The Amazing Atheist tried to answer the YouTube video “Reasonable Questions for Anti-SJWs.”



It got about as many upvotes from TAA’s racist, sexist fanclub as a typical Hitler video gets on YouTube from white supremacists (and the video it’s attacking is on its way to getting about as many downvotes as a typical anti-Hitler movie gets from Hitler supporters on YouTube), indicating that his strident stance has made it so that only a set of predominantly Trump supporters like him.

But it’s just bad. And I don’t mean “bad” in the shake your fist kind of way. I mean that it’s just bad reasoning. I can only really explain the people in the comment section who declare that he “pwned” the SJWs to the hypothesis that he has a bunch of unthinking fanboys, because he really didn’t. Most of what he stated was clearly lazy nonsense.

The first question he answers, which basically boils down to an inquiry as to whether he recognizes the irony of criticizing the SJWs for their supposed hyperreactions when he and other anti-SJWs also have hyperreactions, he basically answers with the response, “It’s OK when we do it, because we’re right.” He says that their extremes don’t match SJWs extremes, which is true — they’re different in content and, in my opinion, the extremes of anti-SJWs themselves are somewhat…well, over the top in an attempt to be entertaining.

I mean, this is just a *sigh*. Those who disagree with you can use the exact same argument — which boils down to, “It’s OK when we do it, because we’re right.”

And even though my piece here is meant to be more serious than entertaining, I have written blog posts that have been intentionally entertaining and a bit over the top, as do several other bloggers, and we get criticized by it by anti-SJWs for it repeatedly. We could use the exact same counterargument of “It’s OK when we do it, because we’re right” but that would be nonsense.

Then he discussed three scenarios that supposedly proved the inferiority of feminist concerns: getting upset at speakers coming to a campus, at “nigger” being a word in Huckleberry Finn, and at women in skimpy outfits in video games. Getting upset when a speaker comes on campus — well, free speech is a thing. If you don’t like a speaker on the campus, you have a right to make your voice heard. And the word “nigger” in Huckleberry Finn — I haven’t heard feminists get upset about that, but that’s an important piece of literature that often is taught in schools, so the way it is interpreted obviously has more cultural significance than constant gripes about Anita Sarkeesian. And the criticism about women in skimpy outfits in video games isn’t on what they’re wearing, but on how women are discouraged from playing video games due to characters who are ONLY eye candy for men and not characters in their own right (in many games, there is not even the option to choose a female character) — so many of these women work with video game companies to make the video games more appealing to women AND men. It’s these drastic simplifications and straw men that get views and create entertainment, but mischaracterize genuine concerns.

And this last bit of rhetoric:

So SJWs are crybabies who throw tantrums and the anti-SJWs side is made up of reasonable people using theatrical techniques and humor to make points.

It seems to me that this could be switched to say, “Anti-SJWs are crybabies who throw tantrums and the side labeled SJWs is made up of reasonable people using theatrical techniques and humor to make points.” It’s just sophistry. It’s admitting that yes, we’re hypocrites — it’s just OK when we do it, because we’re right.

Then TAA answers the question of why he doesn’t identify as right-wing when he has so many right-wing ideas. He responds with several statements that sound left wing, and then says he simply doesn’t fit in with the right wing, although he doesn’t fit in with the left wing because he doesn’t like “identity politics.” Blah, blah, blah….

Whatever. Here’s the deal.

TAA encourages his followers to vote for Donald Trump, arguing that Donald Trump is also left-wing.

You’ll excuse me if I take his definition of “right wing” and “left wing” with a bucket of salt.

Is someone who encourages people to vote for Donald Trump over Clinton and Jill Stein and even Gary Johnson a left-winger? I don’t know about you, but that seems pretty disturbingly right-wing to me.

Moving on.

TAA is then challenged as to why he doesn’t engage in discourse with other people, and says that others fail to engage in reasoned discourse with him.

…….yeah.

I mean, never engage in reasonable discourse? Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And I’m not the only one — several SJWs have engaged in reasoned discourse, all the time. The fact is that, in many cases, they just don’t want to debate us.

I mean, I offered to raise $500 of charity money once if TAA debated me on his characterization of black culture as a crybaby “victim cult” and after agreeing he backed out, offering the BS excuse that he was afraid I’d call him a racist. Really? He insulted an entire black culture, and he won’t talk to me because he’s afraid of being called a racist?

What a delicate flower.

So yeah. When he says, “This notion that we’re the ones avoiding rational dialogue is fucking absurd” I can only conclude that he either has a bad memory or he’s lying.

