Another Day, Another Prominent Dude Defends Sexual Predators

[Content Note: Rape culture; child sex abuse; exploitation.]

Author John Grisham has given a very strange and contemptible interview in which he argues that US jails are full of people who don't deserve to be there.

Which: Yes. That is true. He is correct that there are a very lot of people in US jails who do not deserve to be there, for reasons like racism; sexism; the criminalization of need; the war on drugs; the substitution of the prison system for addiction and mental illness treatment facilities.

But Grisham's primary concern is all the old white men filling prisons because they accidentally looked at ch1ld p0rn:

"We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who've never harmed anybody, would never touch a child," he said in an exclusive interview to promote his latest novel Gray Mountain which is published next week.

"But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into ch1ld p0rn."

Um. This is not something that happens. I have never gotten online drunk and "pushed the wrong buttons" and whoopsy daisy ended up accidentally looking at, well, anything at which I didn't want to be looking.

That sounds like an excuse someone who got busted for accessing ch1ld p0rn might make, though, and sure enough:

The author of legal thrillers such as The Firm and A Time to Kill who has sold more than 275m books during his 25-year career, cited the case of a "good buddy from law school" who was caught up in a Canadian ch1ld p0rn sting operation a decade ago as an example of excessive sentencing.

"His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website. It was labelled 'sixteen year old wannabee hookers or something like that'. And it said '16-year-old girls'. So he went there. Downloaded some stuff - it was 16 year old girls who looked 30.

"He shouldn't 'a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn't 10-year-old boys. He didn't touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door: 'FBI!' and it was sting set up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch people - sex offenders - and he went to prison for three years."

"There's so many of them now. There's so many 'sex offenders' - that's what they're called - that they put them in the same prison. Like they're a bunch of perverts, or something; thousands of 'em. We've gone nuts with this incarceration," he added in his loft-office in Charlottesville, Virginia.

One of the most common features of rape/abuse apologia is drawing distinctions that are supposed to sound reasonable (to other straight men with healthy, predatory libidos), but are not remotely reasonable, given the slightest bit of scrutiny from a perspective that centers victims of abuse instead of centering predators.

Here, Grisham draws several of these distinctions. Sixteen-year-old girls "who looked 30," versus sixteen-year-old girls who "look 16." Teenage girls who want to be "hookers," versus teenage girls who don't. (And here we see the frequent intersection of rape apologia and sex worker shaming.) Sixteen-year-old girls versus 10-year-old boys, as if teenage girls cannot be victimized. (And here we see the frequent intersection of rape apologia and homophobia, because a man who sexually objectifies an underage girl is "normal" but a man who sexually objectifies an underage boy is "deviant.") "Real" perverts versus men who just make mistakes. (Much like rapists who are good boys who just didn't know any better.) Looking versus touching, as if harm only happens once there is physical abuse.

The interviewer asks Grisham about that last distinction, and naturally he has an answer for that, too:

Asked about the argument that viewing ch1ld p0rn0graphy fueled the industry of abuse needed to create the pictures, Mr Grisham said that current sentencing policies failed to draw a distinction between real-world abusers and those who downloaded content, accidentally or otherwise.

"I have no sympathy for real paed0philes," he said, "God, please lock those people up. But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences, and that's what they're getting," adding sentencing disparities between blacks and whites was likely to be the subject of his next book.

"Real-world abusers." That's certainly an interesting phrase, which draws on the idea that the internet is not "real life," despite the fact that it is clearly very real indeed for the children being exploited on it. We are meant to understand, and agree, that abuse which happens on the internet is not "real-word abuse," and the people who look at images of exploited children are not "real paed0philes."

On the internet, everything exists outside of reality. Thus, these cannot even be "real crimes." If that's something one believes, of course it seems profoundly unfair that real police enforcing real laws should make real arrests and send someone who just "pushed the wrong buttons" to a real prison for a real prison sentence.

What Grisham is doing here is essentially the same thing as the distinction men draw between "real rapists" and the men—often their friends; so many men defending so many friends—who just made a stupid decision, made a mistake, had too much to drink and went too far. It's always some other guy who's the real problem. Some stranger in a bush. Some guy who's the one taking the pictures.

