That’s not a “response”, Michael, it’s a “denial”

Ophelia Benson called out Michael Shermer for a sexist remark he made. Now Michael Shermer responds. Well, actually, he jinks and jitters to avoid the issue, and tries a grand distraction: “Hey, look over there! It’s tribalism!”

Here’s what Shermer was caught saying in a video discussion about why women aren’t participating as much in the skeptical movement:

It’s who wants to stand up and talk about it, go on shows about it, go to conferences and speak about it, who’s intellectually active about it; you know, it’s more of a guy thing.

You know what? That is a great big hairy naked sexist remark. It’s a plain assumption that men are intrinsically better suited to leading skepticism and atheism. You can’t get much plainer than “It’s more of a guy thing.”

A good response would have been to admit that he’d made an unthinking, stupid remark and that he’d like to retract it. But that’s not what he does. Instead, he argues that he really does think the split in participation is 50/50, and points to TAM as having roughly equal numbers of men and women speaking.

Need I point out that the reason gender ratios have been improving is because people like Ophelia and Rebecca Watson and Greta Christina and Jen McCreight have been pointing out the discrimination for years, and have provided lists of excellent women and minority speakers, and conference organizers, rather than doubling down and denying the problem, have been receptive and made strong efforts to correct the bias?

Oh. So I guess it’s not a guy thing, and you were wrong, Michael. It might have been cleverer of you to just say, “I was wrong, I made a sexist remark, the evidence shows that it’s not a guy thing.” A column in which he recognized his own sexism and talked about conscious efforts to improve would have been a good and respectful step forward.

But no. Instead he goes shopping for quotes from friends to show that he was right. He asked Cara Santa Maria about this issue, and she says it’s harder to find women willing to get in front of a camera on these issues, and that women atheists are often singled out as particularly brave.

Why is that, I wonder? That’s an interesting observation. Why doesn’t Shermer follow through on that? Because it seems to me that that’s an important fact: it is harder for women to come out, to be prominent in atheist and skeptical circles. We could split the possibilities into two broad categories: it’s the fault of the women — skepticism just isn’t a gal thing — or we could lay the problem on the environment of the skeptical movement. Shermer is just going to take the lazy option of blaming the women, because the alternative would require hard work by leaders of the skeptical movement to address.

And then he brings in Harriet Hall, who also makes a sexist remark.

I think it is unreasonable to expect that equal numbers of men and women will be attracted to every sphere of human endeavor. Science has shown that real differences exist. We should level the playing field and ensure there are no preventable obstacles, then let the chips fall where they may.

So sex differences are real, and we should just pretend that we don’t see sex and gender everywhere we look? This sounds so much like the argument common among clueless white people that they don’t see color. Yeah, you do. Every one of us has preconceptions about people made on the basis of sex and race. You don’t progress by pretending that stereotypes and perception don’t shape how we judge people.

Hall should know this. We see it in science, too, where women and men have initially equivalent interest in following the field, and then women are actively discouraged from pursuing the higher ranks of their discipline. We know this; there are many studies demonstrating a sex bias in refereeing papers, in promotion and tenure, in cultural attitudes about competence. You don’t overcome those by just telling everyone there is no barrier to women and men applying for the jobs in equal numbers.

By the way, I hate the phrase “Science has shown” followed by some irrelevant fact. Science has shown that men and women have differences, true: women have vulvas and breasts, men have penises and hairier bodies. Science has not shown that women have significantly different cognitive abilities. Lady brains do not lack a skeptical module that gentlemen brains have.

And that’s really the big problem here. There is no reason anywhere to think that women have less capacity for critical thinking, or that they are intrinsically more gullible and therefore more likely to be religious, or that they are less rational and so less suited to careers in science. Shermer is talking about the skeptical movement, a pursuit dedicated to fostering greater critical thinking. Why would you argue that women have less capacity or less to gain from that? Because that’s what they’re doing, pinning the blame for less participation on the women themselves.

Oh, man, then Shermer obliviously steps right into the race issue.

