“let’s pretend social interactions happen without social context”

JT Eberhard decided that his contribution to the discussion about sexual harassment at atheist conferences was going to be to talk about how to make sex happen anyway, especially for socially clueless guys like himself. And the list that came out of that might even be decent advice to guys. But the post itself? And the comments?

*shudder*

For one, this is crap:

But ladies, we need your help (which is why I’m writing this post). I’m not an idiot, but I’m terrible at catching subtle hints. Seriously, I’m awful. Men like me need you to communicate with them. If we’ve crossed the line and you don’t tell us, it’s very possible that we won’t even be remotely aware that the line has been crossed at all. If you then go tell other people how terrible we are for having crossed your line, you’re creating drama instead of working toward a resolution.

You know why women give “subtle” hints? It’s because 1)they’re actually not that subtle at all, certain people just prefer not to listen when it’s about sex, and 2)rejections that are more-blunt-than-socially-accceptable are socialized out of women because they regularly and rather thoroughly get punished for employing them.*
So yeah. Women are going to be “subtle”, which really just means they’re going to behave averagely, because that’s usually enough (when it’s not about sex) and because even a bit more will usually get a woman punished.

Oh, but of course we’re not supposed to talk about this:

For the purposes of this blog post, I’m talking only about these two very fun things, flirting and physicality, that are ultimately a very small aspect of getting to know somebody. I say that because I’m trying to avoid the conversation of, “but women don’t want to feel like sex objects whose primary purpose is to be flirted with.”
[...]
Now there are guys who do view women as a means to sex and have no interest in respecting a woman’s boundaries if it means they can’t push for sex. Those guys are a liability. They don’t want help and I’m not writing this post to help them. I’m talking about the men who want to create a friendly environment for women but who also want to interact with the possibility of flirting/getting laid if things go well.

Well, sorry JT, but you can’t just exclude the context from the conversation. Because women can’t exclude that context from their life into which you’re barging when you flirt with them!
You can’t exclude the existence of the creeps, because after being creeped on by 5 guys, it simply no longer matters that you’re not a creep, you’re still Yet Another Dude Who Wants Sex. And at that point, a woman might simply no longer care why you want it or whether you’d flirt correctly and respect her boundaries; because at that point, she’s too sick of all the unwanted attention to still want any sexual attention at all.
You also can’t exclude the existence of creeps, because in order to give you an unsubtle answer, a woman will by definition have to give an unsubtle answer to every man who may or may not be flirting with her. Which not only goes against past socialization, but is also most likely going to result in her being punished for it, both by the man she was just “unnecessarily harsh” to (or maybe she interpreted the signals wrong and he wasn’t even flirting with intent; then she’ll be an altogether “presumptuous bitch” for thinking a guy would even want to fuck her. pffft.), and likely by others in the social circle as well. I mean, shit, Rebecca Watson loosened an internet-wide shitstorm for just saying “guys, don’t do that” about cold-propositioning in elevators late at night!** And you want women to go against socialization and risk social punishment every time they talk to a flirty dude, just because you’re socially awkward?

Yeeeeaaahh, no. You can’t remove the social context because the social context is what determines how women will respond. they’re not flirting with you in a social vaccum, and pretending otherwise is just fucking stupid. We have to fix the social context first (i.e. not punish women for being above-average-assertive, and instead shut down those why try to punish women for blatantly and “rudely” setting boundaries and even taking initiative themselves), before you can seriously expect women to consistently “help” socially inept guys at flirting by being blunt with them.

And nevermind that this whole scenario ignores the existence of socially inept women, since it puts the burden of clear communication on them (notice how it’s the women who have to say “no” as bluntly as possible, socialization and possible punishment be damned, but the socially awkward dudes are still allowed to operate within the subtleties of basic human interaction).

