I tell you, I’ve been tagged in a whole lot of email conversations lately, and there are a lot of women out there who are seething with fury at Ron Lindsay…and now Greta has stepped forward to express that anger at both the content and context of the introductory talk at Women in Secularism 2.
I have a reputation as undiplomatic and blunt, while Lindsay is supposedly an objective philosopher and lawyer, quite calm and cool. To put it mildly, his reputation has just taken a major hit. How could the leader of a secular organization screw up a short introduction to a conference so badly? Apparently, he charged in with the intention of giving the attendees a rhetorical slap in the face.
Huh. I didn’t think philosolawyers had reputations that could be damaged.
Well, many of them had a reputation for at least being polite and thoughtful.
I think many of us stopped being “supporters” about the time he announced that he wasn’t going to welcome us.
I should have written “CFI’s” supporters, rather than ‘his’. Nonetheless, you were supporters when you paid for your attendance and travel arrangements to attend. It is relevant that after all of that, he pulled out his big ol’ skeptic dick and pissed on everybody except for his #bravehero.
I mailed my letter objecting to Lindsay’s condescending and insulting opening talk to the CFI board yesterday. If any WiS2 attendees haven’t written yet, get on the ball. They need to hear from us.
Why is it that so many people, when it is suggested that they’ve done something foolish and hurtful and should probably stop digging themselves a deeper hole, immediately go out and rent a backhoe?
Instead of what? Stopping to listen and reconsider the thoughts, experiences, and feelings of others? That’s mangina talk.
That’s mangina talk.
Perhaps I’m misreading you – are you trying to suggest that I’m a man? Cause no…not so much.
Well, then Lindsey doesn’t care what you have to say.
But no, I was talking about why Lindsey in particular (or anti-feminist men in general) would dig in. Our balls shrivel up and fall off if we admit we Did Not Do The Research before opening our mouths, and then what would the jocks who teased us in high school think?
(I really should start putting those little </snark> tags after my comments.)
Understood. It seemed to me like *I* was the one you were saying was a mangina, and being a trans* person, that hits in an area where a lot of people have hurt me very badly over the years. Glad I was mistaken, thanks for answering.
I’m so sorry, CaitieCat. I apologise for contributing to your hurt.
I was being flip with a term that is commonly applied to me, PZ, and other men who support feminism; I would have been much more careful had I recalled that it’s also used to hurt transpeople. Thanks for the reminder, and I’ll be much more careful in the future.
Again, my apologies.
Because *feeling* wronged is more important than *being* wrong. The more it seems as if they’re being attacked the more right they feel in their original statements. Why else would there be such backlash? Clearly they were speaking truth if it touched so many nerves! And Galileo was persecuted too!
No worries – I believed your explanation, and can certainly take it in that respect. I appreciate your apology, though, and that you’ll consider it in future. :)
Anyone wanna bet that this kind of interaction doesn’t show up on ‘pit radar? It would sure put the lie to the “they’re all bullies who can’t allow anyone to disagree with them” line of crap.
That makes some sense, throwaway; it’s weird reasoning, but I can see how people would fall into it. Me, I tend to find being visibly wrong embarrassing, so I tend to apologize as quickly as I can, and try to move on from the point when I was being stupid. I guess I’m missing the point that they don’t want to be wrong more than they don’t want to be humiliated. I’d rather the brief humiliation of admission and apology, and putting it behind me, personally. Seems to be a least-net-damage approach.
Yeah, I would say Greta is quite unhappy about Ron’s talk. I remember reading the transcript and scratching my head at “no need to welcome you…”. Hell I’m still baffled by that. I’m also still shaking my head trying to figure out how privilege can be used to silence men. Especially in light of the ongoing harrassment perpetrated by the Anti-feminists. In fact, not only have they not been silenced, their verbal diarrhea has increased. I suppose Ron could have been referring to the banning of certain individuals from a blog, but last I checked, that is a bloggers right, not an example of privilege. For that matter, what type of privilege would even *that* be? After all there have been non-women bloggers banning certain people. Id be curious to know how PZ shares in the same privilege as women bloggers (with privilege-not defined mind you-leading women to succeed in making men shut up and listen).
The capper for me though, was just finding out (no idea how I missed this before) that Ron personally welcomed Vacula*.
