I've been laid up with what my doctor thinks is the flu, so I've been in bed browsing Twitter. Also, my doctor prescribed me cough syrup that contains codeine.
The Independent was tweeting about a story on the UK's favourite sex positions, so that was cool. I'm not British, and thanks to body dysphoria, I'm pretty much 0 for 2 on that score. I'd also read a bunch of articles this month, so I didn't want to waste one of my freebies on such an obvious grab for attention. So I guessed.
Westsidebecca and I started tweeting our favourites [sic] (HAHAHAHA I MADE A FUNNY ABOUT THE LETTER "U"). Our circle of largely feminist friends (pretty much all of whom are sex-positive, because that's how I roll) joined in, and the whole thing took off. It's tooooooootally the first time something like this has happened, because we're all humourless cunts, obvs.
In conclusion, #trends.
Click here to read a Storify of the hashtag. Spoiler: Our guesses were way off.
There's a weird trend that's been slinking its way through the social justice community, whereby so-called New Atheists are being denounced for supposedly failing to embrace liberal causes such as diversity and equality. Apparently, atheism has a "race problem," or maybe it should be called a "white male problem." Whichever the case, it appears atheism also has a "shocking woman problem."
...Did I sleep through some radical redefining of the word 'atheist'? It's always been my understanding that an 'atheist' is someone who simply lacks belief in deities. That's it. Somehow, though, it's suddenly incumbent on atheists to take up certain social and political causes, and that's just silly.
It's silly not because equality and diversity aren't worthy causes, but because there's no inherent connection between not believing in god and liberal politics.
1. It's neat how Michael Luciano casually elides the difference between "atheism" and "movement atheism," which are absolutely not the same thing. One is indeed merely the lack of a belief in deities. The other is an ideology, which extends beyond that basic belief. It's cool how movement atheism wants to be a movement when it's convenient, and only wants to be a group of people who share a belief when it's convenient.
2. Here's the thing: Movement atheists—especially but not exclusively straight white male movement atheists—routinely invoke the lives of marginalized people in defense of their anti-religionism.
I cannot count the number of times I've seen womanhood, and hostility toward it in many religious traditions, invoked by male atheists, even at the expense of the reported lived experiences of religious women. I cannot count the number of times I've seen women, or gay/bi men, told outright by straight male movement atheists that they're stupid or self-loathing or deserving of harm for being religious. I cannot count the number of times I've seen a black US Christian told they're practicing the religion imposed on them by slavery.
Movement atheists can't continually invoke our identities and lives (as they see them, viewed through the filter of their Validity Prisms) in order to condemn religion and then reject criticisms on the basis that they don't have a social justice agenda.
It's evidently true that people who are, for example, willing to shame a Muslim woman for wearing a headscarf without listening to that woman about why she might find safety and identity and profound personal meaning in wearing a headscarf, don't actually give a fuck about her. We're all familiar with men who will use the ostensible concern for women to advance agendas that have fuck-all to do with real women's needs and lives.
But as long as movement atheists are going to use marginalized people as justification for their crusade against religion, then they don't get to claim they have nothing to do with social justice. After all, they're pretending to be interested in social justice.
As long as they want to be cultural colonialists and straight white male saviors, then they had better expect there are going to be people—including atheists from marginalized communities—who tell them in no uncertain terms that we don't want to be "saved."
Who call them on their compassion bluff and demand meaningful inclusion instead of rescue.
Dear People Who Defended Richard Dawkins for Many Years and Are Now Distancing Themselves from Him with Maximum Haste:
First of all, I want to say that I'm sorry. It stinks when someone you respect and admire, someone from whom you learned and helped you grow, disappoints you.
Secondly, I want to tell you that if you were among the many, many people who have, over the years, responded to feminist critics of Dawkins by reflexively screaming at us that we're overwrought, hysterical, opportunistic cunts who deserve to be raped and killed, then please let me offer you a massive treasure chest full of fuck yous.
For years, feminists (and others) have been highlighting Dawkins' misogyny, gender essentialism, rape apologia, racism, and disablism (just for a start), and, for years, we have been widely met with derisive dismissals.
Which is my polite euphemism for: Angry emails and tweets riddled with rank misogyny; garbage comments; harassment; name-calling; photoshopped imagery of our public photos; mocking and/or misrepresentative blog posts; mendacious attempts to discredit us; professional attacks; and/or threats of violence.
All because we saw, and called out, the reprehensible attitudes Dawkins has now made so manifest that you cannot possibly continue to ignore it.
And for the iniquity of being right about your hero, before you were ready to see it, you harmed us.
You owe us an apology.
More importantly, you owe us this: Next time there appear feminist critics of an Important Man, instead of reflexively screaming at us that we're overwrought, hysterical, opportunistic cunts who deserve to be raped and killed, or even engaging in the "more civil" variation of invoking classic misogynist silencing tropes or sniffing "I don't see it" from behind a gilded balustrade of claimed objectivity, you could take a moment to consider that maybe we're more sensitive to the red flags of misogyny than you are.
That maybe, just maybe, there's an outside possibility that we're right.
That, of course, is a rhetorical question. People still listen to Richard Dawkins, despite the fact that he is a misogynist, racist, disablist rape apologist (not a comprehensive list), because he is a straight white man who upholds the kyriarchy under the auspices of science and rational thought. He confers the illusion of credible objectivity onto ancient oppressions and indecencies, and allows smug fauxgressives to pretend that their brand of subjugative abuse is superior to the brands justified by belief in deities.
Five days ago, BuzzFeed contributor Mark Oppenheimer published a piece [cn: description of sexual assault] on the misogyny endemic to movement atheism, a subject which has been discussed in this space (and many others) plenty of times. In his piece, Oppenheimer detailed Michael Shermer's alleged sexual assault of Alison Smith—an incident which has been long discussed in skeptic circles.
Smith reports that Shermer invited her for drinks, only to realize "he wasn't drinking them; he was hiding them underneath the table and pretending to drink them. I was drunk. After that, it all gets kind of blurry. I started to walk back to my hotel room, and he followed me and caught up with me." Shermer tricked Smith, then, once she was too inebriated to consent, he steered her back to his hotel room and sexually assaulted her. Other women have reported similar victimization.
Two hours after the piece went live, Richard Dawkins tweeted: "Officer, it's not my fault I was drunk driving. You see, somebody got me drunk."
