There’s not a lot you can say about Ophelia Benson that has not been said before. She has the rare distinction of being the only freefromthoughtblogger that is capable of being even more intellectually incoherent than Greg Laden. Parallel logic anyone? Or maybe some epistemic relativism? Or how about “it’s not a Godwin when I do it”?

Of all of the repetitious reality poisoning that the Talking Prune peddles, none obsesses her to quite the same degree as the gyno-podiatry booby trap I buried deep inside an old slimepit thread where her offence truffle pigs would really have to dig for it – and dig they did, presenting it to her with squeals of triumph. What has come to pass, I now refer to as Ophelia’s Calvary – it is my gift to her, the gift of eternal martyrdom and wailing. It is not a trivial gift. I challenge anyone to match my generosity.

Indeed, almost a full year later, it seems that Ophelia can’t go more than a few hours without, once again, snarling about mean old franc, his pink gumboots and her cobweb filled cavern-of-doom. As in fact she just did at the Center for Inquiry, on a blog by Ronald Lindsay titled Divisiveness Within the Secular Movement, and of this I am glad. The Prune has strayed into territory where she has zero editorial control and no ability to comment tamper. Oversight perhaps, and certainly dangerous for one that relies so desperately on living inside a strictly controlled protective cocoon – it means ordinary folks can have an unfettered right of reply –

#27 Ophelia Benson on Wednesday September 12, 2012 at 9:42am

Franc Hoggle is weighing in! Fabulous. Hey, “Franc,” would you like to defend your much-repeated hypothetical that if you were a girl you would kick me in the cunt? Would you like to explain what a stalwart of unity and non-divisiveness you are?

How is one supposed to resist? I took up her offer, in my usual snarling, misogynist, rape-loving style –

#112 Franc Hoggle on Wednesday September 12, 2012 at 7:01pm

“#27 Ophelia Benson on Wednesday September 12, 2012 at 9:42am – Franc Hoggle is weighing in! Fabulous. Hey, “Franc,” would you like to defend your much-repeated hypothetical that if you were a girl you would kick me in the cunt?”

Actually, I would, considering you have quote mined and deformed the context from the word go. Here is the analysis of precisely how you have deformed my words to slander myself, ERV and every other critic –

https://greylining.com/2011/11/10/morphology-of-that-comment/

Not once have you quoted me correctly. Ever. Further, I invite readers to google site search FTB versus the sites Ophelia loves to slander for the “c” word. You will find Ophelia wins that race by a country mile. This is what is called BigLie repetition – repeat a falsehood often enough and it becomes an assumed truth. This is how Ophelia has slandered me, Abbie Smith and countless others. And this is the tradition Atheism+ seems to be following.

For those too lazy to follow the link, suffice it to say that, in accordance with Myers’ Law, Ophelia’s Calvary has very little in common with the original comment, nor has Ophelia ever linked directly to it’s complete, unedited form. How could she? It would risk imploding all of her carefully crafted demonology. And to provide some perspective on how much hysteria The Prune actually whips up, here is a snapshot of who’s the greatest potty mouth taken shortly before the slimepit relocating to it’s new home –

The stat for ScienceBlogs, broken down further, shows ERV accounting for less than a quarter of the overall site use, whereas on FfTB, Ophelia accounts for most of it. The most interesting stat is the last one for my place here – zero instances prior to Becky Watson’s never ending tantrum. Just goes to show that Ophelia’s campaign for linguistic purity has had the same kind of spectacular success as abstinence only sex education programs. Puritans are funny like that – they are problem factories.

As far as my comment goes, I certainly don’t expect 100% of CFI readers to be immediately swayed. But, it being in what is close to neutral territory, it has value in that previously unexposed minds may actually come to the conclusion that all is not what the FfTB propaganda department says it is. And that is good, I am not a big player. I whittle away on the side and I rouse the complacent one handful at a time. I have just snatched a few more. I think my labours in the long run have had a fair bit of effect, and that is good enough for me. And Ophelia, I know how much you toilet slugs hate dictionaries, having just recently had yet another crack at redefining misogyny (whilst pissing on Jerry Coyne and, of course, Dawkins at the same time), so I’ll leave you with some extracts. Ophelia, you are a –

  • li·ar – noun, a person who tells lies.
  • fraud – noun, 4. a person who makes deceitful pretenses; sham; poseur.
  • char·la·tan – noun, a person who pretends or claims to have more knowledge or skill than he or she possesses; quack.

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