I titled my last post Shermertron the Bigot: Polyamory as the New Reefer Madness because of how this story ends. And here is how it ends…
Being Dicks to Women
Remember delusion number three? After the Yeti’s Roar post was getting bandied about I went over there and I exposed their lies and bullshit (as you’ll see shortly). After which one of my girlfriends, unknown to me, stumbled across the thread. She had been googling the issue on her own to see how the reaction was going to my coming out, since she is contemplating coming out as poly as well, and wanted something to judge by. She discovered the Yeti post and the comments thread. I had by then left and declared that a waste of time. Because they just kept lying and ignoring everything I said. Standard troll behavior. So I didn’t even know she had weighed in there after the fact. She told me about it later.
Of course they were total dicks to her. They ignored half of what she said, lied about what she said, and then tried to convince her I raped her because we were drinking when we flirted and got to know each other and eventually fell into bed together. Because that’s exactly the same thing Shermer did. Again, of course, they are literally lying, in that they don’t really think a woman can be raped on account of inebriation, and are only pretending to believe that, in order to attack people who believe that, although in reality they are the ones promoting the very view they are attacking, by pretending to hold it and actually trollistically defending it. Bizarre.
Which is delusion number three: they can’t tell the difference between being pleasantly drunk but still in possession of your faculties (and thus fully able to consent when asked) and being so drunk as to not even comprehend what is happening or where exactly you are. No one at FtB has ever conflated those two facts. We have always, consistently, maintained that alcohol only equates to rape in the latter condition, not the former. And the law agrees–and years ago, in a post they claim to have read (because it criticizes their god, Michael Shermer), I discussed and cited this fact in detail to make the distinction absolutely clear. And yet still they can’t tell the difference. This means they think it’s okay to have sex with a woman who is so drunk she is incoherent and can barely walk and isn’t even sure where she is. That’s scary.
But they also were belittling of women generally. They dehumanized my girlfriends repeatedly, calling them “pussy” and “fuckbuddies” and assuming the only thing my girlfriends thought about or could talk about was sex, and that they all had STDs. Indeed they maintained the Christianized moralizing prudish position that having an STD is morally shameful. Even someone in the Slymepit had to admit, “one point that [Carrier] sort of made (but not very well), is that Christians (like Ray ‘banana man’ Comfort) add a moral layer to STDs that they don’t apply to diseases transmitted by food, mosquitoes, or aerosols.” Yeah. Funny that. Anti-feminist atheists have the same backwards values as Christians. As Ray Comfort even! Their morality is still the antiquated, 19th century flesh-taboo nonsense you would expect atheists to have shed by now, instead of trying to keep that Christian anti-sex morality alive.
Obsessed with Protecting Their Wives
One thing that kept coming up, in fact, was their sexist obsession with their wives’ moral virtue and a pearl-clutching Christianized fear of polyamory leading to broken families and abandoned children. They even assumed that the fact that some of my girlfriends are married meant those women were cheating and I was going to destroy their families. It apparently didn’t occur to them that married women can be poly, too, and have full permission from their husbands to do things like this. And their kids are just fine. My girlfriend who came into the conversation after I left was an example, and tried explaining this to them at length, but they all essentially ignored her and kept trying to insist I was breaking up families (even though, of course, they can cite not a single example of this ever happening or even being in danger of happening).
Their moral panic appears to be quite generalized: they are terrified that polyamorous men will fuck their wives without their knowing it. Which means they are wracked with a moral fear of polyamorous men. Shermertron in particular exhibited this obsession, by repeating this fear over and over again, laced with related sexist and anti-sex sentiments (these lines are collected from numerous comments in the Yeti thread):
You may also want to consider calling the cuckolds you created so those men will know to get tested and so they will have an accurate understanding of the relationship they have with their wives.
[So: Assumes my married girlfriends are cheating on their husbands and that having sex with someone not your husband gives you STDs. And that I’m not already tested and know I’m clean.]
YOUR sexual escapades led you on a beautiful journey of self-discovery in which you found a true image of yourself. Not in a mirror, but reflected in the vagina of other mens’ wives. You are not good or safe company and men shouldn’t leave their wives in a room alone with you.
[So: Terrified that I will seduce men’s wives, which incidentally denies those women have any agency or ability to make their own decisions. Assumes all my girlfriends are married. Assumes consensual sex between two people is not good or safe.]
Oh, and don’t forget that while you wrote this, you may have had stank on your fingers from a woman who wasn’t YOUR wife, but WAS someone else’s.
[So: Obsessed with the fact that some of my girlfriends are married. Assumes I don’t bathe. Assumes having the smell of a woman on you is bad.]
I’m obsessed with the possibility that your sexual needs are the reason that a child or children may be suffering from the effects of being in a broken home.
[So: Admits to being obsessed with the fact that some of my girlfriends are married. Assumes polyamory breaks up families. Pearl-clutching “won’t someone think of the children!” moral-panic reasoning.]
I’m obsessed with the idea that some chump husbands out there were sitting on their marital beds, weeping their eyes out as they wondered what they did wrong. What they did to push their wives into the arms of another Carrier?
[So: Assumes that a poly woman makes her husband a chump, which presumes women are property and it is unmanly to allow her sexual freedom. Assumes I made husbands cry. Assumes a woman enjoying multiple men is a tear-inducing assault on your manhood. Assumes women are so chaste they have no sexual desires but only fuck other men to avenge not being treated right.]
You admit to fucking married women. The majority of women in your age range have children. It’s a reasonable conjecture that fucking their mother may have caused some problems in the family.
[So: Assumes polyamory destroys families. Disregards the prospect that mothers have sexual desires. More pearl-clutching concern for hypothetical children.]
Shermer’s alleged cheating means he’s probably an alleged rapist. YOUR cheating means that you are a brave polyamorous man who is brave enough to fuck women to whom you are not married and whose hypothetical children may have been wondering where Mommy is.
[So: Can’t tell the difference between cheating and rape. Disgust at the very idea of anyone being polyamorous, and thus having sex with people “to whom you are not married.” Denigrates polyamorous mothers as hurting their childrens’ feelings, or indeed for even not being home all the time, perhaps one of the most sexist assumptions veiled in this discourse yet.]
I feel that the suggestion that some of Carrier’s women may have been “abandoning their families to his wiles” is a necessary one.
[So: Assumes married women can’t have permission to fool around, and that having an open sex-life entails abandoning your family.]
The repeated obsession with “fucking other men’s wives” suggests the real fear here is that his wife might abandon him and his children to cheat with me. And this terrifies and thus angers him. And in sexist fashion, if that happens, it is somehow entirely my fault, even though it would require a willing decision on his wife’s part. And this is so terrifying to him that he insists it is “necessarily” true that this has happened, with at least someone’s wife. Even though he has no evidence it ever has or is even in danger of happening. Polyamory makes the world unsafe for women. It spreads diseases and breaks up homes and ruins the lives of children. It causes rape. It’s Reefer Madness all over again.
Of course, Shermertron doesn’t even consider the possibility that sometimes maybe this feared breaking up of families should happen. If his wife wants to have sex with other men so much that she would actually cheat on him with me, and he doesn’t like that, then maybe they shouldn’t be married. And maybe trying to manipulate her environment (by keeping us from ever meeting or being away from his monitoring eye) in order to keep her chaste, is sexist and controlling. But thinking that would just get you to the even scarier prospect of realizing that maybe our current model of monogamy is a Christian, fear-based, moralistic invention that reduces women to sexual and reproductive property and denies they even have desires much less the capacity to make decisions for themselves.
This Christianized, sexist attitude toward women is reflected again in their repeated demeaning and devaluing of housework, traditionally “women’s work.” They desperately need me to have screwed over my wife somehow (even though there is no evidence of our separation being anything other than entirely, financially equitable), because they can’t abide the thought that I carried through with a divorce ethically and with concern for my partner’s rights and welfare and earnings. That bursts the bubble of their mythical universe. Polyamory can only destroy families. It can’t be a good thing.
When my wife and I divided assets and took into account all I had relied on from her, and all she had relied on from me, over our twenty years of marriage, she got the bulk of assets (including a house and the car), and reckoned into the math was the fact that she had relied entirely on me for all housework and domestic duties for nearly all of that time. Not being a sexist pig, she did not devalue the work of a homemaker. Shermertron and gang made fun of this, belittling the job of a homemaker repeatedly, and arguing it had no financial value, even with such absurd arguments like how hard can it be to refill the soap dispenser once a week, or occasionally boil an egg.
