I was going to move on today, so as not to be a big mean ol’ bully to the Global Secular Council, but then I read yet another of its Twitter responses to me and found that moving on would not be possible.
It was alternating between rebuking me for judging them “by the color of their skin” and saying they are working hard on diversity. Well that’s unclear. What do they mean by “working hard on diversity” if it has nothing to do with “the color of their skin”? “Diversity” is simply a (very stale by now) buzzword used for the purpose of avoiding the mention of race (aka “skin color”) or sex or national origin etc etc. The Twitter account seemed to want to have it both ways – to sneer from a great height at talk of “skin color” while still patting itself on the back for “working on diversity.” (Then there’s a separate question of why it didn’t do this “working on diversity” before it went live instead of after – a question I also asked and got no real answer to.)
So I asked.
@SecularCouncil Which is it? You hate judging by skin or you work hard on diversity?
Secular Council @SecularCouncil 15 h
Both! They are not mutually exclusive. We hate exclusion or hate based on skin-color. We love inclusion across the board.
Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson 15 h
So you’re accusing me of exclusion or hate. On what grounds?
Secular Council @SecularCouncil 15 h
Nope! Not accusing you of anything, except poor word choice in describing what you don’t like about our Council members.
Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson 15 h
What’s wrong with it? I said you need to add “some people who are NOT pale US/UK males” – point being that’s not global.
Secular Council @SecularCouncil 14 h
We already discussed our use of the word Global, Ophelia, and we’re still very sorry it offends you.
See why I had to give up the idea of leaving the Global council alone? That reply is so clueless, so rude, so patronizing, so off the mark, so petulant, so stupid – that leaving it alone just isn’t an option.
This is our “movement” too after all. It’s our “community” too. Ridiculous clueless arrogant shit like this gives us all a bad name. If we all look the other way they’ll just keep at it.
But cheer up, there’s also a bonus hilarity.
Ophelia Benson @OpheliaBenson 15 h
Do you have a list of approved euphemisms?
Audra LA @Audra_LA 14h
Are you serious? Pale is not a slur and accurately describes your lack of diversity.
Secular Council @SecularCouncil 14h
We already discussed our use of the word Global, Ophelia, and we’re still very sorry it offends you.
Corvus Whiteneck @CorvusWhiteneck 12h
“We love inclusion across the board” … unless we’re talking about a publicity photo. @OpheliaBenson
Secular Council @SecularCouncil 11h
Unfortunately, you can only take photos with people who are currently at dinner with you.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha really? That’s the only time and place you can take photos? I did not know that!
No, I’m kidding, that’s wrong. Secular Council is wrong. You can take photos at other times and in other situations. Especially publicity photos. Especially especially publicity photos for your shiny new Global group that you’re setting up. You know what you can even do? You can arrange to do that photo specially. You can do it not as part of dinner with some of your pals, but as a special appointment that you set up and meet because it’s that important.
But clearly this is part of their problem. Their idea of who this Global Council should be is…their pals. The people they have dinner with. The gang. Oh and then it turns out they’re mostly men and they’re all pale and they’re not Global…and it turns out a few people ask them rude questions about that…so it turns out they have to do something about that before more people notice…but surely while they scurry to do that it will help to explain that they simply set up their Global Council with people they like to have dinner with. That way everyone will understand, surely. Surely.
Well that was a fun conversation last night!! I’m pretty sure the person running their Twitter account is going to be the darling of the slymers in short order too. You know, because dinner tables or something.
Amazing how these people who are supposedly so smart can’t understand so many basic concepts. Or just don’t care to.
Why is it that when I read the secular council twitter account using the pronoun ‘we’ my mind’s ear renders their statements into the voice of the borg?
What they do not get they will never get.
And that’s the fact that they set up a “global” council by looking around at their privileged white faces and decided that was good enough. Until it was pointed out how — pale — they all looked. And how pretty much everyone not on staff (ie, the “council”) has a penis.
Clueless. Absolutely clueless.
At this point, I say you should do what I’m about to do. Forget the group exists. It’s as irrelevant as argon.
Kevin Kehres @4
Argon is used by welders to keep metals such as titanium from oxidizing.
Having people “at dinner” sounds like an adversarial relationship. “Hey you, the funny looking one, pass the potatoes.” “Get ’em yourself, you lazy good-for-nothing.”
