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Open Thread to discuss all things Trump, I mean holy crap
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We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.
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Debate Night Open Thread
We already said what the term “mansplaining” means in the other thread and explained why it isn’t a big bad dogwhistle. Why come to this thread to ask about it?
kupo
If someone had a valid criticism, they might be able to figure out a way to do it without a bunch of unsubstantial name calling.
‘Atheistbro’ for example – what possible relevance does either atheism or my sex have to whether the CIA is a trustworthy source?
It’s no more relevant than whether someone is right or left handed, fat or thin, tall or short. I sure didn’t bring that dimwitted nonsense into the conversation.
weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
You’ll have to ask Scildfreja to ‘splain why she brought it up in this thread.
Or why she brought up the CIA thread in this thread.
You’re barking up the wrong tree.
“Atheistbro” is not really a comment on your atheism or your gender, specifically. It refers to a certain behavioral pattern displayed by a certain group of people. You can be an atheist and a man without being an atheistbro. It’s not even difficult (you fucking moron).
@proudfootz
Are you really going to pretend not to know what the slymepit is or how that’s relevant to the way you’re acting and treating others in here?
For the lurkers, since you’re the only ones I’m replying for anyway, There’s this subsection of atheism that believes that feminism and human rights have no place in atheism. They have a tendency to go to religious blogs and harass religious people simply for their beliefs and they get really upset when other atheists point out that some of the sexist and racist stuff taught by religion shouldn’t be part of the atheist movement. They believe that lack of God is the only important message atheism should spread and that SJWs are horrible people polluting their movement. These people were driven off Free Thought Blogs and now dwell in the slymepit, a name they proudly give their Internet home. When people talk about brotheists/atheistbros, that’s the type of people they’re referring to.
@wokefootz
And you just decided to try to emotionally manipulate Scild into being on your side. You’re a piece of shit.
Hi proudfootz.
I’m familiar with your writing; you’ve been around before. As such, I’m a little disappointed in the way you’ve behaved here, because I know you’re capable of better. Please consider what your end goal is, and how you intend to get there.
Saying things like that to Axe or M, regardless of how funny they are or how true you feel they are, is not going to result in an end-state in which everyone agree with you and is your friend.
If your end goal is to “win” the argument in some sense, please consider how meaningless the concept of “winning” an internet argument is, and how seldom it genuinely happens. Having the last word, or being unpleasant enough to someone else to drive them off doesn’t exactly advance the sum total of human happiness.
If your end goal is to be regain esteem in the eyes of the community, then a good step would be to stop posting for a moment, wait until the moment has passed, then reexamine what you’ve written and consider whether you really want to be That Guy.
On a personal note, if your end goal does not involve having me be very disappointed in you, you will apologise to Scildfreja for that. She’s a wonderful person, and if we end up being assholes to her because of her kindness, then that sends a signal to her to not be kind, which makes the world a worse place. Making the world a worse place is something I object to.
(“Be regain esteem”. When I rewrite things over and over, I leave artifacts behind that I don’t spot until after editing. Grrrr.)
It might be worth mentioning that “Elevatorgate” was one of the biggest driving forces behind the formation of the Slymepit.
In case anyone is unaware of it, here’s the summary of it. Rebecca Watson was asked to give a talk at an atheist conference about why women are underrepresented in movement atheism and how it can made more welcoming to women. One of the things she talked about was how women who attend atheist conventions are overwhelmed by the number of men hitting on them, sometimes to the point of harassment. A lot of atheist men treat atheist women, not as humans who attended a conference to meet people with similar interests, hear speakers, etc. but as things just there to provide sexual entertainment to the male attendees.
After the talk and after having some drinks and mingling with people, she goes to the elevator to go up to her room and to bed and some guy corners her to invite her for coffee. She turned him down and then later brought it up, I think in a vlog. She didn’t dox him. She didn’t talk shit about him. She just suggested that men not do things like that at 4 in the morning, particularly when she’s just expressed a desire to not be hit on.
This caused the atheistbro subset of atheism to have a complete meltdown. It was sort of the precursor to Gamergate. She got harassed over this for years. She’s probably still being harassed. Other well known female atheists who stood up for her got harassed too. The manosphere caught wind of it and sided with the harassers.
Sorry if this all old news to absolutely everyone but since it was 5 years ago I thought maybe there could be younger or new to social justice commenters or lurkers who aren’t aware.
