Everyone is breaking up with everyone else, and it’s a good thing. Secular Woman states how silly it is to dissociate someone from an organization they don’t belong to, but goes on to point out that persistent pleas for civility are often used to displace concerns about more serious issues, as a way to silence dissent from the status quo, and that maybe we ought to be more concerned about the prolonged campaigns of harassment against women in the atheist community.
This is an extension of a systemic problem, by no means limited to the words of Michael Nugent, which has become brutally apparent among the atheist and skeptic communities in recent years. Women who speak about assault, sexism, or simply assert their own personal boundaries have been targeted by hate campaigns [tw] while a sobering number of our proclaimed leaders become defensive, insist that the victims remain silent to avoid embarrassment, and prioritize the reputation of men above the safety of women.
Among the very worst and most tireless harassers are the group of people Atheist Ireland has welcomed into their community, a collection of familiar names to many of us, people who have been obsessively and stupidly harassing women and their allies for years. It’s a remarkable example of tunnel vision, that someone can complain with such about single-mindedness about a person who is 6000 km away and is ignoring him, while allowing the vipers in his own site to continue with far more vicious attacks than those he deplores. So the Melby Foundation has dissociated itself from those comments. Not that she has contributed to them, but dissociation is the big thing now.
The Melby Foundation is publicly dissociating itself from the hurtful and dehumanizing, hateful and violent, unjust and defamatory rhetoric of Nugent’s comments section. The final of many, many straws was its latest smear that if PZ Myers and Alex Gabriel were given power that they would send people to “re-education gulags”, and its subsequent description of the out-group as “a community of personality disordered individuals with high degrees of narcissism”. We are also asking all ethical organizations and individuals to consider how you can help to reverse Nugent’s comments section’s harmful impact on the individuals it targets and the atheist movement generally.
And then she goes on to document all the hateful things allowed to persist.
But the best part is this: the first comment on Melby’s post comes from that gang:
PZ is a cunt.
You are a dipshit.
Hilarious! These really are deeply stupid people, oblivious to their own behavior. The tedious Steersman is also already there, making his usual long dismal defenses of rape jokes.
But it’s not just atheism that has its subpopulation of oppressive persons (atheism’s problem is that most of our organizations refuse to do anything about them). Connie Willis has announced that she won’t be participating in the Hugo Awards this year. As most of you already know, a group of people who detest the idea of diversity in fiction, and are particularly resentful of women and minorities, have gamed the nominations to put up a slate of regressive, old-fashioned crap of the type they like. This is within the rules, but is still rather nasty, and it’s driven by a group calling themselves the Sad Puppies, who are kind of the Slymepit of science fiction. What made Willis refuse to participate though, is that not only do they want to pack the nomination slate, they want to dictate the winners.
But then Vox Day and his followers made it impossible for me to remain silent , keep calm, and carry on. Not content with just using dirty tricks to get on the ballot, they’re now demanding they win, too, or they’ll destroy the Hugos altogether. When a commenter on File 770 suggested people fight back by voting for “No Award,” Vox Day wrote: “If No Award takes a fiction category, you will likely never see another award given in that category again. The sword cuts both ways, Lois. We are prepared for all eventualities.”
I assume that means they intend to use the same bloc-voting technique to block anyone but their nominees from winning in future years. Or, in other words, “If you ever want to see your precious award again, do exactly as I say.” It’s a threat, pure and simple. Everyone who votes has been ordered (under the threat of violence being done to something we love) to let their stories–stories which got on the ballot dishonestly–win.
In my own particular case, I feel I’ve also been ordered to go along with them and act as if this were an ordinary Hugo Awards ceremony. I’ve essentially been told to engage in some light-hearted banter with the nominees, give one of them the award, and by my presence–and my silence–lend cover and credibility to winners who got the award through bullying and extortion.
