Ed Brayton Confesses to Cronyism.

In his own words.

I pay no attention whatsoever to the slymepit as I prefer to avoid cesspools full of raging assholes. My initial response, given my affinity for Avi and the source of the accusations, was to dismiss it as much ado about nothing. I believed, with very little thought or effort to confirm,...

So, you're saying that you dismissed the allegations which were accompanied with copious evidence because you dislike the people making them.

...the initial speculation that someone had either gotten his password or that it was the result of some sort of technical glitch.....

And then, you immediately started coming up with excuses for your friend.

...Then I got an email from Hemant Mehta, someone I also hold in high esteem and consider a friend, and he told me that he’d been looking into the evidence and found a powerful case for plagiarism...

Finally, when someone you like tells you that the accusation are backed up by evidence, you then decide to look.

I don't think you know how to do skepticism.  Facts are facts, no matter who tells them to you.  Perhaps you will learn from this and give up your little in-group thinking, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Shocking, Double Standards from Rebecca Watson.

Rebecca Watson has now come out in favor of doxing…when she does it.

As usual, no links so as to deny her money for mendacity.

She starts by recounting her giving the information about someone who made an obvious joke about PC Meyers getting VD and a conference she put on to Meyers, who subsequently complained to the jokers employer.  Yet no suits were filed. More importantly, she has a history of trying to cover her ass by claiming her cheap insults and abuse of privileges given her are just jokes and people taking offense just don't get it.  There's some hypocrisy right there.

She then goes on to criticize the black and white thinking that condemns all doxing.  This from a woman who wrote "If she's drunk, it's rape."  No recognization of degrees of drunkenness.  One sip of wine and a woman is no longer responsible for her sexual decisions.  So I guess black and white thinking is OK when she does it.

This is followed by claiming that "…doxing can be used for good or ill. Like punching.".

Her example of good punching is Buzz Aldrin punching some guy who claims that the moon landings were a hoax and is giving Aldrin a hard time.  He never threatened him, never touched him, yet she condones punching, for talking.  Somehow in her mind, punching for talking is good but punching, in self defense, someone who is repeatedly hitting you (in an elevator, no less) is bad.  I wonder how she would respond to a man who is going from room to room to avoid a wife screeching in his ear for half an hour and finally punching her just get some relief.  I guess it depends upon whether or not she likes you.

She then goes on to misrepresent GamerGate with the canard that is it is all about Zoe Quinn being accused of sleeping around on her then boyfriend.  Get your facts right Becky, She admitted to it.  And its been said before, claiming that GamerGate is about her is like claiming the the First World War was about the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand.  GamerGate is about games journalist using corrupt means to advance a single narrative.  Corrupt means such as colluding on secret lists, shutting down the topic on any forum where they have influence, doxing and, of course the usual dasmseling comes up blah, blah, 'rape' threats, blah, blah, 'death' threats.  None of which have ever been shown to be credible or from even from a GamerGater. 

On the next point she's rig…righ…right.
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I had to go gargle with fire after writing that.

For the sake of argument, we'll ignore the possibility that they were self-sent or sent by cronies using sock accounts, Anita Sarkeesian was within her rights in not obscuring the information on the tweets allegedly threatening her.  If you contact someone and fail to take reasonable measures to maintain your privacy, it sucks to be you if they share it.

Truth be told.  If someone is sending threats to actually harm someone, I really don't care what happens to them.  Call the authorities and let them deal with it.  Of course they'll only concern them self with actual threats.  The problem lies in her expansive definition of a threat.

Rebecca Watson believes in the Law Of Attraction, where wishing makes it so.  That's the only way to confuse "I hope someone kills you." with "I will kill you.".  Or, more likely, she is deliberately conflating for rhetorical advantage.

She also mentions slurs.  So, given her history of interpreting things to her own advantage, if you catch her in a lie and call her on it by using the term "liar", you are now fair game, "liar" being a slur and all.  I wonder if she considers it fair to dox a feminist who repeatedly calls anyone who disagrees with her a "misogynist" or a "neckbeard"  Probably not, disagreeing with a feminists puts you in her out group.

The post ends with her threatening to punch people, but I think that is her attempt at a joke.

GamerGate, Orthodoxy vs. Conspiracy

One distinction GamerGaters have missed is the difference between a conspiracy and an orthodoxy.  The line isn't always clear and orthodoxies can have conspiratorial elements and some conspiracies can have minions controlled by the methods of orthodoxy.  Whatever.  Insert the usual caveats about continua and generalities here.

