- Joined
- Feb 15, 2015
The new Free Thought Blogs thread in Community Watch has already been a way to find out who the specific lolcows related to that site have been and one of the names brought up was Ophelia Benson, who claims that she was harassed off the site and still continues to whine and bitch about what happened to her on Free Thought Blogs. This is a sample of what she usually does and how angry and salty she can get. She loves to play up the harassment angle a lot of times and for the dumbest of reasons. There's a wealth of screencaps taken by Ophelia herself, but I'm just gonna post the ones that stood out the most to me and you can read more for yourself in the linked post.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OpheliaBenson/with_replies
Blogs: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/, http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/author/butterfliesandwheels/
She is also a columnist for Free Inquiry and for Free Thinker.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/06/more-documenting-the-harassment/
This was just one of the many bits of drama that she's gotten herself into. Some of the commentary on this shit also stood out to me.
"Christian Chandler."
Wow. She tagged Michael Nugent. She’s actually actively trying to get me disinvited from a speaking engagement at a conference. Now that’s harassment.
It’s a lie, too. I don’t bully secular women. I don’t, for instance, do what Sara Mayhew does. I don’t endlessly tweet about people I dislike. I don’t try to get them disinvited from things. I don’t make up shit about them. I’ve never bullied Sara Mayhew. I’ve done my best to avoid her. But it does me no good – she still forced herself on me at Eschaton, when I was sitting at a table with Eric and couldn’t escape. She still tweets about me every few days, apropos de rien, just to be malicious and persistent and nasty.
This is a bully-trope that I particularly detest – this business of relentlessly harassing people, then when the people say stop harassing me, pretending the harassed people are actually nursing a secret love for the harasser. ElevatorGATE’s impersonation Twitter account with my name on it was doing variations on that on #WISCFI during the conference – using profile logos saying “I heart Justin” and the like. Yeah no. I like lots of people. I love quite a few people. I do not love or like any of my harassers.
The rest of the post is really long but has a lot more of her whining and crying and going over the top.
This is some of the outrage that she had when she left Free Thought Blogs.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2015/08/21140/#comments
She left FTB around early August and that was when she was in that huge shitstorm where people found out about her transphobic beliefs. The whole drama with her happened just the month before and there were several blogs that covered what happened.
https://sinmantyx.wordpress.com/2015/07/25/some-stuff-about-the-ophelia-benson-dust-up/
This is a link to that last post that's mentioned in the above screencap with even more information about this strange clusterfuck.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousyca...witch-hunter-he-is-dressed-as-one/#more-14364
From the blog post:
Ophelia has recently, ostensibly inadvertently, angered the online trans community, with whom FtB is generally friendly, after some rather tone-deaf commentary on the performance of beauty by Caitlyn Jenner. This brought to the minds of a number of trans folk hereabouts a post from a year ago about Hobby Lobby, when she both dismissed a request to acknowledge that Planned Parenthood actually also benefits trans men who still require OB/GYN services, and subsequently misgendered a trans person who claims to have given their preferred pronouns — they were understandably wary of her and evidently viewed Jenner post as trans-antagonistic. This sparked a large fight, during which time Ophelia acted as though — if you’ll pardon my interpreting her feelings here — that she was under siege by a number of dishonest interlocutors.
After this fight simmered for a month plus (while I’ve been preoccupied with my own life nonsense and could not be moved to post even silly videos about turtles or about the latest video game that I’m obsessed with), things came to a renewed head recently, when a trans person asked her point blank whether trans women are actually women, and demanded a yes or no answer.
Sensing this as a trap, she has posted about how awful this tactic is, how holding her hostage to a yes or no answer is abridging freethought and demanding dogmatic adherence to a specific ideology. The trans community was, in my estimation rightly, incensed by this refusal to acknowledge their requested validation of trans women’s womanhood.
Found this on the Gamerghazi subreddit too that explains a lot of what the fuck happened.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/3f82tb/what_did_ophelia_benson_do/
Found this comment to be one of the most informative there:
They're not fans of Ophelia either and that above link does an amazing job of covering a lot of the craziness and backpedaling that she did. @Chemical snorfare went into even more about what Benson's tactics usually are:
Some points:
She gets incredibly salty if anyone disagrees with her and is quick to block/ban hammer but usually with a lulz worthy passing shot.
She thinks that everything revolves around her, even to the point of calling out completely unrelated sites claiming posts they made were about her.
She claims to be an intellectual but isn't the sharpest tool in the box.
She is in her sixties but has only ever had one short term job in her twenties, and decided work "wasn't for her"
She believes as a woman that she is the most victimized person on the planet (as a sex and personally), and don't go suggesting there's anyone worse off cos that causes salty sperging.
She comes from a very wealthy American family and went to a private school in the UK, she now lives in Seattle with a view over the harbour which I'm guessing is pricey. She is supported by her hard working successful husband, however if you suggest she has any privilege...SALT!
Her "blogging job" consists of spending all day in front of the internet finding things to become worked up over, copypasta them into her blog and writing the bare minimum of commentary to avoid looking like the online scrapbook collector she is. Her articles can be 70 or 80 lines long but only contain 3 lines of original comments, but that still "blogging" and journalism and dont youi suggest otherwise= salt.
She's released private back channel info from FtB after she left like Thunderturd did, but Pz Myers has completely failed to notice , even when it was pointed out to him with links and screen caps "didnt happen".
