Well…the debate went off, according to Ren, without much of a hitch. Karla Mantilla ended up occupying the slot that Sam Berg and John Probert abandoned; and from the looks of things, all was civil and polite, and there was even some — gasp — actual back-and-forth discussion about real and serious issues. Ren is promising a review, complete with picture, later today.

Meanwhile, back at the Womyn’s Warrior Cult Asylum, a few of Sam’s allies decided to add their nickels in solidarity with her for her act of craven chickenhawkedness refusal to be bullied around. For example, this from the still official Free Soil Party candidate for President of the United States of America, Cheryl Lynn Seelhoff (aka, “Heart”):

Sam Berg ultimately accepted an invitation to appear on this panel. However, she will not be attending. I fully and completely support her in her decision. Her statement follows. I have a few comments.

Sam Berg will be far from the the only feminist who will reject public debates with people she has encountered online. These rejections will have nothing to do with being intimidated by proposed opponents’ superior arguments or debating skills or with lacking confidence in one’s own. I would not expect any committed, woman-centered, feminist with an established internet presence to make herself available for debates with others on the internet who have demonstrated that they are willing to play fast and loose with the truth, who lie outright, who are malicious and hateful, who seem unstable or unbalanced, or who have dedicated themselves to harming the reputations, credibility or lives of committed feminist women. I likewise would not expect any woman to present for debate with those who cannot be depended upon to report events honestly or to act in good faith and with good will. Those of us who stand for girls and women, for the lives of girls and women, who stand against pornography, the prostituting of women, sex trafficking, and objectification of women’s bodies have been and continue to be the recipients of rape threats, death threats, and threats to harm us in every conceivable way. Given the risks already inherent in the work that we do, it would be foolhardy for us to present for public debate with those who have demonstrated that they do not care about our work or the risks that we take, or who have actively, publicly caused us specific harm, or attempted to cause us specific harm.

I have emphasized some of the more totally whack statements of Heart for sake of revealing the hypocrisy of it all. So….Ren has actually physically threatened Sam Berg???? Really??? Not even the original “Fall under a truck and choke on your own blood” remark that has fueled all this controversy was even directed at Sam (or anyone else) directly….but was a general statement made in rage. And when did Ren or Jill Brenneman EVER even come close to threatening Sam or any other antiporn activist with rape or death threats??? Yeah, really…thought so. And last time I checked, a debate at a university tends to have its own security, which would probably mitigate against any form of violence occurring.

But, I guess that antiporn activists -whether they call themselves “feminists” or fundamentalists - simply can’t be “comfortable” sitting on the opposite side of the table with women who totally destroy their well-crafted agitprop and world view, so if they can’t control the debate to fit their terms, they just take their marbles and go home and do the bitch-and-moan about being “victimized” and “threatened”.

But even Heart screeds rank as mere amateur as compared to the grand champion of antiporn agitprop, Maggie Hays, who unleashed her own sterling defense of Sam Berg, and in the process, reset all the old saws and libels about how the “pro-pornies” are out to pillage and destroy her and her movement:

IMHO, what happened was absolutely dishonest, cruel and unfair. And I’m glad to have exposed Sam’s side of the story as it is clear that Sam in no way deserved such a treatment and massive online misrepresenting and bashing of her all over the pro-porn blogosphere! And I’m not the only one to expose it. There’s also Laurelin, Witchy-Woo and Heart, so far.

I read about all the bad things pro-porners have done to us and all the lies they’re spreading about us rad fems on their blogosphere. I’ve read this thread at Witchy’s and two very well-written posts from Stormy, Bumblebees and It’s a Bug’s Life, so I know all this nasty targeting and online bullying of rad fems has been going on for some time and a while before I came to the rad fem blogosphere and sometimes I feel like saying we mustn’t take all this shit they throw at us passively anymore but I believe that ignoring them when they stupidly trash us on their blogs is best. I used to find it hard to ignore them but we have to.

[...]

I’ve seen those pro-porn blogs before and you know what? They’re all so unbelievably pathetic! All the nonsense these pro-porners talk and the name-calling they use clearly show pornography’s negative effects on them. They aren’t worth paying attention to, which is why I gave up caring about what they say about me as I made it clear in this post here, I don’t give a shit about what they say about me and I believe the best thing to do for someone who’s targeted is not to give a flying fuck about what they say about oneself, which is why the next post I’ll make on this blog will not be about the same subject. I’ll go back to doing my patriarchy-bashing and exposing the harms of pornography and prostitution.

