A petition is a kind of poll, isn’t it?

First, go read Amy Roth’s summary of the situation: there is a small group of Mabusesque obsessive haters who have been harassing a number of vocal atheists for the past few years. I know; I’m one of their targets, and I can tell you, these people are really screwed up and pathologically focused on hating anyone who dares to profess any support for feminism, or any kind of support for increasing the diversity of the movement. They’re loud, they’re persistent, and they’re an embarrassment to the community.

Now, once you’re in the right frame of mind to understand the context, go read Adam Lee’s petition to support feminism and diversity in the secular community.

You’ll know what to do.

How ’bout we stop this trend in its tracks?

Recently, there has been some complaining about those horrible, awful, draconian anti-harassment policies at conferences. In particular, the Skepticon policy was singled out as particularly wicked and counterproductive (by a certain individual whose nickname ends in “00t”), especially this clause:

Additionally, exhibitors in the expo hall, sponsor or vendor booths, or similar activities are also subject to the anti-harassment policy. Booth staff (including volunteers) should not use sexualized clothing/uniforms/costumes, or otherwise create a sexualized environment.

That seems eminently reasonable to me. It’s targeted specifically at ‘booth babe’ culture, where women are used as sexualized props to peddle commercial products. This trend is at its worst in the tech world, and the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas epitomizes the problem: a company put up an elaborate display featuring four women wearing nothing but body paint posing to draw in attention. (NSFW link, with photo of these women)

The women looked straight ahead with bored expressions, and were not allowed to interact with attendees. The company’s own Instagram feed described them as "fembots."

It was not immediately clear how this display was supposed to relate to the product in question, a hard drive.

It’s obvious! Men like to look at naked women, and only men ever buy or use hard drives. And when men are using their hard drives, they like naked women to plug them in. Duh. Just like only men are atheists and skeptics, and they like to imagine all their women naked and serving them little freshly peeled dollops of critical thinking.

Ugh, ugh, ugh

The ghastly MRA site AVoiceForMen has a post up in which it is claimed that India is a land of great privilege for women, where men are treated as beasts. Yeah, and the guy wielding a four-foot iron rod against a woman was just trying to give her what he thought she wanted.

Fortunately, our own Avicenna has a rebuttal. Those ‘privileges’ women have in India? They’re just necessary accommodations to protect them from a culture gone mad over groping. And the reason men are treated as beasts? Because they act like it.

Neither bullied nor cajoled

Michael Nugent has been accused of being “bullied or cajoled” into his support for women in the atheist movement. It’s strange that people think a small group of bloggers have that much power and influence, and it’s also obvious that anyone making that accusation doesn’t know Nugent at all. So he has written a post denying that he has been pressured, and repeating the seriousness of the problem.

There is also the wider context of sexism in general. If we as men faced this pattern of sick online abuse simply because of our gender, I suspect that we would urgently take action to tackle the problem. If we fail to take the same action when women face this problem, our inaction reinforces prejudice and discrimination against women generally. We may not mean to do that, and we may not even be aware of it, but the impact of our inaction remains the same.

Tackling sexism is a complex problem, with no magic answers. We should rigorously analyze the extent of sexism in our communities, both online and offline, and we should test and refine the best ways to eradicate it. But we must not deny that it exists, or reinforce it with prejudice and discrimination. Instead we should actively work to create inclusive, safe and supportive communities, in which we can live together as equals, regardless of our race, gender, sexuality or ability levels.

And we should work together on this so that, ultimately, we never again have a fifteen year old atheist girl excitedly posting online about her Christmas present of a Carl Sagan book, then reading crude comments about adult men wanting to have sex with her, and having to respond: “Dat feel when you’ll never be taken seriously in the atheist/ scientific/ political/ whatever community because you’re a girl. :c ”

I can tell you why he takes this position, though: because he is a decent human being. That also tells you what I think of the people who oppose this new emphasis on equality in the atheist/skeptic movements.

The company you keep

It’s a new year, and Thunderf00t hasn’t changed a bit — he has a new video where he’s apparently ranting about how feminism is poisoning atheism, which I haven’t watched, so I can’t judge. But there are hints that it’s more of the same. It’s been picked up and praised by A Voice For Men.

Here are a few of the amusing reactions that the video elicited from that gang. Well, they would be amusing if they didn’t testify to a deep hatred of women.

Well, now I look upon these women as nothing but Clowns who have deliberately allowed themselves to brainwashed into believing stupid things like the Earth is flat or some other stupid crap. The vomit that spews from their mouths is not just stupid, it is absolutely laughable. I now sit here laughing my head off at what I read. In my own social movements in life, I laugh at the idiotic dialog of the females I come into contact with. It is unbelievable the level of childish trash that issues forth from the mouths of women whose ages range from 20 all the up to nearly 70.

Women, WILL NEVER BE EQUAL TO MEN!

I don’t care how they put it, because the simple overwhelming fact throughout the history of Mankind, is that women have NEVER been equal to men and they never will be.

We are on this earth for completely different reasons and “never the twain shall meet.” (thanks Kipling, such a great saying)

That’s from a self-described orthodox Catholic, raging about believing in “stupid crap”. This same commenter is concerned that the Catholic church is a liberal, feminist organization.

I am angry at what feminism has done to all belief structures. They hijack everything to change it to be their own. As I said previously, the Liberal organisation of the Catholic Church is overrun by feminists and has been responsible for the spreading of this disease throughout the modern world.

And then there are the traditional excuses for “manginas” coming from people who are unable to think of a single reason for women other than gratifying the penis.

Just another classic case of feminists colonising a formerly male-dominated arena, then attempting to change its rules (unwritten or otherwise) to better suit themselves. If that alienates men, so much the better (and better yet if it criminalizes men).

And, as usual, some of the worst offenders are the mangina-enablers, collaborating in a transparent attempt to score some feminazi ass. *shudder*

Just for laughs, there are a few there who don’t like atheism, either, and really detest Richard Dawkins.

I wasn’t criticising Atheists, I was criticising Dawkins.

I personally think the man is an idiot. I have watched some of his interviews and all he does is drop bombs in conversation, by demanding his religious opponents prove their points, but I have not seen him prove anything himself. Indeed he is a bit like watching feminists in an interview trying to survive the argument when it’s obvious they lack substance.

For some reason, none of this entices me to watch Thunderf00t’s video.

By the way, I learned a new acronym! The MRAs have all these weird little code words I have to look up to figure out what the heck they’re talking about: the new one is NAFALT, or “Not all feminists are like that”. It’s a condemnatory phrase: you are bad if you recognize the range of thought in the feminist community and don’t lump them all into one evil long-haired, smooth-skinned, bosomy chimera of wickedness.

Now I’m waiting for the first MRA to show up and claim I’m cherry-picking the comments, saying NAMRAALT.

Don’t Tell Women What to Wear, Tell Men not to Rape

There have been some horrific stories coming out of India — a place where rape and molestation are considered perfectly normal acts by many men. The latest terrible event was a young woman, raped with a metal rod that shredded her internal organs and resulted in her death, all for the ‘crime’ of being out after 10pm — an outcome excused by ‘experts’ because she resisted.

The promising sign, at least, is that people are marching in the streets to protest Indian rape culture. Avicenna was there, taking pictures; you should be following that guy, don’t you think?