From kafkatrap to honeytrap

I received a disturbing warning today from a source I trust.

The short version is: if you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference. Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a “women in tech” advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp.

IRC conversation, portions redacted to protect my informant, follows.


15:17:58 XXXXXXXXXXXX | I'm super careful about honey traps.  For a 
                      | while, that's how the Ada Initiative was    
                      | trying to pre-generate outrage and collect  
                      | scalps.                                     
15:18:12          esr | REALLY?                                    
15:18:22          esr | That's perverse.                           
15:18:42 XXXXXXXXXXXX | Yeah, because the upshot is, I no longer   
                      | can afford to mentor women who are already 
                      | in tech.                                    
15:18:54          esr | Right.                                     
15:19:01 XXXXXXXXXXXX | I can and do mentor ones who are not in    
                      | it, but are interested and able            
15:19:21 XXXXXXXXXXXX | but once one is already in...  nope        
15:20:08 XXXXXXXXXXXX | The MO was to get alone with the target,   
                      | and then immediately after cry "attempted  
                      | sexual assault".                            
15:23:27          esr | When the backlash comes it's going to be   
                      | vicious.  And women who were not part of   
                      | this bullshit will suffer for it.          
15:23:41 XXXXXXXXXXXX | I can only hope.                            
15:25:21          esr | Ah. On the "Pour encourager les autres"    
                      | principle?  I hadn't thought of that.      
                      | Still damned unfortunate, though.          
15:26:40 XXXXXXXXXXXX | Linus is never alone at any conference.    
                      | This is not because he lets fame go to his
                      | head and likes having a posse around.      
15:26:54 XXXXXXXXXXXX | They have made multiple runs at him.       
15:27:29          esr | Implied warning noted.                      
15:27:34            * | XXXXXXXXXXXX nods

An A&D regular who is not myself was present for this conversation, but I’ll let him choose whether to confirm his presence and the content.

“They have made multiple runs at him.” Just let the implications of that sink in for a bit. If my source is to be believed (and I have found him both well-informed and completely trustworthy in the past) this was not a series of misunderstandings, it was a deliberately planned and persistent campaign to frame Linus and feed him to an outrage mob.

I have to see it as an an attempt to smear and de-legitimize the Linux community (and, by extension, the entire open-source community) in order to render it politically pliable.

Linus hasn’t spoken out about this; I can think of several plausible and good reasons for that. And the Ada Initiative shut down earlier this year. Nevertheless, this report is consistent with reports of SJW dezinformatsiya tactics from elsewhere and I think it would be safest to assume that they are being replicated by other women-in-tech groups.

(Don’t like that, ladies? Tough. You were just fine with collective guilt when the shoe was on the other foot. Enjoy your turn!)

I’m going to take my source’s implied advice. And view “sexual assault” claims fitting this MO with extreme skepticism in the future.

112 thoughts on “From kafkatrap to honeytrap

  1. > do not be alone with any female, ever

    I understand that was Billy Graham’s professional policy all his life. And for exactly the same reason.

  2. One forgets the W in SJW at their peril. They view it as a war, and all is fair…

  3. Why not honeytrap the honeytrappers with hidden audio/video recording devices? They might be illegal to use without consent in your jurisdiction, but then you need not reveal the recordings until you need to, and I don’t think “Arrest him for illegally recording evidence that proves my rape allegation was fake!” would fly.

    Or just spread the word that many men are now using hidden recording devices to defend themselves this way. FUD can work for good.

  4. >Or just spread the word that many men are now using hidden recording devices to defend themselves this way. FUD can work for good.

    That seems like a good plan.

  5. Pastors and church leaders (the careful ones anyway) have had to follow this rule for a long time.

    I would advise the same to any male in authority in any business (government, non-profit, etc) setting.

    SJWs always lie.

  6. “And women who were not part of this bullshit will suffer for it” was my initial reaction as well.

    Next reaction was the usual skepticism, a la “can I trust Eric’s source”. Your claims on that front are appreciated. As for me, I can fortunately afford to wait and see.

  7. @PapayaSF

    Russian drivers have to use dashcams to protect against insurance fraud, so there is precedent of a sort.

  8. @Foo Quuxman: Yes they do, hence about 1/4 of the funny/terrifying videos on LiveLeak.

  9. “…that a “women in tech” advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp.”

    don’t you call such a tim hunt?

  10. > One forgets the W in SJW at their peril. They view it as a war, and all is fair…

    Huh. I always thought the W was sarcasm.

    But then I know real warriors.

  11. William, I in no way mean to discredit real warriors by associating them with SJWs.

    I was more commenting on their outlook on things.

    My apologies for not making this clear.

  12. Big-name SJW Arthur Chu actually describes himself as a “social justice stormtrooper,” either not grasping the implications of the term, or being OK with them.

  13. We could always bring back dueling.

    I met Linus once. And, more to the point, I met his wife.

    The SJW’s only do this stuff because they know they have a favorable environment that protects them from consequences of their actions.

  14. Mr. Brinkley:

    I was speaking with a female SA who’s duties I am taking over as she is transitioning out of the company. Let’s call her Fred.

