AAI Atheist Conference — Meetup at Church & State?

Who’s going to the Atheist Alliance International conference in LA in October?

Churchandstate
Ingrid and I are going, and on the Thursday night before it starts, we’re thinking of going to this great restaurant, called — get this — Church & State.

Come on — how could we not?

We’ve actually been to this place, and it’s amazing. And ever since, we’ve been harboring fantasies of going with a whole gang of atheists.

So are there any blog readers out there who are going to the conference, and who want to join us? If so, let us know! Let us know ASAP, as we would need to make reservations, and we’d need to do so reasonably far in advance. (Note: The restaurant isn’t wildly expensive, but it’s also not cheap. You can check out their prices and drool over their offerings at their website.) The conference is Oct. 2-4, so we’re talking about going to Church & State on Oct. 1. Speak up in the comments, or email me, greta at gretachristina dot com. Hope to see you there!

AAI Atheist Conference — Meetup at Church & State?
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"My Four-Year-Old Is
": Parents, Kids, And Sex-Positivity

Kids first book about sex
This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

How do you teach your kids to feel good and okay with sex… and still teach them the basic social norms about sex that they’ll need in order to function in the world?

I got a letter from reader the other day, asking this question:

My daughter, who is 4, has begun masturbating; and it freaks me the hell out.

I’m as sure as a parent can be that she’s never seen it happen before, and that she’s not been molested. I’m pretty sure she just figured it out on her own. But I have no idea what to do! I’ve always been more of the Brave New World approach that children should not be made to feel ashamed of their sexuality… But 4???

I tried to make her stop by telling her that’s where she peepees, and so it’s dirty (I know, loaded word); but she totally Freaks Out angry when I stop her.

I feel very confused, and quite a bit nervous that I’ll get blamed for something terrible if I approach someone else with this.

So here’s my reply.

Planned parenthood
First, I feel compelled to say this: I am not a trained expert in child psychology or child sexuality. And I’m not a parent. I’m getting a lot of my info from people who are trained experts and parents… but I’m not one myself. (If you want to seek more information from experts about talking with your kids about sex, I can strongly advise the Planned Parenthood Resources for Parents webpage… and I fervently recommend their Human Sexuality — What Children Need to Know and When page, a resource that all parents everywhere should be clicking on right this second.)

That prologue out of the way, the very, very first thing I want to say is this:

Its perfectly normal
There is nothing even remotely strange about the fact that a four- year- old child is masturbating. That is completely, 100% normal. Extremely common, even. Some children begin touching their genitals as young as three months old. It’s not a sign that she’s been molested, or that she’s seen other people masturbate, or anything else scary or inappropriate. It’s a sign that she’s a healthy child exploring her body. (My earliest memory of masturbating was when I was about 6 or 7; and in that memory, the experience was already familiar, something I’d been doing for a while.)

And IMO, there’s nothing strange about the fact that she gets mad when you try to stop her. I mean, if someone in a position of great power and authority over me tried to stop me from masturbating, I’d get freaked out angry, too.

It seems to me that your problem isn’t that your child is masturbating. It’s that she’s masturbating in front of you, and possibly in front of other people, in ways that makes those people (including you) uncomfortable.

So let’s deal with that problem.

I get that this is a difficult situation. I get that, no matter how okay you are with sex in your own life, dealing with your own children’s sexuality can be seriously uncomfortable. I get what a tricky balance it is to teach your children a healthy, positive attitude about sex and still maintain good boundaries.

But I think your instincts about not wanting to teach your daughter that her genitals are dirty, or that masturbation is dirty, are absolutely 100% spot-on. I cannot emphasize this strongly enough: Please, for the sweet love of Loki, do not tell her that her genitals are dirty or that it’s dirty to touch them. I’m not quite down with the Brave New World scenario; but teaching your daughter that masturbation and genitals are dirty is absolutely not going to help her grow up with a good image of herself and her sexuality.

Private
Instead, I’d teach her that they’re private.

I’d be inclined to say something along these lines: “It’s fine that you do that. Most people do that, and it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with it. But that’s something that you should do when you’re alone, in private. That’s a part of your body and a part of your life that people usually keep to themselves, or share privately with particular people. It’s not something we do in front of everybody, and it’s not something kids and adults do together. That’s not because it’s dirty or bad or something to be ashamed of. It’s just because we keep some parts of our lives private — and for most people, that’s one of them.”

If she seems confused by this, you could talk with her about other things that people keep private, even though they’re good, happy things that we aren’t ashamed of. Some possible examples: We don’t always talk about our deepest feelings with everybody: we tell them to our family and closest friends. Some people have private jokes or games that they like to keep special for certain people. Some kids — and even some adults — have secret words or languages that only their best friends know. Etc. Get her to come up with examples. I bet you that she can.

Door lock
You might even talk with her about why people keep some things private. The answer to that question varies from person to person and from culture to culture, so I can’t tell you what to say… but I can tell you what I’d say if it were me. I might explain that keeping some things private is a way to keep some relationships special. I might explain that when people see something as private and special, it makes them uncomfortable when someone they don’t know very well shares it with them or does it in front of them. I might even ask her if she’s ever had anyone tell her something that she really didn’t want to know — not because it was dirty or bad, but because it was too personal. (It’s never too early to explain the concept of TMI. Especially with kids growing up in the Facebook generation.)

