You guys were on the debate team in high school, weren’t you?
No you didn’t, you came here for an argument.
I’m sorry, I thought this was Abuse.
:rolleyes:
There is a far difference between what happened at JREF and what you claim she is doing now.
Why did you even bring up the fact that she was a moderator?
Actually, no. They were woefully vague and unenforced. That was most of the problem.
Here is the DragonCon rule they ‘violated’:
“In deference to our dealers and exhibitors, who purchase a table or sponsor the convention, no general merchandise sales are permitted at concourse tables. You can sell logo merchandise from your organization and other items made exclusively for and by your club, band or organization. Dragon*Con does not charge a percentage of these merchandise sales.”
The initially objected to items were homemade buttons. Later the objection was moved to handmade jewelry that was made by another Skepchick member. the first certainly falls under the rule’s criteria, but the second is a gray area as Surleyramics jewelry is handmade and sold for skepchick, but Surleyramics does exist as another company. This makes it a bit gray, but I suspect the rule was written so that fan tables are not selling full-on commercial merchandise such as action figures, comic books, grumpy-cat T-shirts, etc. Not jewelry that no commercial table could possibly be selling
But the next day the rule was used to shut down the table. Sure they were not booted, but I am not going cry about Watson’s hyperbole vs. a rather liquid adjustment of the rules.
It is alleged that this was an overall crackdown on many fan tables, but if you are going to crack down, at least make sure your rules are clear and that you follow them. The letter of the law might have been violated vis-a-vis the jewelry but not the spirit. This situation could have been reported with less drama by Watson, but the Dragon*Con people really did not seem to handle it well at all -no surprise given my own experiences with a power tripping con volunteer.
No she wasn’t surprised. Not in the least. It was practically planned (talk to the guys whose posts she edited). She was surprised by a few later people’s reaction to her thread but that was about it.
My perspective was that McGraw wasn’t much of a blip. By the time Watson called her out the issue was already blowing up as many female attendees were describing incidents at cons & such that made Watson’s elevator incident pale by comparison. But the reason they were sharing the incident was because Watson brought it up and that opened to floodgates.
Actually I can. It was part of it, certainly. But McGraw wasn’t an innocent babe in the woods here. The Dale Husband article I linked to pretty much covers it better than I can.
I won’t pretend that Watson is some kind of saint or perfect in all ways. She is prone to shooting from the hip. But she also deals with some very sticky issues within the skeptical/atheist community - issues that were not being dealt with by the ‘old guard’ or even a lot of the new arrivals. When skeptical/atheist cons were hesitant to put forth harassment rules, Skepchick was one of the groups that was pushing hard for them. The whole ‘evevatorgate’ incident was probably responsible for this shitstorm of exposed gender issues within the movement. Seeing what I see within the movement, this might have gone on for years without being confronted had not ‘elevatorgate’ brought forth the reports of gender problems in the first place.
She has had to be a lightning rod for the bullies to target. Even so many other female skeptics & atheists have to put up with tremendous amounts of crapIf you think this is not an issue then explain why the Hag Blag had to stop blogging just because of the constant sexist threats to her and her family.
Throughout this, Rebecca does post on a lot of other issues besides femminism in skepticism. She covered multiple topics in her time. Many of them are gender related or feminist related and cover topics that were not covered in skepticism (or at least not well).
So I will certainly not dismiss Watson as a ‘troll’ nor a ‘professional victim’. Such terminology is shallow and dismissive. Are there things to criticize her for? yes! But to use such terms when considering her body of work is frankly unworthy.
Yeah, this. I was all for A+ at first, but it’s turned into some sort of weird, censoring, strange movement. PZ used to be someone I really admired but he’s gone off with the fairies on this as well. Particularly after he posted that bizarre accusation against Michael Shermer - someone I personally find abhorrent (not what he writes, but he, himself, personally when I had to interview him some years ago) but what PZ did was absolutely wrong. A+ is starting a witch hunt and oddly, seems to be involved in weird, cultish behaviour. Dawkins is no prize and he was tone deaf in his remarks but he’s right to want her off the speakers list.
I’m a fairly strong feminist but there’s lots of subtle context here that’s lost on anybody not familiar with new atheism and the A+ movement. There’s lots of Der Trihs style MRA types around the atheism movement, but they’re around in other places, too. We could in fact do with more female speakers and speakers of colour at cons, but so could a lot of other places. Watson - someone I used to greatly enjoy reading - has gone right round the bend, although I think her initial statement was ok - I remember the post when it happened and yeah, it can make women uncomfortable to be trapped in a small space late at night with a man who is hitting on her. That should have been the end of it, although it blew up with the rape/death threats after. But A+ has taken the crazy up a notch.
BCP, however, is just an shrill asshole based on his posting history. Stopped clocks, however…
Just as long is it isn’t getting hit on the head lessons.
…elevatorgate blew up when she attacked McGraw. It is incorrect to say that elevatorgate gained prominence when other people came forward with their stories. Watson’s attack on McGraw were baseless. She did it to get a reaction. She trolled her fans and she trolled her opponents, and they fell for it. There is no difference to what she did then and her behaviour now.
