PZ also marvels at this idea that internet bullying doesn’t count. (PZ is at the AA Convention; I wonder if he’s dropped in on the art show yet.)

He starts with the suicide of Amanda Todd and the arrest of the guy who harassed and extorted her.

I pointed out back then that some members of the atheist community have a vile lack of empathy. I will mention it again. Miri rages against the online idiots who insist that internet activity can’t really do psychological harm — they diagnose freely over the internet, and claim that you can’t possibly develop stress disorders from the bullying tactics of the usual slymey suspects — Miri tears that argument up with

… Read the rest

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A bookend for the Sara Mayhew item, because this one strikes me as peculiarly vicious and tiny-minded.

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson     9 Nov

CFI combating superstition in Uganda http://dlvr.it/4HqYQp [link to guest post here by Bill Cooke]

Skep tickle @Ellesun         9 Nov

@OpheliaBenson Might I suggest link to original post at CFI on campus, 3/2013? Also, how to earmark? Donation link doesn’t allow that option

Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson        21 h

Bill sent me the article directly, w/o mention of link. I didn’t steal it.

Skep tickle @Ellesun

Sure, I get that, & I know he welcomed help spreading word. But as his employer, CFI may hold © on original 3/2013 post, 1/2

and AFAIK mentioning it’d been previously posted, w/ link

… Read the rest

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Mother Jones has a long article on “ElevatorGATE.”

Earlier this month, at least five women contacted Xavier Damman, the CEO of Storify, to complain that a user who goes by the handle “elevatorgate” was harassing female users via Damman’s popular social-media curation site.

I could have told them that two years ago, or any time between then and now. I did tell Twitter several times. Twitter yawned.

…the women who complained about him say he has a history of sending abusive and misogynistic messages on other social networks. Elevatorgate’s Twitter account is suspended, but his YouTube page includes a video of Rebecca Watson, a 32-year-old New Yorker who runs Skepchick, a site about feminism and atheism, edited to

… Read the rest

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No.

#bbpBox_343880208274825217 a { text-decoration:none; color:#0084B4; }#bbpBox_343880208274825217 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }It's odd nobody described the year long campaign of vilification aimed at Chris Mooney as bullying or harrassment. Oh right, no it's not...June 9, 2013 5:00 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite@PhilosophyExpJeremy Stangroom

1. It wasn’t year long. It was season long – summer 2009. It was about four months, June through September, while the promotion of Unscientific America was in high gear.
2. It wasn’t incessant. It responded to articles Mooney, or Mooney and his co-author Sheryl Kirshenbaum, wrote attacking “new atheists.”
3. It lacked a number of features of the harassment campaign that Stangroom is minimizing by tweeting this.

Still. I get that it probably felt like … Read the rest

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So there’s Nugent’s response to the shamelessly dishonest “Open Letters” demanding that he denounce me for doing something I didn’t in fact do. Let’s take a quick look at it.

Thank you for the various open letters and emails regarding the ongoing conflicts between some atheists and skeptics on an interacting range of issues including sexism and harassment, feminism and free speech, personal abuse and bullying, and the impact of these issues on the Empowering Women Through Secularism conference in Dublin on June 29 and 30.

No. He shouldn’t be saying thank you. This is just more harassment, ramped up to trying to get me denounced or disinvited from the conference. The “Open Letters” are thick with lies. He … Read the rest

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How do you demonstrate that you are too wise and grown up and sensible to feed internet drama? By ignoring it bringing it up out of the blue for no apparent reason when no one was talking about it.

Miranda Celeste Hale‏@mirandachale

@saramayhew @desertyard Has you-know-you stopped blogging about you& the pineapple yet? The last time I checked she’d done ~4352 posts on it

Sara E. Mayhew‏ @saramayhew

@mirandachale @desertyard It’s okay, Hermione, you can say the name: Ophelia Benson! Oppressed Pineapple!

Miranda Celeste Hale‏@mirandachale

@saramayhew desertyard Heh! I just died of lulz. I’ll be resurrected in 3 days’ time.

Desertyard‏@desertyard

saramayhew How many blog posts did she do about the pineapple thing? like 5 or

… Read the rest

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Sara Mayhew must have wanted more attention, because as tonyinbatavia pointed out in a comment, she posted another random tweet about Stephanie and me, apropos of nothing.

Learn to summarize someone else’s point instead of quoting huge blocks of text. Lazy blogging. Bad writing. Examples: @OpheliaBenson @szvan

She’s weirdly persistent about picking fights with me. I don’t know why, apart from wanting more attention (but then there are billions of people in the world, and I don’t know why she wants attention from me in particular). I don’t know her. I haven’t written about her here (except about these bizarre random fight-pickings). I haven’t interacted with her. But pick pick pick.

She did a more extended version (less lazy! … Read the rest

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