Women and skepticism: the hate continues.

It's a concern everywhere. These attitudes are deeply ingrained in our society and they can come from anyone and stab you right in the back. You have no idea how many times I've thought I had a decent connection with a dude only for him to pull out the "can't be as bad as you say why are you over-reacting like this" card out on me.

You have a negative view of guys jumping in to aggressively smack down shit, but those guys are a big part of the reason I am more comfortable opening up about stuff here than I have in other places in the past. If someone decided to throwdown that I am a paranoid bitch who needs to be sorted out *wink wink* I know those guys would not have a good chuckle and give him a high five. Or just passively permit it by ignoring the entire exchange as a joke. That we have a great number of women here is also a big part of why I can talk about these issues, but having men who support the cause to is valuable because then it's not ZOMG GENDER WARZ, it's decent people vs assholes.

Look, I gave up one of my favorite genres of games, team-based FPSes, because voice chat became standardized and I refused to pay that level of sexism tax while trying to have fun. And I played the fuck out of those games before then. But, you know, "just ignore the trolls."

It doesn't work. I am tired of pretending it does.

I believe the term that applies here is "tone argument." You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. How can you expect to reach minds when they're on the defensive, so you should be nicer. (You should smile more.) That kind of thing.

This is still a public board where anyone can join and anyone can read posts. Perfectly understandable to keep your guard up, even if the people posting aren't being asshats.

You do not, in fact, catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

Also, reaching minds / doing 101 for people isn't an obligation. You know what is an ethical obligation? Speaking out against sexism wherever you find it.


edit: that is to say, sure, I posted in what I believe to be a measured and reasoned way that was intended to reach out to Calistas, as did Angie; but that doesn't mean that Bahimiron, by not doing so, forsook any obligation, for such an obligation does not exist.

Shoulda armed himself, if he was gonna decorate his saloon with my friend.

Oh god, now they're going to be even more insufferable. (obligatory THANKS OBAMA)

But thanks, I understand that perspective now. (Ironically, my own privilege enabled me to approach the situation from a position of comfort that women don't necessarily have.)

And I would be right there doing the same. That's actually part of my point - that doing so in the presence of some really awful shit from an undisputed asshole would be totally appropriate because, well, fuck those assholes. But is it necessary / useful / worthwhile to dogpile on another BF'er who just doesn't use or understand the right code-words (as the case of bloo and "rape culture") or who makes what I'd consider an unintentionally idiotic comment, like Calistas did?

Granted, Calistas didn't get severely dog-piled; I'm just using this particular incidence of it to mention that this behavior may be counter-productive, because I think the intent (or lack thereof) behind those remarks matter.

There's no issue with men who support the cause. I am one - I just read and learn from these threads rather than driving them. But the decent people versus assholes thing is what I was getting at. Is Calistas an asshole for misreading or not understanding the situation when he says "ignore the trolls?" Or is he a decent person who just lacks the context and understanding to realize why that's a dumb comment?

Calistas isn't an asshole, and we extend him substantial social capital as a member of the community, which is why he didn't get dogpiled.

Agreed on every point. (I admit to never doing scientific studies on fly-catching. Fly-swatting now, the best technique absent purpose-built tools are to clap your hands sharply together an inch or so above and behind the fly, fly-relative direction. When they startle into motion, they almost always leap up and back, right into the killing clap. Discovering this piece of knowledge as a wee lad made me feel like shiva, destroyer of flies.) I was just presenting the term, and it probably called for more words there--namely, that tone arguments as such are pretty stupid arguments. It's a really common one, though, and certainly goes hand-in-hand with the "just ignore things!" 'splaining.

