Trigger warning for frank discussion of bullying and PTSD.
When I was young, I was bullied. A lot. Maybe not more than other kids who’ve been bullied, but I was definitely the target of my grade for many years running in my tiny grade school and middle school. It started to let up a bit in high school after I attacked one of my bullies physically. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but I had been at my wits’ end that there were exactly zero consequences for harassing me for years on end.
I was wrong to attack that person. And yet, I was able to breathe easier afterward.
My father, as fathers do, attempted to coach me on how to deal with the bullies and put a stop to the harassment — coaching that ranged from “don’t react in any way” to “react as strongly and as violently as possible” to “stop doing the things that make them harass you”. None of it really worked, and violence was always my last resort because I was scrawny and not very capable of it. The harassment started because I was a bit of a klutz, because I was a little too smart, because I was the tallest fifth grader, because I stood out a little too much in a few too many ways. Somehow I made myself a target, because at that age, societal pressures trend toward conformity. If you’re too different, you’re wrong and must be brought into line. The fact that some of these aspects of myself were endemic to my nature and could not be baffled or muted meant that I stayed a target for a very long time. I was very, very miserable. I completely understand the battle fatigue that comes with long-term harassment, and I empathize when the bullying escalates to the point of suicide or psychological damage. I am not unconvinced that there is no psychological damage in my own makeup as a result.
I’m seeing many of the same dynamics at play in the blogosphere, twenty years later. Agitators and people who advocate too strongly for change or too strongly against peoples’ saints and heroes get shouted down. They get targeted for being different, for standing out. They especially get targeted for pointing out the moral failings of others — targeted until they themselves break.
Let’s ground you in a comic reference, to keep up my geek cred. Think of what The Joker did to Commissioner Gordon in The Killing Joke, trying to push him over the edge of insanity by making sure he had the absolute worst day imaginable. Stretch that out over years, with microaggressions instead of single gigantic aggressions, and you get what some people experience for standing out a little too much. You get a decade of bad days. That has a psychological effect. That causes stress, fatigue. That causes anger and resentment, deep rifts, reactionary behaviours.
But I will not blame the victim under any circumstances.
This brings me around to Greg Laden, whom people seem to think is some sort of devil that should be made a pariah in the movement. (And this from a culture that thinks criticizing, say, DJ Grothe or Richard Dawkins is an attempt to make THEM pariahs, no less. Who’re the shunners?)
I haven’t talked much about the incidents surrounding his departure from FtB, mostly because I saw a perfect storm of harassment and victims and reactionary behaviour all out of proportion to what was actually happening. I saw all the setup for everything that was to come. I first saw Greg harassed to the point where he decided to shut down his FtB blog for a month and just blog at Scienceblogs, as a way to gain some temporary reprieve from Team Douchebag and their constant swarming attacks. I saw Justin Griffith step up to tell everyone that the members of Team Douchebag were just misunderstood, and that they were using 4Chan humour to get lolz — never mind that said lolz were at someone else’s expense, we saw that, we understood the culture and the jokes and the lolz, and that’s what we objected to. If we’re talking about stopping bullies, the focus shouldn’t be on what VICTIMS can do better (including ignoring the “for the lolz” crowd that makes up the majority of these bullies).
And yes, I then saw Greg react very strongly to what he (absolutely correctly) saw as someone haplessly defending the very people who’d attacked him, his dear friends, and everything they believed in, for years on end — pretending like we just didn’t understand their culture. Greg issued to Justin what Greg describes as a “Patton Slap”, a letter he worded so forcefully because he intended to smarten Justin up and realize that the people who’d targeted him, me, Stephanie, Jen McCreight, Ophelia Benson, PZ Myers, and countless others in the blogosphere would use Justin’s status as a veteran against him. That they would use the fact that he had to engage in activities at the army’s behest that would break most of us. And Greg’s “Patton Slap” went over the line in a lot of ways — warning that these people would try to trigger Justin’s PTSD was, in a way, just another trigger, even if Greg didn’t intend it that way, since intention isn’t magic. It’s the same reason you scream “trigger warning” before a post containing these potential triggers — you don’t want to accidentally hurt someone you’re not intending to.
