Jadehawk has been suffering to provide evidential support for Secular Woman, in particular their recent statement on their priorities.
However, one issue that has surfaced during this dispute demands our attention due to our understanding of events. Our stated values make it clear that we stand with survivors of sexual assault and those who believe and support them. We choose not to associate with those who align themselves with abusers rather than victims.
There is one long-term nest of abusers that has wormed their way into an alliance with Atheist Ireland, which seems to be in flagrant denial of the fact that the most prolific commenters on their website, the ones who provided them with the distortions that supported Michael Nugent’s very personal and very prolix hatred of me, are actually among the nastier characters in the atheist community. Jadehawk has gone through their various public statements and compiled a pair of storify lists that document how awful they are.
Defending rapists? Check. Providing a haven for misogynists? Check.
It gets worse than that, too. That last link is to a compendium of the kind of slyme that gets thrown at numerous people, myself included, that reveals some of the bestest internet pals of Atheist Ireland aren’t just misogynists: they hate non-white people (their mockery of the black men who have been shot by the police will turn your stomach), trans men and women (man, but do they despise trans people), the mentally ill, the overweight, anyone associated in any with Freethoughtblogs or Skepchick…basically it’s a convenient place for people to gather and tell each other how much they hate everyone else. Their tactics vary from bluntly expressed slurs, to long sea-lion-style arguments about how it’s fine to call people “niggers” and “cunts”.
It’s long. If you just want the quick summary, here’s what Jadehawk says:
tl;dr: if the dissociation from PZ Myers was about toxic rhetoric, it would have been primarily targeted at this group of people who have been on a harassment campaign against various feminist (and especially female) bloggers and secular activists. This has not happened; instead, the Slymepit and its abuse remain welcome and protected. Combined with the evidence from the 1st part, in which I demonstrated Nugent arguing for sexual assault victims being stopped from publicly naming their abuser, Secular Woman’s accusation that Nugent & Atheist Ireland support abusers is evidentially well supported.
I assume this result was not the intent of Nugent’s actions and Atheist Ireland’s support for his actions. But if that wasn’t the intent, it would only be sensible to rectify this outcome and focus on condemning and dissociating from actual abusers, not one guy whose tone they dislike.
This evidence has been openly available for a long time. I am not so charitable in my inferences about Nugent’s intent.
As an atheist living in Ireland, I will have nothing to do with Atheist Ireland until they dissociate themselves from these abuse enablers. Whether it was intentional or not, I expect to see some sensible communication on the issue. Up to now there’s been nothing but “Oh but look – we organised a women’s conference!”.
It is the other side of The Rift that forces people to be “for us or against us”. Their campaign must go on so everyone is forces to moderate them out or accept their nasty comments.
Jadehawk deserves a round of applause for wading into the ‘Pit. While hir Storifies aren’t likely to convince the Grand Ole Irish Wanker that his legion of bestest buddies are abusive assholes, hopefully people on the sidelines (or on the fence) will see how toxic the Pitters are.
___
I find it laughable and pathetic that Nugent has whined and whined and whined (and whined some more) about PZ’s tone, while ignoring the substance of the comments from the Pitters on his own blog.
****
Micky Williams @2:
That’s already been tried. It failed. Since then, Nugent has proven incapable of communicating sensibly on this issue.
Good lord. Great job to Jadehawk. I can’t read that all. But good god, I saw enough to know that the point was well proven. No one can say that the evidence isn’t there. I’m sure Nugent will find the right hundred thousand words to dismiss it all though.
Wow, Jadehawk, how long did you showetr after these?
Couldn’t make it through. Seen most of it before. You can currently see a collection on Ashley’s blog
PZ, #1
I completely agree. If it was unintentional he would have long apologized and reversed his position like any sensible person would.
We’re way past the point of “oh, that’s not what I meant” to be taken seriously. He’s still broadcasting that rapists and sexual harassers in positions of power in atheist organizations should be left alone to continue in their ways. So that’s what we’ll take his position to be. Quite simple.
Oh, I see Nugent actually came up with excuses regarding comments on his blog and his hypocrisy when it was brought up by MA Melby.
And the very next section begins…. (prepare yourself for whiplash)
That second paragraph is also highly fucking ironic. And, of course, immediately after all THAT, about responding to criticism, apologizing, and rectifying the situation, Nugent says….