And then, the fucking comments. The entire fucking comment section there needs to read “Yes Means Yes” instead of bleating shit like this:

While I have many times found myself in similar situations, I have to say this: it is absolutely vital that you find a way to communicate effectively, as there is absolutely no way that JT or anyone else can create a functioning environment that is safe for people who won’t/don’t say “no” when they mean “no.”
I totally agree that social leveraging is a dick move. That doesn’t change the fact that your refusal to say “no” makes every social situation more dangerous for everyone involved.

or complain how a “ask first, hug later” culture would somehow be a logistical nightmare.

And of course, the stupid-ass “why don’t women just wear buttons” idea came up. I’ve dealt with that crap before, and some of the less dense posters also pointed out that degrees of consent are every-changing, context-specific and person-specific, so such buttons are fucking worthless. But hey, here’s an idea for you lot: since desire for intimacy is shifting, but social ineptness isn’t, why don’t you guys who want to flirt and get laid but are afraid of missing signals wear a giant red button saying “socially inept; speak bluntly to me”? That way, women would know when they can safely be more assertive (or, if they don’t think they can bring up the energy to go against socialization, just void you) and also remind you that you wanted bluntness when your sexist conditioning kicks in and you (or one of your friends) feels like punishing the woman for being blunt. And at the same time they’ll know that those who aren’t getting their messages and aren’t wearing the button can be safely reported as harassers.

Everybody’s problems solved (that’s fucking sarcasm in case you didn’t notice; but don’t tempt me with more demanding posts like that, or else I’ll decide I’m serious about this buttons-for-the-clueless thing)

- – - – - -
*yeah, I am quite aware that both links talk about rape. The concepts discussed therein are still applicable to flirting and similar interactions. Rape, after all, doesn’t just happen out of the blue; it is simply the nasty pinnacle of rape culture, and rape culture reinforces itself in all these much smaller, much more innocuous-seeming interactions in which boundaries are pushed and assertive rejection punished.
**and then there was also the woman who said “no” to the obviously not-previously-discussed super-public proposal of her boyfriend, and everyone came down on her like a ton of bricks for being “cruel” for rejecting him publicly.

Commenting on the CFI’s non-response

CFI finally responded to the Ben Radfort brainfart. It’s a really fucking stupid response, that I shall take apart now:

What is the cornerstone of CFI’s mission? Is it atheism or humanism? No, not really. Commitments to atheism or humanism or any other “ism” are conclusions we arrive at, presumably after consideration of the relevant evidence and arguments.[and feminism ain't? Fascinating] The cornerstone of our mission is freedom of expression and critical inquiry.[Excellent. so now, I'm sure, you will thoroughly criticize Ben Radford for the complete and utter lack of critical inquiry in his rambling, right?] We see freedom of expression and critical inquiry as indispensable tools for arriving at an accurate understanding of just about any issue of importance, including, but not limited to, the truth of religious or fringe science claims. This brings me to the recent controversy concerning Ben Radford’s blog post on Free Thinking, as well as the related controversy about the blog Free Thinking itself.

The bloggers on Free Thinking, as has been stated on numerous occasions, and as readers of our blog are expressly advised, represent their own personal opinion.[what does "opinion" have to do with this? What happened to "critical inquiry"?] They do not speak for CFI. (Even this blog post is not technically official policy, as it has not yet been reviewed by the full Management Committee, but it would be appropriate to describe it as expressing my view in my official capacity as president & CEO.)[that's... incoherent, actually] We intentionally adopted this policy not only because it’s practical (you can’t do a timely blog post if it has to pass through management review), but because we wanted our bloggers to feel free to advance novel and speculative ideas, arguments, and theories[sexism-denialism is novel? In which universe is that true? And why does the same not apply to the "novel and speculative" ideas of AGW-denialism, evolution-denialism, etc.?] without worrying about whether they’d get in “trouble” with management.

