Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Feminist Tyranny ｜ David Silverman Interview

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Sept. 22, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

51:11

Feminist Tyranny ｜ David Silverman Interview

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	Hello everyone, I'm speaking to David Silverman, the famous atheist activist who was the subject of Me Too allegations in the first sort of quarter of 2018 and was effectively driven underground, I guess is one way of putting it by the community around him.
	And he's decided that he would like to speak to people, I suppose, on the other side, if I dare describe it this way, about what's happened.
	How are you, David?
	You okay?
	I'm okay, Carl.
	Sorry, Don.
	Thanks for having me on the show.
	Carl is fine, honestly.
	Carl's okay.
	I appreciate that, Carl.
	Thank you very much.
	And thank you very much for having me on the show.
	Yeah, I've been driven underground and pounded into the ground by the people that I once called friends.
	And, you know, I don't really see this as going over to the other side, but I'm, you know, it's been a tremendously horrible, horrible year and a half.
	And I am coming out on the other side of this now.
	And I am coming to terms with what happened.
	And all of the many intricate details of what happened and all of the many places where I thought the wrong thing, I expected the wrong thing, and where people really took advantage.
	And so, I mean, the reason that I wanted to come on was not just to say, well, to look at the other side, because I don't think you and I are on the other side of most issues.
	We were on the other side of a few smaller issues.
	And it was those issues that really pounded me into the ground.
	And so I'm out of this terrible hole that I was in.
	And I'm happy to talk about that with you.
	But I'm resetting what I think about feminism.
	I'm resetting.
	I'm re-evaluating.
	I'm trying to overcome cognitive dissonance.
	I'm definitely coming face to face with cognitive dissonance.
	And it's been a terrible ride.
	And I'm appreciative of you.
	And I'm looking forward to this discussion.
	Oh, me too.
	And I'm always as soon as someone says, you know what, maybe there is a problem here, there's no need to argue with them anymore.
	Now it's just a discussion, isn't it?
	So there's no need to think that there's going to be any hostility.
	So I don't really want to go to the drama of what's happened, but to very briefly summarize it, David was accused.
	The accusations were obviously nonsense.
	Lots of people on the sort of anti-SJW side made videos and comments saying, well, this is obviously just cynical actors doing it for whatever reason they've got.
	So I never thought that you were actually guilty of any of these things.
	You know, nothing that's actually like bad, bad.
	And so for me, it was just you should be standing up to it.
	Because the thing, I think that's the biggest problem with everything with the feminist movement at the moment is the systemic nature of it.
	And you are the best example of what I mean by this.
	You are the clearest example of a violation of Blackstone's formulation that you're just the perfect example.
	It's why 10 guilty men should go free rather than one innocent man being punished.
	Because I don't think you deserve this at all.
	I appreciate that.
	I agree.
	I didn't deserve this.
	I deserved something because I did cheat on my wife and I did lie about it to her and my kid.
	I did have consensual sex with a couple of adults.
	Yeah, but if I can interrupt, to me, they are personal issues between you and your wife and then whatever my opinion of you on that basis is.
	That's not a crime.
	That's not someone who's hurt.
	There's no injured party apart from the personal relationships.
	So I'm not, you know, that's not the same as a criminal allegation of rape or sexual assault at all.
	And that's the thing that we've got to be worried about because that can actually really do some like, you know, knock-on damage to the rest of your life, as you discovered.
	And so I guess what I would suggest is there might be some form of moral failing in adopting any kind of view of the world that would actually lead to violations of that formulation.
	And I'm not trying to say, you know, repent, sinner, or anything, but I think that that's like one of those things that after a long period of history, we've actually learned.
	The innocent party has to be presumed innocent.
	Or the, sorry, the accused party has to be the innocent party.
	The accused party has to be presumed innocent.
	And you found yourself on the receiving end of being presumed guilty.
	Yeah.
	Presumed guilty is an understatement.
	I was judged and executed.
	Guilty.
	Yeah.
	And it's important for your listeners to understand.
	And, you know, we can go into this any detail or not, but it's important for your listeners to understand that there is no room in my mind for one of the accusations to be remotely believed true by the accuser.
	In other words, I do not believe that Beth Presswood thinks for a second that I hurt her.
	I do not believe that for a second.
	The account that she gave, and I've used this analogy before.
	What Beth Presswood did to me is akin to what a villain would do in a James Bond film or in a Shakespearean play.
	It was grotesque how much she told, how much she lied.
	And yeah, the other one was a lie too.
	And I believe that she also knows that it was a lie.
	I believe she knows very well that she wasn't too drunk to consent because we had this long walk back to the hotel where she asked me for a job.
	But I think the important way to begin this discussion is that this was malicious, in my opinion, on the part of the two women.
	It wasn't one of those situations where, well, I made a wrong move and it was taken the wrong way.
	And, you know, I overstepped or anything like that.
	It wasn't one of those things.
	It wasn't one of those situations where you can understand the, you know, both sides or the misinterpretation.
	These were lies and they were malicious.
	And if you look at them, you can see it.
