At the risk of splitting the “misogynist dickbaggery in the atheist movement” discussion in two, I really need to mention the amazingly well-timed Reddit meltdown of TheAmazingAtheist. It’s already been covered pretty well by PZ Myers and by Jen McCreight of BlagHag but, what the heck, I’ll throw in my two cents as well.
TheAmazingAtheist, for those who don’t follow these things, is (or was?) a popular atheist podcaster well-known, and beloved by some, for being something of a misogynist dickbag. He’s been on a anti-feminist kick for the last couple of months, winning himself many plaudits on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit, though even the MR regulars couldn’t help but notice that he’s a bit of an ass.
Well, now he’s pretty much revealed, with a series of horrendous comments on Reddit, what a complete and utter asshole he is. Let me put a second TRIGGER WARNING here (for violent talk about rape), on top of the default TRIGGER WARNING I put on all my blog posts.
The context : a discussion (which he started) about the propriety of one feminist Redditor calling themself ICumWhenIKillMen. I’m not going to defend that nickname, which obviously makes light of violence in an obnoxious way. But AmazingAthiest was apparently so troubled by this sort of language that he felt compelled to spew forth a succession of violent rape threats.
Let me draw your attention to some of the highlights. (Click here to see his whole comment history on Reddit, where he comments as terroja).
Things started going south about 19 hours ago, when he told one detractor:
I’m going to rape you with my fist.
He followed this with:
I will make you a rape victim if you don’t fuck off.
It got worse:
I’m tired of being treated like shit by you mean little cunts and then you using your rape as an excuse. Fuck you. I think we should give the guy who raped you a medal. I hope you fucking drown in rape semen, you ugly, mean-spirited cow. Actually, I don’t believe you were ever raped! What man would be tasteless enough to stick his dick into a human cesspool like you? Nice gif of a turd going into my mouth. Is that kind of like the way that rapists dick went in your pussy? Or did he use your asshole? Or was it both? Maybe you should think about it really hard for the next few hours. Relive it as much as possible. You know? Try to recall: was it my pussy or my ass?
He continued in this fashion for some time, mocking those who pointed out that rape threats can be triggering, and regularly referring to his opponents as “cunts.” (Each of the following paragraphs is from a separate comment of his; click the quotes to see the full comments in question in their original context.)
BTW, you have to admit, when I told you that I hope you drown in rape semen, you got a little wet, didn’t you? It’s okay. We’re friends now. You can share.
Yes, you read that right: he was saying this shit to a rape victim.
Eventually, theAmazingAtheist found himself stopped short by this scathing critique, from the Redditor called veerserif.
I now know that, apart from being misguided, intentionally ignorant, and quick to resort to pathetic excuses, you are also a purposefully hurtful person with no sense of empathy, and no sense of remorse. You’re not just unintentionally uninformed, you actively turn what you know against people who should be deserving of your sympathy.
I was mistaken before. I thought, maybe, just maybe, after the circlejerking and the giggling, I could try showing you the stuff you said I didn’t highlight. I could show you what feminism has done for men, or maybe tell you about the existence of sex-positive feminism.
But this… this is a whole new level.
Your reputation, in my eyes, has fallen so far that dragging it back up to “mild disgust” would require nothing short of a miracle. You pretend to care about other people, but you really don’t. You like to think that you’re a decent human being, but you fall so far short of that you’re practically on separate planes of existence.
Deliberately triggering a rape victim? Equating being called out on your bullshit to the trauma of rape?
You know what you deserve? You don’t deserve death. You don’t deserve rape. You don’t even deserve some cosmically mandated, hilarious schadenfreude which would not only be brilliant, but just.
What you deserve is for everyone to know this side of you. You deserve for anyone who thought you were a good person to know what you’ve just done. You deserve your fans’ adoration turning to hatred, you deserve the judging stares and looks that people will give you. You deserve to be reminded, every day, of what you do and what you’ve done. You deserve to remember every day that there are people who suffer more than you, that there are people who are stronger and smarter, braver, more principled and better than you, in every way, until the day you realise exactly how wrong your actions have been.
I don’t want to see bodily harm visited on you, because I don’t want to see bodily harm visited on anyone. What I do want is for you – and, for that matter, every shitposter I’ve ever seen – to learn that anonymity is not an excuse.
At this point, theAmazingAtheist backed off, offered a whiny, petulant non-apology apology for, as he put it, “SOME of the statements I made,” and wondered aloud why people were still so mad at him.
He went on to make, yep, a little video about his experience, and to offer a weird and unconvincing “rebuttal” to PZ Myers’ comments on his meltdown. See PZ Myers’ post for links to the video, as well as the rebuttal itself (which is effectively re-rebutted by Myers). See here and here for a transcript of the video.
