Clenched fist salute for the progressive cause of equality! No compromise!

I’ve long been a fan of Richard Dawkins’ Out Campaign, and think that kind of thing is the single greatest contribution to making public atheism atheism acceptable. It’s not the books, it’s not the leaders, it’s thousands of people standing up boldly and fearlessly asserting that they don’t believe in that nonsense and that we need to keep the magical thinking out of our lives.

The OUT Campaign allows individuals to let others know they are not alone. It can also be a nice way of opening a conversation and help to demolish the negative stereotypes of atheists. Let the world know that we are not about to go away and that we are not going to allow those that would condemn us to push us into the shadows.

…

It is time to let our voices be heard regarding the intrusion of religion in our schools and politics. Atheists along with millions of others are tired of being bullied by those who would force their own religious agenda down the throats of our children and our respective governments. We need to KEEP OUT the supernatural from our moral principles and public policies.

But what if the campaign changed? What if the RDF decided that we were maybe being a little too aggressive (they aren’t, don’t worry) and suggested an alternative strategy: keep quiet, call up your local priest, and have a private heart-to-heart with him. Tell him first that you’re thinking of coming out about your disbelief with friends and family; give him a chance to address your concerns. Let him keep his privileged authority in matters spiritual.

Not so impressive anymore, is it? In fact, the deference to the very people we oppose sounds downright pathetic and wimpy.

So you can imagine my response to the open letter to the secular community, deploring the aggressive rhetoric on blogs, and basically minimizing the hatred radiating from the anti-feminists to equate it with calling said anti-feminists mean names. It’s signed by many people I like and respect, leaders of various secular organizations, but it’s a gooey marshmallow of spineless diplomacy. Not interested. I know they mean well, and they’re just trying to find a formula to make us all one big happy family together, but I’m not about to throw causes I care about under the bus of a blithe starry-eyed atheism.

I’ll join The American Secular Census, Ophelia, Secular Woman, Dana, and Rebecca in rejecting the overtures of the Neville Chamberlain ‘appeasement’ school of secularists.

I will continue to cheerfully abuse the advocates of silence and sexism. And I won’t even pick up the phone to let them know first!

Reddit: working hard to bury their reputation ever deeper in the slime

A new tasteless meme is spreading across Reddit: good girl college liberal. As usual, I think you can guess what makes someone a “good” girl: it’s the willingness to do anything the guy with a copy of photoshop wants her to do. And what makes her a “college liberal”?

She’s topless.

I’ve never known that to be a common characteristic of women in college, liberal or otherwise, but as we all know, reality never interferes with a misogynist’s fantasies about how women should behave.

I’ve included an example below the fold. Breasts are blurred out, but you might still want to be careful about flashing the picture around the workspace.

[Read more…]

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Jill Filipovic points out that sexism in the workplace is alive and well.

If it sounds like I’m comparing the people who threaten Richards with rape to actual rapists, and the people who tacitly justify those threats with hand-wringing over what Richards could have done differently to rape apologists, it’s because I am. Despite attempts to characterize the internet as a space suspended outside of "real" life, cyberspace is real. It is a place where actual human beings connect, communicate, mobilize and work. And online harassment and misogyny very closely parallel harassment, misogyny and sexual violence in the "real" world.

The line is blurring between the physical and virtual world, and we’re not going to reduce a serious physical problem if we encourage it to flourish in a different domain.

Poll on gay marriage—not on our supreme court case, but in New Zealand

Wait, it’s our Supreme Court that is considering arguments on gay marriage. I guess New Zealanders can also consider it an important issue, but why are they getting is so wrong?

Which of the following best fits your view about marriage law?

It should remain only between a man and a woman. 56%
It should be changed to allow it between same sex couples. 39%
I don’t know/I don’t care. 5%

You know, in ten years people are going to be wondering what the heck was wrong with all the people opposing civil rights.

“Mad Men” isn’t a documentary, is it?

I really don’t get it. Somehow, a pair of ads for Ford were ‘leaked’, and Ford (or rather, the ad agency representing Ford) has hastily apologized.

We deeply regret the publishing of posters that were distasteful and contrary to the standards of professionalism and decency within WPP Group. These were never intended for paid publication and should never have been created, let alone uploaded to the internet. This was the result of individuals acting without proper oversight and appropriate actions have been taken within the agency where they work to deal with the situation.

Here’s one of the ads.

silvio-berlusconi-ford-ad

So the car has a large trunk, and the selling point of the ad is that Silvio Berlusconi can haul around a trio of bound/gagged women in it? WHAT?. They were “never intended for paid publication”…but what were they intended for? I am totally baffled. Was Ford contemplating an ad campaign to market this specific car to bondage fanatics and serial killers?

None of this makes sense. It should have been killed when someone first sketched it out in pencil…yet there they are, two professionally done, well polished images. I’m trying to imagine under what conditions this misbegotten mess would be considered a viable example of a serious campaign to sell a mass-market vehicle, and totally failing.

So…has the agency been dismissed for flaming stupidity and gross incompetence yet?

Speaking of terribly rude women…

Now Amina has disappeared.

The 19 year old Tunisian Amina who posted a topless photo of herself with the slogan “my body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honour” has disappeared. Most likely her family have kidnapped her and taken her to an unknown location, (earlier reports mentioned a psychiatric hospital). What’s clear is that they have removed all forms of communication from her so that she can no longer be reached.