This idea that that’s all that women do when they stay at home to manage a house is a common manifestation of sexism. That I was taking the role of the woman thus allowed them to extend that sexism as a tool to belittle me. Much the same way calling a man a pussy is demeaning toward women, and reflects a sexist attitude, because it assumes the worst thing a man can be is a woman. Evidently, here, the worst thing a man can be is a full-time live-in maid, pet sitter, personal chef, personal shopper, and driver, as well as amateur carpenter, landscaper, plumber, and electrician. All of which, being women’s work, has no financial value.
These are the sexist fools we are dealing with here.
The Lie
But as disgusting and backwards as all this is, the thing that most damns them as morally bankrupt, is their use of deliberate lies as a foundation for their mythology. The Yeti post declares and waxes at length on the claim that:
Given these statements by Carrier [in his coming out post], one would assume that Carrier would have no problem with a speaker who went to conferences and picked up women, even if that speaker was married. However, that is not the case at all.
That is a lie.
That I “have [and have had] no problem” with that not only is the case. It is explicitly the case, and consistently has been. On the public record even. How do they create an entire rambling article about how I said exactly the opposite of what I actually said? By using the standard tactic of Young Earth Creationists: the deliberate quote mine. Yeti quotes a paragraph by me (from my post analyzing the Shermer rape claim) and then omits the very next paragraph which refutes everything he then says and speculates about what I meant by the first paragraph. Which means Yeti knew I said exactly the opposite of what he then at length claims and speculates on. And he deliberately concealed it from his readers, in order to maintain the illusion that I said the reverse of what I actually said.
This is despicable. It is one of the most despicable things anyone can do in public discourse. Because it betrays a complete and utter contempt for the truth when disseminating information to and attempting to persuade the people. Indeed it demonstrates a readiness to deceive and manipulate the public. Just like Creationists. This is what atheists have reduced themselves to. Lying, sexist, and sex-phobic quasi-Creationists.
This is what Yeti quotes me saying about Shermer:
[Given things others have said online (revisit the timeline), it’s possible] Shermer has a habit of getting women drunk and having sex with them (or trying to). Several people online claim to have witnessed his skirt-chasing in general (even propositioning a married woman while her husband was elsewhere in the same room) and evidence of his propensity to have multiple simultaneous ongoing affairs (some of which one source claims his wife eventually became aware and was looking online for others…I don’t know if Shermer and his wife are still married). I’ve been hearing other rumors like this for years, so this isn’t a suddenly new thing. It’s just spilling out into public now.
You can review all there is and draw your own conclusion. This is only my own judgment. But the preponderance of evidence (a civil court burden, whereby a claim need only have a better than 50% chance of being true, so even just a 50.1% chance of being true would win a case) is enough for me to conclude that the general picture is probably true: Shermer pursues sex with women a lot, both one-night stands and ongoing affairs, and he has often enough done so without telling his wife or his various girlfriends. His recent attempt to compel PZ Myers to retract his report of what a witness told him appeared to deny even this (that Shermer has lots of consensual trysts and affairs), which I think is disingenuous at this point.
Note that the bracketed material in bold, Yeti omitted. That’s already deceitful (because it erases my epistemic caution, and my evidence). But it’s not the lie.
Yeti claims this was my calculation and thus my argument for Shermer being a rapist. It is not. It was my calculation and thus my argument for the conclusion that Shermer pursues women a lot, and has cheated (thus challenging Shermer’s implied claim that he did not). I never used this as a premise anywhere in the case for his possibly having raped someone. How can one be sure? Because this is what I said in the very next paragraphs (emphasis now added):
If that were all there were to this story, I would not be troubled by it. Consensual sex, even cheating, is not anyone’s doom. What one does sexually does not (contrary to pop politico psychology) indicate a general dishonesty or unreliability in other matters, or entail you’re a bad person, or make you unlikable or untrustworthy. Or dangerous. Or disgusting. Or any negative stereotype attached to expressions of human sexuality, even the sneaky kind. (This has nothing to do with opposing sex.)
What troubles me (and ought to trouble you) are the elements of victimization, exploitation, and insensitivity that are bubbling to the surface in some of the accounts of Shermer’s behavior.
Because I also believe the preponderance of evidence is sufficient to conclude Shermer probably has crossed moral lines. I have seen enough evidence to establish, in my own mind, at least a 50.1% chance that Shermer has not just cheated or fooled around, but has left a wake of victimized women in his path, that he has not conducted himself morally, and that he is probably not good or safe company (especially for women).
Notice how this, even though it immediately follows the paragraph Yeti quoted, completely refutes everything Yeti claims I argued in this article about Shermer. He dishonestly uses the preceding paragraph as evidence I concluded Shermer was a rapist merely because he fooled around, and that fooling around was bad and makes someone “probably not good or safe company.” When in fact I explicitly denied his fooling around weighed at all in favor of his being a rapist, and explicitly agreed that fooling around was good, and not a danger to anyone.
And now, remember Shermertron’s use of the same phrase “not good or safe company” against me? Because these guys can’t tell the difference between ethical and unethical fooling around? This proves he actually read that part of my article, the part he and his colleagues are otherwise ignoring, so they can continue to maintain I said exactly the opposite of what it said. That makes them liars. End of story.
The bizarre thing is that I have always argued in detail and clearly for the position that they actually hold: that fooling around is perfectly okay and does not make anyone unsafe and does not make anyone a rapist. Yet they hate and attack me for saying the exact opposite of that, even though they know I said exactly the reverse. This is so illogical it simply cannot be fathomed. This is delusion number four. They can’t tell the difference between advocating for ethical sexuality and being against all sex. They can’t tell the difference between fooling around and rape.
And that’s scary.
Hypocrisy and Moral Failure Are Not the Same Thing
Remember the myth repeated by JohnGreg? The one that I asked him to adduce evidence of, and he couldn’t, but had to cite this Creationist-style lie by Yeti instead?
Non-FTB/SJW person says: I can’t do monogamy and be happy, so I am going to have multiple girlfriends.
FTB/SJW people response: Boo! Not the way-to-go cowardly serial womanizer! CHUD and killer of social justice; muli-oppressor freedom killer! Patriarchy oppresses us all yet again!
Notice how my actual statements in the Shermer article directly refute this alleged sequence of events. Not only could JohnGreg not find evidence of our saying such a silly thing, the evidence shows we have said exactly the opposite of it.
Yeti’s article claims to adduce evidence of my hypocrisy. Of the sort JohnGreg took away. But they couldn’t find any evidence of that. So Yeti fabricated it. He invented the myth that I said what JohnGreg claims. When the fact is, I said exactly the opposite of what JohnGreg claims. Like I said from the start, these guys have very little contact with reality. They live in a bubble of self-fabricated mythology.
Caught in a lie, they continued to try and reassert the lie (just ignoring that they were caught, by ignoring everything I said and documented), but they also tried laying the groundwork for weaseling out of the lie by trying to somehow find some other way to get me to be a hypocrite in their system of mythology, like a Christian trying to explain away a difficult passage of the Bible by spinning yarns about it. Their new tack was to say that I’m a hypocrite because I advocate for ethical behavior, but failed at a common ethical problem (years ago I cheated on my wife, then confessed and apologized to her).
But moral failure is not hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is when you judge someone else by a different standard than you live by. And in this case, I have consistently judged kindly and sympathetically anyone who has fallen into infidelity (as has Dawkins, even more ardently than I have, as I noted in my prequel post). I did so even in the paragraph in the Shermer article that Yeti deceitfully omitted and failed to tell his readers about. I did so even in several other places Yeti actually did quote! (So, he destroyed their new tack before they even resorted to it…so short is their memory, evidently, that they didn’t even notice Yeti had already refuted the argument they were now trying to make.)
They are the ones acting like Christian moralists and obsessing over the evils of infidelity. While ignoring evidence of the infidelities of Shermer and Dawkins. They then attack me for moralizing and obsessing over the evils of infidelity and the threats to women’s comfort and safety caused by any sexual freedom whatever, when in fact I never have done that, but have always denounced such reasoning. Which means they hate me for being not who I am but for being who they are. In other words, they despise themselves. And don’t even realize it. They denigrate and moralize about adultery and liberal sexuality, while attacking me for denigrating and moralizing about adultery and liberal sexuality. Which I have never done. Head spinning. Big time.
Oh, wait. Remember that definition of hypocrisy? Who is the hypocrite in this scenario?
Right.