Because she was a moderator?
Nah, not really. Watson tried to “rule lawyer” the rules, and it didn’t work.
That seems pretty straight forward to me.
Sorry: I can’t take Watson’s word as truth. She has a history of lying and spinning the truth. You admit that her reaction could be seen as hyperbole. We have witnesses who dispute Watson’s account. There is no grey area. The intent of the rule is pretty clear. If she wanted to make sales then she should have paid the money for the correct booth like everyone else.
And this is the problem. Watson’s comments weren’t hyperbole. They were lies.
So Watson wasn’t singled out? And they cracked down on other fan tables? And the letter of the law was violated? I’m not sure what your problem is then. It sounds like everything played out as it should have.
Your cite simply repeats my cites, with commentary from the blogger.
Not at all. What particular part of the Dale Husband article makes out that McGraw wasn’t an “innocent babe?” And what part wasn’t covered by my cites earlier in the thread? Watson accused McGraw of being “ignorant about feminism.” She accused McGraw of a “pretty standard parroting of misogynistic thought.” Considering what McGraw actually wrote these accusations are not only unfair, they are wrong. And nothing Dale Husband wrote changes any of that.
So forget about Dale Husband’s opinion. Do you think McGraw was parroting misogynistic thought?
The problem with the “cult of personality” that Watson, Myers, Poppy, et al have surrounded themselves with is that rather than take action they are content to spread rumours, innuendo, and insinuations. Just read your cite. Among the many annon accusations sourced from facebook and blog comments there are some extremely serious allegations that Myers and Watson have done nothing about except spread rumour and innuendo. What happened to Ashley and Karen was disgusting and indefensible. But your cite doesn’t expose a shitstorm of exposed gender issues within the movement. I encourage everyone reading this thread to click on Mr Miskatonic’s link and to read the blog he linked to to see just how wrong he actually is.
Trolling is a terrible way to get results. She doesn’t need to be a target and it would be more constructive for everyone if she wasn’t. She is a terrible spokesman for feminism.
Jen McCreight looks like an awesome person. Jen’s father wrote something on the internet and someone responded to that with a mean blog post. I’m not exactly sure what you want me to say about that. I’m a photographer. Here is a blog post describing a rare event that happened recently in the Grand Canyon, accompanied by some beautiful images. Now go read the comments. The reality is that many people on the internet suck. I’m well aware that female skeptics & atheists and females in general have to deal with more crap than the average male blogger. Heck, look at the OP and this thread. But how has Watson being a lightning rod helped Jen? The truth is that it hasn’t.
You are free to do what you like. Watson actions say everything though. She demeans whatever positive work she chooses to do by trolling. I can’t see her body of work beyond the self-promotion and the lies. There are many positive spokesman for atheists and feminism out there. I would encourage those people to stand up and I would encourage others to support them.
Yeah… I find it interesting how people try to defend what is essentially the real world version of a class smear campaign by saying that “just accusations” is good enough.
Hey, I’ll take what I can get at this point.
The point of her joke was not to claim, or even to jokingly “claim,” that male atheists have to say “cunt.” Her joke was parodying images people have of her. The joke, in (no longer funny because explanatory) paraphrase, was “haha as if I think all male atheists are like this, when we all know I think no such thing, amirite?”
While to some extent a public speaker is responsible to know how her words will be taken, this can only go so far. You can’t account for every idiot.
You’re just gonna leave that dangling? Come on, spill the beans!
He posted anonymous rape accusations. Basically, someone told Myers anonymously that Michael Shermer had raped them, and he posted that on his blog. There has since been this. Depending on which side of the debate you’re on (and it really does pretty much split down partisan lines), Myers is either inciting a witch hunt, or warning people of the legitimate threat posed by Michael Shermer. Exactly how fucked-up the logic on this one is… Well, here’s the first comment from an article on the subject talking about this Shermer quote:
Yeah… Not that hard to see how this starts to look like a Witch Hunt. Although even if he had specifically said “I couldn’t tell you which conference they’re even talking about” (rather than having spoken quite clearly in legalese", I’d feel justified in pointing out that given some feminist definitions of “rape” I’ve heard, I wouldn’t know which of the girls I’ve slept with were “rape victims” either, regardless of how strongly they affirmatively consented at the time. :rolleyes:
marshmallow is asking Gleena to spill the beans about her interview with Shermer, not about the rape accusation.
Here is what McGRaw wrote:
There was other stuff but that was the part that Watson concentrated on. And IMO is a problem. It is a poo-pooing dismissal of the experience and frankly I can certainly see how Watson think McGraw missed the point of why this guy was acting creepy.
She got called out on handwaving away Watons’s concerns. Watson calling her on it is not ‘trolling’.
OK, let’s break this down:
- What items, exactly, broke the rule (note: turns out that the jewelry was part of Mad Art Labs, which is part of Skepchick so that ownership is not a gray area at all)
- Why was the reaction to do an immediate full shutdown rather than let them remove the offending objects?
- Who are the “other eyewitnesses”? Please don’t tell me you are using the accounts of Sara Mayhew.