Would that the men who claim to be so concerned about the "real" predators were as concerned about the real victims. Maybe then they'd be less inclined to excuse the behavior of their friends, which looks a hell of a lot like the behavior of "real" predators, from victims' perspectives.

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On Communicating More Effectively with Women

[Content Note: Male privilege; auditing.]

Sometimes, privileged men (here, generally meaning straight cis men) email me asking advice on how to interact with the women in their lives. I get questions on everything from how to be a feminist husband to how to navigate intimacy with a survivor of sexual assault, and so I'm starting a new series that offers Helpful Hints to privileged men who genuinely want advice about how to be a more feminist-friendly dude.

I'm starting with the most basic—and often the most problematic—interaction between men and women: The Conversation. Lots of guys want to learn more about deconstructing their privilege, but are pretty awful about obtaining that information without upsetting the women with whom they're conversing.

This, then, is a very rudimentary, but also very straightforward, primer for dudes who want to communicate more effectively with female partners, friends, relatives, and colleagues during good faith conversations about feminist issues:

1. Every woman is an expert on her own life and experiences.

2. No woman speaks for all women.

3. No woman speaks for all feminists.

4. Because of the way cultural dominance/privilege works, marginalized people are, by necessity and unavoidability, more knowledgeable about the lives of privileged people than the other way around. Immersion in a culture where male is treated as the Norm (and female a deviation of that Norm), and where masculinity is treated as aspirational (and femininity as undesirable), and where men's stories are considered the Stories Worth Telling, and where manhood and mankind are so easily used as synonymous with personhood and humankind, and where everything down to the human forms on street signs reinforce the idea of maleness as default humanness, inevitably makes women de facto more conversant in male privilege than men are in female marginalization. That's the practical reality of any kind of privilege—the dominant group can exist without knowing anything about marginalized group, but the marginalized group cannot safely or effectively exist without knowing something about the privileged group and its norms and values.

5. Which is not to say that men can't become fluent, with effort. But it is important to remember that it does take effort. Even though men's and women's lives can look so similar at first glance, it is shocking how very different they can actually be. (For example.)

6. A woman with intersectional marginalizations cannot wrench herself into parts. Asking a woman to set aside her race, or disability, or sexuality, or body size, or stature, or whatever, in order to discuss a "woman's issue," is to fail to understand that one's womanhood is inextricably linked to the other aspects of one's identity.

7. It is similarly unfair to ask a woman to leave aside her personal experience and discuss feminist issues in the abstract. You are discussing the stuff of her life. Asking her to "not make it personal" is to ask her to wrench her womanhood from her personhood.

8. You are not objective on women's issues because you're not a woman. Your perception is just as subjective as hers is, but for a different reason. Either we stand to be marginalized by privilege or stand to benefit from it. That's the reality of institutional bias; it compromises us all.

9. Don't play Devil's advocate. Seriously. Just don't.

10. Listen.

[Originally posted in February 2011, and republished by request.]

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Open Thread

Hosted by water.

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Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker Dr. Jan Itor: "If you won an all-expenses-paid trip (say, 2-3 weeks in duration) to anywhere in the world, where would you go?"

Somewhere quiet and warm, where I can't even get cell service.

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Gross

No one is more enthusiastic about Rick Santorum running for president than Rick Santorum.
Rick Santorum, former Republican senator and presidential contender, last seen making terrible movies to stop the devil's scourge, is working on putting together another presidential bid for 2016:

Santorum said in a new interview that he's building a network of supporters and donors in case he wants to make a second run for the White House.

"I'm doing everything right now as if I'm running," he told RealClearPolitics. "So we're moving forward and trying to line up supporters — both grassroots and donors. We're talking to folks who might be interested after the [midterm] election to come and help the team, so we're starting to put the pieces together, but we're not going to make the final decision until 2015."

...Asked about potentially facing Romney again in 2016, Santorum simply said, "The more the merrier."

Ha ha terrific.

I can't wait for more of this magic during the next round of debates, even if Reince Priebus is trying to KILL THE MAGIC, like some kind of magic-killing monster.


"Hahaha you are just delightful!"          "Hahaha and you are A TREAT!"

Giant flags for everyone!

