My recent opponent on the issue of sexual equality, Ed Trinmell, has presented a debate challenge, which I have accepted:
Within eight hours of the debate challenge I issued to feuding bloggers John Scalzi and Vox Day, Vox responded positively in the comment threads of the original post.
Half of the debating lineup is on board. But what about the other man?
Within an hour of my debate challenge post, John Scalzi mysteriously posted an ad hominem attack against his opposition. Scalzi now states that he will make a charitable contribution at the end of 2013 in lieu of further acknowledgements of Vox Day, who has agreed to debate him in a neutral venue….
Should John Scalzi agree to this debate for the benefit of Children International, I will volunteer to function as moderator. My ground rules will be as follows:
- This will be a civil, professional, and dignified debate. I will not allow ad hominem attacks, profanity, or excessive sarcasm from either man.
- This debate will be fair and ideologically balanced. The questions will be equally weighted so as to favor neither Vox Day nor John Scalzi.
- Specifically, I will challenge Vox regarding his views of women in the political process (which I am on record as opposing). I will challenge John regarding the premises behind his now-infamous “straight white male” essay—which generated a lot of controversy on the Internet last summer.
It’s certainly an intriguing challenge. Can I present a credible and convincing case for opposing equality in the political process? Does McRapey have anything to offer in support of his claims of racial, sexual, and orientational equality beyond false game analogies and repetitive ad hominem attacks?
And then there is the question that all impartial parties will surely be asking: does John Scalzi possess the courage required to take the risk of having his spinal column metaphorically ripped from him in public? My guess is that he does not. He’s a rabbit. He’s a gamma male. His blog readership is smaller than mine. His intellectual influence is miniscule in comparison with mine. He has no original ideas; he’s little more than a parrot. I strongly suspect that he cannot credibly defend his assertions, which is why he merely repeats them over and over again.
Just as PZ Myers disheartened his supporters by twice backing down, I assume that Scalzi will find a way to rationalize his inability to defend his views in public. That lack of courage, that manifest lack of confidence in the strength of his positions, is one reason my influence will continue to grow in comparison with his, as was the case with regards to the Fowl Atheist, who is increasingly regarded as a joke even within the atheist community. Dr. Myers tried the “I’m too important to waste my time on a crackpot” approach back in June 2008, when my readership was 38.5 percent of what it is now. It may be worth noting that Mr. Scalzi’s fans appear to be woefully ignorant concerning the facts of the situation. Consider this tweet directed to my attention earlier today:
“just a thought, but “superintelligence” doesn’t need to mooch off real thought leaders ( @scalzi ) to get people to notice you.”
How, one wonders, can John Scalzi possibly be considered a “thought leader” of any kind? He has no ideas of his own. Even his fiction is openly derivative, whereas my original concepts have been cited in science journals, on Wikipedia, and provided scientists with hypotheses for which their subsequent experiments have found empirical evidence. Furthermore, I have no need to mooch off anyone, least of all Mr. Scalzi, in order to get people to notice me. Not only did he first come to my attention as a result of him and a number of other SFWA members reacting to one of my WND columns, but my blog readership first surpassed his in 2011.
This failure to understand that there are two sides to the political spectrum is apparently a common misapprehension on the part of the left; some in the SF/F community have publicly complained about Black Gate giving me a platform despite the fact that nearly a quarter of its annual traffic in recent years has come from VP alone.