Secular Solstice and the Importance of Ritual

Secular Solstice cover art.
I wanted to write a little bit about secular ritual and tradition and why it’s important.

To me, that is. It’s important to me. It’s not important to a lot of other people, some of whom politely shrug and say, “Not my thing,” and others of whom sneer condescendingly at those of us who need it, claiming that they’re above such silliness.

I think people leave or avoid religion for a number of different overlapping reasons. Some just don’t believe in god. Others don’t believe in god, and also resent the communal aspects of religion. I’m not a huge fan of singing in groups, either, so I can relate to that somewhat.

But mainly, my issue with religion is the superstitious and unscientific thinking, and also the frequent presence of political conservatism. Ritual is something I always loved, and still love, which is why I attended Jewish religious observances often when I was in college and wish I had the opportunity to keep doing it. Despite my atheism. Despite the fact that I disagree that I have any obligation to avoid eating meat and dairy products in the same meal.

What I continue to yearn for despite all these years of atheism is that togetherness, the feeling of being part of a larger whole, of participating in ceremonies that have existed virtually unchanged for centuries, of feeling that I could go to services on Friday night in San Francisco or London or Tokyo or Cape Town and be welcomed in virtually the same way, with the same greetings and food and songs. They will say Shabbat shalom and there will be challah and red wine, in America and in Great Britain and in Japan and in South Africa.

I don’t think there is anything like that outside of Judaism, and can’t be for decades or centuries more. I’m trying to make my peace with that.

Ritual and tradition feel good. There doesn’t have to be a rational reason and there isn’t. Chocolate feels good, too, despite being harmful in large quantities. I don’t care that there aren’t Valid Logical Reasons for loving ritual (or chocolate). There is a lot of stress and pain in life and if I can spend a Friday night feeling cheerful and whole, I will do it.

But I also know that non-secular Judaism can’t be a home for me anymore, so I’m looking for other ways to get even a fraction of that feeling. One such way is a project run by my friend Raymond Arnold, called the Secular Solstice.

Although groups of humanists/rationalists/atheists have presumably been running their own winter solstice celebrations for a while now, this particular event is an attempt to actually create a new secular ritual, a set of traditions for celebrating a winter holiday that usually goes unnoticed in the Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa/New Year’s Eve pandemonium.

And it’s too bad that it does, because it’s an interesting holiday. Unlike most holidays, the solstice marks an astronomical phenomenon. People have known about it and observed it for thousands of years. From the simple physical fact of the winter solstice, people can (and do) draw all sorts of meaning.

The Secular Solstice, for instance, celebrates science and progress. It’s all about how humans overcome darkness and winter, literally and metaphorically. It’s about how even on the longest night of the year, we can look forward to the days growing longer and longer again. It’s about a lot of things, really.

The first Secular Solstice was held last year, in New York. I went with a bunch of people I care about and had one of the best holiday experiences I’ve ever had. The celebration was set up as a sort of concert with both music and short readings. Some of the songs had a sing-along component, though, for the first time possibly ever, I didn’t feel pressured or expected to actually sing (which, naturally, means that I felt comfortable enough to sing). The songs and readings were about winter, humanity, science, space, planet Earth. Not all of them resonated with me, but most did. (You can listen to them here.)

There were a few reasons I especially liked this particular event. One is that, on a psychological level, winter is just hard for me. I don’t know if I have Seasonal Affective Disorder necessarily, but I’m sensitive to extreme temperatures and to light (or lack thereof) and I find that winter saps me of physical and mental energy. Some of my favorite things–long walks, outdoor photography, swimming, reading outdoors in the sun, wearing the clothes I like–become difficult or impossible. The Secular Solstice, in a weird and possibly unintentional way, validated how much I hate winter and how much of a “big deal” it is for me to get through it without some of my favorite distractions and coping mechanisms. Unlike the other winter holidays, the Solstice doesn’t frame winter as a happy cheery beautiful time with family, snowball fights, kissing under the mistletoe, Santa Claus, and Jesus. It frames it as a challenge, but one that we nevertheless get through every year.

On a related note, the Secular Solstice also differs from a number of other humanist events in its avoidance of faux (at least to me) cheeriness. In this way, I’d contrast it with Sunday Assembly, another event I’ve started regularly attending. I do enjoy Sunday Assembly a lot, but I find myself generally unable to produce the amount of happy singing/dancing/clapping it seems to demand of me. I like my communal observances, secular or otherwise, to be a little more…I’m not sure what the word is. Solemn, maybe.

