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UPDATE: Vacula has resigned.
As most of you are no doubt aware, the atheist and skeptic movements have had just a teensy bit of a problem with misogyny in their ranks. You may recall the unholy shitstorm that erupted last year when Rebecca Watson of Skepchick casually mentioned in a YouTube video that it might not be such a good idea for dudes to try to hit on women in elevators at 4 AM. The assholes of the internet still haven’t forgiven Watson for her assault on the sacred right of creepy dudes to creep women out 24 hours a day, every day.
Watson is hardly the only skeptic to face vicious misogynist harassment for the crime of blogging while feminist. Last month, Jen McCreight of Blag Hag announced that near constant harassment from online bullies was wearing her down to such a degree that she felt it necessary to shut down her blog – hopefully only temporarily.
I can no longer write anything without my words getting twisted, misrepresented, and quotemined. I wake up every morning to abusive comments, tweets, and emails about how I’m a slut, prude, ugly, fat, feminazi, retard, bitch, and cunt (just to name a few). If I block people who are twisting my words or sending verbal abuse, I receive an even larger wave of nonsensical hate about how I’m a slut, prude, feminazi, retard, bitch, cunt who hates freedom of speech (because the Constitution forces me to listen to people on Twitter). This morning I had to delete dozens of comments of people imitating my identity making graphic, lewd, degrading sexual comments about my personal life. In the past, multiple people have threatened to contact my employer with “evidence” that I’m a bad scientist (because I’m a feminist) to try to destroy my job. I’m constantly worried that the abuse will soon spread to my loved ones.
I just can’t take it anymore.
McCreight’s harassers and their enablers were delighted in this “victory,” taking to Twitter to give McCreight some final kicks on the way out the door. “Good riddance, #jennifurret , you simple minded dolt,” wrote @skepticaljoe. “I couldn’t be happier,” added @SUICIDEBOMBS. “Eat shit you rape-faking scum.”
One of the celebrators that day was an atheist activist named Justin Vacula, who joked that “Jen’s allegedly finished blogging…and this time it’s not her boyfriend who kicked her off the internet.”
So here’s the latest twist:
Justin Vacula has just been given a leadership position in the Pennsylvania chapter of the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for secular Americans whose advisory board includes such big names as Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Susan Jacoby, Wendy Kaminer, Steven Pinker, Salman Rushdie and Julia Sweeney.
It’s an astonishing choice. In addition to gloating that bullies had led McCreight to shut down her blog, Vacula has harassed atheist blogger and activist Surly Amy, including writing a post on A Voice for Men (yes, that A Voice for Men) cataloging all the sordid details of his supposed case against her. At one point he even posted her address, and a photo of her apartment building, on a site devoted to hating on feminist atheist bloggers.
Blogger Stephanie Zvan has set up a petition on Change.org urging the Secular Coalition of America to reconsider its choice. You can find further examples of Vacula’s questionable behavior there.
As Watson notes in a post on Skepchick, Vacula’s position with the SCA is likely to “drive progressive women away from the secular cause.” She adds,
I will never, ever get involved with SCA so long as someone like him holds a position of power anywhere, let alone in a state I live in. So Vacula is actively driving people away from SCA. …
It’s all a real shame, because SCA fills an important role in our movement and I’d like to give them my support. … I don’t believe secular organizations should reward bullies and bigots with high-level positions, even if those positions are volunteer-only.
I recommend that everyone here take a look at the petition.
Yeah, SallyStrange may be amazed to discover that bigots usually don’t come out and say that they’re better than other people; it’s much more likely to be something like “Homosexuals were created in the image of God like everyone else, they just chose to pursue a sinful lifestyle!” Turns out that if you do that you’re still acting superior.
Look Pecunium, I’m not going to argue with you about the American jurisdiction and the legal meaning of specific terms which might be different from the casual meaning. Quite frankly, I know shit about the American law and I don’t really care. I’m not even a native speaker. So yes, maybe you are right, though I remain skeptical. Because I’m smart enough to realize that this shit is complicated and you are layperson as well. If you’re interested in that discussion you should debate with a lawyer.