The GamerGaters are focusing too much on the conspiratorial elements of the gaming press instead of the orthodoxy.  I suppose this is where I should outline what I see as the differences between the two.  Orthodoxies are filled with true believers.  In their minds, minds they are on the side of angels.  Conspirators know that they are up to no good.  The problem for outsiders is determining which you are working against and since we can't get into each others heads we'll never have concrete proof.  We can only go with the weight of the evidence.

I am arguing that the evidence weighs in favor of orthodoxy, for one main reason.  They're clumsy.  Conspirators would have been more adroit in covering their tracks.  Were they competent they would have been a little security minded with their forum, they would have been spaced out their "Gamers are Dead" articles, they wouldn't have bragged about their ability to black list people or otherwise destroy careers and,  they would have been much more subtle in their attempts at quashing dissent.

 The orthodoxy is "Social Justice".  Of course the reason they have to enforce an orthodoxy is that it is an incoherent idea, like a religion.  The dominant sect of social justicism, at the moment, is feminism, with their demands of faith ("listen and believe"), ethereal threats (the Patriarchy, but to be fair they are never clear as to whether or not it is a malevolent cosmic force or a vast conspiracy), circular reasoning (The patriarchy causes the difference in earnings.  The difference in earnings proves the patriarchy), terms of derision for outsiders ("neckbeards", "misogyinists", "shitlords"), ascribing evil motives to dissenters (You just want to continue oppressing women), the attempts of silencing dissent (doxing, false DMCAs, closing threads in forums), and let's not forget the witch hunting.

This is the real issue of GamerGate and it's time to own it.  The problem is the mono-culture in the press.  The source of the corruption is the desire to control the narrative.  The echo chamber in the gaming press needs to be opened (that of the mainstream press as well).  No rewriting of ethical guidelines will do, as long as those in charge of enforcing them are in ideological lock step.   As long as the press is filled with comm. lit. and foo studies majors who were all spoon fed the same psuedo-marxist, Post Modern ideology these things will continue to happen,

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I've mentioned before that GamerGate needs a specific list of demands.  The Occupoo movement failed for the lack of one and it looks like GamerGate is heading down the same road.

I demured on specifics for the list, not being a gamer, and apparently,
 that made people lukewarm on the idea.  So here's my list.

• The press needs diversity in it's ranks.  A chorus of people of different colors doesn't count.  They need people with different views.
• No personal attacks.
• No misrepresenting people's positions.
• No deflecting from controversies with red herrings.
• No colluding on narratives.
• No financial or personal conflicts of interest, disclosure is not enough, recusal is mandatory.
• Tell the whole story, not just the parts that fit your world view or agenda.

There is my short list.  Perhaps someone active in GamerGate can add to or edit it and put it up as something others can point to.  I believe that this is necessary.  By having a specific list of reasonable demands, you are forcing the press to either admit corruption or get their shit in order.

Why Feminists Hate the Trans-gendered.

The most extreme feminists hate the trans-gendered.  I have no idea what their numbers are so I can't tell if they have a voice beyond their numbers.  However, they do have enough of a voice and aren't systematically excluded from feminist circles, so they need to be addressed.

The reasons for their hatred are easy to infer.  Trans-gendered people are rhetorically inconvenient.  They undermine three articles of faith among feminists.

First. Gender is a mere social construction.  Every person who was born with an X and Y chromosome and junk who felt like a girl all his life and every one who was born with two Xs and no junk (or interior junk, whatever) who felt like a boy all her life, in spite of all the social pressure to behave like their physical sex is undeniable evidence that there is a physical component to gender identity.

Second.  Life as a woman is an unbearable horror.  Every man who goes through scads of hours of therapy and spends thousands of dollars to become a woman shows that being an identifiable woman isn't as bad as being a woman stuck in a man's body who can live as a woman on his time off. 

Third. Cis women are the only victims. One good strategy for winning the oppression olympics  is to thin the competition as early in the game as possible.  By denying that there are real social problems for the trans-gendered or that the same exist they do so.   It's nothing more than a turf battle.

It's patently obvious that there are people that are born with a brain body mismatch.  Worse, it is probably an issue of gender identity falling on an inverted normal distribution (an abnormal distribution, wakka wakka), but we'll ignore that for now.  It's a birth defect that can be partially corrected through surgery like a cleft palette.  I'm sure that it is very difficult to determine who the legitimate candidates for reassignment are (Perhaps it should be called "gender corrective"?).  And, I have no idea how one should treat borderline cases.  Nevertheless, the phenomenon  is clearly real.