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The Wednesday Blogaround

This blogaround brought to you by ink pens.

Recommended Reading:

Ron: [Content Note: Racism; racist violence; antisemitism] Why We Need Mandatory Anti-Racist Education

Anne: [CN: Self-denigration] Fuck Busy

Trudy: [CN: Racism; exploitation] Treating Black People as a Consumable Good ≠ Valuing Black Life

Aura: [CN: Racism] For Some Native Tribes, Federal Recognition Remains out of Reach

Mustang Bobby: [CN: Illness] Today in Chutzpah

Angry Asian Man: 12-Year-Old US Chess Master Jennifer Yu Wins World Title

[CN: Guns; misogynist terrorism] Angus has more on why it is that Utah's gun laws prevented Utah State University from doing a weapons search at Anita Sarkeesian's (now canceled) speech.

Leave your links and recommendations in comments. Self-promotion welcome and encouraged!

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There Is No Neutral in a Culture of Abuse

[Content Note: Harassment; threats; abuse.]

For those who aren't on Twitter, and/or would like a discussion space for this idea, I had a few more things to say earlier about GamerGate, the threats against Anita Sarkeesian, and what it means to stand silent. So here they are:

I also just quickly want to underline this point: Staying silent for self-protection and self-care is not complicity. It is also not cowardly. As I have said many times in this space, self-care—especially within a culture that discourages it—is always indicative of strength.

And it is not neutral. Someone who has to stay silent, who has effectively been silenced, because they cannot safely speak out is a victim of the culture of abuse.

Conversely, someone is silent simply because they can, because it's easier, is not a victim, but a co-conspirator of abusers.

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Please Support Shakesville

This is, for those who have requested it, your bi-monthly reminder to donate to Shakesville and an important fundraiser to keep Shakesville going.

If you have appreciated being able to tune into Shakesville for discussion of online harassment, for distilled news about politics, for a safe and image-free space to discuss acts of public violence, for recipes, for the Fat Fashion threads, or for whatever else you appreciate at Shakesville, whether it's the moderation, the community in Open Threads, Film Corner, TV recaps, video transcripts, or anything else, please remember that Shakesville is run exclusively on donations. I would certainly appreciate your support, if you can afford to chip in. The donation link is in the sidebar to the right. Or click here.

I also want say thank you, so very much, to each of you who donates or has donated, whether monthly or as a one-off. I am grateful—and I don't take donations for granted. I've not the words to express the depth of my appreciation, besides these: This community couldn't exist without that support, truly. Thank you.

My thanks as well to everyone who contributes to the space in other ways, whether as a contributor, a moderator, a guest writer, a transcriber, and/or as someone who takes the time to send me a note of support and encouragement. (Or a cool drawing!) This community couldn't exist without you, either.

[Further explanation of fundraising is here. Please note that I don't want anyone to feel obliged to contribute financially, especially if money is tight. There is a big enough readership that no one needs to donate if it would be a hardship, and no one should ever feel bad about that.]

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Daily Dose of Cute

Iain lifts Olivia in the air, and she just hangs out there, surveying the room.



And then, when he's tired of hoisting a massive cat to the heavens, she curls up in his lap.



Contentment.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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Quote of the Day

"If somebody like me—or me—became president, there is no chance in the world that anything significant could be accomplished without the active, unprecedented support of millions of people, who would be prepared to make a commitment—the likes of which we have not made! I know that I don't wanna be in the White House taking on the Koch brothers, who'll be running ads 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, trying to destroy me and my family and everything else that we believe in, and not have people getting involved. And I don't know whether that can happen. That's what I'm trying to figure out."—Socialist Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders, sharing his current thoughts about whether he'll run for president in 2016.

He's absolutely right. He's a smart cookie, that one.

