Coffee Loving Skeptic, who seems to want desperately to be Rebecca Watson’s bête noire posted this super hilarious(ly badly Photoshopped) image on his Facebook wall . What I find really interesting, and telling, and instructive here is that the picture is obviously intended to cause offense and outrage in the targeted people, Ms. Watson and PZ Myers. In the image, calculated for outrage, he accuses his victims of profitting from “manufactured outrage”.

As if creating the beloved and beautiful Surly-Ramics jewelry that has become one of the main social signifiers of the skeptic, atheist, nerd, and smartypants sets weren’t enough, Amy Davis Roth keeps bringing the awesome with her writing on Skepchick and at Mad Art Lab , plus her frequent appearances as a speaker and panelist. Then she goes and raises money to send women to the largest skeptic event on the planet as well as helping cure cancer. You’d think that would be enough to be fully qualified as a badass, but then she goes and does even more.

Here in San Francisco domestic violence has been in the news for all of 2012. The abuser just happens to be our sheriff. I’m bringing it up because it’s a public case that documents many of the strategies employed by misogynist shitlords when they’re confronted by distaste from decent people.

Ross Mirkarimi was elected sheriff of the city and county of San Francisco in November of 2011. Over New Year’s Mirkarimi and his wife Eliana Lopez got into an argument that became physical. Lopez went to a neighbor who was a fundraiser for Mirkarimi’s election campaign . Lopez showed the neighbor bruises and made a video to document the abuse. Lopez told the neighbor that she wanted to document the abuse because of fears that Mirkarimi would take their children away from her. Lopez indicated that she had been telling Mirkarimi that they “need help.” The next day Lopez contacted the neighbor and implored her not to contact the police about the abuse. Two days after that, on January 4th the neighbor did call the police. The investigation became public on Friday the 6th – two days before Mirkarimi was due to assume his duties as sheriff. Under a cloud of controversy - but with no charges formally pressed – Mirkarimi was sworn in as sheriff on January 8th.

More The Men is not about me, it’s about all men speaking out in favor of diversity. Last week I asked people to comment here, email me , or link me to comments elsewhere where they, as ordinary guys, speak out against the recent campaign of misogynistic abuse directed at women in our communities. Many of you took a stand and told the haters that you are not on their side:

I’m 36 years old and I’ve never raped anyone. I recently spent almost a whole day reading that now infamous Reddit thread [serious trigger warnings for all sorts of awfulness] inviting sexual abusers and rapists to tell their side the story. I didn’t want to read it at first. I read the articles about it. I circled it…and then like probing an open wound I kept worrying at it. I wanted to understand why. I read and was depressed, sickened, angered. And I noticed some unifying themes.

There’s been a lot of talk posted recently about sexual harassment policies, rape jokes, and the like. Somehow people have developed the idea that complaining about harassment is the root problem, and that it’s ok to make jokes about sexual assault. The handful of people who have spoken out against these ideas have been attacked and threatened online. Perhaps this is a general symptom of the internet’s distance and relative anonymity, but I see it as something far worse: a pervasive idea that sexual assault is a women’s problem, and they should deal with it silently and in private.

On Sunday Surly Amy answered a question from a reader about how to deal with all the vile hate being directed at outspoken women. She provided some examples of the stuff out there being directed at feminist women, and it’s pretty despicable. I’m sure most of you reading this have seen it’s like before and have asked yourself& “What can I do?” The answer is alarmingly simple. You can speak out.

Because of my name and the poor reading comprehension of most misogynists I’ve gotten one rape threat while writing about feminism. That’s nothing compared to what women get. The way society tries to silence women is appalling and well documented. It really turns the stomach of anyone with a trace of humanity. Society has other, gentler, ways of silencing and dismissing feminist men, though. I want to talk about those today, not to climb on a cross or to equate what male feminists like me experience to what women encounter, but to show men that they’re not alone when these things get hurled at them. I want other men to know they’re not alone and that they don’t have to be silent or feign neutrality about equality just because society wants them to.

When Elevatorgate blew up, I didn’t get it. It wasn’t that I was firmly in the camp of sexism deniers, but I argued a lot of irrelevent, tangential ideas and failed to understand the central objection that was being raised. I orbited around the issue for a long time before things really started to click into place, and even now I know I have some hard, mental work left to do.

Since women in the industrialized world have things so good compared to women in countries run by brown religious people and should just STFU already about sexism in their lives, I have prepared a handy list of things you should stop talking about because there are so many worse things happening in the world.

• Stop writing about or investigating ghosts and cryptozoology at home. Don’t you know there are people being killed as witches in Africa?
• Stop complaining about what religious conservatives are doing in your own country. Aren’t you aware that atheism and blasphemy carry a death sentence in other countries?
• Don’t worry your little head about the science curricula in your locals schools. Some countries don’t even have schools.
• Worrying about herd immunity and vaccine denialism in industrialized nations is pretty stupid when you consider that in some countries people think that raping a virgin cures AIDS.

I think you see what I’m doing here. My point is that anti-feminists who say “It’s worse for women elsewhere, so STFU” are hypocrites and are seasoning their hypocrisy with some xenophobic racism. Please remind them of that (or direct them here) when you see them dismiss people working toward equality.