Vote for Blag Hag for Best Religion Blog in the Bloggies!

Holy crap! My blog was nominated for the Best Religion Blog in the 2011 Weblog Awards! I didn’t even realize it until Hemant started smack talking me over twitter because Friendly Atheist was also nominated. I must defeat Hemant! Vote for me!

Though really, if Hemant won, I’d be happy too. I love his blog, and it would be awesome for an atheist blog to win the Religion category. It’s great that two are nominated.

Wait…that just means we’re going to split the atheist vote! Noooooo! Clever, Bloggies, very clever.

It’s shit like this, r/atheism

I know this is just going to dig my hole even deeper, but I’m a blogger, so speaking my mind is what I do.

A couple of months ago I made a passing comment that I don’t like the atheism subreddit that much because it comes off as very sexist. Sexist comments can pop up on reddit as a whole (sometimes heavily upvoted, to my dismay), but sexist comments on r/atheism affect me more. For one, I tend to hold atheists to a higher standard, so it saddens me when they act irrationally about gender.

But two, the comments are personal. Whenever I see that I got an uptick in traffic from reddit, I’m always afraid to go check the link. Because inevitably when someone links to my blog, many of the comments will be disparaging remarks about my gender or looks. Hell, even some of the positive comments are about my gender or looks, which are still annoying – can we please comment about the content, and not my boobs, please?

So I lurk around r/atheism, but I rarely comment and never post my own stuff because I don’t want to deal with the flack. It’s not worth the frustration usually. But today I did submit my post about atheism in high schools, because it’s so important that I wanted to make sure a wide audience saw it. Young people are the future, blah blah.

But it also set up an accidental experiment. What happens when a female submitter links to her own post, and a male submitter links to his post featuring the same story? That happened when JT Eberhard linked to his post on Atheism Resource a couple hours after I linked to mine.

Let’s compare! (at the time of writing this blog)

JT’s Post:

121 upvotes
24 downvotes

1 comment with contact information (by JT) (5.5%)
4 jokes about the content of atheist clubs (22.2%)
5 jokes about high schoolers (27.7%)
8 relevant remarks about high school atheist groups (44.4%)

Jen’s Post:

110 upvotes
44 downvotes

2 comments about the appearance of women/banging them (3.3%)
19 comments basically saying how much I suck (32.2%)
22 comments (a lot of them mine) defending me against said comments (37.2%)
16 relevant remarks about high school atheist groups (27.1%)

So JT gets mostly relative posts or light-hearted humor, while I get disparaging comments and thread derailing thanks to people trying to reply. At least there are people replying (and the bad comments are getting downvoted), but it’s still frustrating. What woman would be encouraged to join this community or share posts when she has to deal with this shit all the time? And it is all the time – if you look at other Blag Hag posts people have submitted, there will always be at least some comments about my boobs, or how I have a deformed chipmunk face (I still don’t quite understand that one).

It gets old, but I don’t have a solution other than escaping to 2Xchromosomes (…which reddit mocks repeatedly). I just want to point out why r/atheism doesn’t make me feel exactly comfortable, instead of people thinking I’m just another “crazy feminist” who’s “hypersensitive” and “making up sexism that isn’t there.” I know the majority of people at r/atheism are fine, but the few rotten fruit are certainly ruining it for some of us.

It's shit like this, r/atheism

I know this is just going to dig my hole even deeper, but I’m a blogger, so speaking my mind is what I do.

A couple of months ago I made a passing comment that I don’t like the atheism subreddit that much because it comes off as very sexist. Sexist comments can pop up on reddit as a whole (sometimes heavily upvoted, to my dismay), but sexist comments on r/atheism affect me more. For one, I tend to hold atheists to a higher standard, so it saddens me when they act irrationally about gender.

But two, the comments are personal. Whenever I see that I got an uptick in traffic from reddit, I’m always afraid to go check the link. Because inevitably when someone links to my blog, many of the comments will be disparaging remarks about my gender or looks. Hell, even some of the positive comments are about my gender or looks, which are still annoying – can we please comment about the content, and not my boobs, please?

So I lurk around r/atheism, but I rarely comment and never post my own stuff because I don’t want to deal with the flack. It’s not worth the frustration usually. But today I did submit my post about atheism in high schools, because it’s so important that I wanted to make sure a wide audience saw it. Young people are the future, blah blah.

But it also set up an accidental experiment. What happens when a female submitter links to her own post, and a male submitter links to his post featuring the same story? That happened when JT Eberhard linked to his post on Atheism Resource a couple hours after I linked to mine.

Let’s compare! (at the time of writing this blog)

JT’s Post:

121 upvotes
24 downvotes

1 comment with contact information (by JT) (5.5%)
4 jokes about the content of atheist clubs (22.2%)
5 jokes about high schoolers (27.7%)
8 relevant remarks about high school atheist groups (44.4%)

Jen’s Post:

110 upvotes
44 downvotes

2 comments about the appearance of women/banging them (3.3%)
19 comments basically saying how much I suck (32.2%)
22 comments (a lot of them mine) defending me against said comments (37.2%)
16 relevant remarks about high school atheist groups (27.1%)

So JT gets mostly relative posts or light-hearted humor, while I get disparaging comments and thread derailing thanks to people trying to reply. At least there are people replying (and the bad comments are getting downvoted), but it’s still frustrating. What woman would be encouraged to join this community or share posts when she has to deal with this shit all the time? And it is all the time – if you look at other Blag Hag posts people have submitted, there will always be at least some comments about my boobs, or how I have a deformed chipmunk face (I still don’t quite understand that one).

