Anyone ever heard of Rebecca Watson?

According to my personal system of morality.
And... I also think it's better than yours Yes.
If I go and tell Christians that I do not believe in god, and they get offended... then what I did was wrong.
Basically, all I've done is gone out and made some people feel bad.
How is that a "good thing"? Or even a "neutral thing"?
Don't you agree that I should have just stayed home instead? At least then no one would have gotten hurt at all.
Perhaps you're thinking of a more specific situation? Feel free to clarify your example and we can discuss (but perhaps it would be better to take the conversation over to here: Morality without god ) Yes, yes, yes.
How does any of that make it "a good thing" if Rebecca hurt elevator-guy?
I agree that it can make it justified or maybe the least-bad-thing she could do in the situation. But the fact remains that she said something that hurt elevator-guy. That fact makes that specific thing "bad." I even explained at the bottom of the post that I fully agree that Rebecca was "less-bad" than elevator-guy (does he have a name?).I fully admit that my system of morality takes a bit of a paradigm-shift. But it also has some very large advantages like providing a clear and objective look at the situation so that everyone can agree on what was good and what was bad... the subjective factor for this classification is completely removed. That is, if we agree that "bad things" are those that people do not want to have happen to them, and "good things" are those that people do want to happen to them... it is then objective that elevator guy's proposition was a bad thing. It's also objective that Rebecca's response was bad.
However, the fact that elevator guy could have avoided the situation (he started it) and Rebecca could not avoid the situation (she didn't start it) mean's the responsibility is more on elevator guy's shoulders.

I'm offended by that, and so you are wrong, and your morality isn't better than mine. Wait... In a conversation, you are wrong to tell your conversation partner that you do not belive in god, if this offends them? I'm sorry, could you walk me through your logic here? We could go over to the other thread, if you think it more aproptiate. It doesn't. which was my point. She overreacted, in my oppinion. But, again, I think people overreact all the time. I don't. I think he was less bad. And what matters here is intent. As far as I can tell, elevator dude didn't mean to cause her discomfort, nor scare her. Where as she said some pretty nasty things about him. The problem however is that perhaps elevator guy thought that his proposition was a good thing. Since we can't read minds, we can never know what other people truly think and therefore can never be sure of what we say to them will "offend" them. Are we then bad or wrong for saying somthing that "offends" other people? Did we have the intent to hurt them? I say, that if we did not, then no, it was not a bad or wrong thing to do. Right. So, according to you, avoiding every and all situation is prudent? Because, well, you'll never know when you'll be wrong or bad by saying something someone might possibly take offence to, and well, you really wouldn't want that, right?

I do! I've replied to your message here: Message 114 in thread Morality without god

Well, if we take what the guy said at face value, he wanted to spend some time in a more intimate setting with Rebecca. The way he communicated that desire put her ill-at-ease. Under these circumstances, he's not going to get what he wants. Therefore, he used the wrong approach.If Christians get offended at me when I tell them something about their religion under circumstances where I'm trying to engage them in a conversation, I'm more than likely not going to achieve my goal and thus am approaching them in the wrong way.

I'm sure they exist. What's the evidence that they're anything but an insignificant minority, that their views represent a real coalition and not just another expression of the random statement-generator that exists at the bottom of the Internet? Remember Bluegenes talked about "radical feminists" who were walking around with T-shirts. That there were so many of them at one time you might reasonably expect to meet a crowd of them in the street. What possible evidence is there for that view? Ok, but who told you that? Not any of the people you quoted. I think the proper response to the KKK can include both the peaceful objection to their violence and the violent elimination by vigilantes of their most violent leaders, if people choose to do that. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The appropriate response to violent oppression isn't unilateral disarmament. Why? Do not the downsides of heterosexual intercourse accrue disproportionately to women? It's a matter of scientific fact that a woman is more likely to contract an STD from her male partner than the reverse. Only one of those two can be pregnant, or will be expected to use or provide birth control.Is heterosexual intercourse not a "cultural practice"?I'm sorry but it's insufficient for you to identify feminists saying things that are objectively true and call them "radical." And again, the proposition made was that there are feminists who believe that all sex is rape. Are you prepared to identify one, or not? No. I made this assertion:

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Are you sure that there was even one such t-shirt worn by an "extremist feminist"? My impression has always been that the "all men are pigs" wing of feminism is largely the invention of its detractors[.]

