Well women are so tiny we just can’t see them
Oooh look, I get to be on a list. Usually when there’s a list, I don’t get to be on it, which is probably perfectly sensible because there are better people to be on it, except when one looks closely at the list one notices that everyone on it is of just one gender, and it happens to be not the one that I am of which, and at that point one begins to wonder, is there a secret invisible subliminal hidden sub rosa unconscious criterion for being on the list that the maker of the list would probably not admit to but that nevertheless somehow just made it be that only people of one gender were good enough to be on the list.
Or to put it more bluntly, which I feel like doing because this kind of thing is getting increasingly on my nerves, is it really that difficult to draw up lists that are not 100% totally all male? Is it really? Is it really that hard for people to remember that there are female atheists too and some of them are well worth listening to or reading?
Because the trouble is (and this is hardly a news flash), the more people go on remembering just the men all the time when lists of atheists are drawn up, the more the women will be ignored and forgotten and the lists will go on being all male and the women will be even more ignored and forgotten and the process just goes on like that forever. I mean, fucking hell! Does this have to be spelled out at this late date? This is well known and has been well known for my entire adult life, and I’m 153. People choose people like them, so everybody else gets overlooked, so people already in a position to draw up lists and invite people to conferences choose people like them and all the other kinds of people just go on being locked out forever. You have to make the effort to seek out people not like you in order to correct for your own bias in favor of people like you so that other kinds of people will get a god damn chance. Is that so hard to understand?!
I beg your pardon. I mustn’t be so vehement. (Or wait, maybe I must – maybe there will be a contest for ‘Most Vehement Atheist’ some day and maybe if I am really really vehement I will get on the list even if the list does not specify ‘Most Vehement Female Atheist’ and then we would know Progress was Being Made.) It just did seem pathetic that a guy drew up a list of most vocal atheists of 2009 and every single one of them was a guy and he apparently hadn’t even noticed until commenters pointed it out. Come on.
Never mind, commenters did point it out, and they were sweet and astute enough to mention me among other people when they did it. But still it seems pathetic that it has to be pointed out. Yo, dude, could you really not think of even one woman worth including? Seriously?
But then, of course, John Loftus is not a towering intellect!
It was a rather odd list anyway. I would have voted for Ariane Sherine as “atheist of the year”, or whatever, for the continued success of the atheist bus campaign. But if it’s vocal in 2009 that we’re talking about, it seems hard to go beyond Jerry Coyne, who has taken and given so much of the heat lately, especially in the sometimes-ferocious accommodation debate. Obviously there are people like you, OB, and Margaret Downey who were in the front line … as deserving of a mention as most of those who were, in fact, mentioned.
I’m pleased to see that John Loftus plugs 50 Voices of Disbelief on his site, but if he’d glanced at its contents page he’d have discovered a lot of high-profile female atheists, some of them rather vocal about it.
Ophelia, you are in my (multi-gendered) top 10 list of prominent atheists.
Its not because I am sucking up, which I know you wouldn’t respect, but because of your stances on important issues and your posts and comments.
Ophelia, we should start a new list of the Top Atheists Who Should Never Shut Up, and you would be my vote.
I am encouraged and enlightened by your writing, and I need to read what you have to say.
And I hate gender bias blindness.
Der, I linked to the wrong list. I meant to link to the one I did actually get to be on.
To attempt to answer your question: women are presumed to be nice; atheists are presumed to be nasty — therefore no one thinks of women when they think of atheists. Simple, really: received unconscious social conditioning operating under the surface.
I know; that’s one reason all right. Hence my unrelenting efforts to demonstrate that not all women are nice.
Yeah, that’s the ivory tower for you. Big League academia has more in common with Mad Men than I’d at first expected. The “fit in or fuck off” attitude is pretty much a way of life.
Perhaps, OB, you need to wear brighter clothing so you will be more noticeable.
*ducks behind couch*
j/k. I voted for you at blaghag.
Sadly, these other lists just show that one can be an atheist without any other enlightenment.
OTOH, the blaghag list is very US-centric. There’s more than one kind of discrimination. It has Ariane on it, admittedly, but almost everyone else seems to be American.
It seems that some of these people won’t notice you unless you’re American or maybe British, and, yes, it does start to become annoying after a while. I feel like telling this blaghag person to take the log out of her own eye. Surely there were some important female atheists in other countries.
Well, actually, there’s Catherine Deveny for a start – she’s a huge atheist presence here in Australia, with best-selling books and continual appearances in the mainstream media (including her own mainstream radio program), not just a popular blog. She definitely belongs above several of the people on the list.
I’d love to see a list of influential or prominent atheists that not only takes into account what Udo (German-Australian-Canadian-Zeus-knows-what-else) and I (Australian) have been up to, but also shows knowledge that even I don’t have, such as exactly what Prabir Ghosh did in India last year. I wouldn’t be surprised if Prabir reached a bigger audience and had more impact than most of the people who keep getting mentioned. But of course, he’s not known in the US so he doesn’t exist.
Yes, there’s more than one kind of discrimination (and the insistent parochialism of Mooney’s version of accommodationism is one of the things I dislike most about it), but the all-boy one is particularly noticeable and irritating because women are after all not a minority. The ease with which people just overlook half the fucking population never ceases to amaze me.
Anyway, I said Maryam Namazie on that list; molto internationalist.
Ha, I voted for you anyways!
Twice I hope!
Twice I hope!
:- )
Yeah… I fail at refresh buttons.
A couple of other things:
1. Why would Eugenie Scott be listed? Okay, if you take it literally … she’s female and an atheist and influential. But she does not use her influence to advocate atheism or argue against religion. Quite the opposite: she’s more about using her influence and reputation to undermine scientific arguments against religion.
2. John Loftus has edited his own anthology of articles by atheists, which is due for release soon. Now, whatever our faults may be, and whoever we may have overlooked who should arguably have been on our scanners, Udo and I were conscious of the importance of gender balance, and had at least some success towards getting it. I wonder whether the same will apply with the Loftus book, or whether that’s a blind spot with him. I.e., I wonder how many women he will have. (I also wonder, on the other subject, how many non-Americans he will have.)
And in answer to one of those questions, it looks like 1 female contributor out of 9 (and 1 essay by a woman out of 15). I can’t easily check regarding the other question.
http://sites.google.com/site/thechristiandelusion/Home/contributors
Not impressive.
It was between OB and Ariane, but DGHW just edged out ABC.
I wonder… if you put a man on the “female atheist” list – would he be voted as a winner?
Yes if it were PZ Myers.
Was I the only one who didn’t think it was a joke that a man was voted most influential female atheist of 2009? It’s no longer funny how thoroughly female atheists are being marginalized in the so-called “new atheist movement.”
You weren’t the only one, Maia, I found all those votes very unfunny and tedious.