Author: Allegra

Born when atmospheric carbon was 316 PPM. Settled on MST country since 1997. Parent, grandparent.

Put those Mennonites and Quakers on the rotisserie….

…. this is what I want my mother to knit me for Christmas.   And no, she doesn’t have to, and I’ll be fine if she doesn’t.

 

Just remember folks, I wrote a song once in which I said, “And my heart’s an 88” and I WAS referring to the forward cannon on a Panzer.  So nobody should be too surprised if I get all gooey over some artillery themed slippers.

Robert is a man who doesn’t get it.

So he responded to that last email with:

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 7:25 AM, robert white <passionatepiper@gmail.com> wrote:
There is no message when the delivery is so repugnant.

 

And here’s my response.

Precisely.  When you talk about the tone of an atheist’s comments using sexualized and demeaning language, you have no message.

I’m glad we can agree on that point.

Your delivery was repugnant; it lacked any demonstration on your part to show “responsibility to be as dignified, intelligent, rational, measured and believable as possible”.  Those are your stated standards, by the way, not mine.  If you are really committed to being dignified, intelligent, rational, measured and believable in your protestations of atheism to a deistic world, why be undignified, immoderate and hidebound towards a fellow atheist?  The deists are clever buggers on occasion, and they’ll catch you being inconsistent and give you a hard time.

By your own standards, you have given everyone who reads that note to Skepchick permission to dismiss it because it’s repugnant and even if it wasn’t, there’s no argument / debate / dialogue / call for clarification.  Arguments against tone aren’t arguments.  They are, and always will be, an acknowledgement of rhetorical failure.  Throwing sexual insults into the mix while clinging to words like dignified makes you look … how?  How do you wish to be perceived?  On one hand you’re claiming the moral high ground, and then you throw it all away by the atheist equivalent of sectarian violence.  (Which of course leaves no one dead, making it intrinsically superior).

As for you being a militant atheist while alternately ignoring and railing against how your public speech and attitudes are not in step with the more forward thinking aspects of contemporary atheism, good luck with that. You remind me of the Catholic priests who continued to celebrate Mass in Latin after Vatican II.   Most Catholics were happy to ditch the Latin, but there will always be traditionalists.  Your version of atheism isn’t mine; mine is messy, fluid, raucous, fun loving, and inclusive of strange and queer and diverse and under-represented voices, even yours, if only as a cautionary sample of how the unscientific and undignified ways of misogyny penetrate even our lofty halls of intellectual superiority.

There was precious little reasoning or dignity in what you said to Skepchick, and you completely dodged any questions I asked.  I did not seek to censor, merely to understand, and if you can’t see how being a misogynist in public doesn’t serve atheism, I can’t see how talking to you any further would help either of us.

Good day to you, sir.

Allegra

 

I am wondering if Robert really is an atheist at all.  Some of what he says just don’t ring true.  However, trolls come in all shapes and sizes, I’ve been a troll meself, so I know.

Robert is a man who promptly responds to email

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 6:46 AM, robert white <passionatepiper@gmail.com> wrote:
As a militant atheist I place great importance on the quality of the
messages put forward to the world community on behalf of reason,
rationality, evidence based thinking and all things leading away from
superstition.

I wanted to make my comments as bitter and scathing as possible
because this woman is the antithesis of those desires of mine.

We have a responsibility to be as dignified, intelligent, rational,
measured and believable when presenting a reason based world view.
When this woman gets on stage and giggles like a valley girl, chuckles
at words like “dick”, interjects her drinking stories along with her
profane fan club letters, she does nothing but set back the cause. All
that’s missing on her are some profane tattoos and a nose ring.

You could profess to the world that the earth is round but if you do
so like some hopped up trashy teenager with a tourette like huffing
laugh between every other phrase and four letter word…no one would
listen.

Get it?

MY RESPONSE

Oh, I do, but the message you are sending is not the one you want me to receive.

So…. you were serious, and you refer to your sexist and misogynistic comments as ‘bitter and scathing’.  You specifically said that you didn’t find her sexually attractive.  Why should any atheists care that you feel that way (except to be amused or repulsed, depending on their attitude towards women)?  In what manner are you advancing the global progress of atheism by targetting a noted atheist woman for your ire?

If half the people in the world are female, and you are wishing to recruit more atheists (isn’t that what militant atheist means?), how is making disturbing and venomous sexually charged comments towards a person who evidently ‘gets’ popular culture (more- sic) readily than you do, moving civilization toward the light?  I think you’re being hurtful for the lulz, not to advance atheism.  You claim to be a militant atheist, as if that is somehow an excuse to trash other atheists whose TONE you disagree with.  At no point do you talk about the substance.  Just appearance and tone…. as flimsy as a theist in your ability to reason, alas.

It appears to me that you are angry because you aren’t setting the terms for the discourse.  You can’t.  Atheism is not a grumpy men’s club, nor is it a single stream, and even if it was it doesn’t help that you’re peeing in it.

Allegra

What kind of man are you, Robert?

Here’s the offending document, from Skepchick.

Here’s my response.

