Atheism+. Why I Am More Resolved Than Before To Support It
Jen McCreight quit blogging yesterday. This from Almost Diamonds who wrote a post explaining some of the reason why.
I’m angry that Jen has been pushed to the point where she has to stop blogging. She’s done so much, especially with the SSA, to help advance atheism. The detractors say that those who support Atheism+ are trying to take over the atheist movement, that we are being hateful and divisive, that we are not thinking critically and are letting our emotions cloud our judgement.
Of course it is emotional. We are enraged and appalled at the misogyny that has become so apparent in the past year. We aren’t automatons, but human. Using our anger at the misogynists and others like them in the atheists movement to try to build something better is good, as Greta Christian says in her book.
Anger can motivate people to right wrongs and gain rights and recognition in society. We want to be seen as atheists who do more than just attack religion. We want to take this movement to the masses, as it were, beyond the atheist community, by working openly, and publicly on important social issues that, until now, religion or other organizations have owned. At least, that’s what I would like to see. I think many who support Atheism+ feel this way too.
The people who drove Jen away want to attack anyone who doesn’t agree with them. It can’t, and won’t, stand. But, I’m not going to attack those people, I’m going to ignore them. They aren’t worth my time. Instead, I’m going to do something positive and try to make Atheism+ a thing that will unite all those atheists who want to focus on social issues instead of just bashing religion and slapping ourselves on the backs for how much more clever we are than theists.
Atheism+: Doing Good Without God.
It’s been said that getting atheists to agree on something is like herding cats. I’d say it’s more like trying to herd cats into a tub of water. Atheists tend to be an inquisitive bunch; an intellectually bunch. We reject dogma and the authority that goes along with it, hence we are loathed to being told what to do and what to think. You could say we are fiercely independent (at least I say that we are).
Given all that, you can see why trying to get a consensus about where to go for breakfast might be hard enough, never mind were we should all stand on a particular social issue. And that’s the real issue in getting us all to band together for a common cause: we don’t like to be told what we should think or feel.
Still, being openminded and skeptical (yes, they do go hand in hand) we are able to listen to each other and really consider what each one of us has to say. This attitude tends to lead to civilized debates, respect for each other’s rights to express ideas, and compromise, or at least it should. I believe that it can and that it does.
The atheist/humanist/secular/(add your own label here) movements have much more in common than they do differences. Most of us in these movements (and most of us identify with more than one) understand this and this has allowed us to begin to come together in the past few years in greater numbers and with great effect in support of issues that we all feel that we have a stake in.
Still, there is an ugly side to us as well. Anti-feminism has shown its self to be much more prevalent that most of us imagined it was. This is both bad and good. It is bad, for the obvious reason that it shows that we all are not as enlightened as we’d like to be. It is bad because it distracts us from working together to achieve our common goals.
It is good, however, that this is now out in the open. You can’t tackle a problem until you can first acknowledge it. Also, it is an opportunity to clean house, as it were. By exposing the misogynists in our midst ( actually they tend to expose themselves) we can shame them into recognizing their misplace sense of privilege or shun them from our ranks. It is vital that we do so because we have the fight of our lives with the religious and social conservitives on our hands.
This is where Atheism+ comes in. The new movement is not an attempt to establish an atheist dogma, as some try to claim. Atheism+ is an attempt to bring together atheists who believe that we have a responsibility to go beyond fighting against superstition or fighting for the separation of church and state. We strongly believe that we have a responsibility as atheists to fight for social justice for everyone, theist and non-theist, the superstitious and the skeptical, the religious and the non-believers.
Feminism, gay rights, separation of church and state are just a few of the issues that most of us feel are important and that we are doing a good job of brining to the forefront of the social and political forums.
We have already begun to raise our profile in the general public’s minds. Just this year we had the Reason Rally, which made the national news. We also have many good organizations supporting critical thinking and humanist issues such as the Secular Student Alliance, CFI, FFRF, American Atheists, the JREF, and American Humanists.
Except for American Atheists and the Secular Student Alliance, most of these, while they might have many atheists as members, are not atheistic groups. What Atheism+ is, or can be, is a way for those of us who self-identify as atheists to get out and fight for social issues in public where we can meet “average” people and have them get to know us. It will allow us to be seen as people who care for others, who do good things. This is vitally important if atheists hope to ever become accepted by a society that currently sees us a amoral, selfish, heartless.
