Dawkins sounds off. Lots of atheists upset.

keane2097

seamus wrote: »

I do completely understand this. But I'm struggling to think of an alternative that avoid having women irritated, but at the same time doesn't sterilise the sexual experience by turning into "organised mating". Men chasing women is the sexual dance we've been at for millions of years. Trying to insert abstract modern notions of mutual respect or feminism is going to be difficult because sexuality doesn't care about such things. Sexuality wants to get laid.

Ideally women would be approached when they want to be approached - or women would more often take the initiative and approach men - but unless you're going to wear an "Approach me/Don't approach me" sign on your head (though it's debateable whether that would be heeded), then I fear that dealing with unwanted attention is a fact of life that women will have to continue to deal with.

There is of course a flipside to the "don't approach me" problem. If men don't approach women because they've been told it's potentially disrespectful, then unless women take the initiative to approach men then it's not going to work.
I've heard both sides of the coin out of the same womens' mouths: Complaining when men do come up and talk to them, but equally complaining that certain individual men don't come up and talk to them.

There is of course the eternal issue that an attractive man who flirts with women is a charmer or a ladies' man. An ugly guy who does the same thing is a creep.

I think the best we can hope for is a little respect on both sides - the guy doesn't act pushy or sleazy about come-ons and the girl is honest and respectful in responding and saying, "No, thank you". It's unfortunate that a guy who appears to have been acting entirely within the realm of respect has sparked a debate on the actions of a subset of idiots who hit on everything that moves.

How the thread carried on for another 45 pages after this I don't know. I am being sucked in though!

Nodin

Morag wrote: »

He does have some left, they are not just student tickets, was talking to him Monday just gone. That is how I am able to attend. Am considering doing some tweet coverage on the day.

Fair play. Though curious to see the potential car-crash conference I would be too conspicuous to blend in.

sponsoredwalk

I'd love to go just to hear a good ol' rape joke from PZ Meyers & laugh along with everybody else on stage.

Turtwig

I'm no fan of PZ but that was way too short to establish context.

sponsoredwalk

They were talking about dove ads being placed next to "haha rape women pictures" [doesn't matter whether they actually seen that on a website, the way you guys sometimes see religious ads on this forum, or whether they were talking about doing this to show to advertisers for purpose X is irrelevant, in fact it turns out they were talking about some crazy [URL="http://reyekomra.wordpress.com/tag/pz-myers/"]authoritarian nonsense[/URL] if you want the actual context though it's irrelevant to my point] & then he goes & makes a joke about using dove to clean up after a rape, the hilarity being found in the fact that he's perfectly able to make jokes involving the subject of rape when he feels like it yet when he reads posts on other forum apparently doing the same he feels no shame in labelling an entire forum as thinking rape is a joke when he finds one post/thread discussing such (hence why I brought the people on stage into this). I like PZ Meyers give or take the odd moments of insanity such as these, always thought he should have done video lectures on biology back in his heyday if he really cared about spreading science in the way they'd always insinuated they were all about as I know tons of people would have watched them just for him let alone the science & he could have gotten through to some people, but there you go...

feargale

Will Pope Dickie Dawkins resign on account of this and go off to the atheist Castelgonegolfing?

Nodin

feargale wrote: »

Will Pope Dickie Dawkins resign on account of this and go off to the atheist Castelgonegolfing?

....there's some point you've been burning up for two whole years to make about this..............I can tell-I have powers....

feargale

Nodin wrote: »

..........I can tell-I have powers....

Gold label?

Galvasean

keane2097 wrote: »

How the thread carried on for another 45 pages after this I don't know. I am being sucked in though!

It's like Eastenders. The stories are predictable. The cast barely changes over ten years. The acting is awful.
...and yet I can't stop watching! :eek:

robindch

Chris Mooney and Indre Viskontas who host the Point of Inquiry podcast have heeded Watson's call to boycott the CFI, so they've resigned from the CFI, citing the lack of "any direct effort to retain" the two and the "very real toll" the controversy has had upon them. They'll be taking their podcast to MotherJones.

http://skepchick.org/2013/06/point-of-inquiry-team-resigns-launches-new-show-with-mother-jones

I hope the good folks in MJ appreciate the political minefield they're now treading in.

Zombrex

robindch wrote: »

I hope the good folks in MJ appreciate the political minefield they're now treading in.

Reminds me of the famous quote about the Nazi purges

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Sooner or later they will come for these pod-casters and others like them and they won't have anyone to support them.

robindch

Zombrex wrote: »

Sooner or later they will come for these pod-casters and others like them and they won't have anyone to support them.

Did anybody make it along to AI's "Women in Secularism" conference last weekend? I saw a few photos (I was out of the country), but the attendance seemed a bit thin, far as I could see.

Morag

I did it was really good but I had to wonder why the had the Empowering Women through Secularism in this hotel chain. Needless to say I opted to have lunch in the gingerman next door and a fair few people joined me.

There was by my estimate aprox 120 people in attendance.
Most of the panels were recorded and are up online.
All the moderators were women and as for the panels, there was a 'token' man on each of them.

I was live tweeting some of it on the first day and encountered some of nasty mra trolls
and unfortunately at the plenary session at the end of the second day where feedback on the over all conference was being given to the floor there was accusations of misandry and some very absurd claims being asserted. So much so many of the speakers and attendees walked out as it was soo off topic.


