@FFRF made a regrettable error in removing Jerry Coyne's post. Because I believe FI's readership can evaluate arguments, FI has reposted Coyne's essay, with a link to the essay he was critiquing. I encourage those interested to read both essays. https://t.co/EAvnwrfY6L
I note the little touch – “Because I believe FI’s readership can evaluate arguments” – implying that FFRF’s readership can’t. In reality, though, it isn’t just evaluating arguments, it’s not swooning every time someone disagrees with you, or calls you ‘she’ or ‘he’ when you want to be called ‘they’ or…whatever hogwash pronouns you claim as yours.
Thanks for the posts on this issue, Ophelia. I largely agree with your refutations of gender ideology.
I hope you can now apologize to Ron Lindsay for your horrible treatment towards him in the past, particularly after he spoke at Women in Secularism 2 & you propped up SJWs who now hate you for ‘wrongthink’ on the trans issues.
You propped up Atheism+ and SJW feminism, now look what’s happened. Hopefully you can see that your made the wrong choices in the past and realize it’s better to side with Dawkins and Coyne rather than SJW FFRF interns, PZ Myers, and Rebecca Watson who would likely falsely smear you as ‘transphobic’ or whatever other attacks.
I cannot answer for Ophelia, but speaking for myself, in the siege mentality of ”Elevator-gate” and the Anti Harassment Policy Wars I almost certainly attacked and vilified some people who didn’t deserve it, and for that I am truly sorry. What I’m not prepared to do is to start pretending there was anything right about ”Dear Muslima” or make excuses for the ”men’s rights” (i.e. anti women’s rights) activists flooding the women who objected with abuse, including rape and death threats (not to mention the breath-taking dishonesty of the many self-appointed voices of ”reason” who pretended the problem was ”disagreement”). As far as I’m concerned, the main problem with trans rights activists (and the ”woke” movement in general) is that they’re too much like the MRAs. Indeed the autogynephiles demanding access to female-only spaces in order to live out their fetishes at women’s expense are nothing but MRAs in womanface, and motivated by the same out of control levels of male entitlement.
The world is not split into those who are right about everything and those who are wrong about everything. Just because someone is right on the trans issue doesn’t mean they are also right about sexual harassment and vice versa. As I keep repeating ad nauseam I know for an absolute fact that many of the people currently determined to defend gender ideology to the death used to be saying the kind of things for which they would now label others as ”TERFs” and ”transphobes” and go out of their way to destroy their lives. They were not always as extreme as they are now, and probably wouldn’t be even today if the MRAs hadn’t radicalized them.
So rather than ”side” with anyone, the lesson I take home from all of this is that there are no good guys and that a shared lack of belief in god(s) or homeopathy or bigfoot is very weak foundation for a ”movement”.
An extract from a longer text I wrote that might provide some useful context for my comment #4:
The atheist and skeptics movements, with which I used to associate, have traditionally been a bit of an ”Old Boys Club”, heavily dominated by well off, highly educated, middle aged white men. By the time I joined (in the aftermath of 9-11) that was beginning to change, however. Thanks to the internet and new media like podcasts, blogs, discussion forums etc. these movements were beginning to attract a younger (I was 26 at the time) and more diverse crowd, including more young women. And for a while everyone seemed happy that the movement was growing and our message was getting through to a wider demographic. Alas, it wasn’t long before women were dropping careful hints that some of the men had gotten the wrong message: Rather than “Yay! More women so we can reach a larger crowd!”, they were thinking “Yay! More ‘babes’ so the guys can get some pussy!”. A few women were beginning to speak out against the unwanted attention, inappropriate comments, and sleazy advances they were subjected to on a regular basis by male atheists and skeptics. It even got out that women had developed an informal network to warn each other against certain men (including some of the biggest names within the movement) with a long history of predatory behavior at conferences.