I urge those of you want to fight for social justice for everyone, who want to fight against misogyny, racism, bigotry, homophobia, poverty, and ignorance to consider joining the Atheist+ movement. Talk about it with your friends and family (if they are still talking to you, that is), write about it, blog about it, tweet about it, set your Facebook profile picture to the Atheists+ symbol (see below), join the Atheist+ forum.
Let’s show the world that we are not only good without God, but we do good without God.
Use me as your profile picture on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or any other site of your choice.
Follow-up and Apology
I posted the other day about some comments DJ Grothe made about women feeling safe at TAM. I was dismayed and angry about how his words were perceived as sexist.
I overreacted. I’ve had a chance to read more from other sides of the issue and I can no longer stand by my condemnation of DJ. He has done much to help the skeptical community become more inclusive and I was wrong to be so quick to judge him.
I let my emotions get the best of me. I allowed my bias (the fact that Rebecca was the first one to really inspire me to become a skeptic) to get in the way of clear thinking. Worst of all, I didn’t do any digging to find out more about all sides of the issue. I didn’t use reason, but I let emotion guide my writing. It was a disgraceful performance equal to the sloppy woo ridden drivel that I constantly rail about here.
To DJ, and to all of my readers, I most sincerely apologize.
Skepticism’s Dirty Little Secret Isn’t Secret Anymore
It started with Elevatorgate. Rebecca Watson related an experience she had at a conference at which she’d just spoken about how uncomfortable it makes women to be constantly hit on at conferences. Afterwards she was going up to her hotel room in the elevator and there was a man there with her who was at the conference. He asked her if she’d like to go back to his room. That was exactly the type of unwelcome advance that she was speaking out about. In a video blog about the incident she simply asked men to please not do that.
She didn’t call the guy a scumbag, she didn’t rail against men in general, or even those types in particular. She didn’t call for all women to rally around the feminists flag. She merely asked men to be respectful of women and not hit on them.
For her troubles she was called a bitch and a cunt. She was told that she deserved to be raped. She was threatened with rape and violence. Even the venerable Richard Dawkins weighed in saying that women like her needed to stop whining and think about all the women in the world who are forced into prostitution, abused by men, forcible raped, etc.
All of this highlighted the ugly underbelly of the skeptic, humanist, and atheist communities: men just don’t get it. Yes, there women around the world in much worse situations that Rebecca and other women like her in our society. That’s not the point. The point is that women feel unsafe in places where they should feel safe. The point is that women are being treated like objects. This treatment may not raise to the level rape, forced prostitution, or genital mutilation, but it is still unacceptable because it creates fear in thousands of women. No one she feel unsafe, especially in a community that prides itself on its inclusiveness.
Not only do some men in our community not get it, some are downright misogynistic. They are quick to call women who speak out about sexism in the community feminazis, whores, and man-haters.
Then there are the, what I will call, accommodationist. They try to show their understanding and support of women while at the same time making excuses for mens’ bad behavior. They say that these men are a product of their society, that they didn’t mean to offend, or some other lame assed excuse.
The fact is that there is no excuse for sexist and myogynistic behavior. And there certainly is no excuse for character assignations and threats of violence.
Women in the community have had enough of this disgusting behavior from men. They have said resoundingly that they do not feel safe at conferences. The vicious attacks from the misogynists have frightened them.
The effects of this may be seen at this year’s registration for TAM. Up until last year, registration for women was close to about 40%. So far this year it is 18%. Once can’t help but wonder if the events of this past year have had an influence on the huge drop in female registrations for TAM.
JD Grothe, president of the JREF and TAM’s organizer certainly thinks so. He recently stated,
Last year we had 40% women attendees, something I’m really happy about. But this year only about 18% of TAM registrants so far are women, a significant and alarming decrease, and judging from dozens of emails we have received from women on our lists, this may be due to the messaging that some women receive from various quarters that going to TAM or other similar conferences means they will be accosted or harassed. (This is misinformation. Again, there’ve been on reports of such harassment the last two TAMs while I’ve been at the JREF, nor any reports filed with authorities at any other TAMs of which I’m aware.) We have gotten emails over the last few months from women vowing never to attend TAM because they heard that JREF is purported to condone child-sex-trafficking, and emails in response to various blog posts about JREF or me that seem to suggest I or others at the JREF promote the objectification of women, or that we condone violence or threats of violence against women, or that they believe that women would be unsafe because we feature this or that man on the program. I think this misinformation results from irresponsible messaging coming from a small number of prominent and well-meaning women skeptics who, in trying to help correct real problems of sexism in skepticism, actually and rather clumsily themselves help create a climate where women — who otherwise wouldn’t — end up feeling unwelcome and unsafe, and I find that unfortunate.
