We haven't said anything about Ophelia Benson on this blog in a long time. We stopped allowing Benson to comment here back in mid 2009, for very good reasons--among other things, she was sending us emails demanding to have other posters' comments deleted. We had a better solution. Lately, Benson has been clamoring to have her commenting status restored, based on the "Tom Johnson" flap. This doesn't make any sense, as the thread that led to her banning happened long before that affair. Still, we decided to look at what Benson was saying in favor of her restoration:
He or he and Sheril Kirshenbaum banned me from commenting at The Intersection soon after I began trying to get them to do a better job of justifying their claims and to criticize their energetic and often inaccurate bashing of new atheists. Commenters who agreed with them were not banned or even moderated, no matter how abusive their comments were. One “bilbo” repeatedly called me a liar after I posted a list of questions for M and K. Benson's banning had nothing to do with her positions. Moreover, how does she know who was or wasn't banned or moderated? We can't tell you how heavily we have had to ...