    Fred was attempting to work with another alleged SA in the organization, let’s call her Jim.

    Fred was upset because $task was still not done. Jim asserted that she had not been given sufficient information for the task.

    Fred stated “It’s a shell script. You run the SHELL SCRIPT”.

    Jim then threatened to go to HR and complain about Fred. Note that both Fred and Jim are of the same sex, gender and ethnicity. However Fred is almost maximally competent. Jim should not be allowed to log in to a computer.

    So yeah, I am not surprised by what ESR forwards.

    There are PLENTY of examples in the last few years where once you put this little piece of information from this news source with that little bit of information from that article you get a picture that suddenly makes sense, and in a lot of cases what “makes sense” is SJW activism.

    And note that not all of these women are SJWs. Some just want money.

  15. I think it’s revolting to change your behaviour because of the chance of someone telling lies about you. Never be alone with any female ever, for any purpose, indeed. For such a reaction, I’d want a pretty strong danger of something bad happening. Have any prominent tech figures been accused of sexual assault yet? If not, I wouldn’t worry about it. I’d want to know what the potential bad things that could happen are and what the chances are of them. If the worst that can happen is that people say nasty things about you on the internet, just ignore them, or tell them to go to hell, either will do. Going to jail, or getting lynched due to false accusations are very unlikely. In between those are failing to get employment and losing the respect of others. Things like that could be a real problem, I suppose. But you should act proportionality to the risks and not get caught up in hysteria. I feel like that’s letting these activists win, making them appear more powerful than they really are, and consequently making people afraid to speak out against them.

    >Don’t like that, ladies? Tough. You were just fine with collective guilt when the shoe was on the other foot. Enjoy your turn!

    I doubt that all women were fine with collective guilt.

    Saying that “they are out to get you” implies the existence of a “they”. I agree there is a “they”, but it requires some interpretation: not a large shadowy conspiracy, but culture, many small conspiracies, and individuals acting alone but influenced by culture.

  16. “In between those are failing to get employment and losing the respect of others. Things like that could be a real problem, I suppose.”

    Ask Brendan Eich.

  17. > Fred stated “It’s a shell script. You run the SHELL SCRIPT”.

    If it’s really just a shell script that just needs to be “run”, why is it being run by a person instead of a crontab?

  18. So has your source named anyone at all who has actually been a victim of this?

  19. > I agree there is a “they”, but it requires some interpretation: not a large
    > shadowy conspiracy, but culture, many small conspiracies, and individuals
    > acting alone but influenced by culture.

    I believe the word you are looking for is “prospiracy”.

  20. Have you folks seen this? Award-winning documentary filmmaker and feminist Cassie Jaye makes an even-handed documentary about the men’s rights movement, found her feminist beliefs shifting, backers pull out, Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulis writes an article on her plight, and Kickstarter donations pour in.

  21. But then, on the other hand, there is this:
    http://lwn.net/Articles/417952/

    5 years old now, so I suppose things might have changed for the better, I wouldn’t know either way.

    Mind you, it’s quite possible that there is a legitimate harassment problem at tech conferences and some people are conspiring to tell destructive lies about it.

    But I would say that if one hears accusations of assault at a tech conference “honeytrap” may not be the most appropriate prior bias.

    But I’d still steer clear of being alone with a woman on spec. As mentioned above for many men this has been standard practice for a very long time.

  22. The short version is: if you are any kind of open-source leader or senior figure who is male, do not be alone with any female, ever, at a technical conference.

    In addition, it’s probably a good idea to record every conference talk you give so you can refer to it when slandered. As you may know, the Nobel-Prize winning biologist Tim Hunt almost had his career ruined earlier this year. Speaking at a lunch during a conference, he had introduced himself to an audience of female scientists by self-depreciatingly calling himself “a chauvinist monster” who believed girls cause nothing but trouble and that labs should therefore be segregated by gender. A slanderous feminist quote-mined the segregated-labs part, accused him of sexist remarks, and thereby triggered an avalanche of outrage. Under immense public pressure, Hunt had to resign from most of his positions as a science advisor.

    What ultimately stopped the avalanche — not sure if Hunt got his jobs back by now — was a tape of his speech that surfaced several days later. It proved that Hunt had indeed used self-depreciating humor, that the female audience had taken his remarks in the spirit he had given them in, and that it had responded with appreciative laughter.

    That’s why prominent speakers who don’t want to rely on other people’s recording devices probably want to record their talks themselves.

  23. Good news that this “group” is finally disbanding. Ada is actually a great programming language, and for a while it was pretty much impossible to use it publicly or advocate it because people would think that you were connected or endorsing those clowns.

  24. Well – we live in interesting times.

    I hadn’t thought it would go so far as deliberate entrapment yet, but the accelerating pace of SJW’s pushing for “codes of conduct”, #shirtgate, (never mind metalgate, sad puppies, and a Nobel laureate being taken down and made to resign, or Brendan Eich) makes it clear no-one is safe if they don’t bow before the collective, or band together and resist.

