Elfie, let me tell you a few things about feminism…

Click here

OK, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I would appreciate it if you would address the following concerns:

1) How many years does a feminist work in a male dominated profession before I am not allowed to express an opinion that may be contrary to what she says, according to Zuska? How strongly held or well supported does my opinion have to be before I can speak? Is there, like, a lookup table or something?

2) Who the fuck are you talking about, anyway? Are you referring to GG? Do you even know who she is? Do you respect her decision to not care about NUMERICALLY biased sex ratio and attribute them, apparently, to something innate to women that makes them bad at public speaking? (or not willing to speak, or whatever?)

3) Do you understand, and here’s my Elfsplaining coming on full force, that you are serving a third party’s purpose? That you have opted in with the idea of choosing what I get to say and when, and when I can and can not feel comfortable expressing my opinion… on my own blog? Do you feel used? Because you were. It is sad to see the Elves used in this way.

4) Which, in all due respect to you and Zuska, is rather sad.

What do you know of Greg’s credentials, when it comes to understanding cultures and how cultures change? What do you know of GG’s credentials for the same? Funny, I don’t know what GG’s credentials are when it comes to understanding culture might be, but based on her comments, that is not something that is part of her field.

Greg is not always right – on occasion he is very, very wrong (at least by my thinking). The fact that he happens to have a penis, does not magically make him wrong about this. And while we all know of and appreciate the things that GG has done, her having done them and the fact that she happens to have a vagina, does not magically make her right.

From a current Zuska post…

Ok, that’s all I needed to know. Thanks, and have a nice life.

From a current Zuska post on mansplaining:

“Mansplaining is when a dude tells you, a woman, how to do something you already know how to do, or how you are wrong about something you are actually right about, or miscellaneous and inaccurate “facts” about something you know a hell of a lot more about than he does.

Bonus points if he is explaining how you are wrong about something being sexist!”

In this case, we’ve got Greg lecturing the feminist who has fought for 35 years in a male dominated profession to bring a little bit of feminist light – definitely bonus points!! Woohoo!!

I don’t think you understand me. As a woman, I don’t feel respected or understood here, in this comment thread. So why would I possibly want to associate with people like this in real life? (Caia)

I’m sorry you feel that way Caia, and I’m sorry to hear that you want me to change my policies Luna. Katharine, I’m sure it was noticed but I suspect many commenters were waiting for it, some saw it as over the top but also understood why I might be quite angry, and some probably though “Yeah, ’bout time.”

Caia, you are not a woman on this comment thread. You are the person who calls herself “Caia.” I was speaking to Becca, not to you. And Becca is not a woman on this thread. SHe is a person with a long history of abusing the openess of comment policy here, with a history of damaging productive conversations, of ruining efforts to make postive things happen, and she is a person who got off easy.

I am not going to openly discuss all the details, but in the best of worlds, Becca had the habit of hijacking important threads (important to me … and this is my blog, so that counts) about important topics (important to me, and this is my blog so that counts) in order to play her psychologically very sick game, at a loss to people, causes, points, other things that simply took it in the neck for no good reason other than her demented amusement whenever she chose to go after a certain thread.

I’m pretty sure that Becca, who is very smart, saw an escalation coming from me and left. That is how most trolls eventually leave this blog (to have a relatively open comment system it is hard to really screen out the trolls). I have never banned Becca, but I was just about to, and it would have been technically difficult to do so.

In fact, you can place Becca along side Mike H and Dave Mabus and the others as the reasons that commenter registration will eventually be required on this blog and probably all science blogs. You can blame the Tylenol killer for all that plastic wrapping as well. Probably cousins of Becca.

So, if you feel that my insults to Becca, which I acknowledge as incredibly over the top obnoxious, and terrible, and that I wish I never said, are also insults to you, then you need to stop reading this blog, go away, and don’t come back. I have no need of readers who feel comfortable being my judge, jury, and executioner. None whatsoever. Zero. Nada. I would apologize and I would even delete the comments, but I can’t. Do you know why? Because it would not satisfy Becca and it would not satisfy you.