And she closes with this statement:
And finally, to Vox Day, Brad Torgeson, and their followers, I have this to say:
“You may have been able to cheat your way onto the ballot. (And don’t talk to me about how this isn’t against the rules–doing anything except nominating the works you personally liked best is cheating in my book.) You may even be able to bully and intimidate people into voting for you. But you can’t make me hand you the Hugo and say “Congratulations,” just as if you’d actually won it. And you can’t make me appear onstage and tell jokes and act like this year’s Hugo ceremony is business as usual and what you’ve done is okay. I’m not going to help you get away with this. I love the Hugo Awards too much.”
I gotta say, don’t ever piss off a good writer. They’ll nail you to the wall with a paragraph, and it’s always more cutting than the long-winded screeds of lesser communicators.
Well, if the Hugos didn’t want their award molested, they shouldn’t have been flaunting it like that. They had it coming.
Is it too late to outright cancel the awards this year? I supposed they’d just interpret that as winning, but that might be better than having tainted awards on the books years from now.
Re: Dissociating from Atheist Ireland:
Hilarious. I love it.
Re: That first comment:
It’s okay everyone. That person is just British, I’m sure. All perfectly fine.
Re: The Sad Puppies:
Honestly, not participating is kinda what they want. What they should get is people telling them to fuck off, voting No Award anyway, and remarking at how the awards were sabotaged by these assholes every fucking time it happens. Someone should be quoting that final quoted paragraph every god damn time the voters need to vote No Award because the category has been filled up with right-wing dreck by these petty, pathetic, scummy, dishonest conservative assholes. No, no one should pretend that it is a normal year for the Hugos. But walking away and letting them have their awards because Voxy Shazam said he will do it worse in the future just to spite them if he doesn’t have his way is exactly what they want.
I’ve seen the list of nominees. There are some that got on the ballot on their own merits and shouldn’t be penalized.
Time enough to cancel the awards next year after the SP/RP group have had their bluff called.
Or, what anteprepro said, above.
I like how MA Melby was able to point out how the issue between Atheist Ireland and FTB is all about commenters on Nugent’s blog are trying to characterize FTB as an “out group” and that they need to attack the people instead of the ideas. They obsessively look for past mistakes or certain statements a person has made but never really address the main issue whether it be harrassment of women or lack of diversity in some atheist communities
Though honestly, the good alternative is to let the Sad Puppies have their way this year and don’t lend any credibility to it all. Then change the rules to prevent this shit from happening again. If possible, I have no idea if that is possible.
There really is no fool-proof way to fight someone like the Smallvox. He is remarkably persistent and petty (much like the slymers). Change the rules and he will find another to game the system. Don’t give into him and he will terrorize you. Give into him, and he will still do that, just with an air of entitlement and pride, rather than an air of spite and outrage. There’s really no winning against someone like that. The best you can do is point and laugh and hope he loses his dedicated following, because his bullying tactics aren’t nearly as effective when his mob isn’t motivated enough or big enough.
karmacat: That’s precisely it, isn’t it? They don’t address the issues, they just hate FTB bloggers who bring the issues up and attack them. That is their M.O. They rarely address anything of substance, it is basically ad hominem bluster all the way down. Well, and some denialism and handwaving and dishonest reframing of events whenever they can be bothered to talk about shit like say, Elevatorgate or Shermer being a rapist. That’s about it in their bag of tricks.
Oh hilarious. Freethought blogs according to the Slymepit:
Authoritarian liberals
Need demons to fight
Circle the wagons
Contort facts and abuse words
Cultish
Revel in being sociopathic victims
Rewrites history
Wounded animal thrashing out
Do not understand how dangerous hate can be
Classic Young Zealot
Burning sense of wide-ranging injustice
Cognitive ability does not by itself lead to rationality
A thousand ways to deflect and shift
Happily attribute behaviors and motives to people
Hyped up a relatively trivial incident (re: Elevatorgate)
And: “as evil as he was, Pol Pot actually did something besides write about how hurty he was at the world.” (They were saying that Alex Gabriel is worse than Pol Pot)
——————————————————
Projection at its fucking finest.