This is what I was trying to say, in a sloppy way. As ALLIES (in this situation, male-presenting or whatever we are on the internet as dudes), we need to be the ones to engage people who aren't openly being cockroaches, i.e. people who say "shouldn't we ignore this." rather than "omg you r whore get raped." It's like what we talked about in the #1reason thread: you don't stay silent, but that doesn't mean you should just be on attack mode (again, as an ally. If somebody's attacking you, defend yourself/express yourself/stay silent/whatever you choose. Being in a working, smart community means that your allies will stand up for you.) at all times. It makes for defensive people, and I believe is what made feminism a bad word (and helped invent the stupid term politically correct and the notion that people as a whole should not "censor themselves," i.e. be respectful, toward people who are asking for respect). It creates backlash that we should be coming up with ways to avoid.
The 60s and early 70s saw some incredible strides being made toward equality on many fronts, strides that we've drawn back from as a society since. I can't say we're worse off than the 50s, but to say it's better isn't exactly right, either. Shit's still all fucked, but we need to figure out how to address the issues without alienating people.

P.S. I'm not excusing it, but I'm sure there's all kind of privilege mixed up in what I'm saying.

I understand that it's unfair to read Calistas' efforts to not make too strong a case for what he thinks on the topic for him trying to minimize the seriousness of the issues at hand. I don't agree with the few solid things he does land on, but I think he's coming from a good place.

But this is really just tossing out "white knighting" by another name. That's fine that you don't agree with what people say and it's up to you whether you think there's an overly aggressive consensus on it. But it is a dirty trick to expect that Calistas be given the benefit of the doubt and not also think that people who feel strongly about issues relating to gender actually, you know, feel strongly about them. I'm not even going to get into why the later honey persuasion thing is completely off base in terms of where the responsibility really lies for stating things diplomatically.

Again, I agree that there are responses that are more constructive than others. But that's not the same as acknowledging the broader societal dynamic in which this tiny subculture exists before asking dem knights to softpedal their honey in kind words.

My initial, gut reaction to your post, Eduardo X is a big "fuck you." Because fuck you if you honestly think that women (or anyone else furious at all this) need to watch themselves being defensive and aggressive against this shit because isn't that what made feminism a bad word? And what makes me really angry is that I know you are aware that you don't know what you're saying. But that is a huge fucking part of the problem. The nice, level headed people jumping in and just ever so casually saying "Maybe if you weren't like that this wouldn't happen" in the nicest way possible. Maybe if you didn't point out the stupid shit people say and make them feel bad, they won't think you're a bitch. Maybe if you were just really sweet and nice about being shit upon, people would take you seriously.


Edited to add: You can't just ignore this shit when it happens. Let's put this in another context: The internet allows a lot of people to burn a lot of crosses on a lot of lawns.

I shouldn't have to nicely convince someone that I shouldn't be threatened with rape because I happen to be "a girl on the internet."

Whoah, hang on a minute - white-knighting? Do you believe that I said what I did because I think men here are white-knighting? No. Not at all.

While I may disagree with the approach in situations like these, I have never questioned (even mentally) the sincerity of the convictions expressed.

I'm interested in hearing that, if / when you have the time and inclination.

I was too lazy to photoshop an Xbox headset on him.

Here's the thing: it's not an equal and opposite reaction to what women and every other non-male, non-white person goes through on a daily basis in the US and other places. It's not even close. It's not even trying to be, and indeed it's coming from a marginalized position in the broader power dynamic, which is to say one person being strongly feminist has nowhere near the same potential for force multiplication from societal context than one person being strongly sexist or misogynist.* It's why sexism is actually a good term for it, since it reflects the neutral setting being "male or pro male". That's old hat, I'm sure, but I got distracted.

Anyway, what I was getting at is that a concern about being "counter-productive" is not as important as being direct when these things come up, and it's in no way comparable to the chilling effect that is constantly going in the other direction. In fact, I would suggest that it is those small breaks in the prevailing climate that make allies more than just tokens. And that other chilling effect is literally what anyone nonwhite/hetero male is up against every moment of every day. The society in which we exist doesn't stop being that way just because in one small corner of the internet people are slightly less ridiculous about privilege. So I guess I would say the onus is upon men and people who hold sexist/misogynist opinions (or distant echoes of them) to tread carefully, and that's ok with me. We'll mend the fences afterwards.


