Okay, who brought the dog?

PZ Myers-owned copy of Skepchick nude calendar now on eBay!

Copies of the now-infamous Skepchick nude calendar are hard to come by these days, but Skepchick fans can now get their hands on a copy previously owned by PZ Myers himself.

Myers, the celebrated evo-devo biologist and popular feminist blogger, is auctioning off his personal copy of the racy calendar as part of the The Pamper Initiative, a fundraiser created to send a dozen people to this year’s Free Thought Convention. The fundraiser aims to cover airfare, hotel and convention fees to the members-only event hosted by popular skeptic and atheist bloggers.

“It’s an item that has enormous sentimental value, obviously,” Myers told reporters. “I’ve always kept it as a reminder that women aren’t objects, and that the female form can be empowering, in this case as a way to raise money for a good cause.”

The original image of Rebecca Watson from the Skepchick nude calendar (left) and the PZ Myers-owned copy up for bid (right).

Bidding started at a modest $150, but by Tuesday — just a day after the auction went live — the highest bid had topped out at $3,216.43.

“Item is classified as fair to worn condition,” the auction description reads. “Cover is faded and scuffed from storage under mattress. The following months on the calendar are either worn, bent or stained: April (Rebecca Watson), June (Greta Christina), September (Amy Roth), and October (Melody Hensley). Pages for June (Greta Christina) and July (Jen McCreight) are joined in some places by organic adhesive. Buyers must agree to purchase calendar as-is, with the understanding that this is a used item. Refunds will not be granted based on item condition.”

More than 300 users posted bids to own PZ Myers’ personal copy of the infamous Skepchick nude calendar.

BronyCon: Female attendance plummets after Watson takes aim at convention policy

Call her Rebecca the Convention Slayer.

In a row that mirrored the TAM controversy of 2011, women are abandoning BronyCon in droves after Skepchick leader Rebecca Watson questioned the convention’s commitment to the safety of female attendees. In an angry missive on her website, Watson accused convention organizers of pandering to “bronies” — adult male fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic — at the expense of young girls and women, who are the target audience of the animated hit.

“The show preaches friendship, tolerance and respect, but Bronies have perverted conventions into hormone-fueled bacchanalias, replete with men cosplaying as hypersexualized versions of the program’s characters,” Watson said. “The sad truth is that Bronie conventions are no longer safe spaces for women. Some of them are straight up meat markets, with alpha Bronies mounting mares like Dothraki horselords on Viagra.”

Grolgoth the Brony King declares war on women.

The skeptic icon went on to quote extensively from a Livejournal entry posted in early 2014 by a female fan who had been accosted by bronies at Equestrian Dreamz, a Montreal-based convention that draws thousands of fans annually. The victim was stepping into an elevator to return to the hotel room she shared with her parents when a bearded, 30-something man cosplaying as Apple Bloom shouldered his way into the lift.

“I could tell he was excited by the festivities, and he wouldn’t stop talking about the Cutie Mark Crusaders,” the victim wrote.

She said she didn’t feel as if she was in danger until the elevator stopped and an enormous man in the pink and magenta hues of Twilight Sparkle waddled into the lift. Apple Bloom high-fived Twilight Sparkle, and as the elevator doors closed “my creep radar was off the charts,” the girl wrote in her Livejournal entry. She described the rest of the ride as “the longest 45 seconds of my life” as the two Bronies sheepishly asked her to join them for banana smoothies in their hotel room.

In the wake of those accusations — and other harrowing accounts detailed on dozens of Tumblrs — female attendance at MPL-related conventions has plummeted more than 40 percent in 2014. Or, as Watson put it, “Brony conventions are packed with more sausage than Abe Froman’s factories.” Tales abound of out-of-control Bronies walking about conventions with their testicles exposed and engaging in lube-fueled “pony rides” along Slip n’ Slides.

A Bronie is attended to by a bevy of female admirers before the Carnivalis Bacchus, the afterparty Bronie orgy that has become convention tradition.

