Tag: trainwreck

Combat Barbie wear

They still won’t be able to outfight a Boy Scout troop armed with jackknives, but the important thing is wearing the right clothes will help them feel more like real soldiers.

A new combat uniform with special consideration to the female body is
now available at Fort Gordon, almost a month after the Army announced
plans to open all units and military jobs to women by 2016. The March debut of the Combat Uniform-Alternate is the first in a
series of moves the Army hopes to make in the next three years to help
female soldiers feel like more professional members, officials said.

With narrower shoulders, a slightly tapered waist and a more spacious
seat, the unisex clothing line has been in the works since 2009 and is
being issued to all installations – except Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga.
– for men and women with a smaller or more slender body.

Enough of all the talk talk.  Let’s see some war war out of our brave amazons.  Let’s see the US Army form a combat division of its most formidable Combat Barbies and send it to Afghanistan.  Perhaps they can make a reality TV show of it called “Rape, Rout, or RIP?”

The defense isn’t resting

Blogging will likely be a little light today, since I’m in the process of putting together all the information I’ve gathered into a coherent response to the SFWA Board.  Anyhow, I also found these particular quotes to be interesting, considering the way in which the SFWA president has handled the complaint process in a manner not dissimilar to his previous approach to differing opinions.

Steven Gould ::: (view all by) ::: March 05, 2005, 12:15 PM:

Does this mean we can’t make fun of Vox Day (Or VD as I like to call him) for his distressing use irrational arguments?  Of course we can. It’s like finding one of those dishes of leftovers in the back of the refrigerator that is busy creating it’s own little ecosystem. You comment on it, you drop it in the trash, and you don’t swallow it. 

Steven Gould ::: (view all by) ::: March 05, 2005, 09:57 PM:

Vox Day  From Dictionary.com:

Hack
5. Slang. To cope with successfully; manage: couldn’t hack a second job.

Yeah, you can’t front on that, Laura.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What language is this guy speaking? Is he from this dimension?… Why are we wasting so much time on this guy? When they came up with the phrase ‘kneejerk’ reactionary, they were thinking of him. 

Steven Gould ::: (view all by) ::: March 06, 2005, 10:39 AM:

