Sunday 19 August 2012

Dost thou protest too much?

ZOMGitsCriss is all over my channel (and twitter, apparently, though I can't be bothered to go look--hearsay evidence so take it with a grain of salt) [HEARSAY EVIDENCE UPDATE: ZOMGitscriss is not accusing me of accusing her. She has been accusing me of accusing FTB and/or Skepchicks of the fraudulent DMCA claims, and others have been accusing me of accusing her specifically and demanding I "leave her alone".] demanding evidence of the accusations I've made against her. That is, the accusations I've made that she is behind the fraudulent DMCA claims against me that occurred earlier this week.






And I would be happy to provide evidence to back such accusations, if I'd actually made any such accusations. In fact, the only accusations I ever made regarding ZOMG is that she deleted my comments from the thread of her video. A cursory search for "neoteny" did not turn up my initial comment, nor other comments in which I had included this word, and I assumed, wrongly, that some or all of my comments had been deleted.

The instant I had ascertained that I was mistaken, I amended my video with a speech bubble, and posted edits on my blog post and the info section of my video to that effect. The edits in these two locations also included a disclaimer that I was not accusing ZOMGitsCriss of the attack on my channel, or of being personally involved in any of this.









More than that, I exchanged a brief series of personal messages with ZOMG, in which I said to her:


I also want to make clear to you (I've tried to publicly, as well) that I don't at all believe this is your doing, but I do consider it very likely that this might be fallout from my participation in your video thread. This is the first trouble I've had on YT, and there's been some serious resentment among atheists/skeptics of thunderf00t subscribing to "the tokyo rose of men's rights". 
If you like, here's a screencap of that message:




So what ZOMGitsCriss is demanding on my channel and (apparently) on twitter, and is criticizing me for not producing, is evidence of a claim I never made, and which I have conveyed in three places--two of them public and one of them directly to her--that I specifically was not making. 


What I HAVE done is note that this attack on my channel--an attack that occurred the exact same day Justin Vacula was dealt a false DMCA claim against one of his videos--is something all too common within the Atheist/Skeptic community, that stalking has been an issue there as well, and that this attack occurred two days after I made my first foray into the increasingly feminist environment of that community. My channel has been pissing people off since last October, and two days after a comment of mine received 117 upvotes in a thread where ZOMG was downvoted


I get (allegedly) two claimants filing false DMCAs against me with the implied threat that my channel would go down if I don't provide them my personal details.

I'm well aware that it could be any number of people within the FTB or skepchick communities, or none of them, or all of them, or someone completely different. But as I said, the timing is awfully iffy.

Again. I did not accuse ZOMGitsCriss of anything. In fact, I went out of my way to say I was NOT accusing her of anything--both in public and in a personal message. Yet she demands evidence of my accusations that she is the culprit behind the false DMCA claims filed against me.


Of course, it's not like I'm not used to this crap. Here is a screencap of a post on FTB (apparently they've acknowledged my existence now):




Now, let's consider what they're implying here. They're implying that by saying "I don’t really find too much in the article that strikes me as seriously ethically questionable," that I find nothing in the article that is seriously ethically questionable. More precisely, they post that comment immediately after posting the most seriously ethically questionable portion of the article in question.

I'm going to allow that these people are unfamiliar with the MRM's general sentiment toward Ferdinand Bardamu, which is that pretty much everything he writes is expected to be so awful that we no longer even remark on the awfulness, but concentrate our discussion on the things he occasionally says that are NOT awful. But let's deconstruct this a little.

"I really don't find too much in the article that is seriously ethically questionable." From this, we can infer that some of it IS seriously ethically questionable, but other parts are insightful or morally neutral or contributory to a discussion of the real dynamics of domestic violence. 

Yet my assessment that there was not "too much" in the article that was seriously ethically questionable was interpreted and portrayed as complete agreement with the most seriously ethically questionable portion of the article (and you know that the worst bit is going to be the bit posted, right?). 

So by essentially saying that I find a portion of the article seriously ethically questionable, while most of it is just observations of human nature, I am portrayed by the folks at FTB as condoning and agreeing with the most seriously ethically questionable part of the article. 

So here we have a group of people who claim I am accusing someone even after I have specifically and unambiguously stated, publicly in two places and privately to her face, that I am not accusing her, who then go on to impute beliefs and values on me based on the fact that I found some, but not all, of a Ferdinand Bardamu article ethically questionable.

The intellectual dishonesty, it hurts. It hurts SO BAD.



19 comments:

  1. If I felt someone had accused me or one of my blog readers of stalking, DMCAing, ddosing, doxxing, or in anyway attacking another blogger, well, sure, I would be pissed, but I would also make it damn clear on my blog, and youtube channels that I did not attack that other blogger, and I do not condone any attacks in my name from my readers. And that if real evidence appeared that my blog or readers were in anyway involved, I would help to stop that, and even help investigate who the attackers were.

