Dawkins sounds off. Lots of atheists upset.

Zombrex

Jernal wrote: »

Zombrex, I know absolutely nothing of this case and from reading your posts I've seen nothing to even indicate that it was racial thinking or racial profiling by Zimmerman. Just thought I'd let you know. If you're trying to make a point it isn't really coming across too well.

Well frankly I'm at a loss as to what would be considered evidence for this. I'm not saying I know for 100% this is what motivated Zimmerman. But a number of posters have said there is absolutely no evidence Zimmerman racially profiled Martin. I find that ridiculous. You have a man who has repeatably called 911 to report black males in his neighbourhood singling out and chasing down a black kid who is apparently doing nothing in his neighbourhood other than walking though it.

You might say that doesn't prove beyond all reasonable doubt, or isn't enough to convinct Zimmerman.

But can you really say it is "nothing to even indicate" that Zimmerman racially profiled Martin?

nagirrac

Jernal wrote: »

Zombrex, I know absolutely nothing of this case and from reading your posts I've seen nothing to even indicate that it was racial thinking or racial profiling by Zimmerman. Just thought I'd let you know. If you're trying to make a point it isn't really coming across too well.

Everything you need to know about the race aspect of this case Jernal is to be found in how the media portrayed the case from the beginning. NBC released a spliced version of the 911 call that suggested Zimmerman was racially profiling Martin (they cut out the bit where the dispatcher specifically asked him the race of the person he was watching form his car). They are being sued by Zimmerman for this and he will most likely win a large settlement.

If everyone in society was exposed to the journalistic investigation that Zimmerman has been subjected to, everyone in society could be labeled a racist.

robindch

Caroline Criado-Pere, a women's rights campaigner in the UK who received a significant dose of online harassment starting last week, decided to deal with the problem through official channels. This morning, five days later, police in Manchester arrested a twenty-one year old man on suspicion of harassment.

http://www.thejournal.ie/caroline-criado-perez-twitter-threats-man-arrest-1012725-Jul2013/

Kudos to Caroline Criado-Perez for pursuing this and I trust it will lead to a successful prosecution, but I'm wondering why the people complaining about harassment by skeptics and atheists either haven't approached the police, or if they have, haven't seen any arrests, even after two and more years?

Doctor DooM

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Watson should start naming and shaming these people who send her these over the top tweets et al. All the evidence I see in that article is a parody twitter account, an anti Watson website (which she seems to think is a crime itself) and a poor taste tweet which is turned into a threat of assault.

If people are saying the scummy things she says they are, they should be outted.

UDP wrote: »

Even more important is she should be reporting the assaults she was subject to at some events to the police and she should be encouraging the others who were assaulted to do likewise. Being assaulted at events is a very serious allegation to be making - she hasn't mentioned anything about reporting it.

robindch wrote: »

Caroline Criado-Pere, a women's rights campaigner in the UK who received a significant dose of online harassment starting last week, decided to deal with the problem through official channels. This morning, five days later, police in Manchester arrested a twenty-one year old man on suspicion of harassment.

http://www.thejournal.ie/caroline-criado-perez-twitter-threats-man-arrest-1012725-Jul2013/

Kudos to Caroline Criado-Perez for pursuing this and I trust it will lead to a successful prosecution, but I'm wondering why the people complaining about harassment by skeptics and atheists either haven't approached the police, or if they have, haven't seen any arrests, even after two and more years?

We've been saying that a long time.

Online abuse- and I'm sure Watson et al receive FAR too much of it- is not on. It shouldn't be tolerated, or celebrated.

I would like to see the culture of online abuse die, but at some point it becomes difficult not to hear boys who cry wolf.

OpheliaBenson

What? Seriously?

1) Rebecca has reported the more violent threats to the police. So has Jen McCreight, for one. (Those are the two that I know have.)

2) The harassment I (for example) get is mostly sub-violent and not a police matter. Is the implication that if it's not violent and thus not a police matter, it's nothing? That I shouldn't object to it or document a small fraction of it or talk about it?