I don’t think I’d have sent that letter. I might have thought about it, I might even have DONE it, but I do try not to say things in anger as much as possible because that anger tends to undercut what you’re trying to do. It was, to my mind, unreasonably lashing out come the end, with the “if you approach me I’ll kick your fucking ass (unless you apologize)”. Frankly, a “threat” of that nature doesn’t carry a lot of force from Greg, where as he points out he’s not a musclebound gun-toting doberman owner who’s famed for kicking ass. But such a non-threat was a threat nonetheless — it was a very bad reaction to the harassment he received. Yet I also think getting kicked off the network was a steep price for someone whose intents were pretty plain in the letters that Justin made public. I don’t necessarily disagree with him leaving this network, but I don’t like it being piled on top of the shit he was already getting.
It’s for that reason that I didn’t get involved — Greg was a victim reacting too harshly; and Justin was the victim reacting too harshly as well, who preferred to escalate by making the fight public at Greg’s exclusive expense, rather than trying to put time between the events or to let cooler heads prevail. There are lots of ways the situation could have de-escalated — neither Justin nor Greg reacted to one another appropriately. I won’t talk about the proportions of offense because that in itself is offensive, though people seem to be unduly focused on who did what when and in what order; on “who’s right” and “who scored the most points.”
I like Greg Laden a good deal. He is personable, witty, and knowledgeable. I still owe him a beer; I’m hoping to see him this New Year’s so he might collect. I suspect I’d like Justin a lot in person too. He seems funny, and I bet he’s got a lot of things to say about atheism in the military that I’m not personally exposed to in general. I know Justin’s mad at me for not hating Greg, but I hope that’ll pass and he’ll be less mad at me in time. (Or maybe it’s just that I pointed out when Justin was sympathizing with the harassers too much for my tastes, and that’s why he’s actually mad at me — that’s how it all started, after all. In which case, he’ll probably continue being mad at me when I point out his future transgressions.)
Just because I held my tongue when it all happened because of all the harassment and victimization and how tangled it all was, though, doesn’t mean I won’t point out these incautious and damaging actions when they’re not done as poor reactions to victimization. Stephanie posted her wish not to be used as a poster-child for how to be a victim properly, and far be it from me to criticize angry reactions to years of targeted harassment. I don’t think there IS a good way to be a victim — and having been a victim, I have a lot of sympathy for when people react badly. I, like Stephanie, have more sympathy for the bullied than for the bullies.
And all of us here would prefer to be left alone by the harassers, rather than targeted for stepping out of ideological line (this is FREEthought!!!1). So while I’d disagree with Justin that we are just not understanding the “for the lolz” crowd, and I’d disagree with Justin’s evident sympathy for harassers just because they’re targeting someone who threatened him (even if you don’t take Greg’s good intentions at face value because of the language), and I’d disagree with Greg’s letter, and I’d disagree with how Greg reacted to this latest spate of harassment by one of the pro-harassment crowd — by “dox’ing” a serial harasser who’d issued many threats on par with what Justin got from Greg over a month — while ALL of this is true, I still see all of this as a distraction from the harassment that caused it all. Disagreement doesn’t mean judgment, though. I don’t KNOW how I’d react. I don’t know how YOU’D react. I can’t express much judgment for how anyone reacted to anything here, except perhaps for the harassment that led up to it all.
After all, I won breathing room when I physically attacked one of my bullies. Even if I know that was wrong.
I don’t think that Greg’s won anything in this case but more targeting, though. They’ve seen him react badly. The bullies already smell blood in the water. They’re going to keep harassing until he leaves the internet, keep escalating until he breaks and does something that hurts his career, keep making him miserable until he’s ruined utterly, silenced ultimately because he’s a vocal feminist.
I only wish his latest misstep as a victim didn’t make him even more of a target for the harassers, the real devils here; and now also for the people who sympathize with the harassers, because Greg’s obviously a “nasty piece of work” — judging only by how he reacts to years of abuse.
How do YOU react to years of abuse? Can you judge?
You like Greg. He may be a fantastic guy in person. But I have never been impressed by him. I’ve been staying out of the fights erupting around Greg (some of which he started) because I don’t have much sympathy for him. I think he’s a bully and I don’t care much for bullies.
Greg Laden is sneakily trying to gain sympathy by having horrific, repellent enemies and fair-minded, rational friends. But I will not be fooled by such a transparent ruse.
