The campaign to pretend that the BBC libeled some of the people on oolon’s block bot continues. People are working each other into a frenzy on Twitter and Facebook, pretending that they were named on Newsnight and then called abusers. Not what happened. No one was named.
Gavin Esler and Paul Mason discuss it.
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Police are investigating bomb threats made on social networking site Twitter against several female journalists.
Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman, Independent columnist Grace Dent and Time magazine’s Catherine Mayer all said they had been threatened.
Anonymous account-holders tweeted that bombs had been placed outside their homes, primed to explode at 22:47 BST.
Not a joke. Not amusing. Not “trash talk.” Not trolling. Not best dealt with by ignoring.
… Read the restFreeman, who had earlier published a column entitled “how to use the internet without being a total loser”, reported the threats to the Metropolitan Police.
The anonymous author of the tweet had “failed to understand my column”, she wrote.
An investigation into the threats, which make the tweeters
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Amanda Marcotte comments on the BBC Newsnight – Paul Mason – Twitter harassment campaign story to point out that misogynist harassers have an agenda.
… Read the restBut as awful as trolls are, they do serve a major purpose, if people are willing to accept that these are actual people expressing actual opinions, instead of imagining them, as too many people do, as almost a force of nature that the internet willed into existence and not people at all. That purpose is revealing that misogyny exists and it is widespread. Understanding that, I think, makes clear why so many other things exist: Rape culture, fundamentalist religions, the Republican Party’s guns-and-abortion obsession. There is a sea of boiling anger out there because men are
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Via the Global Secular Humanist Movement page on Facebook -
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Lindy West, like many observers, points out that a report abuse button on Twitter could be used for just more of the same abuse.
… Read the restThe thought of having my Twitter account potentially suspended by abusers in retaliation for fighting back against my own abuse is profoundly enraging. On the other hand, though, this week someone created a parody account of my dead father to harass me because of my stance on rape jokes (still going on, because COOOMEDYYYYY). And you better fucking believe I wanted a “report abuse” button for that. I can see both sides—though mostly what I see right now is how hard the entire system is rigged to fuck women over.
I used personal examples there, because
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Pakistan now has its own caped crusader, but under the cape is a burqa. Hmm.
Pakistan’s first caped crusader is a burka-clad superhero who fights school-hating baddies by night and moonlights as a gentle, compassionate schoolteacher by day.
Burka Avenger has yet to launch on TV, but she is creating quite an impression in a country where female literacy is estimated at a grim 12% and the Taliban are continuing a campaign which has seen hundreds of girls’ schools blown up in the north-west.
That sounds quite good, in a way. But…a burqa?
… Read the rest“This is such an interesting way to reinforce positive social messages for kids,” Mr Rashid told the BBC. “The Burka Avenger is a great role model.
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Just because. The parrot sketch.
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Texas is racing at top speed toward the edge of a cliff again.
At least six creationists/”intelligent design” proponents succeeded in getting invited to review high school biology textbooks that publishers have submitted for adoption in Texas this year. The State Board of Education (SBOE) will decide in November which textbooks to approve. Those textbooks could be in the state’s public school science classrooms for nearly a decade.
Deep sigh.
It’s biology. It’s not church. Biology textbooks should not be reviewed according to churchy criteria. Ever.
Next question?
… Read the restFollowing are the six creationists/evolution critics we have identified so far on the biology review teams:
- Raymond Bohlin is vice president of vision outreach for Probe Ministries in Plano and a research
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Marcela Kunova on online harassment at the Huffington Post UK:
… Read the restVirtually every woman who publicly contributes to a political debate is subjected to virulent and largely anonymous online invective, or “trolling”. But it is far more than simply readers’ feedback. Trolling is intended to make women shut up – and to remind them their primary purpose is to be there for male sexual pleasure. Or not to be in public life at all.
It now seems to be an established fact: women who speak publicly get threatened with rape, physical violence, harming their relatives and murder. It is not just a bit of fun. Many are stalked and get their home addresses published. And it doesn’t really matter whether those
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That bit of Newsnight is on YouTube.
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Things get more interesting every day.
BBC Newsnight talked about the Twitter harassment tonight (that is, two and a half hours ago). Paul Mason wrote a related article about it. It traced the harassment back to none other than Rebecca’s “guys, don’t do that” video, and showed a bit of said video. Then it talked to oolon about the block bot.
Paul Mason sets the stage:
… Read the restSince I’ve been on the trail of the people threatening high-profile women with rape on Twitter I’ve learned a lot. I get a fair amount of grief on social media, usually from the kind of people who get driven to using the F-word about Keynesianism, or the Laffer curve.
