Women and skepticism: the hate continues.

I don't think it's necessarily a feeling of 'ownership', but that to some people it feels like if they do X, they should get Y, after all it's a fair give-and-take, the basis of contracts, equal exchange, etc. In their mind, giving you a ride home, or a shoulder to cry on, has created a debt that they ought to be able to cash in with a date, or a hug, or first-date smooching, and when they don't get it they feel betrayed and let down because they were owed that. They don't even realize that their expectations are completely out of line to begin with and that the 'trade' is entirely in their own mind, probably largely thanks to being undersocialized.

Dispiriting and relevant to the topic.

Yeah, pretty much this. And a lot of media reinforces this idea: you do the right Leading Man stuff, you get the Sexy Woman reward. It's like a recipe where you're supposed to be able to put together some obsession and light-hearted stalking and romantic gestures and Being There For Her, and a sexual relationship results.

It becomes a lot more obvious how messed up this perspective is when you see it play out from people in less romantic contexts. I had a roommate--sort of by accident--at one point who treated all interactions in life like that. He would give people gifts and do things for them--including gifts they didn't want and doing things they could've done just fine on their own--and then expect that he'd be rewarded by them with whatever it was that he'd wanted out of them. (Two examples that spring to mind. He bought the president of a small company a bunch of toys related to the man's interests, and expected he'd get a job that was open there. Then he bought a bunch of groceries that no one in the house would eat, and cleaned the catboxes twice, and expected this meant he didn't have to pay his share of the rent.) He'd insist that his actions were purely to express his friendship/admiration/good will, but was clearly both angry and confused whenever those actions didn't result in getting him what he really wanted.

Some people approach romantic relationships the same way. It's just as nasty and scammy and manipulative, even if they really think they're acting in good faith and with good intentions.

It really isn't that far back when women were part of the business that is a family. You married not just because you kinda liked the girl, but because she would bring something more to situation. Sometimes , and some cultures it was the ability to make more monsters to get things done. In some it was the connections to her own family structure.

This bartering for sex idea is far wider , older, and pervasive than be nice , pay for dinner , get sex.
Where do we start pointing fingers and tearing it down, and what rules/laws/guards will we put in place to support it.

The frightening thing about being a woman is this. The moment.. MOMENT there is no law for whatever reason, we are suddenly on the table like meat at the feast. Yes some folks still adhere to the higher ideal but would you really trust all your neighbors not to shoot you and eat you? It is the same vein.

My neighbors are pretty nice. After we were robbed, one of them came by with pizza from the really nice local bistro a few blocks away just as a sort of sympathy gesture. I'm borrowing a ladder from the family a house further down. On the other side, I helped that guy get his miniature poodles back inside when they escaped into the unfenced front yard, and the lady in the house past that came by to ask after my cats once.

I'm pretty sure that if the rule of law was suddenly removed, they would not come over and shoot me to consume my flesh.

In general, I do not believe that most people are secretly ravening monsters barely held in check by the ability of other people to fight back. (Nor do I believe they're all fluffy bunnies who are forced into evil by society.) In times of adversity and loss of law, communities often band together quite well to help each other out. It's one of the reasons we have this thing called civilization: the ability of human beings, over time and through terrible adversity and constrained circumstances and lack of resources, to still work together and be reasonably decent to each other.

The fact that women have had more or less rights in different parts of the world in different time periods does not mean that wacky violent rape-fests are some sort of natural state we're always on the verge of falling back into. Some people are monstrous; most people aren't; a lot of people are likely to sort of follow the majority, as that's part of where community action comes from.

I don't think it does anyone any good at all to act as if viciousness and a complete lack of empathy are the standard beneath the civilized veneer. Most people can, and will, act decently. Some people who wouldn't if they could get away with it need to be convinced they can't get away with it. It is a sorry excuse for those who choose to do evil to claim it as some sort of original sin that none can avoid.

tl;dr version: Most people aren't assholes. "Everyone is really a slavering monster if they can get away with it" is a cheap excuse for those who are.

I am glad you live around mostly non assholes. It would be nice if I did too. I don't and I have to consider, if only for a moment, what I would do if things got very stupid around here. I have watched people fight over the semi looking good trash at the dumpster, not all humans are working on the same character sheet, rules .. whatever we want to call it.