Naturally, there’s a discussion of the meltdown on ShitRedditSays as well.
One heartening sign in all this: the massive numbers of downvotes theAmazingAtheist got for his worst comments. I hope that a significant number of them were from actual Men’s Rights Redditors, and not only from people who came into the discussion from elsewhere on Reddit, but of course there is no way of knowing.
Will atheists and MRAs drop theAmazingAtheist like a hot rape-threatening potato? Or will they start rallying around him as some sort of heroic truth teller and rape threatener? Somehow I suspect there will be a bit of both.
I must admit, I have a morbid curiosity about how this is going to play out on TAA’s TV Tropes page.
Though it’s going to be painful watching Brandon link to TAA again, as he’s so fond of, and then drag all the goalposts to try and explain why he wasn’t wrong.
MRAL, just to remind you, you’re on moderation because every single damn time I let you off moderation in the past you eventually had a fit and started lashing out with nasty personal attacks, generally directed at one specific person. So I’m not letting you off moderation, especially given how pissy you’re acting now. I let things through when I check the moderation queue, but sometimes it takes a while because, you know, I have other shit to do.
@MRAL
The difference between “cunt” and “dick”, and between the general misogyny that litters most of the internet and “ICumWhenIKillMen”, is kinda like the difference between “nigger” and “honky”.
“Think on it,” MRAL, seriously?
That’s rich coming from someone who never, EVER thinks on anything that anyone says to him here.
MRAL: Well, he just said he was sorry. He completely owned up to it in that Formspring link.
I can see why you would think that… he did what you do, “I’m sorry. I was angry, it was the heat of the moment. All you people are hating on me for things I have said I was sorry for.”
Well he’s a sad sack. He didn’t apologise, he rationalised. He’s making fucking excuses. It wasn’t one comment. It was, in his own words, eight hours of comments. It was comments he tailored to be offensive, and hurtful and vicious.
He’s not even smart enough to shut the fuck up when he’s behind. He could have said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I was angry and let it get away from me. No one should say such things.”
Then, in a couple of weeks, this whole things would have been forgotten (the internet has a short memory, and spin matters… look at Elevatorgate. Everyone is talking about how Rebecca Watson called the guy a creep. Which isn’t what happened).
But this idiot had to go and “defend” himself by spinning fables about feminism and picking on PZ Meyers, after issuing his, “I’m sorry that you got your feelings hurt when I did that understandable thing any smart person would have done.”
He’s earned every last bit of opprobrium he gets, and then some.
Honestly, feminists are some of the most vicious, unforgiving people I have ever observed (as long as it’s regarding men, of course).
Cry me a river. You go on about how you have it so bad; remember the last time you tried telling me how shitty your life is? You, who are attending BU? You who belong to the group least likely to suffer in a recession?
Not getting laid? Been there. It sucks. But I’ve been homeless too. I’ve been shot at. I’ve spent months without a shower while people tried to kill me. I’ve got an 80 percent disability. I spent more than year trying to get jobs I was qualified for (from California to Tennessee, I was completely willing to relocate), and ended up getting a retail position; and only ended up not homeless again, because one of my girlfriends hooked me up the best housemate ever (because you know, genderqueer, feminist, women like my housemate just hate white men, and if you don’t have money or look like Brad Pitt women spit on you).
You are fucking clueless. You don’t know how to take help when offered. I was willing to keep bending over to be kind, because I know how hard it is when you are young, and clueless, and feel left out; to see the help being offered, much less take it.
But there is only so long that someone can keep being that tolerant. Only so long that cluelessness, married to willfully being an asshole can be accepted.
I am done with being overly tolerant. You need to take more humanities classes, and you need to stop and think before you decide to share your opinions on who is being oppressed.
Lorrdernie: Thanks for talking to us. Hugs, if you want them. We’ve got your back, insofar as you want support.
Think on it.
Condescension really doesn’t become you, MRAL. Just makes you look like an even bigger idiot.
Because MRAL never actually thinks about anything. Get bent, asshole.
Yeah, this. Whenever someone says “I was pushed too far and I just snapped,” I think of what happens when I “snap.”
Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I run away. Sometimes I too turn into a fountain of f-bombs. Sometimes I rip things into tiny pieces and sometimes I pull on my hair and punch myself in the leg.
What I’ve never done is suddenly turned sexist, racist, homophobic, or pro-rape. Because “snapping” means doing the things I want to do but usually restrain myself from. In my case, those things are mostly “being a drama queen” and “being self-destructive.” I do not have to restrain myself from threatening to rape people. That’s not an urge I’m suppressing.
