Claiming to speak for
One strange meme that has turned up in the recent wars is the idea that feminists are “claiming to speak for all women” and that that’s why feminism is so bad and awful.
That’s a ridiculous claim. All political and moral views do that; they all say this is better than that, and not just for me but for everyone in whatever the relevant group is, from the neighborhood to the species. Feminism has always made large claims about what women should be and do, and it has never had unanimous agreement from all women. Of course in some sense feminism claims to speak for all women, but it’s not unique or weird in doing that.
Feminism has never meant “whatever all women agree on” or whatever the majority of women agree on. It’s never meant agreeing with all women because they’re women. It’s always been demanding – it’s always urged women to be more than they currently are, which is guaranteed to be annoying and irksome. Reformist movements are like that.
The recent disturbance has triggered an astonishing amount of sneering and jeering at feminism and feminists, so much so that it has created a glaring example of the very problem it’s busy denying and sneering at: the sense that women are alien to “the atheist movement.”
I don’t think it’s about all feminism but about the behaviour of some feminists.
But perhaps your referring to something different.
Yes but which “some feminists”? The borders are being drawn in very odd places, such that thinking and saying that “cunt” is a sexist (indeed, misogynist) epithet is “radical feminism” while thinking and saying that “cunt” is just a word and has no bullying or silencing or othering content at all is “liberal feminism.”
It is sort of a bad argument hidden in a “good” argument, isn’t it? There’s a more or less rational position that will state “I disagree with your opinion A, I am of opinion B and so are all of these other people. So please don’t pretend that A is the only possible position for people to hold, because there are plenty of people who disagree with you.” And if that was what people were doing, you wouldn’t have posted this.
That’s not what’s going on. What I’ve seen is people saying “I disagree with your opinion A, I am of opinion B and so are all of these other people. So please STFU about opinion A, it is completely invalid since you don’t have 100% consensus on the issue.” That’s not a rational position, it is a silencing tactic. It is an irrational position, since opinion B doesn’t have a 100% consensus either… does that mean EVERYONE should shut up on both sides? Logically that’s what would be called for, but the people making that argument just want to dismiss and silence dissenting opinions.
I see feminists as representing the interests of all women. Since that is part of what feminism is about, I don’t see how they could do otherwise.
I do not see feminists as representing the opinions of all women, nor even the opinions of all feminists.
I wonder what the critics were thinking (or whether they were thinking). How could a spokesperson for any group do other than speak for the interests of that group (as they see it)? I suspect it is a confusion between “representing the interests of” and “representing the opinions of”.
@Improbable Joe
If everyone shut up unless they had 100% consensus then there would never be any discussions so I suppose that that is why each side still pushes their argument. The pity with the current discourse is that entrenched positions have been taken by both sides, which to echo your argument, isn’t rational either, and nobody appears to have anything new to say which doesn’t matter anyway, because nobody is listening to the other side any more.
Ophelia,
thanks for the post, now I understand why I don’t subscribe to *ist movements in general. I consider the act of “claiming to speak for me” to be bad manners and just plain wrong. Rude since I’m quite able to speak for myself, and wrong in the same way forging signatures on a petition is wrong. I find the whole concept to be paternalistic (or perhaps maternalistic in this case), and generally disempowering.
Looking at the bigger picture, it’s interesting to compare this with the GNU/Accomodationist arguments over the last few years, where the Accomodationists were claiming to speak for all atheist/rational people, and the GNUs were objecting to that. The GNU responses were generally individualistic, inasmuch as the authors only really spoke for themselves, then everyone else responded with either a yes, a maybe, or a no.
This isn’t a matter of consensus, it’s a matter of taking people’s voices away.
Graham, your repetition of this “both sides are equally rigid and entrenched, and therefore everyone is equally blameworthy” rhetoric, with its smug implication that those who adopt the rhetoric (as you have) are the truly rational people who are above all this petty irrational bickering, is every bit as repellent to me as the outright sexism (pointed out in comment 2 by Ophelia) and transparent silencing tactics (analyzed by Improbable Joe in comment 3) being used primarily by ONE side in this debate. Unless you are actually willing to discuss who is right and wrong about which points of disagreement and why, your claim that both sides are too entrenched to be rational is just an unsupported assertion and baseless attack — which contributes LESS to the discussion than anyone actually participating in the debate, even those whose contributions consist primarily in sexist vitriol. At least those spewing sexist vitriol are defending a clear position, however unworthy of defense that position is, rather than smugly stating that they are too superior to engage in such petty disagreements.
Both Stef McGraw and Rebecca Watson have claimed to be feminists. Which one am I allowed to criticize without it being a ‘silencing tactic’? The idea that anyone in this whole sorry mess has been silenced or could be silenced is ridiculous.
<blockquote>Yes but which “some feminists”? The borders are being drawn in very odd places, such that thinking and saying that “cunt” is a sexist (indeed, misogynist) epithet is “radical feminism” while thinking and saying that “cunt” is just a word and has no bullying or silencing or othering content at all is “liberal feminism.”</blockquote> I agree! When discussions about the real issues of sexism; employment, freedom of expression, reproductive rights, aesthetic vs competence, assumptions of entitlement and restrictions of personal space and association become subsumed by trivial etymological spats (“bitch”, “cunt” etc) nobody “wins” and nobody learns and the world stands still for pointless reasons.
On this subject, I was pretty disappointed by Jesus and Mo this week. Author kind of misses the point. http://www.jesusandmo.net/2011/07/27/girls/
Does s/he, does s/he tho?
I see several “arguments” being used that are worthy only of kindergarten sandboxes.
1. Graham’s “both sides are equally wrong”; debunked by G Felis, so I won’t go into it.
2. Sam’s “collective responses are patronizing”; by all means, use this on the police sent to take you and all other atheists away upon the election of a Tea Party president. Better yet, read Niemöller’s beautiful exposure of this script for the thoughtless screed that it is.
3. From too many, “words mean what we just define them to mean”; as I said on another thread, substitute nigger, kike, fag, wog for cunt, and re-read all those posts with the substitutions in them.
I cannot imagine how anyone who wants to claim the sobriquet “thinker” can seriously contemplate that feminism can be divorced from struggles against religion, to say nothing of basic human empathy. It is indicative — and unsurprising — that Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, linked women’s rights to the decline of “white christian civilization”; it is equally unsurprising (to me, at least) that when people posted excerpts of his rantings on several sites, the posts were hi-fived, applauded and upvoted until their origin was disclosed.
I lived through a military/religious dictatorship, I know how easily it can happen. The signs in the US are not good right now and are getting worse. The problems of sexism and fundamentalism are inextricably intertwined, and those who compartmentalize them are acting like ostriches with their heads in the sand. As for those women who step on those who paved the paths for them and declare that feminism is irrelevant or destructive, I don’t wish them a world in which their “I’ve got mine” assumptions come back to haunt them.
Graham @ #5
False equivalence fallacy, combined with a smug sort of fence-sitting “well, every else is wrong because they aren’t willing to compromise and change their minds to meet in the middle”… you’ve staked out a useless and somewhat nasty position for yourself. Sort of that accommodationist view where we should compromise our principles for the sake of finding common ground with people who are wrong.
The best stance isn’t somewhere about equidistant from the right position and the wrong position. That’s not to say that I think there’s any one perfect answer, but that means I separate the wheat from the chaff not pretend that everyone is equally wrong or right.
Yes, this is the first time I started doubting that the barmaid is in fact Ophelia.
James B.:
Seriously, if you can’t figure out when you’re making an honest criticism and when you’re just being an asshole(and you actually care), then you should hold your tongue until you’re sure. I managed to criticize both of them without being at all silencing or sexist, and so have dozens of other people.
Exactly, context is everything.
“Both Stef McGraw and Rebecca Watson have claimed to be feminists. Which one am I allowed to criticize without it being a ‘silencing tactic’?
Unless you have some remarkable attribute which qualifies you to explain feminism to feminists, your criticism of either is unnecessary.
Athena,
You reference Niemöller. You’ll find he said “… speak out …” not “… speak for …”. There’s nothing wrong with speaking out – why don’t you read my original post where I said:
the whole act of saying “I agree with Ophelia” is speaking out.
Are you honestly trying to tell me that you think there’s no difference between you saying “I agree with Sam”, and with me saying “I speak for Athena”, without me even asking you?
It’s as if you’re saying the only options are that I let you take my voice by “speaking for me”, or risk a possible Tea Party Gulag. I choose neither.
Niemöller:
“Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
By all means dissect gnats and swallow camels with fundamentalists, Sam.
Marta @ #18
Not sure what you’re trying to get at there, but it sounds a little bit “off” to me. Can you add a little clarification?
Improbable Joe, was Rebecca Watson making an honest criticism of Stef McGraw when she accused her of parroting the ideology of the patriarchy? I feel absolutely sickened by skeptics denouncing other skeptics as sexists. The skeptical movement is institutionally committed to liberating women from religious oppression. Women have a prominent place in skeptical organizations and make up a significant part of the membership. It is not true that skepticism has a sexism problem. People who argue my position are not doing so because they are sexist. Why are skeptics all of a sudden turning on each other and denouncing each other as skeptics? Because of an anecdote? This is not critical thinking. None of this does anything to help either skepticism or women.
Marta, there are no qualifications to be a feminist. Anyone can call themselves a feminist. Anyone is free to criticize another persons claims about being a feminist. Men and women are both free to consider what life is like for the other gender and comment on that. The idea that I have no right to critique someone else’s position should not be part of the toolset of a critical thinker.
James B., why don’t you try taking it down a notch? More importantly, why don’t you try not carrying all of the baggage of the million other threads into this one? It’s hard to do, trust me… but if you start out swinging it is no surprise when people start swinging back. I agreed with the general sense of what Watson was saying about McGraw being dismissive, missing the point, and using the same rhetoric as the sexist men attacking Watson(not the strawman that it got turned into by others later)… but I disagreed with Watson calling McGraw out in public the way she did because I thought it shut down conversation between the two.
See? I criticized both of them, silenced neither, and didn’t say anything sexist. How hard is that?
@#13: “The problems of sexism and fundamentalism are inextricably intertwined, and those who compartmentalize them are acting like ostriches with their heads in the sand. ”
Yes, well said. You might be interested to read what Chris Hedges recently wrote about this point (mostly emphasizing racism and fundamentalism) at Truthdig. He also took a swipe at Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens (and Harris responded by invitation).
And well, I think maybe at the root of an argument like this one (as briefly outlined by Ophelia’s post) is the fact that too many of us jump into arguments online without much serious reflection, sounding like “fundamentalists.” Arguably because our response is meant to be instantaneous, right? So perhaps, the “jeering and sneering” is an instantaneous knee-jerk reaction to which others, in turn, react too suddenly, perhaps unthinkingly, even stubbornly. (Is that too obvious a point?) I don’t mean to sound superior or preachy, but…I do miss snail mail correspondence. It’s too hard unless your an expert to have substantive discourse on weighty topics in real time. Though maybe not in Miller time.
Athena,
are you saying the matter of whether I speak for you, or whether you speak for yourself is “dissecting gnats and swallowing camels?”. If that’s the case I’ll sooner deal with the tea party than you.
I’m saying you’re indulging in the narcissism of small differences, Sam and doing so pedantically and in bad faith. Spend some time in a totalitarian regime as an isolated individualist, and get back to me.
James: Agreed. I apologize.
Apparently Sam thinks “speaking for” is a very very different thing from “speaking out for”, yet he can’t distinguish the first from “silencing”. I guess; not sure how having somebody speak for me means I can’t still speak for myself (and disagree with my spokesperson).
Sounds like somebody is working hard to salvage a weak position.
Athena: OK. let’s try a better response.
I am being pedantic, but not in bad faith. You consider our bone of contention to be a small difference, I consider it to be very important. I can accept that you think it’s small, can you accept that I consider it important? Can we have a plurality of views here? Why should I consider “totalitarian regime” as the baseline society? It may have been for you, but it isn’t for me. This is slightly more than pedantry, since you’ll often find that the alternative to the worst way of doing things is the second worst way of doing things. If you want to convince me of something, you’d do better with rational argument than with false bifurcation fallacies and Godwinnian fearmongering.
Stacy: You’re right, “speaking out” is very different “speaking for”, in my value system, if not Athena’s. I have not mentioned “silencing”, except it was possibly implicit in the GNU/Accomodation section in my first post. My problem, isn’t “silencing”, it’s that it’s “presumptive”. I can speak out for myself, and I have been doing so on this forum tonight! But what about all the other nights? and all the other forums?
In this case, I don’t even understand what people are talking about when they say Watson, for example, doesn’t speak for them. As far as I can tell, this suggests that their position is that they want to be propositioned in elevators at 4 AM by strangers despite their expressed wishes; they want their accounts of their experiences to be trivialized, interrogated, and disbelieved; and they want to be called cunts, twats, and bitches.
I mean, really. How does that make any sense?
Sam @ 6 – I take it you missed the part where I said “Of course in some sense feminism claims to speak for all women, but it’s not unique or weird in doing that” [emphasis added]? And that I said feminism in some sense claims to speak for all women but not that I do? Do you really think it’s bad manners for reformist movements to claim to in some sense speak for people or groups of people at large? If you do you seem to be saying that reform as such is bad manners. That seems like a silly position to take.
@SC: Hm. Yes, I guess Watson speaks for me insofar as she defends my interest in a situation just like hers. She defends my interest in principle and is right to use the episode to argue for more attention to the topic of sexism/marginalization of women at an atheist conference. However, I wouldn’t universalize her situation or her example, and claim that, in practice, we should all respond or act as she did. Does that make sense? (Apologia: I am still catching up on this topic, so I’m not likely doing it justice.)
@Marta, thank you. I’m stunned and humbled by your civility. (I’m not being sarcastic.)
@Improbably Joe, I apologize if my tone was confrontational. (Although, I think it is legitimate to refer to the context of this debate.)
@Salty Current. No. Rebecca Watson doesn’t speak for me because I don’t think institutional skepticism has a problem with women and I don’t think Stef McGraw is a pawn of the patriarchy and I don’t think Richard Dawkins is a misogynist whose book I shouldn’t read anymore. Also, I do not want her to be called ‘Twatson’. I do not want her or any other woman to be accosted in elevators. And I do not want her to be silenced. I do not accept that I am a sexist who wants women to be raped in elevators because I think Rebecca Watson is wrong about the level of sexism women face in our movement.
I think we all want to see the skeptical community grow and for women to be welcome co-equal partners in it. Let’s not tear ourselves apart with denunciations.
@Sam “You’re right, “speaking out” is very different “speaking for”, in my value system”
So in your value system, I take it one can only “speak out” for oneself. Everybody is atomized; the moment you “speak out” for another person, you are (“in some sense”, as Ophelia says) “speaking for” them, and this is “presumptive”, which is a bad thing, on principle. Got it. Not impressed. Have a nice day.
James Fish @ 11, Tea @ 15 – yes, for the duration of this particular Jesus and Mo, I’m definitely not the barmaid.
It makes sense; it’s just a strawman. No one has done or claimed that.
LOL.
I initially posted to say that, thanks to your OP, I’d figured out something that had been bugging me for a long time, and about *ist movements generally. I feel caught in the backdraught of an elevator. Now to reply…
For me, it’s an issue of consent. Lets clear out the emotive labels, and consider an identity label X, an Xist organisation and a reform Y. (1) If they claim they want to improve the lot of X,, fine. (2) If Xist organisations argue Y is good for all X, great. (3) If they wish to campaign for reform X to be passed, wonderful!
However, I think it’s wrong for them to claim to speak for an individual X, without the consent of that individual X. I don’t see what it gains our putative Xist organsation that (2) doesn’t do already.
Now, all that’s as things should be, let’s talk about how they are.
It does claim to speak for all women. I assert that claiming to speak for someone without their consent is three steps away from forging signatures on a petition I’m merely saying that feminism should say that it wants to make the lives of women better, and this is how we’ll do it.
stuff
Stacy: Where did i say you can’t speak out for other people? Argue for them, campaign for them, write books, go on marches, do whatever you want: just don’t force your words into their mouth against their will.
I think there’s a lot of truth to that. Anyone should be able to call themselves a feminist, and try their best to uphold feminist ideals.
Nevertheless, it strikes me as absurd for a man to make a claim about what counts as feminism, apart from platitudes like “feminism is a means of emancipation for those who self-identify as women”. When it comes to the question of ‘what constitutes feminism?’, it seems to me that the distinction above between ‘speaking for’ feminists, or ‘speaking out for’ them, is irrelevant; if at all possible, the most important thing is for women to speak for themselves.
And so it seems to me that those who identify as male don’t seem to get to say what counts as feminism. e.g., sometimes you see men trying to give lectures to women on their own doctrine. This is cringeworthy, because the point is supposed to be that we’re not in charge and shouldn’t pretend to be.
Sam @ 38 – ok – we don’t disagree then. The sense I mean isn’t “I get to say what any particular X thinks or wants” – it’s your 1-3. No I don’t think feminism means feminists get to speak for women in the sense of saying “women want Y” (although people doubtless do generalize that way when not being careful).
If “it strikes me as absurd for a man to make a claim about what counts as feminism”, as you say, Benjamin, consider this: suppose I were to say, in the course of a conversation, that I consider myself a feminist, and someone else in that conversation were to say “so what do you mean by feminism?”. Am I allowed to answer the question- i.e. to make a claim about what counts as feminism- despite my crippling lack of ovaries?
Nicely done, Benjamin. That is more or less what I was attempting to say when I barked at James. It is frequently the case that there are women who define feminism in ways different from me–ways with which I may strongly disagree–but they at least have a stake in the definition. It is another thing entirely when it is a man who is doing the defining. His being male does not invalidate his opinion, but I am always mindful that what is hypothetical for him is reality for me.
I… have kind of a problem with the OP, OB. I feel like you’re turning a debate about content into a debate about tactics and style.
Feminism isn’t unusual in claiming to speak for a group of people who don’t necessarily agree with it.
But then if that’s all there is to it, then what’s so wrong about “community leaders” who self appoint themselves and claim to speak for “the [X] community?” They’re in exactly the same position if all we care about is whether its ok for a self appointed group of people to claim to speak for others (or for the interests of others) who may or may not actually agree with them.
Surely the real dispute is that you feel that feminism actually does speak for women and their interests, while “community leaders” do not? Or at least you feel that the first claim is more defensible than the second?
Ophelia: I agree with what you posted in 41. Goodnight.
@ Nelson #40 “And so it seems to me that those who identify as male don’t seem to get to say what counts as feminism. e.g., sometimes you see men trying to give lectures to women on their own doctrine. This is cringeworthy, because the point is supposed to be that we’re not in charge and shouldn’t pretend to be.”
Yes, it’s “cringeworthy,” but I’ll tolerate it because, in turn, I want to lecture to men (my husband included =) on what they think are “their doctrines” and masculinist strongholds. I think my opinion on “what counts” with respect to any “ism” deserves a hearing so long as it’s rational and, likewise, a man’s reasoned opinion “counts” even if his experience isn’t central to the “ism.” Is that naive? Traitorous? Surely not.
Does anyone have specific concrete examples of, say, Rebecca Watson doing this?
Patrick, no, it’s a different kind of speaking for. “Community leaders” claim to “represent” people who haven’t agreed to be represented. Political movements claim to be defending or working for the interests of a group some of whom haven’t signed up for that.
Mind you, the thought has occurred to me often. NOW for instance…that does seem presumptuous in a way.
But, yes, you’re right – I do think feminism actually does aim to further (rather than speak for) the interests of women, while (to take the obvious example) religious “leaders” aim to further the interests of their religion and/or their deity.
Yeah… but sometimes some woman or another says something extremely stupid, cloaks it in feminism, and claims that their critics are being sexist. Sometimes women are jerks, and claim that their obnoxiousness is “feminist.” Got to differentiate that sort of thing from “men trying to give lectures to women on their own doctrine.” You know, the same way we differentiate fair criticism of ideas that come from women, from unfair criticism of ideas BECAUSE they come from women.
@Benjamin S. Nelson & @Marta. If feminism is about the rights of women, then it is a moral question and as a human being I believe I have as much right as anyone to weigh in. I really feel that our commonality as humans far outweighs the differences of race, gender or sexual orientation. The equality of women (or gays or visible minorities) should not be a concern of only one subset of humanity. I think part of what has got my goat during this debate is the idea that this gulf of understanding between the sexes not only exists but that it is unbridgeable. I concede that as a man, I don’t have the same stake like women do. I don’t have to live as as you, so I can think about life in your shoes or I can mostly not think about it. But it somehow offends my sense of common humanity when people (other people, not you) say I don’t get it, can’t get it, because I’m a man. I think I can imagine, like John Rawls, that I’m behind the veil, not knowing if I’m going to be born a man or woman, and imagine what is just for both.
Marta, :)
SAWells, it’s a fair question. I think, like Ophelia (if I understand her correctly), that there have to be limits. So, for instance, imagine a horrible future where the American New Right succeeds in claiming feminism for social conservatives, and a consensus of feminists say, ‘Girls belong in the kitchen! Don’t take anorexia seriously! Women are just sexual tools! Beat me please!’ and so on — insert vile misogyny here. What does the male feminist say?
In that case, it is tempting to say that there is a kind of emergency brake that the male feminist can pull. I mean, unless there’s a really really good argument for the New Right (which there isn’t), and social and psychological conditions change drastically in some strange unforeseeable ways (which there won’t be), then maybe the male feminist can say: “Wow. That ain’t feminism.”
But under those conditions I’d prefer to say: “Wow. I don’t know what “feminism” means anymore. But it sure isn’t egalitarianism. And I really really care about that.”
“But it somehow offends my sense of common humanity when people (other people, not you) say I don’t get it, can’t get it, because I’m a man.”
I would find that offensive as well, if I were you, James. The problem is, many, many men are NOT like you. They don’t get it, and won’t get it. That may be because they’re men, but it’s more likely that their investment in “not” getting it is huge. If giving up or sharing power was that easy, War would only be a card game.
@SC #31 – actually I do take people who disagree with Watson (McGraw in particular) to mean that they want to be propositioned in elevators at 4 AM by strangers despite their expressed wishes . Since that’s the group making up vulgar names I don’t think the rest is a concern.
Well said.
No, they were arguing about a scarecrow again.
Correct me if I am wrong, please.
Feminism = women are equal to men and men to women. Pretty simple, if you ignore the rest.
Not discounting actual reality, By this I mean we do not disregard the nature of how the world currently is and what it means to be a woman in the different cultures around the world. I’m sure more could be added to explain this further but i’m sure most will get it. I think this part is where many especially in the “skeptic” community get lost. They get the first part,(or pretend to), and then think they can now ignore actual reality in favor of one where everyone is suddenly total equals in all respects (and always have been, because we should just put the past behind us).
If in the future or possibly some alternate reality, equality is achieved and women actually do not need to fear men (Rapes and abuse of male authority are so unheard of and rare as to be basically non-existent) Then it would be perfectly acceptable to say follow a woman into an elevator or down a dark street and offer sex like “hey wanna have some coffee in my private abode tonight <wink> <wink> <nudge> <nudge>.” and she would feel no intimidation or discomfort at saying “nah, your not my type, sorry”.
So does this mean that whenever I go to sandwalk and find a post I don’t agree with, I can say “Hey Prof. Moran, you don’t speak for all biologists” and consider the debate finished and won?
On Ophelia’s topic of “Claiming to speak for” we have cass_m #53 speaking for McGraw wanting to be propositioned in elevators at 4 AM by strangers despite her expressed wishes. Srsly, read #53 to see I’m not exaggerating. Yes, this is one strange meme.
In a larger view, I take Athena’s last paragraph of #13 seriously — I worry where the US is going.
In McGraw ‘s second post (after Watson mentioned her), she said she felt the time, location and circumstance was unimportant to the story. What *was* important was that EG had approached Watson and took no for an answer then Watson later mentioned the encounter in a video. I interpret that to mean McGraw would have not problem with being propositioned in an elevator yada, yada. Want, possibly since it would be an opportunity to flirt. Definitely not be worth mentioning, even in the mild way Watson did. I am not speaking for anyone, I said what McGraw’s statement meant to me. You read her posts. What did it mean to you?
And it is a strange meme as people have dug into “I can approach anyone I want any time I want”. I’m pretty sure no one acts like that in real life.
James B,
Sorry, James, but this is just wrong. I agree that the skeptic movement has a much better track record than most other movements, it’s simply not correct to say that there is *no* problem in the skeptical community. I refer as one example to the recent atheist convention that ran a panel on the subject of how to attract women into the atheist community and empanelled one woman and five men, and which served to antagonise a large number of the female attendees by the responses of some of the panellists. Read about it here.
I’m wondering if this debate could usefully borrow something from the law of evidence. In evidence, a distinction is drawn between fact and opinion. Most witnesses have to confine their observations to questions of fact, and the rules of examination, cross-examination and re-examination are designed to elucidate factual information. Crucially, the witness is not allowed to speculate or give opinions on the matter at hand.
If the court wants an opinion, however, it allows both parties to call an expert witness. The expert is unable to give evidence that goes directly to a fact in issue; he or she is only allowed to give an opinion on the valency of a particular aspect of the case. Expert evidence (and this is reiterated in the judge’s summing up) is never weighted as heavily as evidence that goes directly to a fact in issue.
I suspect men who comment on things of peculiar import to women (feminism, abortion etc) are something like the expert witnesses in a trial. They may be very knowledgeable, and there are occasions where their opinion may be decisive (I take Improbable Joe’s point above @49, and Benjamin’s point @51), but ultimately, there is a rebuttable presumption in favour of the parties directly affected, because their evidence goes to a fact in issue.
It seems, then, to be a question of weight.
On another matter, Athena @13:
This also does not surprise me. One of the signs of political maturity (in my view, at least) is honesty about those aspects of one’s political beliefs that give aid and comfort to evil (not insane, not unhinged, not deranged) people. I have already noticed quite a bit of what I call ‘Excusitis’ — frequently manifested in the form of the ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy — when it comes to Breivik, remarkably similar in tone to the ‘excusitis’ routinely engaged in by many Muslims when one of their co-religionists blows himself up. It really isn’t attractive, and is something that any of us with strong views on matters political ought to confront.
I expanded on this point a few days ago here:
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2011/07/25/excusitis/
Shorter skepticlawyer: “Tie goes to the runner.”
Although I have to say that I wasn’t really clear in what I was expressing, which is because I wasn’t clear in my thinking until just now. It’s evolution baby!
I think that what I’m trying to get at is that not everything is feminism and/or privilege-related. Some things are, in ways that people sometimes miss, and sometimes it is inserted into places where it doesn’t really belong. I’ve been in situations where I’ve said something like “Did you have a specific article you are referring to, and can I get a link to it?” to a woman online, and I got a response equivalent to “Who the fuck do you think I am, your whore-slave?!?! Fuck you and your male privilege!” That’s not feminism or male privilege, that’s a woman with serious persecution issues who needs a therapist, not an Internet connection. The reason for her persecution issues may very well have everything to do with her life experience, and being a victim of sexism and/or sexual assault may be the cause of it and those are feminist issues. Me asking for a link relevant to a point she was making has nothing to do with those issues.
The Watson-McGraw thing can be broken down in all sorts of similarly interesting ways. EG may not have been being explicitly sexist(we all know it was, but let’s pretend for the dumb people), but he sure was showing some privilege in thinking that his desire for ANYTHING trumped Watson’s desire to go to bed, and trumped any consideration for her feelings about being alone with him while he propositioned her. Watson’s response seemed mostly to be a personal thing, but also reflected the larger issue of social interactions where women can be made to feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or just disregarded. McGraw misinterpreted Watson’s larger point by conflating it with the smaller point, and sounded like a dismissive idiot. Dismissive idiot… sort of like EG, when you think about it, which is why Watson went in that direction when criticizing McGraw.
If guys follow Watson’s advice about not being creepy EG and actually considering what women say and how they might feel, absolutely no one is hurt. Everyone is happier except creepy guys who don’t deserve to be happy. Like I posted somewhere else, hotel elevators at 4AM are not the sole location and time where the world’s relationships are required to begin, and cutting off that one potential meeting place isn’t going to cause the extinction of humanity. If we can get guys to move past the “hitting on” and “picking up” and “getting laid” paradigm where women are there to provide men with opportunities for sex, even better. If guys follow McGraw’s advice to ignore Watson because some women claim not to mind, then lots of women get to have their wishes disregarded on the principle that guys are just playing the odds. Maybe 99 women shoot them down, but then that 100th with cave in and give them what they want. That’s worse than where we are now, because now you’ve got the same creepy guys acting with what they perceive as the permission of women to double down on the creep factor.
