What was that we were saying about sexist epithets? Five years ago?
Dear oh dear. The slow-motion train wreck lumbers on its way, tumbling down the slope uprooting trees and squashing goats.
Apparently this move has been in the works for a long time, with Camp Quest. Apparently before Twatson fell down and threw a temper tantrum and demanded everyone kiss her invisible boo-boo.
If you search for “twatson” on that post there are currently 58 matches, with the number of comments at 519. Including
How could I think that this was in the works for a while, AND think that this was in response to Twatson and the Bitch Brigade?
Oy.
This blogger has put herself squarely in the Paglia/Palin category. When someone calls people names of this kind and argues from solipsism (“Only MY experiences count!”), especially in these particular circumstances, s/he forfeits the right to be considered an adult with a functioning cortex. Furthermore, no matter how much her father figures pat her on the head, I doubt they will give her concrete rewards for the Quisling-cum-clown act.
It really is like watching a slow crash. Clunk. Clunk. Grind. Clunk.
This is pretty depressing. It’s so sad to see people who really should know better doing stuff like this. I have seen your battles against such sexist language on RD.net. That was bad enough when men were engaged in it.
Please, everyone go read Jennifer Ouellette’s post today as an antidote to erv’s monumental stupidity.
sometimes I’d like to shake some people and tell them “It’s about the atheism, stupid!”….there are way too many fucking outsized egos out there. I just wish they would all let this thing go and apologize to one another
I mean – FFS there are real issues
This is really, really depressing. The sexist language, and the “invisible boo boo” stuff. It’s unfortunate that so many people feel obliged to keep dismissing and ignoring what RW actually said. This whole incident is really like a series of cars careening into other cars, in an endless chain reaction collision.
Oh that one! Salty told me it was good but she forgot to tell me where it is. Thanks G.
Sexism is a “real” issue, Sailor. Don’t make a false moral equivalency. Don’t say “they should all kiss and make up” as if everyone were behaving equally badly. Do not scoff at the very real wound that’s been revealed under this scab. And please, for the love of fuck, don’t do it here – I’m fed right up to the top of my head with this shit and on a hair trigger.
Sailor, yeah, the only real issues are the ones that aren’t about women, amirite?
Be off to your nice boys club, then. Have fun. Buh-bye!
You sent me here earlier, so I’ll cross-post my comment from there over here:
There seems to be a level of anger above and beyond the obvious surface stuff. From my perspective: occasionally I love you guys, most times I like you guys, sometimes you guys annoy me. Never in a million years am I ever really angry at anyone here, and I never actually hate any of you. As frustrated as I get sometimes, the use of something like “Twatson” for me denotes a level of fury that I could never possibly justify towards any of you online or based on something you said at a conference somewhere.
Trust me… I’m a fucking inch from venting all of my shit online, all the pain and sorrow, and none of it involves someone online being rude to me.
So much of the entire episode is so depressing, but “Twatson,” from a female blogger I used to respect, is really heart-rending. Ugh.
ERV really seems to have lost the plot somewhere. Or perhaps it’s just me.
I can knock down walls if you put them in front of me, I just call it being stubborn, often willfully stubborn, I don’t consider it necessarily a great warrior state.
Yeah ‘Twatson’ is just wrong, no matter which way you look at it. Talk about minimizing and objectifying someone. Reduced to genitalia.
That thread is utterly appalling. Just when you think the misogyny and mendacity can’t stoop to baser levels, it does just that.
I don’t know any of these people, but the main message that I’m getting from this is that Abbie Smith really seems to want Rebecca Watson’s attention.
I still so very much want to stay out of this. You’ve no idea. It isn’t my fight. It isn’t. I don’t want to take sides.
But here’s the thing: If you are a woman, you may not use the words “bitch”, “twat” or “cunt” as an insult against another woman.
All women, especially those who identify as “feminist” may define that term as it pleases them, and I will listen to their definition, even if it does not agree with mine. But no definition of “feminism” includes the use of these fighting words against other women.
There is much I admire about Abbie. Still do. This is just depressing and sad.
I was hoping I remembered wrong and that was a male.
Damn.
What was that new female blogger I saw yesterday…
Totes disappointed by ERV about this whole deal. Respect down quite significantly.
Good work from Dawkins, I don’t see what ERV is adding to anything right now.
I too deplore whatever deplorable thing we are deploring today. Damned deplorable. Take that, deplorable people!