Here’s the problem: he is, on the internet. He went after me with an atrocious Beckish insinuation; he likened Pharyngula to a firing squad; he altered the content of Josh OSG’s post without acknowledging it; when ChasP objected, he changed his ‘nym to his real-name email address, combined with thuggish communications. He’s behaved badly and thuggishly in situations in which he’s not a victim and he’s not defending victims,* and Stephanie Zvan has collaborated with him in that. He should have been at the least suspended from Sb for the altering and the outing. It’s unfortunate that he wasn’t, and unfortunate that he was given yet another blogging platform here.
I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt, or that any accusation against him must be true because I don’t like him – far from it. I know very little about this recent episode, and wouldn’t presume to judge his behavior in it specifically. I’m not claiming this incident was an example of Laden’s bullying. But he’s established a clear pattern of bad, thuggish behavior generally, with no apologies, and I’m tired of seeing that ignored or swept under the rug.
Of course, Greg Laden’s antics are irrelevant to feminism, His behavior in this instance and in general is a red herring. But if you’re going to make his behavior and character an issue, then you need to take a comprehensive view.
*Neither Josh nor Chas was victimizing him, and it would be absurd to suggest that I was victimizing anyone, including Henry Gee (who by the way has been a conservative sexist ass,** about which I haven’t seen Laden or Zvan utter a peep).
**As I’ve said, I don’t loathe him. He appears to like dogs, the ocean, science writing, and salting his prose with Yiddish, all of which meet with my approval. He also fights against anti-Semitism, and although his fire is sometimes wrongly aimed it’s a good and necessary fight.
Well, ScienceBlogs evidently felt differently about that episode, SC. And it does behoove you to check out the harassment in this particular instance, because I’m trying to refocus away from Greg and back onto the harassment. That’s, after all, the whole point of this post.
Or they were, quite typically, clueless about what was happening or didn’t give a shit because they were more concerned with finding corporate sponsors.
But who cares? What sort of appeal to authority is that? Are you seriously suggesting that taking no action in that instance was right? That altering the comment of Josh’s post and then changing Sven’s ‘nym to his real-name email in that circumstance was acceptable and didn’t warrant at least a suspension?
No. It’s irrelevant to what I’m saying.
This post was mostly about Laden. If the point was to remove the focus from him, it was a strange way to go about it. I notice that your only response to my presentation of his history is to argue that Sb presumably felt differently. You might want to step back and reassess before you continue down that line. Note: I’m not asking you to publicly criticize Laden. I’m asking you to rethink your emphasis on defending him and its basis.
And by the way, it took me a while to appreciate how awful this act was. It’s bizarre for you to defend it in these terms in a post with a PTSD warning (I’ll save my opinion about this depoliticized variant of Vietnam War anger for another time…).
Have to agree with one bit of SCs statement, “Of course, Greg Laden’s antics are irrelevant to feminism”, but the harassers won’t see it that way. Despite the commitment to the “one true scepticism” all the ad-homs add up to Laden=Wrong in regard to anything he writes or comments on. They’ll also follow him for eternity parroting “Laden did this! Laden did that!”. So he certainly has my sympathy regardless of past misdeeds as he is a good blogger and writer and I’m not convinced he deserves to be “drummed out of the community” as the pit would put it…
Greg Laden did indeed do exactly what SC describes. Harassing him is still wrong, as is chumming up with harassers and misogynists as Justin Griffith has apparently done; but that harassment in turn does not justify Laden making public what he wrongly believed to be the harasser’s address. (One of the main reasons outing someone in this way is wrong is that you can make a mistake, and involve people who are entirely innocent, even if your target has behaved disgracefully.) Both sides of this brouhaha leave a very bad taste in the mouth.
Jason:
<blink>
Mmmhmm.
Aren’t you judging that no judgement can be made unless one has been in his position?
—
(Good luck with your white-knighting of he whom you like a great deal)
Nice, I like how you make your dad out to be ineffectual. That’s a pattern common to social justice warriors.
It’s also clever how you stand up in this post for non-violence all while explaining how you punching that jackass in the nose worked and urge people to support Osama Greg Laden acts of violence against others.
My guess is that if Laden, on his blog and in his comment moderation policies, had acted with honesty, integrity, and respect for others that he demands for himself that none of this would have happened.
But hey, you guys formed an ingroup, castigated, excoriated, dehumanized the outgroup. Literally called them racist, sexist monsters, act as bullies, and then, whammo, it’s victimhood time for you.
Anyway, you did deliver the bomb about your father. Nice job.
[meta]
Such as Jay are to be expected in these type of posts.
