Do atheists lean left?

Adam Lee asks a question.

All these data points show that, while there’s no necessary connection between atheism and progressive political views, in practice it usually does work out that way. I leave it up to you, readers, to weigh in on why that is.

That’s an interesting question, and one that I think about sometimes. Maybe I should make that my talk at TAM. Or maybe I should make my talk at TAM be about sexism in the skeptic/secularist/atheist community. Or is there something even more guaranteed to be annoying that I could talk about? Locker rooms, gossip, naming names, evidence, slut-blaming, feminist-blaming, women-blaming, the economy and its relationship to registration for skeptic cons?

It’s between talking about the most guaranteed to be annoying thing I can think of, and just not going. I can’t make up my mind. Given that the head of the organization that invited me has recently gone out of his way to make me feel (to use the technical language) “unwelcome,” it has to be one of those.

Here’s what I think is one answer to Adam’s question: atheism is the rejection of god, and god stands for hierarchy and obedience. Atheism is inherently opposed to arbitrary hierarchy and demands for obedience. That by itself makes atheism tend progressive.

You can say “but libertarianism.” True. But then libertarianism is partly progressive.

Well there’s still South Dakota

Check your wallets, by which I mean various rights and freedoms and capabilities. North Dakota might pass an amendment to its constitution called the Religious Liberty Restoration amendment, and you know what that means. Religious liberty to deny children medical treatment, to hit them with sticks, to say that HoMoSeckShuals are evil, to refuse to provide women with abortions or contraception even when that is your job, to teach children that genocide is good and total obedience to “God” meaning to whatever is in the bible is mandatory. It means a lot of horrible fundamentalist shit dressed up as Religious Liberty and allowed to proceed, no matter how illegal it would be in any other context.

…opponents argue the measure is both unnecessary and potentially dangerous — and could raise new ways for people to define their own extreme religious views.

Gladys Cairns, the former administrator of North Dakota Child Protective Services, says she worries that criminals will hide behind a religious cloak.

“If I were a defense attorney, I’d be making sure that my client would be doing that,” she says.

It’s not as if this never happens.

Kill them all, children

The last one sounded like a joke but wasn’t, this one sounds like a nightmare and is. You know the Good News Club, the after-school program run by evangelical whack-jobs? They’re teaching children the glories of genocide.

This fall, more than 100,000 American public school children, ranging in age from four to 12, are scheduled to receive instruction in the lessons of Saul and the Amalekites in the comfort of their own public school classrooms. The instruction, which features in the second week of a weekly “Bible study” course, will come from the Good News Club, an after-school program sponsored by a group called the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). The aim of the CEF is to convert young children to a fundamentalist form of the Christian faith and recruit their peers to the club. [Read more…]

Reporting harassment and naming names

Maybe we can make a little progress here.

DJ Grothe has a comment on his Facebook wall (I don’t know if it’s public or not), replying to this comment:

I wish you could see, DJ, how a different frame would improve your position. Don’t say that the talk is causing a problem, say that the talk has increased the JREF’s desire to continue making TAM a safe and fun place for women.

D.J. Grothe: I certainly agree, and don’t believe any conversation about sexism is the problem — sexism is the problem. But there may be disagreement about the best ways to combat that problem. I favor direct communication and reporting harassment and naming names (such helps organizers remove offenders etc). And I remain optimistic that people of good will can disagree on such strategic issues and continue working in common cause.

Ok; this is one place where the gears start to grind, and maybe further discussion will help us make a little progress. (That’s what we want, right? Not Deep Rifts!! but explanation and better understanding. Right? But of course.)

Here’s the problem: it’s not that easy. It’s sooooooo not that easy.

Reporting sexual harassment (hereafter SH) is not easy – and by not easy I don’t mean it’s a nuisance, or difficult the way learning a new language is, I mean there are inherent problems and obstacles and penalties that make it all but impossible in most cases. I’ve just been chatting with some UK friends on Twitter about it, and they all instantly produced examples from their own experience.

  1. SH is by its nature covert. People usually don’t do it in crowded rooms full of witnesses, although sometimes they do, as Ashley Miller has been telling us.
  2. SH by its nature doesn’t leave evidence, unless it ends in rape.

1 and 2 all by themselves are enough to show that reporting and naming names are not always going to be even possible, let alone easy. Then there are all the other problems – it’s a friend, it’s a boss, it’s a colleague, it’s someone super-important or famous or money-giving or otherwise of value to the organization you work for; it’s a neighbor, a landlord, a relative, a friend’s relative.

Then there’s the “I’m a skeptic!” problem. On the one hand you have 1 and 2, and on the other hand you have people saying “I’m a skeptic, where’s your evidence?” People are saying this about SH among the atheists and skeptics right now, often with venom and malice and cunty epithets. So that’s another obstacle, innit. On the one hand women should report it and name names, on the other hand I’m a skeptic and where’s your evidence.

DJ, this is a problem. It’s a structural problem within skepticism. That’s not your fault or our fault (we women who have been talking about it lately), it’s just a problem. On the other hand when you blame us for talking about it in general terms instead of reporting it and naming names, well that much is your doing.

It’s only a ruddy cooking lesson

It’s good to see the Catholic church and all its offshoots and helper organizations and enablers finally learning some humility and even remorse.