	But you find, sorry to interrupt as well, but it gets worse than just being lied about as well, because you find yourself in a position where you can't even defend yourself because the presumption is in the absence of evidence, which obviously what evidence are you going to have of a drunken fumble two years ago or whatever?
	In the absence of any evidence, you're just presumed to be guilty.
	Yeah, and judged.
	And that's why I was fired from American atheists, obviously, in my opinion.
	Because they knee-jerked.
	They reacted.
	They judged.
	They juried.
	They executed.
	And again, just to reiterate your point, I did not get a single second of due process.
	I did not get, Dave, did you do it?
	Dave, these are the charges.
	Dave, this is what's happening.
	I didn't get, I got zero due process.
	The allegations came in, and then without even looking at me, I was booted.
	I was out.
	And then my friends pounced on me, deserted me, and pounced on me.
	I would say 90% of the people that I called friends are no longer friends of mine.
	But more than that, they are rejoicing in my demise.
	They rejoiced.
	Yay, another one bites the dust.
	Hashtag time's up.
	And all of a sudden, so these two women lied and I'm out.
	I'm destroyed.
	My 22-year career in atheism is over.
	American atheists and almost all of the atheist community hates me.
	And I was walked out of my office like a fucking criminal, Carl.
	And in front of my employees, I was walked out of my office.
	It sounds like something that would happen in the Soviet Union.
	Yes.
	That's what that sounds like.
	And that's the problem that a lot of people on my side of the, I guess for the sake of argument, we'll call it the right wing side.
	But that's, I think, a bit of a misnomer, but it's just easier to, you know, so like this is the thing.
	You've got the left-wing sort of politics like that that are systemic.
	Like they look at things in the same way.
	And it's all because you guys adopted.
	Honestly, to people outside of it, it looks like you guys joined the bad guys, the villains.
	And I don't mean to sound too dramatic, but honestly, they operate like villains.
	Oh, they do.
	Oh, they do.
	And I am so horribly disappointed in my former friends.
	I mean, I've been a feminist for 30 years.
	I've called myself a feminist since I was in college, since the mid-80s.
	And it's a term that I've really held on to from my entire life.
	And I was so proud.
	And I've always been proud of calling myself a feminist.
	And, you know, feminism has kind of changed underneath me.
	Yes.
	And, you know, I talk a lot about, you know, if you don't have a belief in a God, call yourself an atheist because you are one.
	And it doesn't matter how much that definition can't change.
	But what I've realized over the past, really, even over the past couple of months and even over the past week is that feminism has changed.
	Atheism hasn't changed.
	You can't change what atheism is, but you can change what feminism is.
	And this whole idea of ditching due process and using feminism as a weapon to get even with man and to use it as a weapon to stop conversation and just to.
	I'm going to take away civil rights and joyfully do it, so joyfully.
	They're fixing the world.
	They're getting that.
	They're, they're taking the the the, the counter revolutionary forces out and shooting them in the back of the head.
	They really are, and you know you you, you put it you, you made a video about me um, a year ago when it all happened and uh, you were, you were, you were jabbing me a little bit in that video, but you were right in that.
	You know you were saying, oh Dave, you're a rapist now, because the woman says you're a rapist and I can't change my.
	I can't change, and you know you were kind of snarky when you said it, but you were right.
	I, I would like to apologize for the level of snarkiness, but thank you and you know what, no apologies needed, because I deserved it.
	Frankly um, I mean, here it is, here I am fighting for feminism, but I was fighting and I have been and I will continue to fight for my version of feminism, which is fucking gender equality.
	You know equal work for equal pay, bodily autonomy um, you know, equal rights, equality of the sexes, that kind of feminism, but the kind of feminism where if you don't pass a purity test you're presumed guilty, and where anybody, any female, can say anything, just make shit up and and not just take you down but be thought of as a hero when you do it, when they do it.
	Rose Sinclair is kindly regarded now by the feminists.
	Beth Presswood is kindly regarded now by these people who and these people lied to take down an innocent man, not a completely innocent man.
	I did my stuff, I did have, you know, sexual relations with them, but I did not hurt them.
	And they both know it and most people know it.
	If you look at the evidence, it's very plain.
	As you said it's it's, it's.
	They're obviously false allegations, but they're not only effective, but it turns them into heroes, but they're only effective because everyone around them is afraid of them, like the whole structure, the whole hierarchy that they form is built on fear.
	Man, they've got you in a position where you're totally powerless to them and if they take you out that's, that's a lesson to all of the other men below them.
	Man, none of those other men are going to vie for them with five for position with them, sort of social influence that's.
	It's this, this is why it looks like you joined the villains, you know, because you don't run a.
	You know you, due process is what makes us the good guys, you know.
	It means that we don't just hurt people who have actually done nothing wrong.
	10 guilty men better free because they might not be guilty again.
	But if we imprison one innocent man, that's one life unjustly ruined.
	Yes, you know this, this was, this is my objection to social justice in its foundations.
	And so I, I mean, can I be honest?
	I I, I was annoyed, quite annoyed at the time, about your statement about Mythcon, like talking about like Nazis and fascists, because I know that the the sort of radical leftist type school.
