The day after

Paul Fidalgo reports on the conference for The Morning Heresy. (He’s another one of those people – like Rebecca – who are just consistently very funny. He did a tweet that cracked me up – approximately: “I could do a ‘this is what an atheist looks like’ ad but no one would be surprised.”)

Now that was a conference!

This was no egg-headed snoozer, this was no reiteration of why we like Darwin so much (not that there’s anything wrong with those). The Women in Secularism conference was as fantastic, fulfilling, and enlightening an event as we could ever have hoped.

I think that too. Also.

Susan Jacoby did the first talk. I didn’t liveblog that one because the panel I was on was next and I didn’t want to cross wires, if you see what I mean. I’m not good at multitasking. (Neither is anyone else. People think they are, but they’re wrong. Studies show this. People are confused because they can physically multitask, but they do the tasks badly. The fact that it’s physically possible to hold a book in front of your eyes while talking on the phone doesn’t mean you can read a book and talk on the phone at the same time. But that’s by the way.) I’m a plodder. I need to concentrate. I could listen to Jacoby’s talk without crossing wires, but liveblogging it too seemed a wire too many. Or maybe I was just being lazy.

Anyway: she said among other things that it has happened that when someone asks “why no women in atheism?” some men will cheerfully reply that it’s because women are too stupid.

Well, you know, that is what it is at bottom: that people think that. Too stupid and too Nice, which is perhaps the product of being too stupid.

That’s what I talked about for my opening remarks for the panel. The perception of women, and the fact that in some ways a certain kind of feminism – difference feminism – has enforced it rather than undermining it. We are seen as too stupid and too Nice (or, in an exciting twist, too bitchy) for pretty much everything. We must be, or we wouldn’t be so conspicuously missing from popular culture, and we wouldn’t be so staggeringly vapid when not missing.

This is not something it’s easy to change. I know this, because I know feminists have been trying to change it since at least 1970, and in some ways it’s worse than it was then.

Younger generation – your task is plain. Get to it. Thank you.

How to go a-flying

Ways to be not a good polite considerate air traveler.

Take advantage of your aisle seat to extend your leg all the way out into the aisle and then wave your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails up and down up and down up and down.

Take advantage of your aisle seat to cross your right leg over your left knee so that your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails is almost in the lap of the politely restrained atheist woman in the other aisle seat, and then keep inching it closer and closer.

Put your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails on your knee and clean it out between the toes, carefully dropping whatever you find onto the aisle floor.

Put your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails back into its sandal for awhile and stick it out into the aisle in order to stamp it heavily at irregular intervals.

Seize your enormous dirty bare foot with its smashed toenails and weave your fingers into the toes as if you were holding hands with your own foot.

Do all these things without ceasing for 5 hours on a completely full flight.

“Take the Flour Back” has started the vandalism, intends more

I am in receipt of a message from the researchers at Rothamstead via Sile Lane (Sense About Science). It’s urgent and it matters so I’ll just post the whole thing.

Dear Petition Signatory

A forwarded note from the GM wheat research team at Rothamsted:

Dear Signatory

Thank you very much indeed for all your support on this petition and kind emails since our appeal.

We have the bad news that yesterday an individual broke into the experimental site and caused substantial damage. However, the overall integrity of the experiment has not yet been compromised. This is even more reason why we are extremely worried that the Take the Flour Back group is continuing with plans for direct action to destroy our GM wheat experiment entirely next Sunday. It has now issued logistical instructions for doing this and a ‘legal briefing’ for activists.

The group says it wants to destroy the crop because of a ‘contamination’ risk through cross-pollination with other wheat in fields a long way away. Their reason for pulling it up on 27 May was that “wheat is wind-pollinated” and that this was the last weekend before pollination is likely to occur. They did not seem to realise when they booked this date that wheat is in fact self-pollinating, and that therefore almost no pollen leaves the plant, let alone the field. We have informed them of this misunderstanding, but to no avail. They have also refused our offer to debate the issues in public in front of an audience, saying they do not have the “capacity” to field a speaker.

In the thousands of signatories on the petition against destroying our research, there are many diverse voices, including farmers, environmentalists, people local to Rothamsted, researchers in other fields, writers, musicians and all walks of life. We know many of you want to do something to help, and may feel angry and powerless about this latest vandalism. However, in discussions with the authorities, we cannot have our supporters counter-protesting on the day as it would provoke the kind of conflict that we have been trying to avoid. The only way forward is through communication and verbal engagement.