Did he really think that:
–Not welcoming the attendees
–Misrepresenting the origin of A+
–Talking down to a roomfull of women with vast experience in matters of feminism
–Mischaracterizing the position of prominent atheists
–Criticizing feminists for not listening to the men’s all while saying nothing about the actions of their opponents
Speaking of which
–Welcoming a known harasser who has ties to AVfM
*any of the above* was acceptable??
Delivering scorn to feminists while welcoming their harasser…? I guess that was his way of picking a side. The wrong one.
—
* Before learning of this, I thought he could salvage this somehow. Though I still wanted him to resign. I see now that his speech had so much wrong that I overlooked his unspoken support for the status quo. Instead of telling the harassers to stop bullying and harassing, he chided feminists. Then to welcome Vacula after specifically NOT welcoming the attendees?
Screw you Ron.
You deserve to be fired.
The variant they use in these cases is “See how they treat their allies when their allies make a wrong step? They force them to kowtow and wait to be spoken to before they can speak again.”
For all the bluster about the pit, their behaviour is simply Republican (as in the American political party). Lie, distort, beat their chests, and cry persecution. On slow news days they scream their versions of “Benghazi, Benghazi!, BENGHAZI!!” and circulate it through the pit hoping a reputable news source picks it up.
Thank goodness for Ron Lindsey, who’s more than happy to play CNN to their Fox News.
I’ve said this before; but the two people I would not like to be in the line of rhetorical fire is Greta or PZ.
The ongoing silence from the CFI board (collectively) or any of its members individually is deeply disturbing.
Frankly, it’s almost as if they’re resigned to the fact that I won’t be supporting them ever — financially or otherwise.
A QUICK (sorry for the yelling, it’s for their benefit) clear statement was required. The longer they let this linger with silence, the worse and worse it becomes.
Well, he did say (not an exact quote) that telling men to shut up and listen was a silencing tactic, didn’t he?
I’ve commented 23 times on “A Few Examples of ‘Shut Up and Listen'” at CFI while thinking that surely the board would read comments on the posts that their CEO wrote about this issue.
Of course, that CEO issued his limited “apology” to Rebecca Watson in a post in which he decided not to open comments at all. Shortly thereafter, he closed the still-active comment section on the post containing the item that prompted the “apology.” He’s never added a single comment of his own to the two WiS2 posts that are still open.
After reading Greta’s two posts, I’m going to consolidate a few of the 23 and go the stamp/envelope/mailing address route–physically in their hands, maybe another page or two in a packed expandable file folder. I hope a page or two in a re-purposed box for 10 reams of copier paper.
If the CEO will ignore what’s digitally said about his own writing, I’m being foolish to think that the board will take such comments into account.
I don’t know anything about his intentions, but if at some time between WIS1 and WIS2 he developed concerns about men somehow being shut out of the dialog (on some issues) based on the content of their chromosomes (rather than the content of their character) he had a certain number of months to start a dialogue to deal with the issue. For me the real pisser is that he chose use a monologue to a semi-captive audience to talk about how people a lot like him weren’t listened to enough.
Both of Greta’s posts were excellent (Stephanie Zvan’s “An Alternate Universe” post also blew me away). I’m convinced to write to CFI about it.
Nothing pleases me more than being insulted in that way. Sometimes it’s blunt and sometimes it’s subtle (over at the CFI blog, someone answered my post by referring to me as “@Ashley Key”) — but it always reminds me that I’m on the right side.
It doesn’t bother me. I dealt with my non-interest in complying with the demands of toxic, stereotypical heteromasculinity a long time ago.
But I’m a hetero, cis-male. I still recognise that the term has the potential to hurt trans*people far more than someone with my privilege.
Said Ron Lindsay, closing his non-welcome paragraph:
Each little bit would have me shifting in my seat, but I’d be fuming about that presumably and listening extra hard for the rest of his talk for the “substances not rhetoric.” It wasn’t there, you know.
Asher Kay, @20:
Oh yes, I saw that. I’ve been openly female in those comments, but I believe a couple who’ve come in late without reading the thread have answered me as though I’m male because my nym ends in -o. GrzeTor’s type/copy of Asher Kay correctly in one comment and then the change to Ashley Key in the next was quite…interesting.
Ogvorbis @17:
Oh yes, he did give that message in such a way that he strawmanned himself right out of applying it to any feminist who’d be interested in attending a conference put together by a humanist organization. That’s why his “examples” in the second WiS2 post were so ridiculous:
The ongoing silence has a cause: all of the parties directly involved at CFI have been asked to make no comment until the official meeting of the board, which will occur in a few weeks. At that time there will either be a resolution of all of the concerns or there will be another explosion of outrage. Oh, boy!