So yeah, there’s pretty good reason for people, especially secular women to be very weary of men who are unbearably smug, treat oppression that doesn’t affect straight white men as NBD, and identifies as atheist.
Elevatorgate is now actually close to 6 years in the past. Richard Dawkins really made the whole thing explode by getting making a typically clueless comment early on. These events caused me to distance myself from movement atheism.
Speaking of accurate, pithy descriptions of behaviour wokefootz has been indulging in here, has anyone broken out sealioning yet?
I knew this thread was missing something; it was missing proudfootz’ proud footz smell all over it. Glad to see that has been rectified.
In non-shitweasel news, I just hatched two flawless shiny Pokemon within ten minutes of eachother. This swap breeding thing is a revelation.
EDIT: And WP is eating links to images again. U2hgWit.png on Imgur.
Congrats, SFHC!
Does anyone remember back when I was cross-stitching? I picked that back up again. I’ll post a pic of my progress later tonight.
@PoM
I look forward to seeing your photo. 🙂 I’ve been toying with the idea of picking crochet back up or learning to knit.
For kupo or anyone:
I have a goal to have this done by the end of the year. Any bets on whether I will succeed?
Ooh, nice!
@PoM: Holy cats, I can’t even with that! Good luck!
Wow, PoM, that’s gorgeous!!
Beautiful work, PoM. Thanks for sharing.
That is turning out to be one stunning piece of work.
Oh wow, that’s gorgeous. The texture of the cross stitch works very well with the black background to create an insectile shimmying-colour look.
Thanks, all! I am following a pattern, of course, so I can’t take credit for the beauty of the design. It is only about 60% done; that straight line along the left is the edge of pages in the pattern.
@SFHC
What is swap breeding? A Sun/Moon thing?
I got both Sun and Moon for Christmas and birthday gifts this year, but I haven’t really started playing yet. :p
I haven’t commented in ages, though I still lurk steadily. This comment thread has made me want to catch up on reading all comments, given me even more respect for how trolls are dealt with here (especially the ones who walk so close to the “maybe not a troll, just doesn’t get it” line as proudfootz did at first), and get back into fiber crafting.
@Grace of Spades, welcome back, and feel free to lurk or comment however you like. Frequency of commenting is no bar for entry 🙂 The thread you’d be looking for on that is back around here:
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2017/01/07/resisttrump-today-by-reading-the-declassified-intelligence-report-on-russian-hacking/comment-page-2
I think that’s where it started!
@PoM, that’s gorgeous. I love dragonflies as a motif and it’s coming out beautifully. I can’t wait to see it when it’s done!
@Everyone, thank you so much for standing up for me. I mean it <3
@proudfootz, sigh. Somehow you haven’t entirely depleted my patience, so I’ll explain.
First, I apologize for saying these things in a place you could read. I was hoping to find somewhere safe to vent, and didn’t think you were reading all of the other threads. I’ll put that right out front. I’m allowed to be angry, and allowed to express that anger, but I was trying to do it in a way which wasn’t directed at you. Seems like you found it. I apologize.
That said – I see your duplicitous little trick.
Suggesting an equivalence between “needing to vent in place B about a stressful conversation in place A” and “verbal abuse” is abhorrent. You’ve been a jerk and my desire to vent is completely normal and not at all abusive; I went out of my way to do it in a place that wasn’t inline with that conversation. I made it very clear in the previous thread how stressful that conversation was. A couple of sharp words in another place is hardly “verbal abuse”. Nor was my comment about stress anything to do with being mean to you, quite the opposite. And you know it.
You’ve done this a few times now – this aggressive little trick of twisting someones’ words to paint them as the unreasonable one while also painting yourself as the victim. It’s the rhetorical equivalent of “so how long has it been since you stopped beating your wife?” Everyone can see it, no one’s fooled by it. That trick’s been used on me many, many times in my life now, by people who were actually abusive.
My emotional exhaustion is from having to walk on eggshells when speaking to you, to go over my words again and again to scrub them of any unintended aggression or irritation; my worry that I’m communicating poorly or that I’m somehow giving you an unfair chance.
I’ve been trying desperately to help you see where you’ve come into conflict with the rest of us, and tried to show you how you might be able to fix that. This requires I wear kid gloves, and not say plainly what is plainly obvious:
You have been arrogant. Towards others, and towards me. I’ve swallowed my pride and let you do this without reply. I’m guilty of this sin myself so I try to give others the benefit of the doubt in this, but the fact still stands.