And I’d definitely, absolutely, without question explain that masturbation and touching genitals is something that adults don’t want to do with kids or have kids do in front of them — since that’s something that bad grownups do to hurt kids, and good grownups don’t want to do it. (If you haven’t already had the “don’t let anyone touch your genitals if you don’t want it, your body belongs to you and nobody has a right to touch it in ways you don’t like, and if anyone tries to do that you have to tell me right away” talk with her, now’s the time to do it.)

You can discuss the finer points later, as she grows up. You can explain about privacy’s shades of grey, and how different people are comfortable with different levels of sexual privacy. You can explain how respect for sexual privacy is part of respect for sexual consent. You can talk about the question of whether the desire for sexual privacy is a cultural norm, or a hard-wired part of the human social mind, or a combination of both. You can discuss the difference between talking about sex in public, and having sex in public. You could even explain why some people write blogs discussing details of their personal sex lives with thousands of total strangers (ahem!)… but don’t want their families to read them.

But for now, “Some good things are private, and touching your genitals is one of of them” should do.

"My Four-Year-Old Is
": Parents, Kids, And Sex-Positivity

Their Right To Not Say It: Free Speech and the Unitarian Atheist Ad Kerfuffle

Does the Unitarian Church magazine have the right — not just the legal right, but the moral right — to reject an ad from an atheist organization, an ad that criticizes religion and asks people to reject it?

Uu world
You might have heard about the recent kerfuffle, in which UU World — the free denominational magazine for the Unitarian Universalist Association — printed a paid ad (PDF) from the Freedom From Religion Foundation… and then, in response to complaints from some readers, apologized for the ad, said that it was a mistake to run it, and is declining to run it again.

Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist has objected vociferously to this decision, saying (I’m summarizing here) that the decision goes against the UU’s purported commitment to religious freedom and diversity of ideas, and is an unreasonable squashing of atheist expression in a forum that should be open to it.

I’m going to go out on a limb here.

I’m going to disagree with Hemant, and with other atheists who have criticized the UU over this.

I’m going to defend the church.

Theres probably no god
It’s easy to draw the obvious parallel between the Unitarian Universalists’ decision, and the ongoing controversies over atheist bus ads that bus companies keep trying to find feeble excuses to reject. That’s the most obvious context that this kerfuffle took place in, and I can see why people who got irate over the bus ad controversies might jump to irateness at the Unitarian Church.

But there are two enormous differences between these situations: differences that make the situations not parallel at all. Tangential, in fact. Maybe even perpendicular.

One: The magazine of the Unitarian Universalists is a private publication, expressing the viewpoint of a private organization.

You can be good without god
Public buses are… well, public. They’re supported, at least in part, by taxpayer dollars. The rules that apply to them and their ad policies are therefore more stringent. They’re supposed to have consistent ad policies which they apply fairly, across the board, to anyone who wants to advertise, regardless of whether the company agrees with the message. If they rent ad space to churches saying, “Christianity is cool,” then they have to rent ad space to atheist organizations saying, “Atheism is cool.”

That’s a pretty solid legal principle. And I think it’s a good moral principle as well. Publication spaces that belong to all citizens should provide equal access for all citizens.

But a private organization is under no such obligation. Its publications don’t belong to all citizens. They belong to the organization, to publish its own opinions and views.

FirstAmendment
Yes, there are laws about public accommodations and such, and businesses that are open to the public can’t reject customers based on race, gender, religion, and so on. But this principle is balanced by the First Amendment right of publications to control their content. Even large, publicly-sold, widely-read magazines have the right to reject ads whose content they think is offensive or in direct opposition to their mission. (As someone who’s tried to place ads for a sex toy company in the New Yorker… believe me, I know.) And an internal magazine of a private organization has pretty close to free rein. They are under no obligation whatsoever to accept an ad whose content is explicitly hostile to their central function.

Legally — or morally.

Which brings me to:

Two: The content of this particular ad was actively hostile to religion.

Don't believe in god? you are not alone
This wasn’t one of those kinder, gentler atheist bus ads saying something like, “You can be good without God,” or, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone,” or even, “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The message of this ad was not, “Hey, there are other atheists out there, it’s okay to be an atheist, atheists can be good and happy people.”

Twain ffrf ad
The message of this ad was, ‘Religion sucks.”

And it is entirely reasonable for a church magazine to decline an ad with the message, “Religion sucks.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is a message I more or less agree with. Some of the specific quotes are ones I might quibble with… but I basically agree with the message that religion (a) isn’t true and (b) on the whole does more harm than good. I’m not saying that the FFRF were bad people for trying to run this ad.

I’m saying that the Unitarian Universalists were also not bad people for rejecting it. It was totally reasonable for them to reject it. In their place, I probably would have done the same.

Let me put it this way. Would it be reasonable for the magazine of an atheist organization — or an atheist blog, for that matter — to reject an ad saying, “Atheism is immoral, atheists will be condemned to hell if they don’t repent, the only true path is the path of Jesus”?

And if that would be reasonable — then why are this church’s actions any different?