There are a number of things wrong with that. Suffice it to say: Conflating being a drunk driver with being raped while intoxicated is bullshit.
And not just because it's an aggressive indecent bit of victim-blaming. For someone who prides himself on his splendid reasoning skills, that's a spectacularly poor bit of thinking, too.
Dawkins, however, routinely occupies himself with philosophical discussions on the nature of sexual assault. Just two months ago, for example, he tweeted: "Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think."
His expert thinkin' credentials invoked once again, in defense of diminishing the gravity of a crime he's now deemed the exclusive responsibility of its victims.
Naturally, critics of Dawkins' victim-blaming were dismissed as hysterics and reactionaries, blah blah yawn, who don't understand that Richard Dawkins is a feminist ally, blah blah fart.
One day later, another prominent movement atheist, Sam Harris, was profiled in the Washington Post, and the piece ended with this passage:
I also asked Harris at the event why the vast majority of atheists — and many of those who buy his books — are male, a topic which has prompted some to raise questions of sexism in the atheist community. Harris' answer was both silly and then provocative.
It can only be attributed to my "overwhelming lack of sex appeal," he said to huge laughter.
"I think it may have to do with my person slant as an author, being very critical of bad ideas. This can sound very angry to people. People just don't like to have their ideas criticized. There's something about that critical posture that is to some degree intrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women," he said. "The atheist variable just has this – it doesn't obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men."
Estrogen vibe. Wow.
Dawkins, naturally, jumped to his defense, accusing critics of Harris' rank misogyny of merely being outraged as clickbait and recommending—I shit you not—professional anti-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers as a solid thinker on the subject.
This is well beyond the criticisms that the most prominent leaders of movement atheism have failed to be sufficiently inclusive. This is one of the most prominent leaders of movement atheism actively defending rapist and misogynists, from even the most basic criticisms.
I note with gales of mirthless laughter that Sam Harris suggests it is women who don't have the constitution for having our ideas criticized.
So, a straight white male Christian minister decides to "try" atheism for a year by pretending god doesn't exist (ha ha that is not atheism!), and in a single day, movement atheists raise $19,000 for him.
I love that the justification is "people appreciate that this guy is giving atheism a shot." Sure. Terrific. Give him all the cookies. Meanwhile, definitely continue being hostile to marginalized people who are living their lives every day as atheists, and, if they deign to challenge privilege in movement atheism, harass the fuck out of them.
PERFECT.
"He learned what it's like to be an atheist real fast," said Hemant Mehta, a prominent atheist blogger and schoolteacher in Illinois.
...Mehta said he admired Bell's pluck and sympathized with his plight. Though he had never spoken with the pastor, Mehta set up an online fundraiser for Bell on Tuesday. In just one day, nearly 900 people donated more than $19,000 to help "the pastor giving atheism a try."
"I think more than anything else, people appreciate that this guy is giving atheism a shot," Mehta said. "I mean, he lost three jobs in the span of a week just for saying he was exploring it."
Not for nothing, but some of us who are actually atheists have lost jobs over it. It's sure neat to see Christian privilege even within movement atheism, though.
* * *
UPDATE: Mehta has a post about this fundraiser here, in which he responds to Heina Dadabhoy at Skepchick having asked "why so many atheists have been eager to donate to the fundraiser about Ryan Bell, the pastor giving atheism a try, yet not nearly as enthusiastic to donate to the Women's Leadership Project (WLP), a 'feminist humanist mentoring and civic engagement program in South L.A. serving young women of color.'"
Mehta says: "[W]hy would people give money to Bell—a stranger they don't know—and not, say, a project run by a well-known atheist author that advances Humanism and helps young women? I wish I knew."
In my ongoing (and never-ending) series about why this female atheist (*points thumbs at self*) has no interest in movement atheism, I present this exchange, in comments at Libby Anne's place, between Lunch Meat, a self-identified religious woman, and Jack Kolinski, an atheist man who "want[s] to cure religion and [has] written an easy-and-fun-to-read book explaining how everyone can cure themselves and others of this insidious, malevolent mind disease."
Libby Anne has written extensively about that comment thread, and the dynamic of atheist men full of white knight sexism who want to save religious women from themselves, here. Go read it, because it's really great!
There are a lot (a "small but vocal minority," I'm sure) of atheist men who believe that they need to rescue religious women because they are too stupid or brainwashed or weak or some other charming underestimation to know what is best for themselves. (Protip: When your "feminist" argument is indistinguishable from anti-choice rhetoric, you have derailed from anything resembling feminism.) Obviously, this is objectionable to religious women.
But it is objectionable to me, too. Even though I am an atheist woman who has written about the specific harm I experienced being raised in a particular religious tradition. Because my experience is not universal. And because I am keenly aware of the colonialist and racist dynamics that underwrite much of this white male atheist savior bullshit. And because I am a feminist, and thus I want to give women choices, and trust them to make the best choices for themselves.
I don't have any interest in telling women what they should do, or what they should believe.
Because I don't own women. And neither does Jack Kolinski. Nor any of his oppressively chivalrous brothers.
So, late last month, the Women in Secularism conference got off to a rip-roaring start with an opening lecture by a male speaker (of course), Ron Lindsay, the CEO of the Center for Inquiry, who included in his address his Important Concerns about the concept of male privilege:
I am concerned the concept of privilege may be misapplied in some instances. First, some people think it has dispositive explanatory power in all situations, so, if for example, in a particular situation there are fewer women than men in a given managerial position, and intentional discrimination is ruled out, well, then privilege must be at work. But that's not true; there may be other explanations. The concept of privilege can do some explanatory work at a general level, but in particular, individualized situations, other factors may be more significant. To bring this point home let's consider an example of another broad generalization which is unquestionably true, namely that people with college degrees earn more over their lifetime than those who have only high school diplomas. As I said, as a general matter, this is unquestionably true as statistics have shown this to be the case. Nonetheless in any particular case, when comparing two individuals, one with a high school degree and one with a college degree, the generalization may not hold.
But it's the second misapplication of the concept of privilege that troubles me most. I'm talking about the situation where the concept of privilege is used to try to silence others, as a justification for saying, "shut up and listen." Shut up, because you're a man and you cannot possibly know what it's like to experience x, y, and z, and anything you say is bound to be mistaken in some way, but, of course, you're too blinded by your privilege even to realize that.
