Robyn Pennacchia writes about how the non-bros of progressive communities can be just as bad as the dudebros we spot so easily — she’s mainly addressing the alt-lit community and Stephen Tully Dierks, but she mentions the recent paroxysms in the atheist community as well — and she answers the question about how come just about every time I hear about a new and interesting progressive group, it turns out to be in the context of blatant sexism or sexual assault. It’s because it’s harder to police your own than others.
I’m glad that more attention is being drawn to issues of assault, misogyny and sexism in these communities. It’s important. It’s also a lot harder than calling out Rush Limbaugh, because none of us have to live with Rush Limbaugh. I want to make these spaces safer for women, because we have as much right to them as men do.
It’s not just bros and jocks and finance dudes and yuppies and Christians and Republicans who are shitty to women. Being part of a counter-cultural or progressive community does not give you a free pass to be shitty to women without being called out on it. We need to hold our own communities to an even higher standard than we hold those in the opposition, we need to welcome criticism, and we to realize that the ones who call out shitty behavior in these communities are not the threat, but that those who protect it and shield it from criticism are.
Holding ourselves to a standard, rather than raging at outsiders who aren’t as good as us? Whoa, lady, don’t go crazy here. You’re going to wreck all the fun of being holier-than-thou.
It’s also a bit like being a grown-up — it turns out it’s not just all the pop you want to drink and staying up all night playing video games, but that there are also these things called responsibilities that you have to tend to. The Big Atheist Clubhouse isn’t just a place where people tell you how smart and wonderful you are, it’s also a place where you have to seriously try to change the world.
Yup. I don’t have the time, resources or energy to fight on the broad scale. But this week I’ve said on three occasions a variation of “What the hell does a person’s gender have to do with that?”
Cultures are made up of the actions of the individuals within them. Making casual sexism an uncomfortable experience for those indulging in it may not be glamorous, but at least it has the virtue of being achievable by an individual. Not to mention that there’s no risk of suddenly finding out that the leader of your organisation is a douchcanoe of the first order.
FossilFishy,
I’m in the same boat. I used to stay silent or change the topic usually, but all the issues generated by Dawkins’ defense of sexism, I realized I can’t do that anymore.
So thank you Professor Dawkins for making me a better person.
Pre-emptive explanation of the difference between “atheism” and “The Big Atheist Clubhouse”: remember, kiddos, not believing in gods doesn’t mean you have to change the world, but being involved in atheist activism in the form of promoting church-state separation or good science education does. So if you’re involved in the latter then you have no logical basis for objecting to making the world a better place generally (i.e., fighting against sexism & racism, etc.), you’re just being hypocritical because you’re only interested in things that make the world better for you.
And if you’re a small-a atheist who merely doesn’t believe in gods and aren’t interested in church-state separation, science education, and other causes typically associated with organized atheism, then what the fuck are you doing posting here? You don’t care about anything. You have no ethos, no ideology. You’re not trying to make the world a better place, period. You’re a waste of space. Go home. Stop posting and leave the people who actually do care about other people/future generations alone. The least you can do is stop getting in our way.
Just going to say – thanks for reposing and bringing up all these issues – I live in somewhat of a bubble the last, 5 years or so (work, prior to that it was school and naiveté), and I was under the impression we were past all this shit by now. But over the past few years, and it seems to be increasing with some regularity, we’re seeing a lot of otherwise rational people show their true colors.
And having had my eyes open to the issue, I see that it is much more prevalent, even in my own bubble. Like FossilFIshy and Saad above, at this point I think I need to be more vocal, especially with those around me.
The size of the problem summed up in just one sentence from the linked article: “I have *only* been physically assaulted by two men in my life…” [emphasis mine]
Actually, the size of the problem is summed up in just one word from that one sentence: only. She has *only* been physically assaulted by two men in her life.
Let’s just let that sink in for a moment, shall we?
“’Just promise me you won’t join a commune, OK? Because you know who’s going to end up doing the dishes? You and whatever other women are there.’”
Listen to your Mother!
This line sums up sooo much, doesn’t it?
Exactly. The skeptic movement has this problem in a big way. That’s why the moment the subject changes away from Bigfoot or dowsing, suddenly these supposedly great thinkers can’t skeptic their way through a wet noodle.
The real test of critical thinking is when you apply it to yourself. Everything else is just training.
“The real test of critical thinking is when you apply it to yourself.”
But I feel less morally superior when I do that! ;-)
By the way, be careful about reading the comments to that article. There’s a whole mess of oblivious fuckheads spouting off.
^Agreed. I probably should have know better, but I went there, anyway. Now my breakfast is coming back up on me….
I remember reading how, when the ant-Vietnam protests were happening, the progressive bros were just as sexist as the squares: it’s just that they also expected sex services along with the usual maid service and unconditional support. And that that’s what drew a lot of progressive women into feminism. They were accused of causing divisions in the anti-war movement, hating men, not being pretty, etc., etc.
