Nathan vs Memphis

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I voted for memphis because as terrible as he is my self-image is worse.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Yeah, if memphis isn't antireligious and I'm not trans then at least half of the reasons we dislike each other so much in the first place disappear right there.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Maddalena, I have mixed feelings about. Back in the summer during my first request to be unbanned I was intrigued by different religions besides my Catholic upbringing, in particular LGBTQ-affirming religions, I was told to ask the poster then known as Nathan about such religions, so I PMed him and asked him some questions about religion hoping for a thought-provoking discussion, he said he was busy but would get back to me with answers but never did even though I was in limbo on the forum for like 3 months before the mods at the time rejected my unban request. And so I remain a religion-hating atheist.

Yeah, I'm actually really sorry about that. To be honest, because I didn't see you posting any more after a certain point in that interaction, I assumed you'd been re-banned much earlier than I guess you in fact were. If you'd like to restart that conversation I'd be happy to (although I do admit a certain tendency to get distracted and wander away from conversations, I'll try very hard not to with this one.

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I'm sorry for getting the wrong read on you.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

In fairness to memphis, I don't think he can really be called 'pro-rape' by any stretch of the imagination. He's insufficiently anti-rape, but frankly, so are most people. It's not the same thing.

Memphis gives the irreligious community on here a bad name (Hockeydude, you aren't any better either).

Personally I think HockeyDude is noticeably better, actually.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

As our President frequently says, Let me be clear. I do not in any way condone either rape or rapists. Suggesting otherwise is an extremely ugly allegation.

And yet you spend the remainder of this post (not-very-)obliquely making it of me and everybody else in the world who doesn't share your religious beliefs. Charming.

Incidentally, in order for your argument to have any merit, the sort of abuse of power that you're describing would have to be both inherent and (to some extent) specific to religious bodies as a class of institutions. I have no doubt that you do believe that to be the case, and I really can't imagine how you might be disabused of this belief, for the same reason that I don't really know how to argue with Moon landing conspiracy theorists.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

With regard to the "pro-rape" comment, as I said, I haven't really read much of what memphis has to say on such topics, I was just going by what people here were saying.

Can someone fill me in on why memphis is so unpopular and why people think he is, at the very least, insufficiently anti-rape and misogynistic?

As a victim of rape myself (although not a woman), that would render him an instant HP in my book and I would understand his unpopularity in polls like these.

I think people in particular are thinking of quotes like this. It's from a while ago, so it's possible that memphis's views on this are a lot less bad than they used to be, and I certainly hope that that's the case, but it still rankles.

Memphis, do you think if a woman goes outside dressed in a "slutty" outfit and gets raped that it is her fault for dressing that way?

I would not blame a victim of rape. Ever. At the same time, we all live in an imperfect world and need to be mindful of that fact. I wouldn't leave my front door wide open lest somebody loot my modest possessions. It wouldn't be my fault somebody stole my stuff, but it would have been wiser to be more conscious of the risks out there in the world.

Again, I don't think it's at all fair to say that this constitutes being 'pro-rape', but it's still a worrying attitude.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Are you suggesting people shouldn't be conscious of risks, sexual or otherwise, when venturing out into the world? I'm just trying to offer some pragmatic advice. The world can be a scary place. It's wise to exercise a reasonable degree of caution. I fail to see how that could be considered remotely offensive, unless one were deliberately trying very hard to be offended. Which I think a lot of posters routinely do.

I think part of the objection is that whether or not a woman gets raped has very little to do with her clothing, so it's not useful advice anyway.

Exactly. The insinuation that this sort of thing is what's relevant is patronizing at best.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's worth mentioning that it's also incredibly disrespectful to rape victims to use them as pawns in one's unrelated sociopolitical fixations, as memphis does with his antireligious tendencies.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's worth mentioning that it's also incredibly disrespectful to rape victims to use them as pawns in one's unrelated sociopolitical fixations, as memphis does with his antireligious tendencies.

Not nearly as disrespectful of victims as it is of you to pretend that the nature of religious authority doesn't lend itself toward sexual abuse. You are mocking them and belittling the horror of their experiences every day you pretend this is not an issue.

...I just called for a purge of the Catholic clergy something like a week ago. As in I used the word 'purge'. Beyond that, the idea that 'the nature of religious authority' is a thing that exists in the sense of being both consistent across various religions and distinguishable from other types of authority is really weird, and is just a way for you to provide a fig leaf of pseudo-sociological quasi-legitimacy to your wildly arrogant and offensive assertion that the only way to be anti-rape is to share your exact religious beliefs. You're so transparent. Give it up.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It's worth mentioning that it's also incredibly disrespectful to rape victims to use them as pawns in one's unrelated sociopolitical fixations, as memphis does with his antireligious tendencies.

Not nearly as disrespectful of victims as it is of you to pretend that the nature of religious authority doesn't lend itself toward sexual abuse. You are mocking them and belittling the horror of their experiences every day you pretend this is not an issue.

...I just called for a purge of the Catholic clergy something like a week ago. As in I used the word 'purge'. Beyond that, the idea that 'the nature of religious authority' is a thing that exists in the sense of being both consistent across various religions and distinguishable from other types of authority is really weird, and is just a way for you to provide a fig leaf of pseudo-sociological quasi-legitimacy to your wildly arrogant and offensive assertion that the only way to be anti-rape is to share your exact religious beliefs. You're so transparent. Give it up.

I'm sorry you find the truth to be "weird." That's how things operate in the world outside your convent.

I'm sorry you confuse nonsensical, specious pseudo-sociology with 'truth'. That isn't how things operate in the world outside your subreddit.

I don't want to be 'that girl' and quote Durkheim. So I won't. The basic, foundational assumptions of sociology of religion as a discipline are there if you want to look for them.

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If memory serves, what happened was you used it as a jumping-off point to mischaracterize my argument in the most insulting possible terms and I pointed out that that was what you were doing.

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You're aware that this is essentially a tone argument you're making, right? Tone arguments and inflammatory assertions repeated ad nauseam seem to be the only kinds of rebuttals to anything I say that you're capable of making. Accusing me of ad hominem attacks for pointing out that you're bigoted insofar as your arguments contain premises that constitute bigotry...accusing me of obscurantism for preferring to write in complex sentences...it never ends.