Hunting for the elusive atheist woman
Jen McCreight said what’s wrong with Ms magazine’s blog post asking whether gnu atheism will make room for women. Jen did it, so I don’t need to. But I’ll go over some of the ground anyway, because I feel like it.
If you’ve been following the rise of so-called “New Atheism” movement, you may have noticed that it sure looks a lot like old religion. The individuals most commonly associated with contemporary atheism—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Victor Stenger—are all male, white and, well, kinda old (69, 61, 68 and 75).
I have been following the rise of gnu atheism; I’ve even been participating in it, in my own small (but noisy) way; I have not noticed that it sure looks a lot like old religion. It takes more than having a lot of people who are male, white, and kinda old to make something look like old religion. It takes quite a lot more. The US Congress also looks like that; so do many corporations, law firms, universities, unions, insurance companies, and other institutions. I’m white and kinda old myself, and I choose not to consider those attributes disqualifiers, or symptoms of religiosity.
The four guys named are all Names; they have published best-selling books. No women have yet published atheist best-sellers of the kind that Dawkins and Hitchens did. That’s not obviously a sign of sexism. Vanishingly few people have published atheist best-sellers of the kind that Dawkins and Hitchens did. The fact that Dawkins and Hitchens did doesn’t mean that women were excluded from a club.
That’s not to say that atheist women are not overlooked; I think they are; I think people who organize atheist conferences don’t invite enough women; but that’s a separate issue.
There’s no official definition of New Atheism, but the general consensus is that while atheists were once content to not believe in God by themselves, “new” atheists are determined to proselytize so that others join their disbelief.
Yes, but you see, the general consensus tends to be based on stupid prejudices and on manufactured consent – it’s not born, it’s created. “The general consensus” is a product of media recycling of hackneyed formulas that everybodyagreeson without bothering to think about it. Any fule kno that noo atheists are rude and strident and militant and intolerant, so that’s “the consensus,” so yet another journalist repeats it, so it becomes even more the consensus, world without end amen. “The consensus” is indistinguishable from the backlash.
We’re not “determined to proselytize” – we’re determined not to be silenced. There’s a difference. I tend to be determined not to let religious truth claims go unquestioned, but that again is not the same as proselytizing. If there were fewer religious truth claims flying around, I would be doing less questioning of them. It is Because They Are There.
Given the immense harm many organized religions inflict on women through outright violence and institutional oppression, it seems women may have more to gain than men from exiting their faith. Yet no women are currently recognized as leaders or even mentioned as a force within the movement.
That just isn’t true. Lots of women are mentioned as a force – Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rebecca Watson, Greta Christina, Susan Jacoby, Lori Lipman Brown, and on and on.
PZ, like Jen, points out that Monica Shores didn’t even talk to any atheist women.
So don’t blame the Old White Guys, and don’t regard their gender and age as a debit. What we need to do is promote more equality, and make a positive case for freethought. The Ms article could have explored that by talking to some of the many people involved, and could have even talked to the many prominent female atheists out there, and said something about the direction we’re going, rather than where we come from.
Maybe it will do that as a follow-up.
Add yourself and Euginie C. Scott to that list.
Cheque in the post to Monica Shores from Templeton. Thanks very much.
Aw, well…
[digs toe into dirt]
I didn’t want to go me me me.
Mind you Monica Shores did mention me, amusingly, thus rather undercutting her own point. That’s why Templeton probably won’t send her a check after all.
Old white guys? Jennifer McCreight is old and a dude? Why didn’t anyone tell me?
You don’t seem to understand, this was not a article about the sexism and racism of a group they can find many targets for that. This was just another stick to beat Gnu atheists with. You want racism and sexism just look at every religion. You want sexism and racism just look at corporations and politics. Gnu atheists actually go out of our way to recruit new members what do we care what colour and gender they are. I think for once I can speak for all gnu atheists out there and say we want the whole world to be gnu atheists. That would be our ultimate goal, we would all die happy if this was done.
I would hope that Ms. Magazine will now do a full article exploring the ways that women have been contributing to modern atheism. I mean, really exploring it and not doing shallow articles. I would like to see them look at the reaction to this post and do some research into the leadership roles that women have been playing in shaping the way that boots on the ground activist women have been helping to get the word out that religion really sucks and is a force against freedom and rights.
My wife is an atheist. But she has no interest in debate, she doesn’t even bother much with posting on forums, For her it’s just a non-issue. She is what she is. She is moderately active in our local atheist/humanist group
I wonder if that’s a common situation.
