Stonewalling is bad management. It’s unprofessional. It’s not what a good boss or CEO does. It’s sometimes what a good military officer or emergency services chief does, when orders have to be obeyed promptly, but apart from emergencies, it’s not the way to supervise.

Another thing that’s bad management is springing things on people. It’s doing things in a high-handed manner when it would have been perfectly possible to do them with consultation and discussion and agreement. I talked about this some yesterday.

The problem here, if I understand it correctly, is that feminism is a big tent, and there are some woo branches of feminism. I don’t think the woo part is a very big fraction of feminism,

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There are lots of people who think the reaction to CFI and the statement and Ron’s activities is excessive. Some of those people even see flaws in Ron’s activities but still think the reaction is excessive. Maybe it is, but I think there are reasons for that, reasons we can figure out and look at and maybe learn something from.

Or to put it another way – I think I know what it was about the whole thing that got my irritation cranked up past a simmer, and I don’t think I’m particularly special, so maybe the same applies to other people.

It was the stonewalling.

If we’d been able to talk to him – we attendees and speakers at … Read the rest

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So that’s two people cutting ties. Maybe that’s what CFI wanted, but I doubt it.

Rebecca is one.

Do not support an organization that does not have the courage to stand up for women. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. If you are a speaker at a paid event for these organizations, cancel your appearance. If you regularly donate money to them, stop. If you work for them, look for a new job. I have a lot of friends and loved ones who currently do one, some, or all of those things, and I trust we’ll continue to be friends regardless of what happens. But I do think that continued support of CFI will send

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So it’s Monday, time to do the things that hung fire over the weekend…like release any little statements that might have piled up on Friday afternoon. This one from CFI for example, stemming from the meeting of its board last week:

The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.

The Center for Inquiry, including its CEO, is dedicated to advancing the status of women and promoting women’s issues, and this was the motivation for its sponsorship of the two Women in Secularism conferences. The CFI Board wishes to express its unhappiness with the controversy surrounding the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.

CFI believes in

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