Who says god doesnt like science
I actually ran into this very situation myself a while back. The United Church of Christ was running an ad campaign plugging themselves as a science-friendly church, with the tag line, “Science and faith are not mutually exclusive.” It’s a message that I ultimately don’t agree with, that I pretty strongly don’t agree with (I think religion and science can uneasily co-exist, but are fundamentally different approaches to understanding the world that will eventually conflict). And after much searching of my non-existent soul, I decided to reject the ad.

I’ve since come up with a different solution. I’ve put an “Ads Don’t Necessarily Reflect My Views” disclaimer above my ad space (thanks to Ebonmuse for that suggestion!), and I now would probably accept the UCC ad with that disclaimer in place. But I think I was entirely within my rights — not just legally, but ethically — to reject an ad in my personal, “this is what Greta thinks” free-speech space that I felt ran completely counter to one of my most central values.

And I think the same holds true for the Unitarian Church.

First-Unitarian-Church_Milwaukee_Jul09
The Unitarian Church is… well, it’s a church. Yes, it’s a church with a pretty lukewarm and inconclusive position on the existence of God. But it is a church, and at least part of its mission is to provide a home and a place of worship for people who believe in God. Religion is a central part of its mission. It is under no obligation to provide space in its own publications for the message that religion is a terrible institution that should be done away with.

There’s an old saying that free speech advocates use a lot: “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” Well, that applies here. If the Unitarian Universalists don’t want to say “Religion sucks” in their in-house magazine… well, I may not agree with what they don’t want to say, but I’ll defend to the death their right to not say it.

Finally, and maybe most importantly:

If we atheists are going to be ethically consistent — if we’re going to be models for the principle that you really can be good without God — then we have to not be reflexive cheerleaders for people who are on our side. We have to judge these questions, not by choosing up sides between atheists and non-atheists, but on the basis of the ethical principles involved.*

In the coming decades, there are going to be a lot of conflicts between atheists and believers. And the atheists aren’t always going to be right. We’ll have a lot more credibility if we don’t always stand up for the atheists… and, instead, always try to stand up for what’s right.

*(To be both fair and clear, I don’t think Hemant is doing that. He’s shown himself plenty willing to criticize atheists when he thinks it’s warranted. I’m talking about general principles here — not Hemant’s particular arguments.)

Their Right To Not Say It: Free Speech and the Unitarian Atheist Ad Kerfuffle

Getting In The Mood

Please note: The post that this links to includes references to my personal sex life. Nothing too explicit or specific — but family members and others who don’t want to read about that may want to skip this one.

In the mood
I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog. It’s about getting in the mood for sex — with a particular emphasis on couples who schedule and make dates for sex, and on specific, practical strategies for getting your mind off of work, errands, etc… and into the gutter where it belongs.

It’s titled Getting In The Mood, and here’s the teaser:

I’ve written before, many times, in lavish praise of scheduling sex. I’ve written about how scheduling sex can be one of the best ways to keep sex alive and lively for people who are getting older, people who have been together a long time, people who are just plain busy and overscheduled. I’ve written about the myth that being swept away by passion (as opposed to consciously making room for sex in your life) is inherently the best kind of sex… and how this myth reinforces the idea that sex is dirty and bad and the only valid excuse for it is that you were overcome by passion. And I’ve written about how you don’t need to be in the mood to have sex when you start having it: you just need to be willing to get into the mood.

All very well and good.

But how do you get there?

How do you get from A to B? If you’ve made a plan to have sex on Sunday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon rolls around and neither of you is feeling it… how do you get yourself feeling it?

How — specifically, practically, strategically — do you get in the mood?

To find out more — and to share your own strategies — read the rest of the piece. (And if you’re inspired to comment here, please consider cross-posting your comment to the Blowfish Blog: they like comments there, too.) Enjoy!

Getting In The Mood

Race, Gender, and Atheism, Part 2: What We Need To Do — And Why

Black scarlet letter
So what can atheists do about the race and gender imbalance in our movement?

And why should we care?

In yesterday’s post, I asked the question, “Why is the atheist movement so predominantly white and male?” I talked about how, even with the best of intentions, a largely white male community can become a self- fulfilling prophecy. I talked about unconscious bias, and the tendency of a group to focus on the concerns of the people who currently dominate that group. And I talked about how the longer a community stays imbalanced, the more this bias and focus get perpetuated… and how this turns into a self-perpetuating cycle, in which women and people of color don’t feel comfortable joining because the movement is already largely made up of white men.

Today, I want to talk about what — specifically — we can do about all this.

And I want to talk about why we should care.

*

Self fulfilling prophecy
Let’s start with what we can do about it. And let’s start with the self- fulfilling prophecy bit. Self-fulfilling prophecies can seem beyond hope: just another of those stupid hard-wired human behaviors that can’t be fixed. But that’s just not the case here. There are specific, practical steps that the currently white male- dominated atheist movement could take to derail this cycle, or at least to mitigate it. And self-perpetuating cycles can be used for the power of good as well as evil.

