I like this one >> “…TERF is not a slur or ‘a name’ to call people, and claiming it *is* is itself a transphobic talking point.” — It’s definitely a slur, and calling someone who thinks so “transphobic” only compounds the insult.
Then this >> “*I* think trans women are a *subset* of women.” — This is a category mistake, transwomen are a subset of men, a sort of men who want to be women or at least be seen as women. And >> “All trans women are women; not all women are trans women.” — Right well, no women are men, but all trans women are.
It looks like they were stifling all dissent and I’m surprised Ophelia lasted that long. My obnoxiousness would have gotten me booted pretty early on I think. :D
It looks like they were stifling all dissent and I’m surprised Ophelia lasted that long. My obnoxiousness would have gotten me booted pretty early on I think. :D
CBT for my social anxiety did a lot for my intellectual fortitude as a whole. I’m sure that the current me (since eight years or ago) would have been banned right quick. Before that, though? Even spending a lot of time on a board where telling people to choke on a barrel of dicks was a common first premise in any rebuttal didn’t build the kind of resilience necessary to be unmoved by peer pressure. If I’m honest, recognizing the fact that I very well could have been manipulated into affirming and subsequently believing Genderist nonsense evokes both terror and horror.
Nullius, I’m not so sure, it’s the degree to which the crossdressers and transsexuals insist they are actually the opposite sex these days that makes me more doubtful rather than less, but it would have even before I was aware of the more sinister aspects of the ideology, and the deeper implications for women.
James, thanks for linking that, Ophelia was in fine form. :)
Screechy–yeah, me too. As in, I didn’t post much, and when I did, it was under a pseudonym. (My consistent avatar gives it all away now.)
I really didn’t comment much at B&W back then before the big blowup. Or at Pharyngula or any of the others. There didn’t seem much for me to add, and to be honest, I had real reservations about a lot of the commenters (particularly those of the Horde variety and their absolute certainty of their virtue and vast historical correctness). None of them seemed to apply any kind of analysis to the topics that they wrote about.
After that whole debacle in which Ophelia was branded with the scarlet “T” and half of the FtB’ers lost their fucking minds and galloped off to make their New, Pure, Blog home away from the manifold sinners of FtB, I realized that the entire lot of them were a bunch of delusional quacks. And, moreover, that I hadn’t been reading B&W nearly closely enough, which seems to have resulted in me taking part here a good deal more. So the Great Blowup certainly had at least one positive outcome (for me, anyway).
To be able to answer the question I’m afraid I have to ask you to define what you mean by “women”, because as I understand the question you are asking me if I believe people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers who think or feel in certain ways best left unspecified are people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, and that question pretty much answers itself, so I assume that’s not what you mean.
Dammit, you people owe me at least 2.5 hours of chargeable time. I’ve just skimmed the relevant posts from the infamous ultimatum to the end. I’d forgotten just how incoherent some of those people got. Also forgot just how many chargeable hours I lost first time around. Sigh, back to work.
As I keep saying, I happen to know for a fact that many – I’m tempted to say all, but I’m trying to be rigorous – of these people used to say things that could get them labeled as TERFs and demonized any time today (Indeed things for which they themselves would later go on to demonize others as TERFs.). So considering how many of their own former opinions – from less than 10 years ago – are now deemed thoughcrime, considering how many former friends and allies have already been thrown under the bus, what I don’t get is this: How can they be so confident that their current beliefs and opinions will not be deemed thoughtcrime in another 10 years? Why should they expect their current “friends” and “allies” to treat them any better when they suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of the next online craze of fad? How do they expect to be able to hold their attackers up to any standards of intellectual honesty, charity, and good faith without coming across as being fucking hypocrites when it’s their names being dragged through the mud all over the internet for, say, daring to suggest that the Earth might no be flat?
Bjarte: You’re not lying. The inability to take a temporally objective perspective and apply their own methodology to their own beliefs, that is to sell out their future selves for a few pieces of silver in the present, seems intrinsic to the “social justice”–or apropos of the topic, “atheism+”–meme complex. By adopting such a restricted domain of analysis, the true believer destroys the very tools that would allow a revision of belief and gives other believers the tools to punish attempted escape.
