Oh, that guy

Rebecca Watson is going off to China, and she’s already getting veiled threats from some guy called ShenzhenTony. Who? Rebecca did some sleuthing, found out his real name is Tony Ryan, and further, discovered that he’d been formerly known around the web as Coffee Loving Skeptic…and I remember that ass! He was at the center of one of the more surreal bits of psycho MRA drama back in 2012. Coffee Loving Skeptic was one of many skeptics who totally lost their mind over ElevatorGate, who raged at Rebecca Watson, and flung bits of spittle my way on Twitter.

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I’ve just OD’ed on irony

In yet another article about obsessed harassing fuckwit “elevatorgate”, we get an interesting revelation.

In the Google doc briefly viewed by Mother Jones, elevatorgate wrote that he does not use his real name on social media because doing so could make him a target of harassment.

Yeah, we might storify him or photoshop his face into compromising images or send non-stop email notifications to him — you know, the stuff he does to his targets.

Oh gob, evo psych again?

You may have already heard that Ed Clint, a guy who has been dedicated to bashing Skepchick and Freethoughtblogs for over a year, has cloaked his biases in a pretense of objectivity and written a long critique of one of Rebecca Watson’s talks, accusing her of being a science denialist and anti-science because she so thoroughly ridiculed pop evo psych. The excesses and devious misrepresentations in that post were painful to read, as was the revelation that Clint is throwing away his career by jumping on the evo psych bandwagon in graduate school (I frequently advise students on good disciplines to pursue in grad school; bioinformatics and genomics have a great future ahead of them, as does molecular genetics and development, but evolutionary psychology is one I would steer them well clear of, as a field that has not and will not ever contribute much of substance. The good papers in evo psych are the ones that use the tools of population genetics well and avoid the paleolithic mumbo-jumbo altogether).

Fortunately, Stephanie Zvan has already torn into his ‘analysis’, showing that it’s mostly misplaced and misleading. I’m relieved, because I’m going to be tied up for a while, and I found Clint’s response to be extremely irritating.

One think that particularly rankled is that Clint puts up a pretense of being objective and that his criticisms are nothing personal; bizarrely, he even puts up a photo of himself taken with Rebecca Watson as if that were evidence that he’s not biased against her. What he doesn’t mention is that he’s been sharpening an axe since the “elevatorgate” episode; together with a disgruntled ex-FtB blogger who left in a bizarre huff over not getting enough respect, he founded a competing network (which is fine, of course) which they proceeded to stock almost entirely with writers with an an anti-FtB and strongly anti-Skepchick slant — I’ve had to laugh at the lineup which looks largely drawn from the ranks of the Slymepit, a notorious anti-feminist/anti-Rebecca Watson hate site, and my list of banned commenters. And looking at the people who comment there, again, they seem to be largely driven by hatred of Watson and feminism in general.

Again, that’s fine — we have biases here at FtB, too, in that we tend to be pro-feminist and when we founded it, I specifically told Ed Brayton that we needed to be sure to include more than just old white guys like us — but what isn’t fine is to lie about your motives. Any day, I’ll prefer open antagonism from an avowed enemy than fair and dissembling words from an Iago.

For example, after telling people to avoid insults in the comments, this is what Clint has to say:

Although PZ’s behavior is unfortunate, I would urge a modicum of compassion. I believe he lashes out because he feels so small and vulnerable, and because he is. I can think of few other reasons for such unprovoked barking. He is making a mistake in coming after me. He will be wounded by it. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, and that we could just have a calm chat about it.

Condescending and smarmy, isn’t he? Ick. He won’t call me names, he’ll just call me “small and vulnerable.” Man, I despise that kind of sliminess.

I’ll follow up on Stephanie’s post later this week, when my schedule calms down, and what I intend to do is dig into the substantive flaws in both Clint’s hatchet job and in that awful discipline of evolutionary psychology. Seriously, in the reviews Clint recommended to give the background on what evo psych is, I was appalled — do these people have any understanding of modern evolutionary theory at all? I think the answer is clearly “no.”

Around FtB

Hey gang, what’s happening?

  • Lilandra blasphemes. The kitten picture is unforgivable.

  • Martin Wagner talks about the Austin bat cruise, among many other things. I tried, but I just couldn’t make it this year. Next time! I’d like to be shat upon by a bat.

  • Brianne Bilyeu has a report from Louise Kellar about the Creation Evidence Expo in Indianapolis. Guess what? There wasn’t any evidence!

  • Frederick Sparks criticizes the biases of science. Ouch.