<snicker>
Considering the number of other feminist atheists treated in the same way by the slimepitters despite behaving in the way you recommend, I conclude that you’re either a liar or an idiot. That’s an inclusive “or”, of course.
Wait, tell me again how the slimepit started?
Oh, yeah, it was a bunch of people castigating, excoriating, and dehumanizing Rebecca Watson and other feminists.
Jay thinks pointing out that they were castigating, excoriating and dehumanizing people, and that that was sexist, means “we guys” were…castigating, excoriating, and dehumanizing the slimers.
Meanwhile, slimers continue to harass, troll, lie about, and cyberbully Skepchicks and FtB bloggers.
Jay, you’re an idiot. Please go whine somewhere else. You and your little friends don’t get to play “we’re the real victims here!!11”
Wow. FTB has become a lot less interesting to me as it’s become more about the personal lives of the bloggers (livejournal type posts) and a venue for resolving personal conflicts. I’m tired of reading about who bullied whom, or who’s still friends with whom, or who might be mad at someone else for still being friends with whom. It’s become a very junior high type of atmosphere. Which is fine, if you want the blogs to be about that sort of thing, but it makes FTB a much less interesting resource for debate or education re atheism, skepticism, or humanism. At least for the casual reader, who isn’t personally involved with any of the feuders. I don’t care who bullied whom, or who has the cutest cats, etc. That stuff isn’t what attracted me to FTB in the first place, and I don’t think I’m the only reader to lose interest because of it.
Heh. White-knighting. Heh.
You didn’t see any of that criticism, in amongst my unwillingness to judge someone as having been a bad victim?
Hey, look! The harassers are swarming someone we don’t like! What should we do? I know! We can pile on!
Fucking victim-blaming assholes.
@Jay,
Yep. Jason hates dads. You can especially tell with posts like this
1) Is is controversial to say that violence sometimes works? He said specifically that it was unethical of him. Effectiveness and ethics are not synonymous.
2) Where in this post is that stated anywhere? The post tells us not to wholly condemn Laden for his behaviour, not to endorse it. Did that slip by you?
3) Seriously? You gonna compare him to Hitler next? I’ve no love for Laden, but come the fuck on.
Maybe. Then again RW’s great sin was, “Guys, don’t do that.” Shit probably would have exploded anyways.
What bullying has Jason, or any other current FTB blogger done to you? I bet mild name calling is the worst you can think of. In any case, bad behaviour of FTB does not excuse the bad behaviour of others.
On Topic,
We don’t see Greg as a devil. We see him as a jackass. He behaved poorly. Regardless of the harassment he’s experienced in the passed, it did not justify his threats to Justin. Nor did it justify doxxing the other dumbass (I forget his name) he was engaged with on twitter. We are not demonizing him by pointing this out.
Still reading your post. I truly relate to you about the standing out (I was 70 pounds in 7th grade, 110 pounds when I joined the army ten years later, 150 a few months later. Sorry, no time for metrics). I developed a few defense mechanisms, self-deprecating humor, drugs, getting nerdy with music, getting nerdy with drugs, challenge to authority, etc. I’m sure you’ve got your crutches too, as each of us extra-awkward adolescents go through. I was probably pretty successful with my ‘talk with authority while I question it’ bluff. Despite frequent interstate moves fueled by a chaotic divorce situation, I always managed to find fellow ‘bad kids’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrNSjItTfes
I was right there with you, as I was reading along. Musing about how we took different paths to solve the same problem. But I stopped at this bit.
Lousy Canuck wrote:
What!?
I never said that the slimepit was “just misunderstood”.
I never said the 4chan tactics that some of the members use were defensible.
Here are direct quotes from that post:
1) “First off, let me say that I agree that people shouldn’t use gendered slurs.”
1 and a half) “My initial thoughts are complex.” <— including this because holy shit that's a dumb sentence. That's like Greg Laden "hard to say" bad.
2) "If you comment at a place where you know such language isn’t welcome, you’re way out of line to use it."
3) "If you’re directly contacting a person known to dislike this language, and you use this language, you’re wrong."
4) "Abbie is funny, but I think she is unaware of the socially irresponsible applications of that style of humor when she commands an audience that large."
5) "I like PZ a lot, but that’s pretty funny. I’m against idol-worship, autograph seeking, so I appreciated ‘PeeZus’. …But I don’t like the ‘Rebitchka Twatkins’ gender based slurs."
