hearing about it on the radio, and I’m sick of having to suddenly magic up some sort of special meal for the day ’cause it’s tradisssshuuuuun, foo! Fuck you, tradition!
…I admit though, it’s mostly me angry at myself because I’ve been trying to figure out some sort of meal to make, but I really do hate St Val’s. Auuuughrhgh!
…there, I’m done. Apologies. I’ll go fry baby chickens.
Referring back to the “we find an artifact and our guesses of what the society that made it thought of it are guesses,” discussion, I once wrote a short story about a future archaeologist who finds an iPod. And how said archaeologist perpetuates the belief common in the field at the time that it was a religious totem.
(It got some lulz, and a person who actually studies anthropology and archaeology commenting that this is actually rather plausible)
@Icthyic
I am perfectly ready to accept the basic premise of Evolutionary Psychology, i.e. that the human brain evolved just like the rest of us and thus much of human thought processes and behaviour will have an evolutionary justification. However, you don’t need a degree of any sort to criticise the idea that because we used to live in hunter gatherer societies, men all embody the stereotypical idealised thought processes of the rough and tumble deer-assassins that our anscestors must have been, and womenz all have the kind of passive, risk-averse qualities that an MRAs idealised Stay-at-home-mum/cook/cleaner/housewife should display; which is the sort of lazy, applied EP which PZ always seems to be railing about.
@bradleybetts:
You put to words precisely what I was going to say.
I have three serious issues with EP as it seems to be practiced by the majority (and yes, I realize that majority =/= all):
1. EP seems, to me, to give insufficient weight/import to society. Given that humans are social animals, the influence of societal practice, technology. language, and (yes) religion is huge. It isn’t a nature/nurture debate as an either/or, but both/and. And, seriously, the ways that humans use society/tech to change/override our biology cannot be ignored. Look at, for example, birth control. Or plastic surgery. Also, a trait that would have been valuable and increased mating fitness (due to increased survival, attractiveness to others, etc) 5,000 or 10,000 could be undesirable today. And not just because of increased technology making (for example) the ability to stab things efficiently unnecessary. Shit, look at European standards of beauty since the Renaissance. They’ve done a 180.
2. EP seems, frequently, to ignore or minimize the diversity in human practice, both over time, and across cultures. This seems to frequently devolve into “white North Americans/western Europeans in the modern day are typical, those people who do/did stuff differently are abnormal because of [reason].”
3. EP seems, frequently, to ignore or minimize the degree to which something isn’t so much the product of evolution but the byproduct. [Trait X] increasing mating fitness, leading to it being increased in the population, may also increase the incidence of [Trait Y], which is encoded by a different gene but under the same promotor. Statements that “Humans evolved to do [x]” is simplistic.
In a new constitutional outrage, a charity established by a member of the UK’s royal family lobbied to suppress information provided by our national health service about the (in)efficacy of homeopathy (link):
Thanks again, constitutional monarchy.
@31, casus fortuitus
Be happy and watch the Streisand-Effect incoming.
Do I get a prize for knowing the Royal was Chuck even before looking at the link ?
I really hope Brenda outlives her son, because I really do not want Charlie-boy as the monarch.
@33 Matt
Hmm, if Bets outlives Chuck, there will be a great debate: does Kingship pass to Wills (direct line of eldest son), to Andrew (next son) or to Anne (next eldest sibling).
Image that: Queen Anne and her now-aging toyboy-second husband. The prospect of the debate makes me chuckle.
@Matt Penfold
Nope I’m afraid not; that this shameless peddling of Alt-med woo originates from Charles and his supporters would be obvious to anyone familiar with the Royals.
I like Charles, generally. He’s green. He wants to re-name an official Royal title from “Defender of the Faith” to “Defender of the Faiths” (I’d rather they just took that stupid one out altogether, but “Faiths” is better than “the Faith”). But his stupid support for alt-med just pisses me off.
Legally it would be Wills, his being second in line. His dad dropping dead would not change anything, other than to move everyone else up a place.
Trufax. And there is historical precedent for this. The first time it was “needed” was when Edward, Prince of Wales, died in 1376. At the time, he had a living son (Richard), and four living younger brothers. When the king died, Richard – though a minor – was proclaimed king. Granted, Richard II ended badly, but as far as I know, when his cousin (the son of one of Edward’s younger brothers) stole the throne and made himself Henry IV (and kicked off the Wars of the Roses, natch), Richard never being “properly” king and the throne should-have-gone to Edward’s next younger brother (who would not have been Henry IV’s brother, for the record: John of Gaunt was the third son) was not used as an argument.
A couple centuries later, there was a mad scramble when Charlotte, Princess of Wales died. She was her father’s only child, and her various uncles (next in line after their father) were mostly unmarried and (legitimate-)childless. Cue what was referred to as the “dash to the altar.” When George IV died, he was duly succeeded by the next living brother, William IV (the brother in between George and William being (1) dead and (2) sans descendants). William IV himself died childless. The next brother, the Duke of Kent was dead – but before dying he’d married and fathered a child. Said child, of course, was Queen Victoria. Fun fact: Queen Victoria marked the end of the union of the thrones of the UK and Hanover – Hanover had a Salic law that prohibited women inheriting. So, Hanover went to the next brother. And until Victoria had her first child, he was the heir of the British throne.
In summary, I know too much about British history.
And the succession goes like this: Chuck. Wills. Harry. (Wills and Kate’s baby will come before Harry when it appears). Edward. Edward’s kids. Andrew. Andrew’s kids. Anne. Anne’s kids. Then Bets’ sister Margaret’s kids (Margaret being dead). Then Bets’ cousins on her father’s side. Et cetera.
“Henry IV’s brother, for the record: John of Gaunt…” should read “Henry IV’s father, for the record: John of Gaunt…”
John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, was the third son of Edward III (younger brother of Edward Prince of Wales and Lionel Duke of Clarence, older brother of Edward Duke of York and Thomas Duke of Gloucester). He was the father of Henry IV as well as two other sons.
No, Andrew is older than Edward, so comes before the latter. What I don’t know is whether the intended change in the law of succession, to give female royals equal rights with males, is going to be retrospective, rearranging all the existing places, or whether it will just be applied to children born after it becomes law. In the former case, Anne and her descendants would jump several places to come immediately after Harry.
There’s at least two other grandparent-to-grandchild succession in British history: George II’s eldest son Frederick died before his father, who was succeeded by his grandson, George III; and Alexander III of Scotland was succeeded by his granddaughter Margaret in 1286.
@Nick Gotts (formerly KG)
Thanks for your explanations, much appreciated.
Nick:
If this was an offshoot of my talking about Guyland, it’s not terribly relevant. It’s not that guys don’t know how to behave well outside of their homosocial circle. It’s deeper than that. It’s what would be called Laddism* in the UK.
*In this specific sense.
Esteleth:
Now I want your nym to read “Esteleth, just call me Walton Jr”
Caine:
:D
Nick Gotts
Well, during the recent lecture I took in sociolinguistics the prof mentioned several times talking about groundbreaking linguists of the last century “and then he got into trouble with Chomsky, like everybody else. It’s considered a rite of passing: you made it as a linguist when Chomsky notices you enough to be angry with you”.
The search for language universals is considered kind of “the holy grail” in linguistics. And so far they weren’t very successful. The things that all known languages have in common are “prototypes” and “categories”. No universal grammar to be found, no universal word-formation processes, nor do all languages have verbs, nouns or even sentences…
So, while a “language modul” seems to be pretty universal, said modul seems to be veeeery flexible.
Really?
*googles* Yes, you’re right. Whups.
If the new succession law passes, but is not made retroactive (as Norway did), then the succession will stay as-is. If it is made retroactive (as, IIRC, the Netherlands did), then Anne will skip to immediately after Harry, bringing her kids with her.
As if I could possibly compete with Walton. But, I shall consult with Walton, Esq. Maybe I can be Dr. Walton?
You could remove it one more step and be Esteleth, John Boy. And then nobody except Americans over 30 would get it, and all the trolls would think you’re a guy.
I have a mostly-silly question. In the woo-y department, can we compare Charles of Wales to Märtha of Norway? Because Märtha seems a bit enthusiastic too. Though her woo seems a bit more supernatural.
Given that I am an American under 30, I don’t get it. :(
Old fogey explanation
I iz German, I never saw the TV-show, but I get it…
And I hadn’t thought of it, but John-Boy’s mother was played by a woman named Michael. Oh, the gendermanity.
Carlie, I was thinking of Michael Learned when I was being accused of fooling a poor, innocent man into sexism by having a masculine nym, and he brought up that people named Michael were male.
Caine – and thus, the circle is complete. :D
I immediately thought about Michael Learned too. I guess we do have a hivemind. :D
I thought of Michael Michele. Hivemind busted!
I am safely returned from the university library, with Misogyny: A History by Holland and Feminism Is For Everybody by bell hooks safely tucked in my bag.
:D
OT: In case anyone needs practice shooting fish in barrels, there’s an amusing wingnut commenter spewing wingnut science on my bobcat post at KCET. He doesn’t say so in that thread, but discussing it elsewhere he’s outed himself as a godbot. “Biblically we have dominion over all lesser creatures” etc. Noted for the potential amusement of the horde. #SquidSignal
Work? I don’t need to work. What I need to do, according to the Book of Amelia:
Cuddle her in my left arm while petting her and she bruxes and boggles for me.
Keep holding her while she takes a nap.
Keep holding her while she chews on the drawstring of my tentacle hoodie.
Hold her in my hand while she grooms her nails.
Keep holding her in my hand while she grooms my nails.
Back to cuddling, petting, bruxing and boggling.
More napping.
Hold her while she chews the hell out of the A button on my hoodie.
Climbs into the right sleeve of my hoodie. Goes back to sleep.
Okay, finally awake. I place her on my desk and she’s now happily stealing banana chips.
Rats, bad for work productivity.
Caine,
Awwww. Your work productivity may be suffering, but you are drowning in cute.
Beatrice:
True. :D Now to see if I can get some work done.
Caine:
Productivity is overrated.
Beatrice:
That’s what I was going to say. :D
@Chris Clarke,
If he follows us here, can we keep him?
*readies lasso*
I saw this via Stephanie Zvan:
Daniel Fincke has written a Civility Pledge that he’s calling on people to sign.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/camelswithhammers/2013/02/the-camels-with-hammers-civility-pledge/
Particularly amusing is noelplum99’s appearance in the comments in which he basically laments the loss of gendered slurs from his “civil” vocabulary (not the most charitable reading of his comments, but I’ve had it up to way past here with his incessant whining).
I think Stephanie Zvan has a good response:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/02/14/when-you-cant-walk-away/
By the way, people were talking about the fetishization of civility in the comments of PZ’s post about meddling. I think this pledge would be an example of it.
ヘドバンギャー！！[ Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!! ]-Babymetal
At last! J-Pop has a death metal sub-division!
mythbri,
Bah.
I have a hard time taking that man seriously.
Beatrice, Daniel or Jim?
Oh FFS. Daniel & Jim should get a room, far away from other people. Their debate over civility and the inclusion or exclusion of gendered slurs within that framework should last until the heat death of the universe.
Who’s Jim?
Oooh, Jim is noelplum.
I was talking about Daniel.
@Caine
I agree. Josh and I were both saying in PZ’s “meddling” thread that people who are civil do not get heard.
When Fincke was still here at FTB and writing his series about civil argumentation, there were so many people that tried to point out to him that civility is stacked in favor of the privileged.
I can see that he’s trying to make it more “fair” in his civility pledge, but I just don’t see that working in any practical way.
KG, currently Nick Gotts:
Yeah, I saw Kevin Drum flag that. I … just … have skepticism. It’s interesting and plausible, but it’s just that there are plenty of hypotheses which are plausible, obvious, and wrong. :-/
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline
A couple of things that jump out at me are that, first, there’s no downwards bump in the Flynn effect over the 20th century. If lead depressed IQ, how doesn’t it show up? Second, ADHD diagnoses don’t correlate well either; yes, the US had a rise in diagnoses after a lag, but the UK didn’t see the same rise until later, despite being quicker to ban TEL.
Then, there’s the “lone scientist with a theory” (which, obviously is not accepted by The Establishment™) vibe to the whole thing, and I start to get a bit twitchy.
Thankfully, since we can’t do the experiment, someone else will have to do it for us.
Lead pollution in China.
*ugh*
Let the record state that my “thankfully” in #71 was supposed to have a heavy-sarcasm disclaimer.
[random]
Esteleth, if you wrote #37 from memory, I will take my “B” in O-level History and compost it as unworthy.
So Dan Fincke wants all his blog threads run as though they were cozy debate clubs; I was not impressed with his civility to Natalie Reed when she turned up to disabuse him of the notion that civility was a universal panacea in precisely the way others have pointed out. It not only stacks the odds towards the status quo, it also permits performances of faux civility which are not actually civil, and are thus ripe to be exploited by disingenuous commenters who prefer rules lawyering to honesty.
Lastly, verbosity like Dan’s can be a barrier to civil discourse in itself: rhetorical masturbation without ever actually getting to the issue again is a supposedly civil tactic of debate that is often highly negative in practice, rather like the verbal equivalent in a spoken debate, the Gish gallop; to address the point requires far more energy and patience than is reasonable. And it doesn’t take much effort to find examples of people who like bullshitting at length in discussion threads for plausibly deniable reasons, just because they can and they know it succeeds in derailing and gumming up the works.
Xanthe, that chronic tuck makes me smile. :D
Please excuse any typos or idiocy in the following. This bloody fever is making me slow, clumsy, and I’m not sure if I make sense to myself, let alone anyone else!
Nick Gotts, I like your distinguishing ‘EP’ and ‘ep’. I do think that brain wiring (biology) influences behaviour and vice versa; but I have drawn a tentative conclusion that differences between individuals are far greater than can be accommodated in a general gender-based assessment and that culture, being as it is imposed from birth, makes it difficult-to-impossible to test which, if any, responses are purely biological let alone differ between genders/sexes intrinsically.
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It always rains when we’re in Edinburgh, but if I ever escape from Australia, I will take up your suggestion! =^_^= It’ll be somewhere to shelter from the rain, if nothing else! Do they serve GF and vegetarian options?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Owlglass, see my above. I don’t believe in either ‘all nature’ or ‘all nurture’; I have five offspring (and five grandchildren). They were each born with their own (very different) personalities; all I could do was influence them in such a way as to encourage strengths and mitigate weaknesses. Different parenting styles may well have turned them into noticeably different adults. Along with their differences I have, of course, noticed similarities. But those similarities aren’t shared on gender lines. The two anxious, shy, nervous sons share none of those traits with their sister, for instance who is assertive, ambitious and often reckless (as are her sons!). I’ve also provided respite and emergency care for many other children and young people.
Although, on balance, I have noticed that girls share more traits with one another than they do with their brothers, I suspect from observation that those are probably, if not entirely, culturally-influenced choices. Certainly none of my children exhibited any preference for so-called ‘gender-appropriate’ play until they had been at school for a while and came into contact with wider society and its expectations.
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ChasCPeterson, just because many commenters disagree with the conclusions of EP doesn’t mean that we reject all biological explanations for all behaviour. Just those that are nonsense! One doesn’t have to be an expert in a field (or related field) to recognise when assertions contradict reality.
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Or, what bradleybetts and Esteleth said! =^_^=
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casus fortuitus, bloody Prince Charles! Grrrrr…
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teejaykay, I’ve had three Valentine’s Day gifts from hubby in the almost 34 years I’ve known him. Two red roses, one white. One red rose was a fake one he picked up as a joke from the supermarket checkout; the other was for our watering can. The white one was a ceiling rose to replace our broken bedroom light fitting. Yesterday, he came home, slept through the news, went shopping (by himself; I’m sick) and ate a takeaway when he got home (I ate while he was out). We don’t ‘do’ Valentine’s. =^_^=
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Caine, brigade de garces (love the ‘nym! =^_^= ) Amelia is quite right! You are her slave, transport, food provider and comfort, and don’t you think you can forget it!
I still remember the displays of “I didn’t see that! Lalalala…” in the arrivals halls of Heathrow and Gatwick airports whenever I had a rat poke its head out of my suit jacket pocket. Of course, I only ever took one with me when I was picking up a customer who wouldn’t mind.
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Xanthë, chronic tuck, love your ‘nym too! =^_^=
Before there was lead in petrol, most children’s toys, cots, beds and furnishings contained lead (white lead paint) or were entirely lead (lead soldiers, anybody?).
Until it was banned in paint and petrol, it was everywhere.
Also, there have been great changes to the law and culture over the last century, decriminalising some behaviour, and criminalising, or at least heavily frowning upon, other behaviour. There have been changes in the approach to non-neurotypical people too, accepting that there are brain-wiring differences instead of labelling young people ‘naughty’.
I think that there are too many confounding factors to be sure that lead is the culprit.
Caine, :D
*adjusts clothing appropriately* <— the day I don’t have to do this any more can’t come soon enough.
I read Dan Fincke’s civility manifesto yesterday. I plodded through it, determined to get to the end. I resolved not to comment on it because there are many talented and willing writers who wield words much better than I can. But then I thought, no, I’ll burble a bit. I feel that one of the big problems with civility is that too much of it is simply boring. Overdone civility does not lend itself to interesting writing. These are gross oversimplifications, but just my 2 cents.
Oops! Should have been a break after my comment to Xanthë and before the comments about lead. I do think that the lack of lead poisoning is an interesting idea, but we may have to wait several generations for it to disappear, because: does it remain in the body for life? Can it be passed from mother to fœtus?
Tigger:
Neither do we. We’ve happily not done the Valentine’s Day biz for over 34 years. I’m generally unaware of it until I start reading people grousing about it. Who needs manufactured holidays? If you are with someone[s], and everyone in the relationship doesn’t feel loved and appreciated without the hokum chucked up in favour of a fake holiday, you’re doing it wrong.
Xanthe:
:Tentacles crossed that day arrives very soon:
I second morgan, I couldn’t get through the first few sections of his
thesauruspledge. Not because I don’t understand, but why fucking bother? It’s just his long-winded way of saying “Girls, don’t call men misogynists/sexists.” Look at all the support he’s getting from the usual rabble…Well, it was about my talking about your talking about Guyland. So let me make it about my talking about Guyland.
I’ll expand specific sense.
Kimmel:
Except that the social science research (as opposed to narrative sociology) says that [what he’s insinuating, but not saying] is false.
[Aside: What the fuck is a “British” accent? Brummie? Geordie? Mancunian? Brixtonian? Romfordian?!]
Kimmel is making shit up without any attempt to verify it. (As previously noted.) Why?
