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.
VeerSerif:
You are without a doubt my new hero! That smack down was polite, measured, well written and devastating!
Need to know:
Yes, that’s the usual pattern with that type of abuse. They have control over their temper around everyone but their victim. If the rage was uncontrollable they’d be loosing their shit all over the place and they’d be loosing jobs, getting beaten up, pissing folk off left and right and would quickly become persona non grata. Instead they abuse the one person who won’t hurt them back and can be convinced that it must be all their fault.
It’ s bullshit. They don’t “loose it” or “snap”. They choose to behave that way.
Hey bloodquartz, congratulations on you and your mom getting out, and I’m so proud of you guys. Similar situation in my family, though luckily a long time ago. To the point where I was pretty verklempt reading your reaction, because I was all like, “Hey, that’s ME circa 1994. No, actually, it’s someone with a really similar experience.” And at the risk of sounding like one of those it-gets-better videos, it really does get easier as time passes. Hugs to you and your mom.
P.S. Yeah, Dave does good work with this site.
A: At this point, any apology would just be chalked up to a cave-in to peer pressure. Such an apology would be hollow and ring false.
Really? Says who?
Basically, you’re just making excuses for not apologizing.
How about answering this question:
Are you sorry for saying that people talking about their experiences with rape and sexual assault and harassment were “exaggerating” and were bullshit”? And if so, why are you sorry for saying it? What was wrong with what you said?
How about instead of making excuses how NOBODY WILL ACCEPT YOUR SINCERE APOLOGY (which implies without ever actually stating that you actually ARE sorry), you just say you are and explain why you’re sorry?
If people wanna be jerks and reject you, that’s up to them.
Ball’s in your court.
If you care about the people you’ve hurt, you’d put your ego aside and apologize.
Or you can continue to worry about your reputation, which seems to be by far the most important thing to you.
I’m waiting for yet another excuse.
MRAL, as seems typical for MRAs, seems to like setting up a faux “no win scenario” for themselves, so they’re always oppressed, always the victim and therefore never have to take responsibility for nething xD
This “IF I APOLOGIZE EVERYBODY WILL THINK I’M LYING AND HATE ME” is more of the same.
Who cares? If you actually are sorry, apologize. Stop making excuses and playing the “I CAN’T WIN” card and be mature about this. If you truly care about the people you’ve hurt, you will apologize for your actions.
Seriously. Now apparently we don’t ever need to apologise for what we do if there’s a chance the person who receives the apology will reject it. Not even necessarily a personal apology, just “it was wrong of me to say xyz because xyz, so sorry”. ‘Sorry’ on its own means nothing, it should come with recognition that you thought about what you did wrong rather than just trying to curry favour with your opponent/s. This guy never apologised at all.
This is a bit late, Pecunium, but I’ve so been there. Recessions suck. *hugs*
Italics begone!
Complete-internet-stranger hugs here for bloodquartz, Need to Know, Lorrdernie, and anyone/everyone else who wants them!
Crap. That used to work on the Typepad Slacktivist site….
Italics are a misandrist plot. Slanted, sinister, hysterical, and probably the result of bugs caused by left-handed programmers.
MRAL: Sharculese, men aren’t the dominant group, I’ve categorically stated I don’t subscribe to that notion.
How do you feel about Velikovsky?
How do you feel about people who subscribe to his notions?
MRAL: Holly, but then you just MAKE FUN OF THOSE SPACES. Why are you guys allowed to have your “safe spaces” and have them be legitimate?
Do you read what you write? Do you? Because I am pretty sure that this thread has a lot of linkage to places which make fun of feminism. I know you’ve linked to places that make fun of feminist blogs.
So who are you trying to delude with the idea that people making fun of people who are being assholes (or are you trying to tell me TAA isn’t being an asshole?) is somehow not fair?
What you are saying is that men ought not be laughed at. That’s bullshit. That’s demanding privilege. Men aren’t entitled to be treated special. If they say stupid shit, they should be called on it.
I have, on a very few occasions “snapped”. Oddly, they weren’t ever over trivial things. They were also (with one exception) when I was less than 13. The ones I recall had me trying to catch/beat to a pulp, kids who were larger (and in one case more numerous) than I.
The only recent one was about eight years ago, maybe nine. and someone started telling me a bunch of bullshit about what it was like in combat. The little fuck didn’t know anything about combat that he hadn’t learned from playing DOOM, and I lost it.
I wasn’t chasing him about, but I was screaming; probably foaming at the mouth a little. I was stiff with cold fury and in a white hot rage. I wanted him to touch me, so I could take him apart. Friends of mine (who understood. they were in my unit, and one had been in Iraq with me) told me to stand down and step outside, so I did. When I could see straight I went back inside.
I never said another word to him again.
That’s what snapping is like. No reasoning in it, and it doesn’t last for hours. Your endocrine system can’t support it. TAA had more than enough time to think about what he was typing. His reactions now are all in places he has some control.
