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Oct. 19, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
32:21
Steve Shives and the Rejection of Facts
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So Steve Shives, everyone's favourite atheism plus advocate, had a debate with Queenie Martha.
If you're not familiar with Queenie, she is a very funny lady who supports GamingGate and runs a great YouTube channel.
You should check it out.
Link will be in the description.
I thought Queenie did very well in the debate, and even though she didn't have the raw data to show how Steve was categorically wrong in almost everything that he was saying, he still conceded most of her points.
And I personally would have left it at that.
Except Steve went on to say this.
One thing that I want to apologize to you for, Steve, and you can comment on or you can accept my apology or whatnot.
In the chat, and it was the normal thing that we generally get.
In the chat, a lot of people were saying, you know, Steve, why don't you take on Sargon?
Why don't you take on Sargon?
And I gave my interpretation of why you don't want to have a conversation of Sargon, which is you don't think that Sargon would come in good faith, that he would approach in bad faith.
That is to say, that he would have presuppositions and it's not a conversation.
Now, you may or may not agree with that.
That was my interpretation.
So I saw a couple of people saying that, and I don't want that to be straw manned against you.
So if you want to clarify that, that's fine.
I just wanted to go ahead and apologize and make sure that on this video, in which I said something I probably shouldn't have, that you get a chance to clarify.
No, that's pretty much it.
It's also that it's not just that I think he would approach in bad faith.
It's that I don't think he's a person that deserves to be taken seriously on this.
I think he's a misogynist and a bigot.
And I think he's more interested in grandstanding than in having a serious conversation.
Projection, thy name is Steve Shives.
What do you think you are doing here, Steve?
But you know what?
Fine.
We'll have a look at your positions, your arguments.
I'm not going to call you names.
I'm going to point out that you are wrong.
Categorically, the facts of reality, the empirical, testable data is against you, Steve.
And he's one of those people who I was talking about a little earlier when me and Queenie first started talking, where we're so far apart in terms of our starting premises that I don't really see what the point is of that conversation.
Steve, have you forgotten you're an activist?
You're not trying to persuade me.
You're trying to persuade other people.
And you're trying to use the example of my apparently incorrect opinions to do it.
If you had evidence that showed, for example, that all of this feminist nonsense about rape and campuses and all that sort of thing was true, you would change my mind, Steve.
But what you have actually done is revealed everything about your own state of mind.
There is nothing I can say to persuade you.
No matter what data I present to you, no matter how wrong you are in your attempt to model the world through the lens of an ideology, you refuse to change.
You know, I mean, what am I really going to say to him that's going to change his mind?
And what could I do to change yours, Steve?
Even if we assume the answer is nothing.
That's not the point of the exercise.
We're not buddies.
We're not trying to be friends.
In fact, the whole point of debates, Steve, is to have a debate with someone you do not agree with.
And plus, I also just think he's a prick.
That's because I am a prick, Steve.
But whether or not you like me is irrelevant to whether what you are saying is bullshit.
And I'm about to show you that what you are saying is bullshit.
Steve, you look at that.
I don't really feel like you look like you are worried that I might say something that you would have to accept.
You look like your pretense of being a feminist might not actually be true.
You look like a Christian who is not interested in debating the scientific method, who is not interested in finding out whether evolution actually holds any water, who's not interested in finding out what the real age of the earth is, Steve.
You are a fucking creationist for feminism.
Okay.
Well, I mean, that's fine.
I mean, personally, I'd love to see you guys idea by idea.
You're welcome to your position in everything.
A lot of people would, but it's not going to happen.
Steve, a lot of people would because they know you are wrong and they know you can't defend your positions.
But you know what?
I'm actually not that bothered whether we debate or not.
I'm really not.
It's actually not me agitating for this debate.
I would be happy to have one with you, and I would even be happy to refrain from calling you names.
But either way, Steve, I don't want you to feel bullied or pressured by me.
If other people are doing it, well, I can't stop them from doing that.
But I'm not bothered if you are too afraid to engage me in an intellectual debate.
That's your choice.
It's on you, Steve.
So let's demolish your worldview point by point.
I mean, I'm sure there's friends who is like, oh, I wish my daughter was this.
But it works the same with guys like, oh, I wish my son was a doctor instead of like a graphic designer, you know?
And you know, it works a lot of that.
But I feel it's really interesting to hear women that go for women's studies degrees complain that there's not enough women in STEM fields.
It's like, well, why don't you go for STEM fields?
Like, why would you choose women's studies then?
I don't understand what's stopping you.