Considering how many of their own opinions back then are ones they now consider thoughtcrime, I have trouble understanding how some of them can demonize the people who still hold those positions today. Do they remember their hearts being filled with fear and hatred till they saw the light?
If it was just a matter of new discoveries and contemplation changing their minds, it makes little sense to create a narrative where some people (them) can respect people who are different, and other people (us) simply can’t. The truth obviously wasn’t immediately intuitive and based on love.
Partly because what I most wanted to get across at that point was “Fuck off.” I wanted to underline the fact that abbey whoever the hell that was wasn’t my boss or the KGB or the pope and I wasn’t abbey whoever’s scullery maid or naughty toddler or any other kind of insubordinate subordinate. I wanted to underline that rude bossy peremptory “yes or no” questions are just that.
I was blissfully unaware of this when it was happening–I think we were on vacation at the time, and I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t then a reader of B&W. So I only heard some echoes of it on Pharyngula, and was mostly confused by the whole issue (I tended to stay away from the endless threads, which is where much of the drama played out).
But I can remember feeling reluctant to chime in on trans issues back then–of course I supported trans rights (I mean, everyone needs a place to pee, right?) because it seemed to be the progressive thing to do–but I always had some doubts. About pronouns, first (about which I’ve pontificated enough here), and then about the possibility of finding middle ground. Sure, TWAW, I thought, but not in all senses, and just as there are issues that trans women face, but not cis (sic) women, there are also issues which cis (sic) women face that trans women don’t. I mean, a trans woman will never have to worry about where her next tampon will come from, right? And of course trans women wouldn’t compete in women’s sports, or force lesbians to date them. In short, I was terribly naïve, and now I realize that if I had expressed any of these thoughts I would’ve been jumped on as a transphobe, and perhaps even a TERF.
I don’t recall the exact incident that triggered me to leave Pharyngula and search out B&W, but I can identify two trends that eventually drove me away. First, there was a poster who’s name I’ve forgotten who went on and on in the news thread during the 2016 election about how evil Hillary is, how she wanted to kill him (him! personally!), and how she was really no different than Trump; he also whined incessantly about how many “spoons” he had, and about how he still hadn’t decided if he was trans or enby or whatever. It was tiresome, and I lit into him after it became clear that Trump had won. He got what he wanted, and he had to own it.
The second trend was seeing what happened when previously respected posters tried to have discussions challenging the trans ideology*–how they were ripped apart by the mob, torn into viciously with very little attempt to engage their arguments honestly, until PZ would step in and ban the heretic. It was ugly, and hypocritical, and I am allergic to the kind of bullying** and righteous certainty that was on display (probably because I’m rarely certain about anything myself, though I could be wrong). I soon realized that the dislike I’d felt for a long time for certain members of the horde was legit, not just me being uncharitable.
So anyway, I took the advice they so often offer–I did my own research, looked up B&W, started reading some GC sources, and, well, ended up here, though I’m still not comfortable coming out as GC in real life–it would lead to a lot of ruptures which I’d rather avoid. Thus my ‘nym, though anyone who knows me probably could figure out who I am without too much effort if they stumbled on this site.
*One case in particular stands out. Someone (perhaps Lady Mondegreen?) got into an argument on how to define “woman”, which of course led to a lot of self-righteous picking of nits.
**Though I have to admit I’m not always immune to bullying. It’s something I’ve tried to identify in myself, and avoid as much as possible.
Except that I knew that it existed, and I also knew the author had a reputation of being smart and thoughtful, but also prickly. I think in part I was intimidated, but also I don’t like spending a lot of time on a lot of different blogs, so even in the FTB days I stuck to Pharyngula mostly.
WIth PZ, his merciless mockery of John Kwok prior to this should have been an indication of the sort of treatment he would level at anyone who he found to be incorrect in their thinking. Even though I thought that Kwok has some faults, it was painful to see the bullying that he was subjected to. He reached out to me to try to influence PZ to lay off. I had to tell him that I had very little influence over PZ even though I did have some connections to him through the Mn Atheists and the radio show. I sent an email to PZ that was ignored.
Pharyngula had grown from the small blog it was when I met PZ through Talk.Origins to this big thing that he could sic on anyone he wanted to belittle, and I had to think about my own behavior, to self-crit whether or not I had partaken in any of the bullying. I probably did.