*I just want to be clear that this is in no way putting them in the same box, just talking about the space they inhabit in societal discourse.

Yes, but how many of them have 20 paragraph screeds by Vetarnias?

I would also add... we shouldn't conflate "dont go to /b/" with "don't read comments threads". Comments threads are there to encourage dialogue with and feedback for the author, and cedeing them to the trolls is a kind of giving up that I at least don't care for. /b/ is an entirely different sort of phenomenon.

SERIOUSLY DON'T GO TO /B/.

Fair enough. I realize that my "concerns" (that's too strong a word) aren't likely to be shared, and I don't disagree about the need to be direct and call a spade a spade. I'm also not comparing the public shaming that someone might get for a foot-in-mouth comment here on BF as being even remotely close to actual discrimination. I'm surprised you read that as such.

I probably wouldn't post about this shit in the way I do anywhere but here. Anywhere else, I'd have to spend an hour making sure that every last element of what I said was absolutely and totally bulletproof, that there was no tiny little mistake or the slightest bit of unsupported assertions, because everywhere else on the internet, being a woman and speaking out about the treatment women get is like hanging a porkchop around your neck and jumping naked into a den of starving wolves. This is literally the only mixed community I feel safe enough to freely and spontaneously discuss these issues. (By 'mixed', I mean a general interest geek community that doesn't have a hyper restrictive commenting policy to keep out the psychopaths and rape apologists.)

And that's really fucking sad. This isn't just a skeptic issue - it's an issue in every form of geek community I've ever seen. There's no material difference between the treatment Rebecca Watson gets and the treatment Anita Sarkeesian gets. Something in geek culture is rotten to the core.

this whole thread has become a discussion on the poor white male's feelings and how unfair it is to poke him a bit.

/SIGH

Yes, that is literally what I derived from your idea about feminist-competing. "Some guys on this forum to use posts like Calistas' as an opportunity to indulge in competitive feministing" is pushing the same emasculation buttons that white knight accusations aim for. There is no way to read that as "maybe people get a little carried away and internet hyperbolic". And again, I don't actually care about attacking the sincerity per se, which is always going to be personality dependent and isn't necessarily relevant. What I'm getting it is the broader issue of climate, and your comment, for better or worse, is designed to steer the climate in a way that I don't like. Not because it's going to hurt my feelings or, even less likely, the women in all of their forms of BF, but because it's planting something strongly evocative of a maneuver straight from the easy-bruise school of "smart" internet guy sexism square in the middle of us.

Well, hopefully it's clearer now, but essentially I just try to keep it foremost in my mind that I was really wrong about some really important aspects of the whole "political correctness" white male angst I shared in back in the day. I mean extremely wrong. I didn't get it. I didn't understand why solidarity with a marginalized group is functionally different from solidarity within a group that has privilege. That's not license to bullshit each other or be sycophantic towards anything, but I will always try to weigh into my considerations of who needs to be careful and when.

I kind of like it when someone hurls an accusation of 'white knighting'. It means they believe the only possible reason a man could stand up or support a woman online is because he's hoping to get lucky. That is to say, that her only axis of value is sexual. It means I can safely ignore the person flinging the accusation, and know that I will lose nothing by never listening to anything they have to say, ever again.

I used to agree with you on this, for much the same reason that I used to think banning people as opposed to societal opprobrium was a sign of weakness in a community's standards. But I think there are particular dynamics to internet forms of communication, especially in terms of anonymity, the flow of conversation, and the ease with which you can dehumanize your opponents, that we haven't really thought through very well in terms of not turning every place on the internet into a festering petri dish of MRATH and racism etc. I'm not sure what the fair mechanisms would look like, but I am pretty sure that the current "free market" of ideas isn't working for anything of value in formats like comment threads.

I think this is fair, but I don't really know how to explain what I'm getting at, which I think is valid.