We also fully expected that some of the blog posts might make claims that some in our audience would dispute. Great! Isn’t that how the advance of knowledge through free expression is supposed to work? Jane makes claim 1A in her blog post; Joan politely points out in her comments that Jane has overlooked factors x, y, and z; and Jane then thanks Joan for pointing this out, revising her claim to 1B.[that's nice, but has fuck-all to do with what happened, since "Jane" got pissy and pouty and doubled down on a truly idiotic claim. Again I ask, what happened to "critical inquiry"?]

This is an idealized version, of course. In real life, it’s more like this: Jane makes claim 1A; Joan calls Jane a fucking idiot; Jane calls Joan a moron and digs in her heels; Tom, over at another blog, yells that both Jane and Joan are stupid; Jane and Joan momentarily join forces to call Tom a sexist pig[I do wonder what this non-sequitur here is supposed to do? Are you saying "sexist" is an insult like "moron" and "idiot", without an actual meaning?]; Frank says Jane has no business blogging and should be fired; Larry comes up with some obscure dictionary reference the relevance of which no one can understand; and someone using the pseudonym Weeenie10 with a cute Batman icon limits himself to typing in the word “fart,” and on it goes, for about 800 comments spread over 3 or 4 blogs.[this whole paragraph is a strawman of what actually happened; if that's how you are trying to make your argument, you're not doing it particularly well]

Isn’t the Internet wonderful?

Actually, it is. Near instantaneous transmission eliminates certain filters, so, yes, there’s a lot of junk that gets posted, including pointless insults, but there are serious commenters, and their comments can clear up some mistakes and steer a discussion in the right direction. Whether the exchange of ideas works efficiently, as in the ideal model, or in fits and starts, as in the real world, it often works.[except in this case, where incoherent, uncritical sexism-denial is being posited as an "opinion" and the idiot who did it is not changing his mind; while those who've pointed out that he fails at basic research, critical thinking, and the ability to take criticism are being castigated for being "mean" and wanting him fired]

Obviously, there are limits to what we’d put up on our blog, not because we want any limits on free expression, but because we are a donor supported organization and we have an obligation to use that donor money prudently[so if the Discovery Institute gave you money, you'd start allowign creationists to post? Or what the fuck is this line supposed to mean? Is this a very long euphemism for "addressing sexism denialism is mission creep"?]. So we’re not going to invite Joel Osteen, Deepak Chopra, Warren Jeffs and so forth to blog[ok, so you are either saying that you were lying about the whole "The cornerstone of our mission is freedom of expression and critical inquiry" thing and the deciding criterion is cash (who pays you for letting sexism-denialism be posted?), or you're saying there's a difference between the reality-denialism of religiosity and reality-denialism of sexism. Either way, this is not making you or the CFI look good]. These individuals can take advantage of the outlets available to them. Our bloggers are all, broadly speaking, working from a nonreligious or skeptical perspective.["broadly speaking" meaning "sometimes not at all"? Because the complete lack of critical thinking skills and "skeptical perspective" in Radford's posts is what people are complaining about]

One or more of our current bloggers could also conceivably write a string of posts clearly contrary to CFI’s mission and/or its official position on important policy issues. A blogger could, for example, argue that the Establishment Clause should not be enforced[erm... you do know that's an actual opinion, right? the "should" kind of gives it away. We're not arguing about opinions here though], that alternative medicine should be exempt from scrutiny, that women should not have the same rights as men, that we should prohibit gays from serving in the military, and so forth[still all opinions, some hateful some ignorant; nothing to do with sexism-denialism and lack of critical inquiry in sexism-denialism, as has been perpetrated by Radford]. Depending on the frequency of such posts, the person might be removed from blogging or other action might be taken. Again, this would not be because we’re opposed to free expression, but because we don’t see the need to fund a continual stream of messages that are contrary to our mission[you're really confused. I though you said humanism and atheism weren't part of your mission? Let me make this clear: if someone posted opinions that go against humanism, you'd eventually ban them from posting, but someone who exhibits complete lack of critical thinking is exempt?]. That’s never happened and I think it’s unlikely to happen because someone who found themselves disagreeing with several of our key public policy positions presumably would seek employment elsewhere.