But this whole episode completely opened my eyes to the way that even the so-called skeptics can be swept into a fervor, and as I noted in the tweet that Ophelia posted, misled those who gave the transgender movement acceptance and approval through a “halo effect” of being approved by noted skeptics including PZ and Ed Brayton.
I think that the skeptics need a reckoning, but many are self-satisfied that they get validated for this misogyny and homophobia. Not sure who can bring it about.
I can’t agree with you about Kwok. He deserved everything he got, with his “you owe me a Leica camera” demands and the constant bragging and namedropping about which fucking high school he went to — when you come off as an imperious, pompous tool, you’re going to get some shit thrown at you.
PZ often acts (or at least did — I haven’t read Pharyngula in a while) like he has utterly no control over the Horde, which was never entirely true. He would occasionally wring his hands about how he wished the comments sections were a nicer place to dissenters, but the hand-wringing was pretty much all he did — I recall he instituted a “three-comment rule” by which you were supposed to give a new poster three comments before jumping on them as a troll or whatever, but I don’t recall there ever being any consequences for anyone violating that rule. And it’s not like he had some principled stand against enforcing rules on his comments section; he (correctly, in my view) deleted and disemvowelled and banned as he saw fit.
So it was pretty easy for the Horde to see which “rules” were taken seriously, and which were more advisory or aspirational if not outright illusory.
I never got the sense that PZ was disingenuous about this. I think he sincerely did want Pharyngula to be a less hostile place; he just seemed to have no clue how to go about it. But I think he often acted like he had caught a tiger by the tail and was afraid to let go, and so in practice the Horde was often making the rules rather than him. Of course the Deep Rifts and the slymepit didn’t help — having a dedicated group of shit-stirrers and trolls regularly showing up understandably encouraged a kind of siege mentality.
I spent the better part of an hour reading through the series of B&W posts on FtB starting with the one linked to here, and what struck me was how most of the B&W commenters were trying to understand other’s POV instead of jumping on their judgmental high horses. I was a reader of some of the FtB bloggers back then, but not B&W until almost the very end. Oh well, at least I do read B&W now.
The only other thing that I found interesting was Elizabeth Hungerford’s comments on one B&W post, which were in retrospect spot on when it came to the subject of gender identity and how it relied on self ID rather than anything objective that could be evaluated critically. Even back in 2012-13 there were gender critical voices speaking out and of course getting the usual insults and accusations of vile TERFery. How little that’s changed, sadly,
Thinking further about comments, regarding those at Pharyngula it’s always been obvious to me that Myers gets the comments he deserves based on his own predilection to be nasty and insulting to those he disrespects or just disagrees with. LIke the pig in the mud, he really does enjoy it and so do his mini-me’s in the comments.
I was browsing one of the subsequent threads at B&W/FTB, and came across this in a discussion of “yes or no?” questions:
Lawyers get to say “…yes or no?” because you’re compelled by the court to answer. You’ll go to jail for contempt if you don’t.
I always wondered if a witness could say, “I took an oath to tell the truth, and the whole truth. A simple “yes” or “no” is not the whole truth about that question or that topic. I can’t fulfill my oath with a “yes” or “no” that doesn’t permit explanation or elaboration.”
I don’t think it’s that cut and dried. I think opposing lawyers may demand yes or no answers, but the judge gets to decide whether to enforce the demand or not. So I think the witness does at least get the opportunity to say that to the judge.
If you browse through the B&W archives from that time period, I believe there’s a guest post from me saying more or less that. (I only remember because I was re-reading those posts this week in response to this thread.)
In court, the “yes or no” game is a risky one to play for both sides, because ultimately it’s going to come down to whether the judge or jury thinks it’s a reasonable demand. If a witness is offering a reasonable explanation for why they can’t answer a simple yes or no, and the lawyer is continuing to demand it, the lawyer looks like an ass who’s trying to browbeat the witness and/or mislead the jury — especially if the judge sustains an objection and tells the lawyer to move on to a new question. On the other hand, if the witness is being evasive and trying to avoid admitting an obvious truth, then the witness is probably blowing their own credibility much worse than just answering yes or no would have.