This approach doesn't work. It certainly doesn't work for me.
...By the way, with respect to the "Shut up and listen" meme, I hope it's clear that it's the "shut up" part that troubles me, not the "listen" part. Listening is good. People do have different life experiences, and many women have had experiences and perspectives from which men can and should learn. But having had certain experiences does not automatically turn one into an authority to whom others must defer. Listen, listen carefully, but where appropriate, question and engage.
This was such a typical, tiresome, garbage lecture from a secular dude, who has yet to learn the basic principle of communication that if you're talking (i.e. not shutting up) then you aren't listening, and who doesn't believe women are experts on our own lived experiences (!!!), that it would hardly merit comment, except for the entirely predictable fall-out that followed when women rightly objected.
Rebecca Watson details everything here, including the response from the Center for Inquiry Board of Directors, after "dozens of letters (including one signed by the majority of Women in Secularism speakers) were sent to the Center for Inquiry's Board of Directors, begging them to do something to restore CFI's reputation as a humanist organization that cares about women and their ongoing harassment." The response, in its entirety:
Center for Inquiry Board of Directors Statement on the CEO and the Women in Secularism 2 Conference
The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.
The Center for Inquiry, including its CEO, is dedicated to advancing the status of women and promoting women's issues, and this was the motivation for its sponsorship of the two Women in Secularism conferences. The CFI Board wishes to express its unhappiness with the controversy surrounding the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.
CFI believes in respectful debate and dialogue. We appreciate the many insights and varied opinions communicated to us. Going forward, we will endeavor to work with all elements of the secular movement to enhance our common values and strengthen our solidarity as we struggle together for full equality and respect for women around the world.
Oh. They're "unhappy with the controversy." Not unhappy with their CEO being a condescending, mansplaining annoyfuck who scolds women who ask men to examine their privilege, but with "the controversy," which was caused by women who took issue with their CEO being a condescending, mansplaining annoyfuck who scolded them in the opening address of a conference called "Women in Secularism." PERFECT.
Why this female atheist isn't a part of movement atheism, part one million and twelve.
So, Adam Lee has written a follow-up post, which is titled "On Being a Good Ally, Continued," about what he calls our "minor disagreement," and what I would call his accusing me of monolithizing movement atheism when I did no such thing.
I couldn't be less interested in writing about this anymore, but, in the interest of continuing to document what happens in response when a female atheist explains why she is alienated by movement atheism, and offers solicited advice on how to fix that, I feel obliged to make a note of it.
There's a lot I find troubling about his post, but I will make only two observations in response, both of which concern this section:
In her latest post, McEwan wrote:
I will say, again, that I know there are men in movement atheism who make a practice of being good allies to women. (At least straight, white, cis women. And some men more broadly than that.)
I'm glad to hear that! And since that was the only part of McEwan's original post that I had any reservations about, I dare say we might even have reached a consensus. Notwithstanding the noise and clamor of the misogynists, they're not the majority.
1. I will note, again, that my original post with which Lee took issue included this paragraph: "My admiration for the women who hang in and stick it out and fight the same fights over and over. That is a valid and commendable choice, even though it's not mine." He ignored that paragraph in his first piece in order to make the accusation that I sounded as though I were "saying that atheism has only one voice, and it's the voice of the sexists." Only when I subsequently singled out "men in movement atheism who make a practice of being good allies to women" was Lee satisfied that I was not monolithizing movement atheism.
For someone who claims this isn't about cookies, that he's "not saying that anyone has a duty to express gratitude for allies at every opportunity, or that we should expect constant praise for showing a minimum of decency," it's incredible that until I said something which he could read as explicit praise of who he views himself to be, he was accusing me of monolithizing movement atheism as "the voice of the sexists."
That claim was dependent on disappearing my praise of female atheists; it was dependent on disappearing the fact that I'd offered solicited advice in good faith to atheist men who wanted to be better allies (why would I do that if I believed atheism was a sexist monolith?); it was dependent on ignoring the entire post I wrote about the "small but vocal group."
I had shown and stated in multiple ways already that I did not believe movement atheism to speak with a singular sexist voice. But amidst a lot of valid criticism I had made of the people who do engage in misogyny, Adam Lee's primary objective was not to listen meaningfully to any of that criticism. It was to accuse me, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, of being unfair because I hadn't said, in words he found sufficiently inclusive, that there are good guys, too.
That is not being an ally. That is a cookie-seeking mission.
Which brings me to:
2. Lee chose to again quote only one line of a 1,000+ word piece, the very next paragraph subsequent to his excerpted quote is:
But I shouldn't need to keep saying that over and over. Obliging me to salve the consciences of men affiliated with a movement which, irrespective of their efforts, is still incredibly hostile to lots of women outside (and inside) of it, is antithetical to being an ally and incompatible with making me feel like there is a place for me in the movement, if I want my role to be anything but deferential gratitude to men for being decent human beings.
So, he selectively quotes another piece to pat me on the head for explicitly acknowledging men who show me basic decency, but ignores the following paragraph which explains why obliging me to keep saying that very thing is fundamentally not the behavior of a good ally, and does this in a piece titled "On Being a Good Ally." Neat!
I don't know how many times in how many different ways I can say this: Lecturing marginalized people on the ways in which they need to make privileged people more comfortable is not just failing to be a good ally; it is deeply hostile behavior that centers the comfort of the already-privileged. Maintaining one's comfort cannot be an objective of someone keen to shed hir privilege.
I genuinely don't know whether Lee is failing to understand why this arc has been so deeply problematic, especially under the banner of professing to be my ally, or whether he is simply ignoring my argument in order to find some way to still be right by calling it a draw. In either case, whether it takes more empathy work or a willingness to shed the vestiges of gotta-win, to actually be a reliable ally he's got to allow his privilege to be penetrated with the idea that cherry-picking and tone-policing and running marginalized people's feelings and perceptions through a validity prism are all utterly incompatible with ally work.
I'm offering that advice in good faith, to someone who says he wants to be a good ally.
And then, picking up where Adam Lee left off, Ophelia Benson wrote this post in support of his erroneous assertion that I had monolithized movement atheism. It starts thus:
So all the irritated or difficult or especial feminist types think all of atheism is sexist to the core and hostile to all but the most compliant and Hot women, right?
