Guest post: No trace left
Originally a Miscellany Room post by Sastra.
Well, it appears I’ve finally been banned on Friendly Atheist, presumably for arguments I was making on a post about transgenderism. And what I’m guessing is 5 years of comments have all been marked as “spam” and completely erased. There’s no trace of me left. It is as if my very existence is being denied. Heh.
I’m not sure who banned me; it could have been a new moderator, or one of the other people who post articles on the site. I’ve written to ask, and questioned the spam designation elsewhere. I’m not terribly surprised, but do wonder why the absolute blackout, and not even a suspension or, best compromise, making any trans-related comment of mine only viewable when clicking (to avoid triggering the sensitive.)
I’ve been very, very careful with what I’ve said re Trans on FA. No personal attacks on others; no “misgendering” or discussions on hot button topics like bathrooms; no signs of my being angry, hurt, frustrated. And my arguments were all focused on the highest level — on basic concepts from which all else derives. Gender Identity Theory. I did that partly because that’s where the heart of the issue lies, and partly because I figured it would bore those who wanted to attack on the more personal level. My overall purpose was to persuade, of course, but my practical purpose was to help others understand the opposition, and hopefully recognize that disagreement isn’t hate.
I went out with a bang. Here’s the last thing I was allowed to post:
Glad to hear he’s better.
I, too, got the Moderna shots. I’ll be masking up again, and waiting for them to come out with an effective booster.
These “personal choices” the covidiots are making manage to escape the personal area, and it’s equally frustrating and frightening.
And here’s the last thing I wrote on the trans topic:
No, an idea can be theoretically testable and still suffer from conceptual problems. For example, the existence of God. Atheists can come up with miracles which would be hard to explain without God — the stars rearranging themselves into the words “I am God” and observed by all, say — but there’s still contradictions in a definition with the Omnis, and still a lot of vague hand waving and incoherence. These conceptual problems might take precedence, for a definitive miracle still leaves us with a confusing understanding of its source.
For those who endorse GIT, the very “central point of transgenderism” is Gender Identity. If this central point falls apart under any sort of genuine skeptical or critical examination, that’s not good.
(Edited to add: And there would still be a serious problem regarding what I put as the third point: “Gender Identity, not sex, is what makes someone a man, woman, both, or neither.” Replacing sex with gender requires its own support, and brings in a lot of conflicts involving rights.)
So abusive. Tch.
IT is really frustrating how dogmatic, how doctrinaire otherwise rational people are on this issue. I mean, look here where we have had sometimes critical and even heated discussions about CRT, with some regular posters expressing skepticism and other regulars discussing why particular points are incorrect. With the trans religion, there can be no discussion. A 6’5 37 year old who wants to be in the Olympics just IS a woman, all evidence to the contrary ignored. JK Rowling IS a horrible violent person who DESERVES death threats.
My only solution for Friendly Atheist is to skip the trans evangelism. Just like I no longer read We Hunted the Mammoth (which used to be so funny) because the trans nonsense begins to dominate, especially from the ridiculously over the top narcissistic nonsense in the user names.
It bothers me that this one issue is somehow immune from any questioning, any skepticism. Men can have periods. Men can be pregnant. the nonsense is just ACCEPTED and justified through complicated rationalizations and pseudoscience
To quote another skeptic…this nonsense will destroy the left
Exactly. “We Hunted the Mammoth”, especially, was diligently science- and fact-based, and at one time the statement “there is no such thing as a girl brain” would have been vehemently defended there. Times change. Now the commentariat and indeed the blog itself have become that which they once scorned: believers in woo and magical thinking, at the expense largely of women.
I never much liked the Friendly Atheist, though. It seemed like he was always trying over-hard to live up to the name of the blog, accommodating everything with a lopsided “there are two sides to every story” sort of outlook even when one side was demonstrably batshit crazy. (Oh, but the We Hunted The Mammoth commentariat would lose it were they to read that comment!) Sort of a sure, the story of Noah’s Ark is dinglewater made up by bronze-age weirdos but doesn’t it make for a nice tale, and don’t the kids enjoy the animatronic dinosaurs at the Ark Park? Clearly, it was a short step from that to “aren’t girldicks a thing?”
It is fascinating, as well as distressing, how many so-called “skeptics” are willing to assert that accepting someone else’s false premises is required in order for them to live a happy and full life. It’s of a piece with the new developments in blasphemy, wherein saying the wrong thing about someone else’s god will “hurt their religious sentiments” and thereby do them harm.
Though I’m not sure religious fanatics have quite cottoned onto the fact that threatening mass suicide is the missing piece of the puzzle to make the wokesters champion anti-blasphemy laws and norms. That’ll be a chilling day.