It’s pretty damn sad when you stoop to mimicking he-who-shall-not-be-named. That @#$! even tried to pick a fight with me over there as if I care one bit what he says. He just spews misogyny and nastiness, and I am beyond sick of his anti-gay GOProud idiocy. There is nothing left to do but block and ignore him.
Aratina Cage:
Being anti-“I’m always the victim” isn’t anti-gay. It’s anti-“I’m always the victim”. Do learn the difference.
For one who doesn’t care what I think, my name certainly is in your mouth on an awful lot of blogs . . .
Tootles, pumpkin.
Not my blog, and not my place, but Jesus Christ in a sandwich shop, it would just be a day-maker if you pissed off, Justicar.
I suggest avoiding engaging Justicar. He is singularly hostile, dishonest, and disgusting. Care for a sample?
That’s just one of his charming droppings at ERVs place. Really, I strenuously suggest refusing to speak to him or respond to anything he says here.
Oh, and like Marta said, not my blog, not my place, but yeah, it would be nice not to have Ophelia’s comfortable parlor fouled up with the neighborhood trash.
Yes, there’s the ticket – censor people you don’t like. I expect nothing less from this gang.
Say, Ophelia, I have looked hard, but I’ve failed to find your post calling Rebecca Watson et al out over the “Dear Dick” campaign; I thought gender epithets were an issue for you. I’m sure there’s a post dedicated to it and my searching skills are just insufficient.
Justicar, you are being asked to leave by the GUESTS, not the HOST. My word, you are unpleasant.
Oh god, this is one of those things that makes me just want to throw my hands up in despair. When it’s got to the point of juvenile name calling, I think that’s the point where we just have to sit down and take people’s internets away until they can play nice with others.
Does Ophelia not read the comments section? Or is it normal style here for people to address other people to the host while stating a preferred course of action only later on to say “no, we’re just asking you; the host isn’t”?
I already know that not agreeing with every jot and tittle your gang has declared as The Truth from On High has made an enemy of me to you. I mean, nonconformity to your dogma is strictly prohibited. I get it. I also get why it is you guys/gals heavily advocate censorship and banning and stifling of disagreement (it makes it look like you have a uniform position and all that jazz), but to talk about people in the third person to the host to have them censored and then pretending it’s anything than that? Goodness gracious – as I noted to Ophelia last week, so long as the hatred, vitriol, gender bashing, sexism and chicanery are going in the right direction, there’s nothing too vile for her to countenance.
Well, I suppose it’s only natural for a host to have a following of like-minded people, particularly when those who aren’t like-minded are told in no uncertain terms non-agreement is not to be tolerated.
Justicar, I think one of your bulbs is unscrewed.
Marta, at least someone here thinks I have some that aren’t burned out. That’s progress of a kind.
Thank you for the courtesy of at least addressing me directly.
You all know, right, that when you respond to him you’re giving him exactly the attention he wants? And that when you do, you’re helping him turn Butterflies and Wheels into just the sort of cesspit we all are trying to avoid? Seriously. Please. Please. Don’t engage him. Ophelia has to sleep at some point and if you encourage him to go on it’s going to be a disgusting shit storm for her to clean up tomorrow morning.
Please.
I think we should just pull out a blade and cut him on the spot. That’ll teach me.
A jackass has infiltrated the Normandy and is raising the level of pretentious bullshit to near-toxic levels. Somebody get Commander Shepard on the line.
This whole affair has been very illuminating as to what sort of lowlife losers inhabit the ‘atheist, sceptical, rationalist movement’ online. So many boy-warriors! And the wanne-be boy warriors – unfortunate holders of a ‘vagina licence’! Never suspected that such a strong malevolent undercurrent of misogyny raged beneath the surface.
So fuck ERV and her cheerleaders.
Fuck the almighty dawkins for adding to that – too many assholes are using his comments (and now even a good deed, though it is funny how childcare assistance is depicted as such a ‘feminist’ issue) as cover for their own delusions and hatreds and he has yet to speak out on that.
So fuck ERV and her cheerleaders.
That will be quoted as proof of misogyny.
Reading through the comments on the linked post is … sad. I hadn’t heard of ERV before this whole kerfluffle, and the overwhelming impression I get is of someone with some pretty serious issues. I hope she is in counseling, and I mean that honestly, not as some kind of slam. So much anger, and the references to having been threatened with rape so many times … obviously she has a lot of scars. I think what we’re seeing in all this is only tangentially related to the actual events in question, springing instead from something much deeper and more serious.
