I haven’t been doing this lately, but just this once.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Turning a blind eye
Aug 1st, 2013 6:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonJosh has a great post at More Than Men about bystanders.
There’s a special place in my imaginary hell for tepid bystanders who turn a blind eye to the suffering and targeting of someone more vulnerable. I hate them, and I hate them more than I hate the tormentors. Because they fly a false flag. They present themselves as friends but turn out to be collaborators at the most dire moments. Because they know better and they choose to do nothing. To do nothing in a way that magnifies the stage, and scope, and power of bullies.
I came out publicly at 12 years old. This was very unusual in the mid-80s. There were no such things as Gay/Straight Alliances. We queer kids gathered in a sympathetic guidance counselor’s office (bless you, Mrs. H. I still remember giving you makeup tips and how delighted you were when you saw the results.) on a time-rotating basis so no one would figure out we were all in the same place at the same time. We knew we’d be harassed and beaten even worse if our ad hoc meetings were found out. We knew the administration would turn a blind eye, that it might make life professionally difficult for Mrs. H.
There was a 10th grade English teacher, a lesbian, who should have helped him but didn’t. Read it.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Only some of the contempt?
Aug 1st, 2013 5:54 pm | By Ophelia BensonJulian Assange is running for the Senate in Australia, and has said he’ll appoint Leslie Cannold as his “proxy” (I didn’t know there was such a thing) if he’s elected and can’t return to Canberra. (They let you do that? Strange.)
The point is, it’s seen as a good wheeze, because Australia (like all the places) has a misogyny problem. (Never!! No, really, I understand it does.)
This is an election where misogyny, always lurking under the surface like a tetanus spore, has erupted. Both political parties are overwhelmingly choosing men to replace outgoing MPs in safe seats, and former PM Julia Gillard told The Monthly magazine that some of the contempt that she was shown as prime minister was about being the first woman in the job.
Or, perhaps, about being a woman in the job.
…as soon as her position on the WikiLeaks Party ticket was announced on 25 July, the Tweets started – specifically – how can WikiLeaks Party supporters disavow rape culture considering that the leader Julian Assange is hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London while facing rape allegations?
Well, that was certainly my first thought.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Level 3 is “annoying”
Aug 1st, 2013 2:06 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe campaign to pretend that the BBC libeled some of the people on oolon’s block bot continues. People are working each other into a frenzy on Twitter and Facebook, pretending that they were named on Newsnight and then called abusers. Not what happened. No one was named.
Gavin Esler and Paul Mason discuss it.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Not a joke
Aug 1st, 2013 2:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonPolice are investigating bomb threats made on social networking site Twitter against several female journalists.
Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman, Independent columnist Grace Dent and Time magazine’s Catherine Mayer all said they had been threatened.
Anonymous account-holders tweeted that bombs had been placed outside their homes, primed to explode at 22:47 BST.
Not a joke. Not amusing. Not “trash talk.” Not trolling. Not best dealt with by ignoring.
Freeman, who had earlier published a column entitled “how to use the internet without being a total loser”, reported the threats to the Metropolitan Police.
The anonymous author of the tweet had “failed to understand my column”, she wrote.
An investigation into the threats, which make the tweeters liable to be arrested, was then launched, a Met spokesman confirmed.
The anonymous accounts have since been suspended, but screen grabs of the tweets have been circulated on the social media site.
Ms Mayer said she had been tempted to ignore and delete the “not very credible-sounding” tweet.
But the police advised her, Ms Dent and Ms Freeman not to stay at their homes overnight and had searched her building for suspicious devices, she told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.
The police don’t consider it a joke, or trash talk, or trolling, or best ignored.
Ms Freeman remained home as she “did not think it was worth taking that seriously”.
She explained there was no rationale for why she was targeted, adding: “There’s some kind of assumption that you have done something, that you must have written something particularly controversial…
“My great crime is that I’m a woman with some small amount of public profile – that is enough it seems.”
Yes: that is enough. I’ve been told that very explicitly – if I don’t like being abused and threatened, then I should stop writing and talking online. That simple. I’ve been told I’m a “public figure” and as such simply have to expect abuse from strangers. I’ve been accused of drama, and rage-blogging, and victim-feminism, and talking about it for the blog hits. I deserve – I asked for – whatever they choose to dish out. That’s just how it is, I’m told.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
The purpose of trolls
Aug 1st, 2013 12:09 pm | By Ophelia BensonAmanda Marcotte comments on the BBC Newsnight – Paul Mason – Twitter harassment campaign story to point out that misogynist harassers have an agenda.
