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“I’m sorry I did what I clearly meant to do and don’t regret in the slightest”

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Rush Limbaugh issued a double backflip notpology today for his slut/prostitute/sex tape remarks about Sandra  Fluke, saying first that he didn’t mean to attack her personally (err…how do you say that someone is a slut who needs to learn how to have sex less on accident?), and then continuing to misrepresent the content of and reason for her testimony at the Democratic hearing, portraying it as “discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress.” Sorry Rush, but no. It did not amount to a verbal rendition of a Penthouse letter. In fact, it did not address Fluke’s personal sex life at all. He then went on to say that it is not our business to know what is going on in anyone’s bedroom, which a) is an odd statement for someone who just got done demanding sex tapes from someone, and b) a complaint better directed toward someone like Rick Santorum who is actually advocating that bedroom activities are the government’s business. Not Fluke, and not Pelosi, and not anyone who wants birth control to be covered by insurance.

Rush Limbaugh is a troll, as Rachel Maddow points out in the video below. Not a mythical creature who lives under a bridge, but someone who gets his jollies–and in this case makes a living– by being an asshole and pushing people’s buttons. I hope people continue to push his advertisers to stop sponsoring a platform on which he can do so.

Obama calling Sandra Fluke to commend her and condemn what Limbaugh said was like the school principal calling you into his office to apologize for the behavior of the school bully. It’s a good gesture, but really the other students need to sign on in order for it to have enough significance. Not lend any support to the bully, and certainly not give him a radio show.

…and then there was “skank.”

…and then there was “skank.” published on 1 Comment on …and then there was “skank.”

Georgetown University’s president, John J. DeGioia, repudiated Rush Limbaugh’s slut/prostitute/sex tape diatribe  today by not exactly endorsing Sandra Fluke’s message, but noting that her testimony had been respectful and sincere while condemning speech such as Limbaugh’s as “misogynistic, vitriolic, and a misrepresentation of the position of our student.”

He did this in an email sent to everyone on campus, but it apparently fell on deaf ears blind eyes for fellow Georgetown student Angela Morabito, who published a charming editorial in The College Conservative today declaring that a) Sandra Fluke does not speak for her, and certainly not for Georgetown in general, b) the effort to make birth control covered by insurance is a plot of Nancy Pelosi and the Liberal Media (I capitalize all of that because she did, and also because it amuses me to think of it as a band, which presumably plays jazz or soft rock) and c) Fluke does speak for “skanks who don’t want to take responsibility for their own choices.”

Also, Morabito apparently shares Limbaugh’s mistaken belief that the number of pills you need to take is dependent on how much sex you’re having, because she advises Fluke to consider not having so much sex that it puts her in financial peril.

Now, something important to remember– technically speaking, both condoms and the pill are methods of birth control which are used by men and women, assuming they’re using them to have sex with each other and neither party has an interest in transmitting disease or creating a pregnancy. Using condoms and the pill when you have those interests is having sex responsibly, as is using a condom in addition to some other pregnancy prevention device such as an IUD. The condom can prevent both disease and pregnancy, but it’s safer to have backup and, as discussed in the previous post, there are all kinds of reasons why women might want to be on the pill apart from that.

So ultimately, both Limbaugh and Morabito are saying that women and men having the kind of sex they want, with the kind of protection they want, with added benefits to a health of a lot of the women in this particular equation is not valuable because it could allow for women to have as much sex as they want. With men, presumably, who get no epithets thrown at them.

Hmmm.

I’ve taken the pill since I was 16, originally and still for medical reasons though I appreciate the birth control aspect as well, and never once realized that it constitutes grounds for Viagra-popping pundits and moralizing college students to make pronouncements on my sexual habits. The more you know!