Watson herself was a keynote speaker at last year’s SparkleFest in Munich, where she delivered a talk on My Little Pony’s feminist themes. She was hit on by 26 Bronies, a fact independently confirmed by lesser bloggers.

“I had just finished giving a talk about how it irks me when men hit on me,” Watson said, “when a guy cosplaying Prince Blueblood told me he’d make me neigh, whinny and nicker like a magnificent courser. Is this what My Little Pony fans have to deal with all the time?”

Through Skepchick, Watson issued a general fatwa against supporting My Little Pony or any of its associated conventions until organizers apologize, allow Watson to write convention harassment policies, grant exclusive control of after-parties to Skepchick Industries, and ban dissenters — with the exception of the odd contrarian, so attendees “can be reminded of how fucking stupid Bronies are,” Watson said.

Watson cosplaying as Princess Luna at HoofCon 2012.

Watson: Women and LGBT players underrepresented in tabletop gaming community

Unconstrained displays of testosterone are common in tabletop gaming.

Women and LGBTQ players are woefully underrepresented in the Magic: The Gathering community, and in tabletop gaming in general, feminist icon Rebecca Watson told reporters Wednesday.

Watson, the founder of Skepchick Industries — the world’s leading skeptic organization — assigned interns to perform head counts at two dozen tabletop gaming events over the first five months of 2014. The interns visited a four-day Magic tournament in San Diego, observed a weekend skirmish among Warhammer 40k players in Toronto, and watched a Battletech campaign play out over a massive table in Manhattan’s famed Midtown Comics.

“What we found is that fewer than ten percent of players are women,” Watson said during Wednesday’s press conference.

Why? There are several factors that contribute to the overwhelming gender and sexuality imbalance, Watson said. While the fantasy setting and artwork of the Magic: The Gathering universe appeal to both genders, it’s believed the cut-throat, ultra-competitive atmosphere of official tournaments make potential female players feel unwelcome. Other tabletop franchises, like the popular Warhammer, are testosterone-fueled affairs where burly men assume the roles of military generals. And some women, Watson said, are intimidated by the sights and smells of tabletop tournaments.

“Sitting between two 300-pound men, with your nostrils overwhelmed by body odor, is not a safe space for women,” Watson said.

An informal poll also revealed an alarmingly low number of gay and lesbian tabletop gamers, but Skepchick Industries wouldn’t release those figures because suspected gay players refused to self-identify, claiming instead to be paragons of manliness. Watson likened it to the NFL, where an atmosphere of machismo and overwhelming testosterone pressures gay players to maintain a façade of heterosexuality. Like professional sports, there are undoubtedly gay tabletop gamers, but coming out of the closet may cause others to question whether a gay player is fit to lead an Orcish army or deploy space marines, Watson said.

Of all the tabletop games, Battletech was considered the most hostile to female gamers.

“What we’re hearing from women is that they don’t enjoy participating in zellbrigen,” Watson said. “Whereas men may enjoy the ritualistic preening and bidding of the Batchall, women find it tiresome and borderline sexist. As a result, women are often relegated to dezgra units.”

But Battletech may not be the worst offender. Games like Call of Cthulu and Vampire have featured plots involving graphic rape, and Magic: The Gathering players are required to “tap” their mana cards in order to perform actions in the game, Watson said.

“And that leads to all manner of awful, off-putting double entendres that can make women gamers feel uncomfortable,” Watson told reporters.  “It’s a thin line between tapping a Sera Angel for a +4/+4 flying attack, and making jokes about tapping female players around the table.”

Watson demolishes Ten Plagues literalists

As our dear readers undoubtedly know, recently some rodential Youtube misogynists have been trying (and failing) to take Rebecca Watson to task over her supposed self-obsession, making the fallacious argument that Watson spends most of her time talking about herself and the daily harassment she faces from men who are jelly of her success. While we here at Rebecca Watson Fan Club know that’s bullshit, we feel it’s incumbent on us to ask the obvious question: So fucking what?

