A couple of days ago Ms. Magazine’s blog ran a piece claiming there were no female atheist leaders or forces, and that the atheist movement was unwilling to address the problem. After I posted my response and it spread around the atheist community, Ms. Blog asked me to do a guest post to “rectify” the previous article.
It’s up now. Here’s the beginning to give you a taste:
Where Are All The Atheist Women? Right Here
Is it accurate when the media portrays the atheist movement as a club for old white men? It’s undeniable that most of the time men outnumber women, whether you’re looking at conference attendees or conference speakers, blog readers or best-selling authors. But when Monica Shores wrote that “no women are currently recognized as leaders or even mentioned as a force within the movement,” the atheist community cried out.
Why? Because it’s blatantly untrue.
You can read the rest of the article here.
It’s hard squeezing everything I wanted to say when working with limited space, but I tried to give a more accurate representation of all the wonderful atheist women we have in the movement. Hopefully the nonreligious women who read this piece will realize that, yes, there is a community that’s welcoming to them.
Great job. I hope they let me comment through. :)
Bravo!
Nice. Succinct, thorough, well-written. Aaaaaaaand, without explicitly stating it, you gave the impression that the author of the previous piece was intellectually lazy, because anyone who knows anything can trip off two-dozen famous female atheist activists faster than you can say “two dozen famous female atheist activists”!Great job Jen!
I tried leaving a comment but who knows if it’ll get through? Anyway, wanted to say basically:You are profoundly awesome. It makes me sad that I left Seattle about the same time you moved there. Because we would’ve been besties. Or I might’ve stalked you. To-may-to to-mah-to.Anyway, thank you for being unapologetically, snarkily, scathingly, in-you-face-ly ass kicking. You give us feminist atheist womenfolks a good name (and keep us entertained at work, too!).
Very well done. And what April said.
Woot! Nicely done.
Great article, you used the limited space very effectively.
Excellent article. I posted as much over there but I see they’re still moderating comments.
Great job-you focused on your message instead of spending your whole time replying to hers. Lots of folks who never saw her fluff will read yours and be able to enjoy it.You should hit them up for a spot on their blogroll. Especially since they can see the fresh traffic you brought by their site.
Jen– you totally effing rock! Nicely done.
Perfect article! I too tried to comment, but there are so far zero comments so we’ll see. That very clearly and succintly summed it up, beautiful piece of work :)
I can see that there are about 10 comments pending moderation, so they’ll be up eventually. Unfortunately I’m not the one who decides which get to go through.
I wish there were a “Love” button instead of just a “Like” button.
Very nicely done, jen!
An excellent post. Props to Ms. Magazine for being so on-top of this issue. Writers for sites/magazines like Ms. are often under a lot of pressure to write about topics which they don’t have time to properly research. It’s not an excuse for the blatant misrepresentation that we saw in the last article, but it’s unfortunately not at all uncommon. I’m very impressed by how quickly Ms. responded to their error by getting someone outside their staff who actually knows the subject matter to write a post. Bravo, Ms. Magazine. And W00t, Jen! =D
why with the moderation, Ms?nice piece, J. i too hate that “keep it under X words” thingee. it’s damn annoying, as a blogger. there are reasons for it, for all i disagree with most of them.
[and i’m not saying i hate moderation, just that a 10 comment delay is Lame and makes people less likely to comment or come back to the site. marketing-wise, this is Bad.]
Excellent work! Well written and on point. You are certainly earning your place in the annals of “new” atheism.In my opinion, the short length of the article actually helps to spread the message. Fewer readers will give it the ol’ tl;dr.
Awesome I will go check it out right now!!!
*cheers from the sidelineThe awesome part for me is that you not only put in the short version there, but also linked your excellent original rebuttal post and the full list of female atheists. :)That and seeing that Ms. was open minded enough to respond to criticism and invite you over to guest post. It’s heartening seeing that kind of willingness to pursue the truth in the more mainstream media.
Just awesome. If I had a daughter I’d want her to be like you! I know your parents are proud.(Geez, you’ve got me gettin’ all paternal here…)
I think this is an excellent article Jen. It challenges (corrects) the incorrect assertion made by the author of the original article, and it doesn’t rely on vitriol or fallacious arguments. I like your essay’s organization: supporting your assertion by naming key women leaders, then addressing women leaders’ roles within the atheist community, then what the atheist community as a whole (including the “old men” leaders) to diversify the community, and rounding out with a nice reasoning on why correcting the original author’s misconceptions is important enough for you to write a rebuttal. The list of more out atheist women was icing on the cake. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your activism.
Definitely a great article. Its very strong but without being off putting and you managed to correct the previous article without spending most of the time attacking it in an un-constructive way (something I feel a lot of people wouldn’t have been able to do with such a blatant misrepresentation). Kudos! You are seriously my hero sometimes :)
Well done. Brevity is indeed the soul of wit, I’m sure you could have gone on, used more detail, expanded some of the points, but for reaching people outside of our group and a simple rebuttal, you handled it very well, hitting on all the salient points and really maximizing the bang for the buck. I find writing withing a constricted space is a great exercise, it helps you focus on your core argument, which you did very well.Also, I note that Boobquake was not mentioned in your mini-bio. That’s probably good. You likely rocketed to greater (in)fame with that event (I found your blog because of it) but you are clearly much more than that as a writer and a leader in the atheist community, so it’s good that you’re getting wider exposure without everyone focusing on that one event. Did that make sense?
