Update May 21 see update below.

Oh good god. Really?

Three posts on CFI about the Women in Secularism Conference – May 17-19

That’s on the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science website.

But we’re the bullies. Never forget that. We use our immense ruthless power as bloggers to argue with other bloggers, while poor tiny powerless meek obscure humble shoemaker Richard Dawkins simply tries to stamp Rebecca Watson into the ground a little bit more by re-posting Ron Lindsay comparing her to North Korea.

We’re the bullies. How does that work again?

And no those are not “three posts about the Women in Secularism Conference” – that’s false advertising. They’re three posts about Ron Lindsay’s dislike of feminism and then his fury at uppity women who dislike his thrusting of his dislike of feminism on a conference that wasn’t meant to be about his dislike of feminism. Those posts aren’t about the conference at all. You won’t find out by reading them that Maryam Namazie was a speaker and on a panel about leaving religion. You won’t read anything about Rebecca Goldstein’s talk or Katha Pollitt’s or Susan Jacoby’s. You won’t see anything about Debbie Goddard or Jamila Bey or Amanda Marcotte. The posts are not about the conference! They’re about spite and anger.

There’s nothing about the conference on the website. Do a search and the above item is the only one you’ll find.

Brilliant. I guess Ron was so pleased with the results of his three blog posts at the conference itself that he felt it would be even better to trash the conference afterwards with the help of Dawkins. What’s he going to do for an encore? Post photoshops of all the speakers? Is it heads on goats time?

Update May 21 No, that last para is not right, because Ron didn’t ask RDF to publish those posts.

Also, I of course know perfectly well that he wouldn’t actually post photoshops of all the speakers. On the other hand – if you had asked me, I would have said he would never attribute “the most intellectually dishonest piece of writing since the last communique issued by North Korea” to one of the speakers, either. I would never have guessed beforehand that he would write a thing like that about a speaker at a CFI conference. So, yes, in a sense I know he wouldn’t post photoshops of us, but in another sense, I don’t really know that I do know that. Yet I feel as if I do know it, hence phrasing it as “I know perfectly well that” he wouldn’t.

At any rate, I freely admit that was hyperbole. But then so was North Korea, and I’m not the CEO of anything.

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

Amanda Marcotte on a post of Stephanie’s:

(By the way, Amanda was at Women in Secularism 2, as you probably know, and she rocks.)

I’m sick of being targeted by people who confuse their own unwillingness to say stupid things with feminists using magical powers to stop them from saying it.

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

Now to look at some of the claims as claims. For instance in A Few Examples of “Shut Up and Listen”:

By the way, I am well aware that our communications director in his personal capacity quoted Myers approvingly. Obviously, I disagree with him on this point. The fact of that disagreement does not affect our working relationship. Paul is a great communications director. Are there limits to what CFI employees can say? Sure, but the restrictions are fairly loose. At CFI, we do not follow the rule “shut up and listen.” Generally, employees can express their opinions. There is one requirement, however. They need to supply reasons and evidence. Invoking their racial/sexual/ethnic/class identity, whatever it might be, is not considered a substitute for argument.

See, that was the problem in the talk, too. Very few people consider invoking racial/sexual/ethnic/class identity a substitute for argument, and it is insulting to imply that the people you’re addressing do. Insulting, patronizing, belittling…like a daddy talking to a chaotic hormonal teenager. Nobody invited to speak – to donate their time, as Susan Jacoby reminded us – is stupid enough to think that “I’m a woman” is a substitute for argument. That is not the point.

This is the point. Suppose employees are gathered together to express their opinions and one employee keeps getting interrupted and ignored. Suppose that employee says something and is ignored and then a few minutes later someone else says the same thing and everyone cheers and says how brilliant. Suppose things like that. Maybe it’s just One Of Those Things – or maybe the employee has a despised identity. Either way – it is possible to have a meta-discussion about the talking and interacting themselves, and about how the respective identities of the employees might be making a difference. That is not the same thing as invoking identity as a substitute for argument. That’s what “meta” means here – as Ron, a philosopher, knows perfectly well.

