Ooh! Another Atheist Sex Scandal?

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Karen Stoltznow and Ben Radford at a December 2012 conference.

You may recall that in 2011 Rebecca Watson — the total smokin’ hotness of atheist chickdom — celebrated her victimhood after some guy tried to hit on her at an atheist conference. The silliness of it all prompted Vox Day to comment on the misery of atheist guys:

No wonder they’re so furious at God. He created all those lovely women with those beautiful breasts and they aren’t even allowed to even talk to them.

Basically, atheism seems to attract a lot of game-deficient Gamma dudes who figure atheist chicks are easy (correct), but then presume this might mean some hot action for Gammas (incorrect).

OK, so fast-forward, and the New Total Smokin’ Hotness of Atheist Chickdom, Karen Stoltznow steps forward to tell her tale:

Sexual harassment is an uncomfortable topic to discuss with colleagues, especially when you’re the victim. . . .

(As if it is easy for the guy she accuses to discuss it.)

According to gossip about me, I gave him mixed-signals, I led him on, I’m flirtatious, and I’m a dirty little slut. . . .

(Is this true? I mean, was it only “gossip”?)

Five months after I lodged my complaint I received a letter that was riddled with legalese but acknowledged the guilt of this individual. They had found evidence of “inappropriate communications” and “inappropriate” conduct at conferences. . . . They assured me they were disciplining the harasser but this turned out to be a mere slap on the wrist. . . .

(He wasn’t burned at the stake.)

Those who didn’t know the extent of the harassment reacted as though we simply don’t play well together in the sandbox. “Why don’t you two just get over it and move on!” The matter was misconstrued as a lover’s tiff, or that we were a couple in an on again, off again relationship. . . .

(Were you ever a “couple” at all?)

To some people the news didn’t come as much of a surprise. They “knew” there was something wrong, especially with the benefit of hindsight. “I thought something was up when you two stopped working together.” Others felt they could finally admit to me what they think about him. “I never liked him.” “I’ve always thought he was a creepy guy!”, “He’s a weirdo!” and, “I unfriended him on Facebook because of the sexist shit he says and the perverted stuff he posts.” One woman confessed, “No wonder my female friends roll their eyes at me when I tell them he’s single!” . . .

(OK, I’ll stipulate this guy is creepy. But you have not yet told us whether you were ever in a “couple” with him, or explained why people may have thought you were.)

This man is a predator who collects girls of a certain “type”. His targets are chubby, shy, lonely, and insecure, just like I used to be.

(Oh. You used to be his “type,” but now you’re the Total Smokin’ Hotness of Atheist Chickdom, and so — under the bus!)

In the early days I looked up to him and was flattered that he seemed to respect my work. I quickly spotted some red flags but I disregarded them. These became too big to ignore, so I called it all off. The rejection was ego shattering to him at first, and then met with disbelief.

(Hell hath no fury like a Gamma dumped.)

This was followed by incessant communication of a sexual nature, including gifts, calls, emails, letters, postcards, and invites to vacation with him in exotic places so we could “get to know each other again”. He wouldn’t leave me alone. This wasn’t love. It was obsession. His desperation only increased when I met another man. He continued his harassment as though my boyfriend (who is now my husband) didn’t even exist.

(Excuse me for interrupting again — now we’re getting to the good part — but why not have your boyfriend tell the creep to buzz off?)

From late 2009 onwards I made repeated requests for his personal communication to cease but these were ignored. He began manipulating the boundaries by contacting me on the pretext of it being work-related. Then came the quid pro quo harassment. He would find opportunities for me within the company and recommend me to television producers, but only if I was nicer to him. One day the company offered me an honorary position that I’d worked hard for, but he warned me that he had the power to thwart that offer. I threatened to complain to his employer, but he bragged that another woman had accused him of sexual harassment previously and her complaints were ignored. According to him, she had been declared “batshit crazy”. Then, he saw me at conferences and took every opportunity to place me in a vulnerable position. This is where the psychological abuse turned physical and he sexually assaulted me on several occasions.

“Officer, arrest that man!”

Well, isn’t that what you think Karen Stoltznow would have done? If somebody “sexually assaulted” you, wouldn’t you call the cops?