So, according to Nugent, you can’t call someone a liar, or attribute any kind of “malign intent” to them, or insult them, but his comment policy allows for “robust debate” such that he won’t be deleting an unspecified number of comments that MA Melby pointed out. Please, using this metric, feel free to find what possible comments he could be referring to that are allowable:
https://sinmantyx.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/the-melby-foundation-official-statement-of-disassociation/
The only possible ones I can see just glancing over it are the ones where they are bragging about how awesome and funny the Slymepit is. So, what the ever living fuck?
But that’s Nugent for you. It’s layer upon layer of hypocrisy.
To make it explicit: The hypocrisy between quote 1 and quote 2 is that PZ is being criticized for leaving a comment up, while immediately after Nugent scrambles to clean up DOZENS. From ONE post. And then in quote 3, notes that he isn’t going to remove an unspecified number of those comments, because Debate. But apparently Nugent’s Superior Tone makes it all okay. Somehow.
anteprepro @8,9:
All of that doesn’t even begin to address the fact that Nugent spends a great deal of energy scolding PZ for his tone, while apparently seeing no need to speak out against the vile shit people he’s happy to have commenting say on the ‘Pit. His comment policy vs PZ’s is one issue, but the larger one as I see it is the selectivity of his concern for civility. I mean, fuck, apparently it’s not okay to say bad things about Darwin or Feynman, but the ongoing harassment directed at people today is totes ignorable.
Morgan: In fucking deed. The final part of that relevant post makes it clear I’d say that Nugent has a really fucking clear and blatant double standard in that regard. Here is what he says:
The accusation is apparently outrageous. It is something that should not be said and something Nugent will not tolerate.
But what was PZ reacting to?
TRIGGER WARNING
PZ saying that this reflects callous indifference? OUTRAGEOUS.
The actual fucking minimization of child molestation because of Dawkins’ personal low levels of emotional distress from it? No issue, totally ignorable, nothing of note, nothing to see here, barely warrants a mention.
Yes, you are exactly right Morgan. Nugent’s selective focus is really, incredibly fucking telling.
In an unrelated forum, I saw a brilliant comment that I think is worth repeating here because it applies to Nugent:
“Dear Sir,
You are tone-trolling so hard, I am worried that you may begin to suffer carpal tunnel syndrome.
Love and respect,
your fellow tone-troll”
…hopefully people on the sidelines (or on the fence) will see how toxic the Pitters are.
Hopefully also people on the sidelines will see a significant number of atheists (the FTBers at least) openly condemning the sort of behavior that’s giving the movement a bad name.
My comments policy allows robust debate, but there are certain things I do not allow. This includes accusing people of lying, and attributing malign motivations to other people.
I notice Nugent fails to say he doesn’t allow lying or acting out of malign motivations. So it seems it’s perfectly okay to lie and be evil in his space, but it’s not okay to call out people who are lying or evil. Which makes his place a truly perfect haven for the most evil people on the Internet.
Hey Jadehawk, I’m not sure if you’d be interested but I had a twitter discussion with Nugent back in November which would fit nicely into Part 1 of your evidence. He was going on about his crusade for ethics in
gamingjournalism (in his blog post: “Impartial is a requirement for credible journalism.”) , so I interrogated him about what he saw the distinction between PZ giving a platform to Alison and the Toronto Star’s reporting about Jian Ghomeshi or the New York Times giving a platform to Dylan Farrow. Would he also characterise those two newspapers as irresponsible and unethical since none of the allegations against those two have been proven in court and at the time of publication neither had been charged? He pleaded ignorance and refused to comment. I asked him:To which he replied:
And then he linked me back to the post to which I was referring in the beginning.
I don’t know how Storify works but here’s the conversation: https://twitter.com/micknugent/status/529086420879966208
@PZ #1, Saad #7: Ditto.
@anteprepro #8: Nugent –
Holy fucking hell. Accusing people of lying is forbidden? But… what if they ARE lying? Like, demonstrably so? Dude is pure Right-wing Authoritarian.
Has anyone asked Nugent what his view would be if Alison Smith had put her account up on her own blog under her own name, and PZ had simply linked to it? Would he have regarded PZ as unethical for linking? Smith as unethical for speaking?
