Atheism +

[Autumnlicious]

My criticism of A+ was not the same as others. I pointed out technical aspects, the inability to grasp that feminist theory is often inapplicable in practice and that they criticised some things and wanted me to do things in specific ways that would actually HARM women outside their experience. I do not agree with their concept of safe space ONLY, the inability to keep a regular debate is a major problem.

Another criticism is that their so-called practice of "safe space" leads to them giving increased leeway to victimized or oppressed groups, to the point of behaving badly.

Furthermore, as Kay found out, they are fine with controlling the tone, but if you, the poster, dare ask for better treatment, *ban*.

Not exactly actions taken to grow their supposed movement.

Thunderfoot joined a group of people he hated. Then ranted on about feminism and the whole network he was on and leaked backroom conversations and the email addresses of people who subscribe and read along with IP addresses.

Thunderf00t was invited.

For you to frame this as a matter to be blamed solely on him, is more telling of your ideological bent than his.

Not to mention that FTB had yet to show it's true face on the matters at hand.

Leaking backroom conversations? Hah!

Apparently when the FTB cabal fails to remove you from their mailing lists properly (I've administrated these before -- they're not rocket science but you must actually scrub out someone's login info to deauth them) and you find out they are being nasty behind the backs of others, how dare anyone ever show that to the public.

Mmmhmmm. Apologetics are fun to chew on.

That was ALL he did. Imagine all your posts were just slagging people off and then you basically leaked documents that we try and keep secure for a variety of reasons.

Yes, I can see why you'd want to keep your own little secret hate society letters secret.

Good for the world to see the true face of certain FTB members.
REF: http://thunderf00tdotorg.wordpress.com/2...-a-pariah/

Many of my initial readers were from parts of the Middle East since I was born there. Many can be hit with death penalties. Leaking their like Thunderfoot did would have not been cool at all. A lot of the reasons you post on a website in such a way is due to trust that they won't leak your emails to all and sundry, and Thunderfoot sought to damage that.

Wow. Are you really going to try the net censorship angle?

Apparently oppressive regimes do not already indulge in partial tracking of access to sites they deem "unfit".

If you're accessing illegal sites in the clear, you're already exposed.

If you're smart enough to use TOR or other obfuscating solutions, then leaking IPs is the least of your worries.

You're defending a rather undefensible position, primarily due to the worst hit audience (those accessing over the clear) being trivial to sniff out and monitor without any additional help.

Thunderfoot also outed people like Natalie Reed by doing this who was writing under a pseudonym because surprise surprise, she is trans and many people are scared or biased against them.

Citation needed.

However, I did look at Reed's blog

EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: Something I noticed in the comments that I’m a bit worried about, and might make things worse, is people thinking Thunderf00t has directly threatened to out me or my name, or has suggested this is something he intends to do, for its own sake. That hasn’t happened. A few weeks ago, he threatened to publish private e-mails that would have resulted in my name being compromised, and seemed to persist in these threats after I suggested the possible consequences.

REF: http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/...10/all-in/

The context of those events appeared to be over Thunderf00t V. FTB.

In that case, if you do call him a liar, and he has evidence to the contrary, one would expect he yield it.

However, it would not be in good taste to see "who" Natalie Reed is.

Can you yield evidence that Thunderf00t has "outed" Natalie Reed?

In fact one of my massive concerns was that I write under a pseudonym because I have pissed off Animal Libbers who have tried to harass me before (I actually believe I lost a previous syndication because they harassed someone I was talking to.) I used to get death threats and I live in a place where insulting religion can get you jailed. Getting my actual name put up there is "fucking stupid" because I do not want to deal with the kind of crap Taslima has to (And she deals with a lot of crap. At least once a year someone takes umbrage to something she says and they send the cops after her). Think of it this way? Who the hell names their kid Avicenna?

Fear, uncertainty, doubt.

However, I have also stood against A Voice for Men who are currently running a series of posts of outright lies blaming the rapes in India on women.

Citation needed.

The following is from AvFM regarding to what appears to be a culture that demands different behaviors for different genders. It also looks at the male side of Indian culture and how they interact with the female side.

