Internet Lunatics - RadFems, PUA's, MRA's, MGTOW's, etc.

And yet despite the lack of any one pope it does have a number of clearly visible public figures who are profoundly influential and phenomenally popular.

 

To those of us who are not involved in computer or online games, and never heard of Halo 3 before this, the study is just pure unadulterated clickbait. Getting drawn into discussions of it strikes me as just as pointless as arguing over the Face on Mars or some reality show.

 

That's all it is in the first place. Pure femsploitation. It exists solely to provide fabricated "evidence" for their narrative.

 

Regarding the Halo 3 study, it actually takes more than some statistically agnostic amateur excel work to refute real science. I'm not saying that the Halo 3 paper is sound, but I am saying that some person on the internet armed only with an Office 365 subscription and a list of Excel math functions isn't a credible Martin Luther over here. Try some hypothesis testing, maybe?

With respect to Tim Hunt, that dude's career was already over by any meaningful standard. He was an honorary professor, which means his position was afforded him out of a sense of professional respect and not out of an expectation of productivity; his job was basically to go around and give speeches and poach free food from graduate seminars. Nothing that has happened to him changes the fact that he's had a long, productive career in science or that he has a Nobel Prize. He gets a tiny violin dirge from me. The fact that he presented himself as someone incapable of treating his female colleagues as people independent of their capacity to satisfy the romantic considerations of their male colleagues is problematic, especially when stories of gendered mistreatment of female scientists and grad students by their male colleagues are so commonplace. I mean sure, haha, it was a joke, and he found a slew of female colleagues who would go on record that he was nothing but a gem, but, I mean, he didn't actually deny having the shitty attitude towards women. In fact, in his "apology" he made it clear that he was expressing his honest opinion. So whatever to Tim Hunt.

And holy shit, is Eron Gjonis, the throbbing flaccid piece of shit who let loose the gaseous fart cloud from whence Gamer Gate burbled is a martyr? Hahaha, yeah. That guy definitely deserves pity.

 

I refer you to Bodkin's post, where he backs up my point for me with a level of conviction normally found only in religion. Even recordings proving Connie St. Louis is a liar and a fraud, that the stories about what he said included multiple outright fabrications, and that he actually praised female scientists at length and explicitly presented the allegedly "evil" thing he said as a point of view to be mocked are not enough to change Bodkin's mind.

The recordings are right there, but it doesn't matter. Feminism is never wrong. Tim Hunt has always been a sexist, Eron Gjoni was never a victim of significant gaslighting and domestic abuse, we have always been at war with East EurAsia.

Just like feminists still defend "Jackie", Sulkowicz, and Quinn. The truth doesn't matter, the facts don't matter, only the holy word of mother Feminism matters and for any man or men accused that word is always "Guilty".

And as I asked before... Where are the "True Feminists"? Where's that "Majority" of them that's supposed to exist? What actions have they taken to put a stop to any of this? To provide justice and restitution to those whose lives have been ruined by the mob? What have they done at all other than insist "but we're not like that even though we don't ever say or do a single thing to prove it and constantly defend the people that are like that"?

The answer is nowhere. Either they never existed to begin with, or they're choosing to say and do nothing while continuing to defend the "feminism" which did all of this... which means they're part of the problem.

 

Tim Hunt apologises for comments on his 'trouble' with female scientists | UK news | The Guardian

He presented it as something that is mockable? Really? It seems like the joke is perfectly in line with how he actually feels about working with women. His apology is essentially, "Yeah, sorry if I offended anyone, but I meant the part about how bitches be crazy."

One can laud the work of women and also be sexist. One can have supporters who are women and also be sexist (just like how "Well, I can't be racist because some of my friends are black" is obviously bullshit).

 

And I refer you back to what all of us have been saying all along (and you can't seem to get you head around) there is no Universal feminism.

Bodkin and I happen to disagree on Hunt. I am okay with that. I understand where he is coming from but think his conclusion is wrong.

As per my note, I think Hunt was poorly treated. I can see certain feminists reacting to what appears to be a horrible statement and taking someone to task for it. I see speaking truth to power as a good thing. I also see, as per above, that this doesn't appear to the case here.

I am seeing many people falling victim to Internet shaming for many different reasons (not just "foamy feminists" but I doubt your myopic worldview will permit seeing a larger context). My feeling is something larger is happening here. The beast of social media has amplified and accelerated our communications. Sober second thoughts are rarely possible once things are in motion.

 

You know what internet shaming is really good for though? Getting attention for things that would have previously just passed without mention, like police brutality.

