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I am continually amazed by people and their ability to be rational in one aspect of their life and the ability to completely ignore rationality in other aspects of their life. The example that I often see is people who are in evidence based professions, especially the ones that require the application of scientific rigor, that ignore the same critical thinking skills when it comes to their theism. However I now have a new shining example of this and it saddens me because he used to be a person I had a lot of respect for.
What Happened!?!?
The person I am talking about is Thundefoot of course. For the people who don’t know him, he is a scientist who has gained popularity on Youtube mostly by debating theists. Although debate may be a poor choice of term to describe what usually when on when he talked with these people. Evisceration perhaps? But I digress, this post isn’t really about that. It’s about what happened since he joined Free Thought Blogs. Thunderfoot decided to throw his hat into the ring in a controversy in the greater atheist community.
This controversy started when Rebecca Watson gave a talk at a skeptic conference about sexism and added personal antidotes about how being sexualized at these conferences creeps her out. Later that night (at 4am) she was at the bar and decided to call it a night. Unfortunately another attendee decided to tailgate her into the elevator and ask her to his room for “coffee” in an overt pickup artist move of cornering. When Rebecca Watson got home, she posted a video of experiences and talked about the cornering and said Guys, Don’t Do That. Apparently this act of defiance of male privilege was taking things too far and she was sent a shitstorm of death and rape threats by the skeptical community at large.
The saga continued up until this year’s convention where recently the organizer of the event had the gall to blame her for the extreme reduction of female attendees. And this is where Thunderfoot enters the equation. He entered with a blatant sexist joke with a picture of Darth Vader, jabbed with a “This isn’t a big problem” (correction , it read “*THIS REALLY ISN’T A BIG PROBLEM*”), a left cross of Talking About Sexism Is The Problem, Not Sexism, and delivered the knockout blow (paraphrased) So STFU About All This Stuff. It was a truly epic saga of bullshit.
After he got called out on this by P.Z. Myers he got all butthurt. And since then he’s been removed from Free Thought Blogs. And the butthurt continues. Once wonders where it will end. For more on this simply google elevatorgate.
TL;DR
Thunderfoot goes all sexist and then gets all butthurt when there is a blow-back from the womenz. Sad days for Bleatmop as someone he used to respect makes a mockery of himself.
The nickname, which was never used by the composer himself but was introduced only early in the 19th century, originates from a story about how Scarlatti came up with the strikingly unusual motif on which the fugue is built. Legend has it that Scarlatti had a pet cat called Pulcinella, who was described by the composer as prone to walking across the keyboard, always curious about its sounds.
On one occasion, according to the story, Scarlatti wrote down a phrase from one of these “improvisation sessions”, and used it as a lead motif in a fugue:
The nickname was used in concert programmes in the 19th Century (see Performances section below), and was also used by publishers including Muzio Clementi, Carl Czerny and Alessandro Longo.[1]
Influence
The piece was published in London in 1739. George Frideric Handel, famous for his reuse of his own music and ‘borrowings’ from the works of others, wrote his Grand Concertos, Op. 6 between late September and late October 1739 and the strange descending intervals of the second movement of No. 3 are reminiscent of Scarlatti’s piece.[2] Early 19th century theorist and composer Anton Reicha knew the work and wrote a fugue on the same subject for his 36 Fugues of 1803.[3]
From a great interview on Alter.net –
“LP: Some say that if we redistribute income in a more equitable way, people won’t want to work as hard. Is that true? What happens to our motivation to work when things are so inequitable?
JS: One of the myths that I try to destroy is the myth that if we do anything about inequality it will weaken our economy. And that’s why the title of my book is The Price of Inequality. What I argue is that if we did attack these sources of inequality, we would actually have a stronger economy. We’re paying a high price for this inequality. Now, one of the mischaracterizations of those of us who want a more equal or fairer society, is that we’re in favor of total equality, and that would mean that there would be no incentives. That’s not the issue. The question is whether we could ameliorate some of the inequality — reduce some of the inequality by, for instance, curtailing monopoly power, curtailing predatory lending, curtailing abusive credit card practices, curtailing the abuses of CEO pay. All of those kinds of things, what I generically call “rent seeking,” are things that distort and destroy our economy.
So in fact, part of the problem of low taxes at the top is that since so much of the income at the very top is a result of rent seeking, when we lower the taxes, we’re effectively lowering the taxes on rent seeking, and we’re encouraging rent-seeking activities. When we have special provisions for capital gains that allow speculations to be taxed at a lower rate than people who work for a living, we encourage speculation. So that if you look at the design bit of our tax structure, it does create incentives for doing the wrong thing.”
The burgeoning inequality in the US is rotting civil society away, the sooner the US decides to address the issue the better.
Popular culture certainly has it in for women, they wind up dead surprisingly often.
Oh and a link to the actual site of the WiR trope.
Every once and awhile I feel the need to put information that is important into a blog post for easy reference. Today’s post is an amalgamation of the concept of Mansplaining, what it involves and how and why it happens.
