Butterflies and Wheels » Notes and Comment Blog

How not to marginalize women

Feb 6th, 2012 10:13 am | By Ophelia Benson

There are so many ways not to do that. It seems so simple, yet somehow, it proves elusive.

One way is:

If you disagree with a woman, or several women, don’t introduce your disagreement with that familiar Shakespeare tag “the lady doth protest too much.” That’s especially true if you are a man.

Let me explain. (Yes, of course it’s obvious; of course it shouldn’t need explanation; but apparently there are always people who profess not to understand.) There is no need for such a preamble. It is entirely normal to disagree with people by just disagreeing with them. There is no need for a preliminary throat-clearing in which you disparage whatever perceived group your object-of-criticism belongs to via an overused quotation from Shakespeare (or the bible or The Purpose-driven Life).

So, if you are American and your object is French, there is no need to start with a stale joke about The French before you get to the substance. If you are white and your object is not, it is unnecessary to begin with a joke about Other Races. The fact that you are disagreeing with someone from Group X will be clear enough without any introductory joke about Group X talking too much.

So it is with women. If you disagree with a woman, or several women, just disagree with them. Just get on with it. Don’t pause to say they talk too much first; just get on with it. Don’t try to frame the discussion as a matter of women talking too much by talking at all. Don’t try to locate yourself on higher ground by treating women who talk as needing a mild rebuke just for talking, before we even get to the actual disagreement.

I hope that’s clear? It seems very clear to me, but then I have a bias. I have a bias that tells me I get to talk, just like anyone else, and that I’m not doing anything weird or abnormal by talking, and that there is just no need to make stupid creaky is-this-1850 jokes about women talking, just because I talk. Not everyone has this bias, so what seems clear to me won’t seem clear to everyone.

I’ll explain a little more, just to make sure. I’m allowed to talk. Women are allowed to talk. We don’t need permission or approval; we get to do it, just as you do. Jokes about women talking too much are just as funny as jokes about blacks being lazy or Jews driving a hard bargain. They’re nasty ingroup jokes that are meant to keep marginalized people marginalized, and people with any sense don’t make them.

That’s how not to marginalize women, chapter 1.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Sexism

Rituals not detachable

Feb 5th, 2012 5:29 pm | By Ophelia Benson

Sometimes they admit it. Sometimes they admit, “no it’s not just practice, it’s not just being good – it’s belief.” The Spectator does.

It is certainly the case, as AN Wilson says in a Spectator review, that, until relatively recently, religious ritual did include unbelievers as a matter of course since those rites focused on participation rather than subscribing explicitly to a creed. But the ‘consoling subtle or just charming rituals’ of religion that Mr de Botton would like to co-opt for unbelievers are not, I’d say, detachable from the beliefs that inspired them. It’s a little like saying that the music and poetry of love are too charming, too consoling to be confined to those who love and should be extended to those who have never been in love or who find themselves incapable of it. The benefits of religion flow, I’d say, from the things believers believe.

We agree with you, except that we think that most of the benefits aren’t really benefits. We think believing there is an omnipotent being who wants us to believe it exists but refuses to give us any good reason to do so is not a benefit but a mind-impeding device.

Christians believe in the brotherhood of man, for instance, because we believe in the Fatherhood of God, or its feminist equivalent.

But believing in the Fatherhood of God entails believing that the male sex is the better one. The brotherhood of man is not entirely a benefit to women. “Its feminist equivalent” is a throwaway phrase which makes little dent in the existing patriarchal arrangements.

And so on. We can go on for hours in this vein. But the point is, they think what we’ve always said they think: that the beliefs do matter and that they do take them seriously.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB

Why god is a problem

Feb 5th, 2012 11:36 am | By Ophelia Benson

I want to say a little more about George Pitcher…

There’s the way he began his nasty squib about the putative “shrillness” of Richard Dawkins.

There’s something divine in the air. Agnostics and atheists are beginning to nod respectfully in the direction of the Almighty, while still, of course, maintaining that He’s not there.

Jokey, in a way, but he also means it. He especially means the assumption that underlies it: that we (we atheists, we humans in general) owe “the Almighty” our respectful nods. That the Almighty is entitled to them, and that we are obliged to give them.

That’s a stupid assumption, but more than that, it’s an inherently authoritarian, illiberal, hierarchical, dictatorial one. It may seem less so than the demands of a physical, present dictator or mob boss, but in a way it’s more so because the dictator is not physical and present. Pitcher’s “Almighty” is explicitly absent; it’s unavailable; it’s hidden away and mysterious and sekrit. This means we can’t negotiate with it or protest its decisions, much less boot it out or send it to prison for crimes against humanity.

Pitcher is attempting to shore up the principle of submission. There’s nothing “divine” about that.

