Neither bullied nor cajoled

Michael Nugent has been accused of being “bullied or cajoled” into his support for women in the atheist movement. It’s strange that people think a small group of bloggers have that much power and influence, and it’s also obvious that anyone making that accusation doesn’t know Nugent at all. So he has written a post denying that he has been pressured, and repeating the seriousness of the problem.

There is also the wider context of sexism in general. If we as men faced this pattern of sick online abuse simply because of our gender, I suspect that we would urgently take action to tackle the problem. If we fail to take the same action when women face this problem, our inaction reinforces prejudice and discrimination against women generally. We may not mean to do that, and we may not even be aware of it, but the impact of our inaction remains the same.

Tackling sexism is a complex problem, with no magic answers. We should rigorously analyze the extent of sexism in our communities, both online and offline, and we should test and refine the best ways to eradicate it. But we must not deny that it exists, or reinforce it with prejudice and discrimination. Instead we should actively work to create inclusive, safe and supportive communities, in which we can live together as equals, regardless of our race, gender, sexuality or ability levels.

And we should work together on this so that, ultimately, we never again have a fifteen year old atheist girl excitedly posting online about her Christmas present of a Carl Sagan book, then reading crude comments about adult men wanting to have sex with her, and having to respond: “Dat feel when you’ll never be taken seriously in the atheist/ scientific/ political/ whatever community because you’re a girl. :c ”

I can tell you why he takes this position, though: because he is a decent human being. That also tells you what I think of the people who oppose this new emphasis on equality in the atheist/skeptic movements.

The company you keep

It’s a new year, and Thunderf00t hasn’t changed a bit — he has a new video where he’s apparently ranting about how feminism is poisoning atheism, which I haven’t watched, so I can’t judge. But there are hints that it’s more of the same. It’s been picked up and praised by A Voice For Men.

Here are a few of the amusing reactions that the video elicited from that gang. Well, they would be amusing if they didn’t testify to a deep hatred of women.

Well, now I look upon these women as nothing but Clowns who have deliberately allowed themselves to brainwashed into believing stupid things like the Earth is flat or some other stupid crap. The vomit that spews from their mouths is not just stupid, it is absolutely laughable. I now sit here laughing my head off at what I read. In my own social movements in life, I laugh at the idiotic dialog of the females I come into contact with. It is unbelievable the level of childish trash that issues forth from the mouths of women whose ages range from 20 all the up to nearly 70.

Women, WILL NEVER BE EQUAL TO MEN!

I don’t care how they put it, because the simple overwhelming fact throughout the history of Mankind, is that women have NEVER been equal to men and they never will be.

We are on this earth for completely different reasons and “never the twain shall meet.” (thanks Kipling, such a great saying)

That’s from a self-described orthodox Catholic, raging about believing in “stupid crap”. This same commenter is concerned that the Catholic church is a liberal, feminist organization.

I am angry at what feminism has done to all belief structures. They hijack everything to change it to be their own. As I said previously, the Liberal organisation of the Catholic Church is overrun by feminists and has been responsible for the spreading of this disease throughout the modern world.

And then there are the traditional excuses for “manginas” coming from people who are unable to think of a single reason for women other than gratifying the penis.

Just another classic case of feminists colonising a formerly male-dominated arena, then attempting to change its rules (unwritten or otherwise) to better suit themselves. If that alienates men, so much the better (and better yet if it criminalizes men).

And, as usual, some of the worst offenders are the mangina-enablers, collaborating in a transparent attempt to score some feminazi ass. *shudder*

Just for laughs, there are a few there who don’t like atheism, either, and really detest Richard Dawkins.

I wasn’t criticising Atheists, I was criticising Dawkins.

I personally think the man is an idiot. I have watched some of his interviews and all he does is drop bombs in conversation, by demanding his religious opponents prove their points, but I have not seen him prove anything himself. Indeed he is a bit like watching feminists in an interview trying to survive the argument when it’s obvious they lack substance.

For some reason, none of this entices me to watch Thunderf00t’s video.

By the way, I learned a new acronym! The MRAs have all these weird little code words I have to look up to figure out what the heck they’re talking about: the new one is NAFALT, or “Not all feminists are like that”. It’s a condemnatory phrase: you are bad if you recognize the range of thought in the feminist community and don’t lump them all into one evil long-haired, smooth-skinned, bosomy chimera of wickedness.

Now I’m waiting for the first MRA to show up and claim I’m cherry-picking the comments, saying NAMRAALT.

Don’t Tell Women What to Wear, Tell Men not to Rape

There have been some horrific stories coming out of India — a place where rape and molestation are considered perfectly normal acts by many men. The latest terrible event was a young woman, raped with a metal rod that shredded her internal organs and resulted in her death, all for the ‘crime’ of being out after 10pm — an outcome excused by ‘experts’ because she resisted.