It's something of a merry-go-round of intuitions when it comes to imagining how people would behave if the rules disappeared, but I think the evidence shows that enough people would act to the detriment of others to make society, such as it would be, drastically less hospitable and safe than it currently is. I'm not inclined to infer too much about human nature, however, as I think cultural and social contexts in which lawlessness occurs play a significant part in whether the preponderance of people act like dicks or not. See certain natural disasters where assholery is minimal, and others where it's very evident.

It's worth remembering that "civilisation" doesn't imply much about human welfare. I certainly don't think there's much evidence for, uh, rape-fests to be a likely settling point for a post-lawless community structure, for various social and biological reasons, but force will out and there's no guarantee at all that those wielding the power will be of a generally moral or liberal mindset.

Holy crap, Michael Shermer has literally compared women getting upset at his sexism to Nazis. Where the fuck does he... Oh, fuck it, I don't even know where to start. Motherfucking taint-licking... Oh, right, this isn't the Sanctum. Forgive me. I'm just fucking furious.

Stay away from the crossroads after school lets out and keep your reagents in a trapped chest inside a trapped chest.

The nazis did get upset though, you know, just like women do.

I don't think that's an undersocialized thing. I think it's just a human thing (possibly a male thing). I can't find the quote, but I'm pretty sure that Chris Rock has a bit about how if a man buys a woman a Big Mac, he thinks she owes him $4 worth of sex. In a similar vein, a large part of Japanese culture is keeping mental track of every minor thing people have given you or done for you so you can be sure to pay them back later with interest (usually, sex is not involved, though). My wife hates getting crappy presents for this reason.

That's not just Japanese culture:

http://m.npr.org/news/front/165570502

In 1974, Phillip Kunz and his family got a record number of Christmas cards. In the weeks before Christmas they came daily, sometimes by the dozen. Kunz still has them in his home, collected in an old photo album.

"Dear Phil, Joyce and family," a typical card reads, "we received your holiday greeting with much joy and enthusiasm ... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's. Love Lou, Bev and the children."

The cards from that year came in all shapes and sizes, but the basic message was the same. The writers wanted Kunz to know that he and his family were cared for, and also they wanted to share their own news. They included pictures of family members and new homes and smiling graduates with freshly minted diplomas.

It all seems pretty normal, except for one thing: Kunz didn't know any of them.

Kunz was a sociologist at Brigham Young University. Earlier that year he'd decided to do an experiment to see what would happen if he sent Christmas cards to total strangers.

No doubt. They just kick it up a notch or two.

And completely unrelated, but is there not a meme for the fact that examples used at the bottom of Wikipedia pages are overly reliant on Transformers, Pokemon, video games, anime, etc?

Because, seriously?

In the Transformers animated series episode "The Burden Hardest to Bear", the Autobot Kup uses the concept of giri to describe the burden of leadership facing Rodimus Prime. Much of the episode is set in Japan, and deals with Rodimus Prime's reluctance to be a leader, only to eventually come to grips with his responsibility.

What a fucking baby.

Yeah, sorry, that's all I got. But cripes!

And it keeps getting worse - the hatred and harassment has gotten so intense that one of my favorite bloggers has finally decided to quit the Skeptic movement altogether, and find another venue for her work, as it has become too overwhelmingly hostile for women, particularly trans women.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2013/01/19/big-sad-announcement/

I look forward to Richard Dawkins penning an article explaining that the death threats and rape threats female skeptics have endured are actually meaningless, because they aren't forced to wear a burka. This has got to fucking stop. How can a community so ostensibly dedicated to the principles of rational thought and consideration be so damned blind to their own frothing rage, oppressive behavior, and the consequences thereof? Rhetorical question, I know - but that doesn't make it any less damned maddening.

Demobilized link - http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...d-take-how-the-rule-of-reciprocation-binds-us

I started following all that "Atheist community" diaspora through YouTube originally, with people like AronRa and Thunderfoot and especially Potholer54 making some excellent videos. I watched with a kind of sad "I've seen this before" resignation as the whole thing kicked off, with the women beginning to feel confident enough to talk about the experiences they don't appreciate and then the men reacting as if they'd been directly accused of rape. And then it just got worse and worse as each turned their well-honed skills of nit-picking at each others' hastily-constructed rebuttal videos. When Atheism+ appeared, I figured that was pretty much the start of all-out war between sides that didn't even know why they were fighting each other.