Yeah, that, and also Jen McCreight’s A large list of awesome female atheists Five hits down on my Google search. This kind of weak activist journalism pisses me off.
A prominent woman atheist? Natalie Angier. She’s certainly prominent. People around the world read her work every week. Why, here she is again. And she’s definitely a new atheist. Although writing about atheism isn’t a big part of her work, when she does, it’s with considerable force.
Somehow, I can’t help thinking that there’s something to the observation that mainstream journalists don’t regard Natalie Angier as a new atheist, and also don’t regard Richard Dawkins as a brilliant science writer. Y’all need to stay in the boxes where we put you.
“We’re not “determined to proselytize” – we’re determined not to be silenced. There’s a difference. I tend to be determined not to let religious truth claims go unquestioned, but that again is not the same as proselytizing. If there were fewer religious truth claims flying around, I would be doing less questioning of them.” ….. Love that Ophelia.
By the way, Angier’s My God Problem stands well next to Jerry Coyne’s Seeing and Believing as an argument against the compatibility of science and religion. A bit less accommodating, actually.
Wow, that piece by Natalie Angier was amazing. Thanks, Ken.
I can’t help but feel someone who criticises a group for 1) its heterogeneity and 2) its desire to add new people, is somehow engaged in some particularly twisted logic. If we were to accept for the sake of argument that New Atheists are too heavily weighted toward Old White Men, what remedy would there be but to recruit more people?
Funny, some old white guys I hang out with tell me gnus are all “young college girls” like Jen McCreight. Jen is a grad student now, I tell them. And a biologist. And a woman, not a girl. But it’s harder to crack a prejudice than an atom, so…
I love the selection. So Sam Harris got dropped to be able to make the case that they are “kind of old”.
I don’t even buy that premise at all. It’s contrived into making the case the author wants to make.
That said it’s kind of a reality that visible atheism has a bias towards guys. That doesn’t mean there are no women, but that if you count numbers at a convention you’ll see more dudes. But yes, the real question here is: Is this just a reflection of a pattern that we see throughout, i.e. that society as a whole has this trend.
A good article would try to actually look at it and make the case along some data.
Marc #13:
Yes. Several incidents I have observed taking place in the blogosphere in recent years have taught me that people will never, ever, ever, ever learn. If you manage, through long hard concerted effort, to crack one prejudice against one group of people, they will just go and apply the very same prejudice to the group of people standing next to them, and not feel the slightest tinge of cognitive dissonance.
#14: Yeah, that’s the thing. If the article had been a little more honest, Ms. Shore would have had to point out that the list of sexy atheists are more like aberrations than the norm, and that would have made for a far less “sexy” article. And, heaven forbid pointing out the posts PZ Myers has written on the subject of increasing participation of women in the movement! If we do not paint atheists as being sufficiently scary, some children might de-convert! Think of the children!
Looks like there is a template out there that goes something like this:
“New Atheists…blah blah blah…strident…blah blah blah…militant aggressive….Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris et al,….bigoted….evil.”
When you write your anti-atheist piece of journalism, don’t forget to use all those words in your article and then we’ll add you to our favourites list.
I agree with those who see this as a rather typical example of hit-piece writing.
Look at the paragraph that describes what she is talking about.
“There’s no official definition of New Atheism, but the general consensus is that while atheists were once content to not believe in God by themselves, “new” atheists are determined to proselytize so that others join their disbelief. They can’t abide by tolerance of religion, because religion is so insidious a force as to warrant constant criticism. Though they dare not hope for eradication of religion outright, they have expressed the wish that a belief in God become “too embarrassing” for most people to admit.”
The “general consensus”? Amongst who?
I suppose if you mean the consensus amongst those who write in the mass media I guess this is true – but that is rather like saying that the general consensus of commentators on Fox News is that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim Stalinist. It is an image that is being portrayed by media figures that has more to do with playing up to the biases of their marketbase rather than portraying a realistic image.
I consider myself to have views about religion that are fairly close to that of people like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett – the media official -‘New Atheists’. Having read some of their work I think my views also seem similar to those of Ophelia, Stenger, Carrier, Graying, Hirsi Ali, Angier, Moran and Coyne. Yet I really don’t see the lack of toleration of religion that is apparently a defining feature of ‘New Atheism’. I am not trying to proselytize anyone about atheism any more than I am trying to proselytize them about the earth being a sphere that goes around the sun. I happen to think that making the facts open and available will allow them to make up their own mind.
