Sarlug wrote:Is anyone else starting to think that maybe the SJWs have a point? We keep seeing shit pop up about Groethe and Shermer, welch has done a good job showing why Sam Harris is being stupid about the profiling thing, and Dawkins' various "mild pedophilia" and "honey" gaffes are kinda starting to pile up, to the point where it almost seems like he's going senile or some shit.
Don't get me wrong, they do plenty of silly shit themselves ("Anyone who makes fun of feminism is MARC LEPINE!!" and the infamous Grenade), but sometimes I really do wonder about "our side", whatever it is. :?
Sorry if this seems like concern-trolling or tone-trolling, but I do wonder.
You're welcome to ask those questions. There is no side here. It's an open forum and it is made by everyone who posts here. Nobody is stopping critics of Dawkins etc. to sign up. Nobody also speaks for the Slymepit, so even that is an opinion.
I don't feel I am somehow in a team with Grothe or Shermer just because some other gang dislikes them, and I happen to dislike what this other gang does. If tomorrow came out that every single accusation was true, it would not change anything for me. Many people didn't like Grothe's comments on trans here, and I don't recall where people defended Shermer
just because. The main point has been that someone should be considered innocent until pronounced guilty and that such a case was better handled by proper authorities, not by some rage bloggers and his horde who didn't like him anyway. I didn't find the arguments of the accusers convincing, either. I simply don't believe people they wanted to protect women, but waited some years before it occured to them to make a point about it (and then, despite knowing four names at least, swept some under the rug quickly again when they noticed it would be perhaps a little bit too much). Many of these things seem to go back to a feud of Carrie Poppy with some other people, as she is behind many of the allegations. She was washing dirty linen in public.
It is similar with Dawkins. Here we have "Dear Muslima" manufactuversy and Rebecca Watson who started a campaign against him. Dawkins always had his fleas who criticized him: the faithful, accommodationists and culturalist never liked him for various reasons. When Rebecca Watson became a polarizing figure, Dawkins and everyone in here landed on the
other side. And just as everyone else was subsequently demonized by Myers and the gang. Once you have a narrative in place, you can exploit it and frame everything. Oh look, Dawkins is finding a cure for cancer to help his reputation! I mean, Twitter is not exactly a platform for important historical monologues. Can't he tweet about the little things and connect it with some point? What exactly is the problem with it? And his "mild pedophilia" is also context dependent. Something happened
to him. And he alone can place how harmful or terrible it was
to him, and I hope it doesn't need discussion that transgression of that kind aren't On/Off but also have qualitative differences from watching boys in the shower to raping them. I didn't see convincing discussions by the Commentariat gang on relative to absolute meaning, etc. But the idiot gang was led by their hatred of Dawkins since "dear Muslima" and thus went for the most negative interpretation available. Everything else was just written around it (as usual).
Harris -- the same thing. He is hated by the SJW brigades and then they assume everyone who isn't on their side must embrace Harris' every thought. This isn't the case. I don't even see a need to pass judgement over a whole person with diverse opinions and some body of work, much less cast them away because they might have said something I didn't agree with. This is the difference. If there is a side, it's the Commentariat, united as judgemental people who hate and who think Highlander-Style (t/h ERV) that if they got rid of the current leadership their own gang could take over the movement. Maybe not as comical, but at the very least, advance their own agenda points.
It is their hatred and their conformist views that have them emerge as one side, the "other side" is pretty much everyone else -- and they are still more like herding cats. Otherwise "this other side" would have already ganged up and laughed Myers, Watson, Zvan, Benson and Co. out of the room.