There are a lot of ways in which I really, really like Becca. But, my life is busy and rich and distracting enough that I don’t need to engage in the kind of shit I was required to engage in to have her as a regular (even if mainly blogospheric) part of it. And I would assume that anyone who feels deeply harmed by my obnoxiously over the top terribly insulting comments to her, rather than thinking “OMG, that’s a bad situation between those two people, how unfortunate” should probably just go away now.

A friend emailed me and suggested that I “fix” this situation because Becca, as a troll, has essentially “won” because many of my regular readers will now leave this blog because I told Becca to get off the rag.

For those of you who feel this way, bye. And on your way out the door, don’t forget to toss a remark over your shoulder about how I can’t be trusted to not say hurtful things without provocation. Make sure your denial-o-matics are fully tuned up on that one. I truly hope you never have to deal with this sort of situation yourself, and I hope that if you do, if you ever in fact get mad enough at someone to tell them to kiss your ass in whatever way comes to mind, that you don’t have people lining up to slap your wrists, and I hope that if they do line up to slap your wrists, they do it quickly then go away forever.

Oh, and i hope you never, ever, ever make any sort of mistake that someone might possibly take offense at and judge you by. You haven’t yet, have you? Have you?

And yes, I’m still really pissed and I’m probably not going to be unpissed (at Becca) for at least a week.

Now, it is true that a small amount of analysis could broaden the case a bit … to suggest whenever we see any institutional representation (sex, race, whatever) that is NUMERICALLY biased there is a reason external to the institution and internal to the people who demonstrate the bias. That suggests that if 80% of TAM speakers are men, then men are either a) more often skeptical or b) smarter or c) better speakers than women. If most basketball players are black, then there may be an innate athletic ability possessed by black people. And so on.

In most institutions that have any degree of certain kinds of regulation in the US (meaning institutions with enough employees to have individuals assigned to HR duties to open all that pesky junk mail that comes from the Gummit) there will be an understanding of numerical bias as a thing to measure and deal with. In institutions that have a strong social/anthropological self reference there will be an understanding that these numerical biases are often self fulfilling.

But the organization we are talking about here are basically clubs put together with two characteristics pertinent to this discussion, IMO: They are not professionalized and they are run by people who are very smart. People who are very smart but not professionalized often make this kind of mistake.

Professionaliziation means you know to look for certain things and to avoid or do certain things. People who are very smart often operate under the tacit assumption that they are smart enough to reinvent the wheel when needed. Professionalization is a way of making sure all the wheels are attached properly. Being very smart and not professionalized often means that the wheels are not attached or even not even available.

I see that GG and Jeff have hurt feelings. I’m sorry about that. But eventually they will both (and I think Jeff indicated he was very much on his way there on the cited podcast) understand that they (meaning the leaders of these organizations including GG and Jeff) are actually the ones that need to act to make more even ratios. They have arrived on the scene as the unwitting keepers of a self fulfilling prophecy, which they have the power to break.

I’ll also mention this because it has come up here and on the basketball thread: Yes, yes, of course, there are organizations that have strong numerical biases. My wife is a member of a group of “moms” tha happens to be all female, for instance. African American organizations were formed years ago to fight racism. When the racism goes away maybe they will too. Although the one person I know who knows most about sports happens to be female, her husband’s fantasy football league is mostly guys. And so on.

But I object strenuously to the existence of a mostly male club for skeptical people, and I object extra strenuously to the assumption that such a thing is OK, not biased, and unfixable.

If Greg had a vagina, instead of a penis, would you be nearly so adamant?

The notion that because someone happens to do all sorts of great and admirable things, they cannot be wrong is absurd. That is very much like arguing because someone has a PhD, they must be right.

Someone who doesn’t have the desire to see equity is looking at things rather ass backward and making decisions based on those assumptions that will have that effect.

You might also reconsider “not trying hard enough” and replace it with “just flat mistaken.” Nowhere did Greg bash GG for not doing enough – he just fervently disagreed with the notion that equity is not to be sought after.