Tag Archives: TAM

I learned today that there is an unfunny “comedian” by the name of Emery Emery, who does a podcast called Ardent Atheist. For some reason, this person felt entitled and motivated to convene a club of white males, who to my knowledge are rather non-entities in the skeptic and atheist community, to do a podcast that aimed to discuss anything from Elevatorgate to TAM, to the recent DJ Grothe controversy. The resulting trainwreck was not entirely surprising. Participants were as far as I can tell, Emery Emery, Mallorie Nasrallah, Richard Murray, Sara E Mayhew, Travis Roy, BJ Kramer, and Wendell Henry. I don’t know any of these people, and I am not entirely certain what qualifies them to pontificate smugly about these matters in public, but this they did.

So here is that cringeworthy podcast/debate :

The sane one is Wendell, in case you wonder. Not that he’s great, but compared to all the other entitled and privileged white guys who sit there smugly defending their entitlements to be sexist pigs, and the women defending them, trivializing sexual harassment and foulmouthing Watson, he comes out reasonably well. Says Emery :

The greatest harm that has ever been done to TAM so far is the awful, awful groundswell of bullshit that claims that TAM is an unsafe place for women. I think it is absolute bullshit. I don’t know what the motivations were of all the people involved in turning this into this. I just think this: I think they are doing so much more harm to the skeptic movement in general and I don’t believe there is a danger or risk to women any higher than going to the fucking grocery store. In my opinion, TAM should be doing nothing more than they’re doing.

Yes, naturally. Those who point out problems are the ones causing the problems. We’ve seen this fallacy paraded around a fair bit, including by DJ Grothe, so it’s not a surprise that it should surface in this “debate”, I guess. I thought I repost the comment by Jacqueline S Homan here, because it sums up my feelings about this surreal spectacle perfectly well (and much better than I ever could hope to say it) :

I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but but I don’t believe for a New York minute that these guys genuinely have women’s best interests at heart. They’re only out for themselves.

They don’t want an honest discussion on dismantling oppressive structures of privilege; they want to hang onto their male privilege at women’s expense.

They did not discuss how they could work towards helping to build a movement that does not replicate the existing structures of privilege, misogyny and oppression that women and other marginalized people already suffer because of the stranglehold that religious institutions and leaders have on our geopolitical sphere.

Instead, these guys spent well over an hour justifying their bullshit, making excuses for their bullshit, and argued for the sake of arguing when some things simply are not up for debate.

Their nitpicking over how Rebecca as the victim “should have handled” what happened to her proves that they have no desire to build an inclusive environment that doesn’t reek of the same patriarchal authoritarian horseshit as misogynistic religious institutions. The oppressor has no right or moral high ground to dictate to the oppressed how to react after being attacked for demanding basic human dignity. Would anyone today debate the “right” to own slaves? Women’s human rights are non-negotiable.

There is no way to polish this whole steaming pile of bullshit cooked up and served by these professional bullshit chefs.

After listening to/watching this smorgasboard of mansplaining bullshit, I am now convinced that other women are not being unreasonable when they say ‘Why should I spend my hard-earned money to enrich these assholes when I can get treated like crap for free?’

These guys have only themselves to blame. It was not Rebecca or any other known female member of the atheist community that damaged their organizations’ reputations and caused women to vote with their feet (and their wallets). It’s this shit that guys like this pull while having the moxy to make excuses for doing it and then calling for the wahmbulance.

It was not Rebecca, or Greta, or Stephanie, or Ophelia or any other woman that gave them bad publicity: they earned it by shooting off their mouths and running off on their keyboards with their anti-woman bile. I saw their online rants and posts in the free-thought/atheist blogosphere before I even KNEW about what had happened to Rebecca. I first heard about all this from these he-man-woman-haters themselves. They brought negative attention to themselves by the crap they/their faithful followers posted which prompted me to go to the Skepchick site to see what “mortal sin” Rebecca committed to be deserving of so much contempt, scorn and abuse from them.

My grandmother, who came to this country as a destitute Holocaust refugee, once told me: “When someone shows you who they really are, believe them.”

These guys showed me in this video who they really are: Insecure beta male status-seekers with misogyny issues and attitudes of entitlement, who are trying to be alpha males when all they really are are alpha dipshits. It is my personal opinion that women can do better by withdrawing support of ALL forms from any organization or political party or whatever that despises us and seeks to keep us beat down, marginalized, silenced and relegated to the periphery.

QFT.