6) "This language [gendered slurs] does have a place [Carlin, Sonic Youth, etc.]. The ‘greater’ atheist blogosphere is simply not one of those places."
7) "Our particular corner of the internet should probably be run more like this: if you wouldn’t say it to that person in real life face to face, don’t say it on their blog/twitter/facebook."
What the shit is wrong with you? That post ALWAYS included those statements. Use your modly powers if you're suspicious. The only edit I was requested to make was to lower the font size of 4 words: “I support Abbie Smith – I don’t support everything she says or does.”
That was my high crime that generated those threats. It was because Greg Laden only read those four words and then kicked up a shit storm by people who didn’t yet see him for what he was.
It was a naive plea for peace. It didn’t work. Who cares. Stop pretending that I launched some sort of “I LOVE 4CHAN AND SLIME AND YOU GUYS JUST DONT GET THE LULZ” post. You’re lying.
I didn’t see an acknowledgment that Laden has a history of thuggish, totally inappropriate behavior, no. You could be clear about this and still argue that his behavior in any specific instance was justified. What I’ve now seen is a pathetic attempt to evade my question and excuse his inexcusable behavior. I can’t imagine what the point of this is.
***
Right, because it’s not like we haven’t had more than a year and a heap of occasions to “pile on.” If you think you’re going to make expressing an opinion about his pattern of behavior – and I’ll leave aside your complicity – some sort of political litmus test, you can think again. That’s nonsense, Stephanie, and either your friendship with Laden is clouding your judgment or you’re willing to excuse bad behavior if it’s your friend’s.
If you’d been paying attention, you’d have noticed that quarrels like this are about quite a lot more than that. They’re about ethics, and sexism, and how to deal with harassment and bullying, among other things.
But hey, your halfassed opinion means a lot. Don’t let the door smack your ass on your way out.
Criticizing Greg’s behavior is not victim-blaming anymore than criticizing Justin’s is.
” If you think you’re going to make expressing an opinion about his pattern of behavior – and I’ll leave aside your complicity – some sort of political litmus test, you can think again. That’s nonsense, Stephanie, and either your friendship with Laden is clouding your judgment or you’re willing to excuse bad behavior if it’s your friend’s.”
QFT.
Stacy, when the topic is how Greg is being treated right now, yeah, jumping up to say, “Ew, never liked that guy” is indeed victim-blaming. It is particularly victim-blaming when it’s something that happened years ago and which Greg himself noted he learned something about internet mores from. But whatever, SC can just bring that up over and over and over again whenever anyone expresses sympathy with Greg, and Nick can confirm the story with missing details, so that everyone knows Greg should always be fair game. Nothing at all like Rebecca’s past following her around every time she’s mentioned or anything. You know, because it’s Greg instead.
Note that people didn’t actually do that to Justin. Stepping up now to point out that things didn’t actually go the way he’s now claiming they did or that he’s now doing the slimepitters work for them is not the same thing.
[…] Canuck has another post with extreme histrionics. It’s so weird because I really liked the beginning. He was […]
And just in case people can’t figure out why this is victim-blaming: It takes the attention off of the harassers and makes the discussion all about the behavior of the victim instead. Perhaps it will work better if I transpose this onto a different behavior, one we’re used to thinking about.
“There is never any excuse for rape ever, but ugh, have you seen how she dresses? Let’s talk about that instead. There was this one outfit, years ago….”
Start to get it yet?
Wow… I can’t believe this Patton slap explanation! I mean I can believe it coming from Greg “can’t spell the title of his own book correctly” Laden.
From you, though? I’m shocked. Do you think Greg Laden is capable of giving militaristic advice to an ACTUAL SOLDIER? Do you think you are qualified to judge its merit? Seriously, what is going on here? Is this level of fail on purpose, like for an ironic hipster documentary?
I’m going to sleep. I’ll read the rest in the morning. Maybe there is a happy ending or a ‘just kidding’ plot twist ending.
@Stephanie,
Uhh… the topic is not “how Greg Laden is being treated.” The topic, as noted in the title of the post, “Sympathy for the devil”, is “Greg Laden was treated badly, so we should excuse his sometimes atrocious behaviour”.
In your analogy, Greg Laden then went on to rape people, and we’re being asked to excuse his raping. No. I’m sorry Greg was treated as he was. But that does not excuse his harassing of others.
