From Tigerbeatdown, less than a month ago.

It’s concerted, focused, and deliberate, the effort to silence people, especially women, but not always, as I can attest, and particularly feminists, though again, not always, as I can attest, online. The readers, the consumers, the fans, may not always notice it because people are silent about it. Because this is the strategy that has been adopted, to not feed the trolls, to grin and bear it, to shut up, to put your best foot forward and rise above it.  To open your email, take note of the morning’s contents, and then quickly shuttle them to the appropriate files for future reference or forwarding to the authorities. To check on the server, fix what needs fixing, and move on with your day. To skim the comments to see what needs to be deleted, to know that when you write a post like this one, you will have to delete a lot of heinous and ugly comments, because you want to protect your readers from the sheer, naked, hate that people carry for you. To weigh, carefully, the decision to approve a comment not because there’s a problem with the content, but because you worry that the reader may be stalked by someone who will tell her that she should die for having an opinion. And when it happens to people for the first time, they think they are alone, because they don’t realise how widespread and insidious it is.

I really despise this idea that you’re supposed to “rise above it.” I fucking hate it. It makes it our problem, while the shit-throwers don’t have to do anything – they just get to go right on throwing shit. I despise the idea (that I’ve seen touted approximately seven trillion times in the last few months) that saying this is misogyny and it sucks is “playing the victim.” I beg your pardon? If you’re mugged is it “playing the victim” to say you were mugged? Sure, it’s childish to make too much of a fuss about one cross remark; it’s spoiled and whiny to talk about your own thin skin while ignoring tanks running over other people; but that doesn’t mean anyone should “rise above” deliberate calculated sustained campaigns of vituperation. If people are trying to bully you into shutting the fuck up, you really do get to resist. Not “rise above”; not ignore; resist.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

And here’s the New Statesman on the subject.

Helen Lewis-Hasteley -

The sheer volume of sexist abuse thrown at female bloggers is the internet’s festering sore: if you talk to any woman who writes online, the chances are she will instantly be able to reel off a Greatest Hits of insults. But it’s very rarely spoken about, for both sound and unsound reasons. No one likes to look like a whiner — particularly a woman writing in male-dominated fields such as politics, economics or computer games.

Hmm…I don’t seem to have that problem. Maybe that’s because I don’t see talking about it as being a whiner at all; I see it as political. That’s because it is political. The misogyny is political and talking about it is political. Goebbels was political; Radio Mille Collines was political; why would misogynist campaigns not be political?

While I won’t deny that almost all bloggers attract some extremely inflammatory comments — and LGBT or non-white ones have their own special fan clubs too — there is something distinct, identifiable and near-universal about the misogynist hate directed at women online. As New Statesman blogger David Allen Green told me: “In three years of blogging and tweeting about highly controversial political topics I have never once had any of the gender-based abuse that, say, Cath Elliott, Penny Red, or Ellie Gellard routinely receives.”

Kate Smurthwaite -

I get abusive comments on my blog or under my videos. Some is straight up hate-speech: fat, ugly, desperate or a bitch who deserves to be slapped, hit or gang-raped. Other times it is in the form of unsolicited advice: subjects I “shouldn’t” cover or opinions I “shouldn’t” have. I’d say in a typical week I get 10-20 abusive comments though there are undoubtedly more that I don’t see on other sites.

The vast majority of the abuse is gender-related. There is a clear link to internet pornography. Much of the language used could have come straight from pornographic sites.

…

There is an underlying issue though — the people who post these comments reveal a deep-seated hatred towards women. I find that unsurprising in our culture. Violent extreme pornography is normal internet fare. Gang rape and prostitution are subjects for popular music. At least 95 per cent of actual rapists are still on the streets. That’s the real problem. We need to address that.

Eleanor O’Hagan -

On the whole I’ve managed to avoid the worst threats and misogyny that other women writers endure, but I don’t think that’s luck or because my opinions are more well-argued. I think it’s because, very early on, I became conscious of how my opinions would be received and began watering them down, or not expressing them at all. I noticed that making feminist arguments led to more abuse, and as a result, I rarely wrote about feminism at all. I was so nervous about the abuse I would receive when I wrote an article about cultural misogyny. It felt like I was exposing myself as a feminist.