- What is the purpose of the rule? Is it to prevent true commercial dealers from using ‘fan table basis’ to sell generic merchandise? Or is it an excuse to crack down on tables people don’t like?
- Why should Skepchick have to buy a commercial table when plenty of other fan tables apparently do the same exact thing they were doing? Making sales is often what fan tables do to cover expenses - this is not something sleazy Skepchick was doing nor was it direct competition with any of the tables selling Commercial merchandise. You have a horrid double-standard here.
As for the general crackdown - turns out I was mislead on that. Some folks who monitored other tables said there really was no such "general crackdown. Several folks even mentioned that they had products that violated the rules but didn’t hear a thing.
This was badly handled. I won’t blame Dragon*Con as a whole - I will say this sounds like a volunteer powertripping. Nothing I haven’t seen before at a con.
IMO McGraw minimized, handwaved or effectively dismissed Watson’s experience on the basis that ‘we are sexual beings’ (see my quoting of her above). That in of itself may not be straight-up mysogyny but it sure as heck is a party line of people who try to minimize the experiences women have where they can be creeped out or made uncomfortable. It is the same as saying ‘you’re just too uptight about it’ or 'What? Do you want the men to be separated from the women at these events!?" and other overreactions or minimizations of what Watson went through. Watson specifically notes that McGraw is missing a crucial difference between sexual attraction and objectification.
The most whining I have seen is that Watson effectively called her out in meatspace. Somehow this is a rule.
Yet somehow calling out McGraw and naming her is ‘trolling’. I don’t get how that word warps so much.
You keep using the word ‘trolling’ improperly. I do not think that words means what you think it means. Trolling means tossing a stinkbomb into a room and running away. If Watson’s actions get defined as ‘trolling’ I think the word loses all meaning.
Meanwhile I can almost accuse you of ‘concern trolling’ with regards to Watson.
Y’all keep glossing over what seems to me to be the more salient part of the video : she’s ostensibly pitching for cancer research donations. Cool. But she opens up with an ambiguously sexist but non-ambiguously “Me me ME !” bit. Less than cool.
Whether or not she’s a cunt, she appears to be quite histrionic. Which is a turn-off for me : if I’m not the centre of attention, I ain’t interested.
Hmm. This thread has been useful and interesting in three ways:
-
It clued me in to this “Atheism+” thing that I’d never really heard about before. I should probably withhold judgement, but my initial reaction is that I don’t dig it much.
-
It’s helped me realize that Ms. Watson is, while only very questionably a cunt, certainly more annoying than I’d originally thought, which encourages me to go look for a different podcast than the SGU, which has been sorta getting on my nerves anyway.
-
I’ve never seen the word cunt used so much on this board, and I have to say that, as a person who never actually matured past about a seven-year-old level, cunt makes me giggle inside every time, cause cunt is, as the thread title now indicates, a VERY naughty word. Cunty cunt cunt cunt! (This, by the way, has nothing to do with the actual meaning or implications or anything else of the word–this is a simple puerile joy at “bad language”. Cunt!)
^I like this guy.
Is that what you said to your underage, retarded girlfriend?
…the guy asked her if she wanted a cup of coffee. He even went out of his way to say ““Don’t take this the wrong way,”, fully aware that she may well have taken it the wrong way.
What is with your nonsense about “objectification?” How is a guy, asking if someone wants a cup of coffee, objectifying someone?
McCraw didn’t miss the difference between sexual attraction and objectification at all. She asked a question. She didn’t diminish anyone’s feelings. She didn’t accuse Watson of anything and didn’t call her any names.
McGraw did no such thing. Stop stating rubbish. Watson didn’t call her out on her claims. Watson ignored McGraw’s questions and made a couple of personal attacks that you yourself agree are invalid.
Hey, lets no break it down, shall we? Because you are relying on the words of an unreliable narrator for your “break down.” She broke the rules, she got asked to stop, she threw a hissy fit. If you have any evidence of a conspiracy theory of a crack down on "tables that people don’t like I would love to see it. I don’t have a double standard at all. Dragon Con is a commercial enterprise, not a charity. She didn’t have to be in direct competition with anyone else: she simply had to be selling stuff that she wasn’t allowed to.
You are letting your own experiences cloud cloud your judgement. There is nothing in Watson’s own account that shows anything other than professional behaviour on the part of the Dragon Con person who spoke to her.
Watsons “calling out” was vicious and nasty and it was done in an environment where McGraw was outnumbered and didn’t have the right or ability to respond. It was passive aggressive bullying and completely out of proportion to the question that McGraw asked and that you cited up thread.
No words are being warped. You agree with me that McGraw wasn’t parroting misogynistic thought: so why did she say it? She dropped a stink bomb into the room when she attacked McGraw. It was a passive aggressive attack: but it was certainly an attack.
I’m using the accepted definition of the word. When Watson attacked McGraw: she tossed a stinkbomb into the room and then ran away. My use of the word trolling even fits your definition of the word.
Why? What on earth have I posted that would justify that label?
Man, I fucking love this place!
I was trying to avoid it but I’m going to have to go back and read that thread now.
It’s like two girls one cup. I know I shouldn’t watch it but I can’t resist seeing what all the fuss is about.