Too many jesting Pilates
Matt Lodder, who just had to apologize for tweeting damaging lies about Maya Forstater, is an academic. It’s my impression that academia has strong norms against lying – that, like the legal profession, it has powerful vocational reasons for valuing truth and truth-telling and disfavoring lies and slander.
Caroline Dodds Pennock is also an academic – a historian.
That was about eight hours ago, before Matt Lodder admitted he’d told lies about Maya. But this is after he admitted it:
So what I wonder is why does she think that? Why does she think it’s PERFECT to express solidarity with a male colleague who told damaging lies about a woman? When people ask her that, why does she reply with stupid gifs?
What is wrong with everyone?
Too much hydroxychloroquine?
It does seem like we jumped the rails somewhere.
When The God Delusion came out, people regularly accused Dawkins of having said that atheists should go up to religious believers ( riding buses, during ceremonies, while on their death beds) and forcefully tell them there’s no God. When challenged to quote such a passage, accusers often faded away, but a few staunchly insisted it was “the theme of the whole book.” Apparently, making a persuasive case to the general public is equivalent to harassing and bullying individuals. That’s how vulnerable the pious are, and how negligent of boundaries the atheists are.
My guess then is that the distinction between what you write on a topic and what you say to a person also becomes insignificant when the topic is transgenderism. CDP is saying “no difference.”
Sastra, they are also picking up another old Christian idea (I say old because it dates back at least to Eusebius in the 4th century). Lying for Jesus…it is okay to tell a falsehood if it promotes the greater good of [fill in cause here; Eusebius filled in Christianity, CDP filled in men wearing dresses].
Interesting analogy; I hadn’t thought of that. I guess we’re…New Feminists? New Nonfantasists? New Antidelusionists?
#2 Sastra
An extremely common tactic amongst probably anyone espousing an empty idea. Criticism feels like an attack, specifically because the idea they want to protect is so vulnerable. And so we see wild accusations of aggression and so forth, with no concrete passage to point to.
Holms: This is a good point. People’s defensiveness kicks in when their ideas (especially publicly espoused ideas) are threatened. It takes a lot to threaten a good idea that is solidly justified; it takes much less to threaten silly ideas held for silly reasons.
OT @ Holms –
JM didn’t get the last word. PMSL.
/OT
;)