Author: Ophelia Benson

  • How to patronize the wimminz

    William Hamby has a rather annoying article on women in atheism. (The annoying quality is probably inevitable. We get tired of being written about. We get tired of men saying about women. That’s probably unfair; we’d probably get tired of men not saying, too; but all the same – it gets tiresome having men say about women.) He bases it, for some reason, on the elevator thing – and as G Felis points out, he does it rather snidely. He makes an arbitrary and unexplained distinction between “radical” and “mainstream” feminists that boils down to agree-with-Watson and disagree-with-Watson respectively, and I have to say that’s not consistent with usage over the past four decades or so. Agreeing with Watson or anyone that a man hitting on a woman in an enclosed space at 4 a.m. is not entirely civil is really not a very good definition of “radical” feminism. Feminism gets a whole fuckofa lot more radical than that.

    Anyway.

    I’ve found myself wanting to say something constructive about women in the atheist movement.  It pains me to see what religion does to women, and now that the  dust in the elevator shaft is settling, we seem no closer to the original  question.  If anyone happens to remember, we used to be very interested in  figuring out how to attract women to the atheist movement, and encourage them to  be actively and openly involved in secular causes.  Like practically every  other person in the “atheist movement,” I’d like to see more women at  conferences, more women on podiums, and more women getting involved in any way  they would like.  But what is there for this one male atheist to say that  hasn’t been said?

    Nothing. That’s kind of where the annoyingness comes in. It can’t help sounding as if atheism belongs to men and they’re patronizingly inviting us to join in if we’d like. I know that’s not what Hamby intends, but it can’t help sounding like that. I’ve never thought of it that way. I guess that’s one of the advantages of doing one’s atheism via the internet: you don’t need anyone’s permission or invitation, you can just do it. (Well, in my case with masses of technical help, but that’s a completely different kind of thing from permission or invitation.) You can just do it, and then there you are doing it, and you don’t need men liking to see more people of your type doing it.

    One of my favorite atheist bloggers, Greta Christina, has been saying it for months, and PZ Myers has been acting as a megaphone, spreading the meme  all over the internet.  “Listen to women.”  If you want to  know what women are interested in, and what will draw them into the atheist  movement, listen to them.  What bothered me about that approach,  however, was that the only women speaking loudly about women in the atheist  movement were… Rebecca Watson and her stump-mates.  And while their  opinions are certainly important, they are not representative of all women. I  know that because I’ve listened to a lot of women say so.

    What? What? Where’s he been? Rebecca and her (what are stump-mates?) are not the only women talking about women in atheism; not even close. That’s no closer to true than the claim about who “radical” feminists are.

    So then what he did is, he collected his atheist women Facebook friends and looked at their comments and did a table or something of what they were interested in – and what they’re interested in is politics, family and sex.

    Based on my little survey in my little corner of the Facebook Universe, it  appears that we may not be on the best track if we continue stressing feminism  and gender politics.  Above all else, these atheist women are talking about  three things:  Traditional politics, family, and sex.  Not sex-roles,  or sexual politics.  Politics, family, and sex. The topics that get the  most female commentary are those which intersect at least two of these.

    So that’s what atheism should be about more, so that it will attract more women. Not feminism and gender politics, but traditional politics, family and sex. Atheism should be less radical and weird, and more mainstream and normal, to attract those stupid boring conservative traditional women.

    I hope nobody pays any attention to his advice.

  • Snipping around the edges

    Suzanne Moore is not persuaded by the new gang of anti-abortionists.

    Now this new breed of anti-abortionists snip round the edges of the process with their strategies of delay … er, sorry, “independent counselling”. But beware their language of care. This is not about care but about control. This control absolutely depends on shame: sexual shame. This shame keeps us quiet. Shame keeps us locked into individual guilt. Shame even makes us stupidly grateful that we are allowed to have any choice at all.

    This whole debate around counselling pivots on the idea of deep and private shame, positing the idea of counselling being used to sell an evil procedure. Women are always “vulnerable” dupes, never simply adults who have made decisions.

    Sexual shame and worse – something more like witch-shame. A woman who doesn’t want to have what would be her own baby is some kind of terrifying violation of nature. Women don’t get to be just people, who can make choices; women are always a special case.

  • A thoroughly disreputable approach

    Oh honestly. Bad scientists, no cookie.

    The editor of a science journal has resigned after admitting that a recent paper
    casting doubt on man-made climate change should not have been published.

    The paper was outside the journal’s field.

    Publishing in “off-topic” journals is generally frowned on in scientific
    circles, partly because editors may lack the specialist knowledge and contacts
    needed to run a thorough peer review process.

    …

    “The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted…, a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers.

    “In other words, the problem I see with the paper… is not that it declared
    a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public
    media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its
    opponents.

    “This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I
    perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal.”

    …

    Mr Ward described the tactic of publishing in off-topic journals as a
    “classic tactic” of scientists dismissive of man-made climate change.

    “Those who recognise that their ideas are weak but seek to get them into the
    literature by finding weaknesses in the peer review system are taking a
    thoroughly disreputable approach,” he said.