He singled out Rebecca as one of those who were being, as he claimed, irresponsible.
Rebecca: Off the top of my head, your quote in USA Today might suggest that the freethought or skeptics movements are unsafe for women. This is from the article:
“I thought it was a safe space,” Watson said of the freethought community. “The biggest lesson I have learned over the years is that it is not a safe space. . . ”
Rebecca recently announce that she will not be attending TAM this year. I don’t blame her. This is incredibly sad, not because a well know skeptic won’t be attending, but because that those 40% of woman attending last year is in large part due to Rebecca and others at Skepchick. They have been raising money for years to send women to TAM and have succeeded in helping the number of women attending TAM to double over the last few years. This surge in women attendees have spilled over into other conferences such as Skepticon, and has fueled a flowering of hundreds of skeptical female voices in the blogosphere.
I was pondering attending TAM, but decided against it several weeks ago for financially reasons. Now I’m defiantly glad that we didn’t register. I would have been compelled to not attend TAM, despite losing a substantial amount of money for the registration fee. But more importantly, I could not attend TAM because I can not condone, or support with my money and presence, DJ’s stance here. Blaming women who speak out about their feelings and fears is no different than blaming a rape victim for being raped.
Of course this doesn’t rise to the level of rape, but the results are in the same. Women are being victimized by being blamed for speaking out and taking action against an injustice. They are being made to feel violated simply by saying they feel unsafe.
I won’t consider attending TAM until I see that the organizers are willing to stop blaming women and take real, meaningful actions to stop sexual harassment at their conference. I am also withholding my financial support for the JREF and will no longer write for the JREF blog while these conditions remain.
I am hoping that men in the community will respond to these events by voicing their support for Rebecca and all women in our community who are outraged by this latest turn of events. I would call on PZ Myers, Phil Plait and other prominent male skeptics, who I know wholeheartedly support women’s rights, to avoid TAM. We need to send a message to DJ and other organizers that this behavior will not stand. Maybe if we start throwing our support and our money behind other events, such at CFI’s Women in Secularism conference, this will send a message to organizers of conferences to take real, meaningful actions to alleviate this problem. Hopefully this will allow us to create events and venues where all participants can feel welcomed and safe.
defiantly
Paying For Sex With Your Taxes
Rush Limbaugh has sparked an intense controversy with his sexist, misogynistic, and immoral statements about Sandra Fluke’s testimony supporting mandated provision of contraceptives by health insurers. Besides his horrendous comments and personal attacks against Sandra Fluke, his comments also begat a strange, terribly misinformed notion that American taxpayers are paying for women to get free contraception, in essence, we are all paying for women to have sex.
First of all, the foundation of this argument is totally bogus. Taxpayers are not paying for anything here. Insurers are paying for it. These insurers pass the cost of free contraception (just as they do free pre-natal care, yearly physicals, etc) onto employers in the form of insurance premiums. The employers then pay their portion of the premiums and the employee pays their’s. Nowhere does the taxpayer pay one penny for contraceptives, except for government programs like Medicaid.
So Limbaugh’s argument, which is being taken up by the religious right, is false. I might give him and others the benefit of doubt that they are just clueless, but I find it hard to believe that anyone in the public sphere, especially legislators, are ignorant of the reality. They are simple liars, lying to promote their particular political agendas.
But, for sake of argument, let’s assume that Limbaugh’s argument it valid and that taxpayer money is being spent to provide contraceptives. If that is the case, then it is no different than paying for Viagra for old, impotent men. Why should we pay for these men to have sex? There isn’t even any corollary argument for it, as with contraceptive. Contraceptives prevent pregnancy, STDs (in the case of condoms), help some women regulate periods and treat ovarian cysts. Viagra has no other benefit except to give a man a hard-on. So all these aging white men can stop getting viagra at taxpayer expense. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to pay for Rush Limbaugh to have sex, never mind actually watching him do it on video (as he suggested Sandra Fluke do).
Of course, the above argument is just a spurious as Limbaugh’s. The real lesson here is that this is one more attempt by privileged men to control women. The latest outrage is taking place in Arizona (that hotbed of radical religious inspired insanity). Read Rebecca Watson’s take on the new law that would force doctors to lie to their female patients about the health of their unborn child.
