Out of respect for misogynist atheists and other misogynists of all faiths and lack thereof (if the shoe fits you can still refuse to wear it because it is too ugly) we will now replace misogynist with sexist.
If a poster reports that women are generally not interested in joining contests to see how far they can piss into a strong wind. Is this a sexist comment? Does the sex of the poster matter?
If a woman does not choose to participate in pissing contests about the existence of God is she being sexist?
If she points out that many women do not wish to participate in pissing contests about the existence of God should she be required to remove the atheist label from her blog? Does the language she uses to point this out matter?
If a man refuses to go to a school board meeting to protest the religious backed attempt to dumb down the science and arts curriculum can he still call himself an atheist. Is he being sexist because he thinks that is women's work. < sarcasm> Y'know Kinder, Küche, Kirche and all that?< /sarcasm> Does the fact that he is attending an atheist conference on the existence of God instead make any difference?
If a woman suggests that one of the turn offs to women is that to many, atheist are a bunch of testosterone dominated, egg heads with no emotion who like to argue.. and the response is a boobquake, one might expect that she and many others who have learned not to think with their genitals would find confirmation of at the very least insensitivity to what she was trying to say.
FYI the term "Boobquake" is a reference to a fundamentalist preacher who blamed the Haiti earthquake on women who dressed inappropriately. It has been generalized to any inappropriate reference to or misuse of especially images of women's breasts. In my opinion, the use of the photo was inappropriate in the context of the thread, hence a boobquake. It had nothing at all to do with the characteristics of the woman in the photo.
If a woman is trying to educate an argumentative, dogmatic person, frequently male, about things that are important to many women that the man seems to be ignorant of, it is not stereotyping it is information. IMO that was the intent of her main post. She was trying to inform the atheists here why this forum is generally unattractive to women. It is quite apparent that some of the atheists here were offended by her remarks and chose to attack the messenger rather than deal with the message. The comments in the link I sent to MOP were almost universally in the same attack the messengers mode, including some argumentative, dogmatic women.
The atheist movement if not atheists in general have a serious problem. Women should be the driving force in combating religious misogyny and religious anti-intellectualism including the gutting of the school system. They after all, are the ones most affected by it. Atheist men are generally more concerned with dogmatic issues as those make the best arguments. Sterile intellectualized discussion of God beliefs isn't an alternative to anything. It is in effect an admission of acquiescence to the status quo. You are welcome to it. You are ceding the fight against the misogyny and anti-intellectualism of fundamentalism to others. Your privilege certainly but I would prefer that you keep it in your Ivory Tower where intellectualized discussions of issues don't bother anyone else. Some of us are trying to make a difference, and egg head BS doesn't help. I find dogmatic issues almost trivial compared to misogyny and anti-intellectualism. Pissing and moaning about whether God exists or not resolves neither of those issues.
I have dealt with subconscious misogyny for most of my life, and am therefore hypersensitive to it. Some of it is directed at males in "female" roles. As one of the original Mr. Moms by agreement with the mother of my children who was in a very demanding, very misogynic career environment, I was frequently the target of remarks like "that is woman's work," "Where is your wife?" "Why isn't your wife taking care of that?" Hmm, lessee, "She is presenting a paper at an international conference that is critical for her personal grant funding. Is taking her kids to the park more important so that her husband should be excused from the duty?"
If you think a simple descriptive term like misogyny is an insult, please explain how it is so. Or better please explain how misogynist is an insult if it is a true description of a pattern of behavior. Am I insulting Paul by calling him a misogynist or merely describing the over all tenor of his writings concerning women? If a man is wearing a T shirt saying "Women are Property" and refers to all women as "Bitches" or worse, am I justified in calling him a misogynist or am I insulting him? If I refer to the T shirt wearer as a misogynist and he responds "Damn right!" did I insult him?
A descriptive term is an insult only if it applies to you and you wish it didn't. If a woman calls a man a misogynist and he says "That bitch just insulted me." I wonder who has the problem. Someone can call me a misogynist, and I can just laugh at them and ask what gives you that impression. Or if I wanted to be insulting I could reply "liar." At that point is simply an argument about fact. Am I or am I not a misogynist. If the accuser said you did this or said that and that indicates misogyny, I can say here is the context that makes it OK or I say I am sorry I didn't mean it that way, or in rare cases simply apologize for my remark.
On another thread (but more relevant to this thread now) I commented that it is surprising to find misogyny bubbling through atheism. JCarlin rightly corrected this to "bubbling through society in general". I completely agree; I just had higher expectations though from a group of people who after all have been independent enough to examine their commitment to a previously common belief in society and choose a different mindset. In a similar way, I have higher expectations from professionals who work in university settings and large corporations than from, for instance, a clerk at Radio Shack.
I wonder if there are 2 issues here:
1. Misogyny
vs
2. An approach to solving problems that is more feeling-based than thinking-based, separate from gender. (Attention all you thinking-type guys: this is NOT the same as logical/illogical!) Have you ever taken any of the Meyers-Briggs personality tests? Many women identify with the "feeling" category, and many men identify with the "thinking" category. I can see why religion would tend to attract the "feeling" set more so than the "thinking" set... perhaps the opposite is true for atheism.
Fangi
I suspect that if some prick told some woman that she should go shopping, care for her children, dust, iron, and talk about relationships instead of messing with the intellectual matters here it certainly would be a pejorative gender stereotype in fact full blown misogyny. Hmm. Providing information about the characteristics of a group by a member of that group may or may not be prejudice or bigotry, although the same thing said by an outsider may well be hate speech.
Like it or not, if atheism is to be an effective alternative for those disgusted by fundamentalist religion atheism is going to have to attract a lot of people who don't want to shout and argue but will quietly talk in their relationship circles that the excesses of fundamentalism are bad for women and children. If one of those people chooses to point out what atheists need to appeal to if they are not going to remain a marginal group of pricks shouting into the wind of fundamentalism, maybe the pricks should listen. So far their record is pretty dismal.
Maybe atheists should be content in their ivory towers not believing in God and ignoring the rest of the world. But the rest of the world will go right on gutting the schools and turning large parts of the US into a third world country. I find that abhorrent, and personally don't give a NoGod damn about what somebody believes or not about God. I do care about the children who are pulled out of school to worship God. I am not going to reach their mothers with intellectualized BS about whether or not somebody can prove God exists. I am going to reach their mothers with atheists some of whom paint their fingernails, and care about not only herm children but all children. The gender inclusive pronoun is significant because there are atheist dads who take their children to the park and talk to the women there about bringing up children and go to the PTA meetings demanding effective science education and who put their testosterone charged aggression to good use by challenging the fundamentalist status quo, not staring at boobs advertising intellectual arguments about God.
Not incidentally I am not chastising Freedom From Religion and other female dominated atheist groups for using all the conventional appeals to the misogynists that run things. We need a lot more of them. We are not going to get them with intellectual discussions. Thanks for showing us a path that many more of us should be taking.
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