It’s the turn of “Ardent Atheist” Emery Emery to try to peddle the line that all this talk of sexual harassment is actually a campaign to stop everyone having sex. It’s a campaign to shut down pleasure and fun and joy and good things altogether.
The in-groupers at FtB have been attempting to redefine flirting as sexual harassment and sexual intercourse as rape. The problem with this tactic is that it obfuscates actual acts of sexual predation while criminalizing very healthy sex-positive human interaction.
No actually we have not. Not at all. We’ve been attempting (as have many others – we sure as hell don’t deserve all the credit for this) to define sexual harassment as sexual harassment. Flirting is mutual; harassment is unilateral. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to sexual intercourse and rape.
We are not opposed to healthy sex-positive human interaction. That’s an idiotic thing to say – but of course it’s also a very familiar trope about feminists and feminism. DJ Grothe and Emery Emery and the rest of them are reaching into a particularly foul box of tools for this particular trope. It ought to be beneath them, and it says a lot about this haha “community” that it isn’t.
Adults choosing to be sexual with each other is beautiful. and we in the atheist/skeptic community are by and large, not weighed down by sexual hangups. We tend to be not only sex positive but also highly honest and moral people.
Oh dear god. That last sentence froze me in place for a second when I read it – from a capital S Skeptic!!
No. No, you don’t; no, we don’t. We don’t tend to be highly honest and moral people. I’ve never thought that about any set of people, because it’s just a ludicrous claim, about anyone; but in addition I’ve been learning to think it’s less and less true of people in “the atheist/skeptic community” over the past couple of years. That “community” is riddled with malice and aggression and tribal dudely misogynist bullshit. EE’s post is a classic example of that.
This insidious attempt to malign the fine people who frequent skeptic/atheist conventions as white, male dominated communities who both prey on women and work tirelessly to protect this so-called culture of rape we’ve been accused of building, must stop!
Not all of the people who “frequent skeptic/atheist conventions” are fine people. Why would they be? People are people. We’ve all got faults, and many of us have the kinds of faults that can inflict misery on other people. It’s not in any way extraordinary for people to be selfish or greedy or sexually predatory, or all those at once. Some people like that frequent skeptic/atheist conventions. Shocker! Not. And saying that doesn’t equate to saying all such conventions are “white, male dominated communities who both prey on women and work tirelessly to protect this so-called culture of rape.” That’s not what’s going on here.
The A+ folks have demanded that convention organizers add to their harassment policies, that no speaker be allowed to engage in sexual contact with any convention attendees. The attempt to instate such an insidiously over reaching rule speaks volumes to the mind set of these people.
I don’t know what he means by “the A+ folks” there. That is a label of course that is pervasively misused to name people who have nothing to do with “A+” apart from agreement with the claim that atheism by itself is not enough to make “highly honest and moral people.” If that’s what he means by it, then his claim is a ridiculous lie. Nobody I know or know of has demanded any such thing.
As this drama unfolded I found myself becoming more and more afraid to speak my mind and share my thoughts. And as I pondered whether or not I should say anything about this new development I realized something quite horrific. The only people who have frightened me into silence prior to this moment have been extremist Muslims. Think about that. The tactics of the FtB in-groupers have had on many in my community the exact same effect as the tactics of Muslim extremists. Ask yourself, “have I been frightened into silence?”. If the answer is yes please, speak up.
I’ll tell you what’s “horrific” about that. It’s the malicious dishonesty of it. It’s the grotesque insinuation that he’s afraid of being killed by “the FtB in-groupers.” People like us – people in our oh so honest and moral “community” – are afraid of violent Islamists because violent Islamists kill people they dislike. We don’t do that.
Moral and honest. No, I don’t think so.