You might be interested in this comment at WWJTD by Michael Gobaud:
JT, you may already know this, but all these phone conferences the SCA has been doing in their national expansion effort have been recorded and put online for anyone to listen to (you can even scan through the recordings to particular speakers, very useful). Anyway, I just listened to the first 2 PA conferences to see exactly how Justin was made co-chair of the PA chapter (this is all very interesting to me because I might become a co-chair of the NV chapter, I don’t really know much about Justin). So you might wanna listen to those recordings to see the process of Justin’s appointment, it was actually very enlightening for me because I wanted to understand your complaint better.
Here is the SCA PA website with links to all the recordings: http://secular.org/states/chapters/pennsylvania
Here are the relevant parts on Justin’s appointment:
1ST PA CONFERENCE CALL (50 minutes):
Justin Vacula (7:02): “I’m Justin Vacula. I’m calling from Scranton, PA…”
Edwina Rogers, JD: “We don’t know you guys… I’m taking notes.”
Justin (32:55): “[I was in the press recently about the bus ads and have done a lot of media. You could speak about the SCA on my podcast].”
Edwina (36:00): “We’ve got three solid people with extreme talent in Pennsylvania… Hoping we can turn the Republicans around… We’re looking for a committee.”https://www.freeconferencecallhd.com/playback.asp?n=116-17-65-6735121-17-65-67-17-65-6777-17-65-67-17-65-67-17-65-6716-17-65-67-17-65-67%3B0MzkwNTMxMjc%3D1
2ND PA CONFERENCE CALL (34 minutes):
Kelly Damerow: “[Scott, Brian, Stacks, and Justin expressed interest in taking a leadership position].”
Jusin (15:00): “[I have spoken with my legislature in the past].”
Kelly (25:00): “[You guys are all pleasant to work with and cooperative, making my job easier].”
Kelly (26:00): “Do any of you have any interest in being a chair or co-chair?”
Stacks Rosch: “I would nominate Justin.”
Kelly: “Justin you’ve been nominated, what do you think?”
Justin: “Thanks, I’ll accept the nomination.”
Kelly: “Excellent, is anyone else interested and want to be co-chair?”
Brian Fields: “I wouldn’t mind working with Justin. Justin and I work really well together, we’ve done a lot of stuff in the past.”
Justin: “I’ll nominate Brian.”
Kelly: “Ok Justin and Brian, you guys are going to be our co-chairs of our executive committee… Thank you so much for accepting… Woo hoo!”https://www.freeconferencecallhd.com/playback.asp?n=-17-65-6733-17-65-6777-17-65-67-17-65-671356-17-65-672-17-65-67105-17-65-67-17-65-67-17-65-67;1MzkwNTMxMjc=1
Well there ya have it. It looks like despite Justin’s presence on the internet (positive and/or negative), Edwina and Kelly had never heard of him (and neither had I until somewhat recently). His co-chair “appointment” took all of 60 seconds, and pretty much anyone who accepted a nomination by a fellow founding member was “approved.”
I don’t really read blogs much, so perhaps I am just out of the loop on how “bad” Justin is. But I think that’s sort of the point: a lot of activists in our movement (e.g. Edwina, Kelly, myself, etc.), just don’t keep up much with all this internet drama stuff; it’s just not a big deal for many of us (for better or worse). I think there is definitely merit to some of your complaints that you have backed up with evidence, but I just don’t think it is enough to warrant an attempt to systematically ostracize an activist from our movement who seems to be doing SOME positive things and many people seem to respect.
He is DEFINITELY polarizing, and has apparently made some pretty bad judgement calls, so you and others who dislike him should certainly ban him from the orgs. that you guys control, but is it really necessary to attempt to exclude him from ALL corners of this movement? Show me that this guy has a history of violent crimes/felonies and then MAYBE you would have a case for total exclusion. But I mean, are you really going to circulate petitions outlining the allegedly nasty things he’s done online to get him fired from every secular leadership position he ever achieves his whole life? Seems like a hopeless pursuit…
To the last two paragraphs, by not even Googling the guy’s name they missed out on learning all the many ways the man is a terrible fit for representing our movement and undercuts inclusivity for his divisive and polarizing attacks on members of said movement. They were missing a hell of a lot of information in their decision making progress and in their haste to “make their jobs easier” have incurred some terrible blowback.
The goal here is to provide that information. SCA has to now decide to stand by their man to the exclusion of the people that man alienates, or not.