You have been a mansplainer, walking in here with explanations no one asked for, with assumptions of superior knowledge, and with no actual argument beyond “you’re gullible.” You haven’t even attempted to engage in an exchange, have demonstrated no charity towards opposing positions, and in doing so have insulted the intelligence of anyone here. I swallowed all of those insults too and did my best to calmly explain the issue at hand.
You are an atheistbro. I’ll define that for you, since you seem to need a primer on the jargon. Much like a brogressive, it’s someone who claims to care about truth, but doesn’t express any self-criticism. It’s someone who assumes that they have defeated their biases, and therefore someone who assumes their own objectivity. This lets them consider their own warrantless beliefs to be the same as rock-hard facts, and anyone who disagrees is just being emotional. Ref: Elevatorgate, Atheistbro opinions on feminisms, etc.
They also tend to consider the plight of atheists in American society to be one of the greatest struggles of the modern age, making it equivalent to (or greater than) civil rights or feminism. The treatment of atheists in some parts of the US is certainly terrible, but it’s this victim complex, combined with a sense of intellectual superiority, that best defines the Atheistbro.
They also tend to bring it up whenever they’re accused of anything. Such as what you brought up, out of nowhere, multiple times. Which is why I feel comfortable using the term.
All of those terms apply to you, but I didn’t want to use them. You clearly have no clue what they mean, and jargon’s for use within in-groups. So I explained, patiently, prepared to engage your questions, braced to weather your aggression, and steeleed myself for the anxiety that your insults to my friends would bring.
I had hoped that my repeated pleas for you to stop being so defensive, to entertain the possibility that you might be wrong, would help you relax your position. Those two elements – surrendering defensiveness and self-doubt – are the very cornerstones of rationality, and you seem to care about that.
I see now, though, that you don’t care about being right, you care about winning.
When was the last time you were wrong about something you cared for deeply, Proudfootz? When was the last time you had to change your mind about something – the last time a major category of thought went from “True” to “False” in your head? The last time when that shift was accompanied by gut-wrenching guilt and pain and self-abasement? So that you could never again consider yourself actually right on anything, that you forever doubt yourself and your own conclusions?
That’s what rationality feels like, Proudfootz. It’s an eagerness to be wrong, alloyed with a perpetual self-doubt. It’s about having your ego crushed, repeatedly, and being okay with that.
I push away my urge to be angry with people who are arrogant, who are pedagogical, who are perpetual victims, because that’s me. I look at your anger and your sense of outrage and I feel sympathy and guilt, because it’s looking in a mirror. I’ve been holding back and biting my tongue with you since you got here because I want other people to give me that chance when I’m being a jerk. To explain in kindness when I have no kindness to give.
Which is now. I have no more kindness to give you; this is the last. Rationality is about self-destruction, Proudfootz. If you want to be the sober-minded truth-seeker that most atheists want to be, you need to get out your own knives – and use them on yourself. All those tools of science and rationality aren’t weapons to destroy falsehood in the world – they’re tools to destroy falsehood in your own beliefs.
If you want to continue this conversation, I will no longer restrain myself. I will expect a high standard of self-criticism and rationality from you, and will not hold back based on your inexperience with jargon or unfamiliarity with context. You can deal with that, or you can go back to the Slymepit.
@SFHC
Oops! I didn’t check your imgur link before making my previous comment. Ignore that question. 🙂
It sounds pretty complicated but I will definitely play around with it later. I’m a bit concerned that this will devalue shininess though.
EJ (The Orphic Lizard)
Yes, I’ve been around. And we are *all* capable of better.
My goal is not to try and figure out what sort of things to write which will make people want to be my friend. My goal was to contribute to forming some sort of understanding about a strategy that might avert further electoral disasters in the future.
I will let other posters have the last word.
That they have succeeded in driving someone off will apparently make them very happy.
I will continue to support David in his work, as I feel what he is doing is important and contributes to society as a whole.
While there is a great deal more to be said – more questions and more accusations – there’s no point in answering them.
Yes, I don’t want the world to be a worse place than it already is.
I will happily trade apologies with whoever is willing.
It’s not an apology if you insist the other person also must apologize to you.
Scildfreja
I appreciate your efforts, but at this time will not respond as this seems like a very good juncture for everyone to pause and reflect.
Be assured I only wish the best for you and your loved ones. I don’t want you to step on anything painful, contract a rash, or make you want to ‘flounce’ off the site, or have David ban you.
