I somehow stumbled across this essay from the great Molly Ivins on Camille Paglia. It made me happy.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I somehow stumbled across this essay from the great Molly Ivins on Camille Paglia. It made me happy.
This youtube comedian, Sam Pepper, made an awful little video of him startling women by pinching their butts (yeah, humor); the women look uncomfortable and unhappy with this inappropriate behavior, but Pepper giggles madly, so it was funny to someone. It was shocking, really, that he seemed to think distressing people was amusing.
So Laci Green wrote him an open letter — a very polite, too polite, letter describing what was objectionable, since he’s apparently not clever enough to see it himself, and asking him to stop (Ophelia linked to the letter yesterday).
You’ll never guess how Sam Pepper has responded.
Every single goddamned organization with any kind of social presence at all seems to be afflicted with the problem of sexual harassment — including, now, library conferences. Librarians! I love librarians, they always seem to be the most sensible people, and here it comes, a familiar story. Two people, Lisa Rabey and Nina de Jesus called out a guy named Joe Murphy for his predatory behavior at library conferences, in a post titled Time to Talk About Community Accountability. Tell me if you’ve heard this one before.
Atheists have been fighting stereotypes for as long as I’ve been one, and longer: that we’re all Communists, that we’re Vulcan robots, that we’re amoral and likely to rape small children (no, ma’am, you’ve confused us with Catholic priests), that we all think we’re so much better than everyone else. Thanks to the behavior of our Great Atheist Thinky Bigbrain Leaders, though, another one is taking currency fast: that we are all MRA-style anti-woman freaks.
You’ve seen Emma Watson’s speech to the UN. Go ahead, watch it again. It’s worth it, and it’ll highlight the contrast with 4chan’s reaction to it.
Members of 4chan’s b board lost their very minds over this, and embarked on a campaign against Watson almost immediately.
So far, this has included a threat to release hacked nude pictures of her in the manner that other celebrity photos have been leaked over the past two months–complete with a sad little countdown website titled Emma You Are Next. Although this is almost definitely a hoax, it is an incredibly sick one.
Excellent talk at the UN.
She wrote to me to explain that some of the speculation going around about her assault by Shermer was incorrect, and gave me permission to post her clarifications.
Christina Hoff Sommers came out with a video a short while ago about the oppression of those poor boys who play video games — the feminists are out to get them, don’t you know? — and it was pretty bad. Right away she asserts that people who play games that aren’t violent and sexist aren’t really “gamers”, so she defines away everyone who might disagree with her. Par for the course for that anti-feminist — she’s absurdly illogical.
I couldn’t get through the whole video, but Jonathan Mann did it — by autotuning everything and singing a musical counterpoint. It’s hilarious. Listen, especially if you already hate autotuning.
Hope Jahren explains that Science Has a Sexual Assault Problem — fieldwork exposes women to terrible risks.
Anita Sarkeesian was given an award at a game developer’s conference last spring, and now we learn that assholes tried to shut it down with a bomb threat. Seriously, dudes? This is how you deal with critics?