Sex Phobia
There is something odd about people like these, who get blindingly emotionally outraged that someone would demonize sex (never mind getting blindingly emotionally outraged that someone would demonize sex who never in fact demonized sex), while expressing some of the most derogatory and phobic remarks about sex. Yeti and Shermertron both expressed very sex negative attitudes, talking about stank fingers and diseases and fuckbudies and pussy and “playa’s,” all in the exact same tone and context as a Baptist minister’s Young Republican wigga son. Yeti in particular rants in a prudish way, revealing weird hang ups about sex. He bristles at any healthy talk about sex, sex work, gangbangs, swinging, the phenomena of porn. He regards all such discussion of sex to be creepy and bizarre. Which makes one wonder why he is so concerned that I am anti-sex (even though I’m not). He is more anti-sex than he imagines me to be.
In an article awhile ago I clearly explained the fact that women who get awful harassment for appearing in erotic art while I (a man) do not is evidence of a disturbing sexism in our culture that must be fought against, a sex-negativity and slut-shaming that is particularly anti-woman and thus also sexist (and which incidentally decreases the rate of open sexuality among women by scaring them into not being open, thus having exactly the opposite effect these creeps actually want). Yet they didn’t get that at all. They somehow read it as me “lamenting” not getting harassed for appearing in erotic art. WTF? The disturbing way they read an article, miss entirely the point that was clearly and explicitly articulated in it, and somehow come away with thinking I wanted to be harassed for appearing in erotic art and was complaining about that, is evidence again of a disturbing and twiseted sex-phobia. They can only see sex. And they don’t like it. How people are treated? They couldn’t give a shit.
They also showed a repeated concern with how many girlfriends I have, and how honestly and openly I speak about my sex and romantic life. They are evidently bothered by all that. They showed a further disturbing prudery in the way they talked about and imagined my lovers. When I said in my coming out post that I give permission to my lovers to talk about our relationship freely if they wished, these fools assumed (because no other possibility crossed their mind–take note) that I was asking my lovers to boast about my sexual prowess. This expresses sex-phobia twice over: first, by showing they have a disturbing problem with even the idea of a woman wanting to talk honestly about their lover’s sexual prowess (indeed they have a weird obsession with my sexual prowess), or with women talking publicly about their lovers in any way at all, but on top of that, their sex-phobia is evident in these remarks by exposing their inability to tell the difference between talking about your relationship with someone, and talking about how you have sex with them. They weirdly (and repeatedly) just assumed those are the same thing. Which is not a little disturbing. Because it suggests they don’t know what a relationship is. Apparently it’s all just fucking to them. I worry for their mates.
Indeed, so incapable of realizing this were they, that when I pointed it out, they actually came back with “what is the point of inviting your lovers to come forward in the first place?” (other than to give reports of my sexual prowess). So they were very, very clear: they cannot even conceive of a relationship being anything other than a collection of sex positions. Consequently they can’t even imagine what else my lovers would want to talk about. Or that being open just about the fact of being in a relationship with me might be something they would want and like. Or that they might want to talk about how I treated them. Or why they like me. Or don’t like me. Or both. These things, actual human relationship things, things that require you to imagine women are people and not fucktoys, those things they can’t even imagine. All of this reveals that these guys have a hard time seeing women as people, with their own thoughts and feelings and desires and lives and relationships they’d like to talk about. I suppose I should not be surprised to discover this of anti-feminists, but to see it so blatantly revealed like this was a bit jarring.
Both these disturbing attitudes were evident in their repeated inability to tell the difference between ethical and non-ethical sexuality. They say polyamory is about fucking women without consequence (it’s not). They say they can’t understand why someone would be okay with “orgies and BDSM parties” and still be “all that concerned about women being made uncomfortable by sexual advances or behavior.” That someone doesn’t know why those two facts are compatible, tells me they don’t know what consent means. Being into BDSM or being promiscuous does not grant anyone license to harass you or make you uncomfortable or assume you are always down for sex. What is disturbing is that they don’t know that. And still don’t, no matter how many times you try to explain it to them.
They think “telling men to stop being rapey and creepy around women while cheating and banging under the false pretense of infidelity” is hypocrisy because they literally don’t know what the difference is. And it’s not that they think cheating is rapey and creepy. It’s because they think nothing is rapey and creepy. So when we call out and denounce rapey and creepy behavior, they hear us calling out and denouncing all sex whatever. Which is disturbing. Because it means they don’t know what’s rapey and creepy. They think no sexual advances or sexual activities are to be denounced at all. This is why they think what I do is “exactly the same” as what I criticized Shermer for. Because they literally can’t perceive the difference. And yes, that should scare people.
And yet, they contradict themselves in their pose. While they supposedly despise someone who would criticize Shermer’s sexual behavior, they actually reveal that they despise Shermer’s sexual behavior, precisely because they despise it when they project it onto me. As one of them cluelessly said, “You don’t think that parading around like a peacock and pointing out the notches on your bedposts contributes to the atmosphere you condemn?” No. I don’t. Because as I have consistently said for years (Yeti even quotes my sex positive article demonstrating this): abundant and healthy sex lives for everyone, even at cons (as American Atheists said, they want people to have sex at their conferences!) is not what we have ever been against or would ever be against. We have always said, in fact, that having such a community makes us more welcoming, not less, and more respecting of women’s autonomy, not less. But because they can’t tell the difference between that, and harassment and abuse and mistreatment and violating consent, they condemn all sexual behavior I engage in as bad. Which means they condemn all sexual behavior Shermer engages in as bad. And then they attack us for saying it’s bad.
Seriously.
It’s like they aren’t even listening to themselves. Because the people they are attacking, the people who actually express the sex-negative views they are attacking, are themselves.
Their sex-negativity is revealed in a hundred little sex-denigrating turns of phrase, like calling polyamory peacocking, and referring to sexual relationships as notching bedposts, and saying things to me like, “You didn’t apologize for contributing to the atmosphere that you’ve been fighting (that atheist conferences shouldn’t be perceived as misogynist fucksuckfests).” Look at their vocabulary. Consensual and positive sexuality is a “fucksuckfest.” And misogynistic. And supporting consensual and positive sexuality is something we should apologize for.
Wait. Weren’t they asking us to apologize for not supporting consensual and positive sexuality? Oh, yeah. That too. Because they don’t know how self-contradictory their rants are. Outside the myth-bubble they live in, out here in contact with actual reality, I have nothing to publicly apologize for. I’ve been entirely consistent in expressing my sexual values, and I have always endorsed the consensual and positive sexuality these weirdos claim to want so badly that they hate us for opposing it even though we didn’t.
Thus they do wholly self-contradictory things like denigrate human sexuality with expressions of disgust, complaining about my supposedly having “stank on [my] fingers” from consensual sex while typing out articles against nonconsensual sex. They offer that as an example of hypocrisy. Because, again, they actually think, literally actually think, that there is no difference between consensual sex and nonconsensual sex. Otherwise, why would they perceive any hypocrisy? How they can be simultaneously so sex-phobic and so denigrating of human sexuality, and at the same time hate people so much for being (they think) sex-phobic and denigrating of human sexuality, is mind boggling. But that they can’t even perceive a difference between consensual and nonconsensual sex, or between flirting and harassment, or between being poly and being rapey, is not just mind boggling, it’s legit scary.
Conclusion
Since Shermertron, Yeti, and their associates have demonstrated themselves to be unrepentant sexists, liars, and bigots who belittle human sexuality and were total dicks to my girlfriends, I will not be reading anything they write ever again. I consider the evidence documented in these two posts sufficient to prove you can’t trust a word they say. To anyone who encounters them attempting to talk shit in their Twitter feed, treat them as the dishonest trolls they are. Likewise the inevitable sockpuppets they will invent to try and shake the bad rep they now have as liars and bigots. Anytime you see anything like this bullshit, you know where it’s coming from. And, now, where to direct people to who want to know WTF (that link contains the shortlink to the first of these two posts, for use on twitter; and that first article links in turn to this one).
This is too bizarre. Keep your stupid sex life and problems to yourself. You waste your talents as a Mythicist. I had a monetary reason for not showing up at your San Jose appearance this month. Now I have another.
As you have proven to be someone of worrisomely unsound judgment (example and example), I’m actually relieved your bigotry will keep you away from me. That works for both of us.
I’m not a bigot. You can fuck whomever and how many you want. I just happen to appreciate good taste, and prefer not to see you spread your take on your perversions all over the Internet.