This brings me to Ben’s recent post (or posts, as he had more than one, and the one that actually appeared on Free Thinking seems the least controversial). Some commenters have recommended that Ben be fired or removed as a blogger. Similar suggestions have been made, by the way, about Melody Hensley, who commented on Ben’s blog posts, either on Free Thinking or elsewhere.

First, by way of background, these recommendations are not unprecedented. Every few months I receive recommendations about firing employees, terminating individuals’ contracts, or ceasing all contact with certain authors or speakers. For example, I’ve previously been told (in public fora) that I should fire John Shook, Michael DeDora, and Melody, that I should remove Chris Mooney as POI host, that I should never invite PZ Myers to a conference again, that I should not allow Paul Kurtz to post on our blog (back when he was still with CFI) and that CFI should forever cut any and all ties with Richard Dawkins and Rebecca Watson (this last suggestion usually being made by different people)[were any of those criticisms made because the people in question were failing at the basics of critical inquiry or skeptical thinking, or just because their opinions pissed someone off? Because there is a difference]. I have declined to follow all such recommendations. I have declined all such recommendations because the reasons offered were either not worthy of consideration or essentially asked me to cut these people off simply because they were perceived to be on the wrong side of an issue.[I smell a strawman coming on; otherwise, this entire paragraph could have been excluded, as people are not calling for action from CFI because they disagree with Radford]

The fact that a person may be on the “wrong” side of a particular issue is not a sufficient basis, absent exceptional circumstances, for CFI to stop working with that person—especially when it’s not always immediately apparent what the “wrong” side is[and there it is, the strawman. it's not disagreement that's the problem; it's that sexism-denialism is not actually a matter of disagreeing on matters of opinion or even policy, but about denying reality; and Radford did so in an especially non-critical, non-skeptical way that exposed his inability to do proper research; I mean really, children's books? Ask Yahoo?]. We’re supposed to be free thinkers, not dogmatists.

Ben’s posts may exhibit some mistakes in reasoning and may have used some research that was unreliable. I think I can make these statements with confidence because Ben has acknowledged these mistakes himself, in part because some commenters pointed out some research he may have overlooked. (See, free expression does work—sort of.)

Based on this, I don’t see any reason to take any action.[I'm eagerly awaiting the day you let creationists, anti-vaxxers, AGW-denialists and 9-11 Truthers post on your site, as long as someone criticizes them and they offer sufficiently non-committal not-pologies]

Some commenters suggested there should have been an official CFI rebuttal. Why? An official rebuttal suggests that Ben was speaking on behalf of CFI and we needed to clarify that he was not, but as indicated, he was speaking for himself. Second, there were already rebuttals aplenty of Ben. PZ Myers, Rebecca Watson, and Julia Lavarnway (a CFI employee) had their own blog posts criticizing Ben and commenters on Ben’s posts did not seem to be at a loss for words.

And what is it CFI was supposed to rebut?[uh... the factually incorrect bullshit he wrote? I have a very hard time imagining you'd be asking the same thing if the post had been written by a creationist, anti-vaxxer, AGW-denialist or 9-11 Truther] Ben’s speculations about the hues of dolls’ faces? Presumably not.[why not? it's factually incorrect, after all] What appeared to bother some commenters was Ben’s alleged sexism.[no; his sexism-denialism. why the fuck can't you tell the difference?]

OK. CFI denounces sexism[nice but really fucking irrelevant to the topic at hand]. We always have and presumably always will. Stereotyping based on gender is wrong and policies and practices that promote such stereotyping should be condemned. Furthermore, attitudes that exhibit sexism are unacceptable, and we should work to eliminate such attitudes, including, to the extent they exist, such attitudes within secular/skeptical organizations
[this also has fuck-all to do with the subject at hand, which is reality-denialism, research-failure, and complete lack of critical thinking].
The problem is I doubt that Ben would disagree with anything in the above paragraph, nor did I see anything in his posts to suggest he would[might that be because you've attacked a strawman that had fuck-all to do with the criticisms aimed at Radford? Yes, yes I think it might]. Therefore, I’m not sure it counts as a “rebuttal.”