    Randi Harper stuck her nose in once here, if I recall, and I am hard pressed to think of nastier and more bitter bully.

    It’s not too far to this from what Brad Wardell at Stardock experienced – with a sexual harassment case so weak and trumped they extracted a written confession, and stopped there out of mercy. Nevertheless the same crowd responsible for “gamers are dead” and kicking sad puppies piled on without ever giving him a chance to defend himself, much less trying to defend him.

    So SJW’s always lie, they always double down, and they always project.

    In the meantime, resist all attempts at imposing codes of conduct (see the recent example of @rosarior over at awesome django).

    On a practical “recording” note. Recording video AND audio single party is highly restricted and rare. Video single party is less rare. It’s why a lot of security footage doesn’t have audio, if I recall.

    A number of states – South Carolina is one – are “single party” states for audio recording, in that only one party HAS to know the recording is taking place. In that case, feel free to carry an audio “spy” pen/ etc. all the time.

  25. This is not the first time the Ada Initiative has been associated with blackmail and false accusations. In 2013, its founder Valerie “Aurora” Henson successfully pressured the BSidesSF security conference into pulling Violet Blue’s talk on sex, drugs, and harm reduction. AI tried to claim that BSidesSF had consulted them about Blue’s talk, which the organiser refuted on the conference website.

    What the organiser leaves out of that post is that when Henson spoke to him in person, she made it clear that if BSidesSF didn’t comply with her demands, she would escalate to a public shaming campaign. (The organiser disclosed this to me in a personal conversation after the conference; it’s up to him whether he wants to confirm it. I don’t expect people to accept hearsay, but I’m stating what I know regardless.) This turned out to be a bluff, however, because Henson had already arranged with Marie Claire magazine to have a reporter and photographer on site to construct implications of misogyny. The profile of Henson that they ran in 2013 contained, in the print version, a page pullquoted and laid out so as to imply that three randomly-photographed hackers were at that moment engaged in attacking Adria Richards on Twitter. (With a much smaller caption, of course, for plausible deniability.)

    Henson is an unrepentant sociopath who delights in emotional abuse. A former member of the AI told me that she stayed as long as she did only in the hopes of mitigating Val’s tendency to “take after” people (her words). When even your advisory board feels like they have to rein in your vengeful tendencies, you know you have a problem — or should, anyway. Val does not seem to have realised this, or care to.

  26. Yeah, even in the coalface dev world, it’s advisable to metaphorically keep femmes at arms length.

    The well has been poisoned. Reap what you sow, baby.

  27. >[prediction in an envelope]

    Yes, I’m expecting to be attacked. But somebody has to speak up, or the bullying will never end.

  28. Did you catch Vox Day’s “SJWs Always Lie” ?

    I found it encouraging, in an “you’re just figuring this out?” kinda way…

  29. > But somebody has to speak up, or the bullying will never end.

    A lot of somebodies are going to have to speak up. I’ve been trying to speak up since the Ada Initiative was founded, because I had already seen evidence of Val’s predatory nature several years beforehand. Only a few people were willing to listen to me, and they did so only to try to convince me that I should set personal matters aside for a greater good. Val has apparently encouraged the interpretation that my issues with her are a personal matter; another thing I found out during my conversation with the BSidesSF organiser in 2013 was that she asked him whether he’d spoken to me, and when he said no, advised him not to listen to anything I said because “[I’m] pissed at [Val] for stealing [my] boyfriend.”

    In 2006 Val abused my trust and threatened to accuse me of harassing her when I called her to ask what the hell had just happened. Not to put too fine a point on it, I’ve buried a husband since then. So you can add “character assassination of people she’s harmed” to the list of characteristics as well.

    It’s probably going to take an analogue of the Mixon Report to catalogue the extent of people Val has bullied, exploited and lied about in her career as a victimhood culture warrior.

  30. …in *a* “you’re just ……”

    Seriously…WTF no edit function ;)

  31. @Meredith – could you give some insight to a knuckle-dragging male like me…how truly terrible is the insidious patriarchy to women in IT?

    I only ask because I have nothing but good things to say about the women I work with, and I see no indication of any retardation of their careers due to the contents of their underwear.

  32. I suppose I should clarify, since I did ultimately imply “at arms length” regarding the “women that I work with”…

    I have complete professional respect for these women. They are superb and competent. Yet I feel that I must keep them at arms length – in a “walking on eggshells” sense – lest I trigger the vaginal fury of the demented feminist hellwitch.

    Or…I just don’t need the fucking headache…and I really don’t want to strap on my asskicking boots to kick some misguided females into orbit.

  33. As tempted as I am to snark, let me just point out that Always Be Recording is a good general principle in this current age even at your workplace. And never being alone with a female you do not know EXTREMELY well, ever, without doors open and recordings running. Those with whom you have established good long-term working relationships are on the flip side possibly a saving grace, possibly, depending on how well you know her; if she’s an ally she may be able to detect the snakes coming for you faster than you can as women are better at that as a rule than we are–just make sure the trust level is really high not “she’s such a nice person” trust. This should probably become policy in any workplace unless you’re lucky and not in a business larger than a few people.