ETA: Adam Serwer wrote the following in a piece today titled Dear Rush Limbaugh: Birth Control Doesn’t Work Like Viagra:

The “subsidizing-your-sex-life” argument Limbaugh is making is related to, but nevertheless distinct from the religious objection to birth control. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has opposed even allowing insurance companies to foot the bill for contraception for employees of Catholic institutions. However, it has no objection in principle to prescription drug coverage that includes Viagra. Neither, one assumes, does Rush Limbaugh. So if he wants to contend that covering birth control is akin to paying women for sex, let’s hear him explain why men who want their insurance to cover their erectile dysfunction pills are not “sluts” or “prostitutes.”

I’m fine with this rubber spine o’ mine

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Really? Because it looks like that…hurts.

As a follow-up to this post, I feel compelled to share these:

 

R.K. Milholland’s Super Stupor! comic mocking such costumes and poses
Comics are almost certainly the most sexist medium in geekdom. By that I do not mean that a) all comics are sexist, b) all consumers of comics are sexist, c) all creators of comics are sexist, or d) there’s something inherent about comics that means they must be sexist. I’m saying that if you’re looking for a realm of geekery in which the value of women can be most clearly summed up in terms of T&A, comics– let’s be more specific; superhero comics– are it. Devoting a column to the most ridiculously sexist superhero costumes must have been hard work…like identifying the five most annoying contestants on Big Brother or the most painful Jackass experiments.
Why would this be the case? My best guess is that it’s because comics are about the most “fantasy” that you can get. Sure, other geeky things are fictional– you can give any amount of hit points to a monster that players must battle. You can dress a character on Star Trek however you want. You can make a character in a video game have breasts like beach balls. But in a comic, the character depicted is both a) visible and b) static. You can see her, but need not be concerned with how her body would move without violating the laws of physics in many directions. I’ve seen some grossly out of proportion characters in video games, but never one (for example) whose breasts faced the same direction as her backside. But that’s so common an occurrence in comic books that it has become cliche (ow ow ow, on that last one especially).

So having the ability to build a fantastic creation from the ground up plus the means to depict it clearly visually plus not being constrained in any way by physics is what makes it possible to dive head first into not only supernormal stimulus, but also fictitious and highly dubious psychology. Comic book women not only lack spines; they lack any concern about not having spines. They are quite happy to fight crime while clad in (sometimes only in) butt floss. Fiction’s handy that way– you can impose any condition on the characters and make them like it, because after all…you’re the story-teller.

In comparison, actual pornography seems comforting. At least those are real people (more or less), engaging in real activities that people can do in real life. But cross comics with porn and you get….animated pornography! No, I’m not going to link you to examples of such– you’ve got Google, and I don’t want to be responsible for introducing such a thing into anyone’s life.

(Hat tip to Pharyngula, where the following exchange took place:

P.Z.: I guess there’s a reason I haven’t read any mainstream comics in 30 years, too.
Antiochus Epiphanes: I can think of a better reason. Because you are a grown-up with access to actual books.
We Are Ing: Don’t hold your nose too much higher or you’ll fall over.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Feral Fembeast:  Maus? Barefoot Gen? Fun Home? My Cancer Year? Fuck ‘em, they can’t be “actual books” because they have pictures an’ all. Antiochus said so.
Antiochus Epiphanes: To be fair, these are “actual” books, being bound printed matter. And one of them was awarded a Pulitzer prize. So there’s that. And you can read one in less than an hour which is pretty awesome if you don’t like to read.
stringer:  To be fair these are actual Scotsmen.

Fair cop. I’d recommend Maus, parts 1 and 2, to anybody.)

Why serial cheating beats open marriage

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…according to Newt Gingrich: because anything other than one man and one woman is pagan.

Seriously:

It’s pretty simple: marriage is between a man and a woman. This is a historic doctrine driven deep into the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and it’s a perfect example of what I mean by the rise of paganism. The effort to create alternatives to marriage between a man and a woman are perfectly natural pagan behaviors, but they are a fundamental violation of our civilization.

This man is a historian. But he doesn’t know that….

1. There are multiple instances in the Bible of men having more than one wife– at a time, even– without any mention of it being wrong.
2. Monogamous relationships between one man and one woman were not invented in the Bible, and certainly existed outside of the historical and geographic contexts it describes.
3. When Jesus addressed the issue, he specially mentioned divorce in order to condemn it.