Yikes! That’s a scary one. Not at all surprising, but scary.

Cath Elliot -

How am I supposed to know for instance whether “Let’s hope she doesn’t end up getting stabbed in the head or something” is a throwaway comment by a sad little man sat in his bedsit in his underpants, or whether it’s something slightly more sinister that means I need to keep looking over my shoulder whenever I leave the house? At what point does “a bit of online abuse” cross over into sexual harassment or hate speech? And how do you determine when a ‘nasty comment’ has crossed a line and become a genuine threat to kill?

I.don’t.know.

That’s all I can stand to read for the moment. To be continued.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Wo. What was that we were saying about misogynist comments and sexist epithets and stereotype threat and the way racist and homophobic comments are uncool but misogyny is edgy and funny?

Maybe there’s actually something in it?

Crude insults, aggressive threats and unstinting ridicule:  it’s business as usual  in the world of website news commentary – at least for the women who regularly contribute to the national debate.

The frequency of the violent online invective – or “trolling” – levelled at female commentators and columnists is now causing some of the best known names in journalism to hesitate before publishing their opinions. As a result, women writers across the political spectrum are joining to call for a stop to the largely anonymous name-calling.

Largely anonymous, is it? Oh but surely that doesn’t matter. Surely that doesn’t make any difference, and anyway it’s a sacred right. Everybody has a sacred right to anonymously call non-anonymous women bitches and cunts. Obviously.

The columnist Laurie Penny, who writes for the Guardian, New Statesman and Independent, has decided to reveal the amount of abuse she receives in an effort to persuade online discussion forums to police threatening comments more effectively.

“I believe the time for silence is over,” Penny wrote on Friday, detailing a series of anonymous attacks on her appearance, her past and her family. The writer sees this new epidemic of misogynist abuse as tapping an old vein in British public life. Irrelevant personal attacks on women writers and thinkers go back at least to the late 18th century, she says. “The implication that a woman must be sexually appealing to be taken seriously as a thinker did not start with the internet: it’s a charge that has been used to shame and dismiss women’s ideas since long before Mary Wollstonecraft was called ‘a hyena in petticoats’. The net, however, makes it easier for boys in lonely bedrooms to become bullies.”

…

Linda Grant, who wrote a regular column for the Guardian in the late 1990s, has stopped writing online because of the unpleasant reaction. “I have given it up as a dead loss. In the past, the worst letters were filtered out before they reached me and crucially they were not anonymous,” said Grant.

“What struck me forcibly about the new online world were the violence of three kinds of attitude: islamophobia, antisemitism, and misogyny. And it was the misogyny that surprised me the most. British national newspapers have done little, if anything, to protect their women writers from violent hate-speech.”

The author and feminist writer Natasha Walter has also been deterred. “It’s one of the reasons why I’m less happy to do as much journalism as I used to, because I do feel really uncomfortable with the tone of the debate,” she said. “Under the cloak of anonymity people feel they can express anything, but I didn’t realise there were so many people reading my journalism who felt so strongly and personally antagonistic towards feminism and female writers.”

Neither did I. I do now though – boy do I ever.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Can I be mean? Can I laugh a cruel laugh at the Vatican’s shock-horror that Ireland closed its “embassy” to the Vatican on account of how it was useless?

Catholic Ireland‘s stunning decision to close its embassy to the Vatican is a huge blow to the Holy See’s prestige and may be followed by other countries which feel the missions are too expensive, diplomatic sources said on Friday.

Too expensive and too worthless, being as how the Vatican isn’t actually a real state and therefore “embassies” to it are kind of pointless. It’s been very kind and theocratic and respectful for countries to send ambassadors all this time, but all the same the Vatican really does need to learn to stand on its own two feet in their pretty red shoes.

