Why do you assume that atheists are automatically leftwing? Why do you assume that atheists will automatically be in favour of abortion and against the police and in favour of racial special pleading?

Kit Ingoldby @ #44: You’re not very good at reading for comprehension, are you?

Of course I understand that. (Although at least in the United States, over 98% of atheists support abortion rights, and over 97% support same-sex marriage.) That’s the entire point of this post, which you seem to have missed. I’ll restate briefly: Supporting issues that matter to women, people of color, poor and working-class people, LGBT people, etc. may be somewhat controversial within atheist groups as well as outside them. But not doing so is already controversial to these marginalized people. Give a choice between alienating women, people of color, poor and working-class people, LGBT people, etc., and alienating sexist, racist, classist, homophobic asshats, I’ll take the latter any day.

You are attempting to squeeze atheists into a conformist mould.

Again — wow, not so good with the reading for comprehension. I’m trying to increase the diversity of experiences and perspectives in organized atheism — not decrease it. I’m trying to get organized atheism to not be overwhelmingly made up of straight, white, cisgender, middle-class, college-educated men, which seems like a pretty conformist mold to me. Unless, of course, by “conformist mold” you mean “being baseline decent human beings and not being sexist, racist, classist, homophobic asshats.” In which case — yes. Guilty as charged. Failing to see how that’s a bug and not a feature.

And “racial special pleading” is a racist dog-whistle that I will not tolerate in my blog. Banned.

You are attempting to squeeze atheists into a conformist mould.

That is ironic.

Maybe we need to try to game out the pros and cons of both intersectional, broad-scope social justice groups and single-issue (or single-arena?) groups. Do the benefits to having a group that takes definitive stands on a wide rage of issues (necessarily excluding some people who might otherwise be part of it) outweigh the appeal of a broad base?

My emphasis. And that’s where the issue is determined/fought, the composition of that “broad base”. If the broad base consists of basically white men of the leisure classes, that excludes the actually broader base of women plus people of color and everyone without the time to volunteer or debate on Twitter. We’re all numerate, right? It can’t be just about appealing to members of classes with power as infiltration. That’s not a winning long term strategy if justice is a goal. In politics there is still power in numbers, so going after the bigger fraction is a winner.

Generally, social justice can include justice for us, atheists, in addition to other oppressed classes. I get that Europeans think it’s weird that some of us have to fear for our jobs or even housing when acting as or coming out as atheists; that atheists are “oppressed” at all. (There’s some books about it.)

Parse @ #35: That is plenty. Schlumbumbi’s comments about Melody’s PTSD are vile. Banned.

Spot on – he may not be a slymepitter, or he may be but is posting under a different name to avoid notice – but it matters little, as he has exactly the same viewpoint as them on all threads relating to e.g. harassment.

I think atheist groups should take diversity and social justice (and science and church-state-separation) to be the standard and let those who disagree or want to teach the controversy separate themselves – they can be (in impact and scope), like the log-cabin republicans.

The more accessible steps I had in mind were things like putting women in leadership (which in my experience is the single most effective strategy), and instituting stronger moderation so that men don’t talk over the women all the time.

miller @ #38: Those are good, too. (Although I wouldn’t phrase it as “putting women in leadership,” since that implies that it’s men’s job to pick the leadership and put people there. I’d phrase it as “encouraging women to step into leadership.”) In any case: I was trying to toss out a few ideas offhand, not make an exhaustive list. But addressing sexism, etc. in internal matters is only one part of the picture.

What I’m hearing, though, is that you are not interested in talking about these specific groups, and would rather speak more in the general and abstract.

No, I’ll admit, I’m not that interested in hashing out the specific problems you’ve had with your specific groups. But that doesn’t mean I’m speaking in the abstract. It means I’m speaking to problems shared by many groups — not just yours — and to possible solutions that could work for many groups — not just yours.

What I don’t get is that I thought you were arguing that social justice issues should be fought, not because it’s easy, but because it is right. But when I tell you that in certain contexts, the extra difficulty makes it infeasible, you start arguing that the controversial aspect does not make it the slightest bit more difficult. I don’t buy it. This goes against everything I have learned about feminism and social justice–this stuff *isn’t easy*.

I’m getting to the “it’s hard” argument tomorrow. My point is not that doing social justice isn’t difficult. My point is that these difficulties are not insurmountable. My point is that starting out with the pessimistic view that it’s difficult and so therefore we shouldn’t even bother to try is self-defeating and out of touch with reality — lots of groups are doing this with significant success.

And my point is to question what it is, really, that’s hard about social justice. Many social justice action items and projects are not, from a logistical or resource standpoint, any harder or more complicated than any other action items and projects that a group might take on. If you can do a “send an atheist to church” fundraiser for Heifer International, you can do it for Planned Parenthood. If you can invite a visiting speaker, you can ask African-American groups to co-sponsor, or simply invite an African-American speaker, or both. So why is social justice activism more difficult? As I said in my earlier comment: Are these projects “challenging,” solely and entirely, because they are about social justice, and they therefore would make people have to re-think their views about it?