The insane backlash of hatred, abuse, cyberbullying, harassment, and threats facing these women made the point more forcefully than anything they themselves had ever said. The situation wasn’t improved by the collective failure (as I saw it at the time, and still do) of the major organizations and their leaders (one of whom dismissed the issue as “distasteful locker-room banter”) to adequately address the problem. By all appearances these people, who never passed up an opportunity to condemn the Catholic Church for its failure to weed out predators among its ranks, were only too happy to cover up for their own predators. Speaking for myself, I can safely say that it was the most disillusioning experience of my life, akin to catching a beloved uncle beating up your aunt. The cognitive dissonance couldn’t be greater. These were my people. Some of them were my heroes, people who’s books I had read and loved, people I had been defending against their critics for years, people whose work continues to be enormously influential on my own thinking even to this day. All my biases were urging me to blame the women and make excuses for their attackers. But once seen, the rape and death threats – not to mention the breathtaking dishonesty of the self-appointed voices of “truth” and “reason” who pretended the problem was “disagreement” – could not be unseen, and I had already read enough about cognitive dissonance and rationalization to recognize the temptation for what it was.
The problem wasn’t limited to atheists or skeptics. This was also the time of “Gamergate”, the “Men’s Rights” (euphemism for “Anti Women’s Rights”) movement, and the “Alt Right”. My experiences from that time were part of the reason I for one was not surprised (depressed and disgusted, yes, but not surprised) when Donald “Grab ’em by the Pussy” Trump was elected president a few years later. These things are not “fringe”! They also gave me an early glimpse into the kind of abusive male behaviors exposed by the #MeToo campaign. As a result I became a self-identified feminist, and from there one thing quickly led to another. It seemed only natural to think of the fight against sexism and misogyny as part of a larger battle to end oppression and bigotry in all its forms (racism, homophobia etc.). Hence I became a full-fledged “Social Justice Warrior”. In full disclosure: I almost certainly attacked and vilified some persons who didn’t deserve it. If I did it to you, you hereby have my unreserved apology!
This was before I knew anything about the many bitter conflicts and deep divisions between competing factions of nominally pro “social justice” types. In my limitless naivety I thought we were all “in it together” against the “Social Injustice Warriors” of the far Right and began following every feminist, anti-racist, gay rights activist etc. who seemed to have anything interesting or worthwhile to say on Twitter. So when I began hearing from Trans Rights Activists (TRAs for short), I was very much predisposed to sympathize. I suspect my first reaction wasn’t too atypical:
Well, some of the things they say don’t sound quite right to me, but maybe I just need to ‘shut up and listen’ as well as ‘educate’ myself like everyone keeps saying. Don’t want to be like those guys who mansplain feminism to women and think they understand the issues better than the people who have been dealing with them their whole lives, do I? Trans people are indeed a marginalized group, and social justice activism is all about standing up for marginalized groups. At least we can all agree on that (etc. etc.)
The borrowed association with LGB issues probably helped their cause as well. I think they even got me to sign a couple of petitions to ban “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists” (TERFs for short – a slur against gender-critical feminists) from specific platforms.
It wasn’t long, however, before I began noticing things that made me uncomfortable. The women being targeted by Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) at the time never had any problem providing endless specific examples (in the form of direct quotes, screenshots, retweets etc.) of obvious, unambiguous hate speech, cyberbullying, harassment, and threats. One of my most vivid memories from that time is watching Caroline Criado-Perez’s Twitter handle fill up with the ugliest cyberbullying I have ever seen – including the obligatory rape and death threats – quicker than the Twitter feed could keep up: I would click “refresh”, and by the time the tweets were finished loading there were already 15 new ones waiting in line. These attacks could go on for hours at a time, every day for months or even years.
When I began hearing about the diabolical “TERFs” (supposedly at least as bad as the MRAs sending rape and death threats to Criado-Perez) it was a very different story indeed: No direct quotes, no screenshots, no retweets, in fact no specifics of any kind. Nothing but the TRA’s own words. One of the most bizarre conversations I’ve had in my life was when a TRA messaged me on Twitter in order to interrogate me about why I was following a certain feminist blogger who, by his own admission, had never said anything explicitly transphobic. Apparently it was “implied in very subtle ways” that only trans people could decode, and I was not in a position to question their judgment. It was around that time it began to dawn on me that the genocidal “TERFs” I kept hearing about included at least half the feminists I was following, and once seen the glaring contrast between these women’s actual words and the words and attitudes put into their mouths by the TRAs could not be unseen. There was no going back after that.