Looks fair enough to me -- men and women, unsurprisingly, are expected to act in extremely inflexible behaviors and subsequently you see instabilities result from non-egalitarian treatment.
REF: http://www.avoiceformen.com/misandry/a-p...rom-india/

Quite a few atheists hang out there, quite a few of them hate FTB and anyone by association.

I don't hate FTB by association. I despise many of the core members of FTB for their totalitarian, bombastic approach. I despise their demand to minimize other issues to push forwards their own pet issues.

Did it even occur to you that rape in India is so high because the culture is not equal? That women practically cost money to marry off (devaluing them), that men are disposable (women attacking men is considered culturally "funny" and devalued), that many parents perpetuate gendered, stratified behaviors for their children, etc?

For fucks sake, the issue in India isn't just rape. It's an entire culture out of balance!

Talk about focusing on one and only one issue and use it to define the whole system...

Which, by the way, brings me back to why I despise FTB -- their myopic paradigm and demand to destroy/shun/repress other (similarly myopic) paradigms.

It's hard to fathom why rape happens so often in India without inspecting how both men and women act, are expected to act, each group's view of worth, victimization and biases.

The Amazing Atheist even had the founder of that site on his show. Which was what caused the FTB vs Thunderfoot "fight". Reap is a friend of his and FTB quite rightly was critical of Atheists giving voice to professional misogynists.

A preponderance of evidence is required to make the case that AVFM is "professional misogynists" (as in "hate women", not "against the FTB opinion").

AVfM is not running things to make things better for men, it is throwing bricks at women, often women who really need help.

I could say the same thing about FTB attempting to repress anyone who thinks differently from their clique...

AVFM has brought awareness to issues in family court, where fathers overwhelmingly lose custody, even in cases where the mother's standard of care for their children is dubious and poor.

AVFM has brought attention to the attempt by "feminists" at University of Toronto to intimidate, attack and censure an invited campus speaker.

I guess saying anything negative against "women" is "throwing a brick".

I don't think Atheism Plus functions properly because it's tried to be separate and it's use of ONLY Safe Spaces means that discourse on any topic is near impossible as is correcting someone. That is it's problem. You can literally hold stupid views and no one can tell you otherwise.

Only if you're of a repressed group. Try it -- label yourself an autistic woman who has been told what's right and wrong. You'll have A+ falling over itself to let you be an asshole.

Damage Control? Okay that may be the case but I am a feminist too. I agree that Atheists should take the same steps that geeks have taken to try and stamp out sexism within our communities and activities so that we can progress as a group.

Woo hoo. She's a feminist! <Programming activated! Feminist good...>

Though, to be specific, which wave of Feminist are you? First, second or third wave?

However, I'd like to point out that asking the "Atheist" community (if it could be called one) to stamp out sexism is going to provoke divergent opinions.

Some *gasp* might even be like AVFM. They might even notice that where there is oppression of women, there are also similar structures imposed upon men. Structures that help perpetuate a cycle of gendered roles and behaviors. Oh my!

It's not someone diametrically opposed to A+, it's someone who has been doing frontline medical care in a developing country recognising flaws in a plan and who cannot point out those flaws.

Uhh, what?

Someone opposing an ideology does less than someone doing real world work to help others?

Gee, golly gee fuck, I'd [i]never have[/b] thought of that!

Can I have another obvious statement, please?

I was never as popular as Thunderfoot was. I don't have blog posts that have hit a hundreds of thousands of views. In fact I was asked to join because I was writing relatively new stuff outside the western hemisphere and writing about things that atheists across the world are struggling for. If it was damage control there are umpteen bloggers who would fit the bill more perfectly than someone who posted two or three posts about it then stopped because I had said everything that needed to be said and anything else is just a repeat.

Damage control could mean attempting to look more inclusive by inviting more people in. A non-issue, however.

Many of the people kicked out basically broke rules of house bloggers. And even A+ers have been kicked... Everyone has a comments policy of their own, if you break it you take it. Same as any forum. There are rules here too, break them and you get banned. People broke explicitly stated rules.

Ah yes, the rules of "If I don't like it, you get banned".

We don't do that here.

We have a process. We have rules that are enforced carefully to promote the culture we've worked hard to support.

It's not Social Justice Utopia.

Which is great.