Horror films are a wonderful source of escapism, where we can feel the thrill of terror in the relative safety of our living rooms or a crowded movie theatre. One of the all-time classics within the horror genre is the zombie movie: hordes of shuffling, shambling atrocities hell-bent on devouring the flesh of the still-living. One of the iconic images of any good zombie movie is the panic-stricken victim of a zombie bite who is slowly turning from human into monster, as all morality and reason drains from their body while their comrades feverishly debate whether or not to put their erstwhile friend out of hir ‘misery’ courtesy of a well-timed shotgun blast to the face.

Cinema.

One of the things that has always struck me about the thrill and threat of the zombie subgenre is the idea that someone can walk around ‘infected’ without showing any outward signs of distress, but at that pivotal moment they ‘turn’ and lash out. Having watched enough zombie movies in my life, I know enough that I would be far more cautious about that ‘little scrape’ on my friend’s upper arm after a fight with a horde of the undead. I’ve seen enough movies to know that that ‘little scrape’ might mean the difference between life and un-death. I suspect that, if you’ve watched these movies too, you know as well as I do what the warning signs are – the eerie music, the mysterious noise, the unexplained ‘headache’.

Much like a zombie movie afficionado does, members of visible minority communities have spent years learning to read the warning signs of racial antipathy, even from those who don’t recognize that they’re ‘infected’ with the subtle biases that affect us all. They (we) have learned to spot the danger from a long way off, ensuring that we can take the necessary precautions to protect ourselves.

In the following presentation, given in January of 2013 in Kelowna, BC, I explore the parallels between zombie movies and anti-racism, with examples drawn from classic horror scenes. I discuss how we can learn to understand racism in a contemporary context, and understand the role our subconscious plays in our interactions, and how we can use this knowledge to avoid and combat racism in the same way we use it to avoid and combat zombies. I discuss how to have more productive conversations when you, as a member of the majority group, enter a minority space. Finally, I emphasize how anti-racism is a crucial and useful part of a skeptical toolchest, and how we can use this knowledge to grow the movement.

I hope you enjoy the talk, and please feel free to share it, as a whole or in part, wherever you like:

Part 1: Don’t Go In There!

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5pTt2vhVwI

Part 2: Fighting Racism, Zombie Style

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=nap9dpRy1lw

Part 3: How Not to Get Your Head Blown Off

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXk1wrjI_yk

Part 4: Anti-Racism and the Skeptical Movement

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsoDljgcpas

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Clips from Dawn of the Dead, Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, and Resident Evil claimed under Fair Use principles for educational purposes.

The time has come, however, to close down the blog and move on to new endeavours.

I am immensely proud of The Crommunist Manifesto. For three years it has provided regular, thought-provoking, and consistently high quality posts about topics that are relevant and interesting. I do not begrudge the number of hours and the level of effort required to create The Manifesto in that form, but I can no longer maintain that level of output. You may have noticed that over the past couple of months the frequency of posting has decreased dramatically, with nothing new going up in several weeks. That is not a product that I am proud of, and it does my previous work a disservice, but I honestly don’t see that changing any time soon. Writing has become a job, not a joy, and that’s not a sustainable way of being for me.

My plan is to move the content from this site back to its former home on WordPress (crommunist.wordpress.com) and leave this space on the FtB roster to someone who is willing to put in the necessary effort to make it succeed. On the old (new) site, I may periodically post new essays, but I imagine the site will sit relatively quiet for the most part.

As far my plan of what to do with myself, I am really excited for a new musical project I’ve been working on, and I will be devoting much of my newly-freed time to that. I’m also going to be working on my job and my PhD, and trying to find new ways to enjoy life.

And as far as what is happening to ‘the Crommunist’, I’m not retreating from the world, just closing this particular outlet. I hope you will heed my perennial exhortation and follow me on Twitter. If not there, you can always contact me by e-mail if you have something you urgently need addressed. I may pick up new projects (or potentially revive old ones like Seriously!?), so hopefully you will be interested enough to check those out when they appear.

In this farewell, there are some people I need to acknowledge.

First, I want to thank my co-bloggers at FtB, particularly Ed Brayton and PZ Myers for plucking me out of relative obscurity. I could not ask for a more positive and supportive environment to have conducted this experiment. I have met some truly fantastic people in the freethinking movement, and the hands-down best of them have shared the first part of a URL with me for the past 20 months. With the possible exception of the howling herd of insolent nincompoops who crowd the hallways like belligerent hyenas around a fresh kill, cackling about ‘FTBullies’ and ‘misandry’ and ‘feminazis’, blogging at FtB has been a nearly flawless experience. I will miss the backchannel irreverence and the mutual support and camaraderie.

Second, I want to thank my co-bloggers Brian, Jamie, and Edwin. You helped shoulder part of the load when things were at a fever pitch, and you wrote some incredibly insightful and useful posts. I’m proud to call you friends, and will probably have more time to see you in meatspace now that I don’t have daily looming deadlines. Thank you for your contributions and your grace at being launched into a bigger spotlight than you were probably used to.

Finally, I want to thank you. For reading, for commenting, for sending me links, for sharing my posts on your Facebook or on Reddit, for challenging me when I was wrong, and for opening your minds enough to be challenged by some of the more provocative stuff I’ve thrown at you over the past couple of years. Knowing that I had to answer to a crowd of smart and inquisitive people has kept me honest and forced me to work hard to make each post something I can be proud of. I am eternally grateful to anyone and everyone who has felt that this place was worth coming back to, and that these ideas were worth considering and spreading.

In my mind’s eye I had pictured this post ending with something pithy and profound, but I’m not that guy. I’m this guy.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

– Ian

It’s been a while since I last posted (and in fact, even since I last wrote an entry on my personal blog), and this entry is about part of the reason why—and that if you’re reading this, you should take up similar pass times. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the distinction between so-called “peaceful” actions and non-violence, I’d suggest you keep a stopper on that query until a later date, when I will answer that question for you in another piece of writing. In this piece of writing, I am deliberately choosing not to talk about “peaceful” anything; however, I am also not talking about aggressive behaviour or confrontation of any kind, while focusing on a specific form of non-violent direct action. As for the term “direct action”, this generally means, as an activist of any kind, taking matters into your own hands. Direct action is often associated with aggressive behaviour, confrontation, hostility, and violence, whether or not the actions taken even are violent (i.e., police and sometimes even military tend to be responsible for the escalation of direct action to the point of violence, as is being seen in New Brunswick right now, where non-violent protesters in a road blockade are being arrested for laying tobacco on the highway). For instance, I’ve written before about effective grassroots protest methods including the formation of a Black Bloc, and generally speaking, any community of activists can reasonably anticipate infiltration by undercover police if they are effective at anything they are doing (i.e., one more reason for the Black Bloc). Violence is often rather paradoxically mis-characterized as well, in that many see vandalism of inanimate property such as vehicles and buildings as violence, but fail to acknowledge or even recognize systemic oppression such as poverty (a direct and necessary product of capitalism) or racism (a direct and necessary product of cultural chauvinism, cultural imperialism, and white supremacy) as violence. For that matter, most people fail to recognize the inherent violence of the very existence of those buildings and vehicles themselves — environmental violence. I’ll be addressing that further when I write about the distinction between “peaceful” and non-violent some other time.