And – as I tried to tell Ron yesterday – “shut up and listen” is not a “rule” in any normal sense. Ok, he cites a post where PZ generalizes it into a rule – but even there it is surely clear that what is meant is “shut up for long enough to listen and take in what is being said” – not shut up and never speak again. Basically it’s just a sharper way of saying “stop interrupting” – and please don’t make me drag out all the studies of patterns of interruption between women and men.

Is saying “stop interrupting” generally seen as a Giant Law Ordering Everyone to Wait Forever While I Talk? Of course it isn’t. Is saying “dammit you keep cutting me off, it’s more of a guy thing, will you please just shut up for two minutes so that I can finish a sentence?!” generally seen as the opposite of an argument? No. It’s trying to create the necessary conditions to make an argument. Being interrupted doesn’t help, and being patronized and insulted doesn’t help.

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

A right-wing radio host gives us a look at his inner world.

Fringe right-wing radio host Pete Santilli made disturbing comments about Hillary Clinton last week, calling for sexual violence against the former secretary of state because of her alleged involvement in a bizarre conspiracy theory.

“Miss Hillary Clinton needs to be convicted, she needs to be tried, convicted and shot in the vagina,” he said. “I wanna pull the trigger. That ‘C U Next Tuesday’ has killed human beings that are in our ranks of our service.”

Santilli alleged Clinton was involved in drug trafficking in Arkansas and the killing of U.S. troops overseas.

“I want to shoot her right in the vagina and I don’t want her to die right away,” he added. “I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say, on behalf of all Americans that you’ve killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS, the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama, Obama bin Laden thing.

“That whole fake scenario, because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all. On behalf of all of those people, I’m supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.”

That’s what that guy thinks about.

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

I’m ignoring it but this one is just too weird (and I saw it because someone replied and replies always obviate blocking).

justin vacula tweeted

@AmandaMarcotte @OpheliaBenson Get out, Amanda, you not welcome here. Take your dogma elsewhere (you too, Ophelia) #WIScfi

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

Point one. From the Open Letter to the Secular Community, April 2:

Our Approach

Here are some things that we plan to do to make our online secular community a place where we can exchange ideas and views instead of insults.  We hope that others may also find this approach useful.

• Moderate blogs and forums. Any organization or individual engaged in blogging or administering a forum has an obligation to moderate comments. Slurs, threats, and so forth beget more of the same. Keeping our online spaces free of these elements creates a civil climate that makes it much easier for people to engage issues productively.

Point two. From comment # 214, by one “MosesZD”, on Ron Lindsay’s “Rebecca Watson can be compared to North Korea” post, May 18:

Mr. Lindsay,

Do yourself a favor and read Paul’s (PZ Myers) blog and how he’s trashing Vacula who is at your conference.  Vacula is one of many people that he’s spent quite some effort and time demonizing and flaming over the years.  Doing his absolute best to destroy Vacula over something

See how he describes Vacula and his inability to get interviews for Brave Heart Radio.

Why is this?  Because PZ Myers, Watson, Benson, et. al., have spent close to two years lying about him and demonizing him because he doesn’t lockstep to their non-skeptical, non-atheist belief systems.

I don’t choose that comment because it’s the worst in terms of slurs and threats but because it makes a specific false accusation against me. I haven’t lied about Vacula. I have documented his harassment of me.

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

I’m back, by the way. I’m catching up. There’s a lot of reading and scrolling to do. (That was only four days? Really? Two of which were mostly travel? Really? It feels like…I was going to say a week but actually it’s more like some unknown unit of time that’s open-ended, it’s just Way More Than The Literal Hour By Hour Time. Could be a year. Big. A big unit. A big non-specific unit.) (Wait, that sounds…oh never mind.)

I even managed to fit some high-speed touristing in there. Would you believe it? What I mean by “touristing” here is just walking as far as I can to look at the outside of as much as I can. Museums and the like have to be done with enough time or there’s no point…although now I’ve said that I remember that I did go to the Natural History Museum on last year’s high speed touristing adventure…but more just to go inside and get a quick look than to do a proper museum visit. I went to Georgetown and the canal and along the river a bit, then up between the Watergate (god damn that’s an ugly “complex”) and the Kennedy Center (which like so many buildings in DC looks as if it had been built for a species three times the size of our own) and past GWU on Friday morning. Saturday lunch break I went to the Capitol – past the National Archive which is emphatically one of those buildings designed for a much larger species of human, and the whaddyacallit, the Commerce department building, with the giant Stalinist guy fighting with a giant Stalinist horse outside it. Dang, DC is weird-looking in places. To the Capitol, I say, or rather to the edge of where the grounds begin and then up One Street, past the DC appeals court, which I found oddly exciting, and past the Museum of Buildings which is itself a glorious and weird building. I consider that a pretty heroic feat of touristing with only an hour to do it in.

