Month: June 2016

“Greta Christina on The Way of the Heathen” on The Humanist Hour

Stephanie Zvan

A familiar face and voice on The Humanist Hour this week.

So you’re an atheist. Now what? The way we deal with life—with love and sex, pleasure and death, reality and making stuff up—can change dramatically when we stop believing in gods, souls, and afterlives. When we leave religion—or if we never had it in the first place—where do we go? With her unique blend of compassion and humor, thoughtfulness and snark, Greta Christina most emphatically does not propose a single path to a good atheist life. She offers questions to think about, ideas that may be useful, and encouragement to choose your own way. She addresses complex issues in an accessible, down-to-earth style, including: Why we’re here, Sexual transcendence, How humanism helps with depression—except when it doesn’t, Stealing stuff from religion, and much more. Aimed at new and not-so-new atheists, questioning and curious believers, Christina shines a warm, fresh light on the only life we have.

That’s the publisher’s blurb for Greta Christina’s new book, The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life. This book is a distillation of more than a decade of thinking and writing about atheism. Greta joins us on this week’s show to talk with Peggy Knudtson and Jenn Wilson about how the book came to be and why she’s been wanting to write this particular one for so long.

Listen to the podcast here.

“Greta Christina on The Way of the Heathen” on The Humanist Hour
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Your Reaction Is Normal

Stephanie Zvan4 Comments

Yesterday saw one hugely traumatic event in Orlando and another event in Los Angeles that would be considered very traumatic if it hadn’t happened in such close proximity to the Orlando shootings. This trauma mostly affected a set of communities with a high exposure to trauma already.

As I watched my friends in these communities react to these traumas, I was struck by how many people were evaluating their own responses, often negatively. I’ll keep saying this individually to people in the words they need, but it’s worth saying generally as well. As someone with both a substantial personal and an academic background in how people react to traumatic events, I’m here to tell you that your reaction is normal. Continue reading “Your Reaction Is Normal” →

Your Reaction Is Normal

Yes, This Is About…

Stephanie Zvan3 Comments

As the news rolls in from Orlando, with 50 people reported dead and that many more reported injured, the disavowals are flying. Everyone wants to tell us what didn’t cause all this death and trauma. But, well, yeah, it did.

Yes, this is about religion.

Religion is what it takes to give us the authority to look at another person’s consensual pleasure and decide that gives us jurisdiction over their life and death. Nothing else gives us that permission. Nothing else puts us above someone else this way but the borrowed mantle of a god’s judgment. Secular arguments fail spectacularly to do so, which is why LGB rights are a staple of secular activism.

Not only are religious arguments the only one that can give us this permission, they routinely do. It isn’t possible to actively participate in U.S. culture–to view our media, to pay attention to our current events, to educate one’s self in preparation for voting–without being inundated with religious arguments that same-sex attraction and sexual behavior are wrong and harming our society. Nor is this confined to any one religion, making it all the more potent as an idea. Someone raised in a homophobic religious tradition will not have their ideas challenged simply by looking outside their home or community.

Religion planted this idea, makes it pervasive, and gives it power.

Yes, this is about homophobia and transphobia. Continue reading “Yes, This Is About…” →

Yes, This Is About…

“Activist Humanism”, James Croft on Atheists Talk

Stephanie Zvan

At its inception, Humanism was a recognition that humanity needed to save and better itself with no help from any gods on high. It was an activist philosophy, teaching that we all have responsibilities to help humanity thrive. Over time, however, and following the trend of U.S. politics as a whole, the Humanist movement lost much of that activist bent. To the extent organized Humanism has engaged in activism over the last decade or so, it has largely focused on church-state separation, leaving little to differentiate it from organized atheism.

Recently, however, this has started to change. Humanist groups are rediscovering and embracing their activist roots, from the American Humanist Association’s focus on social justice to individual groups and congregations taking up causes important in their broader community. James Croft of the Ethical Society of St. Louis leads one of these groups. He’s also studied the history of the Humanist movement, and he joins us this Sunday to talk about Humanism’s activist past and its future.

Related Links:

Listen to AM 950 KTNF this Sunday at 9 a.m. Central to hear Atheists Talk, produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call in to the studio at 952-946-6205, or send an e-mail to [email protected] during the live show. If you miss the live show, listen to the podcast later.

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“Activist Humanism”, James Croft on Atheists Talk

Saturday Storytime: The Drowning Line

Stephanie Zvan

This story from Haralambi Markov is one of those fantasies you think could be metaphor until the end, when it still could be but you really hope it isn’t.

“Don’t frighten her.”

“I’m frightening her?!” David does all he can to keep his voice low, working on bandaging the wound in a squat. His hands move fast. His touch is unforgiving. “You can drop dead from blood loss any minute now. Don’t talk to me about fear.”

