A Sisyphean task

A File 770 commenter attempts to counteract a common SJW lie:

Pluviann on June 7, 2015 at 3:02 am said:
OK, I usually lurk, but I see people constantly saying that Beale supports acid attacks on women. The original quote for this is from Pharyngula where Beale says:

[F]emale independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability. If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.

Beale is not saying: ‘I support acid attacks’.

Beale is saying: ‘Stupid atheists claim to believe in utilitarian ethics, but they are clearly too stupid to follow their own ethics to their logical conclusions, if they did then they would support acid attacks.’

This is a classic example of Beale’s well known rhetorical slipperiness, but I think it’s worth being clear when you quote him. Why say that he believes in acid attacks which is not true, when, from the same quote, you can say that he believes female independence is correlated with high crime or expensive housing? If you say that he supports acid throwing when he doesn’t then you just give him ideological fodder. He can say: ‘See, those silly SJWs are spreading lies about me and don’t understand my position on anything.’

Pluviann is correct of course. Except that I can do rather more than that. I can point out that the evil SJWs always lie and I can prove it by pointing out that they are lying about me again by knowingly misrepresenting my statements and opinions.

In answer to Pluviann’s question, the reason that the SJWs keep lying about this is because accurately representing my statements will not suffice to stoke the outrage they are hoping to inspire. They don’t want to honestly debate the long-term consequences of pro-feminist social policies, they simply want to drum up enough support to shout me down and disqualify me in order to minimize my intellectual influence.

As I have repeatedly said, I do not support acid attacks. I do not support honor killings. I do not support the Taliban’s attack on Malala Yousafzai. Anyone who claims that I support any of those things, or supported any of them at any time in the past, is lying, for the obvious reason that I am neither an atheist nor a utilitarian.

This comment also amused me for reasons that will soon become clear:

Stefan Mitev on June 7, 2015 at 7:43 am said:
Does anyone on the Puppies seriously expect anyone at Tor to listen to them at all after they spent the last few months (and in TB’s case, years) insulting the company, its employees and some of its main authors and accusing them of fixing the Hugos? LOL.

No, we don’t expect anyone at Tor to listen. But we suspect there are those at Pan Macmillan who will.

This comment was considerably more on point:

AV on June 7, 2015 at 7:56 am said:
Disgusting comments by Irene Gallo. Where is your professionalism? Why are you attacking customers and authors of your own publishing house? This is the third bigwig at Tor who took a cheap shot at their own authors and customers. Does anyone there have any common sense? Where the hell is Tom?

It does appear that the inmates are running the Tor asylum of late. They certainly appear to have a creative approach to customer relations.