But as awful as trolls are, they do serve a major purpose, if people are willing to accept that these are actual people expressing actual opinions, instead of imagining them, as too many people do, as almost a force of nature that the internet willed into existence and not people at all. That purpose is revealing that misogyny exists and it is widespread. Understanding that, I think, makes clear why so many other things exist: Rape culture, fundamentalist religions, the Republican Party’s guns-and-abortion obsession. There is a sea of boiling anger out there because men are taught from a young age that women are here to serve, and then they grow up and discover that women often elect not to do that.
Or because they’re taught from a young age that to be a boy is to be not a girl and that for a boy to be at all a girl is a profound disgrace and shame, deserving of beatings and wedgies and being dunked in toilets. Or because they’re taught from a young age that girls are kind of laughable and contemptible even if they are also highly desirable. Or because they’re taught from a young age that only men do things that matter, and then they grow up and find all these pesky women cluttering up the place and thinking they get to do things that matter too. Or because they’re taught from a young age that to be male is to be a bit brutal and obtuse, that fee-fees are for girrrrrrrrls (who are contemptible and Other Than boys, see above), that a boy or man who is at all good at paying attention to other people’s thoughts and feelings is a wimp and a pussy and doing the male thing all wrong. Or because they’re taught from a young age that women are dependent on men and they don’t want to have a woman depending on them.
Some misogynists—the Rick Perrys of the world—calmly react to this realization by deciding that women’s rebellion is a temporary, feminism-induced insanity, and that the proper legislative pressure plus a good dose of condescension can return them to their natural state of servitude. Some men get a sick pleasure out of stripping away the “illusion” that women are equal and violently showing them exactly how inferior they are. The online troll population has these kinds of characters in it, but the dominant class is men who don’t get the level of sexual attention they feel entitled to from women, and therefore have concocted elaborate, dogged theories about how women are broken, because they cannot ever allow that women have a right not to like them personally. (Or that if they started acting like decent people, maybe they would actually be more likeable.) All misogynists get upset when women are given attention for their talent or skills; it violates their core belief that women are here to serve. This is why writing on the internet while female means getting everything from laughably delusional men pretending to “critique” your writing while barely concealing their rage to rape and death threats. Particularly if your writing is not upholding the opinion that women are inferior servant class.
Ya. That one violates the “only men do things that matter” doctrine, and there clearly really is something special about it. Being a woman who writes on the internet has become like being a magnet with little bits of iron all over your environment. Wham, wham, wham, all day long as the bits of iron slam into you.
The seething rage on display from so many men (and their female supporters) all the time on the internet is educational; it makes it much harder to hand wave and pretend that rape and sexual harassment are a matter of miscommunication, that anti-choice sentiment is a result of some kind of affection for “life”, and that women’s failure to reach economic and social equality is a matter of women’s failures instead of widespread sentiment that women don’t deserve said equality. Seeing the livid rage of devoted Republican voters at the very existence of independent women sharing their thoughts and opinions online makes it very difficult indeed to see Republican policies that hurt women as being merely coincidental. So this shit matters.
That’s why it’s uncomfortable to have so many people insist that there’s an easy fix for troll targets, the “ignore the bullies and they’ll go away” fix, usually spouted by people who haven’t considered for a moment that the trolls may very well be actual people who are trying to protect and perpetuate sexism.
It is educational, but I get tired of being a textbook.
Trolls want to silence women. When they are allowed to shout at you without a response, they have created a microcosm of the world they want, where men are yelling at women who are sitting there and taking it. This is an interesting point, though as West points out, trolls also “win” when they get attention—particularly with the “women won’t fuck me like I deserve!” anger mobs, getting negative attention from women becomes a sort of revenge for them. So it’s tough, but like sexual harassers, trolls know how to create a situation where you can’t win: Either you endure their harassment or you are a “bitch” for pushing back. Cultural misogyny works in their favor.