If you don’t think that there is a war on women being waged by the religious right and the GOP (which have become one and the same), there have been dozens of similar attempts to allow the state to control a woman’s body. For a party that claims that they are for less government and putting a stop to government’s intrusion into our personal lives, they sure don’t seem to think that applies to women. I supposed that as long as the government isn’t trying to regulate your guns or property, everything else is fair game.
Religious Freedom: Your Rights Are Special; Your Religion Is Not
No one’s beliefs are beyond question or criticism. Insisting on special special status for your religious beliefs has nothing to do with your freedom of religion and everything to do with your belief that your religion is somehow better than everyone else’s. You have the freedom to believe what you choose and to live your life accordingly, unless you try to infringe upon the rights of others. You do not have the freedom to insist that everyone else live by your beliefs.
I respect your right to believe as you wish but that respect only goes as far as me not trying to stop you from believing as you do, or insist that you believe as I do. That respect does not include respect for your religion’s ideas, concepts, or particular moral code.
I expect you to question my beliefs and to challenge them. I have no problems or qualms accepting your challenges to my beliefs. I believe that if we don’t constantly question, we stagnate, then we stop learning and stop growing. I question everything, even my own beliefs, constantly. This brings a deeper understanding of myself and the world around me.
You, on the other hand, recoil in dismay when your beliefs are questioned and claim that you are being persecuted and that your right to freedom of religion is being infringed upon. You are wrong. Your beliefs are being questions, challenged, and even ridiculed. Your right to believe them are not being questioned. Your right to practice your beliefs and to worship are not being questioned.
Freedom of religion does not give your the right to insist that every public meeting or event be preceded with a prayer to your god. It does not give you the right to insist that laws be passed to restrict the actions and speech of others not of your faith just because they don’t hold to the same moral beliefs as you. Freedom of religion, as stated in the U.S. Constitution, also implies the freedom to have different religions, or even freedom from religion. It implies freedom of conscience.
The Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution was enacted in order to prevent this country becoming a theocracy, as were most countries of Europe at the time, where Kings reigned by the grace of God. The Founding Fathers, in whose memories of the vicious religious wars of scant generations past were still a powerful and terrible memory, created the Establishment Clause to forestall just such terrible religious inspired strife in this country.
Today we see our society polarized by religiously motivated groups on the right who would push their vision of a Christian nation under their particular god upon all of us. Their titular political arm, the Republican party, which once fought against religiously supported slavery, has now become a tool for those who breed hatred against, homosexuals, the poor, women, and the non-christian or non-religious. Their justification? Their religion. Their Bible.
Their belief that their Bible tells them that homosexuality is a sin worthy of death(1) that the poor will always be with us(2) and will be rewarded in heaven(3) and therefore somehow can be ignored here on earth); that women must be silent(4) and submit to their husbands(5). They claim that their god is a god of love and mercy. Their Bible, their words, and their actions show otherwise; that their God is an angry, merciless, and vengeful god and that they are a bigoted, racist, misogynistic people who use their holy book to foist their twisted view of morality on the rest of us.
We all have the right to our own religion, our own beliefs. We all have the right to worship as we wish. We do not have the right, none of us, is to have our beliefs put up on a pedestal that is above question, challenge or even ridicule. What none of us has is the privilege of having our special religious beliefs, modes of worship, and morals elevated above those of anyone else. The freedom of religion granted by the U.S. Constitution implies, above all, equality of all beliefs, where no one belief or religion, especially that of majority, is above any other.
1 Leviticus 18 and 20
2 Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8
3 Matthew 5:3, Luke 6:20
4 1 Corinthians 14:34
5 1 Peter 3:5
What’s in a Name?
What’s in a name? you might ask. Well, in India, quite a bit, if you are a girl named ”Nakusa” or “Nakushi,” which mean “unwanted” in Hindi. In a heartwarming CBSNEWS World article, 285 girls changed their names to reflect a new beginning in their lives.
It is hard to imagine, in our society, that parents could choose such a cruel name for their child. This reflects, I think, the sad social insistence in many countries on having male children.
It is known that in many cultures in the past, baby girls were buried in the sand, thrown into rivers, lakes, and seas, or left out in the wilderness to die of exposure and starvation, or be eaten by wild animals. Where this horrible concept that a female child is worthless came from is hard to understand. Ok, I get the idea that many cultures desired male children for the purposes of inheritance, protection, wage earning, and so on. Also, many of those same cultures required that the parents of a daughter pay a dowery when she married, which can be seen as a financial burden. Still, why was no thought given to the fact that females are needed for reproduction, or that a marriage of a daughter to a man from a good family could be a benefit? Then there is the most important reason of all to value daughters: that hey are humans begins just as worthy of love and caring as any male.