Then later on Saturday with even less than an hour I went just up to Thomas Circle and along two sides of Franklin Square.

In a way I wanted to stay in the hotel and do more high-speed talking instead, but…balance, people, balance. I believe in being a balanced nerd. No, I don’t really. More like, I believe in being two kinds of nerd as opposed to just one.

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

On the plane, DC to DFW leg. To my surprise, I have free Wifi. I don’t know how that happened. (Then again the Wifi at National refused to connect, so it all comes out even.)

Sarah Moglia and I had a conversation with Ron later in the morning, shortly before I left. I’m not sure how much progress any of us made but at least we had a conversation.

Apart from that whole thing – the conference was amazing. I have so many terrific new friends – Sarah, Monette, Jason, Kim, Miri, Steve – and had so many good conversations with existing ones – Maryam, Melody, Michael DeDora, Debbie, Seanna, Steve W, Ania – oh shut up, I’ll make you all barf at this rate. But our Community is a good Community, don’t let anybody tell you different.

The panel I was on was fun, I thought. Maryam as always rocked the place. We took a solidarity picture with everyone holding a sign in support of the Bangladesh atheists.

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

I can’t begin to say how weird everything has become.

If you’ve been following the right blogs or perhaps Twitter you already know, but otherwise you don’t.

Oy.

Nevertheless – this conference has been FABULOUS. Just really brilliant. It’s way too late to do anything about that. Sorreeeeeeeee.

Some relevant posts.

Rebecca replies to Ron’s opening talk.

Ron replies to Rebecca.

Opening paragraph.

Rebecca Watson inhabits an alternate universe.  At least that is the most charitable explanation I can provide for her recent smear.  Watson has posted comments on my opening talk at Women in Secularism 2.  It may be the most intellectually dishonest piece of writing since the last communique issued by North Korea.

PZ comments on the resulting situation.

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

Oh and also – talk amongst yourselves. It looks so dead here when I’m busy elsewhere. Tell stories, complain, argue, explain, debate. Keep the lights on.

Twenty minutes before the first panel. Zoooooooooom.

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

No time! I was going to do a quick post last night just to say Rebecca Goldstein’s talk was brilliant, but using the lobby Wifi means one sees all one’s favorite people right in front of one – so, in short, I had deeply interesting conversations with Amanda Knief and Michael DeDora and Seanna Watson and others and the post didn’t get written. So: Goldstein’s talk was brilliant. I’ll tell you why later – meanwhile Miri has a post.

Maryam is on in half an hour, along with others. It’s going to be amazing.

It’s too bad Ron elected to open the conference by using a lot of anti-feminist talking points like “sister punisher” and “privilege” and “shut up and listen” by way of telling us to be Good feminists. Sigh. A couple of people have said “sister punisher” on one or two occasions; it’s hardly a central platform of the demonic Secular Feminists. Telling us, essentially, not to be stupid and dogmatic and coercive wasn’t really a good welcoming intro. (Hint: we weren’t planning to be stupid and dogmatic and coercive, and we’re not children, and we’re not thick.)

So that was a sour note, and has caused a good deal of puzzlement and irritation, but other than that – it’s being amazing.

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

I’m hee-eere – in DC. Sorry for blackout day; technical difficulty due to obstincacy of travel notebook but I’m back now. PZ is over there finishing a post he started on the plane; lobby blogging.

Stephanie took this in the hotel restaurant last night. I don’t think she’ll mind if I share it.

That’s Jason and Simon. We were having a good time. I’m looking sarcastic on purpose. I wasn’t really being sarcastic.

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

Maryam has a lovely message from Imad. (It was Imad day today, which I forgot to promote because of a deadline and a thing and another thing and an extended errand and leaving tomorrow).

