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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.
@PG,
Well, other than the fact I might be a barely literate imbecile. (Amazing how quickly one side resorts to name-calling, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you agree, Unimaginative?)
PG, I believe you were the one calling people ignorant fools without reading comprehension just a little ways back in the thread, before Unimaginative even shows up. That was, of course, before you ended up being proven embarrassingly wrong about whether the article was co-opted. So, yes, I’d agree that it is amazing how quickly one side resorts to name-calling here. That side also apparently lacks a sense of shame.
PG: I stand corrected. The added commentary seems to be written for AVfM specifically. My mistake. In any case, again, it doesn’t matter.
It does matter.
1: You asserted that we were lying; without the merest acts of due diligence.
2a AVfM is a cesspit, and adding that much material means either he doesn’t care who gives him a pulpit (the most charitable interpretation)
2b or that he is willing to ignore the evil intent of the owners of that site
2c or that he actively agrees with them in enough aspects that the points of disagreement aren’t relevant.
3: His participation on AVfM, when put into the context of his other actions strongly implies the correct answer is 2c.
And you don’t care.
Let me get this straight. None of you are judging Justin on guilt by assocation with Paul Elam who supports legalising rape*, yet you are saying he has no qualms with contributing to a website run by Paul Elam. Which means what? If the principles of guilt by association does not apply here (which it shouldn’t), what are you implying?
We aren’t implying anything. We are saying he’s a douchenozzle, or an idiot, or both.
I happen to believe 2c. It’s not guilt by association. It’s not that Elam praised him, or happened to belong to a club he also belongs to. It’s that he chose to actively participate in AVfM’s activities.
If I spoke at a Klan rally, as a sponsored guest; when the Klan was notable for not allowing dissenting voices to take part, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to say I was, at the very least, a fellow traveller.
Nope, not like the “Dear Muslima” debacle at all. If you’re going to make comparisons you could at least try to make them vaguely applicable.
The thing about the issue of whether or not people are being persecuted is that to a large extent it can be assessed by looking at what actually happens to those people. Given that the only atheists who think they’re being persecuted as atheists tend to be straight white guys, all evidence points to the conclusion that atheists are not in fact persecuted for being atheists. If they were then the atheists who are not straight white men would notice it too, and for the most part they do not. This is because they have what is known as “perspective”, which you clearly lack.
I love that you wrote the second sentence directly after the first one. Hint – in the first sentence the word you are looking for is “has”, not “have”.
PG: The issue was how people keep referring it to as a threat, when no such indication has been made by neither Justin Vacula nor the Slymepit and therefore the assertion should be dismissed as it lacks evidence to support it.
That’s fucking stupid. Are you seriously saying only threats which are admitted are real threats? If I walk into a room with a sword in my hand; that’s a threat.
Even if I don’t actually attack anyone.
If I say, “I know where you live” to someone I am having a significant disagreement with, a reasonable person can see that as a threat.
And that’s less than what Vacula did. He said, “I know where she lives, it’s right here,” at which point an unknown number of people, many of whom seemed to have ill-will to her suddenly knew where she lived. They didn’t have to do the research; it was handed to them.
A reasonable person can consider that a threat; even if no, “threatening” words are used.
So yes, it was a threat.
The kind of rhetoric you’ll commonly find on FTB and Skepchick: exhibit one.
Is the Slymepit devoted to hating Skepchick? No. Does it say it is? No. Why say it is?
Do the members of the Slymepit have a history of stalking, looking up people in real life they dislike and harming them? No. Do they have a history of sending death and rape threats? No. Why say they do? Are the concerns of Amy Davis Roth and Sally Strange about the denizens of the Slymepit unwarranted? In all likelihood, yes. It’s sad that you wish to slander and demonise them in this fashion, Sally, that you would actually imply, with malice, that the denizens of the Slymepit would possibly track people down they dislike and harm them. More than pitiful if you ask me. However, I suppose when FTB does the same thing, it’s for a good cause? Greg Laden tracked down bluharmony’s (Maria Maltseva’s) home address and posted it on his blog. Not her public information business address, but her home address. Of course, when he later realised it was, he removed it, but did not apologise. Not even a notpology on that one.
Further once more to reiterate: Surly Amy’s address that was posted was her business and not her home address, which was publicly available for years before Justin Vacula posted it and which she had previously advertised herself through her own site. Then when it was confined within the Slymepit, Amy Davis Roth made it public knowledge by posting about it on Twitter – thereby making her address known to not just the Slymepit, but everyone else privy to her Twitter feed. So much for that exposure. Still, he, like Laden, removed it but, unlike Laden, apologised, yet he should continue to be lambasted while Laden is given a pass? Because he’s one of the “good guys”? Yeah, try to square that one in your circlejerk, Sally.
These mostly strike me as the very young, people who were frustrated by name-calling and stuff as kids and find the existence of rules governing discussion to be a novelty. They tend to be disappointed when said rules don’t turn out to be a “stop people from saying anything I don’t like” button.
The Slymepit sounds like something that people are dropped into for comic effect on a children’s television show.