Wait, who am I kidding? He knows these things. A person could never have read a page of the Bible and known– or at least, have been able to make an educated guess– about all of them.  There is no coherent sense in which opposite sex monogamous marriage can be described as belonging to the Bible, or to Christianity, and not to “pagans” (whatever Newt imagines those to be), certainly without also such description being compelled to drag along behind it, like a ball on a chain, the fact that Newt’s own behavior has been condemned just as explicitly as any other deviation from that standard.

This sin– the sin of repeated infidelity and divorce, followed by remarriage– is one to which Newt and his kind are susceptible, so it is ignored. Other sins, the ones that represent minor or no temptation at all, can safely be vilified as pagan, criminal, unAmerican. That’s how scoundrels manage to wave Bibles– by carefully expunging the parts that condemn their own behavior as much as anyone else’s.

Jen McCreight has not rage quit

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…though she has been tempted. It’s easy to see why:

Becoming a board member of a secular non-profit and being invited as a speaker to events has really opened my eyes. You start interacting with a diverse group of people who have been in the movement a long time, and you get a behind-the-scenes glimpse. Some organizations (like the SSA) are truly awesome and run by lovely human beings. Some… boy, if you guys only knew. The people are the same. Some are the most genuinely lovely individuals I have ever met. But some are manipulative, petty, passive aggressive, selfish, sexist, racist, homophobic, ablist, or just downright mean. Yes, I came to the shocking realization that atheists and skeptics are also human. The problem is that without this insider knowledge, it’s incredibly difficult to distinguish the lovely from the loathsome. The bigger problem is that I see no real solution, and am stuck cringing silently when someone is unwittingly praising a person who’s really a Giant Fucking Asshole. Because the politics involved between people or between organizations is enormous. I feel gross staying silent and playing the game, but I often have no choice. This isn’t because I’m afraid of losing readers – contrary to popular belief, I don’t just blog For Teh Hitz, and the money I make off blogging is not enough to float in swimming pools full of hundred dollar bills. This isn’t because I’m afraid of losing a potential writing career – my actual job is as a scientist, remember? It’s because there are people and organizations in the movement I genuinely care about, and stirring certain pots would cause them harm. I’m not sure why I’m even writing this post other than to get it off my chest. It probably comes off as totally vague and pointless to those of you who aren’t privy to the back stories and insider knowledge. But maybe that’s the message. That when some of us insiders rant and rave, and it comes off as vague and pointless…it’s probably because you’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg, and we forget your view. You can’t see under the water to glimpse the private emails, the angry phone calls, and the years of history. So many people think other bloggers and I do anything for controversy because we’ll occasionally speak up against big names. What should concern you are the things we can’t talk about.

They do concern me, but not that much. There are ways that significant figures in a movement can be Giant Fucking Assholes that matter in terms of the movement, and ways that don’t really. And when they don’t really, or when they do and you know but feel like you can’t talk about it, it’s an unpleasant thing to deal with. But deal with it we must. 

Rillion’s Law applied

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I have my own law, devised under the screen name Rillion which I’ve used since about 2000. The law isn’t quite that old, but it has existed at least since 2005. Rillion’s Law states:

The amount of knowledge a person has about a particular subject is inversely proportional to his or her tendency to make universal, authoritative statements about it.

Yes, I know how pretentious it is to devise your own law– especially if you’re not remotely famous. And doing so is not an indication that I am in any way immune to the phenomenon in question. Quite to the contrary, the law exists in part to remind me to avoid it, and I don’t always succeed.