Benson makes a strong case that something other than misogyny may be at work here, when she asks rhetorically if I would make the same argument about race. I would, yes, because I do not believe that the fact that the secular community does not contain the precise percentage of blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans as in the general population, means that all of us in the secular community are racists, explicitly or implicitly. A variance from perfect demographic symmetry does not necessarily correspond to racist attitudes. It just means that the world is not perfectly divided up according to population demographics, and people have different interests and causes. There is nothing inherently bigoted, racist, or misogynistic in the fact that the demographics of the secular community do not reflect those of the general population (in gender, in age and socio-economic class, or in height, weight, or any number of other variables for that matter), so short of some other evidence of bigotry, racism, and misogyny, there is no need to go in search of demons to exorcise.

Errm, yes, actually, it does mean that. Secularism itself shouldn’t be an issue for just us white folks; it’s a universal concern. The grand issues that we put front and center in our various movements — atheism, skepticism, science — really are concerns for every human being. It’s all the associated baggage that we drag in that makes us implicitly racist — we talk about White Men’s Problems all the time, we always, as white people, address the grander topics of skepticism and atheism from the narrower perspective of our particular cultural biases.

White men aren’t really all that concerned about our male children having a very high likelihood of being thrown in prison for minor drug offenses; we middle class white folk are not so concerned about economic disparities as the poor people who can’t afford to attend a conference; male organizers aren’t as aware of the problems of finding child care as women, who are saddled with most of the child-rearing obligations, are. These are implicit biases in our views. This is racism, classism, sexism.

Seriously, every one of us is racist as fuck. We can’t help it.

But denying it makes it worse. And being conscious of our biases and giving other voices a chance to speak is how we make it better.

For years, I’ve been saying that the way to make conferences and the movement as a whole less biased towards male concerns is to ask women what matters to them, and to listen and respond, rather than telling the little ladies what they need to hear. It’s the same with race. If you’re white, you’re racist, and you’ve typically got little appreciation of the experience of being black; so instead of saying, “I’m not racist, how would you like to speak on our panel about Bigfoot hunting and UFOs?” you just ask black people what’s important to them, what they’d like to talk about, what are skeptical/atheist issues of concern in their community?

Shrugging your shoulders and saying that there is nothing wrong with our values being different than those of the black community, or the Hispanic community, or those of women is an open admission that you aren’t working under the banner of Secularism, but under the banner of White Man’s Secularism. You are making an implicitly sexist/racist remark when you blandly insist that what ought to be a truly catholic movement to improve humanity is just fine if it somehow fails to engage the concerns of non-white non-male people as much as it does us.

I could go on at length about Shermer’s other complaint: that the “invectosphere” called him names. He doesn’t get to complain about that at all with respect to Ophelia, who has been under a ferocious invective assault for the last few years; that he complains about being called a “jackass” is pathetic and feeble when you compare it to the non-stop abuse Ophelia, Jen, Greta, Rebecca, and just about every woman participant in this argument gets flooded with online. And he especially doesn’t get to complain because right now his comment section is full of the very same people who obsess over these women and who spew the most disgusting sexist insults at them…and they now see him as a fellow hero fighting against feminst tribalism.

Torturing SF authors for charity

Ryan is considering the sexualization of the female body in geek art, and like all of us people with Y chromosomes, my first thought was, “But what about the meeeeeennnnzzz?” (if you’re reading this aloud, as I’m sure you do, be sure to put a good nasal whine into the phrase). Fortunately, my question has been answered, because Jim Hines and John Scalzi are using SF book covers as guides for posing sexily.

You might not want to click on that link if you’re the sensitive sort.

Scalzi is always willing to indulge in these kinds of stunts, and I’m thinking that a truly malicious sort of person could send him SF and comic book covers that would land him in the hospital with severe spinal injuries and broken ribs and shattered legs. Because, you see, this is what happens to us poor, weak, pitiful men when we try to keep up with those infinitely flexible creatures made out of rubber bands and balloons called “women”.

Stereotypes are always best punctured

For instance, did you know that all gay men are slender metrosexuals with effeminate mannerisms and an obsession with show tunes, like these two men getting married in Washington state?

Jeez. Give me a few more years and that’s what I’ll look like…some of you may be rising to object and say I look like that now. Actually, I might just have a Harley-Davidson t-shirt somewhere in the pile, and I might even have a cap like that.

Maybe we should try to put away that world where manliness and femininity are stultifying, narrowing boxes we put people in.