Vox Day: “I do find it more than a little ironic that the very people who entered the fray making personal attacks are such delicate flowers about enduring them in return. People disagree with me. Fine. People think it’s appropriate to attack me, and not my ideas. Also fine. But it seems a little much for people to expect to be able to do so without taking any return fire.”
~~~~~~~~

Hmmmm. Listen to another series of overwritten, not-on-topic responses or wax the cat? Hear kitty, kitty….

As a person of color, I find it incredibly amusing that the painfully white Mr. Gould clearly did not understand the term
“you can’t front on that”.  In 2005.  And I find it tremendously hurtful that he would so insensitively imply that I am some sort of alien, presumably illegal.

Who are the terrorists?

How is this militarily necessary or anything but disastrous PR?

“Many were wounded in the attack, local tribesman Kaleemullah Dawar said, but rescuers delayed for fear of falling victim to a second attack, a common tactic with drone strikes.“

That tactic is known as the “double tap,” which bombs multiple targets in relatively quick succession — meaning that the second strike often hits first responders. In 2007 the FBI said the tactic as commonly used by terrorist organizations such as Hamas.

Last year a study by the NYU School of Law and Stanford Law School detailed the U.S. use of the double tap, providing first-hand accounts of its devastating effect on rescuers and humanitarian workers.

In other words, the USG is using a terror tactic against non-terrorists in the War on Terror.  Brilliant.  Even Rumsfeld understood that the key to winning this sort of amorphous war was to avoid making more terrorists than were killed.  Which is impossible if you’re going to make your own soldiers into terrorists.

Because respect

Like the SFWA member quoted below, I am bound by the confidentiality rule, but these quotes from Twitter should give everyone a sufficiently accurate image of the anklebiting junior members now running wild within SFWA, as well as for the disdain they openly display for the men, who, back in the day, created the organization and actually wrote genuine science fiction:

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 26 Jun
Pournelle (noun): Term for a well-known author who complains things were better “back in the day” when jerks could act with impunity.

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 26 Jun
I’d be nice if people RT’d last tweet. I’d love Pournelle to become a meme. Not that real Pournelle’d understand memes if they bit his butt.

Scott Edelman ‏@scottedelman 26 Jun
Sigh … what did he do now?

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 26 Jun
Pournelle is being his usual self on the
usual forums which can’t be mentioned due to the usual privacy policy.

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 26 Jun
But this may all tie in with an organization beginning with S, ending with A, and a FW in the middle.

Jason Sanford @jasonsanford 27 JunPournelle
(noun): Term for well-known author who complains things were better
“back in the day” when jerks could act with impunity.

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 27 Jun
It’s a good day when your words have irked the Pournelles of our genre. See previous tweet for definition of term.

Justin Howe ‏@JustinHowe 27 Jun
@jasonsanford Also my term for the Pournelles is “Dense Matter”. Such as, “And then we got stymied by the dense matter at the genre’s core.”

One can readily observe that there is no dearth of jerks acting with impunity these days. What horrifically nasty little creeps! Jason Sanford and his herd of never-will-bes are not worthy to so much as shine the shoes of veteran SF authors like Jerry Pournelle, Mike Resnick, and Barry Malzberg, no matter how many participation ribbons and affirmative action trophies they give each other in the pretense that they are Real SF Riters.

And in addition to snapping at the ankles of 80 year-old men, the pinkshirts are now waxing enthusiastic about [REDACTED: CASE PINK SWASTIKA] because apparently SF conventions are just overflowing with perverts uncontrollably attracted to the hairy dugs and misshapen posteriors of shambling quasi-bipedal manatees.

I shitteth thee not.

Needless to say, this is all being driven by the sort of overweight, unemployed “writers” who spend considerably more time talking about themselves – and, one is forced to presume, eating –  than they do actually writing anything. Because respect.

What any of this has to do with writing and publishing science fiction, I leave to your imagination.

The ironic thing is that [REDACTED: CASE PINK SWASTIKA] will almost surely have the unintended consequence of exposing homosexual harassers instead of the intended targets. Women, especially overweight and unattractive women, have absolutely no idea how overtly aggressive gay men tend to be in comparison with straight men. Based on the sob stories dating back decades that have been shared on various blogs, I would estimate that I have been “sexually harassed” by gay men 2x more than any ten female SFWA members combined have been “sexually harassed” by straight men.