“a fairly no-holds-barred but fun site”
“robust debate and a daft-laugh”
“practically the only opposition to the poison being spread amongst us”
“rough & tumble”
an open, freewheeling and occasionally very crude and/or rude place”
“sophomoric and brilliant”
“It [does] not matter…if the [forum] was sometimes offensive or sometimes angry.”
That’s the pitters assessment of the Slymepit. I think PZ should sue for plagiarism.
Yeah, it’s amazing what MN thinks OK in his own comment section (and IIRC people had to explicitly demand that he remove some outright threatening stuff) and what he deems acceptable on other people’s blogs.
Ashley Miller is currently having a visit from the pit. I don’t know what she hopes to achieve by letting them go on. There are brave people arguing there. If you read this, you have my sympathies, but I couldn’t do it.
Among the commenters is a certain Kirbmarc, who, when somebody else pointed to Nugent’s harassment of PZ on Twitter replied:
I blocked that guy on Twitter. He made a habit of jumping into my conversations (nothing wrong about this per se. It’s an open medium) and then kept ignoring my “go away”. Yeah, that’s the kind of person who tries to objectively define harassment, conveniently along the lines that protect themselves.
And all the photoshop FTB bloggers do. Oh, wait, they don’t because they have are able to express their opinions without having to resort photoshop. It is amazing that people of the slymepit are defending photoshopping.
karmacat:
B-b-but, it’s Humor!!! Therefore, immune to criticism!!!
(In fairness, photoshopping per se isn’t the problem. It’s what they do with the photoshop, and their related “jokes” that are the issue)
The “defense” of that rape joke photoshop posted by Steerman is great (and by that I mean vomit inducing).
Steersman explains:
Hey, we used your picture, knowing that some of yu had been raped and made it into a rape joke about grading rape, because that’s hilarious, but since it wasn’t about you in personal you cannot complain that we used your picture, knowing that some of yu had been raped and made it into a rape joke about grading rape.
It’s not actually a rape joke, get it?
And the moment I post I remember “TRIGGER WARNING”
Sorry
Oh by the way, Michael Nugent has had worse comment threads than this most recent. Back in December, I also decided to take a peek to see what I can find coming from Nugent’s most recent thread:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/19/thunderdome-56/comment-page-2/#comment-892375
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/19/thunderdome-56/comment-page-2/#comment-892522
And also in that thread, a commenter named franc whined about PZ ruining his life. And was light in specifics. And franc was also known as Hoggle. And…. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/12/09/victor-ivanoff-is-a-slimy-stalker/
Also from the same thread, one removed comment: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/11/19/thunderdome-56/comment-page-2/#comment-892238
So Nugent actually does have limits. But the limits that Nugent abides by seem to much more lenient than the requirements that PZ is apparently subject to. Go figure.
Wow, Giliell. That is some fucking strained reasoning right there. “It’s not a rape joke, it’s a joke about rape grading, because GO TEAM DAWKINS WOOO”. The slymepit is what happens when Voltaire’s Prayer is fulfilled by a fucking monkey’s paw. Oh, yes, they are ridiculous, but that doesn’t make them any less horrible.
@anteprepro #3
I don’t think Lois was saying she wouldn’t vote. I think she was saying that she would not be the one to open the card, say ‘The winner is’ and hand them the trophy. And you know, I wouldn’t want to do that either. Though with a bit of luck No Award will be bringing home the trophies this year.
Ariaflame: Connie, but yes, I think you are right.
That makes it sound like she will participate in voting but she doesn’t lend credibility to this charade by being a presenter. Even if not, as I said later, I can’t really fault her, since there is no clear and obvious way to fight this mess.