As long as he’s manifestly unfit for positions of responsibility, then, why yes, he doesn’t belong in positions of responsibility.
Also: “allegedly nasty”?
Joe pointed out on the Lounge that Staks “no worthy women atheists this year” Rosch made the nomination.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2012/01/05/tokenism-is-not-inclusivity/
my reply’s more useful here.
Are you KIDDING me? That was the WHOLE process?
Is this intended to make SCA look better? Because really it just makes them look like a bunch of lazy incompetents.
Joshua: we don’t know if that was the WHOLE process. IMHO as a volunteer (for other things) this should have been a preliminary nomination pending follow-up vetting. There’s no evidence that the SCA did any such follow-up.
Joshua (#3),
Indeed. We had a more thorough deliberation process in my high-school French club. Hell, even in our literary magazine.
Fucking Google, how does it work? (To the beat(?) of ICP)
“…But is it really necessary to attempt to exclude him from ALL corners of this movement?”
Easy: YES! I can’t remember who it was now, but someone here on FtB (maybe Benson or Zvan…OK, it was Benson) was pointing out that if Vacula had a history of making raciest remarks, the SCA would have never appointed him. Looking at this, that may not be the reality because it appears the SCA is not very good about vetting their candidates (didn’t anyone learn anything from John McCain!?!), but I do wounder if people like Michael Gobaud would defend such a person at all.
This just serves as further proof that Edwina Rogers was put in charge of SCA for the sole purpose of neutering SCA as an advocacy group that has any chance of actually hindering the Republican agenda.
Also, recall that it’s easy for organizers to slip up and think that trusted personal recommendations preclude the need to vet an applicant. (FTB accepting Thunderf00t partly on PZ’s recommendation, for instance; which led to a tightening of FTB’s applicant process.) It’s very, very easy to overlook the problematic aspects of someone’s character when they’re not busy marginalizing YOU.
Gotta love Red Herrings. We’re talking about a person who’s being put in leadership over us who terribly represents our values, and this commenter asks about whether we are taking it too far in “systematically ostracising” him.
We’re not tarring and feathering him and driving him out of town. We just don’t want him in a leadership position.
Yeah, but see how fast they would disavow a feminist activist… we know how this game is played. Misogynists have to commit violent crimes to be ostracized, women just have to be feminists to be shunned.
—
Noted.
So if he had a violent criminal past, they MIGHT not support him?
“Sure he presided over systematic genocide but Mr Pot is one of the best project managers we’ve ever had!”
For worse. People who don’t grasp the importance of the internet in this movement have no business being in leadership positions.
Raging Bee @ # 7: … Edwina Rogers was put in charge of SCA for the sole purpose of neutering SCA as an advocacy group …
The main problem with this hypothesis is that Rogers is acting in ways that seem calculated to destroy SCA.
If you want to neuter a group so that it never accomplishes anything positive, you would place a Democratic Party insider as executive director.
Exactly. But apparently, not giving a leadership position to someone who has demonstrated that he gives not one fuck for the safety of other people, and not allowing this person to have even more access to the personal information of others, is ostracizing him over “internet drama” to Gobaud. That chills me right to the bone. I sincerely hope he is as clueless as he claims, because that is some seriously callous, heartless bullshit.
I wonder if he would feel the same way if Vapidula has published Gobaud’s personal address and a photo of his home. I wonder if it would merely be “internet drama” if it were Gobaud’s being harassed and threatened.
What great publicity for the SCA. “Join the SCA! We have no idea what’s going on, but we’re sure it’s just “internet drama” that we’re totally too superior to bother with and we only hire the people least qualified to do any good.”
LOL
Apparently the vetting process was “Staks says he’s okay, so he’s in.” Now Gobaud is complaining because some people think Vacula might not be the optimum choice for the SCA position. “Okay, so he’s been slightly sexist on the internet, but who pays attention to that thing? If you can show that Justin was convicted of murder, then perhaps you’ll have a point about his fitness to be PA co-chair.”
@14 Salty Current
That quote says a lot, eh? Since when is Edwina Rogers an atheist activist? Basically just since she joined the SCA. And the whole thing smacks of “our organization doesn’t care about what happens on that ‘internet’ and ‘blogs’ the kids keep going on about.”
On the other hand, good news for people who were worried youthful indiscretions on Myspace would hurt their job prospects, since apparently lobbying groups don’t actually bother to check up on their members.