I believe Hemant’s moderation system is an automated ‘karma’ system. You accrue upvotes and downvotes over time, and whenever you are reported I think your score is checked to see whether your history is that of a troll or contributor, in the eyes of those casting votes. It’s a system that rewards tribalism – keep downvoting anything coming from someone you dislike, not necessarily for the post they wrote just then but often because of what they have written at other times, and they will eventually be banished and the angering thoughts purged.
And there are people there that use that system to deliberately worsen the score of someone they dislike. They will trawl through your comment history to see where you stand on an issue and then mass downvote you as far back as they have the patience to scroll. If you disable the publicly viewable function of your disqus account, the complaints will be bitter at their being unable to stalk you, and that alone will be taken as evidence that you are a troll.
The toxic personalities over there tolerate no view that is not their own, and the meek ‘allies’ go along with it, mouthing their mantras without ever supporting them.
Good grief, what a terrible arrangement. I hated Disqus anyway but I didn’t know it was that bad.
The Atheist Community of Austin (ACA) runs a bunch of YouTube channels/podcasts/call-in shows that I follow.
On anything having to do with religion or atheism, they are unfailingly compassionate, measured, rational, and evidence-based.
Every now and then there is some mention of trans issues, and all their tools go right out the window. They have 100% bought into the trans ideology, the accept it uncritically, and they recite the dogma.
I don’t know how people like that get that way.
I know. I used to sort of know some of those people, and I’ve never understood it.
I hadn’t thought of the downvotes being involved with an automatic system. Nobody downvoted any of my comments on other topics, and the last trans-related post I had exchanges in didn’t seem to accrue any more downvotes than usual, with most of the conversations between me and just one other. But if this is measured over time, I’ve been writing on issues with GIT and its consequences for something like 2 or 3 years, and that could add up.
My departure has been announced and, as I predicted, what little support I got was always balanced with an obligatory reference to my bigotry and/or unwillingness to be schooled. Bizarrely, people kept wondering what compelled me in my personal life when I was often at pains to explain that it was mainly a rational problem coupled with a concern for a conflict with women’s rights.
I really can’t take such criticism personally, it’s too obviously connected to dogma. Neither do I hold any animosity towards the other commenters, for the same reason. The problem doesn’t start with nasty individuals, but good people enthralled within a nasty ideology. “This is like gay rights; this is like BLM; this is about being kind.” One cannot kindly explain a fair position which the other side believes is, by definition, about being unkind. They would have been happy to ban a Gender Critical Mr. Rogers.
Interesting that one lone regular disagreeing with an entire blog full of people was simply too much to bear. I feel very powerful right now.
I have often thought that movement atheism contained a rational trap: we get too comfortable dealing with conservative Christians, who are Wrong on Everything. Add that to conservative Republicans also being Wrong on Everything and the temptation is to automatically hold any position they’re against. They’re against atheists, they’re against gay rights — and now they deny the existence of transgender people. Well, that’s definitive. We know how poorly they think through religion, how they filter everything through religion. Being against “trans rights” is being just like the religious, in every sense.
I repeatedly ran into the same argument, over and over: “Why aren’t you looking at the other people who hold that position and realizing that it’s wrong???” It made no difference that my reasons were very different, and in some cases the opposite. Results mattered, not reasons. You want transwoman to be beaten up in the Men’s Room.
Those who expressed the most contempt for the GC position seemed to be those with the most burning contempt for the religious.
If that’s what Friendly Atheism does, just be glad you haven’t come across Unfriendly Atheism.
Burning contempt for the religions they are not members of. The trans cult is also a religion, and I invite anyone to provide some argument or proof that it’s not. Here we have religion vs. religion, an age old tale. Same old Us vs. Them bullshit.
“Those who expressed the most contempt for the GC position seemed to be those with the most burning contempt for the religious.”
They may simply be contemptuous people. There’s certainly no lack of them online, where they can indulge themselves. As Aldous Huxley put it:
“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”
― Aldous Huxley, Chrome Yellow
@JA #11;
With a few exceptions, I didn’t get the impression that the commentariat on FA — or TRAs I’ve encountered elsewhere— were actually looking for an excuse to hurt people. I think they were very keenly focused on looking for an excuse to help people — to stand up for the marginalized and aid a cause that needed them. That’s not necessarily a bad motivation, of course. But fighting really Bad Guys with your entire heart behind it is more helpful than cajoling the misguided by reminding them of the common ground.
Another thing that’s interesting about that is that actually it’s not even true, and one can probably get people to agree that it’s not without much effort. (I haven’t tried the experiment.) We all have more common ground than uncommon. I’m pretty sure the people who write books about our cognitive biases and the like have pointed this out. We agree on a long long list of basics, but the controversies loom large because…I forget why. Maybe because we’re all assholes.