We also know that gender attraction isn't necessarily tied to gender identity.  A group so disproportionately laden with lesbians should understand this.  I believe that they secretly do but are throwing their rightful allies under the bus for their own agenda.

What Gamergate Needs to Do, But It's Probably Too Late

Shit, I accidentally deleted the first post of this and it was before the Wayback Machine had a chance to archive it.  So Here it is again from memory.

First off, a confession.  I'm not a gamer.  I have yet to master Openttd.  I have a Wii, but I only use to to watch Netflix.  But I think I have something to offer as an atheist/skeptic. We've survived an attempt at co-opting.  The SJWs have been relegated to a few small farm league cons and blogs of dwindling readership, but not without some cost.

Nevertheless, what I think you need to be doing now is simple.  You need a list of specific demands that people can point to and say "This is what you need to do to gain my trust and patronage.".  The biggest reason the Occupoo movement failed was a failure to do just that.

Not being a gamer I am only offering broad suggestions.

• A provision regarding personal conflicts of interest.
• A provision regarding financial conflicts of interest.
• A provision regarding collusion on stories.
• A provision regarding abusive behavior towards dissenters.
• A provision regarding openness of debate.
• A provision regarding any ideological agenda
• Standards of honesty.

These provisions need to be specified precisely.  You don't need another editor saying "Hey, we fixed it, our staff can no longer make Patreon contributions to the people they write about.  We're the good guys.".  This leaves Indiegogo and any number of other means for them to invest in a project that they later promote through their reviews.  Don't give them the wiggle room.

Don't demand heads, or not more than one or tow to serve as examples.

Be ready to forgive.  The only thing the post-Apartheid government of South Africa got right was the Truth and Reconciliation commissions.  It probably prevented a bloodbath.

Go to the grownups.  The editors of these sites are mostly trust fund babes.  The parent companies are more concerned with the bottom line.  They are more likely to listen to you.

As fascinating as I find the whole DIGRA entanglement in the affair, it is tangential.  The so-called journalists in this affair come from the comm. and foo studies departments in their universities.  These are pretend disciplines whose only purpose is to give an academic veneer to political activism.  There's probably a lit, major or two in the mix.  If DIGRA didn't exist, they'd have the same attitude.

It's probably too late but worth a try anyway.

Another Step in Jaclyn Glenns Victim Narrative

First she tried to antagonize the Muslims.  That didn't get the response needed to cast herself as a victim.  Now she is trying to follow in Rebecca Watson's footsteps. 

Way back when, Becky used her sexuality to get attention in the skeptosphere, making sexual jokes, posing for and selling nudie calendars and using the fact that more women would rather go to a tarot and crystal convention that learn some counterintuitive facts at a skeptical convention, to market herself as the female face of skepticism.  It wasn't long before it became obvious that she has nothing of substance to offer.

Upon not getting the clout she felt entitled to she pulled the woman card, complaining that there weren't enough women (her friends) on the panels to satisfy her while claiming that she didn't want quotas.  How you can claim that there isn't enough of something without having a quantity in mind is beyond me.  Upon not getting her demands met she escalated her rhetoric, telling everyone that would listen that women aren't safe at skeptical conventions.

Anyone with two neurons to rub together saw through this and started pushing back and she doubled down.  More importantly she learned from Anita Sarkeesian that there is money to be made in the professional victim racket.  That's all she talks about now, and she must be doing OK with it because she hasn't had to get a real job yet.

Jaclynn, has started the same way, this time with loads of makeup and low cut camisoles, but without much to say.  To be fair there isn't much left to be said about atheism.  It was all said by 1900.  But, every generation or so needs to hear and say it in it's own voice.  For those alive today that started around 2000 and it has all been said, again.  Even the Amazing Atheist has largely moved on to other matters.  This is why she doesn't have anything new to say.

But the fact remains that she has nothing new to say, and she isn't getting the traffic she wants.  So she is laying the groundwork to get into the professional victim racket.

She did the standard video with hand picked comments to show what a bunch of horrible people atheists men are.  She was clever enough to include one that wasn't offensive, but it is pretty much the same strategy.  I just hope it's played out.

This Is Why I Don't Give Money to Atheist Groups.

The Nashville Sunday Assembly has as their speaker, film fraudster Morgan Spurlock, of Supersize Me infamy.

So apparently, organized atheism is fine with lying as long as he recites the cant of corporations bad, government regulators good.  I guess next it will be Michael Moore.