@Justin
Just caught this,
Yeah. So? Rape jokes have a place too. Look at Stephanie’s post here.
You’ll notice that Kilsteins joke and Carlin’s jokes do not target women (I don’t know enough about sonic youth to comment). The only place these words have is not being used against women, which is exactly how the slimepit uses them. You implied, unintentionally I’m assuming, that there were other places for these words to be used.
My, that’s a REALLY ambiguous sentence. I meant to say that the slimepit uses gendered slurs against women.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t write a post defending Greg Laden (I don’t mean defending him from the slimepit harassment — I mean defending his actions) and expect to refocus the discussion away from him.
Well, judging the person might be uncalled for, but judging the action, not so much.
What Greg Laden did on several occasions was wrong, the same way you, Jason, acknowledge that attacking your harsasser was wrong.
But that doesn’t make Greg Laden fair game, even if he himself thinks that you can do things that make you fair game.
That shit?
We usually recognize it and stand up against it.
There’s no reason not to do it because we might have several good reasons to dislike Greg Laden.
If we don’t believe in “just desserts” then Greg deserves some support and sympathy for being targeted by the team misogyny.
I’ve said so before that apparently Greg Laden is the one person everybody seems to hate and who can therefore be bullied and quotemined and lied about without anybody paying much attention and that is bad.
He also deserves our criticism for acting like an asshole on other occasions and I sincerely hope that his friends try to get through to him.
What the fuck? Do you completely not understand what an analogy is, or are you just that eager to jump up and down in judgment? No, that’s entirely not analogous.
Now you’re returning to the idea that Jason is defending Greg’s actions. This has already been covered by Jason in the comments. Can you make an argument here that doesn’t rely on starting the discussion over at the beginning?
Justin, since I refuse to comment at your place in deference to the moderation rules that there are no effective ways around, you can feel free to link this comment.
You’ve lied many, many times about what I wrote, about what I’m trying to accomplish, and what I’ve said about what you wrote. And your first recourse is to call my post “histrionics” and lies, though your clarifications basically show that my “lies” are the truth just not framed in a way you’d prefer; and your supporters’ ranks on your blog telling you to get off Free From Thought Blogs and to tell Ed to kick me and Stephanie out, those are almost entirely slimepitty, despite your saying you consider them generally terrible influences in the blogosphere (I paraphrase). I’d wager they actually don’t give a shit about you except to use you to further their agenda of destroying us. And yet they think I’m being tribalistic. I’d as soon they leave us all alone, or contribute without trolling. I’d as soon they leave off their harassment campaigns, their parody sites, and actually build something.
I’d further wager that, since you’ve wholly given over to the “witch of the week” bullshit, you think any time someone has a disagreement with someone else they’re trying to drum them out of the movement. Given what you’ve done with Greg over what was a private fight, turning it into a very public and very acrimonious one, do you not see yourself as driving a witch hunt? Regardless of what you think of Greg, do you not see that the present witches are me and Stephanie, for being Friends With A Witch, not you?
Quoted for the mother-fucking truth.
Peter Ferguson @30: those are, of course, separate events. In the first case Salty Current brought up some past butt-hurts where he edited commenters’ comments “for teh lulz”, then came to find out that that’s a breach of internet etiquette and claims to have learned something about the mores that exist.
There’s the further possibility that he might claim the same about this event, given that editing someone’s comment is not identical nor analogous to releasing someone’s old address.
Laden and Griffith? I don’t waste my time reading either of them.
Greg Laden is not a troll (or is not like most trolls, depending on your opinion). He doesn’t just want to be heard like most attention whores, he wants feedback. But it’s a waste of effort responding to his posts, the only thing you’ll do it make yourself look bad. If you disagree with him, you’re automatically wrong according to his ego.
If you see any posts by him, ignore them, and if he responds to one of yours, politely tell him he wasn’t involved or invited in the conversation. Whether you’re trying to infuriate him deliberately or not trying at all, it will drive him up the wall more than arguing with him.
Griffith? His attitude is “I can do no wrong” but that’s all he does, be wrong. He needs to learn when to shut up on some topics, or eventually no one will want to read him on ANY topic.
And as for those commenting about Stephanie Zvan (or anyone else), I have advice: speak for yourself – not in the insulting “STFU” way that’s usually meant. I mean speak for yourself because that’s the only person whose life you really know about or have permission to talk about. If you want to know something about her, read her posts or email her. And if you do, you still don’t get to talk about her – tell others to read her posts, her words, if you want to make a point.