Do they often get tidal waves of abusive trolling comments, necessitating such stringent moderation, or are they just slow?
The delay seems to reach to hours. I imagine they’re trying to keep anyone from seeing some of the rather nasty trollishness (it’s Ms. Magazine, imagine some of the stuff they must get), but this is the internet, and we’re big boys and girls. That kind of delay makes people think they’re being censored for their opinions. It’s a problem. My post seems to have simply gotten lost from the last article.
I’m not disagreeing with your evaluation of it being censorship, because it definitely is a form of it, but as a regular feminist blog reader, many sites moderate comments in a similar fashion to create a “safe space” for their readers. With Ms. in particular, their comments were once completely open and unmoderated, and it went, well, really badly.
I really loved the piece, Jen, especially the last few paragraphs where you started debunking some still-amazingly-popular myths about women and religion. I’ve heard them all my life, and they all make me gnash my teeth, so you have my endless thanks for calling them out.I left a comment on the actual post too, so hopefully they’ll ask you back (assuming you’d want to agree!) so we can read more of your awesome insights on atheism and feminism. Most feminist venues could benefit from adding a few more voices to the mix.
Excellent rebuttal!
Awesome post, Jen.
Unfortunately comments still not showing over there…
I wasn’t saying it was censorship, I was saying I understood, for the very reasons you mentioned, why they do it, but that when it takes as long as theirs does, it looks like censorship to a lot of people who are used to comments appearing instantly. It does seem to me that they could find a better way.
“Do they often get tidal waves of abusive trolling comments”Of course they do. This is America!
I have to ask what the motivation of the original article was. Was she offended by Boobquake? I don’t understand how someone could be so ill informed.
Comments? Hell, I can’t even get the page to load…
I think PZ’s link to the article may have killed the servers. Or at least slowed them down.
I concur.
Your guest post on Ms. Magazine won’t open for me, I’m getting a 404 error…and I’m using a really good computer, make sure it stays up!
Their site isn’t loading any more. Either they’re overloaded or they’re being poopy heads. Is there a way you can post your whole article here (assuming there would be no copyright issues)?
Since I can barely get the Ms. thing to load (it did… eventually), and fear even to click near their comments section for fear my systems will be sucked into some sorta asymptotically inefficient black hole of network badness, I’ll just say it here:Bravo, very good, and thank you so much for doing it.
Could it be that since PZ mentioned the article their servers haven’t been able to keep up with the sudden spike in traffic? Wouldn’t be surprising given PZ’s readership.
The leader of my local atheist group posted your article to the listserv, and heated emails are flowing! One person commented that woman are naturally more spiritual, and a woman sent a simple response: “Bullshit.”It should be interesting to discuss at our next meeting if people still remember it in late December.
I will buy your book.Promise.I am another white male atheist, and I think I have a lot to learn about equality.Jen McCreight, I bow to your wit, sarcasm, knowledge and passion.
Excellent work. If it stimulates dialogue between male and female atheists about sexism and stereotypes, even better.
Brava! Well done; I’m delighted to see that. (I couldn’t read it when it first went up, due to the aforementioned server crash.)
Is it just me or did all of the comments on the original “New Atheism” article disappear?Entirely…
Congrats, Jen, this is great!For what it’s worth, I feel like the religious naturalist community is practically run by women, people like Connie Barlow, Ursula Goodenough, and Mary Oliver. These people wouldn’t necessarily self-identify as “new athiests” (Barlow uses “creathiest,” for example), but they certainly are passionate about promoting a secular worldview. They (we, I should say, though I am male) just don’t see it as a rejection of religion, but rather a continuation of the iconoclastic, truth-seeking, and celebratory traditions that have always been a part of (some people’s) religious behavior. But I’m sure they would be supportive of you and your article.
Now how long before Ms. sees that you drive more traffic than their current blog and offer you a recurring slot?
Excellent article, it shows the point nicely. There really is a great deal of sexism in regard to women being expected to follow religious traditions more then men where I’m from, even the female free-thinkers I know are generally in the closet or consider themselves agnostics instead of atheists (mostly due to the negative connotations of being an atheist in the general (deeply stupid) populace).
I’ve come across your blog in a search for something, anything on women and atheism. I didn’t consider it until I started looking but it really is something of a boy’s club. Maybe it’s because men have an easier time being brash and outspoken, whether by nature or nurture, and that is the attitude needed in this minority movement. The non-religious women I know feel more comfortable sticking to a “no comment” sort of stance. The sentiment is out there, there just isn’t the same fire behind the female voice.But I’m glad to see you and others serving as the face of female atheism. We need more voices like yours out there.For the record, I’m a woman and an atheist and a six foot tall mathematician living in Alabama. I’m all kinds of societal conflict in one.