Actually, come to think of it, I was once “sexually harassed” by a famous female author at a professional convention. [ALERT: TRIGGER WARNING!] I accepted her gesture as the compliment it was obviously intended to be, smiled, removed her hand, and continued with the conversation. But apparently the concept of gracefully rejecting an unwanted or inappropriate invitation is completely beyond the pinkshirted manatees.

Because respect.

At this point, I suspect the SFWA’s old guard is thinking “you know, we would have been a lot better off if we had simply called [REDACTED]’s bluff, maintained the membership standards, and permitted her to walk away mad.”  Lower standards seldom produce desirable results.

Blood on their green hands

Whether it is God or the Devil, someone clearly has a wicked sense of humor:

The White-throated Needletail – the world’s fastest flying bird – was
thousands of miles off course after turning up at Tarbert on the Isle of
Harris. It was first seen by two bird spotters from Northumberland on Monday.  There has not been a sighting of the species in Britain since 1991 when a
single bird was seen four times – in Kent, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and
finally Shetland.

Now 22 years later another White-throated Needletail turned up in the UK, but after
more than 80 twitchers flocked to Harris – with scores more on their way –
the bird flew into a wind turbine at Tarbert, witnessed by around 40 people….

“It is tragic. More than 80 people had already arrived on the island and
others were coming from all over the country. But it just flew into the
turbine. It was killed instantly. The corpse will be sent to a museum but obviously this is just
terrible.”

I can see where he’s coming from, but sometimes, one man’s tragedy is another man’s chuckle.

Devouring their elders

Instapundit urges support for Malzberg and Resnick and quite rightly suspects “that the real ‘radioactive aura’ is more likely to attach to the SFWA”, while Andrew Fox excoriates the recent attempt of the SFWA’s pinkshirted stormtroopers to mau-mau their feminist forebears in considerable detail:

I feel compelled to point out, or at least suggest, that a vocal and
very cyber-visible portion of the SF pro and fan community have not been
covering themselves in glory recently. In fact, they have been acting
like a mob. A cyber-mob. And a mob is an ugly thing….

Given the prevalence of academic jargon from Cultural Studies or
other Studies departments in their comments, I imagine a goodly number
of the criticizers on the SWFA discussion boards and the broader
Internet are either university instructors or possessors of an advanced
degree from one of those programs. For many individuals under the age
of forty who have been through the university system, mau-mauing may
seem normative, or at least unremarkable. They have seen it at work
through divestment campaigns of various kinds (divestment from Israeli
companies or U.S. companies which provide goods to Israel which might be
used in security operations against Palestinians, or from companies
involved in fossil fuel production, or from companies connected to
certain figures active on the Right, such as the Koch brothers) and
through shout-downs and other disruptions of speakers invited to campus
whose backgrounds or viewpoints are contrary to those favored by student
activists.

Many of the criticizers may not consciously realize that they are
mau-mauing Mike and Barry, but mau-mauing is what they are engaged in.
Some commentators have pointed out the criticism is not censorship.
True; but in this instance, rather irrelevant. Other commentators have
stated that freedom of speech does not imply a right to a paid platform
(such as that enjoyed until now by Barry and Mike with their quarterly
columns for the Bulletin). Again – true, but irrelevant. For
what the protesters either seek to do or end up abetting is not
censorship, but what can be called shunning and shaming, an application of a radioactive aura to these two men which will make not only the future editors of the Bulletin
but also editors at other periodicals and publishing houses, organizers
of conventions, literary prize juries, and media outlets shy away from
wanting any connection with these two and their works. Remember, this
story has now broken out into mainstream outlets such as Salon and the Guardian;
people who previously had never heard of Mike Resnick or Barry Malzberg
or any of their books will now have their initial (and most likely
only) impression of them branded with a scarlet “S” for “Sexist,” as
detrimental a negative label in our time as “Adulterer” was in the time
of the Puritans. As Barry himself stated in the column “Talk Radio
Redux,” the most potent form of censorship is self-censorship,
the type that occurs in a writer’s head before he or she sets fingers to
keyboard. The mau-mauers, consciously or not, are using Mike and Barry
as cautionary examples – “Look what we’ve been able to do to the
reputations of a WorldCon Guest of Honor and to a man who has written
close to a hundred novels and over 250 short stories, several nominated
for Hugo or Nebula Awards. If we could do this to them, what do you
think we could do to you if you commit ThoughtCrime?”

The virtually thoughtless piling on is perhaps the most appalling.
So many of the criticizers whose comments I have come across admit they haven’t even read the columns in question. Once the ball of shunning and shaming
got rolling, hundreds of onlookers, alerted by social media, jumped on