And that brings us full circle to where we started. Rebecca Watson was properly “speaking for women” in the sense that she was giving men a general rule that benefits women without even potentially hurting anyone. Even women who don’t mind being propositioned in elevators and dark alleys aren’t going to lose anything if guys make their move in more public settings instead. Stef McGraw wasn’t “speaking for women” as much as she was speaking for herself and telling Watson to shut up, and creating the impression that it is acceptable for men to disregard the feelings and statements of women since not all of them agree. That’s harmful in that some women are going to be freaked out, some are going to be assaulted, and many of them are going to be dismissed and objectified on the off chance that the guy is talking to McGraw and she’s down for whatever.
Oooohhh… I could stir up a hornet’s nest… must… resist… Spock… beam… me up!
I don’t care who is the proper feminist and who speaks for whom. If you’re not defending Rebacca Watson right now, you’re not a proper human being.
http://integralmath.blogspot.com/2011/07/ask-scientist-aka-rebecca-twatson-part.html
I do so agree, Joe. We have to have more and more clear thinking and more and more self-awareness. If a woman saying “no” makes us men feel uncomfortable or angry we must honestly consider the probability that our sense of privilege and possession is offended. We ought to start this in schools. Classes in human rights, understanding our own motivations, and clear thinking. Of course, that will annoy the religious people. They’d rather teach about the Bible and the uncleanness of girls. Religion really is the biggest obstacle. If we were all more literate in these dynamics and more clear about the issues involved and what our real rights and duties are we would see a great improvement in human interactions of all kinds. And now here am I speaking “for” the whole damn human race.
For British and Australian readers (translated), the benefit of the doubt goes to the batsman. I am constantly impressed by the extent to which legal principles find an echo in cricket, baseball and rugby. I now have another to add to my collection, so thanks.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m not terribly impressed with the ‘privilege’ arguments being made around the place (and think the use of bad arguments that make sloppy empirical assumptions should rightly be subjected to skepticism). In making that point, I wish to delineate a space for liberal feminism. The standpoint epistemology of the various ‘privilege’ arguments is a feature of radical feminism, most of whose tenets I do not accept.
That issue, however, is separable from Ophelia’s point, which I think is spot on, and exists not only in the world of ideas, but also in law.
scepticalawyer,
I have seen countless references now to “radical” feminism. I don’t know what “radical” feminism is, let alone what you mean when you use it. Will you define what you mean?
Confusing feminism with identity, is probably why some people have lost the plot.
Most atheists and sceptics (but not all) are liberal in thinking, hence why we see liberal feminists as allies, because we all support the rights of women as much as men-as it is about equal rights. But radical feminists who see politics as a matter of identity–will most likely reject all men (and even lesbians and homosexuals) as ‘other’ and not authentically feminist or liberal.
Marta, feminism is a vast, sophisticated and genuinely complex intellectual movement. I know it is not the done thing to send people off to Wikipedia entries, but this does give one a sense of the intellectual variety involved:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_movements_and_ideologies
Although the summaries are potted, they seem pretty fair, and manage to tease out the substantive differences. From my perspective–and because I am a Conservative (UK version, so a classical liberal in the US)–I find liberal feminism congenial, and dislike radical feminism’s hostility to trade and commerce. That said, this hostility is at least comprehensible in light of radical feminism’s intellectual origins (one of the appealing characteristics of most schools of feminism is their intellectual consistency).
Indeed, one of the things that struck me as odd about the recent brou-ha-ha was the use of many arguments derived from radical feminism that split those arguments off from its traditional anti-capitalist rhetoric. I am not sure why that should be the case, although suspect it may be because many of the ‘privilege’ arguments were being made by American feminists, and while feminism is an accepted part of mainstream US discourse, anti-capitalism is not. It is always a source of amazement among Brits that while the US has a labour movement, it has no Labour Party to speak of.
Joe @61…I have been reading for the last month about this issue and have been steadily on Rebecca Watson’s side of it. I haven’t posted anywhere since any point I could make was being made more clearly by others. But what you had to say here is something a little different than anything I’ve read yet and is very valuable in that it clarifies some muddied issues. After reading many thousands of comments on the topic, yours is the first I really feel I must comment on to say thanks. And thanks to Ophelia too for your thoughts all the way through this. You’ve been terrific.
I always think of “radical feminism” to be sort of the flipside of whatever those guys are doing over on ERV towards Rebecca Watson. It is taking the completely rational ideas of feminism and treating them as absolutes with no grey area or consultation with reality. Saying things like “all men have more privilege than all women in every situation” and “every time a man disagrees with a woman it is because he is a misogynist” and “all men are actual rapists.” It is to feminism what Fred Phelps is to Christianity. It is sexism against men, and victimization and persecution complexes, and often strong anger towards women who are normal, well-adjusted members of the society that radical feminists consider to be the evil empire Third Reich armies of Mordor patriarchal society which benefits all men and oppresses all women.
That stuff turned me off feminists in general for absolutely years! And I think that exposure to it has driven some small amount of the nonsense of the last month, where people see the word “feminism” and think of “ball-busting man hating loonies.”
Good God. Wikipedia delineates 17 styles of feminism, including “radical”. I did not know this. The entirety of my experience with the definition has been to confront (usually) young women who are quick to disassociate from a label of feminism, by asking them simple questions that seem to get to the heart of their disassociation. When they say that they aren’t feminists, I just ask them if they think that women can and should do whatever they like to earn a living? There is much weasel language that ensues, generally having to do with war and fighting and all that other icky stuff, but a few more questions later, they admit “yes”. Then, I ask them if, having say, chosen to be a doctor, lawyer, judge or telephone lineman, shouldn’t the woman be paid the same wage as the man who is doing the same work as she? To which the answer is always an enthusiastic “yes”. At that point, I say “congratulations. You’re a feminist.”
Now, of course, there is a good deal more to the subject than this, but my interest is in how “feminist” became a label so toxic that young women who subscribe to the baseline ideals of it would rather be called anything but “feminist”.
Priss @68
Thank you much for the kind words… but a lot of the credit goes to Ophelia and the regular posters here, and the more decent folks I’ve encountered over on the Skepchick site and elsewhere. I read several thousand posts, and feel like I’m responsible for several hundred of them myself, and it was through the conversation that I got to the place that I wound up.
I’d encourage you to feel free to post more, even if it seems like you’re just saying “me too!” more often than not. Saying things out loud, or committing them to paper or website somewhere, even if it is repeating what other people are saying, even if it is occasionally dumb or pisses people off, can help you clarify where exactly it is you stand, and occasionally make you take a couple of steps in a different and better direction.
Improbable Joe wrote, “The Watson-McGraw thing can be broken down in all sorts of similarly interesting ways. EG may not have been being explicitly sexist(we all know it was, but let’s pretend for the dumb people), but he sure was showing some privilege in thinking that his desire for ANYTHING trumped Watson’s desire to go to bed, and trumped any consideration for her feelings about being alone with him while he propositioned her.”
Not actually a valid set of inferences.
You’ve segued seamlessly from EG asking Ms. Watson whether she was interested in sex, to EG believing that HIS desire for sex “trumped” HER desires. You’ve literally transformed a socially inappropriate request for sexual consent into a denial of the importance of her consent, without evidence or justification for the rhetorical move. If you want to see an example of the sort of thing that makes men worry that they’re going to be treated like rapists for any misstep, well, there you go.
Patrick, you’ve managed to ignore everything that Rebecca Watson has said on the subject, and misrepresented what I just posted and you quoted, in order to… what? What does it serve you?
Seriously, stop for a minute and try to explain what it profits you to ignore what people tell you, misrepresent what they say, in order to justify a behavior that you don’t need to engage in ever, for your entire life. Why can’t you talk to women in the daytime? Why do you have to talk to women who express interest in not talking to you or anyone else? What is so important about YOU?
Thank you, Joe. I was about to say the same. What on earth is the point of saying you don’t want to be propositioned, you do want just to go bed, if some man thinks that all that can be just ignored? Why is he so special? And here we go again.
Gordon, it is hard for me to believe anyone is this stupid/ignorant… or stupid in a different way. If someone wants to be a misogynistic asshat, I hear Abbie’s got a great woman-hating party over on ERV. If someone doesn’t know anything about the situation and they aren’t interested in going back and wading through the whole thing, why bother jumping into the deep end ignorance-first.
Marta, I think Improbable Joe has provided some of your answer @69. I suspect many women react in the same way; I know I did. I particularly remember writers I enjoyed (my pre-law studies were in classics/languages) being written off because they found women sexy and wanted to talk them into bed.
I remember getting into a raging argument with one woman over the Roman writer Ovid (whose views on sexuality are attractively sex-positive, especially for women). What classicists (rightly) consider to be one of the most attractive aspects of Roman civilisation was being used to demonise this particular writer. It was very unpleasant. Then there was the politics, often derived from and associated with Marxism, which horrified me. Anyone who suggested that Marxism had led to terrible atrocities in Eastern Europe was treated to a coruscating dose of ‘No True Scotsman’ and there seemed to be remarkably little focus on things I thought important, like abortion and equal pay.
Abortion and equal pay are still very important. Those issues haven’t gone away, as Athena’s point earlier about the current direction of US politics illustrates.
Joe, I think it’s a case of too many bloody egos so so hurt. I think that a lot of men have simply assumed “we’re alright, we’re atheists and skeptics and free-thinkers and we’re all about liberation and freedom of thought, so of course we aren’t sexist, how can we be?” and when the foolishness and arrogance of this is exposed the resentment and hatred mounts up simply because people don’t want to look at what is going on in their heads.
Improbable Joe- I didn’t ignore Ms. Watson, I addressed you. I don’t have a problem with most of what Ms. Watson has said on the subject. Her initial video was entirely proportional and appropriate, and her subsequent remarks have mostly been addressed to people who have commented on the subject and not to elevator guy himself, and in the main have been appropriate.
I do, however, have a problem with what YOU wrote, and I wrote clearly about why I have a problem with it.
Literally none of the sentences you wrote in response consist of any thought, idea, or rebuttal that in any way addresses any of the things I wrote in my very short, very easy to understand post.
I don’t even know what to do with this now.
Amazing what people read into something, something that isn’t there.
All I said is that both sides are now in entrenched positions, so busy defending those positions that they are no longer even listening to the other side. That is not saying that both sides are wrong, it doesn’t even say that either side is wrong, it merely states that neither side is actually paying any attention any more to the arguments made by the other side.
“Abortion and equal pay are still very important. Those issues haven’t gone away, as Athena’s point earlier about the current direction of US politics illustrates.”
Of course. One of the issues I’m still wrangling with is whether a woman who opposes abortion can rightly claim the label of “feminist”, even if she subscribes to what I consider the baseline ideology I mention above. Sarah Palin always comes to mind. Her execrable politics notwithstanding (YMMV), when asked if she was a feminist, she said yes, if I recall. This continues to confuse the hell out of me. Is it possible for a person to be “feminist”, if they cannot support something as fundamental as woman’s right to control her own body?
Patrick, there’s this thing called “context”. Why was it “a socially inappropriate request”?
Gordon, there’s a weird sort of… something going on here. Paradoxes? Is that the word? Some forms of contradiction, in any case.
You’ve got a situation where a woman expresses her desires in no uncertain terms: “don’t try to pick me up, don’t try to get me into bed, I’m don’t for the night and going to sleep.” You can either respect her wishes, or not. If you choose not to respect them, you cannot turn around and claim that you’re really a good guy. If you’re confronted with this hypothetical, you can side with the woman who stated her wishes, or the man who ignored them. If you claim that it is acceptable to ignore women’s desires in favor of your own (even if it is just a desire to talk when a woman says she’s going to sleep) then you can’t turn around and pretend that YOU’RE the victim here. You’re not even involved, it is a hypothetical… and you’re on the wrong side of it.
And if you’re basically (or literally!) going around saying “I’m not a sexist, let alone a potential rapist, you twat cunt!”… well. You need a dictionary. And help.
Godalmighty.
Patrick, asking someone for sex under all the conditions in which EG did just is ignoring Watson’s wishes. It’s not a “rhetorical move” to say that; there’s no distance between the first part and the second part; they are the same thing.
I simply can not go to sites like that (well I simply shouldn’t) I tend to get violently upset when “the stupid” flows so heavily.
I really would like to be a part of the conversation, but I get the feeling I do not get all the nuances. To me the issue is black and white (most issues to me are, I suppose).
I am not intending to be a thread hog, pardon.
The most hopeful thing I’ve seen in days is the calm discussion that we’re having now, and I’m choosing to see it as evidence that we are trying to move beyond our currently entrenched positions.
Patrick, hang in there. I may not agree with everything that you’ve written, but I’m listening.
Improbable Joe, I’m impressed by almost every word you’ve written, especially here. However, “Gordon, it is hard for me to believe anyone is this stupid/ignorant… or stupid in a different way”, not so much. Don’t do that.
I am not trying to be the gatekeeper or the peacekeeper. I just don’t want anyone leaving until I thoroughly understand what they’re trying to say.
Joe, yes, there is a contradiction. All too many people say, as Patrick does, that they did understand what Rebecca said, and then continue to argue as though what she said were somehow irrelevant. For me, it exposes the fact that many of us men simply do not want to listen to women. Maybe it’s something fundamental. Religions are practically built on it. The only answer I can see is a big big change in education in which human relations become central.
skepticlawyer @60:
I don’t know if this makes any difference to the analogy or the discussion about feminism it’s a part of, but the above description of “the law of evidence” is in fact not true. There is no jurisdiction I’m aware of whose evidence rules require “[m]ost witnesses” (i.e., lay witnesses) “to confine their observations to questions of fact,” or where evidence rules entirely bar such witnesses from “speculat[ing] or giv[ing] opinions on the matter at hand.”
Here’s Federal Rule of Evidence 701:
In Minnesota, where I mainly practice, the corresponding state rule of evidence is nearly identical:
The published comment from the Minnesota rulemaking committee that drafted the above (or, more likely, just swiped it from the FRE) states:
I’m no expert on state-to-state differences in rules of evidence, but I’d be pretty surprised if there were a state in the U.S. that barred lay opinion testimony.
Again, I don’t know how this would relate to the analogy skepticlawyer was drawing, or to the discussion of feminism that that analogy is part of. Regardless, it’s just not true that American courts only allow experts with impressive sheepskin to testify to opinions from the witness stand.
I’m a British Conservative, not an American one. Palin makes most British Conservatives want to run for the hills, on the grounds that we may inadvertently find ourselves mistaken for her.
Your question is a difficult one, and I don’t have an answer. I don’t think there is an easy answer. I like Benjamin’s point @51, which asks what the rest of us ought to do when someone who purports to be feminist departs so wholly from any position associated historically with feminism.
The other thing to remember, of course, is that the substantive content of ‘feminism’ has shifted over the centuries. Feminism is very old; there are protofeminist arguments in Plato, and explicitly feminist arguments in many of the Roman Stoics. When you’re dealing with a movement with roughly 2000 years of intellectual history, tracking the changes can be really, ahem, challenging.
There does seem to have been an early bifurcation in the area of sexual expression, and this goes back to antiquity. There were always women who did not like to be viewed sexually (many of them became Christian). There were always women who did like to be viewed sexually (these women stayed pagan, and pointed out that sex was nice, so abortion to avoid the consequences made sense). Similarly, in the 1920s, many British feminists did not want to promote contraception, because they thought it meant men would make more sexual demands on women. They argued instead that men should moderate their sexual appetites.
All of this is not to argue that we can use a humpty-dumpty approach to the word ‘feminism’, where it means whatever a given individual says it means. From my perspective, abortion is a deal-breaker–so Palin is not a feminist–but I can see why she (and others) may disagree.
…Okay, given skepticlawyer’s reference @64 to cricket and rugby, it seems possible that the “law of evidence” he had in mind is something other than American law. In which case our disagreement may just stem from a(n inter-national) conflict of laws.
I have no idea how British (or Irish, Canadian, Jamaican, South African, Indian, Australian, New Zealander, etc.) law treats opinion testimony by lay witnesses. To the extent that my comment represented American jingoism (“American internet surfer privilege”?), mea culpa.
But in that case, skepticlawyer’s description of “the law of evidence” still doesn’t apply to American law, at least in any U.S. jurisdiction I’m familiar with.
Yeah, there it is: British. Sorry about the presumption, skepticlawyer.
Ophelia @83
Asking for coffee and conversation in this specific situation was ignoring Watson’s wishes, let alone the sex issue. Even divorced from the sexism, if a woman says “I am going to sleep now, goodnight everyone”, it is rude and inconsiderate in the extreme to chase after them and even just ask “Can we go get coffee and talk somewhere?”
Here, let’s put it this way: if you put up a “no soliciting” sign in your yard, and someone drives up and knocks on your door trying to sell you shit, they are ignoring your wishes and being an ass. If you put up a second sign on your door, and a chain across your driveway with a third sign hanging from it, and then walk under the chain and try to give you the pitch, they are ignoring your wishes and being a huge ass. So what if they follow you out of your house when you go to get some food, and sit down at your table and say “sorry to bother you, but can you take a look at my pamphlets, they’ve ignored your wishes, they’re being a huge asshole, AND they are stalking you.
Watson gave a speech about not hitting on her. She probably talked about her speech some more at the bar. She announced her desire to go straight to bed to sleep. EG followed her to the elevator, “pamphlets” in hand trying to make a sale. How is that acceptable? How is that not ignoring her clearly stated desires, and putting what he wants front and center to the detriment of what she wants?
#Improbable Joe #82. Hm. Perhaps it’s unfair, even silly to question you on this single point, but here goes…”If you choose not to respect them [her wishes], you cannot turn around and claim that you’re really a good guy.”
Why not? What sort of person is “really good” in the way you’re imagining here? A person can act in a stupid, unthinking way and still be a “good” person at the end of the day, no? I mean, is this debate really constrained by such rigid definitions? Now your point about not claiming victimhood, that one makes good sense.
Interesting! UK and US laws of evidence differ. Not really surprising I suppose but interesting.
Really extremely interesting if you think about it. The worth of lay opinion…a very knotty problem!
Rieux, I’m in Scotland, not the US, and previously worked in England (Scotland is also a mixed Roman law/Common law jurisdiction, and has evidentiary rules of its own). I could no more purport to know US procedure than I could presume to milk a bull!
I oversimplified when I drew such a sharp distinction (remember, most people here are not lawyers) between fact and opinion, but even in those US rules you’ve shared, I note that opinion–where given by a non-expert–must be based on first-hand knowledge. This is the point I wanted to get across.
The expert, by contrast, has a great deal more freedom to opine; indeed, that is his or her raison d’être.
You’re not being a thread hog, Marta. Anyway it’s a great discussion. And no worries about being a gatekeeper – as I just told Ben on the other thread, a little ad hoc comment-policing is fine. Sensible people know where to draw the line. [cough]
You sure?
hahahahaha
Rieux, gah, sorry for slow typing and reading, I didn’t see your subsequent comments, sorry sorry. Over here, a lay witness is given very narrow scope to opine based based on reasonable inferences — but it is very narrow! Indeedy, just looking at your Federal Rule of Evidence 701, I have never, ever seen an attempt to engage in (b), by any witness, and I doubt any judge would allow it (I certainly wouldn’t want to try it on, anyway, I don’t like what would happen to me during the subsequent voir dire). One just has to keep plugging away, especially during chief, in order to elucidate the evidence.
And of course, in my first sentence @89, I presumed (<a href=http://skepticlawyer.com.au/about/>wrongly</a>) that skepticlawyer is male.
This is just not a good morning for me in the “exposing unconscious biases” department.
Rossana Lhota @92
Heck, question away. I can’t learn anything if no one points out my flaws.:)
In this case, I think I’m OK… but I maybe could have phrased it a little more clearly. My position there hinges on the word “choose,” which handles your criticism about not lumping in “accidental, socially clumsy, and dumb” with “intentionally ignoring other people’s wishes.” If you consciously choose to do so, you’re not a nice person.
For further clarification, EG heard what Watson said on the subject of not hitting on her and going to sleep, he said “Don’t take this the wrong way, but…” indicating that he knew he was on shaky ground. And as Watson herself has more recently clarified, EG was NOT shy or awkward about it but rather confident and assertive.
If I see a woman at a bar and I come over and try to buy her a drink and don’t bother to notice that she’s wearing a wedding ring, THAT’S “stupid and unthinking.”
Marta @85
I missed your comment among the pack. Fair criticism, I can do better than that. Thanks for pointing it out.
Patrick, I apologize for the insults.
@Marta
I don’t have a problem imagining a Feminist who is against abortion. I don’t think you can call yourself a Feminist if you are against a mother’s right to choose though
If I am reading the problem correctly the central issue relating to what Patrick mentions above is this:
Did EG disregard what RW expressed about her own wishes when he approached her?
(I am taking it for granted that approaching someone for the first time in a hotel elevator and asking them to your room is almost always going to appear creepy – the question is whether he did it directly after hearing RW state she hated this sort of behavior)
If EG did this (ignored her stated wishes) then one can reasonably infer that his actions could be construed as harassing behavior.
The problem with this scenario is that the initial information provided by RW was not enough to be certain that EG knew her wishes. I’m not saying he didn’t, just that RWs description of events was not sufficiently detailed for a listener to be certain (to bring a courtroom reference into things again) ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. To state that the first time EG had spoken to RW was in the elevator itself and that he was not actively involved in the bar discussion raises at least the possibility that he may not have been following the discussion (not to mention whether he had even heard her talk at the conference.)
Of course this could easily be cleared up with the addition of some actual evidence and it would be helpful to me, and probably others too, to dispose of these questions. There must have been others there at the bar that night, have any of them posted something that could clear up this point?
Sorry, Marta. I’m probably out of here. If I respond to everyone one by one I’ll look like an internet troll with an unstoppable keyboard.
I feel like I’ve said my piece, and if its read for what it actually says without importing and ascribing to me a bunch of things said by other people in other comment threads, I think it stands on its own.
Excellent point.
Rieux @99,
I made the same damned assumption.
Hah! I assumed skepticlawyer was an Alaskan malamute… :)
Funnily enough, I always thought the British spelling was a bit of a give away. I do it deliberately, for precisely that reason ;)
Improbable Joe:, that’s a fine Siberian Husky, I’ll have you know. Long since departed to the great big dog kennel in the sky, but an outstanding dog in his day…
@Improbable Joe #100. “If you consciously choose to do so, you’re not a nice person.” Ay yay yay. Where are the philosopher/neuroscientists when you need one?
In a lime pit, scattered among several dozen plastic bags… where they belong from trying to argue “free will versus determinism” with me before buying me dinner and a drink.
Sigmund @ 103 –
People have added claims that EG heard what RW said about being exhausted and going to crash; I think RW added that claim at some point; but I’m not sure enough about who said it with what level of ability to know that I’ve been leaning on it very heavily. I think the basic factual claim has always been that EG was “on the edge” of the group in the bar…which isn’t really much use, because being on the edge could mean you don’t hear anything at all the people say at a distance.
I think I’ve sometimes said EG knew she had said she was tired/crashing, but uneasily aware that was second-hand and probably not solid knowledge anyway. I think I haven’t said that in awhile, for that reason.
I’ve always wondered what exactly transpired after EG’s question. I wonder if Rebecca asked him – “Did you hear me say I was exhausted and going to bed?” I wonder, if so, what he answered. I wonder if anyone other than EG knows what EG knew before he got in the elevator.
It’s a peripheral point though. He was still a complete stranger to RW. I’ve always suspected he forgot that she didn’t know him the way he knew her, just because people do that.
“I’ve always wondered what exactly transpired after EG’s question.”
Me, I’ve always wondered why, after Watson says to the world at large, “guys, don’t do that”, that the response was anything other than, “huh. Good to know.”
There are other potential responses… but I never expected “Give me 4AM elevator propositioning, or give me lifelong chastity and an eternal hatred of women!” to be in the top thousand, let alone in the top 4-5.
LOL, Joe. Good one.
Oh, and BTW… I feel like I’m “speaking for all men” (or at least the straight ones!) when I say that it is possible for men to talk to women in places other than Ireland-based elevators between 3-5AM, or their hotel rooms immediately following the elevator encounter. We’ll be just fine if we are forced by social convention to only speak to women in public, well-lit areas during that vital “getting to know you” phase. Our genitals won’t break off or atrophy from lack of use if some men have to do without sex while they figure out how to comport themselves properly. You womenfolk don’t owe us menfolk anything unless you’re the one who gave birth to us and we’re still legal dependents. We’re OK more-or-less, some of us are jerks but as a group I’m confident that we’re going to make good one of these generations.
As duly elected Spokesman for all Men Everywhere that there are Men, I just want to say “thank you.” Also, “sorry” and “have you seen my Yoda bobblehead?”
I think you make an important point here about the nature of moral claims. By definition they are claims about how other people should act, and not just expressions of preference regarding how the individual making the claim chooses to act. This would be good to remember in discussions about “firebrands” and “accomodationists” – both sides make moral claims as well as strategic ones, and expect those claims to be binding on others. Sometimes this is forgotten.
@Marta: Pro-lifers like Palin simply consider any fetus to be equal to any human, and therefore ascribe to them the same rights. To Palin, the mother’s right to choose sounds no different than demanding the right to kill your 5 year old. Her feminism has nothing to say about it; there is just no common ground to be had.
Skepticlawyer said, “There does seem to have been an early bifurcation in the area of sexual expression, and this goes back to antiquity. There were always women who did not like to be viewed sexually (many of them became Christian). There were always women who did like to be viewed sexually (these women stayed pagan, and pointed out that sex was nice, so abortion to avoid the consequences made sense).”
You are falling into the false virgin/whore dichotomy. Many feminists like and want sex (I’m one of them, and as I’m heterosexual I wrote a small manifesto about what kind of men I want, link at the end of my post). What no feminist — or woman in possession of her faculties — wants is to be treated as part of the furniture and be expected to deliver sex on demand. What we want is to be active partners in the acts of courtship, love and sex, all the way. No dichotomy there.
Women who show they like sex are often called unchaste/sluts/whores (a reversal of reality, since prostitutes perform sex for a living and therefore cannot abandon themselves to pleasure). And whether they like sex or not, women are still the ones who bear the asymmetric burdens of pregnancy, delivery and biological and cultural motherhood. So even women who like sex may end up having to avoid it if it means that it threatens their lives — from stoning to eclampsia.
To the larger point of “speaking for” — consider the “Four Horsemen” of GNU atheism and ask yourselves if they were elected to represent the movement, and to what extent they represent it.
The link, as promised (threatened?). Please note that in it I explicitly state that I don’t speak for all women, although I think that if women banded together as men do we’d be much further ahead in our pitifully modest goals. Snachismo; Or, What Do Women Want?
I hate those guys(except Dennett, who is almost a non-entity to me) … almost as much as as I hate John Fucking Mayer. Not just because he’s an aging fratboy douche, but mostly because the old-school blues/rock guys are trying to foist his twisty-faced nonsense on the world as “the next Eric Clapton” or similar claptrap. You don’t get to dump “leaders” on me without my consent, and I’m damned if I’m ever buying a John Fucking Mayer record.
Is John Fucking Mayer (that middle name he’s got must’ve been a huge burden for him, growing up. Probably, he just shortened it to F. though.) the guy who does “Your Body is a Temple” tune? Because that tune makes me want to poke corks in my ears.
As for the Four Horsemen, sometimes they speak for me. Other times they don’t. A serious person really doesn’t doubt that they’re founders of gnu atheism. Whether or not this necessarily means that they’re leaders, yeah, that’s debatable, but is there evidence that they see themselves in this role, or is this something we’ve shoved them into, and they’ve accepted the position, however reluctantly?
And also “tarts” and, more importantly, “pop tarts”. I found this out very painfully by calling one of the beloved commenters at ERV’s blog a “pop tart”, which shook them to their core for my utterly disrespectful, ignorant, and hypocritical use of a sexist term!
@Marta #121 – It’s “Your Body is a Wonderland,” but yes. John Fucking Mayer does sing that. :-) I liked that song a ton when I was 18. Now, not so much.
Related to this is the use of the experience of one person to dismiss any concern another person has—the idea that if you can find one or some women who don’t think something was discriminatory, then that means the issue is close and everyone else is being unreasonable for having a problem with it.
I consider myself a feminist, a believer in gender equality, etc. but I don’t pretend that other women are going to automatically agree with me. In fact, there are some women who I think are just flat out wrong and who are helping others discriminate against me. I’ll speak in favor of their rights, of course, but if they think I’m pretending that all women agree with me, they’re mistaken—as I’m perfectly aware that they disagree with me.
Improbable Joe and Aratina, I was under the impression that ‘pop tart’ was a variety of USAnian pudding (I believe you call them ‘sweets’). How little I knew!
