Henry Gee is an editor at Nature magazine. I’ve met him: he’s smart, he’s interesting, he’s extremely opinionated and often obnoxious, so we have at least one of those things in common. He and Dr Isis have a long-running feud — it may have begun with Gee publishing an awful piece of short fiction called Womanspace, or it may have been something to do with an argument at Science Online, but I don’t know and don’t care.

But now it has blown up in ways that are ultimately going to be damaging to Gee. Dr Isis is a pseudonymous blogger and scientist, and rather vindictively, Gee has outed her. Why? Because she was mean to him.

@nickwan I am a human being who has endured 3 years of unwarranted, undeserved unpleasantness from a pseudonymous blogger. That is all.

I have no sympathy at all. I’ve seen Dr Isis’ snipes at Gee — they’re cutting but sporadic, but she’s certainly not obsessed with him. Check her blog; there really isn’t that much about him there. I have people who haunt me every day; who have blogs dedicated to hating on me; they make photoshopped gifs and videos accusing me of the most outrageous things. And I’m not even a woman! I’ve got it easy compared to what many of the blogging women of my acquaintance have to face. Three years of unpleasantness? Compare that to ten years of getting photoshopped into gay porn and nonstop daily hate mail.

And so thin-skinned Gee, in multiple tweets, announced to the world the full name and professional affiliation of Dr Isis, also admitting that it was revenge for hurting him.

That’s enough background. Go read Dr Isis’s post explaining how an editor at Nature is trying to bully a pseudonymous blogger.

You can’t get much more tone deaf than this: Bill Keller uses Martin Luther King Day to…

Somewhere in all this worthy commemoration we should pause to pay homage to a conservative white Republican named William Moore McCulloch.

McCulloch sounds like a guy who did some good things for civil rights, so no criticism of him…but is this really an appropriate time to say we should take a break from praising that black dude and spend a little more time talking about a conservative white Republican? They get all the attention the other 364 days of the year, a black civil rights hero can’t even get one day to be recognized?

So last night I watch Twelve Years a Slave, and this morning I get up to see a tweet from @chebutykin linking to this letter:

The KU KLUX KLAN notes that one Howard G. Costigan, as quoted by the P.-I. of last Sunday, November 14th, 1937, asks an Investigation of the KU KLUX KLAN in Seattle.

We note also that 2 of your Members, as quoted, as asking investigation of the Silver Shirts — the Nazi movement, along with the Klan.

May we ask why the Italian Fascists also in Seattle, are not included?

Is there anything more deadly — more sinister — to American Democracy, than Fascism, Naziism and Communism. The KU KLUX KLAN classes all these as un-American, with Communism as the most dangerous of the three.

The KU KLUX KLAN are ALL AMERICANS, no ism – no symbol – no salute – no flag except to salute the Stars and Stripes, and the Stars and Stripes is OUR ONLY FLAG.

We invite investigation by your Body, to the fullest extent.

Whoa. You mean racism didn’t end after the civil war? I guess there’s a reason we still need a Martin Luther King Day to remind us of the struggle. I notice some things never change on the Right: the random Capitalization, the ALL CAPS (we await technology to enable random font changes), the draping of themselves in True Americanism, the poor grammar, the absence of the Oxford Comma, and, oh yeah, the implicit hate

It reminds me of how virulent anti-communism was (and still is) in this country, that just howling how much you hate the commies was sufficient cover to excuse racism, oppression, tyranny, and violence — and I’ll note that even now, the racist haters justify their contempt for MLK by accusing him incessantly of communist ties.

I can think of quite a few things more deadly — more sinister — to American Democracy than those three fundamentally defunct ideologies: how about patriotism, piety, and inequity? In fact, all the things the Ku Klux Klan stood for were inherent corruptions of the Enlightenment ideals (fitfully and poorly implemented) that were driving forces behind the founding of this country, and those same corruptions continue to be major factors in the ideology of the Republican party.

I’m also sad to see that that letter came from Seattle, where I grew up, which I remember as a liberal part of the country, a blue-collar town that was a hotbed of labor unions and Wobblies. But there was also always a dark undercurrent of racism there: farmers of Japanese descent could tell you stories, that’s for sure, and the labor movement focused and inspired some of the nastier elements of the far right, as Jeff Sharlet explains:

…Sharlet relates how Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant, founded the Fellowship (the organization now known as the Family) in Seattle in 1935, in direct response to a wave of militant strikes along the West Coast. First regionally and then nationally, business leaders rallied to Vereide’s prayer circles as a way to inject a new spirit of purpose and unity into their fight against organized labor and the New Deal. With the Cold War, Vereide’s “International Christian Leadership” spread to western Europe, notably West Germany, where it helped to rehabilitate a number of former Nazis into anticommunist respectability. (Sharlet describes Vereide’s relationship with fascism as “weirdly ambivalent”. He cultivated Nazi sympathizers Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh and recruited at least one genuine fascist, Merwin K. Hart, to the Fellowship board, but was ultimately more at home with conservative Republicans than far right rabble rousers such as Father Coughlin.) In the 1960s, Coe succeeded Vereide as organizational leader and made two important changes: Following the trajectory of U.S. Cold War policy, he shifted the Fellowship’s international focus away from Europe toward Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and he took the organization “underground,” moving it out of the public eye as much as possible, as a protective measure against sixties radicalism and upheaval.

Of course, David Neiwert is also an invaluable investigator of the darkness gnawing at the Pacific Northwest.

This country has allowed the voices and attitudes represented by that KKK letter — attitudes that were spawned by a vicious reaction to a rising tide of liberal, egalitarian thought — to drown out the ideals of America. Those ideals were better represented by the radical revolutionary Martin Luther King than by rich Wall Street bankers and Silicon Valley moguls. Those ideals are too often forgotten. This day is a day when we should all remind ourselves of that which we oppose and what we should be fostering, a world where all human beings have equal opportunity and dignity. Read King’s “Where Do We Go From Here?” speech to remind yourselves of what we ought to aspire to.

In other words, "Your whole structure (Yes) must be changed." [applause] A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will "thingify" them and make them things. (Speak) And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. (Yes) And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. (Yes) [applause]

What I’m saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, "America, you must be born again!" [applause] (Oh yes)

And so, I conclude by saying today that we have a task, and let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction. (Yes)

Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. (All right)

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. (Yes sir)

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history (Yes), and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home.

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.

Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.

Let us be dissatisfied (All right) until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not on the basis of the color of their skin. (Yeah) Let us be dissatisfied. [applause]

Let us be dissatisfied (Well) until every state capitol (Yes) will be housed by a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy, and who will walk humbly with his God.

Let us be dissatisfied [applause] until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. (Yes)

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes) until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together (Yes), and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid.

Let us be dissatisfied (Yes), and men will recognize that out of one blood (Yes) God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. (Speak sir)

Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, "White Power!" when nobody will shout, "Black Power!" but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power. [applause]

The bits about God I can do without, but make no mistake, I agree entirely with the larger theme of that speech. Now if only a person of prominence could express those values unreservedly without being gunned down by the powers of ignorance and oppression…if only those values were represented in Congress…if only…

We just got back home from Twelve Years a Slave. Throughout that movie, all I could think is, “we human beings did that to other human beings? We suck.”

Now how am I supposed to get to sleep with that kind of disgust for humanity on my mind?

(It was still the best movie I’ve seen in at least a year, though.)

A couple of haters grabbed the blogspot address that corresponds with this site address.  It's recently come to my attention that Google has suspended the account.  I'm not sure of the reason, just that it is no longer available to use.  

This address used to be owned by Christian haters. http://rationalresponders.blogspot.com/  They used the site to tell misleading and usually dishonest interpretations of RRS.  Often they came up high in google because of name similarity.  Google took action.  Nice of them.

People get away with telling lies about people online because most people aren't going to go through the costs or effort of taking it to court.  We had built up tons of evidence to take that case to court and in the end I can only assume that submitting that info to google played a role in the name being taken away from the world.  

If anyone ever sees it become available, I'll offer you a reward to let me know about it.  I'll take you out to dinner when you come by Philadelphia.

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A couple of haters grabbed the blogspot address that corresponds with this site address.  It's recently come to my attention that Google has suspended the account.  I'm not sure of the reason, just that it is no longer available to use.  

This address used to be owned by Christian haters. http://rationalresponders.blogspot.com/  They used the site to tell misleading and usually dishonest interpretations of RRS.  Often they came up high in google because of name similarity.  Google took action.  Nice of them.

People get away with telling lies about people online because most people aren't going to go through the costs or effort of taking it to court.  We had built up tons of evidence to take that case to court and in the end I can only assume that submitting that info to google played a role in the name being taken away from the world.  

If anyone ever sees it become available, I'll offer you a reward to let me know about it.  I'll take you out to dinner when you come by Philadelphia.

Our site goes down from time to time but we usually resolve it within an hour.  This time it was 12 hours. Sorry for any inconvenience, frustration, sadness, or depression that you dealt with as a result.  It lasted so long this time because was our amazing volunteer server admin was away from the computer.