	But you can my, my concerns about this are entirely constitutional, you know, coming from like English common law, back to the Magna Carta.
	This is, this is why you know, this is Blackstone's formulation that I, I consider to be inviolable, you know, and you're, you're patient zero, you know, this is why this is the exact reason why it ruins people, and this is this is why the social justice stuff looks like villainy to me.
	I'm just like, no, you can't go about things that way, because you end up doing you end up opening the door to really bad actors.
	Man yeah, the really bad actors get the power and the good people don't.
	Yes.
	The really fat actors.
	I mean, you know, there's some talk about what I did with Rose Sinclair being a violation of power differential.
	And, you know, there's, I believe there's some validity to that, but there's also some validity to the fact that she had power over me.
	And she wielded it by completely destroying my life with a few words.
	But if you consider it in the sort of like, I guess we'll call it the sort of Marxist conception, where it's men are being men are oppressing women at all times everywhere, then she can't possibly hurt you.
	Everything she does is punching up and is justified.
	It's an act of revolution, you know?
	And it is a revolutionary ideology as well.
	It's like the things that come out of the mouths of the radical intersectional left are genuinely quite scary.
	You know, like actual revolutionaries.
	It's like, I don't really want that.
	You know, I want, like you say, I want due process.
	I want the rule of law.
	I want secularism.
	I want human rights.
	This looks like the sort of way to get rid of all of that, to be honest.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, my Twitter feed is littered with people with progressive feminist women who are very happy and very happy to just say, oh, well, lots of women get raped.
	So even if you're innocent, it's fine.
	It makes up for it.
	And that's what they're doing.
	And so they're not just saying, you know, it's okay if 10 guilty men go to prison if one innocent man goes to prison.
	They're also saying that if 10 innocent men go to prison, well, that makes up for 10 other guilty men going free.
	That's exactly right.
	That's a horrible thing.
	I mean, that's stupid.
	It's not going to get you what you want because it's going to make men revile and protect against you.
	It's actually going to create slash recreate slash nourish the patriarchy because the men are going to be afraid of the women, allah, Mike Pence, and a la me.
	Yeah.
	And what's really interesting is that I'm glad you formulated that way because you can see it isn't a total inversion of morality.
	You know, instead of doing something the moral way, they're choosing the immoral way.
	And if you think about it, it's to secure them personal privilege because none of these women will ever be me too'd.
	None of them are even, they're not even the right category.
	You know, only men can be targeted by this.
	And a group of women have secured to themselves the unlimited privilege of being able to exercise that power at will.
	And you have no defense.
	That's terrifying.
	And it's terrifying because it's not just terrifying that they have it.
	It's terrifying of what they're doing with it and how pleased they are to abuse that power.
	How happy they are to exercise that power.
	Yay, we finally got power.
	Let's use that power to act like the men we hate so much from years past and take down some innocent guys.
	Yep.
	That is exactly.
	They call it feminism.
	They call it feminism.
	This is not feminism.
	Yep.
	I mean, like, for example.
	I will gladly mansplain what feminism is to these people.
	So the thing.
	Oh, God, what was it you're saying?
	There was something I wanted to pick up on, because it was really quite important.
	It was about them choosing to do 10 wrongs to make up for 10 other wrongs.
	Yeah, but there was, oh, that was it.
	The term feminist.
	So for a long time, I was very sympathetic to the men's rights activists because of exactly this kind of case.
	Because the men's rights activists aren't actually misogynists.
	A lot of them are actually women who have male friends and relatives and who've seen them hurt.
	And a lot of them are, they're not incels either.
	A lot of them have been divorced and been really raked over by the court system in much the same sort of way that you've been raked over, actually, because it's actually really, the court system is actually really patriarchal and not feminist.
	But the counter, the other side of the blade is that a patriarchal court favors women in the same way that a feminist court would.
	So it's actually not good, at least in this country.
	But the men's rights activists have long been saying that it's not, a lot of them do still consider themselves some kind of feminist.
	And a lot of men's rights activists are ex-feminists because a lot of them, I guess the distinguishing factor is the term intersectional, which is the sort of neo-Marxist bit.
	A lot of them, like Christina Hoff Summers, I think she just calls it, what is it, a liberal feminist, something like liberal feminism or something rather, to specifically juxtapose it against the kind of systemic feminism that the insectionals have brought in.
	Because the liberal feminism is rooted in checks on power, unwarranted power.
	So why should a man be able to punch his wife or something?
	That's obviously utterly unwarranted.
	So that's a protected action.
	So that's kind of the kind of perspective they come from it because they still want to do good in the world.
	Obviously, not the people who are accusing you want to do good in the world.
	But when you were looking at the world that sort of way, you were doing it because you wanted to do good in the world.
	Yeah, I believe a lot of these people do actually want to do good in the world.
	But it really opens the door to bad actors like Melody Hensley.
	I think that was one of the accusers, wasn't it?
	No, that was one of the Melody was one of the accusers for, I think, Michael Shermer.
	Oh, was it Shermer?
	Right.
	Okay.
	Sorry, there have been so many of these examples in the atheist community.
	And I don't think that many of these people are actually that dodgy.