Athena, that wasn’t the point I was making (although it’s perfectly possible I was unclear; observe the amusing skepticlawyer/Rieux two-step above for an instance of mutual misunderstanding). Rather, I was pointing out that being a woman who disliked sex and being viewed as sexual often, in late antiquity, was a reliable proxy for wanting to be viewed in other ways (often, as intelligent and moral in addition to Christian). Similarly, being a woman who liked sex and being viewed as sexual often, in late antiquity, was used as a proxy for being at ease with oneself, intelligent and moral. The modern virgin/whore dichotomy has distinctively Jewish and Christian origins. It is visible in St Augustine, but not consistently elsewhere (even among Christians), and especially not among Roman pagans.
Much of the best evidence on this point is admirably collated by Ramsay MacMullen and Robin Lane Fox, and is well worth a read. I should note than neither side covered themselves in intellectual glory. Christian women converts did indeed try to stigmatise their pagan opponents as ‘unchaste women’ and ‘whores’, to which the pagan women responded that the only reason a woman would become a Christian was because she couldn’t get a sexual partner (of either sex). This was typically followed by advice to go to the baths every day instead of once a week, and to wear make-up.
I believe it has been observed that history always repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
What the hell is wrong with you people? A “pop tart” is a particularly nasty “pastry” produced by Kellogg, which has the texture of sheetrock, a center so thinly filled with fruit, it was applied by laser, and which cannot be redeemed even by spreading a tablespoon of butter on it after toasting. The reason I know this is because I’ve eaten a hundred of them. Try the apple-cinnamon.
Skepticlawer, it’s true that the division is starkly front-and-center in monotheistic religions. However, the Athenians made similar distinctions between wives (who should not enjoy sex but were expected to produce legitimate male heirs on demand) and heterae/courtesans (who might provide intellectual stimulation as a bonus, but were non-citizens and were expected to produce sex on demand). Similar divisions were observed in several non-Christian cultures: India and Japan come to mind.
So it’s not just monotheists, and the division did not come from women, although women have often been called upon to enforce it on pain of losing even marginal status. Rather, it’s what I call the father-versus-son stance. The fathers want women chaste and sexless, the sons want women available on demand. Neither wants women to have autonomous agency on their bodies and lives.
Marta #125, you said it much better than I ever could! LOL. That’s precisely what I meant when I used it, even though like you I’ve eaten hundreds of them over my lifetime. And I really couldn’t believe the overreaction to it. Truly a weird space they’ve created over there where the T word and C word as applied to women are A-OK but “pop tart” as applied to a man is not.
I will have to take you at your word, Aratina. If I read that thread anymore, I’ll have a stroke.
Ha – I saw that, Aratina. Funny funny funny.
And pop tarts – why on earth does anyone ever eat those things? Weirdest food invention evah.
skepticlawyer, I think what you folks call “custard” is what we call “pudding”. I dunno… I guess a “pop tart” is sexist, although I’m not sure of the current usage. The actual food stuff product is actually worse than Marta describes, because that thin layer of filling tends to, when heated to the “proper” eating temperature, convert to something that’s a cross between the apotheosis of sweetness, and hot roofing tar. It is fruit-flavored napalm!
Marta, I don’t think the “four horsemen” founded ANYTHING. I’ve been an arrogant outspoken atheist since I was old enough to know that there was a name for what I am. They didn’t create anything new, they didn’t particularly or intentionally lead anyone anywhere, they just happened to all have books come out at the moment when the culture was ready to hear what they had to say. If anything, it was the grassroots efforts of us non-leader atheists over the last 15 or so years since the Internet started becoming important culturally, who created that space for the “four horsemen” to have a ready-made audience for what the had to say. If there weren’t millions of atheists who were waiting for books to buy, the “four horsemen” would have written little books that went nowhere and would have been footnotes in history. They didn’t particularly lead or teach or anything else. We made them famous, we did the heavy lifting… let’s not surrender the credit for that to them.
Pop Tarts, yeah. Why does anyone eat them, seriously? Even by the standards of convenience food they’re terrible. Really. They’re not good at all – I have no idea how you can fuck up the taste of a pastry crust that badly. It’s not even a matter of taste, I’m sorry. They’re objectively shitty.
@aratina
I think it was the hypocritical element that pushed buttons. But don’t look at me, I like hypocrites; at least they have standards.
Joe, no, “pudding” is another word for “dessert” in UK-speak. Actual pudding always gets its individual full title – steamed pudding, treacle pudding, plum pudding, rice pudding, etc. Dessert is pudding or sweet or afters – though I think “afters” is a bit non-U.
Mike Kelly: Are you seriously, I mean really, really, really seriously, trying to argue that calling a man a terrible snack pastry is the exact same thing as calling them a sexual epithet? Have you lost your mind?
Afters? Sweet? This must be a regional thing I’ve never encountered. I’ve never hear an American use the singular ‘sweet’ to refer to the dessert course. My perception of “sweets” as a synonym for candy or pastries is that it’s becoming slightly archaic, the sort of thing one is likely to hear from someone 70 or older, but not from others (just an observation, not an insult).
Josh, exactly. They’re so bad you can’t even eat them if you’re really really hungry and they’re all there is. I can’t imagine why anyone would ever pay money for them. Literally as pointless as putting cardboard in your mouth.
Josh no it’s UK as opposed to US. Strictly UK!
No, Ophelia, you misread me… I get that UK-ers call huge swaths of dessert stuffs “puddings”… I was defining what Americans call “puddings,” not trying to make the definition work both ways. I think American puddings are British custards, but I don’t think British puddings are American custards. Can you dig it? ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-OYKd8SVrI )
I make a mean Yorkshire pudding… and that’s no relation to the chocolate stuff that Bill Cosby’s selling! :)
@Marta
I do not. The term was interpreted as a sexual insult of some kind (I’m Irish, I have no idea what “pop-tart” means in that reference frame. I’m also diabetic so I don’t know what they taste like) and therefore as evidence of hypocrisy. That is my interpretation of the ERV melee not my opinion of the term.
Yes, I think Joe is right about the pudding/custard thing. In USAian “pudding” is almost exclusively (with the exceptions of bread and rice pussings) used to describe a thin “custard.” Of course, it isn’t really custard either, but a debased mockery made from dried powder. Shiver.
I think it’s more that they don’t have our puddings. I’ve never seen anything like our chocolate pudding or butterscotch pudding there.
Now, in Nebraska, pudding is a Dish of State…
Josh, Ophelia: Like Jalapeno flavored potato chips, the appreciate of pop tarts is a taste one acquires. Except for the frosted one. Nobody eats those.
“Pussings?” Oh dear lord, but that cracks me up. Don’t know if it was a typographical or a Freudian slip.
Yorkshire pudding – oh I love that stuff. How anyone can justify serving a beef roast without it is beyond me. I often make this for Christmas supper (the years when I don’t make lasagne. . .we have a weird family tradition of considering lasagne a Christmas supper-type-thing).
Little by little I’m getting it, and that helped. Thanks Joe.
@Marta:
A couple have already addressed this, but I figured I could give an example of why I can easily see being feminist, and anti-abortion. In college I was presented with Judith Jarvis Thompson’s Violinist thought experiment. The professor thought, as Thompson’s, that obviously we would have the right to disconnect ourselves from the Violinist immediately. I felt, and said, that I disagreed, and believed I had a moral obligation to remain connected despite it not in any way being my choice to end up there. The professor’s response was horrible: “Well, I’m very sorry you feel that way,” and then he went on as if I never spoke (wish I’d had the confidence to call him on that, but oh well). I would still say that.
Those who are anti-abortion feel that the fetus or embryo is the equivalent of a person, or even is a person, and has a right to life. That right to life trumps the woman’s right to control her body. After all, how can it be ok to murder an innocent, just so you can control your body? If a feminist accepts the argument that the fetus is equivalent to a person, with all the rights of a person, then it seems completely consistent to be a feminist, and anti-abortion. I’m betting many have a hard time understanding how pro-choice people think otherwise (I did, once).
(Before anyone imputes an anti-abortion stance on me, for the record, I don’t think the fetus is equivalent to a person, and am pro-choice. I’m a little fuzzy on the third trimester, but at least up to there I’m pro-choice.)
Anyway, that’s all. Please continue, I’m still learning.
@Mike Kelly
How about you not carry any excess ERV baggage over to here, if you can avoid it? We’re generally pretty good and decent and rational folks over here, and we’re not above calling each other out when lines are crossed. We try damned hard not to be unnecessarily rude here… we’re not perfect, but we’re for Satan’s sake not the cesspool of insult that characterizes ERV.
We’re interested in real conversation… and I think I speak for all of us!… not fighting or flaming or being nasty at each other.
I know what a “twinkie” is, but “pop tart” is news to me. Not much worried, since I don’t use it as an epithet anyway.
Mike Kelly:
Ah.
Pardon.
Sorry Joe? If I was rude it was unintentional. And I can’t actually see where. I was worried that Marta had misunderstood me so I clarified. But no big thing, I’ll go back to lurking.
The problem with thinking of the fetus as a person is that it isn’t a person. It’s “political” to think of it as a person. People manage to really think it is a person, but that’s a religious, “extra” kind of thinking. In a way people have no right to think that, if they try to impose the result of the thinking on other people. It is in a sense willful to think the fetus is a person.
Okay, remind me not to opine freely on the subject of pop tarts, for that way a ‘thread of doom’ doth lie. Over here we have jaffle irons/toastie irons, which are toasted sandwich makers that seal in the edges of the bread and superheat the cheese filling. Although savoury rather than sweet, the napalm-like consistency mentioned above appears to be something in common.
I have never eaten a pop tart. I hope I don’t ever have to after this thread!
Athena, interesting — I think we may be seeing one of the distinctive differences between Greek (or at least Athenian) society and Roman society. Roman marriage was far more companionate (if the woman didn’t consent, the marriage was off — ‘consent is the basis of marriage, not sex,’ says Ulpian, the great Roman jurist), the women were also much older when they married — around 20, Treggiari is good on this — and divorce was equally easy for both sexes. Roman women always retained their property, and often child custody as well. Also, Roman law accepted and accommodated non-marriage relationships, and did not penalise illegitimate children.
Romans of both sexes often made snide remarks about the way Athenians treated women, and the Roman jurists take it as given that evidence for the superiority of Roman civilisation over Greek is in part based on the higher status of women in Roman society. To continue with the ‘not covering oneself in intellectual glory’ component, a nasty comment about the Greeks being a nation of kiddy-fiddlers is usually made immediately after the status of women comment. (The Romans were fine with being gay, but being gay and chasing after a minor — 14 was the age of consent for both [citizen] sexes in Roman law — was not okay).
So the pagan women who had a go at early Christian women were wives and girlfriends and partners in at least quasi-monogamous relationships (concubinage did not require monogamy from the woman, but marriage did). And they thought that Christian women were absolutely fooling themselves when it came to being ‘treated with sexual dignity’.
Don’t go back to lurking, Mike, I got your clarification. Siddown, have some pudding.
@Josh re: pudding
Yeah, the American version is generally an overly sweet, barely coherent mush. I’m a fan of the Spanish-style flan, which is really a crème caramel. The powdered crap is an embarrassment.
Yorkshire pudding and roast beef is just a given. It is a weird sort of call-out to chicken and dumplings, or the biscuits and gravy of the American south: a baked pastry served with meat and a very savory sauce.
As far as strange holiday traditions… I alternate between a traditional Thanksgiving, various turducken recipes, and Joe’s World Famous Potato Soup. The secret of the soup is the dozen different peppers that go into it. :)
American pudding? hmm
I’ve never tried Turducken but I’m just dying to. It’s outrageous and slightly wrong but it looks delicious. Don’t know if I’d be up to making it from scratch though.
Hey Mike, I wasn’t telling you to lurk, or wanting you to shut up AT ALL!!!! I meant that as an invitation to the party. I was just worried that you were wanting people here to explain stuff going on over at ERV… which we have been struggling to understand and failing miserably at for a couple of weeks.
Post away Mike… if you make an honest misstep, you’ll be gently corrected and welcomed to continue posting. Please, re-read this thread. I stepped on my dick earlier (I called Patrick stupid), I was called on it, and I was cool with it because I know the folks here mean well, and apologized because they were right to call me out. You don;t have to lurk because you’re afraid of offending, because if you’re not doing it on purpose you can always get a chance to clarify with no hard feelings.
Ophelia runs the best place on the Internet for conversation, as far as I’ve found, and I’ve been online since 1992.
Josh, my wife hates duck… HATES duck. We ate at a ridiculous restaurant at our ridiculous hotel on vacation back in June, and she was served the most perfect duck ever, and she didn’t like it at all. She ate my fish instead. So turducken is a hard sell in my house.
But I want to go bigger. I want to stuff a pig with a goose with a turkey with a duck with a chicken with a Cornish game hen with a single hard-boiled egg.
Mike, Joe is completely right. Plus, apparently, Ophelia serves desserts. And “pussings”, but I’ll be damned if I know what those are.
I partly agree, and partly don’t. True, not a person. Not sure what you mean exactly by “political” in this context. It probably is religious or “extra” kind of thinking to consider the fetus a person. If someone genuinely believes it though, and sees abortion as murder, then I can’t see anyway they could morally NOT try to make it illegal. If there were a debate over the right to life of a toddler, I would have to fight hard to make/keep killing toddlers illegal. Since it’s dealing with perceived murder, I don’t think its quite the same as imposing personal views on, for example, homosexuals and same-sex marriage.
One other point I didn’t mention, since I wasn’t sure it related to the feminism question: some are held up on “life,” rather than “person.” In other words, the mere fact that it’s genetically human life (and it’s just as alive as a bacteria) is enough to be against it. That’s where I was hung up for years (thank you Professor Ed for asking “Sure its a life, but is it a person?”).
Okay, I hope there’s an Italian-American on this blog, because I’m now leaving the English-language reservation. ‘Pudding’ in British English is the equivalent of ‘dolci’ in Italian. It covers a multitude of sins. There are custard puddings and chocolate puddings and creme puddings and cake-based puddings, but they are all puddings. It is non-U and slightly weird to refer to the third course as ‘sweets’ or ‘afters’ or dessert. But that is a class thing. Often, in Britain, the French-derived term is considered naff.
This is why we prefer ‘napkin’ to ‘serviette’, ‘I missed that’ or ‘what?’ to ‘pardon’ or ‘excuse me’, and ‘pudding’ to ‘dessert’.
Indeed, I was told (while at Oxford) that ‘pardon’ is a much ruder word than ‘fuck’, because only people with no class say ‘pardon’, because they live in ‘pardonia’.
Now, no doubt, I am going to have to explain what ‘naff’ means…
Joe – do you think your wife actually hates duck, or does she think she does because ducks don’t fit into her mental category of birds-that-can-be-eaten? I know a lot of people who “don’t like” foods because of the latter, though they claim it’s the taste (yes, I’m second-guessing their own opinions:)
Seriously? I would eat the shit out of that. What a monumental culinary achievement!
Yup.
Third? I’ve heard of courses beyond dessert (i.e., second course), but always thought it was a historical anachronism.
Hey! I like pop tarts. Strawberry. With frosting! But then again I may be an masochist and I relish the anticipation of having my tongue burned by molten strawberry jam and the taste of frosted sheet-rock.
(but seriously I haven’t eaten a pop tart in years and I am appreciating the discussion going on in this comment thread…)
Ophelia – it’s not always only political to think of a fetus as a person. I think it’s uncontroversial that what’s going on for a lot of people is an evolved emotional gut reaction, a transference of the “OMG must protect child” impulse onto a thing that seems to many people like a child/person but isn’t. We didn’t evolve to emotionally distinguish between “persons” and “non-persons” in that sense. It takes a conscious act of will and intellect (and once you make that act it’s blindingly simple and obvious that a being with no experience of the world and a half-formed brain isn’t a person). For some it’s harder than others. They’re desperately wrong, of course, and just because it’s hard for them to reason rather than emote does not lessen their obligation to do so or our obligation to stop the outcomes of their emotional problems.
For what it’s worth, yes, I realize this argument can be extended to defending infanticide (by parental choice, not as an act of war, etc.). And I don’t really have a huge ethical problem with that. A one-day-old baby is no more a person than it was when it was in the womb.
Josh- I’ve reintroduced my wife to entire categories of food that she previously thought she hated, and that she now loves. The duck is still a sticking point, which I take to mean she doesn’t like the taste, rather than some mental block. She claimed that she hated plantains, but while we were on vacation she had mofongo and tostones twice and loved all of it, and both dishes are very heavy on the plantain. We were in a fancy fine-dining restaurant… she still hated the duck.
Thanks everybody. Love the blog, makes me think (but not about pudding).
Night night.
Mike
Motivated, more or less. Swayed by external factors.
The fetus is hidden, so we don’t know anything about it except via medical technology, but the medical technology shows that the fetus isn’t “a person” – it’s an earlier stage on the way to a person. So people have to ignore what we actually know about the fetus in order to make a semi-magical decision that a thing that looks like a primitive chick is “a person.” If you met a fetus at a party or sat next to one on a bus you wouldn’t think it was “a person.”
(I’m not disputing, just spelling out what I think.)
Josh – hmm – that would apply to people protecting their own prospective children (and perhaps those of relatives and even friends etc) but not prospective children as such. I don’t think we’ve evolved to give a shit about the future children of distant others. Learned, perhaps, but not evolved – and “learned” is what I’m getting at.
@Nathan, I wrote a recent essay about stem cells that touches upon the issues you raise: Blastocysts Feel No Pain. Short excerpt:
“A blastocyst is a potential human as much as an acorn is a potential oak – perhaps even less, given how much it needs to attain viability. Equally importantly, blastocysts don’t feel pain. For that you need to have a nervous system that can process sensory input. In humans, this happens roughly near the end of the second trimester – which is one reason why extremely premature babies have severe neurological defects.”
@Skepticlawyer, the status of Hellenic women was better in other eras and other city-states during the classical era (the Bronze Age, Ionia and Aeolia, Sparta). It appears to have been particularly high in Minoan Crete.
The Athenian erastés/eroménos custom is lazily portrayed as “kiddie fiddling”. In fact, the younger members of this rigidly orchestrated social ritual were fifteen to nineteen years old, past the age of consent for most cultures till recently. They could also refuse suits if they didn’t like the suitor. Very similar customs, with less consent, were followed during medieval Europe (and Japan) by knights and their pages.
Abbie’s latest (not latest latest, but latest bomb) is simply beyond belief.
‘Naff’ is from Polari dialect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari
This is still widespread in parts of England, although not Scotland. The Doric (NE Scots regional dialect) version is coorse. It means uncool, tacky, unfashionable, worthless.
Nathan, there is indeed a course after pudding, it’s called ‘second desserts’ (and this usage is not naff). In my college, those seated at High Table went to the Warden’s dining rooms (always taking our napkins with us), where we partook of Turkish delight, fruit, dessert wine, strong coffee and port.
Skepticlawyer – really common people pronounce ‘pardon?’ as PUH-duhn, which has been rendered as “I beg your pudding?”
Ophelia @ #167:
Ah, ok. I suppose that would be answered by those hung up on the “life” term rather than “person.” Or those hung up on “soul” (since most of us are atheists, no point in dwelling on that silly hang up, right?).
And I could tell you weren’t disputing.
Josh @ #164:
Interesting point. But I’m not touching the infanticide just now, because I’m not sure I have an argument that’s not mostly emotion.
@Ophelia:
Is that what the person who used pop tart meant? Something similar to a twinkie? I was kind of confused about why someone would call someone else a pop tart unless that someone else was a young, sexy, female pop star…
Also, don’t you think twinkies are weirder than pop tarts? I certainly do.
How much would it hurt my head to go to this Abbie’s site? I don’t think I’ve ever been there.
@skepticlawyer; wow. I feel incredibly naff right now with my one course and maybe dessert style meals.
I just had to look up ‘twinkie’. I now understand what ‘twinkie defence’ means. Anyone who eats one of those, well, quite…
Athena @169, I don’t doubt for a moment that the Romans were being unfair; after all, they were the major colonial power at the time, and for all the greatness of Greek philosophy, Romans could look with pride at their legal system and its presumption of innocence, prohibition on the torture of citizens, best evidence rule and right to silence.
When I read Socrates’ Apologia for the first time, I remember thinking ‘you dill, you’re digging yourself an almighty hole’ only to have one of my law tutors point out that, at the time, no-one on the planet had come up with the presumption of innocence. Poor Socrates had to work with what he had, and what he had amounted to the whole city convinced before trial of his guilt.
It was also an important lesson in not reading the past through the spectacles of the present; as the same tutor reminded all of us, ‘always remember, two civilisations, entirely independently of each other, developed the presumption of innocence: the Romans and the English. Everyone else worked on the ‘where there’s smoke, there’s fire’ principle. So be thankful for the Romans and the English’.
Rowan @172, that made me laugh.
Godless Heathen, Twinkies are orthogonally weirder than pop-tarts. Probably. I’m not actually sure about what “orthogonal” means.
Ophelia @ 170
OMG.
I used to hold a great affection for Abbie, based almost entirely on her defense of pit bulls as worthwhile pets. I’m an animal lover who believes that there are no bad pets and only bad owners.
In this case, she’s acting like a teenage ‘mean girl’ brat, attacking other girls who are popular outside of her clique and her range of approval. All I get from her is that she’s mad because Rebecca Watson isn’t as smart as Abbie, or as good-looking as Abbie, and yet Rebecca gets all the attention and therefore needs to be taken down a few notches. So Abbie is playing high school level politics, because she’s pissed off at the Skepchick clique. In doing so, she’s created a home for every misogynistic, hateful, offensive, sociopathic online jackhole on the entire earth to post their worst and most poisonous ideas. Which she’s fine with, because it is all aimed at someone she holds in contempt for being popular and not being a scientist and maybe being a bit clique-ish over the years.
Lots of people make me all sorts of mad. I don’t hold grudges so long, and I would never crap on my own principles just to hurt some relative stranger who has online celebrity. It makes me wonder if Abbie has any principles at all, when she’s willing to go so dirty and cutthroat so fast over a minor Internet squabble.
Godless H – no, I don’t think so, I was just saying I knew what one kind of ecch shop-pastry meant but not the other.
Actually I don’t think Twinkies are weirder than pop tarts. I kind of remember what I liked about them when I was 5 or 6. (Haven’t eaten them since.) Pop tarts don’t have even that kind of for-small-children allure (that I can detect).
Nathan, it would make your head hurt a lot, I should think. Someone quoted it at PZ’s…but not the full context, which is sort of needed.
Ophelia – yes, you’re right. Learned. Now that I think about it, my argument is unnecessarily baroque. I was going to say the politics co-opts the evolved “protect your own children” emotion and provokes it for use in the abortion wars, but it doesn’t even need to be that complicated.
@Improbably Joe – really enjoying your comments. Same thoughts as mine but better expressed. Your wife may not like duck because the fat content affects mouth feel. I’m the same way about lamb/mutton.
@Nathan the deal to me for that we don’t terminate the pregnancy then kill the product. I know several women who have terminated their pregnancy and have their kids running around. It’s called inducing. If the embryo/blastomere/fetus was so important we’d be much closer to an artificial uterus than we are.
Scepticlawyer and Athena – learning by just reading your posts.
@cass_m: I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your first sentence to me? I think you made a typo or two, and this time I can’t figure it out. Although an artificial uterus would be great.
For what it’s worth, I find Rebecca to be both smarter and more attractive than Abbie. But that’s beside the point.
I am more interested to know what Jerry Coyne will do next. I’ve been disappointed with his conduct throughout this entire affair. Posting that laughable strawman of feminists that was the latest Jesus & Mo on his site the other day certainly didn’t help matters. Especially after his quip about EG generating traffic on blogs and posting Mr. Deity’s video caricature of the controversy.
I suspect he’s trying to have it both ways, supporting his dear friends(Abbie & Miranda Celeste) while at the same time hoping not to upset the rest of us by avoiding direct commentary on EG. Then again, that’s just a guess. I’ve been perplexed by Jerry’s actions.
Perhaps with Abbie unraveling before our eyes Jerry will finally decide to distance himself from her. If that’s the case, apologizing to Ophelia would a good start.
Improbable Joe, I think you’re misrepresenting ERV. Her original point was that it isn’t fair to respond to a blog post in a conference where the other person can’t reply, even more if the blogger is only a youngling. I remember her saying Watson should pick on someone her size. Then, things went bad. Everyone started to throw up and shit in the comments, and she started wallowing in all the shit and the vomit which I find appalling. But her original point had nothing to do with envy towards Watson.
Jose:
I never said “envy”… but that would be a more generous interpretation than what it appears to be. Especially considering your own insulting use of the term “youngling” towards an adult woman. You’re being insulting towards Stef McGraw, and since I think you don’t mean to be so insulting, I’d suggest you stop posting, and think about it for a few hours before you post again. Feel free to come back, when you’re done insulting Stef McGraw in order to attack Rebecca Watson.
Jesus Christ. Stef McGraw is a grown adult woman. Abbie’s idiosyncratic fixation and terminology (which you’ve oddly adopted) are just that: idiosyncratic and weird.
Infanticide is a strange beast, legally. The way the offence has developed over time is an argument, I think, for the Roman law view that many people do not view children as though they are as ‘important’ as adults; the valuing of children characteristic of Christianity (hence its view of abortion) must be acculturated, often with great difficulty and with only partial success.
In Britain before 1922, infanticide was a capital offence with a mandatory life tariff. However, juries in the late 19th century and the early 20th century became so sympathetic to women accused of the crime that few convictions were recorded. Even more incredibly, the refusal to convict was often maintained in the face of an extremely strong Crown case. This is known over here as a ‘perverse’ verdict, where the jury finds the accused not guilty despite an overwhelming Crown case.
Perverse verdicts are extremely destructive of the rule of law (some of you may have heard the phrase ‘bringing the law into disrepute’; perverse verdicts are an example of that). Very often, Parliament is confronted with a situation where there is a choice between maintaining the rule of law and maintaining what seems to be a widely held moral principle. In the last 100 years or so, the rule of law has generally been preferred to morality. This is because the wheels really do fall off societies where people don’t think everyone is subject to the rule of law.
The new 1922 law (and a later, 1938 one) weakened the penalty considerably, and made it much harder for the Crown to make out homicide.
What is even more remarkable, of course, is that for the bulk of the relevant period, juries were all male. The men in question did not want to convict a woman who had killed her infant. When women were rendered able to serve on juries, the number of perverse verdicts remained the same. Women, also, did not want to convict a woman who had killed her infant.
Some of the history is here, in the context of further, mooted changes to the relevant law.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/scrap-outdated-infanticide-law-say-judges-495016.html
@Nathan No I think I said it right, but it’s difficult without using emotional terms. Terminating a pregnancy is interrupting the dependency of the embryo -> fetus on a person. If the offspring does not die, there is not an extra effort to kill it. If there’s a chance of survival, doctors usually help in that direction.
Improbable Joe that is absolutely fucking ridiculous, and you owe Abbie an apology.
Abbie has been one of the few people in this whole mess who has been steadily clear-headed and sensible. What you just described Abbie as doing is what Watson did to Stef McGraw. This whole debate, when you boil it down, is about the way Watson used her position of power to humiliate McGraw at a CFI conference put on for students where Watson was a keynote speaker and McGraw was one of the students. That’s been Abbie’s point throughout. What I don’t understand (or “get”) is why so many people are being protective of Watson, who clearly abused her position and seems to be a nasty piece of work. Yet what is being experienced by anyone who makes the slightest criticism of poor little dear sweet self-aggrandising Rebecca is that we’re shouted down as liars, misoygnists, gender traitors, old privileged white men, or whatever else serves the purpose. I’ve found this whole episode very disillusioning.
The whole damn thing would be over if Watson apologised to McGraw. It’s as simple as that. Well not quite that simple, because many other people, including me, are now angry about how we’ve been treated and are owed apologies. But Watson could have ended this within the first few days if she’d taken a deep breath, admitted she was wrong, and apologised to Stef McGraw. It’s not too late – that would restore peace to an extent, as well as restoring Watson’s reputation.
And yes, I know there are some nutjobs commenting on Abbie’s thread – David Byron for one. That’s hardly surprising. Both “sides” in this dispute have more than their share of nutjobs. For balance, read any thread on this at Pharyngula, where there’s a whole army of lunatics cheering for Watson. What astonishes me is that PZ Myers (who ended our friendship by calling me in almost so many words a barefaced liar when I set out what looks to me to be the truth of all this) and Greg Laden are sounding like nutjobs themselves. So are quite a few usually-sensible people here at B&W such as yourself – e.g. with that attack you just made on Abbie.
Toronto Atheist, snap – I was just thinking the same thing – wondering how embarrassing Jerry C finds Abbie at this point. Urgh urgh urgh.
Speaking of Jesus and Mo, Author closed comments there earlier today. They weren’t going well.