Esteleth #37
Not exactly. He died without legitimate issue, but he had at least ten children with the actress Dorothea Jordan. Their eldest commited suicide probably in part out of frustration that he couldn’t inherit the throne.
I think that the current British PM is a descendant of that relationship.
If anybody can throw me a link where to start, I’ll be grateful. Yes, I can (and will) go to Wikipedia tomorrow morning, but I trust you people much more.
cm, if you are around, your links on the previous thread to that Glyndebourne version of Così made me very happy. Thanks.
Well, you are around. Thanks then!
Tigger_the_Wing, I gathered something like that must have happened.
Caine, thanks for wavy tentacles! The day won’t be for another twelve months minimum, but fortunately the dysphoria isn’t horrible all the time, only intermittently so.
morgan, throwaway, I have similar misgivings to yours, but to me they are minor objections to the excessive attention being conceded to civility as a goal over other, more basic virtues.
Forelle, you’re welcome! For what it’s worth, I ♥ Despina.
And this made me go, ‘Meep!’ rather like Beaker. Proximal cause, my foot. ;-)
Thunderdome lurkers, make your presence known there!
Despina? Do you mean this particular singer, Ainhoa Garmendia? The role itself? The character as a peddler of woo, I don’t think?
Soave sia il vento is so soothing and I needed that yesterday. The trio is so moving and dignified, and this is a beautiful version (though the baritone slows down his phrase, as befits his condition).
Tigger:
Our first year together, I went on a picnic with my partner a week after Valentine’s Day and we drank Italian soda and tossed stale bread at ducks. That and me asking him to be my dead Christian martyr this morning are as close as I’ve ever gotten to doing anything for the day.
I always remember the date because this is the anniversary of my dad’s funeral, but otherwise all it really means to me is that chocolate is going to be half off tomorrow.
I do think. It’s funny that she used (about-to-be-debunked-by-Lavoisier) junk science. It seems probable that Mozart’s audience got it.
—
Soave is, as they say, something else.
#83 cm
what is the difference between lads as described and pikeys? curious
casus fortuitous
Homeopathy threads in the Guardian are great fun! Most commenters agree it’s snake oil and smack down heavily on the few people who come along claiming that it works, and whining that it’s not fair to do randomised control trials because it’s biased towards ‘allopathy’ and look this Nobel prize winner wrote a paper that proves it’s true and…
I look forward to an entertaining read. I’m quite taken aback that the charity in question was able to influence the NHS guidelines in the way that it did. I actually used to be apathetic about alternative medicine, until I read the What’s the Harm? website at which point I became strongly opposed. It also smacks of privilege for a royal to be supporting it, because Charles is the kind of person who is never going to be without high-quality medical care, so homeopathy can be a sort of hobby, but it’s unlikely that he’ll come to harm from it.
Then again…Steve Jobs…
broboxley #94
The short answer is that ‘Pikey’ is an ethnic slur aimed at traveling people, while ‘laddism’ is descriptive of a particular set of behaviors currently in vogue among young men.
Dalillama:
Yes, what’s called the ‘guy’ stage here in the States. Speaking of, I’m heading out to read Guyland some more and possibly try to sleep. I have so much to do and this day has been full of fuzzy obstacles. Not that I don’t love my little obstacles, I do. :D
Also – I was reading the news about One Billion Rising, and looking at all the pictures, and thinking how great it was.
…the comments were filled with men complaining about misandry and how it was unfair to only focus on violence against girls and women and claiming that this was creating unnecessary divisions and thanks for calling us all rapists…
Sometimes I wish everywhere was like here.
Esteleth:
Awesome sauce. I look forward to your thoughts on Misogyny. Feminism Is For Everybody just went on my reading list. Thank you.
broboxley:
“lads” and “pikeys” describe different things in different parts of the country. And have changed their meanings over time.
So the differences are different, I guess?
cm:
What you’re going for is “lonely kids on the autistic spectrum do things like memorize the British royal family for as long as there has been a British royal family, and the English one before that as far back as there was a thing called “England.”
*shrug*
Forelle:
Indeed. I’m pretty sure all of George III’s children to live to adulthood had at least one illegitimate child, except for one or two. And given that George had 14 legitimate children, saying that “one or two” didn’t do something is a marked minority.
Unrelated: I once read a joint biography of George III’s daughters. The author recounted a conversation with some publishing person in which she explained her interest in writing this book:
[Publisher]: The daughters of George III? How many were they?
[Author]: Five.
[Publisher]: Who did they marry?
[Author]: No one in particular.
[Publisher]: Hm. So, who was their brother?
[Author]: George IV. And William IV. And Victoria’s father. And six others.
[Publisher]: Fourteen children? How many wives did George III have?!
[Author]: Just the one.
[Publisher]:?!
I think Queen Charlotte is, if not the most prolific, one of the most prolific British royal women.
@ 63 mythbri:
I saw this last night. Fuck. That. Noise.
He views punching up as hypocritical? In drafting a “civility” pledge, where marginalized people tend to get the short end of the stick, he sought out help… from another white male.
If you plan to make a change which you have been told could further marginalize people you want to help, you might want to include them in the conversation.
I am privileged in almost every way, (I’m not wealthy, but I’ve rarely struggled with money;) and I have a long history of letting my privilege show. But, fuck! If marginalized people are yelling at you, that seems like a great time to shut up and listen.
Have A Balloon:
An all too common refrain, I’m afraid. One of the things pointed out in Guyland is that more and more guys (and men) feel seriously put upon by women and others (primarily women though) to be veddy veddy PC and feel emasculated over their loss of privilege. Their sense of entitlement is large and they are angry because they feel as though others are responsible for them not having what’s owed to them; their birthright. Of course, it’s more complex than I’ve paraphrased here, but it’s part and parcel of the anti-feminist backlash, which is being picked up by increasing numbers of young men.
I was very dismayed by the amount of young men who listen to Limbaugh*, ffs. Why do they listen? Because it’s not “PC”. Because they think it’s a masculine refuge, where someone says all the things they are thinking, about the bitches, the sluts, the hos.
*Along with other shock jocks.
Dalillama and cm, thank you
Caine, have a potential 6 month gig in fargo ND, do you know anything about housing availability in that neck of the woods? Is it far enough from the oil patch to be reasonable?
Broboxley:
Geez, I don’t know. If you see Jadehawk around, holler at her, she’s in Fargo. I’m about 5 hours away. If I remember right, she got her apartment for a reasonable rent. I don’t think it would be overrun with oil workers, too far.
*cocks head sideways and squints a bit*
It’s a little broader than than; it’s (here in SE UK) used more generally about … well … people who just don’t belong here. You know, yes, they might be Romani. Or people who define themselves by beating the shit out of each other.
—
Except that this set of behaviours is increasingly not in vogue amongst young men.
The fin-de-siècle narrative is strong around here.
Noooo!
I was impressed!
And embarrassed not to know so much, given I have findable ancestors that go all the way back to the Norman invasion.
(And a B in O-level History.)
*snort* My ancestors are mentioned in the Domesday Book.
And another passel of ancestors had way back when an odd set of arms: a thistle, crowned. Bend sinister. St Andrew’s Cross.
Of course, why someone would use arms that scream SCOTTISH ROYAL BASTARD without actually being arms that “properly” so indicate is lost to history.
Also: Æthelstan. Edmund I. Eadred. Eadwig. Edgar. Edward the Martyr. Æthelred the Unready. Sweyn Forkbeard. Edmund Ironside. Cnut. Harold Harefoot. Harthacnut. Edward the Confessor. Harold Godwinson. William the Conquerer. William II. Henry I. Matilda vs. Stephen. Henry II. Richard I. John. Henry III. Edward I. Edward II. Edward III. Richard II. The Wars of the Roses: Henry IV. Henry V. Henry VI. Edward IV. Edward V. Richard III. End of War. Henry VII. Henry VIII. Edward VI. (Jane). Mary I. Elizabeth I. Union of England and Scotland. James VI and I. Charles I. Cromwell. Charles II. James VII and II. William III and Mary II. United Kingdom. Anne. George I. George II. George III. George IV. William IV. Victoria. Edward VII. George V. Edward VIII. George VI. Elizabeth II.
Anything else?
(Which won’t make sense unless I admit that I got As in everything else, except Geography. What’s with that?)
I am so shutting down this computer …
Caine
Yes, it’s really depressing how much more frequent that kind of comment is becoming. It’s like all the privileged groups are feeling left out and want some oppression of their own. So Christians claim to be persecuted, and homophobes invent words like ‘heterophobia’, and white people talk about reverse racism, and men’s rights is apparently now a thing. And it’s horrible.
As an aside, I wanted to say how awesome all your book references are. It’s really interesting to hear what’s in the books that you’re reading and useful to know what evidence there is out there.
Heh. I grew up right on the edge of suburbia. If you drove out the front of house, you could be in the city in 15 minutes. If you walked out the back door, you could be at a farm that was listed in the Domesday book in … 2 minutes? (If it had been raining, slightly more: clay soil gets sticky.)
I could see history from the kitchen window. ;-)
Have a Balloon, I’m currently reading Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search For Identity. It is quite interesting! It is a thousand-page doorstop, and I’m not far in, but this resonated:
later
The author’s thesis, basically, is that these different types of horizontal identities are very common in how they interact with a person’s place in their family, and are frequently characterized by a fundamental inability of parent and child to comprehend each other.
And I’m also descended from this lot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_MacLeod
*cue Highlander moment!*
OK, I’m definitely turning off the computer now.
Uhhh, CM’s, that doc you linked to is about Travellers. They aren’t Romani, but they are a distinct ethnic group that continues to be chat on by the rest of britain and there is a hell of a lot more to their culture than just “beating the shit out of each other.”
Have A Balloon:
Thank you. I don’t think we have a good framework for effecting social change unless we spend at least some time spent learning. Next up after Assholes: A Theory is Feminism Is For Everyone (thanks to Esteleth). After those is a fun read, Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, set in Chromatacia and society is ruled by a Colortocracy. :D
@dysomniak, I know. Read it again.
I was being quite deliberate in my (written) xenophobia.
Esteleth:
I’ve added that to my book list. Going by the bits you quoted, I’m pretty much all horizontal identities.
Dysomniak:
Word.
Anyone who’s ever worked as a union official of any stripe knows this one. The articulate, grammatical, impeccably legal recitations of this, that and the other thing as a nifty dance routine avoiding the core issue that the organisation, manager, supervisor, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all have clearly violated a central condition of employment of the union member/s in question …… is generally resolved with something very like “Up yours!” Followed promptly by a walkout and or a picket line.
They call it negotiation. I call it ducking and weaving. You really can’t get anywhere with these people.
Caine, Far From the Tree also spends a bit on how people united by one horizontal identity get angry when the horizontalness of another identity (and how they are thus similar) is pointed out to them. The author does not dwell on this (yet, maybe he does later), but he more or less describes the Oppression Olympics. And the “but my issues are valid and real, not like them!” thing.
FWIW, while he acknowledges other horizontal identities, the book is an examination of the larger scheme through a detailed analysis of ten horizontal identities: Deafness, dwarfism, Down Syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, disability, child prodigies, children born of rape, criminals, and transgenderism.
CM’s:
Ah, carry on then.
Thanks to a mention in Guyland, I came across this excerpt from Men on Rape by Tim Beneke. Here’s a bit:
Esteleth:
Thank you. Sounds like fascinating reading.
The Mellow Monkey, I’m so sorry about your father. For the last couple of years we’ve had an additional reason not to celebrate too; it’s the anniversary of the death of my husband’s beloved father. I feel particularly bad for my mother-in-law. It’s tough to lose a loved one after sixty years with them. It’s tough to be single on Valentine’s. For it also to be the anniversary of the former must be particularly hard.
Esteleth, I’m loving all the history!
cm, Yep, Kimmel is using colon research.
‘Pikey’ definitely referred to travelling families (mostly Roman Catholic Irish, rather than Romany, who were called ‘Gyppo’) at least up until the end of the nineties (another SE England-ite here, born in Lambeth and raised in Kent); perhaps it is now also used as a slur-by-association, the way that the ‘c’ word is used in the SE? I left England in 2000 and have only been back briefly since, and not at all for the last eight years. But its origins are definitely racist.
I agree that the current crop of teens-to-mid-twenties young men are a vast improvement on previous iterations. Those who act badly are notable because they are now in the minority and their behaviour is no longer acceptable even to their peers. Around here young people tend to hang out in mixed groups. The young men have friends of all genders and orientations and don’t think anything of it. They truly are equal*.
I have seen no evidence of roving gangs of homogenous youth causing trouble, although I do know of one or two trouble makers. The diversity training and implementation of – not ‘quotas’ exactly – ummm, colour- and gender-blind hiring practices in schools and elsewhere seems to have improved the outlook of our younger citizens. Increasingly, the old macho attitudes are looking anachronistic and the old blokes who behave in the old ways are finding themselves looked down on, rather than up to, by the young blokes.
No wonder they are squealing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*An example: a few weeks ago both Number 4 Son and one of his female friends were admiring a young red-headed server at a tea-shop. I teased them both about it. Recently, son’s friend plucked up the courage to ask her out and she said “Yes.” Son is pleased for his friend. Of course, being straight, he’d like a girlfriend too. Lots of his friends are female, some are straight and he’s had a few dates but nothing lasting more than a few months yet. However, unlike their older siblings, he and his twin have no desire or ambition to ‘settle down’ for a long time yet and it seems that most of his peers are the same. They seem in no hurry to rush into anything so perhaps the wider culture is changing. It seems that they want to enjoy their youth unencumbered. Good for them, is what I say!
Esteleth, what about the uncrowned one between Harold Godwinson and William the Conqueror? (Seeing as you included Jane parenthetically.)
Ugh, Caine, that’s horrible.
What kind of upbringing did he have that put those thoughts in his head? A patriarchal one, I’d warrant.
It’s exactly the kind of thoughts I’d expect to be going on in the heads of people brought up during the last century, not this one.
Ah, the Aetheling? Whups. Forgot about him.
Jesus Fucking Christ Caine @121
I can safely say I’ve never had any thought even close to resembling that shit, and it’s so fucking foreign to me it amazes me (but unfortunately does not shock me) people are out there with those thoughts, let alone being happy to discuss them. If i had thoughts like that my level of shame would be so fucking high I’d never want to let them be known let alone be so nonchalant about discussing them.
I sometimes wonder if my upbringing via a single very fucking liberal mother has something to do with that considering how often it is evident there are a whole bunch of assholes out there with thoughts in this spectrum.
fuck
humans, how do they work
CM
It’s a little broader than than; it’s (here in SE UK) used more generally about … well … people who just don’t belong here. You know, yes, they might be Romani. Or people who define themselves by beating the shit out of each other.
I was going to say pretty much what Tigger the Wing said on this one; just because the term has now been expanded to mean ‘people who act like the negative stereotypes of traveling people, regardless of ethnicity’ doesn’t make it any less an ethnic slur. (Although there always has been s certain amount of taht expanded meaning; pikey has been used to describe tramps, tinkers, pedlars, and carnies as well, once again regardless of ethnicity. The etymology is basically ‘road people.’ Pikey is from the same root as turnpike.
Except that this set of behaviours is increasingly not in vogue amongst young men.
That’s as may be. I was going with the definition of laddism provided earlier in the thread which appeared to indicate that it was widespread, I have no idea how prevalent it is or isn’t in reality.
Caine #121
Damn. There’s a whole mess of toxic BS in there.
Argh, my blockquotes disappeared for some reason. The first and third paragraphs are CM.
Tigger:
All of which demonstrates a complete lack of understanding as to what Guyland is about. It’s not about “bad behaviour”. It’s not about criminal behaviour. It’s not about whether or not they accept same sex marriage or say that yeah, girls are people. It is about young men attempting to delay the move into ‘manhood’ and how their ideas of masculinity are still highly toxic, which keeps sexism and misogyny square and center. The same goes for racism and homophobia. While *you* may not see such attitudes or hear about them, they are there. They are all around you. Such attitudes and feelings are shared with *other guys*.
I’m getting pretty damn tired of such research being dumped on because some people prefer to be a fuckwitted ignoramus who can’t be arsed to learn a single thing and are content to be a part of the problem. This painting of young men in rainbows and unicorn farts is striking me as deliberate shoving of heads into the sand while happily ignoring a very real problem.
I’m also not impressed by people who can’t manage to read a book, but style themselves experts on X.
Rev. BDC:
That was from the ’80s, too. This type of thinking is becoming more common, part of the antifeminist backlash. Unfortunately, the notion of having girls hanging off you is still very much considered to be part of becoming a man, and young men are getting pretty damn resentful over being “PC whipped” and not being allowed to take what they want. There’s also the problem of how they are judged by other guys if they don’t manage to get laid on a regular basis. If they don’t, they feel like a failure.
Hmm. That’s aimed at me? I’ll shell out for the book, I guess (unless someone wants to send it to me) but, as intimated before, if Kimmel is just making shit up, I hope I’ll be allowed to say so, right?
In return, this is a must-read:
http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/books/thewayweneverwere/
(And I have read about 100 pages of Guyland. It’s just not compelling.)
Good morning
Caine #121
That’s that’s horrible and disgusting.
This sense of entitlement, I don’t get it. That’s probably because I’m a woman and society never raised me thinking that I was entitled to a nice guy in a three piece suit with money. So, attrative women are a tease and they apparently do it just because of him. And being denied to force his will onto another human being is denying him his humanity. WTF? Somebody’s parents failed at teaching him that the world isn’t about him.
But yeah, in the recent German sexism debate, a hellotof guys linked to an article written by a right wing neofascist, but she was a woman and therefore her opinion tops that of 100.000 women who say something different, whose main argument was “if you don’t want men to grab your tits or stare at them or constantly comment on them you just have to button up your blouse”. And yes, they thought that a legitimate argument.
Tigger
While it is true that children are noticably different from early on I find it difficult to pin this down to one thing or another. Not only do siblings start out with different genes, they also start out with a different environment. Hell, even their intrauterine environment is different, we know that women’s bodies and their hormone levels change with every subsequent pregnancy.
And the families they’re born into are never the same. We might think it because it’s still our family, but the family the second child is born into is very different to the one the first child is born into. Parents already have a whole child experience on them and react differently and there’s always somebody else around as well.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t a “genetic character” as well, I would be hestitant to make a definit claim about any single or specific trait.
I’ll be back.
Giliell, I know; even the twins are very, very different. Unlike their older pair of brothers, they’ve never been even mistaken for twins! Some children are born jumpy, and have to be carefully handled and gently encouraged to feel safe. Others are born reckless and feel safe in the most dangerous situations and have to be carefully reined in. I’ve had both extremes and stages in between. It really is impossible to state with any certainty that a particular trait in a particular person is a biological product, and as they get older the plasticity in their brain means it doesn’t get any easier.