From your examples :
Sorry, that just sounds like a lot of crazy to me. I’m not going to address it. Except the one thing actually relevant to what I argue: the scripture does say that the servant’s death is the atonement sacrifice (the offering). Indeed it says this more than once. He is a substitutionary sacrifice (Is. 53:8), his “soul [i.e. life] is an offering for sin” (Is. 53:10), God is “satisfied” by this death and it is this death that “justifies” many because the killed servant “bears their sins” (Is. 53:11) even though himself innocent (Is. 53:9) and thus by his death he “made intercession for the transgressors” (Is. 53:12).
________
When I tell you that you do what Christians do and PUT things into the prophetic texts that AREN’T THERE, all you can do is say stupid things like “Crazy is as crazy does.http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/1440/comment-page-1#comment-13805
The Hebrew for the sacrifice in 53:10 is “nephesh”. It means SOUL, not his mortal life. Same in the New Testament Mark 10:45 and the Greek “psuchen”. Neither the typical Isaiah savior, nor Christ was dying to save people, he was giving HIS LIFE to them (‘Psuchen’ means breath, soul)! Isaiah 53:10 is misinterpreted and mistranslated. The YLT should always be consulted FIRST. It holds the key to this verse as it so often does in its correct, “generation which MEDITATES”, not “generation which considered that he was cut off from the land of the living” (same as for John 6:40 and its continuous present active participle, which you never recognized as meditation: “IS seeing, IS believing”, living Mastership). This is a spiritual “consideration” and “cutting off”, not a worldly one. The “land of the LIVING” is NOT OF THIS WORLD. It is the inner heavenly realm of the Father, the Gnostic Pleroma, the Home of the Master. The Master here in this world is “cut off” from living IN SPIRIT, and is subject to suffering by coming to this world to save others. He isn’t suffering IN ORDER to do that. It is just that he DOES “suffer” when he comes here. He would rather be THERE! Just because you don’t believe it doesn’t mean the Pleroma doesn’t exist. All spiritual traditions allude to it in some way or another, and THAT is how we know it is REAL. It has nothing to do with faith. When I see “Israel will come bringing Israel out from Egypt [the world]” in the Gospel of Judas, for example (page 55 fragment, newly placed), I recognize that the author is talking about a living Mastership succession, since “Israel” is Ya’acov, or Jacob (Genesis 35:10), or JAMES, in his English equivalent (not the Patriarch Jacob since the tense is FUTURE), the same person STONED BY FELLOW DISCIPLES ( Paul from Josephus, and Clement’s Recognitions, 1:70) at 44.25 in the vision ‘Judas’ sees. You don’t see these things because you have had no experience with Masters. I have.
Go ahead: “Crazy is as crazy does” or whatever it is you say when you have nothing to refute me.
“I’m not a bigot, you pervert.”
Foot, mouth.
Take your tinfoil hat elsewhere.
This statement implies that “devaluing homemaking” is sexist. But that’s only the case if you accept that homemaking is women’s work.
Yes, I know that those two trolls do think that homemaking is women’s work and were using that association to paint your household contributions as somehow shameful (because What Could Be Worse than engaging in an activity traditionally associated with women). But I guess I feel that the quoted construction cedes them a little too much ground.
I don’t mean to nitpick. I read the transcript of your recent talk on feminism and I thank you very much for speaking out.
It’s analogous to objecting to someone insulting a man with the term “pussy”. It’s objectionable on two counts: equating women with their genitalia and implying that it should be insulting to call a man a woman or “womanly”.
It is not “ceding ground” on the first consideration to object to the second. That is, one doesn’t have to have bought into the dehumanizing equation of women with a body part in order to condemn insulting men with feminizing terms.
In general:
Yeeesh. What a bunch of terrible human beings.
Well fisked Richard. They really do exhibit some bizarre and self-contradictory attitudes.
I have no opinion on any of this, other than to point out there is a meme going around about being too drunk to drive equates to too drunk to consent to sex, which really confuses two very different concepts.
Very much so. DUI is about reaction time not decision-making.
That’s why you couldn’t use “I was drunk” as a defense against a DUI charge even if it wasn’t a strict liability offense (although it usually is). Alcohol does not impair judgment to the legally required level to abrogate responsibility. Generally if you are so drunk as to reach that level, you probably wouldn’t even be able to operate a car (from what I’ve seen in the legal literature, to use intoxication as a defense against a DUI charge you have to be so drunk you can’t even have formed the intent to drive, and you’d somehow have to prove that).
Although note “someone got me drunk” is a defense against DUI, if you were forced to drink and forced to drive.
Also, diminished capacity is not the same thing as diminished responsibility. Laypeople often don’t know the law is way smarter about these things than they are. Inebriation can sometimes shorten a sentence; it rarely can negate a conviction.
I don’t think they were worth this much effort. Your interventions in their comments sections were enough to disabuse people who might be misled. Folk generally have the reading comprehension and moral moxie to see thru this shit or they don’t . The latter your not going to convince and, as we see there, further words will only be further twisted. You probably didn’t even have to drop in on them. A couple or three Christian douches duly showed up to praise them. That’s enough to blow them out of the water as having anything intelligent to say. Your friend ‘Commenter’ weighing in finished them off. Only their fanbois and people only disposed to hate you would be nodding along with them by this point. Commenter’s portrait of you sent you up in my estimation, as I am sure it did others. We got a glimpse of how people who actually knew you see you. All in all; all Shermertron and Yeti accomplished was to swallow their own feet.
CGO, I don’t think you understood what I was saying. I felt that Dr. Carrier’s statement took for granted that homemaking is women’s work. That’s the ground that I pointed out was being ceded.
To be fair, it was one small sentence out of a much larger post that was not addressing the perniciousness of old-fashioned gender-coding. I will agree that I probably should have let it slide, but sometimes one’s personal bugaboos can get the best of one.
Nowhere in Carriers 2x spewings does he acknowledge that he is aligned with the SJW canon of male original sin.
Yet it’s his actions vs this canon which make him a target and laughing stock.
So rut away big boy. Enjoy your trysts with their 1-4 hrs of relationship build up. Obviously you are happy to engage with woman as both humans and physical objects.
Just drop the sanctimonious “with us or against us” BS. Your actions place you outside the crazy fence. With the rest of us.
And next time.
Next time, tell your wife first. Bad robot.
1. There is no such thing as an “SJW canon of male original sin.” That’s just more MRA mythology.
2. Reducing relationships to rutting is just more sex-phobia. As is assuming relationships end with their first sexual encounter.
3. The whole point of my shift in relationship status is precisely so that I won’t ever be trapped in monogamy again. So any future wife I have will be poly like me. Negating any problem with telling her about my over loves.
4. Meanwhile, no one is actually laughing at any of this, other than maybe the clueless tinfoil hatters I’ve exposed as delusional, sexist, and sex-phobic liars. Who outside here in the real world, are actually the laughing stock. You seem keen to join them as yet another sex-negative sexist with delusional beliefs.
Richard:
While I’ve argued in TheYeti’s blog and in the SlymePit that, among others, Shermertron & TheYeti, are, in general, apparently trying to do a bit of a hatchet-job on you, I also think you’re contributing to the mess by some rather questionable interpretations and inferences of your own. For instance, you said:
For one thing, one might ask what specific evidence you have that “they don’t really think a woman can be raped on account of inebriation, and are only pretending to believe that”. Which looks a little vague to begin with – a woman is “fair game” if she’s drunk? But it seems to me that what they are arguing, if somewhat incoherently, is that since some in the FTB/Skepchick community – Watson (1) in particular – have argued that “if you have sex w/ someone who is drunk, they are unable to consent & that is rape” you are therefore deemed to have subscribed to that view, and are therefore guilty of hypocrisy in, apparently, having had sex with someone who was supposedly under the influence. While I recognize that Waton herself (subsequently) qualified that tweet nine ways to Sunday, and that you have explicitly repudiated that position yourself in many ways, I think you’re badly mistaken in your interpretation of their position – at least in that instance. Seems they are hardly defending the idea that it is ethical to have sex with someone who is under the influence, but are merely, if incoherently, trying to criticize you for supposedly, and hypocritically, having done so.
But, in more general terms, it seems to me that this is, in part, a case of people on two “sides” of an issue winding up at loggerheads simply because the mis-interpretations, the frames of reference, are simply inconsistent. Kind of like the spinning dance cognitive illusion (2), although that is a case where neither interpretation (clockwise or counter-clockwise rotation) is really “right”, really a reflection of “reality” as it is merely a question of different misperceptions. But that situation reminds me of a passage from Michael Shermer’s The Believing Brain (highly recommended):
Takes some effort, and intellectual honesty, to be willing to look at a situation from another’s point of view. As Pogo put it many years ago, “We have seen the enemy. And he is us.”