The same applies to his boneless gesture at the epistemology of theism -

The problem is that faith isn’t primarily evidential, as he demands it to be, but revelatory…

If that’s true, you see, it makes “faith” fundamentally arbitrary and incorrigible, and thus authoritarian and dictatorial. “Revelation” is in fact often treated as “dictation” by the deity. This is a bad way to think about things that people are supposed to heed and respect and obey. It’s morally bad, epistemically bad, politically bad – it’s bad all around.

That’s what the god-botherers need to start realizing. It’s not that atheists need to start to “nod respectfully in the direction of the Almighty,” it’s that theists need to stop trying to make everyone bow to the principle of arbitrary authority.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB

Thou shalt not bear false witness

Feb 4th, 2012 5:20 pm | By Ophelia Benson

From a few days ago, the same old dreck – the priest George Pitcher calls Richard Dawkins “shrill.”

First there’s the usual boring empty non-argument -

The narrow and rather meaningless argument to which Dawkins confines himself is the incessant charge that there is no “evidence” for God. And evidence, of course, is defined only within the strictures of his own empirical scientism. The problem is that faith isn’t primarily evidential, as he demands it to be, but revelatory – and we would claim no less true for all that in explaining the human condition.

Oh yes? We need a “revelation” to explain the human condition? And when we have one, it’s reliable? Please.

That contemptuously lazy pass at justifying belief in god accomplished, Pitcher gets on with the “shrill” accusation.

The shrill voice of Dawkins is gradually being marginalised by those of no more faith than him, but who nevertheless perceive mystery in humanity and, while not accepting the presence of God in the world, are prepared to face in the same direction as the rest of us and stand in awe and wonder.

God that’s bad writing. “Of no more faith than him”? Yuck. And then he moves on briskly without bothering to pick a subject for the verb, and then changes to a new one – what a dog’s breakfast. But as for shrill – George Pitcher has a nerve calling anyone else shrill. Remember him after the election, rejoicing that Evan Harris had lost his seat?

A stranger to principle, Harris has coat-tailed some of the most vulnerable and weak people available to him to further his dogged, secularist campaign to have people of faith – any faith – swept from the public sphere. The Lib Dems served the purpose of providing him with a parliamentary seat, but his true love was the National Secular Society. For a doctor, he supported the strange idea that terminally ill people should be helped to kill themselves.

I commented at the time. That’s the man who thinks Dawkins is shrill.

At any rate – Russell posted on the “shrillness” meme, and Richard pointed out that Pitcher told a big fat lie in the Mail piece. Yes, a whopper. Pitcher said Hitchens said cuddly things about Christianity near the end, “much to the evident frustration of his interlocutor Richard Dawkins.” That was rather stupid of him, since he should have realized Richard could just say “no he didn’t.” But apparently he is stupid (as well as shrill), because he said it anyway. Richard said “no he didn’t.”

I was his interlocuter in his very last interview, for the Christmas issue of New Statesman, which I edited, and I can state with total certainty that he expressed no sympathy whatsoever, generous or otherwise, for the Christian worldview. So that is a lie, and so is the “evident frustration of his interlocutor Richard Dawkins.”

Shrill George Pitcher caught in lie shock.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, The backlash

Oh if only

Feb 4th, 2012 3:41 pm | By Ophelia Benson

I get envious of people in other countries quite often. The other day on the CBC’s The National I saw an item about a politician suggesting that certain criminals should be given a rope, so that they could decide to hang themselves if they liked. There was outrage from all parties. Here in the US the outrage is all for people who want to get rid of the death penalty.

And in the UK – the Advertising Standards Authority has told a Christian group it can’t tell people God will heal them.

The ASA said the leaflet read: “Need Healing? God can heal today! Do you suffer from Back Pain, Arthritis, MS, Addiction … Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness?

“We’d love to pray for your healing right now!

“We’re Christian from churches in Bath and we pray in the name of Jesus. We believe that God loves you and can heal you from any sickness.”

The ASA said it had been alerted to the adverts by a complainant, and concluded that they could encourage false hope and were irresponsible.

That would never happen here.

[gazes longingly out the window toward distant lands]

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB

Standup in Tehran

Feb 4th, 2012 12:38 pm | By Ophelia Benson

Ah it is sweet of Mehr to provide so many pretty pictures of Khomeini’s re-enacted Return to Iran as Cardboard Dude.

A cardboard cutout of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during a ceremony on Tuesday commemorating his return from exile in 1979.

It’s cool that Khomeini is a giant. It’s cool that he has no feet. It’s cool the way his two handlers’ white gloves appear discreetly on his shoulders and at his sides, while his own hands don’t appear at all. It’s just all so dignified and holy and impressive.

The New York Times likes it too.

