One nice thing.
There’s a transcript of a hangout PZ did with Rebecca and Jen and Brownian and Louis. (I’m not sure I know Louis.)
Louis is apparently in the UK, and he said a thing I liked.
So I see the vitriol, I see the vehemence of it. And I can understand Brownian’s point, of the, fuck you assholes [Unintelligible] misogynist skeptics. I can see it, because, you know, it’s so apparent to me as an outsider from that angle.
But when I’ve been to Skeptics in the Pub in the UK, or when I’ve been to skeptic events in the UK, or when I’ve dealt with, I don’t know, the Simon Singhs or these sorts of people over here, it’s all so obvious that. . . you know. . . Anita Anand, Simon’s partner, or any of these wonderful people whose names I can now not remember. Tessa Kendall for example. Who are fantastic skeptics and fantastic atheists and fantastic advocates for Enlightenment values and thought.
There was never a question. . . that these people that didn’t have willies were somehow our equals or betters. It was never an issue. So I’m coming from an incredibly privileged background, where it was never questioned. Or at least in my limited view, it was never questioned.
That’s the feeling I got when I was there. (Although that’s partly because I naturally didn’t experience everything. I now know of one guy who was there from the fuck you assholes [Unintelligible] misogynist skeptics contingent.)
And to see some of the abhorrent stuff that’s been chucked out across the intertubes recently, and not so recently, is shocking to me. But that just makes me want to redouble my efforts.
That, you know. . . the Enlightenment values for which skeptics and atheists claim to stand are the Enlightenment values from which feminists have built feminism. It’s – they’re not a separate issue. So I don’t really feel like ceding ground to the misogynists. I don’t really feel like ceding ground to the homophobes and the racists, and the privileged white dudes who think that, you know, being skeptical of Nessie is somehow good, good enough. It just isn’t! You know, I think it all comes from the same wellspring. It all comes from that same Enlightenment value.
Yes yes yes and yes.
Hooray! Yes! Can we ask the skeptical community to have reasoned rational arguments, and not degenerate to the “fuck you assholes [Unintelligible]” comments? I believe that we can! Rationality here, folks.
If someone’s being an asshole and making trouble, calling them an asshole and telling them to GTFO will often cause them to stop. Nothing else fixes the problem. Therefore, the only rational course of action is to call assholes assholes.
@Dalillama
but..but..censorship…
Louis appears regularly at PZ’s. In the immediate aftermath of the discussion he was worried that his contributions had lacked focus. Now that I see that “feminism” paragraph in print I realise I couldn’t have done much better if I’d worked on those ideas for an hour.
So, if I may, please chill out, Louis. Oh, and do please get some ornament or toy to talk through next time – hope there is a next time – something we can anthropomorphise more easily than the Periodic Table.
Well said, Louis! The Enlightenment is every bit as much under attack from climate-change deniers as it is from creationists; every bit as threatened by secular misogynists, racists, and homophobes as it is by religious zealots.
Oh, Louis! I would love to have a long discussion about my views on Dimensions of Enlightenment with you! I doubt if we would find any significant disagreement, and perhaps we could jointly develop some ideas.
As I have recently said elsewhere, while Atheism arises from the Enlightened positions of the cognition and knowledge dimensions, Atheism is only one battle in the War for Enlightenment. It doesn’t take into account (because by itself it doesn’t need to) the empathy and governance dimensions.
The “+” in Atheism+ is adding in the Enlightened positions of those dimensions. By far the most important extra Dimension to think about is “empathy”. And the empathy dimension for an atheist should be the same as the empathy dimension for a feminist or a human rights activist or a skeptic or a secularist. They are, as Louis says, the same Enlightenment values. Everyone should be sharing them, as far as possible.
(How can I get in touch with Louis?)
Yes! Yes!
I wonder how many people actually think of the concepts and values of the Enlightenment regularly? Is it something we have lost sight of? Is it irrelevant in the 21st Century?
(Or, I hesitate to ask this, is it something “a bit British”?)
And then we find out through one source or another that this is by no means universal and there are suddenly two kinds of people:
1. Those who think “Whoah, that’s a thing? People still behave that way?”, examine their own privileges and realise that they themselves might need to change their mind and their behaviour.
2. Those who refuse to accept that their perspective might be skewed, their experience might not be representative and that la la la they’re not listening anyway.
This difference in reaction seems to magnify into the desperate hyperbole we’re seeing everywhere. It’s suddenly OK to lie about and trivialise people’s experiences. It’s fine to repeat those lies even if you kindasorta know they’re lies. It’s perfectly acceptable to claim to be a skeptic while deliberately neglecting to check up on actual evidence.
I expect there are lots of reasons why people in group 2 refuse to see what’s right in front of them, but the smokescreen they create to maintain their blindness – and to blow into the eyes of others – always seems to look the same.
OK, I’m rambling. It’s just such a weird facet of human behaviour and all the more so in people who identify as skeptics. I keep finding myself so enraged by the specific examples of wilful ignorance and nastiness that I’m not as frustrated by this very lying-for-jesus-like behaviour by skeptics as I might otherwise be.
I’ve been going to London skeptical events for a while now. Having read all the controversies online I’ve been paying a lot of attention to gender dynamics. There’s a higher proportion of male speakers but at the free speech rally earlier this year I noticed that the imbalance was not huge (given that such imbalances exist in any area not regarded as specifically “female”) and that the number of young women was equal to or possibly higher than that of young men.
