Secular Women Work: The Nonsense

Why am I posting this? I’d collected it all as it happened, then never bothered to publish it. I’m reminded in another venue, however, that unless I remind people that harassment is continual, they assume it’s all better now. So here, this is what it’s like to run a conference as an open feminist in this movement.

You know, of course, that neither I nor Secular Woman could be involved in running a conference without a load of nonsense being passed around and the conference hashtag flooded. It started with the Kickstarter.

He means I reported him to Twitter for harassment and Twitter suspended his account after agreeing with me.

Yawn. Then they decided they needed to bother my co-organizers.

Information about the conference was, of course, on the front page of the Minnesota Atheists site the entire time. We haven’t closed the books on the conference yet, but for those who want transparency on funding: All the Kickstarter funds were sent to Minnesota Atheists, as were a handful of late t-shirt orders I facilitated. Subsequent registrations were directly paid to Minnesota Atheists. I’ve paid up-front conference expenses, including bigger-ticket items like travel, out of pocket then submitted receipts to Minnesota Atheists for reimbursement. I even paid for my own ticket to the conference. I have no means of making money off this conference. But this had to be a scam, because reasons. If I wouldn’t fess up, they’d go to the speakers.

Congratulations, kids. You’ve discovered bureaucracy. No, the reservation didn’t go on the Humphrey School website until every form was submitted with all the related required forms and signatures and things like proof of insurance and approval for food vendors–and was then verified by the helpful folks we’d been working with all along.

That’s all much easier with a venue that is primarily for-profit, because their goal is to get you paying them as soon as possible. We wanted a school venue, however. Therefore failure and fraud.

The fact that we actually put on the conference we promised did nothing to stop all this, of course. Here’s what happened on the hashtag the weekend of. (You can read it here if the embed doesn’t work.)

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Secular Women Work: The Nonsense
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8 thoughts on “Secular Women Work: The Nonsense

  1. 2

    If it helps, this shows just how important you are to the secular movement. Think about it: big names like Dawkins and Harris earn this level of scrutiny because they have so much influence over the movement. So if you’re getting the same treatment, it can only be because you have the same level of influence.

    Well ok, an alternative theory is that these people are conspiracy nuts who’ve blown your influence all out of proportion, and are using an obsession over you to make their lives feel more fulfilled. But I doubt many of them believe that, and instead agree that you’re very influential.

  2. 4

    This is a masterpiece.

    You are just so damn good at this style of reportage and information-rich snark.

    Thank you!

    P.S. And good to know who the twitter fiends are. Some I of course knew, but others I’ve sparred with not knowing they were also pulling shit like this. Handy data that.

  3. 5

    They seem to be obsessed with the size of SJW conferences. I don’t know, it seems like it’s alway the same tiny handful of harassing assholes who are pestering people on Twitter — every one of those names is familiar to me, and every one of them has been blocked for ages — so if even 6 people show up for SWW or Skepticon, we’ve outnumbered them.

    How about if they shut up for a while and go off and organize Slymecon, the conference dedicated to spitting on social justice and feminism, and show us their superior skills and the vast numbers of their followers?

  4. 6

    “show us the audience!”

    *repost picture of seats during break* Lookit how few people showed up!

    *repost picture of actual audience* Lookit all the seats in the back!

    Just UGH. Why does it matter that much? Did they put any money or time into it? Why do they care? *yanks at hair*

  5. 7

    Considering that this post mostly just quotes the same small handful of people over and over – what, maybe five or six? – it’s ironic how much jeering they did about the attendance at SWW. I’m guessing these few represent the dregs who are determined to keep harassing long after most others have grown tired.

  6. 8

    The funny part of it all?

    It’s not really about the conferences.

    I pointed it out in my post-Skepticon blog thing that as long as certain FTBullies are doing ANYTHING AT ALL, GO TO ANY CON AT ALL, RUN ANY CON AT ALL, the same group of giggling chimps will try to fill any and all hashtags with poop.

    It’s scary obsessive. I’m so sorry y’all have to deal with it.

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