    How tacky is that?! They ignored the scientific arguments of their opponents and they submitted the article to an off-topic journal. Tacky tacky tacky – and the editor is falling on his sword.

    Note the caption under the conspicuous picture of one of the authors.

    Dr Spencer is a committed Christian as well as a professional scientist.

    Zap. For once the BBC connects the dots.

  • Elsie Dinsmore

    Ever read any Elsie Dinsmore books? No, neither have I. I know the name, because it’s a byword for slushy pious Victorian dogoodery, though I don’t remember where – Little Women? Which is no slouch in the slushy pious Victorian dogoodery department itself, so maybe not. Mark Twain? Possibly.

    They’re now big with the Incredibly Christian set. Rethinking Vision Forum is not impressed. But the part I really liked is from a comment there. The commenter read the first Elsie when she was a child and asked her mother what she thought of it.

    “What a wet blanket.  That girl did nothing but cry all the time.  I think every page her eyes filled with tears and her tiny chest heaved with sobs.”  She started to laugh.  “Her tiny chest HEAVED with SOBS!”

    I love her. My tiny chest HEAVED with LAUGHTER.

  • He taught me critical thinking

    Another escapee is Libby Anne. She gives a ten-part account of being a good child of Patriarchy and then of being turned around.

    The childhood is by no means all horrible, even seen from the outside. Much of it is quite appealing.

    I also enjoyed gardening. We always had large gardens, and we children did a great deal of the tending and weeding, sometimes waking at dawn in the summer months to weed before the summer heat. In addition to learning to garden, I found books at a homeschool convention about edible plants and medicinal herbs and set out to teach myself these important skills. I learned that dandelions could be eaten in salads, that plantain was good for mosquito bites, and that raspberry leaves made an excellent tea for pregnant women (such as my mother). I even tried to make flour out of clover. I loved walking through marshy areas or abandoned lots looking for plants that matched the pictures in my books, becoming excited at each new find. I knew that a proper wife should be able to forage for food and prepare herbal remedies, especially if the government collapsed and the country descended into anarchy as we always feared it would.

    The proper wife bit and the descent into anarchy bit are a downer, but then that’s apparently what it was like: a mix of patriarchal doctrine and pleasantly industrious rural life.

    But the patriarchal doctrine had some thorns even then.

    My mother was constantly reading books like Me? Obey Him? as she strove to be a better, more submissive wife. This was difficult for my mother, for she was a very strong woman. I watched her war with herself as she tried to reconcile her strong spirit with the submission she believed in so steadfastly. I watched her cry over it, watched it eat away at her. My father, usually a reasonable man, became quite upset with my mother if he felt she was infringing on his authority. His most common response was to give her the silent treatment, and that was enough. In response, my mother generally first felt indignation and then blamed herself for not submitting enough and resolved again and again to do better. While my parents loved each other dearly, this tension added strain to their relationship, and I could see it.

    The sad thing is that it’s an artificial strain, a worked up strain. A reasonable man has no need to think he has an authority that his wife shouldn’t infringe on. If both had thought of each other as partners and equals, they would still have disagreed about things, but without doctrinal anger or resentment or guilt. Nonsense about authority and submission is an extra element. It’s truly sad that people mess themselves up this way. It’s a disaster that they teach their children to do the same.

    In addition to teaching me about theology, politics, and current events, my father taught me to think. He taught me critical thinking, and told me never to believe something just because someone says it, but to always question everything and follow truth wherever it leads. He taught me to never trust authority for authority’s sake and to never be afraid of truth. He taught me logic and how to recognize logical fallacies. Of course, the context of all this was learning to rebut worldly ideas and bogus concepts like global warming and evolution.

    Not patriarchy or submission or god.

    But then Libby Anne went to college…and as so often happens, the doors opened.

    I began to have theological and political conversations with a number of non-Christians. I worked hard to show them the perfection of the Bible, the evidence of young earth creationism, the evils of abortion, and the love of God.

    Strangely, I found a surprising number of my arguments rebutted by arguments I had never heard before. I was told that there were serious problems with creationism, ethical issues with the Bible, and more affective ways to decrease abortion than banning it. I turned to my resources, my books and websites on creationism, theology, and conservative politics, and I tried again. And again. And again. But some things just didn’t add up. I paused my arguments to do some serious research, and I was astounded by what I found.

    An open door.

     

  • Eric MacDonald on women’s rights all over again

    The case for women’s freedom must be made again and again, until the religious disease is cured; so long as religion is present on the political stage, every freedom we enjoy is in danger.

  • Religious rules do not trump child protection laws

    The Irish justice minister had to reiterate this in response to Cardinal Sean Brady’s fuss about the “sacred and treasured” rite of confession.

  • Christians outraged over BC and AD v BCE and CE

    Baby Jesus is hurt that Australian high school text books will no longer use his name in dates.

  • Sarah Posner and Anthea Butler on the new Pentecostalism

    If journalists want to understand the religious right movement, they must pay attention to diversity among evangelicals, Pentecostals, and non-denominational churches.

  • My faith dispels any doubts

    And by the way three cheers for female genital mutilation.