Connie Willis’s pen is much, much mightier than Vox Day’s ridiculously overcompensating flaming sword. Speaking as someone who loves swords, I find it amazing that Beale apparently doesn’t realize how pathetic that pic makes him look.
Connie Willis:
That’s exactly how I feel about the sleazy arseholes in the atheoskeptisphere. They are doing harm, they know they are doing harm, and they do not care. I don’t have one itty bitty ounce of tolerance towards them, whether they are big name, no name, or somewhere in-between.
Anteprepro @ 9:
Verrry interesting, ennit? I didn’t have the slightest problem with ‘guys, don’t do that.’
@21: In their defence, the reason they don’t care is that they think the ones they’re harming are not real people who matter.
Sorry, not “defence”. “Prosecution”.
Karmacat @ 6:
Yes. Not long ago, a friend let me know that one obsessive copied several of my previous posts here on twitter, using them to claim I condoned murder.
@Giliell #14: So Steersman’s defense is exactly backwards? “It was mocking the grading of rape by attacking people going after Dawkins for grading rape”? Um, what? If you’re mocking the grading of rape, you’re mocking Dawkins, the guy who though grading rapes was a good idea. Using the Secular Policy Institute group-of-White-mostly-male-people-leering photo for the same purpose would be consistent with that, though still a deeply problematic bit of satire (and it would have been an actual bit of satire in that case, exaggerating The Dawk’s rape-gradation idea to highlight the absurdity of his stated position). But instead it’s a ‘shopped image of people engaging in behavior that they themselves are decrying. It’s just a visual slur using the very behavior the people depicted oppose to slur them. There is no defense of that image becasue the entirety of the meaning encoded in it is, “I don’t like these people, so I’m going to depict them doing something they think is awful becasue it will bother them, and I think bothering them is funny [becasue I’m a sadistic tribalist].” That’s it (and that’s the basic premise of any “for teh lulz” trolling – the fact that it’s trying to harm people in ways the troll finds “funny” doesn’t make the intent anything other than harming people, and the motivation for harming people being the amusement of the troll is what makes it sadism).
So … Nugent wants to avoid being seen as a Mr Crankypants, and to me he seems like Mr Crankypants personified.
PZed actually revels in a carefully curated Crankypants personality, but actually ends up seeming thoroughly reasonable.
…Bizarrely delicious.
Up to now I have given the Hugos only slight consideration when I wanted to buy a SF book. Now, they could become a very valuable guide – of what NOT to buy. Thanks, Vox!
By the way, for those who want to know which Voxtastic works to avoid, or to only get at the lowest prices possible so that you can laugh at the inanity that is conservative art, here is the Sad Puppies slate:
https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/sad-puppies-3-the-2015-hugo-slate/
@22, I was about to comment on that as well.
IIRC, it was the slyme and others who were mad about “Don’t do that”. Funny how they also have the quote in there claiming FTBers rewrite history. Oh, wait, it’s a litany of their projections.
The best way to deal with this is to remove the cheaters from the organization. As they are nominated by member ballot, there should be statistical methods to sort the distribution of nominations and ferret out the sad puppies entries. People gaming the awards should have their ballots disqualified and be banned from the organization. If that unfortunately disqualifies some deserving work from being nominated, perhaps that author will dissociate themselves from the sad puppies and denounce the practice.
@25, John Horstman
The mind boggles.
A paraphrase of a quote from Terry Pratchett´s Snuff springs to mind:
“You only been thinking whether this is or is not against the rules, and completely forgot to think about whether it is right or wrong”.
I’m not proud of it, but I was once part of that whole “ironic sexism/racism it’s-cool-because-I’m-actually-liberal” bullshit, but even in those days, I thoroughly doubt I would have found the grand majority of the ‘Pitters “satire” actually funny. It reminds me of the “jokes” my 9-year-old tells, that don’t actually make any sense.
how can anyone think that hijacking the Hugo awards does not degrade the value and significance of the awards or at least put a cloud on it? In which the winners will win nothing of any value, It seems that the threat and the hijacked nomination process has already accomplished the damage that is implied in the threat.