Which of course is what the abbeycadabra faction saw me as doing. In one way they were right, in that I didn’t want to come right out and say “Of course not” at that point. But in another way they were wrong, because I really did want to get clear on what we were talking about. Still do.
Another amusing bit of history from that era: the Slate writer then known as Vanessa Urquhart was largely sympathetic to OB’s position, and wrote some things that would presumably get one labelled a TERF these days.
Aha! I like your comment. Shows me I wasn’t just making shit up.
I think having had jury duty twice, albeit only as far as day 2 of voir dire, probably helped. It’s very different from tv, and it’s serious business. It’s not people barking orders “Answer the question!” it’s people…well, doing better than that.
I just checked in on Pharyngula, and I see Dr. Myers is continuing his vendetta against journalism. He recently posted a long screed vilifying Jesse Singal, calling him part of “a cabal” of evil transphobic writers, citing not one word that Singal has written, but only hit pieces against Singal and that cabal. Myers apparently believes he holds the right to tell journalists what topics they are allowed to write about, though it is my sincerely held belief that Myers has never read one word that Singal has written, about anything.
I had been experiencing disquiet up to that point, but there was an audible clang when I read that the first time. Even now it’s jarring.
OMFG…comment 15.
“A friend of mine remarked yesterday that “This is like objecting to blackface on the grounds that it makes Rachel Dolezal feel uncomfortable.””
An absolute classic!
THAT was stunning, and not the way they use the word. Quite literally stunning.
Ah yes, now I see it, it all comes flooding back.
Wow.
Right? It’s so much worse than I remembered.
Ahhh, good times. That was right before the whole thing exploded into the epic shitshow of FtB virtue-signaling.
This followup really pushed them over the edge, as I recall:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2015/07/are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been/
I like this one >> “…TERF is not a slur or ‘a name’ to call people, and claiming it *is* is itself a transphobic talking point.” — It’s definitely a slur, and calling someone who thinks so “transphobic” only compounds the insult.
Then this >> “*I* think trans women are a *subset* of women.” — This is a category mistake, transwomen are a subset of men, a sort of men who want to be women or at least be seen as women. And >> “All trans women are women; not all women are trans women.” — Right well, no women are men, but all trans women are.
It looks like they were stifling all dissent and I’m surprised Ophelia lasted that long. My obnoxiousness would have gotten me booted pretty early on I think. :D
James – It was intended to. It was intended as a great big fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Kafkatrap: attempting to argue your innocence proves your guilt.
CBT for my social anxiety did a lot for my intellectual fortitude as a whole. I’m sure that the current me (since eight years or ago) would have been banned right quick. Before that, though? Even spending a lot of time on a board where telling people to choke on a barrel of dicks was a common first premise in any rebuttal didn’t build the kind of resilience necessary to be unmoved by peer pressure. If I’m honest, recognizing the fact that I very well could have been manipulated into affirming and subsequently believing Genderist nonsense evokes both terror and horror.
Nullius, I’m not so sure, it’s the degree to which the crossdressers and transsexuals insist they are actually the opposite sex these days that makes me more doubtful rather than less, but it would have even before I was aware of the more sinister aspects of the ideology, and the deeper implications for women.
James, thanks for linking that, Ophelia was in fine form. :)
Rage can be a great source of inspiration.
I just did a little browse through the final days of B&W on FtB. That was a weird trip down memory lane, though I didn’t comment much on those posts.
A very weird trip.
Screechy–yeah, me too. As in, I didn’t post much, and when I did, it was under a pseudonym. (My consistent avatar gives it all away now.)
I really didn’t comment much at B&W back then before the big blowup. Or at Pharyngula or any of the others. There didn’t seem much for me to add, and to be honest, I had real reservations about a lot of the commenters (particularly those of the Horde variety and their absolute certainty of their virtue and vast historical correctness). None of them seemed to apply any kind of analysis to the topics that they wrote about.
After that whole debacle in which Ophelia was branded with the scarlet “T” and half of the FtB’ers lost their fucking minds and galloped off to make their New, Pure, Blog home away from the manifold sinners of FtB, I realized that the entire lot of them were a bunch of delusional quacks. And, moreover, that I hadn’t been reading B&W nearly closely enough, which seems to have resulted in me taking part here a good deal more. So the Great Blowup certainly had at least one positive outcome (for me, anyway).
