Bros protecting bros
Adam Lee has a post on the wall of silence around Lawrence Krauss. We like to pounce on churchy sexual predators, he observes, but then we back away in panic if it’s one of the bros.
When serious allegations of sexual assault were made against Michael Shermer, several high-profile atheist individuals and groups circled the wagons around him and tried to build a wall of silence – either dismissing the accusations as unimportant, outright refusing to mention them, or trying to dissuade others from doing so. To this day, Shermer hasn’t faced any personal or career consequences that I’m aware of.
And now the same thing appears to be happening with Krauss.
There’s a group of people calling themselves Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia, whose original mission was to inject an appropriately balanced and skeptical viewpoint into articles on supernatural and paranormal topics. That’s a mission I’d be all in favor of. However, as Hayley Stevens points out, they’ve apparently adopted a new purpose: making sure the allegations against Krauss are kept off his biography page on Wikipedia.
You can see this for yourself: as of today, March 5, Krauss’ Wikipedia page has no mention of any recent developments – not the allegations themselves, not Krauss being barred from multiple college campuses, not several of his upcoming talks being canceled. If you look at the talk page, you can see several contributors deleting edits by other users that mention these things, and insisting that the Buzzfeed article is just “gossip” and that “Buzzfeed isn’t usually considered a reliable source”, and that this merits totally excluding any mention of it.
While Buzzfeed does publish its share of silly clickbait, their investigative unit employs 20 journalists and engages in serious, important reporting. One of their reporters was a Pulitzer finalist in 2017; another won a Pulitzer prior to being hired there. Ironically, BuzzFeed’s own Wikipedia page has categories for “Notable stories” (significantly, including the sexual-misconduct accusations against Kevin Spacey) and “Awards and recognition”.
As for the journalists who wrote the Krauss story, one of them, Peter Aldhous, has reported for the journals Nature and Science and teaches investigative and policy reporting at UC Santa Cruz. The other reporter, Azeen Gorayshi, has written for the Guardian, New Scientist, Newsweek, and Wired, among others. The editor, Virginia Hughes, has written for the Atlantic, the New York Times, National Geographic, and Slate.
Well they have a defense for that: notice the wording: “Buzzfeed isn’t usually considered a reliable source” – it’s a sibling of Trump’s constant “everybody is saying” and “people are saying.” It’s also self-fulfilling – enough people go “Buzzfeed isn’t usually considered a reliable source” and it becomes ever more true. Some “skepticism.”
And then, Adam goes on, there’s Matt Dillahunty. He knows Matt slightly, and considers him a generally good guy and an egalitarian. But. There was that inconvenient evening with Matt and Sam Harris and Lawrence Krauss that was scheduled for two days after the BuzzFeed story dropped. Oh dear. I wrote a post about that, and about the irritating bro smugness of the conversation between Harris and Dillahunty, and how comfortable these guys are defending Krauss amongst themselves while the women are never there. Just never never never fucking there. The atheist movement gets a zero on the Bechdel test yet again, or more like a minus 500 because they used their all-bro event to explain why bitches be lyin about Krauss and isn’t that just a terrible thing now. And then they get huffy!
Afterward, Matt wrote this post on Facebook, in which he wrote angrily that Buzzfeed’s Virginia Hughes contacted him on his personal cell phone to ask about a followup she’s writing, presumably related to Krauss. He considered this an unforgivable breach of his privacy.
I left a comment on this thread. I don’t have a screenshot of it – more on that in a second – but I said that, whether Matt thinks of himself this way or not, he’s a public figure with regards to this story; that getting public figures to comment on stories they’re connected to is literally a journalist’s job; and that in my opinion, nothing she did constitutes harassment.
How did Matt respond? He deleted the comment and blocked Adam without a word. He did the same thing to anyone else who didn’t kiss his bum and say he was correct on all points. He did it to Amanda Marcotte.
And then, there’s this.
It’s worth mentioning in this context that Matt Dillahunty was planning to introduce Michael Shermer at a conference as recently as February 19. He’s said that he no longer is, but hasn’t explained what prompted the change.
The link is to a Twitter thread.
https://twitter.com/ernestlyseeking/status/969460680016490496
Matt replied to say he won’t be introducing Shermer.
https://twitter.com/ernestlyseeking/status/969603787194294272
Matt replied to say that is no longer the case.
How fascinating, but I have to wonder why it was ever the case, given the allegations about Shermer, which include one of flat-out rape of the “get her too drunk to say no or yes” variety. Matt knows that perfectly well, yet until recently he was on the schedule as introducing Shermer. I guess now he’s just sharing a stage with him.
Amanda Marcotte pointed out in her Facebook post on this that it’s not really fair to upbraid people for sharing stages with baddies, because it amounts to expecting them to damage their careers when they’re not the ones who did anything wrong. I saw her point, and think she’s right – it’s not fair at all. But…
But it still riles me when they go right on doing the bro-fests anyway, and talk over our heads when they do them, and solemnly agree with each other that we must not listen to women talking about a bro who is obnoxiously handsy and sexist around women.
