I’ve just thought of something – well, a few minutes ago, while walking up the street.
Remember the opening of The God Delusion? “I didn’t know I could”? Remember the way the argument turns on that idea – not knowing you can get out, and consciousness raising as the first step to getting out?
Well that’s feminism, you know. Knowing you can. That’s where consciousness raising came from, remember?
The two rebellions have a great deal in common, you know. Both rebel against the principle of male authority and arbitrary hierarchy. Both are about humans standing up straight instead of squirming on the ground. Both are fundamentally about a break with monarchy.
So it’s odd that a segment of the atheist movement (though not the biggest segment) is so hostile to feminism. Big gods, little gods, it’s all the same shit. No kings, no priests. Thank you for your attention in this matter.
I’m sure that those anti-feminist atheists view it as a rejection of another dogma, i.e. supposed feminist dogma. (And FWIW, it’s worth applying a skeptical razor to those aspects of feminism which could rightly be called dogma, e.g. the unfortunate transphobia that infects a lot of second-wave feminism)
Of course, in that vein, I think they are falling into the trap that a certain type of agnostic falls into, the whole false middle, pox-on-both-your-houses thing. I’ve actually built on that analogy in the past — in that, I don’t think it’s necessarily incumbent on skeptics and atheists (or anybody, for that matter) to be a feminist, in the same way that I don’t think it’s necessarily incumbent on rational thinkers to take a strongly atheistic position; but I do think it’s important not to throw those who do under the bus. You can choose your wishy-washy agnosticism and I’m fine with that, just don’t call me a “fundamentalist atheist” or any of that hogwash because I choose to take a strong stance; and by the same token, don’t feel compelled to be a feminist if you aren’t feeling it and/or it doesn’t interest you, just don’t be anti-feminist.
Welcome to the misogynist troll / slimepitter / MRA side.
James I waded into that slimepit (not THE slimepit, but another one) the other day. Trying to explain that no, most feminists don’t want to dominate men and ensure that men become the subordinate gender and so and people just wouldn’t have any of it.
These people really do have this “caricature” of over the top overly moralistic and judgmental feminists. The reason I put it in quotes is that it’s not a complete caricature. I’ve met them, I’ve seen them. They do exist. I want absolutely nothing to do with them. Even if I agree with them. Hell, especially if I agree with them. They’re just not common or even a majority of the movement. Not even close.
Getting from here to there, getting over that hurdle is going to be tough, a lot of work, and a lot of fighting. And it needs to be done. But, it’s not going to be easy.
Shouldn’t we all remember:
“No gods, no masters!”
I’ll just suggest adding:
“no ‘libertarians,’ no randroids!”
So “you’re either with us or you’re against us,” is that it? Seriously, this kind of fucking asshole comment is a non-trivial part of why the misogynist troll / slimepitter / MRA side has such an easy time convincing people that there’s an inviolable dogma here.
I like to consider myself a feminist, and it is an issue that is very important to me. However, being more than 12 years old, I recognize that not every single person can be an activist about every single thing. I don’t begrudge people for not necessarily being an activist in favor of everything that I am an activist in favor of. I do ask that people don’t take the opposite position, that they don’t actively seek to undermine people who are working hard to further important issues. That is both important and practical.
This is actually worse than “You’re either with us or against us.” You are basically saying, “Unless you believe that everyone is either with us 100% or against us 100%, you are automatically against us 100%.” Seriously, fuck you.
It’s a good point, and one that baffled me when Dawkins came out with “Dear Muslima.” It’s not just that he’d addressed the “some people have it worse” argument with respect to religion before, but it’s the whole bit in “God Delusion” about consciousness-raising, and specifically the issue of the “-man” suffix. Like, is that on-par with the genital manipulation example he wielded at Rebecca Watson? Does the hierarchy of “issues facing women” go FGM > gendered job titles > harassment at conventions?
Or was his first response to a feminist who said “maybe you should say ‘chairperson,'” a similar haughty, self-important letter?