You could smell the petrol they were pouring on the pyre in the background.
It was awful.
My response would be something like:
To be able to answer the question I’m afraid I have to ask you to define what you mean by “women”, because as I understand the question you are asking me if I believe people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of fathers than mothers who think or feel in certain ways best left unspecified are people with a strong preponderance of innate physical traits more representative of mothers than fathers, and that question pretty much answers itself, so I assume that’s not what you mean.
Dammit, you people owe me at least 2.5 hours of chargeable time. I’ve just skimmed the relevant posts from the infamous ultimatum to the end. I’d forgotten just how incoherent some of those people got. Also forgot just how many chargeable hours I lost first time around. Sigh, back to work.
As I keep saying, I happen to know for a fact that many – I’m tempted to say all, but I’m trying to be rigorous – of these people used to say things that could get them labeled as TERFs and demonized any time today (Indeed things for which they themselves would later go on to demonize others as TERFs.). So considering how many of their own former opinions – from less than 10 years ago – are now deemed thoughcrime, considering how many former friends and allies have already been thrown under the bus, what I don’t get is this: How can they be so confident that their current beliefs and opinions will not be deemed thoughtcrime in another 10 years? Why should they expect their current “friends” and “allies” to treat them any better when they suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of the next online craze of fad? How do they expect to be able to hold their attackers up to any standards of intellectual honesty, charity, and good faith without
coming across asbeing fucking hypocrites when it’s their names being dragged through the mud all over the internet for, say, daring to suggest that the Earth might no be flat?Bjarte: You’re not lying. The inability to take a temporally objective perspective and apply their own methodology to their own beliefs, that is to sell out their future selves for a few pieces of silver in the present, seems intrinsic to the “social justice”–or apropos of the topic, “atheism+”–meme complex. By adopting such a restricted domain of analysis, the true believer destroys the very tools that would allow a revision of belief and gives other believers the tools to punish attempted escape.
Considering how many of their own opinions back then are ones they now consider thoughtcrime, I have trouble understanding how some of them can demonize the people who still hold those positions today. Do they remember their hearts being filled with fear and hatred till they saw the light?
If it was just a matter of new discoveries and contemplation changing their minds, it makes little sense to create a narrative where some people (them) can respect people who are different, and other people (us) simply can’t. The truth obviously wasn’t immediately intuitive and based on love.
Ah, the #1 tantrum-thrower and dummy-spitter from FTB’s author roster.
“Do you believe trans women are women, yes or no?” Why not just “no?”
Partly because what I most wanted to get across at that point was “Fuck off.” I wanted to underline the fact that abbey whoever the hell that was wasn’t my boss or the KGB or the pope and I wasn’t abbey whoever’s scullery maid or naughty toddler or any other kind of insubordinate subordinate. I wanted to underline that rude bossy peremptory “yes or no” questions are just that.
Am just starting to read this…so, drag is bad because it makes trans people feel unsafe but drag queen story time is totally amazeballs?
I was blissfully unaware of this when it was happening–I think we were on vacation at the time, and I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t then a reader of B&W. So I only heard some echoes of it on Pharyngula, and was mostly confused by the whole issue (I tended to stay away from the endless threads, which is where much of the drama played out).
But I can remember feeling reluctant to chime in on trans issues back then–of course I supported trans rights (I mean, everyone needs a place to pee, right?) because it seemed to be the progressive thing to do–but I always had some doubts. About pronouns, first (about which I’ve pontificated enough here), and then about the possibility of finding middle ground. Sure, TWAW, I thought, but not in all senses, and just as there are issues that trans women face, but not cis (sic) women, there are also issues which cis (sic) women face that trans women don’t. I mean, a trans woman will never have to worry about where her next tampon will come from, right? And of course trans women wouldn’t compete in women’s sports, or force lesbians to date them. In short, I was terribly naïve, and now I realize that if I had expressed any of these thoughts I would’ve been jumped on as a transphobe, and perhaps even a TERF.