the bandwagon, attracted by the enticing glow of participating in shared
moral outrage. Moral preening is on overload; industry professionals
and would-be professionals frantically signal to each other that they
are right-thinkers. According to the mau-mauers, Mike and Barry did not
merely misspeak (miswrite?); they did not have decent-enough intentions
which were ruined by Paleolithic habits and blinkered upbringings; they
are morally suspect, malign and vicious and evil. It’s burn the witch! all over again, but this time on a pyre of blog posts and Tweets.

I mentioned before that I completely understand the vehemence of
Barry’s reaction to all this. One sadly ironic aspect of this brouhaha
is that Barry is a lifelong man of the Left. He was staunchly antiwar
during the Vietnam era (see early stories such as “Final War”), and his
dream president was (and remains) Eugene McCarthy. I fully believe,
based on his writings about Alice Sheldon and Judith Merril, that Barry
considers himself a feminist, and an avid one. Condemnation from one’s
“own side” always burns hotter in one’s craw than condemnation from “the
other guys,” which can be easily rationalized away; just as criticism
(especially when viewed as unfair) from one’s own family hurts much
worse than criticism from relative strangers. Forty years ago (and in
all the years since), Barry was a fierce advocate of the New Wave in
science fiction, whose practitioners (with the sole exception of R. A.
Lafferty) were all politically aligned with the Left, as opposed to
old-timers such as John W. Campbell and Robert Heinlein. Now Barry must
feel as though the children of the Revolution are eating their elders
(as so frequently happens, it seems).

The amusing thing about this is that the SFWA folks involved, from Scalzi on down, genuinely believe that it was Mike and Barry making the organization look bad.  But they’re doing a fabulous job of doing that all on their own and they just keep digging the hole deeper… especially in light of the recent announcement of a 5-Year 4-Step Plan in which the SFWA Bulletin has been put on hiatus for up to six months while the pinkshirted task force ideologically cleanses redefines the “goals and mission of the magazine.”

As for devouring their elders, Fox may not realize quite how literally that has been true.  Although, to be fair, if Laura Resnick has not deigned to publicly defend her father, she has at least refrained from throwing in with the pinkshirted maenads.

PZ Myers, professional “biologist”

Now, before you read this, keep in mind that PZ Myers is actually employed to teach college students biology:

Keep in mind that Jemisin is black. Here’s Theodore Beale coming right out and saying that while she’s human, she’s not fully equal to a white man, himself (and please, his invocation of “genetic science” is reeking bullshit).

The amusing thing is that Myers not only didn’t understand what it meant when I pointed out that NK Jemisin and I are not equally homo sapiens sapiens, he also doesn’t have a clue about current genetic science.  In fact, most of the people who have taken offense at the statement that “genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens” have done nothing more than demonstrate they have not kept up with relatively recent developments in genetics by interpreting my words in a manner that is not only ignorant, but precisely backward.

You see, Africans are pure homo sapiens sapiens.  Non-Africans are not. NK Jemisin, being of African extraction, is almost surely more purely homo sapiens sapiens than I am.  Or, for that matter, than PZ Myers is. 

“Previous research has revealed that Neanderthal DNA can be found in the
genomes of everyone who isn’t of African extraction. But, as Pääbo said,
“The Denisovans had contributed DNA only to people in Papua New Guinea,
Fiji, Australia, and other places in Melanesia.” In other words, modern
humans entering Asia interbred with Denisovans. But the Denisovan DNA
didn’t wind up circulating to other areas of the world the way
Neanderthal DNA did.”

So, everyone who isn’t African possesses DNA from other homo species, including Homo neanderthalensis and what is either Homo denisova or Homo sapiens denisova.  This is why I often mock those who believe in both evolution by natural selection and human equality, because humanity is not only NOT all the same under our skin, we are not, according to current genetic science, even all entirely the same subspecies.  If we apply their idiot logic, then I was actually claiming that I am not fully equal to Jemisin rather than the other way around.

That’s not the only thing that the excitable and characteristically buffoonish Myers gets wrong.  I’m not annoyed at being called a racist, I’m not demanding any apologies for it, and I’m certainly not threatening any lawsuits over it.  For crying out loud, John Scalzi has been calling me a Racist Sexist Homophobic Dipshit for months and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest since I am none of those things.  I demanded an apology because NK Jemisin broke SFWA confidentiality rules by misreading part of my presidential campaign platform, then claimed that I am a “self-described
misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole.”  However, I have never described myself as any of those four things.