Now that all of that is aside, I bet you’re wondering what the actual fuck I’m talking about — what is the non-violent direct action anyone can do and that everyone should? Well, it started with a strong curiosity about a certain bird (I’m kind of nuts about birds, as anyone who knows me personally can tell you). Then it became very long walks in the forest. And then the marsh. And recently, the beach too. Most often, these walks have been a solitary activity, but on a few occasions, I’ve had human company. Over the past few months, it’s become the (technically illegal) gradual discovery, extraction, and disposal of several hundred pounds of trash by yours truly from former Coast Salish village sites, forests, marshes, and beaches. And you could (and should) be doing it too.

I don’t know about any of you reading this, but I like being outside. I enjoy taking long walks in the forest and on the beach, following ravens and eagles around, having staring contests with Great Blue Herons and mute swans, watching ducks waddle around, and being used as a perch for squirrels, chickadees, and sparrows (yes, that actually happens—no, my name is not Snow White). But I also feel disgusted, angry, and emotionally injured on some level when my walk is interrupted by the presence of cigarette butts all over the ground, used facial tissues and wetnaps tossed carelessly aside, abandoned butane lighters partially decomposing into rust, and plastic bags that have been trampled over by people and animals alike for at least several consecutive days. Neither the forest floor nor the beach are ash trays or trash cans to be used at the whim and fancy of everyone who simply can’t be arsed to take the shit they brought in back out with them when they leave. So a few months ago, I answered this distress by making piles of the trash I was finding within mere inches of the sidewalk adjacent to Pipeline Road (which cuts directly through Vancouver’s Stanley Park — a former Coast Salish village site), for Vancouver Parks Board employees to pick up. I hadn’t brought my own bags on that particular occasion, but I came back with an entire roll of them (and a box of gloves) when I went back again within a matter of days. I have been bringing bags with me every time I return ever since.

Soon enough, I also felt a growing responsibility to bring my bags and ambition to Vancouver’s most popular clothing-optional beach. There is a system of trails that winds all the way around the west point of Vancouver, which is engulfed to the north, west, and south by the Strait of Georgia. Currently, this area is home to the University of British Columbia, but it was once a Musqueam village site all the way up until just over a hundred years ago, at which time the deliberate spread of smallpox and malicious amendments to The Indian Act forced the Musqueam out of their last remaining villages throughout their traditional ancestral territories (which includes 125 other locations in Vancouver and several other municipalities, many of which are now home to the wealthiest districts in the area—not even remotely a simple coincidence). Now this clothing-optional landmark attracts people from all walks of life, many of whom have no notion of the history of this place or the dignity and respect it deserves, as they come to the bottom of the 1,000 stairs on this furthest west-facing beach, and leave nearly everything they brought down with them. The very same people who think vandalism of inanimate property is violence.

Between these two places, which I feel are very important and yet, I see being subjected to an equally important amount of apathy and environmental violence, I have gradually removed several times my own body weight in trash over the past several months. I’ve made and maintained a weekly commitment to the beach (regardless of weather conditions) for a couple of months already, and have made up for the inconsistency of my visits to the forests in Stanley Park by staying longer and disposing of more trash when I do make it there. However, it is important to note that, rather paradoxically, if I were caught in the act by an employee of Vancouver Parks Board (depending on exactly what I was caught doing, where, and by whom), I could actually be subjected to a fairly monumental fine. Though I am removing refuse abandoned by other people, I am actually violating at least one municipal by-law that carries a maximum penalty of $2000 (and I am very likely violating several other by-laws as well). It’s a risk I’m willing to take to ensure that these places don’t gradually become landfills, and it’s a risk I encourage every reading this to assume, where ever they call home, as well. When you could actually be penalized for doing your part to take care of the land, resistance becomes duty. When you finally begin to recognize this responsibility, you stop seeing the overturned police car at the Oka crisis as violence; and you start seeing the laws themselves — that punish people for respecting the land — as institutionalized violence.

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On Friday, Point of Inquiry’s two co-hosts—Indre Viskontas and Chris Mooney—resigned from their positions at the Center for Inquiry. On Monday, Point of Inquiry producer Adam Isaak followed suit. This note is to explain our reasons for departing CFI and our future plans.

In May of 2013, when the Women in Secularism II conference took place in Washington, D.C., Point of Inquiry—the flagship podcast of the Center for Inquiry—was more successful that it has ever been. Following a format change in 2010, our audience has increased by 60 percent and our growth rate has doubled in the last year and a half. We’d recently done a highly successful live show featuring Steven Pinker before a packed room at the 2013 American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, and interviewed guests like Oliver Sacks, Jared Diamond, Paul Krugman, and Mary Roach. We had started to incorporate new, successful video content. 2013 featured our most listened-to show ever and we were averaging well over 2 million total downloads per year.

Then came the events at that conference—including a widely criticized speech by Center for Inquiry President & CEO Ronald Lindsay. Lindsay then went further, writing a blog post which referred to a post by one of his critics—Rebecca Watson—as follows: “It may be the most intellectually dishonest piece of writing since the last communique issued by North Korea.”

In response to public criticism of Lindsay’s speech and blog post, CFI’s Board of Directors issued an ambiguous statement regretting the controversy, but going no further than that.

These actions have generated much discussion, criticism and polarization within our community. In addition, they created an environment at CFI that made it very difficult for our producer, Adam Isaak, to continue working there.

We, like others, welcome Lindsay’s recent apology. That apology, however, was not followed by any direct effort to retain Chris or Indre, nor did it make up for the very real toll this controversy has taken upon our podcast and our ability to produce it.

The actions of Lindsay and the Board have made it overwhelmingly difficult for us to continue in our goal to provide thoughtful and compelling content, including coverage of feminist issues, as in past interviews with guests like Amanda Marcotte, Katha Pollitt, MG Lord, and Carol Tavris.

The Center for Inquiry has supported us in the past and has asked Chris and Indre to speak at many of its conferences. We are thankful for that.  But we’re a team and we do this together. We believe that this controversy has impaired our ability to produce the highest quality podcast under the auspices of CFI and that our talents will be put to better use elsewhere.