Let’s start of with a definition:
Mansplaining isn’t just the act of explaining while male, of course; many men manage to explain things every day without in the least insulting their listeners.
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!
Think about the men you know. Do any of them display that delightful mixture of privilege and ignorance that leads to condescending, inaccurate explanations, delivered with the rock-solid conviction of rightness and that slimy certainty that of course he is right, because he is the man in this conversation?
That dude is a mansplainer.”
Another definition: Mansplaining — you know mansplaining, right? It’s that loud, annoying, repetitive alarm call that men emit whenever they perceive a lower-status person challenging their authority — isn’t really so goddam hilarious in and of itself. This is because it is a hallmark of domination culture, because it is comprised primarily of meaningless noise (whether taken in or out of context), and because it is obfuscatory, oppressive, denigrating, sexist, and rude. It can only achieve comic status when openly mocked. Preferably by an angry mob.
More definition goodness from the comment thread:
“This is clearly a form of taxonomy, where we are classifying a form of speech. Specifically:
“the use of male privilege to justify condescending and unnecessary explanation to an equally or more knowledgeable female.”
Note 1: This applies even when the speaker has no clue that the recipient is female, and indeed when the genders of all participants are completely indeterminate.
Note 2: There is apparently some sort of “male privilege” concept which holds between two anonymous bloggers of no discernible gender.
Note 3: Some feel that this phenomenon can occur between men, though others disagree. Both sides agree that the concept that is inherently about minz talking down to wimminz because they are wimminz – even when the recipients are minz or presumed to be minz. It’s unclear whether the reverse holds true, ie, whether a valid charge of mansplaining can be upheld when the anonymous speaker is actually and/or presumed to be a wimminz – more testing in this area may be required.
Note 4: Questioning why anyone feels the need to inject sexism as an explanation into a situation completely devoid of gender roles or identity is sexist, and a form of mansplaining.
Note 5: On balance, mansplaining seems to be more of a convenient label which describes the *response* to dialog rather than the dialog itself. Overall, it seems to be a specific solution of the “why can’t [subgroup] just shut up and realize how right I am all of the time?” for cases where [subgroup] == men and [speaker] = female. Of course, many such solutions exist, including the converse for [subgroup] == women, [subgroup] == foreigners, [subgroup] == [members of hated political party], etc.
Recommend further testing to validate this hypothesis.”
Of course we need a heartwarming anecdote:
“And, as perhaps one of my all-time favorite examples of mansplaining, one time, my girlfriend and I were eating dinner with a white male human. During the course of this meal, I recounted a true story about a high school in the Midwest whose mascot used to be a racial slur for a Chinese person. This mascot was changed sometime in the early 1980s, due to members of this racial minority group protesting. After I told this story, at which many members of the dinner party were quite horrified, the white male human dinner companion misread what, exactly, everyone else was horrified about. Instead, he replied, with perfect certainty, “That is what you call Political Correctness Gone Awry,” and then proceeded to continue eating his Man Food, assuming that the conversation was over now that he had sufficiently mansplained the travesty that had occurred.
His lack of empathy aside, it was that deadly combo of dead certainty that his point of view was completely objective coupled with that incompetent assumption that he was automatically more In The Know About Things than all women present that pretty much defines the art of mansplanation. Yet, the privilege of his race cannot be discounted here, either. Oftentimes, whiteness and maleness work together to exponentially increase a man’s propensity to mansplain.
And so this instance, was also a classic case of whitesplaining, whereby a white person whitesplains how a person of color is “wrong” about something being racist against people of color. It’s the same basic idea as mansplaining- as both are grounded in the privilege of one’s identity being considered society’s default and, therefore, more objective than the experiences of Other identities.
Whereas whitesplaining is the result of the white experience being “normed,” mansplaining, is the logical result of males possessing the privilege whereby they are largely assumed to be both default human beings and automatically competent at life. If white people and men, and especially white males, are not aware of this, they are incredibly likely to wrongly assume themselves to be more competent than women and people of color at pretty much everything, up to and including what it means to live as a female or person of color in society.”
Not a bad start, and for the record if you get referred here please take the time to read and understand the concepts mentioned above, it will save everyone a lot of time.
I’m sure this new legislation in France will impress the hell out of libertarians world wide. The French have identified that statistically, alcohol is involved in some 30% of traffic collisions. The solution? Mandatory breathalysers in every car. Al Jazeera breaks this story wide open:
“A new motoring law has come into effect in France, whereby it will be compulsory for drivers to carry breathalyser kits in their vehicles.From Sunday, motorists and motorcyclists risk facing an on-the-spot fine unless they travel with two single-use devices. The law is part of a government initiative to reduce the figures of drink-driving related fatalities. The new regulations, which exclude mopeds, will be fully enforced and include foreign drivers from November 1, following a four-month grace period. Anyone failing to produce a breathalyser after that date will receive an 11 euro fine.”
This is step in the right direction as people continue to drink and drive killing themselves and others by the thousand. Good show France. :)
Oh, here is how to beat the Breathalyser, it will only cost you your dignity.
The speech is only 30 minutes long, the rest is an extended Q&A session.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…