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Two-Minute Nostalgia Sublime

Joan Jett: "Bad Reputation"

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: War] What is even going on with IS these days? Well: "White House officials insist their twin strategy of air strikes and support for local ground forces is still working despite advances by [the Islamic State] outside Baghdad and in the Syrian town of Kobani, but concede they will consider calls for additional bombing if requested by the Pentagon. In the last two days alone, the US has conducted 21 separate air strikes on IS forces in and around Kobani and recently deployed Apache attack helicopters to repel advances on Baghdad airport. Yet the latest damage assessment released by the Pentagon on Tuesday focused primarily on damage to IS 'staging locations' and buildings rather than claiming much success against fighters on the ground who are dispersed in urban areas and much harder to target using current tactics. 'I am confident the president would want to reserve that option dependent on the advice he gets from his military planners,' the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, told reporters when asked whether Obama was willing to escalate the air campaign against IS." That all sounds terrific. Sob.

[CN: War on agency] In good news: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed more than a dozen Texas abortion clinics to reopen, blocking a state law that had imposed strict requirements on abortion providers. Had the law been allowed to stand, it would have caused all but eight of the state's abortion clinics to close and would have required many women to travel more than 150 miles to the nearest abortion provider."

[CN: Disenfranchisement] In bad news: "A U.S. Appeals Court has ruled to put Texas's strict voter ID law back in place for the upcoming election. ...A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday afternoon unanimously stayed an order issued Saturday by U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos that had blocked the controversial law. Gonzales Ramos last week struck down the law, finding that it discriminates against racial minorities under the Voting Rights Act."

If you live and vote in Texas, and want to make sure you've got the ID you need, go here.

[CN: War on agency] The indispensable Robin Marty: "A personhood amendment by any other name would still ban abortion: Voters don't like laws that would eliminate methods of birth control and fertility treatments. So 'pro-lifers' are rebranding." But it's all just the same shitty semantic games as always. Not that we could expect anything else from people who ruin women's lives but call themselves 'pro-life' without a trace of fucking irony.

[CN: Violence] Debbie Dunnegan, the Republican Recorder of Deeds for Jefferson County, Missouri, says she "meant no ill intent toward the president" when she asked on her Facebook page why no military action "is being taken against our domestic enemy," i.e. President Barack Obama. Okay, player. She also says she hasn't taken down the post, because "I think it could hurt it as much as it could help" her reelection bid.

Coming soon to a TV near you: "ABC has closed a deal for Men in Shorts, a single-camera comedy inspired by the life of professional soccer player Robbie Rogers, who became the first openly gay man to compete in a top North American professional sports league. [The show] centers on a young pro soccer player who takes one small step out of the closet and one giant leap into the spotlight."

[CN: Misogyny] Speaking of soccer, Jessica Luther has written a great piece about women being forced to play on artificial turf and female players bringing a suit against FIFA's "second-class" treatment of women in the sport.

For a mere $95 million, spectacular views from the penthouse of Manhattan's new 432 Park residential tower can be yours!

You can't even get Jay Leno to go away, so don't even try.

[CN: Misogyny] Meanwhile, Steve Harvey continues to be the absolute woooooooooorst.

And finally! Here is a video of a pug who has some very important and dramatic peeing to do. Enjoy!

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Second Healthcare Worker Tests Positive for Ebola

[Content Note: Illness.]

A second healthcare worker who was part of team caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian traveler who died at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital last week, has tested positive for the Ebola virus, Texas state and federal health officials confirmed this morning.

The worker reported a fever on Tuesday and was immediately isolated at the hospital.

"Within 90 minutes of taking her temperature, she was in isolation," Judge Clay Jenkins, Dallas County's chief executive, said Wednesday morning at a news conference.

Preliminary tests were performed late Tuesday by the laboratory for the Texas Department of State Health Services in Austin, and the results were received about midnight. Additional tests to confirm the positive reading were being done by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Officials interviewed the worker to identify anyone else who might have been exposed, the state health department said in a statement, but it was unclear whether any others were being monitored.

...A second case of Ebola among the nearly 100 doctors, nurses and assistants who helped treat Mr. Duncan for 10 days at Presbyterian was not unexpected. For days, federal health officials have warned that, in addition to the nurse who was confirmed to have Ebola on Sunday, other cases were likely.

"It might get worse before it gets better, but it will get better," [Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings] said. "The only way we are going to beat this is moment by moment, person by person, detail by detail."

A key part of preventing infections moving forward is putting in place protocols that were allegedly not in place during Duncan's treatment.

