Author: Ophelia Benson

Someone is mean on the internet. No really?!

Yes but sometimes it is worth noting. When it’s part of an extended misogynist group-rant is one time; when it’s an ostensibly rational person going off the charts for months on end is another; when it’s a matter of singling out a few women is another.

What is it this time? Some guy called Ed Clint did a snide Facebook post about feminists always thinking people are telling them to shut up when really it’s just a matter of polite disagreement, linking to a post of Jen McCreight’s. Abbie Smith made a considerably more snide comment on Ed Clint’s post.

‎*newsflash* Watsons LIFE is fucking around on the internet.  Thats all she does.  Jen is well on her way to being in the same position.  It is pointless to ask them to ‘shut up’ because bitching on the internet is *literally* all they have in their lives.  Normal, sane humans with real lives, yes, we should pick and choose our battles carefully.  Obviously.  But this isnt an issue of asking a normal person to be more tactful.  Youre talking to a loser-at-life and expecting them to react like a normal person.  Be pragmatic.  And dont fucking grow up to be a loser.

Jen did a post responding to what Abbie said. There was discussion – a lot of discussion. Ed Clint did another snide FB post, Abbie copied in a comment she’d posted on her blog. This comment is what it is this time.

Jen–
Rebecca Watson is a loser. She leeches off the skeptical movement to exist. Its disgusting.

You have (had?) potential to be more. And you are flushing it down the toilet.

You are in graduate school. That is your job. You spend way too much time going to these stupid conferences (hey, like Skepticon this weekend), that are not even tangentially related to your job (contrary to what you wrote in the small portion of your proposal I read). You are behaving in an utterly unprofessional manner, posting pics of seminars you attend making fun of them, accusing your professors and classmates of being anti-science. The portion of your proposal I read was horrible, to the point of being shockingly horrible for someone of your education and writing experience. It bears absolutely no resemblance to my NIH proposal (which was funded).

Which brings me to the worst part of your behavior, and why I know you are well on your way to becoming a professional loser– your proposal sucked, and you blamed your critique on your colleagues supposed anti-science. Youve already said your proposal isnt going to get funded ‘because youre an atheist’ or something stupid like that. And do I remember right, you didnt get into Harvard ‘because youre an atheist’ too, right? When you were properly chastised for behaving inappropriately and unprofessionally, you declared that it was because they couldnt handle you speaking out. Poor you for fighting the system! Career suicide! Bitch, please. I killed a Godfather of Retrovirology, and Ive still got a career (technically, it opened up locked doors for me). Heaven forbid your brain entertain the thought, for a moment, that you just fucked up. You are too stuck up your own ass to take responsibility for your own actions. Youre too old for this kind of immaturity.

If you went to my uni and you were in my department, you would be kicked out this coming Spring. And it would have had jack shit to do with your atheism.

But I am not your mother and you are not my problem. If you want to bitch on the internet for a living, more power to you. But you need to deal with the fact that people are going to call you a loser if that is what you choose to do with your life. Because you will be.

If you want to grow the fuck up and be a professional scientist, I would be happy to have you and happy for you.

But I just dont think its going to happen.

Jen did a post on that comment. PZ did one. There are a lot of comments. They cover the ground well.

I have little to add; mostly I just want to go on the record. I think Abbbie Smith shouldn’t say things like that publicly. I think no one should. It’s vicious, and I don’t think people should say vicious things publicly, with a few partial exceptions for hugely powerful and/or influential people like the pope and Bill O’Reilly and Sarah Palin.

I particularly detest all this “loser” talk. It’s so high-school-bully. It’s so conformist. It’s so low.

It’s a woman’s chance for martyrdom.

In her book, The Way Home, Beyond Feminism and Back To Reality, Quiverfull proponent Mary Pride explains that mothers who risk their lives for the sake of building the Kingdom of God are to be honored the same as missionaries:

“Routinely we send missionaries off to work in unsavory climates, knowing full well that they will probably come down with amoebic dysentery, be overheated (or frozen), receive inadequate medical care in second-rate hospitals, and on the average live ten years less than other people. But we don’t tell people not to be missionaries. Instead, we commend missionaries for their courage.

“Missionaries go to foreign countries to beget new Christians; mothers get pregnant to be beget new Christians. Even if maternal missionary work has some hazards (and what missionary work doesn’t?), the noble way is to face them with courage. Likewise, we really ought to honor women with medical problems … diabetes, asthma, quadriplegia, arthritis, heart problems … who are willing to serve God with their bodies as mothers.  These are the unsung heroines of the modern church.”