—–
1) “_http://skepchick.org/2012/12/twitter-users-sad-to-hear-they-may-be-rapists/”;
2) “_http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_Dancer”;
The evidence backing my inferences is all here for people to judge on their own. That’s sufficient for me. You might not like the obvious implications of what these people are saying. But that does not mean it isn’t in fact what they are saying.
That you are a bit trapped in the very delusion you ironically are trying to lay on me is shown by your weirdly counterfactual claim about Rebecca Watson. Who has never said sex while inebriated is rape. At all. She was trolling. Intentionally. You got duped by not reading the rest of the article you were citing, in which Watson concludes, “like me, many of you have had sex while drinking and/or while your partners have been drinking, and it’s not a big deal because you value communication and enthusiastic consent and participation,” and, in fact, she is very clear in saying “I’m also guessing that like me, if you meet a sexy stranger who is drunk (and I’m going by the common definition here, of someone whose faculties are impaired, e.g., slurred speech, stumbling, etc.)” is the only thing that is wrong.
What she exposed with her trolling was the fact that people jump to conclusions about the word “drunk.” In actual fact, we all agree with her…I hope, even you! That when someone is drunk in the sense she defined sex with them is rape. Indeed, it is so even as a matter of law (in many places), not just in moral reality. As incidentally Watson then demonstrates by citing legal sources and quoting them. In the very article you clearly didn’t even bother to read. Because your prejudices led you to assume you didn’t have to.
This is a dangerous way to live. Your epistemology is fucked. You should be seriously asking yourself why you didn’t even read the article you believed supported your point.
I’m not kidding. Why did you do that? That you didn’t should disturb you.
No, no, shining light on roaches is always useful.
I for one appreciate the occasional piece-by-piece takedown – not because I know anything about these particular asshats, but because their pernicious views are sufficiently widespread that knowing how to argue past it and deconstruct it has general application.
I used to date a horrible asshole who used these arguments (and worse ones beside). I could never make a dent in their worldview. Posts like this are ammunition for future conversations, should they be unavoidable.
Thanks for wading through the sewage, Richard. It’s appreciated!
Richard:
You have to be joking. Or more deluded or more into “motivated reasoning” or less capable of interpreting others than even I thought – and I’m one of the few in the Pit who are willing to be somewhat charitable towards some of your positions. I explicitly acknowledged that “Watson herself (subsequently) qualified that tweet nine ways to Sunday”. Does that look like I hadn’t read the article?
I wasn’t arguing that it’s rape if you have sex with someone who is merely inebriated, i.e., not someone so drunk that their “faculties are impaired” to the extent of being unable to consent; I was just trying to point out that Shermertron and TheYeti were inferring that that was the position that you subscribed to, and that you were therefore guilty of hypocrisy for supposedly engaging in the same activities. Do try to differentiate between those distinct cases.
But that position of theirs is still light-years away from your inference that they are actually insisting that it is morally justified to rape someone because they’re totally incapacitated by alcohol. That you’re unwilling to, or incapable of, providing any explicit statements of theirs that would justify that inference or claim does you no credit at all.
So either she didn’t say it or she fully repudiated it (as I demonstrated with her actual comments on the issue).
Either way you spin the narrative, your claim was false. She does not hold the belief you claimed, and did not mean by the word “drunk” what you claimed, and has been very clear about what she did mean, and it is not what you said.
Shermertron and TheYeti cannot have inferred I said anything differently, when the only article I have ever written on the matter is extensively and excruciatingly explicit on exactly that point (what constitutes sufficient inebriation to eliminate consent, and that mere inebriation does not).
That makes them liars. Or else, they really don’t think there is a difference.
If you don’t agree, you are not just saddled with a crappy epistemology, you are deluded.
Those are the lanes you have to pick from: either they deliberately lied, or my inference about their true beliefs is correct.
Which is it?
Richard:
Looks like you’re making a big to-do about thrashing a straw-man. I quoted Watson’s original tweet, and acknowledged that she “qualified that 9 ways to Sunday” in a subsequent article. Which, considering the delay from tweet to article, one might argue qualifies as damage control. But as far as both are concerned I’m not claiming anything as I conceded that there are extenuating circumstances. The issue is what TheYeti & Shermertron think about how that position of Watson’s pertains to your own actions. As I’ve stated several times now.
Or you have a tendency to rather dogmatic black-and-white thinking? Which would be consistent with your “with-us-or-against-us”, and rather problematic post on AtheismPlus. I wonder if you’ve ever gone over there and seen what an abortion it has turned into.
In any case, while, as mentioned, I think that TheYeti & Shermertron weren’t being particularly fair with you, at least in some instances, I wouldn’t go quite as far as insisting that they were lying as that entails a charge that they were being “deliberately untruthful”. Seems to me that people can quite honestly misinterpret other people, other events, and other phenomena – which was the point of my reference to the spinning dancer cognitive illusion. I would suggest that you might consider the relevance of the aphorism, “Honest men and women can disagree”. And that you be not quite as quick to reach for the least charitable interpretation.
Steersman, I’m not falling for your derail. You said Watson affirmed a belief that she did not. She has never said mere inebration entails rape. Never. Ever. And she has been 100% clear on this by now. So drop that stupid claim. Honestly. You were wrong. She never said what you thought she said. She never believed what you claimed. And she has always publicly specified the same thing I have: that mere inebriation does not entail rape.
Yeti & Shermertron have not been fair at all. They quote mined my article and claimed it said the exact opposite of what it clearly said. They also have said, repeatedly, that I accused Shermer of being bad for doing the “exact same things I do.” Even though they read the article that explicitly and in detail says the exact opposite of that.
They are either lying (i.e. they know that article says in explicit detail that what Shermer does that I do is fine, and it’s the other stuff he does, which I don’t do, that’s bad) or they don’t recognize the distinction that entire article was explicitly about making.
You cannot honestly maintain otherwise.
This is not an “honest disagreement.” This is explicit lying. Or a shocking failure to admit the distinction exists that I there drew.
Hello Dr.Carrier,
I have extended you, as well as one of your girlfriends, unfettered posting on the comments of my blog. I hope you will return the favor.
Although your two-part rant was chock full of lies and mmisrepresentations, I only want to address the most egregious one. You stated the following, referring to me:
” And yet still they can’t tell the difference. This means they think it’s okay to have sex with a woman who is so drunk she is incoherent and can barely walk and isn’t even sure where she is. That’s scary.”
Please provide any reference you have to me claiming that it is alright to have sec with a person that is so drunk that they are ncapacitated. Please provide a citation. I know you cannot, because I have never stated any such thing. What you have claimed may be libelous. I simply ask that you either: provide a citation and evidence to your claim, or, apologize and retract your libelous claim. If you have even a shred of integrity left you will do the right thing.
Thanks,
Yeti, I already said here and there that I will never read anything by you again. You are a liar. No rational conversation with you is possible.
As to your request:
So, you now agree that what Shermer did was reprehensible (“have sec with a person that is so drunk that they are ncapacitated”)?
And you now agree that you actually have no evidence I have ever done that?
Steersman @8 wrote:
Classic victim-blaming “logic.” In Steersman’s view Dr. Carrier’s reaction to the hatchet-job somehow contributed to the hatchet-job itself as if in xis/xer world an effect can preceed a cause. Perhaps Steersman can enlighten us as to whether this happens by magic, by some quantum phenomenon or by other means?
Perhaps Steersman can also explain why Dr. Carrier should go out of his way to arrive at the most charitable interpretations while Shermertron and Yeti run amok doing just the opposite? Surely such charitable interpretations must be earned through a record of honesty and accuracy neither of which are demonstrated by those behind this latest hatch-job (as you put it). At the end of the day what’s good for the goose is good for the gander as they say.
Steersman @8 wrote:
This sounds a lot like you are suggesting that any interpretation is just as valid as any other which is a decidedly unskeptical and ultimately untenable view. Just as an example chosen completely at random would you really argue that it’s equally valid to say the N-word is not racist as it is to say that it is racist? We highly doubt it. How could any reasonable person make an argument that the N-word is not racist, right? The fact that there are multiple possble ways to interpret something doesn’t excuse landing on the shittiest and most offensive ones.
It’s also a bit ableist of you to use examples or analogies that are inaccessible or less accessible to those with visual challenges, by the way.
Steersman @10 wrote:
Translation: since Steerman is slightly less uncharitable than xis/xer extremely uncharitable buddies Dr. Carrier should be grateful that Steersman would deign to share such venerable wisdom.