It gives me a chance to be frank with you.  I hate doing fundraisers, as I want to believe that this site can be sustained on ad/amazon/subscriber revenue.  Many a months, it can.  RRS costs a few hundred dollars per month to operate and right now, we're not quite making that back.  Actually one of our awesome board members recently sent us our largest single donation of the year and it got us to about even.  

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Our site goes down from time to time but we usually resolve it within an hour.  This time it was 12 hours. Sorry for any inconvenience, frustration, sadness, or depression that you dealt with as a result.  It lasted so long this time because was our amazing volunteer server admin was away from the computer.

It gives me a chance to be frank with you.  I hate doing fundraisers, as I want to believe that this site can be sustained on ad/amazon/subscriber revenue.  Many a months, it can.  RRS costs a few hundred dollars per month to operate and right now, we're not quite making that back.  Actually one of our awesome board members recently sent us our largest single donation of the year and it got us to about even.  

Another reason I haven't made a public request for donations in over 2 years is that I feel I let you down on the last public appeal for money to buy a server.  I assure you we got a new server to upgrade our sites to the next era of web utilization.  I am sorry I can't enjoy it's spoils with you quite yet.  I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but for the most part it's delay was beyond my control.  I could have avoided it if I had 10-15k to spend on professional help. I don't work off a budget that large, we're dealing in hundreds here. 

In the 24 months since we've owned the server, it has done some work for us and been online, it hosts some things, sometimes.  We have practice sites, but it's daddy's are very busy with real life work.  From Feb-Sept I have about 8 hours a week I can spend on RRS, I work multiple jobs and still make less than 30k/yr.  My earning potential is lower now as a result of my life as an atheist activist.  I'm also a single dad of a young man about to head to college.  Right now he needs me quite a bit.  He has me in the gym with him for about 12 hours a week. I'm worried about how I'm going to afford his college.  He'll have over a 4.0 GPA but I'll still have to cover big costs over the next few years.  For example he doesn't have a car.  It's a decent life, very fulfilling, just not very financially rewarding.  

Right now things are tight.  I feel like we can go in two general directions from here...

DOWN: The site continues on a trend where I have to come out of pocket to keep it going.  It feels more cost effective to reduce or scale back in some way then to keep it thriving.  This might allow me to put the last remaining batch of my focus on a real life job.

UP: We actually have enough money to get the help we need to make our site have the cutting edge community site technology and speed we need to compete in the domain of ideas.  We become dominant again.  Everyone who has ever posted here has their views amplified in the domain of internet ideas.

I don't mean to startle you, I am fairly certain we're not going anywhere.  Freudien slip... we probably are just going to be stagnant, no up, no down.  

There are certainly tons of awesome people that care and that contribute.  Thanks to anyone that has ever donated, it's because of you that RationalResponders.com is still here.  But I've had these thoughts for a while, and thought some of you might want to know what kind of financial state RRS/I'm in.  

This site and it's donors are responsible for supporting CelebAtheists.com and Atheism United.  

We could use your help. If you would like to help point us towards "UP" please consider a one time donation.  Go big, it's a one time donation.  

You can also make a $3, $10, $25 monthly donation.

If you do decide to donate, allow me to say thanks right now.  I really appreciate it. 

If you're wealthy and you're asking yourself, "how much would it take to fix all of this and revolutionize these sites?"  The answer is $25,000 will do it.

It’s good to see that I’m not the only one not falling for this grinnin’ pope. Gregory Paul talks about the Dark Side of Pope Francis.

That theoconservatives are being unsettled by Francis is a good thing. What is disturbing is how so many, but by no means all, liberals – including atheist Bill Maher – are being significantly seduced by the guy. A reason this is occurring is in part because the news media is as it often does is buying into a storyline that boosts ratings, so they conveniently stick to it without checking the objective facts that is supposed to be their job. 

Here is a question that Francis needs to be asked. Directly, and with follow ups to pin him down if he issues another nice little homily that dodges the issue. 

What is he going to do concerning abortion? Really do. Regarding its legality. 

Well, we know the answer to that one. Ophelia snagged a few recent quotes from this pope on abortion.

The ever so much more nice guy pope has pitched a big fit about women having the audacity to terminate their pregnancies.

He said it was was “frightful” to think about early pregnancy terminations.

Easy for him, isn’t it. It’s not his life that will be messed up and perhaps irreparably thrown off course by an unwanted pregnancy. He can afford to drool sentimentally over a process inside someone else’s body that he chooses to think of as a “baby” or even a “child.”

“It is horrific even to think that there are children, victims of abortion, who will never see the light of day,” he said in part of the speech that addressed the rights of children around the world.

