I'm discouraged by some of the comments at that first thread you linked above. Not the ones by posters active in A+, they're pretty much saying the same things they have been over at A+ & in some cases at FtB so that's no surprise.aqi wrote:[spoiler][/spoiler]Ape+lust wrote:I think I'll bring this up again:Skep tickle wrote:...But all he was trying to do was to ask her whether she might be interested in hooking up, just like several Skepchick-style feminists have since said** is what people should do when they're interested in someone...
**I'm forgetting who, but Justicar had a video linked somewhere in the Slyme pit from ~7/2012 that I watched yesterday which pointed this out, and I think more recently one of them posted something about this (Zvan? Amy? Can't recall who, nor where).
Brian Dunning of Skeptoid is a guy the Skepchicks went after twice for alleged sexism. A couple of months after the second time, in the midst of the Elevator hoo-hah, Brian wrote an article that included this:
The Skepchicks haven't messed with him since. Nor have they mentioned this incident. Sexual harassment was the Big Issue of the day, yet they ignored this. You've gotta wonder why, hmmmm...Brian Dunning wrote:After my wife and I attended our first two TAM conferences, we almost considered never coming back. The reason is that we both received an unusual number of unwanted sexual advances — interestingly, they were all from women (some of whom have personally been quite vocal in criticizing me for what they perceive as sexism pervading skepticism, but we’ll save hypocrisy for a different discussion for a different day).
--- July 5, 2011
http://skeptoid.com/blog/2011/07/05/sex ... kepticism/
Maybe he learned to be a decent, non-sexist guy. Or maybe it's a coincidence. Yeah, that's it, it's a big fat honking coincidence.
One name was named at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyat ... ing-names/
but how many consenting people hooked up and regretted it and then used that to start wars. For example, who was the woman that DJ Grothe said was gifted a signed book after spending the night with an author at a conference and was angry about it?
Consenting adults are going to include skeptical popular figures, some have been open about it casually in conversations at events; Dunning said in the past he is poly and isn't ashamed of it and shouldn't be. Also: http://www.polygroups.com/g/polyamory-sans-woo in. What makes it wrong are the hypocrites who hooked up and now pretend they weren't also playing the popularity game.
What jacks me is critics of Mayhew say she has a boyfriend who is a popular skeptic and dates him for that reason only. What if you slept with popular skeptic and atheist men at conferences , then married a popular UK skeptic figure and now live with a boyfriend you met at TAM who also works for USA skeptics and atheists and promotes you? Is that a chill girl like Mayhew or just cooincidence? Hypocrites.
It's the others, who use full sentences and otherwise look reasonable at first, but who advocate quite significant constraints on individuals &/or their behavior. (For example, "no sex if you're a speaker", apparently originated by Jen based on how it's presented in the comments at that link, by someone who thinks it's a good start.)
The amusing-ish aspects include:
(1) the intense heterosexual focus ('men need to curb their behavior! women are at risk of sexual harassment/assault!')
(2) the assumption, more often implicit than explicit but present in many of the posts, that women need to be protected, not only from evil men (even if they're the minority of men), but also from their own judgment & decisions.