Rumors of discord
Kimberly Winston at Religion News Service reports on the debut of a new atheism plus social justice network, The Orbit. You may have heard about it a couple of months ago when there was a leak.
“The Orbit,” a collection of 20-plus new and existing blogs, took off Tuesday (March 15) and will focus on social justice and activism through an atheist lens.
“This group is founded from the beginning as a group dedicated to atheist social justice voices,” said Greta Christina, author of an eponymous blog on The Orbit. “We were also focusing on a diversity of voices when we were building this network from day one.”
Look at all the good they do.
“Our site is feminist and progressive,” The Orbit’s site says. “We know black lives matter and that no one is illegal, we know trans women are women and that sex work is work, and we support a socially conscious atheist movement. As atheists, we believe criticism of religion must fall within this framework.”
Is that progressive or libertarian? A lot of people I know consider it libertarian.
Many Orbit bloggers migrated from other atheist platforms at Skepchick and Patheos, but the bulk came from Freethought Blogs. Rumors of discord at these platforms spread throughout 2015, but writers say they are focused on the future.
Discord??? Surely not!
I probably shouldn’t laugh, but I do.
PZ is being a mensch about this, but he was hurt.
We need hearty, healthy disagreement . That’s not trolling, lobbing bigoted epithets, or e-stalking bloggers you disagree with. It’s also not reflexively attacking anyone who disagrees with the party line, engaging in emotional blackmail, or insisting on intellectual conformity.
That–sounds suffocating.
Ophelia, have you read P.Z’s response to the discord rumour? That there was no back channel problem, no behind the scenes arguing, and the only discord was caused by a small number of people “trolling multiple blogs”?
And now you really have to visit J&M.
While I’m disinclined to believe that he’s lying, it cannot be coincidental that the entire lineup was part of last spring’s lynch mob.
Maybe their were different back channels that decided that his lack of full cooperation in that particular endeavour had sealed the deal.
Well, unless the FTB incarnation of B&W was somehow classed as”multiple blogs’, he sure as sugar ain’t being overly honest, unless he’s counting those who defended Ophelia at Pharyngula as trolls, and that still isn’t veracity as I know it.
Nice to see that some of the worst offenders have been punished by filling the gaps left by the exodus.
Great American Satan is already trying to create drama with one of the new bloggers, with Gilliel in tow: http://freethoughtblogs.com/anjuli/2016/03/17/let-me-say-some-things-about-migrants/#comment-64
Lunatics – keys – asylum. PZ himself must have lost his marbles if he thinks giving these people a platform is a good idea.
Well he did start talking about slimy balls rolling around in his head…
Since you’ve brought up the new blogs, has anyone else noticed renewed activity from slymepitters sending feelers into the comment sections? A bit of polite brown nosing to get the foot in the door so to speak, but even when trying to be ingratiating they simply cannot help being passive aggressive wankers along the way.
No, trans women are not women. They are men. Doesn’t matter what they do to themselves, what hormones they tske, what surgery they have. Sex cannot be changed, and just as importantly for actual women, male socialisation doesn’t change with trans women, not one jot.
“Sex work” is the term preferred by pimps and traffickers, not the vast majority of prostituted women. There’s nothing feminist in any of this. On the contrary, it’s siding with the misogynists who abuse and erase women.
Not in Mano’s as far as I can tell and Ally’s got his own very different crowd. I try not to read PZ’s commentariat due to it being essentially a toxic echo chamber.
It looks like Freethought Satan has equalled Alex Gabriel’s record and banned me before I even had a chance to comment on his blog. I can fully understand why so many in the atheist world despise these people.
There seems to be a core of commenters-turned-bloggers at FtB determined to continue discord by ganging up on new bloggers there who weren’t part of the in-group. I discovered this today, by looking in on FtB for the first time in weeks because of the rumours. Blech. I probably won’t be back again for a while.