I am not trying to get anyone to change their religion. I am trying to create an atmosphere where their children realize they have a choice.
I think we’ll never have a society completely devoid of religion but we may reach the stage where the majority of the public can see through the claims of charlatans who claim to know and speak for the desires and intentions of a god.
What I can’t understand about this particular criticism of the gnu atheism is that, by default, if you like, if the gnu atheism is masculinist, the suggestion is that religion must be feminist. I think they really need to get their ducks in a row. Where are women most likely to be recognised as equals, in the Roman catholic church, or amongst atheists? I know society is really fucked up so far as gender equality goes, but does religion somehow offer something less gender biased? I don’t think so. So perhaps Ms should take a look at what is being said, instead of who is saying it — quite aside, of course, from the fact that there are quite a few prominent women atheists.
So really what the Ms piece is doing is repeating the old old story of the evils of the gnu atheism, only this time concentrating on its anti-feminism. But it isn’t anti-feminist. What they’re talking about is brand recognition. The most prominent atheists are men, because they’ve sold millions of books, and now they’re rich. But those best sellers, the male atheists mentioned, are all progressive thinkers, take the church to task for being anti-woman, recognise that the public image of the gnu atheism is overly male, etc….. It’s very strange that Ms should not only fail to notice that there are really quite a few well-known female atheists, like Ophelia, Natalie Angier, Julia Sweeny, Ayan Hirsi Ali (although, interestingly, she doesn’t seem to be included amongst the gnu atheists, perhaps because she’s not anti-Christian but anti-Islam), Greta Chrisina, Jen McCreight, Susan Jacoby, etc. Perhaps it’s the American disease of thinking that only the rich really count, but not only does Ms fail in the journalism department, it also fails in the feminism department, one place where they should shine. So, my guess is it’s just another way of being anti-atheist.
Atheism isn’t a club with entry qualifications. Yes, Jay, I think there are many people like your wife. This “old, white guys” stuff smacks of another bigotry from our recent past….
Of course, Christopher Hitchens’ tongue-in-cheek bash at feminists is of course not very helpful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7izJggqCoA
So yeah, if you don’t get his naughty humour, then you’re class him as THE ENEMY forever and forever!
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, mavericksmusing. mavericksmusing said: Ophelia Benson tackles the flimsy the Ms. article about women & atheism: http://bit.ly/aHiM6r […]
jay @ 7 – you wonder if what is a common situation? That some (indeed many) atheists don’t spend their time arguing about it? Or that women or wives who are atheists don’t spend their time arguing about it? If the first, I think the answer is clearly yes. If the second, I think the answer is not clear at all.
Perhaps not. But you don’t have many alternative explanations.
1) suppression? not too likely, especially in such an outspoken group on the internet
2) Fewer women atheists? Possibly partly true, there are more women churchgoers. But that would mainly affect the quieter ones, so outspoken individuals would still be noticeable
3) Maybe women as a group are just less interested in posturing. With the term ‘male posturing’ firmly in the feminist lexicon, and that same type of behavior visible in the males of other mammalian species including primates, it may not be so far fetched. Obsessive behavior (whether for good or bad) that drives some of this visibility is much more common in males (see also Treckie conventions, computer gaming, automobile enthusiast clubs etc). Women tend to be a bit more level headed in these areas (probably for good evolutionary reasons, mothers easily distracted by peripheral issues were probably eliminated from the gene pool).
Explanations of what? The whole point is that it’s not the case that there are no atheist women. If you’re saying otherwise, you need to spell that out.
Since I am, arguably, one of the conspicuous (or at least noisy) atheist women, I don’t entirely agree that noisy (or conspicuous) atheism is posturing. I also don’t entirely agree that not being a noisy (or conspicuous) atheist is necessarily more level-headed.
My impression is that the main reason that the famous “New Atheists” are famous, and that they’re “New” is that they managed to sell millions of books. That’s most of what’s really new about the New Atheism—there’s actually market for vintage wine in the Gnu bottles.
I would guess that has something to do with the famous Gnus being mostly Old, as well. Dawkins, Hitchens, and Dennett were established writers of fairly popular books before focusing on atheism per se Dawkins, Dennett, and Stenger were longtime respected academics in very relevant subjects who finally got around to writing whole books specifically about atheism vs. religion.