How much do you want to bet that their solution to the “diversity thing” is to hire a semi-random black woman who ALSO has no experience or expertise in anything global or policy related? There’s a certain right-wing bent to this group that suggests that they’re going to find them some Sarah Palins and work the hell out of them.
Another self-inflicted wound.
All they had to say was, “It’s difficult to get a group up an running. These are the folks that helped get things started. We agree that our current staff/members are not diverse and that’s something we’re working on. We share your opinion on creating a more representative organization and acknowledge your criticism. Please give us a chance to prove our commitment to this issue…blah blah.”
One of the memes I come across in discussing secularism and/or atheism with Muslims locally is that it is all part of a Western conspiracy to overthrow Islam. But it’s not just Muslims who think like that. There are people who consider themselves to be secular but who think that the the wore “secular” has been hijacked by, as an article in Islamphobiawatch once put it, deeply conservative, white, middle class, middle aged Islamophobes. It’s not really helpful to have a group of people, who could be easily seen as fitting that stereotype like a glove, setting up a “Global” Secular Council.
A guitarist friend of mine once joked about some publicity for a concert that he seemed to be “world famous in Hong Kong.” Similarly the “Global” Secular Council is only global in the restaurant where they dreamed up the idea. Everywhere else they seem decidedly parochial. What’s worse is that they seem insensitive to the issues that claiming to be global involve.
I’ve been wondering, more so at this point, just how much the folks in the photos actually know about the GSC, and to what extent they’ve actually agreed to cooperate/participate. To what extent were they aware of the context that would surround the use of the photos they’ve appeared in?
Is there any divergence between what representations the GSC’s mouthpiece has made thus far, and what participants thought they were getting into when they signed on? Are *any* of the “thought leaders” actually okay with being referred to as such, or are they keeping silent as a part of some (now regrettable) quid pro quo?
Were they told in advance that they would be a part of “THE secular policy resource”, and did they know about the largely monochromatic constituency of the organisation? Were they expecting to see secularists from further flung backgrounds than what they got?
What do the named “thought leaders” think now?
they are working hard on diversity
The harder they work on diversity, di verse it is.
So it sounds like something they just dreamed up over dinner. Had an assistant or two whip up a website, didn’t bother to think about the whole thing long enough to even find some more people and take a photo later, basically just some spur of the moment thing undertaken without much thought and now they’re upset that people are pointing out that it sure looks like it came out of an echo chamber environment and that they didn’t think it through.
Diversity? Isn’t that an old, old wooden ship?
What do they mean by “working hard on diversity”
Opposing it.
@7 “How much do you want to bet that their solution to the “diversity thing” is to hire a semi-random black woman who ALSO has no experience or expertise in anything global or policy related? There’s a certain right-wing bent to this group that suggests that they’re going to find them some Sarah Palins and work the hell out of them.”
Who’s betting the ‘semi-random black woman’ will be Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They’ll all just forget how she bleated on about what a force for good the Catholic Church was at the height of the pedophilia scandal, and how the Christian churches should become more muscular in converting Muslims etc etc. All very ‘secular’.
Right? Like they think it’s totally acceptable to treat genuine diversity as an afterthought. Or rather, as an after-action. Clearly they’re thinking a lot about diversity (and how great they are at it), just not doing anything about it.
“You can’t blame us for the utter whiteness of that photo. See, we just didn’t invite any people of color to our special dinner!” That’s seriously their excuse?
Also, the “global” part of the Global Secular Council is clearly a reference to who they hope to boss around (with the help of the US government’s political pressure), not who they hope to represent.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Bruce (#10)
I think Greta Christina has some techniques for avoiding signing on to speaking gigs and the like that lack diversity. Maybe she’ll weigh in on what some of the participants could have done ahead of time to guarantee their contributions went to a venture that practiced diversity more than preached it.
Dinner is kind of a white thing…
@11 Zing!!
“Unfortunately, you can only take photos with people who are currently at dinner with you.”
So that’s the only meeting they’ve had thus far, I take it?
The Global Secular Council: we don’t have the resources to take photographs, let alone hire researchers and lobbyists, but FEAR OUR POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS!
And such policy recommendations! Why, some of them are as much as 150 words long.
They only take photographs at dinner, and they don’t dine with the inferior races.
This all reminds me of those religious groups with titles like The One True Universal Church Of God, consisting of six people. This is the Global Secular Council and they’re barely transatlantic. It’s pitiful.
Look, they’re Anglospherical – isn’t that global enough for you?
Global Secular CouncilSecular Diners Club/@