Who the hell is @Becky_Garrison?

And how can a journalist have so little regard for the truth? Stephanie Zvan documents her bizarre behavior — apparently she was deeply offended by the fact that someone briefly put her on the block_bot a few months ago, and now she’s fully bought into this myth that FreethoughtBlogs is out to get her by sending our shadowy agents at the block_bot and Atheism+ to harass her.

I have no idea who she is, nor do I care.

But I did learn something from her ill-founded accusations and weird evasions, I think.

There are people who get really, really upset if you don’t pay attention to them — it’s an ego thing. I heard secondhand, for instance, that Thunderf00t had triumphantly announced that he was teaching me a lesson by blocking me on twitter — to which I could only say, “WTF?” I have no problem at all with people blocking me, or not reading my blog, or deleting my comments elsewhere. I have no sense of entitlement that says anyone is required to pay any attention to me. Go ahead!

So the block_bot is of zero concern to me. I could be put on it, and I’d shrug my shoulders and bravely soldier on. I don’t use it, so I’m doubly unconcerned. Atheism+ has some good goals, I think it’s great that they’re promoting their cause, but if I were banned there (and I could be, someday — I’ve been criticized by people on Atheism+ before), I would be unperturbed, and I’d still think what they were trying to do is good.

I’ve said all that before. It’s not what I learned from Becky Garrison’s disconnected discomfiture. I got some insight into a tactic being used.

These Ego Warriors are desperately trying to connect the dots. They don’t like being on the block_bot, and they have this vague unease about not fitting in with the community on Atheism+ — so they must be the same thing! Throw them into the pot!

And then FreethoughtBlogs…it has a loud voice, it has members who share some common ideals with Atheism+ — never mind that no one on FtB has anything to do with the block_bot, and I don’t know that any of us even use it, and none of us seem to be particularly active on the Atheism+ forums, even if Greta and Jen were instrumental in inspiring a greater focus on social justice — toss them in the pot, too! Anyone who is ever critical of the Big Names in Atheism must be in cahoots to destroy the godless community (Love It Unquestioningly or Leave It could be the Ego Warriors motto), so, in true conspiracy theorist fashion, they must all be working together, and someone must be pulling the puppet strings.

Here’s what they see as a win:win situation, though. Either we’ll all unreservedly announce that yes, We Are All One, We Are The Freethought Borg, your suspicions are all confirmed, or we’ll start throwing people under the bus. We’ll disown Atheism+ or the block_bot, and thereby use our loud voice to put down those terrible individuals who crush their ego by not listening to them.

Listen, Becky Garrison and all the other clowns who throw around the term “FtBullies”, and wrap your biased little brains around this: I do neither. I am not going to fit into the twisted dichotomy that you so deeply desire.

I support Atheism+, the block_bot, American Atheists, American Humanists, the IHEU, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, CFI, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the National Center for Science Education. That does not mean I own or control any of those groups. They do not even ask me for advice, I do not have any official input into their operations, and sometimes, even often, they may disagree with me, and I may criticize them. And when I do criticize them, it’s because I generally support them, and have opinions (which they rarely share) about how they can better do their job.

FreethoughtBlogs is not controlled in any way by any of those organizations, or the Democrats, or the Republicans, or the Libertarians, or the UUs, or the Mormon Church. We are a completely independent entity, containing a diverse group of writers who don’t even completely agree with each other, although we do tend to skew our selection for membership in the direction of supporting progressive values. We are not the propaganda arm of any organization, we eke out a small amount of money to keep ourselves going with ads (and soon we’ll be offering a subscription service), and are beholden to no one, which means we are free to disagree with just about everyone. Also, need I mention, I do not run FtB, and the other bloggers here can disagree with me on just about anything. And we like it that way.

So please, stop trying to fit a complex set of diverse voices into your pathetic, simplistic narrative. And if you find something we say bruises your fragile ego, just stop reading us. We won’t mind. Actually, we’d prefer it if you freaking narcissists would take a hike and leave us alone.

Bringing back bad memories

Thunderf00t has come out with some execrable video in which he makes a number of horrible, awful, stupid claims: that there is a gray line between rape and bad sex, that it’s pointless to tell men not to rape, that telling women that it’s not their fault that they were raped is depriving them of agency — yeah, it’s one long parade of victim blaming non sequiturs (in which he repeatedly says he’s not victim blaming, while saying women often have the body language of victims). It’s horrifyingly ignorant, condescending, and oblivious to his own arrogant attitude.

Typical blunderthud, then. So don’t watch it.

Instead, read SomeGreyBloke, who has thoroughly deconstructed the video at length, in a 7 part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7. It’s good. It reveals Thunderf00t, and all the other clueless men (Joe Rogan, I’m looking at you) who think that they should not be held accountable if they have sex with someone whose ability to consent has been compromised, as total moral idiots.

One killer insight is that Thudordud simultaneously tries to claim that there is a gray line between bad sex and rape, while arguing that educating rapists won’t work because they’re like Ted Bundy. I don’t think Fubberf00t is anything like Bundy, nor are most rapists, but they do have one trait in common: an inability to use a mirror.

When people like Zerlina Maxwell advocate teaching kids not to rape, they’re not talking about trying to get through to serial killers like Ted Bundy. Of course it’s "bloody obvious" that sociopaths are not about to listen. 

But most rapes aren’t committed by sociopaths. Most rapes are committed by men who are simply too selfish to think beyond their immediate gratification.