The promising sign, at least, is that people are marching in the streets to protest Indian rape culture. Avicenna was there, taking pictures; you should be following that guy, don’t you think?

Piero Corsi continues that fine Catholic tradition…

…the tradition of recognizing the Satanic nature of women’s existence. He apparently authored a little tract that he posted as a Christmas message.

"How often do we see girls and mature women going around scantily dressed and in provocative clothes?" Piero Corsi said in a Christmas message posted on the door of his church in the small town of San Terenzio in northwest Italy.

"They provoke the worst instincts, which end in violence or sexual abuse. They should search their consciences and ask: did we bring this on ourselves?" it read.

The leaflet, a copy of which was posted online sparking a wave of outrage across the country, said the 118 women killed in acts of domestic violence in Italy in 2012 had pushed men to their limits.

"Is it possible that all of a sudden men have gone mad? We don’t believe it," Corsi wrote.

"The fact is that women are increasingly provocative, they become arrogant, they believe themselves to be self-sufficient and end up exacerbating the situation," he said.

"Children are abandoned to their own devices, homes are dirty, meals are cold or fast food, clothes are filthy," he added.

…

"I don’t know whether you’re a queer or not, but what do you feel when you see a naked woman?" he asked a reporter for Rai Radio.

"Are women themselves not causing harm by unveiling themselves like this?"

I’m one of those not-queer people, and yeah, I do feel rather tingly when I see a naked woman…but it doesn’t inspire me to kill them, or abuse them, or commit violence and blame it on women’s bodies.

Must be because I’m not a Catholic.

Is innumeracy a prerequisite to being an MRA?

These numbers do not add up. A redditor is claiming that women are after men’s precious bodily fluids, because the average annual child support payment is $5,150. “Be careful with your sperm. Your very freedom is at stake,” he says.

But this makes no sense. What woman would steal sperm to get impregnated for a lousy $5000/year payout? That’s nowhere near what it costs to raise a child, not counting the costs in time and worry and all the responsibilities of taking care of the little pain-in-the-butt. Yet somehow, all this guy sees in women is venality — that they’ve got a way of milking $5K/year out of him, as if having sex with him is like buying a lottery ticket for her.

I had no idea that child support costs were so low, though. Women, you are being robbed by this system. Don’t you wish you could just have a baby, then pay up a measly $5000/year to greet a well-adjusted, mature, interesting young adult 18 years later?

Also, warning: be careful with his sperm. Pregnancy is just the start of a lifetime of servitude for you, and you should only do it willingly and with some appreciation for the non-monetary rewards.

I wonder what lesson Joshua Becker learned?

Becker is one of those guys who thinks it is fun to sexually harass women over the internet. Only this time, the woman fought back smartly and rationally. And tracked down her harasser and threatened to send Joshua Becker’s mother the screencaps of the chat.

I suspect, though, that the only lesson he learned was to do a better job of concealing his identity when he’s demanding that women give him sexual favors, since his response to being told to stop and that his stupid comments would be made public was “newsflash: your fat as fuck”.

Yeah, I think I can tell who comes off as the intelligent participant in that conversation.

Once again, the Lord has made my enemies ridiculous

When I asked anti-feminists to support their opinions, I had expectations from past experience that they would fail miserably. I didn’t realize how badly they would flop, however. 760+ comments, and not one could present a reasonable argument: no explanation for why they oppose feminism, no evidence that feminism is bad, but lots of non sequiturs and emotionalism. I’m beginning to think that this anti-feminism stuff resembles a religious cult, and doesn’t belong in either skepticism or atheism.

Wait! While people were commenting pointlessly, Al Stefanelli made a video. I’m sure that delivered.

Nope, sorry, it’s an angry ranty video that accuses FtB of being a nazi-like anti-caucasion anti-man cult that is driving people away from atheism — there’s no evidence given for this remarkable assertion, and he couldn’t even be bothered to deliver any specifics on what horrible awful evil things we’ve done to have such extreme effects on the entirety of atheism, but poor mad Al is very upset about it all.

I think it’s settled. That fringe mob of people screaming at FtB because they’re so danged feminist aren’t rational. They’re just stupid assholes.

Maybe I should take that back. Stephanie has just posted a series of twitter comments rationally rebutting her ideology.

<reads comments; views animated gifs>

Whoops, no. I think my opinion of them just plummeted further, something I hadn’t thought possible.

Time with those we love is too often taken for granted

I’m a fortunate fellow. I’m spending Christmas in Madison with my wife and kids, at my daughter’s house (so I’m even luckier — she’s doing all the work!) It’s going to be a good calm pleasant Christmas, with calls back to the family in Seattle as well…and we all accept and love each other.

It does, however, make me sad that not everyone gets the full and desired consolation of family.

An experiment: why do you despise feminism?