@karmakin: Yeah, I know that such “feminists” do exist (just as dogmatic nihilistic atheists do exist here and there), but I don’t mention them at all anymore because a) as you say, they are just so rare; b) also as you say, the “misogynist troll / slimepitter / MRA side” (of which I am apparently now a part of, whee!) spends so much time pretending that all, or even many, feminists are like that; and c) as I’ve gotten older, I really kinda have started to understand how those rare individuals wound up with the positions they have… And in any case, I think a man-hating feminist has much more of a point than a feminist-hating MRA. The former is being unfair, but at least there is a legitimate grievance there, albeit a misdirected one.
So yeah, I don’t even mention that most of the time.
I guess I should clarify a bit when I said that it’s okay not to be a feminist… Depending on how one defines the term, it might actually not be okay, but I was defining at as someone who actively educates themselves about feminist issues and speaks out about them (even if said speaking out is as simple as posting on Facebook or chatting with friends). In that light, not everybody has to be a feminist, because not everybody has to speak out on every singe important issue — there simply aren’t enough hours in the day.
But, it breaks me heart when young women say things like, “Oh, I’m not a feminist” or “I’m not one of those feminists”, decrying it like it’s a bad thing. To actively disclaim the label, it’s just really disappointing. And it’s because the slimepitters have managed to sell to young women this idea that a “feminist” is someone who — well, all the things you described. So now they recoil from the label in horror. And that’s just really sad.
Like I (tried to) say: You don’t have to be an activist about everything, but if people are fighting a good fight it is terrible and wrong to throw them under the bus just because you aren’t as passionate about that particular issue.
Ha! I’m glad I’m not the only one who recalled Dawkins’ discussion of “consciousness-raising” in The God Delusion. I was actually about to make a comment about that very thing, and now I see the point has already been raised!
Here’s the passage, which starts on p. 115 of the God Delusion US hardback:
From the same pen as “Dear Muslima”! The inevitable conclusion is that this passage was added by the copy editor.
(Actually, I’m not a great fan of argument from etymology. If etymology always held the truth of current meaning, then pontiffs would be bridgebuilders, naughty children would be void inside and, as Borges pointed out, sarcophagi would be the opposite of vegetarians.)
Oh, wow! I guess “stalinists”, “maoists”, “pol potians”, and “kim jongians” are always welcome to be in the vanguard of the free-thinking atheists 😀
@ 5 jamessweet
Would it not be truer to say that that kind of “fucking asshole comment” is evidence that there is an inviolable dogma here? The only question remaining is the degree to which this attitude is prevalent.
In the opinion of many – and I think it takes only a short period of lurking to reach this conclusion – the answer is; so prevalent as to be almost de rigueur.
You have just had a small taste of precisely what Paula Kirby (and Becky Friedman and others) has been complaining about. To quote Kirby:
Any suggestion, no matter how mildly phrased or how in keeping with the principles of skepticism, that The Sisterhood might not be automatically and wholly right by default has been met with torrents of abuse, and a pot-pourri (actually, dung-heap would seem a more appropriate metaphor) of accusations ranging from troll at the lower end, through slimebag, douche etc, right up to misogynist or even rape-apologist.
Yet FtBers continue to blithely insist that this attitude does not exist, and that the only explanation for this criticism is that the critics are “anti-feminist”.
@1&5
James, I request a read all the way through.
I do think that at any given point, anyone old enough and inteligent enough to have their own mind about things can either be part of the problem or part of the solution. This is true about sexism (often misogyny), racism, ableism/disableism, homophobia, transphobia, religious discrimination, etc. While there is some room for disagreement within the communities that fight these, it pales in comparison with the disagreement about it outside. In any given issue, at any given time, the groups fighting these can rightly say people are either with them can rightly say, “You can be part of the problem” or even “You’re either with us or against us.” When a group is fighting the staus quo, sticking to the status quo makes a person be part of the problem in that particular issue.
Do you understand that when you say “I don’t think it’s necessarily incumbent on skeptics and atheists (or anybody, for that matter) to be a feminist” you may be read as saying you don’t think they have a duty to see women as people (equal to men)?