“What do you want me to do, David? I go to therapy. I take the fucking meds. You want me to chain myself to the bed now, too?”

David flinches at that last bit. So the though had crossed his mind.

“It’s five AM and I have work in four hours. I startle every time I don’t feel you next to me. I fear next time I wake up to an empty bed, it’ll be the last. This is fucking unbearable.”

He breaks down. I have never seen him cry like that. Una breathes more laboriously low, on the verge of crying. I comfort them both as I guide them inside the car and take the driver’s seat.

I drive on the way back and tell my husband everything he needs to hear—slowly and with conviction, a recital of sweet nothings. What I really do is think about the man in the water, my family’s legacy and undoing. The one Una will inherit once I die. Continue reading “Saturday Storytime: The Drowning Line” →

Saturday Storytime: The Drowning Line

About That Opinion…

Stephanie Zvan2 Comments

This is one of the essays I delivered to my patrons last month. If you want to support more work like this, and see it earlier, you can sign up here.

I have a dirty little secret. It’s the kind of thing that people as involved in social media as I am aren’t supposed to think, much less say. It’s certainly something that bloggers who put their opinions out there as I do aren’t supposed to think.

Here’s how it works: I publish a blog post on a subject, anything from a few hundred to a few thousand words. Or it could be a Facebook post or a series of tweets if it’s a shorter observation that I want to make sure people can see without clicking through to anything. Then people respond to tell me their opinions on the subject.

And I…I don’t care.

This isn’t universal, of course. There are many circumstances in which I do care. There are people who provide data I don’t have: studies, personal insight on something that’s confusing me, experiences I can’t share. There are people with whom I’ve been engaged in years-long discussions about the world, often even though we’ve never met. There are people who raise substantial objections over my reasoning or premises. I’m not talking about those, usually. I have my days when I don’t care much about any of that either, but those are just bad days.

Photo of small child in a pink shirt and jeans leaning across the seat of a chair, cheek resting on hands, looking into the camera
“bored” by greg westfall, CC BY 2.0

Then there are the people who notice that I have put my opinion out into the world and decide that this is an invitation for them to tell me what they think. Often their comments are literally nothing more than that. “I think X.”

That’s nice. I don’t care.

I won’t tell you I never think I should care. I do. I mean, I’m putting my opinions out there, right? Plus socialization. Plus a model of online writing that says readers are my customers, consumers who must be catered to in order for me to succeed.

Still, I don’t care. Not only that, but I think most of the things that tell me I should care miss the point of social media at a minimum. Continue reading “About That Opinion…” →

About That Opinion…

“Humanist Alliance Advisor Interviews, Part 1” on The Humanist Hour

Stephanie Zvan

Coming off AHA’s announcement that they were revamping their Humanist Caucuses, now called Humanist Alliances, I talked to a few new advisory council members.

Blue Happy Humanist logo with headphones and a microphone.
Just before the American Humanist Association’s 75th Anniversary Conference a couple of weeks ago, the organization announced that it was launching a new Black Humanist Alliance and the revamped and revitalized Feminist Humanist Alliance and LGBTQ Humanist Alliance. Stephanie Zvan caught up with several alliance advisory council members at and after the conference. In this show, we bring you the first of those interviews.

Andy Semler is a trans nonbinary activist working in rural Indiana. They are a new member of the LGBTQ Humanist Alliance with a special interest in homelessness in the trans community.

Heina Dadabhoy is a nonbinary writer and speaker who is new to organizational secular activism. They are part of the Feminist Humanist Alliance, looking forward to broadening our ideas on reproductive justice.

Diane Burkholder is an HIV and Black Lives Matter activist out of Kansas City. She’s one of the new co-chairs of the LGBTQ Humanist Alliance, working to get us looking past marriage equality.

Listen to the podcast here.

“Humanist Alliance Advisor Interviews, Part 1” on The Humanist Hour

In the Hands of the Goblin King

Stephanie Zvan1 Comment

Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.

I may have thought about this offer a bit over the years. Yes, yes, all right: I’ve spent hours of my life on it. I know from talking to other women who first saw Labyrinth in their mid–teens that I’m not alone.

Sarah, on the other hand, didn’t think about it at all. She didn’t even listen, reciting her memorized lines instead. I couldn’t forgive her for that. It’s been nearly 30 years since I first heard those words, and I’m still angry, though no longer at her.

With the benefit of some growing up and some time spent writing fiction, I realize it isn’t really her fault. The movie was never set up to let her consider the question. Jareth’s love was never going to be more than the framing story, the necessary element to set the plot in motion, the final obstacle for Sarah to conquer. That doesn’t make me any less angry that the offer was made and thrown away.