To that end, we are in the process of formalizing a new podcast that will allow us to continue to provide the in-depth interviews with leading intellectuals that made Point of Inquiry such a success. We’ll announce the name and more details about the new podcast shortly but as of right now, we can already announce something we’re all incredibly excited about: the new show will be produced in collaboration with the nonprofit news organization Mother Jones. You can follow @MotherJones on Twitter to get the latest updates on the show’s official launch. We all look forward to turning our attention to the work at hand, and leaving this controversy behind.

Adam Isaak, Indre Viskontas, and Chris Mooney

For more information or to schedule an interview with Chris Mooney or Indre Viskontas, please contact Adam Isaak at adam@adamisaak.com or at 701-540-5855.

So that’s happening. I guess Ron’s apology wasn’t universally accepted as sufficient.

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One of the things I noticed when taking my Philosophy undergrad was how 17^th century Philosophers (and Philosophers of other periods too) often made grandiose claims about how people thought about the world. Often their 100% certain proclamations were refuted by other Philosophers who were also 100% certain about how the world worked. A particular example of this would be the general commitment to the Platonic notion of how we are born with a complete set of concepts (believed and accepted by most philosophers prior to Locke), and then the commitment to the complete opposite, the ‘blank slate’ (Locke’s tabula rasa), the idea that we are born with zero ideas. Turns out that biology is more complex than that. Philosophy of Mind makes slow progress.

So in an effort to reduce the amount of things I would say that run contrary to how reality is structured, I spent about a quarter of my undergrad in Psychology classes, mostly focused on the biological structure of the brain. I found it interesting, and it’s definitely something I’d recommend to anyone wishing to better understand… well, people. I learned a lot of interesting things, most of which ran counter to folk psychology. One of the most interesting things I learned was something that has become a truism in Neuroscience: “neurons that fire together, wire together”.

[Side note: the following is, in several ways, speculative. It is a fact that New Experience A often causes us to recall a memory of Experience B. It is also a fact that the firing of Neuronal Set A causes Neuronal Set B to fire. My tying together of the subjective experience with the underlying neuroscience is, however, speculative. I share this because it seems plausible, and it has some explanatory power]

What does this mean? Well, different sections of your brain handle different things. The visual processing area, for example, is physically separate from the auditory processing area, which is physically separate again from your language processing centres (yup, more than one). But when you see a car driving on the street, you see and hear it simultaneously. This triggers a set of neurons in your visual area. Over time, as these same neurons (corresponding to shape, colour, size, etc) trigger each and every time you see a car, this particular set of neurons essentially corresponds to the visual idea of ‘car’. The engine sounds will likewise generate an auditory equivalent of this. And those two areas will often trigger together as you see and hear cars. What becomes really quite interesting is that when you see a car, the ‘car’ auditory area in your brain may trigger because due to the common firing of the two areas, they now often fire together.Similarly, merely hearing the word ‘car’ may trigger car-related memories.

“But Brian,” I hear many of ye retort, ”not once has my reading here caused an image of a car to appear in my head…” And that’s a fair point. While ‘car’ is a handy example, it doesn’t really work for evoking a subjective experience in a reader: because we so often experience *only* the sound of a car (around us, out of eye sight, or when we’re in a car), or *only* the sight of a car (through a window, or on TV with different audio), these two sets of neurons are unlikely to be trained to wire together (for anyone old enough to read this blog post). Because these sights and sounds are *so* common, our brain has been moulded to refrain from triggering these together.

Better examples are going to be the more rare experiences, where the different impressions are more solidly interconnected, and thus much more individual-specific, but I can lay some out in broad strokes: is there a smell, or sight, or sound that ‘reminds’ you of a past experience? Your experience of that event triggers neurons in the visual/auditory areas, which are ‘tied’ to the visual/auditory neurons for your previous experience so they are automatically triggered too. Interestingly, the more you revisit that spot, the more these neurons will be triggered directly separately of the ‘memory’ neurons, and the more the brain will learn that these events are *not* connected, so the weaker will the subsequent triggering be: the more you seek to evoke that memory in this particular way, the more difficult it will be to do so in the future.

Things become even more interesting when we bring the emotional centre of the brain into the mix. We are always experiencing an emotional state, even if that state is something we consider to be ‘emotionally neutral’: that state has a neurological representation in our brain. Likewise happiness, sadness and so on. The triggering of these neurons along with other neurons wires all of them together too: so happy memories are, quite literally, making you happy when you recall them. The converse is also true: studies have shown that when people are happy, they more easily recall memories that they consider ‘happy memories’ than ‘sad memories’, and when sad, they more easily recall ‘sad memories’ than ‘happy memories’. So not only do images and sounds trigger memories of emotional states (which *are* emotional states), but emotional states can trigger memories of images and sounds (which *are* images and sounds).

My use of the word ‘trigger’ is neither incidental nor accidental.

Furthermore, the more intense the emotional state at the time that the original event was encoded, the more intense the memory evoked when associated neurons are triggered. And to complicate things more, your cognitive centres are not in charge here: when those memories are triggered, you are going to experience them whether you want to or not. Feeling happy that they are triggered? That feeling of happiness will be re-encoded into those memories, strengthening the connection between those feelings and that memory. Feeling distressed that you are thinking about a particular event? That feeling of distress will be re-encoded too. Basically, happy memories can (note: not “will”, but “can”) become more happy over time, and distressing memories more distressing. Your cognitive centre is basically along for the ride, dispelling (for some of us) the illusion of what part of our brain, exactly, is “in charge”.

All of this taken together goes a long way to explaining why people often react they way they do to tragedy, to harsh words, to upsetting imagery. As I mentioned above, this is a speculative story, intended to tie together the subjective experience with the neuronal research currently underway. But it’s not ‘warp drive technology’ speculative…

Trigger warning: imagery related to suicide.

An extremely good friend of mine once walked in on his brother while the latter was attempting to take his own life, by hanging. Years later, we were all avid role-players and the guy running the game, in order to raise the emotional stakes, had us walk into a room where hanging from the ceiling… And my friend was up from the table and out the door before the sentence was finished.

Because we do not get to choose what memories we experience, we do not get to choose what emotional states we experience, and we do not get to divert our emotionally intense thought processes once they start. We can not simple ‘get over it’, or ‘not feel that way’, or turn off our responses. Cries for us to do so, to ‘grow up’, to ‘stop being so emotional’, are demands that, frankly, run contrary to the biological facts of reality, and the beliefs that we can do all of these things are part of the folk psychology that 1) many of us build up inductively over the course of our lives, and 2) is completely wrong.