It does sound consistent with someone who is a catholic. How is it any different from professing faith under threat of torture or actual torture and hence surrendering to the authority of the church in all things.
uncle frogy
Though comments are now mostly closed on those threads, George R. R. Martin has given some extended discussion on this FUBAR over at his LiveJournal based not-a-blog, over a series of comments on the issue (and alluding to a few other. There’s about ten on the subject; all seemed worth reading, and when time allows I plan to go back to take a closer look at those comments. I also found this piece at the Daily Beast worth the time to read.
I still think these sorts of problems (in both the SF and skeptic communities, and elsewhere) seem linked to the underpinnings of the Social Dominance Orientation measure Sidanius developed — those oriented to dominance expressing aggression disproportionately to the actual merit of themselves or their cause.
Yeah, I’ve also abandoned Ashley’s, so thanks to the people still willing to counter the slyme there. It’s hilarious (by which I mean fucking depressing and triggering) how they will dance around the issue, refusing to concede points made and then cry “foul” and “oppression” when told that the place they hang out and contribute to with glee is disgusting, which makes them disgusting. I think it was Hunt, who said “A slymepitter is just a pharynglate who hasn’t been raped”. So yeah, fuck all of that noise.
I’m with Caine @ 21. I love that Secular Woman, The Melby Foundation and Carrie took a stance.
I’m so tired of shitlords getting away with this shit, over and over again, and there being nothing anyone can do. I’m so tired of the scolding and scathing letters because an atheist leader’s reputation and how atheism looks to the outside world is much more important than the harm that’s being done to women and other minorities.
And I’m so tired of these pearl clutchers then pulling their mouths into a sneer of distaste and insist that they’re engaging in “good faith” when it’s clear from the get go that all of their good faith is spent on protecting the Big Men of Atheism from criticism, which lead to them throwing women and other minorities under the bus, but oh no, PZ is worse than the slymepit, and we should give the slymepit a fair chance, maybe we can work out “our” differences.
No. There’s nothing to work out. I don’t even want to be on the same planet as these fuckers and their harassment and their vicious lying and smearing.
There is no way to work out “middle ground” between “harass and smear and lie about a group of bloggers literally for years and literally laugh at rape and rape victims” and “protect victims of sexual assault and other vulnerable people”. They are not even on the same fucking board.
Tired tired tired.
And the rifts keep deepening…
Good on Connie Willis, who also happens to be an author whose works I have read and enjoyed very much. I wish there was more firm stand taking among the other members. I do not understand why Vox and his group of amoral losers don’t have their membership unceremoniously revoked for trying to repeatedly game the awards. Why go to all the trouble of voting no award rather than simply removing the small percentage of assholes who cause the problem in the first place?
I especially liked this one, where he went over the history of past winners.
So if we never succeeded in making the Hugos a lefty SJW affair in the first place, what are the puppies campaigning for again…?
Whoops, first quote was abb3w up-thread, second quote was from the end of grrm’s piece that I linked to.
A post from David Gerrold that’s worth reading.
I hope he’s right, but the cynic in me is starting to wonder if the internet’s ability to bring arseholes together and magnify their effects á la gamergate means this shit is just going to get worse and worse.
Maybe they could put asterisks after the names, like they do with certain sports results.
Antepro:
And: “as evil as he was, Pol Pot actually did something besides write about how hurty he was at the world.” (They were saying that Alex Gabriel is worse than Pol Pot)
Yeah, ‘cos just the other day I was remarking that Alex was creeping up on his 2 millionth person slaughtered.
“sophomoric and brilliant”
I’m a fan of Monty Python, or at least the bits that have aged well, and that was sophomoric and brilliant. I’ve lurked in the Slympit often enough to know that it is sophomoric at best, but I’ve never seen anything I’d actually describe as witty or clever let-alone brilliant. It’s just a reverberant room full of the worst aspects of eternal adolescents trying to out do each other.