I don’t recall the exact incident that triggered me to leave Pharyngula and search out B&W, but I can identify two trends that eventually drove me away. First, there was a poster who’s name I’ve forgotten who went on and on in the news thread during the 2016 election about how evil Hillary is, how she wanted to kill him (him! personally!), and how she was really no different than Trump; he also whined incessantly about how many “spoons” he had, and about how he still hadn’t decided if he was trans or enby or whatever. It was tiresome, and I lit into him after it became clear that Trump had won. He got what he wanted, and he had to own it.
The second trend was seeing what happened when previously respected posters tried to have discussions challenging the trans ideology*–how they were ripped apart by the mob, torn into viciously with very little attempt to engage their arguments honestly, until PZ would step in and ban the heretic. It was ugly, and hypocritical, and I am allergic to the kind of bullying** and righteous certainty that was on display (probably because I’m rarely certain about anything myself, though I could be wrong). I soon realized that the dislike I’d felt for a long time for certain members of the horde was legit, not just me being uncharitable.
So anyway, I took the advice they so often offer–I did my own research, looked up B&W, started reading some GC sources, and, well, ended up here, though I’m still not comfortable coming out as GC in real life–it would lead to a lot of ruptures which I’d rather avoid. Thus my ‘nym, though anyone who knows me probably could figure out who I am without too much effort if they stumbled on this site.
*One case in particular stands out. Someone (perhaps Lady Mondegreen?) got into an argument on how to define “woman”, which of course led to a lot of self-righteous picking of nits.
**Though I have to admit I’m not always immune to bullying. It’s something I’ve tried to identify in myself, and avoid as much as possible.
There’s really no shame in not having been a reader of B&W at any point!
Except that I knew that it existed, and I also knew the author had a reputation of being smart and thoughtful, but also prickly. I think in part I was intimidated, but also I don’t like spending a lot of time on a lot of different blogs, so even in the FTB days I stuck to Pharyngula mostly.
WIth PZ, his merciless mockery of John Kwok prior to this should have been an indication of the sort of treatment he would level at anyone who he found to be incorrect in their thinking. Even though I thought that Kwok has some faults, it was painful to see the bullying that he was subjected to. He reached out to me to try to influence PZ to lay off. I had to tell him that I had very little influence over PZ even though I did have some connections to him through the Mn Atheists and the radio show. I sent an email to PZ that was ignored.
Pharyngula had grown from the small blog it was when I met PZ through Talk.Origins to this big thing that he could sic on anyone he wanted to belittle, and I had to think about my own behavior, to self-crit whether or not I had partaken in any of the bullying. I probably did.
But this whole episode completely opened my eyes to the way that even the so-called skeptics can be swept into a fervor, and as I noted in the tweet that Ophelia posted, misled those who gave the transgender movement acceptance and approval through a “halo effect” of being approved by noted skeptics including PZ and Ed Brayton.
I think that the skeptics need a reckoning, but many are self-satisfied that they get validated for this misogyny and homophobia. Not sure who can bring it about.
Prickly? Moi?
Hahahahaha
Anyway that’s what I mean – there are a lot of blogs – there are even a lot of good blogs. No one can read them all.
Mike H,
I can’t agree with you about Kwok. He deserved everything he got, with his “you owe me a Leica camera” demands and the constant bragging and namedropping about which fucking high school he went to — when you come off as an imperious, pompous tool, you’re going to get some shit thrown at you.
I don’t like him either, for the reasons you list. My post was meant more to be an observation of how PZ uses Pharyngula and not a defense of Kwok.
PZ often acts (or at least did — I haven’t read Pharyngula in a while) like he has utterly no control over the Horde, which was never entirely true. He would occasionally wring his hands about how he wished the comments sections were a nicer place to dissenters, but the hand-wringing was pretty much all he did — I recall he instituted a “three-comment rule” by which you were supposed to give a new poster three comments before jumping on them as a troll or whatever, but I don’t recall there ever being any consequences for anyone violating that rule. And it’s not like he had some principled stand against enforcing rules on his comments section; he (correctly, in my view) deleted and disemvowelled and banned as he saw fit.
So it was pretty easy for the Horde to see which “rules” were taken seriously, and which were more advisory or aspirational if not outright illusory.