    I just briefly checked Cristina's YouTube channel and her blog at ftb (where she embeds your DMCA video) and there is no such statement anywhere. She does host several dozen comments calling you out, including one from Ed Brayton one of the creators of FTB, and he too missed the opportunity to either deny or inform his readers that attacks like this will not be condoned.

    In October, 2003, Donald Luskin sued Atrios to try and out Atrios' real life name. At that time, bloggers on the left and the right came together to condemn that lawsuit. (google atrios donald luskin).

    So none of this means that Cristina or FTB is behind any of this in anyway, but it sure seems to be a lost opportunity on their part to clarify that they do not condone any of this shit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yet more evidence that you have far more integrity than this riff-raff.

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  3. You are going to have to come to terms with the fact that none of this is out of the ordinary. It is all standard operating procedure in FTB land. As a rule of thumb with any interaction with them - consider the worst possible outcome you can. Then prepare for double that. I no longer believe there is a bottom to the barrel of FTB filth.

    Cristina Rad's case is a very sad one - I have never seen a person with incisive clarity degenerate to goose-stepping groupthink this quickly. I guess cults are like that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree about the CR thing. I had high hopes for her as she was critisising the people who are really hurting women (radical Islam) rather than middle class white men who do not fight back.

      It is a horrible thing to watch someone decline. Horrible.

      Delete
  4. In before the godwinning, whoops, no, can't say that, thanks a bunch greylining dot dumb.

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  5. lol @ discussing the ethics of a Ferdinand Bardamu post

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  6. That's not how this works, you can't ATTACK them with logic. You've already been identified as a persona non grata, so it doesn't really matter what you say. You could express your love of puppies, and they would blame you for letting the dogs out.

    I tried the reason route; I'm now banned.

    ReplyDelete
  7. In the third of the first three screenshots, someone marked my response to zomgitscris as spam, which means that she will not receive notice of my response, which very clearly showed her why she was wrong. I'll paste my comment here:

    Zomgitscris said:
    "So if I go right now on a video and say that you MAY be a pedophile, with no evidence given, that would totally be ok, right? RIGHT?"

    I responded with:
    "The issue isn't whether you're okay with it, clearly you are not. That doesn't change the fact that you are strawmaning. You are demanding evidence when no claim was made. GWW gave REASONS for why people within your camp MIGHT be responsible for this. Suggesting, with good REASON, why somebody MIGHT be a pedophile is fine, even if they dont like you saying it."

    And I've noticed that she keeps trying to justify her strawman tactics with more bad analogies like this.

    She says:
    "So it will be ok for me to make a video right now and publicly state that "GWW may (MAY, ok?) have DMCA-ed herself in order to get some money and sympathy from people" ?"

    To which I've replied:
    "That depends on whether there is a basis for making that claim. The people you side with have a HISTORY of shady behavior (it wouldn't surprise me if FTB do end up suggesting, in order to save their own asses, that GWW MAY have done something like that). But the idea that GWW false DMCA'ed herself defies our background information. Where as the suspicion that people from FTB false DMCA'ed GWW does not go against our background information."

    I'm going to expand upon this, so that zomgitscris and others who argue the way she does have a better understanding of correct logic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. (I have no idea why it names me Anonymous since I am signed in)

      This is a continuation of my last post:

      There are two things to consider when determining whether something is probably true or not, evidence and background information, both of which give us reasons to believe stuff, and both of which are valid. Let's propose a hypothetical situation where somebody makes a video suggesting that GWW DMCA'd herself to make money, and that we have no more evidence of this than we have that somebody within the FTB and Skeptchick communities DMCA'd GWW so they can harass her in real life.

      Now let’s look at our background information. GWW makes videos devastatingly critical of feminism. Feminists leave angry comments on her videos. GWW made comments on ZOMgitscris’s video, a feminist and blogger at freethoughtblogs, which received many upvotes. Our background information also tells us that people within FTB have stalked and harassed people who do not kowtow to feminism. It is known that they continue to suggest such strategies to each other on their private mailing list, even after Greg Laden was kicked off their blogs. It is also known that when such behavior is exposed by somebody, FTB will try to twist things around to make the whistleblower look like the bad guy (just think, we would never know about these things if it wasn't for Thunderf00t's super amazing "hacking" skills).

      So what does our background information tell us about this hypothetical situation? That the only basis for making a vid which claims that GWW DMCA'd herself would be to cover FTB’s own ass, and not because there is genuine reason to suspect the possibility. On the other hand, our background information shows that GWW has good genuine reasons to consider the possibility that whoever DMCA'd her might be part of the FTB and Skeptchick communities.

      The background information may not be overwhelming to make the claim that people within FTB are responsible for the false DMCAs, to turn “may have” into “has”, since it could have been some random feminist or a sympathizer with FTB and Skeptchick who DMCA’d GWW, and that possibility would need to be controlled for. But as has been pointed out, GirlWritesWhat has not CLAIMED that the FTB and Skepchick communities are responsible. If ZOMGitsCris is unhappy with people voicing their suspicions about the people she blogs for, then she has nobody to blame but her own community, because just like the boy that cried wolf, her own community is responsible for its own bad reputation.