Not all that unsung: TLC is singing like a canary.

And now for something completely different – the anti-Michelle Duggar – Farzana Yasmin in Bangladesh.

A top human rights group in Bangladesh has praised a bride who disowned her husband within minutes of their wedding because he demanded a dowry.

Sultana Kamal of the Ask rights group said that Farzana Yasmin had taken a “principled and brave stand against the gross injustice of dowry payments”.

…

“Already she is facing recriminations with several parties trying to defame her and portray her as a loose woman. In fact she is a heroine of Bangladesh.”

Ms Yasmin’s decision to divorce her husband within minutes of their wedding in the conservative southern district of Barguna has sent shockwaves through the country, with supporters and opponents of her action fiercely arguing their
cases on Facebook.

The “10-minute bride” told the BBC that she wanted other “dowry-oppressed women” in Bangladesh to be inspired by her actions, which correspondents say appear to be without precedent.

…

Ms Yasmin – who has fled her home village to take refuge with friends and
family in Dhaka – denounced her husband as she was about to be taken to her
wedding car at the end of her marriage celebrations.

She told the BBC that he and his family wanted to delay her departure until
they had received “gifts”, including a TV and a fridge.

Brave. Good luck, Farzana Yasmin!

See what it’s like to grow up as a Quiverfull child.

I’m the oldest of 12. I was 13 when my baby sister Tess slept in my room. I was responsible for changing and feeding her in the middle of the night (she was 6 months plus…I don’t remember exactly). That was pretty much the beginning. (To be fair, she was one of two babies who was passed off so young, but still.)

My second sister (seven years younger than me) is mother to our second-youngest sister, Abby. I don’t say second mother. I say mother. After a high-risk pregnancy, mom had an emergency C-section, and Abby became Beth’s buddy. She couldn’t nurse, so she was purely bottle-fed. Beth did everything for her. Last I knew, Abby would come to Beth if she had a problem, before she would come to mom.

Beth and I shared a room for many years, and the younger girls’ room was right next door. When Tess had nightmares and hallucinations, most likely it was Beth or me (or both) who got up with her. When the little girls needed help going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, it was us again who helped (or the twins, when they got older).

It wasn’t that our parents’ room was across the house, either. It was across the hall from our rooms. They believed they deserved the right to sleep through the night while someone else took care of their kids. They believed they earned the right to sleep through the night while someone else took care of their kids.

Child labor laws would rule that out for unrelated children, but within the family it’s ok to make children do the night duty.

So I watched the Duggars for half an hour or so last night. I hadn’t seen them before apart from a few minutes once, before I knew they were Quiverfull. The whole thing is, not surprisingly, blood-curdling. Especially Jim Bob. God he’s awful – genial and ignorant and intrusive. They all went to Edinburgh (apparently because Jim-Bob is under the delusion that “King James” translated the bible), their first time ever out of the country, and perhaps even Arkansas – and on their very first afternoon there, Jim Bob got in a friendly chat with a street performer and damn if he didn’t come right out and say “what’s your faith background?” No really, he did – 90 seconds into a chat and he asks a total stranger what his religion is. When the guy said none, Jim Bob said hey look Jupiter is too cold and Venus is too hot but here it’s just right, God keeps it all working. His first day in a foreign country and he’s out there lecturing people!

And all the children have names that begin with J. Like Jim Bob; geddit? How stinking conceited is that? One is called Jinger.

But that’s just by the way. The really creepy part is where they tell the kids – all 19 of them – that Mom is pregnant again. Then there’s a flashback to the last birth – when her blood pressure skyrocketed and the baby had to be taken out 3 1/2 months early. The kid is now 2 and she looks very damn fragile. But they were all beaming about the exciting prospect of doing all that again or perhaps just plain seeing Michelle Duggar die. She told the camera that would be fine.

It’s disgusting.

And speaking of Facebook, it didn’t cover itself with glory in the matter of Charlie Hebdo, either. Charlie H says Facebook prevented CH from moderating its own Facebook page.

Charlie Hebdo’sFacebook page has been swamped with 13,000 messages, many of them threats and insults, since the publication of this week’s issue retitled Charia Hebdo and featuring a cartoon of Mohammed on its front cover.