And I've seen a lot of conversations like that on Twitter and on Facebook, which end up with the girl saying, fuck you, and just leave.
It's like, wait, what?
Like, what did this happen?
Like, I was just asking a question, you know?
I mean, I think it's fair to identify what you see as a problem, you know, like without necessarily having to be expected to do something about it personally yourself.
I mean, if you're a woman who has pursued a women's studies degree, I think you're still allowed, you know, to notice that there's a lack of female representation in STEM fields.
That's not what she's saying, Steve.
She's saying, what's the purpose of complaining about it if you are going to be part of the problem and not part of the solution?
Millions of young women are going into gender studies, sociology courses, and all this sort of thing, and they're not going into STEM.
The STEM jobs being the higher-paying jobs universally, Steve.
And then women wonder why they're making less on average.
They wonder why there's such little representation of women in STEM.
And you are suddenly going, well, I think they're allowed to point it out.
Well, of course they're allowed to point it out, but they are also the reason it exists, Steve.
But we see those sorts of patriarchies, and we see, okay, well, that's obvious.
You know, the rules are written so that the men are in charge, the men occupy all of the positions of authority.
But I think that can allow us to fall into the trap of thinking that therefore anything less than that doesn't rise to the level of patriarchy.
And I think what we see in the United States and much of Western culture is that the patriarchal structures are cultural, are social, are sort of informal.
You can't say that the United States is a patriarchal culture in the sense that the government imposes some kind of patriarchy because legally speaking, there is equality between the sexes.
But if you look at the way people live their lives, if you look at the social forces in play, if you look at the cultural norms and the expectations that we have for boys versus the expectations that we have for girls, if you look at political representation, if you look at economic empowerment, if you look at education, there are all sorts of different areas where women seem to be disadvantaged relative to men.
Then why won't you give a single example of it, Steve?
You give examples of how they are not disadvantaged.
There is no government fiat against women.
There are no laws disadvantaging women.
Legally, by all measurable accounts, women are completely equal with men.
What you're complaining about is how people act towards each other.
Well, Steve, you don't get to control that.
I mean, that's the reason that there are people going around screaming cultural Marxism, because that is what you have just described.
You want to change the way people interact with each other.
Well, I'm afraid, Steve, that's not up to you.
The pressures people put on each other are not your business.
If people want to act in a certain way, they will act in a certain way.
If they don't, they don't.
The thing about these pressures you speak of is they're not mandatory.
You can do whatever you like.
No one can stop you.
Until feminism finally takes over, it's a free society.
You know, like a lot of the arguments that anti-feminists make, they're not arguing about, well, what's the best technique?
What's the best approach?
What's the best strategy?
Which are the kind of arguments that feminists have with each other.
You know, feminists argue with each other all the time and they say, well, this issue is more important than this, or this issue is more important than that, and here's how we should go about addressing it, and here's what works, and here's what we should do and what we shouldn't do.
Feminists argue about that kind of stuff with each other all the time, but they all have a basic agreement on some fundamental principles.
Yes, and the basic premises of feminism are incorrect, Steve.
The idea that women are oppressed, that they are second-class citizens, that we live in a patriarchy.
These are all principles that nobody agrees with but feminism.
And they don't agree with them for a good reason, Steve.
This is not an accurate model of reality.
And when you argue with an anti-feminist, someone who is not just saying, well, this particular school of feminism is unproductive, but the entire feminist thing is completely off, it's difficult to have a productive argument because many of the prominent anti-feminists that I run across on YouTube don't even acknowledge that gender inequality is really a problem.
Steve, as you conceded earlier, gender inequality is the result of women's choices.
Like Queenie was saying, they choose to do gender studies instead of moving into STEM fields or something that will pay very well.
You accept that, and you said, well, they shouldn't be allowed to not point it out.
And sure, they can keep pointing it out.
But it's their own fucking fault, Steve.
Fundamentally, what you and other feminists like you are complaining about in your echo chambers are the results of a free society in which men and women are free to choose their own life paths.
And surprise, surprise, they choose different paths to follow.
There's nothing to discuss with that, Steve.
You've conceded this point already.
Now you are just on the side that is whinging that women have chosen a different path to men.
I think the long-term solution is to just encourage cultural change so that we stop raising women to steer away from those fields, to stop raising women to think of themselves as not fit for those types of careers.
Point one.
You do not know how women think.
You do not know that women don't think of themselves as fit for those kind of careers.
That seems rather misogynist of you, Steve.
It seems to me that women have different preferences.
They seem to prefer doing gender studies.
