I’ve lost my mind

Mark: What do you call a melon who can’t get married?
Jen: A cantelope
Mark: No, GAY
Me: What do you call a man who sucks another guy’s cock?
Mark: Gay?
Me: CANTELOPE
Mark: WTF

This is funny to me. That should illustrate how little sanity I have left. I have started to drink coffee mixed with white russian mix. No, this will probably not solve my problems.

Also, the internet on my computer keeps blipping in and out, so I’ve had to go downstairs to use my dad’s. After suddenly starting sneezing and losing the ability to breath, I remembered the cat sits right next to my dad’s computer. Cry.

This is post 33 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Dealing with condescending religious friends

From formspring.me: I have a friend who condescendingly asks me to “explain to him why god isn’t real”. I am not a confrontational person, and I don’t know how to say my part without stepping on his toes. Should I just be straightforward with him…almost harsh or avoid it?

You should do whatever you feel comfortable doing. If you’re not a confrontational person, you don’t have to confront him. Politely say something along the lines of “I don’t feel comfortable discussing a personal issue like religion because I don’t want it to come between our friendship. I don’t ask you about your beliefs, and I would appreciate it if you don’t ask me about mine.” If you want, offer to give him resources that will explain what atheist thinks, and say something like “I don’t want to debate, but if you want to understand my position these do a great job.”

I know why you may feel like you have to “say your part” since we’re in a minority and constantly stress how vocal atheists need to be – but you’ve done your part. Simply admitting you’re an atheist does more good than you may think. You don’t need to be an expert debater on top of that, especially when it seems someone is just looking for a fight.

Can anyone suggests particularly good summary pieces about atheism? Or maybe other advice you would give?

This is post 32 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

I get more weird emails

Though these formspring.me questions are much more important, so I’ll actually answer them:

How do you stop a bear ( grizzly) from eating a baby? Need an answer asap.

Obviously this bear is an atheist. Your only hope is to offer it something it wants even more, like definitive proof that God does not exist. Good luck.

I suspect my coworker is a bear. As someone who studies biology, how can I tell for sure? She is always playfully caressing me and leaving large gashes. She invited me over for fish and a movie. My parents would never approve of a bear daughter-in-law.

My friend Spelios offers his expert bear advice: “Paint your front lawn like an endzone. If they can’t enter it, they are likely a Bear.”

How do you get a bear to quit calling you after you sleep with it to stop it from eating a baby? I’m afraid simply ignoring her calls could lead to a mauling. Follow up biology type question, can a human and bear have a child together?

My friend Mark offers his expert bear insights: “Apologize and tell the bear that you prefer twinks.”

As for having a child together, I’m afraid it’s true. How else do you think we get talking bears like Yogi, Fozzi, and Ditka?

This is post 31 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

I get weird email

Well, technically they’re formspring.me questions. But they’re still bizarre:

Do you feel the urge to post a picture of yourself every time you ovulate?

What is your mean and standard deviation of the number of days between ovulation?

Did you start to ovulate on June 17? The picture of yourself online induce lots of signals in my ovulation-detection Bayesian neural net. Please let me know if you do because I’d like to know whether to reward or punish my neural net.

…I think this guy’s neural net needs to be punished for not picking up on what questions are socially acceptable.

Oh wait, it’s the internet. Social norms, lulz.

This is post 29 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

How should men approach and participate in feminism?

Question from a reader:

“I recently had a rather disastrous experience where I attempted to engage a group of feminists in an amicable discussion, where I tried to present a male perspective on the issues they were raising, in the hopes that they would either point out where I was mistaken, or take the perspective I presented into consideration. I was rather violently accused of attempting to tell women how to be feminists, and that I was a horrible sexist monster.

Maybe my approach was not proper, or maybe they were simply jerks. But even going in I understood that this was a sensitive issue and tried to brooch it carefully. I would really appreciate it if you, a person I’ve come to look up to, and a feminist, would make a post about how a man should go about participating in the discussion, or if we should even try.”

First, a disclaimer: I am but one feminist, and a “new one” at that. Not all feminists may agree with me, but this disclaimer fits perfectly with the advice I’m about to give:

Listen.

This may seem like obvious advice, but a lot of men fail at it. They may think they’re listening, but in reality they’re not. Hearing sound and not interrupting women is a good first step, but is still a lot different from actively trying to understand what they’re saying.

Now, I’m not trying to point the blame finger at men. Plenty of men are good feminists, and plenty more genuinely try to understand. It’s just human nature to go into these sorts of situations on the defensive. I know when I’m called out for saying something sexist or racist, my first instinct is to defend myself. But more often than not, when I step back and calmly think about the situation for a while, I realize I was in the wrong.

And that’s hard to admit. When we see ourselves doing something that doesn’t fit in with our perception of ourselves, we generate cognitive dissonance. “I’m not sexist, so of course I didn’t say something sexist!” And that’s an uncomfortable feeling. But if men want to participate in feminism, that’s something you’ll have to get used to in the beginning. You’ll be amazed how many little sexist things you unconsciously have picked up from society, and it can be rough getting over that at first.

Now, to listen, you have to have someone to listen to. I sprinkle my blog with feminist issues, but like I said, I’m no expert. My blog is probably “Feminism Lite” for you guys – a good start, but just the appetizer. My advice is to lurk around feminist blogs.

This is exactly what I did when I first started getting into feminism. Most importantly, don’t stop reading a blog just because they write one post you disagree with. Or many posts you disagree with. The first time you hear an argument, you may be too defensive to be able to honestly assess it. Sometimes I had to hear an idea many times from multiple angles from multiple people applied to multiple situations before I really understood the logic.