    This has been going on for a long time, gentlemen. No we were not paranoid. They’ve just run out of places to go and the nerds are their last frontier.

  34. This is SOP for STEM/Biz profs, too. Never be alone with female students. Never mentor them. Never supervise a graduate thesis. A bad review/grade turns into a sexual harassment claim far too easily.

    So women are shut out of the best mentor/supervisor relationships. Way to go, feminists.

  35. I like the term ‘sousveillance’, coined I think by Steve Mann while working on wearable computers which record everything the user sees.

  36. There is literally nothing SJWs won’t poison. My family’s roots lie in Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China. Their ideological commissars are reincarnated as todays SJWs. They are clones – the impure must be purged by any means available.

  37. Oh, and I think referring to this as a “honeytrap” tactic does not really get to how absolutely idiotic it is. We should call it what it actually is: a real-world boobytrap (pun intended, of course). Protip: any time there’s any possibility of being alone with a possible boobytrap, learn to speak up loudly and say that you’re “not comfortable” about the situation. You don’t even need to spell things out, and “I’m not comfortable” are persuasive words with this crowd. Let’s see what happens when we take their favorite weapon and turn it upon them.

  38. @reader:
    >I understand that was Billy Graham’s professional policy all his life. And for exactly the same reason.

    Well, for religious leaders the reasoning goes a bit further than just the “the woman might make a false accusation of rape” angle. Gossips might make false accusations of extra-marital sex, spouses might become jealous (whether they make it known or dismiss it as irrational and deal with it internally), or in some situations, there is the possibility that something might actually happen, and, even though everything is consensual and even if nobody finds out, the leader would still have violated his personal principles.

  39. “Or just spread the word that many men are now using hidden recording devices to defend themselves this way. FUD can work for good.”

    They are more likely to call the cops for illegal recording, having a recorder strapped to you falls upde wiretapping in many states in the US.

  40. Evolution has equipped us to handle many forms of threat and hardship from the natural world, and the last few thousand years of civilization has added a skill set for dealing with rogue hostiles that occasionally cross our path in life. However, the recent convergence of mass communication and memetic manipulation has given birth to a new threat matrix in our daily lives. For men, it’s natural to view these sorts of feminine attacks as being more of annoyance rather than an actual threat; but our judicial system is broken and the harm can be quite serious. If this pattern continues to worsen, men will soon switch from playing defense (and losing) to playing offense with serious intent. Should you find yourself making that transition, be very smart and very private.

  41. The new, secular man is rediscovering ancient religious wisdom.

    All prophets, all great leaders, all wise men, through all the ages and on every continent, have warned against women getting involved in men’s business. Were they all wrong?

    I am very open about my religious beliefs that men and women should not interact. I am extremely cordial to the women at work, but I don’t shake their hand or make small talk.

    Women love drama, by their nature. It’s hard for us to imagine, because it’s not our nature. “It can’t be. That’s just misogyny…” Until it happens to you. Then you understand real quick.

    More women in science and technology is more drama in science and technology. Ask Tim Hunt. You know, the Nobel laureate, decades at the top of his field. Literally hundreds of female scientists he personally mentored to success, not one of which defended him by the way. They took him down like a pack of lionesses.

    Think you will fare better? Who the fuck are you in comparison? Some neckbeard.

    You wanted women in STEM. You got it.

  42. Try being a male nurse sometime.
    Any female nurse can be with any patient for any procedure, alone.
    Just to protect my license I have to have a female with me for a lot of things I am required to do, and I have to make sure my chaperone is competent and qualified so no false claims can be made unsubstantiated.
    It’s nearly an everyday thing.
    So much for equal opportunity in the workplace.

  43. Many men in education will not be alone with a student (M/F) in their office for the same reason. There was even a film using this motive: “The Life of David Gale”

    It is not that there are many, or even few, students that will try to ruin their teacher. However, you only have to run into a single mental case out of the hundreds or thousands that sit in your classes over the years.

    As usual, the problem is not the mental cases that do such things, but the people that believe them. We saw the same with the scandal of fake “recovered memories” about childhood abuse. Eventually, even the media got enough of that. Our hope is that this will happen in this area too.

    But I myself think that this is already happening. This blog post is just a part of the rebound.

  44. Guest: SJWs are not people of intellectual honesty, consistency, or principle. If you try shooting “I’m not comfortable” back at them, they will likely say something about how their job is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Moreover, you’re playing into their frame and legitimizing their rhetoric. Tell me, how far has it gotten the Republicans to say that Democrats are the REAL racists? Have they managed to break 10% of the black vote?

  45. Erik, the trick is say it loudly enough and often enough, and they’ll have to deal with it one way or the other.

    And when the Republicrats say that Demopublicans are the _real_ racists, they’re BSing to some extent. There’s plenty of socially unpleasant views whithin the GOP, and it’s no good trying to hide them. You don’t need to dignify the word “racist” by throwing it at them, just call them out when they’re being bigoted and prejudiced. Again, persistence helps.