Very sad, the whole thing. I tell you, though, it’s all definitely raised my awareness that there are some pretty serious issues the general atheist/skeptic community needs to work through.
That will be quoted as proof of misogyny.
Given the level wilful obtuseness seen so far, probably. So the disclaimer that I dont mean that literally.
It’s touching to see that my school playground has been so influential in informing academic rhetoric…
Justicar
July 20, 2011 at 8:56 pm
You mean the campaign that doesn’t actually exist?
http://skepchick.org/2011/07/frequently-answered-questions/
mirax
I thought that was what they wanted?
;P
Dunno Bruce. It’s rather a rather crazy world out there and I dont have enough skills to deal with them warrior loon types anyway.
However, all the male-grievance posters seem to have finally found their natural home in Abbie S’s splenetic bosom – that’s good for the rest of us, no? We can get on with the adult stuff without less histrionics now.
with less histrionics.
The comments on that article are just awful (although probably befitting the article itself). I don’t know if I’ve ever seen so many people ignoring so many obvious and salient points while still leaning over from their high horse. Even christians usually leave threads alone after a while.
Sorry! Don’t know why I didn’t just give you the link.
No, don’t try to psychoanalyze someone over the internet. I like Abbie; her whole attitude is one of raving enthusiasm for everything, and she simply doesn’t have an idle position — it’s 100% for or 100% against. This is just a case where she has gone full throttle for what I think is the wrong position.
I’d tend to file that under “has serious issues”. YMMV.
I like Abbie too, but “Twatson” and “Twatson and the Bitch Brigade” are not just the wrong position, that is, not just disagreement on the substance. I like Abbie but I loathe that post and nearly every agreeing comment on it. (And that’s without having looked at it in the last 16 hours or so.)
It’s not really that. It’s that she is also writing in support of that position in a way that makes supporting feminism and anti-sexism harder.
It’s like this: In the UK, ‘gay’ is sometimes used to mean ‘bad’, as in ‘that was a gay joke’. That language is discouraged because it’s a source of bullying of gay kids. It really is quite an effective source of bullying, and bullying of gay kids is a real problem. But if a gay celebrity started to use the word ‘gay’ to mean ‘bad’, it would do damage to that effort to stop bullying. It would be “hey, if teh gays do that, it must be alright for everyone”.
This is why ERV using language like “Twatson” is painful to watch. It empowers the bullies.
Well, that’s my view. This is yet another round of clanging and crashing over the train wreck of this matter.
My view too, Steve.
I think Abbie thinks it’s all hip and transgressive and anti-pious and good stuff like that…but if she does she’s just deluded.
@Josh: not saying sexism isn’t a real issue – it’s all around us, all the time. I was just venting exasperation that so many people are wasting so much time, energy and resources flaming each other, going from bad to worse, indulging their nasty little tempers and egos over what was a very normal observation by Rebecca Watson. That’s all.
Sexism is a real issue but it’s not solved or even addressed by these stupid flame wars!
@Cath: No Cath you are not right.
The amazing thing about this whole train wreck is that it seems to have brought out the worst in pretty much everyone. There’s really nothing more distasteful to me than the depths to which people will stoop to prove that they can claim the high ground in any situation. Is it all down to egotism, fomented by the no-holds-barred internet culture?
Jeez…
The other thing that has happened is that Abbie has created a safe place for misogynists to spew their hatred towards women to their heart’s content, with her permission and even encouragement. She’s so mad at RW and/or so committed to pressing the attack that she’s fine with people spouting some of the nastiest comments of the whole incident, since she approves of their target.
Some parts of ethics are obviously going to be situational. Some principles are actually more or less absolute, and if you are flexible with the application of them then it is more fair to say that you hold an opposite principle. If you show in practice that you’re fine with sexism as long as you get to pick the target, then it is fair to assume that you’re fine with sexism as a principle… or you’ve decided not to give the subject any serious thought.
I’m with PZ, I like Abbie, she’s just really depressing me right now. I’ve read her blog for a long time and enjoyed a lot of what she’s had to say. However, she’s got one hell of a temper, and based on some of what she’s aired on the blog, that she’s taking this position makes sense, but it’s disheartening nonetheless.
Same here. I’ve just said that on Abbie’s post – that I like her…along with that I hate that post.
I didn’t want to; I don’t want the torrent of garbage that will inevitably follow; but I just couldn’t ignore the latest.
