Continued: (Ed) Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

Stout said:
From Novella's blog
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What a load of mealy-mouthed cowardly crap.

A whole lot of words to try and avoid flatly admitting that they disinvited Dawkins to appease a tiny vocal nutcase fringe wanna-be demagogues who no one in their right mind should be taking seriously. Definitely losing respect for Novella over that.
 
Actually, I'm going to synthesize some observations I've had/read/heard regarding this situation:

- People are mad that the video in question refers to a specific feminist who allegedly (I honestly don't care enough to see whether or not this is true because it's irrelevant imo) has received threats (a 3-year harassment "campaign" according to at least one source... sorry for forgetting who said this)
- No one seems to care about the muslim, "Dawah man". The crowd that is angry about big red being in the video did not seem to even know Dawah man was a real person, either.
- There is outrage that Dawkins "didn't do his research" referring to his ignorance about big red being a real person
- The crowd that is outraged about this is ignorant about Dawah man
- The argument goes that endorsing this video encourages people in some way to threaten (or perhaps just to even know of the existence of) big red. This raises 2 points in my opinion:
1) Those who already know who big red is know for one of two reasons, probably: she is a common caricature of radical feminism or they agree with/side with her and know about her alleged harassment already
2) Virtually no one else knows this person exists, and the same goes for Dawah man. Those who know about Dawah man would know about his for his "drink your dad's sperm" comments or other controversial stuff - personally, I didn't recognize this caricature for months despite being a SyeTenAtheist fan for quite awhile

So, what exactly makes people think that this video will result in more people knowing about big red in the first place unless it is pointed out to them (something the outraged crowd has done FOR Dawkins and IN PLACE of Dawkins!)???
How is this any more or less true of Dawah man, and why don't they care?


Sorry if my rambling is incoherent or incomplete/incorrect. I also think the most important thing is that no one should care at all about this whole tweet in the first place. Good for Dawkins, he linked to a satirical cartoon branding the most extreme elements of feminism and islamism and which drew comparisons between the two ideologies. When did this become a problem? Why is his twitter behavior worthy of disinvitation? Why invite him in the first place if he has a record of saying things that are "insensitive or worse"?

This whole thing wreaks of a double standard regarding feminism. If we're going to thought-police people, I'm sure Penn and Teller have said many a controversial or insensitive thing within the community (climate change, second hand smoke, etc.). That said, I don't think we should be thought-policing. I think we should challenge ideas which to be frank I don't see any of his detractors doing honestly, in this case. You can see in Novella's comment section and elsewhere (I read the whole thing last night) that people are completely ignorant on the recent goldfemsoc thing as well as ignorant or dismissive of the feminist response to the cologne attacks. Despite this, they paint the cartoon as wholly "misleading" or "incorrect". On Sharon Hill's facebook page you can see people like Clay Jones and David Gorski (:() agreeing with the knee-jerk decision as well. Truly disappointing
 
pharphis said:
I also like that seemingly no one gives a damn that Dawah man was also referenced in the video to the same extent... except, as far as I can tell he's not nearly as big and obvious of a meme so his reference imo is worse if anything.
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Perhaps I'm being overly charitable, but it seems to me that SyeTenAtheist may well have been using "Dawah Man" and "Big Red" as convenient visual shorthand for specific varieties of stylized Islamic apologism and shouty intersectional feminism, respectively.
 
pharphis said:
This sounds hilarious to me, but maybe I'm too biased because I think big red makes for the perfect caricature of "regressives/radical feminists".
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Her ideas didn't strike me as "regressive" or "rad fem" from what I was able to hear. Dogmatic, yes. Funnily enough, given her demeanor, she was trying to point out that feminists care about men's issues and are not anti-male. But she does make for a good charicature of the aggressiveness / incivility / aversion to actual dialogue that seems to be encouraged in a lot of feminist and social justice circles.
 
