"Socially liberal" a disguise for white male privilege?

In regards to politics, there have been some atheists who describe themselves as "socially liberal, but economically conservative." I've had some concerns as to what that means. It seems there are a lot of atheists who are on board with LGBT rights, but other social issues (women's rights, racism, and income inequality, as some examples) seem to be less important. It has me a bit concerned, then, that these people have come to think that being on board with LGBT rights is all they need to be "socially liberal." Worse, they seem to be wearing this as though it were some sort of badge of honor. That is perhaps what bothers me most! They seem to flaunt being ahead of the curve on LGBT issues to show that atheists can be moral. But, I'm sorry, if one wants to show the morality of atheists, they're going to have to do better than that.

A recent post on Daylight Atheism about LGBT rights thriving while women's choice suffers got me thinking that this may be more about white male privilege than LGBT rights. In that post, Adam Lee had linked to a Daily Beast post on the same subject. There, the author points out that LGBT rights are not near as big of a threat to male privilege (no reference to skin color in that article) as women's rights. A commenter on the Daylight Atheism post went a step furhter, pointing out that the LGBT community includes white men. The thought here being that these men are privileged in nearly every way possible, particularly those who are wealthy. The one area holding them back is sexual orientation. Get rid of that as an area of privilege, and they'll have more of it.

Given that being "economically conservative" these days primarily translates* into "fuck the poor," I can't help but have the concern that the "socially liberal" aspect basically stops at white gay guys. (Women and people of color are then, sadly, only getting benefits here as a matter of consequence.) There are a lot of atheists who are misogynists, so that makes it hard to be optimistic, even though these atheists tend to be more reasonable about women's issues.


* For those not in the know, the claim is typically that being "economically conservative" means being against big government spending. However, few of the people who label themselves as such seem to have any problem with military spending. The spending items that get the biggest focus seem to be those that assist the poor, programs that are often referred to as "welfare."

---

Well...this is interesting. I had basically written this post by Friday when I attended the local atheist social. One person there used damn near those exact words. What timing!

I wasn't able to get in a word — I'm just not aggressive enough to cut off any other speakers — but where the conversation led interested me a bit. Actually, it seemed like more disappointment. A couple others, all white dudes, seemed to be in generally agreement, with one putting it that "[the Republicans] left us." I find that rather interesting. The religious right probably began gaining influence in that party way back in the 1950's with McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Democrats who didn't like civil rights for African Americans switched their party affiliation back in the 1960's. Regan was endorsing the Evangelicals back in 1980. A couple of these men can't be much older than me. So what are they talking about? That train left the station a looooong time ago. It's way past time to be thinking about getting on board.

Then again, that's what scares me. The attitude suggests that that train they're concerned about didn't leave all that long ago. So, if the GOP was just a bit more atheist and science friendly, they'd be back on board? But that would still leave a party that's racist.

I guess what I'm ultimately getting at is that there is a reason the Republican left these white dudes. It embraced the Evangelicals for a reason. I propose that reason to be that it is a tribalistic party. It doesn't care about people in general; it cares about only certain people that it considers its tribe. Now, since it doesn't have a mind of its own, that means the tribe itself gets to define who is in the tribe. And atheists have been kicked out almost entirely.

But when I hear these attitudes, I can't help but hear people who want to be admitted back into the club for their own benefit, and people who don't mind a club that is still going to be pretty exclusionary to other people. Fuck that. I want nothing to do with people like this.

What I want even less a part in is a community of atheists who put on a facade of being inclusive because they support the LGBT community.

---

Lastly, I saw last week an article about California libertarians. Not necessarily atheists, but these are again people who are claiming to be "socially liberal." A part of that article raised my eyebrows where it said, "Despite personal politics that might seem more in tune with Democrats...these millennials say they are more comfortable with Republicans’ emphasis on freedom than Democrats’ penchant for regulation." So...they don't like having environmental protections in place? (Maybe those aren't the regulations they mean, but this is a problem with painting with a broad brush.) Once again, this seems little more than a "fuck the poor" message. The areas discussed that could be considered socially liberal were pot legalization and LGBT rights; areas that benefit those who are already privileged. Once again, that these also benefit those of less privilege seems more of a consequence than the goal.

Mother f&%$ing atheists!!!

   There are a lot of misogynists in the atheists community. They are so awful I had second thoughts about going to the Reason Rally in March (ad is on the right side of this blog).

   The first big incident in the past year occurred in June. The incident was dubbed "elevatorgate," though some people have been calling it "the incident that shall not be named" as of late. It was something that I didn't feel like talking about on this blog, not because it wasn't important to discuss, but because so many atheist blogs had covered it that I felt smothered by the topic as it was. In fact, I am still not going to really talk about it myself. I will instead quote bloggers who have.

In a recent vlog, Skepchick Rebecca Watson had some friendly advice for male skeptics seeking to make women feel comfortable and welcome at skeptical gatherings. She mentioned, offhandedly, that during a recent conference in Dublin, a guy followed her into the elevator at 4:00am and invited her back to his room for coffee. His overture was not well received:

Um, just a word to wise here, guys, uh, don't do that. You know, I don't really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I'll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and -- don't invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.