The reason that this phenomenon exists– generalizing grossly and erroneously with an air of authority about things you don’t really understand– is because people want to have opinions. They want to have a stance to offer when asked, or when they haven’t been asked, and lack of knowledge on a subject makes one incredibly susceptible to glossing over important distinctions within it. Generalizing itself is not a bad thing. It’s a necessary thing in situations when you need to focus on a small number of salient facts about a group to which other facts are irrelevant. Generalizing is important in science, where these situations are frequent. But it should always be done while ensuring that generalizing is what you’re doing, that the facts you consider salient are salient for your purposes but might not be for someone else, and that the facts you’re dismissing as irrelevant to the statements you’re making are in fact irrelevant. Otherwise you end up grouping things together for bad reasons and disregarding important causal factors. You become an example of Rillion’s Law in action. And when the universal, authoritative statements you’re making are about people and end up grossly misrepresenting them, those people are not going to be very happy.

Jason Thibeault, who blogs as Lousy Canuck at Freethought Blogs, posted yesterday asking something along these lines: Are universal statements always a problem? His answer: maybe. He says:

It occurs to me that many (“ALL!” “Shh.”) of our problems around these parts viz every new conflagration, from our recent conversation with Mallorie Nasrallah, to thestatement by DJ Grothe that we only blog about controversial topics for hits, to the pushback against a Rebecca Watson blog title as though it meant she hates all atheists, is the fact that we as skeptics seem to have a problem with blanket universals even when they are not intended as universals. They are the quickest single thing you can do to engender hatred amongst your commentariat. Much of the problem with Mallorie’s open letter to the skeptical community has to do with the universal statement that skeptics “shouldn’t change for anyone”. While she claims she wrote the letter solely for the purpose of expressing her own views of the community, she presented it in the midst of a number of controversies wherein people have been demonstrably misogynistic to bloggers like Greta Christina or new women in the community like the 15 year old Lunam on r/atheism. This caused some outrage in the context of the greater fight we’ve been waging — the fight against entrenched sexism in our communities. For context, I always use the plural for communities because neither atheism nor skepticism have a single overarching community, much less a greater community for either one. We have a set of loosely allied communities, each manifesting their own sets of values and beliefs. The commenters and bloggers at Freethought Blogs appear to have clustered around beliefs in humanism as well as skepticism and atheism, and will fight a misogynist comment as quickly as a creationist or woo-peddling one. I don’t believe that the levels of sexism in our collective online communities are very different from the background of the internet as a whole, no matter how much of a safe space we’ve carved out here. However, there are three things that are important and mitigating factors to that blanket statement about the levels of sexism. 1: The internet is, as a whole, a far cruder and crasser place than real life, owing largely to anonymity and the Greater Interent Fuckwad Theory.
2: Our real-life meatspace communities are very often being organized via the internet, so there’s a lot of overlap between what goes on in meatspace and what came from the internet to begin with.
3: we have experienced by my estimation a significant amount more pushback than most other communities built around other topics, against the very idea that people shouldn’t use sexist slurs at women, or treat women like they’re just there as dating pool material, because either of those are likely to result in women who might otherwise participate bleeding away from our communities. DJ Grothe described our fight against this pushback as being solely intended to drive controvery, to drive a wedge in the community, done solely for the hits. What makes this a short-sighted blanket statement is in part the misidentification of the problem, the misidentification of what it is we’re trying to do about it, and the misidentification of what’s actually being said about the community as a whole. Stephanie’s post itemizing the times when he’s exhibited this sort of blind spot for ongoing fights was met with doubling down, and DJ declared that the whole episode served as proof to him that that’s all the feminist bloggers in our community want to do is to tear other communities apart over sexism. 

Hasty generalization is, as we know, a basic fallacy. Rillion’s Law is really just an observation about what causes people to generalize hastily. And what Nasrallah and Grothe have done, it seems, is hastily generalize about both the problem of sexism in skeptical communities and the people speaking out about it. Greta Christina has a post up today about Grothe, doing her best to be fair and give him the benefit of the doubt, but it’s pretty damning nonetheless.