I used to take part in lots of anti-racism trainings. It was always tough, though, because people would say the shittiest, stupidest things all the time. We were trying to encourage honesty in those spaces, but also not trying to make it traumatic to people of color. So, before I just quit going to the trainings, we decided to split up the groups and have an outside facilitator come in.

This facilitator started by having people give a definition to racism, which people had differences on. Then, before really getting into the nitty-gritty, she had all the people of color go to a sub-group and all the white people go in another. Each group had different facilitators, but we talked about things we had trouble with hearing as people of color.

It was a very good session, speaking with other people of color about all the stupid shit we deal with regularly. We talked about people mispronouncing our names, assuming we speak different languages, asking where we're from all the time, talking disparagingly about certain races and then telling us we are not like most people of that group, etc etc etc.

I think it was a mistake to have the groups then come back together and report on what we had described, as the reaction to most of the stuff we had said was angry and defensive. People I considered friends felt attacked and in turn attacked me and the other people of color. Basically, things went from ok to horribel quickly, and it all had to do, IMO, with defensiveness. Hearing us say things that hurt us that the white folks considered non-offensive made them think we were being stupid or lying or unreasonable or something.

So, I stopped going to those trainings. I stopped talking about race with white people. I don't think it's my job to fix what I see as a white problem. And I don't see it as an obligation to counter racist shit people say to me anymore, either. Even when it's innocent, I get queasy if I feel put on the spot. I expect my white friends to do it, really. Or I just try to avoid white people altogether.

I saw James Leowen speak a few years back about sundown towns. He talked about how racism isn't really about people saying mean things or thinking a certain way, but about economics, media exposure, etc. He said it all in a way that made people listen, though not necessarily comfortable. If I had tried to say the things he was talking about - that thousands of towns around the US had systematically driven black people, Jews, and so on out of them and threatened them should they stay there after sundown - I think people would not have believed me. But he used his privilege to expose the system that gives him privilege. He is instantly comfortable to white people, I think, because he is white. And when he says what he says, he seems more trustworthy because he is white.

I don't think people of color, or anybody who is oppressed, should not speak about their oppression or defend themselves or anything like that, but I think that those with privilege should feel responsible to address those incidents of accidental/unintentional speech with a guiding hand. Turning people defensive doesn't work. Those same people with privilege should also attack those who are purposefully being hateful, however, or accidentally being horrible with no intent to change. I am certainly NOT trying to dictate how people react to being attacked. I'm trying to say what those who are allies should not be silent and also be willing to put up with bullshit so that the people in the oppressed group do not have to.

TL;DR: Something about using your privilege to fight privilege.

I think you've got a good grasp of the broader tactical and strategic questions in society at large. I don't think it translates as directly as you seem to think to the particular situation with discrimination issues on the internet and the way things work on forums in particular. But I appreciate the longer explanation of where you are coming from.

Well, I've certainly never been opposed to banning people, so it probably will not surprise you to discover that my preferred solution to the comments/troll phenomenon is strict, Soviet-style moderation. Just not having comments threads at all is 2nd place, and probably far more realistic because I'm sure most bloggers don't have time to prune their comments threads; leaving them up and giving the trolls the space is the worst option, which is what 'oh just ignore them' gives us.

Eduardo X, thanks for the fuller explanation. I didn't find it to be tl;dr at all, but given my own propensity for long-winded pedantry, I suppose that's unsurprising.

With regards to this specific instance, though, to Calistas and the other posters in the thread, there was constructive engagement. The flamethrower approach was directed at the kinds of people who spew bile in comments threads, and there's no ethical obligation or moral requirement that would ever be considered sound for we privileged white men to have to dive into the mud with those fuckheads. Ban them all and let Shub'Niggurath sort them out.

But not only constructive engagement. Which isn't to say that a little flameage wasn't deserved. I think there's an obvious tension in this thread/topic between needing a place to safely rage about things that need raging about, and the need for a discussion that can reach people who don't totally grok the issues. The first one of those things is necessarily going to make the second more difficult, because of everything in Eduardo's story. Don't have an answer, necessarily. Two threads wouldn't stop people from wandering into the wrong place and confusing things.