3) Part of the issue is that Twitter and Facebook refuse to do anything about it. That's quite separate from whether or not the police do anything about it.

4) Have you not noticed that the Priado-Perez abuse got a lot of media attention? That the fashion for verbally abusing women has been a growing issue for the last year or two, in large part because journalists like Helen Lewis and columnist/academics like Mary Beard have been drawing attention to it? That that could have a lot to do with why the police reacted so quickly in the Priado-Perez case?

5) It's the UK police who made an arrest in the Priado-Perez case. Rebecca is in the US. The laws are different in the two countries.

---

Maybe I misunderstood the question. Maybe it was just wondering about reasons. But I'm drawing on the previous samples of this thread that I've seen, which are all devoted to sneering at Rebecca and other women for objecting to harassment and abuse, so...I'm not able to be confident that that was the meaning.

kiffer

Is sub-violent the same thing as non-violent?
I tried google but the two pages of results weren't helpful, many were about a song and one or yeo results mentioned it in the context of conflicts being near-violent or sub-violent...
It's not a term I am familiar with... I'm guessing that it refers to situations that are non violent but people feel could turn violent? ... because otherwise you'd just use nonviolen?

OpheliaBenson

No, I just meant "doesn't rise to the level of violence." I put it that way, I suppose, because "non-violent" can imply principled non-violence, as in Gandhi and similar.

Maybe also because I don't consider really extreme verbal abuse entirely "non-violent". It's intended to be psychologically violent, and it can have that effect. Like what some young guy tweeted at Mary Beard today - "retweet this you filthy old slut. I bet your vagina is disgusting."

That's sub-violent. But non-violent? Like Martin Luther King? Doesn't really fit.

Doctor DooM

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

What? Seriously?

1) Rebecca has reported the more violent threats to the police. So has Jen McCreight, for one. (Those are the two that I know have.)

2) The harassment I (for example) get is mostly sub-violent and not a police matter. Is the implication that if it's not violent and thus not a police matter, it's nothing? That I shouldn't object to it or document a small fraction of it or talk about it?

3) Part of the issue is that Twitter and Facebook refuse to do anything about it. That's quite separate from whether or not the police do anything about it.

4) Have you not noticed that the Priado-Perez abuse got a lot of media attention? That the fashion for verbally abusing women has been a growing issue for the last year or two, in large part because journalists like Helen Lewis and columnist/academics like Mary Beard have been drawing attention to it? That that could have a lot to do with why the police reacted so quickly in the Priado-Perez case?

5) It's the UK police who made an arrest in the Priado-Perez case. Rebecca is in the US. The laws are different in the two countries.

---

Maybe I misunderstood the question. Maybe it was just wondering about reasons. But I'm drawing on the previous samples of this thread that I've seen, which are all devoted to sneering at Rebecca and other women for objecting to harassment and abuse, so...I'm not able to be confident that that was the meaning.

Well, in my last post I clearly state that I feel all online abuse is wrong and I feel it's time for us to try and end the culture of it.

However, as a moderator and as a small youtuber, I have over the years faced online harrassment too. I have seen some of the examples Rebecca Watson has given, and to be honest they have paled in comparison to what I have faced (including people ringing up family members and threatening me to them). I do not feel the ultimate cause of this abuse has anything to do with my sexuality, or the fact I have a penis: I think it because we are on the internet, and unthinking, nasty people are too.

I don't feel, in that case, that I really need to justify myself, or my position: All online nastiness is wrong, and yes we should work it out. I do feel turning it into a sex based thing is dealing with the symptom, not the cause. If I am frustrated with Rebecca, it is for that reason.

pH

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100228442/if-were-cracking-down-on-twitter-abuse-can-we-include-richard-dawkins-and-the-atheist-trolls/

At first I was ... not sure if serious ... but turns out he is.

tl;dr

Dawkins and anyone who undermines my faith should be banned from twitter ... well not really (unless they don't voluntary stfu ... then really)

Turtwig

The sad thing is an article like that will just attract even more attention and unsavoury remarks. Creating a negative feedback loop where the author's opinion will appear to become increasingly validated to himself.