And, of course, thanks to Jadehawk for trudging through slyme so we don’t have to.
Ibis3 @ 14
This kind of shit drives me up a tree. Words mean things oh, Almighty Irish Wanker. “I’m not saying X, I’m just saying [words which functionally mean X]”. Arglbarglrawr.
I made a joke at Ophelia’s about PZM & MN engaging in fisticuffs in Cologne, but maybe I joked too soon. Time to bring out the Rocky theme?
This is a typical Slymepit tactic. Look at how they deny that Skep Tickle diagnosed PZ with a venereal disease, even though it’s right there in black and white. But because she didn’t say the words “I hereby officially diagnoze one PZ Myers with ghonorhea”, it doesn’t count as her saying PZ had a venereal disease.
Rank dishonesty. Except you’re not allowed to say that on Nugent’s blog, because you can’t know FOR SURE that the person is not just mistaken instead of dishonest, even when it’s clear as daylight that they are lying and being dishonest. TONE! UBER! ALS!
I hope Mick is proud. He’s attracted a bunch of slyme by playing right into their hands and making anyone unable to call them out on their lies and dishonesty.
Have they acknowledged the epic hypocrisy in celebrating this “disassociating” from PZ? After all they are the side who claimed “FTBullies” are “shunning” members of the atheist and skeptic communities with their odd blog post about some crappy thing supposed leader X said. Now there is a formal shunning that has occurred from them, of PZ. Didn’t they spend rather a lot of time saying that is a bad thing? I’m confused.
Anyway the genie is out of the bottle now,
excommunicationsdisassociations all around whenever a “leader” steps out of line. I, for one, welcome our Irish tone police.After reading through a bunch of the examples from the second link…
WHAT GROWN ADULT HAS TIME FOR THIS SHIT?
Who can spend years obsessing over some mildly popular bloggers to the point where it’s daily photoshops and all kinds of inside lingo all day, every day? I don’t get it. Do these people have families? Jobs? Friends?
They like to say you guys are just as bad, but I’ve never seen anything that approaches that level of obsessive discussion at FreeThoughtBlogs or Skepchick. Not even close.
“Mildly popular bloggers”…I AM INSULTED. DON’T YOU KNOW HOW IMPORTANT WE ARE? THE FATE OF HUMANITY RESTS ON SCOURGING US BLASPHEMERS.
PZ, I’ve run websites whose worst hours add up to your blog’s monthly traffic. (I know you’re kidding…mostly.)
Captaintripps @22:
Yeah, I find it funny that they claim that, but they don’t have any actual evidence to back it up. They pull out the use of the porcupine meme*, or the use of “die in a fire” *(which I really don’t think they’re opposed to) as if that is remotely similar to what they’ve been doing year after year after year.
*The former is not used any longer, by community consensus. The latter hasn’t been used-to the best of my knowledge-in years. Even *if* it were, that still doesn’t make FtB as bad as the Pit.
Mostly? I’m kidding entirely. Unlike those looney-toons dipshits who think I am the most serious problem in atheism today, I actually have a rational perspective on this blogging business.
Irish Atheist here. I used to be a supporter and paying member of Atheist Ireland until all this went down and Nugent went off the rails. He has poisoned the entire organisation with his willingness to defend abusers and provide a forum to known harassers. Not to mention his embarrassing brown nosing of our great “thought leaders” Dawkins, et al. It’s a real shame because many in Atheist Ireland have been doing great work regarding raising awareness about our ridiculous blasphemy law and the overwhelming control of our schools by the Catholic Church among a great many other abuses committed in the name of religion.
But just as the charitable acts of the Catholic Church do not outweigh the many abuses it allowed and in many ways fostered under its watch, AI does not get off the hook either. With the organisation choosing to side with Nugent in all this I had to question their commitment towards fighting against sexism and abuse within our community and for the well-being of atheists in general.
Do they only care about sexism and harassment when it comes to achieving their goals against religion only to turn a blind eye when it happens within our own community? I suspect that they do care but are unaware (and possibly unwilling to see) how their recent actions call that into question. The blind hypocrisy from an organisation, and from Nugent in particular, that has criticised the church for its culture of silence and abuse is rather appalling.