	But I mean, she's got a history of essentially using social justice for personal gain when she was apparently given PTSD by Twitter and things like this.
	So, I mean, what are your plans now?
	What do you think you can do going forward?
	Well, from a feminism perspective, I have to figure out what I am.
	I have to figure out what, I mean, my views haven't changed.
	None of my views have changed except for the fact that, well, I'm looking at where I was sucked in, where feminism was hijacked and took me along with it.
	And like I said, the feminism now is not my feminism.
	And whatever it is now, it kind of pulled me along with it.
	You know, feminism says this.
	Feminism says, okay, okay, well, you know, and we're going along.
	All right, well, that makes sense.
	And it brought me into this hole that I couldn't see my way out of until the hole buried me.
	So what's next for this?
	I've got my own webpage.
	I've got a YouTube channel and I've got to go fund me.
	And the gofund me is something that, unfortunately, I need to do because, Carl, I can't get hired.
	I don't have a job and I can't get hired.
	I was the guy who went on TV and said, religion is shit.
	Religion deserves to die.
	And then I was me too'd.
	So I can't get hired anywhere.
	Nobody's hiring me.
	So I'm selling insurance.
	I'm selling AFLAC to try and raise money.
	But that takes months or years to build up a decent income.
	So I have a GoFundMe out to cover for my legal expenses and my life expenses until then.
	Everything is at firebrandforgood.com.
	What legal expenses have you incurred?
	I have legal expenses.
	The reason I can't get a job is the same reason it's hard to get a lawyer.
	And, you know, going after an anti-Me Too case.
	But yeah, tell us why you need a lawyer.
	Sorry.
	I wasn't aware you were being sued.
	Yeah, I am suing.
	Oh, you are suing?
	Oh, right.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, I'm suing.
	I'm suing because of injustice.
	And I can't talk too much about the case, but I am suing.
	Who are you suing?
	I'm sorry.
	Who are you suing?
	Sorry.
	I'm suing American atheists.
	I'm suing both of the accusers, and I'm suing BuzzFeed.
	Really?
	So you're suing the organizations that screwed you and BuzzFeed for printing bullshit.
	Yes.
	Good man.
	Because fuck them.
	Yeah.
	Because if they're going to take me down, if they're going to, look, if we let this shit happen, it's going to happen over and over again.
	I'm not going to fucking yield to terrorism.
	I'm not going to fucking let it happen.
	I mean, what about Beth Presswood's next victim?
	What about Rose St. Claire's next time she regrets having sex with somebody?
	What's she going to do?
	We have to let the people know this.
	And we have to let American atheists know it.
	And we have to let all the other organizations know that due process isn't optional.
	Due process is not a thing that you just dismiss because the regressive lefts want you to.
	Due process is essential.
	Due process is what makes us a good country, like you said.
	And to sit back and just let this happen.
	I had my entire life destroyed and now I can't get a job.
	I have to sell insurance.
	I'm making cold calls and getting hung up on because two people lied.
	Not because I got caught doing something wrong, but because two people lied and abused the system.
	And then other people, amateurs, just knee-jerked.
	And, you know, the level of deceit here, the level of failure on the part of the board of directors of American atheists, the level is just beyond the pale.
	And it's because the culture was just allowing that to happen.
	The board of directors of American atheists are not bad people.
	They're not evil people.
	They're not stupid people.
	They did what they thought they had to do.
	And the reason that they thought they had to do it is because this society has become so toxic because of this Me Too bullshit.
	This concept that all women are so inferior to men that they can't be assholes.
	That they can't be liars.
	That they can't be horrible, shitty people.
	Let me tell you something about feminism, Carl.
	The bottom 1% of society, the worst 1% of society, feminism says half of those people are women.
	And we have to believe that.
	We have to know that.
	We have to own that.
	You could be a really fucking shitty human being and be female too.
	And we have to own that.
	And we have to realize that those people will abuse other victims.
	Those people will break the girl code and actually use other people's victimhood for their own advantage.
	They will.
	The bottom 1% will.
	And to ignore that, I mean, the bottom 1%, 7 billion people.
	So 1% is 35 million women who are willing to do that to people.
	You sound like an MRA to me now.
	This is the sort of thing they normally say.
	Well, no, no, no, I'm just teasing.
	But that is true.
	And also, you are correct.
	That's exactly been everyone's objection to just the way that feminism looks at the world since day one.
	You can't just say women are victims.
	Some women are perpetrators.
	That's such a silly statement.
	It's just nonsensical.
	It's not true on the face of it.
	And when you start abstracting these kind of things, I try to tell people, be local, right?
	Like worry about what's actually happening in your locale rather than worry what's happening somewhere else because things out of the place are shit.
	But if the place around you is pretty good, then that's okay.
	And as soon as you start taking this kind of like abstract systemic view, it's much harder to make sure it actually corresponds to reality.
	When things are local around you, you can see it corresponding to reality with your own eyes.
	You can easily verify it.
	But when you're taking, oh, women are X, it's like, are they, though, you know, women are oppressed?
	Are they?
	You know, I don't think women are actually being oppressed in the West, man.
