Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Mysogynist Asshat Douche-Baggary is Screwing the Atheist Community

Jen McCreight has withdrawn from writing her blog any longer, I haz a sad. :-(

To the rest of the community, namely the hecklers and Idiots.

WTF PEOPLE YOU CALL YOURSELVES ATHEISTS AND SKEPTICS???

Seriously what the fuck is wrong with you people? I thought when all this first broke out the most of the people were like me when I first dicovered I was a sexist, in denial. But after about 6 months I realized that NO these are the same idiots who keep posting the same vitriolic bullshit, month after month. They aren't learning or trying to see it from the opposite side, and instead maintain attack after attack. Yet, the have the nerve to call themselves Skeptics and Atheists???

Well they aren't.

A skeptic, a TRUE Skeptic looks at the situation from BOTH sides of the argument. Even if their bias at first leads to denial, a true skeptic will reason out the issue logically, and arrive at a reasoned decision. However many of these fuckers keep on going...

About two years ago my partner, came home from class an introduced me to some articles on objectification of women, after reading them I immediately said, "yeah, well that's not me". WRONG, I was dead wrong, I started looking around at what I do and say, how I look around at women in general. I was appalled. But I had to make the realization and then adjustments myself. I had always thought I was supportive of feminism, but never realize that I had pretty much kept it at arms length as it were.

But now we have douche-bags, who dare call themselves Skeptics, who are instead maintaining the status qo and attacking repeatedly over and over these beautiful women who are just trying to open our eyes and help us out of the misogyny we live under.

Here is a clue for you idiot guys and gals.



Just because you grew up with it in everyday society
THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT NORMAL!!!

 Slavery, was an everyday part of society, Women not having a vote was an everyday part of society, Thinking less of other races because their skin wasn't white was an everyday part of society, The earth being the center of the solar system was and everyday part of society.


EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE THINGS WERE WRONG!!!!

So are you for maintaining these bullshit attacks for a year and a half.

When Atheism + came out I was like hell no we don't need to divide ourselves further, we need to find a middle ground and fix it. Well guess what, Atheism Plus didnt divide us, YOU Asshats did. I signed up and registered with the A+ forums today. You Mysogynist can have your little corner and grow the fuck up when reality slaps you in the face.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Feminism... Its about understanding guys!!!

I have avoided this subject for months now thinking that it would come to a reasoned conclusion and people would settle down. Things would be discussed in panels and being rational critical thinkers, we would have reached a nice agreement and kept going. Not to mention that several people have said pretty much everything I thought about saying at the time and didn't really need my two cents thrown in. Until now.

I am really disappointed with Thunderfoot (TF) lately. I have followed TF on youtube for 3 or 4 years now. I was glad to see him become part of the Free Thought Blog site and was looking forward to his writings. Then he created his somewhat infamous opening post. He blasts certain parties for "over reacting" or "outrageously defining" or just plain being stupid. On top of that, he threw temper tantrums and whiny fits about his mistreatment over being kicked off for his highly inflammatory, ill informed, and in my opinion derogatory comments. Go read it, and the following threads, and you will probably see it the same yourself.

I am going to start my view on this with a quote from a screen shot I saw recently:
I attended a workshop about preventing gender violence. The facilitator posed a question to all of the men in the room.
"Men, what things do you do to protect yourself from being raped or sexually assaulted?"
Not one man, including myself could answer quickly the question. Finally, one man raised his had and said, "Nothing". Then facilitator asked the women the exact same question. Nearly all of the women raised their hand. One by one, each woman testified:

"I don't make eye contact with men when I walk down the street."
"I don't put my drink down at parties"
"I use the buddy system when i go places (parties, to the car, etc)"
"I cross the street when I see a group of guys walking in my direction"
"I place my keys in my hand as a potential weapon"

This went on for several minutes until the women's side of the blackboard was full.
In stark contrast stood the men's side of the blackboard that had that one word:
"NOTHING"

This isn't some random bull, I have seen this myself in a gender studies class I sat in on while I was in college, and the exact same scenario played out there as well. Why?

Because for centuries women have constantly lived in fear of being attacked, beaten and/or raped. Simply for being "in the wrong place at the wrong time", for "dressing inappropriately", for "acting permiscuous", etc, etc, etc. On top of that living in a male dominated machismo and misogyny driven societies for all those centuries. I know I used to be part of that society raised by conservative rural parents. As a matter of fact, gender violence and intimidation crosses all lines of orientation: race, religion, class, nationality, and political views. In no areas of identity are females 100% safe or not taken advantage of by the opposite sex.

Seeing and hearing the statements and reactions of the populace my parents surrounded themselves with (like minded individuals) reinforced within me the idea of the weaker sex. My dad swore he never hit my mother, my mother never would confirm or deny it, but my brother and I were sure it happened, though we never actually saw it.  saw many cases in other families or the man smacking his wife or girlfriend with a statement folowing like, "I already told you to shut up once".

Some of you may attempt to argue well this society doesn't REALLY exist here in the US any longer, to which I have to say "Horse hockey!!!"

A prime example is Miss Rebecca Watson and the Elevator-Gate Fiasco a year ago. Many of the male responses I read were the knee jerk reactionary type. Not well thought out reasoned rebuttals. I saw several responses that led me to think they were saying something like "I am not that way" and "I don't feel your judging ME fairly". Many of the responses issued, "your just over reacting to a 'perceived' bad situation". I am sorry guys, but she was absolutely right. By absolutely I mean 100% goddamn factual. And she wasn't screaming yelling or threatening she basically said: "Guys, if your in a situation like that, DON'T DO WHAT THAT GUY DID!!!" Fucking Period. See my opening quoted materials above for just a general idea why not if you're thick and wondering why. If your still thick how about the following.

