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Just a Few Loud Voices
(This is a blogpost about sexism in the atheist/ secular community. And it is long)
Conferences, Difference by Stephanie Zvan
This is a long post. It’s a very, very long post.
There’s this meme going around that it’s really just a handful of noisy bloggers who are talking about sexism in the secular and skeptical movements. So I took about a dozen threads where I’d seen women in these movements talk about the sexism and harassment they’d experienced and observed and often how that affected what places in these movements, online and off, in which they were willing to participate. I grabbed the relevant excerpts of those comments to put in one place.
This is a very, very long post, with roughly 90 women represented.
This is a long post. It’s a very, very long post.
There’s this meme going around that it’s really just a handful of noisy bloggers who are talking about sexism in the secular and skeptical movements. So I took about a dozen threads where I’d seen women in these movements talk about the sexism and harassment they’d experienced and observed and often how that affected what places in these movements, online and off, in which they were willing to participate. I grabbed the relevant excerpts of those comments to put in one place.
This is a very, very long post, with roughly 90 women represented.
TheLady: PZ occasionally posts super sexist stuff on his blog, and the antifeminist shit storm I’ve reaped in trying to highlight it and make it stop has more or less put me off commenting on there for ever. And then you’ve got guys like Hitchens and Maher, not to mention lesser antireligionist luminaries like Martin Amis. There’s a lot of penis inches invested in the cleverer-than-thou stance of New Atheism; as a sub-culture it’s very heavily weighted towards the Smart Guy(tm) crowd, and is rife with antifeminist landmines.
catgirl: Bill Maher is yet another example of women being asked to “take one for the team”. The idea is that atheism is so important that it’s OK to support a raving misogynist to promote it, and “don’t worry ladies, we’ll worry about you after we take care of the important stuff, honest.”
catgirl: Along with feminist blogs, I also follow a lot of skeptical blogs. When I try to bring a feminist perspective to an issue in the comment thread, it is often met with hostility. I was recently surprised how bad it really is.
catgirl: Bill Maher is yet another example of women being asked to “take one for the team”. The idea is that atheism is so important that it’s OK to support a raving misogynist to promote it, and “don’t worry ladies, we’ll worry about you after we take care of the important stuff, honest.”
catgirl: Along with feminist blogs, I also follow a lot of skeptical blogs. When I try to bring a feminist perspective to an issue in the comment thread, it is often met with hostility. I was recently surprised how bad it really is.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2013/06/12/just-a-few-loud-voices/
6 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Carlie: The biggest detriment to women being in the atheist movement is that when women do come in and try to get comfortable, then a punch in the gut always comes out of nowhere to remind us that we are still second-class citizens. This blog is fantastic. PZ cares, and he gets it a lot more than the majority of men out there, and so do the majority of male commenters here. Yet look at how often there are still sexist arguments, and still huge numbers of guys willing to defend sexism, and still ha ha women are the butt of the joke, and it’s damned tiring having to decide every time whether to drag the sword out and fight this one off and risk a pile-on, or to overlook it and pretend it didn’t happen. It’s gotten a lot better, because there are more women and men who don’t do that, and who share the burden of schooling anyone who tries it, but most women have a long history that can tend to make them gun-shy of having to deal with it.
chantal: I think the most important thing for men to do is to call other men out when they say misogynist crap. If your buddy says something busted and you remain silent, everyone will assume you agree. Even if you don’t, actually, agree, how’s the solitary woman supposed to know that?
It doesn’t have to be that way. One comment from one dude doesn’t have to ruin the entire thing. It’s the silence from everyone else that screws it all up.
chantal: I think the most important thing for men to do is to call other men out when they say misogynist crap. If your buddy says something busted and you remain silent, everyone will assume you agree. Even if you don’t, actually, agree, how’s the solitary woman supposed to know that?
It doesn’t have to be that way. One comment from one dude doesn’t have to ruin the entire thing. It’s the silence from everyone else that screws it all up.
This, though...
"I don’t consider myself a feminist, I enjoy working and socializing with men."