[...]

But now the fact that they’ve done this to Sam clearly shows that they’ve now gone way way way too far. Sam Berg just wanted something fair as a pornography discussion forum, not the pro-porn side of the panel being changed merely a few days before the event without even letting her, one of the anti-porn panelists, know about the change. The way Sam found out about it via an anti-porn radfem friend telling her she’d seen Ren posting about it on her blog (instead of her being contacted by the organizers about it) wasn’t the way she was supposed to get to know about it. And the way Ren was rejoicing at the anticipating of the event on her blog was utterly inappropriate. The words Ren was using were inappropriate.

There is a complete understanding in why Sam would never want to debate a woman who has once wished a gruesomely vivid death to women who want to stop the exploitation of women that is currently happening on a massive scale (never mind the apologies and so-called “context” for that sentence that Ren had said, if she really was so sorry about what she’d said that day, she would have deleted that “Hate hardline” post from her blog altogether). I wouldn’t want to debate somebody like that and I know Sam has very good personal reasons not to want to debate her.

Of course, if Ren had went ahead and deleted that “Hate, hardline” post, it still would not have been enough, since Maggie and her allies would have simply accused Ren of masking her innate hate of “feminists” and her ultimate goal of “destroying” them. Nope, nothing short than a full retraction, a total conversion to their antiporn worldview, and a confessional in front of the Church of Saint Dworkin of Asissi (combined with a purge of “pro-porn” spokespeople) would have sufficed for the Womyn’s Warrior Antiporn Cult…..and even that would be questioned by some of the more rabid members.

But, that’s really not the real issue, now, isn’t it??? The main issue is that Sam Berg (and Maggie Hays and the rest of the cult) reserves the right only to debate other women on HER terms: meaning that they had damn well better know their place and stick to the strawwoman role, so that Sam can so easily cut them down to size to support her ideology. A “pro-porn male”, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable debate antagonist…..only because he can then be deciphered in the usual antiporn boilerplate as a typical “Dick” who only uses his penis as a tool to degrade and demean and kill women. A woman who happens not to follow the microcode, on the other hand, is the most cosmic threat to the cult groupthink, because it would really mess with all their finely-crafted house of card foundation of thought control….and we just can’t have independent women deviating from the herd, now can we??

Oh, well….to each his or her own, I guess.

Side memo to Maggie, BTW, based on this quote, which I assumed is addressed to moi:

I’ve had pro-porners on their blogs stealing way too large quotes (like sometimes nearly whole articles) from my work on this blog without them even asking for copyright permissions. If they’re angry at Sam for once using a short enough quote from Ren as a sigfile, then perhaps I should be angry at *them* for stealing parts of my work by providing way too long quotes on their blogs without asking for my consent, which is very unfair and dishonest BTW?

Ahhh, Maggie….you do realize that in a public blog setting, you do not need consent to pick quotes from other blogs, right?? And that as long as you give proper acclamation and credit to the original poster and don’t claim the quotes as your own, your words are fair game…..right??? If I don’t feel the need to contribute to your bandwidth through direct quotes and cititations (and I don’t see you quoting the people you distort and slander, either), then that’s my perogative as a blogger. Besides, people will ultimately find it through Google, anyway. If you don’t want your words to be seen in the public realm, then go ahead and put the blog behind a firewall and rant to your heart’s content; but as long as your blog is public and smears and attacks people without cause, I reserve my right to call your bullshit out and clear the record. My blog is public and “copylefted”, and I own and defend my words here. Like it or not, just deal with it, and as Belledame would say, “Own your shit.”

———————————–

Oh, lookee here….I guess that it wouldn’t be a complete throwdown without Witchy-Woo entering the fray in defense of Sam, now wouldn’t it?? Her latest entry at her blog simply reprints Sam’s fax on chickening out of the debate; the only original addition by Witchy being the title: “The Prime of Miss Sammi Berg”. Simply…WOW.

Thankfully, Iamcuriousblue caught the joke in the title, and wins for the day for this thought (posted as a comment at the Blog of Pro-Porn Activism)

And the title that Sam chose for the post couldn’t be more telling:

“The Prime of Miss Sammi Berg”

This, of course, being taken from the novel, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie“. The Jean Brodie character being the inspiring, energizing girls’ school teacher, who instills in her charges a love for Mussolini, Hitler, and Franco.

Yeah, Sam, fitting analogy, that.

Fitting, in-freakin’-deed.