Shortly after the airport arrival, another cardboard cutout made an appearance in southern Tehran at Refah School, which served as Ayatollah Khomeini’s base of operations. There, it was joined by officials, including the education minister, who sat in a large circle with the silent version of the revered leader and awkwardly drank tea.

Well now I don’t see why that would be awkward, do you? Officials sitting around with a giant cardboard Dude, drinking tea? Where does the awkwardness come in?

(Oh I bet I know. They didn’t dare burst into shrieks of laughter, yet it must have been so hard not to. Of course; that would do it.)

There’s something missing though. There should be a giant cardboard Khomeini issuing a giant cardboard Fatwa.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB

Atheism in America

Feb 4th, 2012 12:08 pm | By Ophelia Benson

Well at least Julian now realizes that we Murkan atheists haven’t been exaggerating about the level of hostility to atheism and atheists there is in the US. He took an evidence-gathering trip here last year, and a long article in the FT talks about what he found.

As I found out when I travelled across the US last year, atheists live in isolation and secrecy all over the country. In a nation that celebrates freedom of religion like no other, freedom not to be religious at all can be as hard to exercise as the right to swim the Atlantic…The issue is somewhat neglected because it’s not usually perceptible on the coasts and in the larger cities, but the almost complete absence of overt atheism is striking at all levels of US public life, even in cosmopolitan areas.

I don’t think the issue is “neglected” but maybe that’s because I’m thinking of my particular corner of the Internet, which talks about it all the time. At any rate: yes indeed: the almost complete absence of overt atheism is striking at all levels of US public life. This is one reason we (in this particular corner of the Internet) talk about it so much. It’s worth talking about, plus talking about it makes it less true. We talk about our absence and thus make ourselves a little more present.

This week, Barack Obama was invited to speak at the 60th National Prayer Breakfast, an interfaith gathering which every president since Eisenhower has attended.

And he accepted, too. Boy did he ever.

it’s always been an opportunity that I’ve cherished. And it’s a chance to step back for a moment, for us to come together as brothers and sisters and seek God’s face together. At a time when it’s easy to lose ourselves in the rush and clamor of our own lives, or get caught up in the noise and rancor that too often passes as politics today, these moments of prayer slow us down. They humble us. They remind us that no matter how much responsibility we have, how fancy our titles, how much power we think we hold, we are imperfect vessels. We can all benefit from turning to our Creator, listening to Him. Avoiding phony religiosity, listening to Him.

Vomit.

This is why we have to be so noisy and obnoxious – it’s because the president of a secular democracy feels obliged to talk sick-making drivel like that, which is made especially illiberal and objectionable by all the “Him” crap. He wouldn’t use language that implied that “God” is white; he has no business calling “God” male. He should leave the whole damn thing alone.

But he can’t, or at least he and his handlers think he can’t; so back to Julian’s article.

Julian talked to Harry Purdy, of Manchester, who met his GI father for the first time in 1991, and then moved to the US – only to have all his newly-found relatives reject him because he’s an atheist.

“I’ve been told things like ‘I hope you have an accident, die and go to hell.’ So that’s what I’ve been up against.”

Friends have rejected him. “I used to be a good running friend with somebody who doesn’t live far from here. I mentioned on one occasion that I was an atheist and I’ve never seen him again … I came here knowing this was the Bible Belt, but I didn’t realise it was a more like a totalitarian Christian society: you’re either one of them or you’re not and there’s no in between. So I’ve learnt this lesson, to keep it to myself as much as possible.”

There’s a woman whose relatives had no problem with her babysitting for their children when she was a crack addict, but won’t have it now that she’s not an addict but is an atheist.

No wonder atheist groups talk of modelling their campaigns on the civil rights, gay and women’s liberation movements. It is not that they claim their persecution is on the same level but that they suggest the way forward requires a combination of organising and consciousness-raising. “We want people to realise that some of their best friends are atheists, some of their doctors, and lawyers and fire chiefs and all the rest of them are atheists,” says Dennett.

And that there are a lot of us; that we’re here, and we’re not leaving; that we’re not fanged or rabid or given to eating babies.

The word is getting out, Julian notes; numbers are rising; things may be improving.

When it comes to identifying the main cause of atheism’s recent growth, most people agree. “It’s all about the internet,” says Silverman. “The reason that atheism is on the rise is because there is no way that a person who is an atheist can think they’re alone any more. When I was growing up, I was the only atheist I knew. I had to get on my bike, ride to the public library and take out the one atheist book that they had in the whole library: The Case Against God by George Smith. Now any atheist can go on Facebook or Myspace and find literally millions of friends.”

Or Freethought blogs…

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Visible atheism

Cardboard Khomeini tours Tehran

Feb 3rd, 2012 3:52 pm | By Ophelia Benson

No really, it does.