Anyways. Moving on…

In answer to a question on why the anti-SJWs troll if they’re interested in rational discourse, TAA says the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Let’s see. If you’re trolling someone, you’re saying something designed to get under their skin. You’re not engaging in rational discourse and understanding with that person. So yeah, the two are mutually exclusive. If you try to get under people’s skin for sport, you’re not engaging in rational discourse with them; you’re trying to psychologically annihilate someone and then laughing your head off when your skilled barbs ruin their emotional health. That’s schoolyard bullying, not mature conversation. Which honestly seems uninteresting to those of us who are seeking real, rational solutions to these problems, which is why your wins in the entertainment realm won’t actually translate to the actual reforms we are attempting to make in the real world. People like Trump and TAA may get a lot of popularity with trolling, because it is entertaining, but nobody in the know is going to trust them to actually come up with real solutions to the problems we face, which is the reason both of their tactics may win a few battles, but will ultimately lose the longer-term culture war.

You want to join the team that’s looking for solutions? Then stop trolling for a moment and let’s have a real conversation. You want to troll? Fine. But let’s not pretend that you’re remotely relevant to constructing solutions to the very real issues very real people in the United States are facing.

The next question is from someone who asks whether anti-SJWs realize that terms like “cuck” and “SJW” have been diluted of meaning and derail conversation. TAA doesn’t answer and laughs at the guy’s outfit.

…yeah.

Anyways, in answer to a question by a YouTuber who works in mental health issues for men on working together, TAA boasts that he doesn’t need the help because he and his millions of subscribers contribute money to charity, saying that if they want to help, maybe contribute money to charity.

How does he know she doesn’t? Furthermore, she actually helps mentally-ill patients, so that’s, like, valuable know-how and work.

Y’know, this reminds me of the racist landowners who gave money to NAACP while keeping black neighborhoods they owned separate from white neighborhoods they own. This idea that giving to charity gives you a free pass to be rude to groups of people just kinda is nonsense. You can’t buy a license to being a dick to people just by giving to charity. Giving money to a problem that you’re causing, in the case of exalting misogyny, doesn’t change the fact that you’re causing and exacerbating the problem, or remotely mean that a professional who works on solving the problem day in and day out can’t help you solve the problem.

I mean, when he goes on his tirade on how the questioner supposedly just “talks” about making lives better for women and he actually does it…did he miss the whole part about how she actually works in helping people with mental health issues? Like that’s her job, as opposed to “helping” women by saying stuff like this (pages 90-91):

Rape isn’t fatal. So imagine my indignation when I saw a chatroom called“Rape Survivors.” Is this supposed to impress me? Someone fucked you when you didn’t want to be fucked and you’re amazed that you survived? Unless he used a chainsaw instead of his dick, what’s the big deal? I don’t mean to be horrendously offensive and insensitive here, but everyone survives rape. Some women are killed afterwards, but that’s murder, not rape. To say that you’re a rape survivor is as meaningless as saying you’re a jury duty survivor or a divorce survivor. Lots of things in life suck—that doesn’t mean we survived them. The word survivor applies to people who are alive after being stabbed 73 times with an ice pick or mauled by rabid wolverines, not to a woman who gets dick when she doesn’t want it. Just because you got raped, you have to rape the English language? You vindictive bitch! Also, don’t you ever get tired of being the victim? How many failed relationships are you going to blame on a single violation of your personal space? I’m not making light of it. I know that it is damaging, a reminder of your powerlessness against the world—but it should be a wake up call. We are all powerless against the forces of fate (or chance). We’re all on different paths, but they all lead to the same place. I just showed this writing to a friend of mine, along with the question, “Is this too offensive to release?” I was looking for a yes. I got one. So, I’ve included it here. I’m here to cross lines. This is not The Amazing Atheist from those cute little youtube videos you love so much—this is the real me. And the real me doesn’t give a fuck about your small-minded boundaries. If you’ve been raped, does the above passage add insult to injury? Does it make it hurt worse? How could it? If rape is the paramount psychological trauma in life, then how could my words aggravate it whatsoever? Too often in this culture, we fear words. But even if my words are the height of ignorance, they should elevate you. If you find them funny, then you will laugh and dismiss them as a joke. If you find them honest, you will respect my bravery. If you find them infuriating, I will have given you power. If you find them sad, then I have enriched you. Words never make less of a person, unless they are bland.If you feel something, then I’ve done my job as a writer.

There’s the claim that this actually is the best advice a rape victim can receive. Having talked to women who have been raped, who he would label crybabies…I have my doubts. And besides, can’t this be turned around? Why are white people here complaining about BLM, when white people in other places, like Syria, have much worse problems? Why do men complain here about being attacked for playing video games while men on the other side of the world have AIDS? If we contributed to AIDS victims on the other side of the world as a “men’s issue,” does that license us to say what we like about video games and rape accusations?