	I just can't believe it, you know?
	And that's always been the objection.
	It doesn't seem real.
	Well, I mean, that's a place where I'm trying to understand.
	You know, I am still in a place where I still believe the patriarchy exists.
	I still believe that there's prejudice against women.
	I still believe that there are unreported rapes and sexual assaults that are off the charts that we don't know about.
	I'm not saying, I mean, depending on what you define as patriarchy, obviously, I'm not saying there aren't bad things happening, but it's like where, how often, like taking a number and then spreading it across, like, I don't know, there was something like 300 rapes or something in the UK last year, but there are 65 million people in the UK.
	Like, that's very few and far between.
	And this is the kind of, this is the kind of problem that when you're immersed in an information economy, we have ready access to statistics at any given point.
	Everything sounds terrifying because you can drum up a narrative that shows whatever the chosen problem is, it's terrible.
	But you look out your window and it's just crickets, you know?
	And so it's like, you know, think, and so that even if you wanted to help prevent a rape, what are you going to do?
	There's no one being raped around you.
	You know, you can't run out.
	So, like, don't, you know, don't think you can fix the world because none of us are really that smart.
	I think that's the core thing to take away from any of this.
	It's like, I mean, and the thing is, this is, again, the sort of like the purpose of limited government is to limit the amount of, and like the separation of powers is to limit the amount of damage you do in your mistakes, you know?
	Like, if the power that had been centered around you had been broken up into a bit more dispersed things, then maybe only a third of your life would have fallen away, or half your life, or something like that, rather than the whole thing.
	And that's the same lesson that should be passed down to sort of social groups.
	And it's the lesson that's being usurped by the radical left like this.
	And I just can't stress how much I think that is something we need to think about.
	I can't disagree with it.
	I can't disagree with it.
	It's a really scary place that we're in.
	It's a really scary place that we're in.
	And it's a scary direction that we've gone in and that we continue to go in, where the liberals are taking on extremely regressive, extremely twisted views.
	And innocent people are being really hurt.
	And that's celebrated.
	I mean, they're dehumanizing the women are the literally dehumanizing men.
	These people who are on my Twitter are sending me shit like, oh, you know, it doesn't matter because so many women get raped.
	And, you know, even if you lost everything that you love, at least you're still alive and you haven't been raped and beaten and killed.
	But you know what?
	I had a tremendous amount of pain and I'm still in pain.
	But the amount of pain that I went through over the past 14 months, I mean, it's something that I would not wish on anybody.
	I went into this in Armin's video.
	But I mean, my point is that it was excruciating.
	It was by far the worst pain I'd ever been in.
	And the reason that people celebrate it is because they completely dehumanized me as a person.
	They didn't care that I was a person.
	They didn't see the human being that is Dave Silverman.
	I was just another man taken down.
	Who gives a fuck?
	You were actually otherized by people who complain about otherizing.
	Yes, exactly.
	Yeah.
	Yes, exactly.
	And these were my friends.
	Yeah.
	And so-called skeptics.
	I can't get over that.
	I mean, I don't like relishing the defeat of my opponents.
	Like, you know, if Alexander Ocasio-Cortez was hit by a bus tomorrow, I wouldn't laugh about it.
	You know, I wouldn't post memes and, you know, ha ha ha, you know, and I certainly wouldn't be sending Ilhan Omar pictures of it or something like that.
	You know, but these sort of people would do that to you.
	You know, this is what they're doing.
	They're rubbing salt in the wound.
	They are doing that to me.
	Yeah.
	And they do it with glee.
	They're happy to do it.
	Yeah.
	And it's, but they're happy to do it.
	And now that the evidence come out, now that, and here's the thing.
	Here's the thing.
	I have come out with all of my evidence.
	I have come out with, well, almost all of my evidence, almost all of the stuff.
	At firebrandforgood.com, I've got letter, I've got a letter from a board member saying, yes, I was fired only for the accusation.
	Yes, the internal audit came back clean.
	No surprise.
	I've got eyewitnesses and pictures and recordings, and it's all on the website.
	And what do my former friends say now?
	Now they say, well, Dave maybe may not be guilty of assault, but he still cheated on his wife.
	So we should still hate him anyways.
	Yeah, because well, think about it.
	Think about what they're doing, right?
	Because just the act of rubbing salt on someone's wound is the act of a tremendously shitty human.
	If the ends justify the means to the extent where you can just revel at someone's absolute humiliation in the way that they've been doing it to you, it's like that's awful.
	That's an awful thing to do to someone.
	I don't do that to people I hate.
	Like, I mean, for example, there's a channel called The Ralph Retort.
	You know, things have gone badly for him, and he was a total asshole to me.
	But I don't sit there going, ha ha ha, you deserve this to him.
	You know, I could get a burner account every day and mock him or something, but I don't because that's a totally asshole thing to do.
	So it's one of those things where, and these people do it in public.
	They do it proudly.
	And it's like, this is why I was like, this is why it looks like you've joined the baddies.
	And so the other side of this is what you were saying earlier.
	How much of these people piling on me, let's just take person X who said, okay, Dave isn't guilty of what he was charged with, but he's still guilty of adultery.
