Another uh oh atheism has a dudebro problem article, this time from Amanda Marcotte.
She points out that you would think atheism would be a natural for women, given the way religions view women. (Spoiler: as inferior, and not fully human.) She points out that feminism has had a long tradition of outspoken atheists and religious skeptics.
Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton preferred “rational ideas based on scientific facts” to “religious superstition.” Major feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir argued that belief in God exists in part to “repress any impulse toward revolt in the downtrodden female.” Modern feminist writer Katha Pollitt received the “Emperor Has No Clothes” award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 2001, where she said that religion is dangerous because “it connects with very terrible social energies that have lain in civilization for a very long time.”
And yet…New Atheism has turned out to be not all that welcoming to women, and as for feminist women…
Many of the most prominent leaders of the New Atheism are quick to express deeply sexist ideas. Despite their supposed love of science and rationality, many of them are nearly as quick as their religious counterparts to abandon reason in order to justify regressive views about women.
Sam Harris, a prominent atheist author who has previously been criticized for his knee-jerk Islamophobic tendencies, recently came under fire when he added women to the category of people he makes thoughtless generalizations about. Washington Post religion reporter Michelle Boorstein interviewed Harris, and during the interview she asked him why most atheists are male. “There’s something about that critical posture that is to some degree instrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women.” He added, “The atheist variable just has this— it doesn’t obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men.”
There was an immediate uproar among female atheists, and understandably so, as Harris didn’t even consider that it could be atheism that has a problem, instead immediately assuming that the problem is women themselves. His reaction to the criticism, which was immediate and probably a bit overwhelming was not, however, a demonstration of the tough “critical posture” he characterized as “instrinsically male.” Harris replied to his criticswith a hyper-defensive and tediously long blog post titled, “I’m Not The Sexist Pig You’re Looking For.” His strategy for disproving accusations of sexism was to engage in more sexist declarations, in the time-honored bigot strategy of saying it’s not bigotry if it’s true.
And we criticized that article too, and he responded with even more waspish hostility, and that’s just how the atheist “community” is these days – domineering men and the women who attempt to get a word in edgewise.
Needless to say, for women who reject religion because it so frequently portrays women as mentally inferior helpmeets who exist to serve men’s needs, Sam Harris is not offering any hope that atheism will give them a meaningful alternative.
It would be nice to dismiss Harris as an outlier, but sadly, pompous sexism followed up by defensive posturing is the order of the day for the dominant male leadership of the loosely organized world of atheism. In a lengthy investigative piece for Buzzfeed, Mark Oppenheimer demonstrated that the problem extends beyond sexist condescension. Instead, the bros-before-hos attitude of much of atheist leadership is quite likely serving to protect actual sexual predators.
With Dawkins and Nugent overtly telling us to stop talking about it, and others doing so less directly, yes, it quite likely is.
The reaction to Oppenheimer’s story was swift and did much to support the claim that the atheist community protects sexual predators, much like the Catholic Church did during the priest pedophilia scandal. Richard Dawkins, possibly the most famous atheist in the world, immediately went on a tear on Twitter, blaming victims for their own rapes if they were drinking. “Officer, it’s not my fault I was drunk driving. You see, somebody got me drunk,” he tweeted, comparing being forced to have sex with the choice to drive drunk.
When called out on it, he doubled down by suggesting that rape victims are the real predators, out to get men put in jail: “If you want to be in a position to testify & jail a man, don’t get drunk.”
That’s our “community.”
Dawkins has spent the past few years using Twitter as a platform to rail against feminists for daring to speak up about sexual harassment and abuse. He not only rushed to Shermer’s defense regarding allegations of sexual assault, but rushed to Harris’ defense regarding allegations of sexism, even though Harris’ sexism is so off the charts it becomes downright comical. Dawkins used to cling to the idea that he was an outspoken critic against the oppression of women, but lately he’s more occupied with praising professional anti-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers.
There are many excellent feminist speakers and writers in the atheist movement, men and women who bring the same critical eye to sexism that they apply to religion. Most of them, however, are mostly known only within atheist circles. People like Dawkins, Shermer and Harris are the public face of atheism. And that public face is one that is defensively and irrationally sexist. It’s not only turning women away from atheism, it’s discrediting the idea that atheists are actually people who argue from a position of rationality. How can they be, when they cling to the ancient, irrational tradition of treating women like they aren’t quite as human as men?
Sadly, this contempt for women coming from the top trickles into the ranks, allowing everyday misogynists who happen not to believe in God feel justified in their hatred of women anyway. Subsequently, there’s a thriving online community of people who live to harass not just women, but female atheists in particular, trying to drum any women out of the movement who want to be included as equals instead of as support staff for the male stars. Feminists like Rebecca Watson and Greta Christina, who upset the image of atheism as a “guy thing,” are subject to a relentless drumbeat of abuse through social media by people who prefer an atheism that’s a little more like fundamentalist Christianity, where women know their place.
Dawkins and Harris – and Coyne and Nugent and Blackford and others – could work hard to discourage that and drive it out, if they wanted to, if they gave a shit. But they don’t, so they don’t. That’s our “community.” I look forward to Nugent’s next 5000+-word post saying why I’m wrong to say that.
You mean he’ll keep it short next time?
I think we need to face the fact that religion doesn’t cause the social order, but only justifies that order and serves as a tool to keep it in place. So taking away the tool alone doesn’t give us an equal society, we need to actually dismantle that order.
Unsurprisingly, (some of) the people at the top aren’t too keen.
Yes, and a major portion of that post will be dedicated to ta-ta-ing you for using the word “shit” while ignoring the fact that that’s exactly what they don’t give.
Women tend to be more community-centric than men, perhaps because “it takes a village”. Religion does a better job of forming communities (compared to atheism).
