SubMor said (#4.1.2.3.1):

So, your position is now that some fundamentalist telling you that what you’re saying about evolution is wrong should be taken at face value, without any demands for evidence? Awesomely skeptical of you.

Lol, indeed.

Wait, your position is now that a person who has told you essentially “what you are saying about this is wrong” has not given “any manifest, objective evidence of having given any thought to [that] particular proposition?”

lol

Curious how so many people subscribe to the view that sauce for the gander isn’t sauce for the goose.

And, just en passant, it seems that I might reasonably ask for an apology from you for your insults of me (1).

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1) “_http://freethoughtblogs.com/brutereason/2013/06/11/guest-post-dictionary-arguments-and-why-they-suck/#comment-9352”;

Miri said (#8.1):

… and it’s a great example of a situation in which a sincere apology could do a lot of good.

Yes, that might well be the case. If you, and others, had actually made a credible case that an apology was required. Which I, and others, have yet to see.

And absent which many are likely to quite reasonably conclude that the demand for said apology more or less proves Lindsay’s argument about the misuse of the “shut up and listen” tactic. A response which, if Ophelia Benson’s recent efforts (1) on the rationalization front are any accurate measure, “lots of people” are thinking is “excessive”. Considering that, and the fact that CFI, among others, have made very significant efforts to “listen to the women”, maybe it is those writing those rather critical and intemperate if not draconian open letters to the CFI who should be tendering an apology, and doing a little “shutting up and listening” themselves.

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1) “_http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/06/a-failure-to-communicate/”;

Some serious conflation there, I think, to go from an explicit and limited comparison between two documents from two sources to a comparison between the sources themselves. The most one might argue is that Watson and North Korea are somewhat analogous, but only to the extent of, as Lindsay put it, the common element of intellectual dishonesty in creating those documents.

You might take a look at the Wikipedia article on analogies for further details (1). It emphasizes the fact that analogies entail both similarities and differences as well as similar relationships between the similar elements.

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1) “_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy#Identity_of_relation”;

Also, I’m glad to see you’re interested in reading my blog, as it’s one of which your host has spoken highly in the past. I blog at polyskeptic.com (clicking my name will take you there). Ironically, it’s hosted by WordPress.

That quote that you posted sounds exactly like Ron Lindsay comparing Rebecca Watson to North Korea… Arguing otherwise seems rather silly.

Sure, but if that’s the case, the OP was, at the very least, ambiguous. One of the reasons I interpreted it the way I did was that the system you seem to be advocating would not have fixed the situation at all for a situation like Ron Lindsay, your principle example.

Lindsay’s protestations following his being called out showed that his main mistake was believing that his statements were necessary and justified. Any system which proposes to solve that problem will fail unless it includes a method by which he could see that his statements were not warranted.

“Or you could, as you’ve done, believe that this is sign of a bad-faith ignoring of those important people who need to be able to hear they’ve hurt someone and still be able to shrug and feel moral.”

You did write about those people. Your only example was Ron Lindsay. He is one of those people.

Miri said (#4.1.2.2):

Steersman, were you at WiS2?

No, sorry to say I wasn’t. Although I had followed some of the drama leading up to it, as well as more of the recent stuff.

Many of us tried so damn hard to be charitable.

Well then you’re to be commended for whatever you managed, although that tends to be rather subjective. But my impression was that more than a few others were decidedly less so, at least relative to Justin Vacula’s pending presence there – “histrionic” and “the sky’s falling” might be other more applicable terms. An attitude that I expect hasn’t added much to subsequent discussions and arguments.

… until Lindsay doubled down by comparing Rebecca Watson to North Korea

You say po-tat-o, I say po-ta-to. Apropos of which, something from Michael Shermer’s The Believing Brain (highly recommended):

As we saw in the previous chapter, politics is filled with self-justifying rationalizations. Democrats see the world through liberal-tinted glasses, while Republicans filter it through conservative shaded glasses. When you listen to both “conservative talk radio” and “progressive talk radio” you will hear current events interpreted in ways that are 180 degrees out of phase. So incongruent are the interpretations of even the simplest goings-on in the daily news that you wonder if they can possibly be talking about the same event. [my emphasis]

I think many of these “contretemps”, not to say tempests-in-teapots, won’t really be resolved until more people start to ask themselves why that is the case.