I don’t know, but CFI has just gained a new member (and the FFRF has lost one).
I note the little touch – “Because I believe FI’s readership can evaluate arguments” – implying that FFRF’s readership can’t. In reality, though, it isn’t just evaluating arguments, it’s not swooning every time someone disagrees with you, or calls you ‘she’ or ‘he’ when you want to be called ‘they’ or…whatever hogwash pronouns you claim as yours.
Thanks for the posts on this issue, Ophelia. I largely agree with your refutations of gender ideology.
I hope you can now apologize to Ron Lindsay for your horrible treatment towards him in the past, particularly after he spoke at Women in Secularism 2 & you propped up SJWs who now hate you for ‘wrongthink’ on the trans issues.
You propped up Atheism+ and SJW feminism, now look what’s happened. Hopefully you can see that your made the wrong choices in the past and realize it’s better to side with Dawkins and Coyne rather than SJW FFRF interns, PZ Myers, and Rebecca Watson who would likely falsely smear you as ‘transphobic’ or whatever other attacks.
RedBaron #3
I cannot answer for Ophelia, but speaking for myself, in the siege mentality of ”Elevator-gate” and the Anti Harassment Policy Wars I almost certainly attacked and vilified some people who didn’t deserve it, and for that I am truly sorry. What I’m not prepared to do is to start pretending there was anything right about ”Dear Muslima” or make excuses for the ”men’s rights” (i.e. anti women’s rights) activists flooding the women who objected with abuse, including rape and death threats (not to mention the breath-taking dishonesty of the many self-appointed voices of ”reason” who pretended the problem was ”disagreement”). As far as I’m concerned, the main problem with trans rights activists (and the ”woke” movement in general) is that they’re too much like the MRAs. Indeed the autogynephiles demanding access to female-only spaces in order to live out their fetishes at women’s expense are nothing but MRAs in womanface, and motivated by the same out of control levels of male entitlement.
The world is not split into those who are right about everything and those who are wrong about everything. Just because someone is right on the trans issue doesn’t mean they are also right about sexual harassment and vice versa. As I keep repeating ad nauseam I know for an absolute fact that many of the people currently determined to defend gender ideology to the death used to be saying the kind of things for which they would now label others as ”TERFs” and ”transphobes” and go out of their way to destroy their lives. They were not always as extreme as they are now, and probably wouldn’t be even today if the MRAs hadn’t radicalized them.
So rather than ”side” with anyone, the lesson I take home from all of this is that there are no good guys and that a shared lack of belief in god(s) or homeopathy or bigfoot is very weak foundation for a ”movement”.
An extract from a longer text I wrote that might provide some useful context for my comment #4:
The atheist and skeptics movements, with which I used to associate, have traditionally been a bit of an ”Old Boys Club”, heavily dominated by well off, highly educated, middle aged white men. By the time I joined (in the aftermath of 9-11) that was beginning to change, however. Thanks to the internet and new media like podcasts, blogs, discussion forums etc. these movements were beginning to attract a younger (I was 26 at the time) and more diverse crowd, including more young women. And for a while everyone seemed happy that the movement was growing and our message was getting through to a wider demographic. Alas, it wasn’t long before women were dropping careful hints that some of the men had gotten the wrong message: Rather than “Yay! More women so we can reach a larger crowd!”, they were thinking “Yay! More ‘babes’ so the guys can get some pussy!”. A few women were beginning to speak out against the unwanted attention, inappropriate comments, and sleazy advances they were subjected to on a regular basis by male atheists and skeptics. It even got out that women had developed an informal network to warn each other against certain men (including some of the biggest names within the movement) with a long history of predatory behavior at conferences.
