Author: Ophelia Benson

So there are various atheist and skeptical conferences, and Rebecca Watson talks at them and says things about sexism, and at the Dublin one she talks to people afterwards until 4 a.m. at which point she says she’s exhausted and going to bed, and she gets in the hotel elevator to do that and a guy joins her in the elevator (just the two of them, how romantic) and says

Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, would you like to come to my room for coffee?

And she says, mildly, “Guys, don’t do that.”

Quite right. Nobody should do that, really. In the afternoon, fine; in the evening, well, it depends, use your judgement; at 4 in the morning, unless you’ve both been making googly-eyes already, it’s just obnoxious, even if it’s not a pass. But maybe that’s just me. I can’t imagine doing something like that, because it would feel so incredibly intrusive and presumptuous – “Hey it’s four a.m. and you said you’re exhausted but hey wouldn’t you rather spend time with me than go to sleep?” I’m frankly not conceited enough for that, and don’t want to be.

There’s been a lot of drama and disagreement about all this over the last whatever, few days or a week or whatever it is, to which I’ve been oblivious. (I’m out of the loop.) But PZ did a post on it this morning, mentioning my eccentric neighbor along with Elevator Guy, and along came lots of men’s rights idiots to say lots of idiot things.

It’s not just about sexism, it is (as some commenters said) also about just plain manners. No, it isn’t manners to accost a stranger in an isolated place and ask for sex. (Ok for men that works, which is why there are cruisey parks. Fine. But for straights and lesbians, it isn’t manners.) (Maybe from men’s point of view it would be manners if only women would oblige. But to us it doesn’t feel like manners [sex workers excepted, obviously] so we mostly don’t oblige. You’ll see women doing that in movies and things, but it’s a male fantasy.)

PZ made a different point about manners: when you disagree with someone, name names. It’s passive-aggressive not to.

As Watson says, she loathes passive-aggressive behavior. So do I, and this is a fine example of it. Name names, always name names, and always do your best to be specific. It is right and proper as good skeptics to confront and provoke and challenge, and you have to be direct about it…

The skeptics movement has a surfeit of that passive aggressive attitude right now. As exhibit #1, I’ll mention the infamous “Don’t be a dick” speech by Phil Plait, which, while representing a good goal of asking for more tolerance, was turned into a flopping issue of disagreement specifically because it was all about tone, not substance, and because Phil could not found any of his arguments in specifics, keeping everything vague, and often cartoonish.

I too loathe passive-aggression. (I don’t know that neighbor’s name though, and I don’t want to.)

Well exactly.

Many of the millions of Americans who do not believe in the supernatural have had enough of being targeted by unremitting discrimination.

Indeed we have, and this is what we keep saying, and why we keep pushing back against all the people who started squeaking, the instant Sam Harris’s book hit the shelves, “Yes but please be quiet now, you will frighten the moderates and shock the liberals and horrify the agnostics and spook the undecideds and terrify the moderate-liberal agnostic undecideds.”

The “crime” that the nonpious are committing is nothing more than declining to believe in supernatural beings and forces that lack sufficient verification of their reality. There is no excuse for discrimination that is as under the radar as it is persistent. So I wrote an op-ed that, in the tradition of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter From Birmingham Jail, would put the nation on notice by calling for the societal civil rights of Ameroatheists.

And, Gregory Paul says, it went viral.

The article went viral because atheists are fed-up and the piece says what we have long been feeling. There is not the slightest reason for all the abuse, and we, dear theists, are not going to take it anymore!…So knock off making us miserable for expressing our All American freedom from religion. Just be nice. If a family member goes atheist, don’t berate them. Sit down and have a chat — both of you might learn something.

But make no mistake: Nontheists are not meekly asking for full acceptance and citizenship any more than blacks did after the World War II, or gays did after Stonewall. We are telling you observant Christians, Jews, Muslims, et al., to be as respectful to us atheists as you are to other believers.

We’re not meekly asking. That’s why we’re gnu. (I wonder if Gregory Paul considers himself a gnu.)