Outreach hand
For starters: Atheist organizations could make an effort to reach out to women and people of color, and to get the women and people of color they have now into positions of greater prominence and visibility. Atheist conference organizers could make an effort to get more women and people of color as speakers…. both speaking on issues of race/ gender, and just speaking about atheism generally. Atheist speakers’ bureaus could make an effort to recruit women and people of color. Atheist writers could make an effort to cite the contributions and ideas of female atheists and atheists of color, both from history and from the current movement. Atheist bloggers could make an effort to cite/ link to atheist blogs run by women and people of color, and to include them in their blogrolls. Atheist leaders — writers, speakers, organization leaders — could make an effort to address specific concerns of women and people of color in the atheist community. Atheists of any degree of involvement with the atheist community could speak out when they see racism and sexism in the movement. Etc.

(This is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone who has other suggestions, please speak up in the comments.)

And as these efforts take hold and the movement becomes more inclusive, with more diversity in our leadership and our public figures, more women and people of color will feel comfortable and welcomed about joining.

Inclusivity can also be a self-perpetuating cycle.

Some organizations/ bloggers/ writers/etc. are already doing this. Good for them. More of us need to be doing it… and those of us who are doing it need to be doing it more.

Discovery-of-the-unconcious
The “unconscious bias” thing isn’t hopeless, either. It can also be addressed by taking positive steps to make our movement more inclusive. One of the great things about having a more diverse community is that your unconscious biases get called into question: partly just by seeing counterexamples on a regular basis, and partly because there’ll be more people around to call you on your shit. (People who feel more safe in calling you on your shit, since they’ll feel like they have backup.) And again, this can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy for good instead of evil. The more conscious a community gets of its biases and the more it works to overcome them, the more welcoming that community will be to a more diverse population.

Focus
And ditto with focus. The more women and people of color we have in our movement — especially in positions of leadership and visibility — the more that the specific concerns of women and people of color will be heard and addressed. And the more those concerns are heard and addressed, the more inviting our community will be to a wider and more diverse population. Again, the power of the self-perpetuating cycle can be a force for good instead of evil.<br clear=all /.
Ear
I want to mention a couple of other specific things we can do about all this, before I move on to why I think we should. A very important one, and one that’s really hard for a lot of people, is this: When someone brings up the subject of racism or sexism in the atheist movement — listen. Pay attention. Don’t just get defensive and reflexively reject the idea out of hand. We don’t have to agree with the criticism — heck, I often see accusations of sexism that I think are bullshit — but we should think about it for more than ten seconds, and listen to what exactly people are saying about it, before we decide whether or not the criticism has merit.

As Cubik’s Rube so eloquently put it in his excellent piece, Isms, in my opinion, are not good: “Don’t let your first response to a potentially legitimate complaint — made in as calm and reasoned and generous a manner as you could ask for, lodged by a demographic that consists of half the population of the planet and who have a history of being beaten down by the other half — be to tell them to shut up because they’re wrong to feel the way they do. That should not be where you instinctively, immediately go to when someone’s not happy with the way things are.”

I mean — if our immediate, instinctive response to criticisms about racism or sexism is to say, “That’s ridiculous, how dare anyone suggest such a thing, this is just PC whining”? That’s a good clue that what’s going on isn’t really a thoughtful, considered response, but is instead a reflexive rationalization of something that isn’t right but that we don’t want to think about.

And one last strategy bit before I move on: Those of us who are already on board? Those of us who see how racial and gender imbalances can perpetuate themselves, even without anyone intending them to? Those of us who think this is important, and that it needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later?

Speech balloons
We need to keep talking about it. And talking, and talking, and talking. We need to keep talking about specific instances of this phenomenon… and we need to keep talking about the phenomenon generally, and why it matters. Making this case within the atheist movement is like the atheist movement making our case for atheism outside it: it’s like water on rock. The ideas can take time to penetrate.

People with privilege will go to great lengths to (a) hang to to our privilege, and (b) deny that we have privilege so we can keep hanging on to it without feeling guilty. And people of all stripes will go to very great lengths indeed to avoid having to change our behavior. So we have to keep this issue — and the cognitive dissonance so many people seem to have about it — on everyone’s radar. We have to make it more of a pain in the ass to ignore ths stuff than it is to just deal with it already.

*

But why should we care? Why should it matter so much that the atheist movement is largely white and largely male, with so many white men in positions of leadership and power? Don’t we have other issues to worry about?

I’m going to answer as I so often do: with Greta’s unique blend of pie- eyed idealism and Machiavellian practicality.

Idealist
The idealistic reason? Because it’s the right thing to do. Because women atheists, and atheists of color, matter just as much as white male atheists. Because religion hurts women and people of color just as much as it does white men — more so, in many ways. Because women and people of color who are potential non-believers are just as important as white men who are potential non-believers, and it’s just as crucial to give them a safe place a place to land when they leave religion… as safe a place as we give to anybody else. Because fighting racism and sexism makes us all better people, and makes the world a better place. Because this conversation shouldn’t be about Us and Them: it should be about Us, all of us, all atheists and agnostics and skeptics and humanists and freethinkers and non-believers. Because we are all Us, all part of this movement, and we should all be treated as if we matter.

The pragmatic reason?

Biceps
Because it will make our movement stronger.