I’ve also known people who changed into completely different people after a brain injury.
Applying ‘it’s because of biology’ to a whole chunk of humanity is ridiculous.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Caine, I’m sorry. I’m just very lucky, living in the most liberal city in a liberal country where such attitudes are dying out with the older generation (I admit Adelaide was far, far worse). I may also be very lucky in that all the young people with whom I come into regular contact are genuinely nice people. What got my goat was Kimmel referring not to some young men but to the whole group. It’s as if he had gone back in time.
Even working in male-dominated environments for most of my life I have noticed an improvement in the attitudes and (apparent, going by their behaviour) thinking of young men. In the seventies misogyny such as that displayed in the quote you gave was ‘normal’ (or, at least, publicly acceptable in a ‘boys will be boys” kind of way) and men who disagreed with those attitudes wouldn’t dare voice their disagreement. In the eighties such people were becoming slightly defensive because the voices against those attitudes were starting to make themselves heard. In the nineties, men were starting to feel ashamed of other men expressing such attitudes; by the noughties, it was already apparent that they were held by a dwindling minority.
I’m not saying the ‘guys/lads’ don’t exist, just that they are, at least around here, a tiny percentage of the whole and their behaviour and attitudes are despised by the rest of their age group.
I’m really sorry if your experience is that there is a backlash. Just because I haven’t seen it here doesn’t mean I think it doesn’t exist, along with the equivalent conservative and fundamentalist backlashes which are also notable by their almost total absence here. I apologise for neglecting the wider picture.
I still think it is unfair to tar an entire generation with the brush of ‘laddishness’ when most are perfectly decent young men and are just as horrified at ‘laddish’ behaviour as any other decent person would be. Calling it a ‘culture’ rather than a ‘sub-culture’ does seem to unfairly target everyone in the age group as if ‘lads’ or ‘guys’ are the norm and the decent young men are rare exceptions. It’s the other way round.
I’m not going to be one of those old ladies who glares at young people and mutters rude things about them as I shove past them. In fact, I would trust a stranger under 25 to a degree I wouldn’t trust someone of my own age group because the latter were brought up with toxic masculinity as the norm. I know horrible people exist in any age group. I’ve even waded into a group of about thirty young people, with my wheelchair, to break up a potential fight when a bully was picking on another young man at the bus station. When I made it quite clear that I wasn’t going to merely watch or walk (roll) by and would call the police if the aggressor didn’t back down, the crowd dispersed. I probably wouldn’t have done any such thing in the USA.
Let’s put the blame where it lies, in the hands of the actually criminally-minded. As long as people keep complaining about ‘youth’ as if they are a monolith, those young people will feel alienated. It isn’t fair. Most, if not quite all, young men raised by feminist parents will have feminist views. They are on our side, and are our best defense against the rare misogynists in their midst because, as you say, they are the ones to whom the misogynists will reveal their hand first; and are therefore in the best position to tell them exactly why misogyny is unacceptable.
I think that there is a real problem with some young men, just as there has always been a real problem with some young men. Old men have, allegedly, been writing about it for millennia. But there is a difference between pointing out a problem and scaremongering, just as there is a difference between pointing out scaremongering and ignoring a problem.
@ chigau
I’m back!
…
Went to the History Museum in Kowloon today. They have an amazing display of historical artifacts on exhibition, covering many centuries of early Mesopotamian culture. (Linky for the historically minded.)
Marduk was a Jealous God and could not abide with the notion that His priest-kings could be drawn to Sin. (Sin is the Moon-God, by the way.)
Have a Balloon
It’s got to the stage where I dread reading any article about feminism or women’s rights in the Guardian. My already frail faith in the general goodness of humanity can barely stand the strain any more.
General enquiry about Thunderdome etiquette
I know there’s no such thing as OT or derailing in Thunderdome, but is it OK to be posting these semi-random links to articles that I’m finding interesting?
@ casus fortuitus
Knock yourself out!
…
[“matriarchy” wrt artifacts]
A little mental experiment: The vogons wipe out the human race. Centuries later alien archaeologists return to earth and start digging about in what we have left behind. What examples of artifacts would they find that would confirm to them that we were (ours is the age they are examining in this exercise) essentially a patriarchal society?
(Note, it is kinda cheating to suggest they just pick up a book(or newspaper, dvd or the like), then decypher the language to simply read the discussion/explication of this phenomenon. Suggest something a little less obvious. Pickaxe and shovel stuff … and the like.)
So much of that would depend on their own biases, theophontes, and an understanding of context.
Let’s say they find a copy of Playboy. They cannot read it, but they can look at the pictures. Devoid of cultural context, “these people were matriarchal and worshipped the female form” and “these people were patriarchal and held that women exist to be on display for men’s enjoyment” are both plausible conclusions.
@ Esteleth
We come across more than enough people denying the patriarchal nature of our own society in our own time. One reason is that they are willfully refusing to accept it, they refuse to make those conexxions. Is there not some way we can highlight the patriarchy through reference to our artifacts, rather than purely as a narrative or as an ideological account? This may be of use in arguing our case more forcefully.
(I do not ignore that we can measure such things as income disparities or conduct experiments such as blind auditions. Indeed these are good and convincing parts of our argument. For the purpose of this experiment we leave these aside for now.)
Theophontes, given the number of people who respond to “Vote to Acquit In All Rape Trials” and “Women Are To Blame When They Are Battered” with “yeah, sounds about right,” I’m unsure what could be used as incontrovertible proof of misogyny, sexism, and patriarchy.
And I say that as someone who once found a blogpost arguing that infibulation is not proof of sexist hatred of female sexuality.
All you newcomers, my folks were being listed in the book of fines and later the domesday book. Apparently liking other peoples cattle makes you recordable
@ Esteleth
No, I don’t think we have a hope in such cases. But often ideology is given form, intentionally or unintentionally. Underlying ideologies find their expressions in the artifacts that a society produces.
Anthropomorphism has been a common frame of thought in architecture and town planning for example: Di Giorgio or Ledoux (almost NSFW)
Something along those lines.
@Tigger-the-Wing #137
^ This. I was raised in a similar environment here in the UK. It’s a large part of why I am so abysmally ignorant of rape culture and the inherent misogyny of Western Society; I genuinely didn’t think these attitudes existed outside of a few backwards individuals that all other men were ashamed to be associated with. Reading the comment threads on this blog has rather shattered that comfortable world view.
Re. my above; by way of further explanation I should add I was born in 1990. I have never known a time when sentiments like those shown in Caine’s comment ‘ #121 were commonly expressed. Thankfully.
Giliell:
This makes me want to scream. It’s just another version of “a virtuous women is seldom accosted” or “if you keep your arms at your side, you won’t be groped”. It also completely ignores the legions of women who are assaulted who are not wearing revealing clothing.
Well, I would argue at least that the sentiments expressed in 121 aren’t expressed in the same voice or manner among that person’s peer group. That they are shared wholly or in part is beyond doubt for me, I encounter some facet of that shit regularly among the men who I encounter through work. To see it all summed up so explicitly in one person’s words is unusual, not because I think he is alone in thinking that, but because there is seldom a context where someone will do so at around me. It’s not as if people open up like that to me while working and given the reception that I give when some of the shit spills out of their brains I don’t really think hanging out later on to get the full scoop is likely.
casus fortuitus, please do
cm’s changeable moniker@71
Actually, there is, although it’s not clear the timing is exactly right.
I’m not quite clear what you;re saying here, but ADHD is a relatively new diagnosis, and such are often unstable – IOW, I suspect changes in diagnostic practice over time could swamp real changes.
Read the article I linked to more carefully. There are at least 4 references to papers by groups other than Nevin’s, and two of those deal with ADHD.
And if she buttons up the blouse, they’re still visible.
Hm, have to get a larger blouse.
Nope, they still show, poking out like that.
Hm. Bigger rounder cut and larger size?
Not quite.
Little bigger, little more round, maybe some extra folds so that any bumps appear to be the fabric instead of breasts, maybe another layer of fabric on top just to be sure… ah, there you go.
This is true, however you can’t push it too far before you enter “search her body for the devils mark, it must be there” or “thoughtcrime” territory, whichever metaphor you prefer. In fact, the way language and thinking works (I’m looking at System 1 and System 2 of Kahnemann) it rather suggests that people employ a lot of learned shortcuts they not only not question, but also never really thought about in an affirmative sense. They may have picked up that a word, whatever it is, seen first hand how it somehow has a magical effect on another person forcing them to feel something negative and then they use it themselves. Once you learn another language, it becomes even more apparent, the insulting words have no effect on you even if you can picture quite well what they are supposed to mean. You haven’t experienced them in action, have not seen how people are hurt or how their mimics derail and so their whole magical power is not working.
At one time, for example, the word “victim” became an insult in my native language among puberty kids. We can see what’s wrong with it, but I am pretty sure that those who used it frequently didn’t have the faintest idea of what they were saying. It originally probably expressed social strength, beating of chests, dismiss another person as inferior in the food chain. The core idea can be seen in many ways (including laughing at or dismissing other commenters), and at this point I am not convinced that one signfier is somehow better or worse than another.
I am not claiming that it makes certain expressions or artifacts okay in any shape or form. But the assessment is somewhat different in that not every person who is using them actually approves of a particular ideology or view.
I have yet another wireless unit that is dying on me. *sigh*
Caine – *hugs*
KG, thanks.
I should actually have done that, but I went with my recollection of what I’d read last month, and I also misremembered the ADHD studies, thought they were temporal correlation, and that’s why my statement didn’t make sense. Doh. :-(
Caine:
Home network wireless or phone network wireless?
My USB phone thingy stopped working last week, I eventually extracted the SIM card and found the chip had come unglued and had slipped out. A drop of super glue and it’s back on line. Technology stops working for all the usual dumb reasons.
Lofty:
Verizon Jetpack MiFi thingy. You would not believe how many of the damn things I’ve gone through. This is an old whine, not new. Now the current one is going and it’s not even 6 months old. (Turns itself off, won’t charge, now it will charge, now it won’t, yada, yada, yada.) Also, lately, simply connecting the normal way isn’t enough, I have to connect through the Verizon admin page too. It’s on surge protectors, all that crap, stays in the same place all the time, etc. I just can’t keep them alive for love or money.
Took over 5 hours this morning before I could get it to accept a charge and power up.
Fun fact unearthed today: the definitive 90s “lad’s mag”, Loaded, has suffered a massive collapse in circulation, and is now outsold by Golf World, Real Homes, and Country Walking.
New chewtoy over at Crommunist. He’s a hoot he is.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/2013/02/15/new-required-reading-confessions-of-a-former-misogynist/#comment-134204
My favorite quote from him, in the comment section in response to why he’s turning the conversation from this recovering-misogynist to racism:
Caine, I dug up a couple of reviews etc just because I’m bored…One:
Sounds like another great idea ruined by bad marketing and design.
Rowanvt, Edward Gemmer is not a new chew toy. Watch as this thread becomes all all about Edward Gemmer being oppressed because he is a white male. That is until he got the gift of the banhammer. Injecting race into a thread about feminism is not a new technique for him.
The Slymies congratulated him for his performance in that thread.
OMG! Turns out someone whose wedding I was at did a TED Talk.
*headsplode*
*plots route to TED talk of complete inanity*
Not his perfomance, his longevity. His performance was a typical MRA fuckwit. All opinion, noise, and blather, with not one iota of real evidence. The equivalent of throwing, but not landing, a punch at Ali in his prime, before the inevitable…
And for what it’s worth, yes I do know the person whose wedding I attended.
Gah, you people are so picky. ;P
Becoming… so… fucking… angry at that commenter.
Lofty:
Thanks. Can’t say I’m surprised. As bad as they are (or more accurately, as fragile), they are pretty much the only game for us. Cable doesn’t come to where we are, going through Dir*cTV is a joke (5 MB per month cap, and no, that’s not a typo), so it’s either Verizon wireless or dial-up and we did dial-up for years. Only made the move to wireless after Jadehawk came to stay with us. We do get the stupid things replaced at no cost, but it’s still one hell of pain in the ass.
Edward Gemmer can have that effect on a person.
Try reading the link I provided for more frustrations.
Gemmer will drive you up a wall. This was his first performance here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/28/piero-corsi-continues-that-fine-catholic-tradition/#comments
O_< Drive up the wall is correct. I want to start chewing on my keyboard out of frustration.
Rowanvt:
I empathize. Deeply. After the assclam was banned here, he showed up on my blog, where he had this to say about Adam Lee’s petition regarding sexism and misogyny in the atheistskeptisphere:
Willfully ignorant sexist douchecake doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. Oh, and in the Piero Corsi thread, he did a mix of misogyny and racism which was driving a whole lot of us up a wall.
It was that same mix of misogyny and racism that did him in at the neither bullied nor cajoled thread.
Janine:
I know. His views on pretty much everything were loathsome.
Is it sad that he’s less frustrating now that I *know* he’s a dishonest ass instead of me thinking he was a well-intentioned but entirely missing the mark ass?
I am sorry, rowanvt, but you deserve to know the truth.
Well, instead of chewing on him (or my keyboard) I am going to snuggle my favorite snake, have some hot chocolate, and read a new book. My evening will be much better spent.
So, I’ve just won my first game of Civ5 at ‘Prince’ level. Yay?
(The secret was to realise all improvements cost gold, regardless of whether they’re worked by the cities — sounds so simple, no?)
Which civ?
And what kind of victory? Scientific? Diplomatic? Conquered the world? Cultural?
Congratulations, John. I haven’t played any Civ games since Civ2.
Janine, Civ5 (quite different to Civ4) and a scientific victory.
Now, on to the next level of difficulty!
Hekuni Cat, it was a gift from a friend on my 50th, but too buggy to play at the time.
Enjoying it now, but.
(Also, fuck Steam; its one saving grace is that it updates automagically, but it’s annoying one must be connected to the Net to play at all)
I meant which civilization.
There is now a Civ 5 Gold but no discount for people who have the original and Gods And Kings.
Janine, I’m almost considering lashing out for G&K.
(But I hate Steam with a passion — I get a boxed game, I expect to be able to play it out of the box)
This is weird.
Last week, I was at the school open evening when the dance club (featuring kid #2) did a routine to Brainbug–Nightmare (sinister strings mix). Which I clubbed to 20-ish years ago.
I have vinyl to prove it.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/us-dept-of-retro-warns-we-may-be-running-out-of-pa,873/
Get used to it, cm’s changeable moniker. Many is the time that I pull up a song I first listened to twenty, thirty years ago, read the first ten comments (I know, never read YT comments) and some kid is talking about how some recent TV show or movie sent them there.
John – I have the same problem with Steam.
I don’t think I have played a game out of the box in over a decade, everything streets buggy and needs patches.
rowanvt:
Not sad at all. I feel better for you feeling less frustrated.
But fuck am I frustrated and sad at the same time. I spent time quoting a fellow’s exact words to him only to have him point at a stupid fucking phrase in the next sentence that he said negated the one I just quoted. By the end of it, he’s telling me that he wrote it that way on purpose so that he’d get someone off his back–that she’d think he’d agreed to something while he went right on doing what he had before. He was pleased to call it a slippery slope since his definition of the disputed behavior was at the bottom of it; it didn’t matter than anyone else’s definition would have stopped much higher. That would be their required stopping point.
He wrote 10x more than usual because he had an audience on his side, shrugged off double standards, handwaved my points as though he hadn’t been keeping them secret, put words in my mouth. All that is frustration. The unutterably sad is that another person may get the fallout because I didn’t realize how brazenly he’d lie and how I am only a little baitfish he may dangle for the catch he wants.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, I wish I hadn’t stupidly thought I could be the catch. :“(
I have Civ5, haven’t played much because I don’t give much attention to fullscreen games these days. I also miss how sprawling my civilizations could be back in Civ2. In Civ5 you can only have one fraction of the cities before you fill the map or your empire becomes too bloated ):
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/02/15/1187328/-Summit-Invitation?showAll=yes#
Yes, the NAP has used Daily KOS to invite all freethinkers to join a discussion to heal the rift. Also, it has a poll as to if you feel a rational discussion is possible. Personally I’m doubtful, but then I usually just lurk as I tend to throw my hands in the air and walk away rather than bang my head against a wall when I know people aren’t listening. I truly hope Chris or PZ does a post on this as I am extremely interested to see what the rest of you think.
Heal the rift?! NOOOOOOooooooooo………
*Make it deeper! Fill it with…
sharks with lasers…crocodilians… hippopotamus/es/i.* =^_^=I don’t want the bigots anywhere near me, thanks.
They are irrelevant spammers. It is generally bad policy to give undue attention to spammers.
triamacleod, it’s a piece by a self-admitted nobody.
(meh)
Am I the only one who thinks Torchwood whenever people talk about the rifts?
Seal the rift! So that nothing can get through from the other side!
….yes? no? maybe?
Have a Balloon, I think of tectonic effects.
Well, at least I’ll have happy thoughts of Captain Jack as I turn off the laptop. And will associate Torchwood with the deep rift. Which will probably make it more amusing as I don’t see it going away, ever. I’d have to agree with Tiggers take on the matter.
Ah, the ‘Marianas Trench’ approach…
triamacleod
Perhaps I’m being unfair, but this:
is the point at which I would have decided it wasn’t worth participating.
(criticising him, not you)
Caine:
There is soooooo much to digest in your excerpt @122, but I just cannot get past “If I was going to rape a girl, I wouldn’t hurt her.”
Near fatal :headdesk: on my part.
Dude, you think the act of forcing yourself on a *woman* (I note he is a file clerk looking at women, but refers to these objects of his lustful rape fantasies as ‘girls’) is painless? FFS!
DanialManOfReasonMyAss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMQONjvsMVI
Look at this fucking idiot.
@ Owlglass
I was more refering to real objects rather than the influence on language. The question is whether the patriarchy can be shown to influence our material world, be it in the form of the built environment, through art… or some such artifacts.
An example for comparison: The “Apartheid city”, was very much an expression of the underlying Apartheid ideology. By driving through the city one could (and still can!) read the underlying ideology. There is nothing vague about it.
On a more down-to-earth individual level, we can look at the artifacts produced by a person as a reflection of their personality and their guiding ideology. To show that an individual like Le Corbusier ( the architect) was a misogynist arsehole, is relatively easy, by simply refering to the artifacts (in this case photography, artworks and architecture) that he produced.
(I trust the quesion is not to abstruse for what is essentially a scientific blog.)
Tony, I don’t think you should know how that particular line of reasoning progresses, your furniture may not survive.
That would explain all the weasels that show up around here.