Though apparently posting agreeing stuff on hate sites doesn’t give anyone qualms about hiring you either.
Who exactly is trying to exclude him from “ALL corners” of the movement? We just don’t want him in a position of power. And to answer the second question, no. If he disavows AVfM and all they stand for, apologizes for his past involvement in bullying and harassment, and demonstrates through good behavior that he has changed, then he’d no longer face this kind of opposition.
That probably doesn’t capture all of the vetting that took place if that conference call happened after this inteview Vacula did with Rogers (and Damerow): http://www.justinvacula.com/2012/08/podcast-18-edwina-rogers-and-kelly.html
The tagline for that interview:
@18: Exactly that. The disinhibition effect of pseudonymity in no way means the sentiments expressed are any less ‘real’ or problematic or impactful than if they were expressed in some other way. It just means people are more likely to tell you what they really think (at the moment), with less reflection (this can be good or bad). I think part of the whole “the internet doesn’t matter” attitude comes from the fact that its a relatively unregulated platform with the potential to reach an arbitrarily large audience, so it gives people whose voices are usually marginalized (‘don’t matter’, for good reasons or bad – for example, I support the marginalization of White supremacist ideas and the people who buy into them) a forum for expressing their ideas, and it provides a space for ideas that aren’t considered Serious Business by those controlling other mass-communication systems. As an open forum for voices that ‘don’t matter’ or ideas that are ‘frivolous’, the platform itself is marginalized. For the over-forty crowd, it may also simply be an expression of latent technophobia/neophobia.
Is the SCA an important organization, or not? If they want to dismiss this as “internet drama”, and the SCA as simply being “a corner of the movement”, fine. That’s ok if you’re a podunk little group without any clout. But if you want to be seen as a leader, as one of the big umbrella organizations, then you have to expect some scrutiny of your actions, and you have to act in ways that show you’re worthy to be a leading group. Complaints that it’s too trivial to discuss are by default saying that the SCA is too trivial to discuss. And I highly doubt that’s the message they want being broadcast.
Pteryxx @8: that is a PERFECT example. But when you realize your mistake, you rectify it. What SCA’s doing instead is doubling down.
*blush* thanks Jason. It’s not the screw-up so much as what they do to address it… if anything.
Horstman @21: to be clear, pseudonymity doesn’t enter into it in this case, and internet =/= pseudonymity =/= problematic sentiments. Vacula’s problematic internet activities have all been under his own name.
One weird aspect of this kind of rationalization is the idea that if something is said on the internet, that’s just “internet drama.” As though the things one says and does on the internet don’t really count. It’s very much like people who say things like “I don’t really trust anything on the internet.” The internet is just a means of communication. Saying you don’t trust anything on the internet is like saying you don’t trust anything said over a telephone, or in a letter. It’s all quite silly. He’s said and done some pretty vile things; that they were said and done on the internet does not make them any less real.
Can someone explain to me why a “professional” organization would, when caught being so deeply unprofessional, would stand by their behavior rather than using the same lack of measured, considered decision-making to fix their problem that they used to get into it? I mean, if you make an impulse buy, can’t you make an impulse return?
Fuck. You. It isn’t “internet drama”. The internet isn’t some separate space divorced from reality where people exist as fictitious characters. It’s “real-life bigotry” that is the problem.
And the nomination/vetting process is a fucking joke. Looks more like a mere formality to insider “hiring”. (Yeah, I know he wasn’t “hired”.)
I live in Philly (although I’m moving to Atlanta soon), and I’ve gotta say, this new info about the vetting process makes me super-uncomfortable. Staks Rosch is a member of the local meetup group that, as a somewhat non-social person, I’ve just barely started to sort of get involved in. When I met him in person at the meetup a couple weeks ago, he seemed like a reasonably engaging person, and I was willing to give him the benefit of assuming that he’d probably learned from the “no qualified women” top atheists list incident a while back and would try to do better in the future. But now I see that he casually endorsed Justin Vacula for this position in the PA community, after all the nasty crap that Justin has been a part of lately. Maybe Staks just didn’t know about that stuff, and I hope that’s the case, but it makes me wary all over again.
We have got to put an end to this stuff.
Anne C. Hanna,
I’d say Rosch is totally in on it, especially since he and Vacula are both on a blog network created by a sad, bitter ex-FtB blogger in order to create an “alternate space” for people who hate the victims of the last year’s hate campaign against feminism.