  46. Pingback: A second front in the OSS invasion | Neoreactive

  47. While there are nuances that make some less severe, there are only 11 “all party consent” states in the US: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. The rest are one part consent, if you’re making a recording including your own voice you’re fine.

  48. What happens if you get consent to record? That’s a lot more legal.

    Also, it’s both a good excuse and true that if you record, you have a record of your better advice.

  49. What happens if you get consent to record?

    Either the attempt is aborted or the framer starts complaining that the recording is misogynistic.

  50. Why not honeytrap the honeytrappers with hidden audio/video recording devices? […] Or just spread the word that many men are now using hidden recording devices to defend themselves this way.

    Will do you no good, unless you have a full recording of every single such interaction, and some way to prove that you were never alone with this person and failed to record it. You’re trying to prove a negative, in a situation where (in public opinion at least, and sometime in a court of law) you have the burden of proof.

  51. Meredith said: I have written about this before,

    [snip]
    “Have you ever considered that most women don’t experience things the way you do?”
    [/snip]

    …yet they make out like you’re the one with the problem?

  52. Nobel-Prize winning biologist Tim Hunt almost had his career ruined earlier this year.

    No “almost” about it: he has not gotten his job back, and media references to the story (e.g., this Science Friday episode) still follow the disproven (yet somehow not discredited) narrative.


  53. Will do you no good, unless you have a full recording of every single such interaction, and some way to prove that you were never alone with this person and failed to record it. You’re trying to prove a negative, in a situation where (in public opinion at least, and sometime in a court of law) you have the burden of proof.

    it’s incredibly trivial to arrange with modern smartphones? You can also immediately upload to dropbox or something as long as properly fast network is available

    Well, the battery drain will be SEVERE, but you can always carry a “hackerly” battery pack without too much trouble, and some modern phones already come with very spiffy batteries

  54. My advice: stick to writing about tech, ’cause you make yourself look like a fool when you write about politics.
    My father was a teacher, and he always followed the principle: “never be alone with a student (especially a female student)” as well. But claiming there is a conspiracy of “SJWs” out to make examples of “open source leaders”? That’s as absurd as claiming there is a conspiracy of greens, scientists and big government with regards climate change/global warming! Somehow thousands of people are all in it together!

    Next you’ll be telling us that evolution is made up, and that actually goddunit. I also won’t be stockpiling gold, even if you think it’s a good idea.

    Please continue to write about software, and how you do interesting things with time and GPS etc. But feel free to not show your ignorance in the fields of politics, economics, and similar.

  55. Well, there ARE indications that we are, or have, passed “Peak SJW”.

    I certainly hope so.

    But in any case, wise people know to always be prepared to defend. And considering I start a new position with some manglement responsibilities. . . .I just ordered a “spy pen” . . .

    And @Meredith: Wow. While I’m not on the spectrum ( at least that I know of), I’ve always had similar issues, and so do my wife and daughters. Heck, that’s probably part of our family’s success: lots of other people don’t grok us, but we do grok each other, and that’s more than enough to make it work.

  56. Quick reminder:

    Last month Sarah Sharp “quit” Linux because of Linus and Greg making some jokes that made her feel “threatened’ or somesuch hogwash.
    http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/10/05/2031247/linux-kernel-dev-sarah-sharp-quits-citing-brutal-communications-style
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=8123533&cid=50664697

    Sarah Sharp is a member of the Ada Initiative, who are behind this attempt to frame Linus and others.
    http://adainitiative.org/2014/07/25/welcoming-sarah-sharp-and-selena-deckelmann-to-our-advisory-board/

    I knew something smelled wrong about how Sharp and a few others had an orchestrated fainting couch moment over the “toxic environment,” and now we have claims that an organization Sharp is a board member of is actively trying to frame Linus for Sexual Assault.

    If you’re working with the Ada Initiative, I would suggest not doing so in the future. If you’re working in tech, make damned sure you’re never alone with someone, especially someone of the opposite sex, doubly so if that person is a feminist.

  57. But the article is worth clicking through, if only for the picture of Linus.

  58. This story has a whiff of Eron Gjoni to it. Difficult to verify, but it fits people’s preconceived notions about what “SJWs” are really like, so it earns the attention –and credence — of “a certain crowd”.

    It has been shown that Gjoni was out to get personal revenge on Zoe Quinn for breaking up with him, and was basically pulling the strings in order to start and perpetuate a harassment campaign against her and ruin her emotionally, his stated goal being to “get Zoe Quinn into therapy”.

    So how do we know that this report isn’t some MRA tryna get back at those mean old SJWs for defining and enforcing norms of behavior that require people in open source to be respectful and not be dicks?

  59. The interesting thing is that Mixon is an SJW. She thinks Requires Hate is a betrayal of SJW ideals. I think Requires Hate is a highly probably result of SJW methods. We could both be right.

    I don’t think SJWs always lie. I think they never quantify– a serious problem, but not the same thing.

  60. >So how do we know that this report isn’t some MRA tryna get back at those mean old SJWs

    Because I know the source and he’s not an MRA.