Numbers will make us stronger — and making the movement more inclusive will bring more numbers. Thinking through our ideas will make us stronger — and making the movement more inclusive will challenge us all to think more clearly. And diversity itself will make us stronger. It brings new ideas to the table. It multiplies our abilities to make alliances with other progressive political movements. It brings a broader range of ideas and viewpoints to the public debate. It makes us not look like elitist douchebags in the public eye.

Now, some people will likely respond that this is unfair. To take just one example from all of these issues: Some people will likely argue that making a conscious effort to move women and people of color into positions of visibility and leadership is reverse discrimination, unfair to white men who have worked hard for their prominent positions.

I have two responses to that.

One: The self-perpetuating cycles I talked about yesterday? The ways that unconscious bias can keep a movement largely white and male, and the ways that a largely white male movement will be off-putting to women and people of color, and the ways that a movement that doesn’t make an effort to address everyone’s concerns will wind up focusing on the concerns of the ones who traditionally run the show? Those cycles aren’t going to be broken by everyone just saying, “Okay, we promise not to be racist and sexist.” Those can only be broken by recognizing that there’s a real problem — and taking positive action to address it.

Obama half breed muslin
Two: In this world we live in, you’re really going to complain about the horrible injustice of discrimination against white men?

Really?

I mean — really?

I’ve been restraining the impulse to unleash the snark in this piece. But I’m feeling extremely irritated at the fact that I have to even explain this, and I’m going to let the snark off the leash for a moment. People — this is basic. This is Political Organizing 101. This should not be controversial. The self-perpetuating reality of racism and sexism, and the necessity of taking action to counteract it? This is not rocket science. Every serious progressive political movement on the block knows about it, and is at least making a gesture towards pretending to care about it. If we want to be a serious progressive political movement, we need to take this seriously.

In fact, I’m going to get even harsher here for a moment. When we say things like, “The reason there aren’t more women/POC in the atheist movement is that women/POC have special reasons for staying in religion, or for not coming out as atheists”? When we say things like, “How dare you accuse me of even unconscious racism and sexism — I’m not the problem, the unique personality and culture of women and people of color is the problem”? When we say things like, “Sure, our movement is mostly white and male — but that’s not our problem, and we shouldn’t be expected to do anything about it”?

What we’re really saying is, “White male atheists are the real atheists. White male atheists are the ones who count. The reasons white men stay in religion, or have a hard time coming out as atheists — those are the real reasons, the ones we should be addressing. Women and POC — they’re special, extra, other. We shouldn’t have to change our behavior to include them in the movement. This should be a One Size Fits all movement — and that size should be the size it already is, a size that fits white men.”

And I hope I don’t have to explain why we shouldn’t be saying that.

Mistakes_were_made
Okay. Stepping back from Snarky Harshville now. The thing is, despite my visit to Snarky Harshville, I actually don’t think that this is about blame. I know that this is a difficult issue; I know that people get very defensive when it comes up; and I know that one of the reasons people are reluctant to act on it is that they don’t want to feel like it’s their fault. But this isn’t about blame. Or at least, it doesn’t have to be. As Cuttlefish so eloquently (and succinctly) put it in a comment on Part 1 of this piece:

“It is worth remembering that we can disagree honestly about the causes, but still agree that a problem exists, and most importantly, still work towards solutions to that problem. The solutions, after all, may even be independent of the causes (a headache is not caused by lack of aspirin), and a common agreement as to the problem, if not the causes, still allows us to evaluate our interventions to see if they alleviate that problem. And whether or not white males are a (or the) cause of the situation, it would be difficult to argue that they are not the ones in the position of having the most power to change that situation.”

And that’s a big part of my point. My point is that it doesn’t much matter whether this is happening on purpose. What matters is that it’s happening — and if we want it to not haunt us for the entire future of our movement, we need to learn to recognize it, and to take action on it, now. This is our responsibility… even if only in the most limited sense that we have power to do something about it.

Rainbow atheist
Let me bring it back into practical terms, in a way I think everyone will get. The atheist movement has actually been quite good about being welcoming and inclusive of LGBTs. In fact, it’s very much taken the LGBT movement as its model (especially with the emphasis on coming out), paying close attention to the history of the LGBT movement and the lessons to be learned from its successes and failures.

So here’s a very important lesson the atheist movement can learn from the LGBT movement and our history:

We screwed this up.

Badly.

We still screw this up.

And we are still paying for it.

The early LGBT movement was very much dominated by gay white men. And the gay white male leaders of that movement had some seriously bad race and sex stuff going on: treating gay men of color as fetishistic Others, objects of sexual desire rather than members of the community… and treating lesbians as alien Others, inscrutable and trivial.

RainbowRacism
And we are paying for it today. Relations between lesbians and gay men, between white queers and queers of color, are often strained at best. Conversations in our movement about race and gender take place in a decades-old context of rancor and bitterness, and they can be a minefield, in which nothing anybody says is right. We still have a decided tendency to treat gay men of color as fetish objects, and lesbians as sexless aliens. And we still, after decades, have a decided tendency to put gay white men front and center as the most visible, most iconic representatives of our community.