I think Steve Zara is onto something here with the comparison with bullying language. ERV tends to act like a bully on her blog towards people who incur her displeasure. And she does have a history of using sexist slurs. Remember her chosen nickname for Chris Mooney, “Mooneytits”? Charming, indeed.
Ugh. In that comment on ERV’s, if you are talking about what I think you are talking about, I can’t believe that is who did that to you, Ophelia. Just ugh.
And ERV’s whining about a couple of people and pretending that they stand for all feminists is just a big old strawperson drenched in gasoline and ready to go up in flames.
Ophelia
This is entire episode has exposed some strange behavior in otherwise rational and reasonable people. Maybe it’s the trigger-happy, embattled mindset of skeptics and atheists.
I’m not so sure about that.
Over in the SF/fantasy nerd community, we’ve had enormous recent flame wars about racism. They were awful. It was mortifying to see people I’d respected carrying on as if they had no home training. A lot of people acted stupid and vicious, and a lot of people got hurt. On balance, though, I think the flame war had a lot of positive effects for that community. A few people are still digging into their idiotic positions, but in general, it looks to me like the general level of clue has been raised significantly.
I hope that this GenderFail 2011 of ours turns out to be as fruitful as RaceFail was.
gillt – yes. And I witheld the worst details. That particular item had me absolutely reeling.
As I just added at Abbie’s, I wouldn’t have gone public with it, but her saying it “creeps both of us out” when women email Jerry to tell him to manage her was just too………….incomplete, given that I knew she knew (because I told her) about his attempt to bully me on her behalf. If it’s creepy for women to email Jerry about her, then it’s creepy for Jerry to email me about her. So I went public with it.
That thread now is like an open sewer. I read your post there, Ophelia. As usual, there are things I don’t get. Were we all out on our missions to Mars when the whole Tom Johnson thing broke last year? We’ve all forgotten our outrage when you were called a “twat”? But it’s ok now? What the hell is the matter with people?
Ophelia, if you don’t mind telling, when you said that Coyne “ejected” you, can you be more specific? I can appreciate that you may not want to disclose these details that you regard as private, but I’d really like to know what you mean by this.
Oh, blimey, Marta – do you know, I hadn’t even made that connection. I’d forgotten all about Wally’s use of “twat.”
As for what the hell is the matter with people, boy do I ever not know.
(I agree with Cam though. I think over the long haul it could flush some toxins out of the system.)
Marta – er.
I don’t exactly regard it as “private” – because as I said, it was entirely unsolicited. But it was so vicious I feel as if I shouldn’t spell it out.
Jerry is free to confess any time he wants to, of course.
Abbie and Miranda both know, because I told them. I haven’t heard from either of them since. This mystifies me. It all does.
I’m away for awhile. Honor system. Sweetness and light all around.
We need to start making Team Ophelia T-shirts or something…
Abbie:
I see. I hope you’re reading this, Jerry. Friendship.
Ophelia, you should have the support from both sides in calling out bad behavior by naming names.
Whatever respect lost on many of the minor and major leaguers in the atheist blogosphere (again, on both sides of the fence) was obviously naive and/or unearned in the first place.
My goodness no! That is exactly where ERV is at now: Wally Smith and you-know-who level vitriol aimed at strawpeople. She didn’t just jump the shark, the shark jumped in her boat! Good luck getting that out.
I don’t think ERV is anything like WallySmith. She doesn’t sock puppet and she doesn’t lie for a living.
gillt, I didn’t say that. I said Wally Smith level vitriol. In that respect she is acting like Wally Smith.
ERV and WallySmith employ the same vocabulary?
I stand corrected.
Putting this into a different context: someone who changes their value system depending on whether they dis/like the person they’re arguing with will make a lousy scientist. I had a lab member once with the character attributes of Ms. ERV and they almost destroyed the collective productivity and morale.
@ Cam: You are part of the SF/F community? Please drop me a line!
@Cam: I hope very much that you are right. But the cost has been so high. And we’ve seem some unbelievable nastiness come out. Some people may indeed internalize all this and eventually alter their positions but it’s a hell of a long way from “twatson” to respect.
Train wreck, indeed. This all tore loose while I was on vacation and therefore largely offline, so I get home and find this massive clusterfuck stemming from what seems like a perfectly reasonable, obvious, and moderately expressed complaint by Watson — now long buried beneath meta-levels of how A reacted to B saying C about D because E…. And among people I generally like and respect. Really rather depressing.