PZ:
Thanks. I was curious about that.
The principle of uniformitarianism says my money’s good on any outcome that isn’t ‘a resolution of all the concerns’.
I find this paragraph baffling. As a white person, there are many things that racial minorities experience that I cannot know what it is like to experience because I have not experienced them, that I am bound to be mistaken about in some way, and that I will be so blinded by privilege that I will not realize this. As a straight person, it is the same. As a cis person, it is the same. As an able bodied person, it is the same. As a middle-class person, it is the same. Why is this even controversial? It happens all the bloody time that I say something like, “Oh! I had no idea that [insert minority group] faced [insert a particular problem]. It’s amazing the number of things we take for granted as normal when they aren’t.” Like . . . for a long time I didn’t even have the concept of “food deserts.” Was this because I was an evil, purposeful bigot who was sitting in luxury while cackling away at the oppressed? No, it’s because I’d never lived in a situation where I would encounter food deserts. That people who had lived in a food desert would know more about food deserts than I did should shock no one. For example, during a brief period when I didn’t own or have easy access to a car, I came to realize how incredibly difficult it can be to take the bus to go grocery shopping. In fact, it was so difficult that I biked to get my groceries, which was (fortunately) an option for me. This gave me some small insight as to the hardships that people with lower incomes face to even get something so basic as food, an insight that did not pop fully formed into my head without any experience whatsoever. And even with this insight, I cannot possibly understand what it is really like to live without access to food.
I moved from my phone to my computer, and am delurking, to let Anthony K and CaitieCat know that your open, respectful, learning and kind exchange brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. Especially in the midst of all this mess, I was moved by it- moved by being reminded that *this* is how we can get better, *this* is how we can treat each other. Thank you for setting such a great example, both of you.
I’m humbled, sphex. Thank you for delurking.
@Eristae
This always puzzles me too, and I figured that the problem came from not having direct experience with it from the *other* side. By this reasoning, women, for example, would have an easier time “knowing what they don’t know” about members of some other group because they’ve experienced others not getting something that’s grounded in the experience of being a woman. I don’t know. Maybe that’s part of it.
WRT the skeptic/secular/atheist community specifically, though, I wonder if some men have trouble with the idea that in some areas, experience itself is a big part of the question. You can’t reason or evidence your way to experience, and so there’s both a “rationalistic” desire to minimize its importance and a kind of indignation that you, Captain Rational-Pants, are being told that even your enormous brain is unable to access it directly. Some of Lindsay’s remarks feel that way to me.
“A bit cheesed off” always translates into my head as “défromagé” I know it’s not correct but that’s what my brain does.
I wonder if some men have trouble with the idea that in some areas, experience itself is a big part of the question
I certainly do. The only way I know to get an idea what other people go through is to shut up and listen to them. On the occasions where I’ve tried to imagine myself into their shoes, it just doesn’t work – for something like privilege, it’s not possible to sit for a minute and imagine 24/7 over the years of a lifetime.
PZ
Asked by whom? The fact that they’re willing to let this fester for a couple of months instead of calling an emergency board meeting speaks volumes.
As am I, sphex, thank you very much for speaking up. You made my afternoon. :)
It’s definitely my preferred style; I can’t take credit for it, though, I learned it from Melissa McEwan, as so many other things I’ve come to like in myself. She taught me (and continues to teach me) a great deal about how we can interact online in a way that doesn’t have to be nasty.
It’s important to note, though, that it can only work because we were both willing to do so, at that point. The problem with that form of resolution approach is that if one of the two people in the interaction are, to put it nicely, unpleasant people, it won’t happen. I was aided by that in my prior knowledge of observations of Anthony K’s comments elsewhere, and being able to suss that the likelihood that he would be deliberately hurtful and/or transphobic was pretty small, making my “good faith” approach easier. If I had known the opposite, my own approach would probably have been more careful, because I’d be facing a much larger chance that someone annoyed by my calling them out on something would react in a reprehensible manner.
Anyway, enough meta from me – thank you both. :)
It’s possible their by-laws don’t allow them to meet in any form other than in-person, and that they’re having trouble assembling quorum. It doesn’t necessarily have to be incompetence or hiding; scheduling board meetings is a huge pain in the ass, because they tend to take place outside business hours, and the people likely to sit on boards tend to be people with very, very busy lives (helium-hands types, the ones who can’t fail to volunteer).