No. Not at all.
Adam Lee has a post on the subject.
He starts with a post by Melissa McEwan that lists a string of rules (in the form of tweets). I'm not all that fond of strings of rules.
So, right from the opening line, I am an "irritated or difficult or especial feminist type." Neat! I guess she hasn't heard yet that I'm also famously uncharitable.
Immediately, that is followed by mischaracterizing my expressly solicited list of advice—which has been republished by PZ Myers, who asked the question to which it was a response—as a "string of rules" as if they were presented with some expectation that they be followed in spaces other than my own. (Which I have repeatedly said over the last week was explicitly not my expectation.) I got asked how movement atheist spaces can be more welcoming to women. I replied with some suggestions. Now I am being cast as a rule-making enforcer. Neat!
It goes on from there, with Ophelia quoting Adam's cherry-picked post in order to make the argument that I monolithized movement atheism to call it universally misogynist.
Which, as an aside, if I believed, I wouldn't have wasted my time making a list of advice for "atheist men who genuinely want an answer" to the question about making their spaces more inclusive. If I were a person who went about making "rules" for an entire movement of people I didn't believe were remotely amenable to them, I would be a very silly person indeed.
But never mind the evident curiousness inherent to that logic. I mean, geez, you know how those irritated or difficult or especial feminist types are. Don't even bother trying to figure them out!
Anyway. Fifty comments into her comment thread, after many of her commenters noted that Adam's post was an intellectually dishonest piece based on selective quoting, Ophelia writes:
Urf, I never wanted to get into this level of detail, I didn't know it was going to be this detailed. Maybe I got it wrong.
Followed by:
Yes much too detailed. (I took a look at that post.) I didn't mean to get into a whole huge thing. I thought it was a relatively small detachable point, and I found it interesting, so I said about it. Maybe I'm all wrong. I'm sure as hell not saying "movement atheism is just fine and I feel totes welcome inside of it."
But I'm interested in things like overgeneralization. I always have been. It's what got me into this, more than ten years ago. Sometimes I really am just thinking about that, and not making some larger political point, let alone a gotcha.
So, basically, in the middle of some visible percentage of mainstream movement atheism having a week-long referendum on how unfair, uncharitable, cold, passionless, fascistic, oversensitive, hysterical, stupid, fat, ugly, and deserving of rape and death I am, yet another movement atheist decided she couldn't be bothered with the pesky details of it all, which I have been carefully documenting with backlinks in every subsequent post, before piling the fuck on and just presuming that Adam Lee was right in order so that she could make a "relatively small detachable point" about an assertion I didn't even actually make.
Neat!
A lot of virtual ink has been spilled over the last week arguing that feelings aren't evidence, that this is about my hurt fee-fees or my being offended, that no one should be expected to change hir behavior because of someone's feelings or perceptions, that some feelings are wrong, and so forth and so on. It has been asserted that I am documenting this because I have a grudge, or because I don't like the people involved, or other variations on being oversensitive and taking it personally.
No. The reason I am documenting it is because this is the exact dynamic I was talking about in the first place. Whatever feelings about this dynamic I have are a result of repeatedly cycling through it. Patterns should mean something to people who prize rational thought and evidence. Systemic marginalization can be objectively assessed, and that is the endeavor I've undertaken here.
I've never said I was hurt. I've never said I was offended. I've never made this personal. I said I was alienated for demonstrable reasons. Framing this documentation into the thrashing petulance of a difficult feminist is a discrediting strategy, a choice made in contravention of all evidence to the contrary. For the people who use the next breath to argue that rational evidence trumps feelings, that is a curious choice indeed.
And then Adam Lee—after telling me in comments here that I am being unfair in saying, after a solid week of being harassed and threatened (which is to say nothing of being called unlikable, uncharitable, oversensitive, reactionary, etc.) by self-identified movement atheists in response to offering solicited advice on how to make movement atheism more inclusive for women like me, that "movement atheism doesn't want to have anything to do with me"—wrote this: On Being a Good (and Bad) Ally to Feminists.
In that piece, dedicated to making the same point, he excerpts one line from my nearly 600-word piece and one comment from its 176-comment thread, in order to accuse me of unfairly monolithizing movement atheism.
He says: "To me, this sounds as if she's saying that atheism has only one voice, and it's the voice of the sexists." This, despite the fact that I also wrote in the post from which he quotes: "My admiration for the women who hang in and stick it out and fight the same fights over and over. That is a valid and commendable choice, even though it's not mine."
To accuse me of being unfair, not only does he casually elide that the context of my claim of being unwelcome was a metric fuckton of sustained hostility emanating from movement atheism, but also disappears the recognition I gave to atheist women in the same post he's saying monolithizes movement atheism. Forget whether he's my ally: Ignoring that, because it's inconvenient to his thesis about my monolithizing movement atheism, is being a shitty ally to them—because ignoring it implicitly argues that movement atheism is a men's movement, and my acknowledgement of female atheists doing good work isn't relevant.
It is relevant.
I will say, again, that I know there are men in movement atheism who make a practice of being good allies to women. (At least straight, white, cis women. And some men more broadly than that.)
But I shouldn't need to keep saying that over and over. Obliging me to salve the consciences of men affiliated with a movement which, irrespective of their efforts, is still incredibly hostile to lots of women outside (and inside) of it, is antithetical to being an ally and incompatible with making me feel like there is a place for me in the movement, if I want my role to be anything but deferential gratitude to men for being decent human beings.
And I will note again, as I did in directreplies to Adam Lee in comments here, that how welcoming movement atheism (or any other self-identified movement) is to marginalized people is subjective, and is not defined by how many people want to welcome marginalized people, but by how many people don't. That any percentage of any privileged group can be hostile enough to make the entire group unsafe for marginalized members is basic social justice 101.
Again, these are dynamics I understand as a privileged member (white, cis) of another self-identified movement (feminism). When a non-white and/or non-cis person says zie does not feel like feminism wants anything to do with hir, I understand that—because I am aware of both the history of mainstream feminism and its current hostilities to non-white and non-cis people. (Among others.)