I think we sometimes put too much emphasis on belief and not enough on community, when we discuss religion.
These are also some of the people who complain about divisive radfems and manginas (albeit they are not so impolitic as to use those terms) causing deep rifts in our “community.”
It’s quite disheartening to see intelligent, educated people refuse to examine their prejudices. Dawkins keeps saying that he’s a strong supporter of women’s rights and an opponent of the mistreatment of women. He also keeps tweeting sexist nonsense. However he doesn’t see his tweets as nonsense or sexist. He is always rational and criticism of his comments is always irrational. He provokes outrage to make points but provocation by others is done for blog hits and self-aggrandizement.
Harris recently wrote a rebuttal to claims that he’s sexist. This polemic was entitled “I’m Not the Sexist Pig You’re Looking For”. The title is a take-off of Obi Wan Kenobe’s line in Star Wars: “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” What Harris forgot about Obi Wan’s line was that it was a lie. Those were the droids the Stormtroopers were looking for. I won’t stretch the metaphor any further except to say that Harris, probably unintentionally, had more in common with Obi Wan then Harris intended.
Nugent has been all upset about how everyone (except for the commenters on his blog) are being mean to a certain unspecified* prominent skeptic and atheist. Nugent accused Adam Lee of “lying” about Shermer but somehow neglected to give examples of Lee’s lies. Coyne jumped on the “Lee is a Liar” turnip cart but he also failed to be specific about Lee’s lies. What’s particularly interesting about Coyne is that for years he’s claimed to be above the dispute between feminists and MRAs. Jerry finally decided to climb off his high horse and enter the fray, squarely on the MRA side.
For years Blackford has been a lost cause to rationality concerning women’s rights and equality. Apparently PZ Myers lied or slandered or insulted or said something uncouth about Blackford and so Russell is anti-feminist. No, it doesn’t make sense but I might be wrong about Blackford’s reason for his animosity towards women.
Skepticism is a useful tool for discovering things about the world. Unfortunately all too many eminent skeptics are not using skepticism to examine their own biases.
*The name “Michael Shermer” was never written by Nugent but nudge nudge wink wink.
I’m going to disagree with you slightly. They do give a shit. They care deeply. They care that their privilege is being eroded. They care that there are people out there daring to criticize them. They give a shit about that.
Amanda: “Sadly, this contempt for women coming from the top trickles into the ranks, allowing everyday misogynists who happen not to believe in God feel justified in their hatred of women anyway.”
I don’t think they have contempt for or hatred of women. You have to have paid at least a little attention to someone in order to hate and I don’t think they pay that much attention. I think they are so estranged from women that they can only hear bits and pieces of what women say to them, there is no context. There is no understanding that any one complaint of sexism is but a part of a whole life experience. They can see it only as nitpicking.
They don’t recognize extent of their estrangement from women. They are fond of telling how they love and respect women and are in favor of equal rights and opportunities; that they have mothers, sisters, daughter, wives apparently thinking that gives them immunity from sexism. For them, women are those roles and not much else. The character of those relationships would tend to discourage a real discussion of sexism. They would need women friends for that and I don’t think they have any. Why would they? How could they? given their attitudes?
If someone could say to them, you have not had a human experience, you have had a male human experience and it is not the only one, there is another that you know very little about. Your education is incomplete, you may not have intended it but that is the case. That other experience is in many ways dramatically different from yours. Ignorance of that difference has a profound effect on a man’s life and the lives of women, particularly those they are close to. You do not know this but it is true.
ludicrous @6:
Bolding mine – I think AM is saying the contempt from the top is encouraging other misogynists in their hatred of women, not that Dawkins et al actively hate us. Though given one doesn’t have to actively hate women to be a misogynist, it’s a fine distinction anyway. I’d certainly call the Great Thinky Thinkers of New Atheism a bunch of misogynists and racists.
Which is why I loathed New Atheism from the get-go. Without being able to articulate it then, it was obvious that this wasn’t just a more vocal opposition to organised religion’s abuses; it was sheer contempt for anyone not-atheist, and especially if they happened to be female. It was just another white old boys’ network, at least as far as the public face of it went – and with that public face, there wasn’t exactly any incentive to look further. I felt that lot (the four horsedroppings and their fanboys) would despise me for who and what I am, and it’s proven the case as more and more of their shit comes out.
@ 4 Al Dente
I think you’re being too kind. 😉
Worse than that. It wasn’t, ‘We all know who I mean’, it was, ‘You named him, but I refuse to stoop to your level’. (Because that sort of thing just isn’t done in polite society, dontcha know.)
Worse than that. Nugent wrote a post ostensibly giving examples of Lee’s “lies” that all turned out to be absurd hyperliteral pedantry:
– Lee said, ‘the atheist movement’ not a subset of the atheist movement.
– Lee said some people have no problem with all male speakers line-ups, but didn’t give an example of such a line-up or quote anyone calling for one.
– Lee said Dawkins was snarling about feminists being shrill harridans, while Dawkins never used those exact words. (And, of course, there’s no reason to suppose ‘Feeding-frenzy Thought-police Bullies’ doing it for the clicks was any sort of reference to feminists.)
– Lee said Dawkins tweets about drunk sex were about Shermer, but for all we know Dawkins was just randomly commenting about drunk sex with no surrounding context whatsoever.
– Lee said, ‘were drinking’ not ‘were drunk’.
– Lee said women were upset with Dawkins, while Nugent can name one woman who wasn’t.
… etc., etc.
Worse than that. He reportedly banned and deleted the comments of anyone asking for specifics.
Very disappointing. Especially Nugent. I thought he was a bit pompous but basically a good guy until he decided to have a go at PZ and Adam Lee.
@1 Delft
Exactly
Silentbob @8
Thank you for the corrections and amendments to my post.