Who the hell doesn’t interview volunteers? Even for very part-time folks, you need to know something about them so that you don’t end up wasting their time and yours.
Huh. Lookie that. I haven’t really followed Rosch or Loftus’s network (which apparently is now “Skeptic Ink” as of like yesterday, which made it very hard to track down), but Rosch is indeed over there (“Dangerous Talk”), sharing space with all of the usual suspects. That’s distressing. Makes me glad I’m leaving this state soon, so I won’t be having to decide whether to make an effort to integrate myself into a social circle that includes those particular individuals or to be isolated from the atheist community. I imagine the general misogyny thing is probably a little harder to run away from, tho.
Internet Drama. Except…for many of us (those with two x chromosomes) it isn’t internet, and it isn’t drama – it’s horror. This bleeds over into the world the rest of us live in, even if SCA and their volunteers live in a different world. Many of us have to get up and go to work every morning, teaching the kids that have been swimming in this sewage, and have managed to adopt the posturing of the MRAs as if it were gospel. It bleeds into our classrooms, our boardrooms, and everywhere else. The Internet is a giant octopus that spreads its tentacles everywhere, and can affect even those of us who spent the majority of our lives somewhere else.
First he characterizes a consistent pattern of misogynist bullying as “some pretty bad judgement calls,” and then he moves the goalposts on destructive, divisive behavior that disproportionately affects women, particularly outspoken feminists? Color me surprised.
[…] there are a couple ideas from a comment that Jason highlighted. I don’t really read blogs much, so perhaps I am just out of the loop on how “bad” Justin is. […]
Well, sounds like they don’t vet their state chairs. Someone should probably send them a polite little note privately letting them know that one of the guys they’ve appointed is probably not a good pick. I’m sure they’d be grateful for the tip.
Oops, spell-checked version follows!
I’ve gone away and read read into this over the last few days. I even went to the sl*me pit and read their stuff. My subjective and therefore flawed conclusions follow:
(Seriously, though, can I give something of a trigger warning? Skip this if you only read stuff you like because I’m too jaded to sugar-coat).
1. JV is politically on the nose and likes attention – the two are often related – and that hardly makes him Robinson Crusoe ’round FTB specifically or the SA community generally. He has demonstrated slightly shit judgment under pressure. Robinson Crusoe.
2. He has a fair-to-solid track record of actually DOING atheism and secularism-related shit and obviously doesn’t have much patience with slacktivists;
3. He got a volunteer gig because basically no-one else put their hand up(!);
4. The whingeing about number 3 above is too-late-regrets (there’s a German word for that, isn’t there? There should be). Basically, you’ve got an issue because JV is politically smelly, but you’ve come along too late. Boat missed.
5. As a practical matter there nothing to do now but wait for him to perform or blow up. I give him a 15% chance of achieving both at the same time. Heads you lose. Tails you win;
6. I’ve hunted high and low for “consistent pattern of misogynist bullying” but it aint there, in the sense that IMO his ‘emperors’ clothes’ calling-out and fainting-couch shit-stirring falls far short of misogynist bullying. I’ve dealt with doc cropping separately, below;
7. You were right to kick and scream about Edwina, in that she’ll be politically effective to the external aims of the movement, but is unlikely to be troubled about cajoling the internal FTBers and other outliers.
Two things before I go away and re-lurk: The part of the drama I had the most trouble getting a handle on was the doc dropping re Surly Amy. It was elusive. I saw a summary at the Sl*me Pit which, if it’s even nearly accurate, means you are kind of sort of misleading people (a lot):
“Background: Justin got DMCA’d by Amy for showing a pic of her necklace in an article about her (considered Fair Use as far as copyrights go). He appealed it, and that process requires him giving out his own real name/address. The next step would have been for her to file legal papers where her name/address would get revealed.
“So, they accused Justin, saying that he was appealing just to find out Amy’s address. He said no, that wouldn’t be necessary since Amy has already made her own address public on a business listings website. To prove it, he showed the listing that Amy herself had made public.
“When he copied it here to the Slimepit, they suddenly accused him of docdropping, said Amy has to move now, and then they proceeded to docdrop Justin, who’s info was NOT listed publicly the way Amy’s was.
“They know the real story and that Justin never docdropped Amy, but they are cherry picking just his copying of it to the Slimepit, to make it look like he did.”
Seriously, is this last bit even remotely true? “…and then they proceeded to docdrop Justin, who’s info was NOT listed publicly the way Amy’s was.”