But its moderator cannot remove them, the blog says, “under the pretext – surprise! surprise! – that Charlie Hebdo is not a ‘real’ person” and because it breaches a ban on “publications featuring nudity or other sexually suggestive content”, says the satirical paper’s blog, launched on Thursday to show that it is “reborn from the ashes”.

Therefore it just has to put up with threats. Good job, Facebook.

Reporters Without Borders is not impressed.

Press freedom group Reporters Without Borders slammed Facebook on Friday for threatening to terminate the account of a French weekly whose offices were firebombed after publishing images of the Prophet Mohammed.

RSF noted with irony that Charlie Hebdo’s staff could no longer edit comments on its Facebook “wall”, including those inciting violence, while the “enemies of freedom of expression” could continue to post hate messages.

…

“It is extremely worrying to notice that the social network seems to fall on the side of censorship and restricting the freedom to inform,” RSF said, noting that Facebook had already closed the pages of several dissidents.

Facebook shut down the page of Michael Anti because it was a pseudonym of Chinese political blogger Jing Zhao, while the Facebook group “We are all Khaled Said”, named after an Egyptian blogger killed by security forces, was closed because the group’s administrators didn’t use their real names.

Booooooo, Zuckerberg. Don’t be evil.

The rest of you: Like Charlie’s Facebook page.

Someone who blogs at the CHE under the title “Female Science Professor” ruminates on how to respond to sexist comments.

The incidents themselves are not what generates the debate on my blog. Instead, the sometimes-heated discussion focuses on how I have chosen to respond to such slights: that is, my tendency to react in a calm, polite way, perhaps with a bit of humor or gentle sarcasm. Except in extreme cases, I prefer not to respond to insulting remarks with anger, and I try to move on with the research, teaching, or service task at hand.

No wonder there’s debate.

Granted, it’s sensible to respond calmly and politely, in a professional setting. You don’t want to turn purple in the face and shout a string of oaths. I understand that. But without anger?

No.

No, and no, and no again.

Anger can be calm and polite. Be as icily calm and polite as Rex Harrison on a very cold day, but still be it with anger.

I’ll give you an example of one of these incidents: Not long ago, during a meeting of a somewhat prestigious committee, I openly disagreed with another committee member. He responded by noting that I was there only because “we needed a woman on the committee”—unlike the men, all of whom were apparently invited to serve because of their superior talents, wisdom, and experience.

He was trying to undermine me, and, therefore, my argument. My response was to ignore his statement entirely and continue to make a case for my opposing view. By remaining calm and professional, with a focus on the topic at hand, I think I was more effective than if I had acted defensively, traded insults, or walked out of the room in anger.

Yes but those three items don’t exhaust the possibilities. FSP could also have calmly but firmly pointed out the sexist nature of that remark before going on to make a case for her opposing view. (I couldn’t do that, in such a situation; I would instantly turn purple in the face and shout a string of oaths; but FSP sounds like the kind of person who could simply make the factual statement without flooding her system with adrenalin.)

I think it’s a mistake to ignore overt sexism. The more I see of it, the more I think it’s a mistake to ignore it.

H/t to Christopher Moyer for the link.

Update: Facebook caved, fixed it. Let the experts do the magic realism, please.

Facebook decides to try its hand at magic realism. If cool people like Salman Rushdie can play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, why shouldn’t Facebook do likewise? And how better to do that than by playing silly buggers with the identity of Salman Rushdie himself?

So what Facebook does is, it de-activates Salman Rushdie’s Facebook account on the grounds that it (Facebook) thinks it’s an impostor. That’s a very silly claim, because if Facebook had taken the trouble to read a few posts and comments it would have seen that it wasn’t. But then it wouldn’t have been able to play around with concepts of identity and authenticity and malleability, so it didn’t.

What it did instead was – here’s where its wit and playfulness become apparent – it told Salman Rushdie he could have his ol’ account back, re-activated, but he would have to stop calling himself Salman and call himself Ahmed, instead. World-famous Booker of Bookers-winning Ahmed Rushdie.

That’s a thigh-slapper, don’t you think?

And that sure is what Facebook is for – making its users stop using their own names and start using new ones that they’ve never used, so that nobody will be able to find them or have a clue who the fuck they are.

All very amusing except that Salman is going to quit Facebook in disgust, and he tells good jokes there, so that would be bad. I’ve been shouting at Facebook.