For some reason, she didn’t, but instead complained to her employer, who gave her sort of a runaround, and she published her account without ever naming her harasser. But it seems everybody in Atheist World knows this creep, and his modus operandi is not exactly a secret, so arch-Darwinist P.Z. Myers outs him:

Something strange happened after I posted this. People started emailing me. They all said the same thing: they knew exactly who the harasser was, and they named him, and eerily, they all named exactly the same name, and they were all 100% on the money. I’m starting to believe in psychic powers.
The accused harasser was Ben Radford.
Wait. Maybe it’s not psychic powers, it’s privileged ignorance. Almost all of the people writing to me are women, and some of them also tell tales of their husbands or boyfriends not believing them at first.

Great: “Benjamin Radford is deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer science magazine and a Research Fellow with the non-profit educational organization the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry,” and he is also apparently “a predator who collects girls … [who] are chubby, shy, lonely, and insecure.”

Sorry about your reputation, Mr. Creepy Obsessive Stalker.

Perhaps you can tell us why people thought you and Karen Stoltznow were a “couple” and what those “sexual assaults” were about.

Have a nice day. And good luck praying to nothing.

UPDATE: I Tweeted this post to the attention of some atheists, and set of World War III. Also, I find myself accused in the comments of “blaming the victim,” whereas my point generally was that atheist guys are creeps, and no woman is safe around them. Attending an atheist conference is kind of like having a sleepover with Julian Assange, it seems, but let’s not revisit that controversy just now, eh?

UPDATE II: A feminist blog comments:

As other atheist feminists might be unable to forget, Center For Inquiry is a fairly large skeptic notprofit which came under fire after CEO Ron Lindsay made some pretty thoughtless comments during his “welcoming” address at the Women In Secularism 2 conference held in DC this past Spring. CFI still hasn’t apologized or taken action against Lindsay. Here’s to hoping they have something more to say now that we know they’ve been doling out honoraria to an individual accused of spending 4 years making an equally famous female skeptic’s life a living hell.

So, it’s all-misogyny, all-the time with these guys, and you might think this would cause some of these “atheist feminists” to reconsider their worldview, go to church and fix me a sammich.

But no. Once they go atheist feminist, they never go back . . .

Or something. Rebecca Watson denounced the Center For Inquiry this year, because those atheist men are all hateful misogynists.

This means no more sammiches for you atheist guys, either.

And next? I guess there will be Atheist Lesbian Feminists conference, which then will split into Maoist and Stalinist sects, followed by the rise of a genuinely radical Underground Atheist Feminist terrorist group, blowing up shit and issuing jargon-laden manifestos.

The progress of such tendencies always follows a historical pattern.

 

256 comments

  1. Actually, atheism is belief in an absence. People who have no belief also don’t have vehement interests.

  3. Hold on I don’t understand the problem

    If there is no god and man has evolved into the animal he is then aren’t the actions of this guy the logical result of said evolution?

  7. We need to recognize the element of boasting in the account of Karen, and especially in the account of Rebecca. It’s on the order of, “Hey, lookit me! I have men coming on to me, the poor pathetic creeps.”

    Too bad, in a way, that they don’t seem to realize they’d gain more points if the creep were depicted instead as Smoking-hot-guy whom they rejected despite his male beauty and inherently suave approach because of his lack of politically-correct behavior.

    Because he believed in God or voted Republican, for instance.

  8. Your comment presupposes that we’re not thinking for ourselves. It further begs the question, “why do you care?” If you are correct, so be it. Why, though, do you wish to disabuse someone of a belief system which provides him/her with hope and comfort. Absent some other motive, you merely are being mean spirited, it seems to me. At its heart, atheism is merely evangelical nihilism. It seeks to eliminate that which is unique to the Human Condition, the great question, “Why?”

  9. No one is saying Dawkins et al. base their opinions on an atheist philosophy. Rather, as a result of those opinions — actually, as result of his faith in the God of Chance– he has constructed a philosophy, a philosophy which, alas, is wholly and completely at odds with his opinions.

  11. As I said on Twitter the other day, it’s OK to scorn an atheist because if he’s right you’ll never know it and if you’re right, he’s the one with the problem.

  12. Wait, wait, what? I never really looked at that picture before. Is the date in the caption correct? They were on a panel, seated side-by-side, just 8 months ago?