So kid #1, watching Ice Age 4 notices that Sid the Sloth is Lurhmann’s Tybalt, and on checking I find out he’s Donny Blanco too, which makes me watch Carlito and now I have Ceasefire – Trickshot in my head.
(Kid #1 would love it, BTW. The other day I posted “Let There Be Flutes” and while listening to it, he said “what is that?”. I instinctively apologised but he said “no, that’s epic“. Chips of the old block, etc.)
of => off
Amazon’s cloud player thingy is very smart. I just pointed it at a directory of .ogg files that I’d ripped off CDs, and it matched them up to their (Amazon’s) versions, permissioned me up for the (256kb/s mp3) tracks, and now the Kindle’s downloading them so they’re available locally.
Seriously, this is very valuable service they’re giving away for free. I’m impressed.
See this “a”? If you want #209 to make more sense, please insert it between “this” and “is” in the last line.
Fuck. “is” and “very”. What is up with me today?
@ cam’s
Sneky little letter that!
Thanks, theophontes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1Cwyq3XWeHE#t=42s
.
Chris Clarke
Er… :)
Although ‘weasels’ is also an accurate description.
Torchwoood.
I have looked out of the highest windows of Torchwood Tower; the very ones through which the Doctor and Rose sucked the Cybermen and Daleks into the Void.
The view is incredible. Seeing planes landing at City Airport from above … whoa.
But what’s most incredible is that they’ve fixed it up so well, you’d never know the whole Cyberman/Dalek thing had happened …
cm, I tried watching Torchwood.
(For several episodes, even!)
Torchwoood? Torchwoooooooooooooood!
Does it matter how many o’s are in it?
Some people take things much too seriously.
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_of_Canary_Wharf
;-)
Fucking Torchwood. When it was good, it was incredible. When it was bad, it was awful. AND THEY TOOK MY IANTO.
I’ve watched one episode of Torchwood. It wasn’t particularly interesting.
My main point is what I said at #215. ;-)
All done with Guyland.* It’s really nice that reading it helped MM & I to clarify our feelings about One Billion Rising and that it helped me to relate to someone much better than I would have been able to (prior to reading) in the “you don’t get to be over rape” thread.
*Which did end on an optimistic note.
Caine–yeah, that book is great.
Have you seen ‘Tough Guise’ by Jonathan Katz? Its a movies (90s, I think) about how boys define masculinity and how it forces them to adopt a “tough guize.” I used a clip from it for my class recently, but the entire movie is great.
Torchwood went downhill when they tried to port it to BBC America.
Call for prayers as church deals with abuse inquiry
Grr.
And as we all know, the best way to start would be mumbling to an invisible asshole in the sky.
Cyranothe2nd:
No, I haven’t. I’ll see if I can get ahold of a copy.
Oh, how I hope that the ex-pope gets arrested…
Let’s see how the direct line to god works then! =^_^=
@ old thunderdome’s # 608. Caine, brigade de garces 13th of February 2013 at 12:08 pm :
Meh, another total and demonstrable factual inaccuracy there.
I comment here far less than most regulars including you do. I sleep, I work, I walk my dog. I wa sat a book launch earlier.
I’m actually pretty quiet relatively. I post maybe four days out of five (or less) for an hour or three here.
PS. Oh and also you got my username really very badly wrong as well as the wrong idea of me generally. Can I ask you kindly to y’know, please NOT do that?
Use cut’n’paste if you can’t type – its what I do. (Among many other things – that do NOT include abusing random strangers with falsehoods on the net when I’ve misunderstood what they have to say.)
StevoR,
Could you at least choose one excuse and run with it?
First it was that you sometimes post when drunk and tired, and genocidal tendencies for some strange reason show up in those times.
Then it was that you never ever never posted anything racist.
When confronted with citations, you said that it happened ages ago, and your opinions supposedly changed. Completely.
When confronted with newer citations, you now claim that you are just misunderstood.
*sigh*
StevoR,
Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?
@ old thunderdome’s #594. Tony the Queer Shoop (now with 30% more melanin) on the 13th of February 2013 at 9:43 am :
Well, that would be more evidence that you just don’t understand me I guess. Hell, you can’t even seem to spell my username right so how much else about me can you possibly grasp?
What about either of those lines has anything at all to do with “race” a notion I consider fallacious and stupid anyhow?
Melanin enriched is a biological description of those whose skin has more not less of that substance.
Western values applies to anyone who holds those admittedly somewhat vague set of basic concepts synonymous with the Free World. Democracy, secular government & society, pro-science, nothing to do with “race” at all.
If I was that desperate why am I arguing logically and calmly against some of your scared cows here? Why am I on the opposite side of a few issues on the consensus here whilst still mostly agreeing with y’all on most other things?
Does it really take that much thought to realise that you’ve mischaracterised me here?
@ old td’s # 590. casus fortuitus on the 13th of February 2013 at 8:35 am :
What have I ever said here that’s racist in your view?
How many times have I pointed out that I don’t even think there’s any such thing as “race” to begin with?
You are dog-piling on here based on what exactly?
@ old td’s # 583. Rev. BigDumbChimp :
Reasons like for example .. ?
Actually you *didn’t* mention any reasons or any specific examples of what you think I said which you apparently find objectionable.
So these would be what ..??
StevoR,
Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?
@230. strange gods before me ॐ :
Once again, you’ve had my answers to that already here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/15/thunderdome-12/comment-page-1/#comment-516692
& here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/26/thunderdome-16/comment-page-2/#comment-548691
& I’ve also stated here what my actual current views are, as opposed to the strawperson caricature that some who hate me have misrepresented them as being here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/20/thunderdome-15/comment-page-1/#comment-543071
So SGBM : you are cherry picking ancient statements made many years ago on another blog when I was a different person and which I have long since dis-owned and rejected as opposed to the many more numerous and recent statements contradicting them as noted with, for example, the last link.
I’m pretty sure you would have said things in the past that, in hindsight and after reflection, you now wish you hadn’t said. It would therefore be wrong to hold those past statements against you because you’ve rejected those statements and grown and learnt. Same applies here to me.
SGBM you have also admitted here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/26/thunderdome-16/comment-page-2/#comment-548853
(comment #771. 29th January 2013 at 8:20 am) that you are asking those questions mainly for the purpose of seeking ammunition to use in some future argument you’ve already devised against me and are thus not sincerely seeking answers but are rather arguing in bad faith.
So, strange gods before me ॐ, what you are doing here is misrepresenting me and my views, bad faith arguing, spamming and cyber-bullying and you are being unfair, intellectually dishonest and factually wrong. Please stop it.
PS. No, I am not being bullied off this blog by a few fellow commenters who happen to dislike or and disagree with me. I’ve made that quite clear.
Those who hate me here have equally made their feelings towards me known. If they wish to ignore me in the future that’s their choice, if I wish to ignore them that’s mine.
If they keep making things nasty (&/or boring) for other readers here, well that’s their choice too. I suggest they let PZ and Chris Clarke run this blog as they choose just as PZ and Chris Clarke (& I) would happily let them run their blogs as they choose.
@232. strange gods before me ॐ :
You’ve had my answers to that already here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/15/thunderdome-12/comment-page-1/#comment-516692
& here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/26/thunderdome-16/comment-page-2/#comment-548691
& I’ve also stated here what my actual current views are, as opposed to the strawperson caricature that some who hate me have misrepresented them as being here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/20/thunderdome-15/comment-page-1/#comment-543071
Thus SGBM : you are cherry picking ancient statements made many years ago on another blog when I was a different person and which I have long since dis-owned and rejected as opposed to the many more numerous and recent statements contradicting them as noted with, for example, the last link.
I’m pretty sure you would have said things in the past that, in hindsight and after reflection, you now wish you hadn’t said. It would therefore be wrong to hold those past statements against you because you’ve rejected those statements and grown and learnt. Same applies here to me.
SGBM you have also admitted here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/26/thunderdome-16/comment-page-2/#comment-548853
(comment #771. 29th January 2013 at 8:20 am) that you are asking those questions mainly for the purpose of seeking ammunition to use in some future argument you’ve already devised against me and are thus not sincerely seeking answers but are rather arguing in bad faith.
Therefore strange gods before me ॐ, what you are doing here is misrepresenting me and my views, bad faith arguing, spamming and cyber-bullying and you are being unfair, intellectually dishonest and factually wrong. Please stop it.
Also you do realise you;re going to keep getting this same answer to your same spammed question right?
So spare us all ‘k?
@229. Beatrice : Y’know sometimes the answer really is – all of the above.
Sometimes there are multiple correct answers depending on the circumstances.
This could be one of those times.
Shall we move on and put this all behind us now?
Please?
What About Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I see the paranoid Islamophobic bigot is still throwing his fuckwitted lies at the blog. Why it won’t move on is beyond the ken of intelligent people, and shows StevoR is an arrogant asshole who will impose himself where he shouldn’t be. A real party-crasher. Killfile turned back on. There is nothing but idiocy.
I have already addressed several of your false claims. You have in fact not answered my questions.
From http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/30/thunderdome-17/comment-page-1/#comment-549954
Fuck no. You’re still being a douche right now, with your racist shit like calling Japanese people honorary Westerners.
They’re not cherry-picked. If they were, then you would be able to point out comments by yourself from the same time which somehow contradicted them.
They’re not the equivalent. The problem with answering “no” to “have you stopped beating your partner yet” is that it suggests you are still beating your partner.
What is the equivalent problem with answering “no” to “Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that?” and “Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?”
But I will rephrase my questions, since you’re complaining about them.
That’s nice. It does not answer my current questions.
+++++
You have not dealt with the particular questions I am asking now. I am asking them for a reason. For each quote in this list, I am asking two questions: 1) were you a racist when you said it, and 2) was it a racist comment?
+++++
From http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/02/04/thunderdome-18/comment-page-1/#comment-554512
Nope. I checked your links again just to make sure. They address different questions than the ones I’m asking now. They do not contain any answers to the questions 1) were you a racist when you said it, and 2) was it a racist comment?
Nope; that’s not what cherry-picking means. If I was cherry-picking, then you would be able to point out comments by yourself from the same time which somehow contradicted them.
Nope, not necessarily. For instance, although my commitment to antiracism is apparent, it would never be wrong to ask me questions about the past like 1) were you a racist when you said it, and 2) was it a racist comment?
Let’s see if you can answer the questions about one quote at a time.
Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?
+++++
See also John Morales from http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/02/04/thunderdome-18/comment-page-1/#comment-554429
Duh. Obviously you’re not being bullied off this blog! ;)
But they don’t “happen to dislike or and disagree with [you]“, they actually have reasons they have articulated at length.
As to what you have made quite clear, I think it’s that you are merely being recalcitrant about acknowledging your (supposedly past) racism.
One can’t pick cherries that aren’t there.
Care to elucidate what you imagine is wrong with him quoting you and enquiring “Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?”
–
So being stubborn and liking something is a valid reason to continue to do something, in your opinion.
(Does that only apply to you, or can other people justify themselves thus?)
StevoR,
Chris has already told you to stop invoking him like this:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/02/04/thunderdome-18/comment-page-1/#comment-554418
You should apologize to him and stop doing it. And then you should leave.
I’m impressed how “In only post racist shit when drunk” and “I never ever posted racist shit” and “I may have posted racist shit some loooon time ago” can all simultaneously be true. Truly impressive.
I’ll swap that extra n for a g.
Hey look, one of those comment threads from ages ago* in which StevoR was saying fucking despicable things:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2012/11/17/violence-again-in-gaza-and-israel/
*well, it was in November of 2012. A whole nother lifetime
StevoR,
Ah, no. That’s a false dichotomy. It is both.
I am sincerely seeking answers because I am dissecting your mind, and I want to know whether my hypotheses are correct.
I am also asking because I have prepared a new argument depending upon your answers. Rhetorically, it is really of no concern to me whether or not you answer. If you neglect to answer, I repeat the question and thereby remind everyone what a terrible person you are. Win-win.
But simply as a matter of curiosity, I do sincerely look forward to learning the answer. If you would cooperate with my dissection of you, I might learn how to prevent others from ending up like you. It is a small possibility, but nonzero.
So I ask you,
Were you a racist when you said that? Was it a racist comment?
“Race” is pseudo-biology; a nonsense idea misidentifying humanity as divided into variant sub-species. Wrong. We are all humans and the differences between us matter not at all.
Values & cultures (eg. Western / Islamic / Communist) are something very different about how people think.
The former (“race”) is supposedly innate and unchangeable derived by birth & DNA and not a matter of personal choice, the latter (culture /religion/ideology) is very much a matter of choice and intellectual capacity to imagine, understand and shift from one way of thinking and viewing the world around one into another potentially much better one.
Really, for all the bright people on this blog, what is quite so hard to comprehend about this key distinction?
Why do so many of you seemingly think that a way of thinking that got Humans to the flippin’ Moon is equally valid as a way of thinking that says its okay to chuck acid in women’s faces, mutilate their genitals and silence them thuggishly, stop them even flippin’ driving or travelling outside unaccompanied plus much more and impose all the cruelties and brutalities of shariah law on everyone else on the planet in theory if not practice?
I really, really do NOT understand this or why so many on the progressive, atheist, secular Left fail to comprehend this and are so sympathetic towards Islam and Muslims generally.
Do y’all hate your culture that’s given you the lives and benefits y’all (mostly yeah?) have *that* much? Why?!?
On which note, I’m taking my dog for a walk and hitting the sack. Catch y’all later in a day or so. Over and out.
@ 245 StevoR
Fuck. At least stop digging.
@ cm’s
:DDD {haz happy}
I liked that bit at about 0:46 to 0:47 most of all.
@ StevoR
When are you going to get over yourself and thank SGMB for all the hard work he has put into helping you? Then go do the exercises he has set in order for you to understand and come to grips with your (not his!) problem.
Meme!!
(I’ll also note that Stevo wrote the only sentence I’ve ever seen to employ both ‘whilst’ and ‘y’all’.)
Arguable from a biological/genetic standpoint, but (fortunately) also irrelevant. Whatever the biological basis of racial concepts they do exist empirically as socially-constructed categories that have very real consequences. My point: you do not have to buy into the traditional anthropological-typological concept of Race to be a racist, nor to make racist statements. Can you grok that, Stevo?
Given the habits of medieval aristocrats, so are mine, almost certainly – I just don’t know which ones!
QFT. Racism preceded the invention of the 19th century biological concept of race; the justifications for it then were religious andor openly commercial; then they became pseudoscientific; increasingly, as with StevoR, they are pseudo-secularist and pseudo-feminist, pretending not to consider race at all while still functioning as a justification for denigrating large numbers of mostly dark-skinned people simply for where and to whom they were born: “Muslims generally”.
StevOR’s talking points and myopia haven’t budged an inch. He is just as intent on focusing exclusively on the good in non-Muslims, just as intent on focusing on the bad in Muslims, just as reliant on the same emotional, visceral cases and buzz words. StevOR has defended by himself by claiming he was drunk. By saying that he has disowned his previous statements. By saying he said them Oh So Long Ago. And yet here is, plopping down gobs of the same obviously prejudiced bullshit. Here is displaying exactly how he confirmation biased his way into the Islamophobia he claims was just a figment of our imaginations. Sorry, StevOR. Your attempt to fit yourself down the memory hole hasn’t worked, apparently.
Posted here instead of the sign-on thread.
Funny how paranoid bigots can’t understand the difference between being realisticly indifferent versus hating.
Intelligent people will make their own decision to leave Islam, and do, just as many Xians are making the decision for themselves at the moment. I’m all for them leaving on their own. But, there is a huge difference between leaving on their own, or being told to leave a religion or you home becomes a target for any type of bomb up to a thermonuclear device. The latter is utterly hateful, bigoted, and demented. I will have no part of such hatred.
Ian Cromwell agrees with the quote:
Ian Cromwell says himself:
DMHCO at Stormfront says:
Who do you agree with, StevoR?
@ antepropro
Hehe, I see Rowley Birkin QC uses this same excuse. (… at the end of every single clip!)
*sorry*
snaky letter e…!
Tigger_the_Wing @ 125
It’s only a guess, but I’d say an entirely normal one. While these thoughts are disturbing, I don’t think they’re unusual, except perhaps in degree. They’re entirely in line with our cultural norms, which of course is part of the problem. E.g.
This is entirely true. The cultural image is that as a young man, you’re supposed to switch between two modes; single and getting laid often with random women you never meet again or in a relationship. The only alternative to that model is “loser”.
Clearly this guy is highly frustrated with being, by cultural standards, a loser. Again:
There are two points here: To be a man means to have power and women have power over this guy. The conclusion is that the mere presence of a woman is emasculating to him. This bit struck me in particular:
He feels his desire as a loss of control and he has equated being in control with masculinity. Ergo, he is incapable of feeling healthy desire. The only kind of desire that is compatible with his view of proper masculine identity is one where the object of his desire submits to his control. This is also directly in line with his description of dating mechanics:
All this feeds into his growing frustration. He is told that to be a real man, you have to have money, power and women. He has none of these things and even his desire to attain them becomes an illustration of his failure. His reaction:
Which is where the rape fantasy comes in. He simply sees no other way to be in control; to have power; to be “a real man”. This toxic culture also uses women to manipulate him further, something he’s clearly aware of, despite not quite making that last connection. He ends up focusing his frustrations on women and never seems to question the cultural catch-22 that has lead to this situation. On several occasions it seems like he’s almost about to get it… but then he defaults back to blaming women instead.
He reads to me as someone who’s awfully conflicted and in dire need of some therapy.
What’s really disturbing about all this is that there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s having a perfectly natural reaction to being steeped in this culture and having this highly disturbing view of what it means to be a man. He has effectively assimilated the cultural model, is drawing perfectly reasonable conclusions from those premises, and has entirely normal emotional reactions as a result. To the degree that he’s “crazy”, it’s only because he’s being driven crazy by a toxic social environment.
Of course, that doesn’t make it any less problematic, nor does it make him any less dangerous. What is means is that the intervention has to come in form of breaking down this view of masculinity and replacing it with a more healthy one, both for him and for our culture as a whole.
I promise to do my best at spelling the racist asshats name correctly in the future.
May I have a cookie?
*stuffs a giant chocolate chip cookie in the USB port*
Er, be careful to clean out all the crumbs. Wouldn’t want any stray crumbs to ruin some nice drink or whatever gets sent through the tubes next.
I find it ever so headdesk inducing ‘funny’ that StevoR (oooh look, I did it) thinks he gets to dismiss race, despite the very real influence of race on people around the world. Moreover, because of his privilege he never has to worry about any of the concerns of African-Americans* or Muslims. He gets to continue asserting “there is no such thing as race”, with his fingers in his ears. In pretending race doesn’t exist, he diminishes the struggles racial minorities have faced. It’s almost like their concerns are without merit. Like maybe they didn’t have it that bad. Minimizing the impact of racism-in the face of very real racist actions-is itself racist. But then, the fuckwit would have to leave his ivory tower of privilege and venture down here with us regular folk to grok that.
