The Global Secular Council is getting much much better at remembering that “Global” has to include people who aren’t from the US or the UK or even Sweden; much much better at following the news from other parts of the world and sharing voices from there.
Or, not.
Ooo…”global”.
And … what? About 2 weeks behind (at least) for each issue? I’m impressed … not.
Think right-wing, tweet anti-Muslim.
At first I didn’t get your point – they are talking about global issues! Then I got it. All the people talking about global issues are white Western men. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a white Western man, we just need a bigger cross-section of opinions and voices.
theoreticalgrrrl,
I think it might even work to give links to writers local to those issues. Not Huffpo and Cato and such.
And not just white western men but three out of the tiny number of such men who get treated as Our Thought Leaders and thus blot out everyone else. Pinker and Dawkins have written terrific books for a general audience, no question, but there are a lot of other people who have also done that, who get much less attention because we keep getting the same five or six familiar guys rolled out over and over and over again. The hahaha “Global” secular council should be tweeting less familiar people from other places, not recycling extremely familiar people from the neighborhood yet again.
“but three out of the tiny number of such men who get treated as Our Thought Leaders and thus blot out everyone else”
Ophelia, honestly I think your site serves that purpose. We all appreciate your generosity in allowing a greater range of voices access and a forum.
They’re “thought leaders”, not “action leaders” (is that like action figures?).
Sheesh, you guys can’t get anything right. 😛
They thought about doing this before it even happened!! But they had to wait, or the secret would get out…..
Look, misogyny, it’s happening over there
Crikey, there’s more gender and ethnic diversity in our local atheist Meetup group. I think we need to add Global to our name and put up a fancy website.
Everything I see from them convinces me more and more that the only actual purpose of the “Global Secular Council” is to advertise for its members.
Checked their website, had a look at their members. Some very intelligent people for whom I have much respect such as Stenger and Porco and Dennett, are involved, but still – looks like a Dawson’s Creek cast reunion in the year 2054 but with less women.
The group shot on the site spells it out even more clearly; there’s even a chap looking unbearably smug on the right-hand side draping his arm over somebody for some added Dawson’s flavour.
Anyway, you’ll forgive me if, even as a white dude close to 40, the impression I get isn’t very “global”.
So, this is their “policy recommendation” format?
Thank you for the best laugh I’ve had all day. 🙂
Hank_says @ 11,
That’s Mr CyclingSuperDude™ who just has to get himself photographed with a woman in a pose which says “I own this piece of meat” every few months or his battery goes flat.
Or something.
Well they did tweet about the 800 infant corpes found in an Irish “women’s home.” Oh wait, that was PZ.
Why does Dawkins put culture in quotation marks like that? Why does he include that remark in the first place? Is he trying too suggest that misogyny and religion aren’t part of culture? That crimes like this aren’t rooted in culture, but the expression of the savage instincts characteristic of backward people?
Even as a jab at some unnamed extreme cultural relativists arguing against any criticism of these killings, I don’t see how the remark with the quotation marks make sense other than as a denial that human culture, well, exists.
An opportunity missed: “Dawkins’ Creek”.
The lack of involvement in other cultures– the perception of social issues strictly from the outside– is striking. France and Turkey, two countries where I’ve lived, both have proud secular traditions. France’s goes back at least to Voltaire; Turkey’s at least to Ataturk and the founding of the Turkish Republic. But there’s apparently no effort to bring the secular traditions of those countries or others (Cuba, maybe?) onboard for a truly Global Secular Council. It’s just white English speakers reinforcing their own, privileged but limited, views.