I don’t feel sorry for anything I have said or for the actions I have taken part in, including the 20th February MASAYMINCH Movement, and the establishment of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Morocco – the first atheist organization in a country with Islam as the state religion.

Dear friends, we have a long way to go to break down those Middle Aged myths and ways of thinking, those oppressive and repressive rites in the name of religion or culture, those violations of human rights in the name of cultural relativism… We have to fight for this long awaited world, where people will live equally regardless of their gender, religious beliefs, or sexual orientations, where we will live in harmony with our environment, a world where wars and un-civilisation will only exist in history books.

I would like to everyone taking a stand on International Imad Day, everyone who supported me, everyone who cared about me, everyone who helped or tried to help by any means, everyone who spread the word, everyone who thought about me…

Special thanks to Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain, Norwegian Heathen Society, Atheist Alliance International, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, all the friends who hosted me taking personal risks, everyone who supported and helped me by any means, Ahmed Benchemsi, Maryam Namazie, Daniel Salte, Kacem Al-Ghazali, Marjorie Bloom, Peter Breedveld & his wife, Diana & Roy Brown, and all the members of a so special club trying to change the world.

Keep supporting reason and free thought!

In Mickey Mouse we trust,

Imad Iddine Habib

15 May 2013

Love that guy.

See also Waleed Al-Husseini’s I’m Proud to be Atheist Facebook page, which has more about Imad Day.

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

From What Is It Like to be a Woman in Philosophy: “Don’t say shitty, undermining things”: how hard can that be?

I was scheduled to be a speaker at a workshop in my area, which was canceled due to lack of funding.  The conference organizer wrote this to me:

unfortunately for the only other workshop i have in mind the organizing theme is one where you won’t fit, but on the other hand for purely cynical political reasons i will need a token woman.

When I replied that I didn’t want to be his token anything and found his attitude disrespectful, he told me that the cancelled workshop

was 50% women, so if any of them were tokens they would have a hard time guessing this.

I tried one more time:

Yes, but please also don’t tell them shitty, undermining things.  “I will need a token woman” is a rotten thing to say to somebody you want to come to your conferences.  (Sometimes friends can say rotten things to each other as jokes, but that one definitely crossed a line.)

His reply?

sorry if you found the joke offensive, but that is the effect of the “gendered conference campaign” which it seems almost everybody but me thinks is a great idea.

I’m almost certainly not organizing any more conferences, thanks for your interest in participating in my nonexistent one.

So familiar. So, very, familiar.

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

Gender policing? What gender policing? Garance Franke-Ruta says what gender policing.

Niall Ferguson dismisses economist John Maynard Keynes’s work as the product of an “effete” sensibility more interested in talking ballet than building a family with his wife.

Daily Caller writer Matthew K. Lewis blasts coverage of the gun control debate and declares, “Newsrooms should also hire a few journalists who aren’t effete liberal p*ssies.”

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas dismisses fellow Republicans who considered voting for a de minimis gun-control bill as “squishes.”

Effete squish liberal pussies; we hates’em. We hates women too, because women are where all that effete squish liberal pussiness comes from.

This isn’t policy talk oriented toward coming up with the greatest good for the greatest number, reducing human suffering, or even securing the nation against foreign threats. This is something else — something far more primal. This is about perceptions of manliness, and about policy as an affirmation of masculine identity.

And what is masculine identity?

Not woman-like.

…today I think we see more and more expressions of cultural identity from white men qua white men, as they seek to claim a place of their own in the multicultural firmament. Sometimes this identity is described as being Southern, or rural; other times, as Lewis puts it, it’s about “redneck” culture. He contrasts this with having “a cosmopolitan background,” a.k.a. hailing from a racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse urban community.

“Cosmopolitan” also means Jewish, as does “New York.”

Lewis stuck with his insult against members of the press that they are pussies. By his use of asterisks I think we can all be certain he did not mean that they were kittenish; he meant that they are like women. That they are weak. Inferior. Because women are weak and inferior; they are vulnerable where men are impenetrable.

And they can’t throw. Effete squish liberal pussies throw like girls, and that’s why we hates’em.

Luckily, violence is not the only form of force. There are other ways of creating change.