You see the nonsense here? And he ends with:

You know how you can help me? The next time we do a charity event, why don’t you shut your mouth and open your wallet. That’s how you can help me make a difference, bitch.

Wow. So not only does giving to charity give him the right to say whatever he wants, it also gives him the power to tell women, “shut up, bitch” and make them morally obligated to say, “Oh, thank you TAA”? Really?

This is sad.

Moving on.

Then Steve Shives asks about their objections to third-wave feminism, inquiring about their specific objections to it.

Now, Steve is infamous for blocking people. He says that it’s largely because anti-SJWs are more interested in Internet drama than actually having substantive conversations. At first, I admit, I was skeptical of this, after I heard about his reputation soon after doing a YouTube interview with Shives. But the fallout kinda convinced me that…yeah, if I were getting these kind of responses, I wouldn’t really want to engage in conversation with people determined to smear me, either. And I wouldn’t have to. You are under no obligation to become a troll’s plaything, especially if their end goal is to ruin your emotional health and laugh at you as you receive death threats from their fans.

I mean, where did Shives get the idea that conversation with anti-SJWs would be pointless, when the response to his question was this:

Steve, if your skin is so thin, don’t be surprised when people use you as a condom to fuck your wife…. And this guy has the audacity to sit there and act as if we were somehow beholden to him. As if we owed him answers. As if we now had to give our response to a question of his which he, without a shadow of a doubt, will ignore anyway. No. No. No. Fuck you, Steve. Go watch someone fuck your wife.

So, yeah. Gee, I wonder why Shives blocks anti-SJWs? Also, way to chicken out of the question.

Then there’s the question on an infamous extreme feminist nicknamed Trigglypuff. In answer to why anti-SJWs think this represents all feminists and why out-of-control anti-SJWs (an example is provided) are supposedly not characteristic of anti-SJWs, TAA’s answer is basically nonsense.

First he says:

No one has ever made the argument: Look at how ridiculous Trigglypuff is! All feminists are like Trigglypuff.

But then he contradicts himself when he says right after that:

It’s just that someone like Trigglypuff is such a fucking amazing example of feminist stereotypes that how could people not use her on their channel… she perfectly embodies all the worst aspects of feminism. She’s whiny, loud, entitled, disruptive, emotionally unstable and really fucking incredibly stupid and instantly unlikable. Sounds like feminism to me.

Wait. I’m confused. So…it’s not representative of all feminists but of all feminism? Then the question is still there, right? Why aren’t the extremist anti-SJWs, who say, I think we’ll all agree, some pretty messed up stuff…why aren’t they representative of all anti-feminism? I mean, they can be all of the above listed characteristics of Trigglypuff.

In other words, he doesn’t answer the question. But if you’re part of his fan club, you’ll like his video the same way Hiter supporters like his speeches, I guess.

Ok, this blog post is kinda long and I have some work I need to do, but that’s OK, because I can respond to the answers to the next three questions summarily. The questions they are asked concern why the anti-SJWs dismiss feminism based on extreme examples instead of looking at serious, academic feminism and solutions to the real problems women face. The best-sounding answer of the video is given by a YouTuber named Kraut and Tea to this question, who said he was inspired to start his channel after feminists protected a mass rape perpetrated by Muslims in Germany. That’s actually a somewhat reasonable-sounding response on its face; it would be nice if the video had more of those…although I have doubts that academic feminists support rape, whether Muslims do it or not, and would have liked some more detail. I mean, even Buzzfeed feminism was outraged at the assault and the German laws that made much of it unprosecutable.

But the rest of the answer was just the same old drivel. TAA said that he talks about extremist concepts of feminism because that’s the popular side of feminism and gets him views. I would argue that those are the stereotypes of feminism and people watch to get their stereotypes confirmed — but, more importantly, it seems that he is attempting to replace feminism with an extremist anti-feminism (as expressed, for example, in his above quote on rape) instead of with a more sensitive feminism. I mean, he makes trolling people — or ruining people’s psychological health — into a sport for kicks and views. This is not building something better. It is pure entertainment, not reason, not solution building, not relevant for anything outside of confirming previously held stereotypes and gathering views. The people working towards making things better — and thus working towards real reforms — are the academics, not the YouTubers who are actively working to make the discourse disintegrate into more mud-slinging.

So, yeah. I guess he’ll make two more auto-liked, meaningless drivel for his fans. I dunno if I’ll respond or not…this was pretty underwhelming, so we’ll see.

In any case, thanks for reading.

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