	So let's hate him anyways.
	I think that that person is either a total asshole or scared to even show me a lick of courtesy.
	Scared to avoid, you know, enduring their own echo tunnels.
	Terrified that, you know, mercy, forgiveness, redemption, they're sins in this religion we call regressive left.
	And you can't break those sins.
	So even if the evidence is taken, even if the evidence all shows up, they have to continue hating me because if they don't continue hating me, the rest of their echo tunnel will throw their asses out too, just like they did to me.
	Well, that's because if you have to suddenly look at your own behavior for the past six years that you've genuinely taken sadistic pleasure in enacting, and then someone points out to you, wait, that's wrong.
	You're like, what do you mean that's wrong?
	You've got to account for suddenly six years of awfulness on your own part.
	And everyone knows in this group, subconsciously, they've all got to keep playing this role.
	They've all got to carry on with this because otherwise they've got to admit they've been unbelievably awful for however many years.
	It's really unbelievable.
	And that's not humanism.
	It's not skepticism.
	It's not being a good person.
	No, certainly not.
	It's awful.
	And, you know, like you were saying before, when I said the position before and, you know, every day, I'm trying to be a good person.
	I'm trying to do good.
	Whatever position I take, I'm trying to do good.
	They're not.
	They're not.
	I don't believe that anybody thinks it's good to look at a person that they know is innocent and say, let's hate on him anyways, even though his life is ruined because of false allegations.
	Let's hate on him anyways.
	There's no way, just like Beth Presswood, there's no way they think that's a good thing.
	There's no way they think that's behaving good in a good way, in my opinion.
	But I think the important thing there is, like, just, in fact, just with any of this, I hate this sort of social justice view because it's always predicated on the idea that it won't happen to you, you know, and that's such a selfish way of looking at the world.
	It's like they were saying, you know, well, so many X-Men rape women.
	Therefore, it's somehow a cosmic rebalancing if you get accused, even if it's unfair.
	In the great war of men against women, that's a notch on the, that's territory taken for women, you know?
	What a horrible way of looking at things.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, I used to be there, you know?
	I mean, even when I went down for Me Too, I think Me Too is important.
	I think the idea of Me Too is important.
	I think women coming out and being able to come out is important.
	And when that first took me down, I was, you know, aware that I had been collateral damaged.
	And the fact that Me Too was important to me and I still think is important made it better in my mind that I was collateral damaged.
	But no, you know, it's not okay.
	It's not okay that I lost everything as an innocent person.
	It's not okay that the collateral damage was so bad that I didn't get any due process, that the multiple eyewitnesses that I have never got heard because I didn't get time.
	I didn't get an ear at all.
	So, and it's not okay that I'm collateral damaged.
	It's not okay that innocent people go to jail or lose their livelihoods.
	And it's not okay to fucking celebrate it, folks.
	It's not okay to be okay with it.
	It's something that should outrage everybody.
	My former friends should be outraged that this happened to me.
	And some of them are.
	I have so many new friends and some of my older friends stayed with me.
	And I've got so many really good friends that have really stuck by me.
	But, you know, those older friends who are just abandoned, there's no way that they think they're being good.
	There's no way that that's a respectable place to, would you want to be treated that way?
	Let's put a little Jesus in here.
	Would you want to be treated the way I was treated?
	Would you want your son to be treated the way I was treated?
	How about your brother?
	Come the fuck on, folks.
	You can do this.
	You know how to skeptic.
	You know how to humanist.
	You can do this.
	You have to see what you're doing.
	What's happening here?
	It's interesting you brought up Jesus there because that is actually a fairly sound principle that is a core part of Christianity, isn't it?
	Well, it predates Christianity.
	I was being a little bit facetious.
	But yes, I mean, come on.
	This whole concept of mercy, forgiveness, and redemption is something religion gets right and we get wrong.
	Yeah.
	That's this thing that I did with Rose Sinclair was seven years ago.
	I didn't realize it was that long.
	It was seven years ago.
	And Beth Presswood was four years ago.
	And in that interim, since 2015, I have been getting help, which I got, by the way, proactively, not because I got caught and then went into help.
	I went to get help because I knew I had some issues and I sought help proactively on my own.
	I am a much better person now than I was back then, but I'm still forever a bad guy.
	These people call me fucking rapist.
	These people call me rapist, Carl.
	Well, I was right.
	They would.
	They do.
	It's awful.
	It's awful.
	Fuck up, man.
	Because, I mean, that's going to be attached to my name no matter what.
	It doesn't matter how much evidence I produce.
	doesn't matter when I win this lawsuit it doesn't matter if it doesn't matter what happened The word rapist is next to my fucking name now.
	Because Rose St. Clair and Beth Presswood lied.
	It's bullshit, isn't it?
	It's bullshit.
	This is why...
	It's not humanism.
	It's not good.
	Uh-oh.
	Honestly, this is why I do what I do.
	Because this, Douglas Murray, I recently read his new book, and he was in an interview the other day talking about it on, I think it was LBC, maybe it was Talk Ready or something.
	But he was saying, basically, this whole system has to be undone.