  • Ophelia Benson is concerned about the direction SCA is taking, and recounts some events at this past weekend’s HFA conference. Hey, I was there! Also of note: Ellen Beth mentioned that the obsessed clown posting as “ElevatorGate” was specifically excluded from the event.

  • Greta Christina weighs traditional vs. DIY publishing. I can tell you that traditional publishing sure is slower.

  • Jason Thibeault discusses the proper methods of hunting witches.

  • Maryam Namazie features the FEMEN this month in the Nude Photo Revolutionary Calendar.

  • Mano Singham discusses political purity. Is your presidential candidate a perfect paragon? I know mine isn’t.

  • Steven Andrew notes that arctic temperatures are now higher thant they were in the Medieval Warm Period. There goes another denialist excuse!

I’m ready to be divisive

I can understand how the strain gets to people. I’m a white guy; I’ve got it easy. I do get a steady stream of hate-mail and vituperative noise in my in-box, but I’ve been getting that for 20 years (usenet gave me a leg up on most of you) and my skin is pretty damned thick by now. But what gets me most right now is shame. Embarrassment at being associated with some of these ‘skeptics’ and atheists — a painful shame at being male. Even the polite ones who think they’re making a rational point make me cringe. Look at this little note from JoeNietzsche:

PZ, you’ve clearly misrepresented the function of his “forms in triplicate” argument. What he is doing there is called exaggeration for effect. No one, not him, his readers or anyone else actually believes this is what anyone at FTB would demand of him. He is simply making the point that obtaining consent would ruin the moment. Social interaction is messy, even the deeply conscientious sort. Now, I had no dog in this fight but this, along with your stream of ad homs, have made up my mind. :(

My nonexistent freakin’ deity. “Obtaining consent would ruin the moment.” For whom? How oblivious can you get?

I can understand why Jen is taking a break. These assholes are exhausting. It’s not just the vileness, it’s the godawful stupidity of people who otherwise claim to be on my side. They aren’t. I’m on the side of humanism, of men and women, for science and the environment, for equality and justice, and I’m against the troglodytes who make excuses for treating women as ambulatory receptacles for their “moment”. Screw ’em.

So one thing we can do is let people cycle back away from the front and take a little R&R, and then those of us still on the line can follow Rebecca Watson’s suggestion: double-down, everyone.

I suspect that if everyone steps up and speaks just as loudly as Jen did, there’s no way the assholes would have enough time in their day to bully all of us. But I get that not everyone can do that. I can do it, though, so until everybody steps up, I’ll just try to be twice as loud in the hopes of acting as some kind of asshole lightning rod.

Battle on, horde!

Holy crap. Via Ophelia, Marty Robbins brings up an interesting point: some of these assholes show a greater level of obsession than Dennis Markuze. Look at the pile of stuff one jerk, “Elevatorgate”, compiled in one day. Get help, Chris. You’re sick.

Sexism is a problem we should address

Let us dig up a grave and gnaw on some old bones. USA Today has just now gotten around to an article on that elevatorgate tempest. Fortunately, I think it takes the right tack; it takes the perspective that sexism isn’t particularly a problem of the atheist community, but that what’s going on is that the atheist community is taking the problem seriously and is trying to address it.

Yet many, including Watson, say Elevatorgate is less a calamity and more an opportunity to welcome women and other minorities into a community that’s long been dominated by white men.

“The majority of emails I have gotten have been from men who said, ‘I had no idea what women in this community went through, and thank you for opening my eyes,'” Watson said. “There has actually been a net benefit coming out of this that I think has made everything worthwhile.”

No one is suggesting the freethought community is more sexist than other segments of society — after all, the most famous American atheist, the late Madalyn Murray O’Hair, was a woman. [And what about Ellen Johnson, Margaret Downey, Susan Jacoby, and so many other atheist leaders? –pzm]

Nonetheless, the incident has struck a chord, perhaps because atheists and other skeptics pride themselves on reason and logic — intellectual exercises that theoretically compute to equality.

They’ve got a few quotes from me in there, too. I tried to make the point that whenever I’ve brought this subject up with meeting organizers, they’ve been very receptive, recognize the problem, and try to deal with it. What this one incident did was expose a small, fringe group of obsessive sexists who suddenly had the privileges they took for granted questioned…and oh, how they did squeal, and continue to squeal.

The bad news is found in the comments. It’s as if most of the commenters didn’t even bother to read the article. The comments section at USA Today is a grisly sight — I don’t recommend it unless you’re strong of stomach. A few samples:

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