We live in a country that according to the Domestic Violence Resource Center
  • Date rape accounts for almost 70% of sexual assaults reported by adolescent and college age women; 38% of those women are between 14 and 17 years old. 
  • Women accounted for 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence, men for approximately 15%.
  • 30% of Americans say they know a woman who has been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year.
  • One in five (21%) women reported she had been raped or physically or sexually assaulted in her lifetime. (Estimates I have seen previously say one in three or 33%)
  • 76% of female homicide victims were stalked prior to their death.
According to the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) citing a Department of Justice Survey:
  • Every ~2 minutes (152 Seconds) in this country someone is sexually assaulted, that's an average of 207,754 people a year (12 yrs and older)
So are women justified in being scared about insinuation and, in Rebecca's case, threats? You bet your ass they are. "But, But most rapes occur from people known by the attacker", and yeah that's true approximately for 70%, but that is still leaves 30% that are UNKNOWN assailants.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find numbers on how many threats have led to assaults, but I am sure the figures would surprise and disgust all of us. So Thunderfoot's argument about "Internet trolls does not equal an actual rape threat" which leads me to one inescapable question? How does he know?

OK, sure he has had his share of internet threats over the years, but he is also a man who DOESN'T have to live with the social fear that a disgruntled stalker would follow through with a threat of rape. Also there have been several cases in recent years of internet stalking that lead to the rape and murder of women. So he can't say it doesn't happen and Thunderfoot doesn't have to worry about rape as an looming threat either.

The other arguments I have been seeing is this whole idea that we men don't have to change. I think it was a friend of Penn Jillette (you know the loud mouth half of Penn and Teller), posted some blog or write-up that a female friend of his wrote. In it she claimed she was fine with men in the skeptic community and we DON'T need to listen to these femi-nazi's, telling how we are wrong. Or as Jen McCreight from Blag Hag summarized from that write-up:
"I’m a woman who doesn’t feel uncomfortable in the skeptic community, therefore all those other women who complain are humorless, overemotional, and anti-sex. Don’t listen to them, listen to me because I’m part of the boy’s club!”
Well that's nice for Penn's friend Mallorie, but what about the other side of the coin? OK sure there are some women out there that like to be manhandled or to be the recipients of macho men fawning on them, but they are not that many, at least not that I have seen. Sure they like "you men the way you are" but does that mean we can just carry on business as usual? NO.

We have to try to find a balance and that isn't going to happen as long as we remain divided, finger pointing, whining, or calling foul.

As men, we need to stop being so defensive, that we are immediately dismissing women as Nazi's, or whiners. Men have been objectifying women, and taking for granted our long history of machismo, and assuming everything is fine, status quo. We "don't listen to the vocal Minoritiy" when in fact the statistics and outcomes point to a strong fact saying otherwise. We need to reeducate ourselves about womens issue and LISTEN whether its one woman or a whole room full of women and give it equal weight, thinking it through.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

So Again I Haven't Written in Awhile

I go through spells where I just don't feel like writing. For years I had heard how terrible my writing is and I think that it has put a sort of block in my head where I just don't want to write some days...

However, lately I have also noticed that i have not real desire to try to write when I think it will do little good as well. What I mean is, that I see bloggers, lots of them, saying pretty much what I want to say. But very little seems to be coming out of it. The same stupid people reply with their attacks or the same supportive people with thier huzzahs. But I rarely see those, "wow I didn't know this", or "this really moved me", or "changed my opinion".

Recently I have been following the blogs and news about Jessica Ahlquist and man did she light a fire under the Theists asses recently. See she won her case against the Cranston Rhode Island school board for them having a prayer banner in their gymnasium. Well you would have thought she had been the person who actually nail good ol christ to the cross from the reaction she got. People attacking her left and right. It was disgusting, seriously sickening, watching the scathing attacks coming at her.

The hypocrisy of the religious follower never ceases to amaze me. I mean I know there are those "believers" who are nice and moral people. But do those morals really come from their religious belief, or is it they are moral people due to being raised to be so, taught it from their parents? If  it came from their religion then you would not see certain "believers" attacking other then would you? No they would be like every other good moral person I know. So that pretty much shoots the whole "you can't be moral unless you believe" argument out of the water in my opinion.

Sure there will be those that follow this line of thought and argue, "well they don't really believe" or "they aren't really true christians".... Bullshit, if they didn't believe, if they weren't truly christian, they wouldn't be so fanatical, attacking the poor girl simply because she doesn't believe as they do. They are so routed in the idea that god exists and is there for them that ANY question or action opposed to their belief is an affront to their religion and thus to them. Do I have that backwards? Maybe its an affront to them and their beliefs so THEN it must be one to their religion too.

I see that in many cases. Look at the Catholic church for example. Not that the Catholics are some paragon of morallity or anything, but the church DID declare evolution to be perfectly fine and work just as well with their belief in a deity. But there are several followers that refuse to accept it and thus take any mention of it as an affront against them and their god.

Oh well. I need to get back to work the 'memtest' on the laptop I am working on is almost complete. Later, if I think about it, I will write what has been bugging me about the whole feminist/misogynist thing going on in the Skeptic community.