Or it could be that they’re responsibly trying to wait until their own feelings have cooled off enough that they can do what they view as their duty as board members: careful, thoughtful attendance to the needs of the organization.
That’s just in a few minutes of thinking why a board might be slow to call a meeting in what outsiders would think was an emergency. I’ve served on several boards myself, from theatres to soccer leagues, and the above fits my own experience of how such organizations tend to work. Doesn’t mean I’m right; I’m almost certainly not, as I don’t know what’s going on in there. Neither does anyone else. For me, as rationalists, I think that means that in the absence of evidence, we shouldn’t take it as evidence of absence, nor should we leap to any conclusions in that absence.
So it might be best to let the silence be just a silence, for now. YMMV, of course.
Looking at at Linday’s remarks, they come across as a liberturd who thinks he is being told what to do, because he isn’t the brightest and most empathetic bulb in the room, and he needs to not tell other people how he thinks they should feel. He just can’t philosophically accept anybody telling him what to do, and if he can’t tell others how they should feel without looking like a misogynist asshole, he will tell them they are wrong first. He just can’t/won’t grasp the fact that to engage in the discussion properly, he does need to shut up and listen at some point, and only after he listens, listens good, and listens for a long time, should he respond. And never, ever, tell anybody how they should feel.
Thank you for putting that so clearly. For me at least it helps to clarify the response that comes, seemingly out of the blue, that some man or other feels that he’s being personally being attacked because of the ‘you’re not in the experienced position’ approach. With the mindset that you are always and everywhere able to analyse anything and everything with your boilerplate rationality/skepticism, that must come as a double whammy. You’re not in the women or gay or poor club and your favourite way of being who you actually are is not up to the specific task either – so your opinions are not automatically valued just because of your rational/ skeptic thinking aloud. Bit of a shock to the system when you see that for the first time, I suppose.
Of course, other people can make other judgments about you when they know you’re seeing it for the forty-first time.
Yes, it seems to get tangled up with the
notionSkeptic’s Dictum that “Anecdotes are not data”. Sure, when you’re testing the efficacy of a drug, by all means, do a double-blind test and control for placebos. But when you’re evaluating different cultural environments, the only data there are are people’s experiences.* When you have enough data of this kind, it would be perverse and unsceptical not to draw conclusions about how life is often generally experienced by members of different classes and groups (whether based on ethnicity, gender, appearance, ability etc.). There may be confounding factors (i.e. intersection; geography etc), and not everyone of the group may experience the same things, but no one is saying that culturally derived experience is universal.*I’m including statistical, sociological, and historical research in this definition, because they are only formalised means of investigating reports of people’s experience.
For those looking for an example of a powerful public figure showing how to apologize, I recommend you google Eddie McGuire news articles.
He is the president of Collingwood, an AFL club in Australia that is known for its, shall we say, not very politically correct supporters. Not that Collingwood is the only club like that, but it does have the reputation of being the worst.
Eddie has been very vocal and active in making the AFL brand appealing to women and people of colour, and it’s pretty apparent through his actions as a public figure to say that he understands the importance of diversity.
Last weekend was Indigenous Round, a round where the AFL celebrates indigenous players and the indigenous culture of Australia. Unfortunately, it was marred on Friday night by a 13 yr old Collingwood supporter calling an indigenous Sydney player (Adam Goodes) an ape. That incident blew up, and Eddie McGuire was front and centre, ensuring that apologies were made and that there was no excusing the behaviour – even if her youth meant she might not have understood the history of the term, the implication was explicitly made that her social environment was likely to have led to such racist speech. Reconciliation, denouncement of such casual racism from all corners, I thought the only bad reaction to the event was by a tabloid newspaper publishing the girl’s face.
All well and good, until Eddie, on his Monday morning breakfast radio show, made a passing reference to using Adam Goodes to promote a King Kong stage show. Instant facepalm, instantly walking back what he said, and 24 hours of media appearances with hat in hand, saying it was a slip of the tongue, he deeply regrets it and totally unforgiveable. He offered his resignation as board member of an indigenous focused charity (which was rejected) and hasn’t yet ruled out resigning as Collingwood club president.
Stupid mistake, instant apologies all round and no expectation of forgiveness. That’s how it should be done.