…
I retweet trolls a lot (and then usually block them immediately, because I know that there is no potential for actual discourse here). I get a lot of shit for it, mostly from men. Every time a man condescendingly tells me, “You are giving them attention! Just ignore and block them!”, I hear, “Being exposed to the brutal misogyny you get aimed at you every day is uncomfortable. It would be so much better for me if I didn’t have to know this is what’s going on.” This phenomenon is not unique to the internet. Kids who get bullied get “don’t be a tattletale” from adults. Women who get street harassed end up having to apologize for making men in their lives uncomfortable by bringing it up. The intention is almost never to tell someone they are to suffer this in silence, but the effect is that you are telling them just that.
Yes. That. Kids do get it. Gay kids get it in triplicate.
[Lindy] West is right; it’s time to stop thinking of trolls as idiots who are just seeking attention, and see them for what they are: Misogynists with a political agenda. These are men that absolutely do not want to live in a society where women are treated equally, and they are obsessed with silencing the women online whose writings they rightfully fear are going to help push society in a more feminist direction. They want to harass feminists into silence. If we keep this understanding front and center and discard useless theories about “attention-seeking” or “lulz”, we can begin to have a more productive conversation about what the hell to do about the problem.
I’m doing my best.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
For the cheerfuls
Aug 1st, 2013 11:30 am | By Ophelia BensonVia the Global Secular Humanist Movement page on Facebook -
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Treated like subhuman garbage
Jul 31st, 2013 6:17 pm | By Ophelia BensonLindy West, like many observers, points out that a report abuse button on Twitter could be used for just more of the same abuse.
The thought of having my Twitter account potentially suspended by abusers in retaliation for fighting back against my own abuse is profoundly enraging. On the other hand, though, this week someone created a parody account of my dead father to harass me because of my stance on rape jokes (still going on, because COOOMEDYYYYY). And you better fucking believe I wanted a “report abuse” button for that. I can see both sides—though mostly what I see right now is how hard the entire system is rigged to fuck women over.
I used personal examples there, because I happen to have those on hand (so, so many of those), but this isn’t actually about how I, Lindy West, am treated on the internet. This is about how people—particularly women—are treated on the internet when we challenge entrenched power structures.
We are treated like subhuman garbage, and that’s because internet trolling is not random—it is a sentient, directed, strong-armed goon of the status quo. And the more we can hammer that truth through the public consciousness, the sooner we can affect the widespread cultural change we need to begin tamping down online hate speech.
Yes. A technical fix, if it worked, would be good, but not nearly as good as a widespread cultural change which makes it be the case that people don’t want to treat anyone like that.
One of the pillars of conventional wisdom about internet trolling is that internet trolling just happens. You hear this all the time, from even the most progressive allies: Oh, well, it’s the internet. There are trolls. Trolls troll the internet. Rape threats are like oxygen. Whatareyagonnadooooo. So, I’m just supposed to accept that psychological abuse is built into my job and I’m some thin-skinned rube if I complain about it? Easy for you to say, Señor Rando. Not only is that framework supremely unsatisfying for me personally, I’d go so far as to say that it’s a dangerous and patently false myth. Internet trolling does not “just happen.” It is not some mysterious, ambient inevitability that affects all internet users indiscriminately.
Internet trolling is a force with a political agenda.
Hmmmmmmyes and no. Much of the “political agenda” is just trolling itself. It’s how some people socialize with their friends. That’s a sick, depressing fact, but there it is. It has to be fun for them, because if it weren’t, they would stop after a few hours or days. We know they don’t: they keep at it for years.
…when we ignore the issue—leaving trolls to twist in the wind—not only does it not fix anything, it actively hurts us. It poisons healthy conversations. And, more specifically, it actively drives women off the internet and out of the conversation and back into our “safe spaces”—which is exactly what the trolls want. They want us to shut up. They want us out of their territory.
But engaging with the issue is exactly what trolls want too. They revel in attention. So that’s the conundrum: As soon as we acknowledge them, they win. But if we never acknowledge them, they also win, plus discourse shuts down and we all get dumber. So what are we going to do? Well, in light of that idiotic Catch 22, I know what I’m going to do. Whatever I fucking feel like doing. I’m sick of being told that I’m navigating my own abuse wrong.
I’ve been sick of it all along.