*I am sure racist asshat extraordinaire didn’t even read the wikipedia link I provided that explained why African-American is a term preferred by black Americans (hint: it has to do with them picking a descriptive term for themselves; one with a nod to geographical ancestry rather than race; it is important for marginalized people to have the agency to determine how they express themselves, but StevoR thinks he has the right to decide for minorities how they should be referred to…by FSM I despise him even more than I had after typing all that)
::thanks Beatrice for the delicious, warm chocolate chip cookie…uses mouth as a hoover to suck the crumbs…er did I just say that?::
I wonder if my “priorities” are divided since I am a queer male of color who is an American…
Queer-American
Cis-American
POC-American
Whoa, I am truly divided in my loyalties. I guess I am not a true American. At least according to the asshat, who says people shouldn’t define themselves by geographical ancestry. But, oh wait, I do not give three shits was he has to say on anything, and would be ever so delighted to never see his nym again.
This just made me think of an analogy. Laws are a social construct. I don’t think you’re going to find many people arguing that laws aren’t real, though.
LykeX
This is really the case for a whole lot of deeply toxic and totally irrational behaviors; looked at in the context they occur, they’re actually completely rational, it’s just that the context is horrific and often includes a fair quantity of false information.
Dalillama:
Yep. And Guyland addresses this well. The traditional construct of masculinity is alive and well, but it’s become much more toxic because guys are accepting the more toxic version from peers who are only a year or two older.
AAAA – these brought to you by Amelia.
StevoR @ #245
Because the “way of thinking that got Humans to the flippin’ Moon” also led to the Holocaust, the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the firebombing of Dresden, the My Lai massacre, Operation Condor, the Abu Ghraib scandal, among others. But for some reason, you present Western Civilization as some sort of wonderful happyland made up of candy, unicorns and industrial-strength historical revisionism.
<rant>
I’ve stopped using facebook recently, except for the occasional check to see if anyone messaged me, simply because of people failing to read things. It was literally causing my blood pressure to rise almost every time I looked at the damn thing.
Is it so hard to read something, check your biases and preconceptions, read it again maybe, and then actually respond to what a person said? I know I don’t live up to this every time but I fucking try and when I point out to people that they’re not being fair to someone by setting up a strawman argument suddenly I’m the bad guy? Fuck you.
</rant>
Better not tell SteveoR where math came from.
carlie @ #266
Honorary Westerners living in the Caliphate?
StupidRacist comes up with yet another pathetic intellectually dishonest false dichotomy.
Without the Islamic contributions to the advance of mathematics, among other things, we would never have gotten to the Moon.
For that matter, without the rocketry advances pioneered by Nazi Germany, we would never have gotten to the moon.
There is no single “way of thinking” that got us to the moon.
And of course, as has been evident in the running discussions on THIS VERY THREAD, what the StupidRacist likes to call the “western” way of thinking ALSO includes portions that say it is ok to thuggishly silence women and mutilate their genitals, and commandeer the use of their bodies against their will.
The level of intellectual dishonesty on display here by the StupidRacist is well in excess of that demonstrated by several banned creationist trolls.
Utterly pathetic.
Carlie:
We already have done. All we got in return was Western, Western, Western! in fine testerical style.
carlie,
You evil woman. You know we will now have it explained to us that only math after Europeans took it in hand counts, with maybe some of that old Greek stuff worth a bit.
Oh, look at this. Think joey is still reading?
Why gender equity stalled (boldface mine)
Granted, I am not personally aware of any aspect of the “western” way of thinking that talks about chucking acid in women’s faces. They use bullets instead.
The Islamic world was experimenting in rocketry centuries before the “west”. Though the accounts are, probably, exaggerated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lag%C3%A2ri_Hasan_%C3%87elebi
As were the Chinese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wan_Hu
@carlie It’s interesting that my mother, who homeschooled me and my siblings, has encountered a very different response here in New Zealand. She has put up with people treating her like some kind of lesser person because she chose to spend her time providing education to her children without any kind of compensation.
Please note that I’m not suggesting that the reason it’s my mother who was out of paid work rather than my father is not in a large part down to social norms and pressures. Clearly if it had been the other way around my father would have faced a far higher level of disrespect about his choice of occupation.
Amphiox:
Indeed. StevoRacist was apparently oblivious to the excerpt of Misogyny I recently typed out, a graphic description of a clitoridectomy performed on a 9 year old girl. The excerpt was from the British Medical Journal in 1867. It was performed with a hot iron. Not reading for the faint of heart. It was hardly unusual for “enlightened Westerners” to indulge in a fair amount of brutal, unthinkable female genital mutilation. After all, if girls and women were paying attention to those pesky clitorises, they sure as hell weren’t focusing on their one and only function – breeding.
Amphiox:
Unless some “western” guy is making a joke about Ophelia Benson. And while it’s not terribly common in the West, acid throwing is not unknown, either. Some men feel that’s a much better revenge than just murdering someone.
And speaking of astronomy, where does StupidRacist think the stars Aldebaran, Algol, Achernar, Altair, Betelgeuse, Deneb, Fomalhaut, Menkar, Mizar, Rigel, etc, got their names?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arabic_star_names
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_in_medieval_Islam
Look, it’s our favorite racist scumbag! Hello, StevoR!
Except for those towelheads who we should nuke before they kill our babies in our sleep, right?
I find it funny that you have the gall to talk about distinguishing between race and culture while equating Muslims with Arabs and Middle-Easterns.
Because that “way of thinking that got Humans to the flippin’ Moon” only exists in your fucking imagination. You try to associate progressive values, democracy and development with “Western-ness”, a position even you can’t make sense of.
You’re the prime example of the Western cultural disease – you think all kinds of cruelty and brutality are okay as long as the targets are different from us. Then you turn around and chide the different people from being cruel and brutal. Hypocrite.
The reason is simple: we can see through the dogwhistles of racist scumbags like you. Somebody who’s actually worried about the evil spread by Islam does not advocate deconversion-or-genocide in the Middle East as a solution, and does not try to weasel “Western” as synonym for “superior/enlightened/progressive”. Your agenda is transparent.
“Mostly”? Not even close. For the ones who aren’t rich, white, male or heterosexual, our culture has “given” jack shit. What they got so far was thanks to a lot of fighting, suffering and running against the current, exactly like everywhere else.
Apologies if this question has already been answered, I’m just catching up.
Yes. It’s an anagram for “Doctor Who.”
Sally Strange,
I never noticed that. /embarrassed
So very British crossword puzzle.
StevoR @ 231
No, it’s not. It’s a description of someone who has more melanin than the norm. Enriched implies something being added to something else. That’s where the racist undertones come in; the assumption of white as normal and black as a modification of the norm.
This is not rampant KKK-style racism, but it certainly is a racial prejudice and you shouldn’t be surprised that people react to it.
Then why the term “western”? By associating it with the western world, you’re also associating it with caucasian people. It carries the implication that other people need to assimilate the culture of white skinned people in order to be truly civilized. Whether you intended that implication is completely irrelevant.
No, you can’t use a historical argument, since many of the qualities you mention are also tied historically to cultures outside the western. E.g. we’ve previously been over the contributions of Arab culture to the development of the scientific method.
Also, western culture has historically been deeply infested with the very antitheses of these qualities. E.g. several European countries are still monarchies and have state churches. The United States is currently engaged in a fight over whether democracy is really a good idea at all, with one of the two parties actively trying to prevent people from voting.
If what you’re really getting at is a culture of democracy, secularism and science, then the choice of “western” as a label is misleading, to put it mildly.
Also, regarding the “honorary westerner” thing, two questions:
1) was that in relation to the Japanese? I seem to recall that, but I’m not sure.
2) Have you, StevoR, retracted or modified that comment. I haven’t followed all the discussions closely, so I want to make sure I’m not going over old ground.
Tony
How’s the weather in Queercisland?
By choosing to call it “Western” values, the StupidRacist is the one who MAKES the connection with race. And THAT is why the StupidRacist is being racist. And continuing to do so despite being called out multiple times, in obstinate, willful ignorance is why the StupidRacist is stupid.
These are PROGRESSIVE values, not “western”.
And point of fact, large portions of the “western” world do not, in fact, share these values. A probably majority is NOT “pro-science”. A definite majority does NOT favor “secular government and society”. And it was not that long ago when a majority did NOT favor “democracy” either.
Quiverfull …. “western” or not?
Ultra-nationalism in Europe… “western” or not?
I would argue that calling culture a matter of choice is a bit misleading. Yes you can change your thoughts, which is hard enough as I’ve found trying to alter my internal dialogue to remove sexist words from it, but culture shapes your very perception of the world. I’d say that switching to another culture might be far more difficult than you’re making it out to be.
The beauty of science, which is what got us to the moon btw, is that it’s not a culture it’s a system which can be applied by anyone. They might not like the results but if they apply the system then it will provide the same results regardless of culture. (Yes, I’m assuming it’s applied perfectly without biases which is probably impossible but this is a hypothetical.)
Where does McBigot get off talking about “western values” as if they are set-in-stone values unique to Western civilization? The level of historical ignorance is mind-boggling. Also, equating the Western world with progressive values whilst simultaneously dismissing the concept of race has the effect of sweeping the fight for racial equality (and other struggles for equality) under the rug. Hey racial minorities in the Western world, did you know that our struggles for equality haven’t really happened? Yeah, it’s because of those Western values that only we possess (though we have been known to influence some of them inferior countries to the East). Oh, and lest we forget, those same Western values, combined with– ::tap those brown slippers together and repeat after me::– “there is no such thing as race/racism” means that the slaughter of all the Indians by the Europeans had no component of racial superiority.
I wonder what other historical revisionist gems StevoR will shit out (and is he trying to compete with David Barton)?
Sounds like SteveoR’s been reading too much Samuel Huntington.
They taught Huntington’s Clash Of Civilizations in my geography classes as an example of geographical naivete and lack of knowledge of history, SteveoR. Don’t be like Samuel Huntington. Samuel Huntington was wrong.
OMFSM StevoR is back. *Spits*.
I have family members who identify as Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Protestant (various flavours), Muslim, agnostic and atheist. Who were born in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Sweden, the United States, Greece, Iran and South Korea.
Which of those family members should I be nuking, again?
having done that very thing, no less than 4 times.
yes, it’s very trying.
Tigger:
I really want to post the only correct answer, but I hope StevoR is not so far gone he can’t figure it out.
developmental psychology does not study the evolution of behavior. computing science even less so.
the criticisms of evo psych are based on poor studies, not the foundation of the idea itself, which if you deny it, means you essentially deny selection EVER had anything to do with human behavior.
that pretty much boils down to special pleading.
very tired of it.
you wanna criticize evo psych? fucking become a behavioral biologist, do some science, and publish in the related journals.
that’s the best way to “fix” the problem.
the way this endless sniping from the armchair goes on, it does nothing productive whatsoever, and instead just ends up detracting from the progress of any real science that goes on.
I waded through all this crap when I was a grad student in animal behavior, and saw all the history of sniping against “sociobiology”, which, when it boils down to it, is really addressing the same issues as evo psych is.
you make this shit a political hot potato, and guess what happens to the funding for it? It gets used as a hotbutton issue by politicians.
this entire evo psych debate has done NOTHING productive to further scientific endeavor whatsoever, and actually has more likely caused damage, given the similarity of the arguments and attacks to those on sociobiology in the late 70s/early 80s.
Ichthyic:
To be clear, you are saying one must have a background in Evo Psych to offer a criticism of it?
Tony, thank you. =^_^= Let’s always be optimists, yes?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ichthyic, all I (think that I) know (from experience) is that biological urges exist and that they can influence behaviour. I also (think that I) know that the behaviours expressed can be heavily influenced by culture/upbringing, and can even be suppressed altogether.
I am prepared to learn that my (non-neurotypical, trandgender) brain has some preconditions hard-wired into it from genetic rather than intra-uterine, hormonal and/or culturally influenced developmental changes.
As a layperson, how do I get to read good, scientific papers on evo psych and/or sociobiology? Those that aren’t massive generalisations about races or genders and/or ignore all the non-genetic influences on brain development?
That should be ‘transgender’, sorry.
Well, he said “behavioral biologist.” But I thought the issue was with understanding human psychology and behavior, not simply criticizing evo-pscyh specifically. Sociologists and the like can contribute in some respect, can’t they? Should we expect evolutionary psychologists to become sociologists too, or just to reduce their ignorance of those fields and try to work with them as much as possible, while doing their evo-psych research?
Funniest chemistry paper I’ve read lately:
http://heterodoxy.cc/meowdocs/pseudo/pseudosynth.pdf
h/t:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/02/noted-for-february-18-2013.html
Nice piece of goalpost shifting, Ichthyic. Rather dishonest, too, to leave out what my remark was a response to. In both my first degree and my doctorate, I studied cognitive psychology, and although I have not published on evolution, I read a fair amount on the evolution of behaviour both for the latter, and during my postdoc modelling spider behaviour in the Zoology Department at Oxford. I’ve also read a couple of the key EP (in the sense of #9) texts (Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby, and David Buss’s Evolutionary Psychology, the New Science of the Mind), a key critique (David Buller’s Adapting Minds), and a good deal specifically on human cognitive and behavioural evolution, and on the evolution of cooperation.
Now, what exactly are your qualifications for telling everyone to STFU?
A glaring falsehood. See my #9.
Since you can’t answer the criticisms, you try to discredit the critics the critics. I think there’s a term for that style of argument, but it escapes me.
Point the first: It’s pretty disingenuous to deny that race is a thing and then talk about ‘Western’ vs. ‘Eastern’ when WE LIVE ON A GLOBE.
Point the second.
Beatrice @243:
Thanks for the link that shows how much StevoR has changed (he hasn’t):
Gosh, he’s still talking about dropping bombs (and even uses “humane” in the process…HA) on entire populations, just to wipe out those people he doesn’t like (those ebil Muslims who are coming to get StevoR in Australia). I guess civilians mean nothing to our racist scumbag.
Typical of a racist. When a white person commits a terrorist crime, the media and lawyers look into their upbringing and background, looking for individual circumstances that led to such a terrible outcome. When anyone else commits a terrorist crime, it’s all “Wipe out the entire culture!!!eleventyone!!!”
They then say things like “Oh I’m not being racist! I don’t think race exists!”
So, how are those daisy cutters going to selectively kill Muslims while leaving all those of other faiths (and none) intact, eh? Do daisy cutter bombs avoid doorways with lambs’ blood on the lintels, like the biblical avenging angels? Do they recognise religious symbols worn around the neck and thus ignore non-Muslims in the market place? Can they tell the difference between a White Muslim and a POC atheist? Will these astonishingly intelligent bombs be deployed in New York? London? Paris?
Face it, StevoR; you have made racist comments and, when asked to explain, have accused everyone of misinterpreting your remarks unfavourably and defended yourself by making further racist remarks.
That behaviour is the hallmark of a racist.
If you are not ‘a’ racist, if you don’t think that your remarks are being fairly construed, then bloody well apologise for being so bloody unclear!.
As long as you keep defending your racist remarks here (and you are right about one thing: we have no way of knowing what your meatspace persona is like. We are condemning your cyberspace one, which is racist) every reader here will continue to think of you as a racist. You are the only one who can correct that impression if it is wrong. So far, all you have done is confirm it.
StevoR: If you REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want people to stop calling you a racist you need to stop acting like a racist. And you have consistently acted like a racist throughout these threads. If you REALLY want people to get off your back do the following:
1) ADMIT YOU HAVE SAID RACIST THINGS. This is number 1 because the very first thing you need to do to stop being racist is stop denying you have said stupid racist things. If you recognize your own racism then and ONLY THEN can you actually work towards not being racist.
2) Take a break and cut ties with your past. Maybe leave Pharyngula for a while, but even if you don’t avoid mentioning your history. Call on the reset rule and avoid bringing up your previous statements. After admitting to your previous racism cut ties with it and don’t look back. I’d suggest you avoid talking about Race in general for a long while anyways, you’ll only do yourself harm.
3) STOP SAYING RACIST THINGS.
Now naturally StevoR will deny that they have ever said anything racist, which of course is why their current slate of behavior will prevent them from ever being able to cut ties with their sordid love affair for racist genocide. That’s why it’s reason number 1 on the list after all.
Tigger:
But to him, since race doesn’t exist, then neither does racism. Totes easy to excuse his bigotry while maintaining the illusion of being a civilized, progressive fellow, eh?
Omnicrom:
As long as StevoR dismisses race and racism, he isn’t likely to understand *why* we see how racist he is. He needs to both become more self aware, and also listen to others. He is so wrapped up in his world view, that he is currently impervious to the plight of others (let’s drop Daisy Cutters on a bunch of innocent people). Hence his “race doesn’t exist”.
I really have no hope that StevoR will change Tony. That person has their head firmly up their ass when it comes to their own racism.
The central point of my post is that StevoR has to recognize they’re quite racist if they want an ounce of respect. Until then StevoR will receive the scorn and derision he’s owed as a racist.
You know that the last comment Stevo posted on this thread was like 15+ hours ago? If you don’t want threads to be about Stevo (*raises hand*) then quit fucking talking about Stevo all the time.
Chas:
If it’s a choice between him infecting other threads or just this one, I would take just the Thunderdome. It’s clear he isn’t going anywhere, and I think his racism needs to be challenged.
I agree with Tony. We simply can’t let this slide (which is, no doubt, what he wants us to do). Why? Because it is important to show that we do not tolerate bigotry of any stripe and will call it out.
Attitudes like StevoR’s poison the world for actual, living people. I wouldn’t like to go through a fraction of what my sister (who lives on Long Island) and her family have been put through since the terrorist attacks on the USA in 2001, simply for being a mixed-race family. It started days after the attacks; a woman in the adoption agency rang my sister and told her that they would no longer be able to adopt, being Muslims (after they had already gone through all the procedures, been accepted and were awaiting their son). Fortunately, my sister had contacts and was able to go over the woman’s head to find out she was lying – but that was extra stress she and her husband didn’t need. For years afterward, they were viewed with suspicion by people in authority. Theirs was always the family pulled out of line for ‘random security checks’ at airports. It got so bad for a while that they stopped going anywhere they couldn’t get to by driving.
Every time StevoR comes out with his anti-Muslim nastiness, I remember another one of those events. I’m not going to let him get away with it.