Yes, it is my job to make the spaces over which I have influence more welcoming and inclusive. No, it is not my job to explain to people who feel unwelcome that they're wrong to feel that way; that to criticize the overwhelming nature of the movement is to monolithize it; that they are being uncharitable and prickly and unlikeable; that, hey, I'm one of the Good Ones, as if that's an immutable state, as if privilege doesn't mean there's always the capacity to fuck up.
There is a thing we say here, long ago introduced in comments by Rana: If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it.
That is the concept to which I turn when I read criticisms of mainstream feminism. I listen, hard, to the criticisms being made, and I don't filter them through a validity prism. Instead, I assess whether the person talking about mainstream feminism is talking about me because of my own actions, as I damn well know criticisms of marginalization and exclusion in mainstream feminism are fair, irrespective of the exact number of feminists who engage in it.
If I do not behave in the manner being criticized, then I don't wear the shoe. And if I do behave in the manner being criticized, I had better wear that fucking shoe and get my shit in order.
Either way, I don't defend a movement that I agree needs changing on precisely the basis being held up for criticism.
Anyway. Over in comments at Adam's place, commenter athyco solidly destroys the notion that Adam is making an intellectually honest argument. I don't know who you are, athyco, but thanks. So I will simply leave it at this: Suffice it to say that having my words cherry-picked, thus disappearing my inconvenient acknowledgment of atheist women fighting the good fight, in order to accuse me of being insufficiently appreciative of the men who assert to be my ally while claiming the right to audit my feelings about my lived experience, has not changed my mind about movement atheism.
If this is the welcome mat, I have no desire to walk through the door.
Which I'm certain is of no concern to the number of men in movement atheism (and some women) who have spent the past week discussing amongst themselves what an uncharitable, cold, and variously terrible specimen I am. Nor should it be. I started out writing why I felt alienated from movement atheism, and it wasn't in expectation of a personal invitation.
But what would be of concern to me, were I on the other side of this thing, is that even reasonable expectations of some pushback from the "small but vocal group" were wildly exceeded by petty personal criticisms and gross emotional auditing care of those who identify themselves as part of the ostensibly welcoming majority.
1. I wrote a piece about being a female atheist alienated from movement atheism.
2. I got the usual pushback—I'm hysterical, I'm overreactionary, I'm looking for things about which to get angry, it's my own damn fault for not working to change movement atheism from the inside, it's a "small but vocal group," blah blah fart—as well as lots of support from people who felt I represented their experiences, many of whom in turn got systematically ignored and/or pushback of their own.
4. Taking his question in good faith, I made some suggestions for atheist men who genuinely wanted an answer to that question.
5. I got the usual pushback—go fuck yourself, fat cunt, stupid cunt, cunty-cunt-cunt, blah blah fart.
6. I wrote a follow-up that outlined why it is, exactly, that telling me it's just—just!—a "small but vocal group" is not useful, why "Hey, the rest of us aren't like those knuckleheads!" is not a comfort, why silence is not good enough, and why people who are keen to make movement atheism more inclusive have to get louder than the "small but vocal group."
7. I got the usual pushback—I'm a big meanie poopyhead for wondering why PZ would have "reservations" about my advice because it isn't tailored specifically to atheist men; I'm "uncharitable"; my tone is THE WORST and I am terrible; Shakesville is totes garbage; and the always-popular Hey, I think you're totally wrong, but feel free to explain basic feminism to me and try to change my mind.
I started out writing about why I didn't want to have anything to do with mainstream movement atheism, but, in the end, this entire endeavor has revealed that whether I want anything to do with mainstream movement atheism is irrelevant, because mainstream movement atheism doesn't want to have anything to do with me.
Message received. I'll show myself out, etc.
Of course I don't actually mean me, per se. What I mean is people from various marginalized populations, who challenge the kyriarchal structures at work in mainstream movement atheism, despite its claims to aspire to better.
What I mean is that people are watching how this played out, and people watch how every iteration of attempting to have a serious conversation about inclusion plays out, and every time this happens, it's not just about shouting down one critic, but conveying to everyone following the totally predictable pattern that they still are not welcome, that they still are not safe.
This type of alienation has been a constant refrain of my life, as I have sought meaningful inclusion in male-dominated spaces: Geekdom is for boys; gaming is for boys; music superfandom is for boys; political blogging is for boys; god is for boys; not-god is for boys.
And across each area of interest, there are the cyclical wonderments from the gatekeepers about where all the women are and how do we—the Good Ones—make our space more inclusive for women.
The answer starts with this: You've actually got to want us there.
My admiration for the women who hang in and stick it out and fight the same fights over and over. That is a valid and commendable choice, even though it's not mine.
I'll be over here carving out my own space, in the shape of a fat cunt.
So, last week, I wrote a piece about being a female atheist alienated from movement atheism. Then, in response to PZ Myers asking "What can I do better?", I made some suggestions for atheist men who genuinely wanted an answer to that question.
Of course there was the usual blowback—plenty of atheist men eminently willing to prove the point, by telling me to fuck myself, to shut up, to go away, fat cunt, blah blah yawn.
There were also some very nice reactions—lots of women, and a few men, too, who expressed appreciation for my willingness to do One of Those Things which will inevitably obligate the navigation of hateful garbage.
And then there were the atheist men, in most cases ostensibly sympathetic to my position, who piped up to let me know that I wasn't talking about them, that they were one of the Good Ones. Even Myers linked to my list with the curious line: "Melissa McEwan has some Advice to Atheist Men. The long list sounds very good, but I do have one reservation: none of it is exclusive to atheists or men. I think it's more Advice for Decent Human Beings."
I'm not sure why my "long list" (of 18 suggestions) would engender reservations simply because it is not "exclusive to atheists or men," unless one is keen to deflect accountability for being part of the group being urged to decency.
Not a few atheist men, in comments here and in my inbox, were eager to tell me that I was really only talking about a "small but vocal group."
Which of course I knew, because it is always, always, a "small but vocal group" of men who marginalize, harass, and threaten me in response to having said something they don't like.
A "small but vocal group" of atheists.
A "small but vocal group" of comic geeks.
A "small but vocal group" of gamers.
A "small but vocal group" of fat haters.
A "small but vocal group" of antifeminists.
A "small but vocal group" of men's rights advocates.
A "small but vocal group" of men who are rape apologists.
A "small but vocal group" of men who want me fucking dead. And tell me. Often.