Now, I don't know why this is.
I'm guessing it's because it fits their natural predispositions better.
Maybe it is simply because there are so many feminists saying, hey, you should do gender studies to learn how society is oppressing you.
Maybe it simply comes down to the fact that doing gender studies is a lot easier than doing particle physics.
Maybe it's just the path of least resistance.
But if you are really serious that you want to see more women in STEM, you want to see more women taking up the more productive fields of study, what you could agitate for, Steve, is the closure and removal of gender studies from universities.
That would prevent women from choosing it as an option.
That would prevent women from choosing it over a STEM field.
My wife used to be a librarian, and she was very aware of the problem to come at it from the other side, that it's really difficult to get boys to read.
That girls seem to want to read much more easily and much more extensively than boys.
It's really hard to get little boys interested in books and interested in reading.
And a lot of the library's outreach was sort of focused on let's try and interest boys in wanting to read.
And I think the mistake that people make is they assume that these behaviors are due to something that's hardwired into the brain.
And they're not.
There have been studies shown that if girls and boys are both encouraged to pursue, you know, let's say, working with their hands, putting things together, mechanical stuff, that if they're both encouraged at the same level and they're not steered away from it.
Steve seems to have had a bit of a lag issue here and failed to complete his sentence.
But I think it's safe to assume that he's going to say something along the lines of they will both perform these roles admirably.
And I'm sure they will, Steve.
But the point that you have just made is not the point you think you are making.
If boys are naturally predisposed to working with their hands and to running around playing outside, doing physical activities, and girls are naturally more predisposed to reading, and it's difficult to get one to do the other, then you are literally saying you have to socialize them to make them interested in the things that they are not naturally predisposed to.
You are proving the opposite of the point you think you are proving, Steve.
And you know, there's, I mean, here, I don't know how it is there, but here in the States, there's a huge double standard in terms of how we view parents who abandon their children.
A father who abandons his children is certainly not smiled on.
It's not viewed as a super positive thing, but that's viewed as kind of there are instances where that's kind of forgivable.
Bullshit, Steve.
I can't imagine the degenerate culture that turns a blind eye, let alone lords, a father who abandons his children.
don't believe you.
I don't believe the United States is such a shithole that that is the case, that it's acceptable to abandon your family.
Bollocks.
If that's the case, why do you have like TV shows like Jerry Springer berating dads who have abandoned their families on a daily basis?
Why would that be the case, Steve?
If it's just sometimes it's acceptable, why would that be the case?
In what circumstance is that acceptable?
You don't have to live in a society where rape is considered completely normal in order to say that you have elements of rape culture.
Then it's not a big deal, is it, Steve?
If rape is not normal, it's frowned upon, in fact, it's illegal, in fact, it's one of the worst things you can do, and you can still have a rape culture, then it's not a big deal.
In fact, feminists are blowing this way out of proportion if that is the case.
And it's not a question of whether you are a rape culture or you aren't.
Rape culture is a description of a set of things.
You know, it doesn't have to apply to everything.
Well, like, for example, look at how incredibly difficult the crime of rape is to prosecute.
You're not actually going to say that the burden of proof and the presumption of innocence is part of rape culture, are you, Steve?
Even today, rape is notoriously difficult to prosecute.
And there are horror stories, galore, of women who go to the police to report having been raped and almost end up being treated like suspects themselves.
I'm going to tell you why that is, Steve.
And it's really hard not insulting you because this is such a monumentally important thing.
I can't even...
I don't know how I can describe it.
This is the very cornerstone of justice according to the English system.
The presumption of innocence, Steve.
And when someone comes with an accusation that is potentially life-destroying, they must be interrogated to make sure that their accusation isn't false, Steve.
Let's have a look at the example of the Duke La Crosse case.
Let's see what happened when a bunch of guys were falsely accused of being rapists.
Let's see what the reaction was.
And you tell me if you think this is acceptable.
No one's been charged and no one on the La Crosse team is talking, but our Renew 2 shows us how neighbors are breaking the silence.
If it's metal, strike it.
If it rattles, shake it.
If it's wooden, break it.
You're listening to the beat of outrage.
We're making this kind of noise because we're standing in solidarity with the women who've gone through this horrible atrocity.
Police say something horrible happened at this house.
A gang rape.
I am enraged and disgusted that something and embarrassed that something like this has happened.
No one has been charged, but police collected DNA samples from 46 Duke La Crosse players.
Wake up!
Wake up!
The sun is up!
It's Sunday!
Good morning!
Take you confess!