I don’t think it’s surprising if those guys waited until toward the end of their distinguished careers to go public about this very important but controversial subject. They were busy doing academic science and philosophy, and doing their particular things—biology, philosophy of psychology, and physics—very well. When it gets to be retirement time, though, what do you do? Do you write yet another book about your particular discipline? (How many times has Dawkins explained evolution, anyway?) Maybe you leverage your reputation and/or popularity finally say the single most important thing that most people don’t already know, for a mass audience, before you die or lose your edge. It’s time to use it, before you lose it.
And maybe if you do it then, you can get a major publisher to publish it and promote it, and get it reviewed in major media, and make it a best seller—as opposed to doing it early in your career, before you are distinguished or famous, and mostly just pissing off your academic colleagues and superiors who think you should just do your fucking job rather than being a very minor public intellectual, and rocking the boat. It’s really not the recommended path to being a full professor. If you’re emeritus, or soon to become emeritus, it’s not a big problem. Everybody agrees you’ve already paid your dues in your specialty, and if they don’t like it, it’s just too late for them to do much about it.
(There are other good reasons those guys went public when they did, and maybe not before. It helps that there’s been some relevant scientific progress in the last few decades, e.g., cognitive neuroscience making it ever clearer that dualism is false and clarifying some other stuff relevant to religion, physicists realizing that there’s no real connection between quantum physics and consciousness, and the evolutionary story getting better and better. The smart money was on naturalism decades ago, but the writing on the wall is pretty explicit now. it’s also become clearer and clearer over the last few decades that religion is not fading away and ceding mindshare to science. Accommodationism has not been working, and it’s time to do something about it; that cultural if-not-now-when? factor coincided with the old guys personal and if-not-me-who? and if-not-now-when? factors.)
Then there’s Hitchens. He’s Hitchens—an established and very successful writer, who can get a major publisher to publish and push pretty much anything he writes on any subject.
The really odd (not old) man out is Harris. How the fuck did he do it? What made him think he could pull it off?
When I read the first round of Gnu books, my first reaction was I could have written this sort of thing (with the help of a good editor) but I didn’t think I could publish and sell it. I did in fact outline a book at one point, mostly for my own amusement, and shelved it. I figured that to a first approximation, nobody’d particularly want to hear it from me. If I’d written a general book on atheism vs. religion, it might or might not have been published by, say, Prometheus, like dozens of others, and mostly gone nowhere. I’d have been utterly shocked if it became a bestseller, and surprised if it even sold moderately well.
Given these factors, it’s just not surprising that most of the famous New Atheists are old white men. People in the position to leverage their academic stature and/or science popularization track record are mostly older, and in the relevant disciplines, that means mostly white and male. (There are a lot more women in biology now than there were when Dawkins started out, but physics is still overwhelmingly male; I think the kinds of philosophy Dennett does are still largely male too.)
I’m curious how many women there actually are in similar positions, and how many have tried to write an atheist book and get it published, but failed, or failed to sell many copies. I’m guessing that both numbers are sadly low.
(I’d certainly like to see Natalie Angier try it—she’s wonderful—but I’m not sure who else who’s female and appropriately distinguished or famous. Maybe Patricia Churchland, the cognitive neuroscientist? Lynn Margolis, the biologist? I have no idea if they’re even interested. Maybe a woman who’s famous for feminism, who could leverage that to sell way more copies than Olivia? That’d be way cool, but get the impression that feminism as a movement is mostly accommodationist—the problem is supposedly the fundies, and liberal religion is supposedly okay, so don’t reinforce negative associations of “feminism” by connecting it to the Evil Atheist Conspiracy. IMHO the real problem isn’t that Gnu Atheism isn’t female enough, but that the famous females and feminists are way too accommodationist.)
Unfortunately, when I think of people with especially appropriate expertise and status, I mostly think of men, e.g., Pascal Boyer for cognitive science of religion and Peter Singer on morality. (Boyer because he’s got especially interesting things to say about religion, and Singer because he’s both smart and famous, and could sell a zillion copies.) That annoys me, but I don’t really know what to do about it.
Maybe Ms. should start publishing more articles on the subject by vocal atheist women, huh? That’d be a start.
(I can’t find any other articles on atheism at the Ms. site, but maybe I’m doing it wrong. It’s also interesting that most of the tags on that article return only that article—apparently no others mention Ophelia, Susan Jacoby, or Madalyn O’Hair, for example. There’s another article that mentions Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but it’s basically a hit piece that criticizes her for not appreciating the “spiritual dimension” and not being accommodationist/reformist. Gag.)
Is it my imagination, or did there used to be a whole lot more feminists who were vocally antireligious? (E.g., seeing religion as mainly a way of justify patriarchy and other Bad Things?) Is it my imagination that feminism has evolved to be way more accommodationist/reformist about religion?