Indeed. “Social construct” ultimately means “constructed by society”. Some people get the right impression from this: That it means it is real but malleable. Others get the wrong impression, and think “social construct” is the social science equivalent of shouting out “PHOTOSHOPPED!”.
But, you see, none of that involved acid in the face. Westerners win again!
I’m sure if StevoR squints hard enough through the mists of history, it will be as if they were really white non-Muslims all along.
Any of them that don’t love America hard enough. Bonus points if an angry, violent, and paranoid blowhard, picked off the streets based on the amount of flag paraphernalia they have displayed on their clothing/lawn/vehicle, thinks that family member is a “threat”. With “threat” being defined as *grumble**mumble**mumble*
That’s just comedy gold!
It sickens and amuses me endlessly that those who are most insistent on how Muslims are so diabolical because of violent acts X, Y, and Z are perfectly willing to commit violent acts X, Y, and Z themselves, in order to fight against the diabolical Muslims. “Our enemy is a terrible sort of person, who will kill civilians and torture without remorse! They are so terrible, that we have no choice but to kill their civilians and torture them without remorse!”. And they won’t even so much as blink regarding the hypocrisy. Right-wing authoritarianism at its most vile.
QMFT
Honestly, this is Thunderdome. This is supposed to be the place where trolls live and where we do battle with them. If our talking about him lures him here, that is a good thing. It is where he belongs. If it doesn’t lure him in, then it is just regular ol’ troll bashing that will die out when StevoR is too cowardly to dive back in, and then we will go back to the usual bizarro-Lounge style while we wait for a live one to enter into the arena again. Besides, chewing StevoR out over his racism for the umpteenth time is better than having Sneering Contest over evolutionary psychology for the umpteenth time, in my opinion. But that might just be a matter of taste.
@Chas
I get where you’re coming from. I’m tired of StevoR making it all about him all the time. But I also don’t think that his pity-party should go unchallenged, especially as he displays a remarkable ability to continuously Not Get It.
@StevoR
I try to follow Crommunist’s well-reasoned suggestion that it’s not useful to label someone as “a racist”, but instead focus on the ideas or arguments: “your idea is racist” or “that argument is racist” or “what you said was racist.”
So let me make this very clear:
A lot of the things you say are racist. A lot of your ideas are racist. A lot of your arguments, particularly those about the Middle East, are racist.
Seconded. with knobs on. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
StevoR: Get a clue.
Tony and beatrice
But it’s totally unfair to criticise StevoR for that. You see, that was on a different blog and he was a totally different person there.
anteprepro:
No, this is one half of what was TET, and the Lounge is the other half*.
(Might as well say the Lounge is bizarro-Thunderdome)
—
* Dr. Jekyll couldn’t have done better!
But that is a pretty good way of knowing what he’s like offline.
StevoR isn’t a one-off trolling persona. He’s been StevoR for at least five years online. And around 2009 we can even watch him change from a left-winger into a right-winger, without inventing a new unconnected pseudonym as we’d expect him to do if he just wanted to “pretend to be a racist” all of a sudden.
Even people who pretend to be economists on the internet probably enjoy chatting about economic policy offline, to the extent they are able.
omnicrom:
I would add a number 4 to your list (if I may?):
4. You (StevoR) keep quibbling over words, selecting partial definitions, and redefining concepts to show that what you have written is not racist.
How is that relevant to what I said, exactly?
(I’m aware that this isn’t Lounge. I was referring to the conversations here in the absence of trolls as Lounge-like. Also: The Lounge was originally the TET, but Thunderdome was originally the TZT. And siphoning off the in-fighting of the TET to the TZT hardly makes TZT/Thunderdome “half of what was TET”)
*guffaw*
Yes, of course. An excellent point, the onlyu one necessary. (I’ll note that I would not have posted my little whine on any other thread either.)
Ha! Point taken. (but it is, as you say, a matter of taste)
*guffaw*
I have opined on this before, but I regard the numbering of the Lounge threads as illegitimate. The Endless Thread definitely ended (gah! paradox! my braaaain!!). TET was many things to many people, and neither of the current Open Threads fulfills all of them. The short-lived TZT, on the other hand, was designed as a dedicated troll-sequestering arena*, but this is only a small part of how the Thundrerdome is used.
Best to think of the Lonunge/TD instantiation as a clean break and a new start, in my very strongly held but of course pointless opinion.
*I say ‘designed as’ because despite its explicit raisin date, de facto it was rather quickly overrun with bolshevik weather reports and microscopic members of the Panarthropoda.
Trigger warnings:
Alain de Botton gives us a few more WTF moments to discuss.
Sorry that was supposed to say Sexual abuse / rape trigger warnings
Wait. That means I sincerely wanted to fuck my bed in my sleep.
De Botton knows not what he talks about.
Rev.,
Fuck. That man should just shut the fuck up already.
Holy shit, that was… what the fuck is he thinking?
From the article linked in 320
Rev:
De Botton even shows up in the comments at the link to give a notpology for people reading his statements out of context. WTF?!
All the context was given! The only thing missing from the portion you quoted is “How is sex the great lie detector?”
http://m.psychologytoday.com/articles/201212/12-rude-revelations-about-sex
De Botton, your words were not taken out of context. Your words perpetuate harmful ideas about sexual interactions. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself.
perhaps he didn’t pray hard enough at his secular church…
oh
um
or something like that
I don’t think De Botton does shame. He certainly has never shown any signs of shame before.
Matt:
I attempted to dole out the shame for him in the comments at the The Bad Men Project (btw, Rev…thanks for that link)
via Ed Brayton: more evidence that whatever “human nature” turns out to be, it’s deeply weird, and has been so for a looong time.
Tony,
Good comment over there.
Holy fuck. So basically, he’s saying that body betrayal is not a thing? Jesus h. Christ.
@ Tony
Great comment. It seems that he’s blind to the issue, and that’s being charitable.
hehe, and I just posted this in the Lounge…
@Tony #328
I agree with Beatrice – that was a good comment.
…
I was thinking the other day about victim-blaming, inspired in part by the comments on one of Crommunist’s recent articles:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/crommunist/2013/02/15/new-required-reading-confessions-of-a-former-misogynist/
The very first comment is from a person who later revealed himself to be one of those “I’m totes a feminist and I think it’s MORE dis-empowering to call women victims when they’ve been abused or raped, and the best way to stop it is for women to quit putting up with it” types.
Erista and FossilFishy both had some great responses, as did others.
So, about victim-blaming. We all know that it focuses on the actions of the victim instead of the perpetrator, which kind of reminds me about how people talk about animal attacks:
“He should have known better than to go swimming in that water at that time of the morning.”
“She should have known better than to get in between that bear and her cubs.”
“He should have worn thick boots instead of tennis shoes – then that snake wouldn’t have been able to get to his skin.”
All of these statements assume that the actions of the animal are inevitable consequences of the victim’s behavior – which is pretty true, since (as Kathleen O’Brien Willhelm was kind enough to point out) animals can’t talk. They’re not conscious actors – their actions are instinctive. They can’t be held to a human standard of behavior (which is why deer-crossing signs are for humans, and not for deer).
In this sense, victim-blaming in cases of sexual assault and rape treat the perpetrator’s actions as inevitable. This has the dual effect of categorizing victims as failed humans AND de-humanizes the perpetrators by removing their agency. It’s very much a mentality of “Stimulant X provokes Action Y”, with the victims being entirely responsible for X. Action Y is perceived as a natural, instinctual response instead of an active choice by the perpetrator.
“Rape as a force of nature”. No. “Force of society”, maybe. That’s what rape culture is all about.
In another article about this (link), De Botton gives this explanation:
Even if we take this for granted (and no, we can’t, since the context is not about “a loving consensual relationship” ), he is then claiming that rape in marriage is impossible. Seriously, he’s scum.
From the fuckwit:
Or they are just the result of the stimulation of nerves, or I just woke up and need to go to the bathroom. I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but I know that not all my arousal are signals of “a kind of approval that lies utterly beyond rational manipulation.”
Unless I have an attraction to calculus that I was entirely unaware of.
One may be in a consensual relationship, even in a loving consensual relationship, and still on one occasion be raped by his or her partner.
Beatrice: And it does ruin his that spiel. Those involuntary reactions are supposed to be a kind of signal. And as noted, they aren’t. Even in trying to cover his ass, he still misses the point.
@John Morales, Janine and Vaiyt
Ooh, I’ve been meaning to give Civilization a go. Which one would you reccommend? Bear in mind that I am the sort of spoiled young’un to whom graphics are as important as gameplay :) I was thinking IV, I like the idea of the Religion and Espionage elements, it sounds like they add a whole new dimension to the game.
Except for the fact that I don’t get erections in public. Does he???
Oh, have you noticed the horses? Having read the article, I’m reminded of the aśvamedhá, which was arguably even weirder… here’s a small glimpse of it from a linguistic perspective. That ritual has the dubious distinction of being the first that is documented to have been considered “obscene” by someone from the same culture (though admittedly 1000 years later).
@Beatrice
Seriously. What decade is this guy from, that he thinks that rape cannot occur in ANY kind of relationship? Even “loving, consensual” ones? And this:
Is more correctly understood as “No one understaaaaaaaaaands meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
The context was poorly supplied in that particular answer, but the whole rest of the interview is about consensual people in the privacy of their bedrooms etc. I think extension of his words to cases of sexual assault is, in fact, an uncharitable removal of (doubtless) intended and (arguably) provided context.
But hey, keep on dogpilin’.
glodson,
Yeah, he doesn’t even notice how ridiculous it sounds. During rape = involuntary reaction X means nothing (or does he not know about body betrayal?). In a consensual situation=involuntary reaction X is more sincere than we are.
It’s a fucking involuntary reaction. Note the “involuntary”.
Some of the old timers here should remember Barb. Among her obsessions was pointing at Dr Ben Carson as an example of scientist who reject Darwinian evolution. (Funny how he is a medical and not a biologist.)
As it turns out (Sorry, I did not care enough to dig into the life story of Ben Carson), the wingnuts really love him.
“Morning” wood happens several times every night, maybe to ensure adequate provision of oxygen. No stimulation is involved; and when you sleep enough, you don’t wake up with morning wood.
All of them!!!
Granted, I haven’t tried (or seen) I or V, but II through IV are fucking awesome. And while II obviously lacks a few good things that III and IV have, it also has a few that they lack…
Morning wood after not having slept enough, while tired, and safely hidden behind a desk. And possibly wearing ill-fitting pants.
I know I shouldn’t have laughed at your comment, Tony, but the bit about the bed got me even after reading your comment here about your “genuine interest” in your bed. And bravo, sir, bravo. You are laudable as always.
um, sez who, you? I think the author is in a better position to judge the context he was talking about. And (imo) it’s there, if slightly implicit.
What? Reading comprehension seems to go out the fucking window whenever the word ‘rape’ is in play.
Does a relationship that includes rape meet the criteria of ‘loving and consensual’ to you? Does relationship = marriage? wtf?
Beatrice:
The only thing that will fix this is a retraction of the statement. Everything else is just a special pleading.
David Marjanović:
Ah, I didn’t know that. Learn something new everyday. That’s what I get for conflating my need to pee in the morning with the occasional stiffness. Still, I never find those moments emotionally satisfying, as per the quote.
Even granting you all of that, Chas (which I’m not willing to do), do you honestly not see how this passage is pretty likely to embolden any rapey-inclined readers? You always seem to give the benefit of the doubt against people who fight rape culture.
Chas,
In the first comment, I used marriage where I should have used relationship.
What the fuck does the term “consensual relationship” even mean, then, other than “relationship one has entered into without being coerced or forced”?
And yeah, people can rape someone they honestly believe they love, and certainly someone who loves them. They can have a perfect loving relationship right until one of them rapes the other.
I think de Botton is defining this down to a tautology, granting his modifications.
If you consent to sex (Beatrice, you are right, what does consensual relationship mean? I’m being generous)
and you feel loved and emotionally fulfilled
and you are sexually aroused
your genitals exhibit signs of arousal
ERGO you desire sex because it is emotionally fulfilling.
QEmfD
Re: de Botton’s “clarification” (courtesy of Beatrice’s #335):
No. No no no no no fucking no.
I just re-read the portion leading up to his rape enabler bullshit. Nowhere does that asshat mention that he is talking about a loving, consensual relationship. He gives some awful purple prose while discussing sexual activities (and was he being specific about ‘a man and a woman’? If so, way to exclude everyone who isn’t heterosexual).
Also, even granting a loving, consensual relationship, getting hard or getting wet are not always indicators of this mythic ‘arousal beyond rationality’.
De Botton is a privileged smugg ass who has never ever spent a minute thinking about the fact that his words don’t exist in a vacuum.
I mean really, “…in which it is often hard to tell whether people really like us or whether they are being kind to us merely out of a sense of duty, the wet vagina and the stiff penis function as unambiguous agents of sincerity.”
Yeah, it really takes being totally hysterical about rape to read this in a very bad way.
Chas #342, speaking as someone who was in fact raped DURING what was (up to then) a consensual encounter with a loved (so I thought) partner in the privacy of my own bedroom, go fuck your context.
Chas, is de Botton correct about physical arousal being a true and sincere indicator of consent, yes or no?
If yes, then he has no need to apologize. If no, then he’s equally wrong regardless of whether the context is in a relationship or not.
I am not seeing how any context makes this better. He is talking about involuntary arousal being indicative of a “a kind of approval that lies utterly beyond rational manipulation. Erections and lubrication simply cannot be effected by willpower and are therefore particularly true and honest indices of interest.” I don’t see a way to make this any better.
These words send a message. The message can be devastating to a victim of sexual abuse or rape if they felt any kind of arousal. This unwanted arousal is psychologically damaging enough, and now there’s this. It is a thoughtless blundering. And it sends this idea to those who would abuse and rape, that if they see the reaction, it is a signal of approval.
Even it it is just implicit, there’s no caveat about cases of rape or abuse. It doesn’t match up with reality, and it is just a poorly thought out idea. Maybe he was looking to be uplifting, but his thoughtlessness led him to write something objectionable, which is persists in defending.
OK, I’m reading the whole thing and I tell you, only do so if you’ve taken your blood pressure mediction.
Such an amount of fucking bullshit, especially bullshit about fucking has hardly ever been written.
Just to turn his “most charitable” interpretation around: does that mean that when women don’t get wet they’re faking it?
Chas:
Prior to his comments about erection=sincerity*, please point out where de Botton specifies that he is speaking of a loving, consensual relationship.
*I wonder if the reverse is true- flaccid penis=insincere?
I read that thread that I linked to earlier, the one about Barb’s admiration of Ben Carson. As it turns out, it was earlier in that thread where Barb uttered one of the classic stupid lines.
Newbies, pay attention. You will get great amusement from this.
…hearts that beat for a lifetime without any external energy source…
This folds nicely into the current I Get E-Mail thread.
Ha, that’s true. A much more trivial damaging consequence of his views is that every person who ever thought they were unattractive due to a partner lacking an erection was right! Thanks de Botton!
Tony
Great. Now people suffering from erectile dysfunction are a bunch of fucking liars trapped in insincere relationships! Viagra doesn’t make you have an erection, it makes it so that you have a sincere and true acceptance of arousal for your partner!
…so anyone with lubrication problems or erectile dysfunction must be faking being interested in sex then? Gah… so much horrible to unpack.
Why am I feeling grateful that I never gave a shit about the idea of an atheist church.
or what everyone else said.
I wish that were always so trivial, but some rapists blame their inability to sustain erections on their victim, for being ugly or not acting submissive or enthusiastic enough.
@Mythbri #341
In the interests of fairness, and regardless of what other bullshit this idiot may have come out with, a relationship in which rape is occurring does not fullfill my definition of “loving and consensual”.
In case you couldn’t be bothered to read the whole thing, he also manages to get a bit misty eyed regarding religion:
Oh, I forgot to say this, Barb is still running her blog. You can find her letter to Barack Obama there.
@Chas
Given that “body betrayal” is a real and documented phenomenon, it’s absolutely NOT a stretch to apply his comments to rape and sexual assault.
Giliell:
I am trying to read it all, but it is trying my patience. He makes some assumptions that I do not agree with.
For instance, “uniforms inspire lust through their evocation of rule breaking”. Not for me. The guy I had fantastic sex with mentioned that he used to be in the Marines. I told him I would like him to wear his uniform if we hook up again. He said he’d be happy to. I do not desire to break any rules. It likely has more to do with power and dominance.
@thumper1990 #366
That’s the thing, thumper – whose definition is he using? That’s why I put those words in quotation marks. Many people would assume that married couples are in “loving, consensual” relationships, and yet clearly that is not universally the case. Appearances can also be deceiving – abuse can be well-disguised to people on the outside of the relationship.
So while I agree with you that rape and assault do not fit the definition of a “loving and consensual” relationship that I would use, given de Botton’s remarks, I’m not sure what definition he is using.
thumper: since I didn’t know much about consent nor did I realize I was being abused by my partner until more than a decade of abuse, at the time I was raped I absolutely would have told you I was in a loving and consensual relationship.
@Mythbri #371
Ah, very good point. If he is merely defining “loving and consensual” as “married” then it is indeed entirely possible. I forget people sometimes arbitrarily redefine words; it’s a pet peeve of mine. For the record, I meant a relationship whcih fullfills the dictionary definition of those words regardless of the couple’s marital state.
Portia
Hey, it gets even better when he later claimes that impotence is an achievement and sign of respect because you don’t want to force your lust on your partner…
I’ll shut up here now and make it a proper blogpost…
Good point. Yeesh…rape culture has so very many manifestations, it’s hard to keep up : (
@Pteryxx
…Oh. I didn’t consider that. I’m sorry to hear that Pteryxx :(
Did you think what he was doing was normal? I assume you didn’t enjoy it?
Gawd, gross. How about we measure respectful non-coercion by…respectful non-coercion. If my partner has an erection and knows I’m not interested in sex at the time, the mere presence of his erection is not offensive to me. It’s his actions. Jesus. Another consequence of this logic is “Ugh, you, sitting over there, having an involuntary reaction and making no advances on me whatsoever, you’re so disrespectful!”
Oh Jesus, Pteryxx I am so sorry that was a horrendously insensitive question! Please, do not feel you have to answer that, it was completely thoughtless of me :( I am so sorry. I will try to engage brain in future.
From the Scientific morality post:
As a non-atheist, I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised stumbling upon this post. Good stuff.
So, how exactly do we escape from such a dilemma, other than hoping that the personal preferences of the majority say that we shouldn’t eliminate the “undesirables”?
Oh fuck, I really have to log off now and can’t wait around for a reply, but Pteryxx, I just want to reiterate how sorry I am for that horrendously insensitive question.
thumper: I appreciate that, and I may answer it but not right this moment, y’ understand.