Obliq

pH wrote: »

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100228442/if-were-cracking-down-on-twitter-abuse-can-we-include-richard-dawkins-and-the-atheist-trolls/

At first I was ... not sure if serious ... but turns out he is.

tl;dr

Dawkins and anyone who undermines my faith should be banned from twitter ... well not really (unless they don't voluntary stfu ... then really)

I thought tl;dr as well, but this bit jumped out at me......."you're trying to convince me in 140 characters of sub-GCSE philosophical abuse that God doesn't exist".

It would have been easier just to abandon twitter than write this article on why twitter doesn't please you as a debating forum (ie.if you don't like your 140 character missives to be replied to in 140 characters).

UDP

pH wrote: »

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100228442/if-were-cracking-down-on-twitter-abuse-can-we-include-richard-dawkins-and-the-atheist-trolls/

At first I was ... not sure if serious ... but turns out he is.

tl;dr

Dawkins and anyone who undermines my faith should be banned from twitter ... well not really (unless they don't voluntary stfu ... then really)

Tim Stanley wrote:

you're trying to take away the faith that gets me up in the morning

What a horrible existence - needing faith just to get up in the morning. I hope Zeus is always there for him.

Hotblack Desiato

Jernal wrote: »

The sad thing is an article like that will just attract even more attention and unsavoury remarks. Creating a negative feedback loop where the author's opinion will appear to become increasingly validated to himself.

It works for John Waters...

Hotblack Desiato

pH wrote: »

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100228442/if-were-cracking-down-on-twitter-abuse-can-we-include-richard-dawkins-and-the-atheist-trolls/

At first I was ... not sure if serious ... but turns out he is.

Sigh...

The invention of social media – an unregulated, semi-anonymous public space – has handed us a chance to explore what is and isn't acceptable discourse in the Internet age. We're in the process of building a new online etiquette, and it could teach us some self-discipline.

There is NOTHING that happens on Twitter that wasn't happening 25 or 30 years ago on BBS and Usenet. Usenet was probably worse if anything, it is completely decentralised and unregulated after all. Yet many very strong and worthwhile communities grew in it. There was a lot of hateful dross too of course.

I thought he might at least try to present some sort of argument in his article, but it really was nothing more than a whinge. Waste of 5 mins I'm not going to get back

robindch

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

Maybe I misunderstood the question. Maybe it was just wondering about reasons. But I'm drawing on the previous samples of this thread that I've seen, which are all devoted to sneering at Rebecca and other women for objecting to harassment and abuse, so...I'm not able to be confident that that was the meaning.

I think the accusation of "sneering" is slightly unfair, since many posters here view Rebecca as exacerbating the problem of online abuse, rather than adopting a policy likely to reduce it. And neither do I think any significant number of posters here, if any, approve of harassment or abuse. As before, I think it's the response to it that many posters find unhelpful.

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

1) Rebecca has reported the more violent threats to the police. So has Jen McCreight, for one. (Those are the two that I know have.)

Genuine questions - have the police done anything? Have the people who made the threats known or positively identified? If not, have the recipients appealed to the community from which the offenders are allegedly drawn to help identify them? What software measures have been put in place to cut down on the threats? And what other non-software-related measures have been adopted to cut down on what's going on?

I can't obviously speak for anywhere else, but here on boards, online threats are taken seriously and policies are built up which work, over the long term, to minimize their harmful effects - effective moderation including carding users, temporary and permanent login bans, and I believe IP address bans are a few of them. And if a policy is found to be ineffective or counter-productive, it's likely to be discarded and a replacement policy debated and put in place. And the entire community here on boards co-operates to enforce this -- it's something that boards.ie generally does rather well. One can't obviously control what happens on other sites, so is the best thing just to accept that, unpleasant and all as they are, and simply deny them the publicity they demand? And one can't obviously control what appears in one's inbox either, but perhaps setting up some "junk delivery" rules might cut down on it?