Plus ca change……
Yea, they sure are smart and wonderful for finding the right answer to “The easiest question in the world,”, as Matt Dillahunty puts it.
Personally, I don’t see much value in trying recover the atheist label, at this point in history at least; the “strict definitional atheism” asshats are working overtime to make sure that everyone knows that the “atheist” label includes some of the most immoral ideas humanity has ever concocted. I guess it’s not that surprising that the tragedy of bad ideas inflicts the subset of people who are atheists in the same way it inflicts the subset who are theists; and add in a good dollop of irony that many who hold those bad ideas like to use the words like “skeptical”, “critical thinking”, “rational” and “reasonable” to justify themselves.
Those got ugly. I hear they called the army ants “larva killers”.
@3 SallyStrange
Well put.
@1 FossilFishy (NOBODY, and proud of it!)
Sometimes, you don’t even have to say a word. Last night, I was having dinner at a local tavern, and the couple sitting next to me at the bar were obviously right-wingers as well as heavily invested in the beer menu. They made a couple of feeble attempts to engage me in conversation with sexist remarks (more by the woman than the man). I merely arched an eyebrow and shook my head. That shut them up.
Personally I think I’m much more motivated these days to spread improvement (such as critical thinking and morality), it’s more general, it’s more valuable than “I don’t think there’s not a god”.
*”I don’t think there’s a god”
made a double negative when I modified my sentence -___-
Funny that, while fighting the religious for so long to prove that they’re not selfish, amoral assholes, atheists now fight their own to define themselves as selfish, amoral assholes.
Today I was correcting the English of a [text] that included a sentence about how it is usually the female [descriptor] that does [thing]. I scratched the whole thing out, and just in case, added a comment saying “This is not relevant to the body of the text”.
It felt really good.
Little things.
But what if I’m really extraordinarily good with my penis?
I’ve been following the latest discussions in the blogosphere with a growing sense of dismay. I’ve been a feminist for almost 45 years; it’s discouraging to be hearing the same old crap from the same old place of “just don’t get it.” When I realized I was an atheist I was living in the south and didn’t know another person who was an atheist. Accessing the internet opened me up to a whole new world of thought. It has been a disappointment to learn that a large part of that world of thought apparently doesn’t care if I’m part of it or not, and I don’t want to be associated with their narrow, ignorant ideas about women and what feminism really means. It’s getting to the point that I don’t want to identify as atheist! Thank you, PZ, for your consistent and unwavering support of feminism.
Horton @19, extraordinary claims made without extraordinary evidence, will be dismissed without further consideration. The only acceptable evidence will be by publication in a peer-reviewed journal, so you needn’t trouble yourself to present any here. :)
I am in a new-ish Humanist group. I got tired of women complaining about one of our board members (smart guy, educator at a local university). I called him out but the conversation did not go well. Fortunately the rest of the board is backing me up.
I feel like I failed at code-switching and could not get out of argument mode. The guy either could not or would not accept that there is a problem. We have a meeting today – I don’t know if he will be there or how we will interact if he is.
It’s not just about social justice (although it obviously is exactly just about that!). For our group to grow we need people to feel comfortable and safe in our meetings.
Nice one, rq :-)
and
good luck, Phil Crawford
Well the thing to me is words have multiple definitions, and all of them are, at all times and forever, determined by how people understand the words to mean and nothing else. All dictionaries have ever done is try their best to stay on the pulse of popular consensus as to the meaning(s) of this word or that.
Mouse means a rodent. Mouse means the pointing device I click on to submit this post. Key means a small tool to unlock a lock. Key means the buttons on a keyboard, or piano.
All I can say is this. To the public, all being an atheist means is “doesn’t believe in god”. It COULD mean more, representing a movement or a general consensus on the sort of people who are atheists, but that’s a very diverse and mixed notion rather than a broad consensus. There’s been a wholly necessary “schism” in atheism lately, separating humanists from those who aren’t. I think that this is the sort of thing that’ll be true for a long, long time to come. In this one small way, I agree with the “dictionary definition” types, I think that while the definition (the general public consensus) CAN be changed, it’ll be incredibly unlikely at this point, and probably it’s better to focus on the actual humanist causes themselves. The best we can hope for is that people acknowledge that atheists (still defined in their mind as “someone who doesn’t believe in god”) CAN be humanists, or they CAN be uncaring or misogynistic or otherwise indifferent to other’s suffering. Forcing people to change how they define words never seems to work as well as demonstrating it by our actions, then letting the public decide.
By that token, I’ll work with what consensus gives me. I’m an atheist, and I’m a rationalist, and I’m a humanist. I’m all of those things, and I think they complement each other. I hope for the day when, say “humanist” is seen as inclusive of those other notions, but until then I’ll just try to express myself clearly in language others are more likely to understand.