LMU wrote:I just read the transcript and thought it was a good point. But your answers are good too.
Additionally, remember who is trying to ban who, who is trying to make who a "pariah". Maybe some people here think that the FC(n) should shut up or maybe just stop getting speaking gigs, but I haven't heard anyone say that they shouldn't be allowed to attend at all, that they should be banned from the community entirely. But that *is* what they are saying about us. We make fun of them, but our problem is with their ideas and what they say, they have a problem with us even existing in their sight. Not fighting them doesn't just mean that dogmatism takes over the community, it also means that anyone who was marked as an unperson will be expelled.
My attitude is that in their current sorry state, the FTB/Skepchick/A+ people do not deserve to be speakers at events. But this opinion of mine is not based on personal animus, despite the contempt I hold for most of them. It's based on the fact that what they talk about is either
A) Not relevant to skeptic/atheist events. (Feminist issues, and "People are mean to me on the Internet" wharrgarbl).
B) Poorly researched and even more poorly delivered unscientific rubbish googled-up at the last minute. Evo-psych, anyone?
This crap has no place at convention speaker podiums, but unfortunately the organizers currently seem to be succumbing to the temptation to cater to the cults of personality that exist in the community. They're dumbing down their conventions in order to provide a sense of supposed "big name celebrity" speakers, and sacrificing quality and interesting presentations by qualified speakers in the name of larger attendance statistics. So really, the people who organize these things have to take as much blame as the idiots who stumble up to the mic and blather out irrelevant and incoherent messes.
This is NOT my saying these people should be banned or made pariahs. That's THEIR tactic, not mine. This is about wanting the A/S community to get back on track. If all of a sudden PZ, Rebecca, et al would stop trying to hijack the community with this militant radfem garbage, and started giving quality presentations that were within the scope of issues that are actually relevant to the community, I'd have absolutely no problem with them stepping up to the mic. But they're never going to change their awful ways, so we continue speak out against them.
The sad thing is, they have already gotten what they claimed was all they wanted - almost all conventions already had adequate harassment policies in place, and some orgs even modified their existing policies to better placate the hysterical shriekers. But they carry on like nothing has changed, still malign the community as a bunch of rapey harassers, and they're now demanding more and more.
They do not deserve to be rewarded for biting the hand that feeds them by shoving microphones into their faces at conventions.
And hi to all the lurkers out there! Please feel free to say hello and comment whether or not you agree or disagree, you don't even need to register! The worst that can happen is that we'll call you names and/or FTB et al will try to have you made into a pariah.