It’s kind of analogous to someone saying, “Why are you being mean to me? I’m the nice guy! I totally agree with you that calling black people the n-word is despicable. I just don’t want them living in my apartment complex.”
Your need to strawman the opponent (in ways that are comically obvious to anyone who takes the time to go to the pit and converse with them for a few days) is perhaps the most damning aspect of this whole situation. No doubt, your fans will be satisfied (unless they, as I did, bother to talk to the individuals directly, and discover just how uncharitable you actually are when it suits you), but I don’t think that much more will come of this. Honestly, beyond speaking up to prove there are dissenters to the positions you hold with a fundamentalist’s fervor, I’m not sure what the point of commenting here is. Maybe to plant seeds in the minds of lurkers?
I’m actually a fan of your professional work, which is why it’s so baffling you sometimes resort to the same style of arguments I see from the most base Christian apologists. “Someone thinks my brand of religions is bad, it’s because they hate God and goodness and truth”, sounds very much like “Someone thinks my brand of polyamory is bad, it’s because they’re misogynists and anti-sex.”
It’s always amusing to see someone claim their argument was straw manned, and then present no evidence whatever that it was.
That amounts to not having the cards to win the hand.
It’s doubly amusing to see someone not be able to correctly describe any argument I have made. Galen noted this feature in some hecklers of his science lectures. He called them donkey brains, because they couldn’t intelligibly repeat his own arguments back to him, whereas even a donkey can learn to correctly repeat a routine.
At no point, anywhere, have I ever argued “someone thinks my brand of polyamory is bad, it’s because they’re misogynists and anti-sex.” I presented evidence of sexist statements they made (numerous examples), to prove they are sexists. I then presented separate evidence of statements they made (numerous examples) about polyamory that were bigoted and false, to prove they arew anti-poly bigots. Those are not the same things. Then I presented still separate evidence of statements they made (numerous examples) that were anti-sex or sex-phobic (denigrating of sexuality or creeped out by sexuality), to prove they have Christian-like hostility to any liberation of human sexuality. I then presented still separate evidence that they flagrantly and shamelessly lied about what I said about Shermer, to prove that they are flagrant and shameless liars.
In other words, the actual arguments I made were correct, and thoroughly evidenced.
As to why these weirdos are like that, I justifiably confessed to being baffled.
As to you, you still are a liar. You claimed I made this argument:
I asked you then for evidence of me ever making any such argument.
You still have refused to present any.
And in this case I know why. Because I have explicitly said the exact opposite. So you kind of screwed the pouch on that one. You got caught lying. And couldn’t find any evidence to rescue yourself from it.
And that’s the story of you.
You’re very confused, as I expect is common when projecting as strongly as you do (or maybe you’ve just genuinely lost track of who you’re talking to). This was my first comment. I never said you strawmanned my argument, because I haven’t made an argument that could be strawmanned. I was referring to the others your conversing with, who have supplied ample evidence of said strawmanning.
And I leave it to those who read both your statements and the statements you criticize to decide if I’ve mischaracterized your arguments. Obviously, you think I did, then again, your testimony is a bit biased in that regard.
Oh, and you said I said this:
“Non-FTB/SJW person says: I can’t do monogamy and be happy, so I am going to have multiple girlfriends.”
I didn’t, which makes you a liar. Or you just fucked up. Given your need to harp on every trivial inconsistency or error and use it to insist nefarious intentions, I think I’m going to stick with calling you a liar though.
Oh, right, sorry. I confused you for JohnGreg. My apologies.
So you agree he lied when he said that?
It’s hard to say if someone is lying, but if I had to guess, I’d say no, I wouldn’t agree John Greg was. It seems more likely he was writing with rhetorical flair and you, with an autist’s penchant for demanding machine precision in the use of natural languages (a demand that I also suspect vanishes, when convenient to yourself), determined this to be equivalent to a lie, and thus evidence of his general dishonesty.
I really don’t understand why it’s a big deal for you to agree that when you attend somewhere in the capacity of a speaker, you don’t hook up with anyone. Just accept that the power shift at these conferences means that speakers hooking up with attendees is complicated and problematic, and leave your hooking up for times when you are not there in a position of power. Are you worried that you can only get sex if you have that power on your side? You see, some of your language suggests that you may see these conferences as a pick up joint and when people start to view it as something other than a conference where you can meet likeminded people who share similar worldviews, it can become a meat market. That’s the sort of environment that makes women uncomfortable. They are there to talk atheism, and you are there to hook up.
Also, this is a question for you to ask yourself. If a woman admits that if she hadn’t had those two alcoholic drinks the night she went home with you, it wouldn’t have happened, do you believe that compromises any consent that she did give for sexual activity that night?
If you, like me, believe that a decision based purely on intoxication is not a sound, consensual one, then you really might want to insist that women you are hooking up with are not under the influence of any alcohol. Again, yes, that means that you will probably get less sex, it means that you have to wait for someone who doesn’t need to “loosen their inhibitions” in order to say “hell yeah” to sex with you. But it does mean that you can be comfortable in the fact that her decision involved true, informed consent.
Carrier: Note that they don’t really believe it is a big deal. They are actually against such agreements. They are only pretending to want them (i.e., lying), to accomplish the goal of abolishing them. If that doesn’t make sense, don’t complain to me. It’s their strategy. Ask them. As for me…
Carrier: That’s foolish. We aren’t monks. Problematic situations are navigated by attending to the problems responsibly. That’s how all ethics works. Nothing more is required. Chastity is a holdover from Christianity. Atheists have no business arguing for it. We should not be denying ourselves amazing experiences and great relationships because of a Christianized fear of sex.
Carrier: Since power has never once played any role in my finding lovers, obviously no.
Carrier: A conference is a meeting of people. It is not a monastery. Finding sex and friendships is universally expected at them and is indeed one of the main reasons they exist: to bring like minded people together for fun and education, something especially needed for a community so scattered and isolated as atheists. As David Silverman, president of American Atheists, said, they want people to have sex at conferences. There is no problem with this. A problem only arises when people start pursuing sex in unethical ways. Thus, it is the unethical ways of pursuing it that must be policed, nothing more.
To call pursuing relationships a “meat market” is instrinsically sex-phobic. It reduces sexual relationships to physical encounters (indeed, it implies prostitution, and is thus effectively calling people who have sex at conferences whores). I would hope you can do better than that. If you see sexual partners as people, and as friends, you don’t see them as meat, or meeting them as a market. It disturbs me a little that I have to explain this to you.
The “sort of environment that makes women uncomfortable” is an environment where they are hit or creeped on inappropriately, where it is assumed they are there for sex, or an environment that is suddenly sexualized without their consent, or an environment in which they are assaulted (there have been many examples of that). We’ve been talking for years on FtB about example after example of this, and how it differs from ethical, consensual, boundary-respecting approaches to people. I gave several specific examples (of right and wrong approaches) in the first post of this two-part entry. If you haven’t learned the difference, please make an effort to. Meanwhile, you won’t ever be uncomfortable around me because of anything I do. It’s clear you won’t signal any interest in my even flirting with you. So you can have no warranted fear of that happening. Around me, a conference will proceed for you the same as any. Because I won’t do things like Shermer has been said to do. For example.
Carrier: False dichotomy, and false generalization. Many of us are there to (at least possibly) hook up. And talk atheism. To assume it’s either/or is a false dichotomy. To assume everyone is uninterested in sex at events is a false generalization.
I know more women who go to events to consider hooking up than I can count (indeed, in my experience, at least 1 in 10 attendees of any atheist conference are poly, open or closeted), and no one I have started a relationship with at them wasn’t considering it or game for it before I even asked. Nevertheless, I also know most women who go to events are not interested in hooking up. Hence the ethical part. We have to responsibly treat all women at events as if they are not interested. And treat them as such. Unless they show enough interest to indicate it might be otherwise. And even then we have to responsibly treat those women as if they only might be interested. Unless they then show enough interest to indicate it probably is otherwise. At which point you ask. And take no for an answer, if no it is. And pursue it no further. But if it’s yes, it’s yes. And that’s wonderful. As all involved agree. And that includes a lot of women. And no one should be slut-shamed for it. That’s what liberated sexuality is about.