It's Sunday morning.
It's time to confess.
This is a fucking witch hunt, Steve.
And this is a witch hunt because of these people who have abandoned their skepticism and have simply listened and believed the false accusations made against them.
And now there is a mob of people who want them to confess despite it not being true, Steve.
Imagine if that was you.
Would you suddenly be in favor of not being skeptical of rape claims?
Time to come together.
Time to demand the truth.
We want the members of the Jupiter Crime team to come from home.
They haven't been convicted, but.
So, listen and believe isn't about, well, she said that this guy raped her, so let's go arrest him and we won't even ask and we won't even look into it.
We'll just assume that he's guilty and put him in jail.
That's sort of the fear-mongering that happens.
People say, well, that's what you feminists want.
You just want women to be able to point fingers at men, and then they'll just be arrested and you'll take away their due process rights.
You can't run!
You can't die!
There's nothing to do!
Protest your fight!
This is a direct result of policies that you as an activist are advocating for, Steve.
This is what you want, Steve.
There aren't very many abused people shelters specifically for men or that will allow men to come in.
And a lot of people like to blame that on feminism, but I don't think that's necessarily fair.
I think the only reason why there are battered women's shelters is because of feminism.
I don't think that feminists have been shutting down battered men's shelters.
I just don't think that those battered men shelters have been built for whatever reason.
I think it would actually be great if some of the folks online who fancy themselves men's rights activists and who constantly piss and moan about how it's so hard for a man to get out of an abusive relationship would do the same thing that feminists did 30 or 40 years ago in this country and put their money where their mouth is and open up some battered men shelters.
Well, that is incidentally what Earl Silverman had done before he was bullied to his suicide by feminists.
But my problem with what you've said really here, Steve, is that you're implying that feminists got together and did this as a separate community activity.
They didn't.
They lobbied for funds from governments.
They get taxpayer money for this, Steve.
Earl Silverman could not fund his shelter.
He could not get taxpayer money from the Canadian government because he was trying to open a shelter for men.
The irony of this, of course, is that among men, 6% encountered spousal violence, compared with 6.4% of women.
It's virtually the same fucking statistic, Steve.
And yet you can get all the funding you want for female domestic violence shelters.
You can't get any for male.
And when you have the temerity to set one up from your own funding, you will get bullied and harangued and harassed by feminists.
I don't think you have to say that men are naturally inclined.
I think it's just a matter of recognizing the reality of the situation.
As I said, most people who commit abuse are men.
I have just proven how this is not true.
But even if it wasn't false, what good does this actually do?
What good does creating a paradigm of perpetrator and victim and making it gendered do, Steve?
All that does is put in people's minds that men are always the perpetrators and women are always the victims when we know that's not the case.
So why don't we just have perpetrator and victim irrespective of gender, Steve?
Why do you have to go, oh, men?
Men are the ones doing all this?
Because I mean, if that's the case, we can say something like, well, women are always murdering children.
Why won't women just stop murdering children?
Because whenever a child is murdered, Steve, you can guarantee it was a woman.
You can put your fucking money on it.
But that doesn't help.
I don't want to cast all women as child murderers, Steve.
It doesn't do any good.
Instead of saying that men commit rape and women commit infanticide, let's just say the perpetrators as individuals commit these crimes and not smear an entire collective group of people who haven't actually done anything wrong, Steve.
Do you understand why that's necessary?
But I think there's a larger issue because the rape of male students by female teachers is not the only kind of rape that is tacitly tolerated in our society.
Yes, it is, Steve.
They don't even call it rape when they are writing the news reports.
They don't even call it rape.
It absolutely is the only kind of rape that is actually accepted in our society.
I mean, at least they even call prison rape rape.
But with this, they will not even call it what it is.
I mean, I...
And look, the worst part about that Rolling Stones story turning out to have those kinds of problems that it had is that a lot of people used that as an excuse to say, Well, see...
campus rape isn't really a problem.
Well, even the studies that make it sound like it's not as bad as some studies indicate still make it sound pretty bad.
I mean, a lot of people sort of bridle at the one in five figure.
There's a popular statistic that one in five women on college campuses have experienced sexual assault.
And people have a problem with that because it's based mostly on one particular survey.
And it was a survey of a couple of hundred college freshmen that came up with a figure of 19 point something percent, which is roughly one in five, had experienced some kind of sexual assault on campus.
And a lot of people said, well, that's not nearly a big enough sample to draw that broad of a conclusion.
You can't just blow that up and say, well, therefore, one in five women, you know, has been raped.