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not this one, as you claimed:

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As I have now backed up my assertion with evidence, I would call upon you to do the same with refard to your assertion that such "radical feminists" who equate heterosexual intercourse with rape must in fact be misogynous males themselves using deception to create a target for their misogyny.

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You're simply lying about what assertions have been made. I've never proposed that there are misogynists out there posing as radical feminists, so I won't defend such an absurdity. I did make that claim, and it's been supported by the evidence I've provided (the Snopes article, primarily.) That's a very different claim than the notion that misogynists are actually posing as feminists all as part of a clever plan to confuse us. You're simply lying about which claim I've actually made. Funny, then, that we're talking about it. How did this come up in a thread about Rebecca Watson? Remember, I'm not the one who brought up the imaginary T-shirts. The only explanation is the attempt at guilt-by-association that occurred in Message 38. Or did you think Tangle's message was just a complete non-sequitur?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I'm actually kind of sick of the perpetually offended. If Rebecca's perception is that she is often beset by misbehaving men, to an extent far out of proportion to the actual number of misbehaving men, then she might want to consider looking within herself.But the perpetually offended don't tend to do that.--Percy

Seek and you will find.

So she didn't actually say what you said she said. Ok, but that's not the statement I asked about. What I asked you is where she said, as you said she said:

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She added to this by stating that while attending these sorts of conventions, she was being constantly harassed by atheist men.

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And on what basis do you question her above account? Frankly it doesn't sound unreasonable, why am I supposed to believe those things didn't happen? And if they did happen, why should she not say that they happened?If it happened once at every skeptical conference she's been to - which, her being a prominent woman, I can believe - is it truly unfair to say that it happens "constantly"? I've met up with a ton of asshats already. Yet, again, none of them were women who thought it would be legitimate for them to make a sexual offer and then respond to its rejection by a campaign of harassment. Why do you suppose that is? And comes here Rebecca Watson to say "you know, doing that isn't okay. It's not okay anywhere, and it's especially not okay in movement atheism, where the lack of religious or unsupported dogma is supposed to obviate unsupportable ideas like 'women are inferior.'" I'm just not seeing where that's happening. Straw-feminism. But if guys aren't telling each other that it's not ok to do things like that to you - if, in fact, guys are telling each other that it's awesome to have done that to you, which I can verify to you is happening - isn't there some broader blame to go around? Feminists call it "rape culture." Should the blame for that be solely on the heads of rapists? Shouldn't there be some blame for the people who have had the opportunity to oppose rape culture, but decided it just wasn't that important? I think so.

I don't get any sense that Rebecca Watson is "perpetually offended", since to her the issue merited only a single comment and that was it. Don't you think it's been her perpetually-offended detractors who have flogged this issue over and over again who should consider "looking within themselves"? People are telling her that she should be raped to death, and that they're the ones to do it so she better look out. Frequently they tell her this and then drop some detail about her routine or travel plans, just to up the intimidation factor.I don't think you have to be thin-skinned to take offense to that. And what's your basis for saying that Rebecca Watson is experiencing harassment well out of proportion to the "actual number of misbehaving men"? What is the actual number of misbehaving men, and how do you know?Are you familiar with the case of Kathy Sierra? (For whatever reason, I mistakenly referred to her as "Sierra Bates" in an earlier post, but it's actually tech author and blogger Kathy Sierra that I meant to refer to.)