I’ve not had any sexual harrassment at events. I have great conversations with both sexes and do not feel treated with less respect for being young and female.
It also helps that at most events I’ve been to, the speaker who most people want to talk about afterwards is Maryam Namazie.
I want to stress that I am not saying that no sexism exist at UK atheist events and I certainly do not want my words to be used to dismiss any bad experiences other women may have had. I just wish to report that so far my experiences have been very positive.
Part of your problem is that they do look like separate issues to people who got into this game not to promote the Enlightenment but to join the I’m Always Right Club. I can’t think of a mindset more hostile to re-examining its own assumptions and prejudices.
Louis is in the UK where the Enlightenment values are not so attacked as they are in in the US where the idea of equality is scorned. It’s not what Jesus wants.
It helps to explain, though certainly not excuse, Richard Dawkins strange attitude. The man just does not get America.
I also can relate to a lot of what Louis said. It seems like early on when I’d interacted with a lot of humanists and skeptics, it did do without saying that everyone was equally valued, regardless of race, gender or orientation. It was a rude awakening to see over time that there was actually serious bigotry going on of all kinds. That’s a grave disappointment.
<>
I really like this, too, and that’s exactly the way I’ve always seen it. However, it’s worth pointing out that not all feminists will see it this way. There is a segment of them who see science and logic and other Enlightenment values as being the products of patriarchy, who see the goals of feminism as being in opposition to rather than expressive of those values. They are the ones who’d also reject Enlightenment notions of equality – they’d say feminism isn’t about equality, but about liberation. And they’d engage in a kind of severe identity politics that denies equality and individuality outright. There are more of those people out there than I once thought, and that’s also a grave disappointment.
So it seems to me that both groups, in their own ways, reject the values of the Enlightenment, as diametrically opposed as they may otherwise seem. The path between the disppointments caused by bigots on the one hand, and the disappointments caused by liberal/radical critcis of the Enlightenment on the other, is a tricky one to navigate. But I’m guessing that it’s the only real way forward.
Dang, part of my comment dropped out. The two brackets in the comment above were supposed to contain the quote from Louis that says:
“the Enlightenment values for which skeptics and atheists claim to stand are the Enlightenment values from which feminists have built feminism. It’s – they’re not a separate issue.”
That’s the part I say I really like in the second para and then go on to discuss.
ismenia says:
But isn’t this part of the problem, the idea that something not specifically “female” is by default “male”?
Kevin Alexander says:
I think Dawkins means well but he has many of the prejudices and blind spots of a traditional upper middle class colonial English gentleman, which, of course, is precisely what he was brought up to be. Tony Grayling is similar in many respects but appears to have done more to break the mould.
… the fuck you assholes [Unintelligible] misogynist skeptics contingent.
Hmm… Are the parentheses really necessary?
Louis is a long-time regular commenter at Pharyngula, as is Brownian (Ian Brown). Best way to reach any of the Horde is to drop a comment in Pharyngula’s Lounge thread, where nothing is off-topic and there’s a constant activity level of regulars.
…well, a lot of the assholes have been extremely clear, not to mention loud, about their dismissals and misogyny ;>
If that was a serious question though, the brackets are standard practice to set off notations inserted by the transcribers.
Oh, I see; it’s a bit like [expletive deleted]!
Bernard: exactly!
That, you know. . . the Enlightenment values for which skeptics and atheists claim to stand are the Enlightenment values from which feminists have built feminism.
These are the same values that motivate people to repeal marijuana prohibition
Drug prohibition is often used as an excuse to enact racist policies without being openly racist.
I think that anyone one subscribes to the Atheism+ movement should be welcoming of the idea of marijuana legalization
when can I expect to see some blog posts about it?
I’m guessing a similar dynamic is coming to the US in the next generation or so. Right now atheists are majority male, but then so was the ranks of our higher educated (people). Our recent college graduates are majority women. I can’t help but think that the increasing education of women will change the demographics of freethinkers in the next decade or so, if not earlier.
Thinking optimistically, misogyny in the nonbeliever community may be dying the long, slow “death by generation gap” that is also killing anti-gay bigotry. Like that issue, I would expect the defenders to become more shrill as support for their position shrinks.
One of the criticisms of the Enlightenment has been that it was itself a movement of privilege. Some of the “postmodern” (if that is what it is) assault on the Enlightenment is on target in that respect. And so those of us who uphold what we take to be Enlightenment values must be careful to always test those values against themselves, if you see what I mean.
To those of us in the UK it does look like the cultural attack on those values is carried on at a much higher pitch in the US.
Anyone seen the opening ceremony for the Paralympics? Would it even have been conceivable had the event been held in the US?
thegambler @20
Ed Brayton posts about drug policy fairly regularly at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. His latest entry on that subject was up yesterday, and he had another the day before.
Bernard Hurley:
Yes it’s part of the problem but I would be (pleasantly) surprised if the UK atheist scene had already overcome that absolutely. Part of my interest in the age of the speakers is because it is not suprising that there are far fewer woman speakers in the older generation because fewer women in that generation reached high positions and were brought up to be in the background. I have no idea whether we will continue to see equal representation at events as my generation ages but so far it is promising.
Damn, the formatting went wrong above, it looked fine when I previewed. That’s a reply to comment 14.