I have one thing to say (well, I have many other things to say, about friendship for example, but I won’t):
I concur with the estimation of Abbie’s/Miranda’s and my respective abilities as intellectual “warriors” implied by the direction of Jerry Coyne’s protective impulse. Not that there was ever any doubt, but I’m pleased to see the imbalance recognized.
Well what I want to know is, how can we possibly be expected to keep track? How many friends of each friend are we required to treat as Special and Subject to Protection? Is it just two, as in this case? Or is it five, or ten, or twenty?
And do we have to give their friends Special Protection? How many levels does this go?
I don’t know; I guess I’d better get ready, to be safe. All of you who are my special friends please send me your list no later than sundown tomorrow. Please spell out exactly what sanctions I am to apply to what kind of comment and with what degree of promptness.
The trouble is, though – I know this is indelicate, but it has to be considered – the trouble is, I may just not like some of your friends. For all we know, I may just not like any of them. Then what? Do I still have to give them Special Protection? Is there an exemption for Friends of Yours That I Do Not Like? Can I leave them to their fates? Or is the law iron and binding no matter what I think of your poxy boring princessy friends?
It seems just a little bit unfair, when you think about it. After all if I invite Sally over for lunch, she doesn’t pitch a fit at me if I don’t also invite her friends Bob and Jim. Even if I invite Sally over for lunch along with my friend Jane, Sally doesn’t sulk and then corner me next to the stove to ask why I invited Jane instead of Bob and Jim. Sally understands that she has her friends and I have my friends. There may be overlap or there may not, but she doesn’t try to bully me into liking the same people she likes. She understands how tricky it is to bully me into liking anyone, on account of how I’m so bloody-minded and tiresome.
But if that’s the rule for the intertubes, who am I to argue. I’ll do my best to adjust to The New Order.
Salty, I have a lot to say, too. I will spare you all and not unload it here. But, damn. This is just not getting any better, this story.
Bruce Gorton:
The letter writing campaign of skepchick notoriety is called the “Dear Dick” campaign. Incident to Rebecca Watson’s random, non-suggestive, non-call to action about her boycott of Dawkins’ books and lectures, the letters start poring in with a note that if someone should want to send in some, she’d happily post them.
Yeah, and when PZ puts up a poll on his site and says it “needs help”, he’s not advocating that anyone go vote in it, or vote in a particular way, now is he? He’s just mildly letting it be known that there’s a poll being voted on somewhere in a direction he dislikes, and that it needs help. Not that he’s at all implying anyone who reads him should consider doing anything.
You sure aren’t good casuistry.
Yeah, that was a pretty weird power play. I think they’re afraid of the fact that you’re occasionally right and fair-minded. I don’t see why it’s necessary to indulge in that kind of underhanded ploy.
A more productive avenue would be to point out when you’ve got your head up your ass. I guess it takes effort — I mean, granted, at first, it chews up about 5 hours to go through your half-baked fisking, like trying to navigate a hedge maze created by a sadistic mental patient. But once one gets a handle on your patterns of confused casuistry and self-involvement, it’s a night of entertainment.
Congratulations, Benjamin. Few people can convey so little factual substance with so many, many words while maintaining such a high level of grammatical correctness. Now run along. People of substance are trying to talk.
This alone shows that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe you should refrain from commenting on matters you don’t understand. I realize you find it hard to resist taking petty swipes at me, but it does make you look the fool.
Heh. No.
@Sailor – Thank you! I’m glad it was just a miscommunication.
As with so much else, Justicar fails to understand the point of poll-crashing.
Poll Crashers Tilt Unscientific Polls Their Way
I think my new all-purpose insult will be “you sure aren’t good casuistry.” Quiet but devastating.
I would love to know what this is about.
Hee.
Are we going to start semi-randomly breaking into sesquipedalian loquaciousness?
Who’s we, Kemosabe?
Me and the mouse in my pocket, of course!
@Cath: thanks
Abbie just linked to a post by Gurdur.
TILT
“As for what the hell is the matter with people, boy do I ever not know.”
It’s not difficult to figure out. Sarcasm, when directed toward an individual and when not merely done for humor, is a sign of contempt or condescension or worse. Its only use is to volley with an adversary or to create an adversary.
Uh…….whut?
What’s that supposed to mean?
I actually LOL’d abruptly at John Morales’ total misunderstanding of Justicar’s example.
That was pretty good.