It gets old, but I don’t have a solution other than escaping to 2Xchromosomes (…which reddit mocks repeatedly). I just want to point out why r/atheism doesn’t make me feel exactly comfortable, instead of people thinking I’m just another “crazy feminist” who’s “hypersensitive” and “making up sexism that isn’t there.” I know the majority of people at r/atheism are fine, but the few rotten fruit are certainly ruining it for some of us.

Are you an atheist or agnostic in high school?

Or do you know someone who is? Well, exciting news for the younger godless folks – the Secular Student Alliance is making a push to start groups at high schools around the country!

Even in conservative parts of the Bible Belt, atheist teenagers are starting to organize clubs of their own. The Secular Student Alliance, a national nonprofit devoted to supporting nonreligious students, announced early success in its expanded efforts to foster groups for secular high school students. In the past month alone, five new high school groups have affiliated with the SSA, after it took four years for the first twelve to join.

The Secular Student Alliance already offers services to over 200 college affiliates, but says that high school atheists often face unique challenges including stronger pushback from parents and school officials. To confront these challenges, the organization hired JT Eberhard, former student activist and creator of the acclaimed Skepticon conference, as a Campus Organizer and High School Specialist.

“Every teenager deserves a safe space to meet with like minded peers, but hostile administrations and prejudiced communities are stonewalling them from having it,” said Eberhard. “We’re gearing up to give the students the backing they need. Our goal is to see 50 groups for secular high school students by the end of 2011.”

Educating students and teachers about the legal issues involved will be a key part of the effort. Students in conservative areas have difficulty finding a willing faculty advisor, who often report fearing career repercussions. But according to Supreme Court rulings on the Equal Access Act, schools cannot use the lack of a faculty advisor as a reason to bar the group from forming. The Secular Student Alliance is prepared to help mediate those situations and protect the students’ rights.

“While the law is certainly on our side, we would rather have social understanding than legal victory,” remarked August Brunsman, the SSA’s Executive Director. “We want to demonstrate to our fellow Americans that people who don’t believe in a god are nothing to be afraid of.”

Secular groups are encouraged to focus on activism, building community, education, service projects, and cooperation with other groups. The SSA provides such student groups with resources like group-running guides, activity packets, project grants, and a go-to staff member to answer questions.

The development of these new resources and the creation of Eberhard’s position were sparked by a grant from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation, whose mission is to gain respect for freethinkers and ensure the complete separation of church and state.

As someone who started a college group, I can’t stress how rewarding it was. Having hundreds of people thanking me for providing a voice of reason in the community and reminding people that they weren’t alone meant so much to me. Your impact will have lasting effects!

And as someone who attempted to help a friend organize a Gay Straight Alliance in high school but failed thanks to bigoted push back from administrators… I wish I would have had an organization like the SSA to help me out.

If you’re interested in starting a group, make sure to email JT Eberhard ([email protected]). You don’t have to be 100% sure yet – JT is an awesome guy, and he’ll provide you with info about what starting a group would entail.

Jesus loves racial stereotypes

The only way to summarize this video is my reaction:

“Oh lord, awful Native American stereotype. Wait, they’re cutting out to a diverse group. They’re not going to go through each – wait – yes, yes they are. Jesus, the Asian eyes aren’t even glued on properly. …Good lord it gets worse and worse. OH MY GOD THE BLACK PEOPLE WTF. …And the white people are from the South, of course. I’m so glad that’s ov-OH MY GOD JOSE! JOSE! I want to cry. I’m losing my mind watching this.”

You know you need to sit through the whole thing now.

Atheists need to wear more polo shirts

From the Purdue Exponent:

Fashioning a polo shirt that complemented his witty humor, an atheist high school math teacher recounted how he won his tussle with an influential right-wing group.

What? That wasn’t the takeaway point from this article? I guess for Purdue students, it’s important to illustrate that atheists aren’t always running around naked. That misconception may be partially my fault.

Glad Hemant’s talk went well at my alma mater!

PS: Club members report that about twice as many people showed up than the Exponent reported. Boo, student reporting!

Off my ASS for the SSA – Week 4

Starting weight: 186.4 lbs
Last week’s weight: 179.8 lbs
Current weight: 178.6 lbs
Weight loss this week: 1.2 lbs

My weight was so perfectly stable at 179.8 for the whole week that I thought my scale was broken. But then I magically lost 1.2 lbs this morning. Weight loss is weird.

But yeah, not a good week for being healthy, thanks to lots of stress at school, no time to go grocery shopping for healthier food, and womanly issues. Yay hormones!

Though now’s my chance to pull way ahead of JT, while he’s at an atheist conference gobbling up conference food all weekend. Mwahaha!