Just kidding.

No, they’re not doing that, they’re doing the same old thing only more so. In Spain it’s another one of those reactionary legal associations named after Thomas More (fan of torture for heretics), prosecuting an artist for a film he made…34 years ago. Prosecuting him for what? For “offending religious feelings” – the stupidest “crime” on anyone’s books.

One of Spain’s leading underground artists is due to appear in court today facing up to a year in prison over a film short he made in 1978 on “how to cook Jesus Christ”.

Javier Krahe has been taken to court by a Catholic legal association, the Centro Juridico Tomas Moro, for “offending religious feelings” – a little-known offence. The Catholic association says the law has never before been applied in Spanish legal history.

The film is what the title makes it sound like – a jokey cooking lesson, ending with the punchline, “After three days inside, he comes out of the cooker by himself!”

And some falangist assholes think that merits a year in prison.

Degodwinization

Housework. Detailing. Metadiscussion. Tweaking. Reworking an argument that wasn’t done right the first time.

I said something in the Rebecca explains post, after quoting Rebecca saying

I should apparently put on a smile and pretend it doesn’t happen, because by reporting on my treatment, I am creating “a climate where women — who otherwise wouldn’t — end up feeling unwelcome and unsafe.”

I said this:

As Jews in Germany circa 1936 might have created “a climate where Jews — who otherwise wouldn’t — end up feeling unwelcome and unsafe.” As the Southern Poverty Law Center creates a climate where people who are the object of systematic vocal hatred end up feeling unwelcome and unsafe. That’s not to compare TAM with Nazi Germany or racist pockets of the US, of course, but then Rebecca didn’t name TAM in the item DJ quoted, either; she (or rather USA Today, indirectly quoting her) said “the freethought community.”

Orac pounced on that passage rather rudely and aggressively. [Read more…]

Skepticism gone wild

There’s such a thing as hyper-skepticism (as Jason calls it) – as skepticism pushed past (or steered right around) reasonable skepticism into its own opposite, questioning items that there’s no real reason to question. Evolution by natural selection is one such item; Obama’s birth in Hawaii is another; the utility of vaccinations is another; the superiority of non-alternative medicine to alternative medicine is another.

The reality of casual contempt for women is another. The fact that that reality makes at least some women feel less than “safe” is another.

Salty Current elucidates in a comment at Jason’s.

It’s not a safe space when women publicly talking about the problems of harassment and misogyny are accused by prominent people in the movement of doing it as some sort of self-promotion or drama-stirring for attention or blog hits, or when the behavior cited in their examples is ignored, dismissed, or excused. It’s not a safe space when women who talk about these issues publicly then have to face a stream of vicious, misogynistic attacks and slurs.

No, it’s not.It’s odd the way this fact keeps getting brushed aside. Streams of vicious verbal attacks feel like steps on the way to worse attacks, including violence. That’s not batshit crazy, you know, because sometimes streams of vicious verbal attacks are exactly that.

 

Words, actions, or attitudes

They’re on the story in the UK, too.

The skeptical community is aflame once again over the issue of sexual harassment following the remarks of JREF president DJ Grothe in response to a 50% reduction in female attendance at TAM 2012.

Remarks remarking that the angry feminazis scared off the women who should be registering for TAM because TAM is totally entitled to those women and the angry feminazis have a hell of a nerve scaring them off.

There is not really room to pretend there is not a real problem with sexism and harassment in our community, as this data from the American Secular Census shows, women are 26% more likely to feel unwelcome, discriminated against, or harmed at Secular events 14.4% of women have felt  unwelcome, discriminated against, or harmed in the secular movement and the factors that most influence these worrying statistics are as follows:

77% – Words, actions, or attitudes of other participants

46% – Words, actions, or attitudes of organizers, leaders, or employees

23% – Unwanted advances by other participants

15.4% – Unwanted advances by organizers, leaders, or employees

15.4% – Programs or positions of the organization itself

8% – Choice of activity or venue

Words, actions, or attitudes, you see – it’s not just unwanted advances. Unwanted advances are a pretty small percentage. It’s important to keep this in mind.

 

Wait – that was last year…

Ok there’s another thing…

I was re-reading Chris Hallquist’s post, trying to figure out what there is about what DJ said that he finds worth agreeing with, and I noticed something I overlooked before. From the much-quoted bit of the comment that DJ posted on more than one blog (two? more than two? I forget) –

Last year we had 40% women attendees, something I’m really happy about. But this year only about 18% of TAM registrants so far are women, a significant and alarming decrease…

Last year was very soon after The Great Eruption (of misogynist bile in response to elevator item). This year is in the wake of The Great Eruption. That could be part of the explanation right there. Women likely to attend TAM have had most of a year to digest The Great Eruption, and it may be that some of them just think there might be more of the same kind of thing at places like TAM because there is so much of it in other places. I think that myself, actually. I’m not certain about it, but I think it’s quite likely that there will be some Eruptionists at TAM, and that they might do some erupting.

I wonder if DJ has considered that possibility. I suppose even if he has he could still shove the blame onto people objecting to The Great Eruption as opposed to The Great Eruption itself, but still…I wonder.