That makes it hard on everybody in the LGBT movement. It creates rifts that make our community weaker. And it has a seriously bad impact on our ability to make effective social change. We have, for instance, a profoundly impaired ability to shift homophobic attitudes in the black churches… since those churches can claim, entirely legitimately, that the gay community is racist and doesn’t care about black people. If we hadn’t ignored black churches for the last decade, if we had done any serious outreach and alliance building with the black communities for the last decade, we might not have lost Prop 8.

We screwed this up. We still screw this up. We are paying for our screwups.

Fork in road sign.php
Atheists have a chance to not do that.

We’re not going to single-handedly fix racism and sexism overnight. Even I’m not enough of a pie-eyed optimist to think that. But we have a chance in the atheist movement to learn from the mistakes of the LGBT movement, and the mistakes of every other progressive movement before ours. Our movement — at least, the current incarnation of our movement, the visible and vocal and activist incarnation of our movement — is still relatively new. We have a unique opportunity to handle this problem early: before these self-perpetuating cycles become entrenched, before decades of ugly history and bad feelings poison the well.

Let’s take that opportunity.

Let’s take action on this now.

Race, Gender, and Atheism, Part 2: What We Need To Do — And Why

Getting It Right Early: Why Atheists Need to Act Now on Gender and Race

I want to talk about race and sex in the atheist movement.

Rebecca watson
I’m writing this because of the recent kerfuffle in the skeptical community, in which Carrie Iwan and Rebecca Watson of the Skepchick blog did a podcast interview about sexism at The Amazing Meeting (and about sexist remarks made at that meeting by “The Big Bang Theory” creator Bill Prady)… and were met with a barrage of hostile comments over the suggestion that the skeptical community might not always be the most welcoming place for women, and that maybe skeptics should be doing something about it. (Comments arguing, among other things, that women who complain about sexism in the skeptical movement are just being whiny, unreasonable, and politically correct.)

Sikivu hutchinson
And I’m writing this because of the interview I ran here in this blog with Sikivu Hutchinson, on being an African-American in the atheist movement… in which a surprising number of commenters reacted very strongly, and very negatively, to the idea that maybe there was a problem with the fact that the atheist movement is so predominantly and visibly made up of white men, and that maybe the movement should be doing something about it.

I want to talk about the fact that the atheist movement is so predominantly, and so visibly, made up of white men.

I want to talk about why this is a problem.

I want to talk about how this problem plays out, and how it perpetuates itself.

And I want to talk about why we need to do something about it.

Now, I don’t want to get deeply into overt racism and sexism in the atheist movement. (Not today, anyway. I may get into that in some later post.) For the purposes of this post, I’m going to assume that, when it comes to gender and race, everyone in the atheist movement is completely well- meaning, and has every conscious intention to not be sexist or racist. (I don’t actually believe that… but for the purposes of this post, I think it will be a useful assumption.)

Black scarlet letter
Instead, I want to talk about why it’s important for the atheist movement to start paying attention — now — to race and gender. I want to talk about why it’s important for the atheist movement to start paying attention — now — to the fact that it is largely a white male movement… and to how that’s likely to affect the future of the movement, for everyone in it. I want to talk about into how, exactly, a movement that starts out being mostly white and mostly male, with mostly white men in positions of visibility and leadership, has a tendency to stay that way… even with the best intentions of everyone in that movement. And I want to talk about why this matters: why it’s a serious problem, why it’s going to matter more and more as our movement grows… and why it’s important to nip the problem in the bud, early, while our movement is still relatively young.

*

First, let’s talk about how this happens. Let’s talk about three distinct ways that racial and gender imbalances in a movement can perpetuate themselves… even if there is absolutely zero conscious intention to discriminate. (BTW, these apply to other marginalized groups as well; but race and gender are what’s on the table right now, so that’s what I’m focusing on. And yes, I know there are more than just these three ways. These are just the big, obvious ones that I’m familiar with. Comments about others are very much welcomed.)

Discovery-of-the-unconcious
1: Unconscious bias. Even with the best of conscious intentions, people tend to be more comfortable, and more trusting, with people who are more like them. This has been well and thoroughly documented. It’s one of the most important reasons behind affirmative action: people in charge of hiring decisions will automatically gravitate towards people who are more like them. So if the people doing the hiring are white men, they’re more likely to hire white men… and then as the people they hire rise to positions of power, they in turn will be more likely to hire white men… and so on, and so on, and so on. If there is no conscious, deliberate attempt to seek out qualified women, people of color, etc., this process will perpetuate itself indefinitely.

This isn’t just true in hiring. It’s true in any community, and any movement. If a movement starts out being mostly made up of and led by white men, and there is no conscious, pro-active attempt to seek out and welcome women and people of color, then that movement will have a very strong tendency to continue being dominated by white men.

What’s more, people can have racist or sexist attitudes without being conscious of them. You don’t need to be a torch- wielding member of the KKK or Operation Rescue to say and think dumb things about race or gender. (As someone who has said and thought plenty of dumb things… believe me, I speak from experience.) A lot of racism and sexism isn’t grossly overt: it’s subtle, and it’s woven so deeply into the fabric of our culture that we often aren’t aware of it until it’s called to our attention. But you can be damn well sure that the people on the receiving end of those attitudes are aware of it… and it can put them off from participating in a community that they might otherwise be drawn to.

