Thursday, September 13, 2012

A retraction

Boy, it's a good thing no one really reads this blog, otherwise I'd have some egg on my face.  See I have to (at least partly) retract that last blog post.  Oh, there's a christian on Atheism+ making what I'd define as blatant troll-posts about how they need the Christians on their side, and I'm still calling bullshit, as far as that goes.  But then I took a closer look at the reactions to that post, and saw that they were decidedly squeamish.  And that squeamishness is a good thing, Atheism+.  You hang on to that.  That tells me, deep down, underneath that whiny, crybaby, 1990s/West Coast liberal exterior, there's an angry militant atheist that wants to reach through the screen and punch that jackass Jesus-freak in the face just like I did when I first read it.

Also, I think I have to print a retraction and apology to Xxxild.  See, I got my information off of a youtube comment (and before I go any further, let me just say i r teh retart 4 tinking dat wuz uh valad src), and I can't confirm or deny the validity of the claim that they called Xxxild "a crackhead" followed by some other invective.  Given the fact that you can't even quote Monte Python ("I fart in your general direction!" comes to mind) on their forum without a "TRIGGER" warning (the generic warning that what you wrote might hurt someone's feelings) being slapped on your thread, I very much doubt anyone on there would have the brass.

In short, I plead shoddy research on the grounds that I've been royally pissed off.

Yeah, I've been pretty angry with the Atheist community lately, if we can still refer to it as a "community," and I've been going off half-cocked over it, too.  I think my first indication that I should have stepped back was when I busted some poor bastard's chops on Naomi Chambers' channel when he called her a "feminazi," only to find out that he was being sarcastic.  BTW, don't bother looking for that comment.  I removed it.  If I could, I'd print it out on a piece of paper just so I could burn it.

In my defense, let me just say that I HATE the word "feminazi."  It's one of the only two words I find offensive.  Any atheist who uses that word should call the guy who invented it, namely Rush Limbaugh (preferably if and when he's doing a public call-in show), and extol the virtues of being an atheist.  Then just sit back and wait for his response.  Yeah, I guarantee you'll come back from that little exchange a hell of a lot wiser than you were before you had it, you fucking dittohead.  When it was first coined, "feminazi" meant EVERY feminist, not just extremists like Rebecca Watson.

Likewise, I also hate the term "radical feminist."  This is such a bullshit, apologist term to soften the blow of the fact that you're talking about a "man-hater."  And no, I'm not going to use "misanderist" (or however its spelled), either, because 1) I'm just monosyllabic that way; deal with it 2) THAT is a complete MRA buzzword, and 3) I find it very weird that a word meaning "man-hater" was recently popularized, even though the thing's supposedly been around since before Carl Sagan wrote Contact.  Why do I use that as a benchmark?  Because in Contact, Sagan notes that there IS no word analogous to "misogynist" to describe "man-hater."  And if there had been, a guy like Sagan probably would have known about it.  It all seems too fishy and convenient that the men's rights activists just happened to find a word that essentially means the same thing as "feminazi" while not being nearly as blatantly offensive as "feminazi" right when they needed it most.

On the other hand, there are things I still stand by from that last post.  For starters, I have a few bones to pick with the Atheism+/Freethoughtblogs/Skepchicks combine.  Oh, and don't give me that "we're not formally aligned" derailing crap.  I never said you were formally aligned.  But there's been enough crossover between the three of you for me to know that you all have each other's backs.  And I'm here to reiterate:  REBECCA WATSON IS NOT A FEMINIST.  See, that term "Chill Girl" gave her away as someone who is NOT a feminist, but rather someone who is power hungry.  She wants to lord it over both men AND women.  And honestly, elevatorgate is about her and ONLY her.  I'll say it again:  If she really did give a shit about the emotional and physical safety of her skeptic and atheist sisters, where was she when suvarenee was getting attacked on youtube?  For that matter, where was she when suva was going through some emotionally horrific shit brought upon by males IRL?  (No, I'm not going to go into detail.  If you need to know, I've subbed her blog; read it there.  If you need more detail than that, ask her.)

And yeah, thunderf00t getting kicked from FTB because he didn't have his nose far enough up PZ Myers' ass and disagreeing with the skepchicks' (admittedly admirable in its own way) agenda pissed me off, too.  You know, I've heard a fair share of bullshit slung by the opposition, but when I started digging in to this little nugget, I found NOTHING justifiable in thunderf00t getting fired.  Now granted, I have my own experience in getting kicked from a blog because I didn't shut my brain off enough for the owner's liking and let her do my thinking for me.  So maybe I have a bias.  But unlike most of your opposition, thunderf00t actually posted sources when he addressed his grievances to the public.  Based on those sources, there's no fucking way you aren't in the wrong here, as far as I'm concerned.

