Author: Ophelia Benson

Boy, the chief justice of the Indonesian Supreme Court has a weird sense of humor. He told Angela Merkel (who is in Indonesia on a visit) that the Indonesian constitution guarantees the rights of atheists. Orilly? How does he explain Alexander Aan then?

Supreme Court chief Mahfud MD is telling the vesting German chancellor that the Indonesian Constitution gives people the freedom to be atheist or communists.

Mahfud was answering Chancellor Angela Merkel’s question about the freedom of religion and democracy in Indonesia during a visit to the Supreme Court on Tuesday evening.

“Since its inception, the Supreme Court has guaranteed the freedom of atheists and communists in this country, as long as they do not disturb the freedom of people of other religions. Freedom is equality.” Mahfud said.

Something seems to have gone wrong then, because Alexander Aan is in prison, serving a two year sentence for saying God doesn’t exist on Facebook. 

On that Popehat post All This Talk of Harassment Is Harassing Me! – a comment that helps to explain the basic confusion. Author, Robert White.

Sounds to me like this “free Thought” movement is having what I call “the Libertarian problem”.

As a movement, I have found, Libertarianism is a thin rich chocolate shell of progressive idealists hiding a meaty, inconsistent nougat of biggoted ass-hats looking for a system of thought that can keep the faggots, darkies, spics and freeloading liberals out of their lives. Both outer shell and inner douchebag (again, talking libertarian here) unable or unwilling to take their propositions all the way to their logical conclusions…

Ohhhhhh – they* think “freethought”=libertarian. Nooooooo. No no no no no. All wrong. Freethought is a child of the Enlightenment. Libertarianism is a child of Ayn Rand and Hollywood. Freethought is liberal (in the classical sense), progressive, egalitarian. Libertarianism is liberal (in the classical sense) but not progressive or egalitarian.

*By “they” I mean the trolls who’ve been trolling Freethought blogs since the day of its birth.

Revisiting an old grudge for a moment – you may remember that Orac jumped on me very hard for an analogy about [people complaining about oppression and thus making things worse by scaring people who are subject to the same oppression]. The analogy I used was Jews in Germany in 1936. Orac is a self-appointed cop of (apparently) any kind of Nazi analogy. He said so himself.

As you might (or might not) know, I very much detest the gratuitous use of argumentum ad Nazi-um. I even have a special category for it on my blog.

I was annoyed by the bossy tone and the timing*, but on consideration I decided he had a point, so I withdrew the analogy. There was a brief unproductive email exchange, in which he insisted on talking to me as if he were my boss and I were a janitor found asleep in his desk chair, so I abandoned it.

But then Paula Kirby called me and other women Feminazis (and other things) on Twitter and in her famous open letter. Lots of people wondered aloud when Orac would pounce on Paula Kirby as hard as he’d pounced on me.

I didn’t realize until just now that he’d specifically answered that question, and that the answer was never.

elburto

July 3, 7:03 am

…

OT but speaking of Hitler zombies, Paula Kirby has claimed that feminist bloggers are simultaneously Nazis and Stasi for denouncing sexism.

Baron Scarpia

July 3, 7:23 am

Actually Kirby didn’t. She called certain people Feminazis and at the same time made it very clear that she did not mean they were Nazis- she said this explicitly (She compares the term to ‘Grammar Nazis’). Given that intent is not magical, you may still think that it carries the connotation that such people are Nazis, which would indicate a failure of communication on her part. (Frankly I do not think she should have used the term at all, because I do not see how you can separate the two terms in the minds of the public)

What you can’t do is say that she called Myers, Watson, Benson et al Nazis, because she didn’t.

I won’t touch the ‘sexism’ part of the comment, there have been enough strawmen in the debate already…

Orac

July 3, 8:06 am

Please, people. I really don’t want that argument metastasizing to my comment threads. I’ve already been burned badly enough by it, and I admit my massive error for every having said anything in the first place. These days, I’d rather deal with a torrent of Thingy comments than for a comment thread on my blog to become dominated by this kerfuffle.

He’s been burned badly by it. I have the lying liars who used to hang out at ERV running around claiming that I believe there’s something called “parallel logic” when that’s their invention** pitching fits about it – and he’s been burned by it. No he hasn’t. I have, he hasn’t. And Paula Kirby actually made the real life gratuitous use of argumentum ad Nazi-um, when I didn’t – but he nailed me and left her alone.

He’s a jerk.

*Shortly before TAM and during the spreading fuss over DJ Grothe’s blame-the-women move.

**Corrected. I’d tried to find where I said anything about parallel logic and failed, but ever-attentive “Scented Nectar” rushed to point out exactly where I said it. She’s a scholar in the subject.

I’ve just thought of something – well, a few minutes ago, while walking up the street.

Remember the opening of The God Delusion? “I didn’t know I could”? Remember the way the argument turns on that idea – not knowing you can get out, and consciousness raising as the first step to getting out?

Well that’s feminism, you know. Knowing you can. That’s where consciousness raising came from, remember?

The two rebellions have a great deal in common, you know. Both rebel against the principle of male authority and arbitrary hierarchy. Both are about humans standing up straight instead of squirming on the ground. Both are fundamentally about a break with monarchy.

So it’s odd that a segment of the atheist movement (though not the biggest segment) is so hostile to feminism. Big gods, little gods, it’s all the same shit. No kings, no priests. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

You know how Dan Savage likes to say that conservative Christians should ignore what the Bible says about homosexuality just as they ignore what the Bible says about slavery? Peter Montgomery at Religion Dispatches points out that actually they don’t always ignore what the Bible says about slavery. Sometimes they use it to tell the workers to submit. Ralph Reed, in 1990:

Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God.