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I’ve seen the same mistake made by people from the USA – are the two words, do and due pronounced similarly in some places? Because they are quite different over here (doo and dyoo).
In the relatively brief time that the online atheist/skeptics movement has existed, it seems to have gone through more schisms than the medieval church.
It’s still dyoo over here when I see it, but late night posting and lack of proofreading might render them the same.
do/due/dew are homophones in the accent known as “General American”. I am one of the offenders.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:English_dialect-dependent_homophones#Yod-dropping_and_coalescence
Justinr, #5.
I’ve just read through those comments; where the fuck do that Satan bonehead and Gillel (spelling wrong but can’t summon up enough respect for that Social Justice Rape Apologist to care) get off with telling an ex-Muslim who is clearly very knowledgeable about how Islam really works, what with having had an insiders view for a large portion of her life and so-on, that their experiences with a handful of nice Muslims means that their knowledge of Islam trumps hers?
I haven’t come across Satan bonehead before, so know little of him except that he can’t write for shit, but to see Gillel whitesplaining Islam to an obviously intelligent brown woman with years of experience of being Muslim and living with, working with, socialising with, praying with, and learning from Muslims…..Christ on a fucking Kawasaki, does Gillel have any self-awareness at all?
If that’s how things work then as I have been in exactly three business meetings with German Representatives of German companies making a total of eight German people; dated a girl in school for a couple of months, during which time she and her family hosted a German exchange student who accompanied us everywhere; have often laughed at the humour of Henning Wehn; and unhesitatingly name ‘The Germans’ as the best of the 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers, if not the finest half hour of comedy ever, anywhere, not to mention having read all of Sven Hassel’s books, I am more than amply qualified to go and Britsplain Germany and the German people to Gillel.
But the way that Anjuli responded to them! I think I might just be a little bit in love with her mind. :-)
jstuart @8:
Such essentialist thinking!*
It matters.
If you get to the point of having to examine someone’s genitalia or run a genetic test or know their personal history to detect their transsexual status, you should at least admit that, socially if nothing else, they effectively are what they seem to be.
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* The converse of trans* ideologues — only the conclusion is reversed. (!)
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PS I know it’s not on topic, Ophelia. I shan’t continue with the digression.
@ 17 John Morales
Pity. For once, I wish you would.
S.J. Obsessive:
She strikes me as one of the most interesting bloggers among the new additions (also, more interesting than some old ones). There is still hope for FtB!
A lot of people you know (IMHO) are engaged in rhetorical shenanigans. “Libertarian” is a loaded term, at least in the US, normally associated with people who believe in meritocracy, are laissez-faire capitalists, and think everyone who wants to should have as many guns as they desire. Pretty much the opposite of The Orbit‘s ethos.
On the other hand, if you take the term literally, as “one who advocates liberty”, suffragettes were “libertarians”.
Whatever would we do without you, John Morales, to restate the obvious as if we were all too naive and inexperienced to have considered it.
S.J. Obsessive #15:
She smacked them down nicely. It will be interesting to see if the Hordelings back off or re-double their efforts with a dogpile or two.
#14 [offtopic] do & due (and dew) are also homophones in the East of England, that wretched lair of non-rhotic yod-droppers. I remember turning heads at college with my barbarous pronunciation of ‘human’ as ‘hooman’.
@8
Er yes, transwomen are women, or rather, they belong to class “transwoman” and belong to class “women” when there is overlap or when they experience oppression due to successfully passing as women. Yes, they are generally the benefactors and victims of male socialization (as we’ve seen in how the “feminists” transwomen seem to like to treat actual women) but that’s not universally true.
Transwomen are not women, full stop, but they’re not men either, and when anyone starts talking about men in dresses, mutilated men, men that are women, etc… they may as well just be Godwinning themselves for the purpose of discussion. Note that this is something that OB does not do…
[…] no it didn’t. That’s why we saw the debut of The Orbit on March 15, a new blog formed from a bunch of former FTB ones and some new […]