I’m going to stick my neck out here and say that I still admire and trust Matt Dillahunty. I have been listening to him for years and I think he has amply demonstrated his bona fides as a feminist.
“…he has amply demonstrated his bona fides as a feminist.”
Is that a lifetime thing? At what point are his fides no longer so bona? He won’t introduce the rapist, but he’s okay being at an event featuring him? What would Shermer have to do for him to be kicked out of the festival/meeting circuit? What does he have to do before Dillahunty won’t share a stage with him? Kevin Spacey had his bits from a movie excised and reshot,at very short notice, at the cost of about ten million dollars. Shermer jusy has to not be invited, which is, I think, free. They’re saving a postage stamp by not including him in their love fest. Unless these events are profiting off the frisson of having an accused rapist on stage…
YNNB, I’m not going to speculate about Dillahunty’s limits (although I’m personally dissapointed in how elastic they already appear to be). I think for a certain kind of Bro Sceptic/Atheist Shermer would have to be filmed using force* raping a woman, then convicted before they would grudgingly admit that while in prison he shouldn’t attend any events. Before that ‘no proof’ and after that ‘done his time’.
*Even if the video showed him plying a women with alcohol until she was senseless they would still say it was her choice/fault and that consent was implied.
Rob, I think even if he were shown using force, they would probably still find some way to justify his behavior. Pulled a gun on her? Well, what was she doing in that room, knowing there were men in there and some of them might have been packing? Why in the world would she wear that shirt unless she wanted someone to take it off her? Why did she leave the house in the first place? Doesn’t she know it isn’t safe to be out on the streets/in the classroom/at a conference/in the world?
The capacity for justification in this crowd is endless – right up until a priest is accused of raping a boy (you never hear about the girls the priests rape; even priests get a pass if it’s a girl).
Why do I get the feeling that some of the people who are dismissing this story “because Buzzfeed” are the same ones who scream “ad hominem!” at every available opportunity?
And, oh man, James Randi. I had forgotten just how pathetic that 2014 quote was. If he gets “many” more complaints “from people I have reason to believe,” then he’s going to …. wait for it… “limit” Shermer’s attendance. Wow. You know, if it’s just two or three MORE credible complaints, then no problem. But if there’s MANY, then by gosh, he’s only going to get to read onstage from his book for 10 minutes instead of 15! That’ll teach him!
And Adam Lee’s opener is exactly right. I don’t recall any of the atheist bros insisting that the Catholic church was entitled to shuffle accused priests around because, hey, no court of law has convicted them yet and DUE PROCESS demands that we all pretend nothing has happened until then.
Peter N @ 1 – Ok, but…why? It seems awfully abrupt to just say you’re going to, in response to my rather long-winded account, without offering any reasons other than past experience. Adam has a similar past experience but came to a different conclusion. You don’t owe us anything, it’s just that your comment reads as if it’s missing a sentence or two.
The funniest comment on that post is by Tracey Richardson Melody:
Screechy, yes the “many” really stood out, and everything that flows from it as you so clearly lay out. Randi earnt a solid eyeroll and got struck off my list of good people on that basis alone.
Hi Ophelia,
I am being charitable to Matt, someone I respect and admire. I feel that I know Adam Lee, too (in fact I have corresponded with and briefly met both Matt and Adam on separate occasions), and Adam’s negative assessment carries a lot of weight for me. But I do know how Matt interacts with his female co-hosts on The Atheist Experience, and I know how much he supports his spouse Beth Presswood (she of the Godless Bitches podcast) in her feminist activism, hence I am giving him the benefit of the doubt until he takes the time to respond at length. I know, he barked at some people on Facebook and blocked them. I agree that looks bad, but another thing is that he has been known to change his mind and admit it when he was wrong about something. I predict we will eventually get an hour-long video about this from Matt, like he recorded after the Mythicist Milwaukee debacle. So I’m not ready to condemn him just yet.
Tonight I’m gearing up for a business trip so I’m afraid I won’t have time to revisit this thread for a couple of days.
Yeah well. Sometimes the “it looks bad” is all there is. Yes, it does “look bad” for two dudes to sit on a stage and agree with each other and agree that a third dude must be ok and not really a sexual harasser because he’s their buddy and BuzzFeed is just clickbait [which is not true] and they’d better defend their buddy because hey he’s their buddy and if that amounts to sending a message to the women that they don’t count and aren’t believed well that’s just how these things go.
Yeah, it “looks bad.”
Yes, Spacey was expunged from a Big Ticket film project. But for more than a decade he was given the ‘benefit of the doubt.’ The default to ‘hear no evil’ obstruction seems universal. It would be good to know just what’s needed to make a tipping point. Just where Cosby, Gibson, Weinstein are recognized as the repugnant creeps ‘everyone knew’ them to be.