Further reading:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/..._transphobic_or_a_trans_ally_who_decides.html
http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/2015/07/wait-whats-going-on-at-ftb.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheismplus/comments/3eubr4/could_someone_concisely_summarize_why_ophelia/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OpheliaBenson/with_replies
Blogs: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/, http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/author/butterfliesandwheels/
She is also a columnist for Free Inquiry and for Free Thinker.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2013/06/more-documenting-the-harassment/
This was just one of the many bits of drama that she's gotten herself into. Some of the commentary on this shit also stood out to me.
"Christian Chandler."
Wow. She tagged Michael Nugent. She’s actually actively trying to get me disinvited from a speaking engagement at a conference. Now that’s harassment.
It’s a lie, too. I don’t bully secular women. I don’t, for instance, do what Sara Mayhew does. I don’t endlessly tweet about people I dislike. I don’t try to get them disinvited from things. I don’t make up shit about them. I’ve never bullied Sara Mayhew. I’ve done my best to avoid her. But it does me no good – she still forced herself on me at Eschaton, when I was sitting at a table with Eric and couldn’t escape. She still tweets about me every few days, apropos de rien, just to be malicious and persistent and nasty.
This is a bully-trope that I particularly detest – this business of relentlessly harassing people, then when the people say stop harassing me, pretending the harassed people are actually nursing a secret love for the harasser. ElevatorGATE’s impersonation Twitter account with my name on it was doing variations on that on #WISCFI during the conference – using profile logos saying “I heart Justin” and the like. Yeah no. I like lots of people. I love quite a few people. I do not love or like any of my harassers.
The rest of the post is really long but has a lot more of her whining and crying and going over the top.
This is some of the outrage that she had when she left Free Thought Blogs.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2015/08/21140/#comments
She left FTB around early August and that was when she was in that huge shitstorm where people found out about her transphobic beliefs. The whole drama with her happened just the month before and there were several blogs that covered what happened.
https://sinmantyx.wordpress.com/2015/07/25/some-stuff-about-the-ophelia-benson-dust-up/
This is a link to that last post that's mentioned in the above screencap with even more information about this strange clusterfuck.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousyca...witch-hunter-he-is-dressed-as-one/#more-14364
From the blog post:
Ophelia has recently, ostensibly inadvertently, angered the online trans community, with whom FtB is generally friendly, after some rather tone-deaf commentary on the performance of beauty by Caitlyn Jenner. This brought to the minds of a number of trans folk hereabouts a post from a year ago about Hobby Lobby, when she both dismissed a request to acknowledge that Planned Parenthood actually also benefits trans men who still require OB/GYN services, and subsequently misgendered a trans person who claims to have given their preferred pronouns — they were understandably wary of her and evidently viewed Jenner post as trans-antagonistic. This sparked a large fight, during which time Ophelia acted as though — if you’ll pardon my interpreting her feelings here — that she was under siege by a number of dishonest interlocutors.
After this fight simmered for a month plus (while I’ve been preoccupied with my own life nonsense and could not be moved to post even silly videos about turtles or about the latest video game that I’m obsessed with), things came to a renewed head recently, when a trans person asked her point blank whether trans women are actually women, and demanded a yes or no answer.
Sensing this as a trap, she has posted about how awful this tactic is, how holding her hostage to a yes or no answer is abridging freethought and demanding dogmatic adherence to a specific ideology. The trans community was, in my estimation rightly, incensed by this refusal to acknowledge their requested validation of trans women’s womanhood.
Found this on the Gamerghazi subreddit too that explains a lot of what the fuck happened.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/3f82tb/what_did_ophelia_benson_do/
Found this comment to be one of the most informative there:
They're not fans of Ophelia either and that above link does an amazing job of covering a lot of the craziness and backpedaling that she did. @Chemical snorfare went into even more about what Benson's tactics usually are:
Some points:
She gets incredibly salty if anyone disagrees with her and is quick to block/ban hammer but usually with a lulz worthy passing shot.
She thinks that everything revolves around her, even to the point of calling out completely unrelated sites claiming posts they made were about her.
She claims to be an intellectual but isn't the sharpest tool in the box.
She is in her sixties but has only ever had one short term job in her twenties, and decided work "wasn't for her"
She believes as a woman that she is the most victimized person on the planet (as a sex and personally), and don't go suggesting there's anyone worse off cos that causes salty sperging.
She comes from a very wealthy American family and went to a private school in the UK, she now lives in Seattle with a view over the harbour which I'm guessing is pricey. She is supported by her hard working successful husband, however if you suggest she has any privilege...SALT!
Her "blogging job" consists of spending all day in front of the internet finding things to become worked up over, copypasta them into her blog and writing the bare minimum of commentary to avoid looking like the online scrapbook collector she is. Her articles can be 70 or 80 lines long but only contain 3 lines of original comments, but that still "blogging" and journalism and dont youi suggest otherwise= salt.
She's released private back channel info from FtB after she left like Thunderturd did, but Pz Myers has completely failed to notice , even when it was pointed out to him with links and screen caps "didnt happen".
Further reading:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/..._transphobic_or_a_trans_ally_who_decides.html
http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/2015/07/wait-whats-going-on-at-ftb.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheismplus/comments/3eubr4/could_someone_concisely_summarize_why_ophelia/