So when it came time for my membership to be renewed I emailed them asking that I be taken off their membership lists and I cited Michael Nugent’s behaviour and how it reflects on AI as my reason for leaving. Given Nugent’s insistence on professionalism and maintaining the right tone you will be shocked by the nature of the response I got from their head of Membership, Kevin Sheehan… Or more likely you won’t be shocked at all.
Basically all I got was this quote from the Chair of the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva:
… and a link to a related article on the AI website.
And that’s it.
There was no attempt to address my concerns or even acknowledge that I had any in the first place. No confirmation that my membership had been ended at my request. No “We’re sorry to see you go”. Just the quote and link that, to my mind, clearly implies (whether through simple foolishness or malicious design) that, by discontinuing my support, I no longer care about those horrendous injustices. As though AI is the only organisation fighting for justice in those cases.
I find it very difficult to believe the message was a good faith attempt to change my mind (how could anyone think think something as dismissive and insulting as that would bring me back into the fold?). Rather I suspect that it was a pathetically childish (not to mention wholly unprofessional) attempt to have the last word. It only served to confirm my initial conclusions about the organisation and my decision to leave.
It would be great if they could clean up their act. That we need coordinated efforts to root out religious privilege and abuses in this country is without question but I am not prepared to sacrifice my fellow atheists’ well being as well as my own integrity in the pursuit of such and it saddens me that AI has seemingly chosen to do so.
Captaintripps @22:
One thing I’ve noticed is that FTBullies and Skepchicks never go to the Slymepit. If the Pitters want to whine to us, they have to come here. Yet we’re the ones with an obsession.
I knew the Slymepit was full of remorseless, cruel shitheads but that 2nd link really did a fantastic job of showcasing the extreme hate and bigotry that is SOP for these arseholes. And fuck Nugent for clearly siding with the harassers and bigots of the Slymepit and silencing the victims of Shermer. A boot licking authoritarian if ever I seen one. Those rifts can’t get deep enough.
I think what really strikes me is just how gossipy this supposed manly man brigade is.
Keith Monaghan @27:
That response is fucking atrocious.
Thank you for speaking up.
I ban them as soon as I spot them, but it’s worse: they read this site obsessively, and regurgitate any words in the comments that they can twist to suit their ends. I don’t read the comments on my own site as thoroughly as they do.
Keith Monaghan: Thank you for that post. You made some great points, and that e-mail was really shitty. And also very consistent with the types of arguments Nugent has been making, about the Great Work that Atheist Ireland has been doing and how this makes it all the more important for him to lash out against Defamatory Smears (TM) against the glorious organization.
Al Dente: That is a pretty good point. Also, the Slymepit’s entire point of existence is to rant about the evils of FTB. Whereas FTBers mention them with contempt periodically and move on to other subjects. The asymmetry is built into the very bones of the sites.
w00dview: It is quite impressive. The real intriguing bit is that one of the pitters in there decides to come over and start leaving fresh samples of their idiocy and inhumanity right after that was posted. It is like Evidence Christmas.
Rey Fox: Not sure that was a good joke to go with (implies gossip is feminine).
Keith Monaghan @27, when I lived in Ireland I subscribed to the emails of AI but never gave them any money (except to attend the Women in Secularism conference which was brilliant). I moved back to the UK and unsubscribed from the emails but recently received an email asking me to renew my membership. I wrote back explaining that I was no longer in Ireland but even if I was I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with their organisation because they seem focused on petty infighting rather than the numerous issues they could have been focusing on, and they align themselves with people I have no time for (to put it politely).
I got a reply, which wasn’t something I was expecting, but I deleted it after skimming it as it was so completely irrelevant. Strangely enough, it sounds identical to your response. It’s almost as if they’re getting sufficient people complaining about their behaviour that they’ve had to create a standard response. . .
Keith Monaghan
The everlasting irony is that the horrors of the Laundries were, of course, NOT uncovered by the victims going to the police, but by going public and that most of those involved have never gone to a court of law.
When will AI stand up for the rights of poor nuns and priests who are being slandered by all those women in the media?