Cassandra: I’ve experienced some harassment for being an atheist, and I’m a bisexual white nonbinary. I think a lot of whether someone experiences harassment for being an atheist depends on their circumstances. I, for instance, was at a religious school and in my Noisy Dawkins-Reading Angry Atheist stage; growing up in an extremely religious family and community could lead to getting more harassment. But yeah, it was nowhere near the amount of hate the out queers at the school got.
I’ve always identified more as a skeptic than an atheist (at least since I stopped being an angry atheist). There’s just so many more interesting things to say if you’re pro-empiricism and pro-science than if you’re anti-God (particularly since most of the arguments for #2 fall under #1).
Especially if you then threaten to scoop their eyes out with a melon baller.
You know, I don’t get the anti-God thing. I mean, I don’t think that God exists – how can you be anti something that you don’t believe in the existence of?
Hey, PG? You, my friend, are a shitstain. You sound like those butthurt fundy Christians complaining about not being allowed to deny birth control to their employees or losing business to people who don’t want to fund their bullshit. And you know what? I make a point of eating assholes like you alive. The only frustrating thing about it is that you fuckwads actually think you’re winning the argument.
I think that atheism is generally not overtly persecuted against in the US because it’s one of those things that you can generally hide pretty easily unless you are Big and Loud about it.
I mean, you should see some of the shit that people say (and threaten to do) about Richard Dawkins, and he’s generally pretty level-headed and refrains from outright name-calling in his discussions on atheist thought.
It’s like how I’m pansexual but since I’m married to a man and I have a child, people see me and assume “oh, heterosexual, probably some sort of Christian/monotheist, family values lady.”
I receive “privilege” for things that I am not, because other people assume my privilege based on how I present myself. I like celebrating Christmas, and I don’t go on about how the whole baby Jesus thing could not have possibly happened IRL. I like hearing Christmas carols, even the religious ones, and I enjoy the holiday spirit in general….despite not believing that any of the stuff is true. I think that it’s perfectly possible to enjoy ritual and tradition without having to believe in it FORTRUTHS. It’s like how I enjoy greek mythos, and enjoy reading stories about Zeus and Athene and stuff but I’m not going to go burn some fat on some bones at the local temple for the gods.
This may make me a “cop out” to some atheists but I say that being atheist isn’t being any one way- it’s simply not believing in god existing- a lack of religious belief so to speak. There’s nothing wrong with a lack of religious belief, it’s just problematic when in defining oneself as having a lack of belief, that one must actively attack and hate on all other religious thoughts to validate that lack of belief.
Seriously. I’m not threatened by the Christian God if the Christian God does not exist. And as far as I have experienced, when I say I am not a religious sort of person, even most religious people accept and respect that fact. But if you come out as a vocal atheist in the whole “I don’t want to even have to experience your belief in any way, shape or form” sort of way, you WILL ruffle feathers and suffer a reduction in your privilege levels.
CassandraSays: Think about it this way. Some people do not believe in God. Some people do not believe in God, and want people to know why. And then you have people who don’t believe in God and want to smite God to bloody gobbets in public. Those last people are our equivalent of manic fundies and Jacobins, and a lot of them have women issues besides. (I’ve seen a couple of that type that aren’t absolutely batshit, but once you get into that territory they’re the exception, not the rule, and I still think they’re overplaying their hand.)
Cassandra: I was using anti-God as shorthand for anti-people-believing-in-God-because-you-think-it’s-not-true-but-not-necessarily-being-a-douchebag-about-it. 😛
Shorter PG:
“The Slymepit never SAID they are all about hating Skepchick, therefore you can’t claim that’s what they are about, despite the fact that all they ever do is obsessively monitor FTB and Skephick and hate on everyone who posts there.”
Sure, dude. Is this kind of like how it’s not misogyny unless you publicly proclaim your unfailing hatred for every single last woman, everywhere, throughout all time?
I’m anti-belief-in-God. I’m an atheist and an anti-theist. I think god-belief relies on some of our most common cognitive errors to survive, notably “faith,” i.e., the believing in something for which there is no evidence. Faith is not a virtue, it’s a fucking cognitive error. The world will be better off when people stop thinking there’s any sort of difficulty involved in “having faith.” If there is, it’s a sign that the proposition you’re trying to muster belief in is really, REALLY obviously false.
As far as I’m concerned, Vacula demonstrated he was a pretty shitty person simply by, you know, GLOATING THAT A WOMAN HE DISLIKED WAS DRIVEN FROM THE INTERNET by
So, you know, there’s that. Add to that the Surly Amy crap, and you know, that’s not really the sort of guy that I think is a good representative for secular people like me.
Oh yeah, and also this:
When was the last time someone threatened to track you down and rape you, asshole? And when was the last time someone fabricated a campaign claiming that you invented this rape threat for some bizarre reason?
Once that happens then you can get back to me as to whether my concerns about the Slimepit are “unwarranted.”
Seriously, fuck you.
This is exactly the same sort of bullshit Justin Vacula pulled with Ophelia Benson–telling her that the threats she perceived weren’t really threats, therefore she’s just being stupid or paranoid, or just trying to ruin things for TAM and DJ Grothe.
