I was challenged to watch an anti-feminist video on youtube! My challenger told me he got 16 minutes in before he “couldn’t stomach any more.” I told myself I was made of sterner stuff than that, and the challenge was accepted.

I only got through the first 8 minutes before gagging and having to stop. I am weak. It’s an especially dismal showing because there is almost no content in this video: it’s a guy posturing and sneering through a crudely animated puppet of an armored helmet, and most of it seems to be pointless posing and talking with a funny voice.

No, really. It starts with a long prologue, with an angel and a devil in the stupid helmet talking to each other in those ‘funny’ voices about what the head guy should talk about, and it goes on far too long. They decide to take a skeptical look at feminism.

We’re two minutes in already and I’m regretting it already. Our protagonist emerges to pose with jerky squints and stilted expressions to make his first pronouncment.

2:05 I’m not an anti-feminist

Oh. Right. That bodes well. How many times have you heard someone declare that they’re skeptical of feminism, but oh no, they don’t hate feminism. They like good feminists. Why am I wading through this drivel to get cliches?

We get an announcement of what kind of feminist claims should be regarded skeptically.

2:37 …should be skeptical of the pay gap

Well? And? That’s it. No arguments, no evidence. I guess he’s done with that point. Probably because he doesn’t want to have to flail about to wave away the facts.

2:50 Some feminists treat feminism as a religion

Again, assertion with nothing to back it up. We’re 3 minutes in and I’m not seeing anything but stereotypical anti-feminist noise from this not-an-anti-feminist.

3:20 Title? Intro music?

WTF? Everything up to this point was goddamn intro? How full of himself is this guy?

4:05 Imagine my surprise and dismay when I discovered that Steve Shives had drunk the atheism+ kool-aid…he’s going to attack the arguments made in this video

Finally, we get a statement about what he’s going to talk about, and apparently it’s going to be a criticism of this video by Steve Shives that I liked. It’s been interminable so far, but let’s see where he goes with it. He starts with a clip from the Shives video.

4:45 “Atheism and feminism are complementary to one another”…whoa, one sentence in and i’m like “whaaaat?”

Without watching it, you can’t appreciate the substantive skepticism at this moment. He draws out that “whaaaat” to great length, using one of his funny voices. Well, gosh, I guess Shives is wrong then.

But that’s it. “Whaaat,” and a cut to some old video the Armoured Skeptic did in which his helmet avatar is wearing an afro and talking in his version of black slang, giving me the opportunity to say “whaaat” back to my screen and thereby refute him thoroughly.

Shives points out that atheism and feminism have a common problem, religion, and that there are patriarchal religions that still treat women as inferiors, but apparently the Armoured Skeptic rejects this idea.

5:15 the only people I hear en masse perpetuating the concept that women are not equal to men are third wave feminists

“Whaaat?” So he’s an atheist/skeptic who has never heard of fundamentalist Christianity/Islam, who knows nothing of the Quiverfull movement, hasn’t noticed the American presidential candidate’s comments about women, but thinks modern feminism is about gender inequality?

I’m not holding up well. Boring and wrong isn’t a good way to keep my attention.

Then he starts in on Atheism+. Man, but Atheism+ sure spanked a lot of guys hard — they’re still stinging over it. So he’s going to lecture us once again that the only good atheist is a dictionary atheist.

6:10 Yes, there is an atheist community, but that community is connected by only one thing, and that is the fact that have a shared disbelief in a god

If that is the case, then we’re not talking about a community. We’re also dealing with a mob of dumbasses who are completely uninterested in pursuing the consequences of their strongly held beliefs.

There is an interesting discussion to be had about what atheism does and should mean to its proponents, and some consideration of why it’s important to us. That conversation is killed every time by these know-nothings who yell at atheists to shut up about implications and meaning and consequences, because they don’t believe there are any, and it makes them uncomfortable when you talk about intellectual responsibility.

When Shives talks about things like ethical obligations, that makes people like the Armoured Skeptic rear back in horror.

7:15 …what you’re proposing, Steven, is that we police atheist communities so that they are no longer troubling to you

Yeah, right. Shives must be talking about an Atheist Police Force, all suited up in body armor to threaten the Armoured Skeptic with tasers and clubs and handguns.

No, I think Shives is saying we should be open and talk about what being an atheist means, rather than hiding behind a kind of intellectual nihilism in which all meaning is denied. If saying we should freakin’ THINK is an act of police-state repression to you, what are you doing saying anything at all to others?

I finally gave up when I heard his ignorant tirade against Atheism+ — so ironic, so hypocritical, so dishonest.

8:00 This is exactly the issue that split the atheist community in two when Atheism+ reared its ugly head. The feminist communities started proposing regressive ideas, taking away people’s freedom of speech, punishing members for asking questions and proposing new ideas, and publicly shaming people, including women, for not toting the line. Essentially a group of bullies decided they wanted to police the community because they found it troubling.

What has split the atheist movement is a body of ranting, arrogant fools who want to keep women in an inferior place — what they’ve objected to is that people other than white men have much to contribute to the movement. Armoured Skeptic wants to claim that Atheism+ promoted regressive ideasa like … taking away people’s freedom of speech? “Whaaat?” How exactly does an internet forum dedicated to progressive ideals of equality take away anyone’s freedom of speech? How exactly does Armoured Skeptic think others have the power to take away his freedom of speech? I’m pretty sure a regressive toad like himself has been largely ignored by liberal atheists.

It seems that he thinks it is bullying and depriving people of free speech to forcefully criticize their position, which means that he himself is a bully trying to snatch away the speech of the good people who were writing and conversing with each other on Atheism+. Because he finds them troubling.

And then I looked at the time on this video and saw that it had 20 more minutes to go, and said fuck this and quit.

Challenger, you win. I couldn’t watch the rest, and if I see his videos pop up on YouTube, I’ll just retch and click to close it. It’s just another anti-feminist yahoo.