And so what if it is, Holly? If you have secret urges to make rape jokes, or even rape people, or whatever, that’s your business. As long as you don’t act on it, you’re not a bad person. I feel the same way with pedophiles.
How am I being pissy? I got angry at SRS for implicitly hating two boys who were just murdered. That’s eminently reasonable, in my opinion.
@falconer
You’re thinking of Red Letter Media. If it wasn’t for the dumb ‘serial killer’ shtick those reviews would have been perfect. 🙁
I’ve been following the TAA reddit thing closely, it’s been highly entertaining. Out of context ICumWhenIKillMen’s name is highly offensive, but it’s a response to the following redditors, and many others with “it’s funny because it doesn’t offend me” names.
http://www.reddit.com/user/I_RAPE_PEOPLE_II
http://www.reddit.com/user/gradual_nigger
ICWIKM’s flair on SRS, “acquitted by the misandrist court system” highlighs that it’s a parody. Reddit is a very dumb immature place, perhaps because of the ‘internet points’ system, and sometimes SRS stoops to the level of the other trolls.
^ Exactly. An emotional meltdown reveals the worst side of you, but it’s still a side of you.
Thirding the idea that reaching the end of ones tether does not spontaneously generate bigotry and violence.
I have a pretty short tether nowadays. I reach the end of it pretty easily. And you know what happens then?
I get sarcastic. I get really snide and patronising. I tell people that what I am telling them is very very simple if only they would shut up and listen for three seconds.
Or I get up and leave the room, because I am done having that conversation and don’t have the energy to stay, or don’t want to risk ranting at people I consider friends.
If I’m really upset then I break out the flowery insults and ill-wishes and say “fuck” a lot. I tell people they’re pathetic excuses for earthworms and I’d rather roll in camel dung than hear the poison they spit.
Rape threats? Deliberately triggering people? Insulting them for things they cannot help being? Not so much.
Uh, MRAL, the SRS people aren’t actually bigots. They don’t actually hate those boys, or any boys, explicitly or implicitly.
Well, if a boy, say, went around punching people smaller than him and laughing, they might hate that particular boy.
You’re basing your opinions about SRS on a bunch of shit you’ve just made up, based on nothing. You’ve never even looked at it.
That would be a bit like me saying, oh, I’m not going to eat this hamburger because it hates Jews! When in reality, it doesn’t hate Jews at all, and probably doesn’t even know what Jews are, because it’s a hamburger.
That might not be a good example, but I would really like a hamburger right now.
But if I act out my secret urges to punch myself, that’s okay (if a little embarrassing/unhealthy). Acting out secret urges to rape people is never okay.
There’s also the secondary thing where I don’t actually buy the “just snapped” excuse 90% of the time anyway. It seems like a lot of people who “just snap” do so in an extremely controlled and calculating manner–like the parent who “just snaps” at their child but only when there are no witnesses and without leaving marks. Or the Internet commenter who only “just snaps” at a rape survivor because he thinks everyone will take his side on account of being in r/MensRights and being an Internet Celebrity.
MRAL-
If you feel that “dick” and “the c-word” are equally offensive and obscene, why are you willing to type one out, but you use a euphamism for the other?
DM – Because Manboobz filters the c-word.
Also, he’s learned that David looks poorly upon that language, even if he is completely unable to conceive of why.
Because David has a stick up his butt about the c-word. Although I’m already on moderation, so I don’t know.
Maybe you could go post somewhere else on the internet where the c-word runs free? Somewhere not here? Just a thought, MRAL.
http://blog.thatfatatheist.com/post/17306258695/why-is-it-these-people-are-getting-so-butthurt-at-the
Everyone is being dumb and petty about this, he says. I guess he’s not standing by the half-baked apology.
Thanks for clearing that up, guys. 🙂
I’m a female and an atheist and while I’ve never paid to much attention to the AmazingAtheist I know now to avoid him like the plague, especially since I’m the survivor of a rape. After reading his comments I cant even put in words how disgusted I am. It doesn’t matter if your male, female, atheist, Christian, Muslim, black, white, young or old, NO rape survivor deserves to have someone trying to re-traumatize them like he did. Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting.
I think I might be on moderation after using it unfiltered while explaining this whole fracas to MRAL earlier, so I think I get why he (MRAL) does that.
ooops I mean WHY THE FUCK IS MY COMMENT IN FUCKING MODERATION FUCK
@Wajib
(emphasis added)
Yeah, there’s a man who’s truly sorry for what he’s done. Wow. What an ugly piece of shit.