A Liberian Ebola patient was left in an open area of a Dallas emergency room for hours, and the nurses treating him worked for days without proper protective gear and faced constantly changing protocols, according to a statement released late Tuesday by the largest U.S. nurses' union.

Nurses were forced to use medical tape to secure openings in their flimsy garments, worried that their necks and heads were exposed as they cared for a patient with explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting, said Deborah Burger of National Nurses United.

...The nurses alleged that:

— Duncan was kept in a non-isolated area of the emergency department for several hours, potentially exposing up to seven other patients to Ebola;

— Patients who may have been exposed to Duncan were kept in isolation only for a day before being moved to areas where there were other patients;

— Nurses treating Duncan were also caring for other patients in the hospital;

— Preparation for Ebola at the hospital amounted to little more than an optional seminar for staff;

— In the face of constantly shifting guidelines, nurses were allowed to follow whichever ones they chose.

"There was no advance preparedness on what to do with the patient, there was no protocol, there was no system," Burger said.

The bad news is that there still isn't a solid system with proper supplies in place. The good news is that there will be, and that the contamination was the result of a lack of preparedness, which can be fixed, and not because the virus has evolved to transmit in new ways.

In the meantime, the infected nurses will (one hopes) be getting the best treatment possible, so that they may survive this horrible virus.

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This Is Misogynist Terrorism

[Content Note: Misogyny; terrorism; explicit threats of violence.]

Last night, Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency, creator of the Tropes vs Women feminist critique of video gaming series, who was scheduled to speak at Utah State University this morning, was forced to cancel her speech after the director of the university's Center for Women and Gender, among other people, received an email threatening in gruesome detail a mass shooting if they didn't cancel Sarkeesian's appearance.

Although the threat was deemed by law enforcement to be "consistent with ones [Sarkeesian] has received at other places around the nation" and "not out of the norm" for her, because of Utah's open-carry laws, the university was either unable or unwilling to accommodate a request for firearm searches of attendees, so Sarkeesian was obliged to cancel out of security concerns.

The Standard Examiner published excerpts of the chilling email:

[The] anonymous email terror threat on Tuesday morning [came] from someone claiming to be a student proposing "the deadliest school shooting in American history" if it didn't cancel the Wednesday lecture.

The email author wrote that "feminists have ruined my life and I will have my revenge, for my sake and the sake of all the others they've wronged."

...The email was a warning to all staff and students at USU if Sarkeesian's talk wasn't canceled "a Montreal Massacre style attack will be carried out" against those in attendance, students, staff and the women's center.

"I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs," the email continues. The threat is "giving (USU) a chance to stop it."

The threats increase throughout the letter, saying at one point that even if security is increased it won't save anyone and feminists on campus won't be able to defend themselves.

"One way or another, I'm going to make sure they die," it said.

Sarkeesian poses "everything wrong with the feminist woman" and that is why she is being targeted, the email states. "She is going to die screaming like the craven little whore that she is if you let her come to USU."

The writer ended the email saying they would never be found, but everyone will soon know their name.

"I will write my manifesto in her spilled blood, and you will all bear witness to what feminist lies and poison have done to the men of America."

This is terrorism. It's misogynist terrorism. And, just like anti-choice terrorism, it's diminished with anodyne turns of phrase like "consistent with threats that are not out of the norm for this woman." Because threats of violence against uppity women is just to be expected.

Especially for women whose primary workplace is online.

What do you expect? More. I expect for women to not be terrorized.

I expect Anita Sarkeesian to be able to speak safely, and for her audience members who want to hear her speak to be able to do so safely.

And I expect people to stop dismissing real harm as nobody getting really hurt unless and until a woman dies.

And I expect men (and women) who are writing about this to stop reflexively including the cavernously contemptible phrase "small but vocal minority" to describe the people who are engaging in this misogynist terrorism.

And I expect for serious people who care about the fact that women are being terrorized and silenced and harmed to start talking about this culture of abuse using words that do not diminish what is happening and what its effects are.

If you care about this, about what has happened to Anita, and to other women, what continues to happen every day, now is not the time for polite words.

Now is the time for radical resistance.

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Open Thread

Hosted by Willow.

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Question of the Day

Suggested by Shaker themiddlevoice: "What topics or ideas would you like to see covered more in fiction?"