I’m sus, but if it is true, then…wow!
The other thing is about the Sl*me Pit, which is kind of related, because I’ve seen the argument that JV’s doc-fropping wasn’t an issue but for where it occurred.
Anyway, I have read for ages on FTB that SP is a ‘hate site’ so didn’t even bother looking; indeed I avoided it to minimise traffic/revenue. Well, I went there. I read back to about the first week of September, or to when Jen M skied the towel.
Ahhh… Hate-site? Misogynists? Really? First of all, BF can see that the two or three ‘haters’ are more eccentrics than dangerous weirdoes. Also, there seems a fairly even spread of boys and girls. This flies in the face of the FTB-line about Sl*me Pit (which I’d previously accepted without looking) that Sl*me Pit is all MRA teeth-gnashing.
I can definitely see why you don’t like them. Rebecca Watson cops it but some people will always be irresistably attracted to ego-pricking. Whilst I have a bit of a soft spot for RW becuase I think she can be smart and funny, I’m the first to concede that in the ego-pricking department she presents, how can I put it, a ‘generous’ target;
It can’t come as a complete shock that people calling out couch-flouncing and freeloading would give RW a touch-up.
So the overriding impression I gained over a week’s on-and-off reading is the S-Pitters do call out a lot of FTB navel-gazing, couch-flouncing and attention one-upmanship. They genuinely resent the fact dissent isn’t tolerated at FTB, let alone encouraged. Yes, some have called FT-bloggers they don’t like fat, which is a not cool. But none of these are ultimately hanging I-hate-you-for-ever offences. Well, not in my book.
There’s also a hell of a lot of hard-and-fast critical thinking and current affairs dissection and analysis going on. Also, discussions of food, music, and art. There’s a lively tea-drinking community who’s posts about preferred blends and techniques are never-ending and cool in equal measures.
The ability of anyone to post anything about everything is actually pretty cool to see in action and it seems to largely police itself.
There’s almost no discussion of ‘Peezus’(he he, even I had to laugh at that!) and what there is includes a lot of genuine disappointment over PZ getting lost on the road to gender politics; My impression is the majority of Sl*me-Pitters seem to think he always was a bit dodgy and hatey and the more he marginalises himself the better. But that’s hardly a million miles from the view of the wider-web-world about the latter-day PZ.
I discovered a respectable proportion of Slyme Pitters spend an awful lot of time trawling through the science and data on gender issues (probably due in no small part to being labelled gender-traitors and women haters – so it has some value) and the conclusions they come to are pretty middle of the road and would definitely be at home on some of the FTBs.
If there is a whiff of intolerance about the place, it is for privileged whingers, privileged freeloaders and last but not least, the endless rehashing of memes which would have died a natural death but for their being reliable traffic/revenue generators. And that isn’t only directed at FTB. I mean, we’ve all got to make a living.
Also, one guy there is called cunt, but if that’s directed to the subject-matter of his avatar, then sl*me pit and FTB would be in furious agreement for once.
I can’t address all the points you’ve made right now, but some are valid, some I strongly disagree with. Some are predicated on some elisions and framings of old fights that aren’t borne out by the actual recorded history. There’s evidently a not insignificant amount of history you’re missing, too.
You should, if you want a flavor of what we’re talking about when we say “the slime pit”, read the original threads that were archived on Scented Nectar’s blog. No, I won’t link it. When ERV was forced by NatGeo to close those threads because they were full of terrible nonsense, SN took an archive of them before they were deleted, and some of their members decided to “own the slur” and create their own slymepit with a Y. They also decided to try to “turn over a new leaf” and self-police and focus on the matters at hand — which means, countering feminism which they see as an encroaching evil, and avoiding the rhetoric they’d gotten into before. They’d alienated a few of their members, most notably Justicar (/ IntegralMath) with their rules that apparently get in the way of free speech or something. And there’s a lot of holdover of the “nasties” that you’ve mentioned, the really gratuitously offensive ones who deify offense as its own good, who come directly from the original (and who were actively attacking us before they congregated at ERV’s in the first place). By us bloggers banding together to host our blogs on our own server, we’ve formed something that looks like the Avengers or the Sinister Six depending on who you ask, even though that was never our intention. The other side formed the counter-group.
I’m not up on all the details, but yes, the new forum — while it still serves to organize counter-feminist offensives — is significantly tamer than the old one. The people and tactics and bete noirs are still largely the same though. And they still float from victim to victim, attacking en masse in much the same manner that they accuse us of.