At the end of the day, it seems to me we had a controversial post (or posts) in which a blogger ventured some opinions[the denial that certain forms of sexism exist is not an opinion any more than the denial of AGW or of the age of the earth is an "opinion"], invited comments on those opinions, received comments that suggested he had erred in some ways, and then modified some of his opinions. This is not something we should decry. To the contrary, we should support a robust exchange of opinions.[This.is.not.about.opinions.]

Because of this recent controversy, CFIs Management Committee will discuss the future of Free Thinking this coming week. I have made plain my views, but we do have collective leadership at CFI, so it’s not inconceivable that the policies governing Free Thinking would change. I hope not, because I think any radical change would undercut what CFI stands for. There are already an ample number of institutions that provide the comfort of orthodoxy[not denying reality and scientific research is "orthodoxy"? Is it "orthodoxy" to accept AGW? Is it "orthodoxy" to accept the Theory of Evolution? because you can't have it both ways: if accepting the reality of the sexism Ben denied is "orthodoxy", so is the acceptance of every other well-established observation of reality.] for those want that sort of thing. They’re called churches.[fuck you, too]

So all this rambling to simply state: “I think sexism is a matter of opinion not of measurable and observable reality, so while we won’t let believers in the Yeti post, we will still allow sexism-deniers to post. Everyone who disagrees with me on this is a fundie.”

barf.

More short thoughts

1) Oil Rig Islands + no building codes = one storm away from societal collapse

2)I wish my fellow legal immigrants/children of immigrants would stop using the “but I/my parents did immigrated the right way and waited in line” argument to dismiss humanitarian concerns of illegal immigrants. That argument would only make sense if those who got in illegally would have gotten in legally if they just followed procedures, which is patently untrue

3)spammers are now pretending they’re pingbacks; fascinating

4)Google eBooks is evil; I’ve impulse-bought a number of books I accidentally stumbled upon while doing assorted internetty research (currently, it’s Bathsheba’s breast:
women, cancer & history)

Whining about myself

List of blog-posts which I really wish I’d finally write which are either languishing in unfinished form or don’t exist other than as vague ideas:

-A discussion of what “choice” means in our consumerist culture, and how it’s not really much choice at all.
-A discussion of assorted claims from the right (and especially libertarians) about racism in left-wing movements (specifically, in environmentalism)
-A discussion of the various kinds of feminism (especially choice feminism vs. radical feminism) in the context of the nonexistence of contracausal free will
-A discussion/dissection of my Environmental Sociology class
-A review of “Yes Means Yes”
-A discussion of the difference between a state and its citizens, and the fuckedupedness of the conflation of the two
-A discussion of the New Capitalist Class and the lack of “competition” on that level of the market
-An argument for the difference-of-kind between property rights and bodily autonomy

Whenever I sit down to write about any of these, all the relevant thoughts disappear out of my head. I’m not amused.

Link dump

there’s a few issues on my mind that don’t need a lot to have said about them (or, you know, render one completely speechless), so I’ll just collect them all here:

1)douchebag: now an insult also applicable to racists: Hey Did You Know Your Vagina’s Personality Is Based On Your Race?