I strongly disagree, or rather, I mean to say I’m in favor of a dent in the rule of law when the law is unjust. There are far too few people, in my opinion, who understand that they are not obligated to convict a defendant simply because she did violate the law in actual fact. They have the right to say “no, I refuse to convict.” But most people don’t. When I was a crime reporter, I covered many trials and got a good dose of how authoritarian and manipulative judges can be. Some instruct the jury in such explicit detail about what they are and are not allowed to consider that it’s ludicrous; it’s the judge angling for an outcome under the cover of “objective reasoning under the law.” Most Americans are completely ignorant of the legal theory of jury nullification, and this is how we get verdicts such as the one against Raquel Nelson. I don’t believe for a second that no juror considered it horrible that they “had” to convict her. I’m certain many did, and I’m also certain the judge “instructed” them so.
This is not justice.
Joe and Josh Slocum, I was only trying to represent her point as accurately as possible, that’s why I used her own terminology. If you go to the post titled “Bad form, Rebecca Watson” at ERV, you will see me disagreeing with ERV and trying to make the point that criticizing McGraw’s post wasn’t unfair, and that it wasn’t anything personal, either.
Russell – you have got to be kidding. Abbie has been calling Watson Twatson and a fucking bitch for days, and cheering on those goons who call her all that and a cunt and all the rest of the Misogynists’ Dictionary. Nobody owes Abbie any apology. “steadily clear-headed and sensible” – are you fucking kidding me? Did you see the bit just an hour or so ago where she said PZ had been
sniffing around smelly skepchick snatch
???
I really don’t want you here if you call that kind of thing steadily clear-headed and sensible.
Have you lost your goddamned mind Russell? Seriously- I can scarce believe the things you’re writing! You don’t know me from Adam, but I’ve been a huge fan of your reasoning and blogging for years. I cannot square that with you claiming Abbie has been reasonable. Do you really think accusing PZ of “sniffing smelly Skepchick snatch” is reasonable? Or Twatson? Or “bitch brigade?”
You don’t need to answer, because I know you don’t think that’s reasonable. This means you’re willing to overlook such transgressions in service of protecting your articulated point of view, and that’s outrageous. You should be ashamed of yourself.
Josh, I wasn’t clear, apologies. Perverse verdicts are destructive of the rule of law because it is clear that the law is being honoured only in the breach. Therefore, if the rule of law is to be maintained, it simply must be amended/repealed. This is what happened in Britain in 1922, and again in 1938, with respect to infanticide.
I am not suggesting that laws incapable of enforcement be left on the books; rather, I am pointing out that if jurors repeatedly ignore them, then perhaps the law really is an ass.
@cass_m: “the deal to me for that we” <<That’s what confused me, and the rest just wasn’t following for me. So let me see if I’m understanding you now: you’re saying that based on what we do when we abort or induce labor says something about our values regarding fetuses and infants. We prefer living infants, and if it doesn’t interfere with the abortion, we’ll go ahead and try to end up with a living infant. If we as society actually cared as much for the fetus as the anti-abortion crowd claim, we would’ve put more effort into developing technology such as artificial uteruses (uterusi?).
Is that accurately representing your view? If not, and if it helps, feel free to use emotional terms, and I’ll try not to take offense (I’m usually good at that).
You know, Russell, that’s just bullshit. I’ve made the slightest criticism of Rebecca. I probably terminally pissed her off by saying here that I thought she shouldn’t have worn an undershirt for the Dublin panel. I still think that; I also think the skepchick calendar is a really bad idea, and that sending mixed messages is a really bad idea. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t 100% agree with either side. I thought Rebecca over-reacted to Dawkins’s rude outburst, and I still think so.
And yet, funnily enough, I haven’t seen anyone shout me down as a liar or gender traitor.
But to the extent that your “faction” allies with Abbie in the wake of that cesspool of a post, to that extent you’re no friends of mine. That’s a deal-breaker. No cunting or twatting or smelly snatch-ing for me thank you. Period.
Hey Russell? Not in this existence, or any other possible alternate universe. You should be ashamed… and if you were capable of real reflection on this issue, you’d have kept your mouth shut in the first place. Abbie has been an embarrassment. Whatever her personal issues with the other parties, her eagerness to host a misogyny party has been a disgrace. Your defense of her isn’t any better. Your position is pathetic. Stop sucking up to your friend… real friends don’t let their friends act so poorly for so long.
If you’re cool with what’s been happening, you’re not the decent person I thought you were, and I hope our paths never cross again.
Thanks. I’m sorry that I misread you! By the way, I’m really glad you’re here. Your posts on legal theory and history are very engaging.
Toronto Atheist @183:
It’s a mystery. I think that when Dr. Coyne responded as he did weeks back to Ophelia, he was not himself. Others will disagree. But his response to Ophelia seemed very out of character for him (it goes without saying that I have no special knowledge of Dr. Coyne, except for the sense of “knowing” one thinks one has when one has been a steady reader/contributor at a favorite blog.) This is my most charitable understanding; the alternative is very difficult to consider. I don’t know how he repairs this damage. I don’t know if he cares to. I don’t know if he even has an awareness that damage has occurred. As someone much wiser than me said elsewhere, as a mentor to another young scientist, he has failed. And failed spectacularly.
As for Abbie. She’s wandered out very far on a thin branch, and she’s taken a saw with her. She’s lost reputation and respect and I’m not sure how she wins those back. She’s gone over the cliff, and her heel is too far away now for any of us to catch her. Pity.
Wait… and earlier in this thread I mentioned that I wasn’t on board with the way Watson handled the McGraw deal… and Russell Blackguard went after ME in particular. I guess I’m a safe target because I don’t have a book for sale on Amazon. I guess I’m the “weak link” that Russell feels free to attack… even if his attack makes little sense.
Josh, you’re welcome. For my part, I have learnt that I shouldn’t try to water down the law, but discipline myself to explain it more clearly.
I should add that my comment @187 should read ‘capital offence often commuted to a life tariff’, not ‘capital offence with a mandatory life tariff’. Fumble fingers strikes again!
Blackford. Jesus. I overestimated you.
Ophelia… my posts are being moderated now?
If you want me gone, at least have the decency to tell me so to my face.
There’s a dire need for more articulate public-intellectual-type lawyers. The ignorance of the majority of US citizens about how and why the law is as it is is vast. As you know, the legal profession has a surfeit of terrible, horrible, awful writers addicted to baroque terminology, excessively Latinate prose, and multiply nested dependent clauses. The unusual lawyer with a good command of direct expositive prose is a joy (to me, anyway).
Joe, chill out! Lord but you have a hair trigger – I thought I was bad. Why assume you’re being actively moderated before considering maybe it’s a software issue?
Russell’s going after all of us, Joe (though he did single you out) – he’s going after me by pitching a fit here, for one thing, as he did by pitching a previous fit here and then linking to the fit on Facebook and summoning The Allies to come gang up on me.
That was the day Jerry C sent me that bossy “how dare you” email, so when Russell chimed in along with the dog whistle to His Team I felt well and truly bullied.
He’s not the only one who feels disillusioned.
Well it’s a good thing to shed one’s illusions!
Joe…eh? Not that I know of. I’ll check.
Yes: there was one with links. Sorry. But as Josh says – slow down! They get caught in the filter sometimes.
Yeah, Ophelia… I see that he’s hitting all of us. I just thought it was a little bit cowardly to single me out, on account of I’m the anonymous person(by necessity, trust me… I don’t want to be homeless!) and I don’t have any pull in the larger community. I know he’s after all of us, but he’s only brave enough to go after the person who he doesn’t think can hit him back.
Really, Ophelia – I’m “going after” people by sticking my nose in here to put a view that will be unpopular (though I stand by it)? So any dissent is “going after people”? I’m conducting a one-person witch hunt of the whole lot of you?
Mate, I wish I had that sort of power.
Ophelia and Josh… just because I’m paranoid, it doesn’t mean that someone(the computer!) isn’t out to get me.
Steady, Joe. It isn’t easy at the moment, but your focus is extremely important.
And you’re being absurd, Joe. I replied to your comment because it was the most recent one at the time I started typing and it was the one that struck me as so unfair (in this case to Abbie) that it made me feel I had to say something. See, this is one of the annoying things: the constant accusations of bad faith.
Uh…………….Russell? You’re ignoring the substantive points?
More power than me… but that was the point, right? I’m not saying anything different from anyone else on this site over the last few weeks, but you felt really comfortable singling me out. Your view is crap, obviously. It was stated dishonestly. You’re full of sour owl poop.
Come at me, chum… I’m a no-name anonymous Internet nobody, but if you’re feeling too scared to take on a real name, feel free to get froggy and hop over here. You might be a big fish in your fetid little pond, but I’m not afraid to mix it up with you. Hell, if you’re so scared that you’re only willing to assert your position directed at little old me instead of people with established reputations, I’m sure I can spank you right back up your ivory tower.
Blackford, you’re a real pinhead. Here we all are, having a lovely conversation about pop tarts and puddings and abortion and what not, being civil and friendly and all. Now here comes YOU, pooping on Ophelia’s carpet. At the very least, your manners are detestable.
Russell – To repeat. I’m not 100% of the pro-Watson faction. I don’t agree with everything on either side. But I find more to object to on the anti-Watson side, especially now that Abbie’s misogyny-riddled post is at the center of it. Yet you claim she has been steadily clear-headed and sensible.
Look, Russell, Abbie calls a woman she disagrees with a twat and a fucking bitch and talks about “smelly snatch” yet you want people here to apologize to her. I don’t quite know how to make this clear if it isn’t already…I’m a woman. People who talk about women that way aren’t my allies. Talking about women that way is a deal-breaker. Yet you think it’s clear-headed and sensible.
Its cool Marta… I’ve never been more focused. :)
Folks want to come at me? Let them come at me. Let them bring everything they’ve got. I’ll just bring enough to beat them, and leave the rest at home.
BTW… YOU haven’t seen my Yoda bobblehead, have you?
Russell, intellectual and ethical honesty requires you to respond to questions about whether you think “smelly snatch” etc. is reasonable. Stop ducking this shit, it’s beneath you and it’s blindingly obvious that you’re doing it.
To illustrate that further: it’s just the same thing as when a person decides to denigrate me by insisting on calling me a faggot, a cocksucker, or a fudge-packing butt pony. The answer to that is obvious: Fuck you and get the hell out of my face.
You wouldn’t even dream of defending that, Russell. It’s a disturbing and sick testament to the normativity of sexist degradation that you don’t automatically feel the same way about cunt, twat, and smelly snatch.
Ophelia, Josh, Marta… maybe I need to repeat what you’ve said. Obviously, Russell is only willing to take me on in a semi-discussion, so maybe I need to make your points for you so that he’ll be willing to respond. After all, I’m an engineering undergrad, and he’s got a Ph.D. and maybe he’s only able to defend his bullshit when he’s sure he’s got several layers of education over the person he plans on bullying.
You have truly lost it, Russell.
This claim is so divorced from reality that it probably doesn’t warrant a response, but I will note that I responded to your incredibly patronizing posts about McGraw a while back, quoting from her post and attempting a reasoned discussion of cross-platform criticism. You ignored it. Really, you’re positively addled. It’s a bit shocking.
Yes, it really is. Disturbing, too.
Ophelia, this is a simple but dead-on post. What’s particularly interesting about the “argument” you address is that it co-opts feminism to bash feminism. It co-opts everyone’s instinct that women have the right to speak for themselves (an instinct which only became widespread in the modern world because of feminism!) and uses it to bolster the claims of those who say that THEY don’t mind persistent sexual attention in that setting AT ALL. Which implies that other women shouldn’t mind it either, which…also speaks for all women. It just speaks more stupidly.
I’m curious though–what do you disagree with from Ms. Watson? Everything I’ve heard her say about this seems quite sensible.
Ah, never mind, I see your earlier comment spelling it out, and looked up a couple of old threads. I have to say that I agree with Watson that the comments on her attire are unfair and hint of slut-shaming. I don’t see what good that type of commentary does, and I can see it producing a great deal of harm.
A member of a more powerful group going after the less powerful who speak up is not “dissent.” It is not rebellious. Don’t you dare use the terms describing real struggle to characterize your speaking from a position of power and privilege.
Marta,
I think part of the answer is that she was perceived—partly reasonably, I think—as saying something very much broader than that guys shouldn’t corner women in elevators in foreign countries at 4 AM and make what they should know seem like transparent sexual propositions.
I actually agree with most of the specific things that Watson has said on the subject, but I took Elevator Guy to be a clearly bad example of what I thought she was actually talking about, which was “sexualization” very broadly construed, including too much talk about sex, too many favorable comments on the physical appearance of women skeptics, and too much attempted flirting.
I took Elevator Guy not to be at all representative of what Watson was mainly complaining about, but to be an extreme, “tip of the iceberg” example. I thought the implication was that if some guys at skeptics events are acting that desperate and/or clueless and/or insensitive toward some women sometimes, then you know there’s a whole lot less extreme sexualization by a lot of guys frequently annoying a lot of women, usually in much less dramatic ways, such as pathetic unwanted attempts at flirting.
The real subject, it seemed to me, was “sexualization” quite broadly. (Before the whole Elevator Guy discussion got inflamed and polarized and bizarre, anyway.) I’m pretty sure that’s mainly what Stef McGraw was taking exception to, though I think she fell into a huge trap by trying to defend the “sexualization is okay” thesis too broadly.
Various comments by Watson and various supporters (including Ophelia IIRC) lend credibility to that interpretation.
There’s been some fairly general complaining about sexualization and objectification per se, e.g. with some people saying that women at skeptic events shouldn’t have to put up with all the sorts of frequent sexualization that are endemic to our culture, because they’re not there for that. E.g., they shouldn’t be complimented on their looks, or hear other skeptic women complimented on their looks, because that distracts from proper subjects for skeptic events, such as their smarts and their skepticism.
I took the thrust of Watson’s comments to be something like that—that women are simply too frequently and gratuitously sexualized—and not mostly about the severe cases, such as Elevator Guy, or creepy emails from a small percentage of fans who talk mention fantasies of sex with the recipient.
(The significance of those examples changed pretty quickly though, when a vocal minority of people failed to even acknowledge that hitting on a woman is a bad thing in any way, even alone in an elevator with a stranger at 4 AM when she’s tired and so on.)
Getting rid of the tip of the iceberg—the patently weird cases and really bad judgement calls—would not get rid of the iceberg, even if we could all agree on them. It would not solve the main problem Watson seemed IMO to be getting at: the frequent sexualization of women at skeptic events in many much less dramatic ways. It wouldn’t even come close. The bulk of the iceberg would still be there, right under the surface, and would consist of regular guys doing what regular guys regularly do around women—e.g., trying to flirt.
That’s an easy interpretation for me because
(1) I do think there’s too much sexualization of women in our culture, including too many guys talking too much about sex and the sexy women and their sexiness, and being flirty and on the make, with many fewer women being interested, and
(2) the gender imbalance in the skeptic movement does amplify the basic supply/demand problem. There are too many guys who do it, frequently in little ways, and too many women who are tired of it. (I know I’ve been guilty of it myself in the past.) Given that general picture, you’d expect that the skeptic community would have that kind of problem, and
(3) I would expect the number of minor instances of sexualization to far outstrip the striking ones, and be more important in the overall scheme of things.
Watson seemed to be making the broad point that “sexualization” of women is bad, fairly generally, making it sound like an all-or-nothing proposition or something close to that—most of it should stop, if not all or nearly all of of it. I find that a plausible reading, maybe because I think it’s likely mostly true. Guys should use filters that cut the sexualizing down, and that does mean that usually they should refrain. In a context where available/interested men greatly outnumber available/interested women, they should dial it way, way down, and it’s often not clear how to do that without just stopping it.
For many men, who aren’t particularly in demand anyhow, it is hard to see how that doesn’t mean that they should just give up on the kind of talk and behavior that many people of both sexes do find fun, with the right people in the right circumstances—talk about sex or about somebody’s physical attractiveness, risque banter, flirting, etc. Maybe even making a romantic connection that might result in sex.
For a lot of men, who are not especially good at gauging when and how to indulge in sexualization of any sort, the bottom-line message seems pretty obvious: just stop it. Especially if you’re not particularly attractive, or the woman you’re talking with is. There’s too many of you, and not enough of them, and unless you know how you can beat the odds, you very probably can’t, so you should just give up, now, because playing long shots is annoying—like spam
The problem with spam is not that any particular instance of spam is particularly bad. It’s that there’s simply too much of it, making it almost all bad in practice.
That sounds a lot like a slippery slope argument—sexualization per se is often bad, so sexualization quite generally is uncool, so if you don’t know how to do it well, and have real reason to think you’re special, you should cut it out entirely. It may not go quite all the way down the slope, but it’s not clear that it doesn’t, in practice, for the average guy at skeptic events.
Establishing that Elevator Guy crossed clear lines and Did Wrong doesn’t help those guys much—it doesn’t address the main problem at all. The main problem seems to be that any kind of sexually loaded interaction is usually bad. Ruling out a minority of relatively specific cases on the Don’t Even Think About It end of the scale doesn’t help them decide whether to just give up, or how not to give up—what they need is fairly precise information about the minority of cases where it is okay, and similar cases where it isn’t. If they take the sexualization frequency problem seriously, they need to know about the opposite end of the scale from EG and random fans sharing their sex fantasies—where a little sex talk or attractiveness talk or flirting may be okay. Without that, they should just give up, because they (in their relative unattractiveness and ineptitude) are Part of the Problem—the problem of Too Many Men Acting Like Men. They’re spamming.
Faced with a seeming argument for an almost all-or-nothing position, a lot of people seem to have instinctively run the slippery slope the other way—if it’s all or likely nothing, they’ll take all, not likely nothing. You can’t and shouldn’t neuter people that way—sexualization can be a fun part of socializing—so sexualization of women at skeptic events isn’t bad, not even at 4 AM alone in an elevator, so long as you can take no for an answer.
That’s a fallacy of course, but I can see how it’d be appealing, in lieu of any clear guidelines on how to avoid the sexualization frequency problem. Each instance of sexualization does add to the raw frequency, so you need to know when sexualization is worth it, vs. being marginal or a party foul. Distinguishing between bad things and worse things—none of which you should do anyway—is a whole lot less useful. It’s indistinguishable from saying give up, for guys who don’t know how to play the odds especially well and/or already have the odds against them.
I think that’s the message a lot of people got from Watson, not entirely wrongly. It does seem to be where the general thrust of her original argument leads.
Watson and most of her defenders have generally denied that they’re being all-or-nothing, and made it sound like sexual interest in some women at some skeptic events is sometimes okay up to a point, if you’re not a clueless, insensitive oaf about it. For example, you should at least have a conversation with a woman before showing any sexualized interest of any sort.
But if the main problem is really sexualizing women too frequently, mostly in small ways, doesn’t that include most of the things you do to scope somebody out before deciding whether to hit on them? I think in practice it often does, and that’s one of the ways that Elevator Guy is a bad example of the broader problem.
Watson seemed IMHO to be implying that guys generally shouldn’t try to flirt with women at skeptic events, or even to engage in the kind of mildly sexualized banter that sometimes precedes flirting, unless perhaps he’s got a clear signal that its okay, such as the woman flirting with him first, or sexualizing the conversation first.
That’s a lot to ask. (Which is not to say it shouldn’t be asked—just that it needs to be clarified.) It’s generally the guys’ role to initiate that sort of thing—even women who do want to be flirted with typically don’t start it, and usually accept the role of reacting to it in often intentionally ambiguous ways—so it’s generally the guy’s “job” to initiate and to escalate sexualization, which adds to the sexualization frequency, and is prima facie Part of the Problem.
In practice, taking the sexualization frequency problem seriously does seem to mean don’t try it.
Some of Watson’s supporters seem to accept that—they pretty clearly think that skeptic conferences are not about that, that that’s not what the women are there for, and that women’s right to not be sexualized trumps men’s right to give it a shot, and the interests of those women who do want them to give it a shot. They think that sexualization of skeptic socializing is a bad thing pretty generally, and it’s no big loss if most guys do just give up. (Especially since under the actual gender-skewed circumstances, most guys aren’t likely to have much luck anyhow.)
Other people think that sexualized socializing can be fun, and a good thing up to a point, and that it would not be a healthy or reasonable thing to expect skeptic socializing to be neutered in that way. People should have considerable leeway to sexualize their social interactions if they want to. As long as you can say no, you haven’t been wronged.
I think they have a point, up to a point—it’s not the kind of clear, intentional wrong I’d normally call “sexism” or “misogyny,” due to thinking women are inferior or hating them.
I think that’s one thing Dawkins and McGraw were reacting to—lumping that sort of non-ideological, non-malicious stuff under headings like “sexist” and “misogynistic,” which in their prototypical senses imply something considerably worse than taking too much of a long shot as to whether somebody will be receptive to flirting.
Like spam, it may be unwelcome and a bad thing to do. It may even be somewhat oppressive, and negligent of women’s likely interests, in a way that’s grounded in male privilege and therefore “sexist” in a broad sense, but it’s still not what most people mean by “sexist” or “misogynistic.”
But it is like spam, to some extent. Being able to delete spam unread doesn’t make it not annoying, because if you get enough spam, having do notice and delete it all of it is annoying in itself. The offers themselves are time-consuming, distracting, and annoying, if you can’t automatically filter them out.
I think there’s a real conflict of principles there, and no clear guidelines.
—
This reminds me of Mensa somehow, in a couple of ways—which are, I confess, probably useless for our purposes.
There are Mensans for whom the main goal at Mensa gatherings is to be intellectually stimulated, and other Mensans who just don’t care much about the talks and such. They’re there for the parties, more or less drunken conversation in the hospitality suite, and maybe some flirting or even casual sex with people they just met. There are others who appreciate most or all of those things at different times. It’s generally recognized that different Mensans are after different things, and that it would be unreasonable to expect some Mensans to be interested in flirting or casual sex, and unreasonable to expect some others not to. Different strokes.
There’s a different issue that I’m reminded of, though, and that’s hugging. Some Mensans like to hug people, and don’t might being hugged by random people they just met. Other Mensans like to hug, sometimes, but only want to be hugged by people they specifically want to hug. Still others usually don’t want to be hugged by anyone, even people they know and like; they’re just not huggers.
So if you’re a hugger faced with another Mensan, how do you know whether to try to hug them, and maybe put them in an awkward situation of having to accept an unwanted hug, or reject it?
They have a system for that. They have some kind of little marks they put on name tags, saying whether the individual is a hugger, a maybe-hugger, or a non-hugger. (IIRC, green, yellow, and red for the obvious reasons.) You can just go ahead and hug a hugger, and if they don’t want that particular hug, it’s up to them to disengage. You can ask a maybe-hugger whether they want to be hugged, and must respect their wishes. You shouldn’t even try it with a non-hugger; they don’t want to be put on the spot, even by being offered a hug they have to decline.
Sadly, they don’t have a similar system for risque talk, or flirting, or fucking. You have to work that out the hard, fraught, old-fashioned way, and try not to do anything too annoying or embarrassing in the process.
Let’s go ahead and move back to pop tarts.
Russell has proven his misogynist bona fides by attacking us on B&W, and the Moving Blackford trolls; and, having trolled, moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
[edit]
How could this even remotely be a question? How could people in the 21st century even be discussing this?
Ah, yes. That.
Alas, Improbable Joe, it is now ten to four in the morning over here, and the weather in Edinburgh has been glorious of late, so I have promised myself and the dog a run around Arthur’s Seat today:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e4/Arthurs_seat_edinburgh.jpg
This requires me to get something that is more or less, but not completely unlike, sleep.
I’m not sure what time it is where you are, but have a fine afternoon/evening doing whatever it is you have planned.
I laughed hard reading that and the other descriptions of pop tarts it was based on. Mike Kelley, you are right that they thought it was hypocritical of me, but one particularly nasty person there insisted that “pop tart” was a True Sexist Term while the other terms they were using to describe Rebecca Watson were not actually sexist. Plus, it came as a surprise to me that the first thing that popped into their minds when they read “pop tart” was a vulgar term for “prostitute” instead of the pastry as if the vulgar meaning was something common they had been hearing (and possibly saying, all things considered) for years while never having seen a pop tart pastry in their life. I guess I’m lucky to not have experienced that kind of environment where women are treated so terribly. It might have something to do with me being a gay man and not hanging with dudes who would say that kind of stuff.
Yes, she was saying something broader.
And too much ignoring of women’s expressed wishes and intentions. That is not unimportant.
He wasn’t. The extreme examples were the email rape threats, inappropriate touching, and so on (and what’s come since, but she didn’t foresee that).
No. She’d been speaking about the broader situation that day, based on her long experience and her knowledge of others’.
My recent post about Miranda Fricker’s book might be of interest. She talks about good and bad sexualization and objectification.
There can be a discussion about complimenting and propositioning, etc. It should be based on the acceptance that everyone involved is a human being with their own wishes.
She’s talked about flirting. Women flirt, too, Paul. Real – nonpredatory – flirting assumes equality.
Wow.
Of what?
No. If it’s mutual, with the right people in the right circumstances, it’s great. The point is that no one should override another’s expressed wishes because of their desires.
Stop it or get better at gauging it by treating women as human beings.
Has it occurred to you that men and women can have conversations? Get to know each other? That women you don’t want to screw might be interesting human beings? That women you do want to screw aren’t roulette wheels?
No, You can’t do dehumanizing sexualization well. FFS.
No. The main problem is that women aren’t being treated as fully human.
I’m perplexed by this. You’re in numerous roles every day in which you deal with people, listen to their words, read their gestures. The point is to do the same with women and to recognize that women are in far greater danger of being assaulted. It’s that simple.
What the hell do you mean by “worth it”? That you’ll likely get laid? Ot that a woman is communicating to you that she’s interested?
This is creepy. Women are not casino games, Paul.
Jesus, Paul. You should TREAT WOMEN AS EQUALS.
Human beings. Equals.
That’s the case, Paul. Wow. They’re about skepticism.
Look. I’ve spent a large, inordinate amount of my life out in these situations. Women are capable of communicating their desires (and lack thereof). If you’re unsure, don’t push it.
Socializing is fun. It can be sexualized consensually.
The nerve of you. Taking too much of a long shot in this case meant ignoring a woman’s expressed wishes and intent and acting in a specific way. More broadly, if you’re incapable of hearing women when they speak and act you shouldn’t be taking any “shots.” We’re not targets.
Wow. Read those words again.
Spam doesn’t oppress us or rape us.
I do not want to live in a culture of violent, oppressive spam.
What’s your “principle”? That you should be entitled to “take a shot” at women-objects? Sheesh, Paul.
:D That would be something to behold!
Russell,
I don’t think that Watson treated McGraw very well, though not for quite the reasons Abbie said.
On the other hand, Abbie’s whole “twatson” and “cunt” and “smelly snatch” thing is just beyond the pale.
It’s like calling a black person you disagree with a stinking nigger, which even if you’re black is just not an okay thing to do in mixed company, much less as publicly as possible.
I don’t know if you understand how the words “cunt” and “twat” work in the United States, but seriously, dude, that is very, very far from okay.
You (and maybe Peter Beattie) may be used to the UK-style usage of “cunt,” where it’s used as a fairly generic insult, often applied to men, and seems to have lost its strong, conscious sex and gender connotations for a lot of people.
That is not true in the US. Not even close. In the US, “cunt” is about as harsh a word as there is. The only more verboten word I can think of is “nigger.”
It’s very different from, say, “bastard,” which has almost entirely lost its connotation of sexual illegitimacy. In the US, people often call somebody that they think is mean, insensitive, brutal or whatever “a bastard,” and few people take it as confirming that people whose parents were not married are somehow actually awful, and a good thing to compare awful people to. It’s just a word we use for nasty pieces of work, and actual bastardy has mostly lost its negative implications. (Even for people who still think illegitmacy is somehow a big deal, it’s a failing the parents, not the fault of the child. We don’t call actual bastards bastards.)
In the UK, a lot of people seem to use “cunt” that way—it’s like calling them a “bastard,” or maybe a “dick,” where the word has it’s own free-floating insultingness, almost untethered to its original meaning. Maybe in the UK it’s not very demeaning to people with actual vaginas to call people cunts, in an insulting way, because everybody knows it’s just another swear word whose base meaning isn’t terribly relevant.
Trust me, in the US, it’s really not like that at all. Cunt is a very gendered, very verboten word, used very specifically to insult women in a way that is very vividly insulting them as women. When I went to the UK for a while—and especially when I read Trainspotting—I was shocked that guys would freely call people “cunts,” and it seemed bizarre to apply the term to guys.