Like spam, idiots and abusive individuals are going to be around for the foreseeable future, so it seems to me that the best policy response is one that accepts that it's going to take place, and put in place whatever social and technical measures are likely to minimize it in the long term.

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

2) The harassment I (for example) get is mostly sub-violent and not a police matter. Is the implication that if it's not violent and thus not a police matter, it's nothing? That I shouldn't object to it or document a small fraction of it or talk about it?

No - recipients are obviously free do as they wish with the online threats they receive. But as above, I would work to develop policies that are likely to cut down on the unpleasantness in the long term. And if that included something like not publicizing received threats (accepting that some sad, nasty individuals do get a kick out of seeing other people being privately or publicly upset), then I'd certainly be prepared to consider doing that too.

That video of Richard Dawkins reading out of some of the hate mail he received was quite funny and may well have embarrassed the idiots who sent them. Perhaps it would be worth finding out if it also cut down on the amount of abuse he receives? I would imagine it's far greater than what most people would receive, but he talks about it very little, no doubt realizing that giving them the "oxygen of publicity" is likely to increase the bile, not reduce it.

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

3) Part of the issue is that Twitter and Facebook refuse to do anything about it. That's quite separate from whether or not the police do anything about it.

In the space of a week or so, Priado-Perez has created an effective online campaign demanding that twitter do something about online threats. Perhaps twitter might look at other online communities that have been able to deal with this kind of stuff and perhaps they might learn from them? In any case, I hope the campaign succeeds and that the right kind of software tools are put in place to help cut it down or out.

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

4) Have you not noticed that the Priado-Perez abuse got a lot of media attention? That the fashion for verbally abusing women has been a growing issue for the last year or two, in large part because journalists like Helen Lewis and columnist/academics like Mary Beard have been drawing attention to it? That that could have a lot to do with why the police reacted so quickly in the Priado-Perez case?

Perhaps it did and perhaps it didn't. In either case, I think it's great that the police reacted as quickly as they did, I hope they've found the people who did it, and I hope they'll be prosecuted successfully.

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

5) It's the UK police who made an arrest in the Priado-Perez case. Rebecca is in the US. The laws are different in the two countries.

Yes, of course. But still, I'd have thought that after two and something years of harassment, that enough solid evidence could have been gathered by enough people to identify the perps, and hopefully, put them away. So I can't understand why this isn't, so far as I'm aware, something that the recipients have dedicated a lot of time to doing. Perhaps it's some kind of cultural thing? Or are there other reasons? I really don't know.

OpheliaBenson

I'd have thought that after two and something years of harassment, that enough solid evidence could have been gathered by enough people to identify the perps, and hopefully, put them away. So I can't understand why this isn't, so far as I'm aware, something that the recipients have dedicated a lot of time to doing. Perhaps it's some kind of cultural thing? Or are there other reasons? I really don't know.

Putting them away really isn't an option in the US for harassment. Recipients have dedicated a lot of time to trying things other than putting away.

One of the things we try is persuasion in various forms. I take it that's what you mean by "many posters here view Rebecca as exacerbating the problem of online abuse, rather than adopting a policy likely to reduce it"? Or do you mean something else?

I've seen a good many comments here that I consider much more likely to exacerbate online abuse than to mollify or reduce it.

Doctor DooM

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

I've seen a good many comments here that I consider much more likely to exacerbate online abuse than to mollify or reduce it.

Ophelia I understand you're a visitor here and have been in many corners of the internet, but believe me boards.ie is not a place that tolerates abuse.

I would bet if I messaged one of the admins about that statement right now they'd be demanding examples of it to look at.

I can honestly say I have never been on another site on the internet that does as good a job as here.

It's not my job on this forum to tell you to use the report post functionality but believe me when something genuinely abusive is said you won't have to because others will.

That said- is it so hard to believe we just don't agree with Rebecca for our own reasons? Like the one I gave above (I too reported it to our police btw, and although we never caught the culprit, I believe their assistance lead to the abuses halt).