Shit like this.
rolfraccoon said: They just think it’s not good enough. But that’s the kind of response you give someone who isn’t genuinely sorry. I think it’s safe to say that if TJ says “I fucked up,” it’s genuine. There’s nothing else he can really do so they need to get over it. (on his formspring account) is all he’s letting through.
So his lickspittle fellow travellers will mend his butthurt, and he will bravely soldier on, waging the good fight against feminists.
But… when he’s thinking of taking his act on the road again… he’ll remember.
I’m also a bit late to the party, but:
bloodquartz: I’m glad to hear that this blog is helping you out. And here’s hoping for much more improvement in your life and for your sense of self-worth. I’m good friends with someone who was long abused in many ways by his mother. Knowing that people are healing and moving past the utter crap they were exposed to is heartwarming. Even to hear it about a stranger; it means the world sucks a little less and that someone is a bit happier and healthier. Cheers and all the best to you.
Quackers: Yep. And Amen.
Pecunium:
There are plenty of circumstances where people get very angry for perfectly good justifiable reasons. Lecturing a soldier who has been involved in combat what it’s like, when it’s clear that the lecturer knows nothing at all about it, may be considered one of those times. To your credit, furious as you were, you didn’t become physically violent with the idiot and were able to walk away. Kudos to you.
That kind of response is a million miles away from an abuser who uses “snapping” as an excuse for abusing a partner or making vile rape threats and trying to deliberately trigger a survivor over the Internet.
David, I think you should ban MRAL because he will constantly come back here to troll. These guys love to troll, Somethingawful had a thread about an MRA a few years ago and the guy said he was the biggest troll on the internet. When I was on Lady Raine blog, lots of MRAs were insulting people and we all started our own blogs to avoid them. MRAL must see himself as big guy on the internet.
And to prevent the unclosed italics tag bug in the future : In the WordPress Writing Settings, check “WordPress should correct invalidly nested XHTML automatically”. It should do it.
SaruGoku : That kind of response is a million miles away from an abuser who uses “snapping” as an excuse for abusing a partner or making vile rape threats and trying to deliberately trigger a survivor over the Internet.
That’s precisely my point. The occasions in which I’ve, “snapped” I stopped caring about who was there. Not to my credit, were I less controlled, in general, I’d have gone for the idiot. I wanted to take him apart. I just needed a justifiable excuse, and his stupid talk wasn’t enough to rise to it.
But the abusers, the TAAs of the world, they don’t have that. They target the people they abuse. Eight hours. Eight fucking hours. That’s not heat of the moment. That’s eat a meal, drink a beer, take a dump, come back to the keyboard with a fresh cold one; and a bowl of chips, and go back to work.
It’s intentional.
And he’s getting off easy.
I just want to say how much I love you guys. There are very few places on the internet where I feel comfortable enough to post, and this is the first one I visit every single day. The jokes and ribbing about the weird italics glitch is what got me all mooshy. I’m feeling down about some of the terrible shit going on, like this anti-abortion bill in Kansas which encourages doctors to lie to their patients about their health risks and shields them from malpractice suits if they do, and this ridiculous mortgage “settlement” that will shield robo-signers from prosecution. So even though we talk about some of the most vile crap I’ve ever seen a person type, the commenters here still make it worthwhile. You’re all so clever and hilarious and you make me smile. So thanks for that.
@No More Mr. Nice Guy
I agree. Futrelle should ban MRAL already. He learned nothing from his experiences here. He is still the same histrionic, petulant, whiny, self-pitying, callouss child he has been for months. Even when a rape victim (a MALE rape victim who was raped by a woman by the way) is horribly abused online he still goes about his selfish antics.
Just get rid of him already.
Ugh. How can anybody be that terrible of a person? It’s shitplugs like TAA that really make me wish for an empathy gun- I wish there were a way to actually force a person to recognize and understand the pain they cause others. You know, the way decent people experience empathy? But, since that’s not gonna happen, veerserif is right. He does deserve to be shamed constantly and reminded of what a shallow, empty person he is.
Oh, and I’m actually surprised he pulled that selfish little trick of playing the martyr. He dealt out pure, distilled hatred for hours with no remorse, but when his target wouldn’t accept his apology, that’s when it stopped funny anymore- because his fragile little fee-fees got hurt! WAH!!! He really has no business interacting with the rest of humanity ever.
(Lorrdernie, I know I’m a random internet stranger, but, um… *offers internet hugs*)
*ahem* I’ll try again:
…but when his target wouldn’t accept his apology, that’s when it stopped being funny-
If we can’t ban MRAL can we at least change his name to something more appropriate, like Slavey Jr.?
He’s already reppin’ the white male pride against “feminist oppression” and, between this and his “kneegrows have it easy” bullshit, his feeble and easily-malleable mind is just one conspiracy website search away from going full blown “JEWS OWN EVEYRTHING!!!1”.
Blitzgal, I hear you. I’m in TX, and yes, that incredibly stupid sonogram law just went into effect. Depressing.
OMG: Neil Strauss is going to do an AMA on Reddit on… Valentine’s Day.