Via Ben Nelson, Jon Bois on Guy on the Internet. You know SIWOTI, someone is wrong on the internet? Like that, but GOTI.

Recently, as you may have seen, a feminist blogger/video gamer named Anita Sarkeesian started work on a project examining the representation, and portrayal, of women in the world of gaming. Anyone who’s played many video games lately knows that this culture isn’t quite an egalitarian Utopia. Sometimes the misogyny is sneaky and casual, and sometimes it’s almost unbelievably flagrant, but it’s perpetuated on an institutional level.

So somebody wants to examine this critically. Not militantly, not threateningly, not like she’s trying to break into your house and steal your video games. Just critically. And holy shit,

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Talk about the Streisand effect. The brilliant minds behind the original #FTBullies must be so annoyed. Poor Paula Kirby, who latched onto it and the malevolent people behind it – she must be in despair. Her ardent efforts to get people to join her in hating on us went so spectacularly wrong!

Well, Paula, that would be because it was a stupid idea to begin with. Think about it. Seriously.

Freethought blogs just isn’t an obviously and thoroughly evil thing, unless you’re a theocrat. Even if some of the bloggers are sometimes careless or dogmatic or biased; even if some of the commenters on some of the blogs are that and more; Freethought blogs the network is still not like … Read the rest

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The US government tells us there is no evidence for the existence of mermaids. In other news, the UN issues a press release saying that rain makes things get wet.

There is no evidence that mermaids exist, a US government scientific agency has said.

The National Ocean Service made the unusual declaration in response to public inquiries following a TV show on the mythical creatures.

It is thought some viewers may have mistaken the programme for a documentary.

“No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found,” the service wrote in an online post.

It is thought there might be something amiss with the US education system if people can’t distinguish between a tv show about mythical creatures and … Read the rest

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So how about those funny people at Barclays, huh?

Lord Turner, the chairman of the Financial Services Authority, described the outrage that has built up over the bank’s actions.

“The cynical greed of traders asking their colleagues to falsify their Libor submissions so that they could make bigger profits – has justifiably shocked and angered people, in particular when we are facing hard economic times provoked by the financial crisis,” he told the Financial Services Authority’s annual meeting.

Oh well, so they moved a decimal point now and then. Bankers will be bankers.

Last week, regulators in the US and UK fined Barclays £290m ($450m) for attempting to rig Libor and Euribor, the interest rates at which banks lend

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There’s glory for you.

I’ve never done that before! And doubtless never will again.

I just settled down to a few minutes of joking, and then people joined me, and then it kept going.

#FTBullies

I had to. Because of this one, by Paula Kirby, which is just too funny -

More RTs coming up. If you are sick of the #FTBullies, it is safe to speak up – YOU ARE NOT ALONE. And if you don’t speak up, who will?

Do admit. Every part is funny. Announcing future RTs, as if to a breathless world. You don’t announce future RTs! You do them or you don’t, but you don’t announce future ones, as if they’re like … Read the rest

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Of the latest FTB hangout. Kate writes at at Teen Skepchicks and the Friendly Atheist.

PZ Myers: Freethought [after now, to be FtB, for my hands] bloggers, and what we decided to talk about this time was all the stuff other than atheism that concerns us in this movement. So we thought, well, one of the things that unites all of us here concern for social justice! So what we thought we’d do is we’d just sit here and chatter about all these wonderful essential things we thought were a key part of the atheist/freethought movement that need to be acknowledged. And that means things like equality, social justice, feminism, anti-racism, anti-sexual harassment—all this grab-bag of things we’ve been … Read the rest

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Someone (handle: tigtog) left a good comment here and then made a blog post out of it for more visibility, so I’ll make a blog post out of it too for more visibility again.

On not buying into the LULZer playbook at FtB (or anywhere) #WeLoveFTB

(This will be teaching many of you to suck eggs, I know – this is mainly for lurkers and newbies, especially newbie lurkers. Apologies in advance for the tl;dr)

The idea that each pocket of cyberspace should be a clean slate for somebody with no reference to what they are known to do elsewhere is a page dusted off from the old USENet alt.syntax.tactical playbook, as is the uber-purist semantic-hacktivist stance that objecting to … Read the rest

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Good about Anderson Cooper, huh?

I’ve also been reminded recently that while as a society we are moving toward greater inclusion and equality for all people, the tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.  There continue to be far too many incidences of bullying of young people, as well as discrimination and violence against people of all ages, based on their sexual orientation, and I believe there is value in making clear where I stand.

Yep, and the same applies to atheists. Boy do young atheists get bullied in this country. Any hidden Name atheists out there? Speak up!

Anderson himself (he doesn’t mind if I call him Anderson, does he? I’ve considered him a … Read the rest

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Ok so what about Paula’s Google doc?

Sigh. Do I really care?

Oh well. Maybe a point or two.

First, since I gather this has touched a nerve in some quarters, I shall deal with the terms “feminazi” and “femistasi”. As a general principle, I oppose the use of any kind of name-calling.

Well don’t we all, provided we get to resort to it when we really want to.

For the record, I am categorically NOT suggesting that the people I have applied these terms to are, in fact, Nazis or Stasi members, or would ever have sympathized with either of them. There are many of us who are proud to be called Grammarnazis and who know perfectly well

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Oh, jesus christ.… Read the rest

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We did another Freethought blogs conversation video. We talked about social justice and facts v values and equality / happiness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkWXMiLTWBM

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There’s another thing Paula said, that’s much much more trivial, so I didn’t want to combine with the Nazi&Stasi totalitarian accusation – but it’s one that I keep getting and it’s really…a bad thing to do, so I want to address it too. Actually it’s not all that minor, as a thing to do – but it was about me, so it’s minor in that sense.

It started where I left off, with

I disagree. I see real strains of totalitarian thought over there. And I lived in a totalitarian state for 2 years.

The other said

Incidentally, I do hope you are as strident in your condemnation of threats against eg Ophelia Benson. That’s serious.

Paula said

What threats?

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I usually avoid the word “privilege,” because it’s a red rag to a bull and I’m nothing if not accommodating, but sometimes…

Like now, at Thunderfoot’s Palais de Contempt.

…what I have been trying to tell deaf ears on freethoughtblogs for the past week, that their views are poorly positioned to achieve their stated objectives and are widely unrepresentative of the wider rationalist community in:

1)      The disproportionate amount of attention it gives to sexism compared to other issues.

2)      The way that those who disagree on the matter of sexism are attacked with a disproportionate amount of strawmen, invective and branding (misogynist, MRA, etc etc).  This is a behavior more in line with bullying than free thought.

We … Read the rest

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Don’t read this unless you’re prepared to be upset and enraged. It’s Natasha Smith’s account of being grabbed, stripped and assaulted by a swarm of men in Cairo a couple of days ago. It’s horrible.

Don’t read even this brief excerpt unless you’re prepared. Trigger warning, in short, though I don’t usually like the term.

Men began to rip off my clothes. I was stripped naked. Their insatiable appetite to hurt me heightened. These men, hundreds of them, had turned from humans to animals.

Hundreds of men pulled my limbs apart and threw me around. They were scratching and clenching my breasts and forcing their fingers inside me in every possible way. So many men. All I could see

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