Wedding magazine refuses same sex ad, pays the price publicly, then backtracks.
Where do you get “we” presuppositional godbot? All you have, if you were honest, is the prejudices of of the people who wrote your holy book years ago. It isn’t the word of your unevidenced and imaginary deity. I would say you have to better define your own “morality”, such as it is. Read your babble. I wouldn’t want to pretend that it is a book of morality.
And I am unpleasantly NOT surprised that you find this surprising.
Not true.
I suppose “seem” is the operative word in my statement. I acknowledge that I don’t know everything he has ever said, and that he may at times express sympathy to the anti-rape culture arguments. That doesn’t change the fact that so often in these discussions, he pops up to say “But you all just misunderstand/mischaracterize/take out of context!! It’s not rape enabling, it’s subtle logic.”
In the interest of not misrepresenting Chas (which I suspect is your goal here) I concede the point that he does not always defend rape enabling. Just often enough that it’s fucking obnoxious.
Rev @382:
Argh! I am pissed off now.
Why did I read the comments??
Homophobia: alive and well in 2013.
Yes, the magazine can refuse any ad. From a human rights perspective they were completely in the wrong to do so. I wonder how many apologists would crawl out of the woodwork if she gave them a photo with an interracial couple…
@Pteryxx #381
Hi, I just got home and nipped back on to see if you replied. Yes of course that’s fine, it’s more than I deserve. I was finishing something off at work and rushed off a reply without thinking. I am an idiot and I am very, very sorry. Thanks for being so understanding.
I just want to apologise to anyone else I may have upset with that stupid, thoughtless, inconsiderate comment.
Now I’m going to say goodnight to everyone and go be angry at myself for a while.
Also #225, #69.
Mm. Some people say it’s a weasel word.
I acknowledged that my assertion was (and could only be, no?) based on my perceptions and experiences. I have incorporated your examples and adjusted my assertion accordingly. I am only slightly less annoyed at Chas’s comments. What is your goal now? To make me less annoyed? To get me to be unequivocal?
Talking about weasel words :)
@Tony
The comments are always the worst. I do like the ones trying to dismiss it as simply a publicity stunt. Even if the photo was selected for that purpose, it was the rejection of the photo that fueled the publicity. The issue comes back to homophobia and the fear of losing out on readers because of one ad featuring a same sex couple.
I dislike 1) the practice of making sweeping false claims about certain people who are considered fair game, and 2) defenses of sweeping false claims that fall back on intellectual laziness like “that’s my perception” when evidence is available that would inform a more fairness-oriented perception.
Having contested the first, my goal is also to contest the second.
That would be a bonus, but my goal is to say what I feel morally obliged to say.
OK, I managed to work the first two pages of de Botton’s fail into a blogpost. That took about 90 minutes and was exhaustive. I also knocked over a glass of tea by hitting my desk with my head repeatedly.
glodson:
I also love how the commenters assume everyone in the South is a homophobic bigot. Those who buy that magazine are likely to have diverse backgrounds. Some might be turned off by the photo, while others might applaud its inclusion. Still others might think nothing of it.
Giliell,
Good post!
@ Tony.
Yea, I know. I know the South gets a bad wrap, and often deservedly so. But not everyone is like that, and it is changing in the same direction as the rest of the country. Yes, many down here are backwards bigots, but I’ve noticed that more and more are for gay rights.
All the comments dismissing the story, or the South, run in that same vein of “don’t talk about this issue!”
Good apology from Weddings Unveiled though. That’s rare.
jeez with the rhetoric.
“rape-enabling“?
I’m sorry, I can’t think of any response to that but ‘fuck you’.
Also, to imply that I am some sort of a friend to rape culture? fuck you.
And this because I suggested there was a more charitable way to read something?
I mean, the PaulW thing recently was at least in response to PaulW saying stuff about rape. In this case, as I read the (whole) piece, the context is clearly about intimate communication between intimate and (my inference?) consensual adults. He never mentions sexual assault in any way. But people here take an excerpt and hammer the guy because it is (or would be) offensively wrong and insensitive if applied literally to the specific context of sexual assault (and less offensively wrong in the contexts of sleeping. or perspiring or whatever). But none of that was what he was talking about (indeed, he did not in fact talk about it). He responds with the oblivious-pompous-twit version of ‘gah! I wasn’t talking about rape!!’ but people keep hammering him anyway.
I’m just calling this one as I see it, as always. And as I see this one, a blinkered refusal to read charitably has escalated into some really offensive accusations. To the extent that some of them were aimed at me: fuck you.
joey @ 379
Just to be clear, you do understand that this lends no support whatsoever to any kind of theism or supernaturalism, right? Nor does it in any way imply that religion is required for moral decision-making or indeed that religion is a good method for coming to moral conclusions.
Not making any assumptions about you, but we get a lot of low-quality trolls here, so I want to be sure we’re on the same page.
Well, as PZ writes, the first step would be to make sure that there actually is a dilemma at all and it’s not simply a perception produced by our personal prejudices. If such a dilemma really existed, the possible results would be:
1) Do nothing and society collapses under the weight of a growing group of “undesirables”
2) Implement the plan to limit the number of undesirables, accepting the limitations of civil rights that inevitably follow
Neither of those are really acceptable to me. I suppose you could make an argument that eliminating the undesirables only violates their civil rights while a complete societal collapse will effectively remove the civil rights of everyone. Lesser evil and all that.
On the other hand, you might argue that any society that’s willing to take that step is doomed for failure anyway. Maybe it’s better to go through a period of collapse and rebuilding.
As I see it, the whole point is not to think about this dilemma. After all, there’s no such thing as a genetic class of undesirables that can so easily be gotten rid of. The point is to think about how we reach moral conclusions and to point out that while facts are required to make proper decisions, they don’t in and of themselves lead to the right decision, at least not in all situations.
At least, that’s what I took away from it.
Yep. I thought so too.
Chas
See, that’s the problem:
He talks in absolutes. He would still be wrong if he explicitely said “in the context of consenting adults”, but that’s an aside.
How does:
leave room for the experience of body-betrayal rape victims feel? Or is rape magically different so that while you can’t get pregnant from legitimate rape you can still get a boner or even an orgasmus? And then it’s just a physical reaction of your body to certain stimuli while in the context of consenting adults those switches are turned off and it’s an indication of honest interest?
+++
BTW Part II is on.
Giliell, your link is borked.
Proper link to Giliell’s post
Thanks, LykeX
That’s when you don’t check the link in the preview…
Not surprising, since you, being a religiot, automatically shove your god in any gap you can find on the edifice of knowledge.
Sorry, science not being the best tool to evaluate morality on its own, does not mean your god is a valid alternative.
Chas
I seriously don’t understand why you have such a problem understanding this, especially since it’s the same fucking problem as with PaulW. This statement:
Is categorically wrong regardless of context, and is used in various forms by rapists and rape apologists to justify their actions and shame/silence victims. It is a false and harmful statement, and people have explained how to you. His intent is irrelevant, and his attempts to contextualize it in a way that avoids this are laughable. Adding ‘in a consensual relationship’ means jack shit; either physical responses are ‘true and honest indices of interest’ or they are not. In order for that statement to be accurate, it must be true in all cases, because if it’s not, then it is not a true indicator. Thus, that claim is inherently a blanket claim, regardless of intent. No other honest reading is possible.
Joey,
Why do you fallaciously presuppose that if one doesn’t follow your mythical/fictional holy book, and believe in your evidenced and imaginary deity, one must automatically believe in the practice of eugenics? That was disproven (for example, see here) ages ago, and only true presuppositional idjits like yourself think otherwise.
@Dalillama #407
Exactly. If it can be “true” only in consensual, loving relationships, it MUST be true for sexual activity that is neither loving nor consensual. If it is NOT true for sexual activity that is neither loving nor consensual, then it MUST be bullshit.
De Botton’s entire point is that arousal is independent of conscious control. He can’t magically make that the case for consensual sex and not for non-consensual sex.
LykeX:
It lends no direct support.
But determining whether there is an actual dilemma depends on your particular moral code. I’m pretty sure the Nazis were convinced the presence of Jews was a real problem.
I disagree, there can quite easily be considered a thing as a “genetic class of undesirables that can so easily be gotten rid of”. People with Down syndrome, for example. So why not eliminate the people with DS from society if science says that society would be better off? If it’s wrong to do such a thing, why would it be considered wrong?
But if science alone cannot determine what is “proper” or “right”, then all morality ultimately becomes arbitrary. Unless you want to argue for an absolute morality.
Oh. Mah. Glob. Says Al Stefanelli defending Ben Radford:
“Having had cause to interview a few dozen rape victims (all identify as feminists of varying ages between sixteen and almost eighty, but of the ‘equity’ brand) for an upcoming book,”
Hoo boy. It’s comment 30 here: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/over_it_follow-up_why_would_anyone_criticize_an_anti-rape_poem/
Exclude the middle much?
Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. That’s been my experience, anyway.
Dude was pretty clearly talking about the times they are.
(but what do I care?)
You complete and utter fucking moron, chas, that’s exactly our point. According to De Botton, “, the wet vagina and the stiff penis function as unambiguous agents of sincerity.” This is a categorical fucking statement like the last one I quoted from him. And, as you admit, they are not. Therefore, there is no fucking point to any of De Botton’s blithering from there, because his fucking premise is fucking wrong. (And harmful).
Well, if you want to cling to that, be my guest.
Indeed. Let me rephrase then; the first step is to make sure you’ve got your facts straight. Only then can you evaluate what implications those facts may have, according to your particular moral system.
According to your moral system. However, since Down’s syndrome is not an excusively inheritable trait, it can’t be bred out of the population. Most kids with Down’s syndrome are born to parents who are perfectly normal. This is a fine example of what I mean by getting your facts straight.
In addition, we can then talk about screening methods and abortion, as well as whether Down’s Syndrome people are really a significant drain on societal resources.
Well, like I said, first we need to determine whether science actually says that at all. I’ve given a few reasons why that might not be the case.
Not arbitrary, subjective. Just because it’s subjective doesn’t mean it isn’t valid or consistent, nor that it can’t form the basis for a productive system for governing our interactions. Our laws are subjective, yet that system seems to work fairly well.
The problem here is that you’re intuitively coming from a position of absolute morality. That’s actually quite common, even for people who don’t accept absolute moral values. Part of that is the way our language works.
Science can’t determine what’s right because nothing’s right. There’s no such thing. Right doesn’t enter into it until you’ve got conscious agents who care about outcomes. Asking what’s “right” is strictly meaningless.
Things aren’t moral. They’re moral, according to somebody. Moral judgments are opinions. Some moral judgments can be conclusively demonstrated to be in accordance with, or in violation of, certain objective facts (i.e. that the conclusion does or does not follow from the premises of the moral system in question). Others are simply subjective and science cannot judge anymore than we can objectively determine which ice cream flavor is the best.
Morality, on a larger, social scale, becomes a matter of compromises and negotiations between various individuals. This is no different than what we already do on matters of politics or any number of other subjects.
Now, are you trying to argue that science can objectively determine the validity of morality? Do you accept an objective morality? What’s your position on all this?
In other words, it lends no support, joey.
If you want to show me how it lends indirect support to magical beings with magical superpowers, go right ahead. I don’t know how convoluted you think this is supposed to be, but I sincerely want you to go for it: make it as convoluted and as full of holes as you fucking like. Actually making an argument in favor of your dribble, no matter how bad it is, would be a real improvement.
That doesn’t follow.
That also doesn’t follow.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA
This is my favorite anti-feminist link I’ve found this month.
http://anonym.to/?http%3A//captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-communism-killed-american-muse.html
General Ripper has a blog!
I should note that despite its comedy value, the above link is not to a parody site. The author is an extreme misogynist, and I cannot recommend clicking if you are low on spoons.
Josh -what’s the title of the stefanelli’s book? “Why You Deserved It: Interviews with lying man-haters”?
Oh, hey joey! I wrote a comment for you on the last thread; I’ll repost it here. I’m not necessarily up for having that particular discussion all over again, just wanted to give you some food for thought.
Why gender equity stalled
(boldface mine)
Sven #319
Nope.
It is clear now that I am being bullied. I am posting here in the hope that the bullying will at least migrate to this thread. Thank you for your consideration.
Why is it okay to keep bullying me in the Lounge?
Somebody please, help.
I don’t deserve to be treated this way. I never called Joe a liar. Not once.
He makes the explicit claim that I didn’t care about him. I know that I did care! So I link to me pointing out at the time that I did care.
He is claiming that if I don’t tell a lie — tell the lie that “I didn’t care” — then I am lying.
Sgbm:
I can see why Joe would feel you are calling him a liar. By saying that his perception of your prior interaction ‘is not true’, an implication is that he is lying. I do not feel that you meant it that way, but to Joe, his perception that you didnt care or wouldnt let go feel like truth to him.
I fail to comprehend why you feel bullied.
I think Joe has misread you, and his emotions are coloring his view of you but in this case, it seems more like he is trying to defend himself rather than attack you.
@sgbm
From a lurking perspective in the Lounge, I’d like to offer this:
I didn’t even know you were a vegetarian. I don’t remember ever having read that from you. I didn’t understand why you suddenly claimed you were being tormented, because I didn’t follow the links you posted with no explanation. Not being a vegetarian myself, I didn’t recognize the websites, either.
If you had actually said that the talk of animals and meat was bothering you that badly, then perhaps other people would have reacted differently. In short, you were uncharacteristically vague, and I don’t think you can claim that you’re now being bullied as a result.
I never called Joe a liar.
I never said that he didn’t say something.
I never quoted myself to say that he didn’t say something.
He claimed I “wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t give [him] an ounce of space.” I therefore pointed to comments by me trying to give him space, saying that I wanted to stop replying, and would only respond to accusations about me.
Now he is continually attacking me in the Lounge where he knows that I will get in trouble if I respond, but he will get away with bullying me because he is socially accepted.
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww sgbm, are you really this sensitive? Really? Because you come off as hugely offensive. Like hugely looking to hurt people. Like ridiculously hoping I’ll be so hurt that I’ll go away forever, instead of for a few weeks like the last time you bullied me away from the only friends I have.
Except… and this is the last fucking time I’m going to try this… I’m going to assume that as bad as you make me feel, I am making you feel just as bad. I’m not going to say “you’re saying false things about me”, instead I’m going to say “we’re accidentally and without malice misinterpreting each other.” I’m not going to say that you’re bullying me, no matter how much it feels that way… because I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that when you say you feel bullied that it means that you actually feel bullied. I’m going to assume that all the bad things I honestly feel about you, you honestly feel about me to.
And I’m going to ask you to stop. And I promise you right now that I’m going to stop NO MATTER WHAT YOU DECIDE. I’d rather try to be your friend. I’d settle for some sort of peace where we don’t hurt each other. But if all you can do is keep dumping on me, I don’t care because I’m never going to dump on you, period. I’d rather we find some way to co-exist… but that can’t happen if you insist on “winning”. If you insist on dredging up bits of the past that prove you’re better than me. I’m willing to drop everything and start fresh and apologize for my half of things. If you’re now willing to meet me half-way and start with a clean slate and maybe neither of us feel bullied or picked-on… I don’t know what else I can do!
Either way, I’m moving on, and I’m done with this. How amicable it is from here on out is up to you.
No it is not! No it is not! If someone says something that is not true, you don’t have to just agree with it or call them a liar.
People say things that are not true, without those statements being lies. It happens all the time.
He says I didn’t care what happened to him. I know that is not true! If I say “that is not true” I am not calling him a liar. If I said “that is true” then I would be lying.
That doesn’t mean I should agree with it! That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t point out it wasn’t true!
Don’t you know what a catch-22 is? He is manipulating me.
Because I stopped posting in there, and he keeps on attacking me!
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/02/17/lounge-403/comment-page-1/#comment-565140
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/02/17/lounge-403/comment-page-1/#comment-565156
A half hour later that is! A half hour later I am still being attacked where I cannot defend myself.
He says “sgbm claims that I’m saying things that aren’t true. I say that means he’s calling me a liar. And then he calls me a liar for saying that he’s calling me a liar AGAIN. He’s so full of shit that he’s eating his own shit and calling it steak tartar.”
You don’t see a problem with that?
You don’t see any problem with that?
+++++
mythbri,
The bullying is in continuing to attack me in the Lounge where I am not able to respond. Don’t you see any problem with that?
That’s what I’m telling you guys is bullying.
Tony, mythbri, don’t you see how fucked up that is?
I never bullied you, Joe. Never.
I can see it was a mistake to offer a different perspective to somethng whose history I am not familiar with. I’ll stop now.
sgbm, I apologize for the “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww sgbm, are you really this sensitive?” part, it was an unfair way to start, and while I started out posting that angry, my real feelings came through as I was typing. I take full responsibility for being an asshole in that first paragraph, can you read the rest of it and try to take it seriously?
sgbm… I’m trying as hard as I can to make peace. You’re trying as hard as you can to justify how you’ve treated me in the past.
Mythbri:
I too am bowing out.
After you’ve been attacking me for an hour now in the Lounge where you know I can’t defend myself? I don’t know.
Can you admit that I wasn’t calling you a liar? Can you admit that when I linked to my own words, I was only trying to show that I did care about your feelings?
Why can’t you defend yourself in the Lounge? Because you want to destroy me, be so unkind that it gets you banned?
I can admit that you feel how you feel. I can admit that you may not have intended to call me a liar. Can you admit that I’m making a good-faith effort to end this acrimony between us, even if you don’t think I’m doing a perfect job?
No, dude. What I said at the time too was that I could have been more polite. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/13/thunderdome-7/comment-page-1/#comment-472485
Other than that I didn’t do anything wrong to you until tonight. And I have apologized for misunderstanding you in the Lounge tonight and accusing you of trying to hurt me.
Because sgbm, you’re really not doing anything here that you couldn’t do in the Lounge, are you? You’re not hamstrung, unless your goal is to hurt me so bad that I shut up. And you’re not acting that way… at least not yet.
Because I get blamed for responding in the Lounge.
No, I want to say
‘I did not call you a liar at all.
These accusations
1) are false,
2) should happen in the Thunderdome.
You claimed I “wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t give [him] an ounce of space.” I therefore pointed to comments by me trying to give you space, saying that I wanted to stop replying, and would only respond to accusations about me.’
That’s not the same thing. Can you admit that I did not call you a liar?