Mehreen, Nighat, Sana, Nabiha

This sounds so familiar. It’s an account of feminists being harassed and vilified on twitter and blogs, with misogynists creating multiple twitter accounts to insult, photoshopping photos to degrade, trolling and labeling and sneering at women who speak out.

What is disappointing is that no one will view this as violence against women. No one will say that this is cyber harassment. No, if these women even dare to call this cyber harassment, they will be called attention-seekers, whiners, immature. Every time a woman is attacked, and she fights back, she is the one who is vilified. No one will see that someone made a rape threat to a woman, but instead, they will say, look at her foul language, look at how rudely she is speaking. Is one really supposed to cheek-kiss someone and smile sweetly when they’ve issued rape threats to them? No wait, I forgot. If someone makes a rape threat, you take it like the good little woman that you are.

It’s taking place in Pakistan. You would think the people in the West who do exactly the same thing would feel a little shame at the company they keep, but I don’t expect that level of self-awareness from them, unfortunately.

I am proud to be a native of Washington state

The King County Administration Building opened just after midnight last night to start issuing marriage licenses under the new marriage equality law.

“Tonight you are making history,” said Executive Constantine to the first group of couples at a special midnight ceremony. “Not only our legislators but the people of this state have said every person is entitled to equal treatment. This advances our law in the state of Washington, and brings us one step closer to that first ‘self-evident’ truth announced by our nation’s founders: That all are created equal.”

In the ceremony at the King County Recorder’s Office, the Executive administered the oath and signed the marriage licenses for 11 same-sex couples recommended by community leaders. The first license he signed was for Jane Abbott Lighty and Pete-e Petersen of West Seattle, a couple who co-founded the Seattle Women’s Chorus and who will be getting married during a Seattle Men’s Chorus concert on Dec. 9.

That was the initial announcement. It’s now up to hundreds of same-sex couples. Follow @kcnews on Twitter if you want a bit of a lift — they’re updating regularly with announcements and stats from King County.

I grew up there! And it feels good to say so!

Feminism isn’t about being a more prolific baby maker — it’s about fulfilling your potential as a human being

Oh no! Ross Douthat is dismayed because we aren’t having enough babies!

The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place.

Have you ever noticed how conservatives always just look at population numbers and naively assume that bigger is better? Yet at the same time that they’re whining about needing more babies to keep ahead of the competition, they’re complaining about all those welfare queens pumping out babies (out of wedlock, no less!) while sucking at the public teat. You’d think that sometime they’d be able to bring those two misbegotten concepts together in their head and realize that maybe the problem isn’t how many babies your country has, but what you do with them. That maybe the Duggars aren’t the model for a progressive, rational, technological society that we’re looking for.

Maybe the best solution is to have fewer children but invest more in making their lives productive and happy — quality, rather than quantity.

I don’t call that decadence. People have fewer babies when they do all the things Douthat praises: they are thinking and planning for the future better, they are investing in a better life, and they are preferring a new world where women have other purposes than living as incubators and diaper-changing machines.

There’s also the economic argument, which I would have thought a Republican would love. Not having babies isn’t decadence, it’s sound and conservative fiscal planning.

I agree that this is a problem with decadence. But the decadent thing is having children, not remaining kid-free.

Last year, the Department of Agriculture estimated a middle-income couple spent $12,290 to $14,320 a year per child. More recently, the Times’ Nadia Taha published her calculations of how much it would cost her and her husband to have a child: A safer apartment. A better health-insurance plan. Lost wages. College. Total lifetime tab? $1.8 million.

How is it, again, that not having babies is the decadent choice?

But no. Instead, Douthat is playing the pious faux-feminist game.

Can it really be that having achieved so much independence and autonomy and professional success, today’s Western women have no moral interest in seeing that as many women are born into the possibility of similar opportunities tomorrow? Is the feminist revolution such a fragile thing that it requires outright population decline to fulfill its goals, and is female advancement really incompatible with the goal of a modestly above-replacement birthrate? Indeed, isn’t it just possible that a modern culture that celebrated the moral component of childrearing more fully would end up serving certain feminist ends, rather than undermining them — by making public policy more friendly to work-life balance, by putting more cultural pressure on men to be involved fathers rather than slackers and deadbeat dads, and so on?