2)something that’s quite old by now, but that I haven’t gotten around to respond: Walton linked to an article about a boy in London fighting the ban on cornrows in his school. The ban was being defended because it bans things associated with gang-culture. Someone else commented that it was “unprofessional”. That reminded me of how political black people’s hair is: how much racism there is in associating traditionally black hairstyles with criminality, and how much shaming there is (usually of women) for their natural hair, to the point where many of them end up damaging it to make it look like white people’s hair. Anyway, here’s a good article from the guardian about it: Cornrows? Non-traditional? What rubbish

3)News Corp trying to shut up critics, in a way that vaguely reminds me of something a certain someone recently did… News Corp’s Times Of London Cartoon Shows Starving Children Bemoaning Phone-Hacking Scandal Coverage

4)Limbaugh claims that current heatwave is a Liberal Conspiracy: Limbaugh: The Killer 116° Heat Index Is ‘Manufactured By The Government’

5)Sustainable development that’s actually sustainable: Permaculture in Cambodia (30 min documentary)

EDIT: one more, for good measure: Fox News: Are There Really Poor Americans?, from The Young Turks

assorted short thoughts

1)this being the last few weeks of school, I’m swamped with work and taking a blogging-break until mid-May

2)I was linked by a real-life journalist! yay! plus, the blogpost she wrote was very interesting, so go read

3)visual WTF of the day

4)verbal WTF of the day:

If the demand for land were only D4, land rent would be zero. Land would be a free good — a good for which demand is so weak relative to supply that an excess supply of it occurs even if the market price is zero. [...] This essentially was the situation in the free-land era of U.S. History

oh, what a cruel, cruel joke!

well, someone was bored yesterday

I mean, that’s just silly:

Femininity links and thoughts

Typology of Apology — depressingly accurate description of the different types of rape apology. but we don’t live in a rape culture, no sir [/sarcasm]

feminism is a lie of the devil — pretty much every article in there is an example of “that’s a feature, not a bug”: feminism is making women divorce men who want them to go back to the kitchen! feminism will lead to communism! (not actually true for any real definition of “communism”, but certainly for the wingnut definition, and certainly some Marxist analysis of women’s oppression is quite accurate)

feministe on reporting about O’Donnell’s hypocrisy — and this is a good explanation of how NOT to write about conservative women. Because really, the sort of sexism used against O’Donnell, and Paling, and Coulter doesn’t really help the feminist cause, and just promotes the really damaging trope that only good women deserve to be protected. I.E. this is just a liberal version of the “innocent vs guilty victim” bullshit. And it’s just all sorts of not helpful to be committing hypocrisy while writing about someone else being hypocritical.

Masculinity links and thoughts

Fighting is so manly– this reminds me if some of the cultural narratives that lead to WWI. It was a war that was caused by a flimsy excuse, because the men in power at the time (most notably Willie II) were feeling emasculated by the peace they had been born into. And the same urge to become a “man” was visible in many of the young men who were also itching for a war to fight in. And even abroad, as far as the US, young men were itching to join the war-effort to become “men”. because according to the cultural narrative, that’s what being a soldier did: making men out of boys. Interestingly, this is a form of toxic masculinity that has been dying in many places, even to some degree in the US (though the narratives of how joining the military will make you a better “person” are still very much present). Unfortunately though, in some ways, the narrative still exists. Wilhelm II of Germany started a war to prove his manliness. And so did George II of America, since it’s very hard to interpret the Afghanistan war and especially the Iraq war as anything other than posturing to not look weak “in the face of terrorism”.

The Boy Code — this one made me think of the “be stupid” Diesel Jeans campaign. I’ve written before about how there’s always been a conflict in the Patriarchy about where educated men stand in the Manly Man competition, but it was always a conflict tempered by the fact that women weren’t allowed in higher education, thus at least making being highly educated a masculine domain. Now that women are all over higher education, and slowly gaining more ground even in the most masculine disciplines, being smart and educated has lost the battle to the “Wolverine” kind of masculinity completely. being stupid and aggressive and impulsive and perpetually angry is now the only way to be a Real Man. But the MRA’s still insist that it’s the feminists’ fault that boys now fall behind in many academic subjects.

Oh yeah, and also reminds me of a line from the movie Gran Torino, in which the actress playing a young Hmong woman says something along the lines of “our girls go to college, our boys go to jail”.

Colbert on telling candidates to “man up” — no comment on this one; just an apology to my non-american readers since IIRC Comedy Central can’t be watched without an American proxy.