Cumulatively, the sheer volume of hate that we’re expected to shoulder, in silence, every day, is wearing a lot of people out and shutting down rational discourse. Female bloggers are being hounded off the internet. Teenage girls are being hounded off the earth. There’s no good solution, but we have to do what we can to stop these people—unmask them, shame them, mock them, cement their status as social pariahs—for our own sanity and for those whose armor isn’t so thick (upgrade yo greaves, son).
We’re doing our best.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Burka Avenger
Jul 31st, 2013 5:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonPakistan now has its own caped crusader, but under the cape is a burqa. Hmm.
Pakistan’s first caped crusader is a burka-clad superhero who fights school-hating baddies by night and moonlights as a gentle, compassionate schoolteacher by day.
Burka Avenger has yet to launch on TV, but she is creating quite an impression in a country where female literacy is estimated at a grim 12% and the Taliban are continuing a campaign which has seen hundreds of girls’ schools blown up in the north-west.
That sounds quite good, in a way. But…a burqa?
“This is such an interesting way to reinforce positive social messages for kids,” Mr Rashid told the BBC. “The Burka Avenger is a great role model. We lack those in Pakistan.”
Many real life women’s rights crusaders in Pakistan might not agree. The use of the burka, the full cloth head-to-toe veil that is often worn by women in the north-west and tribal areas of Pakistan, is controversial in a country which has been reeling from the effects of religious extremism over the past decade.
Marvi Sirmed, an Islamabad-based journalist and human rights activist, thinks that it is not right to build a resistance figure out of a woman wearing a garment that has been strongly associated by some with the suppression of women.
“It is subversive and it says that you can only get power when you don a symbol of oppression,” says Ms Sirmed.
“It is demeaning to those brave women in the conservative parts of Pakistan who have been fighting for women’s rights, education and justice, and who have said ‘no’ to this kind of stereotype.”
In one way, yes, but in another way, it’s more like subverting the burqa.
Taha Iqbal, the head of animations for Burka Avenger, thinks that everyone should just wait for the series to come out.
He says like any other superhero, Burka Avenger has a back-story too and her reasons for wearing the burka have nothing to do with subservience.
“Besides she has to kick ass,” he says. “Tight leather pants are hardly practical for that purpose.”
No, but dude, neither is a giant bag over your body and a smaller bag over your head. Those aren’t practical for kicking ass either.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
It’s rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible
Jul 31st, 2013 5:00 pm | By Ophelia BensonJust because. The parrot sketch.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
It’s going downhill
Jul 31st, 2013 11:06 am | By Ophelia BensonTexas is racing at top speed toward the edge of a cliff again.
At least six creationists/”intelligent design” proponents succeeded in getting invited to review high school biology textbooks that publishers have submitted for adoption in Texas this year. The State Board of Education (SBOE) will decide in November which textbooks to approve. Those textbooks could be in the state’s public school science classrooms for nearly a decade.
Deep sigh.
It’s biology. It’s not church. Biology textbooks should not be reviewed according to churchy criteria. Ever.
Next question?
Following are the six creationists/evolution critics we have identified so far on the biology review teams:
- Raymond Bohlin is vice president of vision outreach for Probe Ministries in Plano and a research fellow for the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. The Discovery Institute promotes the pseudoscientific concept “intelligent design” over evolution. Founded in 1973, Probe works “to present the Gospel to communities, nationally and internationally, by providing life-long opportunities to integrate faith and learning through balanced, biblically based scholarship.” Bohlin has a doctorate in molecular and cell biology from the University of Texas at Dallas, making him a star performer for anti-evolution groups. He is listed as a “Darwin Skeptic” on the Creation Science Hall of Fame website. Probe and the Creation Science Hall of Fame promote a fundamentalist, literal interpretation of the Bible’s creation story. We know that Bohlin is in Austin this week to participate in the biology review panel meetings.
Groan.
- Ide Trotter is a longtime standard-bearer for the creationist movement in Texas, both as a source of funding and as a spokesperson for the absurdly named creationist group Texans for Better Science Education. Trotter, listed as a “Darwin Skeptic” on the Creation Science Hall of Fame website, is a veteran of the evolution wars at the SBOE and is participating the biology review panel meetings this week. He testified before the board during the 2003 biology textbook adoption and again in 2009 during the science curriculum adoption. In both instances, Trotter advocated including scientifically discredited “weaknesses” of evolution in Texas science classrooms. Trotter, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering, runs his own investment management company and served as dean of business and professor of finance at Dallas Baptist University. He claims that major scientific discoveries over last century have actually made evolutionary science harder to defend:
“The ball is rolling and it’s going downhill. There are not enough forces on the side of Darwinism to keep pushing it back uphill forever.”