Does that remind you of anything? It reminds me of anything.

Jadehawk does a great fisking of Paula Kirby’s recent declaration of war. I’ve been half-wanting to address the substance but half not wanting to, because there is such a thing as boredom and too much of one subject and let’s move on already. But now Jadehawk has done a thorough one, so that’s that off my mind.

(What I would have said, if I’d said it, is that the whole idea that the answer to systemic injustice is to redouble one’s own efforts is just fatuous, and also strikingly illiberal. Why should anyone have to redouble her efforts in order to overcome systemic injustice? What the hell is wrong with trying to get rid of the systemic injustice? Why should people just put up with it and accept that they have to work four times as hard as luckier people just to get to the same place? Or as Jadehawk put it, “Where in the goddamn universe has being silent about systemic oppression and telling people to instead fix themselves ever worked?”)

One thing Paula said I will comment on now though.

So there is an alternative, and it is this alternative that I would urge women to seize with both hands – whether we’re talking about how we interact in our jobs, in our social lives or in the atheist movement. And that alternative is to take responsibility for ourselves and our own success. To view ourselves as mature, capable adults who can take things in our stride, and can speak up appropriately. To really start believing that we can do whatever men can do. To stop seizing on excuses for staying quiet and submissive, stop blaming it on men or hierarchies or misogyny or, silliest of all, “privilege”, and start simply practising being more assertive.

Hey you know what? I’m not seizing on excuses for staying quiet and submissive, and I’m not staying quiet and submissive, either. Isn’t that why Paula is so furious at me? Because I didn’t stay quiet and submissive? Because I said DJ shouldn’t have blamed women who talk about harassment for the decline in women registering for TAM? The quiet and submissive thing to do would have been to say nothing, and decide to do my TAM talk on…I never could figure out what, frankly. That was one reason the whole thing was such a clusterfuck – what exactly did DJ want me to talk about? I had no clue. Clearly nothing related to women in secularism – and he was on record as not wanting atheism to be on the menu – so what, then? Why did he invite me in the first place? Again: no clue.

But anyway: quiet and submissive would have been to say nothing, but instead I said something. Rebecca hasn’t been very quiet and submissive either, and again, isn’t that why Paula is so furious with her? I’m already assertive. I assert all over the place every day. I don’t need practice. I don’t “seize on excuses” – I talk about sexist epithets and harassment and bullying because I think they’re bad harmful things, not because I’m looking for “excuses.”

So Leeds Skeptics in the Pub has uninvited Steve Moxon. Now they’re discussing the matter. There’s one crux that I think is interesting, and I think more clarity on it would help a lot of people who are disputing about it. It’s a crux we’ve discussed here at FTB, too, especially in last week’s hangout.

This is the crux:

Amy: There are some things that should be a given in any skeptical society, and the equality of its members in terms of gender, sexuality, race etc should be one of those things. Having Moxon speak just gives credibility to the idea that his wacky, bigoted views on women are worthy of debate.

Norman: Not sure how anything can be a ‘given’ in a skeptical society? Surely the point of a skeptical society is that all view points are subjected to a rigorous process of critical analysis, regardless of whether it agrees with our world view or not. One could argue that it is the very ‘givens’ of our own world views that require even more in depth challenging.

Here’s one way something can be a ‘given’ in a skeptical society: you can make a distinction between a view point, or, better, a truth claim, on the one hand, and a moral or political commitment on the other.

It’s perfectly possible for a skeptical society to have a basic commitment to equality, in fact one would rather hope that any skeptical society would have such a commitment, if only so that skepticism won’t be some kind of preserve for the people on top. That’s what Amy was talking about, and it needn’t be or imply dogmatism. It’s an ethical commitment, not an empirical claim. Ethical skepticism isn’t identical to empirical skepticism. It’s helpful to keep those distinctions in mind.

There are some ethical commitments that you don’t really want people challenging except in a philosophy seminar. “When you come right down to  it, shouldn’t I just be grabbing whatever I can and the hell with everyone else?” “If you think about it, what’s the problem with beating people up whenever you get pissed off?” “All this bullshit about treating people as equals is just PC-Nazism and I say the hell with it.”

We’re allowed to have ethical commitments. We should have ethical commitments. Having ethical commitments is compatible with skepticism.

Taslima and I have been thinking along the same lines today.

Mine

Not only no thinking. Worse than that. No thinking because no challenging of beliefs. Thus no learning, no changing of mind, no change, no progress, no education.

The Texas Republican party has come out in favor of stagnation and ignorance and dogmatic, fixed beliefs.

Taslima’s

If we want to make the world a better place, we have to stop the system that forces our children to read the books of barbarism and lies and believe everything without asking questions. If we do not inspire our children to study science and have a thinking mind, we will see the crowds of ignorant people everywhere. If we do not encourage our children to study secularism and humanism, we will not be able to stop fanaticism, caste-ism,racism, sectarianism.

Sisters.

No thinking please we’re Texas, says the Republican Party of Texas. It says it in its party platform.

We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.

Not only no thinking. Worse than that. No thinking because no challenging of beliefs. Thus no learning, no changing of mind, no change, no progress, no education.

The Texas Republican party has come out in favor of stagnation and ignorance and dogmatic, fixed beliefs.

Boy, there’s a program. Less curiosity and progress and cumulative knowledge, more disease and crop failure and technological backwardness. Booya!

No worries, some farmer will find some kind of valuable grease or jewel or medicine under the pasture and Texas will have another boom like the oil boom. God will see to it…provided nobody ever thinks.