Children aren’t “victims of abortion”, any more than killing sperm represents a slaughter of innocents. Oh, but he probably thinks the latter is true, too.

Deborah Blum has a terrific story about the toxicity of MCHM, the chemical that Freedom Industries dumped into West Virginia’s water supply (a plume of poison which is now on its way to Cincinnati, and eventually Indiana). The answer on the degree of toxicity is…we don’t know. It’s had minimal testing.

She summarizes the toxicity tests that have been done on animals, which found it is “slightly toxic”, but that it caused suffering in the animals at all levels of exposure. There have been no long term studies done.

Complement that reading with this personal story of a West Virginian living without running water — which also mentions the powerlessness of being poor in Appalachia.

Hannan is a sports writer who was writing a story about the design of a golf putter. Not my cup of tea, but OK, there are interesting physics and ergonomic issues there. Unfortunately, his story got side-tracked from the relevant and interesting and into the destructively personal by his bigotry.

The designer of the golf club was a Dr V. It was clear from their communications that Dr V was rather pretentious and committed to maintaining her privacy, insisting that any story be about the product not the developer, but she was also extremely helpful, making a custom club for Hannan and giving him help in using it. The club is apparently very good*, so it’s quality wasn’t misrepresented…but Hannan does some background work and discovers that Dr V had lied about her qualifications.

That’s legitimate for a journalist to do. A story about a mysterious designer who isn’t everything she claims to be, but has designed some great sports equipment? Sure. That’s a reasonable story.

But, sad to say, the story he wrote is centered rather differently, and reveals a great deal about Hannan’s biases and preconceptions. In an interview with another source, he learns something he considers horrible.

He was clearly trying to tell me something, which is why he began emphasizing certain words. Every time he said “she” or “her” I could practically see him making air quotes. Finally it hit me. Cliché or not, a chill actually ran up my spine.

“Are you trying to tell me that Essay Anne Vanderbilt was once a man?”

It took a moment for him to respond.

A couple of guys making air quotes about personal pronouns, and a “chill” running down his spine at the discovery that Dr V was a trans woman? I wonder if Caleb Hannan has figured out yet why Dr V was so insistent on keeping her self out of the story. Could it be because that’s how so many people react to her identity?

But no, Hannan just discovered that he now had a great hook for his story.

What began as a story about a brilliant woman with a new invention had turned into the tale of a troubled man who had invented a new life for himself.

Hannan told Dr V what he was going to publish. She was rightfully furious. If the science behind this putter was bogus, that would be reason for her to be angry at being exposed, but I’d support Hannan’s decision to publish it — using false credentials is news. But instead what was going to be a key point in this story was the unwilling outing of a trans woman, and especially given Hannan’s attitude that this was something “weird”, that should have been off-limits. Yes, tell me if someone is faking a degree from MIT. But a trans woman is not faking being a woman; she’s also not doing that for personal profit, but is instead entering a life of peril and contempt, as Hannan’s reaction shows.

Before the story was published, Dr V, Essay Anne Vanderbilt, committed suicide.

Caleb Hannan went ahead and published the story, complete with personal information about the woman, using masculine pronouns, referring to her by her previous name, and with the appalling gall of closing the story by calling it a “eulogy”. You would think having your subject kill herself over what you were doing would make you rethink; maybe go back and remove the sensationalism out of respect for the dead, and maybe recognize the magnitude of your bigotry and realize that you were letting that all hang out in the story, too. But no; he just went ahead and outed a dead trans woman against her will, and his editors also didn’t see a problem with printing it.

Oh, I know what’s wrong with Caleb Hannan. He doesn’t have a speck of conscience or empathy.

Melissa McEwan has an excellent summary of the unconscionable Mr Hannan’s actions. It was just a “strange” story to him, but it was Dr V’s life.

Here’s another good piece on this story: Dr. V Is Dead, Caleb Hannan Is Celebrated: Why We Can’t Accept Lazy, Transmisogynistic Journalism. A bit at the beginning really captures the depth of Hannan’s thinking.

A few hours later, when Wire editor Bill Wasik suggested on Twitter that Hannan’s investigation of Dr. V’s work and life contributed to her death, he replied “ouch.”

“Ouch.” A woman driven to suicide by Hannan’s article, and he says, “ouch.”

*The quality of the club is complicated. He raves about it at first, but then later says that maybe it was psychological — he thought it was great when he thought the designer was a physicist, but now it’s just gathering dust in his garage. He doesn’t consider the other side of the psychology: that maybe he’s avoiding using it since discovering that the designer was trans, and he clearly finds that creepy.