Don't get me wrong: I know this is true. I know, in most cases, it is really is a "small but vocal group" of any community who engages in silencing and intimidation.
But of the "large but silent group" of all these communities, who supposedly don't agree with the hostile disgorgements of the "small but vocal group," the people most likely to speak up do so primarily to defend themselves, to distance themselves from that "small but vocal group," to oblige me to reassure them that I know there is a "large but silent group" who is totally on my side, even though their silence indicates otherwise.
They reach out to me, while I'm navigating the expected bile of typical garbage nightmares, in order to seek my assistance in salving their own discomfort of affiliation. Which is exactly as unwelcome as it sounds.
"Hey, the rest of us aren't like those knuckleheads!" is not a comfort. It is a way of obliging me to concede that simply not being a dirtbag is sufficient action to consider themselves my ally.
I will not concede that. Because it isn't.
This urge to distance oneself from the "small but vocal group," and attempt to mask as solidarity what is actually a deflection of accountability, is a phenomenon I've previously described, not coincidentally, in a piece on Christian privilege and being asked to make distinctions between "real Christians" and the self-identified Christians who seek to do harm:
A response to my piece offering advice on how to be more inclusive to atheist men genuinely seeking it:
Note that I was offering advice specifically because PZ Myers asked, in response to my post, "What can I do better?" and noted I was offering advice "to atheist men who genuinely want an answer to that question."
It doesn't matter how polite you are, or how carefully you endeavor to engage with good faith.
Yesterday, I wrote a piece on being a female atheist who had been alienated from movement atheism by systemic misogyny. (And, naturally, we had to close the thread because it got inundated with dudes keen to prove the point. See also: My inbox.) It got a bit of attention, including from PZ Myers, who wondered: "What can I do better?"
On Twitter today, I shared my advice to atheist men who genuinely want an answer to that question...
Even before I identified as an atheist, back when I was a teenager going to church every week and was ostensibly a god-believer, I was, in truth, an agnostic at best. Once, upon confessing my lack of faith, the minister told me, "Even Jesus had doubts." But I did not have doubts. I had no sense of god.
The closest thing I ever had to a sense of god was a fear of getting in trouble, whether that meant karmic retribution from a god who would not reward a naughty child or eternal damnation. And it felt pretty much the same as the fear I had of disappointing or angering my parents. It wasn't a feeling of the infinite; it was as small as worrying about being grounded.
I knew I was supposed to believe in god, so I tried to look into the glorious sunsets and sweeping landscapes in which the god-believers around me saw his handiwork and find him there. Sometimes I pretended I had. But the truth is, all I ever saw was the sun and the earth.
So there were never any tormentful rejections, no dramatic fist-shaking rebukes, at god when I came to atheism. I just slid into it, like a new pair of shoes.
There were, however, consciousrejections of my religious indoctrination, which had shaped me in a way that belief in god, or the lack thereof, had not.
The religious community in which I'd been raised did not allow female ministers, did not allow female presidents of the congregation, did not allow female elders, and did not, for most of my childhood, even allow female lectors to read the selected Bible readings during the service each week. Women were for teaching children—and for cleaning: Communionware, the kitchen, maybe a vestment.
I started asking questions about this disparity at age 7, possibly earlier. I got the usual bullshit answers that are used to justify these things. I was good enough to be an acolyte (especially since there were precious few teenage boys willing to do it) and scrub the toilets—both of which I did countless times—but not good enough to be ordained. I was less than.
Further, my objections to being told, on the one hand, that we are all equal in the eyes of god, and, on the other, that my gender nonetheless rendered me incapable of serving god in every capacity available to men, were greeted with contempt—and sometimes outright hostility. One minister told my mother that I needed to stop asking questions. Another told me I was "divisive," at an age that required my looking up "divisive" in the dictionary when I got home from church to understand his meaning. Another told me that my rebellious attitude would find me pregnant or dead by the time I was 16.
Even then I found the conflation of the two…interesting.
This was a community of which I did not want to be a part—and I left it, even before I knew, with clarity and certainty, that I am an atheist.
More than a decade later, I found movement atheism online. I was never one to evangelize my lack of god-belief, nor broadcast hatred of religion or its adherents, so that part of the movement was not a draw. But I did fancy the possibility of community around something that has been an axis of marginalization for me in some parts of my life.
I found the same inequality, manifesting in different ways.
There were precious few visible atheist leaders: The most prominent male atheists were very enamored with one another, and not particularly inclined to offer the same support to women, via recommended links and highlighted quotes and inclusion in digital salons about Important Ideas. They wondered aloud where all the female atheists are, and women would pipe up—"Here! Here we are! We're right here!"—only to then go back to the status quo, with explicit or implicit messaging that women just weren't working as hard as they are, just aren't as smart as they are, or else they'd be leaders, too.
There was the exclusion from conferences, the sexist posts, the sexual harassment, the appropriation of religious and irreligious women's lived experiences to Score Points and the obdurate not listening to those women when they protested.
In fact, female atheists' protests were greeted much the same way with which my protests had been met in my patriarchal church. Silencing. Demeaning. Threats.
All of this felt terribly familiar. A bunch of straight, white, male gatekeepers pretending there's no gate.
Whether it was "god's will" being used to justify my marginalization, or gender essentialism cloaked in garbage science, didn't make a whit of difference to me. And it doesn't still.
Not every woman raised in a religious tradition had the same experience I had. There are many different religious traditions. And not every woman who has explored movement atheism has had the same experiences I have had. There are many different ways to participate. And even the women who have had experiences similar to mine do not necessarily share my reaction to either or both.
But a lot do. Enough do.
That should be a concern to the men in movement atheism who fancy themselves a superior alternative to retrograde patriarchal religious traditions.
I would say I felt exactly as welcome in movement atheism as I did at my Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, but that would be a lie. No one at St. Peter's ever called me a stupid cunt because I disagreed with them.
[Trigger warning for misogyny; sexual objectification; dehumanization.]
Approximately five weeks after Elevatorgate, i.e. the latest round of "Where All the Atheist Ladies At?", I click through to Pharyngula at FTB to see that PZ Myers, who was rightly up in arms about the sexism directed at a woman on his team, has posted a piece about Rep. Michele Bachmann which includes a sexually suggestive picture of her from the Iowa State Fair about to eat a corndog and calls her a reptile.
