Two white dudes spend an hour talking about how racist and sexist it is to criticize other white dudes

It was a painful 50 minutes, but I listened to the entirety of Peter Boghossian and Stefan Molyneux patting each other on the back, in this video, Feminists vs. Atheists: The Death of Rational Discourse. I think you can tell from the title that there is not much hope for rational discussion here, and from the two speakers, you know it’s going to be awful. What I did was listen while I was engaged in some other work, and just extract a few paraphrases of the conversation now and then, when they said something particularly tiresome.

And really, that’s what it’s all about: reciting cliches at each other without thought, repeating bogus accusations we’ve all heard a thousand times before. These are not people who think very deeply about much of anything.

So what I’ve done below is scribble down the general tenor of the discussion. This is not a transcript. I’ve included some time points so if you really want to, you can go back and check on all the context.

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Yay! Sexism in science is over!

The New York Times has declared that Academic Science Isn’t Sexist. What a relief! The authors are reporting the results of a broad study of many different parameters of the career pipeline, and are happy to report that there are no problems in academia. None at all, no sir.

Our analysis reveals that the experiences of young and midcareer women in math-intensive fields are, for the most part, similar to those of their male counterparts: They are more likely to receive hiring offers, are paid roughly the same (in 14 of 16 comparisons across the eight fields), are generally tenured and promoted at the same rate (except in economics), remain in their fields at roughly the same rate, have their grants funded and articles accepted as often and are about as satisfied with their jobs. Articles published by women are cited as often as those by men. In sum, with a few exceptions, the world of academic science in math-based fields today reflects gender fairness, rather than gender bias.

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I guess if enough whisper, it gets loud enough to hear

The Toronto Star has interviews with eight women who were abused in various ways by Jian Ghomeshi, and here’s a personal story about the conspiracy of silence. Almost everyone knew about Jian, almost everyone whispered warnings about Jian, but no one would stand up and shout about Jian, so Jian thrived.

That’s depressing, the way it always works.

Death threats are bad, but…

Andrew Sullivan commits a classic rhetorical error.

So let me make a few limited points. The tactics of harassment, threats of violence, foul misogyny, and stalking have absolutely no legitimate place in any discourse. Having read about what has happened to several women, who have merely dared to exercise their First Amendment rights, I can only say it’s been one of those rare stories that still has the capacity to shock me. I know it isn’t fair to tarnish an entire tendency with this kind of extremism, but the fact that this tactic seemed to be the first thing that some gamergate advocates deployed should send off some red flashing lights as to the culture it is defending.

All well and good, but…there’s a “but” coming. It doesn’t really need to be a “but”. And unfortunately, Sullivan throws out a real stinker of a “but”.

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