Let me say right now that I don’t think she should have accepted the bargain—probably. Even without goblins, there’s a lot to consider in that statement. What kind of fear are we talking about? Does it have to be real, or does everyone have their roles to play? What do you want me to do, and what are you willing to do for me?

When I was Sarah’s age, I’d have given a lot for a movie that took my sexuality as seriously as it took my escapism and my fear. I’d had sex before watching Labyrinth, and I’d been grappling with desire and figuring out what I wanted in a partner for years before that. I was slightly precocious, but I wasn’t alone by any means. Where were the movies for teenaged girls like me?

It wasn’t that there was no media aimed at my adolescent sexuality. I was part of MTV’s target market, and no one really blinked an eye when I saw Prince’s Purple Rain concert shortly after turning 13, even though it was decided I needed a chaperon. Eighties pop was delightfully full of “unusual” options for sexualized performers and lyrics, presented with a variety of levels of awareness that some of the pretty candy was poisoned. Not to mention all the “romantic” male singers of the 70s who had been guest performers on my children’s shows even earlier.

There were a handful of books as well, but the ones with protagonists near my age talking frankly about sex were mostly “issue” books. “Oh! Look at the trouble that comes when this young teenaged girl feels and expresses and maybe even follows through on her desire!” No. Just no.

Movies were slightly better, to the extent girls my age were represented in them at all. If you were a character played by Molly Ringwald, you could experience a polite modicum of embarrassed lust. If you were played by Brooke Shields, you could even do something about it. We just weren’t supposed to watch it.

Then there was this movie that put David Bowie in a wig and makeup and tights. Those tights. Then it gave him pining songs to sing in his best feelings voice and orbs to twirl so he looked delightfully dexterous. And he just kept offering himself to us our through our protagonist proxy, both in abstract form and in his own person.

Then we didn’t get to think about what any of that meant and make up our own minds.

Read the rest of this essay over at Uncanny Magazine. And for a very different perspective, read Sarah Monette’s essay on Labyrinth as well.

In the Hands of the Goblin King

Let’s Not Overanalyze Reason Rally Attendance

Stephanie Zvan

This isn’t something I want to write a blog post about while I’m this tired, but shutting up isn’t something I do well when tired either.

Let’s lay off the deep analysis of why Reason Rally wasn’t bigger. I know it’s a grand sport and an opportunity to air all our pet theories about the movement, but there just isn’t enough information there to work with. In a lot of ways, it’s a secular miracle the rally happened at all.

Sarah Morehead left an incredible mess when she was removed from the organizations she was running. We now know both Apastacon and Recovering from Religion spent time unable to access even their bank accounts. We know that she wasn’t sharing the documentation she needed to with the rest of the people in her orgs. We know she said she’d done work she hadn’t. We know she stirred up conflict to cover for it. We know she committed at least one organization to a huge expense without having any way to pay for it.

She did the same things at Reason Rally from what I understand. Continue reading “Let’s Not Overanalyze Reason Rally Attendance” →

Let’s Not Overanalyze Reason Rally Attendance

Saturday Storytime: Deathlight

Stephanie Zvan

Sometimes you just have to try, whatever the cost, as Mari Ness reminds us.

If she killed him, the ship would use a little—just a little—less energy. She could stay warmer just a little longer.

If she killed him, she would probably die. He was, after all, why they were both alive.

And also why they might both die.

The drop mission had been routine, exactly like their last two. Exactly. So exactly that she’d often found herself blinking and needing to check chronometers to remember exactly when they were, especially when they’d found themselves rewatching vids, rehashing conversations. Probably why she had made the tiniest, tiniest navigational error, had forgotten once—just once—to do a routine maintenance check. Probably why he, in turn, had forgotten his own maintenance check.

They still might have lost fuel.

They still might have decided to cross through this nebula to save time. To end this journey just a little faster. To move on.

All kinds of things might have happened. What mattered now was what had happened.

And now this.

We shouldn’t have done this one.

IRIAN discouraged pairs from doing more than one mission; regulations set a non-negotiable limit of three. When Els first joined, she’d found that ridiculous to deeply short-sighted: Surely, if a pair worked well together, it was in IRIAN’s best interest to keep them together? She and Dun were perfectly matched on all levels: His strengths compensated for her weaknesses, and vice versa; they’d had parallel but not equivalent training; more importantly, he’d made her laugh. A year into their first mission, and they were best friends; a half a year later, lovers. Signing up for a second mission felt only natural. She couldn’t even think of enduring deep space with anyone else.

On this mission, they were both so desperate to finish, to end it—

His fault.

You need him alive.

I need him dead. Continue reading “Saturday Storytime: Deathlight” →

Saturday Storytime: Deathlight