But don’t take our word for it. This week, Rebecca proved the naysayers wrong with another expert takedown, this time targeting the millions of Passover literalists who really think frogs and fire rained down from the sky while rivers turned to blood. These stupid shits have been flexing their political muscle, trying to force school districts to include the Plagues of Egypt in history books and lobbying the Obama administration to invade Egypt. It has to stop, and we commend Rebecca Watson’s bravery in being the first to publicly question this insidious lie.

Watson: Faith healer Popoff’s “Divine Wealth Transfer” overwhelmingly favors men

Why do men receive the majority of Divine Wealth Transfers? Does God not love women and their bank accounts?

Faith healer and televangelist Rev. Peter Popoff’s popular “Divine Wealth Transfer” overwhelmingly favors the men of Popoff’s congregation at the expense of women, according to the results of a study released Tuesday by Rebecca Watson and her research team at Skepchick Industries™.

Over the course of a 20-minute investigation over Chinese take-out, Watson and her team watched part of a broadcast of Popoff’s popular late-night program, concluding that men were favored with heavenly checks more than twice as often as women.

“The program began with a female member of the congregation receiving a $25,000 Divine Wealth Transfer, but over the course of the next 20 minutes, Popoff called only men to the stage, where they received checks worth $5,000, $76,000, $28,000 and $12,000 respectively,” Watson told reporters at a press conference.

Furthermore, a hand-count of the audience revealed it was “probably about 60 percent women,” Watson said. “We have a hard time believing God wants all those checks to go to men only, and we suspect Popoff has a hand in diverting the funds after the divine checks materialize backstage.”

The study was limited to only 20 minutes of Popoff’s broadcast because a member of Watson’s research team had accidentally recorded over the rest of the program while taping “The Roommate,” Watson told reporters, sheepishly admitting her office still uses a VCR “because we’re women, and we don’t get the kind of financial support men enjoy. But still. That scene where Leighton Meester masturbates on Minka Kelly’s bed was fucking hawt.”

Asked about Popoff’s ability to ascertain facts about his congregants without knowing their personal history — often chalked up to cold reading or some sort of hidden radio device by the reverend’s critics — Watson waved off concerns, saying it would be impossible for anyone to investigate those claims: “You’d have to spend, like, months going to all his services, and you’d probably need one of those Ecto detectors they use in Ghostbusters. It’s just not worth the trouble when there are more egregious wrongs, like the disparity our study revealed today.”

This month’s WATSONIAN hits newsstands

Ladies: A copy of Watsonian on your coffee table will shrivel the testicles of any male suitor. Coffee means coffee, amirite?

Elevatorgate: “Never Forget” commemorative t-shirts sell out in 24 hours

What an amazing deal for lucky buyers who were able to snatch these up! In addition to t-shirts emblazoned with the above logo — also available as lady’s tank tops and raglans — people who placed the first 500 orders received a year’s subscription to Watsonian, tickets to the summer 2014 Watsonfest, and a copy of the Richard Dawkins biography, An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist, defaced and signed by Rebecca Watson. We’re told they still smell like lighter fluid and Watson’s fecal matter, which clever collectors may want to preserve with airtight display cases. Take a whiff every time a cisgender, patriarchal piece of shit has the gall to pollute the internet with their misinformed retardism!

More comfortable and effective than a chastity belt by far.

Drama #762: DragonCon boots Watson, thousands walk out

Some dude, whose name might be Robert Dennis or David Cody or Neil Patrick Harris, booted Rebecca Watson and Skepchick Enterprises from DragonCon, where Rebecca was giving a lecture on the women of Game of Thrones.

He was a jerk. He is a misogynist. And he made vague threats to Rebecca while contorting the convention’s policy just to get Rebecca thrown out. Case fucking closed, Watson gave a word-by-word account of the exchange on Skepchick, and in the 761 previous dramas, Rebecca has always been on the righteous side.
But of course, yet another backbiter reveals herself, trying desperately to siphon off light from Rebecca’s star. In this case, it’s a blogger who calls herself uberfeminist, as if ANY feminist would stand against Rebecca, let alone question the details of Rebecca’s retelling of the event.

VERDICT: Ridiculous.

The Importance of Consistency

OMG STOP SEXUALIZING MEH.