It sits in on meetings and everything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38-ifm9-nxI

h/t Sigmund.

Update: I should have included a picture.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB

Justin gets a megaphone!

Feb 3rd, 2012 3:26 pm | By Ophelia Benson

Wo! The BBC has done a huge long feature article about our man Justin Griffith and Rock Beyond Belief.

As an active-duty sergeant in the US Army, he’s leading the charge to get atheists more respect in the armed forces. In the process he is earning attention, both positive and negative, from around the world.

Mr Griffith’s most ambitious project is Rock Beyond Belief, a day-long event on the military base Fort Bragg, North Carolina, complete with children’s activities, rock concerts and a lecture by atheism’s most visible proponent, author and scientist Richard Dawkins….

Scheduled for 31 March, Rock Beyond Belief comes two years after another controversial concert at Fort Bragg, “Rock The Fort”. Sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, Rock the Fort was billed as an “evangelical event” with Christian bands, family activities, and an emphasis on spreading the gospel to the entire community.

Just what the world doesn’t need: another evangelical military. Hence the need for Justin Griffith.

Military culture is full of religious ideology and symbolism, says Griffith. For instance, he cites the traditional flag-folding ceremony, which cites faith in God in multiple instances.

“These things have been here for years. It’s tradition,” he says. “How do we go about getting them out?”

Prior to planning the concert, he registered his complaints against the army’s spiritual fitness test, a campaign that he continues. That test, implemented last year as part of a wider resiliency and suicide-prevention program, rates servicemembers on the strength of their spiritual life.

He’s also working to ensure that servicemembers can have “atheist” listed on their official military records. “It took me a year and a half to get my records changed to atheist. When I told them I was atheist, they put ‘no religious preference’,” he says. “I told them that’s unacceptable. I do have a preference, and that’s atheism.”

Similar to my view of god. It’s not just that I don’t believe in god, I also dislike god.

Through his efforts, Mr Griffith has become a figurehead within the atheist movement. His blog gets around 100,000 hits a month and he says he puts in about 40 hours a week of activism on top of his military duties. In July, he was appointed the military director of American Atheists.

“I definitely have a bigger microphone now,” he says.

BBC links to FTB! I think that might be a first.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Posted in Notes and Comment Blog
Tags: FTB, Rock Beyond Belief

Don’t protest the thing you are protesting

Feb 3rd, 2012 12:05 pm | By Ophelia Benson

There was an extraordinary discussion on the Rally for Free Expression Facebook page a couple of days ago. The rally, of course, is a project of One Law for All and Maryam. The discussion started when a KCL student asked, “Whose idea was it to use a Jesus and Mo picture to advertise this rally?” and when told it was One Law for All’s, said, “Bad move. Very bad move.”

Uh. Seriously? But that was the whole point – to say that Jesus and Mo is not the kind of thing that should be banned or bullied into silence or concealment.

Maryam replied, sardonically,

I decided to use it. I couldn’t find a photo of us kneeling down in submission and agreeing not to offend but that also showed a demand for free expression. I guess that’s because it doesn’t exist… Jesus and Mo is the point.

Along with a post on the subject.

But another student who thought it was a bad move entered the fray -

It was an idiotic, attention seeking, and potentially dangerous decision. The point of this rally is free speech. The point of this rally is not to inflame. The original publishing of the cartoons was satirical, funny and definitely not an attempt to offend, whereas this is either an attempt to offend or sheer idiocy. If the leaflets get onto campuses then it certainly won’t help Athiest societies’ causes, with the union and with fellow students. There’s no issue with saying, at the rally, “ooh look, this isn’t offensive at all, but some people got offended and tried to stop this being published” and showing the pictures, but distributing the pictures on leaflets in this fashion is, as [student #1] said, a very bad move.

So the rally shouldn’t advertise the rally with the picture that is the very issue the rally is about. So if there’s a violent racist incident and people call a rally to protest racist violence, the rally shouldn’t be advertised with photographs of the violent racist incident? War protests shouldn’t mention The War? Occupy Wall Street shouldn’t mention Wall Street?

It’s mind-boggling.

From Maryam’s post:

Some atheists are not happy with One Law for All’s use of the Jesus and Mo cartoon on leaflets to promote the 11 February Day in defence of free expression. They feel that since the Jesus and Mo cartoons have been deemed offensive, it is best not to use them.

But that’s the whole point isn’t it?

We’re rallying in order to say that the right to offend is part of free expression. No one needs to rally for inoffensive speech, do they?

And if I hear one more hypothetical on why we shouldn’t offend if we can avoid it, I might just scream. The latest one: ‘If a Muslim comes to your house you will not plaster the Jesus and Mo cartoon all over to offend them on purpose now will you?’

No, but I won’t hide them, either!