Just one thing:
Characteristically repetititve. He did it twice, in two different fora. Did he remove it when he apologised? This one is against you.
As far as I know, he posted the address in one forum and later asked the admin to remove the post when he realized he made a mistake.
Many of those kids are good at responding on the correct threads. 🙂
Hahahahahahaha, “I don’t know anything about this topic, so you might be right, but I’m still totally skeptical and also I don’t even care so really it’s like I was right all along.” Keep fighting the good fight, duder.
Also, “just-so” stories about the origins of religion are stupid and thoroughly anti-empiricist because we have no fucking evidence to support them. Saying “Religion came about because it offered an evolutionary advantage!” is ridiculous. You could make literally the exact same argument about the evolutionary origins of rationalism. (Not that religion and rationalism are fundamentally opposed, but the evo-psych faux-science being pushed here posits them as opposites, so I’m running with that to make a point.)
As I said earlier: The realm of science is huge, since it encompasses all causal explanations and predictions. However, it’s not infinite, since there are other kinds of questions in life, like, for instance, basic epistemology and questions about what one ought to do. Now it doesn’t seem terribly uncommon for atheists to just fail to see this, and rather believe that science can answer ALL questions, even ones that aren’t about causal explanation and prediction. These same atheists are often unable to listen to arguments to the contrary. And this, to my mind, just goes to show that being an atheist in itself doesn’t improve your critical thinking skills, and that atheists too often believe things for no reason.
So I agree that it’s not good to believe things for no reason. It’s debatable, however, whether reasons always have to be epistemological. (And even if they’d have to be, I’ve given epistemological reasons earlier in this thread as to why I personally believe in God)
@cloudiah
You are the internet bad ass, I would think you would be capable of scrolling up.
Sorry, I’m just scrolling for friends.
@Thomas
So you admit you’re a loser, then, rather than someone who engages with arguments and facts. Thanks?
Damn, realised I contradicted myself. In my first post I said that everyone believes some stuff for no reason (such as the existence of an external world), implying that this was perfectly allright, and now I said that it’s no good to believe things for good reason. Gotta make up my mind!
So… I guess one could hold up “always believing things for a reason, never without reason” (without equating reason with absolute proof) as some intellectual ideal, while simultaneously say that it’s okay and not that big a deal that people have all kinds of beliefs for no reason.
@Gametime
I suppose you are a lawyer. I would be interested in your expert opinion of the legal definition of harassment.
And it’s evo psych, which is bullshit all around. Notice how Nepenthe uses the exact same pseudologic as any MRA crusader who wants to prove that women are irrational:
1. Make a hypothesis about how the brain functioned in the past.
2. Assume that your hypothesis is true.
3. Make a sweeping assertion about how this causes large groups of people to all act a certain way in the present.
4. If anyone asks for evidence of 3, refer to 1.
@cloudiah
Really? I’m quite alright to admit that I may be wrong or don’t know anything about a topic. See my response to pecunium.
You, on the other hand, are just absurd right now. Let’s recap: You made an ill informed post. I mocked you and apparently wounded your honor. You can’t admit that your post was ill informed and now you are endlessly defending your position and digging yourself deeper and deeper.
Let’s call it a draw. You can even claim victory, if it’s really that important to you.
Thomas, stop calling everything a draw.
@Thomas
But it isn’t a draw. We pwned you, and you don’t want to admit it. That’s why you played the “calm down” card. Predictable, but disappointing. I often wish for a worthy opponent, but I didn’t get it this time.*
Look, I can understand why you want to turn it into something else, but unfortunately for you reality is not on your side. Sorry you’re so upset about it. Calm down? Chamomile tea? Kitten videos? How can we help?
*If you want to try to redeem yourself, you could try actually responding to my comments rather than responding to your imaginary version of my comments. But I suspect you just want to troll.