I have two questions for JREF President D.J. Grothe. They’re questions that I find unsettling and upsetting to even consider, questions I wouldn’t have thought I’d have to ask a leader of a major organization in this movement. But I’ve been reading some things Grothe has been saying recently… and apparently, I have to ask. Question #1: Do you really think there is any context in which making threats of gender-based, sexualized violence — towards a person of any gender, but especially towards a female writer and her readers — can be justified? Question #2: Do you really think that feminist bloggers in the atheist/ skeptical movements are writing about sexism and misogyny, and pointing out examples of it in our communities, primarily so we can manufacture controversy and draw traffic? I would like to think that the answers to both questions is an obvious and resounding “No.” D.J. and I have had some differences, but we’ve also had a largely cordial and even friendly professional relationship. I know he thinks of himself as an ally in the effort to make the atheist/ skeptical movements more welcoming to women. And I know that he takes pride — justifiably so — in, among other things, drawing more women to TAM, both as speakers and attendees. But I’ve been following the discussion on Almost Diamonds about him, and about an apparent pattern he has of defending sexist language and behavior in the atheist/ skeptical communities. I’ve been reading the things he himself has been saying in this conversation. And I am extremely distressed to realize that the answers to both these questions appears to be, “Yes.”

In essence, Greta Christina is saying “I think you’re making some universal authoritative statements without being aware of the ignorance that enables you to make them. Or at least, I hope you are, because it’s better than the alternative. And I’m giving you the opportunity to look around, understand, and amend your position on that new understanding.”  That’s a charitable reading. No doubt she’s extending it because Grothe has a reputation for being an understanding, charitable guy himself. Perhaps to a fault, and in the wrong direction, in this case.

It’s not fun for female bloggers, scientists, and activists to keep talking about the sexism thing, trust me. It’s a pain in the ass, in large part because it means getting dismissed as a mere attention-seeker in precisely the way Grothe appears to be doing. But the existence of sexism in communities that presume to be so rational and fair-minded in the first place is a roadblock to even being comfortable to participate in the first place, and– sorry– people who aren’t confronted with that on a regular basis can find it easy to forget, and dismiss as complainers people who do have to deal with it and speak up about it.

*removes needle from the broken record*

ETA: Grothe’s reply

The boy’s club

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And here’s Jen McCreight’s take on both the Twitter argument last night (I had a resolution against taking part in those, and of course broke it. Good thing it wasn’t a New Year’s resolution) and the article itself.  Jen takes more time to work through the straw men (or straw women) in the article than I did, and points out something very important: the “I made it into the boy’s club” argument. Mallorie says:

I did not enter this relationship with the intention of changing you all. I am enough of a grownup to know that is a terrible idea. I entered because I love science, truth, questioning, and curiosity. I love candor, and occasionally rough humor, I love the ingroup demeanor we have with each other. And I have stayed because you never insisted on seeing me as a girl.

And Jen responds:

And there’s the first part of a declaration of being part of the boy’s club. “Thanks for not seeing me as an icky girl.”

Mallorie says:

I came because I love what we are about, and I love you guys too. Don’t ever adulterate yourselves in an attempt to try to lure more vagina possessing patrons. I can think of nothing more tragic and disingenuous. Keep joking with me, keeping being open and awesome and curious and funny, keep trying to fuck me, because I cant think of any reason why I would rather fuck someone else, we are after all human. I assure you I’ll return the favor.

Jen replies:

And there’s part two: “Keep trying to fuck me.” That statement effectively communicates “I put out, unlike those sexless naggers, so you should keep me around.” It’s a straw man in itself, since no one is telling men to stop flirting or trying to get laid. We’re asking that you respect the boundaries that we clearly state, understand when no means no, and time your advances for appropriate social situations. Flirt with us in the pub night following the group discussion, not while we’re organizing a campaign to fight the anti-vax movement. And I’m not sure how this logically flows with her insistence that guys don’t see her gender or treat her differently. Unless the whole skeptical community that she’s addressing is bisexual, and she’s the only one in on that secret.

I would think it a bit rude to attribute the sentiment “Keep trying to fuck me” to Mallorie except that it’s right there in the text.

