Here’s some of what Becky Friedman said in her post addressed to me at Ask an Atheist:

My argument is that feminism applied dogmatically, along with employing shame and zero-sum tactics of approach, work at cross purposes to eliminating misogyny and harassment in the atheist/skeptics community(ies). So I’ll give a few examples of how I see your writing as part of that larger observation. I’m not going to go looking for “too-dogmatic” things because that was never my argument.

In my original editorial I state: “Is our womanhood and feminism so holy that we cannot and will not open ourselves to criticism, discussion, and questions? Because the tone I’ve seen is unforgiving.” I could very well have linked the following comment on your Misogyny?  What Misogyny? post as one example of this:

I don’t want to see [commenter] Justicar as a decent human being in one place despite knowing that he’s not one via what he’s said in other places.

This strikes me as dogmatically rejecting all ideas a person has based on experience/contact with them in another arena. If myself and a pastor got into a spat about evolution, but then the pastor said “I don’t even want to see evidence of you doing charity because I know that in another arena you deny the majesty and wonder of the Almighty Creator!” we’d easily identify that as dogmatic.

That’s an idiotic analogy. My mention of Jews in Germany in 1936 was a bad analogy because it was much too strong to compare with women reporting harassment at conferences. Becky Friedman’s analogy is a bad analogy because it’s much too weak to compare with a guy who calls me and other women “cunts” more times than a search function can count.

Becky Friedman was comparing my view of Justicar to a pastor’s view of an atheist who denies the majesty of god. Bad analogy. My view of Justicar is not that he denies the majesty of god or anything comparable to that; it’s that he calls women cunts and whips up contempt for them in every way he can think of.

It’s not “dogmatic” in any relevant sense to refuse to chat with someone who calls women cunts. That’s not the right word, and it’s not the right category. It’s not “dogmatic” to refuse to break bread with someone who calls people by racist epithets, and it’s not “dogmatic” to refuse to argue with someone who calls people by sexist epithets.

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I’m doing an interview with Dan Fincke this morning for his part of the SSA fundraiser, so that’s why things are slow here at the moment.

Normal broadcasting soon.

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I mentioned it in comments and Gordon asked for a link so I might as well put it in a post. James Croft’s “We Are Humanists.” I like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PKkPPJi6jk

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I’m not going to blame religion for this, because it would be a cheap shot. It’s not religion so much as cranked-up nastiness – with a religious veneer.

The Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., has hanged an effigy of President Barack Obama from a gallows on its front lawn, a move DWOC pastor Terry Jones said was in response to Obama’s recent endorsement of same-sex marriage, as well as his stance on abortion and what Jones called his “appeasing of radical Islam.”

What was that I was saying about threatoids and threat-like remarks? Hanging people in effigy is the same kind of thing. It used to be fairly common, I think, or at least not unknown…but then so did flogging and slavery and child labor. Hanging people in effigy is not an old custom that ought to be revived.

The effigy is suspended from a makeshift gallows with a noose of yellow rope, has a doll in its right hand and a rainbow-colored gay pride flag in its left.

In a telephone interview with The Huffington Post, Jones said the flag was meant to call attention to Obama’s stance on same-sex marriage and that the baby doll is there because the president is “favorable toward abortion.”

But then Obama should have an abortion in his hand, not a baby. Get your ducks in a row. Gay pride flag: something Obama approves of and Pastor Jones hates. Baby: something Obama is taken to want to see aborted before it gets to be a baby and Pastor Jones loves. See? The two don’t match. He did it wrong. It has to be: something Obama approves of and Pastor Jones hates, for both items.

People are so sloppy with these things.

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The Church of England is worried and upset about government proposals to legalise gay marriage, saying these plans might come between it and its dearly beloved the state.

The church — whose supreme governor is Queen Elizabeth II — warned that it could be forced out of its traditional role of conducting weddings on behalf of the state.

Well we can’t have that. We can’t have the established church – whose top person is the monarch – being “forced” out of its traditional role. We can’t ever have anybody or any institution, however archaic and useless, forced out of a traditional role. Everybody knows that traditional roles are the best things ever, and must always be preserved and protected from change and reform.

“The Church of England’s unique place in the current marriage law of England means that the proposals will potentially have a very significant impact on our ability to serve the people of the nation as we have always done,” it added.

It said the plan “fails to take account of the fact that consummation has always been an integral part of the common understanding of marriage between church and state, with annulment possible where consummation does not occur.”