These misogynistic ideas have their roots in a major change in human social development.
In their book, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá trace the origins of misogyny to the advent of agriculture, which “…changed everything about human society, from sexuality to politics to economics to health to diet to exercise patterns to work-versus-rest patterns. It introduced the notion of property into sexuality.” (Ryan and Jethá, 2010)
What we see here is the result of the male desire to secure a claim to property for himself and his offspring. In order for this to work, the woman becomes property as well. These attitudes have prevailed for close to 10,000 years even though there is really no longer any reason to treat woman as property.
We have made great strides toward sexual equality in the past 100 years or so, at least in the West. I hope that the cross pollination of cultures we have seen in the past couple of decades will have a positive influence on less enlightens cultures around the world. Until then, more girls will be shamefully labeled “unwanted”, both in practice as well as in name.
References:
Ryan, Christopher and Jethá, Cacilda, 2010, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, Harpers Collins
Women in Science
There is a very cool article on the Smithsonian web site called Ten Historic Female Scientists You Should Know. It is a wonderful example of the contribution of women to the sciences throughout history.
There are, of course (since they only listed 10), many more women who have played important role in the history of science. Here are just a few of them:
Hypatia (b. ca. AD 350–370, d. March 415) was a Greek scholar from Alexandria, Egypt, head of the Platonist school at Alexandria and mathematician. As head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, she also taught philosophy and astronomy. As a Neoplatonist philosopher, she belonged to the mathematic tradition of the Academy of Athens, as represented by Eudoxus of Cnidus; she was of the intellectual school of the 3rd century thinker Plotinus, which encouraged logic and mathematical study in place of empirical enquiry and strongly encouraged law in place of nature. Hypatia lived in Roman Egypt, and was murdered by a Christian mob which accused her of causing religious turmoil.[9] Kathleen Wilder proposes that the murder of Hypatia marked the end of Classical antiquity, while Maria Dzielska and Christian Wildberg note that Hellenistic philosophy continued to flourish in the 5th and 6th centuries, and perhaps until the age of Justinian. (Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia_of_Alexandria.)
Ada Byron – Considered by many as the first computer programer, man or woman. She assisted Charles Babbage on his analytical engine, creating the first ever computer program for it that could calculate Bernoulli numbers.
Grace Hopper - Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906 – January 1, 1992) was an American computer scientist and United States Navy officer. A pioneer in the field, she was one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer, and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.[1][2][3][4][5] She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages. She is credited with popularizing the term “debugging” for fixing computer glitches (motivated by an actual moth removed from the computer). Because of the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as “Amazing Grace”. (Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper)
These are just a small sample of woman scientists. If you are interested in find out more about all the wonderful woman who have had a major impact on science, visit these links:
http://www.women-scientists-in-history.com/historia.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science
http://womenshistory.about.com/od/airspacesciencemath/tp/Famous-Women-Scientists.htm
Sexism Among Atheists and Skeptics
There is a great blog post from PZ Myers that discusses sexism in atheism. I just want to add that this problem is also found within the skeptical community as well, perhaps not quite to the same extent, but close.
This is just a microcosmic example of what we find in society at large. I would say that the problem of sexism in the atheist and skeptical communities isn’t nearly as entrenched or as vicious as in, say, the gamer, science, or other similar communities, which is a good thing. If we can make the efforts that PZ describes, we can be leaders in including women as equals.
As atheists, skeptics, and secular humanists, we already have a greater sense of, and support for, social justice than the population at large. We need to keep working to include all segments of society in our communities and show the often bigoted, sexist, and racist religious believers what real brotherly, and sisterly, love means.
The War Against Woman Has Real Consequences
When will people realize that denying a woman an abortion has real life and death consequences? PZ Myers has a very sad and scary example on his blog.
It isn’t just that abortions are harder to get, but also that many health care professionals have been scared off by the terroristic activities of the anti-abortion crowd. This means that even where abortion is legal, when a woman needs a life-saving abortion, often there isn’t anyone available to perform one.
How long will we allow the elite, white, male, christian dominated right wing to dictate what a woman can and can’t do with her body? That a woman, any woman, should risk losing her life just because some religious zealots want to make everyone else live their lives according to their interpretation of an archaic, iron age text, is unconscionable.
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