I never got the sense that PZ was disingenuous about this. I think he sincerely did want Pharyngula to be a less hostile place; he just seemed to have no clue how to go about it. But I think he often acted like he had caught a tiger by the tail and was afraid to let go, and so in practice the Horde was often making the rules rather than him. Of course the Deep Rifts and the slymepit didn’t help — having a dedicated group of shit-stirrers and trolls regularly showing up understandably encouraged a kind of siege mentality.
TAs: “TERF is not a slur!”
Also TAs: “If you’re a TERF, you’re a bigot!”
They are liars. But then, lying is their stock in trade.
I spent the better part of an hour reading through the series of B&W posts on FtB starting with the one linked to here, and what struck me was how most of the B&W commenters were trying to understand other’s POV instead of jumping on their judgmental high horses. I was a reader of some of the FtB bloggers back then, but not B&W until almost the very end. Oh well, at least I do read B&W now.
The only other thing that I found interesting was Elizabeth Hungerford’s comments on one B&W post, which were in retrospect spot on when it came to the subject of gender identity and how it relied on self ID rather than anything objective that could be evaluated critically. Even back in 2012-13 there were gender critical voices speaking out and of course getting the usual insults and accusations of vile TERFery. How little that’s changed, sadly,
Thinking further about comments, regarding those at Pharyngula it’s always been obvious to me that Myers gets the comments he deserves based on his own predilection to be nasty and insulting to those he disrespects or just disagrees with. LIke the pig in the mud, he really does enjoy it and so do his mini-me’s in the comments.
I was browsing one of the subsequent threads at B&W/FTB, and came across this in a discussion of “yes or no?” questions:
I always wondered if a witness could say, “I took an oath to tell the truth, and the whole truth. A simple “yes” or “no” is not the whole truth about that question or that topic. I can’t fulfill my oath with a “yes” or “no” that doesn’t permit explanation or elaboration.”
I don’t think it’s that cut and dried. I think opposing lawyers may demand yes or no answers, but the judge gets to decide whether to enforce the demand or not. So I think the witness does at least get the opportunity to say that to the judge.
If you browse through the B&W archives from that time period, I believe there’s a guest post from me saying more or less that. (I only remember because I was re-reading those posts this week in response to this thread.)
In court, the “yes or no” game is a risky one to play for both sides, because ultimately it’s going to come down to whether the judge or jury thinks it’s a reasonable demand. If a witness is offering a reasonable explanation for why they can’t answer a simple yes or no, and the lawyer is continuing to demand it, the lawyer looks like an ass who’s trying to browbeat the witness and/or mislead the jury — especially if the judge sustains an objection and tells the lawyer to move on to a new question. On the other hand, if the witness is being evasive and trying to avoid admitting an obvious truth, then the witness is probably blowing their own credibility much worse than just answering yes or no would have.
Which of course is what the abbeycadabra faction saw me as doing. In one way they were right, in that I didn’t want to come right out and say “Of course not” at that point. But in another way they were wrong, because I really did want to get clear on what we were talking about. Still do.
I’d link to your guest post but I can’t find it – searching via the dashboard finds only one in 2015 and it’s not about that.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2015/04/guest-post-signed-confused/
Ah, I was confused. It was a comment I wrote in response to a guest post, which turns out to be the one maddog was referencing @35.
Here is the post; my comment is #4.
Another amusing bit of history from that era: the Slate writer then known as Vanessa Urquhart was largely sympathetic to OB’s position, and wrote some things that would presumably get one labelled a TERF these days.
And then decided she was trans about 5 minutes later. It was quite remarkable.
Aha! I like your comment. Shows me I wasn’t just making shit up.
I think having had jury duty twice, albeit only as far as day 2 of voir dire, probably helped. It’s very different from tv, and it’s serious business. It’s not people barking orders “Answer the question!” it’s people…well, doing better than that.
I just checked in on Pharyngula, and I see Dr. Myers is continuing his vendetta against journalism. He recently posted a long screed vilifying Jesse Singal, calling him part of “a cabal” of evil transphobic writers, citing not one word that Singal has written, but only hit pieces against Singal and that cabal. Myers apparently believes he holds the right to tell journalists what topics they are allowed to write about, though it is my sincerely held belief that Myers has never read one word that Singal has written, about anything.