@14 This is what I think exactly, there are so many points of agreement that the differences seem ridiculous. And yes, assholes is a good term, it’s gender neutral. :)
I’ve been told that if a person considers trans women male, they are agreeing with Trump – who is wrong on everything – and is therefore 100% a Trumpist. It is a mark against any person to agree with him on anything. But when I ask such a person where they stand on an issue where Trump actually said something reasonable – rare, I know – suddenly, it’s fine to agree with a terrible person on occasion. A stopped clock is right twice a day, donchaknow. Many of them don’t even notice the internal conflict.
Then again on these marginal, or seemingly marginal points of contention, people become intractable; no amount of logic or reasoning can budge them from their convictions. It can be frustrating.
I’ve found the post in question, and am reading the remarkably belligerent rude name-calling replies to Sastra. They sound like PZ’s horde – I thought Hemant looked down on that kind of thing.
@16 Operation Warp Speed, Trump approved. Now they are against vaccination. Maybe people are just fucking stupid? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What I really think is that the mask and vaccine issues have been entirely overpoliticized. There are those on both sides who will claim partisanship no matter what it is. It’s like religions who claim morality as their own. It’s not a humanist issue at all, but either a political or religious one. They’re all full of shit if you ask me.
Hemant’s spots never change. He likes to make lofty, noble-sounding announcements every now and then, which he consistently fails to live up to. I lost patience with him during The Great Accommodationism Wars back whenever that was, sometime before decimalisation, I think. After being the most bendy-backed accomodationist of all, he made a Big, Grand Announcement that he was done with both-sideism and would have no more truck with mealy-mouthed apologia for ideas which were harmful or just plain wrong. This was to be a revolution in his style, ‘Friendly’ no more but forthright and honest, while respecting the humanity of all.
Of course, he didn’t change a thing. He enjoyed being widely praised (even by me!) for his announcement, but even if he believed it at the time, it was bullshit through and through.
I’ve never found Hemant to be friendly at all. I think he likes talking down to people. I don’t have time for that.
And if I sound angry, it’s because I am furious.
The very idea of banning someone like Sastra is obscene whether it was pulled off algorithmically or through actual on-purpose idiocy.
I don’t need to explain why banning Sastra is completely idiotic, we all know why.
Right there with you. I’m furious too – and not just banning but nuking all her comments.
: “the temptation is to automatically hold any position they’re against.”
That a given pair of beliefs have a sociological connection is no proof that they have any logical connection.
@21
I don’t think it was completely idiotic that all of Sastra’s posts were deleted, it was done to put an end to comments that are an embarrassment to said blog. Not Sastra’s comments obviously, but those responding to her with name-calling and baseless accusations. Hemant is just trying to sweep it all under the rug. He’ll do what P.Z. Myers has done and permit no debate about transgender matters on his blog. That’s just as well, given how easily provoked and abusive their commenters are on the subject.
@Ophelia;
I was curious so did a little investigating last night and discovered that only the last 1 -2 months of my comments which have been replied to have been replaced by “this comment has been marked as spam.” If I wrote something nobody replied to, there’s nothing there, not even the spam-marker. 3 months or older all appears to be untouched. My guess is that it’s either a limitation of the program, or they don’t think anyone will bother to read an old post and be mentally scarred or whatever the fear is. Erased, maybe. (“See, Sastra — how do YOU like it hurr hurr hurr…”)
I’ll mention something interesting about the discussion (though both posts are getting old.) Over and over again I’ve been accused of “not understanding what being trans is,” of being unaware of what they’re saying and apparently just making shit up. So, in response to Hemant mentioning for the umpty-umph time that an “anti-trans” speaker “denied that trans people even exist,” I posted a shortened version of what I think they’re claiming, taken from both Kathleen Stock’s new book and what I’ve heard most often in FA:
That’s supposed to encapsulate “what being trans is,” right?
Wrong! Turns out I STILL don’t get it and am not even CLOSE! Here’s what I missed about the definition of “transgender:”
And more in the same vein. A nice bit of deflection, indeed. The only person who bothered to engage with the 3 tenets of the definition indicated they don’t think trans people are born trans, but it was hard to draw that out.
So in order to understand what “transgender” means, you either have to be transgender or accept them as members of the gender/sex they know themselves to be. It’s not a definition, it’s their LIFE.
Which reminds me of all the variations where I’d define God as, in part, the Creator of the universe, and get someone furiously disagreeing with “But God isn’t a definition— He’s MY CREATOR!” So apparently both God and Gender Identity need to have “and this is true” somewhere in the definition or we’ll be accused of “not getting it” and “deflecting.” Interesting.
SO interesting, and so…
so…
so everything you would think people who disbelieve one personal uncheckable magical belief would recognize in another.
I’m relieved about the older replies though.