That's the whole post. Rep. Michele Bachmann is a reptile, who may or may not be able to "disarticulate her mandibles at will" in order to get her mouth around a wiener. And the entire thing is set up from the main page so that the rank misogyny and dehumanization is a punchline:
You have to "Read More" to reveal the hilarity of why PZ thinks "there's good reason to be only cautiously speculative when it comes to the capacity of a reptile's jaws."
The sexual objectification of a woman in order to demean her is indefensibly misogynist, and it doesn't matter whether that women is likable, or kind, or herself willing to engage in sexism. If one is to be a feminist, or an ally to feminists, and if one is interested in human rights and social justice, then sexist and dehumanizing rhetoric and imagery is off the table.
And if one is authentically interested in making women feel welcome at your table, then one must stop forcing them to engage in the Terrible Bargain.
[My mistrust is] born of the multitude of mundane betrayals that mark my every relationship with a man—the casual rape joke, the use of a female slur, the careless demonization of the feminine in everyday conversation, the accusations of overreaction, the eyerolling and exasperated sighs in response to polite requests to please not use misogynist epithets in my presence or to please use non-gendered language ("humankind").
There are the insidious assumptions guiding our interactions—the supposition that I will regard being exceptionalized as a compliment ("you're not like those other women"), and the presumption that I am an ally against certain kinds of women. Surely, we're all in agreement that Britney Spears is a dirty slut who deserves nothing but a steady stream of misogynist vitriol whenever her name is mentioned, right? Always the subtle pressure to abandon my principles to trash this woman or that woman, as if I'll never twig to the reality that there's always a justification for unleashing the misogyny, for hating a woman in ways reserved only for women. I am exhorted to join in the cruel revelry, and when I refuse, suddenly the target is on my back. And so it goes.
...I am expected to nod in agreement, and I am nudged and admonished to agree. I am expected to say these things are not true of me, but are true of women (am I seceding from the union?); I am expected to put my stamp of token approval on the stereotypes. Yes, it's true. Between you and me, it's all true. That's what is wanted from me. Abdication of my principles and pride, in service to a patriarchal system that will only use my collusion to further subjugate me. This is a thing that is asked of me by men who purport to care for me.
...Not every man does all of these things, or even most of them, and certainly not all the time. But it only takes one, randomly and occasionally, exploding in a shower of cartoon stars like an unexpected punch in the nose, to send me staggering sideways, wondering what just happened.
PZ Myers is a smart guy, and he is capable of understanding that if he wants women to trust him and his space and the community of which he is a prominent part, then he can't continually expect them to overlook (and endorse) casual misogyny being wielded against other women.
As long as there are "allowable exceptions" against whom misogyny and dehumanization can be wielded, any women knows, from a lifetime of experience, that the target can easily end up on her own back, if one day her alliance to the in-group who defines the boundaries of acceptable misogyny is suddenly deemed insufficient.
That's not a fair thing to do to women. And as long as that insecurity is there, that knowledge that one day it could be me, many women will respond to that injustice by simply not associating with any group or person who perpetuates it.
The only way to make those women feel welcome is to have a zero tolerance policy on misogyny.
I expect more. And I challenge PZ Myers to expect more of himself.
[Trigger warning for misogyny, rape culture, violent imagery, anti-Islamism.]
Rebecca Watson of the skeptics blog Skepchick recently posted a video in which she speaks, in part, about being on a panel in an atheist conference in Dublin during which she spoke about misogyny in the atheist movement. The video, with transcript for the relevant section, is at the bottom of the post. (If the video does not automatically start playing at 2:20, skip ahead.) She then describes how the discussion continued at the hotel bar late into the night, and how a man who purported to be interested in what she was saying followed her into the hotel elevator and propositioned her. Missing the point award.
PZ Myers wrote a post in which the video was mentioned, largely making another point about naming people with whom one disagrees, but acquiescing that perhaps hitting on women and backing off when they signal disinterest possibly is not enough: "Maybe we should also recognize that applying unwanted pressure, no matter how politely phrased, is inappropriate behavior. Maybe we should recognize that when we interact with equals there are different, expected patterns of behavior that many men casually disregard when meeting with women, and it is those subtle signs that let them know what you think of them that really righteously pisses feminist women off."
I almost can't conceive of a more innocuous, virtually noncommittal ("maybe") expression of support for the idea that it's pretty gross to creepily pursue a woman who has said she is going to bed in order to invite her back to your hotel room to further discuss an idea she had introduced in a professional capacity, no less when the idea is not sexualizing women.
And yet, totally predictably, the thread erupted in a hideous gushing explosion of misogyny, anti-feminism, and rape apologia, not only proving Rebecca Watson's point, but illustrating precisely why it is that, despite being an atheist and online activist, I don't touch movement atheism with a 10-foot pole. Were it a place merely hostile to feminist women and outspoken survivors of sexual assault, well, so is the rest of the world. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't passionately advocate against ignorance, only to feign it when asked to examine its privilege.
Anyway, among the many comments in the thread was one left by the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins, who had also sat on the panel at which Rebecca Watson spoke about misogyny in the atheist movement. Given Dawkins' history of doing things like making anti-Muslim rape jokes and reckoning that a child is "arguably" better off repeatedly raped than raised religious, his comment (which Myers has confirmed is indeed the real Dawkins) is not surprising, but it is nonetheless appalling.
Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so . . .
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
Richard
Ah, the old there are more Important Things to worry about chestnut. I always love when a man decides what the Important Things feminists should be worried about are for us feminist women. I also love the idea that "Muslim women" and "American women" are mutually exclusive groups, and the idea that there no American women, Muslim or otherwise, whose lives are controlled and whose bodies are violated with impunity. And I love the mendacious misrepresentation of Rebecca Watson's experience—being innocently invited to coffee, as opposed to followed into an elevator at 4am after announcing her intention to go to bed and asked back to a man's room "for coffee" immediately following her public request to not be sexually objectified—and the profoundly disingenuous implication that because Watson had the unmitigated temerity to mention this incident, she is either equating it with other women's suffering or somehow arguing that her experience is more important than other women's.
I love those things almost as much as I love the embedded premise that the marginalization of women is a series of unrelated injustices that exist in competition with one another for attention and concern, as opposed to a spectrum of injustices on which exists both women being creeped on in elevators by strangers and female genital cutting.