Which is fair, but my problem is that they then use that sort of the same way they use the Rolling Stone story to say, well, therefore, there's not a problem.
And I think there's a broad enough base of evidence going back a number of years that there is a problem.
That even if you can sort of wriggle out of the one in five statistic, you still can't get away with saying, well, it's not a problem.
To start with, Steve, one does not wriggle out of false statistics.
They're not real.
They're false.
They are not accurate to reality.
Why are you pushing these false statistics based on, as you say, a very tiny sample size done by self-reporting instead of simply looking at the actual statistics for the entire country, every fucking person in your country?
We have these statistics.
We don't need to rely on tiny sample sizes that are going to be riddled with confirmation bias.
These are statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice, compiled by two women who are statisticians from the period of 1995 to 2013.
These are reliable statistics gathered by government agents who are female and therefore have no particular reason to have bias against what they're doing.
In fact, any bias you would think would be in favor of what they're doing.
And it's longitudinal, Steve.
It's almost over 20 years.
It's not just, you know, one year's worth of examples.
This is a big fucking report.
This is the best report I have ever seen on the subject, in fact.
The report aggregates estimates of rape and sexual assault for the 20-year period to maximize the accuracy of results and create what they call victimization rates.
This is the raw data for students.
This includes threats of rape or sexual assault, sexual assault, attempted rape, and completed rape.
Anything that could be considered even vaguely sexual assault is included.
And the rate is 6.1 per thousand people, Steve.
That's not one in five.
That's not 20%.
That is less than 1% of people. on a college campus are raped or sexually assaulted or even threatened with such.
That is a number so fucking low, Steve, it is lower than the surrounding cities in which these colleges reside.
When you say, well, it's just an epidemic, it's terrible, it's wildly out of control, you're talking shit.
You're just wrong.
You're just flat wrong, Steve.
You're failing to model reality accurately.
And you're doing it because you have an ideology you're trying to push, an ideology which you are deliberately anti-skeptical about.
You have a fucking mantra, listen and believe, because skepticism is not for Steve Shives.
Just like trying to back up your own points of view and your own activism with facts and reason in debates against people who can prove you wrong.
You spineless worm.
And a lot of these tactics that people use are simply tactics to convince us that the status quo is okay and ought to be maintained.
That's a very common tactic that people use anytime they criticize social justice movements.
They're not necessarily trying, they're basically trying to say, look, things are okay the way they are.
So stop agitating, stop complaining.
Things aren't as bad as you're saying they are.
So just shut up and just, you know, let things be the way they are.
Steve, it's possible that you don't understand what you're doing.
It is entirely possible.
It's entirely possible that you don't understand that a listen and believe attitude creates witch hunt mobs against innocent men, which we know happens.
We know it happens, Steve.
We know that is worse than not having it.
We know that your statistics about rape are not accurate.
We know this.
You are wrong.
But what is worse is that the world you are agitating for is worse than the world we have now.
You are trying to get a world where people are not skeptical about claims that could be falsified.
You're trying to agitate for a world where we believe false statistics.
You're trying to agitate for a world where you're trying to make women afraid, because that's what feminism does.
Feminism is about fear-mongering in the face of reality.
And you are contributing to it.
I do think we have to be mindful of the fact that coerced consent is not consent.
I mean, you could say, you could technically consent to something that you really don't want to do because you feel like your only safe option is to consent to it.
Jesus Christ, Chinese, when did you become a libertarian?
Are you arguing against taxes here?
Seriously, you've joined the libertarian right.
Kudos to you, Steve.
So clearly this is a problem.
And I don't see if people are truly against rape and they truly believe that rape is a bad thing and that rape is something that should be prevented when possible and prosecuted when possible if it's brought to the attention of the authorities.
I don't see what the case is against educating men about consent.
Oh, God, of course you don't.
Maybe you are actually an idiot.
Maybe you are.
I mean, A, it's insanely patronizing, but B, rapists know that rape is wrong.
In the same way that thieves know that theft is wrong.
Murderers know that murder is wrong.
You can't possibly think that these things are happening by accident.
But I mean, maybe you do.
You are the sort of person who doesn't care about statistics.
You are happy to take a false statistic and base your worldview on it and then berate other people for not believing, unsceptically, your position.
I'm not surprised you won't debate me, Steve.
I'm really not surprised.
There's nothing in it for you, except the absolute destruction of your position as an irrational, faith-based argument.
Because that is what this is.
Nothing you are saying represents reality.
That's why people have a problem with feminism, Steve.
You're trying to make the world worse.
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