Groan. Texas Texas Texas – please grow up.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Numbers
Jul 30th, 2013 6:48 pm | By Ophelia BensonMarcela Kunova on online harassment at the Huffington Post UK:
Virtually every woman who publicly contributes to a political debate is subjected to virulent and largely anonymous online invective, or “trolling”. But it is far more than simply readers’ feedback. Trolling is intended to make women shut up – and to remind them their primary purpose is to be there for male sexual pleasure. Or not to be in public life at all.
It now seems to be an established fact: women who speak publicly get threatened with rape, physical violence, harming their relatives and murder. It is not just a bit of fun. Many are stalked and get their home addresses published. And it doesn’t really matter whether those threats will subsequently come true – they are already an act of violence.
Internet has offered women new ways to express themselves. But it has also enabled some misogynistic men to open the floodgates of hate and – cocooned in online anonymity – to bully women who have penetrated traditionally male-dominated public life.
The worst thing is that the strategy of harassing and intimidating female journalists, bloggers and other female public figures, was often sucessful. Some journalists, like Linda Grant, admits she stopped writing her regular column for the Guardian, because of violent threats. Some bloggers think twice before publishing a post.
Some bloggers refuse to second-guess themselves because of what a lot of abusive trolls say, but they also get tired of the abusive trolling.
But since 2011, when journalist Laurie Penny spoke out about the violent sexual threats she regularly receives, things are perhaps starting to change. Others joined her initiative and testimonies started to flow. More recently, American feminist Soraya Chemaly published a bone-chilling post about death threats she received via Facebook and Twitter.
Now thousands of women have joined their voices worldwide in online campaigns like #shoutingback, #silentnomore, and @EverydaySexism, to mention only a few.
It’s a start.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Newsnight on Twitter trolls
Jul 30th, 2013 6:32 pm | By Ophelia BensonThat bit of Newsnight is on YouTube.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Trolls griefers and flamers
Jul 30th, 2013 6:23 pm | By Ophelia BensonThings get more interesting every day.
BBC Newsnight talked about the Twitter harassment tonight (that is, two and a half hours ago). Paul Mason wrote a related article about it. It traced the harassment back to none other than Rebecca’s “guys, don’t do that” video, and showed a bit of said video. Then it talked to oolon about the block bot.
Paul Mason sets the stage:
Since I’ve been on the trail of the people threatening high-profile women with rape on Twitter I’ve learned a lot. I get a fair amount of grief on social media, usually from the kind of people who get driven to using the F-word about Keynesianism, or the Laffer curve.
Now my timeline’s been flooded with abuse – and its alter ego, gentle condescension laden with malice – from all kinds of trolls, griefers and flamers (the latter, one of the trolls explained, are not serious, adding that it is they, the trolls, who are the kings when it comes to ruining people’s lives online).
Proposed solutions range from forcing Twitter to suspend the account of anybody reported for threats or violent abuse, to forcing all users to sign up with a verifiable e-mail address. But who are the “trolls” and can anything be done to stop them?
He talked to a technical person who thinks blocking is all one can do.
Since I did this report I’ve been flamed by a particular community. I put it to Ms Norton that if I sanitise my own experience by blocking individuals and – unlike with Stella Creasy MP or Caroline Criado-Perez – they do go away, this
just leaves me trapped in a sanitised reality while a “dirty” reality goes on around me.She says “Throwing that ‘dirty’ conversation off Twitter doesn’t end it. And actually knowing where it is, I think that’s helpful. I thinking knowing that those dirty conversations are out there, that we can choose to engage with them or choose to ignore them depending on the time and energy and motivations that we have.”
If it’s a social problem and not a technological one, what is the root of it? Ms Norton, believes it is stark:
“The social problem is that men are raised to hate women and technology is not going to fix that. What’s going to fix that is a societal conversation about why that is and why it shouldn’t be, and why women aren’t a threat to men. And the technology gives us the opportunity to have that conversation. It’s not always a pleasant conversation, but we need to have it. Just shutting down the voices we don’t like doesn’t make the sentiments go away.”