I assume Myers would similarly object if Ms. Jemisin claimed PZ Myers is a self-described Catholic pedophile who teaches puppetry to kindergarteners.

Myers is also wrong about my having modified my original post in any way.  The incompetent philosopher is confusing a later post for the original one because he didn’t scroll down the page.  It’s still there in its entirety.  Everything it contains is factually true, utterly defensible, and I will note that not a single person who is throwing hissy fits about it has dared to take up my offer to debate them on any of its contents.  The abysmal scientific ignorance of a collegiate biology teacher concerning the subject may offer an indication of why those who are even less cognizant of the relevant genetic science and its implications are nervous about doing so.

It appears Myers also failed to read Jemisin’s speech.  She is the one who asserted that the “racist stand-your-ground laws” were passed against people like her.  I merely pointed out WHY those laws were passed; because people were being violently attacked by the aforementioned people and needed a legal right to self defense.

Myers doesn’t even attempt to address any of the factual statements I made or try to challenge their accuracy, he merely points-and-shrieks.  No wonder he has twice run away from debates with me; he’s not capable of rational dialectic.  As for not being embarrassed, why would I ever be embarrassed by being aware of history, capable of logic, and reasonably up-to-date on genetic science?  If the hysterical left is really going to abandon history, logic, and science in favor of its precious equality myths, it’s simply not going to be possible for anyone with a functioning brain to take it seriously much longer.

Forget the SFWA kerfluffle.  The real scandal is that a science illiterate like PZ Myers is employed to teach science to college students.

SF vs science

Shattersnipe would appear to favor a rhetorical approach to the seemingly indisputable observation that not all human population groups are equally civilized:

And there is white-hot anger, so fierce you become the eye within the
maelstrom of your own rage, calm as your pulse exceeds the beats of a
marathon runner, calm as your fingers grasp and clench, calm as you grip
your aggressor’s throat and squeeze.

This last I feel for Theodore Beale.

Recently, I blogged about sexism in the SFWA Bulletin.
I wrote that piece as a self-declared comic rant, the tone inspired by
anger at men who ultimately meant well, however offensive and outdated
their efforts at showing it. I received a lot of support for having done
so; but of course, there was a flipside. My anger, said some, was
unseemly and unprofessional. My arguments were poorly reasoned. I was
preaching to the choir. I was the gendered pejorative of choice. But the
thing is, I can shrug that off. I deal out enough criticism that I
expect to receive my share in return, and whatever form that pushback
takes, it very rarely shocks me. By the standards of women on the
internet, in fact, I’m pretty lucky. I’ve received a minimum of rape
threats, I rarely get called a cunt, and if some of my detractors are
uncivil, then I can usually dish it out in return. I was bullied,
harassed, attacked and assaulted enough at school for being forthright,
female and unfeminine that written threats just don’t chill me the way
they used to. (They still chill me, of course. And I didn’t suffer
nearly as much as others. Nonetheless, the comparison stands – and no,
this isn’t an invitation to try harder.)
The point being, I have privilege, and that
privilege protects me. I’m a middle-class, well-educated, straight white
ciswoman with a functional, middle-class white family, and however much
the misogyny gets to me at times, I can draw on that privilege – on
that firmly entrenched sense of self-worth and the emotional, social and
financial safety net which supports it – and fight back. I belong to
the second most privileged group of people on the planet, and whatever
abuse I still suffer regardless of that, I have the cultural status to
counter it and be heard. As an individual, therefore, I’m hard to
oppress. I have privilege. I have resilience. I have opinions.
And I have anger….
I feel poisoned even typing that. Sickened.
Trembling. I cannot even imagine how Jemisin feels. Nor am I attempting
to speak for her. She is, without a doubt, one of the most brilliant
women – one of the most brilliant people and writers, period – active in
SFF today, and my voice in this matter is not a replacement for hers.
I am speaking because it would be a crime against conscience not to.
I am speaking because a world where men like
Theodore Beale are left to speak unchallenged by the weariness of their
opponents is not a world I want to live in. I am speaking because my privilege affords me a chance to be heard.
And I am speaking because of the bodily
disgust, the rage and hatred and putrescence I feel for members of my
own race, both now and throughout history, who speak of savages and
lesser beings, of civilisation and the right to kill those outside or
perceived to be incapable of it; who speak, as Beale does, as though
people of colour are a genetically different, inferior species of human
when compared to his Aryan ancestors.
This is my Reconciliation.