I was thinking about that on the drive home just now - a second thread for the confessions of the well-meaning but unconsciously privileged, so to speak - but what little benefit it might provide is unlikely to be worthwhile for the few people who would use it.

Suffice to say, what I was trying to get at earlier is what Eduardo mentioned above about having a space that encourages honesty without fear of reprisal via public shaming. Obviously BF as a whole cannot (and need not) be that space, but if the broader constructive goal is one of increased awareness and engagement on issues surrounding privilege and conscientiousness, there may be some benefit to choosing our internal battles a bit more carefully.

Always does, man. Always does.

Which is completely true. Whenever I tell a woman that I defend other women in online forums, man, the weird sexual things they'll do to me right there and then.

Even the lesbians.

Especially the lesbians.

Guys, couple of things. Sometimes I herp-a-derp, this is probably one of those times. Also, I often soft-peddle my language as it is a bit of an English thing to do and perhaps I have inherited that from my time in the UK and my parentage.

In any case, you are all good in my books, and you are all free to tell me I am wrong. Often I find out when people tell me - which is the best way I find.

I should say that I absolutely agree the movement has big problems. I have followed this thread and read the articles and reflected on bias, assumption, privilege, and the stupidity on display by Dawkins, et al.

It is damn frustrating(as an outsider to the community and nation involved) that great contributors to a community like those involved with Skepchick are having to deal with the nonsense they have to day in, day out. I have brought up the topic with progressive friends, shared links, etc, so I have been ruminating... which since I have no one to rail against about the topic seems a sensible personal step to take.

The point that male bloggers don't get sexualised commentary on their posts is, of course, entirely valid. I perhaps came at this with a bit of a dejected "I really don't know how you stop trolls" thought rather than a "it isn't serious" or "ignore it" point of view. I probably didn't make that terribly clear.

That's perhaps where I sit. I just don't know how on earth anyone can deal with that stuff. I am exasperated. One can deal with real life idiocy (as hard and as horrible as that may be) and I pray to Eris that men and women step in to support victims in those cases (though by the blog posts and links it appears they often do not), but online crap designed to get a raise? What do we do (non-rhetorically)? Is it a winnable battle? How many people engaged in that stuff have smelt blood on the water somewhere and hope to see their shit in the big lights on a popular blog?

Perhaps where I am going with this is: what should the community respond to, what should be ignored as revolting attention-seeking? This is how I think because I wouldn't personally be able to handle trying to respond to all of it.

TL/DR: sometimes I ruminate and nonsense falls out of my mouth.

Calistas, I think the big thing that caused problems is that you actually typod when you wrote your first post - you meant to write "I am not in doubt there is a problem", but you actually wrote "While I am in doubt there is a problem in the movement..." thus entirely changing the tone of your post. At least, I'm assuming that was a typo, given this followup post.

Correct! OMFG. I read my post again. I wrote "I am in doubt" when I mean "I am in NO doubt".

I deserve all the beatings. God damn. Sorry for pissing people off more than required. That will teach me for posting ponderings while on my bloody phone.

It's okay, man. Your mind was probably on building rockets with airships inside.

Is it too late to call Calistas a cockroach? I feel like I missed a window.

This is the best excuse ever for making a typo.

You are probably correct (see Kerbal thread in games, people!) My workmates are getting a bit sick of it, I think. Just as well I am an acting team lead so they HAVE to listen!

Anyway, since I have managed to make this thread all about me for nearly a page - let's continue! - I want to thank folks for the great, insightful posts about gender. They have made me think carefully about the topic (not that I was ever a big misanthrope, I would like to think, but there is nuance that education can help with). I have actually applied nuance around pervasive culture from here to a work situation that is probably too self-indulgent (I am an awesome supervisor omg!!!) to go on about.

I'm just glad you're not a cockroach after all!