The following is a letter from Winterwind, a reader who recently submitted a response about his experiences at the RDF:
By Winterwind
I was a regular lurker and sometime commenter at RDF for several years. I stopped visiting the site two years ago and have never looked back. It was the best decision I have ever made, to leave that stinking cyber dungheap.
I regret leaving because it was a great place to read some interesting scientific articles and hear some very intelligent commentary. However, as time progressed, the most vocal commenters began to toxify the environment with their unchecked bullshit and privilege. They insisted that feminists, anti-racists and so on were just woolly-headed irrational thinkers, because sexism and racism no longer exist in the glorious West (such maladies only exist in backward countries populated by brown people with Arabic names, see Professor Dawkins’ “Dear Muslima”).
Sadly, the most vocal members of the RDF community are spoilt white heterosexual man-children who really belong on a site like 4chan, but instead wrap themselves in the mantle of rationality and skepticism to bash and disregard the experiences of people from minority communities.
Several times I saw threads in which Skeptical Dudebros announced that feminism was just another baseless religion, because sexism no longer existed in the West or was greatly exaggerated. While they could understand women in foreign (read: Muslim) countries being feminists, American and European women already had the right to vote and own property! That proves there’s no such thing as sexism, so American women are just whiny irrational bitches. And why do we need to attract more women? I don’t even see gender! All our leaders are men because they’re just better than women are, based on merit. (Gee, I wonder why women are underrepresented in the atheist community. I guess women are just less rational than men. It has nothing to do with the fact that the most vocal members of the atheist community are basically a nerdy old boys’ club.)
I saw similar threads in which White Skepticdudes declared that it was an empirical fact that racism no longer existed in the West – after all, black people aren’t lynched any more, and Barack Obama is president – so therefore there was no need for “Black Skeptics” or anti-racism or whatever. In fact, black people are the ones who are racist for wanting special “Black Skeptics” groups to themselves! White Skeptics don’t even see race, that’s how progressive they are! Racism doesn’t exist, it’s all in our imaginations, and if we just stop talking about it, it’ll magically go away. People who bring up racism are the racist ones. (Gee, I wonder why people of colour are underrepresented in the atheist community. I guess minorities just lack the brainpower to be skeptical. How sad.)
It must be nice to pretend racism doesn’t exist. It’s a bit harder for me, because when I was at school (just a few years ago) I had people calling me “black bastard”, “nigger”, “curry”, “Gandhi” at least once a week. Some of them bashed me. Perhaps they hadn’t yet received the memo that racism doesn’t exist any more? Continue reading “Calling out Racism on the RDF site” →