The passion of it all just gives you shivers, doesn’t it?  It’s hard to decide what is the most amusing part of this hysterical “dabacle”.  It’s a little subtle, perhaps, but I think, in the end, my favorite part is where she declares the “bodily
disgust, the rage and hatred and putrescence” she feels for the idea that “people of colour” are “genetically different”.
What is so funny about this is that it all goes back to 2005, and a WND column when I pointed out that women don’t write much hard science fiction because they have little aptitude or inclination for science.  And now, eight years later, we see a spelling-challenged female SFWA writer who is frothing-at-the-mouth furious at the idea that Africans are a genetically distinct population group, a group that therefore must necessarily be either inferior or superior to other population groups.
In other words, she is a science fiction writer who is deeply and violently offended by science.  This should suffice to explain why science fiction has qualitatively declined over the years.

But we shouldn’t be too harsh on her.  After all, she does an excellent job of proving my original point in my response to Ms Jemisin, which is that there can be no reconciliation between the observant and the delusional.  This isn’t a challenge to my views, but rather, an exemplary underlining of them.

SFWA Forum: the “moderated” posts

Since the freethinkers at the SFWA Forum are presently debating whether my comments can be permitted in the very place where I am attacked with the most badthink words the rabbits can produce, I hereby give myself permission, as per the SFWA Forum guidelines, to quote my posts here before they are disappeared again:

1. Posted Today, 03:41 AM
 

Her speech is ridiculous, her call for reconciliation is impossible, and, it should be noted, MS Jemisin is lying about me:

“For the past few days I’ve also been observing a “kerfuffle”, as
some call it, in reaction to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’
of America’s latest professional journal, the Bulletin. Some of you may
also have been following the discussion; hopefully not all of you. To
summarize: two of the genre’s most venerable white male writers made
some comments in a series of recent articles which have been decried as
sexist and racist by most of the organization’s membership. Now, to put
this in context: the membership of SFWA also recently voted in a new
president. There were two candidates — one of whom was a self-described
misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few other flavors of asshole. In
this election he lost by a landslide… but he still earned ten percent of
the vote. SFWA is small; only about 500 people voted in total, so we’re
talking less than 50 people.”

I am not “a self-described misogynist, racist, anti-Semite, and a few
other flavors of asshole”.  It is John Scalzi, Patrick Nielsen Hayden,
and Theresa Nielsen Hayden who have described me that way.  I merely
posited that even if their false claims were true, I would still be the
right choice for SFWA president given my industry connections and
executive experience. Nor have I ever made any active efforts to take
away the woman’s “most basic rights”; I am in fact a libertarian. NK
Jemisin’s speech is not only ignorant, it is blatantly and provably
dishonest with regards to me, with regards to the history of science
fiction, and with regards to Florida and Texas state law.

I hereby demand a public apology from Ms Jemisin.

Moreover, based on the particular nature of her false claim, Ms Jemisin has clearly violated the Forum rules, which state “The
SFWA discussion forums are for SFWA members only, and all posts made
here are confidential. Material may not be re-posted outside these
forums without the explicit permission of their authors.”  Her false statement was clearly based on my announcement which was posted here in the forums by Lawrence Schoen.

I therefore also request that she be given a warning point by a Forum moderator.

2. Posted Today, 07:52 AM

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

She did nothing of the kind.  I have never described myself anywhere
as misogynist, racist, or anti-Semite and a search of my blog will prove
that.  The only time I’ve even bothered to address such stupid
accusations together is here, in the Forum, which is why it is obvious
that she violated SFWA confidentiality.  I have zero interest in
debating with you, Mr. Sanford. I enjoy challenges and you’re not half
as intelligent as people I’ve crushed in three exchanges.

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

I should certainly hope so.  I was warned for violating SFWA
confidentiality once because I was unaware even partial quotes were not
permitted.  I expect Ms Jemisin to be similarly disciplined.  If not,
well, then we’ll know just how impartial the moderators are.  Anyhow,
20x more people will read this on my blog than will read it here.

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

Reality isn’t racist, Mr. Sanford.  Neither is history.  They simply
are.  And you can’t escape the fact that Ms Jemisin lied about me and
about the state laws of Texas and Florida.  As some of my Australian
readers have already pointed out, Ms Jemisin has no idea what she’s
talking about concerning Australian race relations either.

3. Posted Today, 08:15 AM

[PERMISSION TO QUOTE REQUESTED]

So, if I’d simply written: “That post on her blog is one of the most