PZ @ 32: This is readily apparent to someone like me who is a frequent reader and rare commenter. Most people on “this side” seem to try to avoid initiating interaction with those folks as much as they can, even on Twitter, let alone discussing them. Sure, there are occasional mentions of pitters, but from my selection bias that seems to be on a rare occasion. Seems like a really shitty hobby to have.
That doesn’t seem to go the other way at all.
Anteprepro:
I seen that Kirbmarc character slyming up the other thread and misrepresenting the Elevatorgate incident. It was cute how he was tsking tsking Pharyngula for tone considering the horrible things he said in the 2nd link provided by Jadehawk as if we could not go and see what he was really like. Glad he got banned, these fuckers endlessly derail and are boring as all hell in addition to being horrible people in general.
Also, Irish atheist myself and AI can fuck off for all I care.
Al Dente: The Slymepitters really seem to mimic wingnuts in that regard in that 99% of their arguments are projection
I can’t believe I never noticed this contradiction.
But I guess it’s different when it’s about the RCC?
also, to all the Irish atheists who spoke out here (and to Giliell, and I guess myself too :-p ):
nuh-uh, you don’t exist, the “rift” is only some provincial American issue about the American speaker circuit.
Well, Monsignor Nugent has been uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter; perhaps enough of the other people involved in Atheist Ireland have had a glance at the Storify and have contacted him about their disgust for what he’s very publically linked them and their organisation to.
I’d like to hope it’ll have some effect on him – well, other than prompting another 50,000 word evasion piece.
Keith Monaghan @27
That’s a classic example of an infuriatingly common tactic. A person or organization exists to deal with a Big Problem. Everybody agrees the Big Problem is big and a problem, but some criticize the person/organization for doing something awful or associating with awful people. Instead of apologizing for their mistakes and trying to change the person/organization uses the Big Problem as a cudgel to smack down their critics. They claim their critics are distracting people from the Big Problem, that the critics care more about criticizing than dealing with the Big Problem, that their critics are aiding the Big Problem by refusing to march in silent lockstep with them.
Re #27, 34, 37:
See PZ, you ARE hurting AI’s mission! If only you Nugent didn’t out himself as a hypocritical authoritatian due to obsessing over you, he wouldn’t have lost those members!
Wowbagger @40:
He’s probably only being quiet bc it takes time to write a 50K word evasion piece. Give him a little more time.
Fantastic job by Jadehawk!
Incidentally, I had a very similar reaction to the one Keith described above when trying to unsubscribe from the Australian atheist foundation. No confirmation, no “sorry to see you go”, just a form mail with some nondescript mission statement iirc. Maybe they had no time for a proper reply because they were watching Jim Jefferies videos.
It’s almost like there is a pattern with these atheist orgs being run by fuckheads….Well, at least Nugent never threatened to beat me up for disagreeing.
I don’t really see a way out of this problem with movement atheism now, because at this stage most of the good people seem to have turned their back, and are watching the orgs dig themselves in deeper from the safety of their twitter feeds. Me included.
Actual, the Nuge has been on Twitter since I wrote that post; wonder of wonders: it looks like he’s managed to do an entire interview without once mentioning PZ or using the word ‘smear’.
Michael Nugent By Louisa Moss, PRO, Vegetarian Society of Ireland
I know how hard that was for you, Jadehawk, good job and thank you!
Highly unlikely. I’d be surprised if they even bother to read these, even if I linked the one they asked for on their thread on SW’s public wall.
Keith Monaghan @27
That answer is de facto another form of “Dear muslima” – trying to deflect from problem x by pointing to bigger problem y. Funny (not) how these supposedly superior rationalists who outrank FTBullies by miles in reasoning and logic fall so often back to this one logical fallacy. Maybe they think that because Dawkins deployed it, it is not fallacious anymore?
*Reads over Storifys and comment thread*
In conclusion, Michael Nugent can go fuck a power socket.
Anteprepro @ 33
Yeah I noticed. It’s one of the things I felt confirmed that the problems with AI were not limited to just Nugent. Others within the organisation seem to share his mindset.
Sarah00 @ 34
I thought that may be the case myself and, if it is, then for a standard response it is remarkably awful. Wholly unprofessional and very unbecoming of an organisation that aims to be taken seriously on the international stage.