Whut? Consummation? What’s that got to do with anything? No wait, I get it – when it’s straight marriage, they can check for consummation by looking for blood on the sheet. With gay marriage that won’t work.

No, wait, that won’t work, because actually you don’t find the vicar who performed the marriage on the doorstep the next morning, ready to inspect the sheet. You used to, yes, but not any more – that’s one of those traditional roles that have faded away over time. Pause to shed a tear over another traditional role destroyed by our frivolous secular ways.

So that’s not it, so what is it? That “consummation” is a word that applies only to straight couples so that even if there’s no way to verify that a marriage has or has not been consummated, the fact that it doesn’t apply to gay couples makes the church superfluous? Is that it?

Surely not. Surely they can’t be that silly.

Can they?

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A silly Twitter exchange this morning…Surly Amy reported EIGHTEEN Surly Women Grant winners for TAM 2012, and a guy replied

Must be great for all those females. The rest of us are on our own.

I said so she should send you instead? He said no, he just never understood why it’s only applicable to female skeptics. I said it’s because there are fewer of them, and that self-perpetuates. Then I added

Think of it as actually benefiting you, by spreading skepticism among women and thus the population. Benefits all of us.

Why isn’t this more accepted? Why isn’t it just obvious, and embraced?

We’re all in this together, after all. We can all vote. This is in many ways a tragedy; the least we can do is try to spread critical thinking around as opposed to trying to keep it a special little geeky enclave. If this means grants for women or blacks or any other under-represented group, why is that something to kvetch about? Surly Amy isn’t taking money out of Complaining Guy’s pocket to send more women to TAM, she’s just raising the money through her own efforts and handing it out as she chooses. Complaining Guy can still go to TAM! And there will be eighteen more people to talk to there, thanks to Surly Amy. What’s not to like?

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On a pleasanter note, Ron Lindsay has a post suggesting dropping the word “balls” for “courage” and the like. Yes to that. I generally pick fights with people who do that here, and sometimes elsewhere.

More dogmatic feminism, I suppose.

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Taslima has a great post on 19th century reactions to education for women in Bengal. She includes two satirical paintings, one of a woman beating a man with a broom, and the other of a man nursing a woman – at least that’s the caption Taslima has on it, though he’s portrayed just standing there with an implement I don’t recognize.

What a hateful world to live in. One, there’s the idea that men are supposed to beat women instead of the other way around, instead of the idea that nobody should beat anybody. And two there’s the deeply sad idea that a woman should nurse a man but not the other way around. Seriously? So if she’s ill, he’s supposed to just shrug and go off with his friends?

Sad, sad, sad.

(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)

Maryam did a blogathon today. All you need for an arrest is hurt religious sentiment is a good one (as are all the others). The first example she offers is a Bangladeshi writer.

A Bangladeshi court has issued an arrest warrant for the writer of a 2003 novel that allegedly contains insulting remarks against the Prophet Mohammed, a lawyer said Tuesday.

The court in Dhaka issued the order in response to a petition from a Muslim activist accusing author Salam Azad of hurting religious sentiment in his banned book “Bhanga Math” (“Broken Temple”).

“We told the court that the book contained slanderous remarks against the Prophet Mohammed and Islam. The judge accepted the petition and issued a warrant of arrest,” the petitioner’s lawyer Ekhlas Uddin told AFP.

I apologize for pointing out the obvious yet again, but sane legal systems do not have laws against “slander” of people who have been dead for centuries. I can say anything I want to about Socrates; so can you; so can anyone. Sane legal systems also do not have laws against “slander” of religions, even the local religion. Only insane legal systems have those.

The very idea is simply infantile. What next? Somebody slandered a building? A piece of fruit? Pluto? (planet or cartoon dog, I don’t care) The weather?

You saw it predicted here first.

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Javier Krahe has been acquitted of “hurting religious feelings” in a movie he made nearly 40 years ago.

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Crommunist is doing the blogathan by taking pledges for learning songs and then posting a video of himself performing them. What a brilliant way of doing it!

Go cheer him on or donate all of your money or both.

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For our final item for this brief but exciting miniature blogathon – David Gibson at Religion News Service looks at the way bishops strain at imaginary gnats while gulping down very large smelly camels.