Ophelia
I, for one, enjoy your outspokenness. We certainly could use a bit more like you, without keeping score of the race/gender of the people doing the speaking.
Perhaps that is the problem. Why are we even worrying about ‘number of women atheists’ and looking to throw this back out detractors. They’re actually practicing a kind of sexism in using that as a criticism.
Hitchens, Dawkins, and Sam Harris are great, but they aren’t all there is to atheism. There should be more of an effort to seek out fresh new faces for conferences etc; might I suggest Greta Christina, Sikivu Hutchinson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rebecca Watson, Susan Jacoby, or Julia Sweeney (now writing My Beautiful Loss of Faith Story -who knows- maybe it will be the new atheist bestseller.)
Not just to make atheism look good, but because different perspectives are important. Without Ophelia, the atheist movement wouldn’t have Does God Hate Women? for example.
Paul – other women writing such books – Wendy Kaminer is one, but I was disappointed with her Sleeping With Extraterrestrials all that time ago because I found it too apologetic and cautious and two steps forward one and 3/4 steps back. Katha Pollitt has published two books of her columns in the Nation. Joan Smith has done one, I think. Of course Ayaan has. Meera Nanda’s books assume atheism and go on from there.
Anyway, as anna said, and as I said in the post and have said many times in other posts and other comments, the people who organize conferences really do need to remember to invite a lot of women. This shouldn’t be some god damn afterthought, it should be front and center. Women aren’t some pesky little minority that it’s safe to ignore, after all.
If more women were more visible, then there would be more women in the audiences too.
I think it’s worse than that. A lot of feminists subscribe to the “women are so spiritual” school of feminism, with an unhealthy dash of “science is a tool of the patriarchy”. They’re out beyond accommodationism into the wilder reaches of woo-woo. Now I know that’s a sweeping generalization, but I think it certainly applies to Ms magazine.
Hi,
The Global Atheist Convention held earlier this year in Australia featured a number of women (and a panel) – from my ‘sample’ of male to female counting on the first day, I’d say it was about 40% women attending. There is also the Australian Book of Atheism out later this month, with a significant number of women who have contributed.
I do think, however, that there’s factors that influence women attending – for example, women are still the world’s primary caregivers. They have less time to attend conferences, blog, comment on blogs and chat on forums, which is still where the majority of skeptical and atheist activity takes place. There’s also less research and published work. There are obviously notable exceptions who have done amazing work, but finding a range of these is difficult, particularly when there’s some women whose work might otherwise be held up to more scrutiny but the concern that it might be discouraging ‘all atheist women’ to do so. I’d like to see more quality speakers, regardless of gender, et al.
Hi Kylie
Did the global convention in Australia have anything like 50% women as speakers?
There are plenty of quality women speakers, and I’d like to see more of them. It’s way too soon to say “regardless of gender,” I think – when these shindigs keep being almost all-male, time after time after time, and the organizers tell PZ, when he urges them to invite more women, that they couldn’t think of any.
Statements like this point out how huge a task we’re taking on when we try to dethrone religion from its privileged perch on high. The gnu atheists are taking the concept of God and analyzing it — is it true? Is it uniquely valuable? If it’s neither, then we’ve an obligation to make a rational case against it so that we might persuade people to change their minds. Same as in science, same as in politics, same as in history, etc.
And yet what’s this called? Proselytizing — defined as “to induce someone to convert to one’s faith.” Or to “recruit” others to join an organization. You’ve got a side, and you want to get people on your side by proclamation and assertion and bribery and tempting promises.
It’s the wrong term. We don’t talk about someone “proselytizing” for a health care plan or a new theory on cellular evolution — not unless we’re metaphorically slamming the effort as shallow and uninformed, low on intellectual argument. And yet, calling the attempt to make a rational case against the existence of God or the supernatural through intellectual argument is still automatically considered “proselytizing.” Just as atheism is a “faith” and humanists “worship themselves.” It’s as if the religious just can’t think outside of their own damn box.
Oh noes!! We’re trying to change people’s minds! That’s so intolerant! Fundamentalist.
I think it was Austin Dacey who wrote that the difference between the fundamentalists and the gnu atheists was that the fundamentalists say “you’re wrong and you’re going to hell” — whereas the gnu atheists say “you’re wrong … and here’s why.”