And I respect the fact that Charlatan disagrees with me, even though I don't quite understand what he's seeing that I'm not. This is primarily because he can disagree with me without attributing my perspective to some sort of vast feminicult conspiracy groupthink.

 

Maybe I just see him as a mostly harmless guy on the way out. Maybe there's more to him than I am seeing, but I don't think he deserves the Global drubbing he received.

 

I agree that Tim Hunt, the individual, is mostly harmless. But I think he became more than just Tim Hunt. He essentially became the public face of a very particular kind of benign, but still gross, paternalistic sexism that floats around academic departments around the world. And I think because it's a type of sexism that's very difficult to confront directly given the power dynamics of academia, talking about him became a convenient, low-stakes way of talking about the type of day-to-day sexism that a lot of women experience. Like a sort of "I know my adviser is trying to look down my shirt constantly, but I can't confront him because he has to sign off on my work, but Tim Hunt, god bless him, is a really convenient proxy. Maybe if Tim Hunt gets a lot of public flack for being shitty like my boss, my boss will reevaluate how he treats me."

 

I know a few profs like that, including one of my wife's Journalism School profs who told her that if she wore mini skirts, he'd give her an A.

Confronting them has been difficult for a number of reasons including the truncated future career when it gets out that you, as a woman, are "difficult".

I haven't seen anything that indicates Hunt is one of these assholes. He made some lame jokes that fell flat. He advocated for single sex labs (clearly misguided, but also clearly ignored). He may be someone deserving of these actions but I have yet to see anyone who has worked with him or learned from him kick him when he was down. It seems to me, if he was a predatory prof, they would have piled on while the opportunity was there.

I think the fact that he became more than Tim Hunt is what I am talking about when I refer to social media amplification. In this case, a worthy discussion and a real problem were directed at a guy in a volume that did not match.

 

I definitely think It's possible that Hunt was a fine collaborator and treated people fairly regardless of their gender. But, once you're on record publicly endorsing sexist ideas, it's hard to recover from, especially as a scientist operating in the 21st century. He dug himself deeper by offering up an apology that was actually a combination of a non-apology and a reaffirmation of his commitment to what he was ostensibly apologizing for. He gets no points for being 21st century savvy.

Was he a predatory? I dunno, seems unlikely. But I don't think the problematic parts of his perspective necessarily result in overtly predatory behavior. What his apparent perspective implies to me is that he wanted to fuck his female coworkers and that he thinks that women are overly emotional. With respect to the former, cool. Men, women, who doesn't give at least cursory attention to the notion of fucking their coworkers? With respect to the latter, that just raises a bunch of questions for me. Questions like, if he thinks women are more emotional than men, does that mean he might not assign a particularly difficult task to a women because he is concerned that the difficulty might make her cry? Maybe. Or maybe he gives her the task anyway and just expects her to cry. Neither of these are predatory. One seems bad, the other less so.

Social media is undoubtedly terrible in its tendency towards groupthink and reflexive aggression. But the pile ons are also very frequently nestled in amongst really thoughtful conversations and essays that clarify and contextualize the ideas at play. It's all very chaotic and kind of awesome. And the pile ons are equal opportunity affairs. The social media response I saw through my admittedly heavily curated vantage point was either 1) women scientists venting about how ridiculous it is to have to deal with the sentiments expressed in Hunt's joke (sentiments that he apparently is not shy about seriously endorsing) and 2) dudes complaining about what a raw deal he was getting. Both of these groups could have accurately be described as reflexive, as piler on-ers. Neither of them necessarily played any role in Hunt keeping his pretend job. The people actually responsible for forcing him out are his employers and they had any number of valid reasons to want to be rid of him and social media outrage is only one of those reasons.

 

And this right here is the crux of the problem: He did no such thing. He made a joke that was very warmly received by everyone except, it would seem, the person who'd made a career of fraud and deceit up to and including completely lying about what he'd said and how it went. Lies which both of you continue to believe despite even recordings proving them to be lies having been produced.

Like I said, even when the recordings proving you both wrong are right there it still doesn't matter because Big Sister has said Tim Hunt was always a sexist. That's how little both of you care about the truth. There's a goddamn recording proving the very core of the things you are saying are utterly wrong right. fucking. there.

And you don't care.

That's fucking terrifying.