Not the behavior of a “leader” of anyone but a gang of bullies.
Anyone who considers themselves a part of a movement that is oppressed and stigmatized by society for being non-mainstream and then condones abuse and attacks of people due to gender/race/sexuality/etc to silence them is doing exactly what they themselves are fighting to keep themselves from experiencing on their own front.
To me, this is hypocritical and shitty because it’s basically saying, “well *I* don’t want to be oppressed and silenced and treated like shit, but because YOUR situation has nothing to do with mine, I’m totally OK with treating YOU in that manner because I feel that I am superior.”
Bottom line, it’s the whole “I want to have privilege and respect but fuck you for wanting the same” line of thinking that I find utterly repulsive.
Sally Strange is a good demonstration of the “I’m an atheist because I’m INTELLECTUALLY SUPERIOR” line of thought that is so closely associated with “the West is culturally superior,” etc (witness Ruby, for instance).
My position is that theists and I disagree on a matter of fact. While many theists are lovely people who are far smarter than I am, I happen to think they’re wrong on that particular point. Which is cool. I’m wrong about things too.
I’m also not super-invested in convincing people not to believe in God as long as they aren’t douchebags. I figure we should work on convincing people not to believe in wrong things that actually hurt people first.
Also maybe I should clarify. By persecution I mean that a group is actively being discriminated against in a broad, institutionalized way. Racism impacts the ability of POC to get certain jobs, find housing, etc., homophobia leads to gay people not being allowed to get married, sexism leads to women making less money than men and having less chances for promotion, and so on. Having some of the people around you not like you and therefore be unkind to you on the basis of your being vocally atheist is not discrimination in any meaningful sense, I don’t think, since it’s not backed by any real concrete and institutionalized discrimination against atheists. Like I’ve sometimes run into people who’ve given me shit about being an atheist in the sense of wanting to argue about it, but I don’t think that’s discrimination in any sort of society-wide sense, it’s just those particular people having a prejudice and being jerks about it.
And that’s why you’re cool.
Cassandra: How about the Boy Scouts? I’d say that counts as institutionalized discrimination against atheists.
Hey PG,. the links you dropped in your comment don’t say what you want them to say. Wait, my shock, let me show you it. Further, just posting macros are not actually arguments. Just FYI.
(Added numbers for ease of debunkation).
1.) What Greg Laden did was horrible and bullying and he was rightly removed from FtB for it. NO argument, no defense. He did a shitty thing. He was being a bully.
What does that have to do with anything, though? Greg Laden has in no way been part of the “Hey guys, we don’t like that you call us cunts so we’ll just go over here and talk with people who don’t call us cunts” formation of A+ (which is what we’ve been talking about), so what’s your point with this?
Also, if we look at the point you’re quoting, the very fact that Greg Laden was booted off of FtB for his bullying is in fact a point AGAINST your position. FtB did the right thing: when one of “their own” engaged in bullying behaviour they not only called him out on it, they removed him.
2.) Linking to the atheist blogosphere version of the Conservopedia page called “Secular Shunning”? What’s that supposed to prove? Yes, there have been bloggers at FtB who’ve been critical of people. Critical of WOMEN, even. That does not equal bullying.
Perhaps, mister Dictionary Doofus, you’d like to revisit the definition of bullying?
3.) Links to an article by Stefanie Zvan, the blogger who started the petition, showing screenshots of the abusive tweets she has received because of said petition. How is this supposed to support your Ftb ARE BULLIES point?
4.) Linking to an article by Jason ‘Lousy Canuck’ arguing that using the term “witch hunt” is ridiculous in this context. How is this supposed to support your “FtB ARE THE REAL BULLIES” argument?
5.) Linking to a post by Skeptifem who used the word “Gender Traitor”… this is an actual guilt by association fallacy, in action! Skeptifem is not associated with FtB or Skepchick in any capacity other than a sometime commentor. Many of those who comment more regularly at FtB have publically and loudly explained that they are, in fact, uncomfortable with said term, yet you still wish to cite Skeptifem’s use of said term as being an indictment on Freethought Blogs?
I’ll be over here, chuckling at the irony.
6.) Linking to Justin Vacula’s “Response to Surly Amy and Lousy Canuck” – as support for your saying that ““Hey, I don’t like the vibe here. I’m going off to do this other, similar thing but with a groovier vibe”, that’s not bullying.” is not what the FTB crowd has done… what? Are you just throwing out random links now?
7.) Linking to Greg Laden’s piece suggesting that DJ Grothe should possibly consider resigning his post at the JREF – again, what? Laden did the same in that post as what David, Ophelia, Stephanie, Rebecca and others have done in this kerfuffle – listed the ways in which DJ Grothe was not just wrong but harmful to the organization he represents and the people who support said organization… AND HE DIDN’T EVEN CREATE A PETITION or take it further in any way.
So yeah, I seriously don’t get it. DId you think that drowning people under links and argumentless macros would somehow make some kind of point to your argument?
Because it really didn’t. Try harder.