I'd say the women talking about how they're uncomfortable with sexual assault and threats of rape are perfectly aware of why they're now in a rhetorical flamewar with a bunch of dickweeds.

Yeah, fair enough.

Er, I mean yes! You're probably right there!

I was really trying to suggest how people on both sides, but justifiably (in my opinion) on the side of people like Rebecca Watson, would feel hurt and betrayed, attacked by people they once thought of as (potential?) allies.

Rebecca Watson and Richard Dawkinsat at the Global Atheist Convention in June 2011 in Dublin, Ireland.The first thing she brings up is feminism in atheism.

I like how Dawkins picks his nose during her first applause moment and makes an entirely half-hearted attempt the second time.

At 4:30 Rebecca talks about the "Elevatorgate" incident where a man asked her for coffee at his hotel room at 4am while in an elevator alone with her. (She had just moved back to the US from the UK after her divorce).



She posted a video response to her critics, which includes telling men who don't know how to approach women to fuck Real Dolls.



I'm a fan of the podcast "The Skeptics Guide to the Universe " and Rebecca rarely express any interest in science-related topics or interviews. Her brand of skepticism leans towards debunking religion, homeopathy, psychics, astrology, and hoaxes. She had brought up this issue in this episode of the podcast and the rogues discussed it at length (about 45% into the episode).

It wasn't "Elevatorgate" until the identity of the mystery man was discussed, as I understand it. I'm not sure Ms. Watson has personally confirmed or denied the named candidate. Sometimes I wonder how he was named for that, but to be honest the details aren't relevant when you are swept away by the tsunami of #1reasonwhy type recollections.

If you are sometimes a human, then logically it follows that you are sometimes not a human. Ergo, Angie has outed herself as a lycanthrope.

What charming responses those videos have, as their most popular replies. Why, these certainly change my mind about the sexism in the skeptical community.

Gosh. Why would anyone ever, ever think that these men have issues with women? Clearly it's all in our minds. This is a reasonable and totally sane response to Rebecca Watson requesting that you don't try to pick her up in an elevator at 4am, when it's just the two of you in a sealed metal box, and she has no way to escape you should you actually turn out to be one of the men responsible for the millions of rapes each year, or one of the millions of men that turn violent when directly rejected. Of course, I'm sure that none of these guys, screaming obscenities and insults at Rebecca Watson would ever respond like that if a woman threatened their ego in person the same way Rebecca does online. Why, you'd have to be crazy to find this kind of response disturbing or worrisome. And hey, also, shut up and take it because nobody is mutilating your genitals, right, Mr. Dawkins? If any woman in the world in any place or time has it worse than you, you must never speak up about your own harassment or abuse.

That's the same reasonable standard we hold guys to, isn't it? Isn't that why all the male-run atheist blogs shut down, because the Taliban existed? That happened, right?


...right?

Jesus. I have no working explanation of why the skeptic community is such a bag of dicks.

That is certainly the rational and measured response to a skeptic woman speaking out about an unwanted advance in an enclosed space delivered right after talking for hours about how women at conventions aren't there to be sexually available to men so for the love of god stop it. And to keep it up, on a daily basis, for over a year. And you know what, better show all the other outspoken women in the community what's up with daily sexual and death threats for over a year too, so they don't get ideas about being able to say that they are not sexually available and that men assuming that they can approach them for sex in enclosed spaces are rude and kinda creepy. It's just logical.

Could it be that the skeptic community is full of insecure nerdy men who see women as a threat to their "boys' club"? It seems like the same thing that's happening in the video game hobbyist and developer communities.

I have only minimal, peripheral experience with the skeptic community, but I don't think this particular bag-of-dicks sort of thing is all that specific to them. I've seen it in all sorts of communities, and the exact expression thereof may vary, but--rigorous moderation aside--the content at its core does not.

(Well. Except for in the knitting and crochet communities. They've got their own flamewars and sexism and gender essentialism, but they tend to be fairly low on the rape threats, in my experience.)

The thumbs up to thumbs down ratio on those Watson videos is its own kind of depressing.