That is a silencing mechanism.
The implication is that women with relative privilege have no reason or right to "complain" as long as there are women who are experiencing something worse somewhere in the world—a truly despicable position given that it creates a justification for continued brutalization of women across the globe. Feminist scolds like Dawkins, who fancy themselves enlightened, recoil with horror at the suggestion that they support the violent oppression of women, and yet they nonetheless reference it at every opportunity they have in order to defend their lack of concern about injustices done to relatively privileged women in their own communities.
The abject suffering of the world's most vulnerable women is thus used as rhetorical weapon to silence feminists—and feminism is treated as some sort of finite resource that is meant to be kept under glass, broken only in case of a "real" and "serious" emergency, as determined by men who want to silence feminists.
Men who police feminism and feminists, and judge the worthiness of feminist complaints on a sliding scale, don't recognize oppressive acts as interwoven strands of the same rope, and they don't respect the reality that most feminists can multi-task: I can write about a sexist t-shirt being sold to little girls at Wev-Mart, and I write about the rape epidemic in DR Congo in the same day. And do, frequently.
Commenters in the thread made variations on the same argument I am making now, reasonably concluding that Dawkins was arguing that "since worse things are happening somewhere else, we have no right to try to fix things closer to home." But Dawkins left a second comment, insisting that was not his meaning:
No I wasn't making that argument. Here's the argument I was making. The man in the elevator didn't physically touch her, didn't attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn't even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that.
If she felt his behaviour was creepy, that was her privilege, just as it was the Catholics' privilege to feel offended and hurt when PZ nailed the cracker. PZ didn't physically strike any Catholics. All he did was nail a wafer, and he was absolutely right to do so because the heightened value of the wafer was a fantasy in the minds of the offended Catholics. Similarly, Rebecca's feeling that the man's proposition was 'creepy' was her own interpretation of his behaviour, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.
Muslim women suffer physically from misogyny, their lives are substantially damaged by religiously inspired misogyny. Not just words, real deeds, painful, physical deeds, physical privations, legally sanctioned demeanings. The equivalent would be if PZ had nailed not a cracker but a Catholic. Then they'd have had good reason to complain.
Richard
Again, he implies that "Muslim women" and "American women" are mutually exclusive groups; again, he implies that American women do not "suffer physically from misogyny," nor are their lives "substantially damaged by religiously inspired misogyny." Certainly, Dawkins and I would disagree on what constitutes "substantial damage," as I suspect his definition would start just beyond what any relatively privileged woman had ever suffered, but suffice it to say I disagree with his contention. As, I imagine, would the many American women who have been sexually abused by religious leaders, without justice. Just for a start.
Of course, I don't guess this is the sort of stuff that really matters to a man so privileged that he can, with a straight fucking face, assert an equivalency between being followed to an elevator and propositioned by a strange man and having to share an elevator with someone who is chewing gum. Yiiiiiiikes.
PZ Myers followed up with another post, attempting to inject some perspective back into the conversation, to no avail. Dawkins continued to insist that Watson had nothing to complain about in the first place:
I sarcastically compared Rebecca's plight with that of women in Muslim countries or families dominated by Muslim men. Somebody made the worthwhile point (reiterated here by PZ) that it is no defence of something slightly bad to point to something worse. We should fight all bad things, the slightly bad as well as the very bad. Fair enough. But my point is that the 'slightly bad thing' suffered by Rebecca was not even slightly bad, it was zero bad. A man asked her back to his room for coffee. She said no. End of story.
But not everybody sees it as end of story. OK, let's ask why not? The main reason seems to be that an elevator is a confined space from which there is no escape. This point has been made again and again in this thread, and the other one.
No escape? I am now really puzzled. Here's how you escape from an elevator. You press any one of the buttons conveniently provided. The elevator will obligingly stop at a floor, the door will open and you will no longer be in a confined space but in a well-lit corridor in a crowded hotel in the centre of Dublin.
Spoken like someone who does not understand what it's like to live as a woman in this world and has never even bothered to try.
Eventually, Myers appended this to his post: "[Rebecca Watson] asked for some simple common courtesy, and for that she gets pilloried. Sorry, people, but that sends a very clear signal to women that calm requests for respect will be met with jeers by a significant subset of the atheist community."
And I was on a panel with AronRa and Richard Dawkins [which] was on 'communicating atheism.' They sort of left it open for us to talk about whatever we wanted, really, within that realm. I was going to talk about blogging and podcasting, but, um, a few hours prior to that panel, there was another panel on women atheist activists, and I disagreed with a lot of what happened on that panel, uh, particularly with something that Paula Kirby had said.
Paula Kirby doesn't have a problem with sexism in the atheism community, and, because of that, she assumes that there is no sexism, um, so I thought that I would, during my panel, discuss what it's like to communicate atheism as me, um, as a woman, but from a different perspective from Paula. I don't assume that every woman will have the same experience that I've had, but I think it's worthwhile to publicize the fact that some women will go through this, and, um, that way we can warn women, ahead of time, as to what they might expect, give them the tools they need to fight back, and also give them the support structure they need to, uh, to keep going in the face of blatant misogyny.
So, I was interested in the response to my sort of rambling on that panel, um, which, like this video, was unscripted and rambling, for which I apologize. [grins] But the response was really fascinating. The response at the conference itself was wonderful, um, there were a ton of great feminists there, male and female, and also just open-minded people who had maybe never considered the, um, the way that women are treated in this community, but were interested in learning more.
So, thank you to everyone who was at that conference who, uh, engaged in those discussions outside of that panel, um, you were all fantastic; I loved talking to you guys—um, all of you except for the one man who, um, didn't really grasp, I think, what I was saying on the panel…? Because, um, at the bar later that night—actually, at four in the morning—um, we were at the hotel bar, 4am, I said, you know, "I've had enough, guys, I'm exhausted, going to bed," uh, so I walked to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me, and said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more; would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?"
Um. Just a word to the wise here, guys: Uhhhh, don't do that. Um, you know. [laughs] Uh, I don't really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I'll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4am, in a hotel elevator with you, just you, and—don't invite me back to your hotel room, right after I've finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.
So, yeah. But everybody else seemed to really get it.
Whoooooooooooooooops, Richard Dawkins! Almost everyone else.
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