Where the response to the great popularity of my article has been inadequate is among the media, which continue to pay the chronic anti-atheism problem the minimal attention they always have. The absence of progressive media on the issue is especially remarkable because atheist bashing is part and parcel of the theoconservative PR campaign to discredit all who dare not agree with them. Much as theists need to be kinder to nonsupernaturalists, societal leaders need to regularly address and denounce anti-atheism.

Yessssssssss…thank you.

Terry Eagleton is getting to be embarrassing. He reviewed a collection of essays on secularism last week, with his familiar combination of malice, inaccuracy and laziness. That’s not a good combination for a reviewer.

Most recent defences of secularism, not least those produced by “Ditchkins”
(Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens), have been irate, polemical affairs, powered by a crude species of off-the-peg, reach-me-down Enlightenment.

There’s the laziness and the malice – recycling his own stupid joke, which was never funny in the first place, not least because Dawkins and Hitchens are really not interchangeable. And there’s the inaccuracy too, in the meaningless sneer at the end.

It is scarcely a caricature of Dawkins’s work to suggest we are all getting nicer and nicer and that if it wasn’t for religious illusion, we would collectively outdo Kenneth Clark in sheer civility.

Scarcely a caricature! Scarcely a caricature!! This from a literary critic, for christ’s sake. A caricature is exactly what it is, and a broad, stupid, vulgar one at that.

Adam Phillips, a superb writer whose outlook on the world is that of Islington Man…

What, exactly, is it that Terry Eagleton thinks separates his outlook from that of “Islington Man”? What exactly is it that makes Eagleton’s outlook superior in its humility and authenticity and austerity? He’s a prosperous academic; he has been and perhaps still is trendy; he has acolytes; he has international gigs; he writes for the New Statesman and the Guardian. How is he not “Islington Man” himself? Whence comes the great height from which he looks down on other prosperous academics?

Christianity is certainly other-worldly, and so is any reasonably sensitive soul who has been reading the newspapers. The Christian gospel looks to a future transformation of the appalling mess we see around us into a community of justice and friendship, a change so deep-seated and indescribable as to make Lenin look like a Lib Dem.

Big woop. “The Christian gospel” can afford to do that, can’t it, because it’s just making it up. “Looking forward” to things is dead easy; making things happen is another kind of activity altogether, so naturally the latter is much tamer than the former. People who make things happen have to work within real limits; people who just make things up don’t. You’d think a lit crit would know that.

There are some predictable misunderstandings in these essays. No theologian worth his or her salt would see God as an “entity” as Philip Kitcher does.

Why’s that then? (If it’s even true, which I doubt.) See above – because making things up is a lot easier than working within the limits of the real world.

A message for quasi-Islington Man.

Pious Saudi Arabia, famed the world over for its vast compassion.

Indonesia is stopping all maids from going to work in Saudi Arabia after the
beheading of a maid last week for murdering her allegedly abusive employer.

The execution of 54-year-old Ruhati Binti Sapahi caused public outrage in
Indonesia, prompting the government to call for the ban.

Saudi Arabia’s compassionate concern for foreign domestic workers is an old story.

Sumiati Binti Salan Mustapa, 23, remains  hospitalized after suffering injuries by her employer who allegedly  beat, mutilated and scalded her…The news of Sumiati’s horrendous abuse came just as  another domestic worker’s body was found in a trash bin. The victim,  Kikim Moalasari, another Indonesian maid, was allegedly tortured by her  employer. The culprits in both cases have since been arrested.

So much for the ummah.

I’m reading The Pregnant Widow. I’ve heard some good things about it, and I thought The Information was intermittently brilliant, albeit irritating in places, and boring in places, so I’m reading it. The first few pages were electrifying, and I was all excited, thinking I’d struck gold. But then it turned out the first few pages were different from the next pages.

I’m pushing. Hard. I’m trying and failing to resist boredom and the resulting feeling of exasperation – the “why are you telling me all this?” feeling.

Anybody read it? Anybody love it?