Trigger warnings matter, and being aware of the likely emotional responses to our words and deeds also matters. Not because of some abstract, ephemeral notion of ‘it’s mean to hurt other’s feelings’ or the polemical ‘only assholes don’t care about the feelings of others’ (true, but still polemical). They matter because science. And self-described members of a self-described rational community with claimed commitments to science will be judged by their actions, not merely their claims.

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And yeah, maybe boycotts don’t always work, and maybe they’re often impractical what with megacorporate ownership of pretty much everything, but they’re a pretty non-controversial method of expressing displeasure with someone or some entity whose actions you strongly disagree with.

Unless, of course, you’re criticizing CFI and Ron Lindsay, in which case it’s a “witch hunt”.

Now, to be sure, this is not the only circumstance under which I’ve seen this comparison dredged, unwillingly, into a place it doesn’t belong. It is, however, a distressingly common circumstance to see people decry any and all criticisms of or actions taken against someone who is on ‘their team’ as a “witch hunt”. Oftentimes they will invoke the ghost of old Joe McCarthy, and generally bloviate about how innocent people are being dragged through the muck by (fill in the blank).

The substance of the complaint is more or less as follows: anyone who fails to sufficiently toe some line of ideological purity is hounded and has their character assassinated by hardliners who attack the poor, innocent victim for reasons that are entirely political. This is the same kind of persecution once turned against innocent women who were accused of witchcraft.

There are, shockingly, people who don’t immediately recognize how stupid this argument is. And because I am in the business of explaining why stupid arguments are stupid, here is a really simple ‘how-to’ guide for recognizing whether or not something is, in fact, a witch hunt:

1. Is there a witch?
2. Is there fire involved?

If you answered ‘no’ to either of those questions, then it’s not a witch hunt.

Let me flesh out a bit what I mean here.

Is there a witch?

The main thing to remember about witch hunts is that witches aren’t real. There are Wiccans, but that’s a different thing, and nobody is talking about Wiccans here, so shut up and let me finish. Witches do not now, nor have they ever existed. The things attributed to witches were, without fail, not actually caused by witches. So when your crops failed, that wasn’t witches. When a baby was born with a deformity, that wasn’t witches. When the priest was caught molesting someone, it wasn’t a witch that had conjured a demon to possess him; he’s just a molesty asshole.

In summary, witches = not real.

Real scary, but not real real

So, every time someone accused someone of being a ‘witch’, they were levelling an accusation that could not possibly be true. 100% of women who were burned at the stake – or drowned or exiled or mutilated or hanged or whatever – were innocent of the crime. By definition. That is what made the witch hunts so bad. It wasn’t just the punishment, it wasn’t just the accusation – it was the fact that all of the accused and all of the convicted were innocent.

If, by way of contrast, people had real and reliable evidence of the existence of witchcraft: people had been observed to ride brooms, people could reliably cast spells, etc. etc., then hunting witches would probably have been reasonable. We, as a society, hunt murderers because murderers exist. We are careful to make sure that we have sufficient proof, or at least we try to, but we recognize that it is reasonable to seek out murderers for punishment because murder is a bad thing. While some countries do still believe in witches, we in North America and most of Europe have done away with that practice because we recognize that witches aren’t real (or, if real, not harmful).

In the Joe McCarthy era, ‘witch’ was replaced by ‘Communist’. People were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers by the United States Congress. Charges were either invented out of thin air, or someone’s name was mentioned by someone else who had been coerced into revealing everyone they’d ever spoken to. The harm inherent in ‘being a Communist’ was never fully fleshed out – it was just asserted that being a Communist was a bad thing and that everyone who was one should be ferreted out punished.

Once again, however, the standard for evidence was ludicrously low. It was not the case, for example, that someone was charged because they had an established membership in The Communist Party, or had given televised speeches about the need for the destruction of capitalism, or had in some way distinguished themselves as a Communist. Instead, being known to Communists was enough to brand you. People were compelled to testify based on little more than innuendo and the paranoia of a man from Wisconsin.

So, in the absence of a ‘witch’, being a person who a) has engaged in activity that is either impossible or whose harm cannot be demonstrated; and b) is so accused based on flimsy or non-existent evidence, something cannot be a witch  hunt. It can be a hunt, to be sure, but the ‘witch’ is the part that makes the hunt unjust.

Is there fire involved?

The second requisite element of a witch hunt is the stake that someone gets burned at. If people hunted for non-existent witches, ‘found’ them, and then said “okay cool, we were just checking”, we would consider witch hunts no more sinister than Easter egg hunts. Women accused of witchcraft were not merely identified as witches – they were murdered or exiled or otherwise had violence leveled against them. There were real, and terrifying, consequences to being identified as a witch, and those consequences were backed by a system of law and the power of the state.

“I have here in my hand a list of 205 people who have abused this meme in the last 5 minutes”

Again, during the ‘Red Scare’, people weren’t identified as ‘Communists’ for the purposes of the census, or as popular polling. We ask people if they’re members of the Communist Party now. It’s no longer a big deal. And that’s because being a Communist is no longer a punishable offence. You would be tried, blacklisted, have your business bankrupted, and probably do some jail time for being a Communist during the McCarthy era. That was not just due to social disapproval – that was the power of the U.S. government forcing you to testify and punishing you if they didn’t like your defence.

This is different, to return to the ‘murderer’ example, from a jail sentence for having killed someone. Whether you agree with the retributive justice model or not (I’m not a big fan), societies have generally been willing to set some sort of standard of punishment for transgressions that they deem unacceptable. We generally have no problem with this, as long as the charge is fair and there is some sort of due process before we invoke the power of the state. If murder was instead punished by, say, a community-organized boycott of the murderer’s business, we would likely have far less objection if there was no formal trial.

The fire, meaning the presence of some kind of official power to punish the ‘guilty’, is also a necessary component of a ‘witch hunt’. In the absence of the fire, identifying ‘witches’ is not what makes the witch hunt a bad thing.

So when you want to use the “witch hunt” example to describe a thing you object to, you should be able to demonstrate two things: that the subject of the censure is, in fact, being treated like a ‘witch’, and is being threatened with ‘fire’. In the absence of either of those elements, your accusation is specious.

Does loss of reputation qualify as ‘fire’?

I want to take a moment here to discuss the greyest area in the above argument. Many of those who claim that a “witch hunt” is happening point to “smears” or “demonization” as the harm being done to the target/victim. The assertion is that the damage to one’s standing in the community is the ‘fire’, either in and of itself or because it leads to the loss of employment or inclusion.

The easiest way to dispel this meme is to point to the number of times those same critics turn a blind eye to the various “smears” turned against their opponents: the misogynistic language, the accusations of collusion or conspiracy, the outright falsehoods about “doxxing” or “trying to get soandso fired” or whatever is the fashionable nonsense of the time. This is not, to me, a satisfying response. Presumably, there is some perpetually scandalized person out there who thinks that it’s wrong when “both sides” do it, and who is thereby allowed to make as many wild “witch hunt” accusations as ze wants.