I have about a million different answers to this one, but I'll just keep it to one: I would really love to see more fat characters for whom fat is just another characteristic, and not a defining characteristic to their story arc. Like, I don't need to see or read one more "fat person finds love despite being fat" story. And I really don't need to see or read one more story in which fat is shorthand for "this character is bad, stupid, poor, evil, sloppy, funny, clumsy, unlovable, lazy, and/or in some other way villainous or a punchline."

So, basically: The idea that fat people are complete humans.

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Of Course

[Content Note: Homophobia.]

Zack Ford: "Texas Attorney General: 'It Does Not Matter' If Same-Sex Marriage Benefits Children."

Sure. Because invoking harm to children is only allowed to be done in an utterly mendacious way to support indefensible bigotry.

Not because you actually give a fuck about kids' welfare.

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Daily Dose of Cute

This guy has silly ears and wants some cuddles.
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.

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A Point about Harm

[Content Note: Intersectional misogyny; harassment; violent threats; slurs; self-harm.]

At Vice, Mike Diver has written a piece titled: "Does Someone Have to Actually Die Before GamerGate Calms Down?"

(If you're not familiar with GamerGate, there is a summary at the link, and there's a longer explainer here.)

Diver's piece ends thus: "So how about we all calm the fuck down before someone really gets hurt?"

The thing is, people have already really gotten hurt.

As Eastsidekate pointed out on Twitter, at least two trans women who have dealt with online harassment of this nature have killed themselves.

And then there are the women who have been doxxed; who have lost their livelihoods; who have abandoned their online spaces; who have had lies told them; who have had their pictures used to photoshop graphic pornographic or violent (or both) images of them; who have been obliged to live and work under a constant influx of violent threats, most of which are not taken seriously by law enforcement; who are obliged to weather all manner of "not technically" threats—urged to kill themselves; told to die in a fire; had to hear people tell them, over and over and over, that they wish they were dead.

It's critically important to this conversation to acknowledge that these things constitute people "really getting hurt."

When we define "really getting hurt" exclusively as physical harm, that diminishes and disappears the emotional damage that is done to people who are targeted in this way.

When one of us gets to the point, as many of us have, myself included, at which we're engaging in self-harm and/or contemplating suicide as a result of online harassment, that's someone who's already "really gotten hurt."

And it's frankly not helpful, when you're in that space, to know that it doesn't "count" until someone actually makes good on one of those threats and kills you. Or you kill yourself.

We need to care about the harm that comes way, way before someone dying.

Which is, by the way, not to minimize that also incredibly serious concern. I have, after a flurry of death threats, said: I don't want to be a martyr; I don't want there to be a "Liss's Law" named after my fucking corpse.

But I also don't want all the rest of the harm before that to exist. And I don't want it to not matter.

I don't want any of us to have to be alive but harassed and abused every goddamn day, either.

The harassment around gaming and tech is intense. I wrote my post criticizing Fat Princess more than six years ago, and I still get emails containing threats or fantasies of violence against me in response to it.

What women like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu, Adria Richards, Kathy Sierra, and others have gone through, and continue to go through, all for having the unmitigated temerity to be women in gaming and tech, is incredible. And reprehensible. And shameful beyond description. And harmful.

Actively, ongoingly, profoundly harmful. Individually harmful, and reverberatingly harmful, as other women see what happens to women who do what they do and calculate whether it's worth it to pursue their passion, in exchange for, potentially, their lives.

Women are being harassed, and abused, and threatened, and terrorized. Women have killed themselves. If the word "hurt" is to have any meaning at all, we need to stop saying that things need to change before someone gets hurt, and start saying plainly that things need to change because people are already being hurt.

And we really need to stop defining the threshold at which women's harm matters as the point in which one of the men who's been threatening them crosses a line into physically harming them. If I need to explain why it's fucked up to let the harassers define what constitutes someone "really getting hurt," instead of listening to women saying they're already hurting, then you haven't been paying attention.

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And Then This Happened

[Content Note: Privilege; oppression; appropriation; misogyny; homophobia; racism.]

Oh good grief: "Atheists Don't Owe Your Social Justice Agenda a Damn Thing."

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.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!