Let’s have a discussion now about how impolitely exposing one’s breasts is a disproportionate response to the dudebros. She should have just had a quiet discussion in private with her imam.

Ars Technica weighs in on Adria Richards, and flaunts a double-standard

Here we go again. The Adria Richards story has settled into a couple of common themes, and Ars echoes the conventional wisdom. I’m very disappointed in this lazy editorial.

First, look at this nonsense:

Let’s start by spreading the blame where it’s deserved: on nearly everyone involved. The “Boy’s Club” mentality is thankfully no longer acceptable in tech, but it’s still common—some people have actually described tech to me as “men’s work.”

It’s no longer acceptable, but it’s common? Huh. Somebody didn’t think about what they were writing. We’ll just announce that the problem is nonexistent, while sweeping the reality of the situation aside.

But I’d like to point out something sneakier. Here’s the common message:

“Forking a repo” and “big dongles” must rank somewhere around “0.5: classless brospeak” on the seismic scale of harassing/menacing behavior toward women. While such sexually inappropriate comments are completely unnacceptable in professional settings (to many men as well as women), neither merits firing unless someone had a history of making unwelcome comments.

I think we all agree 100% that no one ought to have been fired over this incident. The major villains here are the two companies that used this event as an excuse to axe a couple of employees.

But notice what else everyone is saying: what the two guys did was trivial and minor, “‘0.5: classless brospeak’ on the seismic scale of harassing/menacing behavior toward women”. Keep that in mind for a moment. That kind of thing has been said a lot.

Yet these two men don’t get all of the blame. One recurring theme on message boards and chat rooms, including our own, is that while Richards had every right to report the behavior of the two men to conference organizers, snapping their photograph and posting it publicly to “Twitter shame” them was a step too far (speaking of a step too far, there are other, more repugnant recurring themes among commenters, too). They’re right; going public was not the only way Richards could get a relatively minor issue addressed. She could have confronted the two men or she could have gone straight to PyCon. Her actions only escalated the situation.

It’s a “relatively minor issue”. OK, let’s go along with that for a moment…let’s say it really was an inconsequential, negligible faux pas by the two guys. But if that’s the case, what is this bullshit?

…snapping their photograph and posting it publicly to “Twitter shame” them was a step too far…

Was it something to be ashamed of, or not? Was it a horrible, embarrassing thing to publicize, or was it a “relatively minor issue”? You don’t get to have it both ways. Either it was too damaging to make public, or it was a slight affront that shouldn’t seriously affect any of the participants — it was a minute impropriety that was perfectly reasonable to mention on a casual, conversational medium like Twitter.

This is what’s really pissing me off right now: the flagrant dishonesty of all these people having the vapors over someone posting a photo on Twitter and saying someone’s behavior was “not cool”. Jesus. Have they ever fucking used Twitter? It’s non-stop chatter — just today I’ve been accused of being a “Nazi” and of being “evil”. Please, Ars Technica, do your tut-tut routine right now over all the naughty people ‘Twitter shaming’ right and left. Please also express your sadness that thousands of tweets are going up right now ‘Twitter shaming’ Adria Richards in far more outrageous terms than “not cool.”

Are people seriously proposing that somehow Twitter should be policed for manners, and we should start wagging our fingers at people who dare to rebuke others via that medium? If so, half my correspondents are going to have to shut up. This is ridiculous. Richards’ comment was minor, was appropriate, and was addressing a real issue in a reasonable way.

And then there’s this:

In a blog post explaining the story in her own words, Richards wrote about how, over the course of the jokes, she moved from “I was going to let it go” to “I realized I had to do something.” The moment of decision came after seeing a picture of a young girl on the main stage who had attended a Young Coders workshop. “She would never have the chance to learn and love programming,” Richards wrote, “because the ass clowns behind me would make it impossible for her to do so.”

Clearly, this is hyperbole. These two guys weren’t going to prevent anybody from doing anything. Suddenly, a couple off-color jokes represented all the serious forces that can hold women back from tech careers. While denouncing bad behavior certainly has its place, proportion is important—and this approach to these jokes simply makes it harder to have a sincere discussion about misogyny and men’s/women’s issues in the workplace.

It’s only hyperbole if you misinterpret it. No, I doubt Richards thought these two guys were going to run up on the stage and slap awards off the podium and denounce the young girl being recognized. Richards was referring to a culture that considers those kinds of off-color remarks reasonable in a professional setting. Remember, “it’s still common”. That is what inhibits women from participating in these opportunities.

We’re living in a world where those off-color jokes are dismissed as “classless brospeak”, not worth making a fuss over, while someone tweeting a picture of someone engaging in “classless brospeak” is a disproportionate response, and “makes it harder to have a sincere discussion about misogyny and men’s/women’s issues in the workplace”.

But unwanted sexual innuendo doesn’t? Both men and women make jokes about sex, of course, and there’s a tricky line to be drawn between what’s appropriate and what isn’t, but one of the things I’m seeing all over the place is that in the conversation about where to draw the line, women are expected to shut up; that when they do speak up, however mildly, and say “not cool” or “guys, don’t do that”, boom, the guyverse explodes and denounces the damned uppity woman in either the most furious and violent terms possible, or with polite little suggestions that maybe they should be quieter next time.

But you know, the latter is almost as bad as the former. It’s the privilege of the majority to use politeness to maintain the status quo, while it’s a necessity for the minority to assert the right to offend.