In all I enjoyed it, I have always been in favour of a secular republic and would consider working with a secularism lobby group. I do think that despite the work put into running the event by AI that the fact it was being run by AI would put some people off.

There was no disrespect of people who have personal beliefs that I heard from the chair, panel or input from the floor which was nice, but rather that no religion should be used to infringe or deny anyone their universal human rights.

OpheliaBenson

I was there.

pH

Morag wrote: »

and unfortunately at the plenary session at the end of the second day where feedback on the over all conference was being given to the floor there was accusations of misandry and some very absurd claims being asserted. So much so many of the speakers and attendees walked out as it was soo off topic.

Absolutely disgraceful treatment of Catherine O'Brien, petty and childish, proving once again that these feminists' real problem isn't with offensive internet trolls, it's anyone who has the temerity to politely disagree with them in public, or even think a little differently from them.

I hope Atheist Ireland lost a lot of money on this, seems like the same group of people now feel "entitled" to a never ending series of conferences. Whens #ewts2014 ?

Rev Hellfire

Why what occurred ?

pH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MvYbsma6SQ

This is Catherine speaking about what she said ... some people (PZ etc. were so affronted by its "offtopicness" they walked out, usual people tweeted about how she'd ruined "their" conference.

SebBerkovich

She seemed perfectly reasonable to me...

I'm kinda confused about what the problem is...

OpheliaBenson

None of that happened. None of it. Nothing happened to Catherine O'Brien. You guys are seeing dragons under the bed.

OpheliaBenson

What's this supposed to be for instance?

usual people tweeted about how she'd ruined "their" conference.

What people? What "usual" people? I didn't see anyone tweet any such thing.

I take it you think PZ and I swanned around the place treating it as "our" conference. That is complete nonsense. Of course we didn't! It was an international conference, with people - wonderful people - from all over the world. It was also an Irish conference, with a focus on Irish issues. We were foreign guests, treated very hospitably. Of course we didn't treat it or think of it as "our" conference. What an incredibly insulting thing to say.

OpheliaBenson

Oh and one more thing, in #1846 -

I hope Atheist Ireland lost a lot of money on this

That's disgusting. I hope they get a flood of donations. They do great work.

Rev Hellfire

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

None of that happened. None of it. Nothing happened to Catherine O'Brien. You guys are seeing dragons under the bed.

Are you suggesting she lied in the interview?

OpheliaBenson

That's an insulting question.

Catherine O'Brien didn't say any of that in the interview. I was addressing the invented nonsense in #1848 -

some people (PZ etc. were so affronted by its "offtopicness" they walked out, usual people tweeted about how she'd ruined "their" conference.

That did not happen. PZ walked out when Justin Vacula made a little speech.

In the interview Vacula read her those tweets as if they were about what she said, and he made her rather upset, but the tweets were much more about the way Vacula and others tried to parlay her comments into something like their own anti-feminism.

Sycopat

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

Are you suggesting she lied in the interview?

I might have missed it, but I heard no mention of people walking out or anything. Couple of anonymous tweets that don't seem to agree with her but also don't seem representative of what she was actually saying. None claiming 'she ruined their conference'.
Hard to call anons a 'usual crowd', but I guess for people closer to the event they may not be anons?

I'm very tired today (so very, very tired... Quarterly report day.) I could have just missed it.

But through my weary, bleary eyes, this be one mountainous looking molehill.

Rev Hellfire

My mistake, but an understandable one when you take in the comment made at 3:15 in the interview.

So apologies, didn't intend to offend.

OpheliaBenson

Ok, thanks.

It was a great conference. It's sad to see it misrepresented the way it was by pH in the fact-free comments @ 1846 and 1848.

OpheliaBenson

And while I'm at it - that's not the only untrue thing pH has said about me. There's also this comment a few pages back.

More seriously, yes people like Rebecca Watson/Ophelia Benson get a large amount of internet harassment, in part because they feed the trolls so well, and the drama does them good too. However they seem blind to the vitriol they spew, not at people actually sending them abuse but at people like:

Russell Blackford (A lying f**khead according to PZ Myers)
Richard Dawkins
Abbie Smith
Harriet Hall
Paula Kirby
etc.

So we have a situation where high profile female feminists are being trolled successfully (that's not to say that the stuff they're receiving isn't nasty or upsetting) and in turn spew the most nasty and hateful stuff at others ... people who certainly are not the ones sending them nasty emails.

No I don't. I don't "spew the most nasty and hateful stuff at others." That's a falsehood.

pH

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

And while I'm at it - that's not the only untrue thing pH has said about me. There's also this comment a few pages back.



No I don't. I don't "spew the most nasty and hateful stuff at others." That's a falsehood.

So for example calling Wicknight "a dishonest sh1t", that's friendly stuff is it?

In my opinion it's nasty, and as far as I know Wicknight certainly isn't involved in any online harassment so I'll stand by my opinion of how the FTB/Spepchick/PZ crowd like to conduct discussions, holding on to their right to swear and be as nasty as they like (using whatever words they like) whilst simultaneously complaining about what other people call them!

Turtwig

pH wrote: »

So for example calling Wicknight "a dishonest sh1t", that's friendly stuff is it?

I believe she was only referring to herself? Not others. So the Wicknight thing is hardly relevant. Unless Ophelia was somehow involved.

Sycopat

Rev Hellfire wrote: »

My mistake, but an understandable one when you take in the comment made at 3:15 in the interview.

Somehow I actually did miss that in its entirety.