In the US, it is fairly common for people who don’t worry about gendered insults to call women “bitches” and guys “dicks” or “pussies,” and it’s common enough that those usages have lost much of their gendered sting. (Like Ophelia, I still think it’s a bad thing to do, and the gender-specific uses are a sign of why.)
“Cunt” is different. Even among people who swear colorfully and incessantly, and who are not at all worried about sexist connotations, calling anybody a “cunt” is a whole other level of cursing from calling a woman a “bitch” or a man a “bastard” or a “pussy.” Its the one you pull out when you want to make it extraordinarily clear that you hate the person in question—and it’s always a woman—and that the hatred is something very much to do with her sex.
If you are ever involved with an American woman, and you want her to leave you and never look back, just call her a cunt. It’s like being involved with a black person and calling them a nigger. It’s burning the bridge, by telling the person you basically hate them for what they are, or just hate them so fucking much you’re willing to say something that utterly hateful anyhow, knowing that it will irrevocably destroy the relationship, because you are so scarily hateful toward them, and want so badly for them to know it so viscerally, that you pull out the most vicious word you can think of. That’s the deal-breaker word for women, which you only use if you very seriously want to break the deal.
It’s really not like guys calling each other cunts in the UK. It’s generally not done, here, even by people who toss all sorts of epithets around casually, or even fairly viciously. It’s the extra-vicious word you use when the sheer demeaning gendered viciousness is the point.
IMO, whatever else Abbie was saying that might have had some merit, she just went way over the top with the cunt and twat and smelly snatch thing. I’m a guy and not the most sensitive guy in the world, but holy cow, thats some vicious sexist-as-she-can-be sexist shit.
If nothing else, it’s stupid for any woman with a shred of feminism to use those words that way and expect anybody to listen to anything she’s saying.
This is…telling. To be honest, Paul, I’m surprised at this. I’ve always thought of you as an extraordinarily thoughtful person. This comment has me puzzled.
Just a comment on the use of “pop tart”…
A great many article writers (err…I’m talking about the internet, so I use the term “article” (and for that matter, “writers” (err again…present company excepted? dammit you know what I mean)) loosely) have shown off how terribly clever they are by applying the term to young female performers, such as teenaged Brittany Spears. I imagine them, later at parties, explaining, “You see, there is an edible product known as a poptart, likely so named because it “pops” out of the toaster, and it is a food that is arguably comparable to a tart. HOWEVER, in this instance, I have used this same term to refer to Brittany Spears with the implication that “pop” is short for “popular” or is referring to the “pop” genre of music, and “tart” referring to the fact that she’s marketed as a whore! Brilliant, eh?”
(Sorry, it’s one of those phrases where, if I hear (dammit, read) it more than once, I have to think, Oh please let that not be a thing. One time is worth a “huh I see what you did there.” More than that makes me feel stabby.)
/Relurks
SC’s advice for flirting:
Try to flirt with someone and not at them.
Pay attention to what they’re saying and doing.
If you feel like you’re flirting at someone, STOP.
SC, I’ll keep that in mind.
Now if I can just figure out how to flirt at all, and how to recognize flirting when it happens, I’ll be in decent shape.
Well, Simmel is interesting on this, if you take flirting to be sociability. It’s a form of play – just indulging in human interaction. Maybe that’ll help.
***
Personal anecdote, on a different register: Men I don’t or barely know (50/50 straight/gay) often play with my hair. I don’t mind this at all. If another woman posted about how some guy had played with her hair at a party or bar and said this was a boundary-breaching problem, I would completely support her. To say, “No, I want people playing with my hair without my permission, and don’t tell people what to do – you don’t speak for me” would be absurd.
Paul W.,
Russell would probably be well aware that the Australian usage of the C word is highly denigratory in general and usually reserved for targets of hatred. So the fact that some people in the UK treat it and the T word as innocuous in some circumstances is a non-starter.
As a long-time lurker of a number of the bloggers involved in this fracas I have a very great deal of respect for what you write, so like SC I’m surprised at your #228. Not one of your better efforts I’d surmise.
Regards, Philip
This is the crux. It’s not a frequency problem. It’s a humanity problem.
As you complete your response, Paul, please try to understand that.
(And that you’re one of my favorite internet people, FWIW.)
Russell Blackford, what the hell? Agreeing with Abbie on some aspects of this debacle is one thing, but to try and handwave away what she’s been pumping up her disgusting frat-boy enclave to write about Rebecca – did you see the posts where they were mocking her credentials? – and PZ and others is another.
Unbelievable.
. . . Maybe? I think my biggest problem is body language, and I don’t think Simmel can help me there (what the hell are “twinkling eyes” for example?). Thanks though.
@Paul: I suspect you’re being misread, but you were less clear than normal it seemed to me. I’m not reading you in quite the same way SC is, but could still use some clarification.
You’re welcome. He’s not really giving flirting advice. Body language is hard. Err on the side of caution, maybe.
I think the point – yanked inappropriately from Simmel – is to approach these interactions as play – enjoy them for themselves and not solely for their potential “outcomes.”
I dont think that Blackford, like so many others, is entirely sane when it comes to recent events.
Blackford went ballistic on ERV’s slimepit thread early on – solely on PZ’s statement that he had played rhetorical games on an explanation regarding the steffi mc issue here on B&W. He accused PZ of calling him a liar – which PZ expressly didnt do so, not in my opinion and though I am no bloomin intelllectual, I can still read. He hyperventilated, asked for an apology and said that PZ was no friend of his. Sad thing is that PZ is probably not even aware of all this as he exited the thread much earlier.
So lots of festering anger on Blackford’s part towards a whole slew of characters starting with Watson and ending with PZ and B&W.
The explosive bursts of anger are notably coming from the anti-Watson camp. I wonder why?
skepticlawyer @231
I was asleep before you posted that… I promised my wife a double feature of Cowboys and Aliens and Captain America, and with ticket prices being what they are we have to go for the very early shows to do both.
mirax @246
Interesting that it was my post on Abbie’s “explosive burst of anger” that convinced Blackford to crawl out from under his rock, isn’t it? I think I touched a nerve there. It really does seem like high school BS from where I’m sitting. Come on, grown adults saying “if you’re going to be HER friend, you can’t be MY friend anymore!” is sane and mature behavior? I think some of it is a cross-generational thing between the stodgy old skeptics with their “degrees” and their “book larning” and their “words” and whatever, and Rebecca Watson and her giant bedazzled bulldozer of amateur skepticism, feminism, and half-naked women with tattoos.(Ophelia doesn’t approve of some of it either, but she’s nice about it!) Plus, if you think about it Rebecca Watson is like 30 or something, which means she was in her early/mid-20s when she rose to massive fame in our little pond. I’m sure she said and did some dumb things, and some people like to hold grudges. I noticed that people were dragging up 6-7 year old online quotes from Watson that didn’t click with what she’s saying now. I don’t know anyone 30 and older who wants to be held accountable for everything they said in their early 20s.
Yeah, it is all cliques and long-held grudges and resentment and class warfare and privilege issues (Watson has HUGE privileges in her life, so maybe that’s why some people are offended when she complains about anything?)… but none of that has anything to do with the EG situation, which is why those of us on the outside of the teenage drama look at it and can’t figure out why people are acting this way.
Get lost, Justicar.
Do go, Justicar. May I get the door for you?
Man, I seem to have walked into a barroom brawl while looking for a drink … But speaking of the C word, I seem to recall an incident from Pharyngula, oh, say a few months ago, which given my sense of time could be a year, when someone had been slinging the C word around with reckless abandon. PZ had to go away for a while, and before he went he laid down the law: For the remainder of this thread, you shall be allowed to call someone a cunt, but it is to be understood as a term of endearment if you do choose to use it. I thought it quite funny at the time, but I am afraid the current fight has become too ugly for this trick to work anymore. (If it did work then – I didn’t revisit the thread to see how it went. Who can find the time to read comment threads on Pharyngula anyhow?)
mirax @ 246 –
Right, but why at B&W and thus me? What have I done that, from Russell’s pov, is so terrible? Why has he singled me out for a dam’ good scolding not once but three times? (The third was on Facebk.) I seriously have no idea. It seems to be something to do with my not being furious enough on behalf of McGraw, but why is that a reason to keep shouting at me? I think he’s simply nuts to say the whole thing boils down to that – of course it doesn’t! And I haven’t called anyone a fucking bitch or accused anyone of sniffing around anybody’s stinking snatch, so why is Russell so pissed at me in particular?
And given that he is so pissed and took the trouble to shout at me again here, it’s truly pathetic that he never answered my question (and others’ questions) about how he can say “Abbie has been one of the few people in this whole mess who has been steadily clear-headed and sensible” when Abbie has called a woman a fucking bitch and Twatson and talked about her stinking snatch. Truly pathetic.
I’m sorry I linked to Justicar’s blog. It was just an example of the vitriol directed at Rebecca Watson right now and I don’t see how anyone can think she reserves that. I can agree with Russell Blackford on something:
I’m wondering if there is a subtext to all of this that I’m missing. Is this just an example of jealous academics responding to Rebecca’s non-academic celebrity status in the atheist/skeptic community? As a non-academic non-celebrity outsider looking on at this, it’s very puzzling and disturbing.
The level of anger directed towards Rebecca Watson and those who have spoken against the sexist slurs directed towards her is astounding. The level of anger displayed by Abbie and her supporters/apologists stand in stark contrast with the responses from Ophelia Benson, Greta Christina, and Rebecca’s deadpan comedy response video on YouTube.
When a faction in the atheist/skeptic community comes off looking “tea party” crazy, it really doesn’t help in supporting their arguments.
Jenavir @ 226
Yes yes, I know. That’s why I haven’t said more about it. That’s one category that I think is kind of a party line, and I’m out of step. I do think mixed messages are a bad idea. Yes, sure, women can wear sexy clothes at work or conferences and still say “don’t hit on me”…but it makes it trickier. It also makes things more difficult for women who don’t wear sexy clothes at work or conferences (women like me for example). If you sex up conferences then the conferences are sexed up. (That’s not what sexed up means, but I’m using it that way anyway.) If women are about sexy calendars then that becomes what women are about. I think that’s a mistake, and that it’s likely to backfire…and the last couple of weeks have done little to convince me that I’m wrong about it.
Steve – beats me! I truly do not get it.
Why are these atheist meetings held? Why would one go?
One would go in order to speak, perhaps; certainly to listen, to share ideas and aspirations, to hope that one’s ideas will be bolstered or at least exchanged for better ones, to receive personal affirmation as a human being involved with others in something worthwhile. To meet like-minded people who treat one as an equal, who believe in reason and have no hidden agendas, who will not try to manipulate one, because one’s belief in reason and what is reasonable forbids it: because the point of the new atheism is the affirmation of our lives and our personhood and the fight against all those noxious social tendencies which threaten our integrity, which would force us to surrender to a view of ourselves as objects or slaves or cyphers. There might be friendship, and this is a reasonable expectation. But love, or just sex, are not reasonable expectations. These things happen when they happen; meetings of this kind are not arranged in order that they will if one plays one’s cards right. That isn’t ostensibly why people attend. If it is, that’s a problem, because it’s another agenda, and for many people it’s a hidden agenda, and therefore dishonest.
I cannot see why the prevailing assumption should not be that, even if one feels sexually attracted to another person, there are normal and well-understood ways of getting to know someone as an equal long before anything more intimate takes place, if it ever does. This must include not trying to set up a “discussion” at 4 in the morning with someone who is very obviously on their way to bed. Maybe this is quaint and old-fashioned, but it’s reasonable, it’s workable, and it is based on the expectation that people will meet as equal minds before the possibility of any more intimate meeting even occurs to anyone. The assumption should be that no one goes to these conventions in the expectation or even the mere hope of “getting laid”, and no one should imagine they have a right to even hint at a sexual encounter merely because they happen to think of it.
If the new atheism is about affirmation of the person, then the continuing attacks on one person’s integrity and character are well beyond the pale. Such behaviour is a merely and shamefully egotistical insistence on personal grievance. Sometimes a matter just has to be dropped; we have to move on. The victim of this contemptible campaign has not injured anyone to the extent that would justify weeks of hatred and abuse.
Ophelia, this cretinous affair is spewing its poison everywhere, and it seems to be unbalancing many people whom one would expect to know better. I’m sorry about the personal criticisms that are coming your way. They are totally unjust. You have been utterly brilliant throughout this whole sordid business. Stick to your guns.
@253 “I’m wondering if there is a subtext to all of this that I’m missing.”
I did predict this many months ago. Having read what happens in similar political and social movements that do not have a particular manifesto or philosophy, then what happens is that humans naturally build up their heirarchies based on personalities and who likes/dislikes them. The new atheist movement has fallen naively into this very trap.
Once the views of the leading personalities become the views of their ‘crowd’, and then when two leading personalities clash, so do their crowd, and all sorts of insanity, splits, factions, demoralization and disillusionment and pain ensue.
Those who are really liberal and really sceptical and who are not completely disillusioned will try to pick up the pieces and move on, calling the entire episode a lesson, which will then fade from memory until the process repeats itself.
Steve, Rebecca is an administrator, one of the workers. That’s good and honourable, and she has done valuable work. I suspect that anything that can be used as ammunition, even academic snobbery, will be used and added to personal insult. It’s in every way despicable. I suspect that it’s now just something that has acquired a momentum of its own, fueled by egotism rather than outraged justice. Abbie says she absolutely loves what she has been doing. I wonder if she really knows why.
Thanks Gordon!
Beautifully said. The whole comment is beautifully said [bracketing the last para, from which I must recuse myself].
I see what you are saying, Egbert; and “factions” are points of coalescence which lead to organised sects. Something to be avoided by all free thinkers. And the more we engage in these kinds of squabbles the more we become “sectioned” (for non-Brits, in the UK that means certified as insane!) So we end up with organisations with policies based on “the other lot are creeps” (or heretics, or whatever). Sick. We have to keep free thinking alive. Freedom of thought, respect for each other as persons. Everything to be subjected to rational assessment, no ideas merely taken for granted, no party lines, no dogmas. The reasonable discussion has to go on.
And I haven’t called anyone a fucking bitch or accused anyone of sniffing around anybody’s stinking snatch, so why is Russell so pissed at me in particular?
i dunno. But many of the antiWatson camp appear to be suffering from a terminal case of the white-knight syndrome. Rescuing all the fair maidens – McGraw, Abbie, Zen Buffoon, Hale- from the venom of the wicked witches, chiefly Watson and sadly, stupidly, poor you. Maybe you are not young enough or photogenic enough. Maybe not fuckable* enough? Who knows?
* from a couple of things abbie said : the comment about PZ trailing after RW’s ‘smelly snatch’ and her #658 reply to you, the second last line. It’s an idea that’s definitely in her head.
You can’t. You just made comment #254.
By the way, I remember a post you put up ages ago on the subject of sexy attire (you called it a “can of worms”). I remember it because it took me some while to understand the burden of what you were saying and started off on the wrong foot. And I think you are right, and how one dresses on formal occasions is important for precisely the reasons you give. But then, maybe I’m out of step, too.
mirax – oh I’m certainly not young enough or photogenic or [hence] fuckable enough; there’s no question about that. If I auditioned for a wicked witch part I would get it.
Gordon – gosh, you do? I don’t! I thought maybe I’d written something about it before, but couldn’t remember if, let alone what. I wonder if I can find it – I’m curious…
Ophelia, it’s here:
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2010/seriously/
You and people like PZ are pussy cats – you dont have it in you to hurt people. You hurt egos but you are incapable of doing the nasty, vile stuff. Too kind! I keep telling you this, you know.
Thanks Gordon, I found it, along with the one that preceded it. Funny – it all started with offering some backup to comments by Jerry Coyne and Miranda Hale. [sound of hollow laughter] Also amusing that Jenavir agreed with me there but not this time.
mirax…well I agree with that actually. I do recoil from doing what I take to be really nasty and vile – really wounding stuff. On the other hand I’m very irritable, so I can wound people without actually deciding to or meaning to. Sometimes I apologize afterward.
SC:
I have tried, but I have no idea what it really means. It seems to me that you are misreading me and making false contrasts in several ways.
You seem to think that “playing odds” precludes treating humans as humans.
I disagree. To treat humans “as humans” in any useful sense, you must play the odds—you have to make guesses as to the likelihood and seriousness of the effects of your actions on them. You are morally obligated to do that.
I’m not sure you understand my point about spam, and how frequent unwanted sexualization is like spam. (I’m not saying that a given bit of unwanted sexual attention trivial, like a single piece of spam, of course.)
I am saying that men who treat women as mere sex objects for their potential use, and “play the odds” to maximize their own benefit irrespective of the likely costs to others, are doing the same sort of thing spammers do—frequently inflicting costs on others for occasional gain for themselves, because they don’t care about those others’ interests. It’s disutilitarian, and it’s wrong, and I don’t see how that’s not about (not) “treating humans as humans.”
That’s what your talk about treating women like roulette wheels seems to mean to me, and I agree that it’s wrong. Of course it is. Not all ways of “playing the odds” are the same. Whose interests you’re taking into account when you play the odds is crucial.
Playing the odds doesn’t imply a competitive game, or a zero-sum (or worse) game. You have to play the odds in cooperative games as well. (And of course I mean “game” in something like the game theory sense, not that it’s “just a game,” e.g., with people generally “getting played” by “players.”)
—
You’re telling me a whole lot of stuff that already know and agree with, as though it contradicts what I’m saying. For example, when you talk about how women are at far greater risk of sexual assault, and how that matters, that’s very much what I’m talking about in terms of “playing the odds” and “base rates.”
The odds are different for women, and men need to know that and treat them accordingly, of course.
Saying that we need to TREAT WOMEN AS EQUALS, in all caps, as though I don’t get that idea at all, is pointless. The whole discussion is about what it really means to treat women as equals.
Treating women equally, or “as humans,” does not mean treating them the same. It can’t, because their situations are different and the odds are different for women than for men.
I’m pretty sure you know that, and think it’s very important. Well, I do too. That’s one of the things I’m saying that you seem to be misinterpreting. I would think and fervently hope that it’s a major point of agreement between us. (And with Watson and her supporter—but which some of her critics just don’t seem to get.)
—
Here’s an example that I hope we’d agree on:
A gay guy transparently hitting on a gay guy he just met is different from a straight guy hitting on a straight woman he just met. The odds of that being a mutually beneficial thing to do are much higher, and the odds of it being a particularly bad thing do are much lower. Gay men are more likely to be interested in casual sex with strangers than straight women, and are less likely to be offended or scared by the situation, for a variety of reasons. That has a lot to do with base rates, and the mutual knowledge of those base rates. Gay guys know that it’s not an extraordinary thing to do among gay men, and know why gay men are more prone to those sorts of things, and they know that other gay men generally know those things, too.
Hitting on a straight woman in the same way is a very different proposition, so to speak. Women are less likely to want casual sex, less likely to want to just go right to it, more likely to be afraid of bad outcomes (e.g., physical abuse), and—rightly—more likely to be offended by being treated in that “objectifying” way.
That offense at the treatment has a lot to do with base rates and mutual knowledge. Guys should know, and should care, that most women don’t want casual sex, or don’t want to just get right to it, and are rightly more afraid of men, and have reasons to be offended by and/or scared of men who seem not to know that, or not to care.
Guys should not apply the Golden Rule simplistically, or TREAT WOMEN AS EQUALS in a naive way—they should not treat women the same way they’d treat men in an analogous situation, if they were gay, because women are not men, and are generally not in the same situation as men.
—
IIRC that’s one of my major points of agreement with Watson and disagreement with McGraw. (And Dawkins, if I understand his “zero bad” position.) I thought McGraw was promoting a simplistic, naive Golden Rule kind of feminism, where guys acting like guys is okay or “not sexist” if they treat women the same way they’d want to be treated themselves, or would treat other guys if they were attracted to guys.
I don’t think that naive kind of “equal treatment” is equal at all, for much the same reason that allowing everybody to get married to a person of the opposite sex is giving gays equal marriage rights. When you look at the base rates, it’s ridiculous.
That said, it seemed to me that Watson went overboard in how she criticized McGraw’s naivete. IIRC she seemed to lump that kind of naive notion of “equal treatment” into the category of the “ancient anti-woman rhetoric” that McGraw was “parroting,” or something like that. (Which may not be the right interpretation, but I don’t think I was alone in interpreting it that way.)
IMO, that’s not “ancient anti-woman rhetoric.” It’s not ancient—it’s modern liberal feminist rhetoric to think you should TREAT WOMEN EQUALLY, even in a naive sense that has predictable systematically unequal effect. (Modern as in common in the mid-to-late 20th century.) And it’s not fair to call it “anti-woman” without serious qualification. When I think of somebody parrotting ancient anti-woman rhetoric, that’s just not what I think of. Not even close. McGraw may be a naive dupe of the patriarchy, but that’s a different thing.
—
I did actually think Watson was largely concerned, in her panel talk in which she responded to Paula Kirby, with a lot of low-level sexualization in the skeptic community, to random women in the movement, and not just with bigger and/or clearer things that IMO, should be obvious, at least after a quick consciousness-raising discussion.
I thought the main import of the fairly extreme/weird things that happen to her was not about her, or about the minority of women in the movement who rise to her level of prominence. It thought it was supposed to be indicative of a much broader problem that affects women in the movement generally, usually in less striking ways but much more often.
I could be mostly wrong about that, and projecting my own concerns about how most women in the movement are treated in lots of little ways. It could be that Watson was mostly complaining about things I consider pretty easy and obvious, but which mostly happen to relatively prominent women in the movement, like her. If so, my concerns about how far her argument is intended to go may be misplaced—it may be that she doesn’t even think it should go as far as I do, and I was wrong to think it probably went further.
Whether that’s a misunderstanding or not—and whether or not the misunderstanding is a reasonable one—I do suspect similar perceptions are part of the root of the bizarre McGraw and Dawkins thing.
—
I don’t think that the issues of “consensual sexualization” are as simple and clear as you seem to think they are, such that it’s always a matter of commonsense treating women as equals, or treating women as humans. At least not in some kinds of cases that I’ve worried a bit about for years—and often wondered if I should worry more, but came to no conclusion.
For example, what if the consensual sexualization annoys bystanders? At an atheist happy hour I used to attend regularly, I sometimes observed the usual pattern of physically attractive women getting a disproportionate share of male attention, and I heard a couple of other women complain about it a couple of times. The women getting the attention seemed to like it, or not to mind, and the guys giving the attention were obviously doing so voluntarily.
I never thought it was a particularly big problem in that group. It seemed to happen less often than in most socializing-over-drinks situations, and I was actually surprised that the effect did not seem to me to be as pronounced as usual. The pretty women didn’t seem get a lot of extra credit for being pretty, or noticeably get much extra credit from most people. I thought it was usually within reasonable bounds for that kind of social context, and that the conversations were generally reasonable and acceptably meritocratic.
I don’t know if my perceptions were right. I don’t know how many people perceived that sort of bias thing going on and were very annoyed by it, but said nothing.
In general, I think that such things usually involve extremes you should obviously avoid, but leave a big gray area in the middle where you’re not sure what to do. It’s generally not just a matter of “treat women as humans” and “consensual sexualization is fine.”
To give context to my words: I am an academic scientist, doing basic research in molecular brain function as well as a published author in two languages. I’ve been a staunch feminist for nearly five decades, as I come from a culture that practiced legally sanctioned gender discrimination and from a family that was part of the WWII resistance and actively persecuted for being “godless liberals”.
Skepticism/atheism cannot flourish without scientific foundations and backing. It’s the component that makes it evidence- rather than faith-based. At the same time, it also cannot flourish without being aware of larger contexts. Last but not least, it cannot flourish without doing real outreach and groundwork and putting aside the narcissism of small differences, a perennial scourge of self-labeled progressive groups.
People who consider themselves individual thinkers are proud of saying they’re as unherdable as cats. But this paradigm won’t avail a movement whose professed goal is social progress. The movement cannot remain viable or relevant if it becomes a cult of personalities; and if it’s represented solely by white middle-class Anglosaxon men and the few trophy women they choose to elevate to handmaiden status. Such stances will only serve to transform it into a hermetic parlor game for privileged people who do not question any assumptions outside the narrow box they define “of interest”.
The movement also cannot be represented by people who are so self-involved and insecure that they lose sight of both goals and basic decency at the slightest slight, especially imagined ones. During a similar though smaller episode a while ago, I said to one of the fragile-ego Watson detractors “Contemplating your navel is fine, as long as you don’t let the lint get to your brain.” As far as I’m concerned, the soul of this movement is people like Maryam Namazie or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who do not engage in armchair philosophizing but have put their lives on the line; as well as people who quietly go about living principled, examined lives without constant chest beatings and endless effusions of stale thinking.
Sorry, Andrea, but though I think I have understood some of what you are saying, this paragraph eludes my poor ability to comprehend. If “cult of personalities” refers to Abbie et al. versus Rebecca Watson, then obviously you are right, insofar (and only insofar) as you are saying that an exchange of personalities is at issue in one very small area of the blogosphere. If “cult of personalities” is intended to reference people who insist on thinking for themselves then you are very mistaken (I assume the latter because of how your paragraph continues). You would then be talking about people whose idea of positive social change is inseparably bound up with freedom of thought. Under the condition of freedom of thought, positive social change is the result of people being allowed to think for themselves and enter into dialogue with one another, who eschew any view which is based on the idea of “herding” people together and making them conform to someone else’s agenda. The point about freedom of thought is the liberation of minds, and the establishment of a modus vivendi in which people can express themselves without prejudice and come to some workable agreement on how to live together. Call it democracy, if you like. If “personalities” means Dawkins or Coyne or whoever then they’re just fellow participators, however influential: no one is God, anyone can mess up, and messing up is just life. If they are the ones with the trophy women I’d love to know who the trophy women are.
You talk about a “professed goal” of “social progress”. Who has “professed” such a goal? The problem is that the phrase is a loaded one. New atheists want liberation from slavery (political orthodoxy, religious dogma, bigotry against the religious, racism, homophobia, male lust, arrogance, stupidity, the desire to control, human greed, multinational corporations…), as well as rational thinking and mutual understanding and toleration. Liberation must also involve independence from party lines and from pressure towards conformity. Hammering out a modus vivendi has to be done by free and equal persons, and not according to preconceived “correct” party policies.
I do not know where “white Anglosaxon men” etc. come into the picture. This idea tends to confirm my suspicion that I haven’t understood a word you are saying. I know I can be very thick at times. What are you talking about?
Paul a lot of that was repeating my words back to me, without, it appears, getting what I’m saying. You say that it’s not so simple, but in the post I was responding to, you said
First, in the case we’re talking about, the circumstances were such that the guy ignored or disregarded very clear signals that she would not be receptive to a proposition (much less one made in that situation). Second, can you imagine how this reads? You’ve described behavior that you’ve acknowledged may be unwelcome, a bad thing to do, somewhat oppressive, negligent of women’s likely interests, and grounded in privilege, and then tried to claim that it shouldn’t be described as sexist if it’s not done consciously in a malicious way. I would think that you’d know by now that much sexist behavior isn’t intentionally hostile. Disregarding a women’s expressed intent and wishes to proposition her in a threatening space is an illustration of the larger problem. As John Rennie says:
(This is part of a larger problem in which women aren’t taken as seriously or taken into consideration as much as men.)
Third, your post focused on how straight guys can go about getting laid at skeptic events. I’ve found the emphasis on this “burning question” simply fucking ridiculous. With very rare exceptions, I don’t care about whether any guy at a conference gets laid or not. Really. I can’t express how little I care about this. The fact that you’ve chosen to make it the focus of your long post is revealing. I hope you’ve read gordonwillis’ post above.
I’m going to guess that you haven’t read enough of the posts about this, and apparently not mine. As I mentioned to Russell above, I wrote a long comment about McGraw’s post (I’ll try to find it). Actually, I found the bit about Watson’s alleged “hypocrisy” about equality more dumb than anything (though casually sexist in that she didn’t stop to consider how dumb it was). What parroted anti-woman tropes primarily was her suspicious interrogation of Watson’s account, complete with “I’ll give her”s and “I’ll concede”s and the constant jumping in to try to explain the guy’s behavior (which Watson hadn’t said was any crime, but it was representative of a problem). She was going to see Watson at the conference the next day, but instead of waiting to ask her about it, she wrote that condescending public post.
And as I’ve said in some depth, when I say equal I mean as a fully autonomous human being with my own interests, intentions, and desires that I can communicate to others. Again, you’re one of the most insightful people I’ve “met” online. I find it hard to believe you collapse into incomprehension merely from being in physical proximity to women. Social interactions are complicated, but I’m not buying this idea that men can’t make an effort not to objectify women. Not for a second.