The insane backlash of hatred, abuse, cyberbullying, harassment, and threats facing these women made the point more forcefully than anything they themselves had ever said. The situation wasn’t improved by the collective failure (as I saw it at the time, and still do) of the major organizations and their leaders (one of whom dismissed the issue as “distasteful locker-room banter”) to adequately address the problem. By all appearances these people, who never passed up an opportunity to condemn the Catholic Church for its failure to weed out predators among its ranks, were only too happy to cover up for their own predators. Speaking for myself, I can safely say that it was the most disillusioning experience of my life, akin to catching a beloved uncle beating up your aunt. The cognitive dissonance couldn’t be greater. These were my people. Some of them were my heroes, people who’s books I had read and loved, people I had been defending against their critics for years, people whose work continues to be enormously influential on my own thinking even to this day. All my biases were urging me to blame the women and make excuses for their attackers. But once seen, the rape and death threats – not to mention the breathtaking dishonesty of the self-appointed voices of “truth” and “reason” who pretended the problem was “disagreement” – could not be unseen, and I had already read enough about cognitive dissonance and rationalization to recognize the temptation for what it was.
The problem wasn’t limited to atheists or skeptics. This was also the time of “Gamergate”, the “Men’s Rights” (euphemism for “Anti Women’s Rights”) movement, and the “Alt Right”. My experiences from that time were part of the reason I for one was not surprised (depressed and disgusted, yes, but not surprised) when Donald “Grab ’em by the Pussy” Trump was elected president a few years later. These things are not “fringe”! They also gave me an early glimpse into the kind of abusive male behaviors exposed by the #MeToo campaign. As a result I became a self-identified feminist, and from there one thing quickly led to another. It seemed only natural to think of the fight against sexism and misogyny as part of a larger battle to end oppression and bigotry in all its forms (racism, homophobia etc.). Hence I became a full-fledged “Social Justice Warrior”. In full disclosure: I almost certainly attacked and vilified some persons who didn’t deserve it. If I did it to you, you hereby have my unreserved apology!
This was before I knew anything about the many bitter conflicts and deep divisions between competing factions of nominally pro “social justice” types. In my limitless naivety I thought we were all “in it together” against the “Social Injustice Warriors” of the far Right and began following every feminist, anti-racist, gay rights activist etc. who seemed to have anything interesting or worthwhile to say on Twitter. So when I began hearing from Trans Rights Activists (TRAs for short), I was very much predisposed to sympathize. I suspect my first reaction wasn’t too atypical:
The borrowed association with LGB issues probably helped their cause as well. I think they even got me to sign a couple of petitions to ban “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists” (TERFs for short – a slur against gender-critical feminists) from specific platforms.
It wasn’t long, however, before I began noticing things that made me uncomfortable. The women being targeted by Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) at the time never had any problem providing endless specific examples (in the form of direct quotes, screenshots, retweets etc.) of obvious, unambiguous hate speech, cyberbullying, harassment, and threats. One of my most vivid memories from that time is watching Caroline Criado-Perez’s Twitter handle fill up with the ugliest cyberbullying I have ever seen – including the obligatory rape and death threats – quicker than the Twitter feed could keep up: I would click “refresh”, and by the time the tweets were finished loading there were already 15 new ones waiting in line. These attacks could go on for hours at a time, every day for months or even years.
When I began hearing about the diabolical “TERFs” (supposedly at least as bad as the MRAs sending rape and death threats to Criado-Perez) it was a very different story indeed: No direct quotes, no screenshots, no retweets, in fact no specifics of any kind. Nothing but the TRA’s own words. One of the most bizarre conversations I’ve had in my life was when a TRA messaged me on Twitter in order to interrogate me about why I was following a certain feminist blogger who, by his own admission, had never said anything explicitly transphobic. Apparently it was “implied in very subtle ways” that only trans people could decode, and I was not in a position to question their judgment. It was around that time it began to dawn on me that the genocidal “TERFs” I kept hearing about included at least half the feminists I was following, and once seen the glaring contrast between these women’s actual words and the words and attitudes put into their mouths by the TRAs could not be unseen. There was no going back after that.
Thanks, Bjarte, for reminding me of important things that I had perhaps too easily pushed to the back of my consciousness.
“RedBaron” – whoever the hell that may be – is a little behind. What xir predicts in the final paragraph happened years ago.