I don’t think so. I think having extra places and ways to have the “conversation” just makes that way of seeing women more entrenched and more feverish. I think shutting it down on various media would help.
Personally, as I get enough great conversations from the people who are prepared to debate ideas without abuse, I’ve resorted to the “shared block list” strategy. This focuses the wisdom of the Twitter crowd onto the most notorious idiots and enables those who sign up to engage in a collective block, without necessarily banning the perpetrators from the internet.
I’ve installed The Block Bot and I’ll be talking to the man who coded it tonight about the strange online community that revels in the belittling of women. Though I’ve been aware of trolls, sexism and the flaming of fellow women journalists for years now, what this has taught me is that violent misogyny is probably the defining fault line of the internet, and is what has a better chance of killing the social media than Ayatollah Khamenei and Kim Jong-un ever could.
You can already feel cyberspace divided into a world that hates women and one that does not. Fortunately the former is small, but incredibly powerful – and underestimated at its peril.
And that man is our very own oolon – whom I used to rebuke for his frivolity about the whole thing, but he (obviously) took it more seriously as time went on.
Toby Young was also on Newsnight. He boasted about having tweeted about an MP’s cleavage. The guy is a complete asshole.
Update
A sock puppet commenter pointed out that Jeremy Stangroom is talking about suing oolon for defamation. It’s true.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Living unquietly
Jul 30th, 2013 6:16 pm | By Ophelia BensonSometimes the 140 character limit can produce aphoristic wisdom.
From Quinn Norton for instance.
if I always tried to police my language for those out there who want to use it to attack me, I would have no words left
anyhow, the act I do which causes the most offense is living unquietly.
Recognized.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Journalist hunts the elusive woman atheist
Jul 30th, 2013 10:30 am | By Ophelia BensonSecular Woman responds to the Salon piece on where oh where oh where are the women atheists.
Last week Salon writer Katie Engelhart asked, “Where are the Women of New Atheism?” Since she couldn’t seem to find many, or mention by name most of those she did acknowledge, we decided to give her a hand by rounding up several leaders in atheism and interviewing them ourselves. (We are taking submissions as they come in; please see the contact information below if you would like to participate!)
Most of us made much the same point – the one made by “she couldn’t seem to find many, or mention by name most of those she did acknowledge.” We said it’s stupid to keep asking where the women are when there are so many right out in plain view, and it’s even more stupid to talk about how they’re overlooked when you overlook them yourself.
Kim Rippere said it.
When we are not asked to appear, are not asked for our input (even on a piece supposedly about us), and are sidelined and ignored it is difficult to be or become prominent. Salon merely mirrored the typical media dance in dismissing women in favor of men––even in a story about women.
Amy Davis Roth said it.
It seems to me that almost every year the same article is written, asking where the atheist women leaders are. Then, every year women from the secular community speak up and say, “Look! Here we are and here are other prominent atheist women fighting for social justice and speaking out! We are right under your nose!” And then next the year the same article is written featuring photos of a very specific group of prominent men in the movement and once again asking where we are. Instead of just asking were the atheist women are, without actually looking, perhaps it’s time journalists realized that writing articles about the women who are here and are making a very real difference will encourage even more women to come forward. We are only invisible to the society at large because the media chooses not to focus on us.
Monette Richards said it.
The author should, perhaps, read this article and ask “Where are the atheist women?” because they weren’t named in the title, or in the links to their works or in the picture. The title named men. The pictures were of men. Women’s works were linked to namelessly. The author quotes Bekiempis, saying, “Let’s reframe. For every mention of Hitchens, counter with a mention of Hecht.” Yet, Hitchens was mentioned four times (without counting the picture caption), while Hecht only got in three times. Interview more women. Mention more women by name. Use pictures of atheist women, especially when talking about atheist women. We can, at least, start with the little things?
Noelle George said it.
If we want to increase the number of women involved in atheism, let’s celebrate, recognize, and appreciate the outstanding women who are contributing now. This will not only strengthen our movement from the inside, but it will also draw in talented people outside the movement who want to contribute. This goes for all underrepresented demographics, not just women.
