Serial trolling from 2014
Heh this one is funny to me if no one else.
I had to look up the dates to make sure: that July 28 1914 2014 pair is the one he perpetrated two days after he co-signed with me that truce-thing saying let’s agree to disagree without abusing each other. He co-signed it with me and posted it on his blog. I wrote it and asked him to co-sign it with me because a hell of a lot of aggressively misogynist men had been exercising their aggression on women and a lot of those men were big fans of his. I had to laugh when he tweeted “go away and learn how to think” just two days later. Not exactly in the spirit of let’s decide to disagree without being abusive.
Here it is:
It’s not news that allies can’t always agree on everything. People who rely on reason rather than dogma to think about the world are bound to disagree about some things.
Disagreement is inevitable, but bullying and harassment are not. If we want secularism and atheism to gain respect, we have to be able to disagree with each other without trying to destroy each other.
In other words we have to be able to manage disagreement ethically, like reasonable adults, as opposed to brawling like enraged children who need a nap. It should go without saying, but this means no death threats, rape threats, attacks on people’s appearance, age, race, sex, size, haircut; no photoshopping people into demeaning images, no vulgar epithets.
Richard adds: I’m told that some people think I tacitly endorse such things even if I don’t indulge in them. Needless to say, I’m horrified by that suggestion. Any person who tries to intimidate members of our community with threats or harassment is in no way my ally and is only weakening the atheist movement by silencing its voices and driving away support.
I had to laugh, but it was frustrating, too.
But the American Humanist Association is dead wrong. I’m not going to send them rape threats or photoshop them into demeaning images, but I am going to say they’re wrong.
Y’all have been at this a long time.
Assuming that one thing is worse than another thing doesn’t entail that the latter is not bad. Getting shot in the foot twice is worse than getting shot in the foot once, but it’s not as though getting shot in the foot is good.
I assume that isn’t where the disagreement lay, but rather in whether those categories are gradable in such a simple way, or indeed in any way at all.
Maybe creationism has more going for it than I previously thought. ;-)
What a Maroon – oh yes. It depends on what you mean by “this,” but still – yes, long time. “Dear Muslima” was 2011. B&W dates from 2002.
Ophelia,
But 1914?
Oh ffs. Oooops!
Date rape is actually worse, for a couple of reasons.
First, ‘getting raped by a stranger at knifepoint’ is something you can theoretically take steps to protect yourself from, even if those steps restrict your life and life choices. You can decide not to go out after dark, to only go out with other people, to only go to busy crowded places, to take taxis everywhere, etc. You can only protect yourself from date rape by not going on dates, which isn’t really possible if you’re a woman who wants to meet and connect with a life partner (I guess you could go to a matchmaker or something, but that’s even more restricting your life choices than not walking anywhere after dark).
Second, it’s much more psychologically and emotionally damaging to be raped by a man you actually trusted–a man you were willing to spend time with, and willing to consider as a potential partner. A stranger could be anyone; your judgment and trust weren’t involved in what happened to you. But if you’re raped by someone you deliberately chose to spend time with, and open up to, how can you ever trust your own judgment about men again?
guest, that goes the same for someone who is raped by family. If you aren’t safe in your own home, how can you protect yourself anywhere else?
I guess Dawkins wasn’t quite ready to consider the issue of family rape.
Most people aren’t. It sort of spoils the narrative of the ‘real rapist’, since so many family rapes don’t happen when the woman (girl, often) has been drinking, dressing immodestly, or walking after dark. Nor is it able to be put off to “she chose to go out with him”.
We (as a society, not we on this site, obviously) wish to keep our rape narratives as pure as the girls who suffer “real rape”.