When the bishops gathered under intense public pressure in Dallas in June 2002, they seemed determined to take dramatic steps, and to a degree they did. Their Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People developed a “one-strike” policy to remove priests credibly accused of a single act of abuse, and jump-started efforts to have the Vatican streamline the process for defrocking abusive clerics…

Yet after all was said and done in Dallas, the bishops exempted themselves from any real sanctions. That self-absolution was considered outrageous at the time, and the passing years have not eased the anger.

“The Vatican also needs to do its job. It appears to have no problem investigating nuns and theologians, but investigating mismanagement by a bishop is not a priority,” the Rev. Thomas Reese, a well-known Jesuit commentator, told a symposium last month at Jesuit-run Santa Clara University to mark the 10th anniversary of the Dallas charter.

“Even when a bishop is indicted, no one has the sense to tell him to take a leave of absence until the case is over,” Reese said.

Quis custodiet, eh? Eh? It’s very like the bankers and hedge fund managers getting themselves put in charge of everything so that all the people who had nothing to do with all that gambling with other people’s money get to lose their jobs and houses and savings, while all the people who had everything to do with it continue to pocket millions every year, much of it via taxpayers. It’s very like that. We will fix all the things except the ones that have anything to do with us; those, of course, we will carefully bracket and put aside, because we want to be happy. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.

And so my part in the blogathon comes to an end and I get to rush outside for fresh air and rapid motion.

It is 1:58. This is post 13 of 13.

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Maureen Brian (whom I met at QED, much to my delight) makes an eloquent point on the government’s education plans. It’s so eloquent that it gets the 1:30 slot.

In an ideal world we would have the active encouragement of all a person’s natural languages throughout life, GCSE and A Level exams available in most of them and an end to the notion that passing an exam 20 years ago beats speaking the language every day to your Granny.

We will not be getting that ideal world under the current government whose aim seems to be to have people reciting infant school poetry before they sleep, unpaid and in fear of losing benefits, under the bridges of the nation.

Zing.

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Ron Lindsay points out in the Huffington Post that coming out as an atheist is significantly different from coming out as LGBT.

True. Nobody is saying that being straight is based on a lot of unexamined and untenable beliefs. Nobody is saying or hoping that straightitude will wither away. A good many atheists are saying that religion is based on mistaken beliefs and that it does harm as a result, and should either wither away or become very much less obtrusive and demanding and Special.

I don’t foresee a best-selling book entitled “The Straight Delusion” or “Heterosexuality Poisons Everything.” The LGBT community wants acceptance; they don’t want to persuade others to join their “team,” and even if they had that objective, they would strive for it in vain.

By contrast, the amount of literature that has been produced in the last decade criticizing religious belief is extensive and continues to grow. Moreover, these critiques of religion seem to have had some effect.

So the fact that we don’t have two heads or spikes isn’t enough to make us acceptable, and we might as well get used to it. In fact it’s what we want. (“We” as usual are gnus, or outspoken argumentative atheists.) We want to chip away at social deference to religion, and we can’t combine that with claims to be jes’ plain folks like everybody else.

12:49. I can spend a luxurious 11 minutes eating lunch.

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It’s not the thing you fling – it’s the fling itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJgt-HO0_kY

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Uh oh, it’s 11:50. That’s cutting it too fine.

The UK education secretary has decided to fuck up science education.

All children are to be taught a foreign language – which could include Mandarin, Latin or Greek – from the age of seven under reforms to the national curriculum being unveiled by the education secretary, Michael Gove.

In other reforms, children will be encouraged to learn science by studying nature, and schools will be expected to place less emphasis on teaching scientific method.

Less emphasis on teaching scientific method? What the hell? Why would they do that? They might as well say they’re going to place less emphasis on teaching children critical thinking and just stuff them with a Box o’ Facts.

The science curriculum is expected to emphasise using the natural habitat around schools – learning biology by studying the growth and development of trees, for example.

There will be less of a focus on doing experiments. Instead, children will be taught to observe their surroundings and learn how scientists have classified the natural world.

Seriously? Seriously? Forget experiments, just look at stuff and learn some lists?

That sounds like me at my teenage worst. “Uhhh, I like to look at stuff, that’s good enough.”

One of the first few comments captures it nicely.

Learning foreign languages from age 7 using songs and poetry and learning about science by spending time outside observing nature – that’s not news, my step-son did that at school 15 years ago. But then he did go to a Steiner school…

Precisely.

Whew – 11:58.

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