Michael Shermer is feeling victimized, and is now seeing persecutors under the bed, I think. He posted a complaint about Ophelia writing a post that discussed subliminal biases. It’s a bizarre and paranoid whine — apparently you’re not ever supposed to criticize a skeptic, or you’re carrying out a witch hunt.

The feminist witch hunt continues! Ophelia Benson and PZ Myers have caught me again being a sexist: Trolling through my Scientific American columns Ophelia discovered that in my October column I report on Leonard Mlodinow’s book Subliminal, in which he reports on studies that report on people’s report of how they feel about politicians based on various subliminal cues, one of which is the pitch of the voice, lower judged as more truthful than higher (although looks matter even more). Guess what? My reporting of Leonard’s reporting of the studies’ reporting of subjects’ reports makes ME a sexist! Wiiiiiiitch. Seriously. I couldn’t make this up (note PZ’s comment on my own voice!)

Go ahead and read the Butterflies & Wheels post that hurt Shermer’s feelings; nowhere does she accuse him of being a sexist. She does suggest that he seems oblivious to the fact that a bias favoring the authority of deeper voices is also going to be a bias against women, but it’s more an affirmation of his point that we have these unconscious prejudices.

As for my terrible, awful, evil comment: I pointed out that Shermer isn’t exactly a baritone himself. That wasn’t an accusation or an insult; I don’t have a deep voice, either. My point was that you don’t have to have a voice like a foghorn to be a leader.

It’s a truly delusional state he’s worked himself into, and now he’s seeing witch hunts with himself as the target everywhere he looks (probably abetted by those slime pit denizens who see every cross-eyed look and every criticism as a sign that someone is about to get shivved by the all-powerful FtB mafia, and flood twitter and blog comments with such knee-jerk reactions). It’s a shame.

But that’s not what’s got me curious. Notice what else he does? He uses “feminist” as an insult, a very common phenomenon. It has me mystified.

And if you read that facebook post, the comments are similar: mobs of people having fits over “feminists”, sounding like Republicans fretting over “communists”. Here’s a subset of the shorter complaints:

Also, don’t worry about moronic misandrists.
True feminists (those wanting equality and NOT superiority for women) do not behave like this.

Just look at what happened to Thunderf00t when he dared question the pseudo-feminist dogma.

Welcome to The hysterical totalitarian feminist left….(just ask Lawrence Summers)

The death of Hitchens and this feminist clusterfuck have ruined the Atheist community.

Skepticism (capital “A”) is over for me. The movement has been co-opted by people with an agenda. Sad.

Trying to creep feminism into the skeptic movement is total nonsense. Tea Party was bought out by social conservatives, Occupy Wall Street taken over by hippies, and now the skeptic AND atheist movement is being bought out by radical liberals. It’s a shame.

It is a shame that people like PZ Myers and his ilk are so quick to abandon reason when their feminist religion tells them what nonsense to spew.

This shit is getting really annoying. Please ban all those feminist morons from skeptic conferences. Its a dogmatic belief system not based on evidence, dismissive of evidence provided to them and generally pretty aggressive towards other people for no real reason. How can they call themselves skeptics?

(That one’s a favorite: a dogmatic, dismissive, aggressive comment declaring that you can’t be a true skeptic if you’re dogmatic, dismissive, and aggressive. Own goal!)

I have to laugh at this other non sequitur that popped up:

Pz lost his mind after he went vegetarian. I don’t know what Ophelia is thinking

Well, vegetarianism isn’t associated with insanity as far as I know, and also, little awkward fact, I’m not a vegetarian, although I have reduced my meat consumption.

But anyway, I started to realize something: I don’t understand how these people think at all — they’re completely alien. Regarding feminism with contempt is a bit like regarding science with contempt: it’s incomprehensible to me, and I’m wondering if they really understand what they are throwing away.

So let’s try an experiment. Let’s hear from some of these anti-feminists. I’d like them to comment here and explain themselves, and to do so a little more deeply than just reiterating dogmatic excuses. If you think feminism is a religion, explain why, and be specific. If you think feminism is unsupported by the evidence, explain what evidence opposes the principles of feminism. If you think it’s wrong for the skeptic movement to have a social agenda, explain what you think it should be doing that has no social implications.

Most importantly, if you think feminism, that is equality for men and women and opposition to cultural institutions that perpetuate inequities, is irrational, let’s see you explain your opposition rationally.

This could go a couple of ways: there could be dead silence as the anti-feminists wilt under pressure to honestly explain themselves, or there could be an eruption of the usual shrieking misogyny, or there might actually be a few who try to explain themselves. If it’s the latter, the rest of you behave yourselves — pretend you’ve got a cockroach under the microscope and try to probe it to figure out what makes it work, and don’t just try to crush it under the heel of your shoe, OK?

I’m a bit curious myself. I’ve had these sorts of conversations with creationists, and it’s always like wandering through an alien world; let’s try to figure out what weird things are going on inside the skulls of anti-feminists.