Sadly, the thunderf00t incident seems to be the exception rather than the rule, though.  These past few days, atheism+ has had a lot of shit flung at them, and of that shit, I'd guess only 10% is absolute truth, and 90% is exaggeration.  (0% is pure lie; sorry atheism+, but you know you've got shit-stains on YOUR hands, too.)  And of that exaggeration, I'm betting 80% is just "poor research" (which I was guilty of in my last post), ie. listening to second-hand information, merely skimming the forums instead of reading them, etc.  But there are that 20% that are deliberately telling half-truths.  Yeah, you can figure out which ones by the fact that they don't link their sources on their youtube videos.  To them I say these two things: 1) Making atheism+ out to be more dangerous than they actually are is just as divisive as the Watson/Myers agenda and 2) Do you honestly think we don't know how to use Google and find out what's going on ourselves?

To wit, YES, there are those who are advocating doc-dropping on atheism+.  But you know what?  That's their lunatic fringe, and they got dogpiled as soon as they suggested it.  And yeah, I know you're about to say.  "That's only in public.  They secretly want to..." Please STFU now.  They might "secretly want to" a lot of things, but this is what I'm seeing NOW.  After everyone's backed them into a corner.  Keep them backed in there, and that lunatic fringe will become a vocal minority, which will become a majority, and then yeah, they WILL start seriously considering dropping docs.  But right now, the cooler heads are prevailing, and all they're really doing is whining about you.

Now, having said that, is there more atheism+ could do to ensure no one's docs are dropped?  Hell yeah.  Peer pressure is well and good, but if I were modding those forums, the mod-hammer/banhammer would have come out right then and there.  The thread would have been locked down, and some warnings would have been issued, publicly, with no regards for the lunatic fringe's pwecious feelings.  If I had been admining, I'd have kicked their asses right off the forum.  Because if you DO doc-drop, and someone gets hurt because if it, atheism+ could be held liable.  It would have been a simple case of CYA.

In fact, this is a hell of a lot more serious than the issue regarding transcribing permissions on FTB, also exaggerated apparently.  The so-called dogpiling victim in that particular incident seemed very much on board with the idea.  There wasn't a bullying incident on atheism+'s part (although there was that moronic attempt at derailing with the "we're not really organization A; we're organization B."  In the second place, you share the core values and even part of the title, so the differences are trivial; in the first place, do you really think we care?)  But seriously, you should get on board and let atheism+ (or their subsidy, or whatever) transcribe your youtube videos because 1) they're actually doing something useful for once, and that needs to be encouraged and 2) it might actually go a long way toward healing the breach in the atheism community.  And to that end, I'm also going to make another statement that you hardline anti-atheist+/FTB/skepchick types aren't going to like:

It's a fucking shame that Jennifer McCreight got run off of FTB by trolls and haters.  And no, I'm not being sarcastic.  Whatever else you might think about Jennifer McCreight, boobquake was fucking genius.  It was the best trolling of religion that I can remember since Meatfest Wednesday all those years ago, and the object of her scorn was a hell of a lot more deserving.  A bunch of Muslims saying that there was an increase in earthquakes just because some women wore low-cut tops?  What kind of pants-shitting prude bullshit is that?  Did Pat Robertson convert to Islam when we weren't looking?  Because you hear this kind of shit all the time on 700 Club.  Seriously, I have no beef with anyone who calls a bunch of Islamofacists out on their crap, and they had managed to break their own record for stupidity.  And I can remember a time, not too long ago when, if the Islamofacists came knocking, we would all of us have had Jennifer McCreight's back.  It wasn't about some cult of personality "movement", it was just about being there for each other when we needed to be.  Hell, it might have been easier to take if she'd been run off by a bunch angry Muslims.  Instead, she got run off by a bunch of atheist males ACTING like Muslims.  Over this elevatorgate bullshit.

So yeah, while I'm not too pleased with Atheism+ et al., I'm not so gullible as to think that the opposition hasn't done its share of shit-flinging, either.  Atheism+ is a bunch of whiny, butthurt candyasses.  No more, no less.  But they are not TEH SCARIEST THREAT TO ATHEISM ZOMG THEY WILL KILL US ALL!!!!!1111  If you can't reach out to them and ask for a reconciliation, then at least give them their breathing room and see what they do BEFORE acting as alarmist as Rebecca Watson.  Oh and speaking of Rebecca Watson, atheism+, get your nose out of hers and PZ Myers' asses.  If it weren't that and the fact that your bad reputation precedes you, I might have signed up, even if you would have banned me a week later.  Which, let's face it, you would have.  As the past two blog posts show, I'm not Mr. Sensitivity.

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