Thinking about the Hugos, I got this high fantasy novel, there’s like this weak pretty lady who is sold for convenience by her family then little by little takes her life in her hands and becomes a stalwart defender of the weak and the oppressed.
Then one of the main characters is the representative of a despised minority but he’s very intelligent and one of the few really compassionate and likable characters.
Then there’s this lady who wants to be a knight and keeps kicking men’s asses hard, and all is drowned in social problems and politics…
Sorry Mr Martin, fantasy is about big guys with big swords saving hot useless princesses, that’s what we grew up and what we love, your shitty SJW literature is not what people want, it’s interesting only to liberal academic wankers… /s
I should point out, I’m quoting Antepro’s quotes, not Antepro.
Rob, oh Rob. But you see, you miss the complexity of their humor. Seriously. Let me dig up their actual quote.
Ahem.
It is very Sophisticated Humor, they assure us. You could call this the Court Jester’s Reply.
Charly wrote:
To the hardcore authoritarian, whatever is against the rules is wrong, and anything allowed is right (and perhaps even mandated). That’s why there is so much (completely ridiculous) fear about legalizing gay marriage or decriminalizing certain drugs.
Antepro, thanks I’ll try harder.
Squints. Turns head to side. Other side. Mumbles to self. Looks up winkie chart. Squints at screen again.
Nope. Didn’t work.
there is no clear and obvious way to fight this mess.
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only sci-fi fan who has decided not to pay any more attention to “sci fi fandom” and I’m certainly not buying books based on the hugos, anymore. They’ve made the hugo a poltiical football and my attitude toward football games has always been to walk away from them. The thing they wanted so badly? It’s worthless.
I feel the same way about atheism, for that matter. I used to care somewhat about the doings of the collected big names of atheism, but now – not so much. Other than in his cringe-worthy appearances on Ophelia Benson’s blog, I pay no attention to the doings of Dawkins. I gave up on Harris way before that, when Bruce Schneier handed him his ass (graciously) and his response was to dig in his heels. I’ve never paid attention to Nugent at all, other than when I see him appearing here and there as an example of “learn from fail” I sort of enjoyed JT for a while but wrote him off as a narcissistic twerp who cements his self-belief by being smarter than christians (really, that’s like buttressing your personality by burning ants with a magnifying glass) It was Christopher Hitchens that brought me to Pharyngula back in the scienceblogs days and I stuck around even after Hitch repeatedly shit the bed on islamism and Iraq.
FUCK THEM ALL.
It’s all been instructive for me. If I had any interest or desire in having “heroes” it’s gone. For the last few years I’ve been reading the blogs I find interesting, and occasionally investing in individuals. I used to support Avicenna with donations and helped him get a camera, etc. Yeah, well… What I’ve learned is to be fearless on my personal “delete” button. It’s not hard. I’ll give anyone the benefit of a doubt once or twice and after that: delete. Cosby? Delete. I used to enjoy John Wright’s space opera until something Scalzi said made me realize that his female characters are cardboard cut-outs. Wright? Delete. I’ll just keep mashing the delete key. I don’t care.
I’m (still) liking PZ and Greta and Heina and Dana and Ed and Mano but if any of them need to be deleted, I won’t hesitate. Any more than I’d expect PZ to hesitate to delete me if I’m being an ass long enough, and hard enough.
I suppose I can thank the gamergaters and slymepitters and sad puppies for showing me that I can’t even afford a few comforting illusions in my hobbies. I won’t ever identify myself as an “atheist” again. I’ll say I read PZ’s blog, or fund Anita Sarkeesian, or enjoy Dana’s postings tremendously. But the gamergaters and pitters and puppies have taught me that my loyalty will be only to individuals and never collectives; never seek group identity, and certainly never even think about empowering a leader.