This public dustup is getting pathetic and annoying. Those involved should take it behind closed doors and stop embarrassing the atheist community.
Greg Laden acted thoughtlessly and made a mistake (although how big of one is debatable;) he has a history of acting thoughtlessly and making mistakes. This post doesn’t try to justify his actions, it merely says that Jason understands why Greg acted the way he did, mistakes and all; I understand why, too. But no one is really talking about Mykeru, a known, serial harasser, who’s STILL AT IT EVEN NOW. Can we maybe spend a little more time talking about how big a harassing shitbag Mykeru actually is? Or are we just ignoring him because we’ve accepted he and his slyme-y cohort will continue to be harassing shitbags and there’s no recourse to make them stop?
stakkalee: Nailed it.
[…] receiving a good bit of criticism elsewhere for saying that it’s an asshole move to focus on and pile on someone who is being harassed […]
Jason wrote:
I feel your pain Jason, heavy-handed moderations is such a *non-gendered insult* isn’t it!
….and wouldnt it be the ultimate irony if that comment remained in moderation, hehe!
One of these days, Noel, you’ll try reading for comprehension. On that day there will be a parade.
I want the harassment to stop. How do we do that?
JAFO wrote:
I sincerely hope you weren’t referring to me. That would be quite hipocritical. Zvan did not do this with me. Remember that in everybody’s eyes except hers I’m the victim of Laden’s REPEATED threats – recently even. So by your logic, she’s way out of line for discussing me. If you want an objective opinion, ask yourself why he no longer blogs here. Because your kidding yourself if you view it any other way.
He’s harassed others who are not easily cast off as ‘slimer harassers’. Judging by my few interactions with Salty Current, and she is no big fan of mine, but her comment here at #3 is quite telling. She’s intensely disagreed with me in the past while being extremely calm and rational about it, and that’s what others are trying to do on this thread with LC and SZ. These two are attempting to saber rattle with deceptive accounts of the past, likely expecting a deluge of support. It is a non starter and everyone sees right through it. Except for a handful like JAFO or Stakkalee, who apparently just nailed it.
They’re latched on to Laden like barnacles on a boat (even if the ship sinks, you know you can’t let go.)
I sincerely hope that’s really you, Justin. If it’s not, let me know, and I’ll remove it.
If it is, you’re still mischaracterizing the arguments, presumably on purpose. If I were more like you, I might just scream “lies lies lies lies” and wait for people to pile on based on that altered perception of reality.
Log out. Then log in with Facebook, like I have here. Or just type your name, and since you have the ‘one comment manually approved, then auto-approve’ enabled, it should be no trouble to you from then on out. I’ll let you handle the copypaste, though.
Honestly (way off topic here), as a general practice, it’s wise to split the use of accounts with elevated privileges into accounts specifically set up only to perform those tasks. That’s the right answer, but I think you know IT (we both work in IT, FYI) and I wasn’t intending that to be condescending. It may be a mild hassle to have to use a different login to do the admin functions, it’s really the best practice for a variety of reasons I won’t insult you by explaining.
Nope, ever since you’ve decided that the slime pit is a great place to hang out and try to reason with people, any interaction I have with you will be public. I did talk to you behind the scenes at one point. You were privy to all the discussions about the crap I and others have been put through. You decided to do something with that that means I will not ever trust you again.
A bandwagon appeal and a link that doesn’t show the disagreement you claim. In one sentence. Go, you.
I put up a post about calling harassment and threats “harassment” and “threats” even when they happen to someone you don’t like. That is a general statement that applies to everyone. You were an extreme example. You can start doing that at any time and I will go back to ignoring you.
And, dude, you went and whined about me on Shermer’s post, despite the fact that you were talking about things that happened on that off-limits backchannel and lying about them to boot and that what you were saying had nothing to do with Ophelia’s post that he was criticizing.
An objective opinion of…what? Me? Because that was your topic right up to that point. Also, this might not be the most convenient time for it, but do remember that you claimed to not want him removed from FtB.
What dishonest bullshit. First, Jason himself discusses Laden’s behaviour as well as what was done to him. Second, I did not add any “missing details”, I just confirmed the honesty of SC’s account. Third, I stated explicitly that nothingLaden had done justified the harassment to which he had been subjected. If you had a good case, Stephanie, you wouldn’t find it necessary to lie.