I’m also “more than 12 years old” and “recognize that not every single person can be an activist about every single thing” (when activism is defined in a narrow sense). Moreover, I recognize that no one will be right everything all the time. I do think it’s incubent on everyone to hold certain values regarding all humankind, something like, “Every living person is of equal value and has equal dignity. Because of this, each deserves equal respect and right. Denying the inherent equivalent humanity of any subset of the species is an affront against all humankind.” to hold to that would mean one must fight against all the prejudices I listed above, especially against them taking up residence in one’s own heart. I don’t think everyone must march for every cause, but I do think that everyone should stand up for human dignity when they see it assaulted in their daily lives.
Ni Dios, ni amo.
@AnyBeth: I think my clarification starting in the 3rd paragraph of comment #7 should cover what you said. I repeat that not everyone can be an activist about every thing.
Look at SilentBob’s response at #10 and see what this kind of “with us or against us” mentality is doing. It’s not productive.
My point is that if a given skeptic doesn’t feel passionate about speaking out in favor of an anti-harassment policy (for example), that’s okay (it’s not admirable, but it’s not damning either) because not everybody has to speak out about every single thing that is right at all times. YOU DON’T DO THAT EITHER. Trust me. What is not okay is speaking out against an anti-harassment policy.
If you can’t see the difference, I don’t know what else to say.
The other thing that is frustrating about this is that certain folks, in their take-no-prisoners zeal, are missing the thrust of my comment: I am trying to point out a problem with a particular mentality, namely, the person who says to herself, “I don’t feel particularly passionate about this issue and don’t have a lot of interest in debating it or speaking out about it… therefore, I can just assume without thinking about it that both sides are equally wrong, and I am going to constantly tell them to shut up!” The part after the ellipsis does not at all follow from the part before, and yet too many people seem to feel that it does.
That’s my point. I want to take people in that category, and shift them into silent allies by convincing them that, while they might not wish to personally speak out about these issues, the sides are not equal and when they throw other people under the bus for being passionate about it then they are being part of the problem. By contrast, folks like msironen want to take people in that category, and throw them in the slimepit.
I have to admit that I rolled my eyes a bit at jamessweet’s first comment, but I was shocked by msironen’s response. The difference between his comment and those from the slimepit is dramatic, to say the least. I suspect that even SilentBob knows that, though I doubt he’d admit it.
I agree with James that it’s sad that so many people–especially young women– eschew the feminist label. I saw that a lot in the late 80’s when I was in grad school in chemistry. I also noticed that there were a lot of first-year women grad students who were anti-feminist, but very few third or fourth-years were. Life in a male-dominated field had taught them that the detractors of feminism were wrong. It’s extraordinarily frustrating that “there is no problem” seems to be the default assumption. For young women (and some young men), I suspect it’s wishful thinking. For women my age or Paula’s, it betrays an appalling lack of generosity of spirit. For men, of course, it can show anything from privilege blindness to outright misogyny.
Nonetheless, James is right that many who refuse to self-identify as feminists may be quite a bit more feminist than they think. I am reminded of Daniel Dennett’s “You Might Be an Atheist If…” talk, in which he ends by saying that if you believe God is a concept, you’re definitely an atheist. If no one has done that for feminism, the time is certainly ripe for it.
If you think sexual harassment policies should be totally uncontroversial, you might be a feminist. Or you might just have good sense.
If you think a woman should be able to speak her mind without getting rape threats, you might be a feminist.
If you notice that arguments and suggestions are often ignored when they come from women, but applauded when they come from men, you’re probably a feminist.
If you noticed that the men constantly interrupted the women during Penisgate, you might be a feminist. If you noticed the same phenomenon, but to a much lesser degree, in the last FtB roundhouse, you get that good will is not enough to overcome our socialization, and you’re probably a feminist.
If you don’t confuse the word “patriarchy” with “men,” then you’re almost certainly a feminist.
If you understand that we *all* need to make a conscious effort to overcome that socialization, then you’re definitely a feminist.
OK, that’s just off the top of my head. I’d love to see what Ophelia & the other FtB bloggers could do with this.
But is that true? You seem to be falling into the same trap as Rebecca Watson, who frequently cites abusive messages on the Internet as evidence of some wider problem in the atheist community. But does a handful of vocal people with unlimited time on their hands really say anything about any community? They could be 13-year-olds, for all we know. This is not good data.