Ireland will now be the only major country of ancient Catholic tradition
without an embassy in the Vatican.

“This is really bad for the Vatican because Ireland is the first big Catholic
country to do this and because of what Catholicism means in Irish history,” said a Vatican diplomatic source who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Yes and what does Catholicism mean in Irish history? Centuries of being priest-ridden; Magdalen laundries; industrial “schools” which were actually prisons for children; child rape; refusal to do anything about child rape.

Dublin’s foreign ministry said the embassy was being closed because “it yields no economic return” and that relations would be continued with an ambassador in Dublin.

The source said the Vatican was “extremely irritated” by the wording equating diplomatic missions with economic return, particularly as the Vatican sees its diplomatic role as promoting human values.

Promoting human values. Human values.  What the fuck does the Vatican have to do with promoting human values – the whole point of the Catholic church is that the values are goddy values, not human values. What human values? Kidnapping single women who get pregnant and then keeping them in prison at hard labor for years, after taking their babies away from them? Kidnapping the children of poor women and keeping them in prison at hard labor for years? Telling poor women their babies died and selling those babies to people with more money, as nuns and priests did in Spain? Protecting child-raping priests and bullying their victims into silence? Ordering people not to use condoms for no earthly reason, in the full knowledge that many people will die as a result, leaving orphan children? Human values – how dare the Vatican “see its diplomatic role as promoting human values”?

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

So thinking about this athletic ability/strategic intelligence test I’ve been pondering what other tests would show.

A test for atheists and theists, for instance. A test in which the subjects would be told “this tests your generosity” – or warmth or empathy or compassion or altruism or kindness. I wonder if the theists would be primed to do better while the atheists would be primed to do worse.

That would be my guess, at least. I bet I have that stereotype. Do I also consciously believe it? Yes, maybe. I at least believe it’s possible.

I don’t think theists have a better metaethics than atheists; I think the reverse. But I think they might have a better motivation…depending on what kind of god they believe in. The god that a lot of people believe in is really quite nasty, and I don’t think that god motivates much extra kindness or generosity. Nevertheless “God” is supposed to be super-good, and people who both believe that and have a sane idea of what “good” means might well be motivated to try to live up to a god of that kind. That could be enough of an extra prod that they would actually be on average a few points more generous.

What if there were a test in which subjects were told it was testing their rationality? That one is more enigmatic to me, because I don’t know which stereotype believers would buy into – ours or theirs.

Or a test in which they were told it was testing for innate scientific ability? I bet that one would skew the other way – believers doing worse, atheists doing better. I’m just guessing. Social psychology is interesting though, no question.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Thanks to Stacy Kennedy on the Stereotype threat thread I’m reading Claude Steele’s Whistling Vivaldi.

He notes that we in the US live in an individualistic society.

We don’t like to think that conditions tied to our social identities have much say in our lives, especially if we don’t want them to.

We’re supposed to rise above such things. He subscribes to that idea himself. But –

But this book offers an important qualification to this creed: that by imposing on us certain conditions of life, our social identities can strongly affect things as important as our performance in the classroom and on standardized tests, our memory capacity, our athletic performance, the pressure we feel to prove ourselves…[p 4]

We’re all subject to it. All.

Suppose you go to a psych lab and play miniature golf. Suppose you’re told before you start that the task measures “natural athletic ability.” Guess who does badly. White students. Then again suppose you’re told the task measures “sports strategic intelligence.” Guess who does badly. Black students.

Striking, isn’t it.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Changing the date on this because of renewed relevance.

A re-post of one from a year ago when I was reading God and the New Atheism by John Haught.

October 18, 2010

John Haught says, in God and the New Atheism, that gnu atheists get faith all wrong, at least from the point of view of theology, which

thinks of faith as a state of self-surrender in which one’s whole being, and not just the intellect, is experienced as being carried away into a dimension of reality that is much deeper and more real than anything that can be grasped by science and reason. [p 13]

You know…there’s a problem here. I would like to say something sober and restrained about that; I would like to give a cool, sarcasm-free account of what I think is wrong with it, for once; but I find it very hard to do that, because it seems so babyish. I can’t get past the babyish quality, because if I do, there’s nothing left. It’s babyish all the way down. And that’s typical of Haught, at least in this book. It’s just packed with baby talk.

