“a professional responsibility to get the facts straight”

Sam Harris recently stuck his foot in his mouth, claiming that the lack of women in active positions within atheism is because atheism lacks that “estrogen vibe” and that a “critical posture” is “intrinsically male”, which got him some heat. So he scurried off and has written a reply: I’m not the sexist pig you’re looking for.

Wrong. Right from the title, he gets it all wrong. Here’s how he could easily defuse the whole situation: acknowledge that what he said was wrong, and move on. “I spoke off the cuff, and I said things that were invalid and perpetuate the problem of sexism in atheism. I apologize, and will try to do better.” Over. No problem. We’d all be able to move on, and would appreciate that he’s trying.

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Dear Richard Dawkins

Richard Dawkins: you’re wrong. Deeply, profoundly, fundamentally wrong. Your understanding of feminism is flawed and misinformed, and further, you keep returning to the same poisonous wells of misinformation. It’s like watching creationists try to rebut evolution by citing Kent Hovind; do you not understand that that is not a trustworthy source? It’s a form of motivated reasoning, in which you keep returning to those who provide the comfortable reassurances that your biases are actually correct, rather than challenging yourself with new perspectives.

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The crooked, twisted story of the wanton kid

It’s always the changing story that gives the liar away. We have a couple of accounts of the night in question, when Michael Shermer is accused of taking advantage of a young woman at a conference, and both of them come straight from Shermer himself. Here’s the story from Shermer written shortly after the event.

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Here we go again

Mark Oppenheimer has published an article to blow open the sexism scandals — Will Misogyny Bring Down The Atheist Movement? And whoa, Michael Shermer does not come off well in it.

This bit is more than a little disturbing:

“Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion — I do know that,” Randi told me. “I have told him that if I get many more complaints from people I have reason to believe, that I am going to have to limit his attendance at the conference.

“His reply,” Randi continued, “is he had a bit too much to drink and he doesn’t remember. I don’t know — I’ve never been drunk in my life. It’s an unfortunate thing … I haven’t seen him doing that. But I get the word from people in the organization that he has to be under better control. If he had gotten violent, I’d have him out of there immediately. I’ve just heard that he misbehaved himself with the women, which I guess is what men do when they are drunk.”

I’m glad I’ll be off in Fargo this weekend when the howling mob descends.

That was really quick. Both Ashley Miller and Stephanie Zvan already have substantial comments on the article. (We obviously knew it was coming — we were interviewed for it — but didn’t know what the overall tenor of the story was going to be. I think they prepared ahead of time.)

After sleeping on it, one of the things I like about the article is that it quotes extensively from both sides: not just me and Alison and other people on the anti-misogyny side, but also Shermer himself and Jillette and Emery, and those apologists come across as slimy, dissembling assholes in their own words. It’s a bit like a television police procedural, where all the bad guys indict themselves with their inconsistencies as soon as they open their mouths.

I’m not a big fan of how it portrays Melody — she’s been stressed out, but functioning anyway. She’s organized a couple of major conferences in this time! It could have also spent more time presenting Alison’s story and evidence…but then, I understand that this was not a court case, but an opportunity to discuss the positions of both sides.

September Online Gender Workshop: Gender Attributions in Practice

After a long hiatus, I am attempting to rejuvenate the online gender workshop just in time for the US/Canadian school year.

In the past, we’ve focused on questions and reports back. Last time, we looked at some definitions. The initial exercises needed to be done in a state of gender naiveté. But more in depth exploration can only be done in the context of a common language and common intent. These are never naively assumed; they must be consciously adopted.

Now that we have these, let’s look at some aspects of gender in particular. Most educational focus is on gender identity and gender identification. But I find it more helpful to start with gender attribution. All of us attribute gender to others very frequently, but the process of attributing gender to ourselves is typically limited to childhood. Long before adulthood, cis* folks’ genders are assumptions living in the background of cis* lives. So let’s start by examining an activity with which we all have more practice and more familiarity: telling other people what there genders are. [Un/]Fortunately for you, I have a piece of creative writing that contains a number of good examples of gender attribution: how it happens, when it happens, and what it looks like. As a bonus which will help us segue into future discussions, it also touches on what it feels like when we are conscious of others’ efforts to attribute gender to us. This piece is called Stares. [Read more…]