So let’s be honest about what the opponents of Men’s Human Rights Advocacy are all about: when they see an argument they don’t like, their first answer is to lie, slander, distort, and if at all humanly possible, shut down all dissent and all critical thought.
Such people recently tried censoring Kristina Hansen by falsely flagging a video that mentioned Ophelia Benson, who had recently achieved fame by creating a False Threat narrative supposedly from A Voice for Men. Too bad Ophelia, there was a time when you looked like a rationalist to a lot of us but if it was ever true it changed a long time ago. You and/or your thuggish fans attacked someone who had the audacity merely to be critical of you, and instead of answering it in good faith, the answer was what always comes out of you: attack, smear, change the subject, make up bullshit, and censor, censor, censor. Hey, who needs postmodernism when you’ve got good old fashioned censorship on your side to shut off the flow of rational thought?
Unfortunately, the attempts to censor The Wooly Bumblebee have backfired, as the following sample of the numerous video mirrors popping up will show:
Everyone with a YouTube account is encouraged to make their own mirror of this blatant attempt at censorship by FreeThought Blog trolls. Low-rent Stalinist trash need to be shown what happens when they act like Brown Shirts (or should I say Brown Skirts?) – their true nature is revealed by everyone who’s looking.
Watch and download and mirror the flagged video here: http://www.woolybumblebee.com/apps/videos/videos/show/17641858-ophelia-whines-again
Creep Clown Update: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtULe18AwHo
Creepy Clowns: Freethought Bullies and the Threat Narrative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_7SRa_xQNQ
Oh, Ophelia. Oh PZ. Did someone tell you that calling yourself a skeptic and a rationalist actually made you intelligent, thoughtful, or a decent human being? If so, you were too quick to believe them.
*Update*: Apparently, they’re talking about this on FreeThought Blogs, and Ophelia tries to shift the blame to YouTube. Ophelia, YouTube only yanks videos like this if multiple people report them and then it gets done automatically. The only people who would flag that video are people who wish to silence criticism of Ophelia Benson and/or FreeThought Blogs. But instead of condemning this as any decent person would, you deny all responsibility, and don’t even bother to tell your fans that this is unacceptable behavior. You also take the classic Internet dodge of picking on someone’s pronunciation–and make yourself look silly in the process, because not only is that a trivial complaint, but a quick check of any dictionary will show you that “fassist” and “fashist” are both correct pronunciations of “fascist.” Can you do a better job of illustrating the point made here: that you and yours are censoring bullies, intellectual lightweights, and cowards who slander and silence human rights activists?
*Update 2*: I was just informed by a friend that a message from someone called “AnonymousAreLegion” was posted dated February 12, 2013 at 7:16am (UTC-8) over in Ophelia Benson’s comments section saying the following:
While you may not be a “fascist”, you certainly fit the Stazi mentality of censorship and silencing.
You are a liar, hypocrite, bully, and talentless piece of shit. That’s why the ever-increasing pwning of you will continue. You got your ass handed to you in recent YT videos (since mirrrored, so you can forget your censorship and false flagging tactics – you will be defeated), and PZ got utterly humiliated by Noel Plum and Concordance. Bring it on. We have only just begun with you people. There’s going to be more videos, more blogs, more pushback, and more pressure on getting you the fuck away from our community.
We destroyed A-+, we will destroy you and the FreeThoughtBlogs. We will exclude you from our growing community, and we will make sure your reputation is beneath shit.
We are anonymous. We are legion.
Now, it’s hard to know where this came from. Some misguided Men’s Human Rights Activist? I rather doubt it, that’s not our typical style, but I suppose it’s plausible. Equally plausible is that it’s more of the False Threat Narrative that the FTB/skepchick/Atheism+ crowd is so fond of, and one of them posted it themselves. Or it could I suppose actually be from a member of the famous hacker collective known as “Anonymous” although I kinda doubt that, as this isn’t quite their style either. Or it’s some other troll.
That said, let it be known that neither myself nor anyone on the A Voice for Men editorial team supports any efforts to “destroy” FreeThought Blogs, Ophelia Benson, or anyone else with anything except sarcasm. The solution to hate speech is more speech. Indeed, if they’d drop the False Threat Narrative and actually talk to us like real human beings who might just happen to disagree with them on some things, it’s theoretically possible we could shake hands and agree never to argue again or even (what the hell, stranger things have happened) come to friendly terms. That really is up to them. It is an open offer. That said, one way or the other, to be clear, we don’t endorse that message from “AnonymousAreLegion.”