Here’s the thing: whenever there are some women complaining about sexual harassment or misogyny in a group or movement, there will be a certain number of other women who claim that it doesn’t exist because a) they don’t see it, or b) they don’t have a problem with it, or both. And the latter group is not necessarily wrong– there’s certainly no shortage of people willing to make a stink over nothing. I have a pretty dark sense of humor, and Jen describes herself as “the skeptical movement’s fucking patron saint of boob jokes.” She’s probably right about that. There are certainly jokes that would outrage others that both of us would find funny. But the actual complaint isn’t about jokes that went too far. It’s not even about jokes. It was about harassment and attacks that were clearly intended as such, and you’d never know from Mallorie’s article and Penn’s enthusiastic support of it that either of them are even aware of that. So the comments, addressed (again) to the entire skeptical community, amount to “You people who are accused of it should just go on harassing and attacking women because you’re not doing it to me, and I want to fuck you, so I’m ingratiating myself to you by taking your side against those complainers.”

That’s the “boy’s club” argument…such as it is.

Jen asks:

It’s salt in our wounds that Penn felt the need to promote this. Has someone so involved in the skeptical movement really not been listening to what we’ve been saying?

Very possibly. I can see why someone who has spent so much of his career (as Penn has) fighting prudes and blowhards could take this article written by a friend at face value, and assume that it’s just that sort of people making mountains out of molehills. He seemed genuinely baffled last night by the reaction. But that doesn’t excuse the kind of myopia at play here. I can only see that as just not paying attention.

ETA: Mallorie’s reply is priceless.  A couple of people said to her “You know, if you had just written to say that even though some women have felt attacked in the skeptical community, you don’t, no one would have cared.” They’re right. It would have been an accurate and non-straw-man statement, but no one would have cared.

ETA #2: You know, speaking up about prejudice sucks. It’s really not more fun to be someone like Jen than someone like Mallorie, in large part because of attacks from people like Mallorie. Being a killjoy is not enjoyable, but bashing on killjoys absolutely is.

ETA #3: It appears Mallorie knew full well what the topics of contention were, but misrepresented them and those presenting them anyway. Go figure.

The straw man boxing match

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I love Penn Jillette. I do, very much. But he does tend to carry the denouncement of prudes and blowhards so far that it gets to the point of practically denying that authentic assholes exist. Let me explain.

Earlier this evening, Penn tweeted a link to this letter addressed openly to the “skeptical community from a fellow atheist, who just so happens to be female,” Mallorie Nasrallah. In it, Nasrallah describes herself as having been a member of this community for a very long time and having been welcomed, and now finds herself “distressed” to see that some people are raising the question of how to be more welcoming to women. She asks “Who made you think you weren’t?” The answers, one might suggest, can be found in incidents like this, this, this, this, and this…if one is even half-heartedly keeping up to date on the situation. Nasrallah, it seems, is not. Ignorance of such is the charitable explanation I can come up with for her having declared to the skeptical community at large,

With all my heart I beg you to not make monsters of your gender. I like your jokes. I like your humor. I like the casualness and ease that no gender distinction has allowed us all over the years.

You have never hurt or insulted me, you have brought me years of joy, wonderful debate, and stimulating conversation. By forgetting to see me as a woman, you have treated me as an equal, as a comrade, as a friend.

If your jokes or teasing manner offend some people, so the fuck what? Someone will always be offended by jokes, never let them make you believe that you are guilty of something worse simply because of your gender. If you want to make boob jokes thats fine by me, you have after all been making dick jokes since you were old enough to make jokes. Plus they are funny as hell. If you want to go free and uncensored among a group of like minded people, if you want to try to acquire sex from a like minded person, awesome, do it, sex and friendship are amazing. You are not a monster for wanting these things.  You are not a monster for attempting to acquire them.  I type this with all of the warmth and sorrow of someone entangled in the most beautiful of bromances. I love you guys. And I’d like to slap the silly assholes who have given you the idea that you have mistreated me.

Because, you see….it’s all about how Nasrallah personally has been treated, and how she sees herself as having been treated. Her perception and interests are the only things that matter. Jenn McCreight and I’m sure many others joined in pointing this out.