I am impressed that there is more actual skeptical and critical thought going on there now than there ever had been at ERV’s, where it was just a two-minutes hate stretched out into months (and now years). Now if only they could drop the hatred and just let us do our thing and have our supporters and they can have theirs, maybe we’d stop having to deal with so damn much hatred in this movement. Let them go tribal, that’s fine. Just tell them to stop staging incursions all the damn time. It’s irritating and unbecoming of our movement. I’d never mention them again if they’d just leave me and my friends the fuck alone.
Also: I have no idea about any doc-dropping on Vacula. This is the first I’ve heard of it. I did know that to file a counterclaim, you have to give your name and address, so the ElevatorGATE blog / twitter hate account’s owner had to give his name to someone placed well enough to make sure he’s turned away at conferences as a potential security risk. But as far as I know, no addresses were published except for Amy’s — and that, just out of Vacula’s spitefulness to prove that Amy had to register her trademark and Amy’s not exactly rich enough to own a business address, nor did she have any idea she’d incur hate campaigns to necessitate a PO box (the mail equivalent of a pseudonym).
Jason, many thanks for responding.
I will cop to not being across the histories beyond what I’ve picked up from reading FTB (I came via reasonable doubts podcast 10 months ago) and from looking into the JV thing since last week.
I’ll take the doc dropping on Vacula on notice and see if I can find out.
No-one comes into this without their own history and context. I’m fairly feminist I think. My family was a pretty rare beast for the 1960s through 1980s; a professional working mum and stay-at-home dad, and that gave me a good grounding. (Dad dug his role, though. A lot!),
But I do struggle with a lot of what I see here at FTB around sexual politics. I think that is in part because where I live is a pretty rare place that women are at least as privileged as men in education, social and legal services, and career. Many women I know think they’re significantly privileged over men in education, social services and career, and aren’t entirely OK with it.
Two of my sisters are school teachers, pretty politicised, and hard core feminists, one was and may still be close to being a rad fem. But with their boys now in high school, they’re really worried about the low matriculation-to-college proportions for boys to girls (36 versus 64 percent). The boys aren’t dim, but three decades of programmes have come at a cost.
My sisters are a bit bitter about being sold the line that things would peter out when equality was achieved when that’s not the case, and now they’re wearing the outcome of that.
My boss is a woman, her boss is a woman, and I work in an industry (construction) in which women were largely unknown 20 years ago. If the is a person amongst the 8,000 employees here who has a skerick of an issue with women running the joint, I haven’t seen it. If he or she voiced such a thing he’d be laughed at as an irrelevant, if harmless, dinosaur.
Anyway, anecdotes and data and all that.
I guess I’m privileged to look at (if you’re not from around here), but looking at me won’t tell you I’ve been to (metaphorical) hell and back and had to pull myself up by own bootstraps. I barely made it back from the precipice, but I did.
All this adds up to someone, and probably not the most sympathetic eye/ear to everything I see here. I wouldn’t give a toss but I see a lot of potential being squandered on procedure and minutiae.
And big thanks again for responding.
Yii. That actually does look pretty bad, George. I agree that it doesn’t change what Justin’s done, or his suitability for a leadership role in the SCA, but publishing his parents’ address and asking people to send them letters about his terribleness is a little too similar for comfort to what was done to Surly Amy and Jen (in nature, although definitely not in degree).
Maybe he’s earned it for what he’s involved himself in, but I don’t want to be dismissive of *anyone’s* families getting unfairly dragged into this mess — it *does* matter, and it shouldn’t be happening. Obviously, none of Justin’s prominent opponents can be said to bear any personal responsibility for this, much as he might like to blame them, since they neither did it themselves nor encouraged or applauded it. But I think it’s still important to call it out as an unacceptable way to handle this matter, in order to set the right tone for the discussion. S, whoever ze is, is really not helping.
I can’t believe someone did that. His parents have nothing to do with this. They aren’t to blame for his douchbaggery and bigotry. Completely and entirely not okay, not cool, not acceptable. At all.
Jason @38- The whole sordid story of someone “doc dropping” Vacula is outlined in this YouTube video.
I watched the whole thing and it seems legit. I just don’t think it matters. Is “S” (the woman accused of “doc dropping”)being nominated to a co-chair with the SCA? No? Okay then.
