So an angry dude wandered into the S**t Reddit Says subreddit recently — one of the few feminist-friendly, largely manbaby-free hideouts on Reddit — and left a pretty amazing rant, attacking the SRSers as, well, see for yourself.
I’m not even going to bother fisking this one. I think it’s probably best experienced in its original wall-of-text form.
In case that image is hard to read, here’s the text:
You’re the most f**ked up group of people currently alive (self.S**tRedditSays)
submitted 1 day ago by LewisExMachina
I’m sure you’re gonna devour this account too, but whatever. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that every time I call you out my account gets spammed and your cronies try to doxx me, but I can’t let you keep doing what you’re doing. The harassment you put people through on a daily basis is way worse than anything /fatpeoplehate was ever accused of. Who knows how many men you’ve driven to suicide just because they have something between their legs. But you don’t fucking care, because they made a rape joke and that makes them worse than Nazis. I guess rape is worse than murder now. And since men can’t be raped any man who says he was raped has to deal with it while a female who says she was raped is instantly believed and rewarded for her bravery. And you think women have it worse? Fuck off, women are treated like little princesses while men are treated like shit. Maybe you have a point with the catcalling thing, but everything else you say is bullshit and based on lies meant to devalue men and increase the value of women. Soon you’ll force the government to add the ability to make more money (27% more) by just checking off a “I’m a woman” box on a job sheet. Us men will just say that we’re transwomen (since that’s also something you support) and get that money too, so you’ll be back to square 1 where men and women make the same salaries. If you want to make the same money then don’t take maternity leave, dipshits.
And what’s with all the hate on video games? You don’t even like video games, and we do. Why is that a problem. If something makes a group of people happy and it doesn’t inherently hurt anyone else then why is that such a bad thing? Women don’t want to play video games, they just want to police the development of video games and its community. !??!?!? Seriously just fuck off. Go fight for unisex bathrooms or showing your tits or something I can get behind rather than video games that you don’t even play. All of the girlfriends I had wanted nothing to do with video games and that was okay. How would you feel if we started policing makeup, saying that makeup led to violence and should be banned? You’d hate it, because it’s a stupid baseless accusation meant only to hurt one gender. Which is exactly what the attack on video games is.
I don’t know what to say here other then you probably all need to get laid, then you’ll calm down.
Indeed, a thing of beauty.
EJ,
Honestly, if you have no interest in proselytizing nonbelief and no need to affiliate with a nonreligious community, and if defining & defending a public image for the godless is not a personal priority, I expect you’ll want to move on from movement atheism, and honestly, I don’t think it’s worth bothering with humanism, a+, or any other organization for the irreligious. If your only concern is to limit the harm that corrupt religious leaders do to their followers (by abuse of authority) and the public (by political influence), then there’s nothing holding you back from collaborating fully with religious folk; an ecumenical group is as good as a secular one.
There are a a variety of bad things in the world that are connected to religion, but I’m not aware of any movement against all the bad parts and only the bad parts of religion. There are (1) movements against religion in general, which you’ve rejected, (2) reform movements within a religion, which you’re not qualified to join, and (3) issues-based movements for each individual bad religious thing. I think that’s your best bet.
My impression was that movement atheists are doing very little to shut down the perpetrators of religious abuse and almost nothing to support the victims. If they do more than I realize, then maybe it’s a dilemma, but if not it seems like leaving is an easy call.
In America, we have the SPLC that tracks hate groups, including religious hate groups, the ACLU which defends religious discrimination cases, PFLAG to defend gay teenagers from bullying, including religious bullying, and so on. I should think that similar organizations in your country would be your best bet.
@Imaginary Petal
I don’t think that’s true, honestly. Nobody’s perfectly rational or in possession of all the facts, but plenty of people aren’t religious. As I noted elsewhere, religion declines heavily in situations where it no longer serves its purposes, which include, but are not limited to, hope for stability, the possibility of a better future, and that you won’t starve this week. Places with well functioning economies and social safety nets provide means of reliable support on that front. Religion also commonly serves as a shibboleth or statement of cultural/ethnic/other group identity, and is likely to stick around for that purpose long after anybody uses it for much else (IMO).
Emotions are an essential part of human cognition (particularly since a whole bunch of human cognition is devoted to various flavors of figuring out what that person there is up to).
@EJ
Humanist orgs tend to be pretty white and male, but they’re not usually as big assholes about it, IME.
I’m not sure if that was sarcastic… ?
in my opinion emotion is irrational inherently but that doesn’t mean its inherently wrong or useless.
by rationality we should mean conscious reasoning, otherwise definition becomes too broad that we can’t define something as irrational because everything has some sort of reasoning.
ontologically emotion can be right and reason and be wrong but from a epistemological perspective determining which one is a better way for reaching possible truth is what matters.
it’s also not about “practicality” , there are many situations that reason cannot compete with emotion, and there is good evolutionary advantage: reason is very time consuming.
but when it comes to beliefs or arguments there is no excuse to use emoticons(having emoticons is not equivalent to using them ), there is no imminent need to act fast and acting fast means using limited information and ignoring higher modes of thinking.
so epistemologically speaking arguments and beliefs that are mainly shaped by emotions are very probably wrong.
and because of this, appeal to emotion is a fallacious form of reasoning, and many illogical beliefs have emotional foundations.
+rationality and irrationality are respective, there is no healthy-minded person that is rational or irrational completely but with respect to beliefs, being emotional accounts for irrationality.
@Dalillama
I agree that the importance and influence of religion can be diminished, but I don’t think religion can be eradicated. It’s possible for people, who aren’t perfectly rational, to be non-religious, but I don’t believe it’s possible for all people to be non-religious at the same time. Your argument is like saying it’s possible for flawed people to calculate a math problem correctly, therefore we can eradicate all miscalculation ever. I just don’t believe the perfect eradication part. But diminish, yes.
kupo says:
My suggestion is outright mean, but I think your idea is hilarious and would get the point across to a guy who’s actually nice if you changed the note to be a bit more neutral. Maybe, “With your complexion, this shade would really stand out” or something. I mean, what if he tries telling someone who looks up to him as a mentor she should wear makeup? You certainly don’t have to teach him not to be sexist, but it sounds like you’re in a position where it wouldn’t be out of line if you tried to get through to him about what he did.
No, but I’m frankly tired of having to do this work all the time. It’s exhausting. I already spent a lot of time challenging his assumptions, like when he asked of I was going home to cook dinner for my husband (my husband was cooking that night). I also have other coworkers who I’m constantly having to slowly chip away at their biases but gently so that I don’t get seen as some kind of troublemaker. I’m the only woman on my team, so all of that falls on me. Plus I’m the liason between his team (all men) and my team, so I have to be diplomatic most of the time and sometimes that means brushing this kind of stuff off, even when they’re making me feel crappy.
In the internet age, kids really need to be educated abut what freedom is, and what censorship is. Gamergate is based on the Orwellian doctrine that SPEECH IS CENSORSHIP. If you can believe that speech, in the form of YouTube videos about games, is a form of “policing”, you can convince yourself that attempting to suppress that speech through harassment and character assassination is striking a blow for freedom.
Am I stating the obvious? You’d think so, but apparently not.