 

Dear Robert,

I was interested to read your email to skepchick.  I have a number of questions.  I am sure that your email box is full, so I’ll give you a couple of weeks to shovel your way out from under the uptick in mail volume to respond.  There is always the possibility you were pranked, so I am keeping my questions civil. Here they are.

Are you implying that your reaction to a woman’s appearance is more important than what she has to say on the subject of atheism?

Are you implying that because you do not like a woman’s appearance you have an obligation to ask her to stop commenting on atheism?

Are you implying that your personal preferences regarding a woman’s appearance should factor into whether she continues to make comments about atheism on youtube?

I ask to confirm that you were indeed serious.  If so, kindly direct me to your youtube account so I may critique your videos regarding atheism in the light of your personal appearance.  If you have none such, allow me to express disappointment, as the world of atheism would undoubtedly be better off with your contribution to it more readily accessible.  If you weren’t serious, please advise how I was supposed to know you were joking from the context of the email.

In the spiriit of tolerance and inquiry,

Allegra Sloman

The war on vegans continues

Holy flaming balls of purulence.  I inherited John Caspell’s entire library of anarchist works – if I lived in the US I’d be subject to a Grand Jury indictment just because I lived close to some government building that was vandalized.  Here’s the link.  Or should I not be worried because I am not young?

The calming effect of action

A few days ago I was all triggery and overwhelmy about my sad state as a buttbrain who had helium hands and volunteered for something she oughtnotta.

Today I am not.  That is because when I get together with Sue (usually there is FOOD and CAT and PLOTTING) we have this dreadful bias toward action.  We have now set up a new way for members to donate which will make life easier for everybody.  This is with respect to regular donations AND estate planning.  And we need to have the conversation about estate planning.

It will be a little more complex from a bookkeeping point of view, but that’s why we hired a bookkeeper.

And now, fresh coffee.  I feel better.  I have a day of running around and visiting friends and sushi in front of me.

 

hey mOm

thank you mOm

You know, my mOm raised me to not really give a shit about cosmetics.  She quit wearing her one concession to patriarchal culture, lipstick, the instant she retired.  Over the course of my life I’ve probably saved fifty grand not buying them. I have powder, probably time-expired, and one jar of nail polish, in my bathroom.  I think Katie cleaned out anything else I had lying around.  I do concede that my face looks better if I prevent my eyebrows from meeting in the middle, and I do pluck the darker hairs off my chin and chest because even though I’ll never get mistaken for a man I would prefer to present as a woman.

I don’t care who consumes cosmetics, but I am upset and disgusted by people smearing fishscales and metal oxides on their faces without understanding the long term health consequences.  Makeup, unless it’s part of what you do for a living (rock star, sex trade worker, actor, television personality, model, emo kid) is a waste of money.  It doesn’t get wonderful just because a group of men decide to spend money on it.

New verse for someone else’s song

See, the great thing about filk is that other people get their hands on your stuff and add to it.  Sometimes they add to it by being MUCH BETTER GUITARISTS than you and sometimes by polishing the lyrics, and sometimes by singing it better, and sometimes by playing it on a completely different instrument, in a different key, with a different harmony arrangment.

Sometimes it’s worse in virtually every way, but it doesn’t matter because it’s still your song being sung and there are people enjoying it even if it isn’t perfect.  Especially since it isn’t perfect.  There’s nothing wrong with it. We are fulfilling our birthright as singing primates, it’s what we DO, and we don’t get to do enough of it because of the ever escalating pressure of commercial culture and the drive for perfection.

So if I actually MEMORIZE one of Lady Miss Banjola’s tunes, and then, having sung it numbers of times, decide to add a verse, not only am I within my rights, I know without asking that she’d say, fill your boots, and don’t claim to have written any note or word of that which is mine.  Every song I have written, even the most desperately personal, that I scarcely ever sing in private let alone in public anymore (like three of swords, I never ever sing that song aloud any more), is still open to that kind of creative input.  The thing about a good song is that other people want to, and will continue to want to, sing it.  Sometimes they feel that way about bad songs too, which is good otherwise nobody would ever sing my stuff when I wasn’t in the room.

When you’re a filker, and people start singing your songs when you’re not around, you are still there.  Your presence may be ghostly and insubstantial but you are still in the room.  The brain that shaped the notes and sharpened the jokes and knitted the ideas and the scansion together in a neat and memorable package, that is still in the room.  It’s a wonderful feeling, knowing that it is happening from time to time.

Anyway, I am happy with the verse.  It follows the theme of the song; it covers a situation that fits in with the other verses and doesn’t repeat; the tone of the lyrics is similar.  But… I still think I’ll run it by her before I publish.

 

meliphore and aptitude

…. Meliphore means sweetness bearer so it is an ENDEARMENT.  Have you hugged your meliphore today?

As for aptitude, I must say that I am fortunate that I have by some happy accident surrounded myself with people with a very great aptitude for friendship.  I’d like to thank Paul for lunch, walkies, music and clipping Kira’s claws; I find clipping cat claws restful, which I suppose can only burnish the kneecaps of my reputation.