    …some communities see the practice as an integral part of their culture. “I have two daughters and five nieces, all circumcised by doctors. I do not consider it a human rights violation because, according to our religious teachings, it has been divinely ordained. My faith dispels any doubts that some might put in my mind,” says Shaheen Abdullah.

    Good old god! “He” designed us the way we are and then ordained that the females of us have to have our genitals chopped off. Why not just not include the genitals in the original package then? Why construct the thing only to ordain that it should be carved up and peeled away and stitched closed?

    Human rights v divinely ordained – that’s what it keeps coming down to, time after time. “Divinely ordained” turns a stupid, brutal,  destructive mutilation into a good thing and “an integral part of their culture.” A pox on “divinely ordained.”

  • Get out

    One woman escaped the “Quiverfull” nightmare. First she entered the trap –

    I remarried, found a “bible-believing” church, and worked hard
    within the Quiverfull counterculture to implement the best of the best biblical
    family values into our home life.  I had six more children. I homebirthed,
    homeschooled, and home-churched. I submitted to my husband and joyfully
    sacrificed my time, energy and talents to build him up and help him to succeed.
    I published a “pro-life, pro-family” Christian family newspaper to inform and
    encourage other Christians to defend “Traditional Family Values.”

    In 2003, we were honored as Family of the Year at the Nebraska Family
    Council’s “Salt & Light” awards.

    Then she noticed how bad it was –

    …perpetual pregnancies destroyed my health, and my indiscriminate acquiescence to my husband’s every whim transformed him from a loving father into a tantrum-throwing tyrant. Burnout and disillusionment led to abuse, neglect, family disintegration and a particularly nasty divorce.

    And then she got out, and stopped quivering.

     

  • One woman who escaped the “quiverfull” nightmare

    “Perpetual pregnancies destroyed my health, and my indiscriminate acquiescence to my husband’s every whim transformed him from a loving father into a tantrum-throwing tyrant.”

  • God said let there be FGM

    “I do not consider it a human rights violation because, according to our religious teachings, it has been divinely ordained.”

  • Stop the deportation of Mitra Kahrom to Iran

    She fled to Sweden and has been openly and vocally active in organizations that oppose the Islamic Republic regime.

  • Legal firm helps women accused of witchcraft

    It is often the widows, or the older, poorer or disabled women and those unprotected by male relatives who are most vulnerable to witchcraft accusations in Burkina Fasso.

  • The history of dissident thought

    It’s embarrassing and shocking that Michele Bachmann can be a serious candidate for president. The same goes for Rick Perry; the same goes for Mitt Romney; the same goes for Sarah Palin. Susan Jacoby thinks Americans’ ignorance of our history of secularism is part of the problem.

     I am less concerned about whether the American public is unacquainted with secular philosophy than I am about its vast ignorance of the founders’ determination not to establish a Christian government. College courses cannot fill the empty space left by public elementary and secondary schooling in which secularism is considered a dirty word instead of an honorable part of American history.

    If Americans were not in dire need of remedial education on this subject, Texas Gov. Rick Perry would be automatically disqualified as a presidential candidate because of his unabashed contempt for the constitutional prohibitions against any government favoritism toward religion.

    …One of the great victories of the religious right since 1980 has been its ability to convince a significant proportion of Americans that public education is dominated by secular values and a secular interpretation of history, when the truth is that many local school officials and teachers are terrified of saying or teaching anything that contradicts conventional wisdom about religion as the foundation and essence of the American nation.

    Almost everyone who does any kind of talking-in-public is terrified of saying anything that contradicts conventional wisdom about religion as the best thing evah. Teachers and school officials of course are triply or quadruply so, because they’re public servants, because they have power over the vulnerable young, because they have parents to deal with. The result is a vast rustling forest of taboos, and the result of that is ignorance and distortion.

    What is needed is integration of knowledge about freethought and secularism at every level of public schooling, so that American students may begin, not end, their college education with a basic grounding in the history of dissident thought that has always been the engine of human progress.

    It’s odd the way Americans combine a certain respect or affection for dissident thought with a passion for the most obedient kind of thought there is.

  • Susan Jacoby on secular studies in America

    The American public is shockingly ignorant of the founders’ determination not to establish a Christian government.

  • AI worried about arrests of blacks in Tripoli

    The rebels claim Gadhafi’s forces are stocked with mercenaries from various African nations, but there is growing concern skin colour is all the proof some rebels need.

  • Elizabeth Farrelly on Maryam Namazie in Sydney

    The thinking classes’ timid silence on Islamism cedes the critical ground to the  far right, allowing Islamists to cry Islamophobia and render themselves immune.

  • No more tiptoe

    An atheist comes out as an atheist. In Kentucky.

    I have often tiptoed around stating my lack of religious beliefs because, like
    many people in a minority, I fear being shunned and judged. I’ve described
    myself with words like non-religious, humanist, and freethinker and have most recently been playing with the “Unitarian” label. But as my kids get older, I don’t want them thinking there is anything wrong with me saying exactly what I am, in terms of my personal religious faith: an atheist. There, I said it. I am an atheist. I AM AN ATHEIST!

    Hey Leanna. There are lots of us out here.