Gordon: I wouldn’t presume to speak for Athena (not Andrea), but let me offer my take on what she is trying to say. It is indeed important and necessary for people to think for themselves. At the same time, perhaps a little humility is in order. Very few of us have very many original thoughts, though we may fool ourselves that we do. Rather, we spend much time sifting through the opinions of others, discarding some and adopting others. As individuals, we probably each end up with a unique mix of adopted ideas, even if not one of them is particularly original. But more to the point, some ideas are way bigger and more important than others, such as freedom of speech and gender equality. And even if we fancy ourselves individual thinkers, we would do well to cooperate with others who have adopted the same big ideas and putting smaller differences aside, or at least not letting them get in the way of pursuing the big ideas. Moreover, I fancy that sensible people ought to arrive at this position on their own, without any coercion, bullying or herding to get them there. I think Athena is warning us against those who are so enamored of their unique insights into some small side issue that they let it get in the way of the big stuff.And even if I have got this utterly wrong, I think the point still stands.
Thanks very much, Harald. I think I more-or-less got that, and I agree with it as you express it. But I found her third paragraph so confusing that I ended up not being at all sure. And, to be honest, I’m still not. To the extent that I have understood some of her statements in that paragraph, I can’t say that I agree with her assumptions. Andrea is being too vague, or general, or allusive, for my simple brain to get itself around her words.
That John Rennie post that Salty linked to is great. I hadn’t heard of him before, so at least I’ve gotten something out of all this.
It’s amazing what a lot of entitled stupid MRA nonsense there is in the comments.
MRA? Ophelia, you lost me again. Even google fails me.
Ha! I just googled it too, and in Wikipedia there’s a whole list of possible meanings, including “Male Rights Advocate”.
@Salty Current (#246)
This is excellent advice. I’m a woman and I love flirting. Love it. Even if it doesn’t lead to anything. Especially, if it doesn’t lead to anything. Even if it’s with a married (or otherwise taken) man. I don’t know why, but I do.
The fact that I enjoy flirting means I’ve done it a lot in my life, so when I’m interested in somebody, it’s a bit easier.
Steve:
I had that same thought about a week ago. I assume there are some interpersonal tensions that predate this issue that are being played out on these blogs. Which kind of pisses me off because the way women are perceived and treated in atheist communities is important to discuss. But it can’t be if people are playing out their personal vendettas rather than actually discussing the issues.
Sorry Harald. Three weeks ago MRA meant nothing to me too, but I have since become all too familiar with it. Men’s rights activist – though it should be misogynists’ rights activist.
Yes, I’ve often had a feeling there are thick layers of backstory in some of this that I know nothing about. I know a little backstory in one tiny segment, and boy that muddies the waters enough. If the rest of it is in proportion…it could be that some of us are talking about a kind of false front while the real issues are out of our ken.
All very junior high, in a way…but then so is adult life.
People who doubt the continuation into adulthood of the alliances and cliques characteristic of one’s days in the Lower Sixth have clearly never worked in an office. This is an unfortunate fact of life, and has constantly to be worked through and around.
Really? I thought my reaction to Russell, “Let’s see your rich daddy buy your way out of this ass-whuppin’, Little Lord Fauntleroy!”, was completely adult and mature, and doesn’t reflect junior high at all.
*grins*
“Men’s Rights Activists”- born on third base, bitter because they don’t get credit for a home run.
Paul, those are all very interesting considerations. You’re raising concerns that are both natural and relevant, and even inevitable for any considerate or sensitive human being. Also, your story about MENSA hugging was funny.
But I think you’ve not engaging cooperatively with Watson in this case. For it seems to me that you’re effectively trying to focus on an answer to the question, “What should I do?” But Watson was interested in saying: “This right here? Here’s what not to do.” That is, I think she really was just making the point that it was inappropriate behavior in the context.
So while your concerns about success rates and game-theoretic concerns are interesting and valid, and they deserve development, it’s best to acknowledge them as being substantially to one side when it comes to what Watson was getting at. Or at least, that’s my reading of the situation, FWIW.
Anyway, if I really were to produce some kind of generic take-home message, I would say these platitudes seem to work: treat worthwhile people in such a way that you think is consistent with their trust; treat them as they’d like to be treated on the basis of what you can observe; and never treat them in such a way that is inconsistent with your own integrity. There are lingering questions about what ought to be part of one’s integrity, and what signals mean what, and so on, but presumably you’d agree with the wider abstract points.
(In case this wasn’t obvious — by “what should I do?” I mean, “What general rule should I follow?” or suchlike.)
Or a zoo, or an aquarium, or even a parks department. It used to convulse me with mirth, the feuds and plots that went on in situations where there was nothing significant at stake.
Ophelia wrote:
Ophelia,
My theory is that the candidate perceived as the “cooler kid” will beat the “nerdier kid” in the US Presidential Election regardless of actual qualification (which means we really are stuck in adolescence).
Here are the results of the recent elections:
2008 – Obama beats McCain
2004 – Bush beats Kerry
2000 – Bush beats Gore
1996 – Clinton beats Dole
1992 – Clinton beats Bush
1988 – Bush beats Dukakis
I rest my case.
:^)
Some office politics comes about thanks to manufactured scarcity peculiar to that environment. In one firm I worked at, we kept a number of those little ‘drag along behind you’ trolleys in the area where people prepared discovered documents, undertake due diligence etc. As most people know, commercial law firms generate many heavy boxes of paperwork, so those trolleys were very handy when one wanted to shift the boxes between property and projects (say), and family, or corporate, or whatever.
However, there were a limited number of the trolleys, so different divisions used to hoard them. I kid you not. At one point it emerged that corporate was hiding them, so that they didn’t have to send one of their secretaries around the office when they had to retrieve a whole pile of paperwork for a client, or an appearance.
This was an office full of the best and brightest City lawyers in a ‘Magic Circle’ firm. Grown men and women reduced to shouting matches over trolleys… not to mention the sequestering of said trolleys in the loos. I remember needing to duck into the loo in corporate and damn near breaking my neck on one of them. There were half-a-dozen of the things bunched up at the end. They were tangled up with each other and looked like they were breeding.
This behaviour was only funny in retrospect. The bizarre thing was how it made perfect sense at the time. I mean, those trolleys were useful.
Skep:
Thanks for the point about perverse verdicts. That’s really interesting and remarkable!
Hahaha. Sounds like an episode of The Office (except with lawyers).
Well exactly; every place I’ve ever worked is like an episode of The Office.
Benjamin, the same thing exists in the USA, where–as I discovered–it’s called ‘jury nullification’. It seems to be rarer in the US, mainly because of the different US view of the voir dire. In Britain, a voir dire is a discussion on points of law or evidentiary matters in the absence of the jury (typically, the judge making a call as to whether a piece of evidence is admissible). It takes place during the trial. In the US, jurors are often (but not always (?)–Rieux will know, I’m sure) questioned before being empanelled. I mean, you wouldn’t want someone on a jury who watches Court TV all the time. This is also called a voir dire.
In Britain, jurors are empanelled far more randomly, and the parties’ counsel have very little time to make a judgment call on a prospective juror. They will have a list containing the names, ages, occupations and addresses of those in the jury pool, but that’s all. The first time they see them is when they walk from the back of the courtroom towards the bailiff to take the oath after the law clerk calls their name. At any point before they reach the bailiff and put their hand on the Bible/Koran/etc, they can be ‘challenged’ (defence) or ‘stood by’ (Crown). Counsel simply call out ‘challenge’ or ‘stand by’, and the prospective juror returns to the ‘jury pool’ at the back of the courtroom. They won’t have their name called again for that trial, but may for a subsequent trial. The number of ‘challenges’ or ‘stand-bys’ is constrained procedurally, typically tied to the number of defendants.
In some jurisdictions, the names of prospective jurors are drawn from a lottery barrel, which the clerk spins before each card is withdrawn, like an oddball lucky-dip. All very dramatic.
A good piece for laypeople on jury nullification/perverse verdicts, and why they endanger the rule of law (especially valuable for US readers, with their different system of empanelling):
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2899/whats-the-story-on-jury-nullification
Ophelia:
I don’t think that’s factually true that it’s likely to backfire. The last couple of weeks have been less about Rebecca’s attire and the sexy calendars than that she dared to complain about being hit on and to criticize Dawkins. My guess is the response would have been even more vicious if she had come across as sexless. But if it is likely to “backfire,” that’s worth fighting and should not be accepted. It’s unacceptable that because a man finds a woman’s clothing to be “sexy” (which is highly subjective–I didn’t think Watson’s attire was ‘sexy’), he feels entitled to ignore her when she explicitly says “don’t hit on me.” That’s far from a mixed message. Whatever “message” you choose to attribute to her attire is clearly overridden by her objective verbal statement. It’s incompatible with women’s full and equal humanity to have their explicit statements be secondary to whether someone finds them sexy. Men certainly don’t have to worry about that. It’s simply assumed that their desires (and not those of others) control what they do, and that they are capable of speaking for their own desires.
And it’s unacceptable for anyone to blame the sexy woman for the man’s hitting on her against her explicit desires, or for the difficulties sexual harassers may create for women who don’t appear to be dressed sexily. That’s Taliban-logic. It says that immodest women are a threat to themselves and to modest women, because they introduce sex into the social environment. If this is a “party line,” it’s been adopted for a good reason. I don’t dress sexily at work or intellectual events. But I’d rather have a lot of people dressed like Rebecca than have a lot of people evaluating me to see if I’m dressed sufficiently like Rebecca to make them feel justified in judging me or hitting on me despite my explicit say-so. Conferences being “sexed up” in the sense of being a flirtation market are far more congenial (provided that flirtation is consensual) than conferences that are “sexed up” in the sense of constantly evaluating and judging women for being too sexy. The latter is more likely to encourage non-consensual sexualization, since it presumes that women dressed a certain way are somehow sending mixed messages, and encourages people to listen to the “messages” they want to hear. The attitude that women should avoid sexy clothes because it will “backfire” is more likely to backfire than the actual sexy clothes, because it justifies and legitimates the “backfire” response.
I feel slightly bad for piling on you when you’ve gotten so much grief already. I do so anyway because your comments on the clothing reflect shoddy feminism and shoddier logic. They reflect an attitude that harms women more than the use of sexual slurs does. I’m as appalled to see it as I would be for any number of “cunts” or “bitches.”
C’mon. Think better, Jenavir. The context of clothing really matters. If you are representing yourself, your company or organization in a business or professional setting, the standard is business clothing. If you want to be thought of as a tootsie in any kind of serious setting where you’re trying to influence, explain, teach or sell, just show up dressed in something unserious. The last thing any woman giving a speech to a roomful of executives who are predominantly men wants is to have them staring at her sexy bits. They’re going to do it anyway, but if you show up in any way unpeeled, you fail. This is a simple matter of efficacy and pragmatism.
“the sense that women are alien to “the atheist movement.””
So by trashing feminism they are ultimately trashing women?
Reread the part you wrote where not all women agree with feminism. Hell I can easily find women who will bash feminism over and over.
Oh stop it. You’re absolutely relishing the opportunity to lecture Ophelia, and you know it. Cut the coy crap.
I will not believe you are so stupid as not to recognize the tension inherent in a person dressing in a sexually alluring way and also demanding a social/work space where propositions don’t happen, ever.
Honest to Pete. Have you even bothered to read anything Ophelia said? Oh, what’s that? No? Obviously you haven’t, or you wouldn’t make such a stupid characterization. Christ, Jenavir.
The clothing issue is a hell of a lot more tricky than you might think. Jenavir has a valid point, and it’s a topic that could fill a thread all on its own.
For a start, what is “sexy”? Who judges? It’s in the eye of the beholder to large extent. Women have been slut-shamed for being raped while wearing jeans, ffs! Wear makeup and heels? You sexy chick, you’re asking for it. Don’t wear makeup and heels? Dyke, you need a good fuck to straighten you out, you’re asking for it.
Women’s professional dress is typically rather oppressive – expensive, uncomfortable, and physically damaging. Some of us choose to go along, while others choose to avoid that… which brings its own costs. It’s not an easy game to play.
So yeah, I’ll agree that it’s best to dress professionally in some circumstances and casually sometimes, and sexy in other situations. But exactly what that means is varied by age, profession, country, culture, subculture, whims of fashion, and many other factors. Is a sleeveless top casual or sexy? Depends who you ask. It’s a huge and complicated kettle of fish.
Clothing? Well, let’s stop being general about a hypothetical person, and talk about Rebecca Watson’s clothing and situation in particular. In particular, the situation is that people hate Watson for irrational, unconscious, or unspoken reasons. So, here’s what it would look like:
Jeans and T-shirt- too casual
Fancy dress- too formal
Pant suit- does she think she’s a professional now?
Black- oh, she’s goth now
Bright colors- trying to draw attention to herself
Dull colors- no taste
Too cheap- she’s not serious
Too expensive- she’s showing off
Too tight- slut
Too loose- sloppy
And if everything looks just right? “I’ll bet that bitch hired a stylist. Who is she to give a speech about privilege when she has her own stylist?!?!”
Well played, Improbable Joe! I am sure you are right.
Rorschach has posted the video of Watson’s CfI talk. The talk as a whole is good, and people should watch it.* It was as she described it in her later post. The major misogynistic trope she addresses is the idea that objecting to sexual objectification means objecting to sexual interest – that feminists are decrying the latter. (What she means by “ancient” is that this notion has been around pretty much as long as feminism itself.) What she’s arguing is basically the same thing I’ve been talking about with Paul here, and she explains why it’s important in the context of her talk. Now, someone could argue that the reference to Feminism 101 and ignorance of what feminism is are condescending, and they’d have a point were it not for the fact that McGraw had begun her own post with a dictionary definition of feminism and then gone on to examine what Watson “considers” antifeminist conduct. The harshest part was about women “knowing” other women who respond like this to her brief dicussion wouldn’t have their back and their concerns would be mocked. McGraw’s post did give that impression, but it was harsh.
I’m not going to go through the whole thing again, but to me the point is that McGraw made a public post that was somewhat harsh and condescending but substantive, Watson replied in her talk in a way that was somewhat harsh and condescending but substantive, and then McGraw had an opportunity to reply (in kind or not). That’s how public debate works. It’s certainly valid for McGraw to take issue with the venue in which it was presented** (as I think someone, if people are going there, could have taken issue with her post being on her organization’s site), but it’s entirely unfortunate that this came to be about McGraw as some sort of child who needs to be protected rather than a continuation of the substantive argument. As I’ve said before, I admire these young leaders and they’re a hell of a lot bolder than I was at their age, and I can see how this would have been difficult for mcGraw, but I think adults arguing publicly should be treated as just that. I don’t see how genuine debate can happen without that.
*”Peddle your lesbian cookies elsewhere, jezebel!” was my favorite.
**Though, as has been discussed, I don’t see how many people would have imagined the same response presented on Watson’s site, with its large readership, would have been preferable to McGraw.
I’m not arguing that it isn’t a mine field. It is. And I very much take the point about clothing and slut-shaming.
Women who are lawyers, bankers, judges, management consultants do not have the luxury of feeling indifferent or casual about what they wear to work. And they aren’t. But every work culture–academics, science, the arts–have their own implicit rules about what people wear. In your private life, and this may include the conferences you attend as a speaker or not, you can wear your underwear on your head, for all anyone cares. The overriding concern in a context like that one is: what are you there to do, and is what you’re wearing getting in the way of doing it? I roll pretty old-school in this regard, but I’m coming from a background where wearing the wrong thing could mean the loss of thousands of dollars in lost sales.
I must admit I haven’t been very impressed with the way some of the male speakers in various skeptical/atheist events have been attired. Shirtsleeves, tailored shorts, no ties and unforgivable footwear… as in, sandals.
Yes, I appreciate that lawyers are very conservative, and that both men and women have rigid dress codes (women do have a bit more freedom than men, especially when it comes to colour choice). But, that said, there is something to be said for dressing professionally, and I think that many of the objections to a sharp division between the public and the private when it comes to professional environments are misconceived.
I want to add that something that seems to be getting lost in this debate is that in professional spheres, men’s clothing choices are extremely limited as well. While women are judged much more harshly than men for how they dress in general, it’s not as if men have the freedom to wear whatever they want to work. Particularly in the above professions.
Skep:
I’d be the first to admit that people in sandals ought to be sequestered into a tiny room away from the normies. I would also include “crocks” into that category. My instinct is to automatically put you into a lower class of person, right along with people who drink bubble tea. Horrible people.
But even when I care about impression-management, I don’t iron my shirts, and if I wear a tie it is loose. That’s actually a conscious preference. If you asked me who I instinctively trust, a G-Man or Columbo, I choose Columbo, hands down, no contest.
Ah yes, crocks. They really do constitute a crime against fashion.
As for shirts you don’t have to iron, these days there are perfectly acceptable ‘non-iron’ shirts available from Marks & Sparks; my partner has about eight of them. Yes, bespoke ones are nicer, but he doesn’t want to be wearing, washing and ironing his good shirts continually–he wants them to last!
SC, thanks for the link!
Stop bagging on the Crocs. After you’ve spent 10 or 12 hours in Jimmy Choo or Manolo Blahnik, Crocs are a gift from the gods. Yes. Yes, I do have a thing for shoes. So? What of it? Don’t start with me.
It’s great to finally see Rebecca’s talk. It’s good. Though I doubt it’ll take the wind out of the critic’s sails, focused as they are on Stef McGraw.
Do you also drink bubble tea? *eyes narrow*
Wtf is “bubble tea”?
A horrible drink that contains little bits of floating goo in it. I guess it exists in order to replicate the feeling of eating soup and then unexpectedly swallowing a fly.
Eeuugh, bubble tea. It’s of east asian origin. Milk tea or fruit flavoured tea with starch ‘pearls’ in them. Revolting stuff. I had a sip about 15 years ago and swore off the concoction. Amazingly popular here in Singapore where kids drink massive amounts of the stuff. Dunno if it is any healthier than soda but the magical word ‘tea’ carries a good health connotation in chinese culture. People routinely drink supposedly healthy stuff brewed from flowers, veggies etc like chrysanthemum tea, winter melon tea that have no actual tea content at all. Belief in the ‘cooling’ properties of such drinks is very entrenched.
http://foodofwrong.blogspot.com/2006/05/winter-melon-tea.html
Winter melon tea is absolutely delicious and I can drink a litre of the stuff at one go.
HAhahahahahahahaha Ben. That’s a good one.
It sounds like drinking the milk at my aunt and uncle’s house. They had a kind of hobby dairy farm, complete with farmer, and they got milk every morning which was kept in a white enamel bucket in the fridge. It had yellow lumps in it. It made me gag.
Maybe they are the true inventors of bubble tea, and the Asian markets stole their idea on the sly.
Mmm, delicious yellow lumps. Nom nom nom.
Ah. I think I’ve seen that tea called “Boba” (or Bobo?). The floating chunks are pearl tapioca, right?
I have fun serving my students blue cheese – not too ripe and in minute quantities, mind. It’s a complete waste of my money as none of them manage to actually eat the stuff but the reactions are hilarious. These are Chinese kids who are used to eating a whole variety of ‘exotic’ foods and are generally adventurous eaters.
Maybe they are the true inventors of bubble tea, and the Asian markets stole their idea on the sly.
Oi! We are perfectly capable of inventing orrible foodstuffs on our own, you know. Apart from pickled fish and stinky cheese , you westerners have nothing on us. Balut anyone?
Jenavir – You’re doing what you did last time I tried to talk about this, when (as Harald reminded me) I called it a can of worms. You’re exaggerating and simplifying and rigidifying what I said in order to justify your self-righteous high dudgeon. It’s fucking irritating; stop doing it. Last time – go back and look at it, if you would – you ended by accusing me of saying “women are asking for it” – i.e. asking to be raped. I went through the roof…and you simply never bothered to reply.
You don’t normally do that, at least I don’t think you do, but you sure as hell do on this subject.
No shit, Sherlock, but I didn’t say the last couple of weeks were more about attire and sexy calandars. Those items are however decidedly part of the ammunition that the Watson-haters have been using.
Again, no kidding – I really don’t need you to teach me my ABCs – but that’s not what I was talking about. I was talking about the broader picture, in which for one thing women don’t always have the opportunity to explicitly say “don’t hit on me.” This is what you insisted on getting wrong last time, too. (One of the things you insisted on getting wrong.) My point is not “wear a sexy shirt, put up with rape.” Duh. Nor is it “wear a sexy shirt and then put up with propositions even if you’ve said you don’t want propositions.” My point was that if you wear a sexy shirt then that’s what you’re doing; it looks like an invitation for, at least, admiration. It looks like something. It looks marked as opposed to neutral. No of course that doesn’t mean “therefore anything goes.” I think it does mean “that makes it tricky for the woman to expect exactly the right amount of admiration and not a bit more.” Unless she has a brief, easily read message printed on the shirt spelling out exactly how much attention is allowed, how are strangers supposed to know how much attention she wants?
Let’s be real. Lots of women like and want sexual admiration and attention. It’s not simply self-evident exactly how much and what kind every woman wants, and it’s not self-evident that the right answer is always “the bare minimum.” You’re insisting that it is self-evident; well, no it isn’t.
Finally – if what I’m saying really appalls you as much as “any number of “cunts” or “bitches”” then I should think you won’t want to comment here any more.
Sorry to interrupt icky foods discussion with seriosity. Carry on.
Why were the yellow lumps so disgusting? Orange juice with pulp isn’t disgusting; fruit drinks with chunks of fruit aren’t disgusting, though they can be a bit technically demanding, as one has to drink and eat at the same time; soup with stuff in it isn’t disgusting; why was milk with chunks soooooo repulsive? I tried to convince myself it wasn’t, at the time, but it never worked – my throat always closed.
I’m pretty sure (have spent eight years on a dairy farm) that the yellow lumps would’ve been fat, the stuff that gets scraped off the top to come up with some version of skim milk. It helps to put the milk in a container that’s closed and shake it for a minute or two. Mixes things up a bit, like a low-cost, temporary homogenization.
Lumpy milk is milk that has gone off isnt it? Were those lumps of fat? Sounds gross either way.
Maybe it was being a kid thing? You know how some stuff tasted just so stomach churningly awful when you were a kid but is perfectly delish now?
Probably because it was pus. Drink up!
I was the world’s most finicky eater as a child and had the awful misfortune of being so scrawny that they put me on the school’s fattening programme – seriously. You had to report to a special table at recess, where there was this huge metal canister where they had this thick sludgy grainy lumpy milk concoction bubbling away ominously. You had to down a big mug of the stuff under the stern gaze of a teacher. Sometimes they gave us dried anchovies to eat. The idea was that you ate this stuff as a supplement and then went off to eat at the canteen as usual. Us skinnies spent the rest of recess in the toilets , retching and throwing up. We might have actually lost more weight than we gained.
Nowadays, the kids are too fat and they have TAF (trim and fit) regiments in place. They dont let you eat but make you run round the school during part of recess instead. Humiliation is the only constant in school.
[falls over laughing at Ben’s]
Oh it was fat all right. I used to try to do my own homogenizing, of course, but it never worked.
I do know the kid thing but I also know it would still make me gag. It makes me gag now thinking about it. There was nothing appealing about those yellow lumps.
My hated-then loved-now item is kale. I thought kale was an absolute nightmare horror when I was a kid. Why would anybody eat something so bitter? The very word had a kind of witchy quality. Kale…shudder.
Ewwwww, mirax! God that’s so horrible on so many levels.
The fatty bits in the milk may even be the beginnings of butter (the erstwhile dairy farmers can correct me if I’m wrong). One of my sister-in-law’s parents were dairy and small crop farmers with their own churn. They made their own butter and it was absolutely delicious :)
They were well-meaning, and there were probably kids who were malnourished who benefitted.
The current slimming programme in schools is actually much more cruel. They reaally think that they can humiliate and bully the kids into the perfect body weight. This starts in primary school and continues all the way until the kids leave school at 18. The boys have to do 2 years of compulsory military service; the obese ones have to do a further 6 months. They go into ‘Kilo’ company and lose weight before they do their basic military training. So starting at 16, the boys too desperately attempt to lose weight- resorting to shortcuts like pills. No one wants to end up in kilo company.
Our obesity rates are increasing – just hit 10%. However we are a very weight-conscious society – a lot of grown women think that weighing 45 kg is a major disaster and rush off to get slimming pills- and the government which is determined not to subsidise healthcare costs rigorously pushes the you-better-lose-weight line. In Singapore you are officially overweight if your BMI is 23 and the polyclinics advise you to keep it under 20. Seriously.
So I’ve watched the relevant bit of the CFI video.
Well…I can see how it would be cringey for McGraw…but do I think it’s a huge big outrage? No. It’s as Simon (I think – Simon Davis of CFI) said in reply to Russell’s first outburst here a couple of weeks ago – it was a smallish group, and the subject was leadership. The whole conference was about strategy and the like. Watson was talking about that. It doesn’t seem all that out of bounds to address something specific, even if the author is in the audience. That happens in real life.
James Croft was also there, and he said here that it didn’t seem particularly outrageous to him.
And I think Rebecca was right. I think she was making a fair point overall, and Stef misrepresented her point, and it’s a bad idea for women to do that kind of thing. Feminism 101. [shrug]
And no I absolutely do not think Rebecca did anything remotely justifying the torrent of bile that’s been poured on her over the past 3 weeks.
No it was Michael De Dora who said that, but Simon said he didn’t think Rebecca did anything wrong. Ed Beck also commented.
Ed Beck:
Michael DeDora:
Simon:
Meanwhile, I’m wondering why Rebecca gets so much hate-mail. Is it something to do with YouTube fame?
I don’t think ANYONE is capable of doing anything to justify what happened over the last month, short of being acquitted of murdering your kid. And even that burned itself out after awhile.
Petty personal squabble isn’t even to blame for this, exactly. Petty squabble that drove people to make a home where the MRA guys could find a safe, woman-approved outlet for their misogyny is to blame. This has almost from the beginning been a scorched-earth campaign, and there’s no good reason for it. The Stef McGraw thing is just a rationalization, not a reason.
Abbie called Rebecca a fucking bitch again a few minutes ago. It’s working so well for her…
I guess Abbie is planning on buying a new car, and the page hits she’s getting are going to secure her a pretty decent down-payment…
Oh, and I guess now I owe Abbie an apology, right?
There’s a touch of vanity that is the fuel to this fire. Male vanity is especially interesting — the kind that prompts anonymous trolls to exclaim “I will not be spoken to in that tone of voice”, when reacting to a woman saying “Don’t do that” to a crowd on the internet. They recoil as if they’d just been physically assaulted.
My friend just telling me about how she was having a conversation about the philosophical foundations of mathematics, against a guy who thought that all math was subjective. She argued that in math, once you pick the system you’re working in, you can converge upon a single right answer. He replied by turning to a mutual friend and saying, “I fucking hate her.” As if a disagreement about the basis of arithmetic was a grave threat to his life and personal projects.
My MP made the observation last year that the people who once sent illiterate letters scrawled in green crayon to her constituency office now write comments on YouTube videos. I suspect she may be right.
SC et al.,
I think I need to apologize.
I haven’t had time to re-watch the video of Rebecca’s panel talk, but I did dig up some notes I took while watching it a week or two ago, and it reminded me just how much I agreed with it.
I did have some reservations about it—some things that I thought could have been clearer, and some context-dependent things that I think may have contributed to the negative overreaction by Dawkins specifically—but I pretty much agreed with all of it. (I’d remembered that I generally agreed with what she actually said, as I noted above, but forgotten just how thoroughly. I also think that most of the negative reaction to Watson was not affected by the context that may have clouded Dawkins’s judgment.)
I think I’ve been derailing the conversation in a confusing direction, and while I think I’ve been misunderstood to some extent, I think I set myself up for that, too.
When I get a little time—not today—I may come back and address more of SC’s comments, and defend some of the specific things I said. I hope that doesn’t obscure the fact that I agree with Watson not just a lot, but a whole lot and the issues I’m talking about are somewhat off-topic in terms of whether she was actually wrong about anything she actually said, or whether she’s been treated like shit. She obviously has.
—
BTW, for me one of the most striking examples of that was Abbie’s comments about Kelly from the Rational Response Squad, likening Watson to Kelly as similarly unqualified, and pointing out that Kelly ended up doing porn. She made it a cautionary tale about unqualified self-promoting lightweight atheist chicks trying to make a career of atheism, and ending up with nothing to fall back on:
(I had to look up what “airtighted” meant, being rather less familiar with gangbang porn than Abbie seems to be; it turns out to be simultaneous penetration in all three major orifices. By the way, I don’t think that Kelly’s ever done that anyhow, and it was just a vivid image Abbie liked and had a zingy word for. She’s so edgy and cool.)