	What social justice has done kind of has to be undone.
	And I'm totally with him on that side.
	I think that this is a genuinely kind of cancerous social movement that takes over spaces and destroys them by literally taking chunks out of the people who are in charge until it gets in charge and then keeping everyone else in a state of fear so they just leave.
	They're desperate to get out of the sort of cult mentality by the end of it.
	And I think that we have to just kind of really reject that way of thinking.
	I think there's no other choice.
	I think you're right.
	I think that what you're saying is self-evident if you look at feminism itself.
	You can see how social justice has grown inside of it.
	That's why I was part of it.
	Yep.
	Because it grew inside something I was inside of.
	All of a sudden, I'm in the social justice crowd.
	And all of a sudden, I'm being shit on by the social justice crowd.
	And my feminism is being used against me in a horrible, horrible way.
	Man, I'm with you.
	I remember one of the earliest videos I did was about Rebecca Watson talking about feminism and accusing, that was Elevator Gate.
	Like the whole thing where she was claiming that she was terrified because a guy asked her for coffee or something.
	And it was just like, what do you mean?
	Come on.
	Women are stronger than this.
	You can accept an invitation to coffee without having your world fall apart.
	But that was where I first started noticing it was really taking hold and it sort of took over the atheist community.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And I was sitting there and I was a part of it.
	I was a part of that.
	And I fostered it.
	And looking back on it now, I regret a lot of things I said.
	And I regret a lot of friends I made.
	I regret a lot of friends I made.
	Well, I'm always very quick to say, well, forgive and forget when it comes to stuff like this because it really doesn't matter.
	There's no point holding a grudge or hanging it over someone.
	I think that's unfair.
	And it's not a path to redemption.
	If there is going to be a path to redemption, it has to be forgive and forget.
	And for what it's worth, I'm sorry for the Mythicon comments and I'm sorry for any sort of shade I've thrown at you because quite frankly, you are right and most of what you say is right.
	Thank you.
	And I apologize for the shade that I threw at you.
	But god damn it, these people are bad.
	People are fucked up.
	I know, man.
	I know.
	I know.
	Don't worry.
	We will keep deprogramming them one by one and then just make sure that everyone realizes that there is kind of like a safe space on the other side, I guess, if I have to describe it like that.
	But honestly, though, I'm sorry that this all had to happen to you for you to see it.
	Well, yeah, I mean, that's what happened.
	It had to happen to me for me to see it.
	And I regret that, and that's going to cause a little bit of soul searching on my side because you wonder how much else cognitive dissonance is infecting my mind.
	It's probably a lot like everyone else.
	But, you know, it's so I'm trying to figure out what I am now.
	I mean, I don't think I can, I mean, I've held the word feminist to my chest forever and proudly.
	And I think the word has changed.
	And I think.
	But like with the MRAs, I meant to say this earlier, actually.
	The reason I brought the MRAs earlier was because you had said that you don't want to get rid of the word feminist.
	And I'd had basically the same conversation with the MRAs because of the toxic propaganda pumped out about MRAs by feminists.
	Very little of which is true, I will promise you.
	I was basically like, look, tactically, you may as well because it'd just be easier.
	And they're like, no, this is our label.
	We chose it.
	It's not an issue.
	We're not menonists.
	We're activists for men's rights.
	We don't have an ideology.
	And in fact, the position from which they were coming to the issues was from a liberal position.
	It was from the position of due process and human rights and things like this.
	They were like, no, no, there is a promise here that the men who are being ill-treated deserve to be deserves have restitution under.
	And that's, you know, they're not Nazis or anything fucking ridiculous like that.
	You know, they are genuinely that kind of thing.
	And so I really think reclaiming the word liberal, you know, don't call yourself an intersectional feminist, call yourself like a liberal feminist or whatever.
	Like, you know, the socialist types, the Marxist types will recognize that essentially as like a dog whistle against them.
	They'll see it and be like, ah, you know, like a vampire with garlic or something.
	Good.
	Because they know they're not liberals.
	They know they're not.
	Liberalism is capitalism.
	It's free markets.
	It's personal freedom, small government, small state.
	It's all the things they hate.
	They want giant bureaucracies that are going to micromanage everyone's life where they're going to be at the top and have all these willing, obedient lackeys and then take someone out of the bottom.
	That's how they view the world should be structured.
	And I think that's awful.
	So they're communists, basically.
	And frankly, having a little dog whistle that throws them away from me is not a bad thing because I really don't want them near me.
	Yeah.
	These are not nice people.
	They're not nice people and they're not good friends.
	Yeah.
	During Gamergate, in fact, which I'm sure that you've heard many good things about Gamergate, but there was a journalist called Ian Miles Chung who essentially came to the same revelation that you're having now because he was part of a community very similar to the atheist one, but for video games.
	And he just was, you know, no, no, no, no.
	This is actually going quite badly.
	And people just forgave and forgot.
	Because, you know, everyone makes mistakes.
	It's better to be out of that environment than in.
	So, you know, I hope people are forgiving and understanding in that regard because I think someone has to be.
	If it's not us, then who?