Judging by the reaction in some quarters of the skeptical blogosphere, you'd think she'd recommended preemptive castration.

Some male skeptics huffed and puffed that they had the right to approach women anywhere they damn well pleased.

Prominent skeptic Richard Dawkins opined that Watson had nothing to complain about because Muslim women suffer genital mutilation. By the same token, Western men should suck it up when they’re asked, nicely, to show some manners in the the elevator. Don’t they realize that Muslim women are being genitally mutilated?

Some of Watson’s critics argued that she was too hard on the unnamed guy. How dare she complain about his behavior? Maybe he was just socially awkward, they said. Well, if so, he and his fellow well-meaning but socially awkward men should be thanking Watson. She did them all a favor.

Watson gave them a simple rule that anyone can memorize and apply: Don’t hit on women in elevators. If they didn’t know any better, they do now.

Yet, the discussion devolved into attacks on Watson and a stupid griping match about the “rights” of men to hit on women however they please, and, implicitly, the privilege of men not to care how women want to be treated. Some even argued that by demanding to be treated with respect, women were revealing themselves to be weak and fearful. You see, really strong women just grit their teeth and let creeps hit on them in elevators.

   As the above quote essentially says, the thing was much ado about nothing. Watson provided what should have been good advice. Instead, there was much overreaction to the situation, some of which may have been motivated by personal grudges. It was quite pathetic to watch the developments in the months following, especially after a female blogger had renamed Watson "Rebecunt Twatson." How mature?

   Then there has been the recent incident on Reddit, not started by Rebecca Watson, but brought to light by Watson. She informed the community about a 15-year-old girl who posted on the atheist subreddit about getting a copy of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World along with a picture of her posing with the book. To little surprise, there were anal rape jokes and the likes in the comment thread, including:

• Well 15 is legal many places, including my country, so I'll only have to deal with the abduction charges. (159 up-votes, 42 down-votes at time of capture)
• Relax your anus, it hurts less that way. (1715 up-votes, 648 down-votes at time of capture)
• Blood is mother nature's lubricant (570 up-votes, 175 down-votes at time of capture)
• BITE THE PILLOW, IM GOIN' IN DRY! (192 up-votes, 51 down-votes at time of capture)

And then there are the ones who think adding in some scientific cleverness or Sagan references make the sex/rape jokes really funny.

• i'd put billions and billions in your pale blue dot (354 up-votes, 83 down-votes at time of capture)
• I'd occupy her habitable zone. (227 up-votes, 51 down-votes at time of capture)

Immature jokes are bound to happen; it's just not possible to keep all of the stupid people out of any group. The problem is the up-voting. If the community was as reasonable as it is supposed to be—as it should be—then these comments should have been getting more down-votes.

   Some of the excuses I've seen have been quite bad. One has been a claim that people don't like to down-vote. Granted I do not participate on Reddit at all, but I do spend time on YouTube, which has a similar rating system for comments and videos. As YouTube's comment structure is different, it is impossible to make a comparison there, but go to just about any Christian apologetic video that allows ratings, and it'll likely have a slew of down-votes...which is most likely why some posters don't allow ratings—they know their video would get down-voted, so they don't participate in the system. A somewhat similar excuse has been that Reddit readers are not supposed to have to be "thought police." OK, sure, if you're a user that never votes on comments at all—up or down—then sure, I suppose I can let you off the hook. But, if you're someone who does vote up comments, then aren't you already policing thoughts in some manner, even if the policing is giving praise instead? And once again I can point to YouTube, or even to the, um, "philosophy" of the group, which is that religious people have bad ideas which are often harmful and we want to discourage such thinking. The whole point here is that many of the excuses being used don't seem to apply when it's atheists hounding Christians (or other religions—it's typically Christians because they are by far the majority religion, not because their ideas are somehow any less ridiculous than other religions), which means that these excuses are really saying, "We don't want to pick on people in our group." That's bad! I think there are a lot of people in this group that understand one of the reasons people are able to hold religious beliefs is because those beliefs too often go unchallenged, so the religious person does not have to deal with cognitive dissonance. And we know one way to combat religious belief is to invoke dissonance...to "rock the boat." Yet, here we have people within the group essentially saying "Don't rock our boat!"

   There have been some hypothesis about this.

• As there is a social stigma attached to atheism, many of the outspoken atheists have personality types where they have little concern about what people think about them or their opinions. They are little afraid to say something that other people consider stupid. They have "thick skin."
• From the above, some might also expect others in the community to have thick skin. When they see someone taking issue with something they consider trivial, their response to that person is to, essentially, "toughen up!"
• In addition to the above, many of them could have an arrogant personality—they are always right! They are used to being the ones criticizing other people. To be criticized is not the way the world is supposed to work! ...In their minds.