I thought that was wrong of Abbie on so many levels I can’t even count them. (Ad hominem, guilt by association, and slut shaming being among them.) I don’t know if Abbie is anti-porn, or the opposite, like sex-positive feminists, but I thought it was clear that Abbie was reveling in a fantasy of the sexual humiliation of women she hates. If she’s not anti-porn, she’s a hypocrite, and if she is anti-porn, it’s no better.
I suspect it was just a weapon of humiliation that was available, and a particularly effective one because it involved sexual humiliation of women, and she gleefully used it because she knew it would be effective in that way.
There are a lot of bad things that are detrimental to women that I stop short of calling “misogynistic,” but that is not one of them.
That’s some stunningly misognystic shit there.
When I read Russell saying that Abbie had been “steadily clear-headed and sensible,” I was amazed.
Yeah? That’s a different interpretation from mine, which was that some guys were struck by empathy for a guy and lack thereof towards women because they saw something of themselves in EG. I think your view may be closer to the truth, and less cynical than my own.
Paul, as far as I’m concerned, no apologies are necessary. It seemed pretty clear what you were saying. It’s probably just something for another thread.
(Have you by chance done any work on evolutionary game theory? Brian Skyrms’s “Evolution of the Social Contract” begins that book with an interesting discussion of sex and justice.)
Oh so that’s what “airtighted” means. I didn’t look it up at the time, because I was just so…repulsed and worn out by the whole thing.
Watching the approximately 15 minutes of that CFI video that I’ve watched so far ratcheted up my indignation a notch or two. That’s what Abbie and her pals are foaming at the mouth about? Seriously?
And I guess he stands by it. He hasn’t been back to answer my questions on the subject (which is rather rude, given the way he burst in to shout at us).
Thanks, Paul. And I apologize if I reacted a bit too strongly to your post. Dealing with some of the MRAs, PUAs, and all-purpose misogynists as we’ve been for the past few weeks has been wearing, and my patience is frayed.
I hadn’t read that particular comment from Abbie, and had no idea what airtighting was, either. Like many other things she’s written, it’s horrible (as you said, in many ways).
Yeah, and simultaneously declares his blog an elevator-gate free zone. Lots of asshole moves lately Blackford.
Ophelia @343
I think I scared him away… you’re welcome!
I wonder if Abbie doesn’t see herself as championing a student that’s been wronged in the same way PZ did that started crackergate. I’ve never been a big fan of hers because of her foul language (even though PhysioProg doesn’t grate at me the same way) and it doesn’t help that I thought she was wrong about the balance of power thing from the event description.
And if those ugly threads don’t harm her reputation at her current position, it may should she decide to enter the corporate world – where the money (and HR) departments are. I think someone pointed out earlier that HR doesn’t like to hire people who have problems working as a team.
I would’ve thought I was more cynical. But yeah — it’s clearly a little from column A, a little from column B. It depends on who we’re talking about.
Then again, there’s also column C. Some folks purportedly don’t care about EG at all — they care about McGraw, first and foremost. I’m pretty sure that that’s Russell’s view, for instance, and it’s certainly Wonderist’s.
Well I think she does care strongly about that. But if she sees the two as comparable…she’s not paying attention. What Rebecca “did to” Stef M is not at all similar to what a bunch of angry Catholics did and tried to do to Webster Cook.
I did know what this meant. That’s what working in criminal justice (a few years ago now) does for you. Lovely.
Totally agree. Plus while the comments at Pharyngula can get quite raw, PZ doesn’t get that way himself which is a huge difference.
Crap, I guess I’m just a terrible person. I knew what it meant, and don’t have a cool reason for it.
Ha! “Gurdur” has been doing his bit on Abbie’s threads, giving portentous announcements of his plans to do a new, long, all-embracing thread on elevators and Watsons etc etc etc. Now he’s discovered Jeremy, and the two of them are agreeing about how fraffly bokers atheists are. Hilarious.
I predict a co-authored book in a few years…Why We Hate Atheists.
Mmmmmmph.
Half an hour ago at Abbie’s:
Self-important much?
He really is astonishing, that Gurdur. He seems to genuinely view himself as the universally likable and admired “good guy”, and that that is self-evidently true. Weird. The lack of awareness has a certain Kwokkishness about it.
Truly funny to see Jeremy falling on his neck as the epitome of reason and good sense.
Is Jeremy on ERV as well?
No. No, I don’t think he would chime in there. He’s not a sexist epithet-er.
I found the conversation on twitter (not a platform I use, I must confess).
Neither do I much, but I have a thingy that makes it tweet news items and posts and I think articles.
Hmm, I’m sort of curious, but I have less than a gigabyte left. Oh, well.
“Gurdur”? I only know of a pokemon called Gurdurr. (Habitually carries a construction girder.)
“Airtighting”? I have watched a lot of pornography. I still look it up freely, but have somewhat lost interest in later years. I was however not familiar with that term. Also not knowing the name “Scott Lyons”, I don’t know what was meant by that statement.
(Google gives some sort of american sportsman and a seemingly random british person.)
Speaking of Kw*k, he is already up and posting at Freethought. I think. I’m a clueless technofumble, so who knows what I read?
Improbable Joe:
Far be it from me to judge. I’ve had a number of friends (mostly but not exclusively gay men) who engaged in group sex and thought it was a cool thing all around. As long as it’s considerate and truly consensual, I’ve never seen a problem with it; I just happened not to know that particular term for it. (Which kinda surprised me.)
In principle, multiple men having sex with one woman seems to me more reasonable and less self-centered on the guys’ part, in terms of basic geometry and physiology, than one guy trying to please three women simultaneously. (If I try to imagine doing the latter, it doesn’t seem sexy at all; I can’t imagine feeling anything but under-equipped and ineffectual. Maybe if I could imagine being just so amazingly sexy that just being involved at all would be a thrill for a woman… or being Edward Penishands? “And a pony?” Whatever.)
If you’re talking about it as airtighting somebody, though, it really doesn’t come across as at all considerate, or even comfortable. It sounds like the point is exactly to make somebody submit to being treated as a merely physical object for others’ pleasure.
You don’t even treat an inanimate fuck toy that way—what are you trying to do to it anyway, pop it or something?—so that’s some multileveled, jarring wrongness there.
Abbie does have a way with choice words, so I doubt that was inadvertent. It was precisely a fantasy about the allegedly underqualified Watson getting her comeuppance, and falling from internet stardom to the level of a mere fuck toy being abused even by the standards of mere fuck toys. Pretty efficient prose, I gotta admit.
Thatd serve the uppity underqualified bimbo bitch Twatson right, wouldnt it! Ha!
Just what are Abbie’s qualifications for commenting on anything besides virology, anyhow?
To people waiting for a response by Russell Blackford about ERV being sensible and clear headed when she says things like Twatson is a fucking bitch who may end up getting her smelly snatch airtighed like that other RRS cunt because she said terrible, offensive things to a youngling in a talk (I think it’s a fair summary or her whole opinion on the subject)… he’s busy commenting on her blog.
“Hey, Naughty Abbie – any bets on how many comments this thread can attract?”
Yeah.
Ew. Miranda commented on Abbie’s sewer of a thread – to complain about two comments here. One by mirax and one by Athena. She left out the context (what does that remind me of? oh yes, the way McGraw left out the context of Watson’s advice) and thus distorted the meaning of the comments.
Stupidly, I had thought even she didn’t like the rampant misogyny on that thread, but yet again I overestimated the “Watson is a fucking bitch!” team.
And…………..even more astonishing, to me, Russell also commented there.
He thinks it’s funny!! And cute, and transgressive, and “naughty.”
Jeezis god. I don’t know anybody.
Ah, jose – I was typing while you posted.
Yes quite.
I’m just gobsmacked.
Who is he?!
It takes something like this to see people’s true colors… which is weird, because you’d think with colors like those people would know better than to put on such a display.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
Facebook:
I swear to god it’s Alice through the fucking looking glass. Everything is backward. People I thought were decent suddenly lose their minds and become slavering misogynists overnight.
And one more thing:
Joe – yes but something like what? I don’t get what it is about “this” that makes these particular people – all of whom I could have sworn were staunch liberals and feminists – lose their minds and embrace cunting and bitching and airtighting and all the rest of it. A couple of hours ago Abbie simply asserted in passing that Rebecca is a drunk. Just like that. Yet Miranda, Jerry and Russell are fine with it. I.do.not.get.it.
I wonder if ERV likes being called “Naughty Abbie” by Blackford?
I would speculate, except that while “cunting and bitching and airtighting” are all signs of clear, rational, skeptical thought, speculating as to why people would use that sort of language is simply beyond the pale. Actually, I’m going to speculate anyways, at least a little bit. Why not? Maybe it will cause them to have sexual fantasies about me too, they can masturbate compulsively for a few hours and maybe it will clear their heads a bit.
There’s obviously something seriously broken in the skeptical community, and it seems to me like this was just the weak point in the levee that finally and let all the poisoned water come flooding out. I’m on the outside looking in, so I don’t know any of the interpersonal behind-the-scenes politics and insults and snubs and whatever else driving this. But because I’m outside of it, I think I get to be a little more dispassionate about the whole thing and see just how fucking crazy it all is. I don’t have any particular reason to prefer anyone over anyone else, and I’ve been a fan of many of the people involved on both sides for a fair amount of time.
So, there’s the politics and side-taking and what seems to have been long-simmering hatred/contempt for RW. Why? I don’t know, but I suspect it has something to do with the difference between what the skeptical community was versus what it is becoming. I think a lot of people were much more comfortable when skepticism was a bunch of mostly older, mostly upper-class, mostly college-educated people sitting around scoffing at Bigfoot claims. Some few women, no “chicks”, probably not much in the way of political discussion since people who all share the same basic lifestyle probably share general political views in common. Very good at dealing with UFOs and such, but also very small and insular.
Then the Internet came along. At first it must have seemed pretty cool, because now the message could get out! Penn & Teller got a show! Mythbusters! Michael Shermer is everywhere! Richard Dawkins wrote a book that sold like gangbusters! Except that, well… look what the cat dragged in. Fans of magic shows and blowing up crash test dummies start showing up. The Internet democratized skepticism, so that average folks with no particular expertise got to join the conversation. And with average folks comes average folks behavior and concerns. No more country club skepticism, and BTW look at all the old white guys! Maybe that’s an issue? Pretty soon the conversation shifts from the comfortable Bigfoot and UFO stuff and over to things like economic and social justice, racial and gender equality, gay rights and political skirmishes over creationism and religious freedom.
Am I rambling too much? Should I stop?
Coyne, Blackford and a whole of others are pissing in the pool, now that they have found it to be suffiently deep and there are so many others whom they can shift the blame to. They do not care about the floating turds. Well, this has been one eyeopening experience.
I agree, although I hadn’t thought any of them were feminists particularly. I did think Jerry and Russell (didn’t know or care enough about Miranda to have an opinion) were better people.
And I’m still astonished that there are people who don’t understand the difference between swear words and sexist or racist or homophobic slurs (not to mention ongoing, vicious personal attacks). Do they really think the people objecting to Abbie’s posts about this at Pharyngula are bothered by the use of profanity?! Physioprof’s in my blogroll (which is another I’ll have to update now that he’s on FTB!), FFS, and Abbie’s not in his league.
You persist in misunderstanding what I said, Ophelia. You also persist in saying things and then backing away from their implications. You criticize Watson’s attire in response to her statement that she doesn’t want to be hit on–and then say that it’s a matter of ABCs that she has the right to say it, and of course you didn’t mean to say she didn’t, you were just saying it was tricky. Except it’s only tricky to people who think she doesn’t have the right to say it.
No, I’m not. I’m insisting the answer is what the wearer says it is, and the only way you can find that out is by listening to what she says like she’s a human being. You’re correct that it’s not self-evident, but that’s not what you’re saying. What you’re saying is that wearing an outfit that comes across to someone as “sexy” makes it self-evident that she wants their sexual attention, or at the very least sends a “signal” of some sort that can’t be overridden by what she says. Or else why would Watson’s outfit be relevant, when she has publicly said she doesn’t want to be hit on at these conferences? Sexual attention and admiration per se are besides the point here. The only point relevant here is going against someone’s stated wishes.
Josh Slocum: you have no idea what I “relish” or don’t, so stop assuming. I really don’t relish this kind of argument at all. I hate it, and wish I could unread it. You obviously relish attributing horrible motives to people who disagree with you, though.
I will not believe you are so stupid as not to see that I never demanded a “social/work space where propositions don’t happen, ever.” Nor did Rebecca Watson as far as I can see. If she did, I disagree with her.. That would be a stupid thing to demand. I don’t think it’s necessary or practicable. I demanded a social/work space where what someone says trumps your feeling of being sexually allured by her attire. That is all, and it’s elementary. It’s also elementary to see how responding to someone’s statement that they don’t want to be hit on by criticizing their attire is very harmful. That kind of commentary has probably done more harm than sexual slurs have, because it’s connected to rationalizations for harassment. Whereas sexual slurs are not part of a rationale designed to justify specific wrongful acts, but are more a reflection of general attitudes. If pointing that out means I should stop commenting here, I will.
I will reply to you once. You need to shut up and read. I’ve posted several times the reasons for my characterization of Smith as a gender traitor (a term which, as I noted, I’m not using now, but not because I think the concept behind it is incorrect or that it was wrongly applied). I’ve explained this probably about 10 times now – here, at Pharyngula, and at my own blog – providing links to relevant posts several times over (not that any from the past are necessary any longer). That characterization was never based on anyone’s merely disagreeing with “a single feminist’s interpretation of an event.” That is quite simply false, and you and others need to stop repeating it. If you continue to repeat it, you are willingly spreading a falsehood. Skimming through the rest of your post, it’s evident that’s a pattern for you, so I don’t expect any improvement.
***
I’m also still amazed that some of the people up in hyperbolic arms about “gender traitor” (or the very concept) are failing to recognize the obvious parallel with “faitheist,” their own similar responses to similar actions on the part of faitheists towards gnus (and groups oppressed by religion), and the similarity of faitheists’ responses to the term and to the anger their actions have elicited. And gnus/atheists aren’t a subordinate group in any way close to women. The hypocrisy is palpable.
But usually the wearing comes first, and there isn’t always opportunity for the wearer to say what her clothes mean.
You’re probably right about that thing I said about Rebecca’s “undershirt” (actually a sleeveless scoop-neck top). It’s not all that sexy; it’s more a mix of sexy and casual that I don’t really like in work-type situations. But she pointed out there were guys there in shorts and sandals, which I hadn’t seen – I’d seen only Richard in suit and tie next to Rebecca. Fair enough. I think everyone on the platform should dress a little bit more sedately (or “professionally”) but it wasn’t a very kind thing to say.
No. No, I think it can be overridden by what she says, but also that she doesn’t always have a chance to say (see above). I also think it does the over-riding at the price of some irritation, often at women in general as well as that one woman in particular. It looks like wanting to have it both ways. In one way it seems quite innocent and reasonable to want admiration without hassling, but in another way…maybe not. I’m ambivalent about it.
I must side with Jenavir on this, even though I agree that people should dress appropriately (for the climate to start with, so that we don’t end up with British missionaries broiling inside boiled wool suits in Hawai’i).
Clothing denotes many things; prominent among them is status and social dominance — enforced by sumptuary laws that in earlier Europe designated colors/fabrics forbidden to underclasses or outsiders and proscribed gender cross-dressing on pain of death. Men dressed as colorfully/decoratively/provocatively as women in western societies until the 19th century and some cultural pockets have reverted to doing so (all to the good — why should guys do all the ogling?).
Women primarily dress to please/bolster themselves and project a persona/lity, secondarily to be admired. Men have done so routinely without censure, even when sexual potency is an explicit signal: medieval noblemen across cultures often wore padded codpieces that advertised their prerogative to have and use whatever came within their purview. Note the relative value judgments/connotations of stud and slut linked to this aspect. As “helpmates”, women were expected to enforce dressing norms (including footbinding and its ilk), and of course are still routinely delegated to choose, wash, iron and mend (in person or by proxy) the clothes that make such distinctions possible.
It’s true that actions and words don’t always mesh and people, being imperfect and uncertain, can and do send mixed signals. However, that’s why we have language — so we can collapse the quantum foam of possible interpretations into mutually intelligible meaning.
I think it’s clear that the intent of most of these posts from Blackford, ERV, etc. are othering. There’s enough drama and personal vanity involved here, though. Othering doesn’t necessarily imply misogyny. Othering implies that a person has said to the target: I can’t trust you — and I need to distrust you. One reason for that is latent misogyny, but another reason is that everybody thinks that their dignity has been upset.
Many people have been disrespected, of course, and that is motivating a backlash for perfectly understandable reasons. But the backlash in itself isn’t really interesting, since it’s fuelled by vanity and slights. And at some level, people are entitled to respect or disrespect whoever they like, so long as it is fair and considerate and reasons-responsive. Fine.
The problem is dignity. People are robbed of dignity when they decide that their personal fortunes are tied to the destruction of others. ERV, for example, seems to cherish the idea that she is an entrenched warrior, a front-liner who tells it like it is and takes no prisoners. Despite their protests to the contrary, the non-Watson Skepchicks put on a non-campaign campaign against Dawkins, and to my eye it has the same texture. And for that matter, some gnus define their creed as hostile towards all religious organizations. The point is that if you identify yourself according to your list of enemies, then you stink of reactionism.
What must infuriate ERV the most is that Watson has pretty much kept her dignity. That’s what’s upsetting. That’s evidently why Watson has to be “airtighted”, violated. It’s because ERV already gave up her dignity and wants everyone to lose it, too. And evidently she’s been having some great success.
This keeps coming back like a bad penny, doesn’t it?
It does.
Ben, that all makes sense, I think. And yet I remain puzzled.
So then I go eat a few strawberries and forget about it.
Yes but language usually comes after the signal is sent. If clothes look for instance like a form of flirtation, the response may be a proposition without any linguistic intervention beforehand.
Jenavir kept saying “what the woman explicitly says” and I agree with that, but the woman hasn’t always explicitly said anything, especially not anything she can assume everyone within range is aware of.
That’s actually why Rebecca’s incident is perfect in its way. In that instance it really is fair to assume that the guy had heard her explicitly say she didn’t want to be hit on, because she said it at the conference and he was at the conference. In most contexts that’s not going to be the case.
I’ve seen women say things like “yes I’m wearing this sexy shirt now but I said on my blog last week that my sexy shirts don’t mean you can hit on me.” But not everybody in the world will have read last week’s blog posts, so that doesn’t address the issue.
I think there’s some confusion about this, and also some hypocrisy at times.
The same “argument” can be made for any garment, Ophelia, when the criterion is the unquestioned, unquestionable male prerogative.
Hair peeking beneath the chador=too sexy (medieval Christians also said this and so do hareddi Jews).
Non-annihilating enough burqa=too sexy.
You’re right about this: if male judgment prevails by default and men cannot be held responsible for containing their urges, then language is useless no matter what.
Rightly so. They ought to know better. They ought to react better. But I don’t think most people have the language to think about things in these terms, so they react to challenges to their vanity in primitive egotistical defensive ways.
It’s totally understandable, though. Nobody teaches “dignity” in school or how it relates to respect.
In industry, the attitude towards dignity is bipolar — some corporations give people a kind of anti-oppression training, but it necessarily leave out any details about how people are supposed to have disagreements with their superiors. In politics, dignity is intentionally conflated with respect — which is worse than useless, since it sanctifies all kinds of bogus tone trolling, even at the risk of turning the supposedly august judicial system into a snivelling mockery of itself. Some of the better religions come close to teaching it every so often, but you can’t really count on them for anything, because of obvious reasons. Academic feminism is very close to articulating these ideas, but feminists (even “Feminism 101” guides) will often deploy these rich, sensitive, beautiful theories in ways that are clumsy, incoherent, and unfair.
In conclusion, everyone should live in a bunker until the sun blows up.
True, Athena. And, notoriously, in some places they do – Cairo for instance: all those reports about harassment of women which said it made no difference what they were wearing. Still…in this particular culture, some clothes send more of a flirtatious/sexual message than others.
This isn’t just woman-blaming or (as Jenavir so sweetly put it) slut-shaming. I think a lot of it comes from tv and advertising, and much of that is based on male fantasies. There was that woman at…Harrods was it? Who got a written reprimand for not wearing full makeup?
Ben…oddly enough, I’m reading a draft of a book by Austin Dacey that talks quite a lot about dignity and respect and the connection between them. It’s v good.
Nice! When’s it coming out?
Dunno, I’ll ask him.
This is just way past reasonable. It’s sad.
I’ve always had time for Russell, I’ve met him once, and he is a nice bloke. I guess Ben’s explanation of othering is as good as any. I didn’t want to have a go at Miranda a few weeks ago, re: gender traitor, because I didn’t know what that entailed, the word traitor has strong connotations. I trust SC knows what it means, but I didn’t want to sign up for something that I was unsure of. But Miranda seems to have signed up for team Twatson and the airtighters. Abbie has gone so far off reservation she might do a lap of the Earth and end up where she started, though I doubt it.
I think I’ve figured out where things went off the rails with Russell. I’ve looked again at the comment where he gave his version of The Saga and the one later where PZ pointed out where the comment went wrong. Now the thing about that is…PZ was there for a big chunk of The Saga that Russell described, and Russell wasn’t. PZ had better information. And Russell’s language in that comment is indeed (as PZ civilly points out) very loaded – it’s loaded in a Mooneyesque way: McGraw did a civil post about Watson but Watson attacked McGraw. We’ve seen the video now, and Watson did not attack McGraw. Russell loaded the dice in every section of his comment (which is in numbered sections). I don’t think he meant to, but he did.
Here’s the crucial bit of PZ’s comment:
And this is why we’re revolted by the torrent of crap thrown at Watson, and Russell’s (and others’) defense of it. It seems to be wildly out of proportion to anything Watson actually did, and also impervious to correction even by people who were there – like all the CFI witnesses I quoted yesterday, and like PZ who was in Dublin, saw both talks, and talked to Kirby afterward. Why are Russell and Abbie and Miranda and Jerry so convinced that they know better? When none of them were there?
Beats the hell out of me.
You said it @#392.
Strange bedfellows, all around, it seems to me.
Where is Carol Tavris when you need her?
Reminds me of the theists/creationists who go after the Gnus for being universally hostile and insulting and militant, when most of us aren’t…
… well, except with each other apparently.
well McGraw is subbing at Friendly Atheist while Hermant is away (and she has troll delete abilities) Hopefully she can do better at godlessness than she does with feminism.
Let me put my thoughts on the clothing issue out there. I’m not sure they’ll be helpful, but here goes anyway. If it matters, I’m speaking as a male who happens to be sexually attracted to both men and women.
I agree that a woman’s stated desire should take precedence over what she’s wearing, to the extent that if she’s naked and says “my eyes are up here,” that’s where my eyes should be. But as Ophelia has rightly pointed out, that stated preference is not always available to me, and can be difficult to infer. If I see a young attractive woman at the mall in a low cut shirt and jeans, I have no idea what her preference really is regarding the strangers around her looking at her cleavage. Maybe its laundry day, and that’s one of only two clean shirts. Maybe it’s hot outside. Maybe she dressed to entice her lover that she’s meeting, but would prefer that everyone else not look. Is it a dressy shirt with dress pants and shoes (yes, I’ve seen low-cut dress shirts)? Then maybe she’s on a lunch break from work, and doesn’t consider the shirt to be sexual. It’s impossible for me to know for sure without asking. I know that staring is generally considered rude and objectifying, so that’s out, but other than that, no clue. I can try an application of the Golden Rule I suppose, which in my case means that since I want to be admired, sexually or otherwise, when I dress to look good, I should go ahead and enjoy the view (politely). Yet, the impression I get from some people is the Golden Rule doesn’t apply here.
The same applies to a guy who wears a shirt that’s tight enough to prove he works out, or tight pants that show off his butt. Someone said on some thread I read recently that men don’t dress in suits to look good, and all I could think is “I do, and there’s no faster way to get my wife to objectify me than to put on a suit.”
Taking sex out of it, clothes are something that we do judge people by. When I worked in retail, I got to see lots of people come into our small store for interviews, especially when we were looking for holiday help. I saw some people come in wearing jeans with holes, a shirt promoting music bands, and a baseball cap. My initial impression was always that I didn’t want to work next to that person (I can’t remember if any of those were ever hired).
On the other hand, some, maybe all, of this is just culture. We know there are still tribes in which men and women are mostly naked all the time, and clothing and jewelry is decorative or ceremonial. The sexual parts aren’t sexualized just by getting some exposure. That being the case, it may be possible, maybe even desirable, to try and shift the culture toward one where we don’t automatically think of sex when a little cleavage shows.
It is confusing, and I’m not sure I have an answer. On the other hand, typing at least helps to get some of the thoughts straight.
If you watch the video, you can see Watson dismiss Kirby in an insulting way. It doesn’t matter if PZ Myers was there and sees it otherwise or if Kirby said she didn’t mind. The dismissiveness is in the video. The implicit message is that there’s a double standard. Women who don’t feel mistreated can be sharply dismissed. Women who have complaints, no matter how small (even PZ said elevator guy did something only slightly wrong) must be treated deferentially. I think Team anti-Watson finds this sort of feminism just a sort of sanctimonious political correctness. That are rebelling against it by saying the most politically incorrect things they can think of. I’m on board with their rebellion against the double standard Watson has come to stand for, just not with their tactics. The personal attacks on Watson have been absolutely disgusting, (And I have to say I’m extremely puzzled that Russell Blackford apparently doesn’t agree.)
Jean Kazez’ comment can be read for clarity by substituting her claims about Watson with her previous remarks about gnus (or joining the two). The most appalling comments receive the same absurd, role-reversing apologetics: “Th[ey] are rebelling against it* by saying the most politically incorrect things they can think of. I’m on board with their rebellion…” But she appends a footnote! – “The personal attacks on Watson have been absolutely disgusting” – that totally shows her true stance.
*gnu feminism
“I agree with your desire to call her a twat! Just don’t say it out loud!”
Fuck but you’re an imbecile.
@ Jean K
It does matter that people see it otherwise, and we are not talking about “deference” but about being allowed to say “don’t do that” and being heard. I can see the semantic link between “being respected” and “deference” but it’s an illegitimate move.
That’s potty. Completely potty.
It’s a can of worms. Blackford put himself in your camp because he said something silly and now feels the need to “justify” himself. Something about Rebecca’s stance has caused people I respected to throw every single principle of humaneness and rational discourse (and let us not forget plain common sense) out of the window. I suspect a combination of unexamined misogyny and the mindless mechanics of the internet.
Of course it is. That they’re trying to wrap themselves in a cloak of rebellion and dissent is laughable. No social reality exists for them outside their petty or privileged opinions.
I was starting to think Russell could do no wrong. Well, shows what I know.
First his “You are arguing about the wrong thing. Watson being a meanie is the main issue and we shouldn’t get distracted by the elevator issue.” Which is fine by itself, I suppose. He simply had more interest in one than the other.
Then he reveals his “kthxbai” tactics, moving like a house fly and stinging like a parasitic wasp.
Meanwhile, he and Coyne are having a boys-will-be-boys brawl over semantics and between instances of admitting that it is over semantics pretending that it is not. Gasp! Fatalism! Gasp! Contracausalism! Nah, just kidding! Gasp! Fatalism! Gasp! Contracausalism! Nah, just kidding!
Curse you, “ä” next to the apostrophe-key!
Well I’ll have to watch that video too then. (I knew that. I just keep thinking it’s all going to die, and I won’t have to, but it won’t die.) Meanwhile, maybe so. I’ve always said I don’t agree with either team 100%. I disagree with some of what Rebecca’s said and done, and I’ve said that here (thus pissing off everyone instead of only half of everyone).
But quite so about the personal attacks and about Russell’s giggling “naughty Abbie” view of them. Deal-breaker. He might as well call me that, and that’s a deal breaker.
Is there any rebellion apart from their tactics? The tactics are the rebellion, aren’t they? Otherwise you would get substantive disagreement, not rebellion.
I’ve gotten into huge argument on the Women’s Studies list with people who for instance rebuke people (like me) who are vehemently opposed to FGM. There’s a lot of sanctimonious political correctness in that…but we had an argument, not a rebellion.
Remember that “rebellion” at David Thompson’s place a few years ago, Jean? The epithets came out instantly. That was another abruptly ended cyber-friendship. You tried to talk some sense into David but he was way too into his rebellion against my sanctimonious political correctness to listen.
I’m leery of rebellions against sanctimonious p.c. of a feminist kind, especially ones full of men, because they’re so seldom free of misogyny.
Nathan/Lucien @ 397 – exactly. Thenk you.
Most of the time, the message sent by the clothes is all there is; there is no “what the woman says” that trumps that, because she’s a stranger on the street or in the mall or on the bus. Of course it’s all cultural, but the fact that it’s cultural doesn’t make it a non-issue.