No heroes.
the photoshop work is described as “satirically and artistically fantastic”.
Also described as “pathetic bullshit.”
those oriented to dominance expressing aggression disproportionately to the actual merit of themselves or their cause.
It’s probably just an effect of confirmation bias: I am super duper important and if it’s important to me, then it must be super duper important therefore RAGE RAGE AGGRESSION
I’ve seen some of their photoshop work. It’s pretty easy to describe: take a picture of someone you don’t like, distort it to make it look really ugly, and put them in some stupid situation. It’s piss-poor satire. It’s a lazy “you’re ugly!” glossed up with some superficial photoshop glitz. It’s no different than the people who send me stick figures having sex with a dog, with “PZ” and an arrow pointing to one of them, or the people who’d cut my face out of a photo and crudely paste it on to some gay porn.
Some of these guys know how to feather and blend a cut-and-paste job better, but the quality of the satire is still abysmal.
I’m actually loving the comment on the Melby Foundation post so far. They have predictably gone on to insist that the comments at Nugent’s blog are justified, which leaves them open to the problem of Nugent’s outrage at PZ’s comments being totally unjustified. Unjustified beyond “Mr. Meenie Pants is making all of us look bad!” that is. I would LOVE to see Steersman try to justify the quotes provided by Melby.
Brony,
1. It’s satire
2. It’s a social experiment
3. Can’t you people take a joke?
4. All of the above, in rotation or at random
Sorry, it is prima facie and conclusive evidence for PZ’s claim. You haven’t shown otherwise with evidence, and evidenceless views like yours are properly dismissed as fuckwittery here.
Learn the difference between opinion and facts. You aren’t aware of any difference from your post.
Kirbmarc,
Surely you’ve seen some of the many opinions about women and rape expressed from that bunch. I hope that at least covers the harassers and misogynists part.
Yes, and the evidence conclusively shows that Mick Nugent has provided a haven for slymepitters who are rape defenders and apologists and harassers, making it by extension also a haven for rapists (who would feel right welcome with all the rape apology and victim blaming going on there), harassers and misogynists.
I’m not seeing why this is so hard. Logic, do you no it?
Kirbmarc:
Obvious bullshit is obvious. When you reply to someone on Twitter, and do so repeatedly despite them repeatedly telling you to leave them alone, that is harassment. Twitter doesn’t have to be analogous to home for this be true: Even if you were out in public, which you are perfectly entitled to do, and you are perfectly entitled to prance about and initiate a conversation with whomever you please, being in an open forum, insisting upon a conversation with someone who has repeatedly made it clear that they don’t want to talk is pretty clear cut harassment. The severity depends on the context, obviously, but blanket rejection of the idea that persistent attempts to talk to someone who doesn’t want to talk is harassment because you are doing it in public is just absurd on its fucking face.
We tend to forget that? I haven’t forgotten. There is no point in forgetting it because it is perfectly justifiable position that Nugent decided to go ape-shit over.
Oh really? Explain why.
Gotta love the weasel words. Also, if you think the characterization of “obsessed” doesn’t fit, I would like to see you argue it. Oh, yes, it might have been easy way for PZ to dodge criticism. But none of Nugent’s criticism has been coherent anyway. He has been trying to throw in everything but the kitchen, including regurgitating strained arguments and out of context quotes harvested by the Pitters. So these “many” who see it as an easy way to avoid criticism are vastly overestimating the quality of the criticism being ignored here.
Really, it is comment section that was the target of the claim. But whatever helps Nugent and his supporters play the victim. Poor misunderstood pitters.
Also: obsessed =/= mental illness
The only issue with Myer’s remark is that he said “rapists”. He either should have “rape apologists” or “a rapist”, in that it was all existing to defend Shermer. That is all you got is quibbling over the one word instead of the overall meaning of what was said. Which is, really, just par for the fucking course.