Take the Flour Back don’t need to hear angry invective, but as a last ditch attempt at getting them to call off their action, we think they should understand why so many people oppose destroying the research. The only way we know of reaching them is at info@taketheflourback.org. Although they may not reply, they will be taking note of the strong support that we have received.

Best regards

Toby Bruce (Scientist specialising in plant-insect interactions, Team Leader)

Gia Aradottir (Insect Biology, Postdoc )

Huw Jones (Wheat Transformation, Coinvestigator)

Lesley Smart (Field Entomology)

Janet Martin (Field Entomology)

Johnathan Napier (Plant Science, Coinvestigator)

John Pickett (Chemical Ecology, Principal Investigator)

Here it comes

The pushback has started. Well you knew it would.

Catherine Dunphy has an article on the Women in Secularism conference at RDF – an original, not a link. There are sneery how dare you comments from some usual suspects (like Geoffrey Falk, for instance, who has been shouting at me for years for glaring faults like having no tits). It’s all so reflexive, you know? “How dare you say there’s sexism in the atheist movement, you shrill strident hysterical ugly bitch with no tits?!!”

Siiiiiiiiiiiigh

Oh fuck. Plane broken, of course. Delay of hour and fifteen minutes. I’ll get in WAY LATE at night.

No, now it’s an hour and a half.

Blargh.

I shouldn’t be posting this. It’s a tweet at most. Very self-indulgent.

But blargh.

Update. Well that was a quick reversal of fortune. They changed their minds and decided to give us a different plane, instead, at a different gate, so suddenly instead of being in a smelly faux-leather chair surrounded by smelly people with a view of smelly people (no offense – we’re all smelly) I’m in one of those airport rocking chairs (what a great idea!) facing a huge bank of windows with a view of the office towers of Charlotte and planes taking off, and people sparse and at a much pleasanter distance. Gosh.

Who knew Charlotte had office towers? To be perfectly honest I don’t even know where Charlotte is, despite having spent some time in NC a mere couple of decades ago. It’s…middleish, I think. It’s fer sher not in the mountains (which are beautiful, by the way), nor is it on the coast…so that leaves middleish.

Second airport of the day

Charlotte airport. Yes right, flying due south is just the way to get from DC to Seattle – sigh.

I’m processing it all. It was terrific fun.

Rebecca’s great. Don’t let anybody tell you different. She’s funny as hell – that’s not a big surprise, but it’s not something she can do only when facing a webcam or at a podium or on Twitter…wait…that’s too many only ins…Ok it’s something she can do in all the places.

Jamila’s like that too.

Lauren Becker is a genius at keeping things on time without being even a little bit obnoxious. Melody thought of the whole thing. Ron, as he said, approved it.

Boarding. Ah me. Six hours of fun.

Catch you tomorrow.

Final talk – Margaret Downey

Margaret Downey makes the undeniable (surely!) point that holidays are fun, and secularists should take over the work of Doing Fun Holidays.

Let’s celebrate with a Tree of Knowledge.

Even Tom Flynn says that’s a good plan!

Hang books on the tree. Celebrate knowledge, and reading, and free speech.

Chester County: the human tree of knowledge.

Too often the non-theist community disappears in winter. If we don’t show up, it looks as if we’re not welcome.

Visit www.secularseasons.org. “It’s up to us to make sure that secular celebrations are meaningful and honest.”

Children from a non-theist home are faced with a lot of peer pressure.

www.secular-celebrations.com

This is a helpful thing for ex-clergy.

Margaret calls Linda LaScola up to join her on the stage so that she can answer questions later.

“Many public officials simply do not comprehend what ‘secular’ means.” They think non-denominational is secular, so “holy matrimony” and “in the eyes of god” are ok for civil marriage. Wrong!

Reba Boyd Wooden takes the stage. Secular Celebrants at www.secularhumanism.org

“Or the bride has to promise to obey. I think I did this 50 years ago, but I didn’t mean it when I said it.”

Indiana is well represented here. Reba at the mic right now, Jen in the audience a couple of rows in front of me.

Fox News in Indiana have been very good to CFI Indiana – very fair. Huh. Whaddya know.

Writers for secular ceremonies: Ingersoll, Keats, George Eliot, Thoreau. (Jennifer Michael Hecht name-checked Keats in her poetry reading last night. High five!)

“Our legacy is our afterlife.”

Question: does the trend for same sex marriage help or hinder the movement for secular celebration? Margaret and Reba: it helps!