I suppose the point is to show that there is systematic bullying of Justin going on; that the petition is just an extension of this pattern of behavior. In other words, it is a distraction to avoid giving weight to valid concerns. He knowingly and willfully published an article to a site that is a harbor for hate speech. He inappropriately gave private information about a person he was feuding with to prove a point. He has participated in behaviour that he himself condemns out of the other side of his mouth. Those are not the only reasons I signed and support the petition- they are merely the reasons that I think are both indisputable and germane to whether or not someone is fit to take a leadership role with a national organization.
I guess this isn’t about the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Glad to hear, George. I didn’t think you really meant to dismiss it, I just felt it was important to get it out there clearly that “our side” doesn’t consider that kind of thing dismissable. But as you say, it also doesn’t negate what Justin did.
Anne @41
I totally agree with everything you said. When I re-read my comment, I do notice that I downplay the significance of what “S” did. Let me clarify that I meant that this “doesn’t matter” in the sense of whether or not the concerns in the petition are valid or worthy of action by the SCA- not, and I repeat, NOT– in the sense of whether it matters in the broader sense. It does matter. It matters a whole hell of a lot.
What “S” did was bullying. Period. It was unequivocally stupid and retaliatory. She should never have done it and if I knew who she was I would never support her for any position of authority in the atheist community. I would have ZERO respect for her until she exhibited a boatload of contrition and personal reflection on the matter.
What I find astounding is the number of people whom I do respect who are willing to look past very real and very valid criticisms merely because they don’t like the messenger and feel that the subject of this criticism has been attacked unfairly at some point or another. To me this is like saying that evolution is correct because it has been attacked unfairly for so many years.
No, I don’t like this one bit. However, it does illustrate exactly how easy it is to get ANYONE’S address, and ease of obtaining the address does not excuse publicizing it for the nutters who don’t have that (minimal) bar of knowledge. It’s impossible to make your address completely private unless you blog/comment pseudonymously, and even then, there’s lots of ways to narrow down your identity.
None of that makes this right. At all. Not one whit.
Finding out, say, Dave Mabus’ address so you could give it to the cops is significantly different though — because you’re giving it to law enforcement, not to a forum on which you have no idea whether there are vigilantes. Vigilante justice isn’t justice. I don’t care if you’re as objectively shitty a person as Vacula, you don’t do this.
One thing I find interesting though — nobody knows who this person is outside of Vacula and his friends. The screenshots were taken and the post deleted, apparently. I can tell you this though — it was definitely not Amy’s facebook account, because she does not have “surly” at the front. Scrubbing the person’s identity in the screenshots is an interesting choice, and a damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don’t one in fact. If you scrub it, nobody knows who the accused is, and whether or not they are actually members of any communities we’re part of, so we don’t know if there are vigilantes in our midst. And if you don’t scrub it, you could get accused of name-and-shaming.
However, I’ve noticed there are apparently folks blaming Amy for the doc-dropping on Vacula despite it not being her screen name, and despite the fact that Amy would have had access to his address from the DMCA Counterclaim and wouldn’t have to look up phone books in Scranton.
And further, to George and Anna’s points, whoever this S is, I would no sooner want THEM in a position of power than Vacula.
For the record, “S” is autistic and complains about not having any good ways to learn the social rules of the internet. She also says the address posting was a hoax perpetuated for no more than 20 minutes. I presume that means it wasn’t a correct address posted. And yes, I do know who “S” is, because someone was passing around a pic of the first part of the exchange that didn’t have her name redacted.
Interesting, because Vacula acted like it’s definitely his address. If it wasn’t then he was feigning victimhood, I’d say, because he sees it as another opportunity to tarnish all feminists with the misdeeds of one. Just another way to throw others under the bus to improve his own rep.
A hoax? How weird. And still not good — some random person totally unrelated to all this mess could have ended up getting harassed as a result. Did she think that by doing this she was somehow supporting the women who have been harassed? ‘Cause she sure as hell didn’t — she just gave the slimepitters another club to beat them with. It’s just straight-up wrong either way, and if she didn’t know that before, I hope she knows it now.
Also, I wonder why Justin is acting so upset about it if it wasn’t really his family’s address. He certainly claimed it was in the video George linked. I don’t have a terribly high opinion of Justin right now, but if he’s lying about that, it would be the first I’ve seen of him being so far gone as to just outright make shit up. Is there any other evidence that he’s that much of a lying scumbag, or is this really just his word against hers about whether it was f’realz?