  61. I wrote:
    >Because I know the source and he’s not an MRA.

    In the interests of scrupulous honesty, I will note that I have heard him grumble about “useless diversity hires” and remark that the women he works with who aren’t SJWs are unhappy with them too for making women who advanced on merit look bad. But this is the kind of thing any non-MRA might say when he thinks the PC police aren’t listening.

  62. > It has been shown that Gjoni was out to get personal revenge on Zoe Quinn for breaking up with him

    The behavior he alleged on her part during the relationship was, objectively, emotional abuse. We are told that we are supposed to automatically side with supposed victims of abuse, and automatically side against accused abusers. We are not told that this only applies when the supposed victims are women and the supposed abusers are men.

  63. (We are simply expected to understand the latter without it being said)

  64. > Because I know the source and he’s not an MRA.

    You don’t know his source. All we can infer from, at least, the part you quoted, is that he heard this and believed it, not that he has firsthand or even secondhand knowledge.

  65. “What’s all this concern about ‘big bad SJWs’? It’s all hysteria promoted by MRAs.”

    Riiight. This TLA is not the problem; that one is. Uh-huh.

  66. I’ve researched and written about the Ada Initiative before. They are what you would expect; a mentally disheveled and broken group of women who’ve adopted lesbian supremacist ideology as their own personal religion. For some reason they think if they use the words “feminist” and “social justice” enough they can get away with the most sociopathic bigoted behaviors.

    To no one’s surprise Ada is worshipped in the science fiction community, yet another hobby which has been destroyed by a crusade to fight “whiteness” and the cruel oppression of the “gender binary” and pass it off as “social justice,” mostly without a hint of self-awareness of where their ideology even comes from. See: Judith Butler’s war of the pronouns.

    And let me assure you of something regarding Laura Mixon and Requires Hate: that is an inter-KKK feud. As long as RH was comparing white men to the intelligence of “buffaloes” everything was just peachy, since Mixon herself writes inspiring essays about the “unconscious bias of white men.”

  67. We can all get in a rage for these horrible SJW, but remember that this is the country where you can get on a sex offenders list for urinating in public:

    The Ridiculous Laws That Put People on the Sex Offender List
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/08/mapped_sex_offender_registry_laws_on_statutory_rape_public_urination_and.html

    You Might Be a Sex Offender and Not Even Know It!
    Have you ever peed in public? Or hugged a child? Or been naked in your own home? You might be in trouble
    http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/you-might-be-sex-offender-and-not-know-it

    Who writes these laws?

  68. Hi, I’ve been active in the open source movement since 1999 as a graphic designer. Radical feminism has always been lurking like a dark shadow over the geek community. Under the disguise to encourage more women into tech, the feminist groups would try hard to paint their male counterparts as evil perpetrators and potential harassers. If that’s not enough, they also would lash out to women who dared not to support their hideous narrative. I for example had my work labeled “sexist” a couple of times, other women were criticised over their supposedly “sexualising” outfits. Such behaviour doesn’t encourage women to join the tech community, it drives them away and it leaves a hostile environment for those who stay, male or female. It’s sad to see how far things have come, I would hope that some more people will speak up and make this stop.

    P. S. BTW Eric, we once met IRL at a conference in Germany back in 2001-ish. That was when you played western concert flute and RMS was trying to compete with his singing abilities against you… Oh, those were times. :)

  69. After Winter’s first post in this thread, I thought: “Wow, he didn’t figure out a way to blame the United States!” And then he goes and blows it with a second post….

    @Anonymous 4982: Don’t be an idiot. There’s a big difference between: “Everyone who agrees with X is part of a vast conspiracy” and “The vast number of people who agree with X includes some who are conspiring.”

  70. @papayasf

    For once, I agree with not only his first post, but the ridiculousness of what can get listed as a sex offender.

  71. @ Dgarsys: He’s not wrong about sex offender registries, but I think it’s funny how often his posts involve some terrible and supposedly unique thing about the US.

  72. @Anonymous4982: There is such a thing as a prospiracy, y’know. Or, for those inclined to a SFnal view of things, you could call it something like an aggressively evangelistic hegemonizing memeplex.

  73. This is a legitimate concern for men in today’s society. SJWs are incredibly dangerous and insincere in their methods.

  74. The same type of people are making a play to take over Wikipedia by planting false news articles accusing the Arbitration Committee of sexism and allowing harassment, then citing these articles to justify openly campaigning against the current committee on the Wikipedia Signpost.
    http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2015/02/wikipedia_gamergate_scandal_how_a_bad_source_made_wikipedia_wrong_about.single.html
    https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiInAction/comments/3r84vn/kevin_gorman_campaigning_for_ggtf_bloc_in_arbcom/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-10-21/Editorial
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2015-10-28/Op-ed

    Arbcom member Molly White (GorillaWarfare) was a member of a group that sent threats to Zoe Quinn to justify her claims that Gamergaters were harassing her.
    http://pressfarttocontinue.com/2015/06/03/twitter-bot-army-the-story-of-botally/