It’s not that women aren’t involved, and it’s not that quality women aren’t involved. But the very question “where are the women” discounts every woman who is here now.
Teresa MacBain said it.
As an atheist woman among many atheist women, I’m insulted! Our movement has a large number of female leaders who are changing the landscape of freethought and making our community more diverse. I was honored to be a speaker at the recent Women in Secularism 2 conference, which celebrated the reality of atheist female leaders in the freethought world.
Mandisa Thomas said it.
Articles that pose the question asking about a specific demographic should be well researched, and indicate an exhaustion of all avenues. If writers really want to know about the diversity of the atheist community, there’s plenty of information and organizations to choose from. Our hard work shouldn’t be in vain.
And others said it. I said it. Most of us said it.
I wonder if journalists will ever learn.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Loony left feminist Taliban strikes again
Jul 29th, 2013 4:34 pm | By Ophelia BensonColin McGinn forgot someone for his all-male contrarians list. Toby Young should be on it, because he’s very like Colin McGinn, right down to the thinking he’s funny when he isn’t.
He doesn’t like feminism. Wo, that’s original!
Right, that’s it. I’m not shopping at the Co-op again. The bog-standard supermarket chain announced this morning that it has caved in to growing pressure from loony Left feminist campaigners and given the publishers of lads’ mags an ultimatum: place your magazines in “modesty bags” before 9 September or we’ll no longer sell them.
Needless to say, this decision has been welcomed by Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem Under-Secretary of State for Women, Equalities and Politically Correct Mumbo Jumbo Foisted On Us By New Labour That The Present Government Is Too Cowardly To Get Rid Of.
“Exposing children to lewd pictures that portray women as sex objects is not appropriate,” Ms Swinson told the Guardian. “That’s why the Co-operative’s decision to implement the Bailey review recommendation for publications with overtly sexual images on the cover to be displayed and sold in modesty bags is very welcome.”
“Modesty bags” is a horrible phrase, and concept – but the magazines are displaying women as if they were pork chops – pork chops with their legs spread. Thinking that’s not great for equality between the sexes is not “Loony Left.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if UK Feminista and Object – the organisations behind the Lose The Lads’ Mags campaign – do start clamouring for the Beano to be taken off sale. Give ’em a finger and they’ll take a hand. These puritanical fanatics are the Left-wing equivalent of the Taliban’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. At this rate, they’ll soon be patrolling our city centres in Toyota Land Cruisers, administering on-the-spot punishment beatings to any man caught looking at a woman’s cleavage for more than a second. Like most red-blooded, heterosexual males, I’ll never be able to leave the house again.
Got that? He’s not gay. That’s the important thing.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
They were right there
Jul 29th, 2013 4:13 pm | By Ophelia BensonSoraya Chemaly offers answers to the perennial, silly question, “where are all the women in ___?” Actually it’s not in ___, but it might as well be. It’s in atheism, but it could be philosophy or gaming or politics or you know the drill.
In a Salon piece last week called, “Where are the women of new atheism?”, Katie Englehardt described what looks like diminishing participation of women in atheist life. She also encouraged atheist women to more openly embrace their beliefs.
Yeah it’s not that we don’t embrace our beliefs openly – it’s that people always forget to mention us, including Engelhart herself. Yes, Engelhart herself – in the very act of writing (yet another) article wondering where we all were, she herself concealed the names of a lot of us for no earthly reason. Look at it again – the article wondering where we all were.
But before long, these New Atheists were depicted as an old boys’ club—a clique of (white) men, bound by a particularly unyielding brand of disbelief.
Where were the women?
Why, they were right there: stolidly leading people away from the fold. They were irreverent bloggers and institution founders. And scholars. Around the time that the Dawkins-Hitchens-Harris tripartite published its big wave of Atheist critique, historian Jennifer Michael Hecht published “Doubt” and journalist Susan Jacoby published “Freethinkers“—both critically acclaimed. And yet, these women, and many others, failed to emerge as public figures, household names.
See that? Two names, but also a whole slew of concealed ones, hiding under all those links. Stupid, isn’t it? Why not include the names in the article, instead of hiding them under links? Is it immodest to name women? Under irreverent you have Jen McCreight, under bloggers you have all the women of Skepchick (like Rebecca Watson, Amy Davis Roth, Elyse Anders, Heina Dadabhoy), under institution you have the pillars of Secular Woman like Kim Rippere and Monette Richards, under founders you have Annie Laurie Gaylor of FFRF. Under many you have Annie Laurie again and under others you have…me.