I don’t need to be a lawyer to realize that your pompous little attempt at retaining some measure of dignity while still admitting that you know basically nothing related to the subject about which you’ve been arguing for hours was fucking hilarious.
Hey, remember when you were excoriating us for not doing our research properly and then it turned out you were totally wrong and you had to eat crow? Good times, good times.
Captainbathrobe – I would bet that’s exactly where my psychologist was coming from. He could see how much happier I was with the changing mindset. Plus I guess the matter of professional ethics would come into it, wouldn’t it?
Well, yeah. I mean, the first mandate is “do no harm.” Using one’s trusted position as a therapist to pursue one’s own agenda is 1)massively unethical and 2)incredibly dickish (to use clinical jargon) 🙂 . Which is not to say that it never happens, unfortunately.
Um, the reason I care that people believe in God is that, as far as I can tell from the evidence I have, it isn’t true. I am against people believing in things that aren’t true, even if the not-true things make people feel really happy. I am particularly against the idea that believing in things without evidence is good, and therefore I am against the idea that faith (in the sense of believing without sufficient evidence) is a good thing.
Of course, there are a LOT of things that aren’t true, and so as a practical matter I think people should prioritize getting people to not believe in the untrue things that hurt people, and in raising the general level of scientific knowledge and rationality and skepticism and so on.
Really, the whole “faith is a cognitive error” thing is the logical outcome of atheism. “God does not exist” –> “people must have a reason for believing that God exists” –> “here are some hypotheses about why people believe God exists.”
Frankly, a lot of the proposed cognitive errors that I’ve read about are pretty fucking well-documented. Humans tend to model things as having minds, even when they don’t: ever seen a little kid play with a doll? Ever yelled at your computer because it didn’t work? It seems pretty fucking likely that over time that sort of thing evolved into animism (which most of the fairly early religions are, afaik).
And, yes, some of those cognitive errors evolved. Brains evolved. It would be ludicrous in the extreme to expect that the brain is 100% a blank slate.
Gametime: …yes, of course rationalism evolved, where the fuck else do you expect it to come from?
ithiliana, sorry to hear about the diabetes; hope you can adjust to it without too many problems.
Oh, yeah, and *hugs* Ithiliana about your diabetes. I hope you can still eat some tasty food. 🙂
Really? Must the logical outcome of “I believe X” be “people who don’t believe X must have problems with their brains?”
…No, *everyone* has the same problems with their brains, and for some people it leads to theism.
I think of a tendency towards the spiritual as a personality trait rather than some sort of defect–rather like being introverted as opposed to extroverted. Of course, experience and culture shape how this trait is expressed. I also believe that people are religious for a variety of reasons. Some people crave a connection with a greater whole. Others are drawn to the certainty of a rigidly structured system of morality. Still others seek out comfort in the face of life’s uncertainties and the death that awaits us all. And, of course, some like the social/communitarian aspect to organized religion.
Personally, I have a hard time faulting people for wanting these things, even if I think we’d all probably be better off if we faced the cold, hard, existential truths of life.
Ozy, would you accept the religious corollary; that is, do you think it’s reasonable for religious people to think that atheists have a problem with their brains that makes them unable to accept the rational, reasonable position that is theism?
(I don’t think that, for the record.)
On the other hand, atheists are subject to the same fits of irrationality as everyone else. This thread is more than enough proof of that. 🙂
Captain Bathrobe: Oh, yeah, I do agree “tendency to the spiritual” is a personality trait. (Because I have a whole fuckton of it, despite being an occasionally quite obnoxious atheist, and am prone to going off on rants about how I wish I could believe in God but the evidence is too shitty.)
IDK, I feel like one can have rigidly structured systems of morality and comfort in the face of death and social aspects and connection with a greater whole *without* having the God part, and that in fact developing those is one of the things the atheist movement should be doing instead of appointing Vacula to leadership positions.