I can get my head around it just fine, I've even explicitly unpacked the problems with your apologia's broken logic several times before including sidestepping it by pointing out the lack of a CEO, board of directors, and corporate/military/clerical hierarchy is irrelevant when there are still phenomenally popular and influential public figures and clearly defined political and ideological overlap briefly a few posts back. You may as well insist that there's no such thing as christianity because of the schism, reformation, and further splits of protestantism. Yes they all have their differences but they're all very definitely still Christianity and it's the height of disingenuity and sophistry to claim there's no such thing as the larger overarching branches of Christianity such as Protestantism or even Christianity as a whole.

What you're doing is akin to a false dichotomy. You're insisting there is no "universal feminism" therefore all truly substantive criticisms levied at feminism as a movement are invalid because there's no such thing as a convenient monolithic Feminism-The-Organization to criticise, and anything worthy of criticism is either Lies or was committed by a dismissable individual No True Feminist/"vocal minority". Feminism is thus impossible to ever criticize on any scale because Feminism per se is arbitrarily excluded and any more granular examples given are likewise cut away piece by piece as not being a "true feminist" or being a "vocal minority" or some other convenient handwave.

Which is also fucking terrifying because that makes you the guy who's literally defending a mob by saying there was no such thing as Mob-Incorporated with a CEO and a board of directors therefore nobody can be guilty and the people who whipped up and led the mob can't be criticized. The way you've got your logic-traps set up there's literally no way to ever criticize an ideology/political movement that is so fiercely tribal and coherent in its ideology that one of its most defining factors is that very tribalism and its growing tendency to turn on its own in stalinist style purges for slights real or imagined.

 

What the fuck are you talking about? I am basing my OPINION on what was said and how it was received by a few sources. His wife, friends who were there, and even Tim Hunt himself. As neither of us were actually there, I think it's pretty safe to say that anything either of us has to say about his speech, especially given there are no recordings, is OPINION.

I am fairly confident the my read on it is fairly accurate. I would be willing to adjust with more information but am basing on some people who seem to be pretty close to the subject. So fuck you and you trying to paint me with your brush. Seriously, why do you have to be such a fucking asshole all the time?

Three paragraphs to prove you don't and can't get your head around it.

 

First off you can shout the word "OPINION" all you want, it doesn't change the reality that you're promulgating as fact judgments based on wholly disproven libels and slanders.

And second as I've provided there is plenty evidence from people who were there, including recordings you continue to blindly insist don't exist, that prove you're basing your "opinions" on a mountain of lies and libel.

This is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of facts. Facts which were ignored in favor of blind adherence to ideology and the party line.

And you've had two pages to prove you don't and can't get your head around that.

 

Just so we are all clear, the discussion is currently about whether I believe Tim Hunt's preamble to his speech contained lame, poorly delivered jokes. I am using as a source for this information Tim Hunt and Tim Hunt's wife from radio interview I heard with each of them where they said he was trying to be funny but failed in his delivery.

Apparently, this amounts to libel and slander.

Last I checked, if some one says something on the record and I repeat it, that is neither libel nor slander.

I really don't know why you, Shadowex, are so determined to shape what I saying into something other than I said. It's really counterproductive.

As for recordings, when I last read up and listened to both Hunt and his wife eat there were no recordings. I have looked just now and read they exist but can't find the actual recording (not that it matters). As I have said consistently, I think Hunt was ill treated in this whole affair! Despite your attempts to position my statements as otherwise.

You wonder why I think you are an asshole? The answer is in the last two sentences above. You are so sure you know all that you would rather slander me (yet again) that actually contemplate that my position is more nuanced than your asinine worldview permits.

 

Once again proving my point for me: They weren't sexist in the first place, and if your "majority/no true feminist" apologia were remotely true then yes prominent feminists would be defending Tim Hunt from the lies-from-start-to-finish witch-hunt led against him by a fraud. Just like there would be prominent feminists defending Nungesser and Gjoni while condemning Amy Schumer for being a rapist by their own standards.

 

Hunt has publicly acknowledged that his joke was dumb, but that he stood by its sentiment. It isn't deceptive to treat these facts like facts.

Does it really require a ton of thought to understand why there aren't any prominent feminists willing to defend Gjoni or Nungesser? I mean, who is Nungesser? The ace fighter pilot and rival to Charles Lindbergh? Does he need to be defended by feminists?

Gjoni is the guy who vomited up the acrid, half-digested mountain dew that served as the mother's milk of Gamer Gate when he posted, in as many places as possible, a rambling screed about how terrible his ex girlfriend was and how she cheated on him. Geez, I wonder why this guy, who is famous because he successfully sicced an internet mob on his ex girlfriend, doesn't get a ton of respect from feminists.