It is interesting that this subject bothers Thunderf00t so very very much.

Jebus. To think that we briefly had Dundert00t on this network at all…it’s embarrassing how bad he is.

Did Richard Carrier have to remind me…

…that I was responsible for the Thunderf00t fiasco here? I don’t pay any attention to his videos any more, but Richard carried out an amazingly thorough dissection of one of his recent videos that, as seems to be common nowadays, rants and raves about Freethoughtblogs, feminism, me, and of all things, minorities in atheism. I spot-checked some of Richard’s claims about the video — he references timestamps throughout — and was astounded to hear Thunderf00t actually sneer with contempt at the idea of broadening atheism’s appeal to a wider audience.

You know, all these deranged angry anti-social justice atheists are always complaining that FtB is trying to kick them out of atheism, but we aren’t — we don’t have that power or any authority at all (do they even realize that this is just a blog network with no jurisdiction over anything other than our local traffic?) The real situation is that people like Thunderf00t are doing an awesome job of marginalizing themselves.

Around FtB

This may be redundant — you all cruise every blog on the site already, right?

  • Ed is asking for donations, and exploring ideas to get an ad-free site. Give him your input!

  • The Digital Cuttlefish thinks God is a misogynist. I think he’s right.

  • Greta has a guest post — it seems that being a member of atheist and gay groups is grounds for suspicion.

  • Stephanie can recognize a reasonable dialogue when she sees it.

  • Jen is unimpressed with the paleo diet fad.

  • Ian’s reputation as a stud is forever demolished.

  • Maryam discovers that the Muslim Brotherhood is opposed to a UN resolution against violence against women. She doesn’t seem surprised.

  • Taslima is optimistic about the future for Muslims — that they’ll grow out of Islam.

  • Brianne talks about rape.

  • Ashley talks about rapists.

  • Miri talks about rape and justice.

    Steubenville seems to have stirred up a theme.

  • Avicenna deconstructs a bad Thunderf00t video. It seems he thinks a short clip of a girl video game character punching a guy in the crotch invalidates everything Anita Sarkeesian says.

Dating tips!

Rats, it’s too late. If only the girls had studied these dating tips back in the day, I might not have grown into the sullen, resentful, entitled git illustrated here.

dancing

driving

And my favorite…

deserve

There’s the root of the whole problem! Men deserve your complete and total attention at all times!

While we’re on the subject of how the wimminz ought to behave, I should mention the F00t’s new video, titled, “Do Hot Girls Have All the Advantages?” Yep, it’s about how women have an edge by just being pretty.

Let that sink in for a bit.

Oh, I wish I were pretty! Then there’s an interesting reply: Why Can’t Thunderf00t Be More Like Indiana Jones? Isn’t it interesting how we can overlook superficial attributes in a man, but they’re always prioritized in women? And how some people can look on this skewed perspective as advantageous for women?

Although, I have to say, I don’t expect the guy to look like Indiana Jones, but am just dismayed at how he’s looking more and more like Pat Robertson every day. Robertson recently fielded a question from a young viewer about how he was troubled that his father seemed to be growing more distant from his mother; his answer was basically that his mother just wasn’t pretty enough, which was why all the romance is leaving the marriage.

One more: misandric pants.

I think youtube culture really has gone pathological

OK, people, you insisted and demanded and rebuked me for not watching Thunderf00t’s latest video, so I did.

It was a great steaming pile of dishonest, sleazy shit, disgraceful propaganda to serve the cause of sexism.

Guess what? I’m never taking your advice again. Jerks. What a waste of time.

At least one good thing has come out of it, though: Michael Nugent takes it apart piece by piece. I can tell he was as appalled by the shameful smears as I was.

I also hadn’t realized until I watched it that Thunderf00t concludes by calling on conference organizers to blackball Rebecca Watson, Melody Hensley, Amy Roth, me, and all those other people who want to make the events respectful of women. It’s truly remarkable. He’s been whining about censorship! and bannings! and FREE SPEECH! yet here he is, organizing his followers to bombard secular leaders to silence feminists. I haven’t seen anything remotely similar from our side of this argument, yet here is the champion of holy sacred FREE SPEECH calling on his mob to ostracize people he disagrees with.

His priorities are genuinely screwed up, and if anyone is guilty of hypocrisy, it’s Phil Mason. Michael Nugent gets it right:

Please consider channeling your passion for freedom of expression into our fight for the right of people to express their secular beliefs without being beaten or jailed or killed for blasphemy, instead of fighting for the imaginary right of the Wooly Bumblebee to call Melody Hensley a twat on YouTube without having her video flagged.

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.

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.

C0nc0rdance and the principle of intelligent, responsible discussion

C0nc0rdance has put up a video berating me for shutting down my youtube comments. It might be more interesting if it weren’t so full of speculation about my motives…motives that I understand very well, while he doesn’t have a clue.

It’s simpler than he thinks. I set up my youtube account to have all comments sent directly to my email account; I read them all. And I was appalled.

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Sunday Sacrilege: Free speech is not freedom from responsibility

I’ve been struck by the twisty complications of the recent outing of the creepy redditor Violentacrez as Michael Brutsch, a programmer for a financial consulting company, by Adrian Chen of Gawker. I’m particularly interested by the fact that the case has become a focus of concern by defenders of free speech — people who regard free speech as sacred and absolute.

Well, you know what I think of the sacred.

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