Let's Start a Letter Writing Campaign

It won't do any good since it'll be about me and to me, but maybe if we shop it around, Ophelia Benson, can pick up that new broomstick she's been eying lately. Note, I'm extending to her a courtesy she doesn't feel obliged to extend to others - it's generally considered netiquette to link to people whom you're trashing.  Alas, it's unsurprising given some of the shit she writes.  Remember, tone is irrelevant so long as it's Ophelia's tone that's under consideration.  But if you say something a way she dislikes, well, now tone is important. Also, so is a woman's choice in clothing.

So, let's review where I stand:
Ophelia Benson: not a fan of mine.

Miranda Celeste: not a fan of mine either, but I think she could tolerate knowing we breathe the same air
ERV/Abbie: she understands that most of what I've written is satire for the sake of ridiculing stupid things, but I'm not getting a card. She's also a supporter of unfettered free expression. She and Miranda are unique among the major players in this drama in that regard. Curious, the gender traitors are the only ones who don't advocate silencing criticism, who don't campaign for people to be moderated out of consideration.  Weird, huh?
PZ Myers: I'm going to guess he's not a fan either
Jen and Rebecca: I'll venture a guess they hate me slightly more than Ophelia
Philip Legge: has a man crush on me I think. He has no link in his profile, and I'm not researching him. If anyone has a link to him, let me know and I'll edit it in.

Ok, there are some of the bigger players; there are others, but this list isn't meant to be exhaustive.

Ophelia has accused me of committing a high crime:  calling Rebecca "Twatson".  This, incidentally, she says in the same breath that she insults Twatson* for wearing the wrong kind of clothes.  A proper lady who wants to taken seriously cannot wear clothing from certain stores apparently.  But, remember because this is key, I'm the sexist here.  Of course, to give her credit, her sexism isn't exclusive to women:  men wearing the wrong clothes is also important. For instance, she wouldn't want to see a couple of the four horsemen in a midrift.   But I'm the sexist.

Ophelia counters with a complaint against Miranda for "allowing" me the ability to think something and then say it.  This is apparently a significant emotional event for Ophelia.  Miranda's riposte is curious: I would hope you [that's Ophelia] wouldn't want commenters on your blog who call women "gender traitors" and make death threats. Ophelia parries quite nicely:  gender traitor isn't so bad. What really counts is that it's a sexist epithet.  Death threats - gender traitor, well, we all have priorities, no?

There's one guy Philip Legge who is not impressed with me. Not one bit.  But he apparently wants to find my real name in a bad way. No doubt to get me fired or cause other work troubles. Well, no matter, I own my own business. So, whatever.  Anyway, he goes on to explain that he did a selective sampling of my videos, and I suck. But he admits it might be possible that I do argue in good faith elsewhere in them.

Note, he's watched a maximum of about 4 videos of about a 100 videos. And he chose them selectively. So, yay for good selection controls there - pick the ones you want so that you'll confirm what you already know! That is to say, only about Rebecca Twatson (and my entry for DMD 2 this year).  Anyway, I guess satire isn't a concept these people have a firm grasp of. Also, he says that I am strawmanning arguments with some variety of hyperbole.  (Again, he doesn't know what it is that constitutes satire apparently)  But the curious thing is that among the videos he watched was, um, well, let's just say that it was quoted almost verbatim from the original article.  I just changed the pronouns. Fucking idiot. The entire video from which he takes this bit is on Schrodinger's Rapist, which posits that all men are simultaneously a rapist and not a rapist.  But I, somehow or another, managed to erect a strawman by changing only pronouns in the video. Oh, and I changed "rapist" to "rape victim" or variants thereof. But it's a strawman - a verbatim fucking strawman. What an intellectually deficient person he is.

Philip: the point of it is is that all men are simultaneously rapists and not rapists.  I'm sorry that your reading skills have prevented you from picking that up.  Here's the relevant bit dear old Philip can't quite figure out (I know, quantum mechanical raping is difficult to understand, so don't blame him):

When you approach me in public, you are Schrödinger’s Rapist. You may or may not be a man who would commit rape.

Foul! He whines:

he continually over-emphasises his contrariness by asserting a belief that is not actually held by his opponents (like, “but what would I know, I’m only a man which by feminist definition means I’m a rapist…” – not an exact quote but a commonly employed trope in his writing as well), and his language is deliberately crude and incendiary.

Of course, I'd be remiss not to thank him for this:

the channel is a masterful demonstration of how one can be an intelligent gay male and also a despicable misogynist.

I kind of thought of the work as mediocre at best. After all, it's derision and satire. These are the lowest form of wit. For something that's actually decent, check out my Radical Spiderism. That's a decently written allegory.

Now, I want to end with a lie that Philip has told. It has shown up several times. By many different people.  Namely,

He is not interested in a dialogue: he doesn’t listen to women’s points of view if they don’t reinforce his point of view and he loves the sound of his own voice.

 In one of the videos of mine he watched, he couldn't have missed but for sheer stupidity the very, very long heavily quoted exchange between two women with screen captures no less! I agreed with one of them. So, he's no better than wrong half of the time. Further, I agree largely with Miranda, Abbie, my sister-in-law, my roommate, Paula Kirby, Mary Ann Waters, and a litany of other women, and even some young women like my oldest and her friends. His complaint isn't that I won't listen to women; his complaint is that I'm only listening to the stupid women. The women whose opinions on the matter aren't relevant. The women who aren't smart enough to escape the spiderarchy, err, patriarchy. You know, the kind of woman who should know her place, sit down and listen very carefully so she'll know what to think and say if accidentally left on her own long enough for someone to ask her a question.

It's not that I don't listen to women. I just listen to the women he doesn't think should get to have an opinion.

But remember:  I'm the misogynist, and the sexist. None of that counts because I used the word Twatson. But the women to whom I am listening, well, they don't count because they're the inoffensively termed gender traitors.

One also notes that Ophelia doesn't seem to have the slightest problem with letters starting off "Dear Dick". Remember though, sexist epithets are her dealbreaker. No, Ophelia, they aren't.  Tone is only important, offense is only important, rudeness is only important to you when it's heading in a direction you disapprove of. So long as someone agrees with you, there's almost nothing too repugnant for you to countenance.

One final note, I'm labeled as a person who hates women because I use words that some, not most - just some, women dislike.  I'm a sexist because my response to the "Dear Dick" campaign is "Twatson". But Ophelia Benson and her ilk are the champions of women everywhere, provided it's the right kind of woman that is.  Yes, I've used some rude words.  I don't exclude from consideration people with whom I vehemently disagree by removing their status as people worth being heard. I don't make it a point to have people banned from as many places as possible because they have the fucking temerity to disagree with me.


You do.

But I'm the misogynist here. I'm the sexist. Fuck you.

*Twatson rightly calls Ophelia out on this blatant sexism. There is no correlation between the merit of what one says, and what one looks like, or how one dresses. Twatson, I think you're utterly wrong on almost every point of the last week's ordeal, but on this you are spot on and I fully support your statement to Ophelia on it. But don't listen to me, I'm a sexist. And I hate women too. So I'm told anyway.