Ongoing schisms about which Team Fence-sitter’s perpetual plaint is “Why can’t we put this petty disagreement behind us and concentrate on more important things?” i.e. why are you social justice warriors spoiling my nice cosy status quo?
Pseudonymous author Avicenna Last of the blog “A Million Gods” at FreeThought Blogs (FTB) has been discovered to be a serial plagiarist, and removed from the FTB network as a result. I did a search to check on whether I’d ever referenced one of his posts here on Hoyden, in case I needed to triple-check it for proper source attribution.
Like many others, I am sad and disappointed and angry about this.
I’ve just posted at Feministe about the latest developments in the skeptosphere’s Deep Rifts TM. For those who’d rather discuss the ongoing cyberstorm that began with Elevatorgate here, this is the thread for you. Links to other people’s posts especially welcome.
[Content Note: discussion of graphic rape threats and links to posts that quote them]
the way you personally feel about rape threats is irrelevant. What’s relevant is how you behave when they happen. When you support and promote the work of someone who makes rape threats, you are tolerating rape threats.
UPDATE: It has been shown that there is no evidence that TheAmazingAtheist actually wrote these words, and Kincaid has responded to these allegations. The tumblr from which this quote was sourced has been deleted. Please see below.
Count yourself lucky if you’ve never heard of somewhat popular video-blogger TheAmazingAtheist aka TJ Kincaid. He’s one of the subset of atheists who want certain other atheists to “stop being divisive” via pointing out the injustices of the kyriarchal status quo ongoing within the atheist “movement”. He has ever so many rational and deeply intellectual opinions about life, the universe and everything.
Those of you who are regular followers/lurkers of the atheoskeptosphere probably know about this fundraiser for Karen Stollznow’s legal costs by now, but I’m signal-boosting it for the record …
Debate is not inquiry. Argument is not skepticism. Fetishizing debate makes us less knowledgeable as a culture and even as a movement, not more.
<okay, sure, we’ve been having these debates for decades now. But let’s dredge it up again. Let’s treat the basic bodily autonomy of people with uteruses** as a subject that’s up for discussion, a subject that reasonable people can disagree about. And let’s be calm and reasonable about it.
There are the beginnings of a promising SFF fandom TOD developing over at Scalzi’s joint, for those who have spare popcorn lying around.
As an atheist, I do not get to find solace in the idea that I have an afterlife to plan for. I have to make peace with the idea that this one life is all that I have and that every single solitary moment counts right now. It counts in moments, that are slowly ticking away. And while I also have to realize that while there is no God keeping track of those moments and my actions within them, that none-the-less they matter.
Well, this got interesting fast. The floodgates appear to be opening in the atheoskeptosphere with regard to people deciding that keeping names out of the we-need-anti-harassment-policies discussion wasn’t doing much good for effecting change.
While we’re talking about workplace and convention harassment incidents (particularly amongst the groups for which conventions are also workplaces), I’ve been meaning to link to this excellent post from last month about why conventions are harassment hotspots (there’s Science! on this).
SFF joins the Deep Rifts! club.
Hoyden About Town 