Focus
2: Focus. People have a natural tendency to focus on the issues that concern them most directly. And if a movement — however unintentionally — is being dominated by white men, then that movement will tend to focus its energies on issues that concern white men… at the expense of issues that concern women and people of color.

You want an example? Sure. As just one specific example, I’ll cite the tendency of the atheist movement to provide an Internet community more than in- the- flesh communities… a tendency that ignores the powerful social bond that churches provide in the African-American communities, and that neglects the alienation and isolation that many African-American atheists feel when they leave their churches, and that fails to offer a replacement.

Self fulfilling prophecy
3: Self-fulfilling prophecies. Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that #1 and #2 aren’t happening at all. Let’s pretend that there is no tendency, not even an unconscious one, for the leaders and organizers of the atheist movement to default to white men in citations and event organization and so on. Let’s pretend that there are no racist or sexist attitudes in the atheist movement — not even subtle or unconscious ones. And let’s pretend that there is no tendency in the atheist movement, not even an unconscious one, to focus on issues that largely concern white men, at the expense of issues that largely concern women and people of color.

Let’s pretend that none of that is happening. Let’s pretend that the atheist movement is largely and most visibly white and male, either because most women and people of color just naturally aren’t that interested in atheism, or because of pure dumb random luck.

Even if that were so? The tendency of the atheist movement to be dominated by white men would still tend to perpetuate itself.

Remember what we talked about before. People are more comfortable with other people who are like them. And that isn’t just true for white men. It’s true for women and people of color, too. If a movement is largely made up of white men, and if the leaders and most visible representatives of a movement are mostly white men… women and people of color just aren’t as likely to join up. They — we — are more likely to feel like fish out of water. We’re less likely to see the movement as having to do with us.

Mad-men-2
And maybe more to the point: If a community is mostly white and male, a lot of women and people of color are going to assume that #1 and #2 are probably going on. I know that I’m less comfortable going to an event that’s mostly male… since the chances of having my femaleness be inappropriately sexualized are a lot greater. Women and people of color are naturally, and not unreasonably, going to be cautious about joining up with a movement that’s mostly white and male. We’re going to wonder why that is.

So even if the predominant whiteness and maleness of the atheist movement had somehow happened purely by accident, with no sins of either omission or commission on the part of white male atheists… the predominant whiteness and maleness of the movement would still tend towards a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if those hypothetical winds of fate that innocently led the movement to be largely white and largely male were no longer blowing in that direction, even if women and people of color suddenly sprouted an interest in atheism that they’d somehow never had before… this self- perpetuating tendency of largely white male movements to stay largely white and male would still tend to, well, perpetuate itself.

Plus, of course, all this is assuming that there is no overt racism or sexism in the atheist movement. An assumption that, obviously, isn’t warranted.

*

Circle of two arrows
So that’s some of the ways that largely white, largely male movements stay largely white and male… even if nobody intended it to happen that way. But here’s the good news:

A lot of this is fixable.

Or at least, it’s addressable.

And it’s much, much easier to address in the early stages of a movement than it is down the line, after patterns have been established, and bad feelings have had time to fester.

So how do we fix it?

And why should we care?

That’s Part 2.

(The second half of this piece will appear tomorrow. I’m not going to turn off comments, but if you can hold off on commenting until Part 2 appears, I’d be much obliged.)

Getting It Right Early: Why Atheists Need to Act Now on Gender and Race

Atheism and Patience

Soapbox
So how often do atheists have to keep making the same points, and keep countering the same old arguments?

Okay, that came out a little snarky. And I actually don’t mean it that way. I’m quite sincere. This is my question of the day, a question I’m genuinely pondering: How often do we have to make the same points, and countering the same old arguments?

As some of you know, I’ve been engaged in a debate with a believer, an old friend of mine, on Facebook.* And one of the things that’s been frustrating about this debate has been how many of the same old arguments — arguments I’ve countered a hundred times or more, arguments I could counter in my sleep — have kept coming up.

“Neither side can prove their case with 100% certainty, therefore both atheism and religion are just matters of faith, not based on evidence or reason.” “Science doesn’t understand everything, therefore it’s reasonable to conclude that God exists.” “Religion operates in a separate realm from the physical world, and it shouldn’t have to stand up to standards of reason and evidence.” “It’s intolerant for atheists to make a case for why religion is probably wrong and atheism is probably right.”

I’ve been seeing these same arguments for over three years now. It gets a little old. As one of the commenters said in the FB thread, “Is it too much to ask for *new* bad arguments?”

But here’s the thing: the thing I have to remind myself of, the thing I want to remind other atheists of:

These arguments are old to most of us.

But they’re not necessarily old to believers.

Atheist books
Most believers haven’t been hanging around in atheist blogs for years. Most believers haven’t read a half dozen books about atheism, or indeed any. For many believers, these arguments and ideas are brand new. Many believers have never had a serious challenge to their beliefs before. And they’ve never had a serious challenge to the notion that religious beliefs should go unchallenged. The idea that it’s rude and intolerant to point out the problems with religion — even in a public forum — is very deeply ingrained. As a result, many believers have never had to ponder hard questions about their belief — the kind of hard questions that only people who flatly don’t agree with you are going to ask. And their preconceptions about what atheists think and why have never had to run the reality- check gauntlet of actual atheists.