  13. Today’s liberals aren’t anything more than bundles of animal instincts at the beck and call of nature’s whims.

  16. I forget who the comedian was, maybe Ron White, who said something like:

    “‘No guy becomes a vegetarian. You show me a guy who says he’s a vegetarian, and I’ll show you he’s really a guy who’s trying to f*ck a vegetarian.'”

    (you know, the people who make up rules for punctuation need to create a set of marks for paraphrase. I just decided to add an extra single quote, so that the whole thing appears to hang inside finger-quotes. But I digress.)

    Anyway, the comedian went on the ask chicks in the audience (who were with male companions) if they were vegetarian. You know how that went.

  21. Exactly. An animal in rut will take what they need to fulfill their animal instinct. No responsibility, no consequences, total licentiousness, the progressive Utopia.

  23. Good grief! You’re the second person who’s made the massive and unwarranted assumption that I wish to “disabuse someone of a belief system…”. Where do you get that idea from? Read my comments and observe that all I have done here is challenge erroneous notions about what atheism is. I have said nothing whatever about wanting to persuade anyone else to become an atheist. I don’t care what people believe as long as they don’t hurt or oppress anyone else in the their name of their beliefs. Got it now?

  24. A difference that makes no difference is no difference. Thanks for playing, though.
    Also, a very wise fellow once said “Just because I believe don’t mean I don’t think as well.”

  25. We should follow the example of all those good moral Christian men like David Berg, Tony Alamo, Jack Schaap, and those Catholic priests.

  26. Your first question is a semantical point. Whichever way you want to express, what atheists have in common is that they don’t believe in gods. I’ve no idea what you’re trying to say in your second sentence but it sounds like nonsense.

  29. No, he hasn’t constructed a philosophy. And he doesn’t have faith in the ‘God of Chance’ because there is no such god. Dawkins is a scientist and a humanist. He arrived at his conclusions by considering the evidence arrived at through the scientific method and he judges each situation on its own merits according to standards of reason and humanity.

  30. You mean like Judaism? That’s the source of the Old Testament books, from which we derive the New Testament.

  32. Let me rephrase that slightly, then, for as you know many atheists are quite evangelical. If you’re an exception, fine.

    Why would you bother defending yourself to theists, about anything? I fully respect your right to do it – I just can’t fathom it.

    Except for Muslims, no theist means you any harm. At best, they may annoy you but you can avoid them all. If you have kids you can make sure they’re brought up to your way of thinking. Point is, there’s no imposition, no threat, no personal burden placed upon you by theists – at least not in the West. It’s just difference of opinion and nothing more.

    So why do you bother even responding when, if you’re right, we’re all just ultimately meaningless arrangements of molecules possessing the accident of thought, and when we die we’ll return to nothing? If you’re right we have no meaning beyond that so why do atheists tend to be so defensive of their philosophy?

    Allow me to assure you: If I believed it, I mean REALLY CONSISTENTLY believed as you do, I would no sooner argue with theists about ANYTHING than I’d argue over whether the Norse pantheon could take Mt. Olympus in a brawl. None of them exist so I’d be wasting my time even considering it. I’d have much better, more mature things to do with my time than arguing about sub-childish fairy tales.

    So even if you’re not here to do a Dawkins and deconvert theists, why ARE you here?

    Just curious.

  36. He only proves not all who claim the name of Christ are really His. He said so Himself.

    Ideological tit for tat is meaningless and doesn’t further the topic, which is that these aberrations (according to some atheists) ultimately all stem from problem caused directly or indirectly by theistic religion, thus to be freed from theistic religion is – purportedly – to be free indeed.

    Problem is, that doesn’t ever appear to be the case.

  38. All those men prove is that not all who claim the name of Christ belong to Him. He said so Himself.

    Your next point?

  39. Er…no. Not quite. You may argue – correctly, in fact – that many early Church theologians were deeply influenced by the neo-Platonist philosophers with whom they debated. You may argue – again, correctly – that elements of the Catholic Mass were heavily influenced by Mithraic rites (though I’d approach that with some care, and remember that the debate on that remains heated). You may point out that, during the conversion process, on occasion positive local deities were incorporated into the company of saints (see the Lives of the Saints for confirmation). You may point out the number of ancient sacred sites appropriated as churches and shrines.

    All this is legitimate.

    The deep basis of Christianity is neither neo-Platonist nor pagan.

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