Renee Hendricks has her facts wrong. She has a post on The Women Behind AtheismPlus, and she says there are three, and I’m one.
I’m going to try very hard to make this the last spiel I have on “Atheism Plus”. It’s hard simply because I hate seeing the community I’ve come to love be so divided and actually hampered by the creation of a group intent on co-opting not only the term “atheism” but also a logo (apparently the A+ logo on http://atheismplus.com is from a tee-shirt that has been available on Richard Dawkins site for over 4 years). What is more distressing and pertinent to women is that there are 3 women behind the “movement”: Jen McCreight, Ophelia Benson, and Rebecca Watson.
Nooo, that’s not right at all. It’s wrong on two counts – it counts two who aren’t and omits many who are.
Rebecca has said explicitly she’s not joining. I’ve said explicitly I consider it a description or label rather than a movement. Neither of us had anything at all to do with starting it or setting it up.
Hendricks of course considers her inclusion on the list as blame, while I’m disavowing the credit. Other people have put in considerable effort on the project and I haven’t, so I don’t get credit for doing so.
Normally, I wouldn’t give 2 shits about these women or the movement. But they are actively and divisively stripping apart atheism and attempting to bring together a happy little club of women and sycophantic men under the guise of being more socially responsible. Nothing could be further from the truth. These women are simply angry that they’ve been slighted/harassed/sexed in some way, shape, or form and feel their best course of action is to create a “special snowflake” clique.
We’re stripping apart atheism? Really? I wouldn’t even know how to begin. Also, atheism isn’t stripped apart. And then the “special snowflake” thing – that seems to be very popular with Hendricks’s clique. It’s kind of an ugly concept, at least it is if it’s applied too broadly. Sure, some people are way too quick to take offense. That doesn’t mean everybody is. It depends. There are particulars. Just calling everything “”special snowflake” doesn’t further the discussion.
She goes on to assert a whole bunch of things about all three of us that she can’t possibly (and doesn’t) know. She also says we don’t know what “misogyny” means, then tells us what it means, which I already knew.
Other than that, a valuable intervention.