We are talking about the Internet. The whole world. Out of the whole world, shouldn’t we expect outliers to congregate? 100 abusive people may cause a lot of trouble, but remember that’s 100 from all over the world. The Internet isn’t intuitive in this sense, and the disproportionate weight given to trolls is a cognitive mistake resulting from a mistaken assessment of the problem. It’s simply a fallacy to conclude that 100 — or even say 1000 — is actually representative of anything. Thirteen-year-olds should not count one iota toward the behavior of millions of adults around the world. I’ve been to conferences all over, and I’ve never noticed one single problem regarding sexual harassment.
Why do you give this little clan of trolls so much power? They love to see you chatting them up all the time. You are their greatest gift.
But the segment I had in mind in this post (though to be sure I didn’t spell it out) was Paula Kirby and her fans, who do represent “a segment of the atheist movement,” so yes, it is true. She wrote partly to avenge DJ Grothe, so that’s also part of the segment. Combine RDF and JREF and that’s a pretty big segment, and it’s not just a few teenagers on the Internet.
Well, it’s a big problem. And IMO it’s a growing problem, people who are actively anti-feminist. I also think that more people are becoming more feminist every day. Both can co-exist, and in fact, the former can be caused by the latter. I think this is happening in terms of religion and theism as well. The more we “win” the stronger the resistance is going to be.
And as I said above, a lot of it is the caricature. Which means that it’s really a massive lack of real communication. But at the same time, we should do our best to fight the caricature. And if that means calling out people on our side who do fit the caricature, and making sure that people understand that what we want isn’t extreme, and it’s not absolutely black and white (I.E. We’re all sexist in some way, and that’s the nature of the problem..it’s systematic and it’s cultural and because of that often it’s automatic) and start to push back against anti-feminist memes.
Penn Jillette, thunderf00t, Paula Kirby, and Russell Blackford and are all demonstrably not 13 years old.
Martha: Thanks for your comment. I am thinking I didn’t explain myself very well in my initial comment, hopefully it is clearer now what I meant. In any case, it means a lot for someone to say they disagreed with me yet still found msironen’s response shocking. I thought I might get some pushback from saying “not everyone has to be a feminist”, but I never thought I’d get lumped in with the MRAs and slimepitters(!) — especially since I am passionate about these issues and consider them very important!
James – I’m sorry I didn’t say anything at the time in response to that comment. I’m not sure why I didn’t…but I think I thought it was just one of those misreadings that can happen, and would get corrected swiftly. I should have done the swift correcting though. I usually do. Sorry.
O. Benson, so you are claiming that Paula Kirby is “so hostile to feminism”. However I haven’t seen anything to indicate that the claim could be even remotely true, and I would even say that it is demonstrably false.
If msironen’s other posts on this blog network are any indication, he was just mocking feminists and/or FTB.
@ 21 – how interesting. You need to back it up though.
Oh – so that was a troll comment?! Oh honestly. Fuck off, all of you.
Oh, heh, okay, that makes a lot more sense if true.
It also makes SilentBob’s comment hilarious, if true. “See! Someone from our side doing a caricature of your side proves that the caricature is accurate!” hahahahaha…
Msironen fooled me, too, James. “Oh honestly. Fuck off, all of you” is exactly the right response.
On the other hand, I’m glad you didn’t actually need my support!
It’s a sad microcosm of the current dispute, isn’t it?
@13
James, I really was just addressing the comments I mentioned. I honestly don’t even know how many of the later comments I saw, as I was just writing my comment in a text editor with the post I was responding to in the browser window under it. Either I missed or never saw your 7 and I’m pretty sure I didn’t see 10. (Even so, I’d have to take your word that it shows “with us or against us” isn’t productive. I simply can’t make heads or tails of it, at least not today.)
Apparently you and I define feminism differently. Maybe even activism. Hard to communicate when the same words mean different things.