So the answer to the question, “How often do we have to keep making these points? How often to we have to keep countering the same bad arguments?”… the answer to that question is, Often.

Classroom
Ingrid made a good point when we were talking about this the other day. She said, “Imagine what it must be like to be a schoolteacher. You have to teach the same ideas, year after year after year. At some point you must just want to scream, ‘Do I have to explain this again? Don’t you know this already?’ But of course, they don’t. It’s a new crop of students every year. It’s old to you — but it’s new to them.”

These arguments are old to us. But they’re new to them. As long as there are people who haven’t heard our case — and who haven’t heard it more than once — we have to keep making that case. And we have to make it patiently. It doesn’t make sense for a teacher to get annoyed and impatient with their students for not already knowing the material. And it doesn’t make sense for us to get annoyed and impatient with believers for not being familiar with our case.

Water on rock
Plus, there’s a whole ‘nother reason for making the same arguments again and again. And that’s the “water on rock” principle. When I did my survey of atheists a while back, asking, “What finally convinced you? What finally made you decide that religion didn’t make sense and atheism was a lot more plausible?”, a theme that came up a lot was, “It wasn’t just one thing. There wasn’t one argument. It was a lot of ideas, a lot of arguments, adding up over time.” That was certainly true for me. If I’d only heard these arguments once or twice, they would have been a lot easier for me to ignore or dismiss. Hearing them more than once forced them on my attention, and forced me to take them seriously and really think about them.

So we have to keep making these arguments. And making them, and making them, and making them. I know it gets tiresome. Boy, howdy, do I know. I am deeply familiar with the temptation to get snippy and snarky, the temptation to unleash the claws. I have even succumbed to that temptation, more than once.

But it’s not going to help our cause. And maybe more importantly: It’s not fair. It’s not fair to treat people like they’re stupid just because they’re not familiar with the things we’re so intimately familiar with.

I’m not arguing for accomodationism. I’m not even necessarily arguing for polite diplomacy. I think it’s fine for us to make our case, and I think it’s fine for us to make it strongly, and unapologetically.

Patience
I’m just saying that we also have to make it patiently. We have to remember that the whole reason we’re making our case is that people don’t know much about it. Atheism is old, but the newly visible, newly vocal, newly activist atheist movement is… well, it’s new. People aren’t familiar with it. It’s not fair to get pissy with people because they’re not familiar with it. It’s our job to get them familiar.

In twenty or thirty years, maybe we can start getting bitchy with people who still make the “100% certainty” argument, or the “Science doesn’t know everything” argument, or, for fuck’s sake, Pascal’s Wager. But for now — yes, we have to keep making the same arguments. And making them, and making them, and making them.

Until we get through.

*Sorry if the link doesn’t work. Facebook is fun, but it’s buggy about some things, and external links to specific threads is one of them. If the link doesn’t work, try just going to my wall and scrolling down to the “Response to a believer” note. You do have to be a member of FB to see it, though.

Atheism and Patience

Should Atheists Criticize Religion? A Response

Scarlet letter
“Here’s the thing. If you can’t give me a general guiding principle for why expressing my beliefs and opinions is okay, but criticizing other people’s beliefs and opinions is not? If you can’t give me a general guiding principle for even distinguishing between ‘expressing my own beliefs and opinions’ and ‘criticizing other people’s beliefs and opinions’? If you can’t give me a general guiding principle for why it’s okay for you to take atheists to task for criticizing religion — and indeed to criticize religious beliefs that you don’t agree with (as you have done in this discussion, with creationism) — but it’s not okay for atheists to say why they think religion is mistaken? If you can’t give me a general guiding principle for why saying ‘I think religion is mistaken and here’s why’ is a slippery slope towards religious bigotry and harassment… but saying ‘Atheists are bad and wrong to criticize religion’ isn’t a slippery slope towards silencing atheists? If you can do an ad hoc rewriting of atheist writing that you would approve of, but can’t give me a general guiding principle for how and why you would do that rewrite?

“If you can’t give me a general guiding principle for any of this?

“Then I am led to the conclusion that you don’t have one.

“Or rather, I am led to the conclusion that your general guiding principle is, ‘It’s okay to criticize religious beliefs and positions, as long as they’re not mine.'”

This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote on Facebook, a response to an ongoing debate with a believer who thinks it’s okay for atheists to express their beliefs… as long as that doesn’t include the belief that religion is mistaken. According to this argument, expressing your own religious beliefs and ideas is fine… but saying that you think other beliefs and ideas are mistaken, and making a case for why you think that, and supporting your case with arguments and evidence, is bigoted, disrespectful, missionary proselytizing.

Three guesses what I think about that.

Because of the rule/ etiquette that “what happens on Facebook, stays on Facebook,” I’m not posting the entire note here. But if you’re on Facebook, you can read the rest of this rant (and the conversation that preceded it). You don’t even need to be my Facebook friend to read it (although I’m happy to have you as a FB friend!). You just need to be on FB. If you want to see what else I have to say about this, check it out. I haven’t done a good atheist rant in a couple of weeks, and I thought y’all might want to see this one. Enjoy!

Should Atheists Criticize Religion? A Response

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