But I’ll give it a shot. The trouble is (obviously) that “a state of self-surrender” is indistinguishable from a state of self-deception, and is the sort of state to invite self-deception. An experience of being carried away into a gurgle-gurgle sounds just like either a hallucination or a powerful daydream. Period. There’s nothing else to say about it. That’s what’s so babyish – Haught has dressed it up in the usual boring purple language to make it look significant and meaningful and maybe even true, and that’s just silly. He’s also installed a handy device for forestalling the question “yes but what exactly do you mean by ‘a dimension of reality that is much deeper and more real than’ yak yak?” by making it the faculty that asks the question the comparison. That question is an emissary from science and reason, and the dimension is much deeper and more real than that, so the question is by definition not answerable, so ha.

…there are many channels other than science through which we all experience, understand, and know the world…To take account of the evidence of subjective depth that I encounter in the face of another person, I need to adopt a stance of vulnerability. [p 45]

Bollocks. He’s talking about unconscious processing, among other things (like empathy, intuition, and the like), but those are not dependent on adopting “a stance of vulnerability.” He uses sentimentality to persuade, and it’s a babyish trick.

…if the universe is encompassed by an infinite Love, would the encounter with this ultimate reality require anything less than a posture of receptivity and readiness to surrender to its embrace?

Same thing – attempted persuasion via sentimentality. Why infinite Love? Why not infinite Hate?

Well we know why: because when you go limp and let yourself go off into a lovely fantasy, you don’t fantasize about infinite Hate. But Haught’s confidence that his fantasies reflect reality (and indeed are realer than anything else) is…foolish.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Maryam Namazie, in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo (which planned an edition with Mohammad as guest editor), features Mohammad as a guest blogger.

See some other articles she has written on free expression and the Islamic inquisition:
The Islamic Inquisition
Free expression no ifs and buts
Islam must be criticised
Offensive shomfensive
Apologise for what: On the Mohammad caricatures

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

The Coyne-Haught video has been posted.

Watching. Watching and listening to Haught. Sigh.

We should talk about cosmic purpose; it’s good to talk about cosmic purpose. Metaphors are ok.

It’s a traditional philosophical view that a smaller thing can’t understand a greater thing.

There is evidence: the evidence that comes from being carried away by something very large, very important.

If this ultimate reality has no personality, if it’s an it, it’s smaller than we are.

Religions emphasize the importance of personal transformation.

Medieval philosopher would be skeptical that science is wired to understand deeper meaning.

I’m not convinced of anything yet. Perhaps that wasn’t the goal.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

It’s a fucking outrage.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

FTB got almost 5 million pageviews for October. That’s a lot. I knew you would be pleased.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

PZ had a good time with a blogger fretting about the US moving from democracy to despotism on account of not sucking up to Catholic bishops quite enough. I took a look at the blog post and spotted an item or two for mopping up.

The Church is raising the alarm: Our religious liberty is under attack.

Cardinal Francis George was prophetic in 2009 when he said the White House had taken “the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism.” That was when President Obama broke the promise he made to Catholics at Notre Dame and made the decision to strip conscience rights from Catholic health care professionals, a ruling that could force them to either perform abortions or lose their jobs.

Really! That is shocking. So the gummint is going to force Catholic neurosurgeons and pediatricians to perform abortions or lose their jobs?

No. It’s not a matter of all Catholic health care professionals having to perform abortions if they want to keep their jobs; it’s a matter of  requiring Catholic health care professionals whose jobs include providing abortions to do the jobs they have. It’s a matter of the quite familiar principle that if you refuse to do your job, you don’t get to keep it just the same. That principle isn’t special for Catholics, it’s not made up to persecute them; it’s just that they’re the ones refusing to do the jobs they have.