That’s something that Jewish ritual does particularly well. Most Jewish holidays (with a few notable exceptions) commemorate joyous events or concepts, but the rituals themselves often have a sort of gravity, a seriousness to them. Not every song is loud and cheerful. There is an opportunity to acknowledge adversity, loss, and melancholy.

Perhaps those who lead secular observances worry that people will be pushed away by too much solemnity, that it’ll be too much like religion. Many some people would be, which is why I understand why events like Sunday Assembly are the way they are. But the Secular Solstice differs in that it has so many quiet, beautiful, powerful moments, some of which might even feel quite sad. This, too, was an integral part of the experience for me.

But it had joyful and funny moments, too, as well as plenty of hopeful ones. I felt like I experienced pretty much a full gamut of emotions throughout the concert. Moreover, when it was over, I felt like I had actually observed something, in the sense of observing a holiday or a tradition. I had connected with the other people in the room, as well as with ideas that I believe in–the hope that we can overcome challenges, the ability of scientific progress to improve our lives, and the fact that it is okay to feel sad and scared.

Traditions, including new ones, help me mark the passage of time and find some sort of meaning in it. They also help me connect with people who share my values. While religious values serve a similar function, the values themselves are obviously quite different.

Unfortunately, unlike religious observances, secular ones appeal to a small minority of people and do not have the financial and social capital that theistic congregations can provide. That’s why, if you want to see secular traditions and communities flourish, it’s important to support them.

If this is something that matters to you too, I urge you to support the Secular Solstice through their Kickstarter campaign.

Secular Solstice and the Importance of Ritual
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Internet Activism Matters: An Update On Kickstarter and Ken Hoinsky

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Remember that awful rapey Kickstarter project?

So, not only did Kickstarter release an amazing apology for allowing the project to get funded, but the authors of the petition to get it pulled have spoken with the author of the rapey book. Here’s what he said:

Today, Hoinsky said in a statement that he ‘wholeheartedly apologizes to everyone I offended’ and is committed to writing a book that promotes consent, respect, and healthy relationships.

‘Ben Kassoy of DoSomething.Org, a non-profit that encourages social change, reached out to me,’ he says, ‘…to provide alternate opinions and insights to help remove all of the potentially harmful advice.’

Hoinsky realizes he needed to ‘seriously evaluate every last word of my writing to make sure I wasn’t encouraging sexual assault in any way, shape, or form.’

‘I am proud to say that his was the first of many meetings I will be having with anti-rape and anti-abuse organizations and experts to make sure that the advice I am offering is free of any tinge of sexual assault or rape vibes,’ he added. ‘I will be rewriting Above The Game under their guidance and insight.’

Are books like this still totally dumb? Yeah. But thanks to the petition I and 63,623 other people signed, the book will no longer promote sexual assault. The men who read this book will no longer receive the message that grabbing a woman’s hand and putting it on your penis without consent is okay. They will not read a book that tells them to “force” a woman to “rebuff” their “advances.”

So. $25,000 donated to RAINN by Kickstarter, a new Kickstarter policy banning “seduction guides,” and an apology from Hoinsky along with a commitment to work with anti-violence organizations while rewriting his book.

Not bad!

I don’t know how else to say this: Internet activism matters. The next time someone tries to give you shit for “just blogging” or “just signing petitions,” point them to this and dozens of other examples of small things adding up to make a big difference.

Of course, if you are able, you should do more than blog and sign petitions. But not everyone is able for various reasons, and there’s no need to devalue what for many people is the only way they can participate in activism. Further, there are some things that can only be accomplished through collective action. Where would you have held a protest against this book? Volunteering at a soup kitchen is important, but would it have convinced Hoinsky that his advice was harmful?

A strong movement is comprised of many different kinds of activists doing many different kinds of things. We need the voters who write to their congressional representatives. We need the protesters who march in front of state capitols. We need the writers who produce blog posts, op-eds, and letters to the editor. We need the advocates and counselors who volunteer or work directly with survivors. We need the psychologists and sociologists who research sexual assault and its prevention. We need the artists who make art, visual or written or performed, that challenges rape culture. We need the teachers who lead sexual assault prevention programs. And we need the people who put pressure on businesses and individuals like Kickstarter and Ken Hoinsky to stop promoting sexual assault.

If you devalue any piece of this puzzle in favor of the one you happen to hold, you’re ignoring the fact that there’s no concrete thing called Change that there’s only one definitive way to accomplish. Volunteering with survivors is important, but it ultimately means little unless we’re also doing stuff to make sure that there are going to be less survivors in the future. Marching in front of state capitols is important, but it ultimately means little unless there are writers and researchers there behind the scenes, suggesting how politicians can make better laws about sexual assault.