Wait. So you’re a feminist. And according to Douthat, you’re living in something approaching the feminist utopia. So now, instead of living your ideals and maximizing the opportunities for your small set of beloved children, you should instead begin feeling your uterus quiver with desire to squirt out more babies? For some reason, I’m picturing the queen monster from Aliens with its gigantic egg-factory abdomen writhing in peristalsis as Douthat’s version of a feminist ideal. Yes, they shall spew out hordes of feminist minions who will take over the world!!!

By the way, as one of those liberals who does celebrate the moral component of childrearing, I would argue that an important component of that involves valuing individual children more, taking more time and care for each one, respecting their desires for autonomy more, and not rushing to just make more. There’s a responsibility involved in parenting, and it is not served by greater volume.

It also kind of makes me sick to see a religious conservative like Douthat trying to make an argument for something he desires, more babies, by claiming it will promote something his ilk generally oppose — liberal and progressive improvements in public policy. It’s just too dishonest.

It’s a good idea. It’s depressing that it’s necessary.

There’s a funding campaign going on to raise money for DrinkSavvy. It’s a clever idea to address a dismal problem.

What it is is a simple plan to sell drinking straws and cups that contain a material that responds with a color change to the presence of GHB, ketamine, or rohypnol — date rape drugs. I wish I lived in a world where that wasn’t necessary (well, actually, I do live in a world where it isn’t really necessary for my personal safety; I understand though that some of you live in that dangerous world where people might try to drug you to nullify your lack of consent.)

You know, the existence of this product is evidence for the validity of the Schrödinger’s Rapist argument.

Southern man

I thought this was the 21st century, but I must have been mistaken. Ashley Miller has been disowned by her father because she was…

…dating a black man.

It can’t possibly be what it sounds like, can it? I’m sure he has good reasons for casting his own beloved daughter away. Her mother explains:

Your father is an old Southern man, he was raised like that, he was raised to believe that races just don’t mix. It was the final straw. He loves you, he just doesn’t like you.

You know what? The “old Southern man”, that noble chevalier of Gone With the Wind and other such romanticized tripe, was actually just a bigoted asshole. Putting yourself in that box is not a good excuse for anything. Some aspects of the Southern heritage are simply not the province of decent human beings, now or ever.

Nature’s sexism

The magazine, that is, not the natural world. They’ve published a good editorial today in which they acknowledge inequalities in their editorial staff (14% of their editors are women, 6% of the researcher profiles they did in 2012 were about women).

Unfortunately, they do make a few excuses.

One can speculate that there also may be a tendency for women to be less willing than men to push themselves forward, which may lead to editors being less aware of them. But it is certainly the case that women typically spend more time than men as homemakers and looking after children, further reducing the time available for journal contributions

One could say there is also a tendency for men to shout down women, and to assume that they’ll be the ones taking care of the babies. These are all self-perpetuating stereotypes, you know, and the first step in breaking them involves consciously rejecting them.

But the editorial goes beyond that to recommend steps to break unconscious biases.

However, we do not believe that these considerations can fully account for, or excuse, the imbalance in Nature’s pages. Nor do we believe that our own editors consciously discriminate against women.

That leaves the unconscious factors, and here we believe that there is work to do. We believe that in commissioning articles or in thinking about who is doing interesting or relevant work, for all of the social factors already mentioned, and possibly for psychological reasons too, men most readily come to editorial minds. The September paper speculated about an unconscious assumption that women are less competent than men. A moment’s reflection about past and present female colleagues should lead most researchers to correct any such assumption.

We therefore believe that there is a need for every editor to work through a conscious loop before proceeding with commissioning: to ask themselves, “Who are the five women I could ask?”

Under no circumstances will this ‘gender loop’ involve a requirement to fulfill a quota or to select anyone whom we do not know to be fully appropriate for the job, although we will set ourselves internal targets to help us to focus on the task. It is not yet clear just what difference this workflow loop will make. But it seems to us to be a step towards appropriately reflecting in our pages the contributions of women to science.

This is the same step many of us asked meeting organizers to take in the atheist community, to simply start being aware of the gender balance in their speaker rosters and to think about bringing good and interesting women to the fore…which was no problem for anyone and has resulted in great progress. Honestly, I believe that most people want to be fair and can respect people of all sexes, but it takes work to overcome deeply ingrained cultural assumptions.