Never mind that most of the people concerned about misogyny in skepticism are not saying anything like that

  • jokes and teasing are bad
  • boob and dick jokes are bad
  • people are guilty of something because of their gender
  • people who don’t like boob and dick jokes are trying to censor people
  • people who make boob and dick jokes are monsters
  • people who want sex from the like-minded are monsters
Rather, they’re saying things more like “Not cool,” in response to things like “Go fuck yourself with a knife you irrational cunt.” Which, I believe, does not generally fall into any of the above categories.  
What’s funny is that this is a reminder (among other things, needless to say) not to treat skeptical women as somehow different. Guys who love skeptical women, guys who are our “bros,” will feel comfortable to relax and make baudy jokes without assuming that the only point in having those women around is to sleep with them and/or or joke about how worthwhile it might or might not be to sleep with them. Or, you know, rape them. So here’s my open letter:
Hi Mallorie,
The people complaining about misogyny in skepticism clearly are not objecting to the treatment that you have received. It seems that you have been treated graciously, which is fortunate. That is not everyone’s experience. Please do not disparage their complaints about that experience by expressing a desire to “slap” them, or by misrepresenting the basis of their issues. If you see people making irrational complaints, try and identify them specifically so that people like Penn do not tweet about how right you are, because you’re his friend, while failing to acknowledge that the reality of conflict going on isn’t restricted to your personal experience. I’m not even saying that the bully is still a bully even if he treats you nicely. I’m saying that the fact that some people who sort of resemble the bully but treat you nicely exist doesn’t mean that the bully doesn’t exist. That’s a lot more nuanced and therefore convoluted, but the truth always is.  
And Penn, I’m saying that you need to look at the bigger picture before jumping behind someone’s decree to an entire community based on her personal experience.

For added reading: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/01/02/pennjillette-your-friend-is-wrong/

The power of “Not cool”

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“Dude, we don’t want to see that shit. Here, have a sip of
Douche-Be-Gone so you’ll stop being so…you know.”

Concerning the topic of online sexual harassment against women, atheist and otherwise, and what to do about it, Stephanie Zvan defends the use of social disapproval:

I’ve even seen a couple of people say things like, “Social disapproval is a technique used against atheists by theists. We shouldn’t be doing that ourselves.” All told, the consensus among those feeling challenged for doing nothing is that doing something is dangerously repressive–when that doing something is registering that one simply does not approve. They’re even a tiny bit right. Social disapproval is indeed a potent force. It strongly shapes our societies and our interactions with each other. Being outcast presents a form of stress that is bad for us all on its own. However, where these folks are a tiny bit right, they’re also a whole heaping lot wrong. The problem with this sort of social pressure isn’t that it is inherently wrong. As I mentioned, this is a big part of how we add order and structure to our societies. The problem is when we use to enforce pointless conformity, when we shame or cast out those who are doing nothing wrong, nothing that will harm our society. For the record, sexism, misogyny, objectification, normalizing rape through nudge-nudge-wink-wink humor, threats to bodily autonomy–these are all doing something wrong. They all hurt a substantial portion of our society, and I don’t just mean women. This is not comparable to not believing in a god. Those behaviors are all also prevalent in our society, though less than they used to be before we started confronting them. They are being held in place by a narrative that, while it can no longer claim that nobody at all is concerned by this behavior, the only people who are concerned are “thin-skinned pussies” and “irrational cunts.” That means that if you–yes, you–don’t speak up when something like this happens right in front of you, you feed that narrative. This is what “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” means. The only thing that can really cut through that narrative is more voices that come from within the groups where this behavior happens. No bullying or questing for bad behavior required. You don’t have to be any more eloquent than “Dude, don’t go there” or “It’s only a joke if it’s funny” or “I’m with X on this” to back up someone else already taking the heat for standing up. Or you can just use the brilliant line that should become a meme as of yesterday: “I am also the internet and I don’t want to see that shit.”