Linda LaScola on what clergy are like. The one thing the ones she knows have in common: wherever they started out, they all end up as liberal.

Celebrating non-superstition. Friday the 13th. The Museum of Superstition. Great because the press love it. Next bash: September 13, 2013, in Pennsylvania. Mark your calendars.

Making connections

Yesssssssss.

After I talked to Wafa last night at dinner I had an urgent need to talk to Liz Cornwell about connecting Wafa with the RDF so that Wafa will no longer need to broadcast her Arabic-language tv show via a Christian station. I just – in the last few seconds of the break – found Liz, and she’s already on it. Yesssssssss!

Wafa needs to be in the secularist movement; the secularist movement needs Wafa on board.

Welcome aboard, Wafa!

Sunday morning liveblogging

It’s 9:03. People are milling. I can’t mill because I’m tapping on Simon’s laptop.

Last night at dinner I sat between Wafa and Annie Laurie. Jen, Ingrid, Greta, Simon, and Melody finished the circle. Good company.

Wafa asked me about penalties for being atheist, legal and social. (She says she always asks about that; she’s gathering the big picture.) I was able to point out Jessica at the next table and say what her penalties had been.

I also got a chance to talk to Jessica for a few minutes. She’s looking forward to the post-high school phase of her life.

Jennifer Michael Hecht is introducing the panel. The panel is Jen, Greta, Jamila, and Debbie.

Jen points out that Secular Students are growing hugely while Cru (as secular students call Campus Crusade for Christ) is going in the opposite direction…and they have WAY more money. Go us!

Greta says if the LGBT movement had had the internet in 1969 – wo.

When the internet blows up, it’s different. Hmmm. When the internet blows up about sexism, at least people think sexism is bad. Hmmm. I’m not sure about that.

(What do you think, Linda? I think the internet is [at least also] enabling sexist discourse, and fanning enthusiasm for it and a “community” of it the way it is for, say, atheists and secularists.)

Jamila: “Frankly, I’m a loudmouth and I like words.”

The future should be informed by the past.

“You don’t want to use birth control? Well be Quiverfull and get a show on the Discovery channel.”

Debbie: “So we weren’t really serious about that two minute thing, right?” [laughter]

The movement is broadening as the people involved become more varied. “As the scope broadens we’ll see more people involved.”

Jennifer says her next question is about coalitions. Is it a good idea for us to make coalitions with more liberal kinds of religion? Jen says it’s fine to work with religious groups but we don’t want to do “interfaith” because faith is not a good thing. Yeah.  

Jamila’s little boy is upstairs at the daycare. At his school 13% of the kids are at grade level in science. She’s willing to show up at his school. She might not wear her “show me on the doll where Jesus touched you” T shirt. But there are going to be times when the price is too high. There are going to be times when if you can’t sign the statement of faith you can’t participate. “You can’t come in unless you’re willing to cover. Your name is ‘Bey,’ what’s the problem?”

Debbie: we realize sometimes that there are groups who don’t want us there, because we’re atheists. Some feminist groups are full of woo, so that’s another kind of coalition-building – atheist feminists working with feminist groups and bringing along some skepticism. Ohhh yes.

Debbie: “the problem comes when people assume they know what everybody wants.” Everybody wants to hold hands; nuh uh. Everybody wants to talk about science all day; nuh uh.”

Jamila is invited to a secular inquiry parents group. “Wow, a parents’ group; I have a child; that’s really convenient.” And then – “Nobody starts a sentence with, ‘My child is an indigo child.'”

“This is why I’m so big about ‘be who you are, wear a button.'” We need to do more family stuff and bring kids so they get good memories and they will grow up in the movement.

Greta: “When it’s hard to come out, the people who come out are people who don’t care that much what people think of them.” That’s going to change. Now the movement is growing we’re going to get more people who are social, and do care what people think of them.”

Simon’s battery is about to die. I can’t spot him in the room. Will fall silent in a minute.

Or maybe 19 minutes, which might get me through.

Debbie: was there a world before YouTube? We all need more history. Yes we would benefit; no that’s not why people come to meetings.

Jamila: “We need to let people know there were always people who doubted.”

“I wish we did more reading as a society, especially since I’m a journalist. But then I’m a journalist on the radio…”

Greta: a focus on history shouldn’t mean getting stuck doing things the way they’ve always been done.

Jamila answers audience question: “As a journalist who covers women’s health issues, I’m a little pessimistic.” A journalistic shout-out. “Women don’t do op-eds.” There’s a thing called the Op-ed Project; google it and act accordingly.