      Delete
  8. I've been following your videos and I am always surprised how things like this happens.
    I am from Brazil, so not much I can do. I am more like a lurker, for now, and I am still learning about how human dynamics are progressing and I had the luck to learn about the MRM.

    I guess everyone here is quite appalled about the irony and hypocrisy on the feminist/atheist claims these groups make.

    Anyways, I just wanted to leave my support. We must thank you for your work!

    ReplyDelete
  9. ‘ZOMGitsCriss is all over my channel [...] demanding evidence of the accusations I've made against her. ’

    I think you have made a mistake here. As far as I can tell, Criss demanded evidence of the accusations* you made against the FTB/Skepchick crowd, not against _her_.

    You may need to scramble to correct this.


    *Yes, you just expressed a suspicion rather than a specific accusation, and so her request for proof is disingenuous, but that’s beside the point.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Given that Greta over at FTB used a description of the rape of an Egyptian woman in 2011 as evidence against TF's claim that sexism is a wildly exaggerated non-troversy at atheist conferences, GWW should be able to cite Alexander Aan's abuse at the hands of the Indonesian gov't as evidence that FTB engages in dissent-silencing tactics like the DMCAs. Quid Pro Quo

      The irony of a group that refuses to cite any remotely relevant evidence to support their claims, then demanding evidence to support claims against them, renders your request moot.

      That aside, GWW isn't making a "hard" claim about FTBs involvement, which already sets her apart from their claims about conferences and women's "safety" therein. All she said was that it's rather suspicious that these events took place so soon after she came to the attention of said crowd, on videos that have been around for months and years. In addition, given FTBs documented approach to disagreement (that of shunning/shaming/banning), her hypothesis is not an exercise in ad-hoc-ery.

      FTB has motive, opportunity, and a pattern of behavior. I really don't think GWW needs to take these demands all that seriously. FTB has some serious reputation repair, and internal policing, ahead of them if they wish to play innocent victim in circumstances like this.

      Delete
    2. You completely and utterly miss my point. Fortunately, GWW has replied to my point in the Youtube comments, and amended the above blog post.

      Delete
  10. Exactly what part of the Bardamu essay was not ethically questionable? You admit that the majority of the essay, which said, among other things, that female DV victims bring the violence on themselves and enjoy their injuries, that women are so inherently bestial and irrational that they can only be kept in line with humiliation and terror, and that the only real reason not to beat women is the threat of being arrested, was questionable, so why even discuss it at all?

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    1. "female DV victims bring the violence on themselves"

      This is true in almost all cases.

      "enjoy their injuries"

      I don't believe women enjoy their injuries, but they do enjoy causing drama in order to manipulate their men, and they do enjoy the power that they wield once they've pushed a man enough to hit them. Paul Elam covers this well in his "How to Slap Your Way to Slavery" piece.

      "women are so inherently bestial and irrational that they can only be kept in line with humiliation and terror"

      Most are. The only thing that can keep women in line is force. Once constraints were lifted from women look what happened to our society. As Angry Harry said in his piece, Women and Chimps, "women are the schemers, the phonies and the frauds".

      "the only real reason not to beat women is the threat of being arrested"

      What other reason could there be? If it weren't for the police's use of force preventing men from disciplining women who misbehave, there would actually be a lot less violence in homes, and both men and women would be much more content.

      If you don't understand that women have a basic need to be dominated by men, you don't understand women.

      All these ideas are readily discussed in the manosphere. The only thing Ferdinand does, and I do, is we talk about these things honestly, bluntly, and without apology. We don't tiptoe around things just because they'll offend our enemies.

      The portion of the men's movement that is too scared of offending our enemies to talk about these things, to look deeper at genuine solutions to these problems, etc., they aren't going to accomplish squat, because their premises are false.

      Delete
    2. I guess the problem with your line of thinking is that feminist have the same feeling: "We are right and we know it."

      First and foremost, we should treat everyone as human beings, basic freedom means no one has an inherent control over anyone.

      Now, what I think is, some violence against women has nothing to do with gender. If someone punches me (and I mean a healthy human, not some mentally challenged or toddler) I should not be censored when punching back because of the gender of my attacker.

      I abhor any kind of violence, so I obviously do not condone violence against women. (and to have to write this kind of disclaimer just show how feminist our society is!)

      Delete
  11. dont let it hurt you, this is expected.

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  12. Girlwriteswhat,

    Nobody who cares about your work cares about these accusations. Feel free to ignore these idiots as much as you can. You probably stirred 'em up when you told us about the 'crazies' at the Fem Convention. (I bet Cathulu was selling tickets at the door! ;)

    Btw, I showed your channel to someone at work who's been having trouble in his marriage ... and he thanked me for it. Your videos gave him strength he didn't even know he was missing. Keep bringing sanity into this insane world as long as you can.

    ReplyDelete
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Commenting policy:

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