Shermer… Shermer… Shermer?
I threw a 17-year-old boy out of a soccer game I was refereeing once, a Cup Final no less, the culmination of his team’s whole year’s effort…for calling one of his opponents a monkey. The opponent was a dark-skinned South Asian youth, very skilled, and the target of a few hard challenges.
But when I heard that player calling him that name, I just blew the whistle, stopped the game, pulled the red card, and showed it to the player. He flipped – “What the hell am I being red-carded for, I never touched him!” His coach flipped, the rest of the team flipped, the parents were screaming their heads off.
I called the two captains over and said that I’d heard the player making a racist remark, and that anyone else who did it would follow him to the locker rooms. I told them to make sure their coaches knew what had happened (I didn’t want to keep the game stopped any longer than I had to), and that I would definitely be following up at the disciplinary committee.
They suspended him for one year. He went through the roof, was screaming slurs and swearwords at me (as the chief witness against him), threatening me, all of this in front of the disciplinary committee. Who decided that since he hadn’t actually left the room yet, he was still under their disciplinary reach, and they banned him for five years, for threatening an official.
His parents had tried to pull the “Well, we can say anything we like when we play (ice) hockey!” – to which the disciplinary chairman replied by inviting them to go play that, then, as that kind of behaviour wouldn’t go here, that the referee’s decision had been correct, and that given his subsequent behaviour and threats, his competitive-playing days were over now, anyway.
I don’t like bigots.And I don’t waste my sympathy on them when they get what they deserve: banished from the company of decent folk.
That was the other notable part of the Friday night incident – Goodes immediately pointed out the 13 yr old to security staff so that they could escort her out. First time in the AFL that a player has acted in that manner after being vilified by a spectator. Could be a world first for professional sports? The standard reaction is that players should just shrug off and ignore anything they hear from over the fence.
PZ@25:
Just for info, I asked over at Greta’s blog when the CFI board is meeting, and one commenter replied that it will be June 14 and June 17, specifically. So maybe June 18 will be the big reveal.
I haven’t said much about this because what is there to say other than RAAAAARRRRRRRRR FUUUUUCK!!!!?
But Greta did nail the one thing that has pissed me off most: Ron Lindsay made it all about him. The whole conference sounds awesome, and we should have been talking about the content. But instead it’s just another episode of The Slimey Gang Hates Stinky Gurlz.
This really strikes home for me. Before I remembered why I didn’t like being a scout, I thought that I could reason out what rape would be like. Or that I could read (which I did (Brownmiller’s book)) and understand. I was dead wrong. I compare my attitude toward rape, rape jokes, victim blaming, rape culture, gradations of rape from before I remembered what I did and now and all I can do is say, “I am sorry.”
My awakening towards feminism was concurrent with remembering what I did so I am not sure if I ever really did shut up and listen. I do put my 1.9 cents in when it seems appropriate, when I can try to help someone understand that they do not actually understand (if that makes sense).
And what scares me is that, five years ago, I would have agreed with much of Lindsey’s non-welcome at WiSCFI. It also saddens me.
Imma just sit in the corner here with this.
Yep. Even that stupid “I’m not going to welcome you” bit might have been salvageable if it had been followed with “because you’re doing such important stuff here, so I’m going to get out of the way and let you get right to it”. Instead it was “because you need to know what I think about it and answer all my questions”. Asshole.
@25 – PZ:
Hold the phone…you mean someone told the board of CFI to shut up?
Every irony meter on the planet just exploded.
Ron has demonstrated strong ultracrepidarianism.
I. LOVE. THIS. STORY.
You are my new hero. :)
@ CaitieCat
Your story put a smile on my dial. :D
Kevin
QFT
Jeez, Reap Paden is sock-puppetting away again — another pseudonym, another ungrammatical screed easily caught by the spam filter.
Then we should be doing something to make sure that outcome is the right outcome!
It’s ALWAYS about Teh (white, affluent) Menz, didn’t you know? The universe revolves around us. (/snark, just to be on the safe side.)
CaitieCat, your posts have made my day. :-D
****
As I did not get to attend WIS2, I’m sitting here completely baffled. If anything like this had occurred at any of the professional conferences I’ve attended I can’t help but feel that something would have been done about it by now.
If something like this had happened at my workplace, there would be a full Ethics investigation going on buy now. Considering it was his workplace, I dearly hope that is what CFI is doing in this aggravating silent period.