Now my timeline’s
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Sometimes the 140 character limit can produce aphoristic wisdom.
From Quinn Norton for instance.
if I always tried to police my language for those out there who want to use it to attack me, I would have no words left
anyhow, the act I do which causes the most offense is living unquietly.
Recognized.… Read the rest
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This made me laugh.
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Secular Woman responds to the Salon piece on where oh where oh where are the women atheists.
Last week Salon writer Katie Engelhart asked, “Where are the Women of New Atheism?” Since she couldn’t seem to find many, or mention by name most of those she did acknowledge, we decided to give her a hand by rounding up several leaders in atheism and interviewing them ourselves. (We are taking submissions as they come in; please see the contact information below if you would like to participate!)
Most of us made much the same point – the one made by “she couldn’t seem to find many, or mention by name most of those she did acknowledge.” We said it’s stupid … Read the rest
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Colin McGinn forgot someone for his all-male contrarians list. Toby Young should be on it, because he’s very like Colin McGinn, right down to the thinking he’s funny when he isn’t.
He doesn’t like feminism. Wo, that’s original!
… Read the restRight, that’s it. I’m not shopping at the Co-op again. The bog-standard supermarket chain announced this morning that it has caved in to growing pressure from loony Left feminist campaigners and given the publishers of lads’ mags an ultimatum: place your magazines in “modesty bags” before 9 September or we’ll no longer sell them.
Needless to say, this decision has been welcomed by Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem Under-Secretary of State for Women, Equalities and Politically Correct Mumbo Jumbo Foisted On
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Soraya Chemaly offers answers to the perennial, silly question, “where are all the women in ___?” Actually it’s not in ___, but it might as well be. It’s in atheism, but it could be philosophy or gaming or politics or you know the drill.
In a Salon piece last week called, “Where are the women of new atheism?”, Katie Englehardt described what looks like diminishing participation of women in atheist life. She also encouraged atheist women to more openly embrace their beliefs.
Yeah it’s not that we don’t embrace our beliefs openly – it’s that people always forget to mention us, including Engelhart herself. Yes, Engelhart herself – in the very act of writing (yet another) article wondering … Read the rest
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… Read the restThe social networking site’s move came as a female MP called in police over rape threats she received via Twitter and detectives continued to investigate similar highly offensive messages sent to a feminist campaigner.
Caroline Criado-Perez, a writer, faced a deluge of online vitriol, including warnings that she would be killed, after she successfully lobbied for a woman to appear on a British banknote.
The trolls also targeted Stella Creasey, the Labour MP for Walthamstow in east London, for speaking out in support of Miss Criado-Perez.
Miss Creasey said she was “frankly incandescent” at Twitter’s response to the vile abuse she suffered over a 24-hour period.
One user threatened to rape her and “put the
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It will add a report abuse button.
… Read the restTwitter today said it had introduced a button for reporting abuse on its latest iPhone app and is now looking to expand this function.
A spokesman said: “The ability to report individual Tweets for abuse is currently available on Twitter for iPhone, and we plan to bring this functionality to other platforms, including Android and the web.
“We don’t comment on individual accounts. However, we have rules which people agree to abide by when they sign up to Twitter.
“We will suspend accounts that once reported to us, are found to be in breach of our rules. We encourage users to report an account for violation of the Twitter rules by using one
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Emma Barnett gets lots of sexist abuse online, and she got a couple of sexist online abusers to call in to her weekly radio program to explain why sexist abuse is a good thing.
… Read the restFirst troll up was Peter from Whitechapel. He was quick to deliver some clichés – such as if Criado-Perez can’t stand the heat on Twitter, then she should get out of the kitchen.
But not content with his trite and quite frankly misplaced advice, I pushed harder and whoah – then the real Peter emerged.
“She was asking for it,” he told me. According to this nitwit, if you campaign about issues such as keeping a woman on English banknotes, you should “expect to receive rape
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Eric Schliesser at NewApps took a look at the “Genius Project” excuse and found it well and truly creepy.
… Read the rest2. There is as Jonathan Kramnick pointed out to me on Facebook, something decidedly creepy (in a Frankenstein sense) in the very idea of Genius-Development.
3. McGinn admits to deliberately erasing the lines between the professional and the personal. This is not unique to McGinn in the discipline. As Jason Stanley noted “there is an overly personal and unprofessional aspect to the friendship and socializing in the profession.” (This feature of Stanley’s comments got lost in subsequent discussion over his views about the prevalence of assortative mating in philosophy.) We are dealing here with a phenomenon that is at the
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