Thank you for the apologies for ‘venting’ in a place where I could ‘overhear’ to your unfiltered words.
kupo
In my experience, many times loved ones and I have exchanged mutual apologies.
I feel sorry for proudfootz’ loved ones, if they can never get an apology without having to offer up one of their own, regardless of how contrived.
If you’re sorry for something, apologize. Holding out until someone else “mutually” apologizes means it’s not a true apology.
@kupo
I’ll note that proudfootz did not apologize to Scildfreja, so apparently that “mutual apologies” thing only applies inconsistently. Say, when someone wants proudfootz to apologize for something, not when proudfootz expects an apology.
@PoM
It’s some seriously disturbing behavior that reminds me of my abusive ex. He would never offer up an apology and if I ever got upset or angry with him he would insist I apologize to him for upsetting him.
Proudfootz keeps bringing back very upsetting memories for me and it’s starting to make me really uncomfortable. Was David contacted yet? Has he made a ruling?
@kupo
David told proudfootz to stop commenting here:
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2017/01/07/resisttrump-today-by-reading-the-declassified-intelligence-report-on-russian-hacking/comment-page-6/#comment-1153114
It’s not 100% clear that he meant for proudfootz to stop commenting, period, which I’m sure proudfootz is going to use to argue that the ban was only meant for that thread. I don’t think that rules-lawyering is going to keep him out of moderation once David catches up, though.
The best way to accomplish that is not to mock people who are politically allied with you as conspiracy theorists. It’s not to hand wave away the concerns of non cishet white dudes in progressive spaces. Because even setting aside the ethical issues with fixing the white dude approved issues first and making everyone else wait, it’s not politically practical. Progressivism has to be a coalition of people of different genders, races, orientations, views on religion, etc. There are not enough liberal white men in the US to win election on your own. Shutting up and listening to your own allies is necessary every so often.
@Scildfreja
Bravo. Backing you up 100%.
(Edit: <3 Vis and everyone else, thank you.)
I imagine that David was suggesting proudfootz pause and reflect – I'm glad he's taken the advice.
Thank you for the concern. Do understand, though – I see the insinuations that you’ve wrapped up inside of that concern. I’m not sure if you see them, but that’s immaterial.
Prometheus makes a better guide than his brother, Epimetheus. I hope things improve in the future.
Wow.
Just…wow.
What’s pissing me off the most about proudfootz’ most recent posts is how he’s trying to make us all into a group of some kind with identical transgressions and needs. We are not a “we” with proudfootz, but he sure seems to think we ought to be.
When he’s not doing that, he’s tone policing.
And when he’s not doing that, he’s trying to pretend he’s the only adult in the room, the second time I’ve watched him do this (I reckon because nobody called him out on it the first time).
Which, I will note, is also a form of tone policing. So are a few of his “we are a group here, fellow feminists” statements.
For someone who was whinging on the other thread about content-free posts, this is some mighty lack of content here.
Such rational, much logic, wow.
@PoM
Yeah, I noticed that, too. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure how to articulate the problem with it. Thank you.
I’m actually willing to offer an apology to Proudfootz.
Proudfootz,
I’m sorry you’re an asshat.
If he can do notpologies, so can I, right?
I took the “we can all be better” thing as his way of saying “you first.” He’ll only admit he’s wrong and should apologize when everyone here becomes perfect according to his standards.
Oh, I completely apologize for having the audacity to ask “Why are you here, proudfootz? Isn’t Reddit and YouTube enough for you?” /s
I gave him a “mea culpa” at questioning his length of time on here; I questioned that because he seemed not to know the community very well, otherwise why would he double down?
His subsequent posts gave me that answer.
But I don’t see where I have anything to apologize for…
@proudfootz
Then offer the damn apology to Scild instead of trying to shimmy up some bargaining for your own gains. I have nothing to say sorry for.
@footz
An apology serves 2 purposes:
To let someone know that one empathizes with their pain, and
To accept responsibility in the creation of that pain
Making an apology contingent on anything is anathema to the former and makes the latter literally impossible. Even if I felt the need to offer you an apology, your request proves you unworthy of it
By this point, Athlete’s Foot is coming off as an abusive rapist moreso than the trolls who admit they’re abusive rapists.
And it really pisses me off that his username’s taken from LoTR. You know, that allegorical treatise in favour of equality, moral courage and love and against corruption, war and hatred.
I’ve banned mr footz. I was pretty much inclined to ban already but the passive-aggressive stuff in his last comments here was the final straw.