Does she weigh more than a duck?

I should also point out, before I delve too deeply into this topic, that my a priori instinct is to answer this question with a simple ‘no’. Loss of reputation does not seem, to me, to be tantamount to having the state take action against you. This is largely a question of degree, rather than of type. I will, however, grant for the moment that there are some forms of harm that can be done to someone’s reputation that makes them suffer meaningfully and unnecessarily. People who, for example, are accused and then acquitted of sexual crimes against children may suffer real and tragic consequences that are unjust. Spreading a rumour that someone is a child molester can have real long-term consequences, and I do not think it is okay to make that kind of scurrilous accusation.

That being said, there is a giant chasm between ‘spreading a rumour that someone has committed a crime’ and ‘criticizing someone for shitty behaviour’. In too many of these “witch hunt” accusations, the ‘victim’ of the “hunt” is being taken to task for something specific that ze has said or done. In the case of Rush Limbaugh, the boycotts were fueled by remarks that were overtly and intentionally misogynistic. In the case of Dan Cathy, his remarks revealed an underlying homophobia. It’s important to note here that Cathy did not say “I hate gay people” – he didn’t have to. People judged both the content of his words and the outcomes of his actions and decided they were unacceptable.

It is worth noting that defenders of both Limbaugh and Cathy decided that they were the victims of a “witch hunt”, rather than simply men who were being made to deal with the social consequences of their statements and actions. For the same reason that most people would deny that the boycott campaign of Chick Fil A or the move to dissuade sponsors from Rush’s shows constitute a “witch hunt”, I am unpersuaded by the attempt to equate any damage done to a person’s reputation as being tantamount to the kind of harm required to qualify as the ‘fire’ element of the “witch hunt” equation.

I have further discussed the differences between ‘labelling someone based on their behaviour’ and ‘smearing someone’ in another post that I encourage you to read.

The irony of “witch hunt” as an anti-feminist meme

Before I bring this post around to the button of the argument, I want to pause for a moment and appreciate the irony of “witch hunt” accusations being used to defend men against accusations of misogynistic behaviour. While it is not true that men were never accused/convicted of witchcraft, the charge does seem to have been predominantly leveled against women. In many contemporary cases, the ‘witches’ that are hunted are women who have the temerity to rebel against the social order or against the patriarchy.

The bra was probably a witch

Maybe it is putting too literal a spin on it, but I do appreciate the collision of symbolism when it is the same anti-patriarchy behaviour that is now branded as “witch hunting”. I also note that it is often the case that people who push back against the patriarchial aggression of others who are accused of “hunting witches”, a second-tier level of irony that I’ve always found particularly delicious.

The CFI/Ron Lindsay affair as a witch hunt

I do not wish to dwell too long on Mr. Lindsay’s specific behaviour. Those who are more directly impacted than I am have said more (and better) than I could hope to, so there’s no real value in me piling on. What I do wish to do, however, is explain why calling for a boycott of CFI fails to meet either of the requirements of a “witch hunt”.

Ron Lindsay and CFI are not ‘witches’

Mr. Lindsay’s original speech is a matter of public record, as is his reaction to the criticism it engendered. The reasons why people are upset with it have been meticulously explained (although that does not seem to perturb the flood of people claiming that there’s nothing wrong with what he said). The failure to respond adequately to criticism by both Mr. Lindsay and the organization he helms are not imagined or unprovable slights – they’re evident for all to see. The task before those who would label it a “witch hunt” is to refute the argument of the harmfulness of the events, not to simply throw up their hands and say “witch hunt! dogma! groupthink!”

There is no ‘fire’

If we are perfectly happy to accept boycotts against Rush Limbaugh and Dan Cathy (and countless others), there is nothing special about the ‘fire’ that is being directed against CFI or Ron Lindsay – although, to be sure, Limbaugh and Cathy are both far more noxious and harmful than Ron Lindsay’s belligerence or CFI’s careful silence. Even if we are not okay with making that comparison, the fact remains that boycotts are voluntary actions that are only as effective as the community allows them to be.

Neither Skepchick nor FtB nor any blog network has the power to unilaterally force anyone to do anything. Indeed, FtB doesn’t even have the power to unilaterally force its own members to do anything. Despite the hand-wringing over the imagined “party line” that these networks force their members to carry, there is zero evidence to support such a claim. The worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone who published a full-throated defence of CFI is that they would be asked to leave the network**.

The ‘fire’ currently affecting CFI and Mr. Lindsay was started by their own hand, and there are very specific things they could have done (and probably still could do) if they wanted to put it out. None of these remedies would require anything bigger than the swallowing of pride, which is what makes the accusation of “witch hunts” all the more galling. I’ll bet the people on trial would have loved a remedy so simple.

So beyond the specific issue that is currently en vogue, it is important generally to recognize that the idea of a “witch hunt” requires some constituent elements in order to qualify. Namely, there has to be a ‘witch’, and there has to be a ‘fire’. In the absence of those things, what you are complaining about is likely just a normal method by which communities express their displeasure with unacceptable behaviour. It therefore becomes highly suspect when the only time you express outrage at this practice is when it is levelled against a position you support.

There. Now nobody will ever mis-use that expression ever again.

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*Has anyone else noticed that we exist in more or less a permanent state of furore? Kind of good news if you’re in trouble with the freethinking community – you’re only going to be Public Enemy #1 for a few minutes. Well, unless you’re in the crosshairs of the subcommunity of obsessive weirdoes who don’t ever let anything go, whether real or imagined.

**To be sure, I would eat my fucking hat if that ever actually happened, right before I quit FtB and joined up with SkepticInk or something. There really is zero coercion or threat associated with blogging here.

I am flying to Sydney on the 29th of June. I’ll be there for about 10 days with nothing to do but explore the city and its environs. Because I don’t really know anything about Sydney (other than the fact it exists, is nice, and has an opera house), I am reaching out to you to ask the following questions.

What is there to do?

Sydney is a gigantic city. I am not suggesting that there isn’t anything to do. I just don’t know what is good to do there (aside from seeing the aforementioned Opera House). Does anyone have any recommendations? When I go to a new place I like to see live music, go to history museums, see parks, and generally do things that I couldn’t do anywhere except the place I am in.

If you live in Sydney, or have travelled there, what kinds of things should I do while I am there? If it is relevant, I am staying in The Rocks.

Who is there?

If any of you have been dying to meet me, I’m certainly up for hanging out while I’m there. There’s a Skeptics in the Pub meetup on the 4th that I am planning on attending. Above and beyond that, however, I’m sure there are lots of opportunities to do social things.