(It takes more than 24 hours for posts around here to get old, I think. I for one like to beat everything all the way into the ground.)
Sastra @25, along those lines, I opened a browser tab for the Friendly Atheist post that Ophelia linked above @18. I set the comments to Sort by Newest so your discussion loads near the top. Then I did a Find on identity and I mentally replaced the hits with soul. I found results like your quote from Foxglove telling you,
That quote is like saying atheism denies the humanity of Christians. Hemant Mehta is too shallow to realize this.
@Dave Ricks:
Yes. And from that same source, in previous posts:
For some strange reason, this sounds like it might be just a bit religious, kinda like that “soul” thing you mentioned.
It is so religious. It’s dualism in all its glory, without a hint of doubt or caution or even awareness that it is dualism.
@Ophelia;
They don’t see the analogy because they keep insisting that it’s biological and located in the brain (very science-y and materialistic naturalism.) When this is combined with the idea that “nobody can tell you that you don’t know who you really are,” which is a staple of anti-bullying campaigns, therapy, and the gay pushback against being told “maybe you just haven’t found the right girl,” it becomes this huge unassailable behemoth.
“We’re not being religious— YOU’RE being religious!”
Yes, that whole “nobody can tell you who you really are/people are who they say they are/you and you alone know who you are” line of thinking is a disaster, not least because it’s so wrong. It assumes that humans all see themselves accurately, which is hilarious.
Marx Brothers: I’m Against It
It’s not just that, either. Other people can clearly see what you are not. People can tell that you’re not Napoleon, or the planet Jupiter, or three hundred pounds (when you’re only 87 pounds). People can tell that your left arm isn’t some grafted-on robotic, or alien appendage that isn’t part of your body, that you’re not a puppy, and that you’re not a woman. It’s like the demanded use of incorrect pronouns. It’s a demand for everyone else to collude with a delusion, to agree to a lie. How is this not considered an intrusion upon our autonomy and perception? That’s just it. The intrusion and control is part of the appeal. It’s catnip for narcissists. How is it that their delusion, uniquely, rates being given precedence over our experience of reality, and our ability to correctly name and describe it?
@Sastra #25
I’m struck by “A nice bit of deflection here”. Can’t even just say you’re mistaken or incorrect, must assign motives, must declare that your statement is deflection rather than a (possibly incorrect) description.
Hemant Mehta assigned everything to motives:
He went on from there, and his followers were all aboard for the ride.
Ophelia #31
And, as I keep saying, if what I claim to be is “the same as what you are”, that’s no longer just a claim about me. Now I’m making a claim about what you are as well. If x is the same as y, then y is the same as x. In the case of TIMs, they can’t claim to be the same (and hence belong in the same bathrooms, changing rooms, sporting events, domestic abuse shelters, jails etc.) as biological females by virtue of physical traits, so their whole case rests on an implicit claim about what’s going on inside other people’s heads.
Which is one reason we so detest being called “cis.”
Dave – also heavy use of “LGBTQ” as if trans is the same thing as lesbian and gay and can and must be discussed that way.
The whole “he wants LGBTQ kids to suffer” framing is strange. No, he doesn’t want these kids to suffer, he disagrees about how best to work with these kids. Even if Mahan’s approach causes suffering, Mahan would have to agree that it does, and want it to do so, in order to say he “wants kids to suffer”.
@Sackbut;
The whole “if you don’t agree with the dominant narrative about trans people then it’s because you hate them and want them to suffer” is itself a dominant narrative. Over the last few years I was repeatedly accused of hating trans people and wanting them to suffer— or hating everybody and sadistically enjoying inflicting pain for any reason — despite absolutely no evidence for that other than my being gender critical. I was even one of the very few who never called names or expressed wishes that some conservative Christian doing something distressing should die. No matter. They had my number. Those who disagreed knew to keep their mouth shut. Who wants to become the new target?
I think this conviction is driven at least in part by two beliefs:
1.) “Intent isn’t magic.” If Mahan wants to help trans people but his approach causes suffering, then there’s no significant distinction between him and a different Christian (or anyone) who believes both gay and transgender people are disgusting abominations of the Devil. Disagreeing with GIT for rational feminist reasons is the same as thinking God would not make a mistake. The end result is transwomen getting beat up in the men’s room, so nobody cares about reasons. People are going to die because of you.
2.) “Keep the focus on the suffering.” Again, nobody cares about reasons. Arguing about what “sex” and “gender” mean and trying to define what a “woman” is in order to consider whether trans women are men or women is a cheap tactic designed to distract from the very real pain and discrimination the transgender are living. “Apparently you don’t want to address that … and why would that be, hm?”
The combination of #1 and #2, with their anti-intellectualism and catastrophism, seems to end up creating a Savior on one side, and a Villain on the other.