	You know, where are you going to go to accept that you're just a human?
	And that's it, you know, because they're not going to be forgiving and there is no mercy, forgiveness, or redemption in their religion.
	And so we can have it in our atheism, in our humanism.
	And we can show them what it means to be nice.
	Yeah.
	Because there's a world out here that's much better if you're nice.
	There's a world out here that's much better if you're kind.
	And optimistic.
	And they're not much compassionate.
	And optimistic as well, because the way that they present the world is so fatalistic and oppressive.
	It's like, you know, our women are being ground down by the patriarch.
	But they're succeeding everywhere.
	What are you talking about?
	Like, if I look around, I see successful women.
	What are you talking about?
	It's a better worldview.
	And it is a better worldview.
	And guess what?
	We're all working hard.
	You know, life is not easy for men either.
	Yeah.
	After all, all I have to do is have consensual sex with somebody and they can lie and take down my life.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	So who has the power here?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Totally agree.
	I was using my power for good.
	You know, I was, I was, I had power when I was president of American Atheists.
	I used my power for good.
	I, you know, had those conflict of interest, the sexual harassment policies.
	I had a 50-50 roster on all the conventions.
	I had a lot of women in power that I put on the roster itself.
	I used my power deliberately to help women, to help feminism.
	That's called using your power for good.
	And I stand by those decisions that I made.
	God damn it, I wish they would, you know, take a cue from that.
	I tell you what, I could actually pick you up on that and suggest that actually you're using your power for bad.
	Because it's not the intent really that lies behind the decisions you're making.
	It's the mechanism by which you make the decisions and the procedure through which you go to get there.
	I mean, if you're going to just hire or assign 50% women, then there may well be more deserving men that you're discriminating against on the basis of their gender just because they weren't born women.
	Yeah, that's true.
	No, that is true.
	That is true.
	And that might have been unfair.
	But I'm not saying it was or necessarily that there's, you know, I mean, it could be the other way around.
	You know, if you're saying, well, I've got to have 50% men, then there might be more talented women that you were overlooking as well.
	It's a toast, you know, works both ways.
	Okay, so let me push back on your pushback.
	Yeah, sure.
	I was intending to do good with my power.
	That's fine.
	And I don't think they're intending to do good with theirs.
	I think they're intending to do something selfish.
	I think they're intending to do something malevolent.
	I think they're intending to do something deceitful and vindictive.
	Yes.
	And I think a vindictive intent with power is poison.
	And I think that's something that I didn't do.
	I mean, you can say that I did the wrong thing, but I was trying to do the right thing.
	In fact, I was trying to do the right thing for society.
	I was trying to do the right thing for women.
	I was trying to do the right thing for our movement the whole time.
	There was never a time when I was like, ooh, I've got power.
	Now I'm going to fuck with people.
	I did not fuck with people.
	Oh, I believe it, man.
	I believe it.
	And they fucked with me as soon as they fucking could.
	I believe it.
	But, right, okay.
	So what we'll do is we'll end it there because I don't want to go on too long because I think we've covered all the major points.
	But if people want to find you, I'll leave links to your website in the description because honestly, for anyone who's listening, even if you're not an atheist, supporting David in his attempt to get the American Atheist Association to understand that social justice cannot just carry on ruining people's lives.
	If you want to make a donation, it might well be useful to do so because in any cultural space where this sort of ideology is being rolled back, I support those efforts.
	Even if I were to have other personal differences with the people doing it, I would still say, well, it's a good idea to push those elements out because they're destructive and they're tyrannical.
	So they have to be gone.
	So I'll leave links to all the stuff in the description.
	Tyrannical is the word.
	Tyrannical is the word.
	And you know, speaking of that, I don't have a Patreon.
	I have a subscribestar because Patreon told me in advance that they wouldn't work with me.
	Oh my God.
	So they're taking the narrative seriously.
	Yeah.
	Jesus.
	At least I had done what I was being accused of.
	I had used naughty words, you know, but you didn't even do what you were accused of.
	No, no, I didn't do what I was accused of.
	And Patreon told me that they were not a good match for me.
	So my friend Thomas Sheety actually told me that you use Subscribestar, which is why I use Subscribestar now.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Well, like I said, I'll leave links to the website in the description so people can contact you and whatnot and help you.
	But thanks a lot for coming on.
	And I'm glad that it went fairly well, I felt, because I was worried about how this conversation would go, given how tense the situation had, you know, just in general in the community had been in the past.
	Yeah.
	But you know what?
	I didn't.
	I knew it would be all right because I think you're a reasonable guy.
	I think you're a reasonable person, and all of the people that I've spoken to, whether on podcasts, you, Karen Strogan, and whether I talk to them privately, the people who are not the radical feminists, the people who I used to think were bad guys, have unanimously been kind and compassionate and not misogynistic at all.
	And so I want to thank you for having me on the show.
	Thank you for bringing me on and taking that risk that we would have a more challenging discussion.
	But I found this discussion fruitful for myself.
	And I appreciate your time and I appreciate your producing some good, serious fucking content for this world.
	Thank you very much.
	And thank you very much for coming on.
	All right.

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