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d4m10n said:
Perhaps I'm being overly charitable, but it seems to me that SyeTenAtheist may well have been using "Dawah Man" and "Big Red" as convenient visual shorthand for specific varieties of stylized Islamic apologism and shouty intersectional feminism, respectively.
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I think that's how he does all of his work, tbh. He finds a representative of some subset of a community (Christianity, Islamic, Feminism, etc.) and then uses some hyperbole or brute honesty to show why their positions are silly and/or inconsistent

Meed said:
Her ideas didn't strike me as "regressive" or "rad fem" from what I was able to hear. Dogmatic, yes. Funnily enough, given her demeanor, she was trying to point out that feminists care about men's issues and are not anti-male. But she does make for a good charicature of the aggressiveness / incivility / aversion to actual dialogue that seems to be encouraged in a lot of feminist and social justice circles.
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Fair enough
 
luchog said:
What a load of mealy-mouthed cowardly crap.

A whole lot of words to try and avoid flatly admitting that they disinvited Dawkins to appease a tiny vocal nutcase fringe wanna-be demagogues who no one in their right mind should be taking seriously. Definitely losing respect for Novella over that.
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How do you know what their decision making process actually was, and that this blog isn't an accurate representation of it?

Also, earlier in the thread you described the Goldsmiths University’s Islamic Society as "radical Islamists" in relation to this incident. What is your evidence for this?
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Can you say what you specifically think of as being examples of radical Islamist behaviour? I'm not seeing it.
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What do you think explains the intimidation and disruption of Maryam Namizie's talk, then? Obviously the behaviour is not specifically Islamist, but the motivation appears to be.

From the Torygraph:
Goldsmiths Islamic Society has previously hosted a number of radical speakers including Moazzam Begg of Cage, the charity which described ISIS terrorist 'Jihadi John' as a 'beautiful, kind man'.
Another recent Goldsmiths speaker was Hamza Tzortzis, who says that non-Muslims 'should be killed' if they ever fight against Muslims and once proclaimed: 'We as Muslims reject the idea of freedom of speech.'
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If you want more details, here's a report from the Council of Ex-Muslims on three university Islamic societies, including Goldsmiths.
The Goldsmiths, University of LondonIslamic Society (ISOC) describes itself as “a charitable, religious, social and cultural society, representative of all Muslims within this institution.” However, upon research it is clear that Goldsmiths ISOC is active in the promotion of Islamist norms and values, and is indeed not representative of all Muslims within Goldsmiths. The following will present an account of Goldsmiths ISOC proliferation of Islamist beliefs and practices represented in: (a) their consistent hosting of Islamist hate preachers and (b) their promotion and practice of gender segregation.
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zooterkin said:
What do you think explains the intimidation and disruption of Maryam Namizie's talk, then?
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Well, on the information thus far posted in the thread, it could have been anything up to and including stupid kids being stupid.

Obviously the behaviour is not specifically Islamist[...]
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Which is why I challenged your claim that it was.

From the Torygraph:
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zooterkin said:
If you want more details, here's a report from the Council of Ex-Muslims on three university Islamic societies, including Goldsmiths.
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Thank you. This is what I was asking for.
 
d4m10n said:
Not sure I'd call it a mob, I can see only three socjus tweeters who complained prior to the deplatforming going through.
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Went back and double-checked, there were at least a handful of complaints prior to Dawkins' deplatforming.

https://twitter.com/tweek75/status/689897455849193472

https://twitter.com/DiscordianStooj/status/690421952851353600

https://twitter.com/heliopathic/status/691821844178010112

https://twitter.com/kellySueMcM/status/692095752835850241

https://twitter.com/sabotflask/status/692142414337871874

That is not even counting the blog-based grousing at Skepchick.org where the movement was declared a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ for failing to repudiate teh Dawkbro.
 
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And as a bonus, there's a bunch of new bloggers over at FtB as well.

So these two networks are going to compete with each other ?
 
Stout said:
And as a bonus, there's a bunch of new bloggers over at FtB as well.

So these two networks are going to compete with each other ?
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That would be interesting to see. They'll be too busy attacking each other over minor points of doctrine to actually bother with real-world injustices (not that they've done much about those to date).
 
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