In other words, beware of the self-pitying rhetoric of the offended godbotherer.

Forced Contraception. Health and Human Service has issued a regulation mandating contraceptive coverage from almost all private health insurance plans. “There is an exception for certain religious employers,” said Lori, “but to borrow from Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association, it is so incredibly narrow that it would cover only the ‘parish housekeeper.’”

Same again, you see? It’s not forced contraception. It’s not the gummint forcing everybody to be contracepted. It’s not forcing Catholics to be contracepted; it’s not forcing bishops to be contracepted. It’s mandating insurance coverage for contraception. That is not “forced contraception.” It’s funny what a hard time this devout fella has reporting accurately.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

There are more, and even worse, details at WEIT. It’s all really quite astonishing.

Well, you’re not going to see that tape—ever.  After agreeing to be taped, Haught decided that he didn’t want the video released.  Here’s what happened:

• Dr. Robert Rabel, head of the Gaines Center for the Humanities, which sponsored the debate, informed me on Sunday that Haught had requested that he did not want the video posted. Note that Haught had already agreed to be taped, so his appeal that it not be made public was a post facto decision.

• Rabel decides to honor Haught’s request on the grounds that he didn’t get permission from Haught in advance to post the video.  I find this bizarre because the whole idea of taping the event is to make the debate more public, and because previous debates in this series have been posted.  The idea of posting is implicit when one agrees to be taped, and, believe me, I would not have gone back on that agreement even if I had lost badly. That is not only bad form, but intellectually dishonest.

• Eager to at least get my part out, I asked Rabel to just edit the tape omitting John’s talk and his answers in the question session.  Rabel refuses, saying that it would be too much trouble.

• I ask Rabel for Haught’s email address so I can try to persuade the theologian to change his mind, or at least find out why he won’t sanction posting of the video (Rabel, Haught, and I had all exchanged three-way emails before the debate, but I lost Haught’s address).  Rabel refuses to give me the email address because he wants to “stay out of it,” telling me that I can search for it online.  I find the address and email Haught, asking politely if he won’t change his mind about releasing the video, and, if not, requesting his reason.

• Unwilling to give up, I ask Rabel for a copy of the tape—offering to pay any expenses for it—so that I can edit out Haught’s part and just post mine.  Rabel refuses, saying that he “didn’t think that would work.”

• Haught responds to my email asking him to change his mind. His short response says that the event “failed to meet what I consider to be reasonable standards of fruitful academic exchange,” and that he would have no further comment.

Extraordinary! Rude, obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, not to mention obviously uncourageous.

And in an update, we learn that Rabel is even threatening Coyne with legal action.

UPDATE:  I have received an email from Dr. Rabel, asserting that I have instigated people to write him emails, and claiming that some of those emails have been abusive, calling him a coward and so on.  I did not of course ask readers to write any emails, nor did I provide any email addresses.  But if you write to Rabel or Haught on your own initiative, please be polite!  There is no point in name-calling in such emails; the issue is one of free inquiry, and if you expect to achieve a result (and you won’t anyway, I suspect), you have to be polite.  Anyway, Rabel has threatened legal action against me, so don’t make it worse!

I wonder if Rabel will threaten Coyne with further legal action because I said all this was rude,  obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, and obviously uncourageous. I don’t know – what do you think? Is it libelous to call a set of actions rude, obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, and obviously uncourageous? Or is it within the limits of free speech to call a set of actions rude, obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, not to mention obviously uncourageous. I think it’s only accurate to say these actions were rude, obstructionist, disobliging, uncollegial, unfair, and obviously uncourageous.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

How tacky. I’ve disliked everything I’ve read by John Haught, and it turns out he’s a sore loser, too.

John Haught is suppressing the video of the debate he had with Jerry Coyne. He signed off on permission before the debate, but has now reneged, claiming he did poorly because of the presence of “Jerry’s groupies”, and that the event “failed to meet what I consider to be reasonable standards of fruitful academic exchange”. He got his ass kicked, in other words.

Bad, bad, very bad.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)