Absolutely right. There is nothing intrinsic to social disapproval that makes it a bad thing. It can be a very good thing when it comes to dissuading people from treating each other terribly, even in an atmosphere like the internet where people are often allowed to be anonymous or anonymous-but-trackable (using screen names). The problem with social disapproval of atheists isn’t the what but the why— the shaming and alienation of people for something about them which has nothing to do with their actual worth or moral standing. When what you are is a troll and/or a jerk, however, your moral standing goes down and calling you on it is entirely appropriate. Social pressure can simply be what happens when a bunch of people call you on it, and it works.

Online communities can and usually do also have systems of moderation in place, automated or warm-blooded, whose job it is to regulate and prevent obnoxious and hateful speech. But the most likely message someone who is being arsey gets from being penalized from one of these is “The Man is keeping me down! Violation of freedom of speech!” Which is bollocks, of course– no private community has an obligation to protect the dissemination of odious speech if the owners/ruling powers do not desire it. Still, I think if possible it’s always better to rely on the community at large to make it highly uncomfortable to express nasty sentiments, so that the perpetrators know that the negative reaction isn’t just from one person or a few who happen to be on a power trip or have it out for them personally.

The corollary to the rule of using social pressure to combat internet douchiness is, of course, that those employing it should be able to explain what’s wrong with the speech to which they’re objecting so strenuously. A Picard facepalm might seem sufficient:

…but if not (and usually not), you should be able to articulate the problem, no matter how obvious it appears to you. For one thing, it makes the group disapproval amount to more than “There are a bunch of us who frown on that sort of thing” and create an opportunity for the jerk to comprehend the reason for the perception of his/her jerkiness.

This, in turn, creates an opportunity for him/her to correct the behavior. To maybe even apologize. It does happen! And when it does, that’s the cue to stop with the social disapproval. If the “Dude, that’s messed up”-ing doesn’t end even after the behavior has stopped and admitted fault, the message sent will instead be that he/she can’t do anything right, at least from now on, thereby negating any positive consequence of all of the disapproval. It will probably even counter-productively convey the impression that the disapproving crowd are irrational blowhards and there’s no point in listening to their exclamations. Our jerk in question may even nurse a messiah complex for him/herself as a result, thus becoming further bolstered against any future accusations of jerkiness. With great power comes great responsibility– so it is with the power of “not cool.”

One further thing to note is that online as well as in RL, the most effective social disapproval is likely to come from peers– the people most familiar and similar to the jerk. Yes, pro-active peer pressure! Don’t make the target of the jerkiness and his/her peers the only ones to speak up about it. It might not feel like the best thing, but the thoughts of people who are more like the jerk yet are willing to stick their necks out on the target’s behalf are probably going to carry more weight with the jerk, because they can’t be as easily dismissed as “whiners” or “killjoys” (or “thin-skinned pussies” or “irrational cunts”). Yeah, that’s not rational, but jerks often aren’t– that’s why they’re jerks. It’s also not rational to suddenly start listening to complaints about your behavior just because they start coming from someone you otherwise admire (even if they’re not exactly a peer), but damned if that doesn’t work pretty well too.

I do understand the complaint about misogyny being especially vexing to see in the atheist/skeptical community because they’re supposed to be so…well, skeptical. But though the same thing which makes a person mistrusting of stories about ghosts or Bigfoot should also make them doubt the premise that the most important thing about women is their appearance and general fuckability, justifying turning every internet discussion to that topic, all too often it doesn’t. As we have seen. So it’s high time to start calling out the people who pride themselves on rejecting the former but practice the latter as though it’s going out of style. And if you’ve been doing the calling out, the socially disapproving, all along…my hat’s off to you. Keep it up, please.

The daughter test, in Egypt

The daughter test, in Egypt published on 2 Comments on The daughter test, in Egypt

From the Huffington Post’s list of 2011’s Most Absurd Quotes About Women– And Who Said Them:

An anonymous Egyptian general spoke to CNN about why female protestors arrested during anti-Mubarak demonstrations were strip-searched and forced to submit to virginity tests. “The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and [drugs]…We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place. None of them were.”