Carrier: That’s not how consent works. I covered this in detail already. You seem to be confusing disinhibition with incapacity. Disinhibition might require additional steps to ensure consent is enthusiastic, and won’t be regretted. But that’s not a legal requirement, just an ethical one. Exactly as I explained in Scenario B for Shermer. But one could even describe a milder Scenario C (which does not fit the facts of that case as reported, but that’s not relevant to the present point) wherein one is manipulated into a consensual sexual encounter, either by deception or without being allowed time to consider it and its consequences, which would also be unethical. But if we aren’t even in Scenario C? Then any regret I have the next day is on me, and I think pretty much everyone agrees with that and would own it like I would. And in any case, as I’ve always taken special care to ensure anyone who initiates a relationship with me considers it carefully so as to know they won’t likely regret it, this is an example of how ethical behavior avoids the problem. Which is precisely what I am advocating. And lots of people agree with me, and engage themselves in the same ethical way at events.
In the real world, as in the world everyone actually lives in, a lot of sex is inebriated at events, even between married couples, but everyone else interested as well. And they love that. Indeed, that’s often why they get drunk, to quell their fears, or enjoy it all the more, or both. As Rebecca Watson said, “like me, many of you have had sex while drinking and/or while your partners have been drinking, and it’s not a big deal because you value communication and enthusiastic consent and participation.” That’s the real world. It’s a nice place. If it scares you, then don’t drink. But for the rest of us, “true, informed consent” is exactly what we remain capable of giving when inebriated, and what we do give to each other, with considerable frequency. It might take more time and clearer communication, but then that’s why we give people that extra time and communication. Because unless we are rushed or tricked, being inebriated does not prevent us from being informed. It does not prevent us from reasoning. It does not prevent us from thinking about the consequences and deciding which consequences we like best. Only when we are so drunk that we can’t do those things does drinking eliminate consent. And that level of inebriation is sufficiently evident as to signal when you don’t go further with someone in that state.
This is how the whole world works. All of the time. You can either accept that, or stay out of it. And that’s honestly your call. If you think you can’t make good enough judgments after two drinks to protect yourself from bad decisions, then you should not drink. But just because (you fear) you are that incompetent generally, does not mean everyone else is. The rest of us handle our liquor just fine. And I have a dozen sober girlfriends who will tell you the same. All of whom met me at events. And are quite glad they did.
Well, you still never provided any evidence that I have stated that is alright to have sex with an incapacitated person, so now your readers can see yet again that you are a liar. It us just more evidence of your complete lack of integrity.
“So, you now agree that what Shermer did was reprehensible (“have sec with a person that is so drunk that they are ncapacitated”)?”
What a sad and obvious attempt at rhetorical sleight of hand. What Shermer was ACCUSED of is reprehensible, however, despite your loaded question, I don’t find the evidence that he actually did what he was accused of to be convincing. In fact, if you look at some of the exculpatory evidence(which you of course ignore) that has come forth since the accuser was finally named, it appears fat more likely that the accusation is false. In your piece on Shermer, you presented his womanizing, the claim that he propositioned married women, and his mere consumption of alcohol with women at parties as “evidence” that the rape accusation was true. You even tried to couch that article in legal terms to try and make it appear that you had “proven” Shermer guilty.
“And you now agree that you actually have no evidence I have ever done that?”
I did not accuser you of rape Richard, and you know this. This was made clear in both the article itself as well as the ccomments (it is notable that you completely misrepresented the conversation in the comments to your readers) I pointed out that you admit to engaging in behavior (womanizing, trying to pick up married women, drinking socially and trying to pick up women) that you presented as evidence that Shermer was guilty of what he was accused of. I did not equate that behavior to the rape of an incapacitated person, and you know this. I never accused you of rape or harassment… Just dishonesty and hypocrisy. You may be many things, Richard, but you are not stupid. I have to conclude that your twisting of my words is not an innocent misunderstanding, but is in fact deliberate dishonesty on your part.
I am not at all surprised that you lack three integrity to retract your libelous smear.
You don’t even know what lying is.
I never said you said that. I said it looks like you believe that. And then presented the evidence for that conclusion.
Now, you can certainly correct me, and declare that what I concluded Shermer did you agree is wrong, and that I have not done what I was criticizing him for, and therefore I did not criticize Shermer for doing the same things I do. And that therefore you were wrong to claim I did.
So, are you now saying that?
(Because you never said Shermer didn’t do what I accused him of until now. You have until now said only that I accused him of doing the same thing I do. Let’s stick with what you were claiming before. Not this entirely new claim.)
An established sexual relationship is one thing, however, I still don’t understand why one would so against erring on the side of caution in regards to consent. Especially when in a position of power.
And actually, your defensive assumptions about me are not even close to the truth. I just think the line where intoxication invalidates consent lies at “I wouldn’t have done this without alcohol.” Not at “s/he was passed out/stumbling”. A sobering thought.
Yes, I have drunk sex, even on the first date when there isn’t an established relationship. But the alcohol isn’t the decider. I’d do it stone cold sober. And that’s what I think makes it truly consensual. Those scenarios you gave indicate that you don’t see where those lines lay.
Carrier: We do err on the side of caution. That simply doesn’t require chastity. You are asking for a remedy far out of proportion to the risk, like saying someone shouldn’t drive in order to “err on the side of caution” against accidentally running someone over, when the correct remedy is responsible driving, not abandoning driving altogether. And driving is very definitely a position of power, especially over pedestrians.
Carrier: Which is weird. Because you now admit you get inebriated and have sex with inebriated people, even the first time you meet them, and see nothing wrong with that. So why did you pretend to have a problem with it?
Richard (#11B):
GMAFB. For one thing, I fail to see how my referencing Watson’s article & tweet qualifies as a derail since you rather explicitly – in this post even, and right out of the chute – broach the subject of “the difference between being pleasantly drunk … and being so drunk as to not even comprehend what is happening or where exactly you are”.
But what I first said (#8) about Watson was this:
Does that fucking look I’m saying – in any way, shape or form – that “Watson affirmed a belief”? That I was insisting that she said “mere inebriation entails rape”? I merely quoted her explicit statement in a tweet. And I even conceded that she subsequently qualified that tweet. What I was doing was then suggesting that it was TheYeti & Shermertron who were then misjudging you on the basis of their misreading of both Watson’s statement, and your actions. A conclusion that you also reached, although you somewhat uncharitably characterized that as “delusion number three”.
Do try to differentiate between the players and the referees on the field. So to speak.
I’ve already explicitly agreed and argued – both here and on TheYeti’s blog – that they haven’t been particularly fair, or very careful, in interpreting you. Although I might point out that that “exact same things” phrase is a quote of Shermertron, and that it might be a stretch to suggest, as you’re doing, that TheYeti is equally guilty. Although I’ve argued (on the Pit, Post 26531) that TheYeti seems to be insinuating in his own post – because you and Shermer were both “picking up women when alcohol was being served and consumed freely” – that you are “likely to be a rapist as well”. However, while he subsequently insisted that those were merely some “rhetorical questions”, that seems just a little disingenuous at best, and might qualify as evidence of being unclear on the purpose of rhetorical questions – in this case, apparently engaging in a bit of innuendo and yellow journalism.
Well, that does seem to suggest at least a small step back from insisting that “they” think it’s ok to rape a woman who’s drunk. However, while I’ll concede that the evidence might provide some justification for the charging of lying, I still think, as I said before, that seems to depend rather heavily on a number of inferences, notably that, at least at the time they made those posts, they were intending to be “deliberately untruthful”. Seems there could be any number of other plausible scenarios that could explain the same actions and statements. For instance, while “they” may have read that article of yours, that doesn’t mean that they would have read or comprehended all of the nuances and convolutions in it, particularly when they were buried under a bunch of extraneous verbiage. Or they could have been cherry-picking, by intent or inadvertently, because they had somewhat of an axe to grind. But those are still rather different kettles of fish from actually lying, of actually knowing that they were making false statements.
But, more importantly and relative to my original point (#8: your “questionable interpretations and inferences”), I might suggest that you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too, or that you’re talking out of both sides of your mouth, or that, more charitably, you aren’t as careful or fair in your own argumentation as you think you are. For instance, in your first and second paragraphs above, you say:
Which looks a little inconsistent at best, and which kind of knocks into a cocked-hat your assertion (in your response to #16) that “I said it looks like you believe that”. And I would say that last quoted sentence fragment looks like a pretty stark and categorical claim to me, and one which you haven’t apparently got any evidence to justify or support. Which gives some justification for my own argument (#8) that you also are “contributing to the mess” yourself. Q.E.D.
I am going to be clear, Steersman:
Stop fucking lying to virtual my face or I will ban you.
Last time: Watson never said there wasn’t a difference. She never did. Ever. Never ever. She has in fact very explicitly said there was a difference. And she has agreed completely with me on that. And with you!
Got it?
If you continue to lie about this, you are done here.
And nothing else matters to this conversation. Watson agrees with you and me on this. And has never disagreed. Period. End of story. There is nothing else to debate here.