Also, if you have a group that is having a meeting you’d like me to speak at, I’ve got a couple of prepared talks, or I can just hang out and chat with people if that’s easier.

Anyway, if you’re so inclined, leave me some info in the comments, or e-mail me.

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For my part, I much prefer John Legend’s response to a very similar question. And I think there’s something to be gleaned from the age difference between Messrs Freeman and Legend. The former is a man who came up in a world where the consequences of anti-black racism were dramatically self-evident: vicious racist slurs coming out of the mouths of police officers and judges, blatantly and unashamedly racist laws and policies, frequent acts of race-motivated physical violence with a blind eye turned toward it by an indifferent society*. The latter is a man who came up in the world of ‘polite’ racism and “post-racial” politicking, where the fashion is to find an endless string of euphemisms to disguise racist attitudes and behaviours that, minus the drama, haven’t changed much.

Which isn’t to say, incidentally, that the kind of racism that Morgan Freeman experienced isn’t still very much alive and well today; it’s just less common.

But I think there is something important in the different prescriptions given by these men from different generations. For the most dramatic examples of racism – the lynchings, the housing discrimination, the Jim Crow laws – it would seem to make sense that ignoring race would have a massive and beneficial effect on the world. Once we are no longer overtly segregating people, holding them up for different treatment, we will see a marked reduction in the amount of hatred and violence, and move toward a more tolerant world.

The problem is, however, that ‘move toward’ doesn’t equal ‘arrive at’. And, somewhat paradoxically, the only way to move on from being blind to race is to explicitly notice race, and how policies and institutions can exhibit racist behaviours even in the absence of malicious intent:

Here is one way to think about this: You are black. You have gotten your college degree and a decent job. But your younger brother isn’t doing so well in school and needs some tutoring. And you’re worried about your grandmother because her neighborhood isn’t safe. And your homeboy, whom you were raised with, just finished a bid for intent to distribute. And your homegirl had a kid when she was 15, but the father is out.

You have made it out of a poor community, but your network is rooted there and shows all the markers of exposure to poverty. Because of a history of American racism, your exposure will be higher than white people of your same income level. Perhaps you would like to build another network. That network, because of a history of racism, will likely be with other black people — black people who, like you, are part of a network that, on average, shows greater exposure to poverty. Meanwhile, white people are building other networks that are significantly less compromised by exposure to poverty.

This is how segregation compromises the power of black community. It takes a societal ill — say a lack of insurance — and then concentrates it one community.

Ignoring race doesn’t solve problems like those inherent in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Indeed, the very problems under discussion are those created by a policy that doesn’t allow for the consideration of how race plays a disproportionate role. If we forcibly shackle our vision to exclude race, out of a perhaps well-meaning but ultimately disastrous impulse, we make ourselves unable to see when problems do actually fall along racial lines.

The issue with colour “blindness” is that it is always accompanied by two handmaidens: colour “deafness” and colour “dumbness”. We become colour “deaf” when our commitment to ignoring race makes us unable to hear the legitimate grievances and problems of communities of colour. If we cannot (or will not) hear about race problems in favour of demanding that we ignore race, we rob ourselves of the opportunity to tailor our policy approaches to the people with the greatest need (or at least different needs than the majority). Further, by maintaining a ‘unseen, unheard’ policy, we make ourselves unable to even talk about race. After all, talking about it is noticing it, and noticing it is the problem. And so we become, by our own actions, unable to see, hear, or speak about racial problems.

This is, to be clear, a different argument from the separate-but-equal point that you cannot will yourself to be ‘non-racist’. Racism is part of the air we breathe, and to suggest that we can, through sheer force of will, simply “not see race” is self-delusional**. There are people who commit racist acts who simply do not allow themselves to see their own racism, but that’s it’s own animal. What I am referring to here is the popular idea that not being an overt, conscious, intentionally-bigoted person is sufficient to qualify as ‘not a racist’.

No, in this case we are asked to consider the harms inherent in the idea that problems that exist along racial lines are specifically caused by noticing the existence of racial groups. The argument would suggest that if black people simply stopped realizing they were black, this kind of segregation would not happen. Or, perhaps more charitably, if white people stopped seeing black people as “black people”, then racial problems would simply disappear.

What the above hypothetical shows is that inequalities that are divided along racial lines persist even in the absence of conscious bigotry. The people in that scenario aren’t the victims of colour-consciousness. They are doing the things people do: looking after their families, being members of their communities, participating in what networks they have available to them. The simple fact of already-extant inequalities between racial groups means that normal human behaviour exaggerates their impact. Put another way, the problem gets worse when you “don’t see race” – it doesn’t get better.

The answer, contrary to the oft-linked advice of Mr. Freeman, is to explicitly consider race. Not in a way that means that we consider people more/less deserving or able, but in a way that recognizes what the consequences and realities of racial inequalities are. They are inequalities in access. They are structural inequalities that do not require bigotry to manifest themselves. They are the consequence of a society that has, at various times throughout its history, had overt policies designed to create inequalities along racial lines.

When you apply a “one size fits all” approach to communities that have different lived experiences and challenges, you’ve set yourself up to fail. And you will fail repeatedly if you demand that you must use such an approach because that will, somehow, fix racism. It took intentional recognition of race to get us into the problem, and simply taking your foot of of the proverbial gas pedal doesn’t reverse the car’s motion.

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* I guess some things haven’t changed…

**the title of the Ta-Nehisi Coates piece is “A Religion of Colourblind Policy” – self-delusion is not an accidental word choice on my part

If you’re like me, you will find this a wildly improbable scenario to entertain, but I implore you to at least give it a try. This doesn’t have to be a close friend, or someone you’ve known for an incredibly long time. Perhaps imagine someone who, if you were having a bunch of people over, you would feel compelled to invite but wouldn’t feel super put-out if they couldn’t make it. Someone whose last name you wouldn’t know if it wasn’t listed on their Facebook profile. Someone who you’ve never hung out with except in the context of a group. Someone who, if you ran into them at a party, you wouldn’t go out of your way to introduce your new boyfriend to.

That level of ‘friend’. Someone you have generally good feelings about, but whose friendship is not exactly indispensable to your life.

Imagine you had a friend…

…who you caught making homophobic remarks on social media. Maybe ze didn’t “mean it”, but you didn’t appreciate the way ze called Republican obstruction in the House ‘gay’. Maybe you mention in a comment something like “hey, that’s not cool.” Surely you’d appreciate an apology, or at least a statement of regret saying “I shouldn’t have done that” or whatever. It’s not, like, a huge deal or anything. Even if ze didn’t say anything in response, you wouldn’t be super bent out of shape about it.