   At any rate, I've been getting a little frustrated over this shit. I have been wanting to be more active in combating bad ideas, but now that all of this has come to my attention, I feel slightly demotivated. The silver lining, I suppose, is that the people complaining about the bad behavior could have been a small, insignificant minority. The good news is that I see many of the popular atheists condemning such behavior. And, as Greta Christina (one of them popular atheists) has pointed out, "When people don’t speak out about sexism and misogyny, it creates a climate in which sexism and misogyny flourish. When people do speak out about sexism and misogyny, it creates a climate in which sexism and misogyny wither."

   I have also considered the fact that the atheist community is in itself quite young. While there have been atheists around for centuries, and there have been spikes in the size and influence of atheists throughout the last 300 years, this latest spike only started about 5-6 years ago. What I hope we are actually seeing is a turning point. Perhaps soon the community will no longer be so inhabited by the do-whatever-I-want disgruntled types* and will have an increase in population of people who hold long-term goals as a priority. Those are my hopes and dreams, at least.

* This is not to pick on the disgruntled types; I totally sympathize. There is much to be disgruntled about. Nor do I suggest being accomodationalist! Instead, it's perhaps time to be more diplomatic.

Follow up on Black Atheists of Atlanta

As I mentioned in the edits of my previous post on this topic, the crew at Ask an Atheist found out that the Black Atheists of Atlanta are not the primary atheist group in Atlanta. As promised, I would put up a post (this one) when the video was available. So, here it is in two parts:

Black Atheists of Atlanta, your hosts are embarrassing!

UPDATE: I listened to the latest Ask an Atheist episode (video to be added later to a future post), and this is some rouge group that split ties with the Black Nonbelievers of Atlanta, which appears to be the rational atheist group in that community. It is still disappointing to see some radical loons carry the atheist banner (so to speak) around.



I know other atheist bloggers have now beaten me to the punch, but I need to get my thoughts out on this episode from late last month. First, here are the important parts, broken up into three videos:








What is to follow is what I put in the description of the videos. This covers my main objections, though they said a lot of bizarre stuff, and I know I didn't cover all of it.

This is from the May 23, 2011 episode of "The Black Atheists of Atlanta." The hosts make many disappointing comments regarding homosexuality.

Some examples include making an argument from tradition, where they claim homosexuality was originally part of Greek and Roman culture. A caller into the show is the most reasonable one pointing out that the Greeks and Romans may just be the first cultures that are known to accept homosexuals [in their societies], but not that the first homosexuals were Greek or Roman. The hosts also claim that African societies are family centered, but homosexuality is not family centered. [How so?]

They also make up scientific laws, such as what they call the "Law of Reproduction." No such scientific law exists. The idea seems to be that for mammals, a male and female is required for reproduction and that all members of the species have a desire to reproduce themselves. (I derive the first part from the obvious as well as commentary and the second part from their claim about homosexuality being a choice...or that one is not "born that way.") They seem to not recognize, or perhaps they are unaware, that evolution works on a species and not the individual. (The idea here being that not all members of a species need to take part in the reproductive process...at least not to the extent they [imply].)

They also discuss scientists being raciest, which is true, but they get conspiratorial about it, denying any evidence that might go against, dare I say, "their agenda" if it came from a white scientist. They give the example of Piltdown Man, which is indeed a good example of European bias interfering with the scientific process, but they, as many creationists likewise do, ignore the fact that there were scientists suspecting it to be a fraud from the beginning. [They additionally ignore (or their conspiratorial thinking causes them to ignore) that the scientific process is self-correcting. Errors/mistakes can and do happen, but the process tends to discard these, even if it takes many years to do so.]

Another error they make is claiming homosexuals claim to be atheists to get out of the church. That is just complete BS from anything I've seen. Many homosexuals do not want to be thought of as atheists because then they will belong to another underprivileged minority. I personally see many try to reform the more liberal churches, using the claim, "God made me gay" to gain sympathy. It is true, though, that there are likely homosexuals who do become atheists partly due to questioning of their religion resulting from the discrimination. However, they don't become atheists simply by not liking the discrimination. It just doesn't work that way.

In summary, I was disappointed in that I heard a lot of the garbage I typically hear from Christian apologists coming out of the mouths of people who are atheists. Well, this just goes to show how broad the "atheist umbrella" is; all you have to do is reject the claims of a deity. There is no requirement that you have to make that rejection through critical thinking.

I'd also like to note that the caller in parts 2 and 3 was the most reasonable person in the discussion. It was a shame, I feel, that the caller didn't do a better job calling the hosts on their BS, especially where the caller agreed that homosexuality wasn't "family oriented." I'd really like to know why they don't think homosexuality is family oriented. Yes, I get it that homosexuals cannot have children of their own from engaging in homosexual intercourse. But, the hosts point out that Africans (as well as all humans, though they imply otherwise) are communal. Why can't they consider that homosexuals could have a communal role, such as daycare providers or midwives? It would seem the error primarily lies in that one minute they say the culture is communal and then the next minute it is family-based, which are not necessarily the same thing.