You mean, they deliberately quoted me out of context, concealed what I actually did say immediately after the passage they quoted, and claimed I said the opposite of what I said?
That’s not being unfair.
That’s lying.
Right?
Then what “hypocrisy” did Yeti accuse me of?
Indeed, the inconsistency is theirs. I mention this repeatedly in my exposé articles.
I can’t be blamed for the fact that they have behaved in contradictory fashion, said contradictory things, and expressed attitudes that contradict their statements.
All I did was document that. And lay out what the options are.
If they want now to both admit to the following facts and apologize for having made statements that appear to contradict them then awesome. Let’s see that happen!
1. There is a difference between sexual harassment and consensual flirting.
2. They have no evidence (not a single witness claim) of me engaging in sexual harassment.
3. There is evidence (several witness claims) of Shermer engaging in sexual harassment.
4. There is a difference between appropriate and inappropriate ways of pursuing intimacy with someone.
5. They have no evidence (not a single witness claim) of me pursuing intimacy with anyone in an inappropriate way.
6. There is evidence (several witness claims) of Shermer pursuing intimacy with women in an inappropriate way.
7. There is a difference between being pleasantly drunk but still in possession of your faculties (and thus fully able to consent when asked) and being so drunk as to not even comprehend what is happening or where exactly you are.
8. They have no evidence (not a single witness claim) of me having sex with anyone so drunk as to not even comprehend what is happening or where exactly they are.
9. There is evidence (at least one witness claim) of Shermer having sex with someone so drunk as to not even comprehend what is happening or where exactly they are.
10. I have never criticized Shermer for consensual flirting, pursuing intimacy with anyone in an appropriate way, or having sex with anyone pleasantly drunk but still in possession of their faculties.
11. I have only criticized Shermer for crossing the line into harassment, pursuing intimacy in inappropriate ways, and having sex with someone so drunk as to not even comprehend what is happening or where exactly they are.
12. And I have never criticized Shermer for doing anything I have done or continue to do.
Given Carrier’s willingness to define any inconsistency (as he perceives it), to be “lying”, I suspect you aren’t long for this world, Steers.
JetLagg (#18B):
Welll, my blood pressure is definitely going up. But I expect I’m more likely to be banned here than to have a heart-attack, at least in the next month or so. But who knows. That Richard has – mirabile dictu – actually apologized to you suggests a little less closed-mindedness than we’ve both suggested is the case … 😉
Richard:
Fine. I agree. I never disputed that in the slightest.
What I’m objecting to (read my lips) is that you explicitly stated “You [Steersman] said Watson affirmed a belief that she did not.” Which is unmitigated horse shit. Do quote and link to exactly where I said anything that justifies that claim.
Maybe, or “not technically”. Do note one salient and apparently crucial definition for “lying”: “deliberately untruthful”. Seems to me that intent is the crux of the matter, and that is something that you infer. At least in this case. While one can reasonably say that they “deliberately” quoted you, it is still an inference that they knew the quotes falsely misrepresented your position. On the other hand, if you have some statements from either of them where they admit that they knew that you said something and that they’re claiming otherwise just for the sake of trolling then case closed. Otherwise? Then I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.
I personally don’t have any substantive objections to that list of items, and will largely agree with them. However, as one of a few apparently minor quibbles, I might suggest that your heavy reliance on “appropriate ways” is, in part, a value judgement, at least some of which I probably agree with. But one might ask who appointed you arbiter of what is and is not appropriate. You are, of course, entitled to think what you want about the issue, but you don’t have a right to impose those values on anyone else.
In any case, while there is maybe some justification for asking for an apology from them, I might suggest you could start the ball rolling by apologizing to them for the apparent accusation that they actually think that raping a drunk woman is morally acceptable. Or even conceding they don’t think that. And if you wanted to go the extra (or first) mile then you could also concede that I never said that “Watson affirmed a belief” that she had not.
Holy Christ, Steersman.
You wrote:
There are only two things you can have meant by this:
That they have lied about what Watson said, or that you are lying about what she said.
Because Watson never said any such thing. Again, never. Never fucking ever!
She has always said what I clearly said, which they ignore, and deliberately, because they well know the passage in which I said it.
So when they say I equated all inebriated sex as rape, they are lying. Blatantly, deliberately lying, about what I have said.
And for you to come in and do the same fucking thing with Watson, and ignore what she actually said, and claim she said what she didn’t, makes you a liar along with them.
Unless you really fucking suck at writing and meant to say they have ignored what Watson actually said and attributed to her exactly the opposite of what she said and that in fact she and I have always said the exact opposite of what they claim.
So which is it?
Steersman @18,
We are wondering if you are straight up trolling or if there is something else perhaps more sinister going on here? Dr. Carrier has already taken you to the proverbial woodshed multiple times here and he certainly doesn’t need our help in doing so. But still we can’t help but respond in the hopes that we can help to untangle the web of deceit you appear to be spinning.
First you wrote:
Then you wrote:
[1] Why yes it does fucking look like you said that Watson affirmed a belief. Your words again: “Watson in particular argued that ‘if you have sex w/ someone who is drunk, they are unable to consent & that is rape.'” “Watson argued that…” The clear implication is that Rebecca Watson did believe this and did argue for this and in the act of arguing for it she affirmed said belief. Else why would she have argued for it as you claimed she did unless she had believed it?
(2) Why yes it does fucking look like you insisted that Rebecca Watson had said that mere inebriation entails rape. Your words again: “Watson in particular argued that ‘if you have sex w/ someone who is drunk, they are unable to consent & that is rape.'” As you surely must know drunk is synonymous with inebriated and merely is synonymous with just or only. There are no other necessary conditions mentioned aside from being drunk [inebriated]. Your words thus become: “Watson in particular argued that ‘if you have sex w/ someone who is [merely drunk or merely inebriated], they are unable to consent & that is rape.” The words clearly and unambiguously mean that “mere inebriation” or “mere drunkenness” entails an inability to consent and thus entails rape. So yes. You did insist that she had argued this. That’s what your words mean.
Plethora (#20A):
But the question is, in which direction does it appear to be spinning? 😉 However, I think you need to re-read a little more closely exactly what I’ve said, and the context in which I said it, particularly as this assertion of yours has little to no correspondence to what I really said:
Do note that you yourself actually concede that you’re basing your argument on an implication, an inference that you think corresponds to what I said. But note carefully that this is what I actually said (in #18):
That is to say, my argument was:
a) I did not say that “Watson affirmed a belief”; what I said was that she argued a position in a tweet, and that, as I’ve said – several times, she had subsequently “qualified that 9 ways to Sunday”;
b) I was inferring, suggesting, that “they” [Shermertron and/or TheYeti] assumed that Richard also “subscribed to that view” – i.e., sex while drunk, at any level, is rape – for the reason that, maybe – in their view, since Richard is part of the FTB/Skepchick/AtheismPlus clique he therefore is deemed to slavishly follow that crowd;
c) that hypothetical assumption on their part would supposedly justify their conclusion, their “leap of faith”, that Richard, in having had sex, supposedly, while at least inebriated was therefore deemed to be hypocritical in criticizing Shermer for having done that too.
While that inference might be a little suspect – why I said “seems” – particularly in the case of TheYeti, I think it is a little more tenable in the case of Shermertron. Consider this passage of his that Richard quoted in his Shermertron the Bigot post:
Which I think justifies, or gives some credence to, my suggestion that Shermertron at least was under the impression that, in the view of FTB/Carrier/Skepchick, sex while being intoxicated – to any degree – qualifies as rape. Moot point how and why he reached that conclusion, but I kind of think that there’s some possibility that he, and/or TheYeti, never did read or read very closely or had forgotten Watson’s post (of some 2 years ago) on the question, and that had broached the issue.
You might want to take a close look at that post of Watson’s yourself since, as I’ve mentioned – several times, she qualifies the term “drunk” “9 ways to Sunday”. Basically she’s saying that the judgement of rape depends very heavily on the blood-alcohol-concentration (BAC) – you might take a look at the Wikipedia article on the topic and note the wide range of effects of that concentration – and that it depends on a number of other precursors. So, in her view and apparently in that of Richard’s, “inebriation”, at any level, does not necessarily entail rape. Which I agreed with, several times. So I can’t have been “insisting” that she said “mere inebriation entails rape”. Q.E.D.
Richard,
I’m in awe of the patience you have in dealing with detractors and critics.
I know I’m biased, but I don’t care. =)
I’m extremely grateful that you are open and honest about your life.