Satisfied, except for hyperskeptics, liars, and bullshitters like youself. You don’t know what evidence is, and can only throw evidenceless slogans around. You can’t prove your point until you take it outside of yourself. Which you can’t do, except to point at another opinion.
Kirbmarc @55:
Wow. And here I thought people at FtB were perfectly aware of Nugent’s contention and (by and large) agree that PZ is correct in that assessment.
See, people like you seem to think that many of us haven’t been following the events of the Deep Rifts for years. You act like we don’t know how the Pitters have been acting. You act like we haven’t seen the harassment, the misogyny or the rape defenders. You act like we aren’t aware that Nugent *has* created a haven for them. He’s also created a haven for his bestest buddy Shermer the fucking rapist asshole (or anyone else who is a rapist), bc his blog has become a second home to people who are rape deniers. He’s fostered an environment where rapists, rather than rape victims would feel welcome.
Do wander off with your unimaginative, unoriginal whining.
kirbmarc @64:
Look you goddamn fucknuggett (here, take your damn pearls and clutch them to your hearts content, you tone trolling fuckwit)-there’s a world of difference between a 12 year old who rapes someone after being groomed to do so for years and a fucking adult who chose to violate the bodily autonomy of another human being.
One was a child.
One was an adult.
I probably shouldn’t even bother. As a supporter of the Pit, you’re not likely to have your comments around here long.
Show evidence that MN has called MS a rapist who didn’t follow Crystal Clear Consent with his victims. There is hard evidence MS couldn’t have had CCC, due to the level of inebriation described by those present. Those who claim otherwise are rape apologists and potential, if not real, rapists themselves, who didn’t always follow CCC. Reality versus your views. Which are misogynist fuckwittery, and dismissed as irrelevant.
Am I going blind, or did the comment at 63 provide no new information at all, and basically just repeated what they already said?
Kirbmarc, #68
You are just adorable.
Kirbmarc There are many people who are abused but don’t abuse others.
Even a child of 12 has some legal and moral responsibility for his action, albeit much less than an adult.
Ignoring the fucking grooming? You dishonest, amoral fuckwad.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
And this is why pitters are liberally banned. It doesn’t take long for them to reveal what fucking horrible human beings they are.
anteprepro,
Yup. That was a pitiful sea-lioning entrance at #55 too.
Really?
No, but they are willing to rape given the chance. Who gives a shit about the accused, when there is ample testimony (evidence in a court of law) of their predatory tactics. I don’t have to be like the law and need a formal system to make a judgement. MS is a rapist as he didn’t have CCC. Those who try to defend MS are rape apologists. Given that many men will admit to rape if the act is described, including the tactics used my MS, but not attached to the word rape, they are potential rapists themselves, and may have already crossed the line.
Who gives a shit about your whining about the accused, and not the accuser being victimized by a rapist? Your lack of empathy toward women means you prove to us with prima facie evidence you are a misogynist bigot.
Don’t like it, change YOUR attitude.
Kirbmarc sez:
Well you’re quite the dishonest piece of shit, aren’t you?
Let’s quote what you’re responding to:
Nerd says that, given how drunk everyone says Alison was, there’s no way she consented to sex. This is true. If you’re too drunk to walk unaided, you’re too drunk to consent to anything. Anyone who claims Alison could both be as drunk as described and have given informed consent is a rape apologist. By fucking definition. Because, again, if someone is as drunk as Alison was described being by everyone involved, she cannot consent. If sex ensues, that’s rape. Again, by fucking definition. Anyone who is OK with this state of affairs is a rape apologist. Anyone who is OK with this state of affairs is willing to rape because they’ve admitted that they’re willing to initiate sex with someone unable to consent. Which is rape.
What Nerd did not say is that anyone who doubts any evidence against an accused is a rapist. He said that anyone who denies a very specific point of fact is a rape apologist and potential rapist. Because they are. Because words mean things.