Free(from)ThoughtBlogs

[Red Celt]

This is the latest money-grabbing, attention-seeking stunt from PZ Myers.

What do you do when someone pulls the pin and hands you a grenade?

"I’m dyin’ here, people. It’s like people trust me or something.

So I’ve been given this rather…explosive…information. It’s a direct report of unethical behavior by a big name in the skeptical community (yeah, like that hasn’t been happening a lot lately), and it’s straight from the victim’s mouth. And it’s bad. Really bad.

She’s torn up about it. It’s been a few years, so no law agency is going to do anything about it now; she reported it to an organization at the time, and it was dismissed. Swept under the rug. Ignored. I can imagine her sense of futility. She’s also afraid that the person who assaulted her before could try to hurt her again.

But at the same time, she doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else, so she’d like to get the word out there. So she hands the information to me. Oh, thanks.

Now I’ve been sitting here trying to resolve my dilemma — to reveal it or not — and goddamn it, what’s dominating my head isn’t the consequences, but the question of what is the right thing to do. Do I stand up for the one who has no recourse, no way out, no other option to help others, or do I shelter the powerful big name guy from an accusation I can’t personally vouch for, except to say that I know the author, and that she’s not trying to acquire notoriety (she wants her name kept out of it)?

I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do, I can do no other. I will again emphasize, though, that I have no personal, direct evidence that the event occurred as described; all I can say is that the author is known to me, and she has also been vouched for by one other person I trust. The author is not threatening her putative assailant with any action, but is solely concerned that other women be aware of his behavior. The only reason she has given me this information is that she has no other way to act.

With that, I cast this grenade away from me…

At a conference, Mr. Shermer coerced me into a position where I could not consent, and then had sex with me. I can’t give more details than that, as it would reveal my identity, and I am very scared that he will come after me in some way. But I wanted to share this story in case it helps anyone else ward off a similar situation from happening. I reached out to one organization that was involved in the event at which I was raped, and they refused to take my concerns seriously. Ever since, I’ve heard stories about him doing things (5 different people have directly told me they did the same to them) and wanted to just say something and warn people, and I didn’t know how. I hope this protects someone.

Boom."


The aforementioned coercion was her getting drunk. Not forced to get drunk, mind, but by her own choice. Shermer was presumably doing the same.

The next morning (or 2 years later), with morning-after-the-night-before regrets, she made a complaint. It was ignored. Now she maintains that it was rape. No mention of her telling him "no!" or "stop!" or of him refusing to comply, mind. They just got drunk and had sex.

Is Shermer actually a rapist? I have no idea. On this supposed "evidence"? Certainly not. Regardless, though, if enough mud is thrown his way by these people... some if it will stick.

In the real world, where women suffer the trauma of actual rape, their plight is diminished by the hard-of-thinking (FreeThoughtBlogs and AtheismPlus) who throw the word around as if it has no substantial meaning.

These parasites so need to be driven out of the online atheist world by (at the very least) showing them for the (unfunny) joke that they are.