...Isis shows us why by calling out the anti-vaccine movement in general and J.B. Handley in particular, for sexist attacks on Amy Wallace, who wrote the excellent article for WIRED about how the anti-vaccine movement endangers public health.
True, I did e-mail her for advice in letting feminist bloggers know about this nastiness, being interested in how so many women in the movement could tolerate such behavior from its male members, but Isis took it from there. (Warning, part of the post may be NSFW.)
Also calling out J.B. Handley and other members of the anti-vaccine movement for their misogyny was blog bud Abel Pharmboy. It's only fair to point out that he blogged this story before I did.
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Abel and Orac and Isis have recently called attention to the flak Amy Wallace had been getting for her recent article in WIRED Magazine, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All". The flak Wallace has gotten, as detailed in her Twitter feed (from which Abel…
Case in point:
A few days ago, I sang the praises of last week's article in Wired magazine by Amy Wallace on pediatric infectious disease and immunology specialist, Dr Paul Offit, and the anti-vaccination movement in the US.
Wallace's article has been widely heralded by the scientific community…
Just a quick follow-up from our last two posts about Amy Wallace's article, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," in Wired magazine about vaccine developer Dr Paul Offit and the anti-vaccination movement:
Wired has now compiled Wallace's tweets from the last…
Thanks to the always vigilant eyes of Liz Ditz, Ratbags.com is reporting that pediatric immunologist and vaccine developer Dr. Paul Offit, writer Amy Wallace, and Condé Nast (publisher of Wired magazine) are being sued for libel in US District Court by Barbara Loe Fisher, founder and acting…
You're very sweet, Orac. Thank you for letting me know about this.
I don't know about NSFW, but it's definitely not safe for lunch. But then, when is anything dealing with Handley safe for work, lunch, or logic and reason for that matter? Love how the "Not" was dark font on dark background.
Misogyny comes in all kinds of varieties. Orac you once wrote :
"Well, the stupid has landed. And how. An interview with Jenny has just been published on the TIME Magazine website in which she "surpasses" herself. In fact, so dense is the stupid emanating from what passes for a "brain" in that empty head of hers that words fail me".
The childish hurling of insults between the pro and anti vaccine camps is as hilarious as a debate about Healthcare between Joe (You lie!) Wilson (R-SC) and Alan (Die quickly) Grayson (D-FL_.
How is Orac's quote about Jenny McCarthy explicitly misogyny?
@RAJ, Note that what Orac wrote about Jenny could equally apply to Jim Carrey. I see no misogyny there, sorry.
Crash and burn, RAJ. The only question is: do you have the integrity to admit that you were unequivocally wrong? My guess is no, but I'll apologize in advance if I'm wrong.
Nice try, RAJ, but I can't put my feminist stamp of goatfucker on that one.
RAJ, that comment you quoted contains not the slightest taint of sexism or misogyny. Orac merely insulted Jenny McCarthy's intelligence, which is not exclusively either a male or a female characteristic --- and Jenny earned the raspberries fair and square.
~David D.G.
RAJ seems to have a strange definition of misogyny. To steal Orac's latest favourite quote...
I won't touche RAJ's idiotic claim that Orac's Jenny McStupid comments were mysogynistic since others have already weighed in on that. Instead, I want to talk about his final point:
1. The anti-vaxxers' insults aren't backed up by the facts and the evidence; they're empty insults. The insults from the science based community on the other hand, are colorful flourishes added to substantive arguments.
2. As for the two congressmen mentioned, what leadership has Joe Wilson shown? Has he proposed anything constructive? Was his insult a part of a larger point he was making? (Answers: none, no, no) In fact, his famous (or perhaps infamous) outburst was not only isolated from substance, it was also demonstrably false as well as a clear breach of protocol. Alan Grayson, on the other hand is actually offering substance. Whether you agree with him or not, it's hard to deny that there's more to him than just hyperbolic language. For one, he's created a website listing names and stories of people who've died because of lack of insurance. That sounds a lot (to me, at least) like he's backing up his rhetoric with real data.
3. Now that I think about it, it seems that RAJ's analogy was right on the mark after all!
4. Apologies for wasting all your time responding to a troll.
PS: Part of my post was not safe for work? PART? I showed a picture of a dude having intercourse with a horse. I think that makes all of SB unsafe for work.
OK. I'm done here. I am on the verge of becoming a troll myself.
Evidently Orac's employer has a rather liberal Internet usage policy. ;-)
Orac gets the internets as a direct feed into his blinky lights. ;)