<blockquote>Why are Russell and Abbie and Miranda and Jerry so convinced that they know better? When none of them were there?</blockquote>
Who would know. I talked to Pauly Kirby with PZ fucking sitting next to us, and yes, she didn’t seem to be too fussed by it all and said she would think about it or something. What really gets me is that now that everyone has seen what Rebecca actually said at CFI, how is it that anyone can still maintain this fable of how she viciously stabbed poor hapless 8 year old Stef McGraw in the back from her pulpit during this talk. Some apologies are in order.
The part where she refers to McGraw begins about 12 minutes in. That might save you some time. As far as I can tell, saying Watson “dismisses” McGraw is an overstatement, but she does open by saying that we have a problem “when young women are this ignorant about feminism”. Later, she mentions how McGraw had “conveniently” left about the part (from the EG episode) where she had said she was really tired and going to bed. That seems like an accusation of dishonesty, not mere ignorance, and so would have been best left unsaid. But still, I think the transgression is minor, and no way does it justify the amount of invective hurled her way. (It would be unjustified even had she been truly nasty in that talk, which she was not.)
Aratina Cage has done a transcript of the relevant parts; see here – http://aratina.blogspot.com/2011/07/talk-by-watson-at-cfi.html
Thanks Harald, I meant the one that Jean mentioned, where Watson disputes Kirby, at the Dublin event. I did watch the relevant part of the CFI one on Sunday, and saw more or less what you saw. It seemed very mild to me. (Plus I think the poor-McGraw team makes her contribution sound more benign than it is. It’s a strawman – she misrepresents what Watson said and is scornful about it. Again nothing very remarkable in internetty interactions, but not perfectly wonderful and blameless, either.)
Rorschach – yes. We won’t be seeing them though.
I’m done with Russell. Now that I am, I’ll remark that he’s been making obnoxious coffee jokes and elevator jokes at Facebook ever since this started – sometimes on other people’s threads and out of absolutely nowhere. People talk about carrot soup and up pops Russell to say well at least it’s not in an elevator hahaha. The sustained venom and contempt are just mind-boggling.
And it scares me, to tell the truth. It looks to me as if it could happen to any woman. Put a foot wrong and all of a sudden bam you find formerly sane men and even some women vomiting bile all over you for weeks on end.
Hmm. (Yes, Jason?) Blackford recently commented on being treated unfairly by P.Z. and others. Then closed comments. The 7:57 PM post.
Not sure what to think.
Well, this has been a weird… Internet drama thing. (Which isn’t what I really mean, because I think it’s much more important than “internet drama” implies.)
For what it’s worth, Blackford seems to have entrenched his position in response to PZ. (See comments on Miranda Hale’s site* from this past weekend. That seems to be what he’s now citing as personal complaint — “PZ called me a liar and I’m mad about it!”) There’s also the weird position that some of the anti-Watson individuals seem to have taken — a my-interpretation-of-EG-is-AT-LEAST-as-valid-as-RW’s-because-standpoint-epistemology-is-BS-because-I-have-a-different-experience**-and-even-though-I-have-no-evidence-to-falsify-privilege-as-a-concept-I-believe-this-furiously-because-otherwise-I’d-have-to-inconvenience-myself/admit-I’m-not-immune-to-socialization/treat-women-like-actual-human-beings. (Sorry for any hard-to-readness. The hyphens make me feel a little better.)
*Warning, the links end up sending you in a big circle back to Blackford’s conveniently enumerated post here.
**Usually, although undeniably not always, as a man.
Svlad – I know, I saw that. I’m sure what to think!
Oops, that originally had a couple of paragraph breaks. Sorry for the wall o’ text, with extraneous hyphens to make it all the harder to read.
Never in the history of Internet moral indignation has one topic pissed me off more. The length of the debate, the vitriol and the wikipedia-led over-intellectualising philosophical/ethical bull. I don’t care how you try and defend you position, if you can’t see and accept what Rebecca said then you’re an arsehole. It’s that simple.
If in your normal capacity of social interaction you cannot see that just being a decent human is perhaps quite a nice idea then continue in your life as a big player with the shitty attitude and persona on the Internet. Sleep well in the knowledge that you wholeheartedly voiced your adolescent, misguided rhetoric so eloquently with links
and everything.
The attacks against Rebecca are largely two-fold: men who don’t like the reality slap that unfortunately it takes more than 10 second of dialogue from a porn movie to make a female like you and those who just don’t like Rebecca and so would rather pick the tiniest hole in her delivery and speech to fuel the spite.
Sometimes I just don’t get the Internet. There should be an addendum to Godwin’s Law which is eventually every online community ends up acting with all the wit, reason and intelligence if 4chan members.
Thanks, Cath (and Cage). Is that an accurate transcript? It’s not what I had expected. McGraw seems mentioned in passing.
I think I have thick-skin privilege in addition to male privilege. When I tried to put myself in McGraw’s proverbial shoes, I pictured being pointed at from the stage and everybody staring. Was there any noteworthy gesture omitted in the transcript?
Another weird thing — Stef McGraw is to be ‘nurtured as a future leader’. By demonstrating to her that, once she actually achieves a position of public leadership, she’ll get called a cunt, bitch, whore, smelly snatch?
No I like the hyphens, Mya! Plus they’re impressive – it’s hard work overcoming the habit of hitting the space bar between words for that many hyphens.
Yikes, that’s a good point, Mya.
I suppose the women who’ve been joining the baying pack (this time the comparison with a witch hunt is not far off the mark) think they’ll never be the target of all that cunting and bitching.
Dream on.
Alas. @Hales’s blog, featuring the heroes, these intellectual giants, these nurturers of the up and coming leaders. So edgy, so on-trend. Two young women with their hangers-on, and the previously mentioned heroes and intellectual giants defend themselves against the charge that their only interest is the youth and attractiveness of the two young women, and how DARE you.
This whole thing has also made me think a lot about Joanna Russ, and How to Suppress Women’s Writing. Favorite quote: “To act in a way that is both sexist and racist, to maintain one’s class privilege, it is only necessary to act in the customary, ordinary, usual, even polite manner.”
One can also just use the chapter titles to construct an anti-feminist bingo card — Denial of Agency (I don’t believe RW’s presentation of what happened with EG, here’s MY interpretation), False Categorization (RW doesn’t do REAL skepticism), Pollution of Agency (RW is a cunt/whore/bitch, so EG doesn’t matter), Anomalousness (this one is usually aimed at ERV, actually — she’s not like those other icky feminists who actually expect ME to do something other than what I do now — unfortunately, she’s happy to play along), and on and on.
The real interesting thing in all of this is that the most rational, calm, sane person in this whole deal has been Rebecca Watson, who has been accused of all sorts of evil and overreaction. Her more aggressive critics are guilty of everything they accuse her of and more. I don’t agree with everything Watson has said or done, but nothing she did is particularly bad either.
And oddly enough, as far as I know Stef McGraw has been pretty much silent on the issue past her blog post explaining her objections. I don’t agree with her even more than I don’t agree with Watson, but McGraw has to my knowledge also conducted herself fairly calmly and reasonably all things considered. I think this is worth mentioning as well.
Watson said “guys, don’t do that”. McGraw said “speakers, don’t call people out from the podium”. Clear-headed, rational people can’t find anything rage-inducing over either of those positions.
Jean@398
“That are rebelling against it by saying the most politically incorrect things they can think of. I’m on board with their rebellion against the double standard Watson has come to stand for, just not with their tactics.
A. Oh, right then, the problem with sexual epithets is that they’re “politcally incorrect”. Good to know.
B. Heh, rebellion. Heh.
C. You don’t make a good case for “double standard”, or that Watson is standing [in] for it.
D. You have a teensy problem with the vilification of Watson, but what the hell. It’s too bad they have such potty mouths, but they’re rebelling!!!! Civil rights warriors, every last one of them.
What leadership! How noble of you to stand with them.
@Svlad Cjelli
You’re welcome. I think it is fairly accurate. It only takes about 10 minutes to follow along with the video for comparison, so if you do so and find any big mistakes, please let me know.
What really gets me about all this, besides the gnufound Atheist Right to demean women and men with misogynistic and homophobic terms (and, my friends, you better be OK with doing that or do it yourself or you’re not good enough for ERV and her bunch), is how McGraw is not exactly polite or error-free in either of her blog posts that took place before and after Watson’s CFI talk.
The first post of McGraw’s in response to Watson’s video has at least four places where McGraw isn’t very nice or generous to Watson, even going so far as to call Watson a hypocrite at one point. But the biggest bit of wrongness is in McGraw’s response to Watson’s CFI talk wherein McGraw says that Watson lumped McGraw in with rape advocates, which anyone who watches the video can see did not happen. It’s like McGraw conveniently leaving out the prior context of the elevator incident where EG had been lurking within earshot for some time and had followed Watson to the elevator, which Watson obviously thought crucial to the story.
It doesn’t mean that McGraw did those things on purpose. McGraw could have been a tad careless with her editing of the story, fine. And she could have been seeing red when writing her second blog post and conflated different parts of Watson speech from memory, fine (though I’m not sure if McGraw has yet taken back the false statement that she was lumped in with rape advocates). Still, McGraw isn’t spotless in all this. The position taken by some that all the blame (and why blame, anyway?) for this whole side kerfuffle lies at Watson’s feet seems to me to be an entirely unreasonable position.
Oops, wrong video, sorry. Where is the right one?
This one Harald:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W014KhaRtik
Oh goody, thanks, mirax, that saves me a boring search.
Mya R, that’s a neat conceptual toolkit. But fairness requires pointing out that one thing is absolutely everywhere in this ordeal: the
The denial of agency is just what the sociologist Garfinkel had in mind when he accused some of his contemporaries as treating actors as if they were “cultural dopes”. It isn’t hard to find examples of this, in the present case. e.g., the remedial sociologists will jump to the conclusion of “privilege”, when actually there is evidence that suggests that the target has a richer point of view that has already made an effort to take privilege into account.
Of course, many of the relatively articulate people who are involved in this internet hissy fit are dumb, ignorant of wider social realities, and inconsiderate. But then again, a lot of the people we’re talking about are not; they’re actual agents who are more interested in the critique of McGraw than EG, and in a way that is self-consciously motivated.
Privilege plays an important part in understanding how a lot of people reacted to EG. But the only part it plays in the reaction to McGraw, it seems to me, is the sense of “White Knight Syndrome” (or benevolent sexism): men not being able to see that they’re acting like Mario out to save Princess Toadstool. But then again, since this is just one case, there’s not enough information for you to see a pattern that would warrant the attribution. If a man shows a pattern of only stepping in in favor of women, then that’s White Knight Syndrome. If a man steps in once in one event, then you don’t know what’s going on.
Ok, I’ve finally watched the dang video. I’d watched the first couple of minutes or so before, but not the whole thing. I’ve watched it and I have to disagree with Jean’s characterization of it in # 398.
No I can’t, really. There is one bit of it that could be called (mildly) insulting, but that’s really all. And Watson doesn’t dismiss Kirby. On the contrary; she does the opposite. She disagrees with her but she doesn’t dismiss her.
She starts by saying “the esteemed Paula Kirby, whose work I really enjoy” – “admire” would have been better, but hey, it was a talk – and then she gets to the only possibly-insulting bit: she says Kirby commented that she didn’t think there was a problem of sexism in atheism because she hadn’t experienced any. She then said in the atheist community we call that an argument from ignorance; in the feminist community we call it an argument from privilege.
That’s a little insulting, perhaps especially from a junior to a senior – or perhaps not, because at some point we sort of have to treat all adults as on a level, but these thoughts creep in all the same – “I knew all about this when you were still in diapers so don’t you condescend to me you little twerp.” So ok that’s a little insulting – and it takes up 20 seconds of the 13 minute video.
Then Watson says Kirby also said there’s no conspiracy, and Watson agreed but pointed out that it’s “a strawperson.”
She also says she’s genuinely happy Kirby hasn’t experienced sexism but that she thinks that’s “not a proper way to make a judgment that there isn’t a problem with sexism.”
And that’s it. Is that really insulting and dismissing as opposed to disagreeing? I don’t think so – especially since Watson says at the end it’s a great message to tell women to stand up and speak out, but it’s also important to say what they’re facing – there’s a risk in speaking out.
Well we’ve certainly seen that demonstrated over the last three weeks!
Ben –
True. I’ve been having that thought all along. It’s probably just bad luck that it’s shaken out that way. But then again…Jerry’s shouting at me because a third party said something harsh about two of his buddies who do just happen to be what they are – well it did tend to suggest that pattern. It seems ludicrous to think he would have shouted at me because a third party said something harsh about one of his male friends. Or maybe it doesn’t, but he’s done the shouting-because-his-woman-friend-received-a-harsh-comment-here twice and he’s never done it because a man friend did. Two is a tiny sample, but…….
Still. What you say is true.
I’ve just watched the video too, and I can’t understand Jean’s characterization of it. What was it that was insulting? The word “ignorance”? Why, Dawkins himself uses it all the time and correctly notes it’s a description of a factual state that’s changeable, not a moral character judgment. Was it “straw person?” And if so, why?
Honestly-I know people like you, Jean, have been to academic conferences. I simply do not believe you haven’t heard far harsher disputation among colleagues in the field. Reacting to what Watson said (and indeed, not taking note of how she said it – her body language and intonation makes it crystal clear she doesn’t mean to offend, and she’s trying to take care not to wound while also being direct) as worthy of shock is ridiculous.
Really – I’m sitting here with a WTF look on my face. I can’t believe anyone’s reading the video this way, and I strongly suspect it’s not what Watson said, but other motivations, that are suggesting that reading. No, nothing nefarious, but yeah, I suspect “I’m in X camp and not Y camp” is a more reasonable explanation.
Like Ophelia said, I totally get how it would feel to have someone so much younger say something that seemed condescending —if I’d been Kirby (well, more accurately, if I’d been Josh) I’d have a “damned whippersnapper” reaction I’m sure. But I hope I’d get over my fit of pique. Sometimes older people are wrong, and they need to have younger people, or a set of fresher eyes, call them out on it. I happen to think Rebecca was right that, while it’s great Kirby hasn’t experienced sexism, she stretched too far in seeming to dismiss its existence based on her experience. She should be asked to stop, back up, and broaden her line of sight.
Ophelia, yes. Yes, damn it. Because after the ocean of words and the this side and the that side, how does anyone navigate around the bullying you’ve received from the Marios, but the Princesses Toadstool do so much–so much–worse with support from the Marios?
ps. Thanks for that language shortcut, Ben. It’s really perfect, isn’t it?
Yes. I should have said that. It applies to the CFI talk too. She wasn’t being dismissive or rude or hostile, on either occasion. I think that’s one of her skills – a kind of instant intimacy with the audience. She’s good at inviting people to laugh with her, and at placing herself as not talking from a great height.
I think that’s part of what Abbie dislikes – a certain amateurish quality. I know what she means, and I wouldn’t want everyone to be like that, but from what I’ve seen so far, at least, I think it works for Rebecca.
I can see what you’re saying — it can be suggestive because of the forcefulness. But even still, the facts only tell you something about his protective instinct towards that poster, as a person. That’s being a kind of guardian or protector, perhaps, but not necessarily in a sense that is associated with privilege or benevolent sexism. It can also be more of a kinship bond, which hasn’t got much to do with sexism.
Ditto! Hence the skill of my ventriloquism. :- )
I know exactly what that’s like. It’s easy to imagine Richard having exactly that reaction while sitting there, and in a way, who could blame him. But yo, we can also recognize these things and try to correct for them.
Amusingly, I’m sure Rebecca had much the same reaction to Stef, and again, who could blame her. But in this case Stef really was wrong (at the very least in strawmanning what R. had said).
Gee, does anybody know a whip-smart 12-year-old who could pop up to tell Stef she’s doin it rong?
Ben – hmmm. (Thinking hmm, Jason, not scorn hmm!)
For a second I was going to concede the point, but then…I thought what if I had a much younger male buddy. Would I react that way? No. It would look horrible on so many levels – interfering, intrusive, meddling, and above all infantilizing. Some kind of insane mommy-complex. No thank you. (Or worse, “cougar” – possibly my most hated word in the language at present. Eugh get the filth off me.)
If it would feel infantilizing for a woman to do that on behalf of an adult though young male…why is it different when the sexes are reversed?
I don’t know what to call that difference other than “sexism.” Benevolent sexism perhaps (though not benevolent toward me, certainly, and aintIawoman), but still sexism. Pointless enfeebling special rules for women.
I need a servant to update B&W for me because I’m spending all my time chattering in comments! It’s an outrage!
Mainstream analytic philosophers have developed a perverse academic culture that makes substantial disagreement extremely difficult. There are three reasons for this.
The principle of charity is mis-deployed at an institutional level, and as a result, a critic’s public critiques are not allowed to point out mistakes that are obvious; this protects Emperors with no clothes, unless the critic proves her/himself to be a verbose know-it-all. There’s also (in some places) an expectation that your discussion must be deep, not wide; hence, philosophers can’t point out how other philosophers don’t know or care about what is going on in cognate disciplines. So much for ignorance. Finally, and most importantly, you are expected to avoid ad hominems while at the same time challenged to prove error theories, and these error theories must be neither a) “You have made an obvious mistake” nor b) “You are ignorant”. This is like being asked to punch someone in the face as hard as you can, but not so much that it hurts.
As a result, in professional philosophy, calling someone ignorant or mistaken is regarded as a sophomoric exercise (unless, of course, the target is a few levels below your pay-grade, or if they already have an international reputation).
Wow, Ben, that’s fascinating but disturbing. Thanks for explaining that. If that’s widespread, that’s fundamental breakage. There is simply no way to get at truth in any field if direct criticism is considered prima facie rude.
Shorter me: Sounds like tone-trolling.
I sure didn’t know that. I thought it was the opposite – philosophers like nothing better than a good knock-down brawl.
On the other hand I have had a longstanding problem with what seems to be “the principle of charity”: give the most charitable reading of any particular statement you possibly can, even to the point of ignoring the plain sense of what is said in favor of a much more contorted reading. This seems to make it impossible to address what is actually said, and since what is actually said is what is actually said, I think that’s a terrible idea. We need to be able to dispute things that are actually said!
That may be a misreading of what is meant by “the principle of charity” but honestly I’ve had it said to me – never mind what is actually on the page, read it more generously than that.
Gosh, I wonder whose harsh comment it was the first time…
;D
So, to be clear, my present interest is in looking at what fairness requires of us in terms of our default conduct (assuming that we already know the risks and are aware of how one might appear). Opinions may vary. e.g., the paternalist (parentalist?) will say that fairness requires you to intervene even if there is a 99.99% chance that you’ll embarrass the person you’re intervening for. The libertarian/Social Darwinist will say that fairness requires you to mind your own business. The squishy communitarian will think you should intervene whenever there’s a risk to the peace (“You can disagree without being disagreeable!!”). The crusty liberal will only intervene when the other person’s rights are being violated (e.g., the right to dignity, however we conceive of that).
I’m a crusty liberal, in this sense. I will defend men who are underdogs unbidden if I think they’re being treated like shit — e.g., if their perspective is being actively misrepresented or outright twisted for partisan gain. This might run the risk of embarrassing some men, and I regret it whenever that turns out to be the case. But on the first pass, before I know their personal comfort levels, I’m not interested in protecting them as individuals — I don’t care that much, and don’t know anything about them. It’s more like protecting people as people, i.e., as people who have dignity and hence are worth consideration. Of course, I will generally accept people’s comfort levels once they articulate them, but that won’t necessarily change my default stance towards a population of unknowns.
What about your case? In your case, the cross-sex dynamic adds an even greater risk of embarrassment. Why? Predictable reasons related to sex roles, I’d imagine; nothing really defensible or sophisticated in and of itself. But that doesn’t necessarily matter. If a younger man is threatened by being given a partial defence by an older woman, than that younger man needs to check his brain for egotistical bullshit. People are people, they get to speak their minds, that’s what matters. Amiability is not necessarily flirting.
Oh, you can say that again, Josh! I remember when Dawkins said the authors of the different stories in the Bible were ignorant and became the laughing stock of a show he was on even though he was right and people thinking the Bible is the truth are overlooking how much the authors did not know. It’s just plain ridiculous to be upset over being called “ignorant” by Watson.
Josh/Ophelia, it’s very disturbing. In part, it’s disturbing because young people and contract faculty know that it’s hard enough to get a tenured position doing philosophy, and so we think it most prudent to keep our mouths shut.
But that’s not to say that these principles are wrong. The principle of charity, for instance, plays an extremely important role in certain kinds of philosophy of language and mind, and has an indispensable role in some very elegant theories. It plays a role in Dan Dennett’s intentional stance, for instance. Charity is also useful in conversation, because it forces you to remove some of the emotional obstacles that prevent your passions from reading others as they intended to be read. Charity is supposed to be a tiebreaker: if you want to understand what the speaker is saying, then if you can plausibly interpret an ambiguous passage as true (given the context), you ought to interpret it as true.
But the way the principle of charity is used by the institution is often perverse. It leads exactly to what Ophelia points out: being told to ignore what has been spoken in context, and say, “Hm, what might (s)he have really meant?” Bad philosophers will use charity as a way of keeping the conversation going, and in the process dodging their responsibility to follow the argument to its logical conclusions.
It wasn’t always like that. Back in the old days, everybody hated everybody, so they would all write up the most mendacious and snotty arguments against their competitors. It’s not clear that professional philosophy was any better for that (probably it was worse), but it certainly was different. And even now, there are clear exceptions — you have strains of philosophy (like x-phi) that resist the drive to insularity and charity. But these views tend to be more cross-disciplinary, which means that they just have to abandon the strong rules of the analytic method just to make sense of the social science.
This is the reason I abandoned academic jurisprudence and went back into practice, despite winning a full scholarship to persevere with it at Oxford. In a courtroom, you play to win (courteously), and I like that.
Ben (@ 445)
Interesting about different views on intervening – but you seem to overlook one thing, which is that it wasn’t actually intervening, it was telling someone else to intervene more strongly than she already had. It was more like micro-management than intervention. I mean…what prevented Jerry from just commenting himself? Nothing. But he didn’t; instead he shouted at me for not doing it the way he would have. So everything you say is in a way beside the point. I don’t really know what a paternalist or a Social Darwinist or a communitarian or a liberal would do with regard to that particular bit of weird behavior, because it’s too weird to systematize that way.
It’s remote control intervention, or intervention by proxy, rather than just plain intervention. As such it injects new layers of bizarreness that are hard to keep track of.
I’ve tried to imagine doing it myself, and I just fall back defeated. Imagine a month or two ago I saw someone make a harsh comment at WEIT about, say, my friend Josh, and then saw Jerry disagree with it but without pitching a fit. Would it occur to me to email Jerry to say “why didn’t you pitch a fit?!” No. Not because I’m a this or then again a that, but just because it would be so bizarre. Too bizarre even to cross my mind.
And what prevented him from
Oh, the hell with it.
Oh yes that too. He could have commented himself, and/or he could have emailed Salty. Instead he chose to scold me – not for ignoring the comment altogether, which I didn’t, but for not replying to it as ferociously as he wanted me to.
It’s like displacement behavior. You’re frustrated that the keeper won’t give you another banana, so you attack someone else.
Wow, Ben, my experience with analytic philosophy conferences is completely different than yours. “You have made an obvious mistake” must be the most common phrase at such events.
See that’s what I thought it was like!
Ben is this a Canada thing? :- D
Sorry, I’m traveling, so haven’t been able to follow up on my comment above. Tiny keyboard, terrible wifi, agh! Maybe later…..
Oph, yeah, could be. Nobody really fits an ideal type. But I think Coyne is pretty far from libertarian in this respect, and it’ll effect even how he talks to others. The rest of his choices are for him to explain; I have no insight.
Tea, for sure, I only have Canadian experience as a reference point (though obviously I’m also thinking of conversations I’ve had with international scholars). The circle of Canadian philosophers is fairly small, comparatively, so perhaps there are extra incentives to play nice.
There’s only one talk I’ve ever been to where it was obvious that the speaker’s main thesis was a blunder. Even then, it didn’t need to be labeled as a mistake — it just became obvious once the audience objection was articulated that the speaker was totally off base. A deathly hush fell upon the room.
Putting conferences aside, the attitudes I’m concerned with will affect the way people criticize each other when they can get away with it. I have a colleague who has had a direct conversation with famous philosopher X, and who has heard X say Y both in conversation and in print. Fine enough; the colleague writes a paper that attributes Y to X. Sends paper out for review (to some international journal). The peer reviewer replies, “you didn’t read X charitably, he would never ever say Y”. Hmmm.
Apart from anything else I hate it when people think they can be certain about what anyone would do.
This could be dubbed an Eagleton – he’s very given to the rhetorical move of saying “X would say Y about Z” and then instantly moving to talking as if X had said Y about Z and giving X a dam’ good scolding for doing so. It’s massively irritating.
@451 I’d say you have a “regular user”/commenter point of view while Coyne’s is like that of a forum moderator. It’s common for mods to send PMs to one another to coordinate the way they conduct the discussion. Regular posters approach threads casually: they just go to a blog and post a comment saying what’s on their mind. A mod on the other hand exerts influence, pulls strings. The advantage of acting this way is that you can make the thread go in a certain direction without having to get your hands dirty yourself. The catch is that for this to work, both persons have to think like mods.
Yes and also for this to work, both persons have to own or manage the blog. This is absolutely key. :- )
In this case only one person owns and manages the blog, and it isn’t Jerry.
snuffle snort snerk
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
I mean you’re right, he did talk like a forum moderator (though a pretty rude and aggressive one), but the fly in the ointment there is that this isn’t his forum and he doesn’t get to moderate it. It’s so basic…
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Sbutle would tell starving children to eat cake. You monster.
Ben:
Ha, that happened to me at a conference when I was still an undergrad, presenting a paper on Scruton’s take on photography as an art form. “Scruton would never say something that stupid!” this guy objected. Well, you obviously haven’t read enough Scruton, darling.
(FWIW, my experience with analytic philosophy conferences comes mainly from international conferences that are held in Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria, but host (and are co-organized by) mostly American and British philosophers. But I’m also used to that style from the US, where we had to constantly explain to non-philosophers attending our symposia not to be frightened, because we’re not *really* fighting.)
Well and its not really very rational or critical debating to make comments like “women that say Rebecca does not speak for them want to be propositioned at 4am in elevators”. Hello? I know a WHOLE LOT OF WOMEN that are pissed that Rebecca called out another fellow skeptic woman, and has dragged her name all around the internet, and yet REFUSED to name elevator man. It’ ok and supportive for feminists to behave badly to each other, and refuse to even try to have some unity and behave with some grace and good will. But ALWAYS keep the name of the MAN INVOLVED OUT OF IT. That way, this can be made to pertain to ALL men. Not liking men at 4am does not mean all the other feminist skeptic women out there are going to goose step to the Watson mantra of what seems to be “hey I’m going to get ALL MY buddies to keep posting on this over and over and over again” because THIS is skepchicks new MO. I’d much rather have Buggirl and her rape be the focus of the need for feminists to come together and help educate skeptic men than an elevator encounter that while nothing anyone would condone, was nothing compared to a rape. How about rallying around that or the interesting behavior of influencial white skeptic male writers at conferences…rather than some guy she refuses to name. Sorry,she’s lost a lot of women with not only how she behaved but her refusal to even consider trying to heal the rift.
Tell that to Abbie and her pals, wiltz. They’ve cranked out a lot more words than I have.
IMO elevator guy is not involved. Not in the same way. Elevator guy is just a data point to illustrate a pattern. In a sense he is a case study. But AFAIS the subject is the pattern of manly behaviour that makes women hesitate participating in skeptic/atheist events. The subject is not the particulars of the elevator case. People who want to concentrate on details of the elevator case, try to reduce its meaning by looking at it as an isolated case instead of part of a pattern.
It is a bit like what we call a black spot. It is a spot where trafic accident occur more frequently than other places. You could look at each accident in isolation, who went wrong and was the legal cause of the accident and argue particulars about a specific accident or you could look at the pattern and try to find what about that place makes accident happen more often there than at other places.
Someone trying to explain what is wrong with a black spot could use a particular accident as an illustration what is wrong with it. But that doesn’t make those involved in that accident, also involved in the exchange of ideas and argumentation on if and what to do about it.
In the same way elevator guy is not involved in the exhange of ideas and argumentation about how to make these meetings more women friendly. Stef McGraw is.
» Ophelia: Uh…………….Russell? You’re ignoring the substantive points?
Why is that okay for you (e.g. here) but not for him?
Wow, you’ve been following this debate very closely, have you? Let’s just say you’re not a very reliable source of which arguments Ophelia has responded to and which she’s ignored. Do us all a favor and do your homework before you comment again.