OpheliaBenson

Doctor, I didn't say abuse, I said likely to exacerbate online abuse, echoing Robin's "many posters here view Rebecca as exacerbating the problem of online abuse." I've seen a lot of comments that I think (disagreeing with Robin here) amount to sneering at Rebecca, and given the amount and quality of sneering (and worse) she already gets, I think that kind of thing encourages even more of the same. But no, that itself is not necessarily abuse.

Mark Hamill

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

Doctor, I didn't say abuse, I said likely to exacerbate online abuse, echoing Robin's "many posters here view Rebecca as exacerbating the problem of online abuse." I've seen a lot of comments that I think (disagreeing with Robin here) amount to sneering at Rebecca, and given the amount and quality of sneering (and worse) she already gets, I think that kind of thing encourages even more of the same. But no, that itself is not necessarily abuse.

Sneering constitutes abuse now?

Nodin

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Sneering constitutes abuse now?

...indeed. And its not "abuse" of the internet variety that was and is the sticking point, as I recall, but the existence of long running sexual harassment etc at conferences and so on.

UDP

My problem with Ms Watson is not just that she is going about tackling online abuse the wrong way but she is also a hypocrite/attention seeker from what I can see causing more damage than help.

She is going about tackling online abuse the wrong way by mangling up the whole online abuse, sexual harassment, sexual objectism and feminism into one big issue when I don't think they are just one issue. Online abuse has always been there and online abusers will use whatever they perceive will work to get at someone. In the case of getting at a feminist abuse relating to them being a woman would be the best approach to take. For a priest calling them a pedophile could work. For a German calling them a Nazi could work.

Then the hypocrite/attention seeking side of her releases a nude calendar, gives out signed skepchick branded thongs and calls herself skepchick then slams people for what she sees as sexual objectism. She posts that she likes the occasional random advance from guys then slams a guy for asking her if she wants to have a coffee in her room - in a completely polite and accepting of her answer way (if any of this even happened).

The proof overall that she is a attention seeker is this:


She is doing a lot to cause damage to:

• feminism by coming off as a hypocrite/attention seeker/exaggerator when there are real issues to be tackled
• the issue of tackling sexual harassment and equality at events by exaggerating events to gain attention rather than dealing with real issues
• the atheist movement (if there is such a thing) by causing a fake issue to try and get a response from one of the bigger figures in atheism that she successfully achieved creating a weird split and pitting people against each other.
• the issue of tackling online abuse/trolls by mangling all these issues together is a bs way that distracts from the real issues and by bring a troll herself.

She appears to want attention rather than solve issues. This is really annoying for people that actually want to solve issues.

OpheliaBenson

Sneering constitutes abuse now?

Seriously? I said

I didn't say abuse, I said likely to exacerbate online abuse, echoing Robin's "many posters here view Rebecca as exacerbating the problem of online abuse."

I don't know how I can make it clearer. I'm not saying "abuse," I'm saying "likely to exacerbate abuse." There's a difference. Surely you can see the difference? And if you can't, why aren't you shouting at Robin for talking about abuse when he was actually talking about the likely exacerbation of abuse?

Mark Hamill

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

Seriously? I said

I didn't say abuse, I said likely to exacerbate online abuse, echoing Robin's "many posters here view Rebecca as exacerbating the problem of online abuse."

You said that, but then you said:

I've seen a lot of comments that I think [snip] amount to sneering at Rebecca, [snip], I think that kind of thing encourages even more of the same

So sneering comments encourage more sneering comments. If sneering isn't abuse, then your claim that sneering comments exacerbate online abuse is unsupported. If sneering is abuse then why haven't you reported the posts you consider to be abusive?
What makes a sneering post exacerbate online abuse in such a way that the initial post cannot be acted against? Would Watsons tweet, quoted by UDP, not count as sneering against Dawkins? Does that mean that Watson is therefore exacerbating online abuse against him and anyone else she sneers at?