racist attacks I’ve seen in a long time.”, that would not require
moderation?  Who are you trying to kid?

Meanwhile, the President-elect, Steven Gould, notes: “Lots
of people calling for the expulsion of this guy. With reason.”

Well, my lawyer and I would certainly enjoy seeing them try to expel a paid-up Lifetime member for the thoughtcrime of expressing his opinion.  You see, I’ve already got the entire SF Forum on record, so it would be fascinating to see them attempt to defend various statements by certain authors while claiming that mine were worthy of expulsion.

A Robot doubles down

The remarkable thing about these leftist idiots is how shameless they are.  It doesn’t matter how badly they are caught out, or how completely they are shown to be wrong, they will double-down without hesitation, as A Robot does in defense of his “review” of Men on Strike:

In reviewing scientific literature, which Men On Strike purports to be,
one must review the source material which the author uses to support the
claims and assertions of the author. The source material is the basic
evidence that the author uses to show the person reading the book, “hey,
these things that I’m writing? They’re supported by facts, evidence,
and research. You can trust me and my work because a lot of time and
effort has gone into reviewing this material and making sure the most
accurate depiction of the facts of the matter at hand is presented.”

You
cannot separate reviewing the source material from reviewing the book
at hand, because the source material is the entire reason that one
should believe the assertions of the book. If you’re reading a book that
seriously studies any natural, social, or scientific phenomenon, you
have to check the source material. Theodore Beale is just one of many
sources not worth trusting that are liberally sourced in Helen Smith’s
book: Vox Day taken as a serious source of unbiased, well-researched
material is just the most egregious example and the one that could be
most easily demonstrated due to the great deal of material Beale puts
online.

That said, even without the contributions of Vox Day, Men
On Strike suffers greatly from a serious lack of actual research. The
vast majority of claims that it makes about men and women
(psychologically, socially, or otherwise) are not based on verifiable
data, instead relying on the anecdotes of whoever Smith could find that
supported the view she puts forth in Men On Strike. The book has not
gone through the peer review process that scientific literature goes
through to ensure accuracy. I’ve been totally unable to find any amount
of literature written by Helen Smith from any sort of peer-reviewed
journal or database. The only things I’ve been able to find written by
Helen Smith appear on her personal web site, and on the web sites of
people or organizations who share her political beliefs.

Real
scientists write and research for the purpose of scientific advancement,
and a big part of doing that is making sure that their research stands
up to peer review. The acknowledgements make no mention of any person
who reviewed Men On Strike to make sure it was scientifically accurate.
She mentions “friends and colleagues who have helped and encouraged”
her, but that is the only thing close to acknowledging scientific peer
review. Helen Smith intentionally decided not to bring her book to the
attention of the scientific community while presenting her book as
supported by scientific research and scrutiny. Her footnotes are filled
with references to her own research, and there are more citations of
blogs and of political organizations than of real scientific literature
on any subject even ostensibly related to the subject of sexual
inequality.

Men On Strike is, above all else, a compilation of
anecdote and political bias. It has no basis in research or verifiable
evidence beyond the quotations in her book having actually existed. 

The amusing thing is that this defense proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he didn’t read the book.  Dr. Helen directly addresses this line of criticism in the book, pointing out that she is being held to a standard to which no female writer attacking men is ever held.   Men on Strike isn’t “scientific literature”; it doesn’t pretend to be.

Ironically enough, in his attempt to keep people from reading Dr. Helen’s book, he’s only brought new people to the blog, such as KC:

I just stumbled upon your blog yesterday, ironically through the
1-star Men On Strike review that pointed me to your site.  (“Nobody can possibly be as
wacked-out as this person is saying,” I thought to myself, intent
on verification.) So far, I’ve found your site by turns
interesting, thought-provoking, and mildly infuriating.  (Thanks
for all the fantasy and SF links, by the way.) I just have one
question.  Since your views on Christianity are, well, not the
most mainstream, I’m wondering if you came by them on your own or
if there are any particular theologians or books you’ve drawn on
for inspiration.

KC, didn’t you know you’re always supposed to accept the claims of a leftist, no matter how absurd, without verifying them?  How are they supposed to be taken seriously if you’re actually going to look into what they are saying?  Anyhow, in answer to KC’s question, GK Chesterton and CS Lewis are the two Christian writers I have found most inspiring.