Ow, Sastra, my head hurts from all this proselytizing you’re doing.
snicker
@ Kylie (#31)
Yes, I agree. I wonder if there isn’t also another problem. It seems to me that people like Monica Shores have hit on the fact that it is still easy to pretend that women can be overlooked, because for many (possibly including Shores herself) women are still all but invisible in society – or if they aren’t they ought to be (!). She ought to realise – surely she knows – that some of the most outspoken advocates for reason and human rights are women, even if you only judge by the death-threats.
But there it is: maybe for many women it’s still hard to raise their heads above the parapets. There are a lot of social bigots and religious nuts out there shooting at them. The really visible women have to possess more-than-ordinary courage, and it would appear that even they can still be ignored – even, apparently, by some women. The women who brave all this have my profoundest admiration. It must be very hard indeed to stand up against the opposition of thousands of years of religious and social prejudice.
Pakistan, August 2008: Three women and two girls (names not known) buried alive for wishing to choose their husbands:
Ms Fatima wife of Umeed Ali Umrani, 45 years old
Ms Jannat Bibi wife of Qaiser Khan, 38 years old
Ms Fauzia daughter of Ata Mohammad Umrani 18 years and
two other girls, in between 16 to 18 years of age
http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2008/2969/
Personally, I think their names should be celebrated everywhere as heroines of freedom and personal integrity. And the two anonymous girls should stand for the millions of unknown girls and women throughout history who have suffered so much at the hands of male selfishness and male-oriented bigotry. What does Shores think she is doing? Why isn’t she shouting on the side of reason, too? Money?
@Ophelia Benson: “Did the global convention in Australia have anything like 50% women as speakers?”
I was one of the Masters of Ceremonies and one of twenty-five people – ten women in total. So, that’s 40%.
Yes, it could be better, sure. Many of the women were featured in a special panel mid-way on the first day. Catherine Devney wrote the following column about encouraging women further and mentioned how she also hoped for more (‘No Chicks, No Excuses’):
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/atheism-is-a-broad-church-20100316-qclu.html
I do still think, however, quality should be encouraged with speakers regardless of gender – and there should be more support via opportunities for women to work on presenting skills and get constructive feedback in order to make them great choices. I care about seeing good work being done and presented well, and I’d like to know that there are standards being encouraged.
‘Yes, she’s female – and therefore she’s a role model and has an audience, and therefore should be on stage on the basis of that’ shouldn’t be an excuse and I have had that thrown at me when I’ve raised questions about poor research or information being presented with evidently little planning. :/ I’d rather take a proactive step of seeing many people learn the skills of presenting and doing it well and seeing that further benefit women beyond ‘just talking to other atheists’. Being a spokesperson who can be called upon to do a TV debate as well as a talk at an atheist convention, for example.
So, knowing how to conduct a media interview, knowing how to write press-releases for their work, et al, is something that may very well help get the attention of those ‘organisers who just couldn’t find anyone’. That was also an additional element to Devney’s article, as you can see – she’s urging more networking amongst women so they can be better profiled and also better mentored to become excellent speakers. Why not have that for both sexes? As an educator, I can’t see what’s ‘sauce for the goose…’ couldn’t also help everyone involved.
“The lack of lady presence”As others have mentioned here and elsewhere, this is an awful article: badly researched and blatantly wrong. However, one word jumped out at me: “lady.” It has been a long time since I read Ms magazine, but I don’t remember any Ms article using the word “lady” which, by association, brings to the mind the word “ladylike.” I intend to write to Monica Shores to tell her I am neither a lady atheist nor a ladylike atheist; I am a woman/female atheist.This post has been cross posted on Blue Hag
Ms. Magazine blog has, to teir credit, invited & posted Jen McReight’s rebuttal. Pop over to Blag Hag for the link & details.
Ahem…typos above are result of hurried posting w/broken finger.
(Word to wise: one’s late 50s are not the time to take up “technical” mountain biking.)
Kylie, I too think quality should be encouraged with speakers, but not regardless of gender – I think organizers need to seek out both. As I said, there are masses of quality female speakers among the atheists, and not all the men who speak among the atheists are top notch. It’s not a matter of “oh darn there just aren’t any good female atheist speakers; it’s a matter of conference organizers never managing to think of any.
I’m not sure why you keep saying quality not gender when many quality female atheist speakers have been named on this very thread. There’s just no need to seek out women at the expense of quality – both are available, in abundance. It’s way too early to say “regardless of gender” – because that would just perpetuate this absent-minded failure to remember that women can think and talk too.
Also, some of us online use gender-neutral bylines (my other name is Silverwhistle), to keep at bay the worst of the online sexist idiots.