OpheliaBenson

Sigh. The second "snip" removes part of my argument. That's not playing fair.

pH

So the twitter abuse things takes another turn.

For a long time the A+ crowd have had a thing called a "block bot" which does the usual thing of mixing genuine nasty trolls and those who have had the temerity to disagree with them and label them all "abusers"

So BBC Newsnight takes all this at face value and broadcasts it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0UqtZMqxT8

(Trigger warning: Contains Rebecca Watson)

I mean it's hard to take seriously when a man and a woman compare a list of twitter abusers and finding some in common the woman concludes "the social problem is that men are raised to hate women" but I guess this is what passes for journalism and reporting at the beeb these days.

The interesting thing is the block bot's list of "abusers" contains many people who have never abused anyone on twitter - such as TV's Dr Christian Jessen who once tweeted something about the problem of false rape claims, ended up with much abuse himself, but as from the A+ perspective that false rape claims don't exist - he's a level 3 twitter abuser.

Given the UKs notorious libel laws, it seems many people now labeled by the BBC as abusers, who are merely those who have disagreed with rad feminists online may be considering legal action on the basis of the report.

Mark Hamill

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

Sigh. The second "snip" removes part of my argument. That's not playing fair.

The second snip is just "and given the amount and quality of sneering (and worse) she already gets". You didn't explained how sneering exacerbates abuse, so my questions still stand.

If sneering isn't abuse, how do they exacerbate abuse?
Would Watsons tweet, quoted by UDP, not count as sneering against Dawkins?
And given the amount of sneering (and worse) that Dawkins gets, does that mean that Watson is exacerbating online abuse against him and anyone else she sneers at?

And to return to something I missed in your previous post:

And if you can't, why aren't you shouting at Robin for talking about abuse when he was actually talking about the likely exacerbation of abuse?

Who is shouting?

Sarky

pH wrote: »

So the twitter abuse things takes another turn.

For a long time the A+ crowd have had a thing called a "block bot" which does the usual thing of mixing genuine nasty trolls and those who have had the temerity to disagree with them and label them all "abusers"

So BBC Newsnight takes all this at face value and broadcasts it.

Oh dear. If I weren't such a cynical and shoddy excuse for a human being I'd be really depressed by all this. As it is though, I'm making sure my popcorn is close at hand. It just keeps getting more and more... whatever the f*ck this whole sorry mess is.

Rev Hellfire

pH wrote: »

(Trigger warning: Contains Rebecca Watson)

That's become shorthand for stop reading to me at this stage.

OpheliaBenson

For a long time the A+ crowd have had a thing called a "block bot" which does the usual thing of mixing genuine nasty trolls and those who have had the temerity to disagree with them and label them all "abusers"

No.

You guys have a huge head of hatred-steam built up here, but a lot of that is based on getting the facts wrong.

The "A+ crowd" (whatever that's supposed to be) does not have the block bot. Two specific people do (and they have nothing at all to do with A+).

It's possible that if you stopped making and believing a lot of wild inaccurate accusations, you wouldn't be quite so enraged at either Rebecca or "the A+ crowd".

Rev Hellfire

OpheliaBenson wrote: »

No.
The "A+ crowd" (whatever that's supposed to be) does not have the block bot. Two specific people do (and they have nothing at all to do with A+).

It's possible that if you stopped making and believing a lot of wild inaccurate accusations, you wouldn't be quite so enraged at either Rebecca or "the A+ crowd".

Then the Block bot people seem a bit confused since their site is titled "The Atheism+ Block Bot".

While reading from the FAQ I uncovered the following clue...

Who will be added to the block list?
The short answer is anyone that a blocker defines as block list worthy. The general rule is if you are the type that would find yourself banned on a blog on Freethoughtblogs.com, Skepchick.org or from the A+ forum then you will likely end up in the list…

Linky: http://www.theblockbot.com/?page_id=2#3

Colour me confused.

edit: Actually reading it it doesn't say get banned from those forums smacks you onto the list, but hey there's still a circumstantial evidence.