    There have been a few other incidents on Wikipedia that look more like hostile action than regular editing. When Archon from the Escapist described what was happening in Gamergate as “cultural marxism”, Wikipedia nuked its page on the school of cultural marxism, replaced it with a page calling cultural marxism a conspiracy theory, and started handing out indef blocks to people who questioned the neutrality of this point of view.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Frankfurt_School&diff=prev&oldid=667219503
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive889#New_user_Kaffeburk_using_a_talk_page_as_a_political_Forum_.28rather_than_an_editorial_discussion_space.29.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Seeking_indef_ban_of_Second_Dark

    When an Israeli editor pointed out that Wikipedia allows anti-Israel activist blogs as “Reliable Sources” while banning mainstream Israeli news sources, they made up an excuse to ban the editor as a “sockpuppet”.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel_articles_3/Evidence#RS_issues
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Settleman#Blocked_as_a_sockpuppet

    A comment on reddit alleges “Wikipedians sourcing a state-funded propaganda office as reliable and threatening bans of whoever disagrees” in another case.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiInAction/comments/3r9502/northbysouthbaranof_at_it_again_huma_abedin/

  75. >You don’t know his source. All we can infer from, at least, the part you quoted, is that he heard this and believed it, not that he has firsthand or even secondhand knowledge.

    I’m handicapped by not being able to reveal things that would make him more credible but also provide strong clues to his identity. Unlike me, he has a career that could be destroyed by a full-on SJW attack – and neither of us thinks they would hesitate to target him for speaking truth to their power. He doesn’t want to be Eiched, and I will not put him at that risk.

    So all I can say is that I think I have excellent reason to believe him.

  76. Just more proof that tech should not be forced to integrate women only conform with some pointless statistics.

    If the work they do merits their inclusion into project x then by all means include them but including them just to say y project has z percentage of women is insane.

    Here’s to hoping that 3rd wave feminism fails before its too late…

  77. PapayaSF, sex offender registries only exist in the anglosphere; and the USA is the only country with publicly available sex offender registries which have the chilling effect of pretty much ostracizing people from the community (and increasing the chance of reoffense, because it’s not like they have a good job, a good reputation, or a nice place to live that they could lose by reoffending). So yes, much of the concern about sex offender registries is based on things which are unique to the United States.

    The harsh laws against public nudity are intended to protect children from the likes of “flashers” (and if a perv comes to your neighborhood and flashes your teenage daughter in the park you will want such protection) but also to close loopholes in the law that would allow offenders to plea-bargain down to a lesser offense.

    It doesn’t make much sense, but then again neither does the adversarial judicial system or system of plea bargaining.

  78. “My advice: stick to writing about tech, ’cause you make yourself look like a fool when you write about politics.
    My father was a teacher, and he always followed the principle: “never be alone with a student (especially a female student)” as well. But claiming there is a conspiracy of “SJWs” out to make examples of “open source leaders”? That’s as absurd as claiming there is a conspiracy of greens, scientists and big government with regards climate change/global warming! Somehow thousands of people are all in it together!

    Next you’ll be telling us that evolution is made up, and that actually goddunit. I also won’t be stockpiling gold, even if you think it’s a good idea.

    Please continue to write about software, and how you do interesting things with time and GPS etc. But feel free to not show your ignorance in the fields of politics, economics, and similar.”

    ^^ A classic 5th column type of comment. Appeal to Authority Fallacy. Extensive use of shaming (a variant of the appeal to authority play). And blanketing possible concerns under the shame blanket, as if they were all the same thing – I call this the Bad Heuristics Fallacy. Smells 5th column to me.

  79. If there is an established MO, there should already be previous examples of public accusations of sexual assault at tech conferences. There are none so far. So right off the bat it is obvious that your source is not telling the truth.

    Also, it is hilarious to watch the over pouring of confirmation bias here. If a woman were to make a claim, nothing short of video clips from multiple angles would convince the people that the woman was telling the truth. But idiotic gossip that panders to their biases is so readily believed.

  80. Classic SJW tactics, not at all unlike those of Scientology when they decide to go after you. None of this surprises me in the least; this is in fact EXACTLY what I would expect of these SJW types.

  81. Memetic manipulation works. The SJWs described in this post are not random deviants that occasionally pop up in any social sphere; they were created (and the process is ongoing).

  82. “Cultural marxism” has long been a right-wing scare word used to associate respect for different cultural perspectives with communist agents of influence.

    The hilarious bit is that when they’re right, they get the sides wrong: the modernist movement in art, for instance, was recently revealed to be a CIA psyop!

  83. Mike,

    At least the Scientologists don’t go making wild accusations. They’re rigorous enough to collect evidence, in the form of confessions of what your body thetans did in previous lifetimes, before going public with their accusations. lulz

  84. @asdf: The Wikipedia controversy regarding “Cultural Marxism” is especially egregious. Some punk dictator called Jobrot controls it, and insists it’s a “conspiracy theory.” Funny thing is, Wikipedia has no problem attempting balance on such topics as “rape culture,” which is just as much (if not more) a fringe or “conspiracy theory.” Not that everything Marxist is a conspiracy, but countless groups of Marxists have had various sizes of conspiracies for over a century. There’s one (or more) behind every Communist revolution (or attempt) in the 20th century. It’s simply indisputable historical fact. Sheesh.