Interestingly enough, when I sent my original message I used “Membership” as my subject line. I just noticed that in the response I recieved the subject line was “Re: {possible spam} Membership.” Does that mean that they thought that my message was just spam? Because if that’s the case it makes their response all the more baffling. Wouldn’t the correct course of action then be to enquire as to whether I had actually sent it and actually wished to terminate my membership? But no, that didn’t happen. Also, given your experience, it makes me wonder whether they automatically assume that any email renouncing membership and/or being critical of AI is most likely just spam because No True Atheist would want to renounce their membership of AI, amiright?
Giliell @35 and Jadehawk @38
I think that’s what infuriates me the most about all of this. The more familiar you become with the overall context the more the hypocrisy becomes so glaringly obvious that it burns.
Samihawkins @41 and Charly @48
Yup, “Dear Muslima” (and it’s many variations) seems to be popping up all over the place. Or maybe I’m just recognising it more often. Either way it’s a damning indictment of the reasoning ability of a certain noisome subset of atheists and “skeptics”.
Awww. I never received a response to my request to be taken off their mailing list after they asked me to ‘renew’ my membership.
I’ve never been a member either, but attended EWTS two years ago.
Yes, you of the 19th century moustache, and me too! Little did we know….And to think we sat with PZ and Nugent until late to talk STUFF. (I have the pics to prove it, also that Maryam fell asleep). Although I have to say meeting all those energetic feminists there was absolutely invigorating, and worth the insane amount of money spent getting there and attending.
@35 : Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
23 April 2015 at 3:42 pm
I have said it before, but Mick Nugent acts like Atheist Ireland’s version of Timothy Dolan regarding the hypocrisy of discussing sexual abuse. Victims came out publicly regarding their sexual abuse by Catholic priests which prompted more victims to come out regarding their abuse. I guess Mick and company prefer the back channel of warning that occurred before Jen publicly mentioned the back channel?
Maybe Mick wants a lively debate on what constitutes rape via an International atheist convention in order to draw up the appropriate community responses for sexually harassment and rape within the atheist community? Of course, the ultimate prohibition is never go public with accusations. NEVER EVER make public accusations.
I think that there is a word / phrase that one can use to describe the above sentiment?
It would be tragicomic if Nugent drew the difference between victims of the Laundries going public vs. sexual assault victims going public at “well, they didn’t name the nuns that abused them by name”.
One thing that gets me about the Pit is that they claim to just be hang-out forum and pretend like they aren’t all about the nasty misogyny and other bigotries, but…
Rebecc**t T**tson
That is literally how the Slymepit got its start. That is the whole fucking point of the Slymepit. Right there.
And Nugent is, I guess, perfectly okay with this.
(Side note: am I the only one who mentally puts “Ted” in front of “Nugent” here every time I see it?)
(This comment is just for subscribing. Feel free to delete it.)
Whirlwitch@49,
I agree Nugent is a hypocritical fellow-traveller of abusers and a victim-silencing rape apologist, but please avoid anything that could look like an invitation to self-harm. PZ and the Horde (has no-one taken this excellent band-name?) reached a near-consensus some years ago to discourage such rhetoric, whoever the target. That’s why Slymers in search of “I’m rubber, you’re glue.” material have to go so far back. Thanks.
I’m still reeling from Nugent explicitly saying “there are certain things I do not allow. This includes accusing people of lying, and attributing malign motivations to other people.”
Firstly, because he’s obviously doing both of those things himself; he’s accusing all Shermer’s accusers of lying, and he’s attributing malign motivations to PZ.
Secondly, because there exist on this planet some people who do lie, and some people who are malign. How can you possibly outlaw all accusations of things that people do actually do?
Thirdly, because if you sat down and thought to yourself, “How can I make my site a happy haven for the mendacious and the malignant?”, what would you do? You would institute a policy that nobody there can be accused of being mendacious and malignant! The liars and the horrible would come flocking in, safe and secure in the knowledge that they can’t be called out for their behaviour. Oh look, there are the ‘pitters on Nugent’s site.That was predictable. You might as well start a club with a rule that “no member can be accused of pissing on the carpet.” Give it a couple of days and you’re going to baffled by your squishy, malodorous, yellow carpet.
Nugent is a priggish little pecksniff who values the appearance of civility more highly than truth or justice.