I stand by this though, when an oppressed group seeks to be better treated, it means changing things. In that issue, I do believe everyone is (at any given point) part of the problem or part of the solution. That’s true because the status quo is the problem, so being content to remain part of that status quo is not neutral. But you’d still say people don’t have to be feminists to support (or approve of) some feminist cause. To that, I’d say it’s not nearly as important what people call themselves as it is what they think and even more, what they do.
I didn’t say everyone has to speak out about every cause all the time. Same time, never cool to go, “I’ve done a lot for other causes, so it’s ok for me to be racist,” for example.
I think there’s been some trouble because you’ve been talking about what people do while I’m talking largely about values and some small actions that might naturally spring from them.
I wonder if we’re really disagreeing with each other. I doubt we are much, if at all. I have a question and if I missed the answer, I’m sorry: how can one be in a neutral position as to the human rights of any given group? I’m not sure if that’s even a possibility or what it’d mean to be neutral there. But maybe some of this is me; I’m not having a good day cognitively, believe it or not.
Apparently, the prevalence is next to nothing. Notice how not a single respondent actually agreed with msironen? He’s an asshole looking to stir up trouble; his posting history makes that more than clear.
So where’s the “torrents of abuse”? Present or admit your lack of evidence.
Dismissing misogyny as being mere immaturity, somehow limited to “13-year olds”? Check. Plenty of counter evidence to that if you bothered to actually look for it; this comes out all the time in adult communities. The dismissal of harassment and the discussion as “locker room banter” came from an adult, and a relatively influential one at that. Dear Muslima was written by someone, oh, maybe only a few decades older than 13. When Penn Jilette tells Crommunist that he agrees with him about the problem that Crommunist just pointed out, while failing to in any way retract his previous statements, that’s no teenager.
Claims that the entire problem is just a vocal minority, and a tiny minority at that, without presenting any evidence? Check. If it’s so few people, why do they so consistently outnumber the feminists in unmoderated public spaces?
Implication that the internet is somehow different from the rest of the “real” world / real life? Check. It’s not. We’re all people here. Social dynamics don’t just thrown out the window because someone invents a new communications medium.
Use of personal experience and/or personal anecdote to dismiss multiple claims of reported sexual harassment? Check.
Statement implying talking about harassment is somehow hurting or undermining the cause, or otherwise giving your enemies what they want? Check.
BINGO
@Martha
If you feel how the pie is shared is more important than who bakes it, you might be a feminist.
If you think our culture can improve, you might be a feminist.
If you want “us” and “them” to become gender neutral pronouns someday, you might be a feminist.
“So it’s odd that a segment of the atheist movement (though not the biggest segment) is so hostile to feminism. Big gods, little gods, it’s all the same shit. No kings, no priests. Thank you for your attention in this matter.”
It would be odd if people applied the same principles of thought to all topics at all times. Unfortunately we can easily diivide our ideas and aply different principles in different places. There’s also the fact that we can think some ideas are more important than others, so people can regard raising feminist principles- or even common courtesy- as “false ideology” and a distraction from the important matters of atheism and scepticism. It also goes the other way- in the UK politicians who expound the importance of feminism and gay pride also defend the misogyny and homophobia of islamand see no contradiction.
Ophelia, so you’re saying that the burden of proof is on others to show that Kirby is NOT “hostile to feminism”.
Given that Kirby has written a number of pro-feminism articles, and given that I’ve haven’t seen anything from her that is “hostile to feminism”, clearly the burden of proof falls upon you to support your claim.
@601: I like those!
If Kirby isn’t “hostile to feminism,” then her recent hit piece is extraordinary tone concern trolling. And why was that German history lesson included?
If you think that women just haven’t been appropriately trying hard enough to be equal, you might NOT be a feminist.
Hmmno, wild flower, the burden of proof isn’t decided by what you personally have failed to see. Paula’s open letter/article titled “THE SISTERHOOD OF THE OPPRESSED” is decidedly anti-feminist, in ways that I’ve already pointed out. Possibly the most obvious was the way she simply assumed Women in Secularism was bad and stupid, and insulted the men who neglected to trash it by calling them “the Approved Male Chorus.”
What are all these pro-feminism articles she’s written? Titles and links please.