Public shaming also has a power. Ferguson apologized because he was subjected to a great deal of criticism from people in his own world, people whose opinions mattered to his sense of group belonging. Cruz is getting some blowback from people in his own party who think that he’s acting like an immature jerk (not my words), though I doubt that will slow or stop his rise as a public figure unless it turns into high-level on-the-record shaming from his squishy party colleagues or cuts into his fundraising ability. Majority Leader Harry Reid has sought to help define him during these early days of Cruz’s tenure in the Senate, calling him a “schoolyard bully.”

Well quite. What you get when you have people who hate everthing perceived as female and weak is, inevitably, a bunch of bullies. Not pretend bullies like “FTBullies” but real ones. Public shaming of that mindset is much needed.

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

A guest post by Athyco in a comment on A new way to stir up trouble.

It has been a knotted mass of stupid from the beginning, and each one contributes their little bit to the mess.

I looked over the comments to Karla’s It’s Personal blog post dismissing this WBC contact, then clicked on her banner to look at some other post titles. I wasn’t looking for anything that would relate to a tweet/con problem, but one surprised me.

Did you know that Karla, as one of four organizers, was not at all happy to have a tweet to #NEPABlogCon (single day September 2012 con for Northeast Pennsylvania bloggers) from someone who wasn’t interested in promoting/attending the con?

She writes:

I used TweetChat to livestream hashtagged tweets on the screen behind a presenter who did not bring a visual presentation. As the presenter was half way through his excellent talk on how to monetize a blog, the audience was exposed to the following tweet on the screen behind him:

How many people were raped at #NEPABlogCon? Like, 50/60? I trust fake neck things were banned; they always lead to rape.

Do you know who this horrid FTB/Skepchick/A+/Social Justice Warrior was?  (/sarcasm)  It was ElevatorGATE. The very one who started the Brave Hero stuff that Justin Vacula and Karla Porter use as the title of their radio show. The one who has AmbrosiaX (declared “twitter sister” by Karla Porter) as his co-author on WP. Karla continued:

Can you imagine the confusion and even horror experienced by attendees of a blogger / social media conference seeing this on the screen behind an internationally respected presenter at the conference they were attending? The looks on their faces were quite telling. How would they know the tweet by @ElevatorGATE was a joke?

I knew what was going on, what the reference was to but no one else in the room did except Justin Vacula. I couldn’t allow attendees to feel uncomfortable and so I didn’t hesitate to reply:

Well, if you must know, 0.  Model attendees without a con policy. RT @ElevatorGATE: How many people were raped at the #NEPABlogCon? Like 50/60?

As you can see Matt [Dillahunty], attendees did not understand the context of @ElevatorGATE’s remark – because they have no idea whatsoever about the drama of the paranoid, sick and dysfunctional element of the online atheist ‘community’. [Excuse me, but exactly which part of the online atheist 'community' sent this tweet to your con?]

But I did, and I felt rather fortunate that I was in the room at that moment to provide the response I did to calm rather than incite. It’s called damage mitigation. If it would have been one of the other organizers in the room instead of me, I can only imagine they would have felt the event was being hijacked and assaulted for no apparent reason. [But you can't imagine the feelings of WiS2 conference organizers only a few months later. Huh.]

I’m not happy at all that any of the content filtered to this event, completely removed from the freakish sideshow that occurs on a daily basis on the Internet by people proselytising in ways harmful to one another about the viscosity of mud.

All typographical emphasis above is mine. The emphasis of “confusion and even horror,” “hijacked and assaulted,” “paranoid, sick and dysfunctional,” and “freakish sideshow” are all Karla’s.

She wrote this angry stuff to Matt Dillahunty because he commented on the situation, but I can’t find a word of reproach to ElevatorGATE for his hashtag “joke,” and I’m positive that she never reminded Justin Vacula of it when he later camped on a couple of con hashtags. I wonder if she ever explained to the other three women organizers of NEPABlogCon what it was all about.

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

Sigh. Really?

The Huffington Post on Disney’s makeover of Merida, the heroine of Brave.

She wasn’t hot enough for nine-year-old girls? Nine-year-old girls want hotties for their hero-characters?

Sure. Now let’s put a G-string on Mary Lennox. Let’s give Laura Ingalls Wilder silicone injections. How about a pair of stilettos for Harriet the Spy?

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