But instead of ignoring the comment, deleting the original post, apologizing, or something like that, ze fires back with a statement like “I didn’t mean ‘gay’ in a homosexual way, I just meant that it was stupid and lame.”

You might pause for a moment, rub your hands across your eyes briefly, and then respectfully respond by explaining that the word ‘gay’ only takes on a negative connotation because it was used against gay people. That one can’t get to ‘gay is bad’ without first passing through ‘being gay is bad’, and that’s why it’s not okay to use the word that way. That you would appreciate it if ze’d be more thoughtful about hir language.

You might even include a single sentence that the word “lame”, in that context, is problematic for many of the same reasons.

Thinking that you’d made your case pretty succinctly, you consider the matter closed. At this point, you don’t really want to get into a whole thing about it. It’s just internet shit, and besides you’ve got that episode of Mad Men to watch.

Oh, but here’s the notification popping up on your screen telling you that your friend has responded. Driven by a curiosity that you know you’ll regret as soon as your finger clicks the mouse button, you see that ze has written a long, barely-coherent, and painfully self-unaware rant that alternates between blaming you for being “too sensitive” to pulling in a convoluted justification for it being okay for hir to use ‘gay’ in that context because ze doesn’t have any hangups about gay people and maybe you are the real homophobe because you think that ‘gay’ means something bad.

At this point, you’re ready to just abandon the entire exercise, because it’s not really that important to you and you’ve got better things to do with your time than try to persuade someone out of a ridiculous and fundamentally irrational position. You were just trying to clue them in to the harm their words might have inadvertently done.

You close your laptop and flick on your DVR.

Imagine you had a friend…

An hour later, after Don Draper has spent yet another hour of your time convincing you that he is a complete sociopath, you re-open your laptop. You are suddenly flooded with notifications. It seems that Leslie, a friend of yours who is gay, has ‘overheard’ your exchange with your ‘friend’ and has picked up where you left off. The conversation has been going back and forth pretty furiously.

Leslie has, at first patiently and eventually quite bitterly, been attempting to explain how the bullying and ostracization of gay kids isn’t a minor issue, and that language can have serious consequences.

Your ‘friend’ seems to find this hilarious, because while ze would never personally bully a gay kid, ze finds it interesting that Leslie only cares about gay kids getting bullied. Isn’t it a problem when straight kids get picked on? Is Leslie an anti-straight bigot?

You’re now torn. You really don’t want to get back into this fight, but you agree with Leslie. Besides, Leslie might interpret your lack of a response as an indication that you don’t care about the issue, rather than simply not caring about whether or not your ‘friend’ changes hir mind. So, choosing what you think is the most diplomatic option, you write a short comment expressing that you think Leslie is exactly right, and send a private message to Leslie as a follow-up basically saying “I didn’t realize this person was such an asshole. Sorry for whatever part I played in this.”

You swear off social media for a while.

Imagine you had a friend…

The next day you get an irate e-mail from your ‘friend’, demanding to know why you’ve been slandering hir behind hir back. Baffled, you eventually piece together that Leslie, perhaps a bit indiscreetly, had let the content of your private message slip. Stripped of context, your ‘friend’ has decided that you had been conspiring about hir and trying to paint hir as a vicious homophobe when it is Leslie who is the real bigot.

You draft a painstakingly-worded reply, explaining that you were simply trying to shut down a conversation that was futile and would likely end up with serious hurt feelings. You explain that, while “asshole” might not have been the best choice of words, your ‘friend’ was, in fact, acting like an asshole, and that Leslie’s time would be better spent on other things.

Reading over it, you decide it’s not worth it to send, and leave it in your drafts folder.

You do not reply to the e-mail.

Imagine you had a friend…

Logging back into your social media account, your blood boils as you see that your ‘friend’ has interpreted your refusal to respond as two things: first, a capitulation of your side of the ‘argument’ you were trying to avoid having in the first place; and second, as a direct challenge for hir to post provocative and baiting comments as replies to everything you’ve posted in the past month or so.

On a picture of you with your older sister: “I’ll bet she’d be crushed to learn that there’s such a cowardly, back-stabbing, hypocritical bigot in her family”

On an article supporting nutrition programs for school-aged kids: “Stop pretending you care about kids. You only care about them if they’re gay!”

On a status update expressing excitement about being reunited with your chem lab partner from college: “Do you call her an asshole behind her back too?”

You block and ‘unfriend’ the spammer, figuring there’s no point in engaging hir. Ze’s revealed, through hir behaviour and hir language, that ze is not interested in ‘talking about it’, so much as ze just wants to keep hitting you with it until hir blood-lust is sated.

You then go through the arduous task of deleting all of the comments, hoping that not too many people saw the outbreak of obsessive harassment, and thinking of how you’re going to explain this to your former lab partner when she sees the fracas. You drop a quick status update apologizing for the drama, and saying that you’ve blocked your ‘friend’.

Imagine you had a friend…

In the coming days, a number of friends have asked you what’s going on with you and your ‘friend’. From what they hear, you’ve been publicly slandering hir in social media, spreading lies about hir, and have “silenced” hir, making her unable to defend hirself against your allegations.

Baffled, you explain to one friend after another exactly what it is that actually happened – that after a largely inconsequential disagreement, your ‘friend’ went on a harassment campaign, twisted your actions way out of proportion, and has not slowed hir pace in the slightest as ze tries to continue twisting the knife in order to achieve… you’re not sure what. Rather than engage with someone who is clearly incapable of conversation, you decided it was best not to ‘feed the troll’ and hit the ‘block’ button.

Your close friends accept your explanation; however, a fairly substantial contingent, knowing pretty much none of the relevant facts, have decided that you’re probably both equally at fault and suggest that you should apologize for lying about hir and calling hir a homophobe. When you try to explain that you did no such thing, you’re met with suspicion and accusations of self-serving bias.

Frustrated, you decide that ignoring the problem simply won’t make it go away. You log on to your social media account and post a blow-by-blow, detailed accounting of what happened. You even publish the e-mail that your ‘friend’ sent to you, and the reply you had saved as a draft but didn’t send. You explain that you just want to be left alone. That your ‘friend’ has been obsessive and creepy and that you’re not interested in getting fixated on one single conversation that happened weeks ago.

Imagine you had a friend…

Rather than making things better, your response to your ‘friend’ and hir baiting has caused hir to redouble hir efforts. Accusing you of “doxxing” by publishing hir e-mail (which anyone could have gotten by simply clicking on hir social media comments), ze has galvanized a substantial group of your acquaintances (and more than a few total strangers) against you. They have all begun flooding your social media with belligerent comments, making it impossible for you to use your account. Since new harassers pop up faster than you can block them all, you temporarily disable your account.

Of course, your ‘friend’ views this as more evidence of your cowardice and refusal to simply engage in a “dialogue” with hir.