Yes! Don’t you understand? There is no fighting in the Lounge, full stop. And I have been thrown out of TET for responding to attacks against me. Don’t you understand that? I am not afforded the same social leeway that you get.
sgbm,
Stop quoting the Thunderdome, and look at the Lounge, where I begged you to stop. Stop being meta, and quoting the conversation about the conversation. Because here’s what I said that night:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/12/lounge-373/comment-page-1/#comment-471911
I BEGGED you to stop, and you refused. I called myself stupid and a loser and begged you to stop. I was suicidal and I FUCKING BEGGED YOU TO STOP, and you’re pretending that it never happened.
I’m still willing to make peace, but you have to admit that you did what you did. You have to admit that I begged you to stop, and you didn’t. I can forgive it, but you have to admit that it happened.
No, that is not true. I’m not pretending that didn’t happen. What I am pointing out is that I did try to give you space.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/12/lounge-373/comment-page-1/#comment-471919
I said “I will try to stop replying — as long as you stop making accusations about me.”
You kept on attacking me. You said horrible things about me that night. I never made any personal attacks against you, I tried to disengage, but you kept on attacking me.
sgbm, I don’t understand where you’re coming from, at all. I begged you to stop, and you say it is not true. Look at the words from that post: “You win, just stop… please, whatever you want just stop.” and your response is “No, that is not true”?
You’re being ridiculous.
Now an hour and a half after I said I was trying to go offline, you are still hounding me. I just ask you to admit the truth, admit that I never called you a liar. I want this conversation to end. I want you to stop attacking me. I don’t deserve to be treated like this.
What exactly I said was No, that is not true. I’m not pretending that didn’t happen. What I am pointing out is that I did try to give you space.
I am not pretending that you didn’t beg me to stop. What I am saying is not true is your claim that that I’m “pretending that it never happened.”
I am not pretending that you didn’t beg me to stop.
What I am pointing out is that I did try to give you space.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/12/lounge-373/comment-page-1/#comment-471919
I said “I will try to stop replying — as long as you stop making accusations about me.”
You kept on attacking me. You said horrible things about me that night. I never made any personal attacks against you, I tried to disengage, but you kept on attacking me.
Really, that’s how you see it? I almost committed suicide that night, and you’re the victim? The same way you saw comments about food as attacking you?
sgbm, you’re a fucking joke. Seriously, you’re fucking pathetic. Attack me all you like, you piece of shit. I’ve bent over backwards to be nice to you, and you insist on making me eat shit before you’ll stop biting at my heels? Roll over and beg, Fido! I hope you never feel as bad as you made me feel, but I’ll never waste an ounce of energy to spare you pain, because you bring it on yourself. If I prayed, I would pray that you NEVER get what you deserve for how terrible you are.
SG and Joe
Could ya’ll both take a 15 minute time out from the subject of each other and who said what?
Or mutually apologize and be done with it?
Maybe you can discuss Joes awesome vegetarian recipes in the lounge nicely, and then meet back here for futher thunderdome action if it’s still important. All this fighting before bed cannot be healthy.
/old grandma
That’s terrible, but it’s not my fault, and I didn’t deserve to be lashed out at.
Of false and hurtful accusations like
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/12/lounge-373/comment-page-1/#comment-471938
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/12/lounge-373/comment-page-1/#comment-471923
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/12/lounge-373/comment-page-1/#comment-471864
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/12/lounge-373/comment-page-1/#comment-471802
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/12/lounge-373/comment-page-1/#comment-471801
and your condescending offer of “friendship” that night in the very same comment you said you “feel sorry for” me.
No, I only want for you to stop making false claims about me. I want you to admit I didn’t call you a liar.
Joe, are you not open the idea that both of you could find hurt in the same exchange? Or that trying to alleviate that hurt by being understood is not the same as attacking others who were hurt?
I already have apologized for what I did wrong.
You want me to suddenly reconcile with someone who says things like
“sgbm, you’re a fucking joke. Seriously, you’re fucking pathetic. Attack me all you like, you piece of shit. I’ve bent over backwards to be nice to you, and you insist on making me eat shit before you’ll stop biting at my heels? Roll over and beg, Fido! I hope you never feel as bad as you made me feel, but I’ll never waste an ounce of energy to spare you pain, because you bring it on yourself. If I prayed, I would pray that you NEVER get what you deserve for how terrible you are.”
???
Tethys, it’s not fair to ask that of me. I have been attacked all night by him. He claims I am lying if I won’t tell a lie for him. I can’t assent to that.
strange gods before me ॐ:
It’s after 2 a.m. here, but I can’t go offline without agreeing with this wholeheartedly. I can’t think of anything I could say–or want to say–that will get through to iJoe right now.
I think you are both freaking each other out.
Everyone who isn’t sgbm: Show me where he’s offered me a truce matching what I’ve offered tonight. I’ve offered an apology for my part, and I’ve gotten nothing in return. I bent over backwards, and got nothing in response but attacks. And sgbm says that he can’t deal with someone who lashed out at him based on my last response, and ignored all of the olive branches I previously extended.
Links? Go fucking find them, they are all in the last couple of hours. I was willing to make peace, sgbm was absolutely not.
You’ve actually gone out of your way to harass me. But you’ve got one thing right.
I would never offer a “truce” while simultaneously saying something like
When I ask for a truce, it’s the real deal; I acknowledge that both people are still upset and I make no manipulative bullshit talk of “friendship” — only disengagement.
When I ask for peace, I try to be peaceful.
SG
My 15 minute truce request x-posted with Joe’s mean-spirited wish. I agree that it was hurtful, and it was exactly the sort of escalation that I hoped to preempt.
Improbable Joe, @427, you wrote (in part) “[…] And I’m going to ask you to stop. And I promise you right now that I’m going to stop NO MATTER WHAT YOU DECIDE. I’d rather try to be your friend. […] I don’t know what else I can do!
Either way, I’m moving on, and I’m done with this. How amicable it is from here on out is up to you.”
(Have you moved on, are you done with this?)
—
I can tell you what ॐ finds problematic: the accusation that he called you a liar, which you have chosen not to retract.
“Can you admit that I did not call you a liar?”
… Which is not to say that it wasn’t ॐ who initially made the error of imputing malice to Improbable Joe (and which started this spat) — but ॐ has acknowledged that error and apologised for it.
It’s like we’re reading different threads. His response was basically to repeat that he had no grudge or agenda against you, as you were claiming. This is a nice thing to say to a person. It is not “bullying.” It is not “refusing” to give up some grudge you invented for him, when he’s saying in black and white that he doesn’t have one. And that certainly isn’t calling you a liar. He said that he didn’t want you (or others) to think your accusations about him and his motives were true, so he wanted to try to correct that. We can see what good that did, months later. You’re still going with the same story, which I simply don’t understand except as a form of projection.
So who’s refusing what, now? You think SGBM refused to stop — stop doing what? Do you intend to stop doing anything? And what about all the other people in the thread who “didn’t stop”? Is there some reason why SGBM is getting this kind of shit, but not a dozen other people?
John
Please don’t stir the pot. The thread will still be here when the involved parties have cooled down a bit.
BTW, Improbable Joe, I recognise you’re in a bad place emotionally, right now.
(FWIW, I appreciated the friendly response you gave me in the Lounge quite recently, particularly given how I have upset you in the past. Thanks.)
At which time it will get added to the “SGBM can’t let anything go” data set. Time out favours one party in this argument.
you’re quite right. at no point did sgbm offer a truce simultaneously with an attack on the person the truce is being offered to; nor has he offered one only to immediately break it immediately, before it even could be accepted. Both of which are things you‘ve done in this current conversation.
You know… John is actually right. I DID promise to walk away with no blame, and I didn’t quite manage to pull it off. SGBM, I am absolutely sorry for that, and accept all the blame that comes my way for not following through on that. I was entirely an asshole in that regard.
I don’t think we’re ever going to find peace, because I think we’re both carrying too much hurt. Can we agree to leave each other alone? I’m not going to expect you to apologize, and you don’t expect me to apologize, but can we both just fucking knock it off? I don’t like you, you don’t like me, we can hold onto our grudges and don’t pretend that it is over, but we each pretend the other doesn’t exist, for the sake of our mutual friends? At least that fucking much of a peace? You fucking stop, and I fucking stop, and we stop shitting on each other and pitting our friends against each other? We don’t every few months turn a comment thread into our mutual animosity?
I’m going to try to walk away, can you try to walk away? Or do we have to do this stupid shit where we both look like assholes ever few months?
The time out is to let both parties gain some breathing room.
If yall keep rushing in here to defend the pitbull with lipstick and using his other nym, you will skew PZ’s data in quite another direction while trying to defend your friend.
If there is merit in continued fighting after cooling down, the thunderdome is right here 24-7.
Maybe you could be specific about what he’s supposed fucking knock off, right after the part where you say what you’re supposed to knock off. Because I’m trying to figure out how he’s going knock off things you just keep making up, with no signs of stopping.
I don’t understand. His name is like Betelgeuse or something? If we say it too often (here, in the unmoderated thunderdome of all places, which was custom-made for exactly this kind of argument) somehow those’ll be counted as his comments whenever the poopyhead comes along? Because not only will he not read the content of any of them and only glance at the numbers to make some ominous decision we assume won’t be in his favor, but he’s not even going to do the counting correctly?
Your lack of faith in the poopyhead disturbs me.
The poopyhead himself declares that we consider him benevolent at our own peril.
Well, no, not benevolent. Of course not. Don’t be absurd.
But he’s not exactly a stupid evil overlord either. If I had to guess, he’ll probably concoct some transparent scheme to get us all to donate to a cephalopod orphanage or something. But it’s a trap!
StevoR:
[1] See sgbm’s posts setting out quotes from you. Also, I’m very curious about where sgbm’s going with that, so would you do me a favour by at least humouring him and answering his questions?
[2] See the copious explanations in Thunderdome about why “race-blindness” is both ironic and racist.
[3] My original post to which my dog-piling was an incidental aside was motivated exclusively to pick a particularly pedantic nit of consciousness razor’s. I took the opportunity to add my voice to those who think you espouse explicitly racist views, and who wish you would shut up about them. Or at least develop the entertainment by engaging properly with sgbm’s questions. Go on. It’d be so easy.
I’m with “Tethys”. PZ is a kwokster! He’s the dictator of Pharyngula. Not allowing thunderf00t to support his thoughts.
Boy.
Am I ever happy that I went to bed early last night.
…yeah I retired to sleep just in the nick of time.
I stopped reading the Lounge due to the sheer volume of posts, but apparently there’s volume and then there’s VOLUME.
And now I hafta fucking go to fucking work.
…I realize my opinion isn’t really needed here (and that I did not exactly cover myself in glory last time), but in my baffled reading of the Lounge and Thunderdome, I’m inclined to say that both iJoe and SGBM are making mountains out of molehills, but that iJoe is making more of them. *sigh* SGBM, I think iJoe is in a bad place right now and is lashing out at you unfairly. *hugs* and *kittehs*
*sings “Why Can’t We Just Get Along” in a plaintive voice*
Here, chigau, take this coffee with you. Best of luck getting through the day.
Joe,
Your latest comment here contains more false implications about me, which I cannot be expected to assent to.
I have not shit on you. I acknowledged that I was mistaken last night and I apologized to you for it. In response you harassed me for hours.
I will not assent to the suggestion that I have been shitting on you.
I have not pitted anyone against you. I have responded to your false claims about me.
I will not assent to the suggestion that I have pitted anyone against you.
I don’t have animosity for you. I did not deserve to be treated the way you treated me last night — and I did not treat you similarly.
You called me a liar.
You claimed that I had a grudge against you.
You accused me of hating you, despising you, having contempt for you.
You called me a piece of shit.
You called me pathetic.
You either called me evil or said that I was doing something evil.
You said I am a terrible person and I therefore deserve to be hurt.
You told me to roll over and beg.
I did nothing like any of that. (And again, to be perfectly clear, I never called you a liar.)
I apologized unreservedly for my misunderstanding, which was my fault. In response you began harassing me for hours. Still you indicate you don’t recognize that you did begin harassing me about the past, although if your saying you “didn’t start this fight, at all” does not indicate a total denial of responsibility, you can clarify that. I made a mistake last night about why you were posting those comments; I admitted and apologized for my mistake; I am not the one who started making false claims about the past.
I will not assent to suggestions that I bear any animosity toward you.
Now, to your main question:
I agree with cr, it’s not clear what this is supposed to mean.
But if I am supposed to stop pointing out that you made false statements about me, that would still mean you leave all the hurtful things you said about me in the Lounge last night unaddressed in the Lounge.
I do not deserve to be treated that way. I will not assent to being treated unfairly.
I have apologized for my mistake; I wronged you by accusing you of trying to hurt me in my comment 381.
If you want to treat me something like fairly, you could do so without apologizing. You can go to the Lounge and admit that I did not call you a liar, admit that you wronged me there in several comments: 398, 401, 404, 414, 415, 437, 442.
You don’t have to apologize. You could just admit that you treated me unfairly and made hurtful false claims about me which I did not deserve.
Oh, my misreading of his intent with the bacon comment is exactly that. I am of course embarrassed about it, and I regret it not only because it was unfair of me, but also because it was stupid.
ow, jeez, I’m cruising along, catching up on the back-&-forth*, and bam! comment #469 almost snapped my neck with the sudden retroshift to Stevoland.
*which, for what it’s worth to anybody, sg*’s backs make me nod, Joe’s forths make me go “wha?”. I appreciated Jadehawk’s comments in the Lounge so i didn’t have to.
Why the hell is “Liberty University” up there.
LykeX:
On the flip side you can say that there is no such things as wrong and what’s “wrong” is strictly meaningless. But do you honestly believe that? Going back to the Nazi example, do you think there is nothing intrinsically wrong about the Nazis’ attitudes toward the Jewish people? Or do you think such genocidal thoughts are merely subjective opinions that are only “wrong” with respect to someone else’s subjective opinions?
My position is that there is an absolute morality which is centered around the dignity of the human person, and that most people believe in such a thing even if they won’t admit it. That hating a person for a superficial trait (such as skin color or ethnicity) is intrinsically wrong, simply because it goes against the person’s human dignity.
Hi everyone! So I’m new here (to commenting, at least). I’m a fairly new atheist, and came out while at an uberreligious east-coast college called Patrick Henry. The guy who started the place, Mike Farris, is a lawyer who actively tries to propagate religion through law. I’ve pretty much severed all ties with the place, but this popped up on Facebook last night:
http://www.facebook.com/michael.farris.374/posts/169079603240332
In it, Farris brags about fighting against gay rights, fighting for censorship, and using legal fuckery to promote the far-right evangelical agenda. Thought you might find it interesting; plus, as you may note, his comments are open to all.
Just sayin’. ;)
Cross posting from lounge – Mellow MOnkey, there’s a new post at Dan Finke’s that concerns you.
Pakicetus, do you understand how the ad server works? It is not tied to FTB, but to your browsing history and cookies. :D
carlie:
Thanks for the link. I’ve read it and there really isn’t much with which I disagree. I agree that it’s much more difficult for the father to choose to stay home rather than the mother, and I have seen evidence of that within my own family (brother).
Greetings, tsraveling. Patrick Henry? Damn but your upbringing must have been hardcore.
Congratulations for going against that.
And feel free to asking questions about any conflicting feeling you might still have. There are people here who have similar stories as yours and are happy to help.
Thanks Janine! Yeah, it was a bit crazy — my parents brought me out to campaign for creationism to be used in the textbooks of the next school district over from us when I was nine or so. The funny thing was, I was homeschooled. I’ve actually been writing about the whole process of leaving over at my blog, Good and Lost (http://www.goodandlost.org), if you’re interested.
I actually feel pretty great about leaving. Becoming an atheist for me was like the conversion experiences I used to hear about when I was religious — the unburdening of the metaphorical soul, the straightening of the shoulders, the lightening of the load. It was like, all of a sudden, all of this cognitive dissonance (God = love, and also genocide) was gone. It was pretty great. I’m working through some of the emotional and social fallout still, but suffice it to say I am absolutely glad I made the decision I did. And now I get to write about it!
From my experience there’s a lot of doubt among young people in the evangelical movement. I feel pretty bad for them; American far-right evangelicalism is not a good thing in any sense of the word. I hope that by telling my story, and introducing them to intelligent atheism, some will realize that doubt is not only good, but, in their case, right.
joey,
Do you recognize that this can be true even without the existence of God? Do you recognize that dignity could be intrinsic to the
humananimal, and the moral implications of that existing dignity would therefore follow, and so you could believe all this just as coherently if you become an atheist?+++++
Esteleth,
It would be a bit of both, though, since being at FTB is part of one’s browsing history. Multiple people do complain about seeing the same ads here, so Liberty University is probably buying ads broadly on “sites discussing religion” or somesuch.
ChasCPeterson:
ow, jeez, I’m cruising along, catching up on the back-&-forth*, and bam! comment #469 almost snapped my neck with the sudden retroshift to Stevoland.
Yeah, I totally fucked up. I coulda sworn I refreshed this thread and the last comment in it was sgbm’s #315 (it’s been a while since I visited Thunderdome, so thought it was was just especially slow-moving), so I thought it was safe to address the comments that StevoR directed at me way back when.
Then the thread reloaded and I saw what I missed – I’m sorry for the inappropriateness of dropping that comment in the midst of all that, and I’m particularly sorry to sgbm for invoking him in a noxious context while he had this going on.
Ah, SGBM, I was saying that the ads are not tied to FTB in the sense of “Ed Brayton says that ads for LU etc are perfect for this site.” Of course your reading FTB is going to affect your cookies and such, and affect how the ad server sees you. :)
Thank you for reading it, joey.
Ugh, and now I fucked up blockquote tags, too. Awesome.
Oh, casus fortuitus, I appreciated your comment to StevoR! It was a nice distraction for me. Apology not necessary, but thank you for your kind intention.
I am going over tsraveling’s blog. He seems to be a very good and clear writer. I would suggest the people read Past Is Prologue Part 1 where he talks about being accepted to Patrick Henry College and his growing disenchantment once he is there.
Good luck sorting through your issues.
*pauses part way through Past is Prologue part 1 to wave at fellow home schooler*
Hi tsraveling!
casus fortuitus @#489:
No, no reason to apologize! There is no ‘inappropriate’. For this is Thunderdome!!!
sgbm,
*fist bump* or *hug*, whichever you prefer
Been away the last two days¹. Back to something I recognise without even knowing the whole story. SGBM in some manner of “trouble” from another commenter. Which is a kind of right of passage, as I have gathered after a few short years perusing these threads. What is it that gets some peoples’ goat up with the pitbull tenaciousness? When a rather critical fastidiousness is focussed on our comments, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Learn, move on and raise the game.
…
¹ Macau. It’s a shitty job, but someone has to do it… :)
Question: were you to find out your god proposes something that goes against the dignity of the human person, what would you choose?
rightrite