Does this primarily happen in face-to-face interaction, at conventions and meetups and such? Though I wouldn't consider myself part of a skeptic 'movement', I often read groups like sci.skeptic back in ye olden times, and I don't recall anywhere near this kind of sexist vitriol being thrown around when it was just online discussion. Though that could also be a matter of aging memories and selective reading of just the threads on topics I was interested in, too...

(You get a like for the knit community -- good God almighty, they don't call it stitch-'n'-bitch for nothing. I'd rather attract the ire of all of Broken Forum than step afoul somewhere like Ravelry.)

It depends on where you go on Ravelry. There are literally hundreds of groups there. Some are awful. Some are my second-favorite places online. (BF has become my true favorite.) I've gotten incredible emotional support on Rav, but there are some groups I wouldn't go near with a ten foot crochet hook.

Thanks--I was on my desktop, but all Google was finding was the mobile link.

Here's another cogent post about sexism in skeptical circles. This time dealing with how ignoring the problem is not actually refusing to be part of the problem.

Their is a subset of the skeptic community that is all about tearing down others and showing a sense of superiority, you see it a lot in the r/atheism stuff on reddit, which is why AaronSofaer loathes it so. (Sorry Aaron, I don't subscribe to it, it's just a default, and so far I've been too lazy to actually make an account on reddit and select good subreddits, which I should do, as the default front page is basically imgur links now)

So its not at all surprising that misogyny is prevalent, considering it's roots in needing to feel superior.

I think some people can get like that with any number of 'isms,' though (including some guys with feminism) and I don't think it really has much to do with atheism / skepticism as a framework. Though I guess some of the worst atheists just use it as an opportunity to belittle those with religious beliefs, so maybe it carries over more easily in that community. Either way, you'd think that the whole emphasis on reason and rationality would help but... nope, clearly not.

As a sort of mulling it over follow-up to my "It's not just skeptics" post, there's also this:

There's a particularly pernicious brand of -isms that show up (in my anecdotal experience) in subcultures that pride themselves on being smarter that everyone else. Or, in some cases, "more progressive," but I've more often seen it as "Of course we're more progressive, because we're smarter!" The thought process goes something like this:

1) We are very, very smart people. Only smart people are in this subculture, because it is a sign of intelligence to be in it.

2) Therefore, the things we do are reasonable, logical, and rational.

2a) (...and of course more moral. Everyone knows that being logical is morally sound.)

3) Bigotry is illogical and unreasonable.

4) Therefore, none of us smart, very smart, smarter-than-anyone-else people could be doing anything so unreasonable as being bigots.

5) Therefore, any bigotry pointed out within the group must not actually exist! Otherwise it wouldn't be here. Because we're too smart for that. So you're wrong. It's not possible for it to be bigotry. Either it didn't happen, or you misidentified it. We are far too smart for that sort of thing.

I'm mostly familiar with this in tabletop gaming and sff-reading subcultures. "No, no, that couldn't be sexism/racism/homophobia. We geeks are brilliant and progressive and beyond such things! You're just being oversensitive/politically correct/silly/drama-causing/girly and trying to make a fuss over nothing." And it ends up being in some ways (though certainly not all) even more infuriating than the straight-up sexism/racism/homophobia of other subcultures, because instead of arguing over whether or not sexism is bad, the conversation gets tied up in whether or not it even exists in the particular example being called out.

I think the difference is between those skeptics/atheists who join organizations and those who simply remain individuals. Those who join organizations tend to need something to complain about, feel persecuted for, rally against, etc. People with overpowering needs like that may not be the best-adjusted people when it comes to relationships.

I think that's a bit unfair. I can join all sorts of organizations on account of them representing things I feel strongly about with needing to "feel persecuted". It doesn't make me less of an individual when I sign up for a knitting club, or register as a Democrat, or pay my dues to an ancient languages honor society.

And while I am dubious of the occasional "most hated group in America!" thing that gets bandied about, sometimes skeptics and atheists are discriminated against, and are persecuted. Presumably they join organizations partly because they already have something to complain about, or promote. Referring to "overpowering needs" and how people want to "feel persecuted" is an awfully hostile way of explaining both "Perhaps we should do something about this problem" and "Hey, people who like the stuff I like! Awesome! Let's talk about it!" reasons that I suspect would be true for many people who join those organizations.