Your close friends, finding themselves in the awkward position of having to defend you against accusation from mutual friends, have begun hinting that maybe it would just be easier for you to apologize. “For what? For getting harassed?” you say. They shrug, as unsure as you are about how to proceed.

Imagine you had a friend...

Your best friend’s birthday is approaching, and you want to throw a party. Whereas before you would have simply put the call out over social media and invited whoever you wanted, you really don’t want your ‘friend’ to show up. In addition to the fact that you’re, quite frankly, sick of their bullshit, you have no way of knowing if their online obnoxiousness is going to spill over into real-life belligerence, ruining your fun.

You send a few texts to your buddies, telling them when and where to meet. You ask them to please not mention it to your ‘friend’ or anyone likely to tip hir off. You just don’t need the aggravation.

Imagine you had a friend…

Not even a day goes past before you are caught in the eye of a storm of howling outrage. Not realizing where the ‘allegiances’ lay, one of your buddies passed the information on to the wrong person, who told your ‘friend’ about your party and your instructions not to invite hir. Incensed that you would “blacklist” hir, and similarly scandalized that you would exclude others for ‘guilt by association’, ze vows to show up at the birthday party, invitation or no.

Ze also makes some comments that, interpreted in a not-too-suspicious way, are a thinly-veiled threat. “X better not leave their drink unattended”, ze says “after all, who knows what might happen?”

You’re torn. You don’t know who you can trust, because the details of any party you throw will be disseminated among mutual friends, and those will surely get to your ‘friend’. You don’t think ze’s likely to actually hurt you, but then again you didn’t think ze was likely to wage a long campaign of obsessive harassment against you either. Who knows what ze might do?

Heartbroken, you decide not to attend your best friend’s party. He says he understands, but you get the impression he doesn’t really.

Imagine you had a friend…

Friends who were at the party tell you that your ‘friend’ did, in fact, show up. They tell you ze was looking for you, hoping to “talk it over”. Confronted with the suggestion that ze was going to drug your drink, your ‘friend’ scoffed at the very idea. Ze accused you of “overreacting” to what was very obviously “just a joke”.

Your friends have now begun to discuss the idea of “peace talks”, where both of you can sit down and hash out your differences. The thought makes your head swim. You haven’t declared war or any kind of hostility; you just wanted to be left alone. At no point did you do anything wrong, you were just trying to get away from a shitty situation caused by a shitty person’s obsessive dicketry.

Close friends agree that the “peace talks” are a stupid idea. What needs to happen is that your ‘friend’ needs to just leave you the fuck alone. Stop posting about you, stop telling false stories about you, stop sending people to bombard your social media, stop threatening you as “a joke”. The problem will, at that point, be 100% solved.

Others are not convinced. They think that you need to apologize for the backstabbing, the accusations of homophobia, the doxxing, the blacklisting, and (most of all) for being a “divisive” influence in a group that used to be quite cohesive. They think that your refusal to hear and respond to “dissent” is seriously problematic. Your ‘friend’ is ready to forgive you for your various ‘wrongdoings’ they say, provided you’re willing to be a big enough person to apologize.

You frantically try to point out that you’re being asked to apologize for a number of things that you didn’t do. You’re absolutely not going to apologize to someone who harassed and threatened you and turned your acquaintances against you with accusations based on nothing more than paranoid rage and pure, unadulterated bullshit. Your ‘friend’ should be the one to apologize. But you don’t care whether or not ze does at this point – you just want to be left alone.

People who are peripheral to the situation say that you’re being unreasonable. That your ‘friend’ was just reacting to the lies you spread about hir, and that while ze might have got a bit carried away at times, ze seems to be willing to bury the hatchet now. All ze wants is for you to apologize, and the whole thing will be over.

Your head spins. Even ff you did manage to choke your way through a fake apology, you have no guarantee that your ‘friend’ will actually let up. Ze’s revealed hirself to be unreasonable and irrational and vengeful at every step of the way. Ze’s taken a tiny disagreement over (what was it? oh yeah, hir use of the word ‘gay’) and inflated it into a ‘war’ after which there apparently needed to be ‘peace talks’.

Beyond that though, the goon squad of fellow harassers that your ‘friend’ recruited to spam your social media have made no such promises. Indeed, in many cases, they’ve said that they have no intention of stopping – you (falsely) admitting that their paranoid fantasies about you ‘deserving it’ are justified certainly won’t improve your situation.

And to top it all off, you were right to call your ‘friend’ out for hir choice of a homophobic term. Ze shouldn’t have done that. That’s the insane part of this whole thing. The ‘fight’ isn’t even about who was in the wrong here. Most of your friends would readily agree that it’s generally not okay to use ‘gay’ that way. But instead of focussing on what started the fight, they think they’re helping to end it by putting the blame on you.

Imagine you had a friend like that. Imagine that was a real relationship you had with someone in your life. Then ask yourself – how would you react?

If it were me in that situation, I’d think long and hard about whether or not that person was a friend to begin with. I’d wonder about the people who defended that person – about their motivations and their commitment to fairness. I’d puzzle over how anyone could be so stone idiotic as to suggest that the victim of a campaign of harassment should be made to “sit down” with their harasser and pretend as though the two sides were simply “disagreeing” on something. I would be deeply suspicious of anyone who couldn’t distinguish honest dissent from belligerent heckling, and who would cotton on to a rumour about me without doing the bare minimum to educate themselves on the relevant facts.

But maybe you think the ‘friend’ was right all along. Maybe the crime of obsessive harassment pales in comparison to the ‘crime’ of trying to ignore someone and move on with your life. Maybe every time someone throws an extended tantrum, you believe that the target of that tantrum has an obligation to sit there and take it, or to apologize for the tantrum-thrower’s delusional transmogrification of events. Maybe you think this is the price someone pays for existing on the internet and having the temerity to tell someone they shouldn’t (not that they aren’t allowed to, merely that they shouldn’t) say or do something.

If that’s the case, imagine that we’re not friends.

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We have our Secular Sobriety group here in Kelowna and this is a huge deal for us as there is nothing else similar here and it is making an impact.  Unfortunately they don’t really have a steady place to meet and they don’t have the luxury of moving around like our main CFI group does.

The Unitarians are giving us a good discount at $20 per week but want to have the years rent up front so we need to raise $1040 so that we can secure the space.  I was hoping that you could post it on your blog and hopefully get a few bucks from the larger community.

This kind of stuff is precisely what the freethinking community needs to start doing: replacing religious institutions that provide help at the cost of your rational faculties. I’ve contributed last month’s blog revenues (~$60) to the cause. If you’ve got a few extra bucks floating around your pockets, won’t you consider helping them out?

Check out their fundraising page here

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