And a key word here is lurk. Assume that while you are still a feminism n00b, you are going to say some pretty n00bly things that you will later be embarrassed by. In a perfect world feminists would swoop down, coddle you, and inform you about all things feminist. In the real world, it gets real fucking annoying after a while. Imagine how you feel when some theist rehashes the same ol’ creationist argument that has already been debunked a thousand times. You get pretty annoyed, right? And most people will attack and tease them, rather than reply thoughtfully.

The same thing is true of a lot of feminists. We get tired of hearing the same old bullshit from the patriarchy, so some of us are on short fuses. So read a lot, and comment rarely at first. Increase your comments as you increase your understanding. If you do comment and think you’re about to say something stupid, you probably are. And if you still feel compelled to post that, add disclaimers and actually try to be nice about it. Misguided But Nice Dude will be better received than Pompous Jackass.

Here are some blogs dealing with feminism I enjoy, with asterisk indicating ones that also frequently talk about science or atheism. I still don’t agree with everything they say, but again, it’s a learning experience, and not just about mindlessly agreeing with everyone:

Evil Slutopia
The Fat One in the Middle *
Female Science Professor *
Feministe
Feminisnt (NSFW)
Geek Feminism Blog *
Greta Christina’s Blog *
Pandagon *
Violet Blue (NSFW)
Womanist Musings

And since this is all about listening… Ladies, what advice would you give men on how to approach and participate in feminism? Specific tips? Blogs to recommend?

This is post 28 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Secularism and LGBT issues Know no Borders

This is a guest post by Mike Brownstein, political science graduate student and blogger at Politics and Pucks.

At the SSA conference last week, Greta Christina said one thing that has been on my mind all week. She said that the secular movement is the first political movement where she has been a part of where she felt that people had her back on LGBT issues. As an ally I take this as a great compliment. One thing that atheists and LGBTQ individuals share it is a sense of pride about their causes and communities. In many cities around the world, LGBTQ communities share this pride with parades and a variety of other events. In some places it is very warmly received. For example, the Stanley Cup made a visit to the Chicago parade. However, in some places LGBTQ events are met with stark religious opposition. One of these places is in Israel.

The pride parade in Jerusalem is one that continues to be starkly opposed. In years’ past, the parade has seen its members severely insulted, and murder is not uncommon. Most of this opposition comes from the very religious nature of the city. This year, deputy Mayor Yitzhak Pindrus suggested the city run a “donkey parade” alongside the pride parade as a counter-protest. Pindrus claimed he wanted to show the “bestial nature of the pride march”. Luckily, the municipality was not in favor of sponsoring this. Although this idea was shot down, counter-protest occurred. Organized protests had posters that claimed that homosexuality is a voluntary disease, “sick perverts, leave Jerusalem”, and even a parade of puppet donkeys. Having been to Israel, this doesn’t surprise me. It is one of those major cities (similar to Cincinnati, OH), that has a conservative mind set. It should be expected for the religious symbolism, but at the same time, hate like this is unacceptable.

If there’s something to take from this, it is that LGBT as well as church-and-state issues exist globally. Israel, like the United States, has problems with ignorance on issues of LGBT and religion. Although America’s problems with religion are different, the similarity with Israel is sometimes sickening. The religious institutions there are very entwined with the government too. Even in another highly democratic country exist the same religious conflicts.

Something else that we should take into consideration, is that the LGBT community is our ally and vice versa. After hearing Greta Christina’s speech I’m even more convinced that our groups should be supporting one another. For one, there is considerable overlap between the communities. Not to mention the Purdue Society of Non-Theists are a part of the Queer Student Union. We should be using that to our mutual benefit, because we are fighting the same people about similar issues. As an ally, I’m proud to be a part of the secular movement, and happy that my LGBT peers feel safe that people like us exist!

This is post 26 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Sassy Gay Friend helps Eve

Why has no one introduced me to these videos yet? I’m convinced it’s some sort of conspiracy. There’s no other explanation why an enormous fag hag like myself hadn’t seen them yet.

I picked the one with Eve since I figured you would appreciate it, but they’re all hilarious. Check out the Sassy Gay Friend with Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet, and The Giving Tree.

This is post 25 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Pole dancing classes offered to girls 9 and up

This story has officially broken the Feminist Analyzer in my brain (no, it doesn’t come standard – you have to get in installed and make sure to keep it updated). A fitness center in Canada is offering pole dancing class for girls ages 9 and up, and even younger for private lessons.

I’m mentally flip flopping between both sides. My thought process is going something like:

“Aaaugghhh who would let little girls pole dance?!”
“What’s the problem? It’s good physical exercise!”
“What’s the problem?! Pole dancing is associated with a sexual and oft-exploited activity, and minors shouldn’t be doing it.”
“They don’t think of it as sexual – it’s just like playing on a playground. You only think it’s bad because society has conditioned you to think that way!”
“I mean, why should we be honing the pole dancing skills of little girls? Isn’t that just going to encourage them to do something they’re good at when they’re older?”
“Nothing is wrong with pole dancing if an adult chooses to do so of their own free will.”
“But why not spend that money signing them up for a sport? Or some geeky science thing? Increase those skills!”
“Listing other choices is irrelevant.”
“But pole dancing is inherently erotic. Even if the children think about it innocently, the reaction from others will negatively effect them.”

Maybe I would be able to think about this more if I hadn’t been blogging for nearly 12 hours straight. Gah, I give up. What do you think? Feel free to discuss in the comments.

This is post 24 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.