So that’s one place the women are - they’re being concealed even by people who are ostensibly writing about their very concealment. There aren’t enough face-palms in the world…
Among Soraya’s reasons -
Second, sexism is real and has an effect on women’s participation and leadership within the atheist community. Rape jokes and sexual harassment, as penalties and tools to silence women, exist in atheist and secular groups as well as religious ones. Many people hold the tacit belief that atheism equals rationalism and rationalism is gender-neutral, and therefore sexism can’t exist among atheists. But critical thinkers do irrational things all the time — and unless they actively try to resist existing prejudices, they can easily fall into them. The discrimination based on class, race, gender and sexuality that we see in the broader culture exists in atheist and secular communities too, and requires the same dismantling.
Big time. We’re working on it, but…right now it’s like going up a down escalator.
The Women in Secularism Conference, started by Melody Hensley and the Center for Free Inquiry in 2012, is meant to address imbalance. This year’s conference, which began with an efflorescent expression of the problems at hand, was bigger than last year’s.
Fifth, it’s no exaggeration to say that managing sexism is exhausting, depressing and distracts from work women could be doing as visible spokespeople of fighting for higher and equal pay, or immigration policies that include uneducated women, or ending sexual predation, or advocating for the right to control our own reproduction. All of which, by the way, would probably contribute to the growth of secular and non-religious culture. (There are reasons why seven of the ten most religious states in the US are also rated the worse states for women to live in.) The need to constantly struggle against gender-based prejudice leaves women with less time and energy to work on any of these issues.
Conferences like Women in Secularism Conference or Blackout, a secular rally celebrating diversity started by Mandisa L. Thomas, president and founder of Black Nonbelievers, are vibrant events and important to building communities. But they’re not enough. Kim Rippere, founder of Secular Woman explains, “The secular community needs to be self-reflective regarding acceptance and inclusion both within our community and in society and the media has to stop ignoring women atheists or it will continue to be difficult for women to emerge as atheist leaders.”
Katie Engelhart please note.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
Frankly incandescent
Jul 29th, 2013 2:56 pm | By Ophelia BensonThe social networking site’s move came as a female MP called in police over rape threats she received via Twitter and detectives continued to investigate similar highly offensive messages sent to a feminist campaigner.
Caroline Criado-Perez, a writer, faced a deluge of online vitriol, including warnings that she would be killed, after she successfully lobbied for a woman to appear on a British banknote.
The trolls also targeted Stella Creasey, the Labour MP for Walthamstow in east London, for speaking out in support of Miss Criado-Perez.
Miss Creasey said she was “frankly incandescent” at Twitter’s response to the vile abuse she suffered over a 24-hour period.
One user threatened to rape her and “put the video all over the internet”, while another calling himself @rapey1 wrote: “I will rape you tomorrow at 9pm… Shall we meet near your house?”
And that’s what women “deserve” for talking.
The MP copied the messages to Waltham Forest Police’s Twitter account and said she was making a formal complaint to her local police station.
She said free speech was “incredibly important” but said it did not include the right to threaten people with rape.
“It is important that we do not think that somehow because this is happening online it is any less violent, any less dangerous than if people were shouting or abusing Caroline in the street in this way,” she told BBC Radio 4′s The World At One.
“Twitter needs to be explicit that sexual violence and sexual aggression will not be tolerated as part of their user terms and conditions.
“We can all challenge these people and indeed when this happens to me in other occasions I tend to retweet it so people can say, ‘This is not acceptable’.”
So do I. For that reason.
Senior police officers have privately said they are extremely reluctant to get drawn into the time-consuming and highly sensitive area of trying to police the internet.
Andy Trotter, chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ communications advisory group, suggested today that Twitter was not doing enough to combat internet trolls.
“While we do work with them on some matters I think there is a lot more to be done. They need to take responsibility, as do the other platforms, to deal with this at source and make sure these things do not carry on,” he said.
They do. We’re sick of being told that rape threats (however figurative they may be) don’t violate any Twitter rules.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)