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In March 2007, Sierra abruptly canceled her appearance at the O'Reilly ETech conference in San Diego due to threatening blog posts and emails, including death threats.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] One blog post included an image of Sierra next to a noose. She wrote: "I have cancelled all speaking engagements. I am afraid to leave my yard, I will never feel the same. I will never be the same."[2]
The harassment increased after the threats were reported in the news: a false account of her career was posted online, along with her address and Social Security number.[7]
The issue triggered public discussion on the concept of a bloggers' code of conduct. Some bloggers, including Robert Scoble, author of the technology blog Scobleizer, temporarily suspended their blogs in a show of support for Sierra.[2] One of the larger issues Scoble felt was highlighted by the incident was online hostility to women: "It's this culture of attacking women that has especially got to stop," Scoble said "[W]henever I post a video of a female technologist there invariably are snide remarks about body parts and other things that simply wouldn't happen if the interviewee were a man."[2]

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Do you think that there was something "within herself" about Kathy Sierra that attracted such a massive outpouring of sexist abuse and threats, or do you think that maybe there's a problem with the men in technical and skeptical fields that they react to the presence of a prominent woman in this way?How about the case of Dario Maestripieri, professor of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago:

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On October 14, 2012 he lamented on his personal Facebook page on what he perceived as a lack of "beautiful women" at the Society for Neuroscience's annual conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. "There are thousands of people at the conference and an unusually high concentration of unattractive women," Maestripieri wrote. "The super model types are completely absent. What is going on? Are unattractive women particularly attracted to neuroscience? Are beautiful women particularly uninterested in the brain?" [11]

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So, what happened there? Was it just the case that every single woman at the Society for Neuroscience annual conference had "something within herself" that attracted sexist judgement about her appearance?

"Seek"? They came to her, if you'll recall. She didn't invite that guy into the elevator, and she didn't invite the torrent of abuse and threats that followed.Is there something about this issue that causes you and Percy to just completely lose your shit? The things you two are saying just don't bear any resemblance to what actually happened.

That is not at all what I am referring to. If you're looking to be offended, if you're looking for misogyny, then you will certainly find it. Everywhere. Have we lost our shit? Not agreeing with you or others' points of view on this issue doesn't necessarily constitute lunacy. And besides, I'm completely open to the fact that I have misconstrued words and events. That's why I'm here making and reading comments on this topic. Edited by roxrkool, : No reason given.

Well, yes. You'll find it everywhere because it's everywhere.The way you make it out, though, the problem is not that the misogyny is there, it's that people are noticing it. But as the examples of Rebecca Watson, Kathy Sierra, and Dario Maestripieri prove, you don't have to go looking for misogyny to find it everywhere. Very conveniently it'll bring itself to you, frequently in ways you can't simply ignore.Isn't the actual problem, here, that misogyny is everywhere? Why don't you see it that way? No, but not agreeing with reality does. Claiming that Watson went looking for someone to proposition her in an elevator, or that Kathy Sierra invited people to leave sexualized threats on her blog and home phone, is just madness.

Why? So I can live my entire life living and playing the part of a victim? Fighting and hating people who I have to live and work with? That's not who I am and not who I want to be.
Obviously, I don't subscribe to all tenets of feminist theory -- I consider myself more of a traditional feminist. I fight for equal rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, equal pay, and so on. As such, I don't need everyone to like me in order to have those things, but what they will do and what I demand, in both my personal and professional life, is that they respect me and allow me my rights as a human being.That does not mean I deny that hatred, denigration, or discrimination of women exists. It does. Or that I think women should just shut up and take what they get. I don't. I just refuse to be defined by those things. And I certainly do understand why other women and men have a problem with these things. That's their right. Just don't fucking tell me I haven't thought about things enough or am blinded by my patriarchal upbringing.

No. Specifically so that you don't have to be victimized by misogyny. So that your rights as a human being can be respected. Are the kind of misogynistic threats that Rebecca Watson and Kathy Sierra have received consistent, in your view, with an ethos of respect for them and their rights as human beings? If not, I still don't understand why you're not on their side about this. I would hope nobody is defined by the threats they receive. I've not defined Watson, Sierra, or anybody else in that way. Watson is a skeptic blogger. Sierra is a tech writer (I have a couple of her books.) It's only their detractors, like yourself, who have attempted to define them as professional offense-takers. I don't recall telling you either of those things. "Perpetually offended", much?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Sorry - totally offline and give me the jeers for this but when I first saw Crashfrog's post containing the following: I immediately (forgive me) exclaimed aloud in my mother's basement room equivalent: Now I happen to think the ZPG people are correct, but this reaches into Jonathan Swift shorelines a tad....ok...back to your fascinating discussion......