    @Jeff Read, it’s silly to say “the modernist movement in art, for instance, was recently revealed to be a CIA psyop!” The modernist movement predates the CIA by at least 40 years. Yes, they funded some people in the ’50s, but it was very little and very late.

  85. As a matter of policy I’m automatically skeptical of any claim of the form “my political enemies are functionally Bond villains.”

    …on the other hand, I get nervous being alone with women I don’t personally trust in the current climate, too. So I have fewer legs to stand on than I’d like.

  86. “I doubt that all women were fine with collective guilt.”

    Yeah, this looks like circular reasoning, an infinite recursion bug. Assigning collective guilt is okay, because some of the targets were okay with it, and we can therefore blame all of the targets because assigning collective guilt is okay?

  87. “it’s incredibly trivial to arrange with modern smartphones?”

    If you think your battery life is bad now, try recording yourself 24/7. If you and lithium-ion technology can only conveniently manage N%, then that leaves you with a 100-N% of having no alibi for a false allegation.

  88. We all carry a recording device at all times (get bambuser on your phone now!). And it is perfectly legal to record a conversation as long as both parties agree. So, if you’re ever in a situation with a woman, simply record the entire thing after getting consent from that woman. Problem solved. If a woman doesn’t want to be recorded, then politely explain that it is not possible for us to be alone due to the number of honeytraps that are set for men these days.

  89. Jeff Read, not quite. What we found out is that the CIA funded largely-independent modernist/formalist art, giving it a boost over directly Soviet-influenced “socialist-realist art”. The enemy of my enemy, and all that. The Marxist influence was going to be there in either case, but that wasn’t a huge issue anyway.

  90. >Assigning collective guilt is okay, because some of the targets were okay with it, and we can therefore blame all of the targets because assigning collective guilt is okay?

    Alinsky: Make the targets live up to their own rules.

    I’ve been slightly misunderstood here, I think. I wasn’t advocating treating all women as collectively guilty, but suggesting a rebuttable presumption about all “women-in-tech” advocacy groups.

  91. * “(Don’t like that, ladies? Tough. You were just fine with collective guilt when the shoe was on the other foot. Enjoy your turn!)” *

    I want to point out that this is really unfortunate circular reasoning. You are using collective guilt to justify collective guilt.

    I have, from the beginning, been horrified by the actions of neo-feminists. I understand your caution, but please don’t blame those of us who have fought on the side of free speech and negative liberty.

    I appreciate all you have given us with this post, and all the support Linus and his ilk have been given. Keep fighting the good fight.

  92. Jeff Read, not quite. What we found out is that the CIA funded largely-independent modernist/formalist art, giving it a boost over directly Soviet-influenced “soci**ist-realist art”. The enemy of my enemy, and all that. The Marxist influence was going to be there in either case, but that wasn’t a huge issue anyway.

    (edited for spam-proofness)

  93. Tell these developers to secretly record their meetings with these feminists when they are trying to set them up so that they can expose their lies to the world.

    Show the world what feminism in tech really is.

  94. Eric, you have no evidence of this actually happening. Linus is obviously a popular person and people (including women) will flirt with him.

    I say this out of love, you need help with your paranoia.

    Also remove this article, all you’re doing is making every single woman look like an enemy.

  95. ============
    …on the other hand, I get nervous being alone with women I don’t personally trust in the current climate, too. So I have fewer legs to stand on than I’d like.
    ============

    If Tim Hunt incident showed anything, it is that “not being alone” is not enough, 2+ people of similar beliefs can spontaneously conspire and bully the rest into obedience.

    Tim Hunt only was helped by a chance recording.

    Record everything. If need be, “accidentally” so

  96. > Assigning collective guilt is okay, because some of the targets were okay with it…?

    What about just specifically excluding those who stood against it?

  97. > I wasn’t advocating treating all women as collectively guilty, but suggesting a rebuttable presumption about all “women-in-tech” advocacy groups.

    Well, that and treating all women as being guilty-until-proven-innocent of being a member of such a group. You did say don’t be alone with any “female”, not with any member of such a group.

  98. Also, your original post doesn’t suggest any way for the presumption to be rebutted. “rebuttable” isn’t just an empty word you can throw in to make your position sound less extreme, it has a meaning.

  99. >Well, that and treating all women as being guilty-until-proven-innocent of being a member of such a group. You did say don’t be alone with any “female”, not with any member of such a group.

    Sure, but how is one to know which category one is dealing with?

    It’s not imputing guilt to all snarks to observe that some of them might be boojums, and you can’t tell which in advance.

  100. > Sure, but how is one to know which category one is dealing with?

    Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that “I wasn’t advocating treating all women as collectively guilty, but suggesting a rebuttable presumption about all “women-in-tech” advocacy groups.” is not a fair characterization of what you said. You may well have a justified reason to advocate treating all women as collectively guilty, or arguably your use of the term “collective guilt” was flippant and the treatment you were actually suggesting was not intended as a “punishment” at all, but you were certainly not merely “suggesting a rebuttable presumption”.

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