And writing, by the way, has historically been an agent of change–consider Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto (whatever you may think of its results), and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. 

Writers have changed the course of history. Now that we have the internet, it’s even easier for them to do so. Don’t for a second believe that your obligation to improve the world ends with signing a petition or writing a blog post*, but also don’t believe that doing so means nothing.

~~~

*I actually think this is a strawman argument. People who belittle internet activism love to make fun of people who apparently literally think that signing a single petition is The Most Important Thing and that they are now Real Important Activists for having done so, but do these people actually exist? Or is it just annoying to have people ask you to sign a petition? Hmm.

Internet Activism Matters: An Update On Kickstarter and Ken Hoinsky

Tell Kickstarter Not To Fund This Gross Book About How To Get Laid By Assaulting Women

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[Content note: sexual assault]

There’s a project that’s just gotten funded through Kickstarter. It’s a book called Above the Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome With Women and it’s being written by a Redditor and pickup artist named Ken Hoinsky. Predictably, the book promises to help men meet and hook up with women.

Some quotes from the book:

5) Get CLOSE to her, damn it!

To quote Rob Judge, “Personal space is for pussies.” I already told you that the most successful seducers are those who can’t keep their hands off of women. Well you’re not gonna be able to do that if you aren’t in close!

All the greatest seducers in history could not keep their hands off of women. They aggressively escalated physically with every woman they were flirting with. They began touching them immediately, kept great body language and eye contact, and were shameless in their physicality. Even when a girl rejects your advances, she KNOWS that you desire her. That’s hot. It arouses her physically and psychologically.

Decide that you’re going to sit in a position where you can rub her leg and back. Physically pick her up and sit her on your lap. Don’t ask for permission. Be dominant. Force her to rebuff your advances.

Sex

Pull out your cock and put her hand on it. Remember, she is letting you do this because you have established yourself as a LEADER. Don’t ask for permission, GRAB HER HAND, and put it right on your dick.

Guess what! That’s sexual assault. “Forcing” her to “rebuff your advances” is sexual assault. “Grabbing her hand” and “putting it right on your dick” unless she’s consented is sexual assault. And while many people do indeed find it arousing when someone desires them, sexual assault is not arousing; it is assault, it is violation of others’ bodies, and it is a crime.

Wow, the year is 2013 and I really did just have to say that.

The idea that deep down, women want to be raped is some bullshit we can thank Sigmund Freud for. But it’s time for it to go.

Now, I know that some of you dudes are gonna be like “Yeah but it might help me get laid!” Sorry, but that’s completely fucking irrelevant. The reason crimes like sexual assault are crimes is not because committing them doesn’t benefit anyone, it’s because we’ve decided that they either 1) hurt others or 2) hurt society or both. Claiming that it should be okay to sexually assault someone because then you might get laid is like saying that it’s okay to steal because then you’ll get free stuff. (The point isn’t that sexual assault is equivalent to theft, but rather that the reasoning is just as morally and intellectually bankrupt.)

And no, it’s not enough to say that it’s the woman’s “job” to just “keep saying no.” It is your job not to touch people without their consent. If you can’t do that, then you’ve failed to meet the minimum standards for being a decent human being. Sorry!

Of course, Hoinsky knows he’s being a creepy asshole. These guys always do. He’s been spamming a Jezebel writer about it, hoping to get written up on the blog because “I showed it to my brother’s Jezebel-addicted ex-girlfriend and she went on a 3 hour diatribe about it. Your readers will eat it up!”

Giving attention to a person like this makes me feel desperately in need of a shower, but it’s also pretty important to me that this project not get funded. Here’s where Kickstarter comes in. Every project funded through the site has to be approved first, and the site approved this one. However, Kickstarter’s guidelines prohibit “offensive material (hate speech, etc.).” As we have seen with Facebook, sometimes companies don’t seem to realize that sexual assault is offensive and advocating sexual assault of women is hate speech. So, it seems that Kickstarter has fucked up a little here.

Sign this petition to ask them not to release the funds for the project. Also, go to the project page, scroll all the way to the bottom, and click on the button that says “Report this project to Kickstarter.” You might literally prevent a few sexual assaults. And if not, you’ll at the very least send a message that this is 2013 and this shit isn’t okay anymore. Not that it ever was.

Tell Kickstarter Not To Fund This Gross Book About How To Get Laid By Assaulting Women