However, more specifically and as a case in point, you said Lindsay was “guilty” of “comparing Rebecca Watson to North Korea”, but all he said was that her post “may be the most intellectually dishonest piece of writing since the last communique issued by North Korea”. Rather different kettles of fish if not species from entirely different biological phyla. Your statement, which looks like a bit of egregious propaganda, suggests that Lindsay was laying all of the sins of the North Korean regime at Watson’s doorstep when, in fact, all he was doing was comparing her post – by itself – to that communique.

Not helping to unfairly demonize the opposition to make your own arguments and positions more credible. Tends to backfire too.

… and until he made it clear that all the feminist writers who were “silencing” men were…men.

If you’re referring to Lindsay’s A Few Examples of “Shut Up and Listen” post (1) then that is all it was: a few examples. And if that is the case then my impression is that, of the three examples given, only two of them were men. But, in any case, that seems to be a rather thin pretext for trying to throw Lindsay under the bus, particularly as there seems to be any number of cases where that trope is implicit if not referred to explicitly (2). Although it is of course moot whether it is used unfairly or not in any given case.

However, in any case, what irks me in particular about that concept is a somewhat implicit assumption that whatever the supposedly less privileged individual has to say about their experiences is necessarily a true and accurate representation of reality. Or more so than the perceptions of anyone or everyone else. But it doesn’t take much thought or effort to find many cases where an individual’s description of their experiences frequently bears little resemblance to what most would consider objective reality – religious fundamentalists for example.

… my main issue with it [was] … it is not appropriate to open a conference on women’s activism with the remark that it has been taken “too far.”

Ok, but that is only your particular and individual opinion, not necessarily one that he or CFI are obliged to consider as outweighing all of the other issues and factors and opinions that they might have considered before taking that step. Seems to me quite likely that this was part of a plan that they’ve had in mind for some time – at least from Lindsay’s initiative broaching (3) the subject in January of this year where he explicitly asked for input on how “the appropriate understanding of feminism and how feminism (however defined) should influence the practices and mission of secular organizations”. Given that I can well see that they might have figured that the opening speech at that conference was the most effective method of disseminating those perspectives to the widest possible audience for further discussion.

… but it’s uncharitable to assume that just because you don’t have written evidence that we’ve “given serious thought” to other opinions, that means that we haven’t ….

Ok, maybe you personally have done so, although that comment of mine that you quoted was directed at Eristae. However, one might suggest that the meaning and implications and ramifications of “serious” are decidedly moot. Considering that you and many others have apparently rejected those other opinions in spite of a rather broad range and spectrum of them, and in spite of some significant if not acrimonious and fractious “divisions among true feminists”, one might suggest that your “serious thought” is little more than having gone a couple of rounds in some well-worn grooves without at all letting any outside influences temper or modify your perspectives.

In addition, one might reasonably argue that the set of open letters from various FT blogs, among others, constitutes a rather cavalier rejection of those other opinions and voices, in effect telling them, those other groups of both women and men, to shut and listen to – and heed, forthwith! – the far-fewer voices of the supposedly less privileged group advancing those letters. And in that event that group is in effect proving Lindsay’s point (4) that that “shut-up and listen” trope is being used in an effort to silence the many critics of the style and type of feminism being advanced by FTB and company. And in so doing is seeking to rob those other voices of their humanity.

Considering that CFI and, presumably, the various other secular organization which were party to that January initiative, have obviously made very extensive and far reaching efforts to actually “listen to the women”, it seems rather boorish, to say the least, for many of those invited to that conference to get up on their high horses, sulk off to their tents, and insist that no other voices can be heard, that only their perspectives have any value and credibility.

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1) “_http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/a_few_examples_of_shut_up_and_listen/”;
2) “_http://atheismplus.com/forums/search.php?keywords=%22shut+up+and+listen